#also steve bribed James Hetfield with his daddy's yacht fund to dedicate a song to Eddie

[davinkis-penis]

The Record Store.

   Hiya! This is my first fanfic- like ever. So there's a shit ton of mistakes! *also this was originally supposed to be a few head cannons until I got carried away lololol and I'm typing this on 0 hrs of sleep bby send God*

CANON COMPLIANT // ONESHOT // MENTIONS EDDISY //

1760 WORDS

Synopsis: Wayne and Eddie Munson Being the Buds That We Never Got in the Show so We Have to Make it Up Ourselves™

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When Eddie first starts living with Wayne, the record store is sort of like a bonding experience? Wayne isn't the most affectionate and doesn't really know how to communicate with the kid now that he's responsible for him. Yeah, he's seen him a few times but Eddie's Dad was always doing stupid shit and Wayne didn't want to get wrapped up in that- So, he takes Eddie to the record store because before everything went to shit, that was where him and his super-cool big brother used to hang out to get away from whatever was going on at home.

The record store became a ritual- they’d go one day at the end of the month, order pizza, come home and listen while merged with the couch- staring blankly at the ceiling. They usually picked out something together, but one day Eddie was dead-set on this brand spanking new Agents of Fortune album by Blue Oyster Cult- Wayne thought the band name was weird- but he'd never seen Eddie so adamant, so he caved. They get home with the record and it. never. stopped. playing. Over…and...over...and over. Wayne prayed it would just stop. Every lyric from that album was forever ingrained in his head. But Eddie was just so damn happy- he'd hop off the school bus and bust through the door just to put that record on the player in that cramped bedroom hall.

Wayne didn't understand how he wasn't sick of it. Until he came back from the plant one morning, and found Eddie sprawled over his old beat-up acoustic that came from his grandfather, Eddie's Great-Grandfather, who was a pretty good player himself. That thing had cracks, scratches, water damage, you name it- the strings were so damn old Wayne was surprised they didn't all snap off with Eddie's strenuous playing. Which was pretty obvious from the kid's bleeding and bruised fingertips. Wayne wondered how long he spent, trying to go over the riffs, listening to where the notes cut off, which note played where, playing the record back, trying to move fast enough to keep up- Wayne knew a few chords but never could fully get it. The musician gene skipped him, but maybe it didn't skip Eddie. Wayne learned to embrace the never-ending record playbacks. A rare grin appeared on his face as he heard his nephew progress in the skill.

A few years down the line, Wayne would listen to Eddie's band play at the middle school talent show- He had never been prouder. He didn't know how to show it then but now- he wished he would've ran around and danced like that little cheerleader Eddie had a thing for. He noticed Eddie get all red in the face talking to her after the show while she was running all over the place talking about how it was so cool he played the guitar like that. The guitar that Wayne got him for his 12th birthday. The one that he saved the whole town with, according to one of Eddie's few friends. The town that didn't sow a single seed of gratitude for their unsung hero, instead of gratitude they flocked fields with hatred and disdain. Wayne wonders if that guitar was the beginning of the end or maybe it was the record- maybe he should've showed Eddie that wacky Bee's Gee's album instead. Maybe- His nephew would be sitting next to him. Maybe he'd be going on and on about that damn Mrs. O'Donnell and how he was finally gonna graduate. Wayne was going to take him to a Metallica concert in Fort Wayne to celebrate, even though Heavy Metal wasn't his scene. He'd put up with it for one night for Eddie. He had already made arrangements for time-off, because he knew Eddie was going to finally get that damn diploma.

Wayne always thought metal was a bunch of racket, He was more into the likes of Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, and on occasion The Beatles; i.e. the softer stuff. He remembered always telling Eddie to turn that shit down and he would hear the conundrum as Eddie crashed into the record player to get it from max volume to almost nothing before Wayne could even finish his sentence. He was such a good kid. Trying to fill the shoes of Eddie’s father became especially tough when Eddie went through his teens. Not that Eddie was angry like most teens, he just became harder to read, and there was an obvious distance between them that wasn’t there before. When he was younger, it was easy. That boy was an open book. He'd come through the front door and when Wayne was home- he’d tell Wayne everything about his day from what he learned about in English to what he had for lunch. Eddie’s Dad nor Wayne were much talkers so he always wondered what made the kid run his mouth so much. He was far from the quiet bug-eyed kid Wayne met down at the police station.

Over the years, Eddie stopped busting through the door and then he stopped smiling as often. As if very time he left, bits and pieces of his enthusiasm were walking out with him. And some days, Wayne could’ve swore he saw tears in his eyes. Wayne knew Eddie put up with shit at school- they'd make fun of his clothes or the way he talked. They’d call him the freak because he had gotten into some game with dragons “DD” or something like that. He didn’t press on Eddie to talk about it because he didn’t know how to handle it. Wayne tried teaching the kid to hit first and hit hard but it didn’t work, at least he thought, until he got a phone call from the school, luckily he was home to get the call. Eddie came back home with black and blue splotches swallowing him up that day as well as 3 week’s worth of suspension. That was the point where Eddie’s grades started dropping and his room started reeking of weed and cigarettes. Maybe the guitar and the thrashing metal were inevitable, but Wayne knows if he would’ve intervened then- he would enjoy the silence that surrounded him now. He sure as shit wouldn’t be scrambling through all this junk to flip the damn cassette to side b in the radio that sat on the clutter infested counter.

Wayne hated cassettes, the sound could never compare to vinyl. But as soon as Eddie started making his own money, he owned more cassettes than Wayne could count. Every week he would go around the neighbors asking if they needed lawn work done and at the end of the month they’d go to the record store like usual- the guy behind the counter greeted them with a bright smile and warmth. He knew Eddie by name at that point and always saved a stack of what he might like behind the counter. Wayne would flip through the vinyls, carefully peering at anything new that would catch his eye, but usually it wasn’t much. On the way home they bicker about which was better but he knew Eddie didn’t care. Kid just loved the music. Of course when Eddie got his license and Wayne’s work schedule got chaotic-,the visits to the record store trickled down to only once a year, on Wayne’s birthday. The only thing he ever wanted when Eddie came through flamboyantly with some wacky plan for a surprise party. He shoo’d it away at first thought. Even though they didn’t spend as much time as they used to sometimes they would still listen together. They may have not been on the same wavelength in the last few years- but they were listening together in their own respective ways.

When Wayne went back to that same record store, the clerk who was once so warm- now moved with a lingering aggression that Wayne wasn’t used to. The scent of rotting cardboard and that sweet wood smell threw Wayne into fond memories with his nephew and brother, both of them gone in different ways now. His own brother wouldn’t show his face at Eddie’s memorial- son of a bitch was convinced Eddie was guilty- spewing some bullshit about the Munson family curse or whatever he was strung out about. Wayne thought he would be the only one there- but Eddie had a lot more friends than he let on. They all said such sweet sentiments about who he was- as they too were grasping for another second with him, Wayne wished he would’ve pried Eddie a bit more- because there was so much he didn’t know.

One kid spoke up how Eddie bent over backwards to make sure they were ready for their first game of that “DD'' he played so fervently. Eddie apparently looked out for them better than anyone in that school. He had been the leader of the game- the dragon?- or maybe it was the dungeon master and he was pretty good at it- a little girl interjected with her story of how he welcomed her to the game. She looked like she still played with baby dolls so he wondered what she was doing playing a game like that. But when the clerk asked if he needed help it brought him back to reality. He explained how Eddie would come in there all the time- the man's face crumpled as he went under the counter to grab a single cassette- the title read Somewhere in Time by Iron Maiden- The name and look of the small box sounded about right. The man went to talk about how Eddie waited day and night for the band’s next album, that he would've loved it. Wayne a small promise to buy all the newer albums that Eddie would've loved but would never get the chance to listen to.

Truth be told, he couldn't deal with the silence now that Eddie was gone. He was so accustomed to the thrashing, there’s a void clumping chest without it. He flips the cassette into the radio, turning it all the way up. The lyrics “Caught Somewhere in Time” bleared out of the speaker and kept repeating. Wayne hoped Eddie was caught somewhere in time. That maybe Eddie was with him somewhere merged into a couch, staring blankly at the ceiling, just listening like they used to, together.