𝙸𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚎𝚢𝚎𝚜 𝙸 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚊 𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚋𝚞𝚛𝚗𝚜

𝚃𝚘 𝚏𝚛𝚎𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝𝚜 𝚛𝚞𝚗𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑

𝙳𝚎𝚎𝚙 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠

𝚂𝚎𝚎𝚍𝚜 𝙸 𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚐𝚛𝚘𝚠.

𝙾𝚗𝚎 𝚍𝚊𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚜𝚎𝚎

𝙰𝚗𝚍 𝚍𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚍𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚎.

𝚈𝚎𝚊𝚑, 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚗, 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚗 𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎

𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚝'𝚜 𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝, 𝚕𝚎𝚝'𝚜 𝚍𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎.

𝚂𝚗𝚊𝚔𝚎.

𝙸'𝚖 𝚊𝚖 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚗𝚊𝚔𝚎.

𝚃𝚎𝚖𝚙𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐

𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚋𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎.

𝙻𝚎𝚝 𝚖𝚎 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚍.

𝙻𝚎𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏 𝚋𝚎𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚍.

𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚊𝚏𝚛𝚊𝚒𝚍.

𝙸'𝚟𝚎 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚍

𝙷𝚞𝚗𝚐𝚎𝚛 𝙸 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚏𝚎𝚎𝚍.

Eddie quickly put on some old denim jeans, shoved his feet into some shoes, shoved what little money he had into his back pocket, and quickly whipped up his car keys before rushing toward the door. He swiped something off the table as he held the door open for Lennon but she had already walked out before noticing.

By the time she even realized he had hung back, something was being pushed onto her head and she realized it was the hat she gave back.

"Your hair is still wet," he grumbled, adjusting it so it covered the tops of her ears and didn't cover her eyes. "And it looks better on you anyway," he smiled, causing Lennon to blush and turn away from him to hide the effects of his flattery.

"You wanna tell me what all that about anyway?" Eddie questioned as he closed and locked the door behind him. "Brontë might just kill you for inviting me over for dinner," he scoffed.

Lennon tried to recover from Eddie's protective gesture and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. "All my worries will be dealt with then, won't they?" she joked, going down the steps and waiting for Eddie at the bottom.

Eddie didn't find it funny but he didn't say anything about it either. "Well, can I ask why you aren't spending the holidays with your parents?" he asked nervously, unlocking the van and shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. "His or yours."

Lennon sighed and looped around to the passenger side of the van and hopped in as she tried to come up with a vague explanation. She owed Eddie something in return. She owed him something from the past to explain herself.

"Miss Riordan and her husband switch holidays every year between Brontë and his step-siblings. They're never in the same place at the same time. Last year they came here, this year they're going to Chicago to see their grandkids," she explained when Eddie buckled his seatbelt and waited a few moments for the engine to get warm.

"And your parents?" he pondered.

"Well... Brontë said your dad was arrested... Is...Is that true?" she asked curiously.

"Mmhm," Eddie nodded his head. He wasn't proud of his father but he also didn't know the guy well enough to be embarrassed by him either. Eddie didn't mind talking about him. It wasn't a sensitive subject as strange as it sounded. "If your brother's got it out for me, I'm sure he's shared all the gory details," he smiled through the discomfort of Lennon knowing something about his personal life without him ever having told her.

"Uh-huh..." Lennon drew out knowingly, nodding her head and finding her brothers hypocrites intolerable. "He's one to talk. Ours is too," she admitted. "And my mom's passed like yours so... Seems we have a matching set," she felt her throat swell as her heart began to race with anticipation. "Can't really spend Christmas with them when one's dead and the others in prison."

Eddie's heart dropped.

He didn't expect that.

But it made sense now.

He knew there had to be a good reason as to why she was living with her older brother. He was only twenty-one and he found it strange that she was to live alone with him instead of someone more responsible or older, but he didn't pressure her into sharing why.

When he asked, before he knew her, she replied with a comment of denial and Eddie backed off. If she wanted to share, she would have told him. But she didn't and so he didn't keep pestering her.

It made some sense though. He would know. His father was arrested a few years before his mother died and even though Wayne was in his life a lot before she passed, his uncle promised to watch over him after she died.

If Lennon's father was arrested and her mom was gone, then why wouldn't she live with the person she was the closest to?

Wayne was already spending so much time with him and his mother, helping them out whenever he could. Eddie was comfortable with Wayne and he was clean and making a decent income to raise a kid with and the legal system thought it was best despite his dad's lack of presentation. Wayne was different; he was better in every way.

Eddie couldn't imagine Brontë to be a better man than their father. So, why was it him?

Lennon talked about spending every summer with her brother. They seemed close and she was young and experiencing something tragic but why would she live with her brother?

And how?

How was this girl so perfect, so beautiful, so infuriatingly successful, and still come from a background like that?

Most people who underwent that kind of childhood ended up... like Eddie: drug addicted, sex addicted, depressed, with low self-esteem, bad grades, poor hygiene, and several undiagnosed mental disorders. Most people who went through things like that weren't the popular new girl with straight A's, a beautiful, bright facade, who were unmedicated, driven, social butterflies like her.

Of course, Eddie knew most of that wasn't real. It wasn't instinctual. It was forced. It was forced conformity and the more he learned about the true Lennon, the more he had to wonder why she was faking it.

But now it made some sense. It wasn't just the reputation Brontë set forth, it was coping.

He understood it a little better now.

It was hard to be depressed and mourning all the time if you surround yourself with people who aren't. If you force yourself into social situations where you don't have to think about the losses and the lack of family in your life, then the pain doesn't dwell. It doesn't heal, it doesn't go away, but it doesn't sit and stew inside someone's head either.

That wasn't her. She wasn't the cheer queen with more friends than she could count. She wasn't the track star with a perfect time record set to break. She wasn't this perfect girl everyone thought her out to be. Eddie was tearing that down. He was peeling back the wallpaper that made her look perfect and revealed her gloomy interior walling. He was seeing all the cracks and imperfections that made her who she was.

But the funny thing was, he didn't think the girl she was convincing everyone else she was to be perfect. He didn't think she was perfect in the ways everyone else thought she was.

He found it unnerving how her face never broke out, how perfectly curled her hair was, how muscular her legs appeared to be, and how articulate she was with her words, but he never found those things to be conventionally attractive. It was her mystery that drove him to walk up to her.

It was the odd relationship she had with the mysterious person on the phone that drove him toward her. It was the funny way she had of speaking that brought his feet closer to her. It was the opportunity to introduce himself freely to this new specimen that got him to talk to her. That was what interested him. That was what lured him into her.

And the more she talked, the more nervous yet playful she was with him, that was what made him stay.

The more he learned about her, the real her, the more he started to see perfection. He was determined to find something wrong with her and yet the more he got to know, the more perfect she became. All her cracks, all her uneven patchings, all her 'imperfections', he liked those more than the wallpaper.

The only true thing she had to show for her unconventional bringing up was her lack of trust in others. She didn't trust anybody. Nobody but Eddie; however, he wasn't aware of that.

Before, he always wondered why she acted like a social butterfly but seemed rebellious with him. He wondered why she didn't listen to everyone's warnings about him. He wanted to know why she continued to be nice and seemingly compliant with him even though all her 'friends' were telling her about these scary allegations about murder and cults and drugs and sex.

But now, he knew it was natural. That rebellion, that stubbornness, that was natural.

But even finding the differences between the Lennon those at school knew and the Lennon he knew, there was still a space of mystery. He wondered why she pretended to be someone she wasn't. She did it so loyally. She became the stereotypical popular girl and refused to steer away from the expectations. She had it down to the T. The only times she ever went against the social normality was when she was tired. Only then did she allow the real her to show through because she didn't have the energy to fight it.

And he wondered why she was different with him. Even though he still couldn't figure out why she was so comfortable with him, he knew why she did it now.

She was hiding the pain she felt from her mother's death and the loss of her father's company. It was why Eddie couldn't initially understand how she was so okay. It was why he couldn't initially understand why she seemed so unaffected and... not like him...

"Can you please say something?" she asked insistently. "Tell me where we're going or... Ask why... or how... or... anything. Please?" she pleaded nervously, breaking Eddie from his state of perplexity.

"Actually," Lennon's hands started to shake again and she wanted to revoke her earlier words. "Don't ask why... Just know I don't wanna talk about it. He was wrongly accused anyway but can you just not... stare in silence? Please? Talk. Please? What are you thinking?"

"I..." he trailed off with a loss of words.

"That sounds sketchy, doesn't it? I swear we didn't kill anybody. I just don't want to talk about it. It's not like it happened a long time ago. I'm working on it. I just think you deserve some kind of explanation and if you don't wanna go to dinner, I totally get it. I sound like a fucking psychopath right now-"

"Absolutely not," he instantaneously replied, stopping her from continuing to ramble.

She had very little to hide now. She didn't have to give anything a second thought. It was the first time she never had to be careful how she worded herself or be careful about what she was saying or to who. She felt... scared... but free...

"You don't wanna talk about it, you don't wanna talk about it," he shrugged and sighed, lifting his hands to the steering wheel and dragging them over both sides as he caressed the tough metal in thought. "You uh... when did you move to Hawkins?" he turned to her and dropped his fiddling hands from the wheel to give her his full attention. "I assume that's why you moved here."

Lennon chewed at her lip and pulled her knee to her chest as she stared into those eyes that even in the midst of a mental civil war, she felt safe inside them. She felt like she could reveal the rawest, most fragile parts of herself and he would treat them like delicate pieces of glass that could crush under pressure. She felt like she could trust him with everything in her and yet the fear of where he would carry those pieces of glass scared her beyond belief.

"Yeah. It was in May... My uh..." she scoffed. "My mom-"

She realized she almost told him how she died by saying her mother went missing in February right before her brother did. She almost told him how the coroners suspected she had died shortly after she went missing but wasn't found until later and that it wasn't concrete but she didn't.

She didn't want to tell him but she did.

She wanted to tell him but she didn't.

Fuck.

"My mom died like, right after Valentine's Day and my dad didn't take it well and... his trial went on for two months before Brontë got custody of me so..." she admitted restlessly. "May..."

It was unnerving for Lennon to be so open but it was almost funny to Eddie how effortless it would have been for him to give his condolences. There weren't many people around him that needed sympathetic reassurance but he received plenty; most of which he didn't even want.

But now that the opportunity presented itself, he realized how badly he wanted to tell her how sorry he was for her loss. The one thing he never wanted from people he was willing to give to Lennon so painlessly. It was almost funny.

"It's your first Christmas without them, isn't it?" he asked innocently, slightly furrowing his brow and shooting her an intense look of empathy.

She didn't respond. She only looked up at him and shot him a small smile as if she knew there was nothing she could do about it.

"I remember what that's like. It's not fun," Eddie shook his head and was startled fiddling with the rings on his hand. "House felt empty... Air felt like there was a voice missing... There felt like there was too much food on the table..."

Lennon was listening intently and the vulnerability Eddie was showing her was alarming. How was it that easy for him to just open up and admit to feeling that much pain? How could he effortlessly share such heartbreaking experiences with someone he just met a few months ago?

But what she didn't know was the truth. It wasn't easy.

Eddie had never told anybody about how he felt after it happened. He wasn't too bothered about his dad. He wasn't the best person and all he managed to teach Eddie was how to hot wire a car or how to pick a lock or what to say if pulled over by the police. He wasn't hurt by his father's arrest like Lennon was. He was hurt beyond repair over the loss of his mother and the manner in which he lost her.

But he shared that pain with Lennon because he felt like she needed it more than he did. She needed to know that it was okay. She needed to know that she wasn't in any danger of sharing that information with him. She needed to know that she was safe with him, that he understood, that he didn't judge her for not telling him before or for not wanting to share any more with him. She needed to know that he understood her.

"You're acting really unbothered about all of this," he chuckled nervously and looked over at her, then back down into his lap before pulling the van out of park.

"Well, it is what it is, isn't it?" she shot back simply. "Can't control the past. Can only control how it affects you. And I'm tired of feeling sad and scared all the time so... I'm adapting... I'm doing more and meeting more people and I'm here with you... Going God knows where, but I'm here," she laughed softly, lightening the mood slightly and shifting her anxiety into something more giddy and playful.

She started fiddling with the hem of her pants as the sound of Eddie's warm giggling soothed her frazzled nerves.

"I'm serious," Eddie laughed. "It's a big deal," he ruffled his hair in thought and shook the sleep out of his curls as he turned out of his community. "It's Christmas..."

"Speaking of... Can we swing by the school real quick? I have to pick something up before it gets too late..."

"Now?" he scoffed. "Why?"

"I have something at school that I need for Christmas and I just never had the opportunity to leave with it... Please?" She quickly shot him a pair of puppy eyes and he was sold.

"Fine," he agreed nonchalantly, deciding that it wouldn't make much of a difference if he stopped by. "I mean it though... The first Christmas is a big deal."

"It's just another day with Brontë the Bitch," she groaned, stifling her amusement at the nickname Eddie gave to him and rubbing at her shakey hands.

"Not anymore," he assured. "We'll be there... But only if he doesn't kill you before then."

"He might kill you but I don't think he will if your uncle is there," she responded with a small smile.

"Well... Since it's a free ride, I'll make sure to be on my worst behavior then," Eddie smirked, turning toward the school and preparing to park in the front.

"Can you swing around the back?" she asked innocently, far too oblivious of how sketchy it seemed to have made it seem any less.

"What?" Eddie scoffed again. "Why?"

"Just-" she choked on a laugh, suddenly realizing how it might have sounded to another pair of ears. "The back, please? Trust me..."

"Right..." Eddie sighed sarcastically. "Famous last words..."

Lennon giggled and sat in awe over the driver as he followed orders.

Once he reached the dumpster the potheads spent their free periods at, Lennon was quick to hop out and search for the bin containing Eddies wrapped present.

She crouched down, making sure not to get her knees in the snow before reaching underneath the trash and pulling out a rectangular bin that held a brightly wrapped box inside.

She smiled at the box actually being in her grasp and got to her feet, opening the back doors of Eddie's man and sliding it in right beside a preexisting guitar case that was more than likely empty.

"How the hell did you know that was even there?" he asked incredulously.

She smirked and closed the back doors before coming back to the passenger seat. "I have contacts," she giggled, earning herself a look of bewilderment as Eddie shifted his widened eyes from her to the bin that contained a box that looked almost identical in size to the case it sat beside.

"If we get pulled over and I find out you've been a little drug dealer this whole time, I'm not spending a night in holding again..."

"Again?" she laughed.

"Well," he sighed humorously. "I don't know to break this to you, but people who deal drugs break the law, sweetheart..." he teased.

"Fuck you," she laughed, shoving his shoulder and lifting her finger to her nose to try and stop herself from continuing.

Eddie pulled the car out of park and started back on his original route. "Hey, I'm not the one who pulled a sketchy ass box out from a dumpster."

"It's a Christmas present," she whined in defense.

"A Christmas present from trash goblins? Where the hell did it come from?" he laughed nervously.

"Star Court, if you must know," she stated truthfully, crossing her arms and shaking her head in disbelief.

"And why is it as Hawkins Hell?"

Lennon rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Because the guy who helped me out goes to school with us and I wanted it to be a surprise..."

"That's one suspicious surprise," he leered doubtfully and turned back to the road.

Lennon smiled at Eddie's charm and turned away from his side profile as he got back on the road and focused on taking his time to drive since the roads were icy and the congestion on the main road would have made it more dangerous.

She was watching the flurries of snow turn the world outside a gloomy grey expanse and in any other situation, with literally anybody else behind the wheel, she would have been having a panic attack. She hated cars. She didn't trust many people to drive, but she certainly did not trust herself to drive so she had to accept it.

Brontë and Miss Riordan were the only people she trusted to drive safely, but in worst-case scenarios, she was willing to stifle her fear to get back home. She was lucky enough to have Eddie by her side. She knew she was blessed to have him there with her. He was a very good driver and she guessed that had to be because of the illegal drugs he might have stored inside. He was the last person who needed a cop peering in through the window.