outcast ; eddie munson

- 17 ; scruffy

"Is Eddie short for something or is it just Eddie?" I ask, my head resting on Eddie's chest.

It was later into the night and I'd decided to just stay over at Eddie's place, a risky decision since I couldn't use the excuse of staying at Chrissy's if my mom questioned me, but I didn't exactly want to go home and face those consequences early.

Eddie and I had been just laying there in moments of comfortable silence with each other, also moments of giggling at stupid shit.

"It's short for Eduardo the Magnificent III." he tells me, acting completely serious.

I glanced up at him with a half confused, half suspicious look on my face. The way he said it with such certainty caused a thought to form in the back of my head that maybe, just maybe he was being honest, and Eddie's full of surprises, his full name being that extravagant wouldn't even surprise me at this point.

"Are you being serious?"

"Ask Gareth, he'll back me up." Eddie nods, still completely serious.

"Why magnificent? What magnificent act did you do to earn that title?" I ask, playing along even though I knew there was a 90% chance he was joking.

"It all started in a... kingdom called middle school." he begins, adding his own dramatic descriptions as if he was setting the scene for a D&D campaign.

"There was like– a royal family in this kingdom, and I was a rogue who had a few more rogue friends but not many." he continues, keeping up the theatric storytelling.

At this point, I'm tracing his tattoos with my finger, listening to his weirdly intriguing way of storytelling as my fingertip glides over his bare skin.

"But one of my rogue friends... went rogue." he gasps dramatically, and so do I.

"No way." I utter, pretending to be absolutely shocked.

"So he went up to the royal family of the kingdom and stole the princess' favourite crown." he shakes his head disappointedly as he tells the story.

And then I realise what he's talking about.

"You know me, I've always been extremely heroic and chivalrous, so I knew what I had to do." he nods, "I punched the little shit– I mean, I had a slightly one sided duel with the rogue and of course, I won."

"What next?" I ask.

"I returned the princess' crown to her because it was the right thing to do." he continues, "Also because I had a huge crush on her and wanted to impress her, that too."

"I think it definitely impressed her." I tell him, and I know it impressed her because the princess in his story is me, the crown is my colouring book.

It was cute that Eddie had a crush on me in middle school because I had a huge crush on him back then too. If only younger me knew my feeling were reciprocated, maybe Eddie and I would've been friends earlier.

"That is how I became Eduardo the Magnificent III." he finishes, playing with my hair.

An odd noise filled the silence, a repeated heavy scratching against metal that seemed to be coming from outside the trailer. I almost thought I had imagined the noise out of tiredness, but the second time it happened Eddie was alert, sitting up stiffly.

"Could it be your uncle?" I ask, now having confirmation he heard it too.

"He's never usually back this early. Should we go check?" he asks, and I furrow my eyebrows in confusion.

"We? I'm staying here, what if it's like– an axe murderer or something?" I answer, it's never a wise idea to just go strolling out into the night, especially after hearing weird noises like that.