Thriller - Michael Jackson

October 28th

Eddie heard Gareth blare his car horn and he stomped out the cigarette he had been working on. Every smoke reminded him of how much Beck hated that he had picked it up but he was willing to shrug that off for the relief smoking physically brought him.

They had nearly gotten into a spat about his new habit but he had broken down and explained that smoking calmed him. Beck was very aware that he had become increasingly edgy and stressed, but he refused to explain that the stress was because his "job" had become busier and involved riskier products. What he wasn't giving to her, he was saving for their future so he wanted to protect her from feeling guilty about how much the dealing was stressing him out.

Gareth was waiting impatiently as he jogged over and when he got closer he could see his two new freshmen in the back seat. Mike looked excited but Dustin looked miserable. Eddie fell into the passenger seat as Max rushed out of her trailer to join them and she shoved her friends together to join them in the back.

"Buck up, Dustin," Eddie said, as Gareth pulled out of the trailer park. "It'll all be over soon."

"I still don't know why I have to be there," he complained, but Mike elbowed him.

"Number one rule, man," Mike chided. "Don't split the party."

"You can hide behind me if you need protection," Max teased with a smirk and Dustin rolled his eyes.

Gareth grinned at Eddie and they settled in for the drive.

Today was Beck's birthday. Her eighteenth birthday. Eddie had known her this time last year but she hadn't said a damn thing about her birthday and when he found out later he was unexpectedly annoyed with her. So this birthday had to be extra special, and it already was, even without him.

Beck had gotten a job working makeup for the Tipton haunted house. Otherwise a completely unremarkable Indiana town, Tipton hosted an annual haunted house that people came from across the Midwest to see. Being hired was huge but she had also been allowed to submit a design for a monster. He hadn't seen it but he knew the theme and knew it would be perfect.

She knew he was coming down, but she had no idea he had declared the haunted house a mandatory field trip for the Hellfire Club and this was his gift to her. Everyone had seemed pretty excited, except for Dustin who seemed convinced he would be literally murdered there. And once Max heard her friends were going and Eddie wasn't driving, she wanted to come along as well.

She had started spending more time orbiting around him and Beck, and Max had become the test dummy for makeup application when it turned out prosthetic adhesive gave Eddie hives. She had also tried to teach Eddie some skateboarding, which amused all three of them endlessly since both his successes and failures garnered similarly big reactions.

Beck had told him she appreciated that Max was reaching out and wanted to include her as much as possible which Eddie was perfectly content to do. It was clear that Max had isolated herself from her peer friends and she had told Beck she broke up with Lucas. They both understood completely. Sometimes the pressure to be okay was too much and it was easier to just not be okay by yourself.

An hour later, the group in Gareth's car met Todd and Jeff in line, and their anticipation built as they drew closer and closer to the front door. The theme was horrors of the natural world and twisted versions of deadly animals had been roaming the line and cages were stacked in front of the house.

A bush turned into an open mouth and the whole group screamed while Dustin tried to bolt and tripped.

"Not the motherfucking plants too," he moaned as everyone laughed off the scare.

Eddie caught one of the people monitoring the door as they waited to be let in. "Do you know Beck?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Can you tell her to meet us after? We're here for her birthday. I'm her boyfriend."

That last comment led to a very obvious once over and the woman he was talking to said, "Huh. Yeah I'll tell her."

"What?" he asked, not liking the turn this had taken.

"She said she was with a hot metalhead. I thought she was bullshitting," she shrugged. "You're up."

He smirked and they started into the house.

One of the structures of this haunted house was that you were not guided; you had to roam through and find your own way out. It was terrifying and incredible. Paintings would unexpectedly lunge at you and a huge vase of flowers grabbed Eddie's jacket causing him to unleash every expletive he knew and hit the floor to get away.

They finally found a scary elevator in the top floor of the house that led out of the house and all of them made the mistake of letting their guard down as they left, the cool air hitting their faces.

Beck's monster lept from the arborvitae planted behind the house and a wide range of violent reactions happened at the same time. Eddie was smiling so hard his face hurt because this scare he had known was coming and seeing her design in the flesh was unreal. But he very quickly clocked that Dustin was screaming in genuine terror and Max and Mike were cowering. Dustin grabbed a stick from the yard and Jeff caught him as the actor jumped back.

This seemed to break the spell and Dustin dropped the stick as Beck ran up from where she had been watching, yelling it was okay.

She surveyed the group as she reassured the rattled actor and knew something weird had just happened. She convinced them to follow her to the trailers they used for makeup and the three freshmen sat hard on the plastic chairs outside, taking deep breaths and seeming to find comfort in the "backstage" reality of the haunted house.

Her design had been a plant based creature, face made of five "petals" lined with teeth. It was simple but it used the actor's mouth as the center point of the flower petals and this gave an eerie reality to the design. She had always found Audrey Two to be total nightmare fodder so she had expanded on that in her design, giving it a viney grey-green body and taloned hands.

"You okay?" she asked Mike, knowing he was more likely to talk than the other two.

"Just…" he glanced at his friends and Dustin looked like he was trying not to be sick. "Just reminded us of something Will used to draw after he disappeared."

"Fuck," Beck swore, rubbing her forehead. "I'm really sorry guys. I had no idea."

"It worked," Max said with a hard laugh. "It's a good monster."

"Really good," Miked agreed, elbowing Dustin who nodded weakly.

"Trying to kill the kids, dear?" Eddie teased now that the mood had lightened.

She threw her hands up. "I said I didn't want to be a parent didn't I? Now you know why," she joked.

"Well happy birthday!" Gareth announced, digging into his pocket and throwing a handful of confetti on her.

This sent Beck into a fit of giggles as each of them remembered they had also been given confetti and threw theirs haphazardly.

"Birthday shakes?" she proposed as she shook the paper put of her hair, and they all eagerly drove to a busy ice cream shop in downtown Tipton.

They each regaled her with their favorite parts of the haunted house now that the mood had fully lifted and she explained the makeup behind them, including the ones she had worked on exclusively. The craziest piece of makeup was the flower vase that had attacked Eddie which took three people and a few hours by itself.

And he felt an incredible inner glow watching her. She had dark circles under her eyes that looked almost like bruises on her pigmentless skin and she was slumped against him in exhaustion, but he had rarely seen her this happy.

When the Hawkins group dropped them off and headed home for the night, he swept her up in his arms and kissed her.

"What was that for?" she teased.

"You're a fucking genius," he breathed, obviously awed by her. "This time last year I knew it when I saw your costume and I knew I needed to be near you as much as I could."

Her cheeks hurt from smiling so hard and she kissed him back.

November 10th

Beck had no regrets about working at the haunted house. It had paid well, added to her portfolio, taught her new skills, and had just been really fun. But returning from that to full time school and the night shift had been a brutal transition. She had fallen asleep in her classes more than a few times, and eventually Ms. Kelley had been informed.

Beck blinked to stop her vision from swimming and focused in on her sketch. Ms. Kelley had suggested doodling to stay awake in class since her teachers knew her to be a good student, and it had evolved into full blown daily sketches.

The bell rang and she moved with the tide of students to lunch. Eddie waved her down and she sat beside him, slumping over to rest her head on his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head, pushing a lunch tray toward her, and held his hand out.

She couldn't help but smile as she handed him what had become her drawing notebook. She had only ever messed with drawing because it was important to sketch out makeup designs but she was pretty good at it and her sketches had taken a very obvious bend that he always wanted to see.

Eddie flipped past the basilisk head, the owlbear flying through a lightning storm, and the swarm of bats to the latest drawing.

"Show and tell!" Jeff cheered, sitting on Eddie's other side.

They both admired today's sketch: an aarakocra with a very obvious copy of Eddie's guitar and more lightning behind it.

"Shit that's good," Eddie said, and Beck's heart swelled at the note of admiration in his voice. As she watched him, she could almost see the little wheels in his brain starting to fixate and spin on an idea. "Draw me one?"

"What do you mean? You see all of them," she said.

"No like… draw one for me."

Beck felt herself blushing but nodded. "Definitely."

November 13th

Beck had become suddenly secretive with her designs, refusing to show them at lunch and insisting they would all see Eddie's sketch when she felt like it was ready.

Today, she finally felt like it was.

The guys had beaten her there which made her stomach twist, especially when she knew Eddie read her face as well as she could his. He bounded over to her like a deer, ignoring the usual jeers and grinning so hard his dimples almost disappeared.

"Show me first," he murmured and she handed him the notebook.

He flipped to the last drawing and Beck watched his eyebrows disappear into his curly bangs. He took in a drawing that seemed so perfectly made for him it was hard to believe it was real. The huge puppet master hand from the Number of the Beast album cover made up the top of the sketch but instead of the red cartoon demon from the cover, there was a good rendering of a homebrew demon he had made up for their current campaign, lower half dissolving into bare ribs.

Beck watched his face and grew nervous as they continued to stand there, a tiny island in the cafeteria.

"What do you think? It's supposed to be metal and D&D and you as the DM…"

"Can I take it?" he asked quietly.

"Of course," she said and he very carefully tore the page out of her notebook.

They joined the Hellfire table and no matter how much the guys begged he would not show them the drawing, slipping it into a folder and smirking at them.

"You'll see it soon enough," he finally said and Beck sighed.

"Please no more spray paint," she demanded and even he had to laugh at that.

After school he said he had somewhere to be which she had taken to mean that he needed to meet someone buying or Rick so she didn't question it when he dropped her off.

"When are you off today?" he called to her.

"2. Why?"

"I'll pick you up!" he said, beaming.

"You know it's only a few blocks," she objected.

"Yeah I know!"

And before she could follow up with any other questions, he was driving away.

But instead of going to Rick or to make a sale, Eddie went back to the trailer park, passing his place and driving further in. He pulled up and pounded on the door of a green trailer until a middle aged guy with a cigarette between his lips opened the door.

"Hey kid," he said, waving Eddie in. "What's our design this time?"

"Think you can do this?" Eddie said, handing him Beck's sketch.

The older man traced the lines of it with a finger and then nodded. "Yeah I can manage this. Where?"

Beck was dead on her feet when she saw Eddie's van pull up. She dumped her apron in the hamper, told the cook who was still reading that she was leaving, and trudged out to him.

"Hey," she said, slumping into the passenger seat and immediately closing her eyes.

Eddie debated what to say, decided to say nothing, and backed up carefully. She must be pretty exhausted if she was letting him drive her without any comment at all.

He pulled up into her driveway and before she could get out he caught her arm.

"Don't freak out," he said, and shrugged his coat off. Her eyes landed on his forearm, wrapped in white gauze, and immediately widened.

"Eddie!"

"Just wait till you see it," he soothed.

"You could get an infection!" she said as he started unwrapping the tattoo. "And you shouldn't keep it covered!"

"Oh I know," he said, hiding his arm from her view. "I just wanted to see your face when you saw it."

Then he rested his hand in her lap, palm up with his forearm on full display.

Beck was so tired she had a hard time making sense of what she was seeing at first. And then when she did make sense of it, she yanked his arm closer to her face.

"Holy shit…" she breathed, tracing the linework with her fingertips. "Eddie… this is…"

"It's the sketch you made for me," he murmured, enchanted by how she was looking at his newest tattoo.

"Why would you do this?" she breathed.

He was caught off guard and worried for the first time that this may be too much, too big of a gesture.

"Because I loved it and I loved that you made it for me and I love you," he said, knowing he was blathering. "I wanted it with me forever. I want you with me forever. I–"

Her lips crashed into his and in less than a minute she was straddling him as he dropped his seat back as far as it would go.

"I don't understand why," she breathed as he nipped her neck and collarbones, "but I am so goddamn lucky you do."

He usually brought the heat to their physical intimacy but he found himself unexpectedly trying to keep up as she ravenously kissed him and pushed his shirt up to plant kisses and bites along the sensitive skin of his ribs.

He tried to work her hips against his but Beck slowed their kisses and finally sat back as he grinned lazily up at her, hazy from the fiery reception the tattoo had gotten him.

"I'm so tired and I have to sleep but I promise you, tomorrow I will make this worth your while," she murmured, leaning forward to graze his ear with her lips.

She watched him bite his lip and let out a small laugh.

"What?" he asked.

She held up his forearm. "Now I know why you like leaving marks so much," she teased. "I fucking love that my art is on your body."

"I thought you'd be mad," he admitted, running his fingers through her hair as she moved back to the passenger seat.

"Oh I hate that you did it without proper tools in the trailer park. But I'm willing to overlook that as long as your arm doesn't fall off."

"Seems like a fair trade."

"Don't forget our date," she said with a wink, blowing him a teasing kiss before she shut the door.

"I will be thinking about literally nothing else," he said to himself, grinning stupidly as he drove away.