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powderblueblood · 6 months ago

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

CHAPTER ELEVEN — ALL TOMORROW'S KEGGERS

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summary: after you visit an old stomping ground to pad out your college resume and eddie agonizes about the what of what are you, you both return to the place where all this mess began--a classic harrington rager. content warnings: written in the immersive second person (you/yours), oc has a name, background and she/her pronouns but no physical descriptions. era typical misogyny, homophobia, general bad bitch scheming. mentions of drug dealing, sexual situations and strong language. minors fuck off. word count: 8.7k

Dear reader,

A while ago, I mentioned that thing that Joan Didion said about staying on nodding terms with the people we used to be.

Lucky for me and my once-fervent need to be inviolable from all angles, I have a couple of versions of Lacy I can choose from.

Depends on what I need from her.

The hot sprawl of the community hall drags your sense memory kicking and screaming back to age sixteen.

Scarlet nails tugged a rough line through your scalp, elevating your hair so high it might as well apply for zoning permission. An acrid blast of Aquanet settled right in your bottom lashes. Your mother loomed over your shoulder in the mirror, her cigarette ashing into some poor bitch’s retainer case.

“The way they run these things nowadays… it’s a disgrace,” she tutted, but not to you, “These girls are animals.”

That’s gotta be a fucking fire hazard, right?

“Well, if Lacy’s an animal,” a flame haired Ann Perkins guffawed, yanking a backcombed rat of your hair upwards—ow, “she’s a goddamn gazelle, Glory.”

“First kill?” You didn’t miss the smugness curling around her Elizabeth Arden lips, hunching your body glittered arms inward.

“No—god, no, I just mean with how graceful she is. My Carol, bless her heart, she’s got the coordination of her father after a slab of Old Milwaukee. You remember I told you about trying to teach her baton?”

“She sent it flying through the neighbour’s windshield,” you giggled fondly, recalling Carol telling you how much of a stupid cooze her mom was for trying to teach her in the first place. ‘Throwing some stick around—who does she think I am, Lassie?’

“Don’t smile,” your mom slapped your shoulder sharply, “It’ll smudge your gloss.”

You scrubbed it off in the bathroom moments later, reapplying a layer of scarlet lacquer you knew she’d call whorish. Too late.

Knocking back a swig of Diet Coke and two rainbow pills, you took the stage to claim runner up in the Hawkins division of the American Teen Princess pageant, meeting Gloriana’s seething scowl from the audience with your own Vaselined failure of a smile.

The lipstick had lost you the crown, of course. That was the winning theory. ‘If you’d have just done what I told you…’

The chemical sting of Aquanet still hurts your eyes, but you’re not the target this time.

See, a portfolio of writing is one thing, but the other thing that college applications generally look for is community participation. Volunteer work. Charity grubbing. And gracing Eddie Munson’s lunch table with your occasional presence apparently doesn’t count.

Just kidding. Kind of.

Point is, you needed something quick and dirty, yet passably prestigious, with people who would bend to your will. And there’s no one more malleable than insecure high school girls competing in a beauty pageant in small town Indiana.

“Now, Lacy, we are delighted to have you here helping out,” says Claudia Henderson, a one time multi-title holder (just short of Miss America apparently—‘But then they stopped giving homely girls a pass; poor Claudia never stood a chance,’ your mom had told you) and the kind of kindly woman that loves to clutch your arm while you walk.

Ordinarily, you’d be repulsed by such a gesture but you’re desperate.

Before you get a chance to gush falsely, tell her how grateful you are for the opportunity, Claudia cuts you off.

“But I do hope that this isn’t some covert effort by your mother to get back in our good books—because, golly, well, that bridge is burned!”

Of course. Your mom had attempted to sabotage Tammy Thompson’s performance portion by mixing a laxative into her milkshake, because a shit show like that would make your little poetry reading look positively Carnegie worthy. But she hadn’t covered her tracks well enough and got sniffed out by the pageant committee. So had Tammy, poor thing. Horrible day to wear white chiffon.

Incredible that it was that they were still hung up on, and not the… everything else you and your family had going on. You do a decent impression of cringing, looking at Claudia with mournful eyes.

“Claudia, I swear, this is all me,” you assure her, “The time I spent doing pageant prep was just so formative—I think I would’ve been a lot worse off facing, well, certain challenges without it. I’d really like the chance to give that back to the girls.”

Admittedly, your hours spent in front of the mirror training your face to look earnest for the interview portion hadn’t gone to waste on the stand during your father’s trial.

“That is just incredible to hear, sweetie. And between you and I, you’re really saving our keisters because the girl we had helping our hopefuls out with speech prep dropped out last minute!”

That’d be the current debate team captain, Kate something-or-other. She was easy enough to take out—posing as a concerned member of the local Christian youth group, you’d placed a call to her ultra-conservative parents about her hanging out with Billy Hargrove. Which was total bullshit, of course. Billy wouldn’t approach an ex-or-current band geek with a hazmat suit on. A shame, really. The band kids were the only niche that could rival Billy’s baseless horniness. His dream girl could be hanging out behind a trombone someplace, squeezing her knees together.

Anyway, did you feel great about selling Kate out like that? Honestly, you didn’t care about it too much one way or another. The maneuvre felt very classic Lacy, which was in part a little shameful and in part incredibly satisfying to know that, when it comes to manipulation, you’re still batting at a professional level.

Claudia wheels you and your elbow around the room, the oxygen thick with sweat and body spray and pageant application forms. A couple of the would-be queens catch your eye–homely girls, as your mother would call them, who were duped into their well-meaning parentals or sisters or guidance counselors into thinking that doing the pageant was a great way to make friends. A boost to their self esteem. A chance to really show the town what they’re made of!

Someone should tell them to run, but it’s not gonna be you.

“Oh, Lacy!” Claudia suddenly half-shrieks, halting you with a sharp tug, “Meet my special little guy! This is Dustin, he goes to Hawkins Middle. I like to bring him around to meet the girls so he learns how to treat a lady. It’s so important for boys, don’t you think?”

Yeah, start the little lotharios young. You tilt your chin in acknowledgment of the kid, who squints at you from under the rim of a ball cap. Claudia’s attention is diverted by some other poor bastard helping to organize this dog and pony show, but she keeps her hand firmly on your elbow. It’s starting to feel a little like you’re being led around the prison yard. You attempt a tight smile at her son, who’s still looking you up and down.

“Hey, I know you!” he barks– seems like lack of volume control runs in the family, “You’re Nancy’s friend. You slept over at the weekend. I’m Mike’s friend? I ate the green peppers off your pizza slice…? Not ringin’ any bells? Really?”

“Oh, right,” you lie, having no recollection of ever meeting this child, “Pleasure, sure.”

The way he’s surveying you is a little much. “So, what was up with that guy?” he asks you, tone dropping conspiratorially. You don’t know why, but you feel like middle schoolers shouldn’t be able to do that.

“Excuse me?”

“Me and the guys saw some scary dude climbing out of Nancy’s window. Is he–”

What’s up with kids and just having to say any old thing? What happened to being seen and not heard? What happened to being intimidated by your high school elders? If his mother wasn’t standing right next to you, you’d flip that little propeller cap off his head and tell him to go fetch.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The kid cocks his head to the side. “Positive? Because it sure looked like–”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. –Justin, wow, you’re such a card, ha ha ha,” you slip your arm out of Claudia’s as subtly as a woman breaking into a cold sweat can, “Claudia, I’ve got to dash unfortunately, but you’ve got my number! Let me know when I can come and meet with the girls, won’t you? I’m so excited.”

You’re so absolutely fucking not.

Footsteps burn a hot trail through that creaking hall, not quite avoiding a couple of stares as you flit past. Of course, since Ray’s great return brought a whole new batch of grist for the Hawkins’ rumor mill, you’d been subject to more whispers than usual. Any move you made was in some way looped back to either groveling for the town’s forgiveness, assuming your father’s criminal crown, or generally being a case for pity or ridicule. Sometimes both, if people were really creative. Stood to reason that the only person you want to see is someone who’s lived with notoriety like that for most of their life.

Ivana has parked across two spots in front of the community hall, her green Buick gleaming under an unseasonable glare of sunlight. It’s still far too cold to have the top down like she does but she does and she sits bundled in the front seat. A leopard print fur coat, a cigarette, a pair of sunglasses perched in her platinum beehive.

“Christ, girlie, I thought they’d tied you to the stake in there.”

“My escape was narrow, as always,” you smirk, sliding into the passenger seat and tugging your own coat around you a little tighter. “What’s up with the exposure?”

“Feeling the wind whip your face is good for you, especially when you spend most of the day craned over books like you do.”

“This coming from the owner of the biggest bookstore in town.”

“Only,” Ivana corrects you, as she so often does, “Only bookstore in town. You saw what happened when B. Dalton tried to muscle in on my territory.”

“You admitting to knowing something about that mall’s fiery end, Ivana?” Horseshit bombs and the Russian mafia come to mind, but Ivana just cackles loudly and tears out of the parking lot at breakneck speed.

The frigid sting of wind on your face does feel fantastic, you have to hand it to her. Resetting your base temperature from boiling, where it’s rocketed between school and home and Eddie and everything. Much as it’s thrilling, exploring this new aspect of your… dynamic with him, on top of everything else, it’s a lot.

You’re not quite ready to classify your feelings about Eddie without your chest feeling like it’s going to cave in. Every other conversation winds up with your hands all over each other, clumsy in the communication of your unrepressed passion. And it is great, don’t let yourself be misunderstood, you crave it when it’s not happening, and boy do you beat yourself up when you stop it from going all the way but…

The tape keeps getting tangled. Like you’re playing the right song at the wrong part of the movie. It keeps coming out warped and rushed, and you keep feeling like somebody is watching you two.

You two don’t belong shoved into clandestine corners, making out on the sly. You’d been hiding the things that you care about in places like that your whole life. Your books and records under your bed, your clothes in the back of your walk-in wardrobe. Your thoughts in your journal. Your real face from your fake friends.

Eddie’s like a great, flowering plant that has spread his curling vines into every facet of your life, taking root right at the center.

He may not know it, he may be playing the part of being very understanding but he demands light and care. And dirt.

It scares you.

But that tearing breeze settles your nerves, and those are rarely settled around Ivana herself. She has a preternatural way about her. She knows just when to step out of the shadows and twist fate so your path gets a refresh. First, your job at the Bookstore. Now, letting you into her inner sanctum.

Brambles clatter against the green paintwork of the car as you careen down a backroad off of Holland. Gravel sprays as Ivana hauls you up her drive and you catch a fresh smell– to your immediate right, you’re looking out on the still, chilled expanse of Lover’s Lake. You breathe in that post-winter thaw, curling your wistful hands over the passenger side door and she seems to notice.

“Hell of a view, right?”

The slam of Ivana hip-checking her car door closed is the loudest sound out here.

“Peaceful,” you remark, following her up the sagging wooden porch. Another look over your shoulder. You were used to seeing Lover’s Lake from another part of the embankment, usually crowded with cars and beer coolers, bodies in bathing suits baying for attention. You’d been one once, trying desperately to look comfortable in your sweltering skin only to sneak off and take shelter in Main Street Vinyl.

The frigid water seemed more inviting right now.

Another house, this total slouch of a place, stares right at you from across the lake.

“Nice neighbors?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Ivana says, shoving the ancient front door open.

Following her inside, you have to suppress a gasp.

Ivana’s house is no mansion, but the way she’s filled it makes it feel like one. Under vaulted ceilings, everything seems to be cast in a rich, aquatic shadow. Tendrils of greenery embrace each corner and even hang from the ceilings. Threadbare rugs of once-moneyed origin muffle you underfoot. Chairs of velvet sag and every single goddamned surface is covered in tchotchkes, magazines, scarves, photographs. Even the Steiner piano. You catch a glimpse of the pictures in gilded frames as you slowly follow Ivana toward the back of the house–Ivana with equally glamorous looking friends, dancing at what you’re sure is Studio 54. Ivana standing next to Andy Warhol, a disgruntled looking Norman Mailer lingering in the background of the shot. Ivana on her wedding day. And second wedding day. And third wedding day.

Your chest throbs furiously.

You hear Ivana creek up the stairs and you’re not quite sure what the proper procedure is here– do you follow her? Would she push you back down the stairs if you tried such a thing? She’s always seemed like the type. Fiercely private. Only sharing the tiniest tidbits of this rich meal of a life she lived before she came back to Hawkins.

“Come on, girlie. I ain’t got all day.”

You take your opportunity and scarper up the stairs behind her. Eyes flit over even more photographs as you ascend, a smile of disbelief crossing your lips at the sawn-off shotgun mounted on her wall. Like she’s Annie Oakley or somebody. She could be. It’s evident to you now that Ivana has been just about everyone there is to be. It ought to intimidate you, really, bearing witness to someone who’s so successfully lived life before you’ve even begun to, but it doesn’t. The closeness, clutteredness, coziness of this house lulls you into a funny kind of serenity.

“I just don’t get you, Ivana,” you say, not entirely wanting to catch her in earshot as you float into her bedroom. Dark and plush, like everything else. A light comes on in her overstuffed closet.

“What’s that s’posed to mean?” Of course, she hears everything.

You approach the heaving wardrobe, hands running along silk, chiffon, velvet. Broderie, brocade, lace.

“How the hell do you go from having a full life like this,” you grip the sleeve of what could be one of Ivana’s three wedding dresses, “and end up back in East Jesus, Indiana? I mean you’ve–you’ve been everywhere. You’ve done everything. How can you stand it here?”

Ivana tilts her head at you from where she sits on the ottoman at the end of her bed. Canopy, naturally. She looks at you as if really taking you in for the first time. You shift a little, from one foot to the other. It doesn’t feel probing and accusatory, not like how your mother looks at you. More like she’s reading your palm.

“I wanted to come home,” she says, simply. “Had my fill. Got tired. Wanted to remember what fresh air felt like, and realized I preferred it to car horns.”

“But why not, like… upstate New York? Somewhere actually scenic and peaceful, why Hawkins, Indiana?”

“I wanted to come home, I said. Now,” she gestures to the masses of clothes, “You’ve got ten minutes. One outfit. Dig.”

—

“This is, like, beat for beat my worst fucking nightmare, I want you to know that.”

“You know what, shoot me down but I think you wanna go to this–I think you’re getting nervous because of how excited you are!”

Ronnie Ecker aims a finger gun right between Eddie’s eyes. “Name yourself, body snatcher. Who the fuck are you and what have you done with my best friend.”

She’s got him point blank on that one. He’s acting a little out of sorts–but, in his defense, he’s having, as Rick Lipton might call it, a total wig out. Eddie’s been invited to Steve Harrington’s kegger under absolutely no pretense (but he’s bringing a pocketful of drugs anyway, of course). Eddie’s going to see the (ex) most popular girl in school there, which’d be you.

And Dio willing, you two are gonna disappear into some side room where he’s gonna trace his leaking cock against every inch of your silky, perfumed skin while you hiss his name into the air like it’s the only word you deem worthy enough to speak.

It’s fine. It’s cool. It’s casual.

Eddie tries to shake that thought right out his head under the guise of turning to the mirror and fixing his hair. Fingertips raking into the waves, an attempt to make ‘em look less… or more… he’s got no idea. He’s got no earthly idea. So he huffs.

“What have I got to be excited about?!” Ronnie sighs dramatically, thunking herself into the nearby armchair in Eddie’s room that’s covered in clothes–outfits he’s tried on, like a different jeans-and-t-shirt combination will actually make a difference. “Don’t pretend like I’m not hauling ass to the first party of my high school career so I can be, like, a freak diversion while you two sneak off and–”

Amazing how Eddie’s managed to keep this secret from Ronnie for this long, but she’s got it pretty much sniffed out anyway.

“No clue what you’re talkin’ about.”

“You, Eddie Munson, you’re gonna stand there, preening yourself in the mirror like a fuckin’ peacock telling me the eye contact you two have been making with each other since you ‘made up’ has been completely Christian-minded? Smell test certified?” Ronnie spits. “I just got into New York University, you little bitch! I cannot be fooled! You boinked and it’s scrawled all over your face in her lipstick!”

“Dude, do not say boinked–”

“You’ve greeted her carnally!”

“--who are we, Sam and Diane?”

“If everybody knows your name, man!”

Look, here’s the thing.

You and Eddie have been making out heavy, stolen moments in crooks like the newspaper room after hours, under the bleachers, the decommissioned bathroom, the driver’s seat of Eddie’s van, grinding it out harder than a couple of drumline dorkos from band which has led to Eddie wrecking a couple pairs of boxers a lot sooner than he’d like to. (Which you hadn’t laughed at him about–you’d liked it. It was so fucking hot that you liked it that just the thought of you liking it makes his breath snag if he thinks about it too hard.)

But. Skin-to-skin contact has been… frustratingly minimal, since that night in your bedroom.

See, it’s like, you get there. Eddie’s lips are edging south of your collarbone, his fingers digging into the flush of your tits through your bra and something snaps in you. You go from rolling those rapturous hips into him (god, fuck, don’t–) to tensing right up, looking over your shoulder, expecting to see a door creaking open.

Fear freezing the edges of your features, even if your touch is still hot on him.

“We should–” “... yeah. Yeah. Of course, Lace.” Eddie’s trying really hard not to be an asshole. But it’s hard when… you’re hard. And you, you get him fucking full mouth salivating, forged in the flames of Mount Doom hard. Those tight little skirts you wear are so much more enticing now that he knows what the heavenly enclave feels like underneath them.

Bu-ut.

Your paranoia is working overtime.

Your paranoia is making his paranoia work overtime.

Because, what if after all your dancing around each other, you don’t actually want him and you’ve got no idea how to let him down gently?

Which, Eddie reassures himself, does not track for you. It’d be pretty damn easy to think that your edges have softened with the events of the past couple months, but he’s had a front row seat to how you’ve shed your old edges to reveal different, weirder, more jagged edges. Edges he’s had a pleasure acquainting himself with. You’d have no problem telling him to take a short walk off Sattler’s Quarry if you wanted to.

Eddie adores that about you, the poor sucker.

Anyway, Ronnie Ecker. Dead to rights. Like always.

“If I tell you…” comes the measured grit through his teeth. “... you have to swear, Ronnie, I’m so goddamn serious–”

She hitches forward in her seat, eyes blazing. “Dude. Scouts. Whatever.”

Eddie’s shoulders drop and it all comes out in one big exhale as his rings drag down his cheeks, “GoodbecauseI’vebeenwantingtotellyousobadohmyGOD. Like, oh my god.”

“So full pen or–”

“Be a gentleman, Ecker, Jesus! But yeah, home fuckin’ run.”

“Good?”

His eyes careen back in his skull and he pitches his palms out like a Pentecostal preacher. “Words… evade. Infernal choirs sang. I left a part of my soul in her–”

“Nope, too much!” Ronnie blanches, waving her hands in the air.

“Okay, okay, okay, but Ronnie– you can’t say shit to her. Promise me.”

“Why? We’re friends too, unless you conveniently forgot again.”

“No, I know that, I just–” Eddie swallows, fingers steepled in front of his mouth. His voice comes out small. “I don’t wanna scare her off. She’s fragile.

“She’s fragile? We’re talking about the same Lacy Doevski here, right?”

“Right, the one whose dad just got out of lockup. Fra-gee-lay,” Eddie emphasizes, notes of Old Man Parker, “It’s just… easier like this, right now.”

“Well… is easy what you want?” Trust Ronnie to come through with a gut punch out of left field.

Eddie’s mouth bobs open to fish out some bullshit answer, but not until his bedroom door flies open.

“Goddamn, kid, you gotta get the maid in here.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Al Munson props his hip against the doorframe, sucking all the air from the room. He looks better than the last time Eddie saw him, at least, not like he’s three days cokebent and clammy. More like he went someplace and got a shave.

“If you really didn’t want me comin’ round, you’d tell your uncle to start lockin’ the door. Now, you got something belonging to me– that Stooges shirt, where’s it at?”

A hot line of panic flares up the back of Eddie’s neck. Stooges shirt, darkened on the shoulders from droplets from your wet hair. Stretched over–

“I’unno what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Yes, you do, Eddie,” his dad says, crossing the bedroom’s threshold. Al’s got springs under the balls of his feet, moving with that irritatingly happy-go-lucky effeteness. “It’s my lucky shirt! I need that thing–”

“Hasn’t done you a whole lotta good so far, Allen,” Ronnie mumbles from where she’s bunched up on the armchair.

“Ronnie,” Al’s eyes narrow; they’ve never liked each other because Ronnie’s too goddamn smart for her own good and therefore uncharmable, “How’zabout that for a breath of stale air. Get up a sec, would’ja?”

“C’mon, we’ve gotta go anyway.” Eddie jerks his head toward the door and Ronnie scuttles out ahead of him. He pauses for a breath, watching his dad rifle through the rejected shirts slung over the armchair. “There’s nothing in here worth stealing, by the way. Just in case things have gone so far south already that you’re diggin’ in people’s pockets for spare change.”

Those cut-and-paste Munson eyes survey Eddie and he feels his fist flex. Al’s been a loose cannon lately.

“Big night?”

“Party.” He should know what that means.

“Well, Ed,” Al closes a few steps between them, and Eddie resists the urge to back up. Or wind up. His voice drops so that Ronnie doesn’t catch it. “When you’re ready to graduate from sellin’ ten spots at parties, you let me know. We got something prestigious brewing. Could be the makin’ of you.”

Eddie can’t help but laugh, mirthful from his back molars. “Graduation’s a little ways off for me, Dad.”

He catches up with a tutting Ronnie, slamming the front door behind him and heading for the van.

“Seriously, dude, you got a case for a restraining order the way that motherfucker’s conducting himself lately.”

“I got a crowbar and a map of the Indiana Dunes that’d do just about the same thing, I just need a free weekend.”

“Hey!” a voice calls from behind them, and Eddie and Ronnie swivel toward it.

No stemming the smile that peels across his face, heart thud-thudding back into motion. A soothing cool comes over him at the sight of you, settling him right back into his body. You, dressed to the nines. You, coiffed up like you’re hellbent on making an impression. My little cold front.

“Shotgun!” you chirp, skipping toward the van in your spindly little shoes. Both Eddie and Ronnie are rendered speechless for a beat or two.

Shit, you look good.

“There’s only one fucking passenger seat!” Ronnie protests.

“Fine, Ronnie, I’ll sit in your lap– is that what you want?”

Eddie lets you two nonsensically bicker as he guns the van to life, sweeping out of the park in a thunderous roar. He’s trying to stay tuned into the conversation you’re having, he really is, but the way you’ve got your shoulders thrown back and cleavage thrust out, Ronnie squished beside you, is focus-stealing.

“Wait, you’re volunteering at the beauty pageant?” Eddie finally clues in, “Sorry, Lace, there’s no way that throwing glitter on bimbos in bathing suits counts as community service. Otherwise, I’d be ve-ry committed to my community.”

“Right?! Like, how did I get stuck with helping out Granny’s retirement home friends? I could be checking chicks for visible bra straps but I’m trapped with a bunch of senile losers that smell like clove suckers.”

“It’s not just an ogle-fest, you knuckle-draggers,” you roll your eyes, “There’s an entire interview portion, too. You know, where the judges have to pretend to care about what these girls have to say– and it’s my job to make sure they don’t sound entirely braindead.”

“You love an insurmountable challenge, huh, Lace?”

“Never tell me what I can and can’t mount, Munson,” you purr–he’s almost sure he hears you purr. The way you look at him over the center console, eyes all a-felined, does the job for him.

Ronnie keeps her mouth shut, and he silently thanks her for it.

Festivities are fully in swing as you all pull onto Harrington’s street–plus the festivity-specific problem of there being almost no parking anywhere. Cars of your classmates clog the tree-lined streets, along with the vehicles of the wealthier Loch Nora contingent.

Eddie slaps his hands against the wheel. “How the fuck does he get away with this shit?”

“Senior year pass,” you remark, “Plus, Steve’s always-AWOL parentals. Somehow, his shitty home life gives way to an endless well of sympathy on Richie Rich Row here, so he kind of gets carte blanche.”

“The world’s luckiest latchkey k–woah!”

Reeboked feet have to slam down hard on the brakes, as Eddie almost takes out Robin Buckley, hunching her shoulders and marching toward the Harrington’s porch. The screech of the tires almost sends her leaping out of her skin.

“Watch it, asshole! Pedestrians still exist, you know!”

“Sorry, Buckley!” Eddie calls out down the window wound low, “For what it’s worth, you’re blending into the tarmac just great!”

Robin scoffs and continues stalking. Your head snaps to Ronnie.

“Ron,” you simper, “Why don’t you go make sure Robin’s not suffering from post traumatic? I would be, if I almost got mowed down by this decommissioned tank.”

Her brow screws up like she’s about to answer, but genius little you, this works on a couple of levels. For one, your insistence that something will happen between Buckley and Ronnie if you keep pressing their heads together like Barbies, and for two… Half a second alone.

Half a second is all Eddie needs.

“There’s no way I’m gonna remember where I parked if one of you isn’t here,” he tacks on, as if he needs the support, “And she–” by whom he means you, “--has priors in this house. Off ya go, Ecker.”

Banished to the pavement, Ronnie snarls something about hurrying back, which you promise her that you will. Eddie doesn’t promise anything. If he had his way, he’d rare right out of Loch Nora and keep driving, you to his beautiful right and watch as moonlight started to pool in the window over your skin. Just keep turning the wheel, so he could keep looking at you.

You point out a spot a street over and Eddie kills the engine.

“Hi,” he rasps, angling his torso toward you. He doesn’t stem his smile.

“Hello,” you say in return. Your neck rolls against the headrest. You’re looking at him in a slow drip through your bottom lashes.

Eddie has to remind himself to breathe, and his first intake is kinda ragged. It makes you laugh, this little gaspy sound that sounds like a prelude to something else. Your stare breaks, gliding to the dashboard.

“Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

“Let’s shall.”

Eddie snaps back to life, dashing out of the driver’s side to help you down from the passenger’s. Your fingers give his hand a little extra squeeze and he takes this very, very liminal opportunity to hold you at arms length, pirouetting you under his hand.

“Sorry. I’m sorry! I had to!” he faux-apologizes. “Gotta test the durability of these shoes, in case you need to make a run for it later.”

Your laugh comes out uncorked and full-bodied and it makes Eddie feel like his head is levitating two feet above his neck.

“Relieving yourself of your hero duties already, huh?”

Silk spills over your curves, skirt billowing around your thighs as you move. That makes him feel very much in his body. You look ravishing, your hair crashing into a wave as you come to a smiling stop in front of him.

Eddie presses his mouth to your fingers, clasped around his hand, and hears the bubble of your breath hiccup.

“Not by a long shot.”

A warm berry encases your lips that he wants to see smudged. He wants to wear it on his collarbone like a second chain.

He wonders if he knows you look like you’re trying to get ravished.

Of course you do. There’s not a single thing you’ve ever put on your body that wasn’t on purpose.

Which, if Eddie considers it, now includes him.

You both barely remember to unweave your fingers as you approach Harrington’s house.

—

A meticulously curated outfit makes all the difference, especially if you’re reentering society. And you are, in a manner of speaking.

Returning to the scene of the crime, the inciting incident that saw you in the passenger seat of Eddie’s van the better part of a bottle of vodka deep and a bruise blooming. Bridges actively aflame between you and those you once considered your closest friends.

They’d given you the matches though. Flicked them at you, expected you to do nothing.

It occurs to you now, as a lingering touch stays between your and Eddie’s pinkie fingers and you cross the porch, that you hadn’t so much as looked in the rearview mirror to assess the damage. You looked through his windscreen as he drove you home.

“Divide and conquer?”

“I’ll find you.”

Eddie used to exist to you as an eyesore on the peripheries of parties like this. Here, where you always felt you were sitting alone on the observation deck, watching everyone else have fun and learning how to mimic it for your own gain. Patching yourself together. You felt him leering over your shoulder sometimes, separate from it too.

Now, he’s the boy spinning you around on the pavement, looking at you like you’re a whole person.

So this should be interesting.

The two of you shove past a couple of clumping bodies on the doorstep, eyes already starting to dagger in your direction. Into the foyer, towards the kitchen, those looks become more and more and more focused. Feels like you’re wearing piano wire for a choker.

‘What the fuck…’ ‘Remember the last time she was here?’ ‘Woah, smackdown rematch. Somebody get Carol.’

Eddie gets a little closer than he needs to, feigning a stumble into you, just to brush against your hardened shoulders and whisper, ‘Head up, queenie. It’s not like they’ve got a guillotine,’ before he disappears to make rent.

The smile you’re about to sneak to him dies on your lips as your name rings out from somewhere in the milieu, someplace near the kitchen.

“Lacy!”

All that cruising for a parking space and you hadn’t locked eyes on a Ford Cortina, had you?

The tardiest student enrolled at Amherst or wherever half-jogs toward you with a smile that makes your stomach lurch. Cold sweat starts to prick against your hairline. Excuse me?

“Oh! Hi!” you hit a higher octave than you were intending, for sure, you can tell by the look on his face. Eyebrows all shot up. “What the… fuck are you doing here?”

College guy shakes his head a little, confused. “You mentioned you were gonna be here.”

“...and you took that as an explicit invitation?” You’re still technically dating him, dumbass. Smile. “Just kidding! It is. Good. To see you.”

A cursory squeeze of his bicep. Christ, you’re bad at this when you’re not prepared. Extra bad at this when your first thought, when you’re doing bad, is where’s Eddie. When did that symbiosis develop exactly?

“Listen, can we go somewhere?” Oh, Jesus. “Talk? I tried to call your place a little earlier and–” Oh, Jesus! This guy looks at you with earnest eyes that you couldn’t tell the color of if you had a gun to your head. Bodies jostling around you, you make the choice to drop in and act a little left of sober.

“That sounds ah-mazing, but I do have to pee, so,” you shoot him a glimmering smile which ain’t takin’. “Grab me a drink and I’ll find you? Grab me a drink and I’ll find you.”

Bolt! You’re stepping over knees as you weave your way up Harrington’s impossible staircase to the second floor bathroom, downing a shot from a tray on your way. Five minutes inside Mrs Harrington’s immaculately designed proto-modern lavatory should give you enough chutzpah to take on the rest of this night, right? Maybe a fully clothed lie down in the jacuzzi tub.

The ten-girl deep line outside the locked door says different.

From the seventh spot, Carol Perkins cranes her perfectly coiffed strawberry head out and locks eyes with you.

No guillotine, huh?

—

Eddie’s gotta wonder, what the hell the Harrington household looks like when it isn’t throbbing with mainstream radio rock and gyrating teenagers. The house is a showroom of suburban perfection, but whenever Steve throws a party, it goes full bacchanal.

Tonight Eddie intends to take full and rapid advantage of the skewed consciousness of his classmates and copious amounts of jello shooters.

Like, yeah, Harrington might have graciously invited him and not directly asked him to peddle his wares by the pool like a fucked up candy stand, but you gotta seize opportunity wherever you find it. People see him here, they know what to do. They know his purpose.

It’s not as if Eddie’s here to mingle, okay?

Do what they expect of you until you don’t have to anymore.

The short term objective? Empty his stash, stuff his pockets and steal away with you into one of the billion bedrooms this mini-mansion holds. But, much to Eddie’s chagrin, that means fighting through the din of Cyndi Lauper and body odor first.

Conjured by his very words, Andy Sweeney swings right into Eddie’s path and yoinks the beer that Eddie was reaching for. The kid doesn’t even look beyond the brim of his baseball cap to notice he’s standing there. He’s too busy jawing with some other basketball tool.

“Lissen, man, say what you want,” Sweeney burbles, “but Princess Trailer Trash is still totally bangin’.”

Eddie’s ears immediately tune right into their garbled conversation.

“Pssh, dude, I don’t care what anyone says, she was frigid then and she’s frigid now. No way some overgrown virgin like Munson is splittin’ those knees open.”

“Still… bet she misses the finer things in life, y’know?”

“Tchyuh, like you, y’mean?”

“Nah, rich bitches like that get a wettie over the dumbest shit. Hey, how many glasses of Cristal does it take for Lacy Doevski to spread her legs?”

“I’unno, man, how many?”

“Well, if the first one has her face down in the pillow, how’s she gonna be able to tell?”

Bile scorches the back of Eddie’s throat. He doesn’t even mean for it, he actually means for a lot worse, but his hand goes right out and grabs the scruff of Sweeney’s shirt. The despicable little dirtbag. He yelps, a sound pleasing to Eddie but not quite pained enough for what this motherfucker deserves.

“What the fuck, freak?!”

Breath forces itself hard through Eddie’s nostrils. That they think they even have the right to talk about you like that makes him want to leave an Andy Sweeney-shaped hole in the Harringtons’ marble countertop, with some blood and teeth and viscera to match.

“Interesting observation, Andy. It’s incredible to witness how the minds of the shrivel-dicked work,” Eddie seethes, “I personally like to enact my violence face up. Seen Billy Hargrove lately?”

Sometimes, Eddie forgets that he’s actually scary looking. The hair shrouding his face, the big hulking rings, the unsuspecting strength he’s gained from hauling around kegs and amps and the weight of the world… Sometimes, it takes a stiffened flash and a sudden flash of fear in someone like Andy Sweeney’s irises for him to remember.

Sweeney stammers something between a no, please! and get off me!, fighting his own piss-pantsery in order to keep up appearances for his bros.

Eddie grabs the Miller High Life from his hand and shoves him back toward his friends.

“Champagne of beers. You understand.”

Sweeney spits, like physically spits at him. “Fucking loser!”

“Says the guy threatening to roofie a chick!” Eddie barks. “God, I know that your line of work doesn’t exactly require neurons but I’m begging you to rub your remaining ones together and see if it sparks some self awareness, Sweeney– go on, try!”

—

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here.”

“Praying I don’t get a UTI, like everybody else in line.”

“You know what I mean, bitch.”

A category five sigh rolls your shoulders forward, hunching them further down the wallpaper you lean against. Carol has stepped fully out of the line, looking viperous but keeping her distance. Like you might have the good sense to strike back this time.

“Oh my god, Caroline, it’s a kegger. I don’t think you need to RSVP.”

“There’s a strict no freaks policy,” Carol The Bouncer says.

A one noted bark-laugh comes from the fifth position in the line. “Yeah, I think we’re getting a little lenient with that one these days.”

From the mouth of Robin Buckley, who stands there like she did at the last party, against her will but as living proof that even the worst people you knew might not be as bad as you thought.

I know Steve. He’s not exactly made for this crowd either.

“Stay out of this, Lesbo Baggins!”

“Hey!” You force your stiletto off the wall and lose your place in line, since Carol’s begging for it. Fuck that. No more shrapnel. “Leave her alone. This is between us, isn’t it? You and me?”

“And the rest of this town,” Carol’s upper lip curls.

“Refresh my memory,” you say, and the choking vice of Carol’s overly familiar body spray is threatening your jugular. You used to come home from her place reeking of the stuff; the kind of smell that transfers, and carried with it characteristics that you were once proud to have rub off on you. The misery, the misanthropy for everyone but your pocketful of someones. And you and Carol didn’t even like them, most of the time. United in smarting bitterness, the way that girls who want more but can’t seem to get it always are. “What’s the problem, Care?”

“The problem,” Carol snarls, “is you, Lacy. Think just because your daddy’s out of prison that everyone forgot what he did? What you did? I’m watching you, trailer trash.”

You’re close enough that you can see the clumps in her mascara. Why hadn’t she separated them with a needle like you taught her to? The Audrey Hepburn method. It had always freaked her out, you sitting there with a pin that close to her retina, but she’d never looked better.

Doomed to fail, without you by her side.

Spine straightening, you draw yourself over her. In your heels, borrowed from Ivana and gilded with her hardiness, you make Carol look small.

“Yeah?” your voice drops to gravel. “You like what you see?”

—

Brainless Hawkinsite pieces of shit can’t so much as muster a response before they lurch for Eddie. Who the fuck knows what cursed or blessed him with rhythm, but he dodges around the bustling kitchen island with relative ease, before he nearly knocks Steve Harrington himself straight through his own plate glass patio door.

“No runnin’ indoors!” Steve slurs in his face, so close that a fleck of saliva goes straight up Eddie’s nostril. Gross. He’s found a home in the welcome bosom of the jello shot, that’s for fucking sure.

“They started it!”

“I don’t give a fuck! Finish it!”

Gruffly, he casts an eye around the kitchen for those rogue ballsacks– they’d scarpered, probably spooked by the bellow of King Steve. Whatever.

“My attackers seem to have dematerialized, you’ll be delighted to know!”

“Why do you do that? Why do you talk like such a fucking weirdo, man?” Steve asks exasperatedly, clutching onto Eddie’s shoulder a little too roughly for his liking. Not that he’s keen on Harrington pawing him at all. “Like what d–... ughh, forget it! List-en! Where’s your weirdo girlfriend?”

“Ronnie’s not–”

“Who the fuck is–” Steve’s whole pretty boy face screws up and he lets out a genuine groan of anguish. “No, asshole, where is Lacy at?”

“How should I know?!”

“Because your nose is permanently wedged up her ass!” Steve yells, but something draws him back. “Or it should be!”

Incredibly puzzling wording. Eddie shakes his head, wide eyes bewildered at exactly what the fuck Steve wants from him. With a scoff, the man of the house walks into the body-to-body wedge of his hallway and runs, from what Eddie can see, right into…

Your little college boyfriend.

Now… what the sweet and levelling fuck…

Eddie Munson’s activating Shadow Arts, he guesses, because he dips as close to the two of them as he can get without being accused of tailing Harrington this time.

“...hey man, what the fuck are you doing in my house?”

“Haha. Good to see you too, Stevie. Quite the turnout–you the big man on campus now or what?”

“I don’t know, it’s a party. I’m personally having kind of an evolution moment of my own. So. Fuckin’. Whatever.”

“... right.”

“How’s… fuckin’... whatever needledick school it is you go to?”

“Tch, man. I made it about a heartbeat and a hangover through the first semester before I dropped out. Came home around Christmas, much to the disgrace of my parents… But I’m havin’ an alright time, if you catch my drift.”

“Huh?”

“Y’know. High school girls. You can tell them anything, am I right?”

Shit.

Know what, though? Eddie, as he sees it, would be well within his rights to yuk it up at this pernicious turn of events. He’s had a bet running (with himself) that this eyesore in beige you call a college beau, with his ugly fuckin’ car and his stupid collared shirts and his Waiting for Godot or whoever, wasn’t all he was cracked up to be. And not just ‘cause of jealousy, no! Not entirely. Well, okay. But, riddle him this– instead of snorting it up good, thrilled to be able to rub your nose in it, that rotten coil of anger started shifting in his belly again. Why do you think that is?

It’s simple. Eddie knows it’s simple. Because Mister Faux Ivy League has wasted so much of your time.

Time that should have been yours and Eddie’s.

He’s gotta tell y–

“Hey, man. How’s it going.”

“Agh!” Eddie yelps, as running right the fuck into people is apparently the flavor de nuit. Ronnie stands, stockstill and deadpan, behind him. Flanked by Tommy Hagan and Billy Hargrove.

Eddie makes an exasperated noise of confusion, not even dignifying this apparition with a question.

“They wanna play beer pong,” Ronnie monotones. With a glance down, Eddie can see that her front overalls pocket is filled with empty beer bottles. Apprehension swipes at him. See, his good friend Ronnie? She’s a competitive drunk. She, drunk off Jeff’s dad’s scotch, once trash talked Keith from Palace Arcade to such an eviscerating degree that she got a lifetime ban and he left to work at Family Video. Over a game of fuckin’ Tron.

“We wanna play beer pong,” Hagan echoes.

Hargrove sucks on a cigarette, having finally regained the ability to open his eye. Tragic. “Pong.”

“Why?!” Eddie asks, but more like begs.

“Because they insinuated that I would lose.”

“And we’d like to give the future valedictorian a chance to prove us right,” Hargrove drawls, looking as if he’s trying not to admit to himself that he has to look up to address Ronnie. She’s got a head and a half on him, at least. So many complexes in such a roidy, mulleted package.

Eddie sees that his cheque is signed.

“... Fine. Your funeral.”

—

“All I see is some ex-relevant ex-cheerleader in somebody else’s moth eaten clothes.”

“This is Italian silk, you JC Penney clone-ette.”

“Oh, Italian like a meatball sub or Italian like the mob your dad is part of?”

That sets your teeth on edge. God, Ray Doevski wishes– at least there’d be some valor to it then, capos and all. The reality feels far less shrouded in intrigue. Grimier, somehow.

“Carol, you had the jump on me last time,” you grit, “but I’m stone cold tonight. Either see yourself down the stairs or I will.”

“Are you threatening me, freak fucker?”

“You’d love that, bottom feeder.”

“Lacy! Stop right there, y–”

Earrings clinking as you snap your head around, you watch as a thoroughly ossified Steve Harrington almost brains himself on the top step. Neither you nor Carol nor anyone else reach out to help him, caught red handed in the prelude to a catfight.

“Finally, Jesus!” Carol whinges, “Steve, she’s totally trespassing!”

Panic spikes across your shoulders, quills on a porcupine–are you actually about to get escorted off the premises? That’d be embarrassing, being double-shunned at an open-door Harrington kegger. Eddie hadn’t even managed that dire of a social faux pas and here you are, about to do it for the second time.

“Ow! Shut up, Carol!” Steve decides to steady himself by closing the span of his big hand around your elbow; you both stagger under his wheedling. He’s got a bottle of vodka, cracked, wedged in his other palm. “You and I need to have a little chat.”

And before you can make any attempt to yank yourself away, make a run for it in these stilettos you certainly cannot confidently lift knees it, Steve is pulling you in the direction of his bedroom. A choir of middle school-aged angels that all look like you are singing somewhere as Carol and every other girl in that bathroom line save for Robin enviously glare after you, but you can’t hear it due to being plunged into one of the deeper circles of hell.

“Steven, listen–” You’re not even entirely sure where the full-Christian-name-address comes from, but it’s the only thing that comes to mind when you yank your arm free. “I wasn’t trying to start anything. Not really. I was just…”

Click. Steve locks his bedroom door and turns, staring you down. Well, the best that a drunk teenager with drifting irises could stare one down. You wonder how many Lacys he sees right now. You should ask him to count them, finger on his nose.

“You and I need to have a little chat.”

“You said that already,” but you can’t tell drunk people nothin’.

A remorseful edge around his attempt at a come-hither stare is making you feel a little icky, dawdling on the burning balls of your feet. He looks really bad, actually. The picture of someone trying to sift horniness out of grief or whatever. Steve thrusts one hand through his already scuzzed-up hair, the other jerking the bottle of liquor towards you.

“Have a drink, Lacy, Jesus. Relax, for once.”

You accept the bottle from him. Mostly because it looks as if he’s going to crack you over the head with it if you don’t. The vodka sears going down, same as last time, but there’s not the same urgency to meet everyone else on a level of functioning normal, party girl cool. If anything, the urgency lies in taking the edge off being here.

Particularly in Steve Harrington’s bedroom.

Once upon a time, you’d have mown down half this town in your sporty little Porsche to be sitting right where you’re sitting. But now, under the weight of your own self and Steve’s breakup with Nancy, you’d rather be anywhere else. Anywhere.

“Sit down,” he tells you.

Your eyebrows draw in on instinct, very who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?

Steve scoffs, like he forgot to put on his concerned pantomime. He makes a pretty good go of it, slurring. “Please, Lacy.”

Your knees acquiesce, sinking yourself down onto his checkered bedsheets. The combination of that and the checkered wallpaper is creating an incredible cresting wave of claustrophobia.

“Listen, if this is about Nancy, if this is some harebrained attempt to marionette me into getting her back, I–”

“This is about you ‘n’ me, actually.”

Nope. Opposite day. Fucking Twilight Zone.

“No, it’s not,” you outright refuse. The mattress sags as Steve takes a seat beside you.

“Well, why can’t it be?” Steve’s eyes trail a sticky line up your bare arm as he lies back and props himself up, low on his elbows. However, it’s not eliciting the same amount of alarm that it would if someone like, say, Billy Hargrove were doing it. He’s pathetic, and not in a way you find enticing. “You ‘n’ me, it makes sense. Doesn’t it? Don’t you want it to?”

“No!” You balk with a little more fervor than a then-wounded looking Steve deserves.

“Why not?!” No one says no to the king, of course, especially when he’s this soused.

“Because…” You shake your head, legs crossing on Steve’s bed. A different draft of you, the idea of a girl you had long since scrapped screams at you from somewhere in the very back of your head. You’re ruining it, Lacy–everything we’ve worked for! “You don’t want me. You just feel sorry for yourself. And I’m…”

But luckily, he doesn’t catch the trail-off.

“I’m about to make you feel sorry for yourself,” Steve railroads you.

“How’s that?” Another slug of vodka…

“Well,” he struggles to keep himself propped up, “my girlfriend Eddie and your boyfriend Nancy? Recreationally copulating. How d’ya like that.”

… comes right out your nose.

author's notes: so i once again scrapped the idea of a mega chapter because i wanted to give you guys something in case i have to disappear because i start my new job tomorrow! sweating and pissing and crying. but being able to afford to move out soon will be good. anyway, i love writing a good party scene so expect this to leak right into chapter 12 too. onto the fun stuff: - naming carol's mother ann perkins is a not-so-subtle nod to parks and recreation but the characterization couldn't be further off lol - attention all american teen princesses, i found drop dead gorgeous in full on youtube - the debate team captain in question, kate something-or-other, is in fact the very same kate that appears in rebel robin as robin's now-ex best friend - doctor, she's self-referencing again, this time about the time ivana threw an olive at norman mailer - i had to look up the origin of the term 'boinked', and it turns out it comes from cheers! congrats sam and diane - boners forged fire to table straight from mount doom - fra-gee-lay. it must be italian - that's two for one LOTR references if you count lesbo baggins - i am once again pretending to understand things about dnd - i can't mention *jeff bridges voice* TRON! without watching clips of jeff bridges doing things. it's so cliche to cast him as my reefer rick but bitch the heart wants that's all for now, folks! thanks again for reading and pls do reblog and comment and send me asks and things to keep the spirit of this silly little story alive. we're amping up. love u hellcats x

#published by powder #eddie munson x oc #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x f!oc #eddie munson fic #e. munson by powder #l. doevski by powder #hellfire & ice #in progress

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