𝙲𝚛𝚊𝚠𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚗 𝚖𝚢 𝚜𝚔𝚒𝚗.

𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚜𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚜, 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚕.

𝙵𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝚒𝚜 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝙸 𝚏𝚊𝚕𝚕.

𝙲𝚘𝚗𝚏𝚞𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕.

𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎'𝚜 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚙𝚞𝚕𝚕𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚗𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚏𝚊𝚌𝚎.

𝙲𝚘𝚗𝚜𝚞𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚏𝚞𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐,

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚘𝚏 𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚛𝚘𝚕 𝙸 𝚏𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝚒𝚜 𝚗𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐.

𝙲𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚛𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐

𝙸 𝚌𝚊𝚗'𝚝 𝚜𝚎𝚎𝚖

𝚃𝚘 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚢𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗.

𝙼𝚢 𝚠𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚜 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚌𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚗.

(𝚆𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚊 𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚜𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎, 𝙸'𝚖 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚎𝚍

𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎'𝚜 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚝𝚘𝚘 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎).

𝙸'𝚟𝚎 𝚏𝚎𝚕𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚋𝚎𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚎,

𝚂𝚘 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚎𝚌𝚞𝚛𝚎.

Eddie smoked a handful of cigarettes whilst waiting for Lennon to get out from seeing Billy in the hospital.

He had Iron Maiden blaring off his speakers in the parking lot but his hot chocolate vanished from his cup and was being replaced with cigarette butts quicker than it took for Lennon to get back to him. So, he turned off the vehicle and took to smoking a little ways away from the front entrance.

He knew if he was caught by an employee, he would be asked to leave the premises so he kept his distance far but close enough to see if Lennon returned.

He knew a lot about the ins and outs of hospital procedures and protocols from the times he spent with his mom before she died.

He knew they didn't permit smoking on hospital property. He knew they didn't allow patients to have two jello cups during meals unless you buttered up the staff or got the patient on the other side of the curtain of a shared room to share. He knew silly little rules like that even after so many years.

He still remembered.

Being an ADHD kid to a mom undergoing chemo wasn't fun. He was always wandering the halls and making friends with the residents who found his rebellion endearing.

But he wasn't a kid anymore. People didn't think he was being cute or charismatic anymore. It was the devil's doing if he was being funny or complimenting someone. He wasn't naturally attractive or chivalrous or funny. He couldn't be. It had to be the devil pulling on his strings, luring innocent people into his clutches for sacrifice.

Eddie had finished his fifth cigarette in the last hour when Lennon came rushing out the door. She was walking fast and turned her head in several directions. It was like she needed to check a different corner of the building or parking lot with each step.

"Hey!" Eddie pushed himself off the side of the building and quickly burst out into a jog. He kept his cigarette pressed between his lips as he moved into the center of the asphalt but slowed his pace when he saw how her entire body flinched at the sound of his voice.

"By the angel..." she muttered with what air she had left in her body. If it weren't for being surprised by Eddie's echoic voice, she might have sounded less breathy.

She stopped scurrying but her feet wouldn't let her break. It was a habit she had picked up since the trails in Vermont. To run is to stay alive and to stay alive she had to keep running. If she was faster than what she feared then nothing could touch her. But she failed to understand that running caused exhaustion and that she couldn't run forever.

"Hey..." Eddie lowered his voice, coming up beside her and noticing how puffy her face had gotten since last seeing her. "Are you okay?" he asked softly, tilting his head and trying to see past the cape of hair she used to hide her glistening eyes.

"Fine. Can you drive me home?" she asked timorously, sniffling and turning her head in the opposite direction of Eddie.

He wasn't going to lie to himself, her sudden change in heart was strange. The last time he checked, which wasn't but a few hours ago, she was still mad at her brother and acted like she didn't want to go back home. Now, she had changed her mind which might not have been so strange alone, but she looked rattled. She looked like she had been crying and he couldn't just brush that off. Something was wrong.

"Yeah but- whuh-" he pulled the tobacco from his teeth and hurried to keep up with her despite her blindness to where his van was parked. "Did something happen in there?" he asked with a worried tone in his voice.

"No," she replied simply, casting her eyes out to the concrete and checking to see if the police were anywhere to be seen.

"Are you sure because you don't look too goo-"

"I just wanna go home," she admitted. "Brontë's been looking and I should...." she took a deep breath. "I should go before he calls the cops..."

"You think he'd do that?"

"I don't know. I just wanna go home," she replied quickly, circling around Eddie's van and desperately putting distance between them as if to isolate herself.

Eddie stopped in his tracks and glanced at her reflection in his side mirror before walking around to the driver's side.

She was chewing at the inside of her lip and her eyes never left the crank to the passenger window the entire time he was driving. She was hyper-focused on the small crank beneath the armrest but her eyes were puffy and all Eddie could think was that she was trying not to cry now.

"So, is uh..." Eddie tried to break the semi-silence, finding the sound of his speakers to be oddly lonesome when her voice wasn't played over it. "Is your boyfriend doing alright?" Eddie shot her a lopsided smile to show his humor.

However, she didn't think it was funny.

"Billy's fine," she mumbled, turning her head toward the passenger window to hide her face and terminate any suspicion Eddie might have about her mood shift.

Eddie felt his stomach grumble with nerves and his heart sank into the acid inside it. His eyes shifted toward her, catching a glimpse of her curtained hair which was cleverly hiding her face. He felt sick. Some part of him felt at fault too. Maybe he did something wrong. Maybe he should have gone inside with her. Maybe he would have protected her in some way, preventing this from happening...

He knew something was wrong. Not only was she acting off, numb, and detached... she didn't reassure him that Billy wasn't her boyfriend.

Every time he teased her, she corrected him, and the fact she didn't now made him feel even worse.

He sat in an overwhelming amount of anxiety, tapping his left foot against the carpet and shifting his eyes from the snowy roads to her cold gaze.

"Did something happen back there?" Eddie pondered, finding her silence to be worse than brewing in his anxiety all alone.

Lennon held her breath for a moment and glanced over to find Eddie's eyes moving between the road and her eye. She realized what energy brought with her and the insistent tapping of his foot beside the pedals made her turn her attention to him.

"No," she informed him, lying through her teeth but deciding to keep her own fears to herself.

He didn't need to know about the cops, or the fact she ran away from them and feared they would recognize her, or the fact she broke down in the stairwell, or the fact she was now high on adrenaline and worried about what Brontë would do if she didn't make it home soon.

Because if she told Eddie any of that, the truth would come out. He would know what kind of crimes she was accused of and why she moved to Hawkins and why she acts like this perfect little cheerleader at school. If she told him what happened, she couldn't guarantee that he would believe her, let alone keep it to himself.

She imagined the moment he learned who she was that he would spread the gossip to his friends and like the clap, that shit would reach everybody in Hawkins High. She didn't kill anybody and yet that didn't stop people from believing that she did.

That's what they did in Vermont, why should Indiana be any different?

"No, everything's fine..." she spoke softly, sighing when she kept her eyes on his nervous leg bouncing and wondering if she had enough energy to try and ease it.

She took a deep breath and held it there to try and stimulate pressure on her chest. However, it was nothing compared to the weight of Eddie on top of her as the first snowfall landed on her skin or when the warmth from his body eased every ache in her body enough to lull her to sleep.

"I..." she trailed off. "I just think it's weird that I started the day off with my brother yelling at me about you and your mom, and now we're driving off from the hospital where one of the guys I was making out with is lying in a hospital bed while the other guy I was making out with is sat in the driver's seat of the getaway car..." she deflected, hating the fact she was covering the truth with a white lie.

Eddie furrowed his brows and smiled anxiously.

"It kind of feels like I'm losing my mind..." she giggled nervously, finding some kind of comfort in the fact she was speaking the truth.

The corners of Eddie's lips tightened and lifted his deep pink lips upward. "I can understand that," he chuckled, trying to rid his body from its earlier worriment.

"You can?" Lennon tilted her head innocently and pouted sympathetically.

"Oh, yeah," Eddie spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I never thought in a million years you would step foot in this van after I drove you home... I was sure the talk of the town was enough to scare you off."

Lennon hummed with satisfaction, finding the notion that everything that put her against him meant absolutely nothing to her but the moment she gets self-conscious, she can't think of anybody doing the same for her.

"And the first thing you say to me is how much I could be like Ted Bundy. But no," he chuckled. "That didn't stop you..."

Lennon shook her head in disbelief. "I didn't believe them..." she corrected him with an appreciative smile plastered to her face. "I wanted to figure you out myself."

Eddie smirked and glanced over with a mischievous look in his eye.

Lennon noticed and licked her lips before shaking her head. "You've been really nice... Like..." she sighed, running things back in her mind. "Really nice..."

She thought about all the times Eddie had every opportunity to prove her wrong: when he followed her into the bathroom, when he had her company in the back of the Hideout, when he brought her home, when she fell asleep in his bed -twice-, when he followed her outside before it started snowing, when he followed her at home all alone, when he took her to the back of the football field and it was just the two of them, when it was just the two of them after the winter final, when she was crawling on top of him drunk.

Even now, he was acting like a gentleman. He had every right to tell her, no, to refuse to bring her to see Billy or drive her to school to pick up the present. He agreed to drive her home but she didn't deserve anything more chivalrous.

"Nice people can't be serial killers?" Eddie joked but his comment made her reflect on the past instead.

"Not genuine people," she admitted. "Ted Bundy did volunteer at suicide hotlines but that didn't mean he was a genuinely nice guy; he just wanted people to think he was."

Eddie pulled into her neighborhood and felt saddened by the fact their day together was coming to an end. However, he could tell there was still something bothering Lennon, he just didn't know what and he was too afraid to pry.

After everything, he was still worried she would leave him.

"And you've made up your mind about me then?" Eddie said hopefully, trying to keep the worry from his voice but failing.

Lennon creased her eyebrows and examined the side of his face with a close eye.

From the curled bangs hiding his forehead and all the small scars above his brow to the stubble at his chin that made his skin darker, she took in all his features while he was distracted with remembering where she lived.

He had glassy eyes, a light brown as the darkness of their hue encapsulated the white, reflective snow around them. Subsequently, his skin was paler too. She outlined the shape of his nose and found herself obsessing over the perfect proportion it was to the rest of his face. Then there were his lips. They were dark pink and obviously over-rubbed from his insistent worrying. His upper lip was nearly bigger than his bottom and the full, roundness of them made her crave their kiss.

She knew that no matter how badly she would ever want him, she would always want a peaceful life more. Therefore, she couldn't officiate anything; no matter how badly she wanted to ease his pain.

"As I said before," she began, turning away and finding his oblivious beauty to be too tempting to continue to stare at. "I think I like Eddie Munson a little more than I thought I would..."

Eddie pulled the van to a stop in front of her house and turned to see her skin had brightened since the hospital. Her neck and cheeks were rosy and the corners of her lips were brought down to try and hide the smile threatening to reveal her true feelings.

"I thought you were too drunk to remember that," Eddie accused wistfully.

"I remember too much of last night, which is why I really just wanted to say sorry because that was not cool of me to pressure you and string you along-"

"No, it's fine," Eddie chuckled. "I've got free will," he informed her charmingly. "If I wanted to leave, I would have..."

"So you wanted to watch me be on a date with another guy?" she questioned suspiciously.

"No," he rolled his eyes and smiled dopily. "But that's not who you wanted to be there with," he glowered, shooting her with one of those smiles that hurt her belly.

She froze. She didn't know what to think, let alone do.

His eyes glistened and his dark eyelashes captured his big brown eyes in just the right light to make Lennon feel nervous and warm. His lips were red and round as the corners cradled a pair of dimples that drove her crazy.

Her eyes were heavy and sightly puffy which made keeping them open hard enough. Maintaining eye contact was even more challenging when she was already conscious of keeping them open.

She couldn't help but glance down at her trembling hands.

"Well... You aren't right but you aren't wrong," she smiled teasingly, keeping her eyes down and avoiding his gaze entirely.

"Oh really?" Eddie egged her on, finding her vagueness charming considering her change in tone. She had gone from being reclusive to being vaguely flirtacious, almost like she was too nervous to blantantly admit how much she liked him.

"Yes," she sighed with a smile, closing her hands together and reaching for the cup of cocoa she tried to finish. "Well, I do appreciate everything you've gone, Eddie..." she turned to look at the front of her house as if to cue her leave, but the sight of a car sitting in front of it caused her to lose concentration.

"Shit," she closed her eyes in defeat and slowly turned to Eddie who always had his eyes on her. "I'm really sorry about today-"

"Please," Eddie said dreadfully, deepening his voice and causing Lennon to swallow uncomfortablly. "Don't apologize. Any adventure with you is one worth cherishing," he assured her.

She huffed out a breath of amusement and looked down at her hands before smiling softly. "Even though today definetly didn't go to plan... I'm really glad I got to spend it with you..." she admitted shyly.

It sounded so cliche, but she really did like him. She hated it and she hated how childish she sounded, but it was true. She really liked being with him.

Eddie's heart pounded against his chest, his eyes gleamed with interest, and his cheeks felt overwhelmingly warm as she refused to meet his eye all of a sudden.

She was fiddling with the edge of her cup. She didn't glance over to him but instead looked out the window. Her attention caused Eddie to follow her line of sight and when she noticed whose car was parked outside, his lips parted and his mind felt a little less foggy.

"Oh shit, Steve's-"

Before Eddie could finish his sentence, Lennon whipped her head in his direction and her lips were pressed to his.

Eddie sucked in a breath of air and widened his eye incredilously.

One second she was dead silent, staring out the window like she was ready to jump out of it, and now she was kissing him.

He couldn't collect his thoughts, let alone gather a single coherent one. He didn't know what was going on. All he knew was that she tasted like metal and faint chocolate and that she was kissing him.

Everything else faded around them as she refused to pull away too quickly and eased him into the touch. She knit her brows together and sighed as she finally leaned back.

Her bottom lip was stuck between her lips and her eyes were wide and glossy now as they bore holes into his.

"Thank you," she whispered, smiling angelically and taking Eddie's silence to catch her breath. "I didn't think I'd be able to do that on my own but..." Her eyes travelled down to his parted lips for a moment before they found their way to his eyes again. "I trust you..."