#Eddie Cleveland | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fairyysoup · 2 years ago

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western nights

♫︎ western nights - ethel cain ♫︎

pairing(s): eddie munson x fem!reader

summary: You're on a road trip to nowhere. Eddie wants to get the hell out of dodge. It's a match made in heaven- if only it were, actually, heaven.

words: 13k

cw: explicit, smut, piv sex, oral sex (f + m receiving), exhibitionism, light choking, spitting, eddie is 24, reader's age unspecified (over 21), illegal activities, theft, smoking, alcohol consumption, strangers to lovers, bonnie & clyde type dynamic, mechanic!eddie, eddie's trying hard to be a good boy he's just got issues, pining, perv!reader, some slight dubcon/somno for a sec if you squint, there was only one bed, graphic depictions of violence, a drunk guy being nasty to both eddie and reader, bar fight, blood, arguments, angst, hurt/comfort, panic attacks, an overall janky relationship here, inspired by the song western nights by ethel cain

a/n: *slaps fic* this bad boy can be written with so many cold medicines in my head <3 ethel cain if you see this do NOT interact i have done zero justice to your song and also completely disregarded some key aspects of the themes of it lol this is loosely based at best

ALL MY WORKS ARE 18+ MINORS DNI

He’s never looked more beautiful on his Harley in the parking lot, breaking into the ATMs, sleeping naked when it gets too hot…

You’ve become something of a connoisseur of gas station coffee.

You know which chains have the best. Love’s always has the best and freshest, with the most options of flavors. Pilot is usually a crapshoot, depending on what area of the country you’re in. Occasionally, if you can find it, Bodega doesn’t disappoint. And the worst, by far, is always Shell. Shell coffee, you think, must come directly from the sewers of whatever backwater town you’re trundling through.

You’re somewhere in Indiana, you guess, judging by the state-shaped keychains on the rotating rack next to the cash register. You grab a state map from a magazine stand and toss it in with the rest of your purchase. You were lucky to have found a Love’s so you could finally afford yourself some proper dark roast coffee; all the watered down arabica stuff you’ve been getting since Cleveland has only been making your head ache.

“What’s the quickest way to Indianapolis?” You ask the dead-eyed attendant ringing you up, a 20-something year old guy with bags under his eyes and bad skin.

He chews his licorice like a camel chews straw, staring up at you blankly. “I dunno. Never been.”

You look from him, to the map, and back. “Cool. What town is this?”

“Hawkins.” His bored-by-you attitude is overwhelming.

“Thanks so much for the help.” You afford the attendant a tight smile as you grab your bag of snacks and head out. It’s going to be a long night.

The air outside is stifling, summer heat hanging in the muggy air like a fog. The humidity makes your hair stick uncomfortably to the back of your neck as you peel off your old green hunting jacket and tie it around your waist. You’ve parked your van under the fluorescent-lit gas pump overhang, providing the proper lighting for you to spread the map of Indiana across the hood and bend over it, using your full coffee as a paperweight. You rip open the singular Slim-Jim you could afford for dinner, and pore over it.

There’s commotion across the parking lot, which stirs you from your rumination over the map. You glance up; there are two guys loitering by a telephone booth in one corner of the lot, sharing a cigarette. Teenagers who have nowhere else to be on a Friday night, you suppose. Five yards away from them, a third crouches in front of a badly vandalized ATM, the cause of the commotion. He seems to be hacking at the wiring with a pocket knife.

You ignore it. So far, on this trip, you’ve seen far worse than a guy stealing petty cash from a gas station ATM. Tracing your fingers across the paper, it looks like if you take state route 13 to I-69, you’ll be in Indianapolis by midnight. Shouldn’t be too difficult, as long as you can find the 13, and then you can find a place to crash in the city.

Grabbing an old highlighter from your pocket, you mark your route in bright pink. The guy from the ATM seems to have gotten what he wanted, moving quickly across the parking lot with his head held high, like he has every right to be there. He approaches a motorcycle parked on the opposite side of the pump from you, and begins feeding dollar bills into the machine.

“Hey, do you know how to get to the 13 from here?” You can’t see much more than his leather-clad shoulder and hip jutting out from around the pump, the front tire of his Harley sticking out from behind his leg.

There’s a pause, and then his head pops out from around the pump. A curtain of unruly dark hair frames a long neck, big doe-like eyes and flushed lips pouting at you in confusion. It makes you freeze. “Sorry?”

“I, uh-” What were you trying to do? Get on the right course. Right. Of course. “State- uh- state route 13? I’m trying to get to, um, Indianapolis?” You cringe at your own stuttering, nails digging into the paper before you.

The man stares at you for a long time, dark eyes framed by thick, curling lashes sizing you up slowly. Then, he rounds the pump. “The highway’s just down the road- keep going west and you won’t miss it.”

“Great, thanks.” You grab up your coffee and the map, crunching it between your tense fingers. He hasn’t moved, still leaning against the gas pump, arms crossed, staring at you. It makes you nervous, in more ways than one.

“You won’t get far in that heap, though.”

You pause. Your knees threaten to wobble under you as you look up at him. Your hand is on the door, you could simply ignore him and get in, but something in his gaze makes you stop. Is that… genuine concern? Or is he just putting on a show for you?

“What do you mean?” The heat of the coffee burns through the paper cup and torches your fingers.

“Well, your fender’s bashed in and, I dunno if you noticed, but you have a crack in your windshield,” he gestures at the long crack running horizontally across the glass, just above where your line of sight usually is. “Probably got a lot more shit wrong with it, too, I could hear you coming a mile up the road. Junkyard find?”

“Something like that.” More like, sat in your parents’ garage for so long that you took a chance on the fucked up radiator and bailed. “She’s good, though. She’ll get me another 80 miles, easy.”

“Are you only going 80 miles?” The guy questions, “Or are you going way past that and only doing the 80 miles tonight?”

If he wasn’t so pretty, with a note of flirtation in his voice, you’d be hesitant as hell to tell him. “The second one.”

ATM guy sucks on his teeth, rocking back on heels that creak with the movement. Rubber soled work boots flash at you from beneath torn blue denim. “Dunno if I should let you go alone, then. You might bust your carburetor halfway there and be stranded.”

That puts alarm sirens in your head. You’d back away if your car wasn’t situated between the two of you. “Thanks, but, uh… I think I can handle myself.”

The teasing smile drops off his face quickly, replaced by a look of subtle desperation. “No, don’t get me wrong, I’m not- I’m not saying you can’t handle yourself. Obviously. Or you wouldn’t be trucking along by yourself through Nowheresville, Indiana,” he chuckles. “I just, ah… let me level with you?”

Your face screws up, but you lean your hip against the fender nearest you- the one that isn’t fucked up. What is it with this guy?

“I’m trying to jump ship. Anywhere’s better than here, but I really want to get to the west coast. I don’t know where you’re headed, but I’ve got my sights on San Francisco. And, uh, I have experience fixing cars, working in a garage,” he confesses. “But I don’t have a ride of my own- this isn’t even my bike, really. So, if you’re heading to the city, and you could use someone to make sure your car doesn’t kick it going over 75, I’m your man. Besides,” he bats his pretty lashes at you, his fingers fiddling with the end of his long hair as he brandishes a wad of ATM-stolen cash, “I have gas money.”

“You want to hitch a ride with me?”

“If you’re okay with it. Otherwise, I bid you fair and safe travels.” He bows dramatically, throwing his hand in the direction of the highway you’d asked about. “But if you ask me, I think you’d be doing both of us a favor in the long run if you let me come with. Just for insurance, y’know.”

“Insurance?” You parrot incredulously.

“Yeah,” he grins. He has dimples, a wide smile that stretches across his face and makes him even prettier than you can stand to look at directly. “Just insurance. No other reason.”

“Mhm,” you grunt, going over the positives and negatives in your head.

Positives- your car is a piece of shit and you’re sure he’s right, you’re working on borrowed time and you’re less than halfway to your desired destination. Plus, he’s unfairly nice to look at.

Negatives- you don’t know shit for fuck about him, other than the fact that he’s apparently trying to leave town and makes a hobby of breaking into ATMs. And, hell, even Ted Bundy was supposed to be charming and cute, at first. This guy could be a crazy ax murderer, could be a rapist, could be a junkie who’ll steal your car and leave you stranded, could be, could be-

“MUNSON!”

“Fuck.” ATM guy glances over his shoulder, then ducks quickly around the side of the gas pump as the station attendant comes storming out of the store. He crouches, pressing his hands to the glass window of the passenger’s side and peers through the cab at you on the other side with pleading eyes. “Can you get me a couple miles down the road, at least?”

“What about your bike?”

“Not my bike,” he tells you for a second time. “My buddy’ll pick it up when he hears about this, please.”

The station attendant is making his way across the parking lot now, looking miffed. It’s clearly the most energy he’s put into anything today, but he isn’t moving very fast.

You’ve made worse decisions in your life. You sigh. “Shit. Get in.”

“Thank you, thank you.” He pops open the passengers door as you slide into the driver’s seat, tossing the crumpled up map in the back. You guess you’ve found a GPS, for the time being.

“Does my insurance have a name?” you ask as you peel out of the gas station. The attendant hovers by the pump you’d been occupying, looking lamely at the abandoned motorcycle in your rearview.

“Eddie,” ATM guy says. A ring-clad hand lifts between you, hovering over the gear shift and waiting for your own to settle into it for a shake, “Eddie Munson.”

You eye his outstretched hand, your stomach doing flips, but you’re unsure if it’s because of him or the very situation he’s just put you in. You lift your hand and bat his with your knuckles, a half-hearted acknowledgement without the formality. “Pleasure doing business with you, Eddie.”

Eddie coughs, shifting up in his seat to peer behind you at the station. “Fuckin’ Keith. You can just drop me off at the next exit, it’s no biggie.”

“Hm? I thought you were coming with me to Indianapolis, hot stuff.”

Eddie whips his head around to look at you. “Seriously? You don’t- you don’t have to, I know it’s a big ask-”

“You want me to change my mind?”

“Not particularly.” He sinks down in his seat again. “Guess I figured you think I’m more of a liability than anything.”

“I do, but I need all that cash you swiped from the ATM,” you hum with a snarky grin on your face.

Eddie chuckles, wringing his hands in his lap. His knuckles tighten and relax beneath heavy steel rings. “Yeah, better I do it than you, huh?” There’s an awkward pause, and then he blurts, “Do you have any road music in this thing?”

You reach forward and hit the volume button for the stereo. You’d been halfway through Danzig’s self titled album- Mother kicks in with the chorus. In the darkness, you don’t see the way Eddie’s eyes sparkle with adoration as he looks at you.

“I think you and I are gonna get along great, sweetheart.”

You ignore how your thighs press in on themselves while you sip your coffee, and you turn onto highway 13, headed for Indianapolis.

When you step out of the bathroom in the motel room in Indianapolis, you find Eddie hunched over by the window, wearing nothing but a pair of blue plaid boxers. The chain on his wrist jingles as he smacks at the A/C unit beneath the drawn curtains.

“Everything okay?” You ask, pretty much knowing what the answer is. Your hair drips water down your back, but you can still feel the muggy summer heat in the room practically smothering your pores.

“Damn Motel 6 A/C,” he grumbles as he gives it one last smack on the side, to no avail. “The unit’s broken, there’s gonna be no cool air in the room.”

“That’s okay, we can crack a window.”

“In this part of the city?” Eddie scoffs, looking over at you. “Believe me, princess, I applaud your optimism- I would have just driven away from me there at the gas station, given the chance. But if we crack that window, we’re gonna get fucking robbed, first thing. Believe me.”

“I believe you,” you huff, clutching the itchy motel towel to your wet skin. Usually you would just pull on a tank and a pair of panties and call it a night, but there’s no such luck for you here. You have a backpack full of old, dirty clothes, and no clean underwear to speak of- you’ve been washing them in public bathroom sinks since Columbus. “Well, I’m just gonna sleep naked, then. You do what you’ve gotta do.”

“What- you’re gonna- what?” Eddie blathers, sitting back on his heels. You stare at him for a second- he’s a vision of flushed skin and a cloud of brunette hair cascading over his shoulders. Knobbly knees stick up at awkward angles, hairy thighs disappear into the hem of his boxers drawn tight across his skin. Your eyes glance over the ominous bulge in the crotch of them, not willing to think about those parts of a man you barely know. “You really think- I mean- is that wise?”

“Are you gonna get frisky with me, Eddie?” You ask with a teasing voice. You’d learned enough about him on the way to the city- 24 years old, no prospects, big dreams, ran a D&D club in high school, worked in a garage to help pay the bills- that you’re fairly certain he’s a good enough guy to keep his hands to himself. You just enjoy watching his big eyes go rounder at the insinuation.

“No, of course not. Wouldn’t dream of it.” Eddie looks mortified. He backtracks, “Unless- unless you wanted me to, I mean-”

“Don’t overanalyze it,” you tell him mildly, turning your back to him to rifle through your bag. “We’re both adults, it’s hot, there’s one bed and we’re both paying for it. Something tells me you’ve done worse things than lay next to someone without clothes on.”

Eddie blows a long breath out of pursed lips, not moving from his seat on the floor. He doesn’t deny your accusation, just mutters, “You put so much faith in me, sweetheart.”

“Don’t make me regret it.”

You drop the wet towel on the floor and round the bed to turn down the sheets. Eddie’s eyes trail you; you can feel them burning into your skin, lit by the dim yellow light on the bedside table. It takes a moment for him to finally move, a single trembling hand reaching up to swipe a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the table.

“You gonna sit there on the floor all night?” You muse as you lay back on the bed. It’s too fucking hot. The dampness from the shower hasn’t dried, but now it’s simply growing with the rate your body is perspiring. Your hair and skin stick to the white sheets, which feel pasty each time you move.

“Just getting my bearings,” Eddie says, his voice tight and hollow. “You smoke?”

“Not especially, but I won’t stop you.”

The smell of tobacco hangs in the heavy air more potently than you expected. The humidity dampens the vapor, making it sting your nose and leech into your mouth, even though you’re not the one directly breathing it. It strikes you as devastatingly intimate- the thought that you might be breathing the smoke that’s already touched his lungs.

“Do you mind if I strip down, too?” Eddie asks after a long time of deliberating as he smoked. “Not that- I mean, I don’t have any pajamas, so…”

“Do what you need to do, honey,” you murmur, repeating what you’d told him before. “We can find a laundromat in the morning. Maybe get you a change of clothes somewhere.”

“Right.” He doesn’t say much after that, but you listen to him rustling around, stubbing out his cigarette in an ashtray and flicking off the bedside light.

He straightens up, silhouette looming in the blue-dark from the curtained window. You watch from the corner of your eye while his backlit form hooks its thumbs in the waistband of his boxers, and drops them.

He clambers onto the bed beside you, careful not to bump any part of you. You refuse to look at him, scanning the asbestos popcorn on the ceiling above you with an overabundance of scrutiny, willing yourself to focus on anything but Eddie’s beautiful body, especially what he has below the belt. It’s a bad idea, no go. You don’t want to see it, don’t even want to think about it- what it looks like, how big it is, how it curves, what kind of hair surrounds it, if any-

You’re thinking about it.

And you told him not to overanalyze it. To be calm about it. What a fucking joke.

“You know, I’m not as easy as I might seem,” you blurt out suddenly, unaware of why you even do. You mostly come off sounding like you’re trying to convince yourself of it.

Eddie’s head rustles against the pillow as he glances at you in the dark. “I don’t think you are.”

“Okay. Just- just making sure,” you stutter out. “All evidence to the contrary, and all.”

“I’m not expecting to get lucky with you,” he tells you honestly, a little flatly, like he’s afraid of any inflection in his voice betraying him. “You know, beyond the ride west.”

“Right.”

You both regress into silence. You think you’ve both said your piece on the matter. You might not trust Eddie, not entirely, but you at least know he’s not gonna try anything stupid if you let yourself fall asleep. You actually think that he’s asleep after so many minutes, until he opens his mouth again.

“It’s really fucking hot, isn’t it?” He croaks. His hands twitch by his sides, feet jammed under the downturned covers, but everything else bare to the open room, like you. His pinkie brushes yours, and he nearly smacks himself jerking his hand back toward his stomach.

“Yeah, it’s not… it’s not good.” You blink into the darkness. “Sorry, you must be regretting coming with me all this way.”

“Nah, not a chance.” He brushes it off, waving a hand in the air dismissively. “I’ve been itching to get out of there since I graduated. Feel kinda bad that I didn’t leave a note for my uncle, but it’s not the first time I’ve bailed on him. I can always call him from a pay phone. Kinda wish I had my guitar, though.”

“You play guitar?” you ask dazedly. You don’t have a hard time imagining it, now that you think about it. He has that rocker look about him, the kind that could grace magazines and be on posters on teenage girls’ walls, if he played his cards right. If he got his lucky break.

“Yeah. Pretty good, too, I guess.” He sighs. There’s a wistfulness in it, like he’s reminiscing on something from his past. “It’s okay. I can pick up another one once I get to California. Dropped a mint on the one I had back home, but I guess Wayne can always pawn it. Maybe get himself a nicer place.”

You chuckle. “And you think I’m the optimist here.”

“I never said it was a bad thing,” Eddie scoffs, then deepens his voice quite suddenly. “Two optimists, both alike in dignity-”

A burst of laughter bubbles from your chest, making Eddie grin as you gesture at your bodies. “Or lack, thereof.”

“In fair Indianapolis, where we lay our scene.” He ends his recitation giggling, the flimsy bed frame jolting with the shaking of his chest. “Radiant Juliet, you never did tell me where your chariot is taking me.”

“I’m not sure, really,” you admit, mellowing your laughter into a quiet giggle. “I just wanted to leave home. I was suffocating there, I needed to get out. See what’s out there for me, if anything.”

“And have you seen much?”

“Not much,” you tell him quietly. “Mostly truck stops and shitty roadside attractions. But we’re in the midwest, you know.”

“Don’t remind me.” He lays his hand back down on the mattress beside you.

You turn your body towards him, damp sheets clinging to your skin as you move. “California might not be such a bad idea.”

Eddie turns his head and glances at you, dark eyes finding you in the dim moonlight. “No? I’ll have to fix your car, then.”

“You do that, and I’ll make sure to get you where you’re going,” you whisper.

“Deal.” His eyes linger on your face, just inches away from his on the pillow. Flickering in the moonlight, two voids that hold all the stars in the night sky seem to take you in like you’re more beautiful than they could ever be.

This time, when your fingers brush, he doesn’t jerk away. This time, you don’t avert your eyes when you look down at his cock, but you sure do regret it when you don’t reach out to touch it.

He’s so pretty. You want to.

I watched him show his love through shades of black and blue, starting fights at the bar across the street like you do…

Your underwear and his come out of the dryer wrapped around each other. You spend a minute disentangling them, a small heap of clothes in a rolling laundry basket in front of you. The closest laundromat to the Motel 6 had been a five minute drive down the street.

You’d woken up with your head on his chest, your arm draped across his bare stomach, despite how you’d fallen asleep barely touching him. As if your unconscious body had known more about your wants than you. His hand had been tangled in your hair, palm cradling your cheek and a bit of your neck, like his own unconscious wanted to keep you against him, too.

The morning had been easy- the easiest it’s been since you hit the road. Eddie seems to have given you a sense of purpose you didn’t have before, driving around aimlessly, only stopping for fast food every once in a while when you remembered to eat something other than beef jerky and coffee. Once you had extracted yourself from his grip, you’d gone to buy him clothes from the resale store next to the motel. It wasn’t hard to find a plain black shirt and jeans, but used underwear was something you didn’t want to mess with. You’d brought it back to the motel, along with some food from the Waffle House across the way, and you ate cross legged on the bed while he showered and put on his new-ish clothes.

But now, you can’t stop feeling his hand cradling your head. His hot, sweaty skin against your arm. Your fingernails raking lightly through the trail of hair on his stomach, dragging through his pubic hair, your knuckles just barely brushing up the side of his length- thick, uncut, and so so pretty. Then, stopping nervously when you’d gotten too bold, fingers skimming over sensitive skin too close to his groin, and he’d twitched in his sleep.

You want him. You don’t even know him, and you want him so badly you can feel it even now, an aching blush between your legs turning into a dull throb when you so much as think about him.

You toss all the freshly washed clothes into a plastic bag that you’d grabbed by the door to the laundromat, and haul it out to your van. He’d told you to meet him at the bar across the street when you were done, since he needed to make a few calls on their payphone- he’d even given you his weathered denim vest before he left.

“For insurance,” he winked. “Uh, don’t wash it, though… I stitched it by hand, it’ll fall apart.”

You don’t put it in with the clean clothes. It smells like smoke and alcohol and him, the edges frayed and yellowing a bit. You hold it in your lap for a second, plucking at the stringy bits around the arm holes. Maybe you can convince him to let you soak it in a sink somewhere, hand washed and dried carefully over a working A/C unit, wherever you can find one. You don’t know when he last washed the damn thing, if ever.

When you pull into the parking lot of the dive bar, and you clutch the denim vest in your hand as you step out of your van, something sharp prods your thumb. You hiss, slamming the car door shut and examining what it was. The sharp point of a pin on the vest- which reads Motörhead- had come loose and pricked your skin, which now threatens to ooze blood all over the aged denim.

“Fuck,” you murmur, bringing your thumb to your mouth as you lock the car. You struggle with the vest while you walk towards the door to the dive, trying to resituate the pin so it doesn’t go missing.

You find him loitering beside a billiards table, pool stick in hand, a cigarette in his mouth. When he sees you walk in, his eyes light up, and he nearly drops the stick prancing over to you.

“Told ya I’d still be here- hey, you okay?” His grin turns very readily into a frown when he sees you sucking your thumb like a child.

“Yeah, no, I’m fine,” you mutter clumsily, “your pin just nicked me s’all.”

“Oh, shit,” he curses, reaching for your hand. “Lemme see- no, let me see.” He forces your hand open when you try to close it, and scrutinizes the little pin prick as if it’s the worst battle wound he’s ever seen. “Should’a checked to make sure all the pins were right, this happens all the time. I’m so sorry, baby, my fault.”

Baby. Your brain tries to process it. He called you baby.

He’s also kissing your thumb, cradling your hand with excessive care. He’s tasting your blood, sucking a little on the pin prick like you had been, so your skin is wet with a mix of his and your spit. You don’t think you’ll ever get tired of the way he touches you. Fleeting as his touches have been, anyways. You melt a little under his gaze as his round eyes blink up at you innocently.

“S’okay,” you tell him with a wobbly smile. “Did you make your calls?”

He looks at you softly, a reserved smile on his face. “I did. Wayne’s miffed, but he’ll live. Told him I’d send him a postcard.”

You giggle at that, thinking you’d sign it along with him. Sorry for stealing away your nephew; it will happen again. “Good. Buy me a drink, handsome?”

Eddie beams at you, and his dimples crease his cheeks as he turns to the bartender. There’s a sweet, boyish manner in the way he puffs out his chest and orders you a drink, his arm circling your waist as he moves you smoothly toward the bar. As soon as a whisky sour has been placed in front of you, he turns and squeezes your arm.

“Hey, I gotta finish this game,” he nods at the pool table he’d been stationed at. “I got some money on it. Y’okay with hanging out for a minute?”

“Sure,” you chirp, sipping your drink. “Wipe the floor with ‘em for me?”

“It’s in the bag,” he whispers at you conspiratorially. You push his vest at him, imagining he wants to take his insurance back now that you know he’s not taking off on you, but he shakes his head. “No, you wear it. It’ll look good on you.”

His eyes light up when you shrug the vest over your worn out white t-shirt. As you lift your drink, and he turns back to his game, you think you’d do anything to keep him looking at you like that.

Eddie wins. You don’t know how much he bet on the game, but there seems to be hurt feelings when he collects the money that had been placed on the table. You’ve never been much of a gambler, and he hadn’t struck you as one- but what do you know? He certainly bet on you getting him out of Hawkins, and you certainly took a chance on him.

You don’t think much of it. It’s late afternoon- the sun’s going down, and you figure you’d better get going, but Eddie wraps his arms around you and says, “Dance with me.” And you do.

The jukebox in the corner only plays country classics. Patsy Cline croons over the speakers, taking you back to a time in your far off childhood. Eddie sways with you to the music, and even though there’s barely any rhythm to his dancing, you find yourself falling into it with him. Your head on his shoulder, his curly hair tickling the side of your face. His breath on your neck, cool on your heated skin.

That is, until a hand wraps around Eddie’s shoulder and jerks him away from you. A man with blond hair, clearly a few too many drinks in, snarls at him, “That game was bullshit and you know it.”

Eddie blinks at him. “If by ‘bullshit’ you mean I beat you, then sure.”

“You di’int beat me, you cheated,” the man sneers. “I want my money back.”

“Yeah, no.” Eddie claps the man on the shoulder, trying to push him away. “I won the game, I get the money. That’s how gambling works.”

You step back when the man’s beady eyes fall on you, peering at him over Eddie’s shoulder. “What’re you lookin’ at?”

“You leave her out of this, buddy,” Eddie growls dangerously, still forcing the man back with one strong hand on his shoulder. He’s trying to put himself between you and the man, you know. Still, you feel the need to fist your hand in the back of Eddie’s shirt and pull him away.

“I ain’t your buddy. Whatcha lookin’ at, bitch?” The man reaches out and yanks roughly on your arm, making you yelp in alarm.

And that’s when Eddie’s fist connects with the man’s jaw.

There’s a sickening crack. In the chaos, it somehow occurs to you that Eddie’s wearing all those chunky rings. You wonder if they could be considered a deadly weapon, in the same vein as brass knuckles.

It takes you a second to get through the initial shock, finding it hard to focus on who’s doing what. Eddie and the man have barrelled through a couple of tables, knocking over chairs. Eddie has the man pinned to the edge of the pool table, a flurry of fists moving from all sides.

“You don’t touch my girl!” Eddie shouts at the man. “You don’t fuckin’ touch my girl!”

His girl.

They tumble to the floor. The man curses and spits blood at him from a cut lip. A strong fist hits the side of Eddie’s face once, twice-

“THAT’S ENOUGH!” The words are shouted by the bartender, finally intervening, pulling the blond man off of Eddie. As the bartender restrains the unruly man, a second pulls an equally enraged Eddie away from him, separating the two.

By the time you collect a bruised and bloodied Eddie into your arms, you’ve already tuned out the rest of the ruckus going on around you. Someone suggests that you should leave, but the words only barely register. You’re already pulling Eddie out the door and to the car.

You don’t even remember if you closed the tab.

Trouble’s always gonna find you, baby, but so will I. Crying only because I’m happy, hold me across every state line…

You don’t know when you started crying. Maybe it was around the time that Eddie fell unconscious.

Tears burn in your eyes like you’ve poured gasoline in them, but no matter how badly it stings you just keep sniffling and driving, tearing down the interstate away from Indianapolis, toward St. Louis. You hopped on I-70 as quickly as you could, and from there you’ve been lost in a world of your own.

He’d almost look peaceful, if it wasn’t for the blood on his jaw and the nasty shiner on his cheekbone. You keep telling yourself it’s not bad enough for him to need to be taken to a hospital. You can’t afford to go to a hospital, and even if you could, you’d have to explain how he got in this condition. It’s a recipe for jail time. You know that. You know.

You just want to keep him safe, that’s all.

He hadn’t instigated the fight, not really. He’d just swung first. He was just defending you.

His girl.

When it gets to be too much, you pull over. Headlights gleam bright and then pass by in the dark with a whoosh of air. You think you must have crossed over into Illinois by now, or you’re getting close to it. The traffic has lightened considerably.

You rest your head against the steering wheel, taking deep breaths, but the tears keep coming in streams. A while ago, you had a mattress in the back of this van. That was before it started having problems, and it sat in your family’s garage for a year and a half. You should have put a mattress in it when you took off, but you weren’t thinking that far ahead. You were having a breakdown, something like you’re having now, only worse. It was a manic, get-away-or-die-there kind of breakdown.

Breathe in. You’re not gonna die. Breathe out. He’s breathing.

Once Eddie cracks his eyes open, he flexes his jaw with a groan. You can tell he’s confused by the inquisitive noise he makes, but when he looks at you, all that disappears in a heartbeat.

“Hey, what’re you- oh, god. Sweetheart, don’t cry.”

As if that doesn’t make you want to cry harder. His hand lands tentatively on your shoulder, stiff fingered but light in touch. He shuffles closer to you, pulling you against him to sob into his secondhand shirt.

It’s pathetic, you’re sure of it. You feel pathetic, twisting the cheap cotton of his shirt in your hands and saturating it with tears, as he shushes you and soothes a hand over your hair.

“It’s okay, baby,” he whispers into your hair, pressing his aching lips to your scalp in an attempt to calm you down. “We’ll be okay. I’m right here. What can I do?”

For some reason, the question makes you mad. “You don’t fucking fight,” you sob at him, the anger in your voice making him freeze. “You don’t- you don’t get into fights. I can deal with a lot of shit, Eddie Munson, but I can’t deal with that.”

“Okay, honey. Okay.”

“No fighting.”

“No fighting,” he repeats affirmatively, petting your head. Then he adds, “No gambling.”

“No bars.”

“Well-”

“No bars.”

“All right,” Eddie resigns, resting his chin on top of your head. Once you’ve stopped crying, from what he can feel, he tells you softly, “I’m not… I’m not like that, you know. I want you to know. I don’t fight, not usually.”

“You did.”

“I did,” he agrees. “I just don’t like… I didn’t like him touching you. Disrespecting you like that- did he hurt you?”

“No,” you lie. The guy had yanked your arm a little too hard, your wrist still smarting a bit. Nothing near what Eddie had taken. “He hurt you, though.”

“I’ve had worse, trust me.” His tone is ominous, like you don’t really want to know the heavy details of it. “I’m not a fighter. Used to be if I saw danger, I’d just turn tail and run. I usually just take shit on the chin. But I never had anything to fight for before, really.”

You sniffle loudly, grossly. “I don’t want you to fight for me.”

“I’m gonna protect you, sweetheart. No matter what,” he insists. “Long as we’re together, I’m gonna do everything I can to protect you. Okay?”

Long as we’re together. Like you’re a couple, like you didn’t just meet by chance at a gas station a little more than 24 hours ago. Like you’re in love.

His girl.

“My dad’s in prison,” Eddie blurts out, raking a shaky hand through your hair. “He, uh… he was a fighter. And a thief. And a gambler. And a liar. He tried his best to make me be like him, but I don’t- I don’t wanna be like him.” Eddie sighs, a sad sound that rips through your already bleeding heart. “I thought maybe getting out of Hawkins would set me straight. Finally give me a chance to make something better of myself, prove I’m not like my old man. I tried, but after high school I got in some trouble, and Wayne had to sell my old van to pay for my bail. Now I’m here, and… Guess you just take yourself wherever you go, huh?”

“Yeah,” you agree. Your fingers curve against his hip, squeezing the skin there. “So we have to try to change ourselves in the meantime, while we get where we’re going.”

Eddie breathes in, and it sounds an awful lot like a sniffle.

“Eddie. Are you crying?”

“No.” He is.

You lift your head with a wet, coughing chuckle at his futile attempt to hide it. You look up at him, your fingers tucking a lock of unruly, dark hair behind his ear. He’s staring back at you with glassy eyes, the tip of his nose gone red with the tears he’s holding back. He just barely flinches when your knuckles brush the bruise on his cheekbone.

“Hey, handsome,” you coo at him softly, your touch featherlight on his skin. He blinks, a tear dropping from his lashes. “I’m gonna get you cleaned up, okay?”

“Okay.” His lip wobbles. “Let me hold you a little longer, first?”

“Of course, Eddie.” You fall into his grasping hands, yanking you to him like a child searching for the comfort of his favorite teddy bear. You’d let him hold you as long as he liked.

You wash his face in a dirty rest area just west of Terre Haute. In the middle of the night, no one is around to tell you not to, so you follow him into the men’s room and take your time wiping the blood from his jaw and his hands. You gingerly apply a bandage from your car’s console to his bruised cheek, while he sits in the front seat and brackets your hips with his knees.

He gazes up at you like a man seeing God.

The neighbors beat on the walls, while I'm face first in the bed. Show me how much I mean to you while I’m lying in these sheets undressed…

You sleep in the rest area that night, in the back of your van. No mattress, just your backs to the hard floor of the cab. With no A/C again, you shuck your clothes and spread a single white blanket over your bodies, more for modesty’s sake than anything else. Even though it’s unlikely that a cop is going to run you down in the middle of nowhere, you’d rather not get cited for public indecency.

He holds you all night long, his arms around you and his chest against your back giving you peace, but he doesn’t touch you in any of the ways that you desperately want him to.

It takes the better part of a day to drive to St. Louis. Eddie swallows a couple tylenol for his face with his truck stop coffee and eggs, smiling softly at you from across a bright yellow plywood table in a cafeteria. From the look on his face, you doubt that he regrets the fight that gave him his wounds.

By the time your old van rattles up to another Motel 6 at the outskirts of the city, Eddie’s shaking his head. “The car’s not gonna take much more than this. I need to give it a good look, maybe borrow a tool kit and give it a tune up.”

“Whatever you say, magic man,” you muse at him. “Let’s just sleep in a real bed tonight, huh?”

His head tilted back, he looks at you sideways with a lopsided smile. You can tell his face is still hurting, but he puts on a brave face and bats his eyelashes at you. “Sounds good to me, princess.”

His touch lingers on you more, now, than it did yesterday. His fingers grazing your forearm as you open the glass door to the motel office, his hand hovering over your lower back as you sign for the room. His arm slung over your shoulder as he follows you down to the room, twirling the key around his finger.

“You think the A/C will work this time?” He asks you lightheartedly as he turns the key in the lock.

“Only one way to find out,” you return with the same warmth in your voice. If you from two days ago could hear yourself, and that ooey-gooey note of lovesickness in your voice, your past self might keel over and die. When did this happen?

You drop your bag of clothes on the bench by the bathroom door. Eddie bangs around the A/C unit a bit, until something starts whirring, and he makes a gleeful noise.

“It’s aliiiiive!” He announces dramatically, emulating Dr. Frankenstein. You giggle as he leaps toward you, practically throwing you onto the bed in excitement. “We have cool air. We can actually wear clothes to bed tonight.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, not even trying to hide your disappointment at the thought. The best part of your last two mornings has been waking up to his naked body beside yours, warm and soft and littered with tattoos that you just can’t stop looking at.

You mean, I won’t get to wake up to your skin on mine tomorrow? I won’t be able to pretend like I’m not staring at your dick and imagining all the things I want to do to it? How will I be able to admire you for my own perverted gain?

You don’t even realize that you’re stroking your fingers across his bruised cheek until he leans into your touch. Then you take inventory of your current position- your back to the mattress, his body hovering over you, half covering you. Caging you in with his arms. His long hair creates a veil around your faces.

When he blinks his eyes open at you, you can tell where his mind is before he opens his mouth. “Did we have our first fight yesterday?”

You frown, a puff of air exiting your nose. “No, I think I’d call it laying ground rules.”

“Ground rules,” Eddie nods, his sore cheek rubbing against your hand. You’re starting to wonder if he likes the pain, since he won’t stop pushing into it. “I’m not great at remembering rules. What were they, again?”

“No fighting.”

“Right, and no gambling.”

“No bars.”

He squints. “Is that one still up for negotiation, or…?” He trails off, giggling as you smack your hand lightly against his shoulder. “Kidding! I’m kidding. No bars. Got it.”

“And that was it,” you tell him sweetly. “Unless there was another one you wanted to add?”

He stares at you for a long moment, his fingers twirling in the hair right beside your ear as he gets lost in thought. Say what you’re thinking, your mind practically screams at him. Please, god, say what we’re both thinking…

Eddie licks his lips and finally says, “No sleeping with clothes on?”

Gotcha. A creeping smile stretches your face, trying to play coy even when your heart’s beating a mile a minute. Eddie’s eyebrows raise at you, waiting for an answer.

“I’m not easy, Eddie.”

“I know,” he tells you, mirroring your smile. “I don’t expect to get lucky with you.”

“I know,” you hum. Your hand drifts up the side of his torso, a more firm and languorous touch than you’d previously been brave enough to give him. “But do you want to?”

Eddie shudders, and it’s the first honest to god evidence you have that you turn him on as much as he does you. The realization feels rapturous.

“God, yes.”

He kisses you then, open-mouthed and passionate, his hand cupping your jaw to keep you where he wants you. Your nails scratch up his back with a loud tearing sound against his shirt, and he chuckles as you frantically clutch at him with all your strength.

“I know, pretty girl,” he murmurs, pecking your lips briefly before descending to bite at your jaw. “You’ve been wanting this since that first night. Feelin’ me up in the morning, like I wouldn’t notice…”

“I didn’t wanna wake you,” you hiccup as his hand cups the crotch of your jeans, rocking the meat of his palm firmly where you’re dying for friction. “Oh, ffffuck Eddie, m’sorry…”

“And here you were, thinking I was the pervert,” he grunts. “‘Least I can keep my hands to myself, hm?”

“I’m sorry, I’m s-sorry,” you babble at him, hands shaking as they grip onto his shoulders. Now that the aching throb between your legs is back, and he’s finally giving it attention, you can’t seem to come up with a more coherent sentence. Your face grows hot, but not at the fact that you’d been caught in your lechery- just because he turns you on more than you can think to admit.

“Don’t be sorry, sweet thing,” Eddie whispers. His dark eyes are lined up with yours, the curtain of his hair shielding them from reflecting any of the light from the desk lamp- it’s just you and the starry voids of space, locked in your own little world. He rubs his hand back and forth with practiced pressure against the front of your jeans, your hips kicking up against him. “I want you to touch me. Want you to do whatever you want with me, baby.”

“Whatever I want?” Your fingers dragging up his lower back, under his shirt to feel the heat of his skin.

“Anything,” he insists, kissing you again. Wet and sloppy, teeth clacking as you grind up into his palm. Your thick denim jeans are about the most abominable things that have ever existed.

You feel like your head’s on sideways with how pent up you already are. “I want you to fuck me Eddie- jesus chr- can we do that? Right now? Please?”

Eddie laughs. A happy, whole-hearted, almost disbelieving laugh. “Thought I was gonna be the one begging you, after all this…” His breath hitches, the touch of his hand leaving you so that he can push himself back. “Lemme get you out of these clothes, yeah?”

You nod quickly, earning a pleased hum from him. The way he undresses you is touched by reverence; his fingers slow as they drag the cotton of your shirt over your head, grazing your skin all the way. His lips dancing across your collarbone as he undoes the front of your stupid fucking jeans. You just want them off, done with and laying in a pile to be forgotten about by the motel room door, but Eddie has other plans.

“Slow.” He grabs your hip to stop your wiggling, fingers curled around the back of the waistband of them as he pulls the denim down your thighs. “We’ve got all night, baby. I’m not leaving. Not going anywhere.”

“I want you,” you insist desperately, sounding like a broken record. Your distress is evident on your face, in the way you clench your thighs together to hide the obnoxious wet spot growing on your cotton panties. You wonder if he’d felt it when he was touching you over your jeans, if the heat and dampness had soaked through the denim as well. You wouldn’t be surprised.

“You have me, sweetheart,” Eddie ensures. “Don’t… I don’t want you to worry about it. M’gonna make sure there are no worries in that pretty head.”

He yanks his t-shirt off, the one you’d bought him from the resale store. A cloud of frizzy, dark hair obscures his pretty face for half a second, the shirt landing on the floor somewhere off to the side, and then Eddie’s eyes find you again, grinning at you widely with pointed teeth.

You grab for him, your fingers looping around the chain that hangs from his neck. Tugging him down, you press a gentle kiss to his lips. Then to his sore jaw, where a tiny scab has formed on the right side of his chin. Then to his bruised cheek, where he flutters his eyes shut and groans softly at the brush of your lips.

“My boy,” you whisper to him, and you don’t even know if he understands the significance of it to you. His girl. Your boy.

Eddie smiles against your skin. He peppers kisses everywhere he can reach, down onto your chest, dragging his sharp teeth every once in a while just to hear you keen. You’re certain you’ve ruined your underwear now, feeling the wetness grow cool against your skin.

What a fucking concept. Cool air.

Eddie seems to have the same thought as you, as he slips his fingers beneath the white cotton and peels them down your legs. Strings of your arousal stick to the wet fabric, dropping off in thick tendrils onto the sheets below you as he groans lowly.

“Fuck,” Eddie curses, shaking his head in chastisement as he settles between your legs at the end of the bed. He tsks, “Just look at you, poor thing. Should’a said something to me, can’t have you going around like this.”

You shiver as he trails his mouth up the inside of your thigh. His day-old stubble scrapes your sensitive skin, making you break out in a cold sweat. “M’not- I didn’t want you to think-”

“That you’re easy?” He coos with a condescending smile. “No, honey. I know, you’re a good girl.” He nips at the widest part of your thigh, plush flesh indenting with the imprint of his teeth. “But I’m no good. You should know that, better than anyone. No good for you.”

Eddie’s tongue burns and soothes at the same time, leaving your brain a scrambled mess on the mattress beneath you. He gathers all of your collected arousal into his mouth, groaning like he’s been desperate to taste it all this time. “Been dreaming of this since I saw you, pretty girl.”

Pulling your leg over his bare shoulder, he all but crushes you against his face, his sturdy hands wrapped around your hips to hold you still. Your back arched, your hips fully off the bed as he lifts your lower half into the air.

You choke out the first part of his name, your hands fisting in the comforter next to your head. There’s a twist of pleasure deep in your core that makes you whine far louder than necessary, a waterfall of words spilling from you before you can stop them, “Oh shit- Ed- I don’t- s’too good-”

“Too good?” Eddie snickers, eyes bright as he watches you from between your thighs. “Nothing's too good for you.”

Then he spits onto your already soaked and swollen pussy. You sob, positively crying from the feeling of it, drenched and dripping along your sensitive flesh. Eddie spreads the wetness around with his tongue, and your cunt clamps down hard at the lewd squelch of it, the mortifying slurp of his lips closing down and sucking on your labia.

“Oh fuck, what the fuck-” you whimper high to the ceiling, mouth hanging open in shock.

You could have been doing this for days. He could have fucked you like this the first night, when you lay next to him, naked in the dark. Your body aches at the thought of being deprived of this longer than necessary.

“That’s it, baby, just stay still. Let me ruin you, huh?” Eddie murmurs, letting your thigh rest heavy on his shoulder so that he can move one hand, his thumb rubbing tight circles on your clit in front of his face. He watches your cunt glisten and throb for him, listening to your desperate sobs echo through the otherwise silent room, and whispers, “Shit. Like my own little fuckin’ pornstar, sweetheart.”

Normally, you wouldn’t exactly take that as a compliment- but with the way he says it, with his voice thick and dark like that, and with the way the hot, slick velvet of his tongue dips into your channel and shoots electricity along your skin, you figure he must have meant it like one.

He goes slow, thrusting into you gently, taking his time to get familiar between your legs. Still, it doesn’t stop you from positively shrieking toward the ceiling when he licks you from hole to clit, the entire expanse of his tongue sweeping along nerve endings that are charged like live wires.

Eddie chuckles, hot breath spilling out over your feverish skin, and he pauses there. Lets you feel the warm press of his flattened tongue before he just barely rubs it back and forth, back and forth-

“Eddie-!?” You gasp, an erotically loud moan spilling out of your mouth right before you come all over his. You crumble, your hips threatening to buck out of his steady grip as searing euphoria rips through you. He scrambles, ringed fingers locking tight enough on your waist to bruise, keeping you against him as you thrash wildly.

He keeps you like that for a long time, purring into your spasming pussy while an array of unhinged noises pour from your body- your mouth, your hands tearing at the sheets and at your head, your cunt and all its wet filth drenching Eddie’s bruised face.

If it hurts him, he doesn’t let on. He just keeps going, and going.

Until something pounds against the wall behind your head. You hiccup, your dazed, post-orgasm brain unable to comprehend where the sound is coming from. That wasn’t- couldn’t have been me…

“Pretty sounds,” Eddie giggles as he finally pulls his mouth away from you. “Guess the neighbors agree.”

“Oh, god.” Your hands cover your face, hot and sticky with sweat. Your eyes feel heavy, fuck-drunk, your heart still pounding in your chest from the adrenaline of the orgasm Eddie gave you. You feel embarrassed, like you ought to be going over to apologize to whatever sorry person happens to be sharing a wall with you, now.

Eddie has other plans. “Think we should give the audience a good show, huh?”

It’s merely a suggestion- you know that you could always find a way to quiet yourself, stuff your mouth with cotton and stifle your moans- but the implication of it makes your toes curl. Your breath rattles in your chest when you inhale. “You… you want everyone in the building to hear you fucking me?”

Eddie crowds you on the bed, your legs still slung over his shoulders so that you’re bent nearly in half. He’s still too fucking clothed for your liking- his leather belt digs into the back of your thighs as he presses a sloppy kiss to your dry lips. “I want everyone here to know you’re mine, sweetheart.”

Your hands cradle his face, pulling him in for a deeper kiss as he slowly lowers your legs from his shoulders. Your over extended legs flop down onto the mattress, and you whine into his mouth as he massages his tongue with yours.

“I’m yours, Eddie,” you moan against his damp skin. “Oh god, I want it- want everyone to know.”

You take the initiative, with one last kiss turning in his grip. His hand slips, catching himself from toppling off the bed as you scoot onto your stomach, your knees planting on the mattress so that you can wiggle your hips up at him.

Eddie sucks in a sharp breath, smoothing a gentle palm over your ass before he kisses your lower back. He pauses, drawing soft kisses up your spine until his breath sweeps your shoulder blade. “You’re so beautiful. How’d I get so fucking lucky?”

A quiet keen is the only answer you give him, shoving your hips backward to get him to just fucking touch you, but he pulls away too quickly. There’s the clink of a belt buckle, a zipper being pulled, and you tense, your hand closing into a fist around the pillow at the head of the bed. Following the rustle of clothes, you hear the crinkle of a condom wrapper- you hadn’t even realized he had one. It didn’t even occur to you, in your dizzying need to fuck him, like some loveblind idiot.

You almost berate yourself for it, but then you feel his cock press against your entrance, and all those thoughts die away. He rolls his hips, and every single muscle in you tightens.

Eddie chokes on air as pleasure positively tears through you. Your eyes roll back, your mouth wide open and threatening to drool onto the pillow you’ve been shoved face-first into.

“F-fuck, you’re so big.” It’s the only thing you can choke out around moans. He splits you so wide, dragging through your slick walls that are still so sensitive from your first orgasm.

“Holy shi- oh my god-” he gasps behind you. “M’so sorry- I can’t- Feels so fucking good-”

You groan, unable to form words to adequately answer him. All you can manage to do is jam your hips backward in an attempt to get him deeper, as far as he can fucking go inside you. Your body blazes, everything coming up smelling of sex and sweat as you wail hopelessly into the pillow.

Eddie snarls, a deep and dangerous noise in the back of his throat as he draws his hips back and presses into you again. There’s no time for you to adjust, each thrust a little more forceful than the last. His cock hits sharp heaven deep inside you, punching loud and guttural moans from you each time his hips impact your ass.

“That’s a good girl- so ffffucking wet, goddamnit,” Eddie praises you through clenched teeth, ringed fingers and bruised knuckles wrapping loosely around your neck to lift your head from the pillow. “Let them hear all those pretty noises for me, baby.”

“Eddie…” You hiccup, your voice kicked up into a shrill whine. You swallow against the press of his fingers on your throat, holding your jaw into the air so there’s no place for your sounds to go but to the wall and through it.

Above your head, the banging on the wall starts back up. Eddie drops your chin and slams his hand on top of the headboard, gripping tightly at plywood that threatens to hit the wall as he ruts into you. Your face hits the pillow again, but your sobbing moans still come out loud and disruptive as Eddie speeds up his hips in retaliation.

“Doing so good f’me. Feel me, princess? So fucking deep,” Eddie groans. His cock licks up a sweet heat inside of you, and you know you’re going to come. He curses lowly, his hips pistoning into yours hard enough that you have to smack your hand into the headboard to keep from knocking into it. “Taking me so well. So perfect- s’like you were made for me, I know it, I just fucking know it…”

Eddie’s arm wraps around your waist from behind, and he hauls your back into his sweat-slick chest. You almost feel weightless, for a moment, before you’re settled back into his lap, your thighs bracketing his as he kneels beneath you, clutching you against him.

A gasp tears from your mouth with a loud, “Shit!” His cock hits a different spot inside you, bursting color behind your closed eyelids as you throw your head back against his shoulder.

Eddie’s breath fans across your neck, sweat-damp hair tickling the side of your face. His hand greedily palms at your breasts, bouncing you in his lap as his tongue traces a wet line along your shoulder.

“Just know you were made for me,” Eddie repeats quietly in your ear, his breath feeling like flames on your neck. “That’s why you found me, baby. You were meant to be mine, my girl.”

His girl.

“Yours, Eddie,” you blubber, reaching back to dig a fist into his hair as his hands squeeze your breasts. “M’all yours.”

“Yeah?” Eddie murmurs, his voice saccharine and velvety. He moans in your ear when your cunt clenches down, a threatening throb at the outskirts of your orgasm. “Say it again.”

A whimper, high and needy in your throat. “I’m yours. Your girl- oh, f-fuck, Eddie- I’m gonna-”

“That’s right. My good girl. Only easy when it comes to me, right?”

Eddie’s hand drags purposefully down, fingernails dragging just through your pubic hair, just barely grazing where you want him- just like you did to him, that first morning. The realization makes you seize up, all tense from head to toe.

“What’s it like, when I do it to you? You like it?” He whispers, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. You suck in a sharp breath, a hiss through your teeth as you nod. His laugh is barely a ghost of a breath on your skin. “Yeah. I did, too.”

Eddie’s voice in your ear says, “Come for me,” and not even a fraction of you would deny him that.

His finger drags slowly your clit, calloused skin catching on the swollen bud, and you come. Your body slumps against him, and you’re so grateful for his arms around you to hold you through it. You’d swear he was splitting you in half with the sounds coming from your mouth. Your head tilted back on his shoulder, every breath is punctuated by a hoarse cry that breaks in your throat. Your hand clamps around his arm, which is still cradling you close to his chest as his own moans ring in your ear, his hips driving up into you as your cunt pulses around his cock. You know that he comes when his teeth wrap around the muscle of your shoulder and bite down.

Silence settles over your sweaty bodies, but thunderous banging is still furiously happening on the other side of the wall. You hear voices, words too muffled by the drywall to be intelligible, but they still sound angry.

Eddie won’t let you go, not yet. He’s clutching you, his mouth still wrapped around your shoulder, even though his teeth aren’t biting anymore. You pet his forearm, and lean forward just enough to knock lightly on the wall.

“We’re done!” Your voice cracks with the effort it takes to call out to the people on the other side.

“Fantastic show, my love. I think we deserve five stars.” Eddie laughs, nuzzling his face into your neck as he finally releases your shoulder from the trappings of his jaw. “I think I’m corrupting you, sweetheart.”

You hum, still petting his arm. “I think you already have, teddy.”

Eddie freezes, his grip on your waist tightening just a little. “No one’s called me that since I was a kid.”

“What, teddy?” He nods. Your fingernails drag dully down his arm, tracing over a tattoo of a swarm of bats, which breaks out in goosebumps under your touch. “Is that… Can I call you that?”

“Yeah,” he rasps. “Yeah, you can- you can call me teddy.”

It’s quiet after that. He rocks you in his arms until you kiss his knuckles and lift yourself gingerly from his lap, earning a pacified grunt from him as his softened cock slides out of you. You watch him as he ties off the condom and tosses it in the wastebasket a few feet away, then flops backward onto the bed so that his head hits the pillows.

You chuckle, sliding forward to run your hands along his stomach. “Honey, you still have your pants on.”

He hadn’t taken them completely off, only pushed them down far enough to free his cock and have at you. What’s more, he still has his boots on, too- big, black motorcycle things that nearly hang off the end of the bed.

Eddie grunts dismissively. “C’n deal with it in the morning.”

“No sleeping with clothes on.”

He huffs petulantly, but the scowl he tries to give you turns into a lovesick grin pretty quick. He tucks his hand behind his head in mock-nonchalance. “Hey, pretty lady. You come here often?”

“Once or twice, so far.” You grin at him as he laughs, rolling your eyes as you move down the bed to finish undressing him. You untie his boots and let them fall with his jeans and boxers onto the floor at the end of the bed, glancing up at him once you’re finished.

His eyes are closed. You don’t think he’s sleeping yet, but he’s flushed, covered in sweat. He’s still so much of an enigma to you, but you adore him. You’re enamored with him.

You crawl slowly up the length of his body, feline-like in your movements. You appraise his tattoos, smoothing your hands over them as you go. You lean down and press featherlight kisses across his beautiful, bruised face.

Eddie cracks his eyes open at you with an inquisitive smirk, just barely puckering his lips to kiss you back when you land one on them. “Feeling me up again, sweetheart?”

You hum, kissing his chest. “You’re hot.” It’s the only explanation you afford him. And once he’s shut his eyes again, you carefully move down his body, peppering kisses across his naked torso.

“What’re you-?” He twitches when you drag your tongue over his cock, still wet and salty with his cum. He groans as you slowly lift it, suckling on the head gently. “Oh… Sweetheart, m’not… I don’t think I can-”

“I’m just cleaning you up, teddy,” you tell him gently. “S’okay. You can go to sleep.”

He hums tiredly, his hand lifting to run through your hair, stroking tenderly against the back of your head. “My girl just can’t keep her hands off, huh?”

“Not a chance,” you tell him, giving him another slow lick. “You’re just too fucking pretty, Eds.”

“And you’re too fuckin’ perfect.” Eddie only really falls asleep after he comes again.

I’m never gonna leave you, baby, even if you lose what’s left of your mind…

A few days later, the car breaks down in Colorado Springs.

It had been acting up for a while, of course. Even though you enjoyed watching Eddie when he was bent over the open hood, bare arms sweaty and streaked with grease in the afternoon heat, you knew it ultimately wasn’t going to end well.

Each time Eddie tinkered with it, more and more concerning things came to light. “One of your cylinders misfired,” he said one time, shaking his head. He’d insisted on driving it from that point on. Another, “The fucking spark plug has gone out. We have to get a new one.” That was $75 you didn’t have to spare.

You guess the car had just fucking had it when you got to Colorado. You went to start it up at a truck stop, and the whole thing just sputtered and coughed at you, and then you didn’t have an engine anymore.

After Eddie paced around and cursed about it for a couple minutes, you both crawled into the back of the van and locked the door. And now you sit cross-legged across from each other, with everything of value that you have to your name in a little pile in front of you.

When you left home, you’d saved up a couple thousand to live off of until you got somewhere you felt comfortable working and living in. Since then, you’ve squandered it on food and motels and gas, never staying put and now rambling along with Eddie.

From the ATM, Eddie had stolen around two thousand dollars. He’s in the same boat as you, now looking at only a couple hundred in between the two of you. Hardly enough to afford a hotel room or bus fare for the both of you. Certainly not enough to get you a new car, or even rent one.

He scrubs his hands down his face, dirty fingernails pressing into his skin. “You should take it.”

“What?” You squint at him.

“There’s enough here for bus fare for you, at least,” Eddie murmurs, his fingers poking at the pile and scooting it toward you. “Getcha where you want to go. Get a nice job at a tourist shop in Vegas or Santa Monica or something.”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Eddie?” you snap. You swat his hand away from the pile, looking affronted. “I’m not taking the money, so cut it out. We’ll figure something else out.”

Eddie shakes his head, like he’s already made up his mind. “We had a deal. I fix your car, you take me with you. And I didn’t fix your car.”

“Yeah, but that was before…” you trail off, scrutinizing his expression. He won’t meet your gaze. He won’t look at you.

Eddie’s mouth opens and closes like he’s a fish out of water. Then, he says bitingly, “Before we fucked?”

You can feel all the emotion drain from your face, leaving you a blank, hollow screen with dead eyes just staring at him. It’s your best defense against bursting into tears at the very tone of his voice.

When he glances at you, you can tell that he wants to take it back immediately. His teeth worry his bottom lip, ripping at chapped shreds of skin. “Don’t do me any favors, sweetheart.”

“It’s not a fucking favor- I thought we were doing this together.”

Eddie talks over you. “You don’t need to keep dragging me around with you, okay? You’re off the hook.”

“Eddie, you’re being mean,” you croak at him. Not exactly the quick, biting wit that you can usually whip out- he’s shocked you.

He drops his eyes, his hands squeezing his knees. “Yeeeah,” he grumbles, his fingers tapping sporadically against his denim jeans. “Well, I told you, I’m no good for you. You didn’t listen.”

You told me that while your tongue was in my pussy. The words are balanced on the edge of your teeth, but they won’t fall out. Your hands itch to reach out for him, grab his chin and force him to look at you, somehow.

Instead, they snatch up the little bit of cash from your side of the pile in between you. You crumple it in your hand and shove the wad into your jacket pocket before you grab the strap of your weather-beaten backpack full of the last things you have to your name, and kick open the back door of the van.

It’s summer, but it’s windy in Colorado. It must be something about the mountains, you guess, and it being early morning. Condensation hangs in the air, making the air both heavy and cool as you breathe. Funny- if you slept naked, you’d probably have to curl up into each other for warmth, for a change.

You’re either vibrating from rage or from the abnormal chill in the air. Standing on the street corner with the gas station sign lit up in neon behind you, you kick the crosswalk pole with your dirty converse. You’re still arguing with him, in your head. We were in this together, motherfucker. I told you, I’m your girl. I put all my eggs in your basket. Whatever fucking martyr complex this is, you can shove it right up your stupid-

“I know.” Eddie’s tattooed arms wrap around your waist and pull you into his chest, his face buried in your hair as he whispers urgently into it. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

So, you weren’t arguing with him in your head. You were actually yelling everything you were thinking, and he chased you as you stormed off. Seems about par for the course.

“Fuck you, Eddie, did it even mean anything to you?” you blather at him, your voice thick with impending tears. “‘Cause it meant something to me.”

“Course it did,” he rasps at you, his arms squeezing you to him so tight that you’re running out of air to breathe. “I didn’t- I was being shitty. I’m sorry. Please, don’t leave.”

“Then don’t push me away.” The tears collect in your lashes, finally dripping down your cheeks. You turn in his arms and whack your hand flat against his chest. “Don’t treat me like some slut, don’t- I didn’t sleep with you just because I wanted you to fix my fucking car, you jerk.”

“I don’t think that,” Eddie insists quietly, wiping your tears away with his thumbs. “C’mon, now.”

“You said-”

“I know what I said,” he cuts you off. “And I didn’t mean it. I have a bad habit of throwing away the good things in my life, ‘cause… ‘cause of that martyr complex, you said-” He jams his tongue against the roof of his mouth when you hiccup, staring up at him with a wobbly lip. “Don’t let me throw you away. You’re the best thing I’ve ever had, ‘n I don’t wanna lose you just because I’m an idiot.”

You sigh, your head falling neatly into the crook of his neck like it’s meant to be there. He’s too quiet, holding you against him at the street corner. Eddie breathes in deep and kisses the side of your head longingly.

“I can get us a car.”

You lift your head to look at him. He wears a disappointed expression. “But we don’t have any money.”

“It won’t take money,” Eddie mumbles as he strokes your back. “I, uh… I didn’t want to end up like my old man, but…” he shrugs, his eyes cast away from you. He chuckles sadly. “Nothin’ I can do about that, now, I guess. I mean, look how you met me.”

Oh. You can infer what he means by the far-off look on his face, like he’s resigned himself to his fate. You lift your hands to cradle his face; the bruise on his cheekbone has faded to yellow, the scab on his chin almost healed. He’s never looked more beautiful to you.

“You’re a good man, Eddie,” you tell him sternly.

Eddie’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Don’t be too sure of that. You might change your mind.”

‘Cause you know I’ll be right there beside you, riding through all these western nights…

The sedan isn’t exactly flashy, or new. It’s a tin can on wheels that’ll crumble into bits if you so much as side-swipe a trash can. You keep a lookout as Eddie jimmies an unwound wire coat hanger between the glass window and the door, and a second later the door is unlocked.

You’re unnervingly calm. How did you get to be so calm about all this? Stealing money, driving getaway cars, stealing other cars when those ones don’t work. Suddenly an accomplice to whatever illegal shit has to happen for you to get where you’re going.

What’s worse, you think, is how badly the sight of him hotwiring the car turns you on. It’s practically horrifying the way your skin crawls and your core burns as you watch his hands fiddle with the wires beneath the console, so quick that your mind can barely process it. You’re not sure if the adrenaline in your veins is from looking to see if anyone’s coming, or if it’s because you want to jump his bones.

"I swear to you," he's saying as he swipes at frayed wires, "I swear, when we get to San Francisco, I'll never- I'm gonna get an honest, real fuckin' job, I'm not gonna do anything to hurt yo-"

The car starts, and you leap into the front seat without giving it any more thought. “Eddie?”

“Yeah, sweetheart?” He looks up at you, his brows tilted up expectantly. He’s still tucking wires back under the dashboard, preparing to take off once he gets the door shut.

“I slept with you because I’m falling in love with you.”

Eddie’s eyes go wide as moons, glittering in the light of a fluorescent floodlight at the corner of the dark parking lot.

“You don’t have to love me back,” you tell him honestly. “I just wanted you to know. I’m with you. And I’m not gonna leave.”

You don’t know if he loves you back- not yet, anyways. He doesn’t say it to you. But he kisses you like he does.

I'll be screaming your name past the gas stations, trailing down the interstate. Please don’t love how I need you, and know that one day, you and I could be okay.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things #stranger things fanfic #roses*

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endless-summer-soldier · 1 year ago

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something like that - part two [Steve Harrington x reader]

pairing: Steve Harrington x Reader

summary: after five long years, Steve can't get that special someone out of his mind. he can only hope that he'll run into her again when he visits Robin in Chicago

word count: 11.5k (sorry, may have gotten a little carried away with this one)

part one

March 10, 1989

Steve was zipping up his duffel when he heard the familiar honk of a car horn.

“HARRINGTON!” How he’d missed that voice. Steve collected his things and called goodbye to his roommates as he walked out of the shitty house. Eddie was leaning against his van with a warm smile on his face. “There he is…” Eddie said, imitating a proud father.

“How was the tour?” Steve asked. Eddie slid open one of the van doors and Steve tossed in his bag.

“We had a rocky start but the last few shows went off without a hitch. We’re finally getting into a rhythm and building up our fan base.” Eddie had moved to Cincinnati about a year ago to pursue music full time. His band had just completed a mini-tour, hitting Columbus, Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. They had a few nights off once they returned to Cincinnati and then they played a few shows in Indianapolis. While the rest of the band went home, Eddie headed for Bloomington to meet up with his high school friend.

“How’s school been?” Eddie asked, as he started up the van. Steve was in his senior year at Indiana University in Bloomington. While his father would’ve preferred he attended Notre Dame, he was relieved his only son decided to attend university. Steve wasn’t sure if college would be the right fit for him, but as soon as he walked onto the Bloomington campus, he knew he had made the right choice. Steve filled him in on how his semester was going and shared his excitement for graduation.

“Can you believe our girl’s turning 21?” The two were currently driving from Bloomington up to visit Robin at DePaul University in Chicago for her 21st birthday. They had a four hour car ride ahead of them and were scheduled to get to the city around 8PM. Robin hadn’t given them many details for the night other than hitting the bars and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Steve had been looking forward to this weekend for months, not just to be reunited with his two closest high school friends, but because he was hoping Y/N might be there. He hadn’t seen her or spoken to her since that night at the lake all those years ago. A part of him was always tempted to ask Robin how she was, but he never did, hoping to avoid her sass and knowing gaze. Even if she wasn’t there, it would still be a great weekend. He was grateful the three of them still kept in touch and that their friendship remained intact despite going their separate ways.

The boys didn’t miss a beat, catching up on the new and reminiscing on the old. Eddie pushed his van to its limits while Steve handled the navigation. They had made it about half way there when Eddie had to pull over for gas. Steve went into the gas station to use the restroom and grab a bag of chips. He also wanted to peruse their alcohol selection to see if there was anything gift-worthy for Robin. He looked through the sparse selection and wasn’t thrilled with his options, but ultimately decided it’d be better to show up with a shitty bottle of vodka than empty handed. He chose a frosted bottle with fake purple jewel on it that claimed to be a high-end Polish vodka. When he completed his errands, he walked out of the gas station to find Eddie finishing up at the pump.

“We’re making good time,” Steve stated as they headed back toward the highway. He checked his watch again and it seemed like they could make it into the city a little before eight. As soon as they merged onto the highway, Steve ate his words.

Eddie merely peered over to Steve and read his expression as you jinxed us. Steve tried to remain positive, thinking maybe it was just a minor fender bender that they were clearing out of the road.

It wasn’t. They crawled along the highway for about 45 minutes before Eddie lost his patience.

“I’m getting off at the next exit so you better find us another route.” Steve expected this would happen and had been marking some backroads that would ultimately lead them back to the highway, hopefully past the traffic buildup.

“I’m on it.” Eddie cut over to the right a little early and followed a few cars riding along the shoulder. They exited the highway and were surrounded by fields and farms. Steve told Eddie to keep driving until they saw some more road signs so that Steve could determine where they needed to go. They continued down the road but then the van started to wobble a bit. Steve looked at Eddie with panicked eyes and Eddie responded, “It’s fine, she does that all the time.” His tone wasn’t quite believable though. A few minutes later it happened again and Eddie announced he was going to pull over briefly. Steve held his forehead in his fingers, stressed about their current situation. It suddenly felt like fate was trying to keep him out of Chicago. He wasn’t giving up that easily.

Eddie got out of the van and circled the vehicle, inspecting it for signs of concern. Eddie knocked on Steve’s window, interrupting Steve’s desperate thoughts. Steve cranked down the window.

“I found the problem,” Eddie said.

“How bad is it?”

“It’s a flat tire.”

“Please tell me you have a spare.”

“Harrington, how irresponsible do you think I am?” Steve didn’t answer him and Eddie added, “Yes I have a spare. And I’ve changed a tire before.”

Steve climbed out of the van as Eddie opened the doors for the back, collecting his tools.

“Do you need help with anything?” Steve asked his friend. Eddie genuinely seemed to know what he was doing and Steve didn’t know that he would be of much assistance.

“Nah, I’ve got it.”

Steve peered off in the distance and saw a strip mall about a half a mile away.

“I’m going to walk down there and see if I can find a phone to call Robin. Just let her know we’re on our way but maybe a little delayed.

“Great idea, I knew I kept you around for a reason.” Steve shook his head at his friend, grabbed the maps from the front seat, and then headed down the road toward his destination. Maybe if he met a helpful local they could give them a good route to take. He hoped that by the time he returned, the car would have a new tire and they would be back on the road.

The walk didn’t take him too long and it gave him an opportunity to clear his head. He walked into a small grocery store and was greeted immediately. He let the motherly cashier know his predicament and she was more than happy to help. First he called Robin and the call went to voicemail. He left her a quick message letting her know they were running late and would meet them out at the bar. He just asked that they leave a spare key for them to be able to get into her apartment and drop their stuff off. Once he finished the call, the cashier, who’s name he learned was Cindy, gave him a good back road route that would lead them back to the highway when they got closer to Illinois. He thanked her graciously and walked back to Eddie and the van.

True to his word, Eddie changed the tire and was packing up the van, ready to get going.

“You did that quick,” Steve commented.

Eddie shrugged, “I basically grew up in a mechanic shop. I learned how to change a tire when I was five.”

“Impressive.”

“Did you get a hold of Robin?”

“Left a message on her machine. I told her to leave us a spare key and we’d meet up with them later. Annnnd a very nice lady in the grocery store gave me directions so I know where we need to go.”

“So efficient. We’ll be back on track in no time.” The two piled into the car and, once again, headed north to Chicago.

The duo did make up some time by opting to ignore some speed limits, but they still ended up more than fashionably late. They pulled up to Robin’s address, a row home in Lincoln Park. Eddie let Steve out of the car with the bags while he circled the block in search of free overnight street parking. Steve located the hide-a-key in a potted plant near the front porch and opened the door, dropping the bags by the front steps. He wandered around the house and into the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of tap water that he promptly chugged. There was a piece of notebook paper pinned to the fridge with a magnet that read, “Lily’s Bar, Lincoln and Altgeld St - meet us there!” Robin was always a great communicator.

Steve dug through his backpack looking for a fresh shirt that didn’t smell like Eddie’s van. He put on a printed button up and threw on his oversized denim jacket, needing an extra layer from the crisp March air. Eddie barrelled in a minute or two later, ready to party. Steve locked the door behind him and returned the key to its rightful hiding spot.

Steve checked his map to figure out the general direction of their destination and found it wasn’t too far, he guessed a seven minute walk.

“You nervous?” Eddie asked him.

“Well I wasn’t…” Steve commented, remembering the potential upcoming encounter he was about to have.

“Did you ask Robin if she was coming?”

Steve shook his head, “Didn’t want to be disappointed if she wasn’t. Figured I’d keep that little sliver of hope alive.”

“I’m sure she’ll be there. She’s Robin’s cousin and one of her best friends.”

“I don’t even know if she still lives around here. She could be at school in California or something.”

Eddie gave his friend a look, “We’ll find out soon enough. No sense worrying about it now.” As if Steve hadn’t been worrying about it the whole drive up. It was the build up that was getting to him. This big dramatic scene that had played out in his head. They had a moment together one night almost five years ago, and Steve hadn’t stopped thinking about her since. Tonight things would be different. In a perfect world, they would still have a strong connection and would be drawn to each other immediately. In a more realistic world, things would be awkward and they would never see each other again. Either way, it would give him closure and he could hopefully move on from this fantasy.

They approached a bar with wood paneling, tall dark windows, and a hanging black sign that displayed an outline of a shaggy haired woman. It was a dive bar with character and live music was flowing out the open door. Steve and Eddie handed their IDs to the bouncer and easily walked into the bar, in need of a few brews. They beelined it to the bartender and Eddie flashed his winning smile and was quickly greeted. He nudged Steve, “What do you want?”

“Budweiser,” Steve said absentmindedly, skimming the bar for his old friend and her very beautiful cousin. It was loud with the live music and packed considering it was a Saturday night, which put Steve into stimulation overload.

As Eddie flirted away with the bartender he added, “Hey, do you happen to recall serving a round of shots to a group celebrating a 21st birthday?”

“Oh yeah.”

“They still here?” he followed up.

“I think they went upstairs to try and get a table.”

“Thank you darling. Much appreciated,” Eddie left a few extra dollars on the bar to show his appreciation.

“Laying it on a little thick there,” Steve murmured.

Eddie shrugged, “It’s the Munson Method. I recently developed it and found that if you butter up the bartenders early on in the night, they remember you, thus serving you quicker, and often providing more potent mixed drinks.”

“I’ll have to remember that one,” Steve chuckled, still skimming the crowd for a familiar face.

“C’mon lover boy,” Eddie said, taking the lead after recognizing the look on his friend’s face. Eddie headed toward the corner and up the stairs, where the sound of live music was replaced with the loud chatter of college students. The second floor was mostly tables, all of which were currently full and covered in beer bottles. There was a small bar along one wall where people were collecting cans of beer and plastic cups full of mixed drinks.

A flash of pink caught Steve’s eye and he turned toward the corner to find Robin, sitting pretty in a hot pink feather boa and a plastic tiara.

“Found her,” Steve said, pointing toward the crowded corner. There were a lot of people surrounding her and Steve quickly looked for Y/N, but found himself disappointed with every glance. He didn’t see her. His heart would’ve skipped a beat if he even thought he saw her. Yet here he was, happy to see his friend but missing the butterflies in his stomach.

Eddie and Steve walked over to the table and Robin’s eyes lit up when she saw them.

“MY BOYS!” she screeched when she saw them approaching her. She jumped from her hair to put her arms around their necks in a squished group hug.

She let them go and turned back to the group, “Friends, these are my boys.” Then she sat back in her chair and continued sipping on what looked like a Long Island Iced Tea.

“I’m Eddie, this is Steve.”

“I see you’ve been taking good care of her,” Steve joked, referring to Robin’s inebriation.

The group shifted to make space for them at the table and provided a dozen different names that Steve wouldn’t remember.

Steve let out a deep breath, admitting defeat that his potential soulmate wasn’t here. He chugged the rest of his beer and went to the bar to get another. He would cope with alcohol. It was a bad plan, but it was what he needed tonight.

He stood at the crowded bar and looked for an opening to make eye contact with the bartender. There was a girl in a purple fringed jacket who was on the shorter side currently ordering and Steve slid in behind her, hoping he could order once the bartender filled her order. He saw the bartender pouring a line of layered shots which she then slid towards the girl. There were probably eight shots and he almost considered offering her help. But then she impressively bunched all the shooters together and grasped them in her talons, focusing on her grip before she took a deep breath and picked them all up. She turned quickly and ran full force into Steve, somehow only dropping one of the shots. He reached out instinctively and placed his hands around hers to stabilize the glasses. She looked up at him and Steve could’ve died right there. It was Y/N.

“Hi,” she breathed, her expression softening from frustration to shock.

“Hi,” he responded.

“You probably don’t remember me. I’m-”

“Of course I remember you,” Steve smiled. “Can I give you a hand?”

“Um yeah, can you take some of these back to the table and I’ll grab a few more?”

“You got it.” Steve took six of the shot glasses and left her with one, as she turned back to the bar to order again. He placed them in the middle of the table and Eddie said, “Aw Steve, you shouldn’t have.”

“We have more coming,” Steve announced, so that people knew to wait before taking the shots.

“We?” Eddie asked, looking up at Steve. He merely shrugged and walked back to the bar, Eddie’s eyes following him. When he saw Steve sidle up next to a petite brunette, he had it all figured out.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered to himself with a smile.

Steve returned to Y/N’s side as she collected the remaining shot glasses. She ordered a replacement for the one she dropped, as well as two extra shot glasses for himself and Eddie.

“I’m gonna get a drink, do you want something?” he whispered into her ear as she collected the shot glasses.

“Yes, could you get me between the sheets?” Steve’s heart dropped into his stomach and his eyebrows rose.

“What was that?” Steve asked, not believing what he had just heard.

Y/N blushed, “The drink. Between the Sheets.”

“Oh. Ohhh, yes I will get it.”

“You didn’t think I was coming onto you this early in the night, did you?” she flirted with a glimmer in her eyes.

“A boy can dream, can’t he,” Steve added, sending her a smile back. She held his gaze for a moment then took the remaining shots back to the table, leaving him at the bar. He ordered her drink and a rum and coke and returned to the table.

He walked the drink over to where Y/N was sitting and considered lingering for a moment but decided to play it cool. He placed the drink in front of her and she turned around quickly to thank him. She looked like she wanted to say more but then Robin was tugging at her sleeves, pulling her into her conversation to settle an argument.

Steve gave her the signal to go ahead and stated, “We’ll catch up later.” She gave him an enthusiastic nod and then turned over to Robin.

He returned to his seat next to Eddie and tried not to make eye contact, ignoring Eddie’s knowing eyes.

“Someone looks happy,” he commented.

“Shut up,” he said, nudging his friend.

“Is this moment everything you hoped it would be?” Eddie teased.

“I’ll report back at the end of the night.”

“Fair enough.”

Before they could continue their conversation, Y/N stood up and called for their attention. She held up her shot glass and signaled for everyone else to do the same. She gave a toast to Robin, but Steve didn’t hear a word she said. This was the first time he had gotten a proper look at her and she looked as good as ever. She was in a purple fringe jacket with a black corset top and black jeans. Her hair was straighter, but teased with side bangs that framed her face. But her smile was just as infectious as it had always been. He watched her, laughing with Robin, and longed to hear that beautiful sound again. He had to figure out a way to get her alone.

After a few more drinks (and a couple rounds of shots) Steve had loosened up and had a plan in place. The live band was still playing downstairs and he felt it was time to move the party to the main event. He enlisted Eddie’s help and Eddie ran over to Robin and took her hand, pulling her from her chair. He wasn’t sure what Eddie said to her, but he saw Robin’s eyes go wide and she called to the group and said, “Guys, there’s dancing downstairs!!”

The table all stood up and followed Robin and Eddie. Steve hung behind, letting everyone else go before him. Y/N walked over and stood next to him, watching the others head downstairs.

“Dancing, really? Was this your idea?” she accused.

He shrugged, “I may have made a suggestion.”

“I’m glad you guys made it. I heard you had some car trouble.”

“Yeah, hit some traffic then got a flat. But we weren’t gonna let that stop us from celebrating Robin’s special day.”

“I know she’s wasted right now, but she’s so grateful you guys made it. All she could talk about all week was how excited she was to see her hometown friends.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

“How’ve you been Steve?”

“Doing pretty well. Finishing up my last semester and getting ready to graduate, which is crazy.”

“Where’d you end up?”

“Indiana. What about you?”

“Northwestern. Didn’t have it in my heart to leave Chicago just yet. How do you like Bloomington?”

“It’s been great. Very different from the Hawkins small town life, but still feels…I don’t know, comfortable?”

“That’s great! I’m so happy for you. And what-”

“Y/N! Come dance!!” Robin had barrelled back up the stairs and interrupted their conversation by pulling Y/N’s arm. She looked back apologetically at Steve and he gave her a smile, following their lead. He figured if he couldn’t talk to Y/N he could at least try to dance with her.

It was packed on the dance floor as college kids were flocking to the band. Steve imagined this is what it was like at the shows Eddie played. The girls were dancing with each other and some of Robin’s other friends and Steve found a spot with Eddie.

Steve waited for his moment and when Robin spun Y/N around and she landed a few feet in front of him, he slid in and put a gentle hand on her hip. She turned her head around casually to scope out who was touching her, and she eased when she realized it was Steve. She found his free hand and held it in hers, leaning back into him a little more. Then she spun into him so that she was facing him and moved her hands on his shoulders. They were in a slow dancing position but they were moving at pace with the upbeat music. He could feel the tension building between them and all he wanted was to taste her lips again.

He was pulled from his thoughts when the frontman of the band made an announcement.

“Alright, we’re gonna switch it up a little here and invite a friend up to the stage. Munson, get up here.” The crowd cheered, particularly the birthday crew, as Eddie clambered up to the stage. The frontman took off his guitar and passed it to Eddie, who strummed a few test chords. Eddie walked over to the drummer and bass player and they nodded their heads together before the drummer counted them in. The former frontman took a spot next to the bass player as Eddie took position center stage.

The song started with some aggressive, repetitive guitar chords that Eddie hit hard. Then eventually the kick drum came in, holding a steady beat.

Then Eddie started to sing, “When I get to the bottom, I go back to the top of the slide. I get to the top and I go for a ride. I get to the bottom and I see you again. I see you again.”

The crowd went wild at the Motley Crue cover and Eddie’s vocals were throaty and intense.

“Do you, don’t you want me to love you. I’m coming down fast but I’m miles above you. Oh tell me, tell me, tell me, come on tell me the answer. You may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer.”

A flock of coeds had made their way through the crowd and were now salivating at Eddie’s feet and he was loving every minute of it.

“He’s really good!” Y/N nearly yelled into his ear. Steve hadn’t seen Eddie play in a while, and he had to give it to him. The guy knew how to work a crowd.

“Helter skelter, helter skelter, helter skelter…”

The song continued and included a killer guitar solo that Eddie absolutely crushed. When they finished the song, the crowd went wild, screaming and cheering as they drew out the final notes. Eddie gave a thank you to the crowd and high fived the other band members. The front man came back up to the mic and said, “We’re gonna take a quick break and then we’ll be back with some more tunes for you.” The crowd sighed in disappointment and then quickly flocked to the bar for another round of drinks.

“Should we go find him?” Steve asked, wanting to give his friend a clap on the back. Y/N agreed and they moved towards the side of the stage, hoping they could intercept Eddie before his newfound fan-club.

They heard him before they saw him. He was buzzing off the natural adrenaline high and was speaking his praises to the band. When he saw Steve and Y/N waiting for him, he said his goodbyes and approached them.

“Where’d you learn to play like that?” Y/N cooed.

“That is all self taught baby!”

“You were incredible!”

“Seriously man, you killed it out there. One of these days you’re gonna be selling out arenas all over the country.”

Eddie put his hands together in a prayer position to show his gratitude.

“So how do you know those guys?” Y/N asked.

Eddie shrugged, “I shared a joint with them somewhere in Ohio. They’re on the college circuit too. I recognized them and gave them a wave when we walked in, but I never expected them to call me up like that.”

“I think you’ve got some fans looking for you back there,” Steve said, signaling over his shoulder.

“Well it’d be rude to keep them waiting, right?” He smiled. Steve gave his pal a pat on the shoulder and watched him walk off.

“You want another drink?” Steve offered, hoping he could keep Y/N to himself.

“Yeah, definitely.” They wove their way through the crowded bar and Steve ordered them a few cocktails as he tried to shield her from the bustling crowd. He picked up the drinks and paid his tab, then led the way out of the crowd. He found a spot along the wall with a ledge where they could rest their drinks. He held his plastic cup up to hers and they cheers-ed, taking quick sips of their beverages.

“So are you liking Northwestern?” he asked, hoping to pick up the conversation where they left off.

“Loving it. It’s north of the city, so it's a little quieter but I can come back into the city easily enough to visit family and friends.”

“Best of both worlds. What are you studying?”

“Psychology.”

“Tell me you’re going to school to be a therapist.”

She shrugged, “It’s possible.”

Steve beamed at her. “You are going to be so great at that.”

“I’m still coming to terms with it. It feels weird to follow in your parents footsteps, you know? Like is this something I actually want to do or is it just all I know.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that. But I genuinely think you have a talent for it. You’re so easy to talk to and I can tell you actually, like, listen to what I’m saying.”

“Oh yeah? As opposed to all the other girls you spend time with,” she teased.

“You’d be surprised. Half the time I think girls only talk to me because they like my hair.”

“It is really nice hair,” she added.

“Thank you, but there’s more to me than the hair.”

“The handsome good looks?” she teased.

He blushed, “Well I don’t know about that.”

“I do. You’ve got a lot going for you. The girl you're dating right now is a lucky lady.”

“Oh, no. I’m not seeing anyone.”

“Really? I just assumed…”

“Nah, I’ve been kind of hung up on someone and haven’t really dated much since then.”

“Oh,” she replied. He could see her brain moving, trying to understand where that left them.

Before he could reassure her, the crowd cheered again, signaling that the band had returned to the stage. The loud guitar riffs confirmed that.

“Are you seeing anyone?” Steve asked her, hoping he knew the answer.

“What?” she called, struggling to adjust to the noise coming from the amps.

“Are you seeing anyone?” he repeated, this time a bit louder.

She pointed toward her ear and yelled, “I can’t hear you.”

Steve sighed, but quickly recovered as an idea entered his head. He leaned in close and whispered into her ear, “Do you wanna get out of here?”

She looked up at him with an amused expression on her face. She stood on her tiptoes and he leaned closer to make it easier for her.

“And go where?”

He shrugged and moved his lips toward her ear again, “Anywhere.” She looked up at him as he kept his face close to hers. A smirk was spreading up her face and she held his eye contact as she said, “Okay.” They chugged down the rest of their drinks and snuck out of the bar. Steve made eye contact with Eddie as they left so that he would know not to look for them. Eddie gave him a wink and a smile and Steve shifted his gaze away from his friends.

The moment they stepped outside they were met with the cold air, but they could also hear again.

“That’s better,” she commented, happy to be away from the hustle and bustle.

“Know any good spots around here? Maybe somewhere a little more quiet.”

She looked up at the sky and pouted her lips, thinking through some potential options.

“Mmm, I’ve got it.” She started walking down the street and took a few turns down some side streets.

“Are you planning on mugging me in this alley?” Steve asked, eyeing their surroundings.

“Oh stop, it’s a short cut.”

“You shouldn’t be taking shortcuts down alleyways late at night.”

“Okay, Mom,” she joked.

“I’m serious! Don’t put yourself in a dangerous situation.”

“Okay, okay. I hear ya,” she waved him off, but secretly she thought his concern was kind of cute. They walked back onto the main street and stopped at a small storefront on the corner.

“Here we are,” she announced. Steve opened the door for her and she stepped inside first. The bar was cozy and warm, much different than the establishment they came from. There were a few people sitting at the bar, drinking out of stemmed glassware. They took two empty seats at the bar and skimmed through the cocktail menu. When the bartender approached Y/N requested two glasses of water and she ordered a whiskey smash. Steve ordered the same, making it easier on the bartender.

“This is much better,” Steve said.

“I can actually hear you, which is nice.”

“You say that now,” he joked, “Get a few more drinks in me and I won’t shut up.”

“Well lucky for you, I’m a really great listener.”

“I know this about you,” Steve smiled. He was trying to figure out how to ask her if she was single. She was giving him all the signs that she was, but he still wanted to confirm.

“You never told me what you’re studying.”

“Education. I’m going to be a middle school history teacher.”

Her face lit up, “That’s amazing. I can see you being so good at that, you’re so patient. And I bet you’re great with kids.”

“I’ve had some practice over the years. And as much as they can be a pain, I’ve really enjoyed seeing them grow as humans.”

“There should be more teachers like you out there. Growing up we had so many teachers that just did the bare minimum, handing out worksheets or making us watch videos. They lost all the respect of the students. But I don’t think you’ll be like that.”

“I hope not.”

“What do your parents think of your career choice?” Always with the hard hitting questions. Yet oddly enough, he didn’t mind answering.

“My mom has been very supportive. My dad…let’s just say he wasn’t thrilled. He loves to remind me that it won’t be easy to support a family on a teacher’s salary. I could care less about the money. I spent my whole life being the rich kid, wondering if my friends were hanging out with me just because I had the nicest toys and a pool in the backyard.”

She placed her hand on top of his, showing him her support.

“Robin and Eddie don’t see you that way.”

“You’re right, they don’t. And they really showed me what it means to be a true friend. I was really insecure before I met them, and I was kind of a jackass. I was friends with terrible people and treated others outside my circle really poorly. And then I met Robin and she called me out on my bullshit. She helped me realize I didn’t have to try so hard and I could just be myself.”

“She’s really good at that,” Y/N added. “She did the same thing for me when we were growing up.”

“Really?” Steve asked.

Y/N nodded. “I was always really shy and worried a lot about what people thought of me. And she taught me not to be like that. She told me that I was awesome and if people didn’t see that, then it was their loss. And slowly but surely I started to believe that myself, and that’s when I finally began to feel confident.”

“I’m gonna have to thank her for that next time I see her. Your confidence was one of the first things I noticed about you. It’s extremely attractive.”

There was a brief moment of silence between them, nothing uncomfortable, just quiet. And Steve figured now was as good a time as any. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

Her brow furrowed, “Yeah, you can ask me anything.”

He tried to see if there was a more subtle way of putting it, but there wasn’t.

“Are you…currently dating anyone?”

She smirked, “Is that what you were trying to ask me at Lily’s?”

“That’s not an answer,” Steve countered.

“No, I am not dating anyone. You know how you said girls are mostly interested in your hair?”

“Yes…”

“Guys are mostly just interested in my ass. Doesn’t make for a great dating pool.”

He thought about complimenting her ass, but it felt distasteful.

“I’m really sorry you have to deal with that. I mean, guys are assholes but you deserve better than that.”

“I’m starting to think that not all guys are assholes,” she flicked her eyes up to him at the comment. By now, their drinks were mostly ice cubes.

“Do you want to get another round?” Steve asked.

“Actually, can we go somewhere else?”

“Sure,” Steve replied, knowing he would follow her anywhere.

“I want to show you my favorite place in the city.” Steve smiled. He wanted to see her favorite place. He wanted to know everything about her. And she seemed to be letting him in.

“This is it!” she smiled, arms spread out as she walked onto the shore of Lake Michigan.

Steve looked out across the lake ahead of them, stunned by the size of the water.

“Wow,” was all he could manage. Y/N turned around to find him stopped in his tracks, taking it all in. She walked back towards him and stood by his side.

“Amazing, right?” she said, peering up at him.

“I feel like I’m looking at the ocean…”

She nodded, “It has that effect on most. But if you get a clear day, you can just barely make out Michigan across the way.”

“That’s wild.”

“I know it’s not as quaint and picturesque as your lake in Hawkins, but it’s amazing when you consider there’s a full city right behind us.” Steve looked over his shoulder, peering at the illuminated skyline.

“I can see why you like this place,” he commented.

“I always felt like the lake brought me a little bit of peace, away from the hustle and bustle of the city.”

They stood there for a moment, listening to the distant sounds of the city that contrasted with the calm of the water in front of them. At some point Steve took her hand and they walked further along the sand, sitting just shy of the tides.

“This is nice,” he said. He thought it before he realized he had spoken it out loud. But he meant it. They fell into an easy, comfortable silence. Neither of them needed to force conversation. He was happy just sitting there in her presence.

“I’ll give you another thirty seconds,” she stated.

“We’re leaving already?”

“Not exactly,” he looked at her, expecting an elaboration, “Just…enjoy the next few seconds.” Steve was utterly confused, which made it impossible for him to relax.

“Times up, come on!” she said, quickly standing up. She kicked off her shoes and tore off her jacket, throwing it onto the sand. Steve sat there still, wondering why she was running straight to the lake. She unzipped the back of her top and let the fabric drop to the ground. She turned back around toward him, wearing a simple black bra and her jeans. “Are you coming?” she asked playfully. She didn’t have to ask him twice, he would follow her anywhere. And her lack of clothing certainly helped.

She unzipped and wiggled out of her jeans, leaving them splayed across the sand as she ran toward the water’s edge. Steve couldn’t get his clothes off fast enough, despite the chill in the air.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked, finding it strange to be the voice of reason. “It’s gonna be freezing.” His shirt was off and he was working on his pants.

“Come on Stevie. Live a little,” she winked over her shoulder before running into the icy water. She shivered at first but powered through, knowing she had to force herself in to get acclimated.

Steve followed her lead, albeit with slightly less excitement. When the water hit his skin, he tried not to think about how cold it was. He focused all his thoughts on catching up with her and keeping her warm in his arms. When he reached her, she was out deep enough that she was treading water.

“Took you long enough,” she smirked at him.

“I wasn’t sure if you were serious.”

“Didn’t think I was spontaneous?”

“Didn’t think you were crazy,” he joked.

“Only a little bit,” she smiled back. They bobbed in the water together, eyes locked on one another, and Steve was contemplating what his next move was when she spoke.

“I think about that day all the time,” she confessed. Steve almost told her that he did too, but she didn’t seem like she was finished. “I’ve replayed it in my head over and over again. And it all was perfect, but there is one thing that I would change.”

Steve tensed slightly, unsure where she was going with this.

“I wish I would’ve given you my number. I just had it in my head that I was going to be coy and mysterious and, looking back, that was stupid. And now I’ve spent all these years thinking about you after spending like four hours with you and…I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, probably because the cold-”

Steve heard everything he needed to hear. As she spoke he slid in closer and closer and a dumb smile was spread across his face. She felt it too, this was the confirmation he was waiting for. He cut her off suddenly, his hand cupping her jaw and his lips were on hers. He took her by surprise but she melted into the kiss almost immediately. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she brought him closer, wrapping her bare legs around his waist. His free hand moved to the small of her back and the skin to skin contact reminded him that they were scantily clothed. Whatever his expectations were for the night, this surpassed all of them.

He pulled away for a moment, connecting his forehead with hers as he caught his breath.

“I’ve been waiting five years to do that,” he spoke onto her lips. She smiled and let out a breath. “Well we can’t have you waiting any longer,” she said, leaning into him again. He held her tight as he kissed her again, giving her a playful nip on her bottom lip. She deepened the kiss, allowing him access into her mouth. She played with the hair on the back of Steve’s neck and he let out an unconscious moan, which generated a playful smile on Y/N’s lips, as she continued kissing him.

Steve had almost forgotten about being submerged in ice water, until he noticed Y/N’s shoulders twitch in a shiver. He had lost track of how long they’d been in the water, which meant it was probably time to get out.

He pulled away from her slowly and ran his hands over her shoulders in an attempt to warm her up. “Come on, let’s get you dried off before you catch a cold.”

She nodded and he gave her a quick peck on her nose, which she giggled at. He reluctantly released her and she took his hand, guiding him out of the water. The minute the air hit the two of them they were shivering, teeth clattering at the cold, as they ran back to where they left their clothes. Y/N struggled to pull on her jeans and didn’t even bother with the corset, instead throwing on her jacket. Steve dressed quickly and she pulled at his arm, urging him to come with her, which of course was unnecessary.

They ran through the streets of Chicago, stopping only when there was a car approaching, and within about ten minutes, Y/N led him up the stoop of a brownstone. She easily unlocked the door and led Steve inside. All the lights were out, save for a single lamp, and the entire house was quiet.

“So this is my house,” she said in a sing-song voice. It was small compared to the spacious house Steve lived in, but it was still beautiful. And it felt like home. There were school portraits and family vacation photos strewn all over the walls. It could’ve been a set for a sitcom, it looked that perfect.

“Well this is cute,” Steve said, pointing to a photo of Y/N in her elementary school years. Y/N peered over and winced at the awkward childhood photo.

“Oh god, that’s the worst one,” she said, covering her face with her hands. “I blame my mother for letting me out of the house like that.”

Steve chuckled, “Are you kidding? That girl would’ve been my third grade crush.”

She scoffed, “Maybe if you liked chapter books and jigsaw puzzles. I was pretty introverted.”

“And I always liked shy girls.”

She blushed and looked at him for a moment too long, wondering if he could read her mind. He didn’t disappoint when he took a step closer and gave her a sweet, affectionate kiss on the lips. She looked up at him, a smile extending up to her eyes, and wanted to remember this moment.

“C’mon, let’s get you out of these wet clothes,” Steve offered.

Y/N raised an eyebrow, “Steve Harrington, you big flirt.”

Steve blushed, “I genuinely did not mean for that to sound so sleazy.”

She simply shook her head and smiled at him, before she led him up the stairs. Her room was on the third level, so they made their way up two flights and walked past several closed doors. When they reached Y/N’s room, Steve couldn’t help but smile. Her room was exactly what he would’ve expected. There was a shelf full of books and a turntable with a crate of records under it. She had a movie poster of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off taped to the wall overlooking a small desk covered with writing utensils and pictures of her with her friends. But what caught his eye was a familiar looking Members Only jacket slung around the back of the chair.

“You still have this?” Steve said, pulling at the sleeve of the jacket.

Y/N turned around towards him and a faint blush crept up her freckled cheeks.

“Oh, well yeah. I thought you might want it back someday.”

“Not deserving of a hanger?” he picked the jacket up

“Um, sometimes it stays in the closet.” Steve read the guilty expression on her face and followed his instinct. He brought the familiar fabric to his face and gently inhaled.

“It smells like you,” he smiled.

“It gets cold here,” she shrugged. He looked at her in amazement and she couldn’t maintain his eye contact. “Are you enjoying this? Because it’s mortifying for me.”

“I am actually,” he smiled. “But it could be worse.”

“Oh really?” she challenged.

He merely shrugged, “You could keep a Care Bear in your closet because it reminds you of a pretty girl.”

Her jaw dropped into a smile of disbelief. “Are you serious?” He didn’t say anything, but instead gave her a tight lipped smile and an eyebrow raise as if to say “guilty.”

“Did you bring him with you this weekend?”

“Hell no. Wish Bear is not emotionally prepared to be reintroduced to the woman who abandoned him in the backseat of a car.”

Y/N couldn’t keep in her laugh. “Tell him I’m terribly sorry that I was distracted trying to find him a new daddy.”

Steve’s eyebrows rose as a grin spread across his face. “What was that?” he challenged.

She immediately put her head in her hands, “That…that came out wrong.”

“There are so many things I could say right now…”

“And on that note, I’m going to take a shower.” Steve said nothing as she rushed out of the room, cheeks burning red. She popped her head back into the room to say, “Oh, make yourself comfortable. I’ll be quick.”

“Take your time, sweetheart.”

Y/N showered quickly, letting the warm water melt off the embarrassment from the situation she just escaped. Steve was here, in her childhood home, in her room. She had no idea where the night was going, but she wanted to savor it. Enjoy every minute with him while she could, because she didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.

She emerged from the bathroom in nothing but a towel and took a deep breath as she stepped back into her room. Steve was looking through her crate of records and turned towards her as the door opened. Upon seeing her in just a towel he turned his back toward her, not wanting to make her feel uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” he instinctively apologized, “I won’t look.”

“Oh, it’s fine. The shower’s all yours anyway. I put some clean towels out in the bathroom for you.”

“Thanks,” he walked past her and inadvertently brushed her bare shoulder, sending a small shiver down her spine. He was grateful for the escape because the sight of her in nothing but a towel was too much for him to handle.

Once she heard the water running, she changed into a pair of sweatpants and a Northwestern T-shirt and pulled her wet hair up with a scrunchie. Then she raided her brother’s room, in search of a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt that Steve could wear. She folded the borrowed clothes on her bed and curled up with a book, attempting to distract herself from the boy in her bathroom, which proved to be difficult.

She was overthinking things, as per usual. She tried to convince herself that she was okay with having a one night stand with Steve, but she wasn’t sure that’s how she actually felt. She wanted more with him. The connection and chemistry was there, but the path forward was unclear.

Steve interrupted her internal monologue when he emerged from the bathroom. And Y/N made the mistake of turning to look at him. He was glistening from the shower with his wet hair disheveled, yet somehow framing his face perfectly. There was a towel wrapped around his waist but Y/N’s attention was drawn to his firm pecs, covered by the slightest amount of chest hair that matched the happy trail that ran from his navel down to the edge of the towel. She wanted nothing more than to feel his body pressed on top of hers. Luckily, she was completely frozen by his bare form because her instinct was to take his hand and pull him towards her.

“Good water pressure,” he smiled at her, breaking her trance.

“Oh yeah. It’s one of the things I miss most when I’m at school.”

“I’d be happy if I could get a third of that in my apartment.”

She contemplated her response, running different replies over in her head, but ultimately all she gave him was a smile. It’s not that things were awkward, but there was tension in the air and she was trying to tread lightly.

“So there’s fresh clothes at the end of the bed for you. Hopefully they fit, they’re my brothers and you’re probably close to the same size.”

“Thank you, I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

“And there’s extra toothbrushes in the drawer to the right of the sink.”

“You are truly a gracious host,” he smiled, collecting the clothes and retreating into the bathroom. He came out a few minutes later and she took his place in the bathroom, washing her face and brushing her teeth. Steve took a careful seat at the edge of the bed and waited, realizing this perfect night was coming to an end. He noticed she’d tensed up a bit recently, and he hoped it wasn’t because he was making her uncomfortable. He ultimately decided to follow her lead because he didn’t want to risk crossing a line.

When she walked back into the room, Steve finally took in her appearance. She was in sweats and a T-shirt, hair pulled into a messy bun, with no makeup on, and he was floored by her natural beauty.

She caught his eye and said, “What is it?”

He smiled at her and shook his head, “Nothing, I just like looking at you.” She blushed and joined him on the bed, leaning against the pillows and pulling her knees into her chest.

“So…what now?” he asked her. She peered at the clock on her bedside table and realized it was nearing 2AM.

“I think now we just go to bed.”

“Bed it is,” he said. He nodded and stood up, wondering how he should end this night with her.

“What are you doing?” she questioned.

“Oh I just figured I’d go sleep on the couch or the floor or something.”

“Steve…don’t be stupid.” They eyed each other for a few seconds before she signaled for him to approach, saying “Come on.”

“Are you sure?” he confirmed.

“Of course I’m sure.”

He certainly wasn’t going to argue with that. She pulled the comforter down and slid underneath and he easily followed her lead. Once they were settled, she stretched out toward the side table and turned off the lamp.

It was awkward for a beat. The double bed fit two, but in close proximity. They were both looking up toward the ceiling and Steve heard Y/N pull in a deep breath. She eventually shifted so that she was laying on her side facing him. He easily turned his head towards her and his hair fell over his eyes. Without thinking, she brushed the hair off his face. A verbal thank you wasn’t needed; it was communicated by the look in his eyes.

“I should warn you that I’m a bit of a restless sleeper,” she spoke.

“Not a problem for me. I sleep like a log.”

“The real question is do you snore?”

A smile spread up his face, “Now how do you expect me to answer that?”

“With a yes or no.”

“How am I supposed to know if I snore if I’m asleep when it happens?”

“Has anyone told you that you snore?”

“No, but I don’t think there’s many people that would know if I did.”

“I don’t believe that for one second.”

“Why not?”

“Because…look at you. You can’t honestly expect me to believe you haven’t had hookups before.”

“I’ve had hookups before, just…not a lot of sleepovers.”

“And why’s that?”

He studied her face as he came up with an answer. “I don’t know. I think I didn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. It seemed like if I spent the night, there was maybe hope that something more would happen. But I never met anyone I wanted more with.”

“Yet, you’re sleeping over tonight…”

“Well this is a completely different situations because I’m from out of town and-”

“That is not the answer I was looking for,” she interrupted his rambling. Now he shifted so that he was laying on his side, fully facing her.

“Oh no, you don’t want me to get all sappy.”

“Oh I absolutely do. Girls love it when guys show their vulnerable side.”

“Really? I’ll have to remember that,” he joked. She playfully hit his chest in response. And they laughed for a moment before he gave her a genuine response.

“Y/N, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m crazy about you. Always have been. You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, I was drawn to you the moment I first saw you, before I even knew who you were. And then I talked to you which made me realize you were someone I needed to have in my life. So to sum all that up, I’m here and sleeping over because you are someone special.”

Her cheeks naturally flushed as she smiled at him, and she turned more into her pillow in an attempt to hide her amusement.

“Come on now, don’t hide that smile from me.” He carefully slid his fingers between her cheek and the soft pillow, angling her so that she was facing him fully. She took this opportunity to lean in closer to him.

“Do you really mean that?” she whispered. She wasn’t sure why she was looking for confirmation. In her brain, this all seemed too good to be true.

“Without a doubt.” He held her eye contact and she believed him whole-heartedly. She moved in closer, at a painfully slow pace, and then her lips finally connected with his. They melted into each other, as Steve easily wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her as close to him as possible.

With every second that passed, Steve found himself growing more courageous. First he slid his hand under the hem of her shirt and placed it on the dip of her waist, drawing little circles on her warm skin with his fingertips. When she tugged on his shirt to pull him closer, he gained another boost of confidence. He pulled back for a brief moment, but before she could protest, he peppered kisses up her jaw and gave her earlobe a gentle tug with his incisors. She let out a heated breath and he smiled, planting a kiss behind her ear and working down her neck.

With each new spot Steve explored, he lit a spark under Y/N’s skin. It was like he was thoughtfully stringing Christmas lights but the final result was that Y/N was getting very, very turned on. Steve paused for a breath when he reached the collar of her T-shirt.

“Can I take this off?” he boldly asked. She was flushed but didn’t have to think twice about answering. She sat up and Steve gently pulled the shirt up and over her head, careful to ensure it didn’t get caught anywhere. As she lounged on the bed in a simple bralette, it suddenly didn’t seem fair that Steve was still fully clothed.

“Your turn.” Steve cocked an eyebrow at her suggestion, but easily gave in, reaching behind his neck to pull the shirt over his head. She couldn’t help but notice the flex in his bicep as he shed his tee and felt her attraction increase even more. His hair was perfectly messy, falling over his chocolate brown eyes that were currently fixated on her lips.

She needed to feel his touch again. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him on top of her. He was careful not to put his full body weight on her, but she wanted the skin-on skin contact. He found a comfortable position where one of his legs rested on the mattress between hers. As he closed the gap between them, he could feel the anticipation emanating off her. The minute his lips met hers, she tightened her grip around him, wanting to feel all of him. He allowed himself to drop some of the weight he was holding up, which increased the contact between them. She loved the feeling of his bare chest on top of hers and she ran her fingers through his hair, forcing a small moan out of his mouth. As her arousal increased, she became bolder. She untangled her fingers from his hair and tucked her arms under his, giving her access to his back. He was currently tracing small circles on her side with his fingertips, barely tickling her and making her giddy. She countered his motion, taking it a step further by digging her nails into his trapezius and slowly pulling down. She felt Steve’s breath catch momentarily as she caught him off guard, but he recovered quickly, deepening the kiss. He pulled away, rubbing his nose with hers in an eskimo kiss, before focusing his attention on the spot where her neck met her shoulder. He leaned in close, his lips gently caressing her soft skin before he slowly sunk his teeth into her flesh. She let out a small gasp but held Steve’s head in place so that he wouldn’t pull away. Her entire body was tingling and she could feel her underwear dampening with every second and Steve’s current actions were only making things worse. As he shifted to come back up to her mouth, he adjusted his position and in doing so, his leg slid up and his thigh brushed between her legs. When he found her lips again, the friction between her legs continued as Steve’s thigh retained its position. And then she felt his erection pressing into her hip bone and she pulled away.

She leaned her head back and shut her eyes, “Fuck…”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Steve looked at her, concern plastered on his face.

She sighed as she looked at him, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. We can stop if you want.”

She rested a hand on his cheek, “Steve, I want this so badly and I thought I could be this cool, laid back girl who can have a one night stand but I just keep thinking about what happens tomorrow morning. I can’t give myself to you tonight because it will crush me when you leave.”

He turned into her hand and kissed her palm. He contemplated sharing the bit of information he’d been waiting to bring up all night, but he decided to wait. He didn’t want it to come across like he was trying to persuade her to change her mind.

“You are very wise, my dear,” he smiled at her. “I already can’t stop thinking about you and I haven’t even seen you naked yet.”

She blushed and let out a small laugh, and he couldn’t resist kissing her again. He leaned in first with a peck and then gave her a soft, deeper kiss.

“Will you still cuddle with me tonight?” she asked him, giving him her best puppy dog eyes.

“Only if I can be little spoon,” he teased.

“Nooooo….” she whined. He kissed her on the cheek and then fell back onto the mattress, pulling her tight into his chest.

“Settle in cuddle bug,” he said, kissing the nape of her neck. She made herself comfortable in the bed and intertwined her hand in his. She let out a deep sigh and melted into his arms.

“Goodnight Steve,” she said.

“Goodnight Y/N.”

The morning sunlight crept through the blinds, waking Steve from his peaceful sleep. He smiled when he found Y/N curled into him, her cheek pressed against his chest and her arm draped around his torso. A part of him thought it all might’ve been a dream, a trick his mind was playing on him after years of longing. Yet the evidence was right in front of him: the smell of her grapefruit shampoo, the sound of her steady breathing, and the feel of her warm, soft skin. He didn’t dare move a muscle for fear of waking the sleeping angel in his arms.

He eyed the digital clock on her nightstand and saw it was around 7:30. He’d gotten less than five hours of sleep, yet he’d never felt more refreshed. He never wanted this moment to end, so he savored it by tightening his grip on Y/N and lightly tracing patterns on her back with his fingertips. She shifted slightly and let out a slight groan, a sign that she was waking up. Her eyes fluttered open and she squinted up at him.

“Good morning,” he smiled down at her.

“Hi,” she squeaked, “You’re still here.”

Steve looked down at her in shock, “Are you crazy? Of course I’m still here. Where else would I be?”

She shrugged sleepily and he kissed her forehead, tightening his grip on her and pulling her in closer.

She let out a deep sigh, “I think I’m still in denial about…all of this.”

He nodded, “I had the same thought when I woke up.”

“Do you like coffee?” she asked, out of the blue.

“I love coffee.”

“How about I go make us some coffee,” she suggested, sitting up to stretch.

He nodded in agreement, “Do you want company?”

“Yeah, sure,” she smiled at him. As they climbed out of bed, Y/N took his hand and led him down the stairs. She expertly maneuvered the coffee pot while Steve took a seat at the kitchen island.

“Sorry, I’m not a morning person,” she explained.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked her.

She turned toward him and replied, “Surprisingly well.”

“Surprisingly?”

“I wasn’t sure how I was going to sleep with someone else in my bed.”

He tilted his head and looked at her funny, “Then why did you let me sleep there?”

“Because I wanted you there,” she said sincerely.

“Well I’m glad I didn’t keep you up.”

“I mean, you did a little bit,” she gave him a knowing smile, “but I didn’t mind.”

As the coffee finished brewing, Y/N poured them two cups and brought over some cream and sugar. She sat down next to him and took a deep sip of her coffee, needing a little extra courage for this next part.

“So…what’s your plan for today?” she offered.

“Um, well I’ve gotta get back to Robin’s at some point. All my stuff’s there and Eddie parked his van there and he’s my ride home.”

“Are you heading back to Indiana today?”

“Yeah, at some point.

She nodded, thinking through her words and how to breach the subject on her mind.

“So-” she started

“I should tell you something,” he said at the same time, not meaning to cut her off. He sounded serious and she felt her heart sink into her stomach, realizing this was all coming to an end.

“Go on,” she replied, eyeing him with curiosity. She almost didn’t want to hear what he had to say. This was probably why Robin seemed to keep them apart.

“Well I’m graduating in a few months, so I’m in the fun process of looking for a job. And I actually have an interview in a few weeks for a teaching job in Oak Park.”

Her eyes widened and she clarified, “Oak Park, Illinois?”

He nodded, trying to read her expression.

“So you’ll be back in a few weeks?” she smiled at him.

Steve tilted his head, not sure that she fully grasped what he was saying.

“If all goes well, I’ll be moving out here in the summer.”

Her face turned from contentment to pure joy as things finally seemed to be coming together. She had no words to express her feelings, so instead she reached out and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. He embraced her around the waist and hugged her back, planting a kiss on her cheek.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” she asked, as she moved back to her seat.

He sighed, “I was trying to find the right moment. Early in the night, I didn’t really know what was going to happen and didn’t want to be presumptuous. And then you kind of pumped the brakes last night and I felt like mentioning it then would’ve seemed like I was just trying to get in your pants.”

She looked at him with soft eyes, realizing how truly considerate he was, “You are unbelievable.”

“Is that a good thing?” he asked, eyebrows raised. She responded by placing both hands on his jaw and pulling him towards her so that she could express her emotions with her touch. She captured his lips in hers, kissing him gently but with passion.

When she pulled away, Steve gazed into her loving eyes, “Can I take you out to dinner?”

She smiled and said, “Steve, it's 8AM.”

He rolled his eyes, “Not now. When I’m back in a few weeks.”

“Where are you gonna take me?”

“I hear this city has some pretty good hot dogs,” he joked. She laughed and leaned into him. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

She stood up unexpectedly and walked across the kitchen, grabbed something from a drawer, and walked back over to Steve. She took his left hand and pulled it towards her. She uncapped the pen in her hand and carefully wrote a series of ten digits on Steve’s forearm.

“Had to make sure you wouldn’t lose it,” she smiled at him.

“You’ll regret giving this to me. I’m gonna call you three times a day.”

“It’s a good thing I like the sound of your voice,” she complimented. He placed his hands on her hips and brought her closer. She countered by placing her hands on his shoulders. She looked at him adoringly, wanting to run her fingers through his tousled hair.

“What are you thinking about?” he posed.

She let out a sigh, “It feels like this might be the start of something special.” He leaned up from his sitting position to find her lips and she graciously accepted his advances. As they slowly pulled away, she added, “I really hope you get the job.”

“Even if I don’t get this one, I can find another job in Chicago. But I really hope I get this one.”

“Tell me about the job!” she mused. He returned to her chair and slid closer to him, sipping on her coffee and he gave her the details of the opportunity. It was the first time she saw the passion he had for his career and it was incredibly attractive. He was so excited to teach in a public school in an urban environment and he wanted to help mold these young people who may not have been given a lot of opportunities. He explained that he knew he grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth and he wanted to give some of that back to others. He explained that it probably wouldn’t pay much but he’d have the summers off which would be nice. Y/N still had another year of undergrad followed by two years of grad school, which meant they’d have a lot of time to spend together during their breaks.

“You’re gonna get it,” she smiled at him.

“You think?”

“If you repeat that same spiel to them, they’ll hire you in a heartbeat. You have this twinkle in your eye which shows that you’re excited about the opportunity and you care about your future students.”

“Is that the therapist speaking or my future girlfriend?”

“Well aren’t you sure of yourself? You haven’t even taken me out on a date yet.”

“Oh I’m going to nail the date. In fact, I’d go as far to say that you just might fall in love with me by the end of it.”

She blushed and tried to hide her smile. All she could think was that she couldn’t fall for him on their first date because she was already in love.

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