★Ch 11/23 | masterlist | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
thefreak!eddie x valedictorian-to-be!fem!reader
[4.1k words] *You've been avoiding him for weeks. Eddie is desperate. He formulates a plan to get back within your orbit that works a lot better than he'd expected.
NSFW/MDNI- slow burn, frenemies to lovers, secret relationship trope, eventual smut, sorta-kinda mentions of religion, no monsters/upside down, canon divergence, characters are in high school, reader is of the age of consent, suggestive & sexual content
Chapter 11: One Way or Another
Eddie never claimed to be an honest man.
More often than not, he was lying about something. Fibs about late shifts at a job he didn't even have to get out of detention for his chronic tardiness. Tall tales of sickly relatives that didn't exist to get extensions on assignments he'd never end up turning in anyway. Made up trysts with fictional groupies from the Hideout and fabricated affairs with married women just to get props from his friends who knew better than to believe a word he said. It was so easy for him. The lies slipped right off his silver tongue. Sure, no one ever actually believed half the bullshit he spewed, but it was still fun for him regardless. As Eddie saw it, lying was one of the few simple pleasures in life that even the rich man couldn't gatekeep.
Though he'd never typically think twice about his dishonesty, for whatever reason, deceiving you felt like taboo. Just considering it had a guilt he wasn't quite used to tying his guts into knots. He'd never thought himself a godly man either, but he imagined a special seat in hell reserved just for him for the sin of taking advantage of your goodness.
As bad as he might've felt, it still didn't deter him any. He could atone for it in the afterlife for all he cared. Presently, Eddie was desperate.
You hadn't talked to him in three weeks. Well, you had, technically, but Eddie didn't think a rushed 'hey, can't talk right now' counted as quality conversation. You were busy. He got that. With everything you put on your plate, the self-inflicted hell of student clubs and extra credit and whatever else AP students spent their weeknights doing, you were spread thin. Adding illicit fraternization with the town's pariah on top of all that, it was a marvel to Eddie that hypertension hadn't taken you out yet.
But this was getting out of hand. Every single time he'd approached you, he was quickly rebuffed, left gawking in the middle of the hall like an idiot as you scurried off to wherever your presence was, apparently, desperately needed before he could even finish asking how you were.
Contrary to popular belief, Eddie wasn't completely hopeless. He was more than capable of putting two-and-two together and all trains of thought led back to that kiss on the couch.
He didn't think he'd done anything wrong. You'd kissed him. He'd reciprocated. What else was he supposed to do? Even if he'd come off as a bit too eager, which was entirely possible knowing his track record with the few unfortunate souls who'd been stupid enough to give him the time of day, you didn't seem that put off by it after the fact. You seemed pretty normal about it, actually.
The end of the night went exactly as he'd expected it to. A few yawns, an offer to drive you home. You'd laughed at his shitty jokes during the drive, glared at him when he'd said something dumb and sort of offensive. The usual. Though, it was sort of awkward when he'd pulled up to the curb two houses down from yours and got the bright idea to try to kiss you goodnight. You'd turned your face away. His lips pressed into your hair. That he'd just brushed off as shyness on your part. In the days since, he'd started to rethink it. All of it.
Originally, he thought he'd just cut his losses. If you wanted nothing to do with him, so be it. Graduation was only a few months away, and after that, he was getting the hell out of Hawkins anyway. He could settle for bitterly staring at you from across the cafeteria until June. No big deal.
That resolve lasted all of two days before Eddie startled awake with clammy skin and sticky boxers, one eye peeled open and vaguely set on the fuzzy image of his uncle stood in the doorway, reaming his ass for oversleeping again.
"You know you can set an alarm on that fancy digital clock you got there, right?" Wayne had bitched and all Eddie could do was nod dumbly in response, his half-baked brain still lingering in the liminal realm of a wet dream that you'd been the star of.
Eddie stared at himself long and hard in the bathroom mirror that morning, utterly repulsed with himself. But by the end of his cold shower, it was decided: he was going to get you to talk to him, one way or another.
The idea had come to him in first period calculus.
Mr. Collins, an antique from the nineteenth century, had stood at the front of the room, complaining about the class's unsatisfactory performance on last week's test. As he spoke, his dry tongue continually darted out to drag over his dry lips, missing the smear of cream cheese at the corner of his mouth every time.
"O-kay," Mr. Collins announced in his weak, wobbly croak of a voice, drawing the single word out slow enough that each syllable sounded like their own distinct thought. He slowly hobbled over to his desk, gathering a stack of papers into his arthritic, liver-spotted hands. Each trembling movement made him appear fragile, like he was constructed of paper mache. His crepey face scrunched up as he squinted through thick lenses at the papers. "Let's see."
He turtled around the room, making it as far as the second row of desks before giving up and instructing everyone to just pass the tests around amongst themselves. The girl sitting in the seat in front of Eddie's held his paper between her index finger and her thumb at the very corner of the page as she passed it back to him, like she thought something that belonged to him must've been diseased.
Just as Eddie had expected, a big fat 'F' was penned in shaky script at the top of the page. Rather than balling it up to be immediately forgotten like he usually would, he marveled at it this time, drinking in every little red 'X' crisscrossed beside each problem like they were individual answers to his prayers.
The second the bell rang, he was up from his seat, barreling into the hallway like the place was on fire. Hotfooted, he rounded the corner just in time to catch your retreating frame following the stream of students towards the west wing of classrooms. Shouldering past god-knows-who and stepping on what's-her-name's foot on his way, he caught up to you, taking a firm hold of your elbow before wheeling you around into a nearby alcove between locker rows.
"Christ on a cracker!" you griped, startled and semi-breathless, your hair swept into your face. With both hands pressed firmly to Eddie's chest, you shoved him back. "What's the big idea?"
Eddie reveled in the sound of your irritation, a welcomed reprieve from your detached snubbings. He grinned at the sight of your flushed cheeks, your impatient glare as you brushed your hair behind your ears. He was so delighted to finally be acknowledged by you again, he'd had to remind himself to manage his excitement.
Schooling his features into something he hoped resembled glumness, he began the charade. First came the sordid tale of yet another failure despite his best efforts, then the anxiety that he would end up flunking for a fourth time. A made-up threat from a guidance counselor he hadn't spoken to since August that his chances at graduation hinged on administration-mandated tutoring was his grand finale. It was complete hogwash, hardly passable by Eddie's usual standards of fibbery, but you were eating it up, nodding along solemnly to every fraudulent word.
He was on a roll, and by the time he'd proposed that you be the one to tutor him, you were practically leaping at the opportunity to help. Of course you were. Eddie hadn't expected anything less from the sweetheart of Hawkins High herself.
Eddie leaned back against his headboard, legs crossed at the ankle, still basking in the success of his ploy. There you sat on the foot of his bed, flipping through your own calculus notes saved from the year before. His textbook lay heavy in his lap, opened to a glossy page of foreign symbols beside numbers and italicized letters. You'd tasked him with attempting the first problem from a sample set to assess his proficiency, what concepts he had a grasp on and where he was lacking, but the lined notebook page in front of him remained pristine. Not even a scribble in the margins.
He couldn't focus. Not on indefinite integrals, anyway. He was too absorbed by the crunch of the eraser end of your yellow #2 pencil between your teeth. The chimerical image of your mouth pulled into a pleased 'o', shimmering behind a gauzy dreamlike film, was still seared into his brain. Not entirely unwelcome, but distracting nonetheless. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth.
You peeked up from your old notebook, depositing your pencil into the crease between the pages. Obliviously, you smiled at him. "Done already?"
"Hm?" he hummed, his gaze quickly flicking up to meet yours. The tips of his ears felt hot. Wordlessly, he shook his head.
Thankfully, you seemed to misread his preoccupation as ineptitude. Understanding as ever, far more than Eddie was deserving of, you murmured, "I get it. It's tricky."
You set your notes aside and crawled across the bed to him.
"Here," you said quietly, slipping his pen out from his clammy fist. You peered over his shoulder at the first problem on the page, leaning in close to his side. Close enough that he could smell the light, airy scent of whatever laundry detergent your family used wafting off of your cable knit cardigan. Eddie had to bite the inside of his cheek just to ensure that he wouldn't accidentally let an embarrassing sound slip out. "I'll do this one and explain the steps as I go."
You reached across him and copied down the equation from the book onto the notebook page. Slowly, you went through the problem, notating the derivative operator off to the side, giving a brief, yet thorough review of derivatives and anti-derivatives and the like. The same stupid shit that Mr. Collins had discussed ad nauseum in class. Though, for the first time, Eddie was actually absorbing what was being said. Not because your explanation made any more sense than that crotchety little bastard's had, but because he felt he had no choice but to pay attention, not trusting himself to look anywhere other than at your slanted handwriting in front of him.
"And so that's where the indefinite integral expression comes into play," you murmured, drawing a definitive circle around your final answer. You smiled encouragingly at the side of Eddie's face, handing the pen back to him. "Now you try."
Eddie obeyed, copying your steps for the second question, all the while trying to ignore your nearness. Close to his ear, you hummed, and in his peripheral, he saw you nod slowly. Then, you said, "good. Keep going," in a low tone that made his mind wander to a place he wished it wouldn't with you sitting so close.
The tips of his ears burned hotter and he shook his head to make his hair conceal the effects of your soft spoken praise. He felt self-conscious as he worked, knowing you were watching, until you scooted back to nestle into his lumpy pillows.
Quietly, he went through the lengthy problem set, finding that each question was easier than the last, that he'd actually learned something. A positive consequence of his trickery, he supposed, one that he'd use to plead his case when he arrived at the gates of hell. Eventually, though, he grew antsy in the silence, each moment without conversation feeling like a waste when you were finally next to him again.
"How are things?" he asked between questions. Unable to help himself, he hinted at your recent elusiveness. "You've seemed super busy lately."
With a soft huff, you sunk deeper into the lumpy pillows behind your back. "You know how it is. Spring musical auditions next week. Fundraisers that need organizing. The paper being a pain in my ass. The usual."
The exasperation in your tone made the corner of Eddie's mouth quirk up, your complaints about obligations no longer a bore to him, but something he savored now after weeks of being deprived of them. He doodled a crude rendition of a spiderweb in the margin of the page as he asked, "What're you covering this time?"
"No clue yet," you answered dryly, the expected response. Eddie bit his lip and peeked at you over his shoulder.
"Write about the Hellfire Club," he suggested, not for the first time. Like all the other times before, you rolled your eyes and shook your head. Undeterred, he pressed on. "Why not? It'd be a hell of a lot more interesting than some Student Honor Society food drive."
At the mention of your piece from the last issue in December, the first issue that you'd managed to make this school year, your eyebrows ticked up towards your hairline. Your eyes glimmered with mirth as you scoffed out, "Since when do you read the school paper?"
"I skim it every now and again," Eddie shrugged halfheartedly. In truth, he'd snatched up every issue put out since you'd started talking to him regularly, searching frenziedly for your by-line on the grayscale pages. But he'd never readily admit to that. "That's not the point. The point is, you should consider it."
"What's in it for you?" you asked, eyeing him skeptically.
"Exposure," he mumbled. "And, y'know, we'd get to hang out more."
Unconvinced, you snorted, good-naturedly teasing, "I think we hang out plenty enough."
Half-stung, Eddie winced, snickering lowly as he crossed his arms over his chest. His tone dripping with lighthearted accusation, he asked, "Do you even like me at all?"
"Eddie," you chided, deflecting like always. "Focus."
"But it's so boring!" he protested, laughing again. A strange warmth blossomed in his chest when you mirrored his grin. Quieter, braver, he murmured, "maybe I just need a bit of incentive."
Warily, you eyed him, your smile dropping completely. "What do you mean?"
"I think you know exactly what I mean," he countered lowly, offering you a smirk that appeared much more self-assured than he felt.
His heart was in his throat and his palms were so clammy he had to wipe them off on his jeans. It wasn't too late to chicken out and backpedal, he knew, but how far had that gotten him in the past?
So, hoping for the best, Eddie rolled for charisma.
"Each question I get right?"
Eddie waited on bated breath as he watched you gnaw on your lip with your brief contemplation, already thinking up a graceful response to your inevitable rejection.
You exhaled slowly, and even slower, a coy sort of smile unfurled across your face. An unequivocal sign that he hadn't lost you all the way just yet. With feigned reticence, you muttered, "Whatever will get you to focus, I guess."
Eddie didn't need to be told twice. He returned to his work with enough gusto to have you chuckling uneasily at him. Beside him, you shifted, propped up on one hand pressed into the mattress behind his back as you peered down at his paper, watching him go.
The first correct answer earned him a kiss on the cheek.
"That's it?" he complained, pressing the back of his hand against the sticky kiss-print your lipgloss had left behind.
"Don't push your luck," you warned, glaring at him through narrowed eyes.
After another problem solved, he looked at you, meeting your hesitant gaze with playfully puckered lips. You huffed out a soft breath through your nose, rubbing your lips together. Then, chaste as a Catholic schoolgirl, you pecked his mouth.
You pulled away quickly and placed your hand on his shoulder, resting your chin on your knuckles, eyelashes kissing your cheeks with every slow blink you made at his paper. Though the warmth of your breath against the side of his neck made his skin prickle all over with excitement, Eddie chose to behave for once.
He had gotten what he'd wanted from you, but felt none of the expected triumph. If anything, he felt sort of like a scumbag, pushing you like this. The game was no fun without your enthusiasm. Having it ruined so soberingly, he didn't want to play anymore. In solemn silence, he answered a third question, then moved onto the fourth without ceremony.
Ever-so-gently, you squeezed the meat of his shoulder as you murmured, "Hey, you got that one right."
"I know," Eddie said, strained, continuing on with the problem he was solving.
Where Eddie's courage had run out, yours had been enough to make up for it, evidently, as you placed two fingertips onto the side of his chin and turned his face towards yours. His dark eyes flitted over your features quickly. Your gaze remained unwaveringly on his mouth. In the midst of his anticipation, he panted like a dog.
When your mouth pressed gingerly to his parted lips, he let out a choked sigh. His fingers curled into a tight fist on the rumpled sheets beside your hip. He ached to touch you, but forced himsef to take only as much as you were willing to give.
He half-expected it to end there, a polite sort of kiss to humor him, to stave him off until the next. But you lingered, opening your mouth just slightly against his. Even Eddie wasn't stupid enough to pull away first.
He sat as still as he could manage with his restraint thinned to tissue paper, dumbly following along with the torturously slow pace you had set. He kept his hands to himself, even as your own flattened against his cheek to gently cradle his jaw.
The tip of your tongue just barely grazed the seam of his lips, quick and, from the feel of it, wholly incidental. The second the sensation registered in Eddie's troglodytic brain, stars burst behind his eyelids like he'd been punched between the brows.
With a quick swipe of his arm, the calculus textbook was flung from Eddie's lap onto the floor. The thud reverberated through the trailer and you flinched, jolting back just slightly. Eddie chased your mouth, clumsily crashing his lips into yours again. His hand flew to your hip, blindly shimmied up beneath the hem of your shirt to grip onto bare, supple flesh. Cold fingers against warm skin, you gasped softly against his bottom lip. Eddie was quick to take advantage of the gap, his tongue sliding into your mouth without much finesse. He was rusty, admittedly, his kiss unskilled in its urgency. You didn't seem to mind as you opened your mouth wider to accommodate his tongue's desperate intrusion.
You held tight to the nape of his neck, fingernails gently scratching against the base of his scalp. A shiver rippled up Eddie's spine and he groaned softly into your mouth. You answered him with a soft, stifled sound as he prowled over you on his knees and crowded you back into the pillows. On one trembling elbow, Eddie leant his entire body's weight beside your head. His sweaty fingertips traced along your hairline, a gentle contrast to the harshness of his kiss.
Beneath him, your chest heaved with your ragged breathlessness. You seemed to lag a millisecond behind, unable to keep up with the impatient rhythm he'd unwittingly forced unto you. In the back of his mind, Eddie vaguely considered the possibility that he was overwhelming you in the midst of his own desperation, but he couldn't seem to make himself slow down.
Just slightly, you tilted your chin down, forcing Eddie to allow you to suck in a quick, much needed breath. A thin thread of saliva stretched between your mouths; he broke the fragile tether with a gentle swipe of his thumb over your wet bottom lip. Through half lidded eyes, he drank in the close up view of your flushed cheeks.
Gently, you tugged on the back of his neck, urging him back to you. He obliged your silent request, meeting your mouth slower this time. After a firm, lingering press, he gently nudged your face to the side with his soft hold on your chin. He kissed the corner of your mouth, then your cheek. He dragged his lips along the line of your jaw, following it to the soft, tender space beneath your earlobe.
An experimental kiss to this spot left you shuddering. He parted his lips, licked the salt from your skin, and you squirmed under him. Your knee grazed the inside of his thigh, just barely missing where he twitched in his jeans. He hissed out a sharp breath.
When he thoughtlessly sucked the delicate flesh between his teeth, you made the most glorious sound he'd ever heard.
A greedy bastard like him, he wanted it again, and all the others he could coax out of you. He sucked harder, earning a breathless excuse of a gasp. Your nails clawed into the sleeve of his flannel, pulling it taut around his bicep. Against your skin, he grinned before laving his tongue over the faint mark he'd left behind. His lips trailed lower, another nip given on the side of your neck.
"Eddie," you whispered, hot and tremulous against his ear, making his head spin. He could've died right then and there a happy man. Or, if the universe willed it, after he'd at least gotten your shirt off.
His hand, having a mind entirely of its own, slid back beneath the hem of your shirt, skating slowly up your stomach. The tips of his fingers just barely brushed against the underwire of your bra. It seemed that was as far as the universe would allow him to get.
The trailer shook with the slam of the front door. Eddie froze on top of you, mouth still opened wide over your pulse point. A soft grumble under breath came next. Then the clang of keys being thrown onto the coffee table.
You reacted first to the untimely interruption, quick to shove Eddie off of you so that he fell heavily onto his back, the mattress creaking and swaying with the momentum. As you hastily pushed yourself up to sit, pulling the sleeve of your sweater over your hand to wipe the slobber from the side of your neck, Eddie rolled onto his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows. His gaze swung to the open doorway of his bedroom, seeing Wayne stood stiffer than usual in the living room.
The old man's widened eyes shifted from Eddie to you, back to Eddie, then back to you in a rapid succession.
"Well, hello, miss," Wayne addressed you gruffly, but politely all the same. He swiped a hand over the belly of his wrinkled denim shirt. "Pardon my shabby attire. I wasn't expecting company."
With that, he looked at Eddie pointedly.
"She's a friend from school," Eddie supplied not all that helpfully.
"It's nice to meet you, sir," you said primly, charming as ever, albeit a bit strained. "I've heard nice things."
Nice things? Eddie resisted a scoff as he pushed himself up onto his knees.
He resisted looking at you all together as he mumbled, "We're studying."
Wayne looked at the textbook thrown open and face-down on the carpet, then to both of your flushed faces. His sun-weathered face crinkled with a sort of stifled grin as he nodded slowly. "Sure."
With that, he shuffled a few steps back and turned towards the wall of trucker caps. He nicked one from its hook, inspecting its frayed brim before fitting it over his graying head, as if that's all he'd come in for.
"Well," Wayne muttered coarsely before shoving his hands into his pockets and trudging back from whence he came, closing the door gingerly behind him, as if making a point at his offering of privacy.
In the following silence, Eddie and you sat on his bed, staring at the emptied hallway, listening to the slam of Wayne's truck door, the sputter of the old engine, the crunch of gravel beneath his retreating tires.
Asking to pick up where he'd left off seemed pathetic, even to Eddie, and the few inches of bedsheets between him and you seemed wide as a gulf now anyway. Accepting his humiliation and the fact that the mood had been effectively killed, he leaned over the edge of the bed for his textbook.
"Where did we leave off?"
