Don’t Mind Me. Just Missing My Favorite Squad. :(

Cuties !

the gang on their way to kick vecna’s ass 🏃 acrylic standee available soon!

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𝐭𝐡𝐞 "𝐲𝐞𝐬" 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲.

singledad!mechanic!eddie x fem!reader

✶Casual was much harder rule to abide by when Eddie spent more time with you, as facilitated by his daughter. Dialed back was a flirting style you weren't accustomed to, and proved near-impossible to follow when Eddie's lips were pressed to your ear.✶

NSFW — slow burn, fluff, flirting, mutual pining, slight scent kink, allusion to jerking off, reader wears eddie's jacket, drug/alcohol mention/use, depictions of poverty, 18+ overall for eventual smut

chapter: 5/? [wc: 15.1k]

↳ part 01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05 / 06 / 07 / 08 / 09

AO3

Chapter 5: You're Gonna Get Me in Trouble

————

The days of the week lost their meaning in the best way. Turning from one to the next like the colors of the leaves. Falling in and out of obscurity. What was a Monday, when Monday felt like Friday? And what was a Friday, when the familiar clicking sound of your bicycle spokes found him on a Saturday?

The days blurred. The edges sharpened. They were long when the sun was short. They were beautiful, and aggressively tender, including the lows, because the lows themselves used to be the highs.

The days swirled into an everlasting seasoned breeze of cherished moments. Too many to fill the memories of those collecting them. Glimpses into a life of pleasantness–of contentedness–if one were to grasp them.

————

Leather. Vanilla cologne. Spicy deodorant and earthy tobacco.

You grabbed the cuffs of your sweater into your fists and worked your arms down the sleeves of Eddie’s jacket before grabbing your bike from the porch, and setting off on your shortcut through the frosty grass.

The farther you journeyed, the more you smelled like him. The more you sounded like him.

In Robin’s driveway, cigarette smoke overwhelmed your nose, but as your skin warmed from exertion, the nuances appeared. The natural musk clinging to the inside lining, and the artificial fragrances on top, now enveloping you. You turned onto the main road leading to the auto shop, and the chains on the sleeve cuff clinked against the broken zipper. Bouncing your tire up onto the sidewalk, the snap tab collar jangled in time with the small rocks you rode over on the way to the front employee door. You dismounted your bike in a fluid motion, and the supple leather made to fit Eddie creaked and groaned as you got out your keys.

The door opposite you in the garage was ajar, meaning he was smoking in the alleyway.

Quietly, you went to the break room, and said your peace. “Boy’s clothes are always better.”

Standing in front of the coat hooks, you slipped your hands into the pockets and pulled out the items for no other reason than to observe them in remembrance, as if you hadn’t inspected them for hours over the weekend. A half-empty pack of Camels crowded with rolling papers. Translucent green BIC lighter. A grocery receipt from two weeks ago with an obscene amount of pasta and marinara listed on it. A peppermint candy wrapper you could now confirm came from the candy dish on your desk intended for customers. And, of course, a tiny blue high heel shoe belonging to a Barbie doll. Because what father wouldn’t have that in their pocket.

Returning the items from whence they came, you fished a strip of paper out of your jeans, and added it to his treasure.

You removed the warmth you’d become accustomed to, and stared at the coat hook. You glanced down the hallway. Listened for Eddie.

Silence pressed in on you.

Intentionally, after spending more time doing this in bed than you cared to admit, you found his scent to be the strongest on the inside of the collar, and brought it to your nose.

Hugging the jacket to your chest, you inhaled deep, and sighed.

Years of the leather being draped around his neck did wonders for your loneliness since moving here. Last night you caved despite the voice in your head telling you it was weird to find comfort in your coworker’s belongings. As you stared into pitch-black attic, laying alone in a borrowed twin size bed with someone else’s parent’s hand-me-down blankets, cold, and without the glow or noise of the city to keep you company, you surrendered, and wrapped yourself in him. It was a split second decision, quickly overwhelmed by a sensation you hadn’t felt in quite some time. And it was an emotion you were more than happy to shove behind the other clutter in your brain, vowing you’d unpack it some other day, totally. Definitely. You’d absolutely process the heady buzz, and delightful sweat breaking out across your skin at the thought of your coworker’s arms giving you this embrace, and being able to press your nose to the crook of his neck to experience his salty taste on your tongue first-hand.

A squeaky truck passed by on the street, breaking you out of your spell.

“Good God, get a hold on yourself,” you begged aloud, and hung up the jacket.

~~~

The coffee machine sputtered liquid energy into the pot, signifying the end of your morning chores. And yet, Eddie had not made his appearance, whether it was wanted or not, depending on if he was hiding around a corner, or doing the thing he did where he stood next to you and looked like he wanted to say something, but never did.

The back door was still ajar. You poked your head out, and he was there, leaning against the wall. The stubby end of his cigarette was pinched between his forefinger and thumb with a trail of smoke coming off of it.

Early sunrays pierced the tree-lined horizon, gilding the silhouette of his nose in brilliant beauty. He heard you step onto the rocks, and rolled his head to the side to watch you stand between him and his car. The sun caught his hair. Glanced off the gentle slope of his cheek. Caused him to squint one of his eyes, and wrench his mouth into a lopsided grimace.

“Good morning,” he was first to say.

“Good morning,” you replied brightly. “You cut your hair.” By the way his face fell, you gathered he assumed no one would notice, but the feathery edge of his bangs curled higher onto his forehead, flaunting the harsher shadows of his confusion. You reassured him, “It looks good.”

He continued to stare at you without an emotion you could decipher.

“Really good?” you added, thinking he was seeking a better compliment.

With a soft smile and averted gaze, he flicked the ash from his cigarette, and admitted, “Sometimes I have problems vocalizing my thoughts before they’re gone, and I forget you can’t hear them if I don’t blurt them out. Luckily, my daughter demonstrated much better manners than I did, and thanked you for her costume, while I–”

“Waved for an obscenely long time, and then made fun of me,” you finished.

On cue, you both made eyes at each other, and looked away.

The sun couldn’t compete with his smile. The birdsong couldn’t compete with your giggle.

“Yeah,” he exhaled in a croaky groan. “I did do that, didn't I?” You shrugged and told him it didn’t bother you. It was just how you teased each other. “Still, thank you for putting in so much effort to make it special for her. She was crazy excited when she saw it. My uncle, too. I–uh, I appreciate you doing that for us more than I let on.”

“I know you do.” While Eddie may not have shared many of the details of his life prior to your arrival in Hawkins, it was evident in his every decision that people were not frequently kind to him, and the simple act of noticing he trimmed his bangs was something he’d think about for days.

“You think my hair looks good?” he asked, circling back to the original topic.

“The bangs, or everything?”

After a beat of consideration, he ventured, “Everything?”

You tilted your head. “Oh, it’s outdated. Messy. Unprofessional and like you just woke up from a 7-year coma. The worst case of bed head I’ve ever seen. More like a bird’s nest after a storm than anything, but yeah, it suits you. Can’t picture you with any other hairstyle, to be honest.” His expression was a mixture of bafflement, yet also flattery. You put emphasis on the latter. “I love it. It’s wild. I think you look good,” followed by, “for a weirdo,” to dodge the implication of calling him attractive.

In the long seconds that ensued, you rocked from foot to foot, waiting for him to say anything. Do anything besides stare at you with a slight smirk. Anything at all to make you feel like your nervous habits weren’t being examined under a microscope.

Cheeks suitably burning from the shyness of saying too much, you tugged your sleeves into your sweaty palms, and pivoted while saying, “Welp, time for me to be anywhere else on Earth but here.”

You swung open the door to the garage and he spoke up.

“You look pretty today.”

Halting your momentum on a dime, you slid your gaze from the floor to him–to his way of pressing his shoulder blades to the brick wall, leaning his full weight into the pose, arms crossed over his chest, cigarette between his lips, eyes set on you with an irresistible amount of tenderness to them.

You said, “Thank you, handsome,” and left the door open behind you.

But before you walked inside, before you blinked away, you watched that tenderness widen to excitement. You saw the soft curve of his mouth stretch to a smile. Heard him expel his breath in a single stunned laugh. And you listened to his voice fade as he turned his face up to the sky, and took the final drag on his cigarette with a smug mumble of, “Knew it.”

————

The next morning you stared at the full coffee pot suspiciously. The countertop was wiped clean and the powder creamer container was replaced, alongside the sugar packets being restocked.

Still wearing your backpack, you slipped off one strap, swung it around to unzip the top, and put away your lunch in the fridge. While bent over, you surveyed the room again, and narrowed your eyes at the shiny glass pot filled with dark brown coffee.

A certain someone was feeling generous today, helping you out with your morning chores, and that certain someone was currently sneaking behind your desk.

Pretending to mull over who could do such a courteous thing for you, you ran your finger over the packets. Neatened the coffee stirrers. Hummed a pleasing tune as you left the room with heavy steps. Stomp, stomp, stomp, all the way to the end of the hallway, meandering just before you would turn to sit at your desk.

“Raaah!” Eddie jumped from behind the wall–hunched over, hands clawed at you, face etched with utter deviousness, grinning broadly to bare his teeth.

You took the coffee stirrer and thwacked him on the forehead before sidestepping to your chair.

His wickedness withered away. “Hey,” he complained, rubbing the sore spot. “How did you–?”

“Your reflection, dork.”

He clicked his tongue and peered down the hall at the full coffee pot and microwave door, both giving away his movements. “Damnit.”

————

Lunches together became the norm.

Even after Carl and Kevin left the room to ruminate over the real clunker of a car that came in yesterday, you and Eddie remained crowded together on one side of the round table, eating.

You swiped the crumbs from your sandwich into your container. “How’s Adrie’s sleep been? I thought the whole ‘regression’ thing was just for babies.”

Eddie spoke with his mouth full of half-chewed spaghetti, gesturing with his fork, “Usually, yeah. It’s more like she has nightmares ‘nd stuff. Scared of the dark. Monsters under the bed. That sorta thing.” He hadn’t even swallowed before dipping his garlic toast in the marinara sauce and taking a bite. “It’s gotten better, though. I think only one nightmare these past two weeks.”

It happened last Wednesday. You remembered. After your boss and the other guys went home, Eddie fell asleep at the table, and you turned off the lights for him, letting him rest after taking his work jacket off the hook and placing it over his shoulders. He always pretends to not be awake when you do that, but you could tell from his breathing when he was awake and when he wasn’t.

“That’s good,” you said. “I had a talk with her on Halloween about how the dark wasn’t so scary; how she was a bat and bats love the dark, and I’m a mouse, we’re nocturnal, nighttime is just like daytime and there’s nothing to be afraid of, yada yada..” You trailed off upon seeing the faint shadow of his dimple flourish. “What?”

“That’s a genius move,” he said, impressed. “You sure you’re not a parent?”

You wanted to continue the conversation, you really did, but..

Sighing, you closed your eyes. “Eddie, you have sauce–just–all over your mouth.”

“–Shit, sorry.” Intent on rushing to the stack of napkins near the sink, he didn’t notice how close you were, and stumbled into your chair when standing up.

He caught himself on you. His hands were heavy on your shoulders as he regained his balance. Landing there on accident, yet it felt on purpose when they remained a moment longer, benefitting from your innate response to clasp your hands over his wrists and ask if he were all right, looking up at him with wide eyes of concern and your cheek pressed to his forearm.

He cursed another apology from above your head, and withdrew his grip–but only after you let go, too.

————

“Oh, Adrie, I found that shoe you were.. looking.. for?”

It was the weekend before Eddie managed to wear his leather jacket. He reached into the pocket after coming inside from smoking on the makeshift porch attached to the front of his uncle’s trailer, and uncurled his fingers.

The blue high heel rolled across his palm along with a folded piece of paper.

Jutting his bottom lip in confusion, he gave his daughter the shoe, and as she galloped to her room to play with her dolls, he opened the note.

sorry i stole your jacket

 come to me for a prize when you find this :)

if you find this

So that’s why you gave him that weird expectant look every morning..

————

Facing you on the other side of your desk after a customer left the lobby with their receipt, Eddie held up the note pinched between his index and middle fingers. “What’s my prize?”

Elated, your eyes lit up at the sight, and you motioned for him to give it to you while you held the phone to your ear with your shoulder, and continued your conversation with the auto parts dealer. “So–Yeah, three of those,” you went on, making a note with your pencil on where you left off in the catalog. “Yes, the smaller size, please.” You wrote something on the back of the paper and gave it to him.

Eddie snatched it–darting his eyes over your handwriting–and his excitement melted.

you finally cleaned out your pockets

    your prize is a job well done ♡

“That’s not a prize,” he said, face falling into a pouty glare.

Unamused by his inability to keep his mouth shut when you were clearly busy, you turned your hand over as if to ask ‘what did you expect?’ and directed a question at the man over the phone.

Not one to be ignored, Eddie began searching through the candy dish for a treasure to appease his appetite for a reward, and spilled peppermints over the side as he dug to the bottom.

You made a shushing gesture at him, widening your eyes at the crinkling wrappers interrupting you. “You’re out of those? Okay, then, I’ll move on to the door handle replacement. Let me just find the model number,” you spoke evenly into the receiver.

Eddie grunted, not finding what he was looking for.

You snapped your fingers at him, and pressed the phone to your chest to muffle yourself, “Do you not have a job or something?”

He held up a pink Now and Later, and asked in a stage-whisper, “Where’s all the butterscotch candy?”

“Bu–What?” you balked. “You ate them all? Those are for customers, Eddie! Yes, I’m still here,” you rattled off a make and model for the car. Eddie’s eyebrows rose at the quick switch from your speaking voice, to your cloyingly sweet customer service nasally octave, and back down to your annoyed tone at him. “Stop eating candy not meant for you and get back to work. You’re distracting me, you absolute nuisance.”

“Can you buy more butterscotch ones? Those are my favorite.”

“Sure, gramps, I’ll get right on it.”

Undeterred, or perhaps spurred on by earning your attention, he flattened his stomach to the ledge, and leaned over, invading your space to grab a stack of Post-it notes from the far end of your desk. Your Post-It notes. Your Post-It notes in his scuffed up, greasy hands, and his wavy hair sweeping from over his shoulders to block you from reading the lines of numbers and letters you were about to recite.

“What’re you..” You gave up when he grabbed your favorite pen.

You slid the catalog into your lap and turned away from him, facing the wall as you ordered the rest of the parts you needed, ending the call with an unintentional chat about the mild autumn weather–two minutes tops–and spun around to no one. Eddie had gone out to the garage. But not before sticking a note right smack dab in the middle of your desk where you couldn’t ignore it.

BUY MORE BUTTERSCOTCH

                                     -EM

His initials. It was silly, but two months into knowing him, and you’d never heard his last name. It wasn’t said aloud by him, his friends, or the other mechanics. Maybe you’d remember to ask him what it is one day.

————

Eddie had one rule–no reading over his shoulder when he was writing in his black notebook.

“Oh, chill,” you scolded him. “I’m here to microwave my lunch, not read your diary.”

Mr. Moore was out of office and the photocopier was broken, meaning you had to bike to the drug store and use theirs, missing your lunch break. With Eddie being the only mechanic in today, and having no customers, he made himself at home over the hour you were gone to catch up on.. whatever it was he was catching up on.

He slammed the thin red book shut and flipped it over. And when he thought that wasn’t good enough, he smashed the looseleaf papers back into his binder, closed it, and scrambled for his notebook, tearing through it like a wild animal until he found a blank page. Quick–He spun in his chair and laced his fingers in his lap, donning a weak smile. About as composed as a floundering fish. 

A pink flush crept up his neck, and his heavy breathing caused his unbuttoned coveralls to open wider over his chest, showing more than a glimpse at his black shirt underneath, stretched taut across his pecs.

His pencil dropped to the floor.

“Uh, hey. Didn’t hear you walk in.”

“Yeah, that much was obvious,” you snorted.

“What took you so long? I thought it’d be, like, 15 minutes tops. You could’ve read the manual and fixed our own copier by now.”

You popped open the lid to your container, and placed it in the microwave. “I’d rather jump off a bridge than sit there and read instructions. Anyway, I took a detour to see an apart–”

“Actually, that’s a good question. Would you jump off a bridge if someone asked, with your policy and all?”

“I’m not dignifying that with a response.” You punched two minutes on the timer. “As I was saying–Do you know that motel that closed down on Cypress? Bobbie told me it was a little mom-and-pop place that struggled to compete with the Motel 6.”

Perplexed as to where this was going, he squinted, and answered with a tepid, “Yeah?”

“Well,” you explained, “apparently someone bought the building and has been renovating them into apartments. I guess it wasn’t in too bad of a shape, with them just knocking down a few walls to make them into two bedrooms, and stuff. Bigger kitchens, whatever.” His features softened. The fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes lessened, and the tenseness in his jaw weakened. “Bobbie met the guy who’s renovating them and, uh, they’re gonna be available sometime at the beginning of next year, and the projected rent isn’t that bad. Really manageable for the both of us. As long as her dad is getting better, we could be moving out soon. It’d be nice to not live in their attic anymore, y’know.” You ended it almost on a lilt, as if it were a question, but maybe you were just goading him into saying what was on his mind, because with the way he was looking at you, you had no idea what had him so captivated.

“I–Yeah, I know the place you’re talking about. It’s just a few minutes from here.” And he added helpfully, “It’d be a shorter commute to work.”

“Yeah!” you exhaled, nodding in agreement. “Shorter commute.”

“Yeah,” he said again, allowing the information to wash over you both in different ways. “Closer to the grocery store, too.”

“Yeah. Yeah, and the laundromat.”

Eddie raised his brows. “Oh, nice. I use that place when our washing machine is broken.”

By some miracle you kept your mouth shut, saving yourselves the trouble of listing more establishments you’d be near when you moved. He must’ve realized the awkwardness as well, because he fidgeted with his fingers sheepishly.

“So, does that mean you’re staying in Hawkins?”

Hearing him take interest in your future kicked up your heart rate. It could be coming from a place of blunt curiosity, or conversational politeness, but like hell if your adrenaline didn’t surge from the unmistakable way he leaned in, hanging onto your every word, as the warm hum of the microwave served as background music to the glimmer of eagerness in his eyes.

Downplaying your excitement, you told him one eensy-weensy tiny caveat about your situation, “I am, but Robin’s moving in with Vickie at some point–don’t know when, but probably by the end of summer when she goes back to Indianapolis.. so.”

“And after that?”

“Dunno. I can float rent and bills by myself for a few months, but I’m not sure after that. Could tag along with them to the city, or stay here and, y’know, keep answering phones and annoying my favorite mechanic like I do now. Maybe even find someone willing to go on another date with me, since my first one was a bust.” He didn’t laugh. “Who knows. Maybe I’ll end up back in New York and audition for Cats.” You threw it out there as an outlandish possibility without serious consideration, and you thought you conveyed that through your jokey tone.

The microwave beeped.

You turned around, missing the way Eddie averted his gaze down and away before speaking.

“Just waiting for the next big thing to catch your eye and sweep you away, huh?”

“Not the first time you said that,” you commented teasingly, thinking you were still playing with each other. You grabbed your steaming rice and stirred it with a fork from the cutlery drawer. “What’s wrong? Afraid of not having a pretty girl sit across from you at lunch every day? Scared some other mechanic’s gonna need a receptionist, and then I’ll be gone? Or are you worried you’ll actually miss me if I leave?”

You giggled at your melodramatic phrasing and waited for him to respond. And when he didn’t, you looked over at him.

His shoulders rose and fell with his steady breaths as he thumbed through his notebook, mouth in a flat line.

Confusion stung embarrassment to your cheeks. Holding the hot tupperware, you asked, “Are we not eating together?”

He opened the binder and shifted closer to the table, scraping the chair legs across the tile, signifying the end of the conversation. Worse, still, he spoke in what would be a casual tone, if it weren’t for his rejective back facing you. “Actually, I’m trying to finish this,” he said, putting his pencil to the page and continuing the sentence where he left off.

“Oh.. Okay.”

You walked out the room and sat at your desk. Alone. Glaring at the stupid grains of rice and moving them around with your stupid fork and slouching over to rest your stupid cheek on your stupid fist.

Were you really less interesting than whatever he was writing in that notebook of his?

“Maybe I will find a bridge to jump off of,” you concluded, deciding you’d clock out on time in order to preserve your dignity. At least Robin would be home, and she would be honored to hang out with you.

————

An apology of sorts waited for you on your desk the next morning.

Three fresh-picked flowers in a chipped vase with a torn square of lined paper beside it.

     YOURE RIGHT

  I WOULD MISS

     EATING  WITH YOU

IM SORRY

                    -EM

The bud vase was from his home, the paper from his spiral bound notebook, and the dew-coated flowers from Hawkin’s soil–the last of their kind before the season put them to sleep.

Eddie wouldn’t be coming in today; he had the day off to take Adrie to the dentist. So, he woke up early to leave this peace offering when he could be sleeping in.

You set your elbows on you desk, and laced your fingers to rest your chin atop them, taking in the finer details of the periwinkle blue asters. After a moment, you traced your knuckle along your grin, and nibbled at the skin.

“So silly.”

————

And the morning after that, Eddie strayed from his bee line for coffee to approach you with a familiar meek posture; head lowered in deference, and a pouty expression of remorse on his lips.

The glass candy dish shined like a chest of golden coins awaiting him.

He folded his forearms on the ledge, and picked one of the butterscotch candies on top, pulling either end of the wrapper to unfurl it until the lustrous surface of the sweet flashed under the lobby’s lights.

You sank into your chair and watched him sweep his gaze across your desk in search of the flowers, and after not seeing them, he popped the candy in his mouth, and mumbled, “Does this mean you forgive me?”

Flitting your focus back and forth between his big eyes, you peered into each one, drawing out the moment by clicking your pen in thought, forcing him to sweat and fiddle with his wrapper in the echoey room. “Hmm..” You crossed your legs and shined your fingernails on your shirt, inspecting them.

His mouth twitched into a slight smile, favoring the side with his dimple.

Tipping his head so he was looking at you from under his lashes, he begged, “Come on, haven’t I groveled enough for you to have lunch with me later?” Bravery swelled his chest, jerked his chin in a smug nod once he had your attention. “Got you flowers and everything.”

You locked eyes with him for one, entire, sweet second, in which he winked at you.

Interestingly enough, you remembered you had paperwork to grab from Mr. Moore’s office, and rushed out sloppy sentences as you went, laying the sarcasm on thick to disguise the hitch in your throat, “Okay, okay, fine. I’ll have lunch with you if it’s that important to your livelihood, since you can’t live without me, or whatever.” You closed the office door behind you.

God, your face had never burned so hot.

~~~

And it was that night, when Eddie was alone with himself, he thought of the morning smiles through the glass window, and the afternoon laughs shared at the lunch table. The way you sat next to him and he moved his feet outward, spreading his legs to occupy as much space as possible. And he thought about how you accommodated him. Nudging his knee at first to test the waters, and when he responded by closing the distance between your shoe and his, you leaned towards him at the height of the story you were telling, and the length of your thigh pressed against him in a satisfying squish. He wasn’t entirely sure it was on purpose, but with the state he was in, it mattered not.

Eddie fluttered his eyes closed from blinking lazily at the shower head, stroking away the fleeting guilt of wondering if he should be testing his boundaries by thinking about you while doing this, even as his lips parted with silence, and his stomach tensed from pleasure.

Even as he held his shaky breath to keep himself mute, and his hand moved with renewed swiftness from his release mixing with his spit, and he watched the mess gather in his palm before washing it down the drain, he convinced himself.

This was so casual.

————

Saturday you went to the grocery store–AKA, hell day in hell land. You only needed a few ingredients, and figured getting out of the house for a while was better than calling Robin and asking her to pick them up for you.

However, life mocked you. After a heart-racing encounter with a truck narrowly missing you on the highway, you slowed to an agonizing stop every few feet from people blockading the aisles, taking their sweet time to decide what type of oil they wanted, when you could’ve snatched the one you needed, and moved on if they–would–just–move–a–freakin’–inch.

Least to say, by the time you made it to the baking aisle, you were mentally over it, and yet..

The cocoa powder was on the top shelf, taunting you by sight, just out of reach.

You huffed.

Rising onto your tiptoes, you employed your entire wingspan into clawing for it–tasting victory with your fingertips–but not enough to grasp the slippery plastic.

And of course no one else on the aisle was taller than you. They were hunched over walking canes, and clutching their layers of cardigans over their chests.

And of course, as you were stepping onto the bottom shelf for leverage, and becoming intimate with the bags of flour you inadvertently shoved your face into, your worst nightmare loomed behind you.

You knew it was Eddie before he spoke. You knew his gait, his smell, the sound of his laugh when he kept it in his chest. You knew his radiating warmth, his soft grunt, the way he took a sharper breath and held it for a beat before releasing it as a teasing remark. You knew the magnitude of his presence even when he was being demure. How respectful he was to invite himself into your personal space without crossing a line, squeezing his firm hand on the meat of your shoulder to let you know he was there, and heeding a modest gap between your bodies as his unbuttoned shirt brushed your sides.

He backed away half a step, and waited until you were turned around in the crowded space of him and the metal shelves to wave the tub above your head. The rings decorating his fingers glinted as he boasted, “Shucks, looks like it’s the last one too.”

You held your palm up and dropped your head to the side. “Are you gonna make me jump for it like Adrie, or are you gonna be a grown up and give it to me?”

“Give it to you? Maybe I need” –He read the label– “Cocoa powder.”

“You so do not.”

“You don’t know that,” he replied, lifting his chin at your bored expression. “If you want it..” He shifted his stance and sank into his hip, curling his bottom lip over his smirk as he peered down at you, prolonging your misery instead of just finishing his sentence. “..You can use the magic words.”

What an infuriating immovable object. Blocking everything in your view that wasn’t his red flannel thrown over a wrinkled white tee, and his rebellious hair eclipsing the fluorescent lights.

Just the worst person to rescue you from your predicament. Standing so close you could scrutinize the permanent five-o-clock shadow on his upper lip, and the wispy curls composing his sideburns.

So annoying how his hair reached the shadow of his clavicle, where a chain link necklace showed beneath his shirt, and the tendons in his neck stretched an alluring contour from the hollow of his throat to the underside of his square jaw.

His shoulders shook with a quelled snicker. “Come on,” he sang with an infuriating timbre, swaying the cocoa above you.

You met his steeped tea eyes, and insisted in a warm honey tone, “Please stop being a dickhead, and thank you for not being an asshole and handing over the cocoa.. Fucker.”

Eddie’s face cracked into the biggest grin. Beside you, a blushing grandmother shot you a scathing glare, and grabbed a bag of sugar from the shelf before tsking and walking off.

Bestowing you the tub in your hand, he wrapped his palm over top of it and didn’t let go as he bent to you. “Hey now,” he said in a lower register, voice cracking on the consonants from the remnants of his laugh, “no bad words in front of my kid. Or the elderly. Show some respect.”

You perked up. All transgressions in regards to baking ingredients were forgotten when you spotted his daughter sitting cross legged inside the shopping cart behind him. “Adrie!” You pushed Eddie out of the way, and wrapped her in a tender, heartwarming hug.

“Miss Mouse!” she cheered in equal enthusiasm, dropping the box of cereal she was reading aloud to lock her arms around your neck.

You giggled at the giddy feeling soaring in your chest, and encouraged her, “Yeah, I’m Miss Mouse.” The clunky braids Eddie put in her hair smashed against your cheek as you held each other tighter.

Taking inventory of the sparse groceries she was amongst, you spotted a pattern. “You like pasta, huh?” It was an easy guess considering there were three bags of noodles with two large jars of sauce standing out from the rice dinners and a few cans of soup. Practically a replica of the receipt you found in his pocket. But she corrected you.

“No. Daddy’s just bad at cooking.”

Your eyes bulged, and you pursed your lips to refrain from bursting out in impolite laughter. Standing up straight, you combed a few stray curls behind her ear, and whispered, “Geez, kids are ruthless.”

Eddie shifted his weight to his other foot, and gestured at the groceries with a pencil before striking out something on the short list he had written one on a pad of paper. “Eh, Wayne’s the chef of the family. She knows what she’s getting when it’s my turn to cook.”

You hummed at the new information, and went to pick your hand basket off the floor when something caught your eye–and it definitely wasn’t the leather loafers on the old man shuffling past you.

Eddie, obviously, wasn’t dressed in coveralls.

His black tennis shoes were nearly identical to the white ones he wore on Halloween, with the floppy tongues out against his light-wash blue jeans. (Very, very nice fitted jeans with holes in the knees, and a rip stretching wider across the curve of his thigh.) Dragging your gaze up, you clocked the interesting belt buckle he wore on your way to admire the soft outline of his stomach pressed against his shirt. He moved his flannel aside to stuff his shopping list in his pocket–struggling due to how tight his pants were–and incidentally showed off a smidgen of skin above the waistband of his plaid boxers.

Just a hint of skin marked with the bottom lines of a larger tattoo and you were salivating–

A loud intercom announcement sang a jingle about tortillas, and you were reminded of where you were, and where Eddie was, a few feet away from you, well aware of the places your gaze stalled before landing on his smirk.

He caught you checking him out.

Raising an eyebrow, he asked, “Find everything you were looking for?”

“I, uh–” you stuttered two words out before your brain threatened you to shut the fuck up. As an alternative, you snapped into finger guns aimed in the opposite direction, and made up an excuse. “I forgot to get.. something.”

“Forgot what?”

You blinked. “Milk.”

“Milk, huh?”

“Yep.. Milk.” Sweating under the heat of his narrowed eyes, you made yourself scarce. “Welp. Hope to never see you outside of work again, because this was we-ird,” you enunciated in lilt as you strutted away. But just as you were about to disappear around the corner, you stopped, and said, “Adrie, however, I’d love to see you any day of the week.”

She turned in the shopping cart and waved. “Bye, Miss Mouse.” Eddie was too busy watching you make a fool of yourself to correct her, letting the nickname stick.

Rounding the end cap display of premature Christmas themed candies and bakeware, you held your gaze steadfast ahead as you passed by someone not-so-inconspicuously trying to blend in with the background, wearing a red managerial vest, and holding a clipboard over their mouth.

Robin lowered the employee break schedule, and whispered rather loudly, “He’s so in love with you.”

You groaned. “Can you not spy on us?”

She sweetened you up, “Seriously, he was totally checking you out when you bent over.”

You turned down an aisle and felt her hot on your heels. Yielding in front of the boxes of chamomile tea, you examined one, and asked with an air of disinterest as if you were inquiring about the weather, “Was he now?”

Screwing her face up, she nodded empathically, “Majorly.”

“Good, because I want to crawl in a hole and die.”

~~~

Six feet under seemed like a better fate than what you were dealt.

Though you gave it your best effort, meandering about until enough time had elapsed that you figured he’d left by now, you made your way to the front of the store, and stopped. Eddie had the end of his cart angled towards the registers. Adrie held a package of cookies out for him to approve of, and in a depressing moment of realization, you watched him revert to the person you met him as.

The playfulness was gone. His face was cast with the exhaustion of being around strangers for too long. His lips were bitten raw. His chest sank with a long exhale, and his stomach caved as he looked at his daughter asking for something the other parents around him could throw in their cart without a second thought, and he had to disappoint her.

He didn’t say ‘no’ exactly, but the nervousness of doing so was there. “They’re not on the list,” he begged her in a defeated whisper to understand and not make a scene. He couldn’t handle a scene.

Not yet five-years-old and she sensed his stress and put them back.

“Hey, cutie.” You didn’t know you spoke until Eddie jerked his head up, and you witnessed the change in his mood wash over him. Turned on a dime. He grinned at you in genuine relief, and in a bout of awkwardness, you smiled at Adrie in particular to imply your initial greeting was for her. Not that he wasn’t cute, too. “Fancy meeting you two here.”

He pushed his cart forward, taking the next spot in line, and peered into your hand basket, assessing the Reese’s Pieces, baking goods, tea, and distinct lack of one item. “Hmm, got lost on your way to the milk, huh? Or did you need someone to reach it for you?” He placed his gallon of milk on the conveyor belt first for emphasis. You rolled your eyes.

The two of you must’ve appeared cozier than you gave off, because the cashier motioned at you–specifically, he pointed from Eddie’s groceries to yours. “You two together?”

Eddie froze. Just a useless doe-eyed deer in headlights. You, on the other hand, swallowed your spit before you choked on it, and realized what he meant.

“No, no, separate,” you answered, taking a plastic divider from him and putting it after Eddie’s bag of red delicious apples and before Robin’s dad’s tea.

You stifled your giggle as your beloved coworker fumbled into action after the exchange dawned on him. Bouncing between bagging his groceries, finding the cereal box for Adrie so she could finish tracing the maze on the back, and wiggling his wallet out of his back pocket. The chain attached to it clinked as he rifled through the papers in the biggest slot. They didn’t fit quite right like proper money would. They didn’t look quite right, either. Printed in muted red, purple, green, and blue like Monopoly money. Big text on the front with a picture of the Liberty Bell. Large numbers in the corner with fine print beside it.

Food stamps.

They were food stamps, and it was the middle of the month, and he didn’t have many left.

He counted two of them out, and hesitated, choosing to add a few dollars to meet the total, and handed them over.

Eddie had no reason to feel embarrassed. This was his life. This was how he fed his daughter. But still, he snuck a glance at you, and you looked away so he didn’t think you were staring, even though you were. You were. Not from a place of judgment, but of natural curiosity. Unfortunately, as you directed your gaze elsewhere, you noticed other people around you weren’t as gracious. Eyeing Eddie with cruelty behind their study of the town freak coming inside their territory and depending on their honest wealth to pay for his food.

He’d only begun to stop chewing on his lips when he left the store. Exiting swiftly to begin the process of calming his anxiety as he loaded his car with groceries, knowing he had meals to eat, even if the price he paid stung his ego.

You went through the motions of bagging your groceries in your backpack, and listened to your gut.

Outside, you unchained your bike and put your bag in the wire basket attached to the handles, squinting in the noonday sun as you walked it to the back of the parking lot where Eddie was placing the plastic bags into the trunk of his car. No one parked on either side of him. Not a notable thing, but with how the store was packed, it stood out.

Eddie heard your wheel spokes click as you neared, and schooled the indications of worse emotions from his face to keep you from prying, but he frowned anyway when you passed him to talk to his daughter instead.

The rear door on the passenger’s side was propped open. You flapped your hand at her to get her attention, and she stretched her arm out as far as her car seat allowed in effort to link your fingers. “See you later, girlie,” you said, squeezing her hand in lieu of a proper hug. “Be good for your dad, alright?”

“I’m always good,” she responded, giving you an assured nod of angelic innocence. Eddie barked a laugh, and closed the trunk.

“You can’t swindle her,” he told Adrie. “She knows all about the fit you threw the other morning when I wouldn’t let you bring your stuffed animals to school.” She cut him a sassy glare at being called out.

“Don’t listen to him,” you consoled her. “You’re perfect.” She beamed at you, and you paralleled her delight as you let go of her to smack Eddie’s hand away from your ribs. “Anyway, I’ve gotta get going. Gotta get this milk in the fridge, y’know.”

You stole a coy look at him reveling in what you hoped wouldn’t become a running joke, and steered your bike away, saying another final goodbye to Adrie.

“Not gonna say goodbye to me?” he asked with an aching amount of pitifulness.

“Ch’yeah.” You swung your leg over the frame, put your feet to the pedals. Ensuring you were a decent distance apart, you called out, “You’re right! I should respect my elders.” You waved and shouted at him pointedly, “Farewell, Eddie!”

He fixed his lazy grin on his daughter, who was laughing like it was the funniest thing she’d ever witnessed, and told her with utmost fondness, “Saw that one coming from a mile away.”

————

Sunday morning, Adrie threw him for a loop.

“I want Miss Mouse to come to my play,” she said, spearing the scrambled eggs on her plate with the tines of her plastic Little Mermaid themed fork. “Can you invite her for me?”

Eddie went rigid. The triangle shaped extras from her pancakes being cut into stars flopped off his fork, paused mid-air on the way to his already stuffed mouth. He chewed slowly. Methodically. Swallowing the syrupy sweetness coating his tongue, biding his time as he hunched deeper over his plate, and stared her down while his uncle took special interest in her request.

Wayne wasn’t able to make it this year, and Adrie was quick to think of a suitable replacement.

With a voice scratchy from cigarettes, he directed his question at his nephew, “Miss Mouse?”

Eddie shut him down with a diplomatic answer without breaking eye contact with his daughter. “Adrie’s nickname for the receptionist at work.”

“Oh! The one who did the costume, and went trick-or-treating with you.”

He sounded much too happy, much too chipper for Eddie’s liking, and when he withdrew his gaze from Adrie to pin it on Wayne, the sharp rush of annoyance at the twinkle in his uncle’s eye manifested in a low, tempered correction for him to drop it. “My coworker from the auto shop, where I’m lucky to have the job that I do.”

Wayne wasn’t having it. He leaned in, and matched his intensity, loading his words with a much deeper meaning than the type of conversation they could have in front of Adrie. He spoke to him man-to-man. “The receptionist who is nice to you and Adrie, and, understandably, is being asked to go to a small event at her school.”

“I know what she’s asking,” Eddie replied from behind his hand. “Stop acting like you don’t.”

“Daddy, please,” Adrie begged, kicking his shin under the table. Eddie inhaled sharply and scooted away.

Wayne looked at him.

Adrie looked at him.

His rules, convictions, and morals of the workplace looked at him, rising as a tense pressure in his chest. Eddie sighed them out.

He was weak.

————

Sunday night, you and Robin were up to your usual bullshit.

Stress baking, and stress baking.

Her house was dimmed to only the small lights above the stove and sink, painting the room in an intimate mood of warmth bouncing off the smoky haze clouding the cramped space from the counter where you transferred a tray of hot cookies to a cooling rack, and she swayed behind you to the sultry Cher record spinning in the distance, seeming far away with her deep vocals melding into loops in your sleepy highs.

“Eddie’s beyond in love with you,” Robin said for the hundredth time, probably.

“He is not,” you argued for the hundredth time, probably. “Can you get me a bag for these?” The double chocolate cookies with Reese’s Pieces on top were ready to be put away to make room for the oatmeal ones.

“I just don’t get why you think he doesn’t like you–Oops.” While reaching for the ziploc bags from the top of the refrigerator, she accidentally knocked down a piece of artwork hanging on the door. She tossed you the box and picked the magnet up, along with the drawing of a mouse, owl, and bat off the floor, and put them back into place. “I mean, the way he looks at you every time you speak..” she trailed off in a wistful, airy breath. “So romantic.”

You answered her dreamy grin with a melancholic shrug of your own. “Yeah, but you don’t see all the other times he looks at me.”

Robin persevered. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.. He’s really–” You struggled for a word, interrupted by the sound of roiling bubbles behind you. “He’s really confusing.”

Exhaling at the ceiling, she asked, “Confusing how? Seems pretty clear to me.”

You groaned. Robin jabbed her elbow into your arm and offered you the bong, and when you showed her your greasy fingers, she turned it around and held it to your lips, lighting it for you until your lungs ached from a full inhale and you gave her a thumbs up to pull the stem.

Different place, same old bullshit. Smoking the last of your combined stash of weed you moved here with while bitching about life. It was hardly the first bowl of the night–or even the third–and the sentences you were trying to string together lulled into the drowsy dregs at the back of your mind.

You dropped your head back and sighed the smoke out. “He gets weird sometimes.”

“He’s always been weird.”

Shaking your head at her, you shifted the tone of the night to a somber one. Serious. Reflective.

Rolling the sugar cookie dough into balls, you recounted Eddie’s most recent rejection. “Last week I was telling him how we were hoping to move out soon, and he was giving off signals and asking questions like it was leading somewhere, but then I ran my stupid mouth, and it’s like he flipped a switch. He just stopped talking to me for the rest of the day.”

She put the bong down on the counter next to the tiny vase holding three flowers, and crossed her arms. “Ran your mouth how?”

You groaned louder into the hot wave of heat fanning your face from opening the oven door. “The dude will seriously flirt with me from clock in to clock out, but I–I dunno. I think I lay it on too thick, and it freaks him out. Like suddenly he realizes I’m serious, and he’s not into it. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened last week, anyway. We were going back and forth listing the pros of me living closer to work, and the cons of you eventually moving in with Vickie, and I kinda made a pass at him..”

“A pass how?”

You drew your brows in, and blinked your droopy eyes in a concentrated effort to recall the conversation. “..To be honest, I can’t remember. It was along the lines of me hinting that I’d want a second date with him. Which I only said because he seemed interested after I told him we were staying in Hawkins, but whatever. Guess I read it wrong.”

Perhaps too astute, your best friend in the entire world navigated your love life with undue keenness in spite of how blitzed you two were, breaking into dumb giggle fits at, quite literally, you dropping a spoon. “How obvious was this hint of yours?”

“Doesn’t matter.” You waved off the notion before you could grow attached to it. “We’re still coworkers, so I need to dial it back, regardless.”

“I think you should dial it up.”

“If I dialed it any more up, I’d get an HR complaint.”

“You don’t have HR,” she reminded you.

Squinting, you paused mixing the chocolate chips into the next batch of cookies. “I think I am HR?”

You handed her the pyrex bowl since it was her turn to roll them into cookies, and as she snacked on the raw dough, you filled the ziploc bag with more treats, stuffing it full.

Cher sang about starting over and finding love again.

The drawing on the fridge was in your periphery, as was the vase. Reminders of how kind, and gentle, and sweet Eddie and his daughter were. You were bound to misread his flirtations, but there was no harm in matching them, right? As long as you didn’t cross any lines, yeah? Just followed his lead and stopped when he made it clear it wasn’t welcomed.

Yeah.

Dialed back. You could do dialed back.

————

This was new.

It was early afternoon when you closed the manila folder of invoices, and directed your attention to Eddie, who, for the first time, imposed himself on your side of the desk.

He acted brave when he was timid. A blatant facade, still hesitant to commit to crossing the threshold past the invisible line where your desk ended and the hallway began. Made himself smaller by leaning on the wall behind you, giving you room to leave if you wanted. Not yet courageous enough to take his hand away from playing with the ends of his hair over his rosy cheeks. “So–um–Adrie’s class is putting together a Thanksgiving play, and she requested your attendance by name,” he finished with an adorable pout of your moniker, “Miss Mouse.”

You sat up straighter with lifted brows.

Thinking he was doing you a favor, he dropped the formalities, and gave you an out–a carefully worded out to avoid any cheeky response about your policy, “It’s gonna be a bunch of rambunctious toddlers singing off key, and not remembering their lines. It’s cool if you don’t want to go, I’ll tell her you were busy or somethin’. She’ll understand.”

You gripped the armrests in a burst of enthusiasm. “What? Of course I wanna go! When is it?”

Eddie was unconvinced. He crossed his arms, and bent at the waist to better assess if you knew what you were getting into. “Uh, Wednesday around lunch time–we can be out and back during our break if we hurry–but I’m serious about the little kids being obnoxious part. You don’t have to go.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” It was a rhetorical question he was going to answer, but you knocked the air from his lungs with one simple sentence. “I want to be there for her.”

Warmth bloomed. Spread throughout his body. The things he suppressed. Taking over all at once.

“You said Wednesday around lunch time?” you clarified. He nodded dumbly, a bit distracted. Your grin grew. “Both Mr. Moore and Carl are taking a half-day to start their Holiday early..” you began, and waited for the realization to cross his features.

“So we could just..”

“Lock up, and..”

“Take the rest of the day off too,” Eddie finished with an undertone of pride. He’d have to work extra hard to complete the cars he was working on before then, but the idea was genius. Playing hooky under his boss’ nose like he was a teenager again.

There was perhaps more he wanted to say, but the phone rang.

You answered and kept the exchange short, using your normal speaking voice. “Robin’s dad is being discharged from the hospital today,” you told him after hanging up. “I’m gonna clock out early to help prepare the house for when he gets here.”

Eddie watched you tidy up your desk in preparation to leave, and figured he should get back to work.

Picking up where he left off, he sank into the passenger’s seat of the Ford Taurus outside, and ran a mental checklist of things he still needed to do. Or he tried, rather. He was mostly sitting there daydreaming about potential scenarios, until he saw you come from the breakroom with your jacket in hand, and left out the front door, waving goodbye as you went.

Two dramatic minutes passed.

The quiet warehouse amplified the aural representation of his loneliness.

Eddie frowned. He wasn’t about to attribute the weather to your proximity, but he was certain the temperature in the garage dropped when you weren’t in the office. Or, maybe, he lost the pretty thing distracting him every few minutes, and he had the time to reflect on how badly he wanted a smoke break in the sun to warm him up.

He went inside to get his jacket from the breakroom, and instead of encountering a pack of Camels in his pocket, he grasped an oddly shaped object, and wrangled it out.

bobbie & i made too many

    share with adrie & your uncle!

                      ♡

An array of cookies surprised him. Several flavors, in fact. Some with fun toppings, some plain.

He smiled.

Well. Smiling would be putting it mildly.

Acting on impulse, he (accidentally) crushed the bag to his chest, and made a high-pitched noise of glee in his throat, absolutely smitten. Eddie hadn’t received a sweet gesture like this in years. If ever. Ironically blessed with the allure of being older in high school, he couldn’t distinguish the genuine crushes girls may have had on him from the fake love letters people stuffed in his locker to mess with him. But this? This was sincere. Even if the intention behind the cookies were to pawn them off because you made too many, you still thought of him and Adrie.

Too excited, he opened the bag and went to eat one, but a distinct odor itched his nose–one he was too intimate with to miss.

He held the baggie up and sniffed, then smelled the cookies. Inhaled the acrid scent clinging to the plastic, and nibbled on one of the innocuous looking treats.

He consulted the note again.

share with adrie

You didn’t just give him and his daughter edibles, did you?

————

Wednesday came unannounced. You crossed several days off the calendar in the garage, forgetting to do so with the influx of orders, phone calls, and customers getting in their last minute fixes before the Holiday break. You did what you could. Eddie did what he could. And now, you taped a handwritten sign to the front door and locked it until Monday morning.

Grabbing your backpack, you went to the women’s restroom, and Eddie went to the men’s to change out of your work clothes. After some arguing back and forth through the doors, you made him agree to open them on a countdown, and through your giggles, you shouted, “Three!”

You swung open your door and were instantly disappointed. “Why are you wearing that?”

Eddie made a similar sneer across from you in the hallway, and questioned your sanity, “What in the world are you wearing?”

“It’s adorable, and festive!” You defended yourself by pointing out the scarecrow patch on the chest pocket of your baggy overalls, and how your orange flannel matched the one he was wearing. “Do you not think so, you big gray cloud?”

“Yeah, super cute. You’ll blend right in with the toddlers,” he snarked with much less malice than his words implied, on account of his lopsided grin.

“Big talk coming from the guy dressed like a moody teen.” Sinfully tight black jeans, black boots, black belt sporting a handcuff buckle, black leather jacket, black tee with a graphic of a rattlesnake wrapped around a skull.

It was his first date outfit again. How sweet.

And you didn’t need to be checking out his ass to see the bandana hanging out of his back pocket as he escorted you to his car, but you weren’t complaining about the opportunity. “You should worry about scaring the children with how angry you look.”

He held the employee door open for you, and locked it–then almost tripped on his way to unlock the car door, and hold it open for you too. “Angry?” He glanced from your outfit to his. “Good thing I’m with you, then. We’ll balance each other out, Sunshine.”

“An unlikely pair,” you agreed in good faith. Once he shut your door, and was in the process of walking around to his side, you gawked at the nickname. “Sunshine?”

You snapped your mouth shut as he fell into the driver’s seat, and started the car.

“So,” you drew out to break the silence after he didn’t have the courtesy of turning on the radio to ease the tension of being stuck in a small enclosure together, “red, huh?” The entire interior–every last detail–was custom made in the same bright crimson, from the air vents to the tiniest knobs.

The engine revved with his heavy stamp on the gas. Your stomach flipped. His grin went wicked.

“There weren’t many made in this color,” he said, thrilled to see your fingernails dig into your palms as he peeled out onto the street, and the garage became a miniature in his rearview mirror at a frightening speed, considering you were coming up on an intersection. “I’m lucky I found her used, and she didn’t need much work.”

Petrified as you might be by his reckless driving, you still had it within you to make a sound of disgust. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those guys that refers to their car as a woman.”

“What?” he scoffed. He relaxed one of his hands on his thigh as he lounged back with his head cocked, brazen with his newfound vanity. An arrogant curve to his lips as he interpreted your lingering gaze on his fingers splayed across his leg as being impressed by him, his car, his attitude. The whole package. “You don’t gender your bike?”

Without giving it much consideration, you supposed, “I think my bike is a he.”

“Ha! You ride a man to work every day,” he mumbled after the abrupt laugh.

His smile vanished.

The fact he didn’t mean to say that out loud became very apparent.

The blood drained from his face as quickly as it returned. Splotches of blushy red worked its way up his throat, turning his ears the same color as his beloved car’s interior. Same shade as the traffic light up ahead. Same bawdy hue typically associated with the lustful act his brain suggested before his mouth caught up.

Eddie sat at attention. Swallowed against his pulse as he stepped on the clutch and downshifted gears. The leather strapped steering wheel creaked under his dual vice grip. His chest deflated with a heavy breath, and blinking rapidly at the road, his pounding heart trembled his voice, “Please forget I said that.”

Curled into a ball facing the window–stomach clenched painfully tight from uncontrollable laughter–you muffled yourself with your flannel’s collar, “Never!”

~~~

The rest of the car ride was boring in comparison to the start, but you made it to Adrie’s preschool with only a few more unintentional eruptions of giggles when you remembered Eddie’s horrified face, while he drove in abject misery.

He parked the car, and got out quickly.

“How precious,” you said. The squat brick building had aged pine needles clinging to its shingled roof, and Thanksgiving themed art hanging in its windows.

Opening the entrance door brought the waft of buttery biscuits and grape jelly. Eddie guided you with purpose through the makeshift cafeteria, made snug with four child-sized picnic tables in the middle, and fingerpainted art adorning the navy blue walls. His keyring dangled from his belt, drumming against his jeans as he pivoted into a hallway illuminated by the overcast day outside. Gentle music came from the empty nursery to the left, and to the right was a heavy wooden door that did little to quiet the ruckus beyond it.

He paused. The rectangle window above the door knob streaked the side of his face with warm light from within, countering the nervous energy in his eyes as he took a long moment to look at you. You waited for him to speak, but he decided against it.

“I’m excited,” you offered, just above a whisper, wanting to say anything to help ease the eerie vagueness in his expression.

A muscle in his cheek twitched like he was going to smile, but it came across rather apprehensive.

He turned the knob. You walked inside first. Both of you stood still.

The room was as inviting as it was overwhelming. Bright, decorated, and packed with people. People who were dressed in business casual, and broken off into pairs of two. People who knelt to speak on level with someone who displayed a combination of their distinct features. People who mingled with other adults after the little ones were ushered to the front of the room by the teachers. People who gushed over a topic with their heads together, beaming at a miniature version of themselves dressed in a costume. People who contributed in a joint effort to create life, and the reason they were here today.

Parents.

They were parents.

This was an event for parents.

This was a play for parents to attend to see their child perform, and partake in themed crafts with the implication of going home afterwards to spend the Holidays together.

Eddie watched you realize this.

An older woman gravitated towards you two.

This was very, intensely, happening right now, and you had to navigate the whiplash to the best of your improv abilities.

“Good to see you,” she greeted Eddie first, and he gave a pleasant reply, but she didn’t hear it. Her attention was on you, eyes magnified by her thick glasses, and smiling wider than before. “You brought someone,” she all but gasped, speaking to him, though she was clasping your hand. “I’m Mrs. Teresa. And you are?”

Eddie had a response prepared.

“I’m Adrie’s friend!” you blurted.

He pressed his mouth shut and gave you a sideways glance.

“And, uh,” you continued to dig your grave, “and I work with Eddie. I met Adrie one day, and we really hit it off, haha. Next thing I know I’m trick-or-treating with her, and uh.. now I’m here!” When her expression of anticipation did not wane, you followed up your ramble with your name, and she nodded appreciatively, patting the back of your hand.

“It’s wonderful to meet you,” she said. “We’re starting soon if you’d like to sit.”

She moved on to a non-platonic couple, and collected their kid to the front where a backdrop of an autumnal forest jostled due to the jittery group of children hiding behind it–most notably, the little girl at the edge who peeped her head out, and jumped up and down.

You both waved at Adrie.

Eddie’s hand landed on your mid-back, and he directed you with an appropriate amount of pressure towards the last row of chairs, choosing two in the middle.

“Smooth,” he commented.

“Shut it.” Sneaking an eyeful of the broad man next to you wearing a blazer under his boiled wool overcoat, you scooted your chair closer to Eddie’s. He must’ve had a similar train of thought, because he did the same to get away from the woman next to him, unwittingly making you two cozier than you were at the movies.

Shoulder to shoulder, he kept his hands in his pockets, and your elbow slotted into the crook his arm created when he slouched towards you.

“Are we not friends?” he asked in reference to your introduction.

You assured him, “The best of reluctant friends.”

The impish smile he shared with you dwindled with each set of hypercritical eyes getting their gawk in before one of the teachers turned off the lights.

The room was overcome with darkness. Blackout curtains suppressed daylight from coming through–for naptime, you assumed–and as children do, they squealed. The teachers soothed them with an amused shush, and turned on two lamps, pointing them like spotlights at the backdrop. Your eyes refused to adjust past the faint outline of your leg pressed flush against Eddie’s, (from hip to calf as a result from seeking support in each other,) but that was beside the point. The show began.

Mrs. Teresa sat off to the side and opened a comically large book. She read the first passage aloud with the pages facing the parents, and out came the kids dressed as pilgrims, brandishing their buckle shoes and hats. In another breath, the ones wearing brown shirts and feathers arrived, and you grimaced at the watered down kid-friendly rewrite of history being acted out, interspersed with songs about sharing.

At least Adrie was dancing around as a carrot with other vegetable-clad children, spelling out what part of the cornucopia they were.

Truly, it could’ve been worse.

But it was during a chorus about friendship sung at the top of their lungs, you unbit your tongue, and leaned into Eddie. “So when are they gonna enslave the Natives and steal their land?”

“Pft!”

Several pairs of shoulders in front of you turned to glare at what they assumed was Eddie snickering at their children’s bad singing before sitting forward, surely perturbed.

He knocked the side of his fist on the top of your thigh, and went to scold you.

But the room was dark.

So dark.

And he misjudged how close you sat.

The cold tip of his nose made contact with the cusp of your cheekbone. His stuttered breath caught your jaw. Your arm slipped further into the curve of his body.

He could’ve realized his mistake. He could’ve stopped there. He could’ve apologized for overstepping the coworker code of conduct. He could’ve reminded himself you’d be gone by the end of the summer. He could’ve dialed it back. He could’ve kept it casual. He could’ve backed off, and dropped the silly reprimand altogether. He could’ve done so many things. But he didn’t. He accepted the risk, and committed to it.

He dipped his head until his plump lips discovered the shell of your ear. Every word vibrated on your skin, rippling goosebumps in the wake of his groaned warning, “You’re gonna get me in trouble.” Trembly, raspy from keeping his voice low. Hardly hitting the hard consonants with his tongue before he was withdrawing.

The humidity from his exhale remained. It cooled on your skin. In the weak lamplight, you shifted your wide eyes to his, and the knowledge of what transpired reflected in his keen gaze gauging the consequences of his actions.

Stuck in a daze of buzzing endorphins, you had no idea how to interpret what the hell just happened.

Careful, he didn’t dare express an emotion that would give his true self away.

Together, you both redirected the focus to his daughter.

It took another few seconds for either of you to discern the back of his hand resting on your thigh. He took it away, and crossed his legs, establishing some much needed space between you.

~~~

The play ended, and the lights were flipped on. Everyone winced. There was an announcement from one of the teachers about a snack and crafts for the parents who were staying; and without an auto shop to attend to, you and Eddie were able to dote over Adrie instead of being forced back into the intimacy of his car.

He stood up and said he’d be right back. Lucky for Adrie, she bolted for you first, and you wasted no time in scooping her up into a crushing hug, grateful for the distraction.

Overflowing with pride, you channel all your love into lauding Adrie in mushy compliments, rubbing your cheek against hers. “Oh my gosh, you did so good! You were the best carrot I’ve ever seen. I’m downright impressed by your performance, remembering all those lines.” Pulling away, you waggled your eyebrows. “You wanna grow up to be an actor? Have people flock to see you on stage?” Her face brightened in renewed excitement.

“On a stage like Da–?”

Eddie intervened out of nowhere, “You two ladies gonna join me?” You startled an imperceivable amount from his sudden appearance–truly, you didn’t even jump–but it was enough to earn his toothy grin. “I reserved two seats at the Queen’s table for the princess and her esteemed guest for the evening.” He bowed with a swept out arm, showing you the way through the sea of adults.

Queen’s table was certainly a way to sell it.

It was a tiny, tiny thing. There were several of them at the back of the room, seating four children at most–or two adults and a four-year-old–and Adrie chose a blue one with a cartoon turkey decoration in the middle.

Half an ass cheek fit in the chair, the tabletop was at your shins, and your knees were tucked to your chest. You met Eddie’s gaze above Adrie’s head, and rubbed her back while he stroked her hair, running his fingers through the tangles.

You assumed, for the most part, he wanted to ignore what happened earlier as if it never happened, and you followed his lead.

Adrie broke you from your musing. There was commotion surrounding the teachers, and she gasped, flapping her hands when she saw what they were carrying.

A palm-sized pumpkin pie was set before her, along with three spoons.

“I made this fresh this morning,” she informed you as if she were running a bakery. And as head baker, she was in charge of portion sizes. She took one spoon and scooped out a modest amount of pumpkin filling, and not a crumb of graham crust more. That one was for Eddie.

For you? She split the rest of the pie, and gave you your half balanced on your spoon, and dug into her half without giving her dad a second glance.

“Hey,” he whined. “Not fair. I’m the one who raised you. Why does she get more?”

Speaking down to him like it was the most obvious thing ever, she rolled her eyes, and said, “Because girls are better, Daddy.”

You didn’t hide your snort.

“Yeah, Eddie.” You taunted him by waving the spoon before sticking the pie chunk in your mouth. “G–irls sh’are better.”

Chewing on his measly portion, he regarded his princess and her esteemed guest with a similar amount of weakness, and the tension at the corners of his eyes softened. He submitted. “Yeah. Girls are better.”

~~~

After the snack was a craft. In this case, hand turkeys. Paper, crayons, markers, and colored pencils were passed out amongst the tables, and a teacher gave instructions to the kiddos.

You grabbed the cartoon turkey decoration in the middle of the table for reference, and began your masterpiece. Adrie kept it classic, tracing her hand. Eddie did.. whatever he was doing, hunched over to hide his paper from you two for the past ten minutes.

“I made a princess turkey,” Adrie announced. Indeed, her turkey was decked out with a flowy dress and pink pointy hennin. In the background was a cobblestone castle.

You showed her your realistic turkey, hoping to impress her, but she pulled a face.

“Ew, he’s ugly.”

Frowning at your drawing, you compared him to the one on the table centerpiece, and felt bad for all the less-than-beautiful turkeys around the world. “That’s just the way he looks..”

Eddie, happy as a clam, slammed his pencil down and flaunted his drawing. “I turned mine into a dragon.”

Converging with Adrie, she whispered in your ear, and as a unit, you judged his hand turkey, weighing the artistic ability versus the outlandish deviation from the original assignment.

After a heated debate, you cleared your throat for his attention.

You both applauded his efforts with a humbling clap.

~~~

It wasn’t long before Adrie grew bored with coloring, and left to play with her friends. They gathered around a chest by the teacher’s desk, and brought out non-Thankgivingsy costumes. She played dress up in a fairy-unicorn combo, and another girl hopped around in a mermaid outfit, complete with a shimmery tail.

Eddie switched seats, flopping into the middle chair with a grunt. He moved Adrie’s drawing aside and set up shop. Made himself right at home. Really just invaded your area like he owned the place.

“Uhh–” You gaped. “Can you kindly remove your knee from my vicinity? You’re blocking both my drawing and the colored pencils.”

He imposed himself more. Nudging his feet wider for the sole reason of bothering you until you were forced to curl in on yourself in an uncomfortable hunch. Actively ignoring your plea by sketching the finishing touches on his dragon.

Resigning your sneer at the back of his head, you agreed, “All right.” If he wanted to play that game, you would too. You snatched the orange pencil you needed for your turkey’s feathers, and shoved the markers to the far side of the table, outside his reach.

Giving him no time to prepare a counterattack, you looped your arm around his leg to his shin, and hugged his thigh to your chest with your flexed bicep, locking his knee in a sleeper hold any wrestler would be proud of, preventing him from getting up.

Yes, things scattered as you did this. Yes, people rubbernecked. No, you didn’t care, and Eddie didn’t, either.

Well, he cared a little, even if the grumpy persona he donned cracked with each failed frown.

His mouth curled into a grin despite his resistance. “I can’t have the red marker?” The syllables were caught amongst his hissy laugh at your ridiculousness–tip of his tongue to his teeth, voice rich with affection, and eyes squinted from pure adoration–a short question articulated through his mirth, with his chest braced against your arm after accepting the position of your entwined bodies, and another beg for you to understand on his lips. “How am I supposed to outline the fire he’s breathing, huh?”

He furrowed his brows to appear angry, but it was futile. His smile was here to stay. And what a treat it was to get lost in the moment.

At any point he could’ve easily broken from your hold. Hell, you hardly had his leg secured in your embrace after he shook his hair out of his face, and your muscles were rendered to warm jelly. But still, he played along.

You hunkered down and returned to your drawing with his jeans rubbing on the underside of your chin. “I once heard of these magic words you could use to get what you want.. if you ask nicely.” He hummed a disgruntled noise to show his displeasure. Poor him, being beaten at this own game, and served with a dose of his own medicine.

Incredulous, he huffed, “Magic words?” But there was something suspicious about his tone..

Something just not quite right, indeed..

Without looking, you snatched his hand seconds before his mischievous fingers wiggled their way to your ribs. You interlaced an assortment of index, middle, and thumbs in a twist of power, and dragged your gaze away from your artwork to mock him. “So predictable, Eddie.”

“Am I?”

An aware glimmer from how unpredictable he was half an hour ago presented itself as a gorgeous flash of slyness across his eyes, crinkling his crow’s feet at the corners–

The metal feet of Eddie’s abandoned chair scraped along the floor.

You disengaged from each other, cheeks burning with fresh shame.

Mrs. Teresa had a yellow paper folder tucked under her arm. This was not favorable for Adrie on account of her sharp heel-turn when she saw her teacher sit at the table with her preschool assessment opened for her dad to pour over.

You couldn’t read anything from your angle, but it appeared to be a collection of Adrie’s assignments and a progress report with many notes written in the margins.

Pushing her glasses up her nose, Mrs. Teresa licked her fingertips, and flipped through the pages, updating him since the last time they did this.

The conversation was about the places Adrie excelled, and where she could improve. In regards to education, she was surpassing where she should be, and she was a quick learner. Kindergarten would be no trouble for her. It was sharing, and social interactions she was struggling with, despite her ability to make friends.

Mrs. Teresa guided Eddie towards a more serious discussion about these concerns by asking him if he told her ‘no’ frequently, and how she reacted when he did. You’d never seen him so nervous. Fidgeting, bouncing, wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans. Stuttering through a weak admission that he has trouble disappointing her.

He was uncomfortable, and you did your due diligence to tune them out. But it was no use.

Surveying the room, your mind was consumed by Eddie once more. For a different reason, and inciting a different emotion.

Parents at the other tables whispered observations about his mannerisms into their partner’s ear. About his disheveledness. His weirdness. His clothes.  His nonconformity. His last name. The whole package.

He was the father to the sweet little girl they invited to birthday parties, but never stayed after dropping her off with a gift? This was the man who never spoke. Never lingered long enough to put the rumors at rest. Never denied them either, so, logically, the gossip about him must be true.

“As you know, Adrie will throw tantrums from time to time when you drop her off,” Mrs. Teresa eased him into the topic. “When she cries, she asks for you, and it’s difficult to calm her down. This is abnormal for how long she’s been enrolled here. Have you been working on those techniques I taught you to help steer her towards more independence?” Her inquiry was kind, and sympathetic. It was valid, but his first instinct was to defend himself.

“I-I, well.” He took a shaky breath, and leaned towards her with his elbow on his thigh to cup his hand around his mouth, and sliding it to wring the back of his neck. “She’s–It’s just, she’s all I have, a-a-and–”

Mrs. Teresa rubbed his shoulder.

Though you were missing context for what Adrie’s teacher was trying to correct him from doing, you wanted to show your support. Lessen his stress. Afterall, the integrity of dialed back crumbled when his lips grazed your ear, and following his lead culminated in you being invited into his daughter’s world, so what’s the worst that could happen if you took a risk and comforted him? ..Besides discovering if David’s Auto Repair had an HR department.

Eddie’s pitch fluctuated as he bounced his leg harder, “When I’m home, I just want to make her happy–and, she’s, she’s–” You placed your hand on his knee, and stroked your thumb over the skin peeking out from the rips in his jeans. His inhale hitched at the sensation.

Without otherwise addressing what you did, he covered your hand with his own, crooked his cold fingertips into the spaces between yours, and parsed his thoughts. Slowed his mind. Ceased his nervous habit of bouncing his leg. Appreciated the gesture, even as the tacky silver spider ring on his pinky taunted you.

“I’ve been better about telling her ‘no’ lately,” he said more clearly. “The tantrums are happening less, and they don’t last as long when she sees I’m not budging. But the other stuff.. I don’t know.”

“Do you still carry her?” she asked, and he avoided eye contact.

“Yeah.”

“She’s almost five. She’s not a baby anymore, dear. It’s best to wean her now before it becomes a bigger problem.”

“I know.”

Mrs. Teresa gave him a motherly pat on his back, and smiled at you–his coworker–and rearranged Adrie’s folder to the bottom of the stack she had, and moved on to another table.

For a while, Eddie twisted the hair at his nape around his finger. Eyes fixated on the crayon box. You waited for him to come around, and when he did, he smiled and squeezed your hand before sliding his clammy palms to his thigh, allowing you to let go of his knee.

His chest rumbled with a soft laugh. “Sorry, was I shaking the table?”

Yes? No? Maybe? You weren’t paying attention to notice. “Yeah, like an earthquake,” you joked.

“My bad,” he said with not a hint of remorse displayed in his delighted expression.

On cue, serving as the perfect interruption to the prolonged stare you gave each other, another autumnal craft was being distributed amongst the parents remaining, and Adrie set her chin on top of where your and her dad’s shoulders touched.

Mrs. Teresa’s advice regarding his codependency went ignored for another day.

Eddie shut his eyes and pressed his temple to Adrie’s, humming contently to himself, cherishing the affection he ached for.

Adrie, on the other hand, gasped when she spied what was on the table, and rang his ears, “Glitter!”

~~~

Thank God Eddie was a safer driver with Adrie in the car; your stomach couldn’t handle another queasy acceleration through a yellow light while you made a concentrated effort to get flakes of gold glitter out of your eyebrows, having no recollection of how they got there.

In her car seat behind you, Adrie regaled you with the plot points of the latest episode of My Little Pony Tales, chirping away happily about the interpersonal relationships between the cartoon horses until Eddie pulled into the alleyway behind the auto shop, and you turned around to say your goodbyes, thanking her for inviting you.

You opened the car door and heard Eddie do the same. You were about to ask him why he was getting out too, when he went up to the employee door and unlocked it for you.

Right, you left your keys in your backpack.

Rationally you knew he wasn’t a mind reader, but you were still sheepish when getting your bike, wheeling it out to stand across from him in what was a dreadful amount of silence.

“So, uh,” he faltered in the same rush of feelings crashing like a wave over the both of you. “Thank you for coming today. I know Adrie appreciated having you there.” He went shy, scratching the back of his head before putting his hands in his pockets. “Sorry about the mess.”

You shrugged at the mention of glue on your sleeve. “It’s whatever. I’m just glad I got to watch her perform.” Dumbass move, bringing up the play when what happened during it influenced every bit of this awkward interaction. You hurried to move past it, “Plus, the pumpkin pie was nice.” And what happened afterwards when we held hands–twice–was nicer.

Jesus Christ.

Reeling in the desire to bolt, you gambled on one last question before going home to scream into your pillow. “Uhm–Can I ask you something?”

“I guess,” he answered with a wary tone.

“Why do people look at you weird?” You motioned at his clothes. “Besides the obvious.”

The deep creases between his brows from years of scrunching his face in a sour expression became more prominent. “There’s a lot of rumors out there about me.. Some are true, some aren’t.”

“Do you want to tell me which ones are true?”

Inside the car, Adrie swayed in her seat, belting a tune neither of you could hear.

“I will some other time, okay?” He flicked his gaze to you, saw the understated kindness of your soft smile, and diverted his attention to the rock he was grinding under his shoe; bashful despite the burden of his reputation affecting the instant sag in his posture. “I will,” he promised again, giving you a curt nod.

You walked your bike up beside him, and bumped his elbow. “Hey, don’t look so glum,” you insisted. “Whatever it is, I’ll still go with you to parent-teacher conferences as Adrie’s best friend so you don’t look so painfully single.”

You threw your head back in a witchy cackle as you hopped on your bike and rode away.

And it was when you were in the familiar territory of woods flocking either side of the dirt road leading to Robin’s house that you gave into the urge, and released an embarrassed, guttural, annoyed groan of one word, scaring the blackbirds in the nearby trees, “Why?”

Single, single, single. Good God, could you be more obvious?

Dialed back was a lost cause from the start.

“Well, whatever happens, happens, I guess.” And you finished it with, “Idiot.”

————

Eddie had been sitting in his car for all of two seconds when he patted the side of his seat for the back recliner, and cranked it until he was almost laid flat.

Driving his hands from his nape and upward, he gathered his hair between his fingers and covered his face, mashing the curly ends over his eyes screwed shut from red-hot shame.

He inhaled deeply, and reprimanded his dumbassery in the loudest groan. “That was so–incredibly–not casual.”

“What’s the matter, Daddy?” Adrie asked, sounding like a therapist as she pinched her sticky fingers together to shift the gold glitter from one to the other.

Composing himself, he finished dragging his palms down his cheeks, and combed away the strands stuck on his eyelashes. He blinked. “It’s nothing.” Nothing at all. He definitely wasn’t thinking of how fucked he was, believing he could handle today without taking things too far.

But it wasn’t how he almost kissed your cheek that bothered him the most, nor the multiple scenarios he supplied in effort to hold your hand, or touch you in general.

No. It was worse.

Staring unfocused at the ceiling, his lips parted with a realization.

His whisper was for himself, and his heart only. “I didn’t even care that people were staring at me today..” The mercy of your presence brought a line of water to his eyes. Not enough to flow over, but enough for him to notice his loneliness.

“Can you invite Miss Mouse to Thanksgiving?”

“No, she has her own Thanksgiving to attend,” he told her, and held his hand out, making a grabby motion at her. She understood and put her shoe in his palm so he could squeeze her ankle. Any affection. Any at all. Giving or receiving.

Knowing the answer, he asked, “You really like her, huh?”

“She’s my favorite.”

“Yeah, she’s my favorite too,” he said, in whatever capacity she meant, he meant it as well. He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t, but he did.

Massaging his thumb and forefinger into circles on his forehead, he meditated on the right thing to do. Meaning, he thought about the hundreds of reasons he should put an end to this, to discourage Adrie’s relationship with you, and to resist the temptation of forming his own; and instead he latched onto the idea of him not appearing single for a little longer than his logical brain was comfortable with.

Coworker, risk, flighty personality, yada, yada..

He snorted. “Yeah, I should probably stop this.”

Adrie rolled her leg in his grasp to get him to let go. “Can we stop at McDonald’s first?”

“Wha–?” After a moment of confusion, he sighed. “Give me a break, kid.”

Steve Harrington and Max Mayfield annoying each other for ten minutes straight

---

𝐭𝐡𝐞 "𝐲𝐞𝐬" 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲.

singledad!mechanic!eddie x fem!reader

✶When Eddie gets a call at work telling him Adrie is sick, he rushes to pick her up from school, accidentally leaving his black notebook behind. Being you, you find the means to return it to him. But while at his trailer, you ask him the question he's been avoiding for months.

"Let's get down to those rumors, hm?"✶

NSFW — strong tw for a dark conversation surrounding eddie's past (accusations of murder, rape), heavy angst, comfort, drug/alcohol mention/use, slow burn, fluff, flirting, 18+ overall for eventual smut

chapter: 8/? [wc: 14.1k]

↳ part 01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05 / 06 / 07 / 08 / 09

AO3

Chapter 8: The Munson Name

Leave it to Eddie to make your day special not two minutes into work.

Upon entering the garage, the back door was ajar as usual, but instead of phantom wisps of smoke swimming in the sunshaft, a shadow moved, and Eddie’s arm curled around to knock on the aluminum siding for your attention. His chain bracelet clinked from the motion, and his rings caught the light as he gestured for you to come over.

You peeked through the opening and saw him standing against the wall, but his morning smile wasn’t aimed at you, it was elsewhere, off to the side. You wrapped your fingers around the doorknob, and followed where he was looking.

A bright red cardinal sat perched on the round side mirror of Eddie’s car, chirping and hopping while fluttering its wings, spinning around in search of something, and after several twittering singsongs, it flew away.

“That was precious,” you whispered, breath fogging in awe.

“I’m glad you got to see him before he took off.” Eddie grabbed the door from you and pushed you both inside, shaking his arms in an intense shiver, and shrugging his jacket up around his neck while he hugged his hands around himself in his pockets. “Uhm..”

The goofy smile he wore was mutual, as was the dear silence. The energy between you had changed; it was charged with a new development in your relationship. One that did not need to be articulated in words. It was there, in his well-rested eyes owning a playful gleam when you looked at him, and his need to rock from foot to foot in a measured sway, like a subconscious impulse to recreate that beautiful night.

Then, he cleared his throat. You averted your gaze to the floor.

“You, uh, you said it was one gift,” he recalled with an audible wince squeezing the oxygen from his sentence.

Unsure on how best to approach you buying his daughter a generous amount of presents, and hearing the impassive edge to his voice, you shut one eye and opted for a joke, “It was one gift.. bag.”

“It was too much.”

Your demeanor sagged. “Oh.”

“No, no! Not in the bad way–No.”

You perked up. “Oh?”

A soft laugh poured from the snuggly place he had his chin tucked behind the tan canvas. He dropped his shoulders, and drove his weight forward into jaunty little steps towards you, closing the gap between your bodies. There were affectionate nuances to his fond expression when he corrected himself, “Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound that way. The gifts were great. Like, real home runs. Uhm, she loved them, and they were really thoughtful. Just.. really sweet of you.” Immersing himself in the steady eye contact you were both proud to uphold, he licked his lips, and raised his eyebrows. “You’re so sweet, in fact, it’s piling onto that thank you I owe you at a ridiculous rate.”

“You don’t owe me anything. I just like doing things for you and Adrie. Besides, I live rent free in a tiny town with an abysmal lack of nighttime entertainment for me to waste my money on, so I figured why not spoil my favorite four-year-old.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know I don’t owe you, but” –he moved his hand around in his pocket– “I’m gonna figure out a way to repay you. Do something nice for you. Something big. Until then, your favorite almost-five-year-old made you this.”

He presented his palm to you. Cradled in it was a bracelet made of plastic beads in an assortment of colors, some shaped as stars, some with glitter, and at the middle was a name arranged in white blocks with black lettering. M-O-U-S-E.

“I had to help her spell it,” he said, tugging up his sleeve, “but it matches mine.” D-A-D-D-Y.

There was no masking the effect the bracelet had on you; breath hitched on a raw noise, chest falling on the exhale, muscles tensed on the cusp of a bigger reaction–but you tamped down the wealth of feeling wanted, and spoke beyond the heaviness in your heart, through the strain in your throat, and behind the blurriness of tears, “A true Adrie Original. I love it, tell her thank you for me.”

You slid the elastic band over your trembling left hand. He wore his on his right.

Eddie leaned in to get a better look at you, and the amusement in his face was replaced by genuine surprise. “Are you crying?”

You crossed your arms over your chest and gripped your shoulders, laughing, smiling through the embarrassment of being caught. “Maybe! It’s–It’s really sweet.”

“I’m gonna tell her you cried!”

“Don’t!” you yelped, running away from his evil fingers advancing towards your ribs.

“But it’s cute!”

“Stop chasing me!”

Luckily for you, refuge was on the other side of the glass door you managed to lock before he could grab the handle. You guarded your safe space with a glare. He pouted, and said something. You cupped your ear. He grew more passionate, flapping his lips at a rapid rate and putting his hands up in a prayer, but you couldn’t hear what he was saying. You shouted you’d only let him in if he apologized for making fun of you. “I’m sorry.” The sincerity was lost on his smirk, but you gave in so you could make coffee and get to work, and so he could get said coffee and take your pen cup and put it just out of reach on the ledge of your desk while on his way out to the garage.

And unluckily for you, the first thing on your to-do list after the break was checking the flashing buttons on the phone. You picked up the receiver, pressed the playback for messages, and listened with a pen hovered over your new set of index cards.

The first one began with a startled, “U-uhm, right.”

The second one began with a confused laugh.

The third was a long pause before telling someone else in the room they’d try again later.

Dread pooled in your stomach. The recording button. The fucking recording button for an outgoing message taunted you. Faded yellow, and ugly.

With a clenched jaw, you prepared your racing heart, and pressed it. And oh God. You covered your eyes, more and more mortified as it played.

“We’re currently closed for the Holidays, and will open at 8AM, Mon–” Raspberry. “You! Why! That one was perfect. God, you are so–freaking–annoying. I swear. Obnoxious little..”

————

Standing at a respectable distance from where Eddie sat at the breakroom table with his notebook, you held up three calendars for the new year. “I’m replacing the one in the garage. Which do you want? Mythical Creatures drawn by Eric Carle, Coca Cola, or hot chicks posing on sports cars?”

He dropped his head back, and tipped his chair to balance on its rear legs. His bangs fell, showing his wrinkled forehead as he looked at you upside down. “Interesting options,” he commented.

“The mall didn’t have much left.” A lie. The calendar kiosk at the mall was stocked to the brim, you just had a hunch Eddie would go for one in particular.

“Does the mythical creature one have a dragon for a month?”

“Yes,” you said without checking.

“I’ll take that one, then.”

Predictable.

“Cool, I’ll give Mr. Moore the hot chicks, and I’ll take the Coke for me.” Speaking of–the front desk phone was ringing, and it was in your job description to answer it, you supposed.

You left him to get back to his writing, and put the receiver to your ear. The voice on the other end was politely stressed in the customer-friendly way. You left it in the cradle on hold, and called down the hallway, “Hey, Eddie, it’s Adrie’s school calling for you. I’m sure–” Stumbling out of his way, his jacket softened the blow of his shoulder knocking into you. He reached his hand back in an apologetic gesture, but his focus manifested in the flash of panic crossing his pale face. “I’m sure she’s fine,” you finished sympathetically.

He answered the woman on the line, and you waited along the wall, eyeing the scuff marks around the floorboards you should probably buff off at some point, and after his short conversation, he hung up.

“Adrie’s sick,” he said quickly, patting down his jacket. “Wayne’s not answering the phone, so I gotta go pick her up, and uh, I–” He pivoted in a circle, glancing around, fumbling for his keys in his pocket. “I–I’m sorry. She needs me.”

You drew your eyebrows in, and waved him off. “Yeah, it’s okay. You can leave. I’ll clock you out and let Carl know when he’s back from lunch.”

“Thank you,” he said in breathless earnest, leaving so quickly his boots left black streaks on the tile.

~~~

Lunch came and went. Carl came and went. The end of the hour posted under the CLOSED sign came and went. Eddie had yet to call the shop to update you, which was fine and dandy (aside from your anxiety over whether or not Adrie was okay), but in his rush, he left behind something important..

His black notebook with the devil-horned skull laid in the middle of the table like an ominous item from a horror movie.

And much like the horror movies, you as the final girl should leave it alone, right? Just.. walk away, and forget about it, and leave it for him to pick it up tomorrow, or whenever he’s able to come back to work..

But.

You were worried about Adrie, and when you went to the garage to replace the trash can liners, you saw his rings still on the black tray near the tool cabinet. Now, it’s not like he needed those either, however, what if you just.. returned them for him? And the notebook fell open while you were at it?

It was wrong. Everything about what you were doing was all so very, very wrong. Going inside Mr. Moore’s office and flipping the lightswitch, making your way to his desk in an innocent saunter, and–oops!–kneeling down to pick up a stray pen, and if the bottom drawer happened to be opened, and the plastic folder with the employee’s details from when he hired them was inside, who could blame you for taking the quickest, tiniest glance before closing it?

Yours was in there, of course, along with–

“Edward Munson,” you snorted. “Dorky name.” Duh his full name was Edward, but it was still funny to see.

You read over the top of the file where his address and phone number were. Thankfully, from your various car rides with Robin, you recognized the street name, placing it in your memories as the rusted sign next to the Forest Hills Trailer Park entrance.

The phone number you imprinted into your brain as a recreational activity, and put the folder away.

Closing the door behind you with a hefty jingle of heavy rings in your pocket, you approached the notebook, and gave it a pitied sigh. Having committed many sins in the past minute alone, you figured why not. You didn’t even feel shame opening the stupid thing after months of being teased by it. Besides, what’s the worst he could be hiding in it? It couldn’t be that embarrassing, right?

..Right?

“Okay, can honestly say I was not expecting a big tittied bird lady.” The drawing wasn’t overly detailed, but the artistry was above average. Small details etched the feathers covering her avian legs, and a gleam shone on her talons coming to a sharp point, posed to attack with milky white irises. Above her was Eddie’s stylized font: HARPY, with abbreviations and numbers in a column. His rushed handwriting filled the rest of the page. Reading it over, it appeared you opened to the middle of a story.

Thumbing through, you encountered your first dog-eared page.

IF CHEST IS CHOSEN, GO B

IF DOOR - ROLL FROM INDEX CHART POISON

Absolutely lost, you did see a box labeled B further down with a short bullet point list of what would happen, and more options to choose from on the next dog-eared section.

Flipping deeper towards the back, it was pages and pages of his handwriting. Names of characters fighting dragons. Fantasy towns housing creatures you’d never heard of. Countries with too many syllables and apostrophes. Whatever it was, you were more than happy to hop on your bike and ride it over to the trailer park, only second guessing your sense of direction three times, and releasing a grateful, “Thank God,” when you spotted it up ahead.

The place had an eeriness to it despite the slanted beams of afternoon sun gracing it in gold. Homes were tarnished with dents and algae staining the outside. Trailers slumped on their cinderblocks, buckling under the weight. RVs had permanent brush growing under their parking spots. A child’s scream echoed around the tree-less lot, but you couldn’t see them through the orderless blockade of dilapidated residences and abandoned cars. People watched you: glancing out their windows, or gathered around a charcoal barbeque. Curious eyes followed your trail down the main road. Bumping your bike around potholes, avoiding tetanus ridden nails and petrified clothes molded to the ground as if they’d been there for years.

Dogs walked their fences as you passed.

You were beginning to have some regrets when a beacon welcomed you. After a curve, an old van parked out front of a blue and white trailer came into view, but more importantly, dwarfed next to the Chevy behemoth, was a black car you’d recognize the red interior of anywhere.

The heat of parent’s concerned stares burned into the back of your neck as you rode up to the concrete stairs, leaned your bike against the metal handrail, and approached your fate.

Even though you were absolutely sure this was the correct address, you knocked with as much confidence as a dormouse. Any harder and the sound of your knuckles striking the aluminum would’ve been too loud in the creepy-quiet trailer park.

No answer.

You knocked again. Harder. Louder.

There was movement inside. Footsteps. A muffled voice. Your heart leapt. In your throat. Closer. Closer. This was so stupid. This was a mistake. This was a bad idea. The excuse in your mouth was weak, and you were about to embarrass yourself in front of your coworker by surprising him at his house, which you only knew where to find because you were snooping, and there was no amount of explaining that would help you out of your spot in hell–

Eddie swung open the door, and his heavy-browed, distrustful, annoyed, apprehensive, suspicious glare jumped to wide-eyed shock.

Your cheeks went hot.

“Nope!”

You winced at the slam, but nothing–no God’s will, no Devil’s agreement–would convince you to blink at the shuttered window where he once stood. No. No, no, no. No, never. Never would you want the searing glimpse at Eddie’s naked chest out of your sight before it was engraved into every second of every day of every night of every dream for the rest of your years.

In some part of your mind, you knew your gazes connected long enough to see the blood drain from his face, but your attention was soon urged downward, to the overwhelming amount of skin.

His hair was tied back, exposing a poetry of shadows. Hollow of his throat, to his clavicle, to the swell of his shoulders. Biceps twitching under a prominent vein when he caught himself on the trailer’s frame, and gripped the door handle. Muscles straining with fear, then soft with relief, then strong with fear again when he realized it was you who caught him in this shirtless state, discovering the beautiful line between his pecs when he flexed. Witnessing the fine wisps of softly auburn hair on his chest, juxtaposed to the wiry dark curls creating a blessed trail to the top of his sweatpants. Drooling over the eclectic collection of tattoos sporadically placed over his body. Too many to decipher in the brief encounter, aside from the dragon crawling up a sword etched into the subtle planes of his abs and curving around his slight stomach, with the blade ending at his waistband–a full picture of the tattoo you spied at the grocery store when he stretched his arms above his head.

The door creaked open again, and you’d yet to recover. But thinly obscured in the darkness of his home, he was visibly flustered as well.

Eddie hunched over, struggling to get the zipper of his tan jacket up, tugging it harshly, grinding the metal teeth in his anxious fight to cover his chest; and when it was snug to the splotchy kiss of pink on his neck, he squinted at you. “What’re you doing here?” he asked, voice gone hoarse from his dry mouth.

Knees locked, and oh so staring him directly in the eyes, you took the black notebook from under your arm (not remembering when you tucked it there), and showed it to him. “You left this at work.”

He took it from you slowly without a thanks.

“And, uh,” you continued, gathering the clinking jewelry in your jacket. “These too.” You dropped them into his cupped palm, brushing your pinky over a scratchy callus, experiencing the zing of intimacy of skin on skin.

And he felt it too, with how he curled his fingers in to seal the fleeting sensation.

Pocketing his rings, he stood meek in his doorway. The pain of expecting someone different to be knocking at his trailer had dwindled, but the tension was there in between his eyebrows, weighing on the slope of his gentle frown, painting brilliant highlights on the long line of his nose in the blazing dayglow threatening to invade his home.

The dull brown of his eyes glinted aside the honey as his mouth hung slightly open, tip of his tongue curled against the pearly dam of his teeth. The lined pages of the well worn notebook fanned out, flopping in his grip. “Did you read what was in here?”

Shifting your gaze to the sharp edge of the tin roof decorated in elaborate dangly fish hooks, you clasped your hands behind your back in a cute way, and delivered the answer he awaited with an inflection like it was a question, “No..?”

“For an actress, you’re bad at lying.”

“Or I’m being obvious on purpose so you tell me what it is.”

Working his jaw back and forth, he bided his time, each grind a consideration at his options in regards to how vulnerable he should be, and if this would be the final nail in the corroded coffin where you’d realize what a giant loser he was. “It’s..” You leaned towards him in interest, and he looked away. “It’s notes and stuff for Dungeons and Dragons,” he admitted in a mumble.

“Nerd! Nerd!” You jumped up and down, pointing, shouting, “I knew it! You’re a nerd!”

Twisting his mouth in a sarcastic sneer at your childishness, he snatched the side of the door and began shutting you out. “Okay, okay. I get it. See why I didn’t want to tell you?”

“Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,” you exhaled, switching on a dime from your teasing to a serious tone. You caught the door, and pleaded for him to stop being an idiot, “I knew you were a dweeb when you held me hostage for an entire thirteen minute lecture about your song lyrics. The Dungeons and Dragons shit is the third least surprising thing you’ve ever told me.” You clasped your hand over your heart. “Truly.”

“What’s the second?”

“Your music tastes.”

“And the first?” he asked, despite his better judgment.

“That you’re single.”

He announced his displeasure in a deadpan expression. “And I’m beginning to see why you are, too–” All of him went rigid, withdrawing slightly into the trailer with his head lowered, ear angled towards the right of him, listening as his gaze went unfocused.

After a few seconds, his lungs reawakened with a relieved breath. “Just coughing,” he said to himself. Dragging his attention back to you, he gestured weakly at his jacket to indicate his lack of clothing, still embarrassed at the situation. “Adrie, uh.. She puked on me earlier. That’s why I wasn’t–uhm–dressed.”

Worry edged its way into your question, “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, she’s fine. Kids get sick from daycare all the time. Basically just sentient germs running around, licking their hands after touching everything.”

Your eyebrows ticked up at the memory of the awful Dayquil hangovers following the weekends you worked as a clown for children’s birthday parties.

You asked, “And what about Wayne?”

“Hm? Oh.” Recognition, and the ease of a casual conversation overtook the near-permanent anticipatory hardness to his features, softening his bristly nature around you; finding you comforting when he was in the place where he was supposed to feel safest, but didn’t.

Home wasn’t home for Eddie Munson, and you felt that icy statement behind your ribs as you watched him pat his pocket as a way to check his rings were there for reassurance, acutely aware there was an hostile world at your back, and you chose to only see each other.

There was a tender innocence to his lip crooking up in a lopsided grin as he remembered you asked him a question. “Typical old man. Wayne was outside and didn’t hear the phone ring, that’s why he didn’t answer. He’s at work now, though.”

“Mm,” you hummed. “Do you have soup?”

“Soup?”

“For Adrie,” you clarified.

He glanced over his shoulder, assumingly at the kitchen, and after some mental deduction, he shrugged in vague nonchalance. “Yeah, there’s probably soup for her.” As if you didn’t know him well enough at this point to read past the nervous habits weaving their way into his fidgety unsureness.

You backed down the stairs as you spoke, “Okay. Well then, guess I’ll get going since you have everything on lock down here. Got your sick kid, got your soup, got your notebook, and your uncle’s at work. Sounds like everything’s in order.” Hopping off the last step, you swung around the handrail and guided your bike to the road, beaming. “See ya!”

“Yeah, see ya,” he replied, settling into his usual side-ways glance around the trailer park, challenging the gawkers who watched a girl willingly walk up to his home and leave it smiling. They did not dare to say anything, of course; returning to their lives with sealed lips, pretending to pay him no mind. Just how it should be.

He held his chin high.

————

And when Eddie next answered the door, it was in the low blue hue of a setted sun, and he did so in his black jeans and a white tank top. His unzipped work jacket swayed prettily around his torso, low bun at his nape loosened to a mess, short curls in a frizz over his ears, and cheeks flushed. “I figured you’d be back,” he forced out evenly, doing his best to disguise his panting breaths.

You hugged the brown paper grocery bags to your chin, and grinned.

He stuck his foot behind him in an awkward curtsy, and swept his arm for you to enter.

Walking into his place for the first time there were many things to comprehend, absorb, fawn over, and ask about until he was tired of explaining their origins–and since you were already crossing an entire notebook’s worth of lines today, you inquired about the most obvious. “You, uh, like collecting hats and mugs?”

“They’re Wayne’s,” he grunted, unplugging the vacuum he left in the middle of the living room by yanking the cord out of the wall, and dragging it on his way to the hallway closet where he kicked and shoved things aside to make room, rattling the thin door that definitely had been punched through at one point, patched and painted over, and was now a canvas for crayon squiggles along the bottom. “Before he worked at the power plant, he was a trucker. Collected them at every rest stop in every state, that sorta thing.”

“Ah.”

In a quick spin, he surveyed the rest of the trailer, and made a similar “ah” sound when he saw the cleaning products and balled up paper towels on the tiny table squeezed against the wall. He lunged for them, stuffing the evidence and other garbage into the overflowing trash can. “I still keep up the tradition by getting him a mug for Christmas.” Jerking his chin at the shelf above him, he specified the one on the end. “This year was Looney Tunes.”

“How cute.” The bags crinkled in your arms as you stood in the entryway, nodding expectantly.

“Shit–Sorry.”

You smiled. He finished clearing a space on the wrap-around kitchen counter for you to set the groceries down, scooting a candle out of the way, flickering the flame he may have burnt himself on while lighting, if the red mark on his thumb was anything to go by. And he was back to pivoting, scanning the area, desperate to latch onto the object which would jog his memory on where he was in his cleaning: dishes dripped in the drying rack, Wayne’s grilled cheese endeavor was out of sight, the bathroom radiated the nose-burning scent of bleach.

He snapped his fingers at the overflowing trash can, and almost slipped in his frenzy to tie up the bag and rush for his boots, saying he’ll be right back on his way out, leaping down the stairs.

“Alrighty..”

The steady rumble of a washing machine rattled every loose bit of metal in the museum of belongings.

You waged war with your tennis shoes, wiggling out of them with the laces still tied, and stepped off the carpet dividing the trailer in half. The bubbling vinyl kitchen floor stuck to your socks, still damp from being mopped, and heaved the groceries onto the pale blue countertop, sliding them across decades worth of scratches scarring the material. Once you were sure you could let them go without a toppling situation, you took the goods out one at a time, but your attention was nosy and undivided.

Acting as foreground to the walls of hats and mugs was the rest of Eddie’s life. Laundry baskets occupied a couch with flattened cushions. A coffee table supported stacks of his daughter’s playthings after picking them out of the vacuum’s path. There was a fold out bed in the corner, and a modest TV situated on top of a VCR. To compensate for the lack of overhead light was an abundance of mismatched lamps on each surface.

It was a hodge podge, and it was cramped, and it was incomprehensible, and it was his house.

Turning, you began to guess at which cabinets he would store a bag of rice when you spotted the artwork hanging on the fridge.

Pinned under a teddy bear magnet was a decoupaged version of your Thanksgiving turkeys, cut out and glued to a single piece of construction paper, complete with the castle in the background. And secured safely under a smiley face magnet was a stick figure drawing of two people–one in a pink dress, one in all black scribble–and dated in neat ink by someone with less messy handwriting: 5/7/92.

Eddie came back to your wide grin, and two cans of baked beans held up in a question.

“They go over here,” he said, nodding at the skinny door next to where he stood at the small green table set for three chairs, organizing today’s mail in his hand.

You opened the pantry next to the recessed oven, and stacked the rest of the cans inside. Towards the back there were two white cereal boxes with plain blue text and nothing else, leaving you to deduce no one in his family stooped to eating unsweetened cornflakes even if that’s all they had. Meanwhile, he arranged overdue bills into a ladder style letter holder hung on the wall beside the phone, periodically taking one out and placing it down a rung, ordering them from most to least important.

“I was supposed to go grocery shopping yesterday, but I had to buy and install a new hot water heater,” he told you suddenly. Whether he was saying this because he was coasting on the fumes of his Christmas bonus until December’s child support arrived, or because he was simply too busy to go shopping, neither of you addressed it more than necessary. He accepted your help, and you didn’t pry.

“Unexpected shit sucks, huh?” you added for his benefit.

“Yeah,” he huffed in a short laugh, playing the same game.

And it was him who rested his forearms on the edge of the pale blue wrap-around counter, watching you commit good deed after good deed, guessing where groceries went in the cabinets, acclimating to his kitchen’s set up, and making room for a bag of grapes and three apples between his six pack of Pabst and block of Government cheese.

“Can I ask you kind of a weird question?”

You brightened at his voice, teetering on the edge of a smile just from that alone. “Always.”

He drew absent-minded circles with his finger as he tried to find the best way to word something he wondered about since the week you met. “When you saw Adrie for the first time, you had this really, uh, surprised look on your face.. Why was that?”

Your tone was dismissive in the wake of something that appeared to haunt him, “Oh, that?” You folded down the empty paper bags, and placed them on top of the fridge after he said Adrie would use them for arts and crafts. “Well, it’s like, Mr. Moore has dozens of pictures of his family on his desk, and Carl told me–approximately–ten different stories about his sons an hour after meeting him, and Kevin carries pictures of his dogs in his wallet. It just seemed like if you had a daughter, you would’ve shown me a picture too, like most dads.” You waved your hands around, and contorted your mouth in a silly manner. “I mean, it was just weird you never mentioned her.”

He took your assessment to heart, and opened the drawer closest to him. Amongst the clutter of junk was his black wallet resting on a coiled chain with clips on either end. Taking out the cheap leather, he cradled the width in his palm, and wiggled out a picture kept sealed behind a plastic window. He said, “Actually, I do carry a picture of her,” and handed it to you.

On instinct, you pored over the image of him first, prizing the crown of his head sporting the same wild haircut. He had his face tipped down to the newborn wrapped in a pink blanket in his arms, crooking her in their safety as he held a bottle to her lips. His knees were on display behind his ripped black jeans. His shirt was sleeveless. She was tiny and precious. He was decidedly emotionless from what you could see, sat on a couch that was not the same as the one across the room from you.

“That was taken at Harrington’s place,” he answered your unstated question, keen to the recognition washing over your face as you placed it as Nancy’s ugly pink floral loveseat.

You gave it back to him.

He looked over the captured moment in time, bleak gaze set on his little girl when she was so fragile, and small, and when he was so weak, and teetering on a long overdue breakdown.

“It took me a long time to carry this around,” he said, tone heavy with disappointment, regret, and shame. “Wayne and I were fighting constantly. And I mean, I don’t blame him. He gave up his life to take care of me when I was twelve, and I put so many gray hairs on his head that he went bald from my bullshit, and then there I was, bringing home a screaming infant I didn’t know the first thing about taking care of. Y’know, just proving I was a fuck-up right when he thought I was smart enough to get my act together.“ Tracing the sharp edge of the photo trimmed to fit his wallet, he placed it in its windowed slot and tossed it back in the drawer, closing the past from his sight. “I don’t have a lot of good memories from that time. Shit fucking sucked.”

“I can imagine,” was all you could say.

“I love her,” he said in the event you doubted him.

“I know you do,” you offered in return.

Steering the conversation in a different direction, you swung your index fingers at the extensive cabinetry, and asked, “Where’s a cutting board?” Right of the sink, he answered. “And a knife?” Top drawer next to your hip, he responded. But it took until you shook out the washed celery stalk, and snapped the ribs off, lining them up on the white plastic cutting board did he become suspicious.

He leaned more of his weight on his forearms, and kept his tone carefully neutral, “What’re you doing?”

Keeping your expression indifferent aside from your arched brows, you cut the celery into manageable sticks and began slicing them lengthways. “I believe I’m in Edward Munson’s trailer making him and his daughter soup.”

The crimson guitar pick at the end of his necklace swung forward, jostled from where it was stuck to the healthy sheen of sweat glistening along the top of his chest. “How do you know my full name?”

“A little birdie told me.”

He shifted his shoulders, head lowered, eyes narrowed, voice deep, “Better question. How do you know where I live?”

“A bigger birdie told me.”

“Someone told you about me?”

Rightfully confused, you pulled a face. “Huh? No. I was kidding. No one talks to me. Anyway, back to the soup.” You harnessed all your charm into impressing him by meeting his stare while you diced the celery, using your knuckles as guidance. “Are there any vegetables she won’t eat? Or stuff she’s allergic to?” Your flagrant insolence irked him: reading his notebook, inviting yourself to his residence, filling the voids in his kitchen with groceries, and now making him soup without ever asking if he wanted you to do those things.

Because of course he wanted you to do those things.

He surrendered to your kindness. “No allergies, and she’ll eat anything as long as it’s diced small–Yeah, like that–and cooked down to mush. It’s the one thing she’s always been good about.”

“And you?”

It took a few sad seconds for him to understand you were asking about his allergies and his preferences, not used to his needs being taken into consideration. “No, no, whatever you make is good. Uhm. Hey, you don’t have to do all of this. Don’t roll your eyes, I’m being serious. Adrie’s sick and I don’t want you to catch what she has.”

“Please,” you implored in thick sarcasm, “I’ve been coughed on by every disease known to man on the Q train. There’s not a cold or flu in existence I haven’t succumbed to. I’m immune at this point.”

You found a stock pot from the cabinet at the junction of the wrap-around counter and the sink, and set it on the cooktop to come to heat while you peeled and chopped an onion. Eddie dwelled in his observations; listening to you recount tales of working in kitchens because they were always hiring, collecting horror stories from being a dishwasher, a waitress, a morning food prepper; moving from title to title; birthday clown, bartender, craft store cashier. Flighty, flighty, flighty. He watched your hands move in quick chops and long sweeps down a carrot with skill he didn’t have the patience nor time to learn. He told you as much, how when he comes home he’s fucking tired, and doesn’t have the energy to make dinner.

“Now what’re you doing, sweetheart?” he asked in what he hoped was an exhausted tone, but he knew it was futile. The timidness was there, sneaking its way into his words when he made the leap to calling you an endearment in his own home. And how could he not when you pulled out a stack of tupperware, divided the piles of chopped vegetables between them, and wedged them into the freezer, still tending to the sweating mirepoix with a wooden spoon.

“It’s so next time you want soup they’re all ready to go. You don’t have to waste time cutting vegetables. Just dump a container in a pot and add broth and noodles, and call it a night.”

He made a fond noise in the back of his throat, looking at you through his lashes. “You’re really doing everything in your power to extort me for this ‘thank you’ I owe you, aren’t you?”

“You’re the one who promised me something good,” you reminded him.

Water splashed, sputtered in the pot, steaming into a cloud of savory humidity, filling the living space with earthy aromatics. You added bouillon cubes, and stirred the stock together while turning the dial on high to bring the soup to a boil.

“Yeah, guess I did,” he said, petering out into a mumble, straying further from the current topic. He wasn’t finished talking about the previous one yet, and he made it known.

Tracing his thumb along his plump bottom lip, he tested a boundary, tiptoeing into a realm he did his best to ignore. “So, uh, you employ the same strategy with jobs as you do dating, huh?”

“Oh, yeah,” you grinned. “Having an endless well of stories about shitty customers to pull from is perfect for stand up. Everyone loves the perpetually single girl who works in service or retail, and just can’t seem to find the love of her life, despite going on an insane amount of first dates with New York’s most average. It’s funny, and relatable.”

“And now you’re stuck as a boring receptionist in a nowhere town in a nowhere state.”

You released a sugary, syrupy, sweet giggle. “And now I’m stuck as a boring receptionist in a nowhere town in a nowhere state, and it’s the longest job I’ve ever held.”

His eyelashes fluttered from the nerves–the strong ache in his chest pressing down on him, stealing his breath. “And what about the dates? Gone on any with Hawkins’ finest?”

“Just one.” Though your back was to him while you washed and dried the cutting board, your smile was outlined in your banter. “But it was awful,” you emphasized in a dramatic sigh. “Worst date ever. He drank my Icee, wouldn’t stop talking during the movie, and, get this! He didn’t even tell me I was pretty. Not once.”

“What a jerk,” he agreed fullheartedly, scrunching his nose and twisting a curl of his hair over his stupidly smitten grin. “Sounds like a real asshole.”

“Actually, he was my favorite,” you corrected him, turning down the dial to where the coils lost their fluorescent glow. “Huge, huge nerd. Like, the biggest dork ever, but he was definitely my favorite out of any of my dates.” On your way to the green table, you bent close to his ear, and begged him in a whisper, “But don’t tell him I said that. He’ll get a real big ego about it.”

He made a zipping motion over his mouth.

“Soups gotta simmer until the potatoes are done. Might as well sit.”

He unzipped his mouth. “When did you cut up potatoes?”

“When you were staring at me all dreamy-like,” you supplied, words dipped in coy and flirt.

Undecided on which way to balk at your claim, he did them all: rolled his eyes, clicked his tongue, muttered a small “was not,” and slung himself into his usual chair at the table. He expected you to do the same, to match his silly theatrics with your own impassioned eye roll and smirk, but you didn’t. You sat across from him, poised, hands clasped together with the black notebook beside you.

The mood of the evening dipped visibly in your serious gaze set on him.

You tapped your knuckle on the metal spirals binding the worn pages of his latest campaign together. “No more secrets,” you punctuated. Three short words let go on an exhale. Three little words standing taller than the final barrier he built to keep others out. Not an ask, but a necessity if you were going to continue your relationship–platonic or not.

Your posture and expression were stern, but gentled by patience. “Let’s get to those rumors, hm.”

It was time.

No going back.

Whatever happens, happens.

Eddie took a shaky breath, and invited you over to the vulnerable truth. “Has anyone ever told you anything about me? Not like Harrington’s stories, but actual rumors?”

You shook your head. Between spending most of your time at work, or at Robin’s place, you didn’t have much opportunity to speak to random people, apart from small talk. And chit chatting about the weather was nowhere near as grave as what rooted itself in the solemn slow blink wherein he closed his eyes, and dipped his head.

“I’ll tell you everything, but can I ask you not to say anything while I explain?” he hesitated, knowing how it sounded. “I don’t know how else to word that to make it less rude, but this shit is difficult for me to talk about, and I’ll probably ramble, and go on tangents, and jump around the timeline, but, please, don’t interrupt me or say anything until I’m finished, okay? I don’t want to forget any of the details, and have to discuss this again. Can we do that?”

Digging your thumbnails harder into the flesh of your fingers, you agreed to the terms with a solid nod.

He swallowed. And when his tongue remained too thick in his dry mouth, he swallowed again, and sat up straight, pressing his back into the chair. “Okay.”

Two anxious stomachs twisted at once.

He cast his vacant stare around the room; never allowing it to land on you. This conversation was with himself and the green table and the shelf of mugs and the soup bubbling away on the stove and the washing machine entering its spinning cycle and the containers of Play-Doh on the coffee table; speaking to the non-judgemental objects instead of the person across from him.

“I’ll start with my reputation in school,” he said. “Probably doesn’t take much of an imagination to picture me as I am now with the same hobbies and opinions, just a lot louder about them. Heavy metal was the only music I listened to, and people called me weird for it. And I thought ‘weird?’ Was that supposed to bother me? I loved being weird! I wore the title ‘weird’ with pride. I didn’t want to be like everyone else. And when they saw I played Dungeons and Dragons, they called me a Satanist. Satanist? Like Ozzy, and all the bands I looked up to? Hell yeah! I thought being called a Satanist was so cool I sewed a Leviathan Cross on my jacket.” The corner of his lip jumped at a memory, smiling at something from long ago. Then, it faded. “Goes without saying I didn’t make many friends until I found other outcasts who shared those same views as me. We started a band together, and after some convincing, we made a DND club with me as the Dungeon Master. Of course people called me a cult leader for it, but being a cult leader sounded fucking awesome, so I encouraged it. Antagonized it. Weird, Devil-worshiper, cultist, freak. I wore them all like armor.”

He paused to crack his knuckles, expression falling blank as suppressed scenes unfolded in his head. “I got bullied a lot. Not that surprising. I was so aggressively opinionated about everything and never shut up. But the worst of it stopped when I got held back enough grades that I made “grown-up friends” and started dealing to help pay for my guitars and stuff.” He shrugged a single shoulder in apathy, and the tan jacket slipped down his arm, revealing a faded stick-and-poke viper above his armpit. “Unless it was Steve or someone in that friend circle, I was never invited to parties except to bring drugs. Weed, pills, whatever low scale stuff, nothing that serious, but I wasn’t very popular outside of that context.” The washing machine buzzed at the end of its cycle. “And as much as I told myself I didn’t care, I did. I did care when my friends were out on dates with their girlfriends, and I was alone, stuck in front of a record player learning a song just to give myself something to do, and something to say I did over the weekend when they all talked about the movie they saw together.. Made me feel like I was the outcast even amongst the outcasts.”

Listening, but not responding, you smoothed your thumbs over the divots in your skin your nails left behind.

Swallowing again, he faltered, “Girls didn’t like me. Even if I was the cooler, older guy who was so confident in everything he did, I was still off-putting. Or just weird in the bad way, because I didn’t know how to act, and came on too strong, or too–I don’t know–fucking dorky, doing shit like opening doors and bowing for them, laughing too loud at my own jokes when they didn’t find them funny.” It took everything you had to not to break your promise–to stay silent, and indifferent, and not gather him into a hug and assure him all those goofy mannerisms were exactly why you liked him. “I dated, y’know.. Had girlfriends here and there, but they never lasted more than a month.”

To close one chapter of his life and open another, he rubbed at his eyes, and ran a hand down his face, scrubbing over his chin as he spoke to the ceiling, “Now onto my old man.”

The hand he used to wipe the loneliness from his somber visage came to a rest on the edge of the table, and he ran the side of his palm along it as a way to fidget.

“He was in and out of jail for a number of things my whole life, but when I was twelve, he murdered someone. She was a nice lady. Well known in town, and well liked. Popular. Prom Queen, cheerleader type. Everyone loved her.. And he murdered her.”

Silence, silence, you remained in white-hot, visceral, sweat dripping, jaw-clenching silence.

“According to my criminal record, I was following in his footsteps. I had a penchant for stirring up trouble. It was fun. Stealing dumb shit, hotwiring an old car to drive us to the woods to get drunk when we were teenagers, dealing, begging Steve to throw ragers every weekend so I had an excuse to get shitfaced and run from the cops.. Yeah, it really looked like I was following in his footsteps. Following the Munson name.”

Eddie sat forward. Sleeved forearms sliding across aged coffee rings staining the green collapsible tabletop, and rubbing the backs of his fingers along the other. He was close enough for you to reach, to hold, to comfort when this was over, and the ghosts were put to rest from clouding his softhearted brown eyes.

“There was a New Year’s Eve party I was invited to” –he jumped his fingers in quotations– “on the rich side of town. It wasn’t one of Harrington’s, and I was out of my supply anyway, so I skipped out and spent the night here with my friends playing DND, and setting off fireworks in the trailer park, just having a good time.” The next inhale quivered his bottom lip, “I woke up in my bed to three cop cars blaring their sirens, and someone telling me I was being arrested for-for murder. Ah..”

You steeled yourself from blinking away.

“A girl died at that party. Prom Queen, head cheerleader. The type everyone knew, and everyone liked. And.. A-and, Jesus, I-I just need to get through this, I’m so sorry–but stuff was done to her body.”

The frankness hung in the room.

He screwed his eyes shut, and let the ugly reality spill from his mouth, “A guy from out of state went to that party with way harder shit than I sold, and she wanted to try some. They went to the bathroom together, he gave her too much, drugged her, she overdosed, and h-h-he..” His eyelids twitched with movement, and the tendons in his neck strained. You weren’t sure if he could hear the small, involuntary noise you made, but he chose the same words to avoid what you could infer. What all women could infer. “He did stuff to her body.”

His voice continued to crawl up an octave as his muscles braced in a reflexive cringe. “H-He left her there, and when her body was discovered, and the police were called, it didn’t take long before someone said they thought they saw me there, and once one person said they saw me there, suddenly everyone saw me there.” Hard swallow, palms wiped on jeans. “I was arrested the next morning, and even though I had three alibis, I didn’t have any hard receipts or any of that shit they wanted to establish where I was and at what time. And when my alibis were a bunch of Satanic cultist shithead troublemakers like me, they were brushed off. And why wouldn’t they be? It’s my friend’s word against thirty people who swore the long haired guy they saw at the party was me. Cops thought they caught their man, booked me, and had me in interrogation in under an hour from kicking down my door.”

He licked his lips.

“January of ‘88,” he said with an unsteady cadence, shooting out the sentences as they came to him, lurching faster and faster towards the horrid scars he’d never heal from. “I was so fucking lucky, so fucking lucky. DNA testing had only become a thing the year before. Mhm. That’s what saved my ass. But even then, it wasn’t like it is now. That shit took weeks to process.” He lifted his hands–fingers loosely curled, trembling. “For weeks they made me look at the pictures of her. H-Her body. The b-bruises around her neck.” He gestured at his own, and his voice swung higher pitched, “Interrogated me over and over again. For days, and weeks. Trying to get me to confess. It took weeks to prove I was innocent, and clear my name. Weeks, and weeks. A-A-And in those weeks–”

The trembling escalated to uncontrollable shaking.

“–Fuck–I don’t want to talk about this,” he said, volume fluctuating.

The air was too thick to breathe.

The wrinkles between his brows deepened, as did the lines bracketing his mouth. Red flush overtook his shuddering chest, his strained throat, his scrunched face with his eyes closed in refusal to acknowledge you sat opposite him, your expression slackened by dread.

“In the weeks between waiting f-for the DNA results,” each word wobbled worse than the last, “I found out Adrie’s mom was four months pregnant. And if I knew, then all of Hawkins knew. Everyone knew I knocked someone up, and.. and more rumors started..” He lifted his eyebrows, and his hands developed a violent shiver, hovering over the table, palms open, afraid and begging. “Because of.. what happened to the body.. People thought that she was.. That I..” each pause was a short wheeze.

Your blood ran cold with the slow realization of what word he was avoiding.

Desperation influenced his stammer, “I swear to you, w-what happened between us was consensual,” he stressed the last word in a whimper delivered straight to your dropped stomach. “She doesn’t answer my calls–but I could try, if you need to hear it from her–I promise, I promise, as soon as the rumors started, as soon as they started, she denied them. She tried to stop them from spreading. She tried. She told everyone it-it-it wasn't–that we both chose to–” he sniffed back the croaky sob, and without the grace of respite, he coughed the rasp from his throat, and ushered you into another apology you didn’t know you were owed, “I should’ve told you before we went to Adrie’s school. You had a right to know why people were staring. I’m so fucking sorry.”

In the room at the end of the dark hallway, his daughter who he sacrificed everything for rolled over in her bed, bringing the covers with her. In the belly of the trailer belonging to his uncle, you kept your feet tucked under your chair, letting the information wash over you in worse and worse crashes. In the lousy home he hated, Eddie held his breath until the aches reached their peak, and released them in a cough; and another, and another, until the pain subsided.

Deep breath, deep breath.

Your chair creaked from your uncomfortable shifting.

With time, the tension in his body waned to where his composed words could be heard in all the clarity they deserved, “I know this has been a lot to hear, and process, and I’m so sorry for unloading all of this on you at once, but I wanted you to know the whole story so you could make an informed decision.”

You weren’t sure if you were supposed to speak yet, but your whisper broke through, “Informed decision?”

Cheeks hot, but dry, and lower lashes clumped together from the rescinded tears, he answered you indirectly at first, “It took months to find and arrest the guy, and by then Hawkins didn’t care. Babe, you can be anonymous in the city, but this is how small town mentality works. All it took was one person to say I was at that party, and like that, my life was ruined. My name was stained. No one cared if I was innocent. The culprit was some other guy they’d never heard of from another state whose picture they flashed on the 6 o’clock news once. He might as well not even exist.” A pause. A change. A regret. “I want to protect you.”

There was pressure building behind your eyes, and you moved your gaze to the shelves above you in an effort to stifle the well of tears from falling–for him, for the dead girl, for what he was about to say next.

Eddie alternated between weakly slapping his hands flat on the table, then turning over to show his palms, then slapping them down again; guilt and shame and loneliness and fear working its way into every part of his gentle nature. “My name carries a stigma, and if you’re going to be coming around to my place, or be seen with me in public, you need to know there are consequences. Assumptions are going to be made about you. People are going to speculate, warn you, judge you. You don’t deserve that shit, so please, tell me, and I’ll accept just being friends at work, and leave it at that. I won’t ask questions. I won’t bother you. I won’t ask for more.”

“What?”

“I’ll understand,” he said, eyes tightening in a flinch.

“Eddie–” It came out broken. His encouragement for you to end the burden of this relationship at coworkers for the sake of your image stung like the tender throb of rejection–except, it was worse. It was him giving you permission to break things off because he didn’t see himself as worth the hassle.

Your poise collapsed. “You’re right, it is a lot to process, and it’s all I’m gonna be thinking about for the next week, a-and yeah, I wish you told me sooner, but Eddie–” His knuckles made a harsh sound when you grasped for his hand, knocking them on the table with the force of your messy coordination through the blur of true friendship disrupting your vision. “This changes nothing between us.”

Graceless under the circumstances, you took his right hand and wrapped your fingers around his thumb, fitting the meat of your palm into the curve of his. You delved your other fingers under his sleeve cuff, stroking them down, then up, slotting them beneath the stretchy bracelet. D-A-D-D-Y. He cupped his free hand over top of yours, enveloping them both, and waded through the entanglement to caress the prominent callus at the tip of his middle finger over the white blocks with black lettering. M-O-U-S-E.

“I’m with you,” you said. “I’m here. And whenever you want me here, whenever Adrie wants me here, ask and I’ll be on my bike pedaling as fast as I can.”

His face pinched in sentimental yearn. “Baby..”

Instead of suffocating the intensity of his emotions as he normally would, he slid his chair back and buried his head in the hollow of his outstretched arms; and in the pocket of space where he felt safest, he allowed himself the relief of two hot tears streaking through the fine sweat overtaking his puffy face. They clung to the tip of his nose, and dripped to his jeans in a loud splat.

He snorted, but it came out as a muted huff due to his stopped up sinuses. “Can’t believe I made it all the way through that sober and without crying, and then you just–went ahead and said something like that.”

You smiled. He probably did, too. Then as yours ebbed, his probably did, too.

The intertwined pocket where you clasped each other ran hot with body temperature, humidity, and the loaded implications of his confession and your subsequent acceptance. Heavy with the context for why people stared at him. Their significant glances at you, and the new depths and meaning beyond people thinking he was weird, and you were weird by association.

But at the same time, their stares didn’t last long. They were glances by every definition. A look over, a judgment, and then away, back to their own little world and their own little lives.

You asked, “Are the rumors still as bad as they were?”

The short curls at the crown of his head waved back and forth with his slow head shake. “I don’t think so. I think they’ve gotten better in a weird, fucked up way.” He sniffled, and wiped his nose on the inside of his sleeve before returning to the darkened confines of his arms, refusing excess stimulation until he could handle it. “Ever since Home Alone came out, my friends joke that I’m like that old man, y’know, the one all the neighborhood kids target, and turn one rumor about him into this entire narrative where he’s slayed over a dozen people, and keeps the bodies in his basement.” He laughed, truly. A warm, muffled thing. “That’s the sorta rumors going around now, I think; that I’m some Boogieman that gets blamed for every bump in the night. Adults probably know the accusations, but, like I said, Adrie’s mom did try to stop the other ones, but I guess I don’t know for sure if–when people look at you and me–that’s what they’re thinking. Uhm, I don’t know if I’m making sense anymore.”

“You’re good,” you consoled him. Your thumbs whispered sentiments on his skin, smoothing over the rough terrain from his labor, and catching on the excess sweat, wicking it away and creating more with each hindered brush across his inner wrist, trapped under the weight of his heavy hand copying you; running his fingers over wherever he could, needy, grounding himself to your presence, and seeking closure. “Thank you for finally telling me.”

“Thanks for listening,” he responded quietly.

Eddie shrugged his shoulders to his cheeks, and dried his face on his jacket to the best of his ability. Together, you sat in silence for a while longer, holding each other. Thinking. Decompressing. Plunging into the ice water of yet another development in your relationship, and emerging to the surface in unison, breaking the surface tension latched together by the same lifesaver.

You squeezed.

He squeezed back.

“I think I need a minute,” Eddie said, throwing his head towards the bathroom and letting go of you to inelegantly wipe at his runny nose. He drew further away from the table, standing up and walking in his odd, awkward way; playing with his bangs, and taking his hair out of the ponytail. “I’ll see if Adrie’s awake and wants soup, too.” The edge of the bathroom door flooded with yellowed light and a faucet was turned on high.

There was a nice moment where you nodded at the homely kitchen, lost in thought, absorbing the sounds and smells of the thick bubbling brew, and tomatoey pungence. Until it dawned on you.

“Shit, the soup–!”

Thankfully, as you stirred, the potatoes stuck to the bottom of the pot dislodged themselves, and nothing appeared burnt. Because, honestly, you couldn’t take the wound to your pride if the first time you ever cooked for Eddie Munson resulted in you burning soup.

After searching, you discovered the cabinet above the dish rack housed the dinnerware. You grabbed two mismatched bowls and hesitated on the shallow Little Mermaid one, until hearing the click of the bathroom door swinging open, and a squeak from the adjacent bedroom.

Soft footsteps announced his excitement before you could turn and see Eddie’s silly hand wave.

Come here, he mouthed, peeking from around the wall.

You dropped the serving spoon on the–had to be homemade–ceramic ashtray masquerading as spoon rest, and followed, hungry for new discoveries; the first being the (offensively ugly) pirate ship wheel chandelier hanging above the washing machine you had to have been an idiot to miss earlier. Deeper into the carpeted hallway was the coat closet with crayon squiggles, a shelf of kitschy knick knacks, and a thrifted painting of a lake scene with the curled-edge price sticker still on the corner of the glass. Passing the bathroom, you got a glimpse of a dark green shower curtain, a wet rag on a packed sink of various spilled products, and a bucket of rubber ducks next to the tub.

Eddie slowed, and you were confronted with his back. Slim shoulders on display from his oversized jacket falling further down his arms, thick canvas folding over itself around his tapered waist. The white tank top was stretched to fit him, hem of the armholes digging into his flexed lats as he eased the bedroom door open, back muscles contouring in the heavy shadows as he hunched and held his breath at the creaky hinges broadcasting his entrance. Edges of tattoos taunted you while he blinked into the darkness. And when the one who usurped his bed nearly five years ago didn’t wake, he straightened up and shook his hair out of his face.

He angled to the side, opening himself to you with his arm outstretched; an unspoken suggestion in his fingertips finding the edge of your cable knit sweater. You understood the glossy shine of unfiltered love in his gaze, and fit yourself between him and the doorway, stealing the soft filtered light brushing Adrienne’s sleeping form in tender illumination–made sweeter by the curls falling over her closed eyes, and the pale blue unicorn hugged in her arms.

‘Oh,’ you sighed in surprise, and clasped your hands on either side of your cheeks, craning to look up at him.

Just like the time he helped you hang decorations in the breakroom, your head made contact with the stick-and-poke viper, and his grin was instant.

His inhale cradled you. “She loves that thing,” he said, chest rumbling against your nape, stomach pressing to your side with an amused grunt, filling the gaps between you and him with warmth.

It was as if nothing changed. Not really.

Eddie canted his forehead to you with an expression of mild jealousy over your plush toy wrapped in his little girl’s arms when his cold plasticy ones sat at a miniature table in a pink playhouse pretending to have a tea party. His eyebrows were the same–raised, hidden beneath the wet stringy pieces of his bangs skimming his wrinkled forehead. His damp cheeks, jaw, and neck were the same after his cold water wake up call, splashing himself over the bathroom sink. His full lips were the same, pink and pulled back to show his teeth. His strong chin was the same, peppered with a recent shave. His handsome nose was the same, albeit red. The crinkles at the corner of his eyes were the same, if not slightly fuller from his recent cry.

But everything had changed.

Before, you lacked the understanding of the fear in his eyes when Mr. Moore had walked into the shop. How he had risked a painful bruise on his hip from the chair he knocked over in his scramble to get away from you. The tremble in his hands when he ran them through his hair in an urgent act to appear composed, and not like he was doing something worse with you. To you.

Everything was different, but it was felt, not seen.

The leftover adrenaline from the confrontation at his kitchen table faded, and in its place, rising from the truest, barest, rawest vulnerabilities of himself, was trust. A candid expression of respect in his palm at your back, fingers curled in to stroke his nails along the knitted design of your turtleneck. He confessed his secrets, you knew him to be an innocent man, and despite his worry for your reputation becoming infected by his, you promised him the same loyalty you always had, because there was not a lie in existence that would break the bond you facilitated months ago, born from your sheer desire to annoy the one mechanic who wouldn’t speak to you.

Felt, not seen.

A promise, and an urge.

The tingly pleasure of his nails scratching over your sweater advanced to a divine expression of affection.

He wrapped his arm around you, settling his hand in the curve above your hip. It lasted all of two seconds, long enough for him to bring you into the crook of his body for the purpose of whispering something in your ear, but it was a phenomenal improvement over the usual nervous flittering his fingers performed when in your company.

His voice was candy sweet after watching your face break into a smile for his daughter, “Maybe we should let her sleep, hmm?”

You leaned into him. “Yeah,” you sighed, rolling your head along his shoulder, guiding your silly grin from him to Adrie. “She looks so peaceful.”

“And quiet,” he observed in the wise tone of a single father after long hours of soothing his child’s headache when her cries created one of his own, and juggling the duty of cleaning up her puke from the floor, her clothes, his clothes, and bathing her while wallowing in the misery of doing it all by himself.

Eddie persuaded you into the hallway, and closed the door behind him, letting his arm fall to his side, ending the cocoon of warmth he provided with the harsh drag of the metal zipper scratching across the back of your jeans. He followed you to the kitchen and opened the fridge, muttering a string of words about deserving something as he snapped a silver and blue can from the plastic ring holding them together. “Want a beer? I don’t think you can get a DUI on a bike.”

“You actually can in some states.” You didn’t elaborate, and continued spooning soup into the bowls in questionable silence. “But no, thank you.”

Crack, tss. He held your stare over the rim as he tipped back a long gulp, pressed his lips together, and swallowed with a satisfied ‘ah,’ giving you ample time to ignore him. Finally, he moved his hand about, and asked, “Not gonna tell me why you know that?”

“Nope.”

“Okay.”

Moving on, you located two spoons from the absolute chaos of the cutlery drawer, and brought the bowls to the table while he reached into the pantry for an open sleeve of saltines, tossing them between the both of you and falling into his chair with a soft grunt.

“This looks great,” he complimented in earnest, voice and face alight with appreciation as he thrashed his arms to get out of his jacket, and took another sip of beer before crowding his side of the table with elbows, forearms, and hands; always holding the Pabst, or the soup, or reaching; always in motion, dominating the space you shared between your bowls, and beneath, where your legs were slotted in tight between his wide-spread knees.

His manners were about what you would assume after eating lunch with him many times, but that’s not what had you breathless.

He just.. took off his jacket like it was a completely normal thing he did dozens of times in front of you, sometimes accompanied by a hand rolled cigarette hanging from his lips, or joined by a sneer at some bad joke you told.

But it wasn’t normal. Not this time.

Hungry, hungry, hungry, you devoured the sight of his bare skin.

While he stirred the finely diced carrots and potatoes, you were afforded the time to admire the art no longer hidden by coveralls. Guessing at the older blotchy etches on his inner arm, theorizing about the origins of the souvenirs done in various stages between professional and very not professional, probably by himself or a friend. He didn’t have many, but it was easy to get caught up in the collection of motifs spanning from the top of his shoulders, and crawling in disorder downwards, to a tiny dagger at the apex of his bicep, two dice above his elbow, and a classic twist of barbed wire. Very cool and tough, but your roving stopped at one tattoo in particular.

Rather, one cluster of tattoos making up a whole.

“The bats..”

He perked up at your whisper–”Hm?”–and looked down at his arm. “Oh, yeah. These were my fourth, I think? Somethin’ like that. You like ‘em?” he asked, mouth cutting into the same delighted place a smirk originated from, but with more fascination as he too realized this was your first (technically second) time seeing his exposed arms.

Sucking in your cheeks to curb your habit of smiling at everything he said, you nodded in response, falling into a rhythmic head dip as you thought back to your first time meeting Adrie, and the picture she drew for you, and her Halloween costume, and how she chose not to dress as a princess like all her friends, but as a bat instead, because her daddy liked bats. “Yeah.. Yeah, I like them.”

He removed the twist tie from around the crackers and counted out three, stacking them neatly between his palms and, without warning, crushing them into his soup, sending a fine powder into the air.

It was obvious you were watching him on account of your untouched food, but it was beyond your control. Winter created a barrier between you and his skin. You needed to reap the beauty now while you could. Learn what you could, like the scorpion above his collar bone opposite the viper, and the eyeball monster with tentacles twisting over the bulk of muscles laying dormant in his solid forearms, and whatever the hell else was peeking out from under his tank top.

He scraped his spoon along the bottom of his bowl, and determined he needed one more cracker to make his soup as thick as he liked, and collected it from the crinkly pack. Yet another simple movement he had executed hundreds of times in front of you, and yet..

You stared. And stared. And stared. And made a sound of disgust. Rising from your chair, you loomed an impressive shadow over Eddie’s face as he gazed up at you with an expression of open confusion.

His eyes were trained solely on the pretty glint in yours. 

Shiver. Goosebumps.

He jumped at your bold finger slipping under the strap of his tank top to move it aside. You pinched your brows, narrowed your eyes, and pressed your palm to his skin, enthralled by the sensation of him existing under you, aware of the full breath he took to fill out his chest as you introduced the touch.

Humming, you studied your hand cupped over the black widow spider inked onto his naked pec, and concluded, “That one’s smaller than my palm.”

The pale saltine cracker shattered in his grip.

Acting oblivious, you scooted your chair under you, sat, smoothed your hands over your lap as if a napkin existed there, and slurped your spoonful of soup as if you had done something as natural as point out the weather.

He released his surprise in a huff, and brushed the crumbs from his palms. “You are the lamest person I have ever met.”

“Have you met yourself?” At his weak glare, you slurped more of your soup. An amicable silence followed–the sort of camaraderie communicated through full bellies–but there’d been something on your mind since he willingly opened himself up to you and shared his past, expecting his name to become a forgotten word in your mouth and nothing more. “Hey, since we’re like, baring our souls and shit tonight, do you want to know why I created my ‘yes’ policy?”

Instead of a comically over-quirked eyebrow, he showed genuine interest in listening to your story. He set down his spoon, and turned his full attention to you. “I’m intrigued.”

“I’m tellin’ ya now, it’s not as riveting as yours, but uh,” you faltered on a pause, and fostered the same sort of nervous shrug he did. “Growing up, my parents were really.. negative, I guess is the best way to put it. Like, they wouldn’t let me hang out with friends, told me I’d never amount to anything, said I was a disappointment. Y’know, normal stuff. Uhm, I wasn’t allowed to do much, only really leaving the house to go to school or go to my job when I was old enough to have one. They said I’d never live up to their expectations, I was a failure, I’d never get a boyfriend, I’d be a bad wife, I’m going nowhere in life, and I’m an annoyance and take up too much of their time, and I was never wanted.” You swiped your tongue along your top teeth, and popped your lips after perhaps sharing too much. “Anyway, I made good grades in high school, so I took a lot of electives, and one of those happened to be Drama class. This may come as a surprise, but I was really shy at first, but after a while I got used to playing different roles, and fell in love with the freedom of becoming whoever I wanted on stage. And one day my teacher taught us a lesson in improv, and yeah.. the moment she explained the concept of ‘Yes, and..’ I was hooked. Just the mindset of nothing being rejected, and no idea was made fun of, or shot down was brand new to me. And as you can infer by now, I adopted that ideology for my own life, and, uh, yeah, I’ve been saying ‘yes’ to everything since then and never looked back. Literally, I’ve talked to my parents like, once since moving out, and that was about my insurance.

“Uh, anyway,” you said, still talking a mile a minute, “it did kinda create a people-pleasing complex for a while. I wanted to say ‘yes’ to everyone because it made them happy, since, y’know, I was always told ‘no’ and it did the opposite. But it’s whatever. And, uh, while we’re doing this, I wanted to apologize for always pointing out that you’re single.” You avoided eye contact. “Kinda harsh in hindsight.”

He broke into a laugh–a loud clap like thunder, and curling in on himself–finding the humor in your flustered state.

“Well, I’m glad you find it so funny,” you deadpanned.

“No, no, sorry–” He concealed his giggles behind his knuckle crooked to his lips. “I, yeah, I’m sorry for pointing out that you’re single too.”

“Appreciated.”

The brief teasing commenced to a slight frown between his eyebrows. His gaze drifted to his soup, worry twisting at his lips as the bubbles of oil sloshed across the surface of the reddened broth, trembling in ripples from his bouncing leg.

Eddie was emotionally fatigued. Words weren’t coming to him–none that carried the weight they needed–so he offered an alternative to hollow apologies.

He brought a shaky spoonful of soup to his lips, and dribbled some off the side as he overcorrected the angle he needed to slide it into his mouth. The next dive for a potato proved just as awkward, trepidatious, but the struggle of eating with his non-dominant side was worth it.

Your fingertips brushed over saltine dust as you accepted the proposal of his hand resting at the center of the table, palm open, and fingers coaxing you to reunite skin on skin.

“I like your policy,” he said, voice gone gruff with the exhaustion of the day.

“Really? On more than one occasion you’ve called it stupid, irresponsible, absurd, the dumbest thing you’d ever heard of, naive–”

He shut you up by curling his fingers over yours, setting your cheeks ablaze with his unashamed thumb pressed to your bracelet. “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for your policy.”

A powerful move, and you matched the intimacy.

You hooked your thumb around to the scars lining the backs of his fingers, and lost yourself in the warmth of his embrace, giving yourself to him with each circle you massaged over his knuckles and between the joints. He did the same. Touching, touching, touching. Trusting. Melting into each other's palms. Holding hands with a man accused of so much, and forgiven so little. Holding hands with someone, just months ago, he brushed off as flippantly as her parents did.

He was sorry for the way he treated you.

You were sorry for the way the world treated him.

He squeezed.

You squeezed back.

~~~

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help?” you asked with a whine.

The pot of leftover soup still sat without a lid on the stovetop, and the serving spoon had a layer of scum dried to it. The dirty bowls and spoons were stacked in the sink, and Eddie hadn’t moved his wet laundry from the washing machine yet. Surely, you could help by wiping up the crumbs on the table, or cleaning up the spilled toothpaste on the bathroom sink, or–

He clapped his hands on your shoulders. “No,” he stressed slowly, “it’s late, and I’d prefer it if you got home before Buckley’s mom starts filing a missing persons report, and adding another rumor to my ass.” You cupped his elbows–barricaded from his body heat by his jacket–and opened your mouth, ready to argue. “And I swear if you don’t turn on your bike’s headlight, I’m gonna–”

You threw your head back, and groaned, “You’re so annoying.”

With the trailer’s door open, the quiet night penetrated the mix of air colliding from his warm kitchen and meeting the windless cold from the season, joining where your bodies connected on his cement steps. Your shoes dragged on the pebbly concrete in a woeful goodbye, making your effort to leave appear utmost arduous, tacking on a classic bottom lip pout when you both relinquished your holds on each other, and he shooed you off.

Not like you actually wanted to clean his house, it was just fun to annoy him into thinking you did.

Leaned against the doorway, he crossed his arms and tilted his head, mirroring your fondness in his gaze. “Yeah, yeah. Get out of here before people start gossiping about the pretty girl leaving my trailer, alive.”

The sudden belly laugh escaping you reverberated off the metal boneyard.

You slapped your hand over your mouth. “Sorry,” and after a thought, you asked gently while crouched to unchain your bike from the handrail, “Do you normally joke about what happened to you?”

His shadow shrugged over the hubcap hidden amongst the crunchy brittle grass. “Makes it easier, sometimes.”

“Noted.” You threw your leg over the seat, and made a big production of clicking on the headlight situated between your handlebars. “See you at work tomorrow, pretty boy.”

The scoff he was going for devolved into a snort. “Bye. Be safe. Please.”

Eddie locked the door behind him.

For minutes he stood at the center of his uncle’s trailer. It looked much the same as any other day when he came home from work, if not neater. But things had changed. As much as he liked eating across from Adrie, the two bowls in the sink were adult-sized, and it wasn’t the scent of stale smoke clinging to Wayne’s flannels that had Eddie throwing his arms over his head, locking his grip around his wrist, and twisting back and forth on the spot.

“Not exactly what I meant when I said I was gonna invite her over,” he informed no one but the darkness behind his closed eyes, remembering he promised Adrie that you’d come over soon.

Inhaling deep, he expelled a loud sigh and addressed the leftover soup. “But what a fucking night, huh?”

Inundated by the heaviness of feeling wanted, he opened the fridge and grabbed a tall boy stuffed behind the shelf of condiments. It wasn’t a drink of sadness as it usually was, but in celebration.

Afterall, he had much to celebrate. He held your hand. Twice.

And, not to mention, you know, how he showed you the gruesome details of the reality he lived in–his home, his reputation, his daughter sneezing into his open mouth when he was instructing her on how to take her temperature while you gagged from outside her bedroom. You knew it all, and you’d see him tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Morning smiles, afternoon laughter. Maybe he’d even ask that question he’d meant to before you left.

But for now..

He ran his fingers over the old tattoo on his shoulder, and pressed his palm over it, replicating the weight of your head resting there when you so lovingly witnessed Adrie being his best wingman, hugging her stuffed unicorn while she slept. It’s what gave him the bravery to wrap his arm around you. And what did you do in return? You leaned into him with a smile, utterly charmed by his forwardness, if his cynical eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.

A voice in the back of his head whispered a seed of doubt, but after a sip, he dismissed it.

“Still fucking got it, Munson,” he complimented himself, downing a long gulp.

————

See you at work tomorrow..

You definitely didn’t see him tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next.

“Here you go, my lovely,” Robin cooed. She entered your room on tiptoes, ever so quiet, and placed your requested bottle of Nyquil on the bedside table with a glass of water. “How’re you feeling, sweetheart?”

You broke from your nest of blankets for the lone reason of glaring at her saccharine voice; somehow sweating through yet another t-shirt, while still shivering as if you’d just emerged from an ice bath.

“Aw, don’t look so grumpy, baby,” she comforted you with a pinch to your cheek. “It’s what you get for locking lips with Eddie.”

“I did not–” You cut your own self off with a round of coughs, making your attempts at speaking scratchier, and scratchier. And by the time you’d recovered, Robin had escorted herself out of your vicinity.

Her giggles haunted you from downstairs.

“Yeah, she’s fine!” She yelled to her mom. “Just lovesick.”

You rolled over, and sighed.

Goodbye extra sick day.

Love him so much

:)

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He's so pretty oh my god...

Joseph Quinn as Eddie Munson in Stranger Things | 4×08 “Papa”

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low-budget sitcom spin-off with these three only. WHEN??!

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#gifs you can hear   ⮑ EDDIE MUNSON

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#Turns out, Robin is friend with a child too

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sometimes all i can think about is how max went looking for nancy after she looked for lucas and how nancy is literally like max’s emergency contact bc i KNOW max holds nancy at a high regard because nancy is so fucking cool and how the hell is she related to mike because when they needed help in s3 nancy was already looking into it all and nobody wanted to believe her. bc people are always thinking that nancy is just obsessive and paranoid at first when she’s literally FUCKING RIGHT all the time. and how in st4 when max thought that it might all be happening again her first thought after finding lucas - her on and off boyfriend - was to find nancy bc she knew that nancy would believe her and nancy would help bc nancy always knows what to do and if she doesn’t she’ll figure it out. like nancy wheeler really is max’s role model i’m sorry she just IS like. the way max looks at her when nancy is sawing off that gun she really is like god nancy wheeler is so fucking cool i dont know how she’s related to mike. bc u know that max always thinks like what would nancy do in this situation and she holds nancy’s opinions to high regards - like her asking nancy to settle her argument with mike over el in s3 and nancy immediately siding with max. and it’s not one sided bc nancy does care about max and she knows about the grief max is going through bc she has lived it and keeps living it and they’re both so haunted by people who were close to them - even though the relationships nancy had with barb and fred were different from the one max had with billy - and so they just. get each other. and all nancy wants to do is protect max because she knows what grief can do to someone and she doesn’t want that to happen to max. and i think that is just so neat…. and also they both pet stray dogs and bully mike and talk about their cute autistic lesbian gfs together bc i said so:) and mike is so annoyed bc he’s like u piss me off with ur lil obsession w my sister and robin is like shut up michael u don’t get it. el is like yeah mike. and max is like u will never break apart nancy wheeler stannies club founded by max mayfield sorry mike xoxo

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