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It had come up pretty early on in your relationship. The way that two half baked wrongs could never really be expected to make a right, that whatever the two of you had; would just remain as what it was for however long it happened to last. Simple and clear cut rules put in place for that of a boy and girl who’d never been given the opportunity to actually believe in love.
Eddie Munson, the drug dealing son of a loveless marriage. Orphaned when his mother had succumbed to her addiction and his father had been thrown in jail for possession of the narcotics that had killed her. He’d been kicked around the Foster Care system for a few years before Wayne was able to gain custody. The “good natured” Christian folk of Hawkins Indiana taking the boy in out of the kindness of their hearts, and surely not for the hefty check that often accompanied a ward of the state in need of shelter. They’d shaved his head, and plucked away anything that could even slightly resemble that of his lineage. Taught him in that very moment, that he’d be unlovable if he remained even remotely true to himself.
Your parents had been a bit of a different story. Two people that had stood the test of time, but at the expense of their own children. Where Eddie had assumed the role of total menace for attention, you’d staked your claim in attempted perfection. The little girl of everyone’s dreams; poised, proper, and silent unless spoken too. A family fractured the moment you revealed that a cousin had partaken too deeply in the dream. You’d once let it slip in a drunken moment, Eddie’s fingers had dug into the skin of your thigh a little too harshly and you’d fallen apart beneath him in a way he’d never intended.
Your folks hadn’t paid you any attention before that time, and they’d certainly done everything in their power to keep it that way after. Their perfect little doll, left broken and alone for the sake of another’s success. Eddie had never met the people you’d come from, originally one of the guidelines in your little arrangement, that had quickly turned into something of a life saving measure.
You’d been the first to break a rule, a fun little fact that Eddie would never let you forget. It came in the form of you handing him a slip of paper after one of your little Janitor's Closet rendezvous. Your phone number had been scrawled across the surface in looping pink handwriting. He’d knit his brows in confusion, watching you shrug as you’d done your best to soothe the tousled locks of your hair.
“After Hellfire.” You’d mumbled, all too casually. “Let me know when you get home. Make sure you’re alive and all that shit.”
You hadn’t made an ounce of eye contact throughout your explanation, opting to sling your bag over your shoulder before making your way back down the quiet halls of Hawkins Highschool with a wave of your hand as the final bell rang. To you, it had been a simple exchange of information. Nearly transactional, but to Eddie, a man that had been used as a form of stress relief time and time again? A crack in the facade of this unlabeled experience you’d found yourselves in.
The next break in regulation came from him. He’d never considered himself to be much of a rule follower, and it’s never been in your nature to hold something against him or anyone else, but Eddie still remembers the aching in his chest when his large and calloused hand reached out to encircle the soft skin of your wrist. He’d been sprawled across the expanse of his own mattress, watching you lazily pull your own clothes back on while the lingering warmth of your body evaporated from the crumpled and twisted sheets beneath him.
“You don’t have to leave right away…” He breathed, watching closely as your eyes bore into the space where the two of you connected. He nearly felt you were offended, as if he hadn't just had you face down and screaming into his flattened pillows. “S’not like Wayne’s home, and it’s pretty late too. Don’t hafta go home if you don’t want to.”
He could practically see the wheels turning in your mind, caught somewhere between disbelief that anyone would actually want you to stick around and wanting to keep these strict lines drawn in the sand. Eddie admits that at that moment, his intentions were selfish. He'd been unable to beat back his own demons that entire week. No high reached, campaign built, or guitar solo learned could distract him from his one track mind. The idea of having to sit with himself in the empty trailer seemed more daunting than risking the harm he could cause you in that moment.
“Uh…Munson, listen.” You started, voice dying in your throat the moment you’d spared him a glance.
“Please, princess?” He swallowed thickly, the use of a pet name being another violation to check off the rapidly dwindling list.
He could see it then. The way your features softened and your body craved to bend to his will, it had taken exactly two months of this little arrangement for Eddie to have you completely mapped out. Once a diary under lock and key, he now read you like that of the well worn pages of his favorite book.
“Yeah, okay…” You nodded with a humorless laugh and a roll of your eyes, “Gotta put your pants back on though…Ya fuckin’ animal.”
He’d remembered every moment of that sleepless night, your fingers shifting softly through curly locks of his chestnut colored hair. The tight binds of your situation temporarily lifted as he laid his head against your chest, the quiet rise and fall of your breathing lulling him into a comfortable place between sleep and wake. If Eddie dared to ask about it in morning’s light, he knew he’d be met with an excuse of sorts. Something along the lines of providing him a service just as he had always provided you.
Then again, in the foundest corners of his memories, he holds on to a softly whispered truth.
“Ed’s?” He never replied, assuming that you’d only spoken because you believed him to be asleep.
“I um… Well you.” A frustrated pause, and the slight wiggle of someone processing their emotions had him tightening his arms around you ever so slightly. Quiet comfort despite the fear that it would cut off your thoughts.
“You make me feel like a person, Eddie Munson…” you confessed, voice cracking as you pressed your lips against the crown of his head. “A person…not just a thing, and I… I can’t thank you enough for that.”
He’d never admit it, not to you or anyone else, but in that moment he knew. Eddie Munson knew that he was completely and irrevocably in love with you.
Countless rules had been broken in the five years since then, the year 1991 being rung in with a finally whispered “I love you” and the subsequent breakdown of someone who’d only heard those three words in the context of manipulation. It hadn’t been easy. Tiptoeing through the minefields of childhood trauma and the subsequent damage left behind by those who were supposed to show either of you the highest form of devotion, but with your head cradled against his chest, features illuminated by the light of the television, Eddie knew it was worth it.
He’s been stealing glances at you all evening. The way your lashes flutter against your cheek bones when you laugh, the way your lips move as you mouth along to the lines of a movie the two of you have seen half a million times, and the way you snuggle further into him at the scenes that make you want to cry. Without even trying, you have his heavy metal heart hammering in his chest. Just lying there, blissfully unaware of the engagement ring weighing heavier than any illegal substance had ever weighed in his left pocket.
It wasn’t much, just an old gold band that he’d saved up to add a small gemstone to. His mother’s wedding band, apparently, found in an old safety deposit box Wayne set up for her meager belongings when she passed. It’s all Eddie really had left of his “family”, a soft reminder of the broken past he’d come from. The splintered edge that had smoothed over throughout his time with you.
“You okay in there?” Your voice breaks him from his reverie, big brown eyes blinking down to capture those that stare back up at him in the darkness of your apartment.
“Mmm, just thinking.” He offers in a heavy sigh, a soft chuckle following in its wake as he watches the way your brows quirk up.
“And what, pray tell, is so very thought provoking about Ferris Bueller?” You tease, resting your hands against Eddie’s shoulders to lift yourself into a sitting position; straddling his hips and leaning forward to hover your face above his.
“Not a damn thing.” He teases back, smirking when you react in mock horror.
“Munson, you wound me! Not even the scene with the Seurat painting?” Your hand is clenched over your heart, matching him at his usual level of theatrics.
“Sweetheart, I was a high school senior three times over.” Eddie smirks, reaching out to pull the hand away from your chest and to his lips. “The only work of art that has ever moved me, is the one sitting on my lap.”
“Eddieee.” You whine, pulling your hand away from the smile that pulled across his lips as the cheesy line passed them. He loves watching the heat rise in your cheeks, the twitch at the corner of your mouth as you fight back a laugh, and the look of faux disgust in your eyes at his compliment. “You can’t just say things like that! I’m gonna start making you pay for dinners again.”
“Reinstating the rules on me, princess?” His grin only grows as he teases, knowing that the two of you have come a long way from purchasing milkshakes and fries in exchange for crimes committed against an unspoken contract.
“Like I could ever get a delinquent like you to stay in line any longer than you already have.” You mumble, pressing a chast kiss to his smiling lips before shimmying off his lap to the small kitchen of your shared space.
Sure, marriage was something the two of you had immediately marked as an impossibility between you, along with the million and seven other things you’d dubbed yourselves unworthy of, but as Eddie trails after you in silence; gold band in hand, he’s almost certain that this final breach against your arrangement will convince you of something different.