Chapter Text
It’s two days later when Eddie takes Chrissy on their first date. They haven’t had a chance to see each other since christening his van and renting a movie after, so when he picks her up on another blazing summer afternoon, he jumps out to hug her on the curb. He wraps his arms around her wai st, lifting her up, and kisses into her neck until she squeals.
She smells like clean citrus and it’s intoxicating— he wonders how quick she’d notice if he just kept huffing her hair and skin, and thinks better of it.
When he sets Chrissy down, he cups her face and grins. “Hey. I missed you.”
Eddie knows her mother is glaring from the picture window. He doesn’t really give a shit— if someone asked him, he’d say he even likes it.
“Me?” Chrissy asks, like she doesn’t believe him, blue eyes bright and shining. It’s the same tone she used that day in March in the woods and it makes Eddie’s brain turn to goo. He suspects she knows it unravels him a little, because her smile lingers too long.
“Yes, you. Worst 48 hours of my life,” Eddie pulls open the passenger door for Chrissy, bowing a little while he waves her into the old Chevrolet. He drives away slowly and respectfully, with a barking laugh when Chrissy sneakily holds her middle finger up in between their seats as her house disappears behind them. There’s no way her mother would have seen, but that’s not the point.
It was for Chrissy— for them.
Eddie had taken a part time job at The Hideout as a barback for a few days a week, sometimes for a double. Before the ‘Chrissy likes me back’ rift in the universe, followed shortly by the ‘Chrissy’s legs are wrapped around my face’ rift, he’d agreed to work extra that week to have the next one off. He felt like it was a little too serendipitous for him to have some padding in his wallet and more free time to see her, so he’d asked her out on a date. Formally.
Non-traditionalist that he is, their date is starting at 1pm.
Eddie reaches for her hand, lacing their fingers together while he steers down Main Street. “Thanks for not minding that I slept in. I needed it.”
She squeezes his hand and it makes his heart skip— he’s not used to this part and feels a little ridiculous for it, considering they already fucked. Considering she brought the condoms when they did.
“Are you tired?”
“Your cold fingers are waking me up,” he brings her hand to his mouth and kisses her icy knuckles.
Once Eddie makes sure Chrissy has already eaten lunch, their first stop is for ice cream.
There’s a long line wrapped around the pastel building, but Chrissy’s enthusiasm doesn’t waver when she sees it, so Eddie feels like a million bucks for the suggestion.
She has high waisted denim shorts on, with a sleeveless white button-up tied off at her midsection. Little beige wedge sandals with ribbons at her ankles, even a small white bow in her hair— she’s gonna drive him nuts with all of these ribbons and knots he wants to untie. Eddie doesn’t realize he’s looking her up and down until she nudges him forward as the line moves.
He chuckles, shuffling ahead. They can’t look more opposite. Eddie’s in ripped, slate grey jeans, his scuffed Reeboks, and a Motörhead t-shirt that’s cropped enough at the hem it shows off his studded belt. The sleeves have been trimmed at an angle— he’s always had a flair for customizing his clothes, and summertime involves a lot of cutting fabric away.
But Chrissy looks like a Brunch Time Barbie and he looks like… well, Eddie Munson.
“Starting with dessert?” Chrissy grins up at Eddie while they slowly progress in line. He notices the shimmer of her blue eye shadow and the dewy glisten of her lip gloss from this angle.
Starting with dessert…
“Uhh—”
“Munson?”
Eddie turns to the voice, then cranes his head up to find Keith— ice cream cone in hand, clearly on his way back to Family Video while wearing his work vest.
“Oh, hey, man,” Eddie and Chrissy move forward in the line. “How’s it going?”
Keith awkwardly follows along, licking at his cone. “Fine. Are you still on the waitlist for Return of the Living Dead? Because it’s due back today. I can have one of my subordinates call you.”
“Uh, yeah, I think so?” Eddie squints his eyes while he thinks, scratching at the edge of his jaw. “That’s cool.”
He keeps the ‘subordinates’ thing tucked away to use against Steve some other time. Eddie’s thrilled for the ammo, frankly.
“I still think Day of the Dead is better,” Keith laps at his ice cream. “Buckley keeps telling me there’s no use comparing the two—”
“She’s right,” Eddie nods. “They’re so different, you can’t—”
Chrissy reaches back to grab Eddie’s wrist, urging him forward in line. Keith notices right away and drops his eyes in a slant on her bouncing strawberry blonde hair. “Chrissy Cunningham,” he says, like he’s pointing her out in a line-up.
Eddie blinks, drifting his eyes from Keith, to Chrissy, to the tiny hand holding his wrist. “Uh, yeah, Chrissy, this is Keith. Keith, this is—”
“I know who she is,” Keith drawls. His eyebrows raise. “Wait, are you here together?”
Eddie hates the intrigue in Keith’s voice, hates even more that he’s not even really entirely sure how to answer that, because— well, all of this is so different and insane and new— but Chrissy’s words nearly knock the wind out of him.
“Hi, Keith. We’re on a date, actually,” she tilts her head up at the lumbering giant, tightening her grip on Eddie’s wrist, looping her fingers underneath the chain of his bracelet. Eddie watches while her shoulders square up, almost like a challenge, and he wonders just how uncouth it would be to pick her up and march her right into the back of his van.
There’s a long pause. “Huh,” Keith finally mumbles. “Nice going, Munson.”
“Dude—” Eddie makes a sour face.
“Well, my lunch break is over, anyway. They’re all out of pistachio, by the way. I think their sorbet is subpar, but it’s not terrible. All of the soft serve is good. See you,” Keith is walking away before Eddie even has a chance to respond.
When he looks back at Chrissy, her face is a little unreadable. “Hey,” he whispers, leaning closer, covering her hand over his wrist. “That was—”
“Was that okay?” Her eyes drop down a moment and Eddie thinks he wants to stare and count her eyelashes. “I didn’t want to make you feel awkward, Keith just kind of rambles until—”
“Was that okay?” Eddie repeats, a wolfish grin on his face. “More than okay. It was hot, Cunningham.” He readjusts their hands, lacing their fingers. “And you’re right. We’re on a date,” he presses a kiss to the top of her head. “I really didn’t want to get caught up in Keith’s flawed, hyper-analytical zombie opinions right now. Or ever, really.”
They shuffle forward before Chrissy’s speaking again, soft enough that Eddie has to lean in to hear.
“I want people to know we’re together, Eddie.”
This nearly takes him out. He wants to laugh at first, mostly at himself and how it makes him feel to hear it, but her face is so sincere. So he just closes the gap between them, kissing her temple.
“I do, too,” he murmurs against her hair.
They find a row of picnic tables along the sidewalk after getting their cones. Eddie had gotten two scoops of something called Death by Chocolate, purely on account of the threatening name— while Chrissy had opted for a soft serve swirl of vanilla and strawberry, topped with rainbow sprinkles.
When Eddie sits across from Chrissy, she immediately hooks her toes around the backs of his ankles, pulling his feet closer to hers. He grins when she does, quickly wedging her sandals between his sneakers. She makes a satisfied sound and licks the side of her soft serve, mingling white and pink under the flat of her tongue.
“This is so good,” she finally sighs.
Seeing her savor a sugary treat stirs a happy swell in his chest. A few months ago, suggesting this wouldn’t have landed as well. Eddie knows it’s an uphill climb and knows how important it is to tread lightly and let her set the pace, but he’s so proud of her.
He opens his mouth to say as much— but a family sits at the table across from theirs. He decides it’s not a good time. Instead, he clears his throat and nods, enjoying his own cone. “I’ll let you know when mine starts to kill me.”
Chrissy scrunches her nose up when she laughs. “Switch?” She holds her cone out expectantly.
Eddie would do anything she asked him to.
They trade, and he purposefully licks where she already did on her soft serve. At first, he silently reasons it’s so he doesn’t accidentally help himself to all of her sprinkles— but it’s really because he wants to swap spit. He’s wanted to do that and more for two whole days since he’s seen her.
“Okay, wow,” she mumbles, chewing on a piece of chocolate. She covers her mouth as she speaks, taking intermittent tastes. “This is just as good.”
“Worthwhile death?” Eddie quips, finally lapping up a few sprinkles.
Chrissy’s eyes sparkle at him when she nods and drops her hand from her smile. There’s a dollop of chocolate ice cream at the edge of her mouth, and before he can even think about it, Eddie reaches forward to swipe it with his thumb.
“Hey, here, you have some–”
Chrissy turns her face with a pout, nursing his thumb into her mouth.
Eddie’s eyes are wide and his lips part with a heavy exhale, stuttering into a sort of nervous laugh— and then Chrissy lets go, but not before flicking her tongue along the ridge of his thumb.
She is trying to fucking kill him, he realizes, when her smile curves into something caught between innocent and devious. Chrissy makes a face like this all of the time now, but it always occurs when she’s finally experiencing some kind of normalcy and youthful revelry— not when she’s just sucked his thumb into her mouth. In public. At that bright pastel building downtown, with a family of four sitting next to them.
Eddie’s already half-hard and he has to tense and flex his leg muscles to try to snap out of it. It’s almost laughable to experience it on such a hair-trigger after months of basically accepting he couldn’t get it up unless it was with his own hand and his own Chrissy-led fantasies. Eddie’s still perplexed about that part— how easy it was to just stop trying with other girls months ago. How he didn’t miss it, at all.
He was too in love.
Eddie had been running on autopilot, waiting for when it felt worthwhile to make out with someone, and it never came.
And yet Chrissy’s already straddled his face, he’s already buried himself to the hilt in her, and this makes him feel—
He feels unwound by her, almost like he’s about to cartoonishly wolf-whistle while steam funnels out of his red-tipped ears. Eddie glances to his left to make sure they haven’t scandalized a family and clears his throat when he offers Chrissy her cone back. They trade, wordlessly, and then he shakes his head.
“That’s, uh— that’s not fair,” he weakly mumbles.
Chrissy shrugs, licking the soft serve swirl of pink and white like she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“Evil,” he grins, rotating his cone against his tongue. “I used to think you were the sweetest person I knew, but I was wrong. You are positively diabolical, Cunningham.”
“I’m not that bad,” she laughs.
Eddie wants to tell her she’s so bad she’s good, but that’s not rated E for Everyone, and there's a doting mother lecturing some elementary school aged kids next to them. That’s sufficiently dumping the bucket of ice water he needed on him, so he just shakes his head. They have all day for him to sling pervy compliments at her, especially for when they’re lucky enough to be alone.
“Where are we going next?”
“Oh, um, that’s a surprise,” Eddie answers.
Chrissy has been staring at the small yellow tickets in her hands for about 15 minutes now. Every time Eddie glances at her, he zeroes in on the way she’s smiling— soft, like she’s got a secret she can’t wait to tell. It’s hard to keep his eyes on the road, with her looking this sweet next to him, but he begrudgingly accepts his fate as a (vaguely) responsible driver.
“When did you…” Chrissy trails off.
“Oh, y’know, I had some help,” he admits, turning into another lane. “Might owe Nancy Wheeler a favor or two.” Eddie laughs. “She, uh, she actually came to The Hideout to drop those off to me?”
It’s been a running gag between their friends group that Nancy needs to be bribed or kidnapped to go to the old dive bar. Chrissy seems to be turning the information over in her head— that their friend had visited Eddie during one of his extra work shifts, on a cupid-like endeavor, dropping off tickets to a butterfly house exhibit in another town.
“I love butterflies, Eddie.” He can hear her smile. If he wasn’t trying to get them to their destination, he might pull onto the shoulder of the highway and kiss her stupid.
“I know,” he grins. “There, uh, was an ad about this a few weeks ago in the paper. I may have tried figuring out a way I could take you, like— you know, as friends?”
“You hate flying bugs,” she laughs, but it’s soft and airy, almost like she’s in disbelief.
“Yeah, well, like— I just, uh, I knew it was something you’d be into. Also, for the record,” Eddie wags his finger in the air. “It’s worse when they buzz. Buzzing and flying, that’s a no. Butterflies are at least quiet. I think.”
Chrissy’s silent. Eddie can only see from his peripheral that she’s turning over the tickets again, studying the rectangles of yellow.
“Steve told me it was way too much like a date,” he rolls his eyes at this next part— because it stings, “and yeah, like, he was right. So then, I dunno, I was thinking maybe I’d just give you tickets. To go with, uh… Whoever you wanted.” There’s no way in hell he’s going to admit outright that he figured she’d thank him for the gift, maybe even hug him gratefully, and go with Jason fucking Carver. He won’t admit that he was willing to accept that.
“Eddie…”
He’s not sure what that tone is. Eddie feels a little like laughing at himself, spilling his guts so openly. So he starts with a nervous chuckle.
“That sounds— shit, I know that sounds really fucking pathetic, but I—”
“No, it doesn’t,” she quietly interjects. “When I tried breaking up with Jason, near graduation, he basically— um, he asked me if there was someone else. When I said no, he sort of… I don’t know, he convinced me, in a way, that I wasn’t sure. I-I believed him. Maybe I wasn’t.”
“Jesus,” he hisses. “Fucking prick.”
“So June comes around,” Chrissy sighs, “and there I am. Trying again. I was sure of myself. We hadn’t even kissed, we hadn’t gone out, we were never spending time alone together… It was barely a relationship. It really wasn’t until I told him there was someone else I was interested in, like, where he started to believe me.”
Eddie glances at the highway sign ahead. They’re only one exit away, then another short drive.
“So a few weeks ago, Jason just— he asked me outright. If it was you.”
“Really?” Eddie looks at her and she nods her head, but her eyes are glued to her hands in her lap.
“And I finally said yes. He asked if you knew, I said no. He asked how long, I said too long, because it was true. We didn’t talk for a week. I tried calling him, his mother and his father were covering for him. I needed to talk to him, face-to-face, so Steve and Robin took me to his job at the rec center.”
Eddie really loves Robin Buckley and Steve Harrington really is as good a guy as Henderson said.
“So I made it official. Told him we were over, there was no coming back. I told him it was a long time coming,” Eddie knows about the time Chrissy caught Jason cheating in their junior year, but doesn’t say anything, “I told him to give me space. And to promise me that he would leave you alone.”
“Chrissy,” Eddie reaches for her hand, careful as he makes a turn off of the highway. He brings it to his lips, kissing her knuckles one-by-one. “That sounds like, just, um— such a fucking headache.”
“It was,” she laughs, a little breathless. “It was worth it, though. You know, Eddie, if you had given me these tickets, I still would have wanted to go with you.”
There’s a deeply buried seed of doubt in Eddie about this— about all of this, really— where he keeps wanting to ask when the curtain will be drawn back, where the joke starts or ends. He’s embarrassed about it, truthfully, that it’s just so incomprehensible Chrissy Cunningham likes him back, likes him enough to dedicate a portion of her summer trying to wrangle Jason Carver into submission about it. Likes him enough to even go the extra mile and try to defend him from her ex-dickweed.
She brought condoms when they’d hung out days ago— she was touch-starved, but thinking about him— wanting him. Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson.
She said it wasn’t a rebound. When Eddie had shyly admitted he’d never had a girlfriend before, not officially, she didn’t even laugh. Chrissy just held his hand on the drive to Family Video and told him, ‘Now you do.’
Chrissy just regaled him with a long and winding tale about the pinnacle of insecurity, and the last thing Eddie wants is to make it her job to reassure him, too. But— he’s human, after all.
“You really mean that? Like, really-really-really?”
“Don’t—” He can see her shaking her head, but she’s smiling, which helps calm his nerves. “Don’t make me say it first. Yes, I mean it, Eddie. Really. Really-really-really-really.” Chrissy squeezes his hand.
Don’t make me say it first. Oh, Eddie’s gonna hyper-analyze that. He’s gonna think real long and hard about it, as soon as his heartbeat stops thundering in his chest. He’s positive, now, that Chrissy Cunningham has no clue how in love with her he is. She couldn’t possibly know.
“Hey, uh, we’re here,” he can’t help the frown when she releases his hand, but it doesn’t last long— Chrissy lets out an excited squeak next to him, and then his grin is overtaking his face.
When he parks, he quickly tells her to wait, and rounds the van to open the door for her. Eddie feels ten feet tall when she blushes, letting him help her down from the passenger seat. He closes the door and makes a goofy sort of yelp, because she’s jumping up to wrap her arms around his neck, peppering his face with kisses.
“Woah, hey, angel,” Eddie murmurs, bringing his hands up to bracket her face. He leans down and kisses her, tenderly, smiling against the stickiness of her reapplied lip gloss. He makes a mental note that his jaw is probably covered in it and finds he doesn’t give a single shit once she presses her body against his.
His back is against the van when Chrissy deepens the kiss— however good her tongue felt against his thumb, this is light years better, and Eddie makes a pitiful sound as she pulls away.
“Probably, um, shouldn’t attack you in the parking lot like this, huh?”
“No?” He smirks. “I don’t mind.”
“Eddie,” she whines, but he can tell she’s thinking about it.
And that’s enough for him. “Yeah, well, I guess you have a point. You ready?”
Chrissy nods, cheerily holding up their tickets.
Eddie and Chrissy have spent the first part of their botanical garden journey trying to find and identify the flowers and plants with the strangest names. Sneezewort in particular had really gotten to Eddie and he loudly declared he was going to use the name in one of his D&D campaigns, while Bastard Toadflax had nearly done Chrissy in.
The conservatory, which houses the garden’s brand new butterfly house, is on the far side of the property. They’re almost at the giant glass building when Eddie stops short.
“Hang on,” Eddie grins, leaning in to look at a sign. He casts a conspiratorial look over his shoulder and reads, “Naked Man Orchid.”
Chrissy covers her mouth, joining him at the railing to see. “Oh my gosh, Eddie, look.” She points right at the purple pastel blooms— and an attribute to their namesake, tiny and dangling between their ‘legs.’
“Oh, no shit,” he snorts.
“It’s kind of cute, like—” She squints a little. “The hat, the eyes—”
“Not his junk, though?” Eddie laughs again when Chrissy nudges him with her elbow.
She grabs Eddie by his wrist, pulling him toward the reason they’re here. They shuffle through the doors into a small vestibule with a gangly teenager wearing a wide-brim hat complete with a net down to her shoulders.
“Hi! Welcome to our brand new lepidopterarium!”
Eddie blinks.
“Er, butterfly house,” she mumbles, her enthusiasm deflating. “Here is a guidebook for spotting each of the moths and butterflies you’ll find inside.” She hands a booklet to Chrissy. The girl tilts her head, looking over the couple. Her voice shifts to an authoritative, monotonous drawl. “No food or drink, no picking up or handling of anything without staff-led supervision. It’s very hot and humid inside, and you will get wet,” Eddie catches the reddish tint to Chrissy’s nose, “because we have to keep misting some areas of the facility. When you’re ready to leave, please wait back here with me so I can look to make sure no one’s leaving with you.”
Chrissy looks down at the pamphlet and nods.
“Um, thanks,” Eddie shrugs, hoping he doesn’t look too green in the gills about the prospect of these fucking bugs landing on him. “You ready, Chris?”
“If you have perfume on, that will attract them,” the teenager interrupts. “Oh, and they’ll love your hair.” This is directed to Chrissy, who beams in response.
Eddie gives her a minute once they’re inside, watching her face turn awestruck and sublime while she sweeps her eyes around the conservatory. Chrissy gasps.
She’s beautiful and he loves her, it’s as simple as that. If he knows anything at all— which is highly debatable depending on who you ask— that’s not at all what he should be telling her on their first real date.
He’s willing to work on the whole, y’know, hating flying bugs part. He even feels less nervous about it, when there isn’t a cacophony of Hitchcock-violin-buzzing— it’s cool, he swallows. He’s cool. This is for Chrissy, after all.
She does laugh when he flinches at a moth coasting by, but he’s relieved she doesn’t tease him too much. Chrissy even assures him, repeatedly, that she’ll protect him.
Eddie peers over Chrissy’s shoulder as she unfurls the guide. “Anything interesting?”
“Well,” she chews at her bottom lip, “I guess it loops— see?” She points at the map key. “There’s an Emerging Station, that’s apparently where they—”
“Emerge?” Eddie drops his hand onto her lower back. He draws his thumb across her skin at the waistline of her shorts, just where her shirt ends, and feels her skin prickle under his touch.
It’s just as hot as the perky teenager had forewarned, and Eddie’s taken back to their sticky, humid tumble in his van. He thinks of the way she looked underneath him— glistening and sweaty, blissed out— and how he had brushed off her concerns about smelling bad that night back at the trailer. ‘I like it,’ he had laughed into her neck, while she half-heartedly tried to squirm away. Chrissy had smelled like sweat and sex and he would have laid in the middle of the road to stop her from showering it off.
He swallows.
Really not a good time to delve into reliving that memory.
Chrissy snickers. “Very perceptive, Eddie. There’s a bunch of things called— um, Puddling Stations?”
He’s about to ask what the fuck a Puddling Station is when something beats its wings past his head. “Woah, hey—” Eddie points, impressed with his ability to keep his shit together. “What’s that one?”
“That’s a—” Chrissy flips a page, furrowing her brows, “—oh! Two-tailed Swallowtail. Oh, and that one!” She points to a pale butterfly resting on a broad leaf. “Summer Azure.”
They walk around a little longer; Chrissy is quick to gleefully announce each moth or butterfly that comes close enough. Eddie’s pretty sure that’s the best part of this trip. The bugs are okay, he thinks, it’s not so bad. Chrissy’s quiet gasps and soft laughter is all he really cares about, though, and he’s going to wring his brain out like a wet rag for more ideas like this.
No one’s emerging today, at the Emerging Station. Chrissy pouts a little when she says bye to the cocoons and that part sort of makes him melt, makes him want to let her know he’d do anything— really, anything— for her. He belongs in one of the tiny basins of a Puddling Station, actually.
He sees a wisp of blue and black land on Chrissy’s humidity-kissed, frizzy hair. The amber, oaky underside of its wings are a stark contrast to the vivid blue and deep black. It’s really pretty, even if his skin twinges at the concept of anything landing in his own hair. Please don’t, he silently asks whoever’s listening.
“No fuckin’ way, Cunningham, hey,” he whispers, pointing at her hair. “You’ve got a little, uh, visitor.”
“Really? I do?” She practically squeaks as she asks. He can’t relate to her excitement at all, but it’s adorable— painfully so.
“Yeah, wait, hang on,” Eddie looks back and forth, knowing he saw— there it is. “C’mere,” he grabs her hand, gently leading her over to a mirrored pane of glass. There are a few panels like this dispersed throughout the conservatory, probably for exactly this, he realizes.
He positions her in front of him so she can see, looping his arms around her to flip through the pamphlet to identify their new friend. Eddie lets her take the time to watch its wings fan up and down, close enough to hear every time her breath catches. He kisses the high arch of her cheekbone and drops his chin low onto her shoulder.
He points. “Blue Morpho. Native to Costa Rica.” Eddie straightens up, grinning as he watches Chrissy’s giddy eyes alight in the mirror. “Long way from home, huh?”
“It’s so pretty,” she smiles.
He thinks about the ride on the Ferris wheel, how he had wanted to say that back to her then, how just a few days ago she figuratively opened the door and gave him permission to say it all the time. Eddie also thinks about how stupidly, absurdly lucky he is to get to know this girl— to get to do anything with her at all— to get to watch her own metamorphosis.
Chrissy went from someone whose pageantry smiles always held a shadow of melancholy to a person who shared joints with Robin Buckley, cackling herself breathless on picnic blankets with her friends.
“So are you,” he breathes, wrapping his arms around her waist. She leans back into him and he’s careful as he rests his chin on her hair, opposite from the Blue Morpho. He can handle the closeness with the winged creature. “You’re so damn pretty, Chrissy Cunningham.”
They grab a bite to eat on the way back to Hawkins— fast food that they’re ravenous with. Chrissy won’t stop stealing Eddie’s fries and he’s not going to say a damn thing about it. They’re stopping at her mother’s before he’s taking her back to Forest Hills, so she needs as little stress as possible.
Chrissy’s half-asleep when he parks at the cul-de-sac on Breakwater.
“Hey, Chrissy,” Eddie whispers, nudging her knee. “Wake up.”
She stirs, stretching like a cat— which drives him a little crazy, actually— and sighs at the sight of her house. Chrissy looks back at him with a smile he’s pretty sure is more for him than it is for her. “I won’t be long. I told her I’m staying at Nancy’s. I'm already packed.”
Eddie nods, killing the headlights. “I’ll be here.”
They have plans to stay at Reefer Rick’s place all weekend. Rick Lipton doesn’t realize it, but Eddie’s basically using his lake house as an impromptu summer home with all of his friends. He knows if he keeps shit tidy and in working order before his supplier starts his parole— what is it that Nancy always says? We ask for forgiveness, not for permission?
Something like that.
Chrissy’s pulling the passenger door open before he expects it and Eddie jolts a bit when she does.
She’s smiling. That’s a good sign.
“Everything okay?” Eddie asks, turning his headlights back on before driving.
“Wicked Witch was asleep. Everything’s perfect.”
It’s Chrissy’s fourth yawn that makes Eddie scoop her up from the couch and bring her to his bedroom. Her head lolls, heavy against his shoulder, and she whines— really, really whines— that she’s not tired.
“Sure, uh-huh,” he laughs into her hair. They might’ve gotten a little too stoned in the middle of a movie rental. It might’ve hit her harder than it hit him, like it usually does, but he was happy to see her comfortable. Resting.
He lays her down in his bed, kisses her forehead, and moves to switch on the two fans in his bedroom. It’s cooler at night, which is a blessing, but it’s still warm. When Eddie turns around, Chrissy is sleepily wriggling out of her shorts. She’s wearing one of his Hellfire shirts— a sight to fucking behold, truly— and now he sees she has a pair of baby blue panties on. Pink polka dots. He thinks of cotton candy.
“Hot,” she murmurs against the pillows.
Yeah. Hot.
Eddie peels his own shirt off, sliding next to her in a pair of sweatpants he’s trimmed into shorts. One leg is slightly longer than the other, and he had mentioned wanting to fix it, until Chrissy told him she likes them that way.
So, fuck it.
He needs the added layer of fabric, because she’s shimmying close to him, pulling his arm around her. Eddie moves to settle his arm around her stomach, but she shakes her head with a frustrated breath.
“Sorry, I just, um,” Chrissy’s voice comes out in a tired croak as she pulls his arm to tangle with hers in front of her chest.
“S’okay, princess.” He kisses her neck. “Just like being close to you.”
“ Is this okay?” She whispers. It’s a little harder to hear her with the fans going, but he takes advantage of needing to nuzzle closer. “That we’re going to bed?”
“I fucking love sleep,” he mumbles.
I fucking love you, he thinks.
“Night, Eddie.”
“Sweet dreams, butterfly queen.”