#i am now going to bed because i am the sleepiest girl to ever exist EVER

[ghost-proofbaby]

SO SCARLET (IT WAS MAROON)

CHAPTER THREE: ALL TOO WELL

AND I KNOW IT'S LONG GONE AND THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE I COULD DO, AND I FORGET ABOUT YOU LONG ENOUGH TO FORGET WHY I NEEDED TO.

☆ pairings: rockstar!eddie munson x fem!reader

☆ warnings: no use of y/n, strong language, angst, description of panic attack, minors dni

☆ WC: 5.7K+

☆ A/N: it'll be a short fic, i said. short and sweet and simple, i lied to myself.

thank you to my love @hellfire--cult for the divider!

masterlist

The moment your name leaves his lips, you swear the world halts on its rotation. 

This was real. Every fear and every anxiety you had wrestled with over the last twenty four hours wasn’t for naught – he was here, sitting before you, breathing your name out like a sigh of relief when all you felt was pain. Stabbing, radiating pain. It’s even worse than looking at pictures and headlines of a stranger on a phone screen. Something about him suddenly being tangible, suddenly being real, sends you reeling. 

Lydia looks wildly between your showdown with the ghost of a man before you, “I’m sorry… Do you two- do you know each other?”

Not anymore.

“I-” you choke on your stutter. You’re frozen under his stare, going ashen as your head spins. Leave the room. Think of an excuse, get out of this room, run away. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

It’s the world’s most pathetic excuse, but the only thing you can spit out before you’re turning heel and running, just as your body had so desperately craved. You nearly bump into one of the security guards you’d just bravely had a confrontation with. 

They’d demanded your phone, you had put up a fight. You had stood your ground. Had held your chin high, dared them to push further even once they had your cell phone in their grasp, and displayed all that self-assuredness you had curated in the last two years. Only to end up scampering past them like a wounded animal mere seconds later.

Pathetic.

Lydia calls out something after you, but it reaches deaf ears as you blaze down the hallway. Your chest is squeezing, as if someone had wrapped it in shrink-wrap and sucked all of the air right out of it, swathed so tightly you could feel every pounding beat of your pulse racing. Your eyesight completely blurs, not quite from tears but rather a mere loss of focus. You nearly knock over one of the god forsaken fake plants Lydia insists as a primary form of decor, hardly being within the right mind to reach out and right the oversized bush of green plastic. 

But you don’t have to. Right as your back collides with the wall off to the side of the plant, breathing only coming in short and miserable pants, a different hand reaches out to catch the plant. A ringed hand. 

When Eddie says your name again, it’s not a sigh. It’s laced with panic as you support your full weight against white plaster and stare at where knuckles wrap around faux wooden stems. 

“Hey,” he stresses, hand leaving your line of sight as he puts a large palm on each of your shoulders. You can’t look at him, not yet, “Hey, can you breathe for me? C’mon, big breaths.” 

This close, you can smell the cologne. It’s not even the same woodsy drugstore scent that had lingered on the pillowcases he’d left you to cling to while on tour. Even that, something so miniscule as what cologne he now wore, had changed. And the new and unfamiliar scent chokes you, turns your desperate gasps for air even more futile. 

You had walked out of that apartment two years ago, without any intention of ever being this close to him again. You’d sworn to yourself you’d never be this close again. 

“You’re having a panic attack,” he squeezes your shoulders within his hold ever so slightly, as if attempting to ground you, “You need to breathe.” 

Your eyes nervously find his brown ones. For a second, you recall summer days when the sun would hit them just right, turning them into molten honey for your tasting. Soft and glowing, warming you from the inside out so effortlessly. 

But there’s not a single shred of sunlight in this hallway. The dark brown falls flat against your vision. 

“I’m fine,” you very clearly aren’t, struggling to even get the words out into the air between you two, “I’m- I’m fine.”

He doesn’t fight you when you reach up to swat away his hands. He lets you, hands falling away with ease, touch retracting as if it had never burned you. You take the chance to look over the metal now settled on his fingers, and you realize he still wears all the same ones you remember so vividly. A cross, a pig’s face, an animalistic skull. But there are new ones added to his collection, adorned on his right hand rather than the left. Unfamiliar and odd, the bulky metallic additions are more plentiful. A silver snake wrapped around his pinky, a large spider with the body of a Magic 8 ball on his pointer, a bat spread eagle on his middle. There’s a chunkier one on his thumb, thinner ones added above a few of his second knuckles, but you can’t clear the haze of your vision long enough to pick up on the designs. You choose to focus back on the familiar ones instead, old and comforting even in your panic. 

New rings, new cologne, new habits – the Eddie before you is not the Eddie you once knew. 

“Okay,” he’s whispering now. You’re not even sure what excuse he used to follow you out here without causing a scene. Maybe he did cause a scene, surely a grander one than you. He had that privilege now; he was an untouchable rockstar, he could afford to raise a ruckus. “I… Are you sure?” 

It’s hard to believe there was a time he was a familiar comfort when all that remains now is the awkward distance between the two of you.

But when he takes a step back from you, the new cologne leaves your stratosphere and the new rings leave your field of vision, and the breaths finally come just a tiny bit easier. Still not enough to satiate your lungs, but enough that the headrush begins to pass. 

“I’m sure.” 

You try to insert such finality in those two words. As if whatever had just happened would fade and never exist, as if you could walk back into that conference room and take yourself off this project. You can’t. Eddie has a sense of control, a grip on his reality and the reigns of his choices, but you don’t. If you were to demand Lydia remove you from the project, you’d be risking termination. You’d be risking everything – and it may not be much, but you’d built it brick by broken brick these last few years. You’d salvaged what you had been able to out of the ashes of what had been, but it hadn’t been enough. It had hardly been enough for a foundation. You’d built up the person that now stood before him from practical scratch.

The weight of just how much you had to lose hits suddenly – the realization that this was happening and you had no control of it. 

But Eddie did. He had to. 

“You need to go back in there,” you start, voice still shaking and eyes still averted, “And you need to demand that they reassign you guys. You… You need-” you begin to stutter and fumble to find the right words. You could have lashed out, could have tried to pour salt in a wound you weren’t even sure still existed so that Eddie made the choice on his own. But your mind is muddled and you’re desperate, “Someone else can take on the project. You need to go and demand that someone else takes on the project.” 

“What?” Not the response you wanted. Not the response you needed, “I- No.” 

Two years later, and he still found a way to do significant damage. 

Your eyes snap up, “What do you mean no?” 

“I mean no.”

“I haven’t asked anything of you. Not back then, not after everything happened, I-”

He cuts you off with a scoff. “Can’t ask for anything if you just fall off the face of the fucking earth.” 

You hadn’t noticed before, but as his walls begin to build, you realize that the prior interaction had been something vulnerable. Something where neither of you were on the defense quite yet like you’d always imagined a reunion would go. All that had mattered ten seconds ago was you being okay, him coming after you, making sure you were fine. He’d allotted you all the care and attention you had craved so terribly two years ago, nearly begged for until your knees had bled for. 

“Eddie,” you whisper, getting too distressed to think straight, “Please, for the love of God, just make them reassign the project-”

“I can’t,” he interrupts, shaking his head, “Do you think I’d put myself through this if I could help it? I fucking can’t. I have absolutely no control in there. I didn’t even-” he cuts off his sentence, looking you in your eyes, leaving more to be said. 

He didn’t even what?

“I can’t do anything about it,” he says instead of whatever had been on the tip of his tongue, “Trust me – if I could, I would. But I can’t. So why don’t you say something?” 

It’s your turn for scoffing and disbelief, “I can’t. I’m not the one with all the power and glory-”

“Is that what you think I have?”

“That’s what I know you have.” 

You both go quiet as a battlefield fills the distance between you. All anger, all regret. None of the love or care that had once existed between you two exists here in this quantum plane of sharp words and deadly jabs. 

“Just- please ask for a reassignment,” you try with one final plea, eyes hard on him, “Say that that first impression left you unimpressed, I don’t care. She won’t fire me for that.”

“Once again, no. As it turns out,” his voice is low, dangerous, unfamiliar. A tone he had never used before with you, “Even the one with all the power and all the glory can’t make miracles happen. Sorry, doll.” 

He doesn’t await your response, leaving you on your own as you stay pressed against the wall and he’s walking away. 

What is the saying? ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’? 

You were certainly feeling scorned.

You felt ripped wide open, beaten and bruised and damn scorned as he leaves a conversation you weren’t finished with. You can’t tell which limb aches the most – the shoulder where his now strange hands had held onto you, your fingers that had curled into pained fists at your side to show you were prepared for a fight, your rib cage that still struggled to expand and accommodate the air now vacant of his cologne that you needed after your panic attack, or the legs that had once carried you away from Eddie Munson only to lead you right back to him. 

There’s nothing you can do, though, beyond composing yourself. You take the same big, deep breaths that Eddie had tried to coax out of you moments before. Your fists slowly unfurl and your palms rake against the side of your jeans in an attempt to wipe away the sweat of the interaction. 

Fine. If he wouldn’t help you, you could handle this. You could manage this project, plan a goddamn party for your ex-boyfriend’s new single. You would treat it just as you did every other previous project you had excelled at, and you would avoid all unnecessary contact with him just as you had with previous clients. 

As a matter of fact, you could probably get away with avoiding all contact. 

He hadn’t hired you. His management had. And, according to him, he had no real power in this situation. If he had no say in the matters, then there would be no reason to reach out to him.

You could do this. You could handle this. 

It’s a mantra of salvation that you repeat to yourself internally as you take confident strides back to that conference room, not even stopping for the guards this time before you burst back into the room when your imminent doom awaits. 

The repetition falters a bit when all eyes land on you as you take your first steps into the room. 

Your name comes out of Lydia’s mouth like a hiss, her teeth locked into a smile that would better pass into a grimace as she asks, “How nice of you to join us again. Please, take a seat.” 

“Of course,” you can’t look her in her eyes for very long, immediately rushing to sit at the chair she’d motioned towards. You haven’t spared Eddie a single glance – you haven’t spared any of the boys you’d once known a look. Instead, you look up to direct an apology at the only face you don’t recognize before you, “I’m truly sorry.” 

The older gentleman, wrapped in a certain kindness and warmth below his professional attire, smiles. And in an instant, his face isn’t quite as unfamiliar, “No worries. When Nature calls, right? Regardless, I’m Matt. Nice to meet you.” 

You can guess which hole in Eddie’s life he’s attempting to smother, which shoes this man serves to fill. He has more hair than his predecessor, but the grin is the same. 

If you picture the man he reminds you of back in Hawkins, you’ll surely begin to ache. 

When you reply with your name, you can hear a fragment of your youth in your voice. Better days spent in Forest Hills trailer park, loitering about a trailer as Wayne Munson asks you how well of an eye you’ve been keeping on his nephew. You’d always lie, say you were keeping him in line when you knew you’d spent the day following him right into trouble, like some sort of lost puppy. Like some sort of loyal soldier. It occurs to you that that’s who you had always been; a fierce soldier over the shoulder of Eddie, ever the brave commander. You would have followed him into battle without a second of consideration, you did follow him all the way to New York without ever taking a final glance at your hometown. 

You wondered if he had tried to replace you as well. You imagine it; the new and fresh face that replaced yours in picture frames, that laid beside him at the end of each night he returned home, that heard a whisper of I love you over the line to the backtrack of a sound rehearsal. 

Were there ever any bloody wars between him and his new lovers that could compare to the battles never fought between you two? Did anyone else in this world know the wounds of his gun never fired? 

The smoke clears. You still don’t look at Eddie, afraid to only see the commander you once knew. You force a smile, putting on a soldier's bravado that doesn’t fit quite right anymore. 

Bullets never fired, triggers never pulled, but the blood stained the same.

“So, where shall we begin?”

—

Matt does most of the talking for the next hour. Sheet after sheet of paperwork is laid down in front of you, your hand beginning to cramp from signing your name so many times, and the details are discussed.

A new single, set to release in three months. A release party that needed to be grandeur and garner the type of attention that Matt feared had been waning from the band due to radio silence on their music front. The outlines of the project were clear cut, simple enough, and you had yourself fooled just well enough that this would be easy.

You kept your eyes set on the prize and never once noticed the tomfoolery occurring between the band members. The words on the tip of their tongues that Eddie keeps quiet through quick kicks to their shins beneath the table, the individual hurt reflected in each of their eyes as you treat them no better than strangers. That treatment of Eddie, they understood. But them?

They could never understand. 

“What’s the name of the single, if I may ask?” you question as you look over one of your copies of the paperwork. Lydia had been eerily silent, allowing you to take the lead. 

Despite the rough start, it was paying off. Having a switch for your emotions can be a good thing, as it turns out. 

“You may,” Matt nods before turning to the boys. It’s the first time he's looked to them for answers during the entire meeting, “Shall I do the honors, or would you boys rather do it yourselves?” 

It’s a chance for all the members of Corroded Coffin to open their mouths without silent reprimanding from Eddie beneath the table, but he beats them to it.

“Dial Tone.”

You freeze your reading. 

There’s something in the way he says it that forces you to look up. As if he’s only speaking to you, and the rest of the room is a faded mirage for him to send away for these private moments. Still a commander, even when his bravest soldier has left him. 

“Sounds… interesting,” you murmur, taking a few seconds too long to meet his gaze, unsure of what to say, “Rolls off the tongue easily.” 

“It certainly does. Which, ironic, given the situation that inspired the song.” 

“And what would that be?”

You’re both wearing masks in front of an audience half made up of people painfully aware of your history, and the rest being painfully oblivious. 

Does Matt know about you? Lydia certainly doesn’t know about Eddie. 

“Words never said. Answers never given. Phone calls missed and never… returned.”

You’re not stupid, but you wish you were. It feels a bit selfish, a bit self absorbed, to so quickly assume you’re the inspiration. 

But how could you believe anything else when Eddie is looking at you like that?

Hollow eyes, devoid of all the honey you once reveled in. Not so much of a stain of sweetness you swear you still taste on the back of your tongue. He’s looking at you with blame, well-deserved anger, and yet not an ounce of the guilt that should exist somewhere in those depths. 

“How riveting,” you play along, trying to swallow down the waves of emotions, “Sounds like it’ll really draw in your audience. Might even be relatable to a few.”

Answers never given. Like how someone could stop saying they loved someone they’d spent years planning their life with, like how he could stop calling so easily, how he could leave so easily. 

“Fingers crossed,” his forced smile in return is almost sinister, and you know it was the right choice to avoid speaking to each other until this moment.

There will be no contact. You know now that if you take on this project, which you technically have through law-binding contracts, that you won’t be able to be civil with Eddie. There is a history that can never be erased, mistakes made and wounds inflicted by both sides. Two worlds of hurt caused by opposing sets of hands that can only clash when they try to meet in the middle. 

But then Matt, sweet Matt that you had come to actually like during this meeting, has to burst your bubble.

“Right, well, the good news is the boys aren’t on tour for the time being, meaning there will be plenty of time to talk about the small details and how the single will come into play during planning,” he explains, happily and still so unaware, “As a matter of fact, I would like to emphasize just how much I would appreciate you including the boys, especially Eddie, in this ordeal. His participation would be very helpful.” 

Some silent form of communication happens between Matt and Eddie, glinting eyes and sudden frowns meeting raised eyebrows and fake smiles, but it’s not your concern. 

The last thing you want during this project is Eddie’s involvement. 

“Of course!” You need to think of an excuse, push for a way to keep him out, “But if Eddie is too busy, I’ll completely understand. I know that a single usually means an album, and that can be very time consum-”

“He won’t be too busy,” Matt interrupts, still staring at Eddie as if he’s daring him, not even questioning you singling him out as he does the exact same.

You recall what Eddie had insisted in the hallway, that his reach of control wasn’t as far as you had been assuming. 

Swallowing hard, you see another relic of Wayne Munson in this man – he wasn’t someone to argue with, “Right, of course. Eddie will be involved. Absolutely.” 

All the power and all the glory – but did it really rest in Eddie’s palms like you assumed?

“She has a point,” Eddie finally finds his voice, leaning back in his chair, trying to relax the tension from his shoulders, “I do have the album to work on.” 

“And now you have this. I’m sure you can find a way to multi-task.” 

Your comparison was accurate. It had been a while since you had seen another grown man capable of shutting Eddie down so quickly, tearing down his walls of affinity for challenging authority and reducing him to nothing more than a shell of his younger self. Matt and Wayne would have gotten along well. You doubt that they’ve met, but you know a bond would have formed between the common denominator of being able to subdue the once-rambunctious boy before you. 

Eddie pouts nearly the complete remainder of the meeting. And those foolish, bitter shards within you become determined to be the bigger person. To smile and nod along, even when you disagreed with certain terms discussed. To be agreeable, to be good, to be better. This new version of you has something to prove; that you’ve done better without Eddie, that you’ve changed into something that no longer aligns with who he is. 

It’s all for show, but you tell yourself no one can see through the cellophane disguise. 

The only remaining signatures aren’t required from you but the rest of the boys. A single contract is passed down the line, and each of them sign themselves away to the agreement. Line after line of swooping black ink locks the five of you into an entrapment, a crowded dance of newly made strangers who have no choice but to play pretend. 

Eddie makes it a deliberate point that he’s the last one to sign. Forces Grant to slide the prettily detailed paper right in front of him until it’s clear he’s making no move to pick up his pen, and the poor guy has to stretch a bit further and let Gareth take it rather than the stubborn rockstar. Only once Jeff’s own night-shade of ink has looped over one of the many lines does it return back to Eddie.

He looks you in the eyes for several seconds too long, pen crooked beside the paper on the table. You can’t take a single breath as you register how lifeless his eyes remain. 

He’s not the person you once knew, but you are no longer the girl that once saw the world in him. 

You will not drop to your knees before him, you will not worship the ground he walks on, you will not break. Certainly not first. Certainly not at all. 

There’s no final words before hands donning unfamiliar rings pick up a pen amongst the silence. Just the click of bringing the ink to life, and the soft scratch of promises that will not be kept. It’s nothing new amongst the two of you.

As a matter of fact, if the scratch of the pen could echo, it might just resemble the sound of the door on that haunted and vacant apartment closing for the final time behind you two years ago. 

—

“Do you two know each other?” 

You had been waiting for this moment. Once Matt had called for a quick break so that he could organize and make copies of all paperwork, you knew Lydia would be chasing you down. 

“What do you mean?” you question airily, topping off the small paper cup of water you had used as an excuse to dismiss yourself into the corner of the room, “Me and Matt? No, I’ve never-”

“Not you and Matt,” she moves to stand in front of you, your back to the room and the band, as she continues in an authoritative whisper, “You and the band – you and Eddie.”

“Why do you think we know each other?” 

Please don’t catch on. Please don’t notice. Please don’t make me admit it. 

Please don’t fire me. 

She retrieves her own water, moving as if she wasn’t having such an intense conversation with you at this moment. All a show for the clients, no doubt. You weren’t the only skilled actress in this room, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the way you ran out of this room when you saw him, maybe the way he ran after you without a word. Maybe the way the two of you spent a good ten minutes alone in that hallway, and how the rest of that band has been looking at you like you’re a ghost. Please don’t tell me you had a fling with Eddie before this. I really need my best person on this project, but I can’t have personal relationships interferin-”

“No, we don’t know each other,” you cut her off, ignoring the compliment and taking a sip to give your chance to formulate a better addition to the lie. It wasn’t really a lie, though, was it? “I promise it’s nothing, and it won’t interfere. I just…” I just hate him. I just miss the version of him I used to know. I just need you to take me off this project as quickly as possible for a reason that won’t make you think less of me or affect my future career here. “I don’t like the band, you know this.” 

“I knew you weren’t a fan of them, but…” she trails off and looks over your shoulder, no doubt surveying the band. When you stood up from the table, they’d all been feigning boredom as if they hadn’t been taking turns staring you down so intensely. You felt like an animal under observation. “I thought it would be a good thing. To have a neutral party take this on. Why, exactly, don’t you like them?” 

“ I don’t think he’s a good person.”

He as in Eddie. It goes as unspoken knowledge. And, technically, it isn’t a lie. Based on the headlines, based on his coolness this entire interaction, you don’t think he’s a good person. Not anymore. 

You can feel the four sets of eyes on you even now. Your exchange with Lydia has been too quiet for them to hear, but you know you’re still being watched carefully.

“You don’t have to think he’s a good person, but you do need to play nice,” Lydia reminds you. You open your mouth, prepared to argue that you had been playing nice when Lydia waves her free hand to stop you, “I know, I know. I’m not saying you haven’t been perfectly professional. You have been, aside from your… bathroom break at the beginning, but please just remember that.” 

You nod, stiff as ever. She was giving you more grace than you deserved if you tried to look at it from an outsider’s point of view. 

“Of course,” that tone of professionalism, that mask to hide the whirlwind of emotions. You could do this.

You had to do this.  

Choice is an illusion when Matt returns with the copies of paperwork, dividing the files up between himself and Lydia. Choice is an illusion as fake smiles are exchanged and pleasant goodbyes are offered. Choice is nothing but smoke and mirrors when all is said and done, and the entire group of you all stand outside the conference room, ready to part ways with a promise of next time, meaning the next meeting.

You never had a choice in any of this. Eddie did, somewhere along the line, but you didn’t. 

Lydia and you both hand over business cards to Matt’s waiting hands, a deliberate move on your part. You bypass Eddie’s expectant glare entirely. The quicker this is over with, the faster he’s exiting the building and no longer occupying the same room as you, the better. 

“We’ll be in contact,” Matt promises as he tucks the cards away carefully. 

“I look forward to it,” you assure him, as if you weren’t dreading every second of what those contracts had detailed.

Three months. You had just signed on to guarantee Eddie Munson being back in your life for three months. The thought makes you nauseous. 

Matt, ever the normal person, takes it as his queue to leave. Lydia has nodded, turned and began her short trek to her office as the band’s manager starts his journey to the elevator. Most of Corroded Coffin scampers after him, gazes on the floor as they retreat to a private space that will certainly be filled with questions. You almost wish there was a way for you to hear what will be said. The topic of conversation, undoubtedly, will be you. You and Eddie, Eddie and you. A pair of intertwined souls that had taken a sharp knife to your connection only to end up with Fate cruelly retying it on this dreadful day. 

Fate, and Eddie, it seems. 

His hand reaches out and catches your upper arm before you can escape the exchange properly. 

“Can we talk?” You stare at him blankly to hide the racing of your heart and pounding in your mind. Those hands on you, skin on skin, leaving an inevitable mark. An inevitable stain. “Go for coffee, go for lunch, just-”

“No.”

You don’t have to think about your answer. Your pause was only born out of shock. 

His eyebrows furrow, “No? What do you mean no?” 

It feels like a pathetic repeat of your interaction in the hallway, when you had begged him to save you from this doomed union. Except now, you hold the cards in your hand. The first sense of control you’ve been offered this entire time. 

“I mean no,” you repeat yourself clearly. Matt is halfway down the hall, and the boys trailing right behind him seem to fumble over their steps for a second. Jeff even goes as far as to look over his shoulder at the brewing storm appearing behind them, but clearly thinks better of intruding, “I don’t want to talk. I don’t want coffee, and I don’t want lunch.” 

End of story. 

Except, it isn’t, because Eddie’s face only twists further in pain, “We have to talk at some point-”

“Actually, we don’t. I’d prefer we didn’t. I think we can both agree it’ll be better, easier, for both of us to keep this strictly professional until we can go our separate ways again.”

He looks as if you had physically reached out and struck him. The force of your words nearly makes him rock backwards, face falling and mouth agape as he tries to grapple with the determination in your words. 

If you were a fool, you’d mistake it for a flash of disappointment. But it’s not possible – it couldn’t be disappointment, only arrogance. He had obviously been assuming you would just give in. Your change just hadn’t become clear enough to him yet. It would, in time. 

And now, the two of you seemingly had too much of it to endure. 

“Actually, I think we can both agree that’s a load of bullshit,” he crassly argues back once he’s regained composure, “You know that’s not possible.”

You shake your head, suck in a bit of the skin of your inner cheek between your molars as an internal encouragement to stand your ground, “It is. It’s not only possible, but is exactly what’s going to happen.”

“You heard Matt. We have to talk at some point, even if it’s just about this and not us.”

“And we will. We can talk about this project all you want, Eddie. But not over lunch, and not over coffee,” you swear you draw blood from your cheek as you take back on that tone of professionalism, ice cold and completely disconnected, “My preferred form of contact is email. I usually respond in a timely manner, even after hours-”

“Don’t do that,” he stops you.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m just another one of your clients.” 

The metallic flavor floods the deepest corners of your mouth, overtaking the aftertaste of a honey you once knew on the back of your tongue, “That’s exactly what you are. One of my clients.” 

Just a client, and nothing more. A boundary must be drawn, or else there will be more blood spilled than a mere drop from biting your inner cheek. And you aren’t prepared to bleed for him – not again. Never again. 

He opens his mouth, as if he has more to dig out of the grave of this conversation, when Matt’s voice calls from down the hallway, “Eddie! C’mon! There’ll be time to talk later, we’ve got a meeting with the producer across town now.” 

His stance goes rigid, annoyance rolling off him in waves, eyes still focused on you. 

Maybe the reminder of time, the three month timeline, hurts him just as much as it hurts you. Maybe, just possibly, his arm has also been twisted in carving out a space for you in his life once more, whether strictly professional or not. 

He deeply exhales through his nose, “I don’t even have your email.” 

“Matt does. He has my card.”

“Yeah, he does. I don’t. How am I supposed to reach you through your preferred form of contact without it?”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way.” 

You mean to smile at him just as you would the owner of the bakery opening on Third Street, or the mother of a bride trying to share the weight of responsibilities for a wedding. It doesn’t come off that way, though – you can feel the sadness of it tickle the corners of your mouth before he’s even slowly turning from you.

You watch the figure of Eddie Munson walk away from you, and you begin to wish he were walking out of your life rather than only out of the building for the time being.

eddie's taglist: @capricornrisingsstuff @thisisktrying @hideoutside @vol2eddie @corrcdedcoffin @ches-86 @alovesongtheywrote @its-not-rain @feralchaospixie @cheesypuffkins87 @thebook-hobbit @babez-a-licious @eddies-acousticguitar

ghost's taglist: @emmaisgonnacry @figmentofquinn @bebe07011 @barbedwirebats @ayooooo0 @neverlearnedcivility @munson-enthusiast @digwhatudug @wow-cam @daddysmodifiedprincess2 @cancankiki @gothmingguk @nix-rose @thesesuggestedblognamesbegreat @chevelle724 @madaboutjoe @take-everything-you-can @josephquinnsfreckles @thebanisheddreamer @water-loos @dailyobsession @whenshelanded @happy-and-alone

join my taglist!

#ghost's stories #maroon #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson angst #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfic #i couldn't access my taglist response list for a few days so the taglists are NOT updated! they will be soon :) #half-assedly edited #i am now going to bed because i am the sleepiest girl to ever exist EVER #playing around with formatting don't mind me