#(and an unsarcastic cool n fun time writing Eddie's little hissy fit)

[laundrybiscuits]

(purify our misfit ways tag | AO3)

It’s so, so strange to realize that this is probably the best summer Robin’s had since she was a kid, and it’s barely July.

Oh sure, there’s plenty she still has to worry about—she’s still dead set on escaping Hawkins’ gravitational pull and becoming someone worth being, someone who has adventures and eats fancy cheese in Paris and maybe maybe even kisses a girl under the stars someday, and that means she has to work her ass off. 

If she wants even half a chance at any of that stuff, she’s got to pick up as many shifts as she can and work on her French for at least an hour every day and never ever lose sight of the goal. She can get out of here, and who knows, maybe she can even take Eddie with her. He’s bad at languages but she thinks he’d like Paris anyway, with her around to translate. She thinks it’d be fun, roaming the streets of Europe with someone who makes her laugh like Eddie does: someone she trusts more than she thought she’d ever trust anyone.

So she’s been working hard, definitely, but it wasn’t all that long ago that she’d been thinking of this chapter of her life as just something to get through with gritted teeth and grim determination. Now, she wakes up most days in the early summer sunshine and remembers that she’s scheduled with Steve, and that Eddie’ll swing by in the afternoon when he wakes up if he’s not too busy with his nerd shit, and she feels confusingly genuine happiness percolating through her. It feels like good things can exist in the present, not just the potential future. It feels soap-bubble iridescent and fragile.

A year ago, the thought of toiling in the Hawkins customer service trenches in the company of Steve “the Hair” Harrington and Eddie “the Freak” Munson would’ve sounded like a waking nightmare. Now, just the thought of Steve’s dumb jokes and Eddie’s wild dramatics is enough to tuck a smile into the corners of her mouth as she hurries to get ready, moving just a little faster to get her day started sooner.

Eddie’s managed to get over whatever weird homosexual paroxysm he was having, and acts mostly normal around Steve. Normal for Eddie, that is, which means that on one slow afternoon he sits cross-legged on a table and retells the story of Odysseus with the little red plastic sample spoons, doing progressively squeakier voices for each character; another time, he talks them into what he calls a Scoops Soup Showdown, where he mixes up three spoonfuls of ice cream until they’re basically one undifferentiated liquid and forces Steve and Robin to guess the original flavors.

Steve had been weirdly good at that one, and Robin’s still half-convinced he’d been cheating somehow despite his indignant denials. It had all ended when he’d guessed strawberry-butterscotch-vanilla before she’d even pulled the spoon out of her mouth, and she’d been forced to dip her finger in the gross goop and chase him around the back room, trying to give him a wet willy. Eddie had been cackling so hard he’d slid all the way under the table.

Robin’s not dumb, she knows high school friendships fall apart all the time, but god she hopes she gets to keep this.

That’s another thing: at this point, it’s getting kind of silly to pretend that Steve’s not actually sort of her friend too, bizarre as that would’ve seemed a few months ago. It’s a new and tentative thing, but she is provisionally willing to admit that it is in fact what scientists might classify as friendship, subcategory probational. Even when Eddie’s not around, she usually ends up having a pretty okay time just complaining about the mind-numbing drudgery with Steve.

It helps that Steve seems to have given up on the matchmaking, mostly. He hasn’t mentioned anything about Robin’s boyfriend-attracting qualities in at least a week now, though he still asks stuff about Eddie every so often in a way that makes Robin squint suspiciously.

“I think he might be, y’know, at a loose end,” is all Eddie says when she brings it up. “Harrington needs a hobby more than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s what happens when you eject the Hawkins jock from his natural habitat. He’ll find something new and shiny to distract him soon.”

Eddie’s usually right about this kind of thing, so Robin’s just been waiting it out, fielding all Eddie-related questions with the patience of a saint.

Today, when she rolls into Scoops, she feels about ready for canonization when Steve looks up and says, “Hey, Robin. Is Eddie coming by today?”

“Eddie is mysterious and unknowable,” Robin informs him. “His movements are like the flight of birds, or like the autumn wind through the trees.”

“Jesus christ, why are you guys so weird,” Steve sighs. “Is he gonna be here or not.”

Robin shrugs, pulling on her vest and donning the stupid sailor hat. “He said he’s gonna try to get his band together for a rehearsal or something. He’ll be here if that doesn’t work out.”

“Oh!” Steve points at her. “The, uh. Coffin guys, right? Do they even play in the summer?”

“Not normally, but the drummer guy knows someone who runs a bar in Indy or something like that, so Eddie wants to record a demo and try his luck. He’s been complaining non-stop about it, so maybe if he throws a big enough hissy fit, the boys will give in.”

Robin gets a secret little thrill at how cool and grown-up it sounds to say record a demo, like that’s just something she casually mentions all the time. Eddie is the biggest dork she knows and a total disaster of a human being, but whenever she talks about his life, it somehow ends up sounding amazing. There’s just something about him that’s too big and bright for Hawkins, and she loves how he’s just as hungry as she is to get out and start his life for real. She loves how when she says things like record a demo and bar in Indy, his future sounds close enough to touch, like maybe her own future’s not too far away either.

“Oh, that's kinda cool. What are the band guys like?” Steve asks. He hops up to perch on the counter in a way he definitely shouldn’t be, but it’s not like Robin’s going to rat him out to the Scoops Ahoy overlords.

She shrugs. “Quiet, I guess? Quieter than Eddie, anyway.” To be fair, she hasn’t spent a whole lot of time with them. She’s not a hundred percent sure she even remembers all their names. The impression she’s gotten is that they mostly just let Eddie boss them around because they don’t have anything better to do. They seem like basically okay people, but weirdly boring for being the crowd that Eddie spends the most time with aside from Robin. Even Steve is practically a gibbering eccentric in comparison.

Speaking of which—Steve’s eyes go wide at something behind Robin and he throws his arms in the air. “Henderson!” he yells, sounding happier than Robin’s maybe ever heard him. “He’s back!”

She’s not sure what she’s expecting to see when she turns around, but it’s not a curly-haired moppet grinning toothlessly at Steve and crowing, “I’m back!” She certainly isn’t expecting Steve to hop over the freaking counter and engage in some kind of elaborate handshake ritual complete with sound effects. The handshake goes on for a really, really long time.

It’s kind of hilarious seeing Steve act like a literal child, but that doesn’t mean Robin’s going to let him get away with this shit. Eddie would absolutely flip the fuck out if he were here to witness whatever this is.

“Exactly how many children are you friends with?” she drawls.

Steve just gives the moppet an exasperated look, gesturing to Robin like you see what I have to put up with?

“We’re gonna catch up, Robin. Can you handle the counter for a minute?”

Robin glances around at the total lack of mall denizens craving ice cream first thing in the morning. “I’ll try to survive the overwhelming pressure,” she says. “Don’t get into too much trouble, you wild and crazy kids.”

———

Gareth’s cousin’s roommate in Indianapolis is Eddie’s favorite person in the entire world, and the three numbskulls dithering over having one single solitary extended evening practice so they can actually record something worth hearing…well, they might be his least favorite people in the entire world right now.

“Hey!” he snaps. “Listen up, you goddamn malingering assholes. This, right here, is way more important than whatever you’re rushing home to jerk off to. This is our shot. This is our best chance at actually getting heard by someone who matters, someone who can get our stuff in front of other people.”

He prowls around, making eye contact with each one in turn. “I know you all wanna be rockstars. Well, gentlemen, this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where we get to see if we’re pathetic losers…or if we’ve got it in us to be heavy metal gods.”

Gareth’s the easiest to sway, Eddie can tell at a glance that he’s already hooked, but the other two still look hesitant.

Eddie isn’t completely delusional. Not about how this opportunity’s a long shot at best, and not about how none of the boys want it the way he does. None of them need it like he does. They’re smarter than he is, all of them, and they’re going places. Hell, Jeff’s already starting to look at colleges. His dad wants him to go somewhere in North Carolina, of all the damn states, and…yeah, he’s going places. Music isn’t the the beating heart of his world, the way it is for Eddie.

But there’s a reason they all came to Eddie in the first place: what they need is something to care about and somewhere to belong. If Eddie can just talk them into feeling like a part of this, getting swept up in all the hope and excitement, he just knows they’ll love it. They’ll look back on this as the best summer of their young lives, and he can make it all happen for them, for all of them, if they just fucking practice.

“Okay,” says Jeff. Fucking finally. “Sure. I guess we can stay late for the sake of being, you know…heavy metal gods.”

“That’s all I ask,” says Eddie. As he nods at Gareth to count them in, he sends a silent apology out to Robin and Steve, who must be almost closing up shop by now; they’ll understand that this was a way higher priority than Eddie swinging by to kill some time. It’s not like anything important ever really happens at Scoops Ahoy.