Chapter Text
The morning began with an alarm. It was followed by the harmony of I Think We’re Alone Now. He stared at the ceiling for a few minutes. Long enough for the song to end, as he got up from bed. He pressed the radio off, reset his clock, and padded his way to the bathroom.
In the mirror he finds his hallowed, sunken eyes have yet to return to their healthy vigor.
You’d have to eat and leave the house for that, dingus.
He can almost perfectly conjure up Robin mocking him from the doorway as he examines his reflection closer. She’d stand there with arms folded, a smug look on her face as she watched him.
She is at home currently, getting ready or eating breakfast. Soon she’ll be waiting for him to pick her up since it’s his turn. Some days leaving the house to play chauffeur turned babysitter is the only time he leaves. He goes through the motions of his morning. He has started to take his coffee black, his toast unbuttered. He got three bites in before the rasping slide of dried bread down his esophagus felt like an adventurer clawing their way through a tomb, fingernails scraping the dirt, struggling through crevices undiscovered.
No toast then.
Every day he discovered new things he didn’t like, new things that reminded him of growing up too fast. Toast reminds him of the ash he swallowed when he went through a portal that never opened again.
He spits it out, dumps the barely touched coffee into the sink, before he’s pulling on scuffed white reeboks, grabbing keys, and making his way out to the van.
The damage every morning is assessed, then promptly disregarded.
Wayne Munson could move his boy into a nicer neighborhood, lined with perfectly manicured lawns, freshly painted windowpanes, and nuclear family homes where every single person’s greatest goal is to have the exact same life as those before them. He could take Eddie Munson out of the trailer park but it’s hard to take the trailer park out of the boy, especially when graffiti covers their single car garage door every morning. It serves as a grim reminder that money can buy a lot of things but it can’t buy kindness.
No matter how many times Wayne attempted to cover it, to hide it from him, he saw it. He always saw it. He saw it behind his eyelids in the form of a mangled body hanging from the ceiling during the worst week of his life.
He walks right past it, giving himself the grace of a small chuckle.
Eddie Munson is a murderer! It reads in blood red writing.
He only wished they were more original, more creative. Satan Worshiping, sacrifice, cults, it got stale after the hundredth person accosted him in public. The red cuts a striking shape against the white backdrop of the garage. He knows when he gets home today, Wayne will have washed away any signs of the displays of vitriol this town loves to gift Eddie.
“Sisyphus, meet boulder.” He mutters as he turns over the engine.
He’s waiting for Robin inside the car, they’ve mutually agreed it’s a far safer idea. Her parents haven’t quite shaken the fear that came with the earthquakes. Hundreds of miles of fire and brimstone seem to have validated their worries.
“It’s not you, ya know?” She’d said the first time as they sat in the van, Van Halen wailing away at a volume not previously considered in his most sacred chariot. It’s played low. Like background music. The absolute gall.
“It’s just, like, they’re my parents. And they care about me! But they also care about who I’m with. I told them that I was with Steve when the earthquakes hit and he’s just so himself, right? So they don’t mind it and-”
He interrupted her before she really got going. “Robin.”
She stuttered to a halt.
He put a comforting hand over hers. “I get it. No explanation needed.”
She didn’t seem convinced. “Say the word and you and I will go right in there and declare our friendship for my parents to have a total crap attack over.”
He laughed, imagined Mr. and Mrs. Buckley, straight laced accountant, doting wife and mother, what they might have to say about Edward Munson, of all people, suddenly becoming friends with Robin. He liked to think it would be more forgiving than what he hears these days.
She disregarded the threat of her parents, their judgement or punishments for her choosing to associate with the wrong people. She was weird like that, latched onto Eddie after shit hit the fan, and hadn’t let go. She was a goddamn lemming. Most days he was grateful just to have a reason to wake up. Even if the reason made him wake up at the ass crack of dawn just to get pancakes from that diner she loved. They were birds of a feather, in more ways than one.
He shook his head that day, imagining that there were worse monsters than parents who didn’t like him. There was Jason Carver.
“Nah, no big deal. I’m not exactly the bring home to mom material. Trust me, Buckley, it’s better to steer clear.”
She laughed that day, the first one after it all. He remembers it distinctly felt like clouds parting after a storm. “Maybe you can be the one who finally gets them off my back. They’d rather I not date at all than date a rebel.”
“So you think I’m rebellious?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Is water wet?” She quipped back, smile still stuck in place.
He pulled away from the curb, shaking his head. It was a good day. He didn’t get too many of those.
Now, in the present, she was bounding across the lawn, duffel bag in hand, and a sun hat flopping in her eyes.
Her parents watched skeptically from the window. He waved at them, smiling wide and harmless. He knew the effect it had on people, made them back away, narrow their eyes.
Robin sighed as she launched herself into the passenger seat. “Don’t antagonize them. They think you’re trying to convince me to join a cult.”
“Oh, fair lady Robin, if I was going to do that I would have succeeded.”
Robin laughed. “I’m not that gullible.”
“I’d seduce you with my manly charms and charisma.”
This shocked another laugh out of her, made him give himself a self satisfied smile. He loved to make her laugh, was at his best when he was.
“Right.”
He gave her a look of feigned hurt. Hand over his chest, leaning over the steering wheel, making a noise of agony.
“Your lack of faith is astonishing. And here I was, about to make you my right hand.”
She shoved him playfully. “What’s in it for me?”
Eddie sat up immediately, gave her his most mockingly wolfish smile. “Maidens, dear Robin. A harem of maidens.”
She laughed, smacking his arm. “Ew! Just drive, dingus. Before I tell Nancy about this.”
A truly horrifying thought. To be at the end of Nancy Wheeler’s wrath is not a place Eddie has any intention of being any time soon.