Chapter Text
It was a weird fucking day.
Walking into the hellscape that was school, the aura was weird. Anticipation hung heavily in the air; the promise of an impending week off made tension thick as people prepared for their spring break with wandering minds and jittery dispositions. Ignoring lessons outright in favor of planning road trips and parties, discussing how to obtain alcohol despite the prying eyes of ‘authority figures’ standing over their shoulders.
Eddie reveled in it.
Six years later and he still lived for days when it was obvious that school was an afterthought. Even the meatheads who didn’t have any goddamn clue that they were living the last few weeks of their peak were itching with the excitement of fucking off for nine full days of uninterrupted freedom.
Friday would be even better. Sitting through the monotony of his Thursday classes, Eddie just smirked as he tuned out the droning of teachers with equal levels of get-the-fuck-out-of-here-itis. While his break wasn’t necessarily overflowing with social engagements, he had pretty loose plans with Corroded Coffin to hit up some local metal scenes in Indy and had been writing a one-shot for Hellfire, since he knew that the ending of the Cult of Vecna campaign would leave the freshmen sheepies wanting.
In between that, Eddie figured he’d flit around, making money off the backs of his fellow idiot highschoolers and taking advantage of Rick’s abandoned lake house with the boys. (Honestly, if his supplier didn’t want Eddie to use his house while incarcerated, he shouldn’t have moved to the lake and then been sent to the penitentiary.)
So, yeah. Eddie was absolutely, unapologetically adding to the mass of flittering suspense hanging around the hallowed halls of Hawkins High. Submerged as he was on the way to the lunchroom, where the hectic buzzing would be even more pronounced as the masses congregated, he almost didn’t notice the little note that fluttered to the ground as he shoved his books into his locker.
Almost.
If it had been from anyone else, Eddie probably wouldn’t have caught it at all. But the concentration of citrus, of ginger and chocolate and lavender that wafted from that fluttering little slip of paper nearly dropped him to his knees once it hit his nose.
He knew that scent. He knew that fucking scent.
It hit him like a goddamn fist to the gut every time she slipped past him in the hallway. Every time she crept around him after class, giving him a timid little wave and a polite, reserved smile. Every time he got caught downwind of her in the parking lot, standing beside her jockstrap boyfriend’s jockstrap Jeep waiting for him to finish his peacock strut in front of the other ball fondling jocks.
Yeah. Eddie could detect Chrissy Cunningham in a blind lineup if they made him triple his dosage of shitty blockers. The free clinic in Indianapolis did their best to suppress his instincts, but they couldn’t prevent him from knowing her scent.
They just kept him from going batshit about it every goddamn day.
(If his dick gave a valiant twitch every time he caught that scent in his nose, though, that was between him and the expensive ass bottle of synthetic Omega slick in his nightstand.)
It took conscientious effort to lean down. To pick up that torn slip of college ruled paper and unravel her crisp little lines. To read the needlessly cute scrawl of her handwriting hidden by her primly tucked folds.
Eddie,
Can you please meet me after school today? I’d like to discuss your side business.
–– Chrissy C.
Oh. Oh, Jesus Christ, she was so adorable. I’d like to discuss your side business, like he was some type of contractor and she needed a retaining wall laid in her yard. Like she was afraid of saying the shit people normally wrote in these stupid notes – need some grass, meet me outside. God, Eddie had to stop himself from laughing. From preening. From stuffing that piece of paper into his nostrils so he couldn’t smell anything that wasn’t Chrissy Cunningham for the rest of the day.
She literally knocked the breath right out of his fucking lungs and she didn’t even know it.
Grabbing his own half-shredded piece of paper – because he was absolutely not willing to use the little sheet she’d already provided and lose some of that delectable scent – he wrote a responding note telling her where his picnic table was, waiting until the halls were empty before sliding it through the slats of her locker.
Shit. Shit. He was riled up. Lunch bumbled by in a blur, his fingertips tingling every time he happened to glance toward the jock’s table. She wasn’t there, of course – she was never at lunch – but Crapshoot Carver was. Surrounded by his goons, trying desperately to appear as though he deserved his ridiculous ‘royal’ title as everyone ooh’d and ahh’d every bullshit word that fell from the spittle around his lips. Like he was more than just the most recent in a long fucking line of Alpha sport captains to walk through the gym doors thinking their glands smelled like victory.
He wanted to cackle. Because he was meeting Carver’s girlfriend in a matter of hours behind school, and he’d bet all of the product in his box of tricks that King of the Ball Fondlers had zero idea. Zilch. No way, no how.
End of the day couldn’t come fast enough. And despite how immaculate the weirdness at school was, Eddie’s newfound need to check the clock every five seconds had nothing to do with break and everything to do with the Omega he’d been marginally obsessed with for six years.
Like. Okay. Obviously when he’d first met her, neither of them had yet presented. She was just this tiny girl who told him not to be nervous at a middle school talent show before his band went on stage (and, y’know, got unplugged halfway through their set, but whatever). But goddamn if his imagination didn’t take that completely innocent interaction and fucking run with it.
Two years later, when they were finally housed within the same building again, Eddie found himself glancing up every time he caught the color of her hair bounding through the halls. The strawberry blonde that reflected light so perfectly it cast rainbow fractals straight through his fucking corneas. And her eyes – Christ. Like a storm was just settling over the ocean, clouds rolling in and blending the sea and sky into one.
Eddie had popped into hell for the first time halfway his sophomore year, having to take a full week off from school to go through a rut that nearly overturned the entire fucking trailer. After that, Wayne – a Beta who had no clue how to deal with an Alpha under his roof – had given up the back bedroom so Eddie could have some privacy, then had taken him to the free designation clinic in Indianapolis, since his shitty health insurance through the plant wouldn’t cover blockers.
He told himself if he never had to live through that bullshit again, it’d be too soon.
But then, he almost fucking did.
His first go-around at senior year had him taking woodshop just to fill up his extracurriculars. Fucking alarmingly, it was also the first and only class he’d ever share with Chrissy Cunningham.
She always smelled great. Something subtle, at the time, but so distinctly Chrissy that it made Eddie want to rip his own lungs out and submerge them in her aroma. And that was before she ever presented, sitting across the woodshop room, most of her almost-but-not-quite lost in sawdust and machine oil. It was as though his instincts knew what she’d be before she knew herself.
One day, he trudged into class late, his eyes automatically darting toward her seat on the other side of the room. She wasn’t there, and Eddie heaved out a heavy sigh of remorse for not skipping. What was the point in this stupid class if Chrissy wasn’t in it? Then, like he’d summoned her by willpower alone, she was sprinting into the room, whipping around the door jamb so fast that she ran smack into his spine.
“Sorry, sorry! Are you okay?” she apologized, wide eyes looking up at him with genuine concern and a small tinge of mortification. And, holy shit, her scent. He’d never gotten so close, not since his senses heightened. Eddie could barely manage to nod, giving her what he hoped was a leisurely smile as he gestured around the roadblock of his body so she could take a seat.
The next day, he walked into that class and got walloped in the fucking jaw with something so insanely delicious, it nearly pancaked him. Threw him on the goddamned ground and curb stomped him for effect. Because it sat heavy, closing around his throat in a fisted cloud of want he’d never before experienced. Every breath into his lungs heaved out some new note to find, each inhale interspersed with mouthwatering little surprises.
He knew, before he’d even looked up, exactly what he was scenting.
Chrissy Cunningham was presenting.
She was sitting at her usual table. Staring at the wood grain-printed laminate with wide, glazed eyes, arms wrapped around her midsection. Ruddy cheeks and heaving chest and holy shit. It was insane to him that no one else seemed to realize her blight. His fucking dick nearly ripped its way out of his jeans in search of her.
Blinded and dazed by the roaring rush of his blood, Eddie stumbled into his own seat, fingernails digging into his thighs hard enough he thought he’d shred the denim. How he was expected to sit through an entire class period without dying was impossible to know. He just knew that he needed to stay as far away from her as possible.
Did that stop his inner hormones from throwing a fucking rager in his chest? Absolutely-the-hell- not. It took more willpower than he knew he possessed not to tear through that classroom, throw her over his shoulder, and Tarzan-swing his way back to his house so he could lay her out amongst his things and collapse into her chest. Because fuck she was an impossible force and Eddie would gladly drown himself in her gardens if this was the last thing he smelled.
After about thirty seconds of his eyes boring into her back, she suddenly stood up. Glancing so quickly over her shoulder he thought maybe he’d imagined it before she was bolting from the room with some halfhearted excuse to the teacher.
He felt himself tense to run after her, possession rolling off him so heavily his table partner unconsciously leaned away from him with a grimace, but he kept himself in that wobbly chair like his life depended on it. And maybe, just a little bit, it did. Because he’d straight up jump off the quarry if he ever did anything to hurt Chrissy, and taking advantage of her vulnerability would’ve been exactly that. Getting any closer to her than he had would have sent him into a goddamn rut in the middle of school, and Eddie didn’t know what he’d do if he’d been given the chance.
She didn’t come back to school for over a week. During that time, Eddie forced himself to make the trek back to Indy to up his blockage dose, grumbling when the clinic told him it’d be twenty-six dollars for every three month supply.
Bullshit. But knowing what Chrissy would be when she came back from her presenting heat? Eddie couldn’t be anything but relieved.
So, yeah. She’d been transferred by the school from woodshop into home ec, as it was a course ‘better suited’ to Omegas, whatever the fuck that meant, and Eddie was once more resigned to seeing her in glimpses in the hallways and seldom elsewhere.
Until now.
Actively being sought out by Chrissy had absolutely not been on Eddie Munsons’s nineteen-eighty-six bingo card, but it had the same effect of him shouting out the first ‘bingo’ of his entire life. He was out of his seat like an unhitched arrow as soon as the final bell rang, trying to play it cool and not sprint into the woods after her. Or get there before her to make sure his outdoor bazaar stand was up to her standards.
Which was kinda impossible, because Chrissy deserved the best of everything life had to offer. Some rundown picnic table slowly succumbing to the elements was not, nor would it ever be, on that list. But. Y’know. Limited options, and all that.
“Hey, Eddie. Got a minute?”
Suppressing the urge to growl, Eddie turned around, brows raised as he cast an inquisitive gaze down over Dustin Henderson. Flanked on either side by Will Byers, Lucas Sinclair and Mike Wheeler, the four boys looked nervous. Which–– Okay, yeah. Playing the part of Big Bad Alpha had given Eddie a sort of reputation, he supposed. Even amongst his own little pack of unpresented freshmen sheep.
Crossing his arms and leaning back against the lockers, he made a go on gesture. The four boys all looked at each other before Mike gave Lucas a half-hearted little shove.
“So, uh,” Lucas began, glancing at Eddie before casting his eyes away. Jesus Christ, did these kids not know he had somewhere to be? “Listen, I-I know tomorrow is, um. I know tomorrow is the end of the campaign?”
“Right.”
“And I really, really want to be there, of course! It’s–– I mean, wow, it’s been amazing so far, even with how demented it is, and I’m, like, stoked to see where you take it and everything! I’m just, um. I-I just––”
“The point, Sinclair,” Eddie growled, lips twisted in a snarl. “In this century, preferably.”
“Lucas has to miss Hellfire because of basketball and he wanted to know if we can reschedule!” Dustin practically shouted, briefly glancing at Eddie before finding something very interesting to stare at on the tops of his shoes.
Blinking, Eddie just… gawked. The audacity of these children. Were he not being held up, minutes ticking by while his ass was supposed to be somewhere far more important, Eddie might’ve laughed. Might’ve drawn out their trembling little terror for the sheer humor of it.
But, as it was.
“You want to postpone the Cult of Vecna?” Eddie hissed.
“W-Well,” Lucas stuttered. “Just… Just for one night? It’s the championship game––”
“Oh, it’s the championship game?” The biting sarcasm in his tone had all four of his children tensing up, eyes cast anywhere that wasn’t him. “Oh, well in that case, if it’s for the championship game. Might as well roll over onto our backs across the field and let the jocks run all over us for the championship game! ”
“It’s, um, it’s actually the court,” Mike said, barely able to meet Eddie’s glare. “In the gym. N-Not, y’know, the field.” His voice grew smaller with every word out of his mouth, and Eddie twisted his lips to keep from laughing.
The tension rolled off him in fucking waves, so thick he knew even the senseless babes could feel it. All four of them looked terrified, and okay, so maybe Eddie would feel a little bit like a villain in any other circumstance. Playing up the intimidation for the other Alphas who wanted to strut around thinking he was lesser obviously has its benefits, but these kids didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of his ire like this.
He couldn’t find it in himself to calm down, though. Because his Omega was waiting, and––
Fuck, no, no, not your goddamn Omega, Munson.
“We’ll find a sub!” Will blurted, speaking up for the first time as he grabbed Mike and Dustin’s elbows and edged them backward. Mike reached out and snagged Lucas by the shoulder. “Postponing is totally unnecessary. We’ll figure something else out! Thanks, Eddie!”
They were gone before he could say anything else, and Eddie finally gave in to the temptation to laugh. He grabbed his lunchbox off the floor, elbowing his way through the throng of students that had yet to disperse and beelining his way toward the woods.
The scent of woodland and winter’s decay made his nose itch. Probably didn’t help that he was specifically trying to focus on scent, to pick up whether Chrissy had already made this trek, but if she’d taken a different route it wasn’t like he’d be able to tell regardless. He was just–– incredibly nervous that she hadn’t seen him when she’d shown up and chose to dip instead of waiting around. Wasn’t like Eddie would blame her. Asking for a meeting with Hawkins High’s most notorious asshole was one form of bravery, but waiting around to see if he’d actually show? Well, that was absolutely fucking––
She had her back to him. Standing across the small clearing on the other side of the picnic table, her arms wrapped around her backpack straps and her shoulders drawn in tight. She looked like she was hiding or something. Trying to cloak herself behind the trees. It took another step for Eddie to smell the acrid scent of her fear.
Every instinct in him said to charge through the space separating them. To wrap her up and promise her that nothing bad would ever happen to her. To fucking destroy anything that made her afraid. But that was absolutely ridiculous and Eddie wasn’t an idiot, so instead, he went with a cautious approach. Waiting until he was just a few feet away to let out a meager, “Chrissy?”
She whipped around, her wide eyes rounded even further with fear. Backing up a half-step before she seemed to remember that she’d asked him out here.
“O-Oh,” she breathed, her jaw warbling as her shoulders dropped a little. “Eddie.”
He was fucking delusional to believe he heard relief in her voice.
“Hey,” he replied, swallowing around the lump of silly hope in his chest. Fuck, why did she have to smell so good? Like every fucking dream he’d never be good enough to attain. Whatever he conjured up in his fantasies about being a rockstar and touring the world and buying Wayne a house paled in comparison to how unrealistic it was to dream he might one day be worthy of Chrissy Cunningham. Regardless of their differences in social status, he could simply never be what she deserved.
Eddie was a lot of things, but a fuck up sat stoically at the top of that list. He wasn’t even an Alpha right, according to the general populace. Too soft, too artistic, despite how Wayne said it like a compliment whenever it got brought up. He didn’t have the foot- or hand-eye coordination to play sports, nor the drive to prove his superior physicality. All of his Alpha brain power went into creative outlets like music and stories and painting. Which wasn’t unheard of, but it tended to be an embarrassing bit of a self-realization whenever he let himself fall down that rabbit hole. Growing up in a sport-centric society tore apart any Alpha that didn’t adhere to the impossible standards set before them.
Long story short: not Chrissy Cunningham material.
Chrissy deserved a perfect Alpha. Someone who would treat her right and protect her at all costs and support her in every endeavor. Someone who could keep up with her physically and intellectually. And yeah, maybe Eddie could pretend that’d be him. Maybe he could delude himself into believing that he could be absolutely everything she needed him to be. But at the end of the day, he’d more than likely find a way to fuck it up. And she’d get fucking sick of it, and she’d leave. That was his thing. Fucking Up and Being Left: The Eddie Munson Autobiography.
Maybe he could deal with it when it was parents and friends. But her? No goddamn way.
“Um,” she began, yanking him out of his reverie by the chain she unknowingly had wrapped around his throat. Maybe if he just didn’t fucking breathe he could make it through this. “H-How are you?”
“Good,” he chuckled, the hands stuffed in his vest pockets gesturing vaguely toward the picnic table. “You, uh, wanna sit down?”
She nodded, shrugging her backpack off her shoulders and dropping it onto the bench before she took a seat. Eddie walked to the opposite side, trying to keep as much distance as possible between them as he shrugged out of his jacked and propped his box of tricks onto the old wood.
Chrissy glanced around nervously, as though waiting for someone to happen upon their clandestine little soiree and erupt a geyser of anger at the two of them. Fear still tickled his nostrils, but beneath it was the undeniable layer of Chrissy that had him salivating. Jesus Christ, she was perfect.
“You don’t have anything to be afraid of,” Eddie began. “No one ever comes out here. We’re safe, okay?”
Chrissy nodded, staring down at the rotting table like it held the questions she herself was too afraid to ask. Eddie thought about her note, tucked safely away in the interior pocket of his jacket for, uh, future use, and sighed. He wrenched open his lunchbox, digging through it for a second before yanking a baggie out and looking at her startled expression.
“I can do a half ounce for, uh, twenty, what do you say?” A horrified expression crossed her small, pixie-like features. Eddie trudged on despite his confusion. “Plenty of bang for your buck, should last you awhile.”
She stared at the baggie in anticipation of it growing fangs and snapping at her. Like it was going to devour her fingers, one by one, before consuming the rest of her. She looked so pale and tiny, sitting across from him, as though she’d rather be anywhere else. Far, far away from him and his meager little offerings.
“Um…”
Fuck. Fuck. He’d fucked up. Already. He never should’ve come out here. He’d ruined his own goddamn fantasy by playing with fire, and now every idea about Chrissy Cunningham finding him as irresistible as he did her was up in smoke. Burned up as instantaneously as the note about his side business if it’d been soaked in gasoline.
Throwing the weed back into the box, Eddie slapped it closed. Unable to meet her eye anymore and see the words I made a mistake written behind her stormy irises.
“Listen, we don’t have to do this. Say the word, and I’ll just walk away, okay?”
“No, it’s not that, I don’t want you to go,” she replied immediately, her voice strained and soft. Upturning his entire world on its axis at her little declaration, words catching him before he could hop to his feet and run away. She was scrubbing a hand up and down the table, and Eddie nearly asked her to stop. He didn’t know how he would react if she got a splinter right now, but it would probably be humiliating. All soft purring and pleading desperation to fix it.
“Okay,” Eddie said, his voice just as soft. Terrified to disrupt the quiet that had settled like a blanket between them. His pulse was beating louder than the chittering of the woods, he was certain of it. Because she didn’t want him to go, and that made his blackened little heart fucking swell. Growing like the Grinch’s when he realized he wanted to be part of Whoville’s Christmas.
“I just… Do you ever feel like you’re losing your mind?”
The question caught him off guard. Floundering for a moment, Eddie let out a disbelieving little chuckle he prayed she didn’t take the wrong way.
“Just, y’know, on a daily basis.” She finally looked at him, confusion written across her face in the pucker of her brows and purse of her lips. “I feel like I’m losing my mind right now, doing a drug deal with Chrissy Cunningham. The queen of Hawkins High.”
Scoffing, her eyes fell back to the table, and no, uh-uh, that wouldn’t do. Knuckles rapping against the wood, Eddie pivoted. Searching out a different approach. A different angle. Something that said, you don’t have to be afraid of me. You don’t have to be afraid of being here with me. I would never hurt you.
Something to keep her here, just for a little while longer.
“You know, this isn’t the first time we’ve, uh, hung out.”
“No?”
“You don’t remember?”
Really, he just wanted to hear her laugh. And what a fucking reward it was, the way she gave into his antics and let all that music bubble up from her chest. The tension and fear in the air gradually eased, becoming something far more comfortable and driving Eddie both more and less insane as they secluded themselves into a little bubble of belonging. Shit, throwing himself into the dirt and letting the woods become his stage? He’d pay a far heftier price if necessary. Toss him in the orc den and watch him jest his way back to her, complete with a pointy little hat and fucking tights.
The happier she got, the sweeter her scent grew. Erupting like a garden that unfurled with the dawn. It took willpower Eddie didn’t know he had not to launch himself across the table and bury his nose in her glands. To inhale her, lock her in the lining of his lungs and keep her there for when he needed a fix. If he couldn’t have the girl, he could at least get little doses of her whenever necessary.
“You’re in luck. Flattery works with me.” Eddie pulled the little baggie of bud back out, waving it around like a goddamn lunatic and internally asking himself why he was doing that without any real answer. “Twenty-five percent discount. Fifteen for the half-ounce. You’re robbing me blind here.”
Curling her shoulders in, Chrissy pursed her lips. The clam shell quickly closed once more, and fuck if Eddie didn’t have a way of putting his foot in his mouth. He wanted to reach out between them and rip it back open just to see the shining pearl of her smile one more time.
“I don’t, um.” Scraping her thumb up and down the interior of her wrist, Chrissy looked seconds away from bursting into tears. Devolving so quickly back into her sadness it made his head spin. “I-I don’t––” She really did burst into tears then, and Eddie was around that fucking picnic table and putting a tentative hand on her shoulder before he could think.
“Whoa, hey, Cunningham, it’s alright.”
She turned around on the bench seat of her own volition, tears falling openly as she faced him. Eddie crouched in front of her. Setting what he hoped were reassuring palms on her knees and dipping his head to catch her teary gaze. Trying very hard not to focus on the fact that he was touching bare skin. The need to comfort Omega substantially outweighed the questions swirling through his mind of whether this was the right move. Automatically leaning toward him, Chrissy collapsed in on herself and gave over to her sobbing.
“I-I-I don’t need w-weed,” she hiccuped, her voice muffled by the hands she pressed over her eyes. “I-I… I need…”
Eddie squeezed her knees reassuringly, resisting every neurotic urge surging through his blood that told him he needed to wrap her up and never let her go. Carry her to safety so nothing black and rotten ever touched her again. It was just Alpha protection, that’s all, it was fucking meaningless. He’d do this for any Omega in need. Had nothing to do with it being Chrissy, fucking nothing––
“I need suppressants,” she finally cried, strained and awful as her hands fell from her face and displayed the tear tracks still running down her cheeks. Her hands landed atop his, wrapping around his fingers and holding on with all her strength. “Those–– Those industrial ones that–– M-My heat is due in a month, and I-I need suppressants that will make me skip it. I can’t–– I can’t have another heat before graduation, Eddie, I can’t.”
His brain was straight television static. Running into roadblocks with every attempted channel change. Because the Omega of his dreams was talking to him about her heat (he had this dream once or twice… a week.) But she was upset about said heat and wanted suppressants? And fuck, maybe if Eddie actually sold suppressants his own shitty blockers would be enough to put Chrissy Cunningham out of his mind for longer than five seconds. But shit, she was still crying while his mental gymnastics backflipped along padded mats and straight out the gymnasium doors.
“Uh,” he finally forced out. “Why–– Why?”
Jaw trembling, she opened her mouth as though to answer, then rapidly shook her head. The vice grip around his fingers squeezed tighter, then eased, and Eddie unintentionally captured her fingers before she had a chance to slip away.
“I just can’t,” she said in lieu of an explanation. Her voice was so timid, so incredibly tiny, that it made his chest ache. Thousands of questions were rushing at lightspeed through his mind, each one barely able to take shape before the next took its place. Why would she need to skip a heat? Why would she be afraid of having one in the first place? She had to have had, like, at least a half dozen by now, right? One every four months or something? If it was maybe a cheer thing, or a school thing, she wouldn’t be this fucking scared, fear still rolling off her in noxious waves. But her quivering shoulders and inability to meet his eye only gave him more questions and no answers.
“Ah, fuck,” Eddie sighed, forcing himself to drop her hands. Standing, he turned away and ran a stressed hand through his hair. “Suppressants aren’t exactly one of my wares, Cunningham. I, uh. I take some third-rate shit myself, y’know? If I had access to the heavy prescription shit I might be, like, half-normal.”
The quiet stretched for a heavy moment, no longer a comfort. Then, the barest, rawest little, “Oh.”
It ripped his heart right in half. He was a goddamn disappointment, even now.
She must’ve detected the change in him, because immediately, she was saying, “It’s not your fault, Eddie. It’s mine. I-I should’ve looked into this after my last heat because I knew what was coming, and I didn’t. And now it’s too late and I––”
An anxious sound that made Eddie turn back around, watching as she fell back into her seat from where she must’ve stood with the intention of comforting him. Him. She was crying and trying to reassure him, because she was amazing––
“Chrissy,” Eddie said, though nothing else came for him to continue the thought. He took a deep breath, then tentatively sat down beside her, keeping a good foot of distance between them. Warring with himself of prying the information out of her versus just… being quiet. Letting them exist in the same space.
He chose the latter. She did not.
“Do you have plans once school is out, Eddie?”
The question threw him off guard, and Eddie had the urge to crack his neck with the whiplash that rushed down his spine. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, he tilted his face toward hers.
“Not really,” he admitted. “All I know is that I’m getting the fuck outta here.”
She nodded like that made perfect sense.
“I always kinda thought this place seemed too small for you,” she admitted softly, wiping away the last of the tears from her cheeks. And. Okay. Eddie would have to overanalyze the shit outta that later, because what the fuck did she mean? She thought about him? Casually? In her spare time? On purpose?
“What about you?”
Wringing her hands, Chrissy gave up the most defeated shrug.
“That’s the thing,” she said after a moment. “Everything’s already planned out for me. Like… Like the concrete path of my life was poured years ago, and all I have to do is follow it. And I think I’ve spent so long staring at my feet to make sure I don’t trip that I didn’t see all the–– the forks in the road. All the decisions that passed me by.”
“Is that why you feel like you’re losing your mind?”
“Yeah,” she breathed, hanging her head. “I guess I didn’t even know I had my own brain to begin with. And now, it’s like, I don’t even recognize myself. When we graduate, I’m supposed to go to Evansville with Jason. He got a scholarship, and everyone is just… We’re apparently supposed to be mated by then, so––”
“Wait, what?”
Flinching at the jarring disbelief in his own tone, Eddie was surprised that Chrissy let out a timid little laugh. One devoid of any humor, like her life was some cosmic joke and she was just a satellite caught in its orbit. Watching as it evolved without her.
“Yeah,” she admitted. “That’s–– That’s what the suppressants are for. My next heat is…”
Trying to calm the fury flowing through his veins was a fucking endeavor. He took three great inhales, counting each to eight before he let them go. Eddie could deduce what she meant from fucking context clues – he did, at one point, enjoy learning, after all. But to know that his Omega was going to be––
Not my Omega. Not mine. Not my Omega.
Jockstrap Carver’s Omega? Disgusting.
“Do you want to mate Carver?”
He kind of expected her to at least try and defend her relationship. She’d been with Jason before he’d even presented. Having boasted endlessly about being genetically on track to become the school’s most eligible Alpha as soon as he stepped foot through the doors of Hawkins High made it expected that he’d have the perfect Omega under his arm.
But Jesus Christ, they were way too young for that bullshit.
Instead, though, she shook her head.
“I used to,” she sighed. “In that way that all girls kinda dream about marrying their first boyfriend, y’know? Romanticized adolescence and all that. And I think he picked me because I was one of the first girls in our class to present.” She shot him a look that Eddie couldn’t quite discern before her eyes fell back to her lap. “But… When he finally presented, I… I stopped wanting that. He didn’t… I don’t really like the way he smells.”
She wrinkled her nose at that, but Eddie was counting backward.
“Didn’t he present, like, the beginning of your junior year? A year and a half ago?” Eddie only knew because it had become something of a spectacle when it happened. Which was so gross.
Her silence was answer enough.
“What the fuck,” Eddie whispered, and Chrissy let out a giggle that was so very near real. Finally finding humor in his disbelief, of all things.
“I wanted to break up with him, but… There were too many variables. And I thought, if I could just make it through school, I could go somewhere other than wherever he went to college and that problem would just–– just solve itself? But, um, obviously that’s not the case, because…”
She was actually willing to suffer through nearly two years of pretending to be devoted to him to avoid those variables? The thought made Eddie want to scream. Who the fuck was putting that much pressure on his–– On not his Omega? Who the fuck thought they had the right?
“If you don’t want to be mated to him, then why…?”
Eyes dropping back to her lap, Chrissy took a slow, trembling breath. Her shoulders shook like she was once again fighting back tears, and Eddie wanted to touch her again, to reassure her that he was still listening, but he was fucking terrified of overstepping. One touch allowed did not mean he could put his hands on her whenever he wanted to.
(He always fucking wanted to.)
“My, um. Our parents can be really, like, controlling? And they expect us to, because of church and stuff. Plus, he–– I asked him, recently, if I actually smelled good to him, and I guess I do, so.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that he smells like–– like a heaping pile of dog shit, or whatever, though.”
Another giggle, this one far more wet than the last, and Chrissy shook her head.
“He actually, um, smells like an open can of SpaghettiOs.”
She literally struck him speechless.
“I’m sorry, what?”
She fell against her knees, shoulders shaking, and Eddie was scrambling to find some way to correct whatever erroneous mistake he’d made that led to her crying again when she let out the most unexpected, adorable little piglet snort. Sitting up again, Chrissy threw her head back, her laughter filling the budding branches around them with delight.
If she wasn’t careful, she was going to make this entire forest bloom.
Eddie couldn’t help but laugh, too, albeit a little timidly.
“You know,” she snorted again. “You know when you first open a can of SpaghettiOs, and, like, it’s definitely some variation of tomato, maybe almost even sweet, but there’s also the distinct underlying tang of metal from the can? That’s how he smells.”
“Jesus Christ, Cunningham, seriously?”
“I’ve never actually admitted that to anyone before.” Pulling her legs up onto the bench, Chrissy tucked her knees against her chest and rested her cheek on them. It made her little denim skirt hike way up, showing off more skin than Eddie could deal with at the moment. He kept his eyes studiously on her face to avoid the biting temptation of sinking his teeth into her. “Everyone has these assumptions about us, centering around how we’re perfect, how we must be true mates.” Another little chuckle as she hid her face against her knees. “Telling people that he actually smelled like canned pasta to me seemed too mean.”
“Well, shit, Cunningham, I think you deserve to be a little mean sometimes after putting up with that headache.”
She laughed.
“I’m serious!” he said, laughing, too. Which felt so ridiculously fucking freeing, knowing that she could laugh after the topsyturvy roller coaster she’d just been on. Fear still sat like an anchor in her scent, hidden beneath the waves of her acceptance, and Eddie hated that he could do nothing else about it. But he could make her laugh. “Like, don’t get me wrong, I’ve indulged plenty in the culinary stylings of Chef Boyardee myself, but having to smell that shit constantly? You couldn’t pay me enough.”
“I’ve never liked SpaghettiOs. Not even when I was a kid.”
“Chrissy, that’s so much worse.”
“I know!” she whined, her voice pitched with humor. Torn halfway between a cackle and a sob. “I just–– God, it’s not even his fault. It makes me feel like an awful Omega.”
“You can’t control what your instinct is attracted to,” Eddie shrugged. “Trust me, uh, I’d know.”
She went quiet for a long moment at that, her thumbs pressing into one another in her lap. Her mouth hung open for a moment, on the verge of speaking, before it snapped shut with a hollow smile. The quiet hammered against the interior of his ribs, choking him with whatever it was that he’d once again said wrong.
“I’m sorry for wasting your time,” she eventually managed, her voice so much smaller all of the sudden.
“Bah,” Eddie replied, waving his hand through the air in an attempt to erase that asinine bullshit from existence. “I got a lot of time, Cunningham. And spending it with you definitely isn’t a waste.” Holy shit, Munson, be more obvious. “Uh, and, y’know, I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help,” he continued before either of them could read too far into the verbal bullshit he seemed to spew around her.
Chrissy gave another tight smile as she stood. Eddie scrambled to stand beside her, trying to hold onto these stolen minutes as long as possible.
“Look, I’ll do some digging, yeah? See if I can get some other shit sorted out in the, uh, not-so-legal pharmaceuticals department.” He shrugged. “May cost a pretty penny, but if you’re serious––”
“I am,” she interrupted with wide, solemn eyes. “I definitely am, Eddie. I, um…”
Pausing, she rocked back on her heels for a second. Staring at the ground in obvious uncertainty. Before Eddie could muster up the courage to ask, her arms were suddenly around his shoulders and her entire frame was pressed against his.
“Uh––”
“Thank you, Eddie,” she whispered, so near that he could feel her lips whispering against his fucking heart. “Even if you don’t get the suppressants, this… I mean, this meant everything to me.”
The laugh he let out was unintentional, but it gave him an opportunity to let his hands rest briefly on her sharp shoulder blades. Refusing the instinct in his chest that roared at him to pull her inside and never let her go.
“Yeah, uh. Anytime, Chrissy.” He leaned in close enough that her scent drifted up from her hair, invading his lungs in a siege of fury. Claiming space it felt owed.
If he imagined her taking in a breath deep enough to rival his own, like she, too, craved the scent of him and prayed it stayed jailed within her nostrils, then that was between him and whatever god that smiled down on him long enough to cast her into his orbit.
She stepped back and refused to meet his eye. A small, timid little, “Bye, Eddie,” and she was off. Trudging back through the woods and once more drifting away from his gravity. The Alpha within him begged him to go after her, but Eddie stayed stationary. Watching the way her skirt moved around her thighs as she walked away. From him.
Shit. He needed to make, like, eighty-seven phone calls.
Starting with a collect call to the goddamn prison. Fuck his life.