Brightside | ✓

38 | that don't impress me much

If there was one thing Eddie Yamaguchi was good at, it was sex to prevent having an awkward conversation. Axel never pressured her into saying I love you back even when she'd been doing better. All the same, her brain wanted to beat her up and she would let it if she did anything around him that didn't distract her.

She even took Peter farting between them on the couch and clearing the living room as an opportunity to have sex if it meant she didn't have to say the thing she was scared to say.

None of that had changed in the month that passed. She didn't even say it on the six hour drive down to Los Angeles for the premiere of the film that Maverick wrote the soundtrack for. That was mostly spent eating shitty gas station snacks and singing along to Axel's seemingly endless mixtape of classic rock and country music.

Somehow, the thing she was most ashamed about wasn't not being emotionally mature enough to say I love you, it was the gigantic hickey she'd left on Axel's neck when she'd been too distracted to stop being a whore about his greasy hair and neck moles. Classy. Even if it didn't stop her embarrassment about it, Axel had enjoyed getting it, for anything that was worth to her.

Her distraction in that moment was Axel's hand prominently pushing down on her ass as the other struggled with the zipper on the back of her dress. Now, she'd never blame her sister for a shoddy zipper. That would never be Indy's fault.

"You didn't, like, superglue this down as a joke, right?" Axel grunted with the effort he put into fighting the metal.

"Why in the hell would I do that when we have like 20 minutes to be downstairs?"

"It's fuckin' stuck, Eds, I don't know what to tell you—"

"Okay, okay—" Eddie repeated herself when he tugged especially hard. It was becoming an increasing worry that he was going to rip her dress if he pulled any harder. "I'll do it myself."

"How're you going to angle your arms—"

She wiggled away from him and tried to look at her back in the mirror to assess what intervention was needed next. Surely it wasn't Spanx. A gaze back in the direction of the door saw Axel was standing there, looking mildly amused. Which was worse when he looked as dumb as he did—one side of his collar propped up to try and hide one of Eddie's weaker moments that she'd left behind on him.

"What do you want now?"

Axel shrugged. "I wanna see how this is gonna go."

"Fuck off."

"You look beautiful."

"That's—You—" To be fair, Eddie had warned him several times she was shitty as being in a relationship. "Yuck."

"Yuck?" Axel laughed. He reached out to play with one of her face-framing curls and she swatted his hand away.

"I mean—Ugh, ew." Eddie made a face. Tried to wipe it off. Didn't look in the bathroom mirror to see if she'd succeeded—she was pretty sure she hadn't. "I mean—you look beautiful too. Or whatever."

Axel smiled and put his hands under his chin. "Little ol' me?"

"Now go away. Please."

Axel raised his arms in surrender and made his departure. "Call if you want me to try again," he said from the main room. His fought back laughter rang through each word.

Eddie tried to reach behind her but her biceps got in the way of being able to make any progress with the zipper herself. Annoying. Dislocating her shoulder was out of the question, even if she had considered it. It didn't take much thought to know who could help her—Moxie and Cruella's room was one floor above her and Axel's. A quick zipper stuck SOS pls text got a reply near-instantly that her lesbian saviour was on her way. At least, that's what Eddie assumed men are so useless meant.