Chapter Text
Chrissy stands hand-in-hand with Eddie Munson beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights of the 7-Eleven on Elm Street.
The fifth metacarpal of Eddie’s right hand snapped during a fight with Jason last week, and the cast that will ensure he’s able to play guitar properly again covers his ring and pinky finger. Chrissy’s name shouts from that cast, written in big black bubble letters just like his spectacular art screams from every inch of the cast covering her own severely splinted right arm.
Being able to hold only his first two fingers and thumb is weird, but they’re weird, Chrissy and Eddie. They’re freaks, and there’s power in that, so Chrissy only feels a sort of perfunctory twinge of embarrassment about the box of condoms tucked into the sling holding up her broken arm.
Condoms that will go onto Eddie’s penis.
And then Eddie’s penis will go inside Chrissy’s very eager, very enthusiastic vagina.
She’d never bought condoms before today. Obviously.
The only reason she’d ever even touched a condom was that Mr. White, the gym teacher, called on her to roll one over a banana during sex ed last year.
Unlike most of the other students in her class, Chrissy hadn’t been weird or stupid about putting the condom onto the banana. Condoms were contraceptive medical devices, and Chrissy wanted to be a doctor someday. What was there to be weird about?
After school, Chrissy found the entry for condoms in her Encyclopedia Britannica set and learned that the protective barriers had been in use for centuries. That was very interesting, and she spent an hour the next day at the public library learning about the history of contraceptives (she was very happy to live in a time of hormonal pills, latex sheaths, and rubber cervical caps so she didn’t have to resort to shoving things like animal bladders and sea sponges soaked in vinegar inside herself to prevent pregnancies).
As usual, Jason thought Chrissy’s interest in, well, everything was weird.
Jason, unlike Eddie, didn’t like weird.
“That’s gross, baby,” he whined when Chrissy told him about the animal bladders ( sometimes people used silk or linen, or other plant fibers, too). “Not really a turn-on, thinking about cow guts on my dick, you know?”
Chrissy tried not to think about how her mother called her a stupid cow while taking her measurements the day before.
(She’d gone to bed with an empty stomach and claw-shaped bruises beginning to bloom on her midsection and on her thighs and woken up to a slightly smaller cheer skirt that morning.)
Chrissy tried not to think about how her best friend Jenna, who was a year older and miles cooler than Chrissy, once giggled that having sex was like having your guts rearranged, but she said it as though that was a good thing.
(Jenna gave a long-suffering but not unkind sigh when Chrissy explained that it wasn’t possible for sex to rearrange your organs because the squishy things inside the human body are all carefully anchored and held in place by cool sheets of connective tissue called fascia.)
Chrissy tried not to think about Jason’s dick, either.
(Thinking about his dick usually meant she’d have to touch it. While Chrissy didn’t really mind jerking Jason off, she certainly didn’t like it. She usually preferred to give him blowjobs because it got everything over with so much faster.
Otherwise, Jason’s penis didn’t come up in Chrissy’s thoughts much because he wanted to wait until they got married to know each other as man and wife. He had some religious awe of penetrative vaginal intercourse, fully believing they would both go to hell if their genitals came anywhere near each other. Since the best thing Chrissy had ever felt when Jason put his hands up her cheer skirt was annoyed, she was more than happy to maintain the status quo.
She knew they wouldn’t use condoms once they were married because Jason was Catholic, and every wiggling little tadpole full of genetic material was sacred to them or something. Once they were man and wife, Chrissy assumed they’d have a lot of sex because Jason hated being an only child. Apparently, it was some huge disappointment that his mom hadn’t popped out a bunch more little Carvers. Jason wanted to make up for that failure by having lots of kids.
Chrissy… didn’t want to have a lot of kids. She wasn’t even sure she wanted any kids, but what was she supposed to say? She sort of thought she’d get on birth control and just… not tell him. There was already so much Chrissy didn’t tell Jason. It would be just one more thing to keep secret. A compromise, just with herself.)
But that was all before Chrissy stopped compromising. It was before the bones of her right arm shattered, before she fought her demons and fell in love and helped save the world.
Chrissy likes thinking about Eddie’s penis. She likes it so much that she thinks of it as his cock, a hot, heavy, powerful word that makes her mouth water. Chrissy likes touching his cock, tasting it, feeling it press against her.
Truthfully, Chrissy likes everything about Eddie: his wild, brilliant brain and his clever, wicked mouth; his calloused hands and his cackling laugh; the way his beautiful brown eyes go wide and attentive when she talks about something strange, then crinkle up in glittering excitement when he’s explaining something in turn; the comfort of his company and the way he touches her like he’s spotting her during a stunt, and never like he’s holding her back.
Like is far too weak a word to describe how Chrissy feels about Eddie.
She’s in love with him. It’s a marvelous thing to think, to know.
Chrissy loves Eddie enough to trust him, to tell him about the haunting visions, about her screwed-up relationships with her parents and with food. She trusts him enough to show him her broken brain, her imperfect body, her battered soul.
And even after all of that, Eddie is in love with her, too.
Eddie loves Chrissy enough to venture through hell with her, enough to make her breakfast and lunch after holding her while she cried, enough to come to California with her after graduation, enough to laugh about the idea of wearing sheep intestines on his cock if it meant they could finally, finally have sex.
The having sex thing shouldn’t feel like a finally. They’ve only been together since last Wednesday morning. Yeah, they met in middle school, but they’ve only really known each other for, what, ten days?
But so much has happened since then.
Vecna. The hospital. Jason. The Upside Down. The apocalypse.
And then, after all that, they had to deal with the real world. The police. Parents. Mental illness. High school.
They faced all of that together; because they are in love.
Those are facts.
Like the fact that, until right now, neither of them had any condoms.
That lack hadn’t done much to cool their ardor, a fact to which the hickies on both of their necks stand testament. They’re young and healthy and mostly happy. Between them, they have three and a half working hands, two eager mouths, and two perfectly working sets of genitals. Of course they found exciting, pleasurable ways to use them. Considering how fast most of the girls on the cheer squad moved with their boyfriends, Chrissy judges that they should’ve already made the leap and done the deed.
She and Eddie have done lots of other very fun things together, but they haven’t gone all the way.
And now that’s going to change, thanks to the Trojans tucked into Chrissy’s sling.
Tall and rangy, Eddie’s a little sweaty from band practice. His hair is kind of frizzy, puffier than usual, and he’s still buzzing with energy.
He’d been all over the place at Jeff’s house. Everyone had.
It was Chrissy’s fault. She was an outsider, and it set everyone in the band on edge. She understood that. They were used to playing for, according to Eddie, five drunks at the Hideout, not one wide-eyed, over-eager cheerleader in Jeff’s garage.
Perched on the milk crate Jeff pulled out for her, Chrissy tried her best to become invisible. She used to be so good at becoming invisible!
But it hadn’t helped.
She guesses it might have been like when judges came around during cheer competitions. The squad was comfortable at games and at pep rallies, but when the officials showed up, inspecting every move and whispering into those little dictaphones, it was hard not to feel intimidated.
Intimidation did not necessarily lead people to perform their best.
Gareth blushed and dropped his sticks a few times, then banged his drums way too loudly like he was trying to make up for the mistakes.
With the way he giggled and gazed off into the distance, Chrissy thinks Jeff might have been a little too stoned.
It was clear from his glares, grunts, and flat-out refusals to sing anything with lyrics involving women that Cyrus didn’t actually want Chrissy there at all.
And Eddie tried to show off while pretending not to show off. His fingers flew up and down the neck of his sharp, beautiful guitar, and the sounds he pulled from the instrument were unlike anything Chrissy had ever heard before. It was all very impressive, and Chrissy loved watching him play, but it was like seeing someone do a back handspring/back tuck when they were meant to be performing simple herkies.
Everyone called him out on it, and that led to several shouting matches and a lot of shoving before the four boys actually played anything recognizable as music.
It had been difficult, so difficult, not to try to help Eddie rein in the other musicians. But Corroded Coffin is Eddie’s band. Eddie’s thing. Chrissy tried to imagine what it would be like if he came to cheer practice and got involved. The thought made her shiver. It would be a nightmare. Eddie knew about as much about cheerleading as Chrissy did about heavy metal, and his trying to support her would backfire and totally undermine her authority as captain. She didn’t want to do that to him.
So Chrissy sat on her hand and tried to look pleasant rather than terrifying, but it wasn’t until she pulled Eddie’s copy of The Fellowship of the Ring out of her backpack and stopped obviously observing that the band actually figured themselves out.
Then, it had mostly been… loud. Fun, Chrissy supposes, if a person thinks loud can be fun. Lots of screaming from Cyrus and wailing guitars from Eddie and Jeff and big clashing cymbals from Gareth. They played some songs Chrissy was proud to recognize–something about rainbows that she thinks is by Dio, that Metallica song Eddie loves, and the crazy song about trains.
She watched Eddie out of the corner of her eye–the smudgy streak of his hair flying back and forth as he played, the glint of silver rings beside the shine of her red scrunchie on his left wrist, the flash of white from the cast on his strumming hand.
The way he moved made it hard to pay attention to whatever was going on with the hobbits and Tom Bombadil. The way he looked at her made it hard to think about anything other than the fact that she, Chrissy Cunningham, was absolutely, positively going to have sex with him as soon as band practice was over.
Well, after they bought condoms.
They decided it would be too weird to just buy condoms, so now, Eddie hums tunelessly, perusing the gas station’s snack selection. His tapping foot makes the silver chain on his torn black jeans jingle. Chrissy stands so close to him that she can smell the slight tang of his exertion and the bite of the Old Spice stick he ran over the black hair beneath his arms when they got back into the van.
She knows the deodorant was for her benefit. Looking at him now, all plush lips, nervous energy, and magnetic pull, Chrissy can hardly believe she’d ever thought he was mean and scary. He’s not. He’s sweet. He’s so sweet. Chrissy wants to eat him up like all the snacks and treats she was ever denied.
Chrissy’s eyes skip over the dark glitter of a five o’clock stubble shadowing Eddie’s jaw. It shines mahogany and russet like his hair in the harsh gas station light. He didn’t put his jacket and vest back on after band practice. His arms are bare thanks to Eddie’s stylistic predilections for tearing the sleeves off of weirdly scary band t-shirts. Chrissy watches the lean muscles of his left arm (deltoid, bicep, tricep, the lovely cluster of extensor carpi in his forearm) flex as he snags a Slim Jim, a bag of corn nuts, a pack of nicotine gum, a Twix bar, and two packets of Reese’s Cups from the snack aisle. Her scrunchie shines like a beacon where it sits on his wrist.
He offers to take everything to the front on his own, indicating the box of prophylactics in Chrissy’s sling in an attempt to spare her any of the awkwardness probably inherent in the actual condom-purchasing process, but Chrissy demurs. Her heart hammers as she leads the way to the front of the shop.
Chrissy slams the box of Trojans onto the counter, wincing at the slap of cardboard on plastic. Eddie bites back a laugh and scatters his armful of snacks alongside the box. Then he stands behind Chrissy, both hands on her shoulders and vibrating with energy like he might vault over her in a toe-touch or something.
“Good evening,” Chrissy chirps to the clerk. Her voice feels like a ponytail pulled back too far, high and tight, but it’s not nerves so much as it is excitement.
The clerk, a sleepy, middle-aged woman with bleached blonde curls, barely looks at them or their purchases as she rings them up.
“Anything else?” she asks, bored.
Chrissy shakes her head and hands over some cash from her wallet while Eddie, who can never stay still, fidgets so hard it feels like he’s dancing behind her.
They’ll dance at prom. She’s going to teach him how. Chrissy cannot wait.
The woman swipes everything into a plastic bag, passes it to Eddie’s waiting hand, and nods them a farewell.
Both of them burst into laughter the moment the glass door closes behind them, but the giggles are soon stifled by giddy kisses.
A few moments later, Chrissy experiences another first. Eddie says it’s a fucking tragedy she’s never had a Reese’s Cup before.
Looking at the candy’s bright orange packaging, Chrissy thinks, for a few seconds, that she might throw up. She can’t deserve this–the peanut butter and chocolate, this happiness, him. But then Eddie grins at her, all teeth and dimples, and chomps the cup in half. He offers her the bitten crescent, like a moon or a smile.
“I’ll eat any you don’t want,” he promises, and she kisses him because she can’t help herself, like she can’t help herself from accepting the candy from his fingers.
The flavor is even better from his lips, his chocolate and peanut butter tongue in her mouth, the press of him hard against her stomach, her hair loose around her shoulders, and her back arched against the side of his van.
It’s perfect. It’s incredible. It’s the best thing Chrissy has ever tasted.
And yet, Chrissy can’t agree with Eddie’s assessment because if she’d eaten a Reese’s Cup before, then she wouldn’t get to experience this delicious first here, with him, beneath the sodium-light glare of a gas station parking lot as the sun sets over the last day of the best, worst month of Chrissy’s eighteen years on earth.
It’s been a big day of firsts for Eddie, and all of them are because of Chrissy. Some key moments included:
- The first time he woke up early on a Monday (he needed to make breakfast for Chrissy and get lunch together, too).
- The first time he ever drove someone to school (two someones, actually, with Max in the back seat).
- The first time he arrived before the bell for his classes (partially because he wants to graduate, but mostly to spend more time with Chrissy).
- The first time he ever kissed someone in the Dungeon (incredible, transformative, life-changing).
- The first time he’s ever been asked to participate in Dungeons and Dragons as an actual player (he spent the first two years as a Hellfire member asking other people to play with him, and ever since then, all he’s done is DM, but Chrissy wants to go on adventures together and, shit, he fucking loves her).
- The first time he ever asked someone to prom (Chrissy said yes, of course she did, fuck yeah, she said yes).
- The first time he did any of his homework on the day it was assigned (it wasn’t even annoying, doing homework with her out at the picnic table after school).
- The first time anyone other than Jeff’s little sisters watched Corroded Coffin practice in the garage.
Band practice had been a shitshow. Eddie missed both last week’s practice and their normal Tuesday gig at the Hideout because he was, you know, falling in love and saving the world and shit. All that aside, Eddie’s hand is broken, which would make him fumble-fingered enough without the goddamned love of his life sitting on a milk crate in Jeff’s garage, reading Eddie’s dog-eared copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and blushing every time she looked at him.
When Chrissy blushed, her cheeks went the same color as her nipples.
How the fuck was Eddie supposed to concentrate on proper fingering for "Crypts of Eternity” when all he could think about was fingering her?
After screwing up the Slayer tune twice, Eddie excused himself, lying that he needed to take a leak. Chrissy blew him a little kiss and smiled as he practically sprinted into the house, which made things better and so much worse.
Dick clenched in his fist, hunched over the toilet in Jeff’s guest bathroom, Eddie got himself off fast and mean, thinking of nothing but the next Chrissy-fueled first the day held for him.
- They are going to have sex. Actual sex. Eddie and Chrissy, sitting in a tree, f-u-c-k-i-n-g. His thick cock in her pretty pussy sex.
Eddie’s had sex. Not a lot of sex, but enough that he’s pretty sure he’s not bad at it. He sure fucking hopes he’s not bad at it. No one’s ever complained, but no one’s ever come back for seconds, either, and he wants to be good for Chrissy, especially since it’ll be her first time.
As far as he knows, Eddie’s never been with a virgin before, but most of the people he’s fucked didn’t give enough of a shit about him to tell him their names, let alone provide detailed accounts of their sexual histories. That’s why he’s been pretty fucking strict about condom use and clinic visits.
And he doesn’t want to just fuck Chrissy.
Well, yeah, he does, obviously, but there’s a reason he asked her if they could take it slow.
Maybe five days from first kiss to heels-to-Jesus isn’t slow, but when compared to Eddie’s usual sexual trajectory, it’s glacial.
Before Chrissy, sex was always a spur-of-the-moment thing, a surprise that was usually part of a transaction. He had his first startled fuck and his first stunned kiss (in that order) in the same twenty-minute period, both with an older girl who pulled him by the belt loops into a bar bathroom when Eddie was sixteen.
Since then, it’s been mostly the same. A few one-offs with randy kids back from college who wanted orgasms to go with whatever drugs they were buying. Horny metalheads in Indianapolis after or during a show.
Mostly, they wanted Eddie’s hands or his mouth, but some actually wanted to make the proverbial beast with two backs, and that usually meant he got to nut, too. (Looking back, Eddie’s not sure he liked that more. He always felt lonelier when they left him, after.)
Chrissy never leaves Eddie lonely. She stutters praise as she bounces on his fingers. She whines his name when she shudders and breaks on his tongue. She smiles and hums when she sucks him off. She kisses him as he comes in her hand. After, she holds him. She kisses his cheeks, his nose, his eyelids. She slips her hand into the back pocket of his jeans when they walk together in the halls at school. She wrote her name real big on his cast so everyone can see he belongs to her. She laughs with him, teases him, and loves him so hard it makes Eddie feel like he’s glowing.
And she does love him. Really loves him. Chrissy knows him, knows he’s a fuckup and a freak, a dipshit ratfuck nobody, and she wants him just the same, rough, inconvenient edges and all.
She’s the only person who ever wanted him more than once, the only person who has let him in, chose him, the only person he’s been allowed to know. And Eddie knows so fucking much about her. He knows she’s funny and weird and brilliant. He knows she’s kind and good and broken inside. He knows how the muscle in her jaw jumps when she’s angry, how she rubs her left hand back and forth when she’s nervous. He knows how to hold her so she melts in his arms, knows kissing her neck and ears makes her shiver, knows the little wrinkle between her eyebrows that means she’s about to come.
Eddie has no idea how they got from the 7-Eleven to Forest Hills. It wasn’t a long drive, but his brain just… wasn’t recording memories, he guesses. Maybe all of the higher functions of his mind were between Chrissy’s thighs already.
He thinks it’s because the closer they get to his trailer, the closer they get to actually having sex. Fucking. Making love.
And that’s pretty intimidating because Eddie has sure as shit never made love before. Never been in love until Chrissy. Not even close.
And fuck, Eddie loves this girl. Loves her like he’d build her a three-bed, two-bath house with a white picket fence on the best street in the Upside Down if she wanted it. Loves her like he wants to tattoo her laugh on the roof of his mouth so he can taste it every second of every day. Loves her like he’s dying, like he doesn’t want to die, so he trashed his smokes in favor of nicotine gum, desperately hoping his lungs will hold out for a hundred thousand million more years with her.
So the closer they get to making love, the closer Eddie gets to losing his fucking mind.
What if he does it wrong? What if he screws up her first time? What if he lasts like two seconds inside her gorgeous pussy and disappoints her?
Worse than all of that, what if he hurts her? Eddie’s not, like, a porn star or anything, but Chrissy is tiny. She takes his fingers absolutely beautifully, but cocks aren’t fingers.
Chrissy isn’t nervous at all, which is incredibly hot and also kind of terrifying. She said a bunch of stuff about how vaginas work, which is super fucking cool because she’s so fucking smart, but Eddie’s a dumbass and went into a panting, hormonal fugue state the moment she said the word “arousal.”
Both of the Slim Jims are gone, and the tingling minty-pepper of Nicorette is replacing the aftertaste of bovine by-products in Eddie’s mouth when his autopilot turns off, and his brain restarts.
Chrissy is bouncing in the passenger seat as she sings to “Crazy on You” while they turn into the trailer park, grinning like Eddie’s fucked up, low-class community is prime real estate. Her golden-blonde hair is down around her shoulders, and her blue eyes are closed as she bops along. She’s exquisite in a pair of pink jeans and a white, short-sleeved t-shirt made out of some soft fabric that definitely doesn’t come in a plastic-wrapped three-pack from the discount store. It shows off most of her broken arm, proudly displaying the intricate flowers and images she’d asked him to draw over the plaster that covers her from shoulder to fingertips. She seems to like showing it off, his art, and that makes Eddie’s heart thump like Gareth going nuts during a drum solo.
His eyes flick to the clock on the dashboard as his kick drum heartbeat speeds up.
It’s 6:39 pm, which means Wayne should be…
Yep, Eddie thinks. Right on time.
Eddie’s uncle grins and waves from the front seat of his pickup as he approaches them on the packed dirt road serving as the neighborhood’s main drag. Eddie and Chrissy both wave back like they aren’t about to tear each other's clothes off the second they lock the front door of the trailer.
Slowing next to the van, Wayne rolls his driver’s side window down and gestures for Eddie to do the same. Eddie grumbles and complies. He loves his uncle, but he’ll strangle the old man if he wants a long, drawn-out jaw before work. They only have so much time before Chrissy’s goddamned curfew.
“Evening, you two!” the old man grins. Tennessee Ernie Ford is playing on the truck’s tinny radio. “How was school?”
Chrissy leans over the gearshift, digging one pointy elbow into Eddie’s thigh and resting her chin on her unbroken hand. Eddie tries not to think about how close her head is to his dick, but there’s only so much he can do in that department. She touches him so easily. It still kind of makes his head spin.
“School was great!” she bubbles, turning on that patented Chrissy charisma. “We’ve got some homework left to do, though. Are you headed to your shift?”
Wayne takes a drag on his cigarette, carefully angling the smoke away from Chrissy. He’s just a gentleman like that, he doesn’t even know it gives her headaches. “I am indeed. It is, as a matter of fact, my Friday.”
“Tuesdays and Wednesdays are his days off, so–” explains Eddie in a low voice as Chrissy nods. The movement makes the gold ‘86 charm clink against his mom’s ring on her necklace. They nestle in the hollow of her throat, just a few inches from the hickey he not-so-accidentally sucked below her left ear when they were making out at lunch.
Ignoring his nephew, Wayne carries on. “I’d have made something nice if I knew you were coming over, Chrissy girl, but y’all will have to scavenge for yourselves when it comes to dinner. Fridge and pantry are full, though!”
“Thank you, Wayne,” Chrissy smiles. “Are you expecting anything interesting at the plant tonight?”
Chuckling, Wayne takes another drag off his cigarette. “Let’s hope not.”
Wayne says something about no news being good news when it comes to his work, and Chrissy nods along and grins like it’s fascinating. Her nose wrinkles up into a laugh that Eddie can hardly hear over the pounding of blood in his ears. Her body heat soaks through the thin fabric of his shirt, through the denim of his jeans, but the warmth in Eddie’s chest isn’t physical.
Watching her chat with Wayne shouldn’t make Eddie feel so goddamn good, but it does.
Chrissy just fits.
Somehow, that transforms the vibrating, half-frantic urgency Eddie had felt since the clerk at the gas station handed over the bag of condoms and snacks, that need to fuck her, fill her, feel her muscles grip and flutter, make her happy, keep her happy, keep her, keep her, into something more like… Contentment. Trust. Ease.
It’s like falling into the groove of playing on stage after the full day of anxiety and excitement leading up to a show. The adrenaline not quite fading–just focusing on what his body was doing, or about to do.
Eddie knows he has Chrissy. She has him. This is real. This is… forever, maybe. That’s what she said, and he hadn’t been lying when he said that forever sounds good to him.
Forever sounds like everything.
And then, suddenly, Wayne is giving them a nod and saying goodnight. Chrissy wishes the old man an easy shift, and fuck, Eddie loves her.
He drops a gentle kiss on the top of her head before she pulls back into her own seat.
Chrissy’s eyes are soft and kind and so perfectly blue in the twilight of the trailer park.
“Home?” she says, her tone lilting up at the end like it’s a question, but it’s not. It’s a statement.
“Home,” Eddie agrees, but he means you.
Chrissy expected that going back to Eddie’s trailer tonight would be like yesterday afternoon, when he’d pushed her up against the door the moment they got inside, all fire and teeth and need .
But it’s not, and that’s somehow even better.
There is no furious rush to rip off clothing. There is no fighting with belt buckles and bra clasps. When Eddie drops to his knees by the front door, it’s because Chrissy can’t untie her Keds one-handed. Her unbroken fingers comb the dark curls away from his face so she can watch his smile grow as he slips off first the right, then the left. His silver rings glint when he tucks the laces into the shoes and places them by the worn couch in the front room. His big black boots find their spot right beside her little white shoes, and Chrissy's heart seems to swell at the sight of the mismatched footwear all snuggled together.
Their kiss, when he stands and slides his hands into her sloppy, finger-tangled hair, is two smiles meeting, two laughs entwined.
As she leads Eddie back into his bedroom, Chrissy moves with a clear-headed confidence that she rarely feels outside of cheer performances. There are no questions, no uncertainty. They both know what will happen, and they’re delighting in making that knowledge a reality.
They aren’t rushing. They’re taking their time, just like Eddie wanted.
Turns out, Chrissy wanted to take her time, too, even if she didn’t know it.
Not willing to release his hand, Chrissy waits for Eddie to open the door to his room, but he pauses. Takes his time to run the backs of his ringed knuckles over her cheek, raising goosebumps across Chrissy’s neck. Takes his time to tilt her chin up so he can lick her lips apart, wet and hot and so luxuriantly slow that Chrissy thinks she’ll melt like ice cream on his tongue.
Time itself seems to melt when they do get inside his cramped, cluttered nest of a room. Seconds lose their meaning as Eddie slaps, unseeing, to flip the light switch. The two cozy lamps on the tables he built in woodshop flick on, bathing the room and the lovers in a warm, amber glow.
Minutes glide together as Eddie’s whispers match her own murmured pleas and praises. The passage of time can only be estimated in breaths and heartbeats, kisses and sighs, the repeated sound of their names exchanged in tender, adoring gasps.
Chrissy and Eddie fumble their way onto the mattress on his floor, unwilling to be parted enough see or move properly. His bed is still sleep-rumpled–he never pulls the covers up–but the pillows by the wall are neatly arranged like they’re more important than the rest of the covers. The sheets are soft and smooth and already as familiar to Chrissy as her own skin.
Gravity follows time’s lead as the world shifts. Chrissy is free in Eddie’s arms. The caging weight of her own once-loathed body dissipates, banished by the magnetism that pulls her to Eddie, that pulls him to her. That brave aura of certainty, the surety that nothing they can do will be wrong, that everything is good and everything is correct and safe, swaddles Chrissy’s mind like the blankets around them.
They lose themselves in liquid kisses and indulgent touches. The huge Corroded Coffin banner on Eddie’s wall; the posters and art; the detritus scattered across every surface; the discarded water cups and smoked-out joint on his bedside table; the books jumbled haphazardly by the door, on the floor; the geese on the silly pillowcases she bought him–it all blurs together in a kaleidoscope of meaningless detail through half-closed eyes.
Laid side by side, they undress each other almost lazily, but there’s nothing disinterested in the deliberate way skin and soul are revealed.
Nothing has ever been more enthralling than the movement of Eddie’s untamed curls over his broad, tattooed chest as he pulls off his shirt. Composers might spend fruitless centuries writing great works of brilliant genius, but no music could compare to the soft sounds he makes when she slides the rings off his long, broad fingers. No glass lens could ever focus as acutely as Eddie’s dark eyes when he drags pink denim and damp blue cotton down her legs, kissing every exposed inch of skin. No joint or pill could ever bring Chrissy as high as his hands painting slow sweeps over her back, her ribs, down her stomach, across her hips.
If their time in the Dungeon today had been an open flame, this is a banked fire being rebuilt. The embers and coals of their desire, never extinguished, flicker and brighten, greedily igniting the fuel of their love. Heat grows steadily between their bodies, between the thundering beats of their hearts, between Chrissy’s shaking, slippery thighs.
They play at cartography again, mapping the unveiled expanses of each other’s naked bodies with fingers, palms, lips, tongues. Eddie’s eyes flutter closed when Chrissy traces the ink across his pectorals with her mouth. She huffs in pleasure as his broad palm charts a course from the hickey on her neck to rest at her sternum. His stomach trembles and tightens as Chrissy’s confident hand sweeps low, fingers dipping into the wiry hair below his navel. She sighs into his mouth when his fingertips slide over her peaked nipples, then moans when he follows his fingers with his tongue and his teeth.
As if by some unspoken agreement, they don’t touch each other between their legs, not yet. But the red, leaking tip of Eddie’s cock paints sticky marks into Chrissy’s skin as he rocks against her, and Chrissy’s dripping center ripples and aches in response.
Eddie speaks against her skin, calling her gorgeous and mine and Chrissy, Chrissy, Chrissy. He murmurs endearments and affirmations, declares his adoration over and over and over. Chrissy responds as she can, touching him everywhere, repeating his name, telling him how deeply she loves him, how happy she is with him.
He shudders and twitches when she tells him he’s good. He always does.
Maybe that’s why she says it again and again, just to feel him quiver and hear him gasp.
Maybe that’s why she uses her grip on his hair to maneuver him atop her. The guitar pick necklace drops forward, just brushing Chrissy’s breast as he settles between her legs, close enough that she feels the smoldering sensation of him against her core without any of the electrifying skin-on-skin contact she craves.
Maybe that’s why she finally whispers, “Eddie?” and lets her voice raise at the end like a question rather than a statement of fact.
“Yeah?” he gasps against her neck, stilling above her. One of his hands is buried in her hair at the back of her skull, tilting her head up to him. The other cups her chin, his thumb dragging at her bottom lip. The fall of his hair tickles Chrissy’s throat, and his wood-dark eyes are all pupil.
“We’re taking our time,” she murmurs, arching up so her small breasts press into his chest. “We’re not rushing.”
His skin is scarlet from his jaw down past his tattoos. The long column of his throat works as he gulps.
“Yeah,” he agrees, hands holding her face up to his. His cock jumps between her legs, just touching her swollen center.
The touch is a spark catching on dry tinder. Unthinking, Chrissy pushes forward and up to grind her wet, hot core along the burning, straining length of him.
She hisses at the contact. The friction is divine, obscene, a question and a plea and an answer all at once.
Eddie’s head falls forward to press against hers, and a strangled grunt rips itself from his flushed chest. The sound resolves itself into Chrissy’s name and shoots tingling static joy right to the base of her spine.
Shivering like she’s been electrocuted, Chrissy rolls her hips again.
“Can we go a little faster, please?” she pleads, breathless and impatient against his lips.
Chrissy is going to kill him, or Eddie is going to embarrass himself.
She’s very talented, and he’s a fucking dumbass, so maybe it’ll be both.
The blazing, soaking slide of Chrissy’s cunt against the underside of Eddie’s bare cock is the most erotically torturous experience of his life, and if she does it one more time, Eddie is going to come so hard his whole body will turn inside out.
Tendrils of her golden hair form graceful whiplash lines across the dip and curve of her collarbones, leading to the ripe, peachy peaks of her soft, soft tits. A haze of lust blows her pupils wide as Chrissy pants because of him. The flickering pulse in whatever vein or artery or something that runs up her smooth neck, it’s because of Eddie. The moisture drenching his cock, the radiant heat between her thighs, the desperation in her voice, it’s all because of him.
It’s better than running a perfect campaign. It’s better than getting blitzed out of his mind on weed or shrooms or coke or whatever. It’s better than headbanging, ear-splitting, guitar-shredding thrash metal played so loud it breaks the speakers.
It’s Chrissy, wonderful and wanton and wild for him.
Eddie can’t help but press his hips into her heavenly body, can’t help but rock against her in short judders, can’t help the dumbfounded words falling from his mouth.
“Yeah,” he manages to grit out. He’s proud when his lips form actual words and not fucking gibberish. “We can do anything you want, sunshine. What do you want?”
“You,” she says, her sublimely strained voice confirming his stumbling thoughts. “You, Eddie.”
He wants her, too. Wants to plunge inside her like he’s jumping off the cliffs at the quarry. Wants to make a home inside her, wants to fuck himself so deep they merge into one being. His heart already beats inside her chest, and her voice already lives inside his head. Why do they need these stupid separate bodies?
But it’s her first time, and while she’s slowly soaking his sheets, the last thing Eddie’s going to do is hurt the goddess spread out beneath him.
“Okay,” Eddie nods. It is a Herculean task to untangle his hands from her hair and sit up, but Eddie manages it. He is her hero, after all.
Chrissy doesn’t see his movement as heroic, though. Her ragged noise of satisfaction transforms into a whine, that petulant rising complaint Eddie fucking loves because it means she wants him, needs him, can’t manage without him. She even kicks her little feet in frustration, and if he wasn’t already head over heels for her, that alone would have done him in.
“I know, babe,” he soothes, sliding his uncasted hand down her chest, across the perfect handfuls of her breasts, over the flat plane of her stomach. “I know.”
She whines again, his name this time, catching his broken right hand in hers. She tugs at him, begs. “Eddie, please .”
Eddie’s head goes light as he shuffles back a little on his knees. The breath he hauls in feels thin, immaterial, but his pulse thuds in his heavy, twinging cock. He uses his left hand to squeeze the base hard to maintain any sort of self-control.
It kind of helps.
“Relax. I’ve got you,” Eddie assures her as she tugs him to her again, making more of those beautiful, wordless sounds.
With difficulty, Eddie extricates his fingers from her grip and drops forward onto his elbows, getting his face right into the glistening glory of her cunt beneath the curling, dark blonde thatch between her legs.
“Hello, beautiful,” he grins, mouth already watering. She’s just so gorgeous down here–pretty and pink, bittersweet and heady, kissable and swollen like her mouth, just begging for–
Chrissy tenses, her whole body going rigid. “Wait!”
“What?” Eddie looks up, startled. She usually loves his tongue inside her, the suck and drag of his lips and tongue and teeth coupling with the in and out thrusts of his fingers.
Propped up on her unbroken elbow, Chrissy’s blue eyes are suddenly nervous and unsure. “I thought… I thought we were going to, um.”
She looks pointedly at the floor near the edge of his mattress. Eddie follows her gaze to his discarded jeans. The silver cardboard box of condoms winks at them from the pile of denim.
Huffing out a laugh, Eddie smiles. He smooths his flat left palm and the free fingertips of his right hand across the tense, damp skin of Chrissy’s inner thighs, massaging and kneading until the muscles go slack again.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he explains, settling back down between her legs.
Chrissy’s inhalation is sharp and high when he slides two thick fingers through the slippery, soaking silk of her puffy pink lips.
“I told you, you won’t,” she says, voice reedy and strained. “Vaginas are made for this, and I’m so wet, Eddie. You could probably just slide right in and I’d be fine.”
Jesus H. Christ, she’s gonna make him lose it so stupidly fast. Thank fucking god he jerked off at Jeff’s place. Still, he’s got to get her off quick, so this isn’t a complete disaster. He needs her to come first, needs it like air because as soon as he’s inside her, Eddie is going to fucking explode. A one-pump chump, that’ll be him, and he can’t bear the thought of disappointing her here.
“I don’t want you to be fine,” he manages. “I want to make it good for you, take care of you, sweetheart.”
Her hips jerk a little at the pet name, and her mouth drops open in a gasp when he circles his fingertips along the rim of her fluttering, grasping opening.
Eddie licks his lips in anticipation. “You’ve got a former drug dealer here, babe. Don’t you know the first one’s always free?”
Playing it far cooler than he feels, Eddie winks just to see if her breath hitches.
It does.
“Oh!” She lets out a single perfect syllable as he keeps circling, teasing, getting her wetter and more desperate, because she’s nowhere near as desperate as Eddie is. “Oh, Eddie, but–”
“But what?”
“That’s not what you said.”
“When?” Eddie plants a kiss into the crease of her hip and follows it with a broad, wet lick that tastes like skin and sweat and mouthwatering desire.
“At the p-picnic table,” Chrissy stammers, still propped on her elbow to watch him. He’s never heard her stutter like this. The power goes right to his leaking cock like a bolt of lightning. “You said you’d d-do a half-ounce f-for tw-twenty.”
Mother fucker, Eddie loves her. How does she fucking remember things like that at times like this? She’s a fucking genius. She’s so fucking cool. What the fuck is she doing with him?
Eddie slows his touch to a gentle rub over her fevered flesh. He rests his cheek against the slight swell of her hip. She’d know the name of the bone, he’s sure.
“How much do you think a half-ounce of weed usually costs, Tinkerbell?”
Her face and voice go soft and slightly confused, but her hips follow the dance of Eddie’s fingers. “Twenty dollars?”
“Double that. I charge higher if people are assholes,” Eddie laughs, just brushing her clit with his thumb. Her body jolts and her eyelids flutter.
Chrissy drags in a heavy breath that makes her tits bounce. “Why?” It’s more of an exhalation than a word.
“Because I need to make a profit—”
“No,” she says, forcefully this time. “You were– you were going to give me a h-half ounce for fif-fifteen dollars—”
“How much of a discount is that?” Eddie asks, heart thudding as he dips his two middle fingers into the tight, slick heat of her, nice and easy.
She’s so wet, there’s no resistance at all.
Chrissy doesn’t answer him, just bites her plump bottom lip and breathes through her nose, watching while Eddie fucks her, shallow and slow with his left hand. He loves her blue eyes, but they’re nearer to black now, and she’s never been more attractive.
“Come on,” he teases, voice steadier than his heartbeat. “You’re so good at math, smart girl. How much of a discount was I going to give you?”
Her slightly over-large front teeth leave bloodless indents on her bottom lip when she releases it and closes her eyes. Her eyebrows crinkle in concentration.
“Um. Forty down to fifteen. That’s, um.”
A sudden, striking desire to make Chrissy come all over his face while she calculates his pitiful, miserable middle school crush slams into Eddie’s heart. He opens his mouth wide and licks a filthy, delicious stripe from where his fingers pump up to the sweet bud of her clit.
“Eddie,” she keens. Her eyes fly open and her whole body shudders when he sucks. The muscles around Eddie’s fingers grip and clench.
“Gonna come for me?” Eddie urges, releasing her clit while his fingers press in and up. “Already?”
And then her evil, freezing feet worm their way beneath Eddie’s ribs and wiggle.
He never should have let her find out that he’s ticklish. She’s a fucking menace.
Eddie squeals into Chrissy’s center, recoiling instinctively from the tickling, squirming toes. His fingers fly out of her with a wet noise to match his undignified shriek.
The aching jut of his cock slaps against his stomach when he sits up on his knees, half annoyed and half impressed because, well, turnabout is fair play. He was kind of fucking with her, and he kind of loves that she’s fucking with him, too.
“Sixty-two and a half,” Chrissy pants, resting on her good elbow. Her whole face is bright pink, up to the tips of her ears, and her chest heaves as she breathes hard.
He has no goddamn clue if she’s right, but she probably is. She’s Chrissy.
“I said you were robbing me blind,” he grins, grabbing both of her ankles and spreading her open again. He’ll throw her legs over his shoulders or get them under his armpits this time. She gets so wriggly right before she comes, and she likes when he holds her steady–
“Eddie,” Chrissy demands, twisting out of his grip like a sexy little eel. “Why would you give me a sixty-two-and-a-half-percent discount?”
“Because I was fucking nuts about you, obviously.”
Her light eyebrows furrow in confusion. “We had barely spoken–”
“But we were speaking,” Eddie says, reaching for a leg again. She could easily outmaneuver him, but she lets him catch the slender curve of her calf, and that, that choice, makes Eddie's cock throb. She keeps choosing him, over and over again, and he’s going to choose her every single time.
Eddie presses a kiss into her muscular flesh, lips dragging over her skin. “Chrissy Cunningham left a note in my locker.”
He nips a bite at the inside of her knee, working his way back up to her perfect pussy as he thinks about that note. Green ballpoint pen (he knows now that she uses green pens and notebooks for science classes) on pink notebook paper (red is for math), torn unevenly like she was in a hurry, the lower case i's dotted with little hearts.
His name, dotted with a little heart, maybe two inches away from hers, signed the same. Her name on his cast, with the big bubble heart over the i. His jagged signature on the inside of her wrist, hidden just for her amongst the twisting flowers and bones and love he’d drawn all over the brace.
“Chrissy Cunningham,” he sing-songs. “Always so nice to everyone. So good, so smart, so fucking pretty in your little cheer outfit.”
That earns him a giggle as she lays back, her head on the new pillow she bought him, hair spilling over the stupid, amazing little geese on the pillowcase.
“Ah,” she says, nodding like she’s figured something out. “It was a cheerleader discount.”
He looks up from her thighs, disgruntled. “It was a Chrissy fucking Cunningham discount! Ask Jenna. Ask anyone on the squad. All jocks pay full price.”
Chrissy reaches out to trace the line of Eddie’s jaw. Leaning into her touch like he always does, Eddie shuffles up the bed just to get closer to her.
“But you didn’t know me then. I mean, there was the middle school talent show, but…”
Shaking his head, Eddie flops down beside her, lying on his stomach while she lays on her back. It’s not necessarily sexy, laying like this, but he’ll be able to work her up again pretty fast.
He kisses across the rounded knob where Chrissy’s shoulder protrudes from her cast, snuggling against her side. “It was super fucking obvious that something was going on with you–”
“You were the only one who noticed anything,” she murmurs, rolling onto her bad arm to shine the full power of her gaze on him.
He remembers her terrified expression, her scream when she backed right into him. Eddie did his best to put her at ease, to calm her down, and even then, she was freaked out.
“I thought you were scared of me,” he admits.
Chrissy shakes her head, hair flying. “Not at all, not once we started talking. And I was really surprised you actually wanted to talk to me, because you seemed so cool, and I was such a dork. I was being so weird–”
Eddie grins. “I am very cool, and you are definitely a weird dork.”
Chrissy smiles back, but it’s just a little movement of her lips. It doesn’t do anything to her eyes. “Everyone else just… saw whatever they wanted when they looked at me, but you saw…” Chrissy pauses, looks away like she’s trying to think of the right word, then flicks her gaze back to Eddie’s. “You saw me.”
The words hit like barbed arrows. Eddie actually has to hide his face in the pillow under his chin, shoving one arm up and under the soft cushion. The golden threads of her hair tickle his nose. He takes a few deep breaths, gathering his thoughts, then rolls over to face her, too.
Chrissy’s gaze is still dark and intense, deep and captivating. Her eyes skip across Eddie’s face like she’s trying to memorize him, like she might make flashcards of his features. Like she wants to keep him.
Forever, maybe.
Eddie speaks around the lump forming in his throat.
“You saw me right back,” he tells her, reaching up to brush his fingertips across the apple of her cheek. Her eyelids flutter shut, soft and trusting. Eddie’s heart aches. “No one looks at me like you do. You looked at me like I was, I don’t know, normal? Important?”
Chrissy’s eyes open, and her eyebrows fall. “You are important, Eddie. You’ve always been important.”
She’s always like this. She’s always defending him, picking him up, making him feel…
“I fucking love you.” It bursts from him, startling her into a smile. “Even then, I was a fucking goner. You smiled at me, just like that.” He runs his thumb along her smooth, warm chin, then drops his hand back to the bed. “You remembered my band’s name. You laughed at my dumb jokes, and you looked at me like—”
“I didn’t want it to be a drug deal,” Chrissy whispers, reaching up to card her good hand through the tangled mess of Eddie’s hair. It’s like being touched by sunlight made solid.
“What?”
“Well, I definitely thought I needed the drugs, but… I didn’t want it to just be a drug deal.”
“What do you mean?”
Chrissy’s eyes go far away when she sighs. “I was so scared that day. I saw Vecna’s clock right before you showed up.” Her gaze returns, and she shifts forward, pressing closer to him. Eddie can feel the kiss of her nipples against his chest. “But then you were there, and it was gone .”
He’s never been so proud of just existing somewhere before, of getting somewhere on time for fucking once.
“You said we were safe,” Chrissy continues, tracing the shell of his ear. “I wanted to believe you so bad. Then you listened when I asked you not to go. No one ever listens to me, but you did right away.”
“I always listen to you.”
“I know,” she coos. “I know, and I love that. And you made me feel normal. That was the first time I laughed in… months, probably? You called me a freak like it was a good thing. I would have paid anything to feel normal, and you just… did it. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.”
Eddie’s amazed he still has a boner because it feels like all the blood is rushing straight to his brain. There’s no room for embarrassment in his thudding, aching heart.
“Jesus Christ, sunshine,” he whispers, sketching his fingers across the line of her left eyebrow, then tweaking the tip of her nose, which makes her puff out a laugh. “I probably would have tried to pay you to smoke my weed just to keep you around for a little longer if I thought I could have gotten away with it, damn.”
Her eyes go a little sad, which isn’t what Eddie intended at all.
“When you offered me that discount, I was so disappointed.”
“Why?” he asks through trembling lips. His heart is beating so hard it should be visible through the skin and bones of his chest.
“Because that meant it really was just a drug deal, that we weren’t hanging out,” she explains, looking almost abashed as her hand rests on his neck. “I wanted to hang out with you. More than I wanted to go to the Championship game. I just wanted to be around you. To feel safe and normal and good. I wanted to see you play at the Hideout and be your friend and—”
Eddie kisses her. He has to. He’ll die if he doesn’t.
She squeaks in surprise. Eddie licks the sound from her lips as she softens and pushes herself into the long line of his body like she was made to be there. Wrapping her in his arms, Eddie rolls them until Chrissy is on her back again. Her hand snakes down to where his cock presses into her stomach, but Eddie’s maniacal now, driven mad by love, and there’s no time for anything but making her scream.
He pulls her hand back into his hair, winds her fingers into his curls, and holds her legs open as he kisses and sucks back down to her quivering, pulsing cunt.