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ghost-proofbaby · 1 year

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twenty four hours (modern!eddie munson x fem!reader)

HOUR FIFTEEN

in which Eddie learns what it means to be honest, and you learn that some answers can only lead to more questions.

→ tropes: enemies to lovers, forced proximity, slow burn

→ warnings: strong language, smut, upside down does not exist, minors dni

→ wc: 4.7k+

→ a/n: this chapter is my enemy. that's all. all the homies hate this chapter for the hell it gave me both in writing it and posting it

masterlist.

spotify playlist.

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15:00 ────────ㅇ─────── 24:00

SIX MONTHS EARLIER

You were so caught up in your own disappointment, you never saw the flash of recognition that crossed Eddie’s face. Only the anger that followed.

“Is that the dude who stood you up?”

His voice is weak as he asks the question, a breath that barely reaches your ears as you jump at the unexpected proximity.

“What?” you spin around to face him, “Jesus Christ, why are you creeping over my shoulder at my phone? Trying to see who else doesn’t follow me on Instagram?”

He cringes at your bitter tone, all the vodka you’ve turned to venom in your hurt, “You didn’t answer my question – is that him?”

“Why do you care?”

It’s the short version of the real questions binding you. A million different threads of confusion, and each one constricts you tighter than the last, all of them tangling together in the confusion.

Why do you care when you dislike me so vigorously? Why do you care when you’ll only use my answer as ammunition against me? Why do you care to hurt me so badly tonight? Why do you care if Nancy and I are friends? Why do you care to point out how I don’t belong in this group-

“I don’t,” he interrupts your internal panic, pausing the restless twisting of anxious twine.

You take a deep breath, you let your eyes wander over him, taking him in. He’s ditched the soft-spoken act, his voice coming out powerful finally. The confidence is almost overdone; he sounds as if he’s trying to make up for something not there.

You crave for distance to be put between the two of you, but he makes no move to step away as you ask, “Then why do you keep asking me?”

You can’t begin to understand him, completely unsure of where to ever start with the task. He’s a hollow stranger of the man you’d initially met that night in the bar. You’ve seen how he acts with the others, how he treats Nancy like royalty at times and how he’s warm with Argyle. You’ve seen him share joints and laughter alike with Jonathan. It’s hard to miss when he and Steve both begin to get overly passionate about a topic, Robin always finding a way to join in. Eddie is capable of warmth and care, of friendship and genuine love, but not when it comes to you.

“I was just curious, sue me.”

“If I had a good lawyer, I would,” you snap back quickly, patience wearing thin.

It makes him grin – a damn grin. Shit-eating as ever as he replies, “I know a guy if you’d like one,” and he keeps grinning, and you don’t even notice when a line is crossed and that faux glee no longer meets his eyes as he continues, “Speaking of knowing a guy – do you know the guy on your screen?”

The threads are twisting again, and the friction is leaving your blood boiling. “Fucking obviously.”

“Is he the one who stood you up?”

“Fuck off, Eddie.”

You can’t handle this right now. You’re drunk – not so drunk you won’t remember the night, but still damn drunk – and you’re overthinking. Letting the threads cut off circulation to your brain, letting yourself only be consumed with overthinking about your place within the group. You don’t even have the capacity to question why Eddie is so persistent in finding out about the bartender who left you looking like a fool the night before; you miss his genuine, burning curiosity and the anger that still broods in him as your anxiety bubbles up.

Were you and Nancy friends? Maybe Instagram did matter. Surely, she followed everyone else in the group, didn’t she?

“Why won’t you just answer the question? Why are you so damn stubb-”

“You don’t care!” you nearly scream, throwing your hands up in defeat, slamming your phone down onto the counter beside you, “You don’t care, you’ve made that clear, so I don’t understand why you need to hear me say it so fucking badly. Why do you need to hear me admit how pathetic I am? We both know where this is going – I say yes, you use it against me, I end up looking like a fool for a second night in a row,” your chest heaves and your eyes burn, but you won’t look at him. You can’t bear witness to him watching you bleed in the middle of Steve’s kitchen, “I’m not doing it. Not tonight.”

He looks as if you had slapped him. Stunned, aghast, taking a step back to finally give you the space you had so desperately craved. You don’t even really care about it anymore; the damage is done and you’re already spiraling, thanks to him.

“Do you think so little of me?”

His voice is small again. Deceptively soft, a treacherous whisper you know you can’t look into. He’s not really hurt. It’s all probably an act, a guise to get you to play into how he wants the night to go.

“With what you’ve given me to work with?” you scoff, still blinking your eyes rapidly, trying to stave off the waterworks, “Yeah. Yeah, I am starting to think that little of you.”

“Have you considered I was just trying to be friend-”

You’re not sure how his sentence is going to end, whether he would claim to be trying to be friendly or trying to be friends. You’re not sure which one makes you more livid.

It’s the second one. “You just mocked me, made me doubt if I had fucking friends all because of Nancy not following me on Instagram. Don’t you dare say you were trying to be friends with me right now.”

If you were more sober, you would have cursed yourself for blatantly revealing to him that he’d gotten to you. Your wounds were now on display for him, and you stiffened as you realized and awaited the expected handful of salt he’d be rubbing into them.

We thought he wasn’t going to come, so we invited you instead.

The fight’s only just begun and you’ve already lost – not just this battle, but the entire war.

You know they would choose him. If your friends were given the choice between you two, they’d choose him. And it shouldn’t sting, it’s expected given how long the group has known each other, but Eddie’s animosity towards you has done nothing to soothe the ache stirred by that truth. You would never ask them to choose, you know better, but you’ve always known the answer.

It’s him, not you.

“I was joking-”

“No, that was not joking. It wasn’t funny. It was mean.”

Mean, cruel, ruthless. What Eddie did rings sharply in your chest, in your brain that’s currently running on overtime to process your waves of emotions. The threads are so tight, you expect to see a puddle of blood at your feet on Steve and Robin’s kitchen floor.

“As if you’re any better,” he sharply laughs in disbelief, shaking his head, “You want to talk about mean? Let’s talk about my date with Chrissy and you’re fucking fiasco.”

Your stomach drops. The battlefield lurches into uneven ground, because what you did really was unfair. But you had been bitter, and you had been mean, and you had been….

You had been jealous. Jealous not of the romance that was honestly leaving much to be desired between him and Chrissy, but that platonic friendship. The kind you had yet to earn from him. The kind you were starting to doubt if you ever had, genuinely, with the rest of the group.

“I’m-”

“Sorry? Yeah, well, sorry don't make her call me back.”

This is where, if you were speaking with anyone besides Eddie, you offer a real, genuine apology.

But you’re speaking with Eddie. You’re burnt out from a long week, your pride still remains wounded, you’re suddenly questioning if you even have any friends, you’re drunk, and you’re speaking with Eddie.

A genuine apology would be like terrible shards, dredged up your throat and being clung to desperately by your whining pride. You’re bleeding enough as it is without that.

“My apologies, friend. I am so terribly sorry you weren’t able to get your dick wet.”

You both deserved what was coming, really. You deserved it. Because suddenly, just as it always ended up between you two, hateful words were exchanged. The worst part isn’t when Eddie snarks about how at least he can get his dick wet, unlike you, nor is it when you spit out how being a slut isn’t something to be proud of. It’s a blur of sharp tongues and jabbing knives, both of you swiping for any which way to make the other bleed.

It’s the cruelest you’ve been to each other yet, because somewhere below all of the surface-level insults, there’s real pain pulsing there. There’s your bloodied threads of anxiety, wretched thoughts and doubts as to if you should even be in this apartment tonight. There’s something more in the lines that form between Eddie’s furrowed brows as he matches your anger. His volume raises right along yours, and whenever his voice breaks over certain quick-dagger remarks, you don’t look into it. Especially not when it happens as he brings up the bartender again. All the failed dates, as he so kindly reminds you of.

“For someone who claims to not fucking care, you sure do talk a lot about those ridiculous fucking dates,” you seethe finally. Somewhere in the argument, you’d downed the rest of your drink, leaving an empty glass beside you.

“Because they prove my point!” he shouts in exasperation, “Because you… you… you can’t take a fucking hint.”

A final thread wraps around your throat. You feel as if you can’t breathe.

“And what is that hint, exactly?” your tone shakes as you ask it, past anger and past heartbreak.

Why do you still care what he thinks? Do you still care what he thinks?

The vodka says yes.

Yet Eddie says no, shaking his head immediately.

“Oh, so now you don’t want to speak your mind?” you hate how vulnerable you are, the lilt of your voice with unshed tears and the crack in your chest that you’re sure he can hear. You want to scream, you want to pound your fists against his chest. You want to throw a proper tantrum, like an absolute child. Like a little kid on the playground who no one wanted to play with, “You had all this shit to say, and now you bite your tongue? Fuck you, Eddie.”

“You don’t want to actually know,” he says flatly. He’s emotionless, and it burns you even further. Here you are, overflowing your cup with all your emotions, and his well has run dry. Even the tick you had managed to get out of his jaw is gone. All the anger, all the false signs of him actually caring have vanished.

You bite down on your lip, struggling to take a deep breath. Trying to even your anger, to bring yourself down to his level. You’re tired of the uneven battle ground. “I don’t? I never knew you were a mindreader.”

“Don’t have to be a mindreader to see the way you’re about to burst into fucking tears.”

You suddenly wish you could take the glass on the counter beside you and just toss it at him, full force. Make him physically bleed as he continues to stab at your pride, your ego, your emotions.

You’re not even sure he’d bleed at this point. Maybe he’s a fucking robot designed to do nothing but hurt you.

“Fuck you,” you state plainly as the first tear falls, repeating yourself with a more vindictive tone, “Fuck you. It’s not like you care about my fucking feelings, so just say it.”

“Fine,” he’s still so indifferent, still so emotionless, “You’re so dense, you never realize that you’re not wanted. Not by those assholes, not here-”

It’s your final breaking point. You don’t care to hear the rest of his sentence, temper taking the reins as you reach for the glass beside you.

You throw as hard as you can.

You tell yourself it’s dumb luck and bad aim when the glass shatters against the wall behind Eddie and not his shocked face. Not mercy. Not the ghost of hope, evaporating with a whisper of glass shards as the final shovel full of dirt falls upon the grave. You can see it clearly, the gravestone that marks the fresh grave: Here Lies Possibility. Here Lies All That Could Have Been.

It’s over. Eddie knows it – his emotion finally shows, but you don’t stick around to see it.

Eddie’s wrong. For once, you see you’re not wanted, and make the choice to leave.

—

HOUR FIFTEEN - 6:00 AM

“It was about you. I got banned because of you.”

You don’t know how to respond at first. Honesty hangs heavy between the two of you, suffocating in the morning light.

You asked him for honesty. He gave you honesty.

It should be a celebration, but all it does is build a pit in the bottom of your stomach that threatens to weigh you down to the bottom of his ocean.

When you finally respond, you enunciate each word carefully, “Eddie. What do you mean?”

“I got banned. From the bar. Because of you.”

“No, yeah, I gathered that,” you stress, the crease between your brow deepening, “But…. I… elaborate?”

You can hear the cars on the street below, echoing honks and engines thrumming. Songbirds sing in the distance and shops are opening; the entire world surrounding you two is awakening with a long yawn and a gentle stretch.

Your world feels as though it is coming to a full stop, but life is carrying on.

“Which part?” he breaths out a humorless laugh, “The part where I got banned, or the part where it was because of you? Because the ban is pretty straight forward – I threw a punch at a guy, he threw a punch back, now I can’t step foot in Fat Tuesday on Mill Ave-”

“The part where it’s because of me, you idiot,” you interrupt him in exasperation, “What the hell do you mean you got banned because of me?”

Silence. You’re met with silence.

Maybe honesty has run dry, just like that.

You search his face and count your luck, at least he admitted this much, before sighing, “Okay. You don’t have to tell me-”

The honesty comes bursting out of him. The well of it is anything but dry, “It was the bartender that stood you up. He was there that night after our fight, after the party at Steve’s.”

The bartender.

You hadn’t thought of that guy in ages, had long since forgotten his name and face since he’d bruised your ego.

“I…” your voice trails off, unsure and unsteady as you take tentative steps away from the balcony’s railing, “I’m… honored?”

Honored isn’t quite the right word. You really don’t know how to feel right now. Should you be thanking him, assuming it was in your honor that he started the fight? Or should you press on, test the limits of honesty and figure out if you’re interpreting this entire confession incorrectly?

Eddie chuckles dryly before he suddenly walks over to one of the two lounge chairs on the balcony, a small table separating them adorned with a crystal ashtray, “That’s all?”

“Should I not be?” Confusion bursts and blooms across your face, and Eddie’s only reaction to it is furrowed brows as he sits down, “I mean, you just told me you not only threw a punch, but took a punch from some dude who stood me up on a first date once. I think at the very least I should be-”

“I expected you to have more questions,” Eddie cuts you off as he taps his carton of cigarettes on the table beside you, more of a habit than a necessity. His knee is bouncing with each tap, an invisible beat you try to track and end up failing miserably before you take the other chair beside him, “You always have more questions.”

I do, you think immediately, I have a million and one questions I can’t ask.

Each question flurries past you in a blur, and you’re sure if they’re capable of making you dizzy that there’s no way Eddie could handle them all being thrown at him. There’s also a small part of you still terrified that pressing too far will send him running; ask one wrong thing, and Eddie will retreat to his tall, defensive walls, once again separating him from you. Progress, no matter how minimal, is progress. You can’t risk backtracking.

“Of course I do,” you repay his debt of honesty in a quiet tone, nimbly picking at the hem of his sweatshirt as it brushes your thigh.

“Then ask them.”

“If I ask you more questions, are you going to shut me out?”

The entire morning stills. The breeze turns stale, the sounds of the Sunday hustling and bustling seemingly pause.

You can’t help but look into his big, brown eyes. You try to communicate with a single look, a silent plea for him to please say he isn’t.

“I won’t shut you out,” he’s hardly louder than a whisper, but that’s enough for you.

You don’t know where to start: Did you punch him because of me? Did he say something first? Did you have an ulterior motive? Did you know about my date with him before that night? Did you guys talk about me?

The final one sparks a chill down your spine, uncomfortable at the thought of Eddie having discussed you with the bartender, having been the one to tarnish the man’s view of you enough to leave you stranded at a restaurant alone.

Normally, you’d slowly ease him to the point of your actual question. But your patience has vanished as you look at him now, as you watch him under the promise that he won’t shut you out.

“How did you know him before the fight?”

His lips twitch with a grin, “I was a regular, he was a bartender. Can I make it anymore obvious?”

“Are you quoting Avril Lavigne to me right now?” you ask, flabbergasted before shaking your head in an attempt to clear your thoughts and move past this joke, “You know what? Forget I asked – so he served you often? Were you…. Were you friendly?”

“Well, he once took me out behind the bar and kissed me, but he never got around to buying me dinner. Might have been because of my mean right hook, but who knows-”

“Eddie,” Your voice cracks in desperation, “Please, be serious. Just for one minute.”

It kills you to say it, because part of you is convinced this is a vision of the boy you’ve been chasing after for so long. This is the boy who is best friends with Nancy. This is the boy who is always invited without hesitation to smoke with Jonathan and Argyle. This is the boy that Steve and Robin had ranted and raved about in all those classes before you’d met him. This is the boy you’d met that first night in the bar in brief passing, and had been seeking out ever since.

A boy who felt like coming home after a long week.

It kills you to tell him to quiet down all the grins and jokes that are making your heart ache in such a terribly peculiar way.

“I’m sorry,” something in you gleams with gratuity when his grin takes it’s time fading, him throwing up his hands in faux defense, his playful tone still woven carefully. He’s not shutting you out. “I can be serious. I- Give me a second. Scout’s honor, I can stop fucking around.”

“You better,” you jilt, caving into the joking ever so slightly.

It’s easy to do when he looks at you this way. His eyes sparkle as if the honesty has freed him of some great weight. However he had expected you to react, it wasn’t this way.

All at once, he has become something brand new to you. You’re in his sweatshirt, barefoot on his balcony as you can still smell his last cigarette lingering in the air, and you wonder if you’ve never considered yourself a morning person because you’ve never experienced a Sunday morning with Eddie. If you had felt his morning light like this before, even in a sleep-deprived haze, you would have certainly enjoyed the early hours sooner.

“Okay, okay,” he takes a deep breath, forces away the grin you can still see in the crinkles beside his eyes, “To answer your question, no. We weren’t really friends, I didn’t even know his name and I’m pretty sure he didn’t know mine. He just knew my order.”

“Whiskey and coke,” you whisper, pulling a knee up to your chin, resting it and looking at Eddie with unbridled softness. Fifteen hours ago, you couldn’t have known nor cared about his go-to drink.

“Whiskey and coke,” he confirms. It’s in the pull of his lips – he’s fighting another smile, feeling just as soft as you are at the way you’ve learned something new about him, “Not that it’s hard to remember. Definitely easier than an amaretto sour.”

“Amaretto sours are not hard to remember,” you shake your head ever so slightly, chin slipping and lips dragging across the skin of your knee. Eddie’s eyes waste no time focusing on the movement, “Okay. So you two weren’t really friends, that’s good to know. I guess my next question would be, was he working that night?”

Eddie leans forward, elbows pressing into the tops of his thighs, “Are you asking if I’m badass enough to storm into a bar and throw a punch at the bartender on duty to defend your honor?”

His words paint quite the picture for you. “Did you?”

“No. Lower your expectations of me, please.”

It takes everything in you to not just throw your head back in laughter, having to settle on giggles suffocated against the skin of your knee still. You wrap your arms around your shin tightly, keeping your leg folded up into you as you shake with the soft laughter.

“Okay, one last question - who threw the first punch?” you sigh. The image of how fearful Eddie had looked when he’d first admitted to this entire ordeal is silly now. You already know the answer to this question, he wouldn’t have been so nervous to tell you if he hadn’t been the one instigating the entire thing, but you ask it to humor the two of you.

It’s a good distraction from the buds and blooms alike, all awakening along your vines. The vines don’t feel so constricting anymore. As a matter of fact, you think you’re able to recognize their beauty for the first time. Verdant greenery lined with splashes of reds, of violets, of yellows that are almost the same brilliant shade of gold that his eyes seemingly flash every time the sun hits them just right.

“I did,” he answers just as you expected. He also shrinks into himself, just as you had also expected, “I just saw him there, and- actually, I don’t know if this next part is just an insult to injury but I…” he trails off, not taking a single breath as he meets your gaze. You’re sure he’s searching for anger, for repulsiveness, for hurt. He’ll find none. You only nod your head and encourage him to keep going, “Okay, he was there on a fuckin’ date, sweetheart. A date, the night after he stood you up. So I just…I just decked him. And honestly? I don’t regret it. He deserved it.”

When he’s finally finished spilling his guts, you’re left fighting a grin and an overflowing chest of blooms. He’s flushed and nervous and goddamn it, he beat the shit out of some dude in your honor. You should scold him or be more upset, but you only start laughing again.

“Why are you laughing?” Eddie scrunches up his face, continuing to lean forward, almost as if trying to get closer to you, “Seriously, what’s so funny about that?”

You’ve thrown your head back in delight now, just as you had wanted to earlier, and release your hold on your leg as it falls back down from your chest, “Jesus Christ, I wish I could have seen that in person.”

Eddie’s stunned. But you mean it – if your heartbroken self from six months ago had witnessed that, you would have considered Eddie your best friend immediately. This entire feud would have been cut six months short just from one simple punch.

“I’m sorry,” you gasp out, desperately trying to compose yourself once more, “I really shouldn’t condone violence. I just – man, I cried over that guy. A whole month of those stupid, cheesy, ‘good-morning-beautiful’ texts, and he had just left me hanging, y’know? I mean, I’m sure he’s not a bad person-”

“No,” Eddie interrupts, smiling right along with you, “No, as far as we should be concerned, he’s a fucking asshole. Fuck defending him, we’re never going to see him again anyways.”

We’re never going to see him again.

Eddie probably has no idea what he’s done, referring to the two of you as a joint unit for the first time in a future tense, but it makes you ache all over. That heartache and warmth you felt for him is no longer secluded to just your chest; you feel it from your toes all the way to your scalp, traveling and leaving kisses of goosebumps in its trail. A sudden yearning floods your entire nervous system, the entire roadmap of your heart and your veins and your arteries – you like the image of you and Eddie, Eddie and you, still being a resemblance of a pair beyond just these measly twenty four hours. You like to imagine being able to call him up out of boredom some time next week. You like the thought of him joining on bar crawls with you and the girls. You like the thought of spending every Sunday morning with him from here on out.

Some of those are reasonable. Some of those aren’t. The yearning rushes through you all the same.

“Yeah,” you agree softly, “We’re never going to see him again. Fuck him.”

Eddie hums and leans back in his chair, finally beginning to relax, leaving you a moment to reflect.

He was telling the truth, he had been honest; he had gotten banned from a bar for you. He’d seen the bartender who stood you up, and he’d decided to defend your honor. Even after that night. Even after that fight. Even after the glass you had thrown.

Even after the cruel words he had said.

The yearning stops in its tracks, coming to a rough halt as you glance up at him sharply.

Even after the cruel words he had said, even after claiming you weren’t someone who was wanted, he’d defended you.

“You know what?” he suddenly says, but your mind is still whirling and you can only hum in response, “I kind of like honesty. I sort of dig it,” you wish you could muster up more than a smile as he boyishly grins at you, “What else do you wanna know? Hit me, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart. The yearning rushes past the floodgates, the pink strikes your cheeks, the ache rings out from the very hollows of your bones.

You know what you really want to ask him can’t be answered right now. Because even with the change in him, the one that weakens your knees and has you wishing for things in the future, he was still once the man from that night. He still once made you bleed, made you cry. And even if he’s apologized, and you know he means it, it can’t erase that fact.

And it worries you. Because as all the feelings swell in your chest, you’re left with yet another unanswered question.

Why would you defend me after that fight?

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#twenty four hours #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfic #this chapter is my fucking mortal enemy #rewrote out the angst and postponed it simply because if a guy ghosted me and i found out my 'enemy' rocked his shit i'd cackle #anyways #i hope this is worth the struggle i put in

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