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unclewaynemunson · 9 months

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Pt3/5

Read from the beginning | Ao3 link

Robin's rant leaves an ear-shattering silence behind. Eddie shakes his head, like he can get the fog out of his brain in the same way a dog gets water out of its fur. It doesn't really help as well as he was hoping, though.

He slowly walks out of the backroom and into the garage. He's the only one there this morning and he makes his way to the old boombox in the corner, where he pushes one of his favorite cassettes – Seventh Star by Black Sabbath – in the player and cranks the volume dial up all the way to the right.

It's a quiet morning, with no customers waltzing in and barely any phone calls. Eddie is glad to be alone and have some time to come back to himself. The music attacking his eardrums, in combination with the familiar movements of cleaning up the garage, helps him organize his thoughts. He keeps replaying everything that happened since Steve showed up at the trailer yesterday night in his mind’s eye, trying to make sense of it all.

When Steve asked him out last month, Eddie hadn't seen any reason to say no, even though he didn't fully trust him. Surely they could have some fun together. As long as he'd make sure to properly guard his heart, Steve wouldn't be able to hurt him anyway.

But it soon got tricky: Steve turned out to be better company than Eddie had expected. The time they spent together wasn't solely about their bodies, like Eddie had expected of someone like Steve Harrington. No, Steve took him out on all kinds of original dates, he actually seemed to listen when Eddie was rambling about random nerd shit, and he always treated Eddie with respect. By the time a month had passed, Eddie was getting worried about the way his stomach started doing cartwheels every time he saw Steve. And when Steve surprised him with flowers last night – something nobody had ever done for Eddie before – he got the confirmation that Steve had been playing the exact game Eddie had wanted to avoid all along.

He had been sure of it: all Steve wanted was to know that he could have anyone he wanted, that even the Freak of Hawkins High would fall for his charms. And he'd walk away as soon as Eddie would try to turn them into something more. And all Eddie knew, as soon as he saw the flowers in Steve's hand, was that he had to keep him at a distance or he would actually fall in love in a way that he would possibly never be able to come back from.

In stark contrast to those memories, his conversation with Robin is still ringing in his ears, no matter how loud Danger Zone is blaring through the garage. Her voice keeps drowning out the music, telling Eddie on a loop how he is the one who has been playing a cruel game all along.

Steve is in love with him. Steve thought they were in a real, proper, actual Relationship with a capital R. And he, Eddie Munson, king of blind loser rats with bricks for brains, broke Steve's heart because he thought Steve was breaking Eddie's. Because he couldn't see past the high school stereotypes that apparently everyone around him had already long grown out of.

A nauseating cocktail of guilt, shame and repentance is brewing inside of him. He needs to get out of here. He needs someone to talk to; a voice of reason, someone to tell him what to do, someone to let him know if it will even be possible to fix this at all. Someone like Jeff.

But unfortunately Jeff also has a life of his own and he was just leaving for his shift at the RadioShack when Eddie called him in the morning, so Eddie concludes he'll have to settle for the one person he knows that is most like Jeff: Jeff's mom, who he knows is currently at home baking her famous chocolate pie.

He calls Richie to tell him there's a family emergency. Against all odds, luck is on his side this time: Richie appears at the shop to take over within half an hour and Eddie leaves the garage with screeching tires. He rings Jeff's doorbell like his life depends on it and when it finally opens he's looking into the familiar smiling face of Aunt Pauline.

She's not actually he's aunt, of course, but that's what Eddie has been calling her ever since he first met her. It was back when the word Aunt only meant the female version of Uncle, and the word Uncle meant nothing more to Eddie than someone taking care of you when your parents wouldn't. If Wayne is the father he never knew he needed, Aunt Pauline is the mother he desperately missed.

'Who's dying this time?' Aunt Pauline asks. It's a joke between the two of them that goes back ages, stemming from Eddie's tendency to ring her doorbell like a maniac every time he would show up at Jeff's house. Jeff's place was the first real house with a real doorbell that Eddie visited, and while his fascination with doorbells has faded over the years, his bond with Jeff's mother has only grown stronger.

'I am,' Eddie answers dramatically, stabbing himself in the heart with his hands.

Aunt Pauline chuckles as she steps aside to let Eddie in.

'Jeff's at work,' she tells him. 'But I'm glad you stopped by. He told me to save some pieces of my chocolate pie for you. Everything alright?'

'I have a question for you,' Eddie tells her urgently.

She raises hands covered in flour at him. 'I was kind of in the middle of something,' she tells him. 'But if you help me with my pie, you can ask me anything, how does that sound?'

'Hm...' Eddie pretends to think it over for a second. 'Okay, deal. But I get to eat as much dough as I want.'

'As long as you spare some for me, you can do whatever you want, kid,' Aunt Pauline says over her shoulder while she disappears into the kitchen.

Eddie quickly trails after her.

'Do you remember how I always said I wanted to marry you when I was younger?' he asks.

'How could I ever forget, Eddie?' She looks at him with a fond smile while she shoves a bowl his way. 'Here, knead this while I melt the chocolate.'

Eddie takes off his rings, one by one, and proceeds to wash his hands.

‘I wanted to marry you because you were basically perfect, you know? You always have been, for as long as I remember.'

Aunt Pauline huffs.

'What were you like in high school?' Eddie asks when his hands are covered in flour and sticky with butter.

'Huh.' She pauses, takes a moment to think before she lights the fire underneath a pan with a bowl filled with chocolate on top of it.

'I was...' She chuckles. 'I was very different from you and Jeff, that's for sure. I was on the cheerleading team.'

Eddie gasps dramatically. 'You weren't!'

'Oh, yes, I was. Got the pictures to prove it if you don't believe me.'

'No need to traumatize me with that, but thanks.'

'Hey, I looked good in that uniform!'

'Don't make me think about it.' He shakes his head, getting serious again. 'Did you do anything you regret?' he asks her.

Aunt Pauline laughs. 'Good thing Jeff isn't here,' she says with a wink. 'Of course I did. Who didn't, in high school?'

'No, I don't mean, like, dumb shit,' Eddie clarifies. 'More like... Mean shit.'

Her mischievous smile morphs into something more melancholy. 'Dumb shit, mean shit... I did it all,' she says. 'No one was perfect in high school.' That signature twinkle returns to her eyes when she adds in a teasing tone, 'Except for you, of course.'

Eddie snorts. 'So when exactly did you turn into this perfect human being?' he asks her.

'You know damn well I ain't perfect, boy,' she says, shaking her head. 'But let me give you the boring answer: growing up certainly helped.'

Her answer sinks through Eddie's ear canal towards his stomach, where it settles uneasily among the guilt and shame that were already there.

'Are you gonna tell me what this is all about?' Aunt Pauline asks him after the kitchen has been filled with silence for a while, only disturbed by the sounds of a Tina Turner record playing in the living room.

'I think I made a terrible mistake,' Eddie quietly confesses. He doesn't look at her, but instead stares at the sticky dough between his fingers. He suddenly feels like a little boy again.

'What did you do?'

'I broke someone's heart,' he says. 'Because I didn't believe he could change.’

'Oh, Eddie,' Aunt Pauline says. The way in which she pronounces his name is enough to make him tear up: not angry, not reproachful, not even pitying.

'People always keep changing,' she says. 'No one's personality is set in stone. Especially when you've only just finished high school: there's still so much to explore, so much to discover about yourself and the world. You become more conscious of who you are, and who you want to be, and what you have to do to become a better version of yourself. You can't go through life putting labels on people and never taking them off again.'

'Guess I learned that lesson exactly one day too late,' he states with a sigh.

'Hey now, listen to me, Eddie,' Aunt Pauline says. 'You will always keep changing, too. So you can take this lesson, whether it's one day too late or half a lifetime, and use it to fix your mistakes. And if that boy you're talking about has enough experience with learning from mistakes, he'll know exactly how important it is to be forgiving.'

Next part

Okay, ngl, this was definitely one of the more difficult parts to write. I hope that it sufficiently made clear where Eddie is coming from, even though it obviously doesn’t excuse what he did (and I also hope you like the addition of Jeff's mom. Idk why but every time I write about Jeff his mom just materializes. It got out of hand this time. Shout-out to my beloved Liam @withacapitalp and Cass @henderdads for giving her a cool name!) (And credits to @stevesbipanic for picking the album Eddie listens to ily)

And on another note: HOLY SHIT i genuinely cannot believe that so many people were asking to be tagged on this story! I honestly consider it a huge compliment so I’m happy to spend a few seconds adding you to the list, it’s the least I can do for someone who tells me they enjoy my writing. Buuut to make it as manageable as possible: i’d prefer tag requests in the comments and not in the tags when you reblog. I do read all the tags religiously and they all warm my heart, but it’s way easier for me when I can find all the urls in the same place :)

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#don't mind me rambling about stranger things #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #fruity ficlet #in the words of the amazing eleanor shellstrop: pobody's nerfect

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