Fine Line // Eddie Munson x Reader

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄

"Wow. Your mom was hot!" You pull the photo closer as you lay on Eddie's bed, his head on your stomach as he flicks through an assortment of photos you'd found on his nightstand. The photo in question was one of his parents when they were younger, his dad kissing his mom's cheek. It was cute. His mom had dirty blonde hair and pale skin, cheeks doughy and a smile that looked like it held a thousand secrets.

Her dark eyes weren't looking at the camera, but off into the distance as her companion holds her close. Eddie was practically his double, though Charlie's hair was shorter than Eddie's. It curled at his ears and the base of his neck, dimples piercing his cheeks that were apparently hereditary. "Shit, your dad's pretty hot too." You laugh as Eddie fights to get the picture back, rolling his eyes though it contradicted with the smile on his lips. "Maybe I picked the wrong Munson."

"Bitch." He snorts as he plucks it from your manicured fingertips. "Show you some nice photos and you end up liking my dad more than me. You wound me." He places a hand over where his heart would lay beneath the confines of his ribs and you slip your own hand beneath it to smooth over the fabric of his shirt and feel the gentle thud of his organ.

"Actually, I think it's your mom I like most." You tease and he casts you a funny look that immediately exposes your lie. "Relax, lover boy. I'm all yours." Leaning awkwardly to press a chaste kiss to his lips, he breaks into a dazzling grin. Dimples and all. "She really is very beautiful, though."

"Yeah, she was." He smiles absently, sadness etching into it as he looks at the picture. His thumb traces the line of his moms cheek and you chide yourself internally for your slip in forgetting about her tragic fate. It pangs you in the gut, a mixture of guilt and pity and sympathy all wrapped up in a package you had no idea how to give him. Your thumb traces the dip of his sternum. He squeezes your hand, dwarfed beneath the warmth of his own.

Eddie's mom died a long time ago.

That's all you really knew about it. Even back when you first knew him in kindergarten, you can't remember her ever being around. That made you sad. She seemed so vibrant and full of life in the picture and it saddened you to know that light was gone from this world. You could only imagine how he must feel.

The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable or awkward at all, simply contemplative. He looked at the photo with this vacant sort of smile, like he was remembering something nice.

"Eddie, can.. Can I ask what happened?" You wonder aloud, swallowing over the thickness in your throat in concern you might have overstepped. Surely he would have told you if he wanted to. You didn't want to force him to talk about it.

But truthfully Eddie didn't mind. He had stuttering memories of his mom and it had been so long that the sting of her death wasn't so vivid anymore. Rather than a sharp pain, time had reduced it to instead become like a weight in his gut that ached to remember every single moment he did have with her. The scattered moments he had in his mind were lovely of course, but he wished he could hit play like on a videotape and watch every second he had with her.

Every smile as she cradled him, every kiss to soothe him when he cried, every bandaid carefully laid over a grazed knee or elbow when he would play in the park and get too excited and end up falling over. The hand she would rub in circles on his back to burp him at infancy, the way she would play guitar to send him to sleep, the stories she would make up with his dad to make him laugh before he drifted off. An incoherent smattering of memories rather than one coherent string. It was frustrating.

However healed he felt, it never made it easier to talk about. You felt stupid for asking him about it simply from his reaction. The pause, the swallow, the way he was looking anywhere but in your eyes.