TW: references to physical abuse and injuries

With or Without You - U2

The desolate void that was Thanksgiving break loomed in front of Eddie. It was one of his least favorite holidays because everyone was always gone for the whole damn thing. So no D&D, no band. Just him in the trailer with his uncle who wasn't bad company but would be out like a light after their usual rotisserie chicken.

Beck noted his sour mood when they packed up after D&D at school on Tuesday. It didn't take a genius to guess why he was so pissy given he had to reschedule a campaign session off the weekend since none of them would be there Friday night whether he liked it or not.

"Cheer up," she cooed at him, walking up behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist. "At least it's a long weekend."

"Yeah that's what I hate," he sighed, turning into her. "Also means I won't see you for almost a week."

"I'm still here actually. We're joining Sarah's family on Thanksgiving day and my mom wanted to take me to Indy Friday but she never cares what I do over any weekend. She'll probably be working like always."

Sarah's offer to have Beck and her mom join had been a relief. It was their first Thanksgiving just the two of them and she knew her mom would actually hold her shit together if they were with other people. It had been an almost literal godsend.

"You're serious?" he asked. She was sometimes surprised at how quickly he could lift out of a funk, and she was touched at how obviously relieved he looked. She imagined holidays were long when you spent that much time on your own. "You want to come over? I get it if the trailer isn't…"

She cut him off with a kiss. "If you don't stop saying stuff like that, it might be a slap next time," she teased.

"And I might like it even more," he purred back, making her blush.

She punched him in the shoulder but he could see she was smirking at him. He had learned that if he teased her, she tended to escalate until she won, which ultimately meant he still won too.

"Saturday then?" he asked.

"It's a date," she said, echoing their previous conversations.

Thanksgiving was the exact kind of calm she expected from Sarah's family.

That was until Sarah's dad, James, asked about Eddie. Sarah tried to damage control as much as possible but Beck knew she was sunk as soon as he asked if she was still with that heavy metal kid.

In general her mom was happy to mostly ignore her, but any kind of perceived secrecy set her off. The other side of the coin was that in general she liked Beck to be studying at home alone, so most of Beck's social life required some amount of secrecy.

At home Beck tried to minimize the damage, knowing her mom would be off her back both literally and figuratively if she just made it to Saturday.

Eddie had absolutely too much nervous energy as he waited for Beck to show up since she had insisted she didn't need a ride, so he focused his attention on the guitar solo from Fade to Black. It was punishingly hard but the challenge focused his thoughts when they got beyond him. This apparently worked so well that he nearly had a stroke when Beck started clapping after his best "take" of the solo.

"You don't have to laugh so hard," he chided, hanging his guitar back up in her place over his mirror.

"Oh I think I do. Your uncle told me to just come back here and I'd be lying if I said he didn't hang around just to see you jump out of your skin."

"Now it's a plot to kill me," he moaned, acting as if he had been stabbed in the heart and falling to his knees before hitting the floor face down.

"Well if you're dead I guess there's no reason–"

Beck was cut off as he jumped back to his feet, catching her up in his arms and lifting her off her feet. She laughed as he put her back down and shut the door while she took her coat off.

"So that song was?" she asked.

"Fade to Black. Metallica."

"Never heard of them," she teased, earning a pointed eye roll.

"Death of a thousand cuts from you today," Eddie said, stretching out on his bed and motioning for her to join him. "Have to watch it or I'll need to find a way to occupy that smart mouth of yours."

She curled up against him, draping one leg across his hips. "Well what are you waiting for? All talk as always or–?"

Beck smiled against his lips as he leaned over her, kissing her fiercely. It was never less fun to provoke him since his reactions were always so big and so gratifying. And despite all the time they had spent kissing, it had almost always been in school or his van which were in no way private enough for her. But now they were finally, mostly, alone.

Eddie moved on top of her and his hands slipped under her shirt, skimming the bottom edge of her bra, inwardly marveling at how soft her skin was. He felt Beck lock her legs around his hips and grind her hips up into him. He groaned against her lips and pushed back, feeling her arch into him in response. He cupped her breast and worked down her neck with a mix of kisses and love nips when he felt her pulling at the bottom hem of his shirt.

Eddie broke away from her to whip the shirt over his head and toss it to the floor. He caught the look on her face as she took in his trim chest and the tattoos there. He almost never felt particularly attractive but the way she was looking at him made him feel like Kirk-fucking-Hammet.

Beck ran her hands up his chest before pulling him back to her by his shoulders and shifting her weight to roll on top of him. From this position, she was able to work her hips across the length of his hard on while leaning forward to kiss his chest.

"Not fair," he moaned, pulling at the bottom of her shirt and she sat up, allowing him to slip it over her head.

Lifting himself off the mattress with one arm, Eddie pulled her to him, kissing the tops of her breasts, as she twisted her fingers in his hair. But as he glanced to the mirror for an assist with the hooks on her bra, he stopped cold.

Beck was so ready for him to toss her bra aside that when he stopped and said "What the fuck is that?" it took her a second to relocate where the thinking part of her brain had gone. And then she followed his gaze to the mirror. To her back.

She scrambled off of him, leaning her back against the wall by his bed.

"It's…" she tried, completely caught off guard and wishing she hadn't been so fucking stupid.

"What?" he snapped. "Girls at school? Tripped? Any other story you have for why there are welts on your back?!"

"I'm fine, Eddie. I told you I'm–"

"Stop lying to me and tell me the truth!" he half-shouted at her.

There had always been a point at which he stopped acting rationally and watching her set her jaw in stubborn silence drove him firmly past that point.

Beck watched as he pushed off the bed and stormed out of his bedroom. She chased after him, stopping near him in the hall when she remembered she still didn't have a shirt on though she could see his uncle was asleep in front of the TV. With growing horror, she watched him grab the phone and her whole body went cold.

"Eddie, what are you doing?" she hissed.

"Calling the fucking cops."

It felt like all the blood had left her head, she was so instantly faint hearing this. "Please no! I'm so close!"

That made him hesitate. "Then you tell me what's going on! I'm not stupid, Beck! I know you're not okay!"

"I will just please don't call anyone."

He hung the phone up, immediately feeling guilty for taking things that far. She motioned for him to follow her back, grabbing his shirt off the floor and pulling it over her head as a way to cover up before sitting back on the bed. She did not want her tits out for this conversation. He loomed over her, arms crossed and concern deepening every line in his face.

"Sometimes my mom gets pissed off and hits me with things. She's always been like this but wasn't very often until she and my dad split. Moving down here after she was fired made it worse too."

"Jesus…" Eddie breathed. He had assumed as much at this point, but hearing it was still bad.

"I'm old enough for legal emancipation. I was actually old enough last year but we moved and it's state by state so I had to start over. I've been working on it with Ms. Kelley since we moved here because it's really fucking hard to do."

Eddie sat next to her, not touching her but trying to be a comforting presence as she spoke.

"My mom has worked in law offices for so long she knows everyone. If it goes to the cops, then it goes to the courts and that will be so much worse for me. And I could still end up in foster care if she's deemed unworthy but I don't have legal independence because I would still need a legal guardian until I'm 18. I just have to keep documenting, and Ms. Kelley and I should be able to submit what we have soon. It could take a while but I can't risk anything else."

She met his eyes, tears trailing down her face. "I wasn't lying to you. Not really. I'm not in serious danger. I just didn't want you to know all this ugly shit about me. I like you so much and it's just so fucked up."

He pulled her to him, unable to keep his distance any longer as she broke into sobs. Crossing his legs, he pulled her into his lap and rested his cheek on the top of her head.

Beck clung to him as she cried, and when she eventually calmed and looked up into his face she was surprised to see tears welling in his eyes.

"Don't you ever feel like I can't handle ugly shit," he said, wiping at his eyes roughly. "I would do anything for you."

She caught his lips in a gentle kiss before laying her head onto his shoulder, slowing her breaths to match his and listening to the thudding of his heart.

"What is this?" Eddie eventually heard her ask. He looked down to see her pointing at the demon tattooed over his heart, about where her temple had been.

"My zombie demon," he said, as she sat up for a better look. "Dead but still kicking and ready to drive some assholes straight to hell."

Her fingers traced it's outline before drifting up to the spider just below his collar bone. "And her?"

Eddie smiled, glad she recognized the spider as a female black widow. "Reminder to watch your path for danger."

"So not an ex?" she wheedled, causing him to blush.

"No real ex to speak of."

That caught her off guard but she let it drop. "And I know there's two on this arm…"

She ran her fingers over the fading bats on his left forearm.

"My first," he explained. "Just wanted something metal and there's a guy here who does them for cheap."

She then traced the wyvern on the back of his arm. "He's my favorite but I don't know what he is."

"Wyvern," he said. "Means slaying your dragons."

Beck looked up and met his deep brown doe eyes. She really didn't know why she had assumed he wouldn't understand. It had taken so much energy to hide it from him and he understood what shitty parents were like. But it also always took so much effort to convince people to do things her way and she had just wanted to put that conversation off as long as possible.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," she murmured.

He kissed her so tenderly she melted a little. "I'm sorry I pushed so hard. I just like you so much also."

She sighed heavily. "Didn't mean to make Thanksgiving break even worse."

"We could still liven things up a bit." Eddie narrowed his eyes, weighing the risks of what he was about to say. "You don't like the smell of pot but how generally opposed are you?"

"Like…?"

"Like… brownies?"

He was surprised to see a sly smile from her. "Not opposed at all."

They clambered out of bed as he fished around in a drawer, pulling out a sandwhich baggie of weed.

"Your uncle's asleep," she whispered as they moved into the tiny kitchen.

"Then we'll have to be quiet," he said, reaching into the back of one of the cabinets for a box brownie mix.

Beck hopped onto one of the countertops, letting her legs dangle in the air as he fished out an egg and some oil and set the oven to preheat.

"Never saw you as a baker," she teased.

"Never saw you as a stoner," he returned, wickedly grinning as he dumped the weed into the mix.

She watched him pour the mix into a square pan, taking in his trim frame and the planes of his pale skin. He slid the pan into the oven and turned back to her; this time when he caught her staring, she kept staring.

The naked desire in her gaze caught Eddie off guard. He knew how strongly he wanted her but this was the first time she hadn't played some kind of coy when he caught her looking at him. The moment for all that today had passed, but he also knew some new level of honesty had been reached between them and his heart soared.

He flexed his not particularly impressive muscles at her in a mimic of a body builder pose, earning a laugh.

"Now you were the one who said we had to be quiet," he murmured, moving in close to her and poking her in the ribs. This earned a suppressed squeal and his eyes widened with his spreading grin. "Ticklish?"

"No," she lied and badly at that.

He poked her a few more times, teasingly shushing her as he stood between her legs once again. She poked back at him, catching the right spot between his ribs as he tried to twist away from her before she locked her legs around his waist to keep him from escaping.

They were badly suppressing laughter when someone on the other side of the galley kitchen coughed. Beck stifled a shriek directly in his ear and Eddie stumbled back to see Uncle Wayne staring at them by the front door. His uncle took in Eddie standing shirtless and Beck in his Black Sabbath shirt before wordlessly pushing open the trailer door and heading toward the picnic table to smoke.

"Oh fuck," Beck moaned. "He hates me."

Eddie laughed aloud, not wanting to mock her but unable to resist at the absurdity of what she had said.

"If he hated you, you'd be walking home right now. That's just how he is."

The buzzer on the oven sounded and Eddie rested the pan on one of the burners as the brownies cooled. When they were able to be cut, he sliced through the pan and then took the whole pan with a hot pad to the back bedroom. Flipping on the radio, the two of them sat on the floor, leaning back on the bed and digging in.

He had gone a little hard with the weed to brownie ratio and both of them were mellow pretty fast.

When the radio station shifted out of playing metal and he reached to change the station, Beck knocked his hand back.

"Change the song and I'll bite you," she teased, looking up at him. She had puddled on the floor when the weed kicked in and was laying with her head in his lap.

"Didn't know you were a fan of Meatloaf," he said once he picked up what song it was.

"What about a theatrical performer with a literally Broadway worthy voice seems like something I wouldn't like?"

"Point taken," he returned, running his fingers through her hair. "Well now I know what I'll play the first time we…"

"Shut UP!" she exclaimed, going bright red and laughing.

"This is Bat Out of Hell, right? If I remember correctly, there's actually a song about that very thing on this album."

"SHUT. IT!"

They both burst out laughing, and Eddie was so grateful that the tension from earlier seemed to have finally lifted off of her. She deserved everything and he couldn't give her a lot but he could give her really good brownies.

She curled up on her side, away from him, and mumbled something into his thigh, clearly exhausted.

"Didn't catch that."

She turned her face towards him, her huge blue eyes glassy with weed and sleepiness. "I said when we finally do, that will definitely not be what's playing."

"Noted," he breathed as she curled back up and was asleep within moments.

Thanks for the kind thoughts and props to messy75 for your mind reading powers!