falling like the stars, falling in love
eddie Munson x f!reader. unrequited steve harrington x reader. unrequited eddie munson x nancy wheeler. steve harrington x nancy wheeler.
summary: you’re fifteen when you fall in love with your best friend, and twenty-one when it all falls apart. eddie munson is there to pick up the pieces of your heart, and you’re there to gather his. but both of you get more than you ever bargained for when your silly friends with benefits arrangement becomes complicated. but such is the nature of love. (15k words).
warnings: 18+, smut, loss of virginity (r), friends with benefits, codependent (maybe toxic) relationships, angst, unrequited love, heartbreak, second chance romance, drinking, mentions of recreational smoking…but i promise a happy ending.
——
The sun shines the next morning.
There’s comfort in knowing it always does, even if the day that came before was one of the hardest you ever faced.
A new page, a turning point, and maybe a new beginning.
It’s all you hope for.
You lean against the wooden beams of the lake house, overlooking Lover’s Lake. Birds chirp in the trees, leaves shift to and fro, the water ripples and shudders, a child giggles near the dock, a mother calls out to another running in the grass.
A blanket covers your form, the chill of the morning air spreading gooseflesh along your arms.
Your body aches in places, a lovely kind of ache. An ache from his fingers along your skin, his lips at your mouth, his hips between your thighs.
An ache from being loved thoroughly.
A living, breathing, comforting thing.
“Are you okay?”
It’s a soft whisper against your ear. You hum gently as he draws nearer.
His hands circle your waist. Your fingers brush over the backs of his forearms. Familiar.
The heat of his chest rests at your back. Your body slumps into his, a new comfort to be found there.
His chest is still bare, hair still a mess. But when you turn in his arms and take him in you find you like it. Tousled and unkempt by your hands, his eyes peering down at yours soft and sweet and warm.
Uniquely him. You love those eyes. Could spend forever falling into them. A long time, a lifetime, but spending it beside him is the greatest gift you could ever long for.
And the greatest gift you’ve ever received.
The answer isn’t simple.
Then again, none of this has ever been.
——
It starts when you’re fifteen.
Silly teenagers with nothing but dreams and fantasies.
No thoughts or cares in the world, other than what clothes to wear, what part time job you want to work, who you’re interested in and who likes you back.
Silliness.
Triviality that, if you look back on it now, wish you could get back.
Steve Harrington is perfect. He’s your best friend. The first person you met when you moved to Hawkins at nine years of age. He’s charming and on the school baseball and basketball teams.
He’s liked by most, but to him you are special.
Best friends, in the way that always brings a smile to your face because you know it’s the forever kind.
Permanent in the way the scar on your knee is, from the day you and Steve raced across the pool yard after hours, outrunning Hopper, and you’d cut it when hopping the fence in your efforts to get away.
You’re fifteen and Steve’s body is changing a bit. He’s fuller than you remember, honed by hours of working out, of skin tanned from endless hours in the summer sun. He’s always been handsome, but that summer he just seemed different.
You’re fifteen and you’re reading a book, left propped open between the circle of your thighs as he calls your name and you lift yourself up to sit, taking in the boy treading water in the pool.
His hair is a wet mess. Little droplets clinging to the ends of his hair, his long lashes. He’s grinning at you — a pearly white smile that has your heart twirling in your chest.
You shove it away, because it has been doing that for months now. It’s a new side effect with him. A sickness you’ve never felt before. Some might call it love, and you groan, shoving your finger in your mouth when your friends tease you about it because ‘he’s my best friend’ and ‘that’ll never happen.’
But you don’t know what else to call that annoying fluttery feeling in your belly when he draws near. Nor can you stop the pitter patter of your heart when he looks your way.
It’s inconvenient, troubling, and it’s a crush.
A silly crush that’ll go away. These things always do.
Don’t they?
And maybe that’s a foolish thought. You certainly think so when he teases you to come on in. Warns that the water is warm.
You hesitate on the hem of your tee shirt. You don’t know why, because he’s seen you in bathing suits before, but lately even this feels different. You want him to look at you the way he looks at the girls at school, and yet you also don’t want him to look at all, because if he looks he might see all your imperfections. Might see something he doesn’t like, and for some reason you hate that even more.
Because you want him to like you, to like all of you, to want you in the way you know you want him.
You’re fifteen and you’re swimming in a pool with your best friend. Your boy who also happens to be your friend. Never a boyfriend.
Never that.
You’re fifteen and you splutter out how you turned down a date with Brendan Abbott because, “I’ve never been kissed.”
“Really?” Steve asks, and he sounds genuinely surprised. And before you can even question the curiosity in his voice, he adds, “I just mean…you’re pretty. I bet loads of guys want to kiss you.”
Not the one that matters, though, you think to yourself.
Steve’s kissed dozens of girls, you know. You know because he’s told you, his cheeks staining a pretty pink. He always goes pink like that, and you always smile back, despite that odd pain that wedges its way between your ribs.
Heartache you think, but again, you’ll never put a name to it.
“I could kiss you, you know?” he suggests. And he’s red again in the face, quickly spluttering, “I mean, your first kiss should be with someone special, right?”
Steve’s the most special.
So you’re fifteen and he’s wading over to you in the pool. He cups your cheek and looks you in the eye. There’s a heartbeat and he’s kissing you. Soft, sweet, simple. It doesn’t linger long. Doesn’t give you enough time to feel like fireworks are exploding in the sky. But it’s enough to set something into motion.
Something terrible, really.
Because you’re fifteen and you’re in love — and maybe you’ll always be.
——
You’re nineteen when you meet Eddie.
A glass bottle to the man you love’s throat. He’s there in an instant, terror in his eyes, and you shriek at the suddenness of it. His eyes flash and you recognize him.
You had…a class before with him.
Can’t recall which.
You know him, of course.
Everyone knows Eddie Munson. Maybe not for all good reasons — and at this moment, it’s the worst reason. Because you’ve been looking for him for hours, trying to figure out what in the hell happened to Chrissy.
He looks like a deer in headlights. A terrified human searching for comfort when the world has grown cold.
He recalls what he saw.
Her body, broken. The way she hovered up on the ceiling. The way her eyes were ripped from her body. It’s gruesome and horrible and you curl a hand around his forearm when you notice he’s trembling. A shiver that only someone who has seen death head on knows. You’d seen it before, when Billy died the summer before that.
So you offer him that. A hand for comfort, as he recounts the worst day of his life, and you realize the newest worst day of yours.
It ends up being a long few days. You spend them hoping you’ll all get out alive, and in the process you find a friend in him. He’s charismatic and frenetic, he’s funny and he’s dramatic and he’s handsome in a rugged way that Steve isn’t.
And he notices the way you stare at Steve. Offers you a hand of comfort as you all trek into the Upside Down. You take it, and it feels like a new friendship.
Neither of you speaks, but it feels like an understanding.
——
At twenty, Steve’s halfway in love with Nancy all over again. You’re used to this. Steve has fallen in love with what feels like all of Hawkins — all except you. Neither of you speaks about that. You’ll never bring it up to him, can’t fathom the idea of shattering years of friendship.
But there’s something different about this time. The way he talks about her and how things are going. He’s dreaming of his future. Talking about kids. His Winnebago. About a future that suddenly seems like it’s hurtling towards you, while you’re seemingly stuck in place in the past.
It chokes you. The idea of him and her. Her and him and their six children he tells you about. Traveling all around the world, making memories, starting a new life.
He never talks like this and it terrifies you.
“I’m sure he’s just being his usual self,” Robin says, “diving in and hoping he doesn’t sink. You know how things were with him and Nancy before.”
“This feels different, Rob.” You huff and you whine and she offers you another beer and a look of sympathy you know means she’s really just doing her best.
There are few people in this world who know how deep your feelings run for your best friend. Those quite literally being her and Eddie Munson. And you plan on keeping it that way until the day you die.
Even so, it still hurts the next weekend when you’re all over Eddie’s new government funded apartment for a game night. Nancy gets up to leave and Steve offers to drive her home. And though you offer to clean the dishes for Eddie in the kitchen, it’s not an innocent offer by any means, because you watch them through the curtains.
Don’t know why you do. It stings. Burns in your eyes fiercely as you watch him lean down to kiss her. Watch how his hand slides down her back and into the pocket of her jeans, the way their bodies fit together like they’re made to, how he holds her close like she’s everything to him. Just like he’s everything to you.
“You’re only screwing over yourself by doing that,” Eddie murmurs from behind you, a dish towel hanging over his shoulder. He holds out a hand as you swipe at the tears gathering on your cheeks, and you hand him a plate to dry down.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” you huff, sponge running over the glass. “Plus you’re one to talk.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.” He shakes his head with a scoff, moving around you to put a plate away.
“I don’t?” you ask, eyes narrowing.
“No.”
There’s a day you remember vividly. All of you at Lover’s Lake. You, freshly out of the water after Steve tackled you off the dock at the end of your family’s lake home and the two of you ended up splashing at one another for an hour.
He sat by Nancy around the fire after and you opened the screen door to find Eddie leaning over the back porch railing with a beer in his hand. He watched her like one would watch a movie. Her every move, each smile that curled her lips, holding onto her every word like he might memorize them all. The lilt, the cadence, the tone.
In a moment, you recalled all the times you’d seen them together prior. His best friend, he proclaimed. And maybe it was in the way Steve was your best friend. The other half of your soul. Your person. But you also saw the hurt reflected there in Eddie’s gaze whenever she stared at Steve.
Because while Eddie always stared at Nancy, Nancy always stared at Steve.
“It sucks when you’re always looking at them, but they never look at you back,” you laugh miserably, handing him a glass cup, back in his kitchen, “right?”
He looks away.
He doesn’t speak after that.
Good, you think.
Conversation over.
——
It carries on like that.
Pining.
Wanting.
Waiting.
Loving him while you watch him love another.
But you suppose it’s not all bad — that there is some solace in this world you’re destined to walk.
There’s comfort in the kids. In watching them flourish. In your friendships. There are milestones. When you graduate from your community college program and move into your first apartment. Steve, with a ball cap on his head, arms toned as they hug your boxes. Eddie behind him, his hair pulled back into a ponytail.
They’ve grown closer over time, best of friends who scare similar scars. Kindred, in a sick sort of way they never should have been, simply because sometimes the world is cruel.
Eddie looks at you and you look at him and there’s a smolder of something between you, a promise for when everyone else heads home for the night.
That’s a newer development, too.
This…pseudo relationship with Eddie. A space between being together and not. In knowing each other’s bodies in a way that most friends don’t.
And maybe it’s wrong. The way you twine together some nights like vines. Him stumbling through the door after the sun goes down over Hawkins — because no one knows about this secret dalliance — and rushing across your living room to grasp your face in his hands. To kiss you soundly and drag you down onto the floor, ridding you of your clothes, your underwear, his mouth seeking your center like he’s starving for air.
You’re not really sure when it starts.
Sure, there’s always been an attraction there, but it’s always been something you don’t really dwell on, because Steve is the true paramour of your affection.
And you see the way Eddie watches Nancy.
Right?
But Eddie is kind and loving and he adores you in a way that feels sort of like running toward a cliff and jumping without a parachute.
You always know he’ll catch you. Don’t really know when he became that person for you. The one who you trust wholly and completely.
Yet if you think really hard about it, you’d say it started on your twenty-first birthday. After a strong drink and plenty of dancing at the bar. Steve grabbed your hand and twirled you around. Swayed and bobbed to the music and you grabbed his hand and tugged him outside. And maybe it was the little bit of alcohol you consumed and liquid courage granted by it, but you pushed him up against the side of a lamppost and kissed him.
When you think about it now, you want to cry, but in the moment it felt right.
He spluttered and gasped and you knew you’d made a mistake. Watched the way sadness creeped into his eyes, the awareness dawning on him.
Someone barked out a laugh, yourself maybe. Him. You weren’t sure. But it sounded disbelieving. Years and years of unspoken words spilled out like ink onto a blank sheet of paper. Left there to rot. And he stared — stared at you with a hurt in his eyes that ripped you down the middle. Because you knew he couldn’t return it, knew in an instant that he didn’t love you in the way that you wanted him to.
Not in the way that he loved Nancy.
Nancy. Perfect Nancy with the perfect hair and the perfect mind and the perfect life. Nancy, who was beautiful and stunning and wonderful and inspiring — and why wouldn’t someone love her? She was your friend, a good one at that, and a girl that any guy would want to be with.
Nancy, who you knew was the one meant for Steve, even if admitting that to yourself felt like a knife wedging its way into your gut.
“Honey…” he trailed and his voice broke. An aching, shattering thing that mimicked what was going on inside your chest.
Tiny, little shards. Little ruby glitter in the cavity that once housed a beating organ.
“It’s silly, right?” You laughed again. A hollow sound. A grieved cry that had Steve reaching for your forearm, trying to hold you together. “I've loved you since I was fifteen.”
“You’re drunk…”
“I’m not,” you argued. If anything, you felt stone cold sober now.
It didn’t change anything. Didn’t make it any less true. Maybe it was how Steve coped with it. Blaming it on too many drinks, emotions running high, your lives changing at a rate neither of you saw coming.
“Is everything okay out here?” Eddie stood on the sidewalk, watching from a distance, ready to step in if he needed to.
He did that often. Sought you out. Made sure you were okay. Watched your back as you watched his. There was always an awareness there that both of you held toward one another. An unspoken thing. Special still.
“Just…a moment?” Steve asked, and Eddie looked your way. Waited until you nodded it was, in fact, okay before he slipped back inside the bar and left you alone with your heartbreak. “You’re my best friend. I love you, but I —”
“Don’t love me, love me,” you finished for him.
Felt your lip wobbling, felt Steve’s arms as they wrapped around you, tugged you into a solid chest. You heaved out a loud sob, the kind that had him clutching you tighter, one hand at the back of your head to keep your forehead pressed into the hollow of his throat. Kept you hidden as you weeped, just like he knew you preferred it.
Neither of you spoke for the rest of the night. Kind of left it like there, open in the air, the understanding that you loved him and he didn’t love you, and it hurt every time you thought about it — every time you reminded yourself that you’d worn your heart on your sleeve and watched it fall to the ground.
Everyone left in separate cars. Robin with her girlfriend, Steve with Nancy, Jonathan with Argyle, leaving you to clamber on into Eddie’s car. Both of you had sobered up enough, dawning clarity breaking like the sunrise.
Eddie turned to you when you pulled up to your parent’s house. Looked at you with a sympathy that made you draw the hoodie you pulled on over your dress closer to your body, wanting to shrink away from him. Make yourself smaller, if only to hide from the emotions warring in your mind.
“Did something happen tonight?” He asked, his voice soft.
You tugged at a stray lint on your thigh, rolled it between your fingers, shrugged a bit. “I kissed Steve.”
“Shit,” he breathed out, unbuckling his seatbelt. Leaned back into his seat, finger running through his hair.
“And then I told him I loved him,” you added, head shaking as you laughed pitifully.
His head shifted on the headrest, eyes taking in your downturned lips. “I take it that didn’t go well?”
Another huff of a laugh. “He said ‘I love you, but…’”
“Fuck,” he said, hand reaching over the center console to rest on your thigh. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
He always called you sweetheart. You noticed he called things he held dear to his heart that. His guitar, Max, El, Erica. Nancy. Robin. And most recently, you. So it shouldn’t have warmed your heart, but it did. Twisted something low in your belly, a warm, unfurling sort of thing.
The next words spilled out of you in a rush. Set into motion the course of the next several years. “Do you want to come upstairs? You’ll have to be quiet. I just…don’t want to be alone.”
“I—I…yeah?”
The offer was to talk. To find comfort in another human. Because you hadn’t even thought about sex. Hadn’t had sex in your twenty-one years. Not because you were holding onto your virginity or anything, but because you just hadn’t felt comfortable enough yet to do so. And it wasn’t like you invited him up there for that. It started out innocently enough. Him following closely behind you through your home, slipping up your stairs, fingers laced together. An anticipation hummed in your blood, a tremble of uncertainty in the way he stood there in your bedroom, not moving from the door once you closed it behind the two of you. He seemed so large in your childhood bedroom. Hair a mess on his head, in the way it always was, charmingly so. His hands slipped into his tight jeans, the gesture making his black tee stretch taut over his chest.
A dress still clung to your body after you removed your jacket. Something flowing and pretty that you picked out with Robin the week before. It suddenly felt sticky and tight on your body, and with a nervous glance, Eddie caught your hint and turned around to face the door. Tapped his fingers against his thigh as you undressed and slipped on something more comfortable. A simple pair of sweatpants and an oversized tee shirt.
“You can sit on my bed, you know?” You had sat back down against the headboard, the wood littered with endless pillows and a stuffed penguin that Steve had gotten you at a fair one summer.
In a fearful effort to rid yourself of the evidence of your stuffed friend, you lifted it in your hand and raised an arm to toss it into your closet when Eddie launched himself down onto your mattress with a thump and snatched it out of your grip.
“I don’t sleep with that, or anything…” Heat flooded your cheeks, because why did you care if he knew you actually did sleep with the silly thing, if only to keep the nightmares from the Upside Down away?
“It’s cute,” he murmured to himself, ringed fingers tight around the black and white toy. Sounded genuine and you didn’t doubt him; never did, truly. “Got a name for it?”
“Pip the Penguin,” you said quietly, so quietly.
“I like it…” Suddenly, he changed his voice, warping it into something an octave higher than his usual tone. Bopped the fluffy creature against your forehead, making you laugh. Pretended to talk with the thing and said, “Mr. Pip the Penguin wants you to turn that frown upside down. Because you’re so fucking beautiful when you smile.”
“Pip the Penguin doesn’t curse,” you admonished, plucking him from Eddie’s hands and placing him onto your bedside table. And then, softer still, “You think I’m beautiful?”
“Always,” he promised, and you rolled over onto your side to look at him, to really take in your best friend’s features. “I’m sorry your birthday is shot to hell.”
“It’s not,” you admitted, reaching over to run your fingers along the rings flush against his knuckles, “I’m spending it with you.”
“For what it’s worth,” he said, holding your hand in his and pausing your movements, thumb running across your skin, “you’re great and deserve the world. Anyone who can’t see that is kind of an idiot. Sorry, Harrington.”
You level him with a ‘you’re kidding me’ look.
“I’m serious,” he added, smiling a bit. “I mean, you play guitar like a beast. I don't know many girls who do that. Definitely metal. You’re fun to be around, really cool, definitely would smoke with.”
You had. Numerous times. “Eddie.”
“Maybe a little bit of a shit driver —”
“Eddie!” You shrieked a giggle, clutching his hand tighter.
“I said 'a little bit’” he teased, pushing back a hair that fell into your eyes. “Did you forget that time I had to try and shove your car out of the mud?”
“Yeah, but it was you who told me to turn onto that side road in that rain storm.”
“It was still a fun day, though.”
You sat in your car for hours, rain splattering against the window, waiting for a tow truck. The boy beside you, hair wet from the rain, his shirt clinging to his body. His chest rising and falling with the effort, the cloudy sky and the way he reminded you of sunshine even still. Remembered the way he looked at you, all soft around the edges, that little dimple in his cheek. So handsome it had made your chest ache with it — kind of like how it was then.
“It was,” you agreed softly.
Neither of you slept that night in your bedroom. Instead you talked until the sun started to rise over Hawkins, a quiet something glimmering in the spaces between the two of you. It didn’t have a name yet, no wings to give it flight, but there was something new there nonetheless. You talked about everything and nothing. Dreams, wants, fears. Silly thoughts that sprang to life in your mind, and he was a perfect listener — nodded and laughed and was wholly engaged in you, and you in him.
And you don’t think about Steve once, the ache of rejection dulling to a sweet nothingness.
“Wanna watch a movie?” It was asked after some time, when the nervousness of where you wanted the rest of your morning to go creeped in after your parents called upstairs that they were headed off to work, leaving you alone with the boy they didn’t know was in your bed.
He held you like that. On your bed, arms around your waist from behind as colors flashed across the television screen. Both of you were quiet for a long time. No words said, nothing to say really, until you rolled back over and looked up into his umber eyes. Wondered what it would be like to kiss him. You didn’t have to wonder for long, though; he leaned in, nudged his nose against yours, cupped your cheek. Asked you if ‘this was okay.’ A nod, and you sank into the mattress at that first brush of his mouth over yours, at the way your heart fluttered, something sparkly and beautiful flashing behind your eyes. He held you like that, kissing your lips, your jaw, your neck. Fingers tentatively explored as you sighed and hummed against him, over the slope of your neck, the curve of your shoulder, the line of your collarbone. And then, with a gentle touch, he brushed a thumb along your ribcage, beneath a breast.
Testing, asking for permission.
“I didn’t come up here to hook up,” he said, but it was muffled by your lips against his, an eagerness drowning out his words.
“I know.”
“I…do really think you’re beautiful.” You tugged at the hem of his shirt, helped him pull it up and over his head. Ran your fingers along the scars there. “Fuck, I — you’re my best friend and I —”
“I want this,” you whispered, leaning up to kiss a line across his pecs. “Do you want this?”
Could feel that he did. Could feel it against your thigh, the thick heat of him through denim, straining against his belt and zipper. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” A kiss. “Yes, Eddie.” Another kiss.
He tugged off your top. You slipped off your sweats. He ran calloused fingers along your abdomen, over the slope of your breasts, teased at sensitive flesh. Watched as your head rolled to the side and a sigh spilled from you, feelings you’d never felt settling low in your belly. You liked it, liked the intensity in how he looked at you when he lowered himself down your abdomen, kissing your skin. Liked the desire aimed wholly at you in his eyes as he eased your thong down your thighs and tossed them toward your closet. Felt a thrill at the stare locked on the place only your fingers had ever ventured before this night, like he’d discovered hidden treasure.
“Eddie?” A nervous whispered breath.
He climbed back up your body hastily, thumbed at the worry line creasing your forehead. “Yeah, sweetheart?”
“I’ve never…you’re my…” You swallowed as something like understanding passed over his features.
His forehead dropped against yours, deep breaths spilling from his nose, hand holding the curve of your cheek. “Are you sure? I want you to be one thousand percent sure. Your first time…it should —”
Your hand slid up over his stomach, over the rapid thrum of his heart. “Yes, Eddie. One hundred thousand percent sure.”
He leaned over you with a laugh to turn Pip the Penguin around, facing the lamp. “Can’t have him seeing this. Feels like someone is watching.”
And you laughed, just like you always did with him. Just as you did when he slipped out of his boxers and nearly tripped getting out of them, tumbling forward onto your bed, just as you did when he crawled back up your body and blew a raspberry into your neck to ease the worried lines between your brow when you finally saw him bare for the first time. Something so foreign and yet exhilarating to you. Watching his nervous hands, the way he hovered over your body, the gravity of the moment finally hitting you. He readied you with gentle fingers, with a sort of pleasure that you’d only previously known by your own hand, and yet felt so differently when it was someone else’s inside of you.
Later, as you gasped and shook within his arms in the aftershocks of your orgasm, you watched him roll on a condom with blissful, hazy eyes. Clasped your hand in his as he pressed it down into your pillow, not without kissing the back of it first.
“Tell me to stop if it’s too much, okay?” he asked, and you felt him there, pushing in just the slightest bit, face pinched in concentration.
Eyes widened at the feeling, so foreign and yet not wholly unpleasant.
Just…different.
“Is this okay?” He pulled out a little, pushed in. Pulled out, pushed in a little further each time.
And then, when he reached the point where it seemed your body wouldn’t allow him to go any further, you gasped and Eddie’s hips stilled immediately.
“Shit,” he breathed, dropping onto his elbows, searching your face worriedly, “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
You shook your head. “No, no…you can keep going. Just go s-slow.”
His fingers rubbed along your cheek. “Gotta relax, sweetheart.” You tried to do exactly that. Smiled to yourself as he distracted you with kisses along your jaw, fingers gripping into your hips, little circles along your thigh curled around his hip.
“Can you just, like…” You chewed on your bottom lip, the burning growing sharper with each slow movement of him within you. “Push all the way in.”
“It’ll hurt,” he said, wincing at the thought of hurting you.
“Only for a second. Please,” you leaned up to kiss him soundly, nuzzling his nose as you added, “I want to feel all of you, Eddie.”
As he warned…it hurt, a fullness you’d never felt before. Stole your breath. He wiped your tears away, whispering ‘sorry’ after sorry into your kiss-bitten lips. There was a brief moment where you jokingly teased that you worried if he’d actually fit, even voiced it to him as he shook with laughter into your neck at what he took as a compliment. Because laughter seemed to be a theme between the two of you. You giggled with him, breath hitching when your muscles loosened and he sank in all the way, your body connected with his in an unfamiliar and yet wonderful all at the same time.
That first time was awkward, giggly, and yet perfect all the same. Your bodies coming together in an unhurried rhythm that maybe ended too soon because he spluttered out that you felt too good — a pretty praise that had you preening, and then pleading when he rolled his hips in a way that had you seeing stars, cresting a wave, the crash of your second orgasm stealing your breath away.
Now, it’s a little different.
In your apartment, your back against your new kitchen cabinets, your boy expertly licking at you like he might die if he doesn’t watch you crumble for the third time that afternoon.
First, when Steve and Robin finally left for the afternoon and he had you up against the door, your cheek against the frame, his name a mantra on your lips, his forehead at the back of your head as he filled you deliciously from behind. The second time, you barely made it onto your new bed — frame still on backorder — before he had you on your back, with you scoring marks down his shoulders. Knowing how to draw out your pleasure, to ramp it up – knowing your body in a way no one else ever has.
So different from the people you were a year ago, and yet still trying to pretend that the ties between you don’t grow more confusing with each and every passing day.
——
You’re twenty two and Steve has some news for you. And it’s never the kind of news one wants to hear from the man they’ve been in love with for nearly ten years.
“I’m going to ask Nance to marry me.”
“That’s great!” You blurt it out. You don’t even know why, because it’s a lie, just like the countless other things you have said to save face in front of him. “Really — Steve, that’s incredible! I’m so happy for you. How do you think you’ll go about asking her?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Turns out, it’s happening at Enzo’s the next week. Surrounded by all your best friends. Eddie sits at your right, watching as Steve gets down on one knee. As Nancy cries softly and accepts — as Steve slides a ring up onto her knuckle, thumb brushing against the back of her sparkling solitaire diamond.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t hurt quite like you thought it might. There’s an ache, sure. A feeling of loss that you always feel when it comes to Steve. Though when you turn your head and look at Eddie, and he squeezes your hand in his, there’s peace there.
That’s a newer development. Just as him staying over for days on end is, leaving things of his in your drawers, using your shower. You’re best friends who sleep together and spend all their extra time together, and yet there’s this limbo of where you are and if this is ever going anywhere that neither of you seems keen on opening up to talk about.
Steve finds you later that night, standing outside overlooking the restaurant’s garden. A freshly filled champagne flute rests in your hand. Eddie is inside with Robin, Nancy and the rest of your friends, laughing at the bar where you left them. But out here the world seems quieter. The stars twinkle brighter. Hawkins seems to rest, even though there’s a disquiet in your mind.
“That was a beautiful proposal,” you tell him, turning to rest your back against the railing. He joins you there, elbow leaning onto the metal, his own glass filled with an amber liquid shifting as he moves to get comfortable. “Really. I’m so proud of you guys. You deserve all the happiness in the world after all the hell we’ve been through as a group.”
“You’re in the wedding party, you know?” he chuckles, and you never doubted it. “You and Robin kind of both have to share the title of ‘best man.’”
“As long as we have matching outfits, I’m in,” you giggle airily, head tilting back to look up at the sky.
“You’re in your head a bit,” Steve says, like he knows, because he does.
He knows everything about you.
Except for one thing.
“I’m okay,” you lie, taking a sip of your drink, “just been a long night. We’re getting older, you know? I can’t party like we used to.”
He narrows his eyes, because you’re twenty two and full of shit.
“So it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact you and Eddie are seeing each other?”
“We’re not.”
Not a lie. ‘Seeing’ would imply that your relationship is going somewhere. What you and Eddie have been doing…what you are doing…it has no beginning and no end, but there’s an awareness that at any point either of you might meet someone else and move on.
Lately that thought hurts. Not sure what to do with that.
“Okay…having sex then.”
“Why do you have to say it like that?” You grimace. “It’s weird coming from you.”
“Oh, like we haven't discussed my sex life in thorough detail –”
“Yeah, and I can tell you, as someone who has lived through it, that wasn’t fun either.”
He continues, ignoring you, “Gotta say, kind of feels shitty that you didn’t tell me about it.”
“There’s nothing to ‘tell,’” you say, shifting to look at him. “We hooked up…and then kept hooking up. We hook up, it’s what we do. It’s all we do, actually. I mean, not all we do. We have to breathe and eat sometimes, and we are also friends –”
“Friends who f –”
“Steve Harrington, enough out of you, you child.” There’s a bite to your tone, but no bark. He smirks at you, a cheeky, proud-looking thing that would have made you mourn years ago, but makes you feel a little smug now. Maybe time truly does heal wounds. “How do you even know?”
“When Nancy and I were over at your place last weekend, we realized I forgot my jacket and I, uh, heard you guys.”
Horror seeps into your blood. You wish the ground would open up right now. Swallow you whole. Wish a black hole would suck you up, never to be seen again. “I could have been doing a workout video.”
He grins, and you contemplate shoving him over the railing, but Hopper’s inside and you don’t really feel like facing jail time for murdering your best friend on what should be the happiest day of his life. “Do you always moan Eddie’s name during your workouts?”
Cheeks burning, you splutter, “Maybe I do.”
“So how long has this been going on?” Steve asks, choosing to once again ignore your attempts at redirecting the conversation.
“My twenty-first birthday. We went back to my place,” you tell him, quickly amending, “technically it was the next day. We…talked the whole night. It felt right.”
It was the perfect first time, you decided long ago now. And then that second time, after you’d both passed out, and you climbed on top of him, asking him to show you what he liked, before you ended up skipping your college classes in favor of spending the whole day exploring each other’s bodies.
“That was a…shit day,” he says, and it sounds sad. You never talk about that day. After you told him you loved him, it was almost like both of you had an unspoken agreement in place to just never breathe life into it again. Hearing him acknowledge it now…you don’t really know how you feel about it. “I’m sorry for that, again. I just –”
“It’s in the past,” you reassure him, offering a smile. “We can’t help who we fall in love with.” You know that now.
“So he met Pip the Penguin?”
You shove him. “Yes, he did. And we’ve sort of been – doing this ever since.”
“You love him,” Steve says, like it’s not even a question. At your arched brows, he repeats, “You love him.”
It’s a silly notion, you want to tell him earnestly. Though the more you think on it, the more you can see his words have some merit. For years Steve’s been the object of your affection, and suddenly his relationship with Nancy hurts less, you can be around him without feeling like there’s a raw, bleeding wound in your chest. You always accredited it to getting used to knowing this isn’t something that’s going to change. Yet as you picture Eddie's face in your mind, a coy smile tugs at your lips.
Steve grins. “See?”
“How do you know?” Disbelief imbues your words. It can’t be this simple, can it? To simplify the feelings with the word ‘love.’ An emotion that seems so big and so scary.
“I know what you look like when you’re in love,” he says, mouth tugging southward a bit over how he knows. He makes his way over to the door leading inside, needing to get back to his party. His eyes are soft. “It doesn’t take a scientist to define the way you look at him.”
He leaves you with your thoughts.
You nearly crumble with the weight of them.
——
Eddie’s not himself. You spend the day with Steve and Nancy, working on wedding planning. At one point, the guys end up stumbling into the bridal boutique where Nancy’s standing on a pedestal in a beautiful gown, her veil a billowing sprawl of lace behind her. She’s gorgeous, not that you ever doubted she would make a beautiful bride.
Later that night, Eddie fucks you like he’s trying to forget. Fingers curled tight around your wrists, no words of affection pouring from him, not like they usually do. He’s quiet and when he spills into you, you roll over onto your side and cry.
He tries to console you. A hand splays over your bicep, his mouth at your shoulder. He hadn’t even bothered to undress you tenderly like he usually does. It had been frantic and hurried and it feels like you’re an exposed nerve now, the pain throbbing in your chest.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” It’s another new thing. A nickname for when you’re alone. A term of endearment you wish he would just take back now.
“I feel like you weren’t even here just now. Toward the end,” you whimper, rolling over, lip wobbling.
“No no no,” he coos, kissing along your brow, trying to soak up the blood seeping from your invisible wounds, “hey — hey, baby, I —”
“You were trying to forget.” You tug your blankets up around your shoulders, covering yourself.
“It was a hard day —”
“But I’m right here!” you cry out, launching yourself out of the bed, eyes burning as you whirl on him. “I’m right here. I’ve been here. We’re…this isn’t right, Eddie. It hasn’t been for a long time. Can’t you see that? You just fucked me because you saw Nancy in a wedding dress.”
“That’s not —”
“I think we need to stop this.” His mouth settles into a firm line, eyes rounding as the words slam down on him like a ton of bricks. “Put a pin in it. Call it. Give it a time of death. I just can’t do this anymore. It’s changed for me. It’s not ‘just sex’ anymore.”
“It’s never been ‘just sex’ with us,” he argues.
Eddie climbs out of bed. Tugs on his boxers, tries to console you with soothing hands on your arms. Resolute in your decision, you take a step back, head shaking a bit.
“I’m…” A pause.
After your conversation with Steve some months ago now, you really took the time to think about his words. The realization you’ve fallen in love with Eddie slowly over time. The man who weaved his way into your life so seamlessly on a day you needed him the most.
Eddie, who snores beside you in bed most nights and wakes you with endless kisses along your cheeks, because he wants you to smile first thing every morning. Eddie, who always forgets to separate his lights from his darks every time he does his laundry, so you started doing yours together. Eddie, who you spend every Friday night on your couch with, a pizza and a joint between you, punctuated by soft kisses and endless cuddling as you watch your favorite movies together. He’s become a staple in everyday life; a constant, a rock, an anchor.
You can’t quite pinpoint when it happened. When friendship changed into something more, but it had, and you couldn’t stop the free fall once you were on the edge of the cliff.
This love is also painful too. It’s knowing for a long time the two of you used sex as a way to run from your problems. Had relied on one another to find solace. It’s realizing that, though you want nothing more than to curl your arms around his waist and hold him for the rest of the night, that’s actually the last thing either of you need right now.
“I think you should stay at your apartment tonight,” you tell him, your voice a little hollow. Cold. Eyes downcast. “I think we need some time to cool off, and I think we need to do it separately.”
Eddie swallows thickly. His voice breaks as he chokes out, “Yeah…okay.”
“I love you,” you tell him, stare him straight in the eye as you do so. His breath shudders out of him. “And I think you love me too, but I don’t want you to say it back. I want you to say it when you can fully mean it. But I can’t do this…half version of love I’m getting now. I want the full thing, we both deserve the full thing.”
He tips your chin up. Kisses you. The first tears spill from your eyes, and when you open your eyes, there are tears in his eyes too.
“Fuck,” he rasps, folding his arms around your waist, holding you close as you both break.
Never really together, and yet it’s the worst break up. It cleaves you right down the middle. Leaves you in two pieces, where one belongs to Eddie and you don’t know that you’ll ever get it back. The man wound so deeply in your veins now he’ll likely remain there forever.
You want him to be — just not now.
Not in this capacity, not like this.
You want that earth shattering, ground shaking, immeasurable kind of love. The kind that extends beyond stars and space. Love that transcends time and follows you even in death at the end of it all.
You’d rather have all of Eddie instead of this, even if it means losing him for now.
There’s that saying, albeit cliche, that if something is meant for you, you need to let it go. If it comes back, it was always yours.
In actuality it’s scary — letting him go.
But you trust it’s the right thing. Trust that it’s the best thing for the health of what’s already here, even when every atom and cell in your body wants to fight against what it innately knows is best for it.
Eddie opens his mouth to speak. Thinks better of the words he’s going to say. Instead kisses you on the forehead three times.
I. Love. You.
“I’ll —” He stumbles over the words. Know that he means to say ‘I’ll see you soon,’ but neither of you knows if that’s true.
Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes you simply need to lean up on your toes and kiss him for what might very well be the last time. Tears spill down your cheeks and his. Little fractures. Glittering reminders of beautiful memories made in the time spent together.
He packs a bag and hikes his things over his shoulder. Exits the door you’ve watched him walk in so many times that the thought of never seeing him pass through again makes you want to shatter all over again.
And when he blows you a final kiss on the way out, you do.
——
“So you…ended things?”
Steve tries to understand, your head in his lap, heart in your throat as you bleed love all over your living room floor. It hasn’t stopped since Eddie left. Since you picked up the phone and dialed a number you’d never forget and sobbed out a broken, “Steve.”
There are no words needed to be said. In the background you hear the rustle of keys, and then he’s at your doorstep fifteen minutes later, ready with his arms open for you to fall into. And now you’re here.
He lets you cry. He lets you sob against the pillow on his lap until your eyes are puffy and you’re reduced to hiccuped breaths. Doesn’t judge you for it, offers comfort, understands. He lost Nancy for a while, too. Gets it.
“Staying together in the way we are now isn’t healthy,” you tell him, woodenly, “it’d kill us. I love him, and I know he loves me, but this is what we need right now. Time and space and — and I already miss him so much and it hurts, Steve.”
“Kind of like a limb torn off, right?”
“Maybe not that dramatic?”
“Heart ripped out then?” he amends, huffing a laugh.
“Yeah,” you sob, “that.”
“Hey?” He whispers, and you lift yourself up to look at him. Crumple all over again as he coos, “Honey,” pulling you into his arms. “I know it doesn’t look like it right now, but it’s going to get better, okay?”
“Promise?”
He drops a kiss to the crown of your head. “I promise.”
Everything feels like it’s ending. But one day turns into two, and then two into three. Suddenly it’s a week, and then a month, and without him, the earth turns. The leaves change. The sun rises and falls every day. The ground withers as winter comes and passes, and the flowers bloom in spring. Without him, children still giggle in the park as you rush along on a run. You meet up with friends, deflect advances from men and women at bars — tell them you’re taken, don’t know why — try to live. Try to heal because it’s what you promised Eddie you would do.
Life continues, you miss Eddie because you’ll always miss him, but you don’t see him.
For seven months.
Nancy and Steve make it happen. Coordinate your schedules in a way that allows you both the time you need.
The night before the wedding, after the wedding rehearsal dinner, you invite everyone back to your family’s lake house. You took it for the weekend, just to have some time away after what you’re sure is to be a busy weekend. Wanted to catch up on some reading, wake up to the familiar sounds of birds chirping and the water gurgling.
Eddie stares at you from across the living room, beer in his hand. Watches you like one would watch a show and it has your heart twirling, stomach churning, fingers twitching around the stem of your wine glass.
It’s fleeting. A brief moment before Nancy asks Eddie to help her with something in the other room, and he rushes after her. Robin leans back against the pillows she’s piled up against the couch, her girlfriend, Vickie, beside her, both eying you curiously, “What’s that all about?”
“Nothing,” you mutter absently, sipping at your champagne.
“They used to hook up,” Steve explains, shrugging. “But then they fooled around and fell in love. Just like the song. You know how it goes, ‘fooled around and fell in loveeee.’”
“Steve!”
“What? You were going to tell her in a second. I could see it on your face.”
You blanch. “I mean, yes. But you didn’t have to just spill it out there for the whole world to hear.” You swallow. “Yes, we…were together for a bit but then I ended things. It's been over seven months now.”
“Wow,” Robin breathes out, throwing back the rest of her drink, “so, uh, the smoldering looks Eddie is throwing your way?”
“They’re not smoldering looks,” you argue, cheeks burning, “and if there are, it’s probably just because this is the first time we’ve seen each other in months.”
“Can’t believe none of you assholes told me about this,” Robin huffs out, head shaking. “Does Nancy know?”
“Eddie is her best friend,” Steve says flatly.
“So yes,” Robin concedes. “You’re going to give me grays.”
“You’re only twenty three,” you remind her, and Vickie pins you with a ‘just let her be dramatic’ sort of look.
“I’m just — my best friend was in love with my other best friend. And now the same best friend is sleeping with my other best friend. And those best friends are now acting like a bunch of idiots because they can’t get their shit together and just fall in love and I’m supposed to act like this is all normal?! Just casual, typical Friday night conversation before my other best friend’s wedding to my other best friend —”
“That was…not at all confusing. Nope,” Steve mumbles. Vickie smacks his arm, because there’s a shuffle by the door and Nancy and Eddie appear once more, another log for the crackling fire perched in Eddie’s elbow.
The chatter in the room dissolves after that, as Steve and Nancy make their way upstairs to the room they’re taking for the night. Robin and Vickie have the guest room, leaving you with a decision to make, stopping back into the living room after everyone says goodnight to find Eddie sitting there, watching the fire.
“So…we have one bed free,” you begin.
“It’s yours.”
“You’re a guest,” you remind him, stepping further into the room.
He doesn’t look your way, but you can see orange flames dancing in the reflection of his beautifully dark eyes.
“I want you to have it,” he says, finally turning to face you. Breath hitches in the back of your throat, your body’s normal response when he’s near, clearly not dulled with the passing of time.
“Okay.” You give a curt nod. “Here, let me grab you a blanket.”
He’s quiet. So unlike the man you spent over a year with. Regards you carefully as you move about the room, ducking down to grab a blanket from a basket near the fireplace. Your hand outstretches to pass the blanket to him, his fingers touching yours. It’s a lingering sort of thing. His fingers warm against yours, the barest of brushes of his knuckles across your skin. Electricity dances in your veins.
Then it’s over as quickly as it comes, the blanket thrown over his thighs, his eyes on your face.
“Sorry I missed your birthday," he says.
It was the worst birthday you had in years.
A laugh. “Sorry I missed yours.”
You heard all about it from Steve, but couldn’t bring yourself to go at the time.
He swallows, throat bobs with effort. “You didn’t bring a date for the wedding?”
No, and you hadn’t dated anyone since him either. Tried and failed here and there, blind dates friends set up, but they never went anywhere.
“Neither did you,” you state, as a matter of factly.
Unless she’s hiding somewhere else, and you feel your heart kick anxiously up at the notion.
“Just me,” he says, exhaling deeply.
You thank the heavens, or whoever will listen, for this tiny blessing.
He smiles, and it’s that favorite smile of his. The one where his dimples pop and his face brightens. The one reserved for those many nights you spent inside with him, laughing until the early hours of the morning, both needing to go to work the next day, yet neither finding it in yourselves to care.
“Look at us.”
“Yeah.” Your hand rubs up and down your arm, feet shifting awkwardly beneath you.
“You look…” His eyes trail over your features with a familiar fondness within those dark depths. “You look really good. Happy.”
“I am good…and happy,” you tell him, nodding. “You…you look good, too. I should, uh, head up for bed.”
His head dips, and then dips again rapidly. “Right.” Clears his throat. “Yeah – ah, early morning tomorrow.”
“Yup,” you pop the ‘p.’
There’s a pause in the conversation. A moment where neither of you moves. You know you don’t want to. Want to remain right here. You also know better. There were words said months ago, words with intention behind them. The need for both of you to get better, to get to a place where you’re ready for whatever this thing is between the two of you.
You’re ready, have been for a while now, but Eddie…
As you finally start to trek backwards, maintaining eye contact with the man who still holds your heart, he whispers, “I’m glad you didn’t bring a date.”
“Me too, Eddie,” you admit quietly, biting at your bottom lip. “Maybe it’s selfish, but…me too.”
“Goodnight, sweetheart.” He’s beautiful like this. Dark eyes on yours, hair a wavy mess around his shoulders, strands loose from his ponytail. Soft, in a way that makes you want to climb onto the sofa beside him and let him hold you, erasing all the memories lost. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Breathless, you feel completely and utterly breathless under this spell. “Goodnight, Ed. See you in the morning.”
And you’re gone. Slipping up the stairs to your bedroom, closing the door behind you, and placing a hand over the organ clanging away behind your ribcage. With an exhale, you rush into the bathroom and flick the light on. Your features illuminate in the mirror. Eyes wide, chest heaving, looking a little out of sorts. Your cheeks burn with the whisper of his touch, mind whirling at the meaning behind his glances, the timbre of his words.
Steve might be the first person you loved.
Your first kiss.
But Eddie is the first person you can say without a doubt in your mind you are in love with.
Even now, with seven months of time between you – and you don’t think anything will change that.
——
The wedding ceremony is a beautiful thing. Flowing, floral archway. A church that looks like something out of a postcard. Little mosaic windows, a gorgeous sprawling ceiling with high beams. Everyone they love is here. Family and friends made along the way. The kids, with their beaming smiles and not so childlike faces any longer.
Steve and Nancy recite their vows to one another, the words sounding muffled in your ears, because for the first time in your life the boy you’ve been looking at is finally looking right back at you.
Eddie, in a black suit, smiling over at you. Hands folded in front of himself as Steve and Nancy declare their everlasting love in a room filled with their loved ones. The feeling of his hand on your arm as he walked you down the aisle like a brand that lingers on your skin. Can feel it even now, the way his fingers would feel should they grace your cheek. Had leaned into that caress so many times, seeking the comfort of him.
You don’t even know why, but you smile back, thinking of one of your favorite days with him before everything had gone to hell.
You wanted, very badly actually, to hook up that night. He’d brought a backpack with him, intended to stay for the weekend. But when he walked into your apartment, a spare key on his keyring, he found you holed up on the couch, grumbling about how your weekend plans were ruined.
“They’re not ruined,” Eddie chuckled, dropping down onto the couch beside you. “You act like I’m this insatiable man.”
“You can be –”
“Hi pot, meet kettle.” You glared half heartedly. “Plus you’re a very active participant, and you benefit from it in the form of plentiful orgasms, so quit your yapping,” he teased, catching a little wince, the furrow between your brows. “No dice? What’s going on, sweetheart?”
“Period cramps,” you grumbled out, pulling your blanket up higher on your form. “You don’t have to stay. I’m not going to be much company like this.”
“One, I always like hanging out with you. You’re my best friend, you dork.” He flicked your nose, grinning when you wrinkled it in response. “Two, let me run to the supermarket real quick, okay?”
“Why?” Your head tilted to the side.
“Going to grab us some food so I can cook dinner,” he said, leaning down to press a kiss to your forehead, “and some things for my girl. Gotta take care of her, right?”
His girl. His girl. He’d never said that before, and something about it felt perfectly wonderful and also a little bit like a lie. You wanted it to be true, though. Realized you hadn’t wanted something so fiercely like that in a long, long time. Didn’t know what to do with those emotions, so you dropped back down onto your mountain of pillows and watched as Eddie quickly slipped out of your apartment in a flurry of black leather and curly hair, and slammed the door behind him.
He returned a half hour later with a bag of treats. Your favorite chips, candy, some popcorn. He got started on spaghetti and requested you pick out a movie. Oddly domestic for two people who usually spent most nights tangled in bedsheets.
Later, after your belly was full and the movie was playing on the television screen, Eddie tugged you against his chest and dragged a hand along your lower back, thumb pushing with perfect pressure at the base of your spine to alleviate some of the ache there.
“Is this good?” he asked, voice quiet.
“Perfect, honestly,” you hummed, head nuzzling further into his chest.
You don’t know when you fell asleep, don’t know who fell asleep first, but when you woke up it was to Eddie’s body curled around yours, his arms slung around your abdomen.
Wanting to do something special for him, you quietly extricated yourself out from within the tangle of his arms. Flicked on your kitchen light and started throwing some things together for pancakes. Your oversized tee shirt fluttered against your thighs as you worked, bare legs covered only up to the knee by your crew socks. At some point as you hummed along to the softly playing radio, Eddie appeared behind you, arms around your waist, his chest at your spine.
“Morning,” he muttered, pressing a loud kiss to your cheek. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay now,” you said, leaning your head over your shoulder to look at him. He trailed the backs of his fingers across the highest point of your cheek. Kissed you slowly, softly, sweetly. “Hmm. What was that for?”
“Didn’t get one yesterday.”
And it shouldn’t have made your heart stutter. It shouldn’t have made a liquid heat pool in your belly. Because the arrangement had always been the two of you being best friends who sought shelter in each other.
You kissed him again. “Better?”
He grinned, twirling you in his arms, hand catching yours. “Nope,” he chuckled, drawing you in closer as ‘My Girl’ spilled out of the radio speaker, “but if you dance with me I might be able to forgive you.”
In the morning light you did just that. He whirled you around and brought you back into the circle of his arms. Looped an arm around your waist to hold you close, your face against the curve of his chest, his chin resting on the crown of your head as he gently hummed along. ‘Well I guess you’d say, what can make me feel this way? My girl, my girl, my girl. Talkin’ about my girl, my girl.’
Eventually the pancakes burned, the room filled with smoke, and the fire alarm went off. You laughed about it, fell to the ground in a fit of giggles, your thighs over his lap as you both foregone breakfast in favor of eating ice cream out of a carton.
It felt normal. A little too normal.
Now you only look over to him fondly as Steve and Nancy’s vows draw to a close. Wish, as they walk back out the double doors at the end of the aisle once they’re officially husband and wife, for more stolen moments like that.
——
“Hey,” Steve’s voice calls from the end of the hallway, just as you slip out of the powder room. “I’ve been looking for you. They're doing the couple’s dance next.”
You let out an incredulous laugh. “I think you forget I’m single these days.” You pause, rushing over to grab at his tie, askew around his neck. Nimble fingers reach up to grasp at it, working the fabric back into proper place. “You go on ahead. It’s your special day.”
“I promised a friend I’d get you onto the dance floor for one dance,” he says, curling a hand around the back of your wrist. With a frown, he adds, “Just one dance, please? He gets all dramatic and pouty when he doesn’t get his way.”
“Go figure, so do you!” He narrows his eyes as you add, “no wonder you’re best friends.”
“I’m choosing to ignore you,” he says, suddenly — albeit dramatically — glum.
“Today is your wedding day,” you remind him, sliding your palm down to wrap around his hand, “you shouldn’t be worried about me.”
“Yeah, but remember when I decided you were my best friend at ten years old? I said I’d protect and love you forever —”
“We were kids,” you laugh, shaking your head, “we said a lot of things we knew nothing about.”
“Hey.” His hand frees itself from yours, only for both to rest on either side of your cheeks. Tears, unbidden, start to burn on your lower lash line, threatening to spill out. “You are my best friend. And I want you to be happy. It’s been seven months. Hear him out, see what he has to say, and don’t let this day pass by without at least giving things a chance.”
“Why, Steve?”
“Because I married my person today,” he says, brushing away a tear as it glides down your cheek, “and I think he could be yours. Look at me, okay? Look at you — too pretty to be crying right now. I love you.”
“I love you too, Steve.”
Would love him forever. That kind of friendship never fades, never dwindles, never dies.
A different type of love than the one you once loved him with, because that spot was always meant for Eddie, even if you hadn’t always known it.
“One dance?”
“One dance,” you agree, curling your arm through the loop of his elbow he leaves open for you to take.
The reception hall is glowing in a pale blue. All around couples start to litter the dance floor. Bodies close together, heads bent low, hushes of whispers between partners shared only for their ears. Steve halts you as you step out into the crowd, and it’s then that the world seems to stop. There, at the edge of the floor, stands Eddie with his hands in his pockets. His tie is a little loose around his throat, the top button of his shirt open, revealing a hint of the tattoos he got to help cover some of the scarring there. And then you catch the tilt of his lips, the dimple in his cheek, the way he looks at you like you’re the only woman in the room.
“Go…” Steve gives you a little nudge and joins his new wife.
On shaky legs, you start to walk. One foot after another, after another. One two, one two. You count each footfall, and can feel the thump-thump of your heart, as every step brings you closer to him. Finally, the tips of your heeled shoes meet his leather ones.
Your head lifts, eyes catching him in the dim lighting. “Hi,” you whisper.
“Hey,” he says back, unsure of where to put his hands, one raising to touch your shoulder before he thinks better of it.
“I’ve been told I owe you a dance,” you say, fighting back the silly smile that threatens to grow on your lips.
“Got worried,” he confesses, a tentative hand curling around your back, pressing against the middle to pull you in close.
Your body brushes him, and it feels like coming home after a long day. It feels like your whole soul exhales. Feels right. “Why?”
“Thought you might stand me up,” he chuckles, your head resting against his shoulder, “and then I’d look like the only idiot alone on the dance floor.”
“Look, Eddie, I —” you say, just as he says, “I missed you so damn much, sweetheart.”
There it is. The wonder, the questions you’ve yet to ask, uncovered in one sentence. The confirmation that everything you’ve been feeling, every longing moment, has been mutual.
“That day in your kitchen,” he says, quiet enough only you can hear, “when we danced like this was that first moment for me.”
“What moment?” You blink up at him nervously.
“When I realized how completely and utterly fucked I was because I lo — liked you more than I ever realized,” he admits, a little sheepishly, “although pretty sure it was before that. Look — when we broke up —”
“Eddie,” you interrupt, heart hammering away wildly like little hummingbird wings, “I don’t think a wedding is the best place to discuss this. And I want to discuss it, don’t get me wrong, I just think we should…keep things normal for our friends. It’s their day.”
“It’s been seven months,” he reminds you.
As if you could ever forget, as if there isn’t an ‘Eddie’ shaped indent forever etched into your comforter that you’ve stared at for every day since he walked out your door.
“And I’ve thought about you every single day for each of them,” he says, and it nearly breaks you all over again when you catch the longing in his voice.
“I know,” you say, a little hoarsely, “I have too.”
His lip twitches at that, hopefulness replacing the forlorn look on his beautiful face. Everything in you screams to lean up and kiss him, to put to rest the disquiet in your soul, but you refrain. Focus solely instead on the emcee as he announces the bouquet toss.
“Guess that’s my cue,” you tell him, shrugging softly. “You’ll call me? Tonight?”
Eddie grimaces. Nods. “Sure. Yeah.”
Walking backwards, you flash him a wave, trying to not inwardly wince at your last words to the man. ‘You’ll call me?’ There’s little time to linger, as girls gather around on the dance floor and Nancy turns away from the crowd, her back to your group. Steve looks on at Eddie’s side, the two laughing jovially as Nancy launches the bouquet over her head and into the sea of women.
It happens in slow motion. You think it does, at least. An elbow digs into your ribs here, a knee bumps yours there, a shoulder bashes yours, and, without even realizing it, the flowers thump into your chest. Robin’s shaking your shoulder, laughing in your ear as Nancy rushes over to wrap you in a hug. Steve’s grinning and elbowing Eddie, who is turning a shade of red you’re pretty sure a tomato would envy.
It’s just a silly tradition, you think.
Doesn’t mean anything. So you grab onto Nancy and Robin, pull them back onto the dance floor, and pretend you don’t wish deep down it did.
——
Your keys drop into a bowl near the coat rack. Your jacket is pushed up onto a hook, still wet from the rain that’s starting to fall over Hawkins. Feet aching, you kick those off at the doorway, breathing a deep breath at the instantaneous relief. With a sigh, you slip into the kitchen and hit the light switch, as well as the back light, and suddenly the wide open windows to the sliding door leading to the lake are illuminated. Your eyes trail over the water rippling in the distance. The moon is a perfect circle in the sky, the twinkly lights your parents had wrapped around an umbrella outside like little fireflies in the night, even on a dreary evening.
Another sigh and you slip over to the counter, grabbing a bottle opener. An unopened red wine bottle sits idly on the counter, and you snatch a glass from a cabinet above, pouring a generous cup.
You’ve barely enough time to take in that first decadent sip when the doorbell rings, filling the home. Eyes flick to the clock against the wall, read that it’s nearly eleven now. Maybe the neighbor’s dog got free again? Wouldn’t be the first time.
Another ring.
“One second!” you shout into the open air, placing your glass down on the counter to rush down the hall.
Through the peephole you see him. Hair stuck to his forehead and slicked to his leather jacket. His shirt is nearly seethrough. Droplets of water cascade down the tense lines of his face, his forehead.
“Eddie?” you ask as you tug the door open, head cocked to the side. “What are y —”
“I’ll call?” He sounds pitiful. A hoarse sound tugged from deep within his chest, like his words have been raked over glass.
You…there are no words. “Yeah, Eddie. It’s when a person picks up the phone, dials a number, and the other person answers. Generally they carry on a conversation after, if we are getting technical here.”
He shakes his head and water flicks from the ends of his wet strands of hair with the movement. “Since when are we the kind of people who do that? We’re the kind of people who just barge right into places. I show up at your place, you show up at mine. We eat each other’s food, share everything. Hell, I had a key to your apartment. I’d stop on my way back from the shop to shower because you always lived closer to there than my apartment. Gotta say, I miss that. And fuck — I miss you, sweetheart.”
He’s shivering now as you ask, “What are you doing, Eddie?”
He lets out an incredulous laugh, looking to the sky, exasperated. “Standing here in the pouring rain trying to tell the girl that I love…that I’m in love with her and that I want to be with her. For real this time.” He pauses, arms curling around himself. “And I’m, like, really cold right now and I wanted to have this conversation inside but here I am, trying to make a grand gesture.”
“I thought you weren’t a grand gesture guy.” You’re joking, but there are tears burning in your eyes at his words.
“I’m a grand gesture kind of guy for you. Only you.” His teeth chatter, “Fuck, sweetheart —”
“Oh,” you jolt, tugging the door open wider, “come in. I’m so sorry.”
It’s instant. As soon as the door shuts behind him, and he’s standing there sopping wet on your rug, his hands find your face and draw your mouth to his, claiming your lips in a searing kiss.
A kiss that starts off tentatively. Light. Teasing. Gentle brushes of skin passing over yours. Relearning each other, as if you’d ever forget him. As if you’d ever forget the mintiness on his tongue, the smokiness in his kiss. As if you’d forget the way he always loops an arm around your lower back to tug you in closer, bringing you flush against him, wanting to always be near.
But it’s not enough, you decide, as you work at the buttons on his shirt. Each one pops out slowly, fingers tripping over themselves, a puddle already forming on the ground beneath you. Once he’s free, you tug his undershirt out from his dark pants, fingers roaming over the soft of his stomach, the line of hair disappearing beneath his pants that has him circling your wrists with his fingers to pause you in your ministrations.
“Slow down, sweetheart,” he whispers against your ear, brushing featherlight kiss after featherlight kiss to your throat. “I want to take my time with you.”
“You love me?” you ask him, humming into his mouth as he walks you backward into the living room, barely making it to the couch before you’re clambering up onto his lap, dress riding up on your thighs.
“I love you,” he says, kissing your cheek. “I love you.” He kisses your other cheek. “I love you.” He kisses your forehead. “I love you,” and finally, your lips.
Your face crumples with his words, tears stinging your eyes. His thumbs come up to brush at the ones that slip down your cheeks, voice a coo when he says, “Baby, what’s wrong?”
“I’m happy,” you whimper out, “I missed you. Every day, I missed you.”
“You’re stuck with me now,” he chuckles, and you laugh along with him, liking the way that sounds, “I’m moving my things back into your dresser as we speak.”
“Promise?”
He sobers then. Lips turning downward, the wrinkle on his forehead more pronounced, his hands curling around yours and giving a squeeze. “I’m sorry. For that last day. I…my head was all over the place at the time. I was trying to figure out how I felt about you and clearly had some feelings still that I needed to work through with Nancy. But you — you didn’t deserve that.”
When you shake your head, he continues, “It hadn’t been ‘just sex’ for me for a long time. I mean, I made up excuses to see you whenever I could. Maybe I didn’t realize what was going on, but I just wanted to be around you all the time. And when I wasn’t able to see you and just…be with you…it wasn’t easy. But I know it’s what we needed and I’m ready now. I just want us, for real this time. I want to hang out at your apartment, do all that stupid couple shit that I can only see myself doing with you. I want you to yell at me when I leave the damn toilet seat up. I want to brush my teeth with you before bed and hold you every night. I want to do this with you, be with you in the way we should have been all along, if you’ll let me.”
“Yes,” you kiss him, long and lingering, breathing him in as he does the same. “I want it all with you, Eddie. I love you…I love you so much.”
“Don’t think I’ll ever get used to you saying that,” he says, staring up at you wondrously.
“I’ll remind you everyday, don’t worry,” you tell him with a giggle, sliding your hands up and over his shoulders, along the curve of his jaw. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Eddie makes love to you for the first time that night.
A slow, gentle thing.
His body crowds over yours, hands map out every line of your body, memorizing every detail he’s gone without for months. Kisses along every inch of you he can, whispering praises into your skin. When he pushes inside for that first time, your breath rushes out of you in a strained gasp as your body readjusts to seven months without him, mouth dropping open with a whine when he bottoms out.
It’s slow. His hips rolling against yours, body cradling you close, thumb finding your clit to bring you up and over the edge, trembling beneath him with a cry of his name.
That first time feels like a sorry.
The second, he pulls you into the shower, washing every inch of your body. The remnants of the wedding and him still on your skin. He’s sweet, all soft, fluttery kisses against your lips and shoulders, your spine, your thighs when he gets down onto his knees to glide the washcloth along them.
His mouth finds you in the shower, your head rolling back against tile, fingers tangling in his hair as he props a thigh over his shoulder to keep you open for him.
When you finish, you pull him back up to your lips, smothering his own moan with a kiss as you cup him in hand and help to guide him into you.
That time feels like a promise. The steady rhythm of his hips, the fierceness of his love, the strength of his arms as he holds you, his eyes locked on yours as you both bask in the euphoria of closeness.
The third happens somewhere around the time the sun begins to rise again over Hawkins, the rainstorm from the night before a wispy memory. Thighs slot over Eddie’s hips, his hands sliding up and over your breasts, teasing as you roll over him, the drag of him and the soft moans spilling from the man beneath you spurring you on.
That third time, as he flips you over onto your back and moves inside you so slowly, hands and eyes locked with yours — that one feels like a new beginning, a turning page.
Tears prick at the corners of your eyes at the dawning realization. Tears he brushes away with sweet kisses, whispering, “I know, I know,” into your shoulder as he comes apart at the edges, your own release shattering through you like a bolt of lightning. “I love you too, sweetheart.”
You sleep intermittently. Both of you. The house is yours for the weekend, so you make the most of it. Lips coming together, bodies joining after soft sighs turn into eager movements of hands beneath covers. Over and over, like you can’t get enough — and you won’t get enough.
Somewhere around dinner time the next evening, you traipse out of bed with Eddie still sprawled out on his stomach, long tee shirt dancing along your thighs. Sock clad feet excitedly slide across wooden floors, fingers curling around the refrigerator door to pull out a bottle of champagne. As the cork pops, Eddie appears in the doorway, a white tank top covering his body, sweats hanging low on his hips. A tattooed arm comes up to rest there, the muscle of his bicep straining with the movement.
“Hi,” he whispers. Pauses, making a little camera with his hands, pretending to snap a photo.
“What was that?” you giggle airily, pouring two glasses, offering one to him.
“Just looked so damn beautiful, sweetheart,” he leans down to kiss your forehead, “sunset behind you, your smile.”
“Thank you.” Your fingers tangle with those on his free hand. “How about I order us a pizza? I’m starving.”
You eat in comfortable silence, the bottle of champagne slipping away as the hours do. Everything feels saccharine and wonderful, perfectly warm, as he later tugs your hand on the way downstairs, deciding on a game of pool before heading back up to watch a movie together.
Eddie makes his way over to the record player in the corner. As the music fills the room, the lyrics to “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” meet your ears, a silly smile sliding across your lips.
“Are you a secret romantic?” you tease, snatching a pool cue from a rack.
“Only for you,” he muses, catching the one you throw his way as he starts to rack the balls. “I like this record, though. Reminds me of you.”
You lean over the table to break, not missing the way his eyes trail your backside as you do so. Balls scatter, a solid sinking into a pocket. “So…you’ll move in?”
“Is that your way of asking?” he chuckles, moving around the table to make a shot, knocking another ball of yours in.
“Well…” You bite at your lip, focusing on your next shot. Sink one of his. “My place is closer to your job. It’s bigger. You’ve basically lived there before…”
“You don't think it’s too soon?”
Your mouth pops open, wincing as he sinks another one of your balls. “I mean, I didn’t think. I just feel like —”
“I’m kidding, baby,” he swoops down to kiss your temple, “Told you last night you’re not getting rid of me. I want to do things right this time.”
You sip your glass a bit, relishing the bubbles that spring to life in your belly, sure many of which are thanks to the man staring at you the way he is.
“Your turn,” he says, gesturing toward your cue.
The next song plays on the record, and you once again lean forward, watching Eddie’s gaze in the mirror hanging across the way as he slips up from behind you, curling an arm low around your belly, kissing your neck.
Heat coils low, then lower still. “You’re —” A quiet sigh spills out of you, his lips toying with the space beneath your ear. “…distracting me.”
As he moves out from behind you, lining up his next shot, you snatch his pack of cigarettes free from his pocket. His eyes lock on yours as you pluck one free, holding it between two fingers, drawing it up to pursed lips. Dark eyes lock with yours as the tip glows red, watching you draw in slowly. As you exhale he snatches it from you, bringing it to his mouth.
And maybe you lean over again, backside poking out a little bit too far than it needs to, but the effect is him curling his arms around your hips, dragging your back flush against his chest as you reach up to take the cigarette back from him. Like that, you feel every inch of his body. Each dip and curve of a broad torso, the corded muscles in his arms from working with his hands for hours all day. Hands you know to be skilled, not only with your body, but with cars and his music. And he’s warm — like a damn near furnace, breath tantalizingly sweet against your ear as he kisses you softly there.
“Fuuuck me,” you sigh out as his fingers start to draw lazy circles around the tops of your thighs, dragging higher until they disappear beneath your shirt and toy at the hem of your panties, teasing, slowly swaying to “My Girl” once it starts.
“Always so wet for me, baby,” he purrs, nipping and sucking a line at your neck. He’s hard where he rests at your ass, and the urge to touch him has you reaching behind your back, cupping him through his sweats.
Eddie groans and you’re suddenly spun around, the cigarette stamped out on an ash tray behind you, your glass of champagne nearly knocked over. His hand grasps one of yours, his other loops low around your back, bodies swaying to and fro to the music, lyrics interrupted by the sounds of your lips meeting his. And it’s perfect: moonlight spilling in through a darkened window, your shirt dancing around your thighs, his heart beating in tandem with yours. You’re not sure when, or how, it happens. One moment you’re swaying with him, arms around his neck, keeping him in close. The next, you’re on your back, balls scattering around you on the table, his mouth clashing fiercely with yours.
You shove his sweatpants down, and he tugs at your panties. He’s bare beneath, and as soon as your underwear is tossed somewhere else in the room, he’s crawling up your body, the hot underside of his cock sliding through already slick folds, coating himself in your wetness.
“Eddie,” you let out a breathy whimper, the friction of him against you perfect and yet not enough all the same, “Eddie, please. I want you inside me.”
His eyes are on yours as he grips himself in hand, gliding his glistening pink tip along your center, asking, "You want me like this baby? Tell me.”
“Please. Please, I want it all, Eddie.”
“Look at us,” he whispers, and you watch that moment, that forever splendid moment where he buries himself inside you, closer to you than anyone has ever been or will be. “Jesus…” He grinds out through clenched teeth, pulling out slowly before pushing all the way back in, “You always feel so good. You feel like mine.”
“I love you.” You pant into his neck, clawing at his back as he picks up his pace, “Always loved you.”
You’ve said it a thousand times now. Watched every time as pure and unadulterated peace fell across his features. But now Eddie only holds you, whispering the sentiment back into your skin as his body drives yours further up the pool table, imbuing every roll of his hips, every thrust, with the emotions overflowing in his chest. You can feel it, the depth of it. The way he loves you, the trust between you, the promise he’ll always keep you safe and close.
You can only bask in it.
——
“Are you okay?”
He asks you again, as you stand outside that next morning, a blanket wrapped around your form.
The answer isn’t simple.
Then again, none of this has ever been. Not with Eddie. But you suppose that’s what makes it your favorite love story.
Because it’s yours. Because it’s messy and it’s different and it’s yours. Because you started off as two friends, maybe in the wrong place, in love with the wrong people at the wrong time when you first met years ago.
Or — perhaps, the right time, because in the end you’re here. With him. With thoughts of the future, plans for what happens when you head out later for your apartment.
To the place where you’ll start the newest chapter with him once and for all.
“I’m perfect,” you tell him, lowering down onto the swinging chair against the side of the home. Your fingers tangle with his, your body slumping over his chest as he gets comfortable against the cushions. He holds you like that as you trace patterns into his skin, trace over scars, over tattoos. “I’m going to miss the lake house, but I can’t wait to go home.”
“I know.” He drops a kiss to the top of your head, his fingers brushing against your spine. “Me too.”
A comfortable silence drapes over you as you watch the sun creep higher along the sky. As you listen to the birds chirping, the chatter of children. Later, it’s the ruckus of people launching themselves into the water, people fishing and boasting of their catches. And at night, as you and Eddie make one last fire and share a glass of wine, fireflies drifting around your head, you allow yourself to imagine a life where forever looks like this.
A life with your first real, honest, true love.
Someone who stares right back at you as you grin at him over the lip of your glass, who leans over and kisses you just to whisper he loves you into your lips one more time.
In a year from now you’ll be back, you in a flurry of pretty tulle and him in a tux, newly Mr. and Mrs. Munson, but for now you smile to yourself, ready to watch the next chapter unfold.
——
this is the first thing i have written this long in months after having the worst few months of my life. so happy to finally hit post on this one. i hope you enjoy, maybe leave a comment or a reblog. would mean the world to me. 💕
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