Archive of Our Own ^beta

Eddie refuses to call it a rumpus room, this place where they fuck. He’ll call it a basement. A bedroom. Paradise, even. 

But a rumpus room with a mother-in-law suite? That’s the stupidest shit he’s ever heard. It’s a basement. A basement. It has a worn plaid couch and Chrissy’s brother's Atari, and a ping-pong table pushed against one wall, folded in half because nobody actually uses it. A Christmas present, Chrissy says. She can’t remember whose.  

What Eddie wouldn’t give to have the sort of money that lets him buy a ping-pong table for the sole purpose of not using it. Rich people are wild.  

According to Chrissy, Eddie’s wrong about the terminology because the house is a two-story split-level ranch, and basements only count if they’re fully enclosed. She’s right—the house is built into a hill, and the back wall opens to the outside, so the basement can be accessed through either the two-car garage or a squeaky, metal side door that leads directly to the rumpus room—but Eddie likes to argue. Plus, Chrissy talking real estate makes him want to kiss her directly on the mouth. 

Eddie’s been slipping in that side door for a while now. To meet her in the place she refers to as the rumpus room in the notes shoved between the slats of his locker. Not a rec room, not a living room, but a liminal space all its own. There’s a kitchenette in the corner and that all-too-important mother-in-law suite through a door on the right. 

The not-basement was unfinished when the Cunninghams bought the house, but Chrissy’s parents turned it into an apartment for her grandmother over a decade ago. Eddie could kiss Chrissy’s dead grandmother on the mouth, too, for having the good grace to shuffle off this mortal coil a couple of years before her granddaughter needed the space for illicit liaisons. 

Sound doesn’t carry all that well down there, is the thing. The basement is cinder-blocked on three sides, with four doors and two staircases between them and her parents. 

It helps that Chrissy’s quiet. Quiet on the rug, quiet on the couch, and quiet in her grandmother’s bedroom with its fussy floral sheets, a cross on the wall, and a lingering essence of eau de elderly.

That essence fades further every time they meet here. The room smells increasingly like Chrissy, who is warm and alive and wriggling beneath Eddie with her nightgown rucked to her armpits so he can get at her tits. He’s ruminating on real estate so he doesn’t come too fast, only it’s hard to hold himself back when he’s pushing into her, and she’s whimpering, and ohhh, yes, he is fucking Chrissy Cunningham in the bedroom adjacent to the rumpus room. He is fucking her, and she is warm and tight and wet, and oh, God, she lets him in so easily, now, because they’ve been together for three goddamn months. Three whole months, and it never gets old. He never tires of having her legs around his waist and her thighs beneath his palms and the noises she makes when he thrusts, like…like she’s a tire, and he’s letting the air out, and fuck him, that is a stupendously stupid thing to think, but who has intellect when they’re balls deep in their girlfriend?

“You’re so fucking pretty,” he pants as he shifts his weight to his knees, angling himself so he can move faster. Deeper. The need to come is almost painful, the lifeline between his dick and his brain thrumming in syncopation with the thrust of his strokes. Get-it-done-get-it-done-get-it-done-mo-ther-fu-cker pounding against his skull like a kick drum, sweaty curls falling over his face as she looks at him with eyes like the sea after a storm. Hoo, boy, he ought to put that in a song. Ought to write that down. Maybe later, when she’s snuggled beside him, covering his chest with kisses.

Chrissy moves. Lifts her hips and does this thing where it feels like she clenches every muscle in her body around his dick, and all thoughts of poetry slip from his addled brain as he punches out a “guhhhh?”

“Oops,” she says, coy, like she didn’t do it on purpose.

She is a monster. Eddie adores her. 

The added intensity drives him ever closer to the crescendo, and he loses track of the beat as he fixates on her freckles and her nose and her kiss-bitten lips, and yeah, yeah, he’s tipping over the edge. Pressure and heat and—

There is a noise. A crack. A slash of light across Chrissy’s suddenly terrified face, and Eddie knows only two things for sure: he is coming, and they have been caught. 

Time slows to an infinitesimal crawl, seconds stretching into eons. Eddie leaps—nay, launches himself off Chrissy, dimly aware in the dull recesses of his lower brain that there is a fullness and an ache and a throb-throb-throbbing as his aborted orgasm overtakes him in spite of the circumstances. But that dim, unhappy pleasure is background noise when compared to the heart-clawing terror that engulfs him as he lands, crouched, beside the bed. Turning toward his doom, instinct directs him to grab his boxers and hold them over his condom-clad dick like a shield, protecting him from imminent parental wrath. 

There is no one at the door. The line of light, which seemed so bright at first, is only about six inches wide, and beyond the crack, he can see the empty rumpus room. 

“Huh?” he says with another involuntary shudder, his dick giving a furtive twitch. 

That’s when he hears it. An inquisitive “mrrrrrow?” followed by a lithe, slinking body winding its way around the leg of the bed. The gray tabby with green eyes, who once bit Eddie on the thigh when he was going down on Chrissy, has used her tiny weight to nudge open the cheaply constructed bedroom door, which cannot close completely, only wedge shut. 

Fucking Baxter. 

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie exhales. “Jesus Christ!” 

Laughter escapes him in a series of hushed hisses, all that horny adrenaline needing an outlet, and he falls onto his ass, legs splayed, giggling as Baxter tip-taps her way over to sniff at his toe. 

“You little shit, you son of a—” 

Chrissy sobs. Eddie sobers. It’s been ten seconds since the door opened, and God, he’s an idiot. Self-preservation made him leap, but in retrospect, he should have stayed. Covered her up. Done something beyond crouching by the bed like a demented gnome. What was he going to do—take her parents out at the knees? 

“Hey, Chrissy, I’m sorry,” he says, scrambling to his feet to find her curled on her side, nightgown yanked down in haste to cover most of her bottom half, but not all. “It was just the stupid cat.” 

That gets a muffled hiccup as she turns her face away from him.

Eddie officially sucks as a boyfriend. Jason fucking Carver would have pulled a blanket over them both, then convinced her folks they were doing Bible study. Knowing how Chrissy’s mother still feels about Jason—and how she looks at Eddie like he’s barely sentient pond scum—she probably would have thrown them a party and signed Chrissy over for a bride price of two cows and a goat.

With some trepidation, Eddie sits on the mattress and touches Chrissy’s hip. To his surprise, she rolls over and onto his lap, which is still very much the home of his oversensitive, under-stimulated dick. 

But he’s not thinking about that right now. Not when he’s still kicking himself for leaving her behind. That breaks the cardinal rule he set for himself when they first started dating: to be a better boyfriend than Jason at all times and never make her regret dumping his ass.

So, yeah, the fact that he sort of enjoyed the weird, unsatisfactory orgasm he half-achieved while fleeing the scene of the crime? That is officially filed in the “shit to jerk off about later” box that lives in the place where he stores other useless crap, like the chord progression to Act Naturally and the memory of the time Mike Wheeler shot Mountain Dew out of his nose during a Hellfire meeting. 

“Eddie,” Chrissy sniffles, hugging him so tightly that he begins to believe she might not be angry at his abandoning ass.

“You’re okay, yeah?” The vague comfort appears to help as Chrissy nods and tucks her head under his chin, hunching her shoulders and wriggling, which isn’t helping matters, but Eddie can multitask. He can focus. “We’re good.” 

“That was really scary,” she says, voice wobbling. 

“You gotta talk to your cat, man.” 

“We can’t do it in here anymore.” 

Red lights spin, and Klaxons blare a warning. Abort, abort, no fucking way are we losing the rumpus room, my guy! They have a grand total of, like, three places to fuck, and of the three, this is their best option because it contains an actual bed. Sure, they could use the trailer, but sneaking out is easier for Eddie than Chrissy, considering he has a mode of transport and minimal supervision. Plus, he still feels weird about having her over, considering his circumstances aren’t exactly stellar.

“Ah, c’mon,” he says, aiming for casual as he tickles her side. “We’ll just put something in front of the door next time. Fuck Baxter.” 

She frowns, pulling back to face him head-on. “I don’t know...” 

“Chrissy, seriously, it wasn’t… it’s not like we really got caught. It’s cool.” 

She shrugs, which is neither a yes nor a no. Chrissy prefers to take her time with big decisions, making her his opposite in impulsivity. She’s a planner, and he’s learning to live with that, even if he sometimes wishes she wouldn’t spend so much energy fussing over shit on the fringes. “I’ll think about it. Gosh, my heart’s still beating so fast.” 

“Yeah?” He puts a hand on her chest, where her heart is indeed lub-dubbing double time. “Oh, yeah. That’s like a mouse heart, Cunningham.” 

“How do you know what a mouse heart feels like?” 

“Don’t worry about it.” He moves his fingers a few inches to the left, closing his hand over her breast. “How’s this? Helping? Good? Bad?” 

“Eddie, God,” she says, but there’s a smile poking at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t be dumb.” 

“I’m not being dumb. I’m just checking the merchandise. Making sure nothing got damaged during the feline-induced hysteria.” He shifts to the other side, living up to Chrissy’s low expectations as he tweaks her nipple. 

“Okay, well, the store is closed,” she says, pushing his fingers away with pointed firmness. “You should go home.” 

Eddie sighs, disappointed but not surprised. Sure, he could easily get it up for another round—like, he’s pretty much already there—but he’s not the one who experienced the heat death of the universe on a micro-scale. “Yeah, alright.” 

He lifts her off his lap and seeks his clothes, which are flung to the room's four corners. The condom is tied off and tucked into his backpack for discreet disposal in the dumpster nearest his trailer, and he makes a big production of getting dressed, finishing the performance by hopping around one-footed to tug on his socks. 

The plan is to lift her spirits, and it works. She smiles, scooting to the edge of the bed to tug him in by his belt loops and mash her face against his stomach. “Sorry this sucked,” she mumbles. 

“It didn’t.” His dick shoots an indignant protest to his head, proclaiming uh actually it sure as shit did suck, buddy boy, and you liiiiiiiked it! 

Analyzing that issue is a future-Eddie problem. An Eddie-jerks-off-in-the-shower problem. A kinky motherfucker problem. 

“You’re sure?” he asks, just in case. 

“I’m sure. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah? Don’t blow off first period, okay?” Hooking her fingers around the hem of his shirt, she pulls him down for one last kiss. 

Eddie one hundred percent blows off first period.

He feels kind of guilty about it, but Chrissy only had to walk upstairs, while he had to drive all the way back home, where he was obliged to pull one off and smoke a bowl and work on a campaign for a couple hours before crashing into bed around three, then waking at eight-thirty when Wayne pounded on the door.

Wayne and Chrissy are really on his ass to graduate this year, and Eddie thinks his uncle enjoys having a co-conspirator in his efforts to wrap up the whole high school debacle. The thing is, Eddie’s never had sufficient motivation before, but now Chrissy says she’s going to college in Chicago, and he has grand plans to follow behind, sniffing her trail like a bloodhound off its leash.

With a grunted hello to Wayne followed by two cups of coffee and a can of Mountain Dew in the van, he rolls into the parking lot at 9:29ish, which is practically on time, considering his track record has him as more of an 11:00 guy. Since he’s already late for second period, he might as well smoke a joint behind the stadium bleachers instead of frustrating Mrs. Young with his presence. 

Chrissy has English first and biology second, so he plans to be by her locker when the bell rings. Last night was weird, and he wants to check on her. Plus, like, girlfriend. Quality time. All that responsible boyfriend shit. 

He sees her before she sees him, walking down the hall in a lavender skirt, a knee-length version of the one she wears to cheer in, with a white shirt and cardigan over the top. 

She drives him crazy with those doe-eyed fucking virgin get-ups. Strolling around campus, sweet as cherry pie, like he wasn’t not-quite-nutting in her twelve hours ago. 

“Hey, pretty girl,” he says as she breaks away from her friends and heads for him. Marcie Green gives him the stink-eye, so he gives it right back. Fuck Marcie.

“Hi.” She wrinkles her nose when she gets near enough. “You smell like weed.” 

“You are what you eat,” he replies before wrapping her up and giving her a noogie instead of a kiss. Pure mental instinct, baby. He doesn’t run the show up there; living in his head is a spectator sport. 

“Eddie!” She squirms out of his embrace, putting her palm against his chest and pushing. He has no choice but to slam himself back against the lockers with a wounded moan, which gets her giggling. “Don’t mess up my hair!” 

“Oh my God, is your ponytail not high enough?” He gives it a solemn tug, and she swats his hand away. 

“You skipped first.” 

“And second.” 

She rolls her eyes and slides over to her locker, so Eddie presses himself against her side. Personal space is for chumps. 

“You, uh.” He clears his throat as she spins her combination lock. “You good, though? Last night was—”

She cuts him off, casting a furtive glance to her right, where Marcie’s standing with her back to them like she’s not listening. Eddie doesn’t get why Chrissy hangs out with her because Marcie says nasty shit all the time and apparently has a thing for Jason. But Chrissy insists they’re friends and, honestly, the rules she plays by are more complicated than any D&D campaign. Good luck to Marcie, though; Carver’s a dick. 

“I’m fine.” 

“How’s uh… how’s Baxter?” 

Yanking her lock off, she shrugs. “He’s fine, too.” 

“Good. You get some sleep?” 

She opens her locker. “A little.” 

“Cool, cool. What are you doing tonight? I could pick you up after practice, maybe? We could get dinner?” 

“I can’t,” she says, which isn’t unusual but still bums him out. Between cheer, church, and the insipid social scene of the royal court, Chrissy’s a busy girl. And, yeah, she makes a lot of time for him, but she doesn’t blow stuff off. 

“Oooh, what are you dooooooo-ing?” he asks, hooking his fingers over the top of her locker door and going up on his tip-toes to peer at her from above. 

“Youth group.” 

“God, I love it when you ditch me for Jesus.” 

Chrissy presses her lips together the way she always does when trying not to laugh at something irreverent. “I haven’t been in a couple of weeks, and Charlotte was asking. You remember Charlotte? She goes to FCA?” 

Eddie does not, but he nods anyway, releasing his hold on her locker. “Uh-huh. I’ll miss you, though.” 

“I’m sure you’ll survive.” 

“Yeah, but can I get a kiss to tide me over?” 

PDA is strictly forbidden in the halls of Hawkins High, and Chrissy is an extremely good girl. So she does a quick scan for teachers before leaning up to give him a peck. “Go to class, Eddie.” 

Eddie does as he’s told and makes it through the rest of the day relatively unscathed. He eats lunch with Hellfire, while Chrissy eats with her friends, but she comes over ten minutes before the bell rings, squeezing in between Dustin and Will to feign interest in their campaign. Her secret goal is to play footsie with Eddie under the table, but the boys don’t need to know that. 

Post-lunch, he gets the first C+ of his goddamn life in Spanish, which puts him in a hell of a mood as he wraps up his day and heads home, where he finds himself girlfriendless, aimless, and honestly kind of horny. 

That last problem has a solution, though. Wayne’s gone, picking up an extra half-shift before his regular overnight, so Eddie heads for his room, where he lays out a bottle of lotion, an issue of Nugget, and a roll of toilet paper he keeps specifically for these purposes. 

He can't stop thinking about the previous evening when he gets his hand on his dick, the magazine on the bed beside him. Fucking Baxter and the aborted orgasm and how weirdly awesome it felt to be left so dissatisfied.

This makes no sense. In what universe should being prematurely evicted from Chrissy’s grippy, gooey core seconds before achieving the big O be a positive? None. None universes. Yet, left to shoot his shot into the stale air of her dead grandmother’s bedroom, engulfed by absolute terror, Eddie had prevailed. 

Not only prevailed but fucking dug it, man. Can’t stop thinking about the dickpunch of disappointment that came from being taken to the edge and fucked over at the last possible second. 

That, and he’d gotten wildly, uncontrollably hard on the drive home, to the point where he almost pulled over to take care of it. So, okay. He needs to experiment. Figure out just what he liked. Or, instead, what he didn’t like but sort of loved, and oh, yeah. It’s gonna be a good afternoon.

Since first starting to fuck with himself, Eddie has always leaned into torturing his dick for self-pleasure. Taking himself right to the edge before backing off, then starting up again. He’s never been big on self-discipline in other aspects of his life, but there’s something weirdly cathartic about telling himself no. He can lose himself in it, even, so when he surfaces from that dark haze of denial, having brought himself to the brink maybe six, seven times, he discovers it’s been nearly an hour, though it felt like all of five minutes. 

“Fuck you, man,” he says to his dick, which jumps in his palm, flushed red and weeping like it’s gonna explode if he doesn’t come soon. 

Typically, this would be the time when he lets himself go. Rubs one out with raging intensity, stroking himself the whole way through. However, he needs to replicate the circumstances of the previous evening, minus the cat, and he works on timing it perfectly so when his balls draw up and his foot jerks and he feels that furious rush coming, he can—

Eddie lets go. No friction, no pressure. Watches, fascinated, as his dick twitches and blurts out a couple messy globs of white that aren’t quite the robust jets he’s used to shooting across his stomach or thighs. 

It sucks. There’s no other word for it. A half-satisfied shitshow, and God, God, he loves the feeling. Is obsessed with the feeling. Chases the misery of it down a well by studying his dick as it bobs helplessly, still hard, like a puppy that just got kicked and can’t help looking to its master for comfort. 

“Holy shit,” he mutters. 

Yeah, his cock seems to agree, wavering in the chilly air of the trailer. 

It’s not often Eddie has sexual revelations. He’s gotten pretty familiar with himself over the years. Knows what he likes and what he doesn’t. But occasionally, he finds himself flung down the rabbit hole of something novel and always, always, always fucking weird. 

He prolongs his misery to its logical conclusion, forcing himself to wait until sufficient time has passed before grabbing hold of himself and jerking his dick back into overstimulation. When a second orgasm hits (two! Jesus! Never before!), maybe twenty minutes after the first, he allows himself to ride it out properly, stroking himself through the end.

It’s spectacular. The best orgasm of his life, save for the ones where he’s been inside another person, and even then, it’s a close competition. It’s like his dick’s making up for lost jizz, or something, and he’s so, so, so fucking into this, dude. 

The twisted part of his brain can’t help wondering how far he can push his luck. How many times he might bring himself to the brink. How many orgasms he can ruin in one sitting. How good it might feel to get off properly at long, long, looooooooong last. 

Sure, it could kill him, but what a way to go. 

“Wait, wait, wait, wait…” Eddie pants, attempting to twist his dick out of Chrissy’s firm grasp. That’s easier said than done in the cramped rear of the van, where they’re fucking around in the sliver of space that isn’t taken up by the band’s equipment. 

Chrissy slows her strokes, confusion furrowing her brow in the dim light of the single streetlamp illuminating the Hideout’s gravel parking lot. “What’s wrong?” 

“Just…” Eddie pushes her palm away, leaving his dick waggling like some cosmic joke. Honestly, though, what kind of sick fuck stops his girlfriend from giving him a hand job, huh? Especially a girlfriend who went through all the trouble of lying to her extremely strict parents about her whereabouts so she could come to see him play. “Just wait, please?” 

Chrissy shifts to the side, wedging herself between his body and Gareth’s bass drum. “Did I do something wrong?” 

“What? No, of course not. It’s good. I just… c’mere.” He pulls her back in for a kiss because that’s easier than explaining he’d been two seconds away from busting, and he wants to prolong the moment. 

Chrissy returns the kiss, and he slips his hand under the Manowar shirt she stole from him, then cut up and safety-pinned into a garment far sexier than that band deserves. Padded bra, but he can live with that. Besides, they never fuck in the parking lot. Chrissy’s paranoid that one of the boys will walk in on them, despite Eddie’s strict instructions to the rest of the band that they must never, ever even so much as consider that they might require something from the van when he and Chrissy are occupying it. For if they do, he will take their intestines out through their assholes, tie them in a hang knot, and choke them to death before desecrating their corpse in any number of unholy ways.

She still won’t fuck him after shows, though, and that paranoia has only gotten worse in the weeks since the Baxter situation. They aren’t having sex much at all of late, and while Eddie’s into self-denial, he’s not so good at Chrissy-denial. 

Hand jobs are a decent compromise. Blow jobs are even better, but she’s picky about when she doles those out. Makes them feel like a special occasion. 

It takes a few minutes for her hand to creep southward, and Eddie doesn’t stop her, so soon enough, she’s jerking him off once more. He really ought to let her finish, but shit, he’s had so many good solo sessions lately that he just wants to, just for a second, if she could just…

He takes her by the wrist and pulls her off, then lets out a punchy little exhale. Jesus, he’d been right there. Another two seconds and he’d’a put on a real embarrassing show for her, which brings forth the idea of her discovering his shame and reveling in his humiliation and, oh, fuck, she’s mad. Looking at him with that sullen Care Bare Stare, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. 

“Eddie, what?” she snaps. 

“Uh.”

“Am. I. Doing. Something. Wrong?”

Yeee-ikes. That’s the Queen Bee voice. The head cheerleader voice. The bitchy ass “you’re not doing your round-off right!” voice. 

Eddie is very attracted to the Queen Bee voice. He wants it to tell him he’s bad and deserves to be punished. Except she actually sounds hurt, and he doesn’t like that, so nut up, Munson. Talk to the girl.

“No, sweetheart, I swear to God.” 

“Then why—” 

“Because I uh. I like it?” 

“You like what?” 

“When… it’s good when I get close, you know?” 

Chrissy stares blankly, brow furrowing further. 

“Right.” Eddie pushes a hand through his hair, finding it ludicrous to have this conversation with his jeans around his thighs while his dick leaks pre-cum against his skin. “So, like, when you’re doing that, and you get me really close to coming, and then you stop? That’s… it feels super intense.” 

“Like, good?” 

“Nnnnoooo…” He hesitates, trying to put it into words. “It’s more like it builds the anticipation?”

She frowns, glancing at his groin. “Oh. You never asked for that before.” 

“No, I know. I just, uh, you remember a couple weeks ago? With Baxter?” 

“Gosh, no, what happened again?” She says it all sarcastic and callous, but her mouth is forty-three percent smiling, so she’s just being an asshole. 

“O-kaaaay,” he concedes with a grin. “So I don’t know if you noticed, but when the incident occurred, I was like… there, right?” 

“Like where?” 

“Like, I was coming.” 

“Oh.” 

“Right. And it was, okay, so I always sort of like not coming right away, and building it up, but that was the first time I found out what it felt like to, uh, get over the hump without that last bit of stimulation, I guess?” 

Chrissy’s looking at him as though he’s a specimen in a jar, so he barrels on, unable to shut the fuck up in the face of what’s feeling like a failure to launch. 

“It sucked when I had to pull out, but then I came anyway, and it was sort of shitty and awesome at the same time? Shawesome? Like taking the anticipation and turning it up and… and… yeah.” 

“Shawesome.” 

“Yeah! All the work, none of the reward.” 

“And that’s good?” 

“Um. Yes.” 

“So you like stopping me before you… you know,” she says, and it’s extremely endearing that she has slept with two people and still can’t use any words that refer to genitals or what humans do with them. 

“Uh-huh.” 

“But then you also don’t want to be touched when it happens.” 

“We-ell, kind of, but no?” 

“Eddie!”

“Okay, but it’s just like, I figured out that if I get myself to the edge a bunch of times, then I stop, then it makes it even worse when I fuck up the orgasm at the very end. But then the crappy one doesn’t count because afterward, I get hard again, and maybe fifteen, twenty minutes later, it’s… boom, you know? Best ever.” 

He illustrates this by making fireworks with his fingers. Chrissy’s nose, still wrinkled like a rabbit, relaxes by millimeters. 

“So the second one, you do it regular? Like we always do it?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“That’s kind of weird, Eddie,” she says, though there’s not much judgment in her tone.

“Yeah, I know.” 

“I have to get up early to run tomorrow, okay? So can we just… can we just finish normally, for right now?” 

He nods, swallowing his mild disappointment. Sounds like she doesn’t really understand, and that’s alright. It’s fine. It’s not, like, a requirement. He can do it for himself when he needs to, and he’s never going to turn down her giving him a normal-ass jerkoff. “Yeah, baby. Whatever you want.” 

“Thank you,” she says and takes him in hand. 

Eddie rarely has Chrissy over. This has nothing to do with Chrissy, though, and it’s not the trailer’s fault he doesn’t want her there. Shit, he wouldn’t even be dating her if not for the fact that he’d left his K in said trailer and had to bring her over to retrieve it, which was the drug deal that sparked the friendship that sparked the best thing that’s ever happened to him in his short, silly life. 

However, it’s one thing to have a girl over to sell her drugs and quite another to have her over for a rousting bout of sexxxxxual congress, thank you very much. 

But if she asks? All bets are off. 

So, when she calls him one Sunday afternoon in late April and says she’s bored and can he give her an excuse to miss family dinner with her uncle, who asks creepy questions about her cheer friends? Yeah. Eddie can do that.

He spends five minutes chucking shit into the garbage and making his bed before hitting the road, breaking a few land-speed records on his way to her neighborhood.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters upon seeing her on their usual corner, which is a few blocks from her house. She’s wearing a pale blue dress covered in little flowers, and there’s lace on the cuffs and the collar.

It’s one of her fucking church dresses, and she knows what that does to him, especially when she gets into the van all demure, dropping her backpack, smoothing her skirt over her legs, and saying, “Hi, Eddie,” like it’s nothing.

“Hey. You uh. You look nice.” 

In lieu of responding, she hikes that skirt a few inches up her thighs—just enough to reveal the scar she got when she dropped a curling iron on her lap—and he hits the gas pedal so hard the van jolts and judders beneath him. Oops. 

They make good time. Obviously. Eddie parks, and Chrissy traipses out in her little white shoes that have a heel, but not really a heel. They’re low-slung and patent leather, and he likes the way they make her feet look like a doll’s, and he tells her so as he holds the trailer door open for her. 

“Doll shoes?” She echoes.

“Yeah. Like…” He flaps a hand and finds he can’t say what he means. “Like you’ve got little feet.” 

“I guess? Is your uncle here?” 

“Nope.” 

“Let’s go to your room, then.” 

She used to phrase shit like that as a question, but she’s long since ceased thinking the answer will be anything but an enthusiastic yes. 

He grabs her by the hand and sprints down the hall, thanking whatever deity might be listening that Wayne took his sheets to the laundromat yesterday because he honestly can’t remember when they were last washed before that. 

“Eddie!” she laughs, grabbing him around the waist and head-butting him in the chest as he gropes for the door to his room. “You’re going too fast!”

“Little feet, little legs, hobbit.” 

“Don’t call me a hobbit.” 

“Call ‘em like I see ‘em.” 

“You’re a jerk.”

“Yes, I am.” He sweeps an arm wide to open the door, escorting her inside. “M’lady.” 

That gets the tiniest eye roll as she goes to sit on his bed, lifting her calves and pointing her toes. “Take my shoes off.” 

Eddie’s dick gives a pleasant twitch at the order. He likes it when she’s bossy, mostly because he’s the only person who sees that side of her. At first, she’d been demure, sweet, even deferential to him. Eddie, can I… would you mind if… I’m so sorry, but… 

As if she’s ever had a goddamn thing to apologize for. 

Somewhere along the way, though, things changed. He’d annoyed her into it, he’s sure, and she still throws in a lot of pleases and sorries, but more often than not, he can push her into being downright mean. That good Queen Bee kush. 

And yeah, he might want to explore that a little, but for all that he likes to talk, he’s not sure how to ask for what he wants in his more lurid fantasies. 

“Yes, Princess. Whatever you want, Princess,” he says as he drops to his knees.

“Don’t call me that, either.” 

Eddie grins, taking her ankle and easing off her left shoe. She’s wearing stockings, so the smell coming off her foot isn’t exactly peaches and cream, but he’s into that, too, and kisses her heel just because he can. “What should I call you then, Princess?” 

“Ed-die!” She kicks free of his hold, then pushes her toes against his shoulder, all that athleticism carrying considerable force. If she really laid into him, it’d hurt. Step on him, maybe. Kick him in the—

Jesus. Focus, Munson.

“Not Princess,” he says around a sigh, turning his attention to her other shoe and lining them both up beneath his bed. “Goddess? Saint Christine? Duchess? Benevolent Dictator? Her Glorious Luminescence?” 

By the time he finishes rattling off the list, she has the giggles, falling flat on her back and kicking at him with both feet now. Which, oops, her skirt’s right there, so he noses his way up her calf. Her thigh. Gets underneath to mouth at her pussy through her stockings and panties.

Chrissy smacks his shoulder. Pushes him away and yelps, “No, not that!” 

“Hungry, baby,” he complains, though he does as he’s told and settles on his heels. 

“Starve, then.” She sits, looking down at him. Not touching, simply studying, and it makes him want to squirm. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

“Gonna have to be more specific. I say a lot of stuff.” 

Her mouth twitches. “I’m aware. But um…” She makes the world’s tiniest jerk-off motion in the air. “What you said at the bar?” 

It’s been nearly three weeks since the Hideout, and they have tucked the topic into its taboo little corner. This is an eminently survivable situation, of course—in the interim, they’ve fucked thrice, she’s given him a blow job, and he’s eaten her out approximately six hundred and forty-seven times. It’s hard to keep track of the count, considering how simple it is to get under her skirts and drag her panties to the side at any opportunity. 

“You… what about it?” 

“I was thinking about how I didn’t like how you kept making me stop.” 

“Oh. Uh, right. I’m really sorry about that.” 

“I know. But I was also thinking that you probably shouldn’t be the one who gets to decide, right? Since the whole thing you said you liked is that it’s a tease.” 

Eddie wonders if this is what it feels like to be a deer staring into the headlights of a Mack truck bearing down at sixty-five miles an hour. “Um. Yes.” 

“So when we do this, I don’t want you to use your hands.” 

The Mack truck hits him head-on, and his insides whirl around in a spatter of guts and shit and blood that’s going straight to his dick despite the massacre. “When we do what?” 

Chrissy fixes him with a look like he’s just said something magnificently stupid, then turns her head. “Do those handcuffs work?” 

Eddie nods, instinct driving him because if he has to look at her looking at the handcuffs he’s kind-of, sort-of forgotten are there, given that they blend into the general clutter of his room, he will probably do something exceedingly stupid, like ask her to strap broken glass to her feet and rub them on his face. “Uh-huh.” 

“Where did you get them?” 

“It, um.” He clears his throat. “There’s this store that sells, like, army shit? Bounty hunter gear?” 

“And you needed handcuffs because…?” There is a coolness to her tone. Not jealousy, exactly, but he knows she has the tiniest insecurities regarding other girls he’s been with. Which is a short list, sure, but not an empty one. 

“I thought they might look cool as a belt,” he admits, which is both the truth and the lamest possible answer.

“But they’re not a belt.” 

“No. It was harder to bust ‘em up than I figured, so I bought a fake pair from Melvald’s. Cowboy shit. They were from a toy. It’s uh…” He gestures to the belt in question, which is slung low on his hips, and while he had definitely thought it was hot shit when he made it, the older he gets, the dumber it seems. 

“Oh. So we can use them?” 

“For what?” 

Chrissy narrows her eyes and makes the jerk-off motion again. “For when I… you know.” 

When Eddie dies, he hopes they put her name under ‘cause of death’ on the goddamn certificate. 

“It uh… yeah. The key’s like… hang on.” 

The search for the key takes longer than it should. He scrambles through four messy drawers before he finds it under a bag of weed and a videotape Chrissy’s never allowed to see. Probably. Maybe. Lotta leather in that one, is all he’s saying. 

Chrissy watches, swinging her stockinged feet, and tells him to put the key and the cuffs on the nightstand. Only then does she bother studying his headboard, which is a solid slab of wood and doesn’t offer much in the way of attachment points.

“Shoot,” she murmurs.

That might be a problem. 

“Lemme see,” he offers, crawling onto the bed and finding that the headboard is attached to the frame with three chunks of 2x4, one at either end and one in the middle. “This could work.” 

“Oh, good,” she says, plucking the handcuffs from the table and passing them over. “Put them where you want them.” 

Eddie nods, his brain only half-processing the situation, the other half still stuck in the land of disbelief, where none of this is happening at all. Chrissy, meanwhile, is whizzing along at ninety miles an hour, and it’s only when he finishes looping the handcuffs around the wood and turns to find her poking through her backpack that he realizes she has been planning this. 

Which, duh? Of course she has. Chrissy loves planning shit. She has a giant, color-coded binder with a calendar that tracks everything she spends her time on. Church is purple, school is blue, cheer is green, and Eddie is red. He doesn’t know what Jason’s color used to be. Shitstain brown, he hopes. 

Beyond the calendar, she is conscientious. She likes structure. Rules. Dates with an agenda, boyfriends that pick her up on time, and arriving at the movies early so she gets a seat in her preferred row. 

Eddie, meanwhile, doesn’t so much fly by the seat of his pants as allow said pants to drag him from place to place of their own volition. The way Chrissy plots her life on a grid is incomprehensible to him, but he is trying his goddamndest to keep up with what she wants. Give her what she needs.

In retrospect, she was never going to listen to him spew his fantasies in the parking lot of a dive bar and decide, right then and there, to fulfill his heart’s desire. His girl needs time. Research. A course of action and a careful script to follow. Once she has that, though? All bets are off. 

Cause of death, C. Cunningham all over again. 

“The, uh—” He points at the handcuffs, which rest, open and innocuous, against a pillow. “Ready.” 

“Thank you. Take your shirt off first.” 

Eddie whips his t-shirt over his head, tossing it to the floor and staring at her with what he’s sure is a Gomer fucking Pyle of an expression, but hey, at least his brain hasn’t begun leaking out of his ears. That’s something.

Chrissy pats the bed, then scoots to kneel by the headboard, her prim skirt falling over her legs as Eddie flops onto his back, fighting to control his breathing because he has thought long and hard (oh, so hard) about this sort of thing happening. Fantasy and reality make strange bedfellows, however, and his jeans are getting uncomfortably cramped. 

“Okay,” she says as she picks up his right hand and closes a cuff around his wrist. Clicks it down until it’s tight, but not cop-tight, and says, “Is that good?” 

Eddie doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he nods, and she repeats the action on his left side. The chain is longer on one side than the other, so he shifts until things are even, all the while conscious of the fact that he can’t move his fucking arms below his ears. Can’t touch her, sure as shit can’t touch himself, and can’t do a goddamn thing to improve his situation.

“You uh. You want to take my pants off, too?” he asks since that seems like the logical course of action. 

“Not really.”

“You—” 

“Shh,” she admonishes with a poke to his navel that has him laughing like an idiot while she climbs over his prone form to retrieve her backpack from its spot by the door. 

Eddie watches, dumbstruck, as she takes out a cassette and an issue of Cosmopolitan. The latter is tossed on the bed while the former is placed in his tape deck and turned on. Hungry Like the Wolf kicks on, and he just bets she’s made a mix of all the shit he pretends to tolerate for her sake, but she secretly knows he hates.

Evil. Monstrous. Delightful. 

Chrissy doesn’t look at him once as she takes her magazine and props herself against the headboard on his right side, flipping open to the first page like he’s not there. Not handcuffed to the bed with his dick obscenely outlined against the increasingly constricting denim. 

“Um, Chrissy?” he asks after a couple of minutes have passed, in case she’s gone blind and developed amnesia since cuffing him. 

“What?” 

“Are you gonna…?” 

She sighs. Deigns to pass her attention over his body before returning to the page. “I’m busy.” 

“But—” 

“Eddie. Be good.” 

Well. Well, well, well. Eddie screws up his mouth and bounces his hips a few times, impatient. Chrissy flips a page in response. Then another. Then four more before she finally makes her move, shifting so her leg rests on his torso and then—and fucking then—pressing her heel against his crotch. How a goddamn heel can be feather light, he doesn’t know, but she hits him with both not-quite-enough pressure and not-fucking-fair friction in one fell swoop.

Eddie makes a noise between a grunt and a gurgle—a grungle, actually—and Chrissy ups the ante by pointing her toes and bending her knee so she can run the arch of her foot over him instead. The angle’s probably murder on her ankle, but she remains placid about her plight. Turns another page while rubbing him to an arousal that’s not merely bordering on painful, but actually hurts. Not stabby-stabby or anything, but achy and full, and oh, fuck, she’s just getting started. 

“Chrissy, please…” he says when she grinds her foot against him with increased ferocity. 

“Stop talking, Eddie. I’m trying to read.” 

“You’re—” 

“Don’t make me gag you.” 

Fucking shitfuck, Eddie’s brain supplies, which is remarkable considering all the blood in his body is pooling in his dick. Gagging plays a role in countless fantasies he’s considered, but he doesn’t want to annoy her. In fact, for all his time spent throwing attitude at authority figures, he finds that he very, very much desires to behave. Hell, if Chief Hopper had legs like Chrissy Cunningham, he’d have quit dealing years ago. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles. 

“Mmm,” she says, then licks her fingers and flips another glossy page. 

Eddie takes a deep breath and turns his head, distracting himself by counting the hundreds of dark purple flowers dotting the blue of her dress. It gives him something to fixate on, which helps because he typically doesn’t do so well with shutting up and behaving himself. Quiet is when the thoughts kick in—thoughts where Chrissy graduates and he doesn’t. Where his dad shows up on parole, and Wayne lets him sleep on the fucking hide-a-bed. Where some nebulous badness happens to Wayne or Chrissy that puts them in the same hospital where his mom died, maybe. 

So, yeah. Quiet’s not so good. Better to focus on the flowers, the lavender scent of Chrissy’s perfume, and the single sprouting hair on her kneecap she must have missed while shaving. 

“Alright,” she says once The Police turns into U2, and he realizes she’s timed this entire thing to her mixtape. Judging by the sound quality, it’s a long-play cassette. C120, and fuck him, he’s going to pass out on side A. 

Lifting her foot, she places it back on the mattress and studies him with a smirk. “Gosh, Eddie. Did I get you all worked up?” 

“Jesus fuh—uh. Yeah. Sorry.” 

“Good job letting me read. You can talk when I’m not busy, though.” She places the open magazine on his torso and moves so she’s kneeling by his hips. “Let’s get you out of these jeans, huh?” 

The way she’s speaking is slightly infantilizing without being condescending. He doesn’t hate it and keeps his mouth shut as Chrissy’s nimble fingers undo his stupid handcuff belt and pop the button on his jeans.

She takes a long time with the zipper, though. Dragging it down by millimeters, prolonging the agony of the pressure valve releasing, and setting him to squirming against his bonds. 

“Hold still,” she says, the reprimand accompanied by a swift pinch to the skin above his hipbone. 

And oh, fuck, that does something for him. Yanks another grungle from his dry throat as he lifts his hips a couple inches before flopping back with an aborted, “Please, Chrissy?” 

“Please, what?” 

“Please go faster?” 

“I thought you wanted me to tease you?” She hooks her fingers into his belt loops and tugs. “Wasn’t that the point?” 

Eddie shrugs and licks his lips, “Yeah, but… I gotta…”

Chrissy either doesn’t want him to finish the sentence, or doesn’t care, as she yanks his jeans down to his knees. Not off, though, which is worse than if she’d stripped him. 

The tent in his boxers is obscene, with a damp patch near the slit and his dick straining against its bonds, clearly eager to make her acquaintance. Chrissy giggles—fucking giggles—and pokes his prick down just to watch it spring back, one manicured fingernail running along the outline of his head against the fabric. 

“Fuck, sweetheart…” he says, arching his spine. 

“I know,” she coos. “Poor baby. Let me get a closer look.” 

Leaning over, she mouths a wet kiss against his boxers, and he nearly shoots on the spot. 

“Jesus Christ.” 

“Eddie, it’s Sunday,” she says, like that means a goddamn thing, before tugging his shorts down. Eddie barely has time to hoist himself up to assist, and his dick presents itself with a stupid wiggle-waggle, sproinging back and forth before slapping against his belly like some demented jack-in-the-box. 

It’s humiliating, honestly, especially when Chrissy once again giggles. Covers her mouth and looks at him like he’s just so cute. So adorable. A tiny baby idiot she has to take care of despite him being so pathetic. 

Eddie hates how much he loves the way it feels when she laughs at him.

“Aw,” she says, then gives him a stroke like she’s making his dick’s acquaintance for the first time. “Hi. You’re going to hate me in a few minutes.” 

“Chriss-yyyy.” 

“I wasn’t talking to you.” 

“Oh, my fucking God.” 

“Where’s your lotion?” 

Eddie tosses his head. “Bedside table. Bottom drawer.” 

“So convenient,” she says as she leans over him, ass in the air, to retrieve the container and place it by his side. The bottle is oversized, a store brand bought dirt cheap because he goes through it like a dung beetle rips through shit. “Half-empty. Hmm.” 

Eddie’s cheeks burn hot, and he huffs. “Yeah. So what?” 

“How often do you… you know?”

“Uh. I dunno. A lot, I guess?” 

“But you don’t know?” She pumps some lotion into her hand, and he can’t take his eyes off the movement of her fingers. 

“Just a lot.” 

“Huh. Okay.” With her free hand, she pulls the magazine off his stomach and onto her lap before wrapping her lotion-slick palm around his straining cock. 

“Fuck me,” he gasps at her experimental pump. 

“No talking while I’m reading, Eddie. I told you already.” She gives him a squeeze and arches a brow. “Yes?” 

“Yes!” 

“Good boy.” 

Much like the earlier pinch, the praise activates a primal ohgoodyesplease place within him, and a shudder runs down his spine. She strokes him, slowly at first, but picking up speed with a swiftness, all the while reading her magazine. When it comes to handjobs, she’s an old pro, and he’s capable of getting off embarrassingly fast under her experienced efforts. 

In fact, to his great mortification, she’s barely turned three pages before he’s blurting, “Gonna… fuck… Chrissy…!” 

She releases her grip with such nonchalance that he’s almost annoyed. Like it’s so fucking easy for her while his poor, throbbing dick wobbles like a Weeble but doesn’t fall down. 

“I told you not to talk,” is all she says. 

“But I was gonna…” 

“You think I don’t know your tells?” 

Eddie blinks. He has tells? “I have tells?” 

“Yes.” 

“Like what?” 

“Don’t worry about it.” She considers him for a moment, then declares. “I think I will have to gag you, though.” 

A horrifically timed bead of pre-cum beads at the tip of Eddie’s dick like he planned it. Chrissy smirks, then bends to lick it off, sending a shudder down his spine before she crawls off the bed. 

“Wh—” he asks, confused about her destination, until she hikes her skirt and starts peeling her stockings down her thighs. 

Things crystallize in his addled brain when she does the same for her panties. 

“Oh, fuck me,” he mumbles as she kicks off the flimsy undies, then crumples them into a little ball with a glint in her eye. Stalking toward him and oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus fucking Christ, this is cruel and unusual punishment he’ll submit to any goddamn day of the week. 

“Open,” she says.

Eddie drops his jaw, and she shoves the panties past his lips with no ceremony, face retaining its bored, detached expression. He knows her well enough to feel the invisible, nervy sparks popping from her fingers at the audacity of her actions, though. They’re both in uncharted territory and while it’s clear she has a plan, she’s still Chrissy. Still human. Still his. 

The cotton is cloying and thick against his tongue, but her taste is undeniable. Eddie moans against the makeshift gag, and while he knows he could free himself of it if he wanted to—simply split it out because nothing is keeping it there—he won’t. Instead, he clenches his jaw around the memory of his face between her thighs, watching her as she watches him, silently communicating that this is fine, he likes it, she’s doing a good job, and she’s the best girl in the world. 

“There,” she says, her voice holding the tiniest tremor. “Problem solved.” 

Eddie sucks in a lungful of air through his nose as she resumes her position and squirts more lotion into her palm. 

Once again, she strokes him in earnest. Quick, squelchy movements that have his feet twitching and his thighs quivering, and he’s so sure, he’s so sure, he’s so! sure! it’s happening that he tries to garble a warning, except Chrissy doesn’t need it because milliseconds—mere milliseconds!—before he shoots, she takes her hand away. Wipes the slick remnants on his stomach as he gnaws her underwear into so much ruined elastic.

“Fuck me!” he yelps, only it comes out “fuffee!” Under any other circumstance, that would be hilarious, but right now, it is number one with a bullet on the list of terrible things happening to him involving his penis. 

Chrissy flips a page. “Ooh. That’s cute.” 

Eddie huffs. Knocks his knee against her shin and scowls because doesn’t he deserve to know what’s cute? Isn’t he being a very good boy? 

“What?” she asks, not looking up. 

“Vuhs-cyuh?”

“Oh, for a dinner party, maybe.” She holds the magazine up so he can truly take in the insipid banality of the photograph showcasing an arrangement of individual flowers in a dozen teensy-weensy vases on a dining room table. 

It’s the dumbest thing he’s ever seen, but he nods with her assessment. 

“Suuuuuh-cyuh!”

“I thought so, too,” she says before dropping the magazine onto her lap and grabbing his dick like the idea just occurred to her.

Eddie’s hips shoot off the bed, and when she pumps her dryer-than-he'd-like fist, he kicks his left leg into the air like a goddamn Rockette.

Chrissy drops him like a hot potato.

“Fuuuuuuuh!” 

“Poor Eddie,” she says, then pats his thigh and returns to her reading. 

It must be at least two or three minutes before she touches him again, judging by how many times he has to hear Billy Idol sing about a white wedding. The beat of Eddie’s blood pulsing through his body is just off the song's rhythm, and it’s driving him crazy. Still, it gives him something to focus on outside of the fact that his balls feel like two cores of molten lead, and his dick is so sensitive a fly could land on the tip, and he’d probably blast it into the cosmos. 

Fucking fuck, this is so much better than when he does it to himself.

Languid and unbothered, Chrissy waits until the next song starts before lotioning her palm and running her sharp nails along his length. And, yeah, she chooses that moment to press her thumbnail against his slit, and he howls, overwhelmed in a goodbadgood way as he rocks his hips into the open air.

“Oh, interesting.” She bends to wrap her lips around the head of his cock, licking more gathering pre-cum like she’s sampling a goddamn popsicle, then sitting back with a murmured, “I never noticed how sensitive you are there.” 

“Nnnnngh,” Eddie concurs, yanking at the cuffs and wincing at the brush of metal against skin. He’s been pulling more than he thought, and there’s no padding to cushion the bite. “Cfitth-eee…” 

“Learning so much today,” she chirps, then has the temerity—nay, the audacity—to boop the head of his dick with her index finger the same way she’d boop a fucking baby on the nose. Like it’s just so adorable that she can’t help poking it and fuck him, honestly, because he could get into that, too. 

Chrissy smirks. Returns to her periodical and strokes him with firm, even pressure. 

A minute later, she stops. Not because he’s close, but because she can. Makes him wait through that entire fucking Dire Straits song he hates, and while he can put up with a lot for her sake, he draws the line at Romeo & Juliet and is about to tell her so around the gag when she touches him again. 

That agonizing, aching, awful rhythm continues until Eddie has lost all sense of time, save for the shitty music pumping through his speakers. Start-stop-flip-a-page! Start-stop-flip-a-page! Flip-flip-start-stop-start! A running monologue accompanying his torment: I like those jeans; oh, that’s a nice sweater, huh? I never knew that, she’s so pretty that’s so interesting, so interesting, so iiiiiiiiiiinteresting. 

Eddie has come undone. He is nothing. A shivering, sniveling pile of puss out of which his ridiculous penis juts, trembling and hopeful like a dog begging for a treat when it knows it’s just as likely to be kicked to the curb. 

He has long since stopped trying to stay silent, but she remains oblivious to his antics. His kicking feet, which have tangled his jeans and boxers around his ankles, are trapping him in a prison of denim, buckles, and zipper teeth that catch on sensitive skin and pull his leg hair, and oh, God, he’s so thirsty. His mouth is dry as a desert, all the moisture sucked into the crotch of her panties, and he must be running a fever because he’s sweating like a pig.

Chrissy, meanwhile, sits cool and carefree in her church clothes. Flip-flip-flipping through that hateful fucking magazine. 

Carole King’s warbling about having a friend when she pulls her hand away for the millionth time. Trillionth time. Eddie has lost the ability to count how often he’s been dunked underwater and hauled back from the brink of drowning. 

“Pwuh…” he gurgles, losing the war with his clogged sinuses. Snot and tears mark his face, the latter trickling toward his ears, every bit of him slick and messy and awful and nothing, nothing, nothing save for what she wants him to be. 

“Please, what?” she asks around a yawn. 

“Pwee-uh, eh-ee-um?” 

“Please give you some?” She holds the base of his dick within the circle of her thumb and forefinger. “Some what?” 

“Cuhhhhh-ee!” 

“Ohhh, please let you come,” she amends, lifting that merciless circle of minimal contact to his tip, then down again. “Sure. You can come if you want.” 

Eddie squawks, indignant, around the paste of panties rubbing his tongue raw. 

“Go on, then,” she says, wrapping her other three fingers around him and pumping, brisk and efficient, with an intensity that traipses over the border from cruelty into malice, and fuck if he doesn’t love her for it. 

Eddie’s hands scrabble against the chain holding his cuffs as she finally allows him to hit the proverbial high C. 

When he does, though, she rips the cord out of the amp. Rests her hand on his abdomen and laughs, delighted, as his dick twitches and bobs, dribbling abortive globs of pent-up jizz down its sides like the water fountain outside the boys’ locker room that never works right. 

It is worse than he could have imagined. The gut punch of an unsatisfactory orgasm is bad enough, but the abject humiliation that washes over him at Chrissy’s giggling observation of his drooling misery turns a wretched experience into an insufferable one. 

And yet, he suffers it for her. Snuffles through the indignity as a snot bubble forms at the end of his nose. That’s pretty bad, but she’s not even looking at his face, so what does it matter? 

“Oh, that’s so weird,” she says around a grin when his not-so-softening cock spurts one last, puny blob. 

“Hnnnnngh…” Eddie grunts, arching his back and sniffling. 

Benevolence turns to him, and Chrissy tuts her tongue. “Aw, baby,” she coos, softer now. “Was that so bad for you?” 

“Yuhuh!” 

“Oh, good. I really hoped it would be.” She pats his belly, which twitches involuntarily at the touch. “Gosh, you’re sensitive. Such a sweet boy.” 

The praise is no less affecting this time, and he smiles despite the gag, which sends a cascade of drool out the corner of his mouth, but he can’t find it in him to care. Chrissy laughs like she’s pleased, anyway, then picks up her magazine and sits against the headboard again. 

Eddie sighs, turning his head and opening his mouth so she can remove the gag. 

“Oh, did you think we were done?” She brushes an errant curl from his eyes, then tugs it hard enough to make him wince. “You said it’ll take a few minutes to get worked up again?” 

He squeaks a teakettle protest, slamming his heel against the mattress.

“Tell me how you really feel about it, buddy,” is her only response to his tiny tantrum as she returns to her reading. 

Eddie is ruined. Broken. No longer a man but a shell. A husk. A fossil that’s no good to anyone. Not coal, not a diamond. Just one of those stupid hollow imprints left in a rock and fuck him, is it possible to die of a heart attack at twenty? He’s not sure, but he might be about to find out.

He shuffles closer to her, ignoring the pain in his wrists as he angles himself so he can press his face to her hip, cheek against his tricep, whimpering like a little kid who fell and scraped his knee on the playground.

Chrissy takes pity on him, running gentle fingers through his damp, tangled curls. Sure, it’s the same hand that had lotion on it, but he’s lived through worse. He’s living through worse. 

“My poor baby,” she says like she’s not the cause of all his problems. “You want me to read to you for a minute? Little distraction?” 

Eddie grunts his agreement, smearing her dress with the unique solution of bodily fluids painted on his skin. 

Chrissy clears her throat and flips to an article called The Other Woman Was My Lover’s Sister. To Eddie’s surprise, it’s precisely what he needs to take his mind off his troubles. Sure, his crotch feels like someone’s clamped his dick and balls in a vise and is slowly increasing the pressure, but the lilt and cadence of her helium fairy voice helps him put that pain in perspective. 

He floats a little, desperate to be as close to her as possible. Mouthing at her dress, nose pressed to any soft place he finds, wishing he could touch her. Hold her. Climb inside her skin, maybe. 

“So sweet,” she murmurs as she finishes the article, stroking her fingers over his tear-stained skin. “I like you like this, you know?” 

“Mmm,” he agrees, rubbing his nose against her palm. 

“You’re a mess, though.” She taps his cheek, not lightly this time, and shrugs. “What do you think? Ready to finish this?” 

Eddie blinks, suddenly terrified that she is about to start back up with the hand jobs and the never-ending stops and starts before ruining yet another opportunity for orgasm. And while a very twisted, very curious part of him wonders if he could handle it, common sense dictates he might actually not be okay if forced to go another few rounds in the ring. 

He shakes his head, eyes wide, and whines out his dissent. 

Confusion colors Chrissy’s expression. “No, you don’t want to come again?” 

“Yuh!” He nods, what’s left of his brain rattling around in his skull as he tries desperately to convey that while he would very much like to come, he doesn’t want to be teased, and also, if he could be so bold as to ask, could she please not fuck up his orgasm for a second time? 

“You do want to come?” 

“Yuh! Buh—” He jerks his hip to the right, knocking over the near-empty lotion bottle. “Nnn.” 

“Oh!” Realization dawns, and she laughs, kissing the tip of his nose. “No, that’s not the plan.” 

Eddie has only a moment to wonder what the plan is before she shows him in all her brilliant, technicolor glory. Kneeling by his hips, she throws a leg over his torso, and he doesn’t know if she intends to flash him, but he glimpses her all the same, and oh, hello. Missed that.

Reaching past her lacy collar and into her bra, Chrissy performs a magic trick and produces his brand of condom from where she must have had it this whole time. Logic dictates she would only keep it there if she planned on having sex, and yes, indeed, she’s ripping it open and lifting her skirt and—

HailMARYfullagraceblessedartthouamongWOMEN… “Fnnnnnnngh!” 

“Two seconds, Eddie. Honestly, you’d think nobody ever put a condom on you before,” she says as she rolls the latex down his shaft, which at this point feels ready to detach from his body and fly around the room like a heat-seeking missile, frantic for any warm place to rut. 

Chrissy drops her skirt and shuffles forward. Eddie moans, desperate and low at the slick slide of her cunt against his length. God, she’s so wet beneath that good, good, good girl dress; been working herself up this whole time, getting off on his misery, and he loves her. He loves her, and one of these days, he’s gonna tell her, but right now, he’s just gonna enjoy every second of her warmth enveloping his poor, neglected nethers. 

“Ohhh, Eddie,” she murmurs as she lines herself up and sinks onto him, tightening her walls and driving him to utter distraction. “You’re not going to last long, are you?” 

That’s a no-brainer, and he shakes his head. 

“Me first,” she says, slipping a hand beneath her dress. 

He grungles once more when he feels the muted rhythm of her fingers against her clit, her hips rolling in tiny circles as she uses him like he’s an object. A toy. A tool for her pleasure, deserving of nothing. Desiring nothing. Needing nothing but her attention and her praise and to know that he has made her happy, whether that’s feasting between her thighs or being crushed beneath her heels. 

It takes a few minutes before a familiar breathy moan emerges from her throat, her movements intensifying as she trails a hand across her chest, squeezing her tit while her body seeks its pleasure. Eddie rises to meet her as best he can, planting his feet against the mattress to spur her on with strokes that are, admittedly, pushy, but considering the circumstances, it’s a miracle he hasn’t bounced her onto the goddamn floor. 

“Oh-oh,” Chrissy chides, even as her fingers move faster, meeting him in his thrusts. “I’ll tie your legs next time.” 

Next time! Eddie makes the promise into a mantra that guides his strokes. They’re doing this a-gain she’s going to fuck him up a-gain she might be meaner next time she might do worse she might plan more she might she might she might she might she—

“Ah!” Chrissy’s cunt tightens around him, and she gasps, bouncing and breathy on his lap. She’s coming, he’s almost certain, but she’s always so quiet that he’s never entirely sure it’s happened until... “Ohhhhhhhh no! Oh no, oh no, oh no!” 

Orgasms are a real problem for Chrissy, whose involuntary exclamations of dismay at her satisfaction are one of Eddie’s favorite things about her, and that’s a long fucking list. 

Usually, anyway. Not today. Today, all of Eddie’s favorite things involve her clenching walls and the arrival of his second orgasm on the heels of her first, pleasure so profound it’s painful, taking root at the base of his spine, rocketing upward in an explosive display that has him jerking his lower half so hard and so fast it nearly topples Chrissy from her perch. 

“Oh shit, Eddie!” she squeals, her hands flying to his stomach where her fingers dig into his pubes for purchase, and that hurts too, but he likes it, the bright shocking spark only making his orgasm that much more potent.

His heart is beating through his dick as he pumps into her, over and over, until she has drained him of every single drop of spunk he could ever hope to produce in a lifetime. Like, that’s it. He’s never coming again. The last orgasm of his life, but that’s alright because he can die happy. Drop the curtain, folks; Eddie Munson has left the building.

As the waves of pent-up pleasure subside, leaving him with twitching aftershocks, he is vaguely aware of Chrissy’s movements to extricate herself. He burbles a complaint when she slides off his lap, and his cock slips from her warmth, but he is placated when she murmurs an apology, then takes the condom off him with care. 

“Open up, Eddie,” she says once she’s tied off the latex, stroking careful fingers down his cheek. He does, and she tugs free the soiled lump of fabric that was once her panties. “Good boy.” 

“Mmm,” he concurs, turning his head from side to side, opening and closing his mouth to crack his sore jaw. 

“Oh my God, your wrists,” she says, sounding well and truly horrified. “Eddie, I’m so sorry.” 

She quickly unlocks him, and he frowns, lowering his arms and wincing at the stabbing pain in his shoulders. He sees why she sounded so freaked, as he has rubbed his wrists red and raw, skin chafing away in places. 

“Huh. Wow,” he says, voice cracked and sounding like it belongs to someone else. Someone who lives on the surface of the water he’s currently beneath. “I musta been pulling pretty hard.” 

“I’m so sorry,” she repeats, still shaky. “If I’d known you were doing that…” 

“M’alright,” he says, because there’s something very wrong with the world if she’s feeling guilty when he feels so goddamn good. “Lie down… c’mere.” 

“Let me pee,” she says, because she is a very practical person, his Chrissy, and he can’t help smiling as she disappears to the bathroom, fending off an invading army of UTIs she’s convinced will show up any day now. 

While she’s gone, he flexes his joints and stretches his arms, slowly coming back to himself as if waking from a deep sleep. She returns with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, some cotton swabs, and the Scooby-Doo washcloth he stole from Gareth when he crashed with his family for a few days. 

She uses the washcloth to wipe the mess from his face and bottom half, and he winces his way through the latter indignity because his dick doesn’t want to be handled, even by the loveliest girl in the world. She makes quick work of it, though, then tosses the cloth to the carpet before swabbing the alcohol against the raw spots on his wrists. 

“Better?” she asks when she’s done. 

“Uh-huh,” he says. “Even better if you come here, though.”

Chrissy smiles, and he opens his arms so she can slide into them, resting her head on his chest as he continues his slow rise to the surface. 

“That—” For all he’d wanted to talk earlier, now he can’t think of much to say. “Thank you.” 

“You liked it?” 

“God, yeah. That was… I mean. Jesus. Where’d you uh, did you get the idea somewhere, or…?” 

“Not really. I was just thinking through what you said you wanted, and… it’s like what you told me about D&D? When you’re working on the campaigns? You decide on the outcome you’re hoping for, and you work the problem, and you figure out the different paths, and then you’re like… prepared to improvise.” 

“Fuck me,” he says because she might be the only person in the world who listens when he talks. “That’s awesome.”

“I’m glad you liked it.” 

“Did you?” 

Chrissy nods, running her fingers along his ribcage with enough pressure not to tickle. “Yes, actually.” 

“Anything in particular?” 

She shrugs, nipping at his pec. Right next to the tattoo that she won’t say she hates, but he knows she despises. “Telling you what to do.” 

He grins, shifting so he can kiss the top of her head. “You, uh, maybe want to do more stuff like this sometime?” 

She nods, walking her fingertips across his stomach. “Yes, please.” 

“Cool.” He breathes her in for a second, then smiles. “So what’d you improvise?” 

“Oh, um. The panties,” she admits with a squirm. 

“Chris-tine!” 

“Ed-die!” 

“I’m scandalized. Shocked. Shboggled and shmuh-fuckled.” 

“Shmuh-fuckled?” She asks through a giggle.

“Uh-huh.” 

“Honestly, Eddie, sometimes I think the gag should be a permanent fixture.”