#Stranger things Vol 2

[ryan-waddell11]

a LETHAL face card. he had the preppys scared.

[queenimmadolla]

𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐝

Summary: A glimpse into Eddie’s morning as a first time and young dad with his baby. Oh, and you’re there, too.

Warnings: allusions to sexy stuff, descriptions of breastfeeding (it’s natural—suck it up), and fluff.

a/n: pulled this one out of the vault for you guys, written last July. hope you like it!

Eddie’s up before you and surprised to see it’s light outside, a sight he hasn’t woken up to in the last couple of months. Two, to be exact.

  That’s when the two of you had brought Penny home.

  Eddie yawned, impressively loud before he slapped a hand over his mouth, gaze flickering to you but you were still asleep; on your stomach with your face partially hidden in your pillow. You’d successfully kicked the sheets off yourself in your sleep, leaving your legs bare and your top half covered with one of Eddie’s larger shirts. 

  One of your legs was bent at the knee and raised up near your elbow.

  God, you always looked so fucking delectable. All he’d have to do is rouse you with some kisses pressed to your neck, settle himself behind you, pull his boxers down and move your panties to the side and he could just—

  Eddie inhaled sharply, tearing his gaze away from your body before his blood could rush off to an area he didn’t have the time to acknowledge, as the very reason he couldn’t partake in his little fantasy cooed from her crib. 

  She’d been the result of a very similar event.

  He took a couple of moments to calm himself, squeezing his eyes shut as he promised, soon.

  Then he got out of bed, snagging a band t-shirt from the dresser as he walked to the crib on the other end of the room.

  Eddie yanked on the shirt—only briefly struggling with the arm holes—before he was peering into the crib, mouth breaking out in a megawatt grin.

  Penny was awake alright, big brown eyed stare focused on a sticker that had been plastered to the wall of his room long before she was even conceived. You’d swaddled her before putting her to bed last night, so she looked like an adorable, content burrito.

  Once she realized Eddie was hovering over her, the sticker lost her attention and those big beautiful eyes were on him, sparkling as her mouth parted in a gummy smile big enough to rival his own. 

  Daddy came to rescue her from confinement. 

  “Hi, baby, good morning!” Eddie cooed, trying his best to excitedly whisper so as to not disturb you, but he couldn’t help it. He was still so thrilled—and fucking terrified—to be a dad, to have that cute face peering up at him every morning and waiting for him when he got home from work. She always looked at him like he was the greatest thing to walk the earth, always so delighted to see her daddy.

  Even though she’d start crying for you the moment you came into view—but you had an advantage he lacked, you always had her food on you. Her walking meal ticket.

  And Eddie couldn’t even blame her, he was a huge fan of your boobs and he’d even bet he appreciated them more than Penny. 

  Eddie reached into the crib, tugging the tucked in corner of the blanket out and as the blanket around her loosened, Penny’s arms shot up near her head, her tiny body arching as she stretched for a comically long period of time. Eddie chuckled, using it to his advantage, he slipped an arm behind her back and head with the other supporting her bottom as he picked her up, pressing a kiss to her head (and giving her hair a secret little sniff to get a whiff of that baby scent of hers).

  “Did you sleep good, honey?” He cradled her in one arm, tucked close to his chest as he carried her out of the room to start on breakfast. 

  Penny obviously didn’t answer, head resting against his collarbone.

  “Heard you woke up mom last night—well, early this morning, I guess—with boobie demands.”

  Eddie pulled the fridge open, hovering in front of it as he debated on its contents before selecting the cartridge of eggs.

  He didn’t want to put Penny down, happy to have her curled up in his arms, so a simple breakfast would have to do. A pan was pulled out, so was a little bit of cooking oil and soon Eddie was breaking the eggs out of the shell—angling his body to the side so Penny wasn’t at risk of possible oil splash back—and letting them cook.

  “You like eggs?” Eddie asked, stepping a little ways from the stove as he hitched her higher on his chest and held the eggshells out for her to see.

  She kicked her legs, a roll covered arm shakily reaching out towards the shells but Eddie kept them out of her reach.

  “Uh-uh, no sticky fingers for you, young lady.”

  The shells were tossed in the trash can but Penny didn’t care, twisting her upper so her chest was pressed to his. She gripped his shirt loosely in her chunky fist as she leaned forward and mouthed at his shoulder, effectively soaking the area with her drool before she began to suckle.

  “Jesus, you act like we starve you.” Eddie chuckled, reaching for a recently washed pacifier to pop into her mouth.

  She seemed to prefer it over his shirt, doing a full body sigh once she was suckling on it, with her need partially sated (eddie knew he had about fifteen minutes to wrap up breakfast before she realized nothing was coming from it and would start crying), Penny went back to cuddling into his chest. 

  She was starting to be a little more active—not sleeping as much as she did this time last month but for the most part, her movements were still unstable. She had good neck control (you’d had to pin Eddie down to keep him from picking her up when she’d immediately cry upon being put down for tummy time), she liked to kick her legs like she was about to take off for a marathon, but she still couldn’t quite hold things for long (unless it was hair or fingers) and had yet to roll over without you cheating and nudging her the rest of the way.

  Speaking of making Penny do things…

  Eddie lost to his intrusive thought, rearranging his hold on Penny so he was gently grasping her sides as he placed her feet on the counter. Immediately, she popped down to squat before shooting up again. And then she did it once more, getting comfortable with using her legs.

  She didn’t even seem to wonder why Eddie was making her stand, she was more focused on staring intensely at her own feet.

  Then Eddie made her jump, lifted her up and down and up and down, and when that got her smiling wide enough for her pacifier to fall out of her mouth, Eddie moved onto the cabinets.

  “Go, baby, go!” He turned her on her side, miming the motions of her chunky legs running over the top cabinets like some baby ninja and laughing at how big her smile managed to keep getting, her big eyes squinting with it.

  “What are you doing to my baby?” You asked as you emerged from the bedroom, rubbing sleep from your eyes.

  “She’s gonna be the next Karate Ki—hello.”

  Eddie couldn’t help himself, dark gaze trailing over your figure as you stood there, hair a wreck, no pants, oversized t-shirt—ooh, and a leaking nipple. 

  Eddie’s favorite. Yum.

  You followed his gaze, scoffing at the dark stain growing over your left boob, hand pressing against it to stop it as if you were applying pressure to a wound.

  “It heard her,” You pouted, lip stuck out and wobbling at him as you referenced your body’s response to the sound of your baby. Crying, giggling, whimpering—didn’t matter, your milk ducts went into overdrive, aware that your baby was conscious and could need a feeding. Her baby noises were like a trigger sequence.

  Eddie lifted Penny to his face, pressing fervent kisses into the chub of her cheeks, “Score for you, babe!”

  You rolled your eyes, completely, utterly fond and smitten over the interaction. He briefly abandoned the kitchen to hand her to you after you’d made yourself comfortable on the couch, ready to fall to his knees in adoration.

  You pulled the shirt over your breast, and despite trying to place your nipple in her mouth for her, Penny struggled to find it, mouthing greedily at your boob, her little head turning this way and that way but always missing the peak. 

  “Girl, it’s right there.” You laughed. Penny gave it like four more seconds of trying before her whimpers kicked in and you hurriedly managed to get her to latch, stopping the outburst.

  And just like that, Penny was content, making satisfied little squeaks as she nursed and stared up at you, pretending like she hadn’t been moments away from screaming her lungs out.

  And Eddie was distracted, solely focused on the two of you and how he wanted to roll around on the carpet because the cuteness aggression was almost unbearable. If this was how he would be spending every work-free morning for the rest of his life, he was ready to convert to being a morning person.

  Especially if those big sparkly eyes and that gummy smile would be staring up at him. GOD-she was so stinking cute. He wanted to smother her in his affection, but she was growing annoyed with Eddie all up in her face and squishing the chub she was accumulating. She even cried if he faked chewed on her chunky cheeks for too long.

  “What’s that smell?” You asked, snapping him out of his love stupor as you sniffed loudly.

  “FUCK!” Eddie bolted back to the kitchen, smoke surrounding the pan and what had once been edible eggs, “Hey, honey, what’s your opinion on extra crispy eggs? You a risk taker?”

“The answer to that is hurting my nipple right now.”

“Valid. That was a very fun risk.”

divider ℗ cafekitsune ♡

[hawkebuckley]

eddie munson and hopper core

[foreverautumn89]

I love all of the above so...

[deadboyfriendd]

𝙑𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙤 𝙂𝙞𝙧𝙡. E.M.

Summary: Eddie isn't in college, but he sells drugs at college parties. He usually isn't into these kinds of girls, cokeheads home for the long weekend, but what happens when he meets you?

Warnings: Fem!Reader, Eddie Munson x Reader, obvs a lil canon-divergent, fratboy adjacent!Steve, wingman!Robin, drug use, angst to fluff, smut included

My content is 18+ Minors DNI

Word Count: 9.1k

Author's Note: This is secretly based off of a Fall Out Boy song. Spear me please.

Also this is 100% for @dr-aculaaa , Drac helped me out with a TON of the dialogue and plot in this and she deserves 100% of the hype for this. PLEASE go read her work.

Eddie isn’t in college, but he sells drugs at college parties. 

He’s overstimulated. Both by the heat of the girl grasping and gripping his arm that was turning it unpleasantly raw and by the lack of anything substantial that he could focus his senses on. He can’t remember her name, and it wasn’t because of the seventeen other things distracting his senses, either. She was inherently unremarkable. Another cokehead from The Hideout. College girls home for the long weekend. Love does not occur in dive bar bathrooms, Eddie knew that much. 

He could tell her apart immediately, a Pamela Anderson wannabe with all of the intuition to sniff out anyone remotely Tommy Lee adjacent. The glorification of hard drugs and dysfunction. This would not go anywhere but possibly the bathroom, where she would emerge with a misty ring of powder white around her left nostril and blown pupils. He would taste the drip on her later that night when she would kiss him in a grotesque masquerade of her own cold comedown, denial dripping from her lips with a sticky sweetness disguised with L’Oreal Colour Riche Rich Brown. There were a thousand more like her, some here at home, others in Indianapolis, even more in Chicago. 

She was pretty for a cokehead, but not nearly as pretty as you. 

He spotted you through past the popcorn ceilings, under the fluorescent kitchen lights that were not particularly attractive for any given reason. You were the only girl here who didn’t know how he was. He had been stuck in the pipeline of town deviant to Indiana’s metal microcelebrity. His eyes locked on the kiss of your lashes as the aforementioned date dragged him through the density of other sweaty, coked-out bodies. You swung your legs back and forth as the scuffed rubber from the heels of your sneakers thudded against the hollow cabinet beneath you, rattling the pots behind it. 

She shrieks your name like a birdsong, and you whip around with wide eyes. She drags him along, pulling uncomfortably at his fingers. She bounces up and down in a way that she thinks is attractive, but to everyone else, the jingle of bangles and sequins and squealing is inherently annoying. 

You are not her friend. 

You had become acquainted with the girl before you in an entry-level introductory course for environmental design. It was offered as an elective across all majors but was also stupidly a requirement for all design-specific majors. And, even more unfortunately, the majority of the class was group work. This is how you met her. And she attached to you like a fungus— roots buried in branches that grasped your bones and made her impossible to remove without the inevitability of spawning again. She was a roach of a friend, not even nuclear warfare could rid you of her. But you were too nice to her, in fact, you were the only person that had given half a shit to include her. 

“Oh my God!” There’s a resonant tenor screech that reverberates off of the tile floors and pitches in your own ears so high that it could shatter any champagne flute within a ten mile radius. The guy— poor bastard– being dragged ruthlessly behind her like a content stray cat that had been claimed by a small child twitched an eye nearly shut at the pitchy shriek that plagues him as much as you. 

She explains how you met in an effortful, but drawn-out and utterly painful, story. It was a class. You were assigned a group project. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. 

But his hand was warm when it encased yours in an entirely professional handshake. You shook the thought from your head before it was even allowed to form. You desperately needed to kick the habit of falling in love with strangers in passing. You would not find the one at a party— at least not this one. 

It wasn’t long until she had gotten distracted, an old friend, as she had put it. There was no friend. Only powder on a mirror in the next room over. You questioned why she lied, because she wasn’t even discreet about it. 

“How can you be a nurse and do so much blow?” He asked, face twisted up in a sickening scowl. She had long forgotten about him and he tried his best to forget about her.��

“Girls like that usually are.” You deadpanned back, your face mirroring his own disgust. 

“Nursing majors?” He questioned, her major the only thing he could remember about her at this point. 

“Yeah. It’s the safest option. It keeps their parents happy while they put their financial aid up their noses.” You watched her try to discreetly gum some remnants off of the mirror sitting on the coffee table, pinkie finger dragging alongside the glass and disappearing behind her bottom lip. 

“I’ll bet she won’t finish off the semester.” You stated bluntly after a few seconds of spectating. 

“What about you?” He asked, in reference to your major. 

“Basket weaving. It’s really not much.” You didn’t want to come off as judgmental, or a prude. Especially not after admitting you were a design major. You cringed at how pretentious it sounded.  

“I like baskets.” He said, plopping himself down on the barstool across the island from you, toe thudding against the exterior to stop him from spinning too much. 

“Design.” You said, more of a mumble than a statement. You felt stupid. People usually thought you were stupid when you told them you dropped out of nursing school to be a design major. He didn’t need to know that part of you. After all, he was just some guy at a party and not the love of your life. 

“Of what nature?” He questioned, laying his head tiredly against his folded arm and looking up you you through thick lashes. 

“Of the graphic nature.” You were thoroughly surprised when he stuck around, head tilting to the side in curiosity — a stray curl bouncing from one side to the other. 

“What, like Chip Kidd?” Your head shot up. Sure, he was one of the hottest names in design this year, but who cared about design outside of designers? Next to no one. You forced yourself to play it cool. 

“More like a Stefan Sagmeister.” You grinned, bringing you knees to you chest and folding your arms over them. 

“You’re a Stones fan?” He questioned, brow cocked. 

“Who isn’t?“

“You’d be surprised.” 

“Well, surprise me, then.”

+

Eddie isn’t in college, but he knows a girl that frequents college parties.

This time it’s at some kickback in the woods, and this time it was to sell drugs— but seeing you was like a reward as you folded and contorted your own softness into comfort in the back compartment of his van, legs leaned against his side in search of warmth against the brisk nip of the reminiscence of winter. He draped his arm over your knees as he stood casually in wait, wondering how women could fold their bodies into strange statutes of comfort in only the ways they know how. 

You were good for business. Everyone and their mother seemed to know who you were. Probably because you were sweet. Especially to him. 

You’ve been casually sleeping with each other for a few weeks now, only when you can catch each other through hushed communal dorm phone-calls or whenever you come home for the weekend. No-strings attached, no commitment. But this outing sure felt like commitment, in the same way it felt like commitment when he held your hand earlier, and the same way it felt like commitment when he pressed his forehead against yours during your last entanglement. 

He leans over to you, alabaster skin of his neck stretching over bone and artery so he could whisper to you, 

“This is kind of lame. Let’s get out of here.”

You weren’t one to refuse him, especially not when he looked at you like that. 

“I’m not losing out on high school drama. I’m down.” You whisper back to him, pulling the end of an unruly curl just to watch it spring back up into place. 

While he’s watching the road, you’re memorizing the features of his face. If he could sparkle right now, he would be, even as the only light catching his face was from the too spaced-out street lamps. He drives in near-silence, whatever cassette buzzing hushedly over the radio but quiet enough that you could hear the vapid spinning of the tires and his occasional slow breath. 

You see the headstones before he has a chance to speak. 

“You’re gonna murder me.” You breathed out, joking mostly. 

“Yeah, right here, in the cemetery. Then I’m gonna bury you in a fresh grave.” He said to you, between eye rolls, getting out of the van to go pull the back doors open and straighten the woolen saddle blankets so you could sit. 

He pulls an acoustic guitar down from a makeshift bungee-cord rack fixed to the sidewall of the interior of the van, This Machine Slays Dragons crudely scrawled across the face to mimic Guthrie’s own. 

“I didn’t know that fascists breathed fire.” You said to him through a halfway-crooked sort of smile, pushing yourself up to lean against the sidewall of the van, facing him. You let one  leg swing back and forth, the rubber toe of your shoe tapping mindlessly against the seemingly useless tow hitch. 

“I knew you were more than just pretty.” He said, mouth turning up at the sides of his mouth. He was pretty, peering at you from beneath lashes before turning his attention back to the tuning knob. He strummed a calloused thumb across the tight string, listening to it upturn until he thought it sounded right.

It was a foreign ritual to you, his own prettiness being the catalyst for your own destruction before his vapid excuse at being a boyfriend ever could. . You watched silken curls slip over his shoulder and brush over the neck of his guitar. You watched as pretty deft fingers strummed a progression you would never understand. You desperately wished it was you, instead. 

It was like you were experiencing him through a macro lens, and it only made him more beautiful. His eyes came up to meet yours, dark and rich in the twilight that fell over you. You couldn’t have stared at him for more than a few seconds, but it was enough for your own giggles to bubble over. 

“Oh god.” You say through cupped hands, burying your face in your palms. You knew he was looking at you like you were crazy– all in good humor. 

“What?” He asked, unable to contain his own chuckle at this point. 

“You are literally the guy at the party that brings the guitar.” You managed through your bouts of giggles. 

“I don’t see much of a party here, sweetheart.” That smile curled again at his lips, this time with more teeth. You didn’t want to stare more, despite his fingers strumming the beginning cord of a song with all of the tenderness he could muster.

“Then who are you playing for? The ghosts?” You giggled again, looking around at the eeriness of the headstones. Had it been cooler, it would have been more off putting, but the swelling heat of summer that had settled over Indiana almost gave it some comfort. 

“You. Five regulars at The Hideout. Any ghost that wants to listen.” He laughed back, stopping his strumming to look back up at you. 

“Are you actually good?” You folded your knees upwards, turning yourself fully towards him. You rested your folded arms on top of them, pressing your chin against them to stare at him. 

“Would you just shut up and listen? I wrote a song about you.” It wasn’t hurtful, never was it hurtful. He said this towards you through pretty lips and even prettier winks. 

It wasn’t anything great. Three cords and two lines, but you wished you could record it and play it on a loop over and over again until your walkman caught fire. His voice wasn’t smooth, but it wrapped around you like a blanket, and, suddenly, it was your favorite sound. There was one thing you knew for certain, you wanted Eddie to sing to you every day for the rest of your life. 

“So you actually are good.” 

He rolled his eyes at you, casting the guitar aside as quickly as he had gotten it down. His lips met yours in a rapid staccato of haste kisses, first long, then followed by the plethora of short. You felt calloused fingers dig into the plush of your waist. 

It usually ended up like this. You’d laugh, you’d fall in love with him over and over and over again. You would have sex, and then it would be weeks. Weeks of trying to get your life back together and weeks of trying to remember yourself before him. But, God, when he kissed you over and over like that you would gladly break your heart for him. You wanted him to break it– if it meant that you could have him for this moment. 

“This technically is a party, you know?” You whispered a breathy giggle against his lips, peeling an eye open to peer at him. 

“What?” He asked, pulling back slightly. His lips were still glossy with the taste of you, but his eyes peered down at you in a way that made your stomach flip. You debated letting him take you in a cemetery. 

“Earlier, you said that you didn’t see much of a party. But we are here… at one, I mean?” Eddie looked around, eyebrow raised in utter confusion before clueing into what you had meant. 

“What with… them?” He asked you from behind the back of his hand, as if the bodies beneath you would be offended if they had heard. 

“Yeah. With all of the people buried here.” You stated, matter-of-factly. 

“I don’t think they’re much partying anymore.” Eddie explained to you, looking around the cemetery with raised eyebrows.

“Look… you know how the saying goes: one's company, two’s a crowd, and three’s a party? Well, this is a lot more than three. They don’t specify if they’re of the living disposition or not.” You argued back, trying your hardest to contain your own smile. 

“I’m saying no one here is having a good time.” He argued back in mock frustration, palms jutting out towards the headstones around you in confusion. 

“Besides us?” You asked him, with wide eyes. 

“Yes, besides us.” He said to you, reaching out to grip the opposite side of your waist and pull you into his side. 

“I can see it now. Here lies Edward— what’s your middle name?” 

“Not a chance.”

“Edward ‘Not a Chance’ Munson. He partied so hard he died.” You said, holding your hands out in a picturesque fashion. You couldn’t contain your own giggles. 

“Are you always a wise-ass?” He said, from behind a forward chuckle. 

“I don’t know, am I?” 

“Yes.” He looked down at you from beneath his shoulder, his eyes meeting your own endearingly. 

Eddie had a really bad habit of completely derailing your life with a single look. Once your eyes met the ambergris bourbon of his, you swore you could see the next ten years of your life. You swore you would ever be domesticated– at least not by any frat guy you met at a party. You hoped you were never domesticated. You hoped you never learned the subtlety of wifelyhood of motherhood. You never wanted to be reduced to that. But Eddie wasn’t in college, and Eddie could reduce you to that with one soft glance. 

“ –What about him?” You asked, averting your eyes from his. You would not let him derail your life again. Not tonight, at least. 

“Who?” He asked, genuine confusion registering across his once-soft features. 

“The guy buried there.” You specified. The headstone read a barely decipherable name, followed by 1902. 

“Was he a wise-ass?”

“No, stupid, how did he die? What kind of life did he live?” You said, bringing up your hand to deliver a soft slap to his chest. He wished you would do it again. 

“Tuberculosis.” You stated, bluntly, looking back down towards you with a smile. 

“Not everyone in 1902 died of tuberculosis.” You rolled your eyes. 

“Yeah, but a lot of them did.”

You figured he was right, your microbiology prerequisite failing to regurgitate within your brain. A silence settled over the back of the van, but it was comfortable. You allowed yourself the comfort of leaning your head against his chest, and rested his against your own. You tried to hear his heart from here, wondered if he had one at all. Surely he didn’t, if he could break your heart and put it back together all over again. Part of you hoped he did, and an even bigger part of you hoped that you had a place in it somewhere. You wouldn’t allow yourself to dwell on that fact for long. 

“Hey, Eddie?” You asked, barely above a whisper. Yet, breaking the silence felt like breaking glass. Had you been talking too much?

“Yeah?” He asked, in an equally quiet tone. You wonder if he felt it, too. 

“Why here?” You asked, without needing to elaborate further. 

He thinks about it, silent for a second, and then breaks the glass again. 

“I feel more like a ghost than anything– makes me feel less alone.” He says, finally. He refuses to let his eyes meet yours. It made sense. 

Some of the girls you went to school with still talked about it. Still talked about their friend, Chrissy. You understood that he had been a key suspect in a high-profile murder case. 

Well, as high-profile as Hawkins, Indiana, population: 2000, could get. 

They had found their suspect— apparent suicide. It happened all of the time. Kids try drugs, and drugs end badly. You had seen it before, and you’d see it again. It wasn’t Eddie, nor was it his Uncle– the man with the kind eyes and the gruff exterior that sometimes waved at you from outside Eddie’s van. You tried not to wonder if he thought you were a skank. You should introduce yourself, sometime.

A lot of people forgot about it after the Earthquake, their own lives crumbling enough to where they didn’t have to speculate the downfall of someone else. 

It made sense why he would think that. The same as the ghost that inhabited the loft above The Hideout where he played. 

It must have been exhausting having someone vilify and formulate your existence all the time.  

You decided not to pry. Instead, you read the headstones in front of you, children, the elderly. You focused on one elongated headstone fixated into the ground in front of you. William and Helen Lester. Born in 1910 and 1912, respectively. Died the same year as each other, 

“What about them?” You asked him.

“They were madly in love, they reserved their plots together before they died so when one joined the other they could take comfort in knowing that they would stay together.” He answered, without hesitation. You wondered if he knew them personally. 

“Do you believe that they did?” You asked, instead. 

“Stay together?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess that depends on what they believed.” He shrugged, rubbing his hand up and down your shoulder a little bit. 

“Well, what do you believe?” 

He lets out a long sigh, more joking then not.

“Well, way back when my uncle first got custody of me, he thought it would be a good idea to start taking me to church. Save me before it was too late… or whatever.” He raked his hands through his hair, sitting up a little to look at you before continuing, 

“ -Wayne wasn’t much of a church guy, either, but the nice lady that lived next door to us was, so we started going to church with her. They told us that if we did everything we were supposed to do… tried to live by the book, and that we found our person, that it would be an eternal binding after marriage, or something like that.”

“Do you really believe that?” You questioned. 

“If there’s anything from my churchgoing days that I hoped would be real, I hope it’s that.” He sighed, pulling his arm off of you to lean back . 

“Why?”

“I don’t think I could ever stand to be alone like that again.” He shrugged, and you knew you had struck a nerve. 

“Well, what about us?” You questioned. 

“What about it?” 

“Do you think we’ll stay together?”

“We’re not really even together.” 

It was then that you realized that maybe he did have a heart, but you didn’t have a home within it. There was one thing for certain, however, and that was that he had made himself a home in yours like a fungus. It was then that the introductory biology courses you could never remember remained heavy on your brain. 

Mycelium

Mycelium are incredibly tiny threads of the greater fungal organism that wrap around or bore into tree roots. Taken together, mycelium composes what's called a “mycorrhizal network,” which connects individual plants together to transfer water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals—

Eddie was a fungus in dormancy. He had a mycelial network, and its threads had wrapped and wound their ways through the finest intimacies of your life. Their hairline structure filled their place between any gaps you weren’t careful enough to seal. Even when he wasn’t in your life, he was there. 

You can’t be heartbroken over him if you never had him. 

You know he is talking. You know he continued with a backstory in some form or another. Your guess would be something about spending every waking moment alone after the incident. How no one’s mothers who were kind enough to give him the benefit of the doubt in the first place would no longer let their children— his friends, around him. Something about how he wouldn’t blame them. 

“Hey, are you okay? You went all silent on me there.” He finally asked, tugging on a strand of your hair, playfully. You felt like crying, but you wouldn’t. Not until he was gone. 

“Yeah, just tired I guess.”

Tired of getting attached, tired of derailing your entire life for him. 

“Oh. I guess I should probably get you home, then.” He said, beginning to slide out of the van. 

You were thankful he didn’t pry, but a part of you wished that he would. You had him for weeks, it was commitment-adjacent at the very least. It felt like you had him tonight, and it felt like you had him in all of your spare time. It also felt like you had him in class, doodling his funny little devil horns all over your notes. It was the subtlety of this heartbreak that was the worst– or maybe the fact that it wasn’t really heartbreak in the first place. 

You still let him sleep in your bed. 

+

Robin is a textbook lesbian, which also makes her the best wingman on the face of planet earth. She assessed the situation over a pre-roll, as someone who was both a woman and someone who pleasured women. 

Steve isn’t a frat boy, but his relentless good looks and halfway dumb demeanor are wasted on that fact. He assessed the situation as such. 

Eddie swore they both only hung out with him for the pot. 

It had been weeks since your last call, in which you had mentioned something about a final or something before the line went dead. Maybe you were actually dead. Killed in some freak accident that the news didn’t even know how to cover so they just… didn’t. Eddie’s dignity thought it would be preferable if you were. 

“ — Boys are stupid. Hence why I date women.” Robin stated bluntly from Steve’s bedroom floor, between clumsy, fumbling lighter flicks. 

Eddie rolled his eyes, did he have to do everything? He plucked the lighter from her hands, lighting the pre-roll in one swift motion before looking back at her. 

“Some of us aren’t as lucky.” Eddie said, throwing his body back against the side of Steve’s bed, causing Robin to bounce alongside him. 

“To be of the homosexual disposition?” Robin questioned, turning to face him. 

“To understand women.”

“Again, you don’t need to understand them, You’re just stupid.” She waved her hand, dismissively. 

“God, I know I’m stupid, please just help me.” He said to her, dragging his hands down his face with a vigor. 

“Okay, run the cemetery scenario by me again. Word. For. Word.” She said back, joint tucked between her pointer finger and thumb, elbow rested atop the comforter. 

“Okay—”

Eddie can remember everything about that night. He remembered what you were wearing. He remembered seeing the smattering of new freckles across your shoulder as it peeked out from under your summer sweater– a reminder that the heat of summer was quickly settling over you. He remembered the rhythm that the rubber toe of your sneaker tapped out as he strummed against his guitar. He remembered how you knew Gutherie and batted your eyes at him in that pretty— so fucking pretty– way and how you batted your lashes at him when you asked too many questions that he was suddenly inclined to answer. 

Eddie remembered what he said. 

“And then I said, ‘well, we aren’t really even together-”

“There!” Robin shouted finally, hands splayed out, smoke continuing to roll from between her fingers, 

“What?!” Eddie jumped, running his hands from the crown of his head and down his t-shirt, in search of whatever bug Robin had screamed at him about. 

“That’s where you fucked up!” She clarified. 

“ — really fucked up.” Steve chimed in from his desk chair, sunglasses slipping low on his nose despite the approaching twilight, using the toe of his sneaker as traction in order to spin himself in half-circles from his corner. 

“How?” Eddie asked, raking his fingers through his hair and giving his roots a soft tug. 

“You totally took everything you had with her and threw it right in the dumpster.” Robin continued, fully ignoring him. 

“ — and lit it on fire!” Steve chimed over his shoulder, chair spun backwards towards the wall. 

“Shut up, Steve.”

“Just saying…”

“Anyways, you implied that you didn’t want a relationship with her.” Robin said, finally softening a bit. 

“No, I wanted her to say something like, ‘Well, then can we be?’”  He explained back to her, almost on the verge of tears. 

“That’s the problem, dingus.” She rolled her eyes, delivering a soft smack to the side of his head. 

“Ugh,” Eddie muffled out loudly from behind his palms. 

To him, you were pretty, and smart, and entirely too good for him. You were right for ghosting him, he would never blame you for that. You had all the reason in the world to hate him and you still didn’t— until he gave you one. 

 To you, he was just a boy– one who harbored too much heartbreak that makes him meaner than he anticipates. Eddie wasn’t mean by nature, but right now, he sure felt like it.

He pulls his temples back with the heels of his hands, “She’s just so smart and she has to think I’m the dumbest human being on planet Earth.”

“You are the dumbest human being on planet Earth.” She snuffed out the roach into the ashtray, twirling around for slightly too long. 

“Gee, thanks.”

“But not for that reason.” She pulled her knees up to her chest, turning to face Eddie, “You’re stupid because you expected her to read your mind. You had the upper hand. She was prompting the love confession from you and you probably shattered her heart into a million tiny pieces.”

“Can I even fix this?”

“I’m a wingman, not a miracle worker, dude.”

“Steve? Anything to chime in?”

“You fucked up.” 

“No shit.” 

+

Eddie isn’t in college, instead he plays guitar. 

In the midst of his own suffering, he still has to perform. He isn’t one to pass up the money or the attention— especially since they’re crowds now exceeded into the double digits. They had graduated from the Tuesday-night noisemakers, to the Friday-night headliner, a few people even making their way over to bar-crawl from the next town over. 

Eddie leaned his weight on the speaker, tuning and strumming in a half-assed, absent-minded routine. There was a decent group tonight, people grouped standing in the back once the tables and bartop had been promptly filled. 

Jeff approached him, bass slung heavy over him, “Don’t look now, but I think you might know someone here.” He peered at you over his shoulder. 

Eddie looks anyway, met with your eyes. 

You looked pretty tonight. You looked pretty always. 

You had your toes propped against the bottom rung of the barstool, knees pulled tight together, and a drink in hand. He didn’t recognize the people you were with, but he didn’t know very many people anyway. Not like you did. You were likable, and he liked you a lot. 

He didn’t know what he was expecting you to look like after a month, but he was stupid thinking you’d look dramatically different. You were still soft— still glowed even in this not-particularly-flattering light. You looked happy and he hated it. He hated that you could smile at a time like this. It was selfish, he knew it. He wanted you to be a wreck over him. He wanted the comfort in knowing that you were the same mess that he was in over you. 

Jeff gives him a nudge to say something into the mic once they got the go-ahead to play. He tells Jeff he can do it tonight. The tether that binds you together is made of water— the softest vibration would break the surface tension and it would splash on to the concrete. He wanted to watch you be pretty for just a few more seconds, even if it meant giving up his ego for tonight. He wanted to remain unseen on stage, but the pinch harmonic of his opening riff sent your head snapping towards him. 

Your look made him want to crawl beneath the floorboards. 

Your acquaintance, a girl that was a friend-of-a-roommate who had invited you out, placed a hand on your shoulder, warm and too-friendly,  “This band is really good!”

“I know!” You shouted over the music, too warm already. Maybe it was the bottom-shelf peach schnapps. It was most likely the bottom-shelf peach schnapps. 

“Oh, you’ve seen them before?” She asked, pulling her chair up closer to yours. 

“Something like that!” You had explained, pulling the strap of your purse from your neck where it dug in too harshly. 

You felt underdressed for the occasion. Despite definitely having people to impress, you didn’t feel the need. But now, with Eddie’s eyes that you tried desperately to avert yourself from, you’d felt your skin in a way that you never had before. Maybe you were drunk. 

You were most definitely drunk, enough so that it was teetering off the edge of pleasant and dipping into the waters of uncomfortable. The music was too loud and there were too many people and your purse strap kept digging into the crevice of your neck in a way that was both painful and overstimulating. 

You couldn’t remember how many songs Eddie’s band had played– fuck— you couldn’t remember what they were called. Had been playing for a while, enough for the lines between songs started to blur and it felt like forty-five minutes of continuous time signature. You couldn’t decipher a lot between the hum of the nearly-blown speaker anyways. 

Eddie’s eyes met yours, shiny beneath the bar stage lights. He looked angry. You couldn’t tell if it was because of the genre of his song or because of you. He isn’t insatiable or anything, and he had hoped to God that you were still paying attention. By the look on your face and the way you craned your neck to look at the girl next to you, you hadn’t been for a while now. Your nonchalance had poured the gasoline, your smile lit him ablaze. 

The next line of the song was about you, an ode to the women he’d loved before– which weren’t many– conveniently placed as the last song of the setlist. He wrote it with the fantasy that you would stroll through the doors and hear it, but now that you were here, he didn’t know if he had the heart to be mean to you. He didn’t want to be mean to you. It was vaguely written enough so that the other girls that looked up towards him would think it was about them, a heartbreak anthem, a sorry anthem. An ode to the cemetery and the ghost that he had become without you. 

You understood it, though you chose not to act like you had. You didn’t think you had been in his life for long enough to warrant a song– at least one with more than three cords and fifteen seconds of play-time. Why would he? You were never even together. Your ears rang with the remnants of sound, yet you watched your party— the greek bar-crawlers, get ready to head to the next location down the block. You couldn’t even remember what bar it was. 

The girl next to you– fuck— you couldn’t remember her name either, was leveling with your tipsiness. Maybe she hadn’t teetered over the edge of drunk like you had. You let her take your hand anyways, pushing through the double doors in your party of eight. 

The familiarity of the van backed in front of the entrance haunted you, like it had brought a ghost back with it from the cemetery. Maybe Eddie was the ghost. Maybe he was haunting you. Maybe you were haunting yourself. 

The party discussed some form of game plan. You thought it was stupid, hockey practice was over. Yet they were drunk, and they were rowdy, and they were a spectacle. Suddenly and all at once, unfamiliar lips were on yours, violent and sloppy. You tasted cherry, sticky against your own peppermint chapstick. Soft feminine hands gripped your jaw, pretty tuberose and jasmine on the girl from earlier filled your nostrils in a way that was not quite suffocating, but all encapsulating. It was an Estee Lauder Eau de Parfum. You recognized it from the yellow bottle you had gotten for your fifteenth birthday. 

Kissing a woman was a different ballpark, kissing a woman drunk was an entirely different sport. She was softer, less volatile. She had a languid softness to her waist where men were typically more solid. Her hands were more graceful. You relinquished it, both in the spectacle of the others in the group and the fact that she was what Eddie wasn’t.

From behind the van, Eddie watched you. The floral passion in which you sloppily tangled your manicured hand into the blonde mass of the girl in front of you. Isn’t it unfair? He desperately wished it was him. Wanted to be the reason for the surrounding wolf calls. Eddie wasn’t particularly introspective, but he was dying to be her. A notch in your bedpost, a one night stand, a lover. 

Eddie wanted to be her. 

+

Eddie isn’t in college, and it's mostly because he’s stupid. 

Robin let him know it, too. 

There is an afterparty, or, at least, the loose adjacent to one. The band, some friends of the band, and communal alcohol strung loosely across the island at Gareth and Jeff’s condo. Donated pot courtesy of a combined effort of Rick and Eddie. He didn’t feel like partying, but he did feel like getting really, really drunk. Lecture be damned. 

MD 20/20 Red Grape Fortified Wine tasted a little like alcohol and a lot like feeling sorry for himself. 

The grave was already dug, all he had to do was sit in it and wait for someone to backfill. 

Robin stood, arms braced against the island across from Eddie. The fluorescents in Gareth’s unrenovated kitchen burned his eyes, “I can’t help you if you don’t want it.”

“I don’t want it,” He specified, pulling a long drink from the glass bottle, “ –but I have a feeling I’m gonna get it anyways.” 

“I thought you wanted her back, dude.” The fluorescent lights casted a downwards glow across her forehead. Eddie thought it gave her a Kubrick stare. 

“I don’t know what I want, I thought I did but then I got up there and I sang about her and she didn’t even care.”

In one swift motion, she hopped onto the counter, crossing her legs beneath her, “Well, obviously you care.” 

“I don’t care.” 

“If you don’t care about her then why do you lose your shit every time you see her?”

“Because, Robin, who the fuck else is gonna love me after all of the shit we’ve been though?” He slammed the bottle down on the table. It was enough to rattle the cabinets beneath it, “She was the one good thing that’s happened to me in a long fucking time and I couldn’t even let myself be just content with that.” 

He’s angry, suddenly. With himself, with the universe. The alcohol didn’t help. The feigning headache was more annoying than it was painful. Robin wanted to roll her eyes, to call him stupid and dramatic– but she figured he knew it already. It’s not like he wasn’t warranted in his anger, he was, but she wondered why he had been so pent-up lately. Maybe it’s because there was no Eddie way for Eddie to deal with this. After a bleating silence, she spoke:

“Have you even talked to her yet?” She asked.

“No, and I’m not planning on it.” 

“Why not?”

“Because, dude,” Eddie played himself out across the tile island, trying to ignore the way his t-shirt just mopped up the sticky sweet liquid on the counter, “ – you know why.”

Robin did know why. 

“And?” She asked. 

“They were all over each other, like, like…” He was getting frustrated now, unable to string words together in a cohesive sentence. 

Robin finished for him, “Like you were?”

“Yeah. Like she didn’t even care.” He leaned his head down on his folded arms, 

“Maybe she wanted you to think that.” Robin asked him. She thought she sounded more like his mother than a lesbian wingman. This is what he needed. “Maybe she wanted you to chase her.”

“I don’t understand why.” He groaned, “She’s unpredictable. And pretty. And smart. And fun. And everyone likes her. Do you know how many friends she has? How many people like her?”

“Because maybe you’re not as bad as you think you are.”

And he isn’t. Eddie isn’t inherently bad– albeit a little bit dumb. Maybe that just came with age, or the nature of him. Actually, behind the external composite disposition and his defensive nature, Eddie was the opposite of bad.

That first ‘surprise me’ reverberated in his mind like a crescendo. He was feeling brave that night. It was all ego, and most likely a touch of golden whiskey courage. He could still taste it on the back of his tongue when his mouth met yours in a clumsy, quick, spur-of-the-moment kiss. He didn’t have time to be insecure about it, the afterthoughts of gum or mints being pulled from his mind by your fingers as they combed through the soft curls at the nape of his neck. As he moved down to press pillowy-soft kisses in the soft of your throat, he took in your scent– like the citrus groves just outside of town in the spring, when the little white flowers covered the expanse of the rich green rows. 

It was fast and sweet, his hands pushing your summer cotton t-shirt up your waist with warm, rough hands– encasing the ribs where they curl to meet with your spine in a vice. You were eager, not that you were easy– you almost didn’t care if he thought of you that way– in the way you slid his vest off of him. He threw his arms back quickly, shaking it loose from his wrists as he came back up to meet you. The chain of his bracelet was cold against the plush of your stomach as he dragged it down towards the button of your denim shorts. 

“We don’t have to do this now,” He separated from you in hesitation, “I can take us back to my place, use my be—”

“No, ‘need you now.” You insisted, your kiss more pressing than before. You clung to him fervently. 

You aren’t confined to your softness. You are vocal, grip on his shoulders and his heart like a vice. You were soft in the right places though, in your waist and beneath his hands coming undone, soft in the way you spoke to him behind closed van doors. Pillows over sharp corners, a guard to balance your too-loud laugh or the frequency in which you found yourself too drunk. 

You were stone-cold sober that night, and he thanked whoever was up there looking out for him that you were. You wouldn’t have been here, otherwise. 

You were a painting, and not one of those stupid ones that he had to talk about in history class. Like a real, in-your-face, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Not quite like a centerfold, better than anything he’d counted pennies for at the drugstore, ethereal beyond words. Soft for him and only him, bumps and curves and dips and folds in places you didn’t see in those. Real, right in front of him. His for the taking. 

The night had turned already to that imperceptible pivot where midnight turned to early morning hours. This moment has come and gone, yet you are not yet willing to concede that you have crossed the line beyond which is all gratuitous damage and the play of unraveled nerve endings. 

He plunged his middle and marriage fingers within you with a vapid expanse for pleasure, reaching in deep and curling upwards, gathering slick between fingers and back out again. You could feel every ridge within yourself, your softness pulling him back in once he had pulled out again. 

You allow him, no, encourage him to line himself up within you, and you are warm. Warmer than anything he has ever felt in his life. Tight like a hug. The flavor is vaguely tribal– pendulous guitar-pick necklaces and ritualistic moans of endearance. A gathering drum of heartbeats and a bonfire lit within your core. 

His chest is hard above you, expanding with deep breath and soft cries– the softest cries you had ever heard from a man in your existence. There is a small patch of hair in the center, that follows down his navel in a thin line. You tried to hold it together, but you loved it so much. You could love him, not like the novelty it was right now. Like, really love him. 

If he could tell you he loved you without scaring you away, he would have. Now, he wished he just did. 

Clumsily, almost enough for you to tell he was still new to this, whether the van or women in general, he thrust into you, chasing his own rhythm while still finding your own high. His wrists radiate heat where they brace him on either side of your head, caging you between them. 

“Fuck– I– I,” he begins, looking for his thoughts.

You look up at him through low, sultry eyes. Your own release nearing in moments. “Together.” was what you could manage. 

He cringed looking back, he probably looked like such a virgin. He had been so previously wound with the Pam Anderson wanna-be and the post-show adrenaline that his release was feigning. He took comfort in knowing that you would later find out that he is not that inexperienced. 

It was the after that he remembered. How your little manicured finger traced over the raised ink of the tattoo, now disfigured by the purple fibers of scarring. 

“They’re from the accident.” He explained to you, knowing you were wondering. Everyone wondered. You had been too afraid to ask. 

“The earthquake?” You specified, looking up at him. 

You watched the way his stomach flexed as he pushed himself up, taking your body with him, “Yeah, sorry they’re not pretty.” He sighed, holding out his arms to look at the ones there. 

“You are pretty.” You reiterated, and he chuckled, pressing a kiss to your lips. 

“You’re prettier.” 

“You wanna see mine?” 

“Your what?”

“Scars.” 

You were going to show him anyway. 

That patch where the hair grew wonky across your eyebrow from where you had fallen as a child. You cracked your eye socket and they had to reconstruct the tendons in your eyelid. 27 stitches including the internal ones. He laughed at how you claimed it like a trophy. 

The small white line on the side of your knee you got trying to pet a feral cat. You wanted to be it’s friend so bad and it didn’t return the sentiment. 

The blown out tattoo on your ankle, done by your friend who worked at the cafe with you. It was the second one she had ever done on another living person. Your mom had flipped when you came home from college that first weekend with it. If you weren’t too old to ground, she would have done it. 

Your stretch marks, in which you didn’t dwell too much on. They started happening the summer you turned thirteen and you remembered the palsy of lotions and topical ointments your mom made you smear over the expanse of your body in order to reverse them when you we’re too young to recognize that there were nothing wrong with them. The scars they left on your psyche. 

The ones on your hands and knuckles, burns from your barista days. He remembered your giggle as he pressed soft kisses to every burn scar. 

Eddie was not bad. 

+

Eddie isn’t in college, but, for you, he’d at least brave the college housing. 

This was also not Robin’s plan, instead devised by Steve while he was crossed— and at his most authentic self. Despite her best efforts, they persisted. You roomed in a smaller house with several other girls in Indianapolis— a three hour drive as the crow flies. All in their girlish forms, all soft skin and little shorts and effortless beauty. Sometimes you wondered if you looked the same way- or if they even knew what they looked like. 

All of whom were gathered out the window, ogling at a relic unknown to you. 

A familiar face, the hometown heartbreaker, Steve Harrington himself stood in your freshly mowed grass, boombox held over his head like an idiot. Slovenly waving at the girls through the window. You sighed, palming your face tiredly. You knew who he would have in tow. He is a shadow of either Eddie’s best self of his worst self, you couldn’t tell which quite yet. You are awed by his strict refusal to acknowledge any goal higher than the pursuit of his own pleasure, haphazardly balancing the expensive boombox blasting Head Over Heels on a loud, obnoxious loop. You wouldn’t have been more annoyed if Roland Orzabal was here playing the song himself. Robin stood at the entrance of the small white picket fence, face in hands. 

When you meet with the man that has not quite et. cetere’d you, you are slumming the door open, visiting your own 7:00 A.M Lower East Side with your soul on a lark. He is stepping nimbly around gardenia pots and little happy concrete garden gnomes as if they will bite his ankles if he gets too close– if only you’d trained them sooner. More un-nimbly, he trips up the stairs, and you’ve caught him red handed. He stands there wide-eyed and apologetic, a dog kicked. You lean against the frame, nonchalant, unimpressed, arms crossed. 

“Ew. You like Tears for Fears?” You speak before he can. He seems taken aback. 

“I should have played The Cure.” He speaks truthfully, rubbing the skin on the back of his neck where an itch did not occur. 

“That was my second choice!” Steve called from the one-man show happening on your lawn. You feared if it went on for longer, it would turn to a strip-club.

“Shut up, Steve.” Eddie barked towards him. 

The tension feels like being at the bottom of a swimming pool. Eddie’s drowning in the deep end but the bowl’s empty. He drained it himself. He doesn’t know quite what to say to you. He didn’t think it would get this far. 

“Come on, please just hear me out��” He starts, yet it’s overused. You decided then to drown him in the pool yourself. The door closes in his face. 

Almost immediately, the knocking persists. Your roommates watch from beside the door, half still fixated on Steve, the others watching you ascend the stairs towards your bedroom. You choked down your embarrassment, suffocated in it. You needed to be alone. 

“Ladies.” Steve nods from the front lawn, watching his friend scale the old lattice attached to the stucco on the front of your house. 

“Ladies.” Robin parrots, coming to watch with a hand shielding her eyes from the sun. 

There is a commotion down the stairs, a door opening and footsteps quick. You don’t get the chance to look because there is a body, an apparition of scarecrow limbs and embarrassment parallel with your second-story window. You might be mad, but you definitely aren’t heartless. 

This isn’t what he expected your room to look like. In his wet dreams, he pictured more pink. More coquette lace abundance and stuffed animals. Save for the raggedy menstrual bean-bag bear, it’s relatively neutral. In hindsight, every girl’s room is pink coquette in a wet dream. This felt more like you, the twinkle lights, stacks of old books holding plants, moroccan-patterned pillows lining the daybed. Plush, white bedding. It’s natural, like you. 

Your glare is like a mother’s reproach. He doesn’t know how to react. He didn’t have a mother. Only Wayne and only teachers, the latter of which he had a certain amount of push before they let him do whatever he wanted. You, he could not push further. 

“Please don’t kick me out,” He begs, hands together like a prayer. It’s cheesy, you avoid laughing. 

“I’m waiting.” You say. It’s rude. You sound like a bitch. He thinks you’re warranted. You try not to think of the ears against your bedroom door. 

“I love you.” He said it like a plea instead of a declaration. It was the first and only thing that came to his mind. 

Of course he did.

You rolled your eyes at him, folding your arms and jutting your hip, “You don’t love me.” You corrected, “You just think you do now that you’re lonely.” 

He takes a few more pacing steps towards you, frantic and panicking “Jesus Christ– Yes, I do. I could’ve slipped and broke my neck trying to climb up here for you.”

“Well, I didn’t tell you to climb up here,” You placed your hand over your chest, then turned your finger towards him, “You don’t love me, you love this version of me that thought Tears for Fears would work.”

He stared at you with wide eyes, pleading and sad. 

“ —For once in your life think, idiot. What song would I have really liked?” 

“I– I don’t know.” He said. It came out like a whimper. He was more broken now, softer, yet still desperate. 

“Exactly. You don’t love me.”

“You know what? You’re right.” He stood, closing the gap between your bodies in a few strides. He wanted to touch you, but was too afraid to ask, “I don’t love you.“ 

“I hate all of your stupid questions.” He started, and you didn’t speak, “I hate how all of my clientele comes from you now. I hate that I only get you when you’re home for the weekend. I hate that stupid little scar on your eyebrow. I hate the way your hair gets in your mouth when you laugh. I hate that dumb little scar on your forehead. I hate that you’re so goddamn perfect for me and I hate myself for letting you walk away like that.” He finished, breath heaving. 

You felt the tears pull at the corners of your eyes, but you didn’t warrant them to spill. 

“I hate that you’re a grown man with fucking bangs.” You said, unable to finish. You felt stupid, two stupid little tears slipping from your eyes and streaking down your face.

He opened his arms to you, prompting, and you took it. Part of it so he couldn’t see you crying, the second part of you desperately needing to feel him. 

“I’m so mean.” You wailed into his chest. You felt the rumble of the laugh he couldn’t suppress. 

“I know, so mean.” He said, not as an insult or an agreement, but in endearment. He pressed a sympathy kiss to your crown. His hand was warm as it pulled up the expanse of your back. 

“I’m sorry.” You pulled away, wiping your face furiously with the heels of your palms. 

“No- no. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve to get caught up in my hot and cold like that.”

Your feverance prevails, “I should have asked what happened.”

“I should have asked you out.” He counteracts, pulling back to smooth down the wiry hairs at your crown, his hand heavy against your skull. 

“Can you do it now?” You plead, and he laughs. 

“Will you stop crying?”

“Yeah.” 

He pulls away from you for a second, you want to whine at the loss of contact. He crouches down on one knee, keeping your hands squeezed tightly in his calloused palms. 

“Then will you do me the tremendous honor of being my girl?” He runs his hand up the back of yours, trying to feel for an electric pulse of an answer. The seconds that you take nearly kill him. 

You stare down at him, eyes still red and puffy, but wide, “And not just like at parties?” 

“No, like the full weekday thing.” His smile is warm. You take great comfort in it. 

“Yeah.”

You think you look stupid, crying in your bedroom while he holds you like this. But he burns this memory in his mind. Even when you’re crying, you’re still the prettiest girl he’s ever seen. 

[daydreamingfuel]

Freak Like Me

Chapter 6

Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

AO3 // previous // next

Y/N has just moved to Hawkins from England with her parents and is starting at the high school in the final term of her senior year. Eddie immediately takes a liking to her and they become fast friends, deciding to take her under his wing and falling to her charms. This is Hawkins however and things are never quite as they seem...

WHOLE FIC TAGS & WARNINGS: gratuitous use of Y/N (I'm not sorry), friends to lovers, slow burn, mutual pining, eventual smut, semi-fix-it-fic, angst, injury, canon dialogue and events used, canon graphic violence, no main character death :)

Chapter Tags & Warnings: Y/N's backstory - illusions to SA and drugging but no graphic detail, trauma flashbacks, Eddie and reader have a heart-to-heart-bonding moment, Patrick gets vecna'd in the lake, mass amounts of swearing and sexual innuendo and tension, two idiots in love in hiding, insecurity, anxiety, reader has baggage, Eddie is protective.

Chapter Word Count - 6.1k

A/N - I had writer's block for a while, so another 2-month gap in uploads, sorry. apologies in advance, this chapter is incredibly dark, and you may need tissues. I had my best friend proofread the trauma flashbacks to ensure that it wasn't too much to read emotionally but still, Heavy Trigger Warning for mentions of SA.

“Wait!” Eddie stopped her before she could launch into her story, “Let’s get you off the floor first.”

Slowly and shakily rising from the floor, Eddie managed to get a still out-of-it Y/N back to the boat, carefully sitting her down. Frantic eyes checked over her constantly, looking for any signs of another attack. Her red raw bottom lip was pulled between her teeth, hands fidgeting in her lap which was bouncing rhythmically.  “Eddie, what I’m about to tell you…it’s really dark, I just…I don’t want you to think any less of me…”

“Sweetheart, there are very few things on this earth that could make me think less of you, I can handle it.” His voice had a slightly playful lilt to it, wrapping her hands in his ring-clad ones.

Y/N took a deep breath, eyes fluttering as she tried to keep her thoughts in check, “Before we moved to Hawkins - before my dad got this new job - there was an incident at my old school.” Eddie nodded as she paused, silently encouraging her to continue, letting her fiddle with his rings as she continued to speak, “I didn’t use to look or act like this…I was a preppie. I thought I had to be to survive, and I promised myself that when I started at Hawkins High, I would be myself, completely, and I’m so happy that I did because I found you and I’ve never felt more comfortable in my own skin but…what happened, it still haunts me.”

Y/N’s perfectly manicured nails tapped against the desk absentmindedly to the song in their head as the teacher at the front of the classroom talked the classroom through the imagery in one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. A note slid itself onto the wooden surface from beside her. She smirked to herself before even opening the note, knowing that it came from her boyfriend sitting beside her.

‘You still up for Saturday? Haven’t stopped thinking about what I’m gonna do to you, baby.’

Theo stifled a laugh as Y/N blanched at the words before quickly scribbling a response and passing the note back, readjusting her posture as he read the note.

‘Of course, I’m up for Saturday, but you can keep those thoughts in your head.’

‘Come on! It’ll be a laugh, I’ll be gentle.’

‘You know I want to, I really want to, but I do not want my first time to be at a party where anyone could overhear us or walk in.’

‘But that’s part of the fun baby, come on I wanna make you scream for the whole house to hear.’

‘Drop it or I’m not coming at all. You can have me all to yourself another night.’

‘Alright, jeez, loosen up a bit baby, I was just teasing.’

By Saturday night, 3 days later, unbeknownst to Y/N, Theo had told his friends all about his plans for the evening whilst not bringing it up again to her at all, acting the perfect gentleman. The party hosted by a member of the school’s popular boys, a friend of Theo’s, was in full swing by the time Y/N arrived, flouncy baby pink dress skirting her thighs sweetly. She mingled and danced and laughed, Theo’s arm slung around her shoulder, hand slowly getting closer and closer to her chest with every hour.

As the night went on, Y/N started to feel time moving slower and slower, despite having not drunk too much of anything and mostly sticking to non-alcoholic beverages. Most nights like this, she chose to be able to remember what had happened and hated the headaches that followed when she didn’t.

“Theo, can you take me somewhere to lie down? I feel dizzy…” Y/N slurred slightly, leaning on him, and feeling the rumble of his laugh in his chest. Not hearing his response, she let out a small yelp of surprise as she was suddenly guided to an upstairs bedroom, “Thank you…you’re so good to me…”

Y/N took a shaky breath before letting out a bitter laugh, “‘You’re so good to me’. What bullshit…”

Eddie was silently fuming in his seat, hating every word that spilt out of Y/N’s mouth with eyes like thunder, as she continued the story.

Waking up the next morning, Y/N blinked harshly and groaned as the sunlight hit her face. The more awake she becomes the more horrifically aware of her surroundings and exposed state of being she becomes. Memories of the previous night came flooding back to her in a daze of blurry images and incoherent phrases, making her sick to her stomach. Theo waltzed into the room wearing only sweats and a smug smirk, eyeing the powdery pastel pink of her dress discarded in a corner along with her underwear and shoes.

“Morning baby, sleep well?” The implication dripping from his voice twisted at her insides, despite the seemingly sweet words. All she could do was sit there, clutching the duvet to her exposed chest, staring at him in complete and utter betrayal and hatred.

Breathing growing heavier with rage, Y/N managed to control her emotions enough to speak somewhat calmly, “What happened last night, Theo?”

The boy in question sauntered over to the bed and perched next to Y/N on the bed, making her shuffle away in disgust. “Don’t be like that. You were practically begging me to get you in bed last night,” Everything about his being made her skin crawl, instantly feeling an intense need to scrub every trace of him off her.

“No…I wanted to sleep, I was dizzy…I don’t even know why, I barely drank,” Y/N urged, the door looking miles away from where he had caged her in on the bed.

His laugh, cocky and victorious rang in her ears, “Oh, baby…you were being so fucking uptight, I just wanted to help you relax a little,” The world around her blacked out. “God, you were so clingy, it was almost too easy. ‘Oh, Theo, you’re so good to me…make me feel so good…’”

“I- I didn’t- what did you- you didn’t, please tell me you didn’t.” Tears streamed down her face uncontrollably.

Theo groaned in frustration and rolled his eyes. “Are you really crying right now? I’ve been nothing but good to you. And I remember all those nights we talked and talked on the phone as you told me every single one of your dirty little fantasies, you’re a little freak. I know you wanted this. You asked for this.”

Y/N rocked herself back and forth slightly, her grip on Eddie’s hands vice-like; Eddie looked as though he was about to commit homicide. His mind raced with all the different ways he could hurt the person who hurt her without a single care. Breathing heavily, Eddie gulped down the growing lump in his throat, knowing that despite his rage, all his energy should be focused on the girl in front of him. He calmed his racing mind to take in her state, and almost crumbled. She was a wreck. Their eyes were frantic as she relived that memory in her mind, tears streaming freely down her face, still shaken from the panic attack and more so from the vicious words circling her head.

“I got out of there pretty fast after that.” Y/N sniffled, pushing away the painful memory, “On Monday, back at school, I tried to avoid him, but it was impossible, we shared so many classes and I ended up walking straight into him. I tried to walk away but he pulled me back, he- he told me that if I tried to tell anyone, nobody would believe me. He’d told his friends and they’d told basically the entire school, not that they needed to. Half the school had already seen me all over him at the party and jumped to their own conclusions about what happened when we disappeared. Everyone thought that I’d, like, begged him to-” She took a deep breath to calm herself, “It was torture, none of my friends would look at me the same after, and so many people talked about what they thought happened, I couldn’t escape it, so I became a recluse. Stopped talking to everyone, just went to school, did my work, tried to ignore what everyone was saying and got the hell out of there without saying goodbye when dad got offered his job here.”

“He should be in fucking jail for doing that to you. Actually, no, fuck that, he should be six feet under.” Eddie furrowed his brows, mystified by the sad tale, and wondering why or how anyone would be capable of hurting her in such a violent manner, “Why did you think that I would think any less of you?”

Y/N laughed in hysterical relief at his protectiveness and understanding, gazing at him with such adoration that he thought he might explode, before it faded into anxiety all over again, “Ever since that day, there’s been this voice in my head telling me that I deserved it. That I ruined everything, and that I’m going to keep ruining things, because I’m just some horny bitch who couldn’t keep her legs closed and made everyone hate me…” her voice came out as barely a whisper, “that I, fundamentally, don’t…deserve to be loved. That everyone is just going to use me and leave me.”

Eddie pulled her into the tightest, safest, embrace. She breathed in his scent, stronger from being in hiding but still very much Eddie, and allowed her eyes to fall shut as she nuzzled into the juncture of his neck. One of his ringed hands cradled her head as his other arm locked itself around the small of her back, his head resting on hers once more, the curtain of his hair falling over her face. Trembling hands held tightly onto him as he let her cry into his neck. Whilst his mind spun with the new information, his heart ached – wanting nothing more than to make sure that nothing like that ever happened to her again, and knowing that his own actions hadn’t made it any easier.

“After it all happened,” mumbling into Eddie’s neck, just loud enough for him to hear, she tried to further explain herself, “I didn’t report it, I was too scared, but my parents knew. They’d heard from other parents when it had circulated the school and sat me down to talk about it. Mum was pensive, but I could see on her face that she was in pain for me, despite not saying anything about it. My dad…well, our relationship has never quite been the same…I think he partially blames me for what happened, thinks I was too reckless, that I should’ve never got involved with him in the first place…he always hated Theo.”

“Anyone that could even somewhat blame you for that is just as much a douchebag as he is,” Eddie stated defensively, hands flexing as he barely stifled his temper, bumping her dad up his mental list of people he hated.

She pulled herself off his chest to look him in the eye, “You really believe that?”

Eddie stared down at her in disbelief, “Of course I do.” She smiled softly, leaning back into his touch.

Their surroundings started to phase back into reality, and quite quickly became all too aware of her own skin and the things touching it, snapping her out of her self-pity. With a sigh, she pulled herself up, and started rummaging through her backpack, stuffing a clean pair of underwear in a pocket, having packed them earlier in case a ‘you-never-know’ situation occurred, “Does Rick’s house have a shower we could use? I’d quite like to get this grime off me.”

“Uh- Y-yeah, follow me.”

Sneaking out of the shed, for fear of lurking townies, they made their way up to the house, Eddie pulling a key out of his jacket pocket. The house had a lingering herbal scent, as though it had seeped into the walls and taken up permanent residency, that made Y/N snicker slightly. Eddie strolled pretty casually through the house, knowing the floor plan with his eyes shut, and led her through to a back room where the den was, overlooking the lake, attached to a small bathroom. Opening the door for her, Eddie guided her into the small, tiled room. It wasn’t particularly new or fancy looking but it was clean enough, and towels were stacked in a tall wooden cabinet near the door that she could use.

“I’ll be quick…don’t want to be here long enough for anyone in the area to notice,” Y/N thought out loud and Eddie hummed in agreement, saying that he’d knock if they needed to make a quick escape back to the boathouse. Deciding that it’d be quicker to not wash their hair, Y/N scrubbed at her body with the generic-looking soap in the shower whilst keeping her hair as dry as possible. The warm water wasn’t quite hot enough, but got the job done and she was out of the shower in under 10 minutes, despite having spent the first few figuring out how the shower worked, trying to make it hotter and then having a little cry before actually washing.

Eddie paced the length of the den as she showered, keeping an ear out for any signs of movement around the house from potential townies. Despite the horrific things he’d seen happen to Chrissy and being in hiding for her presumed murder, the story Y/N had told him about her past was all he could think about. Why anyone, how anyone, could do that to another person? How he wished he could punch the asshole in the face, repeatedly, with iron knuckles.  How utterly terrifying it must’ve been. His head couldn’t help but also go back through every one of their conversations and encounters, searching for any sign that he had made her feel uncomfortable in any way, for any sign that she didn’t want what he wanted. But when she appeared back in front of him, skin flushed from the steam, clothes clinging to her slightly differently from the precipitation, any thoughts of doubt fled his mind. She looked at him with utmost care and respect, her body pulling itself into his personal space like gravity. 

“In different circumstances, we’d be sat on these sofas, probably high as kites, watching some stupid movie that Rick has in his collection, right now.” Y/N sighed wistfully at the thought of doing functionally nothing with him, curled up in peace and safety.

Eddie smiled, moving impossibly closer to wipe a stray water droplet from her hairline running down towards her temple, “Wouldn’t that just be perfect, considering our last movie night got ruined by this mess.”

Y/N laughed dryly. Everything she had planned for that night, flew out the window pretty fast and had been flying just out of reach ever since, feeling more and more like a pipe dream with every day that passed. “We technically have all the time in the world right now, to talk about everything but…God, it just-!” She cut herself off, frustrated with the world. “Every fibre of my being is still so confused and tired and angry about this whole fucked up situation, but all I can think about when I’m with you is you. It would be so much easier if you didn’t take up so much of my goddamn brain space.”

She collapsed face-first onto one of the old, blanket-draped, sofas and let out a muffled noise of frustration. He cautiously sat next to her, thigh by her head and arm hanging off the back of the sofa above her. “Do I really take up that much space in that pretty little head of yours?” His voice was slightly cocky and teasing but with that underlying sincerity and insecurity that had made her so infatuated so quickly, and eased her frustration somewhat.

“Yes.” She answered into the sofa, making him chuckle. She lifted her face up and out of the fabric, “Don’t laugh.”

Eddie grinned at her cheekily before it faltered, “Sweetheart, I’m honoured, truly. I don’t deserve it.”

“Shut up, yes you do Eds. If I didn’t think you deserved that time or energy I wouldn’t be here. Dumbass.” Annoyance dripped off every word, but he knew that it wasn’t malicious.

“Someone’s cranky,” She flipped him off, which he returned, a smile trying to force its way onto her face, but being stubbornly repressed. “How are you feeling, anyway?”

“Grim and still anxious, but better having showered,” she sighed pulled herself up to sit, legs touching his, right as her stomach grumbled loudly, “We should probably eat something. I brought all our favourite snacks but there’s also some leftovers from Mum in my backpack-”

Eddie’s face lit up, not saying a single word before pulling her up and dragging her back to the boathouse where her bag was. If there was one thing that Eddie had grown extremely fond of from having Y/N in his life, apart from Y/N themselves and everything they did together, it was her mum's cooking. No matter what she made, he was almost guaranteed to love it. Even the things he wasn’t so sure about he ended up loving. “I don’t know how she does it, she must have magic in some capacity to make vegetables taste good,” he had said one night after she made a veg-packed pasta dish that he knows he would’ve hated if anyone else had made it.

“Eds, ease up, you’re gonna pull my arm out the socket,” Y/N whined as she was pulled behind the man on a mission. They sat in the boathouse sharing the tub of leftovers, that were somehow still good even cold, in comfortable silence, too hungry to talk between mouthfuls. Once devoured, Y/N stuffed the empty box and cutlery back in her bag and collapsed against Eddie, trying to find a comfortable position to get some rest. Ultimately, they found themselves in an all too familiar position, her head on his chest, one of his arms curled around her back and the other behind his head, their legs tangled. Though intimate, the position was comforting and lulled them into a false sense of security. Any other time they had cuddled like this, it was in the safety of one of their rooms after a long night of studying, food, and D&D prep, whilst they listened to music and talked until it was time for the other to leave for the evening. Sometimes, they cuddled up like that under her smoking tree, stargazing deep into the night. But snuggled up in the boathouse in hiding, it meant something different to them both.

“Weirdly enough, the rocking of the boat in the water is oddly soothing…is this how babies feel in the crib?” Eddie broke their comfortable silence.

The question made her scoff into his shirt, shaking her head slightly. “You know, you come out with some right odd shit? But yeah, probably.”

He hums in acknowledgement, before asking another question, “Are you scared?”

“Terrified. You?”

He paused, deliberating how honest he should be. Of course, he was scared. The whole situation was mortifying, and what was scaring him just as much, was how much danger he had put her in. The thought of losing her, of what happened to Chrissy happening to her, made his blood run cold. She could be at home with her mother, peacefully unaware of any of this, safe and out of harm’s way. If only she had chosen another lunch table. If only she hadn’t joined Hellfire. If only she hadn’t taken over every waking thought he had. They wouldn’t be in this mess. But…

But then he would be alone in hiding, alone in his fear. With only Dustin to keep him in check and safe, from a distance. A long and very silent distance. Banished though he may be, at least he wasn’t banished alone. And there was no one he would rather be banished with than her. It was selfish of him but in that moment with her safe in his arms, being on the run wasn’t too bad.

“Not as scared as I could be right now.” His eyes closed, heartbeat picking up as the words fell from his mouth. With her head to his chest, she could feel the skip of his heart and smiled a little. Not another word was said as they drifted off to uneasy sleep.

Waking up every few hours, as noises from the woods made it hard to sleep, eventually, Y/N felt as though she had rested enough and woke up a final time to sunlight pouring in through the arch and windows. Eddie had been awake for a while, having been woken up by sounds of movement in the trees and, though nothing came of it, he couldn’t get back to sleep for much longer after that. His body ached from the wood of the boat, and the tarp hadn’t done much to help keep him warm in the early hours of the morning, but the warmth from Y/N’s body and the sound of her soft snores, as she dozed, helped to take the edge off. Pulling her closer as her eyes finally fluttered open, he gazed down at her, sunlight kissing her sleepily pouted face.

“Mornin’, sweetheart,” Eddie murmured huskily, what little sleep he had caught in his throat.

She closed her eyes again and buried her face into his chest, one hand gripping the fabric as the other played with a near curl of his hair, “Mornin’, honey.”

“Killing me here,” He groaned at the softness of her early morning state, “If this is what it’s like to wake up with you, I never want to wake up alone again.”

She laughed lightly before sitting up and feeling just how stiff she was, letting out long whines and groans as she stretched as much as she could without leaving the boat. As she stood to stretch out her legs and back properly, she thought out loud to herself “Need to pee…” before wandering to the door of the boathouse.

“Where d’you think you’re going?” Eddie questioned, tilting his head with a raised eyebrow. He had propped himself up with his arms behind him slightly, watching as she moved to the door.

She looked back at him in bewilderment, “The bathroom? Gotta go.”

“Be quick, okay? Then back here, it’s early but we can’t be too careful.”

The day was going to be long, and though they were in hiding, they still needed to be human. Luckily, she had food covered and Eddie had found a hiding spot with access to plumbing. She scampered up to the house and back as fast as she could, the adrenaline of potentially being caught had her moving inherently faster. Trying to find ways to pass the time, they spent the day slowly snacking on the supplies Y/N had brought, talking about ideas for the next campaign, discussing theories for what the others were doing – “Knowing Dustin, he’ll have gone full detective, you know, like how he is whilst trying to figure out the next move in D&D?” Y/N had suggested, causing Eddie to laugh with a strange fondness at the thought of the freshmen - and coming up with silly games to keep them occupied, deigning to go to the house only when absolutely necessary, and rarely alone. The conversation didn’t dare breach anything too heavy, already anxious enough and clinging on to any sense of normalcy between them, though the reality was creeping back in with every hour. Sleep that night was more uncomfortable from the lack of any real food, Eddie promised to check Rick's cupboards the next day before drifting off to sleep. Sounds of their stomachs grumbling pulled the pair from their slumber. Y/N reached for her nearly empty bottle of water and took a sip, savouring it before passing it to Eddie who finished it off.

“How many of these do we have left?” He asked, playing with the bottle as he watched Y/N rummage through the bags and rationing out what food was left.

She pulled out another large bottle of water from one of the bags and put it down on the workbench, “This is the last one. God, I hope the others are okay, I thought they’d at least check in to see if we’re still alive or needed more food.”

“They left a walkie for us.” The black device stood on the workbench, taunting them, “I’ll try to get a hold of them in a bit, right now I’m too hungry to care about trying.”

Digging into their breakfast of slightly stale toaster waffles, both of their minds raced, feeling as though their luck was running out. They spent most of the day like they had spent the last, only more on edge. It was past noon before they decided to venture back up to the house, needing some hot food no matter how gross it might be. Rick’s kitchen seemed to have been abandoned long before his arrest, with dust on the counters and shelves and a mostly empty fridge. Y/N jumped up to sit on the counter as Eddie rummaged through the cupboards. Watching him riffle through the abandoned kitchen made a warm domestic bubble settle in her stomach, knowing inherently that it was something she would never be tired of, holding dear all the mundane life moments she had with him, whilst she still could.

With each drawer and cupboard he opened, he muttered a small ‘nope’ to himself before finally opening the cupboard above the oven and inspecting a can, “Yeah,” he snorted, “You’ll do.”

“What are we having, chef?” Y/N watched as he pulled a saucepan from a cupboard and turned on the stove.

When the contents of the can were slowly heating, he turned to her, “A nutritious meal of spaghetti hoops. It was all I could find that wasn’t a potential biohazard.”

Once the hoops were sufficiently hot, they wandered into the living room passing the pan and spoon between them, neglecting to properly plate up the food in sheer hunger. Eddie’s agitation wasn’t fully squashed by the meal, however, “Throw me the walkie…I’ll try to get a hold of Henderson…” He fiddled with the knobs as Y/N collapsed onto the sofa with the hoops, wrapping themselves in a blanket thrown haphazardly onto the backrest. Eventually, he got it to the right channel, holding down a button to talk, “Hey, Dustin, this is Eddie the Banished. You there?”

Static. Silence.

“Dustin, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Dustin?” He tried again, getting more impatient, “Earth to Dustin.”

“Hey, it's Nancy.”

Y/N recognised the voice of Nancy Wheeler, Mike’s older sister. They had only briefly met a handful of times when it was her turn to pick up Mike from Hellfire, she never stayed for long. Only once had she actually gotten out of the car to greet Mike, and that was when he was stalling and talking to Eddie about the campaign for a little too long for her liking, practically dragging him back to the car with a silent nod at Eddie and Y/N as she went.

“Wheeler! Hey.” Eddie sighed in relief of finally getting a response, Y/N jumping up to stand with him by the door, saucepan in hand, “Um, we’re gonna need a food delivery, like, really soon, unless you want us going out into the world.”

“No.” an immediate response from Nancy, “No, no, no. Don't do that. Stay where you are, and we'll be there as soon as we can.”

“Thanks, Nancy, we were starting to get a little worried,” Y/N took the walkie, “How is everything?”

There was an almost palpable silence before they heard Nancy’s voice again, “We’ll tell you when we see you.”

The pair locked eyes, “Well that’s never a good sign.” Y/N mused, deciding not to hold down the walkie button so Nancy couldn't hear.

“Listen, um…” Eddie pinched back the radio, “Can you pick me up a six-pack?”

Y/N stared at him in exasperation for a few seconds before walking away and eating more of the now slightly cold spaghetti, flopping down on the sofa.

“I know, it's stupid as shit, drinking right now,” He said pointedly, not taking his eyes off Y/N as she stared back at him over a spoonful of hoops, “but a cold beer would really calm my jangled nerves.”

“Hey, I'm gonna have to call you back.” Nancy ignored the request, seemingly distracted by something, and they were once again met with silence.

Eddie panicked, “No, don't you da-- Wheeler? Wheeler?”

But she was gone. Eddie cursed to himself before collapsing into the space next to Y/N, and taking the saucepan from her to finish off the rest himself. “Was the beer request necessary, Eds?”

“Look, if we’re gonna be stuck here for longer than a week, I’d kinda like to spend at least some of it not sober,” Eddie grumbled into his pasta, knee bouncing. With a sigh, she slid her hand onto his restless leg to soothe him a little, allowing her head to rest on his shoulder lightly. “Although…”

“Fuck off, Munson.” She denied him, the smile ever present in her voice, making him snort a laugh.

Once back in the boat house, with the empty can of spaghetti Eddie had brought back with them, the pair resided themselves to setting up camp for the rest of the day, settling back into their hideaway routine. From the sound of things with the others, or lack thereof, Y/N slowly let it settle in her head that they might be stuck for longer than she first imagined. It had already been an exhausting couple of days, and they were both getting antsy, waiting for the shoe drop.

Sometime in the afternoon, Eddie started a little game for himself, throwing things he could find into the empty spaghetti can from increasing distances. At first, Y/N just ignored the rattling sound of the can before it became too much, and she resigned herself to join him instead. They took turns trying to beat each other at the shot, nudging the other to make them miss, bickering as they did and keeping score.

Eddie was beating her 4-2 when tires on the path to the house made them immediately stop and duck down from the window above the bench they were sitting on. Eddie, slowly peering over the edge, looked out to see if it was just Steve in the Beemer but immediately crouched back down, “I don’t think it’s Harrington.”

Shaking slightly, Y/N peeked out through the window just as a familiar unfriendly face came into view getting out of the car, and ducked back down to whisper to Eddie, “It’s Jason. And I think he brought friends.”

“Shit…shit.” As Y/N took a few deep breaths, Eddie checked on the group outside, “They’re going into the house, we might have to make a break for it.”

Y/N nodded quickly before scrambling to collect anything important as Eddie tried in a desperate attempt to contact the others, “Hey, Dustin. You there?” He took frantic glances out of the window as he spoke, “It's Eddie. You remember me, right?” His eyes locked with Y/N’s as she came to stand by him once more, essentials in pockets in case they needed to run. “Hey, if anyone's there, I really think we might be in a bit of trouble here. Okay? Wheeler?” He hit the radio hard against his hand, as he sunk back down to crouch beneath the window, “Anybody?!”

“Eds, we’ve gotta try to stay calm, too much noise and they’ll come down here,” Y/N implored and reached for his hands. He put the walkie down, brushing her hands away before pulling her into him. She whispered into his chest just loud enough for him to hear, “They might give up after searching the house and realise we’re not there…”

“Let’s hope so,” Eddie whispered back, closing his eyes, and trying to focus his panicked breathing, his arms wrapped tight around her.

The sun set as Jason and his friends searched the house, the night growing darker and colder as Eddie and Y/N huddled ever closer. Eventually, when the moon was high in the sky, his curiosity got the best of him again. Eddie peered back through the window for any more signs of movement, the glow from the lights in the house alerting him to the townies ever-persisting search. Gripping the walkie tightly, he tried the others again, the desperation and fear fuelling him, “Dustin? Please. Are… Are you there?” After being met with yet more silence, only the sounds of the water against the boat to listen to, he gave up, “Never mind.” Placing the walkie down on a bench in the wooden vessel they had been sleeping in, he rounded it and called Y/N over softly, helping her into it before clambering in himself.

Trusting him implicitly, and not wanting to leave his side, Y/N followed his lead and silently helped him unhook the boat from its mount and started to paddle out onto the lake. They barely got 30 feet into the water before they heard a call from the bank, “Hey, Freaks!” Jason had finally found them. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Fuck.” Y/N could feel her heartbeat pick up more, as Eddie scrambled to reach the engine, cursing to himself. Faintly, Y/N could hear bodies in the water, swimming over to them, as she tried to tune them out and focus on her feeble attempts to row the boat solo as Eddie argued with the boat engine, which had obviously been attached and installed by Rick himself.

No longer caring about being heard now they had been seen, Eddie tried emphatically to get it to work, emphasising each word with a pull of the starting cord, “Just come on, you piece of shit.” Weakly, the engine spluttered in response but did not roar to life the way they wanted it to, “Come on. Gotta help me out here, man. Come on. Come on, you piece of shit!” He tried harder to bring it to life, but nothing worked, “Come on! Goddamn it!” He hit the engine in defeat as Jason and his friends swam ever closer, “Nope? Okay. All right. Okay.”

Scrambling back over to the bench to help Y/N, and almost falling over in the process, he picked up an oar and joined her in rowing away from the two boys in the water, gaining on them. Together, they managed to keep distance between themselves and Jason in the water, but it didn’t stop Eddie from shouting at him to ‘stay back’ and threatening to hit him with the oar if he did start coming too close for comfort, standing up to get more leverage to swing at him.

“Come on. We almost have them,” Jason called out behind him but stopped swimming when there was no response, looking back over his shoulder, “Hey, Patrick. Patrick!”

Y/N stopped rowing and turned around to see what the kerfuffle was about, just in time to see Patrick be pulled under the dark water of the lake, seemingly by nothing. With only the moon's reflection on the lake to illuminate the water, the group could only just see each other without straining, let alone movement below the water. Gripping the oar in one hand and the leather of Eddie's jacket in the other, Y/N scanned the gentle waves of the water frantically for any sign of Patrick beneath the soft currant. But found nothing. “Eddie, it’s happening again,” Y/N curled into herself as a cold chill ran down her spine as the air grew thick with apprehension.

Jason continued to call out for his friend, getting increasingly more terrified, until suddenly Patrick's body lifted 10 feet into the air above the lake. Dropping the oar and staring up in horror at the boy’s body suspended in mid-air above them, illuminated in the moonlight, Y/N let out a terrified scream before she registered Eddie’s shouts and then a loud splash as he fell backwards into the water from the shock. “Eddie!” Y/N shouted and, in complete disregard for her safety, dove in after him. She managed to grab his arm and keep a hold of him as he flailed to try to keep afloat.

Kicking for the surface, Y/N gasped for breath, as Eddie coughed to dispel the water from his lungs nearby. As Patrick's bones started to snap, they lurched backwards in their fear and found themselves clinging to each other in the cold water. Jason cried out for his friend, as he watched in disbelief as his body contorted, suspended in mid-air above him. Patrick's body buckled and bent out of shape limb by limb as his eyes were gouged out from behind his skull, his jaw finally dislocating before her was dropped mercilessly back into the lake, with a loud splash. Dead.

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[hypezombies]

SEASON ONE POSSIBLY FORESHADOWED THE ENTIRE SHOW

I don't know if this has been talked about before, sorry if it has.

I believe the whole story was potentially foreshadowed in the first season, in the form of D&D campaigns and fireballs.

Specifically we see fireballs being mentioned three times over the course of the season:

1.In episode one when the party is playing D&D.

Will has to take action against the Demogorgon but he’s indecisive on what to do, so he asks for advice.

Lucas and Dustin have different opinions on what to do: Lucas says “fireball him!” while Dustin says “Cast protection”. The party isn’t united on what to do. Will chooses the risky option in a hurry, knowing he would have to roll thirteen or higher to win. He rolls a seven and ends up losing. 

As we already know, after that Will got transported to the Upside Down by the Demogorgon and remained stuck there for a week.

This loss marked the beginning of everything.

2. In episode five, when we see a flashback of Joyce and Will having a conversation in the kitchen.

Will is drawing the party in the middle of a fight, with Will the Wise in the front, shooting fireballs from his cane. 

The conversation between Joyce and Will goes like this:

J: What’s that shooting out of his cane?

W: Fireballs. I couldn’t find the red crayon, so that’s why it’s green.

J: If he’s so wise why does he need fireballs? Why can’t he just outsmart the bad guys?

W: Most of the time, yeah, totally. But sometimes the bad guys are smart too.

This in my opinion was foreshadowing of Vecna. 

Over the course of seasons two and three, we were able to see that the evils that were tormenting Will weren’t just some weird interdimensional animals who just wanted to feed and happened to stumble upon him, they had a plan far more complex. And in season four, Henry was revealed as the big bad guy behind everything, confirming that yes, sometimes the bad guys are smart too. 

So just like in the drawing, the party has to fight against an enemy whose intelligence is alike theirs, because Henry is human too and not some unknown entity.

3. In episode eight, after Will is back from the Upside Down and the party reunite to play D&D again. 

It’s once more Will’s turn to take action, this time against the Thessalhydra, which I believe to be a new enemy (maybe a weapon for Henry?) that will be revealed in season five and will play a big role, due to the many many times it has been hinted at. 

Will is once again indecisive on what to do and asks advice. This time Lucas and Dustin agree on what the right move is, the party is united on one decision. Will follows their advice, chooses to fireball him, rolls a thirteen and defeats the Thessalhydra, rendering the party finally victorious, after losing the previous time.

As we all know, the show focuses heavily on people coming together, whether that is to fight against evil or to find love, comfort and safety in each other. The main characters are outcasts and people who have found themselves lonely and struggling to conform and fit in throughout their lives. 

Unity, friendships and found families are core elements of the story, that’s why each season ends with everyone coming together in order to defeat the enemies.

That’s why in season four they weren’t able to succeed. Aside from not being all reunited in the same place, which isn’t necessarily the problem, many of them weren’t united emotionally either. 

Furthermore the plan they had come up with wasn’t something they had all agreed on. Two of the three groups found themselves helping from a distance without having a say on what the right thing to do was. And as we’ve seen in the D&D campaigns in season one, it is fundamental that all of them are united in the battle, physically and emotionally. All of them need to be on the same page in order to succeed. 

Let’s go back to fireballs for a moment. 

Since season one, we see fire is the optimal weapon against the Upside Down’s hive mind, and it’s used multiple times, like with flamethrowers, fireworks etc. 

In season four Nancy, Robin and Steve use Molotovs to fight against Vecna, which look a lot like fireballs.

Yet they aren’t able to defeat him, for the reasons said above and because the key is missing: Will. The one who had to take the final action in the campaigns, the one with whom everything started and the one with whom everything will come to an end.

[puppy-steve]

you know what im really missing this morning? june 2022 when we were all still in pre-vol 2 bliss

[lostdemidog]

DAILY WRITING PROMPT

You are in love with your best friend, but she has no clue. You have suffered in silence as you have watched her fall for the wrong guys over and over again. Graduation is coming up, and you are running out of time to tell her how you feel. Will she finally see that it should have been you all along, or will she break your heart forever?

you’re joking. - eddie munson x reader

MASTERLIST pairing: eddie munson x f!reader (a/n): requests are open! honestly just enjoy the ride. if you like this i’ll throw in a NSFW part two. CW: weed, smoking, suggestive content toward the end. all notes are appreciated. words: 1.5k

Since we came to this hellscape we call Hawkins High School, Eddie's life has been loveless regarding human-to-human attraction. He was utterly zoned in, drawn into his passion for Dungeons and Dragons that he had no time for anyone. 

That is until he saw her.

There was something he found mesmerizing about how she presented herself. Her outfits, her hip sway when she walks, how she tilts her head back when she laughs, and how she grins at him across the lunchroom when he's staring with a sly grin. It had his heart dancing around in circles. And she had no problem talking to him while other people threw labels on him. Weirdly enough, she motivated him to do better in his classes, though the efforts were to no avail, and his grades still hammered into the ground. It's the thought that counts. 

It wasn't that he was particularly nervous around her, more so that he didn't see the appeal of approaching her. If she returned any feelings, then she could be the one to make a move. That is until graduation grew closer and closer.

They were seniors. The likelihood they'd talk once they graduated was thin, and he needed to make his move as soon as possible. Those idle chitchats and this mutuality of loveless chatter they've developed won't work. Not for him, and little does he know it won't work for her, either.

That's when he makes his move.

Lunch had come around, and she was sitting with her friends, grinning at one of them as they held an open conversation that was easily forgettable and only filled the quiet air to refrain from awkwardness. Suddenly, one of her friends speaks up in a mild panic.

"Shit! Freak alert!" They whisper, her eyes glancing to the side where Eddie strides toward their table. Honestly, she can't hold back her grin as he pushes his way between the two jocks in front of her. "You got a problem, Munson? What's your fuckin deal, freak!" Eddie ignores them with a sly Cheshire Cat-like smile, sitting between the group who glare him down but seem unnerved and afraid to act on their frustrations.

"(Y/N)," Eddie greets, resulting in her raising her brow as she watches him take a fry from one of the lunch trays, popping it into his mouth, ignoring his bothersome protests. He chuckles, then slams his hands on the table, leaning forward in her face. "Come over? After school?" his voice is a bit more hushed. His brows raise momentarily in a suggestive tone, making her laugh.

"Alright, freak," she bites back, leaning in as well, the tension between them prominent. It takes everything out of her not to glance at Eddie's lips. "Why not? See ya soon." Eddie bounces on his heels, laughing as he moves away and jumps over the seat he was previously placed in, seeming giddy and cheerful.

"You won't regret it!" he shouts, taking his lower lip between his teeth as he bounds off to his table. She playfully rolls her eyes, cheeks growing rosy as her friends complain and try to change her mind, which she ignores. It's something she's grown accustomed to, blocking out these annoyingly judgmental pricks she forces herself to be surrounded by.

After long agonizing hours of classes and pointless conversation, the final bell rang to dismiss those inside this prison. It was a few minutes walk to Eddie's place, but he'd offered her a ride. Pulling up in his run-down smogging van, he halts to an intense stop, almost hitting her.

"Get in!" Eddie shouts, loud music blasting from his van. She laughs, throwing her bag through the window, then opening the passenger door, hopping inside, and slamming the door. She barely gets time to react as he hits the gas with full force and try jerk forward. The song that's playing is one she actually recognizes.

"Wild Child?" She shouts over the loud music, Eddie looking over to her and cackling with pure joy that she knows what he is playing. He hits the steering wheel to the drum beat as he drives, nodding his upper body to the guitar riff.

"Cultured are we, prep?" Eddie laughs, raising a brow at her as the words pick back up after the bass. He sings with no shame to the tune, the thrill of it all making her cheeks redden as she sings with him, murmuring the words she doesn't know. Eddie then reaches over and opens the glove box, album discs inside. "Go on, look through." He grins, giving her a nudge with his hand on her arm. Per his request, she looks through the different albums with curiosity. Then, she finds one labeled Iron Maiden, popping out the W.A.S.P. disc and slipping in this one. It takes a moment to register, but then The Trooper blasts in her ears, Eddie looking at her with a laugh and shaking his steering wheel. "Fuck yeah!"

It goes on like this for a good few minutes, though it gradually calms as he pulls up to his trailer, stopping his van with a rev of his engine, key clicking as he slips out of the vehicle, grabbing her bag and beelining to the door, opening the door with an excruciatingly extra bow.

"After you, m'lady," he says in a low voice, making her gently push his head with a chuckle, walking inside. The smell of cigarettes, weed, and last night's dinner hit her in a wave. She isn't repulsed, merely mildly surprised by such a new scent. Eddie tosses their bags to the floor, sighing softly. The question he asks next is so abrupt it almost makes her gasp audibly. "You smoke? Weed?" his voice is curious as he stalks to his bedroom, urging her to follow.

"Once, it was at a party," she laughs awkwardly, making him turn his head over his shoulder and look at her. She can't help but notice his beautiful curls and large puppy-dog eyes. Something about him charmed her despite his quirks, and she didn't fight back the grin as he grabbed a box, pulled out a joint, and kicked off his shoes, flopping onto his bed and lighting it with a cheeky grin. Eddie pats the empty area beside him, stretching like a lazed cat. Hesitantly, she follows and sits across from him.

"You know, Teddy," she starts, Eddie's eyes widening. "I'm curious. Why did you invite me?" she cocks her head to the side, Eddie biting back a sly and devious smile.

"Oh, no reason, just to kill you," he says casually, watching her face contort into confusion. He scans her face carefully, a pink tent coming to his face as he takes a drag from the roll, holding the smoke in his mouth before he speaks. "Chill, I'm joking." his reassurance is abrupt and monotone, but he obviously is sincere. 

Well, as open as Eddie Munson can get.

"No, I was just hoping we could talk about sum' is all," he starts, eyes glancing away. He wasn't ready to talk about it yet, but he dug into this hole; he had to explain. "Look. I'm gonna lay this out as clearly as I can." Eddie inhales a deep breath of smoke, looking into her eyes and then coughing out the smoke. "Fuck!" he balls his hand into a fist over his mouth, trying to catch his breath. "I'm not high enough for this..."

Eddie's eyes meet hers again when he surfaces, concern and confusion prominent on her features. Eddie's gaze softens for the first time, and a genuinely gentle smile comes to his lips as he stares at her beauty. "I like you," his words are abrupt as he sits up, keeping eye contact. She laughs at first, taking it as one of his jokes, but realizing quickly he means his words. Her eyes widen, and she blinks a few times as if he'd disappear if she did it enough.

"You're serious?" she suddenly asks, brows furrowed. Eddie seems anxious for the first time in a while, his breath hitching briefly.

"Absolutely," he affirms, making her cheeks redden. Obviously, she's surprised, but then she speaks up before he can make a joke to cover this.

"THE Eddie Munson likes M.E.?" she laughs, dragging her hands down her face. "Holy shit!" Eddie seems confused now, but she moves forward, placing her hand on his free one. "You don't know how fuckin' long I've waited to hear that, freak." her tone is soft, eyes glossy with affections held back for ages. Then, before he can react, she moves in and kisses him. Hesitation washes over him at first, but then he wraps his free hand around her waist, tugging her unto his lap. A soft groan escapes his lips, the kiss deepening with long-awaited passions. Her tongue traces his bottom lip, but he pulls back.

"Wait a minute, sweetheart," he chuckles, biting her lip playfully. Then, he draws in a large puff of smoke, moving in and kissing her with the same passion as before. The smoke dances between their lips, his tongue tangoing with hers as his hand trails down her pants, grabbing her ass, loving how his fingers seep into the skin.

They were surely going to make this a night to remember.

[blenderenvy]

I one hundred percent ship byler, i love them so much and i trust the actors are doing their part but sometimes i worry that we the audience are putting to much trust into the duffer brothers.

When i look at the way robin is written in season three when she seems to be a available love intest for Steve (deeply intelligent, snarky, and extremely witty) vs season 4 when she's just a quirky lesbian best friend (more dumb and useless lesbian vibe). I worry that her queerness was used by the writers as a total personality change. I love Robin, don't get me wrong but the moment she was made clear as a lesbian he whole characterization changed.

And i worry that the Duffers wont treat Wills arc with the respect he deserves. I worry that mikes character will get watered down, that the nuance of queer repression through youth in a homophobic household won't get the coverage we want it to. I worry that there will be minimal build up and then the get together in the final episode without so much as a kiss, like so many shows before it. That the scene will be gauge and ambiguous with a "i love you" and hand hold.

I want byler to happen, but I've been let down before.

[courferre-stan]

Hey y’all! Wanted to put a post out, but if anyone is interested in commissioning a screen-accurate Eddie Munson battle vest from me, I’m totally open to making them! I had a lot of fun making my own last summer and wanted to extend the offer out for any cosplayers who don’t have the time or energy to make one themselves! I would be charging, as this would cost me money out of pocket for the supplies, but I’m open to negotiating prices. DM me if you’re interested, and even if you aren’t a cosplayer, but simply want one, don’t hesitate to reach out!

For reference, this is my vest:

[ryan-waddell11]

The same pictures strike again

[queenimmadolla]

a little something from the vault. enjoy a little dad!eddie munson x mom!reader and their baby who knows her parents aren’t slick. from the pennyverse, of course. hope you like it :) ♡

You’re peaking your head out of the small kitchen, watching with a fond smile and a full heart as Eddie stretches out on the couch. In his arms, resting on his chest, is your angel of a baby girl. A few months old and developing a funny little personality. That personality does not enjoy napping. 

Penny’s got an extreme case of FOMO; can’t shut those big beautiful, brown eyes of hers if anyone else is awake or existing without her. Hence why your husband is pretending to sleep, though his hand maintains a steady patting rhythm on the baby’s back.

You can tell Penny is tired, rubbing her face with her balled up hands and into Eddie’s shirt out of frustration. Her curls all mussed up from the displays of agitation and from her dad’s fingers combing through the soft tufts over and over again (he can’t help himself, she’s much too cute and her hair is ridiculously soft). After every single little wiggle she does to fight off sleep, she goes real still and cranes her head up to stare at Eddie, who immediately drops his head back onto the pillow, eyelids flying shut. 

Eddie even adds in a few loud, cartoon snores and memememes which have you fighting to control your giggles.

Penny’s stare is unwavering though and you can’t prove it, but you’re positive that even as a baby—she does not trust either you or Eddie to actually be sleeping while putting her down for her naps (you’ve caved a few times—it wasn’t your fault though, whenever you tried the fake sleeping bit, she’d cry to purposely ‘wake’ you up).

Her stare lasts a few moments longer and you can see the twitch of Eddie’s lips, he’s fighting not to smile. Luck is on his side, Penny’s head lulls and then shakes as she once more tries to keep sleep at bay, rubbing her cute little face and those chubby cheeks into her daddy’s shirt.

Eddie makes the mistake of peaking an eye open too early—Penny stills and her head snaps up to catch him and you don’t bother to hide your laugh at his groan as she begins to whimper, having caught on to her daddy’s trick.

“Shhh, sweet pea, please. Close those pretty eyes.” He begs, fingers gently stroking over Penny’s eyelids to close them, and Eddie holds his fingers in place, hoping when he retracts them, her lids will stay closed.

Her eyes snap open the moment he pulls his fingers away and Eddie repeats the gesture, gently dragging her eyelids closed again as she whimpers, “No, you keep those watery eyes closed and to yourself, young lady.”

It’s an empty threat, Eddie’s already readjusting her as he sits up, shooting you a playful glare as he spots you. His next sentence is still directed at the baby in his arms, “You can’t keep getting away with this.”

Penny just whimpers and whines louder as she becomes more fussy, wiggling in her dad’s arms.

“Oh, yeah. You’re not getting out of this one, you are in desperate need of a na-AAHHH! AHHH! HELP! HELP!” Eddie yelps as Penny grasps onto his hair, pulling it with all her might. She can’t even crawl yet, and somehow, she’s got the strength of Hercules in that chunky, dimpled little fist. Eddie’s head is yanked to the side and he’s positive some of his hair will remain in her fist after he gets her to release him.

“Ow, ow—little help here, baby!” He calls out to you and you’re laughing the entire time as you pad over, taking her wrist into one hand as you gently pry her little fingers open. It’s a bit of a challenge, you get one little piggy to release its ironhold, and the moment you move onto the next, she clenches it back into place. 

When you’re down to her pinky, Penny immediately lunges for the curls dangling over Eddie’s other shoulder, and he doesn't grab her other wrist quick enough to stop her, “OH MY GOD, YOU CUTE LITTLE DEMON! Stop it! Release me at once!”

“Hey—she was part of your sperm count.” You can’t stop giggling and Eddie doesn’t look all that amused as he winces when Penny gives a particularly harsh tug on the hair in her other fist, still whimpering.

“I’m acutely aware—ow—that’s why I called her a cute demon—ahah, get it?—OW. Insider knowledge—ow! Okay, that’s it. You are taking this nap whether you like it or not now, you’ve just made this personal.”

[thewolffearsher]

Get To Know Me: Characters I hated until I rewatched the show [2/?] Mike Wheeler

“I asked if you wanted to be my friend. And you said yes. You said yes. It was the best thing I’ve ever done.”

[foreverautumn89]

Baby Pumpkin [5/?]

She will stamp her feet at Steve when he doesn't give her what she wants like another banana or a treat after she already had one and Steve will try to get her forgiveness by petting her and apologizing and Jonathan smiles at Steve adoringly while Steve does this.

Random strangers are not allowed to pet and hold baby pumpkin. She is scared of them. Besides Steve and Jonathan and Nancy, the kids are usually the only ones that can hold and pet baby pumpkin. She loves the kids. Will and El often hold her and carry her around when Jonathan and Steve are occupied like when they're making dinner for them and the kids for example.

[eddiephobic]

EDDIE MUNSON BTS