Chapter Text
Eddie might be at rock bottom…or as close to it as an idiot like him can get. He heads straight home after getting the shit kicked and punched out of him. He ignores Gareth’s questions when he swerves the path back into school and instead, walks to his van and peels out of the parking lot.
When he makes it back to his trailer, he washes the taste of blood out of his mouth first. He uses the disgusting mouthwash Wayne swears by and Eddie’s not sure why the hell that is; it burns in a weird way that cannot be approved anywhere other than the US of A.
Eddie inspects the bruised masterpiece that is his face next. He’s pretty sure Carver would have knocked out a tooth if he’d just put in a little more work. Eddie screws up his face in various ways, hoping to get a better look. It hurts like hell and looks like it, too. He leans onto the sink and sighs, “Really fucked this one, Munson,” he tells the guys staring back at him in the mirror.
He thinks of Chrissy and her big, teary doe eyes as he told her to leave. She didn’t deserve him and he would have fucked it all up anyway even with Jason out of the picture. Somehow he would have fucked it just like he fucked his chances of graduating the last two years.
He splashes his face with water a few times and clenches his teeth at the tenderness. He then stomps into the kitchen, grabs a beer, and chugs it down. No use thinking about Chrissy now, or ever again for that matter. Not anymore.
Jeff calls for the second night in a row because, yeah, everything is not fucking cool. “I know, I know,” Eddie cuts to the chase when he answers the phone. “I was playing with fire. You can say ‘I told you so’.”
But Jeff doesn’t. Damn nice guy. “You okay?” he asks.
Eddie leans forward and splays over the kitchen counter, the telephone cord pulled tautly. “I’ve had better days, man. Jason Carver nearly punching my brains to mush definitely doesn’t make the top ten,” he says.
Jeff asks his next question with caution, “So you and Chrissy…are a thing now? Or is the basketball team just making shit up?”
Eddie’s throat squeezes with a whine, “What are they saying?”
Jeff stiffly replies, “Not sure you wanna know, but…some people are saying you guys were…doing it. You know.”
Eddie might laugh at Jeff’s awkwardness but he’s currently imagining all sorts of stupid fucking names those basketholes are calling Chrissy and it makes him want to punch every one of ‘em that dares to say it. “Well, they’re fucking liars,” he spits but sighs a moment later. “We just kissed, okay? Carver was the cheating dickweed. Not like it matters. I ended it with Chrissy.”
“Wait? You ended it? You were obsessed with her, dude! What happened?”
“Uh, Carver’s a psycho. That’s what happened. So I ended it,” Eddie answers, shrugging to himself. Jeff doesn’t reply and the silence quickly eats away at him until Eddie huffs, “What?”
Eddie hears shuffling and Jeff then says, “I don’t know. Seems like you sorta jumped the gun there.”
Eddie lifts himself off the counter. He edges back to the receiver on the wall and leans over it. “You don’t get it, okay? With me around, they were going to make her life a living hell,” he explains tiredly. “It’s not my finest moment, I know. But like you said, they’re already talking shit about us. If I leave her alone, she can go back to Jason and people will lay off.
There’s silence again, judgemental as fuck silence. Disappointed silence that only Jeff and Uncle Wayne have successfully mastered with him.
“Okay,” is all Jeff gives him in response.
“Okay,” Eddie parrots, setting his posture straight.
“So…you coming to band practice tonight?” Jeff asks, an obvious bid to change the subject. “We need to get through Heather’s setlist.”
Eddie’s heart drops. Prom. He holds the phone to his chest and thunks his head against the wall. What a fucking mess he’s in. Well, so long as he avoids Chrissy, it’s fine. Get up on stage, do the thing, and bounce. By then, she’ll probably be back with Jason, with a crown on her head, the universe restored. Plus, he needs the money.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’ll be there,” he agrees.
Eddie keeps his word. He heads to practice that night and works through the motions of the hyperactive pop songs selected by Heather. Some cause him more pain than others, but all of them make him think of Chrissy. How, yeah, the money will be sweet, but he’s really doing it for her, even now.
The words he exchanges at practice are clipped and once they’ve run through the setlist enough times, he makes a swift exit. He doesn’t miss Gareth’s irritation as he’s ducking under the garage door. So what if he’s not much for conversation? He fucking showed up, didn’t he?
The next two weeks drag hellishly. Eddie clocks in and out of school like it’s a factor shift and he reluctantly attends practice every other evening to keep the guys happy. No matter how hard he tries, though, he has more near run-ins with Chrissy than he can boil down to coincidence. It’s like the universe wants him to suffer, to see her pretty face and observe the little quirks in her facial expressions, and suffer. “Look at what you let go. Good going. You really fucked it up, buddy,” the universe gloats.
Every time, he backs right out of the immediate area before he can get lost in the sight of her or worse, get caught.
He has no idea if she’s back with Jason or not, but he’s yet to see them together. A small part of him feels all…ugh…gooey about it. The rest of him feels rotten. A healthy, hearty balanced crisis of the heart.
Eddie trudges to the Hellfire table at lunch and the guys are busy arguing over Ewoks. Mike thinks they’re annoying. Dustin thinks they’re kind of cute. Grant thinks Dustin looks like an Ewok. The argument goes on for so long that Eddie tunes it all out. And then she catches his attention.
Since shit hit the fan, he’s only seen Chrissy hang out with Heather and some cheerleader he’s ninety-nine percent sure he’d sold some Special K to last summer. From what he recalls, she wasn’t friendly but it’s entirely possible that he wasn’t either. His car needed a new brake light at the time and rich-ass teenagers trying to barter for bullshit discounts were really pissing him off.
Chrissy floats to her seat, blue a chequered dress fluttering with each step, and settles down at the table with a smile aimed at Heather. Dammit. She could blind a guy with her beauty and liveliness. He quickly ducks his head when he senses her about to look his way, munching at his sandwich like it’s the first thing he’s eaten all week.
The guys do a good job distracting him for most of lunch. Their dumb arguments get progressively worse and Eddie has to bark at them to shut up or talk about something else at least twice. It’s when he hears Chrissy laugh that his willpower crumbles and he can’t stop himself from looking her way. More like staring, actually. Because the way her head falls back, hair spilling over her shoulder, that little crooked tooth of hers peeking out, it turns him into a pile of goop. He leans on his palms and takes the sight in as if he’s about to evaporate any second now.
A few tables behind, he’s being watched. He catches it at the last second. The rest of the basketball team is unaware, busy talking about shit that’s likely, somehow, way dumber than the conversation at his own table. But Jason’s looking right at him.
Eddie averts his gaze and promptly ditches the lunch table. He mutters an excuse when the guys launch a thousand questions at him and thankfully, no one follows him out.
The hallways are empty as he heads for the back of the school. He hasn’t been back to the picnic table since Jason did that little number on him, but he needs a smoke and some solitude.
The door doesn’t fall shut behind him when he exits out onto the asphalt. A kinder god would let it be Chrissy, but Eddie sighs and accepts the cruel reality of Jason Carver calling out, “You can’t help yourself, can you Freak?”
Eddie slowly turns on his heel and looks plainly at Jason, who is too fucking worked up for someone without reinforcements this time.
“Guess not,” Eddie replies, absently scratching his forehead. Jason stands there like he might huff and puff and blow his fucking top off, but Eddie’s over it. “What do you want, Carver? Huh? I backed off. I know you must’ve been shocked to find out Chrissy still doesn’t want you but man, give it a rest.”
Jason shoves his hands into his pockets. He glances away, muttering, “She’ll come around.”
“Sure,” Eddie scoffs and shakes his head. “Good luck with that.”
It would be easy to land a sucker punch on Carver right now, but Eddie just proceeds to fish for his lighter and the last of his cigarettes. He lights up and with not another peep out of Jason, makes for his departure.
Of course, it can never be that easy. Jason starts bitterly, “Heard you’re playing at prom. I wouldn’t if I were you.”
Eddie groans loudly, dropping his head back. Against his better judgement, he asks, “Why the hell not?”
“I don’t think you need me to tell you.”
“Maybe you do,” Eddie turns to face him and takes a drag of his cigarette. He lets the gust of smoke fill his lungs and blows it back out towards Jason.
Jason’s expression scrunches. He steps back, wiping his nose. He gets that maniacal little twitch in his lip and a twinkle in his eye. “Chrissy’s always wanted a perfect prom. She doesn’t talk about it much but she used to scrapbook about it.” Eddie eyes Jason, careful as he smokes this time. Jason glances pensively at the ground. “But if her mother just so happened to find out that the drug pushing satanist trying to corrupt her was part of the band…”
Eddie’s mouth slowly falls open, his eyes alight with disgust. “Jesus, you’re such an asshole,” he spits, but Jason looks proud of his cartoon villain-ass scheme.
“Just think about it,” Jason tells him. He offers a sly grin and then slithers off back into the school building and hopefully, back to the fucking pit he came from.
“Motherfucker!” Eddie finally shouts and tosses his cigarette to the ground. He crushes it beneath his boot, imagines it’s Jason’s head, and it splits in half with enough pressure.
Eddie arrives at band practice that night, quietly and on time. He sets up slowly, finding himself stuck on his encounter with Jason every couple minutes, staring aimlessly at his guitar. “Just think about it.” What a fucking asshole. It’s been well-established for years but somehow Carver finds new ways to break that glasshole ceiling. He’s given the guys easier ultimatums at the end of a campaign.
Chrissy never mentioned prom when they hung out. She joined the Prom Committee, sure, but she wasn’t, like, obsessed with prom… Was she? Eddie bats his forehead against the microphone. Think. Think. Think. “I think I want to see Jason’s head on a spike right now,” is what he thinks. Eddie’s no murderer but if Jason slipped and his head split clean off his body, he’d consider that the universe finally making things right.
“Earth to Eddie,” Jeff sings from beside him, his voice cutting through the sound system and Eddie’s clusterfuck of a dilemma.
Eddie bolts back to reality and looks at Jeff, who’s tapping his own microphone to produce a droning fwoomp sound. Jeff holds out his hands in question. Eddie breathes deeply and spins himself right around into a decision, “Fuck. I can’t do this.”
Jeff frowns. “Do what?”
Eddie takes in Jeff, Grant, and Gareth, who all look puzzled. “This!” He slaps the microphone stand, draws a heavy breath, and shakes out his hair. “I’m not doing prom,” he declares with finality.
Unsurprisingly, Eddie’s immediately faced with a shitload of questions from all three of them. Grant then yells, “You’re the lead singer!” and that brings their chaotic question time to a standstill. They wait expectantly for his explanation or defence, or whatever.
“Uh, sure, but Jeff sings sometimes! He can just take the lead on vocals and guitar,” Eddie cries out abruptly. “You guys’ll be fine without me.”
His audience doesn’t take kindly to that. The three of them hurl more questions along with complaints and curse words. Eddie stands there and takes it until Gareth asks, “And what about Chrissy?”
Eddie tenses. “What about Chrissy? You don’t even like her!”
Gareth’s standing at his drum set, fists clenched around his sticks like he might lob them at Eddie’s head, but he shrugs. “So what? You told her you’d play at prom. You promised.”
In that moment, Eddie can’t find it in him to argue with that regardless of whether he’d ever even said the word ‘promise’. Gareth’s watching him from across the room like an upset child, grappling with the reality that life isn’t fair.
Eddie sighs and begins with a tired, “Well,” and slowly starts to pack away his gear. “Things change. Assholes with basketballs for brains make threats I can’t ignore. Life sucks and then you die.”
The guys don’t say anything after that, nothing that Eddie registers enough to respond to. He just finished packing up his shit and throws a, “See you guys at school,” behind him as he’s leaving.
Very smooth, Munson. Fuck off all your friends.
He hears a heavy bat of a cymbal just as he’s about to drive away. In the distance, he can make out Gareth staring him down from the edge of the garage. Eddie’s life might be the embodiment of Mordor at this point but hey, his eyesight is good enough to see every pissed off detail in Gareth’s face.
Uncle Wayne has the night off when Eddie gets home, something about some dumbass messing up the schedule. Eddie sits with him on the folding chairs outside their trailer and cracks open a beer. “I’d rather you keep any illegal stupidity to our home,” Wayne had told him the first time he’d caught Eddie drinking at sixteen. That was right before Eddie started dealing. He’s never asked but Eddie’s certain Wayne wants that as far away from the trailer as possible.
“Band practice end early?” Wayne asks gruffly and sips his beer.
“Something like that,” Eddie mutters in return. He opens his can and the hiss it makes is almost therapeutic with everything else going to shit. He then becomes one with the folding chair.
“Don’t you boys go fighting over some girl now,” Wayne warns.
Eddie sits up, brows pulled in tight. “Why’d you think it’s about a girl? Could be anything. We start fights over dice rolls weekly.”
Wayne stares blankly—explaining D&D to him is a losing battle even if he bought him his first set. The old man probably saw it in the Games section and thought it was good enough for his messed up nephew. He was right.
“Well, that young lady in your bed a few weeks ago for a start,” Wayne eventually explains.
Eddie’s mid-sip of his beer and chokes on the fizz. “What do you mean?”
Wayne chuckles. “I wasn’t born yesterday, boy,” he replies. “I come home to get my vest and hard hat, you leave the place stinkin’ of hash and when I come to give you a well-deserved telling, I find you in bed with—”
“Alright! We weren’t fighting over her. Not exactly.” Eddie takes a deep breath and exhales his hopeless frustration. “Look, I’m trying to do the right thing, okay? But not everyone agrees with me is all,” he explains. In fact, the only person who agrees with his decision is Jason. Fuckin’ douche.
Uncle Wayne shifts further back in his chair and surveys Eddie. He sips his beer before asking, “You sure it’s the right thing?”
Eddie shrugs. “If it stops people from getting hurt then yeah.”
“I don’t know the details, Eddie, but I’m wonderin’ if that only hurts them more.” He sighs faintly and Eddie stills. “I thought taking you to see your old man was right, gave you the chance to keep him in your life. But…well, you know the rest. Seeing him only hurt you more. No good comes from that.”
Eddie sinks back in defeat. “When’d you get so wise?”
“What the heck are you talking about?” Wayne scoffs. He brings his beer can to his lips and mumbles, “I came out the womb wise.”
Eddie rolls his eyes but smiles all the same. “Right.”
They let silence lead the rest of their time outside till Wayne falls asleep and Eddie swats him awake. “I was just resting my eyes,” Wayne protests, swatting him in return.
Eddie feels, for the first time ever, a twinge of embarrassment when the guys ignore him in the hallway the next day. The only person willing to talk to him is Henderson, who’s blissfully unaware of the latest ‘drama’. It’s so stupid and so not all at the same time.
The day after that, Eddie walks with Henderson down the winding hallways. He’s quiet, listening to some crazy story Henderson’s spinning. Eddie tunes it all out when he starts getting into something about moving shit with your mind.
Eddie’s busy thinking, anyways. About what Wayne said, hurting people more by trying to not to hurt ‘em. Eddie hasn't yet decided on whether that’s what’s happening now. He just can’t get Chrissy’s face out of his head. Hurt and disappointed that he’d abandon her. She called him a coward and all.
He was.
He is.
“We should invite Chrissy!” Dustin plucks up, disrupting Eddie’s internal wallowing.
Eddie frowns. “What?”
“To that renaissance fair in the next town over— have you been listening to anything I’ve said?”
“Obviously not,” Eddie murmurs, dragging his palm down his face. “Not sure that Chrissy will be into that.”
Translation: “Not sure Chrissy will want to be around me ever again.”
“What do you mean?”
Nosey and naive as ever, Henderson.
Eddie sighs. He stops in his tracks to face Dustin. “It means none of your business.”
“What did you do?” Dustin questions, folding his arms.
Eddie gapes. “Why do you automatically assume I did something?”
Dustin raises one brow and nothing more, the little shit.
Eddie rumbles with a groan, bending back as it leaps from him. “Fine, I fucked it,” he admits.
“Well, unfuck it!”
Normally, Eddie would laugh. But he just lets the guilt take control, looking down. “I don’t know how. Chrissy probably hates me.”
“Dude, you spend most of your time figuring out how to fuck us and un-fuck us every week in Hellfire—”
Eddie makes a twisted face. “Don’t— ugh— don’t say it like that.”
“If you can figure all that out on a weekly basis then you can un…” Eddie narrows his eyes and Dustin smiles sheepishly, “You can figure out how to fix things now.” He adjusts his backpack suddenly and says, “I gotta go. I promised Mike I’d help him with a…thing.”
Eddie nods a goodbye, considering Dustin’s awkwardly phrased advice as he scampers off.
When Eddie sets off down the hallway again, he rounds the corner to catch the mind-boggling sight of Gareth and Dustin talking…to Chrissy?
Eddie swiftly backs up around the corner until he hits the metal of a locker door with a clunk.