32k || All my content is 18+ MDNI || CW: Reader has a stalker; angst; anxiety; fear; depression; sadness; terror; panic attack; self-hate; self-blame; feelings of worthlessness; regret; bodily injury (semi-ish described, less graphic than what's on the show); torture (ish) (actual acts not described); burns; the quickest, briefest implication of future SA but nothing happens and it's a reading between the lines thing; quick mention of being sick; a gun; a knife; alcohol consumption (not excessive); kidnapping; fingering; PIV sex; literally the worst, most half-assed smut I've ever written I'm sorry; Jack helping Reader; yearning; a dash of idiots to lovers.
Summary: When you realize you're being stalked shortly after moving back to Pittsburgh you turn to the one person you know will keep you safe and help you. Your ex-boyfriend, Dr. Jack Abbot.
AN: I don't know. That's how I feel about this whole thing lol. I hope it's okay. It's definitely in my angst wheelhouse I think lol. I love a good stalker story and I don't think I've ever actually written anything where the couple are exes so it was nice getting to work with that for the first time. Reader is a professor who went to school at Oxford but what she studies and teaches is never defined. We're ignoring the realities of jobs in academia a little bit for the plot. Jack is explicitly not a widow in this universe. If you have any questions about the CWs please feel free to DM me! I really do hope it's okay and ends up being worth reading that many words! I know it's a lot so I really appreciate you taking the time to read if you do! Thank you so much for your support and for reading!! ♥️
“I’ll wait until you get inside to leave, Honey, you have a good night now, okay?”
You smile at your uber driver, appreciative of her waiting given that it’s 12:47 a.m. “Thank you, I appreciate that. Have a good night.”
The townhouse you rent is set off the street a good fifteen feet with a little front yard area so even with the porch light on you can’t immediately see the yellow 9 x 12 envelope waiting for you on your doormat. Your heart rate picks up a little when you see it but you try to tell yourself to relax. Someone sent you something. Maybe you ordered something and forgot. You have no reason to think the guy you went on a couple of dates with and then said no to a third date with who has been blowing up your phone would suddenly escalate to leaving you something weird or dangerous.
But when you pick up the envelope it’s not addressed. There’s nothing on it. There’s something in it though. A fair amount of something because it’s decently thick. You undo the clasp with shaking hands and pull out the stack of papers inside.
They’re not papers though. They’re photos. Of you. Everywhere.
You at the grocery store, you walking out in the city, you in other stores, you walking in and out of the building your office is in the morning and night, your office, you walking into your house. And then they’re of your townhouse. Inside your townhouse. Your bedroom, your pillow, your shower, your underwear drawer, your bras, your knife block in your kitchen. A gun on your coffee table. A knife held up by a gloved hand in front of your shower. A gun on your pillow.
Nausea and an intense dizziness overwhelm you as your entire body starts to match your hands and shake.
“You okay, Honey?” Your uber driver calls to you through the window she’s rolled down.
You shake your head and try to pull it together. You can’t go inside. You can’t be alone. Even a hotel doesn’t seem safe. He’s following you.
You don’t know many people in Pittsburgh. You only moved back to the city a couple of months ago and haven't reconnected with anyone you used to know, have only met people at work really. You consider yourself friends with them in a sense, but not for this. Out of the handful of people in Pittsburgh that you do know from before, fuck, out of all the people you know and have ever known in your entire life, you’ve only ever felt truly and completely safe with one of them.
Jack Abbot.
Who just happens to be your ex and soulmate and the love of your life.
You shove the photos back into the envelope and walk back to the car with it. “Can you take me to Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center? The emergency room entrance? I’ll pay you, I can venmo you or I have some cash I think. Just, if I request an uber again it might not be you and I can’t wait.”
“Don’t worry about it, Honey, just get in.” You do and she starts driving immediately. “Is everything okay? Are you hurt? Someone you know?”
“No,” you whisper. “I think I’m being stalked.”
“Oh shit! Do you know someone at the hospital? Who can help you and keep you safe?” your uber driver asks. The genuine compassion in her voice reminds you there’s some good left in this world.
“Yeah,” you say softly. “I do.”
You actually don’t know that for sure. On a couple of levels. You don’t know if Jack is working tonight. You don’t know if he’s still working nights. You don’t even know if he’s still working at the Pitt. You do know, however, that absent a huge shift in his personality and character and entire being, that if Jack is there or you can get in touch with him he will help you and keep you safe, no questions asked. Not even after five years.
MNeither you nor Jack had wanted to break up. You both thought you were going to end up married, knew the other was the one. But then the two of you turned into a classic case of right person wrong time. After going around in circles about it for years since you graduated college you decided to finally apply to a couple of grad schools, including your dream school, Oxford. You didn't think you had any true chance of getting in, though Jack knew otherwise, so you didn't really think you'd ever have to figure out what to do about you and Jack.
And then you got in. You got in and Jack had finally just gotten truly established and settled in the perfect position for him as the senior night shift attending and it's not like he could easily transfer his license to another country. You couldn't ask Jack to come with you and implode the life he'd made for himself and to do whatever he could until he could get his license figured out, if he could. And Jack couldn't ask you to give up your dream. It wasn't fair to the other and it would've caused problems in your relationship eventually, you were both sure.
So somehow you'd come to the decision to break up. You don't even really remember how you ended up there. Your four year anniversary was only a couple of months away when you did. You guys had been talking more seriously about marriage before everything happened. You didn't know it but Jack had been thinking about and sketching engagement ring designs for a good while, it was really the only reason he hadn't proposed yet, he didn't have the perfect ring. He still has the sketches.
Jack is the love of your life. You know it. You don’t bother denying it. You've dated other people occasionally knowing that if you ended up marrying them it would be a type of settling, no matter how much you loved them. Because they wouldn’t be Jack.
You’d debated reaching out to him when you moved back to the city but you couldn’t bring yourself to yet for some reason. As much as you wanted Jack to be happy and truly wished him all the happiness in the world, you didn’t think you could handle finding out he’s married, has a wife and kids. So you just let him be.
“Is this good?” Your uber driver interrupts your thoughts.
“Hm?” You look around. You’re right outside the entrance to the emergency department. “Yeah, this is perfect. Thank you so much.” You start digging through your purse to find some cash.
“Don’t worry about it Honey, just be safe, okay?” Your uber driver turns in her seat to look at you. “Seriously. Be safe.”
You stop searching through your bag and nod at her. The only reason you stop looking for money is because you realized you could just pay her by tipping her through uber, not that you say that, of course. “Thank you so much,” you whisper. She smiles at you and nods as you get out of the car.
If you weren’t so fucking terrified you could almost laugh at how chairs looks so different and yet almost exactly the same as the last time you were here over five years ago. People at the desk are all new though, which means getting to Jack might be harder.
“Hi,” you smile at the woman behind the desk. “Can I please speak with Dr. Abbot? Does he still work here? Is he on tonight?”
“You have to fill out paperwork and wait your turn just like everyone else, Miss.” She gives you an already annoyed look.
“No, I don’t need to be seen, I just need to speak with Jack, please. If he’s here.” You try to make your smile apologetic but it’s hard with how scared you are, and you’re concerned it’s coming across poorly.
“This isn’t really a place to come and just try to chat with a doctor. If you don’t need emergency medical treatment you shouldn’t be here, I’m sorry.” She gives you a somewhat apologetic smile. And you get it, you really do and you don’t hold it against her. This shit probably happens all the time.
“I know, just, is he working tonight, at least? Or could you just give Jack my name and let him decide if wants to come speak with me, please.” You give her a pleading look, bite your tongue and don’t tell her you don’t currently need emergency medical treatment and are trying to keep it that way and that’s why you need to speak with Jack.
Another woman in scrubs looks at you as she walks near the desk. You almost think she might stop but she doesn’t.
“Expecting company tonight Dr. Abbot?” Emery smirks at him as she walks up to him at the hub. Jack looks up at her from where he’s sitting charting and raises his eyebrows at her. “There’s a pretty woman in chairs asking for you. Doesn't want to seem to take no for an answer.” Emery shrugs.
“What the fuck?” Jack mutters, logging out and heading towards chairs. He really doesn’t need this tonight. His shift has been okay, things have been calm. He’ll never say or think the q-word about a shift while here but tonight is approaching that. So he really doesn’t need or want some former patient or former patient's mom or a woman he went out with once or twice showing up here and causing a scene.
Then Jack sees you and stops in his tracks, his breath catching in his throat.
You. The love of his life. The only one he’s ever really wanted to be with in any meaningful way. He’s had trysts and a few relationships, mostly short term, since you but he kind of gave up bothering to try after a while. You're the only one he really wants.
He'll never understand why he decided to actually let you go, why he didn't move with you. Why he didn't try begging you to stay. Really, he does know. However it would've happened, there would've been resentment at some point by one of you. Him for giving up being a doctor, you for giving up an incredible grad school and opportunity.
He thought about you all the time. He's pretty sure that he thought about saying fuck it and flying to you and trying to find you and get back together at least once a month the entire time you were apart, knows he thought about you and wanting you back every day. But as time went on he convinced himself that you'd probably found someone, were probably engaged, maybe married, more recently he's convinced himself that you might have a kid or kids even.
The years have been more than kind to you. You’re just as beautiful as you were the day he met you, more beautiful if anything. He forces himself to take in a breath. No ring on your finger. He finds that hard to believe because you’re a catch on every level. But it doesn’t look like there’s a tan line either. There's no way you can be single.
He wonders why you're here, in Pittsburgh in general and at PTMC. He wonders how long you've been here, how long you're here for.
The way he feels his heart rate pick up and butterflies in his stomach has him shaking his head at himself. All these years later and you still have that effect on him. You always did. Even after you guys had been together for years.
What if you're hurt? That spikes his heart rate even more. You don't look injured or sick or like you're in physical pain or discomfort. But there's absolutely something going on, he can tell by the look on your face and your body language.
“If you know Dr. Abbot well enough for him to want to come out to speak to you, why don’t you call him and ask?” The woman gives you another look.
In your fear that thought hadn’t occurred to you. “Oh,” you murmur. “Yeah, I could do that. Um, okay. Thank you.” You're not actually sure if you could do that because you're not sure if Jack has the same number, but it's your only chance right now you guess, unless you happen to see someone else you know from your Jack days and they let you in.
You start to turn around to find a chair so you can try calling Jack when you hear your first name being called in that deep gravelly voice you’d recognize anywhere. Jack.
You look back at the desk and he's there, leaned over just slightly to speak through the glass. It's your breath that catches this time. The years have only made Jack more attractive. He’s going gray and the salt and pepper curls look so good on him you could scream. Even through your fear your stomach twists in a good way at seeing him. God he looks fucking good.
Jack nods towards the doors, and starts walking towards them. You do the same and once the doors open enough for you to see each other the two of you stand there and look at each other for a couple of seconds.
As the doors start to close you remember yourself and walk through them over to Jack. “Hi,” you breathe, try and fail to give him a smile that doesn't reflect how scared you are.
“Hey.” Jack gives you a small smile. “Come here?” He holds his hands out a little wanting to give you the option about whether to hug. You let out a soft breath and step into his arms, the two of you sharing a tight hug that lingers just a little too long and tells everyone who’s watching you’re not just friends. You both note that the other smells the same.
Being close like this again feels too good for the both of you. You've needed this, craved this. Needed and craved each other. Neither of you wants to let go.
But you have to.
“Thank you for letting me in.” You smile at him as genuinely and convincingly as possible because even under the circumstances, you are glad you’re seeing him again.
He looks even better up close. The crows feet and other soft wrinkles five years have brought Jack suit him perfectly and you have to fight off the urge to hold his face still to get a good look at him. He was always unfairly handsome and is even more so now. The salt and pepper is even more devastating up close, suits the curls you adore perfectly. You wonder if he's graying everywhere. You hate the way you clock his ringless left hand and feel a tingle of hope in the back of your brain somewhere under your terror.
“Yeah of course.” Jack nods. “I’m not trying to skip all the seeing each other for the first time in over five years shit, but what’s up? I know you’re not okay.” He glances down at the envelope and then back up to you.
Of course he knows. He always knew. Jack has always been able to read you with just a glance. You both know it. The same is true of you with him though. You were always able to read him with a glance, no matter how stoic he looked to anyone else.
You look around at everyone watching the two of you and swallow hard, thankful Lena or Bridget or any other night shift regulars from five years ago aren't among them. “Jack,” you shake your head a little and drop your voice to a whisper, “I can’t. Not here.”
He nods slowly. “Okay. Come with me, yeah?” You nod and let him take your hand and lead you to the family room, your fingers lacing together automatically, like no time has passed. You can feel the tears start to form behind your eyes the second he shuts the door. “What’s going on Sweetheart?” He winces at the pet name slipping out. It’s all he used to call you. Robby and Dana teased him about it, would ask him if he even remembered your real name. He did of course. But sweetheart was just what he always called you. “I’m so sorry, that just slipped out.”
“It’s okay Jackie.” You give him the smallest coy smile.
“I, I,” you let out a breath. “I don’t even know how to say it and I know I might be being paranoid and probably am and am probably going to seem like some hysterical woman or something and you can tell me all of that and to get a grip and go but I,” you shift the envelope in your hands, “I think I’m being stalked. And I just moved back and don’t, don't have anyone really and, and,” you let out a sad laugh as a few tears finally run down your face. “And you’re the only place I’ve ever felt safe, the only person I’ve ever felt truly safe with and so I don’t know, I just…came here looking for you so I could feel safe, even for just a minute. I know you're busy and have to get back and that's okay, I just...”
Jack’s stomach twists painfully. You're not one to get shaken easily, so the fact that you are and that you tracked him down to feel safe even for a minute, tells Jack things are bad, that this isn't the first event. But even if you are being paranoid, which Jack sincerely doubts, just the thought of you worrying about being stalked makes him sick and anxious and has that protective side of him coming out hard. It doesn’t matter how much time has passed. He’ll always have that drive and need to protect you. You’re still the most important thing in the world to him. He’ll die before he lets anything happen to you.
And your tears break his heart. He always hated when you cried, hated when he couldn't protect you from the world and make sure you were only ever happy. He'd hold you so close, let you cry it out into him and then do whatever you needed to put you back together again, get a smile on your face.
This time is no different. Maybe it should be. Maybe he shouldn't do this, you aren't together, you've been broken up for over five years, he has no idea if you'd ever even entertain getting back together with him. But it doesn't matter. Even if you won't entertain it he still needs to take care of you.
"Okay, I've got you," he murmurs as he closes the distance between you and wraps his arms around you, pulls you close and holds you as tightly as possible. "You're safe here, I've got you."
"I'm sorry," you sniffle against his scrub top as you wrap your arms around him in return and hold him just as tightly. "I'm so sorry for this, I know it's unfair."
"No, it's not unfair, and you have nothing to apologize for, I'm glad you came to me, okay?" Jack rocks you as you cry against him.
It's intimate, the way he holds you, the feeling in the air, the way you're touching each other, the energy in the room. You've both missed this more than words could ever hope to say.
One of his hands comes up to the back of your head and cups it to keep you close and he must've held and hugged you like this thousands of times when you were together. It takes you right back there and for a brief couple of seconds you're not sure if you're crying because you're scared or because the wound to your heart and soul that was the loss of Jack has been torn back open even deeper.
"It's okay," Jack whispers. "You're going to be okay. We'll figure it out. I promise we'll figure it out."
"It's not your responsibility, Jack," you whisper back to him as you start to pull yourself together.
"I know, and I don't feel like it is, I promise." Jack goes to kiss the top of your head reassuringly and stops himself just in time. But that's how simple it is, how easy it is for him to slip right back into being your partner.
“I doubt you’re being paranoid. Why do you think you're being..?” He can’t get himself to say the word stalked quite yet. It terrifies him too much. “Because of what’s in the envelope?”
“Yeah,” you whisper.
“Can I see?” Again, he knows you're not one to think or say something like this lightly, that if anything you'd try to downplay it.
You nod, appreciate that he’s taking you seriously. You knew he would. You can already see the concern and worry in his eyes. He takes a seat and clears the table in the room, pats the seat next to him.
Jack pulls out a pair of gloves from one of the pockets of his cargo pants and puts them on before he takes it from you. He pulls the photos out and starts looking through them.
“What the fuck?” An instinctual and consuming protectiveness races through Jack as he looks at the photos. It feels like each photo gets worse and worse, tightens the knot in his stomach. “Holy shit.” Jack doesn’t feel a lot of genuine and nearly paralyzing fear anymore but he sure is right now. An overwhelming amount. Because whoever took these is threatening you. Wants to take you away and force you to be with them or hurt you.
“This…” Jack shakes his head as he finishes looking at the photos. He pauses for a second as he holds them to take a couple of breaths so that he can stay calm and reassuring, levelheaded so he can keep you safe. But it's hard to get rid of the lightheadedness from how fucking insane this is and this person is and he doesn't even try to get the nausea to go away.
He puts the photos back in the envelope and sets it on the table. Jack takes off his gloves and then takes one of your hands and looks at you. “This isn’t a maybe, or you being paranoid. Do you know who took these?”
"I think," you let out a shuddery breath, "I think this guy I went on a couple of dates with. I broke it off after the second date because he started getting weird and pushy. Honestly I should've done it after the first because I picked up on something and felt a little weird but I told myself that was just because he wasn't…" You trail off, realizing what you were about to say. It's obvious at this point though. You. "The second date was just…bad. He was a little creepy, felt a little obsessive." You huff at that and flick your eyebrows up. "I didn't think he'd go this far."
You'd jumped into dating shortly after arriving because you needed something to do and more than that you needed to try to take your mind off Jack. Like that was ever going to happen. You think secretly you kind of hoped he'd pop up on one of the apps and that would be your way to test the waters kind of.
Jack's ready to just go kill the guy and solve the problem but obviously knows he can't. "Is this the first thing that's happened or has there been more?"
You shrug. "Little things that were strange, a few that felt kind of creepy, blowing up my phone with texts and calls, emails. But nothing that explicitly makes it clear it's him and nothing that suggested… violence, I guess, the way the photos kind of do, maybe."
It's not maybe, Jack thinks to himself. "Okay." He lets out a long breath and runs a hand through his hair as he thinks. He has to keep you safe. You need to come back to his place. To your old place that you shared together. “Alright,” he nods slowly. There’s too many emotions swirling in him. Protectiveness, anger at the guy, fear, guilt, yearning. Love. “Just, um… You wait here. I've gotta go tell Lena and Shen that I have to leave right now and then I'll grab my stuff and we can go. I think it's probably better if you come to my place in case he's watching you or your place. Seeing you come home with another man could escalate him. I have a hoodie that you can wear and we can leave out a side entrance so he shouldn't pick you up and track you back to my place."
You breathe out a laugh and tilt your head at him, a watery smile on your face. "Jack, I, I, I can't, you can't do that. You can't just leave in the middle of your shift for this."
He shrugs, like it's no big deal when it absolutely is. "Yes I can. There's another attending on already even. We don't have to call anyone in." Jack gives you a soft, what he hopes is reassuring, smile. "I can and I'm going to."
"You don't have to Jack, really, it's okay. I'll be okay." You shrug, suddenly trying to play it off because you feel bad. You don't know what you thought would happen when you decided to come and try to find him, you never got that far in your mind. But the last thing you want to do is come back into his life out of nowhere and inconvenience him. "I just needed to see a familiar face and get some validation, I think."
"I know I don't have to, but I also do have to. I have to keep you safe." He squeezes your hand that he's still holding gently. He knows this must be terrifying for you, especially on top of feeling as alone as he's sure you do in a city this big. "Going back to your place, especially alone, is dangerous right now. He could be there. He could get in. We can't risk it, we can't risk your life or him doing something to you."
You need to know. You need to know what you're walking into when you get to Jack's place because you know you're going to end up there. You need to know if he's with someone. "Do you, are you… Are you with someone Jack? I don't want to fuck things up for you and bringing home your single ex long-term girlfriend isn't a good look."
He shakes his head. "I'm single. And even if I did have a girlfriend, if she didn't understand that I needed to help you with this, if she didn't want me to help you with this, then we wouldn't be together any longer so it would be a moot point."
You bite your lip for a second. "It's too much, Jack. For me to just show up after over five years and pull this shit on you and ask you to protect me and take me back to your place and let me spend the night."
"It's not too much, at all, not even close. And you're not asking. I'm offering. I'm insisting." For now Jack doesn't say anything about you staying more than just the night. He wants you to stay with him until this is resolved, but that's clearly a conversation for tomorrow.
"Jack…" you whisper his name, look around the room and then back at him. Your expression is so distressed and scared it kills him. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. I'm more than sure." He gives your hand another squeeze. "Wait here for me, yeah? I shouldn't be long."
"Okay," you murmur. Jack gets up and heads to the door and you call to him when his hand reaches for the door handle. "Jack." He turns to look at you. "Thank you."
"Always," Jack nods at you and steps out.
Walking into Jack's place is surreal on multiple levels. Because this used to be your place. You and Jack were living together when you broke up. When you left you never thought you'd walk back in here. You half expected him to have moved, to have not been able to live with the memories. But then Jack's always been sentimental, so it doesn't surprise you. And when you think about it, while it would be painful to stay and be surrounded by the memories, it feels like it would hurt more to move and leave them behind.
You smile to yourself at how it looks and feels almost exactly the same. Your influence on the space isn't there as prominently anymore obviously, though you can see a couple of things that he picked up from you, but it feels like Jack, it feels the way it felt before you moved in with him. You have no idea how to explain that but it just does. You can pick out some differences, some changes he's made, the most obvious being that photos of you and the two of you don't hang on the walls or live in frames decorating bookshelves.
"I'm gonna shower quickly," Jack tells you as he sets his backpack down and walks the bag of takeout over to the coffee table. "You should start eating. Everything's still in the same place in the kitchen. Help yourself to whatever of course."
You turn to look at him and offer a small smile as you start walking to the couch. "Okay, thank you."
"You need anything else before I jump in?" His eyes track you as you move to the couch. You're still in his sweatshirt he gave you to wear when you left the hospital and fuck Jack will never get over seeing you in his clothes.
You take in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "A bottle of tequila and a straw." You give him a wry smile as he chuckles. He's missed hearing you say that. You used to frequently. "No, but thank you for asking. I'll be okay." Once you're back by my side.
Jack can hear the unspoken sentence. This is about to be the fastest fucking shower of his life. He wishes he could just invite you in with him. "Okay. Come get me if you need anything though, yeah?"
"I will," you nod. "But I'll be okay, honestly. Enjoy your shower."
Jack nods at you and turns, walks back to his bedroom, the bedroom that used to be yours, that you used to share. Both of you are so fucking aware of it. Of how this used to be your place, plural, the home you shared together for nearly three years.
He's quick in the shower. He can't stand the thought of you out there alone and scared. When he gets out he haphazardly dries his hair and throws on a pair of sweatpants and a random t-shirt and makes his way back to you.
The familiar sound of Jack's crutches clicking against the tile has you biting your lip to avoid bursting back into tears. It's the silliest thing, you tell yourself, how a sound can feel like home, can make you feel safe. But it does. Just like his voice and his laugh and the sound of his heart beating steadily in his chest.
You give him a small smile as he reappears from the hall into the open floorplan of the living room, kitchen and dining room. Seeing him with wet curls and slightly flushed from the heat of the water has you throbbing between your legs and biting your lip even harder as you feel the tears start to sting. You miss getting to shower with him, getting to be close to him like that, intimate. Vulnerable.
Jack isn't prepared for it. He isn't prepared for the way you're perched on the couch close to the edge like you're afraid to sit on it all the way and interrupt his space with your presence. He isn't prepared for the way it makes it so clear it's his space and not yours, not a space you share. He isn't prepared for you looking like you think you're a burden or a bother or an interruption. He isn't prepared for the way you look like a stranger in your own home.
Former home, he guesses.
Jack isn't prepared for the wave of emotion that starts to pull him under, for the tears he feels start to form. He takes in a slow deep breath hoping to keep it as unnoticeable as possible, lets it out the same.
"Drink?" he asks, stopping by the fridge.
"Uh, sure yeah," you nod. "Just whatever you have that's easiest."
While Jack gets drinks from the fridge you start pulling the takeout out of the bag and setting it on the coffee table. The coffee table you and Jack picked out together.
Jack crutches back over and pulls out a drink for himself from one pocket of his sweatpants and a bottle of your favorite drink for you.
An amused smile pulls on your face when you see it. "You have that in there for the last five and a bit years?" you laugh teasingly.
The sound goes straight to Jack's cock, followed by his heart and creating an intense wave of longing that makes his whole body ache. "No," he draws the word out. "I have one from time to time." To remind myself of you. "Wanted one the other day and bought it but hadn't got around to drinking it so I happened to have it in there." But then couldn't bring myself to drink it. You hear what he doesn't say.
Jack settles on the couch and pulls the coffee table closer. "You should've started eating without me."
You shrug at him. "Felt rude."
"Did you go through my shit?" He smirks at you as he hands you the container with your food.
You roll your eyes at him playfully. "It looks almost exactly the same, Jack, I doubt there's much new for me to even go through. I was always the collector and shopper."
"Hm, yes you were." He wants to say that he loves it, that he loves that about you, that he misses it, going shopping with you or seeing the little things you'd find randomly and buy for the place or for him. But he doesn't.
The two of you continue to talk as you eat but it's all surface level, random stuff, nothing about the last five years of your lives. Jack picks up on the way you're slightly out of it, knows you're not in the headspace to talk about that right now and that you're tired and mentally fried. You know he knows and is deliberately not asking and you appreciate it more than you could hope to express to him.
"So," Jack starts as he hands you the now empty takeout box his food was in, "I'm guessing I should call you Doctor now?"
You laugh softly from the kitchen as you throw the empty takeout boxes from dinner into the trash. "Yeah," you nod slowly as you walk back toward the couch. You shrug as you get closer. "Well, you can. You don't have to."
"Yes I do." Jack beams at you, absolutely fucking beams and looks so proud of you it's palpable. He stands, keeps the finger tips of one hand on the armrest of the couch to help balance as he holds his other arm open.
You shake your head at him but smile, walk over to him and give him the hug he's seeking. Jack wraps his arms around you tightly, trusts you to help him stay balanced like you've done thousands of times before.
"I am so, so fucking proud of you Sweetheart," he murmurs, the pride in his voice dripping off each word. Without even truly realizing it Jack kisses the top of your head and nuzzles his nose in your hair as he holds you tight, just like he always used to. "So fucking proud."
The hug is perfect. It's Jack. You never want it to stop. And yet it's the hardest thing in the world right now. Because as real as this hug is, it's not real the way you want it to be. You and Jack aren't together. This isn't your boyfriend hugging you.
This is the love of your life, your soulmate who you're no longer with hugging you. This is a dream, this is what you missed and thought about and wanted and imagined and fucking yearned for. This is all you wanted when you walked out from defending your thesis, when you got your dream job, when you graduated, to be walking into Jack's arms and held tight while he kissed the top of your head and nuzzled his nose in your hair and told you how proud of you he was. All you wanted was Jack.
And you didn't have him.
And you don't have him.
Not really, anyway. Not how you want him. Not how you need him. Not in the way that would fix your broken heart and soul.
But you're here with him in this moment and getting this hug, hearing how proud of you he is, feeling it in the way he holds and touches you. So you let yourself have it, or try at least. On top of everything else tonight it's just making you more emotional.
"Thank you, Jackie," you whisper so quietly it's just the three words coated in a sorrow and longing Jack is sure he recognizes all too well. Fighting back the tears is hard, but you have no real reason for them in the moment, no reason that isn't you miss Jack and want him to be yours again, no reason you could use to explain them that wouldn't guilt trip him or make him feel forced.
Jack isn't unaffected by all of this, by hugging and holding you like this, by having you back in his life and seeing you again and knowing you're here in the city and single. All he wants to do is kiss you and ask you to be his again, apologize for ever letting you go and keep you safe in his arms, tucked against his chest where you belong. But Jack's not sure if you want that, any of that.
And more than that Jack doesn't want you to feel forced. He doesn't want you to think that you have to be with him or give yourself to him to have his protection and help because that could never, ever, be the case. You could actively hate him and treat him as such and he'd still protect and help you. Deep down, Jack knows you could never think that, that you know him too well. But still. There's also some part of him that feels like trying to get back together right now would be taking advantage of you and your vulnerable and heightened emotional state. So he doesn't try as much as he wants to.
Below the self-created blindness and beyond the protective walls you're both imposing on yourselves that prevent you from consciously processing the other's obvious desperation and want and need and longing to get back together and to actively and overtly love the other again, you both know that the other wants reconciliation just as much. You both know that the other wants to get back together, wants to be a couple again. Yet neither of you will make the first move.
Your hug breaks and you both sit back down on the couch. Jack has to fight to keep the frown off his face when you remain sitting at the edge. He hopes you're just starting there to grab your drink and then will settle back in. But Jack knows you won't. He knows this has to be too much for you, all of it, the stalker, being back here, the familiarity juxtaposed with the lack of it in the place you used to call yours.
"You have a copy of your thesis for me?" Jack smiles at you, the pride still sparkling in his eyes in a way that almost has you squirming under his gaze in the best way because he's going to do his damnedest to make you accept that he's proud of you and to get you to be proud of yourself. You laugh and roll your eyes at him. "Hey!" He straightens his left leg out and nudges your thigh with his foot. "I'm serious. I want to read it."
You give him an amused, if not slightly disbelieving smile. You absentmindedly bring your hands to his foot that's still resting just a touch against your thigh and start rubbing it. Just like you always used to. It's a lightning bolt to Jack's heart but he covers it with the practice of someone repressing his emotions for the last five years. "Really?"
Jack smiles at you and nods. "Really."
"Okay, yeah," you nod back, your mind somewhere between unsurprised by his support and enthusiasm and flustered by the same and the way he's looking at you and the reminder that he can still make you feel like this. Easily. "Yeah, no, I can, I can get you a copy. But you really don't have to read it, Jack. It's not going to offend me."
"I know I don't have to. I want to." He shrugs like it's the simplest thing in the world and not one of those things that's everything to you because it's Jack reading something completely outside his field and world just because you wrote it.
"If you change your mind two pages in, that's okay too."
He chuckles to himself. "Noted, but I'm not going to. I'm looking forward to reading it."
You smirk at him and cock your head, scoot down the couch closer to him and finally settle back into it a little more just so that you can rest your thigh under his knees so his legs lay across your lap. It's all unthinking, instinctual almost, practiced. Something you've done a thousand times before when you were together. Something that's just wired into you even after over five years apart.
Your hands quickly untie the knot he'd put in the extra fabric of his right pajama leg to keep it from getting in the way of his crutches, slide the fabric up just enough and start massaging his leg, fingers using just the right pressure over his scar. Jack has to fight back a groan at how good it feels, especially after a string of on days and especially coming from you. And if he thought you rubbing his foot was a lightning bolt to the heart, you scooting up the couch just to massage his leg and keep things equal is a thousand at once.
Keeping the tears out of his eyes is hard. He hasn't had touch like this since you broke up and he never really thought he'd have it again, knew he'd never get close to someone the way he was with you, would never be in more than a casual relationship where maybe they spent the night sometimes, but wouldn't be close enough, intimate enough, for him to allow them to touch him there.
"You don't even know what it's about," you point out.
In fairness, Jack knows what you went to school for and you'd certainly discussed and bounced ideas for your thesis off him when you were applying since you had to send in some proposed ideas for your applications. But you hadn't set anything in stone so he doesn't know anything specific.
Jack doesn't even need to really think about his response and it makes it hit that much harder. "It's about something you're passionate about and care about and enjoy and love." He smiles at you and raises his eyebrows, tilts his head just slightly for a second. "That's more than enough for me."
There's something heart and soul shatteringly sweet about Jack's words. So much so that it's hard to formulate a response that isn't thank you and I love you. So all you can say is the first and leave off the last. "Thank you."
Jack knows. He knows how much it meant to, how truly thankful you are and how good his words made you feel. He can see it in your eyes, feel it in the way your touch becomes just a little more tender.
His eyes flit around your face taking in how exhausted you are at the same time you stifle a yawn. It's so fucking adorable he wants to just launch himself at you and start making out and begging you to be his again. Given that that's not an option he settles for giving you a soft, knowing smile. "I can tell you're exhausted. We should get you some sleep."
Jack is right. You need sleep. You're sure you won't be able to. You're scared about what's going to happen, how you solve a problem like this, how you deal with a stalker, if you'll ever be able to truly get rid of the guy and get him to leave you alone. You'll be missing Jack, will be so keenly aware of how close yet how far he is, of how he must be over you since he hasn't asked to get back together or even tried to start some sort of conversation about the two of you.
You want to fight it because you want more time with him. You're not really sure what the plans are past tonight, if you'll continue staying with him or what. But he's still right. "Yeah," you sigh. "Probably."
There's not really a discussion about where you'll sleep. This isn't you getting back together, something you both are well aware of despite both wishing it was you getting back together. So as much as both of you might like you to sleep in bed with him, neither of you say anything for a moment as you stand in the spare room and look at the bed together.
After a few seconds Jack clears his throat. "Did you want to shower first?"
"No," you murmur, shake your head. You don't think you could handle either of the options, using the spare shower or using the shower that used to be yours, not to mention having to use all his products and smell like him, not tonight at least. "But thank you."
"Okay. I can, um, I can get you something to wear, if you want?" he offers, a touch of awkwardness to it.
"That would be great, thanks." You really don't want to sleep in these clothes or in just your bra and underwear, and sleeping naked just isn't going to work.
Jack is gone for just a second before returning with a shirt and pair of boxer briefs thrown over his shoulder. He hands them to you silently and lingers as you murmur another, "Thank you."
"You're welcome." The two of you look at each other for another beat before Jack decides he has to just rip the bandaid off. "Wake me if you need anything and I'll see you in the morning. Goodnight."
You nod at him. "Goodnight."
He closes the spare room door behind him and all you can both think about is how much this fucking sucks. How much you both love and hate this. Being apart for longer than Jack showering finally gives you both time to start processing. You're back. You're in Jack's place, you're in your old place. You have a stalker. Your life is at risk.
You're frozen for a moment but then force yourself to undress and slip on Jack's shirt and boxer briefs and climb into the spare bed.
As you settle in the space is familiar but not familiar enough. It's soothing but not soothing enough for you to fall asleep. The shirt and sheets smell vaguely of Jack because of the laundry detergent and a few tears hit your eyes at the thought of him using the same laundry detergent all these years. God, you're so fucking in love with him.
Being this close and yet this far from him is torturous, but if Jack wanted you back you're right here. All he has to do is ask if you'll be with him again, if you'll be his again. You’re sure if he does after tonight it'll be out of pity for you, or some kind of fucked up trauma bonding, or for the comfort and familiarity, or just for stress relief. You also know none of this is that simple and that Jack does want to ask, that Jack wants you but has his own reasons for not.
It's impossible for sleep to find you despite how tired you are. You keep thinking about everything that could happen, how scared you are, how much you miss and love Jack. You lay awake for what feels like hours but is really only an hour and a half according to your phone.
You're not sure what it is but something about that little time passing and it feeling like forever breaks you and you finally start to cry, finally give in to all your emotions and let yourself cry and panic and be overwhelmingly sad and anxious. The problem is that then you can't stop.
You can't stop and you know how to get yourself to stop and you lay in the spare bed for as long as you can possibly stand feeling like this before you wipe away all the tears you can and try to pull yourself together at least a little so that you're not visibly shaking when you get out of bed and walk to Jack's bedroom door. The tears you've wiped away have long since been replaced but you're not choking on air anymore, so there's that at least.
"Jack?" you call his name as you knock on his door. Your voice is broken and raw and the tears immediately start to fall harder because you can't believe you're doing this to him, making him deal with this on top of everything else.
Jack only managed to finally get his brain to turn off enough to fall into a light sleep thirty minutes ago when you knock. And the only way he was able to do that was by telling himself that he needed to be at least somewhat rested to protect you the best.
But he jolts awake at the sound of you calling his name and the knock on the door. You sound upset, deeply so and it spikes his anxiety, has him wide awake and calling your name back in half a second. "Come in, what's wrong?" he rushes out as he sits up, dressed in only his pajama pants from earlier. "Did something happen?"
You open the door and take a step in as he turns his bedside lamp on and starts moving to get out of bed. "Nothing happened," you shake your head, almost squeak out the words. "I just can't stop. I'm scared, Jack, I'm really scared and I, I, I…" You can't finish that sentence. Can't tell him how you're feeling. Can't guilt him into being with you. "I started, started crying and panicking and now I can't stop and I didn't know what to do and I thought, I, I thought, maybe just being able to see you would help. I don't want to impose-"
"Hey, hey hey hey," Jack cuts you off gently, voice low and soothing. "Come here?" He stays sitting on the edge of the bed and holds his hand out to you, nods at the bed. "You wanna…?" Jack doesn't want to put any pressure on you. "Or I can stand or we can go sit on the couch?"
Maybe you should fight it more, tell yourself and Jack this isn't appropriate, that this isn't what this is, but you don't. "Are you sure?" you ask quickly, equally as concerned with pressuring him to let you into his bed and wanting to be in it just as much as he wants you to be in it. Your eyes flick to the bed just to confirm what you want.
He gives you a small smile and nods and it's all you need, your feet carrying you around the bed to your side where you slide in and under the covers so fast he laughs under his breath as he lays down on his back propped up just slightly and looks over at you. Big, wet eyes with tear clumped lashes stare up at him as your lips and chin shake and your breathing starts to become hitched. It's not an unfamiliar sight, Jack used to hold you while you cried all the time, but there's an edge here, one of true terror and fear that he's never seen before.
Jack will kill this asshole. On fucking sight.
Nobody gets to make you look or feel the way you do right now and live to tell the fucking tale, not as long as Jack's alive.
Jack knows that's all hyperbolic, something only in his dreams. Because if he killed the guy then he'd go to prison and that, him going to prison for you, would destroy you, regardless of your relationship status.
He holds his arms open for you in offering and tilts his head, silently telling you that you don't have to come into his arms, he just wants to offer. But there is quite literally nowhere else in the fucking world you'd rather be. As you almost scramble to shift and get closer to him Jack angles himself on his side just slightly so that he can hold you better with both arms and you can rest your head in the crook of his neck and shoulder and hide from the world easier. You fall into him and the position easily, burrow into him as much as you can and throw your leg over the top of him, cling to the warm skin of his chest and shoulders and back.
Once you're finally safe in his arms you start to sob again, cry into him, and in the moment it's hard to tell if you're crying because you're scared or because your heart is breaking all over again. It doesn't really matter, you guess, because you're here doing it, sobbing into Jack again like you used to when you were upset and it's so fucked up and unfair of you.
You're not sure how long you cry into him like that, aren't sure how long Jack holds you and whispers soft words of reassurance similar to the ones he used to when you were together and he'd hold you like this. There's a few he can't say anymore, that don't feel appropriate. I've got you. I'll always have you.
I love you.
Eventually you do cry yourself out, take a minute or so just resting in Jack's arms and trying to recover and get it together a little bit before you speak.
"I'm sorry," you sniffle. You take the tissue he offers you and wipe his neck and shoulder and chest before you clean your own face up and blow your nose. "This is so unfair of me Jack, dragging you into this out of the fucking blue and I feel so bad. I don't want you to think I'm using you and I don't know how you can think anything but that and I'm sorry, Jack," you start to get yourself worked up again, "I'm really sorry."
"Shh, shh, shh," Jack soothes you. "It's okay, I promise it's okay and I don't think that. Please don't cry over that, I promise you it's all okay. I know you're not using me. I know you came to me because you're scared and you didn't know where else to go and I'm glad you did." You try your hardest to believe him, are able to enough to at least stop yourself from losing it again, take in some big racked breaths against him. "Can you look at me?"
You nod against him and start to pull away and the way you move together to adjust your positioning so that you're on your sides and can see each other while still so close is painfully natural and practiced. Your legs tangle together like they did when you were lovers, the rest of your bodies following the same. Jack's top arm stays wrapped around you, his lower hand splaying out on your upper chest above your breasts so that you can feel him. You keep your arms tucked between the two of you, your lower hand resting on top of his on your chest, your top arm splayed on his chest similar to his hand on yours.
"I don't feel used or like you're using me and I don't think you're being unfair. I wish I could make you believe that, or accept it, maybe is the better way to put it because I know you know and believe that I wouldn't lie to you." He gives you a small smile and then looks away as he licks his lips, his face setting into something far more somber, something almost like grief and worry. "I'm glad that you came to me. I'm glad that you walked into my ED and found me, I'm fucking thankful." The word comes out as a breath almost, loaded with the feeling it labels and just slightly shaky.
"I'm glad that you didn't go inside your place and that you weren't alone." Jack's lips fall into a line and tremble slightly, his eyes growing glassy with tears. "Because the thought of this night going differently and you being wheeled into my ED and me finding you on a gurney in my trauma room barely alive is something I can't fucking handle. And it could've so easily been a reality if you hadn't come to find me. So no, Sweetheart," Jack shakes his head as best he can laying on his side. "I don't feel used. I feel thankful and grateful. I'm so fucking glad you did."
Your lips tremble harder than Jack's as his words wash over you while he says them, a couple of tears slipping from your eyes. "Jackie," you whisper, unable to come up with anything else.
"I know," he murmurs, blinks back his own tears somehow. "We're going to get through this, okay? I promise. We'll figure it out."
You shake your head this time. "No, Jack," you whisper. It makes him start to spiral. "You don't have to do this with me, you shouldn't have to. Doing this with me, that isn't fair. I just, I needed somewhere safe for tonight and I came to you because you're the only place I've ever truly felt safe and I knew you'd help me and I am so, so grateful, Jack and I hope this doesn't start to make you feel used. I'll, I'll go get some security stuff tomorrow, cameras and alarms or whatever and get them set up during the day and I'll be back out of your hair and you can have your life and home back. I never meant to make it feel like this was something you were going to have to deal with long term with me. I'm not asking you to take this on with me, that wouldn't be fair."
"You're not asking and I know I don't have to, that I'm not required to. And I never wanted you out of my hair to begin with." The second sentence is whispered. Jack almost feels bad saying it, like it's somehow pushy or seems like he's trying to blame you for what happened when he's not. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't either of your fault's. But he knows you and so he knows you blame yourself.
After a couple second pause Jack continues. "Cameras and even alarms aren't going to make it safe. This guy isn't going to care. He'll cover himself up so the cameras can't identify him or he'll just do it on camera and not give a fuck. And alarms might bring attention but there's still so much he could do in the time it takes for anyone to respond to them. I'm not saying that to scare you, I'm saying it because it's reality. You should stay here until we get it figured out and taken care of. You need to. Or, or," the thought hurts but Jack has to acknowledge it, "if you don't want to stay here then somewhere safe, somewhere truly safe that he doesn't know about."
"No, Jack, it's not that I don't want to stay here, it's not that at all," you reassure him. "It's just, it's a lot to as-," you catch yourself, "it's a lot to take on. And who knows how long it'll take." Jack doesn't say anything, just gives you a reassuring smile and a small shrug to tell you that it doesn't matter to him. "If it gets to be too much promise you'll tell me, Jack."
"I promise." He doesn't vocalize how that could absolutely never happen, but he sure thinks it. Jack takes in your face for the hundredth time tonight. With your eyes swollen and bloodshot from crying you look even more exhausted than you did earlier. "We can talk about everything more tomorrow, okay? Try to get some sleep."
"Okay," you nod. You roll with Jack to keep your positioning as he reaches behind him to turn the lamp off, the two of you resettling how you were just with you somehow burrowed into Jack a bit more, his bottom arm wrapping around you under your shoulder to hold you tighter. "Do you work tomorrow?"
"Nope," Jack pops the 'p', clearly very happy about it. "I'm off the next three days."
"That's good," you murmur, pause for a moment. "Thank you Jack. For everything."
"Of course, anytime." Jack gives you a sleepy smile and repeats what he said earlier. "Always."
"So, I guess we can do all the seeing each other for the first time in over five years shit now," Jack smirks, teasing himself for the words he used last night at the Pitt.
The two of you are sitting on the couch again, eating the breakfast that you made together. Well, that Jake made, really, your only contribution the toast and moral support you provided by being in the kitchen with him.
You laugh softly. "Yeah, I guess we can."
Jack nods to tell you he'll go first once he finishes this bite. "Should probably start with the most obvious. Why are you back and how long have you been back?"
You forgot that with everything that happened last night you never got around to telling Jack how long you've been back and why you are in the first place. "I moved back a couple of months ago." Jack's going to have a reaction to this next part, a big one. One you know he's justified in having but that you didn't let yourself have, would never let yourself have. Because somehow you bullshitted your way into the job and eventually it's going to catch up with you. Jack's going to call you on that too, the imposter syndrome. "I got a job at CMU. Assistant professor. Tenure track."
Jack is mid-bite when you say it, raises his eyebrows and widens his eyes at you as he smiles and chews faster. "Holy shit!" he laughs, beaming at you. "Sweetheart, that's fucking insane, holy shit! Congratulations! That's what you always wanted, and right out of school too, that's so fucking amazing. I'm so fucking proud of you. My-" Jack stops himself before the rest of that sentence comes out and hangs awkwardly in the air between you. My girl's a professor, that's so fucking hot. "I hope you're proud of yourself."
"Yeah, it's good," you shrug, trying to downplay it how you always seem to do with your achievements and successes.
A softer, crooked smile settles onto Jack's face at your reaction. It's what he expected but hoped he'd be wrong about. "I'm sorry the imposter syndrome hasn't gotten any better, but you deserve your position, Sweetheart. You didn't bullshit your way into it or trick them into giving you the job, and you didn't bullshit your way to a PhD. You're just truly that smart and intelligent and incredible. You should be proud of yourself, you deserve to be proud of yourself."
You've never been good at accepting compliments, never been good at accepting Jack's compliments. It's something he finds so incredibly endearing about you for some reason. It's just one of those things that's so you and so genuine, not an act to try and get more compliments. He can always tell by the bashful smile that pulls onto your face, like the one that is now, and the way you have to break eye contact with him, like you do now, that his words mean so incredibly much to you, are something you hold so dear, even if your brain struggles to let you accept them at first.
"Thank you Jackie," you murmur, looking down at your plate and glancing back up at him. He's still smiling so widely at you, his eyes sparkling with pride and adoration and something you know you recognize but think you’re making up. Love. Active, heart on fire, soul consuming, all encompassing love.
Neither of you can find the confidence to bring up getting back together. Because somehow neither of you are sure if the other would ever even want that. You're both scared to lose the other again if you bring it up and are rejected. You're both scared to rock the boat or make the other feel forced. There are so many reasons and while many of them are valid, they're also bullshit in a sense. You're soulmates. You both know it. You both know it was time and distance and circumstance that made you break up, that it wasn't your relationship deteriorating or deciding you were better as friends or any other reason. And yet neither of you will make any sort of real move. Slipped uses of Sweetheart and Jackie don't count.
You take another bite and Jack looks at you for another beat before he does the same, doesn't push you to say you're proud of yourself or anything. He never would.
Once you've finished that bite and taken a sip of coffee you look over at Jack again. "What about you, what have you been up to for the last five years? Or should I say who?" You try so hard to smirk when you ask it but it doesn't quite work. You want to care, think you should probably feel embarrassed, but you don't. You just need to know.
"Ha!" Jack laughs before he takes a sip of his coffee. "Hardly. There wasn't much going on there for me. I kept myself too busy."
Jack starts to ask, but doesn't have time to before you're volunteering the same information. You're not sure why you do, aren't even sure he would've asked. "Same. I was too busy for the most part. What did you do to keep yourself busy?"
You look down at your plate and miss the way Jack's head cocks just slightly. For the most part. What the fuck does that mean?
Despite how badly he wants to, Jack doesn't ask what 'for the most part' means. "Played doctor." You give him a look and he grins at you. "I did a little teaching of my own at the med school." You're almost dumbstruck as you think about Jack teaching, about Professor Abbot. Fuck. It's obscenely hot to you.
You pull yourself back to and continue listening to Jack. "Published some papers, went to conferences." Thought about flying to you and asking to get back together. He picks his cup of coffee up and brings it close to his lips. He knows you're not going to like this next one. "Went back to TEMS," Jack mumbles almost against the lip of the coffee mug and then takes a sip.
"Jack." You frown, concern flooding your face, an anxiety along with it that Jack hates seeing on your features. That look is exactly why he stopped shortly after you got together.
"I stopped, I stopped, I promise." He gives you a little smile, hopeful and playful, trying to get you to laugh or smile at him. For him. "I took up yoga in its place."
That gets him the smile he wants, amused and intrigued, your eyebrows raised, lips pressed together as you smile and bob your head to the side as you nod it at him once. "Yoga? Really?" He nods at you and you smile so beautifully at him Jack thinks his heart might stop. "Why yoga?"
He shrugs. "I lost a bet at work, a long story for another day once you've met some people, but I actually ended up kind of liking it so I went back and kept doing it and found I really enjoyed it." The two of you share a laugh and you nod approvingly at him, teasing smile on your face. "Maybe I'll drag you to a class or make you do it here with me. I don't do classes as much anymore. It's too difficult to work into my schedule with going to the gym and running."
"Maybe I'll let you," you smirk at him.
Jack rolls his eyes at you but then thoughts of you in tight yoga clothes hit him and he's shifting on the couch and moving his plate to conceal the semi he's getting that his pajama pants are doing absolutely nothing to hide. If you were still together, his answer would be obvious. Maybe I'll make you. But you're not together. It's one of those moments where it really hits him. You're not together. He does his best to not let it decimate his mood.
"I went on a big cooking kick for a while there. Taught myself all sorts of shit." Jack huffs a laugh. "Robby liked when I was on that kick. I'd make him come over to help me eat whatever I made."
You wonder if he ever cooked for another woman. If that's why he learned. It's so fucking ridiculous that this is where your mind goes, but it's where it goes. And then your thoughts devolve further.
Did he ever bring someone back here? To your place? Did he fuck someone else in your bed?
You immediately feel so nauseous you set your half eaten plate on the coffee table like you're done, sit back on the couch and pull your knees up in front of you like it'll protect you from any further hurt. You can't hold it against him if he did. It wasn't your place then. It isn't your place now.
You have no idea where Jack was planning on having you sleep tonight but you're not sure you could sleep in his bed with him, in what used to be your bed with him, if he fucked someone else there. But it's not your business. You have no right to ask. You try to distract yourself by thinking about what you did for the last five years.
Jack's eyes track you carefully, stay trained on your face trying to read your micro-expressions to figure out what's going on. "Something just happened."
Damn. You hoped he wouldn't notice, but it's Jack and even after five years he still knows you the way you know him. You furrow your brows anyway. "What?"
"Something just happened," he repeats, nodding at you. "You just thought of something."
You push your bottom lip out and shrug. You don't shake your head, you can't, because you can't lie to Jack. "I'm just full. And I'm trying to think about what I did. You did so much, it's kind of embarrassing for me."
Jack decides to let it go. For now. He'll circle back to it because you thought of something that distressed you enough to make you unable to eat.
"You earned a fucking doctorate." Jack laughs, raises his eyebrows as he smiles at you and sticks his head out a little in emphasis. "There's nothing embarrassing about that. And I'm sure you did some other stuff."
You grimace at him and shake your head. "I don't know, Jack, not really. A little bit of traveling but not enough. I was just busy with school constantly. I was TAing and studying for exams and writing and researching for my thesis." You don't say that the reason you didn't do much other than school was because you were too fucking depressed to do anything even when you did have the time. "And you know how I am." You shrug at him and smile. "Homebody."
Your stories of the last five years perfectly demonstrate how you and Jack react to that kind of depression that can threaten to consume you in such different ways. Jack tries to keep his mind busy, constantly doing and learning, even if it's learning how to clear his mind with yoga. And you shut down and revert into yourself a bit, throw yourself into school and your studies and let that consume you.
Jack hums in agreement. You can be a homebody and it's honestly something he loves about you and that was always so good for him. You balanced him, helped him slow down a little. And he balanced you, kept you from stopping completely. "That's true."
A comfortable silence falls between the two of you as Jack finishes eating. There's an edge to it though, something unresolved and not forgotten.
When he's done eating Jack sets his plate next to yours and grabs his cup of coffee before settling back on the couch. He looks at you and catches your gaze, holds it and raises his eyebrows slightly. "Are you going to tell me what you thought of?"
"No," you whisper. At least you're being honest. "It's one of those things that's none of my business."
"Try me," he says softly, giving you a warm smile that's really just the corners of his mouth quirking up.
You shake your head. Jack respects it, doesn't push you to answer or ask you again or try to guilt trip you somehow. But he does let the silence linger.
After a minute you sigh and look away. You're going to have to ask him at some point because, assuming Jack would want you there, you won't be able to get anywhere near that bed again until you know.
When you finally force the question out it's so quiet Jack almost misses it. "Did you sleep with someone else in that bed?"
He immediately knows exactly what you mean, exactly what form of ‘sleep with’ you're talking about and which bed is ‘that’ bed.
"No." The word is firm, clearly meant and truthful, but not harsh, not full of judgment for asking, not irritated or annoyed or put off by the question. "In both senses. I barely ever brought anyone back here at all." He gestures to the room so you know he's talking about the place in general. "I couldn't. It always felt so wrong."
You nod slowly, let yourself soak in his words and try to relax. You force yourself to look at him again. "Thank you. For answering."
"You're welcome." Jack's eyes flick down to your lips and he shifts in his seat so he's sitting up more and not leaning into the couch as much, sets his mug down on the arm table.
The romantic and sexual tension that's been building between the two of you suddenly triples when you mirror him, shift so that your knees are no longer bent in front of your chest opening you up to him more. When Jack's eyes find yours again there's something smouldering about them, glinting with something that feels almost possessive, his pupils a little wider than they should be in this much light. And you, you're doe eyed and looking far too innocent, your pupils as wide as his as you breathe a little too deeply for someone just sitting on the couch, chest heaving a little too much.
You think Jack's about to lunge for you and kiss you, run his hands over your body and take you back to that bed that's still yours and yours alone the way he did all the time when you were together. And Jack thinks you'd let him, thinks you'd happily give in, melt into him and let him worship you and apologize for ever letting you go and coax his name from your lips in the sweetest moans over and over.
But then you look away and clear your throat, convinced Jack wouldn't be doing it because he wants you but for one of a dozen other reasons your mind makes up. You reach for your phone on the coffee table and frown as you look at it and settle back into the couch. You won't let yourself look at Jack. You're not sure you want to see whatever it is that's written on his face, try not to think about all the things that could be.
Jack's face falls when you break eye contact with him, hurt and a kind of pain that cuts him deeper than he can admit to himself right now flashing over his features. He's not sure what he was thinking, why he thought now was the time. He just got caught up in the moment and convinced himself it felt right, that it was happening naturally and on both sides and could be the start of reuniting, of getting back together.
His expression turns to concern quickly though as he takes in your face while you look over your phone. "Everything okay?"
You swallow hard and shrug. You haven't looked at your phone since you went to call Jack when you first got to the Pitt. It's just not worth it. Looking at your phone has become more of a traumatizing ordeal than anything. Because your stalker just blows it up and it seems to have escalated dramatically now that he doesn't know where you are.
"I…" You shake your head and toss your phone at Jack because you don't even know where to begin. "Passcode's the same."
Jack shares another few seconds of eye contact with you before he grabs your phone. He can't see what the messages say yet but he sure sees the notification count. 738 messages. 243 missed calls. From one number.
Shaky fingers type in the passcode and start to go through the texts and Jack's head fucking spins at them all. They vacillate between threats and declarations of love and apologies and yelling at you and calling you names and asking you out on dates to make it all up to you.
"Jesus fucking christ," Jack breathes, runs a hand through his curls. After another thirty seconds of scrolling Jack locks your phone and sets it back on the couch between the two of you.
You're staring at the wall when Jack looks at you and he easily recognizes that you're completely and totally dissociated. He's seen you dissociate before of course, but there's something different about it this time that almost scares him. "Sweetheart?"
It doesn't break through and Jack lets out a strained breath. He's not irritated or annoyed or mad or anything like that. He's just worried, and his heart hurts at how badly he knows you're hurting and how scared he knows you are. And Jack knows there's no good way to get you back to him that won't startle you.
But he needs to.
He slides down the couch so he's next to you and grabs your hands, laces your fingers together with one hand and brings your other hand under his shirt and adjusts your fingers so that they're over one of his shrapnel scars a little above his hip and in. You and Jack had figured out this was the best way for him to get you back with him when this happened. You still startle but you calm much quicker with Jack's hand squeezing yours and your fingers feeling a scar you know is his.
"Sweetheart." Jack says it much louder, squeezes your hand hard but not enough to hurt you. This time it does get through to you and you flinch and take in an audible deep breath as a moment of disorientation and fear wash over you. "It's me, it's me. It's Jack. You're okay, you're safe."
Your eyes focus on Jack and you let the breath out slowly, nodding and squeezing his hand, your fingertips running over his scar. "Fuck," you breathe. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Jack shakes his head. The look in your eye and way you shrug tells Jack you don't want to dwell on it or talk about it and why it happened. So he doesn't ask or bring it up. "I know we talked about it a little at the hospital, but what's this guy doing? How far has he gone?"
"The phone stuff, blowing it up with calls and texts, emails. I block his number but he just gets a new one through google or whatever so it just doesn't stop." Your fingers stop over his scar and just rest there. It's so natural, something you did so often when you were together, trace his scars, that it doesn't really click in your mind how somewhat inappropriate it is for exes, for two people who are now just friends.
"Thinking back I swear I've seen him on campus once or twice, but I think that's just my mind looking for something else." You shrug. "Like I said, there's nothing that makes it explicitly clear it's him and nothing violent or that suggested violence like the photos maybe do." Jack bites his tongue to not interject that it's not a maybe. They suggest violence. They're a threat. A direct threat. "It was harassing and annoying and maybe a little scary, but it wasn't bad, I guess. Like I didn't go to the police or anything because there didn't seem like much of a reason. It just kind of escalated to… what was in the envelope overnight."
"When did you find it?" Jack asks gently, squeezing your hand. "And where?"
"Last night at my front door. I didn't go inside or anything," you shake your head. "I was too scared to. Luckily I had a really great uber driver who was going to wait until I got inside and when I told her she drove me to the hospital."
"Good," Jack nods. "Good. Do-"
"Jack, I'm sorry, but can we just… take a break? From talking about it." You look so mad at yourself after you say it and it kills Jack, as does you finally pulling your hands away from him. You shut your eyes and shake your head. "I know that's a shitty ask when I'm asking so much of you because of it. I should be willing to talk about it as much as you want."
"No." Jack squeezes your hand. "No. That's not how this works. You don't owe me anything or have to talk to me about it at length or when you don't want to."
You chew on the inside of your cheek for a few seconds and then look back at him. "Okay," you whisper.
Jack knows he needs a way to lighten things, to help get your mind off everything that's going on right now, or at least as much as possible. You guys can't, or shouldn't, really leave here and be out in public for too long, just in case. Watching TV doesn't really sound like enough right now and it's not like he can take you back to bed and fuck you and the two of you can just keep yourselves occupied in there all day.
But then it hits him and he gives you a lopsided smile. "You wanna do some yoga with me?"
Over the next few days you and Jack adjust to the situation you find yourselves in, both of you hesitant to call it a new normal, and your stalker continues to make it clear via text just how displeased and angry he is that he no longer knows where you live and isn't able to track you for long you once you leave school.
The biggest 'adjustment,' to put it lightly, is Jack switching with Robby to work day shifts until you figure this all out. It had come up that Saturday while you and Jack were having breakfast. Jack said he wanted to go see Robby and when you asked why Jack explained that he was going to see if Robby would switch and work nights for him so that he could be home every night with you. You said no at first. Absolutely not. That was way the fuck too much.
Internally, of course, you were fucking delighted at the idea and that Jack had the thought. It made you realize how much just the thought of Jack being home with you during the night relaxed you. But you couldn't ask him or Robby to do that, couldn't let them. It's just you. You don't deserve that kind of treatment, from anyone, much less them, especially after being gone for five years.
Somehow, though, Jack had brought you around. All he really had to do was let his true anxiety and fear about you being home alone at night show on his face and you were in. You couldn't stomach the thought of him being that anxious over you for his entire shift.
You know you can find ways to thank and apologize to and repay Jack and Robby for having to switch shifts and for fucking up their lives. There's absolutely no way to thank or apologize to Jack for making him suffer through that anxiety when he offered to do something simple to prevent it. There's no way you'd ever forgive yourself.
And so Jack and Robby switched shifts.
On Monday you start taking ubers to and from school, scheduled ones so that you know who the driver is in advance, and you've been going and will continue to go to the hospital every evening when you're done at school, regardless of whether Jack is working. You're able to find a picture of the guy and Jack makes sure everyone in the Pitt sees it, keeps a copy taped to the back of the break room door.
The hospital is a good place to get lost with all the entrances and exits and being able to be brought back into the actual Pitt by whoever happens to see you first. You switch where you enter and where you exit, leave wearing a different shirt or Jack's jacket and casual pants and shoes kept in his locker for you to change into. And Jack has been and will continue to be there each day to make the trip back to his place with you.
Your stalker blows your phone up even more. Every blocked number is so irritatingly and quickly replaced by a new one he gets from google voice. There's texts, hundreds and hundreds of texts spanning the spectrum of emotions, usually filled with anger and annoyance, but sometimes trying to be sweet and apologize like that'll work on you.
You haven't bothered blocking his latest number, have just turned off notifications for the number and let him go off. It's more work for you to keep blocking numbers. You know you can't delete the messages but you stop reading them because it just distresses you. But with your permission, Jack reads every single one each night.
The guy calls too, but less and less when he realizes you're not going to answer because he appears to realize he can't leave a voicemail, though you wonder to yourself how long that will last and when he'll start typing shit to have the computer read it out for him. He sends some stuff to your personal email and blows that up for a while, but seems to abandon it as you block each new email address so that he can focus on creating new numbers, and then never seems to pick emailing back up again after you just silence his current number.
Your stalker is smart enough to realize that he has to be a bit more chill at the school, probably realizes that you've talked with campus police and notices their increased presence around you and the building your office is in and the classrooms you teach in. But you can just feel him watching you at times when you're walking to and from class. A few times you've seen him, you know you have. By the time you can even pull your phone out for a photo, though, he's gone.
You're sure he knows by now that you went to the police. You and Jack went that Saturday after talking with Robby. You were able to go with an officer to your place on Saturday without Jack and pack some bags so that you had clothes and toiletries and things for work and your other electronics, and you're sure he was watching your place just hoping you'd come back alone.
It had been a whole elaborate thing on the way to Jack's to make sure the guy didn't trail you after you left your townhouse and end up finding out where you were staying and that you're staying with another man. You and Jack had decided it would be best to try and keep the guy from knowing about Jack's presence in your life for a number of reasons.
But other than that the police weren't particularly helpful. They told you that as of right now proving the identity of your stalker would require search warrants for google and ISPs and potentially reviewing hours and hours of security camera footage just for the guy to either never appear or be so well covered up you can't tell it's him. All of that takes time and manpower and this is Pittsburgh where the latter of those is in short supply, and with all the crime the city faces every day, your 'non-violent' and 'vaguely threatening' stalker isn't high on the priority list.
And you and Jack know it won't be unless and until you're injured or killed.
It absolutely fucking infuriates Jack.
Your stalker is unfortunately also smart enough to know that he can't outright threaten you constantly and that his threats generally need to be extremely subtle and written between the lines and phrased in terms that one could plausibly argue contain some other legitimate meaning. After the outright threatening nature of the photos he left you on Friday he doesn't explicitly threaten you again until Tuesday when you're walking accompanied by a campus police officer to the uber that'll take you to the hospital.
The longer you hide, my darling love, the longer my love will have to hurt you once I make you mine.
You only see it because it comes up as you're looking at your phone to confirm which car is your uber. And it's the only message you've received so far that you seriously consider deleting so that Jack doesn't see it because you know he'll lose his fucking mind over it.
And he does.
In a way it's adorable of him, how protective he gets, the way he paces to try and burn off some of the adrenaline and how he breathes harder with his jaw set and rolling, mouth in a line when he isn't voicing what he thinks about this guy and brainstorming ways to keep you safe. It's loving. It's how a boyfriend would react.
There's a couple of seconds there where you forget that you and Jack aren't together. This isn't your boyfriend pacing in front of you. You can't go fuck this out for lack of a better phrase, can't take him into the bedroom and help him relax and burn off that adrenaline and end soft and sweet and intensely intimate. You can't do anything other than try to verbally reassure him things will be okay.
It's around ten p.m. on Wednesday night and you and Jack are chilling on the couch and finishing up the bottle of wine you started while cooking and that you've been sharing since he got home. It was a long day for both of you, but especially for Jack. Today was Jack's first shift since you showed up at the Pitt on Saturday a little past one in the morning. It was his first day shift in he can't remember how long.
It was rough. Not so much the shift itself, nothing of great note happened and he enjoys his day shift colleagues, but the missing you and the worrying about you and the not being able to have his phone on loud and know he could run to you the second he needed to if something happened. That was rough, to say the least.
He held his breath every time Dana told him an ambulance was on its way, just waiting for the time she said a professor at CMU was viciously attacked or stabbed or shot. Sitting on the couch now he realizes he doesn't even know off the top of his head if CMU is in the Pitt's catchment, if you'd even be brought to him if something like that happened. He needs to find out.
The two of you finally got to the conversation about your love lives tonight, talked about what it was like for the last five years. You've spent the last hour or so sharing stories about the cringe worthy first and second dates you went on over the last five years. You'd touched briefly on your romantic histories at breakfast on Saturday but nothing overly specific. You both know far more now.
Jack didn't really consistently see anyone, didn't really try to. He'd go out on one or two dates, maybe three and inevitably break it off, a few developed into something closer to friends with benefits, with friends being a loose term. It was more someone known and safe where there was enough attraction and good sex. Jack doesn't tell you but he just couldn't do it. He couldn't date someone who wasn't you. It took him a while to be able to have sex with someone who wasn't you and it had to be with someone he didn't really have any feelings for, it had to be meaningless, about stress relief and feeling good and distraction and that's it.
Like Jack you had a few friends with benefits, but yours were closer to true friends, guys from your university who were in your friend group or your friend group's orbit who were known and safe and you were attracted to enough for there to be good sex that was understood to be meaningless and for stress relief and to feel good and be distracted and nothing more. It had taken you longer to even try dating and to have sex than it took Jack.
But unlike Jack, you did consistently see a few guys long enough to reach the define the relationship conversation. Only one survived that conversation and was labeled a relationship where you called him your boyfriend and he got to call you his girlfriend. You were only together for seven or eight months, and when Jack asks you're candid and share that he told you that he loved you, but you never said you loved him because you didn't, and ultimately that's why you broke up. You knew you would never love him.
Still. It's hard for Jack to hear. It's hard to know that another man got to share a bed with you for seven or eight months, got to fuck you and make love to you and kiss you and hold you for seven or eight months. Got to call you his for five or six or seven or however many months. He knows he shouldn't be relieved that you didn't love the guy, that he should want you to be happy, whoever that's with. But he wants you to be happy with him. He can't help the jealousy that works its way through him.
And it's fucked up and Jack knows it but it hurts that you wanted that. That you were able to do it, to date someone who wasn't him, to be in a relationship with someone who wasn't him. It doesn't feel like betrayal or like you cheated on him, you very clearly weren't together, and he doesn't hold it against you or think anything less of you for it, he isn't hurt by you. He's jealous. And he knows it. He knows that's what he's feeling.
There's a lull in the conversation as you split the rest of the wine between your two glasses and both of you take a few sips.
Jack breaks the comfortable silence as he sets his glass down and watches you take another sip. "Can I ask you something?"
You smile at him softly and it's almost enough to make his mind go blank and reset. Almost. "Of course."
"Why didn't you call me when you moved back?"
It's a fair question. You know it is. And he's asking it with genuine curiosity, you can tell. He's not trying to be a dick, and while you can tell there's hurt to it and can hear the pain and self-doubt and sadness behind his words, and can put the pieces together fast enough to realize that your conversation helped bring this on, you know it's not meant to make you feel bad or to hurt you because he's hurting. It's not vindictive.
It's a question you've asked yourself a thousand times.
The worst part is that you don't have a great answer, you don't have any answer other than, effectively, you were a coward. You were too scared to. You love him enough that you wanted him to be happy and fulfilled and being actively loved and getting to love someone back even if it wasn't you. You were just terrified you'd find out that he was happy and in love with someone who wasn't you.
You were terrified you'd find out Jack had replaced you.
You were terrified you'd find out you were replaceable to the one and only person who ever truly mattered.
And that's not a fair characterization, you know, and it's not what it truly would've been, you know, but it's how your heart and your brain and your soul would've taken it and the move and total life upheaval again and all of the change had you even more fragile. So your mind just paralyzed you so that you couldn't. It didn't matter that you might have found him single and wanting you back, your brain in some sort of weird self-preservation wouldn't let you risk it.
You swallow your sip and set your glass down, take another twenty seconds to try to organize your thoughts and formulate an answer.
"I was scared," you finally whisper. "I was scared of finding you happily married, maybe with kids, or happily in a relationship."
Jack nods slowly. So it's not that you don't want to be with him again. That you just weren't interested. He's not sure if that would've hurt more or less because now he just kind of feels like he wasn't worth it. He wasn't enough. "Finding out I was single wasn't worth the risk?"
Your face falls and you tilt your head at him slowly before straightening it back out. It's another fair question. It's another fair question that's asked out of curiosity and not spite or to be mean and that's even more loaded with self-doubt than the first.
But it’s impossible for your mind not to read him blaming you into the question. "Don't. Please don't do that Jack. Don't blame me. Don't make me feel worse than I already do, about everything. I'm not asking you questions like that. It's not that you weren't worth the risk. It wasn't that at all. You were and you are and I, I, it's not that I didn't want to be with you again either, or that I don't want to, it's not, it's, it's… It's not that I didn't want to call you, I did, I constantly did. I was just paralyzed by my anxiety and fear. I couldn't, I didn't know if I'd survive finding out I'd been replaced. I was scared. I was fucking scared. I don't know how to explain it. I was frozen Jack. I couldn't, no matter how much I wanted to. I know I would've once I was feeling better, once I had come out of it a bit and was more settled, I just, I, I needed time. I needed time."
The question rolls off his tongue before he can stop it.
"How much time?"
It shatters you.
"I don't know Jack, I don't know. I don't know how much time." Tears hit your eyes and are so obvious in your voice and you know your reaction is out of proportion. You know it's not even him or his questions that are hurting you but your own internal voice and thoughts about yourself that the questions trigger. You know your reaction is ridiculous and dramatic and way the fuck too much but you just… have it.
"Please, Jack, don't. Please don't. I get it, I do. I know. I know I fucked up, I know I fucked up when I even started contemplating actually going over there, and then I fucked up more when I even contemplated it once I knew it would mean we would break up. I know I fucked up every day I didn't quit and come home to you. I know I fucked up by not calling you or trying to find you as soon as I got back, and I know I fucked up trying to see other people and landing us in this whole mess."
"I know I fucked up, I know I constantly fucked up, I hate myself for it all the fucking time, I don't need you hating me for it too. I wrote to you every single fucking day, Jack. I kept journals, diaries, but instead of 'Dear Diary' every entry was 'Dear Jack,'" your voice breaks over his name, tears finally starting to stream down your face, "and I have them all. Five years and however many months and days worth, I fucking have them all. You can read them, they're at my place, we can bring them over. I know how it must feel like I'm using you and how unfair of me it was to just show up and drop this all on you and ask you for your help and how unfair it is for you to take me in like a helpless stray and change your fucking work schedule, I know how unfair it was, it is, and I hate myself for that too. So please, Jackie, I know. I fucking know. I know and I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry for all of it. I, I, I know and I…"
You sniffle, wipe away the tears just for them to be replaced and then take in a deep shuddery breath and let it out. "I'm sorry," you whisper, just loud enough for him to hear. You sound crushed and defeated and resigned. You sound like you truly hate yourself like you just said. It makes Jack nauseous. He didn't want this. He didn't mean to cause any of this. "I'll get out of your hair as much as possible tomorrow, be out of here and take as much of my stuff as I can, come back for the rest at some point that works for you. Thank you for everything Jack and for how truly above and beyond you've gone for me, with all of this and when we were together. For whatever it's worth I really do, and will, cherish these few days we had together. I'll um, I'll leave my key under the mat."
Jack's eyes widen and his face falls as he takes in all of your words and watches tears start to fall and you rush toward the bedrooms.
"Woah, hey. Hey." He sits up quickly as he calls your name, grabs his crutches and starts standing to go after you. "Sweetheart! Please come back and talk."
He crutches forward a few steps but stops when he hears a door shut. You need space, some time to yourself before you talk again. He knows. He recognizes the signs. So as much as he's desperate to follow you and hold you and talk it out with you, he sits back down on the couch.
Jack feels awful. He truly does. He never meant for his original question to become this, to make you run off feeling awful and like you need to leave. That's the absolute fucking last thing he wants. But as he reflects on what just happened and what he said and how he felt when he said it, Jack realizes that subconsciously, yeah, he was probably trying to make you hurt a little bit the way that hearing you had a boyfriend, someone serious in your life who wasn't him, hurt him.
While he can honestly say it wasn't his conscious intent, he still should've caught himself, should've thought about his words and the context and how he was saying them and how they'd make you feel more than he did.
His head also spins with everything you said. He hates the fact that it seems like you think and feel, at least sometimes, like all you did was fuck up over the last five years. Like every choice you made was wrong. Like it was all your fault and you were the only one who made choices and decisions relating to your relationship and potentially getting back together over the last five years. Because it wasn't just you. It was him. He could've quit at the beginning or he could've quit and gone to you at any time.
He hates that you think this, coming to him and staying with him once your stalker escalated, is somehow using him and unfair. He hates that you hate yourself for doing it because he is so fucking glad you did, that he can help protect you. He hates that you think of yourself like a helpless stray, because you're not. You're so overwhelmingly not, and Jack really hopes that you don't think he sees you like that and that he doesn't make you feel like you are.
And Jack hates the fact that you hate yourself all the time, for anything, but especially for what happened between the two of you and you coming to him for help. He hates it so much his skin itches and it's almost hard to breathe. He can't stand the thought of you thinking about yourself like that, of you being in that much psychological and emotional pain, because Jack gets it, he understands what it's like to hate yourself. And he never wants you to hate yourself, never wants you to feel like that.
Then there's the journals. The revelation that you wrote to him every fucking day for the last five years and however many months and days. He is desperate to read them, wonders what you had to say to him every day, how you wrote to him when you were in a relationship, if your words will make him laugh or cry, if they're short little entries or longer ones. Jack ruminates on them while he gives you space.
You stare at the spare bed for a moment before walking over to it. It's made again. You haven't slept in it since that first night when you only did for a couple of hours. After that first night it was just one of those unspoken things like you sleeping in the spare room had been originally.
The justifications are unspoken, it's safer and it lets you both sleep better. You haven't cuddled like you did that first night, haven't been close like that and snuggled up together. Not deliberately or consciously, at least, but you always end up waking up curled into each other somehow, drawn to each other in your sleep.
You pull the comforter and sheets back and slide in, roll onto your side and curl in on yourself as you start to cry silently. All the things you said to Jack that you feel are amplified right now, swirling through your mind so fast all you are is one big ball of sadness and anxiety and self-hate and worthlessness. It's hard to even organize your thoughts with how loud they scream at you but somehow you're able to hear and feel every single one of them.
Tears are still streaming down your face intermittently when there's a knock on the door and a quiet call of your name. You don't say anything, a move that makes you feel like even more of an asshole and a childish one at that. Jack opens the door and uses the light from the hallway to look at you. Your back is to the door, your breathing fairly even. And you're still. Still enough that from the doorway Jack can't quite tell if you're asleep.
He leaves the hall light on for now and the door open a crack so just enough light trickles into the spare room. He crutches over to the empty side of the bed and sets his crutches aside, slides in behind you. You're awake. He can just tell now that he's closer to you. You're not necessarily pretending to be asleep, you're just being quiet and still.
Jack knows you'll tell him if you want him to stop so he feels comfortable getting closer to you. He slides further over toward you, his top arm wrapping around your tummy and pulling you back into him gently as he presses himself up against the back of you, spooning you from behind.
You don't respond because you don't know what to say. Instead you respond with touch, move your top arm and grab the hand of Jack's top arm that's wrapped around you, hold onto it and tuck his arm under yours, guide his hand to your chest and lace your fingers through the back of his and hold your hands there.
"I'm sorry," Jack whispers, kissing the top of the back of your head. "Please, please don't hate yourself Sweetheart. And please don't blame yourself, for anything relating to us and to this situation." The words are truly and genuinely begged. Jack is begging you. "I don't want that. I don't want that at all. I don't blame you and I certainly don't hate you. I never could."
"I never meant to make it seem like I blamed you for anything or like I resented you or like I wanted you to blame yourself. I know that doesn't mean I didn't make you feel like that and stir up those emotions, I just want you to know it wasn't intentional, that I wasn't trying to be mean. I'm very sorry my words hurt you and I can easily see how they would've made you feel like I was blaming you or thought you'd fucked up."
Jack takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "If I'm honest with myself I can admit that I think there was a piece of me that was subconsciously trying to be a bit dick-ish because I was hurting after hearing about your relationship. But I promise that I wasn't consciously trying to hurt you even though I know I did. I didn't think about what I said before I said it or about how I said it. I'm truly sorry and I hope you can forgive me."
"It wasn't you," you whisper. "It wasn't you. I appreciate you coming and apologizing and if you need my forgiveness I forgive you but it wasn't you, Jackie. You have nothing to apologize for, I don't feel like you have anything to apologize for. You didn't say anything mean, you asked simple questions. You didn't blame me. I was twisting your words because of how I feel. You and your words didn't cause any of this. I've been feeling like this and telling myself everything I just said or at least parts of it for the last five years. It's been constant since I moved back." You pause for a second and squeeze Jack's hand, his lips pressing another soft kiss over your hair in return.
"I know you don't blame me, but I blame me." You let go of Jack's hand and scoot away from him, roll over to your other side so you can see him, your bodies naturally coming together, Jack's arms wrapped around how you both need and want. You're teary and the small, albeit somewhat sad smile drops from Jack's face almost instantly. You take a shuddery breath in, lips and chin trembling as you shrug. "And I don't know how to forgive myself or let it go or move past it. I'm sorry Jack, I'm so so sorry. I'm sorry for everything, for all of it. I'm so sorry."
Jack brings his hand up to your face and wipes away some of the tears even though they're quickly replaced. He makes sure he has your eye contact or at least the best he can through your tears. "I forgive you," Jack murmurs firmly but with all the warmth and softness and love in the world. "I don't think you have anything to apologize for and I don't blame you for anything, but I know you need to hear this. I forgive you." He leans his head forward and kisses your forehead before settling back and looking at you again. "I forgive you and I want you to forgive yourself. And I'm going to help you get there."
Your tears finally become audible as you start crying properly again. You shake your head at Jack because you hate that you're like this, that you're just crying instead of talking more because your head is too fuzzy from your previous crying and the thoughts flying around and the wine.
"It's okay," he whispers. You know exactly what he means, that even though there's still more to talk about, it's okay that the talking has ended for tonight, that he knows it was a long day for you and it was for him too, that he knows you're both tired and struggling with your emotions more because of it and that it's better to continue this conversation when you're both fresher. "Come here."
Jack's arms wrap around you a little tighter and you naturally move further into him, your head tucked just under his chin as you cry into him again. He holds you through it, steady and unwavering as he rubs your back and whispers little reassurances and squeezes you to let you know he's there with you. That he's got you, no matter what you are to each other.
He gives you a couple of minutes of silence once you stop crying to let you settle before speaking. "Come to bed with me?" Jack murmurs. "Please."
You nod against him. "Yes please," you whisper back to him.
The two of you force yourselves to separate and make your way into Jack's bedroom. You both get ready for bed quickly and then turn off the lights and slide into Jack's bed, meeting in the middle. And just like that first night you snuggle into each other, little, if any, space between you. You fall asleep in Jack's arms again, the lines of what exactly you and Jack are to each other right now blurrier than ever.
Friday night finds you and Jack in bed laying on your sides chatting.
There hasn't been much change with your stalker and his behaviors. You and Jack are both thankful for that and that there hasn't been an escalation. Or at least not a provable one. You're sure he's been on campus watching you more but you can't prove it so it leaves you feeling like a paranoid mess, which is probably what he wants.
You try to ignore it once you get home, distract yourself with Jack and making dinner and baking him his favorites and anything to get your mind off it.
"So you're actually liking day shift?" you smirk at him, eyebrows raising a touch.
You both know there's probably something a little too intimate about laying in bed together like this on your sides and chatting, even with all the space in between you and the way you're not touching at all. You guys can't help it. You end up like this naturally. You did yesterday and nothing really happened so you tell yourselves it's fine, you're just talking, winding down before bed, only the soft glow of the warm toned light-bulb Jack keeps in his bedside lamp illuminating the room.
But unlike yesterday you both start to move closer to the other every time you speak. It's subconscious and not something either of you even realize is happening.
It's leading somewhere, to something even the universe is surprised has taken this long to happen.
"I am," Jack laughs. "It's been a refreshing change of pace."
"Yeah?" Your smirk deepens as you laugh with him.
"Yeah," he nods, laughter trailing off into a smile that steals your breath. "And I like that it gives me more time with you. Or at least it feels like it does right now."
"Jack," you giggle, "that is so not a reason to like a shift."
He tuts at you. "Abso-fucking-lutely it is!"
It's not that neither of you realize exactly what Jack's words about day shift giving him more time with you mean. It's that the meaning is so natural, so obvious and true and makes so much sense with what the two of you have together that it's just not something that strikes you.
But the thing is, you both seem to be forgetting the two of you don't have that together anymore. That you're not together, not a couple.
Since Wednesday night the tension between you and Jack has started to break like a sheet of ice over a pond, cracks forming just beneath the surface that strain to keep separation between water and air. Between you and Jack.
You roll your eyes at him playfully, close enough now that your legs tangle with Jack's. "You're ridiculous."
Jack continues moving closer, your thighs pressing against each other's and then your lower abdomens, and then your upper abdomens, the two of you pressed together and cuddling like you used to when you were lovers. You couldn't get any closer and still be able to easily see all of each other's faces as you chat. Jack pulls his lips down in consideration, raises his eyebrows, eyes glinting mischievously, but in a way that tells you he means it and is being serious. "Might ask Robby to make it permanent."
"You love the night shift." You shiver when Jack drapes his arm over your side and starts running his index finger up and down your spine. "You'd resent me for making you change after a while."
"You're not making me do anything. It would be my choice." Jack's head moves closer to yours and you rest your top hand along the crook of his neck, thumb brushing absentmindedly over his skin. "And we'd have to try to actually work it out, but if day shift gave me more time with you then I'd easily love it more than the night shift."
"Yeah?" you breathe, everything finally hitting your conscious mind at once. Your head only moves closer to Jack's in response.
Jack's conscious mind is hit by it all at the same time, his heart starting to race at how close yet how achingly far away his lips are from yours. "Yeah," he whispers as you both move your heads in to close the last of the distance.
Your lips hover a millimeter apart for a few seconds ghosting over each other with breaths that are hot against sensitive skin before they brush a little more firmly, something you can really feel as you both whisper another "yeah."
You and Jack finally kiss, soft and short and sweet. Your foreheads rest against each other's for a second before you both pull back just enough to look the other in the eyes.
And then the tension shatters around you, and you and Jack are finally kissing.
Kissing like you used to. Kisses that are gentle and achingly loving and lingering building into kisses that are hungry and needy and passionate building into kisses that are hard and consuming and possessive.
The first time Jack's tongue slides into your mouth and he lets out one of those groans from deep in his chest that says I love you so fucking much and always will just as loudly as it says I fucking need you and to be inside of you it's like everything falls back into place in your world, and it's exactly the same for Jack when you moan into his mouth and wordlessly say the same exact thing. Everything is okay again. Happiness feels real again. You think you could make it through anything again.
Jack lets you into his mouth, sucks on your tongue because he fucking can and because he knows you like it, nips and sucks on your bottom lip for the same reason. Your hands roam each other, rub and tease at all the right spots because you still have each other memorized. When your hand finds the curls at the nape of his neck and tug Jack needs more, knows you need more too.
It's natural the way Jack rolls you onto your back in the middle of the bed while still kissing you, still pulling the sweetest sighs and hums from you. Your legs wrap around him to keep him close and open yourself up for him further. It lets you both get more friction when your hips start to grind and roll against each other's.
After who knows how long you slide your hands under his shirt, let them glide over firm muscle that's covered by the perfect amount of softness that's always driven you insane, that you've nibbled on and sucked hickeys into hundreds of times. The fabric comes with you as you move your hands up Jack's chest and he gets the picture, shifts to support his body weight on his knees while your legs drop off him so that he can reach back and pull his shirt off like you're silently asking him to.
There's hardly any time to truly appreciate him and his body in earnest because his abs are strong enough that he can stay low and hold himself up without his arms to get his shirt off. You'd whine about it but Jack's lips are back on yours claiming you again, and his warm, smooth skin and the muscles you can feel rippling beneath it make it all better.
When you both need more air than you can get while kissing each other Jack moves his lips to your neck. As you try to catch your breath while he lavishes your neck with kisses it hits you.
You fucking can't. You cannot do this.
"Jack," you breathe out. You move your hands to his chest and push gently. "We, we have to stop, we can't…."
"What?" he asks in a breath of his own as he pulls his head from your neck. He sits back on his knees between your legs, always a man to stop and get off you first and ask questions second. "What's wrong?"
You look up at him and open your mouth to say something but no words come out. It's unusual, and it almost never happens, or it almost never happened in at least the last two years you were together, but Jack can't read the look in your eyes. He can't tell what this is.
Jack lets the confusion wash over his face, brows furrowed as he cocks his head at you and shakes it slightly. "I, I have condoms and I'm clean if that's what you're worried about."
You shake your head slowly, tears filling your eyes and something Jack easily recognizes as heartbreak and emotional pain pulling onto your face. "It's not that Jack," you whisper. "We can't because I, in the morning we'll, I'll…" You have no idea why you can't find the words to finish your sentence and explain how you feel.
But you don't need to say anything else. It clicks in his mind.
"Oh," Jack whispers.
Regret. That's the look in your eyes that he couldn't place, couldn't read, regret. Because you've never looked at him with regret, like he's something or someone you could regret until now. A pain so sharp he can't breathe for a minute hits his heart, his stomach in a knot and head fuzzy as the blow emotionally levels him.
"Wow," Jack finally breathes. You don't think you've ever heard him sound so hurt and it destroys you, tears falling immediately because you did that. You hurt him like that. You made him feel like that. Other than the slight creak of the bed and the sheets rustling as Jack moves away from you to the edge of the bed so that his back is to you the room is silent and still. Tears line Jack's eyes as he forces the words out. Forces himself to acknowledge it. "I didn't think I'd ever be something you could regret. A mistake."
"What?" you whisper, genuine confusion and horror in your tone.
"We have to stop and you can't because you'll regret this in the morning, that's what you were going to say. Regret being with me. Regret me." Jack thinks he might actually be sick as the tears start to fall, is so breathless and having such deep pain in his chest he's worried he might actually be having a heart attack. "Fuck, wow. That… That hurts."
"No!" you gasp, the shock still running its way through your system. "No. No, no, no, no." You sit up and scramble to sit on your knees next to him at the edge of the bed. "Oh my god, Jack no! No. That's not why, that's not why at all." You've started to shake, watching Jack's heart break in front of you something you'll never be able to unsee or unhear. When you broke up you'd both managed to keep it together until you parted, fell apart and let your hearts break in private. But Jack's just broke right in front of you.
Tears that match Jack's own stream down your face as you beg him. "Look at me, please. Please, Jack." It takes him a second but he does, looks at you without trying to hide a single emotion on his face because he knows it would be futile, that he couldn't right now. "Never," you breathe, shaking your head at him. You take his head in your hands and hold his gaze as intensely as ever. "I could never regret you. You could never be a mistake. Please know that. I'm sorry for making it seem and feel otherwise for even a second. I'm so sorry, Jackie. But that is not what I meant, I promise. There is no part of me that could ever regret you, regret being with you and loving you."
Jack's lips tremble and a cascade of tears fall down his cheeks before he leans his head into one of your hands, your words and how desperate and panicked you look for him to believe you reassuring him that this has been some sort of miscommunication.
"That's what I thought," he whispers. "That's how you always made me feel, like you could never regret me and that's why it hurt so badly. I shouldn't have assumed, shouldn't have put words in your mouth."
"It's okay," you murmur. Jack nods his head in the direction of the headboard and shifts, gets comfortable sitting up and leaning against it. You crawl onto his lap, wrap your legs around him between his back and the headboard and hug him. He hugs you back just as tightly, holds the back of your head to keep you close. "It's okay, Jackie."
The two of you sit like that for a while, soak up each other's presence and closeness and heal so many pieces that neither of you thought you'd ever be able to.
It's Jack who breaks the silence praying his curiosity won't ruin everything. "If it's not that… I respect you saying no and that we have to stop and I'm not pushing you for anything or to start again and I recognize you don't owe me an explanation so you don't have to answer of course, but why…? Why we can't do this again?"
You pull out of the hug and look at him, hopeless and helpless almost. You start to move and Jack thinks he's ruined everything but you just move back off his lap so that you're sitting between his legs, your calves still on top of his thighs.
"I just, I said we can't because… It's me, Jack." You shrug at him as tears hit your eyes again. "I'm not strong enough for this. I don't want you to regret this in the morning. And I don't want you to be doing this because you feel bad for me or feel bad in general or because you're tired and your judgment lapsed or because I'm here and comfortable and familiar and sex is good stress relief or because of some sort of trauma bonding thing that's happening and bringing us together for a short time."
You shake your head at him, crying and looking devastated in the most beautiful way that makes Jack want to sob. "I can't do this casually with you, Jack. I can't just be friends with benefits and two people having sex and almost playing house because of circumstance. I know we're halfway there and just the playing house alone is killing me slowly I think. I need the divide, the intimacy divide. So I can't do this and have there not be an us. I can't do this and not have you, for real. Like I used to. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, I just can't. I promise you it has nothing to do with regret though, Jack. I could never regret you."
"I just couldn't survive our casual arrangement ending and losing you again. I barely survived losing you the first time, Jack, and I never got over you." You sniffle, wipe away some of your tears just for them to be replaced. "I'm still hopelessly and completely in love with you Jack. So I can't do this, I can't be with you casually until all of this passes and then we just go back to strangers who know each other far too well. I can't do this and not be in a relationship with you, not be yours again and get to call you mine and show you and tell you I love you."
"And there's way too much going on for you to be able to decide with any clarity whether getting back together with me, truly getting back together, is something you'd want or would be good for you and your life. It's not fair of me to ask you to make that decision right now. So I'm sorry." Your lips and chin tremble as you take in a deep, shuddery breath and let it out, tears flooding your cheeks again as you do. "I'm so sorry, Jack."
It's quiet for a few seconds as Jack lets all your words sink in. And then he gives you the quietest breathed out laugh because this is so fucking silly of you and you're so fucking cute and precious and worried for no fucking reason and he gets it, he so fucking gets it because he feels the exact same way and he just loves you so much.
"Sweetheart," he whispers. Jack tilts his head at you and licks his lips before giving you an empathetic smile. "First of all, you never need to apologize to me or anyone else for having a boundary and setting it and enforcing it, okay?"
You nod and sniffle again, wipe away some of your tears as you try to pull it together. Jack leans forward and grabs his shirt from up near the other pillow where he tossed it after he pulled it off and offers it to you as a handkerchief. You huff a laugh and smile all watery at him as you take it and use it and Jack thinks he has to be glowing at how good and how proud he feels for making you smile and laugh, as small as they were.
"Second of all," he continues on, "I could never regret you either. You are the best thing I could ever do, will have ever done.” Jack gives you a little wink. "In all senses."
"Third, this, what we were just doing, kissing and working towards foreplay and sex, it was never casual or just sex to me. With everything else going on, how we were talking and interacting, how we have been since you moved back in," that's a little Freudian slip because you haven't really technically moved back in, "this was us getting back together. For me this was us getting back together. And I very much should've clarified that and asked you and not assumed you just knew and felt and thought the same way as me, but that's what this was. For me this was the start of you getting to call me yours and me getting to call you mine again."
"And fourth," Jack has to laugh a little at how adorable you are wiping your nose and face with his shirt and then looking at him so earnest and concerned and in love. "You think I'm not hopelessly and completely in love with you still? You really think there's any question in my mind about whether I want to be in a relationship with you again? A question about whether I want us again and to call you mine and be called yours?"
"Because there's not," he shakes his head, smiling widely at you, though it falters a little with tears you know are of love and happiness. "Wanting this, wanting you and us again, it's not because of trauma bonding or because you're here and familiar and comforting, though you are. It's because I am so goddamn out of my fucking mind in love with you. And I want to get to tell you that I love you again, get to show you again, and I want to wake up and have the privilege of loving you and on you every day for the rest of my life."
"I've lost over five years with you and I don't need to lose a second more thinking about whether I want you as mine again and whether I'm doing this for the right reasons because the answer is yes. You know how many times I thought about quitting or taking a leave of absence and going to you and begging you to take me back and for us to figure it out? Too many to fucking count. There hasn't been a single day that has gone by since we broke up that I haven't thought about you and haven't wanted you back."
Jack drops his voice a little, a heartfelt if not slightly anxious smile pulling onto his features. "But you have a lot going on too and it would be hard for you to make that decision with clarity. I don’t want you to feel like you have to or like I’m taking advantage of you and how you're feeling and where you're at emotionally. I respect you saying no. I don't want you to think you have to do this for me, have sex or get back together with me, in order for me to help you and protect you because you don't. You absolutely fucking don't. If you want to get back together, like you do with me, I want it to be for the right reasons and not-"
You toss Jack's shirt to the side and shift, climb back onto Jack's lap properly and shut him up with a lingering kiss that turns into several. "I love you too. I always have and I always will. There hasn't been a single day since we broke up that I didn't love you. I can show you the journals. I didn't always say it explicitly but I'm pretty sure it's there in the words," you murmur.
"I want to be yours again. I want you to be mine again. I never didn't want to be yours Jack, and the number of times I almost quit and came back for you is probably concerning," you laugh softly. "I wanted to find you as soon as I got back but I was too controlled by my fear of finding you with someone else or married with kids or whatever. I'm sorry I didn't call you the second I landed, shit, the second I took the job and knew I'd be coming back."
"I haven't said anything or tried to instigate something or anything like that because I didn't want you to feel forced or like any of the other things we talked about. But I've been dying for this, Jackie. For us to be back together." You kiss one of his cheeks. "For me to be yours again and you to be mine." A kiss to his other cheek. "For you." You kiss his lips chastely. "I've been dying for you, Jack."
"You want to be together again?" Jack just has to double check. "You want to be us again?"
"Yeah," you giggle, nodding at him. "To both. Do you?"
Jack laughs, his hands coming up to hold your face. "Yeah, I do."
You and Jack smile at each other for half a second and then your lips are on each other's again, picking up right where you left off. It's a little more hurried this time, each of you loving this but desperate for Jack to be inside of you.
He sits up onto his knees carefully and repositions the two of you so that you're beneath him again, your head comfortably against a pillow as he grinds down into you, his mouth claiming yours until you have to pull away from him a little to catch your breath. Jack uses the time you need to catch your breath to pull your shirt and pajama shorts off so fast you've barely processed your shirt coming off by the time Jack has your legs in front of him and resting against his shoulders as he pulls your shorts off and sets your legs back on either side of him like they were putting you on full display for him.
Jack's eyes run over your body greedily, his chest starting to heave because fucking look at you. "God, fuck!" he groans, palming his cock over his pajama pants as he stares down at you, at all of you. "All five years did was make you get even more beautiful for me. Look at you. Your beautiful face. Your fucking tits and pussy, so perfect just like the rest of you, fuck. I'm so fucking lucky."
"You're one to talk," you breathe out, eyes raking over the half of Jack's body revealed to you just as greedily. "You're so handsome it's almost painful Jack. And the salt and pepper and the white stubble."
"And the crow's feet?" Jack drags his eyes up to yours and smirks at you.
You laugh softly and lick your lips. "You won't believe me but yes. Fucking yes. I find them so hot, you have no fucking idea."
He teasingly rolls his eyes at you and goes to lean back over you to kiss you again and grind into you more but you stop him. "Nu-uh, Sir. Take your pants off."
Jack clenches his jaw, you calling him sir and the needy, desperate look in your eyes making him leak for you. "Anything for you, Sweetheart." He works his pants off and tosses them aside, gives you what you want and pushes up so he's standing on his knees and you can take him in.
Your eyes roam him just as greedily as his did yours, and you can feel yourself get wetter for him. "Fuck, Jack," you moan. "Look at you." Even with your legs spread enough to accommodate his frame you can start to feel your heartbeat in between them.
You lean up on one elbow and reach out with your other arm and take Jack's cock in your hand, stroke him up and down slowly, twisting at his head how you know he loves. He feels good in your hand and it makes you realize how badly you need him in your mouth.
"You, you gotta stop, Sweetheart," Jack groans a laugh. "I'll embarrass myself and come way too fast for you. Being inside of you again is already going to be challenging."
"I don't care," you hum, but let him pull your hand away from his cock. "Just as long as I get to feel you inside of me."
"You're very sweet." Jack leans back over you and goes to kiss you again, his hand wrapping around your wrist and pinning it to the bed. "But I care," he murmurs against your lips.
He moves his hand off your wrists and brings it down between the two of you, shifts so that he's on his side a bit, one arm planted and taking some of his body weight for you as the fingers of his other hand nudge your clit.
"Oh." The word is almost all air as Jack's fingers start playing with your clit, teasingly diving down closer to your pussy every few strokes. "Jack, fuck!"
"So wet for me already," Jack whispers at your ear as he starts to kiss your neck, suck and nip at it in the places he knows are the most sensitive for you. He starts circling one of his fingers around your entrance teasingly, will barely dip inside and smile against your skin when you buck your hips as much as you can to try to get him inside of you. He can feel how hard you clench when his finger starts to dip inside. "Relax for me, Sweetheart."
"Jesus Jack," you laugh through a moan. "How the fuck do you expect me to do that when you're teasing me with your fingers?"
"I believe in you."
You have absolutely no explanation for why that's one of the hottest things Jack's ever said to you but it sure fucking is, sends a bolt of pleasure up your spine and makes you clench even harder for a second. Your eyes flutter closed and you focus on relaxing, focus on staying relaxed when Jack's finger starts to push inside of you, your mind fixating on the praise you hope to earn.
"Mm," Jack hums in approval as he starts to pull his finger out. He starts to finger you properly, crooks his finger and drags it just where he needs to. His lips find yours for something soft, that barely counts as a kiss. "See, I knew you could do it." He gives you a kiss this time, followed by what you were so hoping to hear. "My good girl."
As he says it he slips a second finger inside of you with the first and you jolt for him, eyes flying open at the rush of pleasure his two thick fingers bring you when they work that spongy spot inside of you so insistently before starting to fuck you again. He keeps at it, works you so perfectly and has you teetering so close to the edge before he finally puts his palm flat for you and lets you grind your clit up against it.
"Jack," you pant, stilling your hips so your clit doesn't grind against his palm as hard anymore. "Jackie I'm so close, I'm so… You're so good, make me feel so good."
"I know you are Sweetheart." He kisses along your jaw, starts to suck and lave at one of the most sensitive spots you have just below and slightly behind your ear. "Come for me."
"No." You shake your head and wrap your hand around as much of his wrist as possible to stop his movements. "The first place I'm coming for you after five years is on your cock Jack Abbot."
Jack chokes out a groaned laugh, his cock throbbing against him and smearing precum over his abs at your words. "Jesus fuckin' christ, Sweetheart."
"Jackie," you pout, play into it for him a little. "Please! I need you inside me. Need your cock inside of me."
He shivers at the thought, can't believe he's about to be again and not just in his dreams. "Alright, shh, I've got you." Jack pulls his fingers from you, moans when he sucks them clean and gets his first taste of you in five years.
You can see it in his eyes, know what he's thinking about. "Later," you pant. "You can eat me out later. I need you to fuck me, Jack. No condom unless you want. I'm clean and still on birth control." Both you and Jack are struck by how inadvertently heady your words are, the thought of him fucking you raw and coming inside of you making both of you a little dizzy for a second. "I need you inside of me, need you back where you belong, please."
"I know," he soothes, "I know, I'm gonna give it to you, I promise. Tell me if you need me to stop or slow down, okay?"
You bite your bottom lip and nod and Jack adjusts both of you, slides his cock through you a few times to get himself slick. He notches himself at your entrance so all he has to do is press in steadily and claim you again.
Before he does he slides his arms under your shoulders and takes your face in his hands so gently. He holds your face like that and the two of you hold eye contact as Jack sinks inside of you, the stretch exactly what you remember, almost too much but also almost not enough, intoxicating and addictive, words that also describe how your pussy feels to Jack.
"Fuck Sweetheart," Jack groans, raw and vulnerable almost, so clearly holding nothing back and letting you hear exactly how you make him feel.
"Jack!" you gasp, your breath stolen by so many things, the size of Jack, the way he feels so familiar, how right it feels to have him sliding back inside of you, how good him just being inside of you makes you feel. "JackJackJack."
"Oh god, I missed you," Jack rasps, his chest heaving. He couldn't describe this, how good he feels, how right and perfect everything feels if he tried. "Missed you like this, so fucking much."
Jack's still, rests his forehead against yours as he gives you time to adjust and both of you time to just enjoy this, the feeling of each other, of being one again.
"I love you," he whispers through soft pants. He pulls his forehead from yours and looks down at you. "I never stopped, I could never stop. I never didn't want you." Jack leans down to kiss you and just that little movement of him inside you makes you both keen. "You've always had me and you always will. I'll always be yours. That's all I want in life, to be yours."
"Oh Jack," you whisper. Tears start to leak from the corners of your eyes and Jack's face furrows in concern and confusion. "They're good tears, Baby," you reassure him. You press your lips together hard and click your tongue against the back of your teeth before you speak again. "I just missed you. I missed you so much and I never stopped loving you either, I never didn't want you. I was and will always be yours too, and that's the only thing I'll ever need in life to be happy. You're the only thing I'll ever need. Just you." You lean up a little and capture his lips with yours, kiss him like you're trying to pour five years of missed love into his heart and soul, because you are. "I love you."
Jack's teary when pulls back to look down at you and hold your gaze as he says it back with the sweetest love drunk smile. "I love you."
Jack draws his hips back slowly, groaning low as he thrusts back inside of you at the same speed. He wants to make this last, wishes it could never end, this feeling of being reunited and finally home and how good you feel after over five years.
"I missed this," Jack groans, "I missed you, missed you like this, god I missed you so much." He can't stop going on about it because he did, he missed you more than should be humanly possible, your reunion underscoring the feeling for him.
"I missed you too. Love you so much Jackie," you sigh, the sound so pretty Jack chokes on his breath and has to clench his abs hard to make sure he doesn't lose it and spill into you far too early.
Jack continues to fuck you slowly, but hard, with his whole body, his back hunching with every thrust as he uses it to drive himself into you. With your legs wrapped around him Jack's able to hit deep, makes you feel like he's the only thing to exist in the moment as he steals your ability to think of anything but him.
You slip a hand into his curls while the other wraps under his arm and back over his shoulder, clawing at the muscle to help keep you grounded to something. Jack grunts in pleasure when your hand finds his curls. He loves the way you tug at them, scratch at his scalp before you get so fucked out that all you can do is pull on them.
Jack buries his head in your neck at first, whispers the sweetest little things. And then he starts sucking and kissing at your neck, nipping at it as he makes his way up to your jaw and then over until he's finally kissing your lips again.
You make out for what feels like forever but isn't anywhere near long enough as Jack fucks you, moan and sigh into each other's mouths as you take all the pleasure you can from each other, show the other how much you love them with your bodies. When you break for air Jack pulls one of his hands from your face and slides it between the two of you and starts rubbing your clit perfectly.
"Fuck, Jack, you feel so good, make me feel so good," you start to babble, a little oxygen deprived on top of how fucked out and cock drunk Jack has you.
Jack picks up his pace, but it's nothing too fast, still very much love making as opposed to outright fucking. "Yeah, you feel so good too, pretty girl," Jack pants. "You're so fucking tight, so fucking wet for me."
You tug at Jack's curls hard, claw your fingers into his skin enough for it to give him the perfect little edge of pain that encourages him to pick his pace up just a little more.
"Jack," you breathe his name and he can hear it, can hear how close you are for him, can feel how close you are, how good he's making you feel. "Don't stop, please don't stop. Jackie, please… please, I love you, don't stop."
"Come for me Sweetheart," Jack murmurs, voice raspy from all of his groans. "Make me come." He gives you a lingering kiss and then nuzzles his nose against yours before looking you in the eyes as he pants out another instruction to you, uses the pet name he doesn’t use often to keep it special, the one he knows is simultaneously the one you find hottest when he calls you it in bed and the one that makes you tear up and get all mushy and lovey when he says it outside of bed. "Let me feel you, Baby."
And you do. You absolutely shatter around Jack, soundless with how hard your orgasm crashes into you. All of it, Jack's words and the look in his eyes and his cock and his fingers, is far too much for your system to handle in the best way.
"Jack!" you moan loudly, higher-pitched and needy. "Oh, god, Baby! Fuck- Jack, I love you," you pant, so obviously fucked out of your mind that you're struggling to remember how to catch your breath. "Shit I can't breathe, it's too much, you feel too good, can feel you everywhere."
"Fuck you look so pretty when you come," Jack nearly growls, pulling his hand from between you to give your clit a break, his pace picking up just a little more, fucking you through your orgasm and chasing his own. "Just like I remembered, just like I fucking remembered, could never forget my beautiful girl." The words drip off his tongue, pleasure slurred and nearly pained in ecstasy. "Shit, Sweetheart! I'm gonna come, fuck, fuck, I'm gonna come."
The thought of Jack coming in you brings you back enough to encourage him, to focus on him and how he's feeling and how it feels when he comes in you, your pussy clenching and fluttering around him at the thought. "Please, Jack, I need it. Need you to come, need to feel you come in me."
"Yeah," he pants, "yeah, I will. Claim you again, make you mine… yeah."
Jack comes with the most erotic groan of your name, the sound pure gravel and sex, lined with an adoration that screams how hopelessly in love with you he is and how much he loves that fact. "Oh, oh Sweetheart, fuck," he groans. "Oh I love you, I love you so fucking much, fuck, you feel so good, I missed you."
He fucks himself through it, his entire body trembling with the sheer amount of pleasure rushing through his veins, oxytocin and endorphins and adrenaline and dopamine flooding Jack's system as he slows, mumbling your name and "so good for me, you're so so good for me, thank you Baby, love you so much," over and over until he stills completely, keeps his cock buried inside of you.
"Jack," you whisper, staring up at him with eyes drowning in pleasure, airy smile on your face as the intoxicating afterglow of sex with Jack settles over you. "That was…"
"I know," he whispers back, his blissed out smile taking over his face far too much for him to give you the teasing, self-satisfied smirk he tries to. "I agree."
Jack leans down and kisses you, the two of you making out slowly as your heart rates return to normal, your breaks for air punctuated by kisses to each other's faces. When Jack starts moving his kisses down your neck and keeping them teasingly soft to tickle you, you tug gently on his curls.
"Come here, Handsome," you say softly, knowing he'll understand your request for him to lay on top of you and cuddle.
Jack nods, presses one last kiss against your lips. He looks down at you for a moment, eyes running over your face and then holding your gaze. "You really are my beautiful girl, you know that? You always have been, even thousands of miles apart and not together," he murmurs.
A lump forms in your throat and you can feel the tears start to threaten. You never thought you'd be one of those people lucky enough to be looked at the way Jack is looking at you, and it hits you that, while there is something special and particularly intimate about this moment that adds a bit of an extra edge, Jack is looking at you the way he always looks at you.
What you don't realize is that you look at him the exact same way. Always.
"Jack," you whisper, unable to come up with anything to say other than the only thing that matters to you. Him.
There's so much you want to say to him, so much that you need to say, to make sure he knows just like there's so much he wants and needs to say to you, to make sure you know. But it's not the time, both of you know that. So you settle on the words that say everything all at once but will still never be enough to truly express how you feel about him. "I love you."
He smiles at you, teasing and a little smirked, too handsome for his own good, and so genuinely and purely happy that you think time stops for you. "Yeah," he breathes out, lowers himself on top of you and buries his face in your neck, nuzzling his nose against you. "I know." You bite your lip and giggle quietly, barely let the sound out of your chest and Jack hums a laugh with you, moves his face and kisses just below your ear, sweet and tender and lingering. "I love you too."
The next two weeks go by surprisingly fast.
You're pretty sure the first of the two weeks went by so fast because your stalker seemed to keep intensifying and get more threatening without doing anything that would be enough for the police to get truly involved, and so you were just so scared that time was blurry. He continued to blow up your phone and you continued to do your best to ignore it. You know you saw him on campus each day, but still never got a picture. It was like he wanted you to see him and know he was there and watching you, waiting patiently for what exactly you weren't sure and weren't going to think about too hard.
You found little gifts outside your office door that first Tuesday and Friday. At first you thought the one on Tuesday was from Jack, a cute little plush of your favorite animal, a sweet note that it's there to keep you company until you're back together again. When you called Jack to thank him and he had told you that it wasn't him, that he didn't get you anything, and you realized it was your stalker you actually had to hang up on Jack and were sick into your trash can at work. Jack had called you back in a panic of course, but you reassured him you were fine and went about your day as much as you could with how distracted you were. When you saw the box on Friday you immediately texted Jack and when he said it wasn't him again you didn't even open it, just threw it away.
That Saturday you'd gone with a couple of Jack's friends to your old place and finished packing everything and getting it all out. Luckily you'd rented a furnished place since you were moving back from another country, so you didn't have a ton to move, mostly just personal stuff. It was a whole fucking ruse to get everything to Jack's while making sure you weren't tailed, but you all seemed to have pulled it off together.
You're pretty sure the second week, this past week, goes by quickly because it's so… quiet. You don't hear anything from your stalker that Sunday. You think it's strange and the silence is almost more disconcerting than anything but you try to rationalize that, as awful as it is, the guy probably found someone else, and so you try to be cautiously optimistic. Jack is less so. He doesn't like the sudden complete disappearance.
Because that's what happens. It stays silent. Your stalker disappears. You don't hear from him the rest of the week, don't find any presents outside your office, don't see him on campus or feel like you're being watched. He's just gone.
You'd been terrified when you went into work yesterday morning. Despite your attempt at being cautiously optimistic you couldn't help the pit that had formed in your stomach and told you something was wrong and was going to happen. You were sure you were going to walk to your office Monday morning and find something, that your phone would start to go off again with even worse and more threatening messages. But there was nothing waiting for you anywhere and nothing happened. It was a normal Monday.
And Tuesday starts normally.
Jack sits on the bed next to you and leans down, kisses your face and lips until you wake up for him. He has to leave to get to work on time far earlier than you have to leave for work, especially today. "Hi Sleepy," he greets you with another kiss.
"Hi," you hum against his lips. "You off?"
"Unfortunately," he sighs. He hates leaving you, even now that things have calmed down. The silence feels wrong. It feels like your stalker is trying to lure you into a false sense of safety.
"It'll be okay." You reach up and run your hair through his curls. "Just another day still sticking to the plan. I'll make sure I'm not alone and I'll come to the Pitt right after my last class, okay?"
"Okay," Jack nods slowly, biting his lip. His face furrows, lips pull down in a frown. "I'm not trying to be controlling, you know? It’s the thought of something happening to you, I, I-"
"Hey," you interrupt him gently, give him what you hope is a reassuring smile. "I don't think you are or are trying to be controlling, I promise. I know it's just that you love me."
"Good," he nods again, looking so serious for a few seconds before he lets out a long breath and manages to give you a small smile. "Good. Because I do and that's what this is, it's just me loving you and needing you and to keep you safe. I love you so much. I love you more than you'll ever know."
"I love you that much too, Jackie." You lean up on your elbows so you can kiss him. "I love you as much as you love me. And a little extra because I love you more."
Jack laughs softly against your lips. "In your dreams, Sweetheart."
You smirk against his lips, press a light kiss to them. "In my reality, Sir."
Jack pulls back and shakes his head at you, chuckling as you giggle for him. "Just text me yeah?" He raises his eyebrows at you a touch. "So I know you're okay. I might not be able to respond much depending on how things get there, but I like knowing."
"Of course," you nod. "And I'll call once I'm in an uber on my way to the Pitt. If I don't get you I'll call the desk."
"Thank you." Jack leans back down and wraps his arms under you in a hug and kisses you. And kisses you and kisses you and kisses you until he knows he has to pull away and finds the strength to do so. "I love you, Sweetheart. I love you so much."
"I love you so much too, Jackie." You steal one last kiss from him before letting him go.
Jack walks over to the bedroom door and looks back at you, heart aching beautifully at the sight of you already looking at him, curled up on his side of the bed with your head on his pillow. He smiles at you. "Bye. I love you."
You give him a beaming smile back, happy you were able to make him smile one last time before he really had to go. "Bye. I love you."
When you get to school you head to your office to get your stuff for your first class, check your email. There's nothing waiting for you outside the door and you feel some tension melt away. And when you get back to your office from your first class there's still nothing waiting, your phone still silent other than wanted texts from Jack. You lock your office door and spend the next few hours working until it's time for your second class, and then you go straight from your second class to your third when a couple of students stay after class with you and chat with you in the busy hallway.
After your third class you're relieved when you walk up to your office door and don't see any packages waiting outside for you. Another day without anything happening at school. You unlock the door and walk in, set the bag you use for all of the class shit you have to haul around with you in its spot and then go to grab your purse.
But that's when you see it. Another present, placed right on the center of your desk.
It's an oversized ring box that's intricately wrapped with what would in any other situation be a very beautiful bow. This present hits harder than all the rest for two reasons. One, it was quiet. You had over a week of silence. He was gone. He was supposed to be gone, your life was supposed to be able to go back to normal. And two, it was in your office. Your locked office. He had to break in to plant it. Sure it's not some biometric ultra secure lock situation, but still. He broke in. During the day. That's an escalation.
You scream at yourself not to open it, to do what you did with the last one you got and just throw it away. But there's just some nagging feeling you have that tells you that you should open it.
So, with shaky hands, you do.
You sit in your chair and then tear the paper off unceremoniously and throw it away before opening the box. What you find is so fucking cliché that in any other circumstance you'd laugh or roll your eyes at it. But right now, knowing it's from your stalker who has a gun it's anything but. It's a threat all on its own.
Where there would normally be a ring there's a bullet with your name literally engraved on it.
You stare at it for a solid minute before you're able to remember how to move your eyes and look at something else. A neatly rolled scroll of paper wrapped in dainty twine is wedged into the top of the box. At this point you don't want to look at it. You don't want to know.
But you have to know.
You pull the note out and get the twine off, unfurl it and start reading.
Make sure you have this with you when I get you from school. And don't worry, my love, as long as you finally behave and cooperate I won't use it anywhere fatal, just somewhere it'll hurt enough to teach you a lesson.
Your blood pressure skyrockets so fast so quickly that you think you lose vision for a moment, are able to feel your heart pounding in your eyes. You take in a gasping breath, hadn't realized you’d been holding it since you started to read the note.
You're frozen as your brain tries to process the last four minutes. Tears hit your eyes but they're not even for yourself. They're for Jack, for what you know this is going to do to him. You can already hear him talking again about getting out of the city while he hires a private investigator to prove it's the guy.
There's a knock on your door and you leap out of your seat and turn around, think all of this might not matter in the end because you're going to have a fucking heart attack and die right here on your office fucking floor. Your hand flies to your chest and you take in gasping breaths when you see it's just one of the campus police officers.
The officer looks horrified at the reaction he caused. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to scare you Miss."
"No," you shake your head at him, take a second for a couple of deep breaths before grabbing the box and closing it. You shove it in your purse and grab your phone. "No, it's me, I'm jumpy." You force a laugh. "I'll call the uber while we walk if you're okay waiting with me there?"
"Of course," he nods.
"Thanks," you give him a small smile that doesn't meet your eyes and walk out your door with him, lock it behind you and wonder why you're bothering when it's apparently so easy to pick.
Normally you chat with whoever's walking with you but not today. You can't. Your brain is way too consumed by what you just found. Ordering the uber as you walk is hard enough, but you manage to do it.
You're so in your head as you order it and walk that you don't hear the officer telling you to hold up, he has to go check on the kid that just crashed his god damn e-scooter and call for someone else to come.
So you don't stop walking.
You don't follow the officer over to where the injured kid is and hover close enough to be safe. You just keep walking by yourself to the area of campus always deserted at this hour because classes in these buildings finish much earlier, the usual desertion amplified by the threatening thunderstorm such that the area is nearly empty, only a few students in headphones with their heads down trudging along. You just keep walking until you're by yourself.
Alone.
You only notice when you go to look up at the officer and tell him it should only be three minutes. Your head turns sharply to the other side when you don't see him next to you, but he's not on the other side of you either. You turn all the way around hoping he's right behind you and you were just walking faster than normal. But no. He's not here. You're all alone.
You're all alone and you already know it's going to happen. It doesn't matter how you came to be alone, just that you are. Your stalker will capitalize on this moment of vulnerability, on your fucking mistake. How could you have let this happen?
It doesn't even occur to you at first that you're just standing out in the open and not at least continuing to move and get to where your uber is supposed to pick you up and where there will hopefully be more people. Your heart races again, just as fast as when the officer startled you but now it's sustained, it's tiring, mentally and physically.
And you're scared. You're fucking terrified.
It's the movement in the corner of your eye that makes you realize you have to start walking again. You turn your head in the direction to see if it's the officer, but it's not. You catch another glimpse of him before he's hidden by pillars supporting the building and you know it's him. You know.
Fight or flight finally kicks enough for you to take off at essentially a run. When you hear footsteps pounding behind you instinct tells you it's time to hide, that you're never going to outrun him.
You duck into the next building you pass, mercifully spot a single stall bathroom and run into it and lock the door. As you walk backwards until you hit the opposite wall and slide down it so you're sitting on the floor you clamp your hand over your mouth to try and quiet yourself so that maybe he won't know where you went to hide. You know that's unlikely because it's so fucking obvious, especially because you're sure the classrooms are all locked by now, but it's worth a try.
Time ticks by, your sense of it skewed, you're sure. But nothing happens. You don't hear a door to the building open or footsteps outside of the bathroom. Could you seriously have made all of that up? Seeing him? Being chased?
Tears sting at the back of your eyes now that you're not in quite the state of extreme panic you were when you were running. You start to stand to splash some cold water on your face when someone tries to open the door, pressing down on the handle and jiggling it, pushing the door against the frame and lock and clearly leaning their body weight into it.
Your stomach drops again as a jolt of panic and terror and fear rocking your system so hard everything goes blurry for a few seconds. You cover your mouth with your hand again and bring your knees in front of your chest like it's going to do anything to protect you.
Then it stops just as abruptly as it started.
You have no idea if the person walked away, couldn't possibly hear footsteps over the beat of your heart and how hard you're breathing. You're sure it's not over, tell yourself to be prepared for him to come back.
It's useless. You jolt just as hard again when they start playing with the door handle again, jiggling it and pushing against it like they had been. But then the noise changes and it dawns on you. It sounds almost like they're trying to remove the handle so they can get it.
"Yo!" The noise stops. "Wrong bathroom. We're here for the one on the second floor."
"Oh," a male voice from right outside the door calls back to the other one. "Makes sense. I wondered why this one was locked." When you hold your breath you can hear footsteps receding in the direction you know the stairs are.
The relief that floods over you is euphoric in its own way. You've never known anything like it.
Slowly you move your hand from your mouth and let yourself take in the big, panting breaths that you need to recover. Somehow your mind is still, almost feels empty and like pure fuzz as you get your breathing back to normal.
When the ability to think starts to come back you try to figure out what the fuck just happened. Maybe it wasn't footsteps pounding behind you, just the beat of your heart, or your footsteps echoing, or your mind imagining things. It doesn't matter, you chastise yourself, that's really not the thing to be focusing on right now.
You take a second to try and calm yourself down, sort a few things out in your head now that you're at least in a locked room. You can't leave. He could be counting on that and waiting right outside for you. Someone is going to have to come get you and it's going to have to be one of the officers you know, so that you know their voice and that it's really a campus police officer before you open the door. That sounds so fucking paranoid and you have to let out a pained laugh as you sit on the bathroom floor because this is your fucking reality.
Your hands, like the rest of your body, are shaking so badly that you fumble with your phone. But you're able to get it unlocked and your contacts unlocked and instead of calling campus police first like he'd absolutely fucking want you to, you call Jack.
"Jack?" you ask the second the ringing stops mid-ring and he picks up. "Jack, I'm so sorry but-"
"Guess again, Sweetheart."
And just like that three words bring your entire world crashing down around you.
Ice runs through your veins, your entire body going nearly numb in seconds as the unmistakable voice of your stalker comes through crystal fucking clear. As the unmistakable voice of your voice comes through Jack's fucking phone.
Which means…
"No," you whisper, barely audible, heart racing in a completely different way now. "No."
"Mm," your stalker hums, a laugh to it that almost makes you sick. "Yes. He's right here with me. You're on speaker."
You thought you knew what fear and terror were, thought you had experienced true fear and true terror, though you had felt both. Fuck, you thought you just did when the officer scared you and when you realized you were alone.
But in this moment you realize you had absolutely no fucking clue what true fear and true terror felt like and had never experienced them before. Because you're feeling both now and it's unlike anything you've ever felt before, suffocating and almost blinding in intensity.
This wasn't supposed to happen. He wasn't supposed to know about Jack, he never said anything about Jack. Jack was never supposed to be in danger. It wasn't something you'd even really considered because you thought he didn't know about Jack, were sure that if he did he would've texted something about Jack.
"No. No! No, please, please, don't hurt him, don't hurt him! Please don't fucking hurt him," you beg, breathless and trying so hard to come up with things to say or offer or do while your brain just uselessly sits there, too overwhelmed to do much of anything. "What do you want? Tell me what you want and you can have it if you'll let him go and don't hurt him." The tears finally hit and you stifle a sob. "Anything. Just please don't hurt him."
"You, my love. I want you." He says it like it's so simple. Like it's a choice you're going to make, him over Jack. And then you're leveled. "In the interest of honesty, and a bit to shut you up, you should know that it's a little too late for you to beg me not to hurt him."
"What did you do?" You've never heard yourself sound this way before, sobs and terror and fear transformed in a quarter of a second into sheer rage, quiet and calculated, the question snarled as you think about what you'll do to him if he hurt Jack and you get your hands on him, consequences to yourself fatal or not be damned. But then just like that another quarter of a second passes and your voice and brain and emotions are right back where they were. "Is he alive?" you whisper just loud enough to know your stalker will hear you.
"Yes, he's alive and… Well, he's alive. Here." Seconds that feel like an eternity pass and you feel your phone buzz as your stalker starts to speak again. "Check your texts quickly. I sent you photos to update you on his condition and prove he's alive."
You close your eyes and swallow hard. Selfishly, you don't want to look. You don't want to see what you caused to happen to Jack. But you have to. You owe Jack it if nothing else and he's the love of your life, you have to know how badly he's hurt, have to know just how alive he is, if he's alive but really closer to death than life.
You pull your phone from your ear and pull up your messages, click on Jack, the only person you have pinned. And while you know that you're not prepared for what you're going to see there's some part of your brain that tries to tell you that you are because that would mean it wasn't that bad.
But there is nothing that could've ever prepared you for what you see.
Jack is bound to a chair, forearms zip-tied to the armrests with his hands splayed out at the wider endings, upper calves just below his knees zip-tied to the front legs of the chair. He's naked except for his boxer briefs, his prosthetic removed and mouth covered in duct tape. Seeing him bound and gagged like that is bad enough but that's the easiest part of it all to look at if you had to pick an easiest part.
You torture yourself and flick through the photos. Once you save Jack you won’t survive this. You’ll never be able to live with yourself for causing him to be beaten like this, tortured like this.
Jack's right hand is definitely broken, swollen and bruised, and his right wrist isn't at quite the correct angle for the position it's in telling you it must be dislocated. He’s covered from head to toe in bruises, cuts and abrasions that you're not sure if they were made by a knife or some other weapon deliberately or if what he was hit with just happened to break skin. His left knee is disturbingly bruised and swollen and it spreads both up into his thigh and down into his calf and you know there's likely multiple fractures and torn ligaments.
Jack is littered in bruises and burn marks from what you're guessing is a cattle prod, and the longer you look the more you realize his one collarbone is swollen, the same shoulder being held a little too high leaving you assuming it's dislocated too. And he is bloody everywhere from the cuts to his skin and what’s dripped down from his face and head.
Because his face hasn't made out any better than the rest of him, one eye swollen and black, his nose clearly broken with how swollen it is, fresh blood still dripping from it down over the duct tape covering his mouth and onto his chest. Another bruise is blooming along his swollen jaw on one side, and he has to have a deep laceration somewhere on his scalp because while you know scalp wounds bleed a lot, this seems excessive even for that, his curls matted and one half of his face and neck and chest covered in blood that obviously originated at his scalp.
All of Jack's bruises are concerning and nauseating and dizzying, but for you the worst are the ones that are deep blue and purple, almost black in some areas. Because those ones, they cover the sides of Jack's chest at his ribs and are present on way too much of his abdomen and chest. You know most, if not all of his ribs have to be broken. And it's impossible to know if his bruising is truly from his skin or if it's reflective of internal bleeding deeper in his chest and abdomen. It’s impossible to know if it's reflective of Jack slowly bleeding out internally.
Words and diagnoses and brief descriptions of them that you haven't really thought about in five years suddenly pop up from memory just to terrorize you more. Hemothorax and pneumothorax and flail chest and punctured lungs and ruptured spleen and shattered kidney and lacerated liver and myocardial contusion and valvular disruption and hemopericardium and hypovolemic shock.
It's all too awful and horrific to even begin to describe, but the worst part is how exhausted Jack looks, how you can tell he's struggling to keep his head up because it's so much work for his body as it deals with the assault and his injuries, with the pain and the blood loss and the way he's not getting enough air because his mouth is covered with duct tape and his broken, swollen nose has narrowed his sinuses so it's hard to move air, a problem only compounded by his certainly damaged lungs.
The sob that rips from your chest is tortured, reflects the emotional and psychological fucking agony you find yourself in. It's a pain like nothing you've ever known.
"Oh!" You think it's screamed but it's strangled and choked out at best, barely audible because all the air has truly been knocked from your lungs and the little that's left struggles to find its way out. "Oh, Jack," you whimper. "Oh Jack, no, no." You put the phone back to your ear hoping he'll be able to hear you, that he's conscious enough to hear you say words that will never come anywhere close to enough. "I'm so sorry," you sob, barely comprehensible. "I'm so sorry, Jackie, I'm so sorry," you choke out. "Jack, oh my god, no. No, this can't be happening, this can't be happening."
"And yet it is Sweetheart." You can hear the smirk in your stalker's voice.
"Please," you whimper, "please don't, don't, don't hu-hurt him anymore! I'll do anything, anything, please."
"I take it you found my present?" You make some strangled sound of affirmation that's good enough for him. "Good. Why don't you tell Jack about it?"
"It," you're overcome by a huge wracking breath that you try to rush through so he doesn't get mad at you. "It, it was a, a," another uncontrollable wracked breath, "a bullet, and my, it," and another, "it has my name engraved on it."
Your stalker must be closer to Jack because even over the sound of your sobs and breathing you can hear a muffled reaction from Jack like he's yelling and straining against the zip-ties.
"The message is a little moot now, but I thought you should read it anyway since that last part is still so true. Read it out for Jack, hm?" he hums. There's a groan of pain from Jack and you know your stalker is likely pressing on one of his injuries or inflicting another one.
As you pull the box from your bag to get the message you force yourself to get control of your breathing, the shot of additional adrenaline that hearing Jack in pain and being desperate to avoid hearing again gives you helping you keep it together long enough to get the message out.
"Make sure you have this with you when I get you from school. And don't worry, my love, as long as you finally behave and cooperate I won't use it anywhere fatal, just somewhere it'll hurt enough to teach you a lesson."
"Very good," he hums at you. "Tell me, do you know what kind of bullet it is, my darling?"
"No," you whisper.
"We can't have that, Jack in particular must know! It's a nice 9mm JHP. These ones are specially made for me, designed for maximum damage. They're in the gun now," he laughs darkly, and you try to tell yourself it’s not what you think, but you hear the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking. "What do you think about that?"
There’s a vague ripping sound and then a voice that's barely recognizable as Jack's.
"I'll fucking kill you," Jack takes a wheezy and labored and clearly pained breath in, "if you even try," another breath in that sounds so painful it's hard to listen to, "to touch her."
"Is that so?" your stalker chuckles. "Look at you, Jack. You’re too weak to do anything right now. And she's going to hand deliver herself to me. So I think I will touch her, wherever and however I want. Maybe even in front of you." You can hear Jack say something in the background but can't make out any words because your stalker just talks louder. "I'm texting you our address to come to. Your life for the life of your dear Jackie."
"Okay!" you cry at the same time Jack's voice is clear in the background yelling as best he can, "Do not!"
"I'll be there." You sniffle, try to wipe your face off and pull it together because you have to do this. You have to do this for Jack. "I'll come, I promise, just give me time! Please don't hurt him, please don't hurt him anymore, I'll come, I promise."
"Do not!" Jack yells. "Do not come here!" His breath in is gasping and it somehow kills you even more inside. "You do not fucking come here!"
"As much as I'd like to kill him, I promise that I'll let him go if you come. At least I'll know he has to live knowing you're with me. That you chose me over him." You can just hear the smirk in your stalker's voice again.
"Okay," you whisper.
"Do not," Jack is so clearly forcing and straining out as many words as he can in one breath, his cadence punctuated by them. You'll never forget it. "Do fucking not!… Don't! Don't come here!… Don't do this, I don't… I don't want you to do this… I don't want you to trade your life for mine."
Your stalker scoffs. "He really is so dramatic isn't he?"
"Please," Jack has dropped his voice, his tone pleading and desperate and sad. "I love you… so much and I need you… to please do this… one last thing for me… and don't… don't come here, please Baby." As Jack gets the words out through labored breaths you realize what he's doing.
He's saying goodbye.
Jack asking you, pleading with you to do this one last thing for him and using that name while doing so absolutely fucking decimates you.
There is nothing left of the you that existed thirty minutes ago.
"I have to Jack, I'm sorry." You sniffle hard, tears pouring down your face again as your sobs return. "I have to. I can't let you die for me. I couldn't live with myself knowing I got you killed. Getting you beaten and, and tortured," you choke out the word, "is bad enough. I have to Jack, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry and I love you so much."
"There's an awful lot of talking going on and not very much getting in a car and getting to where I fucking told you to come going on," your stalker snarls, a much louder groan coming from Jack this time.
"Okay! Okay! I'm going, I promise! Please don't hurt him, I'm sorry!" You scramble to try and get up and on your feet.
As you try and fail to stand with how dizzy you get, you hear his voice again. "What? Wait- How did you get out-"
The next three things you hear are far too loud and clear for the circumstances, and knock the wind completely out of you, make your heart stop, and tear a scream from your chest in that order.
A scuffle, a gunshot, and a body hitting the floor.
Reader can't be the only one who's ever in mortal danger, right?
I really don't have much to say for myself. 😶
I have plans for a Part 2 obviously lol, as long as it's wanted. I'm not sure if we're over me and my cliffhangers and same species of angst. 😭 I just really love it, I find it so fun to write. 🫠 Thank you so much for taking the time to read, I know it was long!! I really do love hearing your thoughts and comments and reactions, they often make my day and week! ♥️ Thank you again for all of your support!! ♥️
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summary: One glitchy tablet, one HR email, and suddenly you’re married to your attending, Jack Abbot. HR thinks it was intentional and has already started merging your records. Claim it was a mistake, and your residency could be delayed. With only three months left until you’re an attending, Jack agrees to play along. Pretending to be married might save your career—but can your heart survive the side effects?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 - ongoing
The wrong thing is not the fact that you write a story with an oc, no, that's not the real problem, really.
IT'S JUST THE FACT THAT YOU USE THE WRONG TAG SO YOU HOPE MORE PEOPLE READ YOUR STORY. BUT BELIEVE ME IT'S JUST FUCKING ANNOYING 'CAUSE WE AREN'T ABLE TO FIND THE RIGHT FICS IF YOU KEEP DOING THIS!!!
There are people who like to read more stories with ocs than reader inserts, so use the fucking right tag go reach that community and stop spamming your stories among ours.
I don't think you get it but, you know, the purpose of fanfics with reader insert is to make the reader imagine her/himself as the mc of the story. The best part of these fics is the fact that EVERYONE can be included in them.
SO WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE TO RUIN THEM BY MAKING THE MC A PERSON THAT LOOKS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM THE READER AND EVEN HAS A NAME THAT IS NOT THEIRS?
Not to be dramatic but i hate y'all.
And the fact that it's always the same fandoms and we all know who we're talking about...
You are Rose Red to Bella's Snow White, twin sisters in a little village. Monsters live among you and beasts roam the wolves, danger lurking in the darkness of the trees. One day, while wandering the forest (against your father's orders, no less), you come across a wolf and save the creature from the hunters.
Unbeknownst to you, that wolf was a shapeshifter and you are an imprint, a love story unfolding slowly.
A/N: So, I renamed Renesemee in this fic (because I do what I want). She’s Charlotte Elizabeth Cullen, Charlie for short. Also, Jacob did NOT imprint on a baby, he turned against the pack because it was the right thing to do.
I wanted to use this chapter to explore, in a small way, the relationship between Y/N, Bella, and the Cullens. She’s spending most of the story without them, primarily on her own, but does that out of love for them and especially for Bella. They used to be a lot closer, I think, before Edward and everything caused something of a separation. It’s not that they don’t love one another, it’s that they are struggling to understand each other when it used to come so easily to them.
War was so much quieter then it ought to have been.
When you had imagined such a thing, spurred on by your twin sister’s dark warnings of the beautiful beasts that lurked in the dark, you’d thought it would be a chaos. In your mind, you had seen bodies strewn across the snow-smothered forest and black smoke staining the pale sky, venom burning the earth barren forevermore...the dying screams of monsters, smoke and ash mixing with snow. With what little you knew of vampires, having only just learned of it the truth, you had thought that a battle between would be brutal enough to shakes the heavens themselves, stars falling to the earth and burning it all away.
But it was quiet.
So much so that it almost hurt, the only noise you could have being the thundering of your own heart. War, you had discovered, seemed to mostly be talking. Each side waited across the invisible line, awaiting the first mistake the other dared to make. One wrong step, one misspoken word, and it was all over for them all.
It seemed like some were almost hoping for it.
Between the fallen covens looking for vengeance and wicked kings looking to prove their ferocity, it could have all come to carnage had it not been for Alice. Her visions had been the secret key to peace or something of it, revealing just how close it had all come to the end...and it had revealed you. She hadn’t meant to do it, of course, that much you knew to be true. When in school together, you had thought very little of the Cullens, so lost in your own life. They barely mattered at all to you and, when they finally did, it was only because they had mattered to Bella. But when a strange nightmare had sent you storming into the Cullen house a month ago and into the truth of it all, you and Alice had become especially close. It was strange, wasn’t it? But vampires could be sweet as much as they were deadly and Alice was just that. In time, you’d come to care for them all in little ways but she’d been a true friend…
And if she could have protected you, she would have.
But Aro had learned the truth of it all within her mind, he could see everything and he could see you. Now the king understood that you knew of the existence of vampires and you were a shield, much like your twin.
When the Cullens had returned home, all of them, you’d been delighted.
Esme had insisted that you stay there, the battlefield was no place for a mortal and the fortified house your only protection. Knowing enough to accept her judgment, you’d stayed behind as steel shutters had darkened the place, slowly rolling down as you watched the family walk into the forest. Every one of them, even your sister, was prepared for war that no one wanted. But it was the way it had to be, their lives and love worth fighting for. One window remained uncovered, the only little bit of sunlight left behind in the small attic. Wood creaking beneath your feet, it was a large and mostly empty room, filled with a few pieces of random furniture draped with white sheets and boxes of old memories, clothes from ages ago and artifacts from the past. Obsessed with history all of your life, Carlisle had taken great pleasure in showing you everything and speaking of his journey through history. You’d hung onto every word of it in wonder...and now you stood alone in the silence and the sunlight, the once wonder slipping away into terror.
It was there in the attic that you waited in the light and watched as they walked into war, remaining there until they returned.
Glittering things appeared from the forest one by one, their beauty shocking you still.
Half-amazed and half-terrified, in that moment, all you had cared about was your sister. Was she safe? Was she with them? Now that the nightmare was over, would she smile and laugh again as she used to? Running down the steps, you’d pulled your sister into a hug, the strangeness of her still a surprise. She was so cold now, your Bella, something of a winter queen, and when she touched you, it was as though you were made of glass. Carefully. Sweetly. Reminding herself to be delicate, even when all she wanted was to hold you and love you and never let go. But in that moment she’d hugged you tighter than she had in so long and held you longer, almost allowing herself that little bit of never…
Something was wrong.
You had only ever felt this way twice in all of your life, terror pulsing through your body with every shivering heartbeat. The first was when Bella had run away from home and nearly been killed, not an accident, you had learned, but an attempted murder...the second was when Edward had broken her heart in the forest.
Both times you’d felt it long before you knew. Pain. Loss.
And now you felt it again, everything aching. It was strange, being a sister. Her pain was your own thing to have, even when you failed to truly understand it...pulling away, you looked at your sister, a silent question lingering. Venom stung her golden eyes, looking away as your gaze turned towards Alice. Guilt painted her pretty face as Jasper pulled his wife close.
Something was wrong, your heart whispered once more, and they were keeping secrets again.
Never in all of your life together had she kept secrets from you until Bella had met them, something you often thought about. It was no one’s fault, the lies and the secrecy simply as aspect of their world. Still, it stung from time to time, reminding yourself of what once had been.
“Charlie,” Bella called to her daughter, the name like a lullaby on her lips. “Charlie, go with the wolves for a while. Jacob will keep you safe.”
She trusted them with her daughter, especially Jacob. He’d turned again everything to protect their family, solely out of love and loyalty to Bella and because he had known it to be right. The small, strange child was laughing as she raced into the wood, wolves protectively on her heels. They were taking her to the reservation, you assumed, a hybrid being allowed where a vampire was not, and she would remain there for some time...but why?
Before you could ask, Bella was taking your hand in hers, pulling you into the house once more. Only once she looked over her shoulder and searched the woods frantically. Not for her daughter, you realized, nor for the wolves but for something else.
Some kind of threat, some beast lurking in the trees.
There was nothing there, of that you were certain. Only the winter wind making the trees dance and the shadows shiver. But the terror lingered in her glittering eyes as Bella pulled you inside the house. They kept it locked even still, shutters over the windows and the locks clicking into place, as though it might be enough to keep the beasts far, far away.
“Wait upstairs...I’ll be up soon,” Bella said quickly, her family pulling her away.
And you did.
For a small moment you listened to your sister, trying to ignore the aching in your heart and the rising voices from below. She’d never wanted this for you, never. Bella had only ever wanted you to be safe...but it was far too late for that now and you were here. And you were too much like one another in some ways, both sharing the same stubborn curiosity that had often lead one sister into trouble and the other following behind. Unable to hold back any longer, you crept half-way down the stairs and listened as the family fell apart into another argument. So angry and lost in the argument, not a one of them noticed you at all.
“I will not allow it!” Bella hissed fiercely, as Edward attempted to calm her softly. “I won’t! They cannot do this.”
“They can and they will,” was Carlisle’s gentle yet stern reply. “I know Aro well enough to know that this is his next step. This entire debacle has been an embarrassment for the Volturi, they will wish to remind us all what they are capable of. What better way than to use Y/N as an example?”
“An example? She’d be a prisoner!”
“Couldn't you reason with him?” Esme asked her husband. “Perhaps he might listen to you.”
“No, no, he’s far too angry for that now. We are lucky we returned home tonight at all and that might be the only luck we have...they’re still waiting for my call. They will want an answer by the end of the night.”
His words hung heavy in the air, time already ticking away. Bella scoffed with disgust and rage, Edward once more speaking quietly to her, something you could not quite catch, his velvet whisper soothing and sweet in the air. But whatever he said was not quite enough to quell her anger and the arguing continued in a sea of fury, voices rising like a tempest until Alice’s voice breaking through it all sweetly, almost sadly even.
“Couldn’t we just turn her? She doesn’t have to go with them, she could stay with us, couldn’t she? All that matters is that she’s turned.”
“And cost us all our heads?” Rosalie snapped. “Carlisle is right and we all know it, we’ve used up every bit of reasonable just to get this far! What happens when the Volturi come knocking on the door and just take her anyway? What do we do then?”
“Why would they want her?” Emmett asked.
“You know why! They want a shield, Bella or Y/N, it doesn’t matter which sister. One’s as good as the other at this point. This isn’t some ragged coven of newborns we’re dealing with anymore, it’s the Volturi. And the Volturi always get what they want.”
Hissing, Bella flew at her only to be held back by Edward. And Emmett met his brother’s movements, taking hold of Rosalie and pulling her into his chest, Jasper speaking up to state that his sister was right.
“You have a daughter to think about,” Rosalie reminded her.
At that, your heart froze in your chest. Charlie...your sister, all of her family. They’d done so much to be together, even facing down an army not once by twice before...and now all of it was seconds away from falling apart, happily ever after falling to bits and all because of you. Because you’d stumbled into something you’d never been supposed to know, forcing the choice once more:
Be turned or be killed.
She’d fight for you. You knew it at once, Bella would fight the entire army alone if she had to, she loved you that much. But that wasn’t fair, was it? She had a husband now and a child, a little girl she adored and you loved her too. All of them had somebody to love and something worth fighting for and you...you had Bella. You’d always had Bella, from the moment you’d taken your first breathes and even after her last. Always. And even now, Bella would have fought to keep you by her side. Once, she’d accepted that she would have to give you up, pulling away and telling herself that it was for the best. But fate had given you back and she was so certain that you were worth the fight.
But she was worth the sacrifice.
“I’m so sorry.”
It was Alice speaking once more, her sweet voice weak with sorrow and shame.
Looking up, you caught her gaze in the looking glass and realized that she was speaking to you, the only one aware of your presence.
“I had thought...with so many visions, so many possibilities in my head, I’d thought that maybe he wouldn’t notice her. I needed him to see the battle and what would become of it, believing that it would be enough. But he found her anyway and I, I feel like it’s my fault. And I’m sorry.”
She knew, didn’t she?
Alice knew what you were about to do. Eyes alight with magic, you could almost imagine the visions of your future...what would become of you now, you didn’t know. But she did and that was something to believe in, hoping that there might be something sweeter then a brutal death within those golden eyes. If it was truly a terrible fate, she certainly would have stopped you. But she didn’t and, for a moment, there was a little bit of hope beneath the terror. Unable to take it anymore, Bella stormed out of the house and Edward soon followed behind her, giving you something you had been hoping for.
Time.
Edward couldn’t read your mind, leaving them all unaware of what you were about to do besides Alice, who you knew would keep the secret. All you needed was a few moments to slip away.
And fate brought you just that, the family falling away. Carlisle went to his study, followed by Esme, Rosalie and Emmett storming out of the house as Alice pulled Jasper away too. You only returned upstairs once, running back into the small bedroom you’d been hiding away in. From the pile of books you’d brought with you, there was one you were searching for...an old, clothe-bound book of fairy stories you and Bella would read together as children, huddled beneath the blankets with a flashlight and reading aloud in soft whispers.
Beauty and the Beast and Other Tales of True Love.
Gently you ran your hand across the red and golden rose on the cover, taking up a pen as you opened it to the inside cover and scribbled something. It didn’t seen to be enough, those few words, but you did not have the time to write it all. Feeling the sand slipping through the hourglass already, you wrote only what you could.
“I love you. And I hope you’ll understand how much I really mean that and perhaps even forgive me for this one day...everything I do, it’s all for love. It’s no one’s fault but mine, no matter what happens, but it’s all for love. For Dad and little C. and especially for you.”
And you hoped it would be enough.
Moving quickly, you made for the door, grabbing your jacket and boots...and Carlisle’s cell phone, slipping it into your own pocket as you left the Cullen house for the last time.
It would be a worthy death, wouldn’t it?
You thought of them as you walked through the snow, counting every second that passed and feeling the time more than you ever had before. Bella and her daughter, your father...you’d miss them more than anything else but they were worth dying for. You loved them that much. Pausing once at the end of the clearing, your hand resting upon a barren tree, you looked back at the glass house.
And for a moment, you imagined them.
Bella and Edward never changing as their daughter grew, Carlisle and Esme watching over them all protectively and Alice dreaming in Jasper’s arms...you thought of Rosalie, rough but loving, hoping that no one would put any blame onto her for everything she said. After all, she’d been right and you’d respected her for it. You hoped that Emmett would tell her that. And maybe you would as well, if you ever got that chance to see her again. Looking up at that house, it all faded away in your mind, nothing more but a fantasy of exactly what you wanted for them.
Happily ever after.
And with that, you were gone. At first, you were only running in order to put some space between you and your sister. But when it occurred to you that there was no outrunning a vampire, you paused and tried to come up with a plan. Snow fell sweetly as you searched the darkness for a monster, just Bella had done before, never knowing if it would be the one you loved or the one that killed you.
Had you gone far enough? Would she still find you?
Walking farther still, your hands shook from both fright and cold, reaching into your pocket and grasping the cell phone. Carlisle's contacts were sparse, only family and work and nothing else. Except for one number simply named V.
Once more you glanced into the darkness. Speaking softly, barely even a whisper, you hoped that Bella would hear it somehow.
“I love you.”
Somehow you’d made it to the road, breaking through the tangle of trees and searching the path before you. You could have turned back...hell, you could have gone home to Charlie or even to the reservation. But the thought alone brought images of monsters and spilled blood, your loved ones torn apart. Knowing what might happen if you dared to darken their doorsteps, you instead walked on down the road, taking the direction that lead out of town. You walked until you came upon the wooden sign that welcomed wanderers into the town, with the little pine tree and cerulean wave. Footsteps lay scattered in the snow, the small trial quickly being swallowed by the swirling winds.
Waiting no longer, you made a call to V.
“Carlisle?”
A deep and smooth voice spoke with a strange Frankenstein of accents, something of Italian and Greek and many more things that you could not pick out. The voice belonged to a man, you realized, one of the kings or perhaps a guard, you did not know.
And in the end, you didn’t think it mattered at all, just needing this to be over.
“I’ve made my decision,” you said. “I’m just on the edge of town.”
Silence for a moment, perhaps surprise. Maybe he had not realized who you were at first but quickly, the vampire adjusted. You heard movement, quick and careful, and a quiet curse in Italian or perhaps Latin. And there was another voice in the background, just barely hearing them speak..another man, an order in that same tongue, and quick footsteps.
“Wait there.”
The call ended. It was not a request, as polite as he made it sound, but rather a command. You got the idea that whoever this was was used to giving orders at least in some regard...you just hoped that he was quick. A winter wind blew gently, and you closed your eyes, taking in the cold. Would she be able to catch your scent? Had the wind revealed your little scheme already? Or perhaps she’d returned to her home to find you missing, left with only fairytales and a scribbled goodbye. You hoped, in that moment, that she’d wandered too far with Edward or that Alice might have been able to stall her, just long enough for you to escape. But more then that, you hoped that the stranger was faster than your sister.
Footsteps.
They echoed through the night and were deliberate, a warning of what was about to come. He could have come without warning, if he’d truly wanted to. Too heavy and too slow to be Bella or Edward...he had wanted you to know, hadn’t he?
Perhaps it was a kindness or perhaps it was the thrill of terror he loved, heart thundering in your chest. But it was a man that stepped forward, a hulking creature, not your delicate twin. At once your heart ached again, feeling your sister’s pain as your own. Anger. Anguish. Loss. You didn’t have much time...a black cloak swirled in the winter wind, snow catching like starlight against the dark silhouette as the beast stepped forward, a gloved hand reaching towards you.
Hello 💌 it's missing Eddie Munson hours here. Can I request a fic where the reader is the new girl in town? New to Hawkins high and accidentally sits at the hellfire table (cause obviously she doesn't know it's reserved 🤭) and gets all flustered once eddie and the members come up and tell her. All cute and fluffy ☺️
AN | I am weak for this concept! Enjoy 🥰
Warnings | None
Pairing | Eddie x Fem!Reader
Word Count | 3k
Masterlist | Main, Eddie
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
You clutched at your tray nervously, looking around the cafeteria in search of some place to sit. Everyone had paired off as soon as the bell for lunch had rang and you were basically left in the dust. Most of the tables were crowded, and no one was even sparing a look in your direction. Tears pricked at the back of your eyes and threatened to well up, but you swallowed them down and started to look for an open spot.
After a few moments of trying to make yourself look small you found a few open spots at one of the tables towards the back. With the most miniscule of sighs to yourself you took the seat at the end, and hunched in on yourself, trying to make yourself as invisible as possible. Upon settling in, you reached into your backpack and pulled out the book you were currently reading and dove in.
It was enough to suck you and before you knew it, you were lost and off in your own little world. But then, you heard a loud throat clear among curious little titters. You startled and snapped your book shut, looking up to find several pairs of wide eyes studying you intently.
Your mouth opened and closed a few times as you tried to figure out what was going on, “ummm…hello?”
“What are you doing here?” it came out as more curious and probing rather than angry but it caused your heart to thump wildly nonetheless. He looked young and had dark, floppy hair and gangly limbs.
“I-I couldn’t find anywhere else to sit,” you admitted sheepishly, “and no one was here so I thought it was okay. I’m so sorry-”
“Wait, you’re the new girl, aren’t you?” you turned to the boy with the dark curls under a hat; they all seemed kind but nonetheless it all made you nervous.
“Yes,” you offered them a tight-lipped smile “I’m sorry, it’s just…I’ll go so you can have your table back.”
Standing up, you tried to grab your backpack and throw it over your shoulder in order to leave and run as far away as possible. Mortifying wasn’t enough to cover how you were currently feeling. Before you could get very far, you felt a hand wrap around your wrist and stop you from getting away.
“Stay,” the voice was different from any of the others you'd heard so far, honey sweet and warm. You stopped dead in your tracks and turned around to find another stranger looking at you curiously.
"Uhh…" you were dumbfounded as you looked at the handsome boy standing in front of you. He had dark, wild curls and big brown eyes with a soft smile tugging up the corners. You looked down to where he was still looking onto you and noticed several tattoos peeking out of his shirt, "umm…"
"You're new here, right?" He asked as you nodded dumbly. You were shocked that you hadn't noticed him before - he was so different and unique that he stuck out like a sore thumb, "shit sucks. But seriously, c'mon and sit with us."
"Are you sure?" You allowed yourself to look at the boys; they looked just as shocked as you, "I don't want to intrude."
"I insist," he gave your arm a squeeze before letting go and motioning for you to sit back down. One of the boys gasped lightly as you slowly sank down in the hard plastic shirt. The boy sat down to your right, "hope you don't mind hanging out with the freaks and geeks."
"N-no," you relaxed slightly as everyone sat around as well, "not at all."
"I'm Eddie. Eddie Munson," he held his hand and you shook it, offering your name in response. Your entire face felt like it was on fire as you forced yourself to look away, "welcome to the gang!"
Alright, maybe not everyone in Hawkins was terrible.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
After that first afternoon where you met Eddie and his friends, you started to feel more and more comfortable in your school and within yourself. You noticed that Dustin, Mike, and Lucas had seemed floored by how easily Eddie took to you. You didn’t think anything of it, as you had no prior knowledge of any of them to go off of. Nonetheless you appreciated all the kindness that was being thrown your way.
The next day, however, you weren’t sure if you should just automatically go to their table or wait for further invitation. You’d brought your lunch, brown paper bag crinkled from your anxious twisting, and slowly walked to the table at the back. It hadn’t been lost on you that many people seemed to avoid their table, and a few that did walk back made some nasty comments under their breath. It hurt your heart a little bit because these were the only people that bothered to show you any kindness.
“Hey,” Eddie’s voice pulled you from your thoughts and you looked at him with a nervous little smile. He cocked his head to the side to the chair on his right, watching as you slipped into the hard plastic, “surprised to see you here again.”
“O-oh,” your cheeks warmed under his warm gaze and you wished you could sink into the ground and melt away, “should I not be here?”
“No, no, no, I just meant…I’m surprised you’re back,” he gestured vaguely to the rest of the cafeteria and you almost squeaked when you noticed the rings on his hand. They suited him perfectly, “we’re not exactly the most popular crowd around here.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly too popular either,” you shrugged, catching his eye and exchanging a nervous chuckle, “I think you’re the first person to give me the time of day. No one else has even said anything…they all just kind of stare. I feel like a thing more than anything.”
“The people around here…are the worst,” he put his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand as he studied you intently, “tell me about you.”
“I don’t think there’s much to tell,” you shrugged sheepishly, popping a few crackers into your mouth in order to have an excuse to remain quiet.
“Everyone’s got a story,” you felt him nudge your knee with his under the table, “what’s yours? I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
And that was an offer you couldn’t refuse.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
Over the next couple of weeks, you found yourself growing closer to the gang, but more than anything their enigmatic leader.
It hadn't taken long to figure out the hierarchy of Hawkins High School, and it was easy to figure out that you were on the bottom of the totem pole. Compared to the other kids, seeing how they were and interacted with one another, you had no clue being part of the outcasts. They were the only ones that seemed real and genuine.
The worst part of it, or the best depending on how you looked at the situation, was Eddie. You were drawn to him, wanting to know more and more about him, which felt dangerous. You already knew that you'd both be graduating in the spring and then leaving, and that he was on 3rd attempt at his senior year. Those two things in and of itself were more than to make you weary.
The rest of it - Eddie - was wonderful and had you feeling a type of way that wasn't possible. You liked his style, his hair, his personality - all of it. The issue was that you had no clue what he thought about you, or how he felt about you, if anything. Maybe he didn't even think about you at all, besides the hour and change he spent with you at lunch and breaks. That idea didn't settle well in your stomach, even though it had no right to. Eddie was just-
"Everything alright?" You almost slammed your locker shut as you startled at the sound of Eddie's voice. You sighed dramatically before turning around and finding him leaning lazily against another locker. He turned to you and offering you a devilish little smile that caused you to roll your eyes, affectionately of course, “what’s wrong, sunshine?”
“Edward,” you drawled out his name and he groaned at the use of his full name, “you can’t go sneaking up on people like that! I could have had a heart attack!”
“So dramatic,” he tutted, reaching over and tucking your hair behind your ear, “if you weren’t so busy daydreaming, you would have heard me calling out your name. What’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?”
“Nothing,” you blurted out way too quickly, and you swore he gave you a knowing little look, “just…stuff and things.”
“Stuff and things,” he echoed in an amused tone as you nodded, your face warming up. Despite the fact that students were all around you, loud and noisy, it suddenly felt like it was only the two of you. He had a way of doing that, you’d learned, making you feel like you were the only thing that existed when he was with you, “very descriptive.”
“I…umm, nothing in particular,” you weren’t about to admit that you’d been daydreaming about him to his face. Not voluntarily anyway.
“Well, I was wondering if you were free tonight,” your eyes widened in surprise at his question. He laughed - nervously - and ran a hand through his dark curls. It really was such an innocent question, you were absolutely friends by this point, but it felt like it held much more weight.
“Did you need help with homework or Hellfire or…something?” there had to be a logical explanation to all of this. Surely….right? Right?
“No,” wrong. Very wrong.
“Oh…what is it then?” you squeaked at him and he grimaced for a moment. He was definitely nervous.
“I was wondering if you wanted to go see a movie and made get pizza or something after?” he was biting the inside of his cheek, finding the dirty laces of his Reeboks so interesting suddenly. Eddie Munson didn’t do dates; he didn’t get asked on them and he didn’t ask anyone else. Usually it was only girls that he dealed to that wanted to hook up, but those were quick, illicit affairs never to be spoken of again. But with you…everything had felt different right from the start.
When you remained silent for a few moments, he started to panic but then you opened and closed your mouth a few times, “j-just the two of us?”
“Yeah.”
“Like a…date?”
“Yes?” he allowed himself to steal a peek at your face and when he saw nothing but exuberant joy on your face he relaxed, “yes.”
You gnawed on your bottom lip for a moment before slowly nodding in response, your entire face felt like it was on fire, “no one’s ever asked me on a date before.”
“What?!” he turned to you now fully, pure shock and confusion on his face, “you’re not serious!”
“Eddie,” you were laughing now, a beautiful sound that went straight to his heart and often was the soundtrack of his own daydreams, “I’m being serious! No one’s even really looked at me that way.”
“Well, everyone has been so very wrong,” emboldened, he put his hand on your face and gently brushed his thumb over your cheek, “and in a way I’m glad for that because it meant I got to be the first to do it.”
“Hmm,” you hummed softly before gently wrapping your fingers around his wrist, “and to answer your question, yes, I am free. For you, I’m always free.”
“Wow,” you weren’t sure if he was talking to himself or to you, but it was endearing either way, “great - perfect. Umm, can I pick you up at seven?”
“I’ll see you at seven,” you confirmed softly, heart beating so wildly in your chest that you marveled at the fact that it wasn’t bursting through your ribcage, “don’t be late, Edward.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, sunshine,” he grinned in response, “see you at seven!”
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
You were ready to go well before seven, and ended up nervously pacing around your bedroom. A slew of clothing was on your bed, as you had undergone several outfit changes before finally settling on a simple pink checkered sundress and sandals. You checked over your hair and makeup so many times you were starting to get sick of your own appearance.
Every time you heard a car driving through the neighborhood, you pulled back the curtain to see if it was Eddie. Which was silly, considering you’d been in his van and knew what it sounded like. But still…the nerves were getting to you.
By the time he actually pulled into your driveway, you had started reading a new book in order to occupy your mind. You’d gotten so lost in it that it took your mother knocking at your door to tell you that your little boyfriend was here. All you managed to do was groan in response as you threw your book to the side and grabbed your bag before running downstairs. Your parents had met Eddie a couple of times already, when he’d come to pick you up for school or drop you off, and surprisingly, they didn’t hate him. They liked him, knowing that the fact that he looked and dressed differently had no bearing on the type of person he was. And Eddie was a good guy, despite what a lot of Hawkins seemed to think.
Once you got downstairs, you found Eddie near the door, standing there nervously with a small bundle of floors in his hand. He looked up as soon as he heard you softly calling his name; his brain practically melted at the sight of you. You were always pretty - the prettiest in his kind - but this was just another level up from that.
“H-hi,” he stammered, holding up his hand in a meek little wave before remembering he had the flowers. You took a few steps closer to him, leaving just a little bit of distance between your bodies, “you look lovely.”
“Thank you,” the two of you exchanged shy smiles, “you look good too, Eddie.”
“Thanks,” his stomach fluttered with butterflies; no one had ever said that to him before, “these are for you.”
“You didn’t have to…they’re so pretty!” you gently took the flowers from him, but before you could stop yourself you pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. You stopped when you noticed the pink, glittery gloss print you left, but the two of you giggled as you wiped it away, “want to know something else, Eddie?”
“Tell me,” he trailed after you like a lovesick puppy as you walked to the kitchen to grab a vase for your flowers. He watched your every move like a hawk, noticing how you did everything with gentle reverence; it was the same way you always treated him.
“No one has ever given me flowers before either,” you set them on the counter, admiring how pretty they were, knowing they were from Eddie made them that much better, “you keep surprising me without even knowing what you’re doing.”
“I like surprising you,” he admitted softly, and you vowed in your head then and there that you were doing the same thing for him, “I like seeing that smile on your face.”
“Stop,” you gasped lightly before trying to hide your face in your hands, feeling yourself grow warmer and warmer with each passing moment. He shook his head and gently pulled your hands away so he could look at you, “Eddie!”
“I mean it,” he insisted softly, and you knew that he was being honest. You nodded softly and felt him reach for your hand, “c’mon, I have…well another surprise for you.”
“Another?!”
“Well, either we could go see the movie and then get dinner as planned…or we can go on adventure,” he suggested and you practically lit up, “I figured since it’s Friday and if you’re okay with being out a little late, it could be a lot of fun.”
“And let me guess, I would not be privy to any of these things we’re doing until we’re doing them?” your voice was soft and teasing but Eddie nodded eagerly. How very classic of him, “well, just how am I supposed to say no to that?”
“You don’t….”
“I don’t,” you agreed and Eddie cheered happily, already gently pulling you towards the door. He looked like an eager puppy more than anything and his enthusiasm was infectious.
“Get ready for an evening of excitement, m’lady!” he opened the door and brandished his arm, and all you could was to grin at him. He was such a dork but, you were starting to quickly realize, he was your dork, “you are about to embark on adventure!”
“I couldn’t think of anything better,” and your words made his heart melt, “c’mon m’lord, let’s go!”
At the foot of your steps he paused for a moment to look at you. You grew nervous, but as soon as he leaned in to gently kiss you, everything felt right. You kissed him back before he could pull away and you were both grinning like fools.
You’d never been more glad for sitting in the wrong spot before.
Writing Prompt: Write a day in the life of a character like this
a character has the ability/power/curse (however you’d like to spin it) that lets them know anytime someone has had a dream about them and all of the dreams details
“You’re being too smug. My family’s not gonna buy that I’m dating a smug asshole. Hell, they’re probably barely buying that I’m dating anyone.”
“I’m not being smug,” Harvey insists, curling his arm around your middle. You try not to overthink the way your body warms with the press of his palm, and the sweep of his fingers against the fabric of your dress. “I’m just so happy to be here with my honey-bunny.”
“Oh, my god." You reach out, snagging a glass of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray. You draw in a deep gulp, tipping your head back and letting it slide down your throat, joining the two that you’ve already downed.
“Careful, sweetie. Your family’ll think we’re not happy.”
“One of us isn’t right now.”
“Really? I’m ecstatic.”
You cast an unamused sidelong glance at Harvey and find him smiling brightly at you.
“C’mon, admit it,” He adds, leaning into you, his breath brushing your temple. “I’m a better stand-in at your family reunion than Mike is. I’m better dressed, I’m more interesting, I’m more attractive—”
“I am so telling Mike that you have such a low opinion of him the next time you see him.”
“Now that's not fair. It’s just, you know. Mike is like this,” Harvey raises his hand, waving around his shoulder, “And I’m like this,” He raises his hand, waving it around his brow. “Besides, I’m taller.”
“You’re the same height. The only thing edging you out is your Johnny-Bravo-like hair.”
Harvey’s jaw drops, a stunned laugh leaving his mouth.
“Johnny-Bravo-like?”
Your mom calls, “Get over here, you two!” Before your argument can continue. You wince at the sight of your family lining up for a picture.
“Oh—Mom, I don’t know—”
“This is not negotiable! Get over here!” She orders, “Both of you!”
“It’ll be fun,” Harvey insists, his hand resting on your lower back as he leads you over to the familial tangle.
“I don’t think I want you in our Christmas photos for time immemorial. I’m gonna have to explain who you were every few years.”
“Maybe you ought to just invite me back every year.”
“Doubtful.”
“Maybe your mother will—”
“Do not drag my mother into this—”
The two of you shut up as your mom waves the two of you into line with the rest of the family.
“You gonna quibble with me about standing one place or another? Making sure they get your good side?” You mumble.
“Please, sweetheart. Every side is my good side.”
You roll your eyes openly, winding up for another argument—and then Harvey curls his arm around you again. Your stomach swoops at the feeling, your face going warm. It’s absurd—you can’t stand Harvey, but he’s making you feel all…Gooey. You push a smile on your face for a few pictures, and are determined to hurry away and drown your gooey feelings in champagne—but as the others begin to disperse, your mother warns:
“Ah-ah-ah, don’t get far, you two. You know the tradition, honey.”
Your eyes go wide, stomach twisting with embarrassment.
“Oh—Mom, no,” You plead.
“We do it every year—Oh, Harvey, you’re gonna love this,” Your mom swears, gripping both of you by your hands and tugging you to a different spot in the room. “Whenever a new significant other is brought home for the holidays, they take a picture under the mistletoe.”
“Really.” Harvey’s smug amusement is back, spreading his smile wide.
“It’s an old tradition—It’s—Mom, we really don’t have to do this,” You stumble over your words.
“Oh, come on now! You’ve always been a little shy, never bringing anyone home before, so we can’t pass this opportunity up!”
She looks up, positioning the two of you under the mistletoe that’s been hung in the event space by the staff (probably at your mother’s request). You glance up at Harvey as your uncle waves you closer together, holding up his camera. Harvey leans in, giving your cheek an obliging peck as you give the camera a weak smile.
“Oh, please,” Your mom complains, “A real one!”
Your smile goes tight as you look up at Harvey.
“This wasn’t part of our agreement,” You whisper, “You don’t have to do this.”
Harvey’s gaze skates your expression before he gives a small shrug.
“It’s a couple of seconds to make your mom happy,” He murmurs, “I don’t mind. But I’ll push back if you need me to.”
You can’t help it—you go a little gooey again at the offer. You’d expected Harvey to brush it off, or to be a dick about it—but his expression is sincere, and his eyes are searching yours for any hint of hesitation. So you give a small nod, and try not to think about the way your heart leaps into your throat as Harvey draws you closer. You sway into him just a touch, chest brushing against his. The two of you lean in, and your lips meet in a stunningly warm, soft kiss. You try to fight it, but your eyes slip closed. Harvey raises a hand to cup your cheek, his thumb sweeping tenderly over your cheekbone as your heads tip slightly, deepening your kiss. You vaguely register the coos and clapping from your family just a few feet away, and that finally snaps you out of it.
You lean back, nose brushing Harvey’s slightly. You blink at him in slight surprise, tongue sweeping across your lips. As Harvey’s eyes open, he seems just as stunned as you are. His slick, smug look is gone. His eyes are searching yours again, then dip, and catch on your lips before steadying there. Your chest flutters as he seems set to go in again, but you hear your mother shooing, “Alright, you two can canoodle in the corner! We need to get your cousin and her girlfriend in here. Go on.”
You clear your throat, pressing your hand to Harvey’s chest and guiding him away from the mistletoe. The two of you come to a stop in a quiet corner. Harvey’s arm is still curled around your middle; your hand is still on his chest. You raise your hand a little, absently straightening his tie, just to do something with yourself that isn't fumbling an apology, or drawing him back in.
“Thanks for the, um…” You trail off, waving toward your family. “I’m sorry, I didn’t remember that—stupid tradition.”
“Doesn’t seem that stupid to me,” Harvey offers.
“That stupid implies that you think it’s at least a little stupid.”
“It was unexpected.”
“I’ll give you that.”
“Wasn’t bad, though.”
“Sealed the deal. I mean—” You hurry to correct, eyes darting to Harvey’s face nervously. “In terms of being…Believable. I never pegged you as such a good sport.”
“No one’s ever managed to peg—”
“Oh my—I don't need to know that," You groan, turning and hiding your face in his shoulder. He chuckles, arm tightening around you.
“Still think I’m a smug asshole?” He murmurs against your temple.
“I know you are,” You grumble. “Just because you’re an alright kisser doesn’t mean you’re not.”
“An alright kisser? Oh, that just won't do."
"What do you mean that won't—"
You go quiet as Harvey cradles your jaw, drawing you in for another kiss. You let yourself lean into him, your hand slipping from his tie, up into his hair. He hums softly against your lips, nudging you back against the wall. Your breath leaves you in a soft huff as feel yourself pressed into the hard surface. You can't imagine what your family is thinking, or if they've noticed that the two of you have, in fact, taken then chance to canoodle.
Harvey just smiles, smoothing his hand over your hip.
"Better than alright?" He murmurs. You pretend to consider before shrugging a little.
"Nearly."
Harvey's expression darkens, and he chuckles softly, shaking his head.
"You're asking for it," He warns. You smooth his hair down, a wicked thrill shooting down your spine.
"Why honey-bunny," You coo, sweeping a fingertip along his plush lower lip, "I don't know what you mean."
looking for somebody- send me a gif of a character and I'll write a little baby blurb for it
LIPGLOSS | C.S.
word count: 0.9k
warnings: age gap, as always, reader who wears makeup?
summary: you always forget your stuff in charlie's car, but he doesn't mind all that much since it's a good excuse to get some extra kisses before you go
You made it halfway to the door when you realized your lips were uncharacteristically dry, the pause in your steps making Charlie frown from across the parking lot where he was watching and waiting for you to go inside. He wasn't all that fond of his current spot in the first place, he was too far from the door and he didn't like it at all, having to shift around slightly from where he leaned back against the car to see you and he raised a brow when you turned around and started marching right back towards him.
"What's wrong?" he was straight to the point when you were close enough to hear him, adjusting the tote back on your shoulder, regretting that extra book you forced in there now that your quick walk into work would be repeated more than once, Charlie noticed, not even thinking before taking it from you, looking into it with hidden judgment as he saw how much you had in there.
"Nothing's wrong," you smiled, scrunching your nose at his raised brow, gently forcing him to scoot up and away from the door so that you could open it, missing the little loving look of exasperation as he looked around the parking lot and then stole a glance at his watch, he didn't want you to be late. "Forgot my lipgloss," you explained from inside the car, knee digging into his seat as he tried and failed not to steal a glance at the sight in front of him, you looking into the little mirror to apply the sticky goo.
He was always intrigued by that little gesture, amused by the focused look on your face, the little pout to make the job easier, or even the little head movements to move closer and further from the mirror- it was the cutest thing in the world, he'd decided, though that changed daily with you.
"Take it with you," Charlie suggested, hand coming up to cover the frame of the door where you'd move your head through to make sure you didn't bump in. "I'm sure you can find room in here somewhere," you breathed a scoff at that, taking your bag from his hand and throwing the lipgloss right back into the little cup holder by the gearshift.
"I'll lose it if I take it with me," you explained to him and his hand found your waist before he could think about it, lips tilting just slightly, it was considered a smile by his standards. "At least here I'll know it's safe, got a whole policeman to protect it," he hummed, it was a lovely sound, one of your favourites, it forced you to steal a quick kiss from him, thumb instantly coming up to wipe away your gloss from his lips.
"I'm going to bring you lunch," you wanted to object, reminding him that you did in fact pack something to eat later, but then again, you knew it didn't count as lunch for him. "I'll stop by the diner, get you some pie, know you've been craving some," it was a sickeningly sweet offer, you'd mentioned you craving something sweet last night, he was getting ready for bed and you were sure he wasn't listening but then again, Charlie always pays attention when it's you.
"Will you get yourself a piece too? Stay here and eat with me?" he was considering it, didn't know if he'd have time with everything going on in town as of late, but he knew he couldn't say no to you, you knew too.
"I will," he was the one to steal a kiss, right on your forehead, gently guiding you away from the car, telling you it was time to go, and even if you didn't want to, you knew you should. "Have a good day, sweetheart."
"You too, bear, I'll see you later," you were walking backward, he absolutely hated it, instinctively moving forward with every step you took back, wanting to be able to catch you just in case. "Don't lose my lipgloss."
summary: had you known getting your first tattoo would end up with you being in love with eddie munson, you might have gotten it a lot sooner.
word count: 17.8k
warnings: smut, probably inaccurate descriptions of tattooing processes (i tried my best!), strangers to friends to lovers, fluff
a/n: this one took forever but it’s finally done!!!! i’m sorry for the wait but hopefully u guys like it enough to forgive me :D
༄
You’ve always wanted a tattoo, and you figured now was as good a time as ever. Having just moved to Indianapolis, all by yourself, one change could lead to another.
New city, new apartment, new tattoo.
It may be irresponsible of you, but you settled for the first shop you found, the one closest to where you lived. A short walk away, harder to back out of. You knew you wouldn’t regret getting it, you just had to force yourself to sit through it, to commit.
The wind whips at your cheeks as you make your way to your consultation. You pull your sleeves over your hands and hope that it’ll be warm enough.
Once you’ve made it, the bell above the door rings to signify your entrance. A girl with brown curly hair sits at the front desk, a warm smile on her face. The place has dark floors, walls covered with different sketches that distract you for a moment.
“Hi! How can I help you?” The girl says, drawing your attention back to her. You walk the few steps up to the front desk.
“Hi, um, I’m here for a consultation,” you give her your name and the time of the appointment. “With Eddie.”
She shuffles about for a few seconds before finding what she was looking for, “yep, perfect. I’ll let him know you’re here. I’m Nancy, by the way.”
“Thanks, Nancy.”
She goes to the saloon type doors next to the desk, you watch them swing back and forth. You’re eventually drawn back to the art on the walls, eyes scanning the different styles and images. Your hands fidget with the ends of your sleeves.
A picture of the staff steals your attention next, Nancy standing next to a girl with shorter hair, their hands interlocked. Then, there’s a boy with brown hair and a kind smile. The one who really keeps you looking is the boy with long dark hair, his tattoos the most prominent.
A second later, that same boy is walking through the doors and calling your name.
“Oh, hi. That’s me,” you reply. Then wince at your awkwardness.
“Hi, I’m Eddie,” he gives you a close-mouthed smile, barely there. He’s even prettier in person than he is in that photo. “Follow me.”
He seems distant, sort of cold and you’re not quite sure what to do with it. Your nerves pick up even more.
He ushers you through the saloon doors, then through a room with three tattoo beds that’s filled with the buzzing of the machines and the other people from the picture and their clients. You end up in an office type room, certificates hang on the wall behind the desk.
Eddie takes a seat behind the desk that’s presumably his, papers scattered about and a cup overflowing with pens and pencils sitting atop of it. You stand by the door, shifting on your feet.
“You can have a seat,” he offers, gesturing to the chair facing him. He waits until you’re settled to continue. “So, is this your first tattoo?”
“Yes,” you feel nervous and you’re not sure if it’s the prospect of committing to the tattoo or if it’s the way Eddie’s gaze doesn’t move away from you.
“Well, I’m honored to be your first,” he winks, your heart stumbling at the innuendo. “So, what are we thinking?”
“The moon, on the back of my shoulder,” you pause, but he nods for you to keep going, to give more detail. “I wanted it to be a gibbous moon, almost full but not quite.”
“Alright. Got an idea for size?”
“Uh, kinda small. I think?” You huff, frustrated with your lack of an answer, “sorry I’m not so prepared.”
You stuff your hands under your thighs so that they’ll stop twisting in your lap. You cross your ankles and look down, slightly embarrassed at the way you’re acting in front of him. You were meant to grow in the city, to be better, but so far, not much has changed.
You don’t have friends, your job is slow, and you’re terrible with new people.
“‘S fine,” you think he’s being reassuring. “How’s this sound: we can try some circle stencils on for size now, then we’ll know for your appointment.”
“Okay. Thank you, Eddie.”
“‘Course. I’ll be right back.”
His exit gives you a couple of minutes to try and sort yourself out, to calm down. You want to be able to do this without the stumbles or hiccups that you’re so used to. You blow out a breath and wait for him to come back.
The way he carries himself confuses you, his almost detached nature making you overthink way too much. Although, he’s not being cruel or unkind, he’s just… you’re not sure if there’s a word to describe it.
He comes back with a couple of stencils, some sort of solution, a disposable razor, and paper towels.
“You’re gonna have to take your sweater off,” he says, setting everything down on the desk. When you don’t move to do so right away, he stares at you, waiting.
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
You slip off your sweater, your tank top underneath riding up ever so slightly with the movement. You pull it back down and set your discarded sweater on the chair behind you.
“Which shoulder?” He asks, putting on a pair of medical gloves and grabbing the razor.
“Here,” you slip the straps of both your shirt and your bra off the shoulder you choose, turning in the seat to face away from him so he’s able to do what he needs to.
He brushes your hair towards the front of your shoulder, clearing the spot he needs. He cleans off the area, then shaves it to make sure the stencil will stick, all in silence. He’s quick to apply it, his hands gentle and his breath hitting your skin in a way that has you shifting.
“Don’t move,” he chides quietly.
“Sorry.”
He doesn’t say anything more until he’s done, “okay. Have a look.”
There’s a mirror on one of the walls, and you walk over to get a good look at the size of the circle. You know it’s only the first one, but you think it’s perfect. It looks right and you’re excited to see it when it’s actually the design you want.
“I want this size,” you say, turning to face him.
“Are you sure? It’s only the first one.”
“I know, but it’s good. I like it.”
“I don’t want you changing your mind, okay?”
“I won’t! I’m sure, promise.”
He sighs, then wipes the stencil away and takes off the gloves with a snap. He takes his seat again as you put your sweater back on, goosebumps prickling your skin.
“When did you wanna book it for?” He asks.
“Whenever you’re free is fine, I’m not picky.” You don’t have anywhere else to be, really.
“You’re not the best at answering questions, huh?”
You think he’s trying to make a joke but all you manage to say is, “no, sorry.”
“You apologize a lot. You don’t have to,” he grabs something that looks like a planner then says, “I have a spot next week, if that works.”
Eddie tells you the specific day and time, and you tell him that it works. He hands you some papers to sign and read and bring back with you for next time. “Nancy will sort out payment and stuff at the desk. That’s it for today.”
“Okay. Thank you so much,” you make your way back to the front quickly, eager to go home and try and forget the entire interaction. He certainly wasn’t what you were expecting, and you didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. He was quiet, reserved, and hard to read, but he was good, you knew from the drawings in his office. He was also intriguing; a puzzle you wanted to solve.
You sort out everything with Nancy, who makes you feel a ton better about your consultation. “You look far too worried,” she says.
“I just don’t think he likes me very much.”
“No, trust me, that’s just Eddie. He’ll warm up to you, I’m sure.”
“I hope so. Anyway, thanks, Nancy.”
“See you,” she says as you walk out the door.
That night, you cuddle up and fall asleep thinking about Eddie and his demeanor, his warm hands on your skin.
-
He couldn’t get you out of his head, and that rarely happened to Eddie. He was used to meaningless things and he can’t remember the last time he felt anything for someone.
Not that he felt anything for you. You’d only met once.
Eddie spent the night after your consultation drawing way too many moons in his sketchbook, staining his hands with ink and pencil.
-
It’s two days later when you hear from Eddie again.
Your phone rings just as you’re about to shower before bed, the sun long gone though the city stays bright with lights. You hug your robe tighter around yourself and walk to where the phone hangs on the wall.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” an utterance of your name, a tone you recognize. “It’s Eddie… from Corroded Coffin Tattoos.”
“Of course! Hi, Eddie. Was there something wrong?”
“Oh, no. No,” he pauses, you hear him shuffling around on the other line. “I had a cancellation tomorrow and thought you might want the spot?”
You hate that the fact that he thought of you makes your stomach whirl. Of course, he could’ve called countless clients before you, but you like the idea that he dialed your number first better. You twist the phone cord in your fingers.
“That would be great. Thank you so much for thinking of me.”
If only you knew, he thinks. If only you knew how much he really did think of you—it was almost infuriating. How one person could have such an effect on him when he really doesn’t know them at all. He knows that you’re pretty, and you say ‘sorry’ far too much, and you smell really good, that’s all.
“Yeah. I’ll see you then.”
“Okay, see you-”
He hangs up before you can finish. You stare at the phone for a second after putting it back, wondering if that whole exchange truly happened, if you just dreamt up the whole thing. You pinch yourself until it hurts. You’re definitely awake.
You replay the conversation over and over, wondering why he hung up so abruptly, worrying about how you’re going to act tomorrow.
Eddie called you from his office, even though it was well past closing for the shop. He really needs to get himself together. He can’t be thinking so much about his client. About anyone, really. He can’t.
His head is resting in his arms when the door to his office opens. There’s only one person that never knocks and that’s Steve. He looks up and sees him leaning against the doorframe.
“Why are you still here, Steve?”
“Why are you still here?” He retorts.
“Got some stuff to do,” is all Eddie says.
“Your mood doesn’t have anything to do with the girl you just talked to on the phone, does it?”
Of all the people he could have been friends with, Steve was the most unlikely for Eddie, and yet here they are. Coworkers, and close friends. It’s almost annoying how quickly he can tell what exactly the issue is.
“I dunno. She won’t get out of my head,” Eddie shrugs, glancing down at the sketchbook he has opened on his desk, the one filled with drawings of your tattoo. “It’s annoying.”
“That’s a lot of moons, man,” Steve says as he walks closer.
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying. Maybe this is a good thing. I haven’t seen you with a girlfriend, like, ever.”
“Who said anything about a girlfriend?”
No, if anything, Eddie’s eager to get your appointment over with, to get you out of his head for good.
“Yeah, okay. Can't wait to say ‘I told you so.’ You know it won’t hurt to open up a little, man.”
Steve means well, Eddie knows he does, but the thing is it does hurt him. Or, it used to. He was used to being judged, someone the town saw as a character rather than a human. The best thing he ever did was move away, but that doesn’t mean he left the hurt behind, too.
-
You show up about fifteen minutes early for the appointment. You gave yourself far too much time, you think, because now you just have to sit and wait and the anticipation is making you more nervous the longer it goes.
The front desk was being manned by a different person today, “hi! I’m Robin, how are you?”
She talks quickly and with enthusiasm, like every word is exciting and important. You like her already.
“Hi, I’m good, thanks. I have an appointment with Eddie,” she nods in confirmation, looking down at the schedule in front of her. “I’m a little early though so… no rush.”
“Oh, it’s no problem, gives us more time to sort out the paperwork and stuff. He’s just finishing up with someone else so it won’t be too long.” She smiles at you.
“Here, I have these from my consultation,” you hand her the pages Eddie had given you to sign. You chew at the inside of your cheek as she reads over them hoping you filled everything out correctly.
“That’s great! I’ll just go tell him you’re here,” she goes through the familiar saloon doors, the buzzing of tattoo guns and light conversations slipping through.
When she comes back she informs you that he’s only going to be a couple more minutes, and instead of telling you to go take a seat, she asks, “first tattoo?”
“Yeah, I’m nervous. Mostly excited,” you give her a small smile, one that makes hers widen.
“Don’t worry! I had to take like five breaks for my first one and now here I am.” It’s then that you finally notice the ink peeking from her long-sleeve shirt, at her wrists, and on one side of her neck. “Eddie’s great, and I’m sure you’ve got great pain tolerance—I can sense it.”
You laugh, she’s somehow managed to make you feel much better in the short time you’ve been talking to her. Eddie walks out, greeted by the sound of your laughter and he almost stops in his tracks. Almost.
“Robin, stop chatting up my clients,” he says.
“I’m just being friendly, Eddie! You should try it out,” she replies.
You can tell it’s in good nature, because he ruffles her hair as he passes and leaves it there. From what you’ve seen so far, the workers here are close; a tight-knit group of people and you admire that friendship, long for it.
“Follow me,” he says. It takes you a second to realize he’s talking to you because of your distraction, but when you look up you find him staring at you, waiting.
“Okay,” you trail behind him as he leads you to the bed furthest from the doors, the one tucked away in the back of the room.
“You eat and drink water before coming? I don’t want you passing out on me.”
“Yeah. Yes, I’m good.”
He looks at you like he’s unsure, but moves along anyway. Eddie’s only worried because you’re his client and he has to, no other reason. He can’t be worrying because he thinks you’re pretty and sweet and far too kind. There’s absolutely no way.
“So, I did a couple sketches,” a couple is an understatement. “Have a look and let me know which one you wanna go with.”
You take a look at the five he’s laid out, all as you asked. Gibbous moons, both waxing and waning, some shaded more than others, some simple outlines. The one that catches your eye is a happy medium, fine lines with dotting for shading. It’s beautiful, exactly what you envisioned.
“This one. It’s really good.”
He tips his head down, “thanks. I’ll go get my stuff and we’ll get started.”
He’s not gone for very long, though it’s enough time for you to watch one of the artists at work, the boy with the brown hair. You watched the way he moved the needle, only looking away when Eddie came back and grabbed your attention.
“Gonna do the stencil like before, so you’ll need to move your shirt,” he says, looking down at his station and getting everything ready.
“Would it be easier if I just, uh, take it off?”
That makes his hands hover, paused in his task. He tries to shake it off; he’s seen a ton of people shirtless at the job and he’s never been affected by that, so why should he be now?
“Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“Okay,” you decide it must be easier without your shirt—less things in the way—so you take it off and try not to worry about it.
Eddie applies the stencil just as he did a couple days ago. Gentle, precise hands that you’ll feel the ghost of for hours after your appointment, you’re sure. His head bent close as he pushes the edges down so you can feel him breathing, catch his scent for a moment.
When he’s done, he holds up a wide handheld mirror for you to get a look at it without having to walk all the way to the mirror on the opposite side of the room.
Again, you’re impressed by his drawing, and seeing it on your skin makes you realize that you’ll carry a part of Eddie forever after this. His linework, his trace.
“So,” he prompts you to speak as your thoughts have taken you away, “what do you think?”
“It’s great. Really.”
“You’re sure that’s where you want it?”
He double checks every single detail. That you’ve picked the one you want, that it’s the right size, that you really want to do this. He does so until you’re laying on your stomach on the bed, positioned so he can work comfortably at your side.
“Okay, I’m gonna do a small line, just so you see how it feels,” he warns you, and you tense in anticipation. “Relax.”
“Sorry. ‘M just nervous.”
“You’ll be fine, I’m sure.”
He manages to ease you with very few words.
The sound of the tattoo gun sounds louder when it’s so close, more daunting, but you’re eager to get started only to get rid of the anticipation. He draws a short line after giving you a quiet warning of, “here we go.”
It’s not nearly as bad as you’d expected. A scratch, a small sting, but it’s manageable.
“You okay?” He checks.
“Yeah, it’s not that bad.”
“Told you you’d be fine,” he says so softly you almost miss it.
Your head is turned to the side where he sits, and you can see him in your peripheral vision as he works. His legs clad in dark, ripped denim, the tattoos peeking through. The sleeves of his shirt rolled up to show his forearms. You shut your eyes and try to stop staring.
He works quietly, though you can sometimes hear him humming along to whatever song is playing. You don’t try to make conversation because you don’t want to be a distraction.
It doesn’t take too long before he gets to the shading, telling you, “some people find this part a bit more painful. So you know.”
“Okay, thanks.”
He’s right, it is more painful and you find it harder to keep yourself occupied by looking around. You find it harder to ignore the feeling of the needle.
Eddie notices. He doesn’t know how, but he notices. Maybe it’s the way your eyes are squeezed shut at certain points, the hand of the arm furthest from him bunched in a fist. He decides he wants to ease the process for you in any way he can.
“So, why the moon?” He asks.
“Huh?”
“Why’d you choose the moon?”
“Oh, sorry,” you don’t see him shake his head at your unnecessary apology. “I’ve always loved it, how it has a cycle. The way it looks in the sky. Just, everything. Looking at it was a way of reminding myself I’m alive, kind of. ‘Cause I can still see it. I guess I chose this one to remind myself that even if it’s not whole now, it will be eventually.”
He wants to pick at your brain more, because he thinks it must be a beautiful place to be able to describe things the way you just did. You talk like it means a lot to you and the fact that you shared it with him so openly when you’ve been so quiet isn’t lost on him.
“That’s really…wow.”
“Sorry. I kinda rambled there.”
“No, no. I’ve just never looked at it that way.”
He asks you more questions after that, trying his best to keep your mind off of the needle and on the conversation. He asks how long you’ve been in the city, then, why you moved, and you give him honest answers for all of it.
Not long at all. Because I needed to get out, to be somewhere nobody knows me.
That made him think of Hawkins, of every person there who called him a freak, who looked at him like one. He needed to get out, too.
“Alright, you’re all done, just gotta wrap it up for you,” he says, putting the gun down and wiping over your skin one more time. “Do you wanna have a look first?”
“Please,” you nod.
He likes the way the word sounds coming out of your mouth—he gives himself a mental slap for that.
You sit up and he holds the mirror just as he did before. You can't help but gasp when you see it, exactly what you pictured. He did such a good job that you resist the urge to hug him for it.
“Eddie, it’s beautiful.”
So are you, he thinks.
“I’m glad you like it,” is what he says.
“I love it. Seriously, thank you.”
“It’s my job. Let me wrap it and then you’re good to go.”
He does, carefully and with the same gentle hands that have become far too familiar by now. When he’s done, he takes off his gloves with a snap, and hands you a pamphlet and some cleaning products to use at home.
“Thanks again, Eddie. You’re really good,” you say, putting your shirt back on.
“No problem,” he flashes you a small smile, one you’ll hold onto. “Um, here’s the card for the shop. You know, in case you need anything. Just ask for me, okay?”
“I will, thank you,” you take the card from him, your fingers brush his as you do. The name of the shop is written on it in bold, sharp letters: Corroded Coffin Tattoos. Underneath it, the phone number.
You’re led back through the saloon doors and met with both Robin and Nancy by the desk. They’re talking with wide smiles and rosy cheeks, their hands tangled loosely.
“I don’t pay you two to flirt,” Eddie says, retreating back where the two of you just came from.
Robin slips away, presumably done with her shift at the desk now that Nancy’s back. She gave you a kind goodbye, and makes sure that you promise if you ever want another tattoo to go back there.
“How was it?” Nancy asks you.
“Good! I’m really happy with it.”
“That’s what we like to hear! Eddie’s great. He gave me my first tattoo, too. Robin was mad for ages and then made sure she gave me the next one,” she grins. “Anyway, let’s get you taken care of.”
You pay for the tattoo, and then, you’re off.
It’s times like now that you wish you had someone to talk to, because you’re having way too many thoughts about your tattoo artist that you might never see again and you need to know if you’re reading into things too much. You need to know if his hands linger longer than they need to on other clients, if you imagined the way his eyes stayed on you, too.
You settle for overthinking on your walk home instead.
-
You didn’t think you’d end up using the card Eddie gave you. Not unless you were calling to book another tattoo, but here you were, leaning on the wall by your phone and dialing the number.
It was just a quick question, really, but you were still nervous. You’d only gotten the tattoo yesterday and already you were calling.
You’d realized when reading the aftercare instructions he gave you, that you didn’t have any unscented, gentle lotion like it called for, and you wanted to know if he had any suggestions for what works best. You tried going to the pharmacy, but the options were overwhelming.
You ended up buying something anyway because of how long you spent there. A useless magazine that was the closest thing to you when you noticed how some of the employees were looking at you. Some girl reading way too many lotion labels.
Yeah, definitely embarrassing, and definitely something you won’t let yourself live down.
The phone doesn’t ring for long before someone picks up, “Corroded Coffin Tattoos, Nancy speaking.”
“Hi Nancy,” you tell her your name.
“Hey! How can I help you?”
“Um, Eddie told me to call and ask for him if I had any questions,” you explain. “I was wondering if he’s available for a minute?”
“He did?” She sounds surprised.
“Um. Yeah.”
“Huh. Usually he makes one of us deal with calls instead. I’ll put you on hold and let him know, okay?”
“‘Kay. Thanks, Nancy.”
Desperately, you try not to overthink what she said. That he doesn’t usually get his clients to talk to him for things as minor as this. Why would he want you to, then? You don’t know why every little thing he does sends your mind into a whirlwind of ‘why’s and ‘what does this mean’s.
It’s maybe two minutes—silence filled by your thoughts—before the phone is picked up again.
“Hello?”
You can tell that it’s Eddie.
“Hi. Sorry to bother you but I just had a quick question for you.”
Eddie knows it’s you; he’s not expecting a call from anyone else. Not that he was expecting yours, it’s just that you’re the only client he’s even told to ask for him. He tries to cover that up by saying, “who’s this?”
“Oh, guess I should’ve said. Sorry,” you remind him of your name, as if he could forget it.
“Don’t be sorry. What’s your question?”
He’s quick to get to the point, and you can’t tell if it’s because he’s eager to help, or if it’s that he’s eager to get the conversation over with. Nancy’s words replay in your head. Usually he makes one of us deal with calls instead.
“I noticed that for aftercare, it says to use gentle lotion,” he hums along, urging you to continue. “I wasn’t sure what exactly that meant and I even went to the pharmacy but I didn’t know which one was good-”
“It’s okay,” he cuts you off. “I’ve got some here at the shop. Do you have time today to come pick it up?”
“Yeah! Yes, that’s great. Thanks so much, I promise I’ll get out of your hair after this.”
He doesn’t like the way that sits with him. He doesn’t want you out of his hair. He wants to see you again, he’s realized, and it’s almost too much for him to handle. The way he feels about you is brand new for him—never felt before. He wants to know everything about you.
“‘Course. See you soon, then.”
“Bye, Eddie.”
He hangs up.
You leave a bit after that. Not too soon, because you didn’t want to make it seem like you didn’t have other things to do, even though you didn’t. You’ve memorized the walk to the store at this point, and it doesn’t take you long to get there. You’re greeted by Nancy once again, only in person this time.
“Welcome back,” she says.
“Hi,” you smile at her, you hope it doesn’t look like a nervous grimace. “Um, Eddie told me to come here to pick something up.”
“Right, okay,” she stands, heading in the direction of his office, pausing to say, “he must really like you.”
Great. Some more material for you to analyze about Eddie and how he acts with you. It’s odd to have someone on your mind so constantly, to try and make sense of it. He has something about him that pulls you in, and you’re not sure how, or why, but you let yourself be pulled.
His hair is tied in a low bun when you see him, his bangs and stray strands of hair make it look messy, like he hasn’t had the time to redo it. And yet, he had the time to speak to you on the phone and now.
“Moon girl,” he says, lips turned up just enough to be noticeable.
“Eddie, hi,” your hands twist themselves into the sleeves of your knitted sweater. “Thank you for taking time for me, I know it was a dumb question.”
“It wasn’t. I’m glad you care enough to make sure you’re using the right things,” he says. He holds out the lotion, “speaking of.”
“Perfect. How much do I owe?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He probably shouldn’t make a habit of giving things away for free to girls he thinks are pretty and that confuse him way too much. For you, though, he’ll make an exception. It’s not like anybody else is driving him nuts like you are, anyway.
“No, you’ve done so much already. Please let me pay.”
“It’s fine, I promise that one bottle of lotion won’t hurt me.” But this possibly being the last time I see you might, he thinks.
“If you’re sure.”
“I am,” he confirms. “I’ll see you around then.”
“Bye, Eddie. Thank you.”
“Bye, moon girl.”
You look down at your feet as he walks away, letting your hair curtain your face. You really shouldn’t be feeling so giddy because of a fucking bottle of lotion and a new nickname, but you are.
“Holy shit,” Robin’s voice comes from the front desk. You hadn’t noticed, but she must’ve walked out at some point during your quick interaction with Eddie.
You curse yourself and try to hide the smile that threatens to spread across your face. “Hey, Robin.”
“Well hello,” she’s looking at you like she knows something you don’t, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. “I don’t know how you did it but he’s never acted like that with any client. Like, ever.”
You don’t say anything, biting the inside of your lip to distract from the butterflies in your stomach.
“And, I’m so glad you’re here,” she changes the subject, thankfully. “Because Eddie mentioned you’re new to the city and god knows I could use friends who don’t work here and I wanted to know if you wanted to come for drinks sometime?”
Eddie spoke about you? Robin wants to be your friend? You can’t wrap your head around either of those things. It’s been so long since you’ve hung out with someone who wasn’t family. And even then, it was tiring, not fun.
You realize she’s still waiting for an answer when she clears her throat.
“Sorry, um. Yeah, that would be nice.”
“Yay!” She cheers. “What’s your number? I’ll call you next time there’s plans.”
You write it down on a scrap piece of paper for her, and she beams at you when she takes it.
“Eddie‘s gonna be thanking me for this one later,” she teases. “I think we’ll be great friends.”
You look at her smile, at her crooked tie that rests atop an oversized button up. You think she might be right about that.
-
As soon as you leave Robin and Nancy go to Eddie’s office. An intervention of sorts. They walk in without knocking (the door was open anyway) and stand in front of him with some look.
He’s pretty sure he knows why they’re both staring at him with knowing smiles, but he tries to ignore them and busy himself with some sketches.
Robin’s not having it, so she sits in the chair across from Eddie, kicking her feet up onto his desk.
“What do you want?” He sighs.
“Um, hello? Are we not gonna pretend that you weren’t flirting with her in your own, weird, Eddie way?” Robin starts.
“Dunno what you’re talking about.”
“Come on,” Nancy joins the conversation, on Robin’s side as always. “You’ve never told a client to ask for you, or given them free stuff.”
“Yeah! And, you were all ‘see you around, moon girl, hey let me stare at you and then not do anything about it,’” Robin lowers her voice, imitating him very inaccurately.
“I don’t know. She was nice, that’s all.”
“Nice enough to break your little rule of being mister nonchalant. I think you like her,” she’s right, but Eddie doesn’t even want to admit that to himself, let alone his friends.
He doesn’t say anything, shifting in his seat. He knows they both mean well, but he doesn’t know what to think and an ambush isn’t necessarily helping that. The pit in his stomach he’s had since he realized he might never see you again hasn't lessened, and the memory of your perfume or the feeling of your skin hasn’t faded.
So, maybe you did have an effect on him, but it doesn’t matter anymore. It didn’t matter in the first place because he wouldn’t let it.
“Look, Eddie, we’re not trying to make you admit anything,” Nancy says, “we just noticed that you acted differently with her. Steve did, too, I’m sure. And it was a good different. You seemed less guarded, I guess.”
“What she said!” Robin adds.
“Yeah, thanks guys, but it’s nothing, okay?”
They share a look, one that Eddie doesn’t understand but he’s gotten used to their silent communications over time. He scratches at the back of his neck, nervous about what they’re thinking.
“Anyway, I got her number,” Robin says, holding the small paper you wrote on for Eddie to see.
He grabs it, staring at your handwriting and the small heart you added next to your name. He fights a smile at the sight of it, cute and lopsided and though he doesn’t know you well, it’s very you.
He clears his throat, handing the paper back. “I’ve got her number on file already.”
“It’s not for you! It’s for me and Nance. We’re gonna be friends,” she grins, proud.
“We’re probably gonna invite her next time we go out, and wanted you to know. Just in case you care,” Nancy says, explaining.
Just in case you care.
He does care, he thinks. He cares way too much for someone he’s met three times and knows very little about. He knows you’re pretty, you apologize a ton, you fidget with your hands when you’re nervous, and you like the moon.
He knows that he cares what you think about him, and that when you called the tattoo he gave you beautiful, it meant more to him than most compliments do. ‘Cause it was you who said it. It’s too much for him.
Maybe he’ll skip out on the next outing.
“That’s nice,” he settles for.
“She’s new to the city and she’s cool. Don’t you think, Eddie?” Robin asks.
He swipes her boot-clad feet from his desk in response.
“We just don’t want you to hold yourself back, that’s all. You never go on dates or anything, even though you’ve had many chances,” Nancy says, softer now that she sees Eddie’s mind is full.
“Thanks for caring, you guys, seriously. But I’m fine. I like being single.”
“So, just be friends with her, then,” Robin suggests.
Her and Nancy leave him alone after that, his mind a bigger mess than before and it’s completely surrounding you. He doesn’t understand how someone could make him rethink everything like he is.
I like being single, he’d said.
And yet, when he imagines going on a date with you, giving you flowers, complimenting your dress or your hair, he’s not sure how true that statement is.
-
Your days drag by. You work in a small café, and whenever you’re not there, you’re either wasting away hours in your apartment or taking aimless walks. It’s a never-ending cycle, a carousel spinning round and round.
The only eventful thing that happened to you (other than your new tattoo) was accidentally spilling coffee all over yourself at work and having to stick out the rest of your shift in wet clothes. Not necessarily something you want to remember.
You’re beginning to lose hope that Robin will ever use your number.
It shocks you when your phone finally rings. You try to convince yourself it’s telemarketers, a wrong number, anything not to get your hopes up. Lucky for you, it actually is Robin.
“Hello?” Is your automatic word when you pick up.
“Hi! Listen, I’m so sorry it took so long to call,” she doesn’t have to say it to know it’s her. Robin has a very distinct way of speaking; rushed and animated. “So, I actually lost the paper. Silly me! But, then I found it and I had to convince the others to want to go out. Anyway, you wanna come?”
“Hi, Robin. That’s okay,” you find yourself smiling. Your first real one in a while. “When?”
“Oh! I forgot to say. Tonight?”
“I can do that,” you try to sound excited, you hope she can tell.
“Perfect! Do you have a pen and paper? I’ll tell you the place.”
You reach for your notepad and pen and do your best not to drop the phone in the process. Somehow, you manage.
“Yep, ready.”
She rambles off an address, a meeting time, and then, “shit. Boss is coming, better act like I’m working. Bye!”
She hangs up, and you know who she means when she says ‘boss.’
You’ve been trying your best not to think of Eddie, but it’s easier said than done. You constantly think you see him in crowds that pass by. A head of long, curly hair here, a worn leather jacket there. It’s confusing and almost embarrassing.
This boy who you barely know, taking up so much space in your life.
You’re reminded that you’ll most likely be seeing him tonight, as long as you’re right in assuming that by ‘the others,’ Robin meant her coworkers. The thought makes you nervous, makes your stomach do things you aren’t used to.
Despite the time you had between the phone call and when you had to leave, you’re in a hurry to get ready. Picking your outfit was the hardest part, because you’d never been to the place before. You decided on a dress that was simple enough, a denim jacket that you’d probably end up taking off (you get warm when you drink), and your trusty Doc Martens.
Your makeup is a little messy, but you don’t have enough time to fix it so you act like the smudged eyeliner was purposefully done. Your hair was left down.
Walking through the doors of the bar, you’re a couple minutes late and a little out of breath from your rushing. You look around in search of a familiar face when waving catches your eye.
It’s Robin, who’s waving the most obviously, her arm swinging back and forth until Nancy pulls it down and says something to her. Probably telling her you’ve seen them and she can stop. It’s sweet.
You make your way through the crowd towards the booth they’d secured. The boy, who’s introduced to you as Steve, is sitting in the corner on one side, Robin and Nancy on the other. Eddie’s absence is noted, and you guess you must’ve looked confused because Robin spoke up and said, “he’s just in the bathroom.”
She beckons you to sit with her and Nancy, and you fall into conversation easily. Even Steve is easy to talk to and you’ve only just learned his name. Sometimes you worry you’re intruding in their group, an outsider. In a way, you are, because you don’t work with them nor have you been friends with any of them for a long time, but they have yet to make you feel that way.
It’s a far cry from the friends (or lack thereof) you had back home, in the best way possible.
When Eddie comes back, the first thing he sees is you. He’s shocked. Not because you’re there—he was well aware of you being invited—but because you look like you belong with his friends. You fit right in, and you aren’t even trying. Then, he notices your dress and he wishes he could ignore the feeling he gets.
He’s painfully aware of how pretty you are, and when you look over, as if feeling his eyes on you, you give him a small smile and wave. He walks over and slides into the booth next to Steve as casually as possible.
“You look nice,” he says. It’s the best he can come up with.
“Thank you.”
The two of you are too busy looking at each other and trying to figure out what to say when the others share some kind of look. Knowing.
Your nerves pickup when Eddie’s around and you scold yourself for it. You have no business feeling anything towards him, and yet, his very simple compliment will be the root of your daydreams for days to come.
“I’m gonna get a drink,” you think you need one. “What’s everyone else want?”
“I’ll help you bring them,” Robin says.
You both stand, and everyone tells you what they want. You make your way to the bar and wait your turn. The feelings you have towards Eddie are confusing, and you’re not exactly sure what they even are. Intrigue, attraction, tension. Whatever it is, it’s unfamiliar.
Robin leans on the bar beside you, noticing you looking towards Eddie before even you do. When you pry your eyes away, she’s smirking at you.
“He likes you, you know?”
“Who, Eddie?” You ask even though you know that’s who she’s talking about. “No, he doesn’t. I actually think he dislikes me.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding. I’ve never seen him act like he does around you, and I’ve known him a really long time. Seriously.”
“He’s just being nice,” that’s all it is, you’re convincing her as well as yourself.
“Please. I know he’s hard to read and seems kind of closed-off, but he’s warmer towards you than most people. He barely even talks to clients, usually.”
Everything she’s saying, you can tell she thinks is true, but if you let yourself think it, too, you’d be absolutely fucked. Your mind would go wild with scenarios and imagining what could happen. You’re doing enough of that as is.
“I don’t know, Robin.”
“You’ll see, trust me.”
Unbeknownst to you, a very similar conversation is happening back at the table. Steve and Nancy are trying to knock some sense into Eddie, to get him to realize it’s okay to let someone else in. He denies it all just as you did, his head a mess.
He realizes that you’re not his client anymore, you’re here as a possible friend, and it scares him. There’s no guise to hide under with his urge to care for you.
When you and Robin return with the drinks, you’re the one who hands Eddie his, and when his fingers brush against yours, just barely, he feels them tingle even after the contact ends.
You loosen up a little bit as the night goes on, and you do end up taking your jacket off. The spaghetti straps of your dress leave your tattoo exposed, and Eddie can’t help but look at it. He’s always proud of his work, but seeing it on you is different for him. He likes that his mark is on you.
Nancy and Robin leave first, walking out leaned into each other. The rest of you follow shortly after, Steve slipping out after a quick goodbye. When you stand, you stumble slightly. Eddie catches you, a hand wrapped around your upper arm.
“Let me walk you home,” he says, his hand trailing down your arm lightly before he pulls away completely.
“That’s okay, Eddie. Really.”
You put your jacket back on and struggle to find one of the sleeves, your arm reaching back awkwardly. Once again, Eddie’s quick to help you, pulling your jacket over and guiding your arm to the right spot. You thank him quietly.
“C’mon, it’s dark out.”
“You’re not gonna let me say no, are you?”
He shakes his head, that small smile you so rarely see making an appearance.
The walk is quiet for a bit, the chilled air of the night nipping at your skin, your arms pulling your jacket tight to your chest. He falls into step next to you easily, pace matching yours so he stays right next to you.
He can tell you’re cold, and he resists the urge to throw an arm over your shoulders and pull you closer to warm you up. It’d be weird, he thinks. You barely know him and he’s sure you’d much rather be walking with one of the girls right now than with him.
“Sorry for, like, intruding in your friend group.”
Though you haven’t felt like an outsider, you do feel bad about worming your way into their group that seemed to have stayed the same for so long. You feel bad for the change you caused, the shift.
“What? You’re not,” he says.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, moon girl. I am.”
He knows he might not be the most welcoming person, but he doesn’t mind having you around, really. What he minds is the confusion that comes along with it, which isn’t your fault at all. That’s on him.
“Okay. Thanks for letting me come, then.”
“I think Robin would have smacked me if I didn’t. Besides, you’re nice to have around.”
He doesn’t know if it’s the few drinks or if it’s just a fluke, but the bit of honesty slips out of him with ease. Eddie’s not a trusting person, he’s been through too much for that, but he has never once felt like you were judging him.
The rest of the walk to your apartment is filled with light conversation and small, awkward silences. Having him next to you does make you feel safer, though. You never know what could happen.
He walks you all the way up to your door. You pull out your keys and fiddle with them, your hand shakes when you try to insert it into the lock. You miss a couple of times and feel the embarrassment scorch you. You don’t know if it’s the cold, or the drinks, or if it’s him making your hands unstable. Maybe it’s all of the above.
Yet again, Eddie helps you. He comes up behind you, his chest hovering over your back, close enough to feel the heat of his body, not close enough to touch.
“Here, sweetheart” he wraps his hand around yours and guides the key into the slot, the pet name slipping out without him noticing.
You do notice, though. He says it so softly, and you think it’s your favorite word that’s come out of his mouth so far. It has your heartbeat picking up, a steady thump in your chest.
“Thanks,” you breathe out.
You turn around, leaving the key in the door for now. He’s much closer than you were expecting and he doesn’t back away. Your back against your door, your nose almost touching his.
Then, something shifts, and he’s leaning in and kissing you.
It takes you a second to get over your initial shock, but you recover quickly, winding your arms around his neck and kissing him back. He makes a sound against your mouth when you do, pressing you further into the door. He has a thigh between yours, his hands holding your waist tightly.
He kisses you like he means it, and you forget about everything else. You forget that this Eddie is the same one who puzzles you so much, that not long ago you were convinced that you’d never see him again. And yet, he’s here, kissing you sick in your hallway.
He sucks at your bottom lip, pulling away and letting it snap back into place, opening his eyes to look at you for a second, then he dives back in. Soon enough, he’s licking along the seam of your lips to open you up, and his tongue has your knees weak.
When you whimper into his mouth, he tenses.
He’s snapped back into reality, realizing that he just made out with you against your door. He pulls away, pushing his fingers into his hair. There’s a sudden change, though this one feels much worse than the one where he kissed you.
There are too many things in his head. Thinking he shouldn’t be doing this or that you’ll hate him for it. You’re about to open your mouth and ask him what’s wrong when he speaks first.
“Fuck. I’m sorry,” he steps back until he’s against the wall opposite from you. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Eddie-”
“No, shit. I’m sorry. Good night.”
He’s walking away before you can say anything else. You stand frozen for what could be minutes before finally letting yourself into your apartment. Closing and locking the door behind you, you lean your forehead against the wood and wonder what the fuck just happened.
You’re not sure what you did wrong to make him have to leave so suddenly, and you know it’ll torment you constantly. Replaying in the back of your mind. The worst part is, you were ready to invite him inside, to let him do whatever he wanted with you. He was gone before you could even get there.
Eddie feels awful for leaving the way he did, and he thinks about turning around and knocking on your door the whole way home. He never does, though. He’s sure you don’t want to see him.
You both have a fitful sleep that night. Blocks away, both tossing and turning in bed with that kiss plaguing your minds.
-
Robin and Nancy’s calls grow more frequent over the following couple of weeks, and in turn, so do your encounters with Eddie. You’ve become closer, would like to say you’ve become friends, even. Though, nothing like the kiss that the two of you choose to ignore happens again.
You chalked it up to his tipsiness, he tries to forget it altogether.
It’s not because it was bad, or unwanted. It’s quite the opposite, actually. Eddie’s so used to kissing meaning absolutely nothing, leading to more every single time. Your kiss, though, was completely different. It made him feel more than he knew he was capable of.
He’s surprised that you have yet to say something about it, especially considering the way that he left. It’s a two way street; he doesn’t bring it up at all, either.
He wants to. He wants to be able to explain himself to you, to tell you why he had to pull himself away so quickly. Only, he’s not sure how. He doesn’t know how to explain the way he finds himself drawn to you, the reason he kissed you, or the feeling that runs through him every time you lock eyes. If he can’t even make sense of it himself, how is he supposed to make sense of it to you?
He can’t even bring himself to tell anyone about it because he knows, as much as they try, it won’t help.
Tonight, you’re all piled on the couches in Steve’s apartment (it’s the nicest one) eating pizza straight from the box and chatting. It’s nice to be a part of a true friend group. You’ve never had anything like it before.
“Eddie, you left your guitar here, you know?” Steve says.
He plays guitar? Fuck.
“Shit, yeah. I did.”
“You know what that means,” Robin draws out the last word, shimmying her shoulders.
“No. Absolutely not,” Eddie shakes his head.
“Please! Serenade us, Eddie.”
They go back and forth for a bit and your gaze switches between the two of them like you’re watching a game of ping pong.
“I’d like to hear you play,” you pitch in.
Robin—of course—wears a smirk. She’s been trying to get the two of you together since she saw how you interacted, and she knows Eddie won’t say no to you. He couldn’t if he tried.
“Really?” Eddie asks softly.
“Yeah. I didn’t know you played,” you shift in your seat, “I’d love to hear it. If you want.”
He fiddles with his guitar pick necklace, which you catch. Maybe that should’ve been a dead giveaway that he’s a musician, but you’d never noticed it before, usually hidden by the collar of his shirt.
Eddie’s not usually a nervous person, but the prospect of you listening to him play has him feeling that way. He’s never worried so much about how someone looks at him, or what they might think. With you, he worries because he wants to impress you, he’s realized.
“Yeah, okay. Just for you, I’ll go grab it.”
Just for you. You turn your face away to try and hide how it affects you.
He asks Steve where he left it, and goes off to retrieve it. You watch him walk away until he disappears behind a corner. There’s something about him that pulls you in, something you wish you could figure out. You know you like him, it’s quite obvious, but it’s the kind that has thoughts of him crowding your mind and that has you overthinking every word.
“You guys are paining me, I hope you know,” Robin says.
“We’re just friends. Seriously.”
“Are you sure about that?” Steve adds on. Nancy tends to just observe when the topic of you and Eddie is brought up. She’s a rational person, and she’s trying to let it work itself out naturally. Though, she’s sure it will work out eventually. Hopefully sooner than later.
Eddie comes back before you can manage a reply, holding an acoustic guitar decorated with messy, white, painted-on lettering that says ‘this machine slays dragons.’
He sits down and tunes the guitar first, focused on his task. It gives you a chance to look at him closely, lets you get away with it because the others are watching him, too. Waiting for him to start to play. When he does, you’re transfixed.
Your eyes don’t stray from him at all throughout the song he plays. His fingers move with so much ease, his rings catching the light. It’s no surprise that he’s talented with his hands, just look at the art he creates on people’s bodies everyday. But, this is another layer to it, a piece of him that made you want to see more. Made you want to collect every jigsaw piece until you had the whole image.
You think you could listen to him play for hours on end and never get tired of his strumming. Yeah, you really do like him.
When he finishes, everyone gives him a round of applause, and he hopes his hair does enough to cover up the blush that blooms on his cheeks. He looks to you first, and you’re beaming, looking at him like he’s just done something groundbreaking.
“That was amazing, Eddie,” you say.
“It’s nothing special,” he replies.
“It is. You’re really talented,” you sound so sincere it squeezes his heart in a fist. “Double talented, actually.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.”
He lets it slip again, and you soak it up. Eddie tries to avoid the looks from his friends, especially after the pet name. Surely, they’re all wearing smug smiles and plotting ways to talk him into giving whatever the thing between the two of you is a go.
He sets the guitar aside, clearing his throat amidst the awkward silence. You look at your lap and frown at the run in your tights that you just noticed, avoiding being the first to say anything.
Every new detail you learn about Eddie only makes you like him more. You’re still not sure if he even considers you a friend, but you certainly consider him one. You would ask but decide to save yourself the stress of having to bring it up. The worst part is, the idea of him not liking you hurts more than you’d like to admit.
The silence is eventually broken, and the floodgates of conversation have opened back up. You and Eddie both let out a breath of relief, synchronized in secrecy.
When you get up to leave, Eddie suddenly has the urge to go, too, and he offers to take you home. Much like the time before, he doesn’t let you decline the offer. He’s just being nice, you think to yourself, he would do it for anyone.
This time, he drove, and he opens the passenger door for you when you reach his car. It smells like him inside, sandalwood, something sweet, the underlying smokiness of cigarettes that you don’t mind when it comes to him. He has a pair of dice hanging from his mirror, though they’re twenty-sided instead of your average six.
“You’ll have to give me directions back to yours,” he says, starting the car. “I remember the area, but…”
Yes, he remembers the area all too well. It’s where he lingered after he sprung a kiss on you and then walked away. It’s where he jerked himself around mentally trying to decide whether he should go back to you or just go home.
“Don’t worry, I can be your map.”
The drive is silent save for the music humming through the speakers and your occasional instructions on which turns to take. It isn’t awkward, you don’t think. It’s comfortable in the way that you don’t feel the need to fill it.
One of Eddie’s hands reaches out and lightly tugs on your skirt, “this looks really nice on you.”
He pulls it away after he says it and you wish he didn’t.
“Oh,” you look down at the fabric, something you’ve owned for years, worn when you can’t figure anything else out. It’s never been anything special, but now, you feel like it might be. “Thank you.”
Eddie feels inclined to compliment you all of the time, he’s learned, but he often lets them float in his head rather than say them to you.
He parks on the street by your apartment complex soon after, but you don’t get out right away. You unbuckle your seatbelt and place a hand on the door, but he stops you.
The sight of your building has him thinking about the night you kissed for what feels like the thousandth time. He wants to kiss you again and he clenches his fists to ground himself. If you’re any bit as torn up about it as him, he wants to know. He also wants to try and explain himself to you, even if he still isn’t sure how.
“Hey. About that night,” he doesn’t have to specify. You know exactly what he’s talking about. Your hand lets go of the door handle, settling in your lap. “I’m sorry I kissed you.”
“You are?”
You don’t want him to be sorry, or to feel bad about it. You only want to know what you did to scare him off the way you did. You also want him to kiss you again.
“Um, yeah. I shouldn’t have just sprung onto you like that.”
“Why did you?” Is what you say next.
“I dunno. You just looked so pretty, and I had the urge. The drinks gave me the strength to do it, I guess.”
He hadn’t been drunk, not one bit, but he doesn’t want to use the alternate explanation just yet. He doesn’t want to say ‘I kissed you because you confuse me more than anyone else. Because I’ve never felt so bent out of shape because of one person. Because you were looking at me like you wanted me to, and I can’t say no to you.’
He could, but he doesn’t want to.
“You think I’m pretty?”
He nods, almost ashamed about it.
“I think you’re pretty, too, Eddie,” his eyes lock onto yours, “and I’m not sorry you kissed me at all.”
“What?”
“I liked kissing you. I was going to ask you if you wanted to come inside before you left.”
You don’t know where your candidness is coming from, but you can’t stop yourself anymore. You’ve wondered and wondered what could’ve happened that night had he stayed, and by the way his gaze flicks down to your lips, you think you might find out.
The car suddenly feels smaller, the air thicker, when he asks, “does that offer still stand?”
You nod, he shuts off the car. You both get out, walking up to your place in a sort of haze. Neither of you know what will come from any of this, you’re going in blind and it’s as exciting as it is nerve-wracking.
Things slow down once you’re inside. It’s as if a fog has cleared and now, you’re both painfully aware of everything you’re doing, or saying. His eyes flit around your apartment in silence, looking at your bookshelf, noting the lack of personal photos.
You cut in before he can comment on your place, “can I get you anything? Water, or…”
When he responds, it’s not to your question. Instead, he asks you one: “how’s your tattoo healing?”
He’s been curious about how you’re feeling with it ever since he caught glimpses of it that night at the bar. You pause by your small kitchen island, looking him over before you can manage to reply.
“Oh. Good, I think,” you shrug a shoulder, “I don’t know enough about tattoos but it hasn’t bothered me much.”
“I can look at it, if you want.”
“Are you sure?”
You say it as if he would be going through lots of trouble to do so, when in reality he’s using it as an excuse to get his hands on you. Tattoos are familiar, not foreign the way his feelings for you are. It’s an excuse to ease himself into whatever this is.
“‘Course I am, let me see.”
“Okay. Light’s better in the bathroom.”
He follows you into your bathroom, and you wish you’d taken into account how small it is because you’re forced to be close to him and it’s making you nervous. The anticipation and unknown a flutter of butterflies in your stomach.
“Shirt off,” he says, his voice smooth.
You listen, because it’s hard not to when he sounds the way he does. You turn to face the mirror and peel your shirt away, tossing it to the ground when you do. You’re suddenly very aware that your bra isn’t the nicest you own, and your instinct is to cover it with your arms.
Eddie stops you, his eyes meeting yours in the mirror, his hands wrapping around your wrists gently, pulling them down. “Don’t you dare. You’re beautiful.”
He looks away after he says it, but you can tell he means it. It’s in the way he makes sure you’re looking at him when he speaks, the way he squeezes your wrists reassuringly before letting them go.
For a second, he forgot why you’re even in the position you are. He forgets that he’s meant to be looking at your tattoo until you say, “how is it?”
“Right, yeah,” he looks it over, and he’s satisfied to see that it looks exactly how it should at this stage. “Really good, actually. You’re doing a great job.”
The compliment warms your insides.
“Thank you.”
“Want me to clean it for you?”
“Sure, thanks.”
He does, disinfecting it first, after finding your products on your counter. He’s gentle as usual, his hands a welcome feeling. Then, he applies the layer of lotion slowly, almost like he’s trying to tease you. It’s working.
His hands trail down your arms when he’s done, his head dipping down to press a kiss on the top of your shoulder. The first one is soft, a barely-there push of his lips against your skin. The next is a bit firmer, his confidence growing with each one.
They trail over the curve of your shoulder, his hands still running their paths up and down your arms, raising goosebumps in their wake, his chunky rings cold. He kisses his way up your neck, your head lulling to the side to grant him more access and your eyes fluttering shut.
Everything he does is filing you up more and more and he’s barely even begun.
“Eddie,” you sigh when he tugs on your earlobe with his teeth.
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
He has no idea what’s come over him, but there’s no hiding the effect you have over him anymore. As soon as he got his hands on you, even just to clean your tattoo, he knew he’d be addicted.
“What are you doing?”
“Kissing you. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, yes, it’s- feels nice.”
You would be overthinking if you weren’t so distracted by the feeling of his lips on your skin. And when he uses a hand to tilt your face towards his and kisses you, you’re not sure there’s a single thought left in your head.
There’s something about him that makes everything more intense. You feel like all of your senses are captured by him and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. The smell of his cologne, the taste on his tongue, the feeling of his hands on you and his long hair tickling your skin. All of it.
Eddie pulls away to let the both of you breathe only when it’s absolutely necessary. He’s drunk on every kiss he gets from you and he doesn’t mind one bit. He wonders what you’re like in bed, what sounds you’d make for him, and he can’t stop himself from asking, “can I fuck you?”
The words are spoken between heavy breaths, puffed out against your lips.
“Yes. Please.”
Please, you say. As if you would even have to beg him. You have no idea what you’re doing to him and it only makes him want you more. He pushes his hips against your ass, letting you feel how hard he is and you whimper, you fucking whimper and he’s so gone.
He pushes you down to bed over the counter with a hand on the center of your back, and you obey easily. You’re practically squirming with want, the dampness in your panties growing with every move he makes.
Then, he flips your skirt up, his hands running over the tights that cover you before ripping them in the middle.
“I’ll buy you new ones,” he says.
He keeps a hand on your back, though its drifted much lower, and the other sneaks its way between your legs, cupping you over your underwear before pressing his fingers against you. You can't help but moan at the feeling.
“Soaking already, sweetheart?” He taunts.
“Eddie, come on.”
“What is it?”
“You’re teasing me,” you huff out, your cheek pressed against your cool countertop.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”
He hooks his fingers in the fabric covering you, pulling it aside and going right back to his teasing. His fingers run up and down your slit, dipping into where you’re wet only to pull away and circle your clit; just enough to give you a taste, to have you wanting more.
He’s winding you up and up and up and you think you might pass out if he doesn’t make you come soon.
“Eddie.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve got you.”
It’s then that he pushes one finger in, his rings that still sit around his fingers only add to the intensity. He works a second one in quickly, your cunt sucking him in and he can’t even imagine how good it’ll feel when he gets to fuck you for real.
He’s quick to learn what you like, what makes you pulse around his fingers or moan a little louder. You had no clue that things could ever feel this good and when his thumb finds your clit, you’re absolutely done for.
Your breaths come out hot, bits of condensation gathering on the counter, “fuck. Oh my god.”
“Feel good?” He asks even though he knows damn well it does—your reactions are telling enough. He picks up the pace, his fingers pressing against that spot that has your knees going weak. He wraps his unoccupied arm around your waist to hold you up.
“So, so good, Eddie. Gonna come.”
“Go on, all over my hand, sweetness. Then I’ll fill you right up, how’s that sound?”
Your response is caught in your throat, a whine bubbling out instead.
“Quicker you come, the quicker I’ll give it to you,” he tacks on.
The thought of him fucking you after this drives you nuts because if just his fingers feel this good, you can’t even imagine what his cock will be like. Your orgasm washes over you, eyes rolling back.
He works you through it, steadily slowing down and easing away to give you a break. He pulls his fingers away, chuckling at the noise you make when he does, and sucks them clean. Then, softly, he’s leaning down and kissing his way up your spine.
“Holy shit,” you breathe.
“You okay?”
“More than okay. You’re really good.”
“‘M not done yet, babe.”
He stands back up, but he pulls you along with him so you're no longer resting on the counter. Hands on your hips spin you to face him, and as soon as you do he surges forward to kiss you. It’s quick, like he’s making sure it’s still okay to keep going.
His touch trails up to the band of your bra—which is askew, but still on. “Can I take this off?”
You nod, but he waits for a verbal confirmation before unclasping it and pulling it away from your chest. It joins your shirt on the ground.
You’re suddenly very aware that you’re half-naked and he isn’t. You tug on his shirt, eager to even the score, “you too.”
“Well, it’s only fair, isn’t it?”
He peels his shirt over his head, and you realize that you’ve yet to see his tattoos so closely. You reach out, tracing them lightly with your fingertips. First, the bats that adorn his forearm, working your way up to his shoulder, then down his chest. He lets you, happy to have your hands on him.
While you’re occupied with his tattoos, he looks you over, free to stare without worrying if you’ll notice. His eyes travel across your face, the slope of your nose, the shape of your lips. They go down your neck, a canvas he plans to leave his mark on, and down to your chest that’s now bare.
The sight is enough to remind him of how hard he is, straining against his jeans. He kisses you again, heavier this time, and lets his hands cup your tits, squeezing and thumbing over your nipples. You moan into the kiss and he can’t control himself any longer.
He lifts you up to sit on the counter, close enough to the edge that you’re forced to wrap your legs around him.
“You still want this?” He asks.
Your hands go to his jeans, popping the button open and lowering his zipper slowly, “yeah, Eddie. I want this. I want you.”
I want you. Eddie doesn’t know why the words make his heart go all fluttery, why they make him look at you like you’ve put the stars in the sky just for him. He kisses you all over again.
You fit your hand between his jeans and his boxers, and you gasp into the kiss when you feel just how big he is. He’s wide, and you know the stretch of him will be a kind of burn that hurts so good. You stroke him over his boxers first, but quickly grow impatient to see him.
You tuck your fingers into the waistband of his boxers, pulling them and his jeans down enough to free him. You pull back only to be able to look at him properly, leaning your forehead against Eddie’s bare shoulder, your bottom lip bitten between your teeth because he’s pretty everywhere.
He kisses the side of your head, tender in the midst of the heat of it all.
You think, despite his initial distance, Eddie’s one of the sweetest people you’ve ever met. He shows it in the small things he does. Offering to take you home, the gentleness of his hands, his constant checking in on you to make sure this is what you wanted.
Yeah, you like him a whole lot.
Your hand wraps around his cock, jerking him slowly at first. A tease, he thinks. And then you pick up your pace just a bit and he thinks he might come before he even gets to be inside you and as much as he would love to see your hand covered in him, it’s not what he wants right now.
He’s never wanted anyone like he does you and he knows that information will have him overthinking later, but right now, it just makes him desperate to have you.
“Fuck,” he grabs a hold of your wrist, “as good as this feels, sweetheart, you gotta stop or I’ll come and this’ll be cut short. You don’t want that do you?”
He tips your chin up with his free hand, pecks your lips quickly before giving you the chance to respond.
“No. Want you to fuck me,” you say.
“Dirty girl.”
He reaches for a condom in one of your drawers when you tell him where to find them. When you bought them, you were almost embarrassed, because what were you expecting? Certainly not this.
He’s back on you before you really feel his absence, running his hands up your thighs, under your skirt, and tearing the hole he’d already made wider.
“You want me to stop, you tell me, okay?”
“Okay.”
Pushing your legs apart further to make room for him, he reaches down to paint himself up and down your slit, pushing himself in only when he’s teased the both of you sufficiently.
It’s a welcome stretch, one that’s better than anything you’ve ever felt in situations like this and you wonder why you didn’t move away sooner, if this is what it led to.
Eddie leans forward, resting his hands on the counter on either side of you, close enough that his arms brush against you. His face is close to yours but he doesn’t kiss you, no, he breathes the air you do, swallowing any sound you make.
His first couple of thrusts are tentative, slow, but when you wrap your arms around his neck and speak a quiet, ‘faster, please,’ he dives right in.
Somehow, he manages to know just what you need, and he wraps his arms around your waist to keep you still as he moves harder, quicker. Both of you are still half dressed, your clothes in disarray and his are pushed to his knees. You’re both so wrapped up in want and it shows.
“Fuck me,” you whine as he hits that spot inside you, like he’s done it a hundred times before.
“Thought that’s what I was doing, sweets.”
“Eddie.”
“I know, baby. You’re doing so good.”
He knows your orgasm is creeping up on you, he can feel it in the way you pulse around him, squeeze him tighter, bury your face in his neck so that your moans are pushed into his skin.
If he could, he thinks he’d get the sound of them permanently etched into his mind.
“Taking it so well. You wanna come, sweet girl?”
You nod against his skin, “yes. Yes, can I?”
He snakes a hand down to rub your clit, to push you over that edge and says, “let go. Give it to me.”
It’s like his words were what you were waiting for, the breaking point to let you finish. It’s enough to make your moans get caught in your throat and your eyes squeeze shut, seeing stars.
“Oh my god,” you choke out.
“That’s it,” he works you through it, and only when he’s sure that you’re on the comedown does he let himself finish, too.
He pulls your head from his neck with a hand cupping the back of yours, kissing you to really seal the deal, coming with a grunt into your mouth.
When he’s spent, he rests his forehead against yours, running his hands up and down your back soothingly, “you okay?”
“Mmm. Amazing,” you reply, dazed with a fucked out smile on your face. “Why’re you good at everything?”
He chuckles, kissing your cheek before pulling out, “maybe I’m just good at them with you.”
Discarding the condom and pulling his boxers back up—removing his jeans completely—he then finds a small towel and wets it in the sink. Meanwhile, you take off the rest of your outfit, figuring he’s seen enough already. He cleans you up first, delicate hands and a soft apology when you wince from the sensitivity.
He picks you up when he’s done, your legs wrapped around his waist and your head dropped against his shoulder. It feels natural, he thinks, to take care of you the way he would a lover. You feel like you belong there, in his hold, and he knows that you’ve changed him in a way.
His reluctance to get into any kind of relationship seems to have flown out the window now.
The door across the hall is the first he tries, and he guessed correctly when he finds your bedroom on the other side of the door.
He lays you down on your bed, and you pull the blankets up over yourself, lazily. You don’t think you’ll ever be able to look at Eddie the same way, but it’s not a bad thing. It’s not because of the sex, though it was notably the best you’ve ever had and you’ll undoubtedly think about it constantly. It’s because you have feelings for him. Real, true, romantic feelings that run far too deep for you to ignore.
He goes to leave, but you catch his wrist, “you can stay.”
“What?”
“I want you to stay with me. If you want to,” you say.
“Yeah, I’ll stay.”
He doesn't even hesitate, and he tries not to think about what that means for this thing he knows is blooming between you, its petals unfurling slow and steady. He slips into bed beside you, welcoming you when you snuggle into his side.
“Goodnight, Eddie.”
“Night, moon girl.”
You’re both fucked, literally and figuratively.
-
You wake up the most well-rested you’ve felt in a while. Flipping onto your back, you stretch out, and it’s only then that you feel the emptiness on the other side of the bed.
For a moment, you’d almost forgotten Eddie had been there in the first place. Then, you remembered you were, in fact, naked. The slight ache between your legs was enough to have last night coming back to you in a rush.
You wonder if maybe Eddie had to leave for work, but you don’t find a note or any indication of his departure. Instead, you hear the clanking of pans and plates coming from the kitchen.
You throw on a fresh pair of underwear and one of your oversized sleep shirts that sits at the top of your thighs. You’re still groggy, mind slower with sleep, but you’re awake enough to hear Eddie humming when you open your bedroom door and step out into the hall.
There he is, standing by your stove, cooking breakfast. You rub your eyes to make sure you’re not dreaming. Or seeing things.
He moves around like he’s been using your kitchen for ages, and his presence warms the space that you’ve had such a hard time getting used to. You recognize the song he’s humming to be the one he played on the guitar. The corners of your mouth lift up.
“Eddie?” You call quietly, careful not to startle him while his back is turned to you.
“Oh,” he faces you, frying pan in his hand, “morning, sweetheart.”
“Hi.”
“I’m making us breakfast, I hope that’s okay.”
Is he kidding? It’s the most okay thing anyone’s done for you in a long time and you don’t know whether you want to cry or kiss him. He’s unlike anyone you’ve known, and you can’t believe how different he is now compared to when you first met.
His guard was up, short responses and little emotion. It’s a stark contrast to now, to the way he stands clad only in his boxers and his shirt from the night before, flipping a pancake like it’s the easiest thing in the world. You don’t know how he could even keep the saccharine boy hidden, it seems to ooze out of him now.
“It’s- Eddie, this is really sweet.”
The tips of his ears go pink.
He doesn’t know what possessed him to cook for you, or why the sincerity in your appreciation makes him blush. All he knows is that he thought it would be nice to make you smile, and that there’s something in his chest that seems to expand when you do.
“I hope you like pancakes,” he says.
That morning is the moment you realize you’re falling in love with Eddie Munson.
-
It’s been weeks since that night, that morning. Somehow, rather than put distance between the two of you, you and Eddie have grown closer. You think he’s one of the best friends you’ve ever had, even though you haven’t known him very long.
You’re not falling in love with him anymore. No, you’re deep in it now.
Of course, Robin was able to draw it out of you, and after all of her assuring you that there’s absolutely no way Eddie doesn’t feel the same, you still can't let yourself believe her. You’ll bever come back from it if you find out he doesn’t when you’ve built up your expectations.
So, you keep them low. He’s your friend, that’s all it’ll ever be and you know it. Or, at least, that’s what you keep telling yourself every time you catch yourself getting a little too lost in him.
You’re meant to be meeting the gang at the tattoo shop and then head somewhere for drinks all together. Because you’re not only close with Eddie now, you’ve found yourself friends that are real and true. Sometimes you find yourself wondering what your life would’ve been like had you been in high school alongside them. You think it would have been much, much better, but you have them now and that’s what matters.
You knock on the door when you get there, the shop already closed and locked up. You’re quickly greeted with Robin’s grinning face on the other side of the glass. She lets you in and wraps you in a brief hug.
“I think you should start working here just so I don’t have to miss you at all in between plans,” she says, stepping back and locking the door again.
“We both know I don’t have the skills for that, but I missed you, too, Robin.”
“Not as much as you missed me, I hope,” is how Eddie chooses to announce his presence.
“Hi, Eddie.”
“Hi, sweetheart.”
Robin scoffs at him, “can you not steal my thunder for once, please.”
“I’m not allowed to say hi to my friend?”
He looks at you when he says friend, like he’s sharing a secret. Only, you have no idea what it might be.
“Whatever. I have to go get Nance since she went home to change,” she gathers her stuff from the desk. Then, she points to you and says, “I better get a very detailed life update later.”
“You know you will,” you say.
“‘Kay, see you soon!”
She leaves after that, and Eddie’s gaze is already fixed on you when you turn towards him.
“C’mere,” he nods towards the doors that lead to the back room, where the station he tattooed you at is all set up.
“What’s this?”
“I want you to give me a tattoo.”
Your eyes widen, “sorry?”
“I’m serious. Doesn’t have to be big, it can be a dot if you want,” he gently nudges your chin with his finger, closing your mouth where it was dropped in surprise. “I wanna teach you.”
Your friendship isn’t the only thing that’s grown since that night. Eddie’s become more touchy with you, too. An arm slung over your shoulders, a hand on your thigh or the nape of your neck. Though this touch is small, it doesn’t fail to leave a lasting effect where it was placed, a warmth, like a drop of sunlight. It almost distracts you from what he’s asking.
“Eddie, I can’t. I’ll mess it up.”
“Babe, I’ve got loads of tattoos. Trust me, it’ll be fine,” he moves his hand to your shoulder, gives it a squeeze. “Plus, you’ve got a great teacher.”
It takes a bit longer for him to convince you, but he succeeds in the end. It’s hard to say no to someone you’re in love with, especially if that someone has really good puppy dog eyes.
Before you really even process it, he’s on the tattoo bed, a pant leg rolled up, shaving a small patch for you to use as your canvas. He does all of the prepping necessary, and even goes as far as to put the gloves on for you.
He explains it all slowly, repeats whatever you ask him to, and promises to guide you through it all. You’re incredibly nervous—who wouldn’t be?
“Relax. You’re gonna be a natural, I know it.”
“How do you know that?”
“You’ve got good hands, sweetheart,” he drops one of his eyelids in a wink.
The flirting is something else that’s become more frequent. You think he’s flirting, that is. He doesn’t act the same way with the rest of the group and you know that, but you also need to not get your hopes up. Still, the butterflies come alive.
You draw your stencil, settling on a very simple rendition of the sun. A small circle with short lines as its rays. It’s fitting for him, you think. As much as he seems like midnight on the outside, that boy is dripping in sunshine.
It also goes with the one he gave you, but that’s just a bonus.
Once it’s applied and you’re sat on the stool, in position to begin, he explains it all over again. He knows you’re nervous, but he isn’t at all. He’s excited to have you do this, to wear a piece of you on his skin.
His hand wraps around yours on the tattoo gun for the first line, guiding you so that you can get the feel of it. He lets you take over after that, assuring you that there’s nothing you could mess up enough to have him dislike it, as long as you’re the one doing it.
As he watches you work, your tongue poking out between your lips in focus, he feels his chest swell. He’s never liked anyone the way he does you, and he’s never let someone untrained tattoo him, that’s for sure. There’s something in him that seems to brighten when you’re around, and he doesn’t know how to put it into words.
He wishes he could pluck the moon out of the sky and hold it in his hand, only to be able to give it to you. Since he can’t do that, he hopes his heart will do good enough. He loves you, that he knows, he just can’t bring himself to say the words out loud.
He’s warmed up to you quicker than ever, so much so that the people around him have noticed. That means something and he knows it.
“I think I’m done,” you say after a bit.
“Yeah? Let’s see this work of art then.”
He sits up, bends closer to his leg to get a look at your handiwork. He’s silent at first and it makes you nervous.
“What do you think?”
“It’s perfect,” he says.
You know it’s far from perfect. The lines aren’t even, nor are they all straight. But he says it like he means it, believes it, so you let yourself smile at that.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, sweetheart. I’m super sure.”
He wouldn’t have ever picked out the sun for himself, but knowing that you would has his walls crumbling even more—if that’s even possible with you.
He does the cleaning and the wrapping, and you’re happy to observe. Just as he’s finishing up, Robin and Nancy walk in, Steve not far behind.
“I leave you guys for not even an hour, and now you have a tattoo?” Robin says, though she doesn’t even sound surprised.
-
Eddie thinks his feelings swell and grow every single time he sees you, and he thinks they might just boil over and pour out of him before he even gets to figure out what to say. That won’t do. You deserve more than that.
You deserve to be taken on a date, to be appreciated and taken care of properly, and that’s what he needs to do. The only problem is, he has no idea how to go about it all.
There’s only one person he can think of who will know exactly what to do. The expert in dating; Steve. Eddie calls him into his office.
“What’s up, boss?” Steve says, leaning against the doorway the way he always does.
“Close the door, would you?”
“Shit. Am I in trouble? I may have spilled some ink the other day but you can barely even see it, swears.”
Eddie shakes his head, making note to take a look around his station later. He’s used to Steve’s clumsiness, though, it’s part of the reason he wanted dark floors in the shop.
“No. That’s not- I need your help.”
“Oh. Okay, hit me.”
“I want to ask her out. I just don’t really know, um, where to take her or whatever.”
Eddie doesn’t even have to say your name for Steve to know who he’s talking about. He’s painfully aware that he’s been quite obvious with his affections, especially ever since the night you had sex. He’s always itching to have his hands on you in some way, stealing you away from other conversations, all of it.
That night was like a wake up call for him, a bucket of cold water dumped over his head. He knew there was something about you before that, but it became concrete.
He’d never felt so connected to someone, nor had he been so eager to take care of them afterwards. Hell, he’s never even slept in the same bed as his hookups. He can count on one hand the number of times he’s slept over at all. Then, there was you, asking him to stay and he couldn’t say no to you. He didn’t want to, either.
“You know her better than I do, man. But, flowers, you gotta do. They love that. Do you know her favorites?”
Eddie shakes his head.
“That’s fine. Get a good mix. Other than that, you should just be honest, that’s what Robin always tells me,” he shrugs. “Why don’t you just call her now?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Come on! She’s gonna say yes. She gives you those lovey-dovey eyes all the time.”
“Okay, that’s enough. Out.”
“Not even a thank you?”
“Thanks, Steve. Bye.”
Steve rolls his eyes as he leaves Eddie’s office, shutting the door behind him again. He, along with Nancy and Robin, knows that you and Eddie will end up together, it’s obvious to everyone except you two, they only want to help it along.
Eddie really hopes that their pestering will be worth it in the end. That you’ll feel the same.
He stares at the phone sitting on his desk for what feels like ages before he musters up the courage to actually call you. He had your file open on his desk, your number written out on one of the forms. He finally picks up the phone and dials it.
Luckily, you weren’t at work. You’d been thinking of Eddie more and more each day it seemed. How he looked at you, the secret smiles that he saved just for you, the way he touched you, the way he felt-
The phone ringing cuts off your train of thought. You walk over and pick it up, prepared for it to be Robin or Nancy since they’re the only ones that ever call you besides your boss. The voice on the other line is neither of them.
“Hello?”
“Hey, sweetheart. It’s Eddie.”
As close as you’ve gotten, for some reason, no phone numbers have been exchanged. You wish they had been, because hearing his voice crackle through the phone is a much nicer sound than most.
“Eddie, hi. How’d you get my number?”
He twists one of his rings around with his thumb. He’s glad you can’t actually see him, because you’d surely be able to tell that he’s nervous.
“It’s on file in the shop. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. I like talking to you,” you say, soft and sincere. “What’s up?”
“I, uh,” he shakes his head, trying to figure out exactly what to say. “Are you busy tonight?”
“No, I’m not. Do you guys want to do something?”
“Not exactly,” he says.
Your heart beats quicker in your chest, because you think he’s about to ask you out, maybe. If not that, then at least ask you to do something with just him, which is close enough for you to consider it a win. You smile like an idiot.
He clears his throat and continues, “I wanted to know if you’d want to go out… with me.”
It’s happening, you think. Something is shifting as you speak, the feelings you’ve tried to suppress for so long are itching to come out.
“Like a date?” You ask. Just to be sure.
“Yeah, moon girl. Like a date.”
“I’d really, really like that, Eddie.”
He thinks you can probably hear the smile in his voice when he says, “yeah? Me too.”
He tells you he’ll pick you up, to wear whatever you like, not to worry about being over or underdressed, ‘you’ll look pretty either way, trust me,’ he’d said.
When you hang up, you’re trying not to jump around and squeal like a thirteen year old. It’s difficult to contain your excitement, your nerves, your hope. It feels as if a door is opening. A door to more nights like that night, more mornings with shared breakfast, more kissing, more than friends. More, more, more.
Meanwhile, Eddie’s wondering how he’ll get through the rest of the work day when his head is filled with the promise of seeing you.
-
After much debating on what to wear, no thanks to Eddie’s sweet yet vague instructions, the buzzer sounds in your apartment. You make your way over, one shoe on, the other in your hand. You press the button and speak.
“Hello?”
“Hey, moon girl.”
“Eddie,” he only said three words and you’re already smiling. “Come on up.”
You rush to get your other shoe on, luckily finishing up just as he knocks on your door. There’s a moment where you’re almost expecting someone else to be on the other side, to have been dreaming the whole date up. Luckily, it’s real.
Eddie stands in the hall, pretty as ever. His hair is in its usual mess of waves and curls, his classic leather jacket and denim vest duo are on, and in his hand, a bouquet of flowers.
He notices you looking at them and holds them out, “these are for you.”
“This is really nice, Eddie. Thank you.”
You take them from him, holding them up to your nose to smell them (and also to hide how wide your grin is). He stands by the door, a ball of nerves, and watches you put them into a big cup, because you never had a reason to buy a vase until now. He decides next time, he’ll deliver the flowers in a vase just so you have one.
He holds your hand on the way down, opens the car door for you and makes sure your legs are tucked inside before closing it, he tells you in at least three different ways how beautiful you look during the car ride alone, and he drives with a hand resting on your thigh, your fingers toying with his rings.
He’s an absolute dream.
He takes you to a small restaurant, fancy enough for a date—though you think being with Eddie, no matter where, would be enough for you—but casual enough that you aren’t too worried about the people around you being judgemental. You sit in a booth and instead of across, Eddie sits beside you. He keeps a hand on your thigh during your meal, too.
In his car once more, you’re sitting in the parking lot with music playing through the speakers. Eddie hasn’t made a move to start driving you yet, and you haven’t even thought about going home. You haven’t ever been on an official date before, but if you had, you’d say with absolute certainty that this is the best one.
You sit sideways in the passenger seat so you can look at him, and Eddie’s head is turned toward you, his cheek against the headrest.
“Have you had a girlfriend before?” You ask.
You don’t know why the thought comes out of your mouth. You’d been thinking it, though. Robin’s always hinting at how different he is with you, at the fact that Eddie’s never brought a girl he’s liked around his friends. You’re curious.
“No, I haven’t. Why do you seem surprised?”
“It’s just, you’re really good at this.”
“At what, sweetheart?”
“Like, going on a date. And… other stuff, too.”
He shifts in his seat, resting an elbow on the center console and leaning closer to you. Much, much closer. Your noses are almost touching and you can see the way his eyelashes frame his eyes.
He nudges his nose against yours, “what stuff?”
You know he’s teasing you, trying to make you give him more detail because it’ll make you go all shy or embarrassed. To him, it’s cute, and he’s been trying not to kiss you all night. He was going to wait until he dropped you off like a proper gentleman, but he figures making it through dinner is good enough.
“Eddie,” you draw his name out, almost whining.
“Tell me. Come on, please? You can’t just bring it up and not share.”
The hand of his that isn’t resting between you comes up to push your hair over your shoulder, then slides around to hold the back of your neck loosely.
“God, okay. Um, you’re a good kisser. Like, really good,” he leans in and pecks you for that, pulling away just enough to let you keep talking, your lips still brushing against his. “And, I love your hands.”
“My hands?”
“They’re very talented. You know, ‘cause you’re an artist, and all.”
He huffs and shakes his head. Enough of the teasing, he leans in and kisses you deeper this time. Your hands move and grip the sides of his jacket, holding him close to you.
You kiss, and kiss, and kiss, and it’s enough to have you panting and warm all over. His hand squeezes your neck gently before he pulls away, his lips slick with spit, swollen and darker from your kiss. You’re sure yours don’t look much different.
Eddie drops his forehead against yours, takes both of your hands in his, “do you want to go home?”
You shake your head.
“Can I show you my place, then?”
“Yeah, okay. I’d like that.”
He’s not saying it to get you in his bed, though there’s no doubt that would be a bonus, but he doesn’t want this date to end. There’s also a part of him that wants to see you in his apartment, let you into more of his life.
He’s only ever been to yours, and he doesn’t have the whole group over at his, so you’ve never seen it. He thinks, if he’s really going to give this a shot, he might as well let another wall crumble down for you.
The drive there is fairly quick, and yet again, his hand finds your thigh. This time, though, he lets his fingers hold on, rather than just rest in your lap. You like it a lot.
-
Eddie’s apartment isn’t what you expect. You thought it’d be decorated like the shop: dark colors, black and white art, hints of red. His place is much warmer, much homier. It suits him perfectly.
He has a huge record collection, a whole wall of his living room dedicated to the shelves and the player itself. He also has a shelf for his books. Some more worn than others, letting you know which are his favorites of the bunch.
You trail your fingers along the spines, admiring his collection. He lets you, standing not too far away, enjoying how you look in his space.
His bathroom is much like yours, small and plain, but it’s tidy save for some products of his strewn about the counter. His bedroom is so obviously his that it makes you smile. From the rings and other jewelry sitting atop his dresser, to his dark gray bedding, to the guitars that are displayed proudly, to the desk pushed into a corner with pages upon pages spread about.
You gravitate towards that desk without a second thought.
There’s something so intimate about seeing his art station in his home, much different to his office at the shop. Here, he can let it be a mess, and can draw whatever he pleases.
“Is it okay if I look at these?” You ask.
“‘Course,” he says. He walks up behind you, lets his hands hold your sides loosely and rests his chin on your shoulder. You revel in the warmth of his chest against your back.
You pick up some of the loose pages, looking at the different pieces. Skulls and flowers and landscapes and so much more. He can do it all, you think. You can see so much detail, the strokes of his pencil, and it’s clear how much talent he has.
“These are all beautiful, Eddie.”
He turns his head to peck your cheek, “thank you, sweetheart.”
You reach for a worn sketchbook next, the cover peeling at the edges and the pages nearly full. It flips open to where it seems to have been used the most, the spine broken. What you see makes you gasp quietly, but Eddie’s close enough to hear it.
Covering the pages are drawings of the moon. Over and over again he drew them. Some are big, taking up an entire page, and some are scrawled into corners and empty spaces, like he couldn’t stop adding them. All of these drawings for your tattoo, and he’d only shown you a few.
“It’s weird, right?” Eddie says, hiding his face in your neck.
If he’s honest, he forgot that sketchbook was even there. He couldn’t forget about the drawings you found—you’d taken up so much of his thoughts after meeting that he couldn’t stop drawing the fucking moon for you. There are so many and he’s embarrassed by it, because he really was screwed after the first day even when he refused to see it.
“No, it’s- these are all for me?”
“Couldn’t stop thinking ‘bout you, so I drew these,” he speaks into your skin. “I was trying to avoid my feelings for you, but clearly, that didn’t work. You wouldn’t get out of my head and I had no idea why.”
You turn in his hold, leaving the sketchbook open on his desk. You look at him, the way his cheeks are pink at your finding of his drawings, the way his eyes flick between yours.
“I love them. Every single one,” I love you. “I thought about you a lot, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm. So much. You made me nervous at first,” you admit, your hands fiddling with the collar of his shirt.
“I’m not used to, um, opening up to people and all. I’ve never even been in a relationship,” his hands come up and grab yours, like he needs the comfort. “You make me want to try, though.”
You have to say it. There’s no way you can’t, not when he’s looking at you with those eyes filled with something.
“I love you, Eddie,” his eyes widen, he freezes. “You don’t have to say it back or anything, I just really needed to tell you. You’re the first sense of comfort I’ve found since I moved, and I don’t think I would have felt at home without you and I love you.”
No matter how scared he is to be with you, because he wants to be someone worth being with and he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he can’t ignore the fact that he loves you right back. And he hasn’t said those words to many people in his life.
It’s big for him, so big that he’s stumbling over his words but he tries anyway.
“Oh my god,” he kisses your knuckles, “I love you, sweetheart. My moon girl, fuck, I love you, too. I’ve never done this before, but there’s nobody else I’d want. Nobody.”
You feel so many things at once. Relief and happiness and a thousand fireworks in your gut and in your heart. You grab his face with your hands and drag him down to kiss you.
It’s broken by your smiles, your teeth bumping into each other but neither of you care one bit. He holds your wrists gently, returns your kiss with ease. He’s delicate with his touch, so, so perfect with his lips on yours.
He only pulls away to ask, “will you be mine? Be my girlfriend?”
You nod vehemently, “been yours since you kissed me the first time. Probably even before that.”
You’re not worried about the ‘told you so’s you’re sure to get from your friends, or what happens next because you know whatever it is, Eddie’s gonna be there.
“Think you had me the minute you started talking ‘bout the moon.” He just didn’t know it yet.
༄
if you enjoyed, please leave a reblog or let me know what you thought! it helps loads more than you think <3
Warnings for the whole Story: MINORS DNI! 18+, smut, slow burn, drug use etc. will add onto this as I continue writing it.
part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 , part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15, part 16
taglist
Summary: You couldn’t believe it, but you knew that since seeing him at that Talent Show, you’d always had a little crush on Eddie. It was pure insanity to assume that this would ever lead to something more, he was almost a High School dropout, being held back the second time now, and he was the school’s drug dealer. You couldn’t risk the crystal-clear perfect façade you had built over the last few years, including tons of studying, going to church, physical exercise and dating Hawkins High’s King Jason Carver, just because of a stupid High School crush that hadn’t even talked to you since Middle School. It was insanity. But his smile…
Be kind - this is my first time posting my stuff on Tumblr. You can also read this on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39985251/chapters/100130499
i’d recommend listening to my eddie playlist while reading <3
Warnings for this Chapter: slight unwanted violence, blood
Wordcount: 1.7k
Chapter 1: library encounters
Hawkins High always resembled a chaotic, uncoordinated battlefield at the beginning of term. It began over a week ago, yet Freshmen were still scrambling around, trying desperately to find their classrooms. They kept their gazes steadily on the ground to not provoke any of the Seniors, especially the Jocks, which inevitably included You. Of course, you never considered yourself intimidating or mean for that fact. Still, your position as a Senior and the Head Cheerleader somehow radiated a certain sense of authority over others.
This was your last year of High School, and the thought filled you with dread as you had no idea where the future would lead you. You understood that your parents expected you to directly get into an Ivy League college – your grades indeed spoke for that fact - but you weren’t so sure if you even actually desired that. Disappointing your parents was undoubtedly not on the to-do list this year, so you quickly shook your head in an attempt to get rid of the thought.
“Hey babe, you alright?” a gentle voice beside you said, and you immediately got yanked out of your dreamy state, right back to the present.
Jason - your boyfriend and head of the Basketball Team you were cheering for – had his arm locked around your neck but was now pulling you to the side softly, staring into your eyes with concern. At the same time, your back was pressed scarcely against the wall.
Somewhat startled at the notion, you nodded, observing the white tiles on the floor while fidgeting with the skirt of your cheer uniform. “I’m sorry, Jason, I’m alright. Thank you.”
You looked back at him, but to your surprise, he was not gazing at you anymore, but at something down the hall, his jaw clenched tight, his left hand rolling into a fist.
Confused, you followed his gaze steadily, and as you spotted what had caught his eye, your heart skipped a beat. Besides the loud laughter, the brown curly hair was definitely too big not to notice. He and his gang stood out like a sore thumb.
He was dressed in black ripped pants with white sneakers, and a band cover patched jeans vest over a leather jacket. You knew the bands, though you’d never admit that to Jason or any of your friends. They’d probably laugh at you and believe you’d fallen into the Satanic Panic, actively following the Devil.
“I can’t believe the Freak got held back AGAIN. At this point, they should just chuck him out of the school for good”, Jason taunted through his clenched teeth.
You’d known Eddie Munson ever since Middle School. In fact, you both took part in the same Talent Show, but you’d doubt he’d remember. In fact, it’s kind of embarrassing that you did. He was playing with his band, and it was one of the first times you’d discovered that type of music since your parents never allowed you to listen to anything but the ICMRS, aka the Indiana Christian Music Radio Station.
After his performance, you gathered all your courage, went up to him and asked him about the song he’d played. Eddie was way too startled to reply. In fact, you even believed you had insulted him until the next day in Math Class when he brought you a little cassette of his favourite band at the time called Black Sabbath.
You listened to that tape every time you got the chance and hid it every time your parents went through your things. You still hear it sometimes. Though you’d never confess it.
Before you comprehended what was happening, Eddie turned around, and his gaze met yours. For a brief second, the two of you stared directly into each other’s eyes then you flinched away, breaking up the look with Eddie and stepping out of Jason’s grip.
Jason goggled at you, completely confused until you told him you’d meet him after school for Cheer and Basketball practice. He scarcely seemed to hear what you were saying, though, because his Basketball Team was jogging towards him, greeting and cheering. With a sigh and a last short glance back at Eddie, who was still staring at you, you disappeared behind the corner.
Two weeks had passed since that short encounter – if you could even call it that, the two of you barely had any contact besides that sharp eye gazing - and to your embarrassment, it was still on your mind.
You were strolling around the library in-between the book-packed shelves searching for a particular book you had to read for English Literature, trying your best to concentrate. Still, your mind drifted repeatedly as you pranced in-between the shelves.
Eddie never turned up to any Basketball Games, and you hated to admit it, but a small part of you wished he did. Hoped he’d see your Cheer routine. You couldn’t believe it, but you knew that since seeing him at that Talent Show, you’d always had a little crush on Eddie.
It was pure insanity to assume that this would ever lead to something more, he was almost a High School dropout, being held back the second time now, and he was the school’s drug dealer.
How no one had snitched on him yet was honestly a miracle, but you assumed that it was because no one actually wanted to lose their direct plug. You couldn’t risk the crystal-clear perfect façade you had built over the last few years, including tons of studying, going to church, physical exercise and dating Hawkins High’s King Jason Carver, just because of a stupid High School crush that hadn’t even talked to you since Middle School. It was insanity. But his smile…
Upon realizing where your thought was going, you scoffed at yourself loudly, staring up only noticing that you had ended up in the Fantasy section of the library. Irritated, you exhaled laboriously and spun around, instantly colliding with something soft. The books the person had held dropped to the floor, splattered all around.
“God, I’m so sorry I didn’t see you there”, you mumbled, sinking to the floor and picking up the scattered books.
“Now that’s a first”, a voice replied, and you froze. You could tell by the way they spoke a deep grin was engrained on their face. Before you could accomplish anything, the person kneeled opposite you, bringing his grin down.
His curls were even wilder up close, and you noticed how deep and soft his brown eyes were. You also caught what was on his Baseball Shirt now; a Devil’s face with a font on top that read – “Hellfire Club”.
“You know when you’re done staring, you could hand me back my books”, he grinned again, pointing his ring-covered fingers at the books you were retaining against your chest. Trying to act nonchalant and unbothered, you rose to your feet again, handing the books over.
“There you go”, you stated, giving him a faint smile back, gaping at how his fingers brushed against yours when handing over the books. The short touch felt like slight electricity but you immediately flinched away at the sensation. You couldn’t help but notice the books he was carrying.
“Deities and Demigods?” you asked, raising an eyebrow. “Yeah…” he replied, “… it’s not every day you find a book about yourself in the school library.” To your and Eddie’s surprise, you couldn’t help but hold back a short chuckle which earned you a “SHHTTT!” from the other side of the room. His grin widened at this.
“Now are my eyes and ears deceiving me, or does the Queen of Hawkins High actually have a sense of humour?” he questioned while leaning against one of the shelves, the books held casually in his left hand. You rolled your eyes at this, still slightly grinning, staring back down at the books.
“You want to tell me what those books are really about?”
“Oh, these old things?” he asked, waving the books around his head, “…well… have you ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons?”
“The game that contains and promotes satanic worship?” you replied sarcastically.
“That very one….” Eddie smiled, “…well we have a club”, he pointed at his shirt, “Hellfire club, to be exact, and we play together. I’m their fierce Dungeon Master, of course.” He bowed before you, and you couldn’t hold back a smile. He straightened himself again and looked you up and down, driving you to blush a little and stare down at the floor.
“You know you should come by and check out the club if you have-”
“What the hell is this, Freak?” a voice sounded off from behind you, and you rotated around only to witness Jason gaping at the both of you, fuming.
“Oh, hello, Carver, I’m just turning your girlfriend over to the dark side, nothing new, you know how it goes”, he expressed, winking at Jason.
Panic flowed through your body, and you replied instantly: “Jason, it’s really noth-"but he cut you off immediately.
"Stay away from my girlfriend, you Freak”, he hissed, seizing you by the upper arm and hauling you to the side. Eddie pulled a face, putting his fingers up to his head, imitating Devil’s horns while sticking out his tongue.
“Jason, this is really not necessary”, you hissed back, slapping his hand away and hurrying out of the library without looking back. Jason rushed after you, talking his sense into you, saying how dangerous Eddie was, how he worshipped the Devil, how he lived in a Trailor Park, how he had nothing in his brain, how he sold drugs and to generally stay away from him if you knew what was good for you.
You ignored him the complete time he was rambling, and you could tell he was getting more enraged with every moment you did not talk to him. Then out of nowhere, he stepped in front of you, making you flinch to the side and crashing your head into an open locker beside you. You cursed, and Jason was frozen in place as your hand reached up to your head, blood clinging to your fingers.
“Wait, let me-” Jason said, but you jerked your head, annoyed.
“I think you did enough, Jason.”
You turned and rushed to the Girl’s bathroom, Jason following you with his gaze but not moving any further.
Pairing | Eddie x Female reader 18+. Steve x Robin x Female reader platonic friendship
Series summary | Dustins older sister got brought into the group during the events of Starcourt mall, 3 months on she's in her senior year and the kids are starting high school. After everything that went down she feels that she has to keep them safe at all costs, that includes keeping them way from the charismatic 'freak' Eddie Munson that runs a club based on their favourite game. They've both hated each other since her freshman year -with good reason-, but when keeping distance between the kids and Eddie means putting herself in the firing line, boundaries get blurred, intentions get lost & the heart speaks louder than the brain.
The story is told from both Y/N & Eddies point of view.
What to expect | Slow burn enemies to lovers, Angst - with a happy ending, fluff & smut (in the later chapters). 18+ to read this story.
Series Warnings | Mentions of abuse, drug use, 18+ smut content
Chapter word count | 3.2k word count
Chapter warnings | Mention of physical abuse & Drug use
Any & All comments/reblogs are most appreciated - Love, P. x 🌿
Authors Note | I really hoped you enjoyed it & if you read the entire chapter then thank you for reading! I plan on putting a lot of effort into this story so it may be slow going at first before we see some development between Eddie x y/n. Feel free to let me know what you think! Take care sunflower 🌻, P. x
Y/N | October 1985
It had not even surpassed a month since the quote 'Fire of Starcourt Mall devastates Hawkins' had been splayed across static ridden TV sets in almost every household as it broke across our dearest - and allegedly cursed -towns news headlines and quickly spiralled into a national sensation, the deaths of the flayed blamed on it.
I didn't have to imagine what people thought about that "poor dammed Hawkins town' when they saw the news, up until June I was of the same mind as the rest of the towns terrified residents. Housewives had huddle together in the aisles of Hawkins stores; heads close together as the whispers broke out above the white noise.
“Yes, that’s right, ever since that Byers boy went missing, nothing has been right and all of these tragic deaths. I’m telling you Helen; it almost devilish what’s been happening. Hawkins can’t catch a break, we’re cursed, cursed I tell you.”
And with those venomous words loudly whispered into the eagerly awaiting ears of the notorious town gossip, it had taken only all of an afternoon for that gossip to turn factual and become the opinion held in the highest regard by most residents. Unlike those oblivious to the actual truth, I liked to think I wouldn’t have been so naive and gullible to believe the theories circulating the grapevine, some even more farfetched and implausible than what actually occurred last summer.
Well, almost, I amended. Sometimes I wondered if I would have been better off being continually blissfully unaware of what was beneath my feet at this exact moment. But my brother Dustin and his nerdy friends had come to me for help, whirling me into the most thrilling and traumatising week of my life.
Somehow having read some Russian literature and being able to crack some stupid code that Dustin wouldn’t explain the importance of, corelated to me being stuck in a secret Soviet Russian base elevator underground the famous Starcourt mall. I had sat with my head between my knees for hours, the cold metal of the grates in the floor pushing into my thighs while Dustin explained the past 3 years of our lives from his point of view.
I couldn’t keep up with his voice. Between some band geek from school that I recognised by face only, rubbing my back and kept asking if I was going to hurl, Lucas Sinclair’s kid sister humorous running commentary interrupting Dustin’s story at points and Steve the freaking hair Harrington pacing with his hands on his hips, inspecting the roof and telling Dustin to hurry up. I cut him off halfway through telling a story of something called a Dart. His goofy grin faded from his face as I stood up quickly, rubbing my hand roughly against my eyes to push away the images his irrational words had painted.
“Let me see if I’ve got this.” I had started ticking off my fingers.
“Byers wasn’t lost in the woods but was in fact in some other underground dimension of Hawkins.”
“The upside down.” Dustin interrupted me.
I continued like I hadn’t heard him “There’s some girl with superpowers who always saves you guys, and there’s something called a demodorgan that eats people?” Dustin opened his mouth to correct me, but Steve beat him to it.
“We don’t have time for this dingus, in case you haven’t noticed we are stuck in a literal Russian based filled with soldiers that are probably going to shoot us the moment they find us.” His voice raised to an unattractive shrill at the end, I examined him closer, dressed in that dorky ice-cream uniform with panic plastered across his face it was hard to imagine that he had once been my biggest crush in middle school. Although I doubted I looked much better.
“One last thing.” I grumbled as my hands flailed at my sides.
“Everyone else, literally everyone else knew about this except for me?” I questioned the room, but my eyes were on my baby brother. Anger was coursing through me, but also shame, it was hard to not believe that what he was saying was true given where I was standing at that very moment, no matter how preposterous all of it sounded, but shame at the fact that he hadn’t included me in this earlier. That Steve the hair Harrington had been a better older sibling than I had, I had been too focused on getting the best grades in school and over analysing every interaction I had with Billy while giggling with my friends, to see what clearly had to be happening in front of my eyes.
In that moment I had thought our situation couldn’t get worse. But then Steve, myself and Robin the band geek had held onto each other like a lifeline as we were each interrogated by the Russian soldiers, while Dustin and Erica ran for help. And the lasting physical damage from that didn’t even begin to compare to the consequences after the events of the fire, consequences that we were all still dealing with to this day.
I would have happily taken beatings from trained six foot grown Russian soldiers for the rest of my life if it meant the Mind Flayer never came top side. If it meant that I would catch glimpses of bruised skin out of the corner of my eyes as I passed my reflection in the hallways at school, instead of black worming lines that weren’t really there, crawling over my cheeks and pouring into my head. It had taken weeks for me to convince myself that it was just remnants of PTSD, or whatever the school counsellor had called it, that was causing the fleeting images to stalk me during my waking hours and follow me into my nightmares, seemingly doomed to plague my broken, murky mind forever.
That was the funny thing about shared trauma, the bond it created with those involved. Even though half of the group was split in more ways than one, it was ironic that I’d complained about being left out of the loop for so long, only to be practically joined at the hip with the members of the group that remained behind in Hawkins after the fire.
Max and I had found comfort in each other’s presence, silently understanding each other’s feelings over Billy. Since her stepfather had left and she had moved to the trailer park with her mom it had become the daily routine to drive her to and from school together every day, her home was out of the high school bus route and even though it wasn’t that far of a walk, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving her to her own devices.
As I drove to the trailer park Max and her mother resided in, my eyes came to rest on the clothes flapping on the washing line next to her home, as I turned my car off Curly road, down her street. The familiar gravel of the makeshift street crunching away under the tires. She was perched on the weathered steps, wearing Billy’s jacket as always and headphones already covering her ears. No doubt playing that new ‘Hounds of love’ album, I could hear it sometimes when Max was having a particularly bad day and she blasted it as loud as possible it on her Walkman. Probably to drain out whatever thought or memory harassed her, the first time I wanted to chastise her about making her eardrums bleed I caught myself. I did things I wasn’t supposed to, to block out my own demons. Who was I to judge about how Max dealt with hers.
“Y/N” Dustin pulled me out of my thoughts from the seat next to me as the rolled the car to a stop, Max pulled the back door open and slid into the seat, nodding her head as her morning acknowledgment. “You’ve been in the school for three years longer than me so you should know what clubs there are!” Dustin smacked his walkie and shoved the antenna down in frustration. ”Dammit Mike!” The asphalt flew away beneath the car as I pushed the gas pedal down faster. Itching to get the day over as fast as possible.
“Do I look like I’m even remotely interested in your nerdy stuff to even pay the slightest bit of attention to what clubs you might like?” Although it might have been a good idea to see what group I could off load my brother and Mike wheeler to, it was the last day of the first week of high school and they were still following me around like lost sheep. My senior year, the one where I needed to concentrate the most and I was stuck running a baby-sitting club. I rocked in my seat as we drove over the speedbump leading into the school’s carpark.
“What’s hellfire?” My neck snapped to look at Dustin.
“Wh – what?” I sputtered, “How do you know about them?” He pointed to a duo walking in the swarm headed to the school’s entrance. Gareth and Jeff I thought, but it was hard to tell from the distance, my eyesight was worsening, and I made a mental note to find my glasses in my bombshell of a room, sooner rather than later. Dustin must have seen their shirts.
“So?” He pushed, eyeing me curiously.
“I don’t know man, they’re a club I guess, they play some game...” I tightened my grasp on the wheel and looked over my shoulder to park.
“What game?” He drew out his question like he already knew the answer. I groaned internally already sensing where this was heading. Apparently so did Max.
“Bye.” She murmured as she slinked out of the backseat, sliding her bag up her shoulder and burrowing down into the safety of her oversized jacket.
"Some fantasy game” I shrugged nonchalantly as his eyes bulged in his skull. Killing the engine and gathering my stuff, I spoke before he could. “You’re staying away from them, Eddie Munson’s a member and he’s a freak.” I explained forcefully, the words burned my tongue on the way out, I was sure the words ‘hypocrite’ were plastered on my forehead.
“He’s a freak because he plays a game?” He scoffed looking at me disbelievingly, with traces of disdain.
I rushed to explain myself “No I just – he just – look, he’s dangerous and you aren’t to go near him, no discussion.” He just grinned and jumped out. Rolling down the passenger side window I shouted at his retreating back “No discussion!”
With robotical movements, ingrained from following the same path for almost four years, I made my way to my locker to grab the necessary books for my first class of the day. Ignoring the lingering and longing stares thrown my way, the whispers had dissipated weeks ago. New morsels of gossip were either discovered or created far too often to focus on any specific one to cause any real discomfort.
After the fire, everything had changed, it wasn’t just the physical impact it had. Anyone could see the holes that the deaths had created in Hawkins, but there was one that affected me more than anyone else's. Suddenly the basketball team wasn’t as loud, the hallways were missing a certain cologne and I still waited five minutes after the last bell rung to hear the smooth purr of an engine that would never roar to life again.
In the terms of Hawkins Highs newsletter, I may as well be a victim of the fire to. Sweet perfect Y/F/N didn’t care about cheerleading, or basketball, or parties, or boys or friends anymore. I was just an empty shell, an echo of the bright person they grew up with. They said Billy’s death changed me, that I was too heartbroken to continue on without him. They weren’t all wrong, loosing Billy, and – my heart squeezed painfully with the memories of what happened right after that - did change me. I would never admit it to listening ears, lest it get back to Max, but I was well and truly over Billy in a romantic sense. The past 4 months brought my inane problems and mundane life into excruciating clear focus, suddenly what I was going to wear to the after-game party didn’t matter. Graduating as soon as possible so I could escape the town that had its talons in deeper than just my skin - it had my soul in its grasp - was the most important purpose in my life.
That still didn’t stop my old friends from caressing at the surface, probing to see if I’d would come back to life. A strong hand slammed down on the locker next to me, sending a ringing in my ears and my carefully stacked books to clatter the floor. Sighing, I stilled the rattling open door of my locker.
“You coming to cheer me on tonight Y/N?” Jason Carver. His overpowering stench of expensive cologne and sweat after basketball practise assaulted my senses, invading my body and mind. I took an involuntary step back and crinkled my nose.
“Just like every other Friday you’ve asked me Jason, no. For the last time no.” His nonchalant laugh insulted the seriousness of my tone, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was something lurking there.
“Come on, I know your squad misses you.” His voice was whiny as he reached behind my head to bring the end of my ponytail over my shoulder, the brush of his fingers sent a chill up my spine as he fiddled with the green ribbon tied there. I could feel eyes pouring into my back, but when I spun away from Jason, slamming my locker shut, sending a fresh breeze over the both of us, there was no one I could see watching me.
“I’m going to be late for Mr Mundy.” I called as an afterthought, barely glancing back at a confused Jason still standing by my locker, not wanting to have him seek me out later. I hadn’t heard the second bell ring while he cornered me, too preoccupied with the sickening feeling that had begun in my stomach when Jason’s blue eyes bored into mine and now settled in the low pits of my frame as I tore through the empty corridors. I paused at the edge of Mr Mundy’s classroom door to fix my hair back into place when I got a glimpse of my reflection in the window. My breath hitched in my throat as a prickly heat spread out across my body. She smiled back at me with lips that were trembling on my own face.
“Y/N” She drawled, “I’m still here, waiting.” Black lines appeared on my neck, crawling up my face. My head swam as I hung my head down, ripping my eyes away from the stranger in the window. No, not a stranger echoed in my mind, the same black lines started to flourish from my fingertips, spreading up my forearms.
Something hard but fleshy slammed into my back, bringing me out of my nightmare. Tommy H spun around to grin at me holding his hands up in an apologetic way as he walked backwards into the class. My head snapped back up to the window, but it was my own eyes, glassy with fresh tears that stared back at me. I quickly followed suit after Tommy, hoping to slip in undetected. Fortunately, Mr Mundy was preoccupied with reprimanding Carol over some violation or another as I hastily found my seat in the third row. I shoved my bag under the desk and flipped to an empty page in my notebook, a strong breeze blowing through the open windows helped even my breathing as I focused on the coolness of the air. I groaned as I felt the warm body on my left shift in my direction. With everything that had happened that morning I hadn’t let myself think about this class. Mr Mundy had been out sick for the first two days of the week, so it was actually the first class of senior year, and like the past three years of high school in calculus, I was situated in my regular seat with some quiet band geek on my right side and –
“Miss Y/N,” He cleared his throat leaning forward “You uh –“
“Shut it Munson, you’d think since it was you’re third year trying to pass high school you would at least bring a pencil, regardless – not my issue.” I snapped, crossing my legs and angling my body away from Edward Munson, Hawkins Highs very own organically grown Metal head.
As much I appreciated Mr Mundy’s teaching style, i wasn’t a fan of his inability to deal with change, hence why – after clearly pissing off some high power from above– I ended up sitting next to Eddie on an iron clad seating chart. No amount of begging and bargaining with the Calculus teacher got me anywhere
‘The best and the worst students in the class, you might rub off on him Y/N.’ Mr Mundy then just winked, laughed and snatched his brief case up on his way out before I had a chance to respond. But if he thought for one second that I was going to tutor or be some sort of good role model, then Mr Mundy wasn’t as smart as he thought he was, or I just was as stubborn as I thought I was. Eddie was a lost cause, for the most part of our four years of school, I’d managed to avoid and ignore the metal head. We’d probably said about five sentences to each other and that was only because of partnered projects we were forced to share. Even so, I swore his sole purpose on earth was to piss me off and he seemed determined to live up to the title or die trying.
The way he’d twist the rings that adorned almost all of his knuckles, so they’d catch the sunlight and blind me, or how he’d bang a couple of pencils on his desk pretending to play a fake drum set while humming a song I didn’t know under his breath. The scratching of his pencil against his desk piercing through my concertation as he doodled away, completing ignoring whatever important material Mr Mundy would be teaching. Most infuriating of all though was the fresh smell of weed that would hit me like a rock as he sauntered past my desk, arriving late to class because he was busy smoking. More infuriating now, as it was what I used to be able to sleep through the night. Since the fire I hadn't one night where I didn't wake screaming or locked in a frozen cage of terror.
The earthy smell, even diluted by Eddie's cologne, sent a stab of wanting through my core, not a feeling I wanted to associate with Eddie.
A wolf whistle erupted behind me and I slowly turned to see Tommy and some cronies eyeing me up and down like a piece of meat.
“Nice show Y/N” They chuckled loudly, ensuring everyone could hear them, Mr Mundy started to make his way over to the commotion. I scowled at the group of boys confused, until realisation dawned on my face.
Chapter Two
I hope you enjoyed the first chapter & my very first post! If you would like to be added to my Eddie tag list, let me know! :) Enjoy Sunflowers - P. x
Your first day at Hawkins High sees you paired up on an English assignment with the apparently infamous Eddie Munson. With a heart still aching from the circumstances of your move, you eventually come to find that this unexpected partner of yours might be exactly what you’d been needing.
Series features - Eddie x fem afab reader, strangers to friends to lovers, slow burn, angst, fluff, eventual smut, non-Vecna AU cause I just want our boy to be safe dammit, Eddie and the reader are 19 and 18 respectively, Eddie is soft but can initially be kinda prickly as a result of his social status, reader is sweet but can be a spitfire, side character relationships, mourning and grief depictions
[Chapter 2]
────── ────── ──────
There was a sea of faces stretched out before you and not a one was the least bit familiar.
Hmm. You and Eddie having a running gag where he proposes to you in restaurants for free desert but one day it’s not a joke anymore and he’s really asking 💍 🫢
AN | I adore this concept and hope I did it justice! Enjoy 🥰
Warnings | Language
Pairing | Eddie x Fem!Reader
Word Count | 2.9k
Masterlist | Main, Eddie
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
You were about to say something to Eddie, leaning across the table, immediately getting lost in those big brown eyes like you had a million times before. But before any words could make it out of your mouth, a loud burst of cheering and applause interrupted you. Both of you turned to look at the sudden commotion and your heart immediately flipped a few times.
There was a man down on one knee, holding out a box containing a beautiful, ornate ring to a very bored looking woman. Within seconds she switched and was crying, dramatically fanning at her eyes before shouting a loud yes and eagerly grabbing the ring out of the box. You exchanged a look with Eddie, who playfully rolled his eyes as you giggled.
After a few moments, when everything settled down you spied the waiter bringing out what appeared to be a very fancy dessert that was allegedly compliments of the restaurant. You motioned your head in their direction so Eddie would look; you clocked the amused little expression.
“So, I’m like totally certain they’re going to be divorced within a year if they even make it to the wedding,” you whispered so only he could hear, “but that dessert looks fantastic.”
“And free,” he joked, “what’s better than that? I’m curious though, why don’t you think they’ll make it?”
“It’s obvious,” you stated as he shook his head in amusement, “look at the body language, he’s clearly older, and she’s barely said anything, he’s the one doing all the talking. Plus, when he asked the question, she didn’t go to hug him, she just grabbed the ring. Tell me you’re in it for the money without telling me.”
“Ahhh,” he watched with a tender expression on his face that you missed from your little spy session, “very observant of you, my smart girl.”
“Could never be me,” you shook your head before grabbing your wine and finishing the glass.
“Oh?” Eddie teased, his pretty pink lips quirked into a dopey grin, “you aren’t dating me for my money?”
“Sorry rockstar,” you nudged his foot with yours before beaming at him, “I’m only with you because I love and adore you.”
“Damn,” he sighed dramatically, “here I was thinking if I was in a semi-popular local rock band I’d have you all over me for material things.”
“Nah,” you couldn’t help yourself as you leaned over and kissed his cheek, “all I ever need is you. Besides, marriage is a sham. You don’t need to be married to be happy…all you really need is love, ya know?”
“Totally,” he agreed, his mind already reeling with a thousand different thoughts; all of them started and ended, however, with how much he loved you.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
The first time Eddie Munson asks you to marry him
“Babe,” you hear him before you see him as you stand in front of the full length mirror, looking yourself over. You saw his roguish curls in the mirror behind you as he breathed in sharply, “holy fuck.”
“What?” you turned around and looked down to see if something had happened to your dress, “what’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong,” he tenderly reached over, tucking a few strands of hair behind your ear, "you're just so beautiful - how do you keep getting more beautiful? It's unfair."
"Eddie," your face warmed up as you tried to brush him off. He opened his mouth to say something else but you slapped your hand over it, "I've worn this dress loads! And I look the same as always. So dramatic, honey boy."
The boy in question turned your hand and pressed a kiss to your knuckles, "I said what I said."
"Fine," his arm wrapped around your waist, pulling into his warm frame, "you're getting more and more handsome all the time. Now can we please get going? Otherwise we'll miss our reservation and we've had it for months!"
"Do you trust me?"
“What do you…of course, Eds. More than anyone.”
“Good.”
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
It was about halfway through your meal of ridiculously exquisite food and smooth alcohol that you noticed something was off. Eddie’s expression shifted between excitement and nerves and you wondered what he was up to. But you never got the opportunity to ask because your metalhead pushed back his chair and reached into his pocket, pulling out a small, black velveteen box.
“Eds…”
“Angel, darling, absolute love of my life,” your eyes widened in surprise as you lightly shook your head in a vain attempt to stop. You should have known better. You should have known that he was still getting down on one knee in front of you, “I love you beyond measure, beyond what I ever thought was possible. You have made me the happiest and luckiest man in the world. There’s no one else I’d rather spend the rest of my life with. Will you do me the honor of letting me be your husband?”
“Eddie,” you hissed under your breath, acutely aware of the fact that seemingly every eye in the house was trained on the two of you, “what’re you doing?!”
“Trust me.”
“Y-Yes,” you nodded, a grimace that could be mistaken for a nervous smile on your face. At least you really were surprised, “of course I’ll…marry you.”
He grabbed the ring out of the box - that alone left you with a load of questions - and delicately placed it on your ring finger. You laughed nervously as he leaned in to kiss you, a large hand gently cradling your face, “just trust me baby.”
To anyone else it probably looked like a sweet exchange between now fiancees; not him trying to calm you and you trying not to glare daggers. After a few more soft pecks placed on his lips, he sat back down as people around you clapped happily.
“Edward Munson,” you digusised your annoyance with a sticky, sweet smile, “what the fuck?”
“I-”
“For the happy couple,” a waitress magically appeared, holding a plate piled with a delicious dessert and set it down between the two of you, “your meal and everything is on the house this evening. Congratulations!”
“Thank you,” he gave her that stupidly dazzling smile as you suddenly put the pieces together. Once she walked away, he cocked his head to the side and looked at you with a triumphant smile, “I love you, baby.”
“You’re an absolute bastard,” there was no malice behind your words as you grabbed one of the forks, “all of this for a free dessert? Ridiculous man.”
“Yout ridiculous man,” his pretty cheeks were tinged with pink and his doe eyes were glittering with joy. Maybe you did just fall in love with him a little more in that moment, “and in case you didn’t hear her, it’s all on the house. So there you go - we finally got to try the restaurant you wanted and it was free! And all it took was getting fake engaged.”
“Never change, Eddie Munson,” you whispered, clinking your fork against his, “I love you endlessly.”
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
The second time Eddie Munson asks you to marry him
“Baby, baby, baby,” Eddie sang happily as he walked through the front door to the little house you’d made a home. He’d just gotten off work at the body shop, giddy to come home and see his best girl. It amused you sometimes; he still kept his day job, despite his band’s increasing popularity and notoriety. You looked from the bowl of brownie batter you were whipping up and beamed at him. He came over and picked you up before spinning around a few times, “I’ve missed you.”
“Eddie!” you were dizzied and breathless from his affection, “you’re filthy - you’re gonna ruin my new dress!”
“I’ll buy you a hundred new ones,” he promised, setting you down and taking you face in hands. His touch was soft and gentle, despite his rough, calloused fingertips, “my beautiful girl.”
“You better kiss me,” your heart was pitter-pattering wildly as butterflies exploded in your tummy, “if you’re going to keep looking at me like that.”
“Yeah?” a small, hopeful little question.
“Yeah,” so he kissed you, and kissed until you were melding into his body and breathless, “I love you, Eds.”
“Let me take you out,” you bounced on your heels and couldn’t but squeal softly. It’d been a bit since you’d last had a proper date night between your busy schedules, “wanna show off my girl.”
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
“You look like you’ve got something to say,” you pointed at him with your fork and Eddie shook his head, the picture of innocence and tranquility. You weren’t buying it for a moment - you knew him better than anyone else, “don’t lie to me. I know you’re up to something, Edward.”
“The full name?” he put his hand on his heart, groaning dramatically, “baby, you wound me.”
“Then tell me.”
“Listen…” he paused, taking a moment to compose himself before nodding, “you’re right - there is something I want to say.”
“Eddie…” the chair legs scraped against the hardwood floor as he stood up and came over to your side of the table. He didn’t have to get all the way down on his knee for you to know what was happening. You couldn’t even be annoyed or made at him, instead you were giggling, hiding your face behind your hand.
He reached up and gently pulled your hand away, holding it in one of his hands, “sweetheart - you are the light of my life…you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I’m so glad I walked into the record store that afternoon and ran into you - literally. The past few years have been like a dream and I can’t wait to spend the rest of them with you. Angel, will you do me the honor of marrying me?”
You were more prepared this time and didn’t miss a beat as you nodded softly. He fumbled in his pocket and displayed that same ring to you, and this time you eagerly held out your hand for him to slip it on, “I’d marry you a hundred times over.”
The two of you shared a knowing little kiss before reaching down to pull him up your lips, kissing him with a golden intensity. He nudged his nose against yours before whispering, “nice job, sweetheart. We really sold it.”
He kissed the tip of your nose before jokingly bowing and waved to your curious audience before pointing to you. You felt shy at the attention from the other diners and kept your gaze trained on him. You couldn’t deny that the idea of being his wife was…more intoxicating than you’d ever thought.
“What?” he asked as caught you watching him with heart eyes, “something on my face?”
“No,” you promised, “I just really love you is all.”
“I love you,” a tender, soft spoken statement, dissolved into a wink, “future wife.”
This time around, dessert didn’t soothe your soul nearly as much as the thought of calling Eddie your husband.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
The third time Eddie Munson asks you to marry him
“Eddie?” you walked into the small rehearsal space that Corroded Coffin used, eager to see him after a long day. You found him as the last straggler, carefully stowing away his guitar, speaking sweetly to it, which only made you shake your head in adoration. You were head over heels in love with this man, “hello, my love.”
“Hi baby,” he held out his arms and immediately made grabby hands towards you, “cuddles please.”
"Funny," you walked to him and wrapped your arms around his waist, smashing your face into his back, "I was gonna ask you for the same thing."
"Great minds think alike," one of his hands settled on yours, promoting to shy softly, "what's wrong, baby?"
"Nothing at all,” you pressed a soft kiss to his shoulder, “just wanted to see you. Wanna go out to dinner? It’s late and it’s been a long week, I’m starving, and…kinda just wanna show off my man.”
“How could I ever say no to you?”
“You don’t. You’ve learned well for the past years, my love!”
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
There really was nothing better than being with Eddie and getting to be in his magical orbit. It was easy to get lost in him, to fall so deeply entranced that you forgot everything else around you. That was, until of course, he shot you a wink accompanied by a cheeky smile. You knew the drill by now and weren’t phased as he went through the motions of a grand proposal.
Eddie spoke sweet words to you and while you knew that everything he was saying was true, you couldn’t stop the pang in your heart knowing the proposal wasn’t real. The ring was a silly little thing, a cheap one from the local department store, but that didn’t even really matter. You would have married him with a paper ring. And that’s when it hit you.
You wanted to marry him. You’d always been convinced that marriage was not for you and something you never wanted and yet…here you were. Eddie Munson had changed everything for you.
In that moment, while he went through the proposal spiel and asked you to marry him, you pretended he meant it when you said yes. Because you did mean it. The free meal and dessert couldn’t hold a candle to your happiness and love for him. But then again, it didn’t hurt either.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
…and the time Eddie Munson asks you to marry him for real
“I have an idea,” Eddie almost jumped on the bed as he came out of the bathroom, pajamas on and hair pulled into a messy bun. You set down your book and turned to him, your own smile matching his enthusiasm. Almost as if he couldn’t stop himself, he kissed you, slow and saccharine, “a brilliant idea.”
“Tell me,” you brushed a few of his unruly curls out of his face before touching his cheek, “if Eddie Munson had an idea, it has to be good.”
“Very funny,” but he was laughing too, “next weekend, let’s take a little trip out of town, just you and I. Whaddya say?”
“What’s the occasion?”
“There is none,” he grinned wolfishly, “just want to spend some quiet time away with my girl.”
“Count me in,” you agreed, your amusement quickly turned into a squeal of surprise as he laid down and pulled you on top of, looking up at you with reverence, “I love you, ya know?”
“That’s good,” he mused softly, “‘cause I’m crazy in love with you.”
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
“Have I told you how beautiful you look?” If there was one thing Eddie loved, it was flirting. Flirting with you, in particular and despite how long you’d been together it still made you giggly and shy. You leaned forward on your elbow and looked at him with an eyebrow raised, “because you’re a knockout, baby.”
“Shut up,” a soft, gentle response that made him cheese harder, “besides it’s the dress. The dress you happened to pick out and get for me, dummy.”
“You don’t like it?” his expression turned worried as you shook your head.
“I love it,” you put your hand on his arm, “it’s stunning - thank you for it. This whole weekend…it’s been magical.”
“You deserve it,” he promised and that damned smile made you want to melt into a puddle, “there’s something else you deserve…”
And this time you hadn’t been expecting it. He reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a small box. Your surprise was genuine as he hadn’t done this in a while and you weren’t thinking he would do it during an already over the top luxe weekend.
He kneeled down in front of you and reached for your hand as you tried to sus out what was going. He exhaled slowly before catching your head and almost chucking at your deer in headlights expression, “baby. I…I don’t know where to start. This went smoother in my mind!”
“Eddie…”
“Every single word I’ve said to you the times I’ve ‘proposed’ have been true and I’ve meant it,” oh. What was going on? He laughed nervously, “and I still mean it. You’re it for me and I’ve been a goner for you since the day we met. I love you beyond measure.”
“Edward.”
“I know we’ve always kind of made fun of marriage and how outdated the whole institution of it is,” the back of eyes started to prickle as you squeeze his hand, “but I’d really like to call you my wife. It has a nice ring to it.”
With that opened a small box and showed you the ring he’d picked out. It was gorgeous and way more than you could have ever dreamed of or asked for. You looked at him as if to say seriously and he nodded sweetly.
“Will you marry me?” it was barely above a whisper, inaudible to everyone else but you, “for real?”
“Yeah?” a few tears rolled down your cheeks which he gently brushed away.
“Yeah baby,” he promised, “I kinda really want to be your husband.”
“Yes, fuck yes,” you barely had a moment to realize what was going on before he was kissing you, sweetly and softly but with every ounce of love behind it. He pulled his lips away from yours for long enough to slip the ring onto your finger, lacing his fingers through yours, “I love you so much, Eddie.”
“I love you, angel. So much.”
And then he kissed you again and the world all but disappeared, including the clapping restaurant patrons, and all you knew was him.
Your soon-to-be husband.
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