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powderblueblood · 4 months

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HELLFIRE & ICE — eddie munson x f!oc as enemies to star-crossed lovers

CHAPTER SIX — IN MY ORBIT

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summary: it's escape from new york, if by new york you mean eddie munson's trailer. he knows you need to stay away from him, you know he needs to stay away from you, but honey... who else is gonna tell him there's an 'e' in roane county? content warnings: MINORS DNI obviously, my god. we've got your usual here-- mentions of masturbation, both male and female, white hot motherfucking yearning of the sexual and emotional kind, a surprise nancy wheeler, little women references, sticking it to the teacher we don't need no education style, eddie munson says acab word count: 12.2k

Dear hooker from the Christmas card in Minneapolis, can you shut the fuck up? I need to think!

Dear Bilbdoolpoolp, you nutty sea bitch goddess, do me a solid and send me a diversion– tear the roof off this trailer– I need to think!

Dear Lacy, quit looking at me like I just bit the head off your Virginia Woolf doll. I want to suck face with you so bad, like really goddamn bad, and you seem like you want to do it to me as well, what with your whole, like, big doe eyes and all that shit, but I need.

To think.

It’s not what Eddie wants to clamp over your mouth, but it’s what you’re getting. His hand, his whole ringed hand, which takes up the better part of your face so all he can see is your eyes flashing from possibly turned on (jury’s still out) to confused to plain angry.

“Mmmphmph!” you squeal against his hand, and he pulls his most panicked, most pleading expression out of the bag.

“Lacy! Lacy. Lay-cee,” he hisses, teeth grit and spittle flying,”Do me a favor, do me a favor for once in your life and be. Cool. Be cool.”

His fingers slide from your mouth and your jaw is set all hard. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?!”

Right. Ice princess. Totally. Totally. “When I said be cool, I meant be quiet!”

“Ed.” That gruff rumble is coming from right outside his door. Eddie holds an index finger to his lips, and motions, like a goddamn kindergarten teacher, for you to do the same. Because that’s all you seem to understand. And you roll your eyes, but you do it anyway. And he– fuck, you’re cute.

“Yee-aah?” he calls back, tone about as even as the Appalachian mountains.

“Can I–”

“No!” Eddie barks, seeing that door handle twist a fraction of an inch. What would Wayne do, if he caught you in here? Would his brain explode all over the trailer? Would that be the end of the last truly good Munson family member? I mean, probably not, but he’d be all disappointed in Eddie and that would be worse. So much worse. “I’m not… Decent.”

You, still with your finger planted in the indent of your cupid’s bow, do a bad job of suppressing a snort. “Who are you, Rita Hayworth?” you hiss, and Eddie raises his hand to seal your stupid lips up again. Stupid. Lippy. Stupid lips. You bat it away, motioning like, okay, I’ll be cool!

Who the fuck is Rita Hayworth, anyway?!

“Well. Get decent,” Wayne says, a single knuckle rapping on the door–that means get movin’, “Need to talk to you.”

And far be it from Eddie to keep the man he’s effectively betraying by stowing you away in his bedroom waiting. Up like a shot, he lifts the needle from the skipping record, pausing by the door before he heads out to meet his fate.

He can tell by the look on your face that he’s blown this. Whatever it is– was. He had a perfect precipice of a moment, and he’d totally shot himself in the foot. But Eddie would sooner see you alive and unkissed than dead of pneumonia in the freezing rain, ‘kay? Call him a hero, whatever.

“Just–”

“--shut the fuck up,” you whisper, hands drawn up in surrender. Realizing that there’s nothing funny about this situation. “I got it.”

The door whumps closed behind him, shaking the entire trailer in its wake, and you wait all of three seconds before racing to it and pressing your ear up against the paint-chipped wood.

What’s going on out there? Is it about me?

How could it be about you? Unless Munson’s uncle had some kind of sixth sense, some breach in his cerebrum that alerted him once you crossed the threshold of his precious trailer. Come to think of it, you don’t remember seeing a second bedroom in this thing.

You’d be lying if that didn’t elicit a little pang of pride– my trailer’s better than your trailer, you jealous? Doesn’t answer the question of where the Munson uncle sleeps, but at least you and your mother had a two-bedder.

To your flaring frustration, the Munson men have opted to use an indecipherable muttering gravelly man octave with which to discuss this pressing business. That could or could not be about you. Insanely inconsiderate that this is the one time that Eddie Munson isn’t the loudest voice in the room, a ball of fury and sound and action knocking over everything in its wake. When it was the one time you actually wanted to hear what he had to say.

You also regret to inform yourself that that wasn’t all you wanted from him, up until about forty-five seconds ago.

The white-hot embarrassment of being caught ready to throw a leg over him–the white hot embarrassment of being caught holding onto his wrist in the record store, of him catching you falling out of his van–descends over you in a wave that almost takes you out at the knees.

But you’d wanted it– you did, in one suspended moment that you couldn’t pawn off on being high or drunk or wildly angry, sobbing soaked out in the rain. You had looked at Eddie Munson, in his dark, bottomless eyes and took in his slope of a Grecian nose and his dumb, effusive mouth with the pink lips and the pretty teeth and you had wanted it. Him. Him and the nebulous it that he would inevitably end up doing to you.

He wanted you back. You thought.

When Eddie slips back into his bedroom, you’re peeking through his blinds. Your trailer remains in total darkness, that criminal slip of a key obviously still jammed in the lock. You look over your shoulder at him and his brow is set in such a weird and distant crease that you think– shit. Maybe I hallucinated all that. Maybe that was all me.

“What are you doing?” he asks, voice flat and near silent. What happened out there?

“My mom,” you start, “She…”

Never came home, is where you were going with it, but you don’t get to finish. “Okay,” he says, all absent. He flicks off the bedroom lamp as he passes it, this unconscious motion that leaves you both stranded in a blue-tinged darkness.

In the moments it takes your eyes to adjust, he’s sitting next to you on the bed.

“I’m gonna sleep on the floor,” he tells you. His irises are shiny and hard and serious.

Oh. The kind of tension you want to poke at.

“Don’t be stu–”

“I’m not bein’ stupid, Lacy.”

You blink. Your faces are close. In the dark, the fractals of him would be easier to not remember in the daylight. You could pick out the parts you wanted–his cheekbone, his jutting jawline, the sloping corner of his mouth–and not puzzle them together in the morning. You could separate it. It could be fine. A non-event.

“It’s cold,” you press, your voice low and solid, “and you don’t have another comforter.”

“How do you know that.”

Lucky guess. “I just do.” Just let me have this without having to ask for it.

I am a little afraid, I don’t know of what, and you’re the last solid thing I can grab onto.

Or lay next to.

“What side of the bed do you sleep on?”

“All of it.” God, he’s so obstinate.

“Pick a favorite.”

His mouth–his mouth–scrunches up the way a shitting cat’s might. You puncture the silence with a visible shiver. This staredown is horrible.

“Fuck. Fine.” Point to Lacy. Eddie, arms out, gestures to the side of the bed furthest from the door. “Get comfy.”

In a scramble, you dig yourself under the comforter, pulling it all the way up to your chin. But now the shivering has started, and there’s no sign of stopping it– real, muscle seizing, teeth-chattering shivering.

Eddie mumbles something like Jesus Christ, or God help me or some other plea for mercy, and slides in beside you, pitching himself at the very edge of the mattress. Arms folded over his chest.

“You gotta quit shaking!” he hisses.

“I am fuh-reezing!” you seethe back.

You kick your knees up into your arms, facing away from him and curling yourself in the tightest of balls and really, really working hard on calming down your wracking because, honestly? Little embarrassing.

The mattress crreeaaaks. A shift in weight.

“Are you really that cold?”

You put that shaking to good use and nod in the affirmative. “Ice princess, right?”

Like you were putting this on for show. God, he’s such an asshole.

The way he gulps is borderline cartoonish. “Okay.” A shaky breath. “But we have to not make this weird.”

The mattress shifts again and you feel his weight edge closer to you. You relax a little from the fetal position, head craning to peer over your shoulder. He was– hovering, as much as one could hover when lying in a horizontal position.

“Munson, are you trying to cu–”

“Stop it. Stop making it weird. I’ll throw your ass out that window and it’s a cold snap and you’re already cold blooded so you’ll, like, double fucking freeze to death.”

But he wouldn’t. Of that you were fairly confident.

Eddie’s hand edges toward your waist, positioning his front side ever closer to your back, which feels… not horrible at all, until–

“No. Nope. That’s not gonna work.”

You have to bite back a smile. Boys. Boys and their stupid, simple penises.

He flops back against the mattress, head angled to the ceiling. Awkwardly, he jigs an arm up, like some puppeteer’s yanking his string. His hand hits you square in the back of the head.

“Ow–”

“Shut up. Get under here.”

Slowly, and almost shyly, you rotate your shivering body a cool one-eighty degrees and find him concentrating resolutely on the ceiling. You glance up. There’s black mold on that ceiling. You wish you had noticed that before, but when up shit creek, et cetera. Inching and inching, you settle in next to him, head nestling into his armpit.

His arm gingerly curves around you.

You bring your hands up to your mouth, fingers curled in fists like a little kid.

Your leg brushes against his, accidentally, racking up the leg of his flannel pants. You can feel the hair against your bare calf– strong, ticklish.

And you can hear his heart.

Jackrabbity. Thu-thump-thu-thump-thu-thump.

So’s yours.

He is so warm.

“Hey,” he whispers, tone a little softer this go around, “Can I ask you something?”

You do a tiny swallow and hope it’s not obvious. “I guess.”

“... Does it stink down there?”

Eddie Munson smells like cigarette and soap and that warm smell from the dryer. You inhale and hope it’s not obvious.

“Yes. You’re ripe. It’s disgusting.”

“Good. ‘night, Lacy.”

“Goodnight, Eddie.”

–

Eddie wakes up with a painful inhale and two of his rings tangled in your hair.

Shit! Fucking shit! See, he was supposed to stay awake, stay alert, make sure Wayne didn’t like, suddenly develop a tendency to sleepwalk and stumble into his room while you were all… curled up next to him. With your freezing little ice blocks for feet. And your lashes fanned out across your cheeks. And your tiny little kitten snores, you goddamn bitch.

But for as freaked out as he was–and is, girl in his actual human bed and everything–Eddie started nodding off here and there. And suddenly, here and there became the morning sun beaming directly into his stinking retinas from a crack in the blinds.

He is now hyper-aware of your hand curled beneath his sternum and your boobs pressing against his side.

The following procedure needs to be handled delicately, like a bomb.

Because the other thing, among all the other other things, is Woody fuckin’ Woodpecker has come calling this morning too.

Now, blue sky situation, ideal world, you’d just be able to scoot that hand a little lower and help him out with such an issue. But since he blew any shot of you wanting that along with any semblance of dignity he held in your eyes last night, that is a no-go.

He needs a Bible level miracle to will himself soft and untangle his rings from your hair without you waking up. And he also needs to wake you up and smuggle you the ever-loving fuck out of his trailer.

Careful, careful, careful– he starts picking strands out from around the silver, wondering how the hell he let himself just… tousle his hand around in your hair without, I’unno, getting turned into a pile of dust.

Then you make this noise– this little mewl, like mmnnrgh?, and Eddie’s entire body skips a beat. He needs to commit it to memory, record it to the ongoing multi-track mixtape he’s unconsciously been creating in his mind. Lacy’s Greatest Hits, featuring dick-in-fist chart toppers such as Who Died and Made You My Parole Officer?, Sorry, I Don’t Teach Remedial, and an eight hour loop of you saying his name. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie.

He wants to pull you on top of him, rings-in-hair and all, and kiss all the broken little mmnnrgh?s out of you ‘til you don’t have the breath to make any more. ‘til all you’ve got is his name on your tongue, your Siberian cold hands under his shirt.

And if he keeps thinking thoughts like this, he’s gonna kill himself!

This is not helping. You are not helping.

With some absolutely saint-worthy maneuvering on his part, Eddie gets his fingers free of your hair, but it’s not the gentle tug that wakes you up–

It’s a certain eardrum-perforating WHOOP-WHOOP.

Eddie Munson never thought he’d see the day where he was thanking whoever down there that’s lookin’ out for him for the sound of a cop car. Instant boner killer.

But also–

“Issat-thefuckin’-cops?” you slur at an almost normal volume, rising from underneath Eddie’s arm.

He shushes you, all harsh and wiry and you’ve just woken up, bleary-eyed and not yet able to comprehend your surroundings. Which, boy howdy. He darts to the window like an animal alarmed, peering out through the blinds.

“Oh, you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

“What’s happening?” you whisper-ask, slapping consciousness into yourself with a palm to either cheek.

“Lacy, on a scale from one to ten,” Eddie seethes, scanning his view from the window, “How likely is your mom to report you as a missing person in under 24 hours?”

Your stomach drops with an acidic, awful clunk. Going out and making a fool of us. Your mom, caring only when she absolutely has to.

“Eleven.”

Eddie turns his big, siren-eyed stare on you.

“Then we gotta get you outta here. Like. Yesterday.”

You, now, you’re at a total loss. A total loss that’s made your blood turn bad under your skin, a total loss that has made you want to strangle your own mother, but a total loss where it actually matters. “I can’t believe she’d–!”

“Don’t matter, sweetheart! Does noooot matter– this the first time you ever got the cops called on you or something?”

You blink, remembering red and blue lights outside of your house in Loch Nora. But that wasn’t for you. Technically. Figures why you suddenly feel morning-sick nauseous, though.

“Well, mazel tov,” Eddie says, misreading the memory and starting toward his door.

You scramble for him, tugging at him by the bottom of his t-shirt. “Where are you going?!”

“Running interference. We need a distraction,” he tells you, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Okay, sorry for not being an accomplished criminal.

“Interference. Yeah. You’re good at that.”

He hits you with a sneer. “Not my first rodeo. You post up by that window and watch– when the coast is clear, I’ll give you a signal.”

“And then what?”

“And then– and then what?!” Eddie gasps, totally incredulous that you’d even try to ask– to seek his guidance, or whatever, “And then you’re on your own, kid! I’m already about to throw a match into the powder keg of your stupid hot mom, I’m not gonna stick around to watch her blow up!”

A quiver escapes your pinched lips, one that nearly says don’t go.

You’ve been taking care of yourself for a long time. That’s not the problem. The problem is tasting what it’s like when somebody helps you and realizing you haven’t had your fill. That, and your mother’s wrath which is your father’s wrath if you blow your cover and word gets back that you were hanging out in Al Munson’s boy’s trailer.

Nuclear fallout. Worse than Eddie’s room.

Eddie notices that you’ve been quiet a half-beat too long– and not just because you are both pressed for time, he puts his hands on your shoulders. Reassuringly, hurriedly. He shakes you, pump-pump, snap out of it.

You’re still gripping the hem of his t-shirt.

“Hey.” His voice is quieter. “This is gonna be fine.”

“Before you go out there, I– I need to ask you something.” It’s all compulsion. Why are you helping me? Why are you being nice to me? I don’t deserve you being nice to me.

Do you regret not kissing me last night? Do you regret not doing it right now? What am I supposed to do if I regret it too?

“Lacy?”

“Did you fuck Cass Finnigan in the ass?” Oh, yeah, there it fucking is.

Complete bafflement. Eddie seems to completely short circuit, powering back to life with a groan. “Wh– how did you know that?”

You huff, because it’s all you can do.

“I’m the goddamn Oracle of Delphi.” Finally, your vice grip of his shirt loosens. “Well. Go get ‘em, tiger.”

Okay, insulting.

Eddie stalks out of the room, head reeling on several different strata levels. By someone’s infernal grace, Wayne has already left for the day–it’s 7AM; way to get a headfirst start on inconveniencing the boys in blue, Lacy’s mom–so Eddie has ample space to flail his arms around wildly, frustratedly, cursing himself out before grabbing his uncle’s insulated parka from the coat rack and heading out the front door.

“Officers,” he says, half-wishing the zip on the jacket would choke him out so he wouldn’t have to put himself in the line of fire like this, and for what. “What’s uuuup?”

“Perfect.” That clipped yap comes from behind a cloud of smoke, teeming out of your mother huffing back a Dunhill. “There’s the little curr himself. Ask him where my daughter is, why don’t you.”

Well, now Eddie sees where you get it from.

“Shouldn’t you be on your way to school, son?” one of the officers (Callahan, if Eddie’s last speeding-ticket-receiving memory serves) drawls, clearly not all too concerned with the happenings here. But, considering to your mom, who can resist a Blanche DuBois type in a crisis, right? Definitely runs in the family.

Eddie lets his tongue loll out in an exaggerated hack-cough. “Sick day.”

“Then you oughta be inside, right?” Cops, man. Our nation’s greatest thinkers.

“I would be,” he says, taking on the haughty tone of– well, of your mother, “was it not for that obnoxious weew-weew of yours rousing me from my sick bed.” He even clutches at the lapels of the coat, shivering for effect. That one’s for you, baby.

“And y’know what, while we’re on the subject of noise…” You weren’t wrong when you said that he’s good at running interference– because he’s good at being a nuisance. “I’ve been meaning to put a call into you guys. You guys, police guys.” Eddie moves to stand in the negative space between your trailers, however many feet it is.

“See how much distance it is from here–” he points to his trailer where, if you’re not totally fucking this up, you’re watching from the slits in the blinds of his bedroom, “--to here?” Other arm goes up. He’s standing there like Christ the freakin’ Redeemer, and the cops’ attention is pulled right to him because he’s got priors and he might do something weird and they’re idiots. Your mom is all about Eddie too, forgetting to be concerned and distraught for half a moment.

Munsons have that effect on people.

“... yeah?” Callahan says, prompting a wild-eyed Eddie to go on.

“I should not be there,” again, a nod to his own trailer, “and be able to hear Englebert Humperdinck from in here.” He waves a wild arm toward your trailer, edging a couple steps closer to it. Big ol’ brown eyes here locks his gaze on your momma. “Lady, that’s crazy. What are you doing playing ballads that loud?!”

Lacy Sr goldfishes back at him, mouth bobbing, presumably-last-night’s lipstick bleeding. Still so very hot.

“I mean, look, I get it, you’re writing a letter to daddy in jail–and that sucks, and if you need company, you know where to find me–but can’t you do it a little quieter?” Eddie says, a wholly believable impression of a flabbergasted man. The cops almost seem to buy it.

“I am not in there playing records–” “Right, you’re too busy letting your daughter go missing under your nose. Listen, ma’am, this might not be Loch Nora, but around here, we got respect for our neighbors!” Oh, he is a honey-glazed Christmas ham.

A honey-glazed Christmas ham that is advancing towards your trailer door and dragging the attention of the attending adults with him, indicating you with a subtle two-finger salute that you better get out of his.

You snap the blinds back into place. Motherfucking go time. Until you realize that you have no shoes to speak of, just your book bag and whatever’s left of your steely reserve. You’d tossed your sneakers into that bag with your sodden cheerleader get-up– where the hell was that now?

You shove on the sizes-too-big work boots by the door and make it happen.

Eddie’s out there just pantomiming like his life depends on it and you take the steps in front of his trailer two at a time, as silently as is humanly possible– and fuck, it’s cold out here, but the cold helps! The cold makes you faster, more decisive, more agile simply down to the fact that you need to get out of the fucking cold. Adrenaline is sparking off at the base of your throat, making you a little dizzy but a lot determined.

You catch Eddie’s eye as you sneak, sneak, sneak around the back of your trailer. He gives you a not entirely subtle thumbs up and yells, “Yes! Yes, I think it’s an issue pressing enough for the law, I am a goddamned high school senior! I can’t study if the dulcet tones of Paul Anka are breaking my focus every five minutes!”

“Thought it was Englebert Humperdinck?”

“She’s got a catalog of records on her like you wouldn’t believe!”

Then it’s just hands on the outside of the trailer, feeling around for like, a trap door, some loose paneling, anything.

“Oh, so we couldn’t have sprung for a model with a freaking back door?!” But a window is kind of like a back door, you realize, and you’re a goddamn cheerleader. You’ve got a core of steel.

A lot of elbow grease is required to slide open the window of your tiny living room, but by god do you crank that thing. Army rolling onto the couch and into a bunch of boxes of breakables–living mausoleum, great to see you again–you freeze. That’s a lot of clattering.

“Did you hear that?” Your mother’s voice.

“I’m shocked you can hear anything at the volume you’re playing those Rat Pack records, duchess.” Eddie. You choke out a silent laugh as you dash to your bedroom.’

Alright. Alright. I gotta make it look like I was up to something… First word that comes to mind? Slutty. Because that’ll make the police no longer give a shit what you were doing (she brought it on herself) and effectively redirect your mother’s rage.

Hands tear off the borrowed boxers and Stooges shirt and grab the first thing in your mess of half-unpacked clothes. A form-fitting jersey dress in dark blue, which you throw on without thinking of underwear. A calf-length pea coat on top of that. The nearest pair of loafers to go with. You’re not formulating this outfit, okay, but one cursory look in the mirror and it sure does scream walk of shame.

But at least it doesn’t scream walk of shame from trailer across the way.

Then, your front door creaks. “No, I know I heard something in here…”

Fuck! Fucking fucker! As delicately as humanly possible–so, not very–you ease yourself out of your own bedroom window, book bag in tow.

I’ve gotta make this look believable.

You land on the ground with a soft thump, mere feet from your front door. There, Eddie is holding up the rear of the party walking into your trailer. You, not a goddamned second to lose, break into a soft jog and do a fucking make-believe loop around Eddie’s place, heart hammering in your ears.

You, a professional in willing your own reality, call out a super convincing, “Mom?” as you approach your trailer from the opposite side.

As if you just got here.

“Lacy?!” she squawks, darting right back out from whence she came. She barrels past Eddie, the two Hawkins police officers following close behind.

“What is… going on?” you ask. Lying– you come by it natural.

“Where the hell have you been?!” your mom shrieks, and she would slap the shit out of you if she could. You see that much in her fiery eyes. “You know, I came home this morning to a key broken off in the lock of our door and you were nowhere to be found! Nowhere!”

You cannot help yourself, unable to stomach her self-righteous display of motherly concern. “So where the hell have you been ‘til this morning, Mom?”

Her mouth hardens into a line. Comin’ real close to getting backhanded in front of the cops.

“I came back after cheerleading last night,” you explain, eyes going all earnest and wide as you include the cops in your little spin– paying special attention to Callahan, because he’s not not a little cute, okay? “It was raining like crazy, and I was trying to unlock the door and–you know how that lock sticks, Mom–my key just broke off! In the door! I was like, gee, what do I do? And you weren’t home, Mom. And I had no idea how I could reach you. Mom.” The second she gets you alone, she’s going to strangle you. Worth it, for the look on her face. “So I went to a friend’s.”

Callahan seems to drink in your disheveled appearance. “A friend’s, huh?”

“Just a friend’s, Officer,” you simper, batting your eyelashes, trying to steam up the little piggy’s horn-rimmed glasses. “Promise.”

In the near background, Eddie Munson silently gags. You have to force the corners of your mouth down to keep from smiling.

“I’m so sorry to have wasted your time, gentlemen.” Your mom’s chipped manicure tightens around your bicep. “Get inside that house. Now.”

“Hardly a house. Doesn’t even have a goddamn back door.”

The cops give a good ol’ salute and get to getting, their quota for community service just about totalled for the day. Passing by Eddie on your way to the front door, your mom rolls her eyes. “Typical.”

Over your shoulder, you throw him a twisty little grimace. A mouthed thank you. Seriously.

“You ladies keep that racket down, now,” he calls and watches your mom muscle you past the doorway.

Slam goes the door, the trailer seeming to shudder with it. And then it’s quiet. Still. Eddie sighs out a big, cold lungful, his eyes trained on your front door. Without the immediate distraction of you, the memory of last night’s hushed and furrowed conversation with Wayne gathers over him like a stormcloud, heavy with thunder, pregnant with rain.

Your dad called.

Al Munson never calls. He just shows up. He never calls, unless he’s trying to take the temperature of a place. A place that’s recently been occupied by a family he had a significant part in completely blowing up– yours.

Eddie has… no idea what he’s supposed to do about that.

Because Eddie Munson deals in absolutes.

And he, unfortunately, evidently, obviously, absolutely cannot stay away from you now.

–

So following the events of that fateful Friday, you had no good goddamn idea how to behave. You spend the weekend without a single sighting of Eddie Munson, much to your confusing chagrin, and you really did try your very best to behave normally about this.

But for the first time in a long time, you were completely alone.

No chittering friends to distract you. No stilted lunches with your mother. No conversations into rusted handsets through shatterproof glass.

You drifted around town, retreading haunts that really should have elicited some kind of feeling in you. They used to, y’know, when you escaped the neon of Starcourt (before it burned down) for the mothball-scented stacks of the bookstore.

Which, fittingly enough, was just called The Bookstore. Way to establish a town-wide monopoly.

Toeing around the shelves, chipped nails clutching a Simone de Beauvoir book you’d already read but lost and didn’t exactly intend to buy, you willed yourself to give into the curse of familiarity. To woo yourself with recognizable surroundings. To pretend like your whole worldview wasn’t skewed by a Stooges t-shirt still lying under your pillow.

The boots, you’d left in an inconspicuous position by the front door.

The rest of it, though…

Consciously, you’re reaching into the shelves of the philosophy section, reorganizing the whole thing because they’ve completely blended the Eastern and Western flavors (and even have a little theology thrown in there, for Chrissake). Unconsciously, you’re thinking about how you’ve been wearing that Stooges shirt in some respect since Thursday. How Friday night found it rucked up around your breasts as you squirmed under the covers, two fingers in radial motion in your panties, muffling gasps into your shoulder. Thinking about him gripping you by the shoulders, leaning into you in the half-light, his hair fanned out on his pillow as his arm sloped around you. How Saturday found you with such white-hot shame that you couldn’t even think about him grinning at you without cringing. How Sunday, today, in the bookstore, finds you wearing it under your bottle green sweater.

You’ve lost your mind. Your entire mind. The Woman Destroyed, indeed.

So, maybe it’s better that you’re spending the weekend solo. But of course, the moment that thought occurs and you yank a copy of Fear and Trembling off the shelf, you’re looking down the barrel of something just awful.

Red-rimmed eyes, bucketing tears and sniffling, there’s goddamn Nancy Wheeler. Full on weeping, in your bookstore. What’s worse is, there’s no passing this off– there’s no pretending you never saw it, like you normally would, because she makes direct eye contact with you.

“Ohgh–!” is the noise she makes, a kind of snotted-up exclamation, a congested gasp of surprise at your own dissociative gaze intruding on her private moment.

God, you’re so tempted to just slam the Kierkegaard book back in place and high tail it out of the place.

But you don’t.

From your confessional box-esque view, you can see that weeping Wheeler is clutching a copy of Little Women.

“Don’t worry,” you murmur, the bookstore always making you take on a library-hush tone of voice “They don’t all die of scarlet fever.”

It catches Nancy off-guard; she lets loose a little heh-heh, despite her crumpled expression. “I know,” she says, voice all uneven from her tearfulness, “I’ve read it a million times.”

“Which part got you this go around?” you ask. “The book burning? Meg and that pitiful violet silk debacle? Jo’s sham marriage?”

“Jo doesn’t end up in a sham marriage,” Nancy spikes, wiping under her eyes with a delicate knuckle. You wish to god this girl would turn ugly just once. It’s sickening.

But you were right on this one, and you knew it. “Does so. She spends her whole life refuting the idea of getting all shacked up like Meg, only to settle down with a man, what, twice her age?”

“She loves him.”

“Does she? I mean, she loved Laurie too, in a way.”

“You think she should have ended up with Laurie.” Nancy says this to you in a way that’s almost condescending. A tear drips off the tip of her perfect nose. Fucking joke.

“Don’t be so goddamned simplistic, Wheeler,” you sigh, rounding the sagging bookcase so you can meet her in her aisle. Because you’re right, and you’d like to be face-to-face when you tell her so. “Jo shouldn’t have ended up with anybody.”

Her brow crinkles. “That’s way too sad.”

“Really?” you scoff. You’d have expected Nancy Wheeler to cop to a narrative undertone a little better than that. “All Jo wants is freedom– to live as she pleases and write as she pleases. It’s totally diminutive to just marry her off in the end. Jo deserves to be alone. Make her life completely her own. She doesn’t need Friedrich, or Laurie. She’s enough– she’s Jo March, for Jesus’ sake.”

A seed in this triggers something in Nancy and lets out a big old yelping sob– one that makes Ivana, the take-no-shit owner of The Bookstore, lean over the counter and glower at them. Library hush, remember? You take a couple of steps forward, shielding Nancy from view.

“Okay, what did I do? What’s going on here?” you ask– you kind of hiss, actually.

“I’m sor– no, it’s nothing, it’s stupid!” she blubbers. “Just… God, they all get to be a lot sometimes, don’t they?”

And immediately, you know exactly what she’s talking about. Your friends. Your friends loved to shit on Nancy Wheeler, both to her face and behind her back– though it was more of the latter on this on-again phase of her and Steve’s rocky romance. Steve had shared some not-stern-enough (as far as you’re concerned) words with you guys, basically asking you to lay off Nance. Yes, she’s a nerd. Yes, she kind of thinks she’s better than you guys. Yes, she kind of can’t hang. But she’s Steve’s girl, and that’s what matters.

To her credit, she’s made an effort with you all this time, despite all the ribbing. Despite your pointed coldness toward her.

She doesn’t see kindness as a weakness. You do.

It occurs to you that you’re wrong.

“Tell me about it, sister,” you mutter, hugging de Beauvoir and Kierkegaard to your chest.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffs, meeting your achingly dry eyes with her big, sparkling wet ones. You hate a pretty crier. She looks like a fucking woodland creature. “For how they all treated you, I’m sorry. I should have said something.”

Ah, because you were victim to some not-so-sly digs too. Nancy was probably relieved the heat was off her for once.

“I believe that,” you say, and you do. She’s got no real good reason to lie to you, especially being that you’ve been such a pill the entire time you’ve known her. “But what did we expect, y’know. Lie down with dogs and all that shit.”

“Right,” she nods. Peers at the books in your hands. “That’s pretty… heavy stuff.”

“What, this?” you flash her the Kierkegaard, “Wait, shit, this isn’t Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas!”

Nancy laughs as high and clear as a bell, and you feel kind of… good about it. Proud of yourself. The sound dies between you, a touch of awkwardness coloring the moment.

“Listen. Nancy.” Your tone takes on a seriousness; this is advice you usually save for yourself, but… you don’t know. You’re feeling charitable. Inspired by recent events, maybe. “All of these people are bottoming out in the middle, okay? You don’t need to worry about them. Their relevance in your life is… fleeting, at best.”

“Is that how you feel?”

“Yes,” you tell her, and mean it, “Always have.”

“Didn’t always seem that way,” she says, a tilt to her head. Her bloodshot eyes are studying you. “You seemed pretty wrapped up in them, from what I saw.”

“I’m a chameleon, girl. I adapt to survive.”

“Is that how you feel about… all of them?” There’s weight behind that question. “Bottoming out in the middle?”

She means Steve. You can tell she’s also afraid that she thinks the same thing. Sweet, devastatingly handsome, unambitious Steve. Lionhearted, driven, stratospheric Nancy. She’s going places. He’s going to his shift at Family Video.

“You’re not ready to hear my thoughts on that,” you say, reaching for the book in her hand. Out comes your fountain pen and you’re scribbling in the inside cover. “But you should call me, when you are.”

“Okay, but— you know this means I have to buy this now,” Nancy chuckles.

Amateur.

“Not necessarily,” you say, taking a step closer and slyly slipping the book into the open tote she’s carrying. You pat the wide-eyed Wheeler on the shoulder.

“Sometimes the five finger discount chooses you.”

–

Monday morning finds Eddie Munson not just on time, but early for first period. He’s here before you are, sinking further and further into his seat as he anticipates your arrival. Of all the freakish things he’s done in his whole entire life, this behavior is the freakiest.

But he couldn’t help it. It was a weekend of strategically watching through the blinds so he could avoid you if you left the trailer, and sometimes catching you watching him back. Though, your blinds still aren’t fixed, so it’s not like there was some vice-versa catching going on. What? Shut up. It’s been a confusing forty-eight hours.

He’s slept so poorly that he’s actually hallucinated you in that cursed Stooges t-shirt a couple of times, pacing past your bedroom window.

These visions have led him to have quite the cramp in his dominant hand.

Which is not great, because he’s probably going to have to re-take this pop quiz that Kaminsky is apparently handing back today.

And a cherry on top of this weirdo shit cake is Ronnie Ecker is sitting diagonally across from him at the top of the classroom, looking all concerned and stuff.

He hasn’t told her anything. Not about you and your impromptu sleepover at the trailer, not about his dad’s looming and uncertain return, nothing.

He’d gone over to her place on Saturday to work out some kinks in some Hellfire stuff, but he’d spent most of the time standing in the middle of the living room, zoning out at the TV as an episode of Murder, She Wrote rolled on.

“Dude, what’s the fucking matter with you?”

“Wh– nothing! Angela Lansbury, man, she’s really. Uh. Magnetic.”

But as much as Ronnie had pressed, and she had pressed because she’s a presser, no juice was coming out of this little orange! No siree fuck. Eddie had done such a good and painful job of saying nothing that Ronnie had completely sold herself on the theory that the black mold in his bedroom had finally entered his brain.

Which, I mean, eventually it will, right.

Point is, Eddie is now shitting himself because he knows that the second you walk through that classroom door, it’s gonna be written all over his face. Maybe not in such excruciating detail as I helped her out of the rain and she put her head on my chest and she smoked a cigarette so pretty I almost died and we listened to my–our?!–favorite Tom Waits record and we almost kissed but I did technically sleep with her if you want to be super nit-picky about it, but. Ronnie’ll know something.

And Eddie has an idea how Ronnie will react– and it matters to him how Ronnie will react. Always has, always will. And she is going to beat him to death with her Trapper Keeper, probably, screaming bloody murder about what a moron he is for letting this happen.

But also, she might not. Because she’s always kind of admired you from a distance, too. She would kind of be all shy whenever she came out of a Biology class that you two shared. It was super weird, because Ronnie doesn’t do the crush thing.

Is this just the deadly nightshade effect you have on people, or what?

Fuckshit. Shitfuck. As if he willed your arrival into existence, there you are. Breezing through the door in some belted velvet getup, with your shiny little shoes. They’ve got ribbons attached, winding around your ankles like you’re a ballerina or some bullshit, a terrible, sultry ballerina with daggers for eyeballs that are aiming right at Eddie.

He diverts his interest to his textbook for the first time in his academic career.

And he prays, prays, that you still don’t want to acknowledge him in public– that you’ll just sit down in front of him and ignore him.

Somebody down there likes him.

You take your seat, leaning back further than you need to and flicking your hair all over his desk. It’s almost like every other Monday, but this time it feels pointed.

“Well,” Mr Kaminsky sighs, following you in the door and looking as bedraggled as ever. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”

He clicks open his briefcase, clearly imagining the silence in the classroom to be worth much more than it is. “Some of the worst quiz answers I’ve seen on record.”

Your hair smells familiar, Eddie thinks. Like a mixture of your rich, smoky floral perfume and his shampoo.

“That’s what you get for pulling a shittily written paragraph-answer pop quiz on a half-taught section, dumbass,” Eddie hears you mutter.

Kaminsky calls your name. “Something you wanna share with us?”

Eddie watches your shoulders stiffen. “We’re not even halfway through the section, Mr. K. How are we supposed to answer questions on something we haven’t been taught?”

“Hilarious, coming from you,” Kaminsky says, stabbing a finger in your direction, “because you’re one of the only aces.”

“Just because I passed doesn’t mean I agree with the way I was taught,” you level, and Eddie can see by the way your shoulder blades shift that you’re folding your arms. “I read ahead, anyway.”

“Great. You can continue that independent learning streak,” Kaminsky smirks, “in detention.”

“Oh, that is bullshit!”

Christ, Eddie wants to kiss you between those tense little shoulderblades. All the way down your spine.

“Yeah? Be my guest–Lacy? They call you Lacy, right?–and take two. Now, if there’s no more objections to my teaching methods? No?”

Thunk. A stack of papers lands on Ronnie Ecker’s desk. “As the only other person who scored a hundred and hasn’t given me any lip, go ahead and pass those back, Miss Ecker.”

Ronnie, god love her, does as she’s told. But not before doing a little rifling through the stack and scribbling something on one of the tests. The papers sail back through the classroom in a whirlwind of white, take one, pass it along.

You’ve got Eddie’s, and you hold it over your shoulder without so much as turning to look at him. Which is what he wanted, what he needs, sure, but what he actually wants is for you to accidentally graze his hand so he has an excuse to hold it and maybe eat it.

He snatches the test back, all nerves. Unsurprisingly, a big fat D for duuuuhhhh plants itself in red like an ugly lipstick kiss at the top of the page. Eh, at least it wasn’t an F. You take the victories where you can get ‘em these d–

All of a sudden, you’re snapping back around, grabbing Eddie’s paper back from his desk.

“Hey–!” he hisses, almost knocked unconscious by another bloom of your perfume. “What’re you doing!”

You, again, do not even deign to look back. You just stretch a single index finger back in his general direction– a Lacy-coded sign to fuck off, I’m busy. You hunch over the paper for the remainder of class, seemingly checking and re-checking and going at it with your precious fountain pen.

He spends the next forty minutes in a cold sweat, mind racing, until the bell finally rings.

Then it’s a dash, with Eddie trying to grab you and you heading straight for Kaminsky and the both of you just slamming into his desk.

What in the everloving fuck could she be doing now?

“This is a C grade,” you state, plain and simple. Kaminsky just flops his khaki-wearing ass into his chair.

“What are you talking about?”

“Eddie’s test. You mis-graded him.” Wait, this is– is she helping me? “You docked him points here, here and here when the answers were perfectly fine.”

“I think I know how to grade a test, Lacy. I’ve been doing this, for a job mind you, since before you were even a twinkle in your convict father’s eye.” Woah, Kaminsky. Straight for the jugular.

But then Eddie notices you seize in the tiniest of flinches and decides he kind of wants to punch out this teacher. “Look, hold up, we don’t–”

“Fine. Compare it with mine.” You smack your test paper, with its circled red A, on the desk next to Eddie’s. He squints, and he recognizes it, because he’d recognize Ronnie Ecker’s handwriting anywhere– up top of your sheet, scribbled, HARD AGREE– TOTAL BULLSHIT. “They’re basically the same answers. I mean, same content, same major point– the sentence structure leaves a little to be desired, but he’s got the right idea.”

Snared.

“Wait, really?” Eddie’s eyebrows raise. Okay, even he didn’t know that. He barely remembers even taking this test. He can’t be sure he didn’t cheat, but he’s not about to mention that now…

You look at him, right at him, for the first time today. And shrug, with your one little shoulder, like you love to do when you’re too cool to speak.

“And you give a shit… why?” Kaminsky says, asking the question we’re all pondering.

“Peer tutoring,” you tell him, enunciating those words like you’ve taken elocution lessons. You could’ve. You’re, apparently, full of surprises. “I’m rehabilitating my image.”

Kaminsky is going red, red, and redder under that collar.

“Which is why I won’t be able to make it to detention. Either of ‘em.”

“Now, you listen to me, you little hoity-toity madam–” the older man says, shooting out of his chair to lean almost nose-to-nose with you. Eddie reaches a hand out, to either pull you back or slap this dude, but you sense it coming. Push it away. Ow.

“Mr Kaminsky,” you say, all mock gasp, “What is Ms Kelley gonna say when I tell her that you’re getting in the way of me enriching my fellow students’ academic experience? Is that really the kind of environment we want to foster here at Hawkins High?”

You hit the teacher with a sneer of a pout, boxing him right down to size. And Kaminsky actually retreats, like physically backs off.

“Fine. Fine.” The teacher grabs a red marker from the cup on his desk, harshly scribbling on the ‘D’ on Eddie’s test and marking up the whole paper with a massive fuck-you ‘C’. “Best of luck with that rehabilitation, Lacy. If this is the company you’re keeping, you’re gonna need it.”

“Neato threat, real original!” you chirp, and it’s all venom in those vowels as you gather the tests back, “Knew you’d see the light, Mr K.”

Eddie, of course, follows your hard little steps out of the room like a loyal mutt. But not before he turns and aims a whaddaya gonna do! flavored shrug at Kaminsky. “Go Tigers?”

“What?” In the hallway, he struggles to keep up with you in a sea of jostling students. “And how?” Dodging a backpack. “And–” Marry me? Tripping a freshman. “Gareth! Watch where you’re going, man!”

“Kaminsky wants to play hide the klobása with Kelley.”

“The what?”

“Czech sausage. He’s Czech– Christ. He wants to bang her.”

“Oh.” Get in line, my man. He watches you twist your combination lock with a grace that’s frankly unnecessary. He’s fidgeting where he stands. So much for avoiding you, but he was doomed from the start in that regard. “That was– woah, back there. Like, I think you might have just single handedly raised my GPA.”

“Good. So we’re square. Indy County Tech Center, here you come.” You deposit your books, grab some more, and flick his newly-graded test at him so that he has to catch it in midair. Then, a slam! of your locker door and you’re gone, making tracks down the hallway in your little ballerina shoes.

“Lacy– Lacy, wait up.” Eddie finally falls in step with you, following wherever you’re going. “I’m feeling some hostility here.”

“Wow, point to Munson. How perceptive,” you snit, not meeting his eyes.

“Are you mad at me?”

“How could I be mad at you? I don’t even know you.”

“Lacy, don’t be a bi–”

That makes you stop dead, stabbing a finger in the air near his chest.

“Do not fucking call me a bitch.” You mean it. God, but you mean it, and he can see it; you’re about to boil over, just about holding it together. Your big eyes flutter at him and he feels like he doesn’t have kneecaps. You suck in a jagged breath, hard expression faltering. “I feel like an idiot. If you really wanna know. I thought–...”

“You thought what?” he asks, and he kind of knows, but he also thinks that might be blowing shit way out of proportion. You look down, tugging a piece of lint from your sleeve. Eddie verbally nudges at you, because if he touches you, he might a) crumble or b) be on the receiving end of some blunt-force trauma. That binder you’re holding is huge. “Lacy. You thought what?”

“I just–... You ignored me all weekend,” you say in this little mouse voice he was not expecting to come from you. Except, he had heard it before. I’m cold.

But so what? She’s– she’s always cold.

“And? You’ve ignored me, like, my whole life.”

“I know that, but…” This is difficult for you to choke out. Bodies pass into classrooms behind you and soon enough, you two are alone in the hallway. Again. But there’s no sniping, no snarling, no cur-like behavior with your teeth exposed. “I didn’t hate being in your trailer.” Oh my god. Oh my god. “Hanging… out with you, I didn’t–” Holy shit. Eddie does not know where to look, what to feel, what to think, what to do. And he shows it as much, kind of just gap-mouthed staring at you, willing himself to say something smooth– or at least nice. But when you glance back up at him, finally, it’s a look of defeat.

“Look, whatever. Congrats on your C. We’re even. So you can forget it.” And you move around him, ducking through the door of AP French.

Not you can forget it, like in your dreams, Munson, but you can forget it like it was right there and you blew it, buddy.

The classroom door clicks closed and Eddie bends at the midriff, feeling like he’s been stabbed.

–

You felt like you were trying to digest a rock until the final bell rang– though, c’mon, you didn’t know what you could have possibly expected. Eddie Munson is Eddie Munson, and you’re you. And you’d thought it yourself, it was an instance of temporary insanity. Dawn broke, the harsh light of day illuminating all the reasons why you two being anything less than contentious semi-strangers was a logical impossibility.

So what if you wanted to kiss him. You’ve wanted to kiss a lot of people and haven't done it. It hadn’t killed you.

However, it hadn’t gnawed at you like this either.

Nancy Wheeler called, by the way, which means she stole that book off the back of your advice–that, or paid for it once you left the store, a flurry of charming apologies fluttering around her head like Snow White’s attendant birds. Typical. But she’d called, and you two had had an awkward forty five second conversation where she asked you if you’d mind awfully if you looked over her latest piece for the Streak.

Something about spotlighting female business owners in Hawkins.

“Coffee’s on me!” she’d said brightly, so super-duper keen. You all-of-a-sudden hated to put a damper on her, so you said sure.

“But I’ll be uncompromising. I want you to know that.”

“Of course. That’s why I asked you.”

It occurred to you then that Nancy Wheeler, in her way, might actually look up to you.

How fucking weird.

And sure enough, there she was, waiting for you in the parking lot once you gathered all your stuff from your locker. She leans against her car, wearing a corduroy skirt and a sweater that you don’t even really hate, and throws you a casual wave. The thing about Nancy and her consistent commitment to kindness toward you was she wasn’t even asinine about it– she never chased you around the playground, begging you to put on her friendship bracelet. If she did, you could actually hate her. Hate her for being cloying and desperate. You could call her all the shitty words for saccharine in the book and feel justified.

But that is, regrettably, not the case.

You almost say something like, Thank god your car is out of the shop, I’m sick to death of walking in these shoes, before you remember you made up that thing about Nancy’s car being in the shop. In order to skip class with Eddie Munson.

And just as you’re crossing the lot to her wood-paneled station wagon (family car, you’re guessing?), that very same Eddie Munson skids directly into your path. Like, gasping for breath.

“You di–huhh, you didn’t hear me calling you?” he says, straining against his lung capacity.

“Jesus!” you jump, “No!”

You really didn’t. You must have rage-tuned him out.

“Oh, right. Oh, fuck, you walk so fast. Gimme a second here,” Eddie wheezes, hands on his knees. “You– you want a ride home?”

You look over his shoulder to a very perplexed looking Nancy Wheeler and find yourself fighting a smile. Motioning for her to wait a sec, you turn back to Eddie. “I’m good. I got a thing with Wheeler.”

“Wheeler the priss?”

“And Lacy the bitch,” you remind him of that epithet he’d pinned on you like a corsage.

He clocks it and grins. Eddie’s grin lands like a dollop of cream in your otherwise shitty coffee. You do not like this about him. At least, not right now.

“The dynamic duo.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna go solve crimes,” you roll your eyes, kind of over the whole bit already, “You’re making us late. What do you want, Munson?”

Eddie holds up a ringed finger, uno momento por favor, and digs around in his pockets. Candy and gum wrappers and an old, crushed cigarette soft pack all fall out during his cavity search until finally, he produces a crumpled piece of bright yellow paper and thrusts it toward you.

“It’s no Harrington kegger, but you are cordially invited.”

It’s a flyer. Corroded Coffin, Live at– Oh. Oh. It’s been painstakingly hand-doodled and photocopied, the pencil marks where mistakes have been erased still visible on the print.

This is his band.

You, in only the way you can, study it with a quirked brow– a look of dismissal, one might even say. Your eyes slowly raise to meet Eddie’s, who looks as if he’s about to start hopping from foot to foot, there’s so much nervous energy thrumming under his leather jacket.

Fwump. You palm the flyer into his chest. You nearly feel the physical sensation of his heart sinking.

Then, you pluck your fountain pen from thin air, uncapping it with your teeth.

“There’s an ‘e’ in Roane County, dumbass.”

With the delicate nib, you scratch the letter onto the misspelled place name, using his chest as an upright writing desk. You can actually feel his breathing becoming all uneven. His grin rounds out its corners and becomes a smile, and you can tell the difference between those two expressions now, apparently.

“Does that mean you’ll come?”

“That means I know where it is,” you say, capping your pen and leaving him clutching the flyer to his chest.

“Friday! Ten PM!” Eddie yells after you, hand cupped around his mouth. “Roane County Quarry! With an ‘e’!”

Nancy meets you with a look of total bemusement as you finally tug open the passenger door of your car. She watches Eddie watch you, almost tripping over his Reeboks as he walks backwards toward his beat up van. And you read every inch of the look she’s giving you.

“He is my neighbor, Wheeler.”

“Yeah! He seems like a… super nice neighbor. Really friendly.”

“So not ready to talk about that yet,” you mutter, beating back a blush that’s threatening to color your cheeks.

Nancy giggles– bubbly like phosphate, friendly-teasing, not pointed, not mean. Weird feeling. She turns her keys in the ignition. “But when you are, will you call me?”

–

You’d swear Corroded Coffin were about to be on the cover of Circus, the way Eddie has been… well, Eddie-ing out at rehearsal all week. He’s thrown not one, but two temper tantrums about the boys not sounding tight enough (“We need this clown car tight, you clowns!”) and has received not one, not two, but three perfectly aimed drumsticks to the head, courtesy of Ronnie Ecker.

The third one was just target practice, but he earned the other two.

“What has crawled up your ass, dude?” Jeff, a sophomore that can admittedly out play every single one of them in bass and every other instrument, demands.

“I bet I know what crawled up his ass,” Ronnie glowers from behind her snares, “Or should I say who.”

Now, Ronnie hadn’t witnessed Eddie giving you that flyer, or your copyediting work on it, but she had that preternatural thing where she could feel it when Eddie was out and about doing some dumb stupid dumbass bullshit. Like those dogs that can detect earthquakes. She’s full time on the beat detecting earthquakes.

“Cool it, Jessica Fletcher.” Maybe Angela Lansbury really did do a number on him. “I quite simply want us to sound good, for once. Not Hideout good– good-good. The Quarry is a big deal! Like, a literal big cavernous deal. You want a dry run for the Garden? This is our shot, maestros.”

“Are you seriously comparing Roane County Quarry to Madison Square Garden?” Cyrus, their second guitarist and first-rate vocalist, says with narrowed eyes. “Something did crawl up your ass.”

“And die,” Ronnie agrees.

“And now the death stench is in your brain,” Cyrus adds.

“And the stench has turned toxic.”

“And the toxicity is killing off your brain cells one by one by one.”

“And we’re gonna get on stage at the Quarry, and your head is gonna explode–”

“Just like Scanners,” Cyrus and Ronnie finish in such an eerie unison that it actually raises goosebumps on Eddie’s arms.

“Fuck, are they serious?” sweet, gentle, naive Jeff asks, brown eyes flared in alarm. Something about being a child prodigy in one arena makes you so desperately gullible in everything else.

“No!” Eddie barks. “We just– we’ve gotta be good.”

Because what would Lacy say about what Robert Christgau would say about us?

Something cutting like a scythe, brilliant like a diamond.

But for your part, you don’t know much about metal.

I mean, you’ve got a vague familiarity with the genre– you’ve got a subscription to Rolling Stone and Creem (RIP), for god’s sake. The roots were far more accessible to you as a whole; ‘Smoke on the Water’ by Deep Purple has the kind of intro you can paint your nails to, for example, and ‘Immigrant Song’ by Led Zeppelin feels like hotwiring Billy Hargrove’s car and driving it over a cliff (in a good way).

The absolute thrash of it all, though? Your one musical blindspot. And you weren’t quite sure how keen you were to lift the veil on it

Regardless, you decided you were going. You were going to show up at Roane County Quarry, ‘e’ included, and dip your toe into the kind of lawfully insouciant scene you’d always fantasized about, ever since you read your first Kerouac.

Granted, the metalhead-and-allied contingent of Hawkins weren’t exactly the Beat poetry set, but you doubted they’d be boring. You imagined a lot of leather incorporated into the outfits. At least one of them would have a switchblade. Maybe there’d be a Hells Angel there.

The only way to know is to go.

Something Eddie possibly failed to consider, being that he has molten lava in place of a bloodstream, is that it is positively arctic on this fateful Friday night. So sub-polar is the goddamned weather that you have to dig out your warmest coat.

Your warmest coat isn’t exactly the desired attire for a thrash rock show happening in a quarry.

“What the hell is she wearing?” come the murmurs as you slip your way through the modest (but gathering?) crowd, all finding heat around fires set in trashcans and mouthfuls sunk from bottles in brown paper bags. Girls with hair so gelled and spiked and backcombed that it looks sharp and flammable give you dirty looks, and the looks their boyfriends give you are even dirtier– and not even in that way! Misogyny in rock and roll, alive and fucking well!

You spot Eddie Munson in the near distance and bend down, grab a pebble, and pelt it at his denim-and-leather clad back. He spins, alarmed, on alert, and does a bad job of dimming how he lights up like a goddamn Christmas tree when he sees who’s launching projectiles at him. You. He’s all lit up, looking at you.

You glance away. Like, yes. The miracle has arrived. Calm down.

Then his face falls a teensy bit.

“What–”

“If you ask me what I’m wearing, I’m going to scream,” you say, crossing your fuzzy arms over your fuzzy chest. “And we’re in a quarry. Sound carries.”

Eddie reaches out, hand all gnarled like Dracula or something, and pets you on the arm of your coat.

“Guys, get over here.”

“No–” you start, but all of a sudden, all four members of Corroded Coffin are taking turns stroking the arm of your fur coat. “Stop that. It bites.”

“Eddie, can you confirm or deny that it bites?” Ronnie Ecker says in a tone you’ve never heard Ronnie Ecker use before– knowing, biting, a little nasty. You’re not sure whether or not to be offended by that, but… you like this look on her.

Or maybe you just like when anyone gives Eddie Munson shit.

“He’s never had the privilege,” you say and shoot Ronnie a sly look. Just to test the waters. She blushes. Point to Lacy.

“Alright, let me go ahead and nip this in the bud before it begins,” Eddie cuts in, manually removing Ronnie’s petting hand from your upper arm. He flourishes a hand out in front of you, a half-bow, a consummate dork. “We’re almost on. May I escort you to your seat, m’lady?”

“Jesus Christ,” you mutter, committed to the contrarian bit for the time being, but let him lead you all the same. “They reserve seating in this ditch?”

“Not for everybody!”

“Why am I getting special treatment?” You don’t know what answer you’re expecting to that question.

“Lacy,” Eddie levels, stopping dead at his van and looking you dead in your face, “you wore a mink coat to a metal show. You’re not a VIP, you’re a liability.”

“What, dead animals aren’t hardcore enough for you people anymore?” you drawl as he props open the passenger door of the van. You take his hand, as you’ve taken his hand a handful of times now, in a way where it’s almost ordinary. But then, halfway in and halfway out of the van, you pause.

“Oh, no. This just won’t do.”

“Whaddaya mean?” Eddie mumbles.

“Well, I’m not gonna be able to see shit from here.”

“Where do you–”

“I’m getting on the roof, asshole.”

You slam the door on him, rolling down the passenger window. All hands and swinging limbs, careful not to snag your tights on the peeling paintwork, you clamber out the window and up onto the roof of his van. Settling your ass down, crossing your legs over his windshield, you flash him one of those winning smiles. He smiles back.

There’s a buzzing in your stomach. It’s not from the flask of whiskey you’ve been sipping from, but you’re willing to lie.

“Cheerleader,” he teases.

“Break a leg, Munson,” you say, cheersing that aforementioned flask to him. “Snap it clean off for me.”

There’s not a whole lot of pre-show faffing about (you didn’t time your entrance to hang around) before Corroded Coffin takes the stage. And god, the sound is horrendous. You can barely hear the banter up top (winning, you’re sure) from the band’s frontman– which, to your shock and awe, is not Eddie. It’s a fellow senior named Cyrus Painter (great name, by the way), who you vaguely recognize from Math and from the Hellfire table you crashed that one time. He doesn’t seem to hold much of a stage presence beyond glowering and muttering darkly into a microphone that’s barely picking up his voice, but all importance of that seems to go right out the window as soon as they hit the opening chords of their first song. You think it might be called ‘Whiplash’.

And it’s good.

It’s almost perverse, how technically accomplished it is– like, high school bands should not be this technically accomplished, but then you twig that Ronnie is in band. Like, the marching band. And so is that other kid on the bass, the one who they featured in the Streak for winning a bunch of teen virtuoso awards. Cyrus carries the song with the beautiful grace of a wrecking ball, but–and you might be biased–the one that’s putting the texture on this whole operation is the lead guitarist.

Eddie’s not in band. Eddie’s not technically perfect. But it’s Eddie that’s throwing shots of gasoline down the hatch of this fire-breathing dragon. This would be way too neat of an outfit if it wasn’t for him, fingers flying so fast over his fretboard that he barely touches it, scuzzing up the surrounds of the thrash metal with an almost bluesy warmth.

Warmth. Of course it’s warmth. Of course it’s searing fingers and sweat you can almost see teeming from underneath his bandana, even in the sub-zero temperatures. It’s Eddie, throwing his whole self into this.

A shot of pure admiration followed by a twinge of envy.

You wonder how he does that.

The song concludes, barely leaving time for whoops and applause before they launch into another. They’re laser-focused, locked in like Chrissy Cunningham in that goddamn basket toss, and you kind of get it. It’s not for you, but you kind of get it. This is sword swinging fucking music, slay the monster fucking music.

Dungeons and Dragons fucking music.

It’s all build, all fantasy, all story, all rage and rush and ravenousness. And before you know it, it’s all over, and you’re applauding– applauding more reservedly than you feel you want to.

“I’m comin’ up there!” There is Eddie, who’s apparently made a beeline from the milkcrate stage to his van, under the pretense of loading equipment. Which he’s managed to do in what seems like thirty seconds flat.

A gas lamp of eagerness and pure energy, he’s blazing bright and clumsily hoisting his way onto the roof to sit with you– he doesn’t have your muscular strength, so he has to kind of swing a leg and roll his way up there, almost knocking you over.

“Woah!” you giggle as he collides with you, reaching for your flask with a gimme that. He hoists himself up next to you, tugging off his bandana and running a hand through the flattened waves to give them a little oomph again. But Eddie right now, he’s all oomph.

“So,” he nudges you, eyes gleaming, “Don’t leave me in suspense, Lester Bangs. Whatdja think?”

You screw your lips up, sigh hard through your nose. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Munson…”

“Hmm?”

“...but it didn’t suck.”

“Really?” Eddie’s eyes gleam, like you just scored him that ‘C’ grade all over again.

“Re–ally,” you nod, pulling the flask from him, “I mean, Ronnie? She’s fucking John Bonham.”

“I keep telling her that.”

“And that kid on the bass–?”

“Jeff.”

“Jeeeeff. Him and Cyrus, right? Dead set on a Pulitzer.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

You let the trepidation hang between you for a beat or two, letting Eddie’s eyes search your face with a big fat uuummm? Hello? as you take an achingly long pull of that whiskey.

“Am I forgetting somebody?” you murmur.

“Oh, fuck you!” he barks through a laugh. You’re both shoulder to shoulder, his breath blowing warmth onto your cheek because of how far his voice projects. “C’mon, Lacy. I can take it.”

“Can you?”

“Don’t tease me, ice princess.”

“‘Don’t freeze me’, you mean.”

“Dammit.”

“Gotta be quick on that trigger.”

“I know.”

“Like you are on that fretboard,” you finally hand it to him. “I mean, shit, Munson.”

“Really?” he says again; he is beaming, glowing from the inside out. He’s radioactive, this kid. You cannot, cannot, cannot stop looking at him. “Really shit, Munson?”

“Really shit Munson!” you exclaim, a little louder than intended–blame the whiskey. “Where’d you learn to play like that?”

“Who, me?” Eddie shrugs, stretching his arms over his head. “I’m a self-made man, baby.” You think, for a second that he might try and pull that corny movie theater move where the boy stretches only to drape his arm over the girl’s shoulder– and you’re half-relieved, half-disappointed when he doesn’t.

“Incredible,” you say, when you could’ve said bullshit.

That makes him… almost shy. He glances away from you for the first time since he’s sat up here. “Yeah, well. Gotta while away the hours somehow.”

“Can I ask you something?” It flies out of your mouth before you have a chance to stop it.

“If it’s about what I was doing out at that crossroads with my guitar, then no.”

“Can we be friends?” It’s nearly medical, the way you ask him. Like you’re verifying symptoms. And he’s taken aback– maybe it’s how straightforward you are about it, or maybe it’s the weird, tender lilt to your tone. Eddie blinks.

“... do you mean right here right now friends or actually acknowledge each other in the hallway friends.”

“I mean full time at your lunch table friends,” you say. Suddenly, your throat is very dry. “You can even carry my books if you want to.”

Eddie’s eyes narrow, and his voice seems to narrow with them. “I don’t know. Sitting with us sorta requires that you join Hellfire…”

“Friends need boundaries, Eddie.”

“Price of admission, babydoll.” The way he rolls his head over his shoulder is… shut up.

You pause, honestly kind of mulling it over.

Eddie hitches himself a little upright, a lightning flash of concern dashing across his face. “I”m fucking with you. Yes, we can be friends…” he breathes out a laugh, washing you over with that studying look again, ”What a weird way to ask.”

“But weird good, no?” you say, and you say it all bright and searching– like you’re looking for his approval.

Eddie, with his hand braced against the roof of the van, directly behind your back, leans in so that his chin is resting on your mink-covered shoulder. He looks up at you, revved up on post-show adrenaline and a little of your whiskey. It is now, you realize, a little hard to breathe. Eddie Munson smells like cigarettes and soap and garbage can fire and sweat and rock and roll.

“Weird like you’re a weirdo, Lacy,” he hums, “And I aaalways knew it.”

Bangbangbang! The sound of Ronnie Ecker’s balled up fist on the side of the van makes you both nearly jump out of your skin, two skeletons too close for comfort.

“Guys, I hate to break up–whatever the hell, but I’ve still got a curfew!” she yells. “And my Granny’s got a gun!”

You and Eddie, you and your friend Eddie, look at each other and burst into nose-first laughter, snorting away. Giddy, giggly, stupid. And the funniest part is, you really think you’ve killed it.

By saying let’s be buddies!, you think you’ve put a stake right into the pitter-pattering heart of the nebulous other feelings you find yourself feeling when you look in Eddie’s eyes, at his lashes, at his hands, at his neck.

For a clever girl, you are so, so stupid.

author's notes: here we here we here we fucking go! i'll admit i'm a little delirious writing this because it's REDACTED past REDACTED but i needed to get this up and outta me. and also because y'all deserve it, being so supportive and nice to me AGAIN. i can't get over youse. dyou wanna get married - bildoolpoolp, a real goddess from dnd! her areas of control are darkness, insanity and revenge to which i say: lacy that u? - virginia woolf doll came to me in a dream and then i found this article about a virginia woolf doll. all i want for christmas? virginia woolf doll. stones in pockets not included - rita hayworth, always decent - got me feeling like miss tayla the way i'm burying meaning in eddie's dialogue! - the oracle of delphi, one of our baddest bitches on record - calling lacy's mom a blanche dubois type was admittedly shady of me but... if the shoe fits. - i'm zeroing in on officer callahan based almost solely on how much joy i get from watching him in search party, a show about terrible awful millennials that takes a turn you'd never see coming! THIS IS A FORMAL REQUEST FOR YOU TO WATCH SEARCH PARTY - in case you wanted a visual for the stooges t-shirt eddie gave lacy - LITTLE WOMEN ALIGNMENTS AS I SEE THEM: nancy is a stone cold jo march with a touch of beth around the ears, lacy is amy sun amy moon jo rising, EDDIE IS AN AMY, steve is a meg sun amy moon - also jo march is a lesbian and if you really want to talk about it, trans. i'm not citing a source for this i don't need to - jessica fletcher you beautiful bitch - y'all remember ms kelley, the hot guidance counsellor? right???? - nancy the priss and lacy the bitch-- make us solve crimes! - the missing 'e' in the corroded coffin flyer is a real fucking thing from that hawkins memories box you can buy. i love that boy and he can't spell and i want it framed. - circus, a rock magazine that was neck and neck in notoriety with rolling stone. here's ozzy on the cover in a tutu! - scanners is a perfect film from 1981 by my baby daddy david cronenberg! (cw for head explosion in the trailer) - listened to smoke on the water or immigrant song lately? no? well, we were all raised by school of rock so fix that - alright so the corroded coffin lineup of it all. i've long held the belief that eddie is in fact not the vocalist but is, on charisma alone, the de facto frontman (think russell hammond in almost famous). cyrus is named for the mountain goats song the best ever death metal band in denton which makes me cry if i think about the freaks in corroded coffin being the best ever death metal band out of hawkins! when you punish a person for dreaming his dream, don't expect him to thank or forgive you! they will both outpace and outlive you! - lester bangs! i did another almost famous/real life reference :( which is also a deep cut lacy reference that may or may not be explained - john bonham died! thaaaaaat's all for this round, folks. thanks again for sticking with me, likes and reblogs and comments are always so appreciated and who knows if i'll write even more next time! COZ I SURE FUCKING DON'T!!!! okay love u hellcats x

#published by powder #hellfire & ice #in progress #e. munson by powder #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fic #stranger things fic #eddie munson smut #do not come for me if this is not fully proofread okay..... even saints are fallible bitch....

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