lost_boy | (no subject)

Bit by bit, the flat started to feel more and more like home.

Until Eddie had joined me, I had felt restless, unable to settle whenever I was alone, uncertain of how I should set things up or where I should put anything. Before he was able to officially move in, I rearranged the furniture in the living room three times and the furniture in the bedroom had been in complete disarray when he arrived. It hadn't felt right, making any of those decisions without him.

It was lucky for me that he was much better at being organized than I was. I was neat and I liked things to go in their place, I liked to make sure our belongings were put away, but it was Eddie who had made sense of where things ought to go.

I'd never had a home like this before. Even before Peter. My memories of the home where I lived with my parents were often fragmented and I could never put them together to get a real sense of what it had been like, but I knew it was small. Cold. Dirty. No matter how hard my mother scrubbed, it was never clean enough. I remembered my fingers and toes being cold all the time. Finding it difficult to sleep because the bed was hard and the draft never stopped.

This was home, though. A real home.

As I unlocked the door and came inside after a shift at the library, I put my keys in the bowl by the door, then took off my shoes and put them away in the closet.

"Hi!" I called to Eddie. "I brought food home."

I had burgers in a bag, stopping by one of the really good places on a whim while driving home.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Emerging from the bedroom, Eddie was already talking, about everything and absolutely nothing at all. He appeared to have started mid-sentence, complaining about some encountered he'd had earlier at the grocery store, and how eventually, they would need to get another car.

Were those two topics related? It was anyone's guess.

"I'm starving," he said, making a beeline for the food, and for Jamie. "Hi," he said, almost shyly, pressing up on his toes to give Jamie a kiss right there in the entryway. It was so domestic, like some kind of weird 1950s TV show. He didn't even care that he was the housewife, in that scenario.

"Hi," I echoed, then reached out to hold onto Eddie's arm so I could kiss him again in greeting. Even though we had been together for over two years now and we did more than just kiss these days, it still made me feel tingly all through my body whenever we did.

"Did you say we need another car?" I asked when we parted, grinning at him as we went into the kitchen to get plates for our food. I put the bag down on the counter, then got a glass out of the cupboard and filled it up with water, gulping it down before I filled it again, then filled another one for Eddie.

"What? Oh, yeah, I mean, maybe not now. I don't think we could fit it into the budget, but it would make things easier, right?" Eddie said, hiding a grin as he watched Jamie gulp down his water. "You shouldn't drink so fast. It's not good for digestion," he said offhandedly as he opened up the containers of food and divided up the fries between their plates.

"I'm thirsty," I protested, laughing as I set our water glasses down on the table before I started to get out utensils, as well as condiments for the french fries, because I had asked that they not include the little ketchup packets. It felt very wasteful.

"We could start putting a little bit of money aside every month," I suggested. "There's enough room in our budget for that. Even if it's only a small amount, it will add up."

"I'm already saving a little," Eddie reminded him, because of course he was. The savings account was in his name, but he'd been thinking of it as their money since before he'd even moved out of the home.

"I am a better driver than you," Eddie said, both because he thought it was funny, and because he thought it was true.

"Hey," I protested, laughing as I set everything out on the table. "I'm a good driver."

Eddie was a better driver than I was, he was much more careful and he paid better attention than I did. It was probably impossible to be better than Eddie at something that required a lot of focus and concentration.

"I've never gotten into an accident," I said. "And I've never gotten a ticket."

"Neither have I!" Eddie protested back, the argument mostly playful as he added, "And I only got into a fight that one time."

It wasn't really a fight, but he had screamed at some guy at a traffic light for cutting him off.

"Well, that guy cut you off," I answered. "He deserved it."

Oh, I knew I was probably biased. Most of the time, as far as I was concerned, Eddie could do no wrong. I was inclined to be on his side in any situation, not even always because he was right, but because he was Eddie. Because I loved him. Because he had saved my life more than once.

I grinned at him over the table as I sat down, blushing as I did. "Besides, it's kind of... well, it's rather um, hot. When you yell at people. When they deserve it."

Eddie's eyebrows hitched up towards his hairline.

"You think it's hot when I yell at people?"

And a part of him really meant you think I'm hot, even though Jamie had given him plenty of proof of it already.

"I always think you're hot, dummy," I answered, the words out before I even had a chance to really think on them. It was something I had picked up from Eddie over the years, calling people names even though I loved them more than anything. I liked it, this thing we did, like when Eddie had said we were freaks together.

"But yes," I continued, chewing on my lower lip for a second before I grinned. "When you yell at people, you get all... your eyes are bright. And I know even if you're scared, you'll do anything for certain people and that's just really... really hot."

It was really the worst time in the world to shove a french fry in his mouth, because he nearly choked.

Swallowing thickly, he said, "It's... pretty hot that you think it's hot."

His cheeks burned. He had literally seen Jamie all sorts of naked, but talking this way still made his stomach squirm. In a good way.

I grinned, even though my cheeks felt warm, which was silly. We slept in the same bed. I had seen Eddie naked. We had done all kinds of things together I hadn't even considered before coming to Darrow and didn't know were even possible, but it still made me blush, talking like this.

"So we're both pretty hot?" I asked, biting my lower lip to try and restrain my grin, although it didn't work. Sometimes, when I was with Eddie, I felt so much I thought I might burst.