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deathbecomesthem · 3 months

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Roomies 7

Final Chapter | ~4.2K

A/N: This story has come to an end. I hope you all enjoy it.

Warnings: Lots of feelings, smut, a bit of talk of vomit. I wrote this, and I'm publishing it. As with the rest of this story, I chose not to spend a lot of time dwelling on the details.

---

You don’t think about Eddie. No, you don’t do that. You don’t think about what he thinks when he reads the note you left for him. You don’t think about the anger, the sadness, the confusion he must be feeling. You don’t know what he’s feeling. How could you, when you’ve hidden yourself from Eddie’s feelings since you became his unexpected roommate.

You’re a selfish person. You can admit that now that you’re not face to face with him, not listening to his sleepy snores through the too thin walls of your shared apartment. Not pressing your nose into the throw pillow on the couch trying to catch the ghost of his scent when he’s not home. Sitting on the couch in your sister’s townhouse across town from your own apartment, you feel it happening. You’re putting distance between you and Eddie. Brick by brick, you are expanding the road that sits between the two of you, and soon you’ll not even be able to cross it. Too much space. That’s fine, you’ve decided, because the only way out of this is with that distance, and maybe in the end you’ll find a way to salvage what might be left of the friendship that will always connect you.

“Oh, is that what we’re doing again today?” Jamie is making her way from her kitchen through the living room. It’s Friday, she has work this morning.

“Doing what?” You ask her, running your hand down your face and bracing yourself for impact. You can already feel the welcome has worn thin, and it’s only been 2 days since you showed up with an overnight bag asking for sanctuary.

“Moping. Sitting in your sweatpants and moping.” Jamie looks at you with her typical disapproving older sister expression. “Nobody died, you know. You’re being so dramatic. Just go talk to Eddie.”

“I can’t talk to him right now. It might ruin everything. I can’t lose him as a friend.” You tell her. This is the same thing you’ve been telling her since you walked through her front door. Instead of the sympathetic look she gave you on that first night, this time she rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, because everything seems so great right now. I hate to have to be the one to tell you this,” you know she does not in fact hate to be the one to tell you whatever it is she’s going to say next, “but the damage is done. You can’t rewind the clock. Take a shower, get your shit together, and get the fuck outta my house. I love you.”

Jamie strides back over to you and gives you a kiss on the forehead before turning and sprinting back towards her front door. With a bang of the door, she’s gone. You know she’s right, and the time away from Eddie has done nothing but make you more miserable than ever. You take the shower. You pack your bag. You put on jeans and your favorite sweater of Jamie’s, a small revenge that will take her months to realize. You go home to face whatever is left of your friendship with Eddie, and pray to the gods devils that he will accept what you’ve decided.

Friday. You promised him you’d be home. Time to face the music. Time to tell him that you’re sorry, and that you’re moving out.

—

Eddie’s been fine. After that first night, when he went down to the bar and drank until he puked in the sink of the men’s room, he had an epiphany. It was simple really. While the whiskey rose in his throat, the lightbulb went off. He wasn’t the first person to come to big decisions in that bathroom, he was just the most recent. Only two months prior, Lenny Hendricks had done a line of the sick that is now covered in Jack Daniel’s scented bile, and decided he was going to go to medical school. Maybe it’s something about the poetry scratched on the walls. As Eddie cleans his mess, he sees a fresh scrawl next to the mirror - Just start the set on time. She’s not coming.

Eddie had walked out of the bar that evening with a sense of purpose, regardless of the sour smell of his favorite Metallica tee. He walked up the steps to his apartment and went to bed knowing that it was all going to be ok. Everything would be right soon enough, because it had to be. How could it not be? He’s been so stupid. No more, though.

—

It’s heavy and weighing you down as you look up the stairwell to the dimly lit hallway. Someone, probably Eddie but you don’t know for sure, replaced the light with a red bulb sometime before you moved in. It suits your mood right now, the uneasy red tinted shadows trailing behind you as you ascend the stairs, the dread in your guts making your movements slower than normal.

You stand at the door and look at it. Do you knock? Do you use your key? Do you turn tail and go back the way you came, and check into the Super 8 Motel down the road until you can find your own shitty studio apartment that doesn’t make you wonder who you are and what the fuck you’re doing every time you step foot through the door? You try the knob and find it turns easily under your grip. So, you sigh and walk in.

Eddie is in the kitchen, back to the door. He’s wearing your apron, hands deep in a sinkful of soapy water. He looks back and smiles easily when he sees you with your duffel bag still hanging off your shoulder. This is not the way this scene played out in your head. The counters are clean, bottles of beer and cans of soda all sitting in the plastic bin underneath the side table next to the refrigerator. Is that -

“- did you bake bread?” you question, dropping your bag and heading to the rack sitting on the counter with a round loaf sitting prettily.

“Uh huh,” Eddie’s wiping his hands on a floral dish towel he has hanging from where the apron strings are tied together around his waist. “Smells good, don’t it?”

“Did you clean?” Another question that doesn’t need an answer, the proof is in front of your eyes.

“Don’t act so surprised. Who do you think took care of this place before you moved in? Gareth?” Eddie shudders at the thought.

You nod, not in understanding, because you don’t, but you nod because you accept what your eyes are seeing. Eddie’s fine. The place is fine. He didn’t burn it to the ground when you walked out of the door. You didn’t find him curled up in a ball on his bed. He didn’t punch a hole through the cupboard next to the sink when he found your note.

Eddie’s fine. So you nod, and make your way down the hallway to your bedroom, leaving Eddie in the kitchen. Your room, at least, is exactly how you left it. Bed unmade and drawers left open. A testament to the speed run you made out of this place. You shake your head, how stupid you’ve been. Eddie’s fine. This is all in your head, and there’s nothing else to it.

You startle at the quiet rapping of knuckles on your door. From the other side, Eddie says, “I made Wayne’s famous chili earlier. Want that for dinner, or wanna go out and get something?”

Wayne’s chili is your favorite. It’s the grape jelly he adds to it. You asked him so many times over the years for the recipe, but he wouldn’t budge. He won a cook off the year after you and Eddie graduated from high school, and that was when you discovered the secret. He didn’t know you were standing in the doorway of the kitchen trailer that morning, watching him take a jar of Welch’s grape jelly from the cupboard and unceremoniously dump it into the crock pot he had set up in the corner. He let the meat and jelly cook down before he added a couple of handfuls of diced jalapenos and a mixture of dried herbs.

“You got any Jiffy?” You asked him, leaning your head on the wall next to the door imagining it’s Eddie’s shoulder. You brush the door with the tips of your fingers and wait for his answer.

“Of course. Who do you think you’re talkin’ to?”

You’re talking to Eddie, and he would never forget the cornbread.

—

You re-enter the kitchen to find the table already set, cornbread still steaming in the cast iron pan on the stovetop. The crock pot full of chili, a twin to Wayne’s own crock pot, sits in the center of the small table. Cheese, sour cream, and Cholula are laid out along with the bowls and spoons.

“Wow, Munson. You know how to make a girl feel special.” You head over to the cornbread intending to pinch a taste of it, but Eddie slaps your hand away. “Ow. I take it back, you’re a tyrant.”

“Sit down, please. I’ll get your cornbread, don’t fuck with it.” Eddie has a potholder and takes the hot skillet over to join the rest of the food on the table. “Let’s eat, Baby.”

Baby, baby, baby, baby. The word plays over and over in your head while you float to the table. Baby.

Eddie puts a piece of cornbread in your bowl, and ladles chili on top of it. The way you like it. Baby. You watch his face, and he gives you an easy smile. Another one, like the smile he gave you when you walked in the front door. You suddenly feel like the ground is not as firm as you imagined it. Baby.

“How’s Jamie? She still got that stick firmly up her ass?” Eddie asks as he sits down across from you. You laugh, snorting a bit of chili upwards into your sinuses. You cough and take a drink of the lemonade he has set next to your bowl.

“She’s same as always. She practically threw me out this morning. She sends her love.” You reach for the hot sauce and splash some into your bowl. It’s good, but you think it lacks the heat of Wayne’s normal recipe.

“I’m happy you came home to me.” Eddie’s words come out easily, and you’re left yet again feeling like the floors are tilting a little.

You say nothing, just look at him with your spoon held in front of your face. Frozen, a deer in the headlights that are Eddie’s chocolatey eyes sparkling at you. You’re starting to wonder if you missed a very important conversation somewhere along the way.

“You know, I realized something important when you left. That first night was… not great, but I think it was a good thing. We’ve been dancing around each other for a while now, and having you not in the apartment got me thinking about a lot of things.” Eddie’s talking, seemingly unaffected by your stunned silence. He just keeps on going, looking at you straight in the eyes with that small smile on his face.

“I was thinking about how much it hurt to think of you not being in this apartment with me. Which is crazy, right? It’s not like you moved in here with some kind of long term plan to stay. We both knew it was the right thing for right now. So, why was I crying when I found your note?” Eddie takes a big bite of chili and looks to you in anticipation. He wants an answer, you realize.

“I don’t know, Ed. Why were you crying?” You ask him and place your spoon back into the bowl. Your hand moves instinctively to stroke the back of the hand he has resting on the table. “I’m sorry.”

“Because, Baby, I’m in love with you.” Eddie’s voice is firm. His words are spoken honestly, leaving no room for you to doubt them. You want to run, to stand up and bolt for the door. Eddie’s eyes hold you in your seat. Even as the floor beneath you feels ready to open up and swallow you whole, his gaze is steady.

“Eddie,” his name is a whisper, the breath from your lungs. You had thought that night with sighs of pleasure bleeding through the wall that separated the two of you was the point of no return. You were wrong. That point is right here in front of you. It’s sitting between you, Eddie, and the chili pot in your shared apartment. “What if it goes wrong?”

“What if I get hit by a car tomorrow? What if a tornado runs through town and takes me away? What if the sun explodes and burns us all up?” At some point, Eddie turned his hand over to hold your own. “I know you, and you know me. I’m telling you right now, I am in love with you. I want you to stay here, and I want you to bring your shit into my bedroom and make it ours. And if you tell me you don’t want that, ok. Fine. But the damage is already done, Baby. I can’t go back to not feeling like this, and I’m done lying to myself about it. You do what you gotta do, but don’t tell me you’re not feeling something. I know you.”

Eddie gets up without any preamble and begins to fill the sink with sudsy water, leaving you sitting stunned at the table with a bowl of chili that is now room temperature. You push it away from you and begin picking at the edge of the cornbread that’s left in the pan still at the table. And then you hear Eddie whistling quietly while he cleans up. A new feeling begins to creep inside of you, a familiar feeling. You’re annoyed with him.

“So, you think you can just decide that this is how it is, huh? That I’ll come home, you’ll pour your heart out, and I’ll do the same. And - what? Happily ever after, until you decide you’re bored with me? Because I fucking know you too, Eddie Munson.” Annoyance built to anger with every word that you spoke. You stood, grabbing your bowl of cold chili and head over to scrape it out into the garbage. Eddie’s whistling stopped.

You drop the bowl into the water, pushing Eddie out of the way of the sink with your shoulder. You turn to head back to the table to start putting away all the dinner fix ins, but stop dead in your tracks when a wide palm grabs your forearm. He pulls you close so that you have to look up to see him. He places both hands on your face, moving hair that’s fallen over your eyes so he can see you better.

“You don’t understand, so let me be very fucking clear,” his words are a whisper, his warm breath fanning over your face, “I have been in love with you for a very long time, Baby. I just didn’t know that’s what it was. But I know now, and this is it. I can’t make you believe me, and I can’t make you love me back. I just need you to understand, this is not just a fleeting thing.”

You reach up and push the curls away from his face to see him better. Bare faces staring at each other, the truth of this thing holding you in your places. You bring your hand to the back of his neck and tangle your fingers into his hair. You form a fist and squeeze tight. His mouth opens at the feeling, and you stare at him.

“When? When did you start loving me, Munson?” You hold his hair a little tighter. His eyes open again, pupils blown out by your touch and your words.

“Remember that summer when you bought that red bikini?” He asks. You see his cheeks are turning red, and with this close proximity of bodies, you can feel a bulge growing in his pants. You stand up higher on the balls of your feet.

“You’re a pervert, Eddie.” There’s no bite in your words. You turn your face just as he leans down to bring his mouth closer to yours and whisper in his ear, “I bought that bikini because I wanted you to notice me. The way you noticed those girls with the mini skirts and bad perms that hung out at the bar when you played your shows.”

You kiss the skin of his neck and are rewarded with a whimper from Eddie. His hands are gripping your waist, hard enough to leave a mark. You kiss his jaw and move down his neck stopping along the way to press your nose against his skin and breathe him in. You can feel him swallow against your lips. He loves me. You think that maybe you can try to believe it.

“Look at me.” His words vibrate against your nose as it runs along his adam’s apple. You look at him, desperately wanting the kiss you know he’s going to give you. Aching for it. He tells you, “I am so in love with you.”

Eddie tastes like chili, lemonade, and cornbread. Not at all unpleasant to your senses. Kissing Eddie is unlike kissing anyone else. The secret place inside of you that’s been hidden for so long has his light shining on it. His tongue dances against your lips, and you meet it with your own. A slow waltz, mouths moving together, noses brushing noses. Your faces are pressing together, trying to absorb as much of this moment as you can before you have to break apart. And then it’s heavy breathing, his sweaty fringe against your forehead.

“Fuck, do you feel that?” You don’t answer his question with words, but with your hands reaching under his shirt to feel his skin under your fingertips. “Baby, please.”

“Eddie,” his ears perk up like a dog’s at the sound of his name. The way it comes out like a whine. It’s that needy way you said his name on that movie night, and it grips him somewhere deep in his belly.

Eddie drops to his knees on the kitchen floor, head resting against the fly of your jeans. He’s nuzzling you, in an animal way, fingers gripped at the waist of your pants. He can smell you through denim and cotton. It’s not enough. He makes quick work of unbuttoning and unzipping, of peeling back the skin of the fruit his mouth is watering to taste. Your bare ass is pushed against the counter before you realize your pants have been completely removed, and he hooks a leg over his shoulder.

Eddie’s bulbous nose is fully breathing in your scent from the damp cotton of your panties. His nose is brushing against that hard button, and he’s smelling the way the blood is rushing to it. A coppery musk just for him. His finger pushes the cotton to the side so he can finally taste and feel you against him, and his whining mouth sends a rumble of pleasure through you. It’s like this, with his knees on the tile floor of your shared kitchen that he finally, finally, finds himself able to openly praise you until you’re shaking in rapture. The veneration of your body by this devotee is as genuine and beautiful as any congregant in any church the world over.

—

The food is still on the kitchen table, too far gone to save, but neither of you can care. The moonlight casts shadows around the otherwise dark room, it highlights the way your bodies move together. Joining, embracing, loving, and resting. And then it starts again. The moments your bodies are connected feel eternal, and as soon as you separate you feel an inexplicable grief. What is this, is something you have not voiced wonder in your mind.

No other man has made you weep this way. At the sight of the tears streaming down your face, Eddie’s cock buried deep inside of you, he did not wipe them away. He let his tongue taste it, running the firm tip up your cheek and under your eyelid. The feeling unravels that knot in your gut, and not for the first or second time tonight. And just like the other times, Eddie rocks himself with the wave of your orgasm, whispering into your ear, I love you, I love you, I love you.

It’s 4:30 in the morning when your bodies finally force a halt to your incessant love making, but your mind is wide awake. Eddie’s sweaty head rests on your breast, an arm lays heavy over your belly. You think he may be sleeping, but you need to quiet the thoughts that have started to invade your brain.

“Ed,” you shake his shoulder a little and he moans, “how do you know you love me?”

You feel a twinge of embarrassment at the question, but you need to hear his answer. Somehow, despite it being Eddie, you don’t know if you can trust it. What is love? It’s something you’ve learned you can’t trust. You try to not think of Drew, and fail. But it’s not just him, that most recent mistake - the list goes on and on. What is love, but a promise of future disappointment.

“I just know.” His breath fans out across your chest, and your nipple peaks at the feeling. Traitor.

“Well, did you just know every other time you loved someone? What happens if it’s like when you were with Naomi? Or Sandy?” You know it’s wrong to say these names in this sacred space, but the question needs to be answered. There’s a small spot that itches inside of you that threatens to grow. A spot, that if left to grow, will force you up and out the door. You know it, and you know Eddie knows it, too.

Eddie’s face peels from your skin so he can look to you. He runs a finger along the shadows of the lines of worry creasing your brow. It’s so tender, so loving. You feel a tear leak from your eye, unbidden.

“I don’t think I loved them,” Eddie says while his thumb rubs away the moisture on your cheek, “or maybe I did. I don’t know, I can’t remember. But, Baby, I’ve never felt this before. This is - this is it.”

“What does that mean, Eddie? This is it? Like, what, you wanna run down to the courthouse and get married? Want me to pop out a whole litter of mini-Munsons? What does ‘this is it’ mean?” Your voice is rising in frustration, but Eddie doesn’t turn away. He keeps his gaze steady on your face. He’s looking for something there.

“Baby, you don’t have to feel any particular way right now. You know that right? I’m not asking for anything. I just want you to know how I feel. I love you, and I’ve loved you for a long time. Long enough that those other girls never got the whole of me when I was with them. I’m not telling you this so you’ll make me any promises. I’m just telling you because I fucking love you, and I need you to know it.”

And that’s when you realize it, something that scares the shit out of you. Because love, that overwhelming thing that beats inside of you when you look at Eddie, does not come with a guarantee. It does not promise anything more than what can be felt between the two of you. Love is pain, because nothing lasts forever. You know it now, and it’s a relief. The wrinkles at your temple smooth out, and you run your fingers through his tangled hair. You love this man, and that’s a fact.

“Ok, I believe you. I just have one more very important question.” Eddie’s face relaxes under the touch of your fingers along the side of his pretty nose.

“Ask.” He says, kissing your palm.

You hold his face still, gazing deeply into his eyes. Black pools in the dark room that threaten to swallow you up. “Eddie, would you still love me if I was a worm?”

The tension in the moment is gone, and Eddie giggles like the boy you knew years ago. He pulls you down and kisses you hard on the mouth, pressing his body into yours. Warm, sticky flesh vibrating with bubbling laughter.

“If you were a worm? I’d set up a little enclosure for you,” he points to a spot under the window where the moon hangs low in the sky, “just there. I’d get you some really tasty dirt, and I’d write songs about the worm that is the love of my life.”

Your smile is a beacon in the night, Eddie can see you glowing. You kiss his forehead and tell him, “I love you, Eddie Munson.”

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