Eddie woke up to a cold bed and a pounding headache.

The first thing he notices is the sunlight streaming in from his window, which strikes him as odd because he usually pulls the makeshift curtains made up of old sheets tightly shut before bed. It irritates him, making him throw his arms around as if he's a child, before finally one arm settles stretched out across the other side of the bed and one rests across his eyes.

But as his arm sweeps over the empty side of the bed, he notices the second thing: Willow's perfume.

The smell of her hits him square in the face, a mix of her perfume and shampoo having woven itself into the sheets and pillow beside him. And it only confuses him because the bed is cold . She's not there - not even recently, since there's none of her warmth lingering.

Am I just imagining things? Why would she have even been here in the first place?

And then it hits him. Finally, the grogginess of restless sleep lifts, and the memories of the previous day, the previous night, flood his mind.

The fight with Jason. Getting suspended. Willow showing up to the school. Willow punching Jason. Willow running off.

Willow. Willow. Willow.

He remembers leaving the school and going straight to the Hideout, and he remembers thinking about how he was going to regret his actions after the third shot of whiskey. But then the memories begin to blur, until eventually they become nothing more than snapshots of Gareth and Jeff showing up, and.... And... did Eddie cry to them about Willow?

"Fuck," he groans, rolling over in bed, burying his face in the pillow that smells of Willow. He stiffens, realizing that it's definitely not his imagination.

The pillow definitely smells like her.

He continues to force himself to remember the night. So, he cried about Willow, drunkenly, to his friends. Then what?

Oh.

Oh.

They called her. She showed up at the Hideout. And he can't remember exactly what he said in his drunken state, but he remembers burying his nose into her neck, and he remembers seeing a single tear fall down her face, and-

Fuck, what did he say?

It hurts to continue to remember, to the point that he has to lift his aching head and just accept the sunlight that's berating him. There's a sinking feeling in his stomach, worse than the night he actually confessed to Willow all of his feelings.

Did she drive him home? Did she spend the night? What time was it?

His eyes glance around his room as if there might be hidden clues for him. Maybe her shoes, or maybe a jacket. Something besides the fading scent of her between his sheets. Something to tell him it was real and not just a whiskey-induced hallucination.

But he comes up empty-handed. Maybe he is going crazy.

It's not until he finally glances at the bedside table to his left that he's proven to not be certifiably insane. His Garfield mug sits there, mostly untouched, and it triggers even more memories.

Willow arguing with Gareth.

"I regret it. I wish I had gone after him. Fuck, I wish I had never ran after Steve to begin with. It wasn't worth it," he recalls hearing Willow say through muffled glass.

Gareth leaning across Willow, them fiddling with his van somehow, and the jealousy that sparked in Eddie's chest.

"Get off my girl, Gareth."

Oh, yeah. He definitely fucked up. He almost wishes he didn't remember, that he could save himself from the embarrassment. It nearly drowns him as he sits up on the bed, wincing as his temples pound.

The memory of Willow's regret clings to him, even as he stands and tries to find proper clothes, because it feels like the beginning of something he should remember. It nags at the back of his head as he pulls a fresh t-shirt over his head, as he stumbles around for pants. He needs to remember the rest of the night; he knows he's missing something important. It is a gut feeling, a visceral reaction of anger at the black holes in his memories.

He nearly topples over when he starts to shove his feet into the first pair of jeans he finds on his floor, and he has to catch himself on his bedside table.

There's more than just his Garfield mug on the desk. The tabletop shakes, and his keys fall to the floor, but they aren't what catch his eye. Nor does the bottle of Tylenol that falls on its side.

Eddie's eyes are trained on a piece of paper clearly torn from a notebook, familiar messy scrawl staring him dead in the eyes, the black holes in his memories shrinking with each rereading of the request left behind for him.

Meet me in the woods. - Red

—

The woods of Hawkins are expansive and perilous. They're easy to get lost in - Eddie still recalls a few years back when the Byers boy went missing in them, how everyone in the town had banded together to navigate them in search parties. He and Wayne had even joined one or two of those parties in the beginning, joining in the wandering citizens wielding flashlights and nothing more than the name of Joyce Byers' son - Will . It was nearly two years ago to this day. It had shaken the entire town. It had made the woods morph and twist from something beautiful, something so serene, into something insidious. Even once the boy had been found, even once the tales of monsters amongst the trees had once again become a product of the over-imaginative minds of the children of Hawkins, the residents avoided them.

It was why the picnic table had become a perfect location for Eddie to do most of his dealings.

The clearing was deep enough in the woods that no one dared to venture out there without purpose. He didn't have to worry about deals being interrupted or being caught by any sort of authorities. It was just shy of being on school grounds, and made it an easy ground of neutrality for him and his customers.

But the clearing, the picnic table, had become more than just a place for Eddie to partake in his unsavory side business. It had become something of a safe place for him. He found himself going to the clearing whenever he ditched class and his van simply seemed too stuffy - he'd go to plan campaigns, he'd go to smoke some of his own supply, he'd go to simply get away .

And yet most importantly, it had become the spot where he had sealed his fate when it came to Willow Jenkins.

He knew the pathway like the back of his hand, in any time of day and in any season, but ever since he'd walked the trail with Willow, something had changed in the scenery for him. It wasn't a means to an end, it wasn't a path less taken, and it wasn't a business route for him anymore. Ever since that day, ever since he'd watched her wide eyes take in the nature around them in wonder, he'd started to look at it all a little differently. He started to notice the flowers blooming along the path and around the edge of the clearing. He started to notice all the different carvings in the oak trees he passed, hearts with initials and exclamations of graduating classes, etched into bark in a way that had surely felt permanent when the knife had initially placed them, destined to one day be overtaken by nature.

It was hard to picture who the woods had belonged to before Eddie had laid his claim, before Willow had left her mark.

All it had taken was one visit for Eddie to decide that Mother Nature herself had carefully placed this safe haven there for them . They hadn't even returned after their few short visits, once their deal was set in stone and their meetings no longer required a clandestine aura. Meetings in the woods had easily transformed into meetings in Willow's bedroom, and negotiations no longer had to be held with a table of splintering wood between them.

And even after it all, she still looked as if she belonged there. When Eddie breaks into the clearing and sees Willow sitting at the picnic table, he knows that this space is still theirs.

"Hey, Red," he announces himself, smiling softly to himself when she jumps and looks up from the book she was buried nose-deep in. He wishes he would have said something funny, cracked a joke, but it doesn't feel right.

"Hey," she sighs out once she sees it's only him, letting her legs fall off the bench so she's sitting upright and no longer leaning against the trunk of the large oak in the center of the clearing. When she places the closed book atop the table, he recognizes it as his copy of Fellowship of the Ring.

It's the first time they've been alone since the fight while both of them are sober.

He knows that he technically saw her last night at the Hideout. He knows that technically , they had been alone in his trailer when she took him home. Hell, for the sake of technicalities, he even saw her before she attempted to rearrange Jason Carver's face with her fist yesterday. But this is the first time that it's just him, it's just her, and there's nothing laying in the expanse that lays out between two of them.

No whiskey, no friends, no drunken mistakes. Just him, and just her.

She's as pretty as that first night at the Hideout, and still takes away his breath in the same way. She's looking at him with those beautiful hazel eyes and he nearly trips over himself, nearly chokes up.

Those eyes and all those emotions.

He's never understood it. She had this capability to always look at him when he entered a room, and make him feel things no one else could. Even before this summer, she held that superpower. He can recall the way his chest would flutter when he'd walk into their shared math class last school year, and her eyes would flicker up from her notes so briefly before she offered him the smallest of all smiles. He told himself at the time that the fluttering was only because she was a pretty girl, and she wasn't looking at him like he was some freak . It was nothing more and nothing less, a normal reaction. He'd never have a proper conversation with her, and she'd simply become someone who he forgot about until his ten year reunion. She'd be lost with the memories of Hawkins when he finally got the Hell out of town, and it was fine.

But you have to graduate in order to attend a ten year reunion. And he hadn't quite accomplished that yet.

He starts to believe maybe it was fate, maybe it was the Universe that had held him back all this time. He needed to repeat his senior year a third time, just like some goddamn loser, so that this could happen.

She wasn't some forgotten relic in his mind, only to be remembered as another pretty face when he returns to his hometown. She was everything, now. She was one of the last things that made this town worth a damn dime to him now.

"You got my note," she's whispering, as if scared to break the serene atmosphere around them.

He nods, "I did."

He can see two pieces of notebook paper laid out on the table in front of her, his book working as a paperweight when a cool breeze runs over them. Her nose is a soft shade of pink and he catches the shiver that overtakes her body, even beneath the thickly knit sweater she wears.

Like a screenshot from the movie of them, from the very first scene of them here, he sits across from her at the table.

"Thank you for actually coming," she looks as if she had been worried he wouldn't come, and it breaks his heart, because she has no idea that he would do anything she asked of him. He remembers telling her as much last night, fueled by whiskey, but she clearly had brushed the words off as a drunk man's nonsense, "I was starting to think you weren't gonna show."

"Ah, well," he shrugs, pulling his jacket in closer. The leather jacket he'd once given to her, that she had once paraded the school halls in. He wishes that the collar still smelled like her, but his cheap cologne and cigarettes had leaked onto the fabric once more, "Hangovers are a bitch. Probably wouldn't have gotten up if I didn't have to piss."

Lies , his mind screams. He knew the only reason he had gotten up was her , even before the note. Her, and her perfume, and the stain she has left on every portion of his life, even his bed sheets.

"How are you feeling?" she asks at the sudden reminder that he was, in fact, recovering from a rough night.

He wants to scoff. This feels wrong . This was small talk, and the two of them had never needed small talk to carry a conversation between them.

"Fine," he curtly responds, scrunching up his eyebrows as he squints at the papers in front of her, "My head's killing me, but, you know, the doctor says I'll live."

"Just a superficial wound, then?"

It's reminiscent of their first conversation in O'Donnell's classroom.

"Eh, feels a little deeper to me," he mimics his response from that day, "But apparently, people don't die of a broken heart."

Her face immediately falls. He worries he's said the wrong thing, that she's going to shut him out, but he should know better.

"Actually, I think there was a case where a man's heart strings actually snapped after losing his wife," her voice is shaky and he can tell she's trying to keep her composure, trying to not let this moment seem as big as it was. He knows that she's just as overwhelmed being in front of him, sober him, as he is being in front of her.

He laughs lowly under his breath, "Of course, you'd know that."

"It's really interesting!" she defends, her own grin beginning to break out.

The tension begins to melt and it feels like nothing has changed between them. As if he never screamed how he loved her. As if he hadn't drunk himself sick because she kissed Steve.

"I'm sure it is, sweetheart," he teases back. He doesn't have it in him to keep up a cold front, not when it's her. His eyes move to her, and then back to the papers when the corners begin to flutter, "What do you got there?"

She's flush as her hands suddenly smooth over the exposed edges of the papers, as if finally remembering they're there, "Oh, uh- Nothing. Well, actually, not nothing."

"Oh? Care to share with the class?"

She lifts his book off of them, and grasps one in each hand, "Well- I- okay. Okay, can I start over?"

He fights another smile before nodding, motioning to make it clear she has his full attention. His eyes find hers, and the shaking in her hands increases.

But her voice comes out steady.

"Alright, well, you're probably wondering why I asked you to meet me out here," she begins.

He chuckles, "I'm absolutely shaking with anticipation, Red."

"I'd like to make a deal."

Her eyes are wide as she stares at him, clearly gauging his reaction. The only issue is he doesn't know how to react. He has no idea where she's going with this.

She can sense this, clearly, as she finally places the two pieces of paper back down on the table to face him and slides them closer.

He can finally make out what's on them.

On the right is the paper they'd written their original rules out on. When they'd first started meeting in the woods, when they'd first negotiated their fake relationship.

2. Willow must attend one Hellfire meeting – Eddie must attend one school game.

3. Two One public date a week (Will take turns paying)

4. Willow will wear Eddie's jacket occasionally

5. Willow will attend Corroded Coffin's performances (when she can)

Something stirs in him to see this physical reminder of how they began. To remember the way he'd so eagerly agreed to all of this just to be close to the girl in front of him. The way he had set himself up for heartbreak, because he had so desperately needed to get to know her, to be a part of her world.

"I... I suppose it's not a new deal," she explains, looking down at that original paper.

"I can't believe you kept that," he states, tone shocked but slightly amused.

"I had to. So, you know, we wouldn't fuck it up. Obviously my plan backfired," she's laughing nervously, picking at the corner of that paper, "It was just good to have in case we needed to reference it."

"How many of those rules did we even follow?"

"Quite a few, I'd say. We kept up study dates every Sunday, I attended Hellfire and your shows, you attended a game. I mean, I don't think we went on a weekly date but... who's keeping count?"

They're both nodding for a second, nostalgia flooding their bones for a time that was so recent yet felt so far away.

He still has no idea where she's going with this.

"As I was saying," she resumes what could be described as a professional voice, as if she were truly negotiating a business deal right now with him, "I'd like to make a deal. Or, renegotiate our past terms."

She scoots forward the second paper with new found urgency.

He recognizes her penmanship, another handwritten list filling in the lines of the notebook paper.

It's only the first line, and despite a face contorted in confusion, he finds himself letting out a few chuckles, "Okay, so, I'll graduate. Got it."

"Right," she nods, then she takes her finger and urgently taps the second line, "Keep reading."

"Honorary member?" Eddie snorts, "I think they'd make you Dungeon Master, even after everything that's happen-"

" Eddie ," Willow stresses, "Please keep reading."

He reads the rest of the rules in silence, his smile slowly growing wider with each line.

4. Willow may keep Eddie's jacket. (NO EXCEPTIONS. Non Negotiable.)

5. Willow is granted the title of Corroded Coffin's #1 fan (and Eddie's only groupie)

Eddie pauses his reading, heart beating erratically out of his chest. Most of these rules match up with their previous ones.

Except the last one. The last one, the sixth one, is new.

"Willow chooses Eddie," he murmurs out loud, "That one's new."

"It is."

"Can I ask what this is?"

He looks up at her, eyes abandoning the piece of paper and catching Willow already staring at him.

She takes a long shaky breath, "Rules for us dating. For real this time."

He doesn't answer her at first. He can't tell if it's her or the hangover that has his head spinning, his heart pounding in his ears as he processes the words.

When she's met with silence, she starts to panic.

"If you'll have me, of course. And I- I don't know. We can always add onto it, I wasn't sure if you have any deal breakers, or if you even want this, but I meant what I said last night-" she rambles before Eddie cuts her off.

"Last night? What did you say last night?"

He can see her face, and her heart, dropping in real time. She's suddenly petrified.

"Oh, God. You don't remember."

"Remember what ?"

"Fuck," she spits out, suddenly ripping the papers back and clutching them to her chest, "Oh my fucking God. You don't remember me telling you-"