Chapter Text
March 21, 1986
“Oh, it’s the championship game?” Sarcasm drips from every syllable as Eddie stares down the three freshmen standing before him. Dustin, Lucas, and Mike are arranged in an awkward formation, a pleading look in Lucas’ eyes that Eddie isn’t quite sure measures up to the size of the favor his latest little sheep are asking. He scoffs under his breath. The balls on this kid.
Eddie rolls his eyes and glances around the table, gauging the reactions of the older members of Hellfire. Jeff has his eyebrows raised and is pointedly avoiding eye contact with the entire table, not wanting to get involved one way or another. Walter looks visibly outraged and a little confused, like he can’t begin to understand why this conversation is happening in the first place. And Gareth, per usual, looks ready to echo whatever point Eddie makes with a just a bit more attitude.
“Yes!” Lucas answers as if it was a genuine question and draws Eddie’s eyes back to him. He stands confidently in front of him, flanked on either shoulder by his friends. Mike scratches awkwardly at his ear and Dustin scuffs his shoe on the floor with a mildly hysterical look on his face – they both seem to be more aware of how badly this is going for them than Lucas is. Smart kids.
Lucas presses on anyway. “It’s the most important game of the season, and I want my friends to actually come to a game.” Mike and Dustin wince somehow find a way to avoid everybody’s eye contact even more at the obvious dig.
Honestly, they kinda deserve that one. They might not give a shit about basketball, same as Eddie, but as tight as those three are it’s sort of unbelievable that they haven’t watched the team even once. “Plus, there’s already been, like, three other times Hellfire and basketball overlapped and I haven’t asked you for this once!”
Eddie raises an eyebrow, unsure whether to be annoyed or impressed with the kid’s persistence here. Sure, he likes Sinclair well enough – he’s a good kid, and as much as Eddie might pretend otherwise, he doesn’t actually hold it against him all that much for throwing some balls in laundry baskets if he genuinely loves the game.
But, Eddie suspects that proximity to popularity was a big part of the freshman’s decision to branch out, and that rubs him the wrong way. Making yourself more palatable to the masses just because it’s easier? He knows he’s taught them better than that. And moving the final session of their spring campaign, maybe Eddie’s final high school session ever, in favor of the jock squad? That was asking too much and Lucas should know that.
Come to think of it, for better or worse, Lucas was usually a bit more self-conscious than this about having one foot in nerd world and the other in the ball pit. Eddie would have put money on Sinclair sending Dustin and Mike over to plead his case for him rather than doing it himself.
And yet, here he is, not shrinking back under the intense gaze Eddie has perfected over the years. Sinclair seems pretty certain he has a nonzero chance of winning Eddie over – where the hell is he getting that impression?
“You couldn’t have figured this out any earlier?” Gareth asks through a full mouth of food. “Hellfire always meets on Fridays, basketball’s scheduled in advance…you’ve got to wait until, like, six hours before we play to pull this?”
An excellent point. Eddie tips a fry in Gareth’s direction as he continues eating his lunch and turns his increasingly smug gaze back on Lucas. He’s already decided this isn’t happening, everybody else at the table seemed to know it isn’t happening – they just have to wait for Sinclair to catch up.
“It’s not like I knew we’d make it all the way to the end. That’s kinda how tournaments work.” Lucas narrows his eyes, pulling a snort from Jeff. Eddie shoots a stern look Jeff’s way – he really isn’t helping here. “And I didn’t think I’d have to ask! I figured Eddie would have already postponed it to go to the game.”
He’s thrown for a loop with that one. Surely Sinclair knows him better than that by now. “And why the hell would you think that?”
“Cause it’s your girlfriend’s last game too? I mean, I know nothing could make you actually give a shit about basketball, but the cheer squad’s done for the year after tonight and I just assumed Chrissy would want you there.”
Shit. Eddie visibly winces, suddenly crystal clear on Sinclair’s thought process here. Lucas says all this as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and in retrospect it kind of is. He knows how badly Lucas wants Mayfield from next door to come watch him play – in his mind Eddie and Chrissy must be the same way.
Maybe if they were actually dating it would have occurred to him on his own, or maybe the pair’s six years of friendship should have given him the same idea. Instead, it’s starting to seem like this evening will be going on the small list of times his ‘relationship’ with Chrissy Cunningham has come back to bite him.
March 21, 1980
Eddie packs up his guitar in a huff, alone backstage at the talent show and the other members of Corroded Coffin already long gone. Not that he’s surprised – the other boys’ parents have really tightened the leash in the month or so since ‘the incident.’
Well, that’s what Eddie’s calling it, anyways. Rolls off the tongue better than ‘that time I channeled my shitty father and hotwired another car in the trailer park to take my three friends on a joyride in a fit of bad judgement.’
Wayne had been pretty forgiving about the whole thing. Nobody got hurt and the car was returned to its rightful owners with nothing more than a dent and some scratched paint they were willing to take cash for. Honestly, it was hardly the worst thing Eddie’s done since his uncle brought him to the trailer a couple years ago.
His friends’ parents don’t share Wayne’s perspective. For Jeff and Walter, he supposes it makes sense. They’re only sixth graders, barely allowed to play in Corroded Coffin already, and overprotective parents come with the territory. Lenny, though – that one’s a bummer.
He’s in eighth grade along with Eddie, and the two have been close since the week Eddie arrived at Forest Hills. Lenny took one look at him, sitting on the porch and angrily strumming at an old guitar, and practically drug him across the park to show off the secondhand drum kit his parents bought him. It was sitting a little lopsided on a few pieces of plywood with a cheap camping tent over the top of it so he could ‘be angry outside the damn house for once, Lenny, you’re killing us here.’ Corroded Coffin was born, and they added Jeff and Walter a couple years later when they started middle school.
After the incident, though, Lenny’s dad decided he was out of chances and now their family is preparing to move to Ohio for a fresh start near his grandparents. Lenny’s more than a little pissed at Eddie about it – Eddie’s more than a little pissed at Eddie too. One little spark of jealousy over the new instrument Jeff’s dad bought for him and he had been all too quick to whip out the one party trick his own father gifted him. It looked like it was gonna cost him a good friend, and he didn’t exactly have many to spare.
Leave it to his old man to find a way to screw things up for him when he isn’t even in the same town.
Left to his sulking, Eddie slams his guitar case harder than he means to and winces, head turning on a swivel to make sure nobody heard it. People in Hawkins don’t take kindly to Eddie existing loudly.
To his surprise, he isn’t the only one sitting back here. Pretty much every other participant in the talent show cleared out with their parents, leaving the building empty except for him and Chrissy Cunningham, of all people. She sits on a little patch of floor by the folds of the stage curtain, making herself as small as possible and looking awfully sad for a girl who had been the epitome of cheer on the stage not half an hour ago.
Eddie raises his eyes to the ceiling and curses internally. Despite the opinions of the Hawkins moral majority, he likes to think the Munsons are pretty good people. Well, he and his uncle are, at least. Even if this is one of the most popular kids at school, he can’t just leave her in an empty building looking like she’s about to cry with no sign that anybody is there to take her home. Bracing himself to be glared at or spit on or something, Eddie walks over.
“You okay?” Chrissy must not have heard him walk over, and jumps nearly out of her skin at the sound of his voice before immediately going back to nervously chewing her nails. Not the best start. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. Just…do you, like, have a ride or anything?”
“Oh…yeah, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it,” Chrissy’s voice definitely does not sound okay and definitely makes him think he should be worried about it. She hasn’t even really looked at him yet. “My mom should be here to pick me up soon.”
Eddie’s brow furrows. “She wasn’t here to watch?”
“No, she thought I…” Chrissy trails off for a second, shaking her head before continuing. “She just couldn’t make it.”
Her voice grows impossibly sadder at that, and that simply won’t stand. Eddie has nowhere else to be this afternoon with his friends all grounded, so it looks like trying to cheer up a cheerleader is getting added to his schedule. Nothing better to do, and she looks like she needs it.
“Well, her loss then.” He tries to keep his voice as casual as possible. No need to spook the poor girl any further. Chrissy looks up, making eye contact for the first time since he walked over. She clearly hadn’t expected the weird kid in the metal band to actually be nice to her. Eddie loves subverting people’s expectations like that – he smiles to himself for a moment and keeps up his efforts.
“I mean, I don’t know much about the whole cheer thing, clearly,” he continues, shaking a little imaginary pompom and gesturing at the outfit he’d worn to play in. Chrissy almost smiles at that one, a little twitch at the corner of her mouth. Damn, he’s crushing this.
“But even I can tell that you totally rocked it. That was really impressive.”
“You think so?” There’s a little bit of hope in Chrissy’s voice and a little bit of life in her eyes that wasn’t there before.
“Oh, hell yeah. I know they didn’t do, like, prizes or anything for this but you definitely would have won.”
Chrissy gives him the first genuine smile of the afternoon. “Thanks! That’s really nice of you to say.” She thinks about her next words for a moment. “You guys were really good, too. My mom doesn’t let me listen to music like that, but I liked it.”
“CHRISTINE!” A sharp voice rings out from across the room by the doors before Eddie has a chance to reply.
Eddie and the people he’s surrounded himself have always tended to pick up strays. Wayne did it when he walked into the state social worker’s office to whisk Eddie back to Hawkins, Lenny did it when he offered Eddie a musical outlet that kept him from spinning off the rails.
He takes one look at the chewed down nailbeds on Chrissy’s hands and the way she violently flinches away from what he assumes is her mother’s voice, and decides he might as well try and do the same.
“Well, I better go make sure my uncle doesn’t send out a search party.” Another small twitch of her lips. “Hey, if you really liked it then just find me and the guys at school or something. We can show you even more music your mom would blow a fuse about you listening to.”
“Yeah, maybe. Thanks for checking on me, Eddie.”
Chrissy picks up her bag and walks dejectedly over to her mom. Eddie doesn’t realize until he’s halfway across the parking lot that one of the most popular girls in school had already known his name. Huh. Wonders never cease.
June 14, 1980
Even at the young age of 14, Eddie has seen enough of the world and the shitty people in it to start developing his very own Munson doctrine. Rich pretty people have it made and never had to develop a good personality, parents aren’t really good for anything but screwing up your life, and those on the top of the social hierarchy don’t spare any time for the trailer trash at the bottom. Common sense shit like that.
He was glad he tried to cheer Chrissy up at that talent show, would have felt a little gross about himself if he just left her there to cry, but he was also being a realist about the whole thing. At the time, he knew that he would probably leave the talent show with her polite non-answer and never really speak to her again. Instead, for the rest of the school year, any time Eddie expected Chrissy to zig, she would zag.
He expected her to ignore him like all the other popular kids did when they weren’t picking on him, and instead she waved to him the very first time they passed in the halls on Monday. He expected her to keep a distance like all her friends, and instead she spent a couple lunches a week at the band’s lunch table asking genuine questions about their music. He expected her to walk out of the school building and forget about him until the next day, and instead she followed him out into the parking lot, chatting good-naturedly for the entire walk to his uncle’s truck before asking if she could come along to one of their practices some time.
It defied all logic, it truly did. The Munson doctrine had held true for most of his life, but even Eddie was grudgingly being forced to admit that Chrissy Cunningham was turning out to be a big old exception to all his rules. She might have been pretty, popular, and from a fairly wealthy family that should have looked at a Forest Hills resident like shit on the bottom of their shoe, but instead she was just about the nicest damn person Eddie had ever met.
As Lenny withdrew further and further from Eddie before his family’s move, Eddie found himself gravitating closer and closer to Chrissy and waiting for the day that trying to be friends with someone from the upper crust inevitably blew up in his face. Despite how sweet Chrissy’s been to him since that first conversation back in March, Eddie can’t quite shake the idea that he just isn’t allowed to be friends with someone like her. It simply didn’t happen. Sure, he was the one who offered an olive branch of friendship when it seemed like she wasn’t doing too great, but he never for a second thought she would actually take it. Even now, a couple months later, he can’t quite believe it.
So one more time, Eddie unfairly expects that things will return to their natural order and she’ll forget about him now that school has let out for the summer. And once again, the actual angel that is Chrissy Cunningham shatters those expectations with a phone call to the Munson trailer on a hot afternoon a week or two into summer vacation.
“Eddie! Phone’s for ya!” Wayne shouts loud enough to wake Eddie from a nice summer nap. Heaving out an overdramatic sigh, Eddie crawls out of the sunbeam on his bedroom floor and trips over a pair of shoes on the way to the kitchen to snatch the phone.
“What?” He doesn’t bother being polite, expecting Jeff or Walter to be on the line. Wayne tsks at him disapprovingly and swats lightly at the back of his head as he walks back out to the living room with a cold soda.
“Hi, Eddie? I had to just look up your number in the phone book…I wasn’t sure I got it right.” It’s a girl’s voice on the line. Not his bandmates then.
“Sorry, who is this?” Eddie isn’t even sure he’s getting whole words out, standing and rubbing the last bits of sleep out of his eyes.
“Oh.” The voice falters for just a second. “It’s….it’s Chrissy. Sorry, is it okay that I called? I just…it’s stupid, but some of the other girls from school are at Melanie’s birthday party today and my mom said I couldn’t go and I just…didn’t want to have to be by myself all day. Sorry.”
Eddie’s barely conscious brain reels as he tries to keep up, but the correct response is obvious. If Chrissy doesn’t want to be alone, then he can make sure she isn’t. Easy peasy.
“Yeah, yeah, I got you.” He doesn’t want his earlier fumble to make the girl think he isn’t happy to hear from her, so he puts on his most excited voice and hopes it comes across as genuine rather than freshly awake. “You know what…Wayne was gonna drive me to the arcade to meet up with Jeff and Walter later – wanna come with?” He’s sure the other guys won’t mind a last-minute addition. They normally played as a group of four with Lenny anyway, but he watched their moving truck pull out of Forest Hills just a few days earlier.
Any idea that Chrissy wasn’t really his friend flies out the window as he writes down her address, hangs up the phone and yells to Wayne that they have an extra stop to make on the way to the arcade. When they get there, Chrissy runs out her front door in pretty pink shorts and a matching shirt and hops in the back of Wayne’s truck. The smile on her face seems way too big for just a trip to the arcade and Eddie’s left to wonder whether all that popularity is really all it’s cracked up to be.
August 7, 1980
After the disastrous joyriding incident of late February, Eddie had been dreading his first summer in Hawkins without Lenny, certain it would be unbearably lonely and hating himself a little for causing it. Instead, Eddie and Chrissy both felt a little less lonely together. With no school to dictate their time, the pair had been practically attached at the hip the whole summer. Sometimes Eddie and the guys did their own thing or Chrissy would have family obligations, but more days than not they could be found together. Jeff, Walter, and Wayne all came to understand that if you were looking for Eddie you just had to track down Chrissy, just like they used to be able to find him by listening for the sound of Lenny’s drums across the trailer park.
They grew close in the way only kids can, with no real responsibilities and an entire summer of freedom ahead of them to just exist, and talk, and share things they didn’t talk about with anyone else. He talked about his father, rotting in a state penitentiary somewhere, and his mother, who left them when he was young. How he used to be furious with her for it, but now understood firsthand just how much you could improve your life by getting Ronald Munson out of it. He played her the albums that made an angry little boy fall in love with music and showed her the horror movies her mother never let her watch.
In turn, Eddie started to see why his new best friend had seemed so sad that day he found her hiding backstage. She told him how she first started cheerleading because her mother insisted upon it but had come to love it on her own. How her mother had skipped the talent show because she was upset at Chrissy for gaining weight and looking ‘too fat’ in her costume, and how she had been banned from Melanie’s birthday party earlier that summer because the girls were going to the pool and her mother didn’t want her to embarrass herself in a swimsuit. How her mother seemed to expect very little from her and was somehow always disappointed anyway.
And though Eddie would deny it until he was blue in the face if anyone ever asked, a couple of Chrissy’s ABBA albums made it into the trailer’s regular rotation.
Eddie’s on his way home from band practice one evening, just a couple weeks before a new school year puts him in a separate building from his friends. He sits in the passenger seat of his uncle’s truck, rambling a mile a minute about how incredible Corroded Coffin had sounded that day even without a drummer – they haven’t found a good replacement for Lenny yet. Wayne usually can’t quite keep up with everything Eddie says when he gets going like this, but he’s listening intently with a smile on his face, until they get close to the trailer and he interrupts Eddie.
“Ed, you know what she’s doing here so late?”
Eddie snaps his jaw shut and spins away from his uncle to see what he’s talking about. Sure enough, Chrissy Cunningham is waiting on the couch outside their trailer’s front door. She’s dressed down for her in just a pair of blue jeans and an old sweater, and has her knees pulled up to her chest, curling into an even smaller ball than that day at the talent show. Eddie meets Wayne’s eyes for a moment and shakes his head with a shrug before they both get out of the truck.
Chrissy doesn’t acknowledge either of them as they walk towards the door and Wayne heads inside to give them a little privacy, clapping Eddie on the shoulder as he passes. “Don’t you two stay out here too long, now. Gonna rain in a bit.”
They’re alone then, and Eddie sits down next to her. Normally the two have no problems being in each other’s personal space, throwing their arms around each other’s shoulders and laughing together, but Chrissy flinches away from him as he moves a little closer and it gives him pause. So, something serious then. Eddie settles in for a possibly heavy conversation.
“You okay, Chris?” He speaks as gently as possible, doesn’t want his own nerves to make her feel worse. Her hands have a small tremble to them and her nails are doomed. Whatever happened, she’s clearly rattled and Eddie starts to feel a little in over his head. He gently prompts her again after a minute or two of silence. “Your mom do something again?”
Got it in one, if the little hitch in her breath and tightening of her curled posture is anything to go by.
“Knew it. What’d she do this time?” Eddie relaxes into the cushions and leans closer to her as this conversation starts to veer back into familiar territory. Chrissy still looks flighty, but he’s basically a pro at talking through shit with her mom at this point.
“She didn’t….I mean she didn’t say anything to me, really, I just overheard…” She trails off, staring into the distance before wiping her eyes and making to move off the couch. “Sorry, it’s nothing. I don’t know why I even came here so late. I’ll just…”
Eddie jumps to his feet too, trying to keep her from leaving without making her feel trapped. “Whoa, none of that. You can come here for anything, you know that. What’s going on?”
Her eyes are wet as she sits back down, still curling into herself and refusing to meet his gaze. “Not anymore.” At his blank face, she sighs. “If I tell you why I’m upset, you’ll hate me and you won’t want me back here anymore.”
Well. that was just about the dumbest thing Eddie had ever heard. “Chris, that’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
She starts a little, not expecting him to be so straight forward apparently, and looks up at him with the tiniest glimmer of hope in her eyes. “Unless you, like, killed somebody or something there’s nothing that could make me hate you. Even then I might not give a shit.”
Chrissy lets out a weak chuckle, and Eddie beams at her. He might not have a crush on Chrissy the way his uncle seems to think he does based on the sly looks and raised eyebrows he’s been throwing Eddie’s way every time she’s in the room, but being able to put a smile on her face when she’s feeling down has quickly become one of his favorite things. He waits patiently for her, trying to tone down his natural anxious fidgeting and put her at ease.
“My aunt,” she starts, and Eddie gives her his full attention. She’s never mentioned anything about an aunt before. “She moved to California a few years ago and didn’t really tell me why.” She’s still biting her nails, and Eddie slowly reaches out to pull her hands down from her face, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand to try and keep her calm.
“My mom was talking to a friend on the phone today, just gossiping and stuff. And she brought up my aunt and…and my aunt’s friend. It’s this other lady we’ve known forever and I guess they’re…well they’re not married or anything ‘cause they can’t be but I guess they’re like…in love, or something.”
Eddie tenses a little as Chrissy picks up steam – this is getting a little too close to home. Despite how much they’ve already shared with each other, he was hoping to wait a little longer before getting anywhere near this. Eddie waits anxiously to see where she’s heading with her story.
Chrissy’s breathing speeds up as she rambles, getting visibly more nervous by the second. “And this is the first time I’d ever heard…maybe I should have figured it out, I don’t know. But it sounded like my mom has known for a long time, and she was just…” She chokes out a little sob. “She was just so mean about it. I’ve never heard her be that mean about anything, like, she actually hates my aunt for it, and all I could think…”
She takes a couple deep breaths, clearly psyching herself up finish her story, and Eddie gives her hand an encouraging squeeze, fighting down his instinct to run the fuck away from this topic of conversation to safer ground. Instead, he plants his feet in the face of this topic that scares the ever-loving shit out of him and tries to comfort his friend.
“All I could think is that…she barely likes me now. And if she found out…if she found out that I like Melanie then she’d really hate me, and then everybody would find out that I don’t like boys and then everybody would hate me and…”
The rest of her sentence is lost to heaving breaths and tears, panic evident in every inch of her tiny frame, but she’s said enough. Eddie gapes at her, barely breathing himself. Could she really be saying what he thinks she’s saying?
He was still counting his blessings some days that somebody as amazing as her wanted to be his friend at all. Surely there’s no way the universe would throw him a bone like this, would give him a best friend who turned out to understand this piece of him, too. He waits a few minutes for her to catch her breath, then shakes her hand a little to get her attention.
She can’t look at him at first, but Eddie can be a persistent little fucker, and eventually she meets his eyes. He offers her a small smile. “I don’t hate you. Not even a possibility.” She doesn’t look like she believes him, and he desperately wants her to believe him, so he steels himself for the next thing he wants to say. Needs to say. If Chrissy was brave enough to share something like this with him without knowing how he’d react, then surely he can do the same.
“I mean, it’d kind of make me a hypocrite if I did, right?” This catches her attention. She sniffles and looks up at him in confusion. He presses on. “I know you didn’t really spend that much time with Lenny, he was already kinda avoiding me when we started hanging out but…but I liked him.”
Christ, this is so much harder than he thought it would be, even knowing that she’s almost certainly safe to tell. He’s never said it out loud before, and his voice shakes as he does so for the very first time, but it feels important to push through this. Life-changing, even, for both him and Chrissy. “I liked him the way you like Melanie…never any girls, just Lenny.”
Chrissy looks stunned, knocked off her axis. That makes two of them. There’s only a second of hesitation before she throws herself into his arms and hugs him tightly, crying from relief now instead of fear. He hugs her back, rubbing a comforting hand up and down her spine and burying his face in her hair, and speaks softly to her. “Sorry your mom sucks, but you can always come here with this type of stuff. Promise.”
The two of them sit there for a long time, until the first drops of rain hit the ground and Wayne comes outside to usher them into the trailer for a cup of hot chocolate. Eddie pops one of Chrissy’s ABBA cassettes in the tape deck without even asking, knowing it will help lift her spirits. The three of them stand together around the kitchen counter, a smile finally back on Chrissy’s face, and Eddie feels full of warmth with the knowledge that this girl is going to be one of his most important people for a long time.
January 2, 1981
The start of high school was a mixed bag for Eddie, which was honestly better than expected given the general theme of his life so far. He expected to enter the halls of Hawkins High and buckle down for four years of misery, so the few bright spots he found among the mess were more than welcome.
Like his first week, when he wandered into the cafeteria scanning for a spot out of the way where he could eat by himself while Jeff, Walter, and Chrissy were together across the parking lot at the middle school. Eyes glued to the wood of the table in front of him, he had ignored the shadow looming over his lunch table until the person it belonged to cleared their throat and demanded his attention.
Eddie lifted his gaze to see one of the largest people he had ever seen, adults included. The guy towered over him, his body straining at the seams of the Batman t-shirt he wore under a windbreaker that was definitely no longer in style. There were small patches of acne scattered across his face and a tiny food stain on the sleeve of his jacket, and Eddie hadn’t been sure if he needed to be afraid of this giant until the guy directed a smile his way.
“Nobody to eat with your first week, huh?”
Eddie shrugged and looked back at the table. Even if this guy was being genuinely nice and not winding up to some weird kind of hazing, he knew that admitting you were eating by yourself because all your friends were middle schoolers wasn’t going to do him any favors.
“Hey, don’t worry about it, man – everybody starts out that way. Wanna come join us?” The boy gestured a few tables over. Everybody at the table had something that made them just a little out of place in the same way that Eddie’s too-big leather jacket drew unwanted stares in the hallway, but together they formed a cohesive whole that instantly brought Eddie some comfort as he followed the older boy over and sat down.
The occupants of the table introduced themselves to him (apparently the giant’s name was Blake), and over lunch they chattered excitedly to each other about what brought this group of misfits together – Dungeons and Dragons. Blake, a senior, was apparently the founder of the school D&D club, and Eddie’s eyes widened as he listened to the back-and-forth. This game sounded like it ruled.
He tagged along with Blake to the group’s first session and fell in love with it. His high school career had taken an instant step up. Sure, he still got dirty stares in the hallway and a few painfully uncreative insults thrown at him for no other reason than to make people feel better about themselves, but it was mostly tolerable as a routine started to form. He had a small group of people he could trust at the high school, he booked it to the middle school parking lot to meet up with Chrissy, Jeff, and Walter every day when the bell rang, and he spent one night a week practicing with his band and another night a week at D&D club.
With people in his corner, Eddie found his own way to survive. At the beginning of the year, he had tried to keep his head down outside of D&D and band practice, to fly under the radar as much as possible. As the weeks flew by, though, it was becoming clear that a high school career where he escaped the notice of those above him in the social pecking order just wasn’t in the cards.
He was too different, too out there, too much. His music was too angry, his hair was too long, his clothes too dark, his living situation too unconventional. Everybody around him seemed to take one look at him and instantly peg him as other, and that was even without anybody knowing he was gay. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t just fucking exist in the world the way everybody else seemed to be able to. One semester in and the constant othering was weighing heavily on him.
It's few days into the new year and Eddie is tearing apart his room to find a specific D20. It’s his favorite one, a gorgeous black stone with numbers engraved in artificial silver and a skull on the face where a 20 should be. He can hear his uncle and Chrissy laughing in the kitchen as they talk about some episode of The Twilight Zone they watched together earlier. Wayne’s always had a real soft spot for it.
He’s on his stomach to search under his bed, growing more frustrated with his fruitless search and dreading his return to that cursed fucking school building that’s giving him so much trouble, when an epiphany slaps him right across the face – why the fuck is he trying this hard to come across as ‘normal’?
Just look at all the ‘not normal’ he’s surrounded himself with. Not normal is his Uncle Wayne, who’s been looked down on by the fine, upstanding folks of Hawkins for his lower-class roots and residual accent for as long as Eddie could remember, but still walks through life with his head held high and takes care of Eddie better than anyone else ever had.
Not normal is people like Blake, Jeff, Walter, and Gareth, this kid one year behind Jeff and Walter they recruited to be their new drummer. They had all found common ground in their shared unconventional interests, and always have way more fun together than whatever fucking pageantry seems to go on when the popular kids gather.
Not normal, surprisingly enough, is Chrissy Cunningham. She’s come into a new, fragile confidence since finding out there’s a word to describe all the parts of her they had talked about in August. Eddie had beamed with pride the first time she called herself a lesbian out loud, and he wants to be that proud of himself too.
It seems painfully obvious in retrospect, but clearly the “not normal” folks have the right idea if it means they aren’t anything like Chrissy’s horrible mother who makes her feel bad all the time. So, fuck it, Eddie decides.
It’s the new year – might as well buy into all that resolution nonsense and finally start owning himself a little. If he’s going to be a target anyway when trying and failing to appear a little more normal, he might as well give up the act and have a good time doing it.
True to his word, when school starts back up, Eddie makes an entrance. He blasts his music as loudly as he wants to while speeding through the lot and wears the denim vest with one or two patches he’s been too embarrassed to wear to school. The first time some airheaded jock opens his mouth to shoot a no doubt uninspired insult his way, Eddie beats him to the punch. “Fuck off, man.”
It shocks the other boy enough that he shut ups for a moment, jaw audibly snapping shut, and Eddie gets a few steps down the hallway before the jock calls out after him.
“Hey, freak, I’m talking to you!”
Eddie turns on the spot, rolls his eyes, and gives a mocking little bow in the guy’s direction. He’s not scared of this kid, he’s not trying to be normal, he’s being the authentic Eddie fucking Munson and owning every second of it. He only kind of wants to throw up, he’s got this.
“You rang?” He pours as much confidence as he can into his words, and the jock buys it, hook, line, and sinker. Clearly, he had expected Eddie to take some offense at the nickname (although, Christ, he couldn’t have come up with something a little more creative?) and is floundering faced with a potential victim who doesn’t seem to give a shit what he says. He continues to falter, and Eddie feels the thrill of his new strategy actually…working a little?
“Wow. Very insightful, man, you’ve got a real way with words.” Eddie turns and walks away again as quickly as possible before he loses his nerve. He catches a glimpse of an awed stare in the eyes of some nerdy sophomore the jock had been picking on before, an impressed look from Blake where he stands further down the hallway, and confusion on the faces of the popular kids watching this little interaction go off-script and it puts a spring in his step. Oh, yeah. He can work with this.
September 17, 1982
In the couple years since Eddie “The Freak” Munson was born, Eddie never regretted it for a second. The stares increased in frequency, and people continued to say awful shit about him and his friends under their breath, but his cutting remarks and tendency to grandstand had kept all but the most tenacious bullies from actually trying something for fear of what he might do next. He no longer bothered hiding any of his interests, and it didn’t win him any new friends but it made the ones he already had just as proud of him as he was of himself.
Before long, he had roped his fellow D&D players into his acts of rebellion, convincing them to officially name their club Hellfire just to piss off the church crowd a little. Eddie even took to tucking a bandana into one of his back pockets after he and Chrissy heard about gay people doing it in bigger cities. He wasn’t quite brave enough to let it do more than just barely peek out, but he did it all the same and that was the important part.
It hadn’t been all sunshine and roses. The few kids still determined enough to pick fights with him did so with a vengeance – he’d bailed on school early quite a few times to go home and nurse a black eye or sore ribs. And halfway through his sophomore year, a series of problems with the trailer and his uncle’s truck forced Wayne to switch to night shifts at the plant for a bigger paycheck.
At the time, Eddie couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for being an extra mouth for Wayne to feed, even if his uncle would never think that way, and ended up reaching out to an old friend of his dad’s named Rick Lipton. The guy was way younger and way nicer than his father and Eddie remembered people showing up to slip him a couple of twenties and walk away with a small plastic bag the few times they visited his house out on Lover’s Lake.
Rick had been hesitant to let somebody not quite sixteen yet start selling for him, but Eddie put on his best show and convinced him. It was a cautious arrangement. Rick only ever provided Eddie with a few ounces at a time and nothing stronger than weed, but it was something. A couple times a month, Eddie would find a note slipped in his locker, meet one of his classmates at a picnic table in the woods behind school, and head home with a little extra money to buy some of his own stuff and take the pressure off Wayne.
Eddie had carved out a nice little niche for himself at Hawkins High. A totally survivable way to make it to the finish line and leave Hawkins for bigger and better things. He knew in his bones that Chrissy would thrive when she joined him at Hawkins High and she proved him right and then some.
Now, she sits up at the top of the bullshit social hierarchy as one of only two freshman girls accepted to the varsity cheer squad, and she didn’t lose a bit of her kindness along the way. Chrissy was glowing without changing who she was or dropping him as a friend and he couldn’t be prouder of her.
He should have been expecting the next hit. People like Eddie Munson don’t get to skate through life relatively fine without the universe knocking them on their ass a little every now and then. But this one caught them both by surprise.
Because given Eddie’s whole…everything and Chrissy’s whole everything, if you’d have told him that she would get outed before him, he wouldn’t have believed you. And yet, here Eddie is, sitting on the sofa outside his trailer in a horrible mirror image of that life-changing conversation two years ago, holding his best friend’s hand as she cries.
The thing about high school rumors, Eddie’s learned, is that they don’t become rumors right away. They start as whispers, quietly spreading between the students at the top of the food chain who decide what’s important and what isn’t, and the students at the bottom who overhear the earliest traces of gossip from popular kids who don’t notice them standing two feet away while they talk. It always starts as whispers – the rumors don’t come until later.
Eddie and Chrissy sit there, representatives from the top and bottom in solidarity when faced with the graveness of the newest whispers. The whispers that Chrissy Cunningham is a queer who creeped on another girl on the cheer squad while they changed after practice.
“I didn’t even do anything,” Chrissy’s voice is barely above a whisper. She hasn’t kicked the habit of chewing her nails to ribbons at the slightest hint of nerves, and Eddie reaches over as he always does to save her hands from any further damage.
“I know you didn’t.” He’s unable to even try and bring some levity to the situation when one of the pair is being faced with their worst fear. There’s nothing to joke about, and contrary to popular belief Eddie does actually know when not to poke at something.
“I always rush out of the locker room to avoid this exact thing.” Eddie’s not sure whether she’s hearing him respond to her. He rubs his thumb soothingly back and forth over her hand to offer some comfort. They’re only sixteen and fourteen, they shouldn’t have to deal with shit like this just because they have the god-awful luck to be born in some conservative hellhole.
“I know, Chris. And honestly, even if you had, it’s not like it’s the crime of the fucking century. It’s all just bad luck and bigotry.”
“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t really make it less scary, does it?” There’s a harshness in her tone that’s out of place for her, brought out by the unimaginable stress. She notices it too, and winces. “Sorry,” she mutters, and grows quiet.
Eddie waves her off wordlessly. As far as he’s concerned, she has free reign to react to this by going completely insane if she wants. Hell, she could start throwing bricks through windows in the park and he would probably walk right along beside her handing her more ammunition.
This is a worst-case scenario for two queer kids in Indiana. Eddie’s thought about it before. He thought about it when he added a black bandana to his already rebellious wardrobe. He thought about it when he realized that meeting up with a guy in the woods to sell him weed could easily set off the whispers. He really thought about it in the moments between Wayne finding out he was gay and Wayne cementing his position as the best man in the world by being nothing but supportive.
He already drew the ire of the Hawkins upper crust with his devil music, the drug dealing (to those who knew about it), the anti-authority attitude. Given the way some of the more religious folks have started to talk about D&D, he’s sure that Hellfire will get added to the list of reasons he inspires public outrage any day now. If people found out he was gay on top of all that, then Wayne might as well go pick out a cemetery plot right now.
Chrissy’s high enough in the social hierarchy that she might be able to come through something like this relatively unscathed, but the odds are never good in a situation like this. It could just as easily be the opposite, with the vultures of the Hawkins elite waiting to swoop in at the first sign of weakness.
And that’s to say nothing of her mom, who he knew would fly off the handle if she hears about this. This is serious shit, no doubt about it, and they return to sitting in silence. What could they do to even begin to fix this?
And then, it hits him. The only thing better than a solution for Chrissy’s problem is a solution for Chrissy’s problem that could also prevent this from ever being a problem for Eddie.
“Chrissy, Chrissy.” He sits up suddenly enough to startle her and hits her on the shoulder repeatedly in his excitement. “Oh my god, Chris, I’m a fucking genius.”
She listens intently, still too nervous to fully relax but clearly hoping his plan’s as good as he seems to believe it is. Fuck, he hopes so too. He’s gonna feel like a real dumbass if it isn’t.
Eddie pivots to face her on the sofa, drawing his knees up to his chest to make room and grabbing her face in his hands. She barely even blinks, far too used to Eddie’s antics at this point.
“We should date.”
Chrissy gapes at him. Whatever she thought he was going to say, it clearly wasn’t that. “What?”
He sits up a little straighter and repeats himself, slowly and clearly. “We. Should date.”
“Are you joking? This isn’t really a time for jokes, Eddie, but you better be joking cause…that’s…insane, and…”
Eddie cuts her off, waving his hands back and forth in front of her face. “No, nonono, not, like, actually. Gross. I mean, let everybody think we’re dating.”
Chrissy pauses, chewing her lip with a considering look in her eyes before motioning for him to continue.
“We already spend almost all our time together anyways, so it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. Hell, even Wayne thought I had a thing for you before he found out I was gay.” Chrissy smiles a little at the ridiculousness of that, and Eddie keeps rolling, hoping it will sound less insane once it’s all out.
“Think about it. If we tell people that we’ve been together for a while, then they’ll assume the whole locker room thing was a misunderstanding.”
“They could just assume I like both, and then we’re right back where we started.”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “Chris, come on. This is Hawkins we’re talking about here. Do you really think enough of them even know bisexual people exist to consider that as an option?”
“Yeah, I guess…” She looks like the idea’s growing on her. Eddie feels a little awkward doing the hard sell on something like this, but they need a fix and they need one fast.
“Look, if it makes you uncomfortable or you really don’t think it’ll work then I’ll drop it. Scout’s honor. But I really think this is a good solution here. We just…keep acting like we’ve always acted, maybe dial it up the tiniest bit, and let people think it’s something more so they stay off our backs. Everybody wins.”
“It’s not really fair, though, is it?” She’s still too quiet. “Like, if everybody thinks we’re together, then we couldn’t try and date someone we liked even if we wanted to.” She plays with the laces of her shoes as she speaks, looking sort of heartbroken about the idea.
Huh. Eddie honestly hadn’t even considered that. In his mind, the plan is to survive until graduation, work some odd jobs around Hawkins for two years while he waits for Chrissy to graduate too, and then drag her by the hand and get the hell out of dodge to greener pastures where they can both be themselves. He’s always considered a high school sweetheart completely off the table for him – it didn’t occur to him that Chrissy might feel differently.
“I mean, I know you might be blinded by whatever captivating aura convinced you to be friends with me, but to everybody else I am about as undatable as it gets, Chris. Maybe you would have been able find a cute girl to sneak around with, but guys in Hawkins aren’t exactly lining up for a spot on the freak’s dance card.”
Chrissy shoots him a mildly chastising glare. She doesn’t like when he’s this self-deprecating, but he’s not entirely wrong in this case. He thinks she knows it, too, because she doesn’t correct him.
“And dating Eddie Munson isn’t exactly gonna win you any points at school, but, you know, lesser of two evils and all that.” She hums consideringly at his words.
“Look, how about this.” He pulls a wrinkled piece of paper to write out his next words like an official contract. When in doubt, dial up the theatrics. Chrissy smiles when she catches on, obviously humoring him, but he doesn’t mind. “Okay, let me think. I, Eddie Munson, promise to cover for Chrissy Cunningham, and vice versa, by pretending to date each other until one of us finds an absolute babe…”
“A babe? For you?” She raises a teasing brow and seems genuinely cheered up, willing to joke around with him again. There’s that bright and shiny Chrissy he knows and loves, peeking back through.
“Dudes can be babes, Chris, get with the times.” She lets out a little giggle-snort of a laugh and he continues, really hamming it up. “An absolute BABE who is worth the risk. At which point we stage a dramatic breakup the likes of which Hawkins will be gossiping about for decades and ride off into the sunset to have our big, gay love stories.”
Chrissy’s fully laughing now, and he has a grin on his face as he scribbles out a chicken-scratch signature on the joke contract, handing it her way with an exaggerated waggle of his eyebrows. Her laughter fades to a grateful smile as she holds his gaze for a moment, before going along with the bit and adding her significantly neater signature to the page.
He slips the paper into his pocket to hide somewhere safe, knowing that they’ll want to laugh about this someday down the line, and wraps his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side and pressing a friendly kiss to her hair.
She closes her eyes, and wraps him up in a hug, finally sinking into the comfort that comes from being with the person who knows you best and makes you feel safest. “Thank you, Eddie. You don’t have to…”
He shushes her gently. “Course I do. I’ve always got your back with this stuff, you know that. And I really think this’ll work. Trust me.”
They sit there for a few more moments before Eddie ushers her into the trailer. The pair of them have worked out a perfect little routine for cheering Chrissy up at times like this. He whips up a cup of slightly above average instant hot chocolate, puts on that blue ABBA tape with her favorite song on it, and sits close enough on the couch to save her hands if she starts to demolish her fingernails with nerves. Today, it works like a charm, just like always.
Chrissy turns on the TV and flips the channel to something meaningless, neither of them in the mood for anything more after this doozy of a day. They only move to go back to Eddie’s room and crash. Their problems are far from solved – they still have to make people actually believe this shit, after all. But they have a place to start, and it’s better than nothing.
Eddie drags her out into town over the weekend, even though they’d both rather hide away. The waffles over at Benny’s always make things seem better, and he wants to test the waters a little. See if people are still whispering.
They grab a booth by the front, and Chrissy picks at her food halfheartedly when it arrives, chewing at the nails of one hand and pushing a waffle around with the other. Eddie, on the other hand, practically inhales his. It’s a miracle he doesn’t choke on it, but it gets a smile out of Chrissy and that’s always a win.
He chances a look around at the few other groups of highschoolers washing away their Friday nights with the magic of a diner breakfast. Most of them haven’t spared the pair more than a passing glance, but he feels eyes on them from a table in the back, a few guys from the basketball team and their dates.
They’re whispering. Eddie reaches out to save her hand from her teeth, and keeps it cradled in his own on top of the table in full view of their little audience. They’re whispering louder, now. Chrissy hasn’t noticed, which is probably for the best, but if a little hand-holding over breakfast whips them into a frenzy like this, then Eddie feels more confident than ever that this plan is gonna work. He flashes Chrissy a grin and reaches over with a fork to help finish up her food.
The real test comes Monday morning. Eddie picks Chrissy up from her house like he has since his sixteenth birthday, turning the music down when he notices her fidgeting in the passenger seat. They don’t speak, both too nervous to summon up words even if they wanted to. Today will determine whether Chrissy goes through high school as a princess or a pariah – what is there to say about something like that?
Eddie pulls into the parking lot at a normal human speed, for once. Chrissy’s restless fidgeting has only gotten worse, and she’s practically trembling as they come to a stop. Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever seen her this scared before, and he can’t blame her, so he’ll be brave enough for the both of them today. He pulls off one of his rings, the simplest one he wears on his right hand, and hands it to her. “Ready to put on a show?”
She takes the ring instantly, fidgeting with it the second it’s on her finger, and braces herself with a nod. Eddie gives her a couple moments, then pulls the keys out of the ignition and walks around the front of the van to open the passenger side door. Hand in hand, Eddie and Chrissy turn towards the entrance to brave the whispers.
He walks Chrissy to her locker, leans a hair closer than normal when they talk, wraps an arm around her in the cafeteria. Eddie puts on the performance of a lifetime, and it works like a charm. The whispers about Chrissy in the locker room slowly and steadily shift to whispers about Chrissy and the freak.
They get mixed reactions on all fronts as word of their ‘relationship’ spreads. Chrissy’s mom is pissed at her poor choice in men, but Eddie’s never given a shit what Penny Cunningham thinks about him, so, no skin off his back there. The other Corroded Coffin boys insist they knew already, and Eddie and Chrissy nod along indulgently while flashing knowing eyes at each other. Wayne gives the pair of them a perplexed look over a bucket of KFC one evening that fades into a sympathetic smile as Chrissy shares the whole story with him – he pulls Eddie into a quick hug and whispers “You two are good kids, Ed. Proud of you,” on his way out the door to work. Eddie wipes at his eyes before turning back to his dinner.
The popular crowd doesn’t seem to know what to do with the new information. Chrissy gets a few sneers she’s never gotten before as people tease her about her new trailer trash boyfriend, but nobody seems willing to say anything too nasty to her. And as for Eddie? He’s pleasantly confused by the way some of their brains break in his presence.
Jocks and cheerleaders that never considered buying from him before make their way out to the picnic table in the woods to sneak a peek at the sideshow attraction punching well above his weight. Steve Harrington, who’s matched Chrissy’s unusually swift rise to popularity with a few damn good house parties and an unfairly handsome face, seems to view him being with Chrissy as a point in Eddie’s favor and his little minions lay off of him a little. Some kid in Chrissy’s year named Jason has been harboring a crush on her for quite a while, and channels his bitterness about the development into one hell of a grudge, but it’s nothing Eddie hasn’t dealt with before.
The crisis has officially been averted, yet another challenge Eddie and Chrissy have put firmly in their rear-view mirror. Eddie’s proud of them – they truly are an unstoppable little duo. He can’t wait to see what they accomplish in a few short years when they finally break free of Hawkins.
March 24, 1984
‘84 is gonna be Eddie’s year. He can practically smell it in the air. He couldn’t be more ready to leave the school that had caused him and Chrissy so much grief and wait for her to catch up. Fuck being modest, he’s kind of killing it as leader and dungeon master of the Hellfire Club. Now that all of its members are actually in high school together, Corroded Coffin has been able to play for small crowds here and there. Chrissy has found a manageable holding pattern with her mom that’s only mildly unbearable for everybody involved.
Everything’s coming up aces for Eddie “The Freak” Munson, so, of course, it was only a matter of time before he found a way to blow it all up in his own face. Figures.
College has never been in the cards for Eddie after graduation. He knows that. His grades barely scrape over the bare minimum to pass, and even if they could get him into a school, he wouldn’t want to go. The few times he’s actually thought about a career for himself, nothing that required a degree made the cut, so why would he willingly spend four more years in school? Even Eddie’s not that dumb.
But he needs money, even without college tuition to consider. He and Chrissy are dead-set on moving on from Hawkins after she graduates a couple years from now and you need money to do that. Asking Wayne for help is out of the question. He’s barely making ends meet as it is. So instead, Eddie makes the drive out to the old house on Lover’s Lake to talk to Rick.
There’s no way to sugarcoat it – Rick’s struggling, and nearing the end of his rope. He’s been dealing here for too long and Hawkins PD is circling like a bunch of vultures, waiting for him to slip up so they can swoop in with sirens blazing. They’d probably try and do the same to Eddie if his dealing was less rumor and more fact to them.
Rick barely ever sold these days. Eddie knows he has to have a goldmine of extra stock just waiting around his house, and he’s determined to convince Rick to let him sell it himself. He needs the money, and since his 18th birthday passed a couple weeks ago, Rick can’t keep writing him off as ‘just a kid’ and restrict him to selling weed.
It takes significantly less groveling than Eddie would have guessed. He had come here with a whole little speech prepared and barely had to use a sentence of it. Rick must be more desperate than he realized. Victorious, Eddie drives back to Forest Hills with little baggies of white pills and powders snuggled into his lunchbox next to the weed he’s been selling for ages.
A couple weeks pass before anybody catches wind of the change, and another week before somebody contacts him about it. Eddie finds himself waiting behind the Hideout for his first sale. He stands there awkwardly for five minutes, then ten and, starts to wonder if he’s been stood up like a cheap date when his customer wanders into the alley, drunk off his ass and muttering.
He’s never sold anything stronger than weed before – that was already enough to put Eddie on edge and this dude isn’t doing anything to set him at ease. When he gets close enough for Eddie to make out his face, he realizes that he knows this guy. Couldn’t tell you his name to save his life, but he’s definitely seen him buying a car from his dad at one point. The guy meets his eyes and quickly comes to the same conclusion.
“Well, shit, you’re Ron’s boy, ain’t ya?” He asks the question casually, like it’s not about to blow up Eddie’s entire life, lips barely moving around the butt of a nearly burnt-out cigarette. “I’d recognize those eyes anywhere, you look just the same as when you was a kid.”
Eddie just hums anxiously. This deal can’t be done fast enough. He practically throws the bag in the guy’s face. As Eddie’s speed-walking down the alley with the biggest stack of cash he’s ever held at one time, he hears it, muttered under the man’s breath as he limps back into the Hideout. “Apple don’t fall too far from the tree, I guess.”
It’s like someone dumped a bucket of ice water over Eddie’s head. The fact that he makes it back to his trailer in one piece feels like a miracle because he doesn’t actually remember anything between that moment and slamming his way into the trailer. He tosses his lunch box and money on the bed and stares at his reflection in the mirror.
Eddie’s worked hard for years to accept himself as fully and completely as he can. He’s out to Chrissy and Wayne, he dresses the way he wants to, he acts the way he wants to. He’s as true to himself as he can safely be in a place like Hawkins, and for the most part he really likes who he is.
So, it’s profoundly devastating when Eddie looks in the mirror and is disgusted by what he sees for the first time in years. He apparently turned into his father when he wasn’t paying attention, and that realization is enough to send him spiraling.
Eddie skips full days of school and barely talks to Wayne, dreading the look he might see in his uncle’s eyes if he were to realize that Eddie was following the same path as his dirtbag younger brother. On the rare occasions he graces polite society with his presence, he puts on enough of a show to keep the guys from Corroded Coffin off his back.
Chrissy sees right through him, of course. A permanent look of concern makes its home on her face as Eddie spins further and further off the rails. For a brief moment he considers using some of the shit he picked up from Rick, but manages to throw it back in the box.
The shock of this one encounter has him in a full-on breakdown, time whooshing past him as he fumbles through his days in a haze. Eventually, Wayne and Chrissy will be able to drag him out of it by his hair by reminding him of all the ways he’s nothing like Ronald Munson, but the damage is done. This much time spent in a funk so close to the end of the semester has tanked his grades beyond repair, and he makes peace with the fact that he’s stuck here for a second attempt at senior year.
February 19, 1985
You know what? Fuck 1985, too. Eddie thought it might be his year after the unmitigated shit show that was 1984, but it’s starting to look like senior year number two is going to be derailed just like the first one.
Ironically enough, his current crisis is due to a shift in in the good old Hawkins High social hierarchy that’s caused him so many problems already. Steve Harrington, now a senior alongside him, isn’t quite the imposing figure he used to be, and hasn’t been since the fall of 1983. He’s been sliding down in the pecking order after abandoning the worst of his friends for the good influence of Nancy Wheeler and, kind of, Jonathan Byers, but his word still carries a lot of weight.
At least, it did, until a few months ago, when he showed up to school with his face all beat to hell and Nancy Wheeler nowhere to be seen. Nobody’s sure exactly what happened, but ‘King Steve’ had been suddenly and violently thrown out on his ass, replaced by the walking nightmare that is Billy Hargrove.
Where Harrington was a bit of a douche and a pain in Eddie’s ass, Hargrove has proved to be downright dangerous. Eddie recognizes the signs of a shitty home life (takes one to know one, after all), and Hargrove has clearly internalized all of it to become the meanest son of a bitch Eddie’s ever seen. And given some of the guys his dad used to know, that’s saying something. He takes a sick pleasure in tormenting people at school, almost seems like he gets off on it.
As if Hargrove on his own isn’t enough, he’s usually flanked by his own personal Thing 1 and Thing 2. On one side, Tommy Hagan, an attack dog at heart who’s apparently been salivating for the day somebody meaner than Harrington picked up his leash. And on the other, Jason Carver, whose grudge against Eddie for ‘stealing’ the girl of his dreams is enough to make him overlook the fact that Hargrove’s the polar opposite of those Christian values he loves preaching about so much. The hypocrisy is right on brand, at least.
The stalemate Eddie had constructed with most of the popular crowd evaporated when the three of them made it their personal mission to hound his every step, and they haven’t let up since. He can’t go to gym class in case they’re waiting for him in the locker room. He can’t stay to ask questions after class if he wants to make to his van fast enough to beat them out of the lot. They egged his trailed once, and he hasn’t gotten a restful night’s sleep since.
His grades have started to crash and burn around him again while he focuses on more important things, like not getting murdered by his crazy classmates, and even though there’s a few months left in the semester, it looks like it’s not gonna work out for him this time either. He’s adding a new entry to the Munson doctrine for this one: pissing off the popular kids may be a lot of fun, but fuck, does it hurt when they decide to retaliate.
March 21, 1986
This time…this time he’s bound and determined to get it done. ‘86 is gonna be his year. He’s thought so twice already, but this time really feels different. The one upside to being held back twice is that Jeff, Walter, and Chrissy are now all in the same grade as him, with Gareth just a year behind them. Eddie’s found three new little sheep to pass the Hellfire Club on to, and they’re so damn fun to have at the table that he barely minds putting up with the minor case of Steve Harrington hero worship the boys seem to be infected with.
Hagan’s gone, Hargrove’s dead, and Carver isn’t nearly the same threat that Billy was, not even with his basketball team lackeys. He probably ranks somewhere between Hargrove and Harrington in terms of how much he screws Eddie over on a daily basis. Hawkins PD finally locked up Rick around Christmas, so Eddie sells less and less these days as his stash grows thin, and he never sells anything stronger than weed unless he can personally babysit the person at his trailer.
Everything’s on track for Eddie to stick the landing and finally graduate on his third attempt. All he wants to do is finish his last session with the club that almost single-handedly saved his high school career and end on a high note.
Instead, he’s here, staring down the three freshmen in front of him and groaning as he realizes he has to cave. Chrissy’s been doing cheer for seven years and probably won’t continue in college, and missing out on the last game she may ever be in really would make him the shittiest fake boyfriend in the world.
Time to face the music.