#let’s talk tattoo artist!eddie

[ghost-proofbaby]

i’m not saying fill my inbox with tattoo artist!eddie (or steve), but… 👀

i mean, i’m not saying don’t do it, either.

[vivwritescrappythings]

squeeze

tattoo artist!eddie munson x fem!afab!reader

Eddie is your tattoo artist and long term boyfriend, one night you have an idea of how to spice up your next tattoo session.

an: idk why I thought of this but I did

cw: fem and afab reader, needles, tattoos, unsanitary tattoo practices, don’t let anyone do this to you, p in v sex, cockwarming, masturbation, mild dubcon, mentions of marijuana use, i picture this version of eddie as older, masochism, swearing, dirty talk, not proofread.

wc: 2.3k

masterlist

MDNI

—

It was only after a few joints that you could have ever thought this was a marginally good idea. You and Eddie were well baked by the time you stumbled out of his van in the alley, eyes bloodshot and a wide smile on your face. The rest of the tattoo shop was dark as Eddie snuck you in the back door, the two of you giggling like vandals as though it wasn’t his shop. The keys jingled as he tucked them back into his pocket, nudging you toward his station.

He turned on the harsh fluorescent lamps surrounding the leather chair in the center of the small space. Paper screens separated it from the rest of the store, drawings and sketches stuck haphazardly all over the dividers and walls. “You’ve been drawing more,” you murmured, looking over the magnitude of new additions.

Eddie was already wiping down the chair and getting set up, looking over his shoulder at you with a hum of acknowledgment. You took in the way his shoulders filled out his worn Metallica shirt, his jacket hanging on a hook near the back door. There was something about his warm, chocolate-colored eyes that made your heart flutter every time he glanced at you.

“You gonna pick something out or just stare at me?” he asked, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

You rolled your eyes, a little too stoned to come up with a response you considered to be clever enough. The wall of flash tattoos beckoned you closer. Eddie had given you countless tattoos at that point, insisting that dating a tattoo artist meant you had to get all your work done by him.

Anyone else would just be cheating.

It was how the two of you met five years ago: you came into the shop with a crumpled piece of paper with a book quote you loved scrawled onto it looking to get your very first tattoo. Eddie had stolen you from the guy who usually took the walk-in clients with a saccharine smile, ushering you to his little sectioned off area and charging you half what he normally would for a tattoo that size. You left with fresh ink and Eddie’s number, and the rest was history.

You squinted up at dozens of drawings crudely taped to the wall, admiring the smooth linework and the variety. There were a few from his Hellfire days, fleshed out Dungeons & Dragons monsters and sets of dice high up near the ceiling. The rest were the typical subjects: skulls and flowers and doodles of food and ghosts.

It was hard to decide, your arms folding over your chest as you worried your lower lip with your teeth. Normally it was a quick decision, you’d pick something off the wall or had an idea of your own and Eddie would be off to the races.

That time it took Eddie pulling out the battered notebook he insisted he did his best work in, his name scratched into the black cover. “How about this one? Been workin’ on it, thought it would look good on you,” he murmured, flipping it open to a page in the middle.

The drawing was beautiful, detailed and delicate while still fitting with the rest of your tattoos. You realized that Eddie was listening when you told him you wanted to tattoo your sternum a few months ago, the pages littered in drawings that were suited to the smooth patch of skin over the bone. As always, he knew what you wanted more than you did.

“Yeah, it’s perfect,” you finally said, tracing it with your fingertip.

“Yeah? You sure?” Eddie asked, already rifling through drawers to put together a stencil.

You nodded, biting your lower lip as you sat back on the leather chair. “Matches everything else you’ve put on me,” you said, making yourself comfortable as he went off to trace out a stencil.

You fidgeted with the well-worn Corroded Coffin shirt you were wearing, running your fingers over the torn-up hem and looking up at the ceiling tiles Eddie had painted black.

Meeting Eddie must have been the luckiest moment of your life. You never thought that you’d find someone, for some reason you’d been convinced that you were beyond what anyone wanted—destined to be the old lady with the cats at the end of the street. But Eddie wanted you, he wanted you fiercely and with a passion that was almost startling sometimes.

“Alright, dove, shirt off,” Eddie said, startling you out of your thoughts. He rounded the corner with the stencil in hand, chocolatey eyes focused on you.

You complied, slipping the shirt off your head and tossing the fabric onto a nearby folding chair. The cold air in the shop made you shiver with just your pajama shorts on. You’d forgone wearing a bra, the trip to the tattoo parlor borne from a spontaneous idea you had in the living room of your shared apartment.

“Never gonna get tired of that,” Eddie mumbled, staring at your chest as you settled back onto the cold leather. You rolled your eyes as your face started to heat up, part of you wanting to cover your chest with your hands.

Eddie stood between your legs, rolling over the silver tray that held the little containers of ink and gloves and his machine. He’d already washed his hands, his fingers were cold as he shaved off the smattering of vellus hairs covering your skin. You squeaked when he wiped down your skin with an alcohol pad. His tongue poked out when he concentrated, his brow furrowed as he started to apply the stencil.

He pressed firm to get it to transfer, pulling the strip of paper away and reaching for a mirror for you to see it. It was weird to see yourself reflected back in the small hand mirror. You sat up to properly inspect how it looked between your tits, the U-shaped stretch marks between them catching and shining in the fluorescent light. The mirror tilted up, letting you see your own bloodshot, hazy gaze in the mirror. The blunts Eddie had rolled earlier were strong.

“Looks great, Eds,” you said, lips quirking into a grin as you settled back on the chair. Eddie hummed, letting the mirror drop with a clatter on his drawing space as he went to wash his hands again.

He came back ready, black latex gloves pulled over his hands and hair tied back in a low bun at the nape of his neck.

Bony hips knocked the insides of your thighs apart, your boyfriend curling down over you. “You still feeling up to the rest of this?” he asked, a brow lifting until it disappeared under his frizzy bangs. You were silent for a minute, taking in the sincerity of his expression. “You don’t have to if you’re not feeling right, dove. I can just do the tattoo and we can go home.”

You furrowed your brow, shaking your head and blurting out protests a little too eagerly. It made him grin, boyish charm returning to his stubble-ridden face as though he wasn’t a day out of high school.

“If you feel uncomfortable, what do you say?” Eddie prompted softly, leaning forward to nudge his nose against your temple. He didn’t touch you with his hands, keeping them sterile.

“Yoo-hoo,” you mumbled a little sheepishly. Eddie picked it, the safe word always made you roll your eyes.

He hummed sweetly, pressing a kiss just above your eyebrow. “That’s right,” Eddie said, the simple praise already making you feel warm.

You bit your lower lip as you looked up at him, watching him get the machine going and getting ink on the needles. It felt like your body was buzzing with anticipation, your knees squeezing at his waist.

“Help me out, can’t get my hands dirty,” Eddie said, twisting to fuss with something on the tray next to him. You didn’t care about what he was grabbing, only reaching forward to loop your fingers in the waistband of the sweatpants he was wearing. On a normal day he wouldn’t be caught dead here in sweatpants.

The original idea had come from you. Something in your stoned mind combined to make you ask Eddie if he’d ever thought about cockwarming while giving a tattoo. He looked at you like you’d grown a second head, but fifteen minutes later he wanted to bring your fantasy to life.

“Been so fucking hard ever since you brought this up,” Eddie hissed through his teeth as you pulled his sweatpants down over his cock. It slapped up against his stomach, the tip flushed red and already leaking. You swallowed thickly, reaching out to wrap your hand around him.

The soft moan coming from Eddie’s pink lips was gratifying in more ways than you expected, satisfaction making you feel warm as you looked up at him through your lashes.

“You want me to take my shorts off?” you asked quietly, tilting your head to one side. There was a thrill associated with being naked in the tattoo shop. Of course, it was the middle of the night as no one would have reason to be there, but it still felt scandalous all the same.

“Yeah,” he said, the harsh buzzing of the tattoo machine starting as he touched the needle to the ink. The sound was familiar to you now, part of you associating it with Eddie. “It’ll be complicated to do this if you leave them on.”

You rolled your eyes, letting go of him to strip yourself of your shorts. He cursed under his breath when he saw you completely naked on the chair. Brown eyes traveled over every curve and slope of your body, taking it all in with reverence as his tongue poked out to run over his bottom lip.

There was a brief pause, the two of you waiting for the other to do something. Eddie ended up taking charge.

“Play with yourself for me,” he mumbled, staring down at your cunt. His gloved fingers twitched. “Get her nice and wet.”

Your face heated up at his request, bashfulness binding your chest together for a moment. It was impossible not to comply with Eddie’s request, your fingers finding their place between your legs. You touched yourself without fanfare, your fingertips settling on either side of your clit and rubbing in tight circles.

His gaze was locked on your cunt, chin pressed to his chest and lips parted. Normally you would be embarrassed under that kind of focus, but the awe shining in Eddie’s eyes made your anxiety slip away.

Your movements were practiced and smooth, sending electricity up and down your spine. It was easy to get turned on, your breaths eventually becoming pants and wetness building up around your fingers. His jaw was clenching, you knew he wanted to pull your fingers away and touch you himself.

He huffed, swallowing hard before directing his gaze to your eyes. “Alright, let’s do this,” he said, stepping in closer between your legs. “Before I just decide to ruin my sterile environment and fuck you the right way.”

The idea was enticing, making you bite your lip as you considered. But you already came all the way down here and had the stencil placed and ink in the tattoo gun. And you wanted to make your fantasies happen.

You grabbed Eddie’s cock, your wet fingers smearing down the length of it. Of all the times you fucked, you almost never were the one to guide him inside of you. It was a bit clumsy as you dragged his tip through the soaked seam of your cunt, nudging against the swollen bud of your clit a few times.

Finally you hit your mark, Eddie’s deep moan filling the air as he slotted himself inside of you with a strong thrust. The patch of dark, soft curls at his base brushed against your already sensitive clit. The stretch made you see stars. Your head rolled back against the leather chair, a breathy whine pulling from you as he rubbed against every gummy ridge and gooey spot inside of you.

“Eddie,” you whimpered, brows pulling together as you looked up at him. He seemed to be going through a similar sense of euphoria, his long lashes fluttering against his cheekbones as he breathed into the feeling.

His eyes open, pupils expanding like ink in water as he curled over you, readying the tattoo machine over your chest. He blinked hard, rutting softly against you once… twice… before steadying. The concentration was incredible to witness, his expression hardening and jaw flexing again.

“You ready, dove?” he asked, briefly glancing up at you before staring at the patch of stenciled skin like he could burn a tattoo into it with just his eyes.

“Yeah,” you breathed, feeling like your entire body was made up of TV static as you willed yourself to relax on the chair.

He nodded, the familiar buzz of the tattoo gun starting again. It pressed to your skin like fire, the vibration carrying from the gun all the way down into the flat bone of your sternum. You held your breath without meaning to, toes curling.

Eddie groaned, a smile finding its way onto his face. “You’re squeezing so fucking tight around me,” he said, voice a bit raspier than normal.

You made a conscious effort to relax, staring up at the ceiling and tapping the tips of your fingers along the sides of the chair. “Sorry,” you murmured, a giggle echoing from you as Eddie resumed the line he was tattooing.

Each stab of the needles kept your body alight, teetering you on the edge of pain and pleasure. “You're such a masochist.”

You smiled, your gaze hazy and your pussy fluttering a bit as you took shallow breaths. “I know, it’s gonna be a long night.”

[blushweddinggowns]

Idea expanded, Rockstar Eddie falling head over heels for Bartender Steve working in a high class club type of joint. He sees him working one night and thinks God damn, he's hot. I'm taking him home tonight.

Except bartender Steve has developed a significant distaste for celebrities and rich people in general because of getting cut off from his homophobic parents for coming out and the general bad way many have treated him at work whilst sloshed. But lucky for Eddie, Steve doesn't recognize him. And even though he started off in a trailer park, the fame has gone to his head a little and he asks Steve out with the full intention of getting into his pants and never seeing him again.

But oh no, would you look at that Steve isn't easy. And what Eddie thought would be a booty call ends up being a ten hour date around the city where he has more fun than he even thought was possible. Just from talking with Steve about anything and everything, flitting to parks and museums. And Eddie doesn't even realize until he's back at his hotel that they didn't even kiss.

And they go out more and more, and Eddie likes him more and more and he finds out where the rich people hate comes from. And it scares him. So he keeps lying. Like an idiot. And he tells Steve a fake last name, he tells him a fake job (which is only half fake because he did used to be a tattoo artist) and he rents an air bnb that he pretends is his own place. And the lies keep getting more elaborate to cover up more lies. And he keeps refusing to meet Steve's friends out of fear that they'll recognize him. And he really just drove himself into a corner here because he is absolutely in love with Steve at this point but how the fuck can you have a normal relationship when you are pretending to be someone else?

Turns out you can't, and Steve finds out the truth despite his efforts. But the twist is, he thinks it's fucking hilarious. After a normal period of What the fuck reaction time he gets over it. But never let's Eddie live it down.

------------------------------

6/27 Edit: Welp, now there's a fic.

Two fics actually. The other is by KikiZ on ao3 which is great if you're not looking for an explicit fic! Because mine will be. It's also a bit more introspective than what I got going on, and also thus far, hella romantic.

[urhoneycombwitch]

just thinking of artist!eddie x muse!reader meet cute. cw reader dresses femme in this

“um… excuse me? pardon me. you can’t be touching that.”

Eddie spins to see someone walking across the room towards him (a very hot someone. in clicky heels and a tight black skirt that shows off a gorgeous slip of thigh.)

holding a clipboard against one waist, you point at him with your work-supplied ballpoint pen, sounding lightly flustered but firm all the same- “sorry, it’s just- you can’t touch the art. I know there’s no red rope around here, but not touching the artwork at a gallery, that’s kinda… just courtesy.”

Eddie takes his hand from the now-straightened framed photograph, then spreads his hands in a placating gesture, sheepish and charming smile fixed on you. “sorry-“ his eyes flick down to your name badge, and he says your name in that husky voice, “-must’ve gotten mixed up, thought this was the petting zoo area.”

You snort, intending to let him off the hook with just a warning. then you tap your pen against your clipboard, trying to maintain a professional composure without drooling.

flicking up and down his frame, you take in the tight black ripped jeans, black vine tattoos curling out from a cut-off tank, over the milky expanse of his broad shoulders, alongside the veins running up and down his forearms. smattered with hair.

Eddie’s looking at you the same way. like he’s hungry. the attention calls to you, makes your spine perk up, a little flare of excitement kicking at your heart rate.

you take the bait. turn to the wall of art, point at one of the other frames just to fill the charged silence. “so! um. do you like this body of work? I think it’s the best in the series so far.”

Eddie crosses his arms, gives you a look that you can’t quite decipher- amusement? suspicion? hard to say. you’re tracing the ridge of his ear with your gaze, sunlight streaming through the main entrance windows glinting off the multitude of rings nestled there.

under your attention, Eddie’s preening, and also hoping you keep talking to him as long as possible so he can memorize the way your tits look in that blouse and paint ‘em from memory (😵‍💫) “fancy yourself an art critic? go on, sweetheart- I’d love to hear your take.”

and those doey eyes almost drive you to distraction !!! but you give a very genuine review of Eddie’s newest work (having no idea you’re flattering the artist in person), and he’s smiling by the end of your impassioned response.

“wow. sounds like you really like this artist.”

“I really do!”

“…and if this artist asked you for your number, you’d say yes, right? ‘cuz you like him so much?”

and he’s got that same sweet and silly smile from earlier, eyebrows raised. and when you realize, you’re mortified. bringing up the clipboard in front of your face to hide like “oh my god. you’re Eddie Munson. the artist. and I yelled at you for touching your own art!! why did you let me do that!!”

he laughs, hand over his heart, earnest- “no, don’t apologize! it was a huge ego boost for me, didn’t know they’d have such a beautiful personal bodyguard for my stuff. you gotta let me take you out for a drink as thanks for your service.”

and he does this dorky off balance bow low to the ground and you’re looking over the top of your board giggling. his humor is just your type and you fall for each other before round two of drinks after your shift that night (and fall into each others BEDS. ayooooo.)

[luveline]

𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐠𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

Best friends since middle school, you tell Eddie everything, which is why he's so surprised to find out you've been keeping a secret —you’re hearing a voice whenever you're home alone. He’s always had a thing for the fantastical but he can't believe in ghosts, and the longer you insist on it, the more worried he becomes. This would be bad enough if Eddie didn’t have a secret too, and it threatens to change everything between you. [22k] 

fem!reader, best friends to lovers slow-burn, mutual pining, eddie is infatuated with you, idiots in love, paranormal activity/au, heavy hurt/comfort, angst, fluff and affection, wayne is uncle of the year every year, ghost-hunting

cw assumed auditory hallucinations, talk of mental health, surrounding worry and circumstances, mentioned mental illness stigma, recreational drug use mention, prescription drugs, grief

my endless gratitude and thank yous to @h-ness1944 and @mrcylvsu for their sensitivity beta reads and for answering my questions so many moons ago, I'm very, very thankful for all that hard work, and all the time and energy you both spent!

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Eddie's desk fan is on the fritz. It twists back and forth with a weak metallic clicking sound that promises eventual electrocution but for now provides momentary relief. Even the nights have been hell lately. No matter how many windows he and Wayne open, the air at home stays thick with humidity. 

Sweat shines on his brow and collar. He refuses to tie his hair back, and each hour it grows more and more uncomfortable. 

"Are you sure you don't wanna come and lie up here?" he asks, shifting reluctantly to peer over the side of the bed. 

You're laying on the floor of his room, just as sweaty but half as unhappy. You've abandoned a book to your left, having declared the weather too much to concentrate through. 

"Our body heat will mingle." 

"The fan is really helping," he argues lightly. "If you die on my floor Wayne won't ever let it go. Just come up here." 

You mumble something he doesn't hear and pull your shirt from your chest. You attempt to fan yourself with the thin, clinging fabric. It doesn't work, but it does expose the soft hill of your abdomen to his guilty eyes. His mouth dries up. 

"It's getting late," he says. He's not trying to get rid of you, promise, but now he's thinking about your body heat mingling and why it wouldn't be such a bad thing, and he doesn't want to. "I'll drive you home, yeah?" 

"In a minute," you agree, looking as if you have no intention of moving. 

You turn your face to the side, eyes closed, lashes skimming the delicate skin of your under eye. Eddie sits up and rakes his greasy hair away from his face. He'll drop you home, take a cold shower for purely heat related reasons, and hopefully sleep through the night. It's a very unlikely outcome, but a man can dream. 

"Come on. We'll roll the windows down and go really fast." 

"Eddie," you chastise. 

"Moderately fast." 

His sleeveless tank top gets caught as he leans down to try and flick you. Eddie can only ever forgive his fourteen year old self for maiming perfectly good vintage in times like these. A completely unnecessary culling of an entire wardrobe's worth of sleeves, but when the weather gets bad for a few heady weeks every summer, he remembers the reasoning behind it. 

He's stripped of all his clunky jewellery for now, adorned only in the dark ink of his multiplying tattoos. His most recent addition is an artist's rendition of the Eye of Sauron, blinking up at him from beneath his volley of bats. Still sick, he thinks to himself smugly. 

You've pulled yourself into a sitting position with your arms crossed over the bed, your hand stretched out to touch his plaid pyjama bottoms. You're in a nearly matching pair; when Eddie called you to hang out earlier you'd turned him down, citing a reluctance to change. He'd promised to pick you up in his own pyjamas, and you've been lying on his floor since then.

You're the laziest kids this side of the Wabash river, Wayne'd said, looking over your limp bodies with a smile. 

The other side, too, Eddie popped back. Will you put those chicken wings in the oven for us, please?

Eddie's not a monster, the wings were pre-prepared. Any other day he'd correct his uncle, say, hey, we haven't been kids for years, but the heat makes him feel gross and sometimes you just want your dad to make you dinner. (Sometimes Eddie's just lazy, also.)

"Eds?" you murmur. 

He lets his hands fall away from his hair where he'd been scratching mindlessly and turns to you. He's lethargic, feels like he's turning his head through molasses. "What, sweetheart?" 

Years of being friends lends an easy affection. His pet names are purely platonic. Or they used to be. Either way, you aren't perturbed.

"Can I sleep over?" 

He usually says yes to that question immediately. But again, the thought of your sweaty body curled into his with your hands breaching a friendly gap to curl over his waist like they tend to do fills his stomach with dread. 

His little crush is making him a bad friend, he decides. He will always, first and foremost, be your friend. 

"Of course you can." He rubs his mouth. Feigning casualness. "How come?" 

You peel out of your fatigue and get on your knees. The extra height is all you need to finally grab his legs, smiling sheepishly. Eddie won't judge you for almost anything and you know that, so it's gotta be outlandish. 

"I think…" You tap his kneecap. "Okay, laugh at me if you need to, but I'm pretty sure my house is haunted." 

"Like, by a ghost?" 

"What else?" you ask, laughing good-naturedly.

"Why do you think it's haunted, superstar?" 

You drop your face onto his thigh, giving him a disjointed hug. He hugs you back for as long as the heat will allow it, a handful of stolen seconds with his hand over your back.

"I swear, sometimes, I can hear someone talking."

That's… scarier than he imagined. "Shit, I thought you were gonna say a coat fell off the hanger, or the light in your bathroom started flickering again." 

"It has," you admit, your mouth pressed to his thigh. "But it's just the bulb." 

He pushes you off of him, your voice sending vibrations through places he'd prefer it didn't, and you fall back with a half-hearted stab at melodrama. 

"Oof," you say, straight-faced. 

"You really think it's a ghost?" he asks. 

"No. I don't know. I won't believe in ghosts until I see one, and I haven't seen one, but if it were a ghost, this is the type of behaviour I'd expect from it. So I guess I do. Does that make sense?" 

"Sure." He doesn't know. "What does it say?" 

"Here's the bit where you won't believe me." 

You smile at him from your spot on the floor. Your hand curls out, like a tight budded flower coming to bloom. 

"She asks about you," you say quietly. "It's pretty much all she says." 

"Who?" 

"The ghost." 

"She's a she?" 

"Sounds kind of like one." 

"Come sit up here with me." 

Eddie knows his voice has gone hard and weird, but he can't help it. He understands that he doesn't understand anything, that the world is large and works in mysterious ways, but he wouldn't forgive himself if he took this lightly. You sound so convinced — it makes him feel ill. 

Because Eddie doesn't believe in ghosts. 

You climb up onto the bed in front of him and he doesn't take your hand. He should. You won’t meet his eyes, a sign that you're slightly embarrassed. It's not what he meant to do. 

"What does she say?” he probes.

You go teasing and shiny, a glimmer in your eye. "I know you don't believe me, Eddie." 

"Who says I don't believe you? I just need you to explain." 

"She says…" You laugh. "Okay, she says stuff like, 'Eddie is okay?'" 

Eddie stares at you. 

"I was going to tell you–" 

"When?" he demands. 

"I'm telling you right now!" 

"How long have you been hearing voices?" 

You climb up on knees to wrap your arms around his head. "You think I'm delusional," you say, a loving murmur in his ear. 

He grabs your waist. Unsurprisingly, hugging you doesn't make him nearly as electric as he'd worried. It feels the same as it always has, like hugging his best friend. Loving the smell of your hair is new, but everything else stays the same. 

"I don't think you’re delusional, I don't, I just– if I told you the same thing." 

You pull away, and his hand comes to rest atop the curve of your hip. "I'd believe you," you say. 

"I believe that you believe there's someone talking to you about me. Uh… if it is a ghost haunting your house, why's she talking about me?" 

You take his hands off of your waist, squeezing his fingers together in your palms. "Don't know. I tried asking but she never answers, and last night…" 

Eddie stands up.

"Where are you going?" 

"We gotta let Wayne know you're staying and he's about to fall asleep, and I want a cigarette, and you need something to drink." 

"I don't want a beer." 

"No," he says. When he says to drink, he really means something cold to sip on. He's hoping to grab you back from… whatever it is you're going. "Soda, apple juice, drink what you want." 

He fiddles with the drawstrings on his pants, waiting for you to join him at the doorway. You stay sitting on his bed. He doesn't know what your face means. 

"Hey, you still have to tell me about it. I want to know, swear to god. We have all night." He holds out his hand. Wiggles his fingers at you. "I'll let you paint my nails again too, like a real girls night." 

That grabs your attention. You slide off of the bed and take his hand, shrieking as he yanks you ten miles an hour down the skinny hallway and into the living room. Wayne's got the sofa bed out already, his padded roll-up mattress laid out over the springs and a sheet stretched corner to corner. 

"Hey, kids," he says, fluffing one of his pillows. He chucks it at the top of the mattress. "Home time?" 

"Can I stay over, Mr. Munson?" you ask. 

Wayne rolls his eyes. You once spent eight days here with no breaks sometime in the summer of 1987 and he hadn't batted an eye. Eddie made sure it was truly alright with Wayne, of course, and you'd done your share of housework. Point is, both Munson's find  your asking to stay unnecessary. 

"I'll make pancakes in the morning," you add. 

"Oh, in that case." Wayne throws his blanket out over the bed and sits on top of it. "By all means, kid, stay over. Tell your guardian." 

"Can't. In Santa Barbara." 

"Ah, then I have to insist you stay," he says, laying down with a huff. 

Eddie passes him the TV remote. "She's a big girl, Wayne." You're well past the age of parental supervision. 

Wayne answers with a grumbling sound that means, hey, you can keep talking to me but there's no guarantee I'll answer. 

"I won't be annoying, promise," you say. 

Wayne grunts again. 

"That's old man talk for I know you won't," Eddie translates. 

You nod, glad to have permission, and meander into the kitchen. "Can I–" 

"Yes!" Eddie and Wayne call simultaneously. 

Wayne laughs to himself in that pleased gruff way he's good at and tucks his arms behind his head. He's wearing one of Eddie's t-shirts. They've been the same size since Eddie was seventeen, something both Munson's utilise when laundry day is approaching but not quite upon them. 

"Lighter?" 

Wayne scrunches his eyes in displeasure. "By the sink."

"Thanks." For some reason, Eddie doesn't leave. He stays standing by the TV, listening to the voice of a late-night talk show chuckle through a joke about some scandal. 

When Eddie was younger, he'd get into bed beside Wayne and watch TV until his eyes hurt. Too young to have stopped needing comfort and too old to know how to ask for it, he'd drift down the snug hallway into the living room and Wayne would usually be asleep or almost there. Eddie would stand by the TV hesitantly, and if he was sleeping Wayne must've been able to feel it, a new parents instinct or something, because he'd soon wake, and if he wasn't he'd look at Eddie like he'd been waiting for him. Like Eddie was running late. 

His teenage years were almost solely defined by bad dreams and TV with Wayne. On the good nights, Eddie would go back to bed. On the bad nights, heartache would swallow him whole. Well, almost whole. His cheek would rest on Wayne's shoulder as the night went on. Miraculous and ordinary at once. That's the only bit of him that didn't hurt. 

Pain emaciates the good from his memory, but it can't erase the comfort of watching TV with someone who loved him when they didn't have to. 

Wayne pretends to chop Eddie in the stomach. Eddie laughs and dodges out of his path. 

"Gotta be faster than that," Eddie taunts. 

"Don't chain smoke," Wayne says. 

"We won't be up long." Eddie's lying. He can't imagine that either of you will be getting an early night tonight considering the nature of your confession. What he means is, you won't be keeping Wayne up, and Eddie won't smoke more than what's wise. 

Wayne hums. 

You're in the kitchen screwing the lid back on a gallon of apple juice, your cup a quarter filled. You're like that. Won't ever take more than you need.

"One for me?" he asks. 

"I figured now all your taste buds are dead, you wouldn't want any." 

"Ha-ha," he says. The kitchen is unusually clean. "Shit, stop cleaning my house. Good god." 

You pull one of his jackets off of the seat of one of the kitchen table's chairs and shake it out. "So I can sleep here, eat here, but cleaning is where you draw the line. I like it." 

Eddie grabs the lighter from beside the sink in one hand and your wrist in the other, pulling you away from the table before you can start organising their mail and through the back door. 

It's still sticky-hot out and the steps are warm to the touch as the two of you sit down hip to hip. He pulls the stiff pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and hands them to you. Your hand is already waiting. You peel off the plastic and tap the pack against your chest. You like doing it, arguing that it makes you feel like you're Chelsea Marino in Glory Days, all dark smiles and indulgent self-loathing. 

You open the pack, tug out a lone cigarette, and pass it to him. 

"You're like a pez dispenser," Eddie says, putting the butt of the cigarette between his lips.

"You little freak." 

He laughs and almost drops his cig. Wayne's heavy zippo struggles to light, low on gas. 

"Loser can't even light a cigarette." 

"Who put two dimes in you?" he asks, thrilled by your negging. 

He takes a sharp inhale as the end of the cigarette finally lights, the heat tickling his throat until it burns the way he needs it to. 

"Somebody must've," you say. 

"Reckon we can tip you upside down and get something to eat?" he asks through an exhale of smoke, tapping ash into the small egg cup to his left that's been serving as an ashtray for as long as he's been smoking. It used to be yellow. Every now and again he washes it and sees the old chicken paint underneath. "Too late for cooking." 

"Are you hungry?" you ask genuinely. "I told you we should've had more than just wings."

"It was too hot to eat hot stuff. It's still too hot. Tomorrow, we should go to Bradley's and get stuff for sandwiches." 

Eddie waits for your answer. "I'm sick of PB and J, Eds," or "Yes! And a pitcher for sweet tea, my captain." You don't say anything, your face turned up to the sky and your eyes closed, soaking in the heat. 

He has half a mind to go get a spray bottle and douse you before you collapse. 

"What's going on with you?" he asks. 

"I'm just thinking." 

"Think out loud. Don't be fucking selfish." 

"I'm not sure you wanna hear it." 

He puts his cigarette in the eggcup ashtray half-smoked, ribbons of white curling up into the shimmering summer heat. Any other time he'd lounge back and let the nicotine course through his system, a momentary relief against the winding tightness that comes with being so hot, and so worried about you. 

"If I ask you how you've been feeling lately, could you answer me?" he asks. "Without assuming I don't believe you. Don't get mad, just tell me." 

You drop your shoulder against his. "I feel fine, I think. You know me, I– I worry too much, and work is overwhelming. If you took me to a doctor, he'd probably prescribe me ambien and a week in a dark room, but. I really don't think I'm making this up." 

"I don't think you'd know," he says. Isn't that the deal? If you're having a hallucination of some kind, it would likely sound and feel real enough to trick you in some capacity.

"Trust me," you say. Your hair brushes against the top of his damp arm. He can't smell good, but you don't say a thing about it.

"I do." Eddie turns his head to take another drag. He blows the smoke as far from you as he can manage. "Tell me about last night," he says, eyes on the weather worn plating of the trailer. "What happened?" 

If you're not messing with him, your ghost has been talking to you for a while now. Something happened last night to scare you in a way you hadn't been before.

He fights his rising nausea with a final drag on his cigarette. You stop leaning on him, hands back in your lap as you tell the story. 

"I was listening to the stereo real loud while I did laundry. I don't know if I was trying to, you know, block it out if she started talking, I'm not stupid, I– I know it could be all in my head. I don't think it is, but I'm not stupid. I went down to the basement to swap the load out in the dryer, and while I was down there…" 

You look like you don't know how to explain it. Eddie bites his cheek. 

"She wrote me something," you say finally. "In my notebook, the one you got me for Christmas. She said hello." 

"I could've written it," he says. "I don't remember, maybe I left you a message in it knowing you'd find it." 

"Did you come in and take it off the shelf, too?" you ask gently. "Eddie, I know your handwriting. I'm not making this up."

He sighs, rubs his face with both hands, the smell of smoke and salt ingrained in the lines of his palms. He gives himself a long five seconds scrubbing at his stubbly jaw and wishing it was colder, then he shoots up onto his feet and pulls open the door. 

"Early night," he says decisively. "If you're still sure there's a ghost in the morning, I'll come over. See if she'll talk to me too. How does that sound?" 

You hold your hand out. Eddie takes it, hoisting you up.

"It sounds like you need a better strategy for getting girls to go to bed with you." 

"It's working, isn't it?" 

"Loser." 

— 

You wake up to Eddie tapping your shoulder. 

"Come on, sweetheart," he says quietly, his voice rough as hewn stone. "I made you pancakes." 

It's as if you're submerged at the bottom of a shallow pool. Sound and heat and sunlight reach you, but it's dull. It takes you a second to understand what Eddie's saying, and why his thumb is rubbing into your shoulder. 

"Come on," he says again, "'fore they get cold." 

You blink. Blink blink blink. Your throat hurts and you have a bad taste in your mouth. Your eyes feel like somebody flicked sand at you while you slept, gritty and dry. You kick the thin blanket away from you, a long day of writhing in the heat yesterday having turned you to sludge, your limbs limp and uncooperative. 

Eddie's frowning at you when you look up. 

"Want me to get you a rag?" he asks. 

"No, I'll wash my face." Your words string together like toffee melted between them and hardened again while you weren't looking. "Oh," you murmur, wincing as you set your feet on the ground. "My back really hurts. Did you push me out of bed last night?" 

"You slept like a log. Same position all night." He reaches for you, but his hand wavers. He must change his mind. 

Eddie leaves the door wide open as he leaves. The radio is on, and a song he secretly loves but won't admit to wars with the sound of sizzling oil. If you strain, you can hear him humming. You get closer and dip into the bathroom, the door open so you can listen to Eddie sing the chorus. 

Dance with me, I want to be your partner, can't you see? The music is just starting. 

He doesn't sing well, really. It's a light, high-pitched rendition. He isn't trying. He feels comfortable enough around you to be unapologetically mediocre, and it's somehow sweeter than if he had a voice like Larry Hoppen. 

You wash your face with handfuls of cold water, your lips tasting of salt as it drips down your nose to your neck, rogue rivulets of run-off seeping into your rolled sleeves. 

The heat broke overnight. A light rain patters soundlessly against the windows, and the back door has been propped open in the kitchen to let in the smell of fresh churned earth. Petrichor. 

You pat your tacky face dry. Eddie turns to the sound, and you nod at Wayne's empty seat.

"Where's your uncle?" you ask. 

"He wanted to get epoxy and a fresh roll of duct tape in case we spring another leak. The rain was pretty bad last night, I think he's worried it'll rot the ceiling. I don't know. Don't worry, I made him something first." 

You sit down and let Eddie serve you a stack of pancakes. The ones on the very top are piping hot. You slather them in butter and maple syrup as he sits down next to you, a plate of his own in hand. 

"How's your back?" he asks. He's being too soft with you. 

"I saw a ghost, Eds, I'm not dying." You slice down the pancakes with the side of your fork, attempting to act unbothered. "Worst case scenario, I'm schizophrenic."

Eddie sits down in the chair next to yours. It's a small table but there's ample room. His proximity is a choice. "Worst case scenario, you're being targeted by an evil demon, but schizophrenia could also be really bad," he says. "S'why I'm worried." 

"Eddie." You put down your fork, swallowing a half-chewed mouthful roughly. "Hey. If it's my head, I'll go to the doctor and I'll let them take care of it and everything will be fine." You have no way of knowing if what you're saying is true. Mental illness isn't easy. You're just saying what you think he needs to hear without outright lying. "I'll take the meds and you'll be there for me. But I'm fine. And you're being weird." 

"You're trying to piss me off." 

A little. Pissed is better than anxious. You'd rather give him something to glare at than a reason to twist himself into knots. "You're easily riled," you jest. 

His eyebrows rise. He eats his pancakes and you your own, the wrinkled knees of your pyjamas rubbing against one another as he jigs his leg along to the song on the radio. The rain starts to worsen, fat droplets slapping the screen door like the thwack of a bullet. From your seat, you can see the sky dark with grey clouds, the sun a long forgotten foe. The humidity has been cut in half, which is to say bad but not unbearable. Last night, if you'd been awake to feel it, the rain would've been warm in your palm. Getting up to close the door now, you nudge the ajar screen wide with your foot, letting some of the rain lash your arms and face. 

You sigh at the chilly coldness of each blessed drop. 

"Heatwave from hell is finally over."

"Thank fuck for that. Let's hope it's miserably cold for weeks," Eddie says.

It's mid September —summer has said goodbye with one last fierce kiss. By October, you'll be wrapping yourselves up in throw blankets on the couch on the porch, or hiding inside with Wayne's special pasta (buttered noodles and green pesto for the 'brave') watching slashers on Eddie's blurry TV. The humidity will be nothing but a gross memory. 

You wash your plates and Eddie lets you shower first. You have your own shampoo in the corner, and a rose scented body wash Eddie buys but doesn't use (but it isn't for you, idiot, why would he buy you something so expensive? He got it by mistake). You could draw the cracks in their shower tiles with your eyes closed, and the condensation that clings to the cold water pipe, that's how many times you've been in here. You finish quickly, dry quicker, and pull fresh clothes over your still-clammy skin. 

You tap Eddie in. He's somehow even faster than you were, and you swap places in his room. While he's changing, you dry the bathroom walls with a towel as soon as he's out, knowing the small room has a propensity for dampness. 

"Stop cleaning my fucking house," he says when you traipse back into his room, his head hanging upside down as he towel dries his curls. 

You forgo your usual explanations and tell the truth. "I know you're perfectly capable. I like helping, that's all." 

"I know. Ugh, you suck. Do you have any deodorant?" 

You grin and pull your deodorant out of your bag, a new-ish stick of Teen Spirit. Eddie sees it and sighs, obviously unprepared to smell like Pink Crush for the rest of the day. "I have like, half an inch left of Caribbean Cool. Coconut?" you offer. 

He goes with the coconut scent. The wall of privacy between you has eroded to a scrap of paper after so long living in each other's laps, but you feel guilty for looking at him, the shifting muscle beneath the skin of his arms and chest stealing your focus. If Eddie were to see you without your shirt, you doubt he'd find himself anywhere near as distracted. He'd look if you let him because that's the way he is, unaffected by simple intimacies, but when you tell him to face the door it doesn’t aggrieve him. Most of the time he’s already averted his eyes. 

"Gotta add that to the list of shit we need. Have you seen my shoes?" 

"Your white sneakers are in the hallway. One of your converse is under the bed, but it's hard to say about the other." You swallow a sudden lump. "Are we going shirtless?" 

Eddie does not go shirtless. He pulls a shirt on that thankfully has sleeves, and then a zip up hoodie under his leather jacket. You didn't think to bring a coat yourself due to the extreme baking temperature of the day before. You're lucky you had clean clothes here, considering you hadn't intended to spend the night. Or, not lucky, loved. One of the Munson’s has washed what you’ve left behind.

You have a momentary lapse as Eddie puts his shoes on, trekking into the bathroom to look in the mirror. It's no secret that you aren't pretty. You can make a good effort, and you keep it classy, stay clean, but you aren't pretty, not by your own opinion. 

Eddie knows everything about you (nearly). He knows you don't think much of yourself. And a younger version of him had comforted you as earnestly as an awkward teenage boy could manage, but these days he goes for the root of the problem. He still tells you that you're pretty occasionally, or rather, "Looking good, babe," but not today. 

"Hey." Eddie looks you up and down. "What's wrong?" 

"I look stupid." You glance at your legs. Why does everything look so weird on you?

He hooks his arm through yours and starts to drag you down the hallway to the front door, sideways like two crabs. "No." 

"Yeah, I do, and people are gonna think I do, too." 

"Who cares what other people think?" And there's grown-up Eddie's rhetoric, Who gives a fuck what other people think? 

"Me," you say. 

You understand exactly what it is he's trying to do: free you from the anxiety of overthinking. It doesn't work as often as you wish it would, but he gives it a good go. 

"No, you don't. We don't care what other people think because it doesn't affect us." He doesn't make light, exactly, but his eyes are bright and his smile is sweet as he opens the front door and gestures for you to go down first. Rain and wind are quick to kiss at your naked arms. 

"What if they all think I'm some sort of slob?" 

"Then they'd be wrong. It's okay for people to be wrong about us. That's their problem." More familiar argument. It actually does make you feel better, despite hearing it a hundred times before. "People are wrong all the time." 

Eddie follows you down the first step and turns away to lock the door. 

"Like you and my ghost," you say, trying to steer the conversation from your moment of weakness and into happy territory again. "You don't think she's real." 

"Baby, I'd love it if you proved me wrong with that one." He jogs down the rest of the steps, knowing it’ll give you a conniption, the wet metal a death trap waiting to happen. “Go! Get in the van!”

You scramble across the grass and the curved pathway to the drive where the van is parked and yank open the passenger door with all your strength. The handle is notorious for sticking shut. When nothing happens, Eddie curses up a storm as he clambers into the driver's seat and over the console to force it open, giving it a good old-fashioned kick from the inside. It flies into your waiting hands and you rush up the step into the front of the van away from the rain that’s growing heavier and heavier by the hour. 

“Well, glad I didn’t waste time letting it dry,” Eddie says, wringing his hair out over his lap. It only drips two or three drops, but it’s funny all the same. The top of his head shines like a dark halo. “About the ghost. Do you really believe in them?”

“You asked me last night–”

“I know, but last night you said you wouldn’t believe in one unless you saw it, and then proceeded to talk about it like it was real.”

“I’m agnostic about ghosts.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asks. He sticks the key in the ignition and turns it until the engine groans to life. The van was old when he got it. Now it’s super old. 

“No. What’s agnostic mean?” you ask. 

“We’ll buy a dictionary.”

“I kind of believe in ghosts. I believe in my ghost. If I ever see one, I’ll believe in all the ghosts. Shit, I sound stupid.”

“No, you don’t– you don’t! It’s okay to not know, I wasn’t trying to interrogate you about your personal beliefs.” He is a very responsible driver these days. He keeps his eyes on the road. His hand, however, strays to your arm. “You’re not stupid, superstar.”

“Don’t,” you plead. Superstar is a nickname that stuck despite your vehement disagreement with its origin and further usage. “It makes you sound like an old dad and I’m the son who just got benched at little league. Again.”

You stand as much as your seatbelt will allow and dig out the purse from the butt pocket of your jeans. “I’ll get gas.”

“Way too personal for our relationship.”

Bad, overused joke. 

Eddie doesn’t want you to pay for gas, the same way he doesn’t want you paying for takeout or birthday presents. He hates ‘handouts’ —it took you a while to convince him that gas money isn’t a handout, it’s you trying to keep things fair. You know how it feels to need the money and not want to ask for it, so you put him in a position where he never has to ask. 

Things are easier now. You’re not in high school anymore. Work doesn’t pay as well as you want it to, but it’s enough to get by, especially while you’re living in your childhood home with only partial bills to pay. Eddie isn’t hurting for money either. That’s something to be grateful for. 

Eddie pulls into the gas station. He won’t let you pump while the wind is whipping, but you sprint into the gas station and trawl the fridge for the biggest drinks, sticking two cans of iced tea under your arm. The cold immediately eats into your naked skin. You jog to the counter to pay. 

“Pump two, please,” you say, putting your cans down.

“Twelve dollars.”

You frown. Eddie only put ten dollars on the pump. Well, deducting your two cans of iced tea at 99 cents each, ten dollars and two cents. What an asshole.

You hold out a twenty dollar bill with a smile, and look out the window as you wait for your change. The rain is too heavy to see him, but you imagine Eddie drumming the wheel of the van with both hands. You shiver out a thanks as your change hits your palm, dropping it into your purse with your best receipts. There’s one for bowling (a triple defeat, Eddie a secret master), one for two whole frozen cheesecakes you’d eaten in bed a month ago with double-sized dessert spoons, a couple for Hawk theatre; Back to the Future II, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II (‘89 was a great year for sequels). All your best memories printed on thermal paper. 

“Holy shit I’m so cold,” you squeak, prying open the door without the aid of Eddie’s kick. 

“You’re soaked, you fool. You want to go home first for a sweater?”

You close the door behind you and drop the iced tea into the console, grimacing at the great clang they make. Your seatbelt snaps into place around your soft middle, and without ceremony you’re back on the road for your original mission. 

“No sweaters, Bradley’s. Stupid to double back.” You look at him from the corner of your eye. “I think we should get frozen pizza and extra toppings to put on them. And fries, obviously, and dessert.” The ghost won’t care. Probably. 

“You forgot the side salad.”

“Forgot,” you say, laughing. “Why yes I did.”

“Dessert,” Eddie says, his turn now to make some decisions. “I want a slurpee real bad right now, so I’m thinking we buy a bag of ice for your food processor and get some syrup.”

“We could go get slurpees,” you say encouragingly. If that’s what he wants, why not?

“We have shit to do,” he says, smiling so much his dimples peek out. “Ghosts to convene with, notebooks to analyse. Feasts to prepare.” He looks deeply speculative. You assume he’s thinking about the maybe-ghost, but he says, “Why are we getting frozen pizza? They have those pre-packaged ones now that are basically fresh.”

“They taste the same.”

“Liar, the bottom of the frozen ones go soggy and the cheese burns on the crust. You know that I’m right, don’t give me dish.”

“Aren’t you always?”

Eddie has a horrible tendency to be right about things. Maybe that's why you hadn't told him about the ghost for so long, because you'd wanted to handle it yourself without his explanatory assurances. You’re the worrier and he’s the one who always sets it straight.

What if I make a fool of myself? you've asked him once.

I’ll make one of myself, too. 

What if they fire me? 

We’ll get you a new job with me cleaning up after idiots.

What if it never goes away?

It will. 

What if body snatchers get us while we’re sleeping?

That one made him smile. The fondest upturn of a pretty mouth, not an expression you often see. Then they get us, he’d said, whispering across the pillows, face only partially visible in the struggling light of the TV. It’ll be awesome. Me and you. No brains, no worries. Just lettuce heads forever. 

You watch him beating along to a song you aren’t privy to against the wheel. He hadn’t seemed to mind the idea of losing his mind with you back then. He doesn’t believe you now, but that’s because he hasn’t heard her voice. The whistling wind warping itself into coherent syllables. Reaching for you, a dark slice of sound. 

Eddie… has… a secret…

You look at your lap, tamping down a shudder at the sensation of ice riding your spine. 

Don’t we all?

—

Eddie feels you’ve been overly relaxed about the situation at hand. He doesn’t want to back you into a box and declare a health crisis, but he’s been thinking up possible illnesses while you weigh the pros and cons of pizza toppings in case he has to take you to see someone. He’s not sure how gas lines work but he’s sure a quick phone call to the Munson landline could clear it up for him. Perhaps the most effective test of all for carbon monoxide poisoning would be to subject himself to the same circumstances. He’ll spend a few days at home with you and see how he feels afterward. If push comes to shove he’ll light a match and see what catches. 

On the inside, Eddie’s panicking about your mental health and, admittedly, the slim reality of a supernatural presence. On the outside, he’s playing along with your unconcerned dinner plans and aimless chatter. If you want to pretend that today is the same as any other day, he's prepared to let you. He won’t do the same, but he won’t discourage you, either. 

You cut through one of the home aisles toward the front of the store with a heavy basket on your elbow, Eddie hot on your heels. He grabs a pocket dictionary from the display to his left and hurries to keep up with you. 

You’re shivering. “I really didn’t think it would rain,” you say. 

Eddie looks past the registers to the glass doors at the front of the store where rain pelts with a force bordering on stormy weather. If it gets much worse than this, he'll insist you both go back to Munson headquarters and hunker up to wait it out. 

“The weather,” Eddie mumbles, unlike himself. “Are we expecting a storm? Maybe we should grab a cart and get some basics. Crate of water.”

“Okay, we can do that. Are you worried?”

“Kind of.”

He meets your eyes. He loves your eyes. He knows you don’t. You're not insecure in a way he feels he can fix —if he can fix any of it. It’s like you dissociate, for lack of a better word, from the things you can’t love. You don’t look in the mirror, won’t let him take photographs of you. You don’t say it. You call yourself stupid, weird, silly. Never ugly. 

But he knows. 

And now this whole ghost business. Eddie needs to think of something he can say to you that will inspire a better level of honesty going forward. 

“How long have you been speaking to the ghost?” he asks. 

You grin at a conveniently abandoned shopping cart at the end of the aisle and slide toward it on squealing shoes. You look around broadly for an owner, and when they don’t appear you place your basket in the stomach of it. The only thing remaining from whoever used it beforehand is a small tray of four cupcakes. 

“Four. One for you, three for me,” you say, ignoring his question with a smug giggle. 

Eddie loves you in a way not many people can love someone else, the kind of love that takes years of patience and acceptance and sweetness to take root, kind of love you only feel after seeing someone at their best, worst, and weirdest — memories come thick and fast whenever he thinks about the sheer years you’ve spent together, seeds of affection long germinated and rearing to grow. You, throwing up behind a Denny’s with sick in your hair, crying so hard you couldn’t catch your breath, and when you could, asking him if he wouldn’t mind buying you a new t-shirt to wear in the car as though you were some dastardly imposition, and not his sick best friend. You, on top of the world, surrounded by people who loved you with a birthday cake in front of you, eyes brighter than the blinking flames of each dripping candle. You, in pyjamas too tight, too loose, old or brand new with your hair up, down, washed, and greasy, your lips chapped, bruised then healed, parted against one of his pillows as you slept, as you yawned, as you laughed, talked. No matter what you’re wearing, saying or doing, you, in his bed, completely at home. 

Eddie has a thousand images of you in his head and they all fight to play again, like a VHS on constant rewind, or a movie with duplicated film, double, triple exposed. Before even an inkling of a crush had ever come around, he loved you. That's why it doesn’t really matter that he can’t kiss you. He can’t imagine loving you more than this. 

Sometimes, sometimes… you put your leg over his and your thigh spreads out across the top of his, and he has to beg himself not to want to touch you. He wonders if you’d mind. Eddie thinks about asking so often it turns into its own fantasy. He knows what cadence his voice would take, the exact grit and warmth, his hand waiting on your knee and aching to inch downward. 

You pull him from his sickly introspection with a poke. Your fingernail dents his shirt precisely atop a small beauty mark. He doesn’t know if you know what you’re doing, if you’ve seen his naked chest enough times to realise that there’s a mole right there an inch shy of his belly button, if you’d ever looked at him in so much detail. 

“Transmission incoming,” you say, your fingers flattening over his abdomen, your palm hovering apart. Like the pole of an opposite magnet, it refuses to connect. “Chirp. Houston, we’ve been attempting to connect with Astronaut Munson. He is unresponsive. Let us know when you make contact again.” You smile at him ruefully. “Damn moon keeps dropping signal.”

“Sorry… Astronaut Munson? Do they call astronauts astronauts? I thought it was commander.”

“I don’t know, Eddie, I haven’t brushed up on NASA related job titles lately.” Your deadpan wanes, replaced with a genuine concern. “Are you okay? You really did get lost.”

“I’m just thinking about, you know– Your ghost,” he lies. The ghost should be his highest concern, and for the most part it is, but he’d let his attention get pulled along by other things.

That’s the thing about love. It feels much more important in the moment than anything else, even when it shouldn’t. 

“You’re super worried about the ghost.”

“It is an uber worrying ghost.”

“‘Cause she talks?” you ask.

“Well, yeah. Most of the time you just get, like, blurs on night vision cameras or the general malignant presence of the thing. Not words.” Not questions concerning your best friend. 

“Casper talks and he’s gorgeous,” you say. “A true sweetheart.”

“Doesn’t Casper have to protect Lucy from his evil ghost uncles?”

“Who the fuck is Lucy?”

“The girl. Lucy and Johnny.”

“Bonnie?”

“Oh. That sounds right. But her name doesn’t matter,” Eddie insists. “My point was that the bad ghosts outweigh the good three to one. That’s more than half, you realise.”

“His name is Casper the Friendly Ghost,” you say, shrugging. Eddie hopes you know where it is in the store you’re going to. He hasn’t looked away from your face for the last twenty minutes.  “It’s in the name.”

“But your ghost isn’t Casper,” Eddie says.

“No. My ghost isn’t Casper, but she hasn’t tried to kill me. She would have written something threatening in my notebook or knocked all the books off of my shelf if she were evil.”

Eddie frowns. You’ve steered him around the store like you’ve never been here before, changing your mind after turns to go down the opposite aisle, murmuring about bottled water. He reaches for your hand on the shopping cart rail and can’t resist squeezing it as he pulls it away. 

“I got it,” he says. 

He swears that your expression flickers. Worry breaking through the closed shutters of your blasé. 

You’re not so chatty as you follow him toward the back of Bradley’s where they keep the big jugs of water. He grabs one, thinks back to the bad weather and grabs another. It’s unlikely that you’ll need them, but Eddie would rather be safe than sorry. “Do you have a lamp?” he asks. “An oil lamp? Or a flashlight?”

“I have a flashlight,” you confirm. “Is it really so bad? Uh, I don’t wanna ask again, but I– maybe I could–” 

Eddie wants to pull your face into his chest. He thinks about it. Would he have hugged you like that a year ago, before the butterflies and the late nights daring to think of the dough of your thighs or the column of your throat when you tip your head back? He might’ve. It would mean something different, but he might’ve. 

He throws an arm around your shoulder and gives you a good shake. “What is wrong with you? If it gets any worse, you’re staying with me. I’m only asking about a flashlight in case we have one of those worst case scenarios and get stuck in your haunted house. I refuse to die like the jocks in a b-rated horror.”

“The jocks or the whore? Isn’t it the girl who sleeps around that gets murdered in the dark?” you ask. 

“Super unfair. I sleep around, do I deserve to die?” he asks, dropping his arm. 

You mime stabbing him in the gut. Everyone's so violent. 

Eddie is amazingly unharmed as he gets you to the register. You try to fight him on who’s paying, but you’re an idiot who insisted on getting gas. It’s the leverage he needs to win. Out of Bradley’s and back into the rain with grocery bags double bagged, you run for the van and thrust the spoils of your shopping trip in the passenger seat footwell. Eddie opens the side door to lug the water jugs inside and you take the cart back to the front of the store against his wishes.

He waits for you to be in arms reach and gets back in the van. You’re soaked to the bone. He’s cold in three layers, so you must be freezing. He shrugs off his sopping wet leather jacket and then the zip hoodie underneath, draping the zip hoodie over your lap and chest and then rushing to put his leather jacket on again.

“Thank you, good sir,” you laugh.

He’s already fiddling with the air conditioning. Heat bursts from the left vent but not the right, leaving you in a cold bubble. “Shit, I’m sorry, the right vent’s still busted. Ol’ Beauville keeps letting us down.”

“Don’t hate on the Beauville!” you scold through chattering teeth. 

“You're dying,” he says. “Hold on, I’m gonna do ninety.”

“Do not speed!” 

You get to the road outside of your place without any hydroplaning. You live on a regular American street in a two-story semi-detached house not too far from Hawkins High school with your guardian, who isn’t home very often. It has three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a lot of white walls. You often lament that the house doesn’t really feel like your own, and punctuate with a giddy laugh he doesn’t understand but adores nonetheless. 

Eddie parks his van on the long gravel driveway as close to the house as he can get it and ushers you inside with your keys. You’re cold enough to listen without complaint. 

He puts the groceries in the kitchen on the countertops and kicks off his shoes, intending on putting them away when he’s sure you aren’t in any danger of hypothermia. He kicks off his shoes by the door, locks it tight, and starts up the carpeted stairs to your room. 

He’s not surprised to find you half-naked, but overfamiliar, affectionate friendship doesn’t necessarily mean you like being seen. He averts his gaze from your naked legs and tries desperately to think about anything but underwear. The more he tries not to think about them, the worse it gets. 

“Hey,” he says, covering his eyes so you know he isn’t perving, “our horror flick just got dirty.”

“Yikes,” you say. “Don’t look.”

“I’m not, I’m not. You could’ve closed the door. You know, spare me a guilty conscience.” Then, because he just can’t help himself, “When did you start wearing fancy panties?”

“Fuck off, Eddie,” you laugh. 

“Do I have to make the switch to tighty whities?”

“Our underwear choices do not concern one another.” You trek toward him. He peeks through two spread fingers and finds you thankfully reclothed in dry sweatpants and a sweater soft with age. “I thought tighty whities hurt your–” You raise your eyebrows. 

He regrets being honest with you when you were teenagers. A little secrecy might help repaint him in your mind as less of a huge loser. You could possibly find him attractive if you weren't privy to the numerous embarrassments that make up his life, he thinks. 

He chokes on his own tongue and dies right there in your bedroom. “Why do you remember shit like that?”

“Same reason you keep a heat pack in your room in case I get all crampy,” you say.

You give him one of your sick smiles —you have to know what you’re doing, you have to— and drape your arms over his shoulders, nearly knocking him down with the sudden addition of your weight. He, stunned, plants a foot behind himself so you don’t both trip and fall on your asses. 

The plane of your back beckons beneath your sweater. What he’d give to slip a hand under the hem to explore the ridge of your shoulder blade with his fingertips. 

A quiet ensues. Your hug turns from a joking attempt to push him around a bit to a real one. He steel-arms your waist, tightening them around you three times in quick succession, nose buried in your hair to steal a deep breath. 

“This where the ghost talks to you?” he asks, looking over your head into the chaos of your room. It’s not dirty, but it isn’t tidy, either. 

You sigh too much like a moan for his sanity and stand up tall, your hands trailing down his chest unthinkingly as you follow his gaze. “Yeah. I don’t know if we’ll hear her over the rain. It has to be really quiet.”

“What are you doing? Experiments?” he asks. He sounds as distracted by it all as he feels. 

“No. Something I noticed, is all.”

“I don’t get why you didn’t tell me the first time it happened,” he confesses, voice dropping to a murmur. 

“Um… remember senior year, you kept missing class because you had all those doctors appointments?” You smile sheepishly. “‘N’ you didn’t tell me about it until after you knew you were okay?”

During his first senior year, Eddie found a small cyst in his arm. Small compared to other cysts, large in his arm. He worried it was malicious, or rather Wayne worried and Eddie didn’t know what he thought about it until after they’d cut it out. It had been a thankfully speedy affair in a doctors office they couldn’t afford. Eddie didn’t tell you about it until he’d been all stitched up and tested — he tried, but then he would imagine the look on your face when he did, and it made him feel like his intestines had learned to jump rope. 

He still remembers when he finally told you, the split second between, “a tumour,” and “but it’s not cancer.” The relief on your face. The shock of upset tears it caused. 

“I guess I was trying to be good to you,” you say, shrugging and starting down the stairs.

Eddie follows. “If something like that happened again to me, god forbid,” —he dips into a melodramatic voice, scared of the sombre mood that’s descended— “I wouldn’t keep it to myself. I’d make it your problem instantly.” 

Every now and then, Wayne will lean over the back of Eddie’s chair at the breakfast table and grab an arm, feeling for a tiny bump that hasn’t come back. You’d done the same in your own way: you wrote ‘check for lesions :D’ on a piece of paper and taped it to his bedroom doorway. It fell off ages ago, but he occasionally gets déjà vu as he leaves the room. And as he walks down the hallway, he’ll roll up his sleeve and check that there's nothing there.

Eddie didn’t tell you senior year. A lingering abandonment issue, maybe, ‘cause Dad didn’t stay when things got hard, who cares? He doesn’t think about that shit anymore. Figures the mark it left was enough. But these days, he’d tell you if he found a lump in his arm, or a ghost in his room. Your scribbled note made sure of that. 

"Are you listening to me?" he asks. 

"You'd make it my problem," you provide. "Tell me something I don't know." 

He grabs you by the shoulders at the bottom of the stairs and blows into your ear. 

With the lights on and the radio at a low volume, the rain outside doesn't seem nearly as imposing. The kitchen is small with a long strip light above that gives the room a near clinical white cast, the countertops shining clean, not a plate in the sink. It's evident how much time you don't spend here. No photos on the fridge, no salt or pepper shakers on the table. Where Eddie and Wayne have their insane mug collection made up of states and hours and way too much money in some cases, you have four black coffee mugs in a tower stack by the seldom used machine. Where they have a corkboard of photographs, Polaroids and printouts from Walmart off of rinky-dink digital cameras, you have one photo on the wall, a professionally done portrait of you from the day you graduated and Eddie, unfortunately, did not. 

Eddie's grad pictures are much less robotic. Too much eyeliner but just enough you, he has his arm thrown over your shoulders in the back of a grungy restaurant, his smile blisteringly bright. He might as well have written 'Thank Fuck' across his forehead. There's another one of him and Hellfire Club at the time, blurry with the flash making him pale as snow. You and Wayne had been trying to make the camera focus, twin scowls on your faces. Eddie's expression was one of pure joy. 

He tried to make up for your shitty grad pics by celebrating your first job with a pack of Polaroids. You'd looked adorably strange in the uniform, so young but so done with his shit, eighteen and exhausted. He keeps one in his room in the bottom of the box with all his rings and chains. If you ever found it, he'd think about drowning himself. 

Your appointment with a ghost waits until after dinner. You pull your frozen pizzas out of their boxes and put them in the oven (you don't preheat, which Eddie thinks is a questionable choice, but he'd help you get away with murder). While they defrost and start to cook, you slice and dice your extra toppings on the wooden chopping board beside the stovetop. He stands there with his hands washed and nothing to do. Just watches you cut up jalapeños for him and thinks about how he's going to take care of you if the ghost doesn't speak up. Does he tell your guardian? You're an adult. All your healthcare would be private and confidential. Could he tell Wayne? Would that be a betrayal? 

"Check the pizzas?" You scrape the seeds out of a jalapeño, eyes pinched in concentration. 

Eddie doesn't know if he can eat. You aren't as out of it as you were at the store, but you aren't fully present. A song you love plays on the radio and it's like you don't hear it. 

He pulls the pizzas from the oven. He makes a smiley face out of pepperoni and jalapeños, earning half as big a smile as he thought he would from you in response. 

Together, you clean the small mess you made. The pizzas brown. When they're done you take them out, cut them up, plate them, and carry them up to your room on a tray with a two litre bottle of sprite and two plastic cups. Eddie changes into a pair of his pyjama pants that you keep at the bottom of your dresser before he sits on your bed, wide-eyed when he sees how many slices you've managed in his absence. 

"Nobody's gonna take it away from you," he teases lightly. 

"Can't be too careful 'round you," you say, dropping a crust onto his plate. It's his favourite part. 

"Thought you wanted fries?" 

"And I thought you wanted a side salad." 

"I wanted snow cone syrup," he says, shrugging. 

He considers offering to go make you some fries anyway, but he takes a big bite of pizza and it tastes so good he forgets about it. Eddie doesn't know nothing about nothing, but if he had a say, he'd make it so that he and you could spend the rest of your lives doing this, meaningless jabbering over greasy food. It's not a good idea —you need vegetables that aren't on pizza, and fresh grains, and who knows what else to stay healthy— but Eddie's never claimed he had them. He wants this. 

He gets it most of the time, but he's selfish. He wants it every night. He loves Wayne but he wants to come home to you, or to have you come home to him, in a space that you decorated, a life that you made. He wants a dog and a pet fish and, in five years or ten or never, a baby if it's what you want too. A front door lined with three pairs of shoes. 

He also wants a limousine that takes him from place to place and a room full of thousand dollar guitars. A man can dream. 

The first port of call for any dream is making sure you're okay. Let the ghostly stakeout begin. 

Sated and sick at once, Eddie puts your empty tray on the dresser and goes to turn on the TV. "She won't talk if the TV's on," you interrupt.

"Ugh. Any chance she likes the stereo?" 

You slouch down where you'd been sitting and shake your head. Your jaw goes soft, eyes softer when you smile. "It's not all bad. She doesn't care how loud you turn a page." 

Eddie can't be with you every second of the day, the same way you can't be with him. There are shifts to take, shifts to cover, dungeons to pilfer and dragons to slay. You have your job, your other friends (none as handsome as he is), your hobbies. How often are you home alone, talking to ghosts? 

He stands by your bookshelf, eyes skipping over the titles in slight disinterest. 

"Hey," he asks, "where's your notebook? I wanna see her handwriting." 

"I left it on the top shelf." 

Eddie stares. There are a few other notebooks and sketchbooks aligned here, but not the one you'd described. 

"You sure?" he asks. 

"I left it right there,” you say with a yawn.

Eddie looks at you from over his shoulder. You’re tired. He figures he can see the notebook later, and offer you some remedial comfort now. Anything to wipe the frown off of your face. 

He grabs a book off of your shelf at random and cracks it open. You love being read to. You'd beg and beg him growing up, and he'd almost always oblige. 

"Can I read aloud, or does she hate that too?" he asks, turning away from your shelf. 

"I've never tried it." 

"I'll do it quietly?" 

"Sure," you say, a tired but pleased smile on your lips. "I've read that one before." 

"Should I get a different one?" 

"No, it's good. It's the one I told you about with the demons who eat stars." 

"The dirty one?" he asks, dropping like a stone near the top of your bed, the blankets under his hip warm from the residual heat of the pizza plates.

"It's not dirty. There's one scene toward the end where they get handsy, no graphic detail."

"And by no graphic detail, you mean…" 

"No graphic detail," you repeat. It's awful how funny you find each other. 

"Not even, like… hand stuff?" 

"Do you want there to be hand stuff?" 

"With the demons?" 

You devolve into giggles, the kind that start slow and thicken into a giddy sort of breathlessness, your head supported by the headboard. Eddie looks up at you in awe.

"I could be into that," Eddie furthers, stretching your laughter as long as it will go. "Are they the kind that look like people but with extra arms or wings or something?" 

"You'd like that, huh? Extra arms?" 

"I wouldn't be opposed to extra arms."

"Gross," you cheer through another wave of laughter. "I don't wanna think about it." 

Eddie looks to the book's first page and tamps down a grimace. You don't wanna think about him in that sort of position. 

Eddie, excluding any extra appendages, thinks of you like that more than he should. Never when you're near, not if he can help it, but at night when the hot shower water beating down against his back can be shaped into the vague sensation of a body behind him, he thinks of your chest. Your hands. Or in the early mornings, when he's writhed into a contortionist’s ball and the streaking sunlight through the curtains is kissing his abdomen, he imagines it's your leg thrown across his hip, with your face turned into his chest. 

Fuck, it kills him, because he knows what the real thing feels like. He's had you clinging to his waist on colder nights, and he's been under your hands. Tipsy, free with your touches, he's felt the breadth of your palms cupping his cheeks. 

You're pretty, you'd told him, as you love to tell him when you've been drinking, but you need a haircut. 

He never would've let you kiss him in that state, but he kids himself into thinking you wanted to. It was only booze doing what booze does. 

"Read to me, serf," you demand. 

Eddie clears his throat. 

"The enemy is close," Eddie reads, "and the lane is overrun. Sympathy for the second kind had felt natural to Mellissa once, but now that she sees the sharp angling of their shoulders in the dawn light, she aches with hatred…"

The novel isn't bad. It isn't Eddie's favourite; the tone falls flat, and the main character's actions aren't fed by any particular emotion. Its first arc is formulaic, and soon the hero's forced to answer the call. You evidently find his rehashing tedious, as your head tips toward his head, and you wriggle your way down to his shoulder amicably. 

"Don't fall asleep," he says. 

"It's your whispering." 

"I don't want to disturb the ghost." 

"Okay." You start to pick at your nails, little scratches against the cuticle. "I won't fall asleep." 

— 

Your snores aren't gentle. You're a human being and Eddie doesn't expect you to breathe like a princess, but the wheeze is concerning. 

He waits for you to settle down, easing your head onto the pillow. Your airway clears, and your snoring quietens to the same ambient level as the rain hitting the window outside. He feels your head for a temperature carefully. Back of his hand, fingers curled in so his ring can't startle you, he tries to gauge if you're running a fever. 

It isn't normal for you to cat nap in the middle of the day, but the sun is occluded by dark clouds and the rain blots out what's left, leaving the bedroom in darkness, and you'd been warm and fed and Eddie had been doing something monotonous. It makes sense that you'd drifted off. Eddie wishes he felt tired too, so he could slide down under the sheets with you and curl a hand around your wrist. 

He lies on his back, arms crossed over his chest, straining his ears for the sound of a voice. 

I swear, sometimes, I can hear someone talking.

You have a vent in your room, and perhaps a couple of late nights after your shifts had you mistaking a groaning foundation or the wind for a whisper. That's a thing, right? People hear something in the wind. Fatigue has your mind playing tricks on you. Eddie should go to the library and see if they have anything to do with sleep deprivation. 

It's no fun listening for ghosts. Eddie's shoulders and upper back begin to feel tense. The feeling travels lower, a snaking ache that wraps around each vertebrae. Even his tailbone hurts. 

He shifts onto his side and stares at your closed eyes. He blows a breath at you to watch your lashes flutter like tufts of grass in the breeze. 

Your breaths are like a metronome. He syncs his to yours for kicks, just listening. When you're both asleep, does your breath sync on its own? How do your bodies react to each other? Eddie has woken up to your arms around him or your body halfway across the bed, leg falling out from under the covers. You're irregular, where he has a tendency to grab at you while he's knocked out. He doesn't wrap his arms around you so much as hold you in his hands. His fingers curl in the hem of your t-shirts or bracelet your bicep. If he falls asleep with an arm above your head, he'll occasionally wake to find his hand at the top of it, your hair mussed. 

He must be stroking it in his sleep. 

Or maybe you're frizzy. 

No shame in frizziness. Eddie's frizzy more often than not. Curly hair is hard to take care of and he has a lot of it. God knows it was worse before he started seeing that hairdresser in the city who makes magic happen with her thinning shears. 

Your lips part. 

Thunder cracks outside. 

Eddie lifts his head to look out of the window in surprise. Summer days have come to pass and sunset comes earlier in the day, fractals of light bouncing between the violent rain. In an hour or two, it will be pitch black outside. 

He should call Wayne and see what's happening. How he is, and if he thinks Eddie should come home and bring you, too. 

Eddie clambers off of the bed, careful not to wake you. He slides across your hardwood floor and takes the empty dinner tray with him down the spongy carpeting of your stairs, back to hardwood in the hallway, and finally onto the freezing cold linoleum of your kitchen. 

He locates the source of chill quickly. The window in front of the sink has unlatched. It's the thing you call him over for most; when you want to hang out you go to Eddie's, when the window won't close Eddie comes here. 

His shirt hikes as he leans against the sink, his abdomen pressed to the cold countertop as he yanks the window and twists the handle the wrong way, goosebumps climbing his arms. It groans in resistance, but Eddie knows from experience that it’ll stay closed for a while. 

He takes the liberty of turning your thermostat up as he waits for Wayne to answer the phone, coiled cord pulled taut.

Wayne isn't too bothered by the weather, "It's not a hurricane. A storm, sure– you'll be fine. But by all means, come home if you're scared."

"I'm not scared, jerk, I'm concerned." 

He winds the cord around his arm, leaning in when Wayne's voice is hard to hear like it'll make a difference. 

"...might go out," Wayne's saying, "call me, or call around Roger's… get back to… warm." 

"Where the fuck are you? I can't hear a thing you're saying." 

"Don't cuss at me. I'm with Roger, that's why I said to call Roger if I don't answer, he has that new pool table…" Anything Wayne says after that is garbled, like he has a hand pressed over his mouth.  

“I thought Roger had a broken leg?” Eddie says. “How’s he getting around?”

“He hops. I left money in the bread bin for you, did you see it?”

“No, I didn’t see it. Wayne, we’ve talked about this before, I’m working. I appreciate it, I do, but I don’t need you giving me money.”

Whatever Wayne says at first gets eaten by static. Eddie doesn’t know if it’s your phone or the Munson’s. He doesn’t need to hear what Wayne’s saying to get the general gist of it. “…water bill..”

This again? Eddie paid the water bill. He thought he’d be allowed to do that, considering he uses the majority of the water, but it’s been a great point of contention between them.

“I’m sorry!” he says. “If I knew it would bother you so bad I wouldn’t have done it. But I don’t want it back, I’m not a kid anymore, half the time you don’t let me pay for groceries–”

“This might shock you, son, but I’ve been paying for you to eat for a decade. I ever complained? No, ‘cause it’s my job, and I don’t want you thinking any…” the words scratch out. Eddie guesses what he’s saying. 

The broken phone is starting to irritate him. 

He holds in his argument. Call it respect, love, whatever you want. “I’m not saying that! Listen,” —Eddie laughs to himself, words wrought with it like bubbles— “you’re senile.”

“You weasel–” The phone gives up. Whooshing air is all Eddie hears. 

"I can't deal with this. I love you, I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" Eddie asks, rubbing the space between his eyebrows. 

"Yeah, love you too, kid. Eddie–" 

He doesn't catch the end of Wayne's sentence. The line goes dead. He pulls the shiny receiver from his ear and frowns at it. 

Wayne was probably just telling Roger and the guys what Eddie was up to. Or what he thinks Eddie's up to, at least. Eddie told him via note that you wanted help rearranging your bedroom furniture. A small lie, but he didn't want to expose you to any outward judgement until he's sure himself what's going on. 

Eddie hangs the phone on the hook. He grabs your plates, throwing the meagre leftovers in the trash and dumping the plates in the sink. He turns on the hot faucet and grabs a sponge and the dish soap and gets to work cleaning. It takes him all of five minutes, and he's oh so smug about being a decent person that he doesn't notice the chill. 

He dries the plates and puts them in the cabinet across the room with his back to the sink. The dishes clatter together loudly, like a gunshot in the silence. He winces internally and tries to be gentler closing the cabinet door.

The hum of the kitchen light catches his attention. He looks up, unsurprised to find a bug crawling inside of the plastic covering that shields the long bulb. A moth, Eddie thinks, it's fuzz silhouetted in shadow. He doesn't really like moths, but he also doesn't wanna watch one die. 

The rain seems worse when he turns off the light. Your kitchen faces out into the backyard, and through the night Eddie can see the house that's behind yours with its porch lights on. It turns the rain to quicksilver, and provides just enough illumination for Eddie to look up at the kitchen light and know what he's doing. 

He drags a chair to the middle of the room and steps onto it. It's disturbingly slippery. Thankfully, Eddie doesn't plan on doing any acrobatics. He reaches up to the warm plastic light covering and feels along for the ridges to pry it off. One ridge clicks off, and another. He leans precariously toward the other side and feels for the third and forth ridge when thunder rumbles outside, and somewhere in the distance lightning flashes. 

Eddie flinches but doesn't fall. "Fuck," he mumbles. Pussy. 

The plastic falls into his hands and Eddie climbs off of the chair as quickly as he can. It's too hot to handle, banging against the kitchen table as he chucks it down. He'd turned off the light thinking the plastic would cool down fast, and he’d been proven very wrong.

"Shit," he mumbles some more. Your neighbour's porch light turns off, leaving him in total darkness. 

Eddie’s hand aches from his mild burn. It's like whenever he has to wash the frying pan at home, he forgets that while cold water might cool the pan itself, the slim piece of metal that connects the dish to the handle stays hot. He's burned himself so many times on that fucker– 

Lightning flashes again. 

There's someone standing in your yard. 

The second he notices the figure, it lunges left.

Eddie stands frozen on the spot, unsure if he should approach the window to get a better look, or if he should move backward and away from the potential harm. 

He takes a step forward. Mind in a numb state of thoughtlessness, he walks to your sink and stands there silently, looking into the grass and trees for any hint of irregular movement. 

Tree branches rail in the wind and rain. Eddie leans further forward. 

A third flash of lighting comes, and it must have struck close by, as the light it gives off is long and bright. He gets a clear look at the yard and the image of his own reflection in the glass. No dark figure in the tall grass toward the fence, no heinous murderer trying the back door. 

It’s dark again. Eddie puts a hand over the racing pulse of his heart. Fuck, he thinks. I’m seeing things. He’s on edge ‘cause of your fucking ghost, and it’s not your fault but he wonders if maybe loving you is making him tired. He regrets it as soon as he thinks it, what does that even mean? He’s loved you for years. It has never felt like a chore. But… tired. He’s tired. Pining for someone you already have, just not in the way that you want, is exhausting. It’s not your fault and it doesn’t change the fact that he’s exhausted. Today has been a long day. 

He scrubs his eyes with his palms until they burn and lifts his head. 

There’s a girl on the other side of the glass. 

Eddie startles, startles again when he realises she’s not on the other side at all, she’s behind him, outfitted in white like an apparition, like an angel. She’s inside the house, ten feet away in the doorway. 

His neck cracks with the force of his turn. 

“Sorry,” you say, taking a step back into the hall. “I thought you heard me.”

“Oh, shit.” 

You’ve turned the light on in the hall. Eddie turns back to the window and sees your reflection again, no angels and no apparitions. You’re just a girl. 

He half turns and gets stuck like that, hand braced against his eyes, torso pitching forward. “Shit,” he mutters. 

“Are you okay?”

Eddie laughs. “You surprised me. I’m fine,” he assures you, though he takes his time standing at full height. How can such a small scare feel like a marathon? “Creep, who fucking does that?”

“You were totally spaced, dude, don’t blame me,” you say, holding your hands up in mock surrender. 

“I do blame you. I hope you feel blamed. Fucking fuck, that got me.”

“I wasn’t being quiet. I yelled. You didn’t hear me?”

He can’t stop the dubiety that warps his face. “No? What’s your definition of yelling? ‘Eddie?’” he imitates you, tossing his own name into the dark kitchen. “Unbelievable.”

“What were you looking at?” you ask, nodding at the window. 

“Lightning.”

“That why you’re in the dark? Or have I interrupted something?”

“‘M moonlighting as a serial killer.” He grins at you. “Got me.”

You lean against the wall next to the light switch and turn it on, exposing the chair shy of his leg and the plastic cover from your light on the table.

“What the–”

“I’m doing a good deed. Or, I was. There was a moth at one point." 

You help Eddie clip the light back into place. He climbs back on the chair and you hug his legs to make sure he doesn’t fall either way, arms encircling his thighs and your face pressed comfortably to his stomach. Your cheek flush with the naked stretch of his stomach, his shirt hiked up as he struggles to finish what he started, he explains the moth, who, for lack of an escape, has probably found a home in your curtains or your coat rack. You laugh at his softness.

Back upstairs, you won’t let him read to you again, and the ghost monitoring continues on. Eventually, you both get bored and turn on the TV. Eddie forgets his fright, you forget your haunted house, and the night ends. You fall asleep against his shoulder, drool leaking from the corner of your mouth. He pushes you gently down into your pillow, and goes to brush his teeth with a snort. 

Eddie wakes in the morning with a crick in his neck. He feels better, having slept. All his monstrous yearning has fizzled out overnight, and he’s glad to find that the damp circle of dribble under your cheek isn’t cute, it’s gross. (Okay, it’s a little cute. He’s only human.) 

The window brags an end to the extreme weather. Rain nor shine reaches through your drapes; the morning looks mundane. He kicks your shin ‘by accident’ and waits for you to rouse, keeping a safe distance. He doesn’t wanna get his morning breath all over you. That would be inhumane. 

“Ouch,” you croak.

“It wasn’t that hard.” His voice is as rough as yours. 

“Not your kick,” you moan. “My throat.”

“You’ve been drooling again.”

You cover your face sluggishly and your pinky must feel the wet spot staining your pillow. 

“It’s embarrassing.” You dig your heels in at the bottom of the bed and pull your head off of the pillow so you can grab it and throw it out of view. Once it’s bashed against your mirror with a concerning glass sound, you pull the blankets over your face and sigh. “I’ll be here forever, if you need me.”

“Could be worse,” he says lightly. “Imagine waking up with a stiffy.”

“Did you–?” you ask, like you’re terrified to know but couldn’t not inquire. 

“No, but I have. You know I have.”

“True. That is… unfortunately awkward.”

“‘Xactly. Don’t feel weird about your spit.”

You don’t feel as bad as you pretend. Sure, it’s embarrassing. So is puking in your lap at the movies, or ripping your pants climbing over the fence into the woods by Forest Hills, or getting fired after two weeks from the Palace Arcade because the manager didn’t like your ‘general demeanour and/or presence’, all of which he’s done and you’ve been a witness to. He thinks you might be impervious to humiliation as long as you’re together. 

Eddie pulls the blankets over his head, pleased that the morning light reaches you even here. You’re curled on your side underneath them, bleary eyes meeting his from across the small stretch of mattress. You hadn’t touched him once while you slept. 

“I don’t remember falling asleep,” you say quietly. 

“We watched Poltergeist. You fell asleep with twenty minutes left.”

“Can you blame me? Snore.”

“You wanted to watch it.”

“It’s the only movie I own that has a ghost.”

You share a silent look. Eddie tries to keep a straight face and ultimately fails, his laugh roaring. You join in, half reluctant and half delirious in your fatigue. Your sleep-swollen eyes close like you can’t keep them open anymore. 

He stays under the sheets stealing looks at you for as long as he can, despite the building, smothering warmth. The day passes with much of the same. 

—

When you first started working at Leaven, Eddie called you a traitor. He said you’d made it impossible for him to show his face in Bradley’s. He’d been joking — the prices at Leaven are ridiculous, and completely out of the average joe’s budget. Bradley’s remains your go to for everything. He’s come around these days — he likes the fancy soups and admits Leaven’s has the best fresh fruit.

Despite the rich old women who frequent and make your workdays… less than ideal, you like working at Leaven. Your days consist almost exclusively of stacking shelves, but occasionally they chuck you on checkout and you get to sit in a padded chair for ten hours. You’re basically living the American dream. 

Working here has introduced a special brand of monotony to your life. It’s very, very quiet, and that’s how you like it. But there’s something to be said for noise, for Eddie and Wayne’s noise specifically. You like going there after work to shock your body back into the real world. Here’s sound. Here’s life. Here’s love. 

You’re scanning a bag of ‘holistic’ lemons when you notice Eddie lingering toward the front of the store a mere twenty feet away. You don’t wave at him, lest your customer think they aren’t the sparkling apple of your eye and report you to the manager, but you nod jerkily, hoping he takes it for ‘I see you’. He smiles and points his thumb toward the store’s cafe.

When your arms are numb from another twenty minutes of scanning and typing in coupon codes for people who don’t need coupons, you shut down your register and lock it all tight. You take your lunch break early, and thankfully there’s nobody in the cafe to yell at you for being unprofessional. 

You waltz over to Eddie sitting at the back next to the huge glass windows and prop your lunch bag against the coke bottle he’s opened. “Hello, handsome,” you say. 

“Hey, beautiful.”

“You want half of a turkey sandwich?”

He beams at you, kicking your chair out so you can sit. “Nooo, I brought you a hot dog.”

“Oh, gross. Give it to me right now.”

You know he made it at home before he’s even pulled the foil wrapped package from his bag. Eddie makes the best hot dogs ever. Fancy brioche buns, caramelised onions and a mixture of sauces on the world's worst meat. They make you queasy and they might be one of your favourite foods. You open it, delighting in its retained heat. 

His wrist is shiny. You put your hotdog down to grab his arm and bring it closer to your face. He’s wearing a simple tennis chain with black gems like a rich girl. “What is this?” you murmur, pleased to see him wearing something nice. 

“You like that? It was thirty four dollars from a magazine.”

 “I love it. What’s the occasion?”

“My mom’s birthday.” He fishes his own hotdog from his bag and slaps it down in front of yours. You take a huge bite, and can’t answer him when he asks, “Is that really weird, buying myself something when it’s a day about her?”

You steal a swig of his coke and wince the entire time. “Sorry.” You cough. “No, that’s not weird, Eddie. Wanting to buy yourself something nice is a good way of dealing with a shitty day. A day that makes you feel shitty,” you amend. 

“Maybe I should’ve got her a big bouquet of flowers or something.”

“You can still get her flowers.”

“Yeah.”

You take another bite of your hot dog and slip away to get a bottle of water from the cafe. You feel like an asshole for not hugging him. When you return Eddie’s already polished off his hot dog, and has moved onto one half of your turkey sandwich. 

“Are you gonna be weird about it if I hug you?” you ask him genuinely. 

“No.” He puts down the sandwich. “I don’t know. Maybe. I want one, though.”

You wipe your hands in a napkin showfully before approaching his chair. You slide a knee next to his thigh and wrap your arms around his head, a hand between his shoulder blades and the other pulling his face to your chest. You have to slouch. It's not entirely comfortable but it doesn't feel awkward, so you take the win. 

"I'm sorry, Eddie," you say quietly. You think about kissing his head. 

"Me too." 

There's a moment in there where you feel a nasty emotion brewing, sadness and much worse. You know that the gutted pain aching through you right now is nothing compared to what Eddie feels. That loss. 

It must feel so, so heavy. 

You pet his neck affectionately. Your nose dips into his hair, the tip touching his scalp. Your hands come up, like trying to hold water as it trickles between your fingers, Eddie's slipping. You grapple to keep him with you. 

"I love you," you say honestly. He's your best friend.

Eddie pats your back. "I love you too, loser." 

"You're my best friend." 

I would fucking think so, he'd say. 

"You're mine," he says. 

You smile and give him a good squeeze. When you pull away he doesn't look as odd as he had, relaxing against the hard-backed wood of the cafe chair as he tucks his hair behind his ear. He holds your gaze without any weight to it. You sit in your own uncomfortable chair and lean forward to compensate for the space between you, like two slanting trees in the wind, parallel but untouching.

"It's a really nice bracelet," you say. 

"She'd like it, I think." 

You don't know anything about Eddie's mom. She isn't someone he's ever been able to talk about with you. You can't remember the photographs you'd seen once upon a time, but you remember having the distinct thought that Eddie looked more like her than his dad or his uncle Wayne. She'd been beautiful, and her life couldn't be more starkly mourned. 

"I'm sure she would. It's pretty." 

His mouth wobbles. You're horrified for a moment, thinking he might burst into tears, but it's laughter he's chasing, and his little giggle is like a beam of sunlight. "Sorry," he says. Laughter doesn't seem like a good enough word to describe the sounds he's making, such understated, small curls of sound. Fleeting, golden. "She would've liked you, too. She would've loved you." 

"That's a good thing?" you check, cautious that he might be on the precipice of a nervous breakdown. 

"Yeah, that's a good thing. Is it ever bad? To be loved?" he asks.

He's teasing, but it feels like he's asking you something else.  

"You could be a stalker, with that logic." 

And there you go, ruining a moment with a shitty joke because you're too much of a coward to ask questions when you don't know the answer. 

Eddie grabs his coke, tipping his head back as he says, "Who says I'm not a stalker already?" 

Funny how the subtext of a conversation can contain magnitudes for one party and not the other. You worry you're in love with your best friend. He sips at coke and threatens perversion. 

"You're definitely a stalker. You couldn't wait a couple hours to see me tonight?" 

"I didn't realise I would be seeing you tonight," Eddie says, lifting his brows. 

"Oh. I asked, didn't I?" 

Eddie shakes his head. "Are you sure? I don't remember you asking, babe, I'm supposed to go play at Gareth's." 

Babe is his funniest pet name, in your opinion. It doesn't suit you, or him, but it feels good anyhow. Like you're a babe, supermodel pretty for TV or magazine spreads, long legs and not a single wrinkle that isn't marring the paper itself. 

"Bummer for me," you say lightly. "What are you doing, Dio tributes again?" 

"Don't say tributes like that, like we're out sacrificing goats in studded jackets." 

"That's a good image." You laugh. "That's funny." 

"I don't know. He wanted to try something he wrote. Invited Jeff and Jamison. Band's back together." 

"I'll get out my t-shirts." 

You have all the corny classics; I'm with the band; I'm with the guitarist; a Corroded Coffin faux tour shirt, different Hawkins locations written in typeset sharpie on the back. When you made it, Eddie had been wearing the t-shirt and the ink leaked through. He had 'Lover's Lake, Nov 18' between his shoulder blades and 'The Hideout, May 22' over his tailbone for a week. By day three the words had become illegible but you'd known them anyway, in the same way you knew the dots between the letters H and I were freckles rather than ink spots. You've always looked at him more than you should. 

"I could cancel." 

You and Eddie experience the natural ups and downs of friendship, or rather the ebb and flow. You know you come back together eventually if you get too far apart, and there hasn't been a time since you met him where you were worried about the permanence of your relationship. You're human, and you get insecure about it anyway, but then he says stuff like that and you're confronted with how close you are. He puts you first. He has other friends, other healthy friendships and a life outside of you, but you still get to be a huge and important part of the majority, and that is more than enough. (It should be more than enough. Some days it is.) 

"Now why would you do a thing like that?" you ask, sarcastic but soft. "You know they sound shit without you." 

"I don't like knowing you're alone." 

"I'm not lonely," you say. Truth or lie. 

"That's not what I said." Eddie's eyes narrow.

"It's stupid to worry about me, I always lock the doors. I lock the windows, even the ones upstairs. I don't think I'm gonna fall victim to a home invasion anytime soon." 

"I don't think many people think they're gonna be in home invasions until their homes actually get invaded. And it's not really what I'm worried about." 

"Do you ever think that we worry too much?" 

"Yes. We worry constantly. It's, like, our parasitic relationship with each other." 

"Like a tapeworm," you agree solemnly. 

"Exactly. I'm your tapeworm. And I'm worried about you."

"Can tapeworms worry?" you ask. 

Eddie kicks you mildly. "I don't know? I don't think tapeworms have a level of consciousness beyond what's needed for them to survive. They probably think about eating and parasitizing and that's it. Don't make me ask, please." 

You take a pull of your drink to prolong the inevitable. "Ask about what?"

"Your ghost." 

"Ah."

Eddie waits. 

You sigh again. "Look, I don't even know if she is a ghost, I probably just imagined it." 

He pulls himself forward and there's the weight you'd be waiting for, sternness marked into his face one feature at a time. "Liar." 

"What?" 

"You're lying. You don't think you imagined it." He looks you up and down. “You think I don't know when you're lying?" 

"I'm not lying," you lie. 

"You are. I know you are," he says, smiling despite the point he's making. "I know what you look like when you do." 

"What do I look like?" 

"I can't tell you, you might change it, and then I won't know when I'm supposed to look out for you 'cause you never tell me anything." 

"I don't want to talk about the ghost." 

"Why not?" 

"Because you don't believe me," you say too loudly. 

Eddie reaches across the table but doesn't touch your hand. He puts his palm down and leans ever forward, says, "Hey, I do." 

"No, you don't, you think there's something happening to me." 

"What would you think, if it were me?" he asks, frustration seeping in. "Try and see it from how I'm seeing it." 

"If it were you'd I'd believe you because you needed me to." 

You cringe at yourself and veer back into your chair, shoving your hands between your thighs and clamping your legs closed. Your fingers turn numb. 

Eddie doesn't look shocked, exactly. Surprised that you're talking to him unkindly, sure, and concerned. 

This whole situation is ill-fated, you know that. What good can come of a ghost? Hooks from the past. "I never should have told you," you say quietly. 

"Did you tell me?" Eddie asks, speaking with an anger that forms each word like a cut, clean and hurting. "You won't tell me anything. You tell me she talks to you, that she asks you about me. But you won't say what she says, exactly, and you have nothing to show for it. Your notebook conveniently disappeared. I can’t hear her."

He thinks you're making it up. 

Fuck. He thinks you're making it up. Eddie thinks you're lying to him, and while it hurts like a sharp kick to the solar plexus, a flooring, winding pain, it's the embarrassment that has tears glowing along your last line. If he really believes you'd make something up like this for attention, what does he think of you? That you're some silly leech clinging to him through bad lies? That you're bored? That this is a game you're playing with him? 

Your heart beats hard enough that you can feel it in your chest. Your hands shake with anger and hurt at once, your leg bouncing under the table in an attempt to keep the rush of it at bay. You look at Eddie with your lips parted, trying to say what you mean and not what you feel. You want to say something scathing, and you don't want to be cruel, and these are two facts existing at the same time. 

Eddie has other ideas. He sees your eyes turn glassy, he must, because his anger drains and he turns sorry and soft. It reminds you of a different moment like a film cell played overtop, of a younger, remorseful him. The expression he makes when he's just popped you in the mouth wrestling, or burned behind your ear with the hair iron. An accident. 

"I'm sorry," he says. Sheepish, gentle, sincere, embarrassed, too many threads of emotion to summarise with one word. "Sweetheart, I'm sorry. Don't cry." 

"Fuck off," you mumble, looking down at your bouncing leg. You push your hand against it, forcing it to lay still. 

"I didn't mean it." 

"Stop, Eddie." 

"I'm just hurt you're not telling me everything and I'm acting like an asshole 'cause I'm a big baby," he says, two shades from frantic. 

A tear rolls down your cheek. You thought for sure you'd escaped them, but it had already welled, and with nowhere to go it races down your cheek. You paw at it and hope he won't see it. 

He does. 

Eddie's chair screeches across the floor as he stands up. You know he'll hug you before he's touched you. Same way you know he's freaking out on the inside, allergic to girl tears.  

His hands take to your shoulders, hesitating there, and one slides behind your neck so his forearm presses against both shoulder blades. His lips ghost warmly over your forehead as he leans in. His other hand meanders, braceleting the top of your arm and running downward before swiftly changing paths to flatten out against the small of your back. 

"I'm sorry," he mumbles, rubbing your back.

His tender hug exacerbates the hurt, like an exsanguination. You cry as quietly as you can manage and Eddie feels it under his hands, the two of you condensed at the back of an empty room. You forget where you are, what you're wearing, what you've been fighting about. What he said. You realise how badly you'd needed him to comfort you lately, and hate yourself for giving in.

He shushes you so quietly you think you might have imagined it. 

Or maybe it was your ghost. 

"I'm sorry," he says, his breath kissing your scalp. "I'm a dick." 

"It's fine," you say. You despise yourself for how weak you sound. 

"It's not fine." 

"I wanted to stay because it's getting worse," you tell him. You don't mean to. 

"Okay. Okay. Then you'll stay. It's no biggie." 

"It's worse," you say, turning your face into his chest. 

You're shaking hard. Eddie can't make it stop no matter how tightly he holds you. 

"I'm sorry," he says again. 

He doesn't have to be. If he was acting out, fine. If he does or doesn't believe you, fine. You don't need him to see ghosts, or apologise that he can't. 

"I just didn't want to do it by myself," you confess, at the very pit of pathetic. You hope he won't hear. Your growing panic about the ghost is a secret you hadn’t meant to tell.

Eddie pulls away. He looks down at you, and if he wanted to he could kiss you, his lips are that close, but he widens the distance. He takes your face into his hands, calluses rough against your tacky cheeks. 

"You think I'm gonna let you? I know I'm fucking it up royally right now, I know I'm an asshole, but I'm not fucking going anywhere, okay? Don't worry. Don't worry about it." He drops his hands to your shoulders. "I'm your parasite, right? Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a parasite? Sometimes they have to pull them out, and they're excruciatingly long, it's a process you don't wanna go through–" 

You laugh wetly. Eddie promptly stops talking about parasites. 

"Forgive me?" he asks. 

You nod on automatic. Of course you do. 

"I swear she's real," you say, rubbing your forehead with the meat of your thumb. You think she’s real, but the truth is that you just don’t know. You amend quickly, "I swear I'm not lying. I am hearing someone… even if she's not real." 

Eddie frowns. "I know. I believe you." 

That's when the real trouble begins.

—

Eddie wants to hold your hand desperately. You're wearing your nicest dress, split hem sewn with infinite care, and your dress shoes with the tiny heels. He doesn't get to see you like this very often, and he wishes it were a better occasion. 

You've had your hair down at the hair stylists in the city, you're wearing concealer. You've done everything you can to look presentable. You look beautiful. He hopes you know that, at least. 

You heave a sigh. You're as anxious as Eddie is to get this over with. 

“You remember Hawk?” he asks you. 

“Jack 'Hawk'?” you ask. 

“Yeah, Hawk.”

“He’d come around for green?” you ask. 

“Yeah, that’s the one. Alright. So, when you were on vacation last summer, Hawk knocked on the door, I answered. I’m straight, right? Haven’t sold anything in years, no plans on selling again. But Jack barrels up the steps and starts going on like I promised him something. I said, dude, I don't deal anymore, and could you possibly shut the fuck up? Wayne’s inside making milkshakes. Blender on, couldn’t hear us but I’m sweating bullets.

“Jack, fucker, starts begging.” Eddie leans into your shoulder, hushed. “He’s saying c’mon Munson, I know you got some, don’t you have a personal stash? I’m desperate.” He picks a piece of hair off of your sleeve. “I didn’t, obviously, and I told him that but he’s not listening to me, he’s getting all wild-eyed and fucking wound like he needs the hard shit. I’m just trying to get rid of him at that point, I don’t know if he was tweaking but he looked like he was going to hit me and I wasn’t interested in fighting.” He laughs, encouraging a smile from you. “Wayne’s inside making milkshakes. Full fat with vanilla extract– I’m not about to take a trip to Hawkins General.”

“What did you do?” you ask. 

“I said to him, even if I did you wouldn’t be getting anything, asshole, and pushed him toward the steps, you know? It felt good, standing up for myself.” 

“And he left?”

“No, he fucking hit me straight in the dick. Can you imagine that? Junk shot on my own front door.”

You gasp with giggly indignation, hanging on his every word now. Eddie knows he’s taken you out of your head, even if it’s temporary.

“He hit you in the dick,” —you whisper ‘dick’ like it’s insidious within these four walls— “‘cause he wanted pot? You should’ve pushed him off of the porch.”

“I would’ve but he fucking winded me.” He starts laughing again, your giggles contagious though you try to smother them with your hand. “It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny at the time.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“He was five foot one. I’ve never felt that humble in my life, I told Wayne I was coming down with something and had the worst afternoon nap ever. Didn’t even get my milkshake.”

“No,” you mumble sympathetically. Your eyes widen. “Eds, I’m sorry, that’s not funny. He assaulted you–”

Eddie waves his hand at you. “He got in a cheap shot. I was fine. I’ll still have kids.”

You snort, “Thanks for the information.”

“I got him back for it, anyway.”

He pretends like that’s the end of that, like the story doesn’t go on and he has nothing to tell you. You wait raptly for him to explain but he gloats, knowing you're hooked. 

You elbow him. 

“What?” he asks. “Oh, you wanna know how I got revenge? You’re evil.”

“Less shame and more story,” you say. 

“Alright. Are you ready? Here’s where it gets complicated.

“I’m at The Hideout listening to that new band that blazed through here a couple of months ago, Board Growth, or something? They’re incredible, the booze is cold, I’m tipsy and Gareth owes me anyway, I’m putting it all on his tab and he, seemingly, isn’t noticing. It’s great. Better if you hadn’t been on vacation again, what the fuck, but it’s good. 

“And there he is. It’s the fucking Hawk. He’s looking down his nose at these young girls smooth-talking them. Or, he’s trying to smooth talk them, but it’s like watching a worm flirt with a praying mantis, okay, we all know who’s gonna lose.” Eddie’s knee rests against yours, your hand is on his thigh, he’s losing the thread of his story fast under the smell of your perfume and hair oil. “I knock back the rest of my drink, slick my hair like I’m James Dean and, in all my drunken intelligence, decide that this is the perfect moment for me to get him back.”

“I wasn’t on vacation.”

“What?”

“I only went once.” You’d gone for two days with some old friends. He remembers now, and rushes to fix the story.

“Why didn’t you come, then?” he asks, flipping the script. “You’re such a flake.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know when this was.”

“Stop bailing on me and ruining my stories,” he says, teasing. 

“Okay, you’re hopped up on liquid courage and about to hit Jack in the dick,” you prompt. 

“Right! I stroll up to Hawk and he’s instantly wriggly like the worm of a guy he is, and I say, hey Hawk, how’s it hanging? 

“Maybe he’s just that stupid or maybe he thinks I’m putting out the olive branch but he actually starts telling me how he’s doing, and I’m looking at these girls as if to say, can you believe this guy? I cut him off, and I’m a loser, I’m not half as cool as I think I am but again I’m slightly incredibly inebriated. I’m making bad decisions.”

“Where’s your cafeteria bravado?” you ask.

“It’s worse than that. Imagine me at my most insufferable. I smile at the girls and I lean into Jack’s space, I’m laughing, I feel bad about what I’m gonna say before I’ve said it but I say it anyways. I lean right into his ear and tell him at full volume how sorry I was to hear about his recent bout of syphilis. I’m just so glad they caught it in time, man,” he says, imitating a past self. 

You open your mouth. “And,’ Eddie says, jumping to finish, “so happy you could keep most of it, buddy.”

“Eddie…”

“I’m a bad person.”

“No,” you mumble, hiding your smile on his shoulder, your forehead a hair’s width from his chin. You’d laugh a storm any other day to make him feel good, whether you think he’s funny or not, but today all you can manage is a hand on his leg. “You’re not a bad person, he deserved it… fucking hit you…”

The story isn’t true. 

He made it up. Right here right now. He just spent five good minutes of your lives spinning an outrageously awful story with poor jokes and one glaring plot hole, for what? 

This is hard. Making you cry, begging you to see what a doctor has to say, playing grown up in a grown ups body. Eddie thought you’d get to be kids forever. He never imagined what would come after school, and then suddenly it is after, and everything’s an ugly boring mess except for you (and Wayne, god bless), and now you’re sick. The waiting room you’re in, the road here, the look on your face when he told you what he wanted from you. It’s all… heartbreakingly monotonous.

One doctor's appointment, he whispered across pillows. Late and neither of you asleep. The sound of cicadas outside and Wayne’s deep snore a room away. 

You nodded and closed your eyes, and you didn’t say another word all night. 

What’s the worth in a made up story? What good will it do? You have to see the doctor eventually. Distraction, Eddie thinks pleadingly. Relief. He just wants to give you as much relief as he can from what’s happening with the only thing he feels he has —his quick mouth. 

He stares at your hand on his thigh. He wills himself to raise his own and put it on top of yours. He channels his thoughts, like this is telekinesis and not his own body, move. Move your hand, he says to himself. 

It's a millimetre out of his pocket when they call your name. 

You shoot up like a stalk and smile at the nurse who's come to collect you. You don't look jittery anymore, but there's a distinct doe in the headlights look about you as Eddie watches you trail down the hallway into the doctor's office. You look back at him three times, and each time is a whip.

As soon as the door closes, he bends forward in his chair and heaves a sickly sigh. His nausea has him coughing into his hand and praying he doesn't throw up here. If they want you to go somewhere today, like a pharmacy for temporary medication, or the emergency room for a CAT scan, he can't be covered in his own vomit. 

A child babbles across the room. Eddie peeks at her through his fingers. She's pale with dark hair, much like Eddie himself, and her mom is the same. The kid's mom doesn't look like Eddie's mom besides that, but seeing her here in a hospital makes it impossible not to think of her. She's been on his mind so much lately. Her birthday is at the end of the month, and it isn't the same —she'd been in hospital for three brutally short days— but you're being here is like peeling the scab off of a wound he thought healed years ago. 

Mom was everything. She was willowy and beautiful and tough as a board. She was smart, she knew everything; how to make microwave pizza taste gourmet, how to make whistles out of blades of grass, how to make a bad day feel brand new. 

He wished he could say that he has her every detail committed. The cruellest, most terrifying thing about the people we love is that they aren't permanent, not their life and not what they leave behind. Over time, his mom has turned from an aching spear of love to a dappling of sunlight through the branches of an old tree — scattered. Beautiful and impossible and a thousand pieces in his memory, slowly fading over time. 

There'll come a day where Eddie can't remember her. He knows that. He knows his frame of reference for who she was will reduce down to her photographs, and the nearly empty bottle of her perfume under his bed. 

Eddie is haunted by her absence everyday. 

There is no corporeal apparition of her at his shoulder, no cool chill running down his spine, but he's haunted all the same. It's why he won't accept your ghost. It's why he can't. He knows what it feels like to have someone with him who isn't really here, and he won't let you suffer through the same thing. He'll protect you from this, from her. 

Even if it means he has to take you to doctors offices an hour out of town. If he has to bargain for it, and make you cry at work, and– and fucking drive this wedge between you, he'll do it. 

He needs you to be okay. 

He can't think about his mom anymore. He loves her, he misses her, but if he thinks about her too much he won't be able to stand up. 

Eddie sits up, takes a lungful of air in, and waits. He senses you as you come back down the hall, grateful for your dry cheeks, and your small, small smile. Tiny but irrefutably there.

He stands up and holds out his hand. You don't take it, but you walk into his side so your hips are pressed together and he falls into step with you. 

"So…" he says. 

"She asked if I was getting enough sleep," you say, "and I told her I was. I explained everything to her like I promised I would, even– even… I told her everything. And um, she seemed very open." 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah, she– OK." You frown. 

"Listen, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I know I practically forced you to come, but it's still your life, and you can have privacy from me–" 

"It's not that. I just don't want to cry in here." 

He puts his hand on your shoulder, his arm folded against your shoulder. You don't speak until you're out of the doctor's office and weaving through people as you walk toward the parking lot. 

"She thinks I'm having auditory hallucinations. And that it could be an initial symptom of schizophrenia, or something else. She said it usually starts around my age, and–" 

"Hey, it's okay," he says, though internally he feels as distressed as you're beginning to look, horrified by your crumpling chin and wringing hands. "It's okay. You don't have to say it if it's going to upset you." 

"It might not be anything," you say, shaking your head. "She said the human brain is complicated, and sometimes stuff like this just happens. She wants to, uh," —your voice twists up very high— "see me again after I've had some sleep to see if it's persisting." 

Eddie nods. He's fucking glad that the doctor took you seriously, grateful for her advice and her reluctance to misdiagnose you with something. It's not as though Eddie wants you to be experiencing hallucinations. But he thinks you are, and he needs help looking after you if that’s the case. 

"Did she prescribe anything?" he asks. 

"A week's worth of ambien. She didn't really want to, but I told her about, you know, you coming over to make sure I'm okay, and I know that was because of the gh–" You bite your lip. You're shaking like a leaf. "Well, she thought it was you making sure I'm not an insomniac. Which I'm not." 

"I'm really proud of you," he says quietly. "I know you don't want this to be happening. I get it, I promise. I don't want it either, but this is a good thing." 

He can see you regaining some composure. You smile a little, and you offer him your prescription paper. "You know it only costs seven dollars for seven ambien?" 

"I could get you some for free." 

Your laugh startles him. "No, I don't think so." 

"I'm not offering. Just saying. I know a guy." 

"No, you knew a guy who knows a guy who could get me something ridiculous, like a percocet." 

"I'd never give you anything like that." 

"I know." You come to a halt. The cloudy weather paints you in shadow. "I'm sorry this is happening." 

"You're what?" He doesn't let you answer moving to stand in front of you. "Why would you apologise for this?" 

"Because it's my head," you say stiffly. 

"You didn't want this to happen. And– and it might not be happening at all. You'll try the ambien, and you'll take care of yourself, and we'll go from there. I wasn't trying to scare you… I wish I could brush it off, you know? I wish I could believe that you…" He takes you in. Your skirt and jacket are swaying in the cold wind. You look one sharp shove from falling over. "I get that it isn't like me, to not believe in the fantasy–" 

You save him from his miserable attempt at placating you. 

"I know." 

He licks his lips. 

"I love you," Eddie says as he starts toward the van again. "Let's go fill your prescription, and then I'll get you whatever you want to eat."

"Boys are so weird about I love you," you say, following. The light behind your eyes makes your teasing worth it. "You say it like you chewed on it first. Struggled to get that one out, did you?" 

It's not your best insult. Neither of you are exactly on form. 

"Just so hard to say it to you." 

You take what you perceive to be an insult on the chin. Only Eddie knows there's a sliver of truth in what he's said. 

You generously let him help you into the passenger seat. He's hopeful that your mood's improved until that wretched frown worms its way across your pretty mouth once again. You wait for him to round the hood and start the van before you explain yourself. 

"There's a support group. For anybody who's, um, hearing voices. Schizophrenics, manic depressives…" 

"Is that something you want to go to?" 

"I don't know. Can I be honest with you?" 

"Yeah. Absolutely." 

"I don't know if I believe that it isn't real. I know that's the point. The definition of hallucination is, uh… an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present, and so… it makes sense. My ghost isn't there, even if I think she is, so I must be hallucinating, but Eddie," —you shrink in on yourself— "I have this feeling that won't go away." 

He loves you. You're terrified. 

He's already guessed what you're going to ask for.

"Can we try again? Please? I'll take the meds and I'll go to the support group, but in the meantime, could you please come back and just– just listen. Maybe it takes a while for her to talk to someone else." You scrub your face. "Fuck. I sound fucking crazy." 

Eddie squeezes the wheel. "Don't say that. Don't say it like you've done something wrong. You didn't do anything wrong." 

People say crazy but they mean sick. They ridicule what they can't understand. 

He doesn't understand, but he wants to. He says, "If you want me to, we'll try again. I'll come over." 

You look up from your palms. He notices almost habitually that they're smaller than his. When you were young teenagers there'd been a short period of time where you'd been the taller one, with bigger hands and a bigger smile. Lately, you've seemed small. 

"Really?" you ask hopefully. 

"You came here 'cause I asked you to. It was hard for you." He turns his eyes to the road and turns the key until the Beauville's engine is thrumming with life. "I'd do a lot of shit for you, superstar. Like, anything. If you need me to keep trying then I will. And you'll–" 

"I'll keep trying too," you promise. 

It's all he can ask for. 

— 

The sky is all kinds of grey. It stretches like a sheet from one corner of your eye to the other, darker toward each limit of your vision, a gradual decay into colourlessness toward the very top where the sun fights hardest to burst through an impossible expanse of clouds. They seem thick as marshmallo, but where they begin is hard to decipher. 

Your eyes feel sore. You imagine a hand reaching for you, hitting you, pressing its cold knuckles to each bruised eye socket to calm the raging ache behind them. You hadn't expected to feel this way. It isn't the first time you have, but to feel so intensely unreal while there's someone still with you is new. You lean your weight against the sill and let your arms swing from the open window ledge, knuckles scraping the scratchy brick of the house's exterior walls, instantly chilled by the weather. 

A black band of birds burst across the sky somewhere leftwards. The pitch and tumble with no discernible formation. They're too far to hear. You imagine the flap of wings, their buoyed cawing, screeching to one another as they swim between pylon cables and their brothers spread wings. 

"What kind of birds do you think they are?" Eddie asks. 

You feel his weight settle into the ottoman beside you. You'd dragged it to the window with tired arms. You haven't felt up to anything since you got home, though Eddie's promise should've restored a little hope. He's going to keep trying to meet your ghost. You'll have to hope you don't get worse before that. 

You know, starkly, that you aren't having auditory hallucinations. You know, starkly, that your ghost had written to you in your missing notebook. 

But maybe that's the nature of your hallucination. A night bent over the pocket dictionary had ended as this one begins, with the crushing realisation that you cannot trust what you know. To put it plainly, you're afraid that you're mentally unwell. Terrified of how it’s going to change your life, the people in it.

Eddie's afraid too. 

Your orange bottle of pills glares like a flame to your right where it stands waiting for you on the nightstand. Eddie's made up your bed for the two of you. He could sleep in the guest room, and he never has. 

"I don't know," you say hoarsely. Your voice sounds as you feel, like something has its hooks in you, and it's dragging you down, down… 

"They're too big to be pigeons." 

"They're too dark. They're crows," you guess, tracing an outlier as he skirts the crowd of his family and spirals up into the air. 

Like a party trick, you expect him to disappear, or explode, or rocket up into the cotton clouds and out of view. He slows as he falls, and then he dives back toward the main swarm of birds as they migrate toward the horizon. 

There's a feeling brewing in you that you don't like. 

If you can't trust your own perception. If real isn't real. If you need someone to sit beside you and distinguish real from fake, if… if you're sick. 

If you're sick, what does that mean? 

You search for something in the air to hold onto. 

Eddie hums softly, his hand pushing out into the static as he points toward the glowing clouds. "Sun's going down slow." 

You raise your hand and wrap it around his. It isn't enough. You force your fingers between the gaps of his, just a little longer, thicker, solid, and lock him in. He feels real. That's the key. As far as you know, hallucinations don't carry that far. Bugs crawling over your skin and through the strands of your hair, an itch you can't scratch, a drop of rain from a concrete ceiling, the brain can recreate these things. But the exact width of Eddie's palm or the feeling of his calluses against your loveline, your lifeline, and the heartbeat that bumps against the meat of your thumb when you focus, that's impossible. That's a level of precision the human brain can't find. 

Right? 

Eddie curls his thumb around yours. You can feel his gaze on your cheek like a breath blown between parted lips. You turn toward him, and you catalogue every little mar or mark, every fine hair. His wrinkles, his textured jaw. The strands of a fallen curl come apart near his eye, grown out bangs kissing the highest point of his cheek.

You're panicking. There's a thumping behind your eyes. 

"I don't know if you look right," you say. 

"I look very right. I'm extremely handsome," he says. 

You hold his hand out of the window, worried you'll drop it, and it'll fall. 

If Eddie were at home tucked into his double bed a mile away, she would've talked to you by now. Your breath shortens as the meaning behind that thought solidifies. 

She only comes when you're alone. Why do you think that is? 

She's not real. 

Is that how it works? Can hallucinations, auditory, visual, or otherwise, take place in the company of others? You know next to nothing. Maybe they aren’t so common with loved ones standing guard. 

You push your head out of the window again and look down at the flat, dying grass in the backyard, a yellowing carpet of bluegrass. Bluegrass is prominent because it can grow anywhere, like mould. With all the rain these past few days, the grass should've livened into a plush and solid green, like the lawns in the southern side of Hawkins where the rich people lavish in sprinklers and gardeners alike. It remains rumpled.

Eddie rubs the back of your hand. It's far from the closest you've ever been. There have been nights you spent unawares in his arms, waking with your face tucked into his neck, so embarrassed you couldn't look at him afterward. But it's the most intimate touch you've ever endured. The whorls of his fingerprint embossing itself into your hand, a quarter circle that doesn't cease. Time feels brief and unsteady. 

Eddie must realise you're having a bad moment. He shuffles closer to you, your arms twined, his hair tickling your shoulders. It snaps you back, in a way, with its softness. 

"Let's go to bed," he says when the sky's more charcoal than light. 

You're cold. You follow. You latch your hand in his and he doesn't say a word, closing and locking your window with one hand, pulling the sheets of your bed back deftly for you to climb in. You slide across to the outermost side and he follows, leaning over you to pull the sheets to your chin. 

He stays hovering there. 

He holds very still. 

"Everything's going to be okay," he whispers. 

"What if it isn't?" 

"It will be, you…" he trails off. He keeps your hand in his, but he plants his elbow on the other side of you, like a lover about to share sweet nothings, his face so, so close. "You'll be okay, no matter what happens." 

"I wish she'd told me more," you say. 

"The doctor?" He draws a small, careful line across your cheek with his index finger. "Sweetheart, we'll find out everything there is to find." 

"I want to know how scared I should be. Because this feels like torture." 

"You don't have to be scared." Eddie smiles, and as far as you can tell, though you're having trouble trusting yourself, it's one of his genuine smiles. "Why do you think I'm here, huh? It's not to watch as something bad happens." 

You lift your chin. He's too close to look at both eyes at once: you have to choose, and you can't. Your irises dance back and forth between them, shuddering in indecision. 

"You'll look after me," you say, not a question. 

He turns his hand, stroking down the length of your cheek with the backs of his fingers. They feel much softer than the undersides, the flat of his nails like silk. Your eyes burn as you free your hand from his, hoping he'll be kind with that one, too. 

"I'll look after you." 

You tuck your hands behind the trim of his waist and, knowing you shouldn't, let them feed into his shirt. You draw a shaking line through the downy soft blanketing the small of his back until your finger is skipping up the jutting bumps of his spine. It's like climbing a staircase by touch alone. You wonder if anyone else had ever done this to him, if they ever wanted to, and if he'd let them. 

Eddie releases a breath. Warmth feathers along your skin. 

His hand strokes down to your neck, resting at your collar. Half a second and his petting returns, the side of his thumb brushing your soft jawline tenderly. 

He must feel you swallow. His pupils travel down the whites of his eyes like the steady descent of the setting sun. 

"I can't," he says softly.

Can't what? you want to ask. You don't know if you should. You know the answer, but does he?

"You're not all here," he says, hand paused. He cups your cheek, holds you in place. You hadn't been moving. "But when you are, I could. I could."

"I don't know if I…" you drift off. How can you explain it to him? I don't know if I'll feel better any time soon. 

His eyes move sideways, as if the instruction for your reassurance lay somewhere in the apple of your cheek. 

You don't want him to kiss you if it's a fixative meant to soothe your rampant nerves. You want him to kiss you for a hundred reasons, but that's not one of them. You're not sure he wants to kiss you beyond that. 

He would, you realise. Kiss you, if he thought you wanted it badly enough. That's a lot of power to have over someone, more than you want over him, and you can't ask him to. You look away from his eyes and search upward, trembling hands and the starts of your forearms pressed to his back, hiking his shirt up one inch at a time. 

He sits up agonisingly slowly, in the same way the sky has fallen from light to dusk; inchingly, so as to escape notice, until suddenly you can't feel the emanating heat of his chest against yours anymore, and the only light inside of your room is a yellow band sliced by the ajar door. 

Your hands fall back. One under the sheets, one over. Eddie sits where you lay, his hands at the crook of your elbows. He gives symmetrical, superficial massages to each. 

The life has been sapped from you, as if it were tied to the sun sunk beyond the horizon. A brutal fatigue sets in. 

"You should take your ambien," he murmurs. 

"Okay." 

The eye tattooed on his arm seems to follow you as he reaches for your seven dollar bottle. He twists off the cap and shakes a single pill out for you, and you watch as the lines of his arms start to blur. 

You take your pill, lying firmly in the middle of your pillow, and wonder if now would be an appropriate time to burst into panicked tears.

"I'll look after you," Eddie repeats after a while. Or maybe he doesn't. The weight of the day and the helping kick of your medication pulls you under. He lays down next to you carefully, his hand searching under the covers for yours. 

And there, standing in the corner of the room, is your ghost. Real. Stunningly, terrifyingly real. 

You can’t open your mouth wide enough to warn him.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

end of part one! thank you so much for reading, I really hope that you enjoyed! this was my baby and such a labour of love in April and I’m so happy now to share it :D if you have the time, please consider reblogging, it means so much to me and I’d love to know your thoughts on the story so far <3<3

[stevestark]

Eddie only gets told snippets of everyone else's Upside Down experiences after Vecna, like, the sanitized version. The story told by each person but omitting the most personally traumatizing parts. Which means he doesn't know much about Steve and Robin Versus The Russians. Not in its full, gory detail.

So he doesn't think anything of it when Steve has a day off and wants to hang out, just asks if he minds coming with him to Indianapolis. Steve says yes immediately because he just doesn't want to spend another day alone in his big empty house, even if it means several hours in Eddie's deathtrap of a vehicle.

But then they get there and Eddie is parking outside a tattoo parlor and saying he got a last minute booking with his favorite artist and that he's so excited to cover some of the scars he has from the bats and Steve can barely hear him over the fuzziness that seems to be filling his entire brain.

He lets Eddie guide him into the shop, watches Eddie and the tattooist make small talk, follows Eddie to the table, sits on the stool next to him, and tries to look anywhere but at the tattoo gun.

Eddie doesn't notice at first, too jazzed about the idea he and the artist have come up with, blabbering about how he can finally take his shirt off at the lake again. It's not until the line work is done that he realizes Steve's breathing has gone shallow.

He asks the artist if they can take a smoke break before filling the tattoo in with color, and he gently takes Steve's hand and pulls him out back to ask what's wrong. Steve's too deep into a panic attack to answer, so Eddie just puts Steve on the side opposite his new work and pulls him in close, squeezing him as tight as he can and just gently shushing him, running his hand through Steve's hair.

After a few minutes, Steve's breathing easier, and Eddie asks him again if he's okay.

"I'm fine, I just... I hate needles. Ever since the Russians drugged me and Robin. Can't be around them."

Eddie frowns, realizing this must be one of the parts of the story he knows they were keeping from him. "Why did Russians drug you?"

Steve sighs, pulls out of Eddie's grasp, and sits on the ground against the back wall of the tattoo shop. "Dustin picked up a Russian transmission, summer of '85. We translated it, found their secret base under the mall, and realized they were opening the Gate back up. But then we were seen, and to buy time, Robin and I let ourselves get caught so Erica and Dustin could escape and get help."

Eddie sits next to Steve, their knees bumping. "Erica Sinclair? God, that kid really is the most badass of all of us."

"Yeah," Steve laughs. "Anyway, the Russians beat the shit out of me, asking who do you work for and shit like that. Didn't believe me when I said Scoops Ahoy. So they brought in this Doctor and he drugged me and Robin to get us to talk. Just straight up jammed a big ass needle full of mystery drugs into my neck. Ever since then, needles freak me the fuck out. They had to strap me down in the hospital just to get an IV in me when Robin insisted I get the bat bites checked out."

Eddie runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Steve. I never would've brought you here with me if I knew."

"I know," Steve says quietly. "'S'not your fault. I'm trying to get better at being open about things like this but it's just..."

"Hard. Yeah. I wake up screaming most nights, and I can tell Wayne feels bad because he doesn't know what to do. Because he doesn't know what's causing it."

"Yeah," Steve sighs.

They sit quietly out there for another ten minutes before the tattooist comes back out to see if Eddie wants to keep going, and he glances at Steve, sees the way he's gone pale and rigid, and shakes his head. "Sorry, man, think we're gonna have to pick this up another time."

Eddie stands, grabs Steve's hand and hauls him to his feet, and walks inside, never once letting go of Steve. He sets an appointment for a few weeks from now, on a day he knows Steve is working, and they leave the shop.

The second they're in the car, Eddie sees the color returning to Steve's face, and he drives aimlessly through the city, finally stopping at a combination bookstore/cafe.

"Come on then, big boy," he says with a teasing grin. "I do believe I promised to teach you about Hobbits."

[byersbootyshorts]

New Ink (E.M.)

You and Eddie get matching tattoos. But the way he reacts in the tattoo chair leads to you have some fun with him when you get home.

Word Count: 2,125

EXPLICIT CONTENT MINORS DNI!!

Warnings: sub!Eddie, fem!dom!reader, smut, unprotected sex, mommy kink, hair pulling, degradation, a bit of praise at the end, Eddie’s a little bit of a masochist, Eddie and reader get a tattoo, needles, swearing

Leave a request here

Making my miraculous return with an Eddie fic

“Eddie, you have tons of tattoos. Why are you so scared to get this one?” you asked as you pulled up next to the tattoo shop.

“I’m not scared,” Eddie replied defensively. “It’s just… it’s in a very sensitive area.”

You smirked and leaned in close to his face. “Don’t worry, I’ll hold your hand,” you chuckled, kissing him quickly before turning the engine off and getting out of the car.

The tattoo artist, Nico, knew you both pretty well. Eddie was a regular customer and you’d gotten quite a few tattoos recently too. He smiled at you when you both entered the dimly lit, cigarette scented shop.

“Hey guys,” Nico greeted you, pulling the reference photo you’d shown him the last time you visited the shop out of a drawer. “We still going for this design?” he asked, showing you the photo:

“Yep, thanks Nico,” you replied chipperly. Eddie just gave a shy nod.

“Who wants to go first?”

Usually Eddie was the one to jump at the chance to add to the collection of ink on his body. But this time he stayed silent.

“Alright then, I’ll go first,” you said, giving Eddie a reassuring smile.

You both followed Nico through a curtain, behind which lay a black leather chair and a bench full of tattoo equipment.

Eddie sat on a small stool in the corner while you removed your pants and climbed onto the chair.

“You know, this is a pretty painful tat you two are going for this time,” Nico said as he wiped down the skin where the tattoo would be.

“Yeah, I know, don’t remind me,” Eddie mumbled, nervously covering his face with his hair.

“Eddie’s a little scared for this one,” you told Nico as he turned on the tattoo machine. The buzzing sound caused Eddie’s leg to bounce up and down anxiously.

“Well, I don’t blame him,” Nico replied. Taking one more glance at the reference photo before looking up at you. “You ready?”

“Of course,” you said, catching Eddie’s eye from across the room.

You maintained eye contact with him as the small needle pierced your skin. It hurt like hell but you weren’t going to let him know that.

“See, Eddie, it’s fine,” you said, preventing the pain you felt from showing in your voice. Eddie just shrugged in response.

You spent the next few hours engaging in conversation with Eddie and Nico. You talked about anything that would take your mind off the stinging pain in your hips. But eventually it was finished. Nico covered your new tattoo in film and you swapped seats with Eddie.

Eddie was practically shaking as he climbed onto the chair. Nico went through his usual routine of cleaning Eddie’s skin and preparing his equipment while Eddie looked at you with wide eyes.

“It’s ok,” you mouthed to him. “If I can do it so can you.”

 He threw his head back, shut his eyes, and screwed his face up as he anticipated what was to come.

Eddie let out a quiet whimper when the needle made contact with his skin.

“Holy shit, man,” he said, breathing in sharply. “How the fuck did you sit through this for two hours?”

“I did it because I’m not a pussy, Eddie,” you replied, hoping that would motivate him to continue.

Eddie battled through the next thirty minutes, biting his lip in an attempt to stifle the pain.

But as Nico drew further down his body, Eddie got more and more sensitive. His head turned to look at you and he reached his hand out, giving you a desperate look.

“Don’t be a pussy, Eddie,” you said, remaining seated.

“Please,” Eddie begged grabbing for your hand.

You sighed, slowly getting up and walking towards the tattoo chair. Eddie gripped one of your hands tightly and you used your other hand to stroke his hair.

Eddie felt like he’d been sitting in that chair for days when Nico finally finished the first side of the tattoo. Nico moved to the other side of Eddie to begin the second half of the tattoo. And that’s when you saw it. Nico had been blocking your view of Eddie’s crotch, but now he was on the other side you could very clearly see the bulge that had been growing in Eddie’s boxers.

“Oh my God,” you whispered, your jaw dropping as you looked down at Eddie.

His face flushed red with embarrassment and he squirmed, shifting his legs in an attempt to hide his boner.

“Keep still, Eddie,” Nico said, not looking up from his work. It seemed like Nico hadn’t noticed Eddie’s bulge. Or he didn’t care.

“Yeah, come on, Eddie,” you smiled down at him, tugging his hair slightly to tease him.

Eddie whined, his hand flying over his mouth to stop himself from making any more noise.

You stood holding Eddie’s hand, smirking at the fact that he got a boner from the pain of the tattoo, until Nico finally announced that he was finished.

Eddie leapt off the chair as fast as he could, wincing at the pain of the new ink, and hastily pulled on his pants, adjusting them as best he could to hide the swell that still protruded from the fabric.

You thanked Nico, paid him, and returned to the car.

“Holy fuck,” you grinned as Eddie slammed the passenger side door. “You’re a little masochist, aren’t you?”

“Don’t you already know that?” he said shakily.

“Well, yeah. But I thought pain only turned you on during sex. I didn’t realise you’d get a hard on at a fucking tattoo shop,” you replied.

“Can you just drive?” Eddie asked quietly. “I kind of have a situation going on here.”

Your eyes dropped to his crotch and your smirked. “Oh yes, now that’s a situation we’ll have to take care of.”

You drove slowly back to Eddie’s trailer, watching him squirm as you refused to drive any faster. Eventually you made it to the trailer park. Eddie fumbled to get the key in the lock as you stood close behind him, breathing down his neck. When he finally got the door open, Eddie raced to his bedroom. You followed behind nonchalantly. By the time you reached the room Eddie had already removed his pants, the transparent film that covered his new tattoo peeked out from above his underwear.

“Let me see,” you said, pushing him down onto his bed. You knelt down between his legs and hooked your finger in the waistband of his underwear. Eddie smiled, thinking you were finally going to relieve him. But instead, you ran your finger down the covered tattoo, causing him to shiver.

“Yes, I think Nico did a good job this time,” you critiqued, paying no attention to the frustrated expression on Eddie’s face.

As you continued to feel the red skin surrounding the tattoo Eddie’s stomach tensed and his breathing became heavy.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is that painful?” you asked with a tone of condescension.

Eddie just grunted, leaning back on his hands.

“You want mommy to kiss it better?” you asked. That grabbed Eddie’s attention. He looked down at you and nodded violently.

You brought your lips to the sensitive skin of Eddie’s left hip, placing gentle kisses around the tattoo. Eddie whined quietly as your lips tickled his skin. You ran your hand up Eddie’s thigh and rested it just below the bulge in his underwear.

“Please,” Eddie breathed when he felt your hand stop.

You lifted your head and stared up at him with a raised brow. He knew what that look meant. He needed to use his words.

“Please, help me,” he begged.

“Help you? What do you mean?” you smirked, feigning confusion. You rubbed your thumb on his thigh, just an inch away from his dick.

“F-fuck me, please. I’m going insane here,” he almost shouted.

“Oh, ok,” you said, getting up from between his legs and pulling your pants off. “You should’ve just told me that.”

You ordered Eddie to take off the rest of his clothes and he obeyed, pulling off his shirt and underwear as quickly as he could while you did the same. He sat down on the bed and you straddled his lap. You shoved him back so he was lying down by pushing your lips against his. As you kissed him you grinded your hips against him, causing him to moan loudly into your mouth.

“Oh my God, please just ride me,” he whined.

You didn’t make him suffer any longer. Placing your hands on his chest you positioned yourself above his dick.

“You’ve been hard for so long I’m surprised you haven’t started crying yet,” you said smugly. “Do you want me to make you cry, Eddie?”

Eddie responded with a muffled grunt. But that wasn’t good enough.

“Eddie, come on now. Do you want me to make you cry like a pathetic little baby?”

“Yes mommy, please make me cry. I’m your pathetic baby. Just please let me inside you,” Eddie yelled with agony.

“That’s what I like to hear,” you said lowering yourself onto his cock.

A low moan erupted from Eddie. His mouth fell open and his eyes rolled back into his head.

“That make you feel good?” you asked, watching the pleasure spread across his face.

“Yes mommy,” he panted.

“How about this?” You placed your hands on either side of his hips and pushed down gently on his sensitive tattoos. “Does this make you feel good?”

Eddie let out a high-pitched whimper and bucked his hips up into you.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” you smiled, keeping one hand pressed firmly down on his hip and moving the other to his hair. You tugged the dark strands, eliciting yet another whine from Eddie.

Grinding slowly on top of him you looked down to see him staring back up at you, his brows furrowed.

With one hand he lightly touched your own tattoo. His ringed fingers traced the outline of the film, sending a chill up your spine and causing you to speed up your movements. The change of pace forced Eddie’s eyes shut. You noticed a single tear escape out of the corner of his eye and you wiped it away.

Leaning down to his ear you whispered, “That’s my pathetic little slut.”

You moved your lips down to below his ear, leaving red marks as you worked your way down his neck.

Between kisses you mumbled, “You’re such a little whore.” Kiss “Getting hard at a tattoo shop.” Kiss. “That’s a new low, even for you, Eddie.” Kiss.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Eddie repeated, more tears falling from his eyes now.

He let out a moan with each thrust of your hips. His chest heaved in an effort not to cum. But you knew he wouldn’t last long. Considering how long he’d been hard you were surprised he was still going.

You sat upright again and grabbed Eddie’s hands, which were gripping your thighs. You dragged them up your body and placed them on your tits. Once more Eddie thrust his hips up into you.

“Can I-?” he said between whimpers.

You nodded, positioning your hands on his shoulders as you rolled your hips deep onto him.

“Only because you cried for me.”

“Thank you, mommy. Thank y-,”

Eddie was cut off by his own orgasm. His hands moved to your waist and he gripped it tightly, digging his nails into your skin as he was finally rewarded relief. The sensation of Eddie inside you caused you to finish too. You continued to ride his cock as he shook beneath you, tears rolling uncontrollably down his cheeks.

When you were satisfied you leaned down to place a kiss on Eddie’s lips before rolling off of him onto his stained mattress. You both lay there, breathing in sync. After a few minutes you got up and went to the bathroom. You cleaned yourself up and then grabbed a towel and brought it to Eddie, who was still catching his breath on the bed.

“You were really brave today,” you praised him as you cleaned him up, this time being extra careful not to touch the red skin around the tattoos. “I know you were scared but you did so good.”

“Yeah, except for the fact I got hard in the chair,” Eddie chuckled to himself and ran his fingers through his hair in embarrassment.

“Actually, I quite enjoyed that part,” you giggled, throwing the towel on the floor and climbing back onto the bed with him.

“Oh I noticed,” he said intertwining his fingers with yours.

“I’m going to have to take you to get tattoos more often if it makes you do that.”

[apomaro-mellow]

Tattoo shop AU??

Eddie was devastated when his usual guy packed up shop and went across the country. A good tattoo artist was like a one in a million find. But Chrissy swore by this guy she went to last month.

"He's so sweet and a wonderful artist."

"Taking that with a grain of salt, Miss 1 Single tattoo."

"All the more reason you should go. It was my first time and I didn't feel scared at all with him."

And so there Eddie was, sitting in the chair, about to be worked on by the most beautiful man he'd ever seen. The first time Eddie saw Steve, he wanted to scoff and walk right back out the door. What kind of tat guy had bare arms? It honestly didn't inspire a lot of confidence. But after talking with him and figuring out how to make his new ink work, he found that while Steve was a blank canvas, he was very much experienced.

"Alright, I can tell by how many you have that you're not new to this. But still, I'll say it. Relax. And let's have some fun."

Fun for Eddie was kicking a cop car or experimenting with grilled cheeses. He would not call watching Steve's focus as he tattooed his arm fun. It was intense. It was intimate. Eddie knew he shouldn't be staring. He should be looking at the ceiling or anything else in the room, but he just couldn't help it.

Those thick, dark eyebrows were furrowed in deep concentration and Eddie just couldn't believe he was the focus of it. Technically he paid for this but....Eddie had been through a couple of people before Steve. He'd seen people treat him as just something to draw on. With Steve it was like, well Eddie had never said the reason behind this tattoo, but it was almost like Steve knew how important it was.

When he was finished, Steve still took a moment to inspect it, referencing the drawing Eddie had brought in. It meant Steve continuing to touch his bare arm. God, Eddie felt like a Victorian, getting flustered over an arm touch. Since he was a veteran, Steve spared him the upkeep and aftercare spiel and in a daze, Eddie got up.

"Hey, uh, my number's in the client book, right?"

"Yeah, it is", Steve said.

"You should use it."

Steve gave him an amused smile. "Already planning more ink?"

"Yeah, I'm thinkin' a tramp stamp that says 'You free Friday'?"

"If I'm going to be your go-to guy, I'll have to strongly dicourage that. But we could discuss some other options. Say, on Saturday? When I'm actually off?"

[sidekick-hero]

Dear Future Self

(steddie | 14.5k | explicit | tags: Time Travel, threesome (two Eddies and Steve), self-cest, pwp, double penetration, smut and fluff, POV switches | AO3)

Special Shoutout to @legitcookie with whom I started writing this AGES ago but never managed get very far. I still remember us having so much fun with this idea. I hope you like where I took it 💜

This whole fic is inspired by one of my favorite artists: https://twitter.com/ShinyDirtyCoin/status/1642688399348727808

Summary:

After the events of March '86, Eddie pines for his new friend, the former king of Hawkins High. Too scared to make a move, he has resigned himself to a life as Steve's friend and nothing more. That is, until one hot summer day, a naked guy appears out of nowhere in Steve's bedroom. The naked guy is him from the future, and he says he's here to help Eddie pull his head out of his ass. It turns out that he and Steve are a happy couple in the future. And as if that wasn't enough, he also offers to teach Eddie how to properly fulfill Stevie's needs. Sexy shenanigans ensue.

Spicy snippet under the cut

Then he looks back at Future Eddie. "Okay, then tell us, what is something that you and your Steve have always wanted to try but haven't yet?"

It's clearly the right question, because Future Eddie's eyes go wide, the warm chocolate brown darkening with desire.

"Oh, Stevie. You keep surprising me. You really wanna know?" That last part is clearly directed at Eddie, who's been suspiciously quiet.

Eddie shifts behind him and Steve gasps in surprise as he feels his hard length against the small of his back. He had no idea how turned on Eddie was just by talking about it.

"Yeah." It's just a word, said softly, but Steve can hear the desire in Eddie's rough voice and it makes him shiver with anticipation.

"Good." With that, Future Eddie turns to rummage through Steve's nightstand. The blanket slips from his form, revealing miles of lean muscle and scared, tattooed skin to Steve's hungry gaze.

When Future Eddie turns back to them, he's holding Steve's pink dildo.

"One of the best things that ever happened was when I came home early one day when we first started dating and I found you in my room using this on yourself."

"Oh my God," Eddie and Steve say again in unison. Steve hides his face in his hands, white-hot embarrassment flooding his body. Eddie, on the other hand, wraps himself around him even tighter, his breath hot against Steve's ear.

"Don't. This is the hottest thing I've ever heard. Please, promise to let me watch you someday. Please, Stevie, sweetheart."

Eddie sounds almost desperate for it and it helps a lot to make Steve less embarrassed.

It's Future Eddie who pulls his hands away from his face. "He's right. To this day, I get hard just thinking about it. You're always gorgeous, baby, but watching you give yourself over to your own pleasure is the closest thing to heaven I'll ever get."

"But that's not what I was getting at. After I saw you with your little toy and assured you how fucking hot it was, we decided to play with it together from time to time. Using it on each other, sometimes with our tongues or fingers joining the party. God, Stevie, the first time I added a finger to the dildo in your ass, you went crazy. You came all over yourself with nothing on your cock. Had me almost following you just because it was so hot to watch."

Steve wants to be embarrassed again, feels the blush deepen in his cheeks. But the way Eddie's grinding against his back, his breath coming in the form of quickening pants, the hot breath puffing against his sweaty neck, it's easy to push the feeling down. It helps that he's already hard and aching, and part of him wishes Eddie would stop grinding against his back and just push into him. If he were a girl he would be wet and dripping, ready for Eddie's length to fill him. Ready for Eddie to take him, to use him, to make Steve his.

Future Eddie looks at him, looks at both of them, as if he can read every filthy thought going through their minds. And he probably can. After all, he knows them. He knows them better than they know themselves in that respect.

Future Eddie leans in, his voice dropping to a husky whisper. "One of the hottest things we ever tried? It was the first time we used that pink dildo while I was fucking you. I had you on your hands and knees, both of us a sweaty mess, and I pushed it in while I kissed down your spine. Had you stretched out with my fingers, three of them inside you next to my cock. You were so fucking full baby, rim stretched so wide to make room for me. And the way you moaned my name, Stevie... I've never heard anything like it."

Steve can feel Eddie's breath hitching behind him, the heat from his body almost unbearable. He knows Eddie is picturing it, just like he is, and the thought makes his pulse quicken. Future Eddie's words hang in the air, a tantalizing promise of what's to come.

"We talked about this later. How much you loved being so full, stretched almost to the limit. You said the only thing missing was the feeling of having two real cocks inside you. The fake feeling of the dildo replaced by the real deal. Hot, pulsating flesh. Two loads dripping out of you."

Someone moans brokenly and he's not sure if it's him or Eddie.

"But you may have noticed," Future Eddie gives his past self an amused look, "but I'm not good at sharing. Especially not you. So inviting a stranger was always out of the question."

His gaze becomes pointed, eyes roaming over their tangled bodies, and Steve feels another shiver run through his body. He thinks he knows what’s coming.

"So," Eddie surprisingly fills the ensuing silence, his mouth pressed to Steve's ear. "You want us both to fill you up? Is that it? Two dicks stuffing your hole?"

READ THE WHOLE THING ON AO3

[seths-rogens]

cardboard houses, cardboard hearts | M | 1.9k | ao3

should’ve been finishing my infidelity au, but instead the cardboard joe cutout i was given inspired me to crank this out in one sitting,, anyway, please enjoy :)

—————

Eddie often thanks God that he took the leap and moved to Indianapolis after he finally graduated high school. Not that he really believes in God. Just… figure of speech and all. Though, maybe he’d believe in God if they were a metalhead with tatties and an eyebrow piercing, but he thinks that might ruin their image honestly.

He’s getting off topic.

Eddie often thanks God for Indy in moments like these. Moments where he has a fucking beautiful man pinned to his own front door, strong, thick fingers tangling in his hair as Eddie desperately tries to fit his key into the lock. He shoves his thigh between Pretty Man’s legs - he didn’t catch his name - and presses upwards. Pretty Man whines, grinding down and making it all that more difficult to unlock the goddamn door.

“Hold on, Sweetheart. I just gotta-“ Eddie bites back a groan as Pretty Man kisses down his neck, sucking a bruise over his pulse as the key finally slips into the lock. Chrissy’s never gonna let him live the marks down.

He’s surprised he picked anyone up tonight at all. He’d gone to a concert alone for once, as Chrissy was staying at her new girlfriend’s place, and Gareth and Jeff weren’t the biggest fans of his guilty pleasure artist ‘King S’.

And honestly? In any other world. Eddie wouldn’t be either.

King S isn’t his usual style. Where Eddie usually loves a hard drumline, thrashing guitars and lyrics you can only scream, King S is all soft melodies and crooning vocals set to slow drum beats.

He’d stumbled upon him completely by accident, honestly. It’d been a slow day at the record store Eddie manages. He’d been there for nearly five hours and so far he’d only served maybe three customers - and two of those customers were an old couple shopping for their granddaughter. So he’d picked the first magazine he could reach off the stand by the counter, and flipped it open to a random page.

It’d been an interview with King S, who’d just released his first album at the time. He was talking about his inspiration for making music - his best friend and little brother who, he’s quoted as saying, ‘always ragged on him when he played his pop shit in the car’ - and the meaning behind his stage name - reclaiming an old high school nickname he’d been given after his brief stint as a bit of a mean girl, though now he promises he’s using it for good.

He’d flipped the page to find a double page spread of King S curled up in a bathtub. His eyes were squeezed shut through the lacy masquerade mask that was supposedly his staple (no one knew his real identity after all). His hair was messy and flying all over the place. He was…

He was naked. Or at least that’s how it seemed.

His arms and legs were bare, the black and white photo only emphasising the toned curves of the muscles in his arms and back and the dark hair covering those lush thighs.

Call him obvious but Eddie had been intrigued. He knew they’d received a new shipment of records that morning that weren’t supposed to be hitting the shelves until the next day, so he figured what the hell!

Ten minutes later, elbow deep in a shoddily painted green wooden crate, Eddie emerged victorious with King S’s debut album ‘Robins and Tadpoles’ in his hands.

The album cover was two people’s hands clasped together, matching ice cream cone tattoos on both wrists. There was a little dedication on the back. To R & D.

He took it out to the turntable on the shop floor and dropped the needle. When the soft music started, he was hesitant, but as the album moved on he quickly realised he was hooked.

He’d gone into the shop bright and early the next day - on his day off no less - and bought the album. Only slightly laughing at the look on Mike’s - part time Lit student, part time cashier, full time grump - face.

That had been two years ago, and Eddie had been solidly on the King S train since.

Sure, Gareth and Jeff - and Grant too when he was in town - would tease him about abandoning his people, about betraying the freaks and the weirdos, but really they supported his love for the artist, even if they didn’t quite get it.

So when King S announced a stop in Indy on his second album tour, the guys (and Chrissy) had banded together to get him tickets as an early 26th birthday present. Except when the day came, they were all busy, so he went by himself.

He didn’t mind really, was just happy to be there to appreciate the music. (And the man himself, Eddie has eyes, come on now.)

Elated and feeling just a little self fulfilled after the concert, Eddie had gone to his favourite queer/metal bar, Crash. He’s picked people up there before, sure, but they’ve all been metalheads, just like him, and as many of his friends have said in the past, he’s cursed to have the hots for the preppy jock types.

Usually, that’s not the type of guy he’d find in Crash. Tonight was different.

Eddie had been sat at the bar, thinking about King S’s arms beneath the crimson sweater he wore on stage, when a gorgeous man had stepped up beside him to buy a beer. The man was wearing a dark, charcoal coloured t-shirt under a light grey Members Only jacket, paired with light blue levi’s.

Eddie kinda felt his jaw hit the floor. Could this be the perfect end to the perfect night?

This brings us back to now. Eddie finally pushes the door open, swings Pretty Man around and pushes him back against it.

He drops his keys somewhere. It doesn’t matter. He’ll find them tomorrow.

They’re grinding fast against one another now, only their harsh, panting breaths filling the silence of Eddie’s apartment. Eddie slides his hand into Pretty Man’s hair, tugs on this side of too hard. Pretty Man moans, loud, almost echoing, and tilts his head to the side, baring his neck for Eddie to defile.

Eddie leans in, presses his lips to those two little moles, and—

“What the fuck?”

Eddie pulls back to look at Pretty Man’s face. He’s still, not looking at Eddie, instead staring with wide eyes into the open plan of Eddie’s living room.

Eddie follows his gaze and… Oh. Yeah. He forgot about that.

See the King S tickets hadn’t been Eddie’s only birthday gift. He knew this would come back to bite him in the ass, but his friends thought it was hilarious. Eddie thinks they’re assholes.

Because Pretty Man is staring at a life size cutout of King S, standing by the wall.

Eddie winces, pulls away. This guy might not look like a metalhead, but he was in a metal bar, there’s no way he listens to King S. He’s gotta come up with an explanation for this, and fast.

“Um, yeah… About that… would you believe me if I said I didn’t buy it?” He asks sheepishly, avoiding Pretty Man’s eyes.

“You’re a fan?” Pretty Man asks, except he sounds dejected, which Eddie thinks is weird. And actually? Fuck this guy. He’s allowed to like whatever he wants.

“Yeah, man. What’s wrong with that? Maybe it’s not for everyone but King S actually makes really good music.” He gets more than a little defensive, takes a step back and crosses his arms over his chest.

“No, no… that’s not what I meant.” Pretty Man raises his hands placatingly.

“Then what did you mean?”

Pretty Man sighs, rubs a hand over his face. “Don’t you recognise me?”

Eddie furrows his brow in confusion. “Do I like, know you or something?”

Pretty Man raises his eyes to the ceiling like this is difficult. “Really? Nothing?”

Eddie shakes his head. “I don’t…” Pretty man nods, sighs, and then walks past Eddie further into the apartment. “Hey, you can’t just—“

“How about now?” Pretty Man asks, stopping right next to the cardboard cut out.

Eddie flits his eyes between the man and the cut out, trying to understand what Pretty Man is getting at until he sighs again, pulls down the sleeve of his jacket to reveal…

A tattoo of an ice cream cone, and suddenly it all clicks.

Oh. Oh no. That’s… oh holy ever loving fuck.

“Holy shit!” Eddie exclaims, pointing frantically between Pretty Man and the cardboard. “You’re King S!”

“Yeah. It’s uh, Steve, actually.” Pretty Man, King S, Steve nods, seeming much more shy than he was ten minutes ago. He’s curled his arms around himself, trying to make himself shrink. Eddie feels bad.

“Did you think I was trying to sleep with you because you’re famous?”

“I mean, weren’t you?” Steve won’t meet his eye. Instead he’s staring around the room, taking in all the little details of Eddie’s life.

Eddie takes a step towards him. “No, man. I just thought you were pretty, that’s all.”

“You really didn’t know who I was?” Though he still looks unsure, Steve finally meets his eye.

Eddie shakes his head, coming to a stop in front of Steve. “I didn’t even buy that thing, dude. My friends thought it would be funny because you’re like, the only non-metal artist I listen to.”

Steve smiles at that. He really is so pretty, Eddie can’t help but think. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, man. Heard your first album right after it came out and I was hooked!” Eddie laughs softly. “I used to be a little bit narrow minded when it came to music, but I heard yours and it’s like the world of music blasted wide open.”

A pretty pink blush spreads its way across Steve’s cheeks. “Oh, uh… That’s really cool. I’m glad you like it.”

“I was at your show tonight, actually.”

“You were?”

“Yeah!” He shrugs. “I used to play in a band in high school, we were never very good but I liked to think I had good stage presence, right?” Steve nods and Eddie grins, leaning in a little. “I was nothing compared to you. It was fucking electric, I felt like my skin was buzzing.”

Steve’s smile seems to grow even wider. He sways forward into Eddie’s space, almost unconsciously. “This might be crazy, but do you wanna start over? Forgo the one night stand and just, I don’t know, get coffee or something? I know this cute little 24 hour place, Victoria Street, it’s only a couple blocks away.”

Eddie narrows his eyes a little. “Stevie… barely anyone knows Victoria Street. Are you, dare I say it… local?”

Steve’s cheeks darken even further. “Maybe.”

Eddie laughs. “Then, I’d love to start over. I wanna get to know you as Steve, not King S.”

Steve slips his hand into Eddie’s, tugs him

back towards the door. “God, how much do you know..?”

“I may have read a couple interviews.”

Steve groans, embarrassed, as the door clicks shut behind them.

Then, a few moments later. “Shit! My keys!”

The date goes well. As does the second, and the third, and so on, and so on. They’re officially exclusive by date 7.

Steve meets Chrissy and the boys on date 20. Eddie meets Dustin and Robin, right before date 45.

On date 94, Steve presents his third album to Eddie. There’s a different dedication on the back cover this time.

To E, my love.

——————

taglist: @judasofsuburbia @gothbat99 @cheatghost @flowercrowngods @fastcardotmp3 @simplebtromance @gonzofromspace

lemme know if u wanna be added to a permanent taglist for anything i do in the future, i’m thinkin’ that might be funky :)

[wormdebut]

SEPTEMBER MICROFIC: GUERRILLA

@steddiemicrofic | Word: Charm | Word Count: 548 Rated: T (As always for swears) | CW: none

——

“But why do I have to be the one to go meet this guy, Chris? Send Jeff or—“ Eddie cuts himself off, in favor of smacking at his managers shoulder—“Here’s an idea, send Freddy! He would love to go to an—art show? Art Event?” Eddie wasn’t entirely sure what a showing of ones projects was called, but he digressed. “Anywhozle, send Fred.”

Chrissy tuts at him. “No, it will be you. Mr. Harrington requested you specifically, Eddie. You’re going.”

“Chris, Steve Harrington is fucking terrifying.” Eddie complained, following Chrissy around his apartment like a lost puppy.

“Christ, Eddie. You haven’t even met the man, let alone seen him. It’s a fucking honor, he’s even willing to meet with you. So if Steve God Damn Harrington wants to see Eddie Munson, then that’s how it’s gonna be.” Chrissy shoves a fitted burgundy suit into Eddie’s arms. “And, you’re going to dress nice.”

Eddie folds. “Alright, okay. But why do I have to go alone?” He pouts, and Chrissy just rolls her eyes.

“Honestly, Eddie, for someone who begged me to get you in contact with—and I quote—‘the sickest guerrilla artist since Banksy’. You sure are being a pain in the ass about this.” Chrissy sighs, patting Eddie’s hand before turning toward his front door. “The car will be here in less then hour. Do what you always do, make some friends and wait till he’s ready to speak with you. I promise it will be worth it Eds.”

See Eddie was nervous. Because Steve Harrington was fucking talented. He was smart and charming and a fucking bad ass. Corroded Coffin needed his art for their newest album. It was the only thing Eddie could think about if he was being honest.

Eddie didn’t even know what the man looked like, but he had read interview after interview. Not only did Harrington read well on paper, but the art that he put out was insane.

It would be fine. Eddie could talk to Steve Harrington. He could charm his way through this, just like he did with everything else in his career.

——

The room Eddie found himself in was huge. It was spacious and Harrington’s pieces were splayed everywhere. It was stunning and Eddie needed this art on his damn album, he needed it tattooed on his damn eyelids—

“Tattooed on your eyelids huh?”

Eddie jumps at the voice behind him.

“Ah shit, did I say that out loud? I was distracted—“ Eddie’s voice fades out as he meets the other man’s eyes.

Damn. If all art snobs are this pretty, he’s going to have to visit more art…places…

“Are you a fan of the artist?” The man asks, with a smirk and—That’s hot.

Eddie blinks, “I’m kinda obsessed actually. I think he’s a fucking genius. I have this little band—well we aren’t really little. We are kind of a big deal I guess, but I basically need him to agree to do this piece and I just—“ Eddie paused, eyes wide. The man in front of him holding back what was clearly a laugh. Great. Eddie was so good at this people thing.

“I’m sorry, I’m rambling—What did you say your name was?” Eddie asks, blush overtaking his face.

The man laughed. “I didn’t. I’m Steve.”

Oh shit.

[ladykailitha]

Sweet Home Indiana

You guys are getting an absolute feast this week. Two chapters on regular posting days, the twenty snippets you got on WIP Wednesday, this, and of course more Across a Crowded Room tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Based off a post I saw on here (and didn't save for some reason) about the legal tangles gay people had to go through when gay marriage was federally legalized because a lot of them married different people in different states because their marriage in California wasn't legal in the other states and just never bother to get a divorce.

And my brain let's Steddify this shit Sweet Home Alabama style!

So here we go:

Eddie and Steve got married in Boston when Massachusetts made gay marriage legal. But they broke up when Eddie went to California with his band.

Cue Eddie going around and having a couple of really short marriages in different states. Tommy in New York for three months when the band was in New York recording an album. Billy in Hawaii for two weeks while Eddie was there on vacation.

Neither of them really mattered or were serious. Because they were only legal in the state they were performed in so Eddie didn't think anything about it.

Fast forward to a decade later, gay marriage is legalized across the country. Corroded Coffin has broken up and Eddie has a job as a tattoo artist.

Eddie goes to get a marriage license in Seattle where he's been living for the past five years. And is denied on the account he's a polygamist. He's still married to three different men in three different states.

Fuck.

His fiancee Chrissy is a legal assistant at a law firm so she has her bosses draw up annulments for Eddie's three marriages and has them sent out to all three of Eddie's exes.

Including Steve.

When Steve gets his papers, he's pissed. He hunts down Eddie's number and calls. Tells him that he can do the proper thing and tell him to his face he wants a divorce. None of this annulment bullshit like their relationship didn't matter. But until then he can fuck off.

Now Eddie's frantic. Because the reason why he and Chrissy were getting married in the first place is that her student visa ended in May and her work visa has been delayed three times. They have to get married otherwise she'll be deported. And no just a little across the border to Canada either, she's from Barbados.

He tells her the truth about Steve and how they were actually married for almost two years before Eddie left. They had been living in their home town of Hawkins where their marriage wasn't legal any way, but meant something to them.

Chrissy is upset he didn't tell her this sooner, because yeah, that's whole other kettle of fish. So she has her bosses draft a divorce decree and words it a whole lot nicer than the legalese of the annulment.

Eddie packs his bags heads to back to Hawkins and back to Steve. He has one week to convince Steve to sign the divorce papers.

He gets into to town and finds that Steve is the proud owner of the best bakery in town. And the best selling item is the chunky mint brownies Steve made just for Eddie when they first got together. Eddie gets a little sentimental about it, and Steve stubbornly refuses to sign the papers.

They go back and forth for a few days. They tumble into bed and Eddie wakes up, he finds Steve gone and the papers signed.

Only now that Steve has signed them, he doesn't want that anymore. So he breaks down crying and sobbing. He calls Chrissy and now Chrissy is as distraught as he is.

After they hang up Chrissy calls the bakery and Robin answers. Chrissy really needs to speak to Steve.

Robin tells her Steve can't come to the phone because he is covered in flour and can't because he'll get it messy. Chrissy asks if she calls his cell phone if Robin could hold it up to his ear, because she really needs to talk to him. But Robin refuses to budge. She banned Steve from having a cell phone around their giant stand mixer because he has lost three of them to the beast.

Robin offers to pass long the message, though. And Chrissy has to be content with that. She explains who she is and why Eddie needed the divorce. She tells Robin about Eddie's breakdown that morning and how he really didn't want to divorce Steve.

Robin and her get to talking about their best friends, missed connections and themselves.

While the girls are talking Eddie is having another freak out because he put the envelope containing the divorce papers in the mail box but realized he forgot to sign them himself. He needs to get them back so he can sign them, but he's afraid of getting arrested for tampering a federal post box trying to get the papers back.

He's near hysterics when Nancy finds him. She's in town visiting her family. And she helps him get the papers back by talking to the post office and they open the box and he gets them back.

She takes him to lunch to calm his clearly frazzled nerves. He tells her everything. And she tells him that while Eddie was in New York, Steve had gone to see him and when he saw how much bigger and better the big city was, Steve decided if he was going to win Eddie back, he had to make something of himself. And thus began the bakery. He almost had enough to fly to Seattle and woo Eddie. But then this happened.

Now Eddie is really stricken. He wants Steve so bad, but Chrissy is out of options.

Nancy gives his arm a squeeze and Eddie heads back to the hotel he'd been staying at.

He finally looks at his phone and sees a lot of messages and texts from Chrissy begging him not mail the divorce papers yet, she has a plan. Cue Eddie having a final breakdown in his hotel room, sobbing and wrung out.

There is a knock on his door and Eddie is confused the only person who knew his hotel and room number was Chrissy and she's in Seattle. But he gets up to answer and suddenly has an armful of Steve Harrington. Who is also a sobbing wreck.

After both of them calm down, Steve tells him he only signed the papers because he wanted Eddie to be happy. And if that meant being divorced from him, he'd do it.

But Eddie's isn't happy. He's sad and hurt and lonely. Steve is too.

They fall asleep in each other's arms, placing their trust in their best friends.

The next morning they are woken up by Robin and surprise surprise, Chrissy.

They explained that since gay marriage is legal everywhere now, Robin is going to marry Chrissy. And she'll swap places with Eddie. She'll go back to Seattle with Chrissy and Eddie can stay here with Steve.

It's perfect.

They get a marriage license and walked down the courthouse where Eddie and Steve are their witnesses. While the judge is talking, Steve pulls out Eddie's old ring. The one he returned to Steve when he moved out to be with his band.

He slips it back on Eddie's ring finger where it belongs. They kiss at the same time Chrissy and Robin do.

A couple years later Chrissy becomes a lawyer and her and Robin move back to Hawkins where Eddie has opened his own tattoo parlor, right next to Steve's bakery.

And they all live happily ever after.

ETA: Full Story here.

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[atimeofyourlife]

A coffee delivery

written for @steddieholidaydrabbles prompt: coffee shop/ tattoo au | rated: t | wc: 906 | tags: coffee shop au, tattoo au, tattoo artist eddie munson, barista steve harrington, pre steddie

Steve had something of a love/hate relationship with the morning shift at the coffee shop. On one hand, it meant he didn't have to take part in the evening cleaning, and he had most of the afternoon free. But on the other hand, it meant he had to be up early and had to deal with opening and set up.  Rude customers occurred at any time of the day. In the morning it was the customers angry that they weren't willing to open thirty minutes before their scheduled time. In the evening, they were angry that they didn't stay open over an hour past their scheduled closing time. There were two main things that made up for the rude customers. Being an independent coffee shop over a chain meant they didn't have a corporate office to answer to, so the boss allowed them to talk back and deny service to any customer that was too rude. And the nice customers generally outweighed the bad ones, the ones who would tip generously, who were always polite and kind, who would stick up for them against the bad ones.

But Steve's favorite part of the job was the guy who worked in the tattoo store a few buildings down on the other side of the street. A guy named Eddie, who would come in five days a week without fail. Always ordering a large caramel latte with two extra shots. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes before the tattoo shop was due to open. His name was Eddie, and he always made the time to flirt with Steve when he picked up his coffee.

One morning, Steve was just waiting for Eddie to come in for his coffee. It had passed the normal time he would come in, and Steve felt a little worried. Eddie had, as usual, said the day before that he would be back the next day. Steve was staring out the window, on a lookout for Eddie. Unable to keep himself from getting anxious as the time ticked by. But then, about thirty minutes after Eddie would have usually walked in, Steve saw him run down the street, obviously late to open the tattoo store. He let out a sigh of relief, but couldn't help feeling disappointed that he wouldn't get to see Eddie.

"Look, if you're that upset that you don't get to see and flirt with him today, just make the coffee and take it over to him." Robin said from beside Steve. "We're not busy, and the lunchtime rush won't start for at least thirty minutes. Just don't leave me alone too long."

"Robin, you're the best." He hugged her quickly, before turning to start making the drink.

"Just write your number on it, or at least try to get a date. It's getting painful watching you both flirt everyday."

Steve ignored her, writing Eddie's name on the to go cup, and finishing the drink. He was about to walk out from behind the counter, but stopped and one of the cookies that Eddie sometimes ordered. He was nervous as he left the store and crossed the street. Unsure if this was crossing a line, or if Eddie would think Steve was stalking him.

Steve pushed open the door to the tattoo shop, and could see Eddie cleaning furiously.

"Hi, sorry. I'm running a touch late, so if-" Eddie started, trailing off as he turned around and saw Steve.

"Er, hi. You didn't come in this morning, and I saw you run past and it was obvious you were late. So I thought I would bring you coffee and a cookie?" Steve replied, holding them out to Eddie.

"Oh. Thanks, Stevie. You are a life saver. My van crapped out this morning so I had to take the bus, but it was running late, and part of the road was closed. And I had an appointment booked for opening, and I was already late. But the client hasn't shown up yet." Eddie rambled, taking the coffee and the cookie from Steve, instantly taking a drink of the coffee.

"Sounds like a real rough morning. I hope I managed to help make it a little better for you."

"You made it so much better. You are an angel among men right now."

Steve found himself getting lost in Eddie's eyes, and jumped as he heard the bell over the door signaling someone coming in.

"I've got an appointment this morning? I know I'm a bit late for it, I did try to call-" The customer said.

"Of course. I just need a few more minutes to finish setting up." Eddie replied. He placed the coffee down on a desk and grabbed a business card, scribbling something down on it, before handing it to Steve. "I'm really going to have to get on, but I'll see you around, Steve."

"Uh, yeah. I'm going to have to get back before Robin tries to kill me for taking too long." Steve waved, before leaving and heading back to the coffee shop.

"What's that?" Robin asked as soon as Steve rejoined her, her eyes focused on the card in Steve's hand.

"Eddie gave it to me." Steve replied, turning it over and looking at what Eddie had written on it for the first time. It was a phone number tagged with the words 'call me' and a smiley face. Yeah, the trip across the street had been successful.

[bettysupremacy]

could you do one where the reader is getting her first tattoo and she’s really nervous but eddie is there to comfort her?

tysm for the request! I’ve got more on the way.

“Breathe in — breathe out. It’ll be finished soon.”

“Yeah?” Eddie asks.

The tattoo artist nods once. It’s a sharp, stern nod, but not unkind. They know each other, you think, he probably gets tattooed here.

The pointy needle is brought to your skin again, puncturing and abusing the tender flesh. It moves in neat swirly lines over you, permanently etching in ink. You can’t look, can’t think about the permanence of what’s happening to your hip. Your mom would be so mad.

“You’re okay, brave girl.” Eddie smiles down at you. You had to convince him you could do this. There would be no tears when the tattoo artist meanly brought down his pen.

“Hurts.” You all but whine.

“I know,” he soothes, “Did I tell you how I got this one?”

You look over, watching his hand lift his shirt and point to the scrappy looking skull scribbled on his hip.

The desire to reach out and run your fingers over it is strong, but the fear you’ll move and the artist will mess up is stronger. He can tell.

Gently, he grabs your fingers, running them over his tat. The ridges, the imperfections, the way it’s slightly raised. All prominent features, all telling you it’s a stick n poke.

“It’s a stick n poke I got in the eighth grade.”

You gasp. “Eighth grade?”

“Yeah,” he scoffs dramatically, fighting to cover his smile with mock disbelief. “Can you believe that?”

“No.” You say genuinely.

“Me neither.” He lightly sets your hand back on the sterile chair, the paper crinkles under your fingers. “Sam gave it to me.”

“Sam?”

“He’s giving you yours.”

You lifts your head. He pauses to wave. “Hi, Sam.”

He cracks a smile for the first time since you got here. “Hi.”

“We were in my kitchen, when he told me he wanted to be a tattoo-er-“

“Tattoo artist.” He corrects.

“-tattoo artist, and I told him he could practice on me.”

You glances at the skull again. “Did it hurt?”

“Are you kidding? It hurt the most out of all my tattoos.”

“Are you serious?”

“Deadly.”

“It didn’t hurt that bad.” Sam pipes into the conversation.

“It didn’t hurt that bad?” Eddie astonishes, looking up at Sam with wild wide eyes. “With how far you were sticking that needle into me-“

“It was only a little deep.”

“Your knuckles were touching my hip!”

“Don’t let him lie to you.” Sam eyes you.

“Believe your boyfriend.” Eddie replies quickly.

Your smile stutters when Sam moves over a particularly tender part of skin. The talking ebbs and you listens to the whir of the tattoo machine. This would be nice if it wasn’t awful.

“And..“ Sam draws outs. “All done.”

“What, really?”

“Mhm.“ he hands you a mirror.

“Oh, wow.” You marvel at the line work. Much cleaner than Eddie’s stick n poke.

“You like, baby?”

“I love.” You correct him. “Thank you.”

“I wasn’t the one with the gun.”

“Thank you, Sam.” Your fingers ghost above his art.

“No problem, kid.” He smiles.

Eddie smiles as well. “You want another?”

“No.”

[vivwritescrappythings]

masterlist

updated: 10/25/24

character list: felix catton, recom miles quaritch, jake sully, kylo ren, miguel o'hara, hobie brown, john price, simon riley, könig, eddie munson, geralt of rivia, luke danes, thranduil, joel miller, din djarin, deiter bravo, fransisco morales, ezra (prospect), oberyn martell, marcus acacius.

requests are: OPEN

limits

joel miller

yours : you get new neighbors in Jackson, Joel doesn't like how much attention they pay to you so he decides to teach them a lesson. [SMUT]

unfair : an au about Joel attending a wedding simply inspired by Pedro's slutty little fit at the SAG awards. [SMUT]

part 2: good Morning : Mornings with Joel are the best. [SMUT]

saying thanks : Joel is your grumpy patrol partner who doesn’t even talk to you in the streets of Jackson. But one night a man grabs your arm at the Tipsy Bison, and Joel’s decided he doesn’t like it. [SMUT]

set me on fire, i'll keep you warm : you and Joel get stuck in a cabin together during a winter storm [SMUT, a/b/o dynamics]

eddie munson

the boy is mine (viv's version) : a romantic night at the trailer

just love me and eat : you watched Eddie die, so this must be some nightmare in your room

part 2: it’ll heal : Eddie’s perspective on his new life [SMUT]

late night visits : Eddie catches you dropping Max off and invites you over, he teaches you how to smoke weed [SMUT]

velma : You attend a Halloween party with Eddie, things don't go quite as planned when Jason Carver acts like a jerk

twenty-five : You always cry on your birthday, and this is the year Eddie finds out

silence : The five times you asked Eddie to be quiet, and the one time he was [ANGST, NO COMFORT]

squeeze : Eddie is your tattoo artist and long term boyfriend, one night you have an idea of how to spice up your next tattoo session. [SMUT]

simon "ghost" riley

simon riley brainrot : you sit next to him on a plane [drabble]

roadburn : someone hits simon’s motorcycle while you were riding

take it all : you meet simon at a bar and go home with him [SMUT, toxic simon]

small apologies: six months later simon decides he wants to apologize [SMUT]

könig

king of the joust : you attend a tourney with your family, a knight you’ve never seen before wants your favor [plus size reader]

sworn sword : civil unrest in the kingdom forces your father and the king to assign a knight to you for your protection. thankfully he is someone you have already met before

golden linings : the evening ball presents you with an unconventional dance partner

words fall short : you can’t stop thinking about some rude words said about you at last night’s feast, but your knight doesn’t let you worry for long

if she would have me : könig personally comforts you through the news of your betrothal. things get out of hand [SMUT]

anything you ask : despite all odds, it is finally your wedding day [SMUT]

hobie brown

and they were roommates : you and Hobie always toe the line between friends and something more.

[bettyfrommars]

I'm on Fire//biker!older!Eddie x fem!artist!Reader//biker!Steve//90's au//Part 10

🚨18+Only, smut, oral (m receiving), talk of erection, size kink, swallowing, biker gang, biker!Eddie, biker!Steve, talk of drug use, threats, talk of violence, financial trouble, mention of jail, smoking cigarettes, alcohol consumption, trouble at home, co-parents!Stobin, suggested custody issues, angst, underlying fear of retaliation. Word count: 8.7k

This is mostly just a sweet lil chapter to heal some wounds, right before some old wounds start opening.

Series Masterlist

A/N: I tried to make this part completely void of angst, but alas, I did not succeed. I'm working on a summertime one shot idea for the boys to go to a bike rally with all of the shenanigans that could possibly ensue; it should be a wild one. Big love to my beta @michellecrusher for deciding that this chapter could use a touch of smut.

As always, I'm honored to be on this ride with you and look forward to any and all interactions. Comments, messages, reblogs; it all means so much to me and is what keeps this little world going ❤️‍🔥

-----

I'm on Fire Part 10: I got a bad desire

-----

Landing with your face on the puke-stained, beer dribbled carpet of the Velvet Hammer, dusted in a sprinkle of cigarette ash, was not how you wanted to start your evening. You hadn’t even realized you hit the ground until you heard Steve’s voice demanding everyone get the fuck out of his way as he parted bodies to get to you.

And then, Erika’s voice: “I don’t know what happened...she just...fell. I promise, I didn’t touch her!”

People were murmuring around you and Steve was saying your name as you started to come back to reality, taking a deep inhale, blinking back to life. He knelt and propped you up into a sitting position, and that was when the embarrassment of what had just happened began to wash over you, making you wish that a hole in the ground would swallow you up.

“Do you think you can stand?” Steve asked while his big hands found positions under your arms in preparation to lift you up. You turned your head to look at him; his wayfarer sunglasses had fallen from the top of his head to the tip of his nose, and they were about to slip off, but his concern was more with not letting you go.

“What happened?” He asked as he pulled you to your feet, taking a second to grab the sunglasses off his face and throw them on the bar. “Did someone push you?”

“Please. Get me out of here,” you begged as one of your arms went around his shoulders, and one of his hands secured itself at your waist.

He set you down on a chair in front of the employee lockers and told you he’d get someone to cover the door for him while he took you home, or he’d see if one of the girls could stop by.

With your hands between your knees and your shoulders slumped, you began to come to terms with everything as he picked up the phone in the office.

“Wait,” you stopped him. “I can’t afford to miss a day of work, Steve, I’ll be fine. Just...just give me a second to catch my breath.”

Steve understood what a hard spot that was to be in; he lived it almost every day of his life. He put the receiver back down on the cradle.

“What did that bitch say to you?” Steve asked, putting his foot up on the bench.

You shook your head. “That’s just it, she’s not a bitch,” you chewed your lip. “She just saved me from making a huge mistake. I owe her.”

Steve was on his way back out to the floor when you called to him. “Hey, does Eddie have any female friends who are redheads, that you know of? Really pretty, tattoo on her bicep? Someone he’d feel comfortable enough with to let stay at his place?”

Steve popped his knee out and put his hands on his hips, frowning. “No one that he’s...dated, I don’t think,” he rubbed his chin in thought. “But there’s Max, she’s more like a sister to us. I just tattooed her a few weeks ago. Her hair was like a bright, candy red. Why do you ask?”

You turned away from Steve and squeezed your eyes shut, a sob caught in your throat. The sudden rush of relief at so many groundbreaking realizations had your emotions on the verge of short-circuiting. Eddie still had quite a bit of explaining to do, but the tight bud of your heart was blooming like a rose in your chest once again, full of hope.

----------

Meanwhile, Eddie was officially going stir crazy. “I need to get out of this house,” he told Robin has he hitched through the kitchen, careful not to put too much weight on the hip was right below his wound. He was wearing his jeans unbuttoned, so they hung a bit low, bangs swept across his forehead, and one of Steve’s white wife beaters that was too small for him. The thin material exposed the tattoos on his chest and stomach, as well as the ones scattered from neck to hands. He’d spent the afternoon watching cartoons with Oliver, which was enjoyable, but relaxing and sitting still for long periods of time just wasn’t in his DNA.

Also, he wasn’t sure if it was an affect of the morphine, but he’d had another one of his nightmares early that morning, before dawn, and shouted himself awake, covered in sweat. It was the same dream that had tortured him off and on for over a decade; the one where he’s being attacked by a swarm of flesh-eating bat creatures, they’re all taking big bite out of his flesh, and he wakes up to the feeling of choking on his own blood.

“Over my dead body,” Robin challenged, moving from the stove with a wooden spoon covered in macaroni and cheese in her hand.

Eddie’s eyes traveled to the spoon and then back to her face. “That can be arranged.”

“Seriously, dude,” her shoulders sank. “Don’t make me hog tie you to the couch. I promised Astrid we’d keep an eye on you for another night.”

“I have a business to run, Rob,” he said as he hobbled over to grab his leather from the back of the one of the dining chairs. “If this were a hospital, they would’ve kicked me to the curb by now.”

Robin went back to the stove to stir the powdered cheese in with the noodles. She knew that no one could stop him if he wanted to go, and she really couldn’t blame him.

With her back to him she said, “if you end up getting some type of infection and your foot falls off, I won’t ever forgive you.”

Oliver came trotting out from the other room to say goodbye, and he raised his arms for Eddie to pick him up, which he did—and Robin glanced over just in time to see the grimace of pain flash across Eddie’s face as he settled the boy on the wrong hip at first before switching him to the other side. She shook her head, certain he would pop his stitches by the end of the day.

“Steve brought your bike up the hill,” she let him know, while she packed up some medications for him to take. “Your girlfriend is at work by now, I believe.”

Eddie’s eyes snapped to hers as he put Oliver down. “Why’d you call her that?”

“Isn’t she?” Robin challenged, raising her eyebrow. “I can tell you knew exactly who I was talking about.”

Eddie couldn’t help the smile that twitched across his lips.

----------

The Velvet Hammer was packed that night, and by the end of your shift, after very little food, no sleep, and one blackout, you were a bit wobbly on your feet. Steve had to work as security for a while longer, since there was a bachelor party in attendance that was getting a bit rowdy, but he demanded you let him walk you to your car while he had a smoke.

“So, I like Astrid,” you told him. He held out his cigarette to offer you a drag, but you declined with a wave of your hand. “What’s going on with you two?”

“Going on?” Steve put the cig to his lips with thumb and forefinger.

You adjusted your bag on your shoulder as you made room for a group of people to pass on the sidewalk. “You know what I mean,” you insisted, knowing full well that he did. “You two seemed really close last night. I was just curious.”

“Oh, I’m fuckin’ in love with her,” Steve announced with a shrug, as if it were common knowledge. “We just don’t have a conventional relationship, I guess. No one seems to understand it but us.”

You wondered, sincerely, how many women Steve had been in love with in his life. But, you could tell that there was, indeed, something special about the connection he had with Astrid. You wondered if Eddie looked at you the way Steve had looked at her last night.

Steve hung around to make sure you got in your car okay, and then you chuckled to yourself as he sauntered off, flirting with a group of women who were walking by, asking them to come by the bar and keep him company. You were about to maneuver your way out of the precarious parallel spot you were wedged in when your eyes locked on a piece of folded paper held to the windshield under one of the wipers.

At first, you thought it was ticket of some sort, like maybe you were in a no parking zone or something. But then, at closer examination, you realized it was made with blue-lined notebook paper.

It was a handwritten note.

The street was fairly busy that night with cars zooming around town, so you were cautious as you dashed out to pinch it free and pull it back into the safety of the car with you.

It was a...little paper origami duck? Or some kind of bird? You turned it around, inspecting the intricately folded parts, giggling curiously as you did so. You unfastened the delicate edges, careful not to rip it in haste. Finally, you were able to press a flat, albeit crumpled, half sheet of paper against your steering wheel, your heart shot into your throat, melting there like a fat stick of butter.

It was from Eddie:

I miss you. Come to my place so we can talk? It doesn’t matter how late.

-- E

P.S. Oliver wants to make this into a swan for you

Hopeful tears pooled at your lash line and you checked your watch; it was just after 11:30. Surely, they’d be keeping him at Steve’s for another night? But, if so, he would’ve said that and not, specifically “his place”. You tried to fold it back exactly the way it was, failed miserably, and ended up folding it in half without messing up any of the edges to place it safely in your middle console.

For a few seconds as you sat in your car with the radio on, listening to Nearly Lost You by The Screaming Trees, you wondered if you should play hard to get, if maybe rushing over to his place was not the right game to play. But really, truly, you didn’t give a shit about any of that.

You were blinking excessively and yawning, and you had this feeling like, if you rested your head back against the seat, you’d fall asleep right there in your car. But, you took a few deep breaths and patted your cheeks. You brought a can of Coke in your bag from the bar and cracked it open to guzzle some of it, thinking maybe you’d need to go home first and change? Or go straight to Eddie’s? Fall asleep in your car was still an option.

Fuck.

-----------

Earlier that day, around 5 o’clock, Eddie hissed as he dismounted his bike at the garage, clutching his side, trying to mask the spasm of pain, only to see Wayne watching him from the main garage. His uncle nodded in greeting, just wanting to make sure Eddie was okay, as he wiped his hands, and then turned around to finish what he was working on. So much of the communication they shared was silent, but understood.

He had the note in his pocket that Oliver had made into an origami animal, and he wanted to tidy up his place a bit before he did some work, just in case you did actually come over. If you didn’t, he wouldn’t blame you—it had been an especially long 24 hours. But, damn, he really needed to see you, to try and fix whatever had gone wrong, if he even could.

He still didn’t know what Charlene had done to upset you, but his mind reeled with the possibilities.

Eddie had ripped the bandage off his cheek on the way over, so there was just an angry gash there with a few stitches holding it together like a twist tie to a bunch of hammers, and he didn’t realize how much he resembled Frankenstein’s Monster until the new office assistance choked on her soda at the sight of him.

“Rough night?” She asked. Her name was Dana and she’d worked at garages before, but never for one that was affiliated with an MC.

“You could say that,” Eddie returned as he headed over to one of the metal filing cabinets to look for something.

Dana had a few “while you were out” slips of paper she had filled out with phone numbers and people who had wanted to speak with Eddie or Wayne, and she went over them with him while she chewed a red piece of gum.

She finished the last one and then, “oh, yeah, and someone called here looking for a…” she checked the piece of paper. “...Steve Harrington?”

Eddie nodded, taking something he needed out of the file before shutting the drawer. “He’s a buddy of mine. What’s the message?”

Dana scratched her head. “She didn’t say what it was about, just said that it was a personal matter,” she showed Eddie the pink piece of paper with a phone number and name on it. “Said her name was Christina? I don’t recognize the area code.”

“Could you look up Steve in the address book in that first drawer and relay the message for me? He’s in there under Dingus. I gotta run this out to the---”

Dana spelled out Dingus on the piece of paper, without questioning it, and then looked at the round clock on the wall, nervously. “Actually, I should’ve been gone a half hour ago. I need to pick up my daughter from--”

Eddie waved the papers in his hand. “Of course, I’m sorry I’ve been...distracted. Do me a favor and call him when you get in on Monday? I’m sure it can wait till then.”

The name Christina did not ring a bell at the time, but later on, he’d wish that it had.

--------

You decided to go home first to freshen up a bit, but also, you wanted to pick up the photos to show Eddie. Katie was asleep, but you made yourself some coffee and tiptoed around, wishing you had time to shower because you reeked of secondhand smoke, but then realized Eddie probably wouldn’t notice anyway.

You were nervous as you pulled into the gates of the compound; your heart was racing and your palms started to sweat. His black and chrome bike with the menacing, purple flock of bats on the tank was parked right up close to his door, and you angled your car right in next to it.

Once you turned your car off, you could hear the faint sound of music drifting down from the open window in his apartment. The song was Love You to Death by Type O Negative, and you glanced up just in time to see his shadow pull from the window, as if he’d been standing there, watching you drive up.

---------

Up in his apartment, Eddie cracked his knuckles, ignoring the fact that the skin on them was still raw and one of his fingers was probably sprained because it throbbed like a motherfucker. He wanted to make sure everything looked okay before he ran down to meet you at the front door. The TV was on mute, he’d been watching Unsolved Mysteries, but now an episode of the X-Files was starting. There were clean sheets on the bed—just in case---and he’d been on his hands and knees cleaning the bathroom for a good half hour. There was a vanilla candle burning on the nightstand, and he had lit some Nag Champa incense earlier to try and mask the fact that he’d just smoked a couple cigarettes to calm his nerves. He turned the music down a tad and wondered if Type O was too on-the-nose for such an evening, like maybe you’d think he was setting some tawdry scene, when in actuality, he listened to their music all the damn time. He had on the only pair of dark denim Levi’s he owned without holes in them, a black Faith No More shirt that had the neck and sleeves ripped off of it, and his black converse, which were a nice change from the heavy boots he always wore. He slipped his rings on and used his pinky to clean some sleep out of his eyes just before he headed down to greet you.

---------

You were just about to knock, knuckle poised in the air, when the door flew open.

“Hey,” Eddie stood there looking flushed, lips parted, dragging one hand down his stomach as his pupils dilated to take you in.

You gulped. “Hey. Is this too late? I wasn’t sure if you really meant---”

“Oh I really want you here,” Eddie stepped back, holding the door open with his body.

You were just going to walk through without making any physical contact, but then you found your body being sucked against his, as if by some gravitational pull, and you both sunk into each other. He was quick to put his arms around you, hugging you tighter, securing you to him as if your body was oxygen.

“I know we’ve got a lot to talk about,” he planted his lips on the top of your head, only removing them to speak. “I want to make it right, baby. I don’t ever want to hurt you, and I would never let anyone hurt---”

“I believe you,” you answered, moving further inside, wanting to get behind closed doors with him.

There were old, squeaky wood stairs that led up to the narrow hallway, and you held onto one of his belt loops as you followed him up, pausing so he could open the door and extend his arm for you to enter.

“So, this is where the magic happens,” you teased, taking in the open space that was bedroom, living room, and kitchen all in one. There were Iron Maiden and Slayer posters on the wall, a Harley Davidson plaque, as well as your painting, which was the first thing anyone saw when they walked in. Directly to your right was a hallway that looked like closet space and a door to a bathroom. It was a spacious, warehouse style loft with wood floors and a few round, woven rugs.

The windows...the windows were huge.

Eddie snorted at your comment, and was just about to turn around to take you into his arms again, when you bolted over to start busying yourself with lowering the curtains, starting with the window that faced the other side of the street.

“You really should keep these closed,” you told him, leaning over a table with a turntable and an 80’s style boombox. The pull did not work for the second curtain, and your frustration was mounting as you yanked at it, just as Eddie stepped over and put his hand on the cord.

“Let me do it, baby,” he met your eyes, trying to see if he could guess what had triggered such a frenzy.

While he finished dropping the blinds, you took the photos out of your bag, extending them when he turned around. You sat down at the end of the bed and watched his face as he slipped the contents out of the manila envelope to look at them.

He glanced at you a few times as he flipped through the photos, and his expression ebbed from confusion to anger and back again.

Eddie was shaking his head, hair hanging down, his strong fingers curling as if he wanted to crumple them up. “These aren’t...this is not what it looks like,” his eyes searched yours.

“I know,” you looked down, biting your top lip with your bottom teeth. “Erica told me you were set up. And Steve told me about...your other friend.”

The muscles in Eddie’s jaw tensed, teeth grinding, as his eyes narrowed on the window where most of the photos had been taken from. “Some fucker has been watching me this whole time?” The irrational part of Eddie wondered if the guy was over there, somewhere in the abandoned building, right at that moment. Maybe he should go over and introduce himself, possibly break the guys face with his own camera. Break his hands and throw him out the third story window while he was at it.

The photos were starting to make Eddie feel sick with rage, so he put them back in the envelope. Your bloodshot eyes fluttered and he could see how tired you were.

“Who would do this?” You asked, earnestly. “More importantly, why would they do it? I haven’t been here long enough to make enemies. Not of this caliber, anyway.”

Eddie put the envelope on top of the kitchen counter and sat down next to you on the bed with a heavy sigh. He had his hands resting on his knees, but then he took a chance and slid one arm over to interlace his fingers with yours, and you let him. He squeezed your hand. “It’s a long story, but a while back I made a mistake and got involved with this woman who--”

“Charlene Gregson?” She’d always been at the top of your list for someone who would have the motive for something so unnecessarily heinous.

“That’s the one,” he brought your hand over across his leg. “That’s where I went last night, to try and stop her, I suppose. I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

That made a laugh bubble out of your chest for some reason. “What was your plan? Crash through her gates on your motorcycle on a cloud of smoke and seek vengeance?”

Eddie shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, it always works out in the movies.”

You giggled and pulled away, but then he tugged you back, and you were still smiling as he scooped his hand around your cheek and pulled you in for a kiss, little hiccups of laughter erupting between kisses tongues slipping in ever so gently; Mulder and Scully having a conversation on the TV in the background. You held onto his wrist, sinking deeper into the yearning that you always felt for him, pulling back only to rub the tips of your noses together, lips grazing.

“Stay here with me tonight?” Eddie whispered, pressing his forehead to yours. “I want to hold you.”

You were sure, you were almost positive, that you had just fallen asleep for a second while he was talking, and you blinked hard just as he lifted his eyes to meet yours.

“But I stink, I smell like the Velvet Hammer. I didn’t have a chance to shower,” you mewed, feeling your body slump further into hibernation mode as the adrenaline from the past two days wore off.

“You don’t stink,” Eddie assured you. “You can sleep in one of my shirts, and you can use my toothbrush, if you don’t mind my germs.” He had your hand in his and was holding it to his chest as he watched your face.

“I figured you’d have plenty of extra toothbrushes here for all of the copious amounts of women who sleep over,” your exhaustion was making you feisty.

Eddie gave an exaggerated sigh. “Well, I do have a few extras for emergencies. But I’ve never offered up my own personal toothbrush before.”

“Goodbye,” you chirped, standing up, ready to leave.

But Eddie chuckled and caught you around the waist, throwing you down on the bed next to him with a bounce and a grunt.

You were doing a poor job of stiffing your own laughter as you tried to keep a serious face, but then he moved to crawl on top of you and you watched his face seize in pain. He stiffened and put his hand over the area where his knife wound was, easing himself onto his back. While Eddie silently prayed that he hadn’t ripped his stitches, you went around the side of the bed to click the lamp off. You turned the TV off too; the music was on low, but that you didn’t mind.

“We are quite a pair tonight,” Eddie mumbled from the bed, slightly incapacitated, as he watched you moved around his apartment.

You loved the idea of sleeping in one of his shirts and hygiene and all that jazz, but in that moment—you weren’t sure you could last another second. Your lids were heavy and your conversation skills were at an all time low. With rubbery limbs, you climbed on the dark blue comforter of his bed and curled against him, making sure it was the side he hadn’t been stabbed on. Flat on his back, Eddie’s eyes never left you, and he was ready with his arm high and outstretched for your head to make a pillow out of his shoulder.

“I can’t keep my eyes open for another second,” you yawned. You grabbed his chest to pull yourself closer, like he was a pillow, and he kissed your forehead.

You kissed the gash on his cheek, nuzzling the hair just above his ear, planting more kisses as you went. Eddie felt his cock spring to life in his jeans and he was too exhausted to do anything about it. You cupped your hand on the side of his neck, kissed the corner of his mouth, and then finally let your cheek fall to his shoulder with a flop.

Eddie took hold of your leg at the crook of your knee to pull it across his hips, needing to feel your weight, not wanting to let you get away. He closed his eyes, drowning in the feel of your soft puffs of breath on his neck, your chest moving up and down on his arm. He planted his lips to your head again, giving a few audible smooches before he rested his torn cheek lightly against you.

He wrapped his arm around tighter, bringing you closer. “You know, Robin called you my girlfriend today,” he admitted, a low laugh rumbling from his chest.

The only response you could manage was, “mmmpfm?”

The stubble of his jaw grazed your forehead as he contemplated what he was about to say. He’d just been stabbed, and it made him consider his mortality, and the time he had left.

“I was thinking,” he breathed. “If you like the sound of that, maybe we could, make it official? That is, if you could ever see yourself having a dirtbag like me as a boyfriend.”

Your body had gone limp and, in the following seconds while he waited for a response, he heard a soft whistle in your nose and a snore catch in the back of your throat. A few drops of drool started pooling from the side of your mouth and made a wet spot on his shirt.

Eddie chuckled, peeking down at you, but trying not to move too much, not realizing he was about to drift off to sleep as well.

-----------

You weren’t sure what time it was when your head rolled off of Eddie’s shoulder, jerking you awake, but it was dark outside, and you were still in the same position you were when you passed out: hand loosely cupping his neck, and your leg stretched across his hips. His head had rolled to the side, away from you, full lips parted, and the blue glow from the stereo cast a moody light on his skin, making his cheek wound look like something out of science fiction.

Still half asleep, you kissed the exposed muscles of his throat, right at the spot where the dark lines from his back tattoo came up across his neck, and your hand slid down his chest; you didn’t have a plan, you just wanted to feel him. His breathing was steady and shallow, eyeballs dancing under his lids. Your hand met with the top of his jeans, and then your eyes widened at the bulge that was causing a huge gap from skin to denim.

You slid your leg off of him, letting your hand move down a bit further, and your hand had to widen over his clothing to pass over the expanse of his arousal there.

Without even realizing it, you had started thrusting your hips against him, working your core against his hip, and then you lifted up to kiss his chin, aching to find his mouth with yours. You’d gone over to his place with every intention of being intimate with him, and nature had intervened with other plans, but you still wanted him to know how bad you wanted him, how much you craved him every second of the day.

Eddie groaned awake to return your kiss, and one of his hands grabbed your face. “Who is this greedy girl?” He mumbled against your mouth, his eyes droopy.

You straddled him, keeping your knees low, at his thighs, careful not to hit his wound. You started to move your core up and down along the bulge under his jeans, and then you leaned forward to brush your lips against his as you spoke. “You’re so hard, let me take care of it.”

Eddie whimpered a little in the back of his throat. “You can take whatever you want, baby,” and then a visible shiver ran through his body at the mere thought of your mouth on his cock.

You inched your way down, sucking hickeys into the dark tattoos spread across his stomach and chest, avoiding the medical tape from his bandage. Eddie moaned and threw his head back as you licked along the inside of his hip, unzipping his jeans to pull them down.

No boxers underneath, his huge cock sprang free, and the sight of the pre-cum already dripping from the pink tip made your mouth water. Eddie bit his lip while he watched you from under hooded eyes as you took control, pulled his jeans down further, and straddled his leg.

You bent over, and kept eye contact with him as you licked all the way down the shaft, and then wet the tip with your mouth, flicking your tongue along the slit, cleaning up his primal release.

Eddie pupils were blown, his lips parted as he watched.

“Whose cock is this?” You asked, teasing the tip with your wet mouth, planting hungry kisses down his shaft.

Eddie choked a little in the back of his throat. “It’s—it’s yours baby.”

He was already rock hard—throbbing, even---and your core flowered open beneath your clothes, soaking your underwear to the point that you actually had to reach down and touch yourself as you sucked him. Eddie noticed this and it made him mumble, “fuckbabyfuck,” as his leg squirmed, digging his heel into the bed.

You worked the tip of his cock with your hand while you sucked one of his balls into your mouth, and you couldn’t help but smile a little at how crazy it was making him.

Somehow, between sleeping on someone else’s couch and working, Eddie had neglected to jerk off recently, and so he was about to….

“Fuck, baby, right there,” he hissed, bucking his hips. “You’re gonna make me…”

You went back to work, gripping him with hand and mouth in tandem, lips stretching to take all of him, eyes watering, swallowing his tip in the back of your throat every so often, as he watched you with a furrowed brow, cursing under his breath.

Suddenly, his breath started to hitch, and the fingers of one of his hands dug into the comforter. “Fuck, I’m gonna cum baby...if you want it...like that…”

He was warning you as if you’d pull your mouth off and jerk him the rest of the way, but you wanted all of it in your mouth. You moaned as you sucked at the tip, pulling the orgasm out of him, saliva dripping down his balls.

Eddie let out a whimper and his leg jerked just before he stilled, and you tasted the salty sweetness of his warm cum shoot into the back of your throat in bursts. You drank his spend like his dick was a straw, throat busy swallowing every drop, moaning as you did so. You milked the tip for all he could give you, and then you cleaned him up with your greedy tongue, planting kisses on his cock when he was done with his release.

Eddie stared at the ceiling, slightly shook. “How are you so good at that?”

You sighed a quick laugh, licking your lips, as you made your way to the bathroom to finally brush your teeth. When you came back out, he was already asleep.

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As your eyes opened and adjusted to a sliver of buttery light peeking in from the curtain, your mind put you in several places. First, you were in your childhood bedroom, feeling like you needed to get up and ready for school, and then you were in the more recent bed in the house you shared with Katie. But, then the Iron Maiden poster came into focus and you were slammed with the realization that you had passed out in Eddie’s bed and it was already morning. Your intention had been to take a nap for an hour or two, but now you were alert to the idea that Eddie might still be somewhere in the room.

You remembered falling asleep on Eddie’s shoulder, waking up hungry for his cock, but now you were facing in the other direction, there was a blanket over you, and someone had taken your shoes off. It was Sunday, so the garage was closed, but you could still hear voices down below and the sound of a car engine revving. You reached your hand behind you to pat the bed, but only found an empty space; either Eddie was in the bathroom or he had already gone downstairs to start his day. God, what time was it?

You rolled over to crawl across the bed to look at the digital alarm clock, inhaling the smell from Eddie’s pillow as you went, and choked a little when you saw it was almost 9:30.

“Holy shit,” you mumbled, throwing the cover off of your body. You couldn’t remember the last time you slept in for that long. A fear that you’d be late for work gripped you, but then you were reminded that you were no longer the director of a gallery, and your new job didn’t start until cocktail hour.

You found your shoes tucked neatly against the sofa, and on the kitchen counter in front of the coffee pot was a note propped up like a little tent with your name on it.

I had to run a tow.

I hope you’re here when I get back.

Thank you for taking it like a good girl last night.

-- E

Eddie and his little notes. You grinned as you folded it up and put it in your pocket, because of course you’d be saving any note he ever left you till the end of time.

It was then that a heavy fist started pounding on the door down below. “Helloooo? Anyone? What the hell do I gotta do to get some service around here?”

----------

Even though the mechanics were all off that day, the towing business was a 24 hour thing. There was another Coffin King named Lou who was usually able to cover some nights and weekends, but when Eddie found himself stuck with a pickup at the worst possible time, he tried to focus on the money and be grateful for it.

He’d considered waking you up to see if you wanted to go with him, but you were sleeping so peacefully, he didn’t have the heart to disturb you. He woke up with his cock so achingly hard thinking about what you did to him in the middle of the night, that he had to jerk off as quietly as possible in the shower that morning. He was sure you’d heard the grunt he barked when he came, thinking about filling you up, listening to you tell him how deep you wanted all of him inside of you.

The last time he went this long without having intercourse with a girl that he had feelings for was maybe his freshman year in high school. The crazy thing was, he was enjoying the feeling of waiting and making it special; even though the holding out part was totally accidental, and he would’ve jumped at the chance to bury himself inside you that very first night you met.

But the way you took care of him last night, holy shit: he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t tell if he had really found the Holy Grail of women, or if his feelings for you had made it as intense as it was; possibly a bit of both. He was seized with memories of your mouth on him off and on while he was on the job, and he’d have to slyly adjust himself in his jeans. He couldn’t wait to get back to you.

He started to whistle as he rounded the corner to re-enter the compound, hoping that your car was still there, hoping that he could….

But he spotted a different car in the lot right next to yours that hadn’t been there before, and you were coming out from out of the garage with your hand shielding your eyes, looking deeply concerned.

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You considered just letting whoever it was keep on knocking, but at one point, the person yelled: “Eddie! I know you’re here! Don’t make me take your bike for a spin around the block!”

And so, you put your shoes on and went down, wholly unprepared for what you would find.

There were two smiling faces practically pressed up against the glass of the main door as you descended the stairs. One was a guy with a mop of brown curls, and the woman with him had beautiful olive skin, black hair, and wore glasses. They both waved enthusiastically, happy to finally be acknowledged.

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“What the hell, Henderson?” Eddie parked the tow truck and jumped down, wallet chain flapping against his jeans. Eddie waved to you across the way, as his mouth opened into a toothy grin, exposing actual cheek dimples, that you’d maybe only seen him wear once or twice.

“If it isn’t the Dungeon Master!” Dustin came toward him with his arms out. “What the hell is up with you and Steve? You’re the two hardest losers to find!”

They hugged, and then Eddie tousled Dustin’s hair, mussing it up. “You haven’t changed a bit, you little goblin.”

Next to you, under the shade of the awning was a very pregnant Suzie, who you’d also just met. She was in a purple floral dress with a white collar, and you’d pulled a chair around for her to have a seat.

“I love to see my Dusty Buns happy again,” she said, passing her hand over the globe of her belly as you both watched the two men embrace. “We should’ve moved back sooner, but life just got away from us.”

“How do you all know each other?” You were just barely able to introduce yourself before Eddie pulled up, and so you had no idea how close the gang was.

“I’m surprised the boys never mentioned Dustin to you? They went to high school together; they’re all really close. Steve is basically Dustin’s surrogate father,” she giggled, lifting her sweet moon-shaped face to you in a soft smile.

You did feel a little self-conscious about not knowing, but there was a good reason for it. “Well, I’m...Eddie and I are…kind of a new thing.” But then you remembered that you did know a little bit about one of their old friends. “They’ve mentioned Max to me. I guess she visited a couple days ago? I didn’t get to meet her though.”

“Maxine is a riot!” Suzie exclaimed. “You’ll get you meet her and Lucas when the baby is born. They said they wanted to be here for the actual birth, but who can really tell when that will be? I’m due in a week, but I was born two weeks early, and my sister’s newest baby was born almost a month late,” her eyes got glossy. “Boy, I really can’t imagine holding this baby in for another hour, let alone another month.”

Eddie had his arm around Dustin’s shoulders as they approached, and he gave him a playful knuckle rub to the head before they parted.

Eddie greeted Suzie, and she went to stand up to hug him, but Eddie quickly bent over and kissed her on the cheek so that she wouldn’t have to move. He swallowed as he took in the enormous state of her pregnant belly. “Shouldn’t you be...resting? Is it too hot out here? Should we go inside? Are you comfortable in that chair?”

Suzie laughed. “My god, Eddie, you’re as bad as Dustin. I’m fine, I promise. I’m trying to shake this baby loose; this little person has rented out my womb for long enough.”

Eddie met your eyes and kissed you on the lips before he put his arm around you and pulled you against him.

It was the wrong side, again, and he winced.

Dustin noticed the look of pain. “What the hell happened to you?”

“He got stabbed,” you volunteered with a sheepish look on your face, tilting your head to Eddie’s shoulder.

“Oh, of course he did,” Dustin said, his mouth wide. “What else would Eddie or Steve be doing on the weekends besides mortal combat?”

Suzie looked concerned, but Eddie assured the group that he was fine. He looked you in the face as he said: “So, did you two get to meet my girl?”

Your cheeks got warm, and you ran your hand up and down his back.

“Only briefly, before you rudely interrupted,” Dustin let him know, moving behind Suzie’s chair to put his hands on her shoulders. Dustin had been worried for a while there that Eddie would never move on from his ex, and that he would always be in a dark head space in regards to romance, and so seeing him with you made his heart feel light.

“You see Steve yet?” Eddie asked. “He’ll be pissed you didn’t come to see him first.”

“Um, not like we didn’t tryyyy,” Dustin raised both eyebrows. “No one was at the house and the tattoo shop wasn’t open yet. I talked to him on the phone a few weeks ago, but we weren’t sure when we’d be in town.”

Eddie thought about that for a second. It was very odd for neither one of them to be home, especially on a Sunday morning. But, there was a chance Robin took Oliver to a shift at work with her and Steve had spent the night at Astrid’s, depending on how early Dustin had popped by.

“I’ll find him,” Eddie assured them both. “Are you staying at your moms house.”

“Hell no,” Dustin responded almost too quickly. “I mean, I love my mother, don’t get me wrong, but she’s been driving us up the wall lately. We’re renting a house a few blocks away from her until everything is finalized at our new place.”

They all made a plan to meet up as soon as they could figure out where Steve and Robin were, and once they were gone, Eddie turned to you, cupping your neck to pull you against him.

“Is it okay that I introduced you as my girl?” He stroked his thumb across your chin as he asked it, chocolate eyes unsure if they should meet your gaze or watch your mouth.

You lifted up to brush your lips across his, tongue peeking out only slightly, making him groan a little. You searched his eyes, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. “Is that what I am?”

Eddie put his hands on your lower back and brought his head back, wanting to see your whole face. “You tell me. I wanna hear it. Are you my girl?”

You were nodding yes before he even finished. “I’ve been your girl for a long time now, silly boy.”

“Yeah?” Eddie breathed in a chuckle, his cock growing as he met your sweet, eager mouth. He paused only to admit, “I’ve wanted you to be mine since that first day we met.”

----------

Of all the places Steve had hoped to wake up on Sunday morning, a jail cell was not one of them.

He made bail, and Robin was there to pick him up, giving him a dirty look as she did so. He had his sunglasses on, his Coffin Kings cut in his hand, and a cigarette bobbing between his lips as he got into the passenger seat and shut the door. The “seek and destroy” tat on the side of his neck displayed loud and proud.

“Nice shiner,” Robin said under her breath.

“Yeah, well, you should see the other guy,” Steve said, cupping his hands to light his smoke. His black eye was the only visible mark on him, but the dude he had a tussle with had gone to town on Steve’s ribs, and there would definitely be bruises there.

She made a face as she backed out of the parking spot. “You smell like vomit.”

He ignored her observation. “Where’s Ollie?”

“I dropped him at Astrid’s,” she said as she pulled her own sunglasses down from the top of her head to cover her eyes. “I didn’t want him to see this.”

“Why are you acting like this was all my fault?” Steve blanched, flicking ash out the window as they turned out of the courthouse, Somebody to Shove by Soul Asylum playing on the radio. “You don’t even know what happened.”

“I don’t have to know, Steve, that’s the point,” she barked. Her frustration with him was also mixed with a generous amount of worry. “When are you going to grow up and start walking away from danger instead of headlong into it every chance you get?”

“Oh I get it,” Steve said sarcastically. “So, you don’t care that Tina is back in town, and this had everything to do with her?”

Robin hit the breaks and turned to him so fast, a chunk of her hair stuck to her bottom lip. “What do you mean Tina is back in town?”

“Now you care?” He tapped his knee as he took another drag.

Robin felt like she forgot how to breathe, so she pulled over to park haphazardly along the sidewalk at an angle.

She turned the car off but left the air on. “You know how I feel about Tina, but please tell me you didn’t hit her.”

“Oh, fucking of course not,” Steve balked, snapping his head to look at her. He gestured to his black eye with the two fingers holding his cigarette, “this was courtesy of her new fiance. I think they were both on crack. They were waiting for me when I left work last night. Now, all of a sudden, out of the goddamn blue, Tina wants to see Oliver.”

Robin was shaking her head, gripping the steering wheel. “No, no, absolutely not,” she said, definitively. “She disappeared when he was 3 months old. No. There’s no way. She’s a drug addict, she’s a narcissist, no. Not a chance in hell.”

“I know, Rob, believe me. It’s not going to happen, okay?” Steve assured her with a wave of his hand. “At least not until she cleans her life up.”

Christina, Oliver’s biological mother, didn’t have a nurturing bone in her body, and never wanted anything to do with her son, but the fear had always been in the back of his head that one day she’d pop up like a mean, STD rash.

Robin felt her eyes getting moist and she wiped at her cheeks angrily. “Where are her and her fleabag fiance now?”

“Oh I put that scumbag in the hospital so hard,” Steve threw the rest of his cigarette out the window and licked his lips. “He’s lucky I didn’t put him in a grave. I’m sure Tina’s already changed her mind, you know how fickle and selfish she is. They were most likely on a bender and thought they’d come through town and fuck with us. They’re probably on their way back to Memphis by now. I don’t want you to worry about it, okay?”

Robin swallowed a few times, trying to allow him to comfort her. She never expected or intended to fall into this roll and be a mother to Steve’s son. But, it happened. Oliver was their son now, and she loved him as much as if he had grown in her womb. And, she would fight to keep him safe with the same level of conviction.

Steve sniffed and adjusted himself in his seat. “Thank you for bailing me out, by the way.”

Robin snorted as she started the car. “Dingus, I could barely afford the gas to drive over here, and you think I had the cash to bail you out? Get real.”

Steve frowned. “Who was it, then? They said I made bail. Otherwise, I’d still be rotting in there.”

“I assumed it was Astrid? Or Eddie?”

Steve shook his head. “Eddie doesn’t know, and Astrid is in the same financial hole we are.”

Robin put the car in drive but kept the break on. “Well, who was it then?” She posed the question as both of them searched their collective data bank memories for a close friend nearby who had more than two pennies to rub together, or something valuable to use as collateral.

Hours later, they still couldn’t think of anyone.

----------

You left Eddie reluctantly so that he could go look for Steve, and you could take a long awaited shower and throw your nicotine-saturated clothes in the wash. The business card with John Gregson’s email, phone number, and private extension was on your dresser, and you stopped to pick it up as you walked across the room. You meant to bring up the situation to Eddie, but the timing was never right. Was John trying to mess with you in the same way his wife wanted to mess with Eddie? You didn’t get a bad feeling from him, but now, after everything with the photos and Charlene paying people off, you weren’t sure.

A voice inside whispered that John could be an ally if you impressed him, and he had the notion to take you under his wing. John was the one with all the power at the end of the day, and if Charlene could play with fire, well then, so could you.

You decided to give him a call first thing Monday, and hopefully make a consultation appointment with him to get a taste for what type of art piece would suit his tastes and needs. You wondered if it was for his office or home? If it was a piece for his personal space at home, would you bump into Charlene while you were there, commiserating with her husband? The idea of getting under Charlene’s skin and making her sweat a little scratched an itch in you that you had not been able to reach for a while.

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Part 11

Eddie after reader is done with him image courtesy of @tenthmoon

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It's so damn cool that some of you have made it this far and continue to want to know what goes on with reader and our boys! It warms my heart in a way I'm having trouble expressing in words xoxo

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