"Is Eddie short for something or is it just Eddie?" I ask, my head resting on Eddie's chest.

It was later into the night and I'd decided to just stay over at Eddie's place, a risky decision since I couldn't use the excuse of staying at Chrissy's if my mom questioned me, but I didn't exactly want to go home and face those consequences early.

Eddie and I had been just laying there in moments of comfortable silence with each other, also moments of giggling at stupid shit.

"It's short for Eduardo the Magnificent III." he tells me, acting completely serious.

I glanced up at him with a half confused, half suspicious look on my face. The way he said it with such certainty caused a thought to form in the back of my head that maybe, just maybe he was being honest, and Eddie's full of surprises, his full name being that extravagant wouldn't even surprise me at this point.

"Are you being serious?"

"Ask Gareth, he'll back me up." Eddie nods, still completely serious.

"Why magnificent? What magnificent act did you do to earn that title?" I ask, playing along even though I knew there was a 90% chance he was joking.

"It all started in a... kingdom called middle school." he begins, adding his own dramatic descriptions as if he was setting the scene for a D&D campaign.

"There was like– a royal family in this kingdom, and I was a rogue who had a few more rogue friends but not many." he continues, keeping up the theatric storytelling.

At this point, I'm tracing his tattoos with my finger, listening to his weirdly intriguing way of storytelling as my fingertip glides over his bare skin.

"But one of my rogue friends... went rogue." he gasps dramatically, and so do I.

"No way." I utter, pretending to be absolutely shocked.

"So he went up to the royal family of the kingdom and stole the princess' favourite crown." he shakes his head disappointedly as he tells the story.

And then I realise what he's talking about.

"You know me, I've always been extremely heroic and chivalrous, so I knew what I had to do." he nods, "I punched the little shit– I mean, I had a slightly one sided duel with the rogue and of course, I won."

"What next?" I ask.

"I returned the princess' crown to her because it was the right thing to do." he continues, "Also because I had a huge crush on her and wanted to impress her, that too."

"I think it definitely impressed her." I tell him, and I know it impressed her because the princess in his story is me, the crown is my colouring book.

It was cute that Eddie had a crush on me in middle school because I had a huge crush on him back then too. If only younger me knew my feeling were reciprocated, maybe Eddie and I would've been friends earlier.

"That is how I became Eduardo the Magnificent III." he finishes, playing with my hair.

An odd noise filled the silence, a repeated heavy scratching against metal that seemed to be coming from outside the trailer. I almost thought I had imagined the noise out of tiredness, but the second time it happened Eddie was alert, sitting up stiffly.

"Could it be your uncle?" I ask, now having confirmation he heard it too.

"He's never usually back this early. Should we go check?" he asks, and I furrow my eyebrows in confusion.

"We? I'm staying here, what if it's like– an axe murderer or something?" I answer, it's never a wise idea to just go strolling out into the night, especially after hearing weird noises like that.

"So you're gonna send me out there as a sacrifice? Wow." he clutches his heart in over-exaggerated sadness.

Fine, looks like I'll have to join him.

The scratching noise came back again, a little louder this time. I began to glance around Eddie's barely lit room in search for anything that could be used to defend us in case of an emergency.

I jumped out of Eddie's bed and grabbed his handcuffs from the wall, Eddie looked up at me in surprise, slight smirk beginning to form on his face.

"I don't think now is a great time for that, there's a possible murderer at our door." he blinks, laughing a little.

"Oh my god, I'm not– Jesus." I sigh, he was thinking of something else, "We're gonna go out there and if it's a murderer I'll put these on him and we can call the cops. Come on."

"That's a terrible idea. You think you could just handcuff a murderer who's probably got a weapon?" Eddie shakes his head, disapproving towards my plan.

"What, have you got a better idea?"

"I'll ask him nicely to leave us alone." Eddie nods, I rolled my eyes at his answer.

We both headed out of the bedroom, cautiously tip-toeing towards the front door of Eddie's trailer.

We paused once we reached the door, taking a quick moment to debrief.

"If we die-" Eddie begins.

"We're not gonna die." I tell him, cutting him off before he can continue.

Eddie hid behind me as I slowly began to unlock the door, trying my best to not make any noise. With a little click, it unlocked.

I pulled the door open, not looking outside yet. Eddie grabbed my hand as I slowly peered outside into the night.

I didn't see anything at first, and then I glanced down.

A scruffy looking dog, it looked a little like a Border Collie but like it was possibly crossed with something else. The dog gazed mindlessly up at me with its dopey eyes, tilting its head curiously at me. It was adorable, just blissfully unaware that we'd thought it was a murderer at our door.

"Hey, buddy." I smiled, kneeling down to pet the lost looking dog.

"Jesus, little guy, we thought you were a serial killer." Eddie exhales a sigh of relief as he sees the dog.

"How do you know it's a guy?" I ask.

"I can sense it." Eddie states confidently, as if his thought was fact.

As I ruffled my hand through the dog's thick, knotted fur I noticed the lack of a collar, maybe he didn't have an owner. Judging by how scruffy he looked, I think my assumption was right.

"Do you recognise him? Maybe he's a neighbour's dog who wandered off or something." I ask Eddie.

"Only a few of my neighbours have dogs, this definitely isn't one of theirs." Eddie shrugs, sitting down next to me on the floor to play with the dog.

The dog began to lay down, resting his chin on Eddie's lap, a huge smile began to grow on Eddie's face.

"Look! He likes me!" Eddie beams, making sure I was seeing this too.

The dog seemed to react, as if he could understand, he began to lick Eddie's hand.

"I'm keeping him." Eddie decides without a second thought, practically bonded to the dog already, "My uncle takes care of some of the strays around here sometimes, I have a bunch of dog stuff."

My heart could've melted right there and then, the way Eddie was gently inspecting the dog to make sure he wasn't hurt, the way the dog's eyes closed in relaxation whenever Eddie petted him. The whole sight was just adorable.

"Now I'm gonna have to come up with a name for you, little guy." Eddie mumbles to the dog.

Hm...

"What about Freddy? Like Freddy Krueger. Since we thought he was a murderer." I shrug.

Eddie pauses for a moment, processing my idea.

"... Oh my god, Eddie and Freddy." Eddie's eyes widen, actually liking the suggestion, "You're a genius."

☆ ☆ ☆

cute little val and eddie moments for everyone

also??? we're getting ridiculously close to 100k reads ALREADY??? thank u all sm for all the support on this book it's been crazy

i also read most comments (sometimes my notifs mess up and i miss some) but ty all for keeping me entertained 😭😭 i've seen some rather bizarre comments but they make me laugh every time

like i said before updates might be a little slower bc of exams but the good news is i only have like 5 exams left and then i'm done so 👍👍