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rebelfell · 1 year ago

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The Third Date

Eddie Munson x Anorgasmic!Reader

When you move back to Hawkins after graduating college, you find yourself reconnecting with an old friend in a new way. Your first two dates with Eddie Munson are everything you’d ever dreamed, but the next one has you unraveling.

Part One│Part Two

cw: childhood friends to lovers, mutual pining, deceased parent, mentions of poor sexual experiences, some drinking, sexual anxiety, making out, fingering, panic attack, eddie being sweet and reassuring, fluffy ending.

I was kinda in my feelings and needed Eddie to tell me all the right things. Sue me.

18+, MDNI 7k

You used to like this mirror.

It was vintage. Full length with an ornate gold frame, swirling embellishments on the top and sides. Not to mention it was a fucking steal at $10 from an estate sale. You’d liked it enough to make it one of the scant number of things you hauled all the way back to Hawkins when you moved out of your shoebox apartment in the city.

Right now, though? You kind of hated it.

Usually, standing before it made you feel stately and elegant, even if all you had on was ratty denim shorts and a threadbare t-shirt riddled with holes and bleach stains. Yet here you were in one of your favorite outfits, hair meticulously styled, face glowing and dewy after spending an hour on it, and all you felt was ridiculous.

Not the mirror’s fault, technically. But it was the messenger. It told you at every twist of your hips, at every outfit change, at every pluck and tug of your clothes, that you were never going to look right—that you were never going to feel right. And it mocked every failed attempt to do so.

You inhale, breath shallow and shaky as you try yet again to calm down. It’s just a date, you tried to remind yourself. It’s just a date and he’s just a guy. There’s nothing to be worried about.

Except it wasn’t just a date.

It was the auspicious Third Date.

And it certainly wasn’t just a guy…it was Eddie.

This was something you’d been waiting for forever. For longer than forever. For longer than you could count. Eddie Munson was your oldest and dearest friend. Growing up, you were like each other’s second heads—facing the worst of what small minds in a small town in Indiana cooked up. You stood, middle fingers brandished like swords, dreaming of a wider world.

It felt strange to think this would only be your third date when you’d basically been dating since you were thirteen. You went to movies together, wasted weekday afternoons at the record store, lounged on the gravelly bank of Lover’s Lake reading well-worn paperbacks—Two Towers for him, Dorothy Parker for you. He begged you to sit in on Hellfire when he started the club your junior year and only had three members, himself included. He’d sneak you into the dive bar where his band played Tuesday nights, and you would immediately stick out among the five drunks who assembled every week. But as long as all you ordered was ginger ale and swore up and down you weren’t a cop, the bartender let you sit there all night to watch him.

Nights never ended the way “real” dates did. No hands being held as he walked you from his van to your doorstep; no kisses under flickering porch lights scored by a cricket symphony.

He never touched you too much, always quick to withdraw his hands when they lingered on your hip or back or arm. That would change, though, if he smoked or drank a bit and his cuddly side came out. Secretly, you longed for these times. You reveled in having his chin rest on your shoulder or his arms wind around your waist to hold you close. It never felt gross or crossed the line into groping like with other, lesser, guys looking for something to fondle. With Eddie, it felt more like he was showing you how he wished he could be all the time.

At least that’s what you let yourself imagine.

He always apologized the following day, just short of castrating himself over it. It made you want to slap him. Slap him and then kiss him and slap him again. How could he not get it? How could he not see how goddamn in love with him you were? How could he not feel the same way? You waved him off, assuring him he hadn’t done anything wrong. All the while thinking, you fucking idiot, and not even knowing if you were referring to him or yourself.

Then came graduation. Or rather, your graduation and his sullen admission he wasn't eligible, which lead to the longest, most difficult conversation of your lives so far. It wasn’t even a conversation so much as it was you swinging wildly between reactions—scolding him for not telling you sooner; grasping at the straws of extra credit assignments your teachers would never assign; volunteering to stand guard while he broke into the administration office.

Eventually, though, you had to face the reality of losing him and it left a prominent break in your heart. Your acceptance letter to a school in Indianapolis that used to make you feel weightless, like you could finally fly out of here, now felt more like chains dragging you away.

You had half a mind to take him with you. You must have rehearsed the speech you wanted to make something like fifty times. Screw Hawkins, you’d say. Screw their closed minds and their disdain for anything even a little different. He could get his GED—you’d help him, happily. He could find work in the city and take community college classes or go to trade school. The two of you could live together and watch slasher movies every Friday night, falling asleep on his chest when you got tired just as you’d done all throughout high-school.

Of course those thoughts inevitably spiraled into what would happen once he started dating. A bigger city meant a bigger pool of people, all with the potential to realize the kind, sweet, caring boy who was bursting with passion for his fantasy games and music and his other rich interests was actually a massive catch and not a social pariah. In no time, it would be someone else falling asleep on his chest and you watching them be carried to his bed.

You couldn’t bear the thought of that. Maybe even moreso, you couldn't bear the thought of asking him to come with you and him saying “no.”

So, you went alone. You packed up your car with the barest necessities, you kissed your dad goodbye and said you’d see him at Christmas. But it was Eddie who saw you off, taking you into his arms and holding you there with your head tucked under his chin. You buried your face in his chest, tears leaking onto the patches you’d helped him sew on his denim vest. He told you how proud he was and how much he was gonna miss you. He said to write. To send pictures.

All you could do was sniffle.

At college, you tried expanding your horizons. You joined a couple clubs to make new friends and started going to parties. You met people like Carl. And even though he was handsome and seemed nice enough, you turned him down when he asked you to dinner. It wasn’t until much later, when your roommate scolded you for doing so, that you even felt some doubt about it. What was even the point when you knew he wasn’t what you wanted?

Except what you wanted might never be yours.

That first trip home to Hawkins was wildly unnerving. You knew it hadn’t actually been that long since you left. But why did it feel so strange that everything felt exactly the same? Had you really changed so much already that your home no longer felt like home?

Even seeing Eddie again felt like rupturing old wounds you thought had successfully scabbed over. You withdrew from him without even realizing you were doing it. He knew something was wrong, but didn’t dare voice it. His greatest fear loomed: you were done with Hawkins.

Done with him.

It took a while to strike the balance between the old and the new. You’d run away so fast and tried to overwrite everything in your life, returning to Hawkins felt like entering a fantasy world. And Eddie became like an apparition, a specter of everything you missed most.

You started writing to him more, sharing stories about your classes, gossip in the dorms, drunk adventures in the city. And he wrote back, telling you all about the new members of Hellfire who also happened to play instruments and were eager to replace the members of Corroded Coffin who had graduated and moved away. Eventually, the letters became more like a diary.

You could confess things you’d never imagined telling anyone—stuff about your mom and how you’d spent every day wondering if she’d be proud of you; how you worried about your dad and wondered if he would ever get over her; how you feared you might never find love like theirs and even if you did, how it might be taken away from you like it was from them.

And he confessed back to you. Amidst his ideas for new D&D campaigns and song lyrics, he gave you deeper insight on things you knew already—his father’s sordid criminal history and his mother’s inability to cope, which led to her dropping Eddie on his uncle’s doorstep at the ripe old age of eleven. Reading about Hawkins through his eyes made it feel more real and less like a dream you’d woken up from. It kept that connection open, a bridge between your worlds, so you could experience college and all the new things it had to offer, but still felt connected.

Then the end of your sophomore year brought more bad news.

Again, he wasn’t eligible. Again, he wasn’t graduating.

You’d not been able to let go of that fantasy of him joining you at school. Every time you walked across the quad, leaves crunching beneath your boots, sunlight dying as it dipped behind the old brick buildings and cast everything in a hazy golden autumn glow, you imagined a pair of clean, white sneakers next to yours and a ringed hand squeezing your fingers.

He promised you this was his year. Swore it, in fact. ‘86, baby! he’d scrawled big and messy under his signature at the end of one of his letters. And maybe it would. He said he was doing better—army crawling his way towards a D in Mrs. O'Donnell's class, already planning how he would snatch his diploma and flip the bird at the principal as he walked the stage.

He was certain enough it made you start to believe it too.

You never dared to broach the subject of what he wanted to do after graduation. He hadn’t mentioned applying to any colleges or looking for work. The rest of the band was graduating with him. Maybe they’d all move here to get more exposure. Maybe they wanted to record a demo they could pass out to record companies. Or maybe Eddie wanted to go solo.

The lack of information made you antsy. Was he being decidedly cagey about his plans? Was he hiding something? Or was he just afraid of disappointing you again?

It was nearing the end of the school year when you finally broke. You had to see him.

For once, your spring breaks were going to overlap. You blew off your classes on Friday to make the drive and managed to get to Hawkins High just as the final bell was ringing. His van still sat in the parking lot and you pulled in alongside it to wait, practically jumping out of your skin with excitement. Thirty whole minutes crawled by before you finally spotted him.

He emerged from the woods at the back of the practice sport fields, chattering with ease to maybe the last person on earth you would have expected to see.

Chrissy Cunningham was just as pretty as she’d always been. She was a couple years behind you and Eddie in school, but everyone knew of her from the moment she made the varsity cheer squad as a freshman—a staggering feat no one else had ever managed. She still had the same bouncy ponytail, the same enormous eyes and cherubic cheeks you imagined must ache at the end of each day from her constant smiling. And she was somehow smiling even wider than normal at whatever Eddie was saying as he grinned back at her.

It made your stomach churn thinking what they could have been doing to have her smiling like that. You knew he’d started dealing for Reefer Rick to earn extra money, but in what universe would the queen of Hawkins High be struck with the urge to buy a bag of skunky weed?

Unless it wasn’t weed she was after at all.

Panic doused your body. You jammed your key back in the ignition and sped out of the lot, praying he didn’t see you. You drove straight back to school, tears streaming down your face for the entire journey, making you hate yourself more with every salty trail that stained your cheeks. Because what else did you expect? For him to pine for you like you did for him? For him to be like you and not date anyone, ever? To keep everyone who even attempted to get close at a distance? Reserving a space in your heart for someone who might not even want to fill it?

You loved him more now than you ever had. Even without seeing him every day, even without having him constantly at your side. If anything, it had gotten worse. Your feelings piled up within you just as his letters did in your room. They all lived in a box under your shitty dorm bed to be pulled out over and over and over so you could parse every line for hidden meaning. Crying at his words, so heartfelt and honest you didn’t even notice the grammatical and spelling errors.

By the time you got back to campus, you felt raw and spent. Your face was streaked with tears and you were breathless from crying. For days, you walked around campus like a ghost until you bumped into Carl, the only other soul not off on some debaucherous Spring Break trip. And when he asked you for seemingly the hundredth time if he could buy you dinner…you said yes.

It came in the mail a few months later. Your address scribbled messily on an invitation to the Hawkins High Class of 1986 graduation. Eddie had included a photocopy of his final grades and written “proof it’s not a clerical error” with a little smiley face in the corner.

You called him that night to tell him how proud of him you were. And you were proud of him. So unbelievably proud. But when he asked if you were coming, you lied. You said your boyfriend’s parents would be in town and that he wanted you to meet them. You told him how sorry you were, all the while thinking Chrissy could congratulate him enough for the both of you.

And in spite of yourself…you let yourself pretend you heard a little dejection in his voice when you used the word “boyfriend”—fictitious as it was.

The truth was, you’d only been officially dating Carl for a couple weeks. And he was perfectly nice. He’d kissed you and it felt fine. It didn’t quite live up to what you believed it should feel like, but maybe that was a good thing. Maybe what you imagined wasn’t realistic. Maybe what you thought it should be wasn’t feasible.

Maybe you just had to let that go.

And dating Carl was simple and uncomplicated. It served a purpose. It made you feel at least like you weren’t languishing in a wasteland of your unrequited feelings. It made you feel like you were trying. Sure, the sex wasn’t great. But you hardly expected it to be good for you.

You’d hooked up with the odd guy here and there over the years. It was a pattern that began with some guy you met downtown whose assignment was to keep you occupied while his friend put the moves on your roommate. You were a little drunk and a lot lonely, so you’d gone along with it. It was quick. A little uncomfortable. It certainly didn’t make you eager to repeat the experience. But at least you could say you’d done it.

Part of you thought maybe it would get better, but it never did.

Even guys you thought were decent at first were quick to gloss over the preamble and lead up, jumping straight to stuffing themselves inside you with no regard to your winces of discomfort. It didn’t take long before you started to assume you had to be the problem. Even by yourself, it took you ages to reach any sort of precipice. And even when you did, even when you felt your heart rate rising and your body heaving in response, the pay-off was…underwhelming.

With Carl, you thought it could be different. Maybe you needed a deeper connection; maybe you needed a few times to get comfortable with someone to properly ascend that peak. But the more you did it with him, the less attainable that seemed. Maybe you were just broken.

You also tried not to dwell on the fact that the only times you ever got close were when you pictured a different face hovering over yours; when you imagined your fingers twisted up in dark, shaggy curls; when you visualized pale skin littered with tattoos and sinewy arms caging you in; when you lit that one candle you only bought because it reminded you of Eddie’s cologne.

The decision to move back home turned out to be less a decision and more a necessity.

A whole year out of school and you’d had truly terrible luck finding a job—at least a decent one that actually wanted to pay you. Carl, ever the charmer, wondered why you even wanted to work when you’d just wind up quitting when you got married. Really, you appreciated it. It was exactly the kind of comment you needed to jolt you out of a relationship that had been on autopilot.

You were a mess. Lost. Aimless. Barely treading water. Wishing you could call the one person you knew would cheer you up, but unsure if it would only result in more heartache. In the blink of an eye, it had been over five years since you left home and it was starting to feel like your only accomplishments were breaking up with your boyfriend and buying a mirror.

Then came the call from your dad.

He’d taken a nasty fall at his hardware store. He was fine, for the most part. But he was now significantly weaker and would have to have surgery as well as physical therapy after. And he certainly couldn’t run his store anymore. It had never run particularly smoothly to begin with and his books left something to be desired—another thing you’d be helping with once you moved back. He never outright asked you to do so, but he also didn’t have to.

The only good news was the bad news: a massive fire that disintegrated Starcourt Mall had led to an influx of renovations to the downtown area. In the wake of the mall’s destruction came a resurgence in small businesses that breathed life back into the desolation the mall caused.

It was in this newly resurrected downtown where Eddie was making his mark. He had opened a hobby shop where he still hosted his weekly D&D games with a lot of the kids who had originally been in his club. His store became like a beacon for all the kids (and even some of the adults) in Hawkins who felt there was no place for them. Eddie gave them somewhere to belong and celebrated all the things that made them targets of ridicule to everyone else.

It was also your first stop on your first day back.

The whole shop was so Eddie. As you walked inside and took in the decor, it seemed entirely possible he had just moved everything from his bedroom at Wayne’s right in here. He’d even rigged the entrance with a speaker that played the guitar riff of “Enter Sandman” when someone came through the door.

You wished you could bottle the moment he came out front, your arrival signaled by the song.

“Holy shit…”

The box of miniatures and figurines he’d just finished pricing in the back fell to the floor with a thump and a rattle of plastic parts. He barely registered it, though. With round, unblinking eyes he stared, too stunned to move a muscle until a smile cracked his face wide open.

In just three long strides he crossed the store and swept you into his arms, lifting you up and whirling you around. “You’re here!” he gushed, arms crushing you around the middle in the most exquisite pain. “You’re really here!”

“I told you I was moving back!”

You laughed heartily in his ear as he placed you back on the ground, telling yourself it must have been the unexpected lift making you breathless and not how the sunlight coming through the windows hit his eyes and made them shine like molten honey. He kept you close, letting his hands rest on your arms and squeezing them like he had to be sure you weren’t a mirage.

“I thought it was one of those ‘too good to be true’ things,” he said sheepishly, a pink blush creeping across his cheeks. “Had to see it to believe it.”

“Well, believe it,” you sighed.

You were already prepared for the loss of his touch, for when he would shamefully retract his hands, but he never did. He held you comfortably, his thumb lightly brushing over your skin. He let you go reluctantly, not regretfully, letting his fingertips trail softly down your arm.

“It’s so good to see you,” he said, his voice coated in warmth. “I missed you so much.”

You nodded, your throat pinched as you tried not to cry. “I…I missed you too.”

Eddie’s smile grew even bigger, his eyes seeming to dance with excitement. “Well, we have to celebrate,” he said. “I close up shop at six. Meet me back here and we’ll go to the Hideout?”

You stalled, chewing on the inside of your cheek as you considered. Almost on instinct, you’d nearly agreed right away. Old habits and what not. But did you want to fall immediately back into your old patterns? Hawkins had changed so little since you left, it felt too easy to slip back into the trap. Could you really go right back to hopelessly pining for him as you’d done so long?

“Come on,” Eddie urged, flashing those doe eyes he knew you couldn’t resist. “It’s one drink.”

“Okay, okay!” you laughed. “One drink.”

One drink turned out to be three. Starting with your first legal drink together at his old haunt while a different band of hopeful kids fumbled their way through clumsy Metallica covers.

“Please tell me we were never that young,” Eddie sighed, taking a swig of his beer.

“You’ve never been young,” you teased. “You came out of the womb a crotchety old man.”

A little later, you absconded to the corner booth and tucked yourselves away from the rowdiness of the growing crowd. You were flushed from the alcohol buzzing in your bloodstream and from how close Eddie was sitting. It felt just like old times, except it was nothing like old times.

Because this time, he was flirting with you. And not being subtle.

You thought maybe you were imagining it at first, but it only became more obvious the longer the night wore on. There was a whole new confidence and intention in the way he talked to you. He’d never been shy, never had any trouble drawing people in, but there was a fire lit behind his eyes tonight you’d never seen before. And you were the sole object of that blaze.

“So…still with Carl?” He finally asked, after bolstering himself to do so for the last three hours.

You took a long sip of your drink, eyes never leaving his over the rim of your glass. The liquor made you bold, the burn at the back of your throat adding smokiness to your voice.

“No-pe,” you said, popping your lips on the final syllable. Eddie smiled wolfishly and leaned in.

“Good,” he purred. “Cos that would have made it real awkward when I asked you out.”

He took you to dinner two days later. Rang the doorbell and smiled at you as he stood on your porch wearing a black button down under a darker black velvet vest. His black jeans were a new- looking pair of the same kind he’d always worn, sans the ragged holes over his knees.

Despite the thin material of your sundress and the balmy weather outside, you were sweating with nerves. The breeze played with your skirt as he walked you to his van and the coolness of it on your clammy skin made you shiver. But when Eddie suddenly darted ahead of you to open your door and turned around with his hand held up to help you inside, it made you melt.

The gesture filled your body with warmth, chasing away any hint of a chill.

After dinner, he suggested you walk a block or so to a bar where Eddie liked to play pool. And as you did, his hand reached for yours and he threaded your fingers together. You stared down at it, stunned. How many times had you wished he would do that? How many times did you imagine the heat of his palm against yours mixing with the coolness of his chunky silver rings on his fingers? It had always seemed so impossible and he’d just done it.

Like it was nothing. Like he’d done it a thousand times before. Easy. Natural.

He held your hand all the way into the bar, only letting go of you to accept a tray of balls from the bartender when Eddie requested a table. With a couple of beers in hand, you followed him to his favorite one that was tucked away in a little alcove, practically private.

You set down the beers and watched as he racked the balls, gaze lingering on his long frame and chuckling at the way he shimmied his hips as he leaned over the table to break. “Eyes on me,” he told you, playful smile revealing his teeth.

It was a redundant request, because it was entirely impossible to look anywhere else.

Eddie had filled out quite a bit since high-school. He was never an athlete by any means, but evidently a regime of guitar playing and dice throwing was enough to maintain decent tone. You stared at him unabashed as he walked around the table, lining up his shot. His vest now flapped open and he’d rolled up his shirtsleeves to reveal the familiar smattering of bats under his elbow and the puppetmaster etched inside his forearm. It made you wonder how many more tattoos—new ones you’d not yet seen—were hiding under the rest of his clothes. He smirked at you, smug as he leaned over the table, thoroughly enjoying the way your eyes followed him.

“See something you like, sweetheart?” he drawled before sinking a bank shot.

You rolled your eyes, trying to fein being unimpressed. “Trying to distract me, Munson?” you asked, chalking the tip of your cue in a much more sensual manner than necessary, letting your fingers lazily stroke the stick as Eddie watched transfixed. He huffed a laugh at the display.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

Evidently, both of you were equally distracted. Most of your games lagged for a mutual inability to sink more than one shot in a row as the other did their best to pull focus. It was far easier for you, having only to lean forward slightly across the table from him to reveal a healthy dose of your cleavage. That, coupled with a coy smile and batting eyelashes, spelled disaster for Eddie. Everytime you did it, he’d scratch his shot and chuckle dryly at his own hubris.

He took a different approach, choosing instead to stand as close to you as he could as you lined up your shots. His musk and cologne filled your nose, a tantalizing woodsy smell that made your head spin as you struggled to keep your eyes on the ball. He rested his hip against the table, handcuff belt buckle glinting as it reflected the light from the lamp hanging overhead.

You could practically hear the childish taunt of not touching you, not touching you.

“Just take your shot, baby,” he cooed, low and husky. The sound made your heart hammer.

A couple hours of teasing and toying later, both of you were ready to explode. Your glasses sat empty on the nearby table, neither of you terribly interested in a refill. And as Eddie sunk the eight ball again, his eyes flashed to the tray for the balls rather than going to re-rack them.

“I guess I should get you home?” he asked.

A little sullen at the idea, you nodded and returned your cues to a rack on the wall while Eddie brought the balls back to the bartender and settled the tab. Only when you were walking back to the table to get your purse and passed a pair of men who reeked of tobacco did something occur to you: Eddie hadn’t taken a smoke break once.

“Did you quit?” you asked, staring at him with wide eyes. He smiled as he drew nearer to you, relishing the way your chest heaved as you reacted to his closeness.

“Took a couple years, but yeah,” he said. “Sometimes I still need a little help, though.”

He tugged his shirttail out from the waistband of his jeans, causing his belt and the chain on his wallet to jingle slightly as he lifted his shirt to flash a strip of his stomach. You’re so distracted by the action and the cut of his v-muscle it takes a few seconds to register the beige nicotine patch stuck on his hip. You stared at him and then back at it, fingers itching to reach out and touch.

He leaned in, his face the closest it had been to yours all night, his voice hushed so only you could hear. “For when I’m really nervous,” he said.

Streetlights and stars blurred as you stepped out of the bar and he whirled you into the alley. The rough brick scraped your back and snagged on your dress as you were flattened against it and you gazed up at Eddie, string lights overhead shining brightly in your eyes.

“Are you ready?” he asked softly. “Are you ready for this to start?”

You swallowed hard, feeling the weight his eyes trained on your face. Your hands settled lightly on his waist and you gave an impatient tug as you nodded. It was all the invitation he needed.

His mouth met yours like the sun met the horizon. The softest kiss you’d ever had deepened gradually until you were grasping at him, fisting his shirt in your fingers. Your lips felt molded together, pliant to the other’s movements, but still insistent as they chased one another.

Control shifted subtly between you, taking turns drawing the other in and pulling back. More teasing, more toying. Yet you never denied each other long, unable to stay apart.

God, this was it. This was what it was always supposed to feel like.

It could have been hours you stood out there kissing and laughing, but you’d never have known. The only thing that alerted you to the passing of time was when the lights inside the bar shut off and the employees filed out for their final smoke break before heading home.

Giggling like terrible criminals begging to be caught, you and Eddie hugged the shadows and made your way back to his van. You rode home with your panties soaked, subtly shifting in your seat, trying not to think about the arousal pooled between your thighs. And at home, back in your room, you were so tempted to dip your fingers into the slickness as you thought about Eddie’s breath on your lips; how the ends of his curls tickled your sternum when he leaned into you; the way his scent lingered on your skin after being pressed between his body and that wall.

But you didn’t dare risk the disappointment that would follow when your pleasure receded like waves being drawn into a riptide; when you backed down from the edge of that cliff, feeling even emptier after not reaching that peak. Again. No, you couldn’t spoil this night with all that.

You saw him more throughout the week. He started popping into your father’s store almost as soon as it opened, offering you coffee and a kiss. And he spent the first hour of the morning with you at the front counter, propped up on his elbow with his chin resting on the heel of his hand.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” you asked, swatting him with a folded up newspaper after you finished doing the jumble together.

He just shrugged with all the casual ease of somebody whose own shop didn’t open until 11. Or noon if he was hungover. “What could be better than hanging out with my favorite girl?”

Favorite girl. The words lived in your brain all day. It made you positively giddy every time you thought about it, even causing you to accidentally enter a customer’s 15% discount as 51% and not even bother correcting it. The loss on a value pack of paint brushes and trays seemed a paltry fee for the smile that spread across old Mrs. Gershwin’s face when she saw her total.

Eddie started calling every night at 9:30, practically on the dot, and it didn’t take long for you to get in the habit of settling into your bed around that time so you could pick up the receiver in your room before the ringing disturbed your dad dozing in his recliner downstairs.

“So when do I get to take you out again?” he asked, clearly not oblivious to how it made you melt on the other end of the line.

You blushed your way through making arrangements for an early movie Saturday followed by dinner. Then, before beginning the long process of saying your goodnights, you paused to ask him the thing you’d been wondering since that night at the Hideout.

“Eddie…are we really doing this?” you asked, torn between giddiness and trepidation.

“I certainly am,” he hummed into the receiver.

He talked the whole way through the movie and still had more to say at dinner afterward.

It didn’t bother you, though. You loved listening to him talk. Your ears had gone so long without his rambling, it was more like music than words. His feet toyed with yours under the table and after you ordered dessert, he excused himself to use the bathroom only to slide into your side of the booth when he came back. You giggled over tiramisu and cheesecake, your sides pressed together from shoulder to ankle. Later, the tastes of your desserts would mix in your mouths as he kissed you deeply in his car dropping you off.

Everything about it felt so alive. So ripe with the promise of what this could turn into, what it had already become. In two dates with Eddie, you felt more connection than you had in two years of dating Carl. Not that it was fair comparing them. Nothing and no one could ever compare to this.

It was a Wednesday when he made a new proposition. You had already crawled into bed and swathed yourself in blankets to wait for his call. And after the few customary minutes of talking about your respective days, he brought up his idea for Friday night.

“Would you want to come over here for dinner?” he asked.

“You…you mean like your place?”

“I was thinking mine, but if your heart is set on a neighbor’s, I’m sure breaking in wouldn’t be too difficult.” He’s smirking so hard you swear you can hear it over the phone.

“I guess yours will do,” you chuckled. “Does this mean I’ll get to see The Hair in person?”

Eddie was living with Steve Harrington, which had taken a commanding lead for being the most confusing thing you’d learned since returning home. Apparently they’d been brought together by a shared friendship with Dustin Henderson, one of the kids from Hellfire Eddie had taken under his batwing during his third and final senior year. Dustin had spent months insisting both boys would get along if they only gave the other a chance until his badgering paid off.

Now, the pair shared a tiny apartment downtown, walking distance from Eddie’s shop and only a short drive to Family Video where Steve was now the manager. And Dustin evidently couldn’t go five minutes without congratulating himself for bringing the two of them together. Eddie liked to joke that they were now co-parenting the little shithead (affectionate).

“Actually, Steve is out of town this weekend,” Eddie said, struggling to contain his excitement and keep his cool. “So, we’ll have the place to ourselves.”

Breathe, breathe, breathe. “Oh, yeah?” you said, voice spiking just an octave too high.

“Yep. And, um…you could stay over if you wanted? If that sounds good to you?”

Stay over. You knew what that meant. There was something gut wrenchingly endearing about the way he asked—the innocent peal of his voice. But there was no doubt in your mind what he was getting at. This wasn’t going to be like crashing on his couch after a movie night or pouring yourself into his bed after a Corroded Coffin show that lasted to the wee hours.

This would be something new. Something completely different.

“That sounds great,” you said, finally.

And it did sound great. It just also sounded a little terrifying.

Admittedly, you hadn’t been on many dates in your life. But television and film had successfully indoctrinated you with knowledge of that classic Third Date milestone. And it made sense. He wasn’t some stranger. You’d known each other for so long, it stood to reason things would continue to accelerate between you.

And was that such a bad thing?

This was Eddie, after all. He was your best friend. He was your other half. You weren’t sure if you even believed in soul mates, so to speak, but if they did exist you couldn’t imagine anyone besides him in that role. He had stoked life into the coals within you that you were certain had burnt into a lump of ash. You never felt with anyone the way you felt with him.

So if you were gonna do this, you were gonna do it right.

You went shopping, fighting off anxious nausea as you perused the racks of lingerie in the far corner of a little boutique. Averting your eyes from the more salacious options, you settled on a matching set of midnight blue embroidered with silver thread to look like stars. It was made of thin mesh that gave the illusion of coverage, but revealed plenty through the sheer netting.

It also looked a little like something a wizard might wear. And for obvious reasons, you had a feeling Eddie might like that.

Securing your purchase you thought might make you feel more prepared, but it only caused your thoughts to unravel further. This was the first time Eddie would be seeing your underwear and it wasn’t even your own. At least it didn’t yet feel like your own the way your drawer full of less suggestive garments did. What if he thought you looked ridiculous? What if he laughed or got turned off because your thighs were too big or the pudge of your stomach grossed him out? Worse yet, what if you failed to live up to the implications? What if he saw it and assumed you knew what you were doing, only to be woefully disappointed by your skills? Or lack thereof?

It was impossible to reconcile the two wolves fighting for dominance in your mind. On the one hand, it was wildly exciting: the thought of finally getting to be with him and touch him and have him touch you back. At the same time, though, you were overwhelmed at the prospect. What if it changed things between you? You’d always thought you wanted more than friendship with him, but what if in that pursuit you lost the person you treasured more than anything in the world?

And then of course there were the normal fears.

After so much unfulfilling sex, you couldn’t help but be fearful your body would betray you as it always had. It was hard not to pin all your hopes on this and you didn’t want to add any more pressure to this night than you already felt. But even if you backed off that peak and failed to reach the summit, surely the ascent would feel just as nice as long as it was with him.

Right?

This was what you tried to tell yourself as you turned one last time in front of your mirror.

Literally everything about this night was making you uncomfortable and it hadn’t even begun yet. The lingerie that felt fine when you bought it was tight and itchy on your skin, and it felt glaringly obvious you were wearing it under your clothes—like a diaper or a straightjacket.

You’d shaved, even though it made you feel like a creepy bald Barbie, and even though you found the concept kind of disturbing. Whose brilliant idea was it anyway that to be sexy you had to look like a child between your legs? And you always wound up completely bare because you could never get it even and kept having to take more from each side until nothing was left.

Still, you did it. Because that was what everyone did, right? That’s what he would expect?

Shaking your head, trying to fling away all your thoughts, you busy yourself packing your small overnight bag. It was the same one you must have brought over to Eddie’s a hundred times over, but for the first time you found yourself doubting it. Would he think you were high maintenance for wanting your own toothbrush and a change of clothes? For bringing something comfortable to sleep in? Would he think you were a weirdo for not just sleeping naked? God, what if he saw it and figured you’d been sleeping with so many guys, you just kept it packed all the time?

Panic creeps up the back of your neck. It burns hot on your cheeks and makes your heart pound in your temples until you’re so dizzy you have to lean against the door with your head bent.

Breathe, you think. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Frustratingly slowly, the thrumming in your chest subsides. You managed to bring yourself down off the ledge and find your center—Eddie.

Eddie would make everything alright.

He always did.

Part Two

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