Im a very indecisive person but I guess I'll go with “Surprise, I have feelings and you just hurt them.” with Eddie, if you have any inspiration for this prompt 💕
ty for requesting!! — you get mean when you like someone, so eddie thinks you hate him (grump!reader, enemies to lovers, hurt/comfort, shameless succession reference, 1.9k)
“Please, tell me you’re joking,” you mumble through the melting vanilla shake on your tongue.
Robin grins at you across the table and shakes her head. “Nope,” she says, popping the p. “You are officially looking at Vicki Carmichael’s latest odyssey.”
You and Eddie look over your shoulder at Steve. He stands at the front counter and fumbles with the straw dispenser — hitting the lever repeatedly, with an increasingly rougher touch when nothing comes out. He flounders when they all spill out at once.
He’s lucky he’s so pretty.
“Wait, I’m confused,” Eddie announces from beside you after stealing a sip of your milkshake. He squints and fights off a brain freeze. “Why didn’t he just tell us? He’s screwing the hottest girl in town— it feels like something he’d brag about.”
“I’m sitting right here,” you scoff, mostly kidding.
“‘Cause he knew you guys would totally ream him for it,” Robin answers and pinches fry crumbs into her mouth. Through a mouthful of them, she says, “It’s not like you’re usually supportive about this kinda stuff.”
“I’m all for Steve being a slut, okay?” you defend with your hands up in surrender. “But I do draw the line at my best friend fucking the girl who bullied me in high school.”
“What’d she do?” Eddie asks. You can’t tell if he really cares or if he just wants something new to laugh at you for, but you decide to humor him anyway.
“She cut out the boobs of my gym shirt before class because she knew if I dressed out again, I was getting detention,” you explain, smiling when it makes the table laugh. “I had to run the mile with my bright pink sports bra showing, but at least my record was clean.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Steve wonders aloud when he returns to the table, carrying the only straw that hadn’t fallen to the floor. He slides into the booth next to Robin and looks at the three of you expectantly.
“Nothing.” the brunette girl chirps.
“You,” Eddie deadpans.
You squint. “Real smooth, Munson.”
“Wait, what?”
Eddie laughs. “I mean, Vicki Carmichael? Seriously?”
Steve gapes at Robin, features yawned in betrayal. “You told them?”
The girl shrugs, taking a big bite of her burger and playing coy.
“She’s hot and everything, but she’s really not your type, man.”
Steve’s eyes narrow across the table. “What’s that supposed to mean, freak?”
“She likes bad boys,” you answer for him, shrugging like it’s obvious. “You know, the Billy Hargrove types. With tattoos and leather jackets and long hair. And, no offense, but you’re the furthest thing from that.”
“I think you just described me, doll,” Eddie laughs.
“Weren’t you screwing around with Billy Hargrove a couple months ago?” Steve wonders with a knowing, honeyed squint.
“Shut up, Harrington,” you bite.
Eddie grins with all his teeth, pink and boyish and proud. “Oh, so you’re screwing guys that are just like me now, huh? I’m flattered.”
“If anything, you’re the dollar store version of Billy Hargrove, Munson,” you retort with a roll of your eyes, turning your attention to the milkshake in front of you. You stab holes in the thick ice cream and try to ignore the sudden attention.
All the eyes on you make you nervous. You were never good at being the butt of the joke. ‘Cause when you get embarrassed, you get mean. Like some kinda hurt dog.
“You have everything but the looks.”
“Fuck off,” Eddie snorts and snatches the frosted glass away from you. He slides it over to his side of the table and sips from the straw that has your lipstick stained on the tip of it. “You can’t insult me—”
“Can’t I?”
“—Not when you’re fucking a carbon copy of me,” he scoffs and tries to ignore the jealousy burning wildfires behind his ribcage.
“He’s nothing like you,” you insist.
“He’s exactly like me. Just blonde. And watered down,” Eddie argues, face twisted with disgust. He smiles when it makes everyone else laugh but you. “I mean, it’s kinda sad, actually. I turned you down, so you had to try it out with Hargrove?”
“I didn’t try it, first of all, I fucking conquered it,” you retort, not exactly joking but grinning when it makes Steve and Robin chuckle to themselves. “And second of all, I never wanted you, Munson. So there was never anything to turn down.”
Your words sting somewhere deep in his chest. Like there’s a knife lodged deep in his heart that aches every time he breathes. He doesn’t know what to do with this hurt other than hurt you back.
“So that night you told me you liked me after my show— that was all a lie?” he asks, smirking to hide his ache.
Robin’s eyes go wide as she bites into her burger. “What is this? A sleepover?” she scoffs with her mouth full. “Why is everyone telling each other’s secrets?”
“You started it, Buckley,” Steve quips before stealing one of her fries.
Your answer is immediate. A total lie, but instant nonetheless. No one’s gonna out-insult you. Rarely ever do you come out of petty arguments without having drawn the most blood.
“Yeah! You bombed, and I felt bad, and I wanted to make you feel better,” you confess with a sinister giggle. “What I really wanted to say is that I wish your mom had given birth to a can opener because at least then it might be good at something.”
Eddie meets your smirk with a glower, something genuinely pained that makes your chest sting. You refuse to show it, though. Not even when he slides out of the booth. “Yeah, okay. Fuck you,” he mumbles to himself as he goes.
“What?” you scoff a cynical laugh.
“C’mon,” Steve murmurs quietly to you. “That was a little too far.”
“Oh, so he can make fun of me, but I can make fun of him?”
“It’s different. You know that.”
You roll your eyes even though you know he’s right. Eddie’s a clown, but he means well. He’s a dumbass because he doesn’t know how to be serious about anything, but he’s hardly ever outright mean.
You’re made of something more hardened than that. You set fires all around you, and only when a person walks through it do you know they really care. You don’t mean to be so mean half the time. It’s a defense mechanism more than anything. A time-bomb you never really learned to defuse.
“It was a joke, Eds!” you shout as he storms the short distance to the entrance of the diner.
“Well, surprise. I have feelings—” he grins, though there’s little emotion behind it. The door dings over his head when he shoves it open. He reaches for the crushed packet of cigarettes in his pocket. “—And you just hurt them.”
The diner feels strangely silent with him gone. The air feels noticeably heavy, too.
You reach for the milkshake he left on his side of the table and slide it audibly back over to you. You don’t sip from it, though. Your stomach’s too much in knots now. You just busy your fidgeting hands with it, holding the frosted glass in your delicate palms until they ache.
“Stop staring at me,” you mumble, not meeting the silent looks Robin and Steve give you across the booth.
“Go talk to him before you give him a complex.”
“Yeah,” the boy hums with a knowing smile. “Go kiss and make up.”
“Shut up,” you bite with a scrunched-together face. You deflate with a sigh. “Fine. I’ll go— but not because you told me to.”
You hear them laugh quietly to themselves as you walk out behind Eddie.
He leans against the corner of the old building and blows smoke from his lungs. He looks relatively unfazed despite the circumstances. You swallow down the worry that you’re embarrassing yourself by being out here at all.
Your shoes scuff against the sidewalk as you near him. “Eds—”
“I’m fine,” he interjects before you can say anything real. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“Well, it’s too late. Steve and Robin already kicked me out here, so…” You trail off in a monotone, despite having already declared that you were out here not because you were told to be. He doesn’t need to know that, though. “…I’m sorry.”
He takes a puff of the cigarette between his fingers, then shrugs on the exhale. “Okay.”
“The can opener thing was stupid— I mean, it wasn’t nice either, but it was a really dumb joke,” you ramble without taking a single breath. You cross your arms over yourself in a makeshift shield. “You didn’t even bomb that night. At your show or whatever. I lied. You were… You were actually really good.”
Eddie turns his head slowly. He blinks at you with chocolate eyes sparkling with amusement.
You cower under his stare. “What?”
“I know what you’re doing,” he insists with a crooked smile.
“What?” you repeat, forcing a laugh.
“You’re fucking with me,” he chuckles and brings the cig back to his mouth. He mumbles through the stick. “But it’s cool, you know? I can cope.”
“I’m being serious, Eddie,” you argue. And then, when your chest starts to sting, it becomes impossible not to make a joke. “I think you’re a… super-talented superstar—”
“You’re such a fucking bitch,” he interjects with a sincere laugh, like honey and gunpowder.
You giggle, and the foreign tension ebbs.
“I’m just kidding,” you assure and prop your back against the wall beside him. “Well, I mean, I’m not, but I…” You stammer when you can’t find the words. You gesture wildly with your hands. “I do think you’re talented, it’s just— It’s hard for me to be serious, okay? But I am sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he assures, tossing the cigarette to the ground and snuffing the ash with his sneaker. “Trust me. I know what you mean.”
You swallow hard. “And I wasn’t… What I said to you that night, in your van after the show… I wasn’t lying.”
Eddie’s head snaps up. He blinks at you with a gaping gaze, even though you’re not looking at him to see it. You’re much more focused on the dumpster across the street, lest you meet his eyes and get embarrassed all over again.
This is the realest you’ve ever been with him, you think — since you told him you liked him and he all but turned you down.
Being vulnerable has been impossible since then.
“Then why’d you never talk to me about it again?” he asks, then stammers over himself. “You acted like it never even happened— I thought I fucking— like, dreamt it or some shit.”
“Because you didn’t say anything back! I thought you didn’t feel the same way!”
“I was just— I was just shocked. You always act like you hate me!”
“Because I like you, you idiot!” you blurt before you mean to, then huff with impatience at yourself. “Fuck. Sorry. I don’t know… I don’t know how to be nice to people I like.”
“It’s okay,” Eddie laughs, shifting on the brick wall until his shoulder rubs against it. He looks down at you like he’s seeing you for the very first time — glittering with the hope of finally getting close to you, of finally having something real.
“Don’t laugh!” you argue. “I’m trying really hard here!”
“I know,” he murmurs lowly, leaning in until you can taste the nicotine on his breath. In a honeyed tone, he confesses, “It’s a good thing I like you mean, then, huh?”
Your heart lurches into your throat. He smirks when you freeze, and knocks his shoulder against yours when he heads back into the diner.
The game of cat and mouse continues.
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