chapter 3 - hungry howie's big date
2.6K words
warnings - mmm? daddy issues, i think that's it
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It’s during third-period chemistry with his favorite lab partner, Chrissy Cunningham, that Eddie is interrupted from work he was actually looking forward to. By Michael Wheeler of all people.
“Journalism Pass!” Mike holds up the back of his sister’s badge to Mrs. Clink and she bats her hand dismissively.
Chrissy tightens the scratched plastic goggles around her head while Eddie leans his hip against their work table, arms crossed and foot tapping impatiently, “Yes, Wheeler?”
“There’s a showing of Rocky Horror that I wanna take Jane to this weekend.”
Eddie snorts, peeking over his shoulder at Chrissy, pressing the palm of her hand into her glossed lips to keep back her giggles, “That’s an R-rated movie, wonderboy.”
“Yeah,” Mike rolls his eyes, “and I still can’t date my girlfriend unless you’re dating her sister. So we both have good points.”
Brows shooting to her hairline, Chrissy “woah”s at the little guy’s audacity.
Eddie gestures flippantly to the lanky mess in front of him, “Right? Worse than Henderson, I tell you.”
She wide-eyed nods in agreement.
Returning to his cash cow, Eddie tilts his head - eyes narrowed, “So what? You wanna double-date at Rocky Horror?”
“No, obviously not,” looking through his peripherals, Mike notices Mrs. Clink staring at them a little too hard and turns so his and Eddie’s backs are facing the woman, “I just need you two to be out on a date so I can take out Jane. I also need you to get us into the movie and then leave. Or sit in a different row.”
So demanding, so unfavorable.
Eddie sticks out a hand, palm up, “Fifty. Now.”
Through a positively murderous stare, Mike asks, “What makes you think I have fifty bucks on me right now?”
A long huff passes through Eddie’s nose, “You’re a spoiled, conniving, upper-class nerd and you’re one of my best friends,” he curls his fingers into a fist twice before shoving his flat palm closer to Mike, “Now cough it.”
Similarly sighing, Mike bends down at the knee and yanks out a folded stack of crinkly ten-dollar bills from his sock.
Snatching up the money, Eddie pats Mike’s head as one would a dog, “Now if you wanna complete your Munson-ification process, stop carrying fat wads on your person,” he slaps the pad of tens against the bridge of Mike’s nose, “Everyone knows you’re rich, Wheeler - don’t flaunt it.”
Before Mike gets the chance to properly defend himself, Eddie tucks the money into the snug waistband of his boxers and shoos him away.
“I’ll figure out something for my beloved shrew, but right now Cunningham and I need to light scraps of metal on fire for an hour,” Eddie nudges Mike back by the shoulder and returns to the girl’s side.
She’s tugging on her rubber gloves while Eddie puts on his own pair of safety goggles.
“You know anything interesting going on this weekend?”
Blinking, Chrissy hums before the blankness brightens, “I think there’s an H&M sale in Indianapolis featuring some Laura Ashley stuff. She might like that.”
“Something easier on my fifty-buck budget, please?” he watches her light the Bunsen burner.
Shaking her head, Chrissy pouts, “Sorry, Eddie.”
“No worries,” he stares up at the water-stained ceiling, “I’ll just have to get my own idea.”
And getting Eddie to have his own idea is like asking a teen movie to not rip off the movies before it.
Eddie’s van sputters up to the Hopper cabin precisely two minutes after he said it would. Black backdrop and twinkling stars watch you shoo Eleven off and they awkwardly pull their collars and glance away when your father sternly calls your name before you can follow.
“You’ve had a bad attitude lately,” his hands are on his hips and he’s barely gotten out of his uniform, “I know you’re growing up and need your space, but if you’re gonna go out with this guy then I need to know who the man is.”
And flashing, headache-inducing red lights blare in the back of your mind at the idea of him meeting Eddie. So you resort to manipulation, “He’s a friend of Mike’s - isn’t that enough?”
“No,” he removes the Sheriff’s hat he’s always claimed squeezes too tight and runs a hand through his hair, “I barely like Mike. You expect me to like a senior he’s friends with that I’ve never even met?”
Glancing back, you can barely make out the pinched brows and overly invested lean of Eddie Munson’s concern through his tinted windows.
“Eddie Munson,” you’re too tired to fight and your eldest daughter intuition tells you Jim’s pager is about to go off soon anyways, “that’s the friend.”
“No!” he puts both hands up, evidently distressed, and you find joy in the way his gray hairs must be growing in, “No way.”
“Yes way,” you shrug and waltz towards the van, waving off your father, “I like him so play nice!” and you aren’t totally sure if you’re really saying that to piss him off or if it’s true. Jim opens his mouth to retort, so you lug the passenger side door open and shout before he can, “Can’t hear you over the pager that’s about to go off in two seconds!”
And before you’ve even got the van door closed, his pager does - in fact - go off.
Eddie wants to ask, and you see that, so you just nudge him with your elbow and he pulls out of the dirt driveway quickly.
“Intense fight there,” Eddie hisses through his teeth, “Honestly, I was about to put earmuffs on the kids - it was scary.”
It’s his way of prodding. Avoiding rejection by pretending it could be a joke and then still getting hurt if you turn him down.
“He’s just been up my ass ‘cuz I’m not going to college.”
Eleven comes forward, face puffing up between yours and Eddie’s seats, “You’re not going to college?!”
You shove her back by the shoulder, sick to the stomach at the idea of explaining your life plan (or lack thereof) to your little sister, “What’s the plan for tonight, Munster?”
“For them,” he braces, arms stiff and eyes nervously flickering between you and the rearview mirror, “an R-rated movie. For us? Leaving before the movie to go somewhere totally romantic.”
Avoiding rejection by pretending it could be a joke - his true specialty.
“Sounds spectacular,” you muse, and his arms loosen from their ramrod-straight position.
Totally romantic ends up being at Lover’s Lake next to his van. A threadbare, plaid blanket with a mysterious black stain in the upper right corner is laid over surrounding grass and rocks with a Hungry Howie’s Taxi yellow pizza box in the middle. You suspect the pizza is room temperature by now, but Eddie is nervously picking at his shoelace as he waits for you to sit down, so you choose to not say anything.
As soon as you sit beside him, Eddie shoots up onto his feet, hands bracing you for patience, “I almost forgot!”
Eddie slams open the back doors and disappears inside, you hear a clunk and curse before he tramples back out, uneven-footed and stumbling. A boombox in both hands, he sets it down and presses play.
The borderline waxing poetic opening guitar to Cinderella’s ‘Nobody’s Fool’ crackles over the speakers and Eddie hurriedly turns it down to a gentler hum.
“As long as you don’t listen to the lyrics, it’s kind of romantic,” Eddie pops open the Hungry Howie’s box and grease stains dot the top, “You probably don’t know, but most metal ballads- “ he gestures to the boombox leaking out Tom Keifer with raised brows, “even hair metal ballads - are not super romantic.”
“I can pretend,” you lean over his outstretched leg and brush against his leather-clad side to grab one of Howie’s infamously thick slices, “This is already the most well-thought-out date I’ve been on.”
And you haven’t been on many dates. Eddie knows that, too, but he decides to keep his big trap shut.
The pizza is room temperature by now, but Eddie so nervously tucks an arm into the swirling pit of his stomach and you decide to keep your own trap shut. Eddie can’t say why he’s so nervous - it shouldn’t matter whether or not you actually like him. It really, really shouldn’t, but he can’t help but hope you do.
“Uhm, so,” his eyes look nice under the shiny little pinprick stars, and you chastise yourself for focusing on that when he’s trying to talk to you, “I’m more than happy to listen if you wanna bitch about your problems with the old man. Not that you would be, you know, bitching bitching, just complaining. Yeah, complain. ‘Cuz you’re not a bitch, you know that- “
“Thanks, Eddie,” you cut him off, a hand on his shoulder. You finish off the slice of pizza in your other hand and shrug, “I mean, bitching doesn’t sound too bad if you actually mean it.”
“‘Course I do,” he turns to face you completely, the gentle swoosh of the lake water under moonlight easily forgotten in favor of you, “Trust me, sweetheart, if anyone gets parental problems, it’s me.”
“Well,” you normally have trouble talking about things like this, but something about Eddie makes you feel open. Like a social worker’s dream, he is the softest couch and sweetest candy bowl, “He’s always busy with work - way too busy for me and Jane. And when he is home, it’s about me not going to college and Jane’s stupid high school romance and my attitude as if he’s not the dickhead that causes it all in the first place…” you sigh, a physical weight off your chest, “Only good thing to come of his bullshit lately is that I get to paint in my ex-mom’s storage unit downtown.”
“Ex-mom is an interesting term.”
“Diane wanted to adopt me as a last-ditch attempt to save the family after their birth daughter died,” the years of this exact thought process echoing around your head prevent you from shutting up, “And then she decided she wanted nothing to do with either of us and just,” you make a ‘scatter-off’ motion with your hands, “Left behind divorce papers and then Jim was a wild alcoholic and wilder smoker until Jane came along and then… suddenly he wants to be better.”
The clarity hits you like a stack of bricks, that you spilled your guts embarrassingly fast and that mortification makes you look over to Eddie, who stares back with wide eyes.
“Anyways…”
“No, just- “ he grins and you can’t help but grin back, “I’ve never had someone actually trust me to just let go like that,”
“I’m glad to be the first.”
If Eddie truly had no inhibitions, he would’ve said he wants you to be his last.
And he doesn’t know where that comes from.
“What do you paint about?” so he leans back on his elbow and breaks the thick air. Shatters it completely like it was nothing to begin with.
You cringe preemptively, “My feelings.”
“Oh, a poetic type,” he punches your shoulder softly, “It’s cool, I write songs about that. All the mucky shit.”
You turn onto your stomach, propping your head up on your elbows and ignoring the soft ache it initially stirs in your chest, “Will you ever show me one of your songs?”
“Only if you show me your art.”
“You’re moving a bit fast.”
“Nah, that’s only - like - first base.”
You two linger there. Soft eyes and pouty lips and pizza cooling under the night sky. He hums, entirely to himself, and you lean forward to nudge his arm.
“What’s going on in your pretty head, Munster?”
“Honestly,” he’s quiet. So much quieter than he normally is, and that’s as scary as realizing his rejection hurt your feelings, “I’m just thinking about how you’re not nearly as mean as everyone says.”
“Yeah,” you turn onto your back, eyes up at the stars instead of Eddie’s kind face, “people usually assume you’re a bitch when you’re not smiling at them 24/7.”
He doesn’t respond, and that would be terrifying if he wasn’t motioning for you to continue.
“I mean, I’m not surprised,” so continue, you do, “People usually just expect women to smile and nod to whatever they say as if there’s no thoughts or feelings to each person,” at his persistent silence, you inhale sharply, “First base was actually my feminist rant all along.”
You look back over to Eddie and he’s smiling so big and wide, all for you - at the fear of misspeaking, he intentionally makes himself BooBoo the Fool, “I love Debbie Harry.”
“Oh my God!” you swat his shoulder and he falls onto his own back.
“I’m kidding,” his head swivels to lock eyes with you, sweet bambi eyes nothing except sincere, “but feminism is metal. Equality for all, I fuck with that.”
“I’m glad,” a sudden memory makes you giggle, and at Eddie’s curious stare you expand, “I actually dumped Jason Carver in freshman year because he said women should obey their husbands.”
He gags histrionically, “I’d never say that.”
“I figure.”
You’ve heard from older women the dangers of getting wine drunk with no men to kiss - being that sauced with that intense a romantic urge could kill someone, you’ve heard. And it’s strange - how just being around Eddie can drive you as mad as the stories you’ve heard.
You turn again, onto your side now, “Are you drunk?”
He looks at you like you’re nuts and you’re almost embarrassed at the fact that Eddie can actually drive you so crazy, “No.”
“I’m not drunk either.”
It takes him a painfully visible minute until finally, the lightbulb above his wild hair dings alight and Eddie excitedly matches your position. He tenderly puts a hand on your cheek, calluses purely lovely on your skin as he asks, “Can I kiss you?”
The ache in your chest that you imagine is what the prolonged poison of having no man to kiss when wine drunk hits, you nod, bizarrely giggly, “It’d feel like a personal attack if you didn’t.”
Maybe you were scared for nothing. Eddie seems like a sweet guy with sweet intentions and sweet words. His kiss is sweet, too. It tastes like the tomato sauce of Hungry Howie’s pizza and the weed he smokes and no sinister third thing lingers.
Eddie, however, feels sick. He needs to talk to Mike and he knows Wayne would punch any other guy straight in the head for doing what he’s done to you. He likes you. He likes your bitterness and your anger and the way you roll your eyes at his antics and he wants to soften your edges and he wants to be your one moment of sunshine. He can’t do that if he’s taking money to date you, so he needs to talk to Mike.
But for now, he likes kissing you on his old blanket with the coffee stain he can never get out and cold Hungry Howie’s pizza an arm’s length away.
“I can’t keep doing this,” Eddie has never doubted himself to the point of getting a hideous stomach ache, not even when he had to perform with Corroded Coffin in middle school, “I think I’m falling in love with her, Wheeler.”
“That’s perfect!” Mike, on the other hand, is purely ecstatic, teeth on display as he smiles, “Just keep taking her out, but without me paying you - Jane and I can keep seeing each other and you two are happy. Done deal, Munson,” and this excitement gives him the courage to smack Eddie on the arm, “Just be cool about it.”
“So just don’t tell her?”
“Exactly.”
His stomach twists tighter at that idea, but he swallows it down and pretends to be a little bigger than he is.
“Fine,” finally, he sighs it out, “We don’t talk about it.”
“We don’t talk about it.”
~~
how we rockin? good? good?
going outta state for like 3 days and remembered i should probably update this while i have it
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