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suddencolds · 3 months

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The Worst Timing | [3/?]

part 3 (6k words)!! you can read [part 1] here! (it gets worse before it gets better). this chapter is more character-centric (sorry again 🙇‍♀️). i wanted to post this before work eats me alive this week T.T

this is an OC fic - here is a list of everything I've written w these two!

Summary: Yves invites Vincent to a wedding, in France, where the rest of his family will be in attendance. It's a very important wedding, so he's definitely not going to let anything—much less the flu—ruin it. (ft. fake dating, an international trip, downplaying illness, sharing a hotel room)

—

It’s fine, until it isn’t.

—

Yves gets home, showers first (only after Vincent insists that he shower first), heads out into the living room, and shuts off the lights. The lights in the bedroom are still on, bleeding in from the doorframe.

His head hurts. Every part of him feels cold. He burrows deep into the covers on the pullout bed, rearranges himself until he finds a sufficiently comfortable position, and shuts his eyes.

Tomorrow, he’ll be away for most of the afternoon—with the wedding rehearsal, and then the rehearsal dinner with the rest of his family—and Vincent will grab dinner and drinks with some of Genevieve’s friends in the meantime. Yves will probably be home late. They won’t see each other for the entire day—at least, until he gets back from dinner some time in the late evening.

Everything for the wedding is ready. His suit jacket is ironed, his shoes polished; his speech has been written for weeks and rehearsed first alone, and then in front of Leon and Victoire, who’d told him how to make it funnier (Leon) and more concise (Victoire). Two days from today, Aimee and Genevieve will be married.

All he has to do, now, is just see it through.

—

Yves wakes up coughing.

He feels distinctly wrong. His head is throbbing. His limbs feel strangely leaden, like they’re weighing him down, like it’d be a considerable inconvenience to move them—he isn’t sure if he’d be able to sit up properly.

He presses a hand to his forehead, in an attempt to gauge whether he’s running a fever. It’s no use—his hand is warm and clammy. He can’t tell.

Fuck. This is not good.

One wrong breath leaves him coughing, harshly enough that the coughs seem to reverberate through his frame. His throat burns. He reaches blindly through the dark in an attempt to find one of the waters he’d bought yesterday night, at the convenience store. Had he left a bottle on the nightstand? Or had he gotten rid of the one he’d drunk from last night? His breath hitches, so sharply that he has practically no hope of holding back.

“Hhehh’YISHh-CHHiew! hhHEHH’iIDTSSHh-iiEW!”

The sneezes tear through him with little warning, leaving him flushed and shivering. It’s not warm enough in the living room. He doesn’t know if it’s the air conditioning in the room, or the relative thinness of the blanket he’s under, or if perhaps the window is open just a crack, or if perhaps he just hasn’t been moving enough to get warm. He’s not sure he could pinpoint the cause if he tried.

The only thing that seems evident to him, now, is that he feels immediately, uncomfortably cold. He could get out of bed and look for something to wear—he hadn’t packed any thick jackets, because Provence in March isn’t especially cold, but even one of the dress jackets would be better than nothing, so long as it’s one of the ones which can withstand getting a little wrinkled.

But when he sits up—or, rather, when he attempts to sit up—he feels the world tilt, uncomfortably. He braces himself on the frame of the couch, propping himself up with one arm up on the armrest.

He definitely has a fever, even if there’s no way for him to verify that right now. Otherwise, it would be strange for him to feel so cold. Even now, only half-vertical, he finds himself shivering so hard he can barely move the blanket back up to sit comfortably around his shoulders.

One wrong breath sends a painful twinge down his throat, and he finds himself coughing, gripping the armrest tightly to keep himself upright. He should get out of bed. He should find water, put on a jacket, make an attempt to get back to sleep.

For now, all he can do is muffle the coughs as best he can into a cupped hand. His chest aches with every cough. Every breath he takes in feels like it only manages to irritate his lungs further.

Through the haze of his exhaustion, he thinks he hears footsteps. The knowledge that he’s keeping Vincent up is the last thing he needs, right now.

Through the crack under the doorframe, he can see the line of light from the hallway, which is lit even at night. Maybe if he’s going to be up anyways, he should spend the night out in the hallway—at the very least, he’ll be a little quieter out there.

Someone presses a bottle of water into his hands.

“Drink,” Vincent says. “It’s uncapped.”

Yves brings the water to his lips and takes a short, tentative sip, and then another. His throat is sorer than it had been yesterday—the water burns against the back of his throat as he swallows.

Vincent steps past him, past the edge of the couch, to do—something. Yves doesn’t know what. He hears a click, and the lamp on the cabinet by the sofa flickers on, floods the living room with dim yellow light. Vincent regards him carefully, his expression unreadable.

“Sorry,” Yves says. The next breath he takes in exacerbates the tickle at the back of his throat, and he twists away, muffling cough after cough into a tightly cupped hand. “I didn’t mbean to wake you.”

Vincent’s eyebrows furrow. He looks… upset, somehow, though the light is dim enough that his expression is hard to make out. Yves tries to think of what else he should say, but his head feels heavy.

He tries to re-cap the bottle of water, though his hands are shaky enough to make it a little difficult. Vincent takes the bottle from him and screws the cap tight in one fluid motion. Yves tries and fails to think of something to joke about.

Vincent presses a hand to his forehead. His hand is comfortingly warm, and a little calloused. It’s strange, how good it feels to be touched—he knows and knows well that it means nothing, but the gentle press of Vincent’s fingers to his skin—when he’s spent the past few days trying to keep his distance from everyone—is strangely comforting. Yves leans into the contact, despite all logic.

Vincent pulls away, too soon. “You’re—”

“Warm?” Yves finishes for him.

“Feverish,” Vincent clarifies, with a frown. “Did you already know that?”

“I had a hunch,” Yves answers, honestly.

Vincent just stares at him, for a moment, frustration evident in the set of his jaw. Yves repositions the blankets over his shoulders, a little self-conscious. “It’s fide. I’ll take something for it,” Yves says. “You should go back to sleep.”

“We slept early,” Vincent says. “I’m not tired.”

“What time is it?”

Vincent glances at his watch. “5:34.”

“That’s still early enough that you should be asleep.” Yves sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. His head hurts, and there’s a prickle in his nose again. “Sorry. I can be quieter.”

His breath hitches. In a frantic attempt to keep his promise, he lifts the blanket to his face and stifles—or, rather, attempts to stifle—the sneeze into the fabric.

“hh—! hhEHH’NGKTSHCH-iiew!”

It’s still not very quiet, despite his best efforts, and the attempt to stifle leaves him coughing a little. It’s a good thing they’re not sharing a bed, he thinks. He hasn’t exactly been careful about keeping this illness to himself.

“Bless you,” Vincent says, rising to his feet. He ducks into the bedroom, only to be back a moment later with a box of tissues, which he tucks into the crook between the pullout bed and the sofa armrests, conveniently in reach. “Was it like this last night?”

“What?”

“Were you unable to sleep last night?”

It’s not an accusation, but Yves freezes at the question, nonetheless. For a moment, he worries—that Vincent knows precisely how little sleep he’s gotten since they landed in France. That Vincent was awake last night—or worse, that Yves was the one who kept him up—which is why he’s asking this question now.

But if he knew, wouldn’t he have said something about it yesterday?

“I slept fine,” Yves says.

There’s a cold breeze coming in from somewhere—from the hallway, or from one of the air conditioning vents, he can’t say. Yves tries his best to suppress a shiver. He can tell, by the change to Vincent’s expression—the way Vincent’s eyes linger on him a little too long—that he doesn’t do it well enough.

“You should really have taken the bed,” Vincent says, with a sigh. “It’s warmer.”

“It’s warm here too,” Yves says. There probably wouldn’t even be a problem if he weren’t feverish—it’s just the relative temperature difference that’s making him shiver. “Are you goidg to stop interrogating me ndow?”

“If you stop giving me reasons to be worried,” Vincent says plainly, “Then I will.”

Yves sighs. He’s cold, and exhausted, and he wants this argument to be over. He doesn’t want to have to justify all of this to Vincent, who should be enjoying this vacation instead of worrying about Yves and whatever cold-slash-flu he’s managed to pick up this time. “This is not the first time I’ve been under the weather,” he says. “I—” he veers away to face the opposite direction from Vincent, pulls the blanket up to cover his face. “hHeh-!-hHEHh‘nGKTTSHH-iiIEw!”

“Bless you.”

“—I kdow what I’m doing, snf. I don't even feel that—hh… hHheh'iiDDZZCHH-iIIEW!” The sneeze comes on too quickly for him to stifle. “—that udwell,” he finishes, sniffling, though that’s not entirely truthful. He lifts an elbow to muffle a few coughs into it, blinking through the tears that are surfacing, irritatingly, in his vision.

“So you’ve said,” Vincent says.

“Yes,” Yves says. “You can trust me on this.”

Vincent looks at him for a moment. For a moment, Yves waits for him to refute this, waits for him to point out just how unprepared he is, just how little of a plan he has aside from sticking this out until he has the chance to crash and burn.

“What do you need?” he says, instead.

Yves blinks at him. It’s not the question he expects Vincent to ask.

“Nothidg,” he says, honestly. “Seriously. It’s just a cold. I’ll take somethidg for it when I wake up.”

“Cold medicine?” To Yves’s nod, Vincent says, “I can get it for you, if you want.”

“No need. I’ll probably just — hhEhh-! HhEHh’IITShh-iiEW! Ugh… I’ll pick somethidg up from the codvenience store on the way to breakfast.”

Vincent turns aside to muffle a yawn into a cupped hand. Yves is unpleasantly reminded that he’s probably the sole reason why Vincent is awake right now.

“You should sleep, seriously,” Yves says, insistent. “Maybe you’ll be able to squeeze in a few more hours of sleep before sunrise. I’ll be okay.”

Vincent blinks at him. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Vincent says, softly.

Then he stands, sets the bottle of water on the cabinet by the sofa, switches off the lamp, and heads back into the bedroom. Yves listens as his footsteps recede. His sinuses are starting to feel like they’re slightly waterlogged, and the pressure from behind his eyelids is back, throbbing.

The tickle in his nose heightens, momentarily, and he finds himself muffling another set of sneezes into the bedsheets. He desperately hopes it’s quiet enough to not be disruptive. It’s hard to be fully quiet when whatever he has leaves him sneezing so forcefully, but he’s determined to try.

The coughing fit that follows leaves his throat feeling like it’s been nearly scraped raw. He clears his throat quietly, though that hurts, too. He takes another small sip of the water, though it goes down his throat with such difficulty he finds himself coughing again.

Two more days. He just has to make it through. He’ll grab a pack of cold and flu medication from the convenience store downstairs—the kind that’s supposed to smother all the symptoms—and then he’ll be good as new, he’s sure.

Yves shuts his eyes, turns to the side, and tries his best to get comfortable. He’ll be less disruptive if he’s asleep. It’s just getting there that’s the problem. He’s exhausted—that fact only seems to become more evident the longer he stays awake—but every time he finds himself drifting off, he’s jolted awake by another untimely sneeze which wrenches him back into consciousness.

In college, whenever he was up unreasonably late for some reason, Erika used to tell him to Stop worrying, Yves, I can hear you overthinking from the other side of the room. Ask anyone else and they’d say that Yves has his life reasonably put together—being the eldest of three does that to you. He’d spent his formative years growing up trying to be the sort of person Leon and Victoire could lean on—the kind of person impervious to the sorts of stressful situations he’d gotten regularly thrown into—and for the most part, it’d worked.

He’d learned, early on, that it is not really that difficult to keep things from people. He likes to think of himself as reliable, even if that means that whenever something does come up—something that feels frustrating and insurmountable—it doesn’t really hurt any less when he goes through it privately.

Erika had always been good at seeing through his bullshit. It was one of the things he liked about her—that he could lean on her if he needed to, without worrying that it’d take its toll on her. That she’d take a look at his problems, which always felt so all-consuming in the moment, and make them seem simple and solvable and almost trivial.

It’s hard not to miss her, now, when he’s alone in the dark, devoid of any and all distractions. Or maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was just having someone he didn’t have to hide from.

Yves wonders, faintly, what Vincent would’ve said if he were more honest with him. He and Vincent aren’t actually dating, but he thinks maybe Vincent would understand. He thinks that they’ve been getting along well, as of late—he might even consider them friends.

But then again, hasn’t Vincent agreed to do all of this—lying to Yves’s friends and family, falsifying their relationship, letting Yves drag him from one celebration to the next—because it’s easy? Because he is willing to tolerate going to a party, or a housewarming, or a wedding, where there are no strings attached, when after the night is over he can drop the act cleanly?

It’s a lie that they’re telling, but it’s a self contained one. The moment they step foot out of whatever event they’re attending, there’s nothing left to pretend. Yves can go back to living his own life, and Vincent can go back to living his. Would Vincent really have agreed to do any of this if that weren’t the case?

It’s going to be fine, Erika would have said. Just breathe. She’s not around to tell him this, now, but he still tries.

The medicine will be enough to get him through today, and the day after. It has to be.

—

When Yves falls asleep, it’s the kind of restless sleep that sits somewhere in between unconsciousness and wakefulness. He dreams in fragments of scenes—him at Aimee and Genevieve’s wedding, the details hazy and illogical and unusually bright, the weddings he’d been to in the past all superimposed into one.

When he wakes up to the sound of his alarm, it’s to a pounding headache and what he’s certain must be a fever. He can’t seem to stop shivering. It’s already bright out—the curtains in the bedroom are pulled shut, but light streams in from the sliver of space between them.

He feels too cold and somehow entirely devoid of energy, though he doesn’t remember doing anything particularly tiring. Sitting up makes the throbbing pain in his head sharpen, so painfully that he has to grip the side of the couch to steady himself, blinking against the dizziness. If Aimee saw him right now, he thinks, she’d send him straight home—he’s in no state to attend a wedding, and he’s not sure if he’s in any state to pretend that’s not the case.

He breath hitches. He raises an arm to shield his face, habitually, even though there’s no one here to witness—

“hhEhh-’iZZSSHH’Iew!” The singular sneeze is, unfortunately, far from relieving. The tickle in his nose is irritatingly persistent, even when he reaches up to rub his nose, which is starting to run. “Hh-! hhEH-!! HEHh-’IDDZSCHh-yYew! hHEHH’iDDSCHh-iEWW!hhEhH-! H‘IIDzZCH-YIIIEEew! Ugh…” The sneezes scrape unpleasant against his already-sore throat, leaving him hunched over as he muffles cough after cough into his arm.

There’s a small packet of cold medicine on his bedside, along with an uncapped bottle of water, and Vincent is nowhere to be found. The medication is a relief. It’s strangely thoughtful—a part of him is a little worried that Vincent’s only gotten this for him out of a sense of obligation—but he’s grateful for it, nonetheless.

It’s exactly what he needs. Surely if he takes something for this, his symptoms will be, at the very least, tolerable enough for him to function as usual.

He picks up the packet, squints down at the instructions. The text is inconveniently small, and he’s always been better at speaking French than he is at reading it, but he gets it eventually. It’s supposed to last six hours. If he times this right, he can take a dose that will last him until the end of the rehearsal dinner tonight, and then—if he’s not feeling better by tomorrow—take another before the wedding starts.

It will be fine. He uncaps the bottle by the cabinet, downs two pills, squeezes his eyes shut, and sits there for a minute, forces himself to breathe, waits for the uncomfortable pressure in his temples to subside.

Then he shoots off a quick text—

Y: thanks for the cold meds :)

Y: sorry i essentially left you with some strangers (again)

Y: this seems to be a theme for me huh

Vincent texts him back just a few minutes later:

V: No problem. I hope you feel better soon

V: Leon and Victoire invited me out for lunch

Yves blinks. That’s a little surprising. But come to think about it, Vincent’s plans with Genevieve’s friends aren’t until dinner time, so it makes sense that he’s out doing something else.

His second thought is: he is definitely in for an earful from both Leon and Victoire.

Y: jealous! have fun!

His phone buzzes not long later with Vincent’s response.

V: I considered waking you, but I figured you could use the sleep

V: Do you want me to bring anything back?

Sure enough, when he checks his unread texts, Leon has texted him, are u alive????? And then, a few minutes later, ur sick? dude worst fucking timing ever 😦, to which Yves types back, thanks for your glowing reassurance

Victoire has sent him, vincent told me you’re sick :((( and, feel better soon (preferably before 3pm tomorrow!!), to which Yves says, thanks, fwding this to my body. hope it gets the message ✌️

Then he sends back to Vincent:

Y: i’m good, but thanks for asking! enjoy lunch

Vincent doesn’t say anything, to that, which means that he’s probably busy. Yves makes a note to thank him in person later. And again, much later—when all of this is over.

He just has to get the next day and a half to go according to plan.

—

The wedding rehearsal is mercifully uneventful. They walk twice through the processional, and then twice through the recessional. Yves picks a seat near one of the back rows, shivers through thirty minutes of run throughs, and tries to cough as discreetly as he can. He stifles every sneeze into a vague approximation of silence—he’s never been good at stifling—and does his best to ignore the mounting congestion in his sinuses, the persistent ache behind his temples.

It's easy enough to ignore all of those things in his excitement. He’s happy to be back—here, in France, surrounded by his whole extended family A part of this still feels unreal to him. He’s really here, in a place that feels familiar and simultaneously so novel, to watch someone who’s influenced him so fundamentally get married.

They’re all dressed for the spring weather. For the wedding rehearsal, Yves picked out a gray blazer over a dress shirt, chinos, and dress shoes. It’s not quite as formal as what he’s planning to wear tomorrow—the shoes are the only item he’s planning to rewear—but he finds himself distinctly grateful for the blazer jacket when the wind threads through the trees, knocking his tie slightly out of alignment.

It’s not unusually cold out—this would probably be considered temperate weather here, in March—but the wind is cold enough to offset the otherwise agreeable temperature.

The cold medicine helps, too—it keeps him feeling well enough to stay upright, which is already an accomplishment. He’s congested—his sinuses hurt a little, like everything’s a little waterlogged—but at least he isn’t sneezing as much as he was last night. His head still feels heavy, but the pain is a little duller, a little more muted; he’s tired, but he thinks right now he could stay awake on pure adrenaline alone.

“Dude, you sound awful,” Leon says, after the rehearsal ends.

“Thadks,” Yves says, muffling a fit of coughs into his elbow. “You always kdow just how to flatter me.”

Leon looks him over with a frown. “Are you sure you’re good for tomorrow?”

Yves doesn’t know. “Let’s hope so,” he says. “I don’t have any contingedcy plans for if I’m not.”

“I’m sure Aimee would understand if you told her.”

“I’m sure she would.” Yves looks over to where Aimee’s standing—she’s in the middle of a conversation with Yves’s parents and some of the adults on Genevieve’s side of the family. He’s too far to make out what she’s talking about, but she looks happy—she’s gesturing animatedly, her eyes bright. Every so often, he sees her flash a smile at Genevieve, as if to make sure Genevieve is following along.

Leon seems to understand that Yves has no intention of telling either of them, because he sighs. Yves changes the subject before he can say anything. “How was ludch with Vincent?”

“I like him,” Leon says, brightening at the question. “He’s surprisingly pretty funny. I hope you guys stay together.”

“Just because he’s funny?”

“That certainly doesn’t hurt,” Leon says, grinning. “But you work with him, right? If he’s a nice person while he’s looking at like, tax forms, or whatever, he’s probably a great person when he’s doing anything else.”

“Yves! Leon!” someone waves them over. When Yves turns, he sees it’s Roy, one of his younger cousins from his dad’s side of the family. “Pictures!”

“Coming,” Leon shouts back.

Yves has no idea why there are pictures happening today when the wedding is tomorrow, but he fixes his tie hastily and heads over to join them both.

—

When dinner rolls around, Yves finds he has no appetite, but he eats what he can and spends the rest of the time making conversation with some of his aunts and uncles. He’s always found this kind of small talk to be more enjoyable than it is tedious. They ask about his job, about his workload, about life in the states, about his parents, about Vincent—all things that he knows intimately, and has no problem speaking on. He thinks that speaking in French makes him a little more deliberate with his answers, partially because he has to spend some time formulating the sentences when they get more complicated, and he likes that, too. It has all the camaraderie of a family gathering—warm and crowded, welcoming, a little chaotic.

He finds Genevieve after dinner, sitting out on the steps.

“Hey,” he says, in French. She looks up, and he motions to the steps beside her. “Do you want some time alone before you get swamped with codgratulations tomorrow, or can I crash your alone time early?”

She smiles up at him. “You can sit here,” she says.

He takes a seat on the steps—a few feet away from her, because he doesn’t want to risk passing whatever he has onto her. He doesn’t know Genevieve very well. He knows her best through Aimee—through the stories Aimee has told about her, through the way Aimee’s entire disposition seems to change around her—but he’s exchanged very few words with her outside of that, all over the summer during their yearly family reunions in France. His extended family is large enough and the family reunions hectic enough that he can probably count the number of conversations he’s had with her in person on one hand.

“So,” he says. “How are you feelidg before the big day?”

“Do you want the good answer, or the honest answer?”

“The honest one,” Yves says. “hit me with it.”

For a moment, Genevieve doesn’t say anything. Yves zips his jacket up a little higher, just to have something to do. Genevieve pulls her legs in towards her chest.

“I’m terrified,” she says.

“You think somethidg might go wrong?” Yves asks, surprised. “You guys have planned this all out so thoroughly.”

“It’s not that,” she says. “It’s more like—this is probably going to be one of the most important things I’ve ever done,” she says. “You know, when something is really important to you, so it’s just that much more crucial that you don’t mess it up?”

“You’re the bride,” Yves says, clearing his throat. “I don’t think you can mess up. Unless you like, hheh-! hHheh… HEH’IIDZschH-YIEEW! snf-! Unless you get cold feet and say no when you’re supposed to be saying your vows. I wod’t forgive you if you do that, by the way.”

She laughs. “God, no. I’d never do that. It’s just—there’s all this perceived… I don’t know. Like, fragility around the moment. Like you’re just waiting for the moment to crystallize, and once it sets, it will be like that forever, so you have to make sure that it crystallizes right.”

“I’m guessing you’re ndot a fan of, like, pottery,” Yves says. He tries thinking about what other kinds of art carry the same lack of tolerance for backwards revision. “Or sculpting.”

“I haven’t tried either of those things,” she says. “Though I would probably be bad at them.”

Yves looks off into the distance, towards the countryside, the rows of verdant green hills which unfurl before them, the white cobblestone paths, the houses lining the winding roads all the way to the horizon.

“I think you don’t have to be so concerned about what it’s supposed to be,” he says. “You can give yourself permission to just—live it. Enjoy it, free of expectations. Who cares what you think about it after, right,” he says. “You’ll have a ring on your left hand. That’s good enough to offset any—well, awkwardness, or clumsiness, or anything, because as the bride, you are sort of incapable of doing anything wrong, by default.”

“I guess,” Genevieve says.

“It’d be a disservice to Aimee if you spent the wedding worrying about how to get things right idstead of like, just living,” Yves says, turning to face her. “What’s the worst that could happen? Like, you spill your drink during the wedding toast, or your mascara smears a little, or you trip on your wedding gown and you have to be helped up by the woman you love most? I think that almost makes it more romantic,” he says. “Because however the moment crystallizes, it’ll be you.”

“Did you learn all of this through pottery and sculpting?” Genevieve asks, wiping at her eyes. She looks a little better than before—she’s sitting up straighter, and the tension in her shoulders is less pronounced.

Yves grins at her. “I have a younger brother and a younger sister,” he says. He clears his throat again, though it doesn’t really do a good job at making his voice sound less hoarse. “It’s exactly as bad as you think it is. I have to be the one to talk them out of their stage fright like, all the time.”

Genevieve laughs. “It must be lively,” she says. “Your whole family is very accommodating.”

“They’re certaidly a handful,” Yves says, with a laugh that tapers off into a short cough. “I love them to death. And I’ll be happy to have you as part of them.”

She smiles at him. The evening light strikes the windblown strands of her hair gold. “Thanks for this.”

“Yeah,” he says. “No problem.”

They sit for awhile in silence. Yves crosses his arms in an attempt to conserve warmth and tries his best not to shiver too visibly.

“How did you kdow it was her?” he asks—a sudden, impulsive question.

As soon as he says it, he feels the urge to take it back. Genevieve is already stressed out enough about the wedding without him asking her difficult, abstract questions the day before the ceremony. He opens his mouth to apologize.

“There was never any doubt,” she says.

When he looks over at her, her expression looks a little wistful.

“Like, one day I woke up and I realized that whatever future I imagined for myself—in Marseille, or elsewhere; as a copywriter, or a journalist, or a director, or something entirely different—she would always be there.” Yves understands that—back when he’d been dating Erika, he’d felt like that too. That she was going to be the last person he’d ever date. That there was no conceivable future for him that didn’t involve her.

“Those kinds of revelations would come at the most insignificant of times,” Genevieve says. “I’d look over her halfway through morning coffee, or I’d watch her pick groceries from the aisle, or I’d watch her fiddle with the radio as she drove, and then it would strike me.”

“That you wanted to be with her?”

“That I was happy.” Genevieve tilts her head back to face the setting sun. “I’m really happy. It sounds like such a simple thing, and it is, but even a few years ago I’m not sure if I could’ve told you that that was true. And I think that finding someone who makes you feel that way—like they’d guard your happiness under any circumstance—is really something special.”

“You were the one who proposed to her,” he says. He remembers Aimee texting him about it, the night after it’d happened, remembers how he’d excused himself from dinner somewhere or other, ducked out of the room to get on call with her. She’d sobbed recounting it, the engagement ring on her finger.

“I was,” Genevieve says. She smiles. “I knew that if I gave up this chance I’d be kicking myself for it for the rest of my life.”

—

When he gets back from dinner at last, it’s late.

The cold/flu medicine he took from earlier is starting to wear off. His whole body aches—spending the evening outside in the cold probably didn’t help with that—and even in the relative warmth of the hotel room, he finds that he can’t stop himself from shivering.

He takes a hot shower, which feels pleasantly indulgent in the moment, but not long after he shuts off the water, he finds himself shivering again. The absence of the hot water makes him a little dizzy—he finds himself gripping the tiled wall, pausing for a moment behind the shower curtain to catch his balance.

His head really hurts. It’s the kind of sharp, throbbing pain that makes him all too aware of his heartbeat. He gets changed, towels his hair dry, and steps out of the bathroom.

Vincent is sitting on the bed, reading something. He must’ve gotten back at some point while Yves was showering. At the sound of the door, he puts the book down and looks up.

“How was the wedding rehearsal?” he asks.

“Great,” Yves says. He clears his throat, but clearing his throat irritates his throat enough that he has to muffle a few coughs into his elbow. “How was dinner with Genevieve’s friends?”

“They were very nice,” Vincent says.

“Ndicer than my friends in New York?”

“I felt less like I was being evaluated,” Vincent says, with a smile. “But if they were to express their disapproval of me in French, I would be none the wiser.”

Yves laughs. “I’mb sure that even if you learned the ladguage in full, you wouldn’t hear any disapproval from them.” He takes a seat on the couch, if only because he can’t quite trust his legs to keep him upright for the entire course of the conversation. “What did you guys talk about?”

“Lots of things. Life in France,” he says. “Life in the states. Individual freedom and the formal institution of marriage.”

“Do you believe in mbarriage?”

Vincent looks at him. “I think I believe in it just as much as everyone else does,” he says. Then, after a moment: “It worked out for my parents.”

“The busidess competition proved to be a good edough reason?”

Vincent traces a finger down the spine of the book, over the gold lettering. His shoulders settle. “They weren’t in love when they got married,” he says. Hearing him state it so plainly comes as a surprise to Yves. “Strictly speaking, I’m not sure if they ever were in love. But I think they came to love each other eventually.”

“What about you?” Yves asks. “Do you think you’ll fall in love someday?”

“Is that really something I’d choose?” Vincent says. “It either happens or it doesn’t.”

“Sure, but there are plenty of ways you can seek out love actively.”

“If I found something worth pursuing, I’d go after it,” Vincent says.

Yves laughs. “That’s very like you.” he wonders what kind of person Vincent might be drawn to enough to see as worth pursuing. Wonders if, after all of this is over, he’ll even be in Vincent’s life for long enough to know.

His head hurts. The slight prickle of irritation in his sinuses is already tiringly familiar.

“hHEh… HeHh’IIDZSCH-yyiEW!” The sneeze snaps him forward at the waist, messy and spraying. He reaches for the tissue box Vincent left him this morning, still nestled into the crook of the couch, and grabs a generous handful of tissues. “Hh… hehh-HEh-HhehHh’IIzSSCH-iEEw! Hh…. HEHh’DJSCCHh-IEew!”

The sneezes leave him coughing, afterwards. His throat feels raw and tender—he raises the tissues back up to his face to blow his nose.

“You sound worse than you did last night,” Vincent says, with a frown.

Yves opens his mouth to speak, but he finds himself coughing again. He can feel Vincent’s eyes on him. It’s embarrassing, he thinks, to be seen when he’s like this by someone who’s usually so well put together. “I’b a little prone to losidg my voice when I’m sick,” he admits. “It’s pretty incodvedient.”

“I’m probably not making it any better by talking to you,” Vincent says. That might be true—Yves is half sure that any time he does lose his voice, it’s because he typically makes no effort to converse any less than usual—but Yves likes talking to Vincent. Besides, they haven��t talked all day.

He opens his mouth to say as much, but then Vincent asks: “How are you feeling?”

“Good as new,” Yves says. When Vincent raises an eyebrow, at that, he amends: “Good enough for tomorrow, at least. The ceremony doesn’t start until three, but I’ll probably be up earlier to see if there’s anything else Aimee and Genevieve ndeed help with.”

Vincent’s eyebrows furrow. “If anything comes up, I can help.”

“It’s fine,” Yves says. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“You don’t have to ask. I’m offering.”

“I can handle it on my own. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, I— hHHEh’IDJZSCHh-yyEW! snf-! I’mb really fine. I swear.”

“Yves—”

“I’ve done this before,” he insists, which is true, too—he’s certainly been through worse. It would be wrong to put himself first, to take things easy when he might be needed still. “It doesn’t have to be your problem.”

For a moment, there’s something there, to Vincent’s expression—a flash of something that looks suspiciously close to hurt. Then it’s gone. When he blinks, Vincent’s expression is carefully neutral, as usual. He wonders if he’d imagined it.

“Okay,” he says. He sets the book gingerly on the bedside counter, and pulls the cord on the lamp. Darkness engulfs the bedroom. “You should sleep soon, if you’re able to.” A pause. The rustling of sheets. “Goodnight.” Yves wants to say something. He has a feeling that he’s messed things up, somehow, though he’s not entirely sure how.

But what can he say? He just—he just wants, desperately, for all of this to be okay. He wants the wedding to go just as planned, wants to be as present and as reliable as Aimee deserves for him to be. All of that responsibility falls on him and him alone, doesn’t it?

“Goodnight,” Yves says, instead.

[ Part 4 ]

#sneeze fic #snz fic #sneeze kink #snz kink #snzfic #this chapter turned out to be kind of personal to me in some ways?#i am so sorry if it feels uneventful 😭#i have done so much googling on so many things that did not make it in (and a few that made it in only peripherally)#work is killing me and i am stressed out of my mind so i am posting this before i get swept away and am unable to edit for a week #next chapter will be the wedding for real!#and i will be mean for real when i get to writing it 🙇‍♀️#yvverse #my fic #thank you to anyone who has left nice tags/comments on previous parts :') it's hard to express the full extent of my gratitude but #thank you for making my life a little happier

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bizaar · 2 years

Text

Cruel Summer - Part 3

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: 8k

warnings: non-mutual pining, swearing, Dustin has a great big crush on the reader

A.N.: babysitter!reader part three! this time we get to hear from the baby who is being sat on ... anyway, Dustin is jealous and Steve is kind of a jerk

If Dustin had to pinpoint the moment he’d fallen in love with you, he would say it would probably be roughly an hour into the first time you’d ever babysat him, a hundred years, and a short lifetime ago.

Five years to be exact.

You began as a babysitter of convenience, the thirteen-year-old girl who lived across the street and could be coerced into being paid to sit and watch television with her eight-year-old neighbor for a few hours at a time.

Dustin didn’t throw a tantrum or cry or do anything so dramatic as that when his mother left him in your care that first day, but he was set in thinking that he wouldn’t like you. What did he know about eighth-grade girls, beyond that they all had sticks up their butts and were very often singularly evil? He couldn’t believe the naïveté of his mother, opening the door and willingly letting the fox into the hen house. As far as he was concerned, you were a strange and devious creature, not to be trusted.

He slunk out of the room and listened from the sanctity of the hallway as she walked you through the babysitting spiel, he would go on to be able to recite in his sleep: emergency numbers, house rules, what you should and should not offer for snacks. You nodded and agreed and sweetly bid her farewell, then immediately went to sit in his mother’s favorite chair and flipped on the television. Dustin remembered being outraged at the audacity of it because you ought to have known that you had no right to sit in that chair, but he wasn’t about to do anything about it.

You were Smaug, a great and terrible dragon lurking among the stolen treasures of Erebor, and he was Bilbo Baggins, bravely slinking away, silent and invisible. Dustin would have retreated further to the sanctuary of his bedroom, to discuss the presence of the interloper with his toys, but you’d stopped him in his tracks by turning on the siren call of Speed Racer reruns, and he’d been quietly enraptured.

He watched from the hallway for the better part of twenty minutes, quietly singing along to the theme song, before you finally called out to him.

“I can hear you humming back there.” You said, “You know you can come out and watch, right? I’m not gonna bite you.”

Dustin ran down the hall after that — Go Speed Racer, Go— if only to muster his courage and return five minutes later with backup in the form of a big tub of Legos and action figures.

And just like that, a silent truce was agreed upon.

“Who’s your favorite superhero?” He remembers asking, an hour or so after the cartoon marathon had ended, sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by the growing minefield of his toys.

You’d since twisted to perch sideways in the chair in a way he’d been unwilling to admit was so totally cool, legs slung over the arm as you fiddled with one of his action figures. Cobra Commander. He remembered thinking it was technically okay that you’d chosen that one, in the vast lexicon of all of Dustin’s toys, Cobra Commander was a low man on the totem pole.

You cast a sly glance in his direction and answered without hesitation.

“Daredevil.”

The surety of your answer nearly floored Dustin.

“You know about Daredevil?” He gasped, very nearly losing his composure, “… I mean, he’s cool I guess.”

There was an undeniable coquettish slyness to your tone, like you understood the effect of your presence, even back then. “Spider-Man is cool too.” You said, nodding to the action figure Dustin held clutched in his hands.

He shrugged and tried to feign nonchalance, working at twisting the friendly neighborhood web-slinger into a battle-ready pose. At the same time, his brain kicked itself into overdrive, trying to process what seemed like conflicting information at the time.

You were a tween girl, and you knew about superheroes. That math should not have added up to make a real person.

It was like the world was opening for the first time and he could feel cracks beginning to form in his impenetrable fortress of boyhood.

“I like the X-men.” He said slowly like he was testing to see just how much you actually knew.

You pulled a face like you didn’t appreciate the vagueness of his answer.

“You can’t just say you like the X-men,”

He wrinkled his nose, warily preparing to go on the defensive in case you finally decided to shed your skin and reveal the viper waiting beneath.

“Why not?” Dustin asked.

You shrugged.

“I mean, I guess you can but, come on, you’ve gotta have a favorite. There’s a whole bunch of those guys. You’ve got Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Professor X…?”

Dustin was fully aware of how he was gawping at you as you continued to list the various X-men on your fingers.

The wealth of what actually equates to very basic knowledge was enough to tear down the walls he’d put up to the point of forgetting his leeriness of the strange girl who had been put in charge of him that day. Before that moment, he would not have been able to fathom the concept of a girl like you (ridiculous, of course, he can practically hear you berating him for thinking so little of women’s knowledge of pop culture. Women have interests, Dustin, don’t be a tool.) but suddenly and for the first time in his life, he was completely enamored.

You were like a unicorn he’d stumbled across in a clearing in a dark forest, and he literally could not stop staring at you.

He’d never wanted someone to think he was cool so badly.

You spent the duration of that evening pouring over his favorite comics, debating who among the heroes was strongest, who would win in a fight (you hadn’t been able to reach an agreement over whether Doc Ock or Dr. Doom would win, so you’d agreed to disagree with a cordial handshake), he’d even led you down the hall to show you his bedroom, nervously of course, in some bizarrely juvenile hope to impress you with his books and posters and all the toys who hadn’t made it out into the living room.

At the end of the night, Dustin shocked himself by sending you on your way with his prized Spider-Man action figure, watching him from the back pocket of your jeans as you skipped back home and disappeared into the house across the street.

From then on, Dustin was head over heels, and it only got worse with every passing day.

Over the course of the next five years, you became a staple in the Henderson household. Dustin chased your shadow, entering Hawkins Middle and you made your way over to Hawkins High, and as you waged into the foray of adulthood, you never forgot to leave room for him, even when it wasn’t exactly convenient.

You were always happy to stuff his bike in the trunk of your car and give him a ride home, never balking at the thought of being seen fraternizing with a middle schooler by your high school peers, and you always stopped for ice cream or a Slurpee or any kind of treat that would have curled his mother’s hair and turned it gray. You liked your music loud and heavy on guitars, and Dustin couldn't say he felt any different. He liked what you liked. On nights and weekends, you let him stay up well past bedtime, eating junk and watching scary movies, and you almost never enforced the “homework before Atari” rule, considering you were just as eager to sit down and play it as he was. You were simultaneously a guiding light and a very bad influence.

You not only became acquainted with his friends but went out of your way to include them. If you and Dustin were headed to the movies for the day, you didn’t bat an eye at letting Lucas, Mike, and Will tag along, so long as they didn’t mind cramming into the back of your little Toyota, because according to you “the more the merrier, right?”

You chaperoned trips to the arcade and always came prepared with extra quarters to supplement their meager scrounged bounty. You didn’t mind stepping in to play D&D if the occasion called for it, and most importantly, you never gave the impression that it was some big inconvenience. You dressed up, you did voices, you stayed in character, and you took the matter very seriously.

You treated the Party the same way you treated Dustin, without judgment or exclusion or favorites. You were their friend, but you were in charge, and they all listened with varying degrees of eagerness, despite the fact that you didn’t actually babysit any of the rest of them. Dustin had a tendency to get quite vocal about that. If any of the guys got too friendly with you, he was quick to remind them that you were his babysitter, he knew you first.

They all teased him mercilessly about his massive crush on you, and Dustin could only be bothered to care about it half the time. You were arguably the be-all-end-all of cool babysitters, and sometimes, Dustin was sure you were too good to be true. You weren’t like the other girls he knew, which is to say you weren’t like Nancy Wheeler or Erica Sinclair, or any of his friends' moms. You’d given him a forty-five-minute lecture about the absurdity of that statement when he’d told you as much. (You don’t even know any other girls, Dustin, don’t go putting us in boxes like that.) It had been a failed first attempt at trying to express his feelings for you, and it had ended with him agreeing to be a little more open-minded and a little less sexist, and you none the wiser about his affections.

Sure, maybe you were like plenty of other girls (girls Dustin wasn’t entirely convinced existed, at least until Max came into their lives) but that didn’t mean you weren’t amazing.

And then one day after school, in your tenth-grade year, you arrived at the house, grinning stupidly about something, and acting uncharacteristically foolish and ditzy as you threw your backpack down. While you were normally light and cheerful, this was something else entirely. You were glowing, practically floating around the house. You spent the better part of the afternoon smiling to yourself and sighing, gazing off into the distance and not hearing a word Dustin had to say.

It took absolutely no prompting to discover the source of your good mood. You were more than happy to explain.

You’d met someone.

Oh no.

This really sweet, funny guy.

Oh shit.

You think you really like him.

Son of a bitch!

His name is – Dustin clapped his hands over his ears when you’d tried to tell him. He didn’t want to know the guy’s name; he didn’t want to know anything about him unless you were going to tell him he’d died or something. The next few weeks were an exercise in patience as Dustin waited for you to get bored of this guy, whoever he was.

This wasn’t like you. You had a good head on your shoulders, you liked superheroes and Atari and Lord of the Rings and didn’t get silly crushes. Surely you weren’t foolish enough to get caught up in something as fleeting as a summer fling… right?

Wrong.

By summer break, it was officially official. Boyfriend and girlfriend official. You were even wearing a big chunky chain bracelet of his and a beat-up guitar pick strung around a ball chain necklace. It was all Dustin could do to keep from blowing his lid.

Suddenly he was all you could talk about, your boyfriend. How he was so fun and funny and sweet and thoughtful and yadda yadda yadda. It went on and on, an endless stream of saccharine word vomit that twisted at Dustin’s insides like a rusty fork making spaghetti out of his guts. He’d never been so jealous in his goddamn life. It made him feel like he was on fire.

How was he supposed to compete with high school boys? Especially since whatever teen boy spell this guy had cast on you had apparently turned you into the girl you’d never been? A giggling, flirty mess of sunshine lollipops and rainbows.

You were in love with this guy much too quick, and Dustin hated every moment of it. More than the jealousy, he hated the guilt he felt over hating it because he could not deny that this guy made you incandescently happy. You were on the moon where Dustin could not reach you, and despite how bad it made him feel, he told himself that if you were happy then he was happy … to a point.

A lot of that sentiment went out the window when you started ditching him to hang out with this guy.

Sure, you still chaperoned the Party around Hawkins, but you were just as likely to go skipping off to some dark corner of the arcade or the movie theatre to have some sort of secret rendezvous as you were to stay. You didn’t offer rides to and from school as liberally as you had before, due to the fact that you were riding to school with your boyfriend as often as you were driving yourself. Your evenings babysitting no longer consisted of superhero debates and D&D, but sitting and waiting by the phone, only to snatch it up and run to the other room when it would ring. You spent hours talking on the phone about absolutely nothing of value to this guy, acting like everything you had to say to each other was the most important thing in the world. (Dustin knew your conversations were nothing to write home about because he’d been caught twice listening on the other line before you’d snapped at him to get off the phone).

“Was that your little brother or something?” He’d heard your boyfriend ask, his voice lilting with an infuriating humor.

You’d sighed and rolled your eyes, “No, it’s just the kid I babysit.”

Just.

Dustin didn’t know what it felt like to have his heart broken, but he’d never been made to feel so small and insignificant by a single word. He’d never been just anything to you, not until your boyfriend had come around. Suddenly you were exactly like the other girls he knew, and it set Dustin’s teeth on edge.

Dustin had never met this boyfriend of yours, partially because you never brought him around (thankfully the vice your relationship had on your mind didn’t turn you into one of those cliche babysitters sneaking her boyfriend into the house to make out) but also because Dustin had no interest in meeting his biggest competition for your attention.

He may have only been a middle schooler, but he was smart enough to know that all it would accomplish would be to hurt his feelings, more than it already hurt to think about you in the arms of someone else, laughing at his dumb jokes, playing games in the arcade, going to the movies with him.

He caught glimpses from time to time, of course, even in his denial he was wildly curious about him, your mysterious boyfriend.

The best look he ever got was in spying out through the front window, watching you skip off across the street and climb up into the passenger’s side of a beat-up, shitty panel van blaring overloud rock music. There was a flash of denim on leather, long dark hair, and big chunky silver jewelry on a hand that came up to cup your cheek as you leaned over to kiss him before the door slammed shut.

Dustin had ripped the front curtains down over that, jealousy briefly turning him into the goddamn Hulk. Of course, he’d been subsequently grounded for it despite how it had been entirely by accident.

He painted a picture of your boyfriend in his mind so that he would have something to hate, denim on leather, chunky silver jewelry, long dark hair, an amalgam of all the lame rock and roll guys he’d ever seen on MTV or in magazines. He imagined he was probably too concerned with his looks, fixated on his hair, didn’t let you touch his radio, and played guitar in a shitty rock band. Like Steve Harrington, if he was a metalhead, which is to say a total loser.

Of course, that opinion would go on to change drastically over the months. Steve Harrington, it turned out, was cool. Much cooler than your stupid boyfriend.

Dustin would complain bitterly to Steve about him exactly once before he learned better.

Steve scrunched his features as Dustin went on and on, slowly putting the pieces together. He didn't know you very well, beyond the fact that you went to school together, but come to find out he did know your boyfriend.

“Oh, wait,” He’d started to say, “Are you talking about E—”

Dustin clapped his hands over his ears once again and screeched out what could only be described as a primordial sound of denial. It had shocked Steve perhaps more than anything in his life to hear a sound like that erupt out of a human being.

“Don’t say it!" Dustin cried, obviously being very cool and mature about this whole thing, "I don’t want to know his name!”

Steve threw up his hands defensively.

“Alright, Jesus! I won’t say his name … Anyway, I know... That Guy, and he’s a total freak. Don’t worry Henderson, it won’t last long. She’ll come around eventually.”

It might have made Dustin feel better if it weren’t for the fact that – inexplicably – you liked the apparent freak so, so much. Too much.

You were in love with him.

Dustin was sick with how much he hated a person he didn’t even know. He railed against any and all information, any suggestion of That Guy’s existence, despite how you insisted he would love him, how he was into all the same fantasy and sci-fi stuff Dustin loved, and how he even played D&D.

“He wants to meet you,” you’d said once, sitting cross-legged on the floor, helping him put together his outfit for the upcoming Snowball Dance.

Dustin was already sulking because you would be cutting out on chaperoning to go out with your boyfriend, even though you’d promised you were going to go.

The declaration that he wanted to meet Dustin felt more like a taunt than anything else like the bastard wanted to rub his face in it. It made him burn with petty anger.

Dustin couldn’t give a shit about what this guy wanted.

“Well, maybe I don’t want to meet him.” He’d huffed, “Steve says he’s a freak anyway–”

“Don’t say that.” You’d snapped, your tone biting and harsh enough to cause Dustin to flinch. “He's not a freak. Steve is an asshole, he doesn’t know anything about him. And neither do you."

"Well, maybe you don't know anything about Steve," He mumbled defiantly.

"I know more about him than you do."

Dustin waffled between feeling a mean satisfaction and instant regret over the way your face crumpled in the wake of the fight, as short as it had been. You offered a meek apology for biting his head off and Dustin forgave you. At least you seemed to have the good sense to be remorseful about ditching him.

After a long silence, you nudged him with a sock-covered toe and put on a pout.

“Don’t be mad at me Dusty, I’ll go to the dance with you next year.”

Next year was a poor excuse for a band-aid, but considering everything that had recently happened, Dustin just had to resign himself to trust that you would eventually come to your senses and eventually your boyfriend would be out of both of your lives.

Through growing up and all the otherworldly insanity that had come to Hawkins since, the Demogorgon, the Upsidedown, the Mindflayer and everything in between, his feelings for you were as strong as ever. Stronger, even, because suddenly he had a duty to protect you, to keep you safe from the unseen dangers lurking just beyond the veil. He couldn’t tell you about the battles they’d waged and fought, you were safer not knowing.

Though, to be fair, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to tell you about all that stuff. In November of 1983, before that stupid jerk was your boyfriend and you were still Dustin’s number one girl, you’d spent every afternoon at his house, from after school to dusk. With your parents busy with work like they always were and Dustin’s mother assisting in the search for Will, it was agreed that it was safer for the both of you to stay together. Dustin was over the moon and chomping at the bit to tell you about all the new developments within the Party.

You didn’t think his story about the girl with the superpowers living in Mike’s basement was very amusing.

“That’s not funny, Dustin,” you’d said, your mouth pulling down into a disapproving frown as you crossed your arms and leveled him with that steely look got when you were being serious, “You shouldn’t joke about stuff like that.”

He couldn’t imagine what you were talking about, considering he was being very serious, and Mike really did have a girl with superpowers living in his basement. Dustin had just seen her only half an hour before, you could see her too if you just went over to the Wheeler’s house.

“Stuff like what?” Dustin asked, completely nonplussed.

You grit your teeth like you hated having to explain it to him.

“Like keeping girls locked in basements and stuff! That’s not funny,”

Dustin rolled his eyes, his little body flooding with relief as the apparent source of your upset made itself clear.

“She’s not locked down there. She can go out anytime she wants, just not when Mike’s parents are home…”

Somehow, that explanation didn’t manage to clear things up the way Dustin hoped it would. You stopped showing him scary movies for the better part of a year after that, and Dustin stopped trying to tell you about Eleven and everything that went with her.

It’s been two weeks since the battle at Starcourt Mall, resulting in its unceremonious burning down, and Dustin hasn’t seen hide nor hair of you since the start of all that madness. He’s almost glad he’d been so preoccupied all summer, first with camp, then with trying to hail Suzy, and finally with decoding the Russian message with Steve and Robin. It hadn’t given him time to worry about you becoming one of the mindless throngs taken by the Mindflayer … or the mindless girl you’d become under the influence of your boyfriend.

Dustin had seen you briefly on his way to rendezvous with Steve before everything went down. Technically, you’d seen him first and snuck up on him just as he was crossing the threshold into Scoops Ahoy. You’d seized him by his backpack and jostled him violently, roaring in a way that had drawn a squeaky cry of alarm out of him.

His voice cracked. It was embarrassing. People turned to stare.

You were laughing when he whipped around to find the source of the assault, that bright, musical sound that he knew so well, it almost knocked the breath out of him to see you standing there.

He’d shocked himself in realizing how he’d nearly forgotten you, blinded as he was by the rose-tinted haze that had been his summer fling with Suzy. She made him feel stupid and gooey, all warm and fuzzy inside, but it wasn’t anything like how stupid your boyfriend made you. Dustin told himself it was different, but then there you were to remind him of his one and only, looking like a sun-kissed angel dressed in a strappy little sundress and sandals, and he wondered just how different it could possibly be. He squeaked your name and let you hug him, swallowing hard and answering your questions in a daze. “When did you get back?” You asked, playfully shoving him.

You had an ice cream cone gripped in one hand, and despite your teasing, you were careful not to let it drip on Dustin’s shirt, which he was thankful for.

“Yesterday.”

“Did you have fun? Make lots of nerdy friends?”

“Sure.” He mumbled, eyes catching on that stupid guitar pick necklace and the chunky chain bracelet you still wore.

Then, like he’d been struck by the tingling of Spidey-senses, Dustin realized you were conspicuously alone, and he didn’t trust it.

“So, where’s your boyfriend?”

He said it like it was a dirty word.

Strangely, instead of getting that dopey look on your face and waxing poetic about how wonderful he was, or berating Dustin for being unkind, you pulled a face and rolled your eyes. You made a show of heaving an exasperated groan like he had just asked you the most annoying, trivial question in the world.

“Who knows, I haven’t seen that jerk in like two weeks.”

You crossed your arms over your chest and cast your eyes down to your toes in a way that seemed almost halfway sad.

“You know he didn’t even come to my graduation?”

“Seriously?” Dustin spluttered, “What a jerk!”

He stopped himself from saying something harsher because he knew you were just going to rail on him for cursing, and this wasn’t about him, this was about the heaping pile of bullshit you’d just dropped on him. He was genuinely incensed. What kind of asshole skips his girlfriend’s graduation ceremony? Your boyfriend, evidently, that's who. Dustin couldn’t hardly say he was surprised, he’d always known the guy was a jerk, despite not actually knowing him.

He couldn’t help but think back to what Steve had said the previous autumn, about your boyfriend being a freak. He’d often wondered exactly what that meant, but now he supposed it meant that he skipped out on major milestones in his girlfriend’s life.

Dustin hated how dumb That Guy made you, prancing around in a daze like a lovesick puppy. Maybe if he was lucky, he wouldn’t have to endure listening to you moon over him anymore, talking about how fun and funny and nice and cool and blah blah blah...

How could all of that be true if he couldn’t even be bothered to watch you graduate?

“I know right?” you huffed, and suddenly there was a very real heaviness to your posture like you were trying very hard to make light of something that you didn’t think was funny in the slightest.

In fact, you were genuinely upset about it.

For half a moment, Dustin very seriously considered abandoning the mission to rendezvous with Steve if only to keep you company… or maybe you would’ve preferred to be invited along? He wasn’t entirely sure you liked Steve, but maybe you could learn to love him like Dustin had. And what’s not to love? Steve was cool and charming and funny and— Dustin stopped that line of thinking in its tracks as he began to imagine how much worse it would be to watch you gushing over Steve the way you did with your boyfriend. It might actually kill him if he inadvertently set the two of you up.

“Then again, you didn’t come either, you Butthead.” you huffed, prodding him in the shoulder with the sharp point of your finger.

A fiery indignance rose in Dustin’s chest at the notion of being looped in with your boyfriend’s crimes.

“I was at camp!” he squawked, hoping beyond hope that you knew he would have moved heaven and earth to be at your ceremony if he hadn’t already had the prior summer engagement.

You smirked at him.

“Uh huh, excuses excuses…” your tone was maddeningly condescending, but he didn’t get the sense that you were upset, not seriously, which was a relief. “So, where are you headed?”

Dustin jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the ice cream parlour and you rolled your eyes.

“Right, of course, off to see your new best friend, Steve?” you stretched his name lyrically in a way that didn’t feel authentically You.

Dustin wondered bitterly if maybe that was something you’d picked up from your jerk boyfriend. Still, he nodded and followed your gaze as it slinked up to the Scoops counter, where a girl roughly your age stood looking particularly miserable.

Your face split into a delighted Cheshire Cat grin, pulling your lower lip in past your teeth as the corners of your mouth quirked up.

Dustin wasn’t sure he liked that look on you, his head bouncing back and forth between you and the Scoops counter. His stomach was strangely in knots as a sense of dread washed over him, you knew something he didn’t, and he didn’t like how coy you were being about it… and he really didn’t like that look on your face.

“What?”

“Just wait until you see him.” You purred, giggling as you turned to leave, “Bye Dustin.”

He would have returned the farewell, but it wasn’t you bidding him goodbye. It was your stupid boyfriend again, working through you to taunt him, waggling your fingers and grinning at him from behind your eyes as you skipped away into the crowd.

That Guy, the Freak. Whatever his name was.

In the madness of the weeks that followed, Dustin had almost forgotten that interaction, and now you were coming over.

He’d waited all day for your impending arrival, knowing that you were coming over to babysit that evening, much to his chagrin.

It’s not that he didn’t want you coming over, he’d labored over what kind of things you could do together to pass the time that evening – movies, junk food … board games? – he told himself he wanted to do something you would enjoy, now that you had graduated, not just the same old baby shit you’d done for years. He racked his brain for the things he knew about teenagers, what did Steve and Robin like to do when they weren’t busy decoding secret Soviet messages? Sit around and judge people for their taste in movies? Trade high school gossip, talk about who said what, and who was worth pursuing for a date…? Somehow Dustin didn’t think you’d be interested in any of that, and it stressed him out immensely. Same as he had at eight years old, he still wanted so desperately for you to think he was cool, mature, worth taking seriously. Of course, he told himself it didn’t matter what you two did to pass the time, any amount of time in the glow of your presence was tantamount to Heaven, but he only just wished that you were coming over under different circumstances.

He wished he was old enough to take you out on a date. He’d entertained that flight of fancy for a few days, even found the perfect line to use (courtesy of Steve), but then his mother had caught him talking to himself in the mirror, pretending to ask you out to dinner, and he’d nearly died of embarrassment.

If he was ever going to marry you, he needed you to take him seriously as a man, not just some kid. Because he was going to marry you someday, after all, that was without a doubt. Sure, you’re a few years older than him, he’s only fresh out of eighth grade and you’d graduated that summer. Sure, there’s the problem of your stupid boyfriend, and sure he likes Suzy, like, really likes her. She is as amazing and perfect and phenomenal as he ever hoped his first real girlfriend to be, but you are you.

If ever there was a litmus test for the ideal woman (Don’t be such a male chauvinist, Dustin) you have long since set the bar, and while Suzy is amazing and quite literally had a hand in helping to save the world, she’s not you. He realizes it’s an unfair comparison, and it makes him feel terrible (could it technically be considered cheating?) but there’s no arguing with true love. That shit is forever, baby.

The mood is wrong the moment you walk in the door, twenty-five minutes late, completely flustered and apologizing profusely. His mother assures you it’s no problem, what matters is that you’re here now and she’s out the door with a promise to be back no later than 11:30.

You stash your bag on the kitchen island, moving robotically.

“Crazy about the mall, huh?” You say, looking like a hollowed-out version of yourself as you stare vacantly out the front window.

“Yeah, crazy.” He mumbles, wondering with an uneasy start just how much you know about the incident, the truth of what happened at Starcourt.

He watches you carefully and realizes very quickly that there’s something wrong with you. You’re swaying slightly on your feet and breathing raggedly, and suddenly Dustin can’t help but worry about the lingering effect of the Mindflayer. It was gone, they’d burned it out with the mall, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have some sort of residual hold in this world, like what had happened with Will the year before.

“Are you okay?” He asks, sitting up on the couch, ready to jump up at a moment’s notice in case he has to catch you.

You turn and stare through him, and then after a moment much too long to be considered normal, you lie through your teeth.

You’re a terrible liar.

“I’m good.” You say, “I'm really, really good … in fact I’m great.”

You try to smile, but your lower lip is trembling and Dustin notices for the first time how your eyes are bloodshot and puffy like you’d been crying.

He wants to ask what’s wrong, but he can feel his courage quickly fading, so he decides that further inquiries regarding your emotional state can wait until after the declarations of his love have been made.

The thought of it makes him blush.

“So… listen,” He begins, gathering as much of his quickly fading gusto as he can muster, ‘There’s something I wanted to talk to you about...”

For a split second, Dustin sees what he can only equate to panic flash across your eyes, the corners of your mouth twitch as your plastered-on smile crumples into a grimace. His confidence wavers in the face of it. There is something seriously wrong with you, that’s for certain, but he doesn’t have time to sit and unpack that until after he’s said his piece. He is more than uncomfortably aware of the fact that he’d better do it quick if he wants to keep his nerve.

Dustin opens his mouth to continue, but you turn on your heel and bolt suddenly down the hall, which is perhaps the most shocking thing that has happened yet.

“Hold that thought, Dusty.” You say in a rush, your voice suddenly tight and strained. “Just for a second!”

He stands a little dazed as he listens to the quick sound of your receding footsteps, followed by the slamming of the bathroom door.

A heavy silence bleeds into the room.

After a few seconds of nothing, Dustin thinks he can hear what sounds like muffled screaming, and it throws him for a loop. He doesn’t know what to do with that, he still isn’t completely sure you aren’t being mind controlled by what’s left of the Mindflayer, but he can’t make himself move to investigate.

He stands, and he waits, and you don’t come out, so he waits a little longer.

It’s nearer to fifteen minutes before you finally emerge again, and Dustin has slumped back into the couch cushions, fidgeting with his compass while he waits for you. You’re sniffling, frantically scrubbing your hands over your eyes as you trot back out into the living room, doing your best to put on a smile.

“Okay, kiddo, you wanna watch a movie or something?” you ask, sounding absolutely manic as you throw yourself down onto the couch beside him.

“Uh… sure,” He says, “Something scary?”

It’s a blatant effort to try and please you. Dustin is no fan of scary movies, despite how hard he is trying to be because you love them. He’s still plagued with nightmares of Freddy Kreuger, despite how it’s been well over a year since you sat him down with A Nightmare on Elm Street and a promise to turn it off if it got too scary. It had, but he’d kept his mouth shut and had been forced to endure the whole thing. He is still afraid of sleeping with the lights off because of it.

In a shocking turn of events, you shake your head.

“No, let’s watch something nice. Let’s watch The Neverending Story.”

The coincidence of you suggesting that movie is enough to give Dustin whiplash until he remembers that you were the one who took him to see it in the theatre in the first place –and then ditched him there to go meet up with your boyfriend.

Still, he can't help but be a little stunned considering the recent significance of that movie and how it had effectively saved the world.

“Yeah okay…” He mumbles.

Dustin stands to go and sort through his VHS tapes. He flips absently through the hard plastic rectangles as he feels a lump forming in the pit of his stomach, biding his time to try and muster what meager scraps of his courage are left. He swore he’d tell you tonight.

Don’t be a pussy, he tells himself, It’s now or never.

He stands and turns swiftly on his heels to address you, only to find that you have pulled one of the couch cushions into your lap for security.

Your pretty face is pinched in a mask of despair and there are tears in your eyes again, but they are gone in a moment as you come to realize Dustin is staring at you. You try to smile and barely manage to quirk the corners of your mouth.

“So, listen…” He begins again, slowly, fidgeting with his fingers, twisting the digits, “What I was trying to tell you before--”

Your face brightens in an odd, forced way.

“Oh, right!” you chirp, a little too enthusiastically for how you’re failing to reflect whatever it is you’re trying to pretend to feel. “Yes. Okay, I’m listening.”

Your voice is bubbling and wet like you could break down crying at any moment.

It’s highly disturbing.

“…Are you on drugs?” Dustin suddenly blurts.

He is semi-horrified at the way the intrusive thought broke through the barriers of his mind, especially when your eyes go wide.

You pull a face like it’s the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever suggested, and make an incredulous sound that is closer to a sob than a scoff, especially with the way you gasp on the tail end of it.

“God, Dustin – you can’t just ask people if they’re on drugs.” you sniffle, pulling your eyebrows together to glare at him, “That’s totally rude.”

“Well.” He mumbles, throwing up his hands and hating how defensive he suddenly sounds, “Are you?”

“No, I’m not on drugs! I’m having a bad day.” You cross your arms tighter around the pillow and he watches as you suppress a burst of something caught between outrage and devastation. “Just give your speech already.”

You sound angry, but then again, your expression still doesn’t match your tone, so he can’t exactly gauge what it is you’re feeling. It makes him more than a little nervous about how you will take what he has to say to you, but Dustin manages to soldier through it.

“Okay. Sorry … actually, it’s not a speech, really, it’s more like – nevermind. Look, what I wanted to say is that I’m gonna be starting High School in a few weeks…” he says nervously, “And then I’ll be turning fourteen.”

Your face is still pulled into that annoyed look as you nod. The movement might have been somewhere on the way to sagely if your head hadn’t been bobbing so vigorously, like something trying very hard to look human after having only observed one for a very short time.

Still, somehow you manage to say all the right things.

“Big changes.” You mumble, “You’re not a little kid anymore.”

Dustin’s heart leaps into his throat as a bright light of hope wells in his chest, growing his courage along with it. He suddenly hopes beyond hope that you are picking up what he is putting down, even through the haze of whatever weirdness has currently gripped you.

He’s still not entirely convinced it isn’t drugs.

“Exactly!” Dustin shouts, “I’m not a little kid anymore, and if you think about it, fourteen is actually way too old for a babysitter, right?”

Your face contorts suddenly into a mask of confusion and your voice grows very quiet.

“Um… yeah I guess so…”

“So, really, I guess what I’m trying to say is I don’t want you to babysit me anymore.”

The silence that blooms between you is deafening as the words hang heavy in the air. Dustin doesn’t realize his mistake until you scrunch your face, and the tears finally – finally – begin to spill over your cheeks.

Oh no.

Dustin’s heart drops into his ass, and he freezes as you try not to break down.

Oh shit.

He’s never seen you cry before. In all the years he's known you the closest he's seen you to tears has been through anger or laughter.

He doesn’t know what to do.

In spite of yourself, you choke on a burst of harsh laughter, thick and wet, bubbling up from your throat as you wipe at your eyes. It is an effort made in vain, as the moment you brush away your tears they are replaced by new ones.

“Dammit, Dusty.” you sniffle, “Are you breaking up with me too?”

He rushes to the couch, leaping to land on the cushions beside you.

“No!” Dustin cries, “Oh no, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, that's not what I meant at all – please don’t cry – I only –” And then the words really hit him. “Wait… what do you mean?”

You open your mouth to answer but the rush of emotion is too much, and you bury your face in your hands. You sob for a brief, heartbreaking moment, and Dustin feels something crumple inside of him.

He doesn’t know what to do, somehow it feels like this is his fault, and it has him frozen to the spot.

Then he remembers your son of a bitch boyfriend, or perhaps more specifically how you hadn’t mentioned him once in all the time you’ve been here, and the gravity of the situation dawns on him.

“You guys broke up.” He says softly.

It’s not so much a question as it is Dustin having to say it out loud to believe it.

You nod and break into another round of pitiful sobbing.

Dustin has to take a moment to process the information and decide how he feels. He wants to be happy, ecstatic even. How long has he been waiting for this exact day? Counting the minutes until you’d get tired of that loser and move on to greener pastures. It should be a victory, but it turns to ash in his mouth because in his mind you should have shrugged it off with a flippant wave and an uttering of “good riddance”. But there you sit, choking and crying and crushing the heels of your palms into your eyes like you’re afraid they’re going to fall out of your head. You're not just sad, you're devastated.

This is not how he expected things to go at all, and seeing you so upset hurts Dustin’s heart.

You scrub at your face again, furiously trying to compose yourself, but the tears won’t stop coming. Dustin tries to muster all the anger and hatred and jealous outrage he’s felt towards the jerk over the two years he’s had to endure your relationship, but he suddenly can’t find it. All he feels is the sharp aching pull deep inside of his chest, watching you cry over the no-good bastard who’d broken your heart. It feels something similar to anger, only calmer, sadder. He’s never felt anything like that before.

He wants to hug you, but he dares not touch you, on the off chance that you really are as fragile as you look right now.

He’s half afraid he’ll break you if he tries.

“I’ll kill him,” Dustin says without really thinking.

You’ve calmed down enough by then to heave an exhausted sigh and throw your hands down to the pillow sitting in your lap. Your face is pink and ruddy, streaked with tears as you gasp out the last moments of your breakdown.

“No, you won’t.” you insist, twisting at the ring you wear on your middle finger with the dull black stone set into the band.

His ring.

Son of a bitch.

Dustin remembers the day you showed up wearing it. The suggestion of the promise that stood behind it had knocked the wind out of him.

A cursory glance shows you’ve still got on the chunky chain bracelet and the faintest hint of the guitar pick necklace sitting tucked beneath your shirt. It sets Dustin’s teeth on edge. He doesn’t want you to be sad – ever – but especially at the behest of some guy. He wants you to be angry, rip those gaudy pieces of jewelry off, and hurl them into the quarry, along with everything else that asshole has left in your life. He wants you to curse his name and flip the bird and forget you ever knew him.

“Well, I’ll kick his ass if you want me to.” He presses, scooting closer to you on the couch and rising on his knees in a way he hopes might help to try and make himself seem taller, more mature.

I would never hurt you. He wants to say, I’d treat you so much better than he did if you’d let me.

It’s enough to make you snort with watery laughter and roll your eyes, and for a brief moment, Dustin has to remember that you’re laughing at his offer of kicking your stupid (ex)boyfriend’s ass, not the declaration of love that lives in his heart of hearts.

“That’s sweet. Thanks, Dusty,” you say, patting his hand where he’d unintentionally reached out to take yours.

Dustin’s heart is in his throat. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding your hand until that moment. Despite the moment, his courage dissipates. Disappointingly, he deflates and sinks back into the couch beside you.

The conversation doesn’t carry on much further from there. For lack of anything better to do, Dustin puts on The Neverending Story, and you sit and watch it together in comfortable silence, with your head resting on his shoulder. He doesn’t pay much attention to the movie; he is too busy plotting how he will avenge you. He swears to himself that if and when he ever happens to find himself crossing paths with the sorry piece of shit who had been fortunate enough to be your boyfriend, he’d make sure he paid for what he’d done. Nobody gets to break your heart and just go on with their lives like nothing ever happened. It isn’t right.

By the time flashing headlights signify the return of his mother, and you make your way out the door and back across the street, Dustin is set in his mind that it is a matter of avenging you, defending your honor. He who draws first blood must make it right, lest they face banishment – and since he can’t expect your shithead (ex)boyfriend to do right by you, it’s up to him. He takes the burden on with his shoulders back and his head held high, though he is roiling with anxiety when he tucks in that night. He has no idea how he’s going to avenge you, and if Dustin can’t avenge you, how can he ever expect to be worthy of you? He’s only thirteen, what on earth can he be expected to do?

The theme of The Neverending Story is still buzzing around in his head, a pervasive earworm that any other day would have served only to annoy him, but now it fills him with confidence, reminding him of exactly what he is capable of.

What can he do? Save the fucking world, that’s what.

#eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x you #stranger things fic #eddie munson x reader #reader insert #eddie munson fic #eddie munson #i'm just trying to make sure this ends up in the right tag despite the fact that Eddie is literally only here in the peripheral #this is about dustin but lets be honest #this is about eddie #dustin henderson #cruel summer #cruel summer fic

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