(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <:D)
no but like, he would be a cat person.
can we keep it? — miguel o'hara x reader
summary: you met the love of your life in an alternate universe, and when you laid eyes on it for the first time, you knew it was true love. though miggy was the only hurdle to your love with it, but of course, as is with all things, he lets you have your way and love it wholeheartedly. and maybe, just maybe... he comes to love it with you, too.
word count: 772
a/n: i am so fucking terrified of cats BUT THESE KITTENS ARE CUTE, i might never hold one though willingly........... sadly..............
your eyes were big, bright, and hopeful. you wanted to express your absolute need to have it, to bring it home, to love and pamper it with all your heart and never let it fend for itself in the rain anymore, but of course— "no." he answered in a monotonous voice as he scrolled on the screen of his watch, setting coordinates back to HQ. you held the poor, wet kitten in your hands, bringing it closer to you. you had only known this kitten for 2 minutes, but you felt like those minutes were 2 lifetimes already. "please mig! c'mon, spider cat hates me, this kitty's in love with me, and i love it, too!" you pleaded as miguel opened up a portal back to earth-928 and stepped forward to enter it; however, you grabbed his wrist and tugged him back out. he sighed and glared at you, barely turning his head around. "do i need to remind you i don't necessarily give a damn if a cat likes you or not?" he asked you sarcastically.
"well, no, but... just look at it! look!" you cried out as you let go of his hand and cupped the kitten with both of your hands. miguel refused to let this tomfoolery play out any longer, so to get you to shut up, he reluctantly turned around and faced the feline. though to his surprise... the kitten's eyes were as big and sweet as you described them. they seemed to be in a constant pleading state, pleading miguel to let it come with you both. "miggy, oh, please! let me come home with you..." you said in a high-pitched voice as you moved the kitten around, imitating it.
"i'll be a good kitty and stay out of trouble! i'll poo in the right litter box, i'll be loved to bits by my new best friend who's much cooler than you, but that's besides the point!" you said as you acted like the kitten, with the kitten poking its tongue out as you shook it around while imitating it. miguel sighed as he waved his hand dismissively and turned around. "...you promise to take care of it?" "yes." "take responsibility for it?" "yes." "use your own money to feed it, give it water, proper housing, its shots, checkups, medicines, and such?" "yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes." "then fine. just keep it out of trouble, do not bring that furball near me, and shut up on the way back." miguel said as he stepped inside the portal, with you giggling and cheering as you finally had a kitty friend with you.
by the time you returned to HQ, you showed everyone your new best friend, your kitten! everyone was fawning over it, albeit spider cat couldn't care less, your kitten stole everyone's love and hearts. even lyla had ranted to miguel that he should have made her a life-sized vessel for her to be able to pet it, but miguel merely grumbled at her complaint. "it's just a cat." he said as lyla raised her eyebrow at him. "yeah, a cat that stole not only everyone's hearts... but theirs, too. they did find that cat first, so guess you lost to a cat of all creatures." lyla quipped as miguel felt embarrassed about, well... losing your attention and love to a cat.
not that he was gonna admit yet, of course; you were happy with the cat, who was he to hinder you from being happy? though he kinda wished that— "i wish i was that cat." miguel whispered under his breath as lyla leaned in closer. "what?" she asked, but miguel turned away with a sigh. "nothing." he said as he turned away from his desk and hopped down from his platform to leave his office. he got to the doors, when suddenly— "i wish i was that cat," those six words made miguel halt in his tracks as he heard his own hushed voice reverberate throughout HQ. miguel felt his face grow hot and his eyes widen as the door opened and... you were there, with the kitten in your arms.
"uh, hi mig." you said awkwardly with a nervous smile as miguel got super flustered now, knowing you heard that announcement loud and clear. "and for the record, yes, he means that cat." lyla clarified as she logged off before miguel could tear her displayed image apart. well, he has some explaining to do... never though you'd live to see the day miguel o'hara of all people would be jealous of your cat, but that's a story for another time.
"Eddie, if you don't get that fucking thing out of me right now," you threaten, borderline hysterical.
Eddie laughs under his breath where he's kneeling at your feet, your ankle held in his hand, gentle but stern. You wriggle.
"How can I take it out if you're moving?"
"Eddie! I'm serious, I can't-" you choke on air. You swear, you swear you can feel the piece of glass sticking out of your heel in your ankle bones, the small intrusion a shooting pain.
Your boyfriend softens, fingers flexing over your skin. He rubs a stripe up your calf. You feel mildly soothed.
"You're alright," he says slowly, nodding. "I'm gonna get it, babe, you don't have to get so stressed out."
And Eddie being Eddie doesn't own a single pair of tweezers. All he has is his short fingernails and a pen knife he'd sterilised with the flame of a lighter.
He notices your anxiety as he brings the blade to your foot and pauses, waving a hand to gather your attention. "Just keep your eyes on me, baby."
He says it with enough firmness to persuade you, the only evidence of your nervousness the small crease between your eyebrows. You stare at his face hard as he scratches the knife tip over your glass splinter.
You flinch but don't tell him to stop.
The glass is a triangle, a quarter the size of a fingernail and thicker on one side; Eddie would be similarly panicked had it been his foot rather than yours. He picks it out cautiously, frowning when you hiss at the pinching pain, his hand squeezing at your leg.
"There we go," he murmurs as the glass slides free. He presses his thumb to the wound quickly to stop the resulting trickle of blood. "Sorry, sweetheart."
You flop down on his bed. "You need a new vacuum."
Eddie leans down to kiss your ankle in apology, resting his face against your leg. You reach out for his head and pet his hair. He knows he's forgiven.
ok ok but i NEED your thoughts on miguel dating harleyquinn!reader LIKEEEE?? she’s both sweet AND vicious which i think miguel hates to admit
dearest anon,
this is sooooo on brand for me I’m so sorry my spidersona has certain traits shared with Harley Quinn so this is gonna be fun to expand on 🫶🏾
————————————————————
Let’s lay out the basic stuff shall we:
Both Miguel and Harley Quinn reader are scientists (our reader is a doctor in psychology in Gotham and Miguel being Alchemax’s top geneticist)
So a smart ass couple right? Both of them excel at the technical things and scientific things. They’re insanely good at fighting… I’d say slightly brutalist (more from Miguel given his size but our reader is insanely flexible, able to hit targets at a wide range while still being cute as hell)
They're also polar opposites, with Harley being extroverted and a bit spontaneous whereas Miguel is introverted and observant.
They balance each other out, though can sometimes butt heads when they’re arguing, usually ending in Miguel tossing his harlequin lover over his shoulder to shut her up.
Harley Quinn reader is Miguel’s candy fix. And I mean that figuratively and literally.
Let me elaborate... see, Miguel's pretty set on keeping his emotional side very secretive. It's not a thing many of his teammates get to see.
But when he does have a rough day, he looks forward to hearing the sugar sweet tones of her voice as she saunters into the office.
"Missed ya, Miggy!" The sound of her voice causing his lips curl into a genuine smile, eager to give her a hug.
He'd shoo off Lyla, just to kiss her cheeks till she’s a giggling, blushing mess.
"Good to see you too, doll." He'd whisper, hugging her in the privacy of his office. The one spot he could let his guard down, able to chuckle at her jokes.
The thing is, being Harley Quinn and dealing with a Spider-Man... he'd only let his guard down when he felt like it. He wasn't always keen on admitting that she made things sweet for him, but he'd always treasure it.
Now... that figurative aspect. Miguel having a rough day and he comes home seeing his little harlequin all clad in black, white , and red... maybe a hint of blue... and lace, of course. his favourite.
He'd be unable to speak, simply grabbing her by her hips, biting into your neck so as to paralyze you thanks to his venom.
“Mí muñeca” He’d whisper, knowing that the slight sting of venom coursing through her veins would do nothing more than awaken his harlequin’s crazy side.
She’d bask in the mix of venom and lust coursing through her body as he tastes her skin, groaning laboriously so as to let her know how much he craves her.
She’s got a Miguel tattoo… one hundred percent. Hers is located on her hip, and every time he’s either intimate with her or solely cuddling he ensures he’s holding onto it, his own imprint onto his harlequin.
A/N: thank you anon 🤍😋 I’m saving SOMEEEE things for the fic I’m working on hehe mwah!
(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <:D)
no but like, he would be a cat person.
can we keep it? — miguel o'hara x reader
summary: you met the love of your life in an alternate universe, and when you laid eyes on it for the first time, you knew it was true love. though miggy was the only hurdle to your love with it, but of course, as is with all things, he lets you have your way and love it wholeheartedly. and maybe, just maybe... he comes to love it with you, too.
word count: 772
a/n: i am so fucking terrified of cats BUT THESE KITTENS ARE CUTE, i might never hold one though willingly........... sadly..............
your eyes were big, bright, and hopeful. you wanted to express your absolute need to have it, to bring it home, to love and pamper it with all your heart and never let it fend for itself in the rain anymore, but of course— "no." he answered in a monotonous voice as he scrolled on the screen of his watch, setting coordinates back to HQ. you held the poor, wet kitten in your hands, bringing it closer to you. you had only known this kitten for 2 minutes, but you felt like those minutes were 2 lifetimes already. "please mig! c'mon, spider cat hates me, this kitty's in love with me, and i love it, too!" you pleaded as miguel opened up a portal back to earth-928 and stepped forward to enter it; however, you grabbed his wrist and tugged him back out. he sighed and glared at you, barely turning his head around. "do i need to remind you i don't necessarily give a damn if a cat likes you or not?" he asked you sarcastically.
"well, no, but... just look at it! look!" you cried out as you let go of his hand and cupped the kitten with both of your hands. miguel refused to let this tomfoolery play out any longer, so to get you to shut up, he reluctantly turned around and faced the feline. though to his surprise... the kitten's eyes were as big and sweet as you described them. they seemed to be in a constant pleading state, pleading miguel to let it come with you both. "miggy, oh, please! let me come home with you..." you said in a high-pitched voice as you moved the kitten around, imitating it.
"i'll be a good kitty and stay out of trouble! i'll poo in the right litter box, i'll be loved to bits by my new best friend who's much cooler than you, but that's besides the point!" you said as you acted like the kitten, with the kitten poking its tongue out as you shook it around while imitating it. miguel sighed as he waved his hand dismissively and turned around. "...you promise to take care of it?" "yes." "take responsibility for it?" "yes." "use your own money to feed it, give it water, proper housing, its shots, checkups, medicines, and such?" "yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes." "then fine. just keep it out of trouble, do not bring that furball near me, and shut up on the way back." miguel said as he stepped inside the portal, with you giggling and cheering as you finally had a kitty friend with you.
by the time you returned to HQ, you showed everyone your new best friend, your kitten! everyone was fawning over it, albeit spider cat couldn't care less, your kitten stole everyone's love and hearts. even lyla had ranted to miguel that he should have made her a life-sized vessel for her to be able to pet it, but miguel merely grumbled at her complaint. "it's just a cat." he said as lyla raised her eyebrow at him. "yeah, a cat that stole not only everyone's hearts... but theirs, too. they did find that cat first, so guess you lost to a cat of all creatures." lyla quipped as miguel felt embarrassed about, well... losing your attention and love to a cat.
not that he was gonna admit yet, of course; you were happy with the cat, who was he to hinder you from being happy? though he kinda wished that— "i wish i was that cat." miguel whispered under his breath as lyla leaned in closer. "what?" she asked, but miguel turned away with a sigh. "nothing." he said as he turned away from his desk and hopped down from his platform to leave his office. he got to the doors, when suddenly— "i wish i was that cat," those six words made miguel halt in his tracks as he heard his own hushed voice reverberate throughout HQ. miguel felt his face grow hot and his eyes widen as the door opened and... you were there, with the kitten in your arms.
"uh, hi mig." you said awkwardly with a nervous smile as miguel got super flustered now, knowing you heard that announcement loud and clear. "and for the record, yes, he means that cat." lyla clarified as she logged off before miguel could tear her displayed image apart. well, he has some explaining to do... never though you'd live to see the day miguel o'hara of all people would be jealous of your cat, but that's a story for another time.
Warnings: Angst, yelling, insults, sad reader, crying, cursing
—> [Hobie’s Version]
Request: [Anon] your angst is so UGHHHHH AMAZING. im literally reading every single thing on your masterlist. i need more hobie hurt/comfort or miguel or anyone actually idc who it is i just love your writingggg. maybe like they’ve had a bad day and reader tries to help but instead they get annoyed and say sum ab then being annoying n never shutting up and reader gets quiet after and stuff. although i’ll literally read anything you put out thank you!!!
A/n: More of a repost because I wanted to separate Hobie’s and Miguel’s so :) might even make a part two for this
Miguel entered your apartment, slamming the door behind him as he did. You could hear his heavy footsteps before you even saw him, he was cursing under his breath planning on going straight to your shared bedroom, ignoring your silent figure sat on the couch.
The sound of his footsteps made their way behind you, walking past the couch and you without another word. It was then that your anger turned to rage. He doesn’t spare a single word to you after not showing up to ANOTHER date. It was the same date you’ve rescheduled 2 times before, seeing as he missed those too.
You turned your head and looked over at him, watching as he walked up the steps. That’s when you stood up off the couch and walked over to the base of the staircase. “Took you long enough…” your voice causes him to stop in his tracks, he turns halfway and looks at you. His face was blank, clearly unbothered and indifferent.
“Oh… hi darling, didn’t see you” his voice was calm and smooth. It wasn’t what he sounded like that threw you off… it’s what he didn’t sound like that did. His voice held no remorse or guilt… how could he not feel guilty!? He then pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs “I’m gonna take a shower and go straight to bed. I’ll see you in a bit” he turned to walk back up the stairs.
With that you can’t help but scoff, crossing your arms before speaking. “That’s all?” He stops again and turns, this time making his body fully face you. “What?” He asks, and you picked up on a hint of irritation in his tone. He placed his hands on hips, and when you didn’t clarify immediately he raises his eyebrows and shrugs obnoxiously.
“Miguel I deserve an explanation before you just ‘go straight to bed’. Where were you?” Your tone was stern and you looked at him expectantly, waiting for his apology. He just looked at you as if you had grown two heads. He then let out a chuckle… looking down and shaking his head.
“Sweetheart… I was on a mission. I always told you not to wait up for me didn’t I? You could’ve just gone to bed without me” he looked at you as if it was obvious. Your eyes went wide and you looked at him absolutely speechless. He brushed you off entirely, assuming you felt bad, and spoke again. “It’s alright… i forgive you” and that’s when you broke out of your daze.
“I’m sorry what?!” Your sudden harsh tone shocked Miguel, his hands visibly lifting off his waist for a moment as his brows furrowed. “You let me wait for you for 3 hours in a restaurant, alone, only for you to FINALLY come home and then say that you forgive me?!” you shake your head in disbelief.
You rub at your forehead while letting out a long breath, hoping it would subdue your rage. Miguel finally processed what you said, his eyes widening in realization. The date… oh crap the date! His hands fall from his waist and one goes to run through his hair. “Shit… it completely slipped my mind. I was caught up in an important mission”
He begins to walk down the stairs, his expression a mix of indifference and exhaustion. When he reaches you at the bottom he gives you a smile that barely read as apologetic. “I should have called or texted bu-“ he leans in to kiss your cheek but you immediately step back, looking at him with an awestruck expression.
“No. Miguel. You should’ve been at the restaurant. It was your idea and you promised you’d be there” when you pull away he placed his hands back on his hips before letting out an annoyed huff. “Look I’ll make it up to you. I just got busy” he wasn’t even looking at you, he hadn’t even apologized yet… you felt your blood continue to boil at how little of a shit he seemed to give.
“You always ‘get busy’. This date was supposed to be you making up for the other two dates that you missed because you ‘got busy’…” he picked up on your irritation and immediately made it worse by shrugging. “You know my line of work. Things come up” it’s then that you scoffed, really sick of how he was brushing you off while you were about to explode.
“Miguel. I get that. But then don’t promise me you’ll show up! I’m sick and tired of you making promises you can’t keep!” As you got louder, not dropping the topic, Miguel became even more frustrated… his patience slipping. You watched as his expression shifted to reflect his irritation.
“Fine. I’ll stop making promises… seeing as they only lead to you yelling at me” he mumbled the last part under his breath but you heard it. You physically step back at those words, that’s when his eyes focus on you again, the lack of remorse in his gaze hurting more than his words.
“Why do you have to be such a prick… what you did hurt me Miguel, don’t you get that?! Not only did you forget, but you bailed… AGAIN and then come home and brush me off like I’m nothing” you weren’t yelling, keeping your voice low and rather accentuating the malice behind every word you spoke.
“Well I guess I have bigger problems than hurting your feelings! You ever think of that huh? I don’t have time to care about whatever the hell you’re going through!” The words spilled out of his mouth before he could filter them. As you process his words, your face shifts to shock, fists clenching tightly, waterline glistening as your eyes well up.
The man you’ve known and loved for years… who you thought you would marry, just told you he doesn’t care about you or your feelings. Not only that… he didn’t even hesitate to say it. You step back further, placing a hand on the wall next to you, as if to brace yourself. His demeanor shifting as he saw your bottom lip begin to quiver.
His eyes, having been heartless and cold seconds ago dropped into a look of guilt. His whole expression fell… his brows furrowing and lips parting as he too realized what he just said. He watched as you placed a hand over your mouth as your tears began to fall, softly beginning to sob into the palm of your hand.
“Shit… sweetheart I didn’t mean that.” He tried to approach you, arms raised so he could hold you. His heart pained as he watched how you continued to step back, slipping away from him. “D-don’t…” your voice was breaking, shaky with your heavy breathing before soft sobs began to rack your body. It’s then that you walk forward, past him as you begin to walk up the stairs.
He tries to reach for your arm but you manage to dodge his hand and rush the rest of the way upstairs. His footsteps can be heard behind you as you hurry your way to your shared bedroom. He continues to try and plead with you as he follows behind “Darling please… I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Please just let me explain” you ignore him entirely.
Once inside the bedroom you grab a pillow from the bed and hurriedly grab a spare blanket from the closet. You walk to the doorway of the bedroom where Miguel stands. Harshly you shove the pillow and blanket against his chest, causing him to stumble back a little at the strength your anger gave you.
“You can sleep on the couch. You get your wish, you can go straight to bed” somehow you found the strength to look him in the eyes. Yours were glossed over with tears and the only thing he could find in them was agony, his eyes began to well up at the sight of you so upset… especially since he knew it was his fault.
“Sweetheart please… let’s talk about this” he drops the pillow and blanket and reaches an arm forward, softly circling it around your forearm. You forcibly pull it back, wincing as you feel the claws of his suit scratch at your skin. Glancing down you notice the claw mark and how you began bleeding… Miguel noticed too.
“Shit you’re bleeding!” He goes to react immediately, trying to step towards you but you just push him away again, with both hands this time. “No! Stop it!” You yell and he’s frozen in place, eyes glancing between your bleeding arm and burning eyes. Your breathing was heavy, he saw it in how your chest frantically rose and fell.
“But you’re in pain!” He tries to reason but you just scoff. An grin crosses your face, it immediately unnerved him… it was made worse when you chuckled softly. “What do you care… like you said, you’ve got bigger problems” with that you slam the door in his face. He could hear your footsteps retreat into the bathroom.
He stepped up to the door and leaned his forehead against it… he could hear your sobs through the wood. They were frantic and distraught, he heard how your breathing was split as you tried to gasp for air. Your whole body overwhelmed with this feeling of misery and pain. If Miguel wanted to he could open the door and walk in, but he didn’t dare… too afraid of hurting his chances for forgiveness by doing so.
Miguel began to cry silently, when the first tear broke away dozens more followed. Burning a hot trail down his cheeks. He stayed at the door for a while, whispering softly as if you could hear him. “Please… sweetheart I’m sorry” his voice was pleading… begging for you to be the one to open the door.
Even if it was to hit him or cuss him out… He just wanted an opportunity to drop to his knees and apologize, tell you just how sorry he was for hurting you like this. After your sobs fell silent he called out for you. “Darling? Please… I know I messed up” he was met with silence but he knew you were awake… he knew you were curled up in bed hugging your pillow tightly.
“I didn’t mean it… I swear. I should have never said it and I should have been there tonight.” Once again you say nothing, he does however hear the soft rustle of the bedsheets. He let out a long breath and spoke again “We’ll talk about this in the morning… alright? I’m so goddamn sorry sweetheart” his voice was raspy and trembling slightly, his breathing uneven and broken.
“Good night… I love you” that was his last attempt and like all the others… he got no response. Slowly, he leaned away from the door, wiping his tear stained cheeks with the back of his hand.
As he did that, he noticed the slight blood that glistened on the claws of his suit. He grabbed the blanket and hurriedly wiped his claw clean with the edge of it, hating the sight of it on his hands. His stomach turned at the fact that it was your blood… practically a physical symbol of how he hurt you.
He then grabbed the pillow you gave him… his wounded heart warmed slightly at the fact that, no matter how angry you were, you still gave him a pillow and blanket to sleep with. He was about to head down to the couch to sleep but stopped, instead dropping down onto the floor and leaning against the wall of your bedroom.
He took a moment to close his eyes and steady his breathing. He then grabbed the pillow and placed it on the floor, lying down and pulling the blanket over his body. As his head hit the pillow his heart skipped a beat… in your anger you accidentally gave him your pillow. He was so glad that you did.
It smelled like you and Miguel couldn’t help how he immediately embraced it into his arms and nuzzled his face into it. Taking a deep inhale as his body melted at the familiar scent that he loved so dearly.
He slept outside that door the whole night, holding your pillow close to his chest, eyes not closing once as he thought of what he could say or do to make it up to you.
Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x f!reader
Rating: Explicit (18+ only please)
Word Count: 7,072
Summary: You're a Spiderwoman who has ended up pinned underneath Miguel O'Hara in his lab one too many times. You're not sure what you are to him or what to call your relationship. And that would've been fine until your neediness kicked in and made you catch feelings.
Surely, Miguel taking you to his room for the first time means something right?
In which your lack of understanding of Spanish and denial of the hints Miguel drops are keeping you from realizing you already have what you want.
Tags/warnings: pwp, p in v sex, rough sex, praise + light degradation, multiple orgasms and overstimulation, face sitting/riding, breeding kink, soft dom!Miguel, needy reader, recording, mirror sex adjacent, implied chubby reader, undefined relationship but soft feelings sprinkled in there as a treat, no use of y/n so lots of Spanish nicknames to make up for it, reader does not understand Spanish, brief sexy use of spider webs
A/N: this is quite literally just a self-indulgent fic with most of my favorite Miguel x reader flavors. Not beta read but I hope you still enjoy it! (Translations are the end!)
Edit: turns out some parts got messed up while I was posting here on Tumblr D: it's fine on AO3 though which is weird because I copied from this post instead of my doc because this has the correct spacing. Everything should be fixed now.
•🕷️────✧˖°˖🕸️˖°˖✧────🕷️•
Miguel has you standing in front of him between his parted legs as he sits on the edge of his bed. Even in this position, you were barely any much taller than him, only needing to tilt your head a bit to meet his red eyes. He looks at you from your face, down to the swell of your breast where his eyes are joined by a taloned finger on its journey downwards. You can’t help but let out a soft sigh as the sharp talon cuts through your spandex suit, fully exposing your soft chest to the cold air of his quarters. He would argue that the stretchy translucent mesh with a spiderweb lace design on your chest area didn’t do shit to cover the fullness of your tits anyway so he didn't understand why you even bothered with it. It was for style obviously but riling up Miguel O’Hara was a great bonus. You let out a shaky breath as he continued further down until he stopped right below your navel.
“Que linda,” he says in that low sexy voice of his, very different from the usual grumpy tone he uses to chastise you. He snakes his arms around your hips, bringing you closer to him and his hands find your plush bottom, giving them a rough squeeze. You are getting so worked up by how much attention you are getting from your usually sulky boss. Your heaving chest is right in front of Miguel’s face and his lustful gaze almost feels like it is burning you. The heat spreads from your chest downwards until it pools in the pit of your stomach and between your legs.
“You ruined my suit,” you pout, not really that upset about it. You think it was hot honestly but you just want to tease him “Am I supposed to go on missions with my whole chest out now? Walk around the HQ flashing everyone?”
“Of course not,” he says, rolling his eyes. He continues to take in your figure, hands gently kneading soft flesh on your sides “I’m making you a new suit. Should be done very soon. It'll be the same design but it will offer far more protection than this flimsy thing.”
“Making me a suit just like yours? What so you can control it hm? Deactivate it whenever you want to fuck me?” You laugh, wiping the imaginary tear in your eye until you realize Miguel is silent and looks like he’s been caught red-handed. You lightly slap him on his arm, flustered. “You’re a pervert, you know that?”
Instead of answering you, he brings his head forward to close his lips on a clothed nipple, his tongue flicking the sensitive erect bud. Your mouth opens as you let out a soft gasp at the sensation and you can feel the corner of Miguel’s lips twitch into a slight smirk. He teases your nipple alternating between flicking it with the tip of his tongue and giving it an audible suck. He pulls away for a split second only to give the same attention to your other nipple. You weave your fingers through his hair, pulling him closer to your tits. Your other hand is holding onto his shoulder for support as you urge him to keep going with your whimpers. His hands haven’t stopped exploring your body. His wide hands warm against your hips, ass, thighs, everywhere he can touch, squeezing your softness, committing every curve to memory.
“Migueeeel,” you whine, rubbing your thighs together to try to relieve the ache between your legs. You appreciate the attention to your nipples but your cunt was throbbing with need. You are so close to ripping the rest of your suit and panties off because the way the fabric is sticking to your wet pussy is becoming too uncomfortable.
“Miguel what, muñeca?” He pulls away, licking his lips. Those red eyes are now looking straight into yours and you feel yourself shiver. You try to look away but Miguel grabs your chin to keep you facing him. “Eyes on me. What do you want? Use your words.”
“Please,” your cheeks burn in embarrassment but Miguel just raised an eyebrow at you, unamused. “Stop teasing please.”
“Ah I see okay,” he says, taking his hands off you before standing up and walking to his closet.
“W-wait what are you doing?” you almost trip on your feet, knees feeling weak, as you chase after him. You grab his arm, tugging at it to get his attention as you pathetically look up at him.
“You said stop teasing so I’m getting you a shirt so you can go back to your world and get some rest,” he says as he looks through the neatly folded shirts in his closet. He’s stalling, pretending he was trying to choose one but he’s messing with you. There is no way he would let you go home tonight without getting at least a couple of orgasms wrung out of you. You aren’t leaving until he made sure you were stuffed full and dripping with his cum. You aren’t leaving tonight. Period. He knew you were too far gone with lust to figure that out yourself.
“Miggy, that’s not what I meant please,” you sob, pressing your body against him. Just the thought of being left unsatisfied was painful. “Please, Miggy, I need your mouth. And your cock please”
He finally looks at you and pulls you closer to him by your waist. You run your hands along his still clothed chest, feeling his heart beating with yours. You look up at him with glassy eyes, begging him to finish what he started. He coos at how desperate you were for release.
“You want my mouth and my cock?” he hums, still teasing. He easily lifts you up with one arm supporting your ass to carry you back to his bed. He’s carried you multiple times before but it never ceases to amaze you how he does it so effortlessly. Your legs instinctively wrap around his waist, hips bucking trying to get some friction against your still unfortunately clothed cunt. “Where do you want them, muñeca? You have to be more specific. Which one do you want first?”
“On my pussy, please. I need your mouth on my pussy. Miggy, I wanna cum on your face” you sobbed against his neck “And then- and then I want you to fuck me. I want you to fill me up with your cock. Only you can fill me up so good, Miggy. I need it.”
“Good girl,” he whispers right next to your ear, making you shudder “Now, was that so hard to do? Was it hard to tell me what you wanted?”
“Yes!” you bite his shoulder and you feel satisfaction when you hear him break character and snort. He shakes his head, smiling fondly while he sets you down on the bed.
"Qué voy a hacer contigo?" he brings his lips to your temple to whisper more softly "Qué haría sin ti?"
Your heart skips a beat at the gentleness of his tone. You’re not sure what he said but the genuine affection is evident. Intimate moments like this with Miguel are slowly becoming more and more frequent and you decide that you don’t mind it. You even crave it now. A satisfied sigh leaves your lips as you lean further toward him.
He pulls away but the fond look on his face doesn’t waver. He slaps your thigh, making the soft fat jiggle just how he likes it, as he moves to get settled in his bed.
“Put those lovely hips and thighs to use and ride my face, conejita.” He lies down, anticipating, patting his chest to encourage you to sit down.
You didn't need to be told twice. You rip off the rest of your suit, your heated skin meeting the cold air of his room making your nipples pebble painfully. You quickly take off your panties and toss them aside with your ruined suit. You squeal as you scramble to get on top of him. You position yourself on top of his waiting mouth, straddling his face but just hovering over his face, hands on the headboard to keep yourself steady. The smell of your arousal is almost too much for Miguel to bear at this proximity. The urge to lock you in his room for the next few days and not let you out until you’re thoroughly fucked and bred is getting hard to ignore. His fangs extend as his animalistic urges surface, yearning to bite you and mark you as his.
“Are you trying to tease me now? How can you ride my face if you don’t sit?” Miguel’s tone is deeper than it was just a second ago. There’s a certain roughness to it, a growl in his voice that makes your hole clench around nothing. He grips your thighs, fingers digging into the soft flesh, waiting for you to sit down or he’ll make you. He’s trying to be patient, turning his head a little to mouth at the fat of your inner thigh. He licks a stray trail of your slick up your thigh, stopping just a breath away from where you both want his mouth to be. You feel him sigh, savoring your taste like he just drank the finest nectar, a promise of what’s to come.
“But Miguel–” you yelp when he suddenly pulls you down by your thighs and you immediately feel his tongue lapping at your aching cunt, his nose bumping deliciously against your swollen clit. He wasn’t going to hear your excuses. The only things he wants to hear coming out of your pretty lips are your moans and whines for more. The way Miguel is sucking and devouring your wetness so eagerly makes your head spin and your grip on the headboard tighten to steady yourself for a moment. He teases your hole, licking around the small opening before plunging in as far as he can, feeling you clench around his tongue. He grows impatient at your lack of movement and starts rocking you back and forth on his face by himself. He flattens his tongue for you to grind your pretty folds onto.
“Miggy, feels so good,” you whine, bending over to look at him from under you. He’s so pretty like this, forehead scrunched up from how focused he is eating you out, and when you get a peak of his nose and his cheeks, they’re shiny from being soaked by a combination of your wetness and his own spit. You take one of your shaking hands off the headboard to brush the hair away from Miguel’s forehead only for him to guide your hand into a fist, grabbing his hair, urging you to use it as leverage to ride his face harder. And who are you to say no to that?
You move your hips to try to match the pace he set for you, your thighs burn but you pay it no mind. Not when you feel that familiar delicious knot forming in your core. Your head lolls to the side and your eyes screwed shut as you immerse in the pleasure, grinding your cunt harder on Miguel’s tongue, nose, chin, anywhere you can get some friction, getting desperate to reach your orgasm.
“‘M gonna cum, Miggy. Gonn’ cum on your face” you whimper. You take your hand off the headboard and bring it to your tits, squeezing them, pinching at rubbing circles on your pebbled nipples. Miguel doesn’t stop lapping hungrily at your pussy, shaking his head from side to side as much as your grip on his hair allows. He groans as he watches in awe as you chase your own pleasure.
So close.
You’re so close you swear you can almost taste it.
Miguel could tell from how your hips stuttered and your pace growing frantic, rougher. He gives your clit another suck and that finally pushes you over the edge.
You feel the sweet release consume you like wildfire, your body tensing, back arching, toes curling. You can’t even hear yourself scream Miguel’s name, curling into yourself as he continues to suck on your oversensitive, pulsating clit. His hands held your shaking thighs steady, not letting you close them. It’s all too much.
“Miggyyy,” you sob pathetically, pawing at his head and his grip on you. You finally manage to pry an eye open only to see him watching you intently “Too much. I can’t-”
He doesn’t stop. He continues to lick stripes at your puffy folds and flick the sensitive bud with the tip of his tongue albeit slower this time. He takes one of his hands away from your thigh and plunges two of his thick fingers knuckle deep inside your needy hole. He manages to find your sweet cushiony spot and puts enough pressure on it to make you see stars. That burning hot coil is back just mere seconds after your climax and if you could think at that moment, you’d think it’s unfair how he seems to know your body too well, knows just where to touch to make you unravel.
He adds another finger into your cunt, stretching you out for his cock, curling them inside you, and hitting your sweet spot over and over again. You know that it’s not enough, that it’s nothing compared to what’s coming for you. No matter how much prep you do it's going to be a tight fit and you can’t wait to be stretched to your limits once more. You stop fighting him, needing to chase after your orgasm, grinding your clit again on his tongue as he pumps his fingers in and out of your slutty hole.
Soon enough, you feel your second orgasm wash over you. You spill over his face, making a mess on his pillows and bedsheets. Your limbs go numb and this time you can’t even form words, just sobbing, babbling nonsense as your body shakes on top of Miguel. You would’ve fallen over if it wasn't for Miguel supporting your back with his free hand. You frantically tap his hand as you hiccup a pathetic “no more.”
Miguel relents and lets you catch your breath for a second. He kisses your puffy cunt one more time before moving you to lie on your back on the bed. He lifts your head to turn over the soiled pillow and fluff it up before getting you settled comfortably. You watch as he catches the dripping wetness from his chin with his equally soaked fingers and sticks them into his mouth, eyes rolling back and moaning at your sweet taste. You feel your cunt throb at the lewd action and you can’t help but let out a needy whimper from the back of your throat. It’s so unfair how much he affects you.
“Ay, pobrecita,” he coos at your flushed face with fat tears running down your cheeks as he nudges your legs apart with his knee and settles between your parted legs. “too much for mi conejita to handle? I know you can take more. Your pussy is so slutty, isn’t she? So needy. I doubt two orgasms is enough.”
He cups your face with one hand, thumb wiping away a tear on your cheek, his other hand brushing your hair away from your face, knowing how much you hate the feeling of it sticking to your skin. Your lower lip is jutting out in an adorable pout that he can’t help but kiss, catching your lip between his teeth. You scrunch up your nose and push his face away as you try to steady your breath.
You can see his naked chest rise and fall faster than usual, his mouth open to catch his own breath. You didn’t even notice when he disabled his suit but your eyes are thankful as you drink in the sight of his warm brown skin, stretching across the expanse of his unfairly defined body. He looks like he was sculpted by the gods themselves, taking extra care to give him the most perfect proportions. How lucky are you to see this masterpiece up close? It would be a sin to not enjoy the view.
Your eyes trail down from his strong broad shoulders to his massive tits, and even further down to see his cock standing up proudly against his navel, the head dripping beads of precum and smearing it against his abs. Pride blooms in your chest as you realize that he’s just as affected as you are.
Your throat suddenly feels so empty. You lick your lips as you tear your eyes off his cock to look up at his face only to find his hungry gaze meeting yours. His eyes glint with danger as he takes in the sight of you in your post-orgasm haze, seemingly plotting his next move.
You didn’t have to wait long because, of course, he can’t keep his hands away from you.
He moves closer, making you spread your legs further. His hands grab at the back of your thighs to push them towards your torso, your knees almost touching your chest. Your dripping cunt twitches as it’s exposed to the cold air. Your hole clenching on nothing, begging to be filled.
“Que rico. Podría acostumbrarme a esto,” he says, his voice deep and rough with lust as his hands rub up and down your thighs, squeezing, feeling you. He drinks up the sight of you, so bare and exposed, all for him to take. “I could watch you like this all day. Maybe take a video of you right now so I can watch your pretty cunt pulsing, crying for me, anytime I want. Or…”
He takes his cock in one hand, running his thumb on the swollen tip to spread the beads of precum around, pumping his shaft with a few languid strokes. You yelp when he slaps his thick, heavy cock against your puffy folds.
“I could tie you up like this and keep you here for my own pleasure.” He starts moving his hips at a torturously slow pace, sliding his length along your wet folds, getting it lubricated by your own slick. He brings his hands back to your thighs and pushes them even further until you’re practically folded in half. “Keep you here to breed. Fill you up with so much cum and you’ll stay like this so it will surely take, yeah?”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Miggy” you hiss as the tip of his cock keeps bumping into your throbbing clit “What’s stopping you from doing so huh? You have your web and your little surveillance bots. Put them to good use.”
“Of course, you’d love that, my pretty little slut,” he chuckles, shaking his head as he lines up the tip of his cock with your hole. Your eyelids flutter as you hold your breath in anticipation, waiting for that delicious stretch of being filled by his massive cock.
“Eyes on me, cariño,” he commands and you obey, looking up at him from under your lashes “That’s it, good girl.”
He starts to slowly press his cock into your greedy hole. Inch by inch, he sinks in, knocking the air out of your lungs. Midway, maybe, you can’t tell, there’s just so much of him, you start to feel a little faint, your shoulders tense and your mouth stuck hanging open. You feel so full of him, almost like he’s going to split you apart.
“Breathe for me,” he coos as he slowly presses more of him into you, filling you up more than what should be possible. He drapes your legs over his shoulders, his chest pressing against the back of your thighs as he uses his now free hands to cradle your face. You suck in a breath as he instructed and try to even out your breathing. “There you go. Keep breathing. Relax for me. Thaaat’s it. My sweet girl. So good for me.”
You preen at his words, warmth flooding your chest and going straight down to your pussy. His hands stay on your cheeks, his thumb rubbing soothing circles on your skin as he pushes the last few inches in. You put your hands on top of his as you lean into his touch. He starts to grind his hips slowly, gently, getting you used to his size. The coarse dark curls at the base of his cock tickle your sensitive clit and the head of his cock softly probing at your cervix makes you roll your eyes back and whimper from the fullness.
“Eres tan hermosa. No sabes lo que me haces, cariño,” he leans in to capture your lips into a deep kiss. Soft and gentle until both of you wanted more. One of his hands finds the back of your neck to tilt your head as he pleases as he tries to devour you. His tongue licks into your mouth and his fangs graze your lips with every movement. You hum against his lips as you feel him start to pull his hips back, letting his dick slide halfway out before snapping his hips forward to plunge himself back inside, his balls lewdly smacking against your ass. And he keeps doing it over, and over again making you moan oh so wantonly.
“Estás tan rica. Estás hecha para mí, mi amor,” he whispers against your lips. The breathlessness and the hint of desperation for release in his voice make you shiver. His pace picks up, thrusts growing rougher with it. The wet sounds of him sliding in and out of you and skin slapping against skin echo around his room. The only other sounds you can hear are your combined sounds of pleasure, calling out each other’s names.
You pull on the hand that Miguel has on your cheek to lace your fingers together, his large hand easily dwarfing yours, his talons folded back to not hurt you. Your other hand slips between your bodies, travelling downwards to feel where you two are connected. There’s a deep rumble coming from Miguel’s chest and he presses your sweaty foreheads together, looking at you through half-lidded eyes. Your tight heat is milking his cock so perfectly and at this rate, he’s not going to last long.
“Miggy,” you whine, keeping your eyes on his. His irises seem a little more brown as he looks at you so tenderly, making you feel like you are going to melt into a puddle of goo. He brings your joined hands to his lips to kiss your knuckles and you think you really just might turn into goo.
His thrusts get messier and more frantic You feel the familiar coil building up in your stomach. You lift your hand from between your legs to press firmly against the area below your navel and the sensation is electrifying. You can feel his cock pistoning in and out of you from where you are touching. You can feel him rearranging your insides, molding your pussy to accommodate him and only him, ruining you for anyone else.
“Mi niña hermosa, mi niña linda. Mía. Toda mía.” he moans into your ear, almost whiney and you know he’s near the edge. He starts peppering kisses on your neck, licking, sucking, grazing the sensitive skin with his fangs but not sinking them in yet. He takes the hand you aren’t holding to rest on your hand on your lower stomach. His thumb reaches further down to stroke your clit earning him a shaky whine from you.
“Cum for me again, hermosa,” he lifts his head to look at your flushed face. You’re sure you look like a mess but to him, you’re more beautiful than the brightest twinkling stars on a clear night sky. “Let me see your pretty face when you cum.”
And with that, you’re gone, pushed over the edge, screaming his name, squirting clear liquid up to his chest. Your eyes roll to the back of your head, your hold on his hand tightens, and your legs on his shoulders shake and flail from another intense orgasm. There’s ringing in your ears but you faintly hear him cooing at you, whispering sweet words you can’t quite understand.
Miguel is still fucking into you with messy, frantic thrusts and ragged breaths but it doesn’t take long for him to follow, not when your velvety walls are pulsing, contracting on his dick. He puts a large hand on the space beside your head for support, his claws tearing through the pillowcase, as he drives his hips into yours a few more times before spilling inside you with a deep growl. He paints your insides with his cum as he rides his high with a few more shallow thrusts. You clench around him trying to squeeze as much cum out of him with your tight hole and he whimpers your name.
Both of you pant in unison, trying to catch your breath after that life-altering orgasm together. You turn your head to the side to kiss the inside of Miguel's wrist next to your head. Miguel doesn’t want to move. Everything is too perfect at that moment. You’re perfect.
But he has more plans for you tonight.
He takes your legs off his shoulders to wrap around his waist as he adjusts the both of you so he can lay down comfortably on top of you, putting most of his weight on his elbows on the bed. His dick still plugged in your hole, keeping his seed inside and refusing to part with your tight heat.
“Miggy,” you softly call him, looking at his relaxed face resting on your shoulder, eyes closed.
“Hm?”
“... pull out.”
“No.”
“Please?”
“Fine, but only because I want to,” he grumbles, clearly not wanting to pull out. He gets on his knees again so he can at least watch your sloppy hole fluttering as he slowly pulls out. A thick milky ring of your combined fluid sits at the base of his cock. His eyes darken as he sees your cunt trying to clench at air and his cum starts to drip out of you. He can’t have that. He collects the trail of cum with his fingers so he can stuff them back inside of you.
“Miggy, come back here,” you pull at his hand and when he doesn’t budge, you add “You can just cum inside me more later. I need cuddles.”
That gets him to leave your fucked out hole alone. For now. Miguel kisses your stomach up to the valley between your breasts to your neck and lingers on your lips. He goes back to his earlier position on top of you. You drape your arms around his neck as you hum in contentment against the kiss. He smiles and moves to mouth at your sensitive neck, planting soft kisses, licking and sucking as he moans and pants in your ear.
“Miggy, I’m sleepy now,” you turn to look at him. You know what he’s doing. You know that he’s trying to turn you on again. And it’s working.
“You can do one more, mami. One more for me,” he says. He’s almost pouting, almost begging “You said I can cum in you again.”
“I didn’t mean right away. I just came three times already” you whined wrapping your arms around his broad chest. you want to feel him close.
“Mmm, you can cum four times. Maybe more because you’re such a needy little whore,” he murmurs into your neck, not stopping his ministrations. “My cum slut who loves being bred. We’re not going to end the night without your tummy full of cum I promise you that, cariño.”
You roll your eyes at him but you don't push him away and instead start playing with the short curly hairs at the back of his neck, ignoring the way your pussy shivered at his perverted words. You find comfort in his warmth and weight on top of you. You inhale his familiar deep masculine scent and it almost lulls you to sleep until you feel something wet and hard poking at your thigh.
“How are you hard again?” you say in disbelief as you look down and sure enough, Miguel’s dick is erect and ready to go for another round.
“It’s been a while since we had sex and my hand could only do so much to make up for your absence, cariño,” he huffs as gets up on his knees to turn you over and slap your ass. The sound of his palm meeting the sticky wet skin of your ass is undeniably lewd. “And what about needing to get you pregnant does not make sense to you? Get on your hands and knees for me. That baby is not gonna make itself.”
You plant your knees on the mattress and present your ass to him but you don't bother to lift your upper body from the bed. You keep your face down against the softness of his pillows. You didn't want him to see the giddy smile on your face from hearing that he hasn't slept with anyone else. His cum starts dripping out of your hole, coating your clit with creamy white and Miguel almost cums again on the spot.
“Don’t make me repeat myself.” His large hands grab at your ass, kneading them. His thumbs spread your puffy lips apart so he can watch your cunt try to keep his cum inside. You groan as you force your arms to lift you up. “There’s my good girl.”
He smacks your ass which earned him a yelp from you. His lips curl up as he watches the flesh of your ass jiggle from the impact.
“Get on with it,” you whine, wiggling your ass to entice him to move faster. For someone who wanted to stop at the third round, you sure are impatient to be filled again.
“You are going to be the death of me,” he chuckles as he guides his cock back inside your wet heat. “There you go, mami. Back where it belongs.”
You moan loudly as you feel him grinding his hips, driving his dick as deep as he can reach inside you. Your eyes flutter close, as you savor the stretch of your hole around his fat cock once more. You couldn’t agree more with his words.
You hear Miguel from behind you input a command on a device. It beeps obnoxiously like it’s mocking you. It’s the last thing you want to hear while he is balls deep inside you, his girthy cock stretching you deliciously and filling you up so good. You think to yourself what was so important that Miguel can't put his gizmo down and enjoy the feeling of your warm, tight pussy on his dick? Right after insisting you can go for one more round?
You are about to snap at him for being ungrateful until a hologram appears in front of you. It shows a live video feed of his very own bed and a clear view of your fully naked self on your hands and knees getting ur insides rearranged by your boss. Your hair is a mess and your makeup is all smudged from how he made you cry from all the begging and overstimulation earlier. And he looks so big compared to you, having to bend low to align his hips with yours. You didn't even notice the recording devices planted around the room until now from how your brain was so fogged by lust. There seem to be at least three around the room from different angles. Well, it turns out he wasn’t just bluffing when he said he could record you earlier.
You wonder if he always had those set up. You haven’t really been to his room before. The few “encounters” you had with Miguel happened in his laboratory on his silly little platform, both of you too consumed by lust to think about moving to a more private area. It’s rather unlikely that they’re for actual safety reasons when they all just record the same area. You entertain the idea that him taking you to his room tonight is not just a spur-of-the-moment thing, that he might have all of this set up for tonight for when he has you writhing in pleasure on his bed. How thoughtful, you think. It makes you clench around his dick.
"You really are a pervert," you quip to annoy him. Clearly, the urge to mess with him hasn’t been thoroughly fucked out of you yet. You didn't even get to laugh at your own childish remark when Miguel abruptly starts thrusting his hips without warning, harder this time, dragging out a surprised whimper from you. His tip is bullying your cervix, testing the line between pleasure and pain but you love it. Your eyes meet Miguel's intense red glare on the screen.
"You're still talking," he tuts, his head shaking like he's some kind of pet owner trying to reprimand a disobedient pet "Let me fix that, cariño.”
He brings his large calloused hands back on you – where they belong, you think to yourself, echoing Miguel’s words. His left hand is firm on the flesh of your waist, you are sure they are going to bruise once he’s done with you. His other hand fondles your breasts, the sharp talons on his fingertips lightly grazing your soft skin. You know that when you look at yourself in the mirror tomorrow morning you’d look like you barely got away from being mauled by a feral beast, evidence of how Miguel O'Hara had his way with you and how you enjoyed every single second of it.
You cry out his name, chanting it like a prayer. He’s so deep inside you that you can almost feel him in your chest, his thrusts fucking the air out of your lungs.
“Miggy, Mi…. Mig– ah, ah Mi– haaaa –guel ahhh”
Your eyes roll back at the continuous assault on your sweet spot and your cervix with every deep thrust. High-pitched whines come out of your throat as your arms give out from under you, making you fall face-first on the soft mattress. It all feels so good but overwhelming. You think you’re going to pass out.
“Que rico, mami,” he pulls your hair so you can face the screens. “Look at yourself. Beautiful. Taking my cock so well. Don’t worry. I have this all recorded if you’re too cock drunk to watch yourself now, cariño.”
You can't say anything back. You try really hard to come up with something but the only word that comes out of your mouth is “please” over and over again becoming progressively needier each time. He wraps his arm around your waist to pull you closer to him, his chest flushed against your back, allowing him to rock you back against his forceful thrusts.
“Gonn’ make sure I put a baby in you tonight, cariño,” he growls in your ear. “I can’t wait to see your tummy swell in a few months. You’ll look divine, I won't be able to take my hands off you even more.”
His eyes are back to a glowing red as they meet yours that are glazed over by tears and lust. His hand tightens his hold on your hair making you tilt your head further, exposing more of your neck for him to suck bruises on. Your tits are bouncing freely at his aggressive pace. Coupled with the high-pitched moans coming out of your mouth, it’s all so pornographic. It makes you feel like liquid fire is running through your veins and pooling into your stomach.
“You’re gonna cum for me? Let go. Come on. cum for me, mami,”Miguel grunts in your ear, his hand on your hair letting go so he can greedily grab at your tits. “I wanna feel your cunt pulsing on my cock. Can you do that for me? Of course, you can. Going to milk me dry.”
And just like that, you throw your head back on his shoulder, eyes screwing shut as another wave of orgasm crashes down on you. Miguel follows closely, filling you up with more cum that drips down your thighs and on the bedsheets. Your body slumps back against his, too tired to keep yourself upright. You don’t even have the energy to open your eyes, content with feeling Miguel’s warm body against yours.
“I got you,” he says, wrapping his arms around you and moving you to lie down on the bed. You hum in contentment, letting him care for your tired body. He bends down to plant a kiss on your forehead before he pulls away. You miss his touch already.
A beeping sound lets you know that he turned off the monitors. You feel him taking the soiled bedsheets, getting up from the bed to get fresh ones. You have half the mind to reach out to him and tell him he can clean up later so you can cuddle now. Your mouth, however, doesn’t want to move so instead you groan as you blindly reach your hands out.
Miguel chuckles at your antics, walking back with fresh sheets and a damp towel to wipe off the sticky mess from your body. He sits next to you on the bed and brings the towel to your tear-stained cheeks, gently dabbing the area around your eyes to get rid of the messed up traces of mascara and eyeliner. You take your hand to rest on your chest trying to calm your wildly beating heart.
The comfortable silence, unfortunately, doesn’t last long. You hear the unmistakable voice of Lyla cut through the air.
“Heeeey, bossman! Heeeey, girlie!” she drawls and your eyes snap open as you snatch the sheet from Miguel’s hands to cover yourself.
“Ay, coño! I thought I said no alerts tonight,” Miguel looks pissed, rubbing his face in frustration before moving to turn off his watch. “It can wait until tomorrow.”
“Wait, wait! Sorry to interrupt the big night, Miguel, but it’s an emergency. Trust me you’ll want to fix this now,” Lyla raises her hands in surrender before Miguel presses a button. She turns to you, looking apologetic and asking for help “Then you can go back to babymaking, right, dollface?”
“I–” you flush, choking on your own words. You begrudgingly turn to Miguel, your lower lip caught in between your teeth. You lower your eyes as an ugly feeling crawls up your chest.
“It sounds important. You should go,” you whisper, not trusting your voice to speak up any louder. “I’d say I can be back up but I can hardly move so you’re on your own, big guy.”
Miguel sighs and gets up, telling Lyla to send him the information and that it better be worth his time.
You are already sexually satisfied and tired – that’s what four orgasms could do to you – but you are a little upset and sulky that Miguel has to be called in for work right now. Stupid anomaly or whatever it is. It’s probably important and a universe out there might be in grave danger. But you can't help feeling like shit about it though.
You like how soft Miguel gets when he cleans you up after sex. You like it when he picks up your tired form and whispers soft words to you in Spanish. Plus, you were looking forward to cuddles. What’s the use of having sex in his room on his bed if not to cuddle afterward and wake up next to each other the next day? And then, suddenly, in the early morning light, realize that you’ve been madly in love with each other all along. Okay, you are more than just a little upset.
Miguel notices you pouting and your eyes getting glassy with tears as you try to roll off the bed. He shoots his glowing red web at you, trapping you where you are before going back to readjusting his watch.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, walking back to the bed as he makes sure his suit is all good and ready for the mission. He kneels on the bed to drag you to lie on your back.
“What are you doing? I'm going to take a shower,” you sniffle trying to avoid his eyes “I’ll take care of myself. you should go”
He hums as he takes both your wrists in one hand and forces them above your head to secure them together with his webs.
“Miggy?” you look at him and there’s a spark of mischief in his eyes. He darts his tongue across his lower lip and you feel a shiver run up your spine.
He doesn’t respond. He only keeps looking at you like he’s going to devour you once more. He brings your legs up to the position he had in before, knees to your chest, cunt fully exposed to him. You blush and your heart starts pounding in your chest. He shoots out more of his web, making sure you’re comfortable and your legs are securely tied in that position.
“Good?” he whispers and you nod in response “Words, cariño.”
“Perfect,” you moan, your chest heaving with need. He smiles at you fondly, caressing your cheek with a curled finger, and plants chaste kisses on your temple, your nose, and the corner of your mouth until he reaches your lips. He hums in contentment as he savors the feel of your lips against his. Then, he pulls away reluctantly and puts on his mask. He sets his watch to the right coordinates opening up a portal to wherever the universe needs saving.
“I’ll be back as fast as I can. I’ll make sure that anomaly regrets ever being made for interrupting my plans for our night,” he grumbles and gives you one last kiss through his mask for good luck. “And then it’s going to be all about you for the rest of the night, hm? I promise.”
He walks into the portal backwards so he can look at you until it closes and takes him away. Your heart flutters in your chest, anticipating what’s to come as you feel the webs digging deliciously into your soft flesh.
•🕷️────✧˖°˖🕸️˖°˖✧────🕷️•
Translations:
Que linda - how pretty
muñeca - doll
cariño - dear/darling
Qué voy a hacer contigo? - What am I going to do with you?
Qué haría sin ti? - What am I going to do without you?
conejita - little rabbit
pobrecita - poor thing
que rico - “[you] look good” (literal: tastes good)
Podría acostumbrarme a esto - I could get used to this
Eres tan hermosa. No sabes lo que me haces - You're so beautiful. You don't know what you do to me
Estás tan rica. Estás hecha para mí, mi amor - You feel so good. You were made for me, my love
Mi niña hermosa, mi niña linda. Mía. Toda mía. - My beautiful girl, my sweet girl. Mine. All mine.
mami - mommy (as an endearment for a partner)
coño - pussy
A/N: so many thanks to my friend who helped me with translating and giving me tips on some better Spanish terms to use 🙏
Summary: You and your best friend have your usual movie night except he can’t seem to keep his cuddly hands to himself and your close to physical combusting. Just a bit of your usual order of slightly angsty desired filled romance.
Warnings: doesn’t going any farther than kissing just very passionate, very suggestive, Maybe I’m biased as the authors, but damn it’s hot.
A/N: So I’ve been out of practice for 10 months now. Haven’t even wrote more than a paragraph that I just turned around and delete 20 minutes lates in these past few months. But let’s just say I found some real life inspiration to use for a our favorite fictional men and we’ll see how this goes.
Movie night with Eddie, that’s normal, done it a million times. With friends, just the two of you, late at night, middle of day, outside, inside, at the theater, at his house, thrillers, comedies, action, romance, anything and everywhere for years. So why was this time different?
Currently you were sitting on Eddie’s couch watching the most recently picked out tape from the family video store. Steve let you guys borrow them for free as long as you brought the tape back the very next day. You guys watched movies all the time, so why was your heart beating out of your chest like a race horse on its final stretch to the finish line? Was it because his arm was around you?
No it couldn’t be that, Eddie was a big cuddler, it didn’t mean anything. He loved hugs despite his scary image in the public eyes, and he was always finding weird ways to poke, prod, or touch you. He was the type of friend to bite your shoulder when he got bored, an absolutely feral mad man type guy. And he knew that despite your lack of experience with physical affection, you never mind when it came from him. He always got your free pass.
Maybe it was the slow circles you felt him drawing on your skin? Or how occasionally his hands would slip into your hair, playing with it? Much more intimate little things that were making you feel like you were going to jump out of your skin from just the hints at this new kind of physical touch.
Yep, that was definitely the issue.
You tried removing his arm from around your shoulder and instead brought it back down to his side. But when he looked at you with such confused puppy dog eyes, you caved and played it off as just repositioning yourself as you instead wrapped around his arm and leaned into his side, laying your head on his shoulder. You could never deny him anything, just another issue of being so damn in love with your best friend.
As the movie ticked on and you both stuck to your usual quiet with some slight hilarious commentary during the movie, Eddie eventually pulled you closer so that he could bury his head into the back of your neck. One of his hands came up to play with your hair some more.
You knew he wasn’t paying attention to the movie anymore. He couldn't possibly see it, the way he was laying his head into your neck. Of course, it wasn't a very intriguing movie either, just not a great pick this time. But now he was rubbing the same small circles right under your ear, this time, and every so often his hand would find itself tangled in your hair. You tried to keep yourself straight and breathing consistently without letting your mind wander too far. He had to know this! That HE was killing you slowly.
Your breath nearly hitched this time when you swear you felt him ever so lightly brush his lips against the side of your neck. Did you imagine that part? God, you hoped he would do it again.
You weren’t even questioning why he would do any of this, you just knew you had to get yourself out of there before he realized how much of a mess this was turning you into.
As the movie came to an end you swear he had brushed his lips against your neck at least twice more, and you still couldn’t tell if it was intentional.
“Eddie it’s getting late I’ll have to go home soon.”
“Yeah” he muttered into your hair, all the while holding you tighter.
You gave him, and even more importantly, yourself, another minute before attempting to pull away. “Eddie, I have to get home soon.” You sounded like a broken record as you once again tried half-heartedly to pull yourself free from him.
He only pulled you back in and buried his head into your other shoulder. His arm came around, this time drawing lines down the front of your neck, and you shook at the feeling. This time your hand came up, cupping his head and running your fingers through his hair. Which only caused him to brush his lips against your shoulder once more. That’s it, it had to be intentional.
You swore you would combust into flames if you stayed there any longer like this. As every trace down your throat made you stop breathing. “I'm going to have to be the bad guy. I have to go.” You said, completely pulling away from him this time, moving to the other side of the couch.
He groaned, but nodded as he let you move away from him this time. He ran a hand through his hair before staring at you, darker and more lovingly than you had ever seen before. “Man, you're pretty with your hair messed up.”
God, that was the final straw. You jumped up off the couch. “You can’t say shit like that, Eddie.” You ran your hands up and down your arms, trying to stop how shaken you felt. Your nerves were on high, and he was still looking at you with that same stare.
“Why not?”
“Because!”
“Because what?”
“You’re my best friend. You can’t sit here and hold me like that, and stare at me like that and kiss my neck softly like that and then expect me to just be able to functionally drive home like it was another normal movie night hangout.” You snapped. He had you wound up and your lack of dating experience left you mad for more touches from Eddie.
He sunk low and pain hit you in the gut. “I didn’t realize I was crossing any boundaries of our friendship.” He said, leaning back on the couch. “The last thing I ever wanted to do was make you uncomfortable.”
You sat back down next to him, panicking as you realized how he took your reaction. “No, god no, no that’s not what I meant. You never make me feel uncomfortable, Eddie. EVER! I mean, it wasn’t bad like that. It was good…horribly, terribly good. The kind of good you aren’t supposed to feel when watching a movie with your best friend.” You rambled.
So this was how you were going to confess to him your feelings. Man, he had you so on edge, you would admit anything to him right now if he asked.
That almost hungry stare returned to his eyes as he looked back down at you. You had read about that stare before, many times, and honestly, you thought it was an overused phrase in romance. The hungry stare, but honestly, what else could you call a look like that?
“God, you’ll be the death of me, Eddie Munson.” You laughed, not being able to look at him as long as he stared at you with those big brown eyes.
“You should stop taking the lord's name in vain. It’s a bad habit.” Eddie whispered as he leaned closer to you, getting inches away from you. Your four heads were nearly touching, causing both of you to gently close your eyes at the feeling.
“It's funny, I didn’t have such a problem with it until now.”
You could feel his breath so close to you as your hands found their way back into his hair. He slowly dipped his head further down, leaving the same light kiss in his wake. He could feel you pull him closer and the kisses gained more pressure in a way you had been craving since he first came anywhere near you with his light touches.
As he kissed harder into your neck, your hands switched from running through his hair to almost pulling at it. You began leaning back further on the couch as you pulled him down with you until Eddie was over top of you. You wanted to give him the room to be fully on top of you, so you wrapped your legs around him as he put his whole force over you.
You felt engulfed and dazed in a way you never experienced before as he began to kiss you faster moving sporadically across your neck until he had kissed almost every square inch of you. You focused on keeping your breathing even, trying to spare yourself embarrassment from how simply he had you melting underneath him.
He pulled away from you, hovering over you with that same stare that was filled with so much adoration in it. “God, I would keep you here all night like this. Just right here, all mine, and with nowhere else to be. It’s just so satisfying to be able to wrap you up and hold you in a way I know no one else gets to.”
“You know, I think… I don’t really have to get home tonight. No one’s going to miss me if I stay here.” You said breathlessly.
Eddie grinned like the devil looking over you. “Good,” he said as he finally bent down, capturing your lips. His hand came up to cup your chin, tilting your head up to meet him.
That was the last straw, you were a melted puddle that belonged to him now. If this was to be only the beginning of the evening, then surely Eddie Munson was going to be the death of you.
(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <:D)
imagine being forced to marry miggy because it's your canon event and like you both are now
bound by fake vows — miguel o'hara x reader
summary: do you take him to be your lawfully wedded husband? well, your real choice doesn't matter. choices aren't given to people, they're predetermined by the multiverse. you and miguel were resigned to married life after he discovered it was a canon event for the two of you to be married for... the multiverse only knows how long. not wanting to ruin innocent lives and destroy a whole universe, you accepted your fate and got married to him, but it didn't mean you had to pretend you were happy about it, about being with him.
word count: 1,477
"do you take miguel o'hara to be your lawfully wedded husband?" the wedding officiant's voice rang in your head, the bright lights from the windows as the sunlight poured into the room as the witnesses to your marriage to this man looked on, not expecting you to say no because... because there was no way to say no. to them, miguel looked like he was extremely eager to marry you out of love, out of affection for you, like how any ordinary person would want to marry someone dear to them for. but he was only eager to marry you because the multiverse dictated it, you were to be his spouse, you were to make him your husband, and you'd be stuck with him until the multiverse decides it's had its share of fun from your suffering already.
this doesn't feel real. you must be dreaming, right?
it was like you drifted off to sleep and never woke up, like you were living out a dream while being fully conscious, fully awake and living. you were in your new home, and it didn't feel real, you were in a world that you recognized, but at the same time, would never recognize as one you belonged in. you felt like you were in a world that was completely foreign to you, a home that shouldn't be yours but just is now; the sheets and mattress underneath you didn't feel familiar, it felt soft yet rigid all at the same time. it was definitely not your bed, yet you didn't freak out, you knew exactly whose bed this was.
you thought you knew where you were, but you had the feeling your mind was purposefully repressing your recollection of what this place was to you from coming back up and surfacing to the front of your mind, to prevent you from reminding yourself who you were now. you sighed as you threw yourself back onto the bed, feeling the other side of the bed was still warm and thoroughly wrinkled up from tossing and turning the previous night. that warmth, you could tell, wasn't yours. that warmth belonged to the man who now made your life his, but certainly had no intention of making his life yours.
you tried to close your eyes to sleep, to shake off this nightmare of imprisonment, of you agreeing to lose the freedom you deserved and looked forward to your whole life. you gave up your freedom in hopes of saving your dimension from it collapsing in on itself, and you tried not to hate him for keeping you shackled with him for the rest of your days, when all you wanted to do was live your life and see where fate would take you. you had a whole life ahead of yourself, a whole future you wanted to build by yourself; you had to fight your way out of everything that ever hindered you from living out your life the way you wanted it to go, but of course, miguel had to ramble to you that you had to let go of it all to make sure nobody else gets hurt.
why was he telling you all this, why did it have to be you? could the multiverse not have picked anyone else, does the multiverse expect you two to agree and get married so nobody else has to die senselessly from your refusal? what happened to having a choice?
of course. the multiverse hated seeing you happy.
"if it makes you feel any better, i'll take care of everything for you from now on." he muttered to you as he escorted you in his car after the 'ceremony', and though you would've appreciated this small sliver of concern from him, you scorned it due to how dismissive your new husband seemed. he didn't even look at you a single moment in that who process of tying the knot, the knot that kept tied up and bound to him. you didn't feel the least bit embarrassed or guilty for barely giving an audible "i do," to the wedding officiator when you were asked if you'd take miguel as your husband.
you promised yourself you wouldn't cry, you wouldn't choke on any tears, you wouldn't shed any tears as you let go of your autonomy that you fought hard for when you ran away from home, got yourself through college all by yourself, and scrounged enough money for yourself to leave your old life behind and swear never to let anyone, anyone, order you around and dictate how your life would be lived ever again.
but here you were, a new shiny ring on your right hand, one that matched the one on his left--the one he didn't care to wear after the ceremony and placed in his breast pocket because he complained it was 'too small'.
'he dares complain it's too small when he bought these both himself. what a clown.' you thought to yourself as you scowled at him, feeling a hot rumble of upcoming tears well up in your eyes, and a feeling of cold helplessness envelope around you; these conflicting emotions you were experiencing right now were enough to make you go insane. yes, you agreed to marry him, but why lie to yourself and say you were happy to marry him, that you loved him like no other man who entered your life and wanted to spend the rest of your days with him?
why marry the man who stole your freedom from you?
a silence fell upon you two as the tears came falling down upon your new dress, which wasn't at all anything like the dresses your friends donned on their happiest days. you dreamed of your happiest day being probably 5 or 10 years into the future, and yes, you weren't getting any younger, but what kind of life was this? was this even worth living, being reduced to the spouse of a man you merely consider as a colleague at best, a stranger at worst?
he looked over at you from the corner of his eye, his stoic expression unchanging as he darted his eyes from you to the road ahead of him. "...i didn't want this, either." he murmured as you began to sniffle. he didn't offer you any words or touch of comfort, he didn't feel qualified to give you any of that. who was he to you if not a captor, right? he roped you into this, and now, you were both paying the price. "but you let it dictate what would become of us." you whispered with a shiver in your voice as you sobbed.
miguel didn't quiver, he didn't evidently show you he felt guilty for his decision, for your decision to agree with him. he didn't speak to you for the duration of the car ride until he brought you to his home, where you will spend the rest of your life with... until the multiverse says otherwise.
you two were to share a room, unfortunately. though he promises you that he has zero intentions of touching you, he'd sleep on the couch if you wanted, but you couldn't bear to hear it. you headed up to the new room you were sleep in for the remainder of your life and slammed the door on him, with miguel sighing as he clicks his tongue, asking lyla to chill his beer for him as he sat back on the couch and leaned his head back before the AI alerted him his beer was now cold.
as miguel went to get his beer, he stared at his reflection from the glass. who was this sullen, melancholic man staring back at himself? a genius geneticist? an unknowing murderer of a whole universe he never belonged to? a revered and feared leader of a supreme society of spider folk? an overworked man who finds himself sleeping at his desk and waking up at the crack of dawn to back pains and a backlog of work? a husband?
whatever, it didn't matter, not anymore. as he opened his beer and took three gulps of it, he sighed as he looked up at the door of the room that used to be just his. he really hates what he has to do sometimes, but he's the only one who can do it. he knows you care, you don't want innocent lives and a whole universe to be destroyed because of you.
miguel just hates how you had to be dragged in to all of this, all of this chaos he never wanted anyone else to suffer with him.
a/n: might make a part 2 or smth, if tumblr makes this flop, part 2 is out the fucking window 😡
Hey there! Can you do a Miguel x spiderwoman reader where during a mission Miguel accidentally hurts you pretty badly while trying to get you out of the way of the anomaly, leaving you in a medically induced coma for a couple days while you heal? I wanna see an incredibly gentle, guilt-ridden Miggy visiting you when you wake up and treating you like you’re made of glass
Calling (just to save you, I'd give all of me)
Miguel O'Hara x reader Oneshot
Words: 6.06k (yeah i know)
Warnings: Graphics depictions of Violence, Angst, Blood and Violence.
Summary:
A mission gone wrong, some crying, more suffering, rocky relationships (emphasis on the rocky part)
And after all of it, you prevailed. With him.
Tl;dr: Miguel is a crybaby
It was a normal Tuesday night at the headquarters. 11 pm to be exact.
God knows why you stayed as long as you did—having to juggle missions upon missions the entire week because Miguel decided to loosely throw them at you.
Capturing what seemed like an endless sea of anomalies.
“You’re our most capable.” He had said, not even facing you when he once again sent you off on another job to fend for yourself.
Trying to ask to be replaced was met with a sounding “No.” from the big guy himself, so you stopped trying altogether.
Less questions, more work.
Even if the side of your ribs were bruised from the last encounter with a previous anomaly.
Whatever. Bringing your injury up would just have you end up being demeaned and insulted like a school kid who skipped last week’s homework. At least that was what you assumed.
You grew tired of it eventually, wanting to have more than 6 hours of sleep per day and being able to actually live your life—the birthday cake for a friend sat comfortably inside the fridge of your apartment lingers on your mind as you swung through the familiar sight of the city; another rendition of New York, another variant of an anomaly.
That wasn’t to say you didn’t enjoy the thrill and adrenaline that came with the job—no, you loved it. No one ever told you how fun being a superhero can be (aside from the decades of trauma you had to go through) and being able to propel yourself into the air with webs as the people below you gawked at your presence.
The New York breeze hit your figure like a welcomed embrace, the moon winked at you behind fading beds of clouds. You continue slingshotting yourself down the streets, deja-vu splashed in your face with how eerily similar the roads were to the ones back home; shaking your head, you let out a soft sigh and relish in the cold night’s wind.
Today’s mission: an unknown entity that plagued Earth 1610, the only information you were given via a loosely thrown together email from Miguel was that the entity could possess powers greater than we all understood—but with a limited amount of time, you would (hopefully) capture it just in time before it discovered its full potential.
You’d think with how smart the boss-man was, he wouldn’t send a sleep-deprived Spider into such missions with how severe things could turn if everything went wrong.
“I’ll send him an email to complain later, for sure.” You promised yourself; because you were supposed to do just that days ago when tasks started rolling in for you without breaks.
Solo-tasks, might you add.
A cherry on top of the already spoiled cake, salt on the wound, a slap to the face. You grunted, and an alarm sounding from nearby caught you by surprise amidst the (somewhat) quiet of the city. In the snap of a finger, you flung yourself in a different direction, changing the tides in the waves while the wind that hit your face came to a halt once you landed on a roof belonging to a rather tall building.
The viewing angle from above gave you a clear look into what had transpired underneath.
You squint, arms folded neatly in between your thighs as you crouched over the ledge of the building; from what you could see, nothing was amiss—everything looked to be in place. Letting out an annoyed scoff, you were about to turn on your tail before the ear-piercing sound of glass shattering into pieces hit your eardrums.
You immediately snapped around, and panic ensued when the people on the streets started screaming, running amok like wild animals scattering away into their safe spaces. You, on the other hand, now have to clean up the mess—you had no clue where this universe’s Spiderman was, nor did anyone brief you on it.
Nonetheless you approached the bust-up shop with a wavy heart, praying to something out there that there weren’t any critically injured persons. As you stalked near the front of the shop, you could hear loud banters inside; curious, you stare into the messy excuse for an interior: broken decors, smashed up shelvings, and items sprawled out across the floor inside.
You took the opportunity and shot yourself up to the ceiling, both your soles and fingertips clutching onto the surface, cautiously crawling further into the shop.
“Please—” a voice yelled out, “Just let me steal your ATM machine!”
Your lips part, dumbfounded.
“No! Ey! Get away from—” You finally managed to grasp the scene that played out in front of you.
The store manager was running around with a bat in his hands, and the other person that seemed to be wearing a costume with black spots, a jean jacket slung over his shoulders and a rather cute bucket hat. To your surprise, the man evaded the attack when a black hole had been summoned under the manager’s feet, causing him to fall into the portal and out of another one…
…Right above you.
You yelped at the sudden contact on your back, the manager’s weight had you both falling face first into the shards-filled floor; his body cushioned by yours.
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
The man behind you rolled off, allowing you to take a step and collect yourself as you slowly stood up. Debris started filling up your senses, and the pain from having been cut by thousands of glass shards made you wince in response. You pushed it all down, needing to finish the job as soon as possible so you could flee from more missions when you go back to the headquarters.
You even considered retiring from your spot in the team.
Speaking of spots…
You peered up, eyes catching onto the odd appearance of the man in front of you, who was still attempting to find a way to escape with the ATM. If you hadn’t been as irritated and grumpy as you were, you’d have found the situation hilarious.
“You gotta let that go, big man.” He whipped his head around, eyes darting around before locking in on you. “I’m sorry, I can’t—wait, you look different from my Spiderman.” His head tilted in confusion; you only rolled your eyes in retort, not wanting to drag your already long day out. Webs shot out of your wrists, launching them toward the direction of his foot.
Watching in disbelief as another hole appeared right where his foot would’ve been, the webs flinging into the black void and you felt the substance land on your back, knocking your balance forward.
“What the,” confused, you feel around for it, your fingers finding the source, tracing the substance behind you. “How did you fucking do that?” You glared him down, seeing his stature falter and hands thrown up into the air in defense.
“Whoa whoa, language!” He wagged a finger at you, giving you his head shake of disapproval.
“Shut up.”
“That’s just plain rude, young lady—hold on, you’re a lady right?” Your eye twitched in annoyance.
“Has anyone ever said you’re way too chatty?”
He was fidgeting with his hands, looking away and feeling nervous, unsure of how to respond to your jab. Before he could get another word out, the bottom of your feet connected with his chest, sending his body back against the wall with a loud ‘thud’ watching as he fell on his backside.
“Oof.”
He let out a soft grunt, rubbing the sore spot on his butt; right before you did a chain-attack, he caught your foot with another one of his black holes, your foot now appearing on the other side of the store and out of sight.
“That wasn’t very nice. Listen, I just need some money, let me go and—” He threw the ATM onto a pile of cans and started rolling it out of your way, pushing the huge machine as fast as he could. Pulling back your foot in time, your calf connected with his face, making him trip over the cans comically with his arms flailing in the air.
You quickly reached down to fetch your trap to secure your win.
That would be too easy, though.
Side-stepping a portal of void that almost ate you up, you winced at the pain that shot through your ribs due to your rapid movements. Biting through the pain, you maneuvered to where his body laid and tackled him to the ground once more when he tried to stand up; from then on, it was a cat fight. With you trying to get him detained and him attempting to pry you off of him.
Suddenly, another hole manifested beneath the two of you, watching in horror as you both fell through and landed harshly on top of the rooftop you originally occupied prior; the back of your head collided into the concrete ground; a poor excuse for a cushion.
It fucking hurt.
You were pretty sure you smelled blood.
He tried to get up, but you tumbled the two of you near the ledge of the building; in the midst of all the actions, he found dominance over you when he had your upper body hanging off the ledge with his grip on the collar of your suit. Blood thumped through your eardrums along with the loud horns of traffic, your heart racing in a million miles, if anyone looked up, they'd think you were insane for getting yourself in the situation.
Maybe you are.
Call for backup.
It would be so easy; the gizmo hugged your wrist, just one push of a button and someone will be here—
Too late, his grip on you wavered and you plummet into the air.
Fuck.
You quickly attempt to shoot more webs to find purchase on something, anything.
But terror washed over you the second you realized you had conveniently run out of webbing fuel—being the dumbass you were, you had completely forgotten to get it refilled before the mission at the station back in headquarters.
Closing your eyes, you braced yourself for the impact; your body going limp to soften the blow.
You let out a loud yelp when something flew out of the air beside you and clashed against your body, but you don’t feel the shock at the contact—instead, the warmth of a large arm wrapped around your midsection and you feel the cold wind whiplash you.
Opening your eyes, you were (pleasantly) surprised to find that Miguel caught you just in-time, right before you could suffer any more blunt injuries. You almost cried at the sight of him, his name teased the tip of your tongue, wanting to wrap your arms around him for a hug; you pulled yourself back just in time before you could react on your impulse.
You were still mad at Miguel, you have to act like it.
Before you know it, he came to a halt around a corner into an alleyway and swung down to place you down gently on the ground, your feet now free from the feeling of being dangled in the air. His eyes flickered over your face, then down your body; his arm still pressed into your waist as he squeezed your flesh out of instinct.
Bad move, the squeeze, no matter how gentle, pressed into your bruised rib. The pain sending a wave of shocks throughout your torso, you immediately pushed him away with a small hiss. You couldn’t see it, but hurt flashed through his eyes when you forced yourself out of his grip, his arm falling back to his side; unknowing of its purpose.
He wouldn’t willingly admit it, but the rare moments he would get to feel the heat of your body against him sent him to heaven: like that one time your shoulder pressed into his at the cafeteria, the times your naked fingers would brush over his skin, when your back used to press up on his during missions back in the days he went with you. Sinfully, he would recall that specific time your chest pushed into his torso during a stealth mission, the temptation to take you right there and then a devilish thought that circled his mind.
(Don’t ask what he had done in the shower after the mission debrief.)
That was part of the reason he had stopped frequenting jobs with you, even when you came into his office and invited him; you were met with rejections after rejections, soon enough, he noticed that you stopped trying—and the painful gnaw at his chest reminded him of your growing distant attitude with him, too. Miguel refused to let his personal life interfere with his business, and the last person he would want to hurt was you.
Unknowingly, he had done exactly that whenever he would gradually push your presence away.
Having meals weren’t the same anymore, not when you stopped showing up to his office everyday with his favorite food like a routine, he’d eat less and less as the days passed by; without you there to continuously pester him, he found himself reverting back to his old habits—working after late hours, not sleeping enough, not eating enough, barely talking to anyone unless absolutely necessary.
He had came to the realization that somehow, long ago, your presence had become such a grounding part of his life; the gentle yet persistent reminder that he deserved love and care too, to stop hogging all the responsibilities alone and share his burden with someone who he can trust, and it all manifested into you.
Miguel recognized he royally fucked up when you both barely see each other face-to-face anymore, you stopped showing up to debriefings, the only time he’d get to remotely speak to you was when he sent you off to missions.
He knew he was harsh, yes, but he fully believed in your capability to handle yourself—but while he was relentless, he still cared.
Hence why he arrived and interjected your mission, wanting to extend a helping hand.
“Fuck—what are you doing here?!” You shouted over the loud traffic, emotions taking control of your mind, before Miguel could protest, screams broke out from beside you both. “Shit, let’s get this over with, big man.”
You paused, momentarily forgotten that your webbings ran out of fuel and mentally slapped yourself in the face.
As if he read your mind, he fished out a tube from behind him and threw it your way. You caught it just in time and practically rushed to throw the lid off, tipping the mouth over to allow the liquid flow into the web gadget integrated into your suit. You threw a mumbled “thanks” his way and chucked the tube out of sight.
“Come on,” you nod toward the opening of the alleyway with an arm raised and pull yourself upward with your web.
It was supposed to be an easy job: brawl with the anomaly, win the brawl, capture it.
But this one was starting to grate your nerves—and you were sure Miguel felt the same too, you could sense the rage radiating off of his huge stature like sirens; chasing down the guy who had re-introduced himself as the Spot when you caught up with him earlier, unintentionally finding himself falling in and out of accidental portals he materialized.
“Stop running!” Yelling, you proceeded to jump into the portal he went through, he was always barely a hair away; yet as clumsy as he was, managed to get away every single time.
“Stop chasing me!” Spot shouted back, tripping over the back of his foot and almost falling into one of the portals entirely.
He managed to barely swerve out of the way when Miguel lunged at him from behind, his claws swooping in the air where Spot used to be. It became a constant back-and-forth; you would shoot yourself closer to him and Miguel would come from his back, essentially cornering him, then Spot would narrowly escape; rinse and repeat. Exhaustion crept up on you eventually, nagging the back of your mind as you tapped into your adrenaline to stay awake and alerted of your surroundings.
Miguel noticed it, too, and he went even harder—the intensity of his ferocity grew when he realized he had to end things soon before someone gets injured; he prayed to God it wouldn’t be you.
Somehow, more portals had opened up, and all you could do was avoid falling into them; the possibility of coming face first into the asphalt roads were too high for you to take the chance. Miguel almost got caught in one; hardly dodging a portal that conjured on the wall he stuck to. But unlike you, he was willing to test out his theory, reeling his body back to prepare launching himself into the portal. And he did just that—his reward? A high-five of his face with another set of walls.
He grunted, out of the corner of his eyes, he spotted you latching onto Spot’s back; desperately trying to push him down onto a solid surface. You both spun into another portal and crashed on a different rooftop, Miguel rushed over with claws ravaging the innocent bricks he crawled on; when he went up, he saw the two of you gasping for air on the ground.
You clutched the side of your rib, an indescribable amount of pain overtook your senses; you were pretty sure your ankle was broken when it was caught on a pole. Spot got up earlier than you, and was about to speed off before he felt a large hand tugging at the back of his shirt.
It all happened so fast: reeling in a punch, the adrenaline pumping in Miguel’s veins, Spot’s utter shock at the face of Death himself, the supposed impact of the fist with the other’s face…
…Only for the force to be directed to you in the heat of the moment when a portal happened to manifest where Spot’s face would’ve been.
It was an accident, really, an unintentional line of actions from Spot— he was way too out of it when he figured he was about to go through his final moment; his portals shot out in panic, lucky for him, it was the reason he evaded Miguel’s death fist.
Unlucky for you, the other end of the portal had been right in front of you the whole time; yet in the midst of you processing your surroundings, you hadn’t realized quicker that your senses were screaming for you to dodge out of the way.
The conclusion? You, having just been punched in your guts, falling down a building amongst the New York you shouldn’t have stepped a foot in if you knew the outcome at all. The gust of wind pumped in your ears as you fell, and fell.
No worries—you’ve got your handy-dandy webs, right?
Oh how you wished you hadn’t been wrong.
Miguel had snatched a random refill off of his own shelf when he was about to depart, not bothering to check for its content after his recent use; just shy of a quarter, barely enough to last an average Spider’s fill an hour of webbing. In his defense, he had been distraught when Lyla popped in earlier to warn him of your vitals: most specifically your injuries. He would’ve never sent you out in the first place if he knew you suffered from broken ribs.
But all you knew was that you somehow fucked yourself over.
Panic ensued.
And now, you suffered the consequences of his actions.
“Miguel!” A call for help; he was your last hope.
The fall wasn’t a particularly long one, and you normally would breeze through the impact and pain like a champ—except you have never fell from a building with ribs that squeezed your organs tight, ankle that would most likely not support your landing even if you tried, the adrenaline you lived off of now benched on the side leaving you stranded for some form of strength to pull yourself together in the span of a few seconds.
Your shoulder hit the ground first, then your head; the harsh impact created a string of reactions to your already abused body: pain shooting up your nerves, the corners of your eyes dimming despite the bright lights flashing around you.
Unbeknownst to the three of you, policemen started showing up once someone reported a supposed break-in at the shop you investigated; the sound of blaring sirens filled your eardrums like honey whilst the flashing of red and blue assaulted your blurry sight.
Barely able to distinguish what was happening in front, you attempted to prop yourself up on your elbow; but the more you tried, the more lights started diminishing in your vision. Breathing has never felt so difficult, either.
Miguel was a step too late when he came to you; after having realized what had occurred, he dropped Spot in an instant like a hot potato, prioritizing saving you instead of proceeding with the mission’s objective. He was aware of the policemen being present at the scene when they started noticing your slumped body in the middle of the road, crowding together to watch as you struggled to lift yourself up—they all stood and observed, no one reached out to help, none.
He was by your side right away, his one hand supporting the weight of your head while the other clutching at the hem of your mask, lifting it over your eyes.
His hand felt…wet.
As if things couldn’t possibly get worse: he watched the stiff expression on your face contorted with pain, you seemed to have recognized him as you slowly reached a weak arm out to caress his face, your thumb gently glossing over his cheekbone, your touches light like feathers. His mask concealed the despair in his features, the hues of red and blues still shone on his back as everyone else stayed aside and spectated.
Your hand soon dropped to your side, unmoving, your head now heavier than ever in his hand.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
Miguel held your small, delicate hand into his, the tears teasing the corner of his eye as he watched your life slipped by those eyes of yours he’d grown to adore.
“You can’t live like this, Miguel.”
Lyla crossed her arms over her chest, trailing Miguel’s tiny movements on the desk. His fingers delicately move across the keys on the keyboard, imputing password after password for locked files.
“Seriously,” Lyla sighed, rubbing her temple. “You’re starting to worry me.”
“Nothing to worry about, Lyla, get me the decoded files from yesterday.” Miguel ignored her pestering, choosing to focus on his work and his work only.
That was his routine for the past 5 days or so.
After the entire slip-up in Earth 1610, Miguel had been busting his ass to hunt down the anomaly for every hour he was awake; granted, he did take care of other responsibilities too—babysitting Mayday on Monday, depatching teams to bring back more anomalies, and visiting you every day.
And also dealing with that kid he found out to be the Spider-man from Earth-1610.
He hadn’t missed a single day of visiting you, who still laid in the hospital bed at the infirmary he cleared out for you.
Everyday. On the clock. 5 am when he woke up, when lunchtime struck, and in the late hours of night when he should be spending on getting enough rest.
Lyla had been there through it all, watching Miguel’s tormented back every single minute he was awake as he continuously starved himself off of the bare minimums.
Food, water, sleep, you name it all.
And as his assistant, his well-being was her number one priority—hence the constant pestering that would be swatted away, food that went cold despite Peter having brought them in hours ago upon Lyla’s request and his growing concern for his friend in the chair. Jess’s occasional visits to check up on Miguel, wondering if the day she stepped in would be the day she would see his lifeless body on the desk with how much neglect he reflected on himself. Even the new recruits dropped in to say hello, just to see that he was doing…okay in his book: which was not okay in everyone else’s.
Everyone was worried.
About you, of course, and him too.
The situation had clearly taken a heavy toll on him.
But Lyla understood more than anyone else that it wasn’t because of his work, his dwelling traumatic past, or how he barely had any rest for the past 120 hours.
No one else knew of his infatuation with you except for her—and that was only because she snooped through his things, finding the little knit-knacks he kept from all those times you came and dropped it off: the tiny Miguel plushie you made when you impulsively decided to take up knitting that one time, the shirt of yours you had forgotten to take back when you visited his office at late hours, soaked from the rain outside and sneezing everywhere.
“Hey Mig—“ sneeze. “I came to see y—“ sneeze. “I—“ and you sneezed.
“For the love of God,” Miguel turned around, seeing your soaked clothes that cling to your body, and having to turn away for just a tiny moment to compost himself when he caught sight of your curves.
Groaning, he pulled out one of his drawers and shuffled through and fished out a new shirt—undoubtedly his with how large it was.
His shirt was a sight on you, fitting perfectly yet still draping over your thighs just slightly when you went to get changed.
The image of you that night burned into his head, forever engraved in his brain.
Then there was the polaroid picture of the two of you when you had forced Miguel to “take a selfie with me!” when you picked up a weirdly shaped camera from a thrift store in your universe (something something you saying to be smart and conserve money). “It’s called InstaX, it—here, let me show you” and snapped a picture.
In the picture, his expression was one of annoyance, and you were squeezed against his shoulder with a toothy grin on your face.
Lyla saw how Miguel would come back with tiny frames that he thought would frame the film perfectly, but ultimately was defeated when he decided to just stick it in-between the pages of his files labeled: Classified.
She was the only one ever to know the content inside: mostly pictures of Gabriella’s (poor) baking, first day at school, when Gabriella won her first competitive soccer match; and then there was you.
She knew how important you were to him; yet to her complete and utter confusion, Miguel always kept to himself about his little (big) crush—even though she could clearly tell you were just as interested as he was, too.
He was the densest man you had the pleasure of knowing.
He never made a move; and now, he might never get another chance to.
Now you were reduced to a sitting duck, once a shell of what you were; your body laid in the bed he frequented more than his own, the lively demeanor that you carried with you before turned into a tune of stable heartbeats beeping from the machinery installed next to you: the only indicator you were still alive.
Guilt was the only thing he knew for a while; when he’d step into the shower as the cold water bit the skin of his back, like he was willingly punishing himself for allowing that incident to happen.
Everywhere he went, whatever he did, he was only reminded of your face.
“If only I had been there sooner.”
He’d say to himself while he peered down at your figure, not there but, there. You were barely hanging, and part of him knew that it was your determination to fight through whatever battle was going on inside your head during the coma.
“Por favor,” his hand held yours, careful to avoid the IV’s that pricked your skin, forehead sticky with sweat after having just come back from a specifically tough mission that day.
“Concédeme este deseo.”
He would whisper sweet-nothings to you, praying to himself at night by your bedside that you’d wake up one of these days with that smile he yearned for. And for someone to finally share the extra empanadas he would always bring in, to hope that one day, you’d get to share this joy with him.
The joy of eating together again.
So imagine his surprise when he walked into your room tonight, and found you sat up with the metal frame supporting your back.
You were awake.
And most importantly, you were alive.
He had never sprinted so fast in his life; the warm pack of empanadas he brought from the cafeteria drop to the floor, the gentle ‘thud’ catching your zoned out self by complete surprise, your face softened once your gaze landed on Miguel; who was frantically patting your face and checking your vitals to confirm that yes, you are here.
Your hand reached up to palm his that lingered on your cheek, his eyes finally settled on you, slowly taking in the fact that you were now right there in front of him.
“Miguel,” a small knowing smile tugged at your lips, your eyes the most gentle he’d ever seen. “It’s okay, I’m right here.”
He was still so afraid, so afraid that you would just slip by his fingers again; so he held onto you for dear life, fingers gripping your one cheek and hand with the others.
“Estoy tan contento de que estés aquí,” You whispered.
A soft quiver of his lips; barely there—that was when the dam broke, and his tears started flowing down his sullen cheeks.
You panicked, wondering if you had butchered your Spanish so bad you shamed him to tears.
“I’m…I’m sorry?” You tilt your head in confusion and worry. Miguel only shook his head, a small chuckle emitted from him; as if he knew what you had been thinking.
“Don’t be sorry, silly.” He looked up at you with those earnest eyes of his; ones that melt your heart and warm your soul. You’d taken a liking to him early on; though you weren’t sure when it started, only where it started: during a mission, when the two of you grew physically close, so close.
His breaths fanning down your face, your breathing grew heavy with each and every second; that was when you knew you were in too deep.
You would know it’d take heaven and hell to pull you apart from this man.
There he kneeled, lips on the back of your hand as his thumb gently caressed your cheekbone, enjoying the way hues of red spread out on your cheeks.
There was no way of escaping it now: the pent up tension of a confession teasing the air around you both, and soon, one of you was bound to crack.
“I have something to tell you—“
“I have something to say—“
Only that you both did it at once, together.
Miguel stared at you, lips slightly parted with the ghost of his words and eyes widened, then he cracked into a fit of roaring laughter—and you joined in.
Laughter filled what was once a room only occupied by the sound of your heartbeats on the machine, the two of you clutched each other’s hand, the high soon dying down to mere giggles; as if you two were high-school sweethearts with muffled chuckles thrown at each other in the back of the class.
You two were in your own little world, a bubble that secured around your bodies, forever molding the shape of what once was and what will be.
Wiping away the happy tear in your eye, you stared at Miguel’s devilishly handsome face, and the gorgeous smile you oh-so-rarely get the privilege of seeing. The muted rhythm of his chest rising and falling, in sync to yours, like two lovers on the dance floor—not even the sky could stop your love for each other.
“I love you.”
You blurted out; sure, you were 98% certain Miguel reciprocated your feelings, but that small node of anxiety still tugged at the back of your mind, terrified that you misunderstood his gestures all these times.
But wouldn’t the words he whispered to you during your sleep be all washed away if that was true?
It was a risk, and you took it; it was now or never.
“I—“ Miguel stammered, his heart screaming at him to just lean in and—
—kiss you.
His lips were nothing like you’d ever imagine; it was all the best parts multiplied by infinity: soft, full of all the love he had to give, and passionate.
The kiss lasted for what felt like eternity—part of you wished it did, and you’d be content to die like this, your lips forever engraved on his.
Miguel swore he heard the choir sung to him, albeit with crooked notes; but maybe because he did.
He slowly turned around, and you, who also does the same.
His colleagues had been quietly watching all this time from behind the doors: Peter with Mayday in tow as she cooed at the sight, Jess and that motherly smile of hers—Miles, Gwen, Hobie and Pavitr all stood with heads peeking through the gap of the doors. Even Lyla was there, although she simply floated over Peter's shoulder, joining in on the choir; their mouths agape with barely harmonized tunes of a holy song slipping out of their mouths. Amateur at best, unbearable at worst.
Pavitr carried with the vocals, as always.
They only stopped once they realized they had been caught; thinking that you two were in too deep to notice that there were more guests coming.
“What…are you guys doing here?” Miguel asked, his tone more of a threat than a genuine question.
“We got some food—“ Peter perked up, but was instantly cut off by Hobie.
“‘o watch some sappy romance, ‘ey boss man?” Hobie high-fived Lyla's glitchy hologram, the latter wearing a smirk too wide for her face and nodding aggressively.
“Do the shoulder trick!” Miles yelled out; Gwen looked at him in horror then back to Miguel, this time, it was her who was shaking her head aggressively while crossing her arms into a giant X shape.
Miguel snarled at Miles, not appreciating the cheesy suggestion of a pick-up line while everything went so well for him before they all busted in.
“Remember to host a Sangeet bro! Oh Gayatri is super good at doing Henna—“
“Hey I wanna be the flower girl!” Gwen piped up.
“No, Miguel told me long ago Mayday would be—“
“She’s not even old enough, Peter, can she even throw a fistful of flowers?” Gwen crossed her arms in protest.
“I’ll have you know she’s an extremely capable baby, right, Mayday?” Peter looked down, only to see that Mayday had once again been chewing on his pink robe like always, blabbering with spit foaming at her mouth.
“Oh Christ—“ Jess chuckled at the absurdity of the sight, a hand on her hip and the other tracing soothing circles on her belly; just as Miguel had been doing it with your hand the entire time.
Miguel pinched the bridge of his nose, a frustrated sigh knowing that the special moment between the two of you had been ruined by a bunch of nosy gremlins.
Your hand went up to remove his hand from his face, and even with how (incredibly) noisy the room became with banters and bickering thrown around; it was all quiet with him, only the stable heartbeats of you both reached your ears.
For once, your life was complete.
Miguel glanced into your eyes, the adoration swarmed your orbs; behind them, he could see far into the future where you both exist, always beside each other like glue to a paper—with you on his hips and his on yours.
And at last, Miguel had found what he had been missing from his life.
Author's note: Thank you so much for this suggestion Anon, it's my first one ever and I hope i did not disappoint u.u, I LOVED writing this and it got me tearing up reminiscing some fictional (sexy) mexican man. Hope u enjoyed!
ps: pls excuse the spanish i only have spanishdict as my holy grail (pls also DO correct me if needed!)
Dad's Best Friend!Miguel O'Hara blurb because I'm obsessed
I love the DBF!Miguel O'Hara scenarios that have you sneaking around and fucking while your family is around and unaware BUT consider:
DBF!Miguel O'Hara who offered to let you stay at his place when you moved out for college. You don't have to worry about rent or anything because he'll take care of everything. He'll take care of you.
It all seemed so good and innocent at the start. You even got to have the place to yourself most of the days because of his demanding job. Miguel said you can bring your friends over but no romantic partners or flings allowed. Not that you had anyone in that way when you're so busy yearning for Miguel. You've had a crush on him since forever and every time you tried to get into a relationship or have sex with anyone, anyone your age, your mind always compared them to Miguel. For the longest time you were hopelessly yearning, convinced that he'd never return your feelings until one night.
You were lying in bed trying to catch your breath after fucking your pussy raw with your vibrator thinking about how hot Miguel looked that morning in his nice suit, ready for an important business meeting he had. You were about to fall asleep when you felt the bed dip and suddenly Miguel was pulling you close to him, your back against his chest. Your bare ass still wet from your own slick, flushed against his erection and the only barrier that separated you was the same sexy suit you had been fantasizing about. He was so big, he felt bigger than how you imagined him and your cunt throbbed, seemingly ready to be used and abused again.
He kissed your neck, licking and sucking, marking you as his while murmuring how long he had been wanting to do this. He heard you moaning his name when you thought he was going to come home late and he immediately called in his office to tell them he's taking a sick leave. He's going to spend that time fucking you, on every surface in the house, making up for all those times you teased him in the mornings just walking around in an oversized shirt and no bra. You didn't even wear shorts around him, gave him a show of your cute ass, trying to reach mugs from the high kitchen shelves. He had to go shamefully jerk off in his car just so he didn't have to go to work with a very obvious boner. How'd he explain that to your dad when he inevitably bumped into him in the office? His precious little daughter living under the same roof as this pervert?
Hearing you moan his name while you fucked your slutty cunt was the last straw, all his self restraint went out the window. He took your vibrator from your hand and let it overstimulate your swollen clit but immediately take it away when he feels you almost going over the edge. You whine and beg him to let you cum but he just laughs. He promised you'll cum plenty of times, more than you can handle.
Of course he eats your pretty pussy out and fuck you all night in so many different ways, in positions you never even heard of. Your pussy was swollen and oversensitive, and you're pretty sure your cervix is deliciously bruised. Miguel kisses your pussy as an apology but gets distracted and tongue fucks you and makes you cum again.
You slowed down some time in the morning. Miguel made you breakfast but soon enough you found yourself bent over the kitchen counter getting railed again. You don't know how this man had that much stamina at his age. You were getting close to cumming when you heard your phone ring. Your dad was calling you. You helplessly looked back at Miguel, expecting him to stop so you can pick up the call but he didn't stop and clicked the answer button for you. Your dad happily greets you over the phone wondering how you're doing and you tried to keep your voice steady and told him everything's good and uni was going great. Miguel leaned over, pressing his chest on your back and driving his cock deeper and harder into you. It took everything in you not to cry in pleasure and you wondered if your dad can hear the erotic sounds of Miguel's cock abusing your sopping wet hole and his balls slapping your aching clit.
Your dad told you he heard Miguel was taking a sick leave which he has never done befor. He was convinced that he must be really sick for that workaholic to finally take a break so he asked you to take care of his best friend for him. You told him not to worry because you were taking really good care of him.
twenty four hours (modern eddie munson x fem!reader)
HOUR TWENTY ONE
in which you try everything you can to make eddie feel better after his encounter with chrissy - to make him forget, to make him feel cherished, to make him feel worthy.
→ tropes: enemies to lovers, forced proximity, slow burn
→ warnings: strong language, a single use of Y/N, smut (p in v), oral (m receiving), voyeurism, edging, good old fashioned ball worship if you squint, maybe some sub!eddie if you squint even harder, upside down does not exist, minors dni
→ wc: 7.3k+
→ a/n: shout out to @hellfire--cult for the balcony idea. i knew i'd get them there at some point, little freaks. and everyone say thank you to @icallhimjoey for the early post 😏
masterlist.
spotify playlist.
◁ previous part, next part▷
20:00 ─────────────ㅇ── 24:00
HOUR TWENTY ONE - 12:00 PM
STEVE-O: why do you guys suck so much at providing photographic proof of being alive? seriously
You’ve been staring at Steve’s text ever since the two of you arrived back at the apartment. You’d reply soon enough, but for now, the message was a distraction.
Eddie wasn’t speaking to you.
Not in a brooding sense, but in a way that let you know he was too far gone in his own head right now for you to reach him. When you’d said those words to him, when you’d admitted that you found him worth it, you saw his eyes glaze over slowly. You’d watched in real time as he slipped away from you. It might be that he doesn’t believe you, it might be guilt that continues to gnaw at him for a past that can’t be changed — whatever it is, you hate it.
The easy solution would be to send Steve the photos from the cafe, but you’d already tried that. Your thumb had hovered over that photo of Eddie with a mouthful of croissant, still bright and brilliant before all his waves of self-hatred had gotten ahold of him, and you just couldn’t. It was selfish, it was ridiculous, but you couldn’t share that piece of him with others. Some small, childish, hopeless bit of you needed to cling to the man in that photo and keep him safely inside your chest. It wasn’t a new version to your friends, they’ve always tried to defend Eddie and convince you he wasn’t all bad, but it was new to you. It was all so unexpected and unforeseen, the look behind his golden eyes as he seemingly looked right past the camera and right into you.
No, you couldn’t send that photo. It was for your eyes only. A souvenir you had greedily stolen.
Eddie had excused himself to the bathroom when you two arrived at the apartment, and this time, there was no dirty intentions behind it. You left well enough alone — he needed a moment to be by himself and that was fine. You could entertain yourself until he was ready to come back to you, back down to Earth. Right now, you were currently picking apart an almond croissant as if it were the most interesting thing you’d ever laid eyes on.
Croissant dissection — see? You absolutely could distract yourself in order to give him space. Absolutely no sarcasm there.
You finally sigh when you see a message bubble pop up with three little dots, signifying Steve is typing again. You don’t give him the time to properly finish out his message before you click on your camera icon, snap a shot of the picked apart croissant in front of you, and send a message with the image attached.
YOU: we were eating breakfast, eddie’s been in the bathroom. happy, mom?
STEVE-O: he’s been in the bathroom for an entire hour?
YOU: oh, you know how you men get with toilet time.
Despite the playful tone of your texts, your face is completely flat, chest still heavy as you think about Eddie behind the wooden door. Should you be giving Eddie this amount of space? What if it’s doing more damage than good?
You’re about to stand from the stool you’ve occupied for nearly ten minutes now and go try your hand at knocking, try and remind Eddie that you’re still here, when Steve’s next text comes through.
STEVE-O: stop bullshitting me. what happened?
You swear you taste metallic blood from how hard you bite down on your bottom lip, staring at the mocking message. You can’t even begin to explain to Steve what has transpired, not just this last hour, but the entirety of the time. The parking garage, the joking marriage, Chrissy showing up, Eddie’s painful vulnerability – you can’t find the words to tell him about any of it. The same as you can’t find it in you to send the photo of Eddie in Betty’s.
YOU: nothing happened. do you need any more proof than that?
He only reacts to your message with a thumbs up. You assume that means you’re in the clear, for now.
When you exit your thread of messages with Steve, a new thread that has been started catches your eye. It’s a new number, no contact on it. The only message sent is from you – the photo of you with your coffee, head thrown back and eyes shut with a wide smile boosting your cheeks.
Eddie’s phone number.
You look at the photo of yourself for a while, trying to not cringe at your appearance. To you, you just looked ridiculous. You don’t understand why Eddie wanted this photo preserved so badly. Your smile is too wide, your eyes are mere slits from the way your cheeks were squishing up with joy, most of your makeup you’d started the night with has long since faded due to a multitude of activities. You don’t feel like anything special in this photo.
But Eddie had wanted it. He had deemed this moment in time of you as picture-worthy, had gone so far as to send it to himself so that he’d have this memory even if you deleted it from your phone.
Before you think too hard on it, you tap on that line of numbers and add a proper contact profile to it.
EDDIE. You keep the contact name simple, eager to get it out of the way as you move onto the next step. A contact photo. You don’t even have to ponder on it – in a flash, you’ve selected the picture of him with the croissant.
You’re back on the thread of messages – or, at least, the singular message – and don’t stop yourself as your thumbs begin to fly over your keyboard.
YOU: why were the almond croissants almost sold out?
To be fair, you didn’t even know if Eddie had his phone on him. That green message stares back at you for a few moments before you get your answer.
EDDIE: Excuse me?
He has his phone. You lift your head, looking at the closed door of the bathroom before glancing back down at your phone.
YOU: because everyone went NUTS over them.
You perk your ears and listen for any sign of life from down the hall. Anything. A scoff, a pitiful laugh, him calling you stupid aloud. You’ll take whatever he offers.
It takes a moment, and you truly have to strain to hear it, but you can hear the laugh that would better pass as a sigh.
EDDIE: Is that supposed to be a joke?
YOU: ‘supposed to be’. excuse me, it was definitely a joke. and a very good one, at that.
EDDIE: Debatable.
You find yourself smiling down at the phone. Your neck aches from the way you keep glancing up suddenly at the door, silently pleading for him to come back out. To come out and fight with you, come out and bicker with you, come out and ignore you. Anything, for him to leave the bathroom and do anything but keep that door shut between you two.
He doesn’t, so you send another bad joke.
YOU: what did the customer say when they looked at the croissant?
This time, he plays along.
EDDIE: I don't know, what?
YOU: what a BREADtaking sight.
This time, you hear a more proper scoff come from within the bathroom.
YOU: i heard that. don’t even try to tell me it wasn’t funny.
EDDIE: I’m not laughing because they’re funny. I’m laughing because they’re BAD.
YOU: bet you wouldn’t say that to my face.
Immediately, you discard the phone, facedown on the counter as you look up to the door with unbridled hope. He could always ignore the comment, choose to not respond and continue to sulk away from you. It’s entirely possible – but you pray to every star in the sky that that isn’t what he’s going to do.
Please come back out. Please, even if just to sit in silence with me.
Your prayers are answered.
Slowly, painfully slowly, you hear shuffling on the other side of the door and await for the click of the door unlocking. It never comes, though – the door was never locked in the first place. He opens it, and you realize that the entire time, you could have stormed into the small room with him and demanded that he not hide away.
But you didn’t. You gave him space, gave him patience, and it’s clear he knows this as he comes out.
His eyes are red. As if he’s been crying.
“Hi,” you meekly say, taking in his face past those red-rimmed eyes. The tip of his nose is a fading shade of pink, as if he’s been rubbing it incessantly, and he sniffs for good measure as he turns the bathroom light off and walks to where you are.
“Hi,” his voice is rough around the edges as he greets you back. He won’t look you in the eye once he’s within reach – his gaze remains downcast, and you catch him fiddling with a few of his rings.
You hadn’t considered what you would do if you got this far. In every carefully considered scenario, you’d assumed he’d shut you out. You never expected him to come straight to you, as if seeking out comfort from you, without you having to beg it of him.
His eyes catch the croissants on the counter, torn apart and lazily picked at. He’s about to open his mouth and say something about it, probably questioning what you had done to the poor pastry, but you don’t give him a chance. You’re quick to snatch up one of the pieces you’d been picking apart to snack on for yourself and hold it out to him. An olive branch, an offering – a reason for him to sit and stay for a while with you.
He takes it tentatively, finally looking you in your eye again as he takes a small bite. It’s nothing compared to the bite he had taken when you’d snapped the photo of him, mere crumbs compared to that mouthful.
“Did you just… massacre our croissants?” he questions, squinting his eyes down at the crime scene.
You shift your body jokingly, failing at blocking him from seeing the mess you made, “Absolutely not. I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
He almost cracks a grin, “Right. Of course. I must be imagining things.”
“Wanna hear another pun?” you blurt out, suddenly nervous as he continues to stand before you. You hate the incessant need inside of your chest that calls for you to comfort him, to make this all better for him.
“I feel like you’ll tell me one even if I say no,” he raises an eyebrow at you, “So, sure.”
“Why did the croissant go to the doctor?”
He hums, trying to peer over your shoulder again at the croissants you were badly hiding, “Let me guess. Is it because you tore it apart mercilessly?”
“No,” you scoff, reaching behind you to grab another piece to offer to him as well as one of your own, “It was because he was feeling crummy, dumb ass.”
A crack of a smile. It’s miniscule but there. It makes that terrible pun worth it, just to see him not looking quite as defeated is worth all the stars in the sky at this point for you.
You’d certainly been the reason for his unhappiness in the past, and you surely would be again at some point. It all feels so inevitable; just as he believes that he can only bring you misery, you can’t imagine yourself bringing him joy. A belief that strikes something in your chest, something albeit more painful than you’d care to admit, but it’s true. You’ve crossed a line, you’ve changed everything, but the past still remains.
You aren’t perfect. Neither is Eddie.
Heartbreak is imminent, but for this brief moment, you can make him smile. You don’t need to worry about the next time you’ll piss him off or upset him, you just need to focus on making that twitch on his lips more permanent.
“I meant what I said earlier, by the way,” you decide to rip off the bandaid as he moves as if to sit beside you. Quickly, your words make him freeze. A bad sign, but you push through, because he needs to hear these things, “You deserve good things, Eddie. Good people, good things- you just… you deserve those things in your life.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
He’s turning away from you. Turning and heading to the living room, walking away from you.
You don’t let him. In an instant, you get onto your feet and follow him, continuing despite him acting as if he’s finished with the conversation. You’re not.
“You’re a good person, Eddie,” you insist, reaching out for him before he makes it to the couch, “Don’t walk away from me.”
He spins easily in your grip. “Just because you say something, doesn’t make it true, sweetheart.”
He’s back to saying it like a curse. Like it’s a harmful title. As if it’s not a privilege to you and all your metaphors to hear that nickname fall from his lips.
Right before your eyes, his defenses are on the rise. Brick by brick, he’s slowly reforming those walls to separate the two of you. Instead of defeat, instead of acceptance, it just makes you angry.
“Stop doing that,” you say quietly, carefully, firmly.
“Stop doing what?”
“That. Pushing me away. Locking me out,” you tighten your hand on his bicep and watch the way his nostrils flare, “I fucking hate it.”
“Despite what you believe,” he takes a step closer to you, “Not everything I do is meant to piss you off.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, and we both know it,” you can feel his muscles tense beneath your touch.
This time, his smile that emerges is cold. But you can still see the rubbage left by his tears — pink water lines and a new puffiness around his eyes. His words and his sudden cool demeanor can’t hurt you when you see it for what it is.
“Clearly we both don’t know it,” he chastised you, “We are very rarely on the same page. This isn’t a damn exception. You don’t have to prove your point, it doesn’t matter.”
He’s a wounded animal, striking out. He’s letting Chrissy’s words get to him.
“You’re worth i-“
“Don’t,” One of his hands shoot out to grip your waist, “Don’t fucking say that. Please. Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”
He didn’t believe you.
“I meant it,” you whisper, anger shaking out of your grasp inch by inch as you realize that your words can’t break through to him, “I mean it. You’re worth it, to me, to St-“
“This isn’t about Steve,” he cuts you off, “It’s not about Steve, or Nancy, or Robin, or fucking Argyle. No need to play dumb anymore.”
It’s about you.
You both know it. For once, contradictory to what he’d just claimed, you’re both on the same page. And like he said, no need to play dumb.
“You’re worth it to me,” you say it with more confidence this time, “You’re a good person to me.”
“How can you say that?” he laughs out, void of amusement, “How can you say shit like that after everything we’ve been through?”
How can you not?
You only squeeze his bicep tighter, and he returns the action by gripping your hip harsher. “Because I mean it. I believe it. Whether you do or not.”
For a moment, the cracks in his armor expose themselves.
“You shouldn’t,” his voice should waver, “You shouldn’t believe those things, Y/N. You should hate me.”
“But I don’t,” And I never did.
“But you don’t,” he echoes.
You’ve done the opposite of what you had wanted. His smile is gone, that sadness creeping back up. You hate that. You don’t hate him — you hate that world of mourning behind his eyes, that defeat that brings his shoulders down and makes his grip on you falter. So you do the only thing you can think of to distract him. Make him forget.
“Make me hate you.”
His eyes widen briefly, “Excuse me?”
“Make me hate you,” you practically beg of him, “Show me why you’re such a bad person and I’ll let this go. I’ll drop the conversation, we can- Fuck, we can forget this entire morning happened. Make me hate you, Eddie, and I’ll stop reminding you that I don’t.”
His fingers curl back into you, slowly and gently, as his brows furrow. He’s considering what you’ve just said — more than that, you can see him trying to untangle all the hidden meanings behind it.
“And how do you suggest I do that?” his voice is low and calculated.
You shrug, stepping forward, letting your lips get even closer to his, “Not my problem. Just make me.”
The fingers are no longer gentle as he pulls you into him, finally catching onto the emphasis you place on those two little words.
Make me.
When his lips meet yours, they’re rough and brutal, taking greedily what they want from you. The only thing on your mind is making him forget. Make him forget, carry the load for him — they’re both more important than making him smile for now. Both these driving needs burn brighter in your chest because it’s clear that’s what he needs.
You’re willing to give him whatever he needs right now.
“You want me to make you hate me, baby?” he mumbled against your lip, practically drinking in the way you gasp as he starts to pull back, “Is that really what you want?”
It’s what you want. “Yes.”
And maybe you do too, when he leans back in to bite your lip. There will be another time for you to convince him with words that you find him to be worth it. Both hands from wrap around you and rough start to guide you back towards that fucking couch.
“Not the couch,” you suddenly protest, digging your heels into the carpet at the center of his living room, “Anywhere but the couch.”
And oh, the way he’s looking at you in that moment might be your new favorite thing. Your new favorite color is his eyes as they sparkle with a bit of life that had been missing since the coffee shops encounter. Your new favorite sound is the silence that encases the little breath he lets out. Your new favorite movie is watching him move in slow motion as his eyes dart behind you, towards the door to his balcony, before his lips finally curl up with a hint of the genuine warmth that had been hidden behind his walls.
“Anywhere?” he teases, beginning to walk you backwards.
You nod, grinning right back at him.
“I think I have an idea.”
If you had known twenty one hours ago that Eddie Munson, your sworn enemy, would have you out on his public balcony and on your knees for him in only a matter of time, past you would have….
Well, you don’t really care what past you would have done or thought anymore. You’re making him forget, yes, all while making yourself forget. You don’t care what you, twenty one hours ago, would or wouldn’t do as you let the past slip through your fingers so eagerly. All you can focus on is the dig of concrete against your knees, the way Eddie’s hands grip the railing as he leans against it, and the way the early afternoon sun forms a halo around him as you look up through fluttering lashes.
You just want to make him feel good. Every action is intentional, doing everything in your power to erase whatever storming thoughts had been haunting him so cruelly since Chrissy had so carelessly said what she had. You want to make him feel worthy. You want to make him feel loved.
Loved. You certainly didn’t love him — you couldn’t possibly, could you? He wouldn’t let you. You wouldn’t let yourself. But for now, you could play pretend; you could worship his body, drag his shirt out of the way and place playful kisses across his hips, and you could pretend that only this moment exists.
“You wanna know what makes me such a bad person?” he sighs out as you let your teeth graze his skin, shoulders rolling to shake off that shiver you elicit from him, “This. The fact that this is all I can fucking think about.”
“Hm,” you can only hum in response, nails taking over the denim of the jeans he currently wore. You walk your fingers up his thighs, moving closer and closer to his zipper. Your mouth is nearly watering at the prospect of worshiping him.
And the fact that any neighbor could walk out at any given moment and catch the two of you. You should probably insist on it being fast, on him being quiet, but the thought sends a thrill through the pit of your stomach. Your thighs clench and your cunt aches at the thought of being caught.
You want to do more than make him bite back mere moans of your name. You want to make him scream.
Suddenly, a hand tangles into the roots of your hair, pulling back and making you focus on him again.
“Eyes on me,” he instructs. Once you focus on him and only him, he continues, loosening his grip and letting those fingertips rub at your scalp soothingly, “You know why you should hate me? For all the nights I pictured this.”
“Yeah?” you smile innocently, playing along. He can talk all he wants, you know once you get your mouth on him, he’ll be lucky to remember his own name. “How many nights, hm? Tell me all about them, pretty boy.”
You catch the wobble in his knees, the way his breathing picks up, the brilliant shade of ivory his knuckles stretch to. You lean back on your haunches, and the hand in your hair slips as he glowers down at you.
“What are you-”
“Take off your shirt,” you calmly command.
“Excuse me?”
“Your shirt. I want it off.”
His hand that was once tangled against your scalp now comes down to your face, movement slow but not hesitant as he pinches your chin. His thumb tugs on your bottom lip, and you let out, even making a show of letting your tongue peek out to tap at it. “And who said you were calling the shots?”
“I did,” you put it simply, completely removing your hands from him now, “Take off the shirt, or I’ll leave you out here with blue balls.”
You close your lips around the end of his thumb and his knuckles dig in deeper to the skin below your chin as you suck subtly. He chuckles, but you can hear just how breathless he goes at the small action, even as he keeps up the act with a hard press of his thumb on your lower lip. Your mouth hangs open for him, waiting patiently for his next move.
A game of chess, an exchange of power, a fight for dominance. All the lines of who is and isn’t in control are blurred.
“Have you always been so mean, baby?” he taunts, trailing what spit you’d left behind on his thumb along your lip.
His movement stops when your lips spread into a provocative smile, “I learned from the best, didn’t I?”
The retort had potential to backfire. You wait for smoke and glory, for him to pull away from you further. He’d slam down a brick right in front of your face, lay the mortar to leave you high and dry. He’d push you away, and you’d have to retreat, tail tucked between your legs in the shame of trying when it came to him.
No smoke, no glory. He secedes, but makes no move to add to his walls, only removing his hand from your face and taking off the shirt. Just as you had told him to.
“Better?” he asks as he makes a show of tossing the shirt to the other side of the balcony. It could have even flown over the railing, for all you paid attention to the scrap of clothing. Maybe some innocent bystander is on the streets below, confused to all Hell as to why it’s raining obscure band t-shirts.
You’re just a bit too distracted to consider that right now.
With Eddie’s torso revealed, all words seem to evade you. You catch the sweat beginning to gather across his sternum, watching the way he’s flushing beneath your gaze, reveling in the pink chest exposed to you as the blush crawls wider. Instantly, your original purpose is forgotten, the primal urge to pepper kisses and bites alike across his skin almost lifting you up off your sore knees. You want to leave bruises – you want to make him scream, you want to mark him up, you want to make him feel worthy.
You stay on your knees, but compromise with all your wants as you lift up and stretch a bit. Your lips start their trail a bit lower than you (or Eddie) would have liked, taking their time to get familiar with the spanse of his rib cage first. You don’t nip with teeth, not yet. Just chaste kisses, lining each bone you can hardly feel residing beneath the skin, feeling his lungs expanding against your affection. Your tongue swipes alongside one of his side tattoos, a large and detailed dragon you hadn’t paid much mind to before. Every time you’d seen him shirtless, you’d been a bit distracted.
Not now. Now, you’re focused, determined to learn every curve and dip there is to explore on Eddie. You want to know him better than the back of your hands, memorize him more intricately than your own palms. After all, in order to worship a deity, you must know them.
You return back to the center line of his abdomen, kisses chasing after one another, even taking the time to suck his skin between your teeth but never bite down. You pause once your lips rest right beneath his navel, the tip of your nose brushing that rough patch of hair that leads down to your end destination. Your hands reach for his belt, toying with the buckle.
Through heavy lashes, you look up at him, staring down at you in awe, “You know, you’re not doing a very good job at making me hate you, pretty boy. Think I might just have to worship you instead.”
A deity of your own making. A deity for your own taking.
With skill, your hands undo the buckle effortlessly. You unbutton and unzip his jeans as if you’ve done this part a million times, as if you’d spent every single Sunday of the last year right here and doing exactly this. On your knees, worshiping him. This balcony, for all its exposure, certainly knows how to serve as a holy place.
He opens his mouth to respond, but you’re impatient. You still haven’t left him speechless, meaning you still hadn’t made your point, clearly.
His jeans hang loosely as they creep down his thighs, abandoned for a moment as you occupy your mouth against his hips. The hips you once thought would look so pretty properly decorated. You decide you were wrong – they don’t need ink burying into the skin, they need your teeth digging in.
You cover that skin with mirroring images of bursts of purple and pink, flowering bruises that you take your time to mark onto him. With each suck and bite, Eddie rolls his hips into you, head leaned back and throat straining with each moan he swallows down.
With the last hickey finished, you finally lean back, proud of your masterpiece as Eddie whimpers above you. Blooms in the shape of your lips mingle with faint and quickly fading teeth marks.
“Fuck,” he gasps out when your fingertip stops trailing over your markings and comes down to apply the softest pressure over the straining bulge in his boxers.
“What was it that you said earlier?” your finger traces over where you know a vein is – you know it because you’ve felt it, been driven insane by it – before circling around the wet patch now forming. He’s desperate, hips bucking again and a moan finally escaping. You think he’s bitten his lips hard enough in an attempt at self-restraint that they might be bleeding, “You said I’m not calling the shots, right?”
“You’re not,” he pathetically grits out, hands forming tighter fists on metal railing, as if the moment he lets go of it they’ll find their way home to you.
You lean forward, breath washing over his crotch before you place a feathery kiss to his clothed tip, “I’m not?”
You are. You both know you are. A constant battle of control, an ever-growing fight for dominance.
He lets out something crossed between a sigh of relief and a whine of protest when you remove your lips and hand from him completely, only to let out a sharp yelp when your finger curls into the waistband of his boxers and pulls back the elastic, letting it snap back into place sharply.
“Say I am,” you barter, “Say I’m in control right now, and I’ll put my money where my mouth is.”
You don’t expect him to break so easily. You’ve underestimated just how tightly you’ve caught him beneath your thumb.
“You’re in control,” he gasps out, head hanging low to meet your gaze fully, “You’re in complete and utter fucking control of me. You’re calling all the shots, baby. You always are.”
He didn’t have to sweeten it up with baby, but it spurs you on.
You shove his boxers down, watching his cock spring out for the taking. And you do as you promised; you put your money where your mouth is.
You start softly, taking your time as you gingerly suck on his pretty pink tip as you had his thumb. Hardly hollowing your cheeks, letting your tongue circle his slit to gather up the precum. You let the taste of him completely cover your tongue, even hum in satisfaction when he lets out a loud groan. It motivates you, feeds your fervor as you let his tip fall from your mouth and trail the tip of your tongue down the underside of his cock. That vein you’d traced with your fingertip, yours for the taking, covered in a faint line of saliva as you let it rest on your forehead and graze your lips against his ballsack.
He can’t hide his shiver, even as his fist flies to his mouth to bite down on.
“Have I ever told you how cute you are?” you say low enough for just him. You can hear the sounds of traffic, a dog barking, birds singing — all reminders of the outside world and the looming threat of being caught. Warmth floods you again at the reminder of that threat, thighs clenching closer together in a desperate search of friction, “Just falling apart for me, acting so tough for so long until I got you alone.”
He whimpers your name. It’s the prettiest sound you’ve ever heard.
You wrap your lips around the sensitive skin, sucking and pecking away on one side before moving to the next. His reaction throttles your movements. When his hand loses the fight of resistance, coming down to the back of your head, you laugh breathlessly against the now wet skin.
“Let me make you feel just how worthy you are to me,” you praise, pulling back finally, letting your nose brush against his sack as you do so. The hand that was once merely resting now tangles up in your hair — a warning.
You let the velvet skin of his cock drag down your cheek as each movement is deliberate, taking your time and in no rush. You want to savor him like this. Imprint him to memory.
You want to make him forget while making yourself remember.
You want to remember the way his hand flexes at the base of your skull when you finally kiss his tip once more, remember the way his abdomen tenses as you sink him further into your mouth. You want to remember every little sound that escapes him as he hits the back of your throat, as you constrict around him, as you moan around his base and the vibrations have him slipping out of control.
Your nails dig into his thighs to balance yourself, eyes watering as you look up at him. One subtle nod. He doesn’t need more than that.
Your jaw goes slack, trying to steady your breathing through your nose as you let him take control. His hips thrust at their own pace, gentle enough that he only grazes the back of your throat rather than bruise it. The issue is you want him to bruise it. You want him to mark you from the inside out. Until there’s no part of you left untouched by him.
You gag again, and he slows. Your fingers that grip his thighs immediately tap against him, and he mistakes it as a signal to pull back completely before you chase after him, pressing him onto your tongue until your lips are snug around his cock a mere inch from the base. Your nose is grazing those pubes in the dead center of all your love marks. Shapes of semi-permanent scars that whisper, you’re worth it to me. I want this. I want you.
The last thing on his mind was Chrissy Cunningham and her words alluding to him not being worth it.
You make sure of it when you finally release him from your mouth and begin to pump with an eager fist, ducking down and returning to pay attention to his balls once more. You nuzzle the soft skin, let the tips of your canines graze them before you suck them onto your tongue as you’d done his cock. He’s no longer containing his moans – they flow freely along with curse words, chants of your name, sounds you’d love to capture and play on repeat until the end of your days.
“Oh my God,” he groans out particularly loudly, “Fuck, baby. J-Just like that, please- Fuck. You’re doing so good for me. Such a good girl, just for me.”
Your hand is still wrapped around him, slowly coming up to squeeze hard around the tip as you whisper up to him, “Only for you.”
“Yeah? Only for me?”
You don’t know how to explain to him that it’s true: you’re only ever that mean for him, you’re only ever this eager for him, you’re only ever this desperate for him.
You don’t answer him with words. There are none. Instead, you take him back in your mouth, and you solely focus on bringing your deity to climax. The man you were worshiping, the man who was worth the ache in your knees that surely told you they would be left bruised, if not skinned.
“Is it just like you imagined?” you question as you break your lips off him. He’s close, leaking precum excessively and entire body taut, “Was it worth it? To picture this, to want this so badly?”
He almost can’t answer you, but somehow manages between pants, “It was. It is. You’re- fuck, you’re worth it.”
“Good,” you drop your hand from him, leaving him right on the edge as you rest both sticky palms on the tops of your thighs. You look up at him with relinquished control – the perfect image of submission, for him. “Then you get it. When I say you’re worth it, you get it.”
He’s clearly still reeling from you bringing him so close only to leave him hanging, teetering on a cliff as he stares you down.
His chest heaves as he questions, “What was it you wanted me to do earlier?” A deceiving hand comes down, tucking any baby hairs behind your ear and cradling the side of your face. One moment, his thumb is stroking a soft arch beneath your eye, the next that hand is pulling you up, “Make you?”
You know that if you hadn’t been so eager to follow his touch, you’d still be on your knees. Even as you watch him take the reins, you know you will always call the shots – just like he had said.
“You really think you can make me hate you?” you whisper once you’re standing tall in front of him, leaning your cheek into his touch.
“I shouldn’t have to make you hate me,” he corrects, the thumb back to gentle strokes, loosening the touch to be more tender once again, “You should already hate me.”
“Why?”
He flips positions immediately, your lower back now curving into the railing as he presses himself up against you, his achingly hard cock between your bodies, “Because of this. Because I always want you on your knees for me. Because of all the fucking filth I want to do to you. I want to bend you over, right here, and take you where anyone could see. I want to have you screaming my name loud enough that every single person on the streets of this city hears you.”
With each word, a knot ties inside of you, desperate for release.
“Because you’re fucking right,” he leans down, lips going straight for your neck, not looking you in the eyes, “All it fucking took was for you to get me alone for one night, and now? I’ll never get enough of you, I’ll never get clean of you,” he takes a deep breath, and suddenly, his lips latch onto you, sucking the skin between his teeth and biting hard. You can’t stop your fingers from latching onto his curls, tugging hard, body rolling into his. It hurts, it stings, you need more, “Everything changes. And that includes me.”
His face finally leaves the crook of your neck, pulling back to look you in your eyes. Doe brown eyes search yours, wide and honest and pleading. You let everything else melt away; for a moment, it’s only him and only you. The tension, the last twenty one hours, the last year — you let it disintegrate and focus on him.
It never mattered if everything changed.
It only matters that he’s changed, irreversibly, and so are you.
“How can I hate you for those things?” you press into him again, this time less desperate and more consciously, “Do it.”
“Do what?”
“All of it,” you trail a hand up his chest, “Every single thing you just said. Fucking- Do them. Bend me over, make me scream, change me,” your voice breaks, shaking with anticipation and need.
It’s all the encouragement he needs.
Every single thing he wanted, he craved, he does. A flurry of him properly discarding his jeans as he unbuttons yours to shove them down, spinning you and shoving you hard enough into the railing that it digs into your abdomen and leaves you breathless. You’re hardly aware of the way you step out of your pants and kick them to the side, looking out to the city skyline but not seeing it. It’s all a blur as you focus on the way your shirt rides up and he grabs your hips, bruising you finally as you have desperately needed.
You wanted to be left haunted by the end of these last few hours. You wanted to see him every time you looked in the mirror for the next week, to remember the map of where his body molded to yours. You want to dream of the way he stretches you as your underwear is ripped to the side. You want to be followed by the sounds of his skin slapping against yours as he snaps forward with intention.
Changing you. He has no idea that he’s already ripped you open from the inside out, has already rewired your entire chest and set flames to your brain.
Everything changes, and sometimes, everything is only two people. Just you. Just him. New versions that would have never met had it not been for this stupid fucking bet.
“Eddie,” you nearly sob, nearly choke on, his name burning in your throat like kindling embers.
His hand walks up your spine, trailing wildfire even with a layer of cotton between you two. Burning and singing away all you’d assumed for far too long. When he reaches the nape of your neck, he takes care in wrapping your hair around his wrist, tugging back hard and forcing you to stand from where the railing had been bending you in two.
“Say it again,” his lips brush you ear with every gasping breathing, timing with the way his cock is sliding in and out of your warmth, “Say it louder.”
“Fu-“ you start to moan, cut off by him pulling even harder on your hair, making his point so that you cry out, “Eddie!”
He thrusts harder. You swear you could feel him in your throat.
“Scream for me, baby,” an arm wraps around your torso, firm and solid for you to cling to rather than the warming metal of the railing, “Tell them who’s making you feel so good. Let them know. Be a good girl.”
Even when he claims to have control, it’s your actions, your reactions, that call the shots.
It’s the echo of your voice that spurs him on as you chant his name over and over, as if he were your only God. Primal worship dripping from every syllable. It’s the tremble in your thighs that has him pressing deeper into you, chest glued to your back as if he could never get you close enough. It’s the clench of your cunt around him, a vice that sucks him in as you drag him closer to the high he’s been dizzily chasing since you first dropped to your knees in front of him.
It’s you. You’ve changed him, as he’s changed you.
He pulls your hair until you rest the back of your head against his shoulder, back arching and feet still spread as he only maintains his quick and brutal pace, leaning down to whisper in your ear one last time.
“You know the real reason why you should hate me?” he grits out between to particularly forceful thrusts, “It’s not just because I don’t deserve you. It’s because I’ve wanted you for so long,” you’re right on the edge, fluttering around his cock as his movements stutter. A tell tale sign. “I- fuck, fuck. It’s- God, I’ve loved you for so long, and I’ll never be fucking worthy.”
You shatter around him in waves. Your entire body tenses as the words dig claws into you, piercing through vines and blooms. His body stills, warmth flooding you deep within as you continue to see stars. You can’t make a single sound, fingerprints surely left behind on where you clasp onto his forearm.
I’ve loved you for so long, and I’ll never be fucking worthy.
When the waves recede, when the high has passed its peak, you both freeze. Your body tensed in his hold, struggling to process what he’d just said.
Loved you.
He’s frozen in place, scrambling to figure out how to undo the damage just done.
I’ve loved you for so long.
He slips out of you, his spent dripping down your thighs. His forearm drops from you. Your hands don’t even try to stop him.
I’ll never be fucking worthy.
You should be worried of neighbors coming out to see the two of you on his balcony. If not worried, you should be embarrassed, or aching at the thought once again. Anything. You should feel something.
You turn slowly to him, entirely numb as you catch his rueful expression.
Loved you. He loved you.
His regret turns to pain as you whisper, “What did you just say?”
₊˚ପ⊹ summary: reader asks miguel to accompany her to a bar where they have a few drinks
₊˚ପ⊹ relationship: miguel x fem!reader
₊˚ପ⊹ warnings: miguel is a little mean? spanish-dict spanish
₊˚ପ⊹ wc: 1.2k
tapping away at his keys, miguel's eyes were glued to his monitors. he can't quite remember how long he had been at the office but it must have been a period as his office space showed cups of coffee sprawled everywhere with takeaway food at the foot of his seat given by a certain someone.
"whos there?" he snarled as his ears picked up on a person entering his premises.
"whoops, you caught me again!" you exclaimed as you gingerly walked closer to the center of his office.
"wonder how you always know im here--" you trail as you look at the mess that's accumulated while you've been out sick for a few days.
he grunts as he continues typing away on his keyboard every now and then scribbling a couple of notes along the way.
you sit there quietly for a few minutes by his side before boredom overtakes you and you pop the question you've been waiting to ask since you've returned to work.
"wanna go to the bar? might help you cool down and take a break," you question as you glance at some of the papers near you.
miguel stops whatever he's doing for a brief moment and questions you.
"and why would i do that?"
you give him a light chuckle before replying.
"c'mon, don't you wanna live a little, for all i know, im your only friend!"
miguel chokes a little hearing your reply.
"since when were we, friends?"
"since joining alchemex! you know we are the only ones who are similar in age, everyone else are a bunch of oldies."
you scoff as you get ready to leave as you realize the curly-haired man wasn't going to budge.
miguel observes you for a second as he thinks about what you said. you two were the youngest at alchemex. although he could care less for his peers as he joined at a young age, he forgot that there were still other people out there who wished to become all buddy-buddy with their coworkers.
just as you were about to exit the isolated office, you hear a loud sigh followed by a string of curses in spanish.
"okay, but only this once, and you're paying for the drinks."
you swing around to face the voice and beam at him.
"knew you couldn't resist a good drink after work! im cool with covering the cost, meet you in the lobby!"
miguel watches your frame as it skips out the doors and he places a hand on his face realizing what his words just caused.
"ay, dios mío"
the two of you end up going to a bar nearby the head-quarters of alchemex and settle down, for all miguel knew, this was going to be a long night.
after getting the first round of your drinks, the tension in the air lowers as the two of you sit quietly in the corner.
you swirl your drink as you hold it in your hands and peer at the man next to you who seemed to have barely touched his glass.
"not much of a drinker?"
he frowns as he nods his head and then sticks his hand into the basket of fries, opting to munch on those rather than sipping on the drink he had ordered.
you chuckle as you stare at his appearance in front of you. you had really done it now, you finally got the man you've had a massive crush on to come out with you and all the two of you are doing is just sitting there doing nothing.
miguel sighs as he looks at the time, he really shouldn't be out doing this as the head of human genetics but here he was, dragged along to your antics and for whatever reason he agreed as soon as he heard your reasoning, it gave him a fuzzy feeling hearing you call him your friend.
"i should go"
not wanting for this moment to end you hold onto his arm and pulled him down which was surprisingly harder than you expected and declared.
"not before we get drunk tonight!"
in the end, the only one who got drunk was you, miguel groaned as he held your body tight to his as he swang from building to building in search of your apartment that you had drunkenly given directions to.
eventually, he finds it and opens the window to your apartment and sets you down on the, couch and goes to fill a glass of water for you.
when he comes back he sees you've sat up, but your face looks a little weird, almost like you were going to throw up on him.
"no puedo mas, no puedo mas, no puedo mas."
just like it couldn't get any worse, miguel was there in your apartment, cleaning up your puke that had splattered everywhere on the floor to his suit.
after the mess, he leaned down to where you lay looking much better than before, and watched you quietly as you squirmed around in your slumber.
just as he was leaving, he felt a small tug at his sleeve and a faint whisper.
"thank you mig-- always knew you were a huge softie underneath that mean-looking demeanor, you always have a way of tugging at my heartstrings."
miguel's eyes fix on your figure once more, mouth agape as things began to click. he didn't have many friends but one thing for sure is that he knew that your friendly behavior was not just you being friendly. but the favors you had done never had any ill intentions therefore he never questioned them.
all the times you came by and gave him food to make sure he didn't starve-- even as going as far as to give him empanadas from his favorite restaurant that he absentmindedly said in the middle of a haze.
that wasn't the weirdest part about the situation though, he didn't find it bizarre that you felt this way, in fact, he felt a sense of relief, almost like he felt the same.
he groaned as his mind was all over the place and as he was sinking further into his thoughts he was reminded of where he was by the sudden sounds you made.
he was still a little shaken up but he felt his mouth curve up before he exited your home through the window.
you woke up aching everywhere as you flip around until you eventually find your phone.
you examine your notifications to see one in particular that catches your eye.
"miguel o'hara.."
you whisper as you slide open the message that had been sent at the crack of dawn.
*hope you slept well, you were right about the whole decompressing thing, i liked it a lot, so how about going to a cafe to talk this time, for real, it's a date.*
you had to have reread the message over ten times before the memories flooded back into your mind of your drunkard form the night prior.
you screamed into your pillow, feeling the heat catch up to your face as the only thing that filled your mind was how embarrassed you were.
on the other hand, miguel checked his phone as soon as he heard the chime go off and chuckled as he saw your reply, it was a cute emoticon.
"looks like someone is in love"
"cállate lyla."
₊˚ପ⊹ a/n: so sorry if this was dragged out, i had no idea what to do after the bar part so it may seem a little ooc for miguel the farther it goes.
Reader having first kiss be the"Spider-Man kiss" from Miguel
─ cloud nine .ᐟ
★ pairing: miguel o'hara x fem!reader
★ summary: convincing miguel to do the spiderman kiss with you.
★ warnings: none just fluff.
★ notes: i changed up the request a bit, i hope that's okay!
"You want me to do what?"
"Just hang upside down and kiss me."
"Absolutely not."
"But whyy?" Ever since you heard about the "spiderman kiss" you desperately wanted to try it with your lover, but convincing him to do it was proving to be hard.
"Because it's stupid." He huffes, rolling his eyes. Your puppy dog eyes aren't going to work this time.
"Why do you hate fun?" You pout marching over to him. You secure your arms around his waist, hugging him from behind.
"I don't hate fun. Let's just get back to work, okay?" Miguel says, gently trying to free himself from your grasp.
You in response grip him even tighter. "Oh, come on, just once. Please papi?"
He thought about it for a second before sighing, "Just once, right?" He turns around to look at you.
You could convince him to do anything.
"YES! I mean yes. Just once."
He softly chuckles at your enthusiasm, placing a small kiss onto your forehead.
"Come on, hurry up." You huff impatiently.
"Ok, mami, calm down." In a flash, he's hanging upside down in front of you.
"Are you ready?" You step closer to him placing both hands on his cheeks.
"I mean, I don't - " Before he had a chance to change his mind, you pull him towards you and smash your lips onto his.
He froze for a second before kissing you back with the same amount of passion. The way your hands were cupping his face made him almost lose his grip and fall, the softness of it all made him feel fuzzy, small moments like these are rare for him.
After a few moments you slowly pull back and see the dazed expression on Miguel's face. His eyes were closed as he slowly tried to catch his breath.
"So, did you enjoy it?" You say, gently running a finger over his lips.
He says nothing for a minute before bashfully mumbling, "Can we do it once again, mama?"
summary: even as the crowds at his shows get bigger and bigger, eddie munson still has you, his very best friend. or, (for my swifties) eddie munson is your dorothea.
word count: 8.6k
warnings: fluff, a little angst, childhood best friends to lovers (sort of), weed and smoking, librarian!reader, first kiss, so many uses of the words “i miss you,” and some idiots in love !!!
a/n: hiiiii!!! this one took so long but i really love rockstar!eddie and i hope you do too!!! this is inspired by tis the damn season and especially dorothea by taylor swift <3 thank you to my love @inkluvs for encouraging me on this one ily!!!
♫♩♪♬
It’s surreal to watch someone close to you grow so much bigger than the town you live in.
To know that the person you see on the news, at award shows on your TV screen, is the same one who used to push you on the swings at the playground, who used to walk with you to and from school, who grew up beside you, closer than anyone else ever could have.
Closer than anyone ever would, still.
To most people, he’s Eddie Munson, lead singer and guitarist of Corroded Coffin. To you, he’s Eddie, the best friend you’ve ever had.
You can go back years and years, and Eddie’s woven into your life for so much of it. So is his music. You can pick out the points: watching Corroded Coffin play for the first time in middle school, watching their first gig at the Hideout, being in the front row for it all wearing the widest smile, having the loudest cheers.
Even the late night phone calls you’d get when he’d be stuck on lyrics, when he wanted someone’s opinion and chose to dial your number instead of his bandmates’.
(“Hello?”
“I can’t get this line to sound right.”
“Let’s hear it, Munson.”)
You’re often in disbelief of where he is now. Not because you ever doubted him, but because even after so long, it’s strange not to see him every day. You’re insanely proud of him, but that doesn’t mean you don’t miss him.
Because you do. You miss him so much.
A box sits on the top shelf of your closet, one filled with newspaper and magazine clippings, articles about the band’s success, positive reviews about their shows and their albums. Things to show that Eddie’s dream came true, and that’s a rare thing.
There’s only one kind of tabloid you choose not to keep: the ones booming with rumors you selfishly hope aren’t true.
‘Lead singer of Corroded Coffin has a new spark? Read more to find out who’s caught famous bad boy Eddie Munson’s eye.’
You see him constantly in pictures, through a screen, but you only really ever see him on holidays, when he’s able to come home. When he comes bursting back into your life in vibrant fireworks with his stupid, pretty smile and stupid, shining brown eyes. When he comes back only to leave all over again.
You only have yourself to blame, really, for letting it tear you up. Because more than anything, you’re happy for him, so happy you could never express it properly, but still, there’s an ache in you when he crosses your mind, when the feelings linger.
Life in Hawkins for you consists of working at the library, reading your days and thoughts away, hanging out with the gang when you’re up to it, and that’s about it.
Eddie always knows where to find you when he does come home, usually barging into the library with his arms open for a hug, one you rush into easily. You always spend the couple days he has in Hawkins together, being the you and him you’ve been since you were kids. But the lingering reminder doesn’t fade, the reminder of him having to leave looming over you like a storm cloud.
Eddie Munson comes home sporadically, unknowingly taking your heart with him wherever he goes. And when his inevitable departure takes place, you’re forced to regrow what’s missing from your chest. Every single time.
-
Besides his uncle Wayne, who could only ever see him as a troublemaking kid, you’re the only person who’s never treated Eddie any differently.
Not in high school when he was labeled a freak, not even when the fame rose so suddenly it felt like a tidal wave. You kept him afloat. You keep him afloat.
He knows he should call more often, he knows that even if the phone works both ways, you really don’t have a way of keeping track of which hotel he’s in, which state, which country, even. He knows that falls on him.
Your phone number’s burned into Eddie’s memory. He could never forget it, and still, he can’t seem to find the time to dial it. He’ll get called away, or he’ll just be getting back from a show and barely have the energy to shower before getting in bed. Worse, he’ll get the panicked sense that you won’t pick up anymore.
At least he’s never missed your birthday. That, he’ll always make time for, usually phoning you at the same time that a bouquet of flowers arrives at your door. And somehow, even when he’s away, you don’t miss his birthday, either.
Eddie’s sitting on the small couch in his dressing room, waiting to go on stage, thinking of you the way he often does.
He wonders if you think of him, too. If you miss him or if you’re angry that he’s gone so often, that he can barely even manage a fucking phone call. Though, you were never the type to be angry. Never with him, at least.
He wants to hear your voice, wants to hear you tell him ‘good luck’ before going on stage like you used to. He peeks at the table next to the couch. Eddie’s not sure how much time he has before he needs to go, but he figures it’s worth a try.
Just as he’s about to pick up the phone in his dressing room, there’s a knock on the door.
“Munson! You’re on in five!”
He’ll call you later, then.
-
“Beginning descent to the Indianapolis International Airport.”
The muffled sound through the airplane’s speakers is followed by the ding of the seatbelt signs being turned on. Eddie shifts in his seat to look out the window. He’s got his own little cubicle in first class, and though this is how he always flies now (other than when he finds himself on a private jet, which is even more unbelievable), he’s still not used to it.
He’s itching to get out of this seat, then he remembers that he’s still got the trek through the airport and the drive back to Hawkins. It’ll be worth it to see Wayne, who he doesn’t see nearly as often as he should, and get his classic hug with a slap on his shoulder.
It’ll be worth it to see you, who makes Hawkins feel more like home. You, who reminds him of the person he’s always been, the parts that get lost on the road. You, who hugs him tighter than anyone else ever has.
His hands clench into fits in his lap.
As soon as Eddie steps off the plane, his security team finds him. He’d assured them that he’d be fine, really, but this is how it is for him now. Through baggage claim and all the way to the car that’s waiting for him outside, security takes a step whenever he does.
Shutting the car door as he slides into the backseat, Eddie tips his head back and sighs.
The car ride feels shorter than usual, the city fading into trees and fields until the ‘Welcome to Hawkins’ sign comes into view. The gravel crunches under the car’s tires as it pulls into the trailer park. Wayne’s got enough to get a better place now, Eddie made sure of it, but he never did. He’d never admit it but Wayne’s sentimental, and the trailer houses too many memories to let go of it.
After all, it was home.
Stepping through the front door there’s the smell that he’d never noticed until he’d been gone for weeks at a time. The settled dust, the faint smoke of cigarettes, coffee, and the room spray Wayne inevitably uses to try and cover it all up.
Eddie drags his bags inside, waves to his driver, and shuts the door behind him.
Then, Wayne’s warm rasp, “my boy. Get in okay?”
He’s wrapped in his uncle’s classic hug quickly, the pats on his shoulder and all. Eddie closes his eyes and soaks it in, just for a second, “yeah. It was fine.”
“Good, good,” Wayne says, pulling back and grasping Eddie’s shoulders, getting a good look at him. “Take a shower.”
“Is that your way of telling me I look like shit?”
“Nah, that’s me telling you that you smell like airport, boy.”
“It’s great to see you, too,” Eddie says, smiling.
He and Wayne have the kind of relationship that time doesn’t really affect all that much. Whether Eddie’s away for a week or a month, or two, or three, they fall back into things like he’d never even left.
He knows Wayne’s probably lonely, probably hiding more than he could imagine, but he also knows that he loves him, and that’s always a good thing to know, to feel. Loved.
“Shut up, you know I missed you,” Wayne shakes Eddie’s shoulders and lets go, “now go wash up and you can tell me about your last show over some coffee, sound good?”
“Sounds good. I missed you too, Wayne.”
Eddie carries his bags into his room, leaving them open on the ground rather than unpacking. He’ll just have to pack them all over again, anyways.
Before long, the trailer’s small bathroom is filling with steam as Eddie steps into the shower, dropping his neck back and letting the water run over his shoulders, his back. He stands like that for a bit, simply letting the heat melt away at the tension in his muscles.
By the time he steps out, the mirror is completely fogged with steam, and Eddie wipes away at a section to look at himself. The bags under his eyes, the mess of his hair that he doesn’t bother taming, the small scratch on his chin from one of his rings. He shakes his head and heads into his room with his towel around his waist.
He throws on a pair of plaid pajama pants and a faded band tee, his hair soaking the back of it drop by drop.
In the kitchen, Wayne’s got two mugs of coffee sitting on the small table, a seat already pulled out for Eddie to take.
“Thanks.”
He nods, sipping from his mug as Eddie does the same.
In the silence, he can’t help but think of you, of how close he is to you now. Mere minutes away. He wonders what you’re doing, if you’re reading in bed after your shift, if you’d just showered like him, if you’re thinking of him, too.
“I saw her the other day,” Wayne says.
They both know he means you.
“How’s she doing?”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll ask her that when you see her tomorrow, but she seemed good.”
“How'd you know I’m gonna see her tomorrow?”
“Come on, kid. You go to the library the day after you get in every time and think I don’t notice?”
Eddie looks down at the mug in his hands, his face warm. It shouldn’t matter, shouldn’t have him feeling all shy and nervous, like he’d been caught, but it does.
“She misses you,” Wayne adds.
“She tell you that?”
“Doesn’t have to. I’ve known that girl since she was little and running after you on the playground. I can tell.”
Wayne has always said that you’re as good as family, after all. Eddie used to joke that his uncle liked you more than him, and you used to laugh and joke back that he was right.
Eddie’s suddenly very excited to sleep, only to get to tomorrow quicker.
“I miss her, too.”
“Yeah, kid. I know,” Wayne leaves it there, switching things over, “I saw you almost eat shit on TV the other day.”
“Come on!” Eddie groans. He’d tripped over a fucking wire on stage. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“It was still fuckin’ funny.”
“Of all the shows, you just had to tune in for that one.”
Wayne asks about the tour, about how Eddie’s liking it this time around, about whether or not there’s anything new he’s working on.
In return, Eddie asks about the mechanic’s, about whether or not Wayne’s back has been acting up (which earns him a light slap on the back of the head), about what’s changed in Hawkins since the last time he’d been home.
Even through the smiles he shares with his uncle, Eddie’s wondering how you’ll react when you see him tomorrow, picturing how it’ll feel to be near you again. He gets that feeling in his gut, the butterflies that are nerves and excitement and questions and feelings rolled into one.
He’s pretty sure he dreams about you, too.
-
Your shifts at the library are always long; full days of scanning and shelving books. You’re lucky to say that you actually like your job. The smell of worn pages, the peacefulness (save for when Dustin comes barging in with his stack of overdue books that you let him off the hook for every time), the interactions that are almost always short and sweet since it’s meant to be a quiet place.
Your eight or nine or however many hour days go by much quicker now than they did during your high school job at the grocery store, that’s for sure.
You’re pushing the put-back cart between shelves, humming a random song quietly as you place the books where they belong, sometimes pausing to straighten things out. It’s the middle of a weekday and you’re the only person in there anyway. That is, until the small bell on the front desk dings.
“Just a second!” You call, squeezing between the cart and the self beside it to walk over to the front desk. You think your heart stops altogether.
You’d recognize that head of hair anywhere, the dark, frizzy curls. Hell, you’d recognize that damn denim vest anywhere, even the stance of the person wearing it. “Eddie?”
He turns around at the sound of your voice, and something lifts from his chest when he sees you. A grin spreads wide on his face, splitting his cheeks and crinkling his eyes in the corners, “there she is.”
Usually, when he comes home, it’s on a holiday and you’re expecting him, watching the door and waiting for him to walk through it. This time, you had no idea he’d be coming home. It’s the best surprise you could get.
You’re practically running into his arms, and he wraps them around your waist easily, yours tossed around his shoulders. Your face is buried in his neck, breathing him in, making sure this is real. “What the hell are you doing here?”
His hands clutch at the fabric over your sides, his head twisting so he can place a kiss over your hair, “had a break from tour. Missed home.”
And sure, Eddie hadn’t really realized just how much he missed it until he came back, it’s crystal clear now, with you hugging him. He really, really missed home.
You want to say something stupid and emotional like it hasn’t felt as much like home until now, or I missed the sound of your voice and the smell of your shampoo, but that would probably reveal a little too much.
“Just home you missed or…” you tease, pulling back to look at his face, his brown eyes that sort of sparkle. Your hands stay on his shoulders, his on your waist.
“I missed Wayne, obviously,” Eddie replies, acting oblivious and smiling at the small furrow in your brow.
“Eddie!”
“Aw, come on.” He tugs you in for another hug, his cheek squished against the side of your head. “‘Course I missed you, trouble.”
Trouble. You never knew you could miss a single word so much.
Eddie started calling you ‘trouble’ when you were kids, sometime in middle school when you’d stolen a bunch of his mixtapes and only returned them weeks later, when he finally noticed. He’d snatched them out of your hands and muttered ‘you’re trouble’ and it just stuck.
“Thank you,” you say, laughing when Eddie pulls back frowning at you. “And I missed you, too. Duh.”
“Duh.” He mocks. He lets go of you fully but doesn’t go far, leaning an elbow against the desk, “you’re doing okay?”
“I’m good. Things don’t change all that much around here, you know that.”
“I’m not asking about around here, I’m asking ‘bout you.”
You tug at the hair tie on your wrist. “I’m fine, Eddie. Promise.”
He nods, and there’s a small lull in the conversation that pinches at your chest for some reason. The sort of silence that never used to be there when it came to you and Eddie, always filling it with conversation or letting it be comfortable. Now, there’s something like awkwardness stretching and it stings.
Because it shouldn’t be there, because he’s Eddie and you’re you and you’re best friends and that’s all there should be to it. But it isn’t. You’re the same people, but so much is different.
“You working late?” He asks.
“Until we close.”
“Care for some company?”
You tilt your head at him, “you really wanna hang around the library for the last four hours of my shift?”
“Sounds like fun to me. I’ll even push the cart for you, and you can tell me what I’ve missed while I was away.”
It’s funny that he thinks he’d ever have to convince you to spend time with him, when you’re practically pulling at any thread of him that you can, when you’re taking anything he has to give you. Two days, a week, a couple of phone calls.
It’s all better than not having him at all.
“Only if you tell me what I’ve missed, too. Like all the cool celebrities you’ve met.”
“Not as cool as you, trouble.” Eddie taps your nose, smiling at the way you scrunch it in response.
“Shut up and start pushing the cart, Munson.”
He stands straight and salutes, “yes ma’am.”
You’re still smiling when you shake your head, “idiot.”
Eddie really does spend the rest of the day with you, pushing the cart while you re-shelf books, sitting in the extra chair behind the counter while you file returns, ducking when someone else walks in.
He asks you about Robin and Steve, Dustin and Lucas, how the kids are finding school, whether Nancy’s been hired at a big paper yet. He asks you about your family, and most of all, about you.
He hangs onto every word you say. And not once do you say anything to make him feel bad for being away, if anything, you can’t stop telling him how proud you are, especially when he talks to you about what’s in the works.
“I always told you you’d make it, Munson.”
“Wouldn’t have done it without you, trouble.”
-
The next morning, you’re sitting across from him in the corner booth by the window at Benny’s for breakfast. The same way you did every Friday in high school, at the same table.
Whenever you wind up at Benny’s when Eddie’s away, you tend to avoid that booth. It’s pathetic. Like his absence is clearer than ever sitting there when he isn’t. When he’s not putting whipped cream on your nose or stealing food off your plate.
Now, it’s his presence that surrounds you, his smile and his laugh, his foot nudging yours under the table.
The menu is sticky under your fingertips where you hold it, faded from sunlight and discolored from coffee spills that stain the page. You don’t really need to be looking at it—after years of coming here, you’ve probably got the thing memorized—but you need the time to collect yourself. To remember that this is Eddie, and there’s nothing to be nervous about.
You need the time to stuff down that flutter in your gut and in your chest.
On the other side of the booth, Eddie takes your distraction as a chance to really look at you. The details he can’t seem to picture when he’s away like the flecks in your eyes or the exact shade of your lips.
He never realizes just how much he misses you until he’s home. Until he’s sitting across from you and listening to the sound of your voice clearly instead of through a crackling phone’s speaker, until he gets to see the way your eyes light up slightly when you laugh.
It sort of hits him all at once, and he’s thinking, God, I should call more often. I should visit more often.
After a couple of minutes, you look back at Eddie, “you know what you want?”
“I’ve been getting the same thing since high school, trouble. Don’t need the menu.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll go order,” you say, placing your menu back in the holder by the window.
When you start sliding your way out of the booth, Eddie places a hand over yours on the table, “I can get it.”
You look down at your hands, his skin on yours, like you’d expected to see something there. A spark, a burn scorching your skin in the best way.
“I know you can,” you say, smiling at him. “But it’s my treat, okay? I want to get it.”
Eddie always feels sort of guilty when he’s not buying, because he has more than enough money to take care of it, more than he knows what to do with. Sometimes (often), people expect him to pay, even. And just like you’d known how he was feeling, you shut it down with a flash of your smile.
You shift to squeeze his hand before getting up and heading over to the counter, leaning on your elbows as you wait your turn.
Still, Eddie’s looking at you, his hand in the same spot on the table.
He knows that, despite it not being a busy morning at Benny’s, people are looking at him, whispering the way they did even in school. Only now, they’re saying they can’t believe it, look at him now, instead of calling him a freak. And just like in school, having you around makes the talk bearable. Hell, it makes it disappear, if only for a little while.
When the waiter finally comes over to take your order, you send him a kind smile, rattling off yours and Eddie’s orders.
Eddie watches the entire interaction. He tells himself it’s because he doesn’t want to make eye contact with anyone else, that it’s because he’s just making sure you’re alright. It’s certainly not because of how pretty he thinks you look today, not because of how hard it is to keep his eyes off of you.
The waiter is a younger guy, probably around your age. Someone Eddie doesn’t know. He seems to tell you a joke because you laugh, bright and sunny, and Eddie suddenly wishes that Benny was the one taking orders.
Because he should be the one to make you laugh like that, to be on the receiving end of your grin and crinkled eyes. Because there’s this weight in his stomach that feels a little too much like jealousy. Because you’re his best friend and he fucking misses you.
Eddie looks down at his hands and twists his rings around and around until you come back, the old booth squeaking as you sit down.
“You okay?” You ask, always noticing his nervous habit of fiddling with his rings.
She’s my friend, he reminds himself. My best friend, that’s all.
“‘Course I am.”
“The guy at the counter, Dan, wanted me to tell you he’s a fan.”
He shakes his head, “I can't believe I have those. Especially in this town.”
“Excuse me? Your biggest fan is sitting right here, in this town, Munson.”
He probably thinks you’re joking with the way he chuckles, chest rumbling. But, you’re not. The shoebox full of clippings says enough, and you don’t think he’d ever let you live it down if he knew about it.
“She want an autograph?” He teases, the heaviness in his stomach melting away. Your biggest fan.
“In your chicken scratch? Yeah right.”
It’s not long before your food arrives, plates of waffles and fruit, sides of bacon and hashbrowns. Of course, you inevitably end up with whipped cream on your nose and food missing from your plate.
It’s your favorite kind of breakfast.
-
You’re sitting in the passenger seat of Eddie’s van—the same van he’s had since high school, that he refuses to replace—heading towards Steve’s place. It’s not unusual for either of you to be meeting up with the gang, but Eddie’s still nervous.
“Are you sure about this?” He asks you.
They don’t know he’s in town, and as sure as you are that they’ll be thrilled to see him, Eddie isn’t convinced. You place a hand on his shoulder and squeeze lightly as he drives.
“Everyone’s gonna be so happy to see you. Don’t you trust me?”
“‘Course I do,” he says easily, without thinking, “just haven’t seen anyone in a while, you know?”
“We all miss you, Eddie. It’ll be fun!”
Logically, he knows nobody’s gonna kick him out, or treat him any differently, but it doesn’t stop him from getting nervous. You wanted to surprise everyone, and how could he say no to you? So, here he is, gripping the steering wheel too tight and worrying too much.
Pulling into the driveway, he nods, “here we go.”
You hop out of the van before he has it shut off, but he catches up quickly. He follows you to the side gate of the house, watches you unlatch it and stroll into the yard. The sound of voices mingling hits his ears as you walk around the house and find your group of friends sitting around in lounge chairs.
“Look who I brought,” You announce.
Your shout is followed by eyes flicking towards you, then Eddie who stands beside you. Then, a chorus of his name, plus Argyle’s “rockstar!”
“Hey guys,” he says, waving shyly.
It’s odd to feel this way around these people that he’s known for years. Robin and Steve who’ve rented him way too many movies for free, Nancy and Johnathan who are probably why he graduated high school, and Argyle who was always his most loyal customer.
All of these memories and he feels a little too much like a stranger. At least he’s got you, who feels like one of the only sure things in his life. No matter how long goes by, you’re there, and he hopes you always will be.
“You want a drink?” Steve asks, leaning to reach into the cooler beside him.
“I’ll take one, thanks,” you say, catching the can Steve throws to you.
“I’m driving,” Eddie says, jingling his keys.
“Eddie Munson being responsible,” Robin teases, “they grow up so fast.”
And just like that, he feels a little better. These are his friends, and even though he’s not around all of the time, and even though he may not be as close to everyone anymore, they’ll still be his friends.
You sit down on the empty lounge chair and pat the space beside you for Eddie, sending him a smile that says both ‘told you so,’ in your snark he can practically hear, and ‘everything’s okay,’ in your kind way.
He plops down beside you.
“How’s everything going?” Johnathan asks him.
Not wanting all of the attention on him, Eddie keeps his answer short, “busy, but it’s a ton of fun.”
“Everything you ever dreamed of?” Robin adds.
“You could definitely say that.”
Though, Eddie has this strange feeling that he’s missing something whenever he’s gone. It’ll go away, but somehow, it always finds him again, when he’s debating on calling or not, when he’s hit with a memory of you in the front row at the Hideout when he’s on stage.
He looks over at you and finds you smiling softly at him, eyes fond. He can’t believe he’s the one you’re looking at like that.
Eddie blinks and turns back to the group, “how about you guys? How’re the jobs?”
The chatter picks up and surrounds him, but Eddie can’t stop thinking about the way you were looking at him just then. He’s never had someone look at him like that, like there’s nothing but affection there.
It’s platonic, he tells himself. She’s my best friend.
You feel happier now than you have in a while. Things feel more complete when Eddie’s around. Things feel right. It’s all of your favorite people with no empty chair, it’s falling back into a friendship that’s existed for years.
When conversations split off into smaller ones, you lean your head on his shoulder, and the words sort of slip out of you, “it’s really nice to have you here.”
His heart beats louder, he leans his head on top of yours, “it’s nice to be home.”
And it is. Eddie loves touring, he loves playing his music, and he loves his job, but at the end of the day, he’ll always be this boy from Hawkins, and he’ll always be happy to be home, to be with you.
Catching the moment, Argyle—always sharing his thoughts—says, “sick, you guys are finally together.”
You and Eddie both sit up, like you’d been caught doing something you shouldn’t, even when you’ve sat like that countless times before.
Everyone’s eyes seem to be on the both of you now, and you have a tiny panic inside. Have you really been that obvious with how you feel? Does Eddie know and he hasn’t said anything because he doesn’t want to hurt you?
You laugh awkwardly, “what?”
“Like, dating,” Argyle explains.
“Me and Eddie?”
He’d been frozen for a second there, surprised that Argyle thought that. Was he seeing something Eddie couldn’t? No, no way.
“Just friends, guys,” Eddie says. “Come on.”
You swallow, forcing out a word, “exactly.”
“They’ve always been like this,” Nancy says, which explains enough but also sort of nothing at all.
Just friends. It’s something you know, you remind yourself constantly. It’s all it’ll ever be, and still, hearing Eddie say it out loud has your stomach feeling heavy. Just friends, get over it.
Even as conversation picks up again, as you laugh with everyone, the two words play in your head over and over. Then, after saying your goodbyes, once you’re in the van with Eddie again, it fades, because if you can’t be in love with him, you can be his best friend, and you’d much rather have that than nothing at all.
Once he drops you off, Eddie thinks and thinks about what Argyle had said. He goes over memories, over how he feels around you, and it hits him like a huge punch to the gut.
He thinks he has feelings for you. Big, huge feelings.
-
It’s the same day, a different sky, the sun sunk behind the horizon to give way to a sky full of stars and a bright moon.
Eddie’s van is parked by Lover’s Lake, the back full of blankets where you both sit, the doors open to look at the sky and the way the moonlight reflects on the water.
There’s practically an indent in the ground in the spot he’s parked, the one that’s been your go-to for ages. From day picnics to nighttime smoke sessions, it’s another place on the list of the ones that are filled with memories of Eddie.
Beside you, he’s got a joint in hand, the flick of his lighter catching your ears over the crickets and the breeze. You watch him inhale, his chest expanding, the smoke slipping from his lips. You turn back to the water.
“Your turn,” he says, handing you the joint.
You grab it between your fingertips and bring it to your mouth, feeling the smoke trail down your throat, further, then you’re breathing it out, clearing your throat at the tickle.
“Out of practice?” Eddie teases at your small cough.
“My favorite weed dealer went out of business,” you say, nudging his shoulder with yours, “so, yeah.”
He takes the joint back from you, “you don’t smoke when I’m not around? You know Argyle’s gotta have some stock.”
“Oh, he definitely does. A little too exotic for my taste. Besides, he won’t give it to me for free.”
“Getting cheap, trouble?”
You shrug, shoulder to your cheek, and give him an innocent smile.
It feels easy, the joint being passed back and forth between sentences until it’s done and stubbed out, the flow of conversation, the comfort that’s there. It’s always been easy with him, even when it hurts a little.
Eddie’s got on his worn denim vest, still full of pins, and you tug at it, “think this thing has a permanent weed smell by now.”
“I think that’s just part of my natural scent,” he replies, playfully flipping his hair over his shoulder.
His curls graze your cheek—that’s how close you’re sitting, thighs touching—and you giggle. You’ve had so many nights just like this one with Eddie, and it feels like some kind of reward that you get to have them still, even when they’re far less regular now.
“Doesn’t this make you think of high school?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Eddie’s hand is on his knee, his pinky twitches, reaching for your leg, “hell, I’m even wearing the same clothes as in high school.”
“How does it feel like yesterday and also a lifetime ago?”
Eddie looks over at you, the warm glow of moonlight and stars on your skin, the way your sweater hangs off your shoulder, the shine in your eyes that’s part weed and part nostalgia.
“A lot’s changed since then,” he says. “I’m not a loser anymore.”
“You’re still my loser.”
How is it that even when you’re calling him a loser, the idea of being yours in any sense of the word is enough to have Eddie’s heart swell in his chest, a balloon floating up and up and he has to swallow to push it back down.
“Stop being cheesy,” he plays it off, ruffling your hair.
You shove his arm away, “I just miss you!”
Eddie looks at his arm, your hand still holding onto it, he follows your arm with his gaze until it lands on your face. He thinks you’re beautiful, the prettiest girl he’s ever seen and no groupie could change that.
“I miss you, too, trouble.”
Something shifts, the air growing thicker, a sort of understanding between the two of you. There’s something here, something that could be a disaster but could also be so, so good. Could be everything.
“No way you think about me when you’ve got crowds and fans and-“
“I think about you a lot, honey.”
Honey. He’s probably called you that before, but never like this. Never dripping sweet and sincere, never looking at you like he wants to do something you can’t even let yourself imagine in fear of being let down, of hoping too much.
Eddie’s hand shifts from his own leg to yours, thumb running back and forth, burning you even through the fabric of your pants.
“You do?”
“All the time. You’re my best friend.”
Right. Friend.
“You’re mine, too, Eddie.”
And suddenly you can feel his breath fan across your cheek, your lips. His face is close to yours and the hair that falls over his forehead tickles yours. Just a second ago he’d been saying the word ‘friend,’ and now it feels like he’s going to do something to contradict that.
Against all odds, he does.
Eddie couldn’t help himself. Maybe he’ll blame the weed, or maybe he won’t, but before he knows it he’s reaching up with the hand that isn’t on his leg to cup your cheek and tilt your head. And he’s kissing you.
He’s kissing you.
It’s so delicate, so much you’re afraid to even breathe, like it’ll break in an instant. Eddie’s fingers squeeze your leg, urge you to kiss him back and there’s no way that you wouldn’t. Not when his lips are actually on yours, not when he tastes like weed and mint gum and something perfect.
It could be seconds or minutes that you’re kissing, tilting your head even more to feel him, clutching his sleeve tightly. It never deepens, but it doesn’t have to, it says enough.
When you pull away, it’s not one or the other who does it, it’s natural, like it’s been rehearsed time and time again. Eddie leans his forehead against yours, his hand still on your cheek.
“Was that a bad idea?” He asks you, voice low and quiet.
“Maybe. I don’t know.” And you don’t, because there’s no way of knowing what’s gonna happen next, if things will be ruined, if this will fade away like it never happened, or, maybe, just maybe, if it’ll start something.
“Was it okay?”
“More than okay.”
You don’t talk about it that night, and you don’t want to just yet. You’re fine with enjoying the pink-tinted haze at least until tomorrow.
-
Eddie’s barely been gone for two days and you’re not sure what to do with yourself. After that night, neither of you brought it up, and as much as you wanted to, you couldn’t. You were scared. And anyway, it was probably just the weed for him.
You’d never kissed before. Sure, you’ve come close, faces inches apart when you’d share a bed, whispers away, but nothing ever happened. Until now.
Now, sitting on your bed, chin resting on your knees, you’re reeling from knowing what Eddie’s lips feel like and missing him all over again. Rebuilding that piece in your chest.
Somewhere else in the country, in the world, Eddie’s position isn’t so different from yours. He’s sitting on the edge of his hotel bed, forearms on his knees, head bent. He wants to call you, and he’s figuring out what he’ll say when he does.
He misses you every time he isn’t home, but it’s never felt like this. There’s never been this ache in his stomach that won’t go away because of it. Fuck, he misses you more than ever.
The last trip back to Hawkins was different than anything else, because he brought back these feelings with him and he keeps reaching up to press his fingertips to his lips, like the memory of your own lingers there.
Sure, he’s had silly, sticky thoughts like waking up with his arms around you after a nap and thinking he could wake up that way forever, but he’s always pushed them down. Now, it seems, he can’t, the images too buoyant to ignore, floating back up every time.
Sucking in a deep breath, he sits up and reaches for the phone, dialing your number that’s stored in his memory. His leg bounces as the phone rings.
You’re startled by the screech of your phone on your bedside table, head lifting to look at it shake on the receiver. You reach over and pick it up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, trouble. It’s not a bad time, is it?”
Eddie. His voice crackling through the phone sends a spike down your spine. You clutch the phone a little tighter.
You’d expected Robin, or Nancy, even Steve. Because there’d been a time, earlier in Corroded Coffin’s career, when Eddie would call you at least three times a week, and then the calls grew less frequent until they sort of died out to holidays and birthdays.
So, maybe a couple of years ago, you’d have expected Eddie’s voice, but not today.
“Eddie, hi. Not at all.”
“I- um, I just wanted to call,” a small pause, he clears his throat, “how are you?”
“It’s only been two days, you know how I am.”
“I mean right now.”
You twist to lay on your side, legs curling in towards your chest. You smile to yourself like an idiot. “Right now, I’m good. It’s lame, I already miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
The reply comes easily to him. There’s no thought to it, because in the past 48 hours, he hasn’t been able to stop missing you for a second. The warmth of your hand in his, the sunshine sound of your laughter.
He’s not sure why everything’s so big now, his feelings amplified, only quieted now, by the sound of your voice.
“Did you have a show today?”
You have a way of asking that makes it sound like you really care, Eddie thinks. He loves his music and he knows you know that. It means the world to him to do what he does, confusing feelings or not.
“Not today. We spent the day on the bus. Show’s tomorrow.”
“Nervous or excited?”
It’s something that you used to ask him before every small show in Hawkins, and the memory has a grin spreading on Eddie’s face. “It’s always both. More excited, though.”
“You should be,” you say. “You guys are really great.”
“Yeah? Who’s your favorite band member?”
He’s fishing, and you tease him rather than bite, “hmmm. Gareth.”
“Fuckin’ trouble. You liar.”
“You asked!”
“You answered the question wrong, honey.”
There it is again. Honey. You’re sort of glad he can’t see you right now because you probably look way too happy, burying your face in your pillow for a second before replying.
“You know you’re my favorite, Munson.”
“Yeah I am,” he sounds far too proud. And then, he’s softer, “I’m not keeping you up, am I? Time zones fuck me up.”
“No, no.” Even if he was, you wouldn’t tell him. This is better than trying and failing to sleep the way you so often do. “It’s not that late. What time is it for you?”
“Not that late,” he says, even though the clock on the nightstand reads 1:14AM. “So, what’s happening in Hawkins right now?”
“Mmm, it’s getting warmer. My window’s open and the crickets are loud as fuck.” You twist the phone cord around your fingers, “it’s donation week at the library, so I’ve been shelving new books for a change.”
Eddie listens to every word you say, asks you questions like if you’d kept any books for yourself (you had, but swore you’d give them to the library when you were done) and hums between your sentences.
Somewhere along the way, he’d laid down while listening to you, eyes shut as he tried to picture what you might look like right at this second. If you’re in your pajamas or not, whether your hair would be a little messy, baby hairs a halo around your face.
Then his eyes grew heavier, your voice putting him at ease even with the sounds of his bandmates laughing from somewhere in the hotel.
“Eddie?” You ask after he’d been silent for a bit.
“Hm?” He hums sleepily.
“I lost you for a second there.”
If he wasn’t half asleep, he’d feel worse. “Sorry, getting sleepy.”
“You wanna hang up?”
“No, uh- keep talking to me? You have a nice voice.”
You smile, cheeks pinching with the size of it.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll keep talking.”
And you do, you keep talking and talking until you can hear the sound of Eddie’s tiny snores on the other side of the line. You’re smiling again at that.
Even after you’re sure he’s asleep, you don’t hang up right away, not until your own eyes are growing heavy. You put the phone back quietly, like you’ll wake him if you’re not careful. You whisper a soft ‘goodnight, Eddie,’ as you do.
There’s a small stiffness in your fingers from how tightly you’d been holding the phone, and still, you’d let your hand cramp for hours to talk to him.
The next morning, Eddie wakes up with the pattern of the phone pressed to his cheek where he’d left it last night.
-
The TV sends flashes of color flickering across your living room and over your face. Usually, you’d be in bed by now, but it’s the night of the MTV awards and Corroded Coffin is nominated. You couldn’t miss it.
You’re not really paying attention to most of it, the sounds of performances and hosts and thank-you speeches filling your ears as you read your latest book. At least, you’re not paying attention until Eddie’s category is announced.
That has you shutting your book and sitting up, grabbing the remote to turn the volume higher.
They show the nominees, give far too long of an introduction before tearing open the envelope holding the winner’s names. You don’t know it, but you’re practically white knuckling the blanket on your lap.
“And the MTV award goes to… Corroded Coffin!”
You stand and place a hand on your chest, feeling your heart beating—racing—for the band, for Eddie. This is huge, it’s a dream, and it’s his. If you could, you’d give him a suffocating hug right now.
Eddie’s voice taking over, thanking his fans and Wayne, the boys and their team, then, thanking Hawkins and the people there, even when they gave him hell.
If you knew the right number to call to talk to him, you’d dial it in an instant.
Lucky for you, your phone rings the next night, late enough that you can only assume it’s Eddie given you don’t know anyone else who’s probably in a different time zone right now. You pick up quickly, fumbling with the phone a little before bringing it up to your ear.
“Eddie?”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“Ummm, my amazing intuition? Telepathy?”
“Telepathy, she says.” There’s a soft chuckle on his end, you close your eyes and lean your head back to thump against the wall behind you. “How’re things, trouble?”
“I feel like I should be asking you that, mister MTV winner.”
Eddie’s been calling more often again, whenever he gets the chance, really. Even so, he never thought you’d be keeping up with him that way, that you’d care enough to watch an award show and remember what he’d achieved.
“You were watching?” He asks, heart thudding.
“Of course I was. I’m your biggest fan, remember?” You’re sitting with your back against your headboard, knees bent, hand absentmindedly pulling at a loose thread in your pajama pants. “I’ve got cheerleader pom-poms and everything.”
“You do not.”
“Do too. They’re super metal, all black.”
“Yeah, cause pom-poms are super metal, babe.”
Another pet name in the rotation, uttered like it’s easy, natural. You bite back a smile.
“Whatever. Mine would be,” you say. “I’m glad you called.”
“Me, too.”
“I wanted to call you yesterday,” you admit, twisting that loose thread in your fingers, “after I saw you won. I’m really proud of you, Eddie.”
They’re words he hadn’t been expecting, but ones he’ll be thinking about over and over. He wants to keep making you proud, he thinks, and he’ll pour that into everything he does whether he means to or not.
“Thank you,” his voice is quieter, almost shy. “I wouldn’t be here without you, you know?”
“You would. You’re talented, and there’s no way that could stay hidden in this town, you’re bigger than it.”
Somehow, it’s easier to be so open with him on the phone. You don’t have to look at him, get distracted by his tongue running over his lips or the way his bangs get caught in his eyelashes sometimes. This way, all you have to do is speak, nothing more.
“Trouble-” he can’t even find the words to say, because there’s affection laced in your tone, seeping through the phone and into his head and, fuck, he wants to kiss you for it and he can’t. “I really miss you.”
“I miss you, too.” There’s some silence, and the overthinker in you worries that you’ve said too much even though you meant it with every part of you, that you’ve given yourself away. “Anyways, I should go, let you celebrate your win.”
It’s what he would be doing if Eddie’s thoughts hadn’t been so full of you and your mouth and your voice. It’s what his bandmates and friends are surely doing in some club around here.
“You don’t need to. I’m not doing anything.”
“No?” You try to lighten your tone, to joke the way you usually do, “don’t have groupies knocking on your hotel room door right now?”
Instead of playing along, Eddie’s voice is serious, still soft in the way he speaks to you, but serious nonetheless, “I don’t entertain them, honey.”
“You don’t?”
He’s tried. But ever since you kissed him, probably since before that, too, Eddie can’t seem to look at anyone else, let alone have someone else kiss him and tarnish the memory of your lips on his. He’s only ever thinking of you, it seems. So no, he hasn’t fooled around lately.
“Not in a while. I’m trying to write for the next album. No distractions.”
No distractions. He says it like that’s true, even though he can’t seem to fully focus, like there’s a piece he’s missing. Like every lyric he’s written since he’s been back isn’t somehow about you.
He’s so, so fucked.
“Look at you, Munson. Squeaky clean.”
You hope he can’t tell that you’re sort of a mess, a stupid blossom of hope planting itself where it shouldn’t. He’s your friend, he’s always been just your friend. But you kissed and it felt like something changed, and you can’t seem to let go of that.
“You sound surprised,” he teases, gathering his wits the best he can.
“Can you blame me? You used to have multiple lunchboxes reserved for your weed.”
“You loved those lunchboxes and you know it.”
“Yeah, I did.”
And then, like that moment was simply a blip, easily brushed over, your conversation turns back to your normal. Jokes with underlying affections, teasing while picturing what kind of smile the other wears when you laugh lightly into the phone.
Time runs away from you, and by the time you hang up it’s well into the early hours of the morning, but you can’t bring yourself to care.
-
After hanging up, Eddie’s got this sinking, aching pull in his stomach. He knows what it is, has had bouts of it before where he misses Wayne’s hand patting his back or the way his mattress is worn-in just the right amount back at the trailer, when he thinks about what his friends might be doing or what science project Dustin’s got going on.
But it’s never felt this heavy. Eddie’s the most homesick he’s ever been.
He’d listen to your voice forever, but in that moment, he’d give anything to see your face, to see the shake of your shoulders when you laugh, the curve of your smile.
What the hell is wrong with him?
Eddie wipes his palms on his thighs before standing and walking out into the living room of his band’s suite hotel room. The guys are still up, and they’re all staring at him like weirdos.
“What?” He pauses in the doorway.
“Did you tell her you’re in love with her yet, or what?” Jeff, the electric guitarist, asks him.
“What?” Eddie says again because there’s no way he heard that right. He’d only just come to terms that he had feelings. This is much bigger.
“You’re joking,” Gareth pipes in, “you don’t even know it? Dude, you’re all ‘I miss you, trouble, you’re my favorite person ever.’” He does a knowingly terrible impression of Eddie.
“I do not sound like that.”
“You kinda do,” Jeff says.
“Why else would you be spending hours in that room on the phone, man? Come on,” Gareth sing songs the next bit: “you’re in loooove.”
Then Eddie thinks and thinks and thinks. The warmth that blooms when he hugs you, the jealousy he felt when he thought that server at Benny’s was flirting with you, the difficulty to say goodbye, the way your kiss haunts him in his sleep.
These idiots aren’t usually right about things, but just this once, maybe they are. Eddie Munson is probably, very likely, definitely in love with you.
Yeah, he’s so fucked.
♫♩♪♬
thank you so so much for reading!!! if you enjoyed please please please consider reblogging and letting me know what you think! it helps and means so much <333 i have plans for a part two, and if you’d like to see it, some support would help a bunch! ily!
who could stay? (you could stay.) (eddie munson x reader)
summary: you're convinced that being loved comes with a cost. he finds a way to prove you wrong. (wc: 9.7k+)
order up! i've got one ash's special for anonymous. ♡
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Agree to run that errand for someone. Offer a shoulder to cry on for that person. Fix that problem for this friend. Keep going, keep offering, keep becoming indispensable.
You couldn’t pinpoint the exact age you’d figured out the formula. You can never know for sure if the day was sunny or if it were rainy, if it were a calm December morning or a buzzing July night, but those details aren’t very important. The only important detail is that you had finally cracked the code at some point – you had finally figured out the solution to feeling unlovable. And that was that, truthfully, there wasn’t a solution. Once you were destined to feel this way, to feel so sour at your core, there is no easy way to rid yourself of that rotten pit. It would always be there – always churning, always burning, always yearning. Yearning to be loved, yearning to feel those waves of warmth cascading over your brain and down your spine, the ones others had always described to you but you’d just never… experienced. Never became familiar with.
It felt like everyone was playing an over-elaborate prank on you. They’d all conspired against you, invented a false feeling in which someone claims to feel loved, only to sit back and watch as you fumbled to find it. They’d laughed as you dug through a graveyard of relationships, caked your fingernails with dirt as you sobbed and would continue to claw deeper, trying to find just one set of bones that might hold that warmth for you.
The only solution to that detrimental feeling of being unlovable, was to feel needed.
You needed to feel so necessary, so essential, to everyone around you at all times. It never mattered how much of you it took. You’d give away every piece of yourself a million times over just to feel wanted at some capacity, even if that capacity were one you’d forced upon the other person. You didn’t care if you’d built the glass cages of theirs – you just cared that they kept you around to wipe away any smudges that appeared.
Being wanted wasn’t quite the same as being loved. And if you thought about that for too long or too often, you might just break irrevocably.
“I just don’t understand him,” Nancy sighs from the head of your bed, reclining against a wall of pillows you’d lined your headboard with. Two of which were body pillows. Long tubes of fluff to try and fill lonely spaces, you suppose, “Why didn’t he just tell me he didn’t want to go to the same college? Why… Why do I feel like I am forcing him to be with me?”
Because you are. Just like I force you all to need me.
“I don’t know, Nance.”
That bland, bitter, half-thought out answer lingers on your tongue, almost burns your throat with the whisper of say more, say something useful, say something comforting. It’s the whisper of those four words not being enough. It’s the whisper of that threat that those four words could be the beginning of the end, the thing that makes Nancy realize she doesn’t need you.
After all, what use is a friend that can’t give good advice, or be supportive during relationship rants?
You open your mouth to add on something sweeter, something to coat the conversation like honey and smooth out the lines forming on Nancy’s forehead, but she beats you to it, “I’m sorry, I’m rambling, aren’t I?”
Yes. “It’s fine,” at least that wasn’t a lie – you’d dug this specific grave, had rooted down tooth and nail only to find another empty coffin of a friendship curtained with want instead of love. You’d all but asked for this, “What he did really was shitty. It’s not fair to you.”
The words are almost robotic, telling Nancy Wheeler what she wants to hear rather than what she needs to hear. You don’t always do that, you do make a point of investing in the truth from time to time to truly secure your position as someone who is genuinely needed in her life, but the headache nagging at your temples tells you it’s not worth the fight tonight. You’re tired, you’re agitated, and you really just want to get Nancy to the point of contentment in her rambling so that you can send her on her way.
God, you’re an awful friend.
It turns you quiet, a ricocheting thought that bruises your inner skull the rest of the time Nancy sits on your bed. The guilt eats you alive for that moment of irritation the rest of the night. Even after Nancy goes home, even after you’ve brushed your teeth and you’ve tucked yourself into bed. The guilt gnaws on the edges of that emptiness inside of you, that ever-present black hole that already existed, and says this is why you cannot be loved.
Maybe the pity party for feeling like a bad friend is what makes you a bad friend.
And maybe if you were a better friend, you would be loved instead of wanted for once.
It’s all part of a cycle, never-ending and treacherous. It’s always been this way. You make promises to your friends and rip yourself to shreds before remolding yourself into whatever they need; giving rides to the younger kids within your circle to the pool all summer which evolved into taking turns with Steve as to who would pick them all up after their D&D club ran late every Friday night, always lending a listening ear to Nancy once Johnathan moved away and she’d had to witness her relationship and her love vanishing in real time, always being the one person who will listen to Robin ramble for hours about her sudden interests. None of it was born of ill-intent, but when you’d go home lonesome at the end of the night, you could see it all for what it was.
You were trying to fill a void. A hollow rot, a black hole. And it was only working half the time.
Half the time, until he came along.
And make no mistake, his arrival was as bloody as anyone who had previously entered your life. For a while there, you believed his headstone was at the end of the line already, sanctioned away in this graveyard of the ability to be loved. He came crashing into your life on a random Friday night, and you had sworn you could already see the end as it began, but you had been wrong.
“So, you’re the infamous babysitter.”
His voice caught you off guard. You’d been sitting in your car with your windows down, enjoying the reprieve of a cooling autumn evening as you waited for the boys to finish up with their D&D club. With your head buried in the latest sci-fi novel that Dustin had recommended and would no doubt be grilling you on once he got in the car, you hadn’t even heard the club exit the school.
“Nope,” you fought a smile as you glanced up from the pages to see an older guy standing there, closer to yours and Steve’s age than the kids. There wasn’t a doubt in your mind that this was the famous Eddie all the boys would ramble on about for hours on end, “Harrington’s the babysitter. I’m just the taxi driver.”
There was something particularly pretty in the way he threw his head back with laughter at your words. Curls that messily fell just beyond his shoulders, full lips disappearing as his teeth peeked through and shined beneath the parking lot’s lamp posts. His denim vest looked purposefully distressed with a mirage of patches and pins, and he was wearing a leather jacket beneath it, even if it wasn’t quite cold enough for it yet outside. He was cute – and watching him laugh because of you sparked something irreversible inside of you.
“C’mon now,” he sighed as his cackles quieted, “Give yourself more credit than that. At least call yourself something fancy, like ‘chauffeur’.”
“Ah, but ‘taxi driver’ insinuates that I charge them,” you don’t miss a beat, and your quick wit has him chuckling again.
You caught sight of his eyes, corners creased with joy – brown. They were deep, russet, tantalizing brown. Almost indiscernible from his pupil in the dark.
“I’m Eddie, by the way.”
You took his hand that he shoved through your open window with ease, and felt an immediate shiver run down your spine. Not quite from the cold, but not quite warm. You saw the first flash of his grave, and you knew you’d be digging your greedy hands into it soon enough.
As you gave him your name in return, you knew you wouldn’t be leaving well enough alone.
You had been half right that night. You wouldn’t be leaving well enough alone, you would be seeking out the impossible from Eddie – but so would he.
It quickly became apparent that Eddie was a pest. Someone who weaseled his way into the lives of others, who made his presence felt and never forgotten.
You’d started with the same slow dance as you did with every new person, a hesitant dipping of your toes into their waters, unsure if your presence in their life would only cause more trouble than you’re worth, when you quickly discovered that nothing could ever be hesitant or slow with Eddie Munson. He’s the one constantly reaching out to you. Driving the kids home now takes double the time it used to, long conversations being had with him that has the kids dragging you away, practically begging to just be taken home. The day he’d asked for your number, you couldn’t tell which one of you burned brighter red. And the moment he had your number in his clutches? Forget about it. You never heard the end of Eddie Munson, and you never really wanted to.
Unlike your friends you already had and loved deeply, Eddie was observant.
It’s within the first month of knowing you that he had picked up on your insecurities. Maybe he hadn’t directly seen that gaping hole in your chest yet, but he noticed your habit of running yourself dry to see others thrive.
The need to be needed. He picked up on it quickly.
“What about Sunday?” Eddie’s voice traveled over the line as you laid on your stomach, stretched out across your bed for a few moments of rest before you had to get up and take the cookies you’d baked for Steve and Robin into Family Video, just like you had promised, “I’m free then if I finish all my fuckin’ homework on Saturday night.”
Surprisingly, that phone call with Eddie hadn’t been something expected or planned. It had been impulsive; in a rare moment of peace, you found yourself craving to hear his voice. Somehow, the two of you had ended up trying to figure out a free day to properly hang out. Eddie wanted to go to Benny’s for milkshakes, and you wouldn’t turn down the free fries he also promised.
“I can’t,” you paused just to hear his predictably dramatic sigh, grinning as you continued to explain, “I’m taking Max to the skatepark that day.”
“And it’s going to take all day?”
“It could!”
“There’s absolutely no way.”
“You clearly haven’t seen that girl skate.”
The conversation continued, light-hearted enough with plentiful jokes made. Something about talking with Eddie made your heart lighter, the usual unbearable and contradictory weight of emptiness no longer on your mind as you listened to him ramble about something that had happened in one of his classes – a teacher tried to embarrass him when he caught Eddie doodling for a D&D campaign by asking him a question, not expecting him to know the answer. Eddie had, of course, leaving the teacher baffled with a smirk.
It’s all about my charm, sweetheart, he responded when you asked how he hadn’t earned a detention from that.
Only towards the end of the call, when the conversation finally lulled and the two of you found yourselves settled into a comfortable silence, did Eddie finally circle back to the beginning of your conversation.
“You know,” he started, “When I first met you, I never took you to be someone so…”
“Amazing? Wonderful? Funny?” you jokingly attempted to finish his sentence.
“Busy.”
Oh. You hadn’t expected that one.
“Busy?” you repeated back to him, “I’m not that busy.”
Your mind immediately started racing with thoughts of what he had meant. Was he feeling neglected? Maybe you should have canceled on Max on Sunday, agreed to Benny’s with him instead. No, you couldn’t bear Max’s disappointment. Maybe you could tell Max you had a time constraint, even though you knew she hated those when it came to her skating days. Was there any other plans you could abandon? Anyone else you could bear to let down for the sake of not leaving Eddie high and dry? No, no – all your other weekend plans involved going to the movies with Robin, helping Steve look into colleges finally, taking the boys to the Starcourt mall to shop for supplies to make figurines for their newest campaign. The room was suddenly getting smaller, your chest constricting, your head spinning. You couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing any of those people, no, but what about Eddie? Maybe he was right in feeling neglected, maybe you deserved whatever guilt was to come from whatever his next words would be. He was your friend, you were supposed to make time for h-
“Sweetheart,” he scoffed over the line, and you swore you heart stopped right then and there, “You’re the highest thing in demand since Cabbage Patch Kids last Christmas – and trust me, I should know how in demand those fuckers were. I worked seasonally at the mall, remember?”
Your breath caught. He was feeling neglected. You weakly began your apology as tears were already filling your eyes, that panic turning over itself in your gut, “I’m-”
“And it’s not a bad thing, don’t get me wrong,” It’s clear your voice had been too soft, too weak, for him to hear you, “Just means I’ve gotta fight harder to be worth your time, am I right?”
You had to clear your throat, but it did nothing to subsidize that anxiety that rattled your bones. It’s blatantly evident as your voice shook with a second attempt at an apology, “I’m sorry, Eddie. I didn’t mean- I can… I’ll… Just tell me when for Benny’s. I can make it work, I swear-”
“Woah, woah, woah.”
He had to have heard the tears that had escaped down your cheeks. The shake of your breath as you’d stuttered over your words, grasping for a solution.
“You don’t need to apologize for that,” his voice was soothing and soft, the most gentle it had been the entire night. You pinched your eyes shut and just tried to imagine those stupid, big doe eyes, those ungodly messy curls (you’d started to tease him about if he ever even brushed or combed them). The panic remained, but Eddie’s voice started to give it a run for its money, “I was just playing around. You know that, right?” he paused to give you room to answer, but your throat was still tightly squeezed by overwhelming emotion, overwhelming fear of having scorned Eddie, “You could only have enough time in your schedule to see me once a year, and I’d still be your friend. We could only have these random phone calls, even if they were never longer than a minute, and you’d still be worth it. You know that, right?” Another pause, another wave of silence from your end, “Sweetheart, you don’t owe me your time. And I don’t need monopoly over it for us to be okay.”
Each word made the panic settle. You weren’t sure how he did it. You weren’t sure how mortified you should be that he had only been in your life for a month at most, and had just overheard you at your most vulnerable.
All you were sure of was that you believed him.
“Okay,” you croaked, finally feeling that ring of fear loosen, vocal chords finally functioning once more.
“Okay,” Eddie repeated back in that same gentle, soothing, soft tone.
You weren’t disappointing him. You weren’t making him feel neglected. He still found use for you, he still wanted you around – he still needed your friendship. That had to be enough.
It was quiet over the line for a few moments.
It has to be enough, you reminded yourself.
“Say,” you finally said, voice back to normal strength and the tears having dried themselves up for the most part. Your heart had almost returned to normal rhythm, “How does Benny’s sound tonight?”
“Tonight?” he chimed back, sounding as excited as a little kid the morning of a cherished holiday, something like Christmas.
A shiver ran down your spine. It’s not from the cold, and you tell yourself it’s not quite warmth – it can’t be warmth.
“Tonight,” you confirmed, “With a detour by Family Video, if you don’t mind. I’ve got a special delivery of cookies to fulfill.”
“What kind?”
“Excuse me?”
You were grinning - God, you were a pathetic fool, grinning and clutching onto that phone like a lifeline. Like if you let go of it, you’d lose his voice, and if you lost his voice, that would be the end of the world.
“What kind of cookies?”
“Chocolate chip.”
He hummed, not answering right away as if he were deliberating this information. When he finally spoke again, another shiver wrapped around your spine, spinning down, down down. Waves of what you almost believed were warmth. “Okay. I suppose I can be your taxi driver, for a price.”
“What’s your price?”
“One cookie.”
“Deal.”
It had to be enough, because you were still clutching that telephone tightly to your cheek, long after the phone call ended with Eddie’s promise of being at your house soon enough. It had to be enough, because after that night, it became clear; the world would not end with the loss of just Eddie’s voice from your life, but the loss of Eddie, period. It was the first night of many in which you played a very, very dangerous game.
Even with Nancy gone, you felt restless. You couldn’t help but linger just a little longer in all that self-pity, still replaying the night and all you could have done differently.
Had she caught on with how out of it you had been? Had she seen through your act and immediately assumed the worst – assumed you weren’t worth keeping around?
The thoughts might be an overreaction.
You were definitely overreacting.
You didn’t really care that you were overreacting, though, because you really couldn’t control it. It was just another dark path you couldn’t stop your mind from traveling down. It was endless, and it was lonesome, and… and it was just normal. What should be devolving into a panic attack can only settle like an emptiness deep within your chest; you’ve been staring at the blank wall of your living room for so long without blinking, your eyes have gone dry.
A pattern. That’s what the therapist said. You had a pattern for overthinking these interactions, for projecting feelings onto others that didn’t exist. You think all your friends hate you, you think that a stranger found your smile to be more of a grimace, you think your mom hasn’t called in months because she recognizes you as a failure finally. But none of it is actually what those people think. It’s like a mirror – you look into the eyes of others, and you see all your own insecurities reflected back.
She’d asked you to work on it. To take a step back and just breathe, just remind yourself of that, whenever this happens. You’d decide whether you’d mention this minor slip up later. For now, you were going to wallow. You were going to spiral with just you, this damn blank wall, and maybe even the bottle of wine in the fridge.
Yes, your mind was made up, and you force yourself to stand from the couch and wander into the kitchen, eyes still dry and chest still caving in on itself as you open the fridge.
That’s as far as you get. Your fridge is wide open, the bright luminescent light flooding your kitchen floor in time with the trickling chill that sneaks up on your warm cheeks and already numb toes, when you spot it.
A box of takeout. It’s old enough now you could throw it out, you had known the moment he’d taken the last of his meal to-go that he wouldn’t finish it. Teased him about it, even. But he was stubborn and you weren’t capable of turning down the opportunity to let another piece of him, another flash of evidence of his place in your life, occupy this apartment. So there it sat, a half-eaten burger he hadn’t revisited.
But he had revisited the apartment – revisited you. He’d been here every night this week, and you’d practically had to shove him out on the street to get him to leave this morning to get to work on time.
The edges of that emptiness that weighs down your insides blur, already lightening microscopically as you slam shut the fridge and forgo the wine completely to grab the phone instead.
“You don’t have to always take care of everyone, you know,” he murmured as he joined you in the kitchen to retrieve popcorn for the gang, everyone gathered in the living room for a movie night.
“Pardon?” you asked, hardly glancing over your shoulder as you punched in the designated time for the microwave to turn the kernels into an easy, mouth-watering snack of butter and crunch.
“You always take care of everyone. You don’t have to.”
His words rang clearer that time, loud enough to have stopped you in your tracks. You paused mid-reach, the cabinet for the Harrington’s bowls wide open and shelves nearly too tall for you.
“I-” you weren’t sure exactly what to say, “What do you mean?”
His brows scrunched, eyes having narrowed in the slightest in your direction, “Please don’t play dumb right now.”
“I’m not playing dumb. I’m trying to get popcorn for our movie night,” you waved your hand towards the shelves lined with bowls for emphasis on your point, “That’s not really taking care of everyone – it was just being polite. Steve’s hosting, it’s the least I can do.”
“The least you can do? The least you can do is actually just sit with friends, enjoy the movie,” the crease between his brow deepened, eyeing you with an unfamiliar concern. You shifted beneath the weight of his gaze.
You don’t know what to say. Except, “It’s not that serious.”
He scoffed, and you nearly flinched from it. Fear threatened to bubble up – he’s upset, he’s getting irritated at you. He’s getting tired of you.
You waited for him to say something more as the buzz of the microwave filled the tense space, but he remained silent. Brooding.
“What?” your voice shook, your entire being torn between succumbing to all that fear and anxiety in upsetting him further and that voice in the back of your mind that urged you to push him, to hear what he really thought. “I know you have something more to say.”
“In the six months I’ve known you, you haven’t taken a single break for yourself.”
He met your push, stood his ground and didn’t let it put any distance between you two. It felt like a goddamn revelation, right there in the Harrington kitchen.
“I take plenty of breaks, Eddie,” you tried to laugh off, “I do spend time away from you all, hard as that may be to belie-”
“Hardly,” he cut you off as sharply as the first resonating pop that echoed from the microwave.
“What’s your point? I just like being around you guys. Like I said, it’s not that serious.”
This was the part where the distance would happen. You kept pushing, took the inch he’d given you to bite back and ran with it. Normally, you avoided conflict with any of your friends vehemently. Always afraid, always assuming the relationships to be so fragile and so delicate. You would take such care in never giving them a reason to hate you that you’d never taken to a battleground before.
But there had been a look in Eddie’s eyes that night. A shine that, breaking through all the worry for you, whispered, fight with me. Stand your ground with me. I’ll still call you tomorrow, no matter what words we exchange tonight.
A safety net had formed that you’d never even noticed. That delicacy wasn’t needed here. You could pick up the sword, there in that kitchen, and it wouldn’t turn Eddie to smoke and shadows.
“My point is…” he paused, he swallowed hard, he exhibited the delicacy that was usually expected from you, “You can like being around us. But you should put yourself first. At least once. At least on movie night.”
“How is me making popcorn not putting myself first?” you got the question out, you took a deep breath, ready to go on some sort of defensive tirade for your habit you were well aware of.
He beat you to it, “Every day last week, you only got three hours of sleep, at most, before your shifts. You gave up sleep to hang out with us all way too late, refused to throw in the towel and go home before anyone else.”
“I could have napped-”
“You didn’t nap,” he stressed, taking a step closer to you. The popping of the snack turning in the microwave was erratic, mere seconds left on the timer. Static noise to the conversation at hand, “I know you didn’t fucking nap after your shifts because you were immediately running errands for everyone else, or hanging out again. You offered to give Robin a ride to work every single day, and her shifts start… what, an hour after yours ended? And then you had to give her rides home, right? But in those hours she was at work, you were helping Dustin with an essay for school – that little fucker told me all about it. You were awake when Johnathan called you and we were all stoned off our asses, went and got us food we didn’t need but still wanted. We didn’t even expect you to pick up, you know? I told them, I swore to them, you wouldn’t pick up. You had a morning shift. You were scheduled literal hours from when we called you. But you picked up. You fucking picked up, and you went and got the fucking food for us fucking idiots.”
Your brain completely malfunctioned. You couldn’t comprehend how he was saying all of these things that should be good things, things that proved you were needed and you were reliable, but with such venom in his tone.
Anger had sparked within you as you pictured how giddy Dustin had been over the B he’d earned on his essay, that sincere appreciation on Robin’s face every time she left your car last week, the dopey grin that Argyle had worn when you’d arrived with their food order in your pajamas. All previously things to fuel you, filling that aching hole inside of you, now being tarnished because he was concerned.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” you seethed at him, “Would you prefer I hadn’t been awake? Would you prefer I let Dustin just… get a fucking F on that essay? Or Robin walks to work?”
“Yes!”
You were both shocked at the sudden volume in your voices. The quickness in his reply. The quiver in your lip.
“Yes,” he breathed out, quieter this time, “I would prefer those things if it meant you were taking care of yourself. The word ‘no’ should be in your vocabulary, sweetheart. I… The world doesn’t end just because you don’t constantly make yourself available.”
But you all needing me might.
“Just… just…” your breaths came out in huffs, eyes downcast and unwilling to meet Eddie’s stare. A final push, and it came out more fragile than you’d ever intended, “Just mind your business, Eddie.”
He opened his mouth to say more, but the microwave started to go off, signaling what you saw as the end of the conversation – the fight. You’d raised your voice at him, you’d swung that sword in his direction, and he hadn’t vanished. His friendship – he – wasn’t as breakable as you’d thought.
You spun on your heel, you took the popcorn out and divided it into bowls for the group, busying your hands in any way possible. All the while, he never left the kitchen. He stood just feet away from you and let you do what needed to be done, and only stopped you as you turned to exit the kitchen with the snacks acquired.
His hand caught onto your elbow, “You have bags.”
“Excuse me?”
“You have bags under your eyes,” he elaborated. He no longer looked frustrated, but defeated, a morose distress pinching the edges of his feature.
“Jesus,” you were now scoffing, adjusting your grip on those bowls, “You really know how to compliment a girl, don’t you?”
“They’ve been there for months,” his grip refused to loosen, thumb trailing over the crease in your arm, “Please don’t run yourself into the ground.”
You gave him a cold shoulder as you left him behind to rejoin your friends, unable to shake his consternation. It was so genuine, it terrified you. It made your insides churn, it turned your anxious attachment to dust.
It made a shiver of warmth travel down your spine.
The empty space beside you on the couch only remained for seconds after you’d passed around the bowls, keeping one for yourself. He was back there, back at your side, as if the two of you hadn’t just exited a battle ground. As if a stand-off hadn’t just occurred, as if it all hadn’t ended in a draw.
He looked at you with those eyes.
Fight with me. Stand your ground with me. Don’t walk away from me. I will still call tomorrow.
He did more than call that night. As the movie started, he didn’t so much as flinch when your head fell to his shoulder in exhaustion. He only tucked an arm around your shoulders, only shifted you to be more comfortable as you used him as a personal pillow. He glared at everyone in warning not to grill you on the plot of the movie when you’d awoke mildly disappointed, he’d let you sleep on the drive home. He never once brought the fight back up.
And he still called the next day.
After your shift, he was the first voice you heard after dragging your feet into your apartment. A brief apology was exchanged before it was back to business as usual between you two. And somewhere between his rambles, you fell asleep with your phone balanced half-haphazardly between your cheek and shoulder. You could only dream of the grin he wore when he’d hear your soft snores over the line, quieting down immediately to let you rest. He never hung up – he was content to sit on a hushed line if only for the assuredness that you were finally resting.
The warmth no longer traveled down your spine, instead curling up timidly near that hole inside of you. You let it.
“Munson residence!”
That warmth that had found home in your chest still remains to this day, rousing at Eddie’s voice over the line. It’s nearly enough to make you cry – the relief that floods you just by the sound of him and his endless chipper. His optimism that always seems to exist, even in contrast with those harsh edges he tries to portray.
“Eddie,” you whisper, as if you’re not the only one in your apartment, “Can you… Are you free?”
Even after a year, you still sometimes felt guilt, asking so much of him. Asking so much, and giving so little in return.
But you weren’t the one who set that standard. Eddie had. Ferociously, fiercely, stubbornly. The insistence that you simply being was enough for him.
“For you, sweetness?” he chuckles lowly. He recognizes your voice immediately; you never have to say it’s you calling. You could have shrugged it off as Caller ID, but you knew the Munson’s phone didn’t have that. No, he recognized you by voice only. He’d once joked that only you would one day be able to rouse him from the dead, based on the ‘sweet melody alone’. Recognition in death – you had managed to burrow your way so deeply into his life, you’d earned recognition in death. “Always. What’s up?”
You could have just kept him on the phone. Had one of your infamous conversations about everything and nothing. Sat on the cold tiles of your kitchen and smiled like a child as you listened to him rant. But the cold chill of your lonesome apartment was becoming suffocating, and you remembered that take out in the fridge and the way one of his socks had ended up in your laundry last week. You remembered how you started keeping his favorite brand of beer in your fridge and how one of your pillows started to permanently smell like his aftershave.
He had a toothbrush in your bathroom. He had a key to your apartment. He had a space, here, in this lonesome apartment. And all you had to do was beckon to him, and he would come to fill it. Always.
“Can you come over?”
You don’t even have to explain yourself. He complies readily, whispers out a soft yes in the voice you’d also recognize even in death, and promises to be there within ten minutes.
He makes it within eight.
And you’re still leaning on your kitchen counter, your head still swimming dangerously with all the different ways you’d let down Nancy. Once upon a time, you might have worried about inviting him over, worried that your anxieties and your short-comings might bleed into your relationship with him. In the beginning, it had been simple enough. You kept him at an arm’s length away the moment you realized you couldn’t make yourself needed to him, not out of selfishness but out of fear. Fear, because if he didn’t need you, why would he stick around?
Because without need, if you did the wrong thing, there was no necessary thread tying them to you. Because without need, there was no chance for the day that you might find love in your grave robbings, and you couldn’t handle the thought of someone like Eddie Munson deciding you weren’t worth his time.
It hadn’t occurred to you for a very long time that maybe, possibly, you’d been going around the concept of love with a very wrong mindset.
Your safe place. That’s what the back of the van had become over these sticky summer nights – your safest refuge.
It was always the same scene; Eddie on his back beside you, lazily nursing a joint, while you sat up reading passages of the latest book you two had embarked on together. Sometimes it was poetry, sometimes it was fantasy, and sometimes, it was just a reread. That night, it was a reread. The Hobbit.
“‘I don’t see that this will help us much,’ said Thorin disappointedly after a glance. ‘I remember the mountain well-’” you recited off of the page, when Eddie suddenly sat up abruptly and snatched the book from you.
“No, no, no!” he wagged his finger at you after he discarded his joint into the ashtray you’d made him start keeping in the fan, “Sweetheart, you’re doing the voices all wrong.”
You rolled your eyes at him, reaching to take the book back, “Not all of us have a Dungeon Master voice to whip out, Munson. Give it back.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Do I need to say please? I’ll say please.”
It was best like this. Just the two of you, away from everyone else. Some nights, the two of you hadn’t even needed a book to bond over. You’d just gaze at stars, or indulge in whatever weed he’d brought along with him. He never pressured you, though – if you shook your head at his offer of the joint, that was that. He seemed to apply that to most aspects of your friendship this last year.
You never had to prove anything to him. He saw your worth as if it were glaringly obvious, as if it were as simple of a concept as breathing. No extra effort needed from your end.
Just by being, you had managed to become something important to him. He needed you, if only because you were you.
“The puppy dog eyes aren’t gonna work on me,” he snorted, shifting so that his shoulder pressed against your own. A warmth spreads from the point of contact. “Let the master show you how it’s done.”
You tried to not let it show, but your grin was radiant. He was the master at those ridiculous voices, at theatrics and at bringing the story to life. You were transported from the shore of Lover’s Lake, in the back of that stuffy yet comforting van, to meadows of soft grass and hobbit holes of comfort. To a place where all the threats were mythical and all the expectations of you were released.
You’d spent the week helping Steve finish up his college plans. His parents had tried to pressure him into picking his top three universities, but the moment he had confided in you that he might prefer a community college to begin, you’d held his hand as you guided him through the process. A rewarding process, have no doubt, but it had left you numb and reeling. Sharing someone else’s stress, shouldering their burdens – it had been a bit much.
You needed this. You needed Eddie’s ridiculous voices and the sharp press of his shoulder against your temple.
“Falling asleep on me already?” he teased when he’d noticed how quiet you had gone.
“Never,” you lied through a yawn that quickly exposed you.
“Liar,” he huffed. You didn’t even need to glance up to confirm the smile you knew he wore. “We can head back home, if you need. I know it’s getting late-”
“No,” you quickly sat up, effectively making yourself dizzy, “No, I- It’s fine. I’m awake. I swear.”
“It’s okay that you were falling asleep,” he was quick to reach out, to tug you back down to his side, wrapping his arm around you to press you even closer than before, “I just don’t want to keep Cinderella out past Midnight.”
“It’s barely ten.”
“Nothing gets past you, Sherlock,” he scowled as you pressed your grin against his t-shirt clad shoulder, “I’m serious, though. Do I need to take you home?”
“No, Eddie. I’m good.”
“Swear it? Swear you don’t have an early shift, or some… some obligation?”
“No shifts, no obligations.”
“And if I just kidnap you for the weekend? Am I going to have an angry mob at my doorstep, demanding your service?”
You smiled wider at the thought. The idea of him hiding you away, letting you live in this reprieve for the entire weekend. It was a nice thought, “I certainly wouldn’t complain.”
And so the two of you sat there like that for an hour more. Eddie coming up with ridiculous tones for the various characters, you slipping in and out of consciousness as his warmth stayed wrapped around him. You don’t even notice when the warmth he’d planted in you finally covers up that hole inside of you, not even missing the absence of that emptiness until Eddie went quiet.
In the silence, you noticed it.
The gash you’d grown accustomed to, the hole that had become an extra limb for you. Vanished. Gone. Disappeared without a trace.
It was a sudden and terrifying realization. Everything in you urged you to jump up, to scramble around you to find the darkness again, like a comfort blanket you couldn’t stand to lose. You went against the instinct, though, and rose slowly from Eddie’s hold.
In lieu of scrambling, you peered at Eddie curiously. “Hey, Eds. Can I ask you something?”
He nodded sleepily, almost as drowsy as you. You’re shocked when he shifts and instead of pulling you back to him, he opted to lay his head in your lap.
That hole was still gone. The weight of his head on your thighs, the feeling of his breath on your bare thigh. For a moment, you can’t breathe.
You’re warm. Not uncomfortably so, but encapsulated with an internal warmth. Like a fever spreading, the ice in your spine that you had lived with for years had begun to thaw.
“Why do you keep me around?” you whispered, still sitting stiffly, staring in awe down at the way he just nuzzled his face into your lap.
With his eyes still closed, face smooth from any worry from the question, he mumbled, “What do you mean?”
You only hesitated due to the thought crossing your mind; what if you bringing this up reminds him?
You thought back to the night in Harrington’s kitchen. The push and the pull, the bloody battle and the way he still called.
He was not as delicate as you took him for.
“I- What do you get out of this?” you couldn’t figure out how to phrase it correctly. You knew what you got out of this, but what does he get?
“Get out of what?”
“Get out of keeping me around.”
His eyes finally opened, twisting in your lap so that he could stare up at you. “You say that as if you’re forcing me to be your friend.”
I could be, that nagging voice in your mind whispered. You could very well be forcing him, and just be blinded because you were enjoying the summer of warmth that he carried with him too much to let him go.
“You never let me do anything for you,” you sighed, fingers finding themselves tangled in his roots against better judgment. But you needed to touch him, to ground yourself, as you admitted this hard truth, “You do shit for me all the time. You drive all the way out to this lake just because I complain about everything being too much. You’ve started playing chauffeur for the kids to give me a break. Harrington said you even offered to look at college brochures with him. And…. And I’m not stupid, Eds,” your voice shook as you looked down at him, a sudden feeling of undeserving striking you in your chest, “You do so much for me lately. And you don’t ask for anything in return – you don’t let me do anything in return. Why?”
His smile twisted with a hint of sadness, and brown eyes met your gaze without so much as flinching, “Sweetheart, why do you think you have to repay me for that stuff?”
“I-”
“No, hear me out,” he reached up, taking your hand out of his hair and lacing his fingers with yours, slowly dragging it down to rest on his sternum, “I chose to do that stuff. And, yeah, maybe I was trying to take some of that shit off your plate. But you didn’t ask me to. I chose to. I wanted to do those things, do nice things for you, because you won’t let anyone else.”
You bit back a scoff, “I let people do nice things for me-”
“You really don’t,” his hold on your hand tightened, “You really, really don’t. You constantly…. You just, you take care of everyone else, but you act afraid to let someone take care of you. People are allowed to take care of you, too, y’know? You should let them. They love you – they want to take care of you, just like you take care of them.”
They love you.
The air drained from your lungs in a slow, silent sigh. You waited a few minutes, but the oxygen never replenished as you tried to grasp his words.
They love you.
Why would they love me?
“Why wouldn’t they love you, sweetheart?” Eddie looked more concerned now, suddenly prepared to sit up and remove his head for your lap. But his hand still held yours tightly, still clung to you, “You know they love you, right? God, you gotta know that. We all love you.”
You hadn’t realized you’d spoken the bitter thought out loud until he looked at you, utterly heartbroken, in complete disbelief. “I…”
No. I don’t know that. What have I done to deserve their love?
“They need me, sure,” you started, narrowing your eyes at the breaks in the waves of Lover’s Lake, “I mean, I just try to make myself useful to them. It’s the least I can do when I… when they…” you struggled to get the words out. You saw that hole again, like a light at the end of the tunnel, but so far from the relief most mean by that metaphor. Something peeking around the corner, ready to devour you all over again. So you plunged, you prepared yourself for it to spring to life and take you whole as you nearly whimpered, “When they put up with me. It’s the least I can do when they put up with me.”
“No one puts up with you,” Eddie’s voice cracked. You couldn’t even look him in the eyes. “Least of all me.”
The deadliest of blows. He cracked your hardened surface with that, shook the foundations of every belief you’d held for eternity.
“Most of all you,” you corrected without thinking, “God, I- Eddie, seriously. What reason do you have for keeping me around? I don’t know how the fuck you put up with m-”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” you’d never heard him beg so painfully before then, “Please. Don’t… You want to know my reason?” you nodded numbly, finally looking to find him with wet eyes and lips pressed into a fine line, “Because you’re you. I… Fuck, I love you. I keep you around because you’re you. You’re good for me. Whether you believe it or not. You’re good for me just by being you, and there’s nothing you have to do to accomplish that,” you started to look away before he grabbed your cheeks, turning you to face him as he emphasized each word, “You don’t have to earn love. That’s not what love is. Got it?”
You looked into his eyes, and saw all the soft declarations of love echoed back to you, even from the very start.
‘Sweetheart, you don’t owe me your time. And I don’t need monopoly over it for us to be okay.’
‘The world doesn’t end just because you don’t constantly make yourself available.’
The entire time you’d been so worried about taking care of everyone else, he’d been worried about taking care of you. Endless late night phone calls, careful check-ins when he saw the exhaustion take the frontlines, sparse fights about putting yourself first. The only thing he ever wanted from you was for you to take care of yourself.
While you were busy being there for everyone else, he was busy being there for you.
He never once made you dig to the bottom of his grave to find the warmth. He’d handed it over on a silver platter.
So how could you look him in his at that moment, and tell him that you didn’t ‘get it’? That you’d never been sure if what you were seeking from your friends was really love? That, really, you’d given up on being loved a long time ago, assuming it was asking too much?
How do you look him in his eyes in that moment and tell him you had long since declared yourself unlovable?
He didn’t make you say it. Only kept your cheeks pressed between his palms, as he leaned forward, forehead meeting yours and whispering words for only you, “I love you, no strings attached. You’re my… friend. I love you. Okay?”
No one had ever fought so valiantly to get the point across. Not just that night at the lake, but in the entirety of his friendship with you.
The hole slinked back behind the corner. The darkness decided it could wait another day. And in its place, warm brown eyes filled the void. Whether he even realized it or not.
You nearly believed him. Nearly. But you bit down hard on that belief, throwing it out of sight, and instead of echoing back the ‘okay’ you assumed he was seeking out, all you did was sob out another, “Why?”
When you collapsed into him, he held you. Your sobs remained dry, your confusion palpable as you clung to him and tried to let that belief envelope you like his arms had.
I love you.
How could someone love you?
He didn’t press it the way you thought he would. He didn’t scold you for continuing to question him and he didn’t lash out at your disbelief.
He just held you. Letting your face press into his neck as his fingers ran up and down your spine, giving it a moment before he started talking again.
“Your humor,” he hummed after a couple moments of silence, heavy breathing eventually evening out.
“What?”
“The way you take care of others,” he continued on like he hadn’t heard you, “That spark you get in your eyes when you tell someone about something good. A favorite book, movie, story from your day – whatever it is. The way you give the best hugs – and you don’t give me them nearly often enough. The way you snore, and the way you definitely deny snoring.”
You opened your mouth, about to lift your head and argue with him, but he just placed an encouraging palm on the back of your head to keep you close to him.
“The way your favorite color changes with the seasons. The way you only like artificial cherry flavoring, not the real stuff. The way you look at night when we’re driving and you’re just screaming your favorite lyrics. The way you look at me to see if a joke lands. The way you fuss about my wrinkled clothes, even when you also don’t care about the wrinkles in your own shirts. The way you take your coffee. The way you always offer to paint one of my nails to match yours. The way you treat your recipe for chocolate chip cookies like some top secret, government trade. But we both know it’s just some recipe from a cookbook you thrifted when you were ten. The way you get excited over the small things, like the cows we pass by on the way out here. They're always there, and you always point them out. The way you just… are.”
He didn’t have to say it. He was answering your question.
He was listing his whys.
“You don’t have to earn it,” he didn’t say the word, not this time. You felt it, “It just… it’s there. It’s there and it’s not going anywhere. I’ll remind you of that every day if I have to.”
Loved. For the first time ever, it felt like a possibility; to be loved.
Eddie always knocks on your front door a certain way – a pattern he rarely strays from. But you can always tell. He’s the only fool who would find humor in knocking out such an annoying compilation of hits on the wooden panels until you finally unlatch the lock and open it to find him standing in your threshold.
His hair is frizzy and in a low ponytail, wearing a baggy band shirt and plaid pajama pants. He greets you with such a wide smile, your chest aches.
“Hey there, sweetness.”
You don’t say a word, just drag him inside before you wrap your arms around his waist. Ever since that night, and his admittance of enjoying your hugs, you made a conscious effort to hug him more often.
“Miss me?” he chuckles, and you feel the vibrations against your cheek as you softly pinch his side. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to make him only laugh harder once you pull away.
“Not at all,” you snark back as you make sure the door is securely shut and properly locked.
“Not even a little bit?”
“Nope.”
He smacks a fist to his chest as if you had stabbed him with your words, “Ouch. You wound me, sweetheart.”
“Get over it,” you tease. Your head has finally stopped swimming, your chest no longer tight with the fear of not being enough. Nancy is long forgotten as you say, “Have you eaten dinner?”
“Depends,” he hums as he toes off his boots, “If you’re offering to buy me some, then no, I definitely did not eat spaghetti with Wayne right before you called.”
You throw your head back laughing as he’s already making a beeline for your kitchen, digging out that damned takeout menu and reaching for the phone, already so sure of your order.
Knowing your order at restaurants. Without having to ask. Apparently, that was part of the whole ‘being loved’ gig.
Adjusting has taken months. Since that night in Eddie’s van, he’d kept his word. Not a day went by without him finding a way to remind you, whether it be by direct words or small actions, that he loved you. You both kept it under that friendly guise. He loved you in that familiar way, the way the others supposedly loved you. A way you could manage to recognize some days.
Other days were still rough. Days like today were still rough.
The takeout is ordered and Eddie sets up camp on your couch, rambling about something that had happened during one of the DnD nights he still hosted with the kids. Something about a dumb decision Mike did that cost most of the group their character’s lives. You have a hard time following along, and he’s quick to pick up on it.
“Hey, sweetheart?” he murmurs as you lean into the back couch cushion, smooshing your cheek as you watched him animatedly speak.
“Hm?”
“Bad day?”
He never judged you for the rough days. He never judged you for the days you still couldn’t find the love, even after he worked so virtuously to show it to you. He may never understand it, that hollow ache that resided in your darkest corners and whispered that none of it was real, but it never deterred him.
He loved you on good days, and he especially loved you on bad days.
You consider lying to him, but you can’t. Not when he looks at you so earnestly, “Yeah. It… yeah.”
“Wanna talk about it?” he asks you, shuffling to be more comfortable where he sits as he motions for you to lay down. You do so immediately, head finding a home against his thigh and his fingers stroking over your cheek before they toy with the ends of your hair.
All you can do is shake your head. You didn’t want to talk about that fear of failing Nancy as a friend, especially when you know that wasn’t her take away from it. It felt silly now; all that overthinking, when you know now if you questioned her on it, all she would have seen from the day was a friend lending a caring ear. You know because you had asked her about it once, if she found your listening habits too callous, upon Eddie’s insistence.
She hadn’t. In fact, all she could do was thank you, had insisted that she was just grateful someone would listen to her ramblings. And you understood that, left it at that.
“Okay,” he murmurs, voice so quiet you nearly miss it. His fingers continue to play across your shoulders now, barely weighted against bare skin, “That’s fine.”
He didn’t mind if you didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t mind if you never spoke another word, if all you needed was him here. You just needed him close by and to sit with you, to make it all a little less much.
Nothing. He needed absolutely nothing from you, asked nothing of you. Because you didn’t have to earn this. All you had to do was simply be, and he would provide this.
Love. What an odd concept, to have found warmth in a grave you never even got the chance to dig your shovel into.
“Hey, Eddie?” his fingers pause at your croaking voice. You smile at his stillness, at the way he hums carefully in response, still trying to offer the silence you quietly begged for, “I love you.”
There’s more to unpack there. More than just familial love, more than just two friends that love each other without conditions. But tonight is not the night, and you both see that it is enough. There will be other nights to dig your claws in and to dissect what those three little words mean between you two. There will be other nights to consider how your other friends don’t have a permanent spare toothbrush on your bathroom counter or a space for their takeout in your fridge. But not tonight.
For tonight, this was enough. The quiet, and the warmth, the being was enough.
“I love you,” he emphasizes the last word, leaning down and his lips grazing your temple.
You notice the way he leaves off the too. He’d love you, even if you didn’t love him. You’d love him, even if he didn’t love you. Unconditional, no strings attached. A warmth you do not have to fight to earn. A rarity you never encountered before, and may never encounter again, but you have for tonight and for as long as he chooses to stick around.
Your shovel sits abandoned in a shed in the distance. Your fingernails are clean of the dirt. The graveyard, it seems, would go another night without its robber.
Dumb-ass single dad mechanic Eddie x fem! reader ANGST
Warnings: Trials of single parenthood, talks of Eddie's past with his parents nothing violent, Eddie being dumb, cussing...
Pre-reading: This idea came to me after reading a few other single dad stories, I will try to find them and add them to a tag list here but I was definitely inspired by other writers... that being said all my ideas are original and I made sure I didn't come to close to anyone else's work bc that's stealing duh but yes this story was inspired through other very talented writers.
Story Summary: Eddie's childhood friend stuck by his side through thick and thin. How does he choose to repay her? He pushes her away.
2.4k words
I tried to proofread there are prob still typos
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The thud of his heavy boots clunked at a sleepy cadence as he trudged up the steps for the evening. Just as he does every day, he spent his entire car ride home contemplating what he did to deserve the girl sitting at home with his child that isn't hers.
The gentle, caring girl who put her life on hold to help his sorry ass raise a child...that's not hers...yet she loves that baby as if she grew it in her own belly.
He opened the door quietly and shut the door even quieter predicting correctly his daughter was asleep. As he stood there with his back to the door, turning his wrist until the deadbolt latched he caught a whiff of her perfume from her jacket hanging on the wall next to him... she's worn the same one since high school, it took him back to the day he met her...it made his chest ache with fondness. It also made him sick... because his love for her was criminally selfish... his biggest regret is that the baby you were rocking in the nursery wasn't yours... which sounds insane...but if he could go back and do it differently he would have listened to you and been careful. He would have waited until he could have seen you through your dreams and achievements and then put a ring on your finger. He would have done it different... he would have done it right... he knows what you would say if you could hear his thoughts...
You'd say something incredible like, "Eddie, there is no right way to do this. Sure there are more sustainable... or historically accepted ways of doing life but you are doing just fine and I'll always be here." Fuck. It made him want to cry. He untied his boots and slipped out of them, and shrugged off his old jacket... he stepped lightly into the kitchen and pushed the straps of his overalls off his shoulders to reveal his mostly clean white t-shirt. He twisted the knob on the sink and let the water run over his fingers until it was warm... a post-it note on the window caught his eye and broke his heart,
*Ed, there's a plate for you in the microwave, I'm in the back rocking Mel. Hope you had a good day. :)*
The water scalded his hand snapping him out of his teary-eyed stare at the little luminescent pink piece of paper stuck to the window, and the fucking ridiculously undeserved thoughtful actions attached to the message that made his stomach twist into knots.
He diligently washed his hands and padded them off with the dish towel. Then quietly made his way to check on you... he passed the open door of the hall bathroom that was illuminated by the little star night light you brought from your house the second time you spent the night at his trailer... that's when he found out that out of all things you were afraid of the dark...and even though you sprinted like a track racer through his home you still let him sleep through the night and comforted his baby when she cried into the early hours of the morning...
He was already just holding on by a thread when he reached the nursery door, but when he heard you singing to the baby that wasn't yours he trembled. He leaned back on the opposite wall and looked down at the space between the floor and the bedroom door, where the most beautiful sound floated into the dimly lit hall, he crossed his arms over his chest as if to block his heart from hearing the sound... so keep himself from loving you more than he already did... and held the knuckles of his left hand to his chapped lips as if to think for the first time in his life before he did something as fucking stupid as he was about to do. He mouthed the words with you... it's the same song you gifted him the day he found out Melody's mother was pregnant... you apparently had been looking for him all afternoon after he went MIA... he was working a graveyard shift and you showed up in your pj's and brought him food just to sit in the garage and keep him company while he took advantage of your kindness and talked your ear off about his problems until 3 o'clock in the morning. You stayed with him until you convinced his stubborn ass to go home and sleep on it; so he could make good decisions about his next steps. Before you walked away you handed him a small rectangular package wrapped in shimmery paper left over from Christmas two months prior. "...Ed..." you sighed trying to think of what to say, "I won't lie to you and say I understand what this is like... but... I'll do what I can to help." you scratched your head and smiled sympathetically, "call me tomorrow so I know you're alright." With that, you handed him the gift and got in your car leaving him rigid in the chill of that early February morning... he slid into the driver seat of the van and tore open the package... a mix tape.. scribbled with blue pen across the label:
Take It Easy :) love, y/n
He swiped a tear from under his tired eyes as you hummed the higher-pitched notes so as to continue soothing his child...
"Well, I'm running down the road trying to loosen my load
Got a world of trouble on my mind
Lookin' for a lover who won't blow my cover
She's so hard to find"
He let out a shuddered breath as he pushed off the wall slowly turning the nob. You were curled up in the corner in Wayne's old rocking chair, cradling Melody in a perfectly wrapped swaddle you had practiced for a week just to help him figure it out. You smiled up at him when he walked in, effectively making him pre-regret everything before it even happened. You whispered for him to help you out of the rocking chair so you could lay the baby in her cradle. He scampered over and tilted the chair forward supporting your back with his free arm as you swayed your hips to keep his kid in a constant state of comfort. "Night Mel, Love you baby girl," you whispered kissing his baby on the head lightly. Eddie followed suit before following you out into the kitchen. You were already warming up his dinner when he caught up to you...
"How was she?" he asked trying like hell to keep down the bile in the back of his throat.
"Perfect as always," you said leaning against the kitchen counter, "How was work?"
He could feel sweat dripping down his neck, "Good, good..." he took a steadying breath and bit the bullet like the reckless idiot he always was... "Listen can we talk?"
"Uh oh," you laughed quietly, he was about to blindside you, and it made him feel shittier than anything he's ever done. He motioned for you to follow him out front with his shoulder he grabbed your jacket and keys from the tray. He slid the jacket up your arms.. the same arms that have been protecting his baby since the moment she was dumped into his care six months ago. Once the door was shut he tried to hide his watery eyes and trembling hands behind a cigarette.
"Eddie? What's going on?" your big emerald eyes bore into his soul.
"I don't want you to take this... the wrong way... because I appreciate everything you've done for me.. more than I'll ever be able to express..." He took a long pause leaving you in more agony than he could fathom.
"Eddie...?" so many questions lingered in the one word... what did I do wrong?, how can I fix it? The answer is a gut-punching nothing absolutely fucking nothing... he's just a coward.
"There's no... non-dick-headed way for me to say this but... I don't think you and Melody need to be around each other anymore."
"Eddie...?" What the fuck are you talking about? Please don't take her from me. What did I do? What changed? After everything I've done for you...
"You aren't her mother y/n."
A fat tear rolled down her cheek. Jesus Christ... It dawns on him in this terrible moment that this is the first time he's ever seen her cry... and it's his fault.
"I've loved that child more than her real mom ever did. What is this about?" She clutched at the frayed ends of her old jacket for some sense of comfort. The once pleasant May breeze suddenly felt frigid against her damp cheeks.
"She's gonna think- she's gonna think she's yours... and that we are together... I'm just trying to get ahead of the inevitable, I just don't want to put her through that... this isn't what I want her to remember when she gets older."
He knew he royally fucked up when he manned up enough to look up from the floor. Your face was turning purple from holding back whatever emotions were running through your tired mind.
"You don't want her to remember that despite the way everything looks she has people around her that love her more than anything...?" Your sneakers dug into the gravel at your feet as if to beg the earth for some stability.
"I just- don't want her getting attached."
"Children have nannies Ed.... and fuck you. I've given up over a year of my life to get you through this..." From inside the belly of the trailer, Melody whimpered and whined until she began to wail. You stood frozen in the driveway, Eddie looked right back... he watched the way your muscles fired to go toward the sound, the way your blunt nails dug into your palms with nerves... what really fucked him is up in the way you clutched your chest... the same way you were rocking Mel only fifteen minutes before the rug was snatched from beneath your feet.
You patted the empty spot on your chest where his baby has slept many nights, what was once a warm comforting spot now felt hollow. "Fucking look at me you prick... it hurts this bad because you know it's wrong... and I don't think it's Melody you're actually worried about "getting attached"." You sucked in a hurried breath... "I love that little girl Eddie." Your voice tapered off into a whispered high-pitched whine as you tried to hold back your own river of tears. "I've stood by you through everything...and you are telling me you don't want your child to remember someone who loves YOU and HER unconditionally...? Eddie, I've backed you up through a lot of fucked up shit but this has got to be the worst."
"You can't tell me you don't understand where I'm coming from..."
"Oh I do... trust me I do... your mom ran off because of your dad, your dad was a deadbeat...but your uncle took you in because damn him if anything happened to that little curly-headed mess of a boy.... he isn't your dad Eddie and I've never seen a person love as deeply as Wayne... Funny how you forget so quickly that I've known you for so long..."
He was silent... what could he say.. he knew before he opened his mouth this was wrong. Nothing he could piece together in his mind sounded right so he just accepted it, "Let me give you some cash for your trouble."
She huffed dumbfounded, "I don't want your fucking money. I want to be a part of her life I want to be a part of your life... but you're pushing me away because you are scared of me... you're scared of this," she pointed her finger upward and made an irritated circular motion, "you always run when the going gets tough Eddie... but despite how you feel... you're responsible for more than yourself now." She tilted her head toward the sound of his screeching child.
"Pocket the fucking cash and go get Melody."
You got in your car without another word the headlights casting him in an accusatory light for all of the stars above to see... he felt like the heavens were glaring down at him for shutting out the answer to his prayers. He couldn't see you over the shine of the low beams but he could hear a choked sob rip through the steel doors and windows. The last thing you said to him rattled between his ears as he turned and went inside. He dusted off his pants with his calloused hands in a futile attempt to rid himself of the dirty feeling that settled over him like dust. He leaned over the sink and watched as a tear slid down the tip of his nose and rippled in the dishwater of a baby bottle you had used to feed Mel earlier in the evening. As he turned on the water and waiting for it to get warm he made the mistake of looking up.
Staring back at him the little pink Post-it sagged in the window, the steam from below causing it to detach and drift dismally down into the water where your sweet message morphed into a convoluted mess of black ink until it faded into nothingness and the paper split apart in the sink... Melody cried the microwave beeped to remind him that a homemade meal was getting cold...
*..it hurts this bad because you know it's wrong*
He carried himself down the hall past the night light in the bathroom and gathered Melody in his arms tucking her into his chest just like you did. He tried to re-tuck her swaddle but it wasn't as uniform as yours... he rocked her and bounced her he tried everything he knew but she still cried... he walked with her out into the hall, where he was once again crushed by a memory that took him out like a rouge wave. As the soft glow from your night light seeped onto the scratchy carpet of the hall he was reminded of the night he came home to you and Mel sleeping up against the door frame... You had tried everything to soothe her just as he had now... yet she still cried... you were exhausted but you sat with her on the floor under the light until she slept... you told him you were waiting for him to get home to move because you didn't want to walk into the dark alone... Another tear stung his raw skin, as he slid down the door frame under the nightlight...cradling his daughter in his undeserving hands. As the reality dawned on him that not only did he make you cry tonight... but he pushed you into the dark alone.
warnings: nothing rlly, partying, drinking, kissing, fluffy fluff, angsty if u squint!, high mention?, drinking games!!, truth or dare bc im such a cliche <3
summary: a truth or dare game with eddie reveals some truths between the two of you.
authors note: omg i feel like i haven't posted in forever and this so LONGG and if u can guess which show i was heavily inspired by when i wrote the closet scene i will give u thousand of kisses. as usual i kinda hate this and the ending but this took forever to write and idk i just love friends to lovers eddie SOO MUCH. this is proofread but i only read it once so pls ignore any mistakes !! also if u guys enjoyed this pls LEAVE FEEDBACK, come talk to me in asks, requests r open!! ily all sm, mwah, em!
You scoffed as you made your way past the drunken slimy bodies, pushing everyone out of the way until you finally made it into the kitchen, having no idea how Steve had managed to throw a bash this crowded and your head was spinning too much to care now.
Stumbling a bit your feet picked you up toward the drink stand, shaking the empty bottles, you sighed. "Really? All of them?" you huffed annoyed as you turned around, spotting Robin with a bottle in her hand, you smirked.
"Robin! You are my hero." You giggled as you approached her, grabbing the bottle despite her protests as you chugged a huge sip, your face contorting at the taste.
"Jesus, slow down! You're going to get black out drunk again and then complain all day tomorrow." Nancy came up behind Robin as she scoffed, this is what you had been doing all week, and Nancy was starting to get worried but you rolled your eyes at her, while Robin gave her a 'don't say that' look.
"C'mon Nance, let her be. She's got enough on her plate as it is!" Robin made a suggestive look as you took another sip, turning to face her.
Nancy pursed her lips as she shrugged. "And what does that mean?" You asked, knitting your brows together. Robin pointed towards Eddie, and your eyes followed.
He was chugging the beer he had a firm grip on, face contorting as he took more and more sips, your heart dropped to your stomach at the sight, you knew he would be here, yet you couldn't help the tingles that overtook your body when you saw him.
You were so stupid.
"I don't know what you mean." You shrugged your shoulders, lying through your teeth, Eddie had been sort of avoiding you for some time, and now, for a whole week, he was acting as if you didn't exist.
You didn't know why or how, but it was eating away at you.
Spending your days drinking and smoking away your feelings had become a regular habit ever since he had started avoiding you, and Nancy and Robin had started to get worried about your current coping mechanism.
To say you were feeling hurt would be an understatement, you and Eddie were supposed to be friends, best friends even, in the last four years, you had grown close to him, so close that being away from him even for a second hurt.
And now this distance, his cold attitude, not returning any of your calls, and eventually pretending as if you didn't exist, was eating at you, your own insecurities were bubbling up at the surface.
What was so wrong with you that Eddie couldn't even tell it to your face?
"I mean, it is weird, I've never seen the two of you apart for an hour, let alone a week." Robin spoke up, mentally cursing herself for not being able to stop blabbering and Nancy gave her a look, one that meant, 'not the fucking time' and you narrowed your eyes, hurt twinging in your chest.
"Shutting up now?" Robin asked awkwardly, shrugging her shoulders in defense, "I hope." You replied, trying to hide the hurt in your tone.
Your eyes searched for Eddie again, he was now conversing with Argyle and Jonathan, he looked uncomfortable, he could feel your gaze on him and he was doing everything in his willpower to not meet your disappointed eyes, he knew he would soften up the second he saw you.
"I think I have a plan." Nancy muttered to Robin behind you as they quickly left your side, you were too busy to notice anything as you leaned on the wall chugging the bottle again, face feeling numb.
You meant to talk to him, ask him why he was avoiding you, but you were afraid of his answer, what if Eddie didn't want to be your friend anymore?
What if Eddie was going to tell you how much he started hating you and that he never wanted to see your face again?
You would much prefer the distance rather than be shunned by him. You doubted you could handle anything without him by your side.
You knew what you felt for him was far beyond friendship now, but you never could fully admit to it.
For months, Nancy and Robin had been trying to get you to admit to it, but you had always refused, saying the two of you were 'just friends.'
But you knew, and they knew that people who were 'just friends', didn't do what you two did, friends didn't have movie nights where they ended up cuddling each other and falling asleep in each other's arms, sometimes, Eddie would even place a kiss on your forehead when you fell asleep, tucking you in as a grin took over his lips, seeing how peaceful you were.
Friends didn't have dates in Eddie's van, seated in the back as the both of you ashed a joint, wasting away the night before you watched the sunset with him, his childish grin as he told you all of his stupid jokes feeling like a kick in your stomach now.
And you knew, you knew, friends didn't look at each other the same way both of you looked at one another.
So, you were nervous, nervous that you had fucked up the only good thing in your life, nervous of what he might say to you.
But this apparent nervousness was nowhere to be seen when you had drunk this much. Before you knew it, you found your two feet dragging you to his side, unable to take control of yourself, the drunk you had decided that you had enough.
You slid past the drunk bodies standing in the way of Eddie, your fingertips anxiously fiddling with the bottle, you could barely balance yourself, smushing yourself against the wall near him.
"Hi." You intended for your voice to come out soft but your words were slurred, and Eddie almost stilled when he heard it.
His heart was thudding inside of his chest, he knew you would be at Steve's party, but he never thought you would actually talk to him, not when he had been a complete asshole to you for a while now.
His gaze was avoidant, almost as avoidant as he was and your stomach was churning again, and this time it was not the alcohol.
It was all him.
"Hey." His greeting was short, your mouth had dried up, and the drunk version of you didn't have the tolerance you had for the past week.
Your eyes narrowed as you straightened yourself. "Hey? Is that all you have to fucking say?" You almost snapped, you hadn't meant to sound so sharp, the words left your mouth like word vomit, it probably wasn't fair how you spat them at him, but his coldness to you wasn't fair, either.
You knew once you brought the subject to him there was no turning back, you were afraid of the possibility of him never talking to you again but the liquid in your system gave you enough courage to do what you feared, ripping the band-aid off, and you thought maybe, maybe, ending the friendship would cause you less pain than whatever he was supposed to be doing.
"Hello?" He attempted to joke, and if you weren't this stupidly smitten over him, and maybe a bit buzzed, it wouldn't have worked, but it did. All it took for him to soften you up was a stupid joke, causing you to giggle drunkenly, as you leaned into the wall again.
"Really?" You shook your head, "That's the best you got?" You tilted your head to the side, giving him a warm smile, you couldn't help it, it was the most you had talked with him this week, and you were already putty in his hands, you hated him, and you hated the effect he had on you.
He shrugged, it was obvious he felt more comfortable, his eyes not leaving yours. "Made you laugh, didn't I?" you nodded, you didn't mean to get this soft on him this quickly, but you couldn't help it, not when he made you feel at ease this easily.
You hated and loved how everything with Eddie made you feel at ease, feeling safe with him like you could bring your guard down for once.
You huffed, mind more mellow as you eyed him. "Missed this, ya know?" Your words were slurred again, you knew it wasn't the alcohol talking, but at the same time without it, you never would have had the courage.
Eddie's eyes were glossy and riddled with remorse as they gazed into yours, you could sense it, sense that he was feeling guilty, you bit the inside of your cheek when he looked at you like that.
"What?" He asked, dumbfounded.
"Missed this-" you pointed between the two of you, "Just missed being with y-you." You couldn't help it when your words were tangled with each other again, it made you scared to admit any of this, while Eddie just gave you a sigh.
"You're drunk?" He questioned. "Again?" If you didn't know how Eddie had been treating you the past week you'd think he was worried about you, considerate even, but the way his actions changed made you doubt his sincerity.
Eddie had been aware of your new coping mechanism, his mouth felt dry when Steve told him how badly you had been taking Eddie's new demeanor.
"Mhm." You hummed, signaling to the bottle as you attempted to chug it again but Eddie shook his head, quickly taking it away from your hands. You gasped as you straightened yourself. "Rude."
"You will get shit faced and have the worst hangover, and I'm sure you'll curse us out for letting you drink that much." He raised his brows to warn you and you pouted at him like a child.
"You sound just like Nancy." You scoffed, biting back the insult you had at the tip of your tongue about how he decided to care about you now, instead settling on making him chuckle, and just with his laugh, you felt a tinge of pride swell in your chest, it was pathetic how desperate you were for him.
"No fun, I'm crossing you out." You whined as you draw an 'X' in the air, with pouty lips and soft eyes, Eddie had a foolish grin on his face when he was comfortable with you again, almost at peace with how your soul embraced his.
He felt like an asshole, and so fucking stupid for the way he acted, but it was the only thing he knew how to do: running away from his feelings.
"Come on, where the hell have you guys been, we've got some drinking games going on!" You were startled by Robin's loud voice, and as turning to face her, you heard Eddie's groans behind you.
"No way." Eddie shook his head and you threw him a puzzled look.
"No?" You furrowed your brows. "But, you love drinking games."
"Yeah, you love drinking games. Don't be a buzzkill, Munson." Robin interrupted, she shot a look at Eddie that made him confused but intrigued, and he couldn't say no when the two of you dragged him to where everyone else was gathered.
You sat down next to him and felt your hazy drunken state get worse, it was as if everything was becoming all too real.
Realizing that the conversation you just had with him meant nothing, not after he had been avoiding you for a week, and now your mind was swirled with the thoughts of what was going to happen when you two finally had 'the talk', anxiety riddling over your body again.
"What game are we playing?" You asked in an attempt to shake off your thoughts, it didn't help when Eddie's gaze landed on you and you could feel your cheeks burning with his gaze alone, causing you to chew on your bottom lip out of nervousness.
"We just played endless rounds of 'Never Have I Ever'" Nancy sighed, almost annoyed.
"Turns out Steve the King is bit of a slut." Robin semi-whispered as Steve gasped, holding his heart to be dramatic.
"Really, Robin?" He furrowed his brows. "Well, it's not my fault you hooked up with the half of—" Robin was interrupted by Eddie's groan.
"C'mon you guys let's just play whatever this is and get on with it." His voice sounded annoyed, you turned to face him, but Eddie was already avoiding your gaze again, he looked nervous, and you wanted to roll your eyes, he was being an asshole, again.
You could feel anger bubbling up inside of your chest, and Robin could feel the tension in the air. "Okayy, truth or dare it is!" Robin interrupted with a nervous giggle.
"I thought we were playing Never Have I Ever-" You were shut up by Robin's shushes.
"Yes and now we switched to Truth or Dare, keep up, sweetheart." You furrowed your brows and giggled, turning to Steve as if to ask what was wrong with Robin, but Steve put his hands up in defense, shrugging.
Something weird was going on and you couldn't put a finger on it, and to be honest, your mind was too fuzzy to figure any of it out, filled both with alcohol and the thoughts of Eddie. Robin grabbed the bottle and spun it around the circle, the anticipation of it made her fiddle in her place, and when it landed on Steve, she groaned.
"Steve! I think you should pick truth, are you a virgin? Oh wait, you are not! Let me spin it again." Robin talked so fast that even Eddie threw her a look, you were usually used to her fast-paced actions but she was giving you a whiplash now.
"Robin, what the hell are you—" Eddie's words were cut short by Robin's shriek.
"Wow! It landed on Eddie, what a surprise." Robin rubbed her hands together almost like a villain in a cartoon.
"So, truth or dare, Eddie? Oh, also you can't say truth because Steve just picked that." Robin hit her hand against her forehead in a fake manner, and you giggled again at her actions, unaware of what was coming next.
"Okaa...ay, dare?" Eddie asked unsurely, and Robin mimicked a thinking face, you had no idea what was coming next, but you doubted anything Robin would dare him to do could fix whatever was going on with Eddie.
"I dare you to..." She paused for a minute.
"Go into that closet and not come out until you and Y/N make out." Robin's words were like a slap on your face, and she had that stupid grin on her face that you wanted to wipe off.
"Excuse me?" The two of you said in unison and you were afraid to look at him now.
"I mean... a dare is a dare." Steve shrugged, and Robin nodded quickly causing you to sigh.
"You are a child, Robin." You threw her a death stare, your mind was still hazy as you began to get up, and Eddie was still where he was sitting, he twisted his rings, an action you knew he did when he was nervous.
"Well, are you just going to wait around all day?" You snapped, not knowing what came over you when you were this drunk.
"You're okay with this?" Eddie's face was almost red as he looked up at you, hating the way a nervous tingle formed in your stomach with how he looked at you.
"It's just a d—dare, let's get it over with." You meant to sound confident but your words came out as a murmur.
"This is so stupid." He scoffed as he followed you into the closet, Robin following up behind the two of you. She locked the door when the two of you entered and she sent you a smirk before she did so, making you scoff.
"I swear I'm going to kill her." You said sharply, turning your back on the door.
When you finally faced Eddie you realized how close he was standing to your face, his tall figure towering over you was enough to make your breath hitch.
"Hi." was all he muttered as he looked down on you, making you realize how much you missed the warmth of his soft gaze and you hated yourself for how enamored you were with him.
"Hi." You managed to let out when you caught your breath, the room felt suffocating, and you could barely swallow the lump in your throat.
The possibility of him kissing you made you want to scream, both from excitement and fear.
"So... we have to kiss?" He said awkwardly, scratching his head, almost as if it were a question and you nodded quickly, knowing he was too nervous to make the first move so you had to take matters into your own hands.
"What's the big deal? It's just a kiss. We've been best friends for years, we can do it." You said, with a nonchalant tone, but the hint of nervousness was still visible.
"Let's just do it!" You announced excitedly, "kiss me, Edward Munson!" Eddie chuckled at that, making you realize how much you had missed that genuine laugh.
"Edward..." He tilted his head, "Really?" He raised a brow, causing you to pout.
"Yeah." You giggled softly, offering him a smile, knowing how much he hated someone saying his full name, he gave you a light chuckle.
“Okay, yeah, I think I deserved that." He attempted to joke, the air still tense but filled with your giggles.
"Let's do this...” Eddie added cooly, his hands at his side as he leaned towards you, licking his lips.
“Why are you licking your lips?” You questioned, making Eddie chuckle, as he stopped leaning in further.
"Should I not?" He raised a brow, "I mean do you want dry lips?” He asked sarcastically and you shook your head chuckling.
"No, no!" You protested, face burning from embarrassment. "Never mind..." You chuckled.
“I didn’t think it was—” Eddie started but you interrupted, “No.. no it’s okay.. I just..” You were a stuttering mess now.
"Let’s do it.. I—I’m ready.” His tone was soft when he spoke, he was less nervous and you nodded frantically.
You started leaning in but then abruptly stopped, making Eddie furrow his brows.
“Do you want tongue? Are you like a tonguer?” You asked, your face was serious and Eddie's eyes widened.
“Am I a what?” Eddie asked baffled as you chuckled, shaking your head.
"Fuck..." You cursed, giggles errupting in your throat from nervousness. "I didn't mean it like that, I just meant—" You were babbling, your heart hammering inside of your chest.
"I mean do you like tongue in kissing? I just— I wouldn’t wanna use tongue if you don’t want to..." You trailed off.
“Let’s just do it!” Eddie exclaimed interrupting as you let out another giggle, your nerves were getting the best of you.
“Yes, sorry. Are you ready?” You asked, weight of anticipation settling heavily in your chest as Eddie nodded, “Yes.. I’m ready.. let’s just do this..” Eddie let out slowly, scratching his head from nervousness as you nodded once again.
You barely moved when he leaned towards you, almost frozen in place you stared at him, stared at the sickly sweet brown of his eyes, stared at his dark hair that messily laid on his forehead, and you couldn't help it when your eyes lowered down to gaze at his lips, adoring the curve of his mouth.
Your gaze was stuck on him in a way that made your eyes glimmer with an array of emotions, not knowing if this would be your first and last kiss with him, trying your best to etch this sight of him into your mind forever, unsure of whether you could ever see him up this close again.
and as if Eddie could read your mind, he realized, he realized the weight of how you were staring at him. With more he studied your face, the connection between the two of you deepened, unraveling what he most wanted. You.
“Fuck— You.. you can’t do that!” He exclaimed, desperately, and you knitted your brows in confusion, “What... what did I do?” Eddie was being ridiculous now.
"Jesus Christ, you can't just do that to me." His face was burning up, he thought maybe, that this dare would be good for him, maybe the best way to get over his feelings was to kiss you for once, but the way your eyes glimmered was enough to make him want to stare at you forever, and he couldn't do that when he was trying to keep his feelings for you bottled up, forever.
Now, he was regretting the dare as he could feel the pressure building and you looked so pretty that Eddie felt his heart sink in his body, if he kissed you, he knew he couldn't contain his feelings for you no longer, he sighed, shaking his head.
“You can't do that thing with your eyes and face!” He exclaimed as you scoffed, “What the hell are you talking about?” You almost yelled, getting frustrated by his stand-offish attitude.
“Okay that’s it.. I— I can’t do it!” He huffed as he reached for the doorknob, struggling with it.
“Let me out guys!” Eddie yelled but Robin just chuckled, “You have to kiss her, you idiot!”
“Let me out of here, Robin!” He yelled louder this time, but instead of Robin answering this time Steve, Nancy, Argyle, Jonathan, and the gathered crowd answered to him, chanting “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” and Eddie rolled his eyes, cursing.
“Oh come on Eddie, let’s just do this! Just one kiss!” You said annoyed, and you felt a bit rejected at how much he wanted to leave.
Eddie turned around to meet your gaze, “No, I’m not gonna fucking kiss you.” His words were bitter and you bit the inside of your cheek to keep yourself from crying in front of him.
“Eddie we've been best friends for four years! A little kiss isn’t gonna change anything.” The words that left your mouth stung him, it wasn't easy on you but the emphasis on the two of you being best friends and how a kiss wouldn't change a thing between the two of you was the exact reason he was avoiding you.
Eddie knew if you had rejected him, and told him that you didn't reciprocate his feelings, it would eventually lead to the two of you not being friends.
And he couldn't handle that idea, he couldn't handle not being around you. That's why he tried to stay away from you, just so he could contain his feelings for you, at least for a while.
His gaze on you was agonizing, “Stop looking at me like that.” He muttered as you rolled your eyes, and crossed your arms around your chest, annoyed.
“God, will you just kiss me already!” You blurted out, now getting annoyed with him, not being able to comprehend why Eddie was making such a big deal out of this when it was just supposed to be a dare.
"No."
“Why not?” You questioned, eager to know why he had been acting this way, Eddie ran his hands across his hair, ruffling it before he gripped your shoulders to get your attention fully, “Because..." He took a deep breath as he put his trembling hands into his back pockets, he was trying to hold himself back, but he couldn't, not when you looked at him that way.
"Because I don't want to kiss you like this!” He almost snapped, his feelings taking over before his logic could, and you went rigid with his words.
His own reaction was delayed as his eyes widened at his own words, and he was standing close to you, so close, that your breath hitched when he said that. “What.. what does that mean?” Your head was spinning as Eddie looked down, almost as if he was embarrassed.
“Nothing! I didn’t— I just... That’s not what I fucking meant..” Eddie stuttered over his words, he felt like his desperation had trickled into the very air he was breathing in, his own words suffocating him and your gaze mocking him, he couldn't handle it further as people outside the closet started chanting “Kiss! Kiss!” again.
Eddie scoffed again, “Shit— just, excuse me..” He cursed out as he tried the doorknob again.
“What are you doing?” You asked curiously, you wanted to talk to him now.
“Just need some air” He murmured and tried the door again.
“Robin, just open up!” Eddie yelled out making Robin groan, “Did you kiss her?” Eddie rolled his eyes, and he got ready to curse Robin out but you placed your hands over his mouth, shushing him.
“Yes, yes Robin! We fucking did, we even french kissed! You happy?” You yelled out as Robin giddily chuckled unlocking the door.
You threw her a dead stare as Eddie just brushed past her, hurrying his way out and you followed quickly behind him.
"Eddie, just wait!" You called out after him, you were curious to know what he meant, why he was acting this way, none of it was making sense to you and you were still very buzzed.
"Just leave me the fuck alone, Y/N." He didn't even turn around to face you and it hurt.
"No! I'm not going to fucking run away this time." You yelled, catching up to him, and Eddie turned around swiftly.
"What are you talking about?" He asked, his tone curious and not annoyed like before.
"I'm not playing your stupid game anymore, I don't care if you tell me you hate me, Eddie, just tell me what's wrong, tell me what I did to make you push me away this much. You can insult me and tell me to 'fucking leave' but I won't leave until you tell me to my face what I did to make you push me away, you fucking coward!" You spat out the words, rolling your shoulders as you felt your anger coming out to the surface.
Eddie rubbed his hands against his face, you were asking for him to be vulnerable, and he knew that if he opened up to you, you would probably laugh in his face.
"I just—" He scoffed, "I don't wanna do this. Not right now." He sighed, and he drooped his head, his gaze fixated on the ground now.
"Just tell me what the fuck is wrong, Eddie." You almost yelled, feeling your face hot with anger. "What did you mean by when you said you didn't want to kiss me like this?"
"And why have you been avoiding me, why can't you even look me in the fucking eye right now?" To say you were frustrated would be an understatement, liquid courage had worked a little too well and you were pouring your gut out to him.
You crossed your arms against your chest, feeling your cheeks burning up with anger, you were filled with fury, and nothing Eddie could do was going to change that.
In fact, it made it worse when he kept avoiding his gaze. "Fuck you." You spat out, index finger pointed towards him, hostility written all over your face, your feet picked you up before your mind realized, and you brushed past him as you angrily left his side.
"Just— fucking wait!" His words rang in your ears but you didn't care, you kept walking while Eddie was right behind you.
"Let me just explain!" He yelled out after you. "Jesus— you're fucking fast." He added as he tried to catch up to you.
You stopped in your tracks, and your back was turned to him. "Eddie, just get it over with." You crossed your arms against your chest again, feeling your insides twist as you waited for him to pull the band-aid off.
"What?" He raised his brows in confusion, and you didn't dare to look at him.
"You realized it, didn't you? I mean it took me a while to realize it myself." Your voice was timid, not trusting yourself enough that you wouldn't break down completely in front of him.
"And you realized you didn't reciprocate them, and you're trying to let me off easy by avoiding me." You could feel tears prickling your eyes but you shook your head to make them go away.
"I know you hate confrontation." Your voice was cracking now, and Eddie hated it, he hated being the reason you were about to cry, he hated being the reason you doubted yourself because of him.
"What are you talking about? Reciprocating what?" He didn't dare to turn you to face him, he was still shocked at the possibility of what you were hinting at.
"Feelings, Eddie. My fucking feelings for you!" You turned around to face him now, and his eyes had softened, he blinked slowly to process what you were saying. The air between the two of you was filled with unspoken emotions, your body ridden with anticipation and anxiety.
But Eddie felt stupid, so fucking stupid. He spent this whole week bottling up his feelings for you, and avoiding you to do so because he thought he wasn't good enough for you, he thought you would actually mock him.
He should've known you would never do that, he should've told the insecure voice in his head to shut the fuck up.
Because there you were in front of him, saying exactly what he was feeling, and he felt like the biggest idiot in the world.
"Your... what?" His eyebrows furrowed, and he wanted to laugh, he wanted to laugh at how stupid he was being.
"Just— let's just pretend this never happened." You could barely look at him, nervously fiddling with your fingers.
"Nope." He shook his head.
There was no fucking way he would pretend this had never happened, he had been waiting, for years to tell you how he felt, every night he would give himself a pep talk, encouraging himself to finally open up to you, but when he finally saw you in the morning, and you gave him that warm smile and those doe-eyes, he always backed out, scared of losing you forever.
"No fucking way." He shook his head, and a chuckle escaped his lips.
The look you threw him was filled with disdain, "Oh, so this is funny to you?" You were quick to judge him, turning around and muttering curse words as your feet began to pick up again.
"Jesus Christ, will you let me speak!" He yelled out again and you shook your head, walking faster. Eddie scoffed, "So. Fucking. Stubborn." He muttered under his breath.
He caught up to you once again and this time he reached out to your free hand, and he grabbed it in a tight firm, spinning you around to face him, you were about to cuss him out again, and throw him a death glare, but his gaze was so gentle that you couldn't help it, your eyes were mellow, sickly sweet, as they met his.
Your heart reacted before you could, thumping in your chest. Eddie was leaning so close towards you that you sensed his heavy breathing against your face, you didn't dare to move, not until his tender fingertips brushed against your cheeks, he leaned over so agonizingly slow that you couldn't help but close the gap between the two of you, soft lips clashing with each other as you whimpered the second your mouth met his.
Eddie's chest fizzled with warmness, the smell of your perfume mixed with alcohol dizzying him while your head was still pounding as you were trying to process what was happening, there wasn't enough air in the world for your lungs to pull in.
You deepened the kiss when Eddie's hands slowly cupped your cheeks, parting your lips as his tongue explored yours, shuddering at his touch.
Your brain didn't process any of it, not until the initial shock wore off, that's when you pulled back slightly, catching your breath as you blinked confusedly at him, unable to find the words to speak.
Eddie licked his lips as they twitched to form a smile, speaking up before you could. “In the closet.. when. I said I didn’t wanna kiss you like that... I meant that I wanted something like this..” He gave you a slight chuckle as you returned it with a warm smile.
"I'm sorry for the way I acted." He gulped, feeling guilty for his actions in the past weeks, but he always poorly reacted to things that involved his feelings.
"I thought if I just stayed away from you, if I just pushed you away for a while, I could bottle up my feelings for you and—"
"You have feelings for me?" You asked, interrupting, eyes widening despite the kiss being undeniable proof of that but you still couldn't believe it, you still couldn't believe that the man you had been in love with was actually reciprocating the feelings you harbored, the feelings you tried so hard to contain inside of you.
"Are you kidding? Of course, I do." Eddie affirmed. "I mean how could I not?" He chuckled, pointing towards you. "Jesus, you're so beautiful, so fucking pretty..." he flashed you a mischievous smile.
"You're nice, and god, so fucking kind that it makes me sick sometimes. And shit— you get along with Wayne so well, I think he thinks of you more as his kid than me at this point." You gave him a light chuckle.
"Also... you are funny sometimes too." He added, giving you a light nudge with his shoulder as you pointed towards yourself mouthing 'Little old me?' sarcastically, making him smile.
"Fuck— if it wasn't for you, I'd be so lost, sweetheart. I'm so glad you came into my life." Your heart warmed at his words, gaze softening as your lips twitched into a smile.
"And you're always fucking there for me... even when I don't deserve it." He nervously fiddled with his fingers, he didn't deserve someone as perfect as you.
"Like right now, even though I've been an asshole, avoiding you, and even more of an asshole in the closet, you still came after me." He looked down, embarrassed that he had pushed you away, he knew you deserved better, so much better.
"You didn't deserve any of it, you just deserve every fucking good thing there is, and I'm just none of those things." You shook your head, opening your mouth to speak but Eddie didn't let you.
"Can you even picture it? You and me together? You— god, you are so fucking perfect." Your heart pounded against your chest, the rhythm of it erratic and suffocating because of his painful words, if only he knew how much you loved him.
"I'm just me, Eddie. I'm fucked up, a 'freak', a fucking drug dealer." Deep lines etched his forehead, he chuckled bitterly, and your heart throbbed at him describing himself as anything but good.
"I guess I just decided I wasn't good enough for you. Fuck— I chickened out." He eyed you nervously, and what he didn't expect was you slapping him on the shoulder, harshly.
"Ow!" He yelped, "Eddie never, ever make decisions on my part ever again." You chided him and he nodded quickly, "Jesus, that hurt."
"Good, because I also don't allow you to speak that way about yourself either, you're the best thing that has ever happened to me Eddie and I mean it. You're not fucked up." You affirmed him.
"God, you really are the best thing that has ever happened to me, Eddie. I don't think I've ever been happier, or more comfortable with anyone but you, you helped me realize so much about myself and have been there with me through everything." You didn't blink once, and Eddie's mouth was agape, he couldn't believe that someone —and not just anyone, you— saw him as anything more than a fuck up.
"I love you, Eddie, and I mean it, I love you so fucking much." You added, your eyes glimmering. "I can't stop thinking about you, ever... and it physically hurt being away from you for just one fucking week."
"I'm sorry for that..." He muttered again, embarrassed. "I love you so fucking much, honey. And I promise I'll never do something as dumb as this again." He gave you a warm smile, and his fingertips were gentle as they grazed over your cheeks.
You tilted your head in hesitation, "Yeah, I doubt it." You giggled, and Eddie squished your cheeks in response.
"God, you're so lucky that you're so pretty and so lucky that I fucked up big time because I will agree with you on whatever you say for the next few days." Eddie's lips formed a smirk and you raised a brow, "I'm thinking for the next month." You pursed your lips sarcastically.
Eddie chuckled and leaned in once again to kiss you, "Whatever my pretty girl wants." He murmured into your lips.
You whimpered again when your lips touched, both of you groaned when you were interrupted by Nancy's voice.
"See, I told you it would work!" Nancy pointed towards to two of you kissing as Robin and Steve almost gasped.
Robin turned to Nancy crossing her arms against her chest all-knowingly, "Yeah but it wasn't working a minute ago when they were yelling at each oth-" Robin's words were cut short by the glare Eddie and you threw at Robin.
"Sorry!" She yelled out, giving a sheepish smile, making you laugh.
"So, this was all you?" You asked, pointing towards Nancy, but before she could answer Robin scoffed.
"As if I didn't put your stubborn asses in that closet!" She mocked. The puzzle pieces of Robin acting weird all night coming to you and Eddie at the same time.
"You guys are all idiots." Eddie huffed, but his smile never faltered, and the three of them knew that was his way of gratitude.
You turned towards them with a sheepish smile on your face mouthing a 'thank you' to Robin and Nancy, and giving Steve a thumbs up, they waved you off as if to say 'No problem', and you turned to Eddie again.
"Eventful night, huh?" He asked, a smirk playing on his lips, and you gave him a playful nudge. "Shut up."
"So... you ready to go home?" Eddie asked as he threw an arm around your shoulder, you nodded, melting into his comfortable hold.
"Mhmm." You hummed, as he pressed a kiss on your hair. "I love you, pretty girl." He murmured.
