#and friends to go on walks in the park with and friends to exchange job searching tips with | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

avastrasposts · 10 months ago

Text

A Baker's Dozen - Eleven**

A collection of fun and fluffy one shots set in the same bakery. Twelve Pedro boys, twelve stories, twelve recipes.

Hello!

The second to last visitor to the bakery is here and I can hardly believe it! Eleven weeks of Pedro boys have flown past and I've had so much fun with them!

So before we get started with number eleven, this series was meant to be all fluff, but then this Pedro boy arrived and just really got out of hand and I had nothing to do with it, he just took over!

So I had to ask my friend @morallyinept if I could use her very handy Scoville Smut Rating to issue some warnings. Thank you, Jett!

Series Master List

This chapter is rated:

🌶 - "Don't hurt me, cadejo."

Scoville Level 15,000. The Donis Cadejo Hot Sauce. (Buy the sauce here) The story contains mildly spicy smut. Tingles left on your tongue.

The week’s been slower than usual, as it always is in February, post-holiday blues setting in, everyone trying to be extra healthy and save some money. No time to be indulging in sweet things. Your shop does fine though, planning and prepping for Valentine’s Day and the upcoming wedding season.

But the slower hours in the shop makes you take note of the black car that’s been parked across the street all day. Nothing odd about that, but there’s also been someone sitting in the car all day. You’ve been glancing over as you go about your business, studying the man behind the wheel as he makes notes and phone calls, focused on something further down the street, out of your view. From the way he’s dressed, a crisp, well ironed, pale blue shirt, you’re guessing he’s an agent for some agency, or maybe a very well dressed private eye. He’s not doing a very good job though, he sticks out like a sore thumb on this street of small businesses. When he glances over at you just before noon, you give him a quick smile, to hide the fact that you’ve been staring at the way he’s been rubbing his large hand over his chin for the past five minutes. He locks eyes with you, surprise flitting across his face, before he gives you a crooked smile in return.

This is the beginning of a dance; you glance over to find him looking at you rather than the street in front of him, you raise your eyebrows in challenge and he seems to chuckle, looking away. You study his strong nose, the dark curls brushing over his forehead as he makes more notes, and he catches you staring when he looks over, one eyebrow arching in a questioning look and you shrug with a smile, going back to the cake you’re decorating.

It’s late in the afternoon when you notice movement in the street, a second car parking behind the first and a man getting out and walking over to the first car. Quick words are exchanged, you steal glances from the corner of your eye as you finish up an order for tomorrow. Bending down to put the order away, you hear the bell on your front door chime.

“Hi, I thought I’d stop by and say hello properly,” the man from the car is standing in front of the counter with a small smile as you straighten up.

“Hi,” you say, returning his smile as you take the chance to get a better look at him for the first time. He’s taller than you expected, and broad, so much broader than the side view you’ve had all day indicated. The light blue dress shirt is stretching over his shoulders and arms and you immediately decide that he must be an agent, no private eye is ever this fit, not that you have much experience, but still.

“I just wanted to introduce myself and explain what I’m doing,” the man says, nodding over at his car on the other side of the street, “And I hope I can count on your discretion too.”

“Uuhmm, sure,” you say, looking at him as he pulls a badge from the pocket of his suit trousers, “I was kinda assuming that you’re on some sort of stake out.”

“That obvious, huh?” the man chuckles, showing you his ID.

“Yeah, your sleek car and nice shirt gave it away a little,” you smile, “and the way you sat out there all day, I’m pretty sure every business owner on the street has spotted you.”

“I’ll need to fix that for tomorrow then,” he smiles, “I’m special agent Dave York, I’m with the CIA, and we’ve got surveillance on an apartment further down the street. I can’t tell you what it’s about but you don’t have to worry, it’s nothing dangerous for the neighborhood.”

“That’s good to know,” you reply, “And you’re welcome in for coffee or something to snack on whenever you want,” you thumb at the coffee machine behind you, “I’d offer delivery service but that might be a little bit too obvious.”

He chuckles at that and you notice the dimple on his clean shaven cheek, a slight five o’clock shadow indicating that it’s been a while since he got up and shaved this morning.

“I’d love a coffee right now, if you don’t mind,” he says and you point at the menu.

“What’ll it be?

“The dark roast, black, please,” he says, “You’ve got a good selection.”

“Thanks, people mainly buy bread and cakes, the coffee machine is mainly for me and a handful of regulars who like good coffee, we like trying different beans and roasts,” you throw him a smile over your shoulder as you prepare his coffee to go.

“I’ll have to become a regular then, keep your coffee business going,” he taps his card on the machine as you hand him the cup.

“I just realized I know who you are,” you say, the penny finally dropping, “One of my regulars, Mrs Levinson, knows your mom. Mrs Levinson bought a Lemon Meringue Pie for her a while back.”

“Oh yeah, those two are as thick as thieves, always trying to set me up on blind dates,” he chuckles, taking a sip of the coffee, “I’ve been blaming my workload to avoid them." He raises the cup to you with a smile, “Great coffee, I’ll definitely come back."

“If I don’t spot you, I’ll know you’ve done a better job of hiding,” you tell him and he laughs, giving you a cheesy thumbs up as he leaves.

You watch him take long strides across the street to his car, the coffee still in his hand, and just as he gets in the car, he turns and looks back at you, a smile cracking across his face as he raises his hand in a wave.

You do spot him the next day, but you are keeping an eye out for him, glancing out to see if he’s arrived. He parks a different car across the street this time, a beat up, rusty looking banger, and he’s in a ratty looking t-shirt and a beanie pulled low over his forehead. Much less ‘agent on a stakeout’ this time, but you still glance over at him from time to time, far too often in fact. And you bite back a smile when you catch him glancing over at you too, catching your eye on a few occasions as he winks.

Half way through the day he’s relieved, and he steps out of his car, coming over to the bakery again.

“Hi,” he says, giving you a dimpled smile as he pulls off his beanie, “Did I blend in better today?”

“Yeah, better,” you smile back at him as he comes up to the counter, “The distressed t-shirt was a good choice.”

“I had to dig it out from the bottom of some box left over from when I moved,” he holds up the front of it and studies the suspicious looking stain on the front, “I swear this is not my usual casual look.”

Holding up the front has resulted in the hem of the t-shirt lifting up over the edge of his pants and you can’t help but glance down as he flashes a few inches of skin, his sweat pants sitting low on his hips. The trail of dark hair disappearing beneath the waistband has you momentarily distracted as you follow it down to-

“I’ll take your word for it,” you say, snapping your eyes back up to his, but not before he notices, giving you a small smirk, “NIce sweatpants.”

“Thanks,” he chuckles, “not as old as the t-shirt, but still not my best look, I promise.”

“I don’t mind that much,” you smirk back and he flashes a crooked grin, his eyebrow cocked, before he looks up at the coffee menu behind you and tilts his head to the side.

“What do you recommend today? I’m feeling adventurous,” he says, looking down at you again with a smile, “blame the sweatpants.”

“A single espresso shot vanilla hazelnut latte with salted caramel and whipped cream on top? I usually add some cookie crumbles too,” you say and Dave’s face falls, his eyebrows pulling together in a concerned look.

“Ah…uhh…” he stutters, rubbing his hand over his jaw, clearly looking for a polite way to decline your suggestion and you bite the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from laughing at his panic, but he catches the mirth in your eyes.

“Holy shit, you’re kidding,” he gasps out, wiping imaginary sweat from his brow as you start giggling.

“Sorry, I had to check if you’re serious about your coffee,” you wink at him as he shakes his head and puffs a relieved breath.

“Had me worried,” he says, “I thought I’d have to drink one of those to be allowed to stay a regular.”

“No, I think I’d have to kick you out if you did order one of those,” you smile, picking up the bag of new beans that just arrived, “Here, smell these, I just got them so I haven’t even tried them yet.”

Dave takes a deep breath and nods with a satisfied look, “That’s nice, can I try that?”

“Sure, I’ll make us one each. Single or double?”

“Double, please, this stake out thing is kicking my ass,” he says, leaning against the counter as you start the process of grinding the beans.

“Do you want some cake or something else too?” you ask, nodding at your selection.

“No, I’m good,” he says, “It all looks really good, but not today.” He does let his eyes drift over the cakes on display though and you smile to yourself, you know the type, sooner or later he’ll cave and get something as a treat no matter how strong his resolve it.

“Here you go,” you say, passing him his espresso, in a cup this time, “let me know what you think, if it’s good I might give it a permanent spot on the menu.”

You both take a few sips of the coffee in silence, humming at the flavors.

“It’s good,” Dave finally says, “Really good, I wouldn’t complain if it was a regular on the menu.”

“I agree, I’m going to order more,” you reply, draining the cup as he pulls his wallet out of his pants.

“Let me pay for both coffees,” he says, holding out his card, “as a thank you, for letting me come in and disturb you.”

“You’re not disturbing, Dave,” you smile, “you can come in whenever you want.”

“Even if I’m not on a stake out?” he asks, a small smile playing around his mouth and you feel your cheeks heat up.

“Especially when you’re not on a stake out,” you smile back and his dimple makes an appearance as his smile widens.

“I’ll remember that,” he says, tapping his card to pay for both coffees, “I’ll see you tomorrow though, more stake out.”

“See you tomorrow,” you say, returning the wave he gives you as he leaves.

He’s back the next morning, already sitting in the car as you come out into the shop to open up for the day. He looks tired, yawning big and rubbing his hand over his eyes as he leans his head against the headrest. You glance over at him while you work and serve the small morning crowd, but he doesn’t look back at you. Saying goodbye to the last customer you look over at the car again, Dave’s head is flopped to the side, mouth hanging open and eyes closed, sound asleep. The sight is adorable, the big CIA agent clearly exhausted if he’s passed out on the job. You grab your travel mug, the one you keep filled with coffee through the morning, and give it a quick clean. Filling it up with a triple espresso shot from the beans you’d had with him yesterday, you screw on the top and exit the shop. He stirs as your shoes scuff over the asphalt, jerking up as you lightly tap the window.

“Hey, want some coffee?” you ask, holding up the travel mug and he gives you such a look of relief and gratitude that it melts your heart.

“Thanks,” he says once he’s cranked down the window in the old car, “I’m dead here, can’t keep my eyes open.”

“Doesn’t do you much good on a stake out,” you say, “drop off the mug when you leave, and just wave at me if you want more coffee, I’ll come over with a refill.”

“Thanks, you’re a lifesaver,” he smiles, and you smile back, giving him a wave as you cross the street to the bakery.

Dave stays a bit more alert through the rest of the day, and gets relieved earlier than usual. You smile when he comes into the shop.

“Any luck with whatever you’re waiting for?” you ask as he hands you the travel mug.

“No, and we’re running out of time, this might be a waste of resources,” he says, shaking his head and yawning widely, “I’m sorry, I was up late last night, working on this and then I couldn’t fall asleep, too much stuff on my mind.”

“Go home, Dave,” you say, shooing him out of your shop with a smile, “You’re no good to anyone when you’re like this.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he says, “But I like our chats, makes this stake out more enjoyable than any other I’ve been on,” he suddenly looks a little bit shy as he’s half turned towards the door, a small smile as he looks back at you.

“I like our chats too,” you say, butterflies erupting in the pit of your belly, and for a few seconds you’re just ogling each other like a couple of fools, both too shy to say anything else. Dave clears his throat, a small chuckling sound, and looks at his shoes before he glances up.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“See you tomorrow, Dave,” you give him a wave and a small smile, biting your lip to hold back the bigger one that’s being pushed up by the butterflies as he returns your smile and leaves.

But the next morning you don’t see his car, or any other car that might be a covert CIA operation and you wonder if the stake out got canceled. The day passes slowly, the usual February slump slower than usual without Dave outside your window. Realizing you don’t have his number, you can only hope he’ll come back even though he’s not on a stake out. And when you finally see him the next afternoon, crossing the street at a slight jog to avoid a car, you feel yourself smiling before he’s even spotted you. When he pushes open the door he gives you a wide grin.

“Hey, how’s it going?” he asks, coming up to the counter as you put away your phone.

“Hi,” you smile at him, thanking your past self for changing the stained t-shirt and apron into something cuter, “I’m good, but things are slow today so I’m glad you’re here, it’s been kinda boring without the stake out to distract me.”

He chuckles at that, looking out onto the spot where his car had been for the past three days.

“Yeah, orders came yesterday to can it, another team has picked up a hotter lead so we’ve been working on that. But that place doesn't have any nice bakeries nearby, so it's a complete loss,” he says with a smile that makes your insides liquid.

“So you’re actually here when not on a stake out?” you tease him and he laughs.

“Told you I’d be back,” he says, pushing the sleeves of the sweatshirt he’s wearing up over his thick forearms and crossing his arms, scanning the coffee menu. “Should I go for another one of those nice beans, or should I be adventurous?” he asks.

You give him a crooked smile, tilting your head like you’re assessing him and he raises an eyebrow in question at you.

“What do you have in mind? That look is making me nervous.”

“I’m thinking….” you begin, “the regular coffee, but…you get a snack too, one of the cakes.”

Dave gives you a grin in response and begins to scan the cakes, “The carrot cake,” he says, pointing to one of the smallest slices covered in white cream cheese frosting.

“Good choice,” you smile, “it’s a best seller and I made it this morning.” You plate the slice and start making the coffee for him.

“It’s kinda healthy, right?” he asks, eyeing the carrot cake with suspicion, “It’s got carrots and all?”

“I mean, it’s still got sugar and fat in it,” you chuckle, “but it’s made with vegetable oil and not butter, so there is that.”

You bring the coffee to the counter and start making a coffee for yourself as Dave picks up the plate.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” you sputter out as you watch him scrape the frosting off the cake with the spoon, “That’s the best part!”

“It’s just fat and sugar,” he says, putting the dollop of frosting on the side of the plate, “I’m trying to stay healthy.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Dave,” you smirk, “if you don’t eat that frosting on the cake like the baker intended, I don’t think this friendship is going to last.” You point to yourself and raise your eyebrows in a challenge.

“You know, I usually don’t eat sweet stuff, it’s the job,” he says, “I need to stay fit for it.” He’s toying with the cake, the intonation heavy on the 'eat'. He's not looking at you, but there’s a smirk playing around the corners of his mouth.

“So indulge a little, it’ll be worth it,” you smile and he looks up at you, his smirk suddenly changing into something more challenging as he seems to evaluate you in silence for several long seconds.

“Only if you’re on the menu,” he says, his dark eyes pinning you in place while he runs his tongue over his bottom lip, “Are you on the menu?”

The question is direct as he slowly raises his eyebrows, the intention clear.

You feel your brain grind to a halt, Dave’s dark brown eyes are boring into you as you slowly inhale, you feel like he’s flicked a switch and turned on his professional side, but he’s not using it to interrogate you. Instead he’s using it to put pressure on you, to get you to tell him what you want.

What he wants.

Glancing down at the plate still in his hand, he swipes his finger through the frosting and slowly rounds the counter, coming up to where you’re still standing frozen by the coffee machine.

“Are you?” he says, repeating his question and slowly bringing his finger to his mouth, sucking the frosting off with a pop.

The tip of your tongue comes out to lick across your top lip and Dave glances down at your mouth, following the movement. Taking a step closer, he’s almost touching you now, you can feel the scent of his cologne wash over you as his eyes come back up to yours.

“I’d really like it, if you were on the menu,” he says, his voice low and dark, “but if you’re not, tell me, and I’ll leave.”

You swallow, still transfixed by his dark eyes on you, the way he’s looking at you, like he’s trying to read you and succeeding. You slowly nod your head yes.

Dave inhales softly, putting down the plate, “Use your words. Tell me I can kiss you,” he says, the frustration clearly thrumming just below the surface of his low tones as his breath skates across your cheek, his hands hovering just inches from your body, ready to grab as soon as you give him permission, “You’ve been driving me fucking crazy all week but I couldn’t do anything.”

A shiver runs through your body, your hand shaking as you put your coffee cup down, slowly putting both your hands on the front of his gray t-shirt, feeling the bunched up muscles flex under your palms as you slide them up to his shoulders. Dave is watching you intently, a small crease between his eyebrows, his fingers twitching by your waist.

“Not here,” you say, dropping your hands to your sides, and side stepping him. He turns as you slip out past him, quickly walking the front door and locking it, flipping the ‘Back in five minutes’ sign. When you turn back, he’s still standing by the coffee machine and you pass him.

“Less nosy neighbors in here,” you say, holding out your hand to him.

He reacts in a heartbeat, taking your hand and crowding you as he pushes you further into the kitchen, out of sight. He lets go of your hand and grabs your waist, the other landing on your neck, his large hand easily spanning across it and up, cupping your cheek as he walks you backwards. The cool metal of the walk-in fridge hits your back and Dave’s towering over you, bending his face down so that his strong nose brushes against yours, his eyes almost black under his eyebrows, pulled together tight, and the hand at your waist bunching up your shirt.

“Now?” he husks and you nod.

“Yes, now.”

His mouth is hot when it reaches yours in a flash, he’s pushing you further up against the fridge as he angles his head to have more. There’s an edge of desperation to the way he holds you. The hand on your cheek keeps you where he needs you as he licks the seam of your lips. When you part them, his tongue is eager and needy, a groan escaping from somewhere deep inside of him and you pant into his mouth as his sounds fire up your brain. Heat shoots through your body like rocket fuel ignited, the cool metal behind you a sharp contrast to the solid warmth of Dave’s body in front when he pulls you closer with his hand on your waist, tugging you into him.

It’s messy, tongues and teeth fighting for control, your hands in his hair, his thick fingers grabbing your neck, his thigh between your legs. There’s no hiding the arousal coursing through you both as you moan at the way he rubs over your core, his low groans mixed in when he rolls his hard length into your hip.

He tangles his fingers into your hair, pulling back your head and trailing wet kisses across your throat, sucking a mark into where shoulder meets neck, moving up again, his teeth gently tugging on your earlobe before you gasp when he nips at the soft skin just underneath.

“I’ve been fucking dreaming about how you’d sound when I did this,” he growls when you moan loudly into the silent kitchen, “sound so pretty, so fucking sweet.” His hand on your waist tightens, he’s pulling you down onto his leg, rocking into you as you clamor for a grip, tugging at his hair, loud, satisfied groan coming from Dave.

“I wanna hear what you sound like when you come,” he mutters, moving his mouth up to yours again, biting your bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth, tongue coming out to caress it, taste it, before he lets go.

Pulling back a little, he looks down at you. You meet his dark eyes, lust clouding them as you gasp at the way his thick thigh creates just enough friction to make you convulse under his firm grip.

“So fucking sweet,” he mumbles, a tone to his voice like he’s been craving this, “always looking at me from the bakery, always smelling so good, so tempting. Been wanting to do this since the first day, just get you in here and make you come all over my leg, hear you say my name.”

You try to unscramble your brain, it’s hazy with arousal, the coil that he’s wound so tightly about to snap. But all you can feel is the tell tale tingling that’s started in your core and you close your eyes, the feeling radiating out from where his thigh rubs against you.

“No, keep them open for me, baby,” Dave growls, “keep your eyes on me,” his voice forcing you to look up at him as it hits.

“Dave…” you gasp, “Pl-please, Dave…”

It shoots through your system like electricity, your legs closing around his, your skin burning as he kisses you, swallowing down your cries of his name as he keeps moving his leg, working you through the high until your muscles finally relax.

He holds you up, his arm around your waist now, as his kisses soften. Soft movements across your lips, his tongue gently teasing yours until he pulls back a little, pressing his lips against yours, foreheads touching as you take a deep breath and you can feel him smile against you.

He moves his leg back, bending down and grabbing hold of your thighs, picking you up like you weigh nothing. With your arms around his neck, you hold on until he sets you down on the workbench, his hard erection is pressed tight between you but he seems to ignore it.

“You ok?” he asks quietly, bending down and pressing a small kiss to the side of your neck, “seemed like you needed that.” His chuckle is low and amused as you sigh deeply.

“That’s how you indulge?” you ask, caressing the back of his head, raking your fingers through his thick hair.

“Better for your body than that carrot cake,” he smirks, pulling back a bit so that he can look at you while he cups your jaw and strokes his thumb over cheek.

“I told you, this friendship won’t last if you don’t eat the frosting,” you give him a small smile, your body still humming.

Dave gives you a smug look, “I don’t want your friendship, I want your frosting,” he says with a grin, tugging gently at your chin so that he can press his lips to yours and slip his tongue inside before your addled brain can come up with a comeback.

The kiss is languid and slow, Dave takes his time, holding you back as you try to pull him closer, your hands still in his hair. After several long minutes he reaches up and untangles your fingers and pulls them down to your sides.

“I’m leaving now,” he says against your mouth, his lips brushing over yours, “And I want you to be good. I have to go take care of something on that case. Close the shop when you’re done, go home, I’ll come by later.” There’s a promise in his low tone, in the way he nips at your bottom lip one last time and his fingers dig into your hips as he moves around your neck.

“Listen,” he whispers, his mouth close to your ear, “I’m not done with you yet.”

Part Twelve

Series Master List

Ok, so that got spicier then intended right? I don't know what to say, Dave just stepped in and took over.... blame him or thank him!

For the cake, this recipe uses pecans but I prefer walnuts but you can also leave them out if you want too. But it really is a very good cake...

Taglist: @harriedandharassed @inept-the-magnificent @sheepdogchick3 @readingiskeepingmegoing @noisynightmarepoetry @survivingandenduring @vabeachazn @amyispxnk @oberynslady @vabeachazn @amyispxnk @thewiigers

#pedro pascal character fanfic #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal #dave york #dave york x reader #hot damn!

183 notes · View notes

bizaar · 4 months ago

Text

Cruel Summer Epilogue - Part One

Masterlist - Part One - Part Two

pairing: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

warnings: sexual content (18+) minors DNI (you guys they go the fuck off idk what to tell you, gird your loins), pregnancy, mentions of sickness and vomiting, traumatic flashbacks, angst, swearing (please let me know if I missed anything, there's a lot going on here)

word count: 23k (oof)

a/n: tumblr is really gonna make me split this thing up more than I already was going to — oh well, it doesn't matter because it's here! Forgive me for how I had to lay this out, and for everything that follows, because part two is going to be nothing but complete rabid bunnyfucking...

Melvald’s is slow today.

Of course, that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Melvald’s is always slow. You don’t think there has ever been such a thing as a morning or afternoon rush within these cluttered walls, and you’re fine with that.

You have to be, because it’s not like you have a lot of other options left in Hawkins.

After everything went back to normal again — as normal as normal can be, considering the circumstances — you didn’t dare go back to ask for your job at Benny’s. You tell yourself it’s because you’ve got too much self-respect for that (and certainly not because you’re quite sure they’ll laugh you out of the building if you tried) so now you stock shelves at Melvald’s.

The hours are long and the pay is crap, but your commute is a quick ten-minute walk, and that’s more than you can ask for. Because you never got your car back after you went sailing out the front doors at Benny’s with the singular purpose of finding Eddie, getting out of town, and never coming back – a purpose you mostly succeeded in.

Mostly.

You found Eddie, but you never managed to get around to getting out of town. You did eventually end up coming back, though only to discover that while you were away your trusty little Toyota Corolla had been towed.

Figures.

Funny how you can’t just leave a vehicle sitting unclaimed in a private lot for over a month and expect there to be no consequences.

By the time you got around to finding your car, you ended up having to sell the damn thing just to cover the impound fees, and you quickly learned that despite what all those sappy greeting cards like to say, you can put a price on your memories. Hundreds of hours of carpooling trips to and from school and the arcade and movies and innumerable Corroded Coffin gigs, all the jam sessions and make-out sessions and “you gotta hear this song” sessions that resulted in blown out speakers and deeply existential conversations and fights about nothing and everything. All the time and people, friends and lovers and emotions permeating it’s dingy cloth seats and hard plastic siding was whisked away in the blink of an eye.

Your bittersweet adolescence, gone in exchange for a measly four thousand dollars. Somehow, you’re never going to forgive yourself for letting it go like that.

And yet, for as sad as you were to part with and old friend, it wasn’t all bad, because even with most of that blood money sent off to the Roane County municipality, you still had a little left over.

Enough to get the van towed out of the ditch and back into working order, at least. It wasn’t pretty, and it needed more work than any of you could really wrap your heads around just to bring it back to its previous semi-shitty condition, but it was alive and that was all that mattered.

If selling your car meant that Eddie didn’t have to lose anything else, then you were happy to let it go.

Anyway, you like your walk to work. It’s short enough that it doesn’t give you time to think about anything that isn’t immediately in front of you. It doesn’t remind you of anything you might be mourning from back in the good old days, and it means, if need be, you can get home as fast as humanly possible.

Unlike at Benny’s, nobody at Melvald’s gives you shit if you have to go sailing out the front doors and across the parking lot to rescue Eddie from his demons.

That mile-and-back commute does not, however, keep you safe from the perils of being late for work. Not in the cold blue light of morning, when Eddie snakes his arms around you and holds you hostage, leaving sleepy, sloven kisses down the stretch of your neck and sending shivers up the length of your spine as he begs you for five more minutes, and five more minutes after that.

You find that you have a hard time arguing with him on mornings like that when the only thing that can chase away the lingering sting of bad dreams and worse memories is to lay pressed together in a heap of tangled limbs, listening to the muted thump thump thumping of his beating heart and feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.

You’re spending a lot of mornings like that lately, laying in as late as you possibly can before slinking into work a cool twenty minutes late. And if anyone on Melvald’s barebones staff cares about that, you haven’t heard about it. Even if you did, the feeling would not be mutual.

Who gives a shit where you decide to spend your mornings? Mornings are for people who never came so close to losing everything, so what’s the harm in five more minutes?

Plenty, it turns out, when you finally manage to extract yourself from that tangled mess of limbs and are hit with a wave of nausea like a speeding train the moment you sit up. You were late to work this morning, sure, though not because you couldn’t stop indulging Eddie in five more minutes, it was because you couldn’t stop your insides from turning into outsides and spent almost a full half hour with your head in the toilet.

You mostly don’t wanna talk about that.

If you have to, you chalk it up to the bizarre sickness you can’t seem to shake. You just can’t stomach much of anything these days, except for herbal tea, and that is only consumed against your will, because herbal tea is gross, despite how it’s the only thing that abates your nausea.

Well, you thought it did.

Joyce Byers is on an extended smoke break, so you’re alone in the store when it hits you.

One minute, you’re sitting behind the cash wrap, absently flipping through Cosmopolitan Magazine with a steadily cooling cup of stagnant bog water at your elbow, and then someone hits the ejector button. The next thing you know, you’re sprinting for the bathroom with a harsh squeak of Chucks on linoleum.

You barely make it to the stall in time to send your prayers to that eternal porcelain god.

Zero to sixty in half a second, just like this morning and every other morning this week.

By the time you come slinking in again from the employee’s bathroom, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, Joyce is still not back from her fifteen-going-on thirty minute break. There are no customers, no coworkers, just you and the lingering air of your spectacular Regan MacNeil impression – getting better and better every day – because it’s just another boring Thursday afternoon, and Melvald’s is always slow.

Your insides cramp with the threat of sustained illness as you slide in behind the cash register, ready to resume the spell of your boredom, then, you find yourself face to face with a pharmaceutical ad you don’t remember seeing when you last flipped the page.

You stare down at the image of a beautiful woman with her face stretched into a wide, open mouth smile, which is manic enough that you could easily mistake her for screaming rather than laughing.

You begin to feel a cold, creeping dread raising the hair on your neck and arms as you read the copy.

“Morning sickness? Not me!”

Jesus Christ, you think with no small amount of disgust, Somebody got paid a million dollars to write this – and yet all it takes is those four measly little words.

They fall into place one right after the other, each with a hollow boom that sends shockwaves radiating out across the expanse of your body with goosebumps. A previously darkened part of your brain slowly begins switching on as the phrase is fed through its internal processor over and over until something starts to come into focus.

A question you haven’t yet asked yourself, and the answer you’ve been subconsciously dodging, like lightning in the storm of your sudden onset illness.

Morning sickness? Not me… surely not me…

Still, you immediately begin counting the weeks on your fingers and think yourself in circles, trying desperately to remember when you had your last period. Last week? Last month? You don’t remember. You’ve never been the type of person to keep regular track of something like that, though only because you never needed to.

You were a virgin until you met Eddie and now you can’t seem to recall when you had your last period.

It takes you too long to remember, and when you do, you don’t believe it, so you count it out three times just to be certain and swallow hard against the sick feeling roiling in your esophagus.

January… February… March… March? No, that can’t be right…

You rustle a piece of scratch paper from the register to draw it out so you can visualize it, and when the data still doesn’t change, you get up to go and find the calendar in the employee’s locker room just to be certain that it really is – June.

According to your math, you haven’t had a period since March, and according to the calendar, that was two months ago.

Holy Shit.

If you were thinking rationally, you might understand how two months could pass without a person noticing, especially when they’ve been living their life by the second.

But you’re not thinking rationally, and if you were being honest, you haven’t been since last Spring.

Time stopped for you in the other place, when Eddie’s heart stopped down on the wrong side of the world, and ever since you slipped back through, it hasn’t really started back up again in a way you can wrap your head around. You live your life by the days of the week, so how were you supposed to know something was amiss when your only basis of passing time is “it’s Thursday again,”?

Something heavy settles in the pit of your stomach and you feel like you could be sick again as the facts begin to present themselves in neat little lines.

You and Eddie are living together now.

After everything that happened, when the dust finally settled on the Forest Hills trailer park, the folks from the Hawkins Lab came out from their fortress like feudal lords in lab coats. They took samples, corded things off with a mountain of red tape, performed test upon test upon test on the ruined contents of the trailer, and after all was said and done, it was deemed “uninhabitable”.

Which meant the Munsons were out of house and home. Wayne, it turns out, could get temporary housing through the Plant, but only so long as he was actively working. Someone was going to have to be the steward of Eddie’s recovery once he got out of the hospital (and that was shaping up to be a full time job in and of itself) but if Wayne took any time off to take care of him, he was going to lose his bid for company housing. Without it, he would have to move the pair of them back into the extended stay rooms in the Motel 6 out on the interstate, which he could only afford to pay for if he was earning a steady paycheck – such are the perils of selling your soul to the company store.

So, Eddie came to live with you in your icebox of a basement apartment, which seemed like the most practical, level headed idea until you were left alone and the reality of your sudden and total privacy settled in. It didn’t take long for the both of you to completely lose your minds in a haze of traumatic aftermath and unchecked hormones.

To you, it was the greatest idea anyone had ever had in the history of mankind – to your neighbors, Eddie moving in has been a catastrophic turn for the worse.

Because at the end of the day you’re just a couple of horny kids, sharing four hundred square feet of space, most of which just so happens to be taken up by a queen sized bed.

There have been noise complaints abound, but honestly, what did anyone expect to happen?

And what did you expect to happen when all either of you seem to do outside of basic human function is fuck like bunny rabbits?

You bury your face in your hands and choke on a horrified moan as you wrack your brain trying to think if, in fourteen months of domestic bliss, you ever once remembered to use protection..

The answer is a resounding no.

Who has time for condoms when you’re busy living your life to the fullest? What’s the saying? Wrap it before you tap it? Not me! You both almost died, remember? Live a little!

At least that’s been the logic for fourteen fucking months.

Jesus wept.

In the silence of the store, in between the waning notes of royalty-free Muzak and the gentle murmur of outside traffic, you can hear the tick, tick, ticking of the overhead clock. Wretched time, quietly counting down the seconds as potential disaster comes hurtling toward you like an atomic bomb.

Your stomach is cramping again as you move out from behind the cash wrap and stagger over to aisle three on stiff legs��

Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God

– where you drop to balance on the balls of your feet and come face to face with the little white and purple boxes hanging there – pregnancy tests.

You think back to the way you’d so casually racked them the day before and cannot believe it never once crossed your mind.

Morning sickness.

Except you aren’t just sick in the morning, are you? You’re sick all the time, any hour of the day… so it’s probably not that, right? You probably just contracted some weird parasite at the lake or from a bad burger and now it’s wreaking havoc in your guts, right?

Right! a condescending voice tells you, It’s called a fetus.

Your mind outright rejects the notion, but now that the idea is there, the hint of nagging possibility will not be dismissed. So you sit there, eyeing the vaguely feminine graphic design, promising quick results in big bold letters.

Ten minutes or less.

You nibble your thumb and reach for the box before thinking better and stopping short.

Do you really want to know? And what are the consequences if you decide you don’t?

Maybe nothing.

Maybe big ones. Big round baby-belly-shaped ones.

You abuse your lower lip between your teeth and glance reflexively at your watch, which you discover is not there, but you’re too pressed to notice as you twist around to find the clock on the wall — half past one, and still no sign of Joyce.

You turn back to the promise on the box burning itself into your retinas — ten minutes or less — and count the months again.

The math doesn’t change. You’re definitely late, which means you are definitely—

Shut up! Don’t say it, don’t jinx it!

Then again maybe not…it’s a fifty-fifty chance, either you are or you aren’t. The answer lies in front of you, readily available in ten minutes or less.

…So, what’s ten minutes?

Joyce is still on a smoke break, so there is no one to cover for you, but what can possibly happen to an unmanned store in ten minutes? In Hawkins? On a Thursday?

Melvald’s is always slow — what are the odds you’re going to be hit with the first rush in the history of it’s time as a brick and mortar staple if you decide to pop back into the bathroom for a moment?

Ten minutes more like.

You tell yourself it doesn’t mean anything as you snatch the box off the shelf and wobble back out of the aisle on stiff legs.

Back to the employee’s restroom to take a pregnancy test – the reality of that information is profoundly disturbing.

You’ve never taken a test before — never had to — but you distinctly remember instances back in High school where you’d been enlisted to stand guard outside of a bathroom stall while Carol Perkins and Tina Burton took ��just in case” tests.

You just want to sate a curiosity — just in case. What’s the harm in taking a test?

It’s ten measly minutes.

When Joyce finally comes back in, it’s been fourty-five minutes since she originally left, and you’re a vibrating ball of nervous energy. You sit, bouncing your knee erratically, fidgeting with the ring with the dark stone sitting snug on your finger – a promise, given, returned, and given again, pulling your t-shirt up and asking for five more minutes… just five more minutes – and she greets you with a tight-lipped smile.

You hardly wait for her to get through the door before you’re rounding the counter.

“I don’t feel well,” You say in a garbled rush, snatching your bag from where you’ve had it strategically stashed at your feet since you slunk back out from the restroom a second time, “D’you think it’ll be okay if I head out?”

She blinks back at you, and for a very brief moment, you’re terrified that for the first time since you started here, someone is finally going to give a shit about you leaving.

Thank God Melvald’s is always slow.

“Oh. Sure, Honey. That’s–” Joyce begins, brows tweaked together in confusion as you rush past her.

You’re out the door and headed up the street before she can finish asking if you’re alright.

You don’t think you could stand to answer that question right now, and she couldn’t help you even if you did.

You need a quiet place to sit and think. You need to be swaddled in a blanket of cloying familiarity while you watch the rest of your world come crumbling down. You need… Eddie?

No, a voice answers, startling you almost as much as what you’d learned in those previous ten minutes. You don’t need Eddie. Not right now, at least.

Right now, what you need is for it to be like it used to be. You need an adult, you need to go home, but you don't live there anymore, and your parents haven’t lived in Hawkins since the Summer of 1985. You can't even call them, because if you do, they’re just going to come down here and try to take you away again, like they did when you got out of the hospital.

You can’t have a repeat of that mess. You can’t leave Eddie, but you also can’t face him just yet. You need to be sure before you can go home, and before that, you need to get as far away from Melvald’s as you possibly can.

You briefly consider calling Wayne, just to try and get the closest thing you can to fatherly advice, but what is he going to do for you? What is anyone supposed to do for you right now besides tell you that you ought to have known better?

You don’t need to be told what you already know. You need a second opinion, and you cannot get that sitting at home, socked in to four hundred square feet of domestic bliss with the ghost that haunts those walls.

But there is nowhere else you can go … not unless you want to make that long hike up Cornwallis and bang on the Henderson’s door like it’s the good old days and you’re there to babysit.

You’re not about to submit yourself to the abject humiliation of Dustin (or, God forbid, Claudia Henderson) finding out, because you can’t just go closing yourself up in their hall bathroom for ten minutes (or less) with no explanation. You'd have to tell them what was wrong, why you couldn't use your own bathroom, and you're not ready for that kind of drama.

You can just picture the look Dustin would give you, admonishing you with a terse utterance of your name and a heaping helping of as much paternal disdain as a fifteen year old boy can manage.

“Why weren’t you using protection?” He would demand, “— that’s the first thing they teach us in health class,” followed very quickly by a not so gentle reminder that “they hand out condoms at school like candy!”

As if you didn’t know that. As if you (and everyone you knew) didn’t used to come home with those shiny little packages lining the inside of your bookbag like legal contraband. For the duration of your tenure at Hawkins High, you lived in the surety that you could open any drawer in your bedroom and be sure to find a condom there.

Not that you needed one.

You were a virgin until you met Eddie, but none of that is any of Dustin’s business, and beyond the fact that you’re not in school anymore, you’re not going to go all the way up to his house just to take a pregnancy test.

You don’t need to, the soiled plastic applicator you’d hidden way down at the bottom of the wastebasket back in Melvald’s employee bathroom has already told you everything you need to know.

Suddenly, all you want to do is go home, crawl into bed and pull the covers over your head. You want to go back to the days of everyone telling you “you’re just a kid,” and you want to revel in the frustration of it.

More than anything, you want to smack yourself in the face for ever daring to suggest you were “grown up” enough for anything.

You’re just a kid. Eddie is just a kid. How could this have happened? Why on Earth didn't anybody stop you?

You just want to go home, but you can’t go home. Not yet, so you walk. One foot in front of the other, aimlessly without really seeing, and the next thing you know, you’re sitting at the warped, termite infested picnic bench in the woods behind Hawkins High, and you have no memory of getting there.

You know you should be more concerned about that.

Your shift is technically over at three, and you really should try to get home sometime around then (just so Eddie doesn't start to worry) but time was fake before you slipped back into the eternal dark of November ’83, and now you have no use for it at all, especially when you're so patently avoiding going home.

It seems like just yesterday you were sprinting out into the parking lot at Benny’s, ready to throw caution and everything you ever thought was important to the wind to go and save the jerk who’d so spectacularly broken your heart the previous summer – fifty-four Saturdays ago, your subconscious unhelpfully informs you.

It’s a wonder you’d actually convinced yourself that anything of what followed that week could be the scariest thing you’d ever have to endure. Turns out, giant man eating bats and interdimensional wizards are nothing compared to realizing your period is two months late.

You trace your thumb across the faded carvings in the tabletop and linger over your inscribed initials x E.M. – you did that, in the summer between your Sophomore and Junior year, in the first weeks of your official attachment to Eddie.

It felt like such an important gesture back then, but you had no idea what important looked like in those days.

You think back to those stupid kids who pledged to stand together against the world without knowing what that really meant, or just how viciously people could hate, and your heart throbs.

After everything that happened, Munson Mania in Hawkins has never been worse.

The good people of Roane County had already done all the mental gymnastics to decide that Eddie killed Chrissy. It fit perfectly in their narrative about him, and it would be too much work to untangle the mess they made coming to that conclusion, no matter what the second coming of Jim Hopper said. Guilty or not, they whisper among themselves, point fingers, hurl insults, and shout accusations.

Freak. Murderer. Psycho killer – qu’est-ce que c’est? – Barbed wire candy-grams for the town pariah, hurled like molotov cocktails, even in the light of the truth. The murky, inconclusive truth.

You had to learn how to adapt very quickly to the ramped-up prejudices of all these nice God-fearing people, because for a while there, Eddie couldn’t even walk down the street without fear of being reminded that everyone in this town thinks he’d be better off dead. The bolder of the good people of Hawkins have no shame about telling him so, either.

Now, Eddie stays mostly out of sight of all your neighbors and you take care of everything that has to be done.

You go out, do all the shopping, work to pay the bills, keep your life support afloat and you bend yourself painfully out of shape to be his shield. You provide the bread and butter and all the love he could ever possibly need. You smother him in it, keep him well fed and swaddled in affection so that he never has to feel the cold touch of its absence.

You're everything to him. Friend, lover, caretaker – you wish there was room for just a little bit of help in that, but Eddie doesn't have friends anymore.

He just has you.

Anyway, how are you supposed to explain to Adam and Jeff and Gareth that the Eddie lurking in the shadows of your basement apartment isn’t the Eddie they remember? What would they say if they knew he can’t make his fingers work well enough to play the guitar anymore, or that he can barely even look at his D&D books without breaking into a cold sweat?

You know what they’d say – they’d want to know why. They’d want to know what the hell happened, because when they’d tried to visit Eddie in the hospital, they got one look at him before making a bullshit excuse about needing to leave, and he didn’t want to see them again after that.

So now, when they call (and they so seldom call, these days) you tell them he's fine, and you hold them at bay, because it's your job to protect Eddie, no matter what. If that includes keeping all his friends in the dark, then so be it.

If you can’t get around to explaining what happened to Eddie, and what is so terribly wrong with him, you can’t even imagine trying to break the news that you’re pregnant.

Christ, how are you supposed to tell people when you can barely conceptualize it yourself?

How are you supposed to tell Eddie?

He can barely hear that you’re going to be working late or picking up a shift, because it means he’s going to have to stretch his imagination to find ways to occupy his time without you. It means a change in his routine, and routine is all he has besides bad habits and nightmares.

And now you’re just supposed to add a whole other person to that? One who can’t take care of themself or tell you what’s wrong or when they need something or when they’re on the brink of death or… or or or…?

Your stomach is in knots again, because having a baby is suddenly starting to sound just like having a whole other Eddie to take care of, and you can hardly manage one of him.

You have no idea how he is going to react to hearing that your tight little twosome is about to expand.

Eddie doesn’t have a lot of things that are strictly his, and when it comes to those things he is not exactly the sharing type.

He’ll go blue in the face arguing he doesn’t get jealous, then turn around and have a conniption when you stay on the shore of Lovers Lake with Dustin and send him out in the boat with the others… dot dot dot - dash dash dash - dot dot dot…

You bite back the cloying scent of mildew suddenly filling your sinuses and dig shallow crescent moons into your palms until you feel your feet touch back down on Earth. Then, all the hideous questions you’ve been successfully holding at bay all afternoon come flooding in like the tide.

What if Eddie doesn’t want this? What if this is one of those cataclysmic deal breakers and you lose him forever… again?

And why does this all suddenly feel like your fault?

In an instant, you’re once more brimming with that irrational anger, because if this is anyone’s fault, it’s his. He’s the one who always wants five more minutes, who pulls you back into bed and paws at your clothes and does all the little things he knows you can’t resist and takes and takes and takes.

He’s the one who did all the work – what did Carol and Tina used to call it? The good ol’ pump and dump?

How many mornings have ended with Eddie taking those five minutes more, then rolling over to go back to sleep while you run around trying to clean up the evidence and pull yourself back into shape?

He’s the master behind this little ritual, you’re just the vessel – and what is the vessel for if not to carry the seed?

You need to walk, you need to think. You need to talk to Eddie.

You take the long way home, going past the haunts of your youth and all the places you don’t go anymore. All the places you’ll never go again — all the places that don’t exist like your childhood home, the Starcourt Mall, Benny’s Diner, and the cozy little double wide on the far end of town, and you think about how Hawkins is a ghost town that doesn’t know its dead.

You walk, and you think about Eddie, like you always do.

You think about how bad those first few months were, about his nightmares and how he could barely stand to shut his eyes, let alone sleep because of the monsters waiting for him beyond the hypnotic pull of his circadian rhythms. You think about how in the beginning, sometimes he didn’t even have to close his eyes to become trapped down there in the dark again.

You think about how hard you’ve worked to get him to where he is now, all the blood, sweat, and tears it has taken to curb the itch for all the bad habits that got infinitely worse in his attempt to soothe all the things that hurt. Everything you had to do to center your world around his needs, his worries, his recovery, to make him feel safe. It’s taken a long time, with a lot of set backs, and a lot of bad days, but you tell yourself that you’re happy to have them at all.

Recovery is a road, not a destination, or at least that’s what Eddie’s physical therapists liked to say before he quit on them – if all you have to worry about is making sure the rent is paid and the pantry is stocked and the door is barred against the monsters out there, you’re fine with that.

Nevermind your nightmares and all the little things you have to do to cope.

You’re only the one who had to sit there and lie to Eddie that everything was going to be okay while his lips turned blue and his eyes went dark. You’re the one who had to stand at a basin in the hospital and try to scrub his blood out of your clothes, your skin, your hair and lock your knees to stay upright while you did everything you could to try and keep your shit together.

You’re the one who had to sit at his bedside and tune yourself in to the new normal of monitored heartbeats and machines forcing compressed air into collapsed lungs, feeling so incredibly helpless to do anything but wonder how you ever told such a hideous lie.

Everything is gonna be okay… you wish you could make yourself believe that.

On your really bad days, that helpless feeling comes roaring back so powerfully you feel like you’re going to collapse in on yourself like a dying star. It's those days that you can’t pull yourself away from Eddie no matter what, where you need those five minutes just as badly as he does, because you’re the one who sat there and told him he was going to be okay and then watched him die.

And then, when the feeling passes, you pull yourself up, straighten yourself out, and you go to work, because the only thing that matters is Eddie.

He’s the only thing you can count on when the world gets too loud, the memories of that other place get too close, and you begin to feel yourself slipping away. He’s the only thing keeping you grounded, even if he doesn’t know it, and you’re suddenly so worried that introducing a third element to your duet will blur those lines again.

You think about all your progress, how on your best days it almost feels like things are back to good, and you think about how all of that hard work is about to become extremely fucking secondary to the little parasite nestled in your womb – not a baby so much as a tapeworm.

The notion causes your insides to stir with anxiety.

How could you have been so careless?

And why would you or anyone expect anything else to happen when you’re just a couple of stupid kids playing house and sharing a studio apartment, which is getting smaller by the moment.

Kids having kids.

You should have known better.

Because time isn’t real, the sun is starting to set by the time you finally make your way home, well past three o'clock.

Past Melvald’s and ten minutes down the street to the concrete stone steps and into the recessed well containing the red door, marked with a tarnished silver six. You can still see the faintest outline of the other two sixes someone recently graffitied on either side of the metal placard – just in case anyone happened to forget who lives here – and suddenly you think you can hear the distant tones of Iron Maiden playing somewhere beyond.

Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number…

It is not the first time you’ve had the misfortune of living in Apartment 666, and as you fumble with your keys and glare at the lingering shadow of permanent marker on paint, you are certain it won’t be the last.

Funny how you never used to hate Hawkins before.

Now, you’re painted red with the feeling as you plunge the key into the lock and twist it hard enough that someday you’re certain the blade is going to snap off (and then what are you going to do?) Today, however, is not that day.

As you turn the key you hear the rotor shift over with a satisfying THUNK. You twist the handle, push the door, and nothing happens.

You groan to stop yourself from screaming, because despite what you think, the door is not out to get you.

You’re just having a very bad day.

The humidity the humidity signaling the inevitable heatwaves of the Indiana summer causes your front door to swell and stick, and you have to give it a firm kick to force it open. You know this, despite how you may have forgotten under the weight of everything else currently on your mind.

And yet, today, when the door sticks, it feels personal.

You grit your teeth and shut your eyes against it as you put your foot in the door and give it one more solid push. It swings inward, taking you with it and sending you staggering across the threshold and into the apartment.

The door swings shut behind you with a loud THUMP, and all goes quiet inside your head.

Just like that, you’re home.

A singular room made up of kitchen, dining, living, and bed area, all squeezed into four hundred square feet of what the landlord had originally referred to as “cozy living”, when it was just you and your broken heart.

Now, it’s a chaotic mish-mash of all your things and what you could salvage of Eddie’s before someone went and burned what was left of the Munson residence to a smoking husk.

When you get in, he is sitting on the unmade bed wearing the same sweat-stained t-shirt and pair of ratty pants he’s been in for the last three days. His hair is greasy and hanging limply around his face, which is lined in the shadow of a patchy stubble. You try to think back to the last time you remember him showering, shaving, brushing his teeth, doing anything but laying in bed watching television.

You aren’t shocked when the memory fails to arrive.

Don’t be unkind, that gentle voice comes again. You stamp it out before it can finish. It’s hard to be kind when all you have to cling to is the way things used to be.

Eddie used to have hobbies and interests and friends. Now, he only watches television and reads the TV guide until he’s got it memorized and waits for you to get home so he can use you to chase his demons away.

Eddie’s depressed and you’re pregnant – it’s not much to go on, competition-wise, but the poison of your mood is inclined to suggest that you got the short end of the stick on that one, considering it’s his depression that got you that way.

Nothing gives such an instant boost of dopamine like an orgasm, after all.

The apartment is a mess. There are dirty clothes and dishes everywhere, mixed in with piles of the clean you have yet to put away. Socks and underwear hang draped off the backs of the two rickety dining chairs from where you’d washed them in the sink and lay them to dry six days ago. The bedsheets are pushed down and hanging off the mattress, exposing half a dozen Hostess wrappers sitting on the rumpled, stained top sheet.

And there sits Eddie in the middle of it all with a hand down his pants and a lit cigarette pinched between his lips.

Your blood flash freezes and boils.

He’s supposed to be quitting. That same gentle – nagging – voice whines from the back of your mind. And he promised he wouldn’t smoke inside.

You have to clench your teeth until your ears start ringing to shut that little voice up.

“Hey!” Eddie yelps the moment you appear, leaping up and waving his arms around to try and disperse the smoke as he kicks the evidence of his afternoon indulgence off of the mattress and steps down with a hard thump – he’s limping ever so slightly as he crosses the room to you, “Hi! Shit… um… this isn’t what it looks like,”

Which is a bald faced lie – it is exactly what it looks like, and suddenly you can’t stop the mental tally of all the things you asked him to do today, and all the things that remain undone.

It makes your skin itch, then as he gets closer, you see the holes in his socks – holes in his neck and ribs where he’d nearly been eaten alive – and you remember too late that you’d promised to pick him up a new pack of crew socks on your way home from work. You forgot.

Part of you supposes that makes you even, and you stuff it down with everything else you’re not presently available to feel.

You decide you don’t care.

You don’t care that he’s smoking again even though he’s still not fully recovered from his collapsed lung, or that he gave up on physical therapy because it was too hard, or that he never does anything he says he’s going to and still always expects you to give him five more minutes.

And he probably still expects you to let him fuck you later on, even after all that.

You don’t care you don’t care you don’t care.

And after a moment, you’re surprised to find that you really don’t, (you do, you really fucking do) you’re just trying to see where the cigarette went when he less-than-subtly flicked it away.

The last thing you need to end your shitty day is to have the apartment burn down.

Eddie mistakes your silence for anger, as he always does, and you watch him begin to fidget as he waits for you to speak.

You don’t, because you don’t have anything to say, but also because he’s not wrong. You are angry.

You’re standing there, clenching your teeth and fists and doing everything in your power to swallow the urge to yell at him, or to nit pick all the things that are out of place in your apartment – no, not just yours anymore. He lives here, too – this is his home now.

“Where’ve you been?” Eddie asks when the tense silence becomes too much. “I was starting to get worried,”

He reaches for you and you surprise yourself by letting him pull you into a tight hug that feels a tad too much like it’s meant to try and distract you from everything he evidently decided was less important than smoking cigarettes, eating Twinkies, and playing with himself.

You’re mad as hell, and if you were paying any attention you would realize that the emotion is getting stronger by the moment, but you lean into him and snake your arms around Eddie’s midsection. You bury your face in his shirt and sigh against him as you chase the comfort of his embrace, waiting for the world to fall away and the cocoon of his safety to envelope you.

Once upon a time, all you needed was a good Eddie hug to chase your worries away. Now, under his touch, all you can think is how he reeks of nicotine and smoke and days old deodorant and everything else that comes with unwashed boy.

But you have to remind yourself that you don’t care, because he says he was getting worried.

“You were?” you ask, and your voice sounds odd against your ears.

“Yeah,” he shifts back and holds you to the spot, like he needs to get a good look at you to make sure you’re still you and that nothing has changed in the few hours it’s been since you left that morning — he worries so much these days. “I went to get you from work when you didn’t come home,” He says. “But you weren’t there.”

It sounds strangely accusatory, and you aren’t exactly sure what to do with that as a solid lump begins to form in the back of your throat.

He rubs his hands up and down your arms in a soothing gesture, like he’s attempting to create friction in slow motion. It’s something he’s always done that has been comforting in the past, but right now it is only making a sore spot where he’s rubbing the skin raw.

You look from his attempt at gentle, reverent contact to where he is carefully watching you, and feel your brows creep toward one another as that irrational anger begins to rise in the pit of your belly.

This is all his fault, and part of you seems to think he knows that, even if he doesn’t know.

“Okay, I can see that you’re mad…” Eddie starts, doing his utmost to remain as diplomatic as possible so as not to set you off but also to accept no responsibility, “… are you mad?”

You don’t answer. You don’t even look at him, instead you crane your neck trying to see around him to find that goddamn cigarette before it can catch and send everything up in smoke… literally.

You feel Eddie’s fingers flex on your biceps.

“Don’t be mad. I was gonna get around to it, I swear, but then you didn’t come home from work and… and I was worried! I didn’t know where you were,” .

Anger subsides — if only briefly — and you get almost all the way around to feeling guilty about that until you clock the cigarette butt smoldering on the yellowing linoleum in front of the kitchen sink, and then Eddie finishes his sentence.

“...And I didn’t know if you were gonna be home for dinner,”

He flinches when your head snaps around and you finally level him with a poisonous look.

“So you smoked half a pack of camels and ate a box of Twinkies?” you scoff.

You want to ask where he even got those, but then you remember. He went to Melvald’s looking for you, and when he didn’t find you there, he must have figured he deserved a treat for braving the big, scary world.

He gets a treat and you get to watch your world crumble – you could spit fire.

Eddie’s mouth falls open like he’s going to say something to defend himself, but then he just laughs. You can tell it’s out of nerves rather than humor, the way he always does when he’s caught red handed and doesn’t know what to say to get himself out of trouble.

You would punch him if you weren’t half certain he would break into a thousand pieces if you did. Even then you’re not so sure you’d feel worse about breaking your boyfriend or having to vacuum him up off the floor after.

“I was worried!” Eddie insists when you turn away and throw your keys into the dish with a thunderous crash.

“You said that already.” You snap, storming across the tiny living space and stooping to pinch the half burned stock of cinders and throw it into the sink with a hiss.

You almost wish that he would have just given you that kicked puppy look, then you could have at least felt bad about biting his head off. But no, he had to go and get irreverent on you.

Hi honey, welcome home! I know I said I would clean up and do some house work and stop smoking so I don’t get lung cancer by the time I’m thirty and die, but you see, I can’t be fucked to care about anything but myself! But remember, it’s not my fault, I’m depressed!

You’d spent so much time worrying about what you were going to say to him, how you were going to break the news, but as you step out of your shoes and drop your bag onto it’s designated doorside hook, you decide that if he can’t be fucked than neither can you.

Those little pink lines say differently.

You suddenly feel ready to burst.

You cross to the bed, snatch up one of the pillows and press it to your face, then you scream as loud and long as you can. When you’re satisfied that your lungs are completely flattened, you lean forward and drop down onto the mattress with a muffled THUMP, and let the tide take you out.

It’s just one more thing that douses you in a fresh layer of red. Because your first foray into real adulthood didn’t begin with moving in together, or engaging in excessive amounts of sex just because you could, or even the unexpected addition to your lives — it began with the waterbed Eddie had insisted upon.

After he was discharged from the hospital, you learned very quickly that your mattress was too soft for his broken body, and the nice, “sensibly priced” one you’d gone out and tried to replace it with had ended up being too firm.

After all that talk and research and careful consideration, all the work you put into trying to make him comfortable in his new home, in this new situation, and the mattress was too goddamn firm.

Then came the waterbed, and Eddie’s first full night of sleep since leaving the hospital, and you didn’t dream of sending the damned thing back, no matter how badly you hated it.

You still hate it as you lie there, coasting on the waves and stewing in all the ugly thoughts and feelings and emotions that you are meant to be safe from inside the vacuum chamber of your apartment.

For a time, all you hear is the muffled sloshing of the trussed up waterballoon and the gentle murmuring of informercials playing on the half muted television. Then, you hear the slow thump of footsteps approaching and feel the mattress dip and slosh beside you.

Your guts heave and for a brief, yet terrifying moment, the nausea returns.

“...D’you wanna talk about it?” Eddie asks tentatively from somewhere not nearly close enough.

“No.” You say, knowing well enough that this is not a conversation you can keep putting off.

“Okay…” he says, sucks his teeth, then tries again, “D’you wanna hear about my day?”

“No.” You insist.

“Great. So today, I got up at a reasonable hour and totally didn’t sleep in until two-thirty again. I did everything you asked me to and ate a healthy, full balanced meal and only watched, like, half an hour of tv – don’t worry, just PBS, Babe, only the really boring, educational shit. But I swear on my life, this whole place was spotless … and then out of no where – WHAM! You’ll never guess what happened.”

He pauses for effect, and waits for you to play along, to rise to his prompting like you normally do, but he’s sorely mistaken if he thinks you’re in the mood for games. You wire your jaw shut and leave him waiting for you to answer. When you don’t, Eddie repeats himself,

“You’ll never guess what happened.”

Finally, he prods you sharply under the armpit with two fingers, and you flinch, curling into yourself with the kind of high yelp that can only come from being tickled.

“Ask me what happened.” he prompts when you uncover your face to glare at him.

You tell yourself you won’t, but you’ve never been able to resist him, even when you’re mad. Especially when you’re mad, and especially with the way he’s leaning over and looking at you, all soft eyes and long lashes. Because in spite of the smoking and the lying and everything else, every part of you loves every part of him, even when you want to punch him in the face.

“What happened.” You mutter reluctantly, not a question so much as a submission – Eddie smiles.

It’s a half hearted thing that doesn’t reach his eyes, but you know what it’s meant to convey – Good Girl. Your heart skips a beat and you kick yourself for still being so stupid for him, even after all this time. You’re supposed to be mad at him.

He shrugs.

“Killer Klowns,” He says, and you roll your eyes.

“...you gotta be kidding.”

You turn away to bury your face back in the pillow, and Eddie keeps on talking and talking and talking, because that’s all he does anymore – try to talk himself out of trouble. Funny, the way he never seems to remember how that never works for him.

“Baby? Baby – hand to God…” he says, pausing again. You just lie there and wait for him to finish, “...They were from Outer Space.”

And when his joking fails to garner any sort of joy, the sentiment goes out of him in an almost tangible wave. For a moment, there’s nothing but measured silence as the refrigerator kicks on and vibrates gently against his guitar, hidden from sight and collecting dust.

In the interval of time between your release from the hospital and Eddie’s homecoming, you went looking for what could be saved in the wreckage of the Munson trailer. Thankfully, you knew where to look for what was most precious, like the family photos and heirlooms. You rescued what you could and replaced what you couldn’t, but there are some things that are too precious to ever replace.

Things like Eddie’s guitar.

When the world came tumbling down in those last few moments of whatever the hell happened at the end there, Sweetheart had taken brutal damage, and that was before someone burned the place down. She was barely clinging to life when you finally unearthed her from the rubble – all but one of her strings had snapped, the heat of the fire had caused her resin to bubble and warp, and without its protective layer, someone had been able to stomp her body nearly to oblivion.

The violence of it broke your heart, and you’re not ashamed to admit you’d kneeled over her carcass and wept when you found her.

It made you physically sick to have to return her to Eddie in such a state, but there was only so much you could do without taking time and money you couldn’t spare to get her out to the Guitar Center in Indianapolis.

She’d once been his prized possession, the focal point of his bedroom put on proud display, the only other woman in his life, now, she’s just some forgotten thing tucked into the space between the refrigerator and the wall, hidden from sight and collecting dust.

Somehow that’s worse than any of it.

Eddie told you it was because the apartment was so small and she fit so perfectly in that alcove, but you know it’s because after all that happened, he can’t stand to look at her.

The refrigerator vibrates against her twisted body, and slowly, the room begins to fill with the muted buzz of a low E.

“I’m sorry, Sweetheart.” Eddie sighs, and it takes you a moment to realize he’s talking to you.

You feel the mattress dip as his hand comes down to rest at the side of your hip, caging you in beneath him, “I’m just trying to make you feel better… honest.”

You heave a weighted sigh and roll over onto your back, throwing your arms over your eyes and baring down until you see spots and colors and stars. He settles down over you, and when you feel his weight come down to rest on your belly, your heart briefly palpitates.

You have to stifle the urge to tell him to be careful, because he doesn’t know. How could he know? You haven’t told him.

“I’m sorry,” He says again, and you can’t help yourself.

“You’re always sorry when you get caught, but you always do it again.” You bite.

You feel the corner of his mouth twitch against you and for a long time you both just lie there, wondering how the hell you got here.

You like to think that under normal circumstances you might not stick around for so much bullshit, but unfortunately for you, your life never got back to normal after you put it on hold to go looking for the jerk last spring, and now you’re committed to him, warts and all.

And the pair of you have always existed outside the bounds of “normal circumstances” anyway.

It occurs to you now that this is exactly why you’d been so leery about coming straight home. You’d needed time to prepare before facing Eddie, to be certain before having to explain yourself, because it’s your job to protect him, but how are you supposed to protect him from himself, especially when he’s hell bent on following this path of self destruction to the end of the line?

But you’re still not certain, and you’re starting to think you really need to take another test…

“Where’d you go earlier?” Eddie mumbles dejectedly - you feel his voice rumble in the pit of your stomach and it sends the faintest stirrings of something you absolutely do not want to be feeling down through your central cortex – arousal.

“Nowhere.” You say, distantly feeling your lips move and the vibration of your voice, but not hearing yourself speak.

Before you realize what you’re doing, you shift your lower body, ever so subtly trying to move your hips up in search of a little friction.

Stop that, you silly bitch. You are not going to give him a pity fuck just because you feel bad about making him feel bad.

You sigh.

“I just needed to walk a little… stretch my legs… guess I lost track of time,” and then, “Sorry,”

Eddie says something, and you are vaguely aware of responding – him asking if everything is okay and you dismissing the question, building up another layer of that lie and reassuring him that everything is fine…

At least, you think that’s what you said, you can’t be certain because his voice is still buzzing down through your belly and stirring that raunchy little pot, and you’re still fighting tooth and nail to stop your hips from squirming.

You know if you don’t do something, you’re absolutely going to end up giving him a pity fuck, and that’s exactly how you ended up in the situation you’re in now. Because when Eddie calls, you come running, no matter what.

I should tell him.

You try to take another one of those deep, steadying breaths to banish the skittery tightness forming in your chest, and you choke on it.

Something begins to press in at the back of your eyes, welling up and crowding them in your sockets. Your vision blurs and before you realize what is about to happen, your lashes flood with hot, stinging tears.

You begin to cry.

Goddammit. It really has just been a very shitty day.

You uncover your eyes long enough to mask the motion of wiping away the wetness streaming across your cheeks by checking your watch, and you see that it is not there. A bright burst of panic sparks in your chest sending adrenaline shooting down to the tips of your fingers and toes before you remember how you’d removed it to wash your hands after being sick in the employee bathroom at Melvald’s.

Before your life came grinding to a halt in ten minutes or less.

I should tell him.

You imagine – you hope – your watch is still sitting there on the edge of the sink. And then you remember that it doesn’t matter if it is, because time stopped in November of 1983.

Time isn’t real, it’s just another Thursday.

You heave another one of those measured breaths – this one a little wetter and shakier than the last – and drop your arms to come down gently over Eddie’s shoulders.

You sniffle and sigh, and he immediately twists over to look up at you.

You look down and meet wide brown eyes – sad eyes – duller than they’ve been in months, red rimmed and ringed in dark circles like bruises. He’s so pale, his full lips are dry and cracked and raw from where you know he’s been biting at them.

Eddie’s brows come together to form a deep crease of worry and suddenly your face is bracketed in his hands, brushing at the wetness you can’t manage to stem and apologizing endlessly for everything he’s ever done wrong.

He doesn’t know what he did to hurt you, but he’s sorry for it. Sorry, sorry, always so incredibly sorry – how many times can someone say something before it loses all meaning?

Sorry doesn’t mean shit coming from Eddie – yes it does, don’t be unkind.

He’s depressed, and you’re pregnant, and now you’re crying about it and he’s desperate to take the blame for it.

To his credit, Eddie hauls himself up to meet you and pulls you into his arms, crushing you against him as you go to pieces. You can feel the uncertainty radiating off of him.

He wants to know why you’re crying, so you should just get it over with and tell him, right? You can’t make the words come out, and now that you’ve started crying, you can’t stop.

He deserves to know, but it’s your job to protect him, and so long as you keep this secret to yourself, he’s still safe from the harm it might cause. Everything is still okay, you just have to keep holding that door.

It takes what feels like a very long time before you calm down, and even after you do, you just lay there facing each other, feeling Eddie’s eyes boring holes into your forehead.

You have to tell him.

“Are you mad?” Eddie asks before you can get the chance, reaching across to thumb away one last stray tear from the hollow beneath your eye – the lump in your throat threatens to swell again.

Tell him now.

You swallow hard and try not to choke on it.

“Yes,” you say honestly, “But not at you … not really,”

The corner of his mouth twitches again as he tries and fails to smile.

“Who do you need me to beat up?” Eddie asks in his best approximation of something he might have said once upon a time. It doesn’t hit quite the way it used to, and despite the shy smile that quirks up at the corner of your lips, you feel a sharp stab of grief for the person you lost on the other side of the world.

It's not a fair thought to have. He’s still here, part of him at least, and he’s fighting to get back to you with everything he’s got.

You know he’s trying, and it immediately floods you with guilt. About biting his head off, about lying, about going missing long enough to leave him wondering what the hell could have happened to you.

That was selfish of you, but you’re not going to apologize for it, because above everything else he said he was going to do, he promised to take better care of himself.

You suppose that makes you even.

The silence that follows is unbearably weighted, like a sopping wet blanket – like the air in the other place – and you have to make yourself look at him to make sure you haven’t gone suddenly deaf, and to make sure he’s still there.

When you look, you’re not surprised to find that Eddie is looking too, like he’s had the same thought and it’s struck him with a bolt of blinding fear. You both do that a lot now, go checking to make sure the other is still there, even when you’re laying pressed against each other like this.

He’s giving you that strange hard look you’ve come to know very well. It’s the same look he had on his face every time you caught him staring at you over the course of that long, terrible week last spring – the one he gives you when he knows something is wrong, but he is too afraid to ask on the off chance that he’s right about it. It’s the way his face looks all the time, now, ever since he got out of the hospital.

Are we okay? He wants to ask, Do you still love me?

Because no matter how many times you tell him, it never seems to settle in. He always needs to hear it one more time.

He always needs five more minutes.

Just five minutes more more more more more –

Well, what about what you need? You’re the one watching your life fall apart, you’re the one who’s pregnant.

Then again, how do you know you haven’t been hallucinating the whole thing? You do have to tell him, but you really ought to take another test, just to be really, really sure before you share your findings with the class.

A false positive isn’t unheard of. What’s the harm in a second opinion? You won’t know until you know.

Eddie follows when you sit up, and quickly takes your hands back from where you’ve begun scrubbing them furiously against your face, trying to rid yourself of the cloying miasma of salt drying tacky on your skin.

“Don’t do that,” he tells you, and you don’t even bother asking him why.

He does it because you would have done it to him.

That’s how he operates now, relying heavily on what he knows you would do moment to moment, because he’s still that lost in the reeds. It’s the only way he knows how to take care of himself anymore: what would you do for him in any given situation?

The next thing you know, you’ve got your arms around his neck, squeezing him as tight as you dare, as tight as you think he needs to be held just to remember that he’s still here, and you wish like hell he would just pick up what you were putting down already. You wish he would know exactly what is going on with you without even asking, like he used to.

But you know he can’t, his mind is too clouded for the kind of clairvoyance lovers share anymore.

Eddie’s head thumps forward to rest atop your shoulder and strong arms – less strong than they used to be – squeeze you tight enough around the midsection to cause something in your back to pop. You don’t care. It’s grounding and it’s what you’ve needed all afternoon.

You go chasing the feeling as you breathe in another two-count and exhale on three, twisting your head to bury your nose into the crook of his neck.

He stinks like days old sweat and your perfume.

“I’m sorry I was mean,” you say into the filthy curtain of his hair, and you’re suddenly reminded of how you’d stood together like that in the dark of his bedroom a lifetime ago, counting down the moments you had to spare before you slipped back into the other place for the last time.

“S’okay,” Eddie slurs, and you feel the guilt of it throb painfully in your chest as you nuzzle against him, trying to slip beneath the surface and occupy the space beneath his skin.

It’s the only way he’ll ever feel close enough without being inside of you – the gentle rumbling of your prior arousal begins to stir again, and you have to remind yourself that you’re not doing that.

“I love you,”

He makes a soft sound and you feel his fingers flex against you, digging needily into your skin and pulling you up into his lap.

“Say that again,” he says, holding you against him.

The fibers of his well worn t-shirt make the beginnings of a friction burn against your cheek as you shift to compensate for this new position – it’s hard to stay tucked against him now that you’re sitting above him, harder still not to sit right down and press the seam of your pussy against the bulge you can feel forming in his sweatpants.

For the sake of your own self preservation – why? It’s not like he can get you more pregnant than you already are – you sit back on his thighs and bring your hands up to grace the curve of his throat. Eddie tilts his head back to follow and gaze up at you through his lashes.

“Say it again,” he says, and days old stubble scratches the ridge of your knuckles as you stroke the side of his face.

“I love you,” you say thickly, for all the times you said it and he didn’t believe you, and all the times he needed to hear it and you kept it to yourself.

You listen as Eddie breathes out a shaky, charcoally sigh. His eyes slide shut and he lets his head drop forward to thump against your sternum. For half a blessed second, everything feels exactly like it should. Not like it used to, but as right as it possibly can be after everything that’s happened.

It’s just you and Eddie.

You and Eddie and the sea monkey growing inside of you.

Just like that, your brief moment of perfect peace begins to crack. You curl your arms around his neck in defiance of it and squeeze him a little tighter and do everything you can to hold it in place.

He’ll be okay if you just hold him tight enough. Everything will be okay – nothing bad can happen when you’re together.

Except for all the bad that happened at Rick’s Place and Lover’s Lake and on the other side of the world and… shut up shut up shUT UP!

Everything is going to be fine.

You’ll tell Eddie your secret, and he’ll tell you that everything will be alright. You’ll figure it out, like you always do, and you’ll be happy to have whatever you end up with.

You press your lips into the crown of his head, and he makes a soft sound beneath you.

You tell yourself you ought t0 do it now. Don’t make a big deal out of it, but tell him and get it over with all the same so you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Eddie will help you – you don’t know how, but he will. He’s the only one who can help you, so just tell him.

“Are you hungry?” You ask.

Coward.

He shakes his head and breathes a deeply melancholic sigh into your collar. Of course he isn’t, he’s full of sugar and coffee and nicotine, he’s not going to be hungry until next week.

Still, you know he’s going to crash hard and be sick in the morning if you don’t make him eat something besides processed pound cake. He’s not hungry, but he’ll eat if you’re eating — the thought of food makes your insides clench and heave.

“Are you?” He asks, shifting back so he can look at you again – in another life you watch him retreat to the stove at Rick Lipton’s place.

“I made dinner,” that Eddie says, and you’re thrust into a memory of sitting with your heads bowed together over a flaking linoleum table, a sticky pot of Spaghetti-o’s and a hundred and one unsaid things between you — your stomach roils with nausea.

“No, I’m good.” you tell this Eddie, your Eddie.

That Eddie was your Eddie too, and sometimes you miss him so badly you can hardly breathe.

You shift further back on his knees so you can look at him, really look at him, and tell him – you have to tell him – and you take his hands in yours.

“Eddie, listen – there’s something we need to talk about…” You start, and feel him tense beneath you.

You know what he’s thinking, more bad news. He’s about to lose something else, and you don’t have the heart to quell those fears just yet. If you get stuck trying to make it all better before it even begins, you’ll never get the words out.

You have to tell him.

Deep breath in – the words sit on your tongue like burning coals, and yet you continue to fail to spit them out – just say it.

Two measly little words and it will be over.

I’m pregnant.

Say it, say it now … for the love of God, say anything.

It’s only when you turn Eddie’s hands up to see his palms that you are saved from your sudden onset muteness as a spot of bright blood drying tacky in the creases of his hand makes itself known.

“Oh, my God!” You gasp, wondering how in the hell you didn’t see that before, “What happened?”

“Nothing.” He mumbles, jerking his arm back to try and hide the wounded extremity. “It’s just a splinter.”

You can feel your face pulling into a frown, even if you aren’t conscious of intentionally emoting, and you reach after him.

“Let me see,” you say — Eddie says, because you’re out in the woods with two broken fingers that need setting and a black eye courtesy of Jason Carver, “Baby, let me see…”

To his credit, Eddie doesn’t put up as much of a fight as you did back then, though only because you think after all this time he doesn’t have much fight left, and gives you his hand when you reach for it back in the here and now.

Fingers in his, you turn his palm up again to scrutinize his shoddy work and feel your heart stutter.

He’s dug a needlessly ugly crater into the calloused meat between his forefinger and thumb. Sticky, semi-coagulated blood is still oozing up in a ring around the faint shadow marring his flesh, and for half a second you’re afraid he’d gone and done something stupid like try to extract the foreign agent with a pair of scissors.

When you look, you’re semi-relieved to see that it is only a pair of worn needle nose pliers balancing precariously on the bedside table. Still, you bite the pulpy mass you’ve spent the day chewing into the inside of your cheek until you taste blood to stop yourself from saying anything about it.

Eddie has always been such a boy, blundering through life and bashing his skull against problems because someone once told him to “use his head”. He always makes everything harder than it needs to be, and then wonders why he doesn’t feel any better by the end of it.

“I couldn’t find the tweezers,” he explains sheepishly.

You look up at him and gaze into those big sweet doe eyes — pretty eyes. Sad eyes.

“They’re in the drawer —” You remind him, taking gentle hold of his face in one hand and squeezing, “—where they belong,” and then you push up to stand over him, “I’ll get them.”

You turn for the bathroom and don’t let go of his hand until the pull of distance demands it – his fingers slip from your grasp, and you blink back the beating of heavy wings and gnashing teeth, wrenching you out of his touch and into the dark of your mind’s eye.

Across the room and into the little bathroom, you shut the door behind you.

You click the lock.

You don’t know why you do that, except maybe because you’ve been doing it all day, and you’re desperate for a moment to yourself in this four hundred square foot box of self pity. You tell yourself you only need a moment, but suddenly you can’t imagine that naïve girl who had been so ready to never have to bother with something like personal space and boundaries again.

What a foolish little thing she was.

Young love doesn’t have the foresight for things like the shock of falling into the toilet at three o’clock in the morning because Eddie’s never lived with someone who doesn’t take a piss standing up and you’ve never had to navigate sharing a bathroom with someone who does.

The learning curb has been steep.

You drop the toilet seat with a loud clacking thump and you upend the grocery bag of prenatal contraband you’d smuggled out of Melvald’s.

Part of you hopes Eddie didn’t see you grab your bag off the hook, but you suppose if he did, you’ll have to explain that behavior later, though at that point, you imagine he’ll have a lot more on his mind than wondering why you need to bring your purse with you to the bathroom.

You drop your jeans, pee on the stick, and gnaw your fingers to the bone as you witness a little more of your life flash before your eyes with every passing second until you count out ten minutes … or less, as the packaging so boldly promised.

And when you receive your second opinion, you decide you could stand to get a third, so you lean over the bathroom sink, guzzle as much tap water as you can stomach and you do it all over again.

Colors and shapes and stars explode across your vision in a kaleidoscopic dance as you dig the heels of your palms into the jelly of your eye sockets and you wait … wait… wait to see what will happen next.

There you sit, wringing your hands, bouncing your knees, and you wait ten minutes and ten minutes more until you get your results in thin pink lines and bright blue tabs and little green plus signs.

Positive results, which means…

“Shit.” You hiss — the plastic casing creaks and begins to tremble in your hands, “Fuck!”

A sharp rap on the door sends you leaping damn near out of your skin and the test goes clattering to the floor.

The action is followed by a cautious utterance of your name, muffled by layers of wood vinyl and hollow core.

Your heart lurches– along the bottom of the bathroom door, you can see the subtle shadow of idling movement. You forgot about Eddie, and you wonder with a start just how long he has been standing there, waiting for you.

For ten minutes or less, you imagine. You have to swallow the urge to tell him to go away.

“Are you okay?” He asks, and you suddenly feel ready to burst into tears again – goddamn hormones.

You glance down at the strip of plastic casing and cardboard bullshit, at the two pink lines standing boldly against the soiled backdrop and grinning wickedly at you for all the smart decisions you didn’t make over the course of the last fourteen months of domestic bliss.

The answer rockets to the front of your mind.

No. You’re not okay. You’re pregnant.

You swallow hard to try and banish the cobwebs blooming in your throat, and when they thicken, you swallow again.

Eddie is speaking before you can decide how to answer him.

“… are you feeling sick again?”

You just manage catch to catch the burst of bitter laughter before it can come bleating out of you, and you shake your head for no one in particular.

“Yeah – I mean no.” You say unevenly, “I’m okay, I’m just–” Pregnant. “–feeling a little bit off.”

You know between the vagueness of the answer and the discovery of a locked door between you, Eddie’s mind is bound to be spinning out with worry.

He worries so much about everything these days — just wait until he finds out about the baby, that’ll really give him something to worry about.

You listen to him shifting his weight from one socked foot to the other on the carpet, to the soft thump that follows and has you picturing him resting his forehead on the door jamb.

You brace your hands on your knees and push up to stare at your reflection, eyes heavy and ringed with exhaustion, about to get so much worse when you’ve got a tiny helpless creature screaming its lungs out at you in the inability to communicate.

You hear the tentative rasping of your name eke out from behind the door, and watch the handle jiggle in the mirror.

All you want is to go to bed, sleep this weirdness off, and wake up tomorrow to find that everything has gone back to normal.

Not the normal of this morning’s blissful ignorance, but the normal of days past. Of school days and homework and gossip and when the only thing you had to worry about not getting caught sneaking out of class just to steal five minutes behind the bleachers with Eddie.

The salad days.

You just want things the way they were — Eddie the way he used to be and you the way you used to be, sitting tucked away together in his bedroom at the old place, before anything went wrong and it was just you and your dreams for the future.

More than anything, though, you wish you could buck up the courage to tell Eddie you’re pregnant so you can drop this suffering in silence bullshit.

You carefully wrap everything back in that same plastic bag you never want to see again and stash it in the cabinet beneath the sink, tucked in behind all your forgotten bottles of shampoo and cleaning supplies, where no one will accidently find them.

Then, you push up on creaky legs and address the elephant in the other room. You don’t unlock the door.

“I’m gonna shower,” you watch your reflection say, it is a hollow, robotic sound, and Eddie doesn’t answer right away. You can hear him just outside the door.

Thinking. Worrying.

Pouting more like.

And you know he’s going to ask before he even says it.

“…D’you want some company?”

Bingo.

Never has a sentence embodied a more desperate plea to be let in — he may as well have been scratching at the door and whining like a dog who’s been locked out.

Let me in let me in let me in please let me in.

You clench your teeth and blink back another wave of those pervasive tears pressing at the backs of your eyes as a strange, misplaced resentment wells suddenly in you.

It’s a startling feeling.

Not the same as the cheap, petty anger you’d felt before but a black and violent thing that does not belong to you. It has no business existing inside of you, and yet here it is, telling you that you can’t stand it. You can’t stand how much Eddie needs you all the time. You give him everything you have and he always needs more.

Just five more minutes, please just give me five more minutes. Don’t leave me, just love me, let me in, let me in Please please please.

It’s not his fault. You tell the violent feeling. He’s depressed. He doesn’t have hobbies anymore…

He doesn’t have anything anymore — it bites back, he just has you.

You shake your head in melancholic defiance of these conflicting feelings.

He needs me. You insist.

He’s using you up. It responds. He’s smothering you.

And you hate the feeling for being right. All he does is take and take and take, and you’re nothing if not a fool for giving him everything he needs and then some. You love Eddie more than anything, more than everything, but if he doesn’t stop taking, there’s not going to be anything left for you… for this—

“—Baby?” Eddie calls faintly, startling you again.

You have to take a moment longer than is probably necessary to calm yourself enough to decide whether or not you can stomach his “company” right now.

“No,” you sigh, “I just wanna wash the day off.”

You imagine the pang of fear lancing through his chest as an invisible box is ticked off: the second sign of trouble.

Locked door. His alarm bells are ringing. Can’t get to you. You’re trapped trapped trapped. Let me in let me in let me in let me –

There is the scratching of the chewed edge of his thumbnail digging into the painted wood, peeling it — probably causing another splinter — and you have to bite your tongue to keep from telling him to stop doing that, because you’re not going to get your security deposit back.

Who cares about security deposits or contraception or personal space, you both almost died, remember? Live a little!

You turn away from the stranger in the mirror and face the door, forcing yourself to sound chipper as you make empty promises about the future to the foreign shell of the person you have to remind yourself you love.

“I’ll be out in a jiffy,” you call unevenly, “…just let me rinse off, okay?”

There is a long moment of disappointed silence before Eddie finally responds.

“...Mm’kay…”

Fading footsteps thrum a gentle beat as you step out of your abused and crinkled jeans. Oddly, you feel like you’ve spent more time out of them today than in them, and that might almost be funny if it weren’t for the circumstances.

There is a moment of peace as you continue undressing, then the rapid thump thump thump of returning steps. A sharp knock summons another one of those long-suffering sighs whooshing up from the deepest recesses of your body.

“What do you need, Eds?” You ask a little too harshly, pinching your eyes toward the bridge of your nose with your forefinger and thumb.

You tell yourself you’re not angry with him, you’re just tired and uncertain and scared of that uncertainty.

“Tweezers.”

Oh. Right.

They’re in the drawer, neatly tucked away and exactly where they belong. Just where you said they’d be.

You crack the door as far as you dare and don’t look at your boyfriend when you take his palm in your hand, despite the holes you can feel him boring into the top of your head.

Don’t shut me out — please – oh, God, please let me in! he begs you with only a few short breaths as you pluck the thick spur of plywood from his hand and douse it in rubbing alcohol for good measure.

Eddie hisses and bends to kiss you on the cheek. You let him do it, then shut the door in his face.

If he didn’t know there was something wrong before, he’s bound to be crawling out of his skin with it now.

You don’t care, and you feel terrible about it as you lean over the tub to pull the pin and turn the water on.

The shower head roars to life, and as it fills the room with noise and steam, you can barely hear yourself think – thank God.

You stand under the stream and let the water run hot on you until it goes cold, and even then you linger and accept the beating it gives you.

Eyes shut, senses dulled, body pinging with goosebumps, you feel your muscles begin to loosen and relax. The outside world goes swirling down the drain, and you finally let your hand creep up to touch your belly. You splay your fingers over the expanse of skin and hold it there, feeling for something, anything, some sign of the life lurking there among your guts. When you don’t feel anything — why would you feel anything when the baby is not even a baby yet — you try your hand at rubbing the spot, back and forth, like you’ve seen people do to their fake pregnant bellies in the movies.

The results are middling beneath pruning fingers and the shower head is pinging ice at you now, stabbing you in the scalp, so you decide with no small amount of disappointment that it’s time to get out.

Just as you expected, Eddie is waiting for you when you flick off the bathroom light and re-emerge into the bedroom/living room/kitchen combo.

You’re almost surprised to find that the room has been more or less straightened. It’s not clean, by any stretch of the word, but trash, clothes, and all manner of discarded knick-knacks have been removed from the floor and stashed in other strategic places. The bedsheets have been tidied in the best approximation Eddie can manage for making a bed, though you can’t say it looks much different than it did before. He couldn’t do it right before he had his guts ripped out, and time and practice has had no effect on that inefficiency.

He’s sitting there on the bed, trying to look casual with his long legs stretched out, ankles crossed, arms crossed, fingers crossed, and you give him a weak smile as you enter, holding your towel and heading for the chest of drawers on your side of the bed. You stop short when you notice the clothes he’s laid out for you: an oversized Houston Oilers t-shirt you’d thrifted for him before he came to stay and a soft pair of shorts – how unbearably sweet.

“Feel better?” He asks hopefully, boyishly, as you step into the shorts.

You nod, and you can’t even call it a lie, because getting the muck of the world out of your skin and hair has made enough of an impact to improve your headspace exponentially.

At least you don’t feel like you’re about to start screaming anymore – Jefferson Starship is happy enough to do that for you, howling to the elusive Jane, still playing that same old game she never can win.

Eddie’s put on the mixtape you made him in the summer of ‘84, which you’re not certain he’s ever heard the end of – if only because he can’t make it through Dancing Queen without saying something snide about ABBA and disco as a whole – but he’s trying to make it better.

You tell yourself that, in spite of everything else, you have to give him credit for that as you slip the t-shirt over your head and walk your towel back to the bathroom.

And if he’s trying, then you’re a fool for not trying too, so you do your best to put a happy look on your face when you reemerge and jerk your thumb over your shoulder.

“Okay, your turn.”

His mouth drops open, but you don’t let him protest.

“Go on – git.” You say, affecting a thick southern drawl to try and lighten the mood.

Eddie just frowns at you.

“If you wanted me to shower you shoulda let me join you,” He grouses.

You stick him to the spot with a pointed look.

“If I’d let you join me, we wouldn’t be getting clean in there, and you know it.” You press, “I mean it, Eds. You smell like a garbage truck. When’s the last time you showered?”

He snorts and does his best to make the jab to his ego look like feigned hurt feelings, but you can see the edges of his mask flickering. Not even near death had been enough to dampen that ego of his.

It’s a bizarre thing to witness what is left of the Eddie from before fighting for real estate with what has grown into the Eddie here and now. If you could capture it in an image, you’d hang it on the wall and call it “the duality of man,”, but that wouldn’t help you to get Eddie into the shower any more than your attempt at gentle coaxing.

You have to resist the urge to offer some sort of trade off, because there are scant few things that motivate Eddie these days that don’t end with you opening your legs for him. And you have to remind yourself, once more for the people in the back, that’s exactly how you wound up in your silly little predicament.

Back when you were in high school and still strangers to one another, there had been a wildly circulated rumor that Eddie would trade weed for head … funny how that has circled back to reflect you and your recent penchant for sexual bargaining chips – if you take a twenty minute shower, I’ll go down on you when you get out.

You don’t wonder how your shitty old friends would react to learning about that development in your behavior, because you rarely ever think about Carol and Tina these days.

You do wonder how you’re going to get Eddie to stop giving you that sulky look while holding your ground.

He needs to shower (on his own), and you need a little more time to yourself.

You hate to press the issue, because it makes you feel too much like his mother – and you cannot even begin to unpack the Oedipal concept of that dynamic – but you absolutely cannot spend another moment pressed against his side and breathing shallowly under a cloying musk of days old body odor.

“I’m fine,” He insists, crossing his arms and still trying to pretend like he isn’t bothered by your indictment of his personal hygiene.

“No, you’re not.” You say, “You have to take better care of yourself. I know you don’t think it’s gonna make any difference, but I promise you it will. You’ll feel better.”

Eddie offers you one of those half hearted smiles, and quirks his brow.

“You always say that.”

“Yeah, so what? I’m always right. Do it for me, okay?”

It takes him a minute more of contemplative pouting, but eventually he relents, because for as soft as you are for him, he’ll do anything for you, even if it means bruising his ego a little.

He slaps his hands on the bed and pushes up in the fading glimmer of a gesture he might have made back in the old days – your heart throbs painfully in your chest as you watch him flicker in and out of frame – then makes a show of stretching his arms high over his head.

You watch as he comes to immediately regret the motion when his bad side hitches and he quickly remembers his limited range of movement.

Eddie pretends like it doesn’t hurt as he makes his way across the room.

“Okay,” he says softly, pausing to kiss you on the cheek as he passes, “But only ‘cause yer so damn purty,”

The affectation of the southern drawl you’d used before sounds much better on Eddie, and you lean fondly in to the press of his lips, not even bothering to be annoyed when he takes a cheeky handful of your backside.

You feel your insides burn with what the touch suggests, and for half a mindless second, you tell yourself that maybe you could stand to follow him in there. Just to help him wash, of course, get the spots he can’t reach… nothing else…

Then, your rationality comes snapping back into place when Eddie strikes you hard on the ass with an open palm.

You yelp in alarm more than pain and jump. Even after every time he has done that before, you never expect him to do it, and your face is burning as you turn to watch him go, disgustingly pleased with himself and snickering.

“Wash your hair,” you call, knowing it will add at least another five minutes to his shower, and your coveted alone time. “And brush your teeth.”

Eddie acknowledges you with a dismissive wave and something grumbled under his breath as he disappears into the bathroom, leaving the door cracked in a stark contrast to the way you’d shut him out when you slipped away into the next and only other room.

Therein lies the ultimate problem of your living situation. You keep trying to build a barrier, brick by brick, because you need your space, but Eddie needs it too, so every brick you put up he takes right back down.

You feel a muted pang of guilt over that which dissipates the moment you hear the shower hiss on. Then, and only then, do you breathe a sigh of relief you didn’t realize you were holding.

Your time begins now.

Because you absolutely cannot abide the state of the bed, even after Eddie’s futile attempts to pull it into shape, you spend the full duration of Jefferson Starship’s regression back into the days of Airplane attempting to wrestle the top sheet into position as Jane fades into White Rabbit.

Then, as the first strummed notes of More than Words begins to play, you brave the tide and pull the blankets over your head, curling in on yourself protectively. In the dark, the wet sloshing of the mattress is so much worse, so much weirder, and you try not to think about how womblike your cocoon suddenly is.

You didn’t want the waterbed. You wanted a normal mattress to try and live your normal lives, but Eddie already wasn’t sleeping because of his nightmares, and you couldn’t stand to see him in any further pain, not when it was because of something you could so easily remedy.

Sure, it was a real kick in the teeth to have to send five hundred dollars you couldn’t afford down the drain on a mattress, but thankfully the retailer would accept an exchange on a product of equal or lesser value (emphasis on lesser) and that’s how you’d gone and found Eddie in some back corner of the store, starfished and riding the surf of the floor model waterbed like a blissed out Goldilocks.

The stuff of your nightmares.

“Babe, it’ll be so cool,” he’d told you when he was trying with everything in his power to convince you to say yes.

He’d spouted some bullshit statistic he’d skimmed in a pamphlet at physical therapy about the benefits of hydrotherapy, and you’d informed him that sleeping on a giant water balloon was not hydrotherapy. But you were just so glad he was getting excited about something, and because mattress shopping is an exercise in twentieth century torture, you took it home for a tentative trial.

Fourteen months later, here you lay, trying to relax, trying to sink into a quiet, thoughtless meditation, but you can’t stop your mind from spinning.

Because you hate this fucking waterbed.

You hate the way it lists back and forth when you climb into it, and when Eddie slinks in after you and startles you awake with the sudden lurch of blaring panic, like stepping off a curb in your dreams.

You hate the leaks it springs, you hate the crinkling duct tape patches that poke you through the sheets when you roll over.

You hate how it holds the cold in the winter and radiates heat in the summer.

But you don’t hate how happy it made Eddie to see it delivered, or how you’d lay awake giggling together that first night. You love the childlike glee you’d shared that night, taking turns bouncing each other on the creaking tide and whispering back and forth like kids having a sleepover.

Of course, that giddy episode of play was the only prelude to what was perhaps the worst night’s sleep you’d ever had, but you’re almost happy to ignore that.

In a turn of events which you pretend not to be shocked by, Eddie’s shower lasts nearly twenty-five minutes. By the time he shuts off the water and re-emerges, scrubbed pink, clean shaven, and reeking of peppermint, you’ve let the gentle rocking of the bed lull you into a sleepy stupor.

“How was it?” you ask, regardless of what you already know.

You don’t ask him how long he actually spent washing and how long he just stood there under the tap (you also don’t ask if he allotted any of that time to jerking off in the distant hope that he’ll be satisfied enough to leave you alone) because the subtle change in his posture is all the evidence you need to know you were right.

Like always.

He looks over at you and smiles that same goofy smile that made you fall in love with him back in high school, and his brows come down.

“Cold.” He says, “You used up all the hot water,”

Oh, whoops. He levels you with a sidelong glance which you imagine is meant to make you feel guilty for not letting him share the hot water with you, but somehow you can’t manage to get around to feeling that way.

He’s clean, that’s all you care about.

You can’t help but stare as he drops his towel in a wet heap and stands comfortably naked, pulling open drawers and looking for a pair of boxers and a clean shirt – wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles…

“Sorry,” you hum, watching with rapt, unblinking attention.

Eddie turns at the sound of your apology, and it takes a moment too long for your gaze to snap up when he comes to face you. You smile innocently, but he’s already smirking at you.

“Are you?” he asks, “...or are you just enjoying the show?”

You tilt your head down to press your shoulder to your ear.

“Maybe,”

He rolls his eyes and steps into the faded blue plaid boxer shorts.

“Maybe, she says – move over, will ya?”

You hold the blankets up for him to slide beneath. Pulling the shirt over his head, he settles in beside you and you sit together in silence, listening to the distant sounds of your mixtape playing as you wait for the bed to stop sloshing.

You know deep down he secretly hates it too, but he’s too proud to admit when he’s wrong, especially after campaigning so hard for it. You don’t care, you’re in this for the long game — you’re gonna make him say it before you do.

You curl your arm around his back and immediately go to work knotting your fingers in the tangles of his hair, tugging gently at the damp baby hairs curling at the nape of his neck and making a mental note to help him comb it out before you fall asleep.

Eddie rests his head atop yours with a contented sigh and you feel the poke of his tongue in his cheek as he swipes it over his teeth.

“So, are you ever gonna tell me about your shitty day?”

“Who said I had a shitty day?” You ask.

He breathes an easy chuckle out through his nose and you hear it rattle all the way down in his lungs.

“You and that attitude of yours,”

Before you can say anything in defense of your self, the next track begins to play, bringing with it the iconic intro to Dancing Queen. And because Eddie cannot abide ABBA, he is on his feet in an instant.

The prelude to a great disappointment begins to well in your chest, because unlike Eddie, you do in fact remember being young and sweet, only seventeen, and you cherish those days – the earliest days of your entanglement with the town pariah, before you’d finished dancing around each other.

“Eddie don’t–” You whine, but he’s already thumping across the room to the stereo sitting precariously balanced in your rickety bookcase.

When he reaches the unit, he makes the executive decision that you can neither dance nor jive, and you will not be having the time of your life. He begins agitatedly punching buttons, and the song cuts out.

The track skips, and the next thing you know, your blood is thrumming along to the beat of a crunchy baseline, and Steve Perry is crooning you make me weak, and wanna die… and you know exactly what is coming next.

The main event. The lovin’, the touchin’, the squeezin’... your insides squirm with an unhelpful reminder of your deep dark secret, and you muster every shred of self control you have.

You will not be having sex tonight, no matter how good Eddie looks naked, no matter what he does to try and sway you, and no matter how much Steve Perry insists he’s tearin’ you apart…

You cross your arms and breathe out hard through your nose with wavering determination as Eddie turns back to you, once again disgustingly pleased with himself.

“That’s better,” He says, crossing back to the bed in two long-legged strides and throwing himself down beside you.

The mattress jumps and rolls, and your muscles tense as you do everything you can to stay upright and sulking.

“Why do you hate fun?” you ask as Eddie crawls over top of you on his hands and knees.

“Hate fun?” he echoes, like he cannot believe you would accuse him of such a thing.

“You know I love that song.”

“Yeah, but, Sweetheart, this is a great song! It’s the best song on the list,”

Never mind the fact that he skipped three tracks to get there. You set your teeth and try not to take offense to his criticism of your taste in music because you’ve long since agreed to disagree.

“This is a sex song.” You correct, resisting the asking fingers he’s begun to drum along your tightly crossed arms.

When you fail to open up for him, Eddie rolls his head to the side and looks up at you through his lashes in that very specific way he knows drives you just a little bit crazy.

“It’s your tape, Babygirl,” he says evenly, “I’m just a humble disc jockey.”

You snort out your displeasure with the statement, but you can’t deny it. Because you had indeed hidden Lovin’ Touchin’ Squeezin’ among the tracks on your Summer Fling mixtape back in the summer of ‘84 in the raunchy little hope that it would inspire Eddie to do just that to you, and you know that he knows that as well as you do.

So, whose fault is it really when he slips his hands up under your shirt and starts kissing your neck?

You curse yourself for being so unbearably hot for him back in the day, and for the way that, after two long years, nothing has changed.

“Can I make a request?”

He hums out an easy laugh.

“Nope, sorry. We’re only playing mood music for the rest of the night.” Eddie says, and you tilt your head dutifully back when he nudges your jawline with his nose, “Unless you were gonna ask for Dio, ‘cause you always gotta remember to leave room for Ronnie–”

“If you try to put on Holy Diver again I’m leaving.”

He giggles then – actually giggles – and this time when he kisses you, you feel the press of his tongue on your throbbing pulse point.

You tell yourself this is as far as you’re going to go. You can stand to let him suck a bruise into your neck if that’s what it takes to make him happy but you’re not going to have sex, even if you’re suddenly squirming beneath him to alleviate the thrumming between your thighs.

With everything you still have to talk about, you can’t afford to let Eddie distract you like that.

Of course, you already know what he’s going to say, the question he’ll ask you — what do you want to do?

You don’t want him to ask you that. You want him to tell you what to do. You want him to have all the answers and put your mind at ease because you’ve been driving yourself crazy asking yourself that question all goddamn day.

What do you want to do? What are you going to do? How far are you willing to let this go?

Are you prepared to go all the way with Eddie Munson? You’d asked yourself that once in a situation not so dissimilar to the one you currently find yourself in.

Of course, that time had been significant, because it had been the first time, and even now you remember that cold November afternoon so vividly. You should have been in school, but instead, you were parked outside a record store an hour outside of Hawkins, laying in the back of a van beneath the boy you so desperately loved and letting him send you to pieces with a kiss.

It wasn’t a chaste, pretty kiss like you see in the movies — at least no decent kind of movie — it was a heavy, dirty thing, with tongue and teeth and gasping breath. He held your hands pinned above your head, and you lay there rutting up against him in desperate search of something that only your animal brain could explain.

The natural progression of things, the way of the world and of girls and boys since time immemorial.

You might have briefly entertained the thought of having his baby back then, in the murky heat of the moment. In hindsight, you’re fairly certain that was just latent Darwinism reminding you that you are a mammal and that your only true purpose on this Earth is to breed – so breed, Baby.

And then your rational human mind prevailed, and asked you that terrible question: are you ready for this?

You’d thought you’d been scared of what the question meant then, but the virginal fear of the thing lurking between a boy’s legs — between your legs back then, prodding you through Eddie’s jeans and asking for a respectful permission you could not help but deny — holds no candle to the uncertain, impending future, which you no longer bother planning for.

Pledging your undying love as a horny teen fresh out of a very close brush with death is one thing, but tethering yourself to something and someone indefinitely?

Are you ready to commit to that with Eddie Munson?

Are you prepared to love him and take care of him on good days and bad, no matter what? Through night terrors and fugue episodes and days and days and so many hard days of wishing he would just snap out of it and come back to his old self?

Are you prepared to have his baby?

“Ground control to Major Tom.” Eddie calls distantly, and you feel a gentle tapping at the center of your forehead, “Can you hear me, Major Tom?”

He guides you gently from the mire of your existential thoughts and fears, and you blink back at him as he waits expectantly for an answer to whatever it was he’d just said.

“Hmm? Oh — sorry, Eds,” you say absently, reaching up to cup his cheek in your hand, “What were you saying?”

He glares at you, but the effect is ruined by the shy twitch of his lips, quirking at the corners despite his best efforts to play mad at you. He’s still on his hands and knees, a mere inch of distance between your noses as he glowers at you in mock offense — how dare you not be fully engaged in the first steps of this stunning foreplay.

Oh please, as if you don’t do this every goddamn night.

“Only that I need you so bad right now,” he says, “But it’s not so easy getting that message to Mars. I guess NASA’s not really in the business of passing love notes.”

You scoff and roll your eyes, hooking a finger in the collar of his t-shirt. The lingering effects of the shower waft up in a puff of clean air when you release the fabric, and even through the haze of shampoo and toothpaste, you can smell the bitter undertone of all the cigarettes he smoked today.

“You need me so bad every night.” You remind him.

He grins and you feel his teeth when he tips forward.

“Can’t help it.” Eddie says against your lips, attempting to resume the stilted progress of his foreplay by ducking his head to press a less than chaste kiss to the space beneath your ear — flicking tongue, scrape of teeth – his voice reverberates against the drum and you shiver, “It’s Kafkaesque.”

You snort and wonder as he snakes his hands up under your shirt and takes your breasts in hand if that was meant to impress you.

“Pavlovian.”

“What’s that, Sweet Girl?” He asks, changing direction without missing a beat.

Eddie rocks back on the balls of his feet, and lifts your thighs over his, pulling you down the mattress a tick – your head thumps against the headboard. Ouch.

He helps you sit up straight with an apologetic hand, boring holes into you with those big dark eyes – pretty eyes.

Hungry eyes Eric Carmen might have told you, were you listening to the radio and not Journey’s endless waning call of “nah nah nah-nah nah,”.

“You mean Pavlovian,” you tell him, bracing your hands on his shoulders when he hugs you by the waist and pulls you into his lap.

“How do you know what I mean?” he asks as you settle into this new position.

You drum your fingers along his collarbones and tilt your head, smiling coquettishly as you innocently prepare to bore him to death.

“Because Pavlov trained dogs to drool at the sound of a bell by ringing one every time he fed them,” you say, “and Kafkaesque suggests that you’re trapped in an authoritarian situation that you can’t escape, so I don’t think that really applies … unless you’re trying to tell me something about our relationship.”

Eddie hums out a low, performative moan, deep from the back of his throat. It’s not so performative a sound, however, that you can’t feel the hard length of something prodding into the crook of your thigh.

“I love it when you talk dirty,” he says, baring his teeth at you in a wolfish grin that looks almost like something the old Eddie would have done.

Eddie before the trauma and surgeries and blood transfusion on blood transfusion on blood transfusion.

You roll your eyes and trail your fingers down down down his abdomen until you’ve reached the less-than-subtle tent in his threadbare boxers. He draws in a sharp intake of breath when you skim your fingers over the tip of his bulge before taking an immodest palmful of his dick.

Once upon a time you would have wilted at the thought of doing something like that, but time and practice and the way Eddie’s eyes slide shut as he nods his encouragement has turned a gesture like that into something as casual as late night television.

He rolls his hips forward and you already feel a bead of heady wetness blooming in the fabric of his boxers when you swipe a cheeky thumb over his tip.

His breath hitches, and Eddie has to clear his throat to keep his voice steady as you begin to work him in your fist.

“Go on,” He says, and you’re nothing if not happy to oblige.

“You … getting a hard-on …every night at bedtime… is Pavlovian…” You say, stroking him in a measured up and down.

Big smile, front teeth poking out, cheeks indenting with an elusive dimple, Eddie shakes his head, pulling you forward to press bodily against him, and sandwiching your hand indecently between you. He doesn’t stop moving his hips.

“You’re so smart,” he rasps, and you detect the faintest hint of a quaver in his voice when you make a ring with your index finger and thumb, encircling the broad flare of him through the fabric and squeezing.

His mouth falls open on a heavy breath, and you close it right back up with a finger on his chin.

Still moving in short lazy thrusts, he sighs against you and kisses the line of your jaw, teasing your head back once more with a gentle nudge and exposing the taught columns of your throat to him.

“It’s so fucking sexy.”

You fail to suppress a snort and are almost shocked when it doesn’t immediately kill the mood.

“Is it really that sexy or are you just horny?”

“Who says it can’t be both?” Eddie says, “You’re smart and sexy… and I’m super fucking hot for you right now,”

And because he absolutely cannot help himself when he is reminded of even the faintest hint of a song, suddenly he’s singing under his breath.

“—hot-blooded, check it and see—” Eddie’s Foreigner impression plays against the waning backdrop of Journey turning over to Pat Benatar, insisting We Belong from the competing stereo.

It’s entirely too much, and you burst into a fit of undainty laughter.

“Don’t laugh, this is important.” He says, grinning, “— I got a fever of a hundred and three,”

When you don’t stop, Eddie kisses you, and even under the seal of his lips, you can’t manage to stifle your giggling.

Of course, now you remember why it’s more fun to fool around and have sex every night than it is to be sensible adults who keep their hands to themselves. Because that’s how you get the old Eddie back – fun Eddie – the one who made you lose your mind and fall in love with him that first Tuesday night at the Hideout a hundred Tuesdays ago.

Even then, you’d loved him so bad you could have screamed. And you did scream, you recall. You’d screamed yourself hoarse even as Corroded Coffin got booed off stage because you were their biggest fan – their words, not yours – even if their name was stupid and made you giggle behind their backs.

So what if you only ever see that version of Eddie anymore when you’ve got his cock in your fist? As if to punctuate the thought, he stammers over the next lyric and gasps out a breathy moan when you give him three quick jerks.

He laughs.

“Naughty,”

You giggle along and part his lips with a cheeky swipe of your tongue, happily swallowing every little sound he makes under your touch and feeling your insides begin to quiver in turn.

You’ll keep jerking him off because it’s fun to watch him steadily go to pieces, but you’re not having sex tonight – so, why do you have to keep reminding yourself of that?

“Babe,” Eddie says, lips clicking wetly as you part, “It’s not funny, it’s a serious medical condition – you don’t have to read my mind, to know what’s on my mind – Man, those lyrics are stunning.”

“Sheer poetry.” You say, nodding and his eyes light up.

“Right? Guy’s an artist,”

You’re still giggling when you feel the scrape of Eddie’s teeth along the tender veins lining your neck, pinching just a little too sharply on your jugular.

It sends a bolt of adrenaline shooting down like sparks to sting the tips of your fingers and toes, and suddenly it’s not nearly as funny or sexy as it was a moment ago.

You gasp. Fight or flight kicks in — you freeze.

Your heart hammers in your chest, your hearing whites out, – your hands are trembling as you struggle to unwind the soiled bandage tied tight around your broken fingers. You press it to the ugly wound in Eddie’s throat, spurting blood as he tries and fails to breathe through it – he coughs and gasps against the pain it causes him and chokes on your name in a way that makes you never want to hear him say it again… help me, it pleads, don’t let me die, make it stop…

You breathe out harshly and shake your head against the intrusive image of blood turned nearly black in the dark of that place. Your hands come up to brace firmly against Eddie’s shoulders, fingers trembling as you dig them into the muscle there, and you shove him without really meaning to.

“Stop—” You gasp.

It’s okay, you’re okay, You tell yourself, the same way you tell Eddie every night he thrashes awake in a blinding terror, You’re here. You’re safe, you’re home — just breathe.

“Sorry—” He says immediately, “Too much?”

But you can barely hear him over the roaring in your ears.

You focus on what you can see — the walls of your shared bedroom/dining room/living room, all your collective things illuminated in the amber glow of the flickering table lamp sitting across the room.

And you focus on Eddie, drying curls backlit and flyaway, framing his face — his handsome face — not spattered in blood and twisted in agony, but freshly scrubbed and tweaked in alarm and a less than subtle hint of concern.

You’re okay, but more importantly, he’s okay, he’s here with you, and nothing bad can happen when you’re together — but you’d been together while he lay there bleeding to death, hadn’t you?

“Are you okay?” he asks, all traces of teasing gone from his tone.

It’s amazing how quickly he can shut it off when the mood shifts. Your sweet boy.

“I’m okay,”

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” you say, “I just — I didn’t expect you to do that.”

It’s bizarre that the motion triggered you like that, especially since you’re not the one who had your throat cut down there.

Down there.

“...do you wanna stop?”

You fight to suppress a shiver and the urge to immediately agree – yes, you should stop, especially since you have no intention of letting this go any further than heavy petting, but you don’t want to be a killjoy.

You shake your head to try and disperse any lingering memory of that night – that eternal night – and absently pet the side of your paramour’s face.

“No,” You say, “No, we don’t have to stop.” But you’re painfully aware of the lack of enthusiasm in your tone.

Eddie’s brows furrow over his eyes, and you can tell he doesn’t believe you, so you tilt forward to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Let’s keep going,” you say.

You kiss him, attempting to rekindle what has already begun to die out, and when he doesn’t reciprocate, when you try to kiss him again and he leans back, you feel your insides seize with disappointment.

“I’m fine, Eddie,” you say, and he pulls a face.

“Liar,”

“I am. I promise.”

You watch disbelief shadow his face and the muscle in his jaw flex. You can tell he’s getting impatient, not for the starting and stopping, but because he knows you’re not telling him something.

Isn’t that the understatement of the century?

After a moment, Eddie drops his head and sighs your name dejectedly, you try not to flinch or hear it forced out on a burbling bloody timber begging you to make it stop. He slumps onto his hip beside you and he walks two cheeky fingers up the length of your thigh before resting a hand at the top and giving you a gentle squeeze.

“—we don’t have to do this.” He says, “We can just go to bed.”

You wish that were true.

You rock back into the pillows and force yourself to smile, feeling your cheeks pull as your insides go tight and twisty.

Sure, you could just go to bed with a chaste kiss and a “see you in the morning,” and wake up in a few hours to find Eddie on his third cup of coffee, watching late-night television and chain smoking. Or, and far more likely, you can wake up to him thrashing and screaming beside you through the endless circadian reruns of his death and spend the rest of the night trying to calm him down.

No actually, you can’t just go to bed. You have to do something to help him relax, so that he’s too tired to do anything but sleep through the night.

And the best way to do that, you have found, is to get him off. As it turns out you can only therapy fuck your boyfriend for so long – approximately fourteen months – before it starts to have consequences, like unplanned pregnancies and his being unable to sleep without you getting him off first.

Your hesitation to answer speaks volumes, and Eddie finally shakes his head.

“Let’s just go to bed,”

“No,” you press, pawing at the front of his shirt and hating how whiny you sound as you say it, “I want to keep going.”

“Don’t just say that because you think it’s what I want to hear,” he says a little too harshly.

“I’m not.”

“You have to tell me if something’s wrong, Sweetheart. I’m not a mind reader, I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

It’s startling to hear, like the clanging of a bell. He knows something is up, and while he may not know what it is, Eddie’s not nearly as stupid as he pretends to be, and you’re a bad liar.

So, quit beating around the bush and tell him already.

You don’t know why, but you’re committed to denying it now, so you wire your jaw shut and shake your head.

“I’m fine, you just startled me. I didn’t expect you to do that,”

Eddie gives you that hard look again, and you do your best not to wilt under it.

“And…?”

“…And I’m–” Pregnant. “– a little tired…” Pussy. “…and my head hurts.” Stupid.

Oldest cliché in the book — not tonight honey, I have a headache.

When he still doesn’t let up, you throw your hands up in a lopsided shrug and catch his face to bracket on the way down, as if that’s going to do anything to soften the blow of rejection you’re trying so desperately to avoid.

Suddenly, it feels a lot like you’re the one about to receive it, and you hate how desperate that makes you feel. What are you fighting so hard for? You’re not having sex tonight, remember?

“I found out I have to go in on Saturday to do inventory,” you fib, pulling your shoulders up and fully committing to the bullshit subterfuge, “That’s why I’ve been cranky… sorry, I should have just told you.”

And then, Eddie’s shoulders drop and he relaxes under the blissful satisfaction of the truth. It makes you feel grimy,

“Ah-ha,” he says, “Melvald’s workin’ you to the bone, huh?”

You nod.

“One box of Kotex at a time.” More like one box of neatly packaged pregnancy tests — results in ten minutes or less!

Eddie's features soften, and he dips his head to brush his lips across the slope of your shoulder.

“My Baby’s just tired, huh?” He hums against you, “Poor Baby...”

You suppress a flinch and silently wish he would stop saying things like that.

“Yeah.” You say dejectedly, “Anyway, there you go. My shitty boring day. Stocking shelves, live in technicolor,”

Eddie hums thoughtfully and you watch as he begins a steady descent down your body.

“That’s hot. Think we could get it on pay-per-view?”

You push up on your elbows just as he slides down to come face-to-face with your midriff, and you clear your throat.

“Where do you think you’re going?” You say, as he slips a cheeky finger beneath the band of your shorts.

He pauses to give you a sly look.

“Down unda,” Eddie says, grinning and effecting a thick Australian accent.

Oh no, absolutely not. Jerking him off is one thing, but if you let him go down on you, it’ll be a one-way ticket to Stupidtown, and you’ll absolutely end up letting him fuck you.

You’re determined not to let that happen, so you pull your knees up and cross your ankles over his back, squeezing tightly. Eddie makes a put-out sound when you cage him in and he finds he can go no further.

“You got a passport, Crocodile Dundee?” You deadpan, quirking an unimpressed brow.

“Jeez, can’t a guy worship at his altar in peace?” he says, trying to wriggle free and butter you up in the same breath, “The goddess? My inspiration?”

You roll your eyes but you don’t let him go when he begins to squirm in earnest.

It is an effort in futility.

Back in the day, you spent many an afternoon sitting around the trailer watching professional wrestling, and those sessions typically ended with you in a headlock after boldly claiming you could beat Eddie in a fight. To his credit, he always at least let you try before flipping you ass over tea kettle and holding you pinned to the carpet until you said “uncle”. In those days, you never stood a chance, but that was then, and unlike Eddie, you actually bothered to go to your physical therapy sessions and still have full functional use of your body.

You’re not trying to hurt him, so you aren’t putting nearly enough pressure on his ribs to really hold him, but he’s out of breath before you’ve even broken a sweat.

“Release me, Foul Temptress.” He demands, struggling against you and the vice you have on him.

You cross your arms and make a show of leisurely checking your nails.

“Say uncle.” You say innocently.

“You’re evil,”

“No, I’m winning.”

When he stops moving long enough to glare back at you, you push out your lower lip in a feigned pout.

“Had enough yet?”

You watch the muscles in Eddie’s jaw flex as he contemplates all the biting retorts he could possibly hit you with before evidently decides against retaliation.

He sighs and goes slack against you, forehead dropping to knock against your belly, and you once again have to resist the sudden and bizarre urge to tell him to be careful.

He doesn’t know, how could he know when you haven’t told him yet?

Of course, it’s only lost in this brief but looming thought that you momentarily let your guard down, and Eddie finds his ace in the hole.

He presses his nose to the tender softness of your belly and makes a gentle, needy sound, and your thighs involuntarily tremble.

You unhook your ankles and let your feet drop to the bed on either side of his hips with two solid thumps that sends you rocking back and forth on a sloshing tide.

You don’t know when he started to work your T-shirt up, but suddenly your flesh is exposed to him and those damn lips.

He doesn’t kiss you, so much as part his lips and breathe out, a long, quivering breath that has your throat closing up and your knees edging open far enough to let him drop and lay with his stomach pressed flat to your pubic bone.

“I just wanna be good to you,” he says, muffled against your stomach, searching hands skittering up up up over your thighs and into the open legs of your shorts to grace the supple curve of your hip. “Wish I had something nice to say … to make it all better…”

He brushes his lips over the spot just beneath your navel and you feel something flutter there.

You can’t be sure if it’s just the phantom sensation of your secret crying out to be known, or the way you’ve noticed how he’s begun rocking his hips into the mattress. He still has a hard on, after all, and he knows how much you like to watch him get himself off like that. It causes your breath to hitch in your throat, but you manage catch Eddie’s hands before he can get your shorts off.

Under the looming threat of complete and total mental blackout, you muster your courage, and try once more to pick up where you left off.

“I – I have something to tell you … actually,” you say tentatively, worrying your lower lip and trying not to get caught on the slow, purposeful canting of his hips.

It piques his interest enough to stir him from where he’s tucked himself between your legs and turn curious eyes up at you, blown dark with needy expectation.

“Oh, yeah?” His voice is a deep and husky rasp that sends a bolt of want like lightning down to the thrumming apex of your thighs. “Something nice?”

You swallow hard and, despite your subtle hesitation, lift your hips off the mattress to assist him this time as he slides your shorts down and discards them over his shoulder.

They land softly over top of the lamp, plunging you into a sudden and deeply muted semi-darkness – mood lighting, something inside you suggests and you have to force yourself to watch Eddie work to keep from rolling your eyes.

You’re not going to have sex with him… but that doesn’t mean you’re not just a little curious to see what he has in mind.

You know exactly what he has in mind, Stupid.

You forgot to make him eat dinner so now he’s just going to have to make due.

“I don’t know if it’s necessarily nice, but it’s something.” You breathe, watching transfixed as he eases your knees open as far as they will go, exposing the thin, damp fabric of your panties to the air.

He hums, a gentle rumble in the hollow of his throat that sends goosebumps flash freezing across your arms and legs when it catches on the end.

Distantly, you see his hips jump as he catches on a fold in the sheets, and you throb in wanting commiseration.

“… good or bad?” He rasps, punching a breath out from your already flattening lungs as he skims the junction of at the crook of your thigh with the tip of his nose and moves lower … lower.

“Oh… good.” You say, voice an embarrassing octave higher than normal, “It’s good… hhmmaybe. I...uh... I-I haven’t decided yet.”

Teeth in the elastic of your panties, a sharp tug pulls his lower lip down before it snaps back into place, and he groans.

You fail to suppress a shiver as Eddie eases your legs up over his shoulders, still working his hips against the mattress at an agonizing pace. Suddenly all you want is to be the bed, laying beneath him as he rocks steadily into you, using you to chase his release, just like he does most nights.

It briefly occurs to you that if you’re having that thought, it means you’re steadily approaching the point of no return. If you had any sense at all, you’d pump the breaks while you still can, but then you can feel the smooth plane of his face nuzzling the flesh of your inner thigh. You feel the press of his lips, and your tongue goes fat and useless in your mouth. Under the gentle prelude to the way he begins to press slow, reverent kisses along the expanse of your scar, you forget how to breathe, let alone do something so pointless as speak.

The scar is the only physical thing you carry from that day you slipped through to the other side of the world. It’s a jagged, ugly thing that extends from your knee to your bikini line because while the initial wound had been expansive, the surgeon who attended to you that night last spring knew fuck all about fuck all and somehow managed to make it worse. You’re lucky, because most of your trauma is invisible, but you shouldn’t be thinking about that right now, you should be thinking about something normal, something sexy as Eddie continues with those soft, open-mouthed kisses, leaving cooling wet crescents over the length of the raised puckered skin, higher, higher…

And what’s sexy about scars and surgeons and the lingering evidence of eighty-four stitches?

Nothing, absolutely nothing, but it doesn’t stop you from reaching down to hook your fingers in the fabric of his t-shirt. You tug and pinch and gather material until you’ve made a little progress, trying to undress him while he’s busy grinding his cock into the bed, but you’re having a hard time getting it done from this angle.

Thankfully, the reverence of your touch does not go unnoticed — Eddie ceases his ministrations to push up on his knees and help you. Flushed and sweating, he reaches back and takes a fist full of the fabric, pulling the shirt over his head and discarding it in one swift movement.

And then, just like that, you can see all the punishment he took trying to save you, down there on the wrong side of the world. All his scars and the evidence of just how close you came to losing him. Your heart thumps solidly against your ribs – yours is ugly, but his are worse, and you don’t think you’ll ever get used to seeing what those nasty little fuckers did to him. You keep that strictly to yourself, however, because Eddie already hates the way he looks bad enough without the burden of your opinion. He doesn’t need to know how they make you feel.

You reach for him, suddenly desperate to touch him, and he takes you by the hand. He holds you firmly in his smoldering, blackened gaze, and you watch as he presses your index and middle fingers together. Then, he slides the compressed digits into the dark wet heat of his mouth and sucks on them until you’re flushed so hot your face has started to burn.

On the surface of your brain, the feeling of his tongue slipping up between your fingers, edging them open and flicking at the soft nook of flesh at the valley of their connection is unbearably gross, but that message doesn’t seem to make it down to the places where it matters. Nobody tells your animal brain that it isn’t the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. Your fingers go sliding out with a sickly wet slurp, and you shiver.

“Save these for me,” he says, “For later,”

Later? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What’s going to happen later? You find, as he slides down the length of your body, that you don’t actually care.

What happens in an hour or ten minutes (or less) is none of your goddamn concern when Eddie is busy parting your legs in a mirror image of the way he’d just parted your fingers.

You find you don’t have the capacity to wonder any further than that when he slips back down to prop your legs over your shoulders and hook his fingers in the dampened gusset of your panties. You breathe out a long, wanton noise that something in the back of your mind tells you is whorish when you feel the first puff of air fanning your bare pussy.

That damning something in the back of your mind suggests you should be embarrassed about that, but you can’t manage to feel anything but heated as he eases your underwear down your legs and banishes them to some far corner of the apartment.

Eddie kisses the nook at the highest point of your thigh, directly to the right of where he’s begun to trace the faintest ghost of a touch over your entrance, and suddenly all you can hear is your own heart pounding in your ears. He applies a whisper of pressure and dips into you up to the first knuckle, and you lay there, barely able to take it, wringing the sheets in your fists, telling yourself that at any moment cooler heads will prevail and you’ll put a stop to this.

Stupidtown looms on the horizon, and he’s barely even touched you.

Then, on top of everything he’s doing to you, Eddie has the audacity to try and get you talking again.

“You were saying?… ‘something good, maybe’ … but…?” he says, stretching the word lyrically in a way you haven’t heard him do in a long, long time.

You don’t get the chance to revel in that before the question is followed by the sharp pinch of flesh between teeth as he bites you, just beneath your scar. Hard enough to bruise, but not enough to break the skin. You yelp and jump against him, but he holds you firmly to the spot so you can’t escape, then he soothes the offended flesh with the wide flat press of his tongue before sucking it in past his lips – it burns, and you can’t stand how much you like it.

“Hey, g-go easy with that, will you?” You try to tell him, “Easy…” but then he uses two fingers to spread your pussy open wide, exposing you to the air.

You trail off into a long, high whine, which turns sharp and loud when he flicks the blunt edge of his nail over your painfully neglected clit. The bundle of nerves screams, and your hips buck up hard enough to break the seal of the bruise he’d been busy sucking into your thigh.

When he presses his thumb flat to that howling little bitch, you blow right past the point of no return.

“Oh, fuck! – Eddie!” you gasp, and when he smiles you can feel his teeth as he gives you one last gentle nip for good measure.

“Ask me nicely,” He growls, and you lose your goddamn mind.

Never mind all of your bullshit principles. Never mind tests or little pink lines and blue tabs and green plus signs – you need him to fuck you, and you need him to do it now.

“Please,” you cry, “Please, please, please–”

“Good girl,”

#cruel summer fic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson stranger things #eddie munson #eddie munson fanfic #joseph quinn eddie munson #tumblr really told me to fuck myself with this one didn't it?#well part two is going up anyway and it is ENTIRELY filthy smut so you're welcome i guess

86 notes · View notes

prettytoxicrevolver · 4 months ago

Text

Summer Vacation | Juraj Slafkovský

wc. 7k

You spend your summer vacation with Juraj

an. This is my submission for @wyattjohnstons summer fic exchange! This is dedicated to the lovely @lam-ila!! My fellow Connecticut resident, I hope you enjoy it!

P.S. there's a lot of Slovak translated horribly from google but most of it is just pet names and one swear word

Your last week of work was utter chaos.

The Canadiens hadn’t made the playoffs this year, something that had been known for a bit, but everyone was still running around trying to close up shop before the off season started. You were wrapping up all things social media, planning the last few things that need to be posted, filmed, or any photoshoots to keep fans engaged while waiting for the next season.

“Are you going to the end of the season party?”

You look over at your coworker, grinning widely at the mention of the end of season party. You had been working for the Canadiens for the past two years and last year's party was the most fun you had all year long. It wasn’t just the party with the entire staff, team, club managers, and so on, but also the annual after party hosted at one of the players houses where only a select few get to go. You were shocked when you were invited, but had so much fun and couldn’t wait for the one this year.

“Hell yeah. Are you excited for the party at Josh’s after?” your coworker Courtney was your closest friend in Montreal second only to Juraj Slafkovsky. She was invited to last years after party as well and that’s when the two of you bonded.

“Fuck yes,” she exclaims and you laugh lightly.

The rest of the work day flows by quickly and you say your goodbyes and see you next season to those not able to attend the party the next day. Just as you’re leaving the building, you hear someone yell out your name across the parking lot. You turn, finding Juraj walking towards you and you can’t help the smile that crawls onto your lips.

“Need a ride to the party tomorrow?” you ask him when he approaches you and he shakes his head. “Good cause Arber is driving me anyway,” you explain and Juraj laughs.

“I’m not ready for the season to be over,” Juraj admits as you two slowly walk towards your car.

“But, you get to spend the entire offseason with me,” you tell him, grinning widely again and bumping your shoulder against him. His strong hockey trained body barely moves at your touch and you’re still shocked every time you realize how incredibly muscular the boy who is a year younger than you is.

“Very true,” he murmurs and you stop short at your car.

“See you tomorrow?”

“Drive safe,” he responds, and you nod before getting in your car and starting it up. Your heart seems to thrum along with your engine and you try to tamp down the smile that hasn’t let up since Juraj called your name.

You and Juraj met two years ago when he was drafted to the Montreal Canadiens. You were actually one of the first people he met that draft day. You were head of the social media and content department for the team and had spent the day taking pictures and videos, setting up interviews, and capturing the most important moments of the day.

You were the youngest member of your entire department and always had big shoes to fill. The draft day was one of the biggest days of the year in the hockey world so you were rightfully running around like a mad woman to get everything done. Amongst the chaos, you had managed to step away for a moment and as you walked out of the conference room, you literally ran straight into Juraj.

You congratulated him on the draft and mentioned that you’d be working together technically for however long he would be on the team. The two of you clicked instantly, your personalities meshing well together and some of your biggest perks about your job became Juraj working there as well now.

Since day one, you had always carried a small crush on the budding star player of the habs. You loved his drive, how hockey was everything to him and he was always working to do better and connect with his team. He was sweet and kind and hilarious and you had grown fond of your close friendship. However, you valued your job and didn’t want to risk anything so you stayed close friends even though that tiny crush reared its head more often than not.

The next day, Arber swings by your apartment and drives the two of you over to the end of season party. Every year it was held at the exact same banquet on the water. They rented out the main building for the dinner, left room outside for those who wanted to eat, drink, dance, and enjoy the overall beautiful weather. When you get there, the party is in full swing and you’re swept up into it all.

Hours pass as you eat dinner, chat politely with coworkers you didn’t know too well, drink several glasses of what you assume is expensive wine and laugh loudly with your friends. Around nine pm, the banquet staff start ushering everyone out so with a quick goodbye, most of us head straight over to Josh’s house for the after party.

The drive to Andy’s house is 10 minutes but when you and Arber pull up, the house is already booming. You both head inside excitedly and the minute you step through the door, someone is calling your name.

“(y/n)!!!” you hear just before you’re being lifted off the ground and suddenly carried through the house.

“Put me down Josh!” you yell, trying to slap his back but a drunk Josh is never quite deterred and when he finally sets you down you realize he has placed you right in front of the beer pong table he set up.

“Oh come on,” you complain but there’s a hint of a smile in your annoyance.

“One game, we need to kick Juraj and Kaiden’s asses,” Josh tells you and you roll your eyes but nod in agreement.

You don’t know how or when it happened, but sometime during college you realized you were weirdly good at beer pong. You didn’t care much for the drink and only played occasionally but when you destroyed quite literally everyone at the game last year at the after party, you became somewhat of a legend. It was no surprise Josh dragged you right on over to the table without a second thought.

You look across the table to see Kaiden trying to explain the game to Juraj and you smile as his eyes squint, his focus lasered in on the task ahead. Even at a party he could be so serious sometimes and the thought makes your heart flip and your stomach dip in a light laugh, the one that escapes when you love someone so much that it’s ridiculous.

“Gotta do better than that (y/l/n)!” Kaiden teases when you’ve taken your third shot of the game.

“Really? Cause two more throws and you’re out of the game,” you call back and Josh nods in agreement.

Unfortunately, you take two more shots before you finally sweep Juraj and Kaiden. The two end up getting iced as their punishment and you clap with satisfaction when they’re finished.

“You want another drink?” Juraj asks when he throws out the smirnoff ice bottle and you nod.

You two head towards the drinks area and you go searching for a seltzer while Juraj hangs back. Once you find the one you want, you turn and offer him one but he shakes his head. Andy was keeping all the drinks outside in coolers so the summer air brushed against your skin in a delightful breeze as you leaned against the porch railing.

“Excited for your first summer in America?” you ask Juraj.

Juraj Slafkovský has never had a “proper American summer” experience.

He never had any reason to really. Growing up in Slovakia and always coming home during the off seasons he had no real reason to stay in the states. Especially with how little he saw his family? He never passed up the chance to go home.

However, he knew he wanted to be back in Montreal early before training camp started so he could get used to the Canadian customs all over again. He had been living in Montreal for two years now and some things still seemed to manage to throw him off.

And when you offered up your home in Connecticut as a refuge he couldn’t pass up the offer. He was secretly even hoping that he might finally get the courage to ask you out or make a move. He knew he was somewhat stuck in the friend zone right now and wanted a good opportunity out.

“We better do all these American customs I don’t know,” he tells you and you grin mischievously.

“You sure you can keep up?”

“With you? Easy,” he says, determination in his eyes and the intensity makes your heart swoop.

By 3 am, you’re wasted and incoherent and Arber takes this as the sign to haul you back to your apartment. You “fight” him the whole way, promising you really weren’t that drunk but it was clear you were and that you had started to overstay your welcome at Andy’s house.

Arber makes sure you’re safely tucked into bed, phone plugged in on the nightstand, water and aspirin next to it, a trashcan next to your bed just in case, before heading back to his apartment. You’re passed out pretty much the minute your head hits the pillow and fall into a dreamless sleep.

What you think is the next morning, you wake up to your phone ringing impossibly loud next to your head. With as much grace as someone so incredibly hungover it’s embarrassing can, you shut the ringer off. However, it starts up again and this time you drag the phone close to your face to realize someone is calling you.

“Hello?” you murmur and flinch at the sound of your own voice.

“Dobré popoludnie drahá,” Juraj greets and you pull your phone away, squeezing your eyes shut in an attempt to force the ache away from your head.

“Please stop yelling,” you mumble out and Juraj chuckles happily on the other end, finding some amusement at your hangover.

“It’s 2 pm. I wanted to know if you’re alive,” he explains.

“I’m not,” you mutter.

“Well I’m coming over.”

Before you can protest, desperately wanting to save yourself from the embarrassment of your crush seeing you like this, he hangs up the phone and you’re left knowing he’ll be at your apartment any minute.

You must have fallen asleep again, because the next thing you know your door is being slammed shut and you flinch at the noise, knowing that it probably isn’t that bad but your headache was trying to kill you.

“Zlatko?” Juraj’s voice calls.

You listen as he wanders into your apartment, heading for your bedroom door. He knocks as quietly as he can, the first semi normal sound you can handle and when you groan in response he opens the door.

“You look like shit,” he tells you honestly, walking in and sitting on your bed.

“Thank you,” you respond sarcastically.

“Come on. Let’s go get food.”

Juraj helps you get up, gives you space to go to the bathroom and change your outfit. He comes in a few minutes later when you’re wrestling with your hair and you sigh, frustrated.

“Can I?” he asks sweetly and you nod.

He sweeps your hair to rest behind your shoulders before taking it in his hands and raking it upwards. Your eyes close automatically at the feeling of his hands on you and you stifle a quiet sigh. He pulls the front of your hair back, his fingers like heaven on your scalp before grabbing your scrunchie and tying your hair into a bun.

“Good?” he asks and his voice snaps you out of it, your eyes opening to see a messy bun and you nod.

Your eyes connect in the mirror and the moment is so domestic it breaks both of you from it, the nerves getting to you. You both finally head out, deciding to just grab some fast food and you both relax in Juraj’s car, munching away and talking aimlessly about your summer plans.

After dinner, Juraj walks you back up to your apartment and you lean against the door to face him.

“See you tomorrow?” you ask and he grins.

“Bright and early,” he says and you smile back.

This boy would be the death of you.

Thankfully, the next morning you wake up on time and head over to Juraj’s apartment. You decided forever ago it would be easier to take your car down to Connecticut. When you pull up to his building at 9 am sharp, the young Slovak is already standing outside, bags packed and ready to be shoved in the trunk of your car.

You take the first shift of the drive, the whole thing taking about six hours, and for the first one you and Juraj chat away about anything and everything. Three hours in and Juraj takes over the rest of the drive and by the time you finally get to your childhood home, it’s dinner time. You guys grab fast food again, quickly devouring it in your car before finally getting to your house.

“Mom? Dad?” you yell when you open the door and you hear the familiar bark of your dog and you smile.

“Princess!” your mom greets, running out from the kitchen to wrap you up in a tight hug.

You introduce your parents to Juraj and they smile politely before the two of you head upstairs and settle in your separate rooms. The minute you drop your bags down, you’re headed back to the guest room and off to bother Juraj.

“Okay so,” you say, collapsing onto his bed and he looks over at you with a slight smile.

“I’m craving ice cream,” you tell him and he smiles widely at you.

“Would you like to go get ice cream?”

You end up at the local ice cream shop that you swear you frequented practically every night when you were a kid during the summer.

“What’s cookie monster?” Juraj asks from next to you, squinting up at the handwritten menu.

You turn to look at him and he looks utterly lost as he stares at the foreign ice cream flavors. In his defense, a lot of small town ice cream places had weird names for flavors so you weren’t shocked by the question.

“Cookie monster is an animal, no? From Sesame Street?” He continues and when a small laugh escapes your lips he’s smiling like he won the lottery.

“I’m not sure how to explain it,” you start and Juraj turns to you, waiting for your answer. “It’s basically vanilla ice cream dyed blue with chocolate chip cookies crumbled into it.”

Juraj nods, turning to look back at the board. You try to focus too, but his nearness distracts you. Your stupid crush on the young Slovak was rearing its ugly head and every time he was near you you had to be extra careful not to stumble over your words like a fool.

“What do you usually get?” Juraj asks.

“Cotton candy,” you reply, grinning when his face pinches into one of confusion.

Just as you’re about to elaborate, the two of you are called up next in line. You’re about to order when Juraj starts talking, the young girl taking your order smiling shyly at the taller boy.

“Two orders of cotton candy,” he says.

“One in a cone and one in a cup,” you chime in and the girl nods happily before turning away to get your sweet treat.

“Cone and cup?” Juraj asks.

As the girl scoops your dessert, you explain to Juraj that when you were younger, you always ordered a vanilla and chocolate twist in a cone. However, one night on the beach, your ice cream melted all in your hands and then you touched your hair, leaving you a sticky and crying mess. Ever since then, you have been ordering your ice cream in a cup.

The two of you pay before heading outside to the picnic tables placed in front of the shop. You’re about to take a seat at the farthest table when Juraj finally takes a bite of his ice cream and hums in a happy approval.

“This is good!” he exclaims and you grin.

“Cheers,” you tell him, bumping your ice cream together and Juraj takes his seat across from you.

“So this,” he starts and you look at him expectantly. “Is part of an American summer?”

“The best part, some might argue,” you say, taking a bite of your ice cream and smiling around the sweet contents.

You continue to chat and eat your ice cream and by the time the two of you are headed home, the place is deserted. Your childhood home reflects the late time, the lights out and your dog snoozing happily in his crate. You and Juraj sneak upstairs but when you get to your bedroom door, you pause and look over at him.

“Thanks for coming home with me,” you whisper, feeling brave in this darkness.

Even though Juraj can’t exactly make out your figure, he sees your gentle smile, the way you cross your arms and pop out your hip to stand comfortably. His mind flashes with the thought that he wants to step forward, invade your space, ruin that perfect stance, pull you into his arms, kiss you gently like he always wanted to.

“Goodnight moja láska,” he murmurs instead and your cheeks flush at his native language rolling off his tongue.

“Goodnight.”

The first week of summer break is slow and yet busy all at once. You and Juraj end up sleeping in practically every single day, waking up at 11 or later and lounging around the house until one of you gets bored and wants to go do something or until it’s too late and you already need to go back to sleep again.

However, it’s Friday and your friends have been raving about coming to hangout again after not seeing you since last summer. You decided on a bonfire weeks ago, inviting everyone who you want to see and even some of the Canadiens players since they had time to stop by Connecticut before jetting off to vacation or back home.

You run around like a mad woman all day long, cleaning up the house, getting the drinks and snacks ready and setting up the backyard. Juraj tries to help as much as possible but it’s hard when you’re a whirlwind who often insists on doing everything yourself. Still, he helps out where he can and you’re grateful when your friends start to show up.

“(y/n)!!” you hear your childhood best friend's voice roar from behind you and you whip around just as she rams into you in a tight hug.

“Hi!!” she yells loudly into your ear and you’re grinning so wide it hurts.

“Hi!! I missed you!!”

You two break apart and when she looks over your shoulder you turn to see Juraj smiling widely at the two of you. You reach back and grab his hand, pulling him next to you before looking back at your best friend.

“Juraj, this is Courtney, Courtney this is Juraj.”

Juraj reaches a hand out, telling her that it’s nice to meet her and Courtney not so subtly gives him a once over, a knowing smile growing on her lips. You excuse the two of you, dragging Courtney around to meet Cole, Nick, and Arber as well before you and Courtney grab some food and finally sit down to catch up.

“So how long have you had a crush on tall, brunette, and beautiful over there?” she asks bluntly, nodding her head in Juraj’s direction where his head is tipped back in a wonderful beaming smile.

“2 years?” you tell her, knowing there was no use in hiding the fact that you probably looked at Juraj like he was the sun and you needed him to live.

“And you still haven’t told him?” she asks and you shake your head.

The great thing about Courtney? She doesn’t push. She definitely would have more to say about you and Juraj, but she’s an excellent people reader. She knew you and Juraj would be incredibly cute together, knew he probably liked you as much as you liked him, and knew that you both were too nervous to make a move.

“Hey do me a favor?” Courtney asks and you turn to look at her, breaking out of your trance. “No matter what, keep being friends with him okay? I can tell he’s good for you. He makes you happy.”

Before you can even process what Courtney said, she stands and makes her way back inside the house. It takes you a moment to break from your thoughts and you do when the habs players come sit around you, talking about the rest of their summer plans and quizzing you and Juraj about what you’re going to do.

Eventually, the bonfire winds down, only a few people left until it’s just you and Juraj. You sit on one of the loungers, relaxing back on it as the fire slowly dies in front of you due to the wind.

“Moja láska?” Juraj calls and you look over to him.

“It’s cold and it’s late. Let’s go to bed.”

You know the wording is innocent but your heart doesn’t recognize that. You nod, standing and throwing some water on the fading fire before meeting Juraj at the sliding glass door. He lays his hand on the small of your back, leading you upstairs and that familiar spark of nerves flies through you. Just like the night before, you both end up at your doors, Juraj leans against his, his lean and tall body relaxed in the space.

You want to close the distance, invade his space until he’s towering over you, slip your arms around his neck and pull him close. You find yourself leaning forward, about to take a step when you see Juraj move his hand to the doorknob of his room and you stop.

“Goodnight,” he murmurs quietly and you smile.

“Goodnight.”

Ever since the bonfire the summer has moved slowly. Your days continue on, sleeping in, late nights, swimming in your pool, reading, and hanging out with Juraj. It was the most lowkey summer you have had in a while and you’ve loved every second of it.

“(y/n)!!” your mom yells from downstairs. You get up, reaching the top of the stairs and look down to see her standing there with one hand on the banister.

“Grab Juraj and come down please?”

You knock on Juraj’s door and tell him to come downstairs. The two of you meet your parents in the kitchen and you wait expectantly for them to explain why they needed the two of you.

“So, our vacation to your grandparents house is next week,” your mom reminds you and you nod.

“Juraj, we would love for you to come with us to the lake house,” she says and Juraj turns to look at you, almost asking if it’s okay for him to come with.

“You have to come with us,” you tell him and he smiles.

“I would love to.”

Every summer you and your family head up to your grandparents house in Ottawa for a week or more to see your extended family. You get to go swimming and boating on the lake, bonfires, ice cream, shopping, everything a perfect summer makes up and you get to see your favorite cousins that you definitely don’t get to see enough.

“Juraj!! Let’s go!!” you yell obnoxiously up the stairs. It was early in the morning, the drive to Ottawa taking about eight hours and Juraj was taking forever to drag his bags downstairs and make his way out to the car.

Finally, he makes his way down and the sleep in his eyes is contagious and you find yourself fighting off a yawn. You smile widely at him, leaning down to grab your bags as well and Juraj shakes his head, instantly making his way over to you and pushing your hands away.

“No let me,” he says and you stand up straight, giving him a playful glare.

“I can carry my bags,” you tell him and he offers a genuine smile that makes your heart race.

“I know.”

He throws a wink in your direction, hoisting all of the bags onto his back/shoulder and heading to the car. Your heart drops and crawls its way back up your body until it rests correctly in your chest. After a moment, you finally are able to move, heading to the car and hopping into the backseat with Juraj joining you a moment later.

“Scooch,” Juraj tells you and you smile moving over but your bodies crash into each other anyway. You decide to take the leap, leaning into him and resting your head onto his shoulder.

“Ready?” your dad asks, turning to peek at you and Juraj.

When he sees the two of you cuddled up together he can’t help but smile, leaving the two young ones in the back to rest and starts the drive with your mom in the passenger seat. It doesn’t take you long, five minutes max, really, for you to fall back asleep. Even with your rapidly beating heart threatening to keep you awake.

About half way through the drive you’re finally fully awake and truly bored. You look over at Juraj who has his headphones popped in and a movie playing on his phone. You lean over, snatching one of his headphones out of his ear and placing it in yours. Juraj doesn’t even flinch, just grins widely, his heart kicking around violently in his chest when he realizes you’ve moved close to him again.

“What are you watching?”

“Scream?” he questions, checking the title of the movie.

“Ooh I love this movie.”

You’ve officially relaxed into Juraj, your head back on his shoulder and his headphone in your ear. Juraj takes a chance, wrapping an arm around your waist and letting his fingers relax against your hip. His touch leaves a lick of flame on your body that doesn’t seem to go away until you guys make it to the lake house. It’s late and the rest of your extended family is already asleep so you guys head straight into the house, dropping your bags and falling asleep in your respective rooms.

“(y/n)!! (y/n), (y/n), (y/n)!!!!”

Your eyes crack open slowly and you lift a hand to rub the crust away and blink until you can finally see. You look next to your bed, your youngest cousin standing there with the biggest smile on her face you’ve ever seen.

“Emma!” you cheer, dragging her up onto your bed and hugging her tight against you.

“(y/n)! I! Can’t! Breathe!” she exclaims dramatically and you let go with a laugh.

“So,” she says, tilting her head shyly and you stare at her waiting. “Did you bring a boy with you?”

“And who told you that?”

“Alex,” she admits guiltily and you grin knowing your teenage cousin's habit of getting into everyone’s business no matter what.

“His name is Juraj,” you say, pronouncing his name slowly and Emma mouths his name after you say it.

“He’s cute!” Emma exclaims and you look at her with a tilted head.

“How did you-”

“He’s downstairs!!”

You’re quick to move, scooping Emma up into your arms and rushing out of your bedroom. You jog down to the kitchen and find Juraj sitting there enjoying his breakfast with the rest of your family milling around or eating with him.

“See,” Emma whispers into your ear and you smile. “He’s cute.”

You turn to look at Juraj, mouthing a hi to your best friend and he smiles, waving and Emma is quick to tuck her face into your neck and hide from the young hockey player. You can’t help but laugh, prying the young girl from your body and placing her on the ground before going to take your seat next to Juraj.

“Good morning miláčik,” he greets and you smile.

“Wait,” your cousin Alex pipes up from the other side of the kitchen table. “What did you just call her?”

“Uhm, I said ‘friend’ in Slovak,” Juraj explains but his face has a bright red tint to his cheeks that you want to question but can’t because Alex is already asking another question.

“How many languages do you know?”

Alex and Juraj go back and forth for a bit, Juraj doing his best to answer the questions from your teenage cousin. When you realize you’re not going to get anywhere with the two of them yapping away, you decide to go make breakfast.

“I thought Alex didn’t like him.”

You look up from your book to see your cousin Olivia coming to sit down next to you on the private beach in front of your grandparents house.

“You know Alex,” you tell her, casting your gaze over to the two boys swimming in the lake, splashing each other with water and talking about whatever.

“So,” Olivia drawls, looking over at you.

“Yes?” you ask, knowing her tone of voice means more than she’s letting you on.

“You and Juraj?”

“We’re not-”

“No I know,” she amends and you raise an eyebrow at her. “But you obviously like him.”

“How do you do that?” you ask. Olivia had seen you and Juraj exchange two words and the girl could already tell your feelings for him.

“He also obviously likes you,” she says like it’s a no brainer and you should have known this already.

The rest of the week is perfect, spending time with your extended family, enjoying the moments you had with them since it was so limited throughout the year. Juraj gets along with your entire family and the idea makes your heart sing happily every time you think about it. Your grandparents loved him, smiling fondly whenever they saw the two of you interacting and offering knowing looks to your parents.

The last day has come and gone and it’s far too early in the morning once again for you to be awake. Your cousins had left the day before and now you were saying goodbye to your grandparents.

Your grandma envelopes you in a hug, pulling back just slightly until her lips are next to your ear.

“I better be around for the wedding,” she whispers and when you pull all the way back to look at her she grins mischievously.

“I’ll keep you updated,” you tell her with a wink and she grins.

There was only one week of summer vacation left.

You can’t help but think that this had gone way too fast and you weren’t ready to go back to Montreal just yet. You were enjoying your little universe with Juraj, away from the chaos of work, the prying eyes of his teammates and your coworkers, and the general fact that this was the most time you had ever really gotten with Juraj. Ever since coming home from Ottawa with the approval of your extended family, you couldn’t help but think about telling Juraj about your feelings practically every single day. However, something always seemed to stop you each time.

With three days left, you finally devise a plan. Juraj had never really been to an American theme park and you hadn’t been to six flags in months. You loved going to the park at least once every summer when you were a kid. Truthfully you were terrified of roller coasters growing up until your friends dragged you on the most baby coaster possible before working up to the worst coaster. Ever since, you were still nervous about going on coasters but felt better when someone was with you.

“Juraj!!” you yell loudly, knocking on his door and when he calls out back, you swing open the door.

“Get dressed in something you’d be comfortable walking in all day and meet me in the car.”

Without waiting for an answer, you grab your bag and head downstairs to your car. You wait for about five minutes before Juraj hops in your car, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with nikes on as well.

“Where are we going?” he asks when you put your car in drive.

“It’s a surprise,” you smile mischievously and Juraj just smiles back at you.

It takes about an hour to get there and when Juraj sees the first roller coaster towering in the air he turns to you in his seat.

“A theme park?” he asks and you nod excitedly.

“What ride first?” Juraj asks when you’re through the gates and heading towards the middle of the theme park.

“Come on,” you say, grabbing his hand in yours and racing off to your favorite ride in the park, pandemonium.

Thankfully, the wait isn’t too terribly long and a quick 20 minutes later the two of you are next up. You watch as Juraj peers at the ride, a look of confusion when he sees that the seats are two a piece and face inward towards each other, unlike most coasters.

“Ready?”

“We’re not going uh backwards correct?” he asks almost nervously and you can’t help but be astonished by seeing Juraj Slafkovský nervous about something like this.

“It’s tradition!” you tell him excitedly and Juraj sports a look of worry as you take his hand once more and drag him into the seat.

You two strap yourselves in, holding your arms up for the attendant to check and as you drop them, Juraj catches your hand in his, intertwining your fingers and offering a squeeze that travels lightening up your arm and through your body with a soft tingle.

“Moja láska?” he asks and you turn to see the worry in his eyes. “Where’s the drop?”

You turn your head around and see you’re just about to crest the top of the hill but before you can respond, you’re whipped back around by the ride dipping down and heading towards its first drop.

“Kurva!” Juraj curses loudly as the ride drops and you can’t help the laugh that escapes as his hand tightens around yours as the ride whips around.

Finally, the ride comes to a stop and with a thump you land flush against the seat. Your smile is wide, your hair whipped around your face and you blow a breath out to move it from your eyes. You look over at Juraj who is absolutely beaming, your heart bursting at the sight.

“That was fun!” he exclaims and you nod excitedly.

You two get off the ride, running to the next one until you’ve made your way through about half the coasters in the park. You take a quick break, scarfing down a quick late lunch before you start your walk over to your next coaster.

“Miláčik?” Juraj asks and you look over at him. “What’s that?”

He points over to one of the carnival style games and you grin and grab his hand, dragging him towards the water shooting one.

“Hello young lady! Are you and your man going to play?” the game runner asks.

You nod and hand him the money needed to play before dragging Juraj down into a seat next to you.

“Okay, so see the target right there?” you ask, pointing to the red dot in the center. “You take your water gun, and shoot straight at it until your stuffed animal reaches the top.”

“You’re gonna lose,” he boasts when you sit down next to him and you grin widely, loving whenever Slaf gets into that competitive side of him.

The game runner yells out a start and the two of you put your game faces on as you aim at the target. Halfway through the race you glance up to see Slaf is beating you handily. The next time you look up, his stuffed animal has hit the top and the lights fire off.

“Let’s go!!” Slaf yells excitedly.

“We have a winner!! The young man in the front, what would you like out of these prizes?” The game runner gestures to the row above his head and Juraj looks over to you.

“What do you want moja láska?” Slaf asks and your heart skips a beat, realizing he wants to give you his prize.

“Can I have the teddy bear?” you ask, pointing up at the bear with the red bowtie and the game runner hands it to Slaf who holds it out to you with a giant smile on his lips.

“For you môj drahý.”

“Thank you,” you say, hugging the bear to your chest and you can’t help the smile that is bursting on your face. Slaf slings an arm around your shoulder, flames igniting throughout you as you continue to walk.

“Want to head home soon?” you ask and Juraj shakes his head.

“Can we go on those swings?” he asks, pointing towards the ride rotating in the sky as you walk.

“Sure.”

The wait takes forever as always, but it seems a lot quicker when Slaf is around. You two discuss the last two days of your vacation before you have to head back to Montreal and the plan for the drive back.

You get on the swings when the sun is halfway set and the attendant helps strap the two of you in before checking on others. The ride gets started and as they slowly lift you up, your smile grows when you see how beautiful the park looks beneath you with the sun setting. You turn to look at Slaf and his eyes are already on you, the look so soft and caring you feel it down to your bones.

His hand slips into yours, intertwining your fingers for the second time that day and you can feel there’s a difference in this one that makes your heart beat rapidly. Your eyes flicker from his eyes to your hands together and back up again to see Juraj gazing between your eyes and your lips.

The electricity is palpable and you feel yourself leaning in towards him. Your eyes flutter shut in hope and when his lips finally meet yours it feels like fireworks are exploding all around you. You’re lit up from top to bottom and the feeling is like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. When you break apart the smile on your face is so big it hurts and you look around to see the sun has officially set and there are literal fireworks exploding in the air towards the other side of the park.

“Oh my god,” you giggle lightly at the ridiculous magic of it all and lean your head on Slaf’s chest.

When the ride ends the two of you get off in silence and you find yourself holding his hand, your other coming up to wrap around his bicep. Your whole body leans against him and Slaf can’t help the giant smile on his lips that proves he is the luckiest man in the world.

“Tired?” he asks when you’re halfway through the park and your steps have slowed significantly.

“Mhm,” you murmur and Slaf stops the two of you in his tracks. You give him a confused look but he simply steps forward and squats down in front of you, holding his hands behind his back. You climb onto his back and he lifts you up, striding across the park once more and you lean your head against his back.

He doesn’t set you down until you reach the car and climb in on your side. The drive back to your house is quiet but in a peaceful way. The silence tells you that you’re both finally content in what was happening between the two of you. There didn’t seem to be any tension left, just a giddy air about the two of you.

You’re dragging your feet up the stairs and when you get to your bedroom, Juraj leans you against the door and kisses you like he can’t get enough. When he lets go he gazes at you with an unreadable look and you smile softly at him.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, moja láska,” he murmurs and the Slovak phrase holds a heavy weight to it that it didn’t before, your heart skipping happily over the words.

You’re half asleep, an unknowing smile still resting on your lips when you hear your bedroom door creak open. You attempt to look through the darkness to see what was going on when you hear Slaf’s voice and his weight on the other side of the bed.

“You okay?” he whispers in your ear.

“Perfect.”

The next morning the bright light from the blinds shines into your room and you blink slowly, letting last nights events crash over you once again. For a minute you still think it’s all a dream but when you turn in bed you feel a weight on your waist that has your heart jumping.

You turn all the way around, gazing at a dead asleep Juraj next to you. His hair falls in a mess over his forehead and drapes across his eyes. Your eyes trace his features slowly, the curve of his soft lips contrasted by his sharp jawline, his long eyelashes fluttering with every breath he takes. You smile when you realize once again that last night did happen.

You lean forward pecking his lips and his eyelids flutter before finally opening. Those soft lips stretch into that perfect smile of his and you can’t help but think you’ve won the lottery. Everyone else can go home, give up on soulmates, you found a love that beats all of it.

“Good morning, my love,” he murmurs against your lips.

“Good morning.”

#the summer fic exchange 2k24 #prettytoxicrevolver fic #juraj slafkovsky fanfic #juraj salfkovsky x you #juraj slafkovsky fic #juraj slafkovsky imagine #juraj slafkovsky x reader #montreal canadiens x reader #montreal canadiens imagine #montreal canadiens fic

91 notes · View notes

inthe-dark-tonight · 1 year ago

Text

Falling Into My Sins

chapter five: cling to the memory

dbf!joel x fem!reader series - loosely inspired by the song skin by soccer mommy

chapter 1 chapter 2 chapter 3 chapter 4 chapter 6 chapter 7

summary: you go out to dinner with your friends to fill them in about the mystery man from the bar and run into some unexpected company.

word count: 3.2k

series rating: E (18+ mdni)

warnings: no outbreak AU, age gap (reader is in their 20s, Joel is in his 40s) no use of y/n, more tommy and reader flirting, slight angst/confrontation, alcohol consumption, joel only being a bit of a menace (for now), if i’m missing anything let me know <3

notes: this is a bit of a filler chapter but we’re setting up some future plot points okay!! stick with me please!! i swear there will be some really good drama in the next chapter. thank you @javiscigarette ,my love, for beta reading and also helping me come up with the most diabolical plot ideas for this fic xo. and thank you @ilovepedro for reading this chapter over for me and giving me some input ilysm bby<3

A few days have passed since your date with Tommy, and the kiss. You knew it was wrong, you only kissed him to try and get back at Joel. At least that’s what you’re trying to convince yourself. You haven’t seen either of the brothers since that night, and Tommy only reached out to see how you were feeling the next day.

You decided to make plans with your friends tonight after they wouldn’t stop bugging you for an update on the mystery man from your night out. As you leave to meet them for dinner and drinks, your eyes linger on Joel’s house noticing that his truck isn’t in the driveway tonight.

You picked up Dee first, then Aya and started to make your way downtown. You all agreed to have dinner at your favorite local restaurant, the Attic.

“You have to tell us, did you ever see him again!?” Aya asks. “We’re dying to know.”

You let out a small laugh before answering. “I think I need a drink before I can get into it.” You let out a sigh, drifting off into thoughts of that night in the bar and meeting Joel for the first time. You see the two of them exchange a look from the corner of your eye before their gaze falls back on you.

“That bad?” Dee asks hesitantly.

You purse your lips and push the thoughts to the back of your head as you pull into a parking spot. “Yeah, that bad.”

“I haven’t been here in ages,” Aya states as you put the car in park.

“Me either.” you glance back at her in the rear view mirror and smile, grabbing your purse and unbuckling before reaching for the door handle.

You step out and meet them at the back of the car before walking towards the restaurant. The sun is setting and the air is starting to cool down now as the three of you walk towards the entrance. The host seats you at a booth against the back wall of the restaurant and you all settle in, taking a look at the drink menu.

“How's the new job?” Aya asks as you all flip through the menu.

“Well,” you're unsure how to start. “It’s not bad, I actually work tomorrow night.” You know that you'll have to tell them about Joel showing up at your job with a date at some point, just not right now. “What about you guys?”

“Nothing really new or exciting…” Dee starts before the waiter comes to the table to ask your drink order.

The three of you order margaritas to start and the waiter brings out chips with your drinks. You chat for a couple minutes, sipping on your drinks as you finalize your orders. After you're a little more than halfway through your first drinks he comes back to take your food orders, and you finally feel ready to talk. You can tell they've been trying not to bring it up ever since you sat down.

“Okay, are you ready?” you smile at them letting out a small laugh.

“Yes, I can't wait any longer.” Aya huffs dramatically as she rolls her eyes in a joking manner. “So you saw him again?”

You laugh and take a deep breath before answering. “Yeah, I did see him again.” you look down at your drink and play with your straw as you wait for their next question.

“Okay and? How did it go?” Dee asks excitedly.

“Did you find out his name? Did he take you out?” Aya adds in eagerly.

“Well, um,” you glance back up at them. “Not exactly.” you let out a nervous laugh as they both stare back at you in anticipation. “I saw him again at dinner… at my dads house.”

Both of their eyes shoot open wide in surprise. “What do you mean?” Aya asks cautiously.

“It turns out he's my dads best friend… and neighbor.” you pause, giving them a moment to process before you continue. “My dad had told me that he invited his friend over for Sunday night dinner, I never met him before this, and when he walked in it was him. The mystery man.” You take a deep breath. “His name’s joel.”

“Oh my god.” Dee says, mouth falling open.

“That's not even the worst of it.” They just stare at you in silence as you prepare for the next part. “After we had dinner we talked a bit and, uh,” you take another sip of your drink before going on, trying to calm your nerves. “We had sex.”

You get interrupted by the waiter bringing out your food. Both girls are still in shock as the waiter sets your plates down. “Thank you.” you mutter as he steps away.

Once he’s gone, Dee finally speaks. “Did I hear you correctly?” she's just staring at you.

“Yeah, we had sex… behind my fathers house.” They both blink at you. “I told him before it happened that I understood if he didn't want to see me again, that if he wanted to end things it was okay with me. I mean the last thing I expected was for him to be my dads new best friend, but he said he didn't want to end things.” you sigh.

“So you guys are like, seeing each other now?” Aya asks, finishing off her margarita.

You bite at your lip and let out a stiff laugh. “No, we're not.” you clear your throat and grab your fork. “We made plans for later that week before he came over that night, but he ghosted me after Sunday night dinner.” You take a bite of your food.

“Oh my… You're joking right?” Dee scoffs. You swallow your food and shake your head. “What the fuck…”

“Yeah so that happened.” You rub your cheek, thinking before you tell them the next part. “Then the first night at my new job his brother, Tommy, came into the diner and we were talking for a bit. Maybe 30 minutes later Joel walks in. With a girl.” You look up at them, both completely invested in your story. “So I confronted him about ghosting me, we argued, he kissed me, and then his brother asked me out…”

Dee almost spits out her drink after the last part. “This is insane, did you go out with his brother?”

“Yeah, you're telling me.” You take a sip of your drink, finishing it off. “I did, and he’s really sweet. Picked me up, taught me how to play pool,” you find yourself smiling. “but Joel was there.”

“Is this guy just everywhere? My god.” Aya adds in.

You chuckle at her comment. “We talked again that night. He was flirting with another girl at the bar but when I went outside to get some air he followed me.” You stop, zoning out for a moment. The memory floods back as you retell the story. “It’s weird, I feel some kind of pull towards him but… I don’t know. I think he’s just a player. Actually, I know he is. It was just a fuck to him, those were his own words.”

“God… sounds like an asshole to me,” Aya rolls her eyes and glances over at Dee. “Tell us more about his brother, what was his name?” She takes another bite.

“Tommy,” you smile while saying his name. “Yeah um, I ended up kissing him at the end of our date.”

“You kissed him?” Dee’s eyes practically pop out of her head. “Damn.” She shakes her head in disbelief.

“Yeah yeah,” you wave your hand in front of you. “It was wrong I know, I think part of me only did it to make Joel jealous.” You look away, a bit embarrassed after admitting that.

“Well what did Tommy say after the kiss?” Aya asks, resting her elbows on the table and leaning in closer. “Was it a good kiss?”

“Well first I apologized on the drive home because the kiss was a little abrupt, but it was good. He said it was okay that I kissed him.” You bite at your lip. “He hasn’t really reached out since then though, only to check on me the next day, and neither have I.”

“Why not? It seems like he’s actually into you.” Dee says.

“Unlike his brother.” Aya shoots you a glance. “I say forget about Joel and go for his brother.”

“I’m just not sure if I like him like that, it would be wrong to lead him on.” You play with your fork while you think about what Aya just said.

“You’ve only gone out with him once, how do you know for sure you’re not into him?” She shrugs.

“I guess you’re right.” You hum. “I don’t know though.”

“Just think about it.” Aya shoots you a devious smile.

You laugh, putting your fork down and placing your hands on your lap. “I’ll be right back guys.”

You get up from the booth and start towards the restroom, you really just need a breather after spilling all of that. You walk past a handful of booths feeling a little tipsy as you go, then turn down the hallway and push open the black door to the bathroom. You step in and walk towards the row of sinks lined in front of a mirror, staring at yourself in the reflection before turning on the water. As you run your hands under the water and grab some soap, your eyes stay on your reflection and you take a deep breath.

I can’t believe I just told them all of that, you think to yourself. It all feels unreal. You’ll probably take their advice and text Tommy back tonight, they did have a point. He’s into you and Joel isn’t, that’s just the facts.

You reach to turn off the water and grab a paper towel before taking one last look at yourself in the mirror. You throw the paper towel into the waste bin and reach for the door handle. As soon as you step into the hallway you run into someone nearly falling over before they grab your arms, catching you as you place your hands on their chest.

“Woah there.” You’d recognize that voice anywhere. You look up to find Joel Miller holding you against him.

“Joel!” You immediately pull back, releasing yourself from his grip. “Hi-”

He was the last person you were expecting to see, especially after you were just calling him a player to your friends over dinner. What were the odds of him being here at the same time as you, you know that you live in the same town but it’s like you can’t escape him.

“Hey.” He offers you a small smile and glances down the hallway. “What are you doin’ here?” His eyes fall back on you as he waits for an answer.

“Um, I’m having dinner with some friends,” you straighten yourself out, suddenly feeling nervous. “Girls night.” You take a deep breath and his scent fills your senses.

“Hm. Nice.” You look back up at him, preparing to walk back to your friends when he takes a step closer to you. He runs a hand through his hair before speaking again, and your heart leaps into your throat. “Hey uh, I’ve been wanting to talk to you actually-“

You take a small step back from him, panicking and trying to keep a fair distance between the two of you. “Maybe another time, Joel. I gotta get back.” His face falls as you turn back towards the end of the hallway and make your way back to the booth.

What makes him think you would honestly want to talk to him,what would he even have to say? You don't care anyway. As you walk back you frantically glance around the restaurant. You’re assuming Joel’s here on another date until your eyes land on Tommy sitting in a booth diagonal from yours and a little further down. His back is to you and Sarah is there as well. Shit. Both brothers are here. You get to your booth, turning around and sliding into your seat as quickly as possible.

“Guys, don’t make a big scene please.” You slouch down in your seat. “Joel’s here with Tommy and his daughter, I just ran into him while leaving the bathroom.”

“Where?” They both lean in closer.

“Behind me, to your left.” As soon as you finish saying it, Aya’s head snaps towards the table. Dee waits a moment before also glancing their way. “Aya!” You smack her hand playfully. “I said don’t make a scene.”

“Oh my god!” She whispers, eyes still locked on Tommy sitting at the booth. “His brother is gorgeous.” She smirks.

While Dee and Aya ogle at Tommy, you notice Joel walking back. His eyes lock onto yours immediately as you watch him make his way to Tommy. You can’t imagine what he wanted to talk to you about, there’s nothing to even talk about. And if he wants to talk about what happened with Tommy, it’s none of his business anyway. Once Joel walks past you, you snap out of it and look back at Aya and Dee.

Aya leans in and whispers. “That’s Joel?” She looks past you at the booth where they’re all sitting and you nod to confirm. “Wow, they’re both gorgeous.” She smirks, looking back at you.

“Oh god.” Dee snaps her head back towards you. “They saw us.”

“Are you serious?” You slowly turn to look towards the booth and both brothers are looking towards you. “Fuck.” You turn back in shock to look at the girls again. This can’t be happening.

“It’s okay, what’s the worst that could happen?” Dee says, causing you to let out a nervous laugh.

“Guys, I need to get out of here.” Your chest is starting to feel tight, they both definitely saw you.

The waiter walks past and Aya flags him over to the table. “We’re ready for the check please.” She smiles up at him before he walks away.

You start to dig in your purse for some cash as the waiter comes back and sets the check on your table. Immediately you set your cash on top of the check and wait for the two girls to do the same, then you feel a presence beside you. Aya looks up behind you, eyes going wide and you turn to see what she’s looking at. You find Tommy Miller standing to your right, one hand in his pocket as he smiles down at you.

“Hi.” He says softly.

“Tommy.” You’re breathless. “Hi, what are you doing here?” You’re trying your best to sound genuine.

“Just out to dinner with Joel and Sarah.” He glances at your two friends and back to you.

“Oh uh, Tommy these are my friends Aya and Dee.” You turn towards them. “This is my neighbor, Tommy.” You raise your brows at them and they both give him a small wave. You turn back towards him and he nods in their direction before giving you his attention. “We’re just having a girls night, we were about to leave.” You smile.

“Nice, well uh,” his hand rubs at the back of his neck. “Text me when you get home? I mean, only if you want…”

“Yeah, I will.” You clutch your purse as he smiles down at you again.

He looks at your friends again. “Nice to meet you ladies.” He winks at you before walking back towards the booth where Joel and Sarah are seated.

You let out a deep sigh and glance over your shoulder as Tommy walks back. Joel’s staring at you, a deep crease between his brows as he watches you, eyes falling on Tommy as he scoots into the booth. Tommy turns around to look your way one last time and your eyes meet for a moment.

“Let’s get out of here,” you turn to the girls. “Please.”

You all get up from the booth and you practically sprint out of there. As you open the door to go outside, Aya’s arm loops around yours and she lets out a little shriek.

“What a heartthrob! You better text him when you get home.” She leans into you and you all laugh as you approach the car.

“I will.” You give her a genuine smile before walking towards the driver's side and pulling open your door.

After dropping off Dee and Aya, you find yourself thinking about Joel as you pull into your driveway. Your skin tingles as you think about the way he grabbed you when you ran into him, and the way he watched you as he walked past you keeps replaying in your mind.

Your phone vibrates as you put your car in park, you grab your purse and dig around for it. Tommy had told you to text him when he got home, you’re assuming he decided to text you instead. When you pull out your phone, the message that pops up on the screen isn’t from Tommy. It’s from Joel.

Hey, I was really hoping we could talk. Maybe tomorrow night? If you’re free.

You scoff at the text, ignoring it as you unlock your phone and immediately go to your messages to text Tommy.

Hi, are you free on Friday?

You send it before you can overthink it and bite at your nail before grabbing your purse from the seat beside you, then you feel your phone go off again. You eagerly open the message from Tommy.

Yeah, let me take you out. I’ll pick you up around 8.

A smile spreads across your face as you read the message, and the comments your friends made at dinner play through your head again. He’s actually into you, unlike Joel.

Perfect, see you then :)

You shove your phone back into your purse and reach for the car door. Once you step through your front door, you run up your stairs, a smile still plastered on your face from Tommy’s text. You close your bedroom door and throw your purse on your bed as you walk towards your window. As you grab your curtains to close them, you see Joel’s truck pulling into his driveway across the street.

You stand there frozen for a moment, watching as he parks the car. Sarah gets out first and Joel tosses her the keys as she runs to the front door, Joel closes the car door as he watches her. He lingers there for a moment, hand resting on his truck until Sarah is inside. As soon as the front door closes, Joel turns his head and looks towards your house. You just watch him from your window, hoping the darkness hides your silhouette. You swear you can almost see a hint of a smirk on his face as you pull your curtains shut.

That night your mind lingers towards thoughts of Joel until you fall asleep.

thank you for reading!! feel free to leave comments or asks about your thoughts, and reblogs are appreciated :)

tag list and some moots: @ilovepedro @isitmeulookin4 @joelsversion @nostalxgic @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin @gracieheartspedro @jenispunk @javiscigarette @pedropascalfan221 @mellymbee @kaybee181520 @joeldjarin @akah565 @chefchy4 @untamedheart81 @eliza-8 @fellinfromthetop @znerac let me know if you wanna be added :)

#joel miller #dbf!joel #joel miller x reader #joel miller x female reader #dbf!joel miller x reader #joel miller x fem!reader #joel miller fic #fic: falling into my sins #tlou fic

215 notes · View notes

kayleigh-83 · 6 months ago

Note

Hi, could you share which ROS events you use please 😀

I know I'd shared these a couple times before, but I scrolled back a bit and it's definitely changed a lot since the last time, which was August 2022! Back then I had 48 on the list, now it's up to 70.

Putting more info and the full list behind a cut to save your dash!

I just keep all my gameplay notes and stuff on my ipad, easiest for me. I don't use an ROS program or anything so there's no weighting, no major or minor scenarios etc. I just use Siri or random.org to pick a number.

The scenarios are a mix of other people's lists I've found, plus ones I've made up myself. It's pretty nice to my Sims so there aren't any death or divorce ones or anything lol. I've removed some I used to use as my gameplay has evolved, if they no longer fit.

Day out - all eligible Sims go to a community lot

Movie night - invite friends over for a movie and snacks

Picnic - make food and go to a park for a picnic

Family reunion - invite over any known family members

Blind date - call matchmaker for a single Sim

New outfit - your Sim wants a new outfit, go shopping

Games night - no homework for kids, play games all night

Large pet adoption - get a cat or a dog, Roll dice to choose

Small pet adoption - a small caged animal will join the family (including rabbits)

Grouchy - your Sim picks d4 arguments with another

Vacation time - spend a couple nights away at a vacation destination (or more!)

Fitness regime - your Sim wants to work out, get fit and eat healthy

Rebellious - child or teen skips school and doesn’t do homework for 1 to 3 days, sneaks out, bad interactions

Date night - take a Sim couple out on a date

It’s a phase - a child will only wear a costume for 1 to 3 days, teens get a piercing or drastically change appearance

Party time - throw a party!

Friendly neighbour - chat up the next d3 walk bys

Bad influence - influence someone to do something stupid d4 times

Take advantage - influence someone to do you a favor d4 times

Exchange student - host a teenager from a foreign country; receive $5000 from the exchange agency to cover your expenses

Tired of cooking - order delivery at least once a day for 2 to 4 days

Shopaholic - patronize at least 4 different local businesses this round

Stray love - greet and interact with the next stray you see, try to adopt

Old pets, new tricks - teach a pet a new command

Lottery win - roll dice 1 to 10 and multiply by 10,000

Scratch card win - roll dice 1 to 10 and multiply by 1000

Worst fears realized - fulfill 5 fears in a rotation

Barber shop - change your Sim’s hairstyle

Four eyes - your Sim needs to get glasses

Witchy - become a witch for at least two rotations

Redecorate - choose a room or space in the home and give it a facelift

Identity crisis - change aspiration for this round

Reconnect with friends - invite 2-4 friends for an outing

Make Your Move - if single, try to initiate a romantic relationship with a Sim that you have a high relationship/chemistry with

Time to Commit - if you’re in a romantic relationship but uncommitted, take it to the next level (either go steady or engagement/marriage depending)

Scary dare - visit the cemetery at night

Dine out - go out to a restaurant to have a meal

Lead by Example - have your Sim encourage their child in a trait they value

Kitchen Renovations - no dishwasher or stove, just a sink and microwave or toaster oven, while you wait for the new appliances to arrive! (D4 days)

On the prowl - take a single (or romance) Sim out on the town to pick someone up for woohoo (or teen level activities)

Hobby Focus - Spend at least two hours every day doing an activity for your chosen hobby

Brace face - child or teen Sim must get braces for the round

Dye Job - dye hair a different colour for the round

Slumber Party - teen or child invites friends over for a sleepover

Cool Parent - try to befriend d2 of your kid’s friends

Playing Matchmaker - influence a friend to flirt with someone else

ISBI light - pick a Sim and control only them for 3 days

Creature of the Night - become a vampire for the round

Unexpected Tax Bill - lose d20-40% of your family funds to unpaid back taxes

Power outage - d2 days with no power (only make uncooked meals)

Family Heirlooms - inherit d3 family heirlooms from a distant relative; use kaching and purchase items of around $1000 each

Infertility - your Sim is sadly no longer able to have children!

Orphan relation - a close relation has died, leaving their child orphaned! As the closest living relative, you are now the legal guardian. Move in a toddler or child (d2). Receive $5000 from the government for your generosity to help raise the little tyke.

Rocky relationship - couple argues at least 2 times a day in the round

Great aunt/uncle in town - create an elderly Sim to come stay for the round - after they become a townie if desired

Bylaw fine - your Sim put the trash out to the curb too early and have received a bylaw fine - d6 x $100

Start a club! Find up to 3 Sims who share your hobby, and get to know them better. If you can participate in your chosen hobby together, even better!

Money tree! Your Sim finds a mysterious tree in a pot by their front door. The note on it says to use it wisely because it will only be around for a short time? Buy a money tree and keep for one rotation

Resurrect old friendships - call and invite over the friend your Sim has lost touch with the most (lowest relationship score while still being friends)

Customer appreciation day - to thank your loyal customers for their patronage, mark down the prices at your shop for a day and provide treats for your customers

Ambrosia - take a sip from the elixir of life (Roll to choose between adults or elders in the household)

Mate like rabbits - risky woohoo d5 times in the next 48 hours, hope there aren’t any unintended consequences!

Unexpected vet bill! Your little companion swallowed something they shouldn’t have and the bill comes to $5000! If you don’t have enough money, you might have to take out a loan.

Woohoo scavenger hunt - must woohoo on/in four different possible locations this round (bed, couch, car, photobooth, hot tub, changing booth, elevator)

Lost a dare - walk around in a silly costume for d3 days, go on at least one date or outing in it

Holding a Torch - your Sim is feeling nostalgic for their first crush; have them meet up for a date and see where it leads…

Running with the pack - become a werewolf for the round

I Want More! - your Sim now has six want slots

Changing Preferences - change all your turn ons and turn offs - will this affect how you feel about your significant other?

A Sudden Craving - change to grilled cheese aspiration for the round

Kibble of Life - give your four legged friends something to help keep them around longer

Sudden Poverty - family funds reduced to $100

Sudden Weath - family funds increased to $250,000

You Can't Always Get What You Want - try not to fulfill any wants for d5 days

#ts2 #the sims 2 #ts2 simblr #ros scenarios

76 notes · View notes

boldlyvoid · 2 years ago

Text

Employee of the Month 2: Stocking Stuffers

Eddie Munson x Fem Reader | Part One

Summary: Christmas is the season for Giving

Warnings: food mention, appearances from eddies friends, teasing, kissing, lots of fluff, meeting the family, gift exchanges, Eddie's scars, the truth about Hawkins + the upside down, love confessions, oral sex (m+f), hand jobs, squinting, cum play, first times, Protected p in v sex

word count: 13.9k

Eddie makes her breakfast the next morning, with Wayne trying to sleep on the couch in the living room, thinking he has no idea that Y/N slept over last night… it’s not like her coat and her shoes are by the door or anything.

They eat quietly in his room, they haven’t talked about what happened last night or the fact that they’re dating now… she quietly eats with a confused look on her face like she’s thinking really hard, it’s cute.

He stares at her with a smile, “what’s on your mind, princess?”

“Huh?” She looks up at him finally, wiping away any trace of what she was thinking about. “Oh, I just… I can’t believe this is real and I’m not dreaming right now like I actually slept over last night. You actually like me, that actually happened last night…”

“You’re a big girl now,” he teases first. “No, but really, I feel the same, it happened really fast.”

She nods, fighting a smile as she remembers it fondly, “but it was nice…”

“Waynes out there,” he whispers, pointing through the wall, “you can’t get all horny on me when he’s here, I have to behave.”

“Shut up,” she smacks his knee lightly. “I am not getting all horny on you I was just saying, it was fun and I would like to do it again sometime… with my boyfriend.”

“We work together again tonight, and tomorrow,” he reminds her. “And if you don’t have anything to do on Monday, you’re more than welcome to stay every night, so we can, you know…”

“You can stay with me on Sunday night?” She suggests, knowing Monday was Christmas eve and her mom wouldn’t let her miss it. Not since her dad died. “And we could spend Christmas together if you wanted? I think my mom would actually love to have you at the table too.”

He nods, “I’d love to, I think Waynes working nights but he’d be able to come to dinner before work?”

“I’ll talk to my mom about it,” she fills with glee. “You know, I wasn’t going to say anything but I’ve been working on a Christmas present for you and I’m even more excited to give it to you now.”

“Thank god,” he feels a wave of relief wash over him. “Cause I got you something too and I didn’t want it to be weird if you didn’t get me anything, I was freaking out a bit about it.”

“Really?” She can’t believe it. “You didn’t have to do that?”

“You didn’t have to get me anything either, but’cha did,” he reminds her, giving her the biggest heart eyes ever. He’s so gone for her it’s a little dramatic how much his heart aches for her when she’s right there in front of him.

She returns to her plate with a big smile, stabbing her fork into the scrambled eggs with a shake of her head and then she points it at him, “you’ve gotta stop being so cute before I jump on you again.”

He drops it there, they finish their food and he brings them all back to the kitchen carefully. The two of them get dressed again, he brings her coat and boots over to the other door by his room, not wanting to disrupt Wayne at all. He bundles up and heads out to start the van about 5 minutes before she’s ready to go, making sure it’s nice and warm when she gets inside. He holds her hand on the ride back to her place, he walks her to her door and kisses her with the promise of being back at a quarter to 8 for work.

And then he’s alone again.

The pressure of it all shows up when he’s pulling out of her neighbourhood. So he doesn’t turn back towards the trailer park, instead, he heads downtown. He pulls right up beside Steve’s Beemer at the video store and heads inside with a feeling he can’t shake off.

“Hey, stranger,” Robin lights right up, she was home for the holidays and working with her one best friend, surprised to see another already. “What are you doing up so early?”

“It’s noon?” He laughs, “but uh, I had to drop my girlfriend off at her place before work.”

“Girlfriend!?” She lights right up, “the girl you like from the grocery store, right?”

He nods, “yeah, she uh, she came over when I was sick last week and made me some soup and read to me and tucked me in and I was like, I’m so stupid she clearly likes me too so I kissed her yesterday and now she’s my girlfriend.”

“Wow,” she leans on the counter with her head in her hands, “Steve! Are you hearing this?” She calls over to him in the back room.

“What?” He pops his head out to see Eddie, “oh, hey!”

“Y/N’s his girlfriend now,” Robin points at him with a smile, more of a shit-eating grin, really. They’ve been keeping a bet on when it would happen. “You owe me 20 bucks.”

“Come on, you couldn’t have waited till after Christmas?” Steve complains, happy for him, but out $20.

He shrugs, “sorry man, she wanted me sooo bad, I couldn’t say no to her.”

“Shut up,” Steve can tell he’s exaggerating. “How did you find a girlfriend before me?”

“Charm, raw sex appeal, pure luck,” Robin uses it as an opportunity to bully Steve, “it’s not his fault you lack those things.”

“Fuck you both,” he slaps $20 on the counter and heads back towards the stock room.

“Wait, I needed to talk to you, specifically,” Eddie calls after him, following him towards the back room. “I have a question that only you would understand…”

“Okay,” Steve seems concerned but he holds the door open and lets Eddie into the staff-only room full of VHS cases. “What’s up?”

“Have you… I mean, has anyone seen— ugh this is so weird man, I’m sorry,” he leans against the table back there with a sigh, rubbing his eyes. “Fuck. Okay, the scars… has anyone seen your scars, you know, when you’re… intimate with them?”

Steve nods, “yeah, I’ve been taking good care of them now so they’re not too bad and when they ask about it I just lie and say it’s road burn from a motorcycle crash and they buy it.”

“How do you take care of them?” He genuinely didn’t know there was a way.

“I learned from this one girl that bio oil helps with stretch marks and lightens them so I tried it and look,” Steve pulls his shirt up and moves his vest out of the way. The scars aren’t as red as Eddie’s, they’re almost the same fleshy pink as the rest of him. “You want some, you can have the rest of my bottle, I think this is as light as they’re getting for me.”

“If you don’t mind?” He genuinely wanted to try anything that would make them a little less visible. “I just don’t know how to explain to her why I have these.”

“Have you considered the truth?”

He shakes his head, “her dad died in the earthquake. How do I tell her we almost stopped it from happening but missed it by a few seconds and now her dad is dead?”

“We can give her someone to be mad at, tell her we killed Vecna, we made sure it’ll never happen again,” Steve knows that’s not much, but it’s something. “If you want, we can all help tell her? Nancy’s home as of tonight and staying here all week, or you know what? Bring Y/N to our Christmas party on Monday and we can tell her then… unless you want to wait till you’re more serious?”

“We’re pretty serious,” he can’t help but blush.

“Wait, you’ve fucked but she hasn’t seen you shirtless?” Steve can read Eddie’s face better than anyone. “How?”

“I don’t kiss and tell,” Eddie bites his lip, keeping his secrets to himself. “But we didn’t have sex, we just, you know…”

“I don’t,” Steve crosses his arms, playfully. “Explain it to me, pretend I’m an idiot—

“I don’t have to pretend.”

Steve points at him with a glare, “hey.”

“What?” Eddie laughs it off, enjoying how easy it was to bug Steve. “We kissed and did stuff, you don’t need to know anything else.”

“Fine,” Steve gives in. “I’m glad you’re happy though, man, you’re like glowing right now.”

He nods, smiling away, unable to disagree. “I can’t believe I got her… it’s fuckin’ nuts how happy she makes me.”

—

She has the house to herself until her mom gets home, which means she spends a decent amount of time in the shower without anyone telling her that she can’t. She packs a little overnight bag to bring to Eddie’s tonight, she gets all dolled up too and just in time for her mom to get home.

She’s looking in the mirror, making herself all pretty when her mom comes and stands in the doorway, leaning on the frame with a smile. “You didn’t come home last night…”

“I did not,” she turns slowly, afraid to get told off for some reason… her mom wasn’t very confrontational at all.

“Can you just tell me next time? I woke up in a bit of a panic when you weren’t in here but I figured you’d be with Eddie,” she says it without saying it. “I just want to know you’re safe.”

“I’m probably going over to his trailer again tonight, but tomorrow I want him to stay here… if that’s okay? I just figured that with Christmas coming that you’d want me here on Christmas Eve,” she explains her thinking all in one go. “Is that okay?”

She nods, “I don’t see why not. Does he have anyone to spend Christmas with?”

She shakes her head, “I’m pretty sure he’s Jewish on his uncle's side, but he said he’d like to spend Christmas with us and, his uncle works night shifts but he’d be able to come to dinner too if we have the space? He’d never turn down a good meal.”

“Yeah, I bought a big turkey last week thinking we’d have a bunch of leftovers, so it’s definitely big enough for 4,” her mom explains with a smile, happy to have guests again. “Give them the invite for me, tell them dinner is at 5:30 on Tuesday.”

“I will,” she can’t contain her excitement so she just beams a powerful smile at her. “He’s kinda my boyfriend now too…”

“Yeah?” She smiles right back, proud of her. “Well, I can’t wait to get to know him.”

“He’s really awkward at first, but he’s funny and he’s nice and just the cutest man on the planet, it’s literally not fair how cute he is,” she gets a little carried away on that.

“Yeah well, just try to behave yourself when he’s here… and be safe?” She had the talk with her in grade 6, she’s known about safe sex for years, doesn’t mean mom can’t bring it back up. “You’ve got condoms, right?”

She nods, slightly embarrassed but she knew her mom meant well. “I bought some for his stocking… that’s what I got him for Christmas, a bunch of things I thought he’d like or would make him laugh.”

“That’s cute,” she smiles, remembering how she did that for Y/N’s father. She backs up from the doorway and taps the frame lightly, “well, I’m going to make dinner, should I be expecting anyone?”

She shakes her head, “no, he’s coming to get me for work, though.”

“Sounds good.”

And then she’s gone.

It leaves her feeling a little more anxious than before. She has spent a lot of time thinking about the day she’d finally get to have sex with another person, and after last night it’s never felt realer. It’s mildly terrifying to think about. He was going to see her naked, he was going to stretch her open and slip inside of her and she was going to feel how hot and heavy he is as he fucks her and…

She has to take a deep breath and calm herself down, turned on and anxious at the same time now.

She’s so into him, she has been for so long. She's thought about him while getting off, she’s had dreams about a life with him, he’s been a constant in her fantasies and now it was going to become her reality.

—

Work is excruciatingly slow now that they’re dating.

He’s so handsy, he has to touch her every time he passes by, he kisses her cheek randomly, he comes up behind her to help her and rests his chin on her shoulder to watch what she’s doing and hold her in a weird hug around the middle. She wants to get her work done, the sooner they finish the quicker they can get out of there but he’s just happy being in her presence. He’s so happy with her.

He’s on the other side of the aisle, humming along to the songs on the speakers, shoving boxes of cereal into the shelves without a real care in the world, too caught up in the songs. “Don’t take my heart, don’t break my heart, don’t, don’t throw it away,” his voice drops to mimic the song, making her smile over at him.

He reaches back to the palette of boxes in the centre of the aisle, pretending to drum and then he points at her, “And this is my four-leaf clover! I’m on the line, one open mind, this is my…” he makes his way to her, taking her hand to dance like an old 50s couple and cradling the back of her head as he brings her closer. “Four leaf clover,” he finishes the words before he kisses her head and she settles there.

They sway along to the beat, his jaw pressed to her temple, holding her close to his heart, she feels so incredibly loved by him it was insane. She gives his hand and his side a little squeeze before pulling away with a smile, “that was nice, but stop being so cute, I have things to do.”

“Yeah, me,” he teases, letting her go.

She smacks his arm and pulls away completely, turning back to the shelf to fiddle with the boxes there, nervous to say this but she can’t stop the words from coming out, “maybe if you’re good you can have me for Christmas, you know, on top of your present…”

He leans on the shelf and crowds her space, keeping his voice down and just between them, “you know there’s no rush, right? I know I was kind of a horn-dog last night, but seriously don’t rush. I’ve waited 22 years, I can wait 22 more if I need to.”

“Well personally, I’m tired of waiting,” she presses her lips together awkwardly, admitting that to him felt embarrassing. “I would’ve done it last night if we took 5 minutes to pull apart and get undressed, honestly.”

He’s mighty surprised by that, speechlessly so.

“I’m not kidding,” she manages to laugh at how frozen he is. She pokes his cheeks a few times to bring him back and almost jumps out of her skin when he goes to bite her finger off.

He wraps her up and kisses her all over her neck and under her ear, making her laugh harder as she tries to push away from him. When she finally does pull away enough to look at him, he’s so smiley he’s blushing, “you’re everything, Y/N Y/L/N. Absolutely everything to me.”

She could melt staring into his eyes like this, she’s filled with so much love for him she could burst into a billion pieces of heart-shaped confetti… “I’ve waited so long to hear you say that to me. Too long.”

“Just wait till I feel like I’m allowed to start telling you that I love you,” he teases, letting her know he feels it, but there’s also no rush there.

Little does he know she loves him back already.

—

Back at his trailer, she’s a lot less anxious this time as she takes off her boots and hangs up their coats. Within seconds she’s, once again, all over him. Hands-on each other's cheeks, holding themselves in a heated kiss as the two of them bump into everything on the way to his bedroom.

Knocking things to the floor with a mumbled, “I’ll get that later,” from Eddie against her lips. She laughs against him, kissing his teeth as he smiles back, completely in love with her.

They tumble into his bed in a sea of laughter, he lands on her and knocks some of the wind out of her, making her laugh come out funny and then they laugh harder. He rolls off her, the two of them on their backs with their legs still dangling off the edge of the bed, cackling towards the ceiling. The room is pitch black except for the light beaming in from the hallway, causing an orange rectangle to light up his dresser and illuminates his guitar where she hangs on the wall.

His room is so dark that the old glow-in-the-dark stars still kinda work, as their laughter dies down, she can’t help but smile up at them. She reaches out to hold his hand between them and turns to him, “I haven’t laughed that hard in forever.”

“Me either,” he finally stops giggling with a sigh, unable to stop smiling either to the point that both their faces hurt.

She gets up and sits on her knees, he sits up against the headboard, he reaches over to his side table and flicks on the lamp, making the whole room glow again.

“What did you want to do tonight?” She asks, “like… make out? Watch a movie? Read?”

“All 3 sound amazing,” he reaches out for her, guiding her right back into his lap like she belongs there forever now. It’s her seat. “You pick, I’m just—

“Just happy to be with you,” she rolls her eyes playfully.

“I am!” He tickles her sides, making her grab his wrists while squealing, trying to pull him away but he’s too strong for her.

“Okay, okay, I believe you,” she gives in, wanting to be able to breathe again.

He wraps his arms around her, pulling her in close, her chest heaves as she tries to settle in her own skin again. She wasn’t really that ticklish, it was the way his fingers dug into her sides that got her all squeamish. He kisses her neck again, just under her ear, “this is all I’ve wanted for years…”

“Me too,” she settles against him, arms resting on his shoulders once more, she runs her fingers through his hair. “I have wanted this with you since I was a freshman, so like since I was 14… I saw you in the cafeteria with your curly hair and your charming smile and I’ve been hooked ever since.”

“Why didn’t you come talk to me?” he begs for the past to change.

She shrugs and pulls away, sitting up in his lap she drags her hands down his chest and plays with his shirt slightly, “didn’t think we had much to talk about, I just liked to look at you.”

“Look at us now,” he places his hand under her chin to bring her eyes back to his. “We can’t stop talking to each other.”

“Or touching each other,” she smirks. “I think this was how it was supposed to work out though, we have a lot more in common now.”

“The grocery store, being virgins…” he teases, counting on his fingers but not finding many things.

“Dead dads,” she bites her lip, knowing that was a dark joke but it felt a little too dark. But he laughs. Thank god he laughs.

“Okay so 3 things,” he teases.

“And I know you love to sing and you like metal and rock music and you play dungeons and dragons and have a band, but I don’t know about Wayne until last week and I don’t know your middle name or anything personal really,” she worries. “What if we get to know each other and it doesn’t work out?”

“What if we find new things to love together and have the best relationship that’s ever happened on earth?” He proposes the opposite of her worry, “what if we could be the happiest people on earth together?”

“I’d like to try that,” she muses, brushing his hair off his face, she leans in for a sweet kiss on the lips.

“I’ve gotta tell you some things first before you decide if you want me,” he whispers against her lips. “I’m sure you’ve got questions about everything that happened here.”

“It didn’t happen here, this is a new trailer, right?” She worries. It’s not like she believes in ghosts or anything but the idea of Chrissy Cunningham's spirit lingering made all the hair on her body stands up.

“Yeah it’s new, but, I mean, the truth about if I did it or not,” he explains with a sigh. “I didn’t, I think you know that or else you wouldn’t talk to me…”

“I never thought you did it,” she assures him, petting his hair gently, soothing him as he talks. He stares back at her with sad doe eyes, “really, I mean it. I knew you’d never be able to hurt anyone.”

“I want to tell you everything, but I don’t know it all from the beginning,” he admits. “Steve offered to help me explain it to you, they’re going to have a little Christmas thing Monday night that we’re invited to, and Nancy can probably explain it all the best.”

“Like, Harrington and Wheeler?” She’s surprised he still talks to them of all people in Hawkins. “Since when do you know them?”

“Since they tracked me down and told me they knew what really killed Chrissy, and it was the same thing that killed Barbra Holland and took Will Byers in ’83,” he explains slightly. “The lab in town made a monster and a superhero and their battle ripped the town in half.”

“So it was all connected,” she thought so, the murders were way too close to the earthquake. And as much as she didn’t want to believe the bible thumpers, it made sense that it was a series of sacrifices that caused the earth to fall inward towards hell.

Still, it wasn’t eddies fault.

He nods, “and worst of all, there’s this alternate version of Hawkins called the upside down thats like all grey and creepy and full of monsters… and I was down there for a few days. With Steve and Nancy, and Robin… and poor Dustin. I uh, I’ve gotta show you something, so you’re going to have to get off of me for a sec.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” she’s anxious to know what happened, she backs right off of him and sits on his bed with her legs crossed, watching him get up and stand.

He turns to face the bed, reaching for the hem of his shirt with a sigh, “I knew they needed more time to kill Vecna, I knew something was wrong and the whole system down there is like a hive-mind— if I hurt something attached to him, then it would give the other team some advantage… so I took off running, I got the attention of these bat things and I was going to fight them. Like an idiot.”

She covers her mouth with both her hands, scared to hear what happened to him and terrified that this is actually real. Monsters are real. And in Hawkins.

He pulls up his shirt slowly at first and then all at once, he pulls it off and tosses it to the floor without even looking at her. He can’t. She gasps, reaching out to touch it but she doesn’t, her fingers just hover, “oh my god, Eddie…”

“They kinda got me instead,” he gestures down. “It was bad… I almost died.”

She finally touches the deep pink skin on the side of his belly button. The scar tissue is velvety smooth but she can feel all the bumps and dimples of missing flesh that would never regenerate right. He’s missing his nipple, a huge chunk of his breast around to his back and there are about 4 other decent-sized patches of missing skin across his broad chest. He’s sucking in a sharp breath as she explores, letting her touch even though she’s so cold compared to him, it’s excruciating.

“Your fingers are like fuckin ice,” he finally takes both her hands in his and brings them up to his mouth to blow hot air into her palms.

“Sorry,” she manages to give him a small smile. “How bad did it hurt?”

“When it happened or after?”

“God,” she grimaces at the idea of either, taking both her hands back and placing them on his bare shoulders. “Do I even want to know?”

“I was full of adrenaline when it was happening so I don’t fully remember it all, I passed out pretty quick… and the morphine at the hospital was superb,” he’s able to joke, kissing his fingers like a chef would. “I still get these sharp shooting pains, like phantom bites, so if I ever twitch or jolt under you at night thats why.”

“Okay,” she pulls him closer to the edge of the bed and softly kisses the scar on his neck, it’s big enough to require two kisses to get it all.

Trailing her hands down his arms, she leans down and covers the next scar in kisses, then the one on the middle of his chest. Right over his heart which he hopes she can’t feel beating faster than ever before. She cups his sides, gently rubbing her thumb over the scar under his breast, she kisses where the nipple should be and the other surface area of the scar.

“I hope you know I think you’re handsome and very brave,” she mumbles against his skin, on her way to kiss the mark above his belly button.

He cradles her head in his hands, tilting her head up to look at him, “I love you.”

She straightens right up, almost at eye level with him, full of awe, “really?”

His eyes are full of tears, he’s never felt so loved in his life before. He nods softly, “thank you… you don’t know how much it means to me that you’re okay with all this.”

“I love you, too,” she cups his face in her hands. “So, so much.”

“Yeah?” He wraps his arms around her waist, holding her flush against himself. She nods, “yeah,” she responds with a cheeky smile. “Alright then,” he picks her up and tackles her right into the bed, kissing all over her face as soon as her head hits the pillow.

She’s a giggling mess, like always, she brushes his hair off his face as he hovers over her. She pulls him down for a kiss, breathing him in deeply, she wraps her legs around him and traps him there. He kisses her again and again, and again, breaking away to kiss her neck and shoulder, over her shirt.

“You can take it off,” she assures, reaching for the hem she leans forward, he pulls back and helps her pull the shirt off completely, leaving her under him in her bra.

“Wow,” he’s taken aback by the view before him, he lightly trails his hand from her shoulder down her arm, over her tummy and then up to cup her bra. His thumb glides over the cup, feeling her nipple harden behind the padding. He licks his lips, “you’re so beautiful, Y/N.”

“So are you,” she whispers up at him. With a hand at the back of his neck, she pulls him back in for another kiss.

He can’t help but smile against her lips, he steals a few more kisses and pulls away, he hovers over her and cups her face in his hands, “do you want to go a little further tonight?”

She nods, “yeah… anything on your mind?”

“Can I try and eat you out?” He asks, “I want to feel you cum on my tongue this time…”

“Please?” She melts under him, eyes almost rolling into the back of her head at the mere thought of him doing that… “oh, I want you so bad, Eddie.”

“Yeah?” He smirks, slithering down between her legs and playing with the hem of her pants. “Lift, princess.”

She does just as she’s told, and he takes her pants off first. He traces his fingers down the insides of her thighs, spreading her legs apart to display the wet patch on her cute little panties. He leans in for what she expects to be a kiss over the fabric, but instead, he presses his nose against the damp patch and breathes her in with a groan before dragging his tongue over it. “You have no idea how fucking hot you are, do you?”

“Show me?” She begs, lifting her hips again, giving him permission to peel her panties off. He slips them down her legs and off completely, he grips them in his hands and brings them to his face again, taking one last sniff before he tosses them to the floor.

She spread her legs automatically, over-eager for him to please her and not at all scared of him seeing her naked… she had a feeling no matter what she thought of herself, he was going to love and admire her pussy beyond any expectation she could have.

His shoulders drop and all the air leaves his lungs when he finally sees her, beautiful and wet and on display just for him. “Sweet Jesus…”

Without skipping a beat he flattens his tongue against her spread pussy and laps up all the evidence of just how horny he makes her. It's better than anything she has ever imagined, he sucks at her clit in just the most perfect way before flicking it back and forth with his tongue.

He runs his pointer finger over her hole, circling it gently before slipping the digit inside, pumping in and out of her as he keeps repeating the same movements on her clit. The backs of her knees start to sweat and that all too familiar heat starts to bubble in her gut and spread throughout her body, making her feel like she’s floating.

“Add a second and curl it up, fuck,” she had to take a breather as he listened, pumping into her without a single issue as he found her g spot.

“Oh, right there, Eddie, baby,” she runs her fingers through his hair and grips it tightly, her back arches with a moan, he feels so good everywhere.

His breath is hot against her clit as he takes a moment to smile up at her, proud of himself, “tell me when you’re close, pretty girl, I wanna watch it happen.”

“Okay, fuck,” she moans, pushing his face back into her cunt.

Her free hand comes up to grip her own breast, playing with the nipple between her two fingers for just a little bit more pleasure. Her legs start to tremble, “right there, oh my god, oh my god?”

His big brown eyes flick up to her, he flicks at her clit with his tongue and fucks into her with his fingers, again and again, watching her orgasm build and wash over her in a wave. She trembles, back arching, he has to hold her hips down with both hands but thats fine, he replaces his fingers with his tongue. The wet heat of his tongue inside her and his nose nudging against her clit still as she rides out her orgasm, push her into overstimulation.

“Fuck, fuck, Eddie,” she scrambles to push him away, but he holds her there, tongue fucking her deeply to ensure he gets all her cum.

He licks her clean and pulls away with a smile, face glistening, lips swollen, “good?”

“Fuck yeah,” she reaches forward as she sits up, pulling him in to straddle her hips so she can reach his bet buckle.

“What are you doing?” He asks, curious but his eyes look more cautious.

“It’s your turn?” She hesitates, making sure she’s not going to far. “Can I jerk you off?”

He laughs, shocked that she’d want to so badly, “yeah, yeah, absolutely.”

She tugs his jeans down as far as she can get them, and they stop mid-thigh, exposing his hard cock in his boxers. She runs her hand over the bulge, making him hiss, no one’s touched him before either. She felt unbelievably lucky to be the first person to ever peel back Eddie Munson's boxers and take his thick cock in their hands.

“Wow,” she says, breathless as she strokes her hand from base to tip, using her thumb to trail along the vein under his cock. She strokes him gently with one hand, still balancing on her other forearm, it’s slightly uncomfortable.

He can tell she rather be using both hands, “sit up,” he instructs. He helps her up against the pillows better and gets off her so he can slip out of his jeans.

He re-straddles her hips, and she trails her hands over his thighs, scratching her nails over his bare hips while his cock twitches there in front of her. She grips his cock at the base and slips down the pillows a bit, now at the perfect level to take him in her mouth.

She runs her tongue along the underside of his cock, she can feel the vein working overtime, he’s so fucking hard for her. She takes the head in her mouth, teasing the tip with her tongue, and she strokes the rest of him. His hands are in her hair, his eyes are closed, and his thighs tremble as he tries to keep himself upwards but she feels too good.

“I’m gonna cum,” he warns her, letting her pull away if she wanted to.

She pops off his cock with a smile, jerking him off a bit faster with ease from the added saliva. He moans, he sounds so fucking beautiful, his hips sputter and his cock twitches again and again as he releases all over her neck and chest.

“Oh, fuck,” he shutters, his cum is so hot on her skin, leaking down her chest and between her boobs, he watches the whole thing, stunned and fucked out at the same time.

She giggles amazed that he could get so lost in her touch and cum like that, it was hot and amazing and filled her with pride. She did that.

He crawls off of her, reaching for tissues on his nightstand to clean her up before he ruined her bra. “Sorry, I’m just gonna,” he says as he parts her boobs and wipes the cum off. “God, sorry there’s so much.”

“It’s fine,” she continues to laugh, “You’re so hot when you cum.”

“You’re one to talk,” he scoffs, “I would like to live between your thighs, babe.”

“Thats fine by me,” she sighs as she rests back against the pillows. “I can’t believe I waited so long to experience that.”

He tosses out the tissue once she’s clean and climbs into bed beside her, she cuddles into his chest and kisses the side of his neck. “I still love you…”

“I love you more,” he says it to one-up her, but also because he loves her more now than the last time he said it. He had a feeling it would keep doubling as the moments with her went on. His love for her was going to be never-ending.

—

They wake up in the afternoon, they have lunch together in town and when she gets back to his trailer, she talks to Wayne about Christmas because Eddie had somehow forgotten by the time he got back from her place on Saturday…

“Now, you’re sure your mom is okay with the two of us intruding?” He asks again, “this isn’t just you two wanting us to bond right, she knows you’re asking me over?”

“Yes Wayne,” she places her hand on his arm with a smile. “She’s very excited to have a full house for Christmas again.”

“Is there anything I need to bring? Should I get her a gift as a thank you?” Wayne asks, just as giving and considerate as his nephew.

“No, just come with room for a big supper, she’s making a huge turkey,” Y/N teases. “But you know, she’d never turn down a bottle of wine…”

“Noted,” Wayne nods in agreement, “it’s the least I can do as a thank you, I haven’t had a homemade Christmas dinner in years.”

Something in the conversation also reminds Eddie that he has to wrap his friend's gifts for their party the next night.

“Do you know how to wrap things nicely?” He ponders aloud, making Wayne smile at him, he knew that was his way of asking for help.

“Yeah, what do you need help with?” She asks, following him back to his room ready to help.

He makes her close her eyes while he digs all the presents out of his closet and makes sure none of the ones he got for her are in the pile. He places them all on the bed along with some wrapping paper and tape, and finally says she can open her eyes again.

There are so many things in front of her, he’s been collecting gifts for a while clearly. And clearest of all, he loved his friends more than she could ever imagine.

“Wow, okay, what first?”

“Well,” he starts to arrange things into piles, “these are for Dustin, that’s for Gareth, Jeff and Kev. These are for Steve and this one is for Robin and…” he goes on with more names that she remembered from school and some she had never heard of like Erika and Eleven.

“And this one is for Wayne,” Eddie whispers so he doesn’t hear from the other room. He got Wayne yet another mug with a bag of specialty coffee and some nice biscotti to have with it.

“So we’ll do his first, get it out of the way,” she says as she unrolls the wrapping paper and tries to figure out the nicest way to wrap the 3 items.

“Can I ask why you got each thing?” She asks, carefully slipping the package of coffee grounds into the mug.

“I got Dustin this shirt,” he unfolds it and shows it to her, the shirt reads: “choose your weapon wisely” with a row of differently shaped dice over the letters. “And some dice,” he shakes the box in the pile and then places it on top of the shirt. “He’s the current dungeon master in their school club and when he graduates Erika will be taking over so I got her the newest edition of the dungeon masters book.”

“Oh, thats so cute,” she swoons.

“Then I got the guys in the band some new branded shirts and picks, I had them made by a company over in Shelbyville, they’re so cool,” he takes a pick out and shows it to her. The black was matte, the CC in the middle was glossy, and it popped so well. “They’re going to love them.”

He explains that he got Nancy a journal because she’s going to school for journalism so she must need one. It’s a nice deep red and he’s written her a sweet little note on the first page. Robins gift is a set of rings from Claires that he said screamed her name when he first saw them. Steve gets some fuzzy dice for his car's rearview mirror because no matter how hard they try to get him to play d&d, he’s not interested but he still needs some lucky dice.

He got Lucas a keychain with his basketball number on it. Max got some cool stickers for her skateboard. Mike got a lighter because unfortunately, his tendency to copy Eddie has gone all the way to smoking. He got Will a colouring book and his sister El, a fantasy graphic novel.

It’s a lot of things, but he holds a lot of love for these people in his heart.

She can’t wait to see what he got for her if this is the level of care he put into his friend's gifts.

—

She brings him home after a shift that feels more like 16 hours instead of just 4. By the time she’s tumbling into bed, it’s almost 1 in the morning and she’s ready to crash and sleep for the next 2 days straight. This weekend has been too exciting for her body clock to handle.

Eddie looks around her room curiously, she’s quick to step out of her clothes and climb right into bed in just her bra and underwear. She lays there against the pillows with her eyes closed, under her covers, “I’m exhausted.”

“Awe,” he comes and sits down on the edge of her side of the bed. “So I guess no fun stuff tonight, princess?”

“I mean,” she opens her eyes and leans forward. “I wouldn’t say no to an orgasm before bed… I’m starting to get used to them.”

“I was kidding,” he’s genuinely shocked that she’s down for it. “Your mom is home? Really?”

“I was also kidding,” she laughs at how eager he got, “I think one night of not having our hands all over each other will make tomorrow better…”

“What’s tomorrow?”

“Well technically right now it’s Christmas eve, it’s past midnight, so tomorrow is Christmas,” she reminds him. “I wanted to go all the way… I was thinking maybe after the party at your friends house? Before we come back here?”

“You want to meet my friends knowing we’re going to have sex after?” He teases.

She nods, “yeah, cause when else can we do it? My mom has traditions: after dinner, we have to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas movie and have hot chocolate and dessert, and then she’s going to go to bed, and I don’t think I can do that with her down the hall and us leaving just makes it obvious…”

“If you’re this anxious about it we don’t have to do it yet.”

“I’m ready for it, I just know that when my parents had sex here before the house kinda shakes, it’s old, she’s going to know every time we do it and I don’t want her to,” she explains. “It’s so awkward knowing when your parents are fucking, I can’t imagine how she’d feel knowing I’m having sex.”

“God,” he can’t even imagine the horror. “Wayne only ever had one girl over, years ago, and I only know cause she was loud.”

“So Waynes good in bed too,” she teases, watching him get visibly jealous. “I’m kidding, I only have eyes for you, big guy,” she assures him, reaching out to pull him in for a hug.

“Good,” he holds her there, running his hand over her back gently, “scoot over, I’m getting in.”

“Okay,” she does just that, tossing the covers back so he can get out of his clothes and slip right in and share the warmth.

They get all cozy, cuddled together with him as the big spoon, “I’m getting way too used to going to sleep with you.” He wraps his arm around her middle, resting his hand on her tummy, she places her hand over it and interlocks their fingers.

“I know,” she feels the same way. “It’s not like we have to stop at any time soon… I have no problem going back and forth every night so I can still see my mom often.”

“I don’t mind that either,” he agrees. “Even if I stay here some weekdays cause you have school and you just stay with me after work?”

“Yeah, I like that too,” she agrees. “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be working with you, though. I was just supposed to get holiday hours, they said they’d probably cut me come mid-January.”

“Oh,” he sounds really sad. “Well I can talk to Jerry and Linda, you’re a lot better than anyone else I’ve worked with, if you want some hours a week I’ll advocate for you.”

“Thank you,” she gives his hand a good squeeze and then let's go, she rolls over to face him, missing his sweet face. “I love you, you know that?”

He nods, “I do, funnily enough… and I’m so fucking lucky that you do.”

“I feel pretty lucky too,” she assures him. “I used to lay here after a terrible day and dream of scenarios where you’d come and talk to me at school… and now you’re actually here beside me. I don’t have to dream anymore.”

“You know,” he starts before he can really think it over. He knew she was emotional, but he says it anyway. “There was a part when I was dying, I thought it was okay cause it’s not like anyone loved me anyway,” he admits with matching teary eyes. “I’m so glad I didn’t listen to that voice.”

She cups his face and pulls him into a kiss, she smothers his face in kisses, “I love you, so, so much,” she says between each one. She pulls away with a teary smile, “I’m going to have to kiss Nancy Wheeler as a thank you for keeping you alive for me, what else can I do that says thanks for not letting my soulmate die in a creepy hell dimension?”

He laughs, “I mean, her girlfriend might get upset but you can try…”

“She has a girlfriend? That’s so cool, I had no idea what she was up to now that we’ve graduated,” she explains, not one for keeping up with everyone in her graduating class.

Eddie spends a few minutes explaining the very interesting dynamic of his friend group to her. How Robin and Steve are basically attached at the hip, which is ironic seeing as Steve dated Nancy first and now Robin in… and together, robin and Steve are like parents to the younger group consisting of Nancy’s little brother Mike, the missing kid Will Byers and his step sister Elle. Billy Hargrove's little sister Max and her boyfriend Lucas as well as his little sister Erika. And finally, Dustin. The main glue of the friend group, he was everyone's favourite, he had everyone's back, he was the little brother Eddie always wanted, it’s sweet how everyone loves him.

She’s excited to meet him later.

—

Her mom makes them breakfast, they all sit together and it’s surprisingly easy for him to talk to her. They’re a lot alike, he can tell they’ve spent a lot of time together over the years. He can also tell she really misses her husband, Eddie can’t help but feel like he played a part in taking him away, so he offers his services to her.

“Y/N was saying that you’ve been having a hard time getting to all the repairs and I was wondering if I could help? Me and my friends could get the siding done in the spring and—

“Eddie, it’s okay,” she cuts him off. “Really, it’ll get done when it gets done.”

“I want to help,” he assures her. “It's the least I can do, I have a feeling I’m going to be over a lot.”

“A lot,” Y/N echoes, nodding along. “If he wants to help then let him, mom, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Okay, but I’m going to find a way to make it up to you,” she assures them both.

“I’ll do it for a sandwich and a hug?” He suggests, sticking his hand out to make a deal.

She takes it gladly, “I’ll throw in a pack of beer when you’re done, Y/N’s dad always did that for his buddies that helped us out.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he agrees happily.

He heads back to the trailer around noon to change and grab his presents for the party that night, and to talk to Wayne. He hasn’t had a chance to really catch up with him in the last few days. And they had a lot to talk about.

He brings him up to speed on his new relationship and the Christmas details, asking if Wayne wants his present now or at Y/N’s house the next day, he picks the latter.

“I want to open it on Christmas, it’ll be weird not doing it here but oh well,” he shrugs. “I always knew one day you’d get a partner and we’d end up doing a big Christmas or Hanukkah somewhere with your little family, it just feels like it happened a lot sooner than I expected.”

“I’m 22?”

“I know, but you’re still my little buddy,” Wayne reminds him. “You’ll always be the little boy I raised and love, no matter how big you get.”

He wraps Wayne up in a big hug, “I love you so much, old man, you know that?”

Wayne gives him a big smooch on the cheek and holds him tight, “I know. I love you too, squirt.”

He pats his back a few times before letting go of the hug, the two men pull away awkwardly, never really being touchy with each other. The last time they really hugged that much was when he was in the hospital, Wayne didn’t let go of his hand for about a week. He didn’t leave his side, he spoon-fed him, and he was a wreck until Eddie got better. He thought they had a strong bond before all hell broke loose, it was unbreakable now.

Eddie heads back into his room after that, and he spends some time making it look and smell nice. He sets out her present on the bed, wanting to give it to her right after midnight and right before the main present. He was both excited and nervous, he loves her so much he wants to make it good and fun for her while also making it memorable and special for them both.

Wayne heads to work, and Eddie has dinner with Y/N and her mom which is absolutely delicious and only makes him more excited for dinner tomorrow.

—

Y/N gets all dressed up even though he told her it wasn’t a big party, she made a chip dip and got Nancy a bottle of wine as a thank-you for hosting, she was really trying to win them over.

He holds her hand on the drive over, making sure she’s not too nervous. “Trust me, they’re all super weird and they’re going to do everything in their power to impress you, you won’t have to try hard. They love having new members join.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive… and I’ve been talking about you to Steve and Dustin for the last month, and so of course Robin also knew I liked you cause Steve can’t keep anything to himself. They will literally malfunction if one knows more than the other, it’s like their brains share a hard drive,” Eddie shakes his head with a loving smile.

He loved his friends. More than he could ever explain.

“I know for a fact they’re excited to meet you and they will love you,” he assures her with a squeeze of her hand.

“Okay,” she takes a deep breath and believes him.

“You ready? Cause we’re here,” he says as he parks outside a very large house all decorated with wreaths and lights for the holiday season. There’s a bunch of cars parked in the driveway, so they have to park on the street.

He gets out first, rushing to her side to help her out and then grabbing all their things from the back of the van. She carries the dip, and he carries in all the presents, all the way to the front door where Steve Harrington opens the door before they can even knock.

“Come in, come in,” he ushers them inside and out from the cold.

He can tell it’s really weird for her to be reacquainted with Steve, Robin and Nancy, they never really interacted much in high school but they all knew of each other. It takes about 15 minutes of knowing them and hearing weird inside jokes that she doesn’t understand for Dustin to start the retelling.

He and Nancy argue about the order of events, having led two very different sides of the same battle against the upside down.

Eventually, however, she gets it.

She eats about a whole bowl of chips as she listens, completely engrossed in the lore of Hawkins that no one except their friend group knew of. It was terrifyingly amazing, she loved the fact it brought them all together, but she hated how traumatized it left them all.

“Can I just say thank you,” she reached out for Nancy’s hand, just beside her on the couch. “Eddie’s always meant a lot to me, and I don’t think I would have him if it wasn’t for you.” She turns to the rest of the room too, all smiling because they knew Eddie found the love of his life. “I’m really grateful to all of you for making sure he got off the hook for Chrissy’s murder and everything.”

“It was nothing,” Robin, waves it off, not wanting to get too emotional. “We’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

—

He slips away to talk to Nancy in the kitchen, she’s quietly cleaning up the mess so her mom isn’t mad in the morning. Wrapping cling-film over a few dips, she’s not paying attention when he walks into the room.

“Hey, Nance?” He whispers.

“Oh, hey,” she slightly jumps but settles easily. “What’s up, did you need something?”

“Yeah… uh, I kinda have a super personal question to ask, and you can totally tell me to fuck off if it’s too personal—

“I gave you CPR, there’s nothing too personal between us anymore,” she cuts him off, always teasing him about having to kiss his nasty blood-filled mouth to bring him back to life. “You’re welcome by the way.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he waves her off and then takes a deep breath. “Um, I know you’ve been with guys before and I was just wondering if there was something you wish was different about your first time? You know, to make it better or easier?”

“Well,” she crosses her arms with a surprised yet pleased smile. She leans against the counter and thinks about it for a second, “I mean, Steve was really gentile but it still hurt a lot, I guess I wish I had explored with myself a bit beforehand cause I think if I knew what I liked it would’ve been more fun.”

“We’ve done other stuff together,” he shares, only slightly embarrassed. “I just know on my end I want it to be special for me, it’s my first time too and if I feel this nervous about it being perfect then she must too, and the last thing I want is to hurt her or make it not memorable or fun.”

“You’re you,” Nancy laughs. “Seriously, you’re so charismatic and loud and dramatic and—

“I get it, I’m a lot,” he stops her before she accidentally bullies him.

“But a good ‘a lot’. I just mean, she loves you for a reason, whatever happens, she’s going to have a lot of fun with you,” Nancy explains more articulately. “I know it.”

“Thanks,” he can’t help but smile. “You need any help in here?”

She shakes her head, “no, you go be with your girl, I’ll be done in a few minutes.”

And so he listens, he heads downstairs to see Steve and Dustin still talking Y/N’s ear off. He comes and stands behind her, chin on her shoulder and wraps his arms around her. She tilts her head to the side to rest against his, hands on his big arms as she holds him close.

—

They leave the party shortly after that, she tells them all about her mom's big Christmas breakfast plans and how they need to be up by 8am and Eddie’s friends let them go. She had a genuinely wonderful time with them, they’re friendly and sweet and absolutely hilarious. They love her Eddie, he loves them, and she can see herself fitting in quite well with them.

The clock on his dashboard reads 9:56. She told her mom not to wait up because she’d be home after midnight. They had 2 hours until then. Part of her wants their night to be long and drawn out and hot but she knows they have to get up and get dressed again just to go back to her childhood bedroom.

The stocking she got for Eddie is large enough that all the things she got for him fit inside without much fuss but some of the comic books stick out of the top. She put it inside a grocery bag and then in the back of his van earlier that night, she hopes he hasn’t looked inside or seen anything through the plastic. She really can’t wait to give it to him.

Actually, she can’t wait to give everything to him.

They pull up to said trailer all while she’s been in her own head, in a haze of sorts. He’s about to open her door when she takes a deep breath and says her over-prepared speech, “you go unlock the door, I don’t want you to see the present yet.”

“Okay,” he backs up with a sweet smile, “meet me in my room?”

She nods, “I’ll see you there in a minute.”

She waits for him to be up at the door, focusing on his key in the lock and unable to watch her open the back door of the van and take out his present. She insures that it’s all together and holds it close to her chest on the walk up to the door.

Once inside, she slips out of her shoes and trades the stocking back and forth in her hands as she takes her coat off too. “Can I come in?” She asks at his door, not looking in case he wasn’t ready.

“Yep,” he sounds like he’s smiling.

Once she steps into his room she can see his ever-glowing smirk as he stands on the opposite side of his room. He’s also holding a stocking, only his is decorated to the nines with glitter glue and little accents.

“Oh my god!?”

“No fuckin way?” He says at the exact same time.

They didn’t plan this in the slightest. Neither one knew the other even had a present until just the other day and she’s been collecting things to gift him for a while now.

They quickly make their way to each other, meeting at the foot of his bed and both taking a seat. Criss cross apple sauce facing each other, “I just thought ‘what would Eddie like?’ And it was a bunch of little things so,” She hands him the stocking.

“That’s what I was thinking for you, too,” Eddie can’t help but smile.

She takes the stocking from him, admiring how he decorated it to say her name in purple glitter glue. He drew out some trees, what looked like a can of Campbell's soup and a bunch of hearts… it’s so cute she could cry.

“Do you want to go one at a time?” He asks?

She looks back up at him with a tearful smile, “Yeah, you first.”

“Okay,” he’s more than happy to start pulling things out of his stocking.

One by one, he takes each thing out. First, he takes out the fantasy magazines and comic books and gives his thanks as he flips through the pages. “What made you pick batman and wolverine for me?”

She shrugs, “I spent a lot of time at the comic book store trying to pick what was the best and I thought the art looked cool, I thought you’d like it the best.”

“Thank you, I love them,” he places them down on the bed and takes out the next few items.

Kitkats, skittles, twix, and all sorts of candy. There’s a pack of cigarettes cause she knows he still smokes, he just doesn’t smoke as much around her. She got him a package of hair ties cause he always has one on his wrist that looks a little stretched out and worn down. A pack of chapstick because his lips always looked so soft he must love chapstick. There’s a handful of lighters that have funny saying on them like “flick your bic” which she thought he’d laugh at. And finally, at the bottom of the stocking, there’s a box of condoms.

“Oh, okay,” he can’t help but smirk as he reads over the box. “You pick these out more for me or you?”

“Both of us,” she shyly admits. “It’s not weird right?”

He shakes his head, “no, honestly it’s amazing cause I only got us a pack of 2 the other day…”

“Well, now we have 12,” she bites back a smile.

“Thank you, baby,” he smiles too, leaning in to press a soft kiss to her lips. “Your turn.”

“Okay,” she is more nervous to open her own gift than she was watching him react to his.

The first thing she pulls out is an agenda with 1989 embossed on the dark blue cover. “Oh my god?” She can’t believe it as she flips through the beautiful pages with elegant presets ready to help her plan the next year out.

“I figured with school and work and next year you have to do a placement that you’d need an agenda,” Eddie explains. “And I took the liberty of adding my name and number in the address book and my birthday is in there too…”

“It’s next month,” she already knew when his birthday was. “6-year crush, remember, I know a lot more than you think.”

“Sorry, forgot you were an Ed-xpert,” he teases, hands up in surrender.

She does give him a laugh, cause that was stupid and funny and he’s just too cute not to laugh. She shakes her head fondly, “that was a good one…”

“Thanks,” he’s smug now.

“Your friends would get in trouble every year for sticking candles in whatever the lunch order was on your birthday and they didn’t care, they always lit the candles anyway,” she remembers fondly. “It was cute, you always had little celebrations for everyone in hellfire.”

“We’re a family,” he shrugs. “It’s what families do.”

“It’s cute, and I love this, thank you,” she thanked him, and places the agenda down on the bed, starting her own pile of things.

He got her some gel pens to write in her agenda, as well as a bunch of stickers to decorate it. There’s candy and fuzzy socks with cute patterns on them, he also got her some chapstick and some nail polish in purple and red. Yet her favourite item in the whole stocking is a cute pair of gloves.

“Cause your fingies get cold in the van, I need to get a new heater,” he explains. “I don’t want you to be cold.”

“I love you,” she holds the gloves to her chest, feeling so overwhelmed with emotion. A simple pair of gloves in her favourite colour, they match her coat and her purse, that’s why he got them, and they’re perfect. “Eddie baby, this is the best Christmas present I’ve ever gotten.”

He gets up and stands at the foot of the bed, extending a hand to pull her up onto her knees at the end of the bed. He wraps his arms around her, holding her close to his chest as he looks down into her eyes, “I love you, merry Christmas, sweetheart.”

She wraps her arms around his neck, tilting her head to the side with a lick of her lips, “it's finally main present time, isn’t it?”

He nods seductively slow, “that it is…”

“The bed is a mess,” she whispers, reminding him with a cheeky smile. “We can’t have sex on a bunch of candy and magazines.”

“I mean we could, it wouldn’t be comfortable,” he teases, dragging his hands down her back to cup her ass. “And the chocolate would melt… but we could.”

“No,” she shakes her head with a smile. “Come on,” she pulls back and returns her attention to their presents. She starts to shove everything into her own while Eddie simply takes the box of condoms out of his pile and opens it up.

He holds up the long strip of condoms with a smile, “think we could go through all of these tonight?”

She laughs, “no, we have to save enough energy to go back to my mom's house, remember? If we’re not there Christmas morning she’s going to kill me.”

“Right,” he rips the first condom off and tosses it onto the bed and puts the rest of them on his nightside table.

He puts the rest of his presents on his dresser and while he’s over there, he takes off his shirt and tosses it towards his dirty laundry pile. She watches contently, he’s too pretty for his own good. “Sorry, did you want to do that part?”

“Undress you? No, it’s fine,” she shakes her head and meets him by his dresser, she places her own stocking there for safekeeping and wraps herself back around him. Hands-on his bare shoulders this time, she drags them down his chest and stops at his belt. “But I can continue…”

“Please,” he begs, breathless as he stares down at her, overwhelmed with how much he wants her.

She runs one hand back up his chest, over his tummy, his pecks and she stops at his neck. Cupping the nape of his neck she leans in and presses a kiss to his pulse point. With her other hand she unbuckles his belt and pops the button on his jeans, she snakes her hand inside his pants and palms over his boxers, stroking the outline of his cock and feeling him harden in her hands.

His grip on her hips tightens, he balls the fabric of her dress into his fists and tugs it up to cup her ass through her nylons as she keeps kissing his neck and stroking his cock.

He picks her up in one go, she wraps her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck for support. He walks her over to the bed and tosses her down onto the mattress once more. Reaching for his own belt, he pulls it through the loops and tosses it towards the floor, “how’d you wanna do this?”

“Could you, maybe… um,” she goes sky, watching him push his jeans to the floor and step out of them.

“Yeah, princess?”

“Could you eat me out again?” She whispers up at him.

He smirks, placing his hands on her knees and tracing his fingers down the inside of her thighs until he reaches her hips. He grips her tight and pulls her to the edge of the bed and drops to his knees, “I’d love to.”

He starts to pull down her nylons and he can tell she’s nervous again, “I shaved the other day so I’m going to be a bit stubbly…”

“I don’t mind, baby,” he assures her.

She grips her dress at the hem and pulls it up and over her head, thanking god it was stretchy and didn’t have a zipper to trap her inside of it. One leg at a time he takes her nylons off, smoothing his hands over her legs and then he brings his cheek to her knee. He drags his face along her skin, kissing the hem of her panties and then right where her clit should be.

“Did you wear these panties on purpose?”

“They’re my only black pair,” she explains, black was a sexy colour, so of course, she wore them for this.

“The bow is cute, you’re like another present I get to unwrap,” he teases, running his finger over the little bow at the front of her panties.

“I guess it is,” she can’t help but smile.

He loops his fingers under the band and she lifts her hips knowingly, helping him slip them off of her and onto the floor.

She props herself up on her forearms, watching with her bottom lip sucked between her teeth. He wraps his arms around her thighs, holding them open as he inches closer to her wet pussy. He kisses the little freckle she has on her underwear line, his breath is hot against her skin as he runs his tongue over her pussy lip ever so slowly.

Using his right hand he runs his index finger from her clit to her glistening entrance, he gathers up all her slick and rubs it into her clit with his forefingers. “I want you to cum at least once for me before I fuck you, then you’ll be nice and relaxed and it won’t hurt as much.”

“I think I’ll be fine,” she’s sure of herself, sharing a bit too much because she was so comfortable with him. “I usually use three fingers when I’m alone, I think I can take it.”

He groans, “god, you’re so fucking hot.”

With only one arm holding her legs down he’s not as strong, she clamps her legs closed at the sensation of his tongue lapping over her aching clit, “be a good girl and keep these open for me, kay?”

She nods, breath hitching at the sound of good girl…

“You liked that,” he smirks. “I can tell by the way your cunt fluttered, ooo, there you did it again.”

She’s aching for more, feeling her heartbeat in her clit 10 times stronger than ever before, she needed him desperately, “please, Eddie?”

“Since you asked so nicely, baby,” he muses, voice vibrating against her core as he leans in impossibly close and licks over her hole.

Her hand goes right to his hair as she tries desperately to keep her legs open for him. He holds her pussy open with two fingers, and he drags his tongue over her cunt in long, broad strokes serpentining as he gathers her wetness. She tastes so good he moans against her, she grips his hair tighter, bringing him toward her clit as a silent instruction to suck.

She drops down against the mattress then, “oh, fuck,” she moans, letting go of her grip on his hair to hold her own legs in place for him. He flicks her clit back and forth with his tongue between soft licks and suctioning onto her clit.

He pulls back enough start pulling off his rings and he places them all on his night table. He makes perfect eye contact with her as he takes his middle and ring finger in his mouth, coating them with saliva before he circles them over her hole, “ready?”

“Yeah,” she’s breathless just watching.

He smirks, she fluttered around the tips of his two fingers, sucking them into the first knuckle. He pushes in slowly to the second knuckle, watching her suck in a deep breath at the feeling. He leans back in to suck on her clit as he bottoms out, as deep as he can be inside of her like this, he curls his fingers the way she said she liked it before and begins to thrust. Pulling out ever so slightly and pumping back into her again and again.

She feels him everywhere, back arching as she pushes her pussy into his face more. She reaches behind herself to unclasp her bra and pull it off so she could grip her tits, playing with her own hardened nipples and he watches from between her legs. He laughs slightly, hot breath against her and the feeling of his lips curling into a smile brings her attention back down to him.

“Feels so good, baby,” she praises, reaching out to run her fingers through his hair again, helping keep it out of his eyes.

She can’t help closing her legs on him again as the pressure builds, and instead of scolding her for it he simply holds her knees together and pushes her legs up against her chest. He stands, still fucking her with his two fingers, and a trail of spit hangs from his lips down to her soaked pussy.

“Hold 'em up,” he instructs her to wrap her hands around the backs of her knees to keep them up. “I want you to cum for me,” he says, rubbing the forefingers of his leg hand over her clit rapidly.

Her legs start to shake, and a strange pressure builds in her stomach that she isn’t used to, like an orgasm but so, so much more. She sounds so wet, soaking up his fingers as he fucks into her faster. He rests a knee on the bed for better balance, she can feel his hard cock against her ass cheek and that does it for her.

She cums with a shout of his name and a chain of obscenities, and he does the same. “Sweet fuck, princess, look at you, holy fuck,” he can’t believe what he’s seeing. She squirted all over his hand, the edge of his mattress and his boxers.

She drops her legs, looking between them to see the mess she made. “Oh my god?”

“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever fucking seen,” he praises her, leaning in and cupping her face with his clean(ish) hand as he kisses her. She can taste herself on him, she hums as she sucks his tongue into her mouth and experiences it all.

He pulls back and gets off the bed, leaving her there on the mattress, breathless and empty and craving more. He takes off his boxers and uses them to wipe down his hand and the inside of her thighs. “Did you know you could do that?”

She nods, “not that much though.”

“I can’t fucking wait to discover everything you can do, baby,” he smirks, reaching for the condom on the pillows and opening it with his teeth. “Get comfortable, princess.”

He examines it carefully, making sure he puts it on the right way before he rolls it on. She watches as she scoots up towards the pillows, resting her head against them and laying there with her legs spread again. He crawls onto the bed again, kneeling between her legs with his cock standing there at attention. He rests his hands on her knees and drags his fingertips down towards her aching cunt once more, “you still want this?”

“More than you know,” she’s practically drooling for him, she can’t wait to feel his cock deep inside of her.

He can’t help but smile, shaking his head slightly with disbelief. He drops down on top of her, boxing her in against the mattress, she wraps her legs around him and cups his face in her hands, “I love you.”

“I love you,” he repeats, staring deep into her soul. “Ready?”

She nods, feeling him reach between them to grip his cock at the base and guide it into her.

She sucks in a sharp breath and makes a sound she’s never heard herself make before as he slips in inch by inch, he’s a lot thicker than she anticipated but she takes him easily. “Oh my god?” They say at the same time, resting their foreheads together with deep breaths.

“Can I move?” He whispers.

She nods, “yeah, yeah please?” She doesn’t mean to beg but she needs more.

He kisses the side of her head and then her cheek, she tilts her head to the side to capture his mouth with hers, kissing him deeply as he starts to thrust. She runs one hand through his hair and the other down his back, gripping his skin, she moans against his mouth.

He kisses the side of her mouth and then her jaw, he slips a hand behind her back to arch her forward as he kisses down her neck and towards her chest. His thrusts are slow and deep as he takes her right nipple into his mouth and sucks.

She tugs on his hair, “fuck, Eddie.”

He pops off her tit with a smile, “feel good, baby?”

“I need more,” she admits, “can you go faster?”

“Yeah?” He sits up on his knees, holding her hips with both hands for support as he fucks into her deeply, over and over.

“Holy fuck,” her back arches and she reaches out to grip the sheets around her.

She meets his thrusts, pushing her hips down every time he fucks into her, getting deeper each time. She can feel him knocking at her cervix, the angel is so perfect he grazes her g spot with each thrust, she could cum just like this.

Lucky for her, he’s best friends with her clit now and couldn’t spend more than a few minutes away from her. He licks his forefingers on his right hand and brings them down to meet the sensitive bud, rubbing them counterclockwise just as fast as he was fucking into her.

“So fuckin hot,” he praises, he feels like he’s in the middle of another good wet dream about her it’s so fucking perfect. She’s everything he’s ever wanted and then some, all here, unravelling just for him. “Gonna cum for me again, princess?”

She nods, “yeah, fuck, oh my god?” She can’t believe how good it feels, her whole body tingles, and she can barely keep her eyes open she’s so cock drunk for him.

She reaches out for his chest, wanting to touch him, missing how close he just was before this. She pulls him back down and wraps her legs around him and rolls them over so she’s on top. She straddles his hips, and he’s still inside of her, she hovers enough for him to fuck up into her just as fast, only they’re a lot closer now.

She buries her face in his neck, kissing and sucking just below his ear, “oh, Eddie, oh my god, I love you,” she mumbles, over and over as he fucks up into her.

He’s so close, he isn’t sure he’s going to be able to get her off again before he loses it all inside the condom. He reaches between their bodies to thumb over her clit, immediately making her legs quake.

“Gonna cum, please? Please?” She begs, wrapping her arms under him and holding him close. “Cum with me?”

That does it for him, he fucks up into her one last time as she drops all her weight on him, riding out her high and fucking him through his own. He wraps his arms around her, kissing her shoulder between moans and whispers of her name. “Oh, I love you, I love you so much, sweet girl.”

She’s breathing heavily against his neck but he can feel her smile, “I love you more.”

He runs his fingers over her back gently, and both of them just lay there with their eyes closed, staying in the moment as long as they could. He’s still inside of her too, she doesn’t move, he’s afraid if he does then he’ll get hard again because she’s so tight and she keeps flittering around him as she calms down. It’s heaven.

“Merry Christmas,” he whispers against the side of her head before pressing a kiss to her temple. “How long do you want to lay her before we go home?”

“Home?” She repeats as she sits up carefully, “you consider my place home already?”

“You’re there, so yeah,” he admits. “I just want to fall asleep with you in my arms and I can’t do that yet, so…”

“Yeah, let’s go home,” she agrees, leaning in for one more kiss.

He holds her face in his hands, keeping her there as he breathes her in, loving every ounce of her so deeply he couldn’t even begin to express it with words. He hoped this kiss did it for him.

She pulls back with a smile, “thank you.”

“No, thank you,” he teases.

She gets off him carefully, and he hisses as he slips out, sensitive and soft. She uses the bathroom first, leaving the door open so he could come in with the used condom tied in a not and wrap it in toilet paper before hiding it at the bottom of the garbage in there. Embarrassed as all hell for Wayne to come across any evidence that they were having sex in his trailer.

She slips back into her dress, he slips into some track pants and a shirt, they get all wrapped up with their coats and she puts on her new gloves. She holds her stocking in her lap on the drive home and she still holds his hand over the centre console the whole ride too. They can’t stop smiling at each other, they don’t talk, he just has the radio on low, letting the music fill their silence.

She doesn’t know what else to say other than that she loves him. She’s overflowing with love, it’s insane.

Back in her bedroom, there are two presents left on her bed.

“Oh my god,” she whispers, picking up the one with her name knowing exactly what they are. “How did she have time to do this?”

“What?”

“These are matching Christmas pyjamas for tomorrow morning,” she explains as she hands him the other present.

He can’t believe it as he peels back the green wrapping paper to see that they were indeed the same pyjamas as the ones Y/N is holding in her hands. White shirts with red bottoms, covered in candy canes, they’re cute as hell.

“You’re officially part of the family,” she swoons, overjoyed with everything.

He tosses his PJs back onto the bed and pulls her into a hug, he cradles her head with his big hand and kisses her temple, “I love you so much.”

“I love you,” she wraps her arms around his middle and holds him just as tight.

They get undressed again, their pyjamas for the morning are placed on her dresser as the two of them climb into her bed together. She snuggled right up to his chest, just as naked as they were 10 minutes ago, they release a matching sigh as they settle in the dark room.

He runs his hand over her back, and she traces shapes into his chest with her finger. They’re silent, content, and happy. Everything they’ve always wanted to be, simply together.

General Taglist

@ncsls0515 @stevesmunsons @reidsbookclub @sweetyyhippyy @manuosorioh @mrs-dr-reid @k-k0129 @eddiemunson-rp @squishyturtle @katsukis1wife

Employee of the month taglist

@munsonficdump @angelsarecallin @wonderful-outcast @aysheashea @ick90 @bloodandtime @birdsinmywalls

Eddie

@fightingdragonswithwho @kyomito @reidselle @venomsvl @nomajdetective @girl-with-an-orange-cat @blairscott @princesseddie

#eddie munson #eddie munson stranger things #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x fem reader #eddie munson smut #stranger things #eddie munson imagines #eddie munson imagine #stranger things imagine #stranger things season 4

1K notes · View notes