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chr0llossexygf · 1 year

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IN RUINS

PAIRING: spencer reid x fem reader

SUMMARY: spencer reid has always had something against you. during a particular case, spencer snaps and says something he shouldn’t have said leaving you in ruins. but what happens when your in danger and he still hasn’t explained why he reacted the way he did. will he have the time?

“ what happened?” hotch says standing infront of the big white board that had some very gruesome pictures of 5 victims splayed out on a park bench. he’s standing tall and strong with his hands crossed in his dark grey suit. he’s looking at you and spencer, who’s walking in right behind you slamming the door close.

“ It’s her fault.” spencer says quickly moving to the other side of the room opposite you, trying to get as far away from you as possible.

you take a deep breath in trying your absolute hardest not to roll your eyes and cross your hands in annoyance and disappointment. “ it’s not my fault reid-”

“ woah woah what the heck happened?” morgan says pushing himself back in the precinct chair watching you and spencer. he looks at spencer, he sees the strong look of disgust and annoyance spencer is shooting at you. he looks at you, he notices you looking at spencer with a disappointed look.

“ she told the unsubs family we are after the unsub-” spencer spits out looking over at hotch, waiting for him to yell at you or lecture you.

“ wait spence we don’t even know who the unsub is. what do you mean?” jj says turning her head to look at spencer confusion written on her face. “ exactly! thank you jj!” you reply throwing your hands up.

“ michael miller is our unsub hotch.” spencer says completely ignoring your attempt to reason with him, his eyes stay on hotch waiting for him to snap at you or just lecture you. “ wait a minute i thought michael miller had a solid alibi.” morgan says laying back in his chair resting his arms on the arm rests. “ he does have a solid alibi it checks out-” spencer cuts you off. “ it does not check out!” spencer says.

“ yes it does! hotch we asked his dad who confirmed his son came home at 8:30 pm from football practice.” you say growing impatient looking at hotch, hotch’s eyebrows are furrowed tightly. his arms are still crossed listening to you and spencer bicker back and fourth.

“ just because his dad showed the tiniest bit of concern about his son when the fbi showed up to his doorstep does not make him a reliable source, just because you never had a dad who showed any bit of concern and now when you finally see a dad care about their kid does not mean you should not fall into their trap just because you never had a trap to fall into.” spencer spits out finally looking at you.

he watches as your expression hardens. he watches as humiliation and embarrassment fill your once determined eyes, the determined eyes who tried to reason with spencer at-least 4 minutes ago. 4 minutes, that’s how long it takes for your perspective of someone to change. he watches as your eyebrows tremble, a habit you have when your trying to fight back tears. he watches as your throat trembles too, probably trying to fight back that agonising choke you get when your about to cry.

the entire room goes quiet. spencers gaze remains on you, slowly watching your soul shatter because of his words. your gaze remains on spencer, slowly feeling your soul shatter because of his words.

the door that spencer slammed close 4 minutes ago opens, rossi and emily walking in. “ michael millers alibi checks out. we’ve got pictures of him at football practice from 5pm to 8:25pm. he wouldn’t have had the time to commit the murders.” rossi says opening the door for emily. “ also his teammates described him as an extrovert and outgoing which is not what we profiled the unsub to be.” emily says with her hands inside her pockets nodding looking at everyone surrounding the table.

“ i feel as though we interrupted something.” rossi says eyeing everyone in the room raising an eyebrow in confusion. he could feel the tension. emily could too. which is why she immediately looks over at morgan for answers. morgan looks at her for a split second before returning his gaze on you.

“ y/n-” spencer attempts. he tries to bring himself to take a step towards you, but it’s like his words somehow built a barrier between you and him that he now can’t even physically cross. or maybe he’s just scared that if he takes a step towards you, you’ll take a step back. away from him.

you swallow the gut wrenching feeling of tears crawling up your throat. you look down to your converse. “ i’m gonna go…uhm get coffee.” you say turning around immediately walking towards the door. “ excuse me.” you whisper pushing past rossi and emily.

“ oh wonder boy..” garcia says through the tv screen, her bright purple tinted lips which usually wear a bright smile on her face now wearing a frown. her tone disappointed as she presses her heart eye fuzzy emoji pen into her cheek. “ i uhm did my usual background checking on the uhm..list of potential unsubs and a uhm…scott anderson has a sketchy background. i’ve just sent his file to you my pretties.” garcia says stuttering quite a few times finding it hard to sneak her usually bubbly nicknames into the conversation after what had just happened. “ thank you garcia. jj take y/n and check out scott anderson.” hotch says looking at jj his arms finally by his side.

jj nods standing up walking towards the door “ i-i can go” spencer says turning his body towards jj. “ stay.” hotch replies his voice stern and bold. he looks at spencer his eyebrows furrowed.

jj closes the door. “ sit.” hotch says to spencer pointing to the empty seat at the table, spencer slowly walks towards the seat sitting down. “ you shouldn’t have said that spencer.” hotch says crossing his hands. “ hotch-” spencer attempts but is quickly cut off, “ i’m not finished. I get it. your worried spencer. your scared-”

“ hotch-” spencer is cut off once again. “ you may think your hiding it well spencer but your not. we know the unsub is targeting female victims which have similar features to l/n. if your too close to the case spencer-” it’s spencer’s turn to now cut hotch off. “ but i’m not too close to the case hotch!” spencer replies. he wanted the similarities between you and the victims to only be in his head because he wanted only him, himself to notice the similarities between you and the victims. you both have the same hair color, hair length, both considered to be attractive, both have similar personalities, and similar taste in clothing. he didn’t want it to be true. but now he knows that they are, and they’re not just in his head he’s even more worried.

“ your stuttering spencer. you do that when your worried or nervous.” emily says pulling a chair from the table. spencer shoots his eyes away from hotch to emily’s. his gaze softens a bit, emily’s tone wasn’t like hotchs. it wasn’t as stern or bold. it was rather understanding and gentle. “ i just cant control myself around her.” spencer says looking down at the picture of the fourth victim who had been wearing the exact same pair of converse your wearing now. “ well your going to have to learn how to control yourself pretty boy. you shouldn’t have said that.” morgan says looking at spencer. spencer sighs hiding his face in his hands. “ i just..god i’m so stupid.” spencer groans rubbing his tired eyes.

“ stupidity is what ended my third marriage.” rossi says crossing his hands leaning against the bulletin board with a small chuckle, morgan looks at rossi and laughs. “ well thank god pretty boy isn’t married. he’d be the new rossi.” morgan says tilting his head to the side looking at spencer trying to lighten the mood, spencer who still has his head in his hands. there’s a million thoughts going through his head, all of them are about you. all of them are about how he should apologize. is he even allowed to apologize? will you let him apologize to you? would you accept his apology? what if you didn’t? did he just ruin his friendship with you? no screw friendship, he doesn’t just want to be friends. he wouldn’t be as sensitive as he is to this case if he just wanted to remain friends. he’s in love with you. spencer reid is in love with you. and he just potentially ruined any slight chance of ever having you know that he loves you. just because he’s stupid and didn’t think before he spoke.

“ are you okay?” jj says both hands on the steering wheel turning around to look at you next to her, in the passenger seat. your heads turnt towards the window, your picking at your nails. a habit of yours. you turn to look at jj and nod. “ yeah i’m fine why wouldn’t i be?” you ask tilting your head to the side with a confusing smile. you know exactly why your not okay. but for some reason, you just can’t bring yourself to actually be upset over it. what’s there to be upset about? what spencer said is true. he’s not wrong. why are you making excuses for him? what he said was not okay. totally not okay. why do you have to make excuses for every male figure in your life for when they’ve done something wrong? why do you always make them the victim and you the villain. you just don’t wanna lose them right? because you know that if your the victim and their the villain they’ll never apologise and the entire relationship will disappear, it always does.

“ what spencer said-” jj is talking in that tone, that tone that she would speak in whenever something was wrong. in a motherly kind of tone. you immediately shake your head, “ it’s- it’s fine jj really, i don’t care. can we just please forget it ever happened? lets just work on the case.” you say running a hand through your hair biting your lower lip trying to stop your voice from trembling, you know when your about to cry and you have that heavy feeling in your throat? you swallow it hard. you turn your head to look at the window not waiting for a response from jj. jj clears her throat, “ no yeah of course.” she nods smiling turning her head back around.

“ this should be it…” jj mumbles stopping the car, parked infront of a 2 story cabin. you unbuckle your seatbelt and open the car door. “ it looks like no one’s home, there’s no car. we profiled that the unsub would have a van or a truck..” jj says closing the car door looking at the house. “ maybe he wouldn’t leave something so valuable to him outside, to the eye of the public. he’s possessive he thinks the entire world revolves around him he probably thinks someone would try to steal it.” you reply reaching in your pocket for your id. jj doing the same thing. you two walk to the front door, you in the front,

you knock on the door. you put your hand against your hip waiting for the door to open. “ we should ask the neighbours. maybe they’ll know-” you knock on the door again. “ scott anderson. fbi.” you say knocking on the door again. jj puts both of her hands on her waist. “ looks like he’s not home-” your cut off by the door swinging open.

you immediately turn your head around. “ scott anderson?” you ask looking at the man infront of you. you know it’s scott anderson, penelope had already sent his id picture on the drive over. he looks at you, then looks at jj. “ who are you..” he says looking directly at jj. “ i’m agent l/n with the fbi and this is agent jareau. do you mind if we come inside?” you ask smiling holding up your id.

he doesn’t even bother looking at your id. “ yeah whatever.” he moves to the side, making room for you and jj. you nod turning around to look at jj. she nods. you step inside jj following you.

“ do you live alone?” you ask analysing the house, its organised. weird for someone that’s his age. “ uhm yeah i do. what’s wrong with that?” he asks crossing his hands. you chuckle, “ no no nothings wrong with that, i also lived alone when i was 17.” you reply smiling. “ i’m 19.” he says looking at you, eyeing you up and down smiling. “ your pretty organised for a 19 year old.” jj says raising an eyebrow also crossing her hands smiling. “ guess i was just raised that way.” he replies rubbing his lips together. you nod. “ how were you raised scott..if you don’t mind me asking.” you say looking around the house. “ yeah scott how did you manage to score such a house at your age. do you work?” jj asks grabbing a picture frame. “ no i don’t work-” he turns to look at jj. “ put that down.” he snaps speed walking to jj. you immediately reach for your gun.

“ right..sorry. you don’t like people touching your stuff.” jj replies throwing her hands up in defeat. he snatches the picture frame. he grabs it caressing it gently, jj looks at you with wide eyes. you raise an eyebrow in confusion. “ scott. why do you have a picture of my colleague framed?” jj asks looking at the frame scott’s holding. your eyes widen.

“ oh god oh god. where’s y/n and jj?” penelope says aggressively tapping on her keyboard. “ what? what’s wrong?” spencer is the first to respond shooting up from the office chair just at the mention of your name. “ they’re at scott anderson’s why?” hotch says turning around, away from the white board to the tv. garcia starts tearing up, “ i-i did some deep digging and scott anderson has a blog about y/n..” garcia says in a shaky tone. no. no. no. no. no not again please.

his heart stopped for a split second. his hand start sweating. the air has been sucked out of his lungs. why is it so hard to breathe? why is there no air to breathe? there’s a million thoughts running through his head, they’re still about you. but now they’re worse. your in danger. your with the unsub. the unsub who has already killed five people. your in the same house with the unsub. the unsub who has a blog dedicated to you. and the last time you saw spencer you were teary eyed. no it can’t be the last time. no. please be safe.

his sweaty shaky hands reach for his phone. he clicks on your contact. hotch grabs his phone and immediately calls jj. spencer immediately puts the phone up against his ear. it rings. rossi and emily immediately stand up, “ penelope send us the address to scott’s house now.” emily says walking to the door. it’s still ringing. spencer starts biting his nails. his hearts pounding. the ringing of the phone case is haunting him. what is happening on the other side of the phone. why aren’t you answering. you always answer the phone. why is it still ringing? y/n why aren’t you answering.

“ god damn it!” spencer shouts into the phone as it keeps ringing. morgan stands up, “ hotch we gotta go.” he says standing up shoving his phone into his pocket.

the ringing stops. spencer’s heart stops. his breathing stops. everyone in the room looks at spencer waiting for any kind of confirmation. “ y/n you’ve gotta get out of there with jj!” spencer says stuttering with a shaky voice. hes scared. hes so so scared. hes never been more scared in his life. it’s quiet. why is it quiet? why aren’t you answering? what’s wrong. god y/n.

“ hey mom.” you reply. spencer takes a deep breath in. he stops biting his nails. he wipes his wet fingers on his pants. his hearts racing. your in danger. why are you calling him mom if your not in danger. oh god. he feels like he can’t breathe again. he can’t focus. he can’t do this. he can’t do this. he can’t do this without you. breathe spencer. she’s in danger spencer. she’s all that matters.

“ y/n. god i…” he chokes. “ you already figured it out didn’t you.” he says his throat feeling scratchy. he hears you giggle on the other side of the phone, your laugh erupts the butterflies in his stomach. under any other circumstances he would absolutely hate the butterflies in his stomach and would be mad at you for making him feel such way. but now they bring a sense of comfort, they make him feel normal for a split second. that this is not that big of a deal, he’s just calling the girl he really likes and he got butterflies from hearing her beautiful laughs.

“ yeah of course. i called aunt lizzie for her birthday mom i’m not stupid.” you respond. god your voice is so beautiful, but he can hear it. he can fear the slight fear in your voice. maybe other people wouldn’t hear it, but he can. spencer can. and it’s killing him. it’s tearing his heart apart. it’s making his legs shake. “ d-did he hurt you- is he gonna hurt you?” spencer says gripping his jeans tightly. he hears you laugh again, “ yeah mom.” you say.

he feels his legs going weak.

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luveline · 7 months

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𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

eddie wakes up with a red string tied from his finger to yours, no idea where he got it, and no idea how to tell you that you're caught on the end of it. soulmate!au. fem!reader, 16k.

content warnings mentioned issues with self image, implied body dysmorphia, reader is insecure/a touch shy, alcohol, a short kiss after one character has been drinking, weed mentioned but not used by eddie or reader. please read with care! requested here ♡

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Eddie remembers the party in flashes. The feeling of his thick-soled creepers caught on the floor, wings in fly paper. Someone's headphones cracking like a wishbone between two hands and a fist fight in the backyard. Your hair touching some degenerate's cheek as they leaned down to kiss you, and the shudder that ran through you as you opened your mouth. Beer. Beer, cheap wine, another beer.

While he realises the beer may be fogging his memory, none of the fractures explain the piece of string tied to the marriage finger on his left hand.

He stands in the tiny trailer bathroom with his back against the door, the hustle and bustle of his Uncle Wayne's morning routine filtering through the flimsy door. It bends under his weight. Anymore pushing and it'll fly off the hinges.

The string withstands reasoning. Eddie wasn't particularly alarmed when he couldn't slide it off of his finger that morning, half-falling out of bed and desperate for the bathroom. He figured himself the victim of an elaborate prank, toppling out of bed to follow the red string where it stood taut. He chased it to the door and gave up when he realised that it disappeared down the dark stretch of road leading out of the Hills.

Panic set in somewhere between peeing and a pair of scissors falling apart around the string in the kitchen. Like even the touch of the string was an insult, uncuttable.

From there he tried yanking, buttering, slicing. The butter made his fingers greasy and the knife went dull. To the touch, the string is thin. Twelve pieces of strand like doubled embroidery thread, plain cotton to the eye, maybe polyester if the minimal iridescent shine is a clue. He can spread it out between his fingers and thumb, he just can't cut it off.

"Eddie, what the fuck did you do?"

Eddie winces and drops his hand from his eyes. The string slides down the doorway where it's trapped with a light shushing.

"What?" Eddie shouts back to Wayne.

"Don't what me, son! Come here."

Eddie groans and hangs his head. Pissed, he scrounges through the laundry for a shirt that's in acceptable condition and attempts to put it on but the insufferable string refuses to play nice. It bends, snags, and Eddie can't find a way to get it off —he has to pull the string toward him, pleased if sceptical to find that despite its taut nature, it will allow him enough length to get an arm through his sleeve.

"What the fuck," he mutters, looking at the mirror in disbelief. The purple-yellow bruise haunting the hollow of his right eye has shrunk since last night, to his relief. Upon reflection, Eddie doesn't think it'll draw much attention.

The string doubles back on itself, a red line up the length of his arm to his armpit where it disappears into the sleeve. From there, it snakes down his stomach to pull out from the bottom hem.

If whoever has the other end of the string decides to pull, his shirt will rise up. Awesome. Really great. He's a fucking streaker.

"Edward Albert Munson, if you don't get in here!"

"Wayne," Eddie says, pushing open the bathroom door with a suffering sigh, "what do you want me to say? I can't get the fucking thing off'a me."

Wayne is thoroughly unimpressed where he stands in the kitchen, arms crossed over his chest and gaze on the countertop by the sink.

Eddie's confused at first, complaint dying on his lips as he remembers the mess he made in a mad dash for freedom half an hour ago. Butter shines yellow and melted on a small plate, the broken scissors tossed frustratedly aside, a useless knife in similar fashion at the bottom of the sink.

"What the fuck, Eds?" Wayne asks.

Eddie holds up his hand. "I don't know!" he says, exasperated, eyebrows halfway up his forehead. "I woke up with it, I can't get rid of it."

Wayne's turn to be confused. But, like his newphew's, his confusion doesn't last long. "What happened to your eye?"

"The string?" Eddie asks, waving his red string around for emphasis. Bruises are commonplace, were nearly normal the summer between nine and tenth grade, this weird magic string is anything but.

"That what kids are calling shiners?" Wayne asks, taking Eddie's face in a rough hand. "At least say you got one in too."

"I don't remember."

"You don't remember?" Wayne asks, a mixture of unimpressed and horrified.

"No, I…" He bats Wayne's hand away, giving his tired-faced uncle an abashed smile. "It's fine, Wayne. I was at Gareth's last night."

"Ah, well that explains it. What does your bruise have to do with the state of my kitchen? You try cutting it off?"

Eddie turns from Wayne to grab the scissors and knife. He wraps both in paper towel until the sharps (or not so sharps) are covered and tosses them in the trash, scrounging for a bottle of bleach under the sink to wipe away his buttery mess. "You're focused on the wrong disaster, Wayne. Like, I tried following the string out the door and it's a half a mile long. I'm gonna follow it in the van."

"Is this, like, a trend? Speaking in tongues to get out of trouble?"

"What are you confused about?" Eddie asks, spinning back to hold his hand in Wayne's face.

Wayne doesn't look like Eddie, he's not so dark in the hair or eyes, and he obviously doesn't look like Eddie's mom, but the smile he gives him now was one Eddie's mom wore all the time, enduringly fond. Wayne takes Eddie's hand, turning his nephew's palm this way and that as the string slithers against pale knuckles. It almost writhes.

"What am I supposed to be seeing?"

"That's not funny."

"I'm not joking."

"Wayne," Eddie says, his shirt rising as he pulls on the string to catch the light. It shines in a way that isn't normal, too many colours like the scale of a deep sea fish. "This!"

"Right… I can't see whatever it is you're seeing. How hard did you get hit? Jesus, I asked you to stop getting yourself in these messes, you could get seriously hurt."

Wayne doesn't waste another second looking through Eddie's string. The weight of a long shift rests between his shoulders, abates as he brings the chipped rim of a Garfield mug to his lips. Eddie swears the chubby cat is mocking him, cruel eyes smirking at his misfortune.

"Unbelievable," Eddie mutters, ditching the whole scene in search of his dingy black sneakers.

Wayne chuckles and opens the cabinet where they keep their cookies and coffee cakes, calling, "You want breakfast?"

"No! I have delusions to attend to. Need anything while I'm out?"

"A new pair of scissors."

Eddie pretends to stab himself in the eye by the front door, over and over. His frustration calms. He slips into loose laced sneakers and grabs his jacket where it's hanging on the coat rack, digging for his keys. He elbows the door ajar, and doesn't notice his van isn't in the driveway until he's standing at the bottom of the porch steps, flabbergasted.

"Did you wanna borrow the sierra?" Wayne asks from the door.

Garfield looks on in silent judgement.

Wayne generously lends Eddie the sierra. He's relieved when he shuts the door on his string and it behaves like regular old string (which is to say, it doesn't buckle the metal), but then he tries to grab the steering wheel and his finger almost pulls from the socket, stopped by the string. His relief ends.

"Fuck fuck fuck," he says, opening the door, gathering some string and closing it again. Righted, he pulls his shirt back down his torso and starts the car.

Eddie's hoping he can follow the string to its beginning, but at this point he's sure he got his shit rocked hard enough to forget being hexed by a devious yet loveable warlock —the string can't be a real string. It doesn't tangle around the wheels of the car as he drives over the faint line of it leading from Forest Hills into Hawkins' town centre, it just vanishes, like Eddie's winding it around a bobbin.

He takes the first exit on the traffic circle reluctantly, away from the string and toward Gareth's house, where Eddie assumes he left his beloved van. He can't believe how wasted he must have been, and now that he's accepted the string as an irksome constant but prioritised it below van retrieval, the hangover he should definitely have rears a head. His stomach hurts, his eyes are sand, you were fucking kissing somebody else last night—

Eddie might throw up. He rolls down the window and sticks his head as far out of it as he can justify while driving. The roads are quiet, a late morning in Hawkins pockmarked by the burr of lawn mowers chewing up perfect lawns and the spray of illegal sprinklers. The sun emerges slowly and then all at once, licking his naked arms with the promise of sunburn should he continue the day unprotected. Eddie never seems to tan. He hates the sun, anyway, the glare of it bouncing off of the road in a blinding dotted line. He unfolds the visor over his seat.

Needless to say, he's in a shitty mood when he finally gets to Gareth's house, spying his van wedged in the driveway between a miscellaneous ford and a buick.

Hungover, too hot, trying not to panic about the red string choking his knuckle. It can't seem to decide on how tight or loose it's going to sit. It tightens as he climbs out of the sierra, loosens as he walks toward his van.

"Hey, gorgeous," he says, patting her freshly lacquered body with love. She's all jet black now, rust buffed and wheels shiny.

There are bikes crowded against the house wall like toppled dominoes. The window shades are closed but the door is wide open the hinges, the sharp smell of booze wafting out into the sun. Give it enough time and Eddie's sure the sun'll bake all the milling bodies into a brand new smell.

"Hey, man," Jamison greets, sitting on the kitchen counter and unfairly put together considering the bottle of sours he demolished alone last night, "you survived."

Gareth is face down at the table next to a plate of cold toast, jelly congealed. Jeff stands by the patio door smoking a cigarette that smells exciting, and Macy stands doing the dishes at the sink.

"Got the girl doing the dishes. Classy," Eddie says.

Macy drops the sponge she's using into the water, soap bubbles dripping from her fingers. "Thanks for offering."

He relents. The mess they've made —and it is generous to call it a mess, more apt might be an explosion, or a weather event— is extensive. Pizza boxes upturned, tomato sauce and stringy cheese smashed into the fridge like a modern art piece you'd see at MOMA. Eddie wouldn't put it past drunk or high him to have done it, declaring some statement of pretentious high horsery, so he doesn't comment on it. If it was him, he doesn't wanna know.

"Some party," Jeff says through smoke.

Eddie pulls the stopper out of the sink to let the water drain. He doesn't roll like that. "What the fuck happened?"

Gareth rouses at Eddie's question, said as it is with vigour, and remembers his toast. He takes a bite and turns in his seat to blink blearily at Eddie. For a second, Eddie kids himself into thinking his friend can see the string currently spilling water onto the floor like a tightwire.

"You lost your shit and wrecked my house, you stupid bastard."

Eddie looks to Jamison, as if to say, that true?

Jamison pushes a long arm behind his back and stretches. "Y/N was hooking up with Cory Wilson and you took it like a champ, in my opinion. We had a good time."

"She hooked up with Wilson?" he asks, dread pooling in his stomach. The string shudders as you had, Eddie remembers, your chin tilted up and your eyes closing into sweet dark lines, painted lashes squeezed together.

"She took you home," Macy says, muffled, a hair tie between her lips. She lets the thin blonde strands of her hair fall back to her shoulders. "She didn't stay the night?"

"That would've been kind of sick," Jeff says.

"He could barely walk," Jamison agrees. "Okay, I'm lying. You were fine."

"I figured she'd have to stay, the way you were begging her. Ditch Wilson, baby, he doesn't know you like I know you. We can make it work, just say you'll stop seeing him."

Eddie drops a plate in the sink with a splintering crush. The answering roar of laughter tells him what he hadn't had breath to ask. No, he didn't really say any of that shit.

"You were drunk, not stupid," Jeff says.

"Not that stupid," Jamison corrects.

Eddie frowns down at the broken plate in the sink for a breather. Nerves abated, total loserdom escaped for another day, he holds his damp hand up in the air. "Any of you fuckers seeing this?"

"Get a new tattoo?" Macy asks.

He shakes his hand, the string (still caught in his sleeve, line like a bright vein up his arm) shaking. "You don't see it?"

"Your artist is gonna be pissed, they hate cheaters."

Eddie sighs. "Can someone pass me the trash can?"

They clean the house together in fits and starts, all nauseous, all wishing they'd had the sense to have a chill get together, just the five of them. Gareth declares his home a no go scene for the rest of summer and Eddie doesn't bother offering, nobody wants a party at the trailer park. Seeing the disco ball missing a rainbow lense under the stairs, a jumbo box of popcorn sprayed over the entire downstairs bathroom, and poor Manny Gomez cup-locked where he snoozes on the Persian rug in the lounge, Eddie wouldn't agree to host a party ever, even if he lived in one of the rich kid cribs like Harrington. It takes hours to put it right.

The longer he cleans the looser the string becomes. It drops to the floor (seemingly done with no regard to the laws of physics, having magicked itself out of his sleeve at a point, unnoticed) and trips him up as he walks downstairs. Eddie led a one man search party for Gareth's pet fish who some idiot transferred to the bathtub. The fish flops around at the turbulence of his trip inside of a temporary cup, but Eddie manages to return the poor thing to its tank uninjured.

"It's fucking sick," he says, crouching down to follow the fish as it reacclimates. Its big black eyes are like sequins set in orange glitter, scales glistening, a shimmering of purple and teal blues kissing its underbelly as it swims. "You're a beautiful creature. I'm sorry somebody tried to evict you, babe."

"He's a boy."

"Yeah, and he's a babe." Eddie bites his tongue.

You bend at the waist. With the shades still drawn, the brunt of the light entering the room is from your left, and the right side, the side closest to Eddie, is lit blue by the fish tank. You smile gently at the goldfish puttering around between artificial seaweed, an expression that grabs Eddie by the intestines. You feel his gaze, turning your face ever so slightly to his.

"Don't look as nice without makeup, I know," you murmur.

You're dressed differently today, stripped back in one way and more beautiful all the others, bare-skinned, no makeup or glitters to hide behind. Eddie remembers every detail of what you were wearing last night, the details stamped into his temporal lobe (before he drank his weight in other peoples booze). Black tights that shimmered slick oil as you moved and a tiny dress to boot. You're not a small girl, thighs there and grabbable and so un-grabbed, and when you bent down Eddie's shamefaced to say he followed the line. He loved how you looked last night, loves how you express yourself, but he craves how you are now, the lesser seen side of the same coin.

"You look nice." He cringes, his reflection in the fish tank glass a horror. Eddie never actually managed to shower this morning. If he doesn't smell like pale ale it'll be a miracle. "You do. At least one of us showered."

"I'm surprised you're alive," you say with a fond smile. Eddie never takes your insults to heart because you never say them to hurt. You're easygoing. You're light incarnate. "I haven't seen you drink that much since graduation."

"Macy says you took me home." He stands at full height. You follow suit.

"Kicking and screaming. You told me you were going to drink every drop of Mr. Lashlee's bourbon or die trying, and you tried."

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" he asks. He can be volatile when he's intoxicated, like a fish out of water.

You gesture to his cheek. "Hurt yourself. You were freaking out and your hand kicked back. I didn't think it would bruise. Does it hurt awful?"

Your sympathy melts him. Eddie shakes his head, lying through his teeth, "I can barely feel it."

Your hoodie drowns you, your jeans not as oversized but hiding the feats of your thighs from view. He can't say he's not disappointed, though it's cute on you, your jeans rolled at the ends to showcase mildly mismatched crew socks and a pair of converse, their rubber shiny with newness besides a small sharpie heart on the left toe. Trapped beneath them is Eddie's string.

He tugs it out. You show no sign of feeling it as the string snaps upward like an elastic and stops short. It goes stiff as a stick, tied from the knuckle of his marriage finger and leading…

To the knuckle of yours.

Like matching rings.

Eddie thinks, Sure. If I'm delusional, of course it's something to do with you.

"Don't suppose you can see it?" he asks, pulling against the string. The red band expands to accommodate you, rather than tug you inward. It has a mind of its own, apparently, listening to Eddie only on occasion.

"The bruise?" you ask, confused. "It's hard not to see. But it's not too bad. You could buy some powder for it if it bothers you, but I think it makes you seem cool."

"I don't seem cool?"

You smile as though you're sharing a joke. If you are, Eddie hasn't heard it before.

It's weird, crushing on someone. He can't remember feeling this way growing up, spending sun-soaked days at playgrounds and parking lots and the pool, wet to the knees, you and your friends sitting under the shade of the umbrellas. The first time he saw you there, in your bikini bottoms and your big white t-shirt bent over a book, he didn't feel any sudden revelation. No spark. No pulled string. He thought you were pretty without bragging about it and he met you not long after that at a nondescript barbecue. Then he stopped hanging out with his middle school friends and flunked two years. He forgot you existed. And now he knows you again, he feels more and more of himself bending and twisting trying to be what you want him to be, or what he thinks you want, at least. If you want Wilson, he can be Wilson. Eddie can kiss like a fish and wear too much cologne, he can sell out and cut his hair to the ears.

Well, maybe not that far. I still want to be me, he thinks, eyes on your hands and the string stretched between them. The red seems darker now, onyx hued, ropey as blood.

"What are you doing here?" Eddie forces out. Not surprised, you and Macy are close enough that you've formed friendships with the whole gang of merry misfits, but wondering if his string has pulled you here. Does he have any say?

"I thought I'd help with the aftermath, see if anybody wanted to get burgers, the works."

Eddie catches a flicker of nervousness in your stance, the half-step backwards you take when his shoe nears your own. The string loosens.

He doesn't have any intention of making you uncomfortable. He probably smells like a dumpster, he wouldn't blame you for needing space. And if who you were kissing last night is indicative of who you'll be sidling up to again in the future, Eddie has low hopes for you both.

"Burgers?" Manny groans from the floor.

You turn slowly on one heel. "Hello, Manny," you say, angling your head to line up with his. "Someone's drawn on you."

"What did they draw?" Manny asks, rubbing his smeared face sluggishly.

You look to Eddie for guidance. The reality of Manny's tagging is embarrassing.

"It's a dick, I'm afraid." Eddie offers Manny a hand. "With disproportionate, uh, baubles."

"But I'm sure Benny won't care," you say.

—

Benny makes Manny wear a baseball cap pulled down low, because This is a family establishment, Man. Every time you see the thick-lined drawing on his cheek you smile and feel awful for it, but luckily Manny seems to be taking the joke well.

If you'd fallen asleep at the party last night and woke up with a semi-permanent tattoo of similar calibre you'd be too mortified to bother leaving the house until it was gone. You're not thrilled with your appearance as it is. Any cruel additions would have you housebound.

Guilty, you take a bite of your burger to hide your smile. Eddie's already clocked it, generous enough to pretend he hasn't noticed, and Macy finds it funnier than you do, so she's yet to notice your amusement. The rest of the boys are making ornaments out of plastic straws. Gareth is shit, Jamison better, but Jeff takes the cake with a three layer birthday cake, candles included. It strains to break as he adds another candle. His bloodshot eyes show no signs of anxiety.

Manny grabs a napkin and knocks your ice tea. The cup sloshes but doesn't spill, ice cubes clinking and beads of condensation racing down the sides of your glass. You pick it up to feel the cold. Lately you've been morose. The cold, any sensation, can put distance between you and the heavy for a while, but there's no cure. And now you've gone and let Cory Wilson of all people kiss you for the simple fact that he wanted to.

He's the first person who's ever wanted to kiss you.

But you don't want him to kiss you again, and you're not sure how you manage it. Do you have to tell him you're not interested? Probably not, it was just a stupid kiss. He dipped down, his lips hot, his smell nice if overpowering, and it was right for a while, it was what you wanted, but then his hand dropped down rather than up, searching for something to take rather than something to hold.

It's not how you pictured it.

"You okay?"

You raise your eyes, ice tea in hand. Eddie splits his attention between you and a basket of crispy crinkle cut fries loaded with cheese and bacon bits. He's nonchalant, his shoe tapping into yours as he leans forward for another bite. He chews, and he waits for you to answer.

"I'm alright. Thinking about work." Bad lie. "Gareth said you got a new tattoo?"

"Nope. I've been thinking about getting a new one to fill the gap under my puppeteer," he says, extending his arm to show you it in the light, the ridge and weave of his veins stark against his white skin. They're especially fierce leading down to his wrist, as is the small notch on the outermost side. You reach out to touch it without thinking, fingertip rubbing carefully over the bump.

Eddie pushes his arm closer. "I want something here." He draws a half circle with his opposite pinky in the empty space. "But I can't think of what I want. Sometimes you go to the shop and they have a bunch of flash sheets and you like one of them enough to get it, right? I don't know."

It means a lot to you that he'd let you touch him without asking. You should've asked.

He should've asked you, but he was drunk. You're not sure he was thinking straight.

You sit back in your seat and finish your iced tea, feeling the cold slide down into your chest. You shiver at the feeling.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Eddie asks.

"Why wouldn't she be okay, Munson?" Manny asks.

"Quiet, dickhead."

Manny snorts, grabbing a greedy handful of Eddie's fries as punishment for a low blow. Eddie couldn't care less, clearly, his focus on you and your moping. You step into a sweeter smiling version of yourself that you save for times like this.

"You know I work for Deenie DIY?" you ask.

"Of course I know that," Eddie says, and not in the way people do sometimes where they assume you're insulting their intelligence, but the nice way. Like knowing where you work is easy information to carry.

He's the nicest of his friends, which is a credit to him; they aren't a bad bunch.

"So, I have this coworker that keeps bringing soup to work, and she swears that someone is syphoning off a couple of spoonfuls before lunch every day…"

Eddie listens to your story with a weird expression. You bumble through the twists and turns of the world's stupidest fable, how she blamed a bunch of different people and now no one likes her, and the soup was getting warmed up by the fridge lights —it was her own fault. He listens, he smiles and nods and offers commentary that's funnier than the original story, the entire time with a downturn to his lips. You hate seeing him like that, but you don't know what to say.

Plates left streaked with ketchup and mayo, glasses dotted by greasy prints and lip smackers, you and your friends tip as generously as twenty-somethings can afford and decide to head back to Gareth's for a couple of hours. It's barely past noon on a Saturday in late July. Nobody has to work for at least thirty six hours. You pile into two cars, arguing about what tape to play for the ten minute drive. Eddie ends up in the seat beside you somehow, and he doesn't shy away when the car takes a bend and you lean into his side.

He puts his arm behind your shoulder. "Sorry," he says.

"It's okay."

You lift your head. The memory of his face hovering close to yours, the sweet smell of cheap cherry wine on his breath, his hand clumsy with drink but kind as it climbed your back, your dress thin enough to catch your death, thin enough to feel like he was touching bare skin. Sorry, he'd said, you're just so fucking beautiful.

"I gotta take my uncle's car back. Wouldn't do me a solid and come with?" he asks.

—

You follow Eddie in the van. He can see you in his rear view mirror, your hands on his steering wheel, the window down and the breeze ruffling your hood.

Jeff was too high to drive and Eddie wouldn't trust Jamison to drive a moped. Gareth can't drive and okay, Macy can, she's good, but Eddie chose you for a reason. The string tied between your hands clings from door to door.

Eddie pulls the sierra into the driveway in front of the trailer, holding two fingers up to you as he hops out and jogs up the steps. Two minutes.

"Wayne? Brought the car back."

"How's your bruise, Eds?"

Wayne's laying on the couch with a blanket over his legs, coffee cup swapped for a plate of cookies and a bag of chips. Eddie leans on the doorway, Wayne's keys on his finger. The string bobs back through the door, as if to say, Hey, she's over here, dipshit.

"It's fine, what are you eating? Did you have breakfast after I went?"

"Yeah I had breakfast, I'm a grown man." Punctuated by the crunch of potato chips. "It's lunch time. This is my lunch."

"Let me make you a pot pie or something."

Wayne waves him off. "You're going back out. Who's in the van?"

"That's Y/N."

Wayne smiles knowingly. "Ah, is it?" He stands up with remarkable speed putting his plate of cookies on the table. He ducks down to peek through the window, and you must see him or wave, Wayne waving back. "Make her come say hi."

"I won't be making her say shit."

"She was nice last night."

Eddie cringes, having forgotten you were his saviour. "Do I wanna know what you said?"

"I said you were an idiot and an embarrassment, and that your safe return deserved a reward. You should invite her over for dinner."

"No, because that's, like, a couples thing. Come and meet my parents," Eddie says, shoulders jumping, hands up in jazz hands, "laugh at my baby photos."

"I don't have many of those. Got a bunch of you when you were fourteen and deep in the glam rock obsession."

He used to say Eddie could wear whatever he wanted and paint his face a hundred different colours as long as Wayne got to take a picture.

"Great, I'll invite her, and you can show her your nice album of reasons not to date me."

"Son, why don't you just ask her to dinner? Worked in my day."

"You're not even old. And I was going to," Eddie whines, rubbing the flat of his forehead ineffectually. "Then she was kissing this idiot Cory Wilson last night. I blew it. Lost my chance."

"I still think you should ask her for dinner. Any sense about her and she'll say yes."

It's one of those reassurances your mom says to you when you're down on your luck. Handsomest guy in the world, how could anybody say no to that face?

"Maybe I'll ask her." Eddie smiles nervously. "We're gonna go hang out, cool? You going to Dean's?"

"None of your business. Yeah, I'm going to Dean's, just to help him fix his hand saw. I'll be back before six. See you then?"

Eddie tosses Wayne the sierra keys. "See you. Don't drink too much."

"Ironic, Edward!"

Eddie leaves the trailer feeling vaguely hopeful about you; maybe Wayne's right. Kissing somebody doesn't mean you're married, but the window of opportunity to let his feelings be known is getting smaller the longer he waits. And seeing you standing against the grate of the van with your hands in your pockets, slice of your calves peeking out between your socks and jeans, big sleeves on your hoodie falling up one arm, he doesn't know if he can wait anymore.

"Hey, would you wanna get out of here?" he asks. "Like, ditch Gareth's for a bit?"

"And do what?"

The string shortens as he closes the gap between you. He twists it around his finger. It's tied to you —it must be a sign. (Or he's imagining it and he has, like, a paralytic brain worm eating its way across his eyeballs.)

"I don't know, hit the goodwill? I have somewhere between twelve and sixteen dollars with your name on it if you're interested." He tries not to shrug, can't help it. "Only if you want."

"Yeah. I want to." You worry your lip. "I'm not dressed to go out."

"Are you kidding? You look fine. You look good."

You rub your wrists together, grimacing.

Eddie can roll with the punches. "Or you could go home and change first?"

"Would that be okay?"

Eddie's glad for offering to witness the spectacle of your bedroom. The string seems to hate him but love you, giving you space all the way here and yanking him like a bad dog when he strays too far. You change behind your closet door and it forms hearts at your feet, unperturbed by the mountain of rejected shirts and skirts.

Eddie lounges in a bean bag by the door, taking in your belongings as he waits. You've crafts on your desk, little origami cranes made of paper you've painted with watercolour. Phthalo blue and alizarin crimson foiled with short, skinny strokes of gold etching. Intricate and simple, time and care poured into each sheet.

"Are you sure I'm okay by here?" Eddie asks.

"Can you see me?"

"No." Eddie can see shelves of books with creased spines, your made bed and all your mismatched sheets, the candles on your window sill —moonlight meadow, half-burned and sun-bleached; candied sweetheart, untouched; white lily and freesia, a double wick with only one melted tunnel—, and the soot stain unfurling like a soft-edged flower around the curtain pole. "Can't see anything."

"Then don't worry."

The sun ticks higher into the sky as an hour stretches into a second since you left Gareth's together. Eddie likes his room, his dense kingdom of the stuff that make him him, but he likes yours for the quiet. He can picture you sitting cross legged on your bed with a book in your lap, your back arched uncomfortably forward, a day old drink of water on the ceramic coaster with tiny bubbles clinging to the sides of the glass. He thinks he'd like that, to sit here and watch you, listening to one of your CDs, the string between you bouncing with each turn of a page.

Eddie pulls on the string experimentally. Determined to fuck with him, it becomes a tauter thread, and the momentum of his tug tips you over. Your hand follows the line and the sudden slip pulls you into view without a shirt. Eddie flinches and looks as far away from you as he can.

You laugh to yourself, but the sound is bitter, like burning coffee grounds on the tongue.

"Is everything good with you?"

You and Eddie are friends. Not great ones, but enough to have been able to ask you to ditch the others. There have been hundreds of seconds alone, the two of you sitting together at tables edged by arcade machines, diner booths, bowling alley benches, waiting for the others to get back, and those are moments where Eddie found time to fall in love with you. The string must be a manifestation or those seconds, threads of time tied together that join you forever, even if you can't see them. They're there. Eddie cares about you and it makes his throat hurt to hear your unhappy sounds; you have a morosity to you that he isn't heartless enough to ignore. He doesn't want to.

Everybody has an unseen misery weighing them down. Eddie needs to find a way to hold yours for you. Just for a bit, however long you need.

Unless Cory Wilson is going to take that mantle. Maybe that's why you're sighing; Eddie would be pretty upset if he had to remember being kissed by Wilson. He was already upset about it, and Wilson didn't kiss him.

"Hey," Eddie says, peering between his fingers. With you definitely out of sight, he lifts his head. "Seriously, are you good?"

"I don't know what to wear, that's all. Sorry for taking so long."

"We could sit here till tomorrow and that would be cool. We don't even have to go, but you don't have to stress about what you're wearing. It's goodwill."

"I always get stressed about what I'm wearing."

"Is that a girl thing?"

You toss a pretty flowered dress over the closet door. It slinks under its own weight and puddles on the floor. "I've always been like this, I get too focused on looking nice, it winds me up."

"You always look nice."

Your laugh says you certainly don't believe him. "Thanks, Eddie."

"I'm not just saying it to make you feel better. You'd look nice in a potato sack."

"Like Marilyn Monroe."

"Who?"

You appear in a sliver, naked arm linked to an unseen but unignorable naked chest, your face over your shoulder and a beatific silkiness to your smile. "You know who she is. Happy Birthday mister president? Blonde, with her beauty mark." You tap your top lip with your pinky.

"Oh, right. Did she wear sacks often?"

"Someone said she was beautiful because her clothes were designer and made to fit, so she did a photoshoot in a potato sack to prove she was beautiful."

"You could totally do that."

"It's not other people I need to convince." You retreat behind your closet door again, your voice half as clear as you confess, "I think… I've always been like this. I look in the mirror and I don't even know who I'm seeing. She doesn't feel like me."

Eddie's ridiculous sitting on a beanbag while you bare your heart. He swears in his head and climbs onto tired legs, his hangover beating like a dull knife between his eyes for a moment while he gets used to standing.

You take his silence for something else. "Sorry, ignore me. It's weird."

"That's not weird. It's not." He tries to say what he means and not the first words that come into his head. "You know, I used to feel that way. Growing up, in junior high, I felt like such a poser. Even when I started being myself, I didn't feel authentic. Does that… is that similar?"

"I guess so. How did you make it stop?"

"Okay, this is gonna sound bad, but my mom died." Eddie twists a ring around his knuckle, the string tangling between fingers. "And I didn't care for a while. And then I got older."

"I'm sorry," you murmur.

"It's okay. I didn't say it for sympathy. That's just what happened." Eddie sits gingerly on the end of your bed. He doesn't want to intimidate you —after all, you're a young woman alone with him in a state of undress. A vulnerable young woman, if you're as upset as you're beginning to sound. "I'm trying to make you feel better with the worst personal anecdote ever."

"You don't have to make me feel better. I shouldn't have brought it up, I don't…"

"You can tell me anything," he says.

You appear again, this time fully clothed. Black skirt to your knees —the sickest skirt you've ever worn— and a thin gauzy camisole, you look beautiful, and insanely uncomfortable. "Really?" you ask, hands wringing.

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. I promise."

"Well. Last night," —Eddie sees flashing lights, the carbon bubbles in a spilled beer— "I let somebody kiss me."

He knows. It's agony. Eddie waits for you to continue with an open expression despite the feeling your confession inspires; he assumes this is what a knife to the eye feels like, the willing horror of letting you use it.

"Nobody's ever wanted to kiss me before, so I let him. And I'm shit scared that I'm never gonna recognise myself in the mirror, so I'll keep letting him kiss me." You wring your hands meanly. "Sorry, I know I sound like a bad movie. Why is talking about your feelings this awkward?"

"That was your first kiss, last night?"

It's not the right question. You wince visibly. "I know, I'm in my twenties, it's embarrassing."

"No, that's–" Eddie sighs. "That's not what I meant." What did he mean? Fuck, I wish it could've been me, and Jesus, that doesn't make a lick of fucking sense. You aren't right, for starters, Cory Wilson isn't the first person who's ever wanted to kiss you, he's just the bastard that got lucky enough to have you reciprocate. "Wait, was it okay? Did he corner you?"

You sit on the end of the bed with a small smile. "No. He didn't pressure me."

"Was it what you wanted?"

"Not really… I guess I don't know what I want."

Is that rejection, or is he self-absorbed? Should he take the hint, or is he just another guy making it about himself? Eddie leans back into your bed to escape the heartbreak of being close to you, the string anchoring his hand in place as he tries to scratch his chest.

"It's not embarrassing to get your first kiss in your twenties," he says, eyes roving over the lines of a small paper butterfly, black cardstock like ink against your white ceiling. "That's what your twenties are for."

"Don't bother, I know exactly how you lost your virginity."

Eddie scrunches his eyes shut, can't stop himself from smiling as his wry voice scratches out, "Listen, everyone knows how I lost my virginity, but that's not the point."

"You'd think a seventeen year old would make marginally better decisions." You're teasing, not shaming, your smile playful.

"No, you wouldn't. Seventeen year olds are stupid. I thought I knew what I wanted at seventeen and now I'm twenty three and the only thing I know for sure is that I don't know a thing. The point of being twenty is doing shit for the first time. It's our first time being grown ups."

"That's wise," you say.

"Fuck off."

You lay down beside him. The string whips like a ribbon in the wind before falling into the shape of a heart again, clearly pleased to have you near.

"It's not embarrassing," Eddie says quietly. "But when you get your second kiss, I think you should save it for someone you want to kiss. Don't just let someone have it because you're not sure of yourself."

"That's a nice sentiment, Eddie, but I already gave it away."

He swallows his surprise, a tiny spike of agony. "How was that one?"

"I'm not sure about it. I don't think it counted."

"Do I wanna know?"

"I'm not sure about that, either."

"Was it Wilson?" he asks.

You turn your cheek into the bedsheets. He can hear the fabric brushing your skin, turns ever so slightly to meet you, a few inches all it would take to breathe the same air.

"Eddie," you say, very, very softly.

His heart eases into his mouth a beat at a time until it's thrumming between his ears.

"Yeah?" he asks, his tone a twin.

"I think I need to cancel our plans."

It's not what he's expecting you to say.

—

There's a black velvet jacket dotted with embroidered stars hidden under your bed, their silver thread like cosmic dust. Music pounds the floor and shakes the house's foundations, seeping down into Macy's damp basement one rippling riff at a time, the bass of it deep in Eddie's chest, but he can't stop thinking about your jacket. Did you know it was there?

The string tied to his marriage finger grows restless the longer you and Eddie are apart, bouncing like a shockwave whenever he thinks your name. In fact, all it takes is the idea of you, the slightest memory of your smile, your hands, the way you tell stories to the group with your shoulders turned to him like he's there alone, and the string flinches.

"Are you okay?" Manny asks.

Eddie drags his way up the couch. "Hey, Man. You got the dick off your face. That's great."

Manny lifts his cheek. "Had to steal some of my mom's make-up. Can't tell, huh?"

The colour match is dubious, now he's mentioned it. Eddie doesn't have the heart to tell him, flopping back into the crisp, cracked leather seat beneath him. A circle of his face is sticky where it clings to the couch. It's among the worst feelings of this earthly plane, grim as ice cream dripping down your hand on a hot day, or perpetually gutting heartbreak like he suffers now.

"I think I'm seeing things," Eddie says.

"Jeff has stuff for that."

Eddie groans loudly. With the way he feels it's not melodrama. Just pure human anguish. He groans again when nothing changes, fisting his hair in two aching hands. He's clenched and unclenched his hands for hours all day, trying to force the hurt away from his chest, chasing breathlessness to the tips of his fingers. Pins burn his palms.

He knew in the back of his mind that you weren't going to want to date him. Realistically you have options, even if you think you don't, and his being your only option wouldn't inspire romance anyways. Being someone's last resort isn't love. None of it was love, you aren't in love, but Eddie thinks he could've been. He was halfway there, falling, whatever the poets might say —Eddie wants you. Wants to do stupid shit with you. He can picture the scene like he has before, that first bouquet of flowers, lilies with big white petals and purple sunspots. The cellophane would crinkle in trembling hands pressed to his chest, their stems leaking dew into his hardly worn button up. He'd pass them to you with more confidence than he feels and tell you that you're pretty. You're always pretty.

He's not pretty, he's barely funny. He was stupid for thinking you'd like him too.

The string is pale pink. Eddie loops it around his finger thoughtlessly, worsening the sting of pins and needles.

There were times…

He clutches his chest. The nausea he's feeling can't be understated.

There were times when you could've been in love with him, he thinks. Splitting a cigarette you had no business splitting on the steps of Jeff's porch, your vanilla chapstick softening the filter. Holding his hand for support as you made the hike down to the lake, your fingers curled around his like you worried you might hurt him. In the passenger seat of his van on the way to your house, laughing as he sang along to a Van Halen guitar solo. You could've been in love with him.

But Eddie didn't ask you out. He didn't do what Wayne said, because goodwill is not dinner, and now you're probably happily sequestered in Wilson's BMW. He jumped the wrong gun and he blew it.

"Seriously, Munson, are you good?"

"Peachy." Eddie holds up the sign of the horns, pinky and index finger up, thumb holding his marriage and middle finger down, face buried in an old cushion.

"Let me go get you a joint."

"I gave it up."

"Dude. Pizza it is."

Eddie waits for Manny to leave before he turns onto his back. Last night in the shower after a knowing shoulder squeeze from his Uncle and a frankly overflowing bowl of microwave spaghetti, he pressed his forehead to the tile and let it all ache. He might have cried or water may have streamed from his hair, he genuinely doesn't know, but he knows he's in danger of another round of the same if he keeps thinking about you.

He's a big boy. He can cope with your decision.

"Eddie, what are you doing?"

Eddie sits up with a handful of clicks. "Robin?"

"Hey," Robin says, "whaddya know, I followed the smell of sadness and rejection and here you are."

She's dressed fancy, her hair in a rare updo, faux pearls dangling from her ears to kiss the collar of a leather jacket. "Shit, you're so cool, Buckley."

"Thanks. You okay?" Robin asks, sitting on the arm of the couch.

Eddie's stomach churns as her perfume reaches him, the sweet, subtle smell of vanilla under white musk. He leans his face against the starched denim of her jeans. "Who told you?" he mumbles.

"Steve. Who else?" Robin pats his head. "But Jeff told him. And I was talking about your bruise."

Eddie waves off her concern. "Where is Steve in my hour of need?"

"Smoking a not secret cigarette with Jeff," she says, a melodic cadence to her usual light rasp.

"I wouldn't risk Jeff's cigarettes."

She snorts a laugh, "Steve would risk his life for a cigarette. He loves to say that quitting was easy, but he drinks half a beer and starts gasping like a fish." Robin mimes Steve's apparent desperation, to Eddie's delight.

She smiles as his laughter peters out, tilting her head to the side. "So… was it bad?"

"I don't know." He rubs his eyes. "The last time I got rejected was in senior year, and it was– I didn't even like her, you know, thought she was pretty, but this is different."

"Sorry, Eddie," she says, pushing her bottom lip up into her top one, a bubbled pout that betrays how out of her depth she feels.

Eddie isn't trying to make it awkward. "That's okay. I liked her, she doesn't like me, it's cool." The string flails. The music from upstairs gets louder. "What the fuck is happening? I thought Macy said it was a quiet one."

Robin and Eddie start up the basement stairs to the main body of the house. The air is warmer and thicker, the faint smell of hotdogs and burgers grilling in the backyard filtering inside through the patio doors. "You know," Eddie says, glaring at the sudden crowd, "there's an atari down there."

"Sorry, I think I'll have to keep my idiot out of trouble." Robin points at Steve near the stereo with Jeff, the two of them laughing hard enough to bruise as they mess with the pitch of the music. "Steve! You'll go deaf in your good ear if you don't stop!"

"What?" Steve shouts.

Robin rushes over to drag him away from the stereo. Eddie doesn't want to be your best friend, but if it was a friendship like Steve and Robin's he would consider himself lucky to have it, smiling as she wraps her arms around his chest from behind and pulls him away, sniffing at him, her nose wrinkled as she gives a reprimand too low for Eddie to catch. "I'm serious," she says as they grow closer, weaving around the living room coffee table and retreating back into the slim hallway leading to the basement stairs, "where are your earplugs?"

"In the car, Rob. I'm fine, I promise."

"Sure. Alright, Eddie, would you keep him away from the stereo?" Robin shoves Steve toward him. "Thanks so much."

"I'm not high," Steve says as soon as she's gone.

"While that's uber convincing, honeybear, I don't care if you are," Eddie says lightly. "Not a cop. Wanna go get a burger?"

They move away from the living room and into the kitchen, where Steve nearly trips over the door jam and Eddie forgets for the first time in days how awful he feels.

He sits Steve down at the glass table next to Macy herself and a younger friend of Manny's. Jamison and Gareth stand at the grill arguing about who's doing what, but Jamison proves to be the better grillmaster and the better friend, dropping two burgers on paper plates in front of them not more than twenty seconds after they've sat down. "For you, my poor little Munson," he says, smacking the ketchup and mayonnaise down between them. "Eat up."

"I can't get the cap off," Steve complains, welding a bottle of mayonnaise at him like a dagger.

Eddie sighs. Steve is definitely high. "You know Jeff doesn't smoke plain rolled cigarettes, right? Like, you knew it was weed?"

"Whaaaat?" Steve asks exaggeratedly. "Open my mayonnaise."

"Plausible deniability," Eddie says. "I like it."

He finds that taking care of Steve is a good distraction, but there's only so much care a grown man needs, high or not, and Eddie's gaze is pulled to the string. It's impossible to stop thinking about you on the other end of it. He tries not to look at the string at all, but he can't, being as permanently tied to his finger as it is. What's worse is seeing people tread on it. The colour fades slowly, once a strong red, now a meek pink. At this rate it'll be bone white by the end of the night, like a vein with no supply. Maybe that's how this ends. You stay kissing Cory Wilson and the string dies.

As he thinks it, the string tightens. The pink turns rosy, turns healthy, red as a rose, vice-like on his finger. Eddie knows without knowing that you're near. He could've guessed without the string's shifting, your presence the antonym of sixth-sense chills. He turns back toward the house and catches a glimpse of you as you walk past the patio door in your black velvet jacket, those tiny sparse stars like needlepoints from this far away and glinting as you turn to let Robin pass.

"Holy fuck!" Robin mouths, Steve's earplugs in a small pouch meant for coins in hand as she speed walks down the short path to the table. "She's here!"

"I can see that."

Robin sits on the chair next to Steve's. He passes her the last half of his burger and takes the earplugs from an outstretched hand, shaking them from their pouch. You'd never look at him like this with mayonnaise on his top lip, thigh to thigh with loser-sweetheart Robin Buckley, and think he'd be violent. He isn't, truly, his hearing loss the result of getting his ass handed to him hard, and the motivation of a pacifist who wears ear defenders to the movies.

"You're gonna have to speak up," Steve says, pushing the plugs in.

"Yeah, man." He doesn't have much to say anyhow. His stomach is curled in knots, the string a tightrope without walkers between him and you in the kitchen. You're talking to someone, walking one way before rushing the other. "What the fuck?" Eddie asks, sitting up.

Macy stands as somebody gasps. Eddie's quick to follow, Gareth jumping back out of Jamison's reach as the grillmaster swings a long pronged fork his way. "What?" he asks cluelessly.

Eddie follows the string to you, stepping over the patio doorjam and into the cacophony of the kitchen. Blaring rock music vibrates through Eddie's worn shoes, but it doesn't occlude the vehemence of Cory Wilson's slurring. "I should've known," he hisses.

Eddie would stand in front of you, he should, he's going to, but he doesn't and he can't fathom why. He's glued to the spot as you defend, "I didn't know. And I didn't do it on purpose."

"Are you fucking with me?"

"No." You sound startled rather than scared, but the cagey way you've moved back and the curl of your hands into fists says otherwise. "No, I didn't kiss you to–"

"To what? Guess it doesn't make a difference. I should've known. Two guys in one night's a good night for a girl like you, huh?"

You flinch away. It could be the pull of the string or the panic on your lips as you struggle to speak, or maybe Eddie's done being a coward who half-asses his life even if you're not gonna kiss him like he wishes you would, whatever it is, it has him standing in front of you unafraid.

Cory Wilson is rough. Eyes bloodshot, evil on tequila sliders from the sugary brown stain on his collar, he takes one look at Eddie and starts laughing.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean, a girl like her? Why don't you explain it?" Eddie asks, his voice burnt, almost acrid in his own mouth. "What, you plant one on her and you think it's alright to talk to her like that?"

"Eddie," you say.

He reaches back gently, his fingertips brushing your abdomen.

"You're a fucking classless act, Wilson, you always have been. You don't talk to her like that."

"Why don't you stay out of it, freak?"

"Dude," Jamison says. "No way. Get the fuck out of here."

"You can't stay out of it, can you? It makes sense now I'm seeing it," Cory rails.

This is so teenaged angst and Eddie's over it. You'll have to forgive him but he's feeling territorial. This is Macy's house, they're your friends, and Cory was a dick before he kissed you. "This is embarrassing, dude," Eddie says over the island, meeting Cory's eyes straight on. "Don't do this shit."

"It was you, right?" Cory asks, nodding, mind made up already. He peers around Eddie's shoulder to stare at you incredulously. "Him?"

"It doesn't matter!" you insist, stepping forward. "Why does it matter? I said no, I don't wanna go home with you, I'm sorry, I told you more than you needed to know because I thought it would help you get it, and I'm sorry I let you kiss me! I'm sorry, I thought it was best to be honest with you."

Eddie's thinking you don't have to say sorry for anything. Cory's thinking about the milling crowd of young adults haunting the corners of the kitchen and pressed in from the hallway, rounding the island with his chest puffed up.

"It was Munson, wasn't it?"

You take a step back into Eddie. "It's fine," he says to you quickly, because coward or not he'd never let someone hit you, but you're pushing him behind you. You're protecting him.

"Yes, it was Eddie!" you say. "So what? It has nothing to do with you."

Macy cuts in, all red hair and glare. "Okay, enough. Cory, you have to leave, man. You can't yell at girls in my kitchen because they don't want to sleep with you."

Eddie stares at the back of your head.

Did you kiss him? That second kiss, that was with him?

"You kissed me?" he asks quietly.

Your lips part as you look at him from over your shoulder. Macy and Jamison argue with a red-faced Cory, Steve asks Robin what someone just said and Robin shouts the answer, but Eddie couldn't tell you what anyone's truly saying if you paid him to, his attention on the pillow of your bottom lip and searching upwards as you exhale.

"Eddie, you kissed me." Your eyes are soft, the starts of your brows hooked together. "You really don't remember?"

"I kissed you? When?" He grabs your arm, pulling you toward him. "At Gareth's place?"

"I took you home," —you drop your chin, a new panic about you as your voice drops, waning, tenuous as spider silk— "you were wasted, you'd been drinking Macy's wine and Mr. Lashlee's bourbon and I didn't mean for it to happen. I wasn't trying to get you to kiss me, Eddie, I just asked why you were upset."

"What did I say?"

"You said that I was beautiful. That you wanted to kiss me, and then you did."

Sorry, he'd said, you're just so fucking beautiful.

"And then you freaked out like you'd been laced about string between your fingers. I took you to your room and told Wayne you ate a bunch of hotdogs on the turn." You won't meet his eyes. "I'm sorry. I never meant for it to go that far."

A glass smashes. Eddie takes your hand, pulling you away from the scene and through a curious crowd to the back door. He closes the patio doors behind you and half jogs you down past the smoking barbecue and all its leftovers, chairs pulled out haphazard from the garden table and food discarded.

He has to be quick, he doesn't know how much time he has before everyone comes flooding back out of the house.

You're strangely timid, shame having sewn your brows together. "Eddie, I'm sorry," you say, your hand wriggling weakly in his to be let go. He lets it fall.

"Sweetheart, stop. Just stop. I'm the one who's sorry… I think I–" He sighs, you're so fucking beautiful on loop in the back of his mind. "I remember. I know I made a move. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I should've stepped away faster. I wasn't expecting you to kiss me."

"I shouldn't have kissed you."

"It was just a peck, Eddie. It's okay, 'cos it's not that I don't want you to kiss me ever, but you were drunk. I should have–"

"You didn't do anything wrong," he insists, cutting you off before you can criminalise yourself with a vehement shake of the head. "But that's– that's–" He chokes on his question. "What did I say about the string?"

"The string?" you ask, and fuck! Fuck, you look beautiful now, beautiful still as the night moves forward and the day's last lazy dregs of sunlight dapple your skin through the hanging branches of the surrounding sycamores. You stuff your hands in your pockets and pull your jacket around your tummy to hide from the cold, the string tugging with you. Your eyes are wide with confusion. "You wouldn't stop talking about it. That's when you hit yourself, your bruise?"

"After I kissed you, or before?"

"After, but… why does it…"

"I'm going to sound crazy."

You laugh softly. "No different than usual, then."

Eddie opens his hand and holds it out for yours. The string on his finger is loose but not long, moreso when you give him your hand. "I know you can't see it, I get that it's ridiculous, but there's a string tied from my third finger to yours. This red piece of thread like my nanna would use. I woke up yesterday morning and it was there. I thought maybe I was going crazy, because I like you," —he swallows air, no idea why this is so hard— "and I saw you kissing that loser and I figured it was some quasi manifestation of how much I want to be near you, like torture, but it was after I kissed you. It appeared after I kissed you."

"So we're connected by a string?" you ask slowly.

Eddie's genuinely ecstatic that you'd even entertain it. "Yes!"

"Show me," you say.

"I can't."

"Well, where is it?"

The string is tight as a wire again. Eddie runs his finger along it, hoping that'll help. You can't see the string but you can see the ease with which he follows it, how his finger slides from one end to the other seamlessly. Inspired suddenly by the memory of your bedroom, Eddie grabs the string near the middle and pulls.

The string deigns to do his bidding, yanking your hand forward.

You pull it back instinctively. "Is that a trick?"

"There's a string. I've been losing my mind trying to show people, I tried to cut it off. It's impenetrable." Eddie stamps down his excitement in the face of your less enthusiastic frown. "It runs from me to you."

You rub your marriage finger, the string a strong and shimmering crimson at your touch. "I can't feel it, but you pulled me." Your eyes are shiny. "Eddie, you like me?"

"Yeah, I do." He can't believe he's admitted to it out loud. No escaping it. Of the two secrets he just told you, it's the least terrifying. He wants to say more and he wishes he could take it all back, your confusion tangible in the lines of your frown, your gloss-sticky lips drawn thinner.

He's interrupted.

"Hey, Y/N!" Macy calls, slipping through the doors, Robin on her heels. "You okay?"

Eddie steps back from you guiltily.

"I'm fine! I'm fine, Mace, I was trying to let him down easy and I kept saying the wrong thing." You drop your hand out of the air. "I'm sorry."

"Hey, it's okay, I don't care. I don't want people yelling at you, that's all." She spies on Eddie out of the corner of her eye.

"I'm not yelling at her," he defends.

"Yeah? You should both come back inside, then. Have a drink. That's why you're here, right?"

She smiles until Eddie realises, defeated, that she's not gonna leave you alone out here with him. That's fine, he's glad people are looking out for you, but fuck is it annoying. He's finally told you about the stupid impossible string that links you together and you almost believed him, he could see it, and worse, his confession lays at your feet unanswered.

Macy pulls Eddie back by the t-shirt as you walk on ahead, where you're quickly commandeered by a concerned Harrington, a chocolate milkshake in his hand that he instantly attempts to share. "Eddie," Macy says, jaw dropped in emphasis, "you kissed?"

He covers his eyes with his hands, palm out, solid rings digging into his eyelids. "Not really," he says, a pounding headache emerging between his eyes. "No. I guess not."

—

Hawkins library smells musty with disuse. Dust motes swim between beams of light shining down through dirty windows, an aged yellow colour painting the pages of the book splayed in front of you. You'd originally retreated into Hawkins library in the pursuit of one thing alone: resolute, guaranteed solitude. You'd considered disconnecting your phone, but your address isn't a secret. The only sure fire way to be alone was to leave, and to hide.

No twenty-two year old Hawkinite spends their Sunday mornings at the library. You'd carried a litre bottle of water and a tupperware of sandwiches into the recesses of the old building and dropped into a creaky desk bright and early. For a blessed, blissful half an hour, you set your cheek to cold wood and closed your eyes, content to be unreachable.

It's not that you don't want to see people. Not that you don't want to see Eddie. You don't want to be seen. Not today.

Some mornings you wake up and feel wrong. You can shower, dress in new clothes, wear makeup and nice shoes and pretty bangles, but none of it makes any difference to your poor self-esteem. You figured every woman feels this way —what is there to love in a world that advertises solutions to problems you didn't know you had until they printed it in magazines? But it's been getting worse.

Now you're lonely enough to let acquaintances kiss you for the simple reason that they want to, and insecure enough to attribute that want to a specific motive, but Eddie said he kissed you because he thinks that you're beautiful. Because he likes you. Because a string runs from his hand to yours that can't be severed.

The latter feels as mythological as the former.

It's a mess. You've asked a thousand questions. Would the situation be cleaner if you rejected Cory? Did Eddie kiss you because he realised he could, that you'd let him do it? Cruel. Not his style, and mean to think of him, but a worry nonetheless. From there the questions broaden, immature in root. Does Eddie actually like you? Would he be your boyfriend? Does he want that, do you want that, is he okay? Was he high last night? Was he ill?

You flick through tomes with sweat thumbprints pressed deep into the corners and sides, scanning mildly then feverishly for an answer. Love myths, old legends, everything the librarian can give you on fantastical sweethearts —soulmates.

Eddie thinks that there's a string tied from his finger to yours to torture him as a link to what he wants, but can't have.

It doesn't make much sense. Eddie Munson could have you if he asked nicely enough.

That might be the problem. He's never asked anything of you. Eddie's a giver, constantly, a thousand little gifts. Your hair is nice like that. Do you want to sit here? You'll get the next one, but he never lets you get the next one.

His very best gift was small. Waiting for Gareth to bring the car around and hiding from the early summer rain under the Hideout's short veranda, you and Eddie sitting on a cold wall, his jacket underneath you as he insisted to stop you from catching a chill. You remember thinking he was pretty even with his hair in his eyes, his cheeks hollowed in concentration. He pulled his wallet from his pocket, offering a glimpse of a guitar pick tucked inside of the plastic photo window. "This is my best kept secret, okay? Don't go spreading it around," he'd said from the corner of his mouth, deft fingers folding the length of a receipt into a square. He tore the excess, leaving himself with an incredibly small scrap to start with. From there he made the paper crane swiftly, folding neat corners and twisting the snout, placing the finished craft on your stocking-clad knee. "Here."

"How did you do that?" you asked, awed.

He made you a square of your own, shuffled closer to you on the wall, the heat of his hands near yours to correct you and his patient demonstration booting your heart into overdrive. You remembered every step of his origami even weeks later, folds of paper brushed by the soft memory of his fingertips on the back of your hand, accidental touches, and the smell of him, so close.

Those paper cranes in your room, tens of them sewn like popcorn strings at christmas…

You shake the thought from your head and close the book. Maybe you do like Eddie. Maybe you have all along (tenuously, waiting to get let down, and thinking there wasn't a chance in hell he could ever like you back). And now he likes you back?

This obsessive retrospection is bad for your head. Sighing, you stand from the desk you've monopolised and stretch your arms over your head, taking a breath to peer down at your fruitless investigation. The string is in his head. He punched himself pretty hard the night you took him home —he's reeling from the after effects of booze and a mild concussion, no doubt. His mind is playing tricks on him. As far as you're concerned, there's no string. (But your hand moved when he pulled. But you want it to be real.)

You pull the books to your chest and ferry them back to the lonely shelf they came from toward the back of the aisles near the audiobook stand.

Fuck, you think to yourself, kneeling by the mythology section to begin putting your books back in a vaguely organised manner. Your reading provided no answers, and you're starting to worry it's none of the scenarios you'd contemplated, but a mean-spirited joke. What would Eddie ever want with me? you think, neatening the edges of the books slowly.

Realising you like him, his chaste kiss, the red string, it's a lot to take in. You aren't sure what you believe, but you'd love to believe Eddie, in both of his confessions.

You're standing and dusting your knees when you see it, a small cloth bound book shoved between encyclopaedias on the shelf above. It's more like a personal notebook than a novel. You reach for it on a whim. The cover is selenite white, slightly coruscating in the light and broken only by the weighted lines of Chinese characters painted with the bristle of a squirrel mop brush. You trace the last of the characters mindlessly, the English translation beneath it reading, Chinese Folk Mythology.

You open the book to the first page, blank; the second, the titular; and the third, contents. You flick through creation myths and cosmology, defeated before you've even begun. You really want Eddie to be telling the truth about this —if he is, it means he's telling the truth about liking you, puts real feelings behind his tipsy kiss.

The first and last burst of colour stops you short.

The red thread of fate.

A red line furls from one corner of the page to the second page opposite, shot through phrases, your eyes catching fast on choice words. Invisible to the mortal eye. Marriage of two souls. Tangled, knotted, but never broken. Fate.

You sit on your knees on the floor of the library, the pages spread flat under your hands and their minute trembling.

—

Eddie checks his hair in the rearview mirror again. "Loser," he says, looking himself straight in the eye. Then he smiles with teeth, kicks open the driver's side door, and drops out of the van with a crushed bouquet of flowers held to his chest.

Today's been a nightmare. Between you (always you, his only thought of the growing mess he's made) and Wayne, he's been flayed.

"Your room is a pigsty, Eds, I'm not happy," his uncle had said, glaring at him over the lip of his coffee mug. Garfield absent and replaced by genial Odie, Eddie still felt abjectly judged.

"I've been busy!" Eddie defended, too worried to eat and instead working his way through five pieces of nicotine gum at once, his jaw aching with each magnanimous chew.

"Yeah, busy turning down shifts and spending all your money on burgers and beer."

"I'm way too old for this," he said through gum bubbles.

"Exactly! Too old to need reminding. If we get bugs I'm kicking you out."

Wayne would never kick Eddie out, but that wasn't the point. "Wayne, I'm having a crisis. Could you have, like, a modicum of compassion for me? Your only nephew? In his time of need?" He clutched his chest. "Christ, man."

Wayne leaned backwards in his chair to fish the trash bags from a miscellaneous drawer. "This is compassion. Don't be gross."

His room was chaos rather than gross, knick-knacks in their wrong places and two hampers worth of laundry piled behind the door. The whole time he cleaned, he debated if it was appropriate to call you, and when he finally bit the bullet and picked up the phone you didn't answer. That's fine, except he called Robin (who was predictably nursing a rumpled Harrington back to health but had enough wherewithal to ask for the hot gossip), Macy (who told him to leave you alone if he was causing trouble), Gareth (who laughed), and Shauna (fucking Shauna) in search of you, and nobody knew where you were.

It got to the point where he couldn't not check on you. Couldn't stay stuck in the narrative anymore of your will we won't we. It hurt his chest too much, a real anxiety with claws to match. He hit Bradley's for a bouquet but the flowers they had were wilted slim pickings, and then he raced to the bakery before he thought about it too much and left empty handed.

Imagine buying a girl baked goods for her to reject you. Eddie in the rain with his paper bag of croissants and dying flowers.

He couldn't find you through the phone, but he has a secret weapon: the string that leads from him to you tied tight to his finger, a compass without magnets. He followed it in the van to this secluded spot overlooking Hawkins town, and knew he was in the right place when he found your car parked on the hill.

His palms clam on the way up, pine needles crushed to mulch under his cons. Dirt crusts their white toes and puddle water splashes over the tongues, seeping into his socks. The rain slows to a pittering that beads down the arms of his jacket and along the ridge of one finger, welled cold at the line of a titanium ring.

The string is trodden and dirty on the ground. Eddie toes at it as he goes, the thread red but not taut, leaving you closer than he expects you to be, perched on a picnic table with an umbrella held loosely on one shoulder.

"Hey," he says, tensing as you tense, softening his voice appropriately. "If you don't wanna see me I understand, and I'll leave, but I wanna talk to you… If that's cool."

You peer down at the umbrella handle under your fingers. "Sure, Eddie. You don't have to leave." He counts his lucky stars, more when he sits on the bench beside you and you ask, "Are those for me?"

He fights through nerves, flowers squeezed to death in his grip. "They're for you. I had to buy a couple of bunches. These are the best of the worst." He offers you the flowers, cellophane crinkled in his hand, not half what he pictured but somehow better for being real. "I'm sorry."

"Don't say sorry for giving me flowers," you murmur in your way, not mindless but small. Not tentative, just careful.

"I'm not sorry for giving you flowers, I'm sorry that they're wilting. I wanted to get you a bunch from Leaven, you know, impress you even if it was too late. I'm sorry for a lot of things, actually. Mostly kissing you without asking first." He doesn't mean to say it like that— oh woe is me. "I want to be honest with you," he confesses, quieter. "Stuff feels weird and awful."

"I know what you mean," you say.

"But talking to you isn't like that. Talking to you is..." He scratched his neck sheepishly. "This is going way worse than I pictured."

"Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty bad." Your voice is calm against his awkward panic. You aren't ridiculing him, the opposite. You're in the same terrified boat. It's reassuring at least to know he's not alone.

You put your hand out without turning his way. Eddie stares at it with another gasping round of chest pain but takes it swiftly in both hands, too much. Why are you this fucking weird? he asks himself.

"I think I believe you."

Eddie bites the inside of his lip. Your hand is marginally smaller in his, softer by yards, and easy to pet at your admission. He feels this bone deep longing to stroke the back of it and he does, the side of his thumb tracing the faint indentation of bones beneath your skin with the care of someone handling a more delicate artefact, the string shortening, shortening, until it's all but disappeared. You're hardier than a rough hand-hold, he's wanted to do this for so, so long.

"About what?" he asks. The string? Or his affection?

"About the string." You struggle with the flowers and the umbrella in your other hand but make no attempt to take the first back from his grip.

He waits for you to say more, seconds turning to minutes, his palm growing sweaty in yours. Eddie wants to be cool like a rockstar who knows you want him and doesn't care, and he wants to be sweet and gentle and give you the respect you deserve, but mostly he wants to make it out of this conversation with you at his side. He's not sure how to do it, but holding your hand as you want him to is a start.

"I have to ask you something," you say finally, as though the words have been dragged from the root of you. "This string… this isn't all a joke, is it? That would be– that would be sick. If it's not real."

"No!" Eddie interrupts. "It's not a joke, I get if you think I'm crazy but I'm not trying to mess you around–"

"I don't think you're crazy. This whole situation is crazy. It doesn't make sense."

"But you believe me?" he asks. What he's really asking is Would you believe me, please? He's so tired of being alone with this.

"I found this book at the library." Your hand livens in his, your fingers pushing between his to twine together solidly. "Talking about the red thread of fate. There's a myth that people who are destined to get married have an invisible string tied from their fingers. It gets bigger and smaller, and you can't cut it no matter how hard you try, but I still didn't know if I believed you. You could've read the same book."

Didn't know. Past tense. "What changed your mind?"

"How would you know where I was if you were lying? We're twenty minutes outside of town."

"I could be a stalker."

"Do you want me to believe you?" you ask with a laugh.

"Of course I do," he says warmly, spurred by your laughter, pulling your arm bodily into his and encouraging you closer. "You don't have to believe that we're destined to be together, but the string is real."

"And you like me."

Eddie's turn to laugh. "I do, yeah. So much it's embarrassing."

"Everybody knows but me?"

"Kind of."

"Oh." You lay your cheek against his shoulder. Almost like you're testing his limits to see if you're allowed.

Rain dots lightly on his jacket arm, the chill of the weather sudden and obvious. He covers your wrist with his hand to hide you from it, knowing he should offer to take you somewhere warmer but needing to stretch this moment, his chest alleviated of anxiety pangs for the first time in almost a week.

"You really think I'm pretty?" you ask quietly.

Eddie stares at the top of your head. "You're the sweetest thing I've ever seen. Even if you don't believe it yourself, you're beautiful."

It's not that Eddie thinks you're going to cry but you come apart, slow fissures in the last of your strength. He takes the bouquet from you to lay on the table behind and closes your umbrella, letting the drizzling rain kiss the tops of both your heads. You look as nervous as he feels. "Come here," he says, desperate for you to feel better. "C'mere."

You sew your arms under his as he wraps his around your shoulders, the string stretching so as not to hurt you. Your voice comes rushed and low, honesty now that you're no longer face to face, "I like you too, Eddie. Ever since you made me that paper crane, I think."

He rubs your back. "You don't have to sound upset about it," he teases, trying to rescue you from tears. He'd hate to see you cry.

"This has all been such a mess."

He hugs you harder. "I know. I promise I'll make it up."

"But it's not your fault."

"Maybe, but that's kind of the point of being with someone. Looking after each other, cleaning up messes. I want to."

"You're with me," you repeat carefully.

Eddie pulls back, taking your face into his hand. The string lines your cheek like a teardrop curved down the slope of it. He strokes the red thread gently with his thumb. "I want to be. You think that could work? Us?"

Your fingers curl into the crook of his elbow. You nod into his touch. "If this isn't a trick."

"It's not a trick. I'm in love with you," —he wants to lean in, and he can't, not yet, not while a fraction of you still thinks he couldn't want you sincerely— "everything about you. I think I have been for a while."

"In love…" you murmur into yourself.

You lean forward slowly, stilted, and when Eddie leans in to meet you your eyes flutter closed. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thinks. He might have kissed you before but he doesn't remember it anymore than a phantom, a ghost, the echo of a memory. He remembers what he said and the blooming pain of his hand kicking back into his eye a thousand times clearer than how your lips felt, he has no idea what you like, where to put his hands—

You kiss him first. You lean in, and you kiss him gingerly, waiting for an impending cruelty or rejection that's never going to come. He keeps it gentle, holding his breath as the tip of his nose slides across yours and his head tilts to allow better access, a proper, full kiss.

For someone who hasn't had very many, you're a good kisser. A little too still. Eddie sees no harm in it, moving back a millimetre to wade in again immediately, his left hand rising to join the right on your warming face and prompting you into a braver reciprocation.

He smiles at the feeling of your bottom lip pressed against the seam of his mouth. His jacket sleeve creaks as your grip tightens.

It's a lovely kiss, even if it's tenuously taken. It's everything. For a while the rain doesn't matter, steams off of him, but it must fall too harshly for you to ignore, peeling away from him, so, so carefully. He meets your softened gaze with a similar expression. For once, you seem completely present, and better, your smile is real.

"Was that okay?" he asks, sliding his hands down the lines of your neck, feeling for nothing in particular. Feeling to feel, wanting to learn every hill and bow of you.

"It was better than the first two," you say, an endearingly bashful answer.

"That's not difficult. One was from a wet-nosed, mouth-breathing imbecile and the other one was from Cory Wilson."

You laugh without restraint, a full-bodied sound that echoes down his arms. "I think you mixed that up," you say nicely.

Flirting! Eddie could burst into tears. "You think? How about slimy, frizzy loser?" His hand lives a life of its own, squeezing your shoulder as he suggests, "Desperate and unobsequious uggo?"

Raindrops catch your forehead as you tip your head back briefly, laughter bubbling on your lips, your relief a palpable saccharine. "In what world are you an uggo?"

"What, do you like me or something?" He takes another kiss, lips lingering, longing for just a few more seconds. "Notice how you didn't disagree with 'desperate'? 'Unobsequious'?" he murmurs, a quarter inch from your mouth.

"You're not desperate," you murmur back, almost inaudible under the patter of rain.

"But?"

"But I don't think unobsequious is a word."

"No?" he asks, kissing you again. The awkwardness is gone, replaced by a melding need. "You don't think so?"

"No," you defend. He can hear your fondness.

Eddie presses a tight kiss hard enough to feel the impression of your teeth over your lips before tearing himself away. Kissing you isn't a tenth of what he wants from you; there's a lot to tell you. He needs to start now.

Your lips part as though you've a question to ask, too, but you bring a distracted hand to his hair. "Your hair's getting curlier in the rain. It's…"

You falter.

"I'm drowned, huh?" he asks.

You try to say no. Your hand wavers shy of a coil, listless, "No way," you whisper, eyes on your hand now, on your marriage finger and the red string playing at your knuckle, shimmering with a fish-scale sparkle as you pinch it between your thumb and forefinger on the opposite hand. "I can see it."

"You can see it?" Eddie asks, leaping onto his feet.

Your face is transformed, infinitely, impossibly prettier by your beaming smile as you clamber to stand in front of him, stretching the string between your bodies experimentally. "I can see it!"

"You can see it?" he asks, vaulting his weight into you, his arms working around your back in a squeeze.

You pull your arm up between you both and twist your wrist this way and that, the string following your whims as you lean back in the circle of his arms. Your eyes flicker between him and the string, as though you're working out which one is an illusion. Eddie and the string are both real.

"We're really soulmates."

Eddie doesn't know if he believes in soulmates, but he believes in the hopeful colour to your voice as you say it, and the tacky skin of your cheek as he leans in for your fifth kiss, your sixth, each one better than the last.

If his soulmate were going to be someone, he'd want nothing more than for it to be you.

—

"Come on! We're so late!"

Steve detaches himself from the frankly killer novel in his lap to turn, his sunglasses casting you and Eddie in a sepia tone as he drags you bodily down the path to their picnic spot. You giggle girlishly at Eddie's telling off and the bodily nature of his pushing, flopped like a fish out of water in his arms.

"I'm hurrying, Eds, you're just faster than me."

Eddie pretends to drop you, to your roaring delight, your laugh echoing across the park and drawing the eyes of Steve's summer club.

"Here comes happy and happier," Robin groans.

"You wanted them to date," Steve says, turning to his best friend where she lays on the blanket beside him, his jacket a pillow under her neck. "You have sleep in your eyes."

"I'm tired," she defends, struggling into a sitting position. She wipes her eyes with the bottoms of her palms, mean, words stretched with a yawn as she continues, "Please tell me Eddie has the basket."

"Nope," Max says, slamming down on her knees next to Robin, her jeans already grass-stained.

"Y/N has it," Lucas clarifies, sitting down with them in similar fashion.

Steve's daunted by them when they're together, but he leaves his commentary at an unintelligible curse word, his head tipped back in annoyance. They're constantly pulling the carpet from under him, practically manufacturing flaws to tease him about, Max whip-smart and Lucas loyal to a fault.

Still, he likes them.

More than he likes Dustin when the curly-haired boy sits down next to Steve and takes his hat off. "Feel how sweaty this is getting."

"Rather not, dude."

Eddie speaks, closer now, and Steve misses the words but not the tone of them. Dripping, almost sleazy affection, the kind that knows what it is unabashedly. You stand on toes to kiss the highest point of his cheek as quickly as you can, your hand on his trap.

"Hey!" Eddie shouts to their turned head, waving a hand of rings, calluses and bandaids. "You guys look like meerkats."

His cheeks are rosy red with blush despite the moderate temperatures today, the sun set to come out in an hour or two when the cloud cover moves. Said meerkats make room for you on the picnic blanket, where you share the bounty of your basket, sandwiches and cut fruit. "There are chips in the car," you say.

"You cut up fruit?" Robin asks.

"Eddie did. I watched."

"And ate the best cuts," Eddie says proudly, wrapping his arm around your shoulder to drown you in a hug. You slink an arm begins him to hug him in return, your face pressed with delight to the curve of his neck. "As is her right."

"Don't be disgusting!" Mike calls, a baseball bat in unconfident hands.

"You sure you know how to use that thing?" Eddie calls back. "Lucas, I thought you were helping him, man? Help him!"

"Some people are beyond help."

"Shut up, Dustin."

Despite an abundance of company and a ton of shit to do, you and Eddie are distracted by one another, and Steve isn't stupid enough to not get why. They didn't see you both for a week, and then you emerged from your self-imposed quarantine as grossly in love with one another as Steve has ever seen two people be. Like, maybe the happiest couple ever. In some loud ways but mostly quiet ones, hands held, fond cheek kisses to say hello, these weird paper birds you make for each other whenever there's a scrap of paper left lying around. Eddie's doing it now, having stolen the sticky note Steve was using as a bookmark to craft a teeny tiny crane, Steve, their called cranes. One second it's a pink diamond and the next he's performing an intricate twist, four last folds, and placing the finished product on your knee.

Steve's sort of jealous, but you guys are too in love, honestly. It's nice if you're in it but too intimate if you aren't (nothing maliciously done, of course), so he rounds up the troops for the first round of baseball to give you guys some privacy.

If he's expecting you two to start French kissing when he leaves, he's not correct. He wouldn't know it, back turned to you as he takes first bat, knees bent and waiting for Erica to serve, but you guys talk. Talk talk talk. Eddie can talk for Indiana and you listen in your way, wryly amused, promising any minute now that you're gonna get up and spread out on the field.

"Is this a bad idea, sports? What if it beheads someone?"

"It knows how to behave," Eddie assuages, hand on the blanket next to your thighs, turned toward you, effectively locking you in. "We don't wanna get that involved. You look too good right now to ruin."

Nothing can fix the insecurities you hold instantly, but knowing someone wants to kiss you regularly has helped. Eddie's constant compliments have done even better. He's easy about it, no fuss, no bravado, praise said like fact. Come here, pretty girl, I got a present for you. Hey, gorgeous. You should do my hair, yours always looks so good. And the photos —he has a disposable in the glove box, and insists on taking photos of you when you're especially happy. Now that he's your guy, that's often.

"You're saying I wouldn't look good if I sweat this off?" you ask, gesturing to your face and your makeup.

"I know you'd look good." He dips down for a kiss, as if daring you to suggest otherwise. It's a touch rough, twice as devoted. Things are heady for a time, the two of you stealing another short moment to add to the list, your kiss made of twin smiles. "Maybe we can use it to our advantage," he suggests, pulling back to stroke your cheek.

"The string?" you ask.

Eddie steals a last quick peck before his hand climbs onto your leg, giving your denim-clad thigh a pat. "We'll use it to trip people up. Come on, it'll be fun. We'll get Harrington flat on his ass," he says, clambering onto sure footing.

"No way," you say, leaning back to see him, your hand nudging aside a plate of sandwiches. You shield your eyes from the sun as it comes out, sunlight like spun gold spilling down your arm. "I'm not helping you hurt your friends."

"What, those guys? They're just my D&D subs."

You shake your head at him in disapproval.

"I'm kidding!" he says, reaching down for your hands. "Get up, sweetheart, we'll only trip someone if we need to win. Stop fighting me, you know it's useless. I always win."

"You cheat," you sigh, letting him help you onto your feet.

"I cheat," he agrees, kissing your cheek, then the opposite, before holding them in both hands and leaning in. "I love how you sound when you know you're losing–"

"Shut up–"

"You get all breathless," he says, his face drifting closer, and closer, "all shy on me."

"If I knew you were gonna try and embarrass me this much I never would've said yes to being your girlfriend," you say, half-glaring at him with a wave of affection brimming behind your poor acting.

"Really?" he asks. His voice is low, a little rough.

"No. But you have to stop, okay?" You laugh, nudging him in the stomach with your knuckles. "I wanna play baseball."

Steve waves Eddie over from home base to field on his team while you join Max, Robin, and Lucas in line to bat. "This isn't enough people for baseball," Eddie says, crushing emerald green bluegrass beneath his shoes. The rainfall last week made for lush vegetation.

"Yeah, which is why you were supposed to invite more people," Steve quips.

"I was busy." Eddie rolls his shoulders. "We don't need more people to win. We got this."

"We do not got this! And no going easy on Y/N, okay? I don't care if you're together, we need to play to win. Loser's buying the winner's pizza and I just got Sheila out of the shop."

"Are you kidding?" Eddie asks, stretching his arm behind his head, his eyes across the field where you laugh at Robin's side. "Obviously I'm not going easy on her. Why would you think that?"

"Seriously? This is the worst honeymoon phase I've ever seen. I figured you guys wouldn't even be able to play on different teams, like, major separation anxiety."

Eddie does this thing with his hand, his thumb plucking an invisible string. "I don't need to worry, man. I know exactly where she is."

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

thank you for reading, especially if you got all the way to the end! hope you enjoyed ♥

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