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spideystevie · 1 year

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strike-outs

summary: rust colored dirt, old jerseys & game winning strike-outs

word count: 2.3k

a/n: this has been brewing in the depths of my drafts for a hot minute. college!au because i said so. this is my take on baseball!steve who lives and breathes in my head constantly and if you don’t agree then cry about it. just kidding.

MARCH 1987 - GRAND RAPIDS, MI.

It’s an unusually warm day for Michigan in March. The sky’s a vibrant blue with picturesque cottony clouds scattered across. Sun rays warm your cheeks, a welcoming kiss after last week’s frigid cold. You roll up the sleeves of your university crewnecks to feel the sun on your arms.

Music flows through the orange padding of your headphones, walkman clipped to the waist of your jeans. You walk past the baseball field, eyes focusing in on the lone figure standing on the pitcher’s mound. It’d be almost embarrassing to admit that you recognize it to be Steve Harrington almost immediately.

Your feet stall, rooting you in place near the third base dugout as you watch him wind up and throw. The ball hits the ground and ricochets against the fence behind home plate. There’s a ringing of metal as the chain link fence reverberates. The ball rolls back towards home plate, stopping just a foot away from a worn pair of cleats, covered in a rust colored dust.

Davenport might not have been Steve’s first choice but it was the one that put the most distance between him and his father and that was good enough for him. It was also the only school that took a chance on a small town kid with shit grades so Steve really couldn’t complain.

Steve bends to pick the ball up and when he turns to walk back to the mound, he notices you. Your eyes meet just as Let’s Hear It For The Boy starts to play. A heat not induced by the sun creeps across your cheeks. It only worsens when a charming grin lifts his cheeks.

The two of you stare for a beat too long before someone breaks the silence.

“Hey,” he calls, walking towards the fence that separates the two of you. You step closer, pulling your headphones to rest around your neck. Steve catches a few notes of the song before you pause it. The toes of his cleats bump the bottom of the fence, the metal shaking briefly.

Steve pulls his glove off, shoving the ball inside and tucking it under his left arm. His fingers curl around the holes in the fence. You take a step forward, one more and you’d hit the fence too. His smile softens around the edges this close up.

“Hey,” he exhales. His gaze makes you feel warmer than the sun. Your smile is the slightest bit reserved, tucked away just slightly towards your chest.

“Hi,” you say, crossing your arms across your chest. You wonder if you hold yourself tight enough if it’ll suffocate the butterflies swarming your heart.

Things with Steve are new and covered in the sweetness of the early days. Everything is fresh and new, like a springtime blossom. The shock that sparks both your nerves when you’re around each other is not.

You’d been partnered for a project together in sociology in the fall and when the semester ended, you didn’t think you’d see him again aside from passing occasionally on your commutes to class.

And then you walked into your history course this spring and thought you were hallucinating when you spotted him. You thought you’d collapse when he waved you over to sit in the empty seat next to him. You nearly did when he asked you out a week later.

It’d been a couple months of dating exclusively, not even a week since he asked you to be his. And yet, he still hadn’t kissed you. It’s not that he hasn’t tried, it’s that every time his lips brush against yours something has to interrupt the moment. Steve’s determined to change that today.

“Thought you didn’t have practice today,” you muse, blinking at Steve through the fence.

“Coach wants to try me out as pitcher this season. Thought I’d start practicing now,” he shrugs and lets go of the fence, dropping his shoulder to lean against it. The fence bulges towards you. The sunlight catches on a curl of hair sneaking out of his hat. You have to grip your arm to resist reaching out to tuck it behind his ear.

“Look at you, all star,” you tease. Steve’s cheeks flush a soft shade of pink, hardly discernible in the shade that covers his face from the brim of his hat. You shuffle forward until the toes of your converse bump the fence separating you. “You ever pitched before?”

“Little league,” he laughs. The way it bubbles out of him makes you giggle along, the shoulder opposite to his leaning against the fence. He shakes his head. “Once or twice in high school, too.”

You hum, smile still present but eyes rounding into something more serious. “You’ll do great.”

It’s a reassuring hug around Steve’s heart, one that constricts itself around the muscle until it skips a beat. He softens like butter in the sun and he lifts a hand to clutch the fence near your head.

There’s a tenderness in the way he looks at you, in the way his fingers try their best to wrap around yours when you lift your own hand to clutch the fence. You don’t think about all the logistics behind kissing between a hole in a chain link fence, the only things running through your head being finally and a mantra of SteveSteveSteve.

Your chin juts out, tilted up for him to reach and Steve wishes he were on the other side of the fence so he could hold your face in the palm of his hand. He gets a hair's width away from your lips when the sprinkler system kicks on making you jolt back. He really wishes he were on the other side of the fence now.

You try not to look too disappointed as you step back from the fence, though you’re sure you’re not alone in your emotions. Steve looks almost apologetic, his smile sheepish.

“I’ll catch you later?” he offers, stepping back from the fence himself. You nod, reaching up to pull your headphones back over your ears.

“You better, Harrington,” you say, clicking play again on your walkman as you turn on your heel and leave back to your dorm. Steve’s eyes follow you until you disappear from view.

APRIL 1987 - HOME.

The glimpse of warmth you’d felt in March seems to have vanished into a haze. The weather had backpedaled to an early spring cold. If you focused hard enough, you could see wisps of your breath in front of your face when you’d exhale. First home game. Steve’s first game this season as a pitcher.

The cold metal of the bleachers seeps through the denim of your jeans, your knee bouncing anxiously. It’d been a little over a week since your last almost kiss with Steve. With the flurry of late midterms and the opening of baseball season, you hadn’t seen much of Steve outside of your shared morning history class.

He made sure he caught you yesterday. He waited outside the door of your Thursday literature class, already dressed for practice and cutting it close to being late, all just to ask you if you wanted to wear his jersey to the first game of the season. It was worth it when he saw your eyes light up, hands clutching the old jersey to your chest. He’d kissed your cheek before running off.

Sitting in the stands, wearing his last name on your back, you think you can still feel the lingering warmth of his lips against your cheek while you watch him warm up. The slight wind is icy, biting at your nose and leaving it with a burning numbness. You tug the sleeves of your thick long sleeve you’d layered beneath the jersey over your fists.

It’s easy to forget about the near frigid cold when you watch Steve play. It doesn’t hurt that his uniform pants hug him in the best way as he winds up his pitches and runs the bases. You’re not sure how much prouder you can get of Steve, watching him throw strike after strike.

Your team sits at a tie with the visiting team as the ninth inning rolls around. With two outs and bases loaded, the nerves start to eat at you and you can’t begin to imagine the pressure on Steve. You clasp your hands in front of you, thumbs pressed to your lips.

Steve closes his eyes and takes a breath before starting his wind up. He hauls a pitch down the line, exhales when it sinks into the catcher’s mitt and the umpire calls it a strike. He steps forward, glove extended to catch the ball when the catcher tosses it back.

You squeeze your hands together, whispering encouragement under your breath as though he can hear it from your spot in the stands. He winds up and throws, sinking another strike in the catcher’s mitt. You exhale, watching Steve shake out his shoulders as he walks back towards the mound.

“One more, baby, one more,” you mutter under your breath, not caring if the people sitting around you can hear you. Steve pauses at the top and looks towards the stands to find you. When your eyes meet you nod, releasing your clasped hands momentarily to give him a thumbs up. He bites back a smile, dipping his head down towards the ground as he gets ready to pitch.

You feel like everything moves in slow motion the moment he starts his wind up. The ball leaves his fingertips and seems to float down the line. This time, the batter swings and you watch with bated breath as it swings just above the ball and misses it completely. Everything syncs back to normal with the final smack of the ball meeting the glove and the umpire calling the final strike.

Steve’s shoulders visibly droop in relief, his teammates clapping him on the back and cheering as they head towards the dugout to prep for their final turn at bat. His eyes find you, standing in the stands with a grin on your face before he’s ushered into the dugout.

It’s Steve who bats first at the bottom of the ninth, blowing a kiss to you before stepping up to bat. He swings at the first pitch, a satisfying crack sounding when his bat makes contact with the ball, sending it out into far left field. He slides safe into second, bouncing up onto his feet with a smile.

Steve steals third after the first out, daring a glance at you in the stands to send a smile your way and crosses home plate with a grin, securing the first home game win of the season. He can’t even seem to care about the rest of the inning, his main thought being you standing in the crowd wearing his jersey and the proudest smile he’d ever seen.

You wait outside the dugout when the game ends, a giddiness coursing through you. As the team starts to file off the field, you stretch on your toes to find Steve. He comes out last and his eyes immediately find you. He barely has time to drop his bag to the ground before you’re hurling yourself at him.

His arms catch you around your waist while yours wrap around his neck. You press your nose against his neck, only minutely aware of how sweaty he is despite the chill in the air.

“You were amazing out there, all star,” you grin as you settle onto your feet. Your hands rest against the front of his jersey but his hold around your waist stays tight. Steve’s smile is blinding.

“You think so?” his voice is teasing and you roll your eyes but the smile hasn’t left your face. You push against his chest playfully and a laugh bubbles out of Steve.

“I’m proud of you,” you say, sincerity dripping off each word. Something inside Steve’s chest melts down into a thick honey, warming him from the inside out. He doesn’t even think twice before he’s cupping your face in his hands and slotting his lips against yours.

Your eyes close with a muffled sigh, hands sliding up to rest against the sides of Steve’s neck. Your mind is racing with thoughts of finally and SteveSteveSteve. He kisses you soft and tender, like he has all the time in the world. For once there’s no sprinklers, no pesky roommates or annoying teammates. There’s nothing else except the small bubble surrounding the two of you in the frigid cold of early spring.

Steve pulls back for a breath and his lips part to say something. You don’t let him get the chance.

“Shh, one more, I’ve been waiting to do this for weeks,” you pull him back into you, lips molding with his like they were carved from the same stone, missing puzzle pieces fitting back into place. His hands fall to your waist and pull you closer against him. You kiss him with a fervor until it’s more smile than kiss and you have to pull back.

Your cheeks hurt from smiling. A slight gust of wind pushes past but you can’t feel the cold, not after the searing heat that’s covered your skin from the minute his lips touched yours. Steve kisses you once more, sweet and chaste before squeezing your waist and stepping away to grab his bag.

“Celebratory dinner?” he offers, slinging his baseball bag over his shoulder and wrapping his free arm around your shoulders. He pulls his hat off his head and runs a hand through his hair as you walk.

“Maybe after you shower, you’re all gross,” you scrunch your nose at him, mirth twinkles in your eyes. Steve shakes his head and shoves his hat onto yours. You grin, leaning into him as he squeezes your shoulders.

He wonders if it’s too early to be thinking he might be in love with you.

#interrupting my momentary writing hiatus bc of finals season to bring you baseball!steve #the amount of research i did on the weather during 1987 in grand rapids specifically...astonishing.#baseball!steve plagues my mind daily and i needed to share my take with all of you #spending nearly all of your adolescent years on baseball fields supporting your younger brother will do that to ya #steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x y/n #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington imagine #baseball!steve harrington #baseball!steve x reader #baseball!steve au #college!steve au #📝: a writes!

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bizaar · 1 year

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Cruel Summer - Part 10

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 10k

warnings: Angst, some fluff, descriptions of violence, mentions of throwing up, so sorry if I forgot anything!

A.N.: Part ten!! A little later than I had hoped to get it out (you know... life) honestly I think we can all just agree that Jason Carver is a douchebag — if you see typos, no you don’t I posted this while I’m at work lmao

It’s all weirdly fucked in the worst way and Eddie is not sure it’s entirely his fault, despite how you’re certainly endeavoring to make him feel that way, and how his psyche is pulling out all the stops to help.

It had been such a bizarre fight, one he was only semi-conscious of as just as it had last summer, Eddie’s brain clicked off the moment you started in on each other, rendering him useless to defend you from whatever hurtful things his psyche drummed up.

He shouldn’t have said what he said, he knows that… but goddammit if you didn’t break his heart a little saying what you said.

Maybe he was a fool to think you could pick things up where you left off, that things going forward would be okay again… maybe he’d allowed himself to get lost in a flight of fancy that you’d come looking for him out of anything beyond the promise you’d made to Wayne.

Maybe he was just feeling sorry for himself.

At the time, Eddie didn’t know if he was glad you followed him to the back of the boathouse, on account of the black cloud of violent hatred his hurt feelings were endeavoring to stir up in him to muddy his mind. That part of him, the rational part, was only glad that everyone else had taken the hint and left the room because they’d already seen enough, and if you two were going to fight he much preferred not to have an audience.

Only you aren’t that couple, you never fight.

The way Eddie sees it, most things aren’t worth fighting about, but the problem with when you did is that neither of you is willing to back down and let the other win.

You’re both just too damn stubborn.

“So, what, you’re hanging out with Steve now?” Eddie had asked sullenly, cutting off the apology you were trying to make and gesturing to the house.

You recoiled in response, eyebrows jumping up to your hairline, blinking rapidly as you shook your head like it was the most ridiculous thing you’d ever heard.

For some inexplicable reason, it only made Eddie furious – maybe because the rational part of him knew it was ridiculous but it was an easy irrationality to jump to, a quick way to get angry, and he was angry with you, just not for that reason

“Steve?” You choked, “What are you — Eddie, that’s bullshit. We aren’t even friends,”

“Coulda fooled me,” he sniffed, “‘Cause you two? Oof, gettin’ real heated — lotta tension there … And jumping in to save him like that? From me, no less—”

“Stop that,” you spat, “Don’t be mean over nothing,”

The word struck him like a slap to the face and Eddie had to fight very hard to stay calm.

“Nothing.” He echoed, taking the time to breathe before really reacting because you’d just thrown him away like garbage in front of everyone and now you were calling it nothing?

Talk about bullshit.

The fight went on from there, needless and stupid until you finally threw up your hands and made a harsh, aggravated sound.

“Why are you being such a jerk? I mean why are we even fighting?”

Eddie bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood in a futile attempt to keep his mouth shut, but just like with everything else in his life, he just couldn’t help himself.

“Well, Princess, it’s like you said, I’m not your fucking boyfriend.” He sniffed, feeling a bit too much like he’d just opened his mouth and breathed in a lung full of water to drown himself, considering the way he knew how much you hated that pet name — Princess.

Your jaw flexed as you clenched your teeth and fought the rush of tears suddenly shining in your eyes and, like coming back to his senses, Eddie could feel himself breaking the surface too late, just like last time.

“… and you don’t love me anymore — silly me, how could I forget,” you spat, and the venom in your tone burned him down to the bone.

Oh, that’s not fair… it’s just not fair…

Despite the deep and penetrating ache swelling behind his lungs and all his hurt feelings, hearing you say it made Eddie’s guts seize and his vision go briefly spotty.

The blame swung around and hit him with enough force to leave him winded, one final blow before the ringing of the bell, and just like that it was over. As suddenly as it had descended, the black cloud of his anger lifted, leaving Eddie alone in that room with you and the ringing echo of what he had just said.

He’d done it again.

It’s not fucking fair.

You turned on your heel and stalked off into the house before he could even try to think of what his next move was — should he defend himself? Apologize?

He didn’t do either, instead, he followed you and called your name only to have it drowned out when you slammed the door and left him standing there, feeling like an asshole with everyone staring at him.

You didn’t speak to each other the rest of the night following the departure of Dustin and the others. Eddie didn’t even see you again until the following day, as you stayed in the room you’d closed yourself in, and he took the couch because you needed your space and he was too ashamed of himself to try and go face what he’d done.

In the morning Eddie was a little braver, and when you finally reemerged, eyes red and swollen – from sleep or crying, he couldn’t rightly tell, he wasn’t quite brave enough to ask – he’d tried a whole host of jokes, and comments to test the waters. He complained about his sore back, gently teased you about sleeping in Rick’s bed, wondered idly if this is what Wayne imagined you’d be doing when he sent you to find him, anything he thought might get a reaction out of you.

None of it garnered any sort of response, save for you gently asking him to leave you alone.

Eddie could hardly believe he’d heard you correctly.

“Are you serious?”

You wouldn’t look at him as you twisted the sleeves of your jacket down over your hands, just like Chrissy had in the hallway only a few days ago – Christ, that felt like years ago now…

His whole life came rushing back to him in a second, and Eddie remembered with a start the conversation he’d had with Ms. Kim – he’s graduating … he needs to tell you that he’s finally graduating … but you won’t look at him.

“I just need some space, okay?" You'd sighed, "You stay on your side of the room and I’ll stay on mine and we’ll leave it at that until we’re both ready to talk about it.”

He was ready to talk now, but much as it hurt to do so, as much as it felt like you were hurtling down the road toward breaking up all over again, Eddie took the hint and left you alone.

It's a miserable day, sitting together in the deafeningly quiet house, weighed down by the miasma of everything you’d said to each other the night before.

By the time the sun sets again, Eddie is crawling out of his skin.

He needs to apologize, beg your forgiveness, but he doesn’t want to make things worse by trying to talk to you before you are ready. So far he’s been smart enough not to push it, but it’s dark now and you haven’t so much as looked at him all day – he can’t stand another minute of this bullshit tension.

He doesn’t care about what you said, he doesn’t care that you hurt his feelings, he just needs to fix what he’s broken so that you can move past it already and try to get back to the good part.

From his spot on the couch, he can see you sitting at the kitchen table, shuffling a deck of cards you’d pulled out of a drawer a few hours earlier – he’d seen you do it and asked if you wanted to play Hearts, but you’d pretended you hadn’t heard him and slunk silently into the other room.

He wishes you would look at him, that he could crack a stupid joke and be certain that you’d level him with that same dour look and pretend you don’t think it’s funny like you always do.

It’s now or never, he supposes.

Eddie swallows hard and fights to bring the words up around the knot in his throat.

“Hey,” He calls.

He feels tender and bruised under the harshness of his voice, ringing strangely against his ears after not speaking all day.

Slowly, you glance over at him. You hold his gaze for a brief moment before looking away again, and Eddie tells himself it’s a good sign. At least you aren’t ignoring him anymore.

He takes it as permission to approach and leaps up from the couch to cross to the kitchen with an odd desperation, practically tip-toeing as he goes like he’s afraid to make too much sound.

When he reaches the table, he lingers at your side, standing idly for a very long moment and anxiously wiping his palms across his jeans as he waits for you to say something.

Silence.

Eddie gestures awkwardly to the chair.

“Can I sit?”

You shrug.

It’s not a no – Not-a-No is a win in Eddie’s books – so he whips back the chair beside you and plants himself in it, realizing too late that maybe the one across from you would have been the safer option, but he’s too committed now to get up and move.

You don’t acknowledge him as he settles, you just keep shuffling those damn cards.

It’s another long moment of watching your hands move before Eddie musters the courage to address the nasty little elephant in the room.

He clears his throat and your hands stutter over the cards.

“... So… about last night,” He starts, “About what I said–”

“I don’t care.” You bite, and Eddie feels his heart seize.

Oh… shit.

Thankfully, before he can drive himself crazy beginning to try and decipher what that could possibly mean, you heave a sigh that carries the weight of the world and finally — finally set the cards down.

“I mean I don’t want to talk about it,” You clarify, folding your hands neatly in front of you and twisting the cheap silver ring you have sitting on your middle finger.

Eddie hadn’t noticed it before, he can’t help but stare at it with a strange and misplaced vehemence before glancing reflexively at the ring with the dark stone sitting on his own hand.

He resists the urge to take your hand and slide the delicate silver band off of your finger to replace it with his own as you continue.

“I’m over it.” You say, shaking your head.

“...Even so–” He insists – he's been quietly practicing his apology all day and he'll be damned if he doesn't get to say it.

You don’t let him finish.

“Look, we both said things we shouldn’t have, but there’s no taking them back and now we’re just going to have to live with it.”

Eddie doesn’t know what that means – just live with what?

All he wants is to bask in the euphoria of you finally talking to him again, but he doesn’t like the jagged edge of what you're saying. It sounds too final, like you’re going to suggest that once this is all over, you should go your separate ways and never speak to each other again.

He doesn’t know if he could handle something like that, even if it would be fair, he thinks it might break him.

“...All I want to say is that I’m sorry.” Eddie says in a rush, tentatively reaching out to trace his index finger along the ridge of your knuckles, “And that I do love you…”

You breathe out hard through your nose and furrow your brow.

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.” You bite, glaring at him from the corner of your eye, but you don’t flinch out from under his touch, so he uses it as permission to take your hand, in spite of his better judgment.

He turns it over in his, lacings his fingers with yours, and searches for comfort in the familiarity of how his hand dwarfs yours in size.

“I’m sorry…” he says again, and then because he’s been silently rehearsing this speech all day, he can’t help but finish the line, “I love you…”

If things weren’t so heavy, he might have tried to lighten the mood by prompting you to return the feeling.

Now you say it back, he would say, but he doesn’t dare, despite how desperate he is to hear it.

It’s the fourth time he’s told you he loves you in less than twenty-four hours – not that he’s been counting – and he hasn’t been able to keep himself from getting stuck on the fact that you haven’t said it back…

“…I know,” You mumble, hanging your head and picking at a piece of laminate, flaking up from a deep groove in the tabletop.

It hurts more than he’s willing to admit. Part of him wants to brush it off, chalk it up to nothing more than a Star Wars reference – Empire Strikes Back no less, which under normal circumstances would be very fucking cool of you – but another part, smaller if not decidedly louder, is insisting that you’re refusing to tell him you love him because you simply don’t anymore – it makes Eddie feel like his throat is closing up.

That part of him wants to grab you and shake you out of this weird, sad version of the person he inadvertently manufactured – it wants to tell you he loves you until he’s blue in the face and you have to say it back so that he doesn’t keel over and die from the apparent lack of your love…

Eddie doesn't get the opportunity to address it, however, as suddenly there is the sound of an approaching vehicle, drawing your collective attention and cutting the moment short – tires crunching on gravel, the dull roar of an engine pulling closer before cutting out, and the whine and thump of car doors opening and slamming shut.

“Finally,” You sigh, “I was wondering where those guys had gotten to.”

Eddie watches as you push up from the table and breathes out harshly as he tries to swallow the emotion rising in his chest.

It’s not fair that after a full day of radio silence, they would show up now when he’s trying — and failing — to bear his soul to you.

He wants to ask where you stand, if you’ve got any chance at a future after all this, but he’d gone and wasted the whole day trying to muster the courage to say his piece, and now he’s just going to have to wait.

Still, he tells himself that it’s probably better this way. With Dustin and the others here, it will give him something to distract from the gaping question mark that is your relationship and whether you’ll ever want to see him again after this.

Only suddenly Eddie can’t help but wonder why they would pull the car right up to the house after all that talk about laying low, not drawing attention to his whereabouts – that seems… wrong.

You cross the room to the front window just as a cold and creeping foreboding begins to ooze into Eddie’s veins, like the jelly from inside an ice pack – something is not right, and the feeling is only amplified by the little voice quietly but persistently warning Eddie to proceed with caution.

When the first of the flashlight beams cross the window, Eddie feels his heart drop into his stomach and ricochet right back up into his throat. He chokes on it.

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

“What the hell are they doing?” You ask no one in particular, inching toward the window to steal a peek through the shuttered blinds.

“Sweetheart, don’t—” Eddie starts, jumping up from the table to reach out and try and grab you, but then your body goes rigid and you rocket backward, colliding bodily with him.

There’s that trilling alarm once again, screaming run! Only this time you’re there to back it up, which is highly disturbing.

“It’s not them.” You gasp, curling your fingers into his jacket sleeve as you twist around to face him.

Of course, that’s exactly what he was worried about, but being right doesn’t do anything to alleviate the way Eddie’s body is attempting to send him into cardiac arrest.

“Shit —”

You take him by the hand and pull him through to the living room as the shining of the flashlights intensifies through the kitchen window. You move as quickly and quietly as you can, slipping through the inner door and back out into the boathouse which has suddenly become that much worse by darkness and imperceivable danger.

Eddie had foolishly hoped he wouldn’t have to go back out here, what with the spiders and the lingering atmosphere of your fight, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and any creepy crawly creature is suddenly much more palatable to whoever it was you’d seen out the window.

You shut the door behind you with a loud thump, and he holds his breath as he can only imagine the sound must have rung out through the house like a gunshot.

He didn’t see you grab the walkie-talkie, but suddenly you’re holding the big clunky device out to him and imploring Eddie to take it.

He doesn’t need to be told what to do with it as he switches over to channel two and presses the button on the side.

“Dustin, come in Dustin— are you there?” No response, just loud, screaming static. “Hello?”

Of course, it is absolutely fucking typical of his luck that no one would be on the other line. What else did he expect?

You’ve got your ear pressed to the inner door, listening for any apparent signs of movement inside the house, which is extremely unnerving.

“Who is it?” Eddie asks, not daring to raise his voice above a whisper

You don’t answer, electing instead to put a finger to your lips.

“Sweetheart —” you shush him harshly, and he turns his frustration with it back on the radio “Dustin, do you copy? It’s me, Eddie — remember me? Pick up, pick up, somebody pick the fuck up!”

Nothing but static.

Eddie can feel himself breaking into a cold sweat as he watches you move from the door to one of the tiny windows, peering carefully out into the darkness. He strains to listen for any sort of movement – in the house, outside of the house – thinking back to the blinding terror he’d experienced in the moments before he’d discovered you skulking around outside the day before.

For a long moment, there is nothing but the whirring white noise of the walkie-talkie and a very tiny part of Eddie starts to wonder if maybe they’d gone, whoever they were. That part of him, foolish as it is, hopes that maybe you jumped the gun on panicking and it’s just Wayne out there, coming to meet up with you.

Somehow Eddie can’t imagine he’ll get so lucky twice.

“Sweetheart—” He starts, hoping to circle back to the looming question of just who the fuck it was you saw out there, but you drop from the window and steal a glance back toward him before he can get the words out.

“It’s Jason Carver.” You say flatly.

Eddie feels his blood run cold.

“Shit —”

Surely this has got to be some kind of sick joke the Universe is playing on him, some kind of karmic justice for all that thinking about corrupting Chrissy just to spite Jason.

“Hey, Dustin, it would be really great if you would pick up because we’re in serious need of help here!” He hisses into the radio.

Static.

He is so fucking stupid, and he is so, so fucked… and now he’s pulled you into this, and no one is coming to help.

“Dustin? Fuck— anyone! Please!”

Nothing.

In a fit of desperate frustration, before he realizes what he’s doing, Eddie swears harshly and whips the walkie-talkie to the side. He regrets it immediately as it collides with a heavy tackle box and sends it and its contents scattering to the floor with a thunderous crash.

Eddie exchanges a wide-eyed look with you and for a moment it is all either of you can do but hold your breath.

There are muffled voices then, sending you skipping across the creaky floor back toward him.

“Please tell me you’ve got a plan,” Eddie says in a quiet rush, feeling ever so slightly dizzy from the blood pounding in his ears as you come together in a huddle, “Because we’ve gotta get the fuck out of here right now.”

He watches you think, biting your lip then like you’re frantically wracking your brain for solutions. Then your brow smooths and your eyes go wide as something like a lightbulb going on flashes across your face.

“...Not both of us,” you say slowly, “...just you.”

He thinks he must not have heard you correctly because that sounds an awful lot like you’re suggesting he leave you behind.

“What?” He stammers.

You jerk your head toward the space behind Eddie, and he turns to see the boat launch, the moon shining on the black water behind him. He feels a cold lump forming in the pit of his stomach.

Surely, you must be joking.

“Get in the boat.” You say, “Make a run for it. I’ll try to buy you some time.”

Yeah… that’s what he thought you meant.

“…What are you nuts?” Eddie practically shouts, whipping back around to gawp at you – he drops his tone when you put a frantic finger to your lips, imploring him once again to shut the fuck up.

When he fails to act, you push past him to begin untethering the dinghy. Eddie follows, doing absolutely nothing to help and everything to try and make you see reason.

“You’re just gonna go out there and… and what? Talk to those guys? Just act totally casual and pretend like you haven’t seen me?”

“Yes.” You insist, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world as you unwind the last bit of rope anchoring the boat to the post.

It drops to the water below with a thunderous splash and makes Eddie feel sick.

“No —” He says, fervently shaking his head, “No, no way, this is crazy – Babe, they’re crazy. They’ll tear you apart!”

“We don’t have a lot of options here, Eddie.” You argue, taking him by the shoulders to twist him around so that he is facing the boat.

This is so crazy, he hates every part of this stupid plan.

“We have at least one other option –” he insists, “We both get in this boat and get the hell out of here!”

Eddie takes an involuntary step forward when you give him a gentle shove and suddenly he’s standing with one foot in the hull and one foot on the deck.

“Look – see the motor?” You say, pointing, “It’s pull to start, just like a lawnmower.”

He turns to look, dutifully, but barely gives himself the chance to register what he’s supposed to be looking at – the motor? Fuck the motor – before he turns back and says your name, begging you to reconsider.

“Please tell me this is a big stupid joke and you’re about to tell me the real plan.”

You aren’t listening to him anymore, your attention is fixed on the outer door where the sounds of voices are growing steadily louder.

You are very quickly running out of time here.

“Go,” You say, dismissing him with a wave that feels entirely too flippant for the gravity of what you’re suggesting – what, just leave? Without you?

Fuck that.

Before he’s realized he even moved, Eddie is grabbing at you, pulling at the sleeve of your jacket to try to coax you down into the boat with him.

“Come on,” He says, “We can go. Let’s just go.”

You tug against him, but he refuses to release you.

“We won’t make it if we both try to go.” You say, and he hates how rational you sound, “I’ll be right behind you, I promise – just go.”

As you turn to leave, Eddie snatches your hand up and holds you firmly to the spot – he’s so sorry he ever picked a fight with you because this has got to be some bizarre way of punishing him for saying all those things, trying to push you away a second time.

He can’t imagine what else it could be considering you’re not that stupid to go risking your life for him like this – he’s suddenly so afraid that if he lets you go out there, he’ll never see you again.

He’s losing you again, watching you slip away with you standing there right in front of him.

“Baby, please — please, just come with me —”

You jerk your hand out of his grasp and whirl around.

“Will you get the fuck out of here already?” You hiss, raising your voice as much as you dare.

Eddie’s heart is in his throat, throbbing, and swelling and threatening to choke him, and he’s halfway to panicking that if he leaves you behind something terrible is going to happen, and it’s going to be his fault.

He can’t let you go out there and face Jason and the Argonauts on your own, but you won’t listen, no matter how he pleads with you.

You’re really going to do this. Oh, Jesus fuck, you’re going to get yourself killed. For what? For him? No, no no no please no.

“You said you wouldn’t leave me.” Eddie chokes, getting caught on the jagged edge of his breathing and fisting his hand in the front of his shirt as the pervasive skittering of panic begins to wash over him – it always hits him in the worst moments…

“Eddie, I’m not leaving you.” You insist, staring back at him with wide-eyed desperation, “I’m trying to save your goddamn life.”

Of course, some part of him knows that, but it’s still shocking to hear you say it, like the clanging of a bell.

He’d been so caught up in the rush of having you back and the concept of losing you again so soon that he’d completely forgotten that this isn’t about your relationship — Eddie remembers too late that he is in danger. Real danger. He’s still that animal caught in a trap, and suddenly he’s lingered too long. The hunters are closing in and there is a very good chance that they will kill him if they catch him.

The crunch of gravel beneath approaching footsteps reaches you and Eddie stands paralyzed, helpless to stop you as you rush to the door.

You latch the flimsy lock – some good that will do if those fuckers decide to kick the door in.

This is wrong, this is all so wrong. He’s not safe, and you’re here which means you’re not safe and he can’t let you go but if he stays he’s going to die. He doesn’t know what to do, and it has him frozen to the spot.

Eddie doesn’t know when he took that second step back, but suddenly he’s standing in the boat and you’re kneeling on the deck above him and you’ve never felt so far from him as you do now.

Your hands come down to bracket Eddie’s face and you force him to look at you – you have to say his name twice before it makes it through the haze of his panic.

“Eddie – you have to go, now.” You plead, and he can’t help but shake his head, like a petulant child – he’s got to run, but he won’t leave you, and you’re very clearly hell-bent on staying — somehow he knows there is nothing he can do to change your mind, and it makes him feel like he’s about to come apart at the seams.

“Please go,”

“Not without you,” he argues, hands coming up to grip your wrists.

“Eddie–”

“No, Man – I’m not gonna leave you here!”

You stare at him, brows pinched tight over your eyes as you search his face for the answer to an unknowable question.

The faintest hint of something he can’t make out flashes across your features and you make a harsh sound of aggravation before pushing forward to slant your lips over his in a hard, frantic kiss. It’s startling, in a brightly euphoric sort of way, but it is a rushed thing that is over before it’s even really begun.

Still, it does the job of breathing a little rationality back into Eddie’s shaking form.

There is no time for sentiment, but when you pull away it is only to press your forehead tightly against his.

“Why do you have to be so goddamn chivalrous all the time?” you grind out, and in spite of everything it pulls a short burst of airy, relieved laughter out from Eddie’s lungs. His head is swimming from the kiss, from the sudden and inappropriate levity of the moment, and how desperately he loves you — only he realizes too late you weren’t being funny.

You breathe out harshly in a way that is more of a sob than a sigh and the sound is disturbing enough to startle Eddie into a strange clarity.

“Eddie… please just go.” you whimper, fighting a losing battle against the tears collecting on your lashes, “I can’t – I can’t lose you again.”

Hearing you say it causes his heart to thump solidly in his chest, and suddenly there’s no arguing with you. You’re not calm, you’re scared, scared enough that you’re willing to risk life and limb to make sure he gets away because you don’t want to lose him — it’s the closest thing to I Love You he’s heard since August, and he decides in an instant it’s enough.

Now he has to go.

Eddie can hear Jason’s voice barking orders right outside the door, and he feels you bristle under him.

It’s now or never. Move or die, Man.

“You’ll be right behind me, right?” He prompts, failing to suppress the anxiety spiking in his midsection when you nod against him

It’s not enough, he needs to see your eyes when you say it — he puts a hand on your neck at the base of your skull and pulls you back to make you look at him, really look at him.

“Yes? You promise?”

“I promise.” You breathe, red-faced and sniffling.

“Okay… okay… get out of here.”

You push up in a flash and bolt to the inner door shared by the boat house and the house proper, and Eddie stands in the boat, turning in useless circles and fumbling with anything else he thinks he needs to do to escape. Any kind of proper nautical procedure flies right over his head – he doesn’t know boats, he barely knows cars except for how to hotwire them, and he’d gained that knowledge against his will.

You don’t know anything about cars or boats, but he wishes you were coming with him.

He can’t shake the feeling that this is about to go horribly, terribly wrong, because as much as he hates to admit it, you have never made the best plans.

You’ll be right behind him, you promised, but suddenly, there is an old familiar voice screaming at Eddie to call out to you, the same one that had implored him to call out to his mother the last time he saw her.

Just in case, it tells him, and the suggestion of it seizes his heart in a cold panic.

“Hey!” He bites, perhaps a little too loud, whipping around to look at you where you’ve paused at the door, hovering just over the threshold, “I swear to God, if I don’t see you in two minutes I’m coming right back for you, you hear?”

You nod breathlessly, then disappear back into the house. Eddie stands listening, stretching what borrowed time he still has to the nanosecond until he can hear the faintest sound of your voice calling out to the interlopers. It is met by their own shouting, and the sound of receding footsteps as your challenge is met with a chase.

Another wave of paralyzing fear threatens to wash over Eddie, but he shakes it off with a harsh exhale and twists around to become acquainted with the motor.

Pull to start, you’d said, just like a lawnmower … Eddie’s never mowed a lawn in his goddamn life. He thinks he hears a desperate shout, but he brushes it off.

He tells himself that you’re fast and you’re smart, smarter than any of those meathead jocks, you know what you’re doing, even if he doesn’t know if he really believes it himself.

You’re fine, you’re going to be fine.

He does his best to steady the rock of the boat as he takes one, two, three steadying breaths, then rips back on the rope with everything he’s got.

The engine roars to life.

+++

It was a bad plan from the start, you’re big enough to admit that, but you never in your wildest imagination thought it would take the turn it did.

The fingers of your right hand are broken – bent and twisted up out of shape like Patrick McKinney’s body, lying at the bottom of Lover’s Lake, and the pain is bad.

Worse than anything you have ever experienced, worse even than the time you’d foolishly let Dustin get behind the wheel of your Toyota and he proceeded to back the car over your foot.

That idea had been just as stupid as the thought that you could just lead Jason and the others away from Eddie with no trouble.

Worse than the pain is the image burned into the back of your eyelids. You can’t stop seeing it every time you close your eyes, can’t stop hearing the way Patrick’s bones snapped, the wet smack of his body hitting the water as he dropped.

It makes you feel like you’re going to be sick.

The memory combined with the throbbing pain in your hand is too much, and before you have time to realize what’s about to happen, you double over to empty your stomach contents into the underbrush creeping up around your ankles.

You’re so glad you didn’t eat those Spaghetti-o’s.

You cough and spit, and then miserably kick at a pile of leaves to cover the mess before twisting away from it. You’re exhausted, you’re cold, and you’re starting to think you’ll never feel anything but pain and fear ever again.

You’d walked all night through the woods, and Eddie spent half as much time walking as he did turning around to make sure you were still there, like Orpheus leading Eurydice out of the underworld.

Only you didn’t fade away under his gaze, you were there every time he turned back to look at you, dutifully trudging along after him, cradling your hand against your body and offering only the briefest hints that you heard him when he asked for the hundredth time if you were alright.

You’re really not, but you couldn’t seem to answer him, no matter how many times he asked.

Your jaw had wired itself shut and your brain had deflated in your skull to the point that you were really only even vaguely aware of everything around you. The pain in your hand shooting up the length of your arm, the dull throbbing of the bruise you were sure was forming over your eye, the crunch crunch crunch of Eddie’s footsteps as he led you on through the woods.

Sometime after the sun had risen, you reached the clearing, and Eddie set you down on the big flat rock that you’re currently perched on, promising he’d be right back before disappearing through the trees beyond.

You don’t know how long ago that was, you don’t even know where you are in relation to the lake, to town, to anything, you only know that you should have just gotten in the boat with Eddie and made a run for it, but you didn’t, and you paid dearly for that spectacularly bad decision.

You don’t know why you thought you could outrun Jason and the others, except that you’d fooled yourself into believing it for Eddie’s sake.

You needed him to run, but he wasn’t about to leave you behind, the big dumb chivalrous idiot that he is, so you made a promise you weren’t optimistic about keeping – you told him you’d be right behind him.

You suppose you were, though not in the capacity you’d imagined.

You went out to face the tigers, and you ran when Jason and Patrick chased you – that was the extent of your plan.

Get them to chase you, find a way to give them the slip, and then go find Eddie on the other side of the lake.

Lots of moving parts, lots of variables, and lots of ways it could go wrong, and you’d very conveniently forgotten how your plans always seem to go wrong.

Maybe you thought you could reason with the basketball team. You’d been the herald of their celebrations not even forty-eight hours earlier, after all, maybe they trusted you enough that you could simply send them on their way with a false lead and a phony promise of honesty.

Then again, you’re good enough friends with Lucas that you had no doubt in your mind he would have vouched for you, had he been with them. He wasn’t, of course, because that’s just typical of your rotten luck.

You ran when they chased you, and they caught you because you foolishly hadn’t accounted for the fact that they would split up in their search for Eddie. It was Jason and Patrick lurking outside of the boathouse, and it was Andy, the fucking skeezeball, who’d caught you coming out of the house and held you by your hair until Jason could catch up.

“Where’s your freak boyfriend?” He taunted you as you thrashed under the grip of his sneering toady.

You didn’t have time to answer, as the roar of the dinghy’s engine cut the air and answered for you — well what do you know… he’s right there.

Jesus Christ, you really didn’t think this one through.

You did, however, take the opportunity of their distraction to escape, bracing one foot in the gravel and kicking out hard with the other. Your foot collided with Jason’s stomach and forced you backward into Andy, who toppled over backward with a surprised grunt and pulled you down with him.

Escaping his clutches was as easy as slipping out of your jacket, and once you were free, you scrambled to your feet and made a break for the shore.

You knew well enough that you hadn’t bought Eddie enough time to put any kind of distance between himself and the shore, but then again he’d only given you two minutes to throw these guys off the scent, so really, bad plan all around.

Still, you thought maybe if you could reach the water you could swim for it, get out to the boat and to safety — no such luck.

You’ve always been fast, but you’ve never been a star basketball player running purely on rage, adrenaline, and the blind determination to catch the girlfriend of the guy who apparently killed your girlfriend.

Vengeance is one hell of a motivator.

Jason was on you in an instant, tackling you and wrestling you to the ground – you managed to slip from his grasp if only briefly, but you cried out in strangled protest when he seized you by your ankle and wrenched you right back.

The sound echoed across the lake like a skipping stone, alerting you to the fact that it was suddenly much too quiet over the water — you could no longer hear the boat’s motor running, but you could hear the faint trilling of Eddie trying to reason with the piece of shit. Your heart seized with the realization that he was now stranded out on the water, and you twisted and thrashed in an attempt to claw your way to freedom.

That’s when Jason’s foot came down on your hand. There was nothing you could do to stifle the scream that tore itself out of you when you felt the bones in your fingers snap, giving way and folding beneath the force of all his weight pressed into his stupid sneaker.

He was saying something to you, monologuing about Chrissy you’re sure, or maybe about what he was going to do to Eddie when he caught him, but you could hardly hear him over your own pitiful sobbing.

How had this gone so, so terribly wrong so goddamn fast?

Then that same stupid fucking sneaker came down to collide with your midsection, driving the breath from your lungs with a harsh gasp and a fit of coughing.

You rolled onto your back, trying simultaneously to shield your abdomen and cradle your ruined hand as Jason straddled you in the sand and held you pinned. You thrashed beneath him, kicking and screaming and fighting for an escape until your good hand came free, then you thrust the heel of your palm up into his face and dug your nails in, scratching deeply where you could find purchase across his skin.

He seized you roughly by the front of your shirt – Eddie’s shirt – and jerked you forward. And then he hit you, a hard crack to your brow that sent stars skittering across your vision as your head snapped back into the dirt.

Your mouth filled with the tang of blood as your teeth snapped closed on the tip of your tongue and you made a harsh, pitiful sound. Somewhere in the distance, you thought you could hear Eddie shouting your name, kicking up a wild, desperate fuss, but your ears were ringing too loud to hear any of it.

You could hardly believe any of that had just happened. You could almost dismiss the whole breaking your fingers thing, but he’d punched you in the face.

Jason Carver punched you in your goddamn fucking face and you’re pretty sure you’ll never get over that.

You don’t even think Billy Hargrove, the equal opportunity motherfucker that he was, would have sunk so low as to sock a girl in the face like that, but apparently, Jason Carver would – some upstanding fella he turned out to be, truly one of Hawkin’s finest.

Strange to think that getting punched in the face and having your fingers stomped into oblivion wasn’t even the worst thing that happened in the time it took to flee Rick’s place and find you sitting on this rock in the middle of the woods.

Your clothes have not dried yet, and you sit shivering where Eddie left you, feeling the chill and the horror of what you’d witnessed seep into your bones.

Much of what happened after is a blur, you don’t know how you finally managed to get away from Jason, you only know the shock of the cold water when you finally hit the lake was enough to stop your head from spinning enough to force some clarity to the front of your mind.

You remember swimming, you remember Eddie pulling you up into the boat, and you remember him grabbing you and trying to shield you from what was happening.

“Jesus Christ – don’t look–!”

You remember thinking his voice sounded strange, high, and panicked like that, and when you looked Patrick McKinney was fifteen feet up in the air, rigid and trembling – you’re gonna think I’m crazy, she started fucking floating…

You choked on a strangled scream when the first of his bones snapped up out of place, and you staggered back a step, instantly forgetting that you were not standing on solid ground. You weren’t even really aware of your body moving, jerking backward in alarm, but then you collided with Eddie, the boat listed, and you were in the water again.

The dream was bad enough, but dreams are dreams. Dreams are bullshit, what happened to Patrick was all too real, and somehow you know you’re never going to stop hearing the sound of his bones breaking.

A ruckus draws your attention to the copse of trees standing ahead of you on the other side of the clearing. Your head snaps up in alarm, and you hold your breath, bracing yourself for the gold and greens of the Hawkins Tigers catching up to you, but it’s only Eddie who comes crashing back into the little hollow that has become your temporary haven.

You force a harsh sigh of relief out through your chattering teeth and watch him lope across the clearing toward you.

He has a new walkie-talkie strung around his body and a white plastic case swinging in his hand – you realize with a start that you don’t know how long he’s been gone. It could have been fifteen minutes, it could have been two hours.

You don’t care, you’re only so desperately glad he’s back.

Eddie skids to a halt and drops to his knees in front of you.

“Hey,” He says breathlessly, discarding his new items and reaching out to grab you and rub his hands up and down the length of your arms, trying to create some kind of friction against the way you’re shivering, “Sorry that took so long, how are we doing? Are you good? …talk to me, Baby.”

You shake your head and squeeze your eyes shut, because how are you supposed to be okay after something like that?

“I threw up,” You say honestly, breathing hard against the way his touch jostles you and makes your arm throb.

Under normal circumstances, you might be ever so slightly embarrassed about admitting that, but the only thing you can manage to think about is how badly your fingers fucking hurt.

“That’s okay,” Eddie hums, “Hey— I’ll tell you a secret. I did too. After Chrissy…?” He trails off under the harshness of your gaze.

It doesn’t make you feel any better, you don’t want to talk about Chrissy anymore.

Almost as if he can read your thoughts, Eddie drops the subject quick and releases you. He turns his attention to the little white case, flipping the lid open then to reveal a host of standard first aid equipment — bandaids, burn cream, gauze.

“Where’d you get that?” You manage to grind out through your clenched, chattering teeth.

Eddie dismisses the question with a quick shake of his head.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, but you are worried about it. You know Eddie to be a lot of things, but discreet has never been one of them. You watch him carefully as he sifts through the little case.

“Did you steal it?” you press.

He flinches and hesitates, glancing warily at you like he’s afraid to admit it.

“...Construction site,” he says after a moment, and you feel your stomach bottom out. “Nobody’s gonna miss it.”

But of course, that’s not the point. He’s perhaps the most wanted person in Roane County by now, and he’d gone off on his own for the indiscernible amount of time it took to find the walkie-talkie and the first aid kit. Someone could have seen him.

“Eddie…”

“We need it more than they do.” He mumbles.

You can’t argue with that sentiment, as much as you hate to admit it.

“Okay, let me see,” Eddie says once he finally finishes taking inventory of the first aid kit. He reaches for your ruined hand, and his brows come together over his eyes when you hesitate. “Let me see it, Baby.”

It takes you the better part of half a minute, but you finally relent and peel your arm from where you’ve had it pressed to your body. The movement alone is enough to send a lancing pain surging through your broken digits, but when you feel the pressure of his fingers on the throbbing flesh, as gentle as you’re sure he’s trying to be, you flinch involuntarily away from him and draw a sharp intake of breath – fucking shit that hurts.

He releases you quicker than if he’d put his hand on a burning stove and makes a distraught sound in the back of his throat.

“Christ — okay, it’s okay.” He says immediately, breathing out a shaky sigh to try and steady himself, you can’t be sure if he's saying it for your benefit or for his own.

By the time you went in and out of the water and finally got to the shore on the other end of the lake, Eddie had been a wreck — of course, you hadn’t accounted for that in getting stuck out in the doldrums like he had, he’d been forced to sit helplessly in the boat and watch Jason kick the shit out of you.

You’ve lost track of how many times he’s apologized to you since you crawled out of the water.

It takes all of your willpower to resist the overpowering urge to jerk your hand back, as you know that the movement of doing so is going to hurt just as much as his tender probing does.

You whine out a pathetic noise as he turns your hand over, pressing down on the palm of your hand with his thumb to try and assess the damage.

“Shh, I know,” Eddie assures you gently, “I know it hurts.”

You swallow hard against the sentiment and watch him in an attempt to try and gauge his reaction.

It’s not good. You knew that from the moment it happened, but part of you hopes that maybe it is not as bad as it seems.

Somehow you are having a very hard time trying to convince yourself of that.

Your ring and smallest finger are bent and twisted out of shape where Jason crushed them under the heel of his shoe, the purpling bruise is spread across the length of your hand, stretching up nearly all the way to your wrist.

It throbs unbearably under even the faintest ghost of Eddie’s touch.

It takes him a long time to react, and when he does, he makes a strange lilting sound in the hollow of his throat, an uneven, shaky thing he hums out as he tilts his head.

“Oh, it’s not so bad.” He lies, and based on the way his tone does not match his words, you know it must be for your benefit because it actually is that bad— he clicks his tongue, dark eyes flicking up to regard you with a wry smile that he has trouble holding, “Look at you. Such a baby, making all this fuss over nothing.”

You know he’s joking, trying to lighten the mood, but the only problem there is you don’t think it’s funny in the slightest. There’s not a lot that is funny about what happened over the last few hours, despite the way something deep inside your psyche is imploring you to try and lighten the mood.

You can’t muster the effort, so you just sit there and try to breathe against the pervasive ache that lances up the length of your arm with every throbbing beat of your pulse.

A moment of heady silence bleeds between you as Eddie finishes his assessment of your broken hand.

“Okay.” he finally says, “So d’you want the good news or bad news first?”

You don’t have to think to answer.

“Good news,” you force yourself to say. “Always.”

Eddie breathes out an airy laugh and tries to bite back the smile quirking up his lips as he shakes his head, sending his shaggy curls dancing across his shoulders where they are still damp at the ends.

“Good news, huh?” He hums, then, “Okay, yes ma’am. The good news is it looks like that fucker only really got these two little guys on the end here,”

Eddie reaches for your fingers like he means to tug on them, but stops short as he thinks better of it and shows you his instead, waggling his ring and pinky finger at you.

He holds your gaze when you glance up at him and waits for you to acknowledge him.

You give a curt nod.

“Good girl.” He says, “Now the not-so-fun part – the bad news is … I’ve gotta set ‘em.” He hesitates a moment before continuing, “…it’s gonna hurt, Babe. I’m so sorry”

Your heart leaps up into your throat as suddenly he’s got your twisted fingers pinched delicately between his own.

“No, don’t — please don’t!” you gasp, seizing him by the wrist with your good hand and trying to jerk the wounded one away.

Eddie holds you to the spot and levels you with a deeply apologetic look.

“I can’t fix you up with ‘em bent like that.” He insists, but you shake your head.

“Eddie—”

You don’t know what it was you planned to say, how you planned to reason with him, but he doesn’t give you the chance to say it.

“Don’t worry, Sweetheart, it’ll be over real quick. I promise,” then, strangely, he perks up ever so slightly. “Hey – I’m a child of abuse, remember? I know what I’m doing.”

It’s yet another joke that doesn’t land.

“That’s not funny.” you snap.

Eddie offers you a lopsided shrug.

“It’s a little funny.”

You breathe out hard and feel a hot and burning panic welling up in your chest. It already hurts so badly, you can’t imagine what it’s going to feel like when he tugs them back into place.

You won’t dare ask what his exact qualifications are, how many times he’s done this before – you don’t want that kind of context, but you’re smart enough to know it isn’t going to be like it is in the movies.

A harsh tug followed by a loud click, and a manly grunt, then miraculously you're healed? Not a chance in hell.

“I don’t think I can do this.” You whimper, leaning reflexively into Eddie’s touch when his hand comes up to cup your cheek.

“Sure you can,” he says gently, “Come on, Babygirl, you’re way tougher than me — we'll go on three, okay?”

“Eddie, please…” you whine, “Let’s just wait, let’s just…” you trail off.

Just what? Just find a hospital? Sure, just go waltzing in with Eddie in tow and try to explain what happened to a doctor. There’s no good option here, it’s all so fucked.

“I ever tell you about my pet raccoon?” Eddie says suddenly.

It leaves your ears ringing. You feel your brows come together over your eyes as you gape stupidly at him.

“…What?”

“Yeah … I’ve made some stupid decisions in my day, but that one … well, it’s up there. Gotta be top three at least.”

You don’t answer right away, though only because you don’t expressly know what to say. You can’t say you’re exactly shocked, it’s a very Eddie thing to say, it’s only just that you cannot possibly fathom what has possessed him to break into a story about a childhood pet.

“What has this got to do with anything?”

“Shh, just listen, it’s important,” He says, “So, when I was a kid, all I wanted was a pet – this was before I went to live with Wayne, so it’s not like we didn’t have the room. The old house had a backyard and everything, it wasn’t exactly what you might call nice, but it was a legitimate house, y’know? So every year, all I asked for was a pet. Christmas, birthdays, it’s all I wanted. I was obsessed with it, but my old man didn’t like dogs and my mom was allergic to cats, so no dice in that department. Then one day, I get it in my head that if I can’t have a cat or a dog, I’ll just have to go and get myself some other kind of pet… so I’m like nine or ten, and somehow, I managed to lure this big fat raccoon into the yard and trap him under a milk crate – I know, hey I was a kid, I didn’t know any better–”

“Still don’t,” you can’t stop yourself from saying.

Eddie pulls a face.

“Hush – so I get him in the house, and I’m so proud of myself. I run my ass down to Benny’s where my mom worked, just like, so excited to tell her, show her how clever I was rigging that trap, right? The whole way home I’m hyping it up, I’ve got this big surprise and I won’t tell her what it is because I want her to see first hand. Only problem is that raccoons – they’re smart little fuckers, right? Getting out of traps is like their bread and butter, and this guy… man, this guy was crazy. Like, certifiably. He got out and he just went ape shit. We get home and the place is trashed, curtains are torn down, scratches all over the couch, pillows are ripped to shreds. My mom starts to freak out, so I panic and go looking everywhere for him like I’m gonna find him and fix it, right? I end up cornering him in the kitchen, you know, like an idiot, and what does this fucker do? He bites me–”

Without warning, Eddie jerks your fingers straight and they snap back into place with a loud click that you feel more than hear.

“Oh, fUCKING—SHIT!” You gasp and cry out, slumping forward to press your face against his shoulder.

For half a moment it is all you can do to suppress the urge to be sick as spots and colors explode across your vision.

The agonized sounds you make are muffled by the layers of denim and leather as Eddie rubs wide circles into your back and whispers reassuring, sweet nothings into your hair, punctuated by a litany of soft kisses.

“It’s okay, Sweetheart —I know — you did so good — try to breathe.”

You do, sucking greedily on a deep inhale and shouting out your pain and frustration and alarm and everything else you’re currently feeling.

“What happened to three!?” You wail, rocking back to level Eddie with a tense, incredulous glare.

He pulls a face that is almost halfway apologetic.

“You’re right, that’s on me.”

He reaches for your hand again, and you are reluctant to give it to him, for obvious reasons, until you see the ball of gauze in his hand. You relent, and watch him make quick work of binding your fingers, individually at first and then together.

It takes a long moment for the worst of the pain to fade back to the dull ache, and even longer for the urge to punch Eddie in his stupid, handsome face to go away. You won’t do it, especially considering the outrage you still feel over the fact that Jason punched you.

“So what happened after?” you sniff in an attempt to try and distract yourself – Eddie’s brows furrow in confusion, “What was so important about the raccoon?”

You watch as he goes through a strange journey of several emotions flashing across his face all at once - realization, chagrin, and humor even, and you feel your stomach sink as you can guess what it is he is about to say.

“Nothing,” he says honestly, and shrugs. “I needed to distract you,”

You aren’t sure if it’s the lingering effect of having your fingers pulled back into place or the bell-clanging shock of his response, but your ears are ringing again.

You could kill him.

“You’re the fucking worst—!” You shout, shoving him hard enough to knock him from his knees onto his ass. You regret the decision immediately as you remember your broken fingers and yelp as they light up in white-hot pain.

Eddie is laughing as he tries and fails to catch himself.

“It worked didn’t it?”

You ignore him in favor of stoking the fires of your indignation because as much as you hate to admit it, he’s right. He’d held you enraptured in the palm of his hand with that stupid story, and you hate that you’d let your guard down like that.

Then again, this is Eddie, isn’t that what you’re meant to do with him?

He watches you, groping aimlessly in the dirt, digging up handfuls of leaves and tossing them to the wayside as he waits for some kind of reaction you are unwilling to give him.

“If it makes you feel any better, that story ends with me getting a rabies shot.” He hums.

“It doesn’t.” You snap, but immediately regret it when he gives you a weak smile. You breathe out hard through your nose and chew at your lower lip, “...Was she mad? Your mom?”

Eddie huffs out an uneven breath and shrugs.

“Yeah, she was fucking pissed.” He says, casting his eyes down to his sneakers and smiling to himself in a way that feels secretive, “Only time I was ever in real trouble with her.”

Suddenly, inexplicably, you feel like you’re intruding on the moment. You are not oblivious to what it means, the fact that he shared that memory of his mother with you. You’d have to be living underneath a rock to miss the size of that gesture.

It hits you like a bolt of lightning – Skull Rock, not too far from your old house, and almost guaranteed to be abandoned in the middle of the day like this. It's the perfect place to hide.

“...I know where we should go.” You say suddenly. “Where we might be safe? For a little while at least…”

Eddie glances up at you with those big, dark eyes and nods to himself after a moment. He stands, brushing the detritus from his knees and backside, and offers you his hand.

You give him your left – the good one – and let him pull you to your feet.

“Lead the way, M’lady.” He says, still holding tight to your hand.

You stare down at the point of connection, then look back up at Eddie and feel a sudden and overwhelming rush of affection for him. All that fighting, the stupid way you’d ignored him all day – what did any of it mean in the face of everything happening here? Considering all the time you'd spent without him, missing him, what is the point of fighting about who said what when you’re together?

You surprise yourself by pushing forward then, closing what little distance there is between you with two short steps and wrapping your arms around his neck. You can’t help the sigh of relief you breathe when he pulls you tightly against him without a moment’s hesitation.

“I’m sorry–”

“It’s okay.” Eddie says immediately, stopping you before you can clarify what it is you are in fact sorry for, “It doesn’t matter,”

The sentiment makes your chest hurt.

“It does though…” You insist, stepping back so you can meet his gaze. “It matters to me,”

He purses his lips into a tight, horizontal line like he really has to think about it, then nods.

“Okay …” He hums, “No more splitting up though, okay? I know you’re out here being all brave and shit, trying to save me, but no more hero stuff. Together is better.”

You nod, and he gives you a very pointed look.

“Let me hear you say it,” Eddie prompts, and you nod again.

“Together is better.” You repeat, dutifully.

“Good girl,” He says. He adjusts the strap of the walkie-talkie across his shoulders and nods to you, “Let’s go.”

Taglist: @harrys-titties, @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e, @itsrainingbisexualfrogs, @thicksexxualtensionaltension, @ganseysgff, @scoopsr0bininn, @pbs-theundeadmaggot, @audhd-dragonautagonaut, @clilxlxx, @alexandriaemily200, @averagestudent03, @but-vanessa, @cosmictime45, @timelordfreya, @forever-war, @munsonzzgf, @chervbs, @irisabrams, @mopeymopeymouse, @violetsandroses8

#cruel summer #cruel summer fic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x you #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson #stranger things fic #stranger things #i think i need to take a bit of a hiatus after this just because life is NOT slowing down and not even in the good fun way you guys #also I need to figure out how to get from here to there lmao

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