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powderblueblood · 3 months

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

CHAPTER NINE — EDDIE the OBVIOUS and the LADY SPHINX

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summary: a tense dinner at rick lipton's place reveals some part of al munson's reason for returning to hawkins. your saturday morning detention is tense, and you and eddie both get more than you bargained for when you crash hellfire club to profile them for the school newspaper. content warnings: MINORS DNI AS ALWAYS warnings for smut, cunnilingus, dick-fondling, p in v, reference to drug usage, slight perv!eddie, silly teenagers having silly teenage fights that actually aren't so silly (kinda antagonistic ronance version!), reference to childhood physical abuse, al munson jumpscare, lacy's dad jumpscare, both lacy's real first name and surname is used in this chapter. no description of body type. just descriptions of a good time eye emoji eye emoji word count: 16.4k

Dear Lord,

Grant me the serenity to accept the shit I cannot change, the courage to change the shit I can, and the wisdom to seize a damn fine opportunity when I see one.

Amen.

When Al Munson cooks a spaghetti dinner, you know he means business.

Once a line cook with aspirations higher than diner fumes, always a line cook with aspirations higher than diner fumes.

He learned to cook on the grill, but perfected it in the joint. During one of his stints, a homecoming tour of the state of Kentucky, he fell in with this web of wiseguys who made him stagiaire in their makeshift kitchen, slicing ghostly slivers of garlic with a razorblade.

Al’s insisted on the method ever since. Even now, hunkered over in Rick Lipton’s kitchen, preparing a meal for which Eddie’s already lost his appetite.

Eddie had already given up on the whole there are a bunch of knives right there suggestion, knowing his father loves few things like he loves performing his whole Kiss the Cook bit. He plays it to the hilt, an exercise in tart, rich, floral smarm that beats out the complex flavoring of his tomato gravy by a country fucking mile. Down to that bullshit Serenity Prayer.

“Courage to change the shit you can? Man, you can barely change your underwear!” Rick heartily chuckles, heaping pasta onto his plate. The way the noodles slide against each other, thick and glistening like worms full of nefarious promise, makes Eddie want to ralph.

He hadn’t had much of an appetite for anything since he’d visited the nurse’s office.

He felt weird. Strung out. Guilty. And angry. Guilty like, what got into me, why’d I do that and angry like, why’d I leave you just standing there like that, and why’d you let me.

“C’mon, kid, you look famished,” Al pulls that anger-inducing Cheshire Cat face, placing a solely ornamental leaf of basil on top of the dish Rick passes. This fucking asshole. These fucking assholes. In cahoots together. “Wayne’s Hungry Man dinners ain’t hittin’ the way they used to, huh?”

Al’s smile doesn’t slice through the tension of the room nearly as clean as he wants it to. Eddie feels Wayne stiffen at his right elbow, sees Rick divert his eyes from across the table.

“Well, Dad,” Eddie says, forcibly stabbing and winding his fork through the spaghetti, “You know what coulda solved that?”

“What’s that, huh?”

“You staying out of lockup for longer than the duration of an MC5 song.”

Al doesn’t falter. Eddie bets he could open-palm slap him and that shiteater of a grin wouldn’t slide from his face.

“I’m here now, ain’t I?” his father clicks his tongue, digging right into his own dish, “You really gotta learn to live in the moment, kid.”

Eddie’s spaghetti-filled mouth starts to form around the indignant words, I’m not a kid! but Al beats him to the punch. Quite literally.

“Though, judgin’ by those scuffs on your knuckles, looks like you did somethin’ without thinkin’ it the whole way through first. Huh?” Al slurps his pasta noisily, and Eddie feels Wayne tense even more, if that’s possible. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

The sense memory of silver flashes colliding with Billy Hargrove’s face in the parking lot, the sense memory of you and your vicelike grip trying to pull him off before he killed him. The sense memory of bile blowing through his veins, stumbling upon those lowlifes talk to you like that. Rage blackout. Yadda yadda.

According to rumor, Hargrove was lucky that Eddie didn’t cave his entire cheek in. He still couldn’t totally see out of his right eye, the swelling was that gathered and insistent.

Eddie lets the question droop in the air, before eventually mumbling, “S’nothing. Just– shit at school.”

Wayne had been the first one to ask him, obviously, catching sight of his bandaged hand when he came upon Eddie staring a hole into–you guessed it–yet another Murder, She Wrote rerun, following your encounter on the examination table.

Eddie had given it the brush off so Wayne had given it the brush off. He was no stranger to his nephew bearing busted knuckles, even if it did make the old man’s blood chill every time he saw it. Those interactions always reeked of you poor kid, like Eddie was the perpetual victim. Got under Eddie’s skin a little.

But Al asks him like he knows something. And Rick won’t look at Eddie.

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with your lovely new neighbor, would it?” Other shoe, meet short, hard drop.

Eddie’s grip tightens around his fork, and in the back of his mind, he summons the spirit of the sharpest tongue he knows.

“Who?” He’s this close to prank calling people using his Lacy impression, that’s how good it’s gotten.

Al cradles his cheek against his palm. His eyes, the eyes that might as well have been scooped out and shoved into Eddie’s skull, they’re such iris perfect replicas, search his son for cracks in his composure. Al stabs, stabs, stabs aimlessly into his dinner.

“You’re a lot of things, Eddie Munson,” he says, “but you ain’t dumb.”

“Truly do not know what you’re yakkin’ about. Can I eat?”

“Come on, Eddie boy! You out there getting into scuffles over that little gold-plated piece’ah something?”

“Can I eat?”

“A little forbidden flame, maybe, two’ah you?”

“Can I eat?”

“Can’t say I blame ya. If I were… twenty years younger.... Or maybe she likes ‘em a little more mature. Think I got a shot?” Al’s teeth are starting to grit, spittle starting to fly. Frenzied in the way he’s trying to eek a reaction out of his kid. “Huh? Eddie?”

Al’s lecherous suggestion of you toed the line of too much for the Munson men, it seems. Eddie and Wayne’s voices overlap.

“Maybe we leave that girl out of this, Al–” “–can I eat, or what?”

SLAM! Al’s fist comes into direct contact with the hardwood of Rick’s dining room table, plates and cutlery and glasses clattering nervously. Rick jumps a little, groaning under his breath. Wayne drags a hand over his eyes.

“You can answer the goddamn question! Shit!”

Eddie, for his part, should probably feel a little scared, his dad raring up on him like that. Instead, he just lets his wound-up fork sag in a pile of spaghetti and leans back in his seat. The thing with Al Munson is this– his bark has always been way bigger than his bite. Especially when he’s as coked up as he is right now.

Ever since he’d roared into Rick’s driveway in that eyesore of a muscle car (alright, it was a little cool– but in, like, a lame Dukes of Hazzard kinda way), Al had been operating in sharp angles and backed-up nostrils.

Shit, Eddie would be shocked if there wasn’t residue on that razor blade he used to slice the garlic. That stupid, reckless, peacocking-as-a-father motherfucker.

He folds his arms, waiting for Al’s tone to pitch on down, for the tremor in his hand to act up, for him to say–

“Sorry. Sorry,” pressed through a line of grit teeth, “I just… Hmm.” It’s like Al is actively trying to plaster the mask of his charming grin back on his face but it keeps slipping out of his fingers. “She’s a real dime. Smart as hell too, huh? Shame about–”

“Al, what’re you gettin’ at with all this?” Wayne asks, and thank god he does. Eddie doesn’t know how much more dancing around the subject he can take, but he won’t be the one to bend first. “What did you bring us up here for? And don’t–” the eldest of all Munson holds a hand up, “--say you just wanted to get together. I don’t buy it. Eddie sure doesn’t buy it. And if Lipton here buys it, he’s a fool.”

Al shrinks, a snot-nosed kid under the magnifying glass his big brother holds to him. “Wayne–”

“You bring us up here to make us part of that goddamn stupid high school feud with that girl’s father? You really spin out that far?”

It’s not often that Wayne speaks up, but when he does, boy. Can that man dress a situation down.

Al falters. Wayne has that ability to knock him out at the knees, and Eddie makes a mental note to ask him how he does that.

“Listen. Alright. It’s not– alright,” Al clenches his hands in fists, a flex in and a flex out. A gesture Eddie notices, because he does it too. As if he’s trying to grasp the last threads of trust from them. “With that girl’s old man permanently benched so to speak, there’s an opportunity for another batter to step up. Okay? Jail sentences get doled out like Halloween candy–who knows that better than me, right?--but life goes on. There is… an opportunity here. Work still needs to get done. Work that I could’ve– that I can do.”

Eddie knows that his dad doesn’t realize he’s saying a lot of nothing, because Al’s always saying a lot of nothing. Vague promises with no real end to them. What catches him this time around is the glint in his eye, hidden behind the drug-induced one, and the glint of a gaudy ring on his finger. A green gem stamped in the middle, like a cat’s harvested eyeball. Huh.

“... let me make good on this, boys. For once. Let me take care of y’all.” Al huffs a faux-humble breath, glancing toward Rick for some kind of illustrative reassurance. “Y’know, seeing how it screwed up that little girl, seeing her big, upstanding daddy go to jail and all, I really–,” a swallow, for dramatic measure. Gunning for Best Actor here. “--felt it. Made me think, Eddie, of all the times when you were just a squirt… Made me wanna do right by you, is all.”

“How much of that doin’ right have you got up your nose, Dad?” Eddie sneers, putting two and two together. Of course this is what he’s back for; not to sell, couldn’t possibly be that simple in the convoluted world of Al Munson, but to supply. To get a suit fitted, pretend to be the big man. “Try before you buy isn’t exactly the most cost-effective policy.”

“Jesus, why, why have you got to make this so hard on me, kid?” Al is just about wringing his hands right now, scaling the apex of his desperation. “You have an in! You have the in!”

The in, of course, being Eddie’s connection to you, and by proxy, your dad. Al’s like a bloodhound that way, sniffing out the few good things that Eddie has going for him from miles off and tearing them right from his hands and acting like he’s doing Eddie a favor by making him his man on the inside.

“This whole town could be ours if you would just–”

That does it. Eddie leaps from the table, chair clattering to Rick’s warped wooden floor.

“I don’t want this whole town, are you fucking crazy?!” he yells, spittle flying, “And–and I certainly don’t want it if it’s anything to do with you!”

What the hell would make Al think that Eddie would hitch his wagon (which, granted, ain’t in too great a shape–he’s barely passing any classes, thanks to a pickup in business he guesses he can thank his dad for) to the living sunk cost fallacy that his father is? What the hell does Al Munson want with that kind of fantasy, one where he’s king bastard of the Hawkins cockwalk when he can’t even stick within county limits for more than a couple of weeks?

Well, Eddie actually has a pretty good idea, one that occurs to him like a lightning strike as Al struggles to keep his temper level. Let Eddie look like the tantrum-throwing brat.

Yeah. Exactly.

He’d wind Eddie into whatever scheme he was cooking up and ditch it, half-baked, leaving Eddie in a kitchen with all the smoke alarms going off. Elbow deep in an unsalvageable mess, because Al could never follow through on anything.

He’d have Eddie exploit your relationship for a couple of instances of, “That’s my boy.” Because Al still thought that trick worked; making him believe he’s loved, valuable, wringing every last drop of loyalty out of him because a boy needs his father… and a father needs his boy, y’know!

Fuck that.

“We should split.” It’s Wayne who says it, batting away the apologetic glance both the Munson men get from Rick– like he’s Al’s keeper or something, managing his moods. Like he isn’t raking in a cash cow from Al’s great Ray Doevski replacement theory.

“No, c’mon–” Al half-heartedly protests, like he could still save the evening but can’t really be bothered.

Wayne follows Eddie’s furious stalk out the door, tearing a cigarette from a soft pack as he hauls into the passenger side of the van.

Eddie, a tightening ball of rage, whacks the steering wheel with one good thump. He��d been stupid enough to entertain Al these past couple of days– out of confusion more than anything else. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it were.

“The in,” Eddie mockingly mumbles as the van roars to life and he peels out against scattering gravel.

Wayne has his cigarette pinched between his thumb and index and lets that settle for a beat or two.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Fists flexing around the wheel, Eddie knows very well he’s been caught red-handed. There’s no way Wayne had gone this long without suspecting anything, even after he’d specifically warned him. More of a suggestion, actually; Wayne knows that Eddie will do whatever he wants, regardless.

Unfortunately, he’s like his father that way.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Eddie says, a shoulder shrug, a mirthless lilt in his tone. “She…”

Again, Wayne stays silent. Waiting for Eddie to tell on himself, like he always does.

“She doesn’t deserve to be in the middle of this,” Eddie arrives at, voice a little choked. “Whatever Dad’s planning on doing–”

“Neither do you,” Wayne reminds him. This is where Wayne and his stoicism pulls Eddie up short. Neither do you, and the only way you avoid the blowback is if you two avoid each other. But at that same time, Wayne always knows where Eddie’s heart is at. Knows that his heart is too big not to follow.

Even if Wayne hasn’t seen you two together, laughing ‘til you’re stupid like the kids that you are, can’t he see…

“Why can’t this be easy?” Eddie asks, his voice small. Echoes of a littler him, one that Wayne would pick up in the truck after school. Head hanging, backpack trailing, kicking pebbles and cursing the world.

Instead, through a sage swirl of smoke, Wayne’s hard stare seems to peel back some. He’s always known where Eddie’s heart is at. Eddie’s starting to think he wishes he knew less.

—

Jesus Christ, are you ever sick of learning your lesson. Of reflecting on what you’ve done.

It’s exhausting, and more to the point, pointless, and even more than that, boring.

Truth is, you’re beginning to second-guess your adoration of brilliant thinkers. Those motherfuckers knew too much, and in the past week, you’ve found yourself yearning for the days where you got by on knowing nothing but the good stuff! The juicy gossip, where the best parties were at, what lipstick could not stand up to what nail polish! When intellectualism was a bedtime story you’d read to yourself under the fucking covers and you didn’t have to decode the labyrinth of your own stupid feelings!

Sure, you felt like a husk most of the time, but you’d take that over this graceless stumbling shit!

You should be allowed to smash the windows out of Billy Hargrove’s car and no one should be able to say boo about it! God!

Instead, however, you’ve been caught up in an as-yet-unprecedented display of seething and sulking. People are still whispering about you, natch, glancing at your belly like you would’ve if that heinous spawnous prank was played on anyone else. At the very least, they still have the good sense to flinch when you match their stare.

Billy Hargrove’s two week suspension means you don’t have to worry about seeing his ugly face, but it also comes with the two week guarantee of not seeing Eddie.

And the probable delay of your Hellfire article. Which is paramount. Obviously.

Speaking of Eddie, there’s too much speaking of Eddie to do.

You keep replaying the sneak attack from Al Munson in your head, him sliding his aviators down his nose to get a look at you.

“What are you doing here?”

“Payin’ my respects. Your father, shit. Shame what happened to him. He was– well. I was gonna say he was a ‘good man’, but that sounds kinda funny, don’t it?”

It wasn’t about Eddie, except it was about Eddie, because every stupid thing is about Eddie.

Especially the fact that you’re sitting in your college-going beau’s chariot, about to slink into Saturday detention. If it weren’t for him…

“Lacy?” a voice calls from the driver’s seat. “You alright?”

You snap to, rearranging your face into something definitive and sharp and pleasing to the eye. Because you’re fine! You’d said as much when he snuck you into the basement of his parent’s house–why wasn’t he back in school yet–and said as much when he squirmed against you, asking you if you were okay in that weighted way that really meant can I put it in yet.

You’d gotten on all fours because it allowed you to roll your eyes when he was all, oh, woah! sliding it in from the back.

You’d reached around and teased your clit to attempt a climax. Trying to imitate that clumsy rhythm from the nurse’s office. It didn’t quite stick–paled in comparison, like a Simon and Garfunkel tribute act made up of people that didn’t secretly want to fuck each other.

And then he gave you a ride this morning. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to bore yourself out of misbehavior– but you’d told him that you had newspaper business to attend to.

“I’m fine,” you brightly declare for the fourth and final time, reaching over to squeeze his shoulder. It was a weird gesture, but the shine had buffed off. He’s cute and all, but you two had gone to see Paris, Texas at the Hawk and he didn’t get it.

He didn’t get how much you clowned on him for not getting it afterwards either. You hadn’t been able to get it out of your head, the way he shrugged away from you at the diner as you ribbed him for his plodding misunderstanding of Harry Dean Stanton.

Coldly, you thought of the trade-off that you and Eddie had agreed on. Repo Man for Paris, Texas once it came out. You had to pretend you liked Repo Man a lot less than you actually did to swing that one, because Eddie wasn’t keen to lock in to some movie about a dude crying in the desert or whatever unless you angled in the fact that you owe me for making me sit through all that machismo.

“You love machismo. You wanted to nail that sweaty little punker, I saw you squeezin’ your knees together.”

“For Emilio Estevez? Please. I had my eye on the old guy. ‘Ordinary fuckin’ people, I hate ‘em’--that kind of shit really does it for me, Munson, you know that.”

“That why you’ve been entertaining the pleasure of my company for so long?”

“Down, dog.”

Anyway. Fuck.

“Listen, Lacy, I gotta tell you s–”

“Can’t right now! I’m already late and Fred is gonna have my head,” you chime, all saccharine, climbing out of the car. “Call me!” You pray that he doesn’t.

Slam. What an extraordinary waste of time.

As instructed, you make your way to the gym, which you think is a little weird. Detention usually denotes writing pointless, go-nowhere laments on how sorry you are for being such a bad kid, right? Think on your sins, yadda yadda yadda.

Typically enough, no one’s here on time. Everyone’s late. You’re perched on the bleachers like an asshole, sitting alone like an asshole. That’s the goddamn ticket, isn’t it? You’re alone in all of this. You always have been.

Like, for example. The Al Munson walk-on role into the surrealist tragi-comedy that is your fucking life. You can’t tell that to anybody. Not Eddie, naturally, not your mom, not Nancy because then you’d have to explain the continued and complicated Eddie of it all, not Ronnie because just because. And the ickiness of it hangs off your every move, and you can’t shake it, and no one can share it.

You’re beginning to wonder if that’s true of all the parts of you. The ickiness. It’s all a little heavy, isn’t it?

As if on cue, hearing ickiness called by name on the wind, Mr Kaminsky pushes open the gym’s double doors.

“Oh, what the fuck.”

“Had to see it for myself.” Your loathed History teacher says, full of glee.

“Sir, if this is some kind of elaborate courting ritual, I have to say, you’re not my type.”

“Careful up there, Doevski. There’s more detentions where this came from.”

“Freak accident. I can’t be caged.”

“Well, let me enjoy the exception to the rule!” Kaminsky claps, and you jerk at the echo.

You sigh so hard you almost unlatch something. “What elaborate torture have you got planned for me today? Want me to run laps or something? Because these shoes aren’t built for that.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Lacy,” the teacher digs, “We’re still waiting on your comrades.”

“I’m late, I’m late, I know I’m late!” a familiar voice comes skidding right up behind Kaminsky, baseball hat askew, mud stains on the knees of her overalls. “Some goddamn lunatic tried to run me and my bike off the road–”

“Ronnie?”

“Hey, Lacy!” she calls brightly and breathlessly, slamming herself down on the bleachers beside you.

“Ron, what’re you–”

An unmistakable heel-click rounds its way into the gym, and in walks Nancy Wheeler with her face all pinched like a porcelain doll. She receives your big ol’ center-piece-missing jigsaw puzzle of a look with a knowingly arched eyebrow.

“You’re late, Wheeler,” Kaminsky tries, but Nancy’s already consulting her wristwatch.

“Detention starts at nine sharp, right?” she says, impenetrable as always. “It’s 8:58.”

“Then can I have my admission of lateness struck from the record, actually?” Ronnie asks and Kaminsky shoots her a withering one, consulting his clipboard.

“Alright, we got one more. Give it the goddamn two minutes, but then I’m bumping her to suspension. You wanna count it, Wheeler?” he scoffs. Wow, so he’s like a round the clock douchebag. To everybody.

At what you only can assume is 8:59, the mismatched gangle of Robin Buckley comes slinking over the waxed floor, looking half-awake and pissed off–more pissed off, you might argue, now that she registers her company. She perches on the furthest end of the bleachers, pointedly away from the loose gaggle of you, Ronnie and Nancy.

You shoot Ronnie a look like, what’s the sitch there? Thought you two were getting all bosomy.

Ronnie just shrugs.

“Alright!” Kaminsky claps the clipboard again, “So, this is a fun group. Bunch of smart girls who got caught doing idiot stuff. We’re gonna make you pay for that today. Sound good?”

The whole bad bunch of you just stare at him, slit-eyed.

Your collective punishment, as it turns out, comes in the form of scraping old, disgusting, errant gum and other mystery sticky bullshit from the bottom of the bleachers.

“Stupid is as stupid does,” Kaminsky sagely says, handing you each a tiny chisel from the art room, “And I understand that some of you are violent offenders,” that’s a pointed look at you and Ronnie, by the way, “but please. Don’t use this opportunity to take another girl’s eye out. Your community college acceptance is riding on it.”

Motherfucker. Everyone knows Ronnie Ecker is in the running for valedictorian.

He leaves the four of you to your own devices, promising to check up on you all in a solid forty-five.

“How many times you think he can beat off in forty-five minutes?” Ronnie immediately asks as the teacher disappears through the door.

“Depends. Is he doing it in the shameful privacy of his three-door rust bucket or the clandestine confines of the AV room?” you question.

Nancy makes a gagging sound but adds, “And is he using his imagination or Ms Kelley’s yearbook picture?”

Nasty Wheeler! That girl has truly endeared herself to you.

Robin, however, doesn’t weigh in at all. She just sort of glares and angles herself onto the nearest bleacher rung to start scraping the age-old mastication from the wood. Tension in the air.

“Buckley’s got the right idea,” you say, twirling the chisel in your fingers, “Sooner we get started, sooner we get the grossness over with…”

Ronnie sticks close by you, which is nice. You always like having her in proximity. Nancy, who’s nothing but work ethic in everything she does, starts furiously working on a corner a little ways away from you both– and Robin.

It doesn’t take long, maybe fifteen minutes of silent, resigned scraping, for you to get bored. And disgusted.

“At what point do we get to do the whole prison thing of what are you in for?” you say, sitting up and letting the blood rush back to your head.

“Well, yours goes without saying,” Ronnie chuckles, “going all batter on Hargrove’s car like that. Did you actually bust a window?”

“Just swung it around,” you say, driving your heel into the bench, “I may have inherited the felony misdemeanor gene, but I didn’t inherit getting caught. What about you?”

Ronnie flicks another gum wad off with her chisel, “Actually, you might wanna ask Wheeler about that.”

Your brow furrows. “Nance?” your voice rings down to the lower rungs, “Ronnie here says you were implicated in her detention-getting.”

“Yeah, um. Well, I heard about everything when you went–”

“--totally awesome psycho–”

“--in the parking lot and… I just. I wanted to clean up all that shit. From your locker. And then Nicole came by, smacking her stupid gum, and it kind of got ugly.”

Nicole. The irony of it, Nicole, gnashing out shittalk about you and Eddie in order to impress whatever unfortunate member of the wrestling squad she’d dug her press-ons into this week. Nicole, who’d already invaded Eddie’s territory, much to her apparent shame.

What a majorette of a bitch.

You would’ve given anything to be ringside for this, her versus Nancy.

“You toed up to Nicole Summers?” a little pause, your voice goes smaller, “For me?”

Nancy sits up, her perm clouding around her. She points her chisel Ecker-ward.

“Ronnie was the one who smacked all her books out of her hand.”

Ronnie pffts. “Like she hasn’t done that to me a million times. Eye for an eye.”

“Nicole wouldn’t even go near her on account of that one time she bit that one kid for catcalling her.”

“Oh, stop,” Ronnie’s gathering a blush, batting her hand all coquettish.

“Wait, that was real?” you say, eyes darting between them, “I thought that was just some freak rumor we came up with.”

Rabid Ecker was one of the less clever nicknames your group of crown ghouls had come up with, so it obviously didn’t stick too long.

“We?” Nancy scoffs, not mean.

“The royal ‘we’,” Robin Buckley drawls from her prostrate position on the bleachers. That sounds mean, the bite in her voice.

Your hackles can’t help but rise at that cold snap in her tone. Does she have a fucking problem, or something?

“And why are you here, Robin?” you call, hands knitting in your lap.

“I was with these bozos,” she says, a note-faithful mockery of your pointed voice, “For some godforsaken reason… and now I really wish I wasn’t.”

“Why’s that?” you press.

Nancy’s whole upper half tenses. “Robin–”

Robin’s chisel clatters on the bench, a toss made out of frustration. She looks to the three of you with pursed lips before letting loose.

“Steve found out,” Robin says, “About the pregnancy test thing. In like, the worst way he could possibly find out, which is so goddamn unfair, unfair in the first place because of Nancy not telling him–like, I get it, your choice or whatever but you guys have been together for, like, a really significant period of time and you know how he feels about you–”

You and Ronnie can’t even get a breath in before Nancy rises from her seat, fingernails digging into tiny little fists at her side. She’s all spit and fury, she’s on Robin.

“Oh yeah, the worst way he could find out, Robin, the worst way which is that you blabbed to him!” Nancy yells, ricocheting around the gym, “‘Oh, I couldn’t help it, he asked me what was wrong and it all just came out–’ Give me a break! I mean, are you really that co-dependent that no one can tell you anything in confidence without you running to tell Steve?”

Robin’s face seizes in a snarl. “Are you really that stupid that you forgot to use protection with your long term boyfriend?”

“What is your problem?” Nancy’s voice whistles through her teeth, sheer exasperation, “How is this any of your business?”

“Should we stop this?” Ronnie whispers, with no intention of moving.

You shake your head in tiny, tiny increments, gossip monger past getting the best of you. “I kinda wanna see where this goes.”

“He is my friend, Nancy! And you broke his heart, dumping him right after– after–!”

Both your and Ronnie’s mouths drop into an ‘o’. You’re kind of disappointed–a big Wheeler-Harrington bust up and you weren’t first on the call list?!

“Jesus, Robin!” Nancy spits, perm flying, stomping towards Robin, “Get a personality! Sublimating yourself onto Steve Harrington isn’t doing you any favors!”

“Why, Nancy? I thought you loved him.” What confusing wording.

“I–”

Okay, these two girls are walking right into shit you can’t take back territory. You and Ronnie rush the bleachers, breaking the negative space between them both.

“Ladies! Break it up!”

“You heard Kaminsky! We’re all holding chisels, this could get ugly fast!”

You look to Nancy and her eyes are glistening. Reddening with the heat of anger and frustration. Robin’s jaw has hardened into a tough clinch, arms bound around her chest. Ronnie, she just lingers awkwardly, not quite knowing where to look. Your hand goes out to Nancy’s elbow, and she jerks away from you at first.

“Let’s go. Come on.”

“We’re supposed to be chiseling,” Nancy seethes. Your eyes roll, no patience for this go-nowhere brat routine, and you lead her to the other end of the bleachers anyway. Saying something like, we’ll take one end, Ronnie and Robin take the other, we’ll get this shit cleared in no time.

Nancy starts working furiously, but that’s kind of not what you had in mind here.

“You broke up with Steve?” you ask, point blank. Like she’d ask you.

She keeps chiseling for a few heavy, angry seconds. “I wasn’t gonna tell him, you know. I wasn’t gonna tell him, and we were gonna be fine. He could have lived without knowing. And then–fucking Buckley– and he had all these questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like why didn’t I tell him. And why was I so put out by the idea. Like, why didn’t I want to have his hypothetical baby at age seventeen… stupid shit like that.”

“He’s sensitive.”

“He’s a moron.”

“Don’t say things you don’t mean,” as if you didn’t have irrefutable proof in her favor. But that was the old Steve Harrington, wasn’t it? He’s meant to be some soft-hearted do-gooder dream boy now, right?

“No, Lacy, he’s a moron,” Nancy hisses, spit flying again; you’ve never seen her like this. Blue eyes bold and frightening with conviction. “Why should I have to tell Steve about something like that if it’s just a big nothing? If I was never even actually pregnant or whatever? Why can’t I just have that to forget about myself? Why do I owe him part of every single goddamn decision I make about my life?”

This is a bigger conversation, isn’t it? What you’d once regarded as poor Nancy and her perfect boyfriend, boo-fucking-hoo is now poor Nancy and her perfect boyfriend, stifled by his redemption.

“At least if he was still an asshole, I wouldn’t feel bad about breaking up with him. After all this.”

“Now it’s just like you’ve kicked a puppy.”

“Exactly.”

“What total bullshit.”

Nancy shoots the tiniest smile up at you, a stiff little nod bobbing her neck forward.

There’s a long beat as your focus reframes around Nancy. All the two of you wanted were lives of your own. Existences not indebted to anybody, good or bad. Shit.

“I’m the sublimator, by the way. I know that,” Nancy whispers, great big eyeballs glittering at you, “It’s easy to… fold into someone like Steve when, y’know… you’re not exactly likeable on your own. I just. I wanted to hurt her. She doesn’t deserve it. But I wanted to.”

Her chisel gestures towards Robin, working alongside Ronnie in relative silence that Ronnie awkwardly tries to puncture.

You understand that. Wanting to hurt people after you feel like they’ve breached your trust. Even accidentally. And doing it. And the ugliness of the shame after, you’re familiar with that too.

You reach forward and brush a little lint off her collar. “Thanks for getting in trouble for me, by the way. With that stupid prank and everything.”

“What are you talking about?” she scoffs softly, “You covered for me. And you didn’t have to.”

“Hey,” you hold out your pinkie finger. It’s the least you can do. “Promise is a promise, right?”

—

The members of Hellfire Club gather in an awkward row, standing under the odd, warm glow of the drama room lights like a police lineup of suspects least likely to score a date to homecoming. Sorry, Ronnie.

“What do you think,” you say, swiveling your focus to Jonathan, who’s standing there twice as awkwardly with his camera slung around his neck, “Should we take ‘em outside, make ‘em do Abbey Road?”

In the middle of it all sits the man who can’t help but be of the hour, what with the throne and the glowering and the gravitational pull. Eddie, slumped into that wild set piece left over from god knows what drama club production of, like, Henry VI or Pirates of Penzance or whatever, is so beyond unhappy with what’s unfolding in front of him.

Good.

Ronnie clearly hadn’t even fluffed him into the idea. Which she offered to do, when you’d hitched a ride home on the back of her bike after the tension of Saturday detention dissipated. You’d firmly nixed the idea, the sneak attack being the whole point of this thing.

You’d also learned that a two week suspension was no way no how going to keep Eddie from sneaking in and running this Hellfire session, which meant your article wouldn’t be delayed after all.

So, nah. Good ol’ Ronnie, she just let you stalk in there with your notebook and your pen and your glasses and your Pentax-wielding Jonathan Byers, ready to entirely fuck up Eddie’s day, which gave him no opportunity to protest or call for embargo. Because if he did, it’d raise eyebrows of suspicion and everyone would be like, I thought you two were weird trailer park friends? Is something going on? Something emotionally incoherent and ambiguously erotic? Should we tell everyone? Should we call the Mayor?

“Capital idea,” Eddie says, not exactly to you, but to those in general attendance like he’s playing to the cheap seats, “Maybe I can mow them down in my van and save them from this torture.”

Your smile tightens and Eddie matches your expression, both your mouths straining against your skulls. Wisecracks will not save him. He should know that by now.

“Let’s get a couple of the maestro while I excavate the disciples’ brains,” come the instructions and a swift pat to Jonathan’s shoulder. He flashes you a bewildered kind of look.

“Wh– how do you… want him?”

Incredible phrasing. You glance at Eddie, but not really at him–not enough that he can register and sucker your gaze in. Bathed under the dramatic glow like he was born to sprawl all cock-kneed on a throne like that.

“Exsanguinated and hung on a meat hook, preferably,” you say to Jonathan, “But, I trust you. Do whatever.”

As you gather the rest of the Hellfire denizens at the end of the table to interview them talking head style, Jonathan Byers slinks towards Eddie.

Eddie shifts uncomfortably, less equipped to keep up that fuck you stormcloud persona when he’s at the other end of a focusing lens. Plus, Byers always kind of gave him the creeps. Not to be a dick, but. Here we are.

Byers, to Eddie’s complete and utter horror, clears his throat and attempts to scrounge up some semblance of conversation. But, of course, it’s Jonathan Byers so it’s not fucking small talk. Any other day of the week, Eddie could get behind the notion of eschewing such how about this weather we’ve been having type social norms but Byers decides to jump in with–

“So you guys are…” he trails, leading the witness. Snap goes his little aperture. That’s unfair. Means he caught Eddie’s immediate facial reaction which, hands up, he has never been good at hiding.

“Neighbors,” Eddie supplies in a rush, twisting on his throne again. “She can… hear me yelling about DnD from my trailer. S’why she’s here. To shut me up, I guess.”

Byers adjusts his stance, capturing Eddie from a lower angle– a little more badass looking, he hopes. Frame the fucking curls, for god’s sake.

“Gotcha journalism,” Byers quips. Byers quips.

Eddie’s mouth relaxes and he huffs out a little, “Exactly.”

Byers shifts yet again, clearly covering all wondrous angles with his dinky little thirty-five millimetre whatever the fuck.

It’s not that this whole sneak attack article for the Streak thing is getting under Eddie’s skin– Eddie didn’t even have a chance to acknowledge it getting under his skin. You just breezed in here and started sticking bamboo spikes under his fingernails, like the little warmongtrix you are.

And now you’re sitting at the end of the game table, ruby red end of your fountain pen pointing at Gareth, noting down everything he says without even the slightest hint of condescension. These dorks are looking at you in awe and fear, save for Ronnie who just looks smug, and you’re listening to them. Really listening to them. Your face fixed with that hard little glare that tells him you’re recording the minutiae of their answers.

Eddie digs the pad of his thumb into his lip. Why would you want to do this? Why aren’t you avoiding him at all human cost? What is your angle here?

“She’s cool, y’know.” Click, goes Byer’s camera again. “Lacy.”

Eddie’s voice comes out distant, his focus tugging away from you super, super slowly.

“I heard you blew it with her.”

Byers, caught off guard, lowers his lens. “She told you about that?”

Eddie shrugs, like it’s nothing. It’d be easier to pretend like the idea of you and Byers hanging out was nothing if Byers and Eddie weren’t both classified outsiders.

“Well, uh,” Byers fiddles with something on his camera, shrugging in turn, “It was weird, talking to Lacy back then. You know. She was kind of–”

“She’s different now.” Eddie answers too fast, springing to a defense that didn’t call for him. He sits up a little bit straighter, spine iron-rodding, and tries to recover. “I mean. She’s retired the whole icy Swatch rat bit. She’s not, like– pretending to be something.”

Jonathan gets this look on his face. One last click of the camera.

“I wouldn’t know. I blew it, remember?” But you didn’t, man.

Little does he know.

“Are we done?” Eddie says, launching himself from his chair and slapping palms on the table. His DM screen shakes. Byers steps back with a flared little danger zone! look tossed your way. “We’ve already lost–”

“--fifteen minutes of glorious game time?” you drawl, crossing a final ‘t’ in your notes. “Of course. My apologies. Tight schedule?”

Your eyebrow arches as you flash your eyes up at him. His jaw flares. You– you’re good. You’re vicious and you’re good.

“Theee tightest,” Eddie grits through the falsest of grins and jerks his head, waves flying and the rest of his little Hellfire sheepies following in motion to take their seats.

Ronnie takes her time, mumbling under her breath, “You sure this is a good idea?”

And she was right, with what she’d said before. You are using this as an excuse to get in his face–bolstered only by the fact that he had now gotten in your pants, and you weren’t letting him slink off that easy. Especially with the workplace cameo appearance from Al Munson that you had just been forced to live through.

You’d been looking over your shoulder ever since, expecting to see him leering at you over those sickening aviator sunglasses.

“Oh, I’m positive,” you assure her, turning to Jonathan. “I need, like, one or two shots of them playing then you can take off.”

“Waiwaiwaiwaiwaiwaiwait,” Eddie interrupts, an arm raising over his head to signal halt, “Okay, so first, you storm the castle with your little camera boy without my approval, now you think you’re going to stay for the game?” His ire is genuine. “It’s Hellfire Club, Lacy. Members only. We don’t need bleacher bunnies.”

“Oh, come on, Munson!” you lilt, situating yourself on an abandoned desk, away from the game table. “The people want to know how the Satanic sausage is made.”

“The people being?”

“Your critics and fans. What is this all for, if not to piss off Hawkins’ Presbyterian and garner a whole new legion of Hellfire acolytes, huh?”

“We don’t need any help from the press on that front.”

“Really?” You drag out your single-word answer, using the seconds to count the minimal amount of players in the room. Not even Ronnie could boast 100% attendance, with her marching band obligations clashing with Hellfire sessions. Eddie glares at you. Yeah, yeah.

“A–actually, Eddie… I think it’d be… pretty cool,” Gareth says, waver slowly fading out of his voice. “I mean, if we’re in the school paper, my Mom’ll be less suspicious that we’re like–”

“--doing k-bombs in the drama room…” you mutter, loud enough that only Jonathan can hear.

“--and stuff.”

Eddie exhales so hard his nostrils flare, his shoulders tense, he’s about to shit.

“And who else would like to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Gareth the Treacherous here?” he snarls, looking pointedly around the table, “Jeff? Dougie? Cyrus? Ecker?”

The dorks erupt in yapping agreement, totally swinging for Gareth’s angle.

“Shut up!” Eddie barks, throwing himself back onto his throne. Ringed fingers pinch the bridge of his nose. “Fine. But this, in the business, is what they call a mutiny. Don’t come cryin’ to me when you’re all gettin’ swirlies with half of the Weekly Streak stuffed in your goddamn mouths.”

That’s creative. He really could have had a fruitful career as a bully if he wasn’t so gooey in the middle.

“Munson, I promise you can ride circles around me on a motorbike on live TV if this all goes to shit.”

You make a fluttering hand motion that reads proceed, which he, naturally, hates. He stares at you, like white light white heat searing through stares at you. And then his eyes shut. He takes a deep breath.

What follows is… exactly what you should have expected, actually.

Eddie Munson transports the present-and-correct party of adventurers back into the eye of their campaign. Their mission? Infiltrate a cult of royal knights that have been bewitched by a high priest who is forcing them to sacrifice the kingdom’s innocents in order to fuel his dastardly arcane magic. The plot is… involved. You’d done a light touch of research on how exactly the dragons and the dungeons all worked, so to speak, but it didn’t really seep into the membrane. It’s something you could only really engage with if you saw it in action– you’d have to rely on Eddie and company to fill in the blanks that the extensive lore left. Like, how exactly did these mythical dice come into play? How does a character sheet set you up for success, or failure? What the fuck is a skill check and why does it read so complicated?

And fill in they… kind of did.

Aside from the technical aspects, you find yourself suckered into the story. Quite literally, gripping your seat as Ronnie’s character–a highly capable bard, from what you understand–attempts to escape the hateful royal sect and find her way back to her party. They’d taken her hostage, and she’s managed to escape her chains but they’re ruthless, on her like dogs. Eddie illustrates every sweaty, panicky movement as they close in on her, and your fine, painted fingernails are dug into every word.

Eddie weaves these stories like gossamer– both in the sense of delicate intricacy and destructive nature of that big red monster thing from Looney Tunes. Each plot twist is created to elicit a sense of true foreboding, embellishing how effective his storytelling is. It forces each and every person at the table to face fear head on, dig deep and use what they were given in order to prevail, even if they’re shaking in their boots while doing it– shit, this is good, you should be writing this down.

Blindly, you sketch the word gossamer into your journal, not tearing your eyes away from the table. You barely notice the flash going off to your immediate right– Jonathan Byers’ lens pointed right at you.

“Uh–” you start, Jonathan reaching to grab his jacket from behind you as the game goes on.

“I’m headin’ out– gotta pick Will up from…” he trails off, but you fill in the blank. Nancy had mentioned that Mike was hosting his friends for a DnD session tonight too, and the party naturally included the most junior Byers. You nod, checking the time– Jesus, where had the last three hours gone?

“Tell Nancy I said hey, if you see her,” you say, “and thank you.”

Jonathan shrinks into himself, bashful. “Don’t worry about it.” A beat. “I still want that Echo & the Bunnymen, though.”

Your face peels into a grin that says don’t worry, I”m good for it! and you wave him off. The Hellfire party don’t even notice his leaving, except for Eddie who, being judge, jury and executioner, notices everything.

“...and on that sweltering note, germies and Eckermen, we must bid each other good eventide. Until next time.”

An operatic groan of disapproval goes up from the players, and you realize this must be a regular thing. Eddie always leaving them wanting more. Tease.

“I know, I know, if you had it your way, you’d be locked in here, pissing in buckets and the show would go on all night,” Eddie jeers, rising from his seat to start collecting his stuff, “but I wouldn’t inflict that on the janitorial staff. ‘kay? Scat. Outta my sight.”

With great indignation that swiftly turns into backslaps of appreciation, the Hellfire Club moves out of the drama room one by one. You stay put, and Eddie avoids your eyes completely.

Folding shit back into that madly overstuffed DM folder, he throws a strained-casual, “Need a ride?” to Ronnie, the last straggler.

She shakes her head, smile barely contained. “Uh-uh! Two wheeled my way here and I’ll two wheel my way back– you, uh, have fun though.”

“Bye, Ronnie,” you call after her, voice properly piercing through the air for the first time in hours. Eddie reacts like he’d completely forgotten you were there. Which, impossible. It’s also impossible for him to keep up the whole punk-ass overlord act when it’s just the two of you. As it is now.

Alone, together. Again.

There’s a charge between you, as if that even needs pointing out. Like the electric fences surrounding McCorkle’s farm.

You and the wagonful of your one-time buddies, Carol and Tommy and Tina et al, used to drive out there more than a little under the influence. Your favorite trespassing activity was reaching out for the electric fence, hooking your fingers around it to feel the darting shock permeating your skin.

“What the fuck are you doing? Can’t that, like, fry your brain?” Carol’d ask you, slugging back the last of her beer as Tommy and Steve Harrington attempted to tip a cow in the background somewhere.

“Try it, Care,” you’d giggled, half drunk and half coursing with adrenaline, half alive and half dead, “It feels weird. It feels good!”

You’d woken up the next morning in your plush bedroom in Loch Nora, two little blisters on your fingers, smarting from all that pleasure seeking. Did you regret it? Or did it just make you want to do it again?

Eddie still doesn’t look at you as he speaks from the opposite end of the table.

“Get everything you need?”

“No,” you answer, short. “Missing my key interview.”

Now he looks. Now he has the nerve to. And irises lock on irises, Eddie frozen in place. He knows he’s not getting out of this.

What’s more, you don’t think he really wants to.

“Pretty controversial subject matter,” he says, tone a whole shade softer than the commanding voice of God he’d used through the duration of the session. A little higher. Nervous. “What with the panic, and all.”

“Me and controversy are bedfellows,” your shoulder darts up, “I’m the big spoon.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” you nod; your tone is as marble-solid as ever, eyes trained and undarting, “Like when I implied the Tigers were straddling a generation-defining line of bold faced failure. I got in a lot of trouble for that.”

The corners of Eddie’s mouth twitch a little. “Define ‘a lot of trouble’ by your standards.”

“They made me print a retraction!” You’re genuinely incensed by the memory, hitching forward in your seat, “I mean, how insane? ‘Bad for school spirit,’ they said. Like I’m some kind of pep exorcist.”

Eddie tongue folds in between his teeth and he turns his head a split second too late. You can see him biting back a snicker, or something, and point to Lacy and yadda yadda yadda—but you smile, and the tension feels like it’s waning. Thank god, because it is suffocating you. You take your in and up you get, moving to the seat closest to his right-hand side.

“Can we get started?” The fountain pen is uncapped, the notebook cracked, your legs crossing. Eddie sinks back into the throne, his face warming up under the yellow stage lights.

“Okay. Hit me with your best shot.” Fire away.

You’re quick with it. “Why this?”

“Really? That’s your first question?” Eddie looks bemused.

“It’s the least rudimentary of all the Ws,” you explain nice and plainly, plucking up fingers to illustrate your points, “People know who you are–against their will, mostly. People can glean what the game is–or will, once I put a fine point on the… everything that just happened there. What people don’t get is why. Why indulge yourself in this?”

His fingers knit together in his lap, nearly shy.

“Because it’s fun.”

“Nope, too vague.”

“Vague?”

You physically knock the notion with a waving hand, leaning closer over the table, errant miniatures and spare pencils still scattered there.

“Basketball is fun. Chess club is fun. Throwing rocks into a rusted can of SpaghettiOs is fun if you can make a case for it. Too vague. Didn’t come here for the everyman answer.”

“What did you come here for?” That’s loaded. The way he’s daring himself to look at you is loaded. How soft his voice turns is loaded.

“The Munson answer.” It hangs in the air like someone dropped off the gallows. “Dig for me.”

A long, metastasizing beat. Resistance is futile, as it is and ever will be with you. Eddie hitches his arms across his chest, hiding a smile in the heel of his palm. Flattery works with him. Even if you'd never call this flattery.

“Escape,” he eventually tells you.

“Go on,” you press.

“There is this… insatiability when it comes to fantasy. To stories like this, the kind with big, thriving worldscapes. Reading ‘em, even writing ‘em– it’s good, but it isn’t enough sometimes. Sometimes you want to wrap yourself up in the reality of elsewhere. Travel to a world where things are different.”

“But not idyllic.”

Eddie’s eyebrows pull together.

“No. If these campaigns were just… the bad guys are defeated by a mighty sword that you and you alone always happen to have on you, that’s not a campaign. That’s a circle jerk.”

“The idea is to be challenged. To fight for something.”

“Right. To adventure. Beat the odds.”

“And you can’t do that alone.”

“Well, you can. I think that’s called, like, writing a book.”

“Ohh-kay, Eddie…”

“No, no, no, I mean,” Eddie shakes his head, planting his elbows on the table top, “Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the thrill of the unknown? Of not knowing what the other characters are gonna do, or what sick twist the dastardly, brilliant DM is gonna pull out next?”

He’s on one now, so you don’t stop him. Eddie’s eye takes on that mercurial shine, the same one he had while he was cruise directing the campaign. You wonder when he got like this—got bit by the God complex bug. Here, he could dare people to defy him when he’d been the defiant one his whole life.

You think about a littler him, yearning for escape.

“It also doesn’t work if everyone wants to be a hero. Too many heroes spoil the stew, okay, so you need to find other, y’know, likeminded weirdos who fall into different alignments. Those alignments only work when they’re played off other characters. Your merry band of outlaws or pirates or underdogs or whoever. You work together, or you betray each other, or you come back together because of some mighty sworn oath and you see your mission through. It’s not about winning or losing, y’know? Whatever happens out there,” he gestures to beyond the barricade of the drama room doors, “doesn’t matter. Whether life’s beating the shit out of them or not, my little acolytes, as you call ‘em, sit at this table and they’re part of something bigger. Something thrilling. Magical. Alchemic. They’re part of–”

“--a team.” You think about a littler him, yearning for people to escape with.

Eddie flaps his ever-animated hands. “Not my phrasing. But.”

“That thread runs through it all,” you say, drawing a line down the center of your notes with the inactive end of your pen, “Teamwork. Belonging. Victory– an escape from the mundane to victory, especially when you can’t find it elsewhere.”

Eddie’s chin rests on the back of his hand as he squints at you. “Sounding a little sportsmanlike there, Lacy.”

“And?”

“Thought you weren’t pulling for the everyman answer.”

“A hook’s a hook’s a hook,” you quirk your eyebrows, “–and, when you put it that way—”

“When you put it that way.”

“—what really makes you any different from, say, the Tigers?”

“Besides the cult of personality surrounding all jocks–”

“As if you don’t court your own little cult of personality—“

“—we actually win our campaigns.”

You start to retort, then stop. Letting that sink in.

“Oh. Oh, that’s good,” you say, sketching it down.

“I foresee letters to the editor in your future,” Eddie says, and he’s smug about it. Anything to aggregate the status quo, no matter what the blowback might be.

No one in their right mind here behaves like him. He just… does whatever he wants.

You find yourself wanting to touch the fence.

And maybe it’s that you stare at him a beat or so too long, but Eddie shifts his gaze down to the wood grain, flexing his hand. Scabs still marring his knuckles and all.

“It wasn’t broken or anything, then?” you ask, gesturing to his hand.

Eddie looks back up with a drag. You can feel what’s coming.

“Oh no, it was shattered,” he tells you, eyes-wide earnest and lying through his teeth, “My bones just heal super fast. My mom, she ate a shit ton of canned spinach when I was in ute.”

“Right, the calcium—”

“Nah. Rare botulism side effect,” he shrugs like, whaddaya gonna do!

Dumbass.

“Rare Botulism Side Effect is a good album title.”

“I’ll tell the guys.”

Silence falls again, and if you reach around, there’s something close to normalcy in there. Among the spikes and confusion.

“Um,” Eddie’s face contorts into a tiny cringe, “I found out what the… what the prank was, by the way. I obviously wasn’t here to witness the whole masterpiece theater of it all but– but Ronnie told me.”

A tight and ugly feeling constricts your chest. You look away, nodding through a grimace. You’d opened your locker with the practiced caution of someone diffusing a bomb since that whole incident, which sucks as someone who derives real joy from slamming metal doors.

“Pretty creative bit, huh?” is all you offer.

“Almost too creative for Hargrove,” Eddie counters, uprighting a fallen miniature with one finger.

“Are you trying to say I was being hysteric, jumping on his car?” It sounds like you’re offended, but.

“No,” Eddie meets you right where you’re at with this sparkle framing his stare, “I’m saying it was probably a collaborative effort. You could go seek even more batshit revenge, if you wanted to.”

“And would you be there to stop me before I cut Carol Perkins’ breaks?”

You can see Eddie biting his tongue between his teeth oh-so-lightly… Saliva catching in the low light. It’s warm in here. Stuffy.

“Prob–”

“I miss you.”

You cut him off in such a harsh, unforgiving way that Eddie feels his words rammed back down his throat. He blinks a couple of times, tempted to shake his head to make sure he heard you right. But there you are, your sight line running clean through him. You couldn’t be talking to anybody else.

“You do?” His voice is so small that his lips barely move. His lips, teased by his tongue, wetting them.

“Don’t act brand new. Everything’s harder without you. You have to know that.”

He gets snagged on the angles in your voice. By without you, he can only imagine you mean since he started giving you the cold shoulder and you started hitching rides in that college dork’s Ford Cortina. And by everything, he can only imagine…

“Lace…”

This is hard. This is horrible. This is uncomfortable and risky and as exposed as you have ever been, but it’s necessary.

“I can’t stand the tension of not being around you,” you say, breath feeling harsher as it speeds past your molars, “And I can’t stand the tension when I’m with you either, with you and wanting to–... so what do I do, Eddie?”

You focus on him, adjusting as if you were looking through the viewfinder of Jonathan’s Pentax. Eddie’s face, bewildered and angelic, with his parted mouth and his honorific glow of the stage lights haloing the frizz in his hair. He looks like something you want to commit to memory, as if to say see?! How could you deny this?

You rise from your seat, ever the investigator, and bear over him with hands on the table. Cards on the table, too. A genuine question smarts in your mouth, too sour candy you have to spit out.

“What do I do, Eddie?”

Eddie inhales with a sharp touch as you stand up, inspecting, demanding. He goes to tell you I don’t know… in the meekest of tones but the arch in your eyebrows says don’t you goddamn dare. You terrify him, and you make him dig.

“Forget it. Forget about all of it,” he breathes, almost tasting your perfume, “We can reset. Blank slate. Pretend like we don’t know each other. Pretend like none of this ever happened. It’d be better. Safer. Easy. Right? We could totally do that. We’ve fooled everybody so far. Even ourselves, into thinking this was… we could...”

“Fuck you,” you say in a soft rush.

Eddie only realizes that you’re both smiling when you kiss him. It’s clumsy at first, teeth knocking and everything, your hands winding around his collar and your frigid fingertips finding his neck. The shock of your skin on his, the matchstick crack of your mouth on his propels Eddie onto his motherfucking feet. He leans over you, knocking you into the table as your tongue works its way deep into his mouth.

You give him an, “Mm,” and if feels like an ascent to heaven.

Sparkles in the static makes the stuffiness evaporate, makes the room come alive. Your legs part to invite him closer to you, your hands faster and more insistent than his are. You pull at the hem of his Hellfire shirt and yank your head back, a string of saliva married between your mouths.

Fingers are more bold than they were in the nurse’s office, weaving the leather out of Eddie’s belt buckle. A deep ridge etches between Eddie’s eyebrows and his hands are propped in a mid-air surrender. Your eyes, your everything fucking eyes, are weighted with want. And challenge. Because you always do have to get one up on him.

“Reset this.” You tug at his zipper. “Tell me to stop.”

“Lacy…” Eddie whispers, watching you pull at the waistband of his boxers with his mouth agape. He’d dreamt about this. Thought about this. His cock about jumps into your hand like you’re Snow White and it’s a goddamned hummingbird. Pen marks on your fingers. “Jesus, y–...”

Eddie’s arms angle up behind his head, like a strung-up marionette, fabric of his shirt ghosting against his nipples in the stretch. This only makes him angle his hips further into you, eyelids flickering and his blood breaking the speed limit on its descent. Fuck, and then you fucking touch him– fingertips along the length of him, featherlight and goading.

Eddie’s groan is broken, half-caught in his nose. You’re looking at him like he’s a bad puppy, like you’re teaching him a lesson in scolding masking adoration. You’re beautiful and he wants to tell you so, but it all comes out in a whimper. Your hand closes around his cock, thumb brushing rii-iii-iight along the ridge of his head.

“Tell me to stop,” you echo yourself, and you’re fascinated that it comes out sounding like you know what you’re doing. You don’t. You’ve never been thrust into a net of feeling like this, never had anyone look at you the way Eddie is now– like he’d throw himself on a bed of open flames for you, so long as you kept touching him. It’s drunkard-making. It’s a full headrush. The gradual glisten of his reddening head looks delicious to you.

“Tell me to s–”

Grip tightens around him and Eddie moans from right in his sternum, his arms dropping to cradle around your head. He can’t believe he’s doing this, he can’t believe he’s fucking doing this but–

“Stop,” he gasps, fingers winding in your hair. His entire spinal cord is begging him to buck into your hand, your mouth, your anything, but he steels himself. “Stopstopstop, Lacy. Fuck– fuck.”

Your eyes widen, cheek in his palm. “Really?” Said in the most painful, the most misread did I do something? lilted tone. Your hand doesn’t exactly go slack right away.

“Yeah. Yes,” Eddie murmurs, eyes screwing closed and opening again, the most manual effort ever put behind a blink. “I c–I didn’t do this right, the first time. This is stupid. This is so stupid.”

And so your hands go, and you feel the anchor of your heart slowly dropping… But Eddie drops his face right down to yours.

“You deserve… so much more than giving me a handy on school property,” he tells you, and feels almost coherent about it. “Hot as it is. Right out of my… nastiest dreams as it is.”

Oh. Oh. The corners of your mouth pick up as Eddie presses his forehead to yours, just about evening out his breathing.

“Had a premonition about this, didja?” The pressure of his face on yours, his breath on yours, his skin on yours. It’s nice.

“Came to me in a vision,” he grins, crooked. Slides his thumbs along your cheeks and kisses you, slowly and noisily. “I’m a prognosticator.” Tongue half in, half out your mouth. Your heartbeat sinks between your legs. In a good way. “Been known to prognosticate.”

“Five dollar vocab word,” you mumble into his mouth, can’t help but push your body against him like a cat begging for attention. Eddie’s lips latch to the space right below your ear, a place where his mouth makes you feel like cymbals are clashing in your stomach.

“Come home with me,” he says, the note of pleading in his voice making your legs go numb. His nose and his lips dragging against the side of your neck, begging you to focus on the details and not the bigger picture. “Please.” A swallow. A beat. A ragged whisper. “... I missed you. Too. Y’know?”

“I do…” you sigh into his curls, readjusting his boxers, “actually need a ride… so.”

—

The van ride back to Forest Hills is tight with a tension that makes you both laugh, your mouth still buzzing from the kiss Eddie’d laid on you right before he’d helped you into the passenger seat. Even after he’d insisted you not touch him from the drama room to the parking lot, insisted because, “This thing,” he’d gestured to his crotch, his hard-on painfully zipped into submission, “this thing is gonna get me hauled over by the cops!”

“Don’t laugh!” you scold, mouth straining around the gleaming smile you’re suppressing, body all giddy. Voice ringing clear and high even over the cranked radio. Sabbath, naturally, Vol. 4. Wheels of Confusion sounds like treacle to you, mixed in with his laugh.

“I’m no-oo-oht!” Eddie says, syllables punctuated with chuckles, “I just– I am expressly escorting you back to my place! To, like, have sex with me!” His hands beat against the wheel, teeth sunk into that pretty bottom lip, giddy-upping so hard he actually does swerve the van a little.

“Woah!” you yelp, “Eddie, the road! You should’ve let me drive, you’re feral!”

Eddie moon eyes at you, reaching over to pinch your chin. “Lace, please don’t get all sore about this, but I will never trust you behind the wheel of this van. She’s a delicate piece of machinery and you would drive her like it’s the demolition derby.”

Narrowed eyes and all, you kind of have to concede. You’ve never been the best behind the wheel, a road rageaholic, and if you were to add feeling as frisky as you do now on top of that sundae… you press Eddie’s DM binder into your lap a little harder. Down, girl. He doesn’t help, thumb stroking your chin and everything.

“This is suh-rreal.”

“Stop zooming out so hard or I’m not gonna have sex with you!” You’re kidding. You’re so completely kidding. If he doesn’t touch you someplace lower than your neck soon, you’re going to disintegrate.

But Eddie pauses. “Like, you don’t. Have to.” Panicky, freezy. Hastily pulling on his good guy hat. “You don’t– by the way. It’s whatever you want. Call timeout at any time. I know I’ve been kinda–”

“Eddie.”

“...you still want to though, right?”

The giggling dies down as you edge closer and closer to your respective trailers, darkness washed over them like a swathe of dark blue paint. The lights in both trailers are out. Nobody home. Wayne, something about the weekend, something about overtime. Your mom… who knew. She’d been moving around in shadows more so than usual lately.

Everything out there is dimmed, except you two. Eddie doesn’t waste a second once the motor shuts off and the radio is silenced; he slams the driver door shut but the teensiest knot of hesitation tightens in your stomach before he reaches the passenger door.

And then he reaches the passenger door, gathering you out of it and pushing you up against the side of the van. Snapping you out of it instantaneously using the bare force of his mouth against yours.

“Eddie…” mumbled, your lips barely unstuck.

“Sorry. Shit, sorry. I just really like kissing you.”

Something pops in your chest; he’s… Jesus, he’s so sweet. Coal-eyed and excitable and lovely, kissing you with nothing left to spare.

“Hey. Redirect,” you shiver, his fingertips pressing into your waist. “Come to my place.”

Eddie casts a wide glance back toward your double-wide. The forbidden castle. “Your… y–are you sure?”

“Sure that my bedsheets are cleaner than yours, yes.”

He murmurs, “Bedsheets,” with a darkened gaze and a grunt. Bedsheets. You wanted him in your bedsheets. “Get your key. Get your key. Get your key before me and my dick have a shared brain hemorrhage.”

That new lock doesn’t stick at all, thank god.

Eddie, ordinarily, would nosily register all of his surroundings– he had an extremely barebones idea of your place, cast mostly in darkness like this, from that first night he’d driven you back from the fallout at Harrington’s. But he’s too busy nosily exploring your throat with his tongue, recording and archiving every breathy sound you make as you tug him toward your bedroom.

Cardboard boxes still trip you up a couple times. Did you ever unpack, or what?

You break from his heady kiss, vision doubling, taking in a lungful of air as you push Eddie through the door. Spine flattens against it as it shuts, the noise drawing a little bit of sobriety into the room. You reach to hit the floor lamp on and your bedroom is illuminated in a soft, orange glow, a scarf thrown over the bulb to diffuse light. A half-effort to make you forget where you were sometimes. It works; the edges of everything softens, which is such a contrast to the definitive presence that he is.

Eddie’s chest is heaving. He attempts to get his bearings but he can barely get his eyes off of you, squirming ever-so-slightly, ever-so-sexily against the door. Like you’d captured him.

Lips swollen, watching you watch him from the door, he turns a little shy and turns to look at the ephemera around him instead.

He’s standing in your bedroom.

You’re far more cluttered than he expected you to be.

He expected pressed sheets and a pristine dressing table, like a prison cell designed by a set dresser from Dynasty.

Well, that’s wrong, actually. He expected that of the Lacy people thought you were.

On the walls are a couple of tear-outs from the Rolling Stones he’d helped you liberate from your porch in Loch Nora, a mission you’d bought him breakfast for but didn’t have to. But mostly, every surface in the room is covered in piles. Piles of books, records, tapes, pens, jewelry, nail polish. And the clothes. They hung from everywhere, bursting out of your tiny closet space like bodies trying to escape.

It’s confused in here; feels like someone who has unearthed parts of herself that she hasn’t been able to organize yet. Eddie wants to comb through it like a collector at a rarities market, he thinks, running a finger along the spine of a porcelain cat that sits on your dresser.

“Place is filthy, cheerleader.”

“You’d know about mess, freak.”

The only really neat, clear space is, fortunate for tonight’s entertainment purposes, the bed.

As he’s sliding his jacket (jackets, plural) off, Eddie’s eye travels to the window.

“Did you fix your blinds?” he asks, pivoting back and forth on his heel.

“My blinds?” you parrot. The blinds that had been broken when you moved in. The ones that sure were shuttered now. You’d made a point to fix them with whatever was left out of your first paycheck from the Bookstore. “How’d you know about my blinds?”

He could’ve lied, if he caught himself quicker. If he didn’t straighten up his back like someone had snapped him to attention. “Uuh.”

It dawns on you like a flashlight in the eyeballs. “Were you… watching me, Munson?”

Not spying, mind. Not peeping. Watching. Eddie sinks down to sit on the edge of your bed, because whether or not he’s ever going to get to be here again kind of hangs in the balance right now.

“That. Dep…ends. What do you,” Please don’t kick him out. Please don’t kick him out. Look at the line of your fucking body as you round on him, staring him down like you want him for dinner. Christ, he hopes you want him for dinner.

Eddie swallows roughly, tone bumpy, face a dime store Halloween mask of nonchalance. Paper thin. “What do you think about that?”

Fact is, he’d subsisted on a couple of very guilty glimpses of you. Catching sight of the lines of your bare back and taught shoulders would keep him in jerk-off material for a week, just thinking about kneading out your knots and undoing your bra clasp with his teeth.

Eddie felt positively Victorian about it. Maybe you’d flash an ankle at him next and he’d be institutionalized for hysterics.

You look at him with the same pinpoint as you did earlier. Like you’re studying him. And then you edge closer, closer, nudging his knees apart. Echoes of the nurse’s office.

But this isn’t the goddamn nurse’s office. You’re not straining to adapt to the element of surprise. You know that the breath Eddie takes, shuddering and wondrous as you tilt his chin up to look at you, is a sound you want on repeat for as long as you can bear to hear sounds.

“They’ve blinded men for that, y’know? Before.”

Eddie can’t answer. Just let out a huh! as your fingers trace his jaw, thumb brushes his lip. His hands squeeze the curve of your ass, fingers beg into your thighs as he watches you, dumbstruck. His tongue unconsciously presses to the tip of your thumb and he hears your breath hitch.

A sustained shock travels up your neck.

“I mean, was it worth it?”

“Was it w… Lacy.” Eddie’s hands have breached the hem of your skirt and with a groan, his face burrows into the silken fabric of your shirt, like he’s trying to nudge it off with his nose or his mouth. Fingers are working mindlessly to loosen some article of clothing from your body and it makes you feel buzzy and trancelike. “Don’t ask stupid questions. I might have fuckin’ carpal tunnel because of you.”

Jesus. He makes you feel so…

Desired. Needed. You’ve never felt that way before, and you don’t quite know how to navigate it. So your buttons start coming undone with the work of one hand, the other shoving Eddie by the shoulder to lean back on your bed.

Eddie, here, among all your things. Disparate in your shabby little dollhouse, looking at you like you just swallowed the sun.

Your shirt comes off, and Eddie, in a game of match point, tugs his off too. Pause comes over the both of you. You’d seen him shirtless before; shower-bare in his trailer when the first security breach happened, a crack in the containment whatever you were pretending your relationship to each other was–affable enemies, irritated acquaintances. He’d looked at you like an animal cornered, tendons tense under his tattooed skin and you’d wanted to drag a finger or two down the center of his chest.

You didn’t, though. You’d sniped, asked where the cigarettes were.

This is all one big case of making up for lost time.

You’ve been looking at him so long, bra strap slipping off your shoulder, that Eddie leans forward. As if to come get you.

Remember me? I’m real. You can touch me. Touch me, please.

His warm arms pull you to him, pull you onto the bed, pull you against his lips. It’s gentler there; not as furtive. It says, hi, I’m here. Your arms, tugging him closer as he eases you beneath him say, good, I’ve been waiting. Eddie brushes his nose against yours, you laid down with your hair fanned out on the plush comforter.

Both your pulses must have stuttered at the same time.

His smile is serene but you can feel his forearms trembling. “I feel like I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

“Don’t,” you tell him, very quietly while his hand nervously tries to find the zipper on your skirt, “I just got you back.”

Your hips lift to help him and you’re wiggling the thing off and you’re wiggling your tights off and he’s thrashing his jeans off only to land back between your parted legs with bouncing recoil from the mattress. Laughter biting in one another’s mouths. The nerves are teeming off him in waves and it makes you want to kiss him all over.

The feeling housed in your body is different; not jittery, but struck somehow. This doesn’t feel like the way it usually feels, the way it does when you disappear into spare rooms at parties or the shadow of Skull Rock or hitch your leg up against the center console of someone’s shitty car. It doesn’t feel rote, like you’re doing it to stack up experience points– that is a Dungeons and Dragons term you found particularly interesting. How many bad tongue kisses had you accepted just to feel like you’re progressing, instead of waiting for someone who wants to taste you like Eddie does?

Your bodies caged together, you feel the eager, hard, tragically clothed line of him rub against your center. Eddie manages to free your bra clasp on the first try, which you almost goadingly applaud him for–but he cuts you short with a bewitched stare, his lovely, hot mouth laving over your nipple as he slips the fabric away. It tears the first real moan from you, your back arching into his kneading fingers as his tongue curves over your tightening bud.

Eddie can’t believe what he’s hearing. He can barely see straight, but he’s trying to commit every second of this to a glorious Technicolor memory, sound and image capturing working overtime. The sound that comes from your beautiful, balmy mouth sounds fresh out the packet–like you’d never made it for anyone before. The look of suppressed surprise on your face confirms as much and Eddie feels like he might explode.

He, too, has no idea what he’s doing but he can’t help his hips from jerking into you as he plays on. Playing with your nipples, remembering that making them glisten with his spit will make you whimper, and so will kissing the center of your sternum. He’s watching wide-eyed and fascinated as your brow furrows and your legs tighten around him. He’s a wonderful student, when he wants to be.

Eddie is throbbing, and there’s too much cotton and lace between you.

There’s also this other thing, and it comes out of him like word upchuck as you try to tease his boxers down around his hips using only your feet.

“I oughta tell you,” Eddie whispers, voice all raspy, all boyish with his hair tickling your collarbone, “I’m, uh. I’m not good at this.”

“At what?” He’s got one hand roaming over your chest, the other making indents in the meat of your thigh. It feels like he’s holding your breath right in his hands.

A new shade of pink rises high in Eddie’s already straining cheeks. He really doesn’t want to have to use his words to spell it out. “Thiii-iiss.”

Oh. A rivulet of cold realization runs through you. Nicole. Cass. Girls daring themselves to get near to him. Experience points. The great freak experiment project.

“This isn’t that.” Your hands hold his chin, perhaps a little roughly, to make sure he’s listening. And Eddie is, breath baited. You press your forehead to his like he pressed his forehead to yours. “It’s not.”

He’s really about to ask you, what is it, then? but that feels like something you can work out later. Eddie lets you tug at his lips and you let him tug at your panties, arching up so you can wiggle them down your legs. His eyes cast to the downy hair at your mound, and it’d usually occur to you to apologize for your unshaven legs, as if it mattered.

But the way he regards you doesn’t call for that; it calls for you to open up for him. Spread.

A rough pad of a finger runs along your slit, feeling the generous drip that’s gathered, and Eddie moans as your breath hitches into an animalistic, “hahh!”-- he’s edging down your body to bury his face there. He wants to feel you, smell you, taste you. You tense at the sudden contact of his palms pressing your thighs open, his nose against your clit and he feels it. A jolt of worry passes through him. Did you not want that? “Sorry–”

“Don’t– no, Eddie, don’t stop,” you strain, laugh a little, “You just… surprised me. Keep– keep surprising me. Please.”

Shockwaves break through you as he gingerly offers his tongue. And more, and more, until he’s lapping at you with a vigor and no real direction. You dig against him, made speechless by the building ache in your core.

In your fantasies, you hadn’t anticipated him being so giving–so eager to please and explore. Like all things, this moment projected itself in your head with the hard edges of some imagined cockiness, Eddie telling you to spread your legs and you, nymphlike and fluid and still somehow holding all the indiscriminate ‘power’, doing so.

But this? This is soft and messy and spitty and real. Eddie is drooling and babbling into your pussy with the uncalculated effect of someone who has improvised his whole life and it’s tearing you at the seams. A satisfying little rip, every keen movement he makes.

You know when you’re close to climax, that familiar feeling of your cunt suckling at nothing, but it doesn’t feel as jagged as the first time he brought you there. Urgently, you tug at his hair, claw at his shoulders, begging for his attention.

“Eddie,” you gasp and his hands flex around your thighs at the sound of his name in your mouth. It’s yours, he wants to tell you, rutting heedlessly into the mattress from his position between your legs, keep it! Please! “Eddie, Eddie– come here, come to me.”

Your velveteen voice summons him, his face glistening from the exploration of you. Embarrassment threatens to ping at you, but it flames into want, seeing how wet and obscene he looks. That’s all from you?

Eddie does as he’s told, heart pounding– and the sensation of fabric dragging against the raw tip of his cock nearly makes him pass out.

“Fuck! Fuck, you–” he stammers as your hand pulls his heavy length free, balls tightening under your firm touch, “N-not fuck you, obvi-ously, but–hunh–okay, kinda fuck you…”

Eddie’s lips fold against yours as he attempts, with shuddering arms, to brace himself over you. He whines at your dexterity, swiping his head against your entrance. The wetness from him, the wetness from you– the sheer impact of sensation slices clean through him. It’s not a tactic, you’re not teasing; you’re angling to get him inside you. You need to get him inside you, your entire body is begging for it.

“Baby, please, please, I’m not gonna last–”

“Who said you had to?” you ask, voice a drop of dark syrup. Just for him. “Who said you had to?”

The earnestness in your eyes gives Eddie pause– for all of a pulsating second.

“I want you… inside. Don’t you want to feel me?” you ask with real conviction, thumb swiping over his moistened head in a way that makes his vision go galactic.

Eddie yanks your hand away, kissing roughly it, nailing it beside your head as he tries to ease into you.

“Want? It’s all I want–fuck, it’s all I fucking think about, Lacy–huhh–”

His first attempt results in a gasp of pain– the sting, the stretch, it’s a little much a little fast. The sharpness has you wincing and has Eddie searching your face with an arrested kind of guilt.

“Y–shit, baby, are you–”

“I’m okay,” you recover, hand steadying on his flushed cheek. “Just–slower. Ease it in. You’re– you’re pretty remarkable, Eddie.”

“Remarkable?” he mumbles against your cheek, focused and slowly lining his head against your entrance. “Really?”

“Prodigiou—ss, uhh–fuck!” Whispered swears come streaming from you as he sinks right into the velvety constraints of your cunt.

Your eyes roll right back, mouth tipping open and the grip of you arresting around him makes him cry out into your chest.

Eddie’s cock is long and heavy and thick, constricted to the point where you can nearly feel every ridge of him. It hurts, the stretch of him aches, but it’s delicious–pinned and sweetly painful.

“Prodigious–is a five dollar–fuckin’--vocab word–” he strains, lifting his hips ever so slightly– you’re clutched onto him so tight that you move with him. Eddie open-mouth groans against your neck. “Lacy, Jesus, you’re so tight–you feel so good–how the fuck do you feel so good? Who invented you?!”

There’s a tinge of a giggle in your moaning, which doesn’t let up. Eddie’s voice rings out like a church bell, making one slow stroke inside you, then another. Then another, then another, picking up speed, groans chorusing into the hollow of your neck around the lewd sound of his flesh slapping against yours. The sound alone brings you close to cumming. “Oh, pleasepleaseplease, fuck, Lace, I’m g– fuck, I’m–”

The way Eddie’s hands are carving permanent marks into your hips, the way his movements are halting, you get the idea that… “You holding out on me?” you ask him, short of breath around your panting but demanding still, “Don’t you dare–don’t you dare.”

“Lacy, uhh– please, ’mgonnafucking–”

“Cum for me? Are you?”

Your fingers tug at his curls so you can look at him as his face tenses. Eddie’s hair is flattened across his head, face glimmering with exertion. You drag your lips against his forehead, the salty flavor of sweat breaking across your tastebuds.

“For you, for you, shit, only for you–only for you, only fucking ever–fuck–”

His dark eyes have been blown out since he pulled you to the mattress, eyelids flickering over his irises as he pistons into you with speed that hurts but you love it.

You barely hear yourself beginning a prayer of dirty little succors, but there it is, easing him through his orgasm as he shudders a load between your legs. “You feel like nothing on this fucking earth, you know that, you’re so good for me...” The tension breaks with one final rasping cry, his expression dissolving into a softness as he exhales a lungful, neck stretching to lean into your touch.

A couple of half-cracked dry sobs escape him.

Looking up at you, cradled against your shoulder, Eddie’s cursing himself for every second he’s wasted not doing this with you.

And you, looking down, are stroking his damp curls from his forehead and cursing yourself. You’re going to burn the world down for this boy.

“Lacy. You–”

And then, y’know, the fucking front door of the trailer clicks.

Little too much deja vu for your liking these days!

Immediately, you seize upwards, jolting a confused Eddie with you– which breaks your heart, in a way, seeing him darty-eyed and shocked out of his bliss so fast.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.” These are not like your prior ‘fucks’, he can register through the haze of his post-nut state. These are bad fucks. So he responds in turn, “Fuck?”

“My mom!” You hiss, naked and scrambling. Panic crests on you like a wave, a wave that should have been an orgasm mind fucking you, and your fingernails tear at the comforter beneath you.

“Under, under, gogogo!”

Because if there’s one thing your mother, in all her former-center-of-attention glory, loves to do? It’s enter a room uninvited.

Case in fucking point–

“Lacy?” A perfunctory knuckle rap from the other side of the door, just as you manage to hide Eddie by shoving him behind you and tenting the comforter around you both. You’re praying to anything with a little more gusto than God that it works. And then, enter your mother and her cloud of Shalimar.

Soon as she opens the door, you can tell something is terribly off.

She’s smiling, face as serene as the Virgin Mary. Usually she’s got a sharpened dagger of a glare, just for you. Two of you haven’t been spending much quality time lately, see.

“Lacy! What–” your mom’s brow knits, but it’s a look of amusement. Which freaks you out. She’s looking at your just-fucked-by-Eddie-Munson hair, isn’t she? The mascara that’s surely streaking down your face? Does she know? Can she sense he’s in this very room? “--what are you doing?”

“Napping. Crying. What does it look like?” you snap, hiking the comforter up a little further and begging that she doesn’t notice Eddie’s incriminating clothes strewn across the floor.

Eddie, for his part, is not breathing. He’s crouched behind your bare ass, a position he’s in no rush to get out of, arms caged around your thighs like a petrified child. This is almost funny–or would be, if he wasn’t scared shitless of everything your mom would definitely do to him if she discovered him buck ass naked in your bed.

Dreamily, Eddie reminds himself that he’s buck ass naked, in your bed. He smiles into one of your cheeks and considers how biteable it is.

“Well. Wrap it up,” your mom says, tone still light, and you twinge at the irony. At least you’re on the pill. “I have a surprise.”

Slam. Door shuts. Your lamp wobbles with the force of it and Eddie emerges from behind you, like a freshly-fucked groundhog.

“She sounds happy,” he mumbles, arms sliding up around your waist.

You want to kiss the mirth out his mouth but you have to shove him back behind you first– cue your mom, doubling back through the door. Jesus!

“What was that?”

“Nothing!” you say, shortly and breathily because Eddie nips at your fucking ass cheek back there. “Just–you sound happy, mom!”

She shakes her head at you, a smile curving her tulip colored lips, like a mom from a detergent commercial. Y’know, were it not for the whole Italian widow getup she’s alway sporting.

“Get on with it already.”

You count to a full five before you even let out a breath, snapping your attention back to reality and the fact that Eddie Munson is very naked in your very bed.

“You gotta get out of here,” you tell him, and you want to kill yourself about it.

The both of you balance on your knees. Eddie tugs you into him with shining, begging eyes. Standing almost at full attention again, already.

“Jesus, that thing’s impressive.”

Eddie’s fingers wind around the hair at the nape of your neck. Despite the brief jolt of fear from your little interruption just now, he’s all romance–totally suckered, rose-colored glasses, the whole bit. Thoughts not exactly creating a straight line just yet, but he doesn’t care. He’s had his hands all over you for the better part of an evening now, and he doesn’t want to let up just yet. It might kill him. It might kill him.

There’s no unringing this bell between the two of you, and he knows that.

And you knew it first, because you know everything first.

“You sure?” he hums into your sweet lips, “You absolutely positive? Because I could be real, real quiet…”

Eddie’s also thrilled by the fact that he seems to know instinctively what to do to turn you on.

“What if I don’t want you to be real, real quiet?”

You kiss him back, sighing and sliding a single finger down the length of his cock.

“Lace…” he whimpers to you, his commandant fantasy of being dominant in the bedroom officially, officially escorted out back and shot. He wants to please you too badly. Be the jester in your court that makes you cackle and makes you cum.

“Lacy!” a shrill yell comes from the hall. Your eyes snap open, Eddie’s dancing with amusement and yours heaving with alarm.

“Fuck, okay, go! Window!”

Another scramble, you tossing jeans and socks and the rest of Eddie’s uniform at him while you clean yourself off, try to pull a robe around yourself. A stray thought occurs to you as you watch him trip over himself, ripping the hole in his jeans a little further–you hate what he wears, but you love it on him. And off him. And…

You yank up those blinds and unlatch the window with a faint smile. Nothing about you two makes any conceivable sense–

Eddie starts out the window, shirt barely pulled down his torso and his shoes in his hands, then turns to hook you to him by the elbow. Smiling with the full blush of his mouth, he kisses you. Firm and knowing and whole.

–except that. That makes sense.

The pad of his finger clears a lock of rumpled hair from your forehead.

“To be continued?” Eddie searches your face, with those crazy dark brimming universes of eyes.

Your heart is leaping in your ribcage. You nod sharply, gleaming back at him.

“I’m comin’ back for you, Lacy Doevksi,” he tells you with all the brazen confidence he can muster. “And I am gonna go down on you until I drown. On pain of death, I swear it.”

“Go!” you command, and regret it as soon as he drops out of your bedroom window. Eddie starts a cant toward his trailer across the way.

“Faster!” you hiss, just as an excuse to watch him.

He pivots mid-jog, hair swinging wildly, his hand grabbing at his crotch.

“You try runnin’ with a hard on! Witch!”

It’s far, far, far too quiet once he’s escaped through the front door of his trailer.

It's not fair, you think. You should be basking in some kind of afterglow, sharing a stupid cliché cigarette, you feel like you should be... celebrating this.

You shouldn't have to keep running away from each other.

The warmth the two of you had created, through mere physical friction or just how much you… you like each other, rapidly dissipated into a chill as you advance through your bedroom door, to deal with the other thing.

Surprise, you thought, What kind of goddamn surprise could mother o'mine have for me? Did she boost a bank? Did she win the Indiana Sweepstakes? I don’t want to know about any g–

“Lorelei.”

The universe has a way of shoving you back in place when you get ahead of yourself.

You don’t just stop in your tracks, you’re repelled a half-step backwards. The centrifugal force urging you away, telling you there’s an immediate threat in the heart of your home.

No one uses that name anymore. Not even him. Not since you were fourteen.

“Daddy.”

Your father sits at the shabby dinette that you and your mother don’t even share meals at, sits there in the suit he was sentenced in. A rich navy pinstripe, chosen because gray would have been too flashy and black would admit defeat. “Of course!” your mother had said, marveling at his ingenuity. But the pantomime of his defense was wearing real thin on you; whispering at school had started growing louder and louder and you were finding more and more chips in the porcelain of your father’s worldly facade.

“Why not compromise. Wear charcoal,” you’d said, leaning against the kitchen counter in Loch Nora, drinking orange juice from your parents’ wedding crystal as the movers taped up your boxes, “You can plead guilty and still look smug about it.”

Your father had smacked the flute from your hand and it shattered in forty thousand pieces on the ground. You didn’t move, didn’t breathe, because you knew if you did, you’d be next.

Navy it was. And navy it is. He sits at that dinette like he’s expecting white jacket service. You swear even more gray has started glimmering through his hair. Flashy.

“Should I ask how you’re here?” you say, stiff and scared. Your mother, standing at your father’s shoulder, tuts and sighs. Can’t you just enjoy this? she silently bemoans.

“Good behavior,” Ray smiles, “Can’t say the same for you. Can I, Lorelei?”

“Principal Higgins called,” your mom chimes in, “Or rather, that odious little secretary called. You think you could get a Saturday detention and they just wouldn’t tell us?”

“That’s why he’s here?” You laugh a little, inwardly. “With all due respect, Daddy, that’s a terrible reason to break out of prison.”

To your surprise, your father chuckles too. Makes your blood run cold, obviously.

“Y’know, I really didn’t anticipate this for my homecoming, I gotta tell you,” he says, shifting in his seat and plucking a cigarillo from his jacket pocket. “I mean, honestly. I thought, a nice bottle of Beaujolais–”

“We’re fresh out,” you gesture to your cringing mother.

“--a dinner at, Christ, Enzo’s, since that’s where our budget is at now,” his lighter flicks and ignites the end, “But no. I have to sit here and cross-examine my daughter about… fraternizing with the lowest of criminal elements.”

The lack of self awareness here is off the fucking charts. It makes your blood pressure spike.

“Take a seat, Lacy,” your father so gallantly gestures to the vinyl backed kitchen chair in front of him, “and tell me all about Eddie Munson.”

Chair drags aggressively against the linoleum. You sit, and swear that the next time you’re caught off guard by anyone’s father, it’d better be God himself.

This bit is getting old.

author's notes: so i'm not fucking around when i say i need to hear everyone's thoughts on what just happened immediately. i really do think that happenings-wise, this was my favourite chapter to write thus far. felt cathartic, from the al munson to the hellfire article of it all. anyway. onto the good stuff - like i feel like everyone who reads this series will have clocked this but of course i lifted the garlic slicing right out of goodfellas. i just think it's a perfect al munson attribute to have - al munson kicking out the jams instead of picking up his kid i know that's right - our dukes of hazzard ref is a tribute to my own personal al munson fancast - not that paris, texas but this paris, texas. (and you know when lacy eventually gets eddie to watch it he CRIES. they both cry) - i should probably put the repo man trailer in here as well - speaking of another fancast! the manager of forest hills trailer park is, of course, to me, in my heart, carl rodd. - the best song off of abbey road by the beatles, fight with the wall - SHOULD WE CALL THE MAYOR - lacy promising eddie that he can ride circles around her on a motor bike is a reference to hunter s thompson being ambushed on canadian television by one of the hells angels he wrote about in his book. dude rolls onto set on his hog. it's crazy. - eddie is kinda gossamer coded - cow tipping? at mccorkle's? anybody? our love is god - god wheels of confusion is kinda horny sounding huh i think that this might be the shortest references recap so far in the series?? one of them anyway. probably because i wrote 4k words of FILTH. anyway, thank you all so much for continuing to read this fucking thing. we're almost at the end of this part of the story which is wild to me. now let me get on your ass and remind you that REBLOGGING FICS IS ESSENTIAL TO YOUR FIC WRITERS HEALTH. SO ARE COMMENTS AND SO ARE ASKS so send those pls :) love you hellcats. be well, cats

#published by powder #hellfire & ice #in progress #e. munson by powder #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x oc #stranger things fic #eddie munson fic

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