Brightside

05 | barbie girl

trigger warning: harassment, groping. take care before, during, and after.

*

Eddie should've known better than to trust Maverick at the best of times, but she should've definitely known better than to trust Maverick after he'd smoked a joint right in front of her. All she managed was a soft sigh when the moment he opened the door, the sound Rush's godawful rendition of Paper Rings spilled onto the street, and Maverick practically hurdled someone's table to get back to Everleigh so they could sing it at each other in the most disgustingly they're too fucking in love with each other way with arms wrapped around necks and waists and noses pressed together and Everleigh's hands were in Maverick's hair and Maverick's smile could light up a worldwide power outage and Eddie was going to vomit if she looked any longer so instead she walked away.

If the Meadowlark-Maverick's weren't enough, there was something positively evil about the fact that Eddie got a block away from the bar and was immediately met with footsteps behind her. Made her walk faster until a familiar voice called her name.

"Bo, I'm not in the mood—"

"I won't talk to you about anything, I just want to get shit-faced somewhere else."

If he was into women, and if he wasn't already dating someone, Eddie might've been forced to kiss him for saying the most romantic thing she'd ever heard.

"Tonight was worse than the time I told Rush and Axel that folklore wasn't in my top five."

"You're probably lucky Maverick and Stevie weren't there."

"I learned my lesson from seeing them on Twitter with Midnights to keep my Taylor Swift opinions away from them. Fuckin' Blondie police."

"They do share the same three brain cells."

"You think Maverick has access to three brain cells?"

"Rude."

"You didn't have Maverick's phone number when Barbie came out last year, did you?"

Bo frowned. "Why? He didn't like it?"

"How dare you ever doubt Maverick," Eddie said. "On the contrary, he spent the next six months sending videos of him singing I'm Just Ken to Everleigh. Only of his face, because he's nothing if not a fucking Leo, but she was there. Yelling at him to shut the fuck up, to be fair. But she was there."

"Every day?" Bo asked.

"Every single fucking day."

"Did she even see Barbie?" Bo asked. "She gives... Oppenheimer vibes."

Donny snorted. Loudly. Covered his mouth with his hand.

Bo looked at him. Like the answers were on his forehead. "Yes?"

"She's both."

Eddie raised an eyebrow.

"She'd watch both," Donny said. "Maverick gives just Barbie."

Eddie had fought a lot of battles in her life but trying not to laugh at an Australian saying Barbie was, somehow, the worst of them all. She supposed that should've been her first hint that Axel was sitting across from her at the bar—that man couldn't pronounce an R properly if his fucking life depended on it.