Chapter Text
Time taints memory. Weakens and rewrites it. You tell yourself the same story often enough, eventually you start to believe it. Time does that, and sheer force of will.
Eddie Munson always thought he was a person of singular willpower, but when it comes to rewriting his memories of Chrissy Cunningham, he’s spent the last eight years coming up woefully short.
He could hate her. He did, for a little while—but it was weak and pale and only lasted as long as the next time he caught a whiff of cinnamon or vanilla on the air.
He’s angry, still, even after all this time, and part of him thinks it’s the anger that sustains him. Who is he, as an adult man, without his anger at the vampire girl who left him on graduation day? Who didn’t leave a note, just a patch with a broken, bleeding heart that so closely mirrored his own?
It’s a question he’s asked himself a million times: was the patch meant to be Chrissy’s heart, or his? Does it matter? She left and she didn’t say goodbye and in the time since he hasn’t heard a word from her. Not a phone call, not a letter, not a telegram. Nothing…except eight years of a bond unsevered, through which he could feel her constant misery and pain.
He wants to forget. He wants to enjoy cinnamon rolls again. Most of all, he wants to stop feeling her. Alcohol is the only thing that seems to help, and that’s how he ended up at this shitty bar just outside Hawkins where he can drink until he’s blotto and no one he knows’ll show up to drag him home.
Robin and Steve mean well, but right now they (and everyone else) can fuck off. He gestures for the bartender to bring him another, and as he does he hears the scraping jingle of the bell over the door as another hopeless idiot joins the party. He doesn’t look back, because what does it matter, but as the bartender sets his fresh drink in front of him, Eddie goes still.
“Hey, s’there a bakery ’round here somewhere?” It comes out more like bake-ree, just two syllables instead of three. That’s fine. Syllables are slippery lil bastards anyway.
The bartender gives him a curious look. “A bakery? You mean a plug? C’mon, man, you a narc or somethin’?”
Eddie grunts. “Not hardly. I meant an actual bakery, with like…cinnamon rolls ’n’ shit.”
“Oh. Yeah, not that I know of. Why?”
He shakes his head. “Nothin’. Never mind.” Just your whole fuckin’ bar suddenly smells like cinnamon, that’s all.
There’s the sound of a coin being dropped into the jukebox in the corner. Eddie closes his eyes and curses. Clearly she still has her sense of humor. God if only he could hate her! If only he could gloat! He wants to turn around and rub it in her face. You left me, Christine! We said forever and you just fucking left! Of course you’ve been miserable! I’ve felt the echo every day, and you deserve it!
Except he can’t, and she doesn’t (no matter what his alcohol-soaked brain is telling him), and every time he’s felt her fear or disgust over the last eight years, every time the tiniest spark of hope in her was extinguished by he-could-only-imagine-what, part of him died. Another slice to his heart, another drop of blood lost.
Death by a thousand cuts, and every single one bears her name.
“Drinking alone, Munson?” her far-too-familiar voice says from over his shoulder. It’s scratchier than he remembers, deeper, without its usual sweetness, but the sound still pierces him right through the heart.
How the hell did Chrissy Cunningham just walk into this bar. What the fuck is she doing here? How didn’t he feel her? Maybe he’s passed out in a gutter somewhere and this is all a drunken hallucination. That’d be nice, but not really his luck, and he doesn’t think his subconscious would score this scene to their fucking prom song.
But, then again, maybe it would. He’s a glutton for punishment, after all.
“Tryin’ to,” he says at last. “Fuck. I guess they let anyone in here.” He fishes out his wallet and drops a 20 on the bar before sliding off the stool. He wobbles on his feet, drunker than he thought, but when she reaches out to steady him he bats her hand away.
“M’fine,” he snarls. He points toward the ceiling, a violent stab of his finger. “Really, Cunningham? ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’?! Are you kiddin’ me?”
She shrugs and tucks her hands into the pockets of her battered leather jacket. It’s the same one he remembers from high school. Her face is the same, her hair. Except…something’s different. She’s dressed like a doll, for one; some sort of pink floral Laura Ashley bullshit that she wouldn’t have been caught dead (or undead) in before, and her eyes are…
He doesn’t want to think about her eyes, or the lines on her face, or the odd slump to her shoulders. She looks tired and sore and maybe hungry. She moves like she’s wrapped in barbed wire, worse than that first night, and he hates that he cares so much. He hates how much he hates seeing her in pain.
“What’re you doin’ here?” he says. It’s the safest question of the millions of them flooding his mind as he watches her watch him.
Those strangely dark eyes continue their long appraisal, up and down and back again, and her mouth quirks in an ironic smirk. Her lips are dry, he notices. Chapped. She’s been chewing on them. “Dragging your drunk ass home, looks like. You’re not fine, and you go for those keys I’ll break your wrist.”
She says it so sweetly, too low for anyone else to hear, but he knows she means it. “As for the song, it seemed apropos. Turn around, bright eyes.”
Yeah, his life would be so much easier if he fucking hated her.
Easier. What a ridiculous, stupid word. Nothing is ever easy. Life is nasty, brutish, and short…except for when it’s nasty, brutish, and fucking long, and even though Eddie’s only 26, he feels like he’s lived 500 years.
Maybe being a vampire really isn’t as cool and glamorous as it looks from the outside, because if this is what Chrissy has dealt with for over a century, no wonder she’s jaded and cynical and ran the fuck away.
There’s no way he can say all that, so he settles on a very direct “You’re such a goddamn bitch.”
“Yeah, no shit, but you’ve known that a long time.” She reaches into the pocket of his jeans to grab his keys, and when she turns away he lets out a long, furious sigh, but he follows her. It doesn’t occur to him until they’re outside, standing by his car, that he could’ve had the bartender call him a fucking cab.
She unlocks the passenger door before moving around to get in the driver’s side. He stands staring over the roof of the car, his whiskey-muddled brain trying to work through what the fuck is going on. Chrissy is here. Chrissy is driving him home. Chrissy Cunningham, his vampire ex who ran out on graduation day without a word.
He collapses into the seat and shuts the door with an echoing slam. “What the fuck is goin’ on?”
“Put on your seatbelt.” She starts the engine and shifts the car into gear while he fumbles to comply.
“Why’re you here?” he says once he’s managed the buckle. “Did I say that already? You’re not a bitch. Kind of a bitch. But I always liked it before.”
She gives a sharp, quick jerk of her head, dismissing the last bit like the nonsense it is. “No, Eddie, why are you here? What happened to Purdue? What happened to getting out of Hawkins?” Her tone is cutting, and he bristles at the disdain that drips from it.
“Christ Jesus, Christine. You fuckin’ well happened. Came into my life, fucked everything up, then ran away without a goddamn word. What happened. Of all the fuckin’ things for you to say to me! You’re a vampire, and you drained every bit of life outta me at eighteen.” He likes that, the melodramatic bite of it. No pun intended.
“Oh, bullshit!” She runs a red light without so much as pausing, and he twists blearily to watch the intersection recede behind them. “Don’t give me that woe is Eddie crap,” she says. “Poor baby boy, given all the chances in the world and he blows them because of a girl?! One stupid girl he dated for a few months in high school?!”
“Fuck you,” he says, suddenly exhausted. And far too sober. “Fuck you.” He slumps into the seat and stares out the window without really seeing anything. “Y’know you were more’n that. Y’know what you were to me. Don’t try t’let yourself off the hook by makin’ it small. Maybe that’s easier, but you don’t get easy. S’not your right.”
There’s a long, chastened silence. Finally, “I’m sorry. You’re right. And I’m sorry about your parents.”
He scowls across the car at her. “S’that why you’re here? Because my parents died? How’d you even hear about that?”
She runs her tongue over her dry lips and doesn’t look at him. “I felt it.”
“Oh.” He lets out a rusty chuckle. “Guess that goes both ways, huh?”
“Yes,” she says, softly. “I didn’t realize—it would last.” She glances at him, quickly, then away again just as fast. “I’ve never had…that kind of bond before.”
He grunts and lets his forehead fall to rest against the cold glass. “Yeah, me neither,” he mutters. “S’bullshit. Fuckin’ grade A bullshit. Just tryin’ to have a quiet drink, live my fuckin’ life, ’n’ here you come like you never fuckin’ left. Strollin’ in, smell like—bakery. Asked if there was a bakery. Knew there wasn’t. Knew it was you. Just hoped…” He lifts his head and drops it again, the thunk of his skull on the window solid. Grounding.
They don’t speak for the rest of the ride, her with nothing to add that he hasn’t already said, and him only half conscious. When they get to his place she parks in the driveway and sits as the engine ticks and the wind swirls through the trees outside.
“Smells like snow,” she says.
“Callin’ for it.” He reaches for the door handle. “Thanks for the ride. It was swell catchin’ up.”
She rolls her eyes and a split second later the door is flying open.
“Goddamn, Cunningham, quit doin’ your vampire shit at me! I’m really fuckin’ drunk.” He blinks up at her, hating the way the street light limns her hair while leaving her face in shadow. His face curves in a wide, eye-crinkling grin. It’s cold and hard and not like he's ever smiled at her before. “You gonna eat me now? Big bad vampire with your big bad teeth.”
“Of course not,” she says. “It would take me three days to recover from all the alcohol. You still outweigh me by almost a hundred pounds.”
Because she’s viciously mean, she bends at the knees, wraps her arms around him, and bodily hauls him from the car. He lets out a squawk of protest that she ignores as she kicks the door shut behind her and carries him toward the house. She uses his keys to unlock the front door, and she doesn’t put him down until they’re in the kitchen, where she drops him into a chair like a sack of potatoes.
He gapes at her as she opens the fridge and pulls out a carton of orange juice. Moments later a glass is plunked in front of him.
“Drink it. Slowly.”
He grumbles, but does it. She leans against the counter, arms crossed around her middle. The juice or maybe the ride home or maybe some vampire mojo clears his head a little, and by the time the glass is empty he feels more human.
She looks as vampiric as ever. Actually…
He peers across the kitchen at her, eyes squinted as he studies her face. “You look like shit,” he says.
“So do you,” she offers back, her tone bland. Not due to the weight he’s gained, because that suits him; he was too skinny back in high school. Rather, it’s the bitterness in him. All the bright sweetness she loved and feared smothered by time and alcohol and heartbreak.
“My parents just died. Some stupid fucking—ice on a dark road and bam! Orphan. What’s your excuse?”
Her lips move in something like a sneer, but she just shakes her head and looks away. “Am I safe to leave you here alone? You aren’t going to asphyxiate on your own vomit or try to blow-dry your hair in the bathtub or something?”
“I’m not suicidal, if that’s what you’re askin’,” he says, startled. He pushes to his feet and wanders toward her, watching in satisfaction as she stiffens. She still won’t look at him. “I felt it. The last eight years? Everything. But you know that. S’why the fuck’re you here tryin’ to pretend everything’s fine when we both know it’s not? What’s goin’ on with you? Since when’d you give a shit about my parents?”
Her eyes flash to him, finally, and he wishes he hadn’t provoked her into it. It was easier to talk to her when he couldn’t see her face. “I’m here for you,” she says. She swallows and pulls her jacket around her frail-seeming body. “I came because of your parents, for you, not for them, because I didn’t know—after everything you’ve…if you could—be okay.”
He tilts his head as he studies her. “Y’gonna tell me where you’ve been? Or why y’took off?”
White teeth dig into her chapped lower lip and she shakes her head. “I can’t.”
“Can’t?” he echoes, mildly. “Convenient. Always the story with you, yeah? Fuckin’…can’t be my girl, can’t stay, can’t…” He trails off, mumbling to himself, and her patience snaps.
“Eddie, Jesus!” She shoves her hand out in front of her, arm stiff, to arrest his progress across the kitchen, then scoots away. If he touches her now she’ll lose it, she’ll shatter, and if he could use his hands to kill her she would let him. Welcome it. “I don’t think we need to talk about all that tonight. You’re drunk and I’m—” She stops, unable or unwilling to finish the thought.
“Hungry,” he says.
She spins toward him and he catches a quick glimpse of fang before she sheathes them again. She wants to cry, but it’s been too long since she fed. Too long she’s been away from Pietro. The pain is getting bad, but now that she’s here, now that she knows he’s more or less okay, she can go back.
Right?
No. She promised herself that once she left she’d stay gone. She’d check in on Eddie and then run, find somewhere she could hole up and figure out her next move. Figure out how to survive despite the oath she swore doing its work.
“You should try to get some sleep.” Her eyes roam his face, taking in the sallow skin, the dark stubble, the heavy bags under his eyes. “You’re exhausted,” she murmurs. She wants to touch him so badly (despite what it would cost her) that it overwhelms the pain of her hunger, of her distance from Pietro, everything. Eddie. Her Eddie. Her sweet, sensitive, beautiful Boy Scout. He’s still in there. She knows he is.
“Don’t,” he croaks, as though he can read her thoughts. “Just—don’t. M’not goin’ there with you, Chris.”
“I didn’t—that isn’t—” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”
“Fuck,” he growls and goes after her when she breaks for the door. “Wait! Chrissy, wait!”
She’s moving at human speed, so he catches her easily. She lets him grab her, spin her toward him. The dizzying scent of cinnamon overwhelms him. Or maybe that’s the rotgut whiskey. Either way he stumbles, but when she holds out a hand to catch him (again) he dodges it and grabs the wall instead. “You’re just gonna run out again? Take off the second it gets hairy?! That’s your play, huh? Can’t stick around for one goddamn conver—con—discussion! You—so goddamn eager to suffer. Can’t risk bein’ happy.”
He staggers closer. “That was always your problem, Christine. You got no idea how to exist without the pain. Now that it’s your life twenty-four-seven you must be fuckin’ thriving.” He snorts. “Don’t look it, though. You look like someone trashed their favorite doll.”
Her expression freezes, eyes shuttering against him, and her hand hovers in the air between them. After several long, fraught heartbeats she lets it drop. She doesn’t bother trying to argue with him. Instead, “You don’t want me here,” she says. “You’ve made that crystal clear.”
He throws out his palms in a gesture of frustration. “Honestly I dunno what the fuck I want. That hair dryer’s lookin’ better ’n’ better every minute.” He tries to make his tone light, to show that it’s just a morbid joke, but he can tell she doesn’t buy it. She steps closer, her head tilting back so her eyes stay on his face.
“Y’think I can figure all this out in two seconds? S’been eight years. Eight—dismal goddamn years. Now you’re here lookin’ like y’fell off the back of a bus—”
She frowns. “I’m pretty sure—”
“Or got ran over by a bus,” he continues, raising his voice to drown her out, “but still so goddamn beautiful, an’ I’m supposed t’know what I want?” He snorts and tugs a hand through his disheveled curls. “Fuckin’ typical. You never know what the fuck you want. Never can make a goddamn decision. I begged you to stay. I begged y’to—an’ y’said—but then you fuckin’—! Why’d y’ever tell me you loved me? I felt it, Chris! Was it a lie? Can you trick me with your vampire shit? Was any of it real?”
Her lips turn white as she rolls them together, and when she speaks again her voice is strangled and thin. “It was all real. Every second of it was real. How can you doubt that?”
“Because you left! What part of it’s confusing you!? You left a patch, not a note! Didn’t explain a fuckin’ thing! Didn’t even say goodbye, for fuck’s sake!” He blinks and shakes himself like a dog coming in out of the rain. “Your heart’r mine?”
“What?”
“On the patch. Wazzit your heart or my heart? My heart with the blood or yours?”
“I—shit. It was mine, Eddie. I hoped you would realize…” She shakes her head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I should go.”
He should let her. He doesn’t want her here, doesn’t need all the shit she’s dragging back up like an old nightmare. She’s not his anymore, if she ever really was, and letting her walk out is the best possible thing he could do for both of them.
“Stay,” he says instead. He coughs and clears his throat and tries again. “Stay, Chris. Please. Just—jus’ for tonight. Tomorrow you can go back to whatever’s been makin’ you so fuckin’ miserable for the last eight years, but for tonight, stay here. With me.”
She rubs a small hand over her mouth, and he can’t help but notice how ragged her nails are. Painted baby pink but chipped and messy, not at all how she likes them. Part of him wants to take it back, just bundle her out the door like so much trash, but…fuck it. He’s said it now, and he’s not taking it back. She’ll probably say no anyway.
I don’t think your parents’ deaths were an accident. It’s right on the tip of her tongue, and she bites down hard to keep from saying it. Now isn’t the time. In the morning, maybe, after a shower and breakfast and some aspirin, probably.
“You want me to stay?” she finally manages. She doesn’t believe it. He’s drunk and angry and even through the haze of her hunger his resentment pricks like thorns. Death by a thousand cuts.
“I want—didn’t I already tell you I don’t know?” He shakes his head. “Yeah, I want you t’stay. I’m drunk an’ if I wake up tomorrow an’ you’re gone I’ll think this was all some stupid dream. I’m sick of havin’ that same fuckin’ dream, Chris. Sick of wakin’ up ’n’ realizin’ all over again that you’re gone an’ you’re not comin’ back.”
“I’m here now,” she says. Her eyes are dry but hot and red and it seems like every single thing she’s tried to keep herself from feeling for the last eight years is threatening to rise up and choke her. “I want—I want to. I would like to.”
“Okay,” he says. He shoves his hands in his pockets and gives an easy shrug, surprisingly graceful despite his state. “Then do it. For once just stay.”
***
The smell of coffee wakes him the next morning, and for a few moments before he opens his eyes, Eddie forgets. He forgets that his parents are dead. He forgets that Chrissy popped back into his life last night looking like a half-drowned kitten. He forgets that, like a pathetic idiot, he basically begged her to stay. Then a spear of light through the window stabs into his eyeballs and he realizes he’s back in his childhood bedroom and the only person who could be making coffee right now is someone who doesn’t really eat solid food.
He lets out a rough sigh and slings his legs over the side of the bed. “Fuck,” he mutters, voice thick with sleep and hangover. His head feels like a brass band is playing inside it. Who the fuck opened his blinds?
A quick glance at his nightstand answers that question: she’s left a glass of water and two Alka-Seltzer tablets for him. Well fine if she’s going to be thoughtful.
He drops them in and watches the fizz before taking a long gulp. Ugh this shit tastes like feet. But he finishes all of it before he drags himself to the bathroom for a shower and a shave, and by the time he makes it downstairs he’s feeling a little better.
The scent of bacon has joined that of coffee, and for a moment his stomach rebels. He rounds the corner into the kitchen just as she sets a plate on the table, and when she sees him she points at it.
“Bacon sandwich and orange juice. Sure-fire hangover cure. Eat.”
Why did he ask her to stay again? Just to get bossed around in his own goddamn kitchen like she has any right to tell him what to do? He makes a face. “Can I get some of that coffee?”
“Sure. Once you eat.”
Rolling his eyes, he drops down into the chair and stares at the sandwich. Okay, well. The bacon’s nice and crispy, and it’s just simple white bread. He can handle it. His first bite is tentative, but then the salty, smoky, fatty flavor of the bacon explodes across his tastebuds.
“Holy shit,” he mumbles around a mouthful.
She pours two mugs of coffee as he eats, then takes the seat across from him. She doesn’t drink her coffee, he notices between wolfish gulps of sandwich, but instead plays with the mug, spinning it around and around in her hands to watch the dark liquid slosh around inside.
He takes a long gulp of juice to wash down meat and bread. “When was the last time you ate?” he says. He shouldn’t care, but old habits die hard. Like her cooking for him, he guesses.
“I could ask you the same thing,” she says with a nod toward his now-empty plate.
He squints his eyes, thinking. “Don’t know. Pretty sure I had a turkey sandwich at some point yesterday.”
“Mmm.” She leans closer and sniffs. “Let me make you another one.”
“I’m fine,” he says. He adds sugar to his coffee so he has something to look at besides her. “Stop smelling me.”
She sits back again, color flooding her too-pale cheeks. “Right. Sorry.” A silence falls between them. She’s still not drinking, and of course she didn’t make herself any food. Sometimes meat helps when she’s especially hungry, but apparently she either doesn’t want it or it’s gone beyond that.
He’s never seen her like this. But, then, after that first time he was always sure to keep her fed, even when he couldn’t do it himself. Shivering, he shoves those memories aside. He drums his fingers against the table, his impatience cresting. “Are you going to answer the question or keep avoiding it?”
She shoots him a brief glare and pushes to her feet. When she reaches for his plate he grabs her wrist without thinking, and once his fingers are wrapped around her he can’t let go.
“I don’t need you to take care of me, Christine. I haven’t needed your help for a long time now.”
Her skin is cold, hard like marble, and when he squeezes she makes a small sound of distress. Pain. She yanks out of his grasp.
“That goes both ways, Edward,” she snaps. “And based on the actual state of you, I think you do! If not me then someone. I took your trash out last night while you were sleeping.”
He winces. The trash full of empties, a massacre of dead soldiers and drained liquor bottles. “Harder to feel you when I’m drinking,” he mutters.
The bond. The stupid fucking bond that’s been a bane to both of them from the beginning. It feels like a weight around her neck, a chain dragging her to the bottom of a river and holding her under the rapids until she chokes. “I’m sorry. If I knew how to break it—”
“It’s not the bond, Chris. Or, at least, not just that.” He looks up at her, his familiar face haggard as a stranger’s. “Sometimes I wonder if it would be better or worse if you’d spent the last eight years happy, but that’s bullshit. Bottom line: I can’t deal with your pain and mine. Not every day. Not sober and clear-headed.”
She’s quiet a long time, her face lined with worry and her mouth tight. “I’m not judging you for drinking, Eddie.”
“Yeah? Coulda fooled me.”
Her lips move in a bitter moue. “We all have our vices. I used to use sex to forget my problems once upon a time.” She fiddles with the zipper on her jacket and won’t look at him. “It worked until I met you.”
He isn’t sure how to respond to that. He wants to stop her hand, because he knows when she fidgets like that it means she’s frightened of something, more than just nervous, and the last thing he wants is for her to be scared of him. He’s drowning in frustration and fury, but he would never hurt her.
As if he could.
She lifts her chin, that familiar stubborn set to her jaw, though her eyes stay stormy and distant. For a split second he sees the old Chrissy, his Chrissy, and he opens his mouth to say something, but before he can, she brushes a wayward curl off his forehead. She very deliberately doesn’t touch his skin.
“You need a haircut,” she says, softly.
He stares at her. There’s a coldness where her fingers ghosted past, a spot of ice on his otherwise burning skin.“I need a lot of things. Mostly for you to be straight with me. If I could just understand why you left it might…. Clearly it wasn’t for greener pastures. And you—you could’ve come back. Yeah, I was pissed and hurt and—” He breaks off and takes a deep breath through his nose. “You could’ve come back.”
She drops down into the chair again like a marionette with its strings cut, a boneless tumble of arms and legs. If only it were that simple. “I couldn’t,” she says.
Couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t . Again with that. For a superhuman vampire there sure is a whole lot of shit she couldn’t do. “Too proud, huh? I wouldn’t’ve made you beg.”
“Pride has nothing to do with it.” She makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob, but her eyes are as dry as ever. Too hungry to cry, he knows. “I would never have left if I had a choice, Eddie. I would have come back if I could have. I didn’t want any of this. I didn’t want to hurt you. You have to know that!”
He stands, ostensibly to pour more coffee, but really because he needs to put space between them. He rests his palms on the counter, his back to her, and struggles to breathe. His girl. His vampire girl. Eight years gone, eight hours back, and he’s as ready to kill for her, die for her, live for her, as he ever was.
“I didn’t ever make it to Purdue,” he finally says, his voice rough. Changing the subject before his brain explodes or he gives in and—well. Best not to think of that.
“No?” He can hear the gratitude in that one small word.
He shakes his head. “Indiana State, eventually, after a couple years at Hawkins Tech. But I dropped out, came home. Got a job selling insurance with my dad.”
“Mmm. I bet you were good at it.”
“Ha. I was, actually. Am. Was. I don’t know. No idea what’s going to happen now. I was fine as a salesman, but I’m not sure I’m ready to own the whole thing.” He pours the coffee and takes a sip without doctoring it. It’s rich and bitter and he closes his eyes as it makes its warm way down his body.
He turns to lean against the counter. “It’s easy to blame you,” he says, “but it’s just an excuse. Yeah, you leaving fucked me up. Feeling you every day fucked me up even more. But let’s face it: high school was my glory days, and once that was over I had nowhere to go but down.” He snorts. “Such a pathetic cliche.”
She frowns. “That isn’t true. You’re smart. Talented. If we could break the bond—”
He finally looks at her, and his smile is tired and rueful. “And lose what little bit of you I have left?”
Her mouth falls open. “That’s not—I’m not—oh god I shouldn’t have come.”
He sighs as she jumps up and heads for the door. He’s tired of chasing her, so this time he doesn’t. He stands sipping his coffee until he hears the front door open and close, then he nods. Yep. And now three, two, one…
The door opens again and slams behind her, and he listens to her footsteps as she stomps back to the kitchen.
“People leave, Eddie! They do! Things don’t last! I tried to explain that to you, but you insisted we could be forever. It doesn’t work that way!”
He lets out a weary sigh. “Of course they don’t, if you run away. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You wanted to be right. You wanted to hide from the world and hide from me, so you made it happen.”
“I didn’t run away!” she cries. She closes her eyes and her throat works as she swallows. He can hear the dry click from across the room. When she opens them again, she pins him with a look so torn and shattered he can feel it in his bones. “I didn’t run away. I had—to make a deal. To keep you alive.” She tries to say more, but the words won’t come. Her mouth moves, soundlessly, and she balls her hands into fists. “I would never have just run away,” she says through gritted teeth.
There’s clearly more to this story, details she can’t or won’t tell him. He sets his half-empty mug aside, and she winces at the heavy sound of it hitting the countertop. “A deal?” he says. “I don’t understand. A deal with who? Another vampire, I guess, since I rarely run into humans who want me dead. Or at least I didn’t used to.”
“A vampire,” she says. “Powerful. Old.” The words are clipped and hard, and in them he feels an echo of the last eight years, her pain and misery. He steps closer, lessening the gap between them, but neither of them is willing to close it completely. It’s like she’s radioactive, or they both are, and getting too close sets off some danger warning that’s almost primal.
Maybe, finally, he’s reacting to a vampire the way a human is supposed to. She’s a predator; she told him that the very first night. He’s the idiot who tried to tame her. Keep her. Make her into something soft and sweet and…what? Human? Is that what he wanted? She warned that he’d get tired of her immortality, of her super strength and speed and general otherness, and he’d sworn up and down that he never would.
“I should’ve listened to you,” he says, his dark eyes fixed on some point over her shoulder so he doesn’t have to see her face as he says it. “You tried to tell me. We’re not the same. We never could’ve been.”
“No,” she agrees. “But I—” Her face scrunches. “I would have tried. I wanted to try.”
“Fuck,” he mutters. Then, louder, both hands buried in his hair, “Fuck! Goddammit, Chrissy! So that’s it?! You made some deal without even talking to me about it, and now—what?! What happens now?”
“I don’t know.”
He feels the words more than hears them, and his palms burn to touch her, to pull her against him and never let her go. Apparently he’s still the same idiot he was before, a dumb kid who thought he could have the impossible. He closes his eyes and grinds his fingers against them.
“You should go.” He doesn’t know what else to say. He can’t keep her here, they’ve proven that well enough, and whatever danger he was in before…well. Maybe it’s still a factor and maybe it isn’t, but if she thought she couldn’t protect him then, then she sure as hell can’t now with the state she’s in.
“I know,” she says. She sounds lost. She feels lost, like one wrong step and she’ll plunge through ice, down down down into the freezing dark. She remembers how warm he is, how he always seemed to know when she needed him to be gentle or when she needed to be ruined. Now he’s two steps away, reaching out, and she hasn’t felt further from him since the moment they met.
He lets his hands fall to his sides again and she’s watching him warily. It’s so like how she used to look at him in their earliest days that he can’t help a bitter, pained laugh. “Christ, pix. Look at us. We’ve royally fucked this up, haven’t we?”
“Not you, Eddie,” she says. “You were right to blame me. I thought—things were different. That we would be safe.” She rolls her eyes in disgust. “I was so fucking stupid.”
He starts to protest, but then seals his lips shut around it. If she wants to martyr herself, fine. He won’t stand in her way. “So you—made this deal.” He clears his throat and shifts back onto his heels, away from her. “What were the terms? That you’d stay away from me?”
She’s silent for so long he thinks she won’t answer, but eventually she shrugs. “More or less.”
“More. A lot more.” He frowns. “It wouldn’t be enough, just you staying away from me. He—was it a he?”
She nods.
“He wanted you…back, I’m guessing.” He scratches his neck, just where she used to bite him back when—before. “And you thought I was the one with the crazy, jealous ex.”
“You were,” she says. “Mine just happens to be a fifteen hundred-year-old vampire instead of a bitchy cheerleader with a very confused sexual identity.”
His brows lift in wry acknowledgement before his expression turns serious again. “None of this explains why you’re not eating. And why you look…” He gestures up and down. “Like that.”
That seems to get her hackles up, because she shoots him a scathing glare. “You’re awfully critical for someone I dragged out of a whiskey barrel last night. Just because you’ve had a shower and I haven’t—”
“Ohhh,” he says. “That’s all you need? A shower? Well be my fucking guest, Miss Cunningham. I believe you know where it is, even though it’s been a few years, because the last time you were in it we were—”
“Eddie!”
Naked. Steam everywhere, skin slick and hot, his mouth on hers, her legs wrapped around him.
He sees his own memories reflected in her eyes, and he can’t help but smirk.
Together. Buried in her so goddamn deep it felt like they were practically one person, her voice rough and desperate in his ear, her teeth sharp against his throat but not breaking the skin.
She seems to take it as a challenge and doesn’t look away. Instead her lips part and he watches as she presses the tip of her small pink tongue against her teeth. His breath leaves him in a hard rush.
In love. He couldn’t say it enough, chanting it over and over as he fucked up into her, as she dropped down onto him. Her fingers going tight in his hair and her body arching when she comes, and the only word she could remember was his name, gasped like a prayer.
“Chrissy.” He tilts closer, eyes so deep and dark it makes her shiver. “Don’t bullshit me. I’m not in the mood.”
She recoils like a scalded cat. “Why don’t you have a drink and leave me the fuck alone?!” she hisses. “My diet is none of your business!”
He settles back against the counter, hands raised in surrender. “You’re right. As long as you’re not lookin’ to snack on me, I’ll just butt out.” He leans toward her again, poking a finger at her chest without actually touching her. “Except you came here half starved, sought me out looking like a drowned—rat.” He’s not going to call her a kitten. “Unless you’re making some kind of pity play—which isn’t your style at all—there’s something stopping you from eating. I want to know what it is. You dragging me out of that whiskey barrel, as you put it, has made it my business whether either of us likes it or not.”
It hits him, then, now that he’s so close: her scent. The usual cinnamon and citrus spiked with vanilla. It’s different. Sour and metallic, like—like—an old penny with too much patina. It brings him up short and he takes a deep breath through his nose. “Wait. What is that? That’s not just hunger. What is that?”
Her eyes go wide and she backs away, shaking her head. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. Just hungry, like you said. Another stupid hunger strike. I—I’m going to eat. Right now.”
“Don’t lie to me!” He follows her, step by step until her back hits the wall. “Tell me what’s going on.” He softens his voice in the hopes of coaxing her guard down. “I’m on your side, Chrissy. Let me help you.”
Somehow she manages to smile despite how desperately she wants to scream. “You can’t help with this, Eddie. I’m sorry. It’s already done.”
“I don’t understand,” he says, even though he’s beginning to. Except it doesn’t make sense, none of it does, and he feels like he’s wading through quicksand as he tries to work it out. “You—Chris—I don’t…” His voice cracks. “Are you—? But you can’t be. You’re—immortal.”
She tilts her head in a rueful shrug. “I—I wasn’t going to tell you because I thought you’d try to talk me out of it. I’m not going back. I won’t,” she says as he stares at her in mounting horror.
“Going back? To him? What does that have to do with—?”
“Don’t ask, because I can’t tell you. Just leave it be. I left you out of it for a reason.”
He shakes his head and paces away. This can’t be real. He didn’t just get her back—not that he has her, not that he wants her—for her to pull shit like this. She’s going to starve herself to death?! Is that her play? Why?! And what does this whoever-it-is who wants him dead and has made her life hell the last eight years have to do with it?
He stops in front of her again, eyes bright and voice thick as he struggles to hold back tears. “That’s not—you have got to stop thinking you can make decisions for me, Christine! It was bad enough before, but I’m not some stupid, naive kid anymore. You think I want you dead?! I never—”
“It's okay,” she says. “I know.” She lifts her hand toward his face, but when he flinches back her fingers flex and she drops it again. “I’m so sorry about your parents. I truly hope it was just an accident.”
“What?” he says. Too much information too fast. He hasn’t come close to processing anything that’s happened in the last two minutes, and now she’s implying…? He shoves that aside for now and focuses on her. “There has to be something we can do. You need to feed? We’ll find somebody. Or—what if we kill him? The ex, I mean. We just—” He makes a hacking motion at his throat with the side of his hand. “Boom, problem solved.”
“We?” she says with a frown.
“Obviously! I’m not letting you go through this alone. Not again.” She sounds so fucking resigned! Like it’s the only way, like she’s accepted it and expects him to just nod and smile and wish her a happy death.
Her mouth quirks. “My beautiful, noble Boy Scout. I’m too weak to face him and you’re too human. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
He takes another step closer but stops short. “I don’t—! Chrissy! What the fuck are you saying to me right now!? That you came all the way here to check in, and now you’re gonna go crawl in a hole and die?!” Despite everything, he still can’t bring himself to touch her. His palms hover near her shoulders, her upper arms, before he finally gives up and goes back to tugging at his hair instead. “That’s insane! You’ve lost your goddamn mind!”
“Probably,” she says. “But at least now you’ll be safe. You’ll be free. It’s better, Eddie. I promise.”
She turns, and he reaches for her but his fingers fall through the air as she takes off. The front door bangs open, and this time when he runs after her she’s gone. “Dammit, Chris, I don’t want to be free!” he cries to the cold, empty air.
He slams the door and stumbles back into the house to slump against the wall. “I want you, dummy. Always.”