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It started with a dirty joke.
How it had ended with Eddie Munson’s head between her thighs, Chrissy isn’t completely sure.
She can’t say she’s complaining about it though, her teeth digging into her lip on a groan as Eddie flicks his tongue just so-
Her fingers are going numb from how tightly she’s got them wrapped over the backseat from behind, the back of Eddie’s van cast in long shadows, her other hand buried in Eddie’s hair to keep him in place.
She doesn’t need to.
One of her knees hooked over his shoulder, callused hand and cold cold rings pressed gently but firmly to the other to keep her legs open for him, and his mouth dirtyfilthyslick when he’d pulled away to look at her, eyes asking silently for approval as she had to gasp around a breathless yes, more, please-
Yeah, she’s very sure she doesn’t need to hold him there against his will.
This was his idea, after all.
His idea, but totally her fault.
Because Chrissy had said, do you want to hear the only dirty joke I know?
Because the weed had loosened her tongue, and Chrissy never gets to tell it.
Eddie had inhaled deeply, the rolling paper sticky with her lipgloss as he offered the joint back to her. “Let me hear it, Cunningham.”
And Chrissy, with her legs dangling from her perch out the back of Eddie’s van, her sneakers barely scraping the ground as she looked out over the sunlight fading over Lovers’ Lake, had asked, “Why do they put flowers on women’s panties?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie had said, his mouth tugging up at the corners as Chrissy bit down on her lip. “Why do they put flowers on women’s panties?”
“In loving memory of all the faces that were buried there.”
Eddie had absolutely lost it.
Chrissy had giggled into her hands, delighted by his reaction. He’d wheezed on his laughter, his hand pressing into his eyes. “Jesus, Chris. Good one.”
But the weed had loosened her tongue too much, because then Chrissy had muttered, “Not like I’d know, though-”
And well.
Here she is, after Eddie Munson had looked at her with big, sincere eyes and said, could change that, if you want, after she’d stuttered on a yes, after he’d shut the van doors behind them and perched her up on the pile of cushions and blankets he keeps in the back of the van for nights he’s too high to drive, after he’s got her panties hooked under his fingers, after he’s slid them down and rucked her skirt up with a you’re calling the shots here, baby. Say stop and I will.
Chrissy thinks she’d rather die than tell him to stop.
Her breathing is getting shallow as he pets at her thigh, hands big and warm and soothing as he does something with the flat of his tongue that has her keening against him, seeking him out for more, impossibly more, please, Eddie, please-
“So pretty,” he murmurs, and Chrissy can feel it more than she hears it, her ribs ready to burst as he says, “you sound so pretty, sweetheart.”
Her hand grips into his hair, dark locks curling around her fingers like a promise, and she knows she’s whining as she moans on his name, but Chrissy can’t bring herself to care, not with Eddie’s tongue against her and his clever clever fingers teasing at her the way he is.
How absolutely cruel of him.
His reign of terror doesn’t last long, because neither does she, and as he slips one finger into her, she’s gone.
Eddie works her through it softly, and catches her on the comedown, his smirking mouth spit-shiny-slick when she opens her eyes to look at him. He presses a kiss to the inside of her knee, and somehow that’s what causes her face to erupt in flames.
His mouth is tacky against her skin, and something burns in her chest, knowing that she’s the cause of it.
Eddie works his jaw, stretching like he’s sore, and Chrissy can’t look him in the eye as he fishes her panties off the floor behind him. “Don’t put those on yet,” he says as he hands them to her, and he still hasn’t wiped at his mouth. “Got a water bottle around here somewhere-”
Even in the low light, she can see his jeans straining, and Chrissy bites her lip.
Jason would have expected her to have taken care of him by now.
Of course, Jason hadn’t ever gotten on his knees for her. Eddie’s pretty clearly different.
And he just keeps proving it, because Eddie finally finds the bottle of water he’s looking for, and upends it onto a stray tee-shirt he’s dug out from somewhere back here. “It’s cold, sorry-” is all the warning she gets before there’s damp fabric against her, cleaning her up and swiping at her sticky thighs with gentle little strokes that nearly set her off all over again.
And only when he’s done does Eddie fold the shirt the other way, and wipe at his face with it.
When she reaches for his belt, he stays her hand. "You just told me how much you hated doing that," he says, smiling at her with a crooked grin, honest and true and not an ounce of guilt-tripping in it. Chrissy swallows, her mouth suddenly dry. "I'm a big boy, Chris, I can take care of it. This was about you, baby. Not me."
And he isn't wrong, per say. She had hated fumbling around backseats with Jason, sticky hands all she ever got to show for it.
"It's different," she murmurs, "if it's you."
And she can tell that he hadn't expected that, his eyes wide and taken aback as he just.
Looks at her.
Like she's something worth seeing.
Chrissy searches his face right back, brushes her thumb along the waistband of his jeans, and watches the shiver run through him. Her panties are still wadded up in a ball by her leg as she shifts, pushing him back and sliding down the pile of cushions to kneel in front of him, to press herself up to him fully.
When she unbuckles his belt and pops the button on his jeans, Eddie buries his face into her shoulder. "Not gonna last long," he warns, and Chrissy’s heart stutters in her chest, because she did this to him, got him all worked up doing nothing, Jason never would have admitted that, him and his stupid pride, too good to use his mouth or his fingers on her, telling her that good girls don't want those things-
He bucks into her hand when she wraps her fingers around him, like the barest of her touches is enough to undo him completely. Chrissy doesn't think she's ever been so flattered as he groans on her name.
Eddie’s hands are bunched into her blouse, surely causing wrinkles in her perfectly pressed shirt, and it sends sparks through her to think about looking at it later and knowing exactly who disheveled her flawless facade.
She wants to kiss him so badly her ribs ache with it, but she settles for pressing her mouth to his hair as he rocks against her, little panting breaths by her ear as she twists her wrist-
They're both going to need cleaned up again, Chrissy thinks blankly, as she feels her own slick slip down her thigh. She can't help it though.
Not with Eddie Munson slumped against her, just a little bit sweaty and smelling like boy, after she's taken him apart in a way she finds she actually likes, at least when it's him, when it's Eddie writhing under her touch.
And later, after he's gladly worked her up again with his fingers and sucked a mark into her throat, after they're both a laughing mess, hair mussed and cigarette burning, dangling from Eddie’s mouth, Chrissy looks at him as she tugs her panties on, and realizes she never got her kiss.
Something in her is too shy to ask for it now.
~
It's incredible how little it changes things.
He had never promised her anything, after all.
They hang out with Steve and Robin and Nancy, in separate deck chairs in Steve’s backyard, four feet between them like Chrissy hadn't rutted against his hip with her fingers gripping desperately at his shoulders in the backseat of the van on the way here.
She tells herself that it's just sex. It's just sex, and she knows what people say about men and sex and how it's not the same sort of big deal to them as it is to women, to overly-emotional, attached women, and god, Chrissy doesn't want to believe any of that.
Because it's Eddie. It's Eddie who smiles at her and holds her and tells her to make as much noise as she wants, take up as much space as she wants, this van is your castle, baby-
Chrissy gulps her drink, and hopes her face isn't flushed.
She watches Robin heckle Steve, and laughs in all the right places, but all she can think is that Eddie has put his mouth on parts of her she can't say in polite company, but not once has he kissed her.
Nancy is looking at her with knowing eyes, her gaze flickering between Chrissy and Eddie with raised eyebrows, and when Chrissy darts back to the house to get more ice, Nancy follows.
"He isn't like, making you do stuff, right?" Nancy asks, and Chrissy nearly chokes on her tongue.
She and Nancy had been close in elementary. If she closes her eyes, she thinks she could probably picture the layout of the Wheeler's house, sleepovers and birthday parties long in the past but no less loved now.
"God no," she says. "I'm the one jumping him," she admits, and it's so nice to say it out loud, to say it to Nancy, who lived through everything people said about her dumping Steve for Jonathan and gets what it's like to want something no one else seems to understand.
Except.
Well, it's not quite the same.
Because Eddie isn't her boyfriend.
He isn’t her boyfriend, and she has it in her head that he doesn’t want to be, because Eddie is jagged edges and soft smiles, teeth and tongue and laughter against her skin. Boyfriend is such a high school word, and she doesn’t think he’d wear it if she gave it to him, offered it to him with open palms.
Because high school is over, and they’re both standing on the other side of something bigger than Hawkins, something bigger than this dimension, and something bigger than some silly little word that Chrissy aches to call him.
Nancy smiles at her, one of those secret, shared smiles she remembers from the locker room on Mondays, when the girls would talk about their weekends and Chrissy would pretend she understood, like her Saturday night had ended the way they all gossiped about between tossing perfume bottles and hairspray back and forth between them.
Except now, Chrissy understands it.
“He doesn’t really have his dick pierced, does he?” Nancy asks, and Chrissy laughs into her palms, shaking her head. She’d forgotten about that rumor.
She’ll have to tease him about it later.
~
Teasing him had been such a good idea, Chrissy thinks, biting down on her knuckle. Her nails are scraping lines into Eddie’s back, but he really doesn’t seem to care, snapping his hips into her even faster.
“Don’t you wish,” he’d said when she’d brought up the alleged piercing, and Chrissy had flushed scarlet. And Eddie’s mouth had curled wolfishly, leaning over to tuck back a lock of her hair. “Can probably get you there without it, though. Wanna find out?”
Weirdest way anyone has ever said they wanted to fuck her, Chrissy has to admit. Asking if she wanted to know, like if she’d said no thanks, he’d have driven her home, hands to himself.
She doesn’t want him to keep his hands to himself.
He reaches up to tug her hand away from her mouth, kissing at the teethmarks indented on her finger. “I told you before,” and oh god, his voice sounds so wrecked. “You sound so pretty. Don’t hide it, please, Chrissy.”
Eddie gets his wish as he ducks to scrape his teeth over her collarbone, and Chrissy gasps, the sharp inhale shifting into a whine as he tangles his fingers with hers. “Better,” he whispers into her skin.
God, she feels so full and hot and safe, here in the back of Eddie’s van with him on top of her. She’s pretty sure she’s still got one sock on, and for the life of her she doesn’t know where her panties went this time, but none of that matters, because Eddie’s hand has snaked between them to brush his knuckles over where she’s sensitive and slick, his rings catching against her in the most interesting way, and Chrissy can’t help the way her back arches up, pressing herself into his touch like she’s dying for it.
She just might be, and that thought tips her over the edge.
Eddie cleans up both of them again, tying off the condom and wrapping it in fast food napkins to throw away later. His bangs stick to his forehead with sweat, and Chrissy doesn’t think she’s seen anything more satisfying than the evidence that he’d worked so hard to get her off.
There’s a pang in her chest as he reaches out to smooth her hair for her, and all Chrissy wants is for him to pull her in, to press her lips to his, but the way Eddie has stamped kisses all over her except for where she wants him to the most-
Well, she might just have to accept that it’s a line he isn’t going to cross.
~
She can’t take it.
For multiple reasons.
For one, she’s straddled over Eddie’s leg, her panties still on because she couldn’t be bothered to tug them off, and besides, the friction of his jeans and her pristine white cotton underwear is really doing something for her, and two, Eddie’s just tipped his head to the side instead of kissing her.
Chrissy doesn’t know if she wants to laugh or cry.
She hadn’t meant to try to kiss him. She’d told herself last week that if all he wanted was what they’d been doing, then fine. She doesn’t need to be his girlfriend to get close to him, to feel him against her.
The fact that what she wants so badly doesn’t necessarily involve sex with him is irrelevant.
Because what Chrissy wants is to listen to him talk about Corroded Coffin, and his latest campaign, about how his mom was a hairstylist and made the best french toast. She wants to hold his hand in public and sing Prince at him just to see his nose scrunch in distaste. She wants to wear his too-big jacket and laugh when he does something just to make her smile.
He clearly doesn’t want any of that.
Fine. Fine.
Tears prick unbidden at her eyes, and Chrissy swipes them away angrily, painfully turned on and hurt despite herself. So she rolls her hips against him, against where she can feel him, hard and hot beneath her, and asks, “Why won’t you kiss me, Eddie?”
A groan tears from his throat like he can’t help it, his hands on the small of her back as she arches into his hold. “Can’t come back from it,” he says through gritted teeth. “Jesus, Cunningham-” she grinds down relentlessly against him, and he chokes.
Chrissy slides her hand under his jaw, cradles his face and forces him to look at her. “I know this is just fucking for you-” and the way he moans when she says fucking at him has her bucking her hips. “-but it’s not for me.”
His eyes are wide, blown black in the dark of the van, and she can’t help the way her gaze flickers down to his mouth. “It’s okay if you don’t feel the same Eddie,” she says, and she doesn’t mean to brush her thumb over his bottom lip, but it happens, and his hips jerk beneath her. “But I want you to know.”
Eddie’s chest is heaving. “Who the fuck says that’s all this is for me?” he asks, looking at her like he’s seeing her for the first time. Chrissy blinks at him, surprised, and it must show on her face, because Eddie gives a breathless little laugh. “Chris, I was okay with this because I thought this was all I was ever gonna be to you. The guy you fucked after graduation. I’m okay with that, but-” he breaks off, his fingers digging into her back pleasantly, chasing sparks she can feel, too. “-but if I kissed you, jesus, I can’t recover from that. Break my heart, baby.”
She doesn’t know if that’s a statement of fear, or a demand, but either way, her soul splinters for him, looking at her with broken, fond eyes. “Eddie,” she says, and works so hard for it not to come out as a whine as he meets her shallowly rocking hips with his thigh. “I liked you before all this happened,” she says. “I still like you, so so much. You make my brain go quiet.”
His stunned expression means everything to her as she leans in again.
And finally, finally Chrissy Cunningham gets her kiss from Eddie Munson, wrapped up in his arms, far too chaste for what the rest of her is doing, but so incredibly perfect that she doesn’t care.
Eddie pulls away, forehead pressed to hers, both of them sweaty and unkempt and right. “Eighth grade,” he says, and Chrissy wrinkles her nose in confusion. “That’s how long I’ve liked you, Cunningham.”
Her heart is going to crack out of her ribs.
She’s sitting here in soaked panties, spread out on Eddie’s lap, and all she wants is to kiss him senseless. He already looks pretty dazed, if she does say so herself.
“I know you don’t remember-” he’s panting, just a little bit. “But I do. And you told me that you liked my song, and you were sorry my amp got unplugged. Sweetheart, I was a goner from day one. Never thought I’d end up here, though.”
And it feels so redundant, with the way they are right now, but Chrissy has to say it anyway.
“Go out with me,” she says, and she knows it’s more of a demand than she usually allows of herself. Eddie doesn’t seem to mind, his breathing picking up again. “The movies, a concert, Jupiter, I don’t care.”
“Anywhere you want, Chris,” he agrees, and she chases after him, relishing in his slightly chapped lips against hers. That tongue of his is just as talented at this as at everything else, and Chrissy sighs as he licks into her mouth, her fingers finding their new favorite place, buried into his wild mane of hair.
She’s going to get to hold his hand where people can see her, Chrissy thinks giddily. She’ll be able to say, my boyfriend and mean him. She’ll be able to wrap him in her arms outside of the safety of the van, hold him to her whenever she wants, brush his hair back from his face and kiss him just because she wants to.
The thought has her hips stuttering, or maybe it’s Eddie’s fingers brushing against the wet cotton of her panties, stroking her slowly back up, callused fingertips sliding against her with no resistance. There’s a part of her that wants to be embarrassed by how he can see what he does to her, dripping through her underwear against him, but the greater part of her just doesn’t want him to stop.
The way she can feel him twitching beneath her, she’s very sure that he isn’t worried about the mess she’s making on his jeans.
His mouth is preoccupied nipping at her throat now, but Chrissy doesn’t mind anymore, not now that she can pull him back up to her if she wants, and she tips her head back to give him better access. “...like you so much…” she murmurs, her voice lower than she even knew it could go. She’s only half-aware of what she’s babbling, too busy pressing into his touch. “Make me feel good, make me feel safe, Eddie, please-”
Eddie’s fingers work faster at her, and Chrissy swears she sees stars behind her eyelids.
He always does what she asks, what she pleads, and this is no exception, because all she feels is floaty as she slumps into him, Eddie following her immediately after when she breathes his name and strokes her palm over him just right, too worked up to even take himself out of his jeans.
She presses a kiss to his neck, salt on her tongue as he shudders against her. “The hell have you done to me, Cunningham,” he rasps, husky voice wrapping around her soul. “I told you, there’s no coming back from that for me,” and he’s teasing, giving her a way out but-
“I don’t want you to,” she says, smiling against his throat. “Stay,” Chrissy says, and pulls back. She runs her hands over his hair, combing it down and attempting to tame it to very little avail as he looks up at her with big eyes. “Because there wasn’t any way I could come back from that, either, and you know I hate being left by myself.”
“You’re stuck with me now,” he says, like he thinks it’s a threat, and Chrissy giggles. She’s sticky and spent, and Eddie Munson is making her laugh the way he always does, like he can’t stand the thought of her being unhappy, and nothing has ever felt so right in her life.
“Good.” she says firmly, and reaches out again to hold his face still, leaning up to pepper kisses along his cheeks and nose as he squirms.
And later, she’ll swat at him with a mortified squeal when he mutters something about never washing these jeans again, and he’ll grin at her, somehow both shy and dirty at the same time, and Chrissy’s heart will beat double time out of her chest, but for now.
For now, she’s more than content where she is.