⫷SECOND-HAND EMOTION⫸
Gif Source
Pairings: Eddie Munson/Reader
Warnings: Angst/comfort, happy ending though it hurts to get there; break-ups and make-ups; some cursing; love confessions; minor proofreading tbh i only proof-read like half of this
Word Count: 6,492 words
Reader Gender: Female
Author: Meg
Summary: ”I didn’t know what to do so I... I ran away.” It’s been months since you last saw him, the only man to break your heart. Hell, he’s the only one who ever could. Filled with regrets, it’s too hard for Eddie to lie to you this time, as circumstances beyond your control bring the two of you together.
A/N: Eddie Munson break my heart challenge 😭❤ I’m cursed with a brain that gives me intrusive thoughts like, “What if Eddie Munson broke up with you.” On the bright side(?) for once I’m not writing smut---
“Just great,” slamming the hood of your car closed, you’re nearly on the verge of tears. You can’t help the angry curses that spew from your lips into the dead of night, standing dejectedly on the side of the road, “Piece-of-crap car—! Damn this town!”
Hawkins really was just as cursed as people say, because every way you turn, your life seems to fall apart at the seams the moment you step foot back here.
Blinking back the overwhelming frustration, you move around to the driver’s side of your completely dead vehicle, fishing out your bag and keys. There’s nothing for it, now, and if you were feeling especially self-loathing, you would admit that this was your own fault for ignoring that weird rumbling noise your beat-up Chevy had been making these past two months.
As if you had much of a choice in neglecting the car, with your mom’s hospital bills taking up any bit of extra money that you could’ve used to get it looked at. You barely have enough to make ends meet as it is with your job at the Family Video store. It was just about the only place in Hawkins that had been hiring over the winter break, and when your stay in your hometown had become more permanent as your mom got sicker, you’d barely found the time to get your head on straight, let alone find a better-paying job.
Work was where you were heading home from until you broke down on the side of the road, with one last rattling wheeze from your car before death claimed it. Having closed down at the store, it’s well past eleven in the evening, and this side of Hawkins is all but vacant at this hour. Shoving your work uniform’s vest into your bag, you begin the trek down the road. The 24-hour diner two miles away is where you’re betting you’ll find a payphone, but even the brisk walk you take up doesn’t keep the anxiety from creeping up your spine at having to walk alone at night.
After all, Hawkins was far from a safe little town.
Every skitter in the pitch-black woods to your right has you picking up your pace, and when it starts sprinkling rain overhead, you’re begging to whoever’s listening that maybe Steve will be back from that date he’d been bragging about all shift by the time you get to a phone. You never thought that you would be praying for Steve Harrington to not get lucky, but here you were, practically in a full jog by the time you have the diner in sight, and hoping beyond all hope that Steve’s date has gone horribly in the last half hour.
The diner’s nearly vacant as you push in through the door, the ring of the bell alerting the lone waitress to your entrance. The rain has developed into a full-on downpour, and you’re sopping wet, tennis shoes squeaking on the tile as you step inside. The warm orange glow that the lights seem to cast on everything and the scent of fresh brewed coffee only serves to slightly calm your nerves, while you dig around your soaked bag for enough change to use the phone.
“Please pick up, please pick up,” you were muttering to yourself, listening to the lingering ring of Steve’s land-line. With every repetitive ring, your heart sinks, until finally you’ve hit rock-bottom with the sound of his answering machine picking up.
“How’s it goin’? You’ve reached Steve. I’m probably real busy at the moment, but I’ll be sure to call you back—”
Rolling your eyes at his recorded message, it drones in your ears until you hear the beep, “Harrington! If you’re home right now, pick up! This is an emergency situation. Steve? C’mon, pick up.” You groan, all but whining his name into the phone with one last hope that he’s maybe moping after a bad date, “Steve, please!”
You’re not that lucky.
Clanging the phone back on the hook, you groan. What are you going to do now? Your mom’s still recovering from her latest stint in the hospital, and if only Robin would ever bother to get her license, you would be able to call her up. It’s not like you remember any numbers from the group of people you used to hang around with in highschool off the top of your head—
Your breath catches in your throat at the thought. There was one person’s phone number you could never forget, regardless of how many months have passed. It was muscle memory at this point, with how often you’d dialed it over those three years between Sophomore year and the summer after Senior year.
The breath you take is shaky, and you don’t even want to consider calling him right now, not after how you left off. There’s still a space in your heart that he once occupied, and the mere thought of hearing his voice again after all this time sets a deep, empty ache in your chest.
Truth is, you’ve never quite gotten over what had happened between you and Eddie Munson.
He had been your first everything, and when he broke your heart, you’d lost pieces of it in the process that you don’t think you’ll ever grow back. Hell, you hadn’t even had a relationship since him. Maybe a date here and there, most recently set up by Steve or Robin, but an actual, committed, bona-fide relationship? No chance. No way.
That version of yourself who could learn to love again was still lost in the past, with him.
You still remember the words he’d said when he had torn you to pieces on his uncle’s living room floor. The distant, cruel tone he’d spoken with rings in the back of your mind like you were standing there this very second, and the heartbreak that tears through your soul is just as fresh.
“You need to wake up. We both knew from the start, this was never going to be a long-term thing—” he must have been the only one, because in your silly lovestruck mind, you still thought you would be Eddie’s girl for the rest of your life, even as he pushed you away. “You’re going off to college this fall, right? So now’s the perfect time for us to break up. We had our fun, but it’s time to go our separate ways, y’know?”
He had been so cold, barely able to look at you. There was nothing perfect about that day, or the way you had started to cry, ugly, with the more he said. For the first time since you met him, he’d managed to make you cry from something other than laughter, and the contrast of your reality versus what you’d come to expect from him was so jarring that some part of you had been left hoping this was all just another joke. Only when you were wiping tears from your face did he look at you, but while he only stood a few steps away from you, you felt more distant from him than ever.
“But, Eddie—” you were so broken that even your voice was shattered, barely able to get past his name before another sob bubbled up your throat.
“What? Did you seriously think this was serious?” he cleared his throat, and looked down at his arms crossed over his chest like it was difficult to look at you, as if the notion of it disgusted him.
It was pitiful, the way you bared your neck for him to hurt you, but you couldn’t stop the words falling from your lips, “I told you, we could make long-distance work! Why are you acting like this?”
Biting, he had only cut deeper, “Isn’t it obvious? I don’t want you hanging around here. You’re just embarrassing yourself—”
“I love you, Eddie,” came so quickly, you hadn’t realized you’d sobbed it, until his brown eyes widened, finally staring you dead in the face. In that moment, you could have sworn you saw a hurt of his own reflected back at you. A crack in the unfeeling shield he’d crafted with his words until the small sliver of heartbreak broke through, but he had just forced his eyes away from you once again, and said the one thing that he knew would send you away.
“I don’t love you, don’t you get that? I. Don’t. Love. Y—” you hadn’t let him finish, before you ran. Escaping the trailer that had once been a second-home to you, but right then felt like nothing more than a mausoleum. A tomb for the piece of you that he had killed on the spot, with a cruelty and indifference you had never witnessed from him until that very moment.
Eddie had always been so sweet, so kind, to you in particular. He had completely blindsided you with the break-up. One minute, you were planning out how to spend the holidays that you got off of college together, and the next there was no together at all.
You spent the better part of high-school so entirely infatuated with the boy, that by the time he finally mustered up the courage your Senior year to ask you out, he could do no wrong in your eyes. Maybe it had blinded you. Maybe if you’d spent less time trying to be his friend, and later his girlfriend, you would have seen the red flags.
Or, maybe not, considering that you still hadn’t quite figured out where your relationship turned south, even after spending months replaying every second over and over again in your mind. You had missed it entirely, simply figuring that any annoyance or anger on his part had been directed at the fact that he’d failed senior year for a second time.
Maybe he blamed that on you. Maybe you had distracted him too much. Maybe—
“Order up!”
The kitchen bell dinging breaks you from your downward spiral, bringing your thoughts back to the diner, and the payphone you still held onto for dear life. Your throat is dry, as you stare at the phone for a moment more, dread swirling in your stomach like the milk a patron beside you was stirring into his coffee.
You try to take a deep breath, but fail at even that, because it comes out shallow, shaky, and entirely uncertain of the decision you’re about to make. Even your hands shake, as you pluck the phone off the receiver and slowly bring it to your ear, pushing the last of your change into the machine, and tapping out the numbers that are imprinted in your mind even after all this time.
You don’t know if it would be better, or worse for him to not pick up the phone at all. Part of you wishes his uncle would pick up instead. Wayne had always liked you, if only because you made sure to leave him the leftovers whenever you’d cooked dinner at the trailer in those days. You know it’s just wishful thinking, though, because you doubt Wayne’s quit his steady night job at the plant.
Maybe Eddie wouldn’t come get you, even if he did pick up the phone. You had once thought you could rely on him for anything and everything, but after the break-up, you were less certain in him. Questioning everything about your relationship and the man you once thought you knew had become second nature by now.
You’re so lost in the stress of the moment that you almost miss the sound of the ringing halting abruptly, and the lazy-sounding, “Yeah-lo?” that cuts through the line. A beat passes that you’re too stunned at having reached him to even so much as speak, before Eddie drawls with a little bit of impatience, “Munson residence? Hello?”
“Eddie?”
You said it so soft that you’re left for a second wondering if it had even been loud enough for him to hear you. With how quiet it gets on the other line, if it weren’t for the absence of a disconnection tone you would have thought he hung up.
Then, “Yeah,” comes through, just as soft, with a tinge of awkwardness at hearing your voice again, “It’s me.”
He doesn’t ask why you’ve called, and you take that as a good sign, or at least a sign that he was too stunned to refuse listening to your request, “I wouldn’t have called you so late— or… at all. I know you don’t want to hear from me anymore. I don’t want to bother you— but I really need some help right now and there’s no-one else—”
“Woah, hold on— What’s wrong?” comes clearer this time, but you know there’s no way he could be worried about you. Not after everything he’d said.
But you’re on the verge of tears anyway at the sound of his voice, trying to hold it together despite the crushing frustration that everything in your life building up to this moment has caused, and you’re certain he can hear it in your voice when you start anxiously rambling into the phone, “I was on my way home from work, but then my car broke down out on Dawson Road. I had to walk two miles to the diner, and it started pouring, so now I’m all wet, and Steve won’t pick up the phone—”
“Steve?”
“Harrington,” you sniff, “From work—”
“You’re workin’ in Hawkins?”
“Yeah,” you pause, debating on if it’s worth even telling him, before you cave, “I’m working at the Family Video, now.” It’s almost a relief, telling him about your life. There was once a time when he would’ve wanted to hear all the details, but you keep yourself from spilling more than that. You’re certain he doesn’t care to know anymore.
You can practically hear his confusion in the way he hums into the phone, and it reminds you of the late-nights you’d spent blowing up the phone bill to talk to him in high school. This isn’t high school, though, and you lost more than a boyfriend last summer. That’s what hurt the most, and the deep ache that’s throbbing in your chest tells you as much, because you really wish you could talk to the part of him that had once been your best friend right now, but there’s a cage around the words. Stopping them in your throat, as fear laces your tongue with each passing moment that he’s quiet on the other end of the line.
“What happened to college?” he questions you, and there’s a rustling noise in the background, “Wasn’t it your dream… to get into that program?”
You sigh, clenching your eyes shut. You don’t want to get into it all, especially not on the phone.
Swallowing, you murmur, “Eddie, I used my last twenty-five cents to call you, and I’m sure it’ll take at least another quarter to buy the time to explain.” The sound of his huffed chuckle is bittersweet, and shouldn’t make your stomach flip like it still does. It’s your destiny to be tortured by his every action, you suppose, because you’re torn between regretting ever calling him in the first place, and relishing in hearing the sound of his voice again when you ask, pitifully, “Would you mind… coming to get me, just this once?”
If he refused, at least your torture will be short-lived.
But he grunts into the phone, and you hear the sound of keys jingling, “Yeah, just give me, uh, a couple minutes.”
The relief that washes through you is tinged with nervousness, and your voice shakes when you breathe in, “Alright… I’ll be waiting here.” And you did wait, shifting foot to foot near the window, looking out into the pouring rain with the anxious anticipation of seeing him again.
You’ve had enough time to talk yourself in and out of whether it was a terrible idea to have called him, by the time you see the familiar van’s headlights through the pouring rain. The diner is a ten minute drive from his trailer, but he’s made it here in seven minutes, undoubtedly because he still drives like a bat out of hell, even in the heavy rain.
You don’t give him a chance to put the van into park before you’re pushing out the front door, bell chimes fading with the roar of the rain. Running through the downpour to reach his passenger side, and panting slightly when you wrench the door open to haul yourself inside.
It smells just like you remember, and the sense of peaceful relief that washes over you at the familiar scent of air freshener and faded cigarettes is gone as soon as your eyes cast upon him when you shut the door behind you. The Black Sabbath cassette playing drowns out in your ears at the sight of him, hair just slightly damp, raindrops on the leather of his jacket. Dark hair framing the dark eyes that look at you in a way that was almost too intense to fully distinguish what emotion swirled there, and for the first few moments, you’re both struck by silence.
There’s so much to say, and yet you can’t think of a single word. You had never thought you’d get to be this way with him, so closed off and yet yearning to tell him everything. Knowing far too much about each other, perhaps more than anyone else, and yet just as lost in this uncertain place, strangers to what you had become.
You weren’t even friends anymore, were you? But, he had shown up for you.
And he looked just as terrified as you felt.
You should say something. Anything—
“I guess I shoulda’ got out with an umbrella to get you,” he starts, clearing his throat awkwardly. “You’re, uh, soaked.”
Looking down at your wet clothes, you shake your head, “I got caught in the rain when I was walking to the diner from my car, so… it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“Oh…” and the silence settles in again. Tense and just as terrible as the swirling grief in your soul at sitting here again, with him. Pain seeping into your heart with the sight of him, with how he was just the same as he ever was, and yet you both felt so different, now.
Once upon a time, talking to Eddie had been as easy as breathing. He used to run his mouth all the time, but right now he’s silent as he pulls out of the diner’s parking lot. With each passing second, you feel the cracks in your heart spread, canyons in their wake with the unexplainable heartbreak that was your complete inability to find the words to say, because what was there to possibly say?
I’m still just as angry as the day you left me? I’d really like it if you gave back the pieces of my soul that remained with you? I wish I could force myself to stop loving you?
You would die first, before a single admission of the truth consuming you passed your lips.
And, so, you sat in silence.
A shiver creeps up your spine, wet clothes allowing the cool air from the A/C to seep into your bones far easier than it would have otherwise, and you draw your arms around yourself. Eddie notices, reaching to turn the air down with a sharp jerk of the dial from cool blue to the warm red, sparing a glance in your direction before his eyes are glued back to the road. Hands planted to the steering wheel, he’s just as stiff as if this were his driver’s test all over again.
He should say something. Say something, damn it!
“You, um,” you blurt out, before trying to collect your jumbled thoughts. They come out just as uncomfortable as you feel, “I’m sorry about this, Eddie… I know you probably have a million other things you’d rather be doing tonight than driving out this late to save my ass…” Your chuckle is forced, and it sounds like it, even to you, “But, uh, it’s real decent of you, you know? So… Thank you… You really didn’t have to come get me. I appreciate it.”
He scoffs, almost like he’s annoyed, “Of course I did.”
“Huh?”
“I wasn’t gonna’ just leave you stranded like that, so of course I had to,” he stops at a red light, casting his dark eyes back to you like it should be obvious. Like he’s offended you would think any less of him. Like it hurt for you to act like he would treat you that way.
“Oh…” you murmur softly, trying not to read into his words. You’re desperately trying to hold yourself together as it is, and the agonizing joy at seeing him again churned with the grief until your whole mind was so muddled that you don’t know quite what to make of him right now.
The light turns green, and his eyes are back on the road before you can dive too deeply into them. Fighting the dwelling silence is an uphill battle, because it’s too easy to just ride this out in silence. You don’t want to do that, though. You don’t want to take the easy way out.
You’ve missed him so much. You’ve missed your best friend, and even if it tears you apart, you wish that some part of yourselves could be like that again. Even if you were left spending the rest of your life wishing for something more, if this is to be it between you, you can’t have your last memory of him be on bad terms.
Friends tastes bittersweet on your tongue, but you would like to be his friend again, at the very least. Perhaps you could get to that place, after the time that’s passed. It’s a hopeful lie to tell yourself, but your wretched heart clings to it regardless.
Giving up is easier than trying, but you always were a fighter, “How’s your uncle?”
“He’s alright, I guess,” is all you get from him, and you can’t help the way it deflates you into the seat beside him.
Coaxing him into conversation is easier said than done, but at the risk of annoying him, you try again, “That’s good. I haven’t seen him since… well, a while… so it’s good to hear he’s alright.” God, you sound absolutely dumb right now, but you can’t stop. Desperate to fill the silence in some way, to urge him into talking with you again. “My, um, mom isn’t doing so great… You know how she was sick… Well, it’s only getting worse, I guess. She’s had to go to the hospital a couple times…”
The car is blowing hot air by the time he looks back to you, defrosting the chill in your bones more than his awkward, “I’m sorry to hear that,” ever could.
Still, you blunder on, “It’s why I’m back here… in Hawkins, I mean. Yeah, I did my first semester and then crap hit the fan, like it always does. I had to transfer to the community college, because I have to be close enough to home to help out my mom right now… so… I’m staying here again.”
“Oh…” Eddie breathes, and you think that’s all you’re going to get, until he shifts in his seat, fingers flexing on the steering wheel, “I didn’t know you were back in town, until you called.”
“Yeah… I guess there’s no reason you would’ve… I’m usually going between work, home, and school, so…” glancing out the window, you sigh, fidgeting with the hem of your wet shirt as you try to think of something else to say, growing frustrated at how hard it was to get him to engage in the conversation. “Oh! I saw Jeff, though. At work. He came in to get some horror flick, like a month ago.”
Eddie bites around a forced smile, sounding more than a little annoyed, “Jeff saw you? It must’ve just slipped his mind to tell me.” His fingers tap against the steering wheel, like he was trying to redirect the anxious energy anywhere other than his voice, but he sounds strained anyway.
You murmur under your breath, “He probably didn’t want to upset you…”
But he catches it anyway, eyes snapping towards you as his breaks hit hard at a stop sign, “Why would it upset me?”
You can’t help your own annoyance from seeping into your tone when you huff, “Well, we didn’t exactly leave off with hugs and kisses, Eddie…” He’s struck back into silence at that, and you mentally kick yourself for letting your bitterness seep through. Sighing, you apologize, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you’re right.”
You want to say more, but before you can, you realize he’s pulling into your mom’s driveway. Pushing the gear into park, you sit there for a second, before glancing from the rainy view of your house to the man beside you. He stares straight ahead, fingers tapping on the steering wheel still.
“Thank you, really, Eddie,” you begin, licking your lips as you try to muster the courage to ask him what you want to. It takes a moment, but you get there, “If you want, sometime we should meet up, you know?” Eddie chews the inside of his cheek as he keeps his eyes on your house, but you’re determined to get through it. You’d hate yourself if you didn’t take the chance, “Like old times… back when we were friends, you know? We should catch up, or something… Honestly, I… I wouldn’t mind being your friend again.”
Your heart beats so fast that you’re certain not even the best drummer in the world could compete with it. Thrumming in your ears, you grip your bag, waiting for a response. Anything, from him, but he just sits in silence, looking out the front windshield towards your house.
“Eddie?” you call his name, almost begging for him to speak. Look at you. Something.
But as another beat passes, it’s clear you’re not going to get it from him. Hurt, red-hot anger washes over you then, because who does he think he is to treat you like this?
What had you ever done to him to deserve it?
“Actually, just, forget it,” you hear the way your voice chokes off in your throat, feeling the burning behind your nose, but you’re determined not to cry. Not this time. “I don’t know why I even bothered to try to fix things between us. You clearly don’t care anything about me, but what else is new? You don’t even want to be my friend. I get it. Fine. Whatever.” Pushing open the door, you hop out into the rain, feet hitting the gravel driveway. Fueled with all the anguish you can muster when you call back at him, “Don’t worry, Munson, I won’t bother you ever again! Have a nice life.”
Slamming the door, you could scream, but you push yourself towards the house. You can’t fall apart, not yet. Not until you were inside. Not until he couldn’t see you—
You’re halfway up the driveway when you hear the sound of his door opening through the rain, feet hitting against gravel as he shouts your name. You ignore him. You can’t do this anymore. It hurt too much. Whatever had happened between you was too hard for you to try to unravel anymore, and you were done begging him to care about you.
But he keeps calling your name, and you’re practically running from him by the time your feet hit your front porch, only for a hand to catch you by your arm, turning you so quickly that you nearly slip down on the wet concrete. He’s steady, though, pushing you against the wooden column of the awning and breathing heavily down at you.
Eddie’s just as soaked as you are now, rain dripping down his hair and off his nose, parted lips and angry eyes glaring right back at your own when he says, “Won’t you wait, for just a damn second?”
“What?” you bite back, unable to help it.
His voice sounds just as desperate as you feel, but his words cut through you just like they did last summer, “I don’t want to be your friend. I can’t ever just be your friend—”
“Why do you hate me, Eddie?” you can’t stop yourself, sniffing back the burning urge to cry with the distress of it, “I don’t know what I did to make you to hate me so much—”
“I don’t hate you— I could never hate you!” there’s a rising panic in his voice, as you shake your head at him. Fingertips digging into your arm, his touch burns, but you don’t try to pull away. You couldn’t if you tried. You don’t have the willpower to move from this spot, with how your heart has melted into the ground.
Your voice rises with his, until you’re both shouting over the rain and the roar of your heart in your ears, “You do! Eddie, you do! I see it— You can barely look at me, let alone talk to me—”
“I love you!” he shouts, like it hurts him to say it, or maybe it hurts him to hear you think otherwise, because when he says it again, it’s a whimper of all the regrets he’s carried since the break-up, “I love you, damn it! I don’t hate you— You could run me over with my van right now and I still wouldn’t be able to hate you! I can’t be your friend because I’m in love with you!”
You’re left slack-jawed for all the time it takes for the rage to boil up, and now tears are brimming at your eyes, when you shove him away, “Don’t you dare mess with me right now, Munson! That’s a sick joke after everything—”
“I’m not joking—!” he regains the ground just as quickly, hands coming to your arms as if he can soothe you somehow. Like a simple touch can solve how broken he’s made you.
“If you love me, why did you break up with me?!” you’re screaming now, but you don’t care. Tears are streaming down your cheeks, and you can’t stop them, because you’re so overwhelmingly confused by him that you don’t know which way is up anymore.
“I messed up, okay!” he shouts back at you, his own tears brimming in his eyes, until he backs away to bring one ringed hand up to press his index and thumb against his eyes, wiping the water and tears away. “I fucked everything up last summer, because I was scared!”
Your fists clench at your sides as you lean against the column, watching him until he looks back to you, “You were… scared?”
“I was so sure I was gonna’ graduate with you last year. We were gonna’ finally get the hell out of this town,” he gasps out a bitter chuckle, gesturing widely with his arms, “and then Mrs. O’Donnell’s bullshit class just screwed me over again! I had to watch you walk that stage without me, right beside Steve The Hair Harrington, who is apparently your best buddy now—!”
“We work toge—”
“---and you were going all the way to Indiana State! You didn’t need me to be dragging you down here every couple of weeks, and what if you met someone there? I couldn’t handle it if we just grew apart because of the distance and some,” he grits his teeth, stepping towards you, “some random college guy… So maybe I self-destructed!” Eddie swallows hard, struggling to get out the rest, “I didn’t know what to do, so I… I ran away.”
“You…” you breathe, trying to remain calm, but the outrageous edge to your voice gives how upset you are away, “You broke up with me, because it was easier than us putting in the work?!”
“No,” he steps closer, staring at you with such a grief-stricken intensity that it takes your breath away, “I broke up with you, because if I was gonna’ lose you anyway, I wanted to lose you on my terms, but all I wound up doing was ruining my life, and hurting you, like the stupid son of a bitch I am.” His voice breaks, when he continues, “I thought you would be better off without me. That you’d move on and forget about me, or something… but when you told me you loved me that day at my house, I almost couldn’t do it. I thought,” he clears his throat, “I thought that I wasn’t being selfish by letting you go, but I know that’s a lie. I was only trying to save myself the pain of losing you, but that clearly didn’t work out, ‘cause I haven’t gone a single day since without missing you.”
You’re so mad at him, but the pieces of you that would always love him— that are still in love with him— keep you quiet. He was rambling his heart out to you after so long of you wishing he would just speak to you, tell you what’s wrong, and now he was. You still remembered what he’d said to you the day he broke your heart, though, and he had been far too convincing for his words now to mend your worried heart this easily.
“When you called me tonight, I… I didn’t know what to say, or do. I don’t know how to fix this after how badly I’ve messed everything up,” Eddie brushes his tears away again, huffing out the anguished sound of your name, “I don’t blame you if you hate me after all this. You were supposed to be my girl, and— I treated you wrong. I’m so sorry.” Pushing back his hair, he looks out past the pouring rain, towards the van’s headlights, voice catching in his throat before he takes a breath, “I wish I could go back to that night and take every stupid thing I said back. I wasted so much time that I could’ve spent loving you being terrified of the way you make me feel.” His lip quivers as he tries to breathe steady to no avail, “I should’ve been here for you. Shit! I didn’t even know about your mom, for God’s sake—!”
He’s crying too much to stop it when his dark eyes look back at you, unable to keep the redness from his cheeks any longer, or the tears from falling, despite how he tries to push them from his jaw, “I’ve missed you so bad. You are— you were my best friend, and now I really have lost you.”
Trying to breathe steady is as much a struggle for you as it seems to be for him, but you carefully construct the words on your tongue, “You told me you didn’t love me.”
“I lied,” it comes out broken, in as much anguish as you’ve been these past months. “I was so fucking stupid—”
“You’re not stupid, Eddie,” he watches you carefully as you move towards him, close enough that you can reach up, brushing your hand against his jaw to wipe the tears trailing there with your thumb. “You just overthink everything, and it’s something I’ve always loved about you, even when it backfires.“
“Well, boy, did it backfire, this time,” it’s a dry joke, and a weak smile that he forces at the corner of his lips as he leans into your touch. His fingers come to rest along your shoulder, sloping up your throat as you tilt your head into his warmth. A shuddering breath falls from him when you drag his lips down to yours by the grip you take up on his leather jacket.
He kisses you like not a day has passed, as if the burden of your heavy hearts weren’t weighing you down this very instant, but there’s an edge to it. Some desperation to the way you cling to one another after everything that’s been said and done. Fingers catching in his wet hair, you drag him as close as possible, but even that doesn’t seem enough. You don’t care if he can tell how terrified you are, so scared that the moment you release him he’ll leave again. That all this won’t be real again.
But his hands on your skin are warm, and just as real as he’s ever been. Tilting your jaw into his kiss as his lips move feverishly against your own. If your neighbors were to look out their windows, they’d be shocked to see you and Eddie Munson making out on your front porch at nearly twelve in the morning, but you don’t care who sees. You never have.
You don’t care if the whole world knows how in love with him you are. All that matters is if he knows it.
And you desperately want to believe that he loves you, too. Eddie could break your heart all over again, if it meant he truly loved you for even this moment.
His lips part from yours, breathing against them, so low that if you weren’t so close he would’ve been drowned out by the rain, “Can you ever forgive me?” Blinking up at him, you watch the way the night’s shadows cast along the worried lines of his face with the headlights that still shine on the both of you from the driveway.
“Only if you promise to tell me you love me again.”
“I’ll tell you I love you as many times as you like,” he smiles softly, leaning in to kiss you once more, shorter this time. “I love you. I’m so sorry I ever told you anything different.”
“I love you, too, Eddie,” you hum, “but if you’re coming inside, you better go turn off your van’s headlights before the battery dies.”
He grins this time, one of those wide ones that had always made your heart swell to see, “I’d better go do that, then.” Instead, he takes another moment to kiss you again, before letting you go to jog across the gravel driveway through the rain to his van. Your key’s hit the lock of the front door by the time the lights go out, and he’s jogging back your way when you open it.
Reaching out to him, he takes your hand, and you intertwine your fingers against the silver bands of his rings to drag him into your house, “I missed you, too, you know.”
Eddie follows you, and you have a hunch he’d follow you anywhere, “I got a lot of time I gotta’ make up for.”
You chuckle when he kicks the door closed behind him, locking it, “You can start by telling me you love me again.”
“Like I said, sweetheart, as many times as you like—”