When Eddie had said he 'fucked up', she had agreed, but only to a certain extent. At the time, his 'fuck up' had seemed more like a small bump in the road, something unexpected but something they could navigate. Willow wasn't particularly upset if Eddie's D&D club believed they had been dating over the summer because she was under the impression it wouldn't have any effect on her part of the plan - Steve. She hadn't realized how wrong she was until she saw just who entailed the Hellfire club.

There, sitting with a wide and toothy grin, was Dustin fucking Henderson. Steve Harrington's golden child. Yet another witness to the Scoops Ahoy incident, and a direct line of contact to Steve.

Willow hadn't realized how tightly she was squeezing Eddie's hand once she caught sight of Dustin until Eddie subtly bumped shoulders with her, looking at her curiously. There's a silent communication in his stare, clearing wanting to know if she was okay.

All she could do was swallow hard.

Oh my God. No. No, he didn't possibly fuck up this badly. Mother fucker. Son of a bitch.

A continuous string of curses cycle through Willow's head as Eddie finally reacts.

"Wha- How do you know my girlfriend, Henderson?" Eddie's hair shakes as he looks between Dustin and Willow, the latter silent in shock while Dustin has a look of pure and unbridled excitement.

"You're friends with Steve, right?" Dustin ignores Eddie subtly, directing his question to Willow.

"You know Steve?" The boy on Dustin's left interrupts, suddenly leaning forward with a look of pure confusion. Willow thinks she recognizes his black hair and thin frame, but can't be sure.

"Obviously, Mike. I mean, didn't Dustin just say that?" the boy to Dustin's right snaps back at Mike.

Oh my God. Mike. Mike Wheeler. Nancy Wheeler's little brother.

"I," Willow is overwhelmed, at a loss for words as Dustin is looking at her expectantly with kind eyes and jittering hands, "Y-Yeah. I'm friends with Steve and Robin."

This is not good, at all . Willow is immediately overcome with the anxiety of what this means for her and Eddie and their ridiculous fake-dating ordeal. She had only just gotten to the point where Eddie's name didn't trigger a fight between herself and Steve immediately, and even then, she could tell it was a sore topic for Steve. He'd clearly accepted that she was friends with Eddie as the week ended, but he didn't want to hear about it, or be reminded about it in any way. Just this afternoon, seeing her in Eddie's jacket had almost triggered an argument.

"Jesus, why do you still have that thing?" Steve complained as Willow slid into his passenger seat.

"What thing?"

"The jacket. Munson's jacket."

"Oh," Willow hadn't even considered that Steve would have such a negative reaction, though it should have been an obvious part of the backlash she'd received for the day, "I just didn't want to get cold during class."

"But out of all the jackets? You couldn't have worn any of your cardigans? Like what about that one your mom got you, with the flowers on it-"

"It was dirty," Willow interrupted Steve, flashing a smile before she reached over to pinch his cheeks, "Is someone jealous? If you had a better sense of fashion, I would steal your jackets too, you know."

Robin snorted, clearly picking up that Willow was exaggerating. She needed to get back to normal with Steve, which meant teasing him, getting under his skin, annoying him.

Steve scoffed as he shifted his car into drive, "I'll have you know my sense of fashion is just fine , Jenkins."

Willow pushes away the memory of the afternoon as she looks over the three kids.

"I knew it! You were there at Scoops Ahoy when I got back from camp, weren't you?" As Dustin says this, Willow watches Eddie tense in realization as to why she reacted to the sight of Dustin the way she did.

Yeah, dumbass, she thinks bitterly as if he can hear her thoughts, he was there that day.

"Yep, that's me," Willow admits and accepts her fate. Eddie would be getting an earful after Hellfire. Honestly, he'd be lucky if she didn't interrupt his meeting every minute out of spite now. She now agreed with his earlier words, that he had indeed royally fucked up instead of this being a minor mess up they could handle as she had reassured him.

One of the older members suddenly speaks up, "Hold on, you're a friend of Harrington's? Munson bagged a Harrington groupie?"

Willow opens her mouth, hating the nickname she'd already once been called by Eddie, when he interrupts.

"Don't call her that, Craig," Eddie snaps, "Who cares? We're running late, let's get to playing so my campaign can kick your asses. Red's just going to hang out."

"Red?" Gareth questions the nickname in a whisper while looking over at Jeff, who simply shrugs.

"She's not playing?" Dustin pipes up, seeming a little disappointed.

Willow decides to answer for herself before Eddie can, feeling bad and not wanting him to continue being unnecessarily cruel to the kid who's begun to resemble a puppy to Willow, "I don't know how to play."

"We could show you! I mean, this is just the first meet-" The boy to Dustin's right begins. His brown eyes are wide with genuine, good intentions. The sort of remind Willow of Eddie's for a moment, before she hears his voice interrupt the poor kid.

"She doesn't want to, Sinclair," Eddie probably doesn't intend to be so cruel in his interruption, but it comes out sharply. His hand finally leaves Willow's as they reach the opposite end of the table, and he drops his backpack by the only chair that doesn't look like it belongs in the school.

Lucas Sinclair .

All the pieces finally come together for Willow as she's still staring at the three boys. Her next realization causes a drop in her stomach.

Holy shit. Wait, these kids fought monsters. These are the kids that fought fucking monsters with Robin.

Just as quickly as she thinks this, Willow remembers her promise to Robin – as far as anyone else was concerned, Robin never told Willow that monsters exist.

Willow physically shakes her head out, still feeling incredibly out of place. She doesn't even know where to start, but she immediately feels the need to soften his words against the boys, "Not today, at least. Maybe some other time?"

Gareth is the one to speak up now, looking shocked. "You? You want to learn D&D?"

His words aren't mean, or condescending. He genuinely looks as if she's telling a five year old that Santa doesn't exist.

"Girls don't play D&D," Craig pipes up, and Willow doesn't know if it's because he called her 'Harrington's groupie', but she's slowly deciding he's her least favorite person in the room currently.

"They can if they want!" Jeff, the final member that Willow hadn't been properly introduced to, finally joins the conversation. He's looking at Willow curiously as he introduces himself unnecessarily, "I'm Jeff, by the way."

Just smile and wave. It's fine. It'll all be fine.

Willow waves timidly before Eddie walks around her, grabbing a chair from the dark corner behind her and pulls it so she's within reaching distance of the odd chair out.

"M'lady," he motions for her to sit. She's hardly audible as she mumbles a 'thank you', looking at the chair Eddie had placed his things by with morbid curiosity.

"Whose seat is that?" she finally asks, looking around at everyone. They all look to be fighting smiles, glancing around at each other as if they think she's told a bad joke.

Eddie is the one to fill her in. "That's my throne , sweetheart."

"Throne?" Willow scoffs, about to make fun of Eddie, but stops herself as she takes a closer look at the chair. There's extensive detail along the back of chair carved out, waves and swirls formulating the very top edge. The cushion is a red velvetine rather than a hard wooden slab, and the legs are knobby in a way that works. The detailing reminds her of Catholic churches, which seems to fit the overall theme of the room well, now that Willow takes a better look around. The boys have several candles and ironic religious imagery placed around.

No wonder people think they're a cult .

"What? Don't think I deserve a throne?" Eddie teases her as if no one else is in the room, falling down onto his throne with a soft thud. Willow can't help but admire how his hair bounces with this action, the way his face looks lit up but the soft glow of the candles in the room, how sof-

No. Nope. Don't.

Willow reels her thoughts in quickly, forcing a smile, "Oh, no, of course you deserve it. I just think it explains your giant ego problem, baby."

She hadn't called him that before. She'd never referred to him with any of the usual slew of nicknames that girlfriends call their boyfriends. It had always been Munson, or Eddie, or Eds, or dumbass, or idiot. Never babe. Never love. Never baby .

She's not the only one who notices her slip of tongue, Eddie's reaction even worse than hers as he blushes hard enough that she can see it even in the dim lighting of the room. For a moment, it's just the two of them, no Hellfire, no lies. They're back in the place where their moments in Willow's bathroom and back in the hallway were currently residing, something stirring in the air. All there is between them is Eddie's wide brown eyes staring at her with what she could confuse with affection if she were a fool, and the echo of the name of endearment, of baby , falling from her lips.

Gareth clears his throat. "Alright, boss, we starting or what?"

A switch flips within Eddie, and Willow watches as he transforms from Eddie Munson, the idiot who agreed to fake-date her for some impossible reason to Eddie the Banished, Dungeon Master.

---

"I'm sorry, I'm still confused, why do you have to roll the dice after saying what you're going to do? Why can't you just say you're going to like, kick someone's ass, and do it?"

Willow is sitting across from Eddie in a booth at the Denny's, strawberry shake in front of her as she continues to ask him endless questions about the game she just witnessed.

She hadn't expected to be so intrigued. At first, she had pulled out a book from home and figured she'd be reading for the next few hours, possibly even moving onto working on some homework if she got bored of her book. But at some point after the thirty minute mark, the loud arguing and Eddie's ridiculous voices for each of his made up characters had caught her attention. She only had to look up once before she had suddenly been sucked into the storyline, finding herself invested in the boys' choices as if she were watching a movie.

"You can't just kick someone's ass, Red. The point of the dice is to see the outcome. Using your example, if you say you want to kick someone's ass, you'd have to roll to guarantee you have the strength to do it. If you roll too low of a number, you're the one getting your ass kicked," Eddie explains, a smile on his face as he continues to be patient with Willow and her shocking curiosity.

None of the rules really made any sense to her. After watching the game, it made Willow realize she'd probably never be able to take part in a 'campaign', as Eddie had called it, although she had enjoyed watching everyone play. It was a situation where it had been boring until suddenly, it wasn't.

It was boring until Eddie came along.

"That's stupid ," she stresses as she leans across the table and grabs a fry off of Eddie's plate. Whereas Willow had been a child, ordering solely to soothe her sweet tooth, Eddie had been smarter; he'd ordered actual food. A cheeseburger and fries, to be precise.

"Hey!" he reprimands, trying to smack her hand away from his plate. He's too slow, Willow smirking as she dips the stolen fry into her shake while he continues, "And hate the game, not the player, baby ."

Willow immediately cringes. "Don't call me baby."

"Why not? That's what you called me ."

"Because I already have a nickname, remember?" She takes pleasure in mocking him from that day in English, doing the same rainbow motion with her hands as she tries to mimic his voice, " Red ."

"You know, for someone who claims they hated that nickname, you seem pretty insistent that I call you it," Eddie teases her before his hand suddenly reaches out and grabs her shake.

She doesn't have time to complain or react before Eddie brings the straw of her shake to his lips, taking a long sip that drains nearly half the glass.

"Eddie," she whines, reaching and yanking the glass back to her side, "Seriously? After I sat through your stupid campaign?"

"Don't act like you didn't enjoy it," Eddie points a threatening finger at her, tilting his head accusingly, "Besides, if I'm paying for this date , I'm getting my money's worth."

"Who said you were paying? Or that this was a date ?" Willow leans back and crosses her arms, playing up her fake pout. She actually didn't mind Eddie drinking her shake, considering she had probably stolen at least half of his fries or more.

Eddie chuckles around a bite of burger, "Our contract, sweetheart. Once a week, remember?"

"I recall..." Willow trails off, finally breaking and leaning forward to take a few more sips of her shake.

"And I decided I'm paying tonight because I'm feeling chivalrous. Don't get used to it, Red."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Munson."

They fall quiet for a while, Willow preoccupied with the last of her shake as Eddie finishes off his burger. The silence between them isn't particularly awkward or smothering as Willow would have expected. Instead, it's nice. There's a blanket of warmth, of comfort, to the fact that she knows that she doesn't always have to entertain Eddie. And he doesn't have to entertain her - at some point, they'd both accepted that the other's presence was enough.

"So, you think we were successful?" Eddie breaks the silence first, moving his plate out of the way from between the two of them, resting his hands on the table.

Willow focuses on his fiddling of his rings, particularly the skull one on his left ring finger, before answering, "I do. But you know that those kids are going to tell Steve all about your little fuck up."

"I know," she sees him swallow hard, clearly feeling bad, "I'm sorry. How do you think he's going to take it?"

"Badly," Willow doesn't even try to sugarcoat it. She knows that it's going to cause a fight, and a major one at that, between her and Steve. Her chest is already preemptively aching from the thought.

Eddie is wordless, moving on from twisting his skull ring to now the sole ring on his right hand. It's an intricate band that holds a dark, almost black stone, in the center. Willow's eyes trace over the swirling patterns clearly carved into the band, reminding her of his throne in the D&D room.

"Do you really think fake-dating me is going to make Harrington admit his feelings?"

Willow isn't expecting Eddie's question, eyes shooting up to see his face painted with sincerity. "I... I don't know. It seems it's causing more fights between us than anything. I just- can I admit something to you?" Willow pauses, pleading silently with her eyes until Eddie nods reassuringly, "It's fucked, but a small part of me is enjoying it. And I mean a small part. We're talking microscopic. Every time I see him get uncomfortable or pissed off when I mention you, I think about all the times I listened to him talk about Nancy and I- I don't know... I kind of secretly wish he's feeling the same pain I went through. Does that make me a bad person? That definitely makes me a bad person."

Willow feels slightly nauseous at her admission, saying the words out loud making it all too real. She shouldn't relish in making Steve jealous - it should simply be a means to an end. Steve had just been friendly, confiding in her about Nancy without malice this summer. But what Willow was doing was deliberate . She was doing anything she could to get under his skin, even after seeing how much it bothered him.

Jesus Christ, she's an awful friend.

"I don't think it makes you a bad person," Eddie suddenly says, "I mean, if I had to listen to the person I was in love with talk about someone else over and over again, it'd drive me to be pretty damn spiteful too."

"I'm not in love with him," Willow immediately corrects Eddie, but he just laughs.

"Don't bullshit me, Red. I've seen the way you look at him."

"Yeah? And how's that?"

"Like... Like he's your favorite boy in the whole wide world ," Eddie's nose scrunches as he says this, clearly cringing in exaggeration as Willow lets out a giggle, "I'm serious. You look at Harrington like he can do no wrong. Even when he's being an absolute asshole. Like he painted the night sky just for you, like he's the funniest person in every room. It's sickening , Red. Makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it."

Willow takes the straw of her shake and fiddles with it, drawing circles in the bottom of the now empty cup, "I mean, he is, to me - the funniest person in the room and all that. I know he's an asshole, and I don't like having to always defend him, but I know he's a good person. He's trying to be better. He is becoming better."

"Your faith in him is astonishing," Eddie scoffs, shaking his head.

"I just like seeing the good in people," Willow shrugs, convincing herself this wasn't something only exclusive to Steve. Her best example was sitting right in front of her, proof that she could find good in anyone , not just Steve Harrington.

Eddie is smiling so softly, Willow's chest clenches at first glance. His doe eyes are looking at her with so much admiration, so much respect, it throws her off guard. For once in her life, the roles feel reversed - Eddie Munson is looking at her like he can only see the good in her. She's never experienced that look, always being the one behind the rose-colored glasses. It makes her dizzy.

"That you do, Red," his voice is just as soft as the look on his face. It's killing her, chipping away at a new hole in her chest. It's making something stir inside of her that is completely unfamiliar - something she had never come across inside herself in her eighteen years of life.

"We should probably get going," she forces herself to choke out, trying to look away from the brown eyes currently enrapturing her attention.

I could stay here all night if he let me.

It's a startling thought, one that further solidifies that they should leave. Willow is just tired and Eddie is just nice. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Right," Eddie moves into action, pulling out his wallet to pay as Willow continues to get lost in her exhausted thoughts.