#drawing Eddie haunts me

[myartsing]

This is my second attempt at drawing steddie and it is infinitely better! Yay!!

[roastedsloth]

This is how the next episode is gonna go Tim told me himself ( I hate this fuck you art block )

[ghost-proofbaby]

can someone please draw eddie as that girl from either tik tok or vine who's having a mental breakdown about being pulled over because she didn't know you had to do so for emergency vehicles and she just sobs "and that FAT ASS INDIANA COP-"

and that it cuts to hopper, extremely unimpressed

please. PLEASE.

[cannibalhellhound]

I AM BACK !!! FINALLY IT IS DONE!!!!

Again this is the third and last piece of the Uncle Princess series ft. BuckElsa and Sleeping Tommy

[luveline]

𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

eddie wakes up with a red string tied from his finger to yours, no idea where he got it, and no idea how to tell you that you're caught on the end of it. soulmate!au. fem!reader, 16k.

content warnings mentioned issues with self image, implied body dysmorphia, reader is insecure/a touch shy, alcohol, a short kiss after one character has been drinking, weed mentioned but not used by eddie or reader. please read with care! requested here ♡

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Eddie remembers the party in flashes. The feeling of his thick-soled creepers caught on the floor, wings in fly paper. Someone's headphones cracking like a wishbone between two hands and a fist fight in the backyard. Your hair touching some degenerate's cheek as they leaned down to kiss you, and the shudder that ran through you as you opened your mouth. Beer. Beer, cheap wine, another beer. 

While he realises the beer may be fogging his memory, none of the fractures explain the piece of string tied to the marriage finger on his left hand.

He stands in the tiny trailer bathroom with his back against the door, the hustle and bustle of his Uncle Wayne's morning routine filtering through the flimsy door. It bends under his weight. Anymore pushing and it'll fly off the hinges.

The string withstands reasoning. Eddie wasn't particularly alarmed when he couldn't slide it off of his finger that morning, half-falling out of bed and desperate for the bathroom. He figured himself the victim of an elaborate prank, toppling out of bed to follow the red string where it stood taut. He chased it to the door and gave up when he realised that it disappeared down the dark stretch of road leading out of the Hills. 

Panic set in somewhere between peeing and a pair of scissors falling apart around the string in the kitchen. Like even the touch of the string was an insult, uncuttable. 

From there he tried yanking, buttering, slicing. The butter made his fingers greasy and the knife went dull. To the touch, the string is thin. Twelve pieces of strand like doubled embroidery thread, plain cotton to the eye, maybe polyester if the minimal iridescent shine is a clue. He can spread it out between his fingers and thumb, he just can't cut it off.

"Eddie, what the fuck did you do?" 

Eddie winces and drops his hand from his eyes. The string slides down the doorway where it's trapped with a light shushing.  

"What?" Eddie shouts back to Wayne. 

"Don't what me, son! Come here." 

Eddie groans and hangs his head. Pissed, he scrounges through the laundry for a shirt that's in acceptable condition and attempts to put it on but the insufferable string refuses to play nice. It bends, snags, and Eddie can't find a way to get it off —he has to pull the string toward him, pleased if sceptical to find that despite its taut nature, it will allow him enough length to get an arm through his sleeve. 

"What the fuck," he mutters, looking at the mirror in disbelief. The purple-yellow bruise haunting the hollow of his right eye has shrunk since last night, to his relief. Upon reflection, Eddie doesn't think it'll draw much attention. 

The string doubles back on itself, a red line up the length of his arm to his armpit where it disappears into the sleeve. From there, it snakes down his stomach to pull out from the bottom hem. 

If whoever has the other end of the string decides to pull, his shirt will rise up. Awesome. Really great. He's a fucking streaker.

"Edward Albert Munson, if you don't get in here!" 

"Wayne," Eddie says, pushing open the bathroom door with a suffering sigh, "what do you want me to say? I can't get the fucking thing off'a me." 

Wayne is thoroughly unimpressed where he stands in the kitchen, arms crossed over his chest and gaze on the countertop by the sink. 

Eddie's confused at first, complaint dying on his lips as he remembers the mess he made in a mad dash for freedom half an hour ago. Butter shines yellow and melted on a small plate, the broken scissors tossed frustratedly aside, a useless knife in similar fashion at the bottom of the sink. 

"What the fuck, Eds?" Wayne asks.

Eddie holds up his hand. "I don't know!" he says, exasperated, eyebrows halfway up his forehead. "I woke up with it, I can't get rid of it." 

Wayne's turn to be confused. But, like his newphew's, his confusion doesn't last long. "What happened to your eye?" 

"The string?" Eddie asks, waving his red string around for emphasis. Bruises are commonplace, were nearly normal the summer between nine and tenth grade, this weird magic string is anything but. 

"That what kids are calling shiners?"  Wayne asks, taking Eddie's face in a rough hand. "At least say you got one in too." 

"I don't remember." 

"You don't remember?" Wayne asks, a mixture of unimpressed and horrified. 

"No, I…" He bats Wayne's hand away, giving his tired-faced uncle an abashed smile. "It's fine, Wayne. I was at Gareth's last night." 

"Ah, well that explains it. What does your bruise have to do with the state of my kitchen? You try cutting it off?" 

Eddie turns from Wayne to grab the scissors and knife. He wraps both in paper towel until the sharps (or not so sharps) are covered and tosses them in the trash, scrounging for a bottle of bleach under the sink to wipe away his buttery mess. "You're focused on the wrong disaster, Wayne. Like, I tried following the string out the door and it's a half a mile long. I'm gonna follow it in the van." 

"Is this, like, a trend? Speaking in tongues to get out of trouble?" 

"What are you confused about?" Eddie asks, spinning back to hold his hand in Wayne's face. 

Wayne doesn't look like Eddie, he's not so dark in the hair or eyes, and he obviously doesn't look like Eddie's mom, but the smile he gives him now was one Eddie's mom wore all the time, enduringly fond. Wayne takes Eddie's hand, turning his nephew's palm this way and that as the string slithers against pale knuckles. It almost writhes. 

"What am I supposed to be seeing?" 

"That's not funny." 

"I'm not joking." 

"Wayne," Eddie says, his shirt rising as he pulls on the string to catch the light. It shines in a way that isn't normal, too many colours like the scale of a deep sea fish. "This!" 

"Right… I can't see whatever it is you're seeing. How hard did you get hit? Jesus, I asked you to stop getting yourself in these messes, you could get seriously hurt."

Wayne doesn't waste another second looking through Eddie's string. The weight of a long shift rests between his shoulders, abates as he brings the chipped rim of a Garfield mug to his lips. Eddie swears the chubby cat is mocking him, cruel eyes smirking at his misfortune.

"Unbelievable," Eddie mutters, ditching the whole scene in search of his dingy black sneakers. 

Wayne chuckles and opens the cabinet where they keep their cookies and coffee cakes, calling, "You want breakfast?" 

"No! I have delusions to attend to. Need anything while I'm out?" 

"A new pair of scissors."

Eddie pretends to stab himself in the eye by the front door, over and over. His frustration calms. He slips into loose laced sneakers and grabs his jacket where it's hanging on the coat rack, digging for his keys.  He elbows the door ajar, and doesn't notice his van isn't in the driveway until he's standing at the bottom of the porch steps, flabbergasted. 

"Did you wanna borrow the sierra?" Wayne asks from the door. 

Garfield looks on in silent judgement. 

Wayne generously lends Eddie the sierra. He's relieved when he shuts the door on his string and it behaves like regular old string (which is to say, it doesn't buckle the metal), but then he tries to grab the steering wheel and his finger almost pulls from the socket, stopped by the string. His relief ends. 

"Fuck fuck fuck," he says, opening the door, gathering some string and closing it again. Righted, he pulls his shirt back down his torso and starts the car. 

Eddie's hoping he can follow the string to its beginning, but at this point he's sure he got his shit rocked hard enough to forget being hexed by a devious yet loveable warlock —the string can't be a real string. It doesn't tangle around the wheels of the car as he drives over the faint line of it leading from Forest Hills into Hawkins' town centre, it just vanishes, like Eddie's winding it around a bobbin. 

He takes the first exit on the traffic circle reluctantly, away from the string and toward Gareth's house, where Eddie assumes he left his beloved van. He can't believe how wasted he must have been, and now that he's accepted the string as an irksome constant but prioritised it below van retrieval, the hangover he should definitely have rears a head. His stomach hurts, his eyes are sand, you were fucking kissing somebody else last night— 

Eddie might throw up. He rolls down the window and sticks his head as far out of it as he can justify while driving. The roads are quiet, a late morning in Hawkins pockmarked by the burr of lawn mowers chewing up perfect lawns and the spray of illegal sprinklers. The sun emerges slowly and then all at once, licking his naked arms with the promise of sunburn should he continue the day unprotected. Eddie never seems to tan. He hates the sun, anyway, the glare of it bouncing off of the road in a blinding dotted line. He unfolds the visor over his seat.

Needless to say, he's in a shitty mood when he finally gets to Gareth's house, spying his van wedged in the driveway between a miscellaneous ford and a buick.

Hungover, too hot, trying not to panic about the red string choking his knuckle. It can't seem to decide on how tight or loose it's going to sit. It tightens as he climbs out of the sierra, loosens as he walks toward his van. 

"Hey, gorgeous," he says, patting her freshly lacquered body with love. She's all jet black now, rust buffed and wheels shiny. 

There are bikes crowded against the house wall like toppled dominoes. The window shades are closed but the door is wide open the hinges, the sharp smell of booze wafting out into the sun. Give it enough time and Eddie's sure the sun'll bake all the milling bodies into a brand new smell. 

"Hey, man," Jamison greets, sitting on the kitchen counter and unfairly put together considering the bottle of sours he demolished alone last night, "you survived." 

Gareth is face down at the table next to a plate of cold toast, jelly congealed. Jeff stands by the patio door smoking a cigarette that smells exciting, and Macy stands doing the dishes at the sink.

"Got the girl doing the dishes. Classy," Eddie says.

Macy drops the sponge she's using into the water, soap bubbles dripping from her fingers. "Thanks for offering." 

He relents. The mess they've made —and it is generous to call it a mess, more apt might be an explosion, or a weather event— is extensive. Pizza boxes upturned, tomato sauce and stringy cheese smashed into the fridge like a modern art piece you'd see at MOMA. Eddie wouldn't put it past drunk or high him to have done it, declaring some statement of pretentious high horsery, so he doesn't comment on it. If it was him, he doesn't wanna know. 

"Some party," Jeff says through smoke. 

Eddie pulls the stopper out of the sink to let the water drain. He doesn't roll like that. "What the fuck happened?" 

Gareth rouses at Eddie's question, said as it is with vigour, and remembers his toast. He takes a bite and turns in his seat to blink blearily at Eddie. For a second, Eddie kids himself into thinking his friend can see the string currently spilling water onto the floor like a tightwire. 

"You lost your shit and wrecked my house, you stupid bastard." 

Eddie looks to Jamison, as if to say, that true?

Jamison pushes a long arm behind his back and stretches. "Y/N was hooking up with Cory Wilson and you took it like a champ, in my opinion. We had a good time." 

"She hooked up with Wilson?" he asks, dread pooling in his stomach. The string shudders as you had, Eddie remembers, your chin tilted up and your eyes closing into sweet dark lines, painted lashes squeezed together. 

"She took you home," Macy says, muffled, a hair tie between her lips. She lets the thin blonde strands of her hair fall back to her shoulders. "She didn't stay the night?" 

"That would've been kind of sick," Jeff says. 

"He could barely walk," Jamison agrees. "Okay, I'm lying. You were fine." 

"I figured she'd have to stay, the way you were begging her. Ditch Wilson, baby, he doesn't know you like I know you. We can make it work, just say you'll stop seeing him." 

Eddie drops a plate in the sink with a splintering crush. The answering roar of laughter tells him what he hadn't had breath to ask. No, he didn't really say any of that shit. 

"You were drunk, not stupid," Jeff says.

"Not that stupid," Jamison corrects. 

Eddie frowns down at the broken plate in the sink for a breather. Nerves abated, total loserdom escaped for another day, he holds his damp hand up in the air.  "Any of you fuckers seeing this?" 

"Get a new tattoo?" Macy asks. 

He shakes his hand, the string (still caught in his sleeve, line like a bright vein up his arm) shaking. "You don't see it?"

"Your artist is gonna be pissed, they hate cheaters." 

Eddie sighs. "Can someone pass me the trash can?" 

They clean the house together in fits and starts, all nauseous, all wishing they'd had the sense to have a chill get together, just the five of them. Gareth declares his home a no go scene for the rest of summer and Eddie doesn't bother offering, nobody wants a party at the trailer park. Seeing the disco ball missing a rainbow lense under the stairs, a jumbo box of popcorn sprayed over the entire downstairs bathroom, and poor Manny Gomez cup-locked where he snoozes on the Persian rug in the lounge, Eddie wouldn't agree to host a party ever, even if he lived in one of the rich kid cribs like Harrington. It takes hours to put it right.

The longer he cleans the looser the string becomes. It drops to the floor (seemingly done with no regard to the laws of physics, having magicked itself out of his sleeve at a point, unnoticed) and trips him up as he walks downstairs. Eddie led a one man search party for Gareth's pet fish who some idiot transferred to the bathtub. The fish flops around at the turbulence of his trip inside of a temporary cup, but Eddie manages to return the poor thing to its tank uninjured.  

"It's fucking sick," he says, crouching down to follow the fish as it reacclimates. Its big black eyes are like sequins set in orange glitter, scales glistening, a shimmering of purple and teal blues kissing its underbelly as it swims. "You're a beautiful creature. I'm sorry somebody tried to evict you, babe." 

"He's a boy." 

"Yeah, and he's a babe." Eddie bites his tongue. 

You bend at the waist. With the shades still drawn, the brunt of the light entering the room is from your left, and the right side, the side closest to Eddie, is lit blue by the fish tank. You smile gently at the goldfish puttering around between artificial seaweed, an expression that grabs Eddie by the intestines. You feel his gaze, turning your face ever so slightly to his. 

"Don't look as nice without makeup, I know," you murmur. 

You're dressed differently today, stripped back in one way and more beautiful all the others, bare-skinned, no makeup or glitters to hide behind. Eddie remembers every detail of what you were wearing last night, the details stamped into his temporal lobe (before he drank his weight in other peoples booze). Black tights that shimmered slick oil as you moved and a tiny dress to boot. You're not a small girl, thighs there and grabbable and so un-grabbed, and when you bent down Eddie's shamefaced to say he followed the line. He loved how you looked last night, loves how you express yourself, but he craves how you are now, the lesser seen side of the same coin.

"You look nice." He cringes, his reflection in the fish tank glass a horror. Eddie never actually managed to shower this morning. If he doesn't smell like pale ale it'll be a miracle. "You do. At least one of us showered." 

"I'm surprised you're alive," you say with a fond smile. Eddie never takes your insults to heart because you never say them to hurt. You're easygoing. You're light incarnate. "I haven't seen you drink that much since graduation." 

"Macy says you took me home." He stands at full height. You follow suit. 

"Kicking and screaming. You told me you were going to drink every drop of Mr. Lashlee's bourbon or die trying, and you tried." 

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" he asks. He can be volatile when he's intoxicated, like a fish out of water. 

You gesture to his cheek. "Hurt yourself. You were freaking out and your hand kicked back. I didn't think it would bruise. Does it hurt awful?" 

Your sympathy melts him. Eddie shakes his head, lying through his teeth, "I can barely feel it." 

Your hoodie drowns you, your jeans not as oversized but hiding the feats of your thighs from view. He can't say he's not disappointed, though it's cute on you, your jeans rolled at the ends to showcase mildly mismatched crew socks and a pair of converse, their rubber shiny with newness besides a small sharpie heart on the left toe. Trapped beneath them is Eddie's string. 

He tugs it out. You show no sign of feeling it as the string snaps upward like an elastic and stops short. It goes stiff as a stick, tied from the knuckle of his marriage finger and leading…

To the knuckle of yours. 

Like matching rings.

Eddie thinks, Sure. If I'm delusional, of course it's something to do with you. 

"Don't suppose you can see it?" he asks, pulling against the string. The red band expands to accommodate you, rather than tug you inward. It has a mind of its own, apparently, listening to Eddie only on occasion. 

"The bruise?" you ask, confused. "It's hard not to see. But it's not too bad. You could buy some powder for it if it bothers you, but I think it makes you seem cool." 

"I don't seem cool?" 

You smile as though you're sharing a joke. If you are, Eddie hasn't heard it before. 

It's weird, crushing on someone. He can't remember feeling this way growing up, spending sun-soaked days at playgrounds and parking lots and the pool, wet to the knees, you and your friends sitting under the shade of the umbrellas. The first time he saw you there, in your bikini bottoms and your big white t-shirt bent over a book, he didn't feel any sudden revelation. No spark. No pulled string. He thought you were pretty without bragging about it and he met you not long after that at a nondescript barbecue. Then he stopped hanging out with his middle school friends and flunked two years. He forgot you existed. And now he knows you again, he feels more and more of himself bending and twisting trying to be what you want him to be, or what he thinks you want, at least. If you want Wilson, he can be Wilson. Eddie can kiss like a fish and wear too much cologne, he can sell out and cut his hair to the ears. 

Well, maybe not that far. I still want to be me, he thinks, eyes on your hands and the string stretched between them. The red seems darker now, onyx hued, ropey as blood. 

"What are you doing here?" Eddie forces out. Not surprised, you and Macy are close enough that you've formed friendships with the whole gang of merry misfits, but wondering if his string has pulled you here. Does he have any say? 

"I thought I'd help with the aftermath, see if anybody wanted to get burgers, the works." 

Eddie catches a flicker of nervousness in your stance, the half-step backwards you take when his shoe nears your own. The string loosens.

He doesn't have any intention of making you uncomfortable. He probably smells like a dumpster, he wouldn't blame you for needing space. And if who you were kissing last night is indicative of who you'll be sidling up to again in the future, Eddie has low hopes for you both. 

"Burgers?" Manny groans from the floor. 

You turn slowly on one heel. "Hello, Manny," you say, angling your head to line up with his. "Someone's drawn on you." 

"What did they draw?" Manny asks, rubbing his smeared face sluggishly. 

You look to Eddie for guidance. The reality of Manny's tagging is embarrassing. 

"It's a dick, I'm afraid." Eddie offers Manny a hand. "With disproportionate, uh, baubles." 

"But I'm sure Benny won't care," you say.

—

Benny makes Manny wear a baseball cap pulled down low, because This is a family establishment, Man. Every time you see the thick-lined drawing on his cheek you smile and feel awful for it, but luckily Manny seems to be taking the joke well. 

If you'd fallen asleep at the party last night and woke up with a semi-permanent tattoo of similar calibre you'd be too mortified to bother leaving the house until it was gone. You're not thrilled with your appearance as it is. Any cruel additions would have you housebound. 

Guilty, you take a bite of your burger to hide your smile. Eddie's already clocked it, generous enough to pretend he hasn't noticed, and Macy finds it funnier than you do, so she's yet to notice your amusement. The rest of the boys are making ornaments out of plastic straws. Gareth is shit, Jamison better, but Jeff takes the cake with a three layer birthday cake, candles included. It strains to break as he adds another candle. His bloodshot eyes show no signs of anxiety. 

Manny grabs a napkin and knocks your ice tea. The cup sloshes but doesn't spill, ice cubes clinking and beads of condensation racing down the sides of your glass. You pick it up to feel the cold. Lately you've been morose. The cold, any sensation, can put distance between you and the heavy for a while, but there's no cure. And now you've gone and let Cory Wilson of all people kiss you for the simple fact that he wanted to. 

He's the first person who's ever wanted to kiss you. 

But you don't want him to kiss you again, and you're not sure how you manage it. Do you have to tell him you're not interested? Probably not, it was just a stupid kiss. He dipped down, his lips hot, his smell nice if overpowering, and it was right for a while, it was what you wanted, but then his hand dropped down rather than up, searching for something to take rather than something to hold. 

It's not how you pictured it. 

"You okay?" 

You raise your eyes, ice tea in hand. Eddie splits his attention between you and a basket of crispy crinkle cut fries loaded with cheese and bacon bits. He's nonchalant, his shoe tapping into yours as he leans forward for another bite. He chews, and he waits for you to answer. 

"I'm alright. Thinking about work." Bad lie. "Gareth said you got a new tattoo?" 

"Nope. I've been thinking about getting a new one to fill the gap under my puppeteer," he says, extending his arm to show you it in the light, the ridge and weave of his veins stark against his white skin. They're especially fierce leading down to his wrist, as is the small notch on the outermost side. You reach out to touch it without thinking, fingertip rubbing carefully over the bump. 

Eddie pushes his arm closer. "I want something here." He draws a half circle with his opposite pinky in the empty space. "But I can't think of what I want. Sometimes you go to the shop and they have a bunch of flash sheets and you like one of them enough to get it, right? I don't know."

It means a lot to you that he'd let you touch him without asking. You should've asked. 

He should've asked you, but he was drunk. You're not sure he was thinking straight. 

You sit back in your seat and finish your iced tea, feeling the cold slide down into your chest. You shiver at the feeling. 

"Are you sure you're okay?" Eddie asks. 

"Why wouldn't she be okay, Munson?" Manny asks. 

"Quiet, dickhead." 

Manny snorts, grabbing a greedy handful of Eddie's fries as punishment for a low blow. Eddie couldn't care less, clearly, his focus on you and your moping. You step into a sweeter smiling version of yourself that you save for times like this. 

"You know I work for Deenie DIY?" you ask. 

"Of course I know that," Eddie says, and not in the way people do sometimes where they assume you're insulting their intelligence, but the nice way. Like knowing where you work is easy information to carry.

He's the nicest of his friends, which is a credit to him; they aren't a bad bunch.

"So, I have this coworker that keeps bringing soup to work, and she swears that someone is syphoning off a couple of spoonfuls before lunch every day…" 

Eddie listens to your story with a weird expression. You bumble through the twists and turns of the world's stupidest fable, how she blamed a bunch of different people and now no one likes her, and the soup was getting warmed up by the fridge lights —it was her own fault. He listens, he smiles and nods and offers commentary that's funnier than the original story, the entire time with a downturn to his lips. You hate seeing him like that, but you don't know what to say. 

Plates left streaked with ketchup and mayo, glasses dotted by greasy prints and lip smackers, you and your friends tip as generously as twenty-somethings can afford and decide to head back to Gareth's for a couple of hours. It's barely past noon on a Saturday in late July. Nobody has to work for at least thirty six hours. You pile into two cars, arguing about what tape to play for the ten minute drive. Eddie ends up in the seat beside you somehow, and he doesn't shy away when the car takes a bend and you lean into his side. 

He puts his arm behind your shoulder. "Sorry," he says.

"It's okay." 

You lift your head. The memory of his face hovering close to yours, the sweet smell of cheap cherry wine on his breath, his hand clumsy with drink but kind as it climbed your back, your dress thin enough to catch your death, thin enough to feel like he was touching bare skin. Sorry, he'd said, you're just so fucking beautiful. 

"I gotta take my uncle's car back. Wouldn't do me a solid and come with?" he asks. 

— 

You follow Eddie in the van. He can see you in his rear view mirror, your hands on his steering wheel, the window down and the breeze ruffling your hood. 

Jeff was too high to drive and Eddie wouldn't trust Jamison to drive a moped. Gareth can't drive and okay, Macy can, she's good, but Eddie chose you for a reason. The string tied between your hands clings from door to door. 

Eddie pulls the sierra into the driveway in front of the trailer, holding two fingers up to you as he hops out and jogs up the steps. Two minutes.

"Wayne? Brought the car back." 

"How's your bruise, Eds?" 

Wayne's laying on the couch with a blanket over his legs, coffee cup swapped for a plate of cookies and a bag of chips. Eddie leans on the doorway, Wayne's keys on his finger. The string bobs back through the door, as if to say, Hey, she's over here, dipshit.

"It's fine, what are you eating? Did you have breakfast after I went?" 

"Yeah I had breakfast, I'm a grown man." Punctuated by the crunch of potato chips. "It's lunch time. This is my lunch." 

"Let me make you a pot pie or something." 

Wayne waves him off. "You're going back out. Who's in the van?" 

"That's Y/N." 

Wayne smiles knowingly. "Ah, is it?" He stands up with remarkable speed putting his plate of cookies on the table. He ducks down to peek through the window, and you must see him or wave, Wayne waving back. "Make her come say hi." 

"I won't be making her say shit." 

"She was nice last night." 

Eddie cringes, having forgotten you were his saviour. "Do I wanna know what you said?" 

"I said you were an idiot and an embarrassment, and that your safe return deserved a reward. You should invite her over for dinner." 

"No, because that's, like, a couples thing. Come and meet my parents," Eddie says, shoulders jumping, hands up in jazz hands, "laugh at my baby photos." 

"I don't have many of those. Got a bunch of you when you were fourteen and deep in the glam rock obsession." 

He used to say Eddie could wear whatever he wanted and paint his face a hundred different colours as long as Wayne got to take a picture. 

"Great, I'll invite her, and you can show her your nice album of reasons not to date me." 

"Son, why don't you just ask her to dinner? Worked in my day." 

"You're not even old. And I was going to," Eddie whines, rubbing the flat of his forehead ineffectually. "Then she was kissing this idiot Cory Wilson last night. I blew it. Lost my chance."

"I still think you should ask her for dinner. Any sense about her and she'll say yes." 

It's one of those reassurances your mom says to you when you're down on your luck. Handsomest guy in the world, how could anybody say no to that face? 

"Maybe I'll ask her." Eddie smiles nervously. "We're gonna go hang out, cool? You going to Dean's?" 

"None of your business. Yeah, I'm going to Dean's, just to help him fix his hand saw. I'll be back before six. See you then?" 

Eddie tosses Wayne the sierra keys. "See you. Don't drink too much." 

"Ironic, Edward!" 

Eddie leaves the trailer feeling vaguely hopeful about you; maybe Wayne's right. Kissing somebody doesn't mean you're married, but the window of opportunity to let his feelings be known is getting smaller the longer he waits. And seeing you standing against the grate of the van with your hands in your pockets, slice of your calves peeking out between your socks and jeans, big sleeves on your hoodie falling up one arm, he doesn't know if he can wait anymore. 

"Hey, would you wanna get out of here?" he asks. "Like, ditch Gareth's for a bit?"

"And do what?" 

The string shortens as he closes the gap between you. He twists it around his finger. It's tied to you —it must be a sign. (Or he's imagining it and he has, like, a paralytic brain worm eating its way across his eyeballs.) 

"I don't know, hit the goodwill? I have somewhere between twelve and sixteen dollars with your name on it if you're interested." He tries not to shrug, can't help it. "Only if you want." 

"Yeah. I want to." You worry your lip. "I'm not dressed to go out." 

"Are you kidding? You look fine. You look good." 

You rub your wrists together, grimacing. 

Eddie can roll with the punches. "Or you could go home and change first?"

"Would that be okay?" 

Eddie's glad for offering to witness the spectacle of your bedroom. The string seems to hate him but love you, giving you space all the way here and yanking him like a bad dog when he strays too far. You change behind your closet door and it forms hearts at your feet, unperturbed by the mountain of rejected shirts and skirts. 

Eddie lounges in a bean bag by the door, taking in your belongings as he waits. You've crafts on your desk, little origami cranes made of paper you've painted with watercolour. Phthalo blue and alizarin crimson foiled with short, skinny strokes of gold etching. Intricate and simple, time and care poured into each sheet. 

"Are you sure I'm okay by here?" Eddie asks. 

"Can you see me?" 

"No." Eddie can see shelves of books with creased spines, your made bed and all your mismatched sheets, the candles on your window sill —moonlight meadow, half-burned and sun-bleached; candied sweetheart, untouched; white lily and freesia, a double wick with only one melted tunnel—, and the soot stain unfurling like a soft-edged flower around the curtain pole. "Can't see anything." 

"Then don't worry." 

The sun ticks higher into the sky as an hour stretches into a second since you left Gareth's together. Eddie likes his room, his dense kingdom of the stuff that make him him, but he likes yours for the quiet. He can picture you sitting cross legged on your bed with a book in your lap, your back arched uncomfortably forward, a day old drink of water on the ceramic coaster with tiny bubbles clinging to the sides of the glass. He thinks he'd like that, to sit here and watch you, listening to one of your CDs, the string between you bouncing with each turn of a page. 

Eddie pulls on the string experimentally. Determined to fuck with him, it becomes a tauter thread, and the momentum of his tug tips you over. Your hand follows the line and the sudden slip pulls you into view without a shirt. Eddie flinches and looks as far away from you as he can. 

You laugh to yourself, but the sound is bitter, like burning coffee grounds on the tongue. 

"Is everything good with you?"  

You and Eddie are friends. Not great ones, but enough to have been able to ask you to ditch the others. There have been hundreds of seconds alone, the two of you sitting together at tables edged by arcade machines, diner booths, bowling alley benches, waiting for the others to get back, and those are moments where Eddie found time to fall in love with you. The string must be a manifestation or those seconds, threads of time tied together that join you forever, even if you can't see them. They're there. Eddie cares about you and it makes his throat hurt to hear your unhappy sounds; you have a morosity to you that he isn't heartless enough to ignore. He doesn't want to. 

Everybody has an unseen misery weighing them down. Eddie needs to find a way to hold yours for you. Just for a bit, however long you need. 

Unless Cory Wilson is going to take that mantle. Maybe that's why you're sighing; Eddie would be pretty upset if he had to remember being kissed by Wilson. He was already upset about it, and Wilson didn't kiss him. 

"Hey," Eddie says, peering between his fingers. With you definitely out of sight, he lifts his head. "Seriously, are you good?" 

"I don't know what to wear, that's all. Sorry for taking so long." 

"We could sit here till tomorrow and that would be cool. We don't even have to go, but you don't have to stress about what you're wearing. It's goodwill." 

"I always get stressed about what I'm wearing." 

"Is that a girl thing?" 

You toss a pretty flowered dress over the closet door. It slinks under its own weight and puddles on the floor. "I've always been like this, I get too focused on looking nice, it winds me up." 

"You always look nice." 

Your laugh says you certainly don't believe him. "Thanks, Eddie." 

"I'm not just saying it to make you feel better. You'd look nice in a potato sack." 

"Like Marilyn Monroe." 

"Who?" 

You appear in a sliver, naked arm linked to an unseen but unignorable naked chest, your face over your shoulder and a beatific silkiness to your smile. "You know who she is. Happy Birthday mister president? Blonde, with her beauty mark." You tap your top lip with your pinky. 

"Oh, right. Did she wear sacks often?" 

"Someone said she was beautiful because her clothes were designer and made to fit, so she did a photoshoot in a potato sack to prove she was beautiful." 

"You could totally do that." 

"It's not other people I need to convince." You retreat behind your closet door again, your voice half as clear as you confess, "I think… I've always been like this. I look in the mirror and I don't even know who I'm seeing. She doesn't feel like me." 

Eddie's ridiculous sitting on a beanbag while you bare your heart. He swears in his head and climbs onto tired legs, his hangover beating like a dull knife between his eyes for a moment while he gets used to standing. 

You take his silence for something else. "Sorry, ignore me. It's weird." 

"That's not weird. It's not." He tries to say what he means and not the first words that come into his head. "You know, I used to feel that way. Growing up, in junior high, I felt like such a poser. Even when I started being myself, I didn't feel authentic. Does that… is that similar?" 

"I guess so. How did you make it stop?" 

"Okay, this is gonna sound bad, but my mom died." Eddie twists a ring around his knuckle, the string tangling between fingers. "And I didn't care for a while. And then I got older." 

"I'm sorry," you murmur. 

"It's okay. I didn't say it for sympathy. That's just what happened." Eddie sits gingerly on the end of your bed. He doesn't want to intimidate you —after all, you're a young woman alone with him in a state of undress. A vulnerable young woman, if you're as upset as you're beginning to sound. "I'm trying to make you feel better with the worst personal anecdote ever." 

"You don't have to make me feel better. I shouldn't have brought it up, I don't…" 

"You can tell me anything," he says. 

You appear again, this time fully clothed. Black skirt to your knees —the sickest skirt you've ever worn— and a thin gauzy camisole, you look beautiful, and insanely uncomfortable. "Really?" you ask, hands wringing.

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. I promise." 

"Well. Last night," —Eddie sees flashing lights, the carbon bubbles in a spilled beer— "I let somebody kiss me."

He knows. It's agony. Eddie waits for you to continue with an open expression despite the feeling your confession inspires; he assumes this is what a knife to the eye feels like, the willing horror of letting you use it. 

"Nobody's ever wanted to kiss me before, so I let him. And I'm shit scared that I'm never gonna recognise myself in the mirror, so I'll keep letting him kiss me." You wring your hands meanly. "Sorry, I know I sound like a bad movie. Why is talking about your feelings this awkward?" 

"That was your first kiss, last night?" 

It's not the right question. You wince visibly. "I know, I'm in my twenties, it's embarrassing." 

"No, that's–" Eddie sighs. "That's not what I meant." What did he mean? Fuck, I wish it could've been me, and Jesus, that doesn't make a lick of fucking sense. You aren't right, for starters, Cory Wilson isn't the first person who's ever wanted to kiss you, he's just the bastard that got lucky enough to have you reciprocate. "Wait, was it okay? Did he corner you?" 

You sit on the end of the bed with a small smile. "No. He didn't pressure me." 

"Was it what you wanted?" 

"Not really… I guess I don't know what I want." 

Is that rejection, or is he self-absorbed? Should he take the hint, or is he just another guy making it about himself? Eddie leans back into your bed to escape the heartbreak of being close to you, the string anchoring his hand in place as he tries to scratch his chest. 

"It's not embarrassing to get your first kiss in your twenties," he says, eyes roving over the lines of a small paper butterfly, black cardstock like ink against your white ceiling. "That's what your twenties are for." 

"Don't bother, I know exactly how you lost your virginity." 

Eddie scrunches his eyes shut, can't stop himself from smiling as his wry voice scratches out, "Listen, everyone knows how I lost my virginity, but that's not the point." 

"You'd think a seventeen year old would make marginally better decisions." You're teasing, not shaming, your smile playful. 

"No, you wouldn't. Seventeen year olds are stupid. I thought I knew what I wanted at seventeen and now I'm twenty three and the only thing I know for sure is that I don't know a thing. The point of being twenty is doing shit for the first time. It's our first time being grown ups." 

"That's wise," you say. 

"Fuck off." 

You lay down beside him. The string whips like a ribbon in the wind before falling into the shape of a heart again, clearly pleased to have you near. 

"It's not embarrassing," Eddie says quietly. "But when you get your second kiss, I think you should save it for someone you want to kiss. Don't just let someone have it because you're not sure of yourself." 

"That's a nice sentiment, Eddie, but I already gave it away." 

He swallows his surprise, a tiny spike of agony. "How was that one?" 

"I'm not sure about it. I don't think it counted." 

"Do I wanna know?" 

"I'm not sure about that, either." 

"Was it Wilson?" he asks. 

You turn your cheek into the bedsheets. He can hear the fabric brushing your skin, turns ever so slightly to meet you, a few inches all it would take to breathe the same air. 

"Eddie," you say, very, very softly. 

His heart eases into his mouth a beat at a time until it's thrumming between his ears. 

"Yeah?" he asks, his tone a twin. 

"I think I need to cancel our plans." 

It's not what he's expecting you to say. 

—

There's a black velvet jacket dotted with embroidered stars hidden under your bed, their silver thread like cosmic dust. Music pounds the floor and shakes the house's foundations, seeping down into Macy's damp basement one rippling riff at a time, the bass of it deep in Eddie's chest, but he can't stop thinking about your jacket. Did you know it was there? 

The string tied to his marriage finger grows restless the longer you and Eddie are apart, bouncing like a shockwave whenever he thinks your name. In fact, all it takes is the idea of you, the slightest memory of your smile, your hands, the way you tell stories to the group with your shoulders turned to him like he's there alone, and the string flinches. 

"Are you okay?" Manny asks. 

Eddie drags his way up the couch. "Hey, Man. You got the dick off your face. That's great." 

Manny lifts his cheek. "Had to steal some of my mom's make-up. Can't tell, huh?" 

The colour match is dubious, now he's mentioned it. Eddie doesn't have the heart to tell him, flopping back into the crisp, cracked leather seat beneath him. A circle of his face is sticky where it clings to the couch. It's among the worst feelings of this earthly plane, grim as ice cream dripping down your hand on a hot day, or perpetually gutting heartbreak like he suffers now. 

"I think I'm seeing things," Eddie says. 

"Jeff has stuff for that." 

Eddie groans loudly. With the way he feels it's not melodrama. Just pure human anguish. He groans again when nothing changes, fisting his hair in two aching hands. He's clenched and unclenched his hands for hours all day, trying to force the hurt away from his chest, chasing breathlessness to the tips of his fingers. Pins burn his palms. 

He knew in the back of his mind that you weren't going to want to date him. Realistically you have options, even if you think you don't, and his being your only option wouldn't inspire romance anyways. Being someone's last resort isn't love. None of it was love, you aren't in love, but Eddie thinks he could've been. He was halfway there, falling, whatever the poets might say —Eddie wants you. Wants to do stupid shit with you. He can picture the scene like he has before, that first bouquet of flowers, lilies with big white petals and purple sunspots. The cellophane would crinkle in trembling hands pressed to his chest, their stems leaking dew into his hardly worn button up. He'd pass them to you with more confidence than he feels and tell you that you're pretty. You're always pretty. 

He's not pretty, he's barely funny. He was stupid for thinking you'd like him too. 

The string is pale pink. Eddie loops it around his finger thoughtlessly, worsening the sting of pins and needles. 

There were times… 

He clutches his chest. The nausea he's feeling can't be understated.

There were times when you could've been in love with him, he thinks. Splitting a cigarette you had no business splitting on the steps of Jeff's porch, your vanilla chapstick softening the filter. Holding his hand for support as you made the hike down to the lake, your fingers curled around his like you worried you might hurt him. In the passenger seat of his van on the way to your house, laughing as he sang along to a Van Halen guitar solo. You could've been in love with him. 

But Eddie didn't ask you out. He didn't do what Wayne said, because goodwill is not dinner, and now you're probably happily sequestered in Wilson's BMW. He jumped the wrong gun and he blew it. 

"Seriously, Munson, are you good?" 

"Peachy." Eddie holds up the sign of the horns, pinky and index finger up, thumb holding his marriage and middle finger down, face buried in an old cushion. 

"Let me go get you a joint." 

"I gave it up." 

"Dude. Pizza it is." 

Eddie waits for Manny to leave before he turns onto his back. Last night in the shower after a knowing shoulder squeeze from his Uncle and a frankly overflowing bowl of microwave spaghetti, he pressed his forehead to the tile and let it all ache. He might have cried or water may have streamed from his hair, he genuinely doesn't know, but he knows he's in danger of another round of the same if he keeps thinking about you. 

He's a big boy. He can cope with your decision. 

"Eddie, what are you doing?" 

Eddie sits up with a handful of clicks. "Robin?" 

"Hey," Robin says, "whaddya know, I followed the smell of sadness and rejection and here you are." 

She's dressed fancy, her hair in a rare updo, faux pearls dangling from her ears to kiss the collar of a leather jacket. "Shit, you're so cool, Buckley." 

"Thanks. You okay?" Robin asks, sitting on the arm of the couch. 

Eddie's stomach churns as her perfume reaches him, the sweet, subtle smell of vanilla under white musk. He leans his face against the starched denim of her jeans. "Who told you?" he mumbles.

"Steve. Who else?" Robin pats his head. "But Jeff told him. And I was talking about your bruise." 

Eddie waves off her concern. "Where is Steve in my hour of need?" 

"Smoking a not secret cigarette with Jeff," she says, a melodic cadence to her usual light rasp. 

"I wouldn't risk Jeff's cigarettes." 

She snorts a laugh, "Steve would risk his life for a cigarette. He loves to say that quitting was easy, but he drinks half a beer and starts gasping like a fish." Robin mimes Steve's apparent desperation, to Eddie's delight.

She smiles as his laughter peters out, tilting her head to the side. "So… was it bad?" 

"I don't know." He rubs his eyes. "The last time I got rejected was in senior year, and it was– I didn't even like her, you know, thought she was pretty, but this is different." 

"Sorry, Eddie," she says, pushing her bottom lip up into her top one, a bubbled pout that betrays how out of her depth she feels. 

Eddie isn't trying to make it awkward. "That's okay. I liked her, she doesn't like me, it's cool." The string flails. The music from upstairs gets louder. "What the fuck is happening? I thought Macy said it was a quiet one." 

Robin and Eddie start up the basement stairs to the main body of the house. The air is warmer and thicker, the faint smell of hotdogs and burgers grilling in the backyard filtering inside through the patio doors. "You know," Eddie says, glaring at the sudden crowd, "there's an atari down there." 

"Sorry, I think I'll have to keep my idiot out of trouble." Robin points at Steve near the stereo with Jeff, the two of them laughing hard enough to bruise as they mess with the pitch of the music. "Steve! You'll go deaf in your good ear if you don't stop!" 

"What?" Steve shouts. 

Robin rushes over to drag him away from the stereo. Eddie doesn't want to be your best friend, but if it was a friendship like Steve and Robin's he would consider himself lucky to have it, smiling as she wraps her arms around his chest from behind and pulls him away, sniffing at him, her nose wrinkled as she gives a reprimand too low for Eddie to catch. "I'm serious," she says as they grow closer, weaving around the living room coffee table and retreating back into the slim hallway leading to the basement stairs, "where are your earplugs?" 

"In the car, Rob. I'm fine, I promise." 

"Sure. Alright, Eddie, would you keep him away from the stereo?" Robin shoves Steve toward him. "Thanks so much." 

"I'm not high," Steve says as soon as she's gone. 

"While that's uber convincing, honeybear, I don't care if you are," Eddie says lightly. "Not a cop. Wanna go get a burger?" 

They move away from the living room and into the kitchen, where Steve nearly trips over the door jam and Eddie forgets for the first time in days how awful he feels. 

He sits Steve down at the glass table next to Macy herself and a younger friend of Manny's. Jamison and Gareth stand at the grill arguing about who's doing what, but Jamison proves to be the better grillmaster and the better friend, dropping two burgers on paper plates in front of them not more than twenty seconds after they've sat down. "For you, my poor little Munson," he says, smacking the ketchup and mayonnaise down between them. "Eat up." 

"I can't get the cap off," Steve complains, welding a bottle of mayonnaise at him like a dagger. 

Eddie sighs. Steve is definitely high. "You know Jeff doesn't smoke plain rolled cigarettes, right? Like, you knew it was weed?" 

"Whaaaat?" Steve asks exaggeratedly. "Open my mayonnaise." 

"Plausible deniability," Eddie says. "I like it." 

He finds that taking care of Steve is a good distraction, but there's only so much care a grown man needs, high or not, and Eddie's gaze is pulled to the string. It's impossible to stop thinking about you on the other end of it. He tries not to look at the string at all, but he can't, being as permanently tied to his finger as it is. What's worse is seeing people tread on it. The colour fades slowly, once a strong red, now a meek pink. At this rate it'll be bone white by the end of the night, like a vein with no supply. Maybe that's how this ends. You stay kissing Cory Wilson and the string dies. 

As he thinks it, the string tightens. The pink turns rosy, turns healthy, red as a rose, vice-like on his finger. Eddie knows without knowing that you're near. He could've guessed without the string's shifting, your presence the antonym of sixth-sense chills. He turns back toward the house and catches a glimpse of you as you walk past the patio door in your black velvet jacket, those tiny sparse stars like needlepoints from this far away and glinting as you turn to let Robin pass. 

"Holy fuck!" Robin mouths, Steve's earplugs in a small pouch meant for coins in hand as she speed walks down the short path to the table. "She's here!" 

"I can see that." 

Robin sits on the chair next to Steve's. He passes her the last half of his burger and takes the earplugs from an outstretched hand, shaking them from their pouch. You'd never look at him like this with mayonnaise on his top lip, thigh to thigh with loser-sweetheart Robin Buckley, and think he'd be violent. He isn't, truly, his hearing loss the result of getting his ass handed to him hard, and the motivation of a pacifist who wears ear defenders to the movies. 

"You're gonna have to speak up," Steve says, pushing the plugs in. 

"Yeah, man." He doesn't have much to say anyhow. His stomach is curled in knots, the string a tightrope without walkers between him and you in the kitchen. You're talking to someone, walking one way before rushing the other. "What the fuck?" Eddie asks, sitting up. 

Macy stands as somebody gasps. Eddie's quick to follow, Gareth jumping back out of Jamison's reach as the grillmaster swings a long pronged fork his way. "What?" he asks cluelessly. 

Eddie follows the string to you, stepping over the patio doorjam and into the cacophony of the kitchen. Blaring rock music vibrates through Eddie's worn shoes, but it doesn't occlude the vehemence of Cory Wilson's slurring. "I should've known," he hisses. 

Eddie would stand in front of you, he should, he's going to, but he doesn't and he can't fathom why. He's glued to the spot as you defend, "I didn't know. And I didn't do it on purpose." 

"Are you fucking with me?" 

"No." You sound startled rather than scared, but the cagey way you've moved back and the curl of your hands into fists says otherwise. "No, I didn't kiss you to–" 

"To what? Guess it doesn't make a difference. I should've known. Two guys in one night's a good night for a girl like you, huh?" 

You flinch away. It could be the pull of the string or the panic on your lips as you struggle to speak, or maybe Eddie's done being a coward who half-asses his life even if you're not gonna kiss him like he wishes you would, whatever it is, it has him standing in front of you unafraid. 

Cory Wilson is rough. Eyes bloodshot, evil on tequila sliders from the sugary brown stain on his collar, he takes one look at Eddie and starts laughing. 

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean, a girl like her? Why don't you explain it?" Eddie asks, his voice burnt, almost acrid in his own mouth. "What, you plant one on her and you think it's alright to talk to her like that?" 

"Eddie," you say. 

He reaches back gently, his fingertips brushing your abdomen. 

"You're a fucking classless act, Wilson, you always have been. You don't talk to her like that." 

"Why don't you stay out of it, freak?" 

"Dude," Jamison says. "No way. Get the fuck out of here." 

"You can't stay out of it, can you? It makes sense now I'm seeing it," Cory rails. 

This is so teenaged angst and Eddie's over it. You'll have to forgive him but he's feeling territorial. This is Macy's house, they're your friends, and Cory was a dick before he kissed you. "This is embarrassing, dude," Eddie says over the island, meeting Cory's eyes straight on. "Don't do this shit." 

"It was you, right?" Cory asks, nodding, mind made up already. He peers around Eddie's shoulder to stare at you incredulously. "Him?" 

"It doesn't matter!" you insist, stepping forward. "Why does it matter? I said no, I don't wanna go home with you, I'm sorry, I told you more than you needed to know because I thought it would help you get it, and I'm sorry I let you kiss me! I'm sorry, I thought it was best to be honest with you." 

Eddie's thinking you don't have to say sorry for anything. Cory's thinking about the milling crowd of young adults haunting the corners of the kitchen and pressed in from the hallway, rounding the island with his chest puffed up. 

"It was Munson, wasn't it?" 

You take a step back into Eddie. "It's fine," he says to you quickly, because coward or not he'd never let someone hit you, but you're pushing him behind you. You're protecting him. 

"Yes, it was Eddie!" you say. "So what? It has nothing to do with you."  

Macy cuts in, all red hair and glare. "Okay, enough. Cory, you have to leave, man. You can't yell at girls in my kitchen because they don't want to sleep with you." 

Eddie stares at the back of your head. 

Did you kiss him? That second kiss, that was with him?

"You kissed me?" he asks quietly. 

Your lips part as you look at him from over your shoulder. Macy and Jamison argue with a red-faced Cory, Steve asks Robin what someone just said and Robin shouts the answer, but Eddie couldn't tell you what anyone's truly saying if you paid him to, his attention on the pillow of your bottom lip and searching upwards as you exhale. 

"Eddie, you kissed me." Your eyes are soft, the starts of your brows hooked together. "You really don't remember?" 

"I kissed you? When?" He grabs your arm, pulling you toward him. "At Gareth's place?" 

"I took you home," —you drop your chin, a new panic about you as your voice drops, waning, tenuous as spider silk— "you were wasted, you'd been drinking Macy's wine and Mr. Lashlee's bourbon and I didn't mean for it to happen. I wasn't trying to get you to kiss me, Eddie, I just asked why you were upset." 

"What did I say?" 

"You said that I was beautiful. That you wanted to kiss me, and then you did." 

Sorry, he'd said, you're just so fucking beautiful. 

"And then you freaked out like you'd been laced about string between your fingers. I took you to your room and told Wayne you ate a bunch of hotdogs on the turn." You won't meet his eyes. "I'm sorry. I never meant for it to go that far." 

A glass smashes. Eddie takes your hand, pulling you away from the scene and through a curious crowd to the back door. He closes the patio doors behind you and half jogs you down past the smoking barbecue and all its leftovers, chairs pulled out haphazard from the garden table and food discarded. 

He has to be quick, he doesn't know how much time he has before everyone comes flooding back out of the house.

You're strangely timid, shame having sewn your brows together. "Eddie, I'm sorry," you say, your hand wriggling weakly in his to be let go. He lets it fall.

"Sweetheart, stop. Just stop. I'm the one who's sorry… I think I–" He sighs, you're so fucking beautiful on loop in the back of his mind. "I remember. I know I made a move. You didn't do anything wrong." 

"I should've stepped away faster. I wasn't expecting you to kiss me." 

"I shouldn't have kissed you." 

"It was just a peck, Eddie. It's okay, 'cos it's not that I don't want you to kiss me ever, but you were drunk. I should have–" 

"You didn't do anything wrong," he insists, cutting you off before you can criminalise yourself with a vehement shake of the head. "But that's– that's–" He chokes on his question. "What did I say about the string?" 

"The string?" you ask, and fuck! Fuck, you look beautiful now, beautiful still as the night moves forward and the day's last lazy dregs of sunlight dapple your skin through the hanging branches of the surrounding sycamores. You stuff your hands in your pockets and pull your jacket around your tummy to hide from the cold, the string tugging with you. Your eyes are wide with confusion. "You wouldn't stop talking about it. That's when you hit yourself, your bruise?" 

"After I kissed you, or before?" 

"After, but… why does it…" 

"I'm going to sound crazy." 

You laugh softly. "No different than usual, then." 

Eddie opens his hand and holds it out for yours. The string on his finger is loose but not long, moreso when you give him your hand. "I know you can't see it, I get that it's ridiculous, but there's a string tied from my third finger to yours. This red piece of thread like my nanna would use. I woke up yesterday morning and it was there. I thought maybe I was going crazy, because I like you," —he swallows air, no idea why this is so hard— "and I saw you kissing that loser and I figured it was some quasi manifestation of how much I want to be near you, like torture, but it was after I kissed you. It appeared after I kissed you." 

"So we're connected by a string?" you ask slowly. 

Eddie's genuinely ecstatic that you'd even entertain it. "Yes!" 

"Show me," you say. 

"I can't." 

"Well, where is it?" 

The string is tight as a wire again. Eddie runs his finger along it, hoping that'll help. You can't see the string but you can see the ease with which he follows it, how his finger slides from one end to the other seamlessly. Inspired suddenly by the memory of your bedroom, Eddie grabs the string near the middle and pulls. 

The string deigns to do his bidding, yanking your hand forward. 

You pull it back instinctively. "Is that a trick?"  

"There's a string. I've been losing my mind trying to show people, I tried to cut it off. It's impenetrable." Eddie stamps down his excitement in the face of your less enthusiastic frown. "It runs from me to you." 

You rub your marriage finger, the string a strong and shimmering crimson at your touch. "I can't feel it, but you pulled me." Your eyes are shiny. "Eddie, you like me?"

"Yeah, I do." He can't believe he's admitted to it out loud. No escaping it. Of the two secrets he just told you, it's the least terrifying. He wants to say more and he wishes he could take it all back, your confusion tangible in the lines of your frown, your gloss-sticky lips drawn thinner. 

He's interrupted. 

"Hey, Y/N!" Macy calls, slipping through the doors, Robin on her heels. "You okay?" 

Eddie steps back from you guiltily. 

"I'm fine! I'm fine, Mace, I was trying to let him down easy and I kept saying the wrong thing." You drop your hand out of the air. "I'm sorry." 

"Hey, it's okay, I don't care. I don't want people yelling at you, that's all." She spies on Eddie out of the corner of her eye. 

"I'm not yelling at her," he defends. 

"Yeah? You should both come back inside, then. Have a drink. That's why you're here, right?" 

She smiles until Eddie realises, defeated, that she's not gonna leave you alone out here with him. That's fine, he's glad people are looking out for you, but fuck is it annoying. He's finally told you about the stupid impossible string that links you together and you almost believed him, he could see it, and worse, his confession lays at your feet unanswered. 

Macy pulls Eddie back by the t-shirt as you walk on ahead, where you're quickly commandeered by a concerned Harrington, a chocolate milkshake in his hand that he instantly attempts to share. "Eddie," Macy says, jaw dropped in emphasis, "you kissed?" 

He covers his eyes with his hands, palm out, solid rings digging into his eyelids. "Not really," he says, a pounding headache emerging between his eyes. "No. I guess not." 

—

Hawkins library smells musty with disuse. Dust motes swim between beams of light shining down through dirty windows, an aged yellow colour painting the pages of the book splayed in front of you. You'd originally retreated into Hawkins library in the pursuit of one thing alone: resolute, guaranteed solitude. You'd considered disconnecting your phone, but your address isn't a secret. The only sure fire way to be alone was to leave, and to hide. 

No twenty-two year old Hawkinite spends their Sunday mornings at the library. You'd carried a litre bottle of water and a tupperware of sandwiches into the recesses of the old building and dropped into a creaky desk bright and early. For a blessed, blissful half an hour, you set your cheek to cold wood and closed your eyes, content to be unreachable. 

It's not that you don't want to see people. Not that you don't want to see Eddie. You don't want to be seen. Not today. 

Some mornings you wake up and feel wrong. You can shower, dress in new clothes, wear makeup and nice shoes and pretty bangles, but none of it makes any difference to your poor self-esteem. You figured every woman feels this way —what is there to love in a world that advertises solutions to problems you didn't know you had until they printed it in magazines? But it's been getting worse. 

Now you're lonely enough to let acquaintances kiss you for the simple reason that they want to, and insecure enough to attribute that want to a specific motive, but Eddie said he kissed you because he thinks that you're beautiful. Because he likes you. Because a string runs from his hand to yours that can't be severed. 

The latter feels as mythological as the former. 

It's a mess. You've asked a thousand questions. Would the situation be cleaner if you rejected Cory? Did Eddie kiss you because he realised he could, that you'd let him do it? Cruel. Not his style, and mean to think of him, but a worry nonetheless. From there the questions broaden, immature in root. Does Eddie actually like you? Would he be your boyfriend? Does he want that, do you want that, is he okay? Was he high last night? Was he ill? 

You flick through tomes with sweat thumbprints pressed deep into the corners and sides, scanning mildly then feverishly for an answer. Love myths, old legends, everything the librarian can give you on fantastical sweethearts —soulmates.

Eddie thinks that there's a string tied from his finger to yours to torture him as a link to what he wants, but can't have. 

It doesn't make much sense. Eddie Munson could have you if he asked nicely enough. 

That might be the problem. He's never asked anything of you. Eddie's a giver, constantly, a thousand little gifts. Your hair is nice like that. Do you want to sit here? You'll get the next one, but he never lets you get the next one. 

His very best gift was small. Waiting for Gareth to bring the car around and hiding from the early summer rain under the Hideout's short veranda, you and Eddie sitting on a cold wall, his jacket underneath you as he insisted to stop you from catching a chill. You remember thinking he was pretty even with his hair in his eyes, his cheeks hollowed in concentration. He pulled his wallet from his pocket, offering a glimpse of a guitar pick tucked inside of the plastic photo window. "This is my best kept secret, okay? Don't go spreading it around," he'd said from the corner of his mouth, deft fingers folding the length of a receipt into a square. He tore the excess, leaving himself with an incredibly small scrap to start with. From there he made the paper crane swiftly, folding neat corners and twisting the snout, placing the finished craft on your stocking-clad knee. "Here." 

"How did you do that?" you asked, awed. 

He made you a square of your own, shuffled closer to you on the wall, the heat of his hands near yours to correct you and his patient demonstration booting your heart into overdrive. You remembered every step of his origami even weeks later, folds of paper brushed by the soft memory of his fingertips on the back of your hand, accidental touches, and the smell of him, so close. 

Those paper cranes in your room, tens of them sewn like popcorn strings at christmas… 

You shake the thought from your head and close the book. Maybe you do like Eddie. Maybe you have all along (tenuously, waiting to get let down, and thinking there wasn't a chance in hell he could ever like you back). And now he likes you back? 

This obsessive retrospection is bad for your head. Sighing, you stand from the desk you've monopolised and stretch your arms over your head, taking a breath to peer down at your fruitless investigation. The string is in his head. He punched himself pretty hard the night you took him home —he's reeling from the after effects of booze and a mild concussion, no doubt. His mind is playing tricks on him. As far as you're concerned, there's no string. (But your hand moved when he pulled. But you want it to be real.) 

You pull the books to your chest and ferry them back to the lonely shelf they came from toward the back of the aisles near the audiobook stand. 

Fuck, you think to yourself, kneeling by the mythology section to begin putting your books back in a vaguely organised manner. Your reading provided no answers, and you're starting to worry it's none of the scenarios you'd contemplated, but a mean-spirited joke. What would Eddie ever want with me? you think, neatening the edges of the books slowly. 

Realising you like him, his chaste kiss, the red string, it's a lot to take in. You aren't sure what you believe, but you'd love to believe Eddie, in both of his confessions. 

You're standing and dusting your knees when you see it, a small cloth bound book shoved between encyclopaedias on the shelf above. It's more like a personal notebook than a novel. You reach for it on a whim. The cover is selenite white, slightly coruscating in the light and broken only by the weighted lines of Chinese characters painted with the bristle of a squirrel mop brush. You trace the last of the characters mindlessly, the English translation beneath it reading, Chinese Folk Mythology. 

You open the book to the first page, blank; the second, the titular; and the third, contents. You flick through creation myths and cosmology, defeated before you've even begun. You really want Eddie to be telling the truth about this —if he is, it means he's telling the truth about liking you, puts real feelings behind his tipsy kiss. 

The first and last burst of colour stops you short. 

The red thread of fate. 

A red line furls from one corner of the page to the second page opposite, shot through phrases, your eyes catching fast on choice words. Invisible to the mortal eye. Marriage of two souls. Tangled, knotted, but never broken. Fate. 

You sit on your knees on the floor of the library, the pages spread flat under your hands and their minute trembling. 

— 

Eddie checks his hair in the rearview mirror again. "Loser," he says, looking himself straight in the eye. Then he smiles with teeth, kicks open the driver's side door, and drops out of the van with a crushed bouquet of flowers held to his chest. 

Today's been a nightmare. Between you (always you, his only thought of the growing mess he's made) and Wayne, he's been flayed. 

"Your room is a pigsty, Eds, I'm not happy," his uncle had said, glaring at him over the lip of his coffee mug. Garfield absent and replaced by genial Odie, Eddie still felt abjectly judged. 

"I've been busy!" Eddie defended, too worried to eat and instead working his way through five pieces of nicotine gum at once, his jaw aching with each magnanimous chew. 

"Yeah, busy turning down shifts and spending all your money on burgers and beer." 

"I'm way too old for this," he said through gum bubbles. 

"Exactly! Too old to need reminding. If we get bugs I'm kicking you out." 

Wayne would never kick Eddie out, but that wasn't the point. "Wayne, I'm having a crisis. Could you have, like, a modicum of compassion for me? Your only nephew? In his time of need?" He clutched his chest. "Christ, man." 

Wayne leaned backwards in his chair to fish the trash bags from a miscellaneous drawer. "This is compassion. Don't be gross." 

His room was chaos rather than gross, knick-knacks in their wrong places and two hampers worth of laundry piled behind the door. The whole time he cleaned, he debated if it was appropriate to call you, and when he finally bit the bullet and picked up the phone you didn't answer. That's fine, except he called Robin (who was predictably nursing a rumpled Harrington back to health but had enough wherewithal to ask for the hot gossip), Macy (who told him to leave you alone if he was causing trouble), Gareth (who laughed), and Shauna (fucking Shauna) in search of you, and nobody knew where you were.

It got to the point where he couldn't not check on you. Couldn't stay stuck in the narrative anymore of your will we won't we. It hurt his chest too much, a real anxiety with claws to match. He hit Bradley's for a bouquet but the flowers they had were wilted slim pickings, and then he raced to the bakery before he thought about it too much and left empty handed. 

Imagine buying a girl baked goods for her to reject you. Eddie in the rain with his paper bag of croissants and dying flowers. 

He couldn't find you through the phone, but he has a secret weapon: the string that leads from him to you tied tight to his finger, a compass without magnets. He followed it in the van to this secluded spot overlooking Hawkins town, and knew he was in the right place when he found your car parked on the hill. 

His palms clam on the way up, pine needles crushed to mulch under his cons. Dirt crusts their white toes and puddle water splashes over the tongues, seeping into his socks. The rain slows to a pittering that beads down the arms of his jacket and along the ridge of one finger, welled cold at the line of a titanium ring. 

The string is trodden and dirty on the ground. Eddie toes at it as he goes, the thread red but not taut, leaving you closer than he expects you to be, perched on a picnic table with an umbrella held loosely on one shoulder. 

"Hey," he says, tensing as you tense, softening his voice appropriately. "If you don't wanna see me I understand, and I'll leave, but I wanna talk to you… If that's cool." 

You peer down at the umbrella handle under your fingers. "Sure, Eddie. You don't have to leave." He counts his lucky stars, more when he sits on the bench beside you and you ask, "Are those for me?" 

He fights through nerves, flowers squeezed to death in his grip. "They're for you. I had to buy a couple of bunches. These are the best of the worst." He offers you the flowers, cellophane crinkled in his hand, not half what he pictured but somehow better for being real. "I'm sorry." 

"Don't say sorry for giving me flowers," you murmur in your way, not mindless but small. Not tentative, just careful. 

"I'm not sorry for giving you flowers, I'm sorry that they're wilting. I wanted to get you a bunch from Leaven, you know, impress you even if it was too late. I'm sorry for a lot of things, actually. Mostly kissing you without asking first." He doesn't mean to say it like that— oh woe is me. "I want to be honest with you," he confesses, quieter. "Stuff feels weird and awful." 

"I know what you mean," you say. 

"But talking to you isn't like that. Talking to you is..." He scratched his neck sheepishly. "This is going way worse than I pictured." 

"Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty bad." Your voice is calm against his awkward panic. You aren't ridiculing him, the opposite. You're in the same terrified boat. It's reassuring at least to know he's not alone. 

You put your hand out without turning his way. Eddie stares at it with another gasping round of chest pain but takes it swiftly in both hands, too much. Why are you this fucking weird? he asks himself. 

"I think I believe you." 

Eddie bites the inside of his lip. Your hand is marginally smaller in his, softer by yards, and easy to pet at your admission. He feels this bone deep longing to stroke the back of it and he does, the side of his thumb tracing the faint indentation of bones beneath your skin with the care of someone handling a more delicate artefact, the string shortening, shortening, until it's all but disappeared. You're hardier than a rough hand-hold, he's wanted to do this for so, so long. 

"About what?" he asks. The string? Or his affection?

"About the string." You struggle with the flowers and the umbrella in your other hand but make no attempt to take the first back from his grip. 

He waits for you to say more, seconds turning to minutes, his palm growing sweaty in yours. Eddie wants to be cool like a rockstar who knows you want him and doesn't care, and he wants to be sweet and gentle and give you the respect you deserve, but mostly he wants to make it out of this conversation with you at his side. He's not sure how to do it, but holding your hand as you want him to is a start. 

"I have to ask you something," you say finally, as though the words have been dragged from the root of you. "This string… this isn't all a joke, is it? That would be– that would be sick. If it's not real." 

"No!" Eddie interrupts. "It's not a joke, I get if you think I'm crazy but I'm not trying to mess you around–" 

"I don't think you're crazy. This whole situation is crazy. It doesn't make sense." 

"But you believe me?" he asks. What he's really asking is Would you believe me, please? He's so tired of being alone with this. 

"I found this book at the library." Your hand livens in his, your fingers pushing between his to twine together solidly. "Talking about the red thread of fate. There's a myth that people who are destined to get married have an invisible string tied from their fingers. It gets bigger and smaller, and you can't cut it no matter how hard you try, but I still didn't know if I believed you. You could've read the same book." 

Didn't know. Past tense. "What changed your mind?" 

"How would you know where I was if you were lying? We're twenty minutes outside of town." 

"I could be a stalker." 

"Do you want me to believe you?" you ask with a laugh. 

"Of course I do," he says warmly, spurred by your laughter, pulling your arm bodily into his and encouraging you closer. "You don't have to believe that we're destined to be together, but the string is real." 

"And you like me." 

Eddie's turn to laugh. "I do, yeah. So much it's embarrassing." 

"Everybody knows but me?" 

"Kind of." 

"Oh." You lay your cheek against his shoulder. Almost like you're testing his limits to see if you're allowed. 

Rain dots lightly on his jacket arm, the chill of the weather sudden and obvious. He covers your wrist with his hand to hide you from it, knowing he should offer to take you somewhere warmer but needing to stretch this moment, his chest alleviated of anxiety pangs for the first time in almost a week. 

"You really think I'm pretty?" you ask quietly. 

Eddie stares at the top of your head. "You're the sweetest thing I've ever seen. Even if you don't believe it yourself, you're beautiful." 

It's not that Eddie thinks you're going to cry but you come apart, slow fissures in the last of your strength. He takes the bouquet from you to lay on the table behind and closes your umbrella, letting the drizzling rain kiss the tops of both your heads. You look as nervous as he feels. "Come here," he says, desperate for you to feel better. "C'mere." 

You sew your arms under his as he wraps his around your shoulders, the string stretching so as not to hurt you. Your voice comes rushed and low, honesty now that you're no longer face to face, "I like you too, Eddie. Ever since you made me that paper crane, I think." 

He rubs your back. "You don't have to sound upset about it," he teases, trying to rescue you from tears. He'd hate to see you cry. 

"This has all been such a mess." 

He hugs you harder. "I know. I promise I'll make it up." 

"But it's not your fault." 

"Maybe, but that's kind of the point of being with someone. Looking after each other, cleaning up messes. I want to." 

"You're with me," you repeat carefully. 

Eddie pulls back, taking your face into his hand. The string lines your cheek like a teardrop curved down the slope of it. He strokes the red thread gently with his thumb. "I want to be. You think that could work? Us?" 

Your fingers curl into the crook of his elbow. You nod into his touch. "If this isn't a trick."  

"It's not a trick. I'm in love with you," —he wants to lean in, and he can't, not yet, not while a fraction of you still thinks he couldn't want you sincerely— "everything about you. I think I have been for a while." 

"In love…" you murmur into yourself. 

You lean forward slowly, stilted, and when Eddie leans in to meet you your eyes flutter closed. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thinks. He might have kissed you before but he doesn't remember it anymore than a phantom, a ghost, the echo of a memory. He remembers what he said and the blooming pain of his hand kicking back into his eye a thousand times clearer than how your lips felt, he has no idea what you like, where to put his hands—

You kiss him first. You lean in, and you kiss him gingerly, waiting for an impending cruelty or rejection that's never going to come. He keeps it gentle, holding his breath as the tip of his nose slides across yours and his head tilts to allow better access, a proper, full kiss. 

For someone who hasn't had very many, you're a good kisser. A little too still. Eddie sees no harm in it, moving back a millimetre to wade in again immediately, his left hand rising to join the right on your warming face and prompting you into a braver reciprocation. 

He smiles at the feeling of your bottom lip pressed against the seam of his mouth. His jacket sleeve creaks as your grip tightens. 

It's a lovely kiss, even if it's tenuously taken. It's everything. For a while the rain doesn't matter, steams off of him, but it must fall too harshly for you to ignore, peeling away from him, so, so carefully. He meets your softened gaze with a similar expression. For once, you seem completely present, and better, your smile is real. 

"Was that okay?" he asks, sliding his hands down the lines of your neck, feeling for nothing in particular. Feeling to feel, wanting to learn every hill and bow of you. 

"It was better than the first two," you say, an endearingly bashful answer.  

"That's not difficult. One was from a wet-nosed, mouth-breathing imbecile and the other one was from Cory Wilson." 

You laugh without restraint, a full-bodied sound that echoes down his arms. "I think you mixed that up," you say nicely. 

Flirting! Eddie could burst into tears. "You think? How about slimy, frizzy loser?" His hand lives a life of its own, squeezing your shoulder as he suggests, "Desperate and unobsequious uggo?" 

Raindrops catch your forehead as you tip your head back briefly, laughter bubbling on your lips, your relief a palpable saccharine. "In what world are you an uggo?" 

"What, do you like me or something?" He takes another kiss, lips lingering, longing for just a few more seconds. "Notice how you didn't disagree with 'desperate'? 'Unobsequious'?" he murmurs, a quarter inch from your mouth. 

"You're not desperate," you murmur back, almost inaudible under the patter of rain. 

"But?" 

"But I don't think unobsequious is a word." 

"No?" he asks, kissing you again. The awkwardness is gone, replaced by a melding need. "You don't think so?" 

"No," you defend. He can hear your fondness. 

Eddie presses a tight kiss hard enough to feel the impression of your teeth over your lips before tearing himself away. Kissing you isn't a tenth of what he wants from you; there's a lot to tell you. He needs to start now. 

Your lips part as though you've a question to ask, too, but you bring a distracted hand to his hair. "Your hair's getting curlier in the rain. It's…" 

You falter. 

"I'm drowned, huh?" he asks. 

You try to say no. Your hand wavers shy of a coil, listless, "No way," you whisper, eyes on your hand now, on your marriage finger and the red string playing at your knuckle, shimmering with a fish-scale sparkle as you pinch it between your thumb and forefinger on the opposite hand. "I can see it." 

"You can see it?" Eddie asks, leaping onto his feet. 

Your face is transformed, infinitely, impossibly prettier by your beaming smile as you clamber to stand in front of him, stretching the string between your bodies experimentally. "I can see it!" 

"You can see it?" he asks, vaulting his weight into you, his arms working around your back in a squeeze. 

You pull your arm up between you both and twist your wrist this way and that, the string following your whims as you lean back in the circle of his arms. Your eyes flicker between him and the string, as though you're working out which one is an illusion. Eddie and the string are both real. 

"We're really soulmates."

Eddie doesn't know if he believes in soulmates, but he believes in the hopeful colour to your voice as you say it, and the tacky skin of your cheek as he leans in for your fifth kiss, your sixth, each one better than the last. 

If his soulmate were going to be someone, he'd want nothing more than for it to be you. 

—

"Come on! We're so late!" 

Steve detaches himself from the frankly killer novel in his lap to turn, his sunglasses casting you and Eddie in a sepia tone as he drags you bodily down the path to their picnic spot. You giggle girlishly at Eddie's telling off and the bodily nature of his pushing, flopped like a fish out of water in his arms. 

"I'm hurrying, Eds, you're just faster than me." 

Eddie pretends to drop you, to your roaring delight, your laugh echoing across the park and drawing the eyes of Steve's summer club. 

"Here comes happy and happier," Robin groans. 

"You wanted them to date," Steve says, turning to his best friend where she lays on the blanket beside him, his jacket a pillow under her neck. "You have sleep in your eyes." 

"I'm tired," she defends, struggling into a sitting position. She wipes her eyes with the bottoms of her palms, mean, words stretched with a yawn as she continues, "Please tell me Eddie has the basket." 

"Nope," Max says, slamming down on her knees next to Robin, her jeans already grass-stained. 

"Y/N has it," Lucas clarifies, sitting down with them in similar fashion. 

Steve's daunted by them when they're together, but he leaves his commentary at an unintelligible curse word, his head tipped back in annoyance. They're constantly pulling the carpet from under him, practically manufacturing flaws to tease him about, Max whip-smart and Lucas loyal to a fault. 

Still, he likes them. 

More than he likes Dustin when the curly-haired boy sits down next to Steve and takes his hat off. "Feel how sweaty this is getting." 

"Rather not, dude." 

Eddie speaks, closer now, and Steve misses the words but not the tone of them. Dripping, almost sleazy affection, the kind that knows what it is unabashedly. You stand on toes to kiss the highest point of his cheek as quickly as you can, your hand on his trap.

"Hey!" Eddie shouts to their turned head, waving a hand of rings, calluses and bandaids. "You guys look like meerkats." 

His cheeks are rosy red with blush despite the moderate temperatures today, the sun set to come out in an hour or two when the cloud cover moves. Said meerkats make room for you on the picnic blanket, where you share the bounty of your basket, sandwiches and cut fruit. "There are chips in the car," you say. 

"You cut up fruit?" Robin asks. 

"Eddie did. I watched." 

"And ate the best cuts," Eddie says proudly, wrapping his arm around your shoulder to drown you in a hug. You slink an arm begins him to hug him in return, your face pressed with delight to the curve of his neck. "As is her right." 

"Don't be disgusting!" Mike calls, a baseball bat in unconfident hands.

"You sure you know how to use that thing?" Eddie calls back. "Lucas, I thought you were helping him, man? Help him!"

"Some people are beyond help." 

"Shut up, Dustin." 

Despite an abundance of company and a ton of shit to do, you and Eddie are distracted by one another, and Steve isn't stupid enough to not get why. They didn't see you both for a week, and then you emerged from your self-imposed quarantine as grossly in love with one another as Steve has ever seen two people be. Like, maybe the happiest couple ever. In some loud ways but mostly quiet ones, hands held, fond cheek kisses to say hello, these weird paper birds you make for each other whenever there's a scrap of paper left lying around. Eddie's doing it now, having stolen the sticky note Steve was using as a bookmark to craft a teeny tiny crane, Steve, their called cranes. One second it's a pink diamond and the next he's performing an intricate twist, four last folds, and placing the finished product on your knee. 

Steve's sort of jealous, but you guys are too in love, honestly. It's nice if you're in it but too intimate if you aren't (nothing maliciously done, of course), so he rounds up the troops for the first round of baseball to give you guys some privacy. 

If he's expecting you two to start French kissing when he leaves, he's not correct. He wouldn't know it, back turned to you as he takes first bat, knees bent and waiting for Erica to serve, but you guys talk. Talk talk talk. Eddie can talk for Indiana and you listen in your way, wryly amused, promising any minute now that you're gonna get up and spread out on the field.

"Is this a bad idea, sports? What if it beheads someone?" 

"It knows how to behave," Eddie assuages, hand on the blanket next to your thighs, turned toward you, effectively locking you in. "We don't wanna get that involved. You look too good right now to ruin."

Nothing can fix the insecurities you hold instantly, but knowing someone wants to kiss you regularly has helped. Eddie's constant compliments have done even better. He's easy about it, no fuss, no bravado, praise said like fact. Come here, pretty girl, I got a present for you. Hey, gorgeous. You should do my hair, yours always looks so good. And the photos —he has a disposable in the glove box, and insists on taking photos of you when you're especially happy. Now that he's your guy, that's often. 

"You're saying I wouldn't look good if I sweat this off?" you ask, gesturing to your face and your makeup. 

"I know you'd look good." He dips down for a kiss, as if daring you to suggest otherwise. It's a touch rough, twice as devoted. Things are heady for a time, the two of you stealing another short moment to add to the list, your kiss made of twin smiles.  "Maybe we can use it to our advantage," he suggests, pulling back to stroke your cheek. 

"The string?" you ask. 

Eddie steals a last quick peck before his hand climbs onto your leg, giving your denim-clad thigh a pat. "We'll use it to trip people up. Come on, it'll be fun. We'll get Harrington flat on his ass," he says, clambering onto sure footing.

"No way," you say, leaning back to see him, your hand nudging aside a plate of sandwiches. You shield your eyes from the sun as it comes out, sunlight like spun gold spilling down your arm. "I'm not helping you hurt your friends." 

"What, those guys? They're just my D&D subs." 

You shake your head at him in disapproval. 

"I'm kidding!" he says, reaching down for your hands. "Get up, sweetheart, we'll only trip someone if we need to win. Stop fighting me, you know it's useless. I always win." 

"You cheat," you sigh, letting him help you onto your feet. 

"I cheat," he agrees, kissing your cheek, then the opposite, before holding them in both hands and leaning in. "I love how you sound when you know you're losing–" 

"Shut up–" 

"You get all breathless," he says, his face drifting closer, and closer, "all shy on me." 

"If I knew you were gonna try and embarrass me this much I never would've said yes to being your girlfriend," you say, half-glaring at him with a wave of affection brimming behind your poor acting. 

"Really?" he asks. His voice is low, a little rough. 

"No. But you have to stop, okay?" You laugh, nudging him in the stomach with your knuckles. "I wanna play baseball." 

Steve waves Eddie over from home base to field on his team while you join Max, Robin, and Lucas in line to bat. "This isn't enough people for baseball," Eddie says, crushing emerald green bluegrass beneath his shoes. The rainfall last week made for lush vegetation. 

"Yeah, which is why you were supposed to invite more people," Steve quips. 

"I was busy." Eddie rolls his shoulders. "We don't need more people to win. We got this." 

"We do not got this! And no going easy on Y/N, okay? I don't care if you're together, we need to play to win. Loser's buying the winner's pizza and I just got Sheila out of the shop."  

"Are you kidding?" Eddie asks, stretching his arm behind his head, his eyes across the field where you laugh at Robin's side. "Obviously I'm not going easy on her. Why would you think that?" 

"Seriously? This is the worst honeymoon phase I've ever seen. I figured you guys wouldn't even be able to play on different teams, like, major separation anxiety." 

Eddie does this thing with his hand, his thumb plucking an invisible string. "I don't need to worry, man. I know exactly where she is." 

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

thank you for reading, especially if you got all the way to the end! hope you enjoyed ♥

[k2padfoot]

Perfect

Eddie Munson x Y/n

summary: when your mind is plagued by bad thoughts Eddie wants nothing more than to comfort and reassure you just how perfect you really are. best friends to lovers.

warnings: TW. body shaming, mentions of anorexia, smoking, self loathing, angst, hurt/comfort, fluff. SMUT!! (unprotected sex).

A/N: this fic is based on my own experience of skinny shaming. i don’t think a lot of people realize how hurtful it really is to be shamed in any way about your body. please be understanding and kind, all bodies are beautiful! also this is my first time writing smut so i hope y’all like it!!

“She’s so skinny it’s gross.”

“Look at her chicken legs.”

“Does she even eat anything?”

“She looks anorexic.”

“Isn’t she eighteen? She literally looks twelve.”

When your ears caught echo of the painful words from the girls behind you, you abandoned your lunch tray, it’s contents untouched on the table. A rush of emotion had you swiftly leaving the cafeteria, seeking solace beyond its walls.

It's not as if the whispers were unfamiliar to you. They’ve been a haunting refrain since childhood, but with the passing of time their intensity swelled, casting a darker shadow over you.

You harbored a self-loathing, a visual disdain to your own reflection, fueled by the relentless comparison to every other girl in school. Your legs seemed too slender, arms too skinny, lacking in curves, and a chest that barley made its presence known.

You found yourself walking into the woods and taking a seat at the aging picnic table nestled in the clearing. As you settled onto its weathered surface you allowed your head to fall into your hands while the tears began to flow.

The cascade of tears persisted, blurring your perception of the world around you, but the subtle sound of someone settling into the seat across from you reached your ears.

Aware that it was none other than your best friend, Eddie Munson, you didn’t have the courage to lift your gaze and meet his eyes.

You felt his comforting touch on your wrist as he delicately withdrew your trembling hands from your face, his voice laced with genuine concern, “What’s wrong sweetheart?”

Your gaze barley rose to meet his, and the tears that welled in your eyes tugged at the strings of Eddie’s heart.

A fractured sigh escaped your lips, “You know just the perfect little cheerleaders spitting insults at me like usual.” You remarked with a scoff, a touch of bitterness in your voice.

A wave of distress swept over Eddie, unsettled by your words. “I’m sorry sweetheart. They’re just a bunch of preppy assholes, I know how shitty it feels to be the focal point of their laughs but you don’t deserve that. How can I help?”

In the quiet recess of your mind you considered a little temporary solution. “Hmm, you got a joint on you by any chance?”

A sly grin splayed on his lips, “Of course I do.” He quickly reached into his backpack pulling one out and sparking the end, “Don’t go anywhere without one.” Your eyes were glued to his lips as he took the joint into his mouth and slowly exhaled the smoke.

You finally broke the unyielding hold of your gaze when Eddie passed you the joint, taking it in between your lips and drawing in the smoke, Eddie couldn’t help but stare at the way it left your lips.

After the joint was passed back and forth until it was no longer burning you began to gather your things.

“You going home?” Eddie asked as he started to get up from the table.

“Yeah, don’t really feel up to going back to class.” You said, following his actions standing up and swinging your bag over your shoulder.

“Okay, I’ll join you.”

A rough sigh left your lips, “No Eddie, you have to go back to class if you want to graduate this year. I’ll be fine, seriously don’t worry about it.”

Eddie was hesitant to leave, in all honesty he just wants to take you home and tell you how beautiful you are, but he knows he can’t. “If you’re sure.” He said.

“I am Eddie, I’ll see you later tonight okay? Now get back to class.” You teased and he nodded before turning around, reluctance lingering in his every step away from you.

Eddie Munson found himself entangled in an enchantment with you, a feeling reciprocated by your own infatuation of him. However, the unspoken truth hung in the air, an uncharted territory where vulnerability loomed, both fearing to confess thinking the other might not feel the same.

Eddie hurried out of Hellfire in anticipation to get to your house. It was a movie night just like every Friday night, and in the wake of todays events, Eddie felt an undeniable urge to make this night special for you. To get your mind off of the harsh realities of the day. So he stopped at the general store grabbing all of your favorite snacks and picked up one of your favorite horror films from family video, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

When Eddie pulled into your driveway he was confused to see no lights on, he knew your parents were out of town but not even your bedroom light was on. Eddie jumped out of the van and hurried to the door, he knew you were home because your car was in the driveway so with his hands full of snacks he knocked a few times.

After the fourth unanswered knock, he hesitated briefly before cautiously turning the doorknob, and to his surprise it was unlocked.

Venturing into the dimly lit living area, he called out your name, the echoes of his voice fading into an unsettling silence. He continued on through the house making his way upstairs to your bedroom. As he reached your bedroom, Eddie’s worry intensified at the absence of your presence.

In that moment a delicate murmur of hushed sniffles reached his ears coming from the direction of your bathroom.

As he got closer he could hear the sobs racking through your body resonating through the closed door like a haunted melody.

Slowly as to not startle you he eased the door open revealing a sight that sent a shiver through him. There you were, a fragile silhouette against the wall, your form cradled by the floor. Knees drawn close, hands entwined in strands of your hair, and your face pressed against the haven of your legs. 

“Y-Y/n?” Eddie's voice, a gentle whisper, faltered as he knelt before you. "Sweetheart, I'm here.” He uttered, his warm hands finding solace on the curve of your knees.

At the sudden awareness of his presence, your head snapped upward, revealing your puffy red-rimmed eyes and tear stained cheeks. Your words struggled to escape, “Shit, I-I forgot you were coming over, I’m sorry.” A wave of guilt and embarrassment draped over you as you let your head fall back to your knees and your fingers grip into your hair.

“Princess, please stop pulling at that beautiful hair of yours.” Eddie’s gentle touch eased your hands from your head. “Can you look at me?” He whispered, delicately lifting your chin, his eyes searching the depths of your own.

“Talk to me sweetheart, tell me what’s bothering you.” His soft voice accompanied the feather-light dance of his thumb along the curve of your cheek.

A pause hung in the air as more tears fell from your eyes. “I-I hate my body. I hate the way I’m so fucking skinny compared to all the beautiful girls at school. I wish that I didn’t look like this, it’s disgusting!”

A heavy ache settled in his chest as he looked at you with sad eyes. “Don’t say that, you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen Y/n.” His words softly spilled.

“W-What?”

He smiled gently, fingers softly sweeping to push aside a stray hair from your face, his touch lingering there for a moment. “Yeah, to me your perfect.”

Once more, you lowered your head, “Eddie—

“Stop, just listen to me for a second.” Again, he tenderly lifted your chin coaxing your eyes to meet his. “The first time I saw you, you took my breath away. Everything about you is so captivating, every facet of your being mesmerized me. From your striking eyes, to your infectious smile, the tiny little freckles like constellations on your skin. To the curves of your hips, and the shape of your thighs like a dance of contours, God you are just so beautiful Y/n.”

In that instant, your eyes welled up with tears stirred by his unexpected honesty. Caught in the shock of the moment, you instinctively surged forward bridging the gap as your lips met his in a tender, unexpected embrace.

Initially catching Eddie off guard, the awareness finally dawned on him that your lips had found his, instantly melting into the kiss. His hands ascended, gently cradling your face, while you fervently grasped at his soft locks. You both felt a whirlwind of sensations as neither of you had the intention to stop, yet the necessity for a breath of air became an undeniable plea.

As you reluctantly pulled away, a glistening thread of your mixed saliva separated your entwined lips. In that lingering moment you exchanged an intense gaze full of unspoken emotions.

“W-Wow, I’ve been waiting forever to do that.” He admitted, a warm smile splayed across his lips that was woven with threads of love.

You couldn’t help the flutter of butterflies in your stomach, and the undeniable love swelling within your chest. “Me too.”

“Good, I’ve always liked you I just didn’t want to ruin our friendship incase you didn’t feel the same way about me.” He told you.

You let out a light hearted giggle, “Well that’s ridiculous isn’t it, because I’ve had feelings for you for years now.”

A curious frown etched across his brow, “So you’re saying you could’ve been mine all along?”

“Yes, because I’ve always been yours Eddie. I think we’ve wasted some serious time tiptoeing around our feelings for each other.” You let out a playful laugh.

“Well we don’t have to waste time anymore, do we?” Eddie said, his lips turning into a cunning grin.

You had to squeeze your thighs together when your eyes caught the bulge forming in his jeans. “Well, I-I guess you’re right.”

He roughly planted his lips on yours in a needy manner, swiftly pulling you to your feet and tugging you flush against his chest. His hands were exploring all over your body as he gently guided you towards your bedroom.

He softly tossed you onto the bed before reconnecting your lips in a desperate manner. “So beautiful.” Eddie muttered between kisses before his lips trailed to your neck and then to your ear. When he placed a gentle bite to your ear a hushed moan escaped your lips.

After placing a few more marks on your neck he drew himself back, his hands reaching for the hem of your t-shirt.

“W-wait!” you hastily rose your voice.

Eddie’s eyes went wide with fear, “I-I’m sorry, did I do something wrong? Is this too much?”

“No! No, it’s just— I don’t want you to be disappointed.” A sad frown cast upon your face as you looked down to your hands.

“Disappointed? Baby I could never be disappointed by you. Please, let me show you how truly beautiful I think you are.” Eddie pleaded with you, his hands gliding softly up your arms until they reached your cheeks, gently cradling your face to meet his gaze.

You hesitated for a moment but you trust Eddie, and his earlier words echoed in the chambers of your mind reassuring your decision to trust him. “O-Okay, you can take it off.”

Gently Eddie pulled off your shirt and you instinctively wrapped your arms around your chest as to conceal yourself.

“Hey, don’t do that sweetheart, I want to see all of your beauty.” His gentle words resonated as he reached for your arms, slowly encouraging them away from the protective fortress of your chest.

“See, you’re gorgeous baby. Is it okay if I take this off?” He gestured to your lacy pink bra and you tentatively nodded.

The clasp of your bra broke free and Eddie took this chance to take the rest of it off, “Fuck.” He let out a hushed breath as he took in the sight of your bare chest. “So fucking perfect.” He muttered through sloppy kisses down your neck until he reached your breast. Without warning he took your nipple into his mouth and began swirling his tongue around it, earning a loud moan from you.

“Mmm, you sound so pretty baby.” Eddie groaned against your tits.

Through muffled moans you pushed Eddie off of your chest, “Eds, c-can you take your shirt off? I wanna see you too.” You practically begged.

Eddie grinned at your anticipation before throwing his shirt over his head and onto the floor. Your fingers ran across his exposed skin stopping to trace the tattoos adorning his chest. “You’re so pretty Eds.”

Immediately he closed the gap between you engulfing your lips into his with a hungry intent. Swiftly his hand slid into your shorts and found your clothed heat, he didn’t waste a minute before rubbing soft circles on your clit causing you to moan even more. “Eddie, please.” you plead against his lips.

“Shh princess, I wanna show you how pretty you are.” Before you could grasp any thoughts they were quickly swept away when he yanked down your shorts along with your panties earning a sultry gasp from your lips.

“Shit. You’re fucking unreal.” Eddie kneeled in front of you staring at you like a piece of art. He bent down planting tender kisses across the landscape of your stomach, continuing with equal devotion down to the curve of your hips. Delicate kisses lingered in the warmth between each thigh, “So, so beautiful.” He whispered with an unwavering devotion

You could feel your heat dripping in anticipation. In any other situation you would’ve halted any advance to get your shirt off, let alone your pants, but this was Eddie. Eddie, who was currently worshiping you as if you were a divine being.

“I’m gonna make you feel so good princess.” He uttered just before engulfing his face into your pussy. “Ahh, fuck Eddie!” you cried out between breathless moans, his tongue lapping at your clit like a starved animal.

“That feel good baby?” Eddie struggled to say with his mouth on your cunt.

“Fuck yes baby, keep going!” you shouted out in bliss.

A wave of confidence swept through him at the passionate sounds he was eliciting from you, compelling him to slip a finger into your entrance while he worked at your clit with his tongue.

Intense waves of pleasure began to consume your body as his fingers plunged in and out of your hole, finding yourself having no control you gripped onto Eddie’s hair, “I-I’m gonna, fuck I’m—

“Let go sweetheart, I’ve got you.” His words were enough to have your orgasm rushing through you as loud moans and Eddie’s name repeated like a mantra from your lips.

He quickly lapped up your juices, gazing at you with blown eyes before gently caressing his hands up and down the length of your legs. “Jesus, I love these gorgeous legs.” He uttered softly before trailing his hands up to your hips, delicately tracing them with the grace of his fingertips. “And these sexy hips.”

Before you knew it his hands were gliding up your stomach, ascending to your chest, only to stop with a gentle touch to your face. “Beautiful girl.” He whispered, allowing his thumb to tenderly stroke your cheek.

His sweet words stirred a spring of tears in your eyes, an irresistible surge of emotion that had you crashing your lips into his. Your lips worked in sync, tongues dancing in a fervent rhythm, creating a mess of wet kisses and the occasional collision of teeth.

“Eddie?” You pulled away from the kiss, “I want to feel you.”

Eddie could feel his cock angry against his jeans and he wanted nothing more than to give it to you and only you. He quickly jumped up, pulling his pants down along with his boxers before he reclaimed his position, settling once again atop you. In a breathy whisper, he spoke softly, his lips grazing yours, “You don’t have to tell me twice sweetheart.”

He took his cock in his hands and swiped it through your glistening folds a few times before slapping it against your clit. “Oohh, Eddie please.” You begged.

A content smile traced its way across his lips as he hovered above your entrance, leaning down to kiss you before sinking into your pussy. An audible gasp could be heard from your lips as his cock filled you up, “Fuck you’re so tight.” Eddie practically moaned into your mouth.

He was taking it slow, indulging in the warmth of your walls, but you reached a point where you couldn’t take it any longer. “Eddie fuck me, fuck me faster!” You practically yelled after parting your lips from his, and your legs wrapped around his back, a deliberate gesture to have him deeper inside of you.

Eddie reached his limit, unable to resit your desperate pleas for him, unable to resit the way your walls sucked him in. “Yeah? You want more?” He said, words laced with desire. You watched as he began to relentlessly thrust into you, the way his cock slid in out of your wet hole so easily had your head spinning, and his hands trailing all over your body earned more sinful moans from your mouth.

“Mmm, that’s it. You’re so fucking gorgeous Y/n.” He uttered before seizing your hips with a firm grip to draw you closer as he settled onto his knees, a new angle that had your eyes rolling into the back of your head.

With each rough thrust he skillfully targeted that sensitive spot you craved the most, you were seconds away from unraveling, that familiar euphoric wave rendering your brain with bliss and leaving you breathless. Your walls began clenching around him and he knew you were coming undone, “Cum for me baby, cum all over my cock.”

As your orgasm washed over you, you were a moaning mess unable to stop yourself from the cries and disarray of words leaving your lips. “Ahhh! Fuck, oh fuck Eddie I love you!”

Eddie’s thrust we’re starting to get sloppy as his own orgasm was approaching, “Say that again.” He muttered, grabbing your chin with a gentle but firm touch ensuring you were looking at him.

“I love you Eddie.” You repeated for him, and Eddie’s hips rutted into yours roughly.

“Ohhh fuck Y/n, I love you so much!” He practically cried out, his lips latching onto yours as his cock twitched inside of you, his warm release spilling into your pussy.

Through breathless pants and sloppy kisses, Eddie laid you back down on the bed and slowly eased out of you. “Let me go get something to clean you up.” He told you before darting to your the bathroom.

When he came back, a fresh towel in hand, he couldn’t help but smile at the way you looked so fucked out against the pillows.

“I’m just gonna clean you up quick.” He said and in response you mindlessly nodded as he gently wiped away your mixtures of cum.

After tossing the towel into the hamper, he leaned down to grab his discarded clothes when you protested. “No don’t, lay with me?”

The warm smile upon his lips illuminated the room as he gracefully joined you in bed. You gently raised your head, resting it upon his chest, as he nestled below you. His arms instinctively wrapping around you, legs entwined, a profound sense of comfort and familiarity enveloped you both, as if this was the missing piece, the way you were always meant to be.

Eddie’s fingers gently threaded through you hair, almost sending you into a soothing slumber when his voice gently interrupted your sleepy state.

“Can I ask you something?”

You blinked your tired eyes glancing upward at him,“Hmm? Yeah sure.”

Eddie’s voice carried a delicate hesitation, “Did you really mean that? You know when you said—

“When I said I love you? Yeah, I meant it.” You interrupted before he could finish.

Emotion quietly unfolded in the depths of his gaze, a softness reflecting in his eyes at your words. “Good, because I did too.”

A broad smile crept across your cheeks as you leaned in sealing the connection with a kiss, a kiss filled with not only passion but the language of love.

As Eddie gently withdrew, his gaze lingered in a tender lock with your eyes, “One more question, can I be your boyfriend?”

A fluttering storm of butterflies danced within the confines of your stomach as a delightful giggle escaped you, “Yes. Yes, yes, 1000x yes!” The sheer excitement had you throwing yourself into his arms as he embraced you with an even firmer grip.

You knew with Eddie by your side, the shadows of doubt would never cast themselves upon you again.

[chronicowboy]

but when i tried to love him i loved at the wrong time

this is a two for one spec inspired by this post and my long lost love trapped dads

any complaints about this fic can and should be directed to @evankinard who bullied me into writing this for her after i ruined her day with a single dm. love you bby <3

Eddie breaks apart a little the moment Buck disappears from view, lets himself feel the wound in his side as an excuse not to feel the big unwieldy thing unfolding in his chest like a colonising panic. He hadn't wanted to leave him, not after half an hour trapped in that smoky room clinging to each other to ground themselves in the reality they were trapped in, but Buck had made several stubborn and convincing arguments about Christopher before announcing he wouldn't move if Eddie didn't. Eddie had tried, had tried to get Buck out first, Buck who had just found happiness with—with Tommy, Buck who has always deserved to live. But Hen and Chim had come in with the clinical wisdom of paramedics and said a rebar through the abdomen was always going to take priority over a fractured leg.

Now, Eddie is rolled out of a collapsing building, leaving behind Buck—a bird with a broken wing, incapable of moving.

God, the noises Buck had made when he'd dragged himself over to Eddie's side. They'll be haunting him for years, for whatever lifetime he has left. Worse somehow than the first time with an entire engine on top of him. Except this time, Eddie couldn't hold his hand. Not now, but not before either because... Because that was someone else's job now. And like a laugh from the universe, Tommy appears just as Eddie reaches down to put the brakes on the gurney before Hen and Chim can get him into the ambulance.

"Kinard?" Bobby greets him with a grim-faced nod. "What are you doing here?"

"Heard you might need an assist from air support." He shrugs, but the breathlessness in the voice and the way his eyes keep jumping around the gathered 118 like he's only counting the one man not there reveals his nonchalance as the act it is. "Thought I'd swing by."

"Isn't that a conflict of interest?" Chimney asks.

"Fine, so I stole a helicopter again. Sue me for wanting to offer a hand." Tommy's face draws as soon as he stops speaking, and he glances back at the building waiting to swallow Eddie's heart whole. "How is he?"

"Holding in there," Eddie answers, voice tight enough to have Tommy really seeing him for the first time. "Think his bad leg is fractured."

"Shit," Tommy hisses, clenching his fists at his side.

"Yeah," Eddie breathes out. "Can't get himself out because of it. I wouldn't have left him, but—"

"He insisted," Tommy says, something entirely too knowing in his voice and his eyes. Eddie swallows thickly.

"And, well..." He gestures weakly to the rebar in his side, Buck's undershirt, now soaked through with Eddie's blood, wrapped around it as a makeshift bandage.

"Shit, Diaz." Tommy grimaces. "Shouldn't you be getting to the hospital?"

"He's refusing care until Buck is out too," Hen deadpans, pressing a new pad of gauze to his wound a little too firmly for it not to be intentional. Eddie just grits his teeth.

"Of course he is," Tommy murmurs. Eddie is too much of a coward to face up to whatever expression is on Tommy's face when he says it, so instead he focuses on the Incident Commander approaching Bobby.

"Site's been deemed too unstable," he announces. "No more personnel are to enter until we've found a way to stabilise it."

"My..." Bobby calms himself when his voice comes out in a growl. "My man is in there."

"And sending another man in there would be a suicide mission." The Incident Commander grimaces apologetically. "Sorry, Captain. That's an order."

Bobby turns his gaze back to the building, something so tightly drawn in him that it makes Eddie hurt all the worse. He knows without a shadow of a doubt what Bobby's thinking. He can't lose another son to a burning building.

And here, maybe this would be where Eddie runs back into the building and drags Buck out all on his own, maybe this would be where he finally gets to repay the favour for the gravel burn on his back, maybe this is where he'd get to redeem himself from the helplessness he'd felt just lowering Buck down to the ground. Except. There's a rebar in his side. Even with the adrenaline, even with the love... Eddie doesn't think he'd make it three steps before falling to his knees—a prayer in and of itself.

Instead, Eddie turns to look at Tommy. Tommy who is already looking at him, something determined and understanding and loving trapped behind the wildness of his eyes. A beat passes between them, silence saying more than they ever could.

"Bring him back to—" Me. But. Not to me.

Because that's not Eddie's place anymore. Eddie doesn't get to ask that of Buck's boyfriend. Eddie doesn't get to ask that at all. He's no longer the person that will be shaking Buck's pain pills into his hand and fetching him a bottle of water. He's no longer the person that will be wrapping Buck's cast in a bin bag for a shower and listening to him lament about the indignity of it. He's no longer the person that will be pulling Buck out of bed on his worst days to remind him that he's real and valued and loved. No, that's not his job anymore. But, fuck, Tommy's the only better man for the job.

"Bring him back to us," Eddie tells him then, and it feels like he's finally let go of the baton in the relay race, sure Tommy's got a hold of it now. And Tommy looks as wrongfooted by this as Eddie feels, but he nods anyway and grabs Eddie's discarded helmet from his lap, strapping it on.

"Kinard, no one goes in," Bobby warns him. "That's an order."

"You're not my captain anymore." Tommy only smiles and shrugs before sprinting towards the doors.

Bobby curses, but there's relief in it. Hen and Chim just watch him go with something hopeful on their faces. And Eddie. Eddie's eyes start to droop.

"Hey, hey, Eddie." Chim snaps his fingers in front of his face, jolting Eddie back into semi-consciousness.

"Eddie, we need to get you to a hospital," Hen says calmly, reaching for the brakes.

"Move me an inch and I rip this rebar out of my side," he says lowly.

"Jesus, anyone ever tell you you're a drama queen?" Chim huffs.

"Yeah." Eddie chokes on his next breath a little. "The man trapped in that building."

A solemn silence settles over them then. They redirect their attention to the doors Tommy had disappeared into, and Hen lays a grounding hand on his shoulder as they wait.

It's not long before Tommy comes stumbling out of the building, looking every bit the action hero Eddie has never gotten to be for Buck what with his soot-stained face and Buck himself slung over his shoulder, splinted leg bouncing against his sternum. Hen and Bobby spring into action immediately, racing to meet them. Chim just unlocks Eddie's gurney and loads him into the ambulance, raising him up just enough to catch a perfect view of Tommy lowering Buck onto his own stretcher with a kiss to his forehead. The ambulance doors close, Chim knocks twice, the sirens begin to whine, and they lurch into motion.

"Did you draw the drama queen straw?" Eddie asks to distract himself from the tenderness of Tommy's kiss.

"Higher ups are a little more serious about conflicts of interest now Buck is officially my brother-in-law," Chim mumbles as he works on getting Eddie's IV in. "But also I'm better acquainted with rebars than Hen, so..."

Eddie huffs a weak laugh as his eyes drift to the ceiling, the clean white of it stinging his eyes.

"Chim?"

"Yeah?"

"Tomorrow isn't promised to anyone, right?" he chokes out. He doesn't take his eyes off the ceiling, but the sudden silence in the ambulance is as deafening as the siren overhead.

"No," Chim says eventually. "No, it's not."

"But what happens if the person you love..." Here, his voice breaks. An almighty crack right through the middle. It sounds like the building behind them just came crumbling down in his throat. "What happens if someone told them first?" He turns to face Chim's wide eyes. "Should you still tell them?"

"I-I don't know..." Chim opens his mouth a few times, a fish out of water, before he makes a decision. He takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. "But what I do know is." He clears his throat. "If you let a wound like that fester... It'll kill you, Eddie."

"Yeah." Eddie lets his eyes fall shut.

I can feel it already.

[solarmorrigan]

Hello there! I’m not entirely sure if you’re still doing the whole angsty-ish prompt thing, but if you are could please consider doing, “Shit, are you bleeding!?”, with steddie and Steve being the one bleeding?

Maybe Steve never actually took care of his bat wounds and they reopened or smth??

If not then that’s totally fine! Feel free to ignore :)

THIS IS VERY LATE, I'M SORRY. I know you sent this request months ago, and believe it or not, I didn't forget about it! It haunted me. (Not really, but I did keep it in mind, and I finally managed to get a little thing out for it! I hope this is a little like what you had in mind?)

[CW: blood, mentions of injury]

-

They’ve done it.

They’ve actually fucking done it.

They pulled off the whole stupid plan, no one is dead (except for Vecna), they’re right-side up, the gate has resealed itself – it’s over.

They won.

And now, there’s just one thing left to do.

Nothing official, really, just something Eddie had promised himself he would do if he actually managed to survive (odds hadn’t seemed to be in his favor at the time, so he hadn’t expected to have to follow through, but he’d also promised himself there would be no more running away). In a way, he’d promised Steve, too, so he thinks he’d better deliver.

(At least, he hopes that’s what he’d communicated to Steve; he hopes that’s what that meaningful look and that significant nod that passed between them had meant and that he’s not about to get his ass kicked after surviving the siege of a bat tornado in a mirror version of his trailer in a fucked up alternate dimension.)

Eddie gives Dustin one last affectionate pat on the back, skirts around where Robin is babbling something enthusiastically at Nancy, who looks a little too shellshocked to do much more than listen with an almost disbelieving smile, and makes it over to where Steve is standing by the front door. He’s got his back to the group, hunched over a little as he fiddles with something beneath his unzipped jacket, but he perks up the moment he hears Eddie’s voice.

“Steve,” Eddie calls, more quietly than the last time, but with no less gravity, and just like last time, Steve turns back, his gaze falling heavily on Eddie.

Before he can talk himself out of it, and horribly aware that this isn’t really the best time or place (but then again, if not here, then where? If not now, when?), Eddie steps closer, steps right into Steve’s space, cups one hand to his ash-smudged cheek, and leans in to kiss him.

He barely even has a moment to wonder if he’s made a monumental mistake before Steve is kissing him back, tilting his head and pressing closer and moving his lips against Eddie’s like this is all he’s ever wanted to do. If the rest of the trailer has fallen conspicuously silent, Eddie doesn’t notice.

The kiss doesn’t last long (not as long as Eddie would like), but that’s alright; it feels like there will probably be more.

“Wanted to do that earlier,” Eddie murmurs as they pull apart. “But I didn’t want you to think it was some kind of last-ditch wish fulfillment because I thought I was going to die. Figured now would be better.”

“Now is good,” Steve says softly; his eyes are a little hazy, a little unfocused (and damn, had Eddie done that?), but they find Eddie’s without trouble. "Now is great."

And then it’s Steve’s hands on Eddie’s face, curled carefully at the edges of his jaw, drawing him in for another kiss. It’s only the feeling of something wet sliding across Eddie’s skin that distracts him and makes him pull back. Steve’s hands fall away, and Eddie reaches up to swipe over his jaw and looks down at his hand.

His heart thumps when he sees red.

“Am I–?” He reaches up again, rubbing his fingers across his skin again, but he feels no pain, finds no injury. “Are you–?” Eddie looks now at Steve’s hand, heart jumping again when he sees more of the same smeared across Steve’s fingers. “Shit, are you bleeding?”

Steve frowns, reaching up with his clean hand to try to swipe the mess away with his thumb. “Sorry,” he mumbles, but he sounds distant now, a little breathless in a way that Eddie can’t blame on any kiss.

Eddie reaches out and spreads his hands under Steve’s jacket, pushing it open to get a good look at him, and finds the damning dark spots spreading across the fabric of the t-shirt underneath.

“Shit,” Eddie hisses. “Shit, shit, Steve–”

“Might’ve pulled something,” Steve murmurs, “fighting Vecna.”

“You think?” Eddie is aware that he’s getting a bit shrill, but he thinks that he really can’t be blamed. “Wheeler!”

Nancy is there in an instant, and Robin is at Steve’s side just as he starts to wobble. She gets an arm around his back and he hisses, reminding them all that the bat bites on his sides aren’t the only wounds he’d sustained.

And then Nancy is barking instructions, and Robin is talking, quiet and rapid-fire at Steve as they sit him down on the couch, and Dustin is demanding to know what’s wrong (and if Eddie thought he’d been getting shrill–), and Eddie only manages to get him out of the vicinity by telling him to go call an ambulance.

“He’s gonna be fine, Henderson, but we need help,” Eddie says firmly, giving him a shove in the direction of the phone. “We’ve got him, he’ll be fine.”

And Eddie hopes to God, to Satan, to who-the-fuck-ever it is he’s supposed to be praying to at this point, that he isn’t lying to the kid.

He’s just gotten Steve – he can’t lose him now.

[angie-likes-to-art]

Fic Recs (Stranger Things Edition IV)

My semester is over and I can finally read fanfics again!! and maybe write??? All fics are fem!reader

Marvel One Two Three Harry Potter One Two Three Stranger Things One Two Three Specific Characters Tangerine Masterlist

Like a Random Tuesday in December by @bimrwolf (18+ Only)

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Reader Summary: “Reader had always had a crush on Steve, but he is not interested. Yet, when he starts to get closer to her, he realizes he made a mistake because it might be too late.”

Whip it! by @schoopsahoy

Pairing: Steve Harrington x roller-rink!Reader Summary: “steve gets forced into taking the kids to the new roller rink, but he doesn’t mind so much once he meets you. basically just steve being a massive simp for reader.”

Dazed and Confused by @caxde

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Reader Summary: “you work on Hawkin's music shop, and Eddie is a regular costumer. Your friends (Steve and Robin mostly) help you to gain confidence and flirt with him.”

Start Me Up by @jobean12-blog (18+ Only)

Pairing: Mechanic!Eddie Munson x Reader Summary: “Your car needs a major tune up but when you meet your mechanic, all you want is for him to tune you up.”

Dreaming of You by @boomhauer (18+ Only)

Pairing: Virgin!Eddie Munson x Reader Summary: “Plagued by graphic dreams about the Munson boy, you decided to see if he can make them come true.”

Sketchbook by @galaxy-siren

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Artist!Reader Request: Could I please request an Eddie x artist!reader story. Maybe he sits next to her in a couple of classes and he sees her drawing in her sketchbook and he’s just like “holy shit that really good” and he asks if he can look at some of her other drawings. She lets him forgetting that she has a couple of sketches of him.

Second Chance by @astermath

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Reader Summary: “steve decides to ask out the girl who he keeps seeing around hawkins with her nose in a book. he’s a little surprised when he gets brutally rejected, only to find out his “king steve” era is haunting him more than he expected. he attempts to make it up to you and show you he’s changed, even if it takes him a couple of tries.”

Private Viewing by @lokis-army-77 (18+ Only)

Pairing: Camboy!Eddie Munson x Reader Summary:  “What happens when your favorite camboy is in your class? You should stop watching his content... or should you? What happens when you are eventually paired together for a project? Everything will be just fine, won't it?”

Next Caller by @eddiemunsons-missingnipple (18+ Only)

Pairing: College!Eddie Munson x Shy!Reader Summary:  “Eddie hosts a late night radio show for his college campus, where he discusses various different topics. He's mostly known for his DnD and sex talk segments. You've been a long-time listener who works up the courage to finally call in for some help.”

Deal with the Devil (Series, Ongoing) by @hard-candy-writing (18+ Only)

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Cheerleader!Reader Summary: “you want to piss off your parents. eddie wants to pass his classes. so you make a deal with each other: he'll date you, you'll tutor him, and you'll both end the year happy. the catch? no falling in love. slow burn romance, enemies to friends to lovers, fake dating, don't fall in love. fic takes place in 1984-85.”

[ladykailitha]

Batshit Soulmates: in Medias Res

As promised, the soulmate AU you've all been waiting for. I don't have a set schedule for this. I'll post chapters as they come. That said, I do have a backlog of chapters to put out on the regular.

Summary: Steve's never met his soulmate. Even though everyone else in his life has. Most of them are even bonded. Literal teenagers got their soulmates before Steve. He tries not to take it personally. He tries really hard not to take it personally when he finds out it's Eddie Munson when he has a bottle at his throat. He tries even harder not to take personally when everything that could go wrong, does.

*throws chapter at you and runs*

***

“I just think we should wait,” Steve huffed for what felt like the millionth time. “Give our allies more time to get to Hawkins.”

“But the longer we wait,” Nancy growled back, “the likelihood of Vecna finding someone we don’t know to haunt and kill goes up.”

“Except we know who his next victim is!” Steve yelled back. “You! And excuse me for thinking that using you as bait would be better than a fifteen year old girl!”

“Steve!” Max hissed. “What the hell?!”

Steve looked down at his feet and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked up at Nancy and dared her to tell him he was wrong.

But Nancy was stubborn. “The batteries on her Walkman are going to die sooner, rather than later. I know this whole thing sucks, but the longer we put it off the sooner Vecna could wipe out the whole town.”

Steve looked around the room for support and got none. He sighed. No one was on his side in this. But he could feel it. If they waited just five more minutes. But it was five minutes he wasn’t going to get.

He looked down at his feet again as Nancy started listing off who would go where. His head shot up when Dustin and Eddie were told to be the distraction.

“What?” he said. “No. Eddie is my soulmate.”

Robin put her hand his shoulder. “I know, but we can’t leave Dustin alone and you need to come with Nancy and me to kill Vecna.”

Steve’s face shuttered. So the choice was to go with the girls and protect them or go with Eddie and Dustin and protect them, leaving the girls to battle Vecna by themselves?

No.

No, no, no, no.

He had to protect everyone. Why couldn’t he protect everyone?

It was killing him.

“Just go!” Eddie said. “You know you’re going to be needed when it comes to killing this bastard. They’re going to need your strength.”

Steve let out a whine that had been caught in his throat. “You’re telling me to leave you...” He didn’t understand.

Eddie pressed his fingers into his eye. “It’s not because–it’s not what you think. Honest. This is just proper strategy and you know it. Dustin and I aren’t going to be doing anything but drawing the attention of the demobats away from you and the girls.”

Steve let out another noise of distress. He knew Eddie was right. He did. It just hurt that in the five days since meeting his soulmate, they had spent a total of less than a day together. And most of that was spent getting ready for this.

“All right,” he finally agreed.

Everyone let out a sigh of relief and that made Steve’s heart hurt. They weren’t counting on him to make the right decision. They weren’t counting on him to do the smart thing. Even Eddie had sighed in relief.

Steve shut down. Maybe his mother had been right. Maybe soulmates weren’t everything they cracked up to be. Maybe it was good he was find this out now, before he got too attached.

He gave his little speech and made them promise not to be heroes.

Eddie looked down at the ground and then back up at Steve’s retreating back. He closed his eyes and opened them slowly.

“Hey, Steve?” he called out.

Steve turned around, trying to keep the hope out of his eyes.

“Make him pay.”

Steve nodded and turned back around, his heart shattering in his chest. He was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Hoping for a declaration of love. Hoping that Eddie felt something for him. But despite Eddie’s reassurances that he no longer thought that Steve was douchebag, he still couldn’t get over the fact that he had been fated to be his soulmate.

He felt the ice creep up his chest to nestle around his heart. All his life he hoped that his soulmate would be the one that’d love him unconditionally when no one else could. But he guessed that was only for children’s fairy tales.

Steve had barely taken two steps when he heard the sound of running feet and then he was being spun around. He was suddenly face to face with Eddie and he couldn’t breathe. Eddie gently took his face in his hands and kissed him on the lips.

Steve had melted. That is the only explanation for how gooey his insides had become. Eddie pulled back.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he panted. “Be safe. Come back to me, okay, Stevie?”

Steve rested his head against Eddie’s. “You, too. I can’t lose you now. Please.”

“Okay, baby,” Eddie whispered. “Okay.”

Steve watched as his soulmate ran back to Dustin, his heart just as heavy, but now whole.

Robin tapped his shoulder. “Come on, Steve. Vecna needs to die so you can be together without having to always look over your shoulder.”

He closed his eyes and nodded. Nancy took his hand and gave it a squeeze. He let her lead him away from the best boy he had ever known to kill the person who was responsible for all the turmoil in their lives.

*

Shit.

Eddie looked up at the rope ladder in dismay. All around him he could hear the sounds of the demobats clawing their way through the vents. If he climbed the rope, they would break through the gate and Dustin would be a sitting duck.

They would both die.

“Get Steve on the walkie-talkie!” Eddie yelled. “Tell him the bats are about to break through this gate and I’m leading them away from you.”

“Eddie!” Dustin yelled. “Don’t!”

Eddie took a deep breath and cut the rope ladder.

“No!” Dustin yelled.

“Get Steve!” Eddie yelled over his shoulder as he strapped his makeshift spear and shield to back. He zipped up his jacket, knowing full well that armor was no good if it didn’t cover the bits that needed protecting. He took the bandanna off his hair and tied around his face.

God he hated this place.

He grabbed one of the bikes and hopped on. He just needed to give Steve, Nancy and Robin enough time to kill Vecna so that Dustin was safe.

That’s all he needed. Just two minutes.

Behind him he could hear the screech of the bats turn from the trailer to chase him. After all even a moving target out in the open is better than a sitting target in a tin can.

Eddie wasn’t sure how long he could outrun them. He wasn’t exactly in peak physical condition but he had to try.

It took him a bit to realize that subconsciously he hadn’t been running from Dustin, but to Steve. And just how fucked up was that. Which of course was when the front tire hit a small hole in the ground and he went tumbling, rolling in the dirt. His shield and spear prevented him from getting up and he thought for sure that this was the end.

But suddenly he was being righted and yanked to his feet.

“Eddie!” Steve called over the screeching of the bats.

“Steve!” Eddie called back. “Are the girls okay?”

Steve nodded. “I left Robin with the Malatov cocktails and Nancy with her shot gun. They’re kicking his ass.”

Eddie pursed his lips and nodded back. “Dustin is safe. Or as safe as I can make that kid.”

Steve closed his eyes. “He said you told him the bats were breaking in though the vents.”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t want them to get to him or out into Hawkins, lynch mob aside, so I lead them away.”

Steve gave him a hug. “Well then, let’s keep their attention on us, shall we?”

“Bring it on!” Eddie yelled, pulling off his shield and spear.

Steve stood at his back, ax in one hand, nail bat in the other. He twirled them both, warming up his wrists as he stared up the sky that was now thick with bats.

And even though they had only fought together once before, they moved as one, anticipating each other’s movements and covering each other’s backs.

Steve hit a bat so hard its guts rained down upon them, spraying them with black goo. Eddie in turn protected them with his shield putting it in front of him as the bats slammed into it full force.

He could feel his feet sliding back, but Steve was there and he leaned backward, putting all his weight against Eddie to brace him up.

Eddie had been on the verge of giving up, tears streaming down his face as he fought against impossible odds. But Steve was there. And he remembered that every impossible thing he had ever thought in his life had be come possible in this one man. And he was damned if he wasn’t going to survive this too.

“I love you,” Steve whispered.

Eddie closed his eyes and whispered back. “I love you, too, Stevie.”

The bats soon realized that they couldn’t get through Eddie and turned, swirling in the sky and Eddie could feel it before it happened. They were going to attack Steve.

He pushed Steve to the ground and lifted his shield above their heads. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too,” Steve replied.

And then all the bats dived at once.

***

Yeah...don't expect a quick resolution to that. Just know, I'm a sucker for happy endings. ;)

Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Epilogue

Tag List: @spectrum-spectre @estrellami-1 @zerokrox-blog @artiststarme @swimmingbirdrunningrock @gregre369 @pyrohonk ​@a-little-unsteddie @chaosgremlinmunson @chaoticlovingdreamer @maya-custodios-dionach @goodolefashionedloverboi @messrs-weasley @val-from-lawrence @i-must-potato @danili666 @carlyv @rozzieroos @wonderland-girl143-blog @justforthedead89 @emly03 @bookworm0690 @itsall-taken @vecnuthy @bookbinderbitch @redfreckledwolf @littlewildflowerkitten @yikes-a-bee @awkwardgravity1 @scheodingers-muppet @mira-jadeamethyst @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @genderless-spoon @anne-bennett-cosplayer @irregular-child

[carolperkinsexgirlfriend]

Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 81

Part 1 Part 80

Eddie’s hand is clutching tight enough on Will’s shoulder to hurt, but Will barely notices because Eddie’s sniffling behind him. He can hear it in the way he’s swallowing it down, breath hitching. Will reaches up to clasp Eddie’s hand on his shoulder, not looking away from Steve.

“What do you remember?” Will asks, hoping Steve will say something, anything to prove he’s still in there somewhere. 

Steve’s eyes unfocus, like he’s really focusing, trying to pull memories out of his head and coming up with air. There’s no sound in the tight room except Eddie’s breath hitching, the eyes of Dr. Owens, Uncle Wayne, and Will all trained on the same target.

“I remember they hurt me,” Steve says, still unfocused.

Will shifts, looking behind him at Dr. Owens with a glare. “You mean the tests?” Will asks, thinking about how uncomfortable blood draws are, and how much more they might do to someone possessed and unmonitored by a loving parent. How much worse would it be for someone who’s memory has slipped out of their ears and no longer contextualizes the harmlessness of the needle. 

Dr. Owens isn’t smiling anymore. He looks grim as he meets Will’s eyes, no congenial twinkle to be found. 

“No, the soldiers,” Steve says.

“Someone hurt him?” Uncle Wayne asks, glaring past Will to where Dr. Owens is standing. 

Dr. Owens starts, “Now, wait a mi–” before Steve talks right after him in that same, lifeless voice. 

“They shouldn’t have done that. It upset him.”

They all know who “he” is, but Uncle Wayne still asks. “Who’d it upset, kid?” He sounds gruff, unaffected, too much a man’s man to let it show, but when Will looks up at his face, his eyes are just as wet as Eddie’s. He looks back to Steve quickly, wiping his own tears as they well.

It’s like Uncle Wayne crying is what makes this real. Eddie always has big emotions and big reactions to them, getting caught up into the dramatics of any given moment like he’s acting out a scene. 

But Wayne? Wayne’s solid. Sturdy. Dependable. And he’s crying. 

Steve doesn’t answer. 

He doesn’t say anything else at all, just settles into his bed and lets them perform more tests, the same battery of them. 

Then, a new test, one he’s never seen before. A familiar vine in a box, a flamethrower, and Steve’s steady heartbeat. 

Almost immediately, Steve’s heartbeat kicks up, echoing around the room as the scientists turn on the flamethrower and light up the vine. 

It writhes in its little box. Steve sits still in his bed. 

“Do you feel that?” Dr. Owens asks.

Steve nods, holding his chest, like he can feel it there.

The vine catches fire and Steve writhes in his little bed, heartbeat kicking up until it’s almost deafening in Will’s ears. 

“Turn it off!” Eddie demands, running up to Steve like he wants to hold him down in a macabre reenactment of what they’d done in the pumpkin patch. “Now!”

They don’t, until Dr. Owens echoes the orders. 

Steve goes still. 

It doesn’t connect, what happened to Steve, until the vines been wheeled out of the room, adults trailing after it to talk away from children’s prying ears. But, it’s too late. They already know. It doesn’t matter how much retroactive protection they want to provide, it’s already connected. 

The soldiers hurt the vines. The soldiers hurt Steve. The scientists burned the vine and Steve writhed. 

They’re connected, Steve and the things that haunt the Upside-Down. Can’t hurt one without the other. 

But, why Steve?

They’re all connected, he can feel it still, flickering and ashen, but there. So, why not him? Or Eddie?

Why is it always, eternally Steve?

For the first time, Will wonders if Steve might not make it this time. Big, strong Steve, who’s back he’s more familiar with than his face. Who’s always going first through doorways, toward danger, to make sure it’s safe. What happens when that back bows and breaks?

What if he doesn’t make it this time? Will that tether flicker and go out? 

Will Will and Eddie go out with it, connected to the last?

Even as he stares at the stranger wearing Steve Harrington’s face, Will hopes so. 

He holds Eddie’s hand and waits with him for the adults to make more decisions about the minutiae of their lives. 

Part 82

Taglist: @deany-baby @estrellami-1 @altocumulustranslucidus @evillittleguy @carlprocastinator1000 @1-8oo-wtfbro @hallucinatedjosten @goodolefashionedloverboi @newtstabber @lunabyrd @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @manda-panda-monium @disrespectedgoatman @finntheehumaneater @ive-been-bamboozled @harringrieve @grimmfitzz @is-emily-real @dontstealmycake @angeldreamsoffanfic @a-couchpotato @5ammi90 @mac-attack19 @genderless-spoon @kas-eddie-munson @louismeds @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @pansexuality-activated @ellietheasexylibrarian @nebulainajar @mightbeasleep @neonfruitbowl @beth--b @silenzioperso @best-selling-show @v3lv3tf0x @bookworm0690 @paintsplatteredandimperfect @wonderland-girl143-blog @nerdsconquerall @sharingisntkaren

[storiesbyrhi]

Witch!Reader x Bat/Vampire!Eddie Munson Series Masterlist The Grimoire The Timeline

Warnings: canon typical violence, horror genre typical violence/some infrequent gore, swearing, animal death, no beta, death in childbirth (mentioned, not described), abusive parents, suicide, spiders/bugs, grief/mourning; light smut; warnings updated each chapter.

Synopsis: No witch has stepped foot in Hawkins since 1845, but when Vecna opens the ground and poisons the town, a voice begins to call to you. Have you been brought back to this cursed place to heal the townspeople’s wounds, to save a hexed bat that always finds its way to you, or to redefine your history with a reunion 150 years in the making?

Chapter Summary: Homeward bound. 2738 words.

1986

Every now and then, you’d catch a glimpse of Eddie swooping by, keeping pace with your car. It was mid-afternoon by the time he grew tired, burrowing into his front seat nest and sleeping until twilight. As soon as the sun was safely locked away on the other side of the world, Eddie chittered and you responded by turning him back into himself.

He stretched out, making dramatic noises and pulling faces.

“You okay there?” you asked him, laughing at the show of it all.

“Only trying to make you smile, my little witch.”

Damn.

“So, you were right,” you changed the subject. “About not being the only non-witch,”

“Wolf, right? I could smell him.” Eddie’s face screwed up in disgust.

“What happened to the support group for monster lovers?”

“I draw the line at lycans.”

The seriousness of his expression made you laugh. “Well, you’ll have to redraw it, because Ev has it bad for him. The others already knew all about it too,”

“And we believed we were special,”

“I mean… We still are… Witches and werewolves aren’t mortal enemies…”

“Of course. Wolves’ mortal enemy being their own tail and all,”

“Eddie! Stop,” you laughed, hitting him with the back of your hand.

He grinned at you, then looked out at the road. “And the other?”

“That one is a bit more of a secret. Ash is seeing one of the fae folk. It’s still very new. Taking it slow… Making sure they’re not actually trying to lure her into some centuries old curse. You know how they are,”

“Trickster sprites,”

“Exactly,” you nodded. “And then there’s Steve fucking Harrington… who has elected to inexplicably haunt Mel,”

“Why? I assume he never met her,”

“Yep, but she came and asked me if the ghost in her house was him. It was. He says he’ll leave her alone but had this stupid puppy dog look on his face… So… Maybe there is a whole new world of witch romances to come.”

Eddie grinned, he liked the sound of it. Though, he really didn’t want a werewolf as a brother-in-law. “Do you want me to take over?” he asked then, pointing to the steering wheel. “I’ve been practicing,”

“And here I was thinking you disappeared in the middle of the night to eat,”

“Oh, I do. I find the worst person I can. I eat them. Then, I take their car for a lesson,”

“A two birds, one stone, kind of thing, huh?”

Eddie nodded with a disconcertingly innocent smile on his face.

“I was thinking about that actually. I think I can help,”

“With which part?” he asked. “The eating or the thieving,”

“Neither. The choosing.”

The joy left Eddie’s expression. He looked away from you, suddenly studying the hardly visible horizon out his window. “You don’t need to be a part of it. You don’t have to have it on your conscience,”

“Neither do you. Not in the same way, at least. What if I can take some of the guesswork out of picking who is, you know, bad,”

“It’s not guesswork. I watch them. I find them while they’re-”

“I know. But what if you didn’t have to wait for them to do something bad? What if you could tell what they had already done?”

Eddie stayed quiet. There was a gas station up ahead, the lights shining brightly. You pulled in and cut the engine.

“I know it’s always going to be on you. You’re always going to have to make that call, about if they have sinned and if the sins are…”

“If they justify death,” Eddie finished for you solemnly and still not looking at you.

“Yes. But what if you could see them? The sins. If you could, I don’t know, just touch someone and see the worst of them. And only when you wanted to. Would that help?”

He was clicking two fingernails together, pensive or maybe anxious. Eddie got out of the car and looked around. There was a family inside the gas station. The kids were screaming about peanut butter cups and soda.

“Would it help you?” he asked after you’d got out and walked around to him. His hands were shoved into the pockets of the sweatpants he’d been getting in and out of, vampire then bat then vampire then bat. “It might make it more precise. But it’s still conjecture. Still a judgment. Still a human death.”

You tried to read him, but he’d locked you out for the moment.

He continued, “Sometimes it hurts. Or, sometimes I think it hurts. Or, I think it should hurt. I don’t know if I can tell the difference. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I can stop myself from hurting them. But I don’t know, really know, if it weighs on my conscious. I don’t even know if I have one.”

It had been easy to get lost in Eddie’s goodness. It had been the important thing to show your coven. But it was never going away, the darkness. He might have been a good vampire, not a properly made monster, but it didn’t change the fact that he was still a vampire.

“If I say it would help me-”

“Then, I am sure, it would help me. What is good for you is good for me,” Eddie told you. “But I can tell which of them are more like me than you. I can see it in their faces. But if this makes you feel more in control of it, then I’ll do anything you ask of me.”

The neon sign of the station buzzed and crackled, the cicadas trilling back at it. The family got in their car and hit the road again, the radio turned right up to drown out the noise of bickering children.

You could see the station’s clerk watching you and Eddie from behind his counter.

“Loving you doesn’t make me feel guilty. I’m not ashamed of what you are,” you told Eddie then, looking back at him. “I’m not trying to make you into something you’re not.”

He nodded. “I know.” He saw it on your face, a flash of exasperation. “What are you trying to do?” he asked. “Because I’m not ashamed of what you are either… You don’t have to be a lawful, virtuous witch.”

There was a small smile playing on Eddie’s lips and you knew it meant he’d cottoned on to the fact that the seed of darkness that lived inside you was working its magic.

“It’s not just about making things easier for you or for me. It could be… A kind of justice…”

“Ohhh,” Eddie almost laughed. “I am your weapon, and if you can point this blade in the right direction, then well fuck, it might work faster than the humans’ courts and witches’ spells?”

Eddie had only recently started to swear, a habit he was picking up from you most likely. Fuck, in particular, sounded terribly good coming from his mouth.

You looked at him and slowly nodded. He threw his head back and laughed into the night. The gas station clerk sighed in relief at the sudden change of atmosphere around you both.

“Oh, my little witch. You do continue to delight me.”

Eddie pulled you into a rough kiss, letting the tips of his sharpest teeth run along your bottom lip. You were warm and tasted so sugary. He had been itching to eat you up since leaving the Catskills.

“I love you,” you said breathlessly when he let you come up for air.

“I love you too. Entirely.”

…

Waking up alone was bittersweet. Although you missed the weight of Eddie next to you, the immediate crawl of his body to yours, it did mean he was likely up to something. Mostly, it was innocent domestic work.

Pre-turning, Eddie never really had a place to call his own. As a vampire, the idea of home meant something different too. But now, the boy could nest. He cleaned and picked flowers to put in vases and glasses all across the trailer. He was also dabbling in cooking, though he could not eat the fruits of his labor.

So, mostly, it was domestic work, but now and then, you would wake up to him doing something different. A week after returning from the Catskills, you and Eddie had fallen back into routine, but this morning was out of the ordinary.

Eddie had stacks of books crowded around him. Pages of handwritten notes were spilled across the coffee table, your altar supplies stacked neatly below it.

“Looking very witchy there,” you greeted, voice gravelly with sleep.

“Hi, my love,” he replied without looking up. “I’m almost finished.”

Looking around, you realised it wasn’t just the books Eddie had been combing through. Herbs and other potion-brewing bits and pieces were lined up along the kitchen bench.

“Almost finished what?” you asked.

“The spell.”

Nodding slowly at him, you waited for the explanation. It never came. Instead, you let him work on his craft and went about your day.

By mid-morning, he was ready.

“Little witch!” Eddie yelled loudly. You were outside, watering your potted plants and herbs. “Little witch! Come!” There was childlike enthusiasm in his voice and it made you smile.

“Where do you need me?” you asked him, but he was already ushering you to the couch.

“I have written you a grounding spell,” he announced.

“A grounding spell?”

“Yes. Something to reconnect you to the natural world. To promote health and healing.”

Eddie was wide-eyed and on the verge of mania. He had a little dirt smeared across his cheek, and it was caked under his nails. Although his hair was pulled back in a bun, single coils of curls had fallen out throughout the night. He was beautiful.

“Go on,” you urged.

“It starts with malus domestica,” he began.

“It always does,” you noted, already holding back a giggle. He could have just said apple. Still so very dramatic.

“They connect you to the earth. Sacred. Biblical.” He really had been doing his homework. “Then, black hellebore root.” Eddie was at the kitchen bench, holding up a jar that he’d already dug through. That explained the dirt.

“I hope you’ve been careful with that,” you warned.

“I know. Extremely toxic. Even witches sometimes wear gloves to handle it,” Eddie said, reciting one of the books he’d read. “But it is also symbolic of rising from the past. And has a long history of use in witchcraft.”

Eddie had read about hellebore poisoning, how it brought on hallucinations but could also cure mental affliction. He read about how it could be harnessed and used in banishing spells and for purification. About white versus black hellebore and all the folklore surrounding them.

“Okay. What do we do with this apple and root?” you asked, playing the part of a captive audience.

“Core the apple and thread the root through it. Let it air overnight, by moonlight. Come morning, it gets wrapped in willow then cooked,”

“Willow?” you tested.

“Willow that is strong and true. Willow that takes pain and fever and grief and releases you from it.”

You nodded and smiled.

“When the apple is cooked through, falling apart, you take the hellebore root and powder it,”

“Then what?”

Eddie hesitated. “Alas, I do not know…” he admitted. “I can’t find a way to close the spell,”

“Do you have any ideas?” you asked, standing up and coming to the kitchen counter. You looked at everything he had pulled out of the apothecary.

“Moreso, bad ideas. What not to do. Consume it, for example,”

“Yeah. That could kill me. Maybe even turn me into a werewolf,” you joked. The look on Eddie’s face was priceless. “Kidding. Hellebore is an active ingredient in lycanthropic ointment though… Mostly it’s used in what we used to call flying ointment, or magic salve. So no, I cannot consume it,”

“Yes… Well… I thought then, returning it to the earth. Burying it. That didn’t feel right,”

“Mmmhmm… I think you have a clue here,” you told him, pulling a bowl of eucalyptus seed pods forward. “Did you read about these?”

Eddie shook his head.

“They’re kind of amazing. Eucalyptus trees are native to Australia, but are planted ornamentally around the U.S. They produce a highly combustible oil through their leaves. Little fire bombs, basically. They catch ablaze easily. But, these little seedpods are fireproof, and when threatened with fire, they drop lots of seeds and fertilise the scorched ground. Within a couple of years, the burnt earth is already returning to its gloriously green form,”

“Very smart of them,”

“Very smart,” you agreed. “Maybe we can learn from them. We can not just withstand the blaze, but add fuel, let it all burn, and start again,”

“The powder… we let it go free…” Eddie said slowly, catching on to what you’re saying.

“Ah-huh. We give it to the wind.”

Working side by side, you and Eddie cored apples and filled the void with black hellebore root. You set them on the kitchen windowsill ready for the moonlight. (You’d have to take down all the window’s covers though, sunproof house and all.)

Eddie was proud. It was written all over his face.

“Now who’s the little witch?” you whispered to him, stepping up to his body, pressing yours to his.

In reply, Eddie pulled you close, wrapping his arms tightly around your frame. He kissed the top of your head then pressed his cheek to it, resting on you.

“Thank you. Nobody has ever written a spell for me before… Well… Not a good one…” You looked up at him. “You are good, Eddie. And you’re allowed to be. You can be… both. Everything,”

“Everything,” he repeated quietly.

“Yeah… So… What now? We can’t work on them until tomorrow.”

Eddie swept you off to the bedroom by the time you opened your eyes after your next blink.

“But it’s not bedtime,” you said voice saccharine and purposefully dumb.

Eddie grinned. “It’s not. I don’t want you to go to sleep now anyway,”

“No?” You sat on the edge of the unmade bed, looking up at Eddie.

He stood between your legs, reaching out to cup your face in his hands, his thumbs running softly across your skin. He smiled wide, teeth sharp. “I’m very, very hungry.”

Eddie rarely let himself taste your blood, though the occurrences were becoming more regular. He was scared of a multitude of things. Not being able to stop. Seeing something in your magic blood he couldn’t unsee. Pissing off some ancient and unknown creature that would resurrect if ever a vampire munched on a witch.

Sometimes, if you begged pretty enough, you’d get a small bite out of him. But it was better when he came asking for it. The soft inner thigh was his greatest weakness.

Lifting your arms up, Eddie followed the instruction and took your shirt off. You fell back against the bed and let him push your skirt up. He dropped to his knees and kissed the tops of your thighs. Up, up, up, until his mouth was bruising the skin above where the femoral artery was pumping blood.

You still didn’t know how he did it, how he could make it feel so good. You didn’t want to know. It was his own secret vampire magic and it was one mystery that would never appear on your murder board.

Eddie’s teeth sank in and your hot, red blood began to flow. He pushed you further back on the bed, then held your leg up, so the blood would pour down towards where you were already wet. His tongue lapped at blood and arousal fast. He didn’t waste a single drop.

You writhed under him, eyes screwed shut, and body on fire. The vibration of his tongue was pulling you ever closer to climax, but he wouldn’t stay in one spot long enough to let you get there.

Eddie grabbed your hand and smashed it to where he’d bitten you. “Heal it,” he growled, barely able to form words. You did what he said and he licked your palm clean of blood as a thank you. He hooked his arms under your legs and ripped you back to the edge of the bed. Then, he was positioned exactly where he needed to be to let you get there.

End Note: We're back in Hawkins... Now what? Reblogs and comments are appreciated!

Fic Taglist:  @paranoidmunson  @idkidknemore @paprikaquinn @stardustworlds @loz-brooke @wyverntatty @vintagehellfire @dark-academia-slut @scarletwitchwhore @becks1002 @mrsdollardog @heyndrix @luceneraium @rosaline-black @devilinthepalemoonlite @goldencherriess @iamwhisperingstars @wiltedwonderland @blueywrites @breezybeesposts @jadehowlettthewolf @spikesvamp79 @foreveranexpatsposts @tortoiseshellspells @wingedpeachjudgegiant @stardustmunson @live-love-be-unique @fangirling-4-ever @reanimated-alice @b-irock @gh0stlybunnie @myown-worstenemy-2003 @woozzz @cyberxlust @hiscrimsonangel @buckysbarne @m00nlight101 @word-wytch @spicysix @briasnow-blog @goth-cowgirl-03

All Eddie Taglist: @solomons-finest-rum @ruinedbythehobbit @sweetpeapod @thorfemmes  @corrodedhawkins @grungegrrrl @lilzabob  @averagemisfit03 @ches-86 @ilovecupcakesandtea @onehotgreasymechanic @hazydespair @mel-the-fangirl @eddies-hid3out @siren-lungs @aheadfullofsteverogers @hiscrimsonangel @dashingdeb16 @cultish-corner

[cherrycolored-punk]

WD - Chapter Two🦇

Masterlist

summary: is it possible to be haunted by a town? for it to sink its claws into you, and be felt whenever you close your eyes?

author's note: I’m a few hours late but here it is! I really enjoyed writing this chapter so I hope you love reading it. Please comment or reblog if you did! Support is always so appreciated 🖤

w/c: 2.5k

warnings: nightmares, mention of blood and injuries. please let me know if I missed anything!

The road into Hawkins is quiet except for the faint noise of cicadas in the distance. Their song plays low, a soft hum in the cool air. 

The only light is the full moon hanging in the night sky, illuminating everything with a white glow. It follows you, a quiet passenger, as you approach the Hideout—hesitant, heavy feet carrying you forward.

The building isn’t as it was before when you first saw it. 

The wood is all but rotted through, the thin boards warped and bent out of shape. Looking as though it could collapse in on itself. Cobwebs hang on nearly every surface, thick and dotted with corpses of bugs. Spiders crawl in and out of the crevices in the wood, searching for more sustenance. 

There is an unnerving silence that envelops you, the cicadas no longer singing. The wind still and heavy.

You take a shaky breath. 

It’s cold despite being the middle of summer, and you can see the evidence of your unease puffing out in white clouds in front of you.

You step through the front door, just as you had before. The space is dimly lit, and the red of the Coors Light sign creates an eerie glow in the otherwise pitch-black room.

Shadows dance in your peripheral, moving on the bar's edge, closing in on you until you can feel their presence like a whisper above your skin.

Dominating and suffocating.

You walk further into the Hideout, your legs feeling like they’re made of lead. 

A chill runs up your spine as your head whips around the space. 

“Eddie?” you whisper for the only person you know, but your voice echoes across the empty space.

The squeak of a floorboard makes your neck snap to the right. Listening, waiting. Trying to steady your breathing.

You are not alone.

The hairs on your arms stand on end, and your heart picks up pace. The same strange feeling that someone is watching you growing by the second.

You can feel them with you, their eyes following your frame.

Fingers dance across the back of your head and you turn around, breaths coming in unsteady gasps - finding no one behind you.

“H-hello?” You stammer, but you’re only met with silence. A never-ending quiet that feels like it consumes you.

A shiver runs up your spine as warm breath fans across your neck, and you feel something sharp run down your back.

The voice is loud as it calls your name. Haunting and overwhelming. A little hypnotizing, but you don’t dare turn around, eyes trained on the darkness as it steadily approaches. The red glow of the neon sign disappears.

The stench of rotting flesh fills your senses, making you dizzy with nausea, and you about fall to your knees when sharp fingers wrap around your neck. Their grasp cuts off your breath, digging into your throat.

The voice repeats your name. 

Closer. 

Louder.  

Angrier.

You feel your eyes begin to close as you drift into unconsciousness. Unable to breathe, unable to see. 

All you feel is darkness.

–

The alarm on your phone blares, the catchy pop tune a stark contrast to how you gasp awake, fingers clawing at your throat as your legs thrash beneath your sheets.

You sit up in bed, wide eyes dancing around the room, wondering if what you’re seeing is real or part of the dream.

A layer of cold sweat coats your skin, making the fabric of your t-shirt cling to your skin uncomfortably. Your chest heaves as you try to draw more air into your lungs, a disbelieving gaze searching for signs that you’re still stuck in your nightmare.

But the loud noise of the busy streets below your apartment reminds you that you’re home. You reach over to your nightstand, an absent finger tapping away until finally, the alarm quiets, and all you can hear is the white noise of the city.

A sigh of relief leaves your lips as your shoulders shrink from your ears, but your hand is still pressed to your throat. You can still feel its grasp, its nails clawing into your skin. The stench of its dead flesh still stuck in your nose, making your stomach turn.

You throw the comforter off your body, swinging your legs over the side of your bed and ignoring the way the cool air of the fan meeting your sweat slicked skin sends a shiver up your spine. Making your nausea that much worse. 

Your arms stretch over your head, but a sharp pain makes you freeze, face twist in growing agony. Automatically, your hand reaches for your back searching for the source of it all. Your fingers push under the fabric of your shirt, and you wince, a gnawing pain shooting through your body when your fingertips connect with a jagged mark starting at the bottom of your back.

What the fuck?

You rush off the bed, pulling your shirt above your head and turning your back towards the full-length mirror that leans against the wall near your closet.

For a moment, you’re scared to turn around. Already knowing what the mirror will reflect.

You take a steadying breath and place a hesitant chin on your shoulder, chancing a look down. 

Every muscle in your body tightens, your heart hammering against your ribs when you see the long gash that lines your spine. The blood is already crusted over, a deep maroon that stares back at you.

Flashes of your nightmare spring forward and you quickly pull your shirt back down, gaze trained on your hardwood floor.

Questions flooded your mind, none of which you had answers to.

What happened in Hawkins forty years ago?

Who or what was Eddie?

And what was the thing in your dream?

Matthew had mentioned an earthquake that decimated the town, but it felt like there was something more.

All you knew for sure was that there was something strange about the small town, something that lurked in the shadows, and for some reason, you could feel its malice. The evidence of which was marred into your skin.

You sat in front of your laptop and stared at the screen, the cursor blinking back at you as you debated what to search for first.

The easiest place to start was with Hawkins itself. Hurried fingers rush over the keys as you type into the search bar. 

Dozens of links loaded onto the screen. Headlines that gave a glimpse into the destruction, the loss that the town felt.

“Hell Is Upon Us”

“The Devil’s Gate”

“Nearly All Presumed Dead”

You read through each one, all of them containing the same details. An unprecedented earthquake, a death toll that only climbed as the days dragged on, and missing people who were never found presumed to be amongst the carnage.

“The town appears nearly split in half, a massive hole in the ground like a portal to hell.”

Pictures were attached, blurry images that showed the state of destruction from when it first occurred. Your eyes pour over the scene, widening when you see the giant crater that was once Hawkins. 

You scroll further and read through the names of those missing and presumed dead. 

Dustin Henderson.

Lucas Sinclair.

Steve Harrington.

Robin Buckley.

Ted Wheeler.

Karen Wheeler.

Nancy Wheeler.

Michael Wheeler.

Holly Wheeler.

Jesus, the whole family.

The list dragged on.

The few who survived relocated or were never heard from again.

And it was only when you saw his face that you knew it wasn’t a dream.

Eddie Munson stared back at you through your screen, a picture of him in black in white but with the same vivid gaze. The flyer detailed his appearance, height and weight—the color of his hair, the shade of his eyes. But you could still smell his cologne. 

You gulp, mind unable to grapple with the reality. Because you know you saw Eddie. Talked to him, flirted with him, but he was…a ghost? 

It didn’t make sense.

It was almost worse than him being a figment of your imagination because he was real, but he was dead.

You swallow the bile that rises in your throat and click the back arrowing, Eddie’s face disappearing when you do but stained on your vision.

You continue to scroll down the list of articles.

One link in particular catches your eye.

“No Return: Some Who Visit Hawkins Don’t Come Back.”

You click the link and are taken to a LiveJournal blog.

Above the title is a collage of missing faces, and amongst them are newer pictures of those who recently went missing. 

The blog entry details their disappearances with one common denominator: they all had ventured beyond Hawkins’ city limits and were never seen again.

You read through the accounts of their family and friends. The details the missing had once shared before they disappeared. 

A broken-down car on the edge of the town, an abandoned bar or store, ghostly encounters, and recurring nightmares. 

Your heart thuds against your chest, and you click on another blog entry. 

It’s a list of links, one of which leads to a YouTube channel. You click it curiously, recognizing the face of the narrator from the banner on the blog—one of the people who was now missing. 

Ryan Lancaster.

The video is dated two years ago and starts with a recounting of Hawkins’ history with a montage of the photos you’d seen in the articles you read before it cuts to a video of Ryan talking about his experience.

He’d entered on the opposite side of town as you, but not two miles in, his car broke down. His cell had no service, so he began to walk into town, hoping to find someone who could help or direct him to a mechanic shop.

He talked about how he wandered into a video store, excited because those were obsolete. Replaced with streaming.

The inside felt like stepping into a time capsule. He expected DVDs, but he found VHS tapes and two workers who he thought were pretending not to know what discs were. 

Ryan swears he wasn’t inside for over thirty minutes, but the sun had already gone down when he left. 

When he turned back around, the store was abandoned. There was no one in sight. No Robin or Steve, the two he’d just met.

An eerie feeling settles over you as you continue to watch the video.

He walked until his phone regained signal on the outskirts of town and called a tow service. 

The nightmares started two days later, and you can see the terrified look in his eyes. The way he stares off into space as he recalls the presence he can still feel.

It sends a shiver through your spine, a sense of dread pulling in your stomach.

He only found out about the town’s history when he searched online. Horrified to find that Robin and Steve were presumed dead for nearly forty years. 

So he was set on exploring the town, convinced that it was an undiscovered gem. Possibly one of America’s most haunted.

The video ends with him inviting viewers to continue to watch as he documents what he uncovers. 

You click on his page, and your heart stops when you read the next title. 

Six days after the first video is one titled Ryan is Missing…

You slam your computer shut and press your fingers into your temples, trying to massage the growing headache that throbbed against your skull.

None of it made sense; it felt like you were losing your mind.

There wasn’t a logical explanation for any of it, but you couldn’t ignore how you were drawn in. Like the town had a vice grip on you and refused to let you go. 

And part of you wants to reach back. To be dragged in. 

—-

The Hideout is busy…as busy as it can be for a Wednesday night. 

A haze of cigarette smoke clouds the space, making the light of the neon bar signs all the brighter—a red glow cast over the otherwise dimly lit bar.

Madonna’s Like a Prayer plays on the jukebox, and Eddie tries to hide how he bobs his head as he pours another beer. He has heard this one at least once a night since it came out.

Customers are scattered around the Hideout; a couple dancing, gazing at each other with drunken smiles. The same few drunks plopped into stools before him, downcast eyes staring into their drinks, watching how bubbles form and burst at its surface. Some pressed into the red vinyl seats that needed to be replaced. Making out or in deep conversation.

It is a typical Wednesday night, and Eddie is bored out of his mind. Praying for some excitement. A pretty girl, a funny drunk, a gnarly bar fight. Anything.

He huffs and stares at the ceiling, absently wiping circles into the wood surface of the bar—persistent rings threatening to break down the varnish. 

He is tempted to begin ripping dollar bills from where they are pinned to the ceiling, betting that there’s at least two hundred dollars there. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to get him the hell out of Hawkins. 

“Munson,” one of the regulars grumbles and breaks his trance. 

Eddie points his bored, hooded gaze in the man’s direction. His chin resting on the palm of his hand.

“Another?” He asks, already pushing off his elbows and reaching for the man’s mug.

“You know me,” the man chuckles, hiccuping and tilting back in his seat. 

Eddie fills the glass to the brim with the cool, amber liquid. 

“That I do, Roy,” but Eddie can’t give him a full smile as he slides the filled mug in front of the man. 

Roy pushes a five-dollar bill towards the curly-haired bartender.

“Towards your tab?” Munson asks, holding up the money, but the man shakes his head.

“A tip,” the man holds up his mug in cheers, and Eddie tilts an appreciative chin in his direction before reaching for his wallet.

He pulls the black leather from the back pocket of his jeans and unfolds it to push the five into the bill hold. 

His hands freeze, his gaze trained on a bill he’d never seen before. 

Where did you come from?

Eddie pulls it from his wallet, dropping the leather onto the bar top as he examines the money. 

The note is so different from the one he was just given; a bigger portrait of Lincoln, the bald eagle situated behind the president, and the money far more colorful.

His eyes turn to slits as he peers closer, looking for signs of forgery because there is no way it is real. 

And then he sees it, the small writing right next to Good Ol’ Abe—series 2024.

No fucking way.

How did you get here?

His heart thunders against his ribs, and he shakes his head as he closes his eyes—images of a girl, her smile, the smell of her perfume. The way she looked up at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

Why do you look so familiar?

It feels like he’s grasping for a memory that feels more like a dream because he would’ve remembered you.  

Eddie swallows hard and opens his eyes, his gaze darting around the bar.

The scene is just like any other Wednesday, but why does he feel like he’s lived this moment before?

-

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tag list: @munsonburn3r, @american-idiot-jpg, @bellasm3lla

request to be added to tag list 🦇

if you requested to be on the tag list but you weren't notified it's either because I couldn't find your blog to verify your age or your age wasn't listed. feel free to send me a message :)

[rebelcracker-s]

WELCOME HOME THEORY :D

i've been swinging back and forth between "this is genius" and "i am spitballing" in debating whether to publicize this theory. i have decided to put it out there. i hope i'm somewhat right! (long post ahead)

so user @thecolourfulkingdom pointed out the importance of this tic-tac-toe image from the guestbook page:

i know a one-person game of tic-tac-toe doesn't seem like much, but op then placed this image on top of the neighborhood map (credits to them for figuring that out!), this image becomes very interesting.

it's suspicious how nicely the two line up.

i know this could be a random detail, but in somewhere as detailed as welcome home, i think that every detail counts, especially one like this. if it is a coincidence, it's a very strange one.

the circles in the board call attention to four (or five, depending on how you look at it) characters: wally/home, sally, frank, and howdy. we already know wally and home are two very important characters in the lore, but what connection do the remaining three three have? and why is wally pointing them out specifically?

this trio made me think of a certain image from the conceptual days of welcome home: concept art of the telephone that was revealed in the july update. (i'm not going to repost it due to clown's wishes about spreading conceptual art, but you can find it on their portfolio!)

in this image, the phone has eight buttons for eight neighbors, like the current one on the website. however, this one has three buttons scribbled out. based on colors, the three characters missing are sally (orange), howdy (teal), and eddie (purple).

i know it's not exact, but the fact that two out of the three "scratched-out" characters match the ones circled on this map has me thinking that i'm onto something.

here's what i think is going on. something happened in the neighborhood that divided the neighbors in half. something happened to the four uncircled ones--julie, barnaby, eddie, and poppy. it's really not clear what's happened to them right now, but wally has mentioned that he cannot talk to his neighbors right now. i think they at the very least lack the awareness to the strange things happening in the neighborhood. at the worst, they are dead.

again, i'm not sure what happened to them, so all we can do right now is speculate.

our remaining four--frank, sally, howdy, and wally--are the ones who have retained awareness. they know what is happening in home. they know about the whrp. and they know about the audience welcome home is gaining.

we know wally and home know about us because they have both spoken to us through the "i will find a way soon" audios. but what about the remaining three?

the july website update not only included the drawings that led to wally's messages, but also bugs leading to videos of interactions between the members. while the whrp insisted that there was nothing important about the bugs, the audience could click on these bugs and find secret videos depicting a conversation between the neighbors.

the latest game theory video on welcome home points out that like how drawing is related to wally and the drawings lead to messages from him, bugs are connected to frank, from his character description to his hidden audio with eddie. i believe those messages could be from frank. the video goes into more depth about this, but for the sake of the length of this theory, i'll stop here.

in the october 13th halloween update, we got the "happy haunting to boo and yours" record. the website staff insist multiple times that there is a gap in the audio during sally's story where they can't make out what sally is saying, but we can. (if you need a transcript for the skipped-over part, i have one reblogged!)

sally's story is a very menacing one about a monster that she cannot see or hear that prowls the neighborhood at night, devouring anything it passes, confining the neighbors to their homes at night. this would seem like a normal scary story if not for how the audio changes. at every other part, the audio has a crackly, vinyl sound; however, sally's story is perfectly clear.

it seems to me like sally is directly talking to the website's audience here: she's trying to warn us about the strange things going on in home. i think frank's messages were trying to do the same thing too. these are glimpses into the sides of welcome home that the whrp, wally, and home have not shown us: the lives of the neighbors, and the unsettling danger lurking beneath it all. notice how subtle both of their warnings were, and how they were careful to make sure that whrp could not discover them while the audience could.

also, remember how the title of the video tabs in the july update--"answer"--led us to the staff only page? i think the title of the newest hidden video--"listen"--is telling us not only to listen to the audios for a true glimpse of what life in the neighborhood was like, but to listen to their warnings.

i don't think wally is aware that frank and sally have been contacting us in secret, but i do believe he knows that they stand apart from the other neighbors, hence the tic-tac-toe board and the map.

but there's still one loose end: howdy hasn't yet talked to the audience. i think that during the big holiday update, we will see the final member of the "survivor trio" (as i like to call them) contact us. and i'm hoping this update tells us more about what's happening in welcome home's world and what role we as the viewers play in it.

:)

[daffi-990]

Seven(ish) Sentence Sunday ✍️

More from my new WIP which I found a title for already (I’m as surprised as you are) -> when your heart releases, you won’t fall to pieces

I have no idea how long this fic is going to be, definitely shouldn’t be longer than 5K … well that’s what I’m aiming for anyway 😅. Okay enough from me, let’s get to the snippet! Prev snippet here

“Hey.” Buck reaches out a tentative hand, not wanting to spook his best friend. He aches to touch Eddie, to feel the weight and warmth of him under his palm. Still here. Still alive.

Eddie sobs and pushes his forehead into his knuckles, his words almost a whisper even in the quiet room.

“They’re all dead.”

Buck’s eyebrows furrow in confusion. They haven’t lost anyone on a call recently so he doesn’t know who Eddie is talking about.

“Who’s all dead?”

“Everybody that I saved.” Eddie sobs out. He takes a shuddering breath before he speaks again, voice louder and harsher. “They’re all dead!” Eddie finally looks at Buck and the fear and sorrow that is raging in the muddied storm waters of his eyes has Buck flinching slightly. He’s so used to Eddie’s eyes being sun kissed pools of rich coffee that draw you in with their warmth, making you feel safe.

“They’re all dead, they’re all dead, they’re all dead”. Eddie whispers it over and over again and Buck doesn’t know what to do besides move closer and pull him into his arms. Eddie doesn’t fight him, just falls into the safety of Buck’s embrace, clutching tightly at his back as a broken sob falls from his mouth. Eddie continues to cry into Buck’s neck as Buck wraps his arms securely around him, a shield of flesh and bone attempting to protect Eddie from the horrors of whatever is haunting him.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you” Buck murmurs into Eddie’s hair, his lips caressing the sweat soaked strands. “I’ve got you.”

No pressure tagging 😘: @hippolotamus @jamespearce9-1-1 @callmenewbie @wikiangela @watchyourbuck @thewolvesof1998 @fortheloveofbuddie @disasterbuckdiaz @spotsandsocks @wildlife4life @exhuastedpigeon @athenagranted @nmcggg @eddiebabygirldiaz @elvensorceress @sibylsleaves @lover-of-mine @rainbow-nerdss @theotherbuckley @hoodie-buck @giddyupbuck @the-likesofus @steadfastsaturnsrings @princessfbi @spagheddiediaz @malewifediaz @loserdiaz @jeeyuns @ladydorian05 @jesuisici33 @monsterrae1 @mellaithwen @captain-hen @devirnis @glorious-spoon @fcntasmas @bekkachaos @try-set-me-on-fire and anyone else I’ve missed and wants to share something -> consider yourself tagged ❤️

[archivequinn]

Closure — Eddie Munson.

warnings: angst, depression, grief, mention of the death of a family member (his mother), nightmares, pain, sad themes, broken heart, smoking, illness, mention of his father's terror at home, grave, longing and tiredness, crying. (Please let me know if I forgot something)

Eddie adjusts leather jacket, takes a drag on cigarette, exhales slowly. The house stands like a skeletal remains of memories past, its once-white walls now faded to a dull grey from years of neglect. The windows are boarded up, the shutters hanging crookedly like broken wings. A thick layer of dust coats every surface, making it hard to distinguish between old furniture and mere shadows.

A sheet drapes over the worn-out couches and chairs like a shroud, as if trying to smother the last remnants of life within those walls. Cobwebs cling to chandeliers and lampshades like macabre decorations. In the corners, shadows writhe and twist like restless spirits trapped between worlds.

The air inside is heavy with stagnation and decay - stale air that's been locked away for decades, now reeking of rot and mildew. The floorboards creak underfoot with each tentative step, their groans echoing through the empty halls like ghostly whispers.

''It's a haunting sight, really…'' takes another drag. ''A testament to love lost, dreams faded, and lives that once echoed through these rooms but now lie silent as the grave."

He pauses, takes a deep breath, and exhales slowly. He pushes the creaking door of the house and goes in. "Oh man… looks around the room with a mix of nostalgia and pain This place… it's like stepping back into my childhood hell. The memories come flooding back, but they're all bittersweet.

As I walk through the front door, I'm hit with the same stale air that's been trapped inside for years. It smells like decay and forgotten dreams. The once-vibrant colors on the walls have faded to dull hues, just like my mom's smile after she passed away.

I wander into the living room, where we used to spend hours together as a family. My eyes land on the old piano Mom taught me how to play on. It looks dusty and worn out now, just like our relationship with Dad did in those final years. I can almost hear Mom's gentle voice guiding my fingers as I played, but it's drowned out by the echoes of Dad's yelling and belittling.

I move into the kitchen, where we used to have family dinners that always ended in arguments. The same old table is still there, covered in a thick layer of dust. I remember how Dad would sit at the head of the table, his eyes cold and unforgiving, while Mom tried to keep us all together with her warmth and love.

Upstairs, our bedrooms are just as they were when I left this place behind. My childhood bed looks like it hasn't been slept in since then - unmade and dusty. It's hard to believe so much time has passed since those sleepless nights filled with fear and anxiety because of Dad's nightmares.

As I walk through these rooms again after all these years, I'm hit with a mix of emotions - sadness, anger, and nostalgia. It's like reliving the same pain all over again. But maybe this time, I can face it head-on and find some closure."

He pauses, eyes widening in surprise "Whoa… he gets down on his hands and knees to grab the box What's this doing here? I haven't seen this thing since… rummages through the contents of the box.

It's a bunch of old stuff from when I was a kid. There are some drawings I made, some notes from school, and… pulls out a small guitar pick with my name engraved on it. Oh man, Mom gave me this. She said it would bring me good luck with music.

And there's also a letter addressed to me. It's from Mom. He unfolds the letter and begins to read.

''Dear Eddie,

I know things have been tough lately with your dad being so mean all the time. But please remember that you're loved no matter what. You're an amazing kid with a heart full of music and kindness. Don't let anyone ever make you feel like you're not good enough.

I'm so proud of the person you're becoming, even if it's hard to see right now. Keep playing your guitar and singing from your heart. You have a gift that can bring joy to others.

With all my love, Mom''

His hands tremble, feeling a lump form in his throat "Man… clears his throat I had forgotten about this letter. It's like she knew exactly what I needed to hear back then.

As I sit here surrounded by these old memories, I feel a mix of emotions - sadness because things didn't work out between Mom and me before she passed away, but also gratitude for the time we had together and the lessons she taught me.

This box is like a time capsule from my childhood, reminding me of the good times and the struggles I faced. It's a reminder that even in the darkest moments, there is always hope and love to be found." smokes his cigarette in silence for a moment before speaking again.

He finds a photo in the box. This photo is like a punch to the gut. I remember this day so clearly. Mom was already sick by then, but she still had that spark in her eyes when we took this picture.

She's sitting on the hospital bed, and I'm hugging her tightly around the waist. Her arms are wrapped around me too, holding me close like she never wanted to let go. We're both smiling for the camera, trying to be brave even though we knew things weren't good.

Mom looks tired and weak in this photo - her skin is pale, and there are dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep or medication or whatever it was they were giving her at the time. But despite all that, she's still got that momma bear strength in her arms, holding me close like she's trying to protect me from the world.

I remember how scared I was that day. I didn't understand what was happening to her, and I knew it wasn't good. But Mom always tried to reassure me, telling me everything would be okay even when it didn't feel like it would be.

This photo is a reminder of the last time we were together before… pauses Before she left us. It's hard to believe so much time has passed since then.

Looking at this photo now, all these years later… sighs It feels like a punch in the gut all over again. The pain and sadness come flooding back, but also the memories of our time together as a family are more vivid than ever.

I get up from the bed and make my way downstairs, my heart pounding in my chest. The stairs creak beneath my feet as I descend into the darkness of our old living room.

When I reach the piano, I hesitate for a moment before lifting the dusty lid. The keys are yellowed and worn out, but they still have that familiar feel to them. plays a few tentative notes

The sound is rough and rusty at first, but as I play on, it starts to come alive again. It's like no time has passed at all - like Mom is sitting right there beside me, her fingers dancing over the keys in perfect harmony.

I play some of our old songs together - Chopin's Nocturne and Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. They're still as beautiful and haunting as I remember them to be. closes his eyes, letting the music wash over him

As I play, all the emotions come flooding back - the joy we shared when Mom was well, the fear and anxiety during her illness, and finally, that devastating loss when she passed away without ever coming home.

But amidst all that pain… opens his eyes There's also this sense of peace. Like Mom is here with me now through this music we created together. It feels like a way for her to stay close even though she's no longer physically here.

So yeah… smiles softly Playing my childhood piano again after all these years… it's like a homecoming, man. It's like I'm finally coming full circle and finding closure."

written with inspiration and assistance from ai