The first time Eddie says he loves you is freshmen year when you order him a meat lover’s pizza.
He’s still asleep, sprawled out on the couch in a way you know must be uncomfortable but he slumbers on through the phone call and the door opening. Only waking once you gently shake him and set a plate on his lap. He looks around for a moment, still disoriented as he squints at the plate before slowly picking it up and then bringing the pizza to his mouth with a hum. Mumbling a “I fuckin’ love you man” with a mouthful of food as you sit down next to him.
He says it often, after that. Each time you cover a bill, help him study, or race to the Hideout to hand him whatever equipment he had forgotten back at the trailer.
Each time he picks you up or rents a movie is done with a dramatic frown lined by his voice huffing. “You’re lucky I love you, you know that?”
But he doesn’t truly say it until senior year.
When your friendship had become more. After shared woes of lacking romance and desire on the night of homecoming turned into wandering hands and cautious kisses with “is this okay” mumbled against skin that turned into matching hickies hidden under his hellfire t-shirt and the creaking of bed-springs in his trailer damn near every night. It turns into that black lipstick he loves so much smeared against his neck as you straddle his lap and curl your fingers in his hair.
It isn’t until he’s snapping his hips against yours, fucking into you on a random Thursday night, so delirious on the feeling of your soft cunt gripping his cock and your lips against his that he moans out “I’m in love with you” without realizing he had said it out loud.
It isn’t until he feels your hands twitch and you pull away to ask “wait, what did you say?” that he his heart drops.
Tears brim in his eyes as he stutters out excuses as a rapid fire speed.
Anything to save it. Save the relationship. The friendship that he spent years wishing would become more but never acted on because he’d rather you be his best friend than not in his life at all. The one he didn’t want to fuck up just because he was a lovesick fucking moron who didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut and now he’s scared you off for good.
But then your hands reach out and cup his face, thumbs wiping away his wears as you lean forward until your bare chest is pressed against his and Eddie realizes then you’re crying too.
“Say it again?” You ask him. That voice he’s laughed and sang with, pleading to him in a tone so soft and broken his heart bleeds. “Please, Eddie?”
Eddie Munson holds you with trembling hands as he tells you he’s in love with you, and finds ecstasy when you say it back.
Now, the Freak of Hawkins does not only say he loves you. He announces it. Every day he drops you off he hollers it out of the van window with an accompanied honk of his horn, he screams it into the mic of a dingy bar with only three patrons, including yourself, watching him play with his band. He mumbles it into your ear as his hands creep up your waist in a setting entirely too public for him to be so confident in sharing this affection. He moans it against your neck at night, crying it out each time you ride his cock and each morning when you have to pull his head away from your cunt beneath the bed sheets with a wet grin before getting up to make breakfast.
It’s his greeting, his goodbye, his melody and his battle cry. Days may come where you feel exhausted and desperate, but never do you feel unloved.
