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wicca-wicca-whack · 1 year ago

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Care

Gordon Malloy x Reader

Word Count: 3059

Now Featuring PT 2!

“You two haven't even talked since your first month here!”

This was an argument you and Talla have had nearly daily for the past month.

“We've messaged,” you remind her. “We're both Union members on fleet ships, we don't have time to call.”

“When's the last time he sent you something first?”

“Not this again, come on.” You sigh, looking away from your science console. “I don't keep track of who messages who first.”

“Well, you showed me last time we were all over at yours drinking wine,” she informs, looking a little smug. “He hasn't even initiated a conversation with you for nearly a year!”

You consider, briefly, smacking your head against the nearest wall. Of course wine-drunk you had shown her, probably wanting to prove a point you'd completely failed to prove.

“Relationships aren't about who sends who a message first.”

“But they are about communication and showing you care for each other.”

“We communicate.”

“No, you communicate. He can't even bother to ask you about your day.”

You sigh, returning your gaze to your console. “Shouldn't you be on the bridge right now?”

No sooner than you say that does Captain Mercer call her over the comms, and she gives you her version of a pout as she assures him she's on her way, moving quickly from the science lab.

The issue is that she isn't technically wrong- you and your boyfriend had been drifting significantly since you moved postings from the small science vessel to the Orville. When he found out you took the posting, he'd gone so far as to accuse you of acting like you were too good for the ship you'd met on. That wasn't it at all. The Achilles had been a great ship- great crew, interesting missions… but you wanted adventure as well, and the Achilles was only equipped for short expeditions. When you'd heard the Orville was working on putting its own anthropology team together, you'd put in an application immediately. You were a small team, and, to your shock, they'd placed you at its head. According to Commander Grayson, not many Union anthropologists with more than a couple of years of experience were willing to transfer to a new team. It ended up being not only good for you, but a good career opportunity, a chance to prove you could lead. Kevin didn't see it that way. Kevin acted like you were some sort of traitor, or like you were only thinking of yourself. Even just thinking about it really downed your mood, so you didn't, returning your attention to your work.

It's a few hours later, in the mess, that Talla and Commander Grayson sit down with you, and the Commander gives you a kind of amused look.

“Talla was just telling me your boyfriend sucks.”

You can't help the exasperated sigh that escapes you. “Commander-”

“Please, we're not working, and we're gossiping? Kelly is fine.” She waves a hand at you, sipping on her drink.

You hesitate, but nod. “Okay, Kelly. Talla is totally blowing things out of proportion.”

“I mean, does he text you first? Like ever?” She leans back in her chair.

“He doesn’t have to, I’m more than willing to-”

“You guys talking about the shitty boyfriend?” Lieutenant Malloy takes a seat beside you, and you could scream. Absolutely the worst person who could decide to plop down into this conversation.

“You know about the boyfriend?” Kelly looks shocked, and you stab at your food.

“Know about him? Dude, we’ve met. The guy is a piece of work.”

“Guy is still my boyfriend, dickwad.”

He snorts, loud, unbothered by your barb, which irritates you more as the Captain and Chief LaMarr take a seat at your table. “Kevin D’Acunto is a major asshole. He’s known for being a piece of work and a total chick-hater.”

“He’s not a chick-hater, he’s-”

“Your boyfriend, yeah, I know.” He rolls his eyes, hard, and you scoff as Kelly looks between the two of you.

“Point of contention?”

“If you’re asking me if Malloy consistently badmouths my boyfriend, then yes.” Your fork goes down, no longer very hungry. “Excuse me.”

You take your food to the synthesizer to recycle it, moving from the mess as quickly as you can. You figure, screw it, fine. You’ll prove them wrong. Kev cares, and you’ll prove it, stop messaging him first, let him prove that he’s just as crazy about you as you are about him.

You wait patiently, making yourself a snack at home, watching vintage movies on your viewscreen… getting ready for bed. You can’t help but feel like, well, obviously he must just be busy. The Achilles was a busy ship. Things happen, you can’t count all the late nights you’d spent at the lab. You give him a pass, expecting to wake up to a message in the morning.

Except there is no message in the morning. Your mood is soured from the jump, tugging on your uniform, grabbing a to-go coffee, and making your way to the lab as fast as you can.

There’s no message when you get home that night either, or by the time you go to bed.

The cycle continues for a month before Gordon confronts you.

“You’ve been such a bitch lately, what’s going on?”

You can't help the scoff that comes from you. “Fuck off, Malloy.”

Talla takes up on your left side, pulling you from Malloy and down another hall. “You are kind of… irritated lately,” she tries to be more polite about it.

You sigh, loud, running your hand through your hair. “I haven’t heard from Kev in, like, a month.”

Her steps falter. “What?”

“I stopped messaging him first, to… prove a point to you guys, saying he’s a dick and doesn’t care about me.” You pause in front of your quarters. “Apparently he is a dick who doesn’t care about me.”

She scoffs, punching in a code to open your door and pushing you inside, moving for your synthesizer. “Lieutenant Keyali to Commander Grayson.”

Your protests go unheard. “Grayson. What’s up?”

“We’re having a pity party with our favorite female science officer. You coming?”

“On my way as we speak. Grayson out.”

“It’s not a pity party,” you try, watching the Xelayan woman synthesize what must be a gallon of red wine.

“Okay, a breakup party.”

“We didn’t break up.”

“Oh, please. You don't speak even a little in like a month, you’re broken up. Either way, it’s a reason to drink!” She holds up three wine glasses as your door dings, and she lets in the Commander.

“What’s the reason for the pity party?”

“Well, the Lieutenant wanted to prove us wrong, that her boyfriend is super caring and great,” she sees your frown, “which is totally valid! But she hasn’t heard from the little scumbag in a whole month.”

She gives you a shocked look, and you shrink as she moves to join you on the couch, pouring big glasses of wine for the three of you. “He’s not worth a pity party, you should celebrate. Sounds like a total jackass.”

You sigh, taking a long sip. “He didn’t even want me to take this posting. He’s probably trying to give me the silent treatment.”

“For a month? Come on, if he cared he’d miss you too much to let it go on for so long.”

You sigh, watching Talla get music on that she likes, something slower, like old R&B, and you roll your eyes. “You guys are so annoying.”

“We’re your friends right now, excuse you.” She points a finger at you, settling into your chair. “And it’s only half for your ridiculously plush furniture.”

“Yeah, seriously, what is going on with this?” Kelly pats the arm of your couch. “Soft as hell.”

“I like nice things,” you defend, waving them off. “I like soft furniture.”

Talla takes a long drink before she speaks, grinning at you. “What about soft guys?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m just saying… you’re single now. Maybe time to start looking.”

“I think Malloy’s got a thing for you,” Kelly offers, giggling a little.

“A thing for pushing my buttons, maybe.” You swear your eyes roll into the back of your head.

“Maybe that’s his turn-on,” she teases, and you scoff, loud.

“Well it's not mine, so he’s going about it all wrong.”

She cackles, loudly, and you relax a little more. “Well, Gordon really isn’t the go-to guy on how to get women to like you, you know?”

Talla smothers her own laugh. “No, he so is not.”

“We don’t talk like that, so I wouldn’t have any idea about any of that.”

“He’s sweet!”

“To who? Not me!”

“You know, he hasn’t had a girlfriend in a long time, he’s re-learning how to talk to women.”

The night continues on, more or less like this. You, rebuffing every attempt at they toss to shine some kind of positive, sweet light on Gordon.

But in the morning, you can’t help thinking about him like some kind of cute, ginger puppy dog, and you curse everything around you that two women could change your opinion so fast.

Things kind of… shift from there. You don't mean for them to. But when Gordon makes little barbs- at least the ones not about Kevin- you're not as rude. You find yourself dressing a little more… revealing when you know he's going to be somewhere you're going to be after work. But you didn't go out of your way to be somewhere just because he would be.

Sure, Gordon was attractive. That was never something you doubted. From the moment you got on board, you found him cute. But he was a dick, and you were in a relationship. But now it's been four months since you last heard from Kev, and looking back, you can't believe you dragged the relationship out for so long. It was kind of ridiculous, really. The news broke out last month about your lack of contact, and Gordon had been significantly sweeter since- probably trying not to rub salt in the wound, Kelly had told you. Which was shockingly polite, given that you'd expected him to pester you with ‘I told you so's. Another reason to tally onto your count of reasons Gordon may not be terrible.

You peek around the simulator, sipping on your drink. LaMarr’s birthday party. You, for one, were shocked to get an invite, but it looks like he invited just about anyone he shared more than one positive conversation with, including a Lieutenant you'd often seen both in engineering and subbing for navigation on the bridge, engaging in what could easily be a flirty conversation with the Captain.

“He's, like, totally into her, it's insane.” You almost jump at Gordon's voice at your side, blinking at him.

“You scared me.”

“Dunno how. I didn't walk over here all quiet.” He gestures to his friend and the woman down the way. “Good for him, they're actually talking.”

You snort, peering at his drink when he gets it. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What, no plans to flirt with one of the… 20 women LaMarr invited?”

“I don't really flirt,” he tells you, sounding a little bummed. “I'm cool, thanks.” You can see his eyes dart to your chest, but you save him the embarrassment of pointing it out. “Hey, I heard you totally laid a guy out because he grabbed your ass at your last posting, that true?”

You snort, an ugly sound, but Gordon's face lights up. “Ensign Barcus. Yeah, I did. Total prick, did it to women all over the ship.” You look into your empty glass. “I just about broke his nose.”

He chuckles, glancing at you for a moment. “Probably deserved it.”

“Definitely, yeah. I mean, come on, most of the scummy guys I'd met would never even try that outside of a bar.”

He hesitates, and you can see He wants to ask something, so you wait. Patiently. He fiddles with his glass, his hands, the zippers on his jacket, his hair.

“What's up?”

“Huh?”

“You look like you wanna ask me something. Spit it out, dude.”

“...I also heard you used to, uh… dance while you were at Point. For fun. Is that true?”

You flush, embarrassed. “Where'd you hear that from?”

He shrugs, obviously not wanting to give up his source.

“I… did some dancing at a nearby… gentleman's club,” you shrug.

“Is that what we're calling them? Gentleman's clubs?”

You reach to whack his arm, and he laughs, holding his hands up defensively. “Okay, okay!”

He orders you another drink- you think he must have been watching you before, since he doesn't ask what you were drinking, but manages to get you the same thing. You think it's kind of sweet, if not just a little weird. Gordon rides that line between the two a lot, you hear.

You thank him softly, and he smiles, waving it off. “You talk to the birthday boy yet?”

You snort. “Just when I came in. He's a little busy with… every available woman who's interested, I think.”

He snorts. “John is pretty good with women like that, I guess.”

“You guess? Aren't you friends, wouldn't you know?”

“I really try not to hear about it.” He scrunches his face up, and you giggle. “Sometimes he just says too much.”

“Oversharer?”

“Big time, yeah.” He takes a long drink, rolling his eyes.

“I thought all guys like to overshare.”

He just gives you a look. “I thought that was a chick thing, you know, chatting with friends about your boyfriend.”

“Maybe it's a human thing,” you shrug, playing with your hair.

Before he can say much more, Talla is on your side, grabbing another drink and pushing you against Gordon's side, making you squeak as your drink splashes your top. “Talla!”

“What?” Her eyes drop to your wet top. “Oh, shit, I'm sorry.”

You sigh, drinking what's left of your drink. “It's fine. I should probably head out anyway, it's late.” You smell like alcohol, and God knows you're not gonna leave, change, and come back.

“I can walk you,” Gordon offers, knocking his drink back like a true alcoholic.

“You don't have to do that, it's your friends' party.”

“He won't miss me.” He gestures to LaMarr, saddled up on a couch chatting with a couple of women. “Come on.” He nods you towards the door, and you catch a glance of Talla's shit-eating grin, and you know damn well she did it on purpose, so you shoot her a glare as you walk out with the ginger man.

The walk is shockingly quiet. If you didn't know any better, you'd think Gordon was nervous. You keep yourself busy, pulling the neck of your top away from you, annoyed by the sticky, drying alcohol. You can see him looking, more than once, for more than just a couple of seconds, but you don't comment, stopping at your door and raising a brow at him.

“Well I guess I'll see-”

“Why don't you come inside?” You blame the alcohol, or maybe Talla's constant goading ever since she realized you were warming up to the man, for the question, and he looks appropriately shocked.

“Me?”

“I don't see anyone else in this hall,” you offer, exaggeratedly looking left to right.

“Right… uh… yeah,” he shrugs a little, and you reach to snag him by the jacket sleeve and tug him in with you.

He's anxious- of course he is, given he's never been inside your quarters, but you wave him towards your couch before heading into your quarters to wipe down and change, coming back out in something comfy and maybe a little cute.

“That jacket can't be comfortable. It's got, like, eight zippers.”

“...Twelve. Not including the,” he gestures to the actual, functional zipper.

“...What? Twelve?”

“It's got twelve zippers, yeah.” He unzips it, carefully shrugging it off.

“That's a ridiculous amount of zippers.”

“Looks cool though.”

“You look like a final fantasy character or something.”

He snorts, and you move to get yourself and drink and him a beer before plopping beside him, handing it over.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, picking at his jeans as you move to put something on the viewscreen.

“It's no problem.” You shrug, watching him hesitantly drape his arm over the back of the couch behind you.

You hesitate for a few beats before leaning into his side a little more, feeling him tense.

The two of you sit like that for a while- you can barely pay attention to the show you put on, brain focused on the warm body beside you, practically radiating off him. You can see him looking at you repeatedly, eyes coasting over your face and your body. The tension is thick, you feel like you could touch it. You're two attractive people, apparently attracted to each other, alone, sitting close on your couch.

You decide to bulldoze through the tension, pulling up and grabbing his shirt to pull him into you, kissing him a little rougher than you mean to. He stalls, and then one of his hands is on the small of your back as he groans. You tug him closer, nipping at his lip, and he sighs against you, nails digging into your top as he flounders to put his beer down so he can tangle his hand into your hair, your own arms wrapping around his neck as you fall back against the arm of the couch, tugging him with.

He pulls back as your viewscreen begins pinging with a call, and you both start at the name plastered over it.

Kevin D’Acunto.

You have a short internal debate as Gordon slowly parts from you, and you can't quite see his face, but from what Kelly has told you, you can guess that he thinks you’re gonna shoo him away.

You hold him close to you as you answer, unphased by Kev’s shocked face. You can hear Gordon say your name, a little panicked, but you ignore him, just hanging up the call and pulling the ginger man into another kiss, which he returns immediately.

You’ll deal with the backlash in the morning, but right now, you’d rather start a new relationship with someone who gives a damn.

#gordon x reader #gordon malloy x reader #the orville #wiccawrites #kelly grayson #talla keyali

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bizaar · 2 years ago

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Cruel Summer - Part 6

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 15k (YIKES)

warnings: swearing, mentions/descriptions of child/spousal abuse, death, funerals, grief, ANGST, panic attacks, fluff, allusions to sex and smuttiness towards the end of the chapter

A.N.: Babysitter!reader part six is here! This one is a MAMMOTH you guys I was gonna cut it down but you all gave me some pretty positive feedback about long chapters so... here you go :) Wayne Munson continues to be the best man in Hawkins, meanwhile, Eddie's father is the literal worst -- Eddie has TRAUMA

I'm gonna be sad about the Munsons for the rest of my life

Hellfire met and played at the Munson trailer for the better part of a month before the drama room finally became available again. Eddie could not have been more relieved if Publisher’s Clearing House had shown up on his doorstep with a million-dollar check. It was only three sessions, considering the club only officially met on Fridays, but each and every one of them had been punctuated by a special kind of weirdness that Eddie could not stomach another second of.

He’s never been so happy to be back on school grounds.

First and foremost, Gareth had been correct. Wayne was very clear that he didn’t want them playing D&D in the trailer anymore, not after a particularly rowdy session had seen Jeff and Adam engaging in a wrestling match that ended with them falling over and absolutely decimating an antique coffee table that had belonged to Eddie’s grandmother.

Eddie damn near pulled his hair out over it, considering it was arguably the nicest piece of furniture they owned and something Wayne had been very careful about preserving, scratches and water rings and all. The moment only got worse from there, as before Eddie could even finish saying “oh shit—you guys, my uncle is gonna kill me!”, there was Wayne, stepping in through the door mere seconds after the table collapsed … well, exploded was probably the better word to describe what had happened to it when Jeff and Adam came crashing down with all their collective weight like they thought they were a pair of pro-wrestlers or something.

Pair of assholes, more like.

It would have been hilarious if it had been any other piece of furniture in any other house, but then that was just Eddie’s luck, wasn’t it? That it would be the single piece of furniture they owned that his uncle was precious about.

Eddie never met her, considering his father was all but disowned by everyone but Wayne by the time he was born, but he knew well enough that his uncle was a mama’s boy through and through, and Grandma Munson was revered in that household, even in death. What few remaining heirlooms of hers there were that hadn’t been pawned or lost to time were tantamount to sacred, so needless to say, Eddie was in deep shit.

Wayne stood surveying the scene as the smoke cleared – dice, pages, and character maquettes scattered to the wind, sweaty teen boys still wrapped in the vice of their wrassling, laying amidst the rubble of Munson family heirlooms – and he miraculously did not kill his nephew. He did, however, breathe out hard through his nose and go right back out to chain smoke and try to calm down.

Wayne didn’t get mad easily, his temper was a slow-burning fuse in contrast to his volatile younger brother’s, but still, it made Eddie panicky. Being in trouble with Wayne was an exercise in “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed,” and arguably worse than any insult or abuse his father could have hurled at him in the same situation. Eddie would have given blood to avoid finding himself in the line of those big, sad eyes as he rushed everyone out and did his best to clean up and piece the table back together. The effort was in vain, there was no saving the table and no amount of apologies could save Eddie from the long tired sigh of disappointment Wayne heaved when he finally came back inside.

Wayne didn’t have many hard rules – respect the space, don’t do anything too stupid while he’s gone, do your damn dishes – but that night he made a new one. No more D&D in the trailer. Eddie promised, though more importantly, they shook on it, which was binding among Munson men. Of course, the nasty little problem there was that Eddie had also sworn to himself that he would never set foot in Benny’s diner ever again, not even if his life depended on it … not even if he thought he was going to find you there.

He honestly didn’t think he could physically make himself go through that door, and he was panicking about it, because how was he supposed to explain that to anyone?

How to explain that even after ten years, the diner was still so stifling with the lingering atmosphere of his mother’s presence that he couldn’t breathe? Too many memories of days after school spent waiting while she moved back and forth behind the counter, hours and hours sitting in the squishy pleather booths doing his homework (when he still did his homework) or perched on his knees on the rickety stools and spinning around and around and around until he couldn’t see straight. Watching the clock and counting the minutes left in her shift, walking home hand in hand, telling her about his day, and enjoying a brief interval of peace before his father got home.

Enough time has passed that those days are fuzzy now, bright little jewels of memory that have turned to sepia-toned shards of glass embedded in his mind. They are still painful enough to keep Eddie away from the diner permanently. How is he supposed to explain that he’s afraid he’ll taint what is left of those memories if he returns as he is now, so far removed from the version of himself that his mother knew? The best version of himself.

He can’t do it. He won’t.

So he swallows his pride and calls Wayne at the plant and begs him – literally begs – to let Hellfire play in the trailer. He doesn’t know precisely what it is that wins his uncle over, maybe he’d blown the whole coffee table thing out of proportion in his mind and Wayne wasn’t actually that upset about it (he was) or maybe it is just because he just thinks Eddie really needs a win after the last few months, with you and what happened that afternoon at Rick’s and not graduating again (he really hopes it isn’t that, despite how stridently true it is) — really what is the harm in letting them play a little D&D? Especially after Eddie’s long, drawn-out spiel about how he swears they will be on their best behavior and they won’t get too rowdy or make a mess and he’ll make sure everyone uses coasters if he wants them to, and Wayne listens to his nephew talk a mile a minute before finally cutting him off mid-stream — because they aren’t the type of people who worry about things like coasters — and he relents.

“Take a breath, Bud, it’s alright. You can bring your friends over.”

And Eddie practically sobs with relief, which is embarrassing, but it had been a very tense few hours fighting off panic attacks and wrestling with the very real thought of canceling Hellfire entirely just to try and avoid ever having to set foot in that diner again.

Somehow he gets the sense that Wayne knows all this because he’s always had that weird sort of omniscience that parents have when it comes to their kids (good parents, at least) even though Wayne is not his dad and Eddie is not his son – Wayne always seems to know exactly what’s wrong with him at any given moment and it would be maddeningly frustrating if Eddie didn’t rely upon it completely.

The Munsons have never been good at talking about their feelings, and Eddie feels so much all the time.

He thanks Wayne profusely and swears he’s going to make it up to him.

“Just don’t let the big guy break any more furniture.” Wayne huffs down the line, wrenching a watery laugh from somewhere deep inside Eddie.

He would have said something smart about how the only thing that’s going to get broken is Jeff’s neck if he doesn’t behave himself, but he’s already too far gone in his memories as he hangs up and switches over to autopilot to go about getting the place ready for guests…

It was late summer, 1977, and Eddie sat on the steps of Wayne’s trailer, back when it was just that, before it was home— sulking because she was leaving him there again.

It wasn’t her fault, and he didn’t blame her, because he knew she didn’t have any other choice.

Still, he did not want her to go.

His father had gotten himself arrested again, for dealing or boosting a car or any number of his other nefarious pastimes, and his mother was preparing to go through the long, arduous process of bailing him out. That meant Eddie would be spending the night on the couch at Uncle Wayne’s, and while those nights were never bad — it was all television and take out and the novelty of being treated like an adult without being scandalized in the process, like when he was nine and his father took him out to a strip club on the interstate (it was the angriest Eddie had ever seen his mother – she’d blown a gasket) – it was always just the circumstances that sent him to Wayne’s that Eddie hated.

His mother sat crouched in front of him on the stairs and pinched and poked and tried to make him smile. She always teased just a bit too much when things were bad, always told him he was too young to be so serious.

He pouted and told her that she ought to just leave his old man there to rot, not for the first time (though unknowingly the last). She’d wrinkled her nose and agreed with him, pulling him forward by his elbows to wrap her arms around him and blow a raspberry into his cheek. He would have told her he was too old to be treated like that, but in spite of himself, he snorted with laughter and let his mother kiss the offended flesh before standing to talk to Wayne.

Eddie felt the brief warmth of humor give way to anxiety tugging at his heart and covered his ears – he didn’t want to hear her say anything too serious. Serious on Eddie’s mother was always too close to sad, and he hated when she was sad (too many mornings sitting and watching her try to mask last night’s bruises with caked on cover-up, biting back tears and doing her best to smile for him.)

Her voice was hushed and thick with emotion as she spoke.

“I’ll be back when I can, but…” he heard her suck in a sharp breath, “I don’t know, Wayne, it just — it took so long the last time –”

Wayne cut her off, patting her on the shoulder and speaking in a soft, reassuring voice.

“I know, Darlin’. You take as long as you need,” and then he made a point to perk up, raise his voice to try and make himself sound chipper, for Eddie’s sake – chipper is an emotion that has never worked on Wayne. “We’re gonna be just fine. It’s gonna be fun. Right, Bud?”

He nudged Eddie gently with the toe of his boot, but the only response he could muster was a dejected sigh, propping his head up with his fists, elbows perched on skinned knees.

He reached down to ruffle his hair and Eddie jerked moodily out of his touch and buried his face in his knees as his mother tut-tutted him.

“Hair’s gettin’ real long…” Wayne mused, sucking his teeth, “Maybe we’ll give you a trim while your mama’s gone,”

The thought of it set Eddie’s heart beating at a pace – his father was always trying to cut his hair, spitting hateful slurs and insults about the “kind of men kept their hair long” – thankfully, his mother spoke up.

“Oh, no, don’t.” She said quickly, reaching down and running her fingers fondly through Eddie's curls, “We like it long, right, Baby?”

He didn’t answer, but he could feel her looking at him, waiting patiently. A sprig of defiance wormed its way up through his midsection, and Eddie decided he would stay quiet for the rest of his life if he had to.

His mother just sighed – she didn’t have time for a tantrum, the one his father was sure to throw was arguably worse than the one Eddie was kicking up. She had to go, so she turned on her heel and started down the gravel drive.

“I’ll be back soon. Love you, Teddy Bear!” She called, waving over her shoulder— her massive collection of keychains jangled loudly as Eddie peeked up from his knees to watch her make her way back to the car.

The Munsons were all packrats in their own way – his mother collected keychains and magnets, Wayne collected novelty mugs and baseball caps, and his father collected felonies and arrests… Eddie supposes now that he collects regrets. He wishes he’d done more to commit her to memory, he wishes he’d done something to make her stay…

“I love you!” She said again, louder, stretching the phrase lyrically and trying to bait him.

He wired his jaw shut – maybe if he didn’t say it back she’d stay until he did. Maybe he’d never say it again and she’d never leave him.

Still, a sudden spike of anxiety flared in his chest as something screamed at him to call out to her, make her turn around and look at him one more time. Just in case.

Just in case what? Just in case you never see her again.

“Don’t let him drive!” Eddie shouted at his mother’s back, pushing up to stand on the steps like if somehow he were a little taller it would help drive the message home.

Don’t go. Don’t go. Please, don’t go.

She stopped as she pulled the driver’s side door open and smiled – a wry, crooked thing that indented her cheeks with dimples.

“I never do.”

She winked, and slipped in behind the wheel and out of his life because no matter what she assured him, she didn’t ultimately have a say in who drove home that night, no matter what his father had taken or how fucked up he was.

He drove. They crashed. She died.

The funeral was open casket, and Eddie refused to move from his seat. He didn’t want to see her, not like that – he wanted her here, smiling and laughing and teasing too much and collecting stupid novelty keychains and breathing, not cold in the fucking coffin his father had put her in.

The son of a bitch had tried to drag him up there to “pay his respects”. He seized him by the scruff and told him not to be a pussy, but his arm was in a sling from the accident and he couldn’t get a good enough grip on Eddie to hold him to the spot when Wayne stepped in and pulled his brother aside for an extremely tense, hushed conversation.

The repast had been at Benny’s because she’d worked there long enough that the staff was like family and their house was too small to host. His father somehow managed to get himself completely blackout drunk, despite the lack of any booze being served, and made a huge scene – like he always did, and Eddie sat there trying to endure the violence of his hatred for the man.

Why couldn’t he have just let her drive? Why did it have to be her? Why hadn’t she been wearing her seatbelt? Why why why…

His grief was too big, he didn’t know what to do with it or where to put it, and it made Eddie so angry. Angrier than he had ever been in his life. It made him brave— or perhaps vitriolic— and when his father shouted and slurred and swatted at him like he always did, Eddie grit his teeth and spat the venom right back.

For all the times he’d sat helpless, for all the times she’d sent him to run and hide, he finally stood up.

He paid for it, of course, with a hard crack to the face that knocked him right back down, and before his brain could stop rattling around his skull enough to catch up to his body, Eddie hit one of the first of many hard limits he would pass with the old man over the next few years.

With a bloodied, broken nose, he bolted from the diner and ran all the way out to the interstate. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he meant to get as far away as humanly possible, from his father, from Hawkins, from his grief and the terrible life he knew he surely faced without his mother to act as a buffer. Even at eleven years old, he knew he didn’t have a chance if he stayed.

This town would kill him if he stayed.

The first and only car to pull up beside him had been a rusty pickup – it was Wayne, because of course it was, and he rolled alongside Eddie in the truck at a glacial pace on the shoulder of the wrong side of the road for the better part of twenty-five minutes as he tried to talk his nephew down.

Eddie continued to walk, wiping blood and tears on the sleeve of his suit jacket and refusing to be coaxed into the cab until he’d learned that the cops had picked his father up and he wouldn’t have to go home that night. When Eddie finally relented and climbed up into the passenger seat, he saw that Wayne’s knuckles were cracked, swollen, and bleeding on the steering wheel.

He didn’t have to ask to know what had happened – he hoped his father hadn’t been too drunk to feel every second of the beating Wayne had given him — Eddie hoped it hurt as bad as it did when Wayne set his broken nose later that night, sitting perched on the edge of the sink, gritting his teeth and biting back tears.

It would be another two and a half years of days like that before the old man would finally go to prison.

With Wayne’s blessing, Hellfire resumed at the Munson trailer, and by 8:30 that Friday in April, everyone was piled into the little living room, huddled around the replacement, decidedly less nice coffee table, and Eddie could finally breathe again.

Except that Jeff was fully committing to the bit of being bizarrely hostile, in his own completely non-threatening way. Eddie thought it was exceedingly strange – and more than a little rude considering he would have been meek as a mouse if he had found himself allowed back into a home where he’d so unceremoniously destroyed a treasured piece of antique furniture, but he couldn’t really kick up the gusto to be angry about it, because Jeff was being hostile no matter where they were.

“Hey, what the fuck is Jeff’s problem?” He’d asked Gareth one day, sitting huddled over his notebook in the back of second-period English Lit while Mrs. Faulkner droned on about some old dead guy.

Proust or some shit.

Gareth had merely shrugged his flannel-clad shoulders in feigned ignorance and done his best to look innocent as the color drained from his face and his eyes went wide. Of course, that reaction suggested he knew exactly what Jeff’s problem was, but the old harpy had screeched a warning at them about cross chatter and threatened detention from the blackboard before Eddie could press him further on it.

The issue with doing everything with the same group of people is that when you have a problem with one of them, you have to see them everywhere you go. Jeff is a member of the Hellfire Club as well as Corroded Coffin, so Eddie has to deal with his snarky, backhanded remarks pretty much wherever he goes.

It is, at best, mildly annoying and at worst, deeply confusing.

Eddie can’t wrap his head around the shift in his attitude, except that once, when you were still very new to each other — the first time he’d ever brought you to hang out with the guys as his officially official girlfriend, in fact — Jeff had pulled him aside at the end of the night and drunkenly warned Eddie that if he ever hurt you, he would kill him.

It had been an intense and slightly off-putting way to end what had been a generally pleasant evening, but Eddie had just chalked that up to Jeff being… well, Jeff. Poor social skills and all too easily impressed by nice girls who showed him even the slightest bit of kindness or attention.

You’d laughed about it on the car ride home, not unkindly, though. You thought his crush on you was sweet, like the crush the kid you babysat had on you. And then you’d sat in the car eating ice cream and discussing life’s most important questions; who would win in a fight – Jeff or Eddie...

Eddie had just been happy to get to share you with his friends and integrate you into the group without it being weird so that he didn’t have to parcel out his time between the band, D&D, and you.

He knows you would have won out over his friends every time, though he’s not sure they could have held it against you.

He used to love how much they loved you until he told everyone about the breakup.

He’d said it was mutual, and maybe he’d let them believe that it had been more your idea than his — he doesn’t know why, maybe he’d thought it would be easier to stomach if he could manage to be pissed at you, but he couldn’t muster it and it didn’t make him feel any better to say it.

Despite everything, Eddie can’t help but shake the feeling that all of his friends have taken your side. Somehow they know he hurt you, and he supposes if Jeff had meant he was going to annoy him to death it’s working marvelously.

And then there’s Dustin.

Dustin Henderson, who spends all his time talking about his babysitter and hangs out with that pretentious douche Steve Harrington when he isn’t following Eddie around like a lovesick puppy.

He can’t deny he has a soft spot for the kid, even if he is annoying as hell, and Eddie does feel bad about biting his head off over the whole situation with the diner. He’d thought it was actually very cool that the kid even tried to find them an alternate place to play, and he’d been sincere in his apology at the campus phone, but he also knows he’d gone a little overboard in the teasing, especially with that bizarre conversation with Dustin’s babysitter that followed.

It hadn’t been Eddie’s fault, not entirely.

He’d already been feeling too manic, his senses dialed up to eleven at the thought of having to go back to Benny’s, but Dustin was also just entirely too easy to tease. He was, perhaps, just a tad too flirtatious with the babysitter on purpose, just to ruffle Dustin’s feathers — Eddie is big enough to admit that that was a fuck up on his part.

The connection over the payphone had not been the greatest, just as much static as voice, and somehow he’d fooled himself into thinking the girl on the other end of the phone sounded a lot like you. So much like you that if he tries very hard, he can convince himself that it had been you on the phone that day. It wasn’t, he knows this, but in his heart of hearts?

The teasing, the cadence of her speech, the specific little phrases she used, her laugh? Christ – the way she’d laughed had been enough to make Eddie weak at the knees because he swears to God, Tiamat, Ozzy Osborne, whoever is out there listening, that it had been you laughing on the other end of that phone call — but then she’d hung up on him, and Eddie knew he’d been deluding himself, projecting you into some random girl he’d probably scandalized.

He imagines some snotty cheerleader on the other line, lying on her bed, twisting her perfectly manicured fingers in the phone cord, popping bubble gum, and kicking her feet —painting the picture of a pretty little fantasy until she realizes who she was talking to, until he tells her his name. Then he pictures her sneering and slamming the phone into the box with a harsh grunt of disgust.

She probably felt like she needed to take a shower after that, to wash the freak off of her.

Eddie still can’t believe how badly he’d let his feelings get hurt over it, all because he’d let himself pretend he was talking to you.

Then there was the way Dustin and Wayne acted towards each during that second Friday playing at the trailer. It was a rare day off, and it had seen his uncle rolling up unexpectedly and coming through the door halfway through their session.

Everyone instantly shut up and mumbled their own overly formal, awkward greetings as Wayne surveyed the group. He greeted the boys he knew, regarded the ones he didn’t with a curt nod as Eddie introduced them – Mike and Lucas, and then he clapped eyes on Dustin, and he got stuck. He stared hard and set his jaw, and Eddie could practically see the gears turning in his uncle’s head as he tried to work something out.

It would have made him nervous if he hadn’t noticed the way Dustin was staring right back at him with the same intensity. Like they recognized each other but they didn’t precisely know where from.

Weird.

And then the moment passed, like fixing a skipping record.

“Y’all been playing long?” Wayne hummed, setting his wallet and keys down on the little dining table shoved against the opposite wall.

His addressing Eddie brought the game to a screeching halt and everyone held their breath and waited to see what he would say.

“Few hours, yeah.” he replied cautiously, “Why?”

There was a tiny nagging voice in the back of his mind that warned him they were about to get kicked out and they would have to finish their session with flashlights in the back of his van, but Wayne just shook his head, like it didn’t matter why he’d asked.

He fished his cigarettes from his pocket and patted himself down in search of his lighter, coming up empty.

“You got a light?”

Eddie tossed him his lighter— he caught it effortlessly.

“Well, don’t stop on my account, gentlemen.” He said, pushing a cigarette up to his lips and going right back outside.

The door clicked shut and a collective sigh passed over the room as everyone turned back to the game board and began chattering amongst themselves.

“You think he’s still pissed about the table?” Adam asked sheepishly.

Jeff and Gareth both began to voice their dissent – no, no way that was so long ago — and Eddie had to grit his teeth to stop himself from saying anything too mean about it because it may have been long ago to them but he still hadn’t heard the end of it.

“Of course, he’s still pissed – you guys, shut up about the table already,” Eddie huffed, flipping through the beat-up Player’s Handbook balanced precariously on his knee.

Of course, that only spurred them on to talk more about it. And when Mike piped up, asking “what table” Gareth was all too happy to launch into the story, much to Eddie’s annoyance as everyone lost interest in the game and began laughing and talking.

He propped his chin up on his hand and heaved a dejected sigh, continuing to flip through the book and waiting for them to be done. He just wanted to play D&D, was that too much to ask?

And then he could feel eyes on him. He glanced up to find Dustin staring at him expectantly from where he sat on the floor like he was waiting for the answer to a question he hadn’t asked yet.

Eddie waited. Dustin waited, and for a long moment, they both just sat, staring, waiting for the other to speak.

“What?” Eddie finally prompted.

Dustin began slowly.

“So…” He said, giving him a quizzical look and shuffling just a little bit closer to where Eddie sat with his knees up in the lazy boy. “How do you know that Wayne guy?”

Eddie wouldn’t say that the question floored him, but he didn’t quite know how to respond. He supposed he could have just answered the question – he’s my uncle – but he was much too caught on the other end of it.

“How do I–? How do you know Wayne, Dustin?” Eddie snapped, well aware that he was biting the kid’s head off over nothing again. “Don’t ask me stupid questions like that.”

He could practically hear you in the back of his mind, reminding him that there were no stupid questions, but Eddie stridently disagreed. That was a very stupid question.

Dustin didn’t have a response. He looked more put out than dejected as he threw up his hands and shook his head, but someone kicked up with a concern about snacks or drinks or something variably more important to a group of teen boys before Eddie could chase the thought any further.

It was another twenty-five minutes of trying to corral the group before they finally resumed their session and when Wayne finally came back in, Eddie spent the rest of the night trying not to get distracted by the way he and Dustin sat glancing at each other as he did his best not to lose his flow.

Wayne didn’t have much to say about it later on.

“Do you and Dustin know each other or something?” Eddie asked after everyone had gone, gathering the last of the books and character sheets, and dice.

Wayne sank heavily into his chair — the lazy boy that had served as a poor substitute for Eddie’s throne — with a sigh and beer. He scratched his stubbly chin and furrowed his brow like he had no idea what his nephew was talking about.

“Who?”

Eddie grit his teeth to keep himself from snapping.

“Dustin— the kid with the hat? Braces?”

“Oh.” Wayne said.

He hummed deep in the hollow of his throat, like he was considering whether or not to tell Eddie something, then he picked up the remote and flicked on the tv.

“Nope.”

That was the end of the conversation, no matter how long Eddie stood there in the living room, waiting for his uncle to elaborate. He didn’t, and Eddie finally had to just turn and stalk back to his room with an agitated sigh.

He can’t help but feel that there is a huge piece of the puzzle missing there, one he isn’t sure has anything to do with all the weirdness that has punctuated his days since school started. He tells himself he doesn’t care, so why does he suddenly feel like there is some kind of big conspiracy between everyone he knows going on behind his back? He racks his brain for what the possible connection could be and comes up empty.

He is so goddamn relieved when they finally get back to playing in the drama room.

+++

The counselor’s office looks the same as it always does, all of Ms. Kim’s pictures, degrees, and personal items are still where they were when Eddie was last here, same time last year.

Christ, has it been a year already?

He knows he’s fidgeting more than usual, bouncing his knee and digging his nails into the arm of the chair as he waits for the guidance counselor to speak.

So far she’s just sitting there, staring at him and it's making him very nervous.

The last time he’d been pulled out of class to see Ms. Kim, she’d told him he wasn’t graduating again… and graduation is only a month away now. He’d be lying if he said his stomach wasn’t in knots.

She is smiling sweetly at him from across her desk, hands clasped neatly in front of her and Eddie is still frantically bouncing his knee.

“How are you doing, Eddie?” She finally asks, tilting her head thoughtfully and leaning forward ever so slightly.

He resists the urge to ask her to just cut to the chase. He would much prefer to rip the band-aid off and get it over with – none of this beating around the bush with mindless pleasantries.

Still, his mother had done her best to raise him right, in spite of it all, and he would be damned if he didn’t at least try to be civil with Ms. Kim. She’s never been anything but kind to him, which is not something he can say about most of his teachers.

“Okay, I guess,” he mumbles.

Her face pinches into a mask of concern.

“I heard you’ve been having a bit of a rough year.”

Eddie clears his throat to cover the bitter snort of laughter that tears itself out of him.

“Yeah well, nothing ever really changes around here, does it?” He says, smirking and shifting uncomfortably in his seat, “Same shit different day – sorry.”

The silence that blooms between them is more than a little bit awkward. He hadn't meant to swear.

Ms. Kim straightens the stack of papers set out on the desk in front of her and Eddie’s gaze flicks down to try and discreetly see what they are – he can only make out his name.

“So, I've got your transcripts here,” She begins, “And I wanted to talk to you about your future at Hawkins High School…”

Eddie’s heart drops into his stomach – he suddenly feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Oh come on, my grades can’t be that bad…” He chuckles. It is a humorless sound.

He is going to be devastated if she tells him he’s not going to graduate again. He doesn’t think he can stand another year of this…

He half expects her to give him a piteous look, scrunch her features and turn her eyebrows up in apology, but instead, they jump up towards her hairline and she shakes her head.

“No, actually, quite the opposite. Your grades are…” she trails off, shrugs, “Well, I’m not going to lie to you, they’re still pretty low, but considering what they were this time last year?” and then her lips quirk up into a big smile, “I think you might be on track to graduate next month.”

Eddie would have been less shocked if she’d pulled a gun on him. He's fully aware of how his mouth has fallen open as he stares at her.

“Shut the fuck up!” He gasps, and then, “Sorry – I’m so sorry – I just… y-you’re serious?”

"I'm serious."

"You're not just bullshitting me, right?" Goddammit, Munson, language, "Ah– sh-shoot – sorry."

Despite his language, Ms. Kim is still smiling and nodding – and Eddie doesn’t think she would lie to him about this. Educational staff wasn’t allowed to pull practical jokes, were they? Prank the guy with the worst grades in school by telling him he was graduating? That would be a major conflict of interest, probably illegal even, which means she’s not kidding, and he’s really – finally – going to graduate if he can keep his shit together.

Holy shit.

“I know it’s a little premature to say, but congratulations.” Ms. Kim says.

Eddie almost doesn’t hear her.

He feels like he’s going to burst, though for the first time in a long time it’s from happiness and not some kind of devastating attempt to hold himself together. Eddie only realizes how broadly he is smiling as his hands come up to clasp either side of his face. Shock is the only word he can think to describe what he feels, elation maybe? Dumbfoundedness?? Mostly, he can’t believe his stupid luck.

No, not luck, hard fucking work is more like, he’s been kicking his own ass all year and it’s finally paying off. He suddenly can’t wait to tell someone, everyone, get up on a table and shout it at the denizens of this wretched place – take a good last look, everybody, Eddie Munson is finally getting out of here.

“That being said–”

God dammit.

“–you’ve got one grade that you need to pull up. Mrs. O’Donnell’s class–”

Eddie's heart sinks a little. He's not sure any one of his teachers hates him more than Mrs. O'Donnell does. She would fail him just to spite him if it didn't mean she would have to endure another year of him in her class.

“– you’re close though, D is a passing grade. I should mention, however, that if you don’t manage it–”

“Oh, Christ – don’t say that!”

Eddie’s not superstitious, but he can’t help but jump forward and wrap his knuckles sharply on her desktop with both hands. It’s made of sheet metal – shit.

Is it bad luck to knock on wood when it’s not made of wood? He doesn’t know.

You would have known because you always had little bits of random information for him like that.

You were a purveyor of secrets and forbidden knowledge – you were Lady Midnight.

God, he wishes he could tell you the news, wrap you up in his arms and spin you around and around until he can't stand up straight.

Ms. Kim carries on about how there’s no shame in getting his GED and how best to stay on track for graduation, but Eddie isn’t listening anymore.

He’s too busy picturing the alternate universe where you still lived in Hawkins. Maybe you had a place together, one of the tiny apartments above or behind or in the basement of one of the buildings on Cherry Street.

He imagines he’d go straight from Ms. Kim’s office to find you at work, wherever that was – maybe you worked at Family Video with that asshole Keith and he’d find you behind the counter, or maybe you had some office job that he’d pick you up from every night at five.

He imagines the way your face would brighten when he told you — Baby, you won’t believe it, I’m finally fucking graduating! — your eyes would go wide and you’d scream and throw your arms around him and jump up and down. Everyone would stare because everyone always stared at the both of you, but you wouldn’t care because Eddie was graduating.

You’d be so excited that he would have to pry you off of him, and then you'd take him by the hand and insist you go out to celebrate immediately.

“Let’s go to Enzo’s and get drunk and eat our weight in breadsticks and lasagna,” You’d say, sidling up and tucking yourself beneath his arm.

And Eddie would scoff because there’s no way either of you could afford Enzo’s, but he would never deny you a good time.

“Sounds great, Sweetheart, we don’t have to pay rent this month,”

Of course, that was never going to happen.

Realistically, he thinks if he had the chance to tell you, your face would scrunch in sadness or maybe even anger, because you’d worked so hard tutoring him last year, all for nothing. All for him to break up with you just because he was jealous that you’d graduated and he didn’t, because you’d promised you weren’t going to leave him behind and he hadn’t believed you.

Maybe this was the start of Eddie finally getting his shit together, but what is the point of moving on if you aren’t going to be there waiting for him?

He’d spent so long imagining the moment when his life would finally jump out of stasis — graduating, moving on, moving out, getting his own place, getting a real job, and maybe – if he was really lucky – even someday getting married. Settling down with someone kind and fun and funny and eventually having a couple of little Munson brats of his own, running around wreaking havoc and living the childhood he always wished he’d been lucky enough to have.

He doesn’t want any of that on his own, he doesn’t want it without you – as cheesy, sappy, rom-com bullshit as that sounds.

He'd spent too long imagining his life with you.

Whatever scenario he drummed up for his future self — whether the band took off and he made it big and became this ridiculously famous rockstar living in a mansion out in LA, or even if he just got a job at a mechanic’s shop somewhere that barely paid him enough to make rent — you were always there with him.

Filthy rich or dirt poor, you were supposed to be hitting those milestones together.

He’s going to graduate next month and you’re not going to be there.

Eddie's heart is hammering against his ribs again, and he flexes his fingers to keep his hands from shaking.

It always hits him in the worst moments...

There is no rhyme or reason to his path after Ms. Kim turns him loose. For lack of anywhere better to go, Eddie heads straight for his locker, because he doesn’t think he can stomach sitting through class — he doesn’t know what he plans to do when he gets there.

Maybe he’ll grab his shit and leave — cutting class is not a good look when you're trying to graduate — maybe he’ll slam his head in the door until the blood stops roaring in his ears or his head falls off or something — can't graduate if you're dead — can't have a panic attack if you're dead either.

He fumbles with the lock until he can get the door open then, for lack of anything better to do, sticks his head inside, hands gripping the metal tightly as he tries to take deep breaths.

It’s nothing compared to a sink full of ice water, and the relative dark is not enough to be calming, but it’s better than nothing.

Calm down calm down calm down calm down calm–

“Are you okay?” he thinks he hears you ask.

Eddie whips back from his locker and cracks the back of his head against the door – ow – and it’s not you standing there, staring at him through your lashes, of course, it’s a cheerleader.

Chrissy Cunningham, he remembers after a moment of static. Red-blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail, sweet face, heavy blue eye makeup. She’s wearing jeans and a soft white cardigan and Eddie realizes he didn’t recognize her without the greens and golds of her cheer uniform. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her out of it.

The phrasing makes him feel like he could start blushing.

She’s staring up at Eddie with big, wide eyes, filled with concern, and maybe something halfway to fear. It takes him a moment too long to realize she’s waiting for him to answer the question she’d asked.

“What?” He asks a little too loud, swallowing hard.

Her voice is very quiet when she answers.

“I just … asked if you’re okay…?”

“Oh… Yep— I mean — yeah, no. Yes. I’m fine.” Real smooth, keep talking cool guy, “I was just— I was looking for something.”

He gestures nervously to his locker, glancing at its messy contents before reaching out and snatching the first thing he sees. A broken pencil. Great.

Eddie has never been good at thinking on his feet — there is always as good a chance that he’s going to make a complete fool of himself as he is going to come across as smooth. Even when he’s confident that things will go well, his brain has this nasty little habit of betraying him at the last moment and short-circuiting, as had happened that first moment he’d tried to talk to you in the lunchroom.

He may as well have just stabbed himself with the broken pencil for how thinking about that makes his chest hurt.

Still, he holds the pencil up to Chrissy, like he needs to prove that he’s okay. He’s not.

“Found it.” He says.

She stares at him, wide-eyed and blank for what feels like an excruciatingly long moment, and then she smiles — giggles even, in spite of herself, pursing her lips and casting her gaze downward. It’s a soft, shy thing that carries shades of the way you’d looked at him the first time he’d ever spoken to you. It makes Eddie’s heart thump.

In a moment he remembers himself and slams his locker door shut, putting the pencil behind his ear and crossing his arms over his chest like he suddenly feels the need to protect himself.

Cheerleaders don’t usually talk to him unless it is to say something nasty or to try and buy from him … or that time in his first senior year when the cheer captain cornered him in the bathroom at a party and tried to coerce him into having sex with her out of some kinky, rebellious fantasy she’d wanted to fulfill before she graduated — you’d thankfully come to his rescue before anything could happen.

Girls like Chrissy Cunningham, who wear their innocence like a veil and date sports stars most certainly don’t talk to guys like Eddie.

It makes him nervous.

“Uh … sorry, did you… want? Something?”

Her eyes grow wide, like she’s been accused of something untoward and she looks away again, scratching nervously at her ankle with the toe of her immaculate white sneaker.

“Oh. Yes… actually.” Chrissy says, “Um, s-so… I was told that you— like … I mean if I wanted to get … something? You would have it.”

It takes him a long moment to untangle the sentence, and he’s a little dumbfounded when it finally comes undone. Maybe he was wrong about her because according to his translations, Chrissy wants one of two things from Eddie: sex or drugs.

Somehow he doesn’t think she’s coming on to him so that just leaves option two, which doesn’t leave him any less flummoxed.

“You wanna buy?”

It sounds much more like an accusation than he intended.

Chrissy twists a delicate finger tightly in the hair at the nape of her neck, garroting the tip of her digit and doing her very best not to look directly at Eddie. Her face is ever so slightly flushed pink as she bites at her lower lip and nods.

In spite of the bizarre situation, Eddie does think she is really very pretty, in a way he’d never noticed before.

He swallows and clears his throat to stop his voice from cracking as he continues.

“…What, uh— what were you in the market for… specifically?” He asks.

Chrissy glances at him from the corner of her eye and twists her sleeves down over her hands. She hesitates like she has absolutely no idea how to answer the question. Suddenly, her eyes are bright and shining, like she is ready to cry, and Eddie’s heart is in his throat.

He can’t stand to see people crying – girls, in particular, it makes him feel helpless, too much like watching his mother put makeup on over the bruises on her face. His hands twitch at his sides as the impulse to somehow try and comfort her becomes nearly overwhelming.

“Hey — hey… it’s okay. I’m not gonna bite you.” He says softly, resisting the urge to take a step toward her.

And do what, hug her?

That’s what he would have done with you, pulled you close and held you tight until you’d calmed down. Eddie doesn’t dare cross that line to touch Chrissy, he’s half convinced she might combust into flames if he did, innocent little bird that she is.

Innocent little bird trying to buy drugs.

He hopes she knows he means no harm as suddenly she becomes very interested in her sneakers, tugging at the hem of her big cardigan.

Eddie dips his head to try and meet her gaze, make her look at him – all she’ll do is glance at him, and he smiles at her when she does, in a way he hopes is reassuring. The moment of emotion thankfully passes quickly and Chrissy comes down again – she’s no longer on the verge of tears and Eddie can relax… at least a little bit.

“You good?” He asks.

“Yeah— yes. I’m sorry… I’ve — I’ve never done this before.” She mumbles, chewing the inside of her lip.

“That’s okay…” He assures her, shaking his head, “Everybody starts somewhere… I guess – uh – I guess I should’ve asked what kind of results you’re after?”

She blows out a tense breath and purses her lips like she really has to think about it.

“I don’t know… I—um… I've been having …n-nightmares?” She mumbles, then shudders bodily, like a sudden chill has ripped through her. “Terrible nightmares.”

For half a moment, she gets this scary, far-away look in her eye and it’s enough to stop Eddie from thinking about how her admitting that feels a tad too much like oversharing, considering they don’t know each other…

That’s not true, He tells himself, You do know Chrissy… second grade. Project on manatees – she came over and mom helped us work on it…

And then like being struck over the head, he’s reminded of another seriously unhelpful bit of information for the moment Eddie has found himself in.

She came to Mom’s funeral…

Eddie nods sagely, “You wanna sleep better.” he hums, trying to banish the image of black clothes and sorrowful faces standing around as a coffin is lowered into a grave — a much younger Chrissy stealing a shy glance at him before ducking back to hide behind a pair of legs.

Eddie wonders if she remembers any of that.

Chrissy returns the motion, a sharp jerk of her head in affirmation. It’s reassuring. At least he knows what he can sell her now.

“Okay.” He feels himself smiling without really being aware of how it got there, and he shrugs, “Well, hey, I’ve got the cure—“ Eddie stops short and tries to blink the living room at Rick’s place back on its axis — I’ve got the shit for what ails you — he’s quick to correct himself, shaking his head to try and clear the sudden smokey haze from his mind, “I’ve got something for that,”

Chrissy nods again and then brings up a hand Eddie hadn’t realized she’d had clutched in a fist. Slowly, her fingers unfurl to reveal a crumpled hundred-dollar bill.

“How much will this get me?”

Eddie almost laughs out loud at the sight of it. It’s more than he’s ever even paid to refill his whole stash.

Much more than you’re gonna need, Sweetheart, he wants to say, but he can suddenly taste whiskey on the back of his tongue and his head is buzzing with static.

Eddie rubs his hands down his jeans where his palms have become sweaty, and he tries to pass the nervous motion off like he’s searching his pockets.

“Well, I don’t— I don’t have anything on me right now…?”

“Oh!” Chrissy chirps, eyes widening to the size of dinner plates and freezing a moment as her fingers snap closed on the money again. “Sorry–”

“It’s fine, I’ll just...” Eddie makes a show of jerking his thumb over his shoulder, but Chrissy is shaking her head before he can finish the thought.

“No, no that’s okay—I just thought… nevermind, it doesn’t matter…”

She trails off, color bleeding into her cheeks as the interaction suddenly starts to feel like it’s fizzling out.

Eddie is quick to try and smooth things over because strangely he is suddenly very concerned with what Chrissy thinks about him. He suddenly wants so badly for her to think he is nice.

“No, I mean — like, if you wanna come back around tomorrow?”

An awkward silence blooms between them as she considers the offer.

“Tomorrow?” She echoes, a soft, lilting question that has Eddie smiling at her again.

He notices that her two front teeth are ever so slightly crooked in a way that is painfully endearing. She’s much too sweet for this, he shouldn’t be agreeing to deal to her, but he suddenly feels the closest he has felt to his old self in months, standing there in the empty hallway, talking to Chrissy Cunningham — Eddie before you.

“Yeah.” He says gently, “Yeah—we could meet after school…”

She hesitates, worries her lower lip, and continues to avoid looking at Eddie. It doesn’t feel malicious so much as bashful, like maybe it didn’t matter that it was him she was talking to, like she would have been this shy trying to buy drugs from anyone.

Her brows come together, scrunching down over her big pretty eyes.

“Tomorrow’s the pep rally,” Chrissy says softly, like she’s letting him down.

It hits Eddie like a fist to the gut, and darkness begins creeping in at the edges of his vision. He takes a slow, deep breath in through the nose and blinks rapidly.

“You don’t want to go to the pep rally.” He can suddenly hear you saying, somewhere very far away.

Eddie digs his nails into the palm of his hand until it hurts in an attempt to try and banish you.

“Right.” He says, forcing himself to breathe normally.

Chrissy finds the courage to finally look at him then, if only briefly — her eyebrows are turned up apologetically.

“…And the championship game,” she says.

“You just want to go and antagonize the basketball team…”

“That’s also true.” Eddie hums, nodding.

He’d caught you on your way out of class, throwing his arm around your shoulders and trying to steer you towards the gymnasium before you’d shrugged out of his reach.

No, of course, Eddie didn’t want to go to the pep rally, but an injustice had been delivered upon the Hellfire Club by said Hawkins Tigers, and by code of law, action begets action. He didn’t know what he planned to do – make a scene, probably heckle and taunt the players from the bleachers, be generally disruptive – but you wanted absolutely no part of it.

Your refusal was an idle thing, yet dagger sharp.

Eddie staggered, throwing himself back against a row of lockers and gasping dramatically as he pantomimed being stabbed. You hardly reacted, rolling your eyes and leaving him behind as you made your way further down the hall toward your locker. You were used to his antics by now. He watched you go.

“Me? Antagonize the basketball team?” Eddie called, jogging to catch up, “I would never–”

“No, of course not.” You said, the sarcasm oozing off of you thick enough to leave a gooey trail in your wake. “Because you’re just bursting with school spirit, right? – Go sports!”

Eddie couldn’t help but laugh, coming to a sliding stop at your side as you found your locker amidst the row.

“Oh, come on, Sweetheart, give me a little credit here. I’m peppy as hell. I’ve got pep in my step,” The statement was punctuated by Eddie jumping up and down beside you.

Again you rolled your eyes, and turned your attention to fidgeting with the sticky padlock clipped to your locker.

“Look, if we go, it’s gonna be weird that we’re even there in the first place and you’re just gonna push it and push it until one of those meatheads decides he’s offended by something and causes a big scene – because that’s what always happens – and it’s just so much easier not to go and avoid all that drama in the first place.”

You were right, because you were always right, but Eddie didn’t have to tell you that.

“How dare you,” He gasped, feigning offense, pressing a scandalized hand to his chest, clutching phantom pearls, “Here I am, bearing my heart and soul, and you won’t even entertain the idea of being seen in public with me. Heartless – that’s what you are.”

Of course, by then you were openly ignoring him and his antics, which absolutely would not do, so Eddie changed tactics. He reached out and pinched the flesh of your cheek between his thumb and forefinger.

“Hey, can you blame a guy for wanting to support the home team?”

You jerked out of his touch and swatted angrily at him.

And then, perfectly on cue, there came the basketball team. The hallway parted like the sea as people made way for Hawkins’s best and brightest (and most popular) flanked by the ever-present cheerleading squad, like a green and gold cloud of preppy little gnats.

Eddie clenched his teeth as he watched the group pass, feeling judgment rolling off of them in tangible waves, like invisible daggers hurled in his direction – worse still in your direction, because they’d offered you a choice and you’d picked him over them.

He just couldn’t help himself.

“Go Tigers!” Eddie shouted, pumping his fist in the air.

The phrase “if looks could kill” passed briefly through his mind as they turned to regard him. He felt a strange mixture of satisfaction and chagrin as they did their very best to kill him dead, satisfaction for how he’d gotten under their skin without doing basically anything, and then chagrin as he saw how their disdain for him extended to you.

That made it less fun – still, he committed to the bit.

“See?” Eddie said, gesturing down the hall towards the group of fading athletes, “Think about how fun it would be to sit through three whole hours of that.”

You watched them go – your old friends – and turned to look at him. Something fluttered across your face, and for half a moment Eddie was afraid he’d gone too far and hurt your feelings somehow. Then you narrowed your eyes.

“I thought Eddie Munson didn’t do school functions?” You teased, though there was real bite behind it.

Eddie cringed bodily – he understood that reference.

In the weeks before he’d mustered the courage to ask you out, you’d asked him if he was going to that night’s Sadie Hawkins dance. Eddie had scoffed and told you “I don’t really do school functions,” like it was some kind of running joke.

The Hellfire guys had laughed, and you’d tried your best to join in, but he’d seen the look of disappointment flash across your eyes and the way your face fell. You’d mumbled a quiet, “oh, okay, nevermind then” before quickly excusing yourself. It only occurred to him that you’d been asking him to the dance several hours later, while he was sitting on his bed working out the chords to a song you’d said you liked.

Eddie was sure his neighbors must have thought he was being murdered with the way he’d screamed when it hit him. He was a fucking idiot, and he knocked over just about every piece of furniture and clutter they owned in his panic to get to the phone and call you. It was too late for the dance, and he barely let you get a word in edgewise as he stumbled over apologies and excuses and promises to make it up to you somehow – he was still making it up to you.

“You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?” He groaned, thumping his head against the locker beside yours.

You gave him a sly, sidelong glance, your lips quirking at the corners and eyes flashing in triumph as you finally managed to jimmy your locker open.

“Never.” You purred.

Flirting with Chrissy seems like a real funny way of trying to make it up to you, but still, Eddie tries to make himself smile in a way he hopes is reassuring. He hopes it looks a lot more convincing than it feels.

“What if we meet up before the game?”He posits, and Chrissy doesn’t seem convinced, so he keeps talking, “D’you know where that old picnic table is? Out in the woods past the field?”

She nods, still tugging at the sleeves of her cardigan.

There is a soft crease of worry between her eyebrows and Eddie feels a strange combination of warmth blooming in his chest and guilt cramping his stomach as he resists the urge to smooth it away.

She really is very pretty...

“Yeah,” she says, slowly with a newfound sense of surety, “…Okay. Before the game.”

He lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. A sigh of relief.

“Okay. So… I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

"Okay."

She offers him one more shy smile before turning on her heel and scurrying down the hall.

He watches Chrissy go and very quickly feels the afterglow of talking to a pretty girl give over to guilt as something crumples inside of him.

“Come over tonight?” He’d asked, leaning against the locker beside yours.

You’d cast a sidelong glance his way and offered an apologetic smile as you tucked away your textbooks.

“I can’t – I’m babysitting.”

Ah, the old babysitting excuse – Eddie knew it all too well, and it was not enough to deter him.

“That’s okay, I’ll come to you.” He said, eliciting the expected response, your face scrunching up in the way he loves, brows coming together, eyes narrowing.

“No, you won’t.” you’d huffed, like he’d suggested something positively scandalous.

The suggestion of it was there, of course, a perpetually lingering shadow of arousal that lived between any two people in a consenting adult relationship (particularly if they happened to be a couple of horny teenagers) – still, Eddie couldn’t help but feign innocence.

“Why not?”

“Because.” You pressed, stretching the word, “I’m not gonna be one of those cliche babysitters who sneaks her boyfriend over to make out all night. That’s how you get killed in a horror movie.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, hand dropping idly to crook a finger through your belt loop and tug you towards him.

“Oh, come on,” He said, “We’re not gonna make out all night.”

He moved to tuck a wayward lock of hair behind your ear and somehow managed to get lost along the way. Suddenly his hand had come to rest at the curve of your throat, which only went on to suggest a strident contrast to what he’d just said.

No, you weren’t gonna make out all night, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do everything in his power to get you out of your jeans.

“Eddie…” You warned him.

"Ed-die."

You furrowed your brow at his mocking and he just smiled. He knew that tone, it meant “don’t start”, but the way you sighed his name betrayed your steadfastness. It was reminiscent of the way you said it when he had you in a compromising position, with his hands all over you – all whiny and a little desperate, face flushed, lips bitten.

Uh oh, he thought, feeling the stirrings of something in his abdomen that was never so easily banished. Dangerous territory. Proceed with caution.

For the sake of his dignity, and considering you were both still at school, Eddie pivoted – it was a rare act of self-preservation.

“Come on, Babycakes,” he said, sounding perhaps a tad whinier than he’d intended, “I wanna meet the little twerp who’s been trying to steal my girl.”

Your brows came down in stark contrast to the way your face split into a wide grin as your fingers came up to grip the hand that had drifted south to rest over your collarbone.

“Your girl huh?” You purred, tilting your head down to gaze up at him through the thrush of your lashes.

Fuck. He loved it when you looked at him like that, but he knew if he wasn’t careful, he was gonna end up with a raging hard-on – at school, no less – and then what was he gonna do?

Eddie swallowed hard and ran his thumb over the plush spread of your lower lip, despite how it nudged him just a little further down the path of ruin. He had to fight to resist the urge to push the digit past your lips, press down on your tongue.

“Gotta scope out the competition.” He said thickly.

You scoffed then, thankfully cutting the tension with the harsh sound as you jerked your head back, pulling out of his grip.

“He’s not competition, Eds, he’s twelve.”

Eddie shrugged. “Even better, I’ll let the punk know who’s boss.” He could tell you clearly weren’t buying it, so he doubled down, “Hey– hey, I’m great at babysitting — I get those babies flat as a pancake every time.”

Your eyes flashed indignantly and before he could think to move, you jabbed him sharply in the ribs with your knuckle.

“Ah—shit!” he gasped.

“That’s my joke, Munson.”

Eddie hissed a sharp intake of breath and jerked away from the skittering feeling over his ribs as you poked him again and again.

“Baby don’t—ahh!“ He cut himself off with a cry as your hands came down to squeeze at his sides.

The worst thing that had ever happened to him was how you had so unceremoniously discovered just how goddamn ticklish he was, one afternoon when you’d engaged him in a wrestling match. You’d started it, but Eddie had easily flipped you over and pinned you down, holding your hands over your head and ready to torment you until you said “uncle”, but little did he know that you were an incorrigible brat who would not go down without a fight. Not a fair one, at least. Somehow, you’d gotten a hand free and immediately jabbed him in the ribs, pulling an embarrassingly high-pitched yelp from somewhere deep inside of him, startling the both of you. It was all over from there.

Eddie has not known a day of peace since, and today it seemed would be no different.

In some small attempt at self-preservation, he seized you at the wrists and pulled your hands around his back, jerking you forward and forcing you to hug him so that you couldn’t tickle him.

It was not the most ideal solution, considering the growing state of his arousal. You were suddenly pressed flat to him, head forced back so that your chin was resting at the dip of his sternum, gazing up at him with the faintest hint of mischief glinting in your pretty eyes.

If you were a cat, your tail would have been twitching with anticipation.

"Oh good, now that I've got your attention," He started, breathless and a little lightheaded as you tilted your chin down ever so slightly.

And then you sank your teeth into the soft flesh of his chest and Eddie yelped. He bit the sound off with a shout of laughter and pushed away from you.

You chased him, because of course you did, vicious harpy that you were – talons extended and reaching to grab at him again. He easily skirted around you in a wide circle, and suddenly you were both laughing and shouting as Eddie proceeded to run up and down the hall, fleeing the threat of your tickling fingers like he was running for his life.

It was an exercise in stamina, as even though he had longer legs, you were the faster runner, and as such, you were on him at every turn, squeezing and poking and pinching.

You really were in rare form that day. Super bratty. Part of him knew he was gonna have to hold you down and teach you a lesson later if you kept it up. That same part of him really hoped you would keep it up.

Your classmates passed you idly in the hall as you played, staring in varying degrees of discomfort as they made their way to the forgotten pep-rally, admonishing your dopey public displays of shouting, laughing affection with sidelong glances and the singular utterance of “get a room.”

In quite the athletic feat, Eddie finally managed to outmaneuver you enough to grab you from behind, pulling your hands across your chest and pinning them there so that you were stuck in a straight jacket of your own body. Once he was certain you were restrained, he walked you back to your locker, compensating for your presence between his legs by taking large awkward steps.

The action was closer to skipping than walking, and by the time Eddie deposited you back to your locker – the both of you noticeably winded from the game – you were giggling hysterically, spinning in his arms and rocking back against the cold metal door. You made no effort to stop him from caging you in there, hands coming up to rest on either side of your head as you lingered a moment, working to catch your breath.

Your face was flushed the prettiest shade of pink from exertion, eyes bright, chest heaving. Eddie watched your tongue poke out to swipe a thin sheen of moisture over your lips, and he swallowed hard.

He had to force himself to drag his gaze up from your mouth.

“So anyway, about me helping you babysit tonight—"

You heaved an overdramatic groan and rolled your eyes as Eddie rushed to continue before you could cut him off.

“Just hear me out— you said he’s a little nerd, right? That’s perfect. Nerds love me,”

“No, they don’t.”

“They do.” He insisted, beaming, “We can play D&D! Like a mini-campaign. Just the three of us – it will be so fun, I promise.”

The corners of your mouth quirked with humor.

“Can I be the Dungeon Master?” You asked.

You were teasing, but Eddie just dipped his head forward to brush his lips against the highest point of your cheekbone.

“Baby, you can be whatever the hell you want if you just say yes.” He said, pressing a kiss to your temple.

You hummed thoughtfully and let your head thump back against the hard metal like you were really considering the suggestion.

Eddie pulled back ever so slightly to watch the gears of your mind turning visibly on your face, though he very quickly became distracted as his eyes dipped to the exposed columns of your throat. He had to work very hard to resist the urge to put his mouth on you and suck a bruise into your flesh.

He wondered what the student body would think about that? The Freaky couple going at it in the hallway while the pep rally went on unnoticed? How’s that for school spirit?

Finally, you shrugged your shoulders.

“…I mean… he would love that, actually.”

“Yes!” Eddie cheered, pumping his fist in victory.

He grabbed you by the wrist and jerked your hand up for a high-five, the force of which rang out with a loud clap, echoing through the now-empty hallway and leaving his palm stinging.

You were giggling again, chewing your lower lip like you meant to contain the sound.

“Really though, he’s gonna love you. You guys like all the same nerdy stuff,” you said, rapping your knuckles against his chest. “You’ll be best friends and then I’ll just be that girl from across the street who used to be cool. Last year’s toys —totally lame.”

Eddie caught your hand and held it there, brushing the pad of his thumb across your knuckles and telling himself he didn’t need to tell you just how cool he thought you were, how much he loved you.

He was too caught in the way his heart was suddenly thumping in his chest over the sentiment.

Nobody ever said “oh you should meet Eddie Munson, you’re gonna love him,” — at least not without a heavy dose of sarcasm.

Nobody loved Eddie. Except for you … and the kid you babysat, apparently.

It made him feel like he could burst.

Eddie wanted to linger in the feeling a little longer, bask in its glow, but because he was who he was, he just couldn’t help himself.

“Of course, he’s gonna love me, I’m awesome.”

You snorted with a burst of undainty laughter.

“And so modest!” You teased, eyes growing soft as you walked your fingers up over his chest. “And smart, and funny, and handsome…”

Eddie felt his stomach do a cartoon flip-flop – he was still learning to take compliments like that, and you’d made it perfectly clear that you wouldn’t stand for his self-deprecating comments, which left him standing hopelessly defenseless in moments like this.

He rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to hide his face in the crook of your neck, if only to hide the warmth he could feel creeping up into his face.

“Aw, babe…” he mumbled, “You’re gonna make me blush.”

Then your hands drifted southward to rest on the buckle of his belt, and Eddie felt something inside of him begin to throb.

He couldn’t tell if it was his heart or his dick.

“Let me come with you.” He suddenly couldn’t stop himself from saying, perhaps a little too earnestly as he did his best to ignore the way your nose wrinkled at the unintended innuendo.

You giggled, and Eddie pushed his lower lip out and pinched his brows in a mock pout.

“No, stop it, I’m trying to be sweet.” He huffed.

You breathed a sigh of soft laughter through your nose and nodded, relenting.

Eddie dropped his chin and nudged your nose with his, glancing up at you through the thrush of his lashes in a gentle mockery of the way you’d looked at him moments before.

“Please?” He pleaded, softly.

At this point, despite how you’d gotten him all worked up, he didn’t even want to have sex with you (that was a bald-faced lie, he would have fully taken you right there against the lockers if this were some kind of cheap porno and if he thought he could get away with it) he just wanted to be near you —always— sit on the couch and watch a movie with you, cuddle you, hold your hand, breathe you in, kiss you, hold you and never let you go.

Truthfully, Eddie just wanted in on the piece of your life that you had yet to share with him, because he was infinitely curious about how you spent your nights entertaining the kid you babysat.

Selfishly, he wanted every part of you to belong solely to him. He was, in fact, more than just a little bit jealous of how much of your time and attention that kid held in his grubby little hands.

It was stupid, he knew that, but you had a knack for making him just a little more stupid than was normal.

You brought your hands up to smooth the wrinkles out of the front of his shirt and drummed your fingers over his heart.

It was a nice prelude to the gentle rejection hanging on your lips.

“Not tonight, Eds.” You mumbled.

Eddie made an unabashedly whiny sound of disappointment in the hollow of his throat and put on a show of pouting as he dropped his head to press his forehead against yours.

“Fine,” He sighed – rather pathetically in the hopes that you would take pity on him enough to reconsider.

You didn’t, but you did surprise him by suddenly fisting your hands in the front of his jacket and tugging him closer, as if that were even possible.

He was fully pressed against you now, pinning you to the lockers, and that little sparkle of mischief was back in your eyes.

“…You should come over after, though.” you breathed against his lips.

Eddie felt heat flaring in his chest, the possibility of “after” dripping down to pool in the pit of his abdomen – he could feel his face splitting in a slow smile as he rocked back on his heels.

“Yeah?”

You nodded slowly, “My parents are in Chicago until next week — and I should be done tonight by eleven-thirty? Then we can hang out, watch a movie, and stuff.”

If he was grinning any wider, his face might have started to peel off, so Eddie bit his lip.

“And stuff, huh?” He echoed, tilting his head in curiosity, “What kinda stuff?”

He knew exactly what kind of stuff you were talking about, he just wanted to hear you say it.

“Oh, I dunno.” You hummed innocently, “Maybe play some games?”

“I like games.” Eddie said, nodding emphatically, “What kind of games do you want to play?”

You blew out a breath and rolled your eyes up like you were thinking, even going so far as to tap your chin with your index finger. You were so goddamn cute, Eddie’s fingers twitched with the urge to squish your face.

“Well, there’s Candyland… Twister… Chutes and Ladders?”

It was a stretch, to be sure, but nobody ever accused him of being mature, and in spite of himself, he snorted with laughter.

Chutes and Ladders… Dumb joke. Really trashy. Barely even an innuendo.

Still, he tried and failed to compose himself.

“Sounds good. What next?” Eddie asked, still chuckling.

Your eyebrows jumped, like you couldn’t believe the audacity of him to even think to ask.

“What, and ruin the surprise?”

The surprise was ruined the minute you put your hands on his belt.

It was sex.

You meant sex, but you were too shy to say it outright.

You were the type of person who wasn’t shy about initiating but did so by rolling up with your hands behind your back, eyebrows jumping as you coquettishly asked if he wanted to “fool around”, and it was so incredibly cheesy Eddie couldn’t help but fall a little more madly in love with you for it.

His heart was so full with the feeling, the declaration of it lived perpetually on the tip of his tongue, but how many times a day could a man feasibly tell the object of his affection he loved her before the words started to lose meaning?

The danger of semantic satiation was ever-present.

“You,” he said, taking your face in his hands and pressing a gentle kiss to your lips, again and again, each following word punctuated with another chaste peck, “Are,” Kiss. “An incorrigible,” Kiss. “Tease.” Kiss kiss kiss. “And a mean, mean girl. How am I ever supposed to make it to eleven-thirty?”

You stuck him to the spot with a sly look, quirking your brow and pursing your lips.

“You’ve got hands, don’t you?” You said, deadpan.

The boldness of the statement hit him like a slap to the face, and as if it weren’t enough to say it, you punctuated the statement by bringing your fist up and making a slow jerking motion.

“Oh, my God!” Eddie shouted, hands flying down to grip you by the shoulders as he barked out a burst of sharp, incredulous laughter. “Who are you?”

In the distance, he could hear the marching band beginning to play, signifying the start of the pep rally.

You smiled, looking awfully proud of yourself for being so naughty, and then you were serious again, pouting.

“Well?” You prompted, “Edward. I asked you a question.”

Eddie bristled at the sound of his full name and gave you a hard, disapproving look. You just smiled, a cat in cream – you were really gonna pay for that one tonight, and he had to wonder if you knew that.

His fingers scrabbled up to rest at the junction where your shoulders met your neck – because he couldn’t not touch you – fingers gracing the curve of your throat, and he met your gaze.

“Yes.” He said matter-of-factly, “You’re absolutely right, my darling little weirdo. I’ve got hands.”

And then there was that look again. You were pleased as punch and his head was spinning for it.

He bit his tongue to resist the urge to tell you he loved you again.

Eddie had never been this stupid about someone in his entire life – he’d been with other people, had little crushes here and there, some reciprocated, most not, but he had never been in love before, not like this.

Nobody had ever matched his energy the way you did. He knew he could be too much, but his feelings had always been big and unwieldy. Eddie did nothing in small measures, least of all love, and he didn’t know how to parcel it out in manageable bites. Once he was in, he was all in, and he threw everything he had to offer at the object of his affection. You were the first person who had ever accepted it without hesitation, and perhaps most thrilling of all, you’d given it right back.

He could hardly stand it.

He would have married you tomorrow if you’d have him, but that was a secret, something shiny to take out and admire in private moments. That was just for him.

Eddie pulled you into a tight hug, and pressed yet another kiss to your temple. He hummed contentedly when he felt your arms snake up around his waist under his jacket and the soft rumble of you sighing against him and he loved loved loved — but still, he just couldn’t help himself.

“I’ve also got a blanket in the back of my van.” He said crudely into the line of your hair.

Then it was your turn to shout with laughter, pushing against his chest. Eddie only held you tighter, deciding he could stand to indulge himself, and you could stand to be squeezed a little.

“Come on, Sweetheart.” He said, teasing a little too much as he hugged you and stretched the words in a singsong way, “Let’s go out to the vaaaan.”

“I don’t have time!” You laughed, the strain of trying to break free of him evident in your voice.

Eddie nuzzled his face into the crown of your head and felt the tickling of static kicking up over his nose and cheeks.

“Sure you do.”

You continued to struggle, and Eddie continued to hold on.

“I don’t want to be late.”

“You can be a little late.”

“No—"

“Yes.”

“Eddie.” You whined, that authoritative warning creeping into your tone again.

Christ, he loved it when you got bossy.

Still, Eddie released you, though only to seize you roughly by the jaw and pull you back to him, slanting his mouth against yours in a forceful kiss. He coaxed you to open up for him just a little more with a swipe of his tongue and the little moan you breathed into him as he licked the roof of your mouth shots all the way down to his balls, kind of like a bolt of lightning, kind of like getting kicked there.

It was not entirely unpleasant.

You were more than just a little bit breathless when Eddie finally released you with a wet, vulgar smack, feeling satisfied enough to start purring, like a cat in cream as he licked his lips. He watched you struggle to open your eyes and hummed contentedly at the sight.

He still had a gentle hold on your jaw, and he was not entirely convinced he wasn’t just going to kiss you again and again, holding you to the spot until you were late to babysit, just because you were that sweet, with your pink lips parted ever so slightly and your face flushed bright red.

Instead, he squished your cheeks in his hand and shook your head back and forth, fondly, before finally releasing you.

“Alright, that’s enough out of you.” He said, “Begone Succubus! And tempt me no more.”

“Don’t be mean,” you huffed, taking your bag from Eddie as he offered it to you and shouldering it.

Eddie spun you away, and crooked his fingertips to hold on until distance demanded you part. Off you went, looking back at him with a bashful smile and starting down the hall.

He sighed, and watched you go. Eddie pressed his hand to the left side of his chest where he could feel his heart thumping and felt utterly dopey, drunk on your love and lost in the promise of “after”.

Then, he remembered almost too late that he couldn’t just let you go — he had to get you back for biting him— and because you were a brat and he had absolutely no handle on his impulsivity, Eddie took a big step forward and brought his hand down to clap you on the ass with a loud smack.

You yelped and leaped damn near out of your skin, hands flying down to cover the offended spot and face burning as you turned back to glare at him. You stuck your tongue out at him and he could feel the muscles in his face start to hurt from how widely he was grinning.

“See you tonight!” He called, watching you scurry down the hall, shoulders pulled up to your ears because of course —of course— he still wasn’t done, so he raised his voice and shouted, “—you know— FOR THE SEX!”

“Eddie!” You hissed, “Shut up!”

Eddie watches Chrissy go and breathes out a hard, shaky breath to try and banish the way he’s getting dangerously misty-eyed.

When she’s gone, disappeared around the corner, he sinks to the floor to stop his knees from buckling underneath him, and crouches at the foot of the lockers. He groans and crushes his palms into his eyes until he sees bursts of color.

Eddie misses you more than he’s missed anything in his stupid, pathetic life, and he feels guilty for it because he has no right to miss you after he’d so carelessly thrown you away.

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

He can’t shake the feeling that with the perfectly innocent interaction he’d just had with Chrissy, he’s wronged you somehow, betrayed you — more than he already has — and he has to remind himself that flirting isn’t cheating.

You can’t cheat on someone you aren’t with.

He sniffs pathetically and runs the back of his hand under his nose.

He wishes the ground would open up and swallow him. He wishes he could feel normal again, free from this pervasive guilt, these stupid panic attacks, the crushing vice you still hold on his life after almost a year. He wishes he could be rid of you, and he wishes he would cease to exist for even thinking that.

Nobody’s fault but your own, you fucking loser.

Eddie makes himself think about Chrissy, because that feels easier than missing you. He thinks about her long legs in her short little cheer skirt, the gentle pout of her pink lips, her big wet eyes.

He thinks about how he’s going to see her again tomorrow.

He tells himself he’ll keep on flirting with her if she’s open to it, because she’s nice and she’s pretty and because there’s danger in it.

He knows he’ll definitely end up having sex with her if she comes on to him, because it’s been eight months since he’s felt the gentle press of your body and his hand has been a poor substitute.

Eddie knows Chrissy has a boyfriend, but he doesn’t care, because fuck Jason Carver and the shining white horse he rode in on.

There is a delicious sense of satisfaction in thinking about how goddamn pissed Jason would be to find out Chrissy had been talking to him, let alone soliciting drugs from him.

His perfect little princess.

Eddie thinks he could ruin her and have fun doing it.

No, he wouldn’t. He would do it and feel awful about it afterward because all he seems to manage to do these days is destroy himself a little more.

The thought of using her like that makes him feel sick, but he doesn’t know what to do with all the love you left behind in him. He doesn’t know where to put it. He won’t part with it — it’s all he has left of you — but it’s becoming a weight much too cumbersome to carry.

Eddie tells himself that maybe a rebound is the answer, maybe it’s what he needs to finally start to feel halfway normal again. Maybe it’s time to finally start thinking about moving on… the thought of it breaks his heart all over again.

If he closes his eyes tight enough he can still see you walking down the hall, glancing back at him over your shoulder – sticking your tongue out at him because you think he’s an asshole.

You'd wanted to see him.

He wants to see you so badly it makes his chest hurt… but instead, tomorrow he is going to see Chrissy...

Taglist: @harrys-tittie @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e @itsrainingbisexualfrogs @thicksexxualtension @ganseysgff @scoopsr0bin @peanutbutter-y-jams @audhd-dragonaut @clilxlx @alexandriaemily20 @averagestudent03 @but-vanessa @cosmictime45 @timelordfreya @forever-war @munsonzzgf

#eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson #cruel summer #stranger things fic #stranger things #not me hurting my feelings imagining mama munson #and how much of a mama's boy little eddie was #also i'm sad about chrissy #am i just a sad boy like orville peck?#the answer is yes #I’m sorry this is so late getting up it took me literally four hours to edit #cruel summer fic

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jusvibbbin · 1 year ago

Text

Deep Denial

Ed Mercer x Female!Reader

“Lay in a course for…”

Captain Ed Mercer could barely pay attention to what Commander Grayson was saying as he gazed at the newly transferred navigator. Lieutenant (Y/N). She was cute, a bright and eager smile was on her face when she first came onboard. He’d never admit it, but from that moment on, she took up a significant portion of his thoughts.

It didn’t help that she seemed to be getting along well with the rest of the bridge crew, Gordon taking a shine to her instantly. Which led to him inviting her to get drinks with a few of them after shift. Which led to the events of the previous night…

After a long and fairly boring day, about half the bridge crew was in the mess having a drink. Gordon, in his infinite wisdom, had insisted on saving Ed a seat, so he had to sit in between his helmsman and his new navigator. He walked in while Gordon was telling some long and highly embarrassing story from their time at Point and he tried not to groan as he sat down.

“Yeah and then Ed totally fell in the pool. It was nuts!” The table chuckled collectively as Ed just shook his head and jerked his thumb towards the new navigator.

“Trying to humiliate me in front of the newbie?”

“Always, man,” the ginger chuckled before launching into another tale. Ed had glanced over to find said newbie eyeing him. She looked flustered at getting caught, burying her face in her glass as he looked back at his friend, the smallest of smiles on his face.

As the night winded down, he offered to walk her to her quarters.

It’s the captain-ly thing to do. I’m just being nice. It’s on the way.

All not quite lies but not total truths as they walked in silence.

“So…how do you like it so far?”

“Oh! Uh, I mean it's only been a couple days…”

“Right, duh sorry.” He kicked himself a little.

“Everyone has been really nice so far, if that’s any indication,” she offered.

“Sounds about right. Can’t be hard to be nice to someone so-” His brain finally stopped his tipsy train of thought dead in its tracks, but (Y/N) had looked at him expectantly as they stopped in front of her door.

“Well uh, this is you. See you tomorrow, Lieutenant,” he had quickly, and loudly, announced before high-tailing it out of there.

“Ed?”

“Hm?” He pulls himself out of his thoughts with a little start, looking over at Kelly and her quirked eyebrow.

“Is that alright with you?”

“Yeah, definitely.” He nods but has no idea what she asked him. Kelly relaxes back into her seat so it must’ve been the right answer and Ed attempts to shake off his wandering thoughts for the remainder of the day.

Later that day Ed is in the mess, sharing a beer with the empty chair across from him as he looks over daily reports. His attention is quickly stolen by a flash of orange moving near him. As he glances behind him, he can see his new navigator taking a seat at the table over with some other lieutenant dressed in green. He quickly looks back at his work, not wanting to seem weird, but a small, quiet part of him wishes he could look at her for longer.

“How are you liking it here so far?” The other woman asks.

“I mean, it's okay,” she answers hesitantly. “I’m just worried I’m not gonna find my fit here, Lux.” He can hear the other woman, presumably called Lux, hum in response. He knows he definitely shouldn’t be eavesdropping but he can’t help being a little nosey.

“What do you think of the bridge at least?’

There’s a short pause as she seems to think over her answer.

“I like everyone, I think. Lieutenant Malloy is pretty funny.”

“Sounds like you’re interested. He’s cute!”

“No, no, no. Not like that,” she chuckles awkwardly.

“Good. I’ve already called dibs,” Lux chuckles, and Ed can almost feel (Y/N)’s eyeroll.

“Have at it. No, I think I would rather wait for Ed.”

Said captain chokes on his beer as the two women look over at him.

“Are you alright, sir?” The navigator gives him a look of concern that he attempts to wave off.

“I’m fine,” he insists. Both women eye him warily before turning back to their conversation.

“Yeah, I would rather wait instead. Someone can approach me, you know?”

Ed flushes a bright red as he curses himself softly. He had completely misheard her and now he felt rather foolish. He quickly gathers his things, deciding it’s probably for the best that he avoids Lieutenant (Y/N) for the time being as he hastily exits the mess, much to the confusion of the two women.

Unfortunately for Ed, avoiding social interaction is easier said than done. Gordon’s birthday rolls around only a week later and the captain finds himself heading to his ginger friend’s quarters. As he heads in, he’s instantly amused at seeing Lux chatting up the birthday boy as the bridge crew and a few people from engineering mill about. He scans the room as he moves to drop his present on the table, spotting (Y/N) speaking with Talla. He’s content to look for a moment before moving to get a drink.

“Oh, good idea,” he can hear Gordon say to the woman before addressing the whole group. “Truth or dare,” he calls. Most everybody moves towards the couches and Ed makes his way over to sit on the floor by the coffee table. A few timid rounds pass as he works his way through a couple beers before John dares Gordon to kiss someone. The ginger man grins before grabbing Lux’s face and planting a kiss on her lips. There’s a couple little oohs before he pulls away, and the woman’s flushed face only makes his grin wider. Ed rolls his eyes, finishing off a beer as his friend points at him.

“Truth or dare, Ed?”

He does his best not to groan, tipsiness already taking over his body.

“Uh, truth?”

“Lame!” John heckles as Gordon waves him off.

“Okay uh… when did you have your first kiss?” He grins at Lux who just playfully rolls her eyes.

Ed pauses for a good few moments, trying to really answer the question.

“I was twenty I think? Which I know is pretty late, but I thought it should be like special so I was saving it. I don’t think that anymore. In fact, I keep kissing people when I should be saving them for something special. Not like that’s happened anytime recently… I don’t know.”

He flushes a deep red when he realizes he’d started rambling, sharing way more than was asked or that anyone would be comfortable with. He wants to just about die when he looks up and locks eyes with (Y/N), looking at him with concern. He chuckles awkwardly as his eyes dart to literally anyone else and land on Bortus. “Truth or dare, man.”

“Dare. It is the only option.”

“I uh… dare you to eat that,” he points at one of Gordon’s couch pillows, getting up to slip away during the chaos as the birthday boy tries to wrestle the pillow out of the Moclan’s hands.

After the incredibly awkward exit from the night before, Ed is doing his best to avoid as many party goers as he can. He’s doing well, staying at home for most of the day, until Kelly calls him to pick up some reports with no time to drop them off. He groans but gets into some casual clothes to go to his XO’s office. It’s a quick trip, and he’s almost home free when he spots a couch in the middle of the corridor. He pauses, looking around for an owner before Lieutenant (Y/N) pops out of her nearby quarters.

“Oh, captain!” She stands at attention as he waves her to relax.

“Making the place a home?”

She chuckles awkwardly, nodding.

“I’m trying, but clearly it’s not going well…”

He mulls over his next words very carefully.

“Let me help you,” he offers with a smile.

“You don’t have to! I wouldn’t want you to waste your free day!”

“I’ve moved a few couches in my day,” he tries to joke before calling over a few crewmen to help him lift her sofa and move it into her living room area. Once it's in the perfect spot and the other crewmen have left, Ed goes to take his leave.

“Thank you again, captain.”

“Really, it's no trouble, Lieutenant,” he assures with a smile. “What was I gonna do? Let a pretty girl like you move it all by herself?”

The heat rises to each of their faces simultaneously as the silence between them thickens.

“I should uh,” he gestures back to the door.

“Yeah, I really need to uh,” she gestures back into her quarters.

Ed gives her a tight-lipped look and nods as he skedaddles his way home, beyond embarrassed.

A few days later and Ed is still doing his best to avoid looking at (Y/N) whenever he can. But it’s even more noticeable on the bridge and Kelly can’t help but mention it to someone else as she heads towards the shuttle bay with Gordon.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?” The ginger looks over at her questioningly.

“Ed seem weird with the new girl?”

“Oh thank god, let’s talk about it.”

Kelly chuckles as they get into the elevator.

“Yeah, he’s been really weird this whole week. I think he likes her.”

“No, he definitely does,” Gordon nods as the doors open and they walk into the bay.

“Maybe… No, I don’t want to overstep,” Kelly waves a dismissive hand.

“I do. Are we gonna play matchmaker, Commander?”

“If you’re down, I’m down, Lieutenant.”

And as the shuttle heads towards the planet, Kelly and Gordon come up with a perfect plan.

Ed sighs as Gordon finishes telling him about the night’s plans.

“I don’t really feel up to a party dude…”

“Come on, Mercer. It’ll be fun, aaaand a great way to welcome (Y/N) to the Bridge Babes.” The brunette gives his ginger friend a look at the dorky nickname before shrugging.

“Fine. But I’m not gonna stay very late, I’m tired.”

“Sick! You won’t regret it. Kelly and I have everything all planned out…”

Ed gives Gordon a suspicious look.

“You said that weird.”

“No I didn’t,” the red-head denies instantly, and Ed just rolls his eyes.

“Whatever, man. I’ll see you at 1900.”

Far too soon for Ed’s liking the appointed hour rolls around and he forces himself to head to the simulator. When the doors open, he can see the bridge crew milling about a small, 21st century bar. As he walks in, he scans the room until his eyes land on (Y/N). She’s far too busy talking to Kelly to notice his gaze and he quickly turns to order a beer from the bar.

“Hey glad you made it!” Gordon quickly wraps an arm around his best friend’s shoulders as he gives him his best smile.

“I said I would come.”

“Yeaaaah but I’m still glad you’re here.”

“Yeah, me too.” He glances back at the two women again, seeing them move to sit at a table.

“Wanna go sit?” Gordon tries his best to be casual as he turns to get himself another beer.

“Oh, uh, nah. I’d rather sit up here. Can get drinks faster,” he jokes as Gordon chuckles.

“Sure, man. Sure.”

A few downed beers later, Ed is a bit more malleable and Gordon migrates them over to the table. As they take a seat, the tipsy Captain sends his navigator a warm smile.

“Hey Ed. How are you?” Kelly’s voice pulls his gaze and he nods.

“I’m good. How are you two?”

“I’m fine. Gordon and I are gonna get more drinks. Want anything?”

The brunette shakes his head as the Commander stands and looks to (Y/N). She shakes her head as well and the other two head for the bar.

“So, I asked how you were…”

“Oh! Oh, um… I’m okay, captain. Thank you.”

“Ed is fine when we’re off duty.”

“Alright, Ed.” She hums, trying it out as he smiles at her.

“Have you decided if you like it here yet?”

She shrugs a little.

“I think so,” she takes a sip as Ed moves to follow suit.

“You think or you know?”

She gives him a confused look.

“Capt- Ed… Why are you so worried about what I think of the Orville?”

He blinks for a minute, trying to formulate a good answer.

“I just… want you to feel welcome,” he says honestly. He glances over at her as she gives him a little smile. He can’t help but return it with that signature grin of his.

Their conversation flows easily after this, Ed asking her questions about herself and retelling some of the crew’s best adventures. As they gab and polish off their drinks, Ed offers to get them another round. But as he turns to stand and moves to the bar, he notices the rest of the bridge crew is gone.

“Uh…I think we got ditched.”

(Y/N) looks over and tilts her head.

“Oh…I guess we did.”

Ed moves to get them drinks anyway before returning to the table to find the woman chuckling.

“What’s so funny?” He slides the drink over to her.

“I just am surprised I guess,” she says as she reaches for her glass.

“Surprised about what?”

“About you.”

He looks a little worried and she waves his anxiety away.

“Honestly, up until now, I thought you just weren’t able to talk to me. Maybe you didn’t like me, I don’t know,” she admits.

Ed brow furrows as he tries to think clearly about the past few days.

“No… No, (Y/N), I like you a lot.”

She gives him a smile as she sets her glass back down.

“I like you too, Ed.”

He takes a gulp of his beer and, feeling brave, speaks again.

“No, I like really like you. A lot.”

Her face definitely heats up as she smiles into her glass.

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely, yeah,” he hiccups.

The lieutenant looks around the bar before downing her drink and standing.

“Did you wanna get out of here?”

Ed blinks up at her for a moment then stands, beer long forgotten.

“Yeah. May I?” He holds out a hand to her and she takes it. Ed gives her that damn smile of his as he leads her out of the sim and into the corridor.

They stroll through the ship until they reach her quarters and she releases him. He preps himself to bid her a goodnight once her door is open, but instead she pulls him inside.

“Stay?”

Ed makes a skeptical face.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”

She scoffs out a chuckle.

“I asked if you would stay, not if you would have sex with me,” she teases drunkenly as he chuckles.

“...okay sure, I’ll stay.”

She takes his hand and leads him to her bedroom. She disappears into the bathroom to change as Ed takes off his shoes and lays down. When she comes back out, she turns the lights off and slips under the covers beside him.

“Hey, Ed?”

“Yeah, (Y/N)?”

“I really like you, too.”

He smiles at her, tucking some hair behind her ear before getting comfy and falling asleep.

The next morning, Ed groans as he rubs his eyes. When he finally opens them, he sees a painkiller and water on an unfamiliar nightstand. He takes it quickly before rolling over to see (Y/N) peeking at him.

“Hi,” she says softly as his face pales.

“Did we…?”

“No, no…”

“Oh good.”

They lay in silence for about a minute as they each think about what to say.

“I should go…” He says as he sits up, (Y/N) quickly sitting up as well.

“Yeah, okay…”

“Last night was fun, from what I remember,” he offers as he gets out of bed.

“Yeah it was.” She follows him out of her room and into the living room while he attempts to tug his shoes on.

“See you on the bridge.”

Before the door can swish open, she grabs his hand to stop him.

“Wait!”

As he turns back to her, (Y/N) gives him a quick peck. Ed is sure he’s a bright red as he looks at her, surprised. Before her anxiety can catch up with her, he leans down to capture her lips for longer.

“Think they fell for it?”

“Are you doubting my sim programming abilities?”

“No, no. It definitely looked like the whole bridge was there. But if they talk to anyone besides us they’ll find out.”

“That’s okay,” the ginger shrugs. “Once they figure it out, they’ll be too into each other to care.”

#the orville #ed mercer #ed mercer x reader #oneshot #female reader #orville

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