#l. doevski by powder | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

powderblueblood · 7 months ago

Text

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

CHAPTER ELEVEN — ALL TOMORROW'S KEGGERS

PREVIOUS | MASTERLIST | NEXT

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

103 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 10 months ago

Text

FOUR TIMES YOU WERE STRUCK INCAPABLE OF IMAGINING YOUR LIFE WITHOUT EDDIE MUNSON

(+ one, of the many, where he felt the same about you)

part of the hellfire & ice universe eddie munson x f!reader, reader is nicknamed lacy, you know the drill, minors dni only warnings are for fluff and eddie and lacy being cute and in denial word count: 2k tagging @chiefbonkpruneegg happy birthday pal <3 enjoy this nonsense

TRACK ONE: LET'S STICK WITH TELEVISION FOR TWO HUNDRED, ALEX

You and Eddie balance on either side of Ronnie Ecker's couch like faithful gargoyles, armed with soup and homework. Ronnie's caught the worst end of some green-gooed virus, so you two have taken it upon yourselves to deliver the necessities; tomato soup with extra hot sauce ("To snot out the demons," quoth Eddie) and history homework. But something on the television sucked you both right in, Poltergeist style, as you entered the Ecker trailer. Some hot young thing called Alex Trebek, captaining the maiden voyage of a brand new Jeopardy.

"You know who would kill on this show?" Eddie says, settling himself on the armrest to Ronnie's sniffling left.

"Guh, who?" Ronnie asks, huffing the steaming vapors of the spicy tomato soup like it's paint fumes.

You're pitched on the other armrest, pointing the rolled up history homework toward the screen. "What is the White H--US Treasury, are you fucking stupid?! Have these people never seen a twenty dollar bill before? What is the White House!"

You toss a glance over to Ronnie and Eddie for reassurance, just in time to catch them sharing a look. A good ol' Lacy know-it-all look. "Oh, shut up. as if I have more useless information rattling around in my brain than--"

Both you and Eddie snap at the TV in unison, "Who is Elvis Presley!"

Your turn to share a look. Game on? Game on.

It rolls on like that for a couple of categories, Ronnie sipping her soup straight from the container between you, hiding a smile as you and Eddie gradually bark louder and louder. Who are the Marx Brothers! What is 'break a leg'! Who was Napoleon!

"What, you're paying attention in History all of a sudden?"

"I'm a solid C student thanks to you, baby."

It occurs to you suddenly and begrudgingly and all at once; Eddie's right. You would kill on this show. But more than that, you want to wipe the floor and wring Eddie Munson out like the mop that he is.

"The greeting which opened each episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents."

"What is," both of you, in perfect Hitchcock tonality and without missing a beat, "Gooooood eeeeevening."

TRACK TWO: LIKE IF BECKY SHARP WAS FRIENDS WITH A BIG GOOFY HOUND DOG

Your first honest-to-god paycheck from the Bookstore was a fat wad of tens and singles plus change and it was handed to you in a brown paper bag. Invest this wisely, said Ivana, so of course, you followed your heart and your hard earned cash directly to the thrift store.

The front bell ding-a-lings and you walk through the door holding your moneybag aloft like the biggest, blue ribbon winning-est gourd at the county fair. You are proud as hell, because you did this! On your own! This isn't your daddy's money, this isn't the result of a once-toyed with idea that you might make a really good cat burglar, this was yours all yours!

"Put that down already! It's like you're wearing a sign saying mug me!" Eddie, bringing up the rear, yanks your arm back down by your side.

You laugh, mirthful and Hepburnian. "More like try me! I'm a working woman now, Eddie! I can hold my own! I can buy boots, guilt free, no strings, no blood money!"

"Uh-huh. consider that glass ceiling of having an after school job well and truly," he picks up a lamp from the scarcely populated homewares section, mimes slow-motion smashing it, "shattered!"

"Plus!" you cheerily pivot on your heel, a spring in your step that cannot be unsprung, even by Eddie's welcome to the real world, jackass flavored attempts. "Who would ever dare try and rob me when I've got a big, tough guard doggy like you three feet behind me at all times?"

Eddie's eyes narrow, like he's not all the way peachy keen on how you've pointed out your inseparability. But. He doesn't deny it either. A broken-stringed tennis racket bops you on the head.

"You owe me gas money."

"Shut up, please. I am shopping."

TRACK THREE: BUSTER MOVES

We'll always have the movies.

You sit, glassy-eyed, in your regular seats at the Hawk as The Cook starring Buster Keaton ticks along on the screen ahead of you. This Keaton retrospective, which you had been looking forward to for weeks, which you had been threatening to drag Eddie to for weeks, is going down a little... bland.

Not even that over-the-shoulder gaze that has Keaton beaming lasers of lust right into Virginia Rappe's skull adds any spice. You don't even bring up the whole scandal with her and Fatty Arbuckle, which would ordinarily be fertile territory to plow through with Eddie as a rapt audience.

In fact, you don't even tell him to kick his feet off the seats.

You've zoned out, because you still have the chill of the penitentiary's visiting quarters under your skin. Your dad and his cruelty that the bulletproof glass couldn't dull. The usual escape to the movies bit isn't doing the trick.

Then, you feel shaggy waves tickling your shoulder.

"I can do that."

"What?"

Directly in front of you, Buster is giving it his best Salome, his dance moves all angles. This display of pure deadpan goofiness was what made you obsess over Keaton in the first place, falling head over heels for a man who kicked it long before you were born.

And to your immediate left, you have Eddie Munson in your ear, telling you, "I can do that."

"No you can't," you say, and it doesn't sound like half the challenge it usually would.

Then, in a jolt that makes the whole row of rickety theater seats shake, Eddie's on his feet and stripping off his jacket. And before you can utter some totally perfunctory what're you... he's hot footing it down the steps to the splash zone, the front row, of the screen.

"You know I've seen this movie a million times?" Eddie says, projecting his voice right out like he's performing a one man show. Munson: Meditations on Dumbassery. You sit upright, glancing around to double-triple check that you're definitely alone in the screen. And you are-- Hawkins doesn't have as much a taste for the non-talkies as you do. And you were pretty sure that Eddie didn't either, and yet...

"Are you serious?" you ask, a laugh starting at the back of your throat.

"Does this look like a call and response? Let the maestro work, please," Eddie chides you over his shoulder, turning his back and hopping in place like a boxer about to take the ring.

And then, all of a sudden, he's... dancing? Sort of? Well, he's certainly moving his body, but it's nothing like what Buster's doing, and it's nothing like anyone's ever possibly done and not been hospitalized for, because the way his limbs are moving is borderline inhuman and you are laughing. Laughing, laughing, laughing in a way that feels like Eddie reaching right through the fog of your horrible, dissociative feelings and bringing you back into the light.

You toss popcorn at him and he totally fails to catch it in his mouth, his face lit up in shades of black and white by the projection.

"A million times, huh?"

Eddie, breathless, shrugs, "Alright, I lied. But you laughed."

Point to Munson.

TRACK FOUR: LIBERATING MY MAGAZINES

It was a favor that he'd agreed to before you even offered to buy him breakfast after, a favor that didn't need sweetening up. As his van rolled into Loch Nora, Eddie's brows knit a little bit-- and you wondered how much of him regretted saying yes so hastily.

"On a scale of one to felony..."

Your house hadn't been sold yet. Repossessed, sure, but not sold. It stood there, darkened and quiet and gathering dust and the sheer sight of it being the only house on your street with an overgrown lawn made your chest feel tight. You bet the neighbors had something to say about that. You bet the neighbors had a lot to say about you. Curtains were no doubt twitching when you and Eddie pulled up in front of your old driveway.

"It's fine. It's my stuff, anyway."

About a half hour later, Eddie drops a pile of slightly-weather beaten copies of Rolling Stone bearing your name and old address onto a table in the diner, the remnants of your now-cancelled subscription.

"You gotta wonder what they're putting in that new print format that kept those things from totally composting."

"Thank god they didn't! I need to finish that Tom Wolfe serial or I'll die," you declare as he picks up a menu and you rifle through the pile. "Order whatever. It's on me."

Eddie snorts. You're still carting around that dwindling brown bag of cash. "You don't have to do that."

"No," you say, eyes darting around to anywhere but his face, "but I want to. For helping me to liberate my magazines."

"Lace. I'd happily liberate your magazines without the promise of pancakes," his mouth twists into this little grin you can't help but think of as sweet, "but they do help."

"Order enough to keep us here for a while," you say, and pass him a Rolling Stone.

The next while passes silently between you two, passing issues back and forth until one of you picks out something the two of you can fight about. Eddie twists his rings around when he's reading; you gather this from the looks you keep sneaking.

It feels eerily relaxed. Slightly domestic. And by the end, over-caffeinated with the way you two are soundlessly cackling over an imagined world where the cover of Springsteen's Born in the USA isn't an ass shot, but a full-frontal dick shot. "But where does he put the flag?!"

It's one way to kill a Saturday.

SECRET SONG: SWAPPING NOTES

In the relentless waves of the morning crush to get to his next class, he almost misses you-- just like he'd like to almost miss this next class. But then, there you are with freshly-manicured nails digging into his elbow.

For whatever reason, you've taken it upon yourself to make sure that Eddie Munson doesn't skip! At least, where you can help it.

"Yoohoo! Spanish is this way," you say, reorienting him in the right direction in that insistent little way that you do. Eddie's pretty sure that if he sat on you, you'd snap, yet he lets you completely manipulate his clearly superior physical strength anyway.

"We're not in Spanish together!" he tries, a last ditch to get you to turn around so he can ditch.

"No, but French is juste par là so you are pas de chance, my friend!" you tell him with a stare that says I've been tracking your movements like a hunter, dumbass. See my big spear? From that gargantuan folder you're clutching, you dig out a paper. "I have that thing you wanted me to look at."

"Sssshut up, I don't need everyone to know," Eddie flushes. It's not homework he begged to copy from you for once. It is actually this comparative essay that he actually thinks he might not have completely screwed up. But he kind of wanted a professional not-screwer-upper-of-homework's point of view, so... that's why your little red pen marks are all over it.

"Why, whose reputation am I sparing?" He sees your point. You are basically walking arm in arm with him. You. "But, y'know, I was right about you! The thought is there, the execution just needs a little fine tuning."

"So it was..."

"Not amazing! But not awful. I've done my edits and you can just copy as per-- but absorb them, please, okay? Learn something?"

Eddie's head rolls back on his neck with this petulant groan and he almost clocks a freshman at elbow level, shaking his arms in total frustration. God, now you were giving him homework on top of his homework? He should have just paid you to do the homework!

"I hate when you want me to better myself! Shit!"

"Well!" you say, in that bright, adorable, annoyingly-self satisfied way, "I wouldn't do it if I didn't see potential, so suck on that."

#published by powder #e. munson by powder #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x oc #edlacy #blurbs #need to stop tagging things over 2k as 'blurb'#anwayy your honor i LOVE THEMMMMM this is just silly and fun #cba making a banner i'm too tired #hai brainrot #l. doevski by powder

104 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 9 months ago

Text

everything looks better on me (especially you)

eddie's missing something and lacy gets a new accessory. (825) cw: fluff the house down, thank GOD these two get to be CUTE for once in their stinking lives. happy valentines day palentines part of the hellfire & ice universe

that looks familiar.

the note bounces over your shoulder, landing in a crumpled little ball for you to unravel on your desk. first period. monday. history with kaminsky, enforcing tyrannical rule by reading about the ottoman empire at an excruciating pace. the morning is passing at it's usual torturous tick, only helped by the warm reassurance of eddie, sat in place behind you.

you make sure to shake your stupid hair all over his desk as you pass back your reply.

oh, this old thing? you like it?

eddie holds his breath as he watches you slide the slip of paper by your ear for him to snatch, fixated on the flow of your neck to your shoulder. said flow, which he so frequently admires, is now obscured. a wrap of fabric around your neck that he knows well. real well. super well. part of the uniform well.

you'd thought it'd be a cute look--a coquettish little necktie element to set off your otherwise rote skirt-and-satin blouse set. a nod to sexy librarians, contrarians, know-it-alls with edge-- oh, okay, fine. who are you fucking kidding. you wore it around your neck because you knew it'd make eddie's dick twitch from a thousand yard reach.

you knew it'd make him go all doe eyed and grin stupid and maybe even make him do that thing where he hides behind his hair. you love that. it makes your heart flip like a speed freak olympian. makes you want to shove him to the ground and make out with him until he suffocates.

you knew it'd be a statement, too. i'm intentional about every single thing i've ever put on my body. i want you. i want this.

you reach up and wind the end of eddie's bandana around your little finger.

you think you hear his breath hitch. (you totally do.)

you look really pretty.

eddie catches you off guard, y'know. with his earnestness. with how hard he means things.

really pretty.

he'd left his bandana on your bedroom floor the night he stole away out your window. remember? "i'm coming back for you, lacy doevski?" all that? well, you'd found it after getting third-degree cross examined by your father and lay awake with it held close to your face. it'd gotten caught on a pin or something and tore, so you darned it back together with your limited sewing skills. you didn't want to give it back right away--it's such a part of the eddie munson ensemble that it made you feel like you had a real piece of him with you, 'til you could see him again. which was only 48 goddamned hours, but let's slice off a little slack here.

and so came this morning. and you wound it under your collar, tying a windsor knot.

you feel him lean in a little closer to tuck the note next to your shoulder.

really REALLY PRETTY.

pretty enough to meet me in the bathroom? you write, tossing it back to him with a stretch. you don't wait for an answer as the bell trills.

moments later, eddie has you pinned against the wall of that bombed out boy's bathroom (say thank you lack of school funding!), pressing his lush, pink lips to the line of your jaw.

he makes your whole body feel as tingly as tv static.

eddie's forehead finds yours and you don't have anything in you but to sigh and smile, just a breath away from his mouth.

"hello," you say, watching the sparkle in his dark eyes.

"hi," eddie mumbles, grinning away. he brushes a knuckle down the side of your face. "pretty. pretty. you're so pretty, lace."

god, even the way he says it knocks you clean out. pritty. like there's some tennessee twang still left in the highest reaches of his voice.

your lashes flutter. you're lightheaded and girlish and you can't for the life of you stop smiling.

eddie's smile breaks into a little laugh, breath brushing against your nose.

"what's so funny?"

"you like something i wear," he croons, fingers brushing the knot of the bandana, settled beneath your collarbone. "you like me."

"so what if i do?"

"you like me. i melted you."

"i wouldn't call this melting," you chuckle softly, but your eyelids drop and chin tilts back as eddie brings his mouth to your neck. "this is defrosting at best."

"you tryin' to say you want it... wetter?"

"shut up, eddie."

"i could get you so soaked with this wit alone..."

a delicate snort. "ladies and gentlemen, the friars club presents..."

"mm, you lost me."

"i'll tell ya later."

his hands travel all over your body, groping you with a sweetness driven by desire. eddie is all want when it comes to you; wants to touch you, talk to you, listen to you, lay with you. bug the shit out of you.

and you want him too, is the thing. it's reciprocal. you're wearing it right around your neck.

you could both die happy before fourth period.

#e. munson by powder #hai brainrot #edlacy #eddie munson x oc #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #shortest blurb ive ever written probably shoutout to me #this is so lazy chill good times i just love them #published by powder #l. doevski by powder

90 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 10 months ago

Text

YES, NURSE RATCHED - a hellfire & ice retelling of chapter eight's most pivotal moment, from eddie's pov

a special treat for my love @deadlynightshade-and-hyacinth eddie munson x f!reader, reader is nicknamed lacy, reader's last name is also mentioned, this is lore-filled and handsy so if that's not your thing keep it truckin, minors dni i do not like you go away warning for strong language, smut inthe form of public fingeringgggg, drug usage, extremely bad parenting (al munson klaxon), evoking the feeling of a comedown, billy hargrove gets his shit rocked, excuse all typos it's redacted o'clock and i'm a little buzzed word count: 2.6k

The first thing you should know about the following occurrences is that they are preluded by a whole lot of next thing Eddie knows. Things snapping his attention to the left, to the right, knocking him over the head, rearing up on him with little to no warning.

Number one? His dad showing up at Reefer Rick’s, eyes bloodshot and sleep deprived and frantic, putting on a pantomime of being so psyched to see his boy! Rick snapping to attention and falling into his role of affable associate of Munson Senior immediately, despite the apology he’d tried to press against Eddie right when Al crunched the gravel of his driveway. What followed was a bender that Eddie couldn’t help but give into. Al has that effect on people, even him, even Eddie in his angry, angsty resoluteness that he should know better.

You try knowing better when you're all bewitched, bothered and bewildered and shit.

Cue cut lines and records blaring until daylight broke over Lover's Lake– then Eddie, rising at noon but barely landed from his previous (ill-advised and bad-parentally-supervised) high, got it in his head that he ought to show up for school. At least for a little bit.

Because they’d tossed your last name around a little last night, Al and Rick. Doevski this, Doevski that, in weird, vague terms that Eddie didn’t all the way understand. And the more weed he smoked and the more Jim Beam that got passed around, the less he remembered.

Which, dumb, right?

You’d tell him that was dumb.

You’d tell him he should have stayed sharp, listened up, gathered information.

He passed out on Rick’s sagging couch, mind searing with nothing but thoughts of you nagging him for intel.

Eddie woke up cotton-mouthed with your name on his lips.

He needed to see you.

To catch one of your avoidant, barely-there glances as you flit through the hallway or maybe even spy you smoking a cigarette on the outdoor bleachers, reading in silence with Ronnie or Wheeler.

He’d think of what to say to you in the moment; probably spurned on by the sneer you’d give him– which he’d totally have earned, for having the nerve to ignore you for so long.

Forgive me, he'd say, hands held aloft in Christlike composure, I just couldn't look you in the eye knowing you were getting willingly boinked by some Ivy League sweater monkey.

And then you'd have to admit your little bullshit college boyfriend wasn't Ivy League, and he'd prod you with that for a while, and things would eventually ebb back to whatever shade of normal you two were pretending to be. So? Okay!

But.

Next thing Eddie knows, he’s peeling into the parking lot and the first thing that he sees, bada bing, is you. All however many feet of you, steel true and planted on the hood of Billy Hargrove’s fucking Camaro, wielding a baseball bat like a sword.

Eddie’s heart stops for the full entirety of a what fresh hell is this filter-focused second before he skids the van to a halt and launches himself from it.

He advances this helluva scene just in time to hear you holler out, right in front of God and everyone,

“One thing you can say for Eddie Munson, is at least the motherfucker can get hard!”

Eddie’s tread stutters and he wonders if this is what people mean when they use the expression taken out at the knees. Can he get a fucking encore, please?

But then there’s the issue of the rabies-ridden Hargrove, the kid who’s snorted so much of Eddie’s dubiously cut supply that it’s no wonder that word has gotten around that he can’t keep his johnson rigid. There’s a thread dangling somewhere that makes Eddie wonder how familiar you are with that concept but. Alas. Digression.

Hargrove calls you a cunt, and Eddie’s vision is replaced with a swathe of red.

How ‘bout you try playing it cool, hearing someone talk to your girl like that, after a night of fun family drug-taking?

Wait. His what? Hold on--

Next thing Eddie knows, he’s side-swiping Hargrove like a dirty bumper car, yak yaks something kind of funny (he hopes) and does not turn to look at you standing backlit like a holy fucking statue. Because he knows you’ll look beautiful up there, white hot with rage, holding a weapon poised for minor automotive destruction. He can’t handle beauty, not right now. Because of that thing from before with his knees.

“...now her snooty ass is spreading it for half of Hawkins! Desperate! Stringin’ you along like the dumb piece of shortbus shit you a–”

It’s impossible to say whose hair trigger that tugged first, yours or Eddie’s. That’s like chicken vs egg. That’s like Han vs Greedo. That’s like, irrelevant.

That baseball bat clatters to the pavement, a hearty overture to Eddie’s surge of empowerment, of rage, of insisting that she isn’t, I’m not, she isn’t, I’m not, nobody talks about her like that–

Next thing Eddie knows, he’s sitting beside you. Outside the principal’s office. Hand split open and aching, nose backed up and a little bleeding, coming down like the fucking Hindenberg. Reckoning with the fact that he wouldn’t need to be a little morning-after zipped on coke to throw a punch for you, if it came down to it. If it came down to it, he would have tried caving in Billy Hargrove’s other eye socket. He would have made him look like the Elephant Man if you needed him to.

He liked that Eraserhead movie you made him watch.

“He needs an ice pack…”

The soft mumble from you makes Eddie take this breath that makes his chest feel like it might concave. You, you. Reckless, unbuttoned, unlaced, off-kilter you, that still had time to snap at him after he’d tried to freeze you out, that still had eyes that asked him did it hurt?

Eddie eavesdrops on as much of your grilling with Higgins and the hot guidance counsellor as his damaged eardrums will allow. Temporary insanity. Disgusting prank. He wonders what that’s about… and again, didn’t even think to question what brought you onto the hood of Hargrove’s car. He just saw you. He just acted.

He just keeps doing that.

And then he hears. College. Application deadlines are within touching distance.

“I can turn this around.”

Of course. Eddie hadn’t even thought about that, because he’s him. And it was something you were probably worrying yourself sick over, because you’re you– you wanted out of here. To get up, go, be someone great.

“New York, ideally,” you’d said to him once, tightrope walking across the broken bleachers outside; you’d been waiting around for him to give you a ride home, but he had a deal to make first. You were weirdly patient, weirdly pensive that day. “Someplace I can go and burrow in and absorb everything and grow out of a crack in the sidewalk, new.”

Eddie’d held your hand, helping you step over a gap in the bench, “Not taking Manhattan by storm? Hurricane Lacy?”

You–and he remembered this–had held onto his hand for a few more minutes, a cigarette dwindling in the other. Your fingers were cold; they clutched at his a little tighter when you spoke again.

“No. Not Manhattan, not midtown, not big business. I have precipitated a change in my weathervane.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means that someone taught me the difference between being important and being significant.”

Back in the room. Eddie drawls out some stupid crack to Higgins, who he’s still supplying with enough benzos to take out Jonestown a second time, which is the only reason he hasn’t been booted out of Hawkins High for absolute and final good. And then you’re alone again, the two of you. Together.

“Wanna get out of here?”

Next thing Eddie knows, he’s spending the last of his energy like it’s burning a hole in his pocket, horsing around on the nurse’s saddle stool while you rifle through her office. You are all edgy and commanding because you have no idea how to say sorry you got wailed on by Hargrove for me.

Good. He likes you better like this, at least for right now. Likes to watch you attempt to pirouette on the razor’s edge of your relationship to one another, mostly because your attempt is more graceful and easier to watch than his is. And he likes to watch you. Watch you do anything, really.

Watch you snap at him to get on the bed. Fuck.

Watch you tear and dab at his busted knuckles. Fuckfuck.

Watch you talk about Cat People and press his hand to his chest and tell him he’s injured and wrong and watch you watch searing, singing alcohol on his split lip dry up. Eddie watches your eyes brighten and darken with curious affection, like those twinkle lights that fade in and out, steady as breathing. His breathing is anything but steady. His knees have come apart, letting you stand between them.

You dab and he lets this broken sound loose from him, because the proximity of your body to his feels like a fresh fucking spring breeze and god, god, the way you’re touching him with such gentle, measured movements, like you’ve choreographed every one–

You’re so exact. You’re so organized. He wants to unexact you.

Eddie uses his good hand, not that either of them are really any good, and presses as much of you into him as he can. The flush of your front, the flush of your mouth, he even has to stop those shorn denim-sheathed legs of his from wrapping around your hips. Eddie’s grip, it travels, hitching tweed up the curve of your ass.

You don’t push him away like he figured you might, you don’t indignantly demand what is going on?! You don’t. You weave your hand up the line of his thigh, to the hard edge of his crotch where he is straining, a rigidity that’s been building since you went all Nurse Ratched on him.

A rigidity that’s hard to keep down around you, badum-tsssss.

Fuck.

Eddie almost knocks the word loose with a low groan that’s pressed into the supple flesh of your cheek, your lovely blushing fucking cheek, a cheek he goes to kiss or bite or something but misses by a hair because you’re straining your neck back. To look at him. Not soberly, he hopes.

Someone down there is wishing him death by dick.

Not the wettest, wildest, filthiest dreams that he’s had about you (and categorically, there have been many) could have prepared Eddie Munson from the earth-shattering consequences of this tiny gesture. Your tongue, perfect and pink, darts to his lip, stinging and sore and comes away with the tiniest drop of ruby-red blood sitting on its tip.

And you suck his bottom lip between yours, eyes fluttering closed.

Eddie’s cock jumps as his heart does, not a second out of time, as you clamber up, into his lap– so completely un-Lacylike, so totally… unexact. How, in all the vastness of Heaven and earth and Middle Earth and Hell and the Bookstore and the closet and his bedroom and the van could he be so fucking stupid?

“Just friends, right?” Eddie is deaf to how pained it comes out sounding.

His good hand travels. He finds your thighs, the softness there giving way to easy indents for his fingers and he knows, he knows that this is where his hands should be–unless, higher could be good? Higher, high up past those offending, incriminating lace top stockings that drilled through Eddie’s mind like an ice pick, giving him whatever the opposite of a lobotomy is. Haunting him with a fervour, begging him to snap them, but there’s no fucking time for that, god it hurts but there’s no fucking time for that because you. Two. Are. In. The fucking. Nurse’s. Office.

But the world has ceased turning.

Eddie’s mouth opens in a silent attempt at a moan as his fingers push past to the beating, radiating core of you that the throbbing, radiating core of him longs for.

You’re so wet, and soft and lush and it rings through is head like a fucking hallelujah, you’re wet, you’re wet for him.

More than anything, he needs your encouragement–he needs to know that you want him to keep going. That you want him, that you want him, that–

You nod, frantic and undone, and Eddie kisses you for it just before he realizes he has no idea what he’s doing. But nothing in his body tells him to zoom out–in fact, the only thing he wants is more in. More you, more of you wrapped around him. He moves his hands with a clumsiness usually uncharacteristic of him, fucking guitar guy, fucking painting miniatures and shit guy. But it works, according to you and the way you keen against him with your beautiful, spit-shining lips parted and pulling against his.

These little noises, chirps and swallowed moans of yours– it’s like music. He wants to choke on them.

Eddie’s voice kind of cracks open again, letting a little air and a touch of begging out. He strains, pained, cock aching against the hitch of denim. “Does he do this? Does anyone do this for you, Lacy?”

Because you’re lonely, and Eddie knows that, with his fingers stroking you deep. You’re lonely, or would be, were it not for him. And it feels like now, in the heady swirl of these few moments that are stretched into an infinity, that he’s using it against you, but he’s not. He should be the one doing this for you, he should be the one making you feel this way, making you tremble even as he clumsily thumbs at your clit, because he thinks knows you and he thinks you want it unmeasured and unshackled and washing over you in a wave of sheer blind devotion and that’s why his tongue is all over your neck.

That’s why his knuckles are split.

That’s why there’s no malice in Eddie’s voice when he croaks, “Just friends? Lacy?” as you rock and spasm, hands clutching him around the shoulder and whimpers barely deadened against his lips. He can feel the texture of your pinched brow against his own.

He wants to clutch you as close as he possibly can, but he’s got one good arm and it’s between your legs.

Between your legs. Jesus fucking Christ.

Sobriety hits like a tidal wave as your breath returns to its normal rhythm; Eddie’s doesn’t quite have the same rebound. He’s still huffing a little, out of exertion or out of nerves, as he slips his hand out from under you, brushing what was off on his jeans. A small patch of his own bodily fluid collected there too, making sure he’s wearing the both of you like Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter as he walks around for the rest of the day.

Eddie, throat starting to tighten up, pulls you in for one kiss, to give you one last taste of where he’d been split open for you. Melodrama dances around it; shades of we shouldn’t have, but we did, but we can’t, but now I have to fucking live with the fact I cracked open this Pandora’s box and I’m sorry.

Or something to that effect.

And you see right through him, because you always do. Hair in a muss, lips flushed, adjusting your skirt, re-exacting yourself, you clean up any evidence that this had ever happened. At least, on a surface level.

Eddie dares to look at you once more, and you dare to look back at him. And thank god he’s sitting down, because that look shoots him right through the fucking aorta. You, wide-eyed and small-looking, pupils darting and unsure, are asking him why. Pleading with him, why. Why do this. Why now. Why at all, ever, why did you have to. Even though you know.

“I–”

“No, I know. I know. I certainly know.”

Because you’re Lacy. You know everything.

Eddie does think about going after you for a second, after your curt nod and dash through the door but he knows that it’s a zero-sum game. He has nothing good to say. It’s not even you that’s rendered him speechless– funny thing, you usually do the opposite. You always give him something to say. He just has nothing good to say. Nothing worthy of you.

So he sits there, on the examination table, waiting for the mythical Nurse Lydia to tend to his wounds.

First he’ll will himself soft, then he’ll will himself sane.

Famous last words.

#published by powder #e. munson by powder #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x oc #eddie munson fic #blurbs #edlacy #hai brainrot #this actually helped me crack a little thing i've been stuck on in chap 9 so thank you for that!!!#Spotify #l. doevski by powder

92 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 11 months ago

Text

bethy on beale street

eddie tells lacy the story of how al munson and elizabeth franklin met in memphis, tennessee. or, love is a grilled cheese sandwich. (2k) cw: sickening fluff, me making shit up about beale street, al munson is a junior sleaze but is no match for elizabeth franklin and her sunshine smile. taggin @dieaverage & @fracturedarkness x

part of the hellfire & ice universe

"oh, this is pathetic."

you push your lower lip out a little further, gesturing to the blackened thing of jiffy pop with the pitiful enthusiasm of a door-to-door salesman that needs to make one last sale or else she's giving her exhaust pipe a blow job. "eddie."

"was that your dinner?" he asks, gesturing to the failed science experiment in your hand with the cigarette in his.

a couple of incinerated kernels fall out the bottom. you nod, eyes shiny. he rolls his head around on his neck, groaning with a fervor. he's such a fucking sucker.

"fine! get in here-- you're so goddamn lucky wayne's doing overtime--"

"oh, otherwise i'd starve!" you say, brightening up immediately as you hop through the door of the munson trailer.

"otherwise you'd starve."

"emaciated!"

"a dessicated corpse come monday."

and come a few moments later, you're biting into the most heavenly grilled cheese you've ever had. like, really. the cheese is plastic and gooey and dripping and a string of it clings to your chin. eddie, the chef de cuisine, points for you to clear that up. you'd really underestimated what this boy could do with a pan-- you didn't even think he owned a pan.

watching him whip up this little number with the cigarette still dangling from his mouth was... mystifying. if entirely unhygienic. but if that's what you're putting up with for how this thing tastes...

"s's very good," you say with your mouth full.

"don't they teach you not to talk with your mouth full at miss porter's finishing school for prisses?"

you pinch your brow and give him the finger.

"better be careful," eddie says, tone sauteing in warning as he reaches forward and nudges that offending finger back into your little fist, "this is exactly how my parents got together."

your eyes flare as you wipe some grease off your lower lip. eddie rarely talks about his parents, just like you rarely talk about yours-- for a bouquet of reasons. bonding over your shared daddy issues is difficult when they're criminal accomplices-turned-enemies or whatever.

or maybe it's easier. you two just hadn't tried it yet.

"really?"

"tale as old as time," eddie sighs, sitting backwards on one of the two kitchen chairs and picking up the salt and pepper shakers.

"he was a line cook." shake shake. "she was a waitress." shake shake. "he could not leave the state of tennessee. they used no discernible form of birth control and figured that was a good enough reason to say 'i do'."

"how did they end up here?"

"well, soon as i was let loose upon the world, dad decided he was a little homesick--" eddie's eyelids sag sardonically, "--read, he had to go somewhere and cool off. hawkins is as good a place as any for that, unless you're al munson and trouble draws you in like a fucking electromagnetic force."

there's a beat.

"what part of tennessee?"

he doesn't expect you to ask that. knocks him out of his facetious narration. makes him twist his ring a little, like he's debating whether to tell you or not.

"um. memphis."

you smile, all knowingly. "beale street."

he smiles back, warming back up.

because of course you wouldn't say graceland first.

because you're pretentious and you're psychic, or something, because you're the goddamn oracle of delphi and you'd know to say beale street because...

franklin's diner was on beale street. still could be, eddie doesn't know, because they left memphis when he was still a baby. what he did remember, from what he could remember of his mom and what al rarely trickled into conversation, was that franklin's diner was an institution.

franklin's was beloved. it was the kind of place that slung hash and sausage to people twenty-four hours a day. those people ranged from civilians to cops to politicians to musicians to poets to drunks to degenerates. the hierarchy broke down at franklin's-- everyone was the same. everyone took their hat off at the door and said their pleases and thank yous and ate together. and laughed together. and told stories together.

whoever you were outside of that didn't matter.

so it stood to reason that a man on probation could get a job there.

al munson avoided a stay in the federal correctional institution in good ol' shelby county by the skin of his dazzling midwestern teeth. friends (because friends come by easy for al-- look in any dark, shady corner and there's a friend) had told him to make for franklin's, because not only is there work, but there's work.

and women.

seemed as if back of house was staffed by nothing but a pirate crew of ex-(and soon-to-be)-cons (which ain't a bad transition out of the big house, if you think about it), but front of house?

some of the most dee-vine fading beauties that memphis had to offer. one-time contenders for miss tennessee, each and every one of them, were it not for... the missing teeth, the bum eye, the drinking, the swearing, the smoking, the cussing out the customers.

al, as you can imagine, flourished in this environment. plucky little upstart sleazeball who handled women like don juan by way of some shitstain in indiana no one'd ever heard of? they loved him. cherished him.

and al, a lover of women of any shape, size or moral decrepitude, cherished them right back. in every imaginable way.

("gross." "i know, but stick with me.")

that turned south one sweltering august day when poppy franklin (which is what they called the big man who owned the place) came huffing in after a five-foot-nothing spitfire with a fried blonde dye job.

"y'know what, poppy, fine!" she yelled, her accent ringing through the diner like high, fine crystal tainted by smoke. "you want me as part of the family business, then i am more than happy to oblige-- but i got conditions! if i'm workin' my shift, we are listenin' to my music!"

she grabbed each side of the jukebox like the wheels of a high powered rally car, tongue peeking out the side of her sugar pink lips, eye squinting.

"c'mon, girl," poppy gasped, clutching at the counter. "goddamn ernie ford ain't music?"

"no!" she barked, and she swung around with this megawatt smile that filled her whole face-- filled the whole diner.

"this is music!"

and that first lick of hoodoo man blues rips through the jukebox speakers and the place goes up.

("hoodoo man blues? i don't think i know that." a beat. "what? but you know everything." a lingering kind of look. "i don't know everything! only most of everything." "i'll play it for you." "i'd like that. anyway. as you were.")

so, this little chickie dipped around the back to grab an apron and ran smack bang into al, who'd been ignoring his darla-of-the-week to watch this whole flurry play out via the service window.

she knocked the wind out of him. like, clean deflation.

"he- hey." first time al munson has ever stuttered, ever, on record.

"indiana, right?" she kept on smiling, like it'd hurt to stop, and dug this prefixed name tag out of the apron. "yeah, they said you was pretty."

all al could muster was this huff, like 'heh!' because she was looking at him with these eyes, just picking him apart and putting him back together with this look on her face that felt like the first blast of sunshine out of the joint.

which he knew about, right. so that mattered.

"bethy?" he pointed to the nametag.

"holy crow, and he's literate! you're a real diamond in the rough, there, indiana!"

and she threw her head back and cackled like a hyena and al munson knew he was done for. lights out. game over. see y'all next time! y'all come back soon now!

elizabeth 'bethy' franklin had landed back in memphis after an ill-guided attempt to rebel in nashville. she made it about a month until she became incredibly homesick, because bethy franklin was raised around love and family and music and nashville had the music part and some of the love part, and as much as she wanted to do something completely independent of her family, she missed her people. wasn't her time. so she came back, with a shitty blonde dye job that made a mess of her natural red curls.

and she was as effervescent as she was when she was a kid; always had a smile for everybody, and a dirty joke for everybody she liked. and she insisted on pumping that chicago blues out of the jukebox during every shift, dancing her way around that diner. the customers didn't even give a shit when she messed up their orders-- she was that magnetic.

al spent the next three weeks trying everything he could to take her out.

"bethy, you like ribs?" "you know i do, al, and you know i know every rib joint in town." "bethy, you wanna go for a drive?" "last i saw, i was the only one of us with a car!" "bethy, i just got this record by these dudes, uh, the aces--" "you better not be tryin' to impress me with things i already know, indiana!"

she made him work harder than he'd ever worked in his life-- much to the chagrin of every other waitress in the joint, who he'd tossed by the wayside in pursuit of the heiress to the finest, dirtiest diner on beale street.

the only day that franklin's closed was new year's day. poppy had even made it a longstanding rule that they could finish up early on new year's eve, around eight o'clock, to get at least some of the night's dancin' in.

as if they weren't already sick of each other's company, the diner staff stuck together like a pack of rats, descending on downtown memphis and causing a ruckus in the bars. one favored spot of the franklin family, this little tin roof bar that dealt mostly in country music, even called on bethy by name from the stage.

"well, let's see now-- looks like the prodigal daughter has returned safe and sound from the armpit of our national nudie suit, nashville, tennessee! you goin' git up and give us a tune, miss bethy franklin?"

and again, that voice rung clear but raspy, clean through the room and al’s aching heart, "well, i would, john, but your guitar player's just been kicked out the bar!"

"i can play." and al munson stepped up to the plate, to the stage, and he held that gibson like it was excalibur and he'd just yanked the sword out of that goddamned stone.

"you can play?"

"anything you want."

bethy covered the microphone and stared al down with a challenge. "long-legged guitar pickin' man."

which sounded like an insult, but he ripped them first couple chords off like it was nothing.

("and the crowd went up?" "and the crowd went up.")

she could sing, that girl. al too, but she had a voice like a nightingale. and she had him singing that same stupid song as midnight approached, sucking down cigarettes outside the bar. then, twenty minutes to go-time, bethy materialized in front of al and said--

"i could eat."

which is a terrific thing to say to a line cook, especially one that has since decided he would sacrifice the world and its riches just for a minute alone with you.

"bethy franklin, i'm gonna make you a grilled cheese so good, you're gonna ask my father for my hand in marriage."

so they high-tailed in back to their diner, down the street, breaking in with bethy's spare set of keys. al fired up the grill with white bread and all-american cheese on hand and bethy fired up the jukebox and danced herself around the kitchen to where do you go to, my lovely.

("oh, wow." "yeah, thought that might tickle your sensibilities.")

in about ten minutes flat, al was watching bethy insistently pick her sandwich up from his spatula, even though he was insisting she'd burn those pretty hands.

"these hands are fireproof, indiana. they can survive anythin'."

"they gonna survive how good that grilled cheese is, bethy?"

and bethy didn't hold back. she let her eyes roll right back in her head, humming out her mm-mm-mm! credit where credit's due. ate the whole thing in three bites.

"it's elizabeth, by the way."

al looked confused, but something on her face told him to remember this. the eyes that were usually sparkling with light had dimmed a touch; a more intimate setting of her gaze, if you will.

"that nickname. been drivin' me crazy my whole life. kinda... whassa word, diminutive, y'know? i like my name-- it's big and solid and important, don't you think?"

al shook his head and took elizabeth in. the whole big shining beacon of her, the one he'd let himself be burned right up in. singed, to a crisp. moth, meet flame. you get the idea.

and he said, "only one way we could make that name sound better."

"how'zat?" she asked.

and he said, "if we made it elizabeth munson."

and elizabeth smiled again, because she was always goddamn smiling, and said, "what's your daddy's number?"

back in the room.

you exhale big, and eddie's watching your reaction for... he doesn't really know what. he digs around for a cigarette and offers you one.

"this what you're like in hellfire club?" you ask, leaning back in your chair and crossing your legs. "because that was a hell of a story."

"good point. not enough grilled cheese motifs in my campaigns, lacy, i really oughta write that down somewhere..."

"no, i mean it. you're good."

the compliment sort of hangs between you. eddie's not quite sure how to handle it-- he doesn't have asbestos fingers like his mom did.

you look at him for what feels like an excruciatingly long time.

"i think you're like her," is what you finally say, and it feels like when you do that thing where you play with the tension of a situation like a cat with a mouse.

eddie's chest immediately tightens. eyelids stutter. he tries his damnedest to brush it off, but he's leaning in, the way he always does with you. he can't not give. he can't resist, not when it's you.

"i think it's the smile." you say, biting at the tip of your little finger. "provided what you told me is not complete unverified bullshit."

"hold on." and he's up and out of his chair, searching around for his jeans that he'd discarded earlier (yeah, he's walking around in his own damn boxers, it's his damn trailer, grow up (you're being very grown up about it)).

he slides a photo that he keeps in his wallet toward you, leaning over you.

it's a young woman, can't be more than 21, with a little baby that has a shock of dark curly hair. her dark roots are growing out a little. she's beaming toward the camera like her life depends on it.

eddie watches you as you study it, all considered and pouty like you get when you study anything. you hold the photo up right next to his face.

"now smile."

he smiles.

"bigger."

he stretches the corners of his mouth way out.

"just as i thought. identical."

pink colors his cheeks, just a little.

"a couple of all-american cheesers."

#e. munson by powder #blurbs #hai brainrot #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #al munson #elizabeth munson #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fluff #ish??? i guess??? i'm running out of relevant tags #published by powder #l. doevski by powder

98 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 11 months ago

Note

I wonder how Lacy would react if Eddie ever read her journal 👀 Like if he ever happened upon it accidentally. I'm picturing a full on nuclear explosion. Scorched earth. That kind of thing.

ANON YOU BETTER FUCKING---!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh, it's the end of the goddamn world, as far as she's concerned.

like, she's comfortable enough with him that she eventually leaves it sort of kind of lying around right-- except for, not really, eddie does pinch it out of her bag. he does a really good job of sneaking excerpts when she's out of the room, and that shit gets addictive.

starts like this-- she's researching something (shit, maybe it's even hellfire club, who knows, not me) for the streak and eddie's like, "what the hell is she even scribbling about in here all the time..."

first of all, she's got imperceptibly tiny spy-level cursive that he feels like he needs a magnifying glass to read properly but with a little squinting and a little spirit, he's getting places.

and the places. are. crazy.

"what the fuck are you doing."

he hears her voice from the door of the drama room, and it is like he's been caught red handed with his first stolen copy of penthouse all over again (i'll let you guess who caught him-- because it wasn't wayne and it wasn't al, but she does live in forest hills trailer park). heart hammering, brain scrambling.

lacy, for her part, is red hot tip to toe. curiosity killed the cat, right, but she is going to skin eddie munson and make a coat out of him.

"lacy-- now, lacy, let's not--"

"asked you a question. i asked you a question, munson."

she moves fast but he's faster (used to scampering; he has rat blood).

"i have questions for the author!"

"i have a bullet with your name on it!"

"it says here that steve harrington is the kind of guy that would proclaim to love pussy as a pushback to his chauvinistic past, but would keep fingering you in the wrong hole-- care to comment!"

"i was bitter-- it doesn't fucking matter! give it back!"

"nancy wheeler has the intellectual stamina of an american girl doll with a particularly starchy backstory, but at the very least--fuck--at the very least, it means she won't end up like her mother, who almost definitely cashed in on the last of her souring good looks--stop fucking screaming!--to assist in the spread of billy hargrove's petri dish of sexually transmitted diseases! lacy!"

"what?!"

"it's like you've written fucking hawkins babylon!"

she shrieks, because he only knows about hollywood babylon because of her! don't you dare use a woman's cultural touchstones against her!

eddie just about dodges a d20 that's been flung at him with eerie precision.

"okay, that almost got me in the eyeball!"

"good! all the better to not read my fucking journal with, you provincial pigfucker piece of shit!"

"no, no no," eddie says, and he's like up on a table now because the guy loves to be up on a fucking table, holding that journal waaaay above his head, waaaay above where lacy can reach it (short, evil), "i need you to hear my favorite part."

he doesn't even need to read this part from the cursed tome, because it's memorized.

"al munson probably has no bearing on the way eddie munson lives his life, because he's a deadbeat the way his son is destined to be a deadbeat. but the mere genetic suggestion of that piece of shit--you said piece of shit, right?"

lacy stops. stomach dropping.

"--is enough for you to want to cut the brakes in his little boy's van."

a beat. the silence is, like. heavy. eddie stares down at her and she can't meet eddie's eyes. like. at all. she feels-- really bad. mouth all dry. steps off the chair she'd been standing on.

eddie crouches to face her. maybe his ripped jeans strain a little more at the knees, i don't know. he uses the journal to tilt her chin up, to look at him, to face what she's written about him, in paper and ink. (fancy ink. fountain pen ink. paper's not too shabby either.)

her heart is hammering out her chest, body not quite sure how to process guilt like it processes anger or resentment or annoyance or (more recently) laughter.

"lacy," he says, voice husky and serious. "i just have one question."

"... yeah?"

"why didn't you cut my brake lines and kill me when you had the chance?"

and the way the smile breaks over his face (sunrise after months of gloomy winter, yadda yadda yadda), she almost wishes she did.

almost.

"can i hazard a guess?" he's gonna hazard a guess. he flicks to one of the most recent entries and lacy, weakly, tries to slam her hand over the page. this one he's had to read a couple more times to get the gist of it. because this one is really scandalous.

"dear reader," god, what is this? is this his lacy impression? it's awful, "it has taken you less than five weeks to become incapable of imagining your life without--"

"don't," and lacy actually snatches the journal from him this time, clutching it tight to her chest. "if your ego gets any bigger, it'll become cancerous."

or y'know somethin like that

#powder room talk #Anonymous #NONNY IM SO NORMAL ABOUT THIS.......#hai brainrot #eddie munson x reader #e. munson by powder #l. doevski by powder

97 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 6 months ago

Note

They both give me major switch energy. Like I'm fully with you that some days Lacy needs Eddie to dom it up and throw her around a bit, maybe throw in a little spanking because idk that shit's a big stress reliever for me ngl BUT ALSO

Lacy spanking Eddie?? hoooooboy the thoughts i am thinking right now hehe

i let this sit in my inbox for a couple of days because i absolutely needed to let it percolate because. because. because.

BECAUSE!

please enjoy 1.5k unedited words of spanky edlacy smut.

—

he's been getting on her nerves all day, let's say that much. corroded coffin have managed, by some small miracle, to score an audition for some battle of the bands thing that lacy is refraining to comment on.

it's not that she doesn't think they'll crush. if it's a competition where noise is the driving factor, of course they will. they'll blow everyone's eardrums out of their skulls.

it's that lacy's neutrality is enough to keep eddie so on edge that he'll have to outperform himself, out of sheer spite. this is how this works. she knows where to push and where to soothe.

what she didn't anticipate is just how goddamn annoying he would be in the run-up, anxious tension getting the better of him and making him boisterous in a way she's finding hard to find charming.

he's been a pest at the bookstore all day, but it's when he purposely de-alphabetizes her bestsellers in order to bait her that...

well, that works.

"jesus christ! alright, fuck this, i'm taking my break. you can explain the mess you just made to ivana when she gets back."

lacy grabs her copy of baby driver by jan kerouac and disappears to the back--the mention of ivana puts eddie hot on her heels. that old bitch makes his blood run cold and she knows it.

"wait, baby--"

"get out of here, this is staff only."

"--please, i'm sorry! i was just dickin' around!"

she pivots on him as they cross the threshold of the break room. dinky, dingy, green-tinged light. misery guts bomb shelter basement shit, one of the only places on the planet that lacy feels completely at peace. you get the idea.

"dicking around?" she says, met with his mocking puppy-dog eyed dimpled half frown, the asshole, the fucking asshole.

"lace. come on. no need to pull priss rank on me," and he leans in, but she dodges around him.

"you wanna dick around?"

eddie's head tilts as she reaches around, twisting the lock on the door behind them. there's a lock on the break room door because the fridge in the break room isn't a fridge, it's a safe and-- you know what, let's get into the machinations of the bookstore at another time.

eddie's lips puff out in a little, "whuh--" as lacy steps up on him. her voice, dropping low, for only the two of them to hear.

"dicking around has consequences, you know."

eddie just blinks his big dark eyes at her. amusement tugs at the corners of his mouth in a way she's just dying to wipe off.

"do you hear me?"

"... yeah?"

"what did i say?"

"dickin' around has consequences."

"uh-huh."

he tuts, eyes rolling and arms crossing at her little tough guy act. he hunches himself down to her level, which she haaaates. "jeez, what are you gonna do, lace? punish m--"

smack! the hardcover of her book meets with his clothed thigh and he jumps. eddie's mouth pops open, a chuckle of disbelief filtering through.

"ow."

lacy lets it hang. lets him register the way she's staring up at him, the way she seems to be seizing the air from the room.

something throbs in eddie's brow. something throbs in eddie's belly.

"ow," he repeats, softer, a hairline crack running through his voice.

"that's nothing," lacy says, "you deserve a lot worse."

"i do?" the words come out wanting.

she nods all slow and his heartrate picks up. he swallows hard, about to speak through a throat that's suddenly incredibly parched--

but lacy turns him around, his body limp and malleable in her hands. eddie faces the dinky formica table, not unlike the kitchen table in both of their trailers. familiar. featured in many of his lacy-related fantasies. but none of them like this.

she shoves him square in the center of the spine and eddie folds in half over the tabletop. it shakes on its spindly chrome legs, squeaking against old linoleum.

his palms brace the surface, his hips curl a touch. he breathes out a little, "uh."

uh for unexpected. uh for the way his brain is fizzing into static between his ears already.

"lights, baby?" he hears lacy breathe from behind him. she's got him.

of course. green. yellow. red. even if eddie had scoffed at safe words once upon a time. but lacy, the more experienced of the two of them, had insisted--she wanted transparency. when they tried things.

'no more hiding behind what we think people want from us. right?'

"right," he nods, noticing a tremble in his forearms. a curiosity pulling deep from his abdomen. "... green."

"oh." eddie's breath catches as he feels the flat of one palm curving over his ass. "so now you wanna pretend like you're good, hm?"

smack! eddie jerks as the hardcover of her book makes contact with his rear. a little groan leaving him. his jeans tightening, and not just from the angle.

with two fingers, lacy taps at the base of his spine. the book in her hand still rests against him--does she feel him lean into it?

"green, green-- i'm good," eddie says and expels another breathy hahh! as the book comes down against him again.

"the fuck you are. behaving the way you do."

eddie's face devolves into an open-mouthed grin, near drooling, as he grips onto the table. the only sounds, for a while, are the sharp snaps of her hands or her book against his ass and his high, appreciative groans.

he wants so badly to look over his shoulder, see her standing over him with that hard line circling her irises and her lips pouted from frustration and exertion. but when he tries, she snaps, "no. you haven't earned that yet."

fuck. fuck. fuck, this is good, why is this good? he is such a filthy freak for wanting this, for loving this, for feeling these pangs of pleasure race through him as he tries not to arch his ass in the air for her.

eddie nearly loses it when he feels lacy's knee separate his legs a little more, the firmness of her thigh coming into contact with his taint and balls, trapped in the constraints of his jeans.

she takes her sweet time reaching around and unbuckling him--it's all he can do not to try and buck into her hand, but it seems an untoward move like that would piss her off, make her stop. and she can't stop. he needs her to keep going.

"finally got a hold of yourself?"

not for long. lacy shoves eddie's jeans and underwear down his thighs and he yelps at the sensation of his cock hitting against the cool chrome trim of the table.

"christ, please, lace--" he whimpers, cheek pressing against the tabletop. he can barely tell if it's him manipulating his hips or her; her hands have melded into his skin, groping the plumpish flesh of his ass like she wants to devour it.

eddie has a thought he's never had before, at least not localized in that area.

i want her mouth.

it doesn't disappear completely when her hand makes a mark against his bared skin, but it fizzes out some. once, twice, thrice, each snap stinging more than the last. eddie can feel the singing outline of lacy's palm on his ass cheek and his mouth attempts a laugh--lands somewhere halfway between that and a moan.

"that's more like it. good boy."

because lacy's hitched her leg over his rear now. he can feel the silky scratch of her tights and the heat of her crotch sitting on him. he throbs, listening to her chastened moan as she grinds down against him. lacy's fingers web into his hair and she hauls his neck up. her other hand reaches to ghost along the swell of his balls. his hot, hardened cock in her grip.

a broken sound of pitiful wanting echoes out of eddie's glistening lips, drool catching in the corners.

yet he still manages to gather himself enough to attempt a grin, because he can see her now. flushed. pupils obliterated. speeding off how fucking hot this is.

god, he loves her.

"ambidextrous?" he breathes, canines showing.

lacy's hand slips around to his throat. a little squeeze. "shut up," but the way she says it feels like a kiss.

eddie's face hits the formica again, the only appropriate response to the way she's handling his cock from behind. that yanking thread of desire is pulled so taut in lacy's hands.

"fuck lace, i need y--i need you to fuck me. i need you, i need you, i need y--... hah-uh, jesus christ--..."

her trigger finger rubs his sputtering head.

"you're doing so well for me, though... all pink-cheeked and pretty for me, huh?"

her other hand smooths over the smarting, reddening, tender skin on his ass.

"such a darling boy."

eddie's knees buckle as he cums in long, violent, messy ropes that splatter against the break room linoleum.

lacy holds him up, keeps him steady. pets his hair until he's ready.

"but i can't fuck you 'til you nail that audition," she whispers. "you're late for practice."

#powder room talk #Anonymous #edlacy #e. munson by powder #l. doevski by powder #eddie munson smut #eddie munson x oc #hai brainrot

47 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 8 months ago

Text

THICK SKULLS IN A TWO STAR TOWN - UNIVERSE MASTERLIST

charting the life, love and criminal activities of eddie munson and lacy doevski.

main pairing - eddie munson x lacy doevski (fem!oc) supporting cast - ronnie ecker, nancy wheeler, steve harrington, robin buckley, al munson, ray doevski (oc), reefer rick lipton, fred benson, chrissy cunningham, jim hopper warnings include but are not limited to - angst, smut, criminal activities, bad parents, mental illness, fluff, humor and complicated relationships explored throughout. 18+ only please

part one | HELLFIRE & ICE - or, the teenage years

1984. former bitch supreme of hawkins high lacy doevski begins a new life as eddie munson's trailer park neighbor - after his father put her father in prison.

MASTERLIST | GENERAL TAG

part two | BURNING UP AND BURNING OUT - or, the scary late 20s

1994. lacy and eddie reunite after eight years of relative radio silence, shoved together by nancy wheeler and their ten year hawkins high reunion.

MASTERLIST | GENERAL TAG

part three | LIGHTS UP LIKE A LIFE - or, late 30s parenthood

2000. having made some peace in hawkins, lacy and eddie's life is about as ordinary as can be--if you don't count the criminal enterprises. then, their cozy reality is completely uprooted by the arrival of eddie's 15 year old son, frankie.

MASTERLIST | GENERAL TAG

VERSE TAG | ask box is always open for this verse. ama.

#thick skulls #masterlist #published by powder #rubbing my stupid little hands together. now you know what i'm about #e. munson by powder #l. doevski by powder

42 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 11 months ago

Note

omg can we see lacys dad being arrested? or maybe her first day back at school since it happened and everyone knows it was eddies dad that took him down?

CAN YOU FUCKING EVER!!!!!!!! i accidentally wrote 2k words on this because i cannot be normal about lacy, ever. should also mention that her father's name is mentioned in this. also, thank you for sending this in! it makes me real happy to know that people are interested in the background of the verse!!! *part of the hellfire & ice universe, obviously

You learned about guilty omniscience from your father.

The night that red and blue lights descended over your house in Loch Nora–a cage of relative opulence–your father was sitting in his favorite chair, drinking the aged scotch that he only brought out around his birthday. His suit was pressed. His hair shined, the salt-streaks of gray that ran like lightning shocks across his skull sharpened up against the light. His class ring from Hawkins High, which you always told him was tacky, tapped against the crystalline glass. Ting. Ting. Ting. Waiting.

Your father is the kind of man that carries himself impeccably, every single detail forethought.

Even this one. He knew when they were coming.

Like a fucking white collar soothsayer.

That always made your blood run cold.

Then again, from the minutiae that you were able to squeeze out of your mother throughout the course of his trial, this charge was a while in the making. He could have heard that they were closing in on a capture, so he made sure to wear his best three-piece.

At first, you thought the police car was for you. You had spent the entire weekend out with Carol and Cass– cruising around on a cloud of heady adolescent nonchalance, which also could have been the weed that Munson kid sold you. The three of you had approached him, slinking around the abandoned starcourt mall like a trio of vipers.

Some rum and Coke in a Big Gulp had helped soften out the sleaziness of the parking lot. You were all moving a little slower than usual.

Munson had looked at you–you especially–with some potent mixture of fear and resignation.

“Half ounce for thirty?” he’d said, and you’d heard the grit in his teeth. Ooh. He had some kind of principles when it came to selling to people he didn’t like.

“That’s an upcharge,” you’d rasped back, leaning out of the back seat of Cass’s convertible.

Cass, who was oddly fidgety, looked back and shook her head. “Let’s just get out of here.”

Munson clicked his tongue. “That’s inflation. Cost of livin’s crawling up.”

“For you, maybe,” you muttered and the girls snickered.

You turned back to him again, finding him glowering, brow all set and heavy. You understood why people thought he was frightening– the rumors of cult activity, animal sacrifices, ties to biker gangs, plus the garden variety he’s just a pervert! type of shit. But nothing scared you. Not then.

You were bulletproof.

“You can do better than that.”

His stare met yours. Heavy, like a door that wouldn’t nudge open. “No can do.”

People rarely said no to you, either. Not then. It made you drop back into your seat like the spoiled brat you were, unimpressed.

“What if we said you could come smoke with us?” Carol chirped from beside you in the back, just mockingly enough to go somewhat undetected. “You’d give us a discount then, right?”

Cass spun around in the passenger seat and smacked Carol on the arm, hissing, “Shut the fuck up!”

Carol was all, ow, what’s your problem?! I was kidding… but your head lolled against the leather headrest. You peered at him over your shades. His jaw tensed and winched, an active attempt at biting his tongue. You could see that he was begging for this humiliation to end.

Despite all the hearsay, he was just some pathetic kid. And he clearly needed the money, or he’d have told you all to fuck off by now.

“I don’t smoke with trailer trash,” you’d drawled. Pulling the tension, just because you could.

“Thirty,” he said again, tone hard. “Take it or leave it.”

You shrugged at the other girls, reaching for your purse. “Well, we know he doesn’t take Mastercard, so…”

You had spent the following forty-eight hours attempting to drag yourself down from the paranoia that set in after your first joint. God, you were fucking horrendous at smoking weed. Still are. Everything was a threat; every sidelong glance from Cass, every hyena-like laugh from Tommy. You tried to stick it out and be cool and be normal for as long as you could, but the next thing you knew, it was Sunday night and you were sneaking back home through the backyard.

Your feet had just gotten a hold on the trellis you usually snuck down from when you saw the glimmer of red and blue flashes from out front. Shit. Your mother, your vengeful mother must have followed through on that missing person threat, because she knew that the only way to get to you was through a display of public embarrassment.

This maelstrom of irony is what we call karma.

At the head of the stairs, you prepared to edge your way down to the white-hot rage of your parents and the eye-rolling of whatever beat cops were unfortunate enough to have responded to the call. But police chief Jim Hopper's gravelly, monotonous voice carried remarkably well from your foyer. You heard your father’s name and your throat went dry.

“... you are under arrest for embezzlement, fraud, conspiracy to distribute illegal narcotics–”

“This is ridiculous! You have no idea what you’re doing–Jim, can’t you do something!”

A starchy, federal-sounding tone cut right through your mother as you raced down the stairs, panic tightening your windpipe. “Ma’am, we would really appreciate your cooperation–!”

“Cooperation with what?!”

“Mom?”

“These charges are bullshit!”

“Mom!”

She looked right through you, right to your father, as she always does–did. And your father, with his expression a kind of bemused smile despite the cuffs binding his hands behind his back, looked at you. He usually wore some kind of sheen for you; of pride, mostly. But now, his eyes were empty and deep and bore through you like a blade.

Tears trickled past your waterline though you didn’t even feel them building. On instinct, your hand dashed to wipe them away– despite your confusion, you knew he didn't like that kind of pitiful display.

“Daddy, what is going on?” you asked, and your voice was embarrassingly thick. Two of Hawkins PD’s finest slowly muscled him to the door, one dark-suited agent taking up the rear; he wasn’t putting up a fight in the slightest. Confident in this being a big misunderstanding, you were sure.

“Game face, Lacy. for god’s sake.”

As he passed Chief Hopper, who stood in your doorway and exuded a puzzling kind of aura, he stopped. Looked right into the cop’s face, with a kind of seething glare you’d never even imagined he could muster.

“To whom do I owe this pleasure, chief?”

“Don’t start this, Ray,” Hopper says, voice echoing tones of disappointment.

Your father’s voice dropped, dangerous and personal.

“Now, Jim–you really think that’s a fair thing to say to a man in handcuffs? Because it looks like somebody already got the jump on me.”

“This doesn’t end well for either of you, you know that.”

“Well, you be sure to pass that along to Al Munson next time you see him.”

Munson. Your blood chilled and you instinctively grabbed for your mother’s arm, before she could start after them.

“This is insane! This is in-sane– my husband is a beloved member of this community and–”

“Mom,” you said, rounding on her with a vice grip. Tears sparkled on the very precipice of your lashes but you willed them not to drop. “Keep that up and you’ll be in that squad car with him. You want that?”

She exhaled, and you loosened your hand to stroke her arm– attempting to approximate something like comfort. Not like either of you were any good at it. Snapping back around to where Hopper was just vacating your porch, you followed him and called, “When can we see him?”

“After questioning,” Hopper grumbled back, looking over his shoulder to size you up. He paused. Pulled out a cigarette. “Calm your mother down. But bring a lawyer.”

“Surely we don’t–” you started, but he steamrolled you.

“Bring. A lawyer.”

Eyes followed your father to the squad car, with its offending flashing lights making a mardi gras mockery of this moment of shock. Something wasn’t right– something really wasn’t right, but you couldn’t yet put your finger on it. Your mom wasn’t wrong; your father was an upstanding member of the community. A real estate mogul (as much as one can be in small town Indiana), a philanthropist, a generous investor…

Yours weren’t the only eyes watching from a porch. The surrounding neighbors had likely caught the reflections of the lights in their evening glasses of cabernet and come out for a peep– police cars were a rare sight in Loch Nora. So rare, it begot rubbernecking.

Your stomach leadened. In your minds eye, you saw the Hawkins’ phone tree light up like Christmas. News of this would have reached your homeroom by morning.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck– and that haunting of a name ringing in your ears. You be sure to pass that along to Al Munson next time you see him.

It keeps on fucking ringing as you screech into an empty spot in the parking lot, leaving your car skewed over two spaces. You didn’t care, you hadn’t slept, you couldn’t think about anything else other than your poor father in that questioning room and your poor mother crying her eyes out over a bottle of beaujolais no matter how much you told her to lay off and that sinking feeling that something was terribly, awfully wrong.

It’s not that you believed what the police had said. You didn’t, of course you didn’t! You’d stake your life, your future, which you were so painstakingly building, on the fact your father was innocent. That he was a good man– but what had Eddie Munson’s shitheel father got to do with any of this? what could this Al Munson possibly get out of slinging false accusations?

Took exactly twenty four hours after that first pitiful day at school for the Al Munson factor to come to light. At first, you friends didn’t really know what to say– they handled it by kind of avoiding it, not entirely sure whether they should bring it up, even though you knew that they knew. And that they were frothing at the mouth to know more.

But after Munson Senior was a confirmed player in the scene (“Probably running his mouth about it in every shithole watering hole this hole of a town has to offer!” your mother had tearfully exclaimed), interest was piqued.

"Like, what was your dad doing messing with a Munson? How does he even know him?"

And the fact that you shut down almost every question with an, “I don’t know yet, we have to wait and see,” meant that rumors started to spread about what your dad had done. Nasty rumors. Violent ones.

Worst of all were the ones that painted Al Munson like some bad guy turned good, a victim of some thuggish mafioso taking advantage of underprivileged people in your poor, fair town!

It made you sick. literally. You puked many times, and regained your composure, and went back out to listen to the rumor mill churn again.

Motherfuckers. Pitiful motherfuckers. Something your father would mumble on the rare occasions you’d seen him really get angry. They have no idea what it takes to build something in a world like this.

Once, completely lost in this thought, you ran headfirst into the person whose two cents you wanted the least– but who seemed to know exactly how he was implicated in this situation.

Munson Junior jumped back in the hallway, as if you’d zapped him. If you had, you would have aimed to kill.

“Listen, I–”

“Don’t,” you warned, stalking around him. You never had words for this fucking loser; you weren't about to start then.

“I just want–”

“No.”

“–to say,” and something turned in his tone as he started to follow you down the hallway; something foul sprouted out of it, twisted and jagged and angry, “that I know times are real tough right now– and money’s probably tight! I heard the IRS are on their way? Anyway, those court appointed lawyers really ain’t the worst things in the world… my dad only got sentenced, like, four out of five times! I'm sure your pops will be fine.”

A beat shuddered between you. You stopped in your tracks.

“They love pretty boys like him in prison,” Munson finished, a self-satisfied smile dripping around his words.

It took everything, and I mean everything, not to turn around and use your manicured nails to rip clean through Eddie Munson’s jugular.

“All the money in the world won’t save him from getting fucked like he deserves.”

A shallow breath drawn in, shuddering some. You tossed your head over your shoulder and let your narrowed eyes drill into him until discomfort started pressing on the moment, like a boot to the neck. That same hollow-eyed stare. You inherited a lot of things from your father.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “Who are you?”

#powder room talk #Anonymous #hai brainrot #e. munson by powder #blurbs #published by powder #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x oc #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fic #god the lore i do it for the lore the lore the lore #like lacy was a bad bad girl and played on indignity because it was one of her greatest fears too for fucksake for fucskaekeeeee #i love that you give a fuck about this thank you #l. doevski by powder

65 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 11 months ago

Note

How about Lacy finding Eddie's writing? 🤭

need you to imagine me listening to a fifth of beethoven from the saturday night fever soundtrack whilst writing this because i became insane and filled it with Clues.............

it's like trying to understand the fucking zodiac killer.

it's all codes and ciphers and scrawls and-- well, she thought she might have been reading that one upside down but it's actually indecipherable any way you twist it.

and it's not like any of it is even written on paper either. torn open cigarette packs, napkins, burger wrappers from the diner. one time a leaf.

because eddie's not like lacy in the way she keeps a journal but eddie's like lacy in that if he's roundhoused with a thought that he needs to remember, he's got to write it down now immediately pronto on any available surface.

which is pretty pointless, since he keeps losing all this garbage and she has to pick it up after him.

she bears over the spread of scraps like an fbi agent, palms braced to the table. there's a thread here, but she can't quite untangle it. she's staring at a pile of shit that says shit like

crabs incident-- bruised like a peach worth biting-- violet like violence??

red tights. tingly. carnelian little carnivore.

track two. treasure.

persephone's hall pass.

seventh grade & as many minutes in limbo. shoulda ripped off band aid.

mage in a mink coat.

well, that last one--

"you dumpster diving now? hard times."

fuck! fuck. told you, rat blood. appearing out of nowhere with no noise no notice to then become the loudest thing in the room. he's like thunderclap, this fucko, like a spontaneous combustion.

he also doesn't even recognize his own handwriting, seems like. she blushes, furious. doesn't know why.

"community service. they have me picking up the trailer trash's trailer trash."

"snitty!" he shoves the bag of chips he's holding at her--an offering, he can't do anything normal around her--and reaches for one of the scraps. lacy watches him like a scientist watching a guinea pig for brain activity-- and his eyes go all wide and panicky. "wait."

"eddie-- hey!" but he's scrambling now, going for all the little pieces of writing she'd been trying to arrange on the table like a pointless puzzle. "don't--"

"where'd you get all this shit, huh?! going through my pockets now, is that it? like a cop?"

"i-- hey, don't you fucking dare-- look, you shed!"

"i shed?"

"you shed. you've got shit falling out of that stupid, enormous nerd binder every goddamn day because you just shove shit in there and don't organize anything, and i wasn't gonna stand around and let you just litter everywhere and--" now it's her turn to be like. wait. crosses her arms, eyes narrow, she's mother superior serving nailed ya bitch. "--why are you all skittish?"

"huh?"

"it's just-- trash, right?" she snatches a burger wrapper out of his grasp. oh this is delish.

"yeah," he grabs, but she's holding it behind her back and god her face is like stupid smirky, "but it's my trash. my--giveit--private... trash."

eddie munson is blushing.

"who's the mage?"

"the fucking.... the what?"

little crinkle as she unfolds a piece torn off a brown paper bag. "mage in a mink coat. who's that?"

"nobody."

"i have a mink coat."

"oh. does that really say mage? 'coz it should say mange." he's such an asshole. she's grinning so wide.

everyone says revenge is a dish best served cold but she bets she could use eddie munson's cheeks as a hotplate and eat right off 'em. it'd taste so much better. lobster bisque. filet mignon. michelin star.

"have you been writing about me, munson?"

his face is all stone-set, mouth all i can't fucking believe this and eyes all i'd cut the brake lines in her van if she wasn't the one scamming rides off me all the time. "li'l miss my life is incomplete without eddie munson wants to talk?"

"called you a neanderthal in the next sentence. don't forget that."

"you're such a beastie."

"carnelian little carnivore, you wrote."

"what makes you so sure it's all about you, huh?"

"context clues."

he glances down. she is, in fact, wearing the aforementioned tingly-feeling-inspiring red tights again today. shit.

"what happened in seventh grade?" she's pointing to the scrap in his hand, one he's managed to keep out of her snatchy little fingers.

she doesn't remember anything significant about seventh grade. but he does, and a knot tightens in his chest and he's about to lie and say something crass about my fist, a stopwatch and a view of you from underneath the bleachers at cheerleading practice-- then final bell rings.

"that is for me to know--"

"--and for me to die ignorant?" she's an active listener.

"precisely, you wench. now get the fuck outta here, i got hellfire."

lacy leaves the scraps.

"i will find out, y'know."

he knows. "you're like a bitch with a bone that way."

"the bitchiest."

#powder room talk #Anonymous #eddie munson x reader #hai brainrot #e. munson by powder #blurbs #honestly i thnik this helped me get out of my tiny writer's block for next chapter so THANK YOU i WILL be referencing back to this #lacy_as_charlie_day_as_charlie_kelly_pepe_silvia.gif #love u so much nonny #also-- i have to add that these dont reference eddie's 'dear whoevers' in the chapters bc i feel like that's his internal monologue #more than Writing Anything Down. my nonsensical shorthand king <33333333 #l. doevski by powder

64 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 8 months ago

Note

Lacy bullying Eddie (affectionately) into having a sleepover (not sexual, initially) with her with facemasks and deep conditioning treatments and nail polish because she can’t look at his dry ends and the clogged pores on his nose or the hair between his brows because he’s unfairly pretty and she misses girly sleepovers a little bit maybe perhaps

THIS IS EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER WANTED UUUUGGHHHH and it starts like this

“so you’re entering me into the witness protection program.”

“what? sh—“

“lace, you came in here with full artillery. look at this thing.” thunk. it’s just a little cosmetics case! a midsized cosmetics case. alright, it’s a decently sized cosmetics case. christ. “i’m expecting, like, reconstructive surgery.”

lacy stares a clean hole right through him.

“you were the one that said you could use a little pampering. stressful times and all that shit.”

“yeah, but i meant—“

“you meant a blowjob.”

“i… maybe.”

“and i’m not ruling that out! just… sit down. let me make you pretty.”

smash cut to like, an hour later and both of them are trying desperately not to smile so as not to crack the facades of the quick hardening mud masks they have on. (lookin’ at her in that little robe, it’s not the only thing in the room that’s quick hardening if you get what i��m say—alright.) eddie, in a bright green concoction designed for extraction and lacy in a ghoulish white version made for maintenance— because she’s on top of this shit, don’cha know.

eddie’s reclined between lacy’s legs, his head resting against her chest. his hand in hers, she’s using those nimble fingers to work lotion into his knuckles and callouses.

(“is this really necessary?” “if you ever wanna put those fingers inside me again, it is.”)

in the background, they’ve got lou reed spinning.

if lacy had to illustrate a perfect moment…

“this feels…”

“say something stupid and i break your fingers.”

“nooo,” the word curls in his mouth like smoke, “it feels… nice.”

lacy struggles against a smile. for the sake of the face mask. of course.

“i was the manicure boss when we’d have sleepovers. me and…” she trails off. eddie blinks. “i’m deceptively good with my hands. for a rich girl.”

“oh, i know that better than anybody— ow!” eddie squirms as she pinches at him lightly; pinches her back on her thigh. “what else did you harlots get up to at those sleepovers? practice kissing?”

“god, you’re such a caricature of a boy sometimes,” lacy tuts. “but… mm. maybe.”

“yeah? who was the best?”

“wouldn’t you like to know.”

“i would, dipshit, s’why i asked.”

“this faux lesbianism better not be titillating you, freak.”

“you’re not even giving me anything to work with, cheerleader.”

lacy sighs, so deep out of her chest that it shifts eddie’s head a little. his curls are wrapped in an old t-shirt on top of his head, y’know, to sop up whatever sauce she put on ‘em when they got out of the shower.

she hadn’t thought about those sleepovers in a minute. powdery perfume and the smell of hair burning from carol’s room when cass would accidentally go too hard with the hot rollers. wild, loud laughter. everyone balancing on the life raft of her canopy bed.

“t is for tina who used too much tongue…” lacy starts and eddie snorts, “h is for heather who sometimes got handsy…”

“oh shit, my mask!” eddie gasps, but she rubs his chest, bare and soft from the lotion she’d slathered on him earlier.

“don’t worry about it, you’re already cooked.”

“oh?” he chirps, hauling up and around to face her. she can’t contain herself, him cast in gill-man green. “so i can take this shit off now?”

“jesus, you’re the creature from the black lagoon!” lacy guffaws, and here eddie comes with those tickling hands, fingers making a rapid crawl up her legs.

“oh yeah? you gonna be my little, uh— whatsername—“

“julia a—hhhahah—julia adams!”

“lemme make you pretty, she says, lemme make you pretty—and look at me now!” eddie rears up on his haunches, arms flung wide, “i’m a monster!”

lacy, face mask flaking, can barely catch a breath from where she lies on his sagging mattress— and before she knows what’s what, she’s being hauled up bridal style, carried to the bathroom to ‘reverse this green-skinned curse you put upon me, witch!’

eddie quietens right down when lacy passes over his pretty features with a warm washcloth, careful and gentle, patting in face cream after she dries his face off. her touch, again, delicate and dedicated. like nothing eddie’s ever felt from another human being.

not since he was little, at least.

he leans forward, clutching at her waist and pressing his face into her belly from his seat on the closed cistern. and squeezes her ass for good measure.

“did heather ever get this handsy?”

lacy, carefully unwrapping his conditioned curls, smiles. the weight of him around her feels so good. so grounding. makes her feel solid.

“just the once. you got big shoes to fill, munson.”

#powder room talk #anonymous #lmao A BLUrb on accident who ME???!#hai brainrot #edlacy #thanks anon ily #l. doevski by powder #e. munson by powder #published by powder

52 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 8 months ago

Note

how would they handle a pregnancy scare?

TW pregnancy scare i guess WHOOPS it’s ANGSTY in here lmao

HAHA. well!

“did this take this long the first time we did it?”

oh, you mean the first time they did it when lacy bought nancy wheeler’s pregnancy test and they had to wait around in the freezing broken boys bathroom in the middle of midwinter to see if harrington had sired something?

“no,” lacy says, extracting her little finger from her mouth where she’s chewed it to mince, “time has slowed down to a glacial pace in order to punish me for my sins.”

eddie, sitting in the bathtub, attempts a grin. he’s not feeling too spiffy either. “getting locked out of wed?”

“coming off the fucking pill.”

how late is she? late enough to mention, late enough to worry. see, lacy’d been on the pill since they began this little world-axis-shifting dalliance of theirs so she and eddie had enjoyed the luxury of bareback, so to speak. she had put a lot of faith in that thing, but it so happened that she started getting these splitting migraines and low, low, low moods so her campus doctor had suggested that she come off the pill for a little bit. see if that changed anything. hormone imbalance and all that.

problem was, it was kind of hard to remember that she had come off it. those first couple of times, it was kind of an event, lacy making sliding that condom onto eddie almost ritualistic in a way that had him near to busting. but a time or two after that, it kinda… slipped their mind.

it happens. right? or is she stupid all of a sudden?

eddie’s a good boyfriend. drove her right to the drugstore, walked her right up to the counter so at least if the clerk gave her a dirty look, he was giving it to both of them.

but there’s just… something…

“you haven’t… changed your mind or anything?”

the last time they did this, eddie had asked her if she wanted kids. they hadn’t gotten together yet, but the tension between them was like a pot boiling over. spitting everywhere.

“i fully reserve the right to change my answer given the fact that we are eight-shitting-teen years old.”

but now she is twenty. her twenty first birthday looming, in fact.

eddie, doe eyed, watches lacy like he knows she’s got a knot in her chest, because she does. he watches her hands curl over her face, shoulders tense.

“not even…”

because a good girlfriend would say yes, right? a good girlfriend would be like, yes, of course, because i worship the ground you walk on, because i should drop all notions of my life without a second thought at the mere suggestion of a kid with you, because it would make you so happy. and i love you, so much. all i want is to make you happy. i’d eat the sun if that meant anything to you.

that’s what a good girlfriend would do, right? that’s how she would act. overjoyed. dreamy eyed. we’ll make it work, baby, you and me.

and there’ll always be the notion that we shackled each other to this town we purport to hate. and i’ll watch you avoid becoming your father and you’ll watch me become mine. and a little bit of my mother, too. and wayne will still hate me, even moreso for trapping you here. and in between, there’ll be this baby who didn’t ask for any of this at all.

“you can’t hate me for this,” lacy chokes. “i’m begging you.”

i was raised in resentment and i would never risk doing that to another child.

eddie feels sick. he hauls out of the bathtub to wrap his arms around her but his heart is hammering in his ears.

of course he wants this. and when he pictures a kid that theoretically has his eyes and her nose, he gets scared when he can’t really see her in those visions. others, sure. they’re clear as day. eddie knows what their wedding bands will look like, and what she’ll look like brushing her hand through her hair when she’s wearing it.

but he doesn’t see lacy glowing and barefoot, even though he’s tried.

“i don’t… lace…”

elizabeth munson was twenty when she had eddie. al was a little older. she’d snapped her life in half to uproot from memphis to hawkins, only to die six years after.

eddie really tries to make it not feel like a crusade to better his father’s wrongs, when he imagines it. you know?

“because i love you so much, i love you so much that i couldn’t take it,” lacy’s voice cracks in time with his heart, “if you hated me for this.”

a horrible thought flashes through eddie’s mind. would you do it if it meant i would never hate you?

“i love you,” is all he says into her hair, “i really, really love you.”

they stand on the cold tile of the bathroom for a long time. two people very much in love, and seemingly at odds.

eddie peers over lacy’s head at the watch on the counter.

“alright, sweetheart.” feels impersonal. he never calls her that. that’s for the outside world.

lacy picks up the stark white strip from the test tube, and her voice shakes.

“well. a lot of drama over… nothing. i’m sorry.”

eddie watches her shrink into herself, and would easily sock himself in the jaw if he thought it would do any good.

“hey!” his dazzling smile comes into her view, and she nearly buys it for a second. “forget about it, okay? who needs some fucking loser baby, right?”

but what eddie means, in that present moment, at twenty years old, is until next time.

and what lacy knows, in that present moment, at twenty years old, is there won’t be one.

#powder room talk #anonymous #edlacy #hai brainrot #e. munson by powder #l. doevski by powder #published by powder

33 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 11 months ago

Note

🎵+ our girl lacy hehe

send me 🎵+ character name and i’ll write a lil blurb inspired by a song from their playlist (you can also request songs and i will do my level best. god is a dj and i'm god)

▶ MAKING THE BED - OLIVIA RODRIGO

and i'm playin the victim so well in my head, but it's me who's been making the bed or lacy visits her dad in prison and reflects on the life she's created*

*as part of the hellfire & ice universe

warnings for mentions of past parental abuse, incarcerated parent, slight drug mention, cussin up a storm as always

also the amount of time this has spent buried in my drafts! it's not right! but it is okay i hope thank you love you anon <3

You had been putting this off for as long as was excusable to put it off-- as long as you could push it, you'd push it. Busy with school, with work now since your gig at The Bookstore had started (which he'd hate), with your... friends (which he'd hate even more, if he knew exactly who that company included).

But eventually, you do just have to bite the bullet and pick up the phone.

The bullet tastes rancid and the visitation room is always freezing. Doesn't matter if you wear your warmest coat--the mink that he bought you, that still smells of smoke from a garbage can at Roane Quarry--you're still practically vibrating by the time you sit down.

"You always ran so cold, baby girl."

Your father smiles at you through the glass. His eyes are wrinkled at the edges, kind of tired. They've got him behind there like a caged animal. Like you're supposed to tap on the glass of his enclosure and see if he'll respond with glee or fury. He's docile today. It's a change; the last couple of times you'd accompanied your mom here, he'd been seething.

"I think it's an iron thing," you muse vacantly, winching your shoulders in.

"Should eat some red meat."

"There's been a concerning lack of filet mignon in my life lately."

That makes him chuckle and that makes you smile. The orange jumpsuit reflects badly against his skin, extra harsh under the burn of overhead fluorescents. Makes you both look sickly; worse than you are. Misery loves company. There's no way you can tell him that you're actually...

"So how are you doing?" He asks you this question and there's a weight attached to it. He must know, right, he must have figured the shitstorm of trouble that you'd been in for in the aftermath of his arrest. The blowback on you. On your mom, who you were white-knuckling yourself into having pity for.

Your lips purse, tugging to the side. Again, no clue how to answer a question like that. Is he expecting game face? Is he expecting... honesty? You can't read it. So you shrug. "You know."

"I don't, Lacy. That's why I asked."

He has a terrible stare, your dad, the kind you can never get out from under. The kind that makes you feel like you're being constantly watched. In the walls, this guy. As if he knows everything already.

"Well, ah-- school is fine, I'm doing about the same as always," you try to smile as casually as possible, "An even keel of greatness, as you used to say, and extracurriculars are... yeah. I, um," and you attempt a throat-clear, "I dropped cheerleading."

Your father pinches his chin between his pointer and his index as you speak, scratching at the side of his face. Contemplative. The smoothness of this expression doesn't break as you drop that on him.

"Why would you do that."

Your toes curl up in your shoes, ten little ice blocks you're begging to thaw out. Your pulse quickens with such a rapid pace that you feel it in your skull. So, you try and answer like he might.

"Conflict of interest."

"Conflict being?"

"Tina and I came to an impasse."

"Pass it." His laconic brilliance outshines yours.

Your throat tightens. "Why?"

This makes his expression falter, his hand drop from his face. There's a weird rush of satisfaction in that, seeing a crack in the facade--but then you have to deal with what leaks out of the crack in the facade.

"What do you mean, why? Because. This is who you are. This is what you've worked for."

Sshrrk, slicing right through the prime rib of you. He doesn't even need to hear you out, because he knows you, he created you.

He saw you attempting to alter and distort yourself in order to be something perfect and said, good.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Take their standards and make it look like you could maintain them in your sleep, bleeding, blindfolded. Be better, and make it look beautiful. Make them love you, then make them fear you.

And if it doesn't fit, shave parts off of yourself until it does.

You doubt that your uniform would even fit anymore.

Your teeth grit so hard that your jaw starts to ache. "I just don't understand why I should--"

"Why are you letting them win?" he asks.

"I'm not," you insist and it turns your stomach, "I'm not letting them win, it's just-- Daddy, you don't know what it's been like out here for--"

"Of course I do. I bet they're saying horrendous, gut-punching things about me, about what I've done, about you-- but what makes you think that freezing them out is the answer?"

You choose not to mention that you'd actually thrown a Molotov cocktail at them the night of Steve Harrington's party. Reason being?

"Self preservation."

"Your fragile ego can't take it?"

"I'm not fragile."

"No, god, you're solid as a rock. At the first sign of trouble, you turn heel, you quit."

"Dad, that isn't fair."

"This life isn't fair. And frankly, Lacy, I don't have faith in your capability to make it on your own."

Something about the way he uses your nickname makes it feel like it's tied too tight around you.

"You're scholastically intelligent, sure, but you're a shell. You have no inner structure. If you don't pack yourself full of something, whether it's pom-poms or prom invitations or fucking diet pills to keep you pretty, you will fall in on yourself." A pause. "You're not a well-rounded person. But it doesn't matter, not if you can make people believe that you are."

"Is that what you did?" Your voice is nearly slurred. When your father wants to cut you down to size, it's the one time that sound moves faster than light-- and it makes your head spin.

"Yes."

"Worked out pretty spectacularly for you, Daddy." It knocks out words you ordinarily wouldn't say.

"You're the child. You're supposed to learn from my mistakes."

"Can I count them on one hand?" Sometimes he'd knock you back for it. But this time there was a sheen of bulletproof glass between you.

"Lacy."

"Is doing yourself up like Saint Jude Thaddeus and siphoning money out of made up charities one of them?" You wonder if he could crack it. Use that handset as a hammer and gather his might and crack it.

"Lacy."

"Is Al Munson another one?" That one lingers between you a moment. "He's a two-bit do nothing deadbeat lowlife that's never come clean out of a job, straight or otherwise. Or so I've heard. People talk. He's like a folk hero now. Does it embarrass you that trusting him was all it took to topple everything?"

A beat. The sense memory of his hand cracking against your cheek is so visceral.

"Does it embarrass you that your charm offensive wasn't offensive enough to fool someone as surface level as him?"

A beat. The feeling of letting him have it, as they say, is all the more real.

"Does it embarrass you that you should've known better?"

A beat. You feel like you've just done a bump of something very dirty. Something somebody would sell out of a tin lunchbox. Immediate headrush.

"You got sloppy trying to fill that gaping maw inside you. And what do you have now?"

"What do you have, Lacy?"

And the descent of fear.

You open your mouth to answer, but decide y'know what. You hang up the headset, and leave him there.

Bussing it back to Forest Hills, your blood slowly starts to recirculate in your veins. With that, second guessing starts to flood in. Should you have said that. Were you right. Did any of it get through. Were you cruel. Did he read you.

Coat shrugged around you, you discover Eddie sitting at the picnic bench on your lot. Handful of pebbles in one hand, old SpaghettiO can in clear sight. A flash of pink presses out of the corner of his lips in sheer concentration-- you watch him miss three shots before you call to him.

"Knew you were flukey."

Eddie's head cranes over his shoulder and he grins a grin so loud and lively that it puts color back in your cheeks. They apple up; you're smiling too.

"Where the hell have you been?"

You cross to the bench, propping yourself up on the table beside him. He keens into you, bumping his head against your fuzzy elbow like a happy cat. Playfully, you nudge him away, but he's relentless.

"Prison. Where the hell do you think?"

Eddie hits pause, stares up at you with eyes brimming with shit, dude and fuck, dude. "Oh. Did it suck?"

You start to shrug it off, to completely glaze over it like the donut of daddy issues you'll force yourself to swallow later. But then you take a second look at him, his big eyes yelling you can tell me, y'know.

"It was fucking awful. Like, horrible."

His spine bolts up a bit. "You okay?"

This one you roll around your head a bit. "Right now, yeah. Maybe it'll hit me later."

"Okay. So worry about it later." Eddie's nonchalance when it comes to dad talk is reassuring. To you, he's a zen master when it comes to disengaging with the goading nature of toxic fathers.

"Worry about it later!" you echo brightly.

"I'll stick around in case, for later." He's a good friend. And your stomach sort of flips.

"Take me to the movies?" An afternoon in the warm dark sounds good.

"Fuck you, what if I had plans?" Eddie pushes back only because it'd be weirder if he didn't.

"You don't," you say, pushing back too, "Unless aiming rocks into that soup can is a prelude to something much more spectacular."

"Maybe it is. Maybe I'm finally trying out for basketball." He misses another shot.

"At the eleventh hour." It's a little transfixing, watching him aim and score. Moreso than when she ever stood on any basketball sidelines. "Why are you so bad at this. You're usually kind of good at this."

"These rocks are too small!" he exclaims, animatedly frustrated. Another one, making a sharp ting! off the can's jagged rim. "But seriously. I got banned from the trailer for playin' my gee-tar too loud while Wayne was sleepin'."

Because vaudeville was always one of your fascinations, you mimic your shittiest Southern accent in tribute to his uncle, "Goddamn, boy, ain't nobody teach you any manners?!"

"Was you brought up or dragged?!" His is so much better than yours.

You chuckle. He chuckles. There's a moment, the two of you looking at each other with the softness of two people with nothing but dumb bits and dangerous families. What ludicrous kinds of lives you lead.

"So, movies?" Eddie says, like it's his idea. You let him have it. It's nice to share.

"We'll always have the movies."

#powder room talk #Anonymous #hai brainrot #i genuinely DON'T know what else to tag this as but tentatively #eddie munson x reader #even though. look. it's lacy family issues centric #do i love it? not really. am i glad i wrote it? absolutely #anon thank you again for sending this in i'm very pleased that you're into this and that you fuck with this hope you're still here #i know this has been in drafts Furever #published by powder #blurbs #l. doevski by powder

47 notes · View notes

powderblueblood · 5 months ago

Text

a cat is only itself

eddie helps lacy process the death of a friend he didn't know she had. a/n: this ficlet is completely self-indulgent and an effort in processing grief. last night, i lost my young cat in a cruel and tragic accident. she would have turned 3 this week. i wanted to write something that would help me process all that happened that night and anchor my love for her. i do not know what to do with all the love i have for her, so i put some of it in here. this is for fran. i love you forever. cw: dead dove, extreme TW for pet death, animal suffering, description of animals in pain, strong language and implied driving under intoxication i guess, classic edlacy banter, angst, yearning. this takes place in that nebulous just friends part of the hellfire & ice timeline. but who knows. this is kind of flung out of time and space. no one is under any obligation to read this as i know the subject matter is heavy. it was heavy to write it. thank you if you do though. wc: 5.7k part of the hellfire & ice universe

The day she came began as unremarkably as the day she went.

Lacy’s boots were biting her–as in, chomping at her toes, due to them being both a touch too tight (doesn’t matter, too gorgeous to leave them behind in the thrift store) and her tights being a touch too thin. An unseasonal frost was creeping in and she’d elected to walk home and not get a backache in the library chairs while she waited for Eddie and Ronnie to finish up with another bottomless Hellfire session.

Rounding her part of the trailer park, she spied movement up by the raggedy chainlink fence. It seemed as if the equally raggedy Mayfield mutt was being bothered by something. A flash of iridescent eyes in her direction and Lacy saw that it was a little black kitten, no bigger than a cantaloupe, swiping at the dog’s nose. Her little eyes locked on Lacy’s little eyes, Lacy huffing out a steamy puff of laughter. That thing was so small, yet it was putting more anxiety on that Mayfield dog than SAT prep put on Nancy Wheeler.

A flash–the cat darted straight to her, circling and dodging around her ankles. Lacy tried to pick her head up, ignore the little bother, but, y’know. Kittens. There’s no saying no to them, especially if they’re uncharacteristically insistent.

Cats usually have a decent sense of boundaries, which is why Lacy was shocked that this little thing dashed into her trailer ahead of her. Tail up, making a beeline straight to her bedroom.

She hopped upon Lacy’s dinky excuse for a double bed, making a seat for herself on a cozy tartan scarf Lacy had earlier discarded when dressing for school.

“Hey… hey. You can’t be in here!” Lacy tried her best to shoo the cat out her open window, but there’s no moving her at all.

They spent the rest of the night just staring warily at one another, a Marianne Faithfull record spinning lowly in the background.

The next day, Lacy found flea shampoo in Melvald’s and washed the kitten in the bathroom sink in the dead of night. The little thing squirmed, a living sudball, biting but not harsh enough to break skin.

“Cat, don’t be a difficult child!” Lacy hissed to her, rinsing out the bubbles so her fur was clean and flea-free, “We’ll wake up Gloriana de Vil, and then she’ll have you for a coin purse. You wouldn’t like that, huh? No?" Her voice slid into babyfied territory, her usual reserve no match for this tiny creature. "No, my little thing?”

The cat, gleefully ruffled through a towel, woke up fresh and shiny the next morning in the crook behind Lacy’s knees.

And that same day, Lacy passed the junk shop on the way to the Bookstore. In the window, she spotted a little leather band with a diamante heart. Just about big enough for a collar.

Every night, the cat scratched on Lacy’s window, seemingly knowing when Gloriana’s Valium would hit and she’d be safe to snuggle in beside her new companion. In the morning, she would sit on Lacy’s dressing table to watch her get ready for school, or for work, or once, a matinee engagement at the Hawk with one Eddie Munson. They were showing Excalibur, and Eddie fucking begged.

Lacy had picked out these dangly earrings that the cat was fascinated by, jumping on her shoulder to bite at the swinging creatures. Lacy had been so preoccupied with humoring the cat that she hadn’t even noticed Eddie watching them through her open bedroom window– but the cat did. She scarpered out upon seeing him, diving into the hollow space under the Doevski trailer’s tiny porch.

She watched Eddie with shining green eyes, all that could be seen under the clapboard.

“Who’s the familiar?” Eddie asked, propping the van door open for Lacy.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” came the coy reply. “Come on, we’ll miss the previews.”

It’s not that Lacy kept the cat a secret on purpose. It’s just that… she loved what they shared. Just the two of them. She'd had so much dirty laundry aired, it was good to have something just her own.

—

The day she went begins as unremarkable as the day she came.

It’s a Saturday evening, a thick, hot greyness hanging over the sky. Lacy’s languishing in her bedroom on a rare day of doing next to nothing, because it’s too humid to even attempt. She has her window open, half expecting company but half not. Her fountain pen trails idly on the paper stock of her journal. Nothing much worth writing down when the air feels this sluggish.

Bang, bang, bang!

Someone’s door is getting a hammering.

Bang, bang!

Must be the Munson’s.

Little close, though.

She heaves herself off the carpet to go check it out, opening the door to a breathless young redhead. Max Mayfield, Hargrove’s stepsister.

“Can I–”

“That– that little black cat, with the collar? The heart collar? She’s yours, right?”

Oh, here we go. Lacy crosses her arms, bracing for the whole, your bitch cat scratched my dog bit. “Why?”

“She just… someone hit her with a car. Up the lot.” Max breathes hard through her nose. She’d run here. That strikes lacy, the pink bloom under her freckled cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Lacy’s neck suddenly feels very stiff. “Wh–what do you mean?”

“Come on. Come with me. Will you just come with me?”

Max’s sweaty hand links with Lacy’s paper dry palm and she drags her up the lot. This is the way I go to Ronnie’s place, Lacy idly thinks as her legs struggle to keep up with Max’s. Standing around with the bound arms of grown-ups raptured by impotence are Max Mayfield’s mother, that lady Nita who does Ronnie’s hair and Carl, the grizzled trailer park manager.

In the middle of the loose gravel and sprouting grass is the little black cat. She is on the ground, and she is gasping. Wheezing. Skinned at the side of her tiny face, teeth missing. The diamante heart she wears glitters against the loose gravel. The blood glitters against the diamante.

“Oh. Oh. Cat.” Lacy’s voice sounds as if it’s folded up in her throat. It feels that way. She doesn’t know what to do with her limbs. She doesn’t know where to step.

“Honey, I’m so sorry,” the Mayfield mom says.

“Some asshole just came roaring out of here, didn’t even… didn’t even stop,” Carl nods gravely.

“Nita’s cousin is a veterinary nurse. She’s on the way,” Max tells Lacy, level-headed and soberly. She is still holding her hand. Lacy notices the rough grey dog sitting close by. She stares at him, hazy-eyed, and he whines. His head drops to his two front paws and Lacy feels lightheaded.

“He tried to help,” Max says.

She feels her knees bend but does not register her brain telling her body to get on the ground. Cat is wheezing, wheezing, a high whine in her little cat throat that nearly makes Lacy echo it. She shouldn’t be out here. Who hit her? She shouldn’t be out here, she’s probably cold. She’s probably uncomfortable.

“Can I please take her home, please?” Lacy asks in about as level a voice as she can muster, which is not very.

“It’s best not to move her, hon. She’s very hurt.” Nita, in her bright shell suit, kneels beside her on the ground. A little speck of blood gets on the fluorescent lilac of her pant leg and Lacy’s breath shortens.

“She is… she’s very hurt,” she whispers, half-reaching for the little feline, half-recoiling, “Oh, Jesus. You’re very hurt. You’re very hurt, Cat. Poor Cat.”

Nita hugs her, which she doesn’t know how to respond to, except to stiffly thank her and vaguely gesture to her stained knee.

Nita’s cousin arrives in a shiny blue Sedan, and they help her safely move Cat back to Lacy’s trailer. She is nestled in a towel with a faded print of Minnie Mouse on it, and they put her up on the Formica table where Lacy and her mother never meet for a meal. A quick flash of fear that her blood might stain the tabletop is soon killed by the sound that poor Cat makes.

On the left side of her face, her beautiful green eye is reddened.

A hard tangy smell wedges itself deep in Lacy’s nose and she doesn’t blink for a long, long time.

Nita’s cousin, the veterinary nurse, a woman with a terrifically soothing voice who she thinks is called Stacie, checks the cat’s vitals. It’s very quickly assessed– too much damage. Spinal. Abdominal. That’s where all that blood is coming from. Paw crushed. She’s still making that terrible wheezing noise.

Rage against the dying of the light comes to mind and Lacy wants to hit herself. Not this. Not sentiment. Not now.

Cat hangs on til the bitter end.

“How old is she?” Max asks, her voice either very quiet or very far away. Lacy cannot tell.

“I don’t– I don’t know. I don’t know.” Lacy looks to the lovely, warm-voiced woman who could be called Stacie. “How old is she?”

“She's very little. Can’t even say she’s reached her first birthday, hon.”

Lacy feels sick, and sicker, and sicker. Tunnel vision shows her nothing but the cat, once with the highest trilling meow, sputtering.

Cat reaches her paw out to Lacy a final time, and she lets go.

Lacy tearfully exhales a noise she’s never heard herself make before, and asks everyone to please, please wait. Please.

They wrap Cat in the tartan scarf.

Max hovers near Lacy, her arms bound tight around her chest, as if shielding herself from the sadness seeping from the walls.

“Do you want me t–”

“Did you see who hit her?” Lacy asks Max. A clear and loaded question; she’s asking if it was Billy. Billy and that fucking weapon of mass compensation he calls a car.

For a split second, Max looks angry at the flash accusation, even though she knows the kind of putrid her stepbrother is. But she tamps it down; she’s a better woman than Lacy is, for a middle schooler.

“I didn’t recognize the car. Just… some fucking asshole,” Max swallows. “If I see him again, I’m putting sugar in his gas tank.”

Lacy just nods and makes some vague-mouthed attempt at a thanks for everything, Max, Stacie, Nita. Nita is hesitant to leave her alone, as is Max, but Stacie ushers them out. Leaves her number, just in case Lacy should need anything.

Lacy spends what feels like an eternity staring at the yellowed plastic of the phone nailed to the kitchen wall. She realizes she’s got no contact for the one person she wants to call. Her hand hovers over the scarf-wrapped cat like she’s trying to cast some kind of impotent spell, and she reaches for the open smokes on the table behind her. Lacy spends what feels like eternity under the awning-covered picnic table, chain smoking and sniffing sulfur from clouds that refuse to break.

—

The van’s lights finally flood the ground at her feet. Eddie emerges, slinging himself out of the van in that loose-limbed metal marionette way that he has. His Hellfire shirt cuts a stinging image in the dark.

He spots her immediately, in that way that makes her sometimes think he enters spaces accidentally looking for her.

Sometimes she does the same.

“Well, what have we got here? A little dark night of the soul with the Marlboro Ma–... Lace?”

Some sliver of moonlight cuts through the tear streaks in her makeup and stops him up short.

“Eddie,” Lacy croaks. Her throat is ashen, her eyes are ashen, her head is pounding.

“Hey, hey…” His voice tunes right down into an immediate soothe, arms hovering around her like they aren’t quite sure how to ring around her yet. “Oh, hey, hey, what the shit? What’s the matter?”

Her throat thickens. “Oh, this is stupid.”

That makes him put a firm grasp around her shoulders. He smells like excitable sweat and Mountain Dew– the Hellfire Club special. “What’s happened, sweetheart?”

A rough sound comes out of her nose. “You know that… you know that stupid cat that’s been coming around my trailer–”

“The cat you’ve been pretending not to have?” She should abhor how perceptive he is.

“Y… yes. She, w– well, someone hit her. With a car. It’s s– she didn’t make it–’

“Oh, holy shit.” Eddie wraps her up in his arms, her head pressing hard into the joint of his shoulder. Lacy’s eyes screw up harder, as if she could push them to the back of her skull.

“They just hit her, Eddie, and they kept going–”

“Holy shit.”

“And I didn’t– and, but, Max Mayfield, she came to get me and– it was just, I didn’t hear the door in time–”

“Come on. No, no. Come on, baby, inside. Up, up, atta girl.” Eddie about props her up, steering her right into his trailer. Lacy’s preset Wayne alarm goes off–is he here, doesn’t he hate me, I don’t want to die tonight too–but Eddie’s quick on the buzzer.

“Night shift, sweetheart. You’re safe. Siddown.”

“It’s so stupid.” She drops in slow motion onto the Munson’s sagging couch. It aches to move.

Eddie sinks in right beside her, leaving no room for a draught between them. He’s running warm, no doubt hopped up on caffeine and campaign mischief.

“Hey. Not stupid. Not stupid.” His voice is featherlight. He tucks the tiniest lock of hair behind her ear.

“I loved that little thing.”

“I know you did. Well–I didn’t have the privilege of knowing you did, really, but you… obviously did, Lace. Shit.”

“Fucking little bitch,” Lacy says, voice a roux of incredulity and betrayal. “I loved her.”

Eddie snorts and pulls her right close. She crumples up and sobs good, like the sounds she makes can’t quite fill the cavern this has created in her. Lacy sobs until her head can’t take it anymore, a wet spot and a streak of mascara left on Eddie’s Hellfire shirt.

But Eddie is sweet and patient, and strokes her hair and doesn’t comment on how ugly she probably sounds. Not at all.

After a little bit, he asks, “Lace. Where’d you find her?”

“Uh. She must be– must’ve been just a stray, you know, from around. I found her giving shit to the Mayfields’ dog.”

“Huh?” Eddie’s brow leaps.

“Yeah,” Lacy breathes, lowly and mirthfully.

“But how did you two…”

“I don’t know. She just locked eyes on me and ran right around my ankles. Right into the trailer before I could stop her and headed straight to my room. I flipped, of course, because of Gloriana but then she hopped up on my bed and did that kneading thing they do? With their nails?”

“The–” Eddie imitates it on her shoulder, his thicker fingers with his blunt nails no match for Cat’s talons. Lacy’s inclined to tell him to keep doing it, though.

“Yeah. Sniffing around. And I just watched her in the doorway. I didn't know what to do, so I tried to shoo her. But she didn’t give a shit. She just curled up in my– my tartan scarf and fell asleep. Like it was her place all along.”

The corners of his mouth press downward, an expression that makes her heart lurch.

“She didn’t wanna leave, huh? She wanted to stay with you.”

“She did. She did. Shit.”

—

“Times of strife call for special privileges.”

“Oh, Christ, the fine china.”

The Garfield mug filled with two thumbs of Bev’s finest fell-off-the-truck well whiskey and three cigarettes later, a slack-limbed Lacy rubs her face against Eddie’s shoulder.

Any other day, any other planet, that’d be cause for some considerable pants action but… it’s difficult. To see her like this. All shocked and scraped out.

“You want to hear a stupid conclusion I came to the other day?” Lacy says steewpid with empty-stomach drinking vitriol. “Just the other day.”

“You know I love stupid,” Eddie polishes off the last of his drink from his I Heart Nabraska (real spelling error) mug and pours them both another. “Hit me. Just not in the groin.”

“I didn’t understand what unconditional love meant before this goddamn cat.”

It checks out, Eddie thinks. Her parents and their affection with strings attached. Her old friends, worshiping a facade. No one really saw Lace at her worst and loved her anyway. At least, not until–

“No shit?” He blames his roughed up voice on the liquor.

“Mm. I expected nothing of her. Every time she left I thought, well, that’ll be it. I expected nothing. And I loved her all the same. Unconditional. No strings, no compromise.”

“No pretending.”

“No bullshit. Ride or die.”

“‘til the bloody end,” he raises his mug to cheers her, and Lacy winces. Eddie’s face crumples, apologetic. “Yeowch. Okay. I’m sorry.’

“No, it’s– I'm just pissed her little face got messed up so bad,” she sniffs. He gazes down at her and wants to poke the pudge of cheek that’s wedged against his shoulder. “I was gonna taxidermy her one day.”

“Really?” Eddie's voice comes out a little pitchy.

Lacy hops immediately on the defensive. “Yeah.”

There’s a lot of bizarro stuff Eddie can get down with, but the whole uncanny valley of the animals thing always weirded him out. “You were gonna stuff the cat? Give it, like marble eyes and shit?”

Lacy, on the other hand, sits up straight.

“Abso-fucking-lutely. We were going to grow old together, and either I was going to taxidermy her or she was going to eat my body when I died.”

The glassy eyes and indignation are additions to a long list of things that make Eddie feel a gold rush of serious affection for this girl. “Oh, honeybear, you are so creepy.”

“Well, everyone says that about cats!” Lacy yelps, wedging another cigarette between her lips. She rubs at her eyes too, the red rims looking stingy and painful now. “That if they’re left alone with a corpse, it’s like an all-you-can-eat, seconds at the breakfast bar type of deal. And everyone gets so goddamn squeamish about it too, I mean, come on, I'd rather she eat me than starve.”

“Warped. Digressive,” Eddie says, his mouth curling up.

“Spare me your five-cent words, I'm pragmatic.”

“You’d let your cat treat you like a church cookout and you’re calling that pragmatism?”

“Of course I would. She's my girl.” She flinches, head shaking. “Was.”

“Is,” Eddie insists. “You know, whole cat-eating-your-face thing… That’s basically a sacrifice to Bastet. Totally transcends mortality.”

She sinks back into the couch and instinctive motion has him throwing his arm up so she can tuck underneath it.

“Know what I called her?”

“This’ll be good.”

“Cat.”

“This’ll be bad.”

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s, you fucking neophyte. ‘If I could find a real life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name’. Holly Golightly in that bare apartment.”

“I spy a parallel being drawn here, sweetheart.”

“Well, good fucking eye. No… um, I think I finally got what she meant when I moved into…” She gestures, hard, with her cigarette toward the door. Toward her own trailer across the way from the Munson’s abode.

“Mm.” Eddie shifts in his seat. It kind of bugs him sometimes, the idea that she might still look down her nose at the trailer park despite having adapted to it pretty fucking fluidly. Comes with being a chameleon, he guesses, but he wonders if there’s not part of her that’s still wrinkling her nose. “Not exactly the picture of refinement, yeah, yeah.”

“I don’t know,” she mumbles. She’s as close to undone as he’s ever seen her, her mascara caked and flaking under her eyes and her hair all a rumpled mess. Only time he’s ever seen her as close to the edge before this was the last night she’d stormed this trailer. “I don’t know if I've really found my Tiffany's. Maybe this is it.’

“Double-wide with a busted water heater? Should we also check for a gas leak, Doevski? You’re mental.”

“You’re being obtuse,” she says, suddenly pointed like a dart. A flash of his regular serving of Lace. “The Tiffany’s in question isn’t honest-to-god Tiffany’s–she says it's the quiet, the proud look about it. That’s what calms her down when she’s got the mean reds. And I…”

Eddie can feel that he’s wearing that infuriatingly bemused expression he tends to slide on when Lacy is mid-reveal of a profound thought. He can tell by the way she’s starting to glare at him.

“Shut up. Listen. I– I think about it like this. It's 6AM. The sun’s just cracking the sky. It’s quiet, you can barely hear the birds. There’s a hundred identical units across this lot, each one of them housing different lives. Carl in the management shack. Nita in the home hair salon. Granny Ecker and Ron. Everyone interconnected. Everyone… everyone looking out for each other, a little.”

Right. She’d mentioned how Nita and Max and them had rallied around her and poor Cat.

Still, Eddie can’t help a bad thing. He flips his hand in a flourish, gesturing to himself.

“Presenting the great exception.” For all this inter-connectedness she spoke, of, wasn’t nobody looking out for little old–

“Shut up, Eddie. You know half this park has your back by writ of being related to Wayne, you’re just too much of a contrarian woe-is-me to see it. And you’re a pain in the ass on top of that.”

He stifles an argument she would win with a pinched lemon sour face. “Noted. Go on.”

“Anyway,” she exasperatedly huffs, passing him the remaining half of her cigarette, “I sit… on my porch and I have my coffee. And I have my little cat. And I know you’re across the way, probably asleep. It's quiet. And there’s pride in that quiet. In that quiet, I've felt more at peace than I have my whole stupid flimsy life. I can't explain why. I'm a cynic, we know this. But it might be fucking… Tiffany's.”

Eddie’s fingers drum against the crown of Lacy’s head as he considers this. Framing this as some kind of surprise utopia. This skidmark on the outer edge of town. Except, she’d said it in a fashion that made him want to set an alarm for six in the morning.

“Buy some furniture and give the cat a name. Shit.”

“Shit.”

He finishes the last of the cigarette she’d passed to him and takes another sip of shitty, awful, rotgut whiskey.

“... we can find another cat, y’know,” he mutters tentatively, resting his chin on her head. “I’m kind of a–” Don’t you fucking say pussy magnet. Eddie. Don’t. “--a feline whisperer.”

But he’s got grounds, unfortunately. The feral cats around the lot take to following him around like he’s a bigger, hairier feral cat. This might have something to do with him carrying loose salami in his pockets as a younger man. That reputation never really goes away among the feral cat colonies.

“Those mean and scary strays,” Lacy mumbles into his chest.

“Not so mean and scary. Just used to having their boundaries up, is all. Can relate.”

“Can relate.”

“I could unscary one for you. There’s this one little dude, one eye, three and a half legs, I call him Snake Plissken and he–”

“Oh, Eddie,” she sighs; it makes his heart ka-chunk, “There is no other cat. There’s just Cat. She was perfect.”

“Well, she had hefty goddamn standards to meet if she made this much of an impression on you.” Eddie’s mouth twinges. “I’m real, real sorry, Lace.”

“I need to bury her.” The finality with which Lacy breathes it out makes them both sag further into the couch.

But Eddie doesn’t show a lick of hesitation.

“So let’s bury her. You got a spot?”

—

They pull up at Lover’s Lake.

Cat lies in Lacy’s lap, slowly stiffening and losing warmth. Lacy’s fingers stay crooked in the little space under her chin that she would tilt up, up, up for her to tickle. It makes her queasy to think about it too much, and to think about it too little makes her cry. She straddles the line between sick and sad and Eddie plays the radio real low in the truck. Some sad sack station. ‘Don’t Forget Me’, Harry Nilsson. Pathetic fallacy eeks out of the speakers, not used to playing anything this low and slow.

Lacy directs Eddie into the underbrush as they edge off Holland.

“Right over here.”

“This is a nice spot. Not too public.”

“The water. She’d like to see it.”

“The water… for your cat.”

“You know they can swim? Cats can swim. Everybody thinks they hate water, but they can swim.”

She notices that he doesn’t quite swallow that scoff in time and mutters, “Yeah, and they probably hate every second of swimming.”

“But they can do it.” She's driving a point home. It’s about subverting expectations. Stupid.

“Yeah! Yeah, they can swim,” Eddie says, half-way humoring her as he helps her out of the van with Cat, “and if you ask them, they hate every second of it."

“Stop being pedantic.”

“Stop trying to have something to say about everything!”

They both blink at the slight blow of Eddie’s exasperation. Everything feels a little weird and wired and raw right now. He pulls a shovel out of the back of the van, huffing through his nose.

“You’ll rue the day I don’t have something to say about everything,” Lacy winds up, indignant and stepping to him with that poor little thing cradled against her. Her eyes narrow and his index finger floats in her face. She can’t quite place where this is bubbling from, and nor can he.

“You’re staying overnight with me, okay?!” Eddie snaps. He means business. He’s got the finger out.

“Huh?” It comes out her mouth a garbled little protest.

“You’re not going home alone. There. Not tonight.” All he’s missing is a patented and that’s final! Flashes of a night spent curled against him attack Lacy’s frontal lobe.

Yes, is her immediate reaction. She wants that. That warmth he’s thrusting toward her, that security. That comfort. But, one problem.

“Wayne.”

“Wayne’s not back ‘til morning and also, who gives a good goddamn shit?” Eddie froths. “I don’t. My room, my mildew, my rules. Okay?”

She feels shaky in this, his insistence to tug the safety blanket around her. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

His shoulders sag. He nudges his sneaker against the hilt of the shovel. It’s very quiet out here, save for the crickets and the sounds of their heartbeats in their ears.

“Look at us,” Eddie smirks, his mouth twisting for facetiousness, “Fuckin’... Shitkicker Gothic out here. Let’s get this cat burial on the road.”

Lacy nods with a heavy head and starts into the underbrush. Eddie matches her step for step. They end up in a secluded spot deeper into the wooded area. Nature’s bay window looks out onto glittering Lover’s Lake. And if you look right up, the trees open up to a tiny patch of sky. Smattering of stars. Just enough for Cat.

“I don’t mean to be disgusting, Lace, but I really hope you’re not burying Cat at a hotspot for fingerbanging.”

Ambiance shattered. Almost. Lacy glares at him.

“No. People begin to exhibit signs of wigging-outery the closer they get to that weird house on the bank, so they never get past second base here. This is… a perfect boundary for her.”

“Ah,” Eddie nods, his chin resting on the shovel handle. “One paw in the world of lakeside makeouts and the other in the land of the working class criminal.” At Lacy’s puzzled head shake, he gestures to that dilapidated looking house across the way. “S’uh, Reefer Rick’s place. Really clean marker of the social divide you got here.”

“A fault line,” Lacy says. Yeah. That feels good.

“With a lovely view.” Eddie jerks his head toward the flat rocks at the water’s edge and sinks the shovel into the soft soil. “Go sit with her.”

Lacy does. Cat wrapped in her stiffness, her head hidden in the tartan shroud. Lacy’s heart aches, that she’ll never get to run her pinkie finger down the perfect slant of her tiny nose again. Not without feeling blood matted against the fur. It’s not fair. None of it. It was so close to real, this thing they had.

What's wrong with her that the bottom keeps falling out of good things like this?

“Is this your first?” Eddie gently calls over the soft shoveling of soil.

“Cat?”

“Death.”

Lacy doesn’t have to think on it. Any relatives other than her mom’s estranged sister were dead before she was cognizant of what it all meant. Her father didn't have any family to speak of. Not even a foster sibling or two he was still in contact with.

“Yes.” A beat. “Is this your first?”

“Death?” Eddie grimly parrots.

“Grave.”

“Why, yes.”

“Hopefully your last." She's arch.

“Ah, with your blessed presence in my life, Miss Doevski,” he says, “something tells me it won’t be.”

She smiles into her shoulder, down at Cat, across the water.

“Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart.”

There is no being ready. There is no way to easily unplug from the faux-reality of holding something once soft now rigid, the netherealm of not knowing whether your beloved is coming or going. Up, down, left, right. sideways. Maybe Lacy ought to toss Cat in the water and see if she’ll swim.

She joins Eddie at the neat little grave he’s dug and is hesitant.

Throat closing. Head pounding. Stomach tightening.

Shit. Fuck.

Nerves or bile or both rise and she can feel every nerve ending in her hands.

A clear of a throat that isn’t hers.

“May I?” Eddie’s holding his hands out. He takes Cat. Lacy watches his ringed fingers gently taper through the tuft of her furry side. Glistening blue-black in the moonlight. He might’ve mouthed the words, ‘Aw, soft,’ but she can’t be sure.

“Well, Cat,” and she can tell a classic Munson missive is about to kick off. Lacy knits her fingers together as if in prayer and looks down at her feet. Tries not to look at Eddie, with his insistent arms and undefeatable presence, cradling Cat. “It sucks that I never got to know you, but I understand you had some kind of third-wave, kill-all-men feminism thing going on which, practically I'm shit-scared of and conceptually I guess I respect.” He clears his throat again. “But I know that you were… loved, even if your presence wasn’t a whole to-do. I mean, damn.”

Eddie bends his head nearer Cat’s, affecting a stage whisper that makes Lacy roll her eyes. Affection. Affection. Affection.

“You lucked out, Cat. You picked a really good one here. I know it. She likes to play the shit that matters, the nice shit she does, close to the vest instead of showing off about it, but… ‘Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised’. Aragorn. By the way.”

“Nerd.”

“Please shut up, I am not finished, you are being rude,” Eddie pokes in this clipped tone Lacy knows is supposed to be an impression of her. He drops it as soon as picks it up, everything about him softening. “She was lucky to have you, but you were luckier having had her.”

Oh. The breath shakes in her lungs. Oh.

A moment or two passes before Lacy realizes she’s been frozen. It’s time.

“You wanna–” Eddie softly suggests, “Or should I–”

“Oh, wait!” Her collar. Lacy’s nails unpick the leather strap, sliding it away from Cat’s throat. Eddie catches the shimmer of the diamante heart and shakes his head.

“Farewell, the fanciest cat Forest Hills has ever seen.”

With gentle and careful hands, Eddie lowers Cat into the dirt. Lacy might choke if she tries to speak, but then he catches her trembling, nerve-raw hand in hers.

“'I don’t like love as a command. As a search,'” it slips out of Lacy in a murmur, “'It must come to you, like a hungry cat at the door.'”

Eddie’s brow furrows, waiting for her to cite…

“Bukowski. By the way.”

“Nerd.”

Lacy sprinkles the first fistful of dirt over Cat’s prone, resting body. It really seems like that, in the dark bed of soil. Cool, restful. And in the heavy swathe of this night too.

Eddie only lets her hand go to cover the rest of the grave.

Once he’s done, he twists the shovel in the dirt. “You wanna mark it or anything? So you can come back?”

“I don’t know,” Lacy says. Is there a way to address the gap she feels between her and the resting place? Probably not yet. “Don’t know that it’ll really do anything for me.’

“You’ll know where to find her, though. If you need.”

“Oh, yeah. you don’t forget a spot like this.”

Eddie slings his arm over her hunched and shivering shoulders, shaking against a chill that doesn’t exist. He leans into the crown of her head–not quite a kiss, but an utterance.

“Gracefully done, Lace. She’d be proud.”

God, she hopes so.

Silly little cat.

They follow their track back to Eddie's van, arm in arm, the two-person funeral match plus one shovel. From up the embankment, a light flickers on. Some heavily obscured figure seems to wobble in silhouette, like it’s waving.

Eddie slides off a two-finger salute to the spectre.

“Friend of yours?” Lacy squints.

“That’s Rick. If you’re lucky, I’ll never have to introduce the two of you.”

Eddie helps Lacy into the passenger seat. She sits there, arms feeling weighted and empty.

“Eddie.” His name crackles in her mouth.

“No, no. Don’t mention i–”

“You were the only person I wanted to see. After it happened. You were the only one. I couldn’t call you at Hellfire or anything. I wouldn’t have wanted you to leave, but you… I just wanted to see you.”

Something about that statement makes her feel incredibly lonesome.

Until he takes her hand. Swallows hard and kisses it gentle.

“That is… an honor I don’t rightly deserve, Lace.”

“Bullshit.”

“Let’s not make, like, a whole thing of it.” Eddie inches out this pained smile that Lacy needs desperately to wipe off his face, somehow. To replace it with something that doesn’t look like it’s pinching him. He has to know. “I’m glad I could be here. For you. For Cat.”

“Me too, Eddie.”

#published by powder #hai brainrot #l. doevski by powder #e. munson by powder #eddie munson x oc #eddie munson fic #edlacy

32 notes · View notes