eddie munson x reader cw: smut, established relationship, mental deterioration, death, the afterlife, advanced technology a/n: based off of the black mirror episode titled san junipero. thank you @ali-r3n for reminding me to reupload this. 3.8k words
You’d been watching him all night. Dark curls bouncing every time he laughs, hands squeezing around the neck of his beer bottle. He was making friends with a group of similarly dressed individuals, other metal heads of the 80s clad in leather and worn band tees. They weren’t hard to find in a place like this. Some of them may have even made a name for themselves once. But, in this town, things like fame didn’t matter much.
Eyes like melted chocolate meet yours, a devious smirk forming on his lips. A wink. Acknowledgement of the game the two of you were playing tonight. You watched as he called the bartender over, yelling something that you couldn’t hear over the loud bump of 80s pop music. The bartender nodded, and after a few moments of mixing was walking your way.
“From the guy at the end of the bar,” he said, sliding the drink to you. But you already knew, smiling to yourself as you sip your signature drink. It went down quickly after years of drinking it. The bitter alcohol taste didn’t bother you like in the past. You popped an ice cube in your mouth before jumping off the bar stool, looking back for just a moment to see him quickly down his drink, getting up to chase after you.
The end of your dress billowed lightly in the breeze, chilling your skin as you stepped out into the busy nightlife. The sun had set, and the sky once filled with blues and pinks was now a deep purple with stars mixed in. You could see the moon reflecting over the glassy waves of the ocean from the deck of the bar.
“Beautiful, isn't it,” you ask as he leans next to you, his back against the rails. The tendrils of his hair flutter with the salty air, reaching out to you where you stand. It’s tempting to take one and wrap it around your finger but you decide against it, just in case it may be too intimate for the facade you’re trying to keep up.
“Sure is,” he says, his eyes fixed on you, looking you up and down. You feel the heat rise in your cheeks under his gaze.
“You’re not even looking,” you shake your head. His teeth show this time when he smiles at you, leaning into your personal space to whisper in your ear.
“Wasn’t talking about the beach, sweetheart.”
If he was any other guy you wold have told him to fuck off by now. He knows that, too. Which is why he does all that he can to push your buttons as the two of you talk. Teasing and joking around, being his authentic self, putting you in laughing fits that bring you to tears.
And when he gets you in his bed, he’s making you moan his name. He tells you that the way you say his name is better than any chorus of devils that would have been waiting for him if the two of you hadn’t been here. Your bodies meld together like they belonged to the other in this weird fucked up place you’ve found yourselves in. His hips roll into yours, wet slapping of skin on skin filled the room, loud enough to rival the waves hitting the shore just outside your window.
“Eddie, please I’m so close,” you huff, on the precipice of another orgasm, your senses heightened by the air of this place. His hand slides from your hip to your bud, moving in calculated circles from the years of working your body how you liked it. Your hand in his hair tugs at the base of his neck, fingers tangling in his curls as your body goes stiff. White hot heat washes over you and the stars in your eyes are so bright they blind you for a moment. For a second you panic, having to remind yourself where you are as his face becomes clear again.
His features are contorted as he finishes inside you. Brows pinched and nostrils flaring as he breaths through it. You’re suddenly reminded of the first time you two had spent together like this. In the back of his old beater van at Lover’s Lake. His face looked just like this, it was crazy to see it again. You wondered if this place gave him the same nostalgia.
The two of you settle in post orgasmic bliss, bodies tangled in each other despite the sticky sweat on each other's skin. You wished it didn’t have to end. For him it didn’t, not anymore anyway. He could stay like this all the time, but you…
The sound of the clock beeping brought tears to your eyes. It was the worst sound in the world. His grip on you tightened as he shushed in your ear.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ll be right here waiting for you when you come back.”
“You promise?" You choke out, feeling less and less of his touch as you start to fade.
“I always am, aren't I?”
This was your favorite look of his. Sure, you couldn’t deny the way he made you feel back when you first met, but this decade was some of the best years of your life with him.
“I don’t get it,” he says as he swings your hands together. The two of you walk along the city streets. Music you haven’t heard in nearly 4 decades can be heard playing in every building you pass. “This is when I started getting grey hairs. You sure you don’t want to-”
“No, Eddie,” you laugh, “I told you that I like the seasoned rock star version of you. Sure, you were plenty cute back when we were young-young, but this you?” You tuck a curl behind his ear, kissing his cheek where it sat. “This is the sexy dad version of you that I love. Good thing you got that vasectomy because we probably would have had way more kids back then.”
His laugh is like an old song to your ears that gets harder and harder to remember. You wish you could capture the sound in a bottle to keep with you when the two of you aren’t together. His ring clad hand squeezes yours, bringing it his lips to skin there.
“How are they? Any updates you can think of?” The way he phrases it doesn’t get past you, but for the sake of argument you let it go.
“Leah and David are going to be grandparents again. A…little girl this time, I think,” you try and wrack your brain for the information. “Bella is due in, um, December. Right, yeah, because it’s close to Christmas.”
“That’s awesome! Bella was a peach when she was little, so I’m sure Leah and Connor were excited when they found out Bella was having a girl after three boys.”
“Three boys?” You look at him confused.
“Yeah, remember? Liam, Markus, and Jay. And this baby will be their first girl.”
“Oh, yeah, I knew that” you say quickly.
“Sweetheart,” he sing-songs to you. You wipe your eyes on the strap of your dress before looking at him.
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? I only know these things because you tell me. I wish I could be there to see them.” His voice trails off, a somber look in his eyes that he tries to disguise with a weak smile. “Have they, um, changed their minds about…”
You shake your head. You didn’t blame them for not wanting to come here. The only reason you were even here is because of him. As real as they try to make this place, it still feels like living in a film or a music video. Eddie says it feels more authentic for him now. Maybe you’ll feel that way one day.
“Oh fuck, don’t stop, don’t stop, please, don’t stop!”
Your thighs shake as Eddie’s tongue does wonders between them. He’d been edging you since you woke up, pushing you almost past your limit just to pull away.
“I don’t know baby,” he says mere inches from your mound, “Do you still have doubts about me? Wouldn’t want to do all of this just for you to think I’m trying to fool you.”
“No, no, you’re real, fuck, you’re so real,” you say as you grip his hair, desperately trying to ride against his face as you feel your orgasm approaching.
“Damn right I am,” his fingers pick up their pace as they curl into that sweet spot in your walls. “They can’t fake the way I know you inside out. Know exactly how much you can take, how you like the way I…”
His tongue moves meticulously on your clit, the combination with his fingers finally pushing you over the edge as your eyes squeeze shut, moaning his name. He slows his movements, letting you come down from your high before pulling away.
Your eyes blink open, shifting down from the ceiling to where Eddie was between your legs. Except it wasn’t Eddie whose eyes were looking back at you. You shift up in the bed, pulling the covers over yourself as you scream, “Eddie? Eddie!”
The man jumps up, confused. “Baby, what's wrong? I’m right here.” Your eyes don’t leave him, terrified of what will happen if you look away.
“W-what? Where’s Eddie? Who the hell are you?”
He moves towards you, causing you to flinch. But when you open your eyes again Eddie’s the one standing in front of you. His hands cup your face, shushing you to calm you down. He climbs in the bed with you, holding you close as you cry and whispering reassurances in your ear.
“He looks so real,” you shout to Eddie, eyeing the very real looking Kurt Cobain playing on the stage in front of you.
“Maybe it’s just because we’re so far back. He died way before they could have uploaded him here, so he’s gotta be a hologram or something,” Eddie shakes his head as he shouts back to you.
“Maybe they used people’s memories to make him?”
He shrugs, taking a sip of his beer, offering it to you when he catches you looking at him. You wave him off, resting your head against his arm. A memory jumps to the front of your mind, like deja vu.
“Eddie,” he looks down at you, “We’ve seen them before, haven’t we?”
His face lights up, nodding excitedly. “Yeah, back in ‘93! You remember that?”
“Kind of. It feels like we’ve done this before,” you bite at your lower lip, a nervous habit you’d picked up in your life.
“Well, we’ve been to a lot of concerts. Do you remember standing on the side stage to watch them in Portland?”
“Side stage? Why would we have been on the side stage?”
He blinks at you wordlessly, dark eyes becoming misty as he looks into yours. You feel a guilt creep in. You should know the answer, but you don’t, and the feeling eats you up inside. What else have you forgotten? How many times has he asked you if you remember something, only to break his heart over and over again?
How much longer before you forgot his face?
“Grandma, please.”
“No, I don’t want to take those damn pills!”
You smack the man’s hand away, sending pills flying across the floor. A sharp pain shoots through your shoulder, causing you to cry out in pain.
“Grandma, those pills are to help with the pain. I promise I’m not giving you anything else.” The man before you looks familiar, his dark loose curls and deep brown eyes that feel safe are the only reason you even let him in your house, even if he insists that he lives there.
“Well, damnit, if you had said they were for pain I would have taken them,” you say through gritted teeth. Eddie sighs, placing his ring clad hand on top of yours. It doesn’t look like your hand. The skin looks too withered and bruised to be yours, but the feeling was there. “Eddie, can you bring me something to drink?”
“My name is-” Eddie looks at you for a moment. Defeated, he sighs, “Yes, grandma, I’ll be right back.”
The man comes back a few minutes later with a drink and helps you take a sip from the straw. “Do you want anything to eat?” He asks, hope in his eyes as you ponder for a moment, only to be dashed away when you refuse.
The man gets you cleaned up and ready for bed, and you only give him a little bit of shit as he does, your body too tired to fight tonight.
You watch as he fiddles with a little round device on your bedside table. You’re not sure what it does but you know in the back of your mind that it makes you happy when it’s working.
“Uncle Dustin called to check in on you today,” the man says as he presses a button, bouncing his head happily as it turns green. “I told him you said hi.”
“Why the hell would you tell your friend I said hi?” You grumble, feeling the sleep start to take over your body. You eyelids are heavy, the room going dark as you drift off.
“Goodnight, grandma.”
You wake a moment later to the feeling of Eddie’s hair tickling your nose. Slowly, you blink your eyes open, brown eyes staring down at you from where you lay on his chest. The soft up and down of his chest is missing, not that he needs to do that anymore, a sad reminder of what this place is for him..
“Awake so soon, sweetheart,” he asks, his hand rubbing up and down your arm. You nod, shifting your body so you can stretch out next to him. “You know I’m not going anywhere,” he sighs, eyes flicking between yours. “I don’t want you to miss out on anything.”
“I’m not,” you say with a smile hoping that it would be enough to put his mind at ease. He pulls you in for a kiss and holds you close to him. Even if this place isn’t your home, Eddie always makes you feel like you belong.
“Hey, Eddie,” you whisper into his neck, and you can feel him hum on the top of your head where his chin rests. “Who’s Dustin?”
It's still for a long moment. His lack of response has you worried. The heave of his chest has you pulling away, sitting up next to him in the bed. Tears roll down his cheeks and you quickly wipe them away with your thumbs.
“E-Eddie I’m sorry, I-I don’t know why I even asked.” It’s true. The name sits in your head but you don’t know why. It's a hollow thought, with no meaning.
“You really don’t remember?” His voice is strained. For some reason his question made you angry. Like he was calling you stupid for not remembering. Why does everyone get so upset when you can’t remember something?
“No,” you say sternly. “And I don’t want to remember!”
You throw the blankets off of you, getting out of the bed and storming out. The hem of your dress tickles your ankles as the breeze blows down the beach. The further you go the more you start to forget where you’re at.
Now you’re running, panicking with no one else around to help you. You trip, hands hitting the sand as you fall to your knees. You feel helpless, confused, wailing into the empty beach that you don’t remember coming to. You hear your name being called. A man with long, dark hair approaches you, attempting to put his arms around you.
“Don’t touch me!” You push him away, trying to get up on your own. “I don’t need your help, young man!”
The look on his face is nothing short of mortified. “No, no, this isn’t right,” he says, shaking his head, hands grabbing at his hair. “Please don’t forget me, please! Something isn't right!”
Suddenly your ears start ringing. The ringing gets louder and louder until bells and alarms swirl around you, and vision starts to spin. You try covering your ears but the sounds are coming from inside your own head. It feels like you’re screaming but you can’t hear. The man's hands are on you a moment later shaking you, and his mouth is moving but you can’t hear him either.
Your vision starts to go white and you feel your body becoming heavy. Everything feels cold, then nothing. The last thing you feel is the man’s lips on your forehead.
“I think this is the best chicken you’ve ever made. Swear on my life, sweetheart.”
“That’s not much to swear on, Eds.”
He gives you a knowing look from across the table, continuing to dig into the dinner you made for the two of you. He was right, it did taste almost as good as your own grandmother had made it when you were young, but that seemed to be how things are in San Junipero. Something you’re sure they built into the software when they made this place.
“Do you want to walk to that new ice cream place on the pier? I heard it’s amazing,” you ask as you grab your plate to place in the sink. “I bet they have that gross pistachio ice cream you like.”
“Hey, don’t knock it until you try it,” Eddie says with a mouth full of food, handing you his dirty dishes as you start to clean up.
“I did try it. Fifty years ago, remember?” You laugh as you clean the dishes, handing them back to him to dry. His smile reaches his eyes as he looks at you.
“Yeah, it was our second date. How could I forget? I got ketchup all over your new dress, too. I don’t know why you agreed to another date with me after that.”
“Hmm, I don’t know either. Maybe it's because you’re, oh, I don’t know, really cute or something?” He shoves you playfully and you shove him back. Shoving turns to grabbing, and grabbing turns to groping. His hands all over your body as you pull him by the belt loops into your bedroom.
It was amazing to feel this again. For it to feel real. To be intimate with Eddie after he had been gone for those seven long, lonely years.
You thought your time was limited when he got the diagnosis. That the cancer would take him and you would have an empty hole inside you that you would never recover from. Rock star money could buy a new car for all your family and friends or a last family trip to Rome, but you couldn’t pay enough for cancer not to spread so rapidly in the body.
Money could, however, get you early access to a new experimental technology that may be able to save your person hood to a cloud.
“Fuck, Eddie, I miss this,” you moan as you bounce up and down on his cock, “Missed you.”
Eddie's eyes were glued between you, watching as he disappeared inside you over and over. He pulled you down to press your bodies together, letting his hips roll into your as your lips locked in hot passion. You weren’t sure if it was because the two of you hadn’t had bodies like these in so long or if it was just the effect San Junipero has on you after death, but as the two of you lay breathless you can’t help but think that it’s the best sex the two of you have had in a long time.
“He really does look like me, doesn’t he,” Eddie says. You follow his gaze to a picture of your great-grandson, Micha. He was almost a clone of Eddie with the same long curls and dark eyes. And thanks to a recent 80s revival, they even had the same sense of fashion. You’d let him go through yours and Eddie’s shared dresser after he passed, letting him take whatever “vintage” pieces of Eddie’s wardrobe he wanted. “I hope he washed that vest though, I’m sure that thing stinks.”
“You think I was going to give him your vest without washing it first? God you should have seen how brown the water was when I first let it soak,” you cringe thinking about how many times you had to clean the tub after that.
“Damn, he really must have been your favorite if you did that. You wouldn’t even wash that thing for me.”
“Oh, shut up,” you roll your eyes, “I think you’re forgetting that you wouldn’t let me clean it. “Too many memories” or something like that.”
He looked at you in faux offense, but broke character when you didn’t back down. You use the last bit of sunlight to talk about the other pictures that now adorned your shared bedroom. Pictures of young family members he never got to meet, seven years worth of memories with friends and family he didn’t get to share after he had passed.
There was a picture that someone had taken of you and some of your friends that had been able to come out for Eddie’s funeral. You didn’t want to put that one up, but Eddie said it made him happy that all of his friends still cared so much even after he was gone.
It was bittersweet for both of you as your memory had started to rapidly fade in the last year of your life. You barely remember the time you spent here with him. Thankfully you had the memories from when you were awake regularly uploaded into the cloud just as they started letting the living enter San Junipero.
“I wish they could be here, too,” you sighed.
“Me too,” his hand squeezed yours, “But, I get it. Maybe by the time they get to our age it will be safer for them.” You nod and break away from him, standing up from the bed. “Where are you going, miss ma’am?”
You pick up your dress from the floor, slipping it over your body. You look over to him, the man who gave you one of the most amazing lives that any person could have ever lived. The freak of Hawkins High turned rock star, never forgetting those who were most important to him in his life. The man who you made two beautiful children with, who never felt like their dad put the rock star life before them. He was the love of your living life and now you got a second chance to love him for as long as this place would allow it.
“I think someone promised to get me some nasty pistachio ice cream.”
thank you for reading!
