Sunny N Sugar - Tumblr Posts
Faint of Heart
(Part One)
Pairing: Eddie x fem! Reader
Word Count: 1.6k
Summary: You don’t know his name, but Eddie becomes a regular at your diner. Scared you’ll run like everyone else, he can’t bring himself to tell you how he feels, until…
Warnings: Some angst, brief appearance by an unwanted ex, mild threat and violence, 18+ in later parts, strangers to lovers, smut to come…
A/N: disclaimer - I started writing this in the midst of a week long migraine. I was really high and off my face on pain pills and strong migraine medication, so I’m so sorry if this sucks.
•••
“In this moment together
Though we feel worlds apart
Can you lend me your hand
I’m a little too faint of heart”
It’s always 3:18am when he arrives. So punctual and set in stone that you don’t even need to glance up at the old clock on the wall anymore.
You don’t know his name, but you call him Sunny, because that’s how he likes his eggs when he orders every day (except, it seems, on Wednesdays - although you haven’t figured out why, yet).
It’s definitely not a description of his demeanour - Sunny is anything but bright and breezy. He slinks in each early morning with a constant frown set on his brow, shoulders slightly hunched over as if they’re straining under the weight of whatever emotional burden he’s lugging around. Heavy boots clunk across the black and white diner tiles as he heads to the far end of the counter. You could set your watch by the jangle of his chains as he hoists himself onto the very last worn leather stool of the row.
Wordlessly, he’ll go through the motions of reaching for a menu, holding it open in his hands but never really looking at the options. You play along with the charade of giving him a moment to decide on his order before walking over with a small smile and cheerful tone to ask “what can I get you?” whilst reaching for the little pencil tucked behind your ear and writing down his order before Sunny even starts talking: two eggs (sunny side up), bacon, and a short stack of pancakes with extra syrup. You don’t need to ask your usual follow up question, instead just reaching behind for a coffee cup, filling it to the brim with hot, black liquid and sliding it softly towards him.
His leather jacket squeaks when he reaches to take several large gulps from the mug, and you always wonder if his throat is lined with asbestos because he barely seems to register the heat of the drink.
Every morning you offer sugar, but his heavily ringed hands wave you off with a little grunt. If he were anyone else, you’d have stopped offering and being so polite a long time ago - but there’s something about Sunny that draws you back in. The gentle tug of a string in your chest urging you in his direction, despite the complete lack of interaction.
One time he’d glanced up as you placed his plate in front of him. Eyes dark and still as the sky outside, but you saw something buried in them the second your gaze connected. A flash between you so instantaneous, it was gone before you’d registered the way your heart stuttered in its rhythm.
Like the bite of a venomous animal, you returned to the cash register that day knowing something new and foreign was in your veins. You felt it coursing through your bloodstream - changing the make up of your cells with a heat so intense, you’d never recover.
•••
You’re always in the same spot of the diner when he arrives, Eddie could set his watch by your shift routine these days. It’s 3:18am and you’re refilling the napkin holders. Hands working methodically without your eyes really having to follow what’s going on, such is the depth of your muscle memory.
He keeps his head down as he passes, knowing you never seem to look up when he arrives anymore. Eddie hears his footsteps echo through the mostly empty diner, taking his favoured stool at the end of the row - within reaching distance of the old jukebox he loves so much. He puts in a couple of quarters and picks the same songs like clockwork.
You come over to politely take his order, but Eddie sees you write it down from memory before he speaks. Although he keeps his head ducked low, if you were to glimpse beneath his mane of unruly curls, you’d see the way he can’t help but smile at this little act the two of you go through every morning. It’s become his favourite part of the day, not that he’ll ever tell you that.
Eddie doesn’t know your name, but he calls you Sugar in his mind for several reasons. It started because of the adorable way you ask him each day if he’d like sugar in his coffee, despite him never taking it.
By far his favourite reason, though, is the way you hum along faultlessly when Eddie plays Def Leppard’s ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ from the jukebox. You never seem to realise the way your hips sway to the beat as you’re standing at the cash register, yet Eddie finds the movement utterly mesmerising. Can’t tear his eyes away, even at the risk of you catching him staring.
He finds most of what you do hypnotising, if he’s honest. The way your fingers tap on the counter when you’re bored between customers, or that habit you have of tucking your pencil behind your ear, or how your head tips back in laughter at Old Ken in his booth when he cracks the same crazy jokes - a noise bursting free from your chest and brightening his world like fireworks lighting up the night sky. Eddie feels drawn to you like a moth to a flame, has done since the first time he came to this diner.
If this was the Eddie of a few years ago, he’d have worked up the courage to ask you out by now, but a lot changed for him after that night. People look the other way when they see his scars, kids cross the street. He wants so desperately to tell you how you’re all he’s thought about for the past few months, but the words die on his tongue the minute you’re stood in front of him.
He braved a glance up at you once, as you’d laid his plate down on the counter. Eddie felt the lightning bolt through his chest the second your eyes met. The heat of your gaze, even in that fleeting moment, burned into his soul like being branded with a hot poker.
•••
Sunny hadn’t arrived as usual this morning. At 3:49am, his stool is still painfully empty. A feeling of unease squirms its way up from your stomach, crawling between the gaps of your ribs and settling in your chest.
You have plenty to keep yourself busy with - the cook has called out sick, and despite ringing him several hours ago, your boss clearly thinks leaving you high and dry to run the diner by yourself in the middle of the night is acceptable.
Walking over to Old Ken, you take his payment from the table top, sliding over a paper bag containing an extra portion of his meal. What your boss doesn’t know won’t hurt him. The grin on Ken’s face as he shuffles home is worth the risk a hundred times over.
Your other customers so far had been a small group of college girls grabbing burgers to soak up the booze they’d overindulged in, an older couple on a road trip who sat in silence for the entire meal, and a trucker who had the appetite of a horse but the tipping etiquette of a rat.
When they’d all finally left, you take a moment to rest, loosening the ties of your apron, stretching out the ache of your stiff neck muscles with a tired groan while turning to wipe down the back counter. When the bell above the door jingles to signal the arrival of a patron, it echoes loudly into the now empty diner. An unexpected wave of relief crashes down your spine. That must be Sunny, finally. You hadn’t realised until that moment quite how much you’d come to enjoy seeing him each morning.
The excitement is short lived, however - and as you turn to greet him, the smile falls from your face, stomach plummeting to your feet.
“Aiden” You manage to croak out, mouth now painfully dry “W-What are you doing here?”
Your ex-boyfriend lands his hands on the counter and grins, obnoxious gold tooth glinting beneath the strip lighting.
“Didn’t think you’d be seeing me again so soon, did ya?”
No. You knew you couldn’t avoid him forever, but part of you had really hoped you would.
•••
“C’mon, y’stubborn old woman!
Eddie swipes his sweaty forehead with the back of his grease covered hand, a smear of black oil staining his pale skin like ink on white paper. With a final twist of the wrench, he straightens his back a little too quickly, thwacking the back of his skull on the underside of the hood.
“Motherfu_” He catches himself, seething through his teeth with a grunt of pain.
Slamming the hood closed, he hops into the open drivers door and turns his keys, saying a silent prayer to whatever deity was awake and listening at this godforsaken hour.
“Come on. Come on. Come on…”
The van engine miraculously splutters into life, plume of dark smoke billowing from the exhaust. Eddie knows he can’t keep his trusty van going forever - her days are surely numbered, but damn if he isn’t still very much attached to his beloved vehicle. He won’t let her go without a fight.
A glance at the clock on his dash confirms his post-shift breakfast is very overdue. There’s a moment of contemplation, Eddie considers driving straight home. There’s a food stop much closer to the trailer park he could grab something from. Turning the radio up, his fingers tap a beat against the steering wheel, bottom lip protruding in thought. With a shake of his head, Eddie throws the van into gear and grins at the screech of his tires on asphalt as he barrels towards his diner of choice.
Towards you.
•••
•••
PART 2 COMING SOON!
Thanks for reading 🫶🏻 Reblogs keep fic writers thriving 🥰 special thanks to my dearest @joesquinns for giving me the push to post this and not be scared 💛