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bettyfrommars · 1 year ago

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Stop the World and Melt with You

Part 6: Meet Me in Hawkinsgate

Eddie Munson x fem!Reader

Summary: A lot will be explained in this part, but there will also be more questions left to ponder. We get a glimpse of reader from the past, another Traveler shows up in Hawkinsgate, and secrets are revealed through a comic we borrow from Dustin. wc: 4.3k

Masterlist

A/N: I've been staring at this for way too long and I just need to post it🙃 This part is bitesize because I feel like there is a lot to take in. If it goes the way I've planned it, we'll have two more chapters after this, and you won't have to wait as long as you did for this one 🧡

18+ONLY, MDNI, this is a mindbender, fear of the unknown, mention of zombies, interdimensional travel, circus freak show, no smut in this chapter but I have a spicy blurb on its way to do with the version of Eddie and Reader introduced in this part.

“Cold-hearted orb that rules the night

removes the colors from our sight

Red is gray, and yellow---white

but we decide which is right

and which is an illusion.”

- Twilight Lament, The Moody Blues

---Somewhere Else---

The Crossroads is a place for various interdimensional Travelers to wait while on the way to their next location or assignment. A place to get their “passport stamps” and figure out which portal they’d need to take to get to where they needed to be. The atmosphere made it feel as if you were conducting business on one of Saturn’s rings; nothing but stars and infinite universe around you. There's a row of doors arranged in an arc, all of which seem to be floating in the air, all with numbers above them. You're waiting to take number 4.

The version of you from another dimension took a turn around, hoping to spot a place to drink at one of the vendors inside the floating establishment. This version of you has a few more visible tattoos scattered from head to foot: each a passport from a parallel universe or pocket of time you have traveled to. It was your job, like all of the other Muses, to bring back inspiration for the Storytellers. There's music playing over the speaker system as you waited; it was an instrumental version of Melt with You by Modern English. The song is interrupted by the tin of an electronic female voice announcing the departure at gate 9.

You’d been staring up at the monitors, checking the time for your portal, but you stepped back in haste, and there he was: the boy you would soon know as Eddie Munson.

You didn’t recognize him but also, you did---in a way you couldn’t explain. The sight of his face knocked over a tiny domino in your soul and the rest went tumbling.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he gave a crooked smile, putting his hands up, palms out. This version of him has strange tattoos as well; a few designs at his temples, lines above one brow, a series of numbers and letters on his throat. He wears a black leather jacket over a shirt that reads: Hellfire Club. “I should watch where I’m going.”

“No, no, it’s my fault,” you stammered. “I’m running late so I was worried---”

“Worried that you’d miss me?” He interjected.

The forwardness of it caught you off guard and you stifle a laugh, tucking your chin. “Something like that.”

You turn back to face the monitors, thinking he’d head off the way he was going—but he didn’t. He stayed close and waited as a group of human and non-human beings passed between the two of you.

“So,” he stepped up closer as the crowd passed, shoving his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Of all the Crossroads in all the universes, you walk into mine.”

You turned and gave him a curious look, not understanding what he just said or why he was saying it to you. Your eyes flicked from his tender chocolate orbs, down to his soft lips and back again.

He leaned back, noting your confusion, and tilted his head. “Humphrey Bogart? Casablanca? Of all the gin joints in all the---” he could tell it wasn’t ringing a bell. “Wait, you’ve never watched Casablanca?”

You gave a few tight shakes of your head, a scowl creasing the skin between your eyebrows.

“Oh, sweetheart, we need to fix that,” he patted around in all of his pockets. “Do you have a pen?”

You weren’t sure where this was going, but you were fascinated by him. Muses weren’t allowed to take any form of physical identification with them through the portals—-hence the inked passport stamps that were usually invisible to most non-travelers---and the only things you had on you were gum and lip gloss.

He checked the inside pocket of his jacket and made a sound of triumph. He procured a black, felt tip marker and popped the cap off. “Mind giving me your number? For educational purposes. We can watch Casablanca, and maybe get some decent food back on the mainland. What do you think? Could you stare at this mug while you eat?”

You were reaching for the pen as he talked, and he offered his palm to you. In a line from his pinky to his thumb, you wrote your name and phone number without another word, and then capped the pen and handed it back to him. Eddie watched you; the curves of your face, the way your eyelashes fluttered, the way the tip of your tongue rested on your top lip as you concentrated. He wanted to commit you to memory.

He turned his hand to look at what you wrote, and then met your eyes over his fingers. “Have we met before? You seem so familiar to me.”

He had chunky, silver rings on his fingers, and the air surrounding you felt electric, you could almost taste the tang of the static on your tongue.

“Oh, I think I’d remember you,” you smirked, trying to mask the depth of your attraction to him.

But then a loud chime sounded and the electronic female voice sounded over the platform, letting everyone know that the portal for Gate 4 was opening.

“That’s me,” you swallowed, flushed. “Maybe I’ll see you around,” you quipped, a sudden pain shooting through your chest at the thought of never seeing him again.

Eddie felt flustered, he didn’t want you to go. “Hey, I’ll call you,” he promised, showing his palm. You gave him one last look over your shoulder before disappearing into the crowd. When you stepped over the thresh hold to your portal, you realized you didn’t even know his name.

And you really hoped he could call.

----------

You became aware of your surroundings before you were fully awake enough to open your eyes, trying to hold on to the image of the boy in your dreams as hard as you could---but then he was gone. As intense and real as the “dream” had been, it was now a pin prick of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, and you tried to squint but then it was gone as soon as your consciousness came to the surface.

It felt so real, though. So real that you tossed in bed with tears wet in your eyes, trying to get it back, screaming into your pillow. The pillowcase that smelled strongly of bleach and a hint of age old body odor embedded deep in the pillow itself.

The dark of night lasted for the next 24 hours in Hawkinsgate, as if it were a movie set and someone forgot to turn the lights on. It was noon, and you were sitting behind the motel reception desk, staring out into the street lights of the dark town. Claudia bustled in with one of her cats in a pink carrier after taking it to the vet. There was a young boy with her who offered you a gappy grin with missing front teeth. He had a trucker hat that sat squished on his head of curls.

You’d been doodling on the inside of the phone book, about to go and put a load of sheets in the dryer, when the boy with Claudia marched right up to you. He was a teenager, but you weren’t sure of the age.

His eyes blew wide. “Is it true you’re one of the Travelers?”

“Dustin,” Claudia called to him as she came around the desk, marching toward the back room.

Nailing you with an enigmatic grin, he pulled a rolled up comic out from under his arm and slapped it on the table. His hands working to smooth out the pages before he pointed to a face on the cover.

“Isn't that you?”

Your eyes hesitated on him before following to where his finger pointed.

The likeness caught you by surprised and made you step back, but you never took your eyes off of it. You held it up, attention flicking over the details in the artwork. It wasn’t you, exactly, but, indeed a version of you: legs wide, arms crossed, exposed skin dotted in tattoos, way more than the few you had now, standing in what appeared to be a desert wasteland with two moons in the sky.

“Where did you get this?” You asked, wondering if someone was playing a trick on you. “Did Eddie put you up to this?”

“Eddie?” Dustin’s generous smile widened, cocking his head. “How do you know Eddie?”

You only handed the comic back when Dustin reached for it. “I’d let you keep it,” he shrugged. “But it’s the newest issue and I haven’t read it yet.”

“No, it’s okay,” you shook your head. “I understand. Could you maybe, tell me what happens in it?”

You could tell that the kid was emotionally mature for his age and he quickly caught on to the source of your distress and took his tone down to more of a calm reassurance. “I’ll just leave it on the desk for you when I’m done, okay?”

A part of you wondered if reading such a thing was a good idea with the fragile state of your blank brain. Dustin came around the back, following after Claudia before she shouted his name again.

“Hey,” you turned to face him now that he was behind the front counter. “Who writes that comic? Do you know?”

“Oh, no one knows,” his face was serious, and then he turned to keep walking.

“Of course no one knows,” you said under your breath. “But, where do you buy them? There must be a way to trace it back to the creator?”

He adjusted the strap of his backpack. “I’m sure there’s a way,” he looked down, thoughtfully. “These issues just show up like everything else around here, but I can ask a few people.”

You told him how much you would appreciate that, and he repeated his disbelief that you also knew his friend Eddie.

---------

That day, another Traveler wandered into the motel; the first one since your arrival. You caught sight of the bright pink hair immediately, followed by the black ink markings from her nose to her throat, and on her hands as well. You scrambled to your feet, eager to make her acquaintance. She was hesitant, her eyes shifting to take everything in, just as you had that first day when you arrived.

The second she saw you, her eyes blew wide, and her mouth dropped open.

She knew your name. “What are you doing here?” She asked, spinning in a circle. “Where are we? Where is Lorelei?”

Your heart started racing and your mouth dried up. “Where do you know me from? How do you have your memories?” You were coming around the desk, racing towards her now. “Who is Lorelei?”

She had on a ripped, threadbare, white tee with no bra and worn jeans. She pulled a knife from the hilt at her hip and held it up. “You’re not safe here anymore,” she warned, eyes darting around as if she expected a monster to come flying out of the walls.

“Not safe from what?” You begged.

The confused look on your face turned to a horrified one when an invisible door slid open behind the pink-haired girl, exposing an infinite blackness, and she turned, jumping threw it as if she knew exactly where it led to.

“No, wait---” you screamed, stretching your arm out as if you could catch her, but then the invisible door slid shut again and there was nothing but air there. You waved your hands frantically around over the space.

--------

Eddie came to meet you on the roof of the motel that night, because you asked him to, because you needed a friend. The roof was angled, but not drastically, with a perfect sitting ledge. You each had pillows behind your heads, laying side by side, knees bent, staring up at the sky.

You were feeling more and more at home in Eddie’s presence; eager when you knew you would get to see him, and fearful when you had to part ways. Even so, you didn’t want to care for him, and tried to push away the feelings at all costs. You could sense him holding back as well; reaching out to take your hand, only to pull away, and swallowing words that hovered on parted lips, left unspoken.

You told Eddie about the pink-haired traveler and he chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully.

“She knew my name,” you mumbled, replaying the short interaction over in your head for the hundredth time that day.

“I’ve seen Travelers come and go that fast,” he said. “One second they’re in front of you, and then they’re gone the next---poof.” Eddie decided not to say out loud what scared him the most, and that was the fact that, once you remembered who you were, you would disappear in the same way. He wondered how quick he’d have to be to dive into the void to go with you. “Maybe she came to give you a message?”

You hadn’t shared with him her message yet, and you weren’t sure if you wanted to. But then you felt the side of Eddie’s hand slide up against yours and you realized you didn’t want to have any secrets from him.

You swallowed back a tickle of emotion in your throat. “She said I’m not safe here anymore.”

In a heartbeat, Eddie took your hand, intertwined his fingers, and pulled it to his side, tucking your arm close. “Hey, that’s not true. You’re safe here with me.”

It was the first time you’d ever held hands, and you could tell he’d been working up the nerve for days. You were grateful for the touch and it made the sides of your mouth dance up, even under the weight of such disturbing circumstances.

Elbows planted, you looked over at your two hands locked together and the dark blue sky full of scattered stars beyond. “I do feel safe with you,” you told him. Even though whatever was happening to you felt much bigger than either one of you could fathom in that moment, and it wasn’t fair to put such a big job on Eddie, you were comforted by the thought.

You scooted closer to him, and placed your head on his shoulder. Eddie brought the back of your hand to his lips and kissed it.

“Why do the stars and the sky look so real?” You asked in a whisper, watching the way the stars flickered, and clouds hovered around the moon.

Eddie turned his head to find your profile. “You still think this is a dream?”

It didn’t feel like a dream, but maybe we all traveled in our dreams to very real places and then forgot it all once we opened our eyes. You hesitated, not sure how to answer him, working your jaw. The air was wet and cool, bright with the smell of rain on concrete and forest pine.

“Sometimes I worry that I’m going to wake up any second and forget this place,” you failed to catch the tremor in your voice. “That I’ll forget you.”

An unexpected tear ran down your cheek, and Eddie felt the wet drop hit the side of his neck.

“Hey,” he said, squeezing your hand, pulling it across his stomach. “Can I tell you what I think?”

“Please?” You urged.

He wanted to tell you about the dream he had about a group of circus people that came through a place called Hawkins, Indiana to set up a show on the outskirts of town. In the dream, Hawkins was his hometown, the place where he had grown up, and it was similar to Hawkinsgate, but also nothing like it. The dream felt so real, he could still smell the popcorn and hear the cackle of the Bearded Lady on stage, beckoning to any passerby. The circus rolled into town on old caravans and rusted cars compiled of junkyard metal. There was a Ferris wheel and various freak shows and a fire-breather and a strong man and a fortune teller. Eddie went with his buddies Gareth, and Jeff, because they wanted to see the clowns on stilts, and maybe get a glimpse of the peep show.

They peeked inside a hole in the red and white tent when they heard the sultry music, just in time to catch sight of a voluptuous blonde woman spinning tassels on her huge breasts before they were shooed away by one of the barkers. He had a fully tattooed face and a metal bar pierced through his tongue.

“Yo, sorry man,” Eddie and the boys held their hands up in a form of surrender, unable to contain their laughter, and the barker spat on the ground at their feet, sneering to show his silver teeth.

Eddie went in to see the psychic in the purple caravan on a dare. The boys teased him and said he wouldn’t, and so Eddie said, “hold my jacket” and made his way inside, through the beaded curtain in the doorway, stopping in his tracks at the sight of the older woman sitting at a round table in front of a crystal ball.

“It’s you,” the older woman said, looking up at him only briefly. She had long gray hair, and her eyes were mismatched: one was bright blue and the other was milky white with no iris or pupil. “I was starting to think you’d never show up.”

“Do I know you?” Eddie looked around the space cautiously, making sure the two were alone. The air was smoky and smelled like the floral dank of incense.

“Please, Eddie, sit,” the woman said in a young voice that did not match her elderly exterior.

Eddie stepped back. “Wait, how do you know my---”

“There’s no time for that,” she interrupted him, shuffling a deck of tarot cards in her hands. Her eyes repeated the gesture of motioning for him to sit. “There’s a lot you need to know and we only have a few minutes.”

Stiffly, Eddie took a seat in the squeaky wooden chair across from her, hoping that the boys were right outside and not back at the peep show without him. She made a clean stack with the deck of cards and set it to one side.

“So,” Eddie’s eyes flicked around after a full minute of silence. “How do we do this?”

The next thing he knew, Eddie was headed outside again, squinting, his head blurry and his eyes dry.

Gareth and Jeff had been giggling over a joke when Eddie stepped out of the caravan and stumbled, his eyes glossy. They got serious immediately and went to help him stand as his knees buckled.

“Damn, what did she do to you?” Gareth frowned, watching Eddie take long blinks and shake his head as if trying to wake up. Jeff looked around nervously, wondering if he should find help. Gareth tried to see in through the beaded curtain, but it seemed like the old woman was gone and the caravan appeared empty.

When Eddie stepped out, he felt like everything was the same, but also very different. He was still in Hawkins, but there was something...off about it. The boys asked him over and over what the old woman told him, but he couldn’t remember, he just knew he felt woozy. His stomach growled and he figured it was because he was hungry.

The next morning, after the dream---the visions of you started. The dreams, the whispers, the way he knew every inch of your body, every mole, every tattoo, even though he’d never seen you naked before; not in this reality, anyway. He stepped over a torn front page of the Hawkinsgate Gazette in the grass in his dream, and he stopped to pick it up, wondering why the name Hawkingate looked so familiar, but also so wrong.

There on the roof of the motel, Eddie wanted to tell you that he’d been thinking and dreaming about you ever since.

After that, the other Travelers started showing up in Hawkinsgate. Just like you, they were plopped there without much of a memory of where they came from, and seeing them around became normal as well. The entire town seemed to be designed around them in fact, as if Hawkinsgate was an airport from which people took off to their various destinations.

Every time he heard about a new Traveler in town, he went looking, hoping to find you. He was about a week away from losing hope when you showed up at the gas station that day in tears.

The one he had been waiting for and pining over this whole time.

Eddie wanted to tell you all of that on the roof of the motel when you started to cry.

“Do you want to know what I think?” Eddie asked and you begged him to tell you something, anything that was remotely comforting.

He slid his fingers up and down between yours before intertwining them again. “I’m not sure why or how I know this, but no matter where you go, you’ll always have me. If this is a dream and you wake up, I’ll be waking up with you.”

---------

You finally got your hands on the comic book with your likeness on the cover and hurried back to your motel room on your lunch break so you could lock the door and dissect it in peace.

The woman who looked like you in the drawings was apparently a Muse who worked for a group of people called The Storytellers. You had a gift for collecting inspiration and experiences in other dimensions and worlds and passing them on. The amount of knowledge your character had acquired through her journey was vast. She knew how to speak several languages, she knew karate, knife throwing, chess. She knew how to cook French dishes you didn’t even know how to pronounce. There was another Muse in the comic named E who looked remarkably like your Eddie. Long hair pulled back, a loose strand hanging down his cheekbone.

In the comic, your character and E had traveled through many dimensions together, and you were on the run from a group of lizard people called The Kreel. They were reptilian in nature with a human appearance, but for their lizard eyes that flicked out of their human lenses every so often. They did not emote and they did not experience compassion, and they were waging a war with the Storytellers, so that the Kreel could control all creative consumption. The Kreels wanted all of the powers of the creators for their purposes alone; to create worlds that would benefit them only.

Your character and E had jumped from dimension to dimension, from world to world, gathering inspiration for the Storytellers, while simultaneously evading The Kreel.

The final page of the comic book left you with a cliffhanger: in modern day, in a quiet dessert town off the grid in New Mexico, The Kreel found the location where you were your character resided, and were closing in. You were supposed to meet E that night, when he was back from his recent trip, but there was no time to get a note to him. The next best thing you could do was go through the portal to Hawkinsgate and wait for him there.

Hawkinsgate was the safe haven; a place undetectable to Kreels. It was created by a group of Storytellers when the war began.

You typed the location of the portal into the gps on your phone.

With a tight blink of concentration, you imagined a hoard of zombies into existence to block the The Kreel from you in their masses, while you made your escape.

You watched the home you loved disappear in a cloud of dust in your rear view mirror, as a van full of lizard Kreel soldiers went to battle with the flesh eating zombies in their haste to get to you.

The character that looked like you in the comic book wailed and sobbed, driving away as fast as they could, fearing they’d never see E again.

You frowned at the page as you finished reading, your lungs starving for air after holding your breath for so long.

At the very end, your character reminded herself in thought bubbles that she’d lose her memory once she breached the Hawkinsgate portal. The Kreel could pinpoint brainwaves when a creative’s thoughts were particularly active, so everything had to be wiped clean for their safety. The girl in the story cried again, thinking about how she wouldn’t remember E, and how she hoped he’d show up there too, just like they had planned.

But, they wouldn’t know each other.

“Meet me in Hawkinsgate,” alone in your motel room you felt the warm breath against your ear, heard the words as clear as day. It was Eddie’s voice, and it sounded like he was right there next to you. “Meet me in Hawkinsgate….”

You jumped up off the bed and threw the magazine, making it land against the wall with a smack before it fluttered to the floor, landing face down. You were panting, trying to find your breath, a whimper escaping the back of your throat. You could feel the emotions building hot behind your eyes.

And then, you screamed.

#Eddie Munson #Stop the world and melt with you #Eddie Munson fic #Eddie Munson series #eddie munson x reader #twilight zone #mystery #sci-fi

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