im curious to hear ur thoughts on what an interaction between zombie!au steve and reader would look like had the apocalypse not happened. would she fly completely under his radar like in high school or would he be interested in getting to know her?? we know she knew who he was pre-apocalypse but does she really care? i keep thinking about what would happen if she walked into family video one day and if he would hit on her or not lmao
hi I love you! zombie au (ish) | fem, 1.3k
Voices force Steve’s attention.
“I’ll be five minutes!”
“Two minutes or I’m driving off without you!”
Steve’s more familiar with the second one. Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson and his creaky shit van idling on the curb outside of the store. That sheds some light on the first voice —one of the club members. Or, honorary club members? When Steve decides to be kind and drive Dustin home in the winter after his games, you can be seen occasionally sitting on stoops waiting for Eddie to finish.
Who knew The Freak could get a girlfriend? That makes Steve being single even sadder.
You say something else. Eddie laughs. “Do you want popcorn or not?” you quip.
“Why, are you paying for it?”
“Not for you I’m not.”
“You got a minute and counting.”
“If you drive off without me, you can forget about Friday night.”
Steve angles his head to watch you through the open door. Summer heat has made a mess of Munson’s hair where he’s leaning toward the open door. You’re holding the car door, in a light chequered dress with bows on the shoulders and the cutest pair of socks and buckled shoes. How the fuck does Eddie get a girl like that? Also, Steve’s been wondering, where the fuck did you come from? Clearly you went to Hawkins High, and when Robin told him that he swore he could remember you, but there’s nothing in his head. It’s like Robin all over again, in the same homeroom for two years and he didn’t know she was awesome until the summer after high school ended.
“Can you just go get your fucking movie so we can go?”
You’re still glaring when you turn around, but you’re quiet as you edge into Family Video. “Jerk,” you mouth to yourself, taking a quick cut to the slasher moves at the back. You don’t spend much time browsing, Steve can see from the back that it’s Day of the Dead. You emerge and head to the blockbusters.
You catch Steve watching at the desk.
He knows he doesn’t have a chance, you already have a boyfriend, so all he says is, “Let me know if you need any help.”
You smile weakly and turn back.
Maybe he wasn’t nice to you. He can’t remember, is the thing. He was such a jerk, Tommy and Carol were such jerks.
He’s not a miserable person, but he does hate himself more often than not. It’s easier because he actually has friends who love him. Robin might give him shit every day, but she’s the first person to teach him what being loved feels like, and it makes him better. He’s less cruel, less quick to anger, less selfish. But Steve knows he isn’t completely kind or patient in turn. He’s a fuck up. He’s nearly twenty three working for $4.50 in an hour with no degree and no prospects and—
“Hey,” you say, setting three tapes down on the desk.
“Hey.” He clears his throat. “Is this everything?”
You look vaguely embarrassed to ask, “Do you guys still do the bags of popcorn, do you know?”
“Sure, they’re by the window, let me just–”
“That’s okay, I’ll get it.”
You speed walk for the popcorn. Steve finds himself with a weirdly dry mouth as you reach for one, swallowing hard as you make your way back. It’s just the one bag of popcorn after all. Eddie must’ve really pissed you off.
Steve rings up your movies. The barcode on Pretty in Pink won’t work. He opens the window and starts to type it in with his keyboard.
Outside, someone lays on the horn for three long beeps.
“I’m real sorry about him,” you say, letting out a breathy, nearly-timid laugh.
“Is he always like that?”
“Every day of his life.”
Steve works in customer service. He has mastered the art of the polite smile. “I don’t think you should put up with it. Nice girl like you,” he says lightly.
“That’s what friends are for, right?” you say with chagrin.
Steve glances over your shoulder. Just friends? Who the fuck would put up with Eddie voluntarily? Steve understands that love isn’t a choice, but if you’re not even kissing to soften the blow of things, you’re just crazy.
He slides your tapes back to you. “How long did you want them for, just the one night?”
“Two, please.”
“Awesome, can I have a phone number and address?”
You give them.
Steve uses his employee discount and doesn’t really know why as he clicks it out. “It’s four dollars when you’re ready.”
You take the swing purse from your hip and clip it open, pulling out a ten dollar bill. “He’s not totally mean,” you say, “I know he seems rude. But that’s just his character.”
“Sure.”
You offer him the ten dollars, shifting around on your shoes, eyes over his shoulder toward the back. You seem a little put off by him. He really must’ve been mean to you. Maybe he laughed when Carol called you names. Maybe he ignored you as he put himself in Nancy Wheeler’s path.
“Steve?”
He looks up in surprise, still counting your change out. It should be easy, except he doesn’t have a five dollar bill in the register, and he had three one dollars, so he’s counting quarters he’ll have to apologise for. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
He pauses. “I’m good. Why?”
You gesture to your eye. “You have a cut. Did you get hurt?”
“This? This is nothing. I threw Robin, you know Robin? Robin Buckley? She’s going to college, she actually already left, but I threw her a surprise going away party. When everybody yelled ’surprise’ she sort of panicked and her ring caught me.” He chews his lip. “Yeah, I’m fine though.”
“Oh, shit. Eddie’s going to do this internship thing in Michigan at the end of the week, I hope he doesn’t get me with his rings when I give him his goodbye present.”
“Lot of rings.”
“Right? He’ll blind me.”
Steve startles both of you when he laughs heartily, grabbing the remainder of your change and shutting the register tightly. “Can’t let that happen.”
“So we both find ourselves without best friends for the autumn,” you say, holding out your hand for your change. “Maybe if you’re bored, you can call me. We can go to the movies or something.”
“You’re serious?”
“How else do you make friends?” you ask. “If you don’t wanna be my friend that’s fine, I’m putting you on the spot, just don’t call me, but my number’s in there.”
“And when you come back to return the movies, and I still haven’t called, that won’t be awkward at all,” he says wryly, teasingly, enjoying the way your face has changed. He wouldn’t go so far as to say you’re flirting, but your smile is something else.
“So… call me?” you ask quietly, grabbing your movies, your popcorn, and waiting for an answer.
Steve thinks that sounds more like a date being planned than a burgeoning friendship, and his grin probably shows that. “Sure. Yeah, I’ll call you. We’ll go to the movies.”
You’re decidedly quick as you escape the store, rushing down off the curb and upto Eddie’s van. You open the door and climb in fast, Steve only hears a snippet of your conversation as Eddie turns the engine back on.
“What the hell?”
“What?”
“I fucking knew you had a crush on that jerk! Look at your face!”
“Shut up, can we go?” you hiss. “This is why I didn’t get you any popcorn.”
“This is why you can't come to Michigan.”
Steve presses the back of his hand to his cheek as the van leaves the parking lot. He’s hot as a burning hearth. Probably red as one too. God, who are you? Where have you been this entire time? You might’ve just saved Steve’s life. (Or, his social life.)
—
I was curious and maybe this is like an au of the au and it’s not as cute as I wanted it to be but I think they’d accidentally trap themselves in the friends box for a while trying to survive being without their best friends together and Steve still falls slowly, I was gonna make this a bit longer but I thought I won’t bother unless it’s something people really want cos there’s a few requests I wanna do soon!! thank you for requesting
coworker!james and his love hate gf meeting his parents by accident? she thinks he won’t own up to her but he’s super proud and calls her his girlfriend (for the first time 0.o)
coworker frenemies <3 fem, 1.2k
You get the foolish idea to check in on James. Dying, he’d texted, won’t be in. Don’t miss me too much <3
And then, throughout the day, can you ask Remus to answer his phone please lovely, sorry
Can you make sure my smiskis are all okay
I miss you too much
Did you see that thing on the news about the goats in Spain ?
Sometime around three, as you’re preparing to leave, his sporadic texting ends. You and Remus get on alright without James, and a quiet day comes to a close at four.
“See you tomorrow,” you say.
“Yeah, see you, have a good night,” he says back.
You might. It depends on how James is feeling. You go to the shops on the way and wrack your brain for the things he likes. You know he likes cream of chicken soup: he brings it in his thermos sometimes for lunch. He likes freddos, tangerines, melon slices, and everybody likes balsam tissues and painkillers.
James doesn’t necessarily have to let you take care of him, but it’s a care package. He can take what he wants and bin the rest. You get him some cool patches for his eyes and a box of teabags and consider yourself finished, paying, packing it into a tote, and carrying it back to the car. You get nervous on the road leading into James’ flat building, but Sirius’ car isn’t outside, just an old BMW that looks well loved.
You pop the button to be let into the building and seconds later you’re opening the door. You make your way up the tight steps to the second floor and then the third, pausing to catch your breath lest you seem unfit just outside the door.
You raise your hand to knock. James laughs from somewhere inside, loudly, and that laugh travels toward you until he’s yanking the door half off of its hinges.
When he sees it’s you, he grins. “Hello, beautiful.”
“Hi. You okay?”
He sniffles, but he doesn’t seem too poorly. His eyes are sore and he has a tissue in hand, but James is nothing if not spritely. “I’m okay, lovely, are you okay? To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“I brought you sickness survival essentials,” you say, dangling the bag on two fingers between you. “Just in case.”
He gets that look on his face you’re finding yourself on the receiving end of more and more. That You can be so lovely face. Like you’ve done something selfless, and he’s not deserving of it. “Thank you,” he says genuinely, quietly, slipping the bag from your hand and leaning in. You’re expecting the kiss on the cheek, just not the hand under your jaw turning you for a chaste one on the lips.
“Listen,” he says softly, “my mum is here.”
You pause. “Oh.”
“My dad, too, actually. She caught wind that I was feeling rough from Sirius and she’s brought it upon herself to come and make sure I’m alright.”
“Oh. Well, well I’ll just go–”
He shakes his head. “Don’t go. I mean, you don’t have to stay, ‘course you don’t, but you can come in and meet them.”
“As…”
“What do you want to be?” he asks.
It’s probably written all over your face exactly what you want to be to James. It’s the bag swinging from his elbow. It’s what he asked you not so long ago, sitting on the end of his bed with a puddle of nerves in your stomach. Do you want to be… this is the real thing, right?
You didn’t know what to say, so you’d kissed him, and he’d known it wasn’t a yes or no.
“Are you sure you want them to meet me?” you ask.
“Yes.” He strokes your cheek with his forefinger, all gentleness, but then he gives it a squeeze. “Be warned, mum’s heard everything about you, even when I was sure I hated you.”
“What if she doesn’t like me?” you ask, sickly.
“She took your side every time,” he assures you. “I just mean she’ll give me a smug look every other minute. And my dad’s just happy to be wherever he is. But if you don’t want to… you know, if you’re not ready, that’s fine. I wasn’t gonna ask ‘cos I was worried you’d say no.” He winces.
“I’m really worried they won’t like me.”
“Why wouldn’t they?” he asks, as though the possibility is a pipe dream.
“James, you didn’t like me.”
“That had less to do with you and more to do with email politics,” he jokes, “lovely, you don’t have to come in. It’s fine, there’ll be other times.”
It’s his confidence in that that makes you take a step forward. “Do I look a mess?”
“You’re beautiful.”
“James, I just went to work, I’ve been up since six–” You give him you’re most pleading look, eyebrows soft and lips a little pouted, “please, just check.”
James holds you by the shoulders, his gaze moving over you one feature at a time. “Still beautiful,” he says quietly, “you have something in the corner of your eye.”
“Get it.”
“I will,” he laughs, “just gimme a second.”
You gasp as he almost pokes your eye out.
“James, babe, who’s at the door?”
You’re surprised to hear a male voice and instantly endeared. James, babe, turns away from you, slipping a hand behind your shoulder to force you into the hallway next to him. A dark-haired older man is standing in the door to the kitchen, his smile curious and friendly. “James?”
“Yeah, this is Y/N,” James says, “she was just making sure I’m okay.”
“You've invited her in for a cup of tea?” Monty asks, a picture of his son as he gestures for the kitchen.
“Tea?” James asks, watching you carefully.
You attempt to hide your nerves with a nod and a smile of your own. “Yes, please.”
Monty heads back into the kitchen. James runs his hand down your back and lets you step in front of him, bearing the brunt of his mother’s gaze all by yourself. “Hello,” she says, clearly excited.
“Hi.”
James holds you by the back. “Mum, dad,” —you suck in a breath— “this is Y/N. She’s my girlfriend but–” He raises his voice before Euphemia can talk. “It’s not been long, okay?”
“James, why didn’t you say?”
“Mum, I just–” James sighs. You go numb with the pleasure of the thing —you weren’t expecting him to say girlfriend. To own up to you completely. “You dropped in unannounced, and we aren’t telling very many people.”
“It’s my fault, I didn’t say–” You start, tamping down a brilliant smile.
Monty cuts you off swiftly. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. We’re all here now, aren’t we? So, you work with Jamie?”
“Yeah, yes, I’m on the accounting team.” You relax into James’ touch, letting your shoulder be guided against him just a bit. “I started a couple of months ago.”
“Almost a year ago,” James corrects. “Should we have that cup of tea?”
You frown at the scratch of his voice. “I can make it,” you offer.
Euphemia laughs, James groans, and Monty has a twinkle in his eye you aren’t familiar with. “I can make the tea,” Monty says, “why don’t you lovely ladies sit down?”
can we get coworker James and reader not getting along despite having obvious feelings for each other and not knowing how to say sorry, so they really awkwardly try to play nice? maybe reader apologising with a kiss
coworker frenemies <3 fem, 1.6k
“It’s the wrong file.”
“Nope. Open it up properly.”
You roll James’ rugby stress-ball under your hand. “It’s not, I need the Lang and Co test reports from last year, this is dated from April 14th.”
“That’s because the fiscal year ended on April 6th. If I send you something from before April, that won’t be last year, it’ll be the year before.”
“No, we still have a month left in this year,” you argue, “so these are from two years ago.”
You both turn to Remus. He tenses at the sudden silence, pen paused over blue post it notes. “What?” he asks finally. He doesn’t actually need you to repeat yourselves. “If you need a test report from the last fiscal year to cross check the RAS number, then you need one dated before April. We’re in the current fiscal year right now until April again.”
“See,” James says.
“That’s what I said, James.”
“It is not.”
You roll your shoulders. It’s what you’d thought you were saying. From the look Remus is giving you, James is the correct one, and you’re too confused about the logistics of things to argue your case. You should say Okay, alright, even apologise for getting wound up, but you hate being wrong when it’s with James, it’s like a flinch reflex. “I shouldn’t even be doing this, you’re supposed to double check this stuff before you send it back to me, the RAS number should be printed at the top,” you say with heat.
“Open the files properly,” James says, almost spits, apparently more wound up than you’d been. As soon as he says it, all his fire burns out. He bites something back, clears his throat, an unarmed emotion on his face as his gaze dips to his coffee. “The RAS numbers are all in the headers. They’re just hard to see.”
A few weeks ago his spitting retort would’ve made you laugh, or maybe made you want to hit him with your car, but a few weeks ago you didn’t know what it was like to be on James’ right side. You’re aware now of how it feels to have his hand on your shoulder, his smile pressed to the top of your ear. The idea of not feeling it again fills you with dread.
“Sorry,” you mutter.
“I’m sorry,” he says back, sounding three times as awkward. “I shouldn’t have such an attitude. I’m just– hungry or something.”
You don’t really like being snapped at, but James probably didn’t like being reprimanded for something he’d apparently actually done, so… You’re not sure where you go from here.
Remus breaks the tension for you kindly. “Look, we don’t have to argue about the Lang and Co anything today, because it’s all properly finished. Finish checking the RAS numbers for the rest of them and then I can go over them after dinner.”
“I doubt you’ll need to,” you say.
“I know, but if I don’t and something is wrong, I’ll get the flack for it.” Remus rips a sticky note off of the pad and puts it on his monitor. “It’s alright. I’ll just glance at them.”
You feel properly chastened, then, and retreat into yourself for a while. You hate feeling like this at work, it’s exactly how you felt when you first started. You haven’t been such a hindrance to their working for months. Your accounting team Smiskis attest to your burgeoning friendship with Remus and your more than that with James, each of them exercising. A week ago, James bought you a museum themed one, a little green figurine that pays homage to the Girl with the Pearl Earring. You’d laughed for ages, only bothering to stop when James had kissed you and asked if you were pleased.
With the kiss or the Smiski is anyone’s guess. Sometimes you think James might like a performance report from you, a job well done sticker or something, but you don’t know if he’s bad or good or mediocre, he’s just James. He annoys you beyond words and he’s the kindest boy you’ve ever met.
You work in tepid silence until dinner rolls around and Sirius swings by the desks to retrieve Remus. You’re relieved when James turns down their offer to go with them and quickly follow suit.
“Will you eat with me?” he asks you.
Which is nicer than pretending you’re eating together out of coincidence. “Uh, yeah.”
“Are you done?” he asks, nodding at the computer.
You click off your monitor.
Together, you retrieve your Tupperware boxes from the fridge and steal the single sofa in the break room by the window. James cracks it open like you like without having to be asked, and you sit on his left side, close enough to touch him. On your best days you’ll eat thigh to thigh, shifting if someone comes in but otherwise comfortable. Today, the inches between you feel like miles.
You don’t know what to do. You both said sorry, it’s not like you were furious or anything, but maybe James is more annoyed than he’s letting on?
You try to think of what you can do as he peels his tangerine. The smell is sudden in the air, fresh, a tad sour now they’re out of season.
“Do you want some?” he asks.
You hold your hand out for a piece too early, he’s not done peeling, but he hurries and cleans the white strings of pith from the fruit and passes you two slices stuck together. “There, lovely,” he murmurs.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
There’s nothing really for it, is there? You eat your tangerine and summon your courage, putting your untouched lunchbox on the table and turning in your seat. James turns to look at you too, locking eyes with you, hands paused in his lap with his own slice of tangerine waiting. “What?” he asks carefully, as though worried you have another bone to pick.
You should ask if you can kiss him, but you can’t make the words form. Your lips feel sticky, citrus still sharp on your tongue.
Tentatively, your raise a hand to his face. You feel his skin under your thumb, light stubble grazing your palm. Gentle, you work your fingers around the side of his neck and pull him toward you, raising your chin, but keeping your eyes opened. He doesn’t kiss you —James is eager now he knows he’s allowed yet he won’t cross boundaries, he’s careful with the word yes— but he doesn’t pull away. He lets you guide him to your lips. It’s only when his eyes shutter closed that you close your own, lips a hair’s width apart when you manage to say sorry again. “I shouldn’t have made out like you hadn’t done the RAS numbers,” you whisper.
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you. You couldn’t have known I’d fixed the Lang and Co one’s already.”
“I don’t like being mad at you anymore.”
“Yeah, you do. You just don’t like thinking I’m mad back.”
Your noses brush. “I don’t… it wasn’t fun for me, James. Us hating each other. You’re not a bad person, but it was quite miserable. I don’t want to go back.”
“We won’t,” he says, pulling away before your lips can touch. You open your eyes and find him looking right at you. “I didn’t hate you. I didn’t always like you, but I didn’t fully hate you, either, n’ there’s nothing like that to go back to.”
Being vulnerable is hard. You struggle to find the words. “I’m not saying it’s your fault or anything, I just really don’t want you to not like me again.”
“I didn’t know you,” he says simply. You’re sure he’s done, but he pulls your hand off of his cheek to hold thoughtlessly to his chest. “And now I do. I can’t not like you anymore.”
“Do you think it’s normal that we still get mad at each other?”
“Of course it is. Remus and Sirius argue every day, but they always say sorry.”
You smile weakly. “We did that. Off to a good start.”
James returns your smile tenfold, grinning as he squeezes your hand. “We’re off to a great start. It’s work that’s the problem, that’s all. Hate the James that’s your coworker and love the James who drives you home, hm?”
“It’s the coworker one that I ended up really fancying,” you murmur.
He goes pink with delight. “You fancy me?”
“You’d hope so.”
James peers down at your hand and gives it another tender squeezing. “Can I have an apology kiss or something? I felt like it was going that way but I ruined it, and now I’d quite like one.”
“Can you kiss me?” you ask softly.
James braces his hand against your shoulder and ducks in to kiss you. Chastely (lest someone see you snogging in the break room and get you written up), but a great kiss all the same. It makes your mouth tingle. It still feels exciting all these kisses later, better when James kisses your cheek and the side of your head in quick succession.
“I don’t care that we argued,” he says, “I just don’t like how I acted, n’ I love how you look when you’re mad. It’s why I used to wind you up so much.”
You find yourself drawn into Remus’ life after an awful night you can’t remember. He does his best to hold onto you. [10k]
cw: heavy themes, implied sexual assault of the reader [with no graphic scenes but it’s a continuous theme, so please be careful when reading], pregnancy, eventual friends to lovers, friendships, hurt/comfort, james makes a lot of soup, found family
𖦹
The pharmacy on Wilmand Street is always deathly quiet. The boy behind the counter reads and occasionally picks up the phone to put it back down, his hair in his eyes, a waxiness to his pale skin that never fails to perturb.
Your shoes creak over the hardwood floor. He’s noticed your entry, signalled by a golden bell above the door and your muffled panting, but he hasn’t looked up.
Your eyes slide past pads, nighttime, ultra-long panty liners, searching with a poorly restrained desperation for something in particular.
The phone rings —dark-haired boy picks it up and puts it back down again as you recalled, silencing the ring. You watch him from over your shoulder and he looks up from his book to stare.
“Pregnancy tests?” you ask.
His expression doesn’t change as he pulls a drawer open behind the desk with a metallic clink. “What kind?”
“The most reliable. Please.”
He gives a nod, black curl bobbing under his chin. He grabs a blue card box and places it on the counter. “Sixteen fifty.”
You open your purse before you’ve reached him, extracting the change exactly and tipping it next to his book. “Thank you.”
“Are you alright?”
Your heart squeezes in your chest like a tightening fist. “Why?”
“I have to ask. I’m a mandated reporter.”
“I’m not a child.”
He levels your look with his own. “You don’t have to answer. I’m only asking because you look upset. Are you alright?”
You don’t think you’ve ever heard him say more than three words at a time. His voice is reminiscent of someone else’s, half-remembered. You want to ask him, then. The questions you’ve had since it happened. Why does it hurt so badly, still? But the boy, while seemingly well-intentioned, isn’t one you trust to care nor keep it to himself.
“Fine,” you reply, pressing the blue-boxed test into your pocket, pulling the hood of your coat up to brace against the December rain. You’re fine.
The door opens before you can get to it, another lovely dark-haired boy letting himself inside. His stare is blank as the one at the desk’s is, but you smile on instinct and he smiles back warmly after a moment, holding the door for you to leave.
“Okay, Reg?” you hear him ask as you pass.
“Close the door,” Reg says. “You’re letting in the cold.”
—
It’s even colder the next time you go. You throw on another hoodie and wrap a scarf tightly around your neck, face ducked, nose tickled by flyaway fibres. The walk to Wilmand Street takes seventeen long minutes where your hands hurt, then shake, chapped by hateful winds.
The pharmacy’s newspapered window comes into view. A poster for the local pub leaks ink on the outside, wet by the rain, its font blooming like fungus across purple paper. Live music event: December 31st.
The dark-haired boy —Reg?— is behind the counter again. The first one. Are you alright? boy. He looks twenty so or near that, but there’s something wilfully young about the skin under his eyes, despite a more haggard pinch to his brow. You were hoping it would be the second one, or the sandy-haired boy who mans the till in the very early mornings. He has a more natural smile than the other two. Perhaps not more authentic, but quicker to perk up when you slink in for whatever before work, Mondays and Fridays if he’s there.
Reg doesn’t lift his head. You push yourself toward the back of the pharmacy. It’s a small shop slotted between two others, one wall touched from the next in thirty seconds should you walk it. It makes pretending you’re there for other things useless and embarrassing, but you do it anyway. Another test won’t change what you wanted the test to say, but you can’t take one single test and trust it was right.
“Reliable?” Reg asks when you finally approach.
“Yeah. And the five strip box, too, if you have it.”
Reg takes them from the drawer and adds their prices seemingly in his head. “Eighteen eighty-nine.”
You pass him a twenty pound note and wait for your change, not bothered that he counts it slowly, or that he puts it down flat on the counter away from your outstretched hand. “Thanks,” you murmur.
He noticeably bites his tongue.
“I want to be sure, is all,” you say.
“If you go to the doctor’s, they do it for free. And it has a ninety nine percent rate of accuracy.”
You hold the tests to your stomach. “I’m not… really sure what I’d want them to tell me, right now.”
“They’d tell you the truth, at least.” Reg seems to decide this line of conversation isn’t one he wants to continue, and he lets his mouth flatten into a thin, white line. You get the sense though that he isn’t done talking, and are rewarded for your patience with an inkling of an almost-smile. “Please know that I’m bound by duty of care while I work here, so if you are concerned about something, I can listen and offer advice. And if you don’t want to tell me private information, my uncle is the acting pharmacist, and he is more strictly bound by patient confidentiality law.” He looks you in the eye. “You’re only as alone as you allow yourself to be.”
“Who says that?” you ask, poked by the way he lays it out.
Reg doesn’t like your question and doesn’t answer. He picks up his book, murmuring, “I hope they give you the result you want.”
A different dark-haired boy is standing outside of the pharmacy when you leave. With a nice nose, eyes like a puppy, he’s handsome but hidden behind black frames. He stands from his car where he’d been leaning when the door swings out, sits back again when he realises you’re not who he’s looking for. “Sorry, lovely,” he says, pulling at a loosely-knotted tie. “I thought you were someone else.”
“Sorry,” you say back, holding the tests to your chest.
Your hand covers the boxes. His eyes flicker down to them regardless. You wait for disdain or embarrassment but see neither. Really, the only thing this new boy wears is pleasantness.
“Don’t stay out too long, will you?” he asks, smiling genially, “You’ll freeze.”
“I’m–” You clear your throat, caught off guard to have a stranger care about you so openly. No reluctance to his well wishes, and no strings. “Sorry– I’m going home now. I won’t stay out.”
“Good, shortcake. Have a good night.”
You should say you too. The wind chases you back to your flat, where you head for the bathroom, and, despite living alone, lock the door.
—
You take your pregnancy test and sit on the floor, too weak-legged to stand at the sink, waiting for two pink lines.
Sure enough. Control, result. One solid pink line, and one much lighter. It doesn’t matter —a positive is a positive, no matter how weak. The strip tests say the same thing.
In TV and movies, people always paint the test as the ultimate moment. As though the result is the result, and that everything after is fixed, but the result now is only a signifier for another decision to be made: will you keep your baby, or foetus? Do you feel as though it is a baby, or a foetus, or both? Is it welcome, or a foreign object? There is no right or wrong answer, only how you feel.
The migraine you get then is debilitating. Like toothache in every tooth, pain behind your eyes half-psychosomatic, half physiological stress. You’re not sure how long you’re in the bathroom holding your forehead, but it’s dark when you manage to stand again, and the tests have only gotten more obviously positive. You throw them all in the bin.
—
The third day you go back to Wilmand Street pharmacy, the desk is manned by your unfamiliar, smiling boy. He looks up when the door opens, his eyes browned honey set in a face that recently saw the sun, but not too much of it. Kissed by it. His cheeks are pinked. He must be the first person who’s worked here to bother turning on the heating.
“Morning,” he says.
“Morning,” you say back. Voice croaky, you remember to be polite. “You okay?”
“I’m great, lovely, thank you. How are you?” He gives a nod toward the street. “It’s so cold out, are you gonna be warm enough in your jumper?”
You find yourself struck as you were the day before, so startled by genuine kindness that you can hardly work your mouth. “I’m okay. I’m going right back home after this.”
“Aw, good.”
You nod. What are you here for today? Not another test. You aren’t stupid enough to believe a third round will give you a different verdict, but you‘d felt an urgent need to move.
You grab a rounded basket from near the door and make your way to the haircare. There’s a handful of shampoos to choose from. You take the usual. Beneath them are baby shampoos and soaps. On a whim you pick one up, the words Tear and fragrance free stuck like a bad swallow at the back of your throat.
Babies need so many things. At the supermarket they have these great walls of baby food and it’s expensive enough to take your eye out every time. A quarter of an hours wage for every organic, soft meal, and sure, they don’t need organic, vegetables are organic intrinsically, whatever, but if you don’t buy organic pre-made meals you have to make the baby food yourself, how long does that take? You put the baby shampoo down and turn to the conditioners.
Unhappy, you scour them for nothing and turn on the spot. Why is Dr. Black never here? How are you supposed to ask him your questions if he doesn’t show up to work?
You’ll have to ask the brown-haired boy. Nice eyes, nice smile. He probably won’t judge you, at least not out loud.
He stands up from his rickety chair, soft leather seat worn and creaking as he pushes it away. “Yeah?” he asks.
“Do you have to do that patient-confidentiality thing?”
He smiles rather gently. “I do. A condition of my employment is to protect patient information. Legally, I can’t share private or sensitive information about you to anyone else in the world, unless I believe you’re in proper danger.” He holds his hands behind his back. “Is there something you wanted to ask me?”
Wind roars outside. Your eyes start to the door.
“There’s a private room in the back,” he adds.
“I don’t want to waste your time.”
“It’s not wasted. Even if I weren’t legally obligated to keep whatever secrets you may have, I’m worried you look a bit poorly.”
He speaks oddly. Or not odd, but different to any of the other men you’ve met. It’s friendly, and yet somehow he’s quiet, too. His interest feels real, so you cross the room to the desk and put your basket on your shoes.
You try to find a way to say it. “I know you’re not a doctor.”
“No, I’m an apprentice pharmacist.”
“Right. I know I should go to the doctor, and not you.”
“That depends. We’re here to help. Doesn’t matter if you should go somewhere, you can ask me first.”
You struggle. He waits. His hands lay steady on the edge of the desk, his face nearly blank besides a hint of warmth.
“Is it alright if it’s a question about, um, sex?”
He nods emphatically. “Of course that’s alright. I can’t promise I’ll know the answer, but you’re welcome to ask me anything and I can always get back to you if you’re not willing to ask someone else.” His smile turns wry. “I know it’s uncomfortable, but it’s only sex. I don’t mind.”
“I just…” You hold your hands together. “I wanted to know, if pain after… if it’s supposed to hurt so much after.”
His wry smile is quickly subdued, though he remains friendly looking. “It depends,” he says, measured, “on a few things. You probably know that the first time you have sex can be painful because of the initial perforation of the hymen, but usually sex isn’t supposed to be painful at all.”
“At all.”
“No. If sex hurts, it’s likely from a lack of preparation, bruising of the cervix, or it could be a condition called vaginismus. That’s where your muscles tighten suddenly when you attempt penetration. Having sex with vaginismus can be extremely painful.”
Something on his chest catches the light. A name tag.
He follows your gaze. “Oh,” he says. “I’m Remus. Sorry, it might’ve been nicer for you to know that before I started talking.”
Remus… You shake your head at him. “Um… Remus… Well, I’m not really sure what happened.”
“Right.”
“I wasn’t–” Your heart jumps before you can confess, horrible secret stuck to the roof of your mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “are you sure you don’t want to go sit down in the quiet room with me? I can make you a cup of tea.”
“I can’t have caffeine.”
“I have night time tea. Is that alright?”
“The shop?”
“It’s okay, I’ll ask Sirius to come down. You really aren’t doing anything wrong.”
“I feel like I shouldn't ask you.”
“That’s a consequence of our great British society,” he says, lightly teasing as he lifts the counter to come from behind it and presses a small red button on an intercom box by the inside door. It’s an attempt to make you feel better, and it nearly works. “You feel embarrassed about something you have no reason to feel embarrassed of. Everybody has sex, and everybody has bad sex, sometimes, and needs advice.”
The intercom crackles before you can speak. “Moony?” a voice asks.
“Sirius, I have someone who needs to talk to me. You’ll have to come on the till for a bit.”
“Kay. Down now.”
Remus smiles. “That’s about as obliging as he gets.”
“Sirius, is he the– is he the one who reads?”
“Not often. You’re thinking of Regulus, his brother.”
Regulus, of course. “They look so similar.”
“They do.” He gestures for you to stand beside him as the inside door swings open, unveiling one of those dark-haired brother’s, the taller of the two.
“Oh, hi,” Sirius says, wet hair on his shoulders, his t-shirt sodden at the front like he’d swept it back, “okay? There’s biscuits in the left cupboard, Moons.”
Remus, Moons, Moony, holds the door back and lets you inside.
The walk to the quiet room is strange. Sitting down at the table with him as he passes you a box of biscuits, kettle boiling, he doesn’t put you on ends, but it doesn’t feel good. You slip your hand under your t-shirt where he can’t see and feel the hot stretch of your stomach for something that isn’t there.
“So,” he says, grimacing, “I’m going to ask you some precursory questions. You don’t have to answer any of them if you don’t want to.”
“Okay.”
“Are you in any active danger?”
You shake your head slowly. “None.”
“Is someone close to you hurting you?”
“No.”
“Are you alright?”
You twist your hands together tightly. “I don’t think so.”
“No?” He slips his chair closer to your own. “Are you hurt now?”
You look down at your lap. This is awful. This is why you didn’t want to go to see your doctor. “I don’t know. I’m not hurt, but it does hurt. I move and it feels like something sharp is digging into me.”
“I see.” He frowns. “This can happen sometimes with penetration. It’s like I said before, if your body isn’t, you know, prepared? If you aren’t using lubrication, if you aren’t relaxed, it can be as simple as friction having hurt you, but it’s possible you’ve got cervical bruising, or an issue with your pelvic floor. It could be that you have a UTI. If we go through a couple of questions together I might be able to suggest a solution, but I have to tell you to see your doctor if you can. Alright? Pain after sex can be normal, but it doesn’t have to be. When we go back out, I’ll give you some paracetamol as well.”
He looks as though he might have something else to say, but he stops when you open your mouth. “I don’t know what happened.”
Remus frowns again. “Right.”
The cellophane on the biscuits is shining under the light.
“I don’t really know what to do.”
“It’s a stabbing pain?” His frown gets impossibly deeper. “I have some ibuprofen. Off the record, you can have some of that with your tea. Here.” He procures a blister pack from his pocket and hands it to you, jumping up for the kettle, carrying it back to your mugs to set with the pint of milk. “It will probably go away soon, lovely, I would try not to worry, but it’s good to keep an eye on it too, and to book with the doctors if it gets worse. There are so many things that can go wrong in the body, but we’re also such good self-healers, it’s hard to know what to do.”
“It’s… something else, too.”
“Yeah?”
“I was wondering if the pain is maybe because I…”
Your face goes hot as coal embers, a furious sweat on the back of your neck. Remus doesn’t prod. He pours water into your mug until it’s a little over half full, the tea bag at the bottom staining it sepia.
“I think I’m pregnant,” you say, not sure why it hurts to say so much.
“Right.”
“Do you think it hurts because of that?”
Remus bites his lip as he pours his own mug of tea. He’s looking at you as he puts the kettle down. “No, I wouldn’t think so, but it’s not an impossibility. How pregnant were you thinking?”
“It was two weeks ago, so… so however long it takes to get pregnant.”
He looks alarmed, then. “Lovely, that was the last time you had sex?”
“Yeah.”
“And it still hurts now?”
“Only sometimes,” you say nervously.
He ignores his steaming tea. “Right. Well, I think I need to advise you to make an emergency appointment today. I can make it with you. You shouldn’t still be hurting after two weeks, pregnant or not. Ectopic pregnancies don’t tend to hurt until further along, so…” Remus slows, looking at you with that too-kind frown, brown eyes darker back here behind the fog curls of his tea.
You feel caught on something.
“I wasn’t awake,” you say quietly. “Just woke up hurting. I guessed what happened, ‘n now I’m pregnant. It could only have been...” You shrug it off, even as heat blooms behind your eyes, nose already hot and sniffly.
“You were assaulted.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Remus seems to freeze up. “I’m sorry.” He takes a few seconds, and then he meets your eyes. “I can’t imagine how scary that must have been, and how scary it still is.”
Your eyes line with tears. “I mean, it’s less scary now.” First tear tips forward as your voice falls to pieces. “I just don’t know what to do. Every day I’ve come here this week I’ve tried to ask about it, because I saw that poster, if I’m hurt then I can– then I can come to the pharmacy, but I’m not hurt, I’m fine now.”
“Oh,” he says gently, pushing his chair over a little to bring himself closer, his hand coming to rest on your hunched shoulder, “even if you weren’t in any pain at all, you’re more than welcome to come here and speak to us, to me. This residual pain, I imagine you must’ve been quite injured when it happened. You didn’t have any help at all?”
“I didn’t think there’s anything they could do.”
“That’s okay, it’s not your fault,” he says, rubbing your shoulder kindly. “I just want to know as much of the details as you feel alright giving me, so we can move forward in the best way possible.” His hand slides across your back, nearly hugging. “I’m sorry. Really. And I’m sorry for talking so much about ‘bad sex’, I didn’t realise what you were telling me.”
“I’m sorry for telling you.”
“What?” he asks, a soft incredulity to him, “You have nothing to be sorry for. You can tell as many or as few people as you like, but I’m extremely glad to be told, because no one should ever have to face this sort of thing alone, should they?” He rubs your back when you nod, again when you sniffle. “Alright. It’s alright. You’re okay.”
You don’t cry as much as you worry you might under a soft touch. The memory of waking up paralyses you for a bit, that confusion, the pain, the bruise across your neck. All of it makes you feel sick, but Remus shushes you under his breath, not to really shush you, but to calm you down.
“I’m okay,” you say, shamed.
“Try and drink some of this tea. Can I leave you alone for a minute?”
“Oh, uh– yeah, of course. I’m fine.”
His hand lingers between your shoulders. “Just for a minute, I’m going to find some bits for you–”
“I don’t need anything–”
“No, no, it’s okay, it’s just stuff I have to give you, and some things you might need.” Remus’ hand traces carefully to the front of your shoulder. He meets your eyes, nothing but compassion in the line of his mouth. “Okay?”
You say okay. Remus uses the door you came in through to head back out onto the pharmacy’s shop floor, letting it shut quietly behind him. You press your hand to your teeth.
—
To Remus’ credit, he apologises for both pamphlets. Abortion Explained. What to expect when you’re expecting. “For you to know your options,” he’d said. “Whatever you decide, it’s your decision.”
He can’t know you’ll spend a week pouring over them all, that you’ll worry at the corner of the STD clinic card, or that you’ll shove the RapeCrisis one down the side of your bed, desperate to throw it out, but terrified you’ll need it, too.
And some of the stuff he gives you. You don’t even know what to do with it. Painkillers, lavender oil, discreet pads for incontinence. You’d tried to pay and he’d touched the back of your hand without explanation. “No, it’s okay,” he’d said. Nothing else.
You spend days again wrapped in your own nausea, until Thursday evening, when you make your way to Community Support.
You honestly weren’t considering it when Remus first gave you the card, but he said his friend worked there, “My best friend, James,” he corrected, ”and his wife, Lily, too. She talks to people about all kinds of things. I just wonder if you might feel happier talking about it with a woman.”
Which was a nice sentiment, and possibly true, though Remus had been the first person you told. To be met with his sympathy in such a boundless capacity made it easier. Made you think, Maybe I’m not stupid for hating that it happened.
“I’m here every Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday,” he‘d said when you made up a lie about needing to leave, scared of overstaying, “seven ‘til three, but you can ask for me if you ever want to. Sirius usually knows where I am.”
And you had wanted to, but you knew you couldn’t. Being so desperately alone that you craved the comfort of a stranger’s hand is fine, but it didn’t feel okay to hold him hostage like that. Of course he feels sorry for you, of course he wants to make you feel better, how heartless would he look otherwise?
You’d chide yourself for thinking cynically about someone who’d only ever been nice if it would make a difference. Lonely, wrecked, you end up at the Community Support Group at the local leisure centre, wavering behind the swing doors.
A face appears on the other side of the door. Deep skin, eyes like cherry pits and lips painted a cheery red, a woman smiles at you and pulls it open.
“Hi! Are you here for the support group?”
“Uh– Yeh–” You swallow roughly. “Yes. Is that here?”
“That’s here.” She puts a thumb through the belt loop on her jeans. “Why don’t you come inside?”
You take a tentative step.
“I’m Mary,” she says.
“I don’t have to sign anything, right?” you ask.
Mary leads you into the room without stopping. “This is off the books only. Do you want some tea or coffee?”
“I can’t have caffeine.”
“Decaf?”
“Can I have water?”
Mary has a good smile. Like she knows you, like you’re already friends. She cups your shoulder and guides you to the refreshment table, an impressive splendor of coffee, tea, individually wrapped biscuits, and sandwiches. There’s a box of protein bars with a handwritten red felt note that says: Take me home if you want to!
“Aren’t hungry are you?” Mary asks.
“Not really.”
She ducks down at the table and pushes aside tablecloth to grab a crate of water from underneath.
“You haven’t been here before, then?” Mary asks as she stands. “I remember most faces, I don’t think I’ve seen you here.”
“No, I’ve never… um, someone at the pharmacy told me I can come,” you say tightly.
“Oh, you can! Of course you can. I wondered if you were new, that’s all.” She presses a bottle of water into your hands. You look down at her fingers, confused at their odd texture, your neck snapping up once you realise what you’re doing.
Mary has scars all over her hands, her wrists, and you’d been gawking at them by mistake. “Sorry,” you mumble.
“For what? Do you want me to stay? Or would you rather be by yourself?”
“We don’t sit in a circle, do we?”
Mary laughs lightly. “No, no circle yet, you can leave if you don’t wanna stay for the group talking therapy. For the first hour people just say hello to one another. There are a ton of counsellors here, okay? I’m just gonna wander, but if you want to talk to me, come and find me, yeah?”
“Okay, thanks. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, hun.” She smiles at you, a little softer than before. “You can sit down if it makes you feel less awkward, but be warned, the sofas are James’ territory. He loves to talk.”
Don’t wanna get stuck with James, you think. Though really, you’re here to talk. Or to turn around and go home with a pocket full of protein bars.
The community room is an emptied dance hall that’s been made nice. There are big boards of fliers, of last year’s trampolining club, and another of the Community Support Christmas club, whatever that had been. It looked busier then than it does tonight —there are a ton of sunny looking counsellors dotted around the room and talking in triangles, half as many people like you.
Someone random catches your eyes and you fluster, making your way to the terracotta sofas in the corner of the room on impulse. A man sits with an arm across his eyes, glasses on his chest, looking so sorrily tired for a second that you forget you’d come looking for help of your own.
“Are you okay?” you ask, stilted. James’ territory, and you’d walked straight in.
The man sits up starkly. He looks right at you, but you don’t recognise him until he puts on his glasses. It’s one of those pharmacy men.
No, it’s not, you’d just seen him outside.
“Hello,” he says, sliding his glasses up a strong-bridged nose. “I’m okay, I’m just resting my eyes,” —he laughs— “you alright?” You nod. “Yeah? Here for the support club? Or the sandwiches?”
“I–” Will you stammer every time someone asks you about it? “One of the– the pharmacy, one of the pharmacists told me to come.”
“That’s good,” he says earnestly. “I like those guys. Did you want a sandwich or something? I must’ve made a hundred. My hand still aches from the butter knife.”
“I’m okay.”
“Okay. Well, did you want to sit down? I promise I won’t hold you hostage or anything.”
What am I doing? you think miserably, taking a seat in the sofa adjacent to his.
He crosses one leg over the other. “Please don’t look so upset. I swear I genuinely won’t make you talk. I’m just here for the biscuits and lovely Lily, I promise. And lovelier Remus–” He laughs to himself.
“You’re James?” you ask.
“The last time I checked.”
“Remus– he mentioned you’d be here. I forgot.”
James only smiles. “He’s brilliant, isn’t he?” he asks, wriggling in his seat to procure one of those biscuit packets from his back pocket.
“He said that I might like talking to Lily.”
It feels weird calling her by her first name without knowing her, but James agrees, “I’ll introduce you when she gets here, if that’s what you want.”
“I just… I don’t know.”
“She’s just as nice as Remus is. Remus was nice to you, wasn’t he?”
You nod and look down at your clenched hands. “Yeah. He was nice to me.”
“That’s good.”
A tepid silence pervades for a moment.
“Do you want a biscuit or something? Or we have noodles and soup and stuff in the storage room, I’m happy to make you something warm if you want that.”
“You guys are like a restaurant,” you say, still not willing to look at him.
“It’s nice to have options.”
You nod hurriedly, sick to your stomach all over again. Options. Decisions.
Somewhere in the room, they turn on a radio. Shoes squeak on the waxed floor, a boy laughs like he’s being tickled. It was a mistake to come tonight. You desperately want someone to hug you and you know it’s too much to ask for, staggering to your feet with a headrush to be blinked back.
“You okay?” James asks.
“Yeah. Um, where’s the toilet?”
“Back out of the double doors, they’re right in front of you, okay? Straight in front and then to the left, you can’t miss them.”
“Okay.”
“Wait, Y/N?” he says.
You shoot him a look that betrays your surprise.
“Sorry, Remus told me to keep a look out for you. I just wanted to say, I know this is different, and it’s weird, I get that, and I have no idea why you’re here tonight, but I promised Remus I wouldn’t upset you, and I think I already have.”
“He didn’t tell you why I’m here?”
“Of course not.” James blows a breath that makes his hair fly away from his face in a wave. “It’s none of my business why you’re here. My job is to make sandwiches. I mean, some people come here just for the sandwiches or the warm room, and that’s fine.”
“The sandwiches are that good?” you ask.
“They’re great. We don’t fuck around, I use the real salted butter in the foil wrappings and the thick bread and everything. Proper ham, not the wafer thin stuff. And there’s veggie bacon too, if you don’t eat meat. I don’t know, could you please just let me feed you something? Remus won’t forgive me if you came here and you didn’t even eat.”
“I think you’re using Remus as a ploy,” you say quietly.
“I am! So let’s go have a sandwich or a biscuit or something.” He waves his biscuits at you. “They’re Border’s. Butterscotch Border’s, you literally can’t ask for better.”
Just try. Be brave for a bit. “I like the uh– the lemon ones.”
James shoots up onto his feet, grinning. “Amazing taste. Let’s go find you some.”
—
James takes you to the refreshment table. He finds you lemon drizzle biscuits, two packets, and he pushes two more into your hands with the command to take them home. He offers to make you dinner again when Lily arrives in a tizzy, with a chubby baby on her hip.
Harry, she says. Just turned three. Scandalised everyone at home, Lily’s sister kicked her out, disaster. Harry, though, is beautiful. James and Lily are beautiful, and happy. James takes Harry into his arms the moment he sees him murmuring about his boy, and the sensation of guilt under your skin grows worse than ever.
How are you liking group? Lily asks. Would you come back next week? That’s great! I’m so glad to hear it.
—
You’re walking through Wilmand Street to the corner shop a few days later when you see him. Brown hair wet with snow, ashing a cigarette into the brick wall by the library. Remus cringes as he does it, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth in a call, “Y/N!” he says, “Hey, lovely, how are you? Sorry about the smoke,” he adds. “I was hoping I’d see you this week.”
“Yeah?”
“I wondered how you were doing.”
“Well, don’t worry about me, I’m okay. I…” You cringe, pulling a hand down your sore chest. “I owe you an apology. I’m sorry for the other day, for dumping that stuff on you, you don’t even know me and I told you such a horrible thing and made you worry, and your friends were so nice to me at the community group and I just didn’t say thanks or anything. I’m genuinely ashamed of myself.” You smile a weird smile, clunky, attempting to brush everything away like it didn’t mean anything, silly little you. “All the time.”
Remus’ expression goes odd, a wall you can’t read, left searching his winter jacket for clues as to how he’s feeling. “I don’t think you have anything to be ashamed of,” he says, finally and simply.
“It was rude of me.”
“I have some experience with feeling ashamed for the things other people have done,” he says, flakes of snow kissing his shoulders, a white dot coming to rest and melt on his cheek. “I understand why you’re feeling this way, and it’s expected, but… How do I put this?”
You watch his eyes. Remus struggles to say anything more. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen a flicker of insecurity on him. He always seems calmly settled, as though he’s thought about the world and found what it is he was looking for in it a long time ago.
“Just because we think something doesn’t make it true,” he says, hiding his hands in his coat pockets. “You might feel like it was wrong to tell me, but it wasn’t, and you might think you were rude to my friends, but you weren’t. They didn’t have a single bad word to say about you. Not that either of them tend to say anything disparaging about anyone,” he adds as an afterthought.
“I wish I didn’t tell you, is all.”
“I’m sorry. I can go on as though you didn’t, if that’s what you want, whatever you want.”
You look down at your chest, nodding. “Okay.”
Which isn’t a yes or no to his suggestion, but he doesn’t pull you up on it. “Okay. Are you going to the pharmacy?”
“I– no. But I did hope to ask you something.” He nods, as if to say, Go on. “It’s about the sex clinic.”
“What about it?”
“I don’t really know what it is.”
Remus looks around the street and then up and down your arms. The jumper you’re wearing is thin, your teeth aching to chatter, and he’s noticed it already. “Do you want to have this conversation over tea, lovely?” he asks.
“Decaf?”
“Yes, and biscuits, if you’re interested.”
You follow Remus up the marginally steep hill that makes up Wilmand Street and enter the pharmacy behind him. It’s wooden front and newspaper clippings give way to the starker insides, where you find Sirius sitting at the front desk. Or rather, sitting on it, corded telephone held between his ear and his shoulder. “Oh, he’s just come in, but he has company. Yeah, he said.” Sirius presses the phone to his shoulder to give you both a small but earnest smile. “Hey, you’ve been snowed on. Turn the heating up before you catch your death.”
“It’s been caught,” Remus says with a wave. “We’re going to sit in the kitchen. Tell Reg not to interrupt us.”
Your mouth falls open, but Sirius only salutes his —friend? coworker? “James says he’s giving the phone a sloppy one for you.”
“Lovely.” Remus laughs brightly, his hand slipping behind your shoulder. “Alright?” he asks.
You give a nod and continue following him past the inside door to the kitchen you’d sat in before. Remus flicks the kettle on and sits down, forcing you to take his cue and sit opposite of him.
“Much warmer in here,” he mumbles, stripping out of his coat. “Alright. What did you want to ask me about the sex clinic?”
“Um… I don’t know. How do I go there?”
“We’ll make an appointment. It’s not far from the leisure centre, so you can walk, or I can book you a taxi, give you a lift. We'll work something out.”
“And they… won’t mind that I– that I don’t really know what I’m doing?”
You almost miss the dissatisfied noise he makes over the rising sound of the kettle. “They won’t mind.”
“Do I have to tell them what happened?”
“No. I mean, I assume it’s better if they have a clearer picture of the circumstances, but then again, you’re entitled to your privacy. You could just say you’re concerned about your intimate health.”
“But they’ll ask questions.”
“Yeah, they will. I know you don’t want to answer them, and that’s okay. You don’t have to answer them. Doctor’s, pharmacists, we just ask about stuff because we have to, but there’s no law that says you have to answer.”
Now you’ve had time to think about things beyond the aching and the angry horror, a new fear has curdled. “What if he gave me something?” you say under your breath.
“Then we can get you whatever medicine it is that you need and we can work toward you feeling better again.” His head tips as the kettle clicks. “Did you still want tea?”
“Yes, please.”
Remus makes you each a cup of decaf tea, bringing sugar and milk to the table for you to add yourself.
“We can go now, if you want to.”
“To the clinic?” you ask.
Remus nods slowly. “Mm-hm. It’s an emergency.”
“You’d come with me?” you ask, not breathless, but almost.
“If you’re okay with it and you want me to, I’ll come with you. It might not be so scary. Or I can ask Lily to take you.”
It’s not Remus’ fault that the person who assaulted you was a man like he is, but it does sound less intimidating to go with a girl. You’re not sure why. It’s not like he hasn’t been kind since the minute you asked him about confidentiality or that he deserves your distrust, but even sitting in this room with him now talking about the clinic has made you uncomfortable again. “Would she mind?”
“Lily would love to take you. I know that sounds strange. She wouldn’t love that you need to go, but she wouldn’t want you to go alone if you’re worried about it.”
“And she’ll go now?”
Remus pushes your mug toward you. “You have some tea and I'll go and ask James if she’s around.”
“I don’t want to be a burden.”
“You’re not,” he says. “There’s biscuits in the cupboard, lovely. If you want some, you can help yourself.”
Things don’t pass that day in much detail after that. When Remus returns ten minutes later, you’ve finished your tea, and Lily is with him. She was on her way here already. She’d be happy to take you to the clinic.
So you go, and you get checked out, and you submit to their tests and their invasive, well-intentioned questions. Lily takes you to a cafe afterward and buys you a pastry you can’t do more than poke. She takes you home. You feel guilty for not saying thank you in the car, but you can barely speak. A few days later you get a phone call with your results. You take a course of medications. You cry yourself to sleep three days in a row, because, as they’d tested for STDs, they tested for something else, and they’d told you what you‘d already known.
You’re as pregnant as your home tests said you are. Despite everything, you feel an emotion you hate, and you push it down again.
—
The door to your flat shakes with a sharp knock.
You startle and stand, not sure what you’d been thinking, a hole burned into the floor at your feet. You’re in no state to answer the door, wet hair dripping a river down your back and your pajamas old. There’s nothing for it.
You take the handle into your hand and squeeze.
Dark-haired Regulus is standing in the hallway. You let the door close just an inch between you.
“Regulus,” you say, unsure if surprise will help or hinder you.
“Hello.”
“How can I…”
“Remus asked me to check in on you.”
You’re not sure you like what he’s saying. “How do you know where I live?”
“Remus didn’t ask me to come to your flat, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No, it’s not. I’m confused that you know where I live when I didn’t tell you.”
He holds a deft hand up in surrender. “I live across the street, I’ve seen you come into the building, and your last name is on the postbox downstairs. I’m not doing anything illegal.”
Just weird, then.
“Remus asked me to keep an eye out for you,” he says, “but you haven’t been to the pharmacy, naturally.”
“So your solution was to come to my house?”
“I don’t think there’s any need to get twitchy.”
But there is. There is. He might not know what it is, and you might find thinking about it feels like a serrated blade end squeezed in your fist, but there is a need. You don’t want him to be here. It doesn’t matter that he’s small and skinny and has a sweet nose. This is your place to be by yourself, and to have nobody know where you are. This is the locked door.
He has the sense to soften his bravado. “Sorry. I’ve made you uncomfortable.”
You try to relax your shoulders. Your ribs ache with the tension. “Please,” you say gently, “tell Remus that I’m alright. Thank you for worrying about me.”
Regulus looks to the stairwell leading to the foyer. “He’s going to Community Support tonight if you want to tell him yourself. I am, too.” He doesn’t look at you again. “See you later,” he says to the stairs.
—
You go to Community Support despite yourself.
“Can you forgive me for not flirting with you?”
You surprise the urge to flinch hard, turning to the voice with a half-smile. Sirius is standing beside you suddenly, your faces reflected in the plexiglass covered notice board just outside of the community hall. “What?” you ask.
“I don’t mean to be offensive. I haven’t flirted because I thought Remus might have his eye on you, and I don’t want you to think it’s because you’re not beautiful.”
You have to turn to see him to realise he’s teasing you now to be friendly. “I’d be offended if you did flirt with me,” you say.
“Marvellous, then I won’t.”
“Remus doesn’t have his eye on me, though. He’s just been giving me pharmaceutical advice, I suppose.”
“Oh, I see. I thought maybe you’d… Well, never mind. Forget I said anything.”
He’s handsome enough that you’d be shocked if he actually did flirt with you, clear-skinned as his brother, but with a warmer smile, almost mischievous, like he knows something you don’t know and he’ll tell you for the right price. His shoulders are slim, his biceps particularly solid as he crosses his arms over his chest. He notices you noticing and gives a flex, to your laughter. “Like what you see?” he asks.
“Sorry.”
“We’re on the rugby team, you know.”
“You and Remus?”
“As if, Remus doesn’t like sports. He’s more of a walker. James and I are the sportsmen.”
Sirius didn’t strike you as somebody who plays anything either, but it’s not polite to say.
“Well, aren’t you coming inside?” he asks. “We could use a face like yours in there tonight. Beautiful girls are great for overall morale.”
You shake your head. “Don’t think so.”
“You came all the way here. You could at least come in for a bit of cake or something.”
“Community support or community kitchen?” you mumble.
“Everybody gets hungry. The best part of being in a community is making sure nobody goes hungry for long, right?”
You give him a sideways look. Somehow, someway, you’ve become acquainted with a circle of philanthropists. Normal people aren’t so generous. You’re too tired to be this kind.
“What kind do you have?”
“Carrot, red velvet, Victoria sponge, and plain chocolate, I think. Maybe a bit of walnut sponge if Marlene hasn’t mauled the whole thing.”
You’re not sure you can stomach it, just he’s looking at you so nicely that you want to go in with him. “Okay.”
“Okay?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
Sirius slips a hand behind your back, letting it hover an inch from your skin as he shepherds you through the double doors and into the main hall. It’s far more crowded than it had been on your first visit, a small circle of people already in chairs talking a ways from the crowded food table, pilfered, more sandwiches in hands than hands to hold them, and enough brewed coffee to scent the air. James is immediately noticeable crouching at the table, having pulled a crate of juice boxes from beneath it, laughing about something someone is saying to him —something Remus is saying, the tallest man in the room and somehow completely non-imposing, his voice more colour than sound as he talks.
It must just be because Remus is attentive. Must be the memory of his nice hand on your shoulder, squeezing, that makes you pay special attention to his shaking. “Is he laughing?” you ask.
Sirius tunes in quickly. “Yeah. He’s done that since we were kids. He can laugh like normal, but when something really has him it’s like he can’t get the sound out.” He chuckles himself. “Idiots. Come on, let’s get you your slice of cake.”
You can’t help staring at Remus as Sirius takes you over to him and James. James is so happy to see you he almost loses his glasses.
“You’re back! I thought my shitty impersonation of a counsellor might’ve scared you off. Don’t want some soup, do you?”
“Don’t say yes out of pity,” Sirius says. “Nobody ever wants James to make them soup.”
“You like my soup.”
“I like Effie’s soup. She makes the best bowl of lemon chicken I’ve ever tasted, and you make a mediocre imitation of her recipe, which is as good as it gets while I’m away.”
“Effie’s my mother,” James explains, clambering to his feet with the crate of small bottles of juice held to his chest. “Euphemia. And she does make the best lemon chicken soup, but mines just fine! And anyways, tonight I made winter vegetable because all the Christmas veg was 8p and I have a fuckton. It’s delicious. I cut the swede up so thin it melts in your mouth, I got fresh thyme from the garden, little bit of spinach, all of it cooked in a metric ton of butter.”
Remus snorts softly. He meets your eyes, which has you smiling on automatic. “James is a bit of a soup addict.”
”I–” You feel hungry for the first time in weeks. “I’d quite like to, uh, try some. If you really don’t mind.”
James glows, shoving the case of juice onto the refreshment table next to the hot water towers. “Yes. How about toasties, lovely, d’you want a cheese toastie with it? You’ll love it.” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Anyone else while I’m warming it?”
Remus meets your eyes again, like you’re sharing a secret. “I’ll have a bowl, Jamie.”
“Yes.”
“Alright,” Sirius acquiesces, “and me. And Reg will, too, wherever he’s gone off too. But he won’t have cheese–”
“Just toast, I know.”
James gets a look on him like he’s found the secrets of the universe. “I’ll make a garlic butter cheese toastie for all of you. Mm?”
Sirius waves him away.
Sirius grabs you a slice of cake even as you mumble about the soup and how it’s dessert before dinner. Doesn’t matter, he murmurs back, not worried about why you’ve gone shy, I promised you a slice.
You take an apple juice and follow him to a table. Remus comes with you. He looks sunnier today than the last time you saw him despite ever-cloudy weather. Maybe he’s just a bit golden. Steady, he sits at the table across from you with Sirius taking a seat perpendicular, the three of you three sides to a square, nothing to look at besides your hand squeezed around the handle of a plastic fork.
“I’m sorry about Regulus,” Remus says. “I didn’t mean for him to visit you at home. He told me you weren’t thrilled about it, and I can’t blame you.”
“I’m sorry too,” Sirius says, wrinkling his nose. “I have no clue why he did that.”
“And Regulus would be sorry, he just has a hard time realising when he’s overstepped.”
You nod at the table. “It’s okay. I mean, it did make me uncomfortable, and I– wasn’t super polite to him. I just wasn’t expecting him to be at the door, that’s all. And he said sorry, actually. So it’s forgiven.”
“Oh.” Sirius perches his hand in his head. “That’s unlike him. He doesn’t tend to be sorry.”
“Neither do you,” Remus says.
“It’s a family trait.”
“Can I save this for after soup?” you ask, shuffling your plate to the side. It’ll be easier to eat your cake when everyone else is eating as well.
“Course you can,” Sirius says, leaning back in his seat. “But if you don’t eat it, I’ll assume you don’t like me. I’m sensitive like that.”
Remus rolls his eyes, again gifting you with a great feeling, as though you’re in on a secret with him. He’s wearing an aviator jacket that looks incredibly soft, worn but not tattered, sherpa insides flattened but clean. The sleeves warp as he crosses his arms in front of him on the table and leans forward, conspirator.
“So, how was your morning? Besides Regulus’ unwelcome intrusion,” he says, almost drawling as Sirius does when he gets that playful look in his eye.
You’re not sure how to handle these boys. But you want to try. You’re sick of having nobody, of being nobody, even if it’s a little discomfiting sometimes to be with them. “My morning was fine. Tries to get through all my washing but it’s a mountain, so I left it and had a long shower instead.”
“How long is long?” Remus asks.
“Too long.”
“Like Remus’, then. I’m a one and done man, wash and go.” Sirius peels forward, “And Remus takes hours. Uses all the hot water.”
“You live together?” you ask.
“We did for a bit, didn’t we?” Sirius says.
“Six very long years,” Remus says. “But I have a flat, and Sirius lives on Wilmand Street now, thank god.”
“Thank god indeed,” Sirius says, “now I can actually wash my hair on a semi-regular basis.”
“Can you?” Remus asks.
“What are you implying?”
“Only that your hair seems distinctly unwashed lately, don’t worry.”
“He’s showing off ‘cos you’re here,” Sirius says, smiling despite the accusation as he takes a hand through his hair and pushes it back from his face. “I wash plenty.”
“Do you? I was almost hoping you’d stopped. Maybe that would explain the weird thing you have going on right here.” Remus scratches his upper lip.
“Fuck off, you just don’t like a scratchy kiss–”
Remus laughs suddenly. After a moment, it tapers into silence, though his shoulders still shake, and you can hear his laughter in his voice when he says, “That charming thatch of stubble would be the last of my worries if I wanted to kiss you, Sirius.”
“What’s top of the list then?”
“The smell, obviously. I’m getting top notes of wet dog and a headier dampness–”
“You sick bastard,” Sirius says, sounding absolutely delighted at his friend's insult.
“You just need a good wash, is all.”
You don’t mean to, but you laugh. Giggle, really, entertained by them and shocked a little by the way they snip and snap at each other. You pitch forward, face angled down, eyes tempted to shut completely. Sick bastard, you think, laughing still.
It only makes you laugh more when Sirius nudges you. “Hey, thought we were getting somewhere,” he murmurs.
You giggle some more. “Sorry,” you squeeze out eventually.
“Don’t be. He can take a hit. Even if he’s sensitive,” Remus says.
Sirius sniffs. “I’m not that sensitive. Can’t make a joke anymore without being entirely misrepresented.”
—
James’ soup becomes a staple for you over the next couple of days. Community Support is a daily occurrence, though some nights are more popular than others. The weekends are busiest, Friday and Saturday night, but Wednesdays have an uptick you aren’t expecting, sitting at one of the plastic tables with another cup or winter veg soup and a garlic buttered toastie. You blow on melty cheese as James brings the hot plate out to the refreshment table, making it easier to serve the many who want it. He’s gleeful, promising that they’re gonna love it, and then tacking on an amendment that anyone who doesn’t like it is more than welcome to something else from the kitchen.
With payday for most at midnight Friday, or some time after, it’s the hump of the week that hits hardest. You don’t come for the soup, but some people do, and they can’t be blamed for it; stretching money out isn’t easy.
Your stomach clenches. Your spoon wobbles in your hand.
From across the room, Remus sends you a warm smile, a kid in his arms and another at his thigh, chattering away as their mam takes a well-deserved breather by the terracotta sofas.
The next day is the same. James makes soup and ham sandwiches, ham off the bone, made it himself, and you pick at the crusts at a plastic table. Sirius keeps you company for a bit, and then Remus rags on him until he leaves. They’re both too smiley to believe any animosity.
On Friday, James isn’t there.
“Harry’s poorly.”
“I thought he might’ve had a day off.”
“He and Lily like the group too much for days off.” Remus scratches a hand through his hair. It’s the most boyish thing he’s ever done in front of you. “Are you liking it here? You haven’t missed a day all week.”
“James makes a good soup.”
“He left plenty, if you want it.”
You’re not sure you can stomach it. You give a small shake of your head. “Will Harry be okay?”
“Fine. He gets ear infections, James used to get them too, even when we were teenagers. He’s on antibiotics already, it’s just the crying that’s the worst. Makes him sick.” Remus smiles sympathetically. “Makes James sick, too. But they’ll be okay.”
“That’s good. It’s too quiet here when James isn’t around.”
The hall is practically silent. There are a few people milling around on the sofas and another handful drinking tea by the refreshment table. Mary is patting a crying woman with pink hair on the back. A two year old sits at her feet, staring up at her sullenly.
“I could go turn on the radio.”
You perch your chin in your palm, elbow on the table. Tired today. “That’s okay. It’s nice.” Quiet, but not lonely.
“You feeling okay?” he asks.
“Yeah.” You fight the urge to let your eyes shutter closed. “I’m okay. You okay?”
“I’m great. I’m really glad you’ve been coming. I know you don’t stay for group therapy, and you don’t have to, but… I don’t know, I think it’s just good to be around people.”
You feel like he meant to say a particular but dodged it at the last second. He hesitated.
He said he wouldn’t bring it up if you didn’t want him to, but maybe you do, just so you know it was real, and bad. It was awful, wasn’t it?
“I don’t like being alone,” you confess, scratching the back of your neck. “For a while…” You scratch scratch scratch, sounds of your nails over skin, then let your hand drop with a thump against your thigh. “I wanted to be alone. But now when I’m home by myself I feel awful.”
“It’s normal to want company.”
“Even after what happened?”
“Especially after what happened. I think the stereotype is that people… experience something bad, and that they retreat into themselves, and that’s based on a real process of emotions,” —he talks quietly but surely, without a lick of condescension— “and a real sort of phenomena. Everybody needs time to lick their wounds, to put it heavily. But it makes sense that you’d seek out company when you’ve just had a really, really horrible thing happen.”
You did retreat into yourself at first. Wasting days away in bed without an appetite, crying yourself sick and to sleep, hating yourself and the world and him, because it hurt so badly. But then you didn’t get your period when you were expecting it and it was like holding the times of a fork to a plug socket, a nasty shock flaring through your entire body from the tips of your fingers. And now you have decisions to make and a life to live after, it’s happening now, quickly. You aren’t feeling any better than you were that morning when you first woke up and realised you’d been attacked without fully knowing, but time is moving forward regardless. You don’t know why you crave other people, but you do. You like seeing Remus every night, even if he only talks to you once or twice. You like eating James’ home cooked food, like watching Sirius and Regulus bicker as they lean against one another, and you like seeing Lily press her nose to her baby’s. You wonder what that feels like. How soft is a small nose? What does it feel like to hold the person you made out of love and a little bit of every part of you in two hands?
You’re still so lonely it’s palpable. There are moments throughout the day where you can’t face it head on, but the support group is genuinely helping, if it’s just to spend an hour outside of your head.
Lonely, and with nobody to confide in.
Remus watches you think for a while. He’s waiting patiently for you to speak again.
“Can I tell you something stupid?” you ask softly.
“Sure.”
“Don’t laugh at me.”
“I doubt I could.”
You let out a deep sigh. He’s all browns tonight in his old jacket. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown jacket. “I was thinking about keeping the baby. I don’t know if you’d consider it a baby right now,” you murmur, staring at the corner of his mouth, “but I think I want it to be one. And I can’t stop thinking that it’s a bad idea.”
“It’s your decision,” Remus says. When you sigh, he looks chastened, and you hadn’t wanted it to be a chastening. He clears his throat. “You already know that, don’t you?” Not expecting an answer, he leans back in his chair and levels you with a smile more friendly than you deserve. “Keep your baby if you want to, lovely. The point of– Well, of having the choice, is being allowed to choose yes, to choose to keep your baby, even if it’s a bad idea. Or looks like one.”
“I know, but…”
But it’s a bad idea. But it happened because somebody hurt you. But you’re completely alone.
“I’m not upsetting you, am I?” he asks.
“No, you’re not. You’ve been really nice to me,” you mumble, letting your aching eyes close as you lean into your hand. “It’s not you.”
Remus settles for a few seconds. “Can I put my arm around you?” he asks finally.
“Okay.”
So he does. His voice drops to match your own, his elbow right between your ribs as his thumb skirts across the top of your shoulder, “I’m sorry I can’t fix it for you, I wish I could tell you what to do that’s going to make you the happiest. I can’t, though.”
“I know.”
He rubs your shoulder. “I know you know.”
There’s a lot to think about. You aren’t pregnant by a miracle. Something bad happened to you, and the choice is yours now to take, and no one would blame you for wanting to forget the whole thing. At least, nobody here at the support group would. It’s not like you haven’t thought about it; lately, it’s the only thing on your mind. But the guilt of wanting it won’t go away.
“Sorry you have to do this again,” you mumble.
“What, give you a hug?” Remus’ voice turns softer. It feels less like the kind words of a stranger and more like a friend. “I don’t mind it.”
You try to stop feeling guilty. The most you can be right now is looked after, at least for a while, for as long as Remus will hold your shoulders.
“It’s not your fault,” Remus says. “You know that, too, I’m guessing. What happened to you wasn’t your fault.”
You’re not so sure. It’s a different guilt to look at in whatever light finds you when it happens. “I know,” you say, half a lie.
“And I know you have no reason to trust us with something so huge, but we’re here for you. That’s the whole point of the group.”
You sigh heavily. “I know,” you say under your breath. You’re just not sure it’s going to be enough.
𖦹
hi thanks for reading the first part! this is a heavy one but it’s also a fic I’ve wanted to write for a long time, or rewrite <\3 some of you may have read my first go at this years ago and I’m hoping to tie in some of the old stuff but it’s also its own story hopefully, it’s shaping up well!
https://rapecrisis.org.uk rape crisis UK — they have a support line! and many many articles
information about rape crisis https://247sexualabusesupport.org.uk/faqs/
because I just binged read all the office frenemies au James, can we pleaseeee have like them interacting after they've been on the coffee date, or just them dating in general? and maybe r teasing James instead of James teasing r? tqqq
—James begs for a kiss, and you’re almost caught. fem, 1.2k
You thought your life was over the second you kissed James Potter. You kissed him, you went first; the second you lifted your chin, you were giving him power over you he didn’t have before. You were confessing that all your arguments and quipping had turned from real annoyance to fondness.
You thought he’d hold it against you. You didn’t really consider that he might enjoy being kissed by you.
“Oh, please,” he says, pushing across his sofa to hold your arm, “please, don’t be angry with me. I’m sick of you frowning, and I usually love it when you frown.”
“I’m not kissing you,” you say.
“Please,” he says, dark strands of hair falling across his forehead. You can see your face in his glasses if you concentrate, but his eyes distract you, their pupils brown as the slick bark of a sycamore.
“The last time you brought me here, James, you laid me out on the sofa like a– like we were in some sort of dirty movie, and Sirius nearly caught us. You know he and Remus are already suspicious of us.”
“They aren’t, they aren’t,” he insists, his hand spreading warmly across your stomach, “I told them we’re just friends now.”
“And they didn’t believe it.”
“Well, no, but that’s because everyone’s under the impression you might kill me one day.”
“How do they know you’re not gonna try and kill me?” you ask, enjoying the feeling of his pinky skirting adoringly under your ribs. “You’re the boy.”
“Don’t be sexist.”
“Don’t be obtuse.”
James is an aching sort of pretty. If you think about it, frenemies or otherwise, you never for a moment thought he’d want you. He’s made his jokes, but he’s said things with sincerity that are too much to ignore. You can be so lovely.
You find that you want him to think it again.
He looks down at your stomach, teasing the creases of your t-shirt between his fingers.
“Okay,” you say quietly, raising your hand to his ear. You draw a line down the shell of it and catch the lobe under your index finger. “Let’s kiss, then.”
“Seriously?” he asks. His head comes up fast with enthusiasm.
“Yeah, I think so. Just don’t push me over again.”
“Don’t say it like that, I didn’t push you, I just laid on top of you,” he says, bringing his hand to your cheek, where he holds you with all the tenderness of a practised lover, like he’s known you for years, “and you seemed to like it, I’ll have you know.”
“James,” you whisper, thinking, if he’s gonna play it that way, “I–” You enthuse your tone with a timid sort of longing, which isn’t hard to procure. “I liked it, of course I did, I’ve never felt like this before, I just don’t want…”
He rubs your cheek gently. His eyes fill with a sorriness that nearly makes you feel bad for messing with him. “We’re being careful, yeah? Sirius won’t find out. No one will until we want them to.”
“Who says I want them to?”
He doesn’t fill with anger nor annoyance; his eyes light with delight at your regular tone. “You’re such a devious, wicked girl,” he says, brushing a line up your cheek with his thumb. “You had me, then.”
“Don’t I always?”
He gives a self-deprecating scoff. “I’d rather you didn’t think so, but yes.”
“I really don’t want Sirius to find out.”
“He’s not home for hours,” James says easily. “Knowing that, would you like to have a kiss now?”
“I already asked for one.”
He hums his agreement against your lips. You squeeze your eyes closed at the sudden connection, relaxing as his hand works behind you to hook you in. “Sorry for the delay,” he murmurs, kissing the corner of your mouth, the very bottom of your chin, and your neck, twice, before returning to your lips. They part under his, and the kiss turns to much more than softness you’d shared on the steps outside the office. This is hot, and inviting, and searching for something as he leans his weight against you. He doesn’t push. You knew he wouldn’t.
You hold his shirt as he kisses you. Things are so new between you that you aren’t always sure what he wants you to do, where he needs your hands, but he doesn’t complain. Doesn’t make it feel like a big deal. His hand roves from your back to your hand on his chest and guides it behind him. “Alright?” he asks between kisses, nose pressed to yours.
“Mm,” you say.
“Yeah? You sure?”
“I’m fine, I’m– I’m great.”
“You’re brilliant,” he says warmly, nudging your nose up with his to press your lips together loosely. Just loose, nothing kisses, your heart like a bruise deep in your chest as he draws you nearer.
You decide to be lovely as he’d thought of you and hold him with both arms. Your fingers flirt with the edge of his shirt, fingertips finding a slip of bare skin.
“You’re so handsome,” you whisper.
You can’t see him, but you can hear how he takes it. “You– fucking hell. Fucking hell, you’re beautiful.” He tips your head back. You have the feeling he wants you to open your eyes, but you keep them closed, and eventually he leans in to kiss the soft spot under your jaw.
You let out a sigh. Somehow, James’ kiss gets even gentler.
He’s kissed down to the collar of your shirt when a clattering sound echoes down the hall, the weight of the front door hitting a radiator as two giggles follow. “Remus!” Sirius hisses, “you’ll take it off the wall!”
“Sorry!” Remus says.
You and James spring apart so hard it makes the sofa squeak.
“James?” Remus calls.
“We’re in here!” James calls back.
You widen your eyes. James is far less shocked, neatening your shirt and throwing a blanket from the back of the sofa over your legs. He shuffles across the seats and grabs the remote just in time to click play on the TV. The door opens, and James quickly straightens his glasses, the lenses smudged with skin.
“Hello,” Remus says happily, Sirius poking his head in behind him.
“Hi,” Sirius says, giving you both a far more suspicious look. “What are you doing here, sweetheart?”
You know instantly that whatever you say will be better believed than James. “James bragged about having that new Quiet Place movie on the telly, and I knew he didn’t, so now we’re watching– what?”
“Uh, antiques roadshow,” James says.
You roll your eyes. “We’re watching antiques roadshow.”
“Right,” Sirius says.
“I thought you had the DVD?” Remus asks.
“I did! I just don’t know where it is!” James cries.
Remus raises his eyebrows. “Wanna get some dinner, then?”
James deflates in relief, sending you a completely unsubtle smile. “You hungry, shorts?”
You can’t believe you just let him kiss you. That you keep letting him. He’s never gonna be able to keep your secret from his friends. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Hii! I'm in love with your Hotch adult daughter fics. Could we get one where she is getting bullied in college or where she works and then Hotch finds out somehow and helps her? Please please :)
thanks so much for requesting! fem, 1.2k
He decides to surprise you. He’s at risk of embarrassing himself greatly, and he’s okay with that risk.
Hotch stands outside of the George Washington University and winces in the hot weather. The sun beats down on the back of his neck. He’s more aware of how little sun protection he uses as the time stretches on, waiting for you, but he doesn’t mind it. He’s worn full suits in the Nevada desert.
You emerge from the main building where your last class for the day takes place. He dropped you off here last week, got to watch you walk in and say hi to the custodian. It was a nice insight of who you are, someone he’s proud to be the father of though he had little hand in what you’ve become.
Behind you are two female classmates.
Hotch pauses under the tree he’d taken refuge by.
He can’t hear what they’re saying, but he can see the rigidity of your shoulders, your hackles rising as they talk. The brunette gets a nasty look on her face, to which you respond, and the blonde’s volume begins to rise.
The brunette looks like she might reach for you. “Don’t touch me,” you warn.
Hotch steps in.
“Hey, excuse me,” he says, loudly and firmly, the Unit Chief tone in play. He’s gotten very good at raising his voice without shouting. “What’s going on here?”
The two women who were talking to you falter, but the brunette stays fiery. “We’re just talking.”
“About what?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“If you’re going to lay your hands on her, it becomes my business,” he says.
There’s a guilt to the blonde’s expression that proves you’d been thinking correctly and that she was going to touch you, even if it were only to grab your wrist, but she bristles and denies. “We weren’t.”
“Then you have no reason to stay.”
You frown deeply. “No, they can finish. Clearly they think it’s important–”
“But do you think it’s important?” Hotch asks you.
Your frown, your anger beginning to ebb. You take a breath. “I suppose not.”
Hotch levels the women with a look. Just a look, not interrogative or heated, but prompting —it’s the kind of look he gives people when he wants them to realise they’ve missed their cue to leave.
“See you next week, then,” the brunette says, a threat he abhors.
“I’m sure she will,” he says, hoping anything unsaid is felt. He has no idea who they are or what you’ve apparently done to make them angry, but you won’t be intimidated.
“Do I need to talk with Dean Langley?” he asks, turning to you as the women walk out of hearing range.
“Aaron.” You look at him, look like him, not in appearance but the pinch to your brow as you rub the bridge of your nose. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”
“What?”
“They do it to me every time I’m here.”
“They do?”
You sound like it’s a chore. “They think I’m sleeping with our professor.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Because ever since I stopped working, my grades are much better, n’ they think I cheated my way there.”
Oh, of course. Hotch tries to do something good by you —he’s started giving you a little chunk of money every week so you don’t have to work anymore, nothing obsequious but enough to cover everything you need, rent and food and transportation, clothes, textbooks, and he made it clear you can ask for more— and it makes things worse for you instead. Still, “Your grades are improving?”
“I’m doing pretty well,” you confess shyly.
He holds your shoulder. “I’m sorry they’re jealous, and I’m sorry they’re inventing a narrative to cope. I really can speak with Dean Langley if you need me to.”
You smile and let yourself lean into his touch. “Inventing a narrative to cope,” you repeat. “That’s a good one. I’ll use that one.”
You have more fight in you, it seems. “If it gets too much, just let me know. You don’t have to entertain their delusion.”
“I’ll use that one, too.”
He laughs, hand sliding behind your back to hug you from the side, his nose briefly pressing to your temple before he gives you space again. “I was hoping I’d catch you on your way out, are you busy? Let me take you to dinner, celebrate your performance.”
“You realise I wouldn’t have improved without your help?” you ask.
“I think any parent in my position should provide for their kid,” he says easily. “It’s not help. Not everyone can support their children through college, but I can, and I wish I had been from the start.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” you say.
He nudges you into a walk toward his car. “I owe you more than you realise.”
He takes you to an early dinner, and celebrates your improving grades with the dessert of your choosing. Conversation with you can sometimes feel strange. It’s hard to think you were a kid once and he’d never met you, but then he realises how young twenty two really is, how you’re still willing, longing for him to be a father to you. You’re smug that he’d go to the dean to for you. You like that he stepped in. And you love being doted on, being encouraged. He can see that easily.
“When can I come back to see Jack?” you ask eventually.
He wishes he could say whenever you like, but he has a hard time following Haley’s movements. “I’ll ask. Soon, I promise.”
“He took great care of me.”
The last time you’d stayed over, Jack acted like you were the best thing since sliced bread (which you are, in Hotch’s eyes).
“You know, he had a little trouble with bullies last year.”
“They aren’t bullies,” you say, taking a bashful bite of your ice cream.
“No, of course not. But he’ll understand, if you want to tell him about it.”
“Aaron, he’s five.”
“He’s six,” he corrects.
“Oh, sorry. But still, I don’t think Jack wants to deal with that. I couldn’t unload on him, he’s my… you know, he’s my little brother.”
“Then tell me about it, at least.”
“You saw the most of it.”
He sighs. Wishes you’d call him dad, understands why you don’t, and can’t think of what to do. It was easier when Jack had trouble, because little kids bully each other almost on accident. They don’t know what they’re doing is wrong, having learned the behaviour from their parents. It’s almost never personal.
Your situation is not the same.
“I’ll talk to the dean,” he suggests again.
“Don’t bother. It’s alright. And if it gets worse, I’ll tell you.”
He smiles, reaching over plates to squeeze your hand briefly. “Thank you.”
You look down at your food. Some shyness to you still at being cared about. “Thank you,” you mumble.
jade!! i saw you were willing to add emily to your 46 fics and i have a request!! i think about your emily x single mom!reader everyday and i was wondering if you’d write more in that universe? maybe emily has to drop readers kid off at their first day of pre-k or preschool (i have no clue what you call it in the uk) because reader has a work emergency or something??
thanks so much for requesting! fem, 1.1k
“It’ll be fun,” Emily says.
Jane is looking at Emily like she’s grown a second head. “No.”
Emily tries again. Swallows her nerves, and readjusts herself where she’s on her knees. “Mommy was gonna drop you off herself, but it's her very first day back at work and they needed her super early, so it’s me. But mom will be the one who picks you up again.”
Jane just squints.
“I have to go to work, too,” Emily says.
“I’m com’n with you,” Jane says, nodding.
Emily looks behind Jane at the baby gated corral of little kids. It’s possibly the worst adjustment in the world for your work to decide the day-of that you’d have to go early. You didn’t have time to prepare Jane for her own first day, and Emily isn’t good at this bit yet.
“No,” Emily says, holding Jane by both arms, “I have to go work too, and it’s too boring for you. You’re gonna have way more fun here meeting your new friends.”
Jane had already met one of the daycare workers, incidentally called Janet, a few days ago to try and ease the new phase of her life, but it’s a common fact that the majority of kids cry on their first day here. Why wouldn’t she? Jane has spent the majority of her growing life with you. This is a horrible adjustment, but better she does it now.
Emily’s just waiting for tears.
“Em-wy…”
“It’ll be fun, okay? There’s so much to do! Colouring, painting, dancing, nap time. They’ll make you lunch, and your new friends will have games to play–” She strokes Jane’s arm. “Sound fun?”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll miss you…” Jane mumbles, her eyes finally growing shiny.
Emily’s honestly not expecting it. “Well, I’ll miss you more. But mommy will pick you up soon,” —you aren’t working the full day— “and you’ll see me at dinner time, okie dokie?”
“I’m not…” Jane looks lost for what to say. She’s very, very little. Emily isn’t surprised.
“I know it’s different, but it’s not bad.” Emily tilts her head to the side, giving Jane her gentlest smile. She’s learned all her motherly tricks from you. It’s easy to fall into that tone of voice, that same affection, because Emily adores Jane.
“Em-wy,” Jane mumbles again.
“Janie,” she says, copying Jane’s warbling voice. “Baby, I swear it will be great, and then mommy will pick you up and I will buy you whatever big girl dinner you want. We could have McDonald’s.”
She whispers the last part.
Jane smiles slowly. “Okie dokie.”
Emily should’ve guessed that Jane wouldn’t cry. She’s a funny little kid, quiet and sweet and a teeny bit slow to understand. Perhaps she’ll cry once Emily’s already gone.
“Okay. Do you want a cuddle before I leave?”
Jane nods, tucking her face into Emily’s front. Emily wraps her arms around her and breathes in the smell of the lavender conditioner you’d run through her hair last night. “Love you, babe,” Emily whispers.
“Love you too.”
—
Emily thankfully gets home. Hotch laughs at her eagerness to not work, remarking that somehow you’d made a family of a woman determined not to be tied down. He had a point —Emily didn’t realise she wanted a wife until she met you. Didn’t realise she wanted a daughter until she met Jane, though she’s had her whims and whiles about it.
This is real.
You hear the door and hurry to it. Emily’s barely out of her shoes when you find her, in your smart clothes yourself, a chocolate smudge on your cheek.
“Where’s the fire?” Emily asks.
“Thank you for this morning,” you say, taking her hands.
Emily softens as you rub her fingers. “You’re welcome. Did she– was she okay? She looked extremely worried for a baby.”
“She’s not a baby.” You lean forward and to one side, just touching her. “Emily, you– I was so worried, I thought she’d take it hard but you really pulled a magic trick. She didn’t even cry when I picked her up. When I asked how her day was, she told me you promised it would be fun… and that you were going to get her McDonald’s.”
“I will get her McDonald’s.”
You take a swift, soft kiss. “My hero. She told me she missed me, but guess who she mentioned first?”
Emily raises her eyebrows.
“Mm-hm,” you hum, pulling her to the kitchen. “Em-wy, of course.”
Emily squeezes your hand as you both enter the kitchen to find the source of your kissed cheek. Jane sits at the table in lavender pyjamas to match the smell of her hair. She’s eating chocolate covered strawberries and celery with peanut butter, spread on her hands and lips, but less on her cheeks than her mom.
“Baby, look! Guess who’s home?”
Jane finds Emily with her gaze and gasps happily, clapping, a strawberry falling in the gap of her chest and table. “You’re back!”
“I’m back! You’re home, too! Did you have fun?”
There’s a suspicion in Jane’s expression that she’s too young for, as though she’s guessed this whole daycare business is permanent, but she shrugs it off. “I miss you,” she says.
“I’m back,” Emily reminds her. “I can see where mommy got her kiss from, that looks yummy.”
You wipe your cheeks with two palms and bring them down to find chocolate melted against your fingers. “Thanks for telling me.”
“I had plans to help you eventually.” Emily rounds the table and chair to tip Jane’s head back gently, looking her over. “You okay? Did you have a good day?”
“Good day,” she echoes.
“You’re happy?” Emily asks.
She’d realised how nervous she was for your girl the second she left the daycare building. What if Jane hates it, and she cries the whole day and makes her eyes sore? Emily hadn’t enjoyed thinking about it, deciding she’d get her more than McDonald’s.
“I’m glad you had a good day,” Emily says.
“I fed Sergio!” Jane tells her.
Sir-joe must be a pretty happy cat. “Thank you, babe, you’re the bestest.”
You aren’t jealous but eager as you slide into Emily’s side and under her arm. You smile as you rest your face on her shoulder, a little cat-like yourself as your breathing evens. “She saved the day.”
Jane looks up at you both, but her eyes meet Emily’s as she smiles. “Missed you, mommy,” she says.
Emily’s heart skips a beat, wondering, just for a moment, if Jane was talking to her. Emily wouldn’t mind it. It wouldn’t be so bad, would it?
You nab a strawberry from Jane’s plate. Emily’s expecting it, but she’s still too happy to talk as you kiss her cheek. “Got you back.”
Hey!! I love love LOVE your criminal minds content so much, especially the Hotch with unexpected daughter reader. Is there any chance you’re gonna write more for that series? I’d literally take anything, the comfort vibes are off the charts with your works and I need some Hotch comfort. But no worries if not, hope you have a great week <33
thank you for requesting! fem, 1.4k
Jack peers at you from over the furthest armrest. “Y/N. Are you grumpy?”
“Do I look grumpy?” you ask.
“Yes.” He pokes his eyebrow. “You do.”
“My face is betraying me then, because I’m not grumpy.”
“Mine does that to me all the time but mom doesn’t believe it.”
You give him a small nudge. “Your mommy probably knows you better than you know yourself, like, knows how you’re feeling before you do.”
“But how does she know?”
“I think it’s because she loves you. She really loves you, babe. You’re lucky.”
“So lucky.” He climbs over the armrest and onto the couch, smiling at you politely, like a friend he’s just found at school.
You try to see the similarities in your faces. He looks more like Haley than he does Aaron. You look more like your mother, too. There are bits of Aaron in both of you, yours not quite as physical —Jack’s tame when it comes to expressing emotion, and you both talk in a measured tone. (Though your tone is coincidence or genetics, but not learned. You’d have to have known him growing up for it to be learned.)
“Did dad tell you what mommy said?” Jack asks.
You glance over his head but see no one. Aaron said he was going to get chips for movie night, and Haley tends to find things to do. “No.”
“It’s a secret.”
“Well, you don’t have to tell me.”
“You can’t tell anyone,” he says.
Your stomach feels not your own. “I won’t,” you promise.
“Mommy says you’re here too much.”
You nod slowly. Jack frowns at you as though waiting for you to be upset, but you’ve suspected she thinks so for a while. It’s not something you blame her for.
Jack watches you.
“Dad got really mad.”
“I’m sorry, Jack. That must’ve been scary.”
Jack drops his face into your arm. “No. Dad doesn’t yell. But he slept in my room with me.”
“Want a hug?” you whisper.
Jack squirms under your arm. You pull him toward you and try to divide your feelings into boxes. Embarrassed and horrified and a little annoyed that Haley thinks you’re here too much. Sad and again embarrassed that Aaron defended you.
This is Haley’s house, and she never signed up for you. She’s never made you feel unwelcome but that doesn’t mean she wants to see you every Saturday. You're a huge new wedge inserted in their married lives, and now you’re affecting Jack, making his parents argue.
“I’m sorry,” you say, suddenly flooded by a wave of hot, awkward regret.
You knew when you found out that Aaron was your father that you would change his life. You’ve always hoped it would be for the better, but maybe it isn’t.
“Jack…” you say. What is it about hugging him that makes you feel like crying? “I’m real sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“It’s not your fault. I like you here. You’re fun.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
He looks up at you. “Will you stop coming over?”
“I guess it’s up to your mommy.” You falter. “Jack?”
“What?”
“I’m sorry if having a new sister isn’t as fun as you thought it would be. I don’t want to make things harder for you, but I guess I did.”
“Mom says everything is hard now.”
You bite the inside of your cheek in efforts to hide how you’re feeling. “I’m sorry. Um, listen, can I have a big hug? I just remembered I have to go help my mom at home.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Sorry, Jack.”
Jack gives you a hug. You gather your things and rush to the door to shove your shoes on, but your dad catches you before you can leave.
“Where are you going?” Aaron asks, his smile falling.
“I–” He makes you nervous, and you know your stammer gives you away. “I forgot I had to do the laundry for my mom tonight, if I don’t do it she’ll be mad for days.”
“I’m sure you can make it up to her tomorrow,” he suggests gently.
“I better go.”
“Honey, what’s really going on?”
“The laundry is really going on,” you say, unconvincing. “I have to go, I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay. Well, I’ll see you on–”
You open the door before he can finish or offer a hug, image of him in his loose t-shirt carrying a tray of sandwiches burned into your guilty conscience.
—
You don’t see Aaron for three weeks before he corners you. You owe your great avoidance to his busy job, but it didn’t feel good to reject him, to refuse to make time for him as he does for you.
“You!” he says, clearly kidding but not entirely where he’s waiting outside of your university building. “Beautiful young woman in the blue! I have some questions for you.”
It’s so absurd for him that you immediately burst into shy laughter. “Dad, what?” you ask, hiding your face.
Classmates part around you, seemingly unperturbed.
Aaron retrieves his badge. “See this? I could detain you, but I won’t if you come quietly. In fact, if you don’t argue I’ll buy you lunch.”
“You’d buy my lunch regardless.”
He grabs you. Kindly, but grabbing all the same, like he’s worried you’re about to scarper. “Where have you been hiding?” he asks, giving you a quick hug. You feel tenseness in his arms you're unused to, hear a sadness in his voice that makes your throat burn.
Putting a table between you helps marginally. Aaron pretends he doesn’t know why you’ve been avoiding him and the Hotchner house, and you’re more than happy to go along with it, until.
“I have something to tell you,” he says.
You press against a piece of soaked fruit with your spoon. “Okay.”
“Haley and I are probably going to separate.”
You bite your tongue so hard it makes you flinch, spoon scratching the bottom of your bowl. “What?”
“We’ve been having problems ever since Jack was born.”
You stare.
Aaron is very still. He talks carefully. Not without emotion, but stilted, perhaps. “I’m not as good a father as I wish I were. And Haley sees that. Sweetheart, I haven’t ever wanted to burden you with the, uh, less than happy details of my life. I think you’ve suffered me enough. But I’m telling you because I know Jack told you about my most recent argument with Haley.” He smiles at you. “Honey, we fight too much. That day, it was about you, but it’s not all about you, and she doesn’t… Haley’s a good woman. She is. I’ve changed her life a hundred different ways and she hasn’t had many choices, and she…” Something vulnerable crops up, a wavering in his breath. “Sometimes I think she isn’t fair. She holds me to standards I can’t reach, no matter how hard I try, but we’ve stopped arguing about it so much recently, and I’m afraid that that’s… the death knell.”
“I’m sorry,” you say softly.
“I’m going to keep trying. I don’t want to lose her.” He drinks what’s left of his soda and presses his napkin under the edge of his plate. “But I won’t lose you, you know? I just want you to understand that you’re not the problem, and you never could be.”
“I don’t want to add another thing to your levy, dad,” you say, still soft.
“Meeting you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Well, tied with your brother, of course. You aren’t a thing to be added to anything, you’re my daughter, and Haley might not like it but my home will always have a place for you.”
What if that’s the problem? From his perspective, you’re not a hindrance to his marriage so much as a separate issue, but from your own, it sounds like you’re just making things worse.
You’ve missed him, though, and you can’t argue that his reassurances aren’t working.
“It’s not that Haley doesn’t like you,” he adds, reaching for your hand, “more that she’s unhappy. I’m sorry that that’s something you had to carry.”
You often think to yourself that Aaron talks like he’s telling a story. He’s so calm and steady, the same as the feeling of his thumb on your wrist.
“I’m sorry I stormed out.”
“I wouldn’t call that storming out,” he says. “You’re too quiet sometimes. I wish you’d be upset out loud.”
“I just don’t want you to fight about me.”
“Honey,” —he holds your eyes, giving your wrist a gentle squeeze— “I’m always gonna fight for you. That’s what fathers do.”
hey! i wanted to request r with a best friend!marauder, and she feels guilty for being a clingy/touchy bsf? eg. always holds hands and loops arms together and loves hugs. but said marauder comforts her? thank you jadey
The steps off of the bus feel especially steep on just four hours sleep. You’re not dizzy, but when James offers his hand from the ground, you accept it. Much less scary to know he could catch you if you slipped.
“I’m surprised we weren’t holding hands already,” he says, giving yours a squeeze as you land, and pulling you to the side where the already departed rugby team and their family members wait for their luggage to be retrieved from the bus’ belly.
“Oh, I know,” you say. There’s an odd awkwardness to it that you’re trying to bury.
James is used to you. Your hand in his is casual, perhaps a little too much for company, but it’s just hand-holding. You like feeling that he’s near, the slight chill of British summer more readily suffered with his palm against yours. He runs hot.
He lets your joined hands swing gently with the wait, doesn’t bother letting it go until the luggage is all out. James grabs his duffel bag and your suitcase, and everyone makes their way to the hotel. It’s late —the team were expecting to be here much sooner but there had been a punctured tire, and then an accident on the M4. James will have to play the game tomorrow with less hours of sleep than intended, but he’ll play well.
“You’re uncharacteristically quiet,” James says a little later, when you’ve shoved your suitcase under the double bed. He turns off the big light.
“That is an uncharacteristically large word.”
“Loser,” he says, pushing down the blankets to sit next to you. He rubs his mouth and nose, then he turns to you, all business. “You are quiet, though. What’s the matter? Still feel poorly?”
“I feel fine.”
“You look awful.” He winces at his own harshness. “You look upset, sorry. And you still have sleep in your eyes, let me–”
You sigh and tilt your head up for him to scratch the sleep from your eye. For a moment, it’s quiet, just your face in his hand, his fingernail against the delicate inside of your eye. “Do you ever think we’re too close?”
“Not really. Sometimes when you kick me in your sleep, maybe.” He takes back his hands.
“You don’t care that I’m, like, constantly on you? I don’t know, like earlier, when you helped me off of the bus. Most friends wouldn’t keep holding on to each other after, but we do.”
“Most friends wouldn’t take a nine hour bus just to see me play an away game, so…” James gives you a little poke in the ribs. “But we aren’t friends, we’re best friends. So what if we want to hold hands? That’s our business.”
You frown. “You really don’t care? Even when I’m harassing you for hugs and stuff?” Nausea sits in your chest, waiting for him to say, Yeah, actually, the hugging is a bit much.
“Babe, I love you,” James says, his glasses slipping down his nose as he gives a shake of the head. His eyebrows are pinched in confusion, but his mouth is softening. “How long have you been thinking about this?”
“I just don’t want to be a burden.”
“You’re never a burden.” He opens his arms.
You crawl into his embrace, reassured by his chin where it digs into your forehead, and his warm voice.
“You don’t bother me. We bother each other, right? We fight like kids. I love it, I wouldn’t trade our friendship for anything.” He pauses. Hums. “‘Cept a Big Mac. I’m starving, I can’t believe we got stuck on the motorway like that.”
“You’d trade me for a Big Mac?”
“In a moment of weakness.”
His smile curves against your head. His arms settle on your back. It’s the same as every other hug you’ve shared, warm and easy. “I wouldn’t,” he murmurs, “I don’t know why you’re worried about being too much, but don’t bother. You’re touchy, I’m touchy, we’re affectionate people.”
“I spent too long on that stupid bus,” you say, dropping your flushed face into his shoulder.
“You definitely did. Why would I care about you hugging me too much?” His hand moves gently up and down. “You give the best hugs around.”
this may sound crazy, but i have really bad OCD in terms of cleanliness. for example, always need clean clothes (has to be exactly “correct” level of clean), hand wash always over and over, i also don’t like anyone sitting or laying in my bed uncleaned or in outside clothes.
eddie is, well eddie. how do you think he would react to a gf or potential gf that has this same issue?
You can’t wear the same sweatshirt twice, you can’t not wash your hands three times before dinner. He doesn’t think much of it, to be totally honest. Eddie’s been called weird his whole life, and he knows that behaviour like yours is out of the ordinary, so he refuses to make you feel bad about it.
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” he says, putting his backpack on the floor. You’re wringing your hands nervously in front of the bed, having just told him Please don’t sit on my bed. I can’t– It’s the contamination, it’s not you.
He unzips his backpack to unveil the extra clothes he brought with him. “I got these fresh out of the washer, but if it’s still not alright, I can just sit on the floor.”
“Eddie, I’m not gonna make you sit on the floor.” Something in your expression softens. “You promise they’re clean?”
“They still smell like detergent, but it doesn’t bother me. I can sit on the floor. Or at your desk?”
“You can’t sit on the floor, Eddie. If they’re really clean, you can come and sit with me.” You smile weakly. “I want you to sit with me. I can’t deal with the idea of, like, your outside clothes on my bed, that’s all.”
“That’s fine.” He makes sure not to put the clean clothes against his chest. “I get it, babe, the van is gross, pollution is disgusting, I’m gonna save the world for you to make it less icky. Can I get changed?”
Your smile strengthens. “Yeah, course you can. I won’t look, much.”
“Much!” Eddie’s joy at your teasing is palpable.
He changes. You don’t watch, but you don’t avert your eyes either, which Eddie thinks is a good sign. It’s a little nerve wracking to be standing there in his boxers and socks while you’re fully clothed, until you smile at him with your face in your hand and he remembers how sweet you are.
“How many tattoos do you have?”
“You don’t know?” he asks.
“I’ve seen them all. Just never counted.”
Eddie puts his worn clothes in his backpack and sits on your rug to change his socks. “I have sixteen.”
“What?” you ask incredulously.
“I’m counting the bats separately.”
“Of course you are.”
He springs up, squeezing the hand sanitiser on your desk into his two palms, and cleaning down to the middle of his forearms. Then, when they’re cold from the air in your room but mostly dry, he meanders his way to your side, giving you a long and loving stare. “You look really pretty when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“When you hold your face. Can I…”
You lean back. He replaces your hand with his own, rubbing a soft path into your cheek. “I can’t believe you sanitised for me,” you say with a smile that’s half embarrassed and half pleased. “Thank you.”
“Thanks for what?” He strokes your cheek back. The soft skin there pulls. “I should be saying thanks, do you know how big of a deal it is, to get to touch you? I’m on cloud nine. I feel like such a fucking winner.”
Your nose crinkles as you laugh. “Very passionate.”
“I’m saying goodbye to grunge. No more unwashed jackets or crust pants, I swear. I even cleaned behind my ears.”
“You weren’t cleaning behind your ears?”
He leans down to touch your nose tip with his. His eyes close, but not before he sees your nice smile. Getting to be here joking with you in your bedroom is worth sanitising his hands, are you kidding? He’d do a full body bleach bath three times a day if it meant he got to breathe the same air as you.
“Tell me if I do something gross, okay? I know you think about things a lot, I just need you to tell me.”
“I don't want you to get caught up in my stupid rules.”
“They’re not stupid.” He noses at your cheek, his lips touching skin as he speaks, “Don’t worry about it. Tonight’s about you and me and the Amityville Horror.”
“Okay, I won’t. I won’t worry.” Your breath warms his lips.
He kisses your cheek gently, a quiet thank you. It’s nice to be trusted with something as important and intrinsic to you as this, nicer to be touching you. He can’t believe he’s allowed.
Best friends since middle school, you tell Eddie everything, which is why he's so surprised to find out you've been keeping a secret —you’re hearing a voice whenever you're home alone. He’s always had a thing for the fantastical but he can't believe in ghosts, and the longer you insist on it, the more worried he becomes. This would be bad enough if Eddie didn’t have a secret too, and it threatens to change everything between you. [22k]
fem!reader, best friends to lovers slow-burn, mutual pining, eddie is infatuated with you, idiots in love, paranormal activity/au, heavy hurt/comfort, angst, fluff and affection, wayne is uncle of the year every year, ghost-hunting
cw assumed auditory hallucinations, talk of mental health, surrounding worry and circumstances, mentioned mental illness stigma, recreational drug use mention, prescription drugs, grief
my endless gratitude and thank yous to @h-ness1944 and @mrcylvsu for their sensitivity beta reads and for answering my questions so many moons ago, I'm very, very thankful for all that hard work, and all the time and energy you both spent!
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Eddie's desk fan is on the fritz. It twists back and forth with a weak metallic clicking sound that promises eventual electrocution but for now provides momentary relief. Even the nights have been hell lately. No matter how many windows he and Wayne open, the air at home stays thick with humidity.
Sweat shines on his brow and collar. He refuses to tie his hair back, and each hour it grows more and more uncomfortable.
"Are you sure you don't wanna come and lie up here?" he asks, shifting reluctantly to peer over the side of the bed.
You're laying on the floor of his room, just as sweaty but half as unhappy. You've abandoned a book to your left, having declared the weather too much to concentrate through.
"Our body heat will mingle."
"The fan is really helping," he argues lightly. "If you die on my floor Wayne won't ever let it go. Just come up here."
You mumble something he doesn't hear and pull your shirt from your chest. You attempt to fan yourself with the thin, clinging fabric. It doesn't work, but it does expose the soft hill of your abdomen to his guilty eyes. His mouth dries up.
"It's getting late," he says. He's not trying to get rid of you, promise, but now he's thinking about your body heat mingling and why it wouldn't be such a bad thing, and he doesn't want to. "I'll drive you home, yeah?"
"In a minute," you agree, looking as if you have no intention of moving.
You turn your face to the side, eyes closed, lashes skimming the delicate skin of your under eye. Eddie sits up and rakes his greasy hair away from his face. He'll drop you home, take a cold shower for purely heat related reasons, and hopefully sleep through the night. It's a very unlikely outcome, but a man can dream.
"Come on. We'll roll the windows down and go really fast."
"Eddie," you chastise.
"Moderately fast."
His sleeveless tank top gets caught as he leans down to try and flick you. Eddie can only ever forgive his fourteen year old self for maiming perfectly good vintage in times like these. A completely unnecessary culling of an entire wardrobe's worth of sleeves, but when the weather gets bad for a few heady weeks every summer, he remembers the reasoning behind it.
He's stripped of all his clunky jewellery for now, adorned only in the dark ink of his multiplying tattoos. His most recent addition is an artist's rendition of the Eye of Sauron, blinking up at him from beneath his volley of bats. Still sick, he thinks to himself smugly.
You've pulled yourself into a sitting position with your arms crossed over the bed, your hand stretched out to touch his plaid pyjama bottoms. You're in a nearly matching pair; when Eddie called you to hang out earlier you'd turned him down, citing a reluctance to change. He'd promised to pick you up in his own pyjamas, and you've been lying on his floor since then.
You're the laziest kids this side of the Wabash river, Wayne'd said, looking over your limp bodies with a smile.
The other side, too, Eddie popped back. Will you put those chicken wings in the oven for us, please?
Eddie's not a monster, the wings were pre-prepared. Any other day he'd correct his uncle, say, hey, we haven't been kids for years, but the heat makes him feel gross and sometimes you just want your dad to make you dinner. (Sometimes Eddie's just lazy, also.)
"Eds?" you murmur.
He lets his hands fall away from his hair where he'd been scratching mindlessly and turns to you. He's lethargic, feels like he's turning his head through molasses. "What, sweetheart?"
Years of being friends lends an easy affection. His pet names are purely platonic. Or they used to be. Either way, you aren't perturbed.
"Can I sleep over?"
He usually says yes to that question immediately. But again, the thought of your sweaty body curled into his with your hands breaching a friendly gap to curl over his waist like they tend to do fills his stomach with dread.
His little crush is making him a bad friend, he decides. He will always, first and foremost, be your friend.
"Of course you can." He rubs his mouth. Feigning casualness. "How come?"
You peel out of your fatigue and get on your knees. The extra height is all you need to finally grab his legs, smiling sheepishly. Eddie won't judge you for almost anything and you know that, so it's gotta be outlandish.
"I think…" You tap his kneecap. "Okay, laugh at me if you need to, but I'm pretty sure my house is haunted."
"Like, by a ghost?"
"What else?" you ask, laughing good-naturedly.
"Why do you think it's haunted, superstar?"
You drop your face onto his thigh, giving him a disjointed hug. He hugs you back for as long as the heat will allow it, a handful of stolen seconds with his hand over your back.
"I swear, sometimes, I can hear someone talking."
That's… scarier than he imagined. "Shit, I thought you were gonna say a coat fell off the hanger, or the light in your bathroom started flickering again."
"It has," you admit, your mouth pressed to his thigh. "But it's just the bulb."
He pushes you off of him, your voice sending vibrations through places he'd prefer it didn't, and you fall back with a half-hearted stab at melodrama.
"Oof," you say, straight-faced.
"You really think it's a ghost?" he asks.
"No. I don't know. I won't believe in ghosts until I see one, and I haven't seen one, but if it were a ghost, this is the type of behaviour I'd expect from it. So I guess I do. Does that make sense?"
"Sure." He doesn't know. "What does it say?"
"Here's the bit where you won't believe me."
You smile at him from your spot on the floor. Your hand curls out, like a tight budded flower coming to bloom.
"She asks about you," you say quietly. "It's pretty much all she says."
"Who?"
"The ghost."
"She's a she?"
"Sounds kind of like one."
"Come sit up here with me."
Eddie knows his voice has gone hard and weird, but he can't help it. He understands that he doesn't understand anything, that the world is large and works in mysterious ways, but he wouldn't forgive himself if he took this lightly. You sound so convinced — it makes him feel ill.
Because Eddie doesn't believe in ghosts.
You climb up onto the bed in front of him and he doesn't take your hand. He should. You won’t meet his eyes, a sign that you're slightly embarrassed. It's not what he meant to do.
"What does she say?” he probes.
You go teasing and shiny, a glimmer in your eye. "I know you don't believe me, Eddie."
"Who says I don't believe you? I just need you to explain."
"She says…" You laugh. "Okay, she says stuff like, 'Eddie is okay?'"
Eddie stares at you.
"I was going to tell you–"
"When?" he demands.
"I'm telling you right now!"
"How long have you been hearing voices?"
You climb up on knees to wrap your arms around his head. "You think I'm delusional," you say, a loving murmur in his ear.
He grabs your waist. Unsurprisingly, hugging you doesn't make him nearly as electric as he'd worried. It feels the same as it always has, like hugging his best friend. Loving the smell of your hair is new, but everything else stays the same.
"I don't think you’re delusional, I don't, I just– if I told you the same thing."
You pull away, and his hand comes to rest atop the curve of your hip. "I'd believe you," you say.
"I believe that you believe there's someone talking to you about me. Uh… if it is a ghost haunting your house, why's she talking about me?"
You take his hands off of your waist, squeezing his fingers together in your palms. "Don't know. I tried asking but she never answers, and last night…"
Eddie stands up.
"Where are you going?"
"We gotta let Wayne know you're staying and he's about to fall asleep, and I want a cigarette, and you need something to drink."
"I don't want a beer."
"No," he says. When he says to drink, he really means something cold to sip on. He's hoping to grab you back from… whatever it is you're going. "Soda, apple juice, drink what you want."
He fiddles with the drawstrings on his pants, waiting for you to join him at the doorway. You stay sitting on his bed. He doesn't know what your face means.
"Hey, you still have to tell me about it. I want to know, swear to god. We have all night." He holds out his hand. Wiggles his fingers at you. "I'll let you paint my nails again too, like a real girls night."
That grabs your attention. You slide off of the bed and take his hand, shrieking as he yanks you ten miles an hour down the skinny hallway and into the living room. Wayne's got the sofa bed out already, his padded roll-up mattress laid out over the springs and a sheet stretched corner to corner.
"Hey, kids," he says, fluffing one of his pillows. He chucks it at the top of the mattress. "Home time?"
"Can I stay over, Mr. Munson?" you ask.
Wayne rolls his eyes. You once spent eight days here with no breaks sometime in the summer of 1987 and he hadn't batted an eye. Eddie made sure it was truly alright with Wayne, of course, and you'd done your share of housework. Point is, both Munson's find your asking to stay unnecessary.
"I'll make pancakes in the morning," you add.
"Oh, in that case." Wayne throws his blanket out over the bed and sits on top of it. "By all means, kid, stay over. Tell your guardian."
"Can't. In Santa Barbara."
"Ah, then I have to insist you stay," he says, laying down with a huff.
Eddie passes him the TV remote. "She's a big girl, Wayne." You're well past the age of parental supervision.
Wayne answers with a grumbling sound that means, hey, you can keep talking to me but there's no guarantee I'll answer.
"I won't be annoying, promise," you say.
Wayne grunts again.
"That's old man talk for I know you won't," Eddie translates.
You nod, glad to have permission, and meander into the kitchen. "Can I–"
"Yes!" Eddie and Wayne call simultaneously.
Wayne laughs to himself in that pleased gruff way he's good at and tucks his arms behind his head. He's wearing one of Eddie's t-shirts. They've been the same size since Eddie was seventeen, something both Munson's utilise when laundry day is approaching but not quite upon them.
"Lighter?"
Wayne scrunches his eyes in displeasure. "By the sink."
"Thanks." For some reason, Eddie doesn't leave. He stays standing by the TV, listening to the voice of a late-night talk show chuckle through a joke about some scandal.
When Eddie was younger, he'd get into bed beside Wayne and watch TV until his eyes hurt. Too young to have stopped needing comfort and too old to know how to ask for it, he'd drift down the snug hallway into the living room and Wayne would usually be asleep or almost there. Eddie would stand by the TV hesitantly, and if he was sleeping Wayne must've been able to feel it, a new parents instinct or something, because he'd soon wake, and if he wasn't he'd look at Eddie like he'd been waiting for him. Like Eddie was running late.
His teenage years were almost solely defined by bad dreams and TV with Wayne. On the good nights, Eddie would go back to bed. On the bad nights, heartache would swallow him whole. Well, almost whole. His cheek would rest on Wayne's shoulder as the night went on. Miraculous and ordinary at once. That's the only bit of him that didn't hurt.
Pain emaciates the good from his memory, but it can't erase the comfort of watching TV with someone who loved him when they didn't have to.
Wayne pretends to chop Eddie in the stomach. Eddie laughs and dodges out of his path.
"Gotta be faster than that," Eddie taunts.
"Don't chain smoke," Wayne says.
"We won't be up long." Eddie's lying. He can't imagine that either of you will be getting an early night tonight considering the nature of your confession. What he means is, you won't be keeping Wayne up, and Eddie won't smoke more than what's wise.
Wayne hums.
You're in the kitchen screwing the lid back on a gallon of apple juice, your cup a quarter filled. You're like that. Won't ever take more than you need.
"One for me?" he asks.
"I figured now all your taste buds are dead, you wouldn't want any."
"Ha-ha," he says. The kitchen is unusually clean. "Shit, stop cleaning my house. Good god."
You pull one of his jackets off of the seat of one of the kitchen table's chairs and shake it out. "So I can sleep here, eat here, but cleaning is where you draw the line. I like it."
Eddie grabs the lighter from beside the sink in one hand and your wrist in the other, pulling you away from the table before you can start organising their mail and through the back door.
It's still sticky-hot out and the steps are warm to the touch as the two of you sit down hip to hip. He pulls the stiff pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and hands them to you. Your hand is already waiting. You peel off the plastic and tap the pack against your chest. You like doing it, arguing that it makes you feel like you're Chelsea Marino in Glory Days, all dark smiles and indulgent self-loathing.
You open the pack, tug out a lone cigarette, and pass it to him.
"You're like a pez dispenser," Eddie says, putting the butt of the cigarette between his lips.
"You little freak."
He laughs and almost drops his cig. Wayne's heavy zippo struggles to light, low on gas.
"Loser can't even light a cigarette."
"Who put two dimes in you?" he asks, thrilled by your negging.
He takes a sharp inhale as the end of the cigarette finally lights, the heat tickling his throat until it burns the way he needs it to.
"Somebody must've," you say.
"Reckon we can tip you upside down and get something to eat?" he asks through an exhale of smoke, tapping ash into the small egg cup to his left that's been serving as an ashtray for as long as he's been smoking. It used to be yellow. Every now and again he washes it and sees the old chicken paint underneath. "Too late for cooking."
"Are you hungry?" you ask genuinely. "I told you we should've had more than just wings."
"It was too hot to eat hot stuff. It's still too hot. Tomorrow, we should go to Bradley's and get stuff for sandwiches."
Eddie waits for your answer. "I'm sick of PB and J, Eds," or "Yes! And a pitcher for sweet tea, my captain." You don't say anything, your face turned up to the sky and your eyes closed, soaking in the heat.
He has half a mind to go get a spray bottle and douse you before you collapse.
"What's going on with you?" he asks.
"I'm just thinking."
"Think out loud. Don't be fucking selfish."
"I'm not sure you wanna hear it."
He puts his cigarette in the eggcup ashtray half-smoked, ribbons of white curling up into the shimmering summer heat. Any other time he'd lounge back and let the nicotine course through his system, a momentary relief against the winding tightness that comes with being so hot, and so worried about you.
"If I ask you how you've been feeling lately, could you answer me?" he asks. "Without assuming I don't believe you. Don't get mad, just tell me."
You drop your shoulder against his. "I feel fine, I think. You know me, I– I worry too much, and work is overwhelming. If you took me to a doctor, he'd probably prescribe me ambien and a week in a dark room, but. I really don't think I'm making this up."
"I don't think you'd know," he says. Isn't that the deal? If you're having a hallucination of some kind, it would likely sound and feel real enough to trick you in some capacity.
"Trust me," you say. Your hair brushes against the top of his damp arm. He can't smell good, but you don't say a thing about it.
"I do." Eddie turns his head to take another drag. He blows the smoke as far from you as he can manage. "Tell me about last night," he says, eyes on the weather worn plating of the trailer. "What happened?"
If you're not messing with him, your ghost has been talking to you for a while now. Something happened last night to scare you in a way you hadn't been before.
He fights his rising nausea with a final drag on his cigarette. You stop leaning on him, hands back in your lap as you tell the story.
"I was listening to the stereo real loud while I did laundry. I don't know if I was trying to, you know, block it out if she started talking, I'm not stupid, I– I know it could be all in my head. I don't think it is, but I'm not stupid. I went down to the basement to swap the load out in the dryer, and while I was down there…"
You look like you don't know how to explain it. Eddie bites his cheek.
"She wrote me something," you say finally. "In my notebook, the one you got me for Christmas. She said hello."
"I could've written it," he says. "I don't remember, maybe I left you a message in it knowing you'd find it."
"Did you come in and take it off the shelf, too?" you ask gently. "Eddie, I know your handwriting. I'm not making this up."
He sighs, rubs his face with both hands, the smell of smoke and salt ingrained in the lines of his palms. He gives himself a long five seconds scrubbing at his stubbly jaw and wishing it was colder, then he shoots up onto his feet and pulls open the door.
"Early night," he says decisively. "If you're still sure there's a ghost in the morning, I'll come over. See if she'll talk to me too. How does that sound?"
You hold your hand out. Eddie takes it, hoisting you up.
"It sounds like you need a better strategy for getting girls to go to bed with you."
"It's working, isn't it?"
"Loser."
—
You wake up to Eddie tapping your shoulder.
"Come on, sweetheart," he says quietly, his voice rough as hewn stone. "I made you pancakes."
It's as if you're submerged at the bottom of a shallow pool. Sound and heat and sunlight reach you, but it's dull. It takes you a second to understand what Eddie's saying, and why his thumb is rubbing into your shoulder.
"Come on," he says again, "'fore they get cold."
You blink. Blink blink blink. Your throat hurts and you have a bad taste in your mouth. Your eyes feel like somebody flicked sand at you while you slept, gritty and dry. You kick the thin blanket away from you, a long day of writhing in the heat yesterday having turned you to sludge, your limbs limp and uncooperative.
Eddie's frowning at you when you look up.
"Want me to get you a rag?" he asks.
"No, I'll wash my face." Your words string together like toffee melted between them and hardened again while you weren't looking. "Oh," you murmur, wincing as you set your feet on the ground. "My back really hurts. Did you push me out of bed last night?"
"You slept like a log. Same position all night." He reaches for you, but his hand wavers. He must change his mind.
Eddie leaves the door wide open as he leaves. The radio is on, and a song he secretly loves but won't admit to wars with the sound of sizzling oil. If you strain, you can hear him humming. You get closer and dip into the bathroom, the door open so you can listen to Eddie sing the chorus.
Dance with me, I want to be your partner, can't you see? The music is just starting.
He doesn't sing well, really. It's a light, high-pitched rendition. He isn't trying. He feels comfortable enough around you to be unapologetically mediocre, and it's somehow sweeter than if he had a voice like Larry Hoppen.
You wash your face with handfuls of cold water, your lips tasting of salt as it drips down your nose to your neck, rogue rivulets of run-off seeping into your rolled sleeves.
The heat broke overnight. A light rain patters soundlessly against the windows, and the back door has been propped open in the kitchen to let in the smell of fresh churned earth. Petrichor.
You pat your tacky face dry. Eddie turns to the sound, and you nod at Wayne's empty seat.
"Where's your uncle?" you ask.
"He wanted to get epoxy and a fresh roll of duct tape in case we spring another leak. The rain was pretty bad last night, I think he's worried it'll rot the ceiling. I don't know. Don't worry, I made him something first."
You sit down and let Eddie serve you a stack of pancakes. The ones on the very top are piping hot. You slather them in butter and maple syrup as he sits down next to you, a plate of his own in hand.
"How's your back?" he asks. He's being too soft with you.
"I saw a ghost, Eds, I'm not dying." You slice down the pancakes with the side of your fork, attempting to act unbothered. "Worst case scenario, I'm schizophrenic."
Eddie sits down in the chair next to yours. It's a small table but there's ample room. His proximity is a choice. "Worst case scenario, you're being targeted by an evil demon, but schizophrenia could also be really bad," he says. "S'why I'm worried."
"Eddie." You put down your fork, swallowing a half-chewed mouthful roughly. "Hey. If it's my head, I'll go to the doctor and I'll let them take care of it and everything will be fine." You have no way of knowing if what you're saying is true. Mental illness isn't easy. You're just saying what you think he needs to hear without outright lying. "I'll take the meds and you'll be there for me. But I'm fine. And you're being weird."
"You're trying to piss me off."
A little. Pissed is better than anxious. You'd rather give him something to glare at than a reason to twist himself into knots. "You're easily riled," you jest.
His eyebrows rise. He eats his pancakes and you your own, the wrinkled knees of your pyjamas rubbing against one another as he jigs his leg along to the song on the radio. The rain starts to worsen, fat droplets slapping the screen door like the thwack of a bullet. From your seat, you can see the sky dark with grey clouds, the sun a long forgotten foe. The humidity has been cut in half, which is to say bad but not unbearable. Last night, if you'd been awake to feel it, the rain would've been warm in your palm. Getting up to close the door now, you nudge the ajar screen wide with your foot, letting some of the rain lash your arms and face.
You sigh at the chilly coldness of each blessed drop.
"Heatwave from hell is finally over."
"Thank fuck for that. Let's hope it's miserably cold for weeks," Eddie says.
It's mid September —summer has said goodbye with one last fierce kiss. By October, you'll be wrapping yourselves up in throw blankets on the couch on the porch, or hiding inside with Wayne's special pasta (buttered noodles and green pesto for the 'brave') watching slashers on Eddie's blurry TV. The humidity will be nothing but a gross memory.
You wash your plates and Eddie lets you shower first. You have your own shampoo in the corner, and a rose scented body wash Eddie buys but doesn't use (but it isn't for you, idiot, why would he buy you something so expensive? He got it by mistake). You could draw the cracks in their shower tiles with your eyes closed, and the condensation that clings to the cold water pipe, that's how many times you've been in here. You finish quickly, dry quicker, and pull fresh clothes over your still-clammy skin.
You tap Eddie in. He's somehow even faster than you were, and you swap places in his room. While he's changing, you dry the bathroom walls with a towel as soon as he's out, knowing the small room has a propensity for dampness.
"Stop cleaning my fucking house," he says when you traipse back into his room, his head hanging upside down as he towel dries his curls.
You forgo your usual explanations and tell the truth. "I know you're perfectly capable. I like helping, that's all."
"I know. Ugh, you suck. Do you have any deodorant?"
You grin and pull your deodorant out of your bag, a new-ish stick of Teen Spirit. Eddie sees it and sighs, obviously unprepared to smell like Pink Crush for the rest of the day. "I have like, half an inch left of Caribbean Cool. Coconut?" you offer.
He goes with the coconut scent. The wall of privacy between you has eroded to a scrap of paper after so long living in each other's laps, but you feel guilty for looking at him, the shifting muscle beneath the skin of his arms and chest stealing your focus. If Eddie were to see you without your shirt, you doubt he'd find himself anywhere near as distracted. He'd look if you let him because that's the way he is, unaffected by simple intimacies, but when you tell him to face the door it doesn’t aggrieve him. Most of the time he’s already averted his eyes.
"Gotta add that to the list of shit we need. Have you seen my shoes?"
"Your white sneakers are in the hallway. One of your converse is under the bed, but it's hard to say about the other." You swallow a sudden lump. "Are we going shirtless?"
Eddie does not go shirtless. He pulls a shirt on that thankfully has sleeves, and then a zip up hoodie under his leather jacket. You didn't think to bring a coat yourself due to the extreme baking temperature of the day before. You're lucky you had clean clothes here, considering you hadn't intended to spend the night. Or, not lucky, loved. One of the Munson’s has washed what you’ve left behind.
You have a momentary lapse as Eddie puts his shoes on, trekking into the bathroom to look in the mirror. It's no secret that you aren't pretty. You can make a good effort, and you keep it classy, stay clean, but you aren't pretty, not by your own opinion.
Eddie knows everything about you (nearly). He knows you don't think much of yourself. And a younger version of him had comforted you as earnestly as an awkward teenage boy could manage, but these days he goes for the root of the problem. He still tells you that you're pretty occasionally, or rather, "Looking good, babe," but not today.
"Hey." Eddie looks you up and down. "What's wrong?"
"I look stupid." You glance at your legs. Why does everything look so weird on you?
He hooks his arm through yours and starts to drag you down the hallway to the front door, sideways like two crabs. "No."
"Yeah, I do, and people are gonna think I do, too."
"Who cares what other people think?" And there's grown-up Eddie's rhetoric, Who gives a fuck what other people think?
"Me," you say.
You understand exactly what it is he's trying to do: free you from the anxiety of overthinking. It doesn't work as often as you wish it would, but he gives it a good go.
"No, you don't. We don't care what other people think because it doesn't affect us." He doesn't make light, exactly, but his eyes are bright and his smile is sweet as he opens the front door and gestures for you to go down first. Rain and wind are quick to kiss at your naked arms.
"What if they all think I'm some sort of slob?"
"Then they'd be wrong. It's okay for people to be wrong about us. That's their problem." More familiar argument. It actually does make you feel better, despite hearing it a hundred times before. "People are wrong all the time."
Eddie follows you down the first step and turns away to lock the door.
"Like you and my ghost," you say, trying to steer the conversation from your moment of weakness and into happy territory again. "You don't think she's real."
"Baby, I'd love it if you proved me wrong with that one." He jogs down the rest of the steps, knowing it’ll give you a conniption, the wet metal a death trap waiting to happen. “Go! Get in the van!”
You scramble across the grass and the curved pathway to the drive where the van is parked and yank open the passenger door with all your strength. The handle is notorious for sticking shut. When nothing happens, Eddie curses up a storm as he clambers into the driver's seat and over the console to force it open, giving it a good old-fashioned kick from the inside. It flies into your waiting hands and you rush up the step into the front of the van away from the rain that’s growing heavier and heavier by the hour.
“Well, glad I didn’t waste time letting it dry,” Eddie says, wringing his hair out over his lap. It only drips two or three drops, but it’s funny all the same. The top of his head shines like a dark halo. “About the ghost. Do you really believe in them?”
“You asked me last night–”
“I know, but last night you said you wouldn’t believe in one unless you saw it, and then proceeded to talk about it like it was real.”
“I’m agnostic about ghosts.”
“Oh, yeah?” he asks. He sticks the key in the ignition and turns it until the engine groans to life. The van was old when he got it. Now it’s super old.
“No. What’s agnostic mean?” you ask.
“We’ll buy a dictionary.”
“I kind of believe in ghosts. I believe in my ghost. If I ever see one, I’ll believe in all the ghosts. Shit, I sound stupid.”
“No, you don’t– you don’t! It’s okay to not know, I wasn’t trying to interrogate you about your personal beliefs.” He is a very responsible driver these days. He keeps his eyes on the road. His hand, however, strays to your arm. “You’re not stupid, superstar.”
“Don’t,” you plead. Superstar is a nickname that stuck despite your vehement disagreement with its origin and further usage. “It makes you sound like an old dad and I’m the son who just got benched at little league. Again.”
You stand as much as your seatbelt will allow and dig out the purse from the butt pocket of your jeans. “I’ll get gas.”
“Way too personal for our relationship.”
Bad, overused joke.
Eddie doesn’t want you to pay for gas, the same way he doesn’t want you paying for takeout or birthday presents. He hates ‘handouts’ —it took you a while to convince him that gas money isn’t a handout, it’s you trying to keep things fair. You know how it feels to need the money and not want to ask for it, so you put him in a position where he never has to ask.
Things are easier now. You’re not in high school anymore. Work doesn’t pay as well as you want it to, but it’s enough to get by, especially while you’re living in your childhood home with only partial bills to pay. Eddie isn’t hurting for money either. That’s something to be grateful for.
Eddie pulls into the gas station. He won’t let you pump while the wind is whipping, but you sprint into the gas station and trawl the fridge for the biggest drinks, sticking two cans of iced tea under your arm. The cold immediately eats into your naked skin. You jog to the counter to pay.
“Pump two, please,” you say, putting your cans down.
“Twelve dollars.”
You frown. Eddie only put ten dollars on the pump. Well, deducting your two cans of iced tea at 99 cents each, ten dollars and two cents. What an asshole.
You hold out a twenty dollar bill with a smile, and look out the window as you wait for your change. The rain is too heavy to see him, but you imagine Eddie drumming the wheel of the van with both hands. You shiver out a thanks as your change hits your palm, dropping it into your purse with your best receipts. There’s one for bowling (a triple defeat, Eddie a secret master), one for two whole frozen cheesecakes you’d eaten in bed a month ago with double-sized dessert spoons, a couple for Hawk theatre; Back to the Future II, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II (‘89 was a great year for sequels). All your best memories printed on thermal paper.
“Holy shit I’m so cold,” you squeak, prying open the door without the aid of Eddie’s kick.
“You’re soaked, you fool. You want to go home first for a sweater?”
You close the door behind you and drop the iced tea into the console, grimacing at the great clang they make. Your seatbelt snaps into place around your soft middle, and without ceremony you’re back on the road for your original mission.
“No sweaters, Bradley’s. Stupid to double back.” You look at him from the corner of your eye. “I think we should get frozen pizza and extra toppings to put on them. And fries, obviously, and dessert.” The ghost won’t care. Probably.
“You forgot the side salad.”
“Forgot,” you say, laughing. “Why yes I did.”
“Dessert,” Eddie says, his turn now to make some decisions. “I want a slurpee real bad right now, so I’m thinking we buy a bag of ice for your food processor and get some syrup.”
“We could go get slurpees,” you say encouragingly. If that’s what he wants, why not?
“We have shit to do,” he says, smiling so much his dimples peek out. “Ghosts to convene with, notebooks to analyse. Feasts to prepare.” He looks deeply speculative. You assume he’s thinking about the maybe-ghost, but he says, “Why are we getting frozen pizza? They have those pre-packaged ones now that are basically fresh.”
“They taste the same.”
“Liar, the bottom of the frozen ones go soggy and the cheese burns on the crust. You know that I’m right, don’t give me dish.”
“Aren’t you always?”
Eddie has a horrible tendency to be right about things. Maybe that's why you hadn't told him about the ghost for so long, because you'd wanted to handle it yourself without his explanatory assurances. You’re the worrier and he’s the one who always sets it straight.
What if I make a fool of myself? you've asked him once.
I’ll make one of myself, too.
What if they fire me?
We’ll get you a new job with me cleaning up after idiots.
What if it never goes away?
It will.
What if body snatchers get us while we’re sleeping?
That one made him smile. The fondest upturn of a pretty mouth, not an expression you often see. Then they get us, he’d said, whispering across the pillows, face only partially visible in the struggling light of the TV. It’ll be awesome. Me and you. No brains, no worries. Just lettuce heads forever.
You watch him beating along to a song you aren’t privy to against the wheel. He hadn’t seemed to mind the idea of losing his mind with you back then. He doesn’t believe you now, but that’s because he hasn’t heard her voice. The whistling wind warping itself into coherent syllables. Reaching for you, a dark slice of sound.
Eddie… has… a secret…
You look at your lap, tamping down a shudder at the sensation of ice riding your spine.
Don’t we all?
—
Eddie feels you’ve been overly relaxed about the situation at hand. He doesn’t want to back you into a box and declare a health crisis, but he’s been thinking up possible illnesses while you weigh the pros and cons of pizza toppings in case he has to take you to see someone. He’s not sure how gas lines work but he’s sure a quick phone call to the Munson landline could clear it up for him. Perhaps the most effective test of all for carbon monoxide poisoning would be to subject himself to the same circumstances. He’ll spend a few days at home with you and see how he feels afterward. If push comes to shove he’ll light a match and see what catches.
On the inside, Eddie’s panicking about your mental health and, admittedly, the slim reality of a supernatural presence. On the outside, he’s playing along with your unconcerned dinner plans and aimless chatter. If you want to pretend that today is the same as any other day, he's prepared to let you. He won’t do the same, but he won’t discourage you, either.
You cut through one of the home aisles toward the front of the store with a heavy basket on your elbow, Eddie hot on your heels. He grabs a pocket dictionary from the display to his left and hurries to keep up with you.
You’re shivering. “I really didn’t think it would rain,” you say.
Eddie looks past the registers to the glass doors at the front of the store where rain pelts with a force bordering on stormy weather. If it gets much worse than this, he'll insist you both go back to Munson headquarters and hunker up to wait it out.
“The weather,” Eddie mumbles, unlike himself. “Are we expecting a storm? Maybe we should grab a cart and get some basics. Crate of water.”
“Okay, we can do that. Are you worried?”
“Kind of.”
He meets your eyes. He loves your eyes. He knows you don’t. You're not insecure in a way he feels he can fix —if he can fix any of it. It’s like you dissociate, for lack of a better word, from the things you can’t love. You don’t look in the mirror, won’t let him take photographs of you. You don’t say it. You call yourself stupid, weird, silly. Never ugly.
But he knows.
And now this whole ghost business. Eddie needs to think of something he can say to you that will inspire a better level of honesty going forward.
“How long have you been speaking to the ghost?” he asks.
You grin at a conveniently abandoned shopping cart at the end of the aisle and slide toward it on squealing shoes. You look around broadly for an owner, and when they don’t appear you place your basket in the stomach of it. The only thing remaining from whoever used it beforehand is a small tray of four cupcakes.
“Four. One for you, three for me,” you say, ignoring his question with a smug giggle.
Eddie loves you in a way not many people can love someone else, the kind of love that takes years of patience and acceptance and sweetness to take root, kind of love you only feel after seeing someone at their best, worst, and weirdest — memories come thick and fast whenever he thinks about the sheer years you’ve spent together, seeds of affection long germinated and rearing to grow. You, throwing up behind a Denny’s with sick in your hair, crying so hard you couldn’t catch your breath, and when you could, asking him if he wouldn’t mind buying you a new t-shirt to wear in the car as though you were some dastardly imposition, and not his sick best friend. You, on top of the world, surrounded by people who loved you with a birthday cake in front of you, eyes brighter than the blinking flames of each dripping candle. You, in pyjamas too tight, too loose, old or brand new with your hair up, down, washed, and greasy, your lips chapped, bruised then healed, parted against one of his pillows as you slept, as you yawned, as you laughed, talked. No matter what you’re wearing, saying or doing, you, in his bed, completely at home.
Eddie has a thousand images of you in his head and they all fight to play again, like a VHS on constant rewind, or a movie with duplicated film, double, triple exposed. Before even an inkling of a crush had ever come around, he loved you. That's why it doesn’t really matter that he can’t kiss you. He can’t imagine loving you more than this.
Sometimes, sometimes… you put your leg over his and your thigh spreads out across the top of his, and he has to beg himself not to want to touch you. He wonders if you’d mind. Eddie thinks about asking so often it turns into its own fantasy. He knows what cadence his voice would take, the exact grit and warmth, his hand waiting on your knee and aching to inch downward.
You pull him from his sickly introspection with a poke. Your fingernail dents his shirt precisely atop a small beauty mark. He doesn’t know if you know what you’re doing, if you’ve seen his naked chest enough times to realise that there’s a mole right there an inch shy of his belly button, if you’d ever looked at him in so much detail.
“Transmission incoming,” you say, your fingers flattening over his abdomen, your palm hovering apart. Like the pole of an opposite magnet, it refuses to connect. “Chirp. Houston, we’ve been attempting to connect with Astronaut Munson. He is unresponsive. Let us know when you make contact again.” You smile at him ruefully. “Damn moon keeps dropping signal.”
“Sorry… Astronaut Munson? Do they call astronauts astronauts? I thought it was commander.”
“I don’t know, Eddie, I haven’t brushed up on NASA related job titles lately.” Your deadpan wanes, replaced with a genuine concern. “Are you okay? You really did get lost.”
“I’m just thinking about, you know– Your ghost,” he lies. The ghost should be his highest concern, and for the most part it is, but he’d let his attention get pulled along by other things.
That’s the thing about love. It feels much more important in the moment than anything else, even when it shouldn’t.
“You’re super worried about the ghost.”
“It is an uber worrying ghost.”
“‘Cause she talks?” you ask.
“Well, yeah. Most of the time you just get, like, blurs on night vision cameras or the general malignant presence of the thing. Not words.” Not questions concerning your best friend.
“Casper talks and he’s gorgeous,” you say. “A true sweetheart.”
“Doesn’t Casper have to protect Lucy from his evil ghost uncles?”
“Who the fuck is Lucy?”
“The girl. Lucy and Johnny.”
“Bonnie?”
“Oh. That sounds right. But her name doesn’t matter,” Eddie insists. “My point was that the bad ghosts outweigh the good three to one. That’s more than half, you realise.”
“His name is Casper the Friendly Ghost,” you say, shrugging. Eddie hopes you know where it is in the store you’re going to. He hasn’t looked away from your face for the last twenty minutes. “It’s in the name.”
“But your ghost isn’t Casper,” Eddie says.
“No. My ghost isn’t Casper, but she hasn’t tried to kill me. She would have written something threatening in my notebook or knocked all the books off of my shelf if she were evil.”
Eddie frowns. You’ve steered him around the store like you’ve never been here before, changing your mind after turns to go down the opposite aisle, murmuring about bottled water. He reaches for your hand on the shopping cart rail and can’t resist squeezing it as he pulls it away.
“I got it,” he says.
He swears that your expression flickers. Worry breaking through the closed shutters of your blasé.
You’re not so chatty as you follow him toward the back of Bradley’s where they keep the big jugs of water. He grabs one, thinks back to the bad weather and grabs another. It’s unlikely that you’ll need them, but Eddie would rather be safe than sorry. “Do you have a lamp?” he asks. “An oil lamp? Or a flashlight?”
“I have a flashlight,” you confirm. “Is it really so bad? Uh, I don’t wanna ask again, but I– maybe I could–”
Eddie wants to pull your face into his chest. He thinks about it. Would he have hugged you like that a year ago, before the butterflies and the late nights daring to think of the dough of your thighs or the column of your throat when you tip your head back? He might’ve. It would mean something different, but he might’ve.
He throws an arm around your shoulder and gives you a good shake. “What is wrong with you? If it gets any worse, you’re staying with me. I’m only asking about a flashlight in case we have one of those worst case scenarios and get stuck in your haunted house. I refuse to die like the jocks in a b-rated horror.”
“The jocks or the whore? Isn’t it the girl who sleeps around that gets murdered in the dark?” you ask.
“Super unfair. I sleep around, do I deserve to die?” he asks, dropping his arm.
You mime stabbing him in the gut. Everyone's so violent.
Eddie is amazingly unharmed as he gets you to the register. You try to fight him on who’s paying, but you’re an idiot who insisted on getting gas. It’s the leverage he needs to win. Out of Bradley’s and back into the rain with grocery bags double bagged, you run for the van and thrust the spoils of your shopping trip in the passenger seat footwell. Eddie opens the side door to lug the water jugs inside and you take the cart back to the front of the store against his wishes.
He waits for you to be in arms reach and gets back in the van. You’re soaked to the bone. He’s cold in three layers, so you must be freezing. He shrugs off his sopping wet leather jacket and then the zip hoodie underneath, draping the zip hoodie over your lap and chest and then rushing to put his leather jacket on again.
“Thank you, good sir,” you laugh.
He’s already fiddling with the air conditioning. Heat bursts from the left vent but not the right, leaving you in a cold bubble. “Shit, I’m sorry, the right vent’s still busted. Ol’ Beauville keeps letting us down.”
“Don’t hate on the Beauville!” you scold through chattering teeth.
“You're dying,” he says. “Hold on, I’m gonna do ninety.”
“Do not speed!”
You get to the road outside of your place without any hydroplaning. You live on a regular American street in a two-story semi-detached house not too far from Hawkins High school with your guardian, who isn’t home very often. It has three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a lot of white walls. You often lament that the house doesn’t really feel like your own, and punctuate with a giddy laugh he doesn’t understand but adores nonetheless.
Eddie parks his van on the long gravel driveway as close to the house as he can get it and ushers you inside with your keys. You’re cold enough to listen without complaint.
He puts the groceries in the kitchen on the countertops and kicks off his shoes, intending on putting them away when he’s sure you aren’t in any danger of hypothermia. He kicks off his shoes by the door, locks it tight, and starts up the carpeted stairs to your room.
He’s not surprised to find you half-naked, but overfamiliar, affectionate friendship doesn’t necessarily mean you like being seen. He averts his gaze from your naked legs and tries desperately to think about anything but underwear. The more he tries not to think about them, the worse it gets.
“Hey,” he says, covering his eyes so you know he isn’t perving, “our horror flick just got dirty.”
“Yikes,” you say. “Don’t look.”
“I’m not, I’m not. You could’ve closed the door. You know, spare me a guilty conscience.” Then, because he just can’t help himself, “When did you start wearing fancy panties?”
“Fuck off, Eddie,” you laugh.
“Do I have to make the switch to tighty whities?”
“Our underwear choices do not concern one another.” You trek toward him. He peeks through two spread fingers and finds you thankfully reclothed in dry sweatpants and a sweater soft with age. “I thought tighty whities hurt your–” You raise your eyebrows.
He regrets being honest with you when you were teenagers. A little secrecy might help repaint him in your mind as less of a huge loser. You could possibly find him attractive if you weren't privy to the numerous embarrassments that make up his life, he thinks.
He chokes on his own tongue and dies right there in your bedroom. “Why do you remember shit like that?”
“Same reason you keep a heat pack in your room in case I get all crampy,” you say.
You give him one of your sick smiles —you have to know what you’re doing, you have to— and drape your arms over his shoulders, nearly knocking him down with the sudden addition of your weight. He, stunned, plants a foot behind himself so you don’t both trip and fall on your asses.
The plane of your back beckons beneath your sweater. What he’d give to slip a hand under the hem to explore the ridge of your shoulder blade with his fingertips.
A quiet ensues. Your hug turns from a joking attempt to push him around a bit to a real one. He steel-arms your waist, tightening them around you three times in quick succession, nose buried in your hair to steal a deep breath.
“This where the ghost talks to you?” he asks, looking over your head into the chaos of your room. It’s not dirty, but it isn’t tidy, either.
You sigh too much like a moan for his sanity and stand up tall, your hands trailing down his chest unthinkingly as you follow his gaze. “Yeah. I don’t know if we’ll hear her over the rain. It has to be really quiet.”
“What are you doing? Experiments?” he asks. He sounds as distracted by it all as he feels.
“No. Something I noticed, is all.”
“I don’t get why you didn’t tell me the first time it happened,” he confesses, voice dropping to a murmur.
“Um… remember senior year, you kept missing class because you had all those doctors appointments?” You smile sheepishly. “‘N’ you didn’t tell me about it until after you knew you were okay?”
During his first senior year, Eddie found a small cyst in his arm. Small compared to other cysts, large in his arm. He worried it was malicious, or rather Wayne worried and Eddie didn’t know what he thought about it until after they’d cut it out. It had been a thankfully speedy affair in a doctors office they couldn’t afford. Eddie didn’t tell you about it until he’d been all stitched up and tested — he tried, but then he would imagine the look on your face when he did, and it made him feel like his intestines had learned to jump rope.
He still remembers when he finally told you, the split second between, “a tumour,” and “but it’s not cancer.” The relief on your face. The shock of upset tears it caused.
“I guess I was trying to be good to you,” you say, shrugging and starting down the stairs.
Eddie follows. “If something like that happened again to me, god forbid,” —he dips into a melodramatic voice, scared of the sombre mood that’s descended— “I wouldn’t keep it to myself. I’d make it your problem instantly.”
Every now and then, Wayne will lean over the back of Eddie’s chair at the breakfast table and grab an arm, feeling for a tiny bump that hasn’t come back. You’d done the same in your own way: you wrote ‘check for lesions :D’ on a piece of paper and taped it to his bedroom doorway. It fell off ages ago, but he occasionally gets déjà vu as he leaves the room. And as he walks down the hallway, he’ll roll up his sleeve and check that there's nothing there.
Eddie didn’t tell you senior year. A lingering abandonment issue, maybe, ‘cause Dad didn’t stay when things got hard, who cares? He doesn’t think about that shit anymore. Figures the mark it left was enough. But these days, he’d tell you if he found a lump in his arm, or a ghost in his room. Your scribbled note made sure of that.
"Are you listening to me?" he asks.
"You'd make it my problem," you provide. "Tell me something I don't know."
He grabs you by the shoulders at the bottom of the stairs and blows into your ear.
With the lights on and the radio at a low volume, the rain outside doesn't seem nearly as imposing. The kitchen is small with a long strip light above that gives the room a near clinical white cast, the countertops shining clean, not a plate in the sink. It's evident how much time you don't spend here. No photos on the fridge, no salt or pepper shakers on the table. Where Eddie and Wayne have their insane mug collection made up of states and hours and way too much money in some cases, you have four black coffee mugs in a tower stack by the seldom used machine. Where they have a corkboard of photographs, Polaroids and printouts from Walmart off of rinky-dink digital cameras, you have one photo on the wall, a professionally done portrait of you from the day you graduated and Eddie, unfortunately, did not.
Eddie's grad pictures are much less robotic. Too much eyeliner but just enough you, he has his arm thrown over your shoulders in the back of a grungy restaurant, his smile blisteringly bright. He might as well have written 'Thank Fuck' across his forehead. There's another one of him and Hellfire Club at the time, blurry with the flash making him pale as snow. You and Wayne had been trying to make the camera focus, twin scowls on your faces. Eddie's expression was one of pure joy.
He tried to make up for your shitty grad pics by celebrating your first job with a pack of Polaroids. You'd looked adorably strange in the uniform, so young but so done with his shit, eighteen and exhausted. He keeps one in his room in the bottom of the box with all his rings and chains. If you ever found it, he'd think about drowning himself.
Your appointment with a ghost waits until after dinner. You pull your frozen pizzas out of their boxes and put them in the oven (you don't preheat, which Eddie thinks is a questionable choice, but he'd help you get away with murder). While they defrost and start to cook, you slice and dice your extra toppings on the wooden chopping board beside the stovetop. He stands there with his hands washed and nothing to do. Just watches you cut up jalapeños for him and thinks about how he's going to take care of you if the ghost doesn't speak up. Does he tell your guardian? You're an adult. All your healthcare would be private and confidential. Could he tell Wayne? Would that be a betrayal?
"Check the pizzas?" You scrape the seeds out of a jalapeño, eyes pinched in concentration.
Eddie doesn't know if he can eat. You aren't as out of it as you were at the store, but you aren't fully present. A song you love plays on the radio and it's like you don't hear it.
He pulls the pizzas from the oven. He makes a smiley face out of pepperoni and jalapeños, earning half as big a smile as he thought he would from you in response.
Together, you clean the small mess you made. The pizzas brown. When they're done you take them out, cut them up, plate them, and carry them up to your room on a tray with a two litre bottle of sprite and two plastic cups. Eddie changes into a pair of his pyjama pants that you keep at the bottom of your dresser before he sits on your bed, wide-eyed when he sees how many slices you've managed in his absence.
"Nobody's gonna take it away from you," he teases lightly.
"Can't be too careful 'round you," you say, dropping a crust onto his plate. It's his favourite part.
"Thought you wanted fries?"
"And I thought you wanted a side salad."
"I wanted snow cone syrup," he says, shrugging.
He considers offering to go make you some fries anyway, but he takes a big bite of pizza and it tastes so good he forgets about it. Eddie doesn't know nothing about nothing, but if he had a say, he'd make it so that he and you could spend the rest of your lives doing this, meaningless jabbering over greasy food. It's not a good idea —you need vegetables that aren't on pizza, and fresh grains, and who knows what else to stay healthy— but Eddie's never claimed he had them. He wants this.
He gets it most of the time, but he's selfish. He wants it every night. He loves Wayne but he wants to come home to you, or to have you come home to him, in a space that you decorated, a life that you made. He wants a dog and a pet fish and, in five years or ten or never, a baby if it's what you want too. A front door lined with three pairs of shoes.
He also wants a limousine that takes him from place to place and a room full of thousand dollar guitars. A man can dream.
The first port of call for any dream is making sure you're okay. Let the ghostly stakeout begin.
Sated and sick at once, Eddie puts your empty tray on the dresser and goes to turn on the TV. "She won't talk if the TV's on," you interrupt.
"Ugh. Any chance she likes the stereo?"
You slouch down where you'd been sitting and shake your head. Your jaw goes soft, eyes softer when you smile. "It's not all bad. She doesn't care how loud you turn a page."
Eddie can't be with you every second of the day, the same way you can't be with him. There are shifts to take, shifts to cover, dungeons to pilfer and dragons to slay. You have your job, your other friends (none as handsome as he is), your hobbies. How often are you home alone, talking to ghosts?
He stands by your bookshelf, eyes skipping over the titles in slight disinterest.
"Hey," he asks, "where's your notebook? I wanna see her handwriting."
"I left it on the top shelf."
Eddie stares. There are a few other notebooks and sketchbooks aligned here, but not the one you'd described.
"You sure?" he asks.
"I left it right there,” you say with a yawn.
Eddie looks at you from over his shoulder. You’re tired. He figures he can see the notebook later, and offer you some remedial comfort now. Anything to wipe the frown off of your face.
He grabs a book off of your shelf at random and cracks it open. You love being read to. You'd beg and beg him growing up, and he'd almost always oblige.
"Can I read aloud, or does she hate that too?" he asks, turning away from your shelf.
"I've never tried it."
"I'll do it quietly?"
"Sure," you say, a tired but pleased smile on your lips. "I've read that one before."
"Should I get a different one?"
"No, it's good. It's the one I told you about with the demons who eat stars."
"The dirty one?" he asks, dropping like a stone near the top of your bed, the blankets under his hip warm from the residual heat of the pizza plates.
"It's not dirty. There's one scene toward the end where they get handsy, no graphic detail."
"And by no graphic detail, you mean…"
"No graphic detail," you repeat. It's awful how funny you find each other.
"Not even, like… hand stuff?"
"Do you want there to be hand stuff?"
"With the demons?"
You devolve into giggles, the kind that start slow and thicken into a giddy sort of breathlessness, your head supported by the headboard. Eddie looks up at you in awe.
"I could be into that," Eddie furthers, stretching your laughter as long as it will go. "Are they the kind that look like people but with extra arms or wings or something?"
"You'd like that, huh? Extra arms?"
"I wouldn't be opposed to extra arms."
"Gross," you cheer through another wave of laughter. "I don't wanna think about it."
Eddie looks to the book's first page and tamps down a grimace. You don't wanna think about him in that sort of position.
Eddie, excluding any extra appendages, thinks of you like that more than he should. Never when you're near, not if he can help it, but at night when the hot shower water beating down against his back can be shaped into the vague sensation of a body behind him, he thinks of your chest. Your hands. Or in the early mornings, when he's writhed into a contortionist’s ball and the streaking sunlight through the curtains is kissing his abdomen, he imagines it's your leg thrown across his hip, with your face turned into his chest.
Fuck, it kills him, because he knows what the real thing feels like. He's had you clinging to his waist on colder nights, and he's been under your hands. Tipsy, free with your touches, he's felt the breadth of your palms cupping his cheeks.
You're pretty, you'd told him, as you love to tell him when you've been drinking, but you need a haircut.
He never would've let you kiss him in that state, but he kids himself into thinking you wanted to. It was only booze doing what booze does.
"Read to me, serf," you demand.
Eddie clears his throat.
"The enemy is close," Eddie reads, "and the lane is overrun. Sympathy for the second kind had felt natural to Mellissa once, but now that she sees the sharp angling of their shoulders in the dawn light, she aches with hatred…"
The novel isn't bad. It isn't Eddie's favourite; the tone falls flat, and the main character's actions aren't fed by any particular emotion. Its first arc is formulaic, and soon the hero's forced to answer the call. You evidently find his rehashing tedious, as your head tips toward his head, and you wriggle your way down to his shoulder amicably.
"Don't fall asleep," he says.
"It's your whispering."
"I don't want to disturb the ghost."
"Okay." You start to pick at your nails, little scratches against the cuticle. "I won't fall asleep."
—
Your snores aren't gentle. You're a human being and Eddie doesn't expect you to breathe like a princess, but the wheeze is concerning.
He waits for you to settle down, easing your head onto the pillow. Your airway clears, and your snoring quietens to the same ambient level as the rain hitting the window outside. He feels your head for a temperature carefully. Back of his hand, fingers curled in so his ring can't startle you, he tries to gauge if you're running a fever.
It isn't normal for you to cat nap in the middle of the day, but the sun is occluded by dark clouds and the rain blots out what's left, leaving the bedroom in darkness, and you'd been warm and fed and Eddie had been doing something monotonous. It makes sense that you'd drifted off. Eddie wishes he felt tired too, so he could slide down under the sheets with you and curl a hand around your wrist.
He lies on his back, arms crossed over his chest, straining his ears for the sound of a voice.
I swear, sometimes, I can hear someone talking.
You have a vent in your room, and perhaps a couple of late nights after your shifts had you mistaking a groaning foundation or the wind for a whisper. That's a thing, right? People hear something in the wind. Fatigue has your mind playing tricks on you. Eddie should go to the library and see if they have anything to do with sleep deprivation.
It's no fun listening for ghosts. Eddie's shoulders and upper back begin to feel tense. The feeling travels lower, a snaking ache that wraps around each vertebrae. Even his tailbone hurts.
He shifts onto his side and stares at your closed eyes. He blows a breath at you to watch your lashes flutter like tufts of grass in the breeze.
Your breaths are like a metronome. He syncs his to yours for kicks, just listening. When you're both asleep, does your breath sync on its own? How do your bodies react to each other? Eddie has woken up to your arms around him or your body halfway across the bed, leg falling out from under the covers. You're irregular, where he has a tendency to grab at you while he's knocked out. He doesn't wrap his arms around you so much as hold you in his hands. His fingers curl in the hem of your t-shirts or bracelet your bicep. If he falls asleep with an arm above your head, he'll occasionally wake to find his hand at the top of it, your hair mussed.
He must be stroking it in his sleep.
Or maybe you're frizzy.
No shame in frizziness. Eddie's frizzy more often than not. Curly hair is hard to take care of and he has a lot of it. God knows it was worse before he started seeing that hairdresser in the city who makes magic happen with her thinning shears.
Your lips part.
Thunder cracks outside.
Eddie lifts his head to look out of the window in surprise. Summer days have come to pass and sunset comes earlier in the day, fractals of light bouncing between the violent rain. In an hour or two, it will be pitch black outside.
He should call Wayne and see what's happening. How he is, and if he thinks Eddie should come home and bring you, too.
Eddie clambers off of the bed, careful not to wake you. He slides across your hardwood floor and takes the empty dinner tray with him down the spongy carpeting of your stairs, back to hardwood in the hallway, and finally onto the freezing cold linoleum of your kitchen.
He locates the source of chill quickly. The window in front of the sink has unlatched. It's the thing you call him over for most; when you want to hang out you go to Eddie's, when the window won't close Eddie comes here.
His shirt hikes as he leans against the sink, his abdomen pressed to the cold countertop as he yanks the window and twists the handle the wrong way, goosebumps climbing his arms. It groans in resistance, but Eddie knows from experience that it’ll stay closed for a while.
He takes the liberty of turning your thermostat up as he waits for Wayne to answer the phone, coiled cord pulled taut.
Wayne isn't too bothered by the weather, "It's not a hurricane. A storm, sure– you'll be fine. But by all means, come home if you're scared."
"I'm not scared, jerk, I'm concerned."
He winds the cord around his arm, leaning in when Wayne's voice is hard to hear like it'll make a difference.
"...might go out," Wayne's saying, "call me, or call around Roger's… get back to… warm."
"Where the fuck are you? I can't hear a thing you're saying."
"Don't cuss at me. I'm with Roger, that's why I said to call Roger if I don't answer, he has that new pool table…" Anything Wayne says after that is garbled, like he has a hand pressed over his mouth.
“I thought Roger had a broken leg?” Eddie says. “How’s he getting around?”
“He hops. I left money in the bread bin for you, did you see it?”
“No, I didn’t see it. Wayne, we’ve talked about this before, I’m working. I appreciate it, I do, but I don’t need you giving me money.”
Whatever Wayne says at first gets eaten by static. Eddie doesn’t know if it’s your phone or the Munson’s. He doesn’t need to hear what Wayne’s saying to get the general gist of it. “…water bill..”
This again? Eddie paid the water bill. He thought he’d be allowed to do that, considering he uses the majority of the water, but it’s been a great point of contention between them.
“I’m sorry!” he says. “If I knew it would bother you so bad I wouldn’t have done it. But I don’t want it back, I’m not a kid anymore, half the time you don’t let me pay for groceries–”
“This might shock you, son, but I’ve been paying for you to eat for a decade. I ever complained? No, ‘cause it’s my job, and I don’t want you thinking any…” the words scratch out. Eddie guesses what he’s saying.
The broken phone is starting to irritate him.
He holds in his argument. Call it respect, love, whatever you want. “I’m not saying that! Listen,” —Eddie laughs to himself, words wrought with it like bubbles— “you’re senile.”
“You weasel–” The phone gives up. Whooshing air is all Eddie hears.
"I can't deal with this. I love you, I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" Eddie asks, rubbing the space between his eyebrows.
"Yeah, love you too, kid. Eddie–"
He doesn't catch the end of Wayne's sentence. The line goes dead. He pulls the shiny receiver from his ear and frowns at it.
Wayne was probably just telling Roger and the guys what Eddie was up to. Or what he thinks Eddie's up to, at least. Eddie told him via note that you wanted help rearranging your bedroom furniture. A small lie, but he didn't want to expose you to any outward judgement until he's sure himself what's going on.
Eddie hangs the phone on the hook. He grabs your plates, throwing the meagre leftovers in the trash and dumping the plates in the sink. He turns on the hot faucet and grabs a sponge and the dish soap and gets to work cleaning. It takes him all of five minutes, and he's oh so smug about being a decent person that he doesn't notice the chill.
He dries the plates and puts them in the cabinet across the room with his back to the sink. The dishes clatter together loudly, like a gunshot in the silence. He winces internally and tries to be gentler closing the cabinet door.
The hum of the kitchen light catches his attention. He looks up, unsurprised to find a bug crawling inside of the plastic covering that shields the long bulb. A moth, Eddie thinks, it's fuzz silhouetted in shadow. He doesn't really like moths, but he also doesn't wanna watch one die.
The rain seems worse when he turns off the light. Your kitchen faces out into the backyard, and through the night Eddie can see the house that's behind yours with its porch lights on. It turns the rain to quicksilver, and provides just enough illumination for Eddie to look up at the kitchen light and know what he's doing.
He drags a chair to the middle of the room and steps onto it. It's disturbingly slippery. Thankfully, Eddie doesn't plan on doing any acrobatics. He reaches up to the warm plastic light covering and feels along for the ridges to pry it off. One ridge clicks off, and another. He leans precariously toward the other side and feels for the third and forth ridge when thunder rumbles outside, and somewhere in the distance lightning flashes.
Eddie flinches but doesn't fall. "Fuck," he mumbles. Pussy.
The plastic falls into his hands and Eddie climbs off of the chair as quickly as he can. It's too hot to handle, banging against the kitchen table as he chucks it down. He'd turned off the light thinking the plastic would cool down fast, and he’d been proven very wrong.
"Shit," he mumbles some more. Your neighbour's porch light turns off, leaving him in total darkness.
Eddie’s hand aches from his mild burn. It's like whenever he has to wash the frying pan at home, he forgets that while cold water might cool the pan itself, the slim piece of metal that connects the dish to the handle stays hot. He's burned himself so many times on that fucker–
Lightning flashes again.
There's someone standing in your yard.
The second he notices the figure, it lunges left.
Eddie stands frozen on the spot, unsure if he should approach the window to get a better look, or if he should move backward and away from the potential harm.
He takes a step forward. Mind in a numb state of thoughtlessness, he walks to your sink and stands there silently, looking into the grass and trees for any hint of irregular movement.
Tree branches rail in the wind and rain. Eddie leans further forward.
A third flash of lighting comes, and it must have struck close by, as the light it gives off is long and bright. He gets a clear look at the yard and the image of his own reflection in the glass. No dark figure in the tall grass toward the fence, no heinous murderer trying the back door.
It’s dark again. Eddie puts a hand over the racing pulse of his heart. Fuck, he thinks. I’m seeing things. He’s on edge ‘cause of your fucking ghost, and it’s not your fault but he wonders if maybe loving you is making him tired. He regrets it as soon as he thinks it, what does that even mean? He’s loved you for years. It has never felt like a chore. But… tired. He’s tired. Pining for someone you already have, just not in the way that you want, is exhausting. It’s not your fault and it doesn’t change the fact that he’s exhausted. Today has been a long day.
He scrubs his eyes with his palms until they burn and lifts his head.
There’s a girl on the other side of the glass.
Eddie startles, startles again when he realises she’s not on the other side at all, she’s behind him, outfitted in white like an apparition, like an angel. She’s inside the house, ten feet away in the doorway.
His neck cracks with the force of his turn.
“Sorry,” you say, taking a step back into the hall. “I thought you heard me.”
“Oh, shit.”
You’ve turned the light on in the hall. Eddie turns back to the window and sees your reflection again, no angels and no apparitions. You’re just a girl.
He half turns and gets stuck like that, hand braced against his eyes, torso pitching forward. “Shit,” he mutters.
“Are you okay?”
Eddie laughs. “You surprised me. I’m fine,” he assures you, though he takes his time standing at full height. How can such a small scare feel like a marathon? “Creep, who fucking does that?”
“You were totally spaced, dude, don’t blame me,” you say, holding your hands up in mock surrender.
“I do blame you. I hope you feel blamed. Fucking fuck, that got me.”
“I wasn’t being quiet. I yelled. You didn’t hear me?”
He can’t stop the dubiety that warps his face. “No? What’s your definition of yelling? ‘Eddie?’” he imitates you, tossing his own name into the dark kitchen. “Unbelievable.”
“What were you looking at?” you ask, nodding at the window.
“Lightning.”
“That why you’re in the dark? Or have I interrupted something?”
“‘M moonlighting as a serial killer.” He grins at you. “Got me.”
You lean against the wall next to the light switch and turn it on, exposing the chair shy of his leg and the plastic cover from your light on the table.
“What the–”
“I’m doing a good deed. Or, I was. There was a moth at one point."
You help Eddie clip the light back into place. He climbs back on the chair and you hug his legs to make sure he doesn’t fall either way, arms encircling his thighs and your face pressed comfortably to his stomach. Your cheek flush with the naked stretch of his stomach, his shirt hiked up as he struggles to finish what he started, he explains the moth, who, for lack of an escape, has probably found a home in your curtains or your coat rack. You laugh at his softness.
Back upstairs, you won’t let him read to you again, and the ghost monitoring continues on. Eventually, you both get bored and turn on the TV. Eddie forgets his fright, you forget your haunted house, and the night ends. You fall asleep against his shoulder, drool leaking from the corner of your mouth. He pushes you gently down into your pillow, and goes to brush his teeth with a snort.
Eddie wakes in the morning with a crick in his neck. He feels better, having slept. All his monstrous yearning has fizzled out overnight, and he’s glad to find that the damp circle of dribble under your cheek isn’t cute, it’s gross. (Okay, it’s a little cute. He’s only human.)
The window brags an end to the extreme weather. Rain nor shine reaches through your drapes; the morning looks mundane. He kicks your shin ‘by accident’ and waits for you to rouse, keeping a safe distance. He doesn’t wanna get his morning breath all over you. That would be inhumane.
“Ouch,” you croak.
“It wasn’t that hard.” His voice is as rough as yours.
“Not your kick,” you moan. “My throat.”
“You’ve been drooling again.”
You cover your face sluggishly and your pinky must feel the wet spot staining your pillow.
“It’s embarrassing.” You dig your heels in at the bottom of the bed and pull your head off of the pillow so you can grab it and throw it out of view. Once it’s bashed against your mirror with a concerning glass sound, you pull the blankets over your face and sigh. “I’ll be here forever, if you need me.”
“Could be worse,” he says lightly. “Imagine waking up with a stiffy.”
“Did you–?” you ask, like you’re terrified to know but couldn’t not inquire.
“No, but I have. You know I have.”
“True. That is… unfortunately awkward.”
“‘Xactly. Don’t feel weird about your spit.”
You don’t feel as bad as you pretend. Sure, it’s embarrassing. So is puking in your lap at the movies, or ripping your pants climbing over the fence into the woods by Forest Hills, or getting fired after two weeks from the Palace Arcade because the manager didn’t like your ‘general demeanour and/or presence’, all of which he’s done and you’ve been a witness to. He thinks you might be impervious to humiliation as long as you’re together.
Eddie pulls the blankets over his head, pleased that the morning light reaches you even here. You’re curled on your side underneath them, bleary eyes meeting his from across the small stretch of mattress. You hadn’t touched him once while you slept.
“I don’t remember falling asleep,” you say quietly.
“We watched Poltergeist. You fell asleep with twenty minutes left.”
“Can you blame me? Snore.”
“You wanted to watch it.”
“It’s the only movie I own that has a ghost.”
You share a silent look. Eddie tries to keep a straight face and ultimately fails, his laugh roaring. You join in, half reluctant and half delirious in your fatigue. Your sleep-swollen eyes close like you can’t keep them open anymore.
He stays under the sheets stealing looks at you for as long as he can, despite the building, smothering warmth. The day passes with much of the same.
—
When you first started working at Leaven, Eddie called you a traitor. He said you’d made it impossible for him to show his face in Bradley’s. He’d been joking — the prices at Leaven are ridiculous, and completely out of the average joe’s budget. Bradley’s remains your go to for everything. He’s come around these days — he likes the fancy soups and admits Leaven’s has the best fresh fruit.
Despite the rich old women who frequent and make your workdays… less than ideal, you like working at Leaven. Your days consist almost exclusively of stacking shelves, but occasionally they chuck you on checkout and you get to sit in a padded chair for ten hours. You’re basically living the American dream.
Working here has introduced a special brand of monotony to your life. It’s very, very quiet, and that’s how you like it. But there’s something to be said for noise, for Eddie and Wayne’s noise specifically. You like going there after work to shock your body back into the real world. Here’s sound. Here’s life. Here’s love.
You’re scanning a bag of ‘holistic’ lemons when you notice Eddie lingering toward the front of the store a mere twenty feet away. You don’t wave at him, lest your customer think they aren’t the sparkling apple of your eye and report you to the manager, but you nod jerkily, hoping he takes it for ‘I see you’. He smiles and points his thumb toward the store’s cafe.
When your arms are numb from another twenty minutes of scanning and typing in coupon codes for people who don’t need coupons, you shut down your register and lock it all tight. You take your lunch break early, and thankfully there’s nobody in the cafe to yell at you for being unprofessional.
You waltz over to Eddie sitting at the back next to the huge glass windows and prop your lunch bag against the coke bottle he’s opened. “Hello, handsome,” you say.
“Hey, beautiful.”
“You want half of a turkey sandwich?”
He beams at you, kicking your chair out so you can sit. “Nooo, I brought you a hot dog.”
“Oh, gross. Give it to me right now.”
You know he made it at home before he’s even pulled the foil wrapped package from his bag. Eddie makes the best hot dogs ever. Fancy brioche buns, caramelised onions and a mixture of sauces on the world's worst meat. They make you queasy and they might be one of your favourite foods. You open it, delighting in its retained heat.
His wrist is shiny. You put your hotdog down to grab his arm and bring it closer to your face. He’s wearing a simple tennis chain with black gems like a rich girl. “What is this?” you murmur, pleased to see him wearing something nice.
“You like that? It was thirty four dollars from a magazine.”
“I love it. What’s the occasion?”
“My mom’s birthday.” He fishes his own hotdog from his bag and slaps it down in front of yours. You take a huge bite, and can’t answer him when he asks, “Is that really weird, buying myself something when it’s a day about her?”
You steal a swig of his coke and wince the entire time. “Sorry.” You cough. “No, that’s not weird, Eddie. Wanting to buy yourself something nice is a good way of dealing with a shitty day. A day that makes you feel shitty,” you amend.
“Maybe I should’ve got her a big bouquet of flowers or something.”
“You can still get her flowers.”
“Yeah.”
You take another bite of your hot dog and slip away to get a bottle of water from the cafe. You feel like an asshole for not hugging him. When you return Eddie’s already polished off his hot dog, and has moved onto one half of your turkey sandwich.
“Are you gonna be weird about it if I hug you?” you ask him genuinely.
“No.” He puts down the sandwich. “I don’t know. Maybe. I want one, though.”
You wipe your hands in a napkin showfully before approaching his chair. You slide a knee next to his thigh and wrap your arms around his head, a hand between his shoulder blades and the other pulling his face to your chest. You have to slouch. It's not entirely comfortable but it doesn't feel awkward, so you take the win.
"I'm sorry, Eddie," you say quietly. You think about kissing his head.
"Me too."
There's a moment in there where you feel a nasty emotion brewing, sadness and much worse. You know that the gutted pain aching through you right now is nothing compared to what Eddie feels. That loss.
It must feel so, so heavy.
You pet his neck affectionately. Your nose dips into his hair, the tip touching his scalp. Your hands come up, like trying to hold water as it trickles between your fingers, Eddie's slipping. You grapple to keep him with you.
"I love you," you say honestly. He's your best friend.
Eddie pats your back. "I love you too, loser."
"You're my best friend."
I would fucking think so, he'd say.
"You're mine," he says.
You smile and give him a good squeeze. When you pull away he doesn't look as odd as he had, relaxing against the hard-backed wood of the cafe chair as he tucks his hair behind his ear. He holds your gaze without any weight to it. You sit in your own uncomfortable chair and lean forward to compensate for the space between you, like two slanting trees in the wind, parallel but untouching.
"It's a really nice bracelet," you say.
"She'd like it, I think."
You don't know anything about Eddie's mom. She isn't someone he's ever been able to talk about with you. You can't remember the photographs you'd seen once upon a time, but you remember having the distinct thought that Eddie looked more like her than his dad or his uncle Wayne. She'd been beautiful, and her life couldn't be more starkly mourned.
"I'm sure she would. It's pretty."
His mouth wobbles. You're horrified for a moment, thinking he might burst into tears, but it's laughter he's chasing, and his little giggle is like a beam of sunlight. "Sorry," he says. Laughter doesn't seem like a good enough word to describe the sounds he's making, such understated, small curls of sound. Fleeting, golden. "She would've liked you, too. She would've loved you."
"That's a good thing?" you check, cautious that he might be on the precipice of a nervous breakdown.
"Yeah, that's a good thing. Is it ever bad? To be loved?" he asks.
He's teasing, but it feels like he's asking you something else.
"You could be a stalker, with that logic."
And there you go, ruining a moment with a shitty joke because you're too much of a coward to ask questions when you don't know the answer.
Eddie grabs his coke, tipping his head back as he says, "Who says I'm not a stalker already?"
Funny how the subtext of a conversation can contain magnitudes for one party and not the other. You worry you're in love with your best friend. He sips at coke and threatens perversion.
"You're definitely a stalker. You couldn't wait a couple hours to see me tonight?"
"I didn't realise I would be seeing you tonight," Eddie says, lifting his brows.
"Oh. I asked, didn't I?"
Eddie shakes his head. "Are you sure? I don't remember you asking, babe, I'm supposed to go play at Gareth's."
Babe is his funniest pet name, in your opinion. It doesn't suit you, or him, but it feels good anyhow. Like you're a babe, supermodel pretty for TV or magazine spreads, long legs and not a single wrinkle that isn't marring the paper itself.
"Bummer for me," you say lightly. "What are you doing, Dio tributes again?"
"Don't say tributes like that, like we're out sacrificing goats in studded jackets."
"That's a good image." You laugh. "That's funny."
"I don't know. He wanted to try something he wrote. Invited Jeff and Jamison. Band's back together."
"I'll get out my t-shirts."
You have all the corny classics; I'm with the band; I'm with the guitarist; a Corroded Coffin faux tour shirt, different Hawkins locations written in typeset sharpie on the back. When you made it, Eddie had been wearing the t-shirt and the ink leaked through. He had 'Lover's Lake, Nov 18' between his shoulder blades and 'The Hideout, May 22' over his tailbone for a week. By day three the words had become illegible but you'd known them anyway, in the same way you knew the dots between the letters H and I were freckles rather than ink spots. You've always looked at him more than you should.
"I could cancel."
You and Eddie experience the natural ups and downs of friendship, or rather the ebb and flow. You know you come back together eventually if you get too far apart, and there hasn't been a time since you met him where you were worried about the permanence of your relationship. You're human, and you get insecure about it anyway, but then he says stuff like that and you're confronted with how close you are. He puts you first. He has other friends, other healthy friendships and a life outside of you, but you still get to be a huge and important part of the majority, and that is more than enough. (It should be more than enough. Some days it is.)
"Now why would you do a thing like that?" you ask, sarcastic but soft. "You know they sound shit without you."
"I don't like knowing you're alone."
"I'm not lonely," you say. Truth or lie.
"That's not what I said." Eddie's eyes narrow.
"It's stupid to worry about me, I always lock the doors. I lock the windows, even the ones upstairs. I don't think I'm gonna fall victim to a home invasion anytime soon."
"I don't think many people think they're gonna be in home invasions until their homes actually get invaded. And it's not really what I'm worried about."
"Do you ever think that we worry too much?"
"Yes. We worry constantly. It's, like, our parasitic relationship with each other."
"Like a tapeworm," you agree solemnly.
"Exactly. I'm your tapeworm. And I'm worried about you."
"Can tapeworms worry?" you ask.
Eddie kicks you mildly. "I don't know? I don't think tapeworms have a level of consciousness beyond what's needed for them to survive. They probably think about eating and parasitizing and that's it. Don't make me ask, please."
You take a pull of your drink to prolong the inevitable. "Ask about what?"
"Your ghost."
"Ah."
Eddie waits.
You sigh again. "Look, I don't even know if she is a ghost, I probably just imagined it."
He pulls himself forward and there's the weight you'd be waiting for, sternness marked into his face one feature at a time. "Liar."
"What?"
"You're lying. You don't think you imagined it." He looks you up and down. “You think I don't know when you're lying?"
"I'm not lying," you lie.
"You are. I know you are," he says, smiling despite the point he's making. "I know what you look like when you do."
"What do I look like?"
"I can't tell you, you might change it, and then I won't know when I'm supposed to look out for you 'cause you never tell me anything."
"I don't want to talk about the ghost."
"Why not?"
"Because you don't believe me," you say too loudly.
Eddie reaches across the table but doesn't touch your hand. He puts his palm down and leans ever forward, says, "Hey, I do."
"No, you don't, you think there's something happening to me."
"What would you think, if it were me?" he asks, frustration seeping in. "Try and see it from how I'm seeing it."
"If it were you'd I'd believe you because you needed me to."
You cringe at yourself and veer back into your chair, shoving your hands between your thighs and clamping your legs closed. Your fingers turn numb.
Eddie doesn't look shocked, exactly. Surprised that you're talking to him unkindly, sure, and concerned.
This whole situation is ill-fated, you know that. What good can come of a ghost? Hooks from the past. "I never should have told you," you say quietly.
"Did you tell me?" Eddie asks, speaking with an anger that forms each word like a cut, clean and hurting. "You won't tell me anything. You tell me she talks to you, that she asks you about me. But you won't say what she says, exactly, and you have nothing to show for it. Your notebook conveniently disappeared. I can’t hear her."
He thinks you're making it up.
Fuck. He thinks you're making it up. Eddie thinks you're lying to him, and while it hurts like a sharp kick to the solar plexus, a flooring, winding pain, it's the embarrassment that has tears glowing along your last line. If he really believes you'd make something up like this for attention, what does he think of you? That you're some silly leech clinging to him through bad lies? That you're bored? That this is a game you're playing with him?
Your heart beats hard enough that you can feel it in your chest. Your hands shake with anger and hurt at once, your leg bouncing under the table in an attempt to keep the rush of it at bay. You look at Eddie with your lips parted, trying to say what you mean and not what you feel. You want to say something scathing, and you don't want to be cruel, and these are two facts existing at the same time.
Eddie has other ideas. He sees your eyes turn glassy, he must, because his anger drains and he turns sorry and soft. It reminds you of a different moment like a film cell played overtop, of a younger, remorseful him. The expression he makes when he's just popped you in the mouth wrestling, or burned behind your ear with the hair iron. An accident.
"I'm sorry," he says. Sheepish, gentle, sincere, embarrassed, too many threads of emotion to summarise with one word. "Sweetheart, I'm sorry. Don't cry."
"Fuck off," you mumble, looking down at your bouncing leg. You push your hand against it, forcing it to lay still.
"I didn't mean it."
"Stop, Eddie."
"I'm just hurt you're not telling me everything and I'm acting like an asshole 'cause I'm a big baby," he says, two shades from frantic.
A tear rolls down your cheek. You thought for sure you'd escaped them, but it had already welled, and with nowhere to go it races down your cheek. You paw at it and hope he won't see it.
He does.
Eddie's chair screeches across the floor as he stands up. You know he'll hug you before he's touched you. Same way you know he's freaking out on the inside, allergic to girl tears.
His hands take to your shoulders, hesitating there, and one slides behind your neck so his forearm presses against both shoulder blades. His lips ghost warmly over your forehead as he leans in. His other hand meanders, braceleting the top of your arm and running downward before swiftly changing paths to flatten out against the small of your back.
"I'm sorry," he mumbles, rubbing your back.
His tender hug exacerbates the hurt, like an exsanguination. You cry as quietly as you can manage and Eddie feels it under his hands, the two of you condensed at the back of an empty room. You forget where you are, what you're wearing, what you've been fighting about. What he said. You realise how badly you'd needed him to comfort you lately, and hate yourself for giving in.
He shushes you so quietly you think you might have imagined it.
Or maybe it was your ghost.
"I'm sorry," he says, his breath kissing your scalp. "I'm a dick."
"It's fine," you say. You despise yourself for how weak you sound.
"It's not fine."
"I wanted to stay because it's getting worse," you tell him. You don't mean to.
"Okay. Okay. Then you'll stay. It's no biggie."
"It's worse," you say, turning your face into his chest.
You're shaking hard. Eddie can't make it stop no matter how tightly he holds you.
"I'm sorry," he says again.
He doesn't have to be. If he was acting out, fine. If he does or doesn't believe you, fine. You don't need him to see ghosts, or apologise that he can't.
"I just didn't want to do it by myself," you confess, at the very pit of pathetic. You hope he won't hear. Your growing panic about the ghost is a secret you hadn’t meant to tell.
Eddie pulls away. He looks down at you, and if he wanted to he could kiss you, his lips are that close, but he widens the distance. He takes your face into his hands, calluses rough against your tacky cheeks.
"You think I'm gonna let you? I know I'm fucking it up royally right now, I know I'm an asshole, but I'm not fucking going anywhere, okay? Don't worry. Don't worry about it." He drops his hands to your shoulders. "I'm your parasite, right? Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a parasite? Sometimes they have to pull them out, and they're excruciatingly long, it's a process you don't wanna go through–"
You laugh wetly. Eddie promptly stops talking about parasites.
"Forgive me?" he asks.
You nod on automatic. Of course you do.
"I swear she's real," you say, rubbing your forehead with the meat of your thumb. You think she’s real, but the truth is that you just don’t know. You amend quickly, "I swear I'm not lying. I am hearing someone… even if she's not real."
Eddie frowns. "I know. I believe you."
That's when the real trouble begins.
—
Eddie wants to hold your hand desperately. You're wearing your nicest dress, split hem sewn with infinite care, and your dress shoes with the tiny heels. He doesn't get to see you like this very often, and he wishes it were a better occasion.
You've had your hair down at the hair stylists in the city, you're wearing concealer. You've done everything you can to look presentable. You look beautiful. He hopes you know that, at least.
You heave a sigh. You're as anxious as Eddie is to get this over with.
“You remember Hawk?” he asks you.
“Jack 'Hawk'?” you ask.
“Yeah, Hawk.”
“He’d come around for green?” you ask.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Alright. So, when you were on vacation last summer, Hawk knocked on the door, I answered. I’m straight, right? Haven’t sold anything in years, no plans on selling again. But Jack barrels up the steps and starts going on like I promised him something. I said, dude, I don't deal anymore, and could you possibly shut the fuck up? Wayne’s inside making milkshakes. Blender on, couldn’t hear us but I’m sweating bullets.
“Jack, fucker, starts begging.” Eddie leans into your shoulder, hushed. “He’s saying c’mon Munson, I know you got some, don’t you have a personal stash? I’m desperate.” He picks a piece of hair off of your sleeve. “I didn’t, obviously, and I told him that but he’s not listening to me, he’s getting all wild-eyed and fucking wound like he needs the hard shit. I’m just trying to get rid of him at that point, I don’t know if he was tweaking but he looked like he was going to hit me and I wasn’t interested in fighting.” He laughs, encouraging a smile from you. “Wayne’s inside making milkshakes. Full fat with vanilla extract– I’m not about to take a trip to Hawkins General.”
“What did you do?” you ask.
“I said to him, even if I did you wouldn’t be getting anything, asshole, and pushed him toward the steps, you know? It felt good, standing up for myself.”
“And he left?”
“No, he fucking hit me straight in the dick. Can you imagine that? Junk shot on my own front door.”
You gasp with giggly indignation, hanging on his every word now. Eddie knows he’s taken you out of your head, even if it’s temporary.
“He hit you in the dick,” —you whisper ‘dick’ like it’s insidious within these four walls— “‘cause he wanted pot? You should’ve pushed him off of the porch.”
“I would’ve but he fucking winded me.” He starts laughing again, your giggles contagious though you try to smother them with your hand. “It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny at the time.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“He was five foot one. I’ve never felt that humble in my life, I told Wayne I was coming down with something and had the worst afternoon nap ever. Didn’t even get my milkshake.”
“No,” you mumble sympathetically. Your eyes widen. “Eds, I’m sorry, that’s not funny. He assaulted you–”
Eddie waves his hand at you. “He got in a cheap shot. I was fine. I’ll still have kids.”
You snort, “Thanks for the information.”
“I got him back for it, anyway.”
He pretends like that’s the end of that, like the story doesn’t go on and he has nothing to tell you. You wait raptly for him to explain but he gloats, knowing you're hooked.
You elbow him.
“What?” he asks. “Oh, you wanna know how I got revenge? You’re evil.”
“Less shame and more story,” you say.
“Alright. Are you ready? Here’s where it gets complicated.
“I’m at The Hideout listening to that new band that blazed through here a couple of months ago, Board Growth, or something? They’re incredible, the booze is cold, I’m tipsy and Gareth owes me anyway, I’m putting it all on his tab and he, seemingly, isn’t noticing. It’s great. Better if you hadn’t been on vacation again, what the fuck, but it’s good.
“And there he is. It’s the fucking Hawk. He’s looking down his nose at these young girls smooth-talking them. Or, he’s trying to smooth talk them, but it’s like watching a worm flirt with a praying mantis, okay, we all know who’s gonna lose.” Eddie’s knee rests against yours, your hand is on his thigh, he’s losing the thread of his story fast under the smell of your perfume and hair oil. “I knock back the rest of my drink, slick my hair like I’m James Dean and, in all my drunken intelligence, decide that this is the perfect moment for me to get him back.”
“I wasn’t on vacation.”
“What?”
“I only went once.” You’d gone for two days with some old friends. He remembers now, and rushes to fix the story.
“Why didn’t you come, then?” he asks, flipping the script. “You’re such a flake.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know when this was.”
“Stop bailing on me and ruining my stories,” he says, teasing.
“Okay, you’re hopped up on liquid courage and about to hit Jack in the dick,” you prompt.
“Right! I stroll up to Hawk and he’s instantly wriggly like the worm of a guy he is, and I say, hey Hawk, how’s it hanging?
“Maybe he’s just that stupid or maybe he thinks I’m putting out the olive branch but he actually starts telling me how he’s doing, and I’m looking at these girls as if to say, can you believe this guy? I cut him off, and I’m a loser, I’m not half as cool as I think I am but again I’m slightly incredibly inebriated. I’m making bad decisions.”
“Where’s your cafeteria bravado?” you ask.
“It’s worse than that. Imagine me at my most insufferable. I smile at the girls and I lean into Jack’s space, I’m laughing, I feel bad about what I’m gonna say before I’ve said it but I say it anyways. I lean right into his ear and tell him at full volume how sorry I was to hear about his recent bout of syphilis. I’m just so glad they caught it in time, man,” he says, imitating a past self.
You open your mouth. “And,’ Eddie says, jumping to finish, “so happy you could keep most of it, buddy.”
“Eddie…”
“I’m a bad person.”
“No,” you mumble, hiding your smile on his shoulder, your forehead a hair’s width from his chin. You’d laugh a storm any other day to make him feel good, whether you think he’s funny or not, but today all you can manage is a hand on his leg. “You’re not a bad person, he deserved it… fucking hit you…”
The story isn’t true.
He made it up. Right here right now. He just spent five good minutes of your lives spinning an outrageously awful story with poor jokes and one glaring plot hole, for what?
This is hard. Making you cry, begging you to see what a doctor has to say, playing grown up in a grown ups body. Eddie thought you’d get to be kids forever. He never imagined what would come after school, and then suddenly it is after, and everything’s an ugly boring mess except for you (and Wayne, god bless), and now you’re sick. The waiting room you’re in, the road here, the look on your face when he told you what he wanted from you. It’s all… heartbreakingly monotonous.
One doctor's appointment, he whispered across pillows. Late and neither of you asleep. The sound of cicadas outside and Wayne’s deep snore a room away.
You nodded and closed your eyes, and you didn’t say another word all night.
What’s the worth in a made up story? What good will it do? You have to see the doctor eventually. Distraction, Eddie thinks pleadingly. Relief. He just wants to give you as much relief as he can from what’s happening with the only thing he feels he has —his quick mouth.
He stares at your hand on his thigh. He wills himself to raise his own and put it on top of yours. He channels his thoughts, like this is telekinesis and not his own body, move. Move your hand, he says to himself.
It's a millimetre out of his pocket when they call your name.
You shoot up like a stalk and smile at the nurse who's come to collect you. You don't look jittery anymore, but there's a distinct doe in the headlights look about you as Eddie watches you trail down the hallway into the doctor's office. You look back at him three times, and each time is a whip.
As soon as the door closes, he bends forward in his chair and heaves a sickly sigh. His nausea has him coughing into his hand and praying he doesn't throw up here. If they want you to go somewhere today, like a pharmacy for temporary medication, or the emergency room for a CAT scan, he can't be covered in his own vomit.
A child babbles across the room. Eddie peeks at her through his fingers. She's pale with dark hair, much like Eddie himself, and her mom is the same. The kid's mom doesn't look like Eddie's mom besides that, but seeing her here in a hospital makes it impossible not to think of her. She's been on his mind so much lately. Her birthday is at the end of the month, and it isn't the same —she'd been in hospital for three brutally short days— but you're being here is like peeling the scab off of a wound he thought healed years ago.
Mom was everything. She was willowy and beautiful and tough as a board. She was smart, she knew everything; how to make microwave pizza taste gourmet, how to make whistles out of blades of grass, how to make a bad day feel brand new.
He wished he could say that he has her every detail committed. The cruellest, most terrifying thing about the people we love is that they aren't permanent, not their life and not what they leave behind. Over time, his mom has turned from an aching spear of love to a dappling of sunlight through the branches of an old tree — scattered. Beautiful and impossible and a thousand pieces in his memory, slowly fading over time.
There'll come a day where Eddie can't remember her. He knows that. He knows his frame of reference for who she was will reduce down to her photographs, and the nearly empty bottle of her perfume under his bed.
Eddie is haunted by her absence everyday.
There is no corporeal apparition of her at his shoulder, no cool chill running down his spine, but he's haunted all the same. It's why he won't accept your ghost. It's why he can't. He knows what it feels like to have someone with him who isn't really here, and he won't let you suffer through the same thing. He'll protect you from this, from her.
Even if it means he has to take you to doctors offices an hour out of town. If he has to bargain for it, and make you cry at work, and– and fucking drive this wedge between you, he'll do it.
He needs you to be okay.
He can't think about his mom anymore. He loves her, he misses her, but if he thinks about her too much he won't be able to stand up.
Eddie sits up, takes a lungful of air in, and waits. He senses you as you come back down the hall, grateful for your dry cheeks, and your small, small smile. Tiny but irrefutably there.
He stands up and holds out his hand. You don't take it, but you walk into his side so your hips are pressed together and he falls into step with you.
"So…" he says.
"She asked if I was getting enough sleep," you say, "and I told her I was. I explained everything to her like I promised I would, even– even… I told her everything. And um, she seemed very open."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, she– OK." You frown.
"Listen, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I know I practically forced you to come, but it's still your life, and you can have privacy from me–"
"It's not that. I just don't want to cry in here."
He puts his hand on your shoulder, his arm folded against your shoulder. You don't speak until you're out of the doctor's office and weaving through people as you walk toward the parking lot.
"She thinks I'm having auditory hallucinations. And that it could be an initial symptom of schizophrenia, or something else. She said it usually starts around my age, and–"
"Hey, it's okay," he says, though internally he feels as distressed as you're beginning to look, horrified by your crumpling chin and wringing hands. "It's okay. You don't have to say it if it's going to upset you."
"It might not be anything," you say, shaking your head. "She said the human brain is complicated, and sometimes stuff like this just happens. She wants to, uh," —your voice twists up very high— "see me again after I've had some sleep to see if it's persisting."
Eddie nods. He's fucking glad that the doctor took you seriously, grateful for her advice and her reluctance to misdiagnose you with something. It's not as though Eddie wants you to be experiencing hallucinations. But he thinks you are, and he needs help looking after you if that’s the case.
"Did she prescribe anything?" he asks.
"A week's worth of ambien. She didn't really want to, but I told her about, you know, you coming over to make sure I'm okay, and I know that was because of the gh–" You bite your lip. You're shaking like a leaf. "Well, she thought it was you making sure I'm not an insomniac. Which I'm not."
"I'm really proud of you," he says quietly. "I know you don't want this to be happening. I get it, I promise. I don't want it either, but this is a good thing."
He can see you regaining some composure. You smile a little, and you offer him your prescription paper. "You know it only costs seven dollars for seven ambien?"
"I could get you some for free."
Your laugh startles him. "No, I don't think so."
"I'm not offering. Just saying. I know a guy."
"No, you knew a guy who knows a guy who could get me something ridiculous, like a percocet."
"I'd never give you anything like that."
"I know." You come to a halt. The cloudy weather paints you in shadow. "I'm sorry this is happening."
"You're what?" He doesn't let you answer moving to stand in front of you. "Why would you apologise for this?"
"Because it's my head," you say stiffly.
"You didn't want this to happen. And– and it might not be happening at all. You'll try the ambien, and you'll take care of yourself, and we'll go from there. I wasn't trying to scare you… I wish I could brush it off, you know? I wish I could believe that you…" He takes you in. Your skirt and jacket are swaying in the cold wind. You look one sharp shove from falling over. "I get that it isn't like me, to not believe in the fantasy–"
You save him from his miserable attempt at placating you.
"I know."
He licks his lips.
"I love you," Eddie says as he starts toward the van again. "Let's go fill your prescription, and then I'll get you whatever you want to eat."
"Boys are so weird about I love you," you say, following. The light behind your eyes makes your teasing worth it. "You say it like you chewed on it first. Struggled to get that one out, did you?"
It's not your best insult. Neither of you are exactly on form.
"Just so hard to say it to you."
You take what you perceive to be an insult on the chin. Only Eddie knows there's a sliver of truth in what he's said.
You generously let him help you into the passenger seat. He's hopeful that your mood's improved until that wretched frown worms its way across your pretty mouth once again. You wait for him to round the hood and start the van before you explain yourself.
"There's a support group. For anybody who's, um, hearing voices. Schizophrenics, manic depressives…"
"Is that something you want to go to?"
"I don't know. Can I be honest with you?"
"Yeah. Absolutely."
"I don't know if I believe that it isn't real. I know that's the point. The definition of hallucination is, uh… an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present, and so… it makes sense. My ghost isn't there, even if I think she is, so I must be hallucinating, but Eddie," —you shrink in on yourself— "I have this feeling that won't go away."
He loves you. You're terrified.
He's already guessed what you're going to ask for.
"Can we try again? Please? I'll take the meds and I'll go to the support group, but in the meantime, could you please come back and just– just listen. Maybe it takes a while for her to talk to someone else." You scrub your face. "Fuck. I sound fucking crazy."
Eddie squeezes the wheel. "Don't say that. Don't say it like you've done something wrong. You didn't do anything wrong."
People say crazy but they mean sick. They ridicule what they can't understand.
He doesn't understand, but he wants to. He says, "If you want me to, we'll try again. I'll come over."
You look up from your palms. He notices almost habitually that they're smaller than his. When you were young teenagers there'd been a short period of time where you'd been the taller one, with bigger hands and a bigger smile. Lately, you've seemed small.
"Really?" you ask hopefully.
"You came here 'cause I asked you to. It was hard for you." He turns his eyes to the road and turns the key until the Beauville's engine is thrumming with life. "I'd do a lot of shit for you, superstar. Like, anything. If you need me to keep trying then I will. And you'll–"
"I'll keep trying too," you promise.
It's all he can ask for.
—
The sky is all kinds of grey. It stretches like a sheet from one corner of your eye to the other, darker toward each limit of your vision, a gradual decay into colourlessness toward the very top where the sun fights hardest to burst through an impossible expanse of clouds. They seem thick as marshmallo, but where they begin is hard to decipher.
Your eyes feel sore. You imagine a hand reaching for you, hitting you, pressing its cold knuckles to each bruised eye socket to calm the raging ache behind them. You hadn't expected to feel this way. It isn't the first time you have, but to feel so intensely unreal while there's someone still with you is new. You lean your weight against the sill and let your arms swing from the open window ledge, knuckles scraping the scratchy brick of the house's exterior walls, instantly chilled by the weather.
A black band of birds burst across the sky somewhere leftwards. The pitch and tumble with no discernible formation. They're too far to hear. You imagine the flap of wings, their buoyed cawing, screeching to one another as they swim between pylon cables and their brothers spread wings.
"What kind of birds do you think they are?" Eddie asks.
You feel his weight settle into the ottoman beside you. You'd dragged it to the window with tired arms. You haven't felt up to anything since you got home, though Eddie's promise should've restored a little hope. He's going to keep trying to meet your ghost. You'll have to hope you don't get worse before that.
You know, starkly, that you aren't having auditory hallucinations. You know, starkly, that your ghost had written to you in your missing notebook.
But maybe that's the nature of your hallucination. A night bent over the pocket dictionary had ended as this one begins, with the crushing realisation that you cannot trust what you know. To put it plainly, you're afraid that you're mentally unwell. Terrified of how it’s going to change your life, the people in it.
Eddie's afraid too.
Your orange bottle of pills glares like a flame to your right where it stands waiting for you on the nightstand. Eddie's made up your bed for the two of you. He could sleep in the guest room, and he never has.
"I don't know," you say hoarsely. Your voice sounds as you feel, like something has its hooks in you, and it's dragging you down, down…
"They're too big to be pigeons."
"They're too dark. They're crows," you guess, tracing an outlier as he skirts the crowd of his family and spirals up into the air.
Like a party trick, you expect him to disappear, or explode, or rocket up into the cotton clouds and out of view. He slows as he falls, and then he dives back toward the main swarm of birds as they migrate toward the horizon.
There's a feeling brewing in you that you don't like.
If you can't trust your own perception. If real isn't real. If you need someone to sit beside you and distinguish real from fake, if… if you're sick.
If you're sick, what does that mean?
You search for something in the air to hold onto.
Eddie hums softly, his hand pushing out into the static as he points toward the glowing clouds. "Sun's going down slow."
You raise your hand and wrap it around his. It isn't enough. You force your fingers between the gaps of his, just a little longer, thicker, solid, and lock him in. He feels real. That's the key. As far as you know, hallucinations don't carry that far. Bugs crawling over your skin and through the strands of your hair, an itch you can't scratch, a drop of rain from a concrete ceiling, the brain can recreate these things. But the exact width of Eddie's palm or the feeling of his calluses against your loveline, your lifeline, and the heartbeat that bumps against the meat of your thumb when you focus, that's impossible. That's a level of precision the human brain can't find.
Right?
Eddie curls his thumb around yours. You can feel his gaze on your cheek like a breath blown between parted lips. You turn toward him, and you catalogue every little mar or mark, every fine hair. His wrinkles, his textured jaw. The strands of a fallen curl come apart near his eye, grown out bangs kissing the highest point of his cheek.
You're panicking. There's a thumping behind your eyes.
"I don't know if you look right," you say.
"I look very right. I'm extremely handsome," he says.
You hold his hand out of the window, worried you'll drop it, and it'll fall.
If Eddie were at home tucked into his double bed a mile away, she would've talked to you by now. Your breath shortens as the meaning behind that thought solidifies.
She only comes when you're alone. Why do you think that is?
She's not real.
Is that how it works? Can hallucinations, auditory, visual, or otherwise, take place in the company of others? You know next to nothing. Maybe they aren’t so common with loved ones standing guard.
You push your head out of the window again and look down at the flat, dying grass in the backyard, a yellowing carpet of bluegrass. Bluegrass is prominent because it can grow anywhere, like mould. With all the rain these past few days, the grass should've livened into a plush and solid green, like the lawns in the southern side of Hawkins where the rich people lavish in sprinklers and gardeners alike. It remains rumpled.
Eddie rubs the back of your hand. It's far from the closest you've ever been. There have been nights you spent unawares in his arms, waking with your face tucked into his neck, so embarrassed you couldn't look at him afterward. But it's the most intimate touch you've ever endured. The whorls of his fingerprint embossing itself into your hand, a quarter circle that doesn't cease. Time feels brief and unsteady.
Eddie must realise you're having a bad moment. He shuffles closer to you, your arms twined, his hair tickling your shoulders. It snaps you back, in a way, with its softness.
"Let's go to bed," he says when the sky's more charcoal than light.
You're cold. You follow. You latch your hand in his and he doesn't say a word, closing and locking your window with one hand, pulling the sheets of your bed back deftly for you to climb in. You slide across to the outermost side and he follows, leaning over you to pull the sheets to your chin.
He stays hovering there.
He holds very still.
"Everything's going to be okay," he whispers.
"What if it isn't?"
"It will be, you…" he trails off. He keeps your hand in his, but he plants his elbow on the other side of you, like a lover about to share sweet nothings, his face so, so close. "You'll be okay, no matter what happens."
"I wish she'd told me more," you say.
"The doctor?" He draws a small, careful line across your cheek with his index finger. "Sweetheart, we'll find out everything there is to find."
"I want to know how scared I should be. Because this feels like torture."
"You don't have to be scared." Eddie smiles, and as far as you can tell, though you're having trouble trusting yourself, it's one of his genuine smiles. "Why do you think I'm here, huh? It's not to watch as something bad happens."
You lift your chin. He's too close to look at both eyes at once: you have to choose, and you can't. Your irises dance back and forth between them, shuddering in indecision.
"You'll look after me," you say, not a question.
He turns his hand, stroking down the length of your cheek with the backs of his fingers. They feel much softer than the undersides, the flat of his nails like silk. Your eyes burn as you free your hand from his, hoping he'll be kind with that one, too.
"I'll look after you."
You tuck your hands behind the trim of his waist and, knowing you shouldn't, let them feed into his shirt. You draw a shaking line through the downy soft blanketing the small of his back until your finger is skipping up the jutting bumps of his spine. It's like climbing a staircase by touch alone. You wonder if anyone else had ever done this to him, if they ever wanted to, and if he'd let them.
Eddie releases a breath. Warmth feathers along your skin.
His hand strokes down to your neck, resting at your collar. Half a second and his petting returns, the side of his thumb brushing your soft jawline tenderly.
He must feel you swallow. His pupils travel down the whites of his eyes like the steady descent of the setting sun.
"I can't," he says softly.
Can't what? you want to ask. You don't know if you should. You know the answer, but does he?
"You're not all here," he says, hand paused. He cups your cheek, holds you in place. You hadn't been moving. "But when you are, I could. I could."
"I don't know if I…" you drift off. How can you explain it to him? I don't know if I'll feel better any time soon.
His eyes move sideways, as if the instruction for your reassurance lay somewhere in the apple of your cheek.
You don't want him to kiss you if it's a fixative meant to soothe your rampant nerves. You want him to kiss you for a hundred reasons, but that's not one of them. You're not sure he wants to kiss you beyond that.
He would, you realise. Kiss you, if he thought you wanted it badly enough. That's a lot of power to have over someone, more than you want over him, and you can't ask him to. You look away from his eyes and search upward, trembling hands and the starts of your forearms pressed to his back, hiking his shirt up one inch at a time.
He sits up agonisingly slowly, in the same way the sky has fallen from light to dusk; inchingly, so as to escape notice, until suddenly you can't feel the emanating heat of his chest against yours anymore, and the only light inside of your room is a yellow band sliced by the ajar door.
Your hands fall back. One under the sheets, one over. Eddie sits where you lay, his hands at the crook of your elbows. He gives symmetrical, superficial massages to each.
The life has been sapped from you, as if it were tied to the sun sunk beyond the horizon. A brutal fatigue sets in.
"You should take your ambien," he murmurs.
"Okay."
The eye tattooed on his arm seems to follow you as he reaches for your seven dollar bottle. He twists off the cap and shakes a single pill out for you, and you watch as the lines of his arms start to blur.
You take your pill, lying firmly in the middle of your pillow, and wonder if now would be an appropriate time to burst into panicked tears.
"I'll look after you," Eddie repeats after a while. Or maybe he doesn't. The weight of the day and the helping kick of your medication pulls you under. He lays down next to you carefully, his hand searching under the covers for yours.
And there, standing in the corner of the room, is your ghost. Real. Stunningly, terrifyingly real.
You can’t open your mouth wide enough to warn him.
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
end of part one! thank you so much for reading, I really hope that you enjoyed! this was my baby and such a labour of love in April and I’m so happy now to share it :D if you have the time, please consider reblogging, it means so much to me and I’d love to know your thoughts on the story so far <3<3
Could we please get vampire Sirius? Like maybe he originally lured reader in to drink from her but was just totally enamoured by her because she isn’t scared of him? Love you xx
love you!!
“Do you often accompany strange men to cemeteries?”
You pick a little piece of lint from your sleeve and move on through the gravestones, “Only ones in need. Padfoot! Come here, boy.”
Sirius feels bad for lying to you about his dog that he doesn’t have, but he’s hungry. It’s like blaming a cat for killing a mouse. Nature is nature is nature, and you’re pretty enough to make feeding from you a thrill and a half. He can’t believe you’d been this potent a fool as to believe his lie in the first place — the moon is heavy as a silver medallion in the sky, light like silk pouring over the cemetery, but it is still a cemetery, and you are still alone with him, a strange man you barely know.
“You should call him more, he’ll recognise your voice,” you suggest, turning to him with a very nice smile, as smiles go. This is the part where he jumps on you and holds you down. But you’re smiling, not a hint of suspicion about you. “You really don’t know what breed he is?”
“He looks like a mixture of every dog on earth.”
“A creature, then. Nice.” You wait for him to catch up with you before you point to a darkened area of the cemetery. Maroon pitch stains the floor, evidence of past misdemeanours. “Ooh, gross. That looks like blood. How many people do you think get murdered in places like this?”
“Definitely a few.”
“Is there even really a dog?” you ask.
Sirius takes your hand into his. Your hands are almost as cold as he is, your fingers stiff with frigidity. He doesn’t bother trying to warm them, impossible, but he does attempt a seduction of sorts. He likes when his victims are scared; it gets the blood pumping quickly, and it tastes different. Not sweeter or anything so fanciful, but different. You aren’t easily scared, it seems, so he brings your hand to his lips instead for a kiss pressed against delicate knuckles.
“Why wouldn’t there be a dog?” he asks.
“There are other ways to get someone alone, you know?”
“Like what?”
“Like flirting,” you say, your shoulders relaxing as he continues his touching, his fingers dancing up the length of your arm and netting behind your shoulder to pull you in.
“There’s a dog,” he lies, he promises, staring into the innocent pools of your eyes as hunger burns with the ferocity of tears in his throat. “Why? You thought I wanted to be alone with you?”
He leans in, forcing you to close your eyes as he closes his. “You don't?” you ask.
His gums sting as the razor tip of his fangs slide over his canines, sharp and thing. There’s no room for words now, only action. He kisses you softly, because if he’s going to kill you he thinks he can manage a kinder goodbye, your glossy lips parting at the pressure of his wading. He opens his mouth and yours opens with it, a gasp rushing between you as you feel the sharpness of his fangs and pull away.
“Ow,” you say, frowning, “you vampires are all the same.”
“We— what?”
“You have no sense of sweetness about you. If you kissed me nicely at first I wouldn’t mind letting you feed on me." You scowl, pressing your pinky to your bloody lip, dissatisfied.
"You want me to kiss you nicely?" Sirius asks.
"I thought so, yes." You turn away from him. "Not very much anymore."
For some reason, the idea that he could overpower you flees his mind. "Now, wait a minute, darling. I'll kiss you very nicely."
"Sure you will. My lip is bleeding, I know exactly what you're like."
"Nuh-uh." Something about your lack of fear —he's shocked, but it's hot. Really, really attractive. "Sweetheart, I've been kissing people for longer than you've been alive."
"Ew." You giggle at him, your reluctance fading. "Okay, fine. But no biting, okay? You can bite me afterwards."
Sirius grins and pulls you forward, barely caring about the implication of afterwards as you melt into the circle of his arms and kiss him with an ardency he hasn't felt for a few decades, at least. You shiver at his cold hand where it disappears under your shirt, but you smile into his mouth rather than shriek. (He's in love, probably.)
bEGGING for something with the marauders with drunk reader at a halloween party!!! make it literally anything you want follow ur heart ily and ur writing is AMAZING!!!!
thank you, ily ♡ modern au, fem
The rugby uniform felt like a funny idea at the time, but now you're cold and wondering how James manages to stay warm when he plays. You must ask him.
He sits on the couch with Remus and another friend, Frank. You like Frank but he's not one of your boys, leaving you no options —you have to slide yourself between Remus and James, emphasis on have to. Remus touches your waist unthinkingly as you do, like he might catch you if you fell.
James is ecstatic to see you as always. "Where have you been? I was about to send out the search party."
He's been very, very pleased with you upon the reveal of your costume. Like, pleased enough to take a handful of your thigh and squeeze at the soft inner part greedily. You lean back into Remus, enjoying the feeling and wanting his comfort. He's used to it, and he adapts by pressing his face indulgently to the side of your head.
You giggle. This is usually a nice feeling, but drunk? You're euphoric.
"You can't stray too far, lovely, I need my victim," Remus says.
"Where have your fangs gone?" you ask, pointing at your neck. "I made the bite mark so perfect. Everyone will think I have rabies if you don't commit."
James laughs like you're hilarious. Later, you'll find out that you didn't quite say every word that you thought you said, and that you'd been slurring your words into one another to create Frankenstein's sentences.
"Everybody already thinks you have rabies," James says. He's wearing a chef's costume from a show he likes, a white shirt that's sleeves strain against his biceps and a blue apron. Sirius spent an hour drawing tattoos into his brown skin with a sharpie. "That's why we've decided to put you down."
"I'll have one last night of passion with her first, if you don't mind," Sirius says, announcing his presence.
You like the sound of that, lifting yourself away from the other two boys and their touches to take Sirius' fine hands. He's in a button up and tie, the sticker on his chest proudly proclaiming, Hello, my name is: Dave.
"You're here to kiss me, right?" you ask.
Sirius grins and presses a quick kiss to the corner of your mouth. "My little alcoholic, you smell like lambrini. What did we say about lambrini?"
"Uh, that it makes me sloppy drunk."
"Exactly!" He kisses your cheek, working an arm around your shoulder as though showing you off with pride to the other boys. "My darling, you're so smart."
"Not that smart, she still drank the lambrini."
"Remus, don't start," Sirius admonishes. "You just hate that she chooses me when she's drunk."
"You're her enabler," James says, "of course she does. But before she was drunk she chose to dress as me for Halloween, so if anyone is the favourite–"
"Oh, please don't start," Remus says.
The boys start, arguing over who your favourite is. It's a silly pass time with no real merit but no malice, either, and you're just drunk enough to goad them on. "Maybe Remus should be my favourite. After all, he's my vampire. Our love is, like, eternal."
The furrowed brow he gets whenever the other two boys debate slips. "It's so eternal," he says, nodding confidently. "Quite right, dove."
"Eternal doesn't mean better."
"Then what does it mean, Sirius?"
You decide that James' lap looks comfortable and that you might be here for a long time, so you push his legs down flat and sit carefully (not very carefully in reality, but in your heart) on his thighs, socked feet pulled up onto the couch, sideways and skewiff in his company.
"Well, obvious winner," James says, encompassing your back with a big arm, pulling you into him. Under his hand your shoulders feel like a more delicate system; you aren't necessarily small, but his touch feels so everywhere, a pervasive feeling of safety and comfort in the palm of his hand where it grasps you.
"You have the more comfortable seat," Sirius says nonchalantly. "It means nothing."
Remus pulls one of your socks up where it's slipping down your calf and Sirius interrupts the arguing to ask if you need a glass of water. You don't have favourites. They're each incredibly lovely in their own way.
hey jade! i loved your vampire!sirius fic it was so cute!! i know it’s not halloween anymore but could you write another one of vampire!sirius with that unphased reader please?
hi lovie!! for u
Sirius pushes you down by the throat, his eyes narrowed and his weight heavy on your stomach. You squirm beneath him, trying to push him off.
"Ow…" You cover his hand. "Not so rough."
"Sorry," he says, hand moving to your shoulder. His apology is genuine, soft as silk, as are his hands where they wander. "I just missed you." He tucks his arm behind your neck and leans in for a hug.
You giggle. "Yeah? Me or my circulatory system?"
"Don't say stuff like that!" He kisses you atop your pulse, the place he so often nibbles. "I missed you."
You grab handfuls of inky hair and hug him back. You can't say you weren't expecting to be taken to bed the moment you got back, but you absolutely thought it would be for a feeding or some weird bloody fun. This is unexpected, but still nice. "You smell nice," you mumble, closing your eyes.
He kisses your neck. His lips travel upward, nothing seductive or smooth about it —this is all clumsy, chaste sweetness, and it's knocking you off kilter. "I don't think you should go away again."
"It was four days."
"Have we been apart four days? Since we met?"
No. You and Sirius have become that irritating weirdo couple that met and immediately fell in love, so to speak. You live in the other's lap, and you have no regrets thus far. It's odd how well you get along, but he's an odd creature, and you're worse if he's to be believed. My little freak never sounded so saccharine.
Even when he pulls up to tower over you and that strange alarm bell in your head begins to ring, your adrenaline spikes, the glint of his sharp fangs and the predatory thinning of his irises activates an innate fight of flight, but in your head? You have no urge to move. It doesn't make any sense. "No," you answer, having almost forgotten. "We haven't."
His cheek is scratchy in your hand. "And look at the consequences. I've been forced to drink from other people and you've taken up a barrage of exciting new boyfriends–"
"Well, I haven't," you say, grinning at him. "You're the only boyfriend for me. I tried, but the supernatural find me so very off-putting. I can't imagine why."
"Oh, you tried?" he asks, dropping his face to dig his nose under your jaw. He kisses you, but you know he's doing that as an afterthought, the nose jabbing his main prerogative.
"Not really." You cup the back of his head. "Are you hungry?"
"Would you stop it? I'm trying to express my love for you and you're desperate to play victim."
"I'm just wondering."
His fang scratches your skin, a graze. The blood it produces wouldn't so much as wet his fingernail, but he licks the wound to seal it and kisses straight up your cheek to the corner of your eye. "Please," he says, relaxing into your hold, "don't go on holiday again. At least for the next century."
"So for the rest of my life?"
Sirius scoffs. "If you think I'd let you die an old crone, you're stupid. You're stuck with me forever." He doesn't sound quite as sweet when he says it like that, a solidness to his declaration that should give you goosebumps. "You belong with me."
It should freak you out. What a strange thing to say. What a weird thing to picture.
"You really don't want me around for my endless buffet?" you ask.
"Don't be stupid. If blood were your most valuable trait I would've drained you the night we met. It's a little bonus for now, and in a few years when you're ready you'll drink some of my blood and be my wife for the rest of time."
You lean back to look at him. "What if I'm ready now?"
He moves to mouth kisses into your soft jaw. "Darling, why rush? You can only get more perfect." He laughs into his kisses, speaks smushed and warm into your skin, "What if I'm ready now?" he repeats, kiss-kiss-kissing. "You aren't scared of anything, are you, my love?"
"I'm certainly not scared of you."
"You might be scared of never eating crisps again though, hmm?"
spencer x reader where she kisses his forehead and he’s 🥹🥹
“Spencer, are you dead?”
Spencer ignores your question by accident. Heavy head in hand, he’s slowly sinking closer and closer to the hotel breakfast table to rest. His neck twinges with the effort it takes to stay up.
“Spencer,” you say more sharply.
His eyes track like the air is honey. He settles on your sluggishly while offering no greeting, tiredness pulling at him. “My eyes hurt,” he offers.
“Make you some tea.”
“Um, okay.” He’s disappointed when you leave, then dozing, face pressed to his desk as itchy eyes press along lids. It feels as though his eyelashes have turned inward.
You return with a cup. Spencer grabs it blindly, lifts his head to squint one eye open. “What?” he asks.
There isn’t tea in the cup. There are tea bags, two of them, wetted and leaking tan beige along the white china of the mug. Distinctly no tea. You must be tired too.
“They’re for your eyes, Spence. They’ll make your eyes hurt less. The caffeine restricts your blood vessels to calm the inflammation, and the tea itself soothes sore skin.”
“How do you know that?” he asks.
You rest a hand on his shoulder. “I read about it in a book of modern home remedies. It really works. Here, can you tip your head back?”
Spencer is very, very tired, but your voice is nice, your fingertips gentle against his neck, so he tips his head back. He doesn’t know how terrible he looks, having forgotten his untucked shirt, his rumpled sweater vest, his hair sticking up all over the place.
“Close your eyes,” you murmur.
Spencer shuts them.
“It’s cold,” you warn, “but it’ll feel nice.”
Spencer doesn’t care. He waits for you to move. The tea bags you place on his closed eyes feel cold and at first they sting just a touch, perhaps tea finding its way through his lashes, and he can’t confess to noticing a difference in soreness.
“Hey… what’s this? It looks like it hurts?” you ask, drawing a short line over the side of the bridge of his nose. There’s an indent there that feels like a bruise.
“I fell asleep at my desk with my glasses on,” he says. “They dug in.”
“You were up late, I’m guessing. Maybe you should go back to the room.”
“No, I can’t. I’ll be okay. Thank you for the… tea.”
Your hand rests tentatively against his cheek. He can’t open his eyes to see what you're feeling, and he doesn’t need to. There’s emotion to be felt in your slow strokes, how your thumb rests along his jaw as your nail scratches to the top of his ear, then behind the shell of it. It’s intimate enough to summon a different kind of tiredness. Exhaustion swapped for content. He could sleep in the curve of your palm all day.
“You’re welcome,” you say. “I’m gonna take them off for a second to check the damage.”
You take them. Your breath draws near.
A warmth presses to his forehead atop his left eyebrow. Spencer doesn’t know what it is until your nose graces just above it, and your lips part —it’s a kiss. You’re kissing him sweetly, your fingers sewing through his hair.
He peels his sore eyes open to look at you. You lean back as unhurried as you’d ferried forward, your hand cradling the nape of his neck.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” you ask.
Spencer stares up at you. In that moment, tired, aching, and balmed, he’s completely in love with you. You must see a little of it, your lips parting again in an unnamed emotion. It’s sheer luck that you’re the only one awake with him, because if any of his teammates saw the way he was looking at you they’d never let him forget it. And, he gets to see your reaction. Your partial smile.
“Did that help?” you ask.
You must mean the tea. “I feel better.”
“Yeah? Do you…” Your voice turns to cashmere, a thread of bemusement tugging at the corner of your mouth. “Would another one be okay?”
Spencer can only nod as you wrap your arms around him and position your mouth at the soft skin where his hair meets his forehead. When you kiss him again, his eyes flutter shut.
“You really need some help with your insomnia,” you murmur.
Spencer wonders if maybe you’d want to be that help. You must have melatonin in your kisses.
james calls you something he maybe shouldn’t | fem
You’re feeling at a James-given mark when Sirius appears.
You don’t know Sirius half as well as you know James nor Remus, but you’re ninety five percent sure he’s a good guy. He’s funny at lunch, whenever Remus has managed to convince you to go with them. He’s like James in terms of scandal. They like making bad jokes. Sirius really likes making Remus laugh, so he must be nice.
“Hey,” he says, “where are they?”
You nod toward the boss’ office. “Presenting the last of the Lang and Co.”
“Oh, right.” Sirius moves in to James’ desk. He knocks one of his figurines over purposefully, then moves one to have its face in the other’s backside.
“I’ll have to tell him that was you,” you say.
“Rat. Why?”
“He’ll think it was me otherwise, and then–” He won’t kiss me later, you’d been about to say. James has grown suddenly and enthusiastically fond of withholding affection whenever you mess with him. As a joke, of course, but you refuse to risk your lunchtime kiss. “You know what he’s like with me.”
Sirius smiles oddly. “I do.”
He sits at James’ desk. Ever since you and James… started whatever it is you’re doing, things have been raw for you. Maybe you’re stupid, it’s only kisses, but you’re sort of thinking it isn’t. Like, this is dating. You might not be boyfriend and girlfriend, but you’re exclusive.
James is too good, and some small part of you doesn’t like admitting it, but the bigger part (the part that wants to kiss him and be kissed by him) knows it surely. How could you have grown to fancy him otherwise?
“Doing anything fun this weekend?” you ask.
“Not likely,” Sirius says, tucking hair behind his ears. “We’re all helping Remus’ dad paint the house. It’s a tiny thing n’ it won’t take long, but he lives in Aberystwyth. S’gonna take hours to get there and he wants to stay up there ‘cos his dad gets lonely.” Sirius scratches his jaw. “His dad’s nice, mind. I don’t mind going up there. Just hate being stuck in the car when James is driving.”
You won’t see James this weekend, then. He hadn’t mentioned it. “It’s beautiful in Aberystwyth. Maybe you can go to the beach,” you say.
“That’s what I’m trying to convince them to do.” Sirius grins.
“Not the best weather.”
“It’s always nicer up there. We spent a lot of time up there, you know, in the summers. We ping-ponged between Remus’ house and James’ parents.”
“Do they live there too?” you ask.
“Nowhere near.” Sirius laughs, a deep, rich sound. “You think I’d be used to long drives.”
“Where’s James from?”
“My parents live deep in the West Country,” James says, his hands sudden on the back of your chair.
Fuck, you think. You had no idea he was coming, distracted by Sirius and the patter of rain against the window. “You creeper.”
“You’re the creeper. Grilling dear Siri for details on my personal life.” James dives for a biscuit from the plastic packaging laid out on your desk and then away from you. “If you want to know where to send your fan mail, just ask me, sweetheart.”
“How do you sneak up on me like that?” you ask.
The space between your chair and the wall isn’t super tight, but it’s still weird to think he’d approached from the right and you hadn’t noticed. Just, James isn’t generous with details about himself and you’re too timid in your standing with him to ask.
“Practice… Sirius, what have you don’t to my little women!”
“I thought they were boys?” Sirius says.
“That gives you no right to knock them over and make them do frankly obscene things to one another. This is a workplace.” James knocks Sirius out of the way, desk chair and all, to set each of his little green figurines onto their feet. The ones that are standing, that is. The sleeping one he puts back in pride of place underneath his computer’s monitor.
“She told me not to,” Sirius says, not looking at anyone now, peering backward toward the office. “But I didn’t listen, don’t blame our sweet Y/N.”
“I wasn’t going to.” James sends you a secret smile.
“She wouldn’t physically withheld me if I weren’t so devilishly fast.” Sirius’ voice warms. “Hello, darling.”
Remus huffs as he sets down a huge binder of paper. “Hi.”
“You okay?”
The tone he uses is so tender, so soft, you aren’t jealous of Remus but you’re not far from it, either. Remus’ frowning is quick to turn up at the sight of his meddling boyfriend. It must be nice to see someone and have them make a bad day good.
You look up, finding James paused with a hand on his desk. He’s looking at you, impassive.
“You okay?” you ask him.
He squints, wrinkles his nose. “Fine. Got shouted at a bit for the reports. Bet you’re glad you have a twisted ankle.” You’re confused at first, then caught. James’ wrinkled face darkens to glare at you. “You lied?”
“I really didn’t wanna see him today.” Your boss sucks.
“And we did? Remus, we’ve been betrayed.”
“James, I knew she was lying, I just don’t care.” Remus rubs his face. “Why shouldn’t one of us escape him?”
Sirius takes Remus’ empty hand hanging at his side, picture of a concerned lover.
James, on the other hand, steals another biscuit despite your laughing protesting and nimbly switches off your monitor.
“Had enough,” James says. Turned away from the boys, he smiles at you playfully, hand twitching at his side like he wants to give you a squeeze. Or a shove. “Your betrayal is noted.”
“Mm.” You take a third biscuit from your pack to offer him.
He takes it, letting his knuckles brush under your arm before pulling away. “And filed away for a later date.”
When Sirius has pulled Remus away for another early lunch, James retakes his chair and slides as close to you as he can be. He looks for your hand under the desk. You pretend it’s just casually there on your knee and not waiting for him to hold.
“My dad’s family is very well off,” he says, rubbing your index finger with his thumb, “so the estate is huge. They own a lot of land, but he’s not, like, a lord or anything. You’d love it down there though, it’s nice.”
“I bet I would.”
“Don’t look so surprised.”
“No, I’m not, I know you’re rich.”
“Not that sort of surprise. It would be nice to go down there together.” He can tell he’s getting ahead of himself and backtracks. “Well, this weekend I’m going to gorgeous Aberystwyth and you’re…”
“Doing laundry.”
“Well,” he says quietly, “maybe you can make some time Sunday night after all of that and we can get a late dinner.”
“I thought I was in trouble over the twisted ankle.”
“Who could be in trouble for an injury?” James sandwiches your hand in his.
“Fake injury.”
“Oh, my girl,” he murmurs, almost inaudible, “so honest. No punishment on account of owning up to it.”
Great. My girl and he’s going away for the weekend. James Potter’s your personal nightmare.
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