Work Text:
I want to taste her lips
Yeah, 'cause they taste like you
I want to drown myself
In a bottle of her perfume
I want her long blond hair
I want her magic touch
Yeah, 'cause maybe then
You'd want me just as much
There’s a part of him, albeit only a small one, but still a part nonetheless, that’s considering trying to get Jason’s attention. He’s sat halfway across the lunch hall with his usual gang of cronies, Eddie doesn’t know their names, doesn’t care to learn them either. He can’t quite tell from this angle if he’s eating or not, if there’s a lunch tray in front of him. He wonders what a guy with a body like that even does eat, if he ever eats much at all. He glances down at his own tray, prods at a cold fry until it disappears under the mound of mayo beside it.
He lifts his finger to his mouth, sucking it clean as he returns his gaze to the other side of the hall.
Jason isn’t wearing his usual Tigers jersey today, for reasons unknown to Eddie. Instead, a crisp white dress shirt sits atop his torso, a sleek black tie tied loosely around his throat, right where Eddie wishes his fingers were, his co-
“Hello? Earth to Eddie?”
Eddie tears his gaze away, swatting angrily at Gareth’s hand as he starts to snap his fingers right in front of Eddie’s face with a smirk.
“What?” he hisses, finger finally falling free from his mouth, still embarrassingly connected to his lips with a string of drool that he hopes no one else has noticed.
“Jeez, what’s got you all riled up?” Gareth asks, arching a brow questioningly in Eddie’s direction. “You tryna make eyes at a gal over there or something?”
Eddie rolls his eyes, pushing his tray further into the middle of the table before he leans back in his seat, arms folded tightly across his chest.
Gareth ignores him. “I was asking if you’re still on for the gig tonight?”
“Oh. Um…” he trails off, tamps down the urge to look back over at Jason. He wants to say no, he really does, kind of has something else he wants to do instead. Someone. “Yeah, yeah. Sure, dude,” is what he settles on instead. They’ve been friends for long enough that he thinks Gareth might see straight through him if he tried to blow him off anyway. And, besides, it’s not worth burning those bridges over a guy he’s only hooked up with a handful of times, or any guy, for that matter. At least that’s what he’s telling himself anyway.
At least if he keeps the beers to a minimum he’ll be kosher enough to have some one on one time with his hand when he gets home.
“Great,” Gareth grins, giving his shoulder a firm slap as he grabs his backpack and pushes to his feet. “See you at nine?”
Eddie nods. “I’ll be there.”
A breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding in falls from his lips as soon as Gareth is out of sight, the air in the lunch hall suddenly sickly sweet and heavy against his skin. He fans at his face with his hand, pulls at the hair that sits at the back of his neck with the other.
“So stupid,” he mumbles to himself as he stares at the ceiling, wondering what the hell he’s gotten himself into.
By the time he looks back over, Jason and his gang of merry men are nowhere to be seen. Eddie figures he should probably follow suit and at least pretend like he’s going to class so, reluctantly, he grabs his tray and his backpack and tries his best to convince himself that the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach is down to the weird lasagna Wayne made for dinner last night.
-
It’s another eight days, nine hours and sixteen minutes before they cross paths again, not that Eddie’s counting. He’s trekking his usual route around the building instead of being in math class when he spots him, a smirk he doesn’t even try to stop pulling at his lips.
“Mr Carver,” he grins, as his back hits the cool metal of the lockers. He can’t even see his face yet, the top half of him entirely hidden behind the door as he rifles around for something inside, but Eddie would recognise those legs anywhere.
“Eddie,” he sighs in reply, pulling back from his locker with a huff. He slams the door shut with a clang, hand lingering against the paintwork. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
The heady scent of him fills Eddie’s nose, the musk of his skin paired with the cologne he wears, the one that Chrissy bought for him. Eddie goes a little light headed at the memory of how he acquired that little nugget of information, at the memory of Jason on all fours in the back of his van, pants around his ankles, three of Eddie’s fingers wedged deep inside him as he’d bitten harsh kisses into the side of his throat and showered him with complements.
Good times.
“Could ask the same of you, princess,” he fires back, grin widening at the flush that slowly creeps up Jason’s neck and spreads across his cheeks.
“Don’t call me that,” he grumbles, sucking in a breath through his nose.
Eddie doesn’t look, wants to but he doesn’t, but he’d put money on the fact that, if he did, he’d be able to make out the unmistakable sight of a boner forming right between Jason’s legs. Eddie would’ve never taken him for the submissive type had he not experienced it for himself, but by God is he happy about it.
He kicks his leg up against the locker, aiming for nonchalance as he angles his shoulders in Jason’s direction. “Got any plans after school?”
Jason rolls his eyes. “I don’t need any drugs, Eddie. I already told you, they’re not even helping her.”
“You didn’t need any last time either.”
He scoffs at that, pushing away from his locker and heading in the direction of the math rooms. “You promised not to bring that up,” he says after a beat, still a few paces ahead. Eddie’s kind of pissed, actually, that he has the gall to assume Eddie has followed him.
Or maybe he’s just pissed at the fact that he did, and without even thinking about it, too.
“C’mon dude,” he chuckles, slightly out of breath when he finally catches up. He knocks his shoulder against Jason’s, hands jammed into his pockets. “Lighten up. I was just messin’ with you.”
Jason stills at that, stops dead in the middle of the hallway as he sucks in a breath, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingertips before he turns on his heels. “This was meant to be a one and done thing,” he hisses, voice hushed as he jams a finger into the middle of Eddie’s chest. “A one time transactional thing. A favor, if you will.”
Eddie can’t help but glance down to where their bodies are joined, the cause of the dull ache that’s shooting through his sternum where Jason is still pressed sharply against him.
He opens his mouth to speak, betrayed by his own lungs that offer him little more than a squeaking breath.
Jason seems more than happy to fill the silence.
“You’re acting like this is, what? Some kind of a, of a thing?” Jason’s prodding him again now, fingernail sharp against his skin even through the fabric of his shirt. “Because it isn’t, Eddie. You’re you and I’m me,” he points out helpfully, as if Eddie is supposed to know what the fuck that means. “I’m not-” He cuts himself off, sucks in a wet breath. “This isn’t-”
The squeak of a door from somewhere down the hall stops him in his tracks, has his eyes widening in fear as he glances around the hallway quickly before he grabs Eddie by the front of his shirt and pulls him into the boys bathroom.
He doesn’t even wait for the door to slam shut behind them before he carries on. “This isn’t - we’re not friends, Eddie. We’re not anything, you and me.”
“I know that.”
“So you gotta stop fucking, I dunno. Following me around like some little lost puppy-”
“I’m not.”
“This can’t keep happening. You can’t keep just fucking turning up places and expecting me to-”
“Jesus. I just saw you by accident, dude. I wasn’t-”
“I fucking saw you, Eddie.”
Eddie blinks at him, suddenly painfully aware of the hand that’s still fisted tightly into the front of his Hellfire jersey, of Jason’s hot breath against his chin where he glares up at him, something Eddie can’t quite get a read on flashing across his eyes.
“What?”
Jason finally lets go of him, takes a step back as he scrubs a hand over his face. He doesn’t answer right away, lets the heavy silence hang over the both like rain clouds. It gives Eddie a chance to drink him in. The curve of his thighs as they disappear up under his gym shorts, his waist, slender beneath his jersey, the gentle slope of his shoulders and his back and his arms.
“I saw you put that note in my locker, Eddie,” he says eventually, voice soft as if they hadn’t just been fighting.
Eddie scoffs. “I mean, wasn’t exactly a secret. Had my name at the bottom of it.”
Jason rolls his eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Okay…” Eddie prompts, eyes widening in his direction as he gestures for him to carry on.
He pauses again, shoots Eddie a look that reads somewhere along the lines of annoyance and disbelief. Eddie isn’t exactly sure when they started being able to communicate with just their eyes, when they crossed the line between enemies and casual acquaintances. Maybe somewhere right between the third and fourth time he’d seen Jason’s dick, if he had to guess, but he can’t be certain.
“I have a girlfriend,” he says after a long enough silence that Eddie has almost forgotten what they’re even talking about.
Almost.
“I know.”
“And I love her.”
Eddie swallows. “Good.”
“So I can’t - we can’t - we have to stop doing this.”
“Okay,” Eddie nods. He smooths a hand down his front, toys with the button on his jeans, mostly just for something to do with his hands. “I should…” He trails off, gesturing over his shoulder, thumb towards the door. “I have a class to get to.”
Jason huffs out a breath.
“Eddie,” he says softly.
He shakes his head, deliberately ignoring the way Jason’s voice cracks a little as his name slips from his tongue.
“It’s cool, man. This isn’t - we’re not anything, right? Seriously,” He laughs, although there's no humor behind it. “I get it. You had a little wobble, we had some fun. It’s all good.”
For some reason his brain decides it’s a good idea for him to stick a hand out for Jason to shake like they’re doing some kind of janky bathroom business deal and not, essentially, breaking up with each other. If it can even be called that when they were never anything to each other in the first place.
He feels like he’s watching on from outside his own body as Jason slowly takes a hold of the hand he's been proffered and, instead of slotting their hands together, tangles his fingers between Eddie’s own before bringing them towards his lips.
“Don’t,” Eddie says, voice firm as he tugs his hand away. Because he can’t do this, he can’t. He’s not in the habit of catching feelings this quickly, after a few rushed hookups in the woods and in the back of his van. He’s not much in the habit of catching feelings for boys either, not often anyway, and certainly not for Jason fucking Carver. Lord knows half the school would try to cave his skull in if they found out he’d tried to get in the middle of Hawkins High’s golden couple.
Like he isn’t enough of an outcast as it is.
“Come on, dude,” Jason starts, taking a step towards him. There’s a thin sheen of sweat across his forehead, a tinge of pink flushed over his cheeks. They may not be anything to each other, not anymore, but Eddie still wants to fuck him. “Just be normal about this. Things don’t have to be weird between us.”
Eddie scoffs at that. “Oh, so, what? You want me to just ignore the fact that I’ve had my cock down your throat on more than one occasion and that I know what your insides taste like and we just go back to how we were before? And what’s that, huh? The before times where you and all your buddies make me the school laughing stock and you look at me like I’m a piece of dog shit on the sidewalk?”
Jason blinks at him, gaze dropping to the floor as he picks at his nails.
“Yeah, you know what? I’m actually super good but thanks so much for the offer,” He steps back, finally putting some space between the both of them. When Jason eventually meets his gaze there’s a moment, albeit only a small one, but still a moment nonetheless, where he wants to pretend none of this ever happened. To pretend like things are still cool between them, to tell Jason it’s fine and they can just be…friends again, or whatever they were before. That they can still hook up sometimes and it doesn't have to be anything or mean anything, that really he thinks he’s been a little bit in love with him for years and he would gladly let him chew him up and spit him out again and again and again if that’s what he wanted.
If that's all he could have.
He doesn’t though. Instead, he reaches for the door handle and pulls it open, let’s Jason watch as he starts to make his way back into the hallway alone.
“Hey, um,” he looks sheepish when Eddie turns back to him, a far cry from the presence he held back in the lunch hall last week, the presence he holds over his friends, the presence he usually holds over Eddie. “Just. Call me, yeah?”
It takes everything in Eddie to hold back the laugh that bubbles up his throat. As much as he wants to humiliate Jason right now, to give him a taste of his own medicine after the years of hell he’s put him through, he can’t bring himself to do it. No matter how mad he is he knows there’ll always be a small part of him that feels nothing but love for Jason, no matter how much he hates that about himself.
Instead, he just shakes his head.
“See you around,” he says with a small nod, and lets the door fall shut behind him.