"Come on, Rory! You can push yourself harder than that," Eddie encouraged while holding onto her.

After two weeks of this, Rory was starting to get a good grip on fighting techniques. Nothing extreme, but she had the pivoting and the ducking, she was able to throw a mean punch, but she struggled at getting out of a grip. The moment Eddie has his arm around her collarbone or pinned her dominant hand behind her back she didn't know what to do. Each jerk of the body made the grip tighter, until she would tap out.

"Fuck," Rory muttered as she tapped out. "I'll never be able to overpower someone of your stature, this isn't fair."

"I know, you're right," Eddie said, not mentioning the fact that yes, she was quite petite and couldn't overpower someone of his build. However, with the right tricks up her sleeve she could do enough to get herself out of a situation. Already he printed off an article a friend of his wrote about escaping attackers; some of the methods seemed silly, but were proven to work. One of them was to drop to a 'turtle' position, and inch away; the back could take a beating, it was the head and stomach you needed to protect.

Eddie and Rory stood facing each other, he raised his hands. "Alright, pretend I'm that guy."

They hadn't talked about him since the morning Rory told him to stay away from her past, because it was ugly, and it would get one or both -likely both- of them hurt. Eddie heeded her warning, letting his curiousity fade because he was spending all this time with Rory; he was learning who she was through their own interactions, his own judgement. Being around her made him forget about Annie a lot of the time, and he didn't want his judgement of her clouded by whatever he could dig up from her past. Though he was curious, he wouldn't do that to her.

Rory's lip was curled into a grimace, her hands were clutched into fists and for a moment Eddie thought she was going to punch him in the nose. But she stood there, frozen.

"Come on, Rory," he encouraged again.

"If you were him, it doesn't matter what I learn here," she gestured to the gym, "I would shut down."

"Nah, you can't think like that, Rory."

"I do, that's a learned behaviour."

He sighed. "Want to wrap it up for today?"

She agreed, and they hit the street on the bike, heading back to the apartment. When they arrived, the obligatory parting to occur, Eddie stopped her before she disappeared behind her door. "I've been thinking," he started, "you spend so much time between places, I want you to have a key."

"What?" She turned to face him, surprised by this grand gesture that usually occurred between relatively long-term couples, not neighbours.

"You're welcome over anytime, I like you there."

She blushed, it was impossible not to when Eddie talked to her like she had a place in his home, his life, his heart. "Isn't that like... step four of a relationship? I think we skipped a few, given that, oh I don't know, we aren't in a relationship."

He cocked his head to the side. "What are we then?"

She widened her eyes at his bold question. "I... You tell me..."

"We can't just be neighbours who make out... That's a bit of a weird title."

She laughed, still shell-shocked. Then she shrugged. "What do you want to be, Eddie? I'm damaged goods, I'll never be..." she was going to say 'Anne' and they both knew it.

"I don't want you to be her," Eddie told her, and it sounded true. He handed her the little bronze key for his apartment. "And I'm not him, so don't be a stranger, don't pull yourself away from whatever... whatever this can be."

She reached out gingerly, taking the key from his hand and rubbing her thumb over the smoothness of it, then the jagged edges. Like life, some parts were smooth and made sense, like going to school, coming home to loving parents, then making something of yourself. That was all smooth. And the jagged came to life, the boyfriends who trapped you, cut you off from the world and gaslighted you until you didn't know what was real and what was false. The jagged was having to live in a shitty apartment where you were scared to leave it.

She didn't know where Eddie fit in that metaphor; if things proceeded the way they were, it could go either way. Smooth being they would work out, Rory would feel substantially safer as she already did with him just as a neighbour. Jagged being he wouldn't easily forget or move on from Anne. Jagged being Rory would hear the words he told her.

"I would kill you if I saw you with another man, I just couldn't fathom it!" he says with a laugh, as though this is a perfectly acceptable joke -that he is kidding about murdering her if she moves on.

She doesn't think it is funny.

"Rory?" Eddie waved his hands in front of her; she zoned out.

"Sorry," she blurted. "Sorry..."

"What are you apologizing for?" He asked.

She didn't want to answer, so she just smiled. "I'll take your key, mostly because you've locked yourself out of your apartment three times since you moved in two months ago."

"That's all?"

Their eyes met, holding there for a brief, intense moment.

"We'll see," she said with a smile, stepping into her apartment and closing the door behind her. She quickly rushed to the bathroom to shower, peeling off her sweaty clothes and throwing them in the basket. She took a short shower, just a quick scrub and shampoo, then stepped out and decided to wear something nice to Eddie's for dinner.

Standing in a towel, she flicked through her clothes. She had no dresses; she refused to wear them after the left him. Any dresses she had when she left went straight to donation – she couldn't throw them out without a guilty conscience, but she refused to wear them. She felt so vulnerable in them, she felt exposed and despite looking beautiful she felt ugly.

Rory pressed her hand against the closet border and took a deep breath, trying to recover. She grabbed her best pair of jeans, they were a bit tight, she wondered if she gained a bit of weight. She lost so much when she was with him when the anxiety of leaving him and being with him pressed down on her. She lost even more when she left, living in fear that he would find her. Her hands ran over her stomach and she felt the weight, she felt strength, she felt growth and the power of overcoming everything.

Yet so much still pinned her down, like stakes through her wrists that pinned her to the ground.

Worthless.

"Get out of my head," she muttered to herself. "You've gotten over this, Rory, come on!"

She knew her mind was trailing back to her past demons because she was falling for Eddie; she was not allowed to be with other men, that was what she was told over and over again. One-night stands were easy because she never even learned more than their first names and she split before sunrise. But Eddie was different, because she cared about him, she was close to him and knew she was putting him at risk.

She straightened up, chose a simple black t-shirt and ran her fingers through her hair. Key in hand, she walked over to Eddie's apartment and walked in like they lived together; it empowered her to know she was moving on, even if she was feeling the signs of regression. She would get over this, she would take back her own life and her autonomy, and there was no way anyone, not even the demons that laughed at her behind closed eyes, could stop her.

She closed Eddie's apartment door, then turned around to start cooking something, when she saw him step out of the bathroom in only a towel.

"Oh," Rory blurted.

Eddie turned and looked at her, nonplussed. "Oh, uh, that was fast."

"I can go, I can come back..."

Eddie shrugged. "I'll be a few minutes, don't worry about it."

He disappeared into the bedroom, and Rory had half a mind to follow him. She wanted to scream at the demons in her head that she was allowed to do this, she was allowed to fall for someone, she was allowed to sleep with other people, she was allowed to start something that might go on for a long time. A shiver ran down her spine as she thought of the possible outcomes; smooth being things went well, and that he never found her- them. Jagged being he did, and she knew it was Eddie who would pay the price.

"That's my girl."

-----

Hey guys! So a reminder, because Wattpad didn't actually upload and notify readers of the last chapter and I noticed reads were down significantly, but I do post EVERY day! Usually around 7/730AM PST -I get up at 6AM every day to write for you.

I am still trying to flesh this story out, figure out what I am doing with it, where it is going. I think the route of the closer Rory gets to Eddie, the worse her demons get. The idea of her having voices in her head and Eddie having Venom in his later really sits well with me -what do you think?

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