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powderblueblood · 4 months

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HELLFIRE & ICE — eddie munson x f!oc! as enemies to star-crossed lovers

CHAPTER EIGHT — SEWN UP

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summary: you'd need a hacksaw to cut the tension between you and eddie, but that's not your weapon of choice this time around. a newspaper pitch, a patchwork girl and a tasteless prank all work together to make things ever more awkward between you and the boy you keep senselessly calling your friend. content warnings: MINORS DNI, THIS IS NOT SAFE FOR YOUR PURITAN EYES - reader is an ex-bitch on a journey of self-discovery through being an even more specific kind of bitch, angst in the form of an elizabeth munson mention, miscommunication, lacy engaging non-platonically with someone other than eddie, mention of lacy's surname and dad's name, REEFER RICK CAMEO, billy hargrove slander as per, violence, a humiliating prank, smut in the form of public hand stuff (f!receiving), me feeling insane about this chapter word count: 14.3k

Dear Mom,

She hasn’t got warm hands. She hasn’t got the kind of smile that draws people to her. She hasn’t got a kind word for everyone, no matter where they come from. She hasn’t got a lot of patience. She hasn’t got a fixed sense of herself–well, she does kinda. But, not totally. Not yet.

She’s not like you.

Other cheerleaders wore ponytails and they’d bounce. But when she wore a ponytail, it swung like a sword. She used to be cruel and exacting, but now she’s just exacting. She’s honest and observant to a degree that’s, like, almost psycho. She’s a cold front, but she laughs like a lightning strike. I feel like thunder, powerless to do anything but roll after her. Can’t help myself.

She knows what she wants, she thinks. Other days she doesn’t. I keep trying to tell her that’s okay, in ways where I don’t actually have to use the words. My words wouldn’t be as good as her words. Her words burn clean through me like a lit tip of a cigarette.

But she does have your book.

Y’know, I always thought it was kind of creepy the way some guys would try and look for their mom in other girls.

So this might be a good thing. Less Oedipus-y, more ea–…

Shit. I was gonna say something I’m so sure you’d smack me around the head for. But you’re not here to do that. I might be in better shape with this girl if you were.

Anyway. I miss you.

Eddie Munson stands in the midst of an incredibly awkward aftermath.

See, for two people so purportedly self-assured, he in his freakshow roguishness and you in your prim-perfect knife-edge sharpness, you’re both entirely dogshit at acknowledging… well… anything.

You both tried to snap back to normal so quickly, with Wheeler and her science experiment pregnancy scare smashing through the ice. But the water underneath that ice is still freezing cold– and you’re both pretending you’re not gasping for air, pretending like you don’t remember gasping for each other’s lips.

This is totally cool. This is totally fine.

And then Eddie comes to see you at The Bookstore, which has become just as routine as nearly never brushing his hair, and sees you fixing your seller’s tag to your pick of the week. Your face in that arresting, self-conscious smile that he wants to melt off with the blowtorch of his mouth.

It’s The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum.

Now, he noticed that you would habitually drop writers’ names into conversation like they were your lit professors– Didion said this, Bukowski said that, Bronte yadda, Burroughs yadda. Always some genius-adjacent, formative-thinking, socio-politico-boffo brainwad, more often than not with a substance abuse kick that you romanticized from a safe distance.

But then you unearth this book, a green clothback cover yellowing with age and roughness, red and yellow inlaid titling blasting out a name he ought to know. It makes his visual memory brrrrrrring! like a bright red tomato shaped kitchen timer.

The Patchwork Girl of Oz was with Elizabeth Munson wherever she went. Her records were her plane tickets, her escape to another world, but you couldn’t take your records with you to the hospital. Escaping to Oz was a decent substitute. She must have read it a bajillion times; she even took to calling Wayne Unc Nunkie after the elderly munchkin who only ever had one word for anybody. And whenever Eddie would drop an egg when they were baking or come running through the house with his knees all cut up, she’d coo, “Oh, my li’l Ojo the Unlucky!”

The book lingered everywhere– on the kitchen counter of the house on Pennsylvania,on the vinyl seat of the booth at the now-shuttered Benny’s when she could afford to take Eddie for a treat, on her bedside table.

Up until the end.

It knocks the wind out of Eddie when he sees it on the display shelf. He does a bad job of hiding that.

“What, too shocked to make fun of me?” you say, perching yourself on the rickety stool behind the counter, and your voice betrays a little embarrassment. “That’s a first.”

“I–... huh?” He tears his eyes away from the book long enough to catch the specks of blush high on your cheeks.

“It’s not my usual flavor, I know, but I’m capable of whimsy too.”

“Why that one?” His limbs feel stony like Unc Nunkie’s, as much as he wants to languidly lean over the counter and bother you like he always does.

You shrug, but you tilt the opposite shoulder. A reverse, a peek behind the looking glass. He notices that about you, which goddamn shoulder is your shrugging preference.

“I think it was one of the first books I kept checking out of the library when I was little,” you say, glancing back at the display, “It’s about this poor little kid who has to find a way to reverse a spell on his uncle who’s been turned to stone, and the eponymous patchwork girl is–”

“I know the story.” It comes out a little blunter than Eddie was intending it to. So much so that it knocks you back a beat.

“Oh,” you say shortly, eyes flaring down at the counter. “No need to cut me off mid-stream about it.”

Eddie winces, knowing he’s coming across as weird and stilted but with no idea how to safely climb down. “No, just– I know the story, yeah. My mom…” That is not a safe dismount, dummy! “...she… liked it a lot.”

“Yeah?” your tone stays even, yanked back from him a little. He wants to be like, sorrysorrysorry. “She ever read it to you?”

“A bunch, actually.”

“No shit.” The corners of your mouth tick up. “Wanna hear something super dorky?”

Just the mere invitation of your little smile loosens him up a bit. Eddie twists a ring around his finger, head kicking to his shoulder as his foot kicks to the counter. “Always,” he says, squinting.

You straighten your spine up on your stool and clear your throat. Hand goes over your heart, like you’re about to recite the damn declaration. Your eyes shutter closed.

“Here’s a job for a boy of brains– a drop of oil from a live man’s veins; a six-leaved clover; three nice hairs, from a Woozy’s tail, the book declares; are needed for a magic spell, and water from a pitch-dark well– the yellow wing from a butterfly to find must Ojo also try; and if he gets them without harm, Doc Pipt will make the magic charm; but if he doesn’t get ‘em, Unc…” your crack one eye open. “...will always stand a marble chunk.”

Eddie is silent for… for a while. For a good handful of heartbeats, for a beat so long that makes you knit your brow up, your eyes needling into him. Eddie’s looking at you with rose-colored soft focus. His elbows are eagerly pitched on the counter now, chin in his hands. The last person to recite those words to him was his mom, her voice raspy and tired but still willing to read to him. She hadn’t smelled like herself. It was sad.

And now, your voice, with all its snippy chainmail thrown off, gone all soft and lyrical and dedicated.

He thinks about a littler you, one he could vaguely pick out of a lineup if he really, really tried, criss-cross applesauce and pouring over that book so often that that little spell jams itself into your brain.

The mage before she donned the mink coat.

Eddie is looking at you and can’t force his heart out of his throat.

Well, until he can.

“Ew,” he cringes.

“What?!” you exclaim, your eyes getting all incredulous and kind of mad.

“And they call me a fuckin’ nerd, what the hell was that?” Eddie’s laughing, mocking, not with his whole heart. But it’s enough to make you scoff, irritated with him again.

See, you thought you were being cute and he knows you thought you were being cute. He needs to put you back in a place where you’re marginally unlikeable enough to just be a friend.

Restore the natural order. Don’t think about how he wants to recite that same verse back to you in front of an ordained Elvis in Vegas. Because he would, in a heartbeat. If he wasn’t committed to not being stupid.

Christ, you’re pretty. Christ, he’s gonna do something stupid.

“You are… completely undateable, you know that?” he nods ferociously, eyes trailing you as you cross out from behind the counter and head for a box of books that need to be shelved. All uh-huhs and sure, Eddies. The bell on the front door jangles and a customer passes behind him.

He yells after you, voice traveling down whatever winding path you’ve taken through the stacks. “You with your black and white movies and your twat rock and your Wizard of Oz… baby, what crowd are you even playing to?”

“What crowd am I playing to? What crowd are you playing to?!” you seethe, shuffling the ten-tonne box of books down the aisle with your feet. “Fucking baggie-pushing, guitar-brutalizing, board-game-...maker-...upper!”

“Woah. Wit’s unmatched as usual, Lace.”

This fucking guy. This fucking guy. You try and do one darling little thing, you just recite a little piece of a book his dead mom used to read to him or whatever, and you get verbally bashed! God forbid, god forbid you let the fucking drawbridge down for half a second! This blows!

You’re trying to be less of a bitch, in case you idiots didn’t notice!

It’s kind of inexplicable, how sensitive you’re feeling about this. Could be that since you kissed and since you pinkie-swore with Nancy Wheeler in the bombed-out boys bathroom, you kind of felt as if you were standing on a blade’s edge with Eddie. Not knowing where to put your hands, not knowing how much or how little to joke around. Not entirely happy with your moment of madness at the Ecker trailer. Not entirely happy that it hadn’t happened again.

But you’re not about to apologize. Not to him. Don Rickles in a battle vest over there. Must he always just poke you like that?!

“You’re undateable!” You shove a bunch of books aside on the shelf. “Me, I’m cu–...”

Right through the shelf, a customer stares at you. Your voice dies in your throat because, unfortunately, he’s looking right at you in your flurry of annoyance toward Eddie. And unfortunately, this stranger, he’s a little…

“What were you gonna say?” he asks, closing Gravity’s Rainbow.

“Cute.”

Guy smiles, doesn’t break eye contact with you for a second. He’s wearing a sweater. He looks fresh out of somewhere stone walled with crawling ivy. “I’d attest to that.”

You forget about Eddie– just for a second. Gesturing to Gravity’s Rainbow, you say, “Gonna attempt to finish that?”

“What’s that mean?” His grin is infectious, or maybe you’re just starved for this kind of attention.

“Nothing,” you say, with a little more tongue than you need to, “Just, I don’t know of anyone that’s ever finished that behemoth.”

Well, you don’t know of a lot of people that read the way you do either. But, digression. He raps a knuckle against the cover of the book and for some reason, you feel it in your belly.

“I always finish,” he tells you.

“Do you now?”

That’s the longest you’ve been quiet in a hot minute, and that’s the kind of thing that gets under Eddie’s skin. Chain on his jeans jangling, he starts off into the creaking labyrinth of lined-up bookcases.

“What, did you expire back here or something…” he mutters, a little whine in his tone– play with me, play with me, even though I’m being kind of a dick to you–

He sees you, a book lying lax in your arms, your body swaying to and fro and you’re–

“--talkin’ to yourself, Lacy? Great look. Real honeytrap, if you’re lookin’ to catch some imaginary di–”

“Eddie,” you grit at him, and he spots the whole other human male you’re talking to through the stacks. Well, not just talking to. Not with that body language.

This dude tilts his chin to Eddie. “Hey, man. I remember you. Didn’t you used to sell dimebags in the woods outside school?”

Fire flares in Eddie’s gut. He vaguely recognizes this guy– class of ‘83 or ‘82, not remarkable enough to be hateable but now, he’s certainly collegiate looking enough to be… distracting to you. So, annoying to him.

“Why, man? You lookin’ to buy? Or just cruise some high schooler tail?”

“Eddie!” you hiss again and he scoffs like, really?! You turn back to this… whoever the fuck. “C’mon, I’ll check you out.”

“You’ll check him out, huh?” Eddie sneers, bearing over you as you pass him in the aisle. Body heat breezing right by, face a mask of sheer disgust. Impulse talks; it totally wants to just grab you and throw you behind him and– well, he hasn’t thought that far ahead yet. But he’s creative. Who the fuck even is this guy? Where did he come from?

“That you?” this guy says, jerking his head toward the staff display, toward The Patchwork Girl of Oz. “Lacy?”

“To my friends and co-conspirators,” you say, ringing up that godawful Pynchon book.

“Which one was that guy?” he asks, watching you jot out his receipt on the carbon copy pad because for whatever reason, Ivana’s cash register is from the fucking 1800s and she refuses to upgrade to anything with a thermal printer. “Friend? Co-conspirator? … boyfriend?”

You wrinkle your nose. And don’t exactly answer, but it’s enough confirmation for him.

“Good. Say, why don’t you jot down your number on this thing?” He pushes the receipt back to you. “I can keep you updated on my Pynchon progress. You can… see if I’m good enough to co-conspire with.”

You like this approach. In fact, you love this approach, because you hadn’t been earnestly picked up in… forever. And he has this certain je ne sais quoi about him, something that screams moved out of state for college. You stay grinning, biting your lip for a good breath or two after he leaves the store.

Then Eddie appears in your peripheral, like some terrible harbinger of embarrassment.

“Undateable, huh?” you say, fully aware that he was earwigging on that whole exchange because he’s a nosy bitch and he can’t help himself. Glutton for gossip.

“You don’t have to throw yourself at the first person who walks in the store just to prove a point, baby,” Eddie tells you, this big face of condescension. You want to smack it off him so bad your palms are itching.

You huff and backtrack to where that box of unshelved books sits. “Maybe I’m tired of waiting around.”

—

Ronnie Ecker and Robin Buckley are looking each other in the eye, wolf-whistling furtively when you elbow open the door of the gym.

“You’re flat. I’m telling you you’re flat,” Ronnie’s insisting, an adorable three inches away from Robin’s face.

“I can’t be flat! A mouth whistle cannot be flat!”

It’s marching band practice. You don’t know what the hell goes on in here and you know better than to ask.

“Would you two get a room already?” you call, heels clicking across the glossed wood of the gym. These dorks have all got their feathered hats and bibs on, a kind of half-assed dress rehearsal for some pep rally they’re having on Friday. You missed the bulletin– kind of stopped paying attention, actually. Extracurricular distraction is a hell of a drug.

“Excuse me, this is a closed–” that’s the voice of Miss Genovese, the band teacher, stomping down from the bleachers in these tragic little loafers with the pleather peeling off. She makes it about halfway toward you, then this exasperated look washes right over her. The teacher dashes for the double doors and you point after her with a freshly painted red index finger. New lease on looking good.

“And that is?”

“Like, the third time in the last hour,” Ronnie shakes her head, taking her flamboyant little hat off. “Biggest running theory is morning sickness.”

What, is pregnancy like, catching or something? you’re about to muse.

“It’s almost contagious, right?” Robin says, tugging at her clip-on collar, “I mean, first your whole thing and now–”

Ronnie doesn't even have a chance to gesture for her to ixnay! before she slams pause on herself, eyes wide and all shit, did I say that out loud?! Your eyes narrow in return. That’s suspicious.

“What whole thing? My whole what?”

Ever and eternally knowing when to call it, Ronnie holds a hand up before Robin can even start to scramble an apology and serve it to you. Panther versus a precious little puppy dog– the fight ain’t even fair.

“Nothing. Scuttlebutt bullshit, the usual,” she rolls her eyes, throws a sympathetic glance to Robin who winces and retreats. Huh.

“What’s going on with you two?” you ask, crossing your legs over the bottom rung of the bleachers.

This actually makes Ronnie’s expression soften a little– her eyes race back in Robin’s direction and you swear you catch a blush. “Also nothing! Compound nothing. Why, does it look like…”

Lips purse into a little satisfied grin. Knew it. Toldja. Point to Lacy. “Looks like whatever you want it to look like.”

Ronnie reaches forward and waves her feathered hat in your face– stop being so observant! You cough in protest– ew, I don’t know where that thing has been!

“Whatever! What brings you to geek church?”

“That’s what they’re calling it now?”

“Stick around, we’ll start speaking in tongues.”

“Satanic Panic bringing about a fun new turn for the pep rally! Put some God back into that wind instrument,” you croon. “No, I actually wanted your thoughts on something.”

Ronnie raises her eyebrows and you feel like you oughta mirror her. You’re not usually one to seek out a second opinion, but the more you’ve gotten to know Ronnie, the more you see that she’ll tell you how it is. Especially now that you’ve dispersed with the whole intimidating it-girl cloud and she’s stopped pretending to be shy.

“I know. I’m shocked too.”

“I’m honored,” she swings her shoulders in girlish delight, “Dish it up, Doevski.”

“Okay, so,” you clap, hiking forward on your creaking bleacher, “I’ve been seeing this guy–”

“--this is the bookstore guy?”

A blink and a beat. “How’d you know about that?”

A face that has Eddie told me with footnotes of and he was kind of jealous scrawled all over it stares back at you. “I ‘unno, maybe I overheard…”

“Doesn’t matter.” You slice a hand through the air, no time for this right now. “Facts are facts, I’ve been hanging out with this guy,” interesting change of phraseology, considering, “and he’s a college guy–”

“If they could see you now.” The royal court of Hawkins, obviously. Older guys are generally an accomplishment. But Ronnie’s half-jesting.

“--I know, shut up. But, he mentioned something that would absolutely rock my college applications is a really, really great–”

“--feature in the Streak?” you’d gasped out in the back of his Ford Cortina (how very European!). College guy’s mouth was on your neck and his hand was inching into your shirt, playing at a faux placket of pearl buttons. Boys can never tell a real button from a fake one, apparently, even if they go to an East Coast school. I mean, shit! You’d gleaned enough information from him over a shake at the diner; relatively well-to-do family that lived near the Wheelers on Maple and kind of underwhelming taste in lit for an English major.

But he maintained eye contact and listened to your witty little bon mots, even if he didn’t… laugh at them. One thing led to another and thus, the backseat college advisory-slash-makeout session.

“Yeah, yeah, they love that shit…” he’d said, moving to your mouth in order to swallow any forthcoming words. But his words had piqued your interest more than his fingers had.

“What about an underdog story?” you said, eyes kind of hazing over in the middle distance.

“Sure, underdog, great…” college guy grabbed ahold of your leg and tugged you into him, “We can talk more about it later, okay?”

“Okay–”

“–okay?”

Ronnie grimaces. “I didn’t need that much detail.”

“Yes, you did.” You stare at her. “I’m a storyteller.”

Ronnie chews the proposal over a little, cheeks kind of bunched up in confusion. Behind her, band geeks badly hide their hickeys and exhibit too-gangly, too-obvious body language. No inspiration to be tapped from there.

“An underdog story… on the society pages? Like, who could you possibly–”

You smile that awful, conniving smile, because you came in here armed. “Ye of little faith.”

“Oh, no,” Ronnie says, and honestly, you’re a little taken aback by that reaction, “Hellfire?”

A shrug pulls your shoulders right up, rapidly on the defense. “Why not, right?”

“Why not– Lacy, you almost guillotined Jeff that one time he asked you.”

True that you hadn’t had the inches of article to spare for Hellfire Club in not-too-ancient history, but, “That was then, this is now! World’s changing– and it’s topical!”

The whole Satanic panic thing really did tickle your funny bone; and you saw yourself having a little fun with that by turning the focus on Hellfire. Subverting Eddie’s cult-leader mythos to show that he is just a kid who might have a propensity for telling a good story, surrounded by other kids who want to get a word in. You’re not looking to turn the tide on his reputation or anything but maybe… y’know. You could do the admirable journalistic thing and scratch the surface a bit. Show what you’ve learned.

It’s a challenge. You love a challenge.

“And it’s a good excuse to get in Eddie’s face,” Ronnie’s voice breaks through.

There is a lonnng beat, one you hold like the last shoes in your size at a sample sale. Your mouth keeps going to make the words yeah, right or it’s not about him! or y’know, something to exonerate you from the notion.

“I know he isn’t…” Ronnie trails off, coming to sit next to you. “that he’s kind of being weird to you right now.”

Go ahead and feign that ignoramus, girl. Shoulders quirking and all.

“Oh. Is he?”

And then Ronnie says maybe the dumbest thing on the planet, regarding the abominable sitch between you and Eddie Munson.

“You should just talk to him.”

“Ecker, there’s fruitless efforts and then there’s barren wasteland,” you scoff, “Guess which category proposing this to Eddie falls into.”

“That’s not what I–”

J’excuse, Ronnie, but you don’t care! Because this isn’t actually about anything other than getting all of those dice-throwing dorks, including Miss Ecker herself, into your damn paper. Okay?

“We have to ambush him! Element of surprise, that’s it,” you smile primly and hop off the bleachers. “I’m just going to show up at Hellfire, photographer in hand and– he won’t have a choice, will he?”

Ronnie’s expression is a mask of reproachfulness. You don’t let it shake you. You’re a cat playing with a now-endless ball of yarn, and you’re unshakeable.

“He’s such a sucker for attention,” you say, tossing your hair, and it sounds a lot more like you’re convincing yourself than anyone else in this echoey gym, “He won’t be able to resist.”

—

Reefer Rick doesn’t call, unless it’s an emergency. All of his communication is inbound, or passed through a shoulder check and a goofy smile at Melvald’s, or a nod of the head across the pool table at The Hideout. He doesn’t frequent there so much, because Bev knows he’s a pool shark and ever since ‘Nam, his ears are a little too sensitive to all that metal racket, man! By all means, rock on, but by then I gotta go rock-a-bye myself to sleep, alright? Anyway, that’s how Eddie knows to ride over to his place, if it’s not through a call he’s placed himself.

You need me, kid, you come and find me.

So when Eddie gets a call that says, “We gotta pow-wow, ese,” his nerves are set on edge. Not that he wasn’t feeling bad enough, what with the fact that some douchebag in a Cortina had picked you up and dropped you off to school the last couple of days. What with the fact he had actively dogged the car down a little bit of the road from the trailer park with his van, resisting every temptation to just run it all the way off into a ditch. And what with the fact he didn’t know what to say to you about that without it coming out in an anti-missive of jealousy! jealousy! jealousy! so what he did say to you was… nothing.

You two can’t maintain a consistent line of communication to save your lives, he realizes. There’s too much left unsaid, and the both of you are too stubborn or too scared to say any of it. Or even think it, in his case! The amount of times he’d had to slap himself sober, his brain going into overdrive thinking, if I had just told her… It’s a ‘friendship’, if you can even call it that, based on barbs and bad behavior and doing things because you know you shouldn’t. For the thrill. Right?

Like. Whatever. It’s not like he’d made tapes of a half dozen Black Sabbath albums because you mentioned you wanted to ‘study up’ on that ‘monster music’ he’s making. It’s not like you’d given him an annotated copy of Still Life with Woodpecker because he wanted to throw some ‘nonsensical curveball shit’ into a later Hellfire campaign.

It’s not like Eddie missed you– he just… should have seen this coming, is all. He’s used to getting left in the dust while people move onto better things, or whatever.

God, Munson, your voice taunts him from somewhere in his hippocampus, need some help nailing yourself to that crucifix?

Anyway, fuck, Rick called him.

Rick had gotten out of lockup about a month ago– some truncated charge or another that Eddie didn’t bother asking too much about, mostly because… well, Rick hadn’t really been himself. Larger and brighter than the sun itself, the great and powerful lion of a man that oozed life ain’t shit if you ain’t havin’ fun energy, Rick had kind of dimmed. Lost a lot of weight while he was inside. Came back a little bit twitchy and fluent in Spanglish, for some reason.

Eddie was worried, because of all the adult figures in his life, Rick was meant to be the one with levity. He’d lost out on a fun uncle when Wayne stepped into his father-figure role. Al was nothing but a dangerous bit player. Rick, he could rely on.

Thinking back to that infamous day when he had gotten loaded at Lipton Landing, before he picked up you and Ronnie, before he… well, you know the rest but, Eddie had sensed that Rick could use the company. He kind of tried to poke it out of him, whatever was wrong. Didn’t work. They had just watched The Godfather in a tense-ish silence and doofed a lot of joints. Sorta freaked him out.

Eddie’s crushing gravel on the descent to the infamously slanted Lipton Landing for his summons. There’s a hum that seems to traverse the window panes, a fond plucking work that could only belong to Link Wray. He puts the van in park and jogs up the steps to the front door, bracing himself for the pungent plume of skunk smoke that always greets him.

“Eduardo,” Rick’s voice curls around the greeting like smoke curls out of his mouth and he yanks Eddie over the threshold. Door slams, arm tightens around his shoulders. “You’re here.”

Rick’s always a handsy sorta guy–not like that!–but this grab makes him seize a little.

“You rang,” Eddie says, voice lilting, “Everything okay?”

Rick clutches him by the shoulders and looks at him for a long, long time. Uncomfortably long. How has he managed to puff on that joint for this long without choking long.

“No.”

And Rick begins a shuffle toward the kitchen. Eddie follows in an awkward half-step, headache threatening to bloom someplace in the back of his skull because he does not know how much more of this vagueness he can take!

“Does it have anything to do with why you called me down here? Because, shit, I would love to get a straight answer out of someone for once!” A mirthless chuckle follows, trying to soften his desperation.

A flick of the refrigerator door and Rick places two beers on his kitchen counter, hands bracing against the surface. “Then let’s sit crooked and talk straight. It’s about your…”

Hss. Eddie takes a notoriously mis-timed sip.

“...neighbor girl.”

Ffflp– Eddie wishes, just one day of his goddamned life, he could act cool at the mention of you. Even the suggestion of the mention of you. But no, he’s got PBR streaming from his nose like a moron and a look on his face that says uh-oh, spaghettio!

“That’s what I was afraid of,” says Rick, taking a knowingly smooth drink from his beer.

With the heel of his hand, Eddie wipes away his spluttering mess and fumbles around for a crumb of nonchalance.

“I don’t know–”

“Eddie,” Rick levels. God, Eddie hates it when adults are adults, and Rick hates having to act the adult even more.

His shoulders drop. “What about her?”

“Well, when I was in the pen–local, I’ll have you know–I got approached by a very interesting man with a proposition I was powerless to refuse.”

With some trepidation, Eddie mumbles, “Oh, yeah?”

“Someone– well, let’s say me and this someone have a friend in common…”

“Rick–” Eddie’s attempting the leveling thing, but he’s not as good at it as Rick is. Or as you are, for that matter. And you’re who he’s attempting to imitate here, even if he won’t admit it.

“--a certain mutual business partner, if you will–”

“Rick.” Eddie tries to punch through the tension with the big man’s name. “It was Lacy’s dad. Right? You can just say it was her dad.”

Rick’s brow sinks into a wrinkle. “...Lacy? The fuck kind of a dumb name is that?”

“It’s a nickname.” Why does Eddie feel defensive.

“The fuck kind of a dumb nickname is that?”

“They call you Reefer Rick.”

“That is a calculated business decision, a calling card if you w–”

“Rick. Can we close in on the point, here?” Ooh! Seems to actually work this time, much to Eddie’s relief. “I only got so many if you wills left in me.”

“Si, pronto,” Rick nods with apologetic understanding; he’s such an empath, this guy, “Long and short of it is, her pops offered me a little bit of cash and some assistance, iffin’ I promised to keep an eye on her.”

“Assistance…?” Eddie murmured out of the side of his mouth. It’s all in the way Rick says it! “Like…” Hand a loose fist. Jerky-jerk.

“Eddie,” Rick chides, “Assistance gettin’ out. In prison, that is just called bein’ sociable. –anyway, I have this conflict of interest, with the whole surveillance thing.”

“And what is that?”

“You.” The way Rick drops it is obviously meant to cause some kinda ripple effect of realization, but Eddie’s still confused.

“So you… didn’t take the money?”

“Huh?” Now Rick’s all confused. “Of course I took the fuckin’ money! What kind of a chump do I look like, man? What I’m getting at is, I knew that rattin’ on her also meant rattin’ on you.”

“Wh– why would it…”

“I got eyes everywhere, man. Dig? I’ve seen what’s been happening.”

Eddie’s heart leaps into his larynx. Eyes everywhere. And the truth was, you two had been stupid enough to be a lot of everywhere, thinking your respective trailers were the only hot zones. The Bookstore, the Hawk, Main Street Vinyl, Family Video, the diner, you name a Hawkins establishment and it has probably seen Eddie Munson and Lacy Doevski good-naturedly bickering in its aisles.

He wonders if Rick even had eyes in the Ecker trailer. Ronnie could be a Lipton informant. That girl can hold a secret about as well as Wayne Munson can hold his liquor, which is gracefully.

“Nothing’s been happening, we’re just–”

“Eddie.” Like a bulldozer, this guy. “I know Ivana pretty well. You ain’t hangin’ around that bookstore for the good of your health.”

“So what, you’re gonna–,” Eddie can feel himself starting to scramble, starting to sweat, backed into a corner like a hunted animal, “...tell her dad that we went to the movies a couple of times? That I go to her job, that I– that we’re–”

“What are you?” The way Rick puts it to him– rock, meet hard place. Should this really feel like such a tough question to answer?

“Friends.”

Rick draws up to his full height (tall, mountain man) and looks at him like he just shoved a cream pie into his face.

“It doesn’t matter, okay!” Eddie froths over, like a snapping dog, “We’re barely hanging out– anymore– so you can… you’re not gonna tell him anything, are you?”

Rick’s hands slowly, slowly rise, urging him to calm the yapping. No need to get into such a tizzy. Which Eddie wishes he could believe.

“‘course not, man,” he shakes his head, “Ray Doevski only needs to know what Ray Doevski absolutely needs to know.” Eddie can feel a little more weight behind that sentence than he’d like. “No reason you need to figure into this story.”

“That– that’s it? You’re not gonna tell him about u– about me?”

“You’re in enough of a shitheap as it is, is how I see it.” A beat. Rick takes him in; really takes him in. Feels like an embrace, his stare. Concern uncrinkles the ever-present smile in Rick’s eyes.

“Eddie, you care about this girl?”

Eddie’s mouth attempts to form around an answer, but he’s just blinking into nothing. Does he care about you? Does he care about you? He wants, needs to say no, to pfft you off, but every molecule is screaming otherwise. And Rick can sense it, operating on the extraterrestrial level that he does.

“Then I’m real sorry.”

“For what?”

As if on cue, car wheels on gravel shuck Rick’s attention away from him. His eyeballs jitter in his head, heading for the door– Eddie close behind him. “Sorry for what, Rick–?!”

“Little bit for that, little bit for… this.”

Standing in the window of Rick’s living room, these two watch an offensively red muscle car skew into the driveway, making a mockery of Eddie’s beat up van. The driver’s door pops open and the first thing Eddie clocks is a blinding glint off some brand new aviator sunglasses.

The second is that trademark Munson smile.

—

“This is exciting!” Nancy Wheeler says, kind of flatly but with a conviction buried deep under her curled bangs.

On the table sits two piles of playing cards, one steadily growing and one steadily decreasing.

You two had taken to playing gin rummy when staring at paper layouts became a little too much. Technically, she actually had a say in layout and you were just nosy, but it’s a decent excuse to hang out. Though, both you and Nancy had this incredible tendency to hyperfocus on detail so hard that neither of you could pull the other out far enough to look at the big picture, so one day she tossed a deck of cards your way and said, “Deal!”

“I know,” you say, trying to focus on these melds of suits you’re making– that discard pile is looking poor, “Fresh turn for me, y’know? Less fluffy, more Didion.”

Nancy snorts softly, swapping out a card from her hand. “Who does that make Eddie? Charlie? Or Linda Kasabian?”

A smile dances across your lips and you shrug, reaching for a cigarette before you go for another card. Usually, smoking in the newsroom was prohibited, as it was prohibited on most of Hawkins High grounds, but whenever that deck came out, you felt it was appropriate for at least one of you to be smoking. Gave a kind of Torchy Blane feel to the whole scenario which fit you and Wheeler pret-ty keenly, if you did say so yourself.

“That’s not what I was talking about, though,” Nancy says, poking Fred Benson’s empty mug toward you to use as an ashtray.

Your eyes narrow; this could be a play to distract you from a winning hand.

“It’s not?”

“No…” she puffs out another soft scoff, meeting your eyes over her fan of cards, “I mean the college guy.”

“Why is it exciting?” and you do want to know why Nancy thinks so. She’s a mile wiser beyond her years, even precocious enough to keep in step with you most of the time. You’d like her take.

“Well, it’s what you wanted, right?” she tells you, watching you puff your cigarette and dig into the stock pile. “Somebody older, decidedly not a grabby high school boy– but someone with more experience, both with girls and with being outside of Hawkins. And the fact he goes to Vassar means–”

“He probably eats kitty like a maniac.”

Nancy lets out this full-bodied Merlot of a laugh, only a little color dashing over her cheeks. She’s gotten used to you being provocative on purpose because it gets a laugh out of her. So far grown out of the prude shoes you were sure she was still sporting. You’re proud of her.

“Not exactly what I was getting at but– more sensitive to the female perspective, sure.” But then she registers what you forgot you’d even dropped. “Hold on, probably? You mean you haven’t–...”

You shrug. It’s a little withdrawn on your part.

“Oh,” Nancy says, and seems to be leaning a degree or two towards unsurprised. That ruffles your feathers a little bit. Again, with the frigid thing. You couldn’t shake it.

“No,” you emphasize, shucking your pitiful melds back again. “It's not as if we haven't–done things. I've copped a handful. Time is of the essence, and I take, y'know, a little more time to get there.”

“So no return on investment...?”

"Not... yet."

Nancy almost tosses her cards at you, the way she jabs them through the air. “You? You, the one who’s been preaching Betty Friedman to me, you haven't been getting–”

“Yes, me! Did you not hear me about time and the essence?”

“I know, it’s just– a little surprising.”

There have been exactly three instances of almost you tying your panties to the rearview mirror of college boy’s Ford Cortina, so to speak, and you’ve come out of each one with this desperate echo of oh well! Maybe next time! careening around your skull. Like you’re trying to convince yourself that by virtue of him not being in your grade, this has been a worthwhile way to spend your time. And listen, no misunderstandings here, it has! At least, part of it. It usually starts like this– the two of you grab some shitty diner coffee or some shitty diner food and then he takes you around in his car for a turn or two, admiring that famous Hawkins scenery (see: shuttered businesses and if you’re really lucky, that one mangy fox that feasts on the overflowing trash can near the Big Buy). You talk (you mostly talk) books and movies and say something that should be a hook of conversation but usually ends up with him screwing his face up in amusement and saying something along the lines of, “God, you’re so beyond this place.”

Which, duh. You’ve been saying this. This is the raft upon which your whole identity floats.

The exchange dies in the air and he puts his hand on your leg and that is just… wonderful. He’s a solid B on the kissing GPA, and he’s cute and sort of funny, even if he doesn’t rally back jokes the way you’d… sort of gotten used to. Sometimes he makes a halfway-interesting observation about like, Philip Roth or somebody. But when it comes down to the minute of it, it still feels like going through the motions. Fumble bra strap, catch nail on his zipper, crank back passenger seat to climb in the back. Hey presto, you’ve distractedly jerked off a boy once again.

You are not entirely sold on the fit of his hands on your body, even if he doesn’t look at you like he’s just solved a Rubik’s cube.

In fact, he kind of looks at you like you’re precious. Virginal precious. Innocent precious. Which you’re not totally sold on either.

Nothing about him that makes you fantasize about what his mouth might feel like on you. What your fingers might feel like wound around his curls. His hair doesn’t even curl. There’s just nothing about him that calls for your full attention.

“Think there might be a reason for that?” Nancy, your annoyingly perceptive Nancy, presses. Goddamn intrepid girl reporter. She hasn’t stopped staring at you with that smug little look. You haven’t answered the question. “And it might be… living across the way from you?”

“Tch. What?” you snip. “I’m… having fun. What?”

“Nothing,” she smiles. “Just… gin.”

She lays out her dazzling melds, complete with a measly goddamned three in deadwood cards and you toss your own bullshit hand to the side. A dumb amount of spades that add up to nothing scatter across the desk. An accusatory finger jams in her direction.

“You are a fucking card shark.”

“Nope!” Nancy says, popping her ‘p’, “I just know a really great set when I see one.”

Reaching into Fred’s mug, you crush your cigarette with a little too much force. Now, how would Nancy have a read on that? you think, oblivious to your own obviousness. (Like a neon sign. Like a circus tent.)

You hadn’t even reminded her of the catastrophic events of her thirteenth birthday which led to a whole lot of this awkwardness, which, now that you thought about it, actually implicated her in the crime of you kissing Eddie Munson ‘til you were breathless in Granny Ecker’s closet.

If you hadn’t been born and had a birthday, I wouldn’t be in a spiral over some boy with a curl pattern like a fucking backwoods libertine.

“You’re not clever,” you tell her, but she’s looking at you all cleverly, “Like. You’re clever, but I need you to know that you’re not clever.”

With flicking fingernails, Nancy picks up your discarded cards and folds them neatly back in the deck.

“I’m just saying,” and the tone she takes is a little gentler now, “don’t… let yourself miss out on something just because, I don’t know, the thing you’re currently having fun with is what you think you want. What you feel you want and what you think you want are two very different–”

“This isn’t entirely about me, is it?” you realize, defenses peeling down a little bit. The Nancy and Steve of it all had been looming since your (admittedly triumphant!) visit to the war memorial that was the boy’s bathroom. Still no sign of that place getting fixed, by the by. And ever still, Nancy hadn’t told Steve about their little mission. Many a reason for that, you were led to believe. Not a lot she wanted to dissect, though.

Nancy’s face scrunches up and she stops packing the cards.

“No. But let’s pretend like it is.”

A groan escapes you as you sink back into your chair, a twinge of pain running along your shoulders.

“Nance. This is all so much more complicated than you realize.”

“Try me.”

You toss a hand through your hair, slapping your palm down on the desk.

“Fine. But if I tell you this–”

A hand rises out between the two of you– yours, pinkie extended.

“Not a word,” you press.

Nancy clamps her finger around yours in a way that enforces how super-serious she is about this. The reason your usual reserve doesn’t hold up under that x-ray stare of hers is because you can tell she actually gives a shit. She’s not looking for gossip. She cares. Which is still an entirely alien feeling to you.

So the whole thing spills out. Steve’s party, the record store, getting locked up in Eddie’s trailer and getting locked up in feelings, Roane County Quarry’s incredible acoustics, the friendship that made you fold all the neatly arranged origami parts of yourself out toward him only to realize you had no idea how to fold them back. The kiss. The subsequent awkwardness of said kiss. The college guy. The relative radio silence. The fact that…

“...I don’t feel like myself when he’s not around,” you say, lighting a fourth cigarette off your third. “Isn’t that silly? I spent all this time painting this like, fabulous eggshell of myself then this wild-eyed, smart-mouthed, catastrophic ass smashes it clean open and now–”

“All the college boys couldn’t put you together again,” Nancy nods. “You’re a very beautiful Humpty Dumpty.”

“... does Humpty Dumpty die in the end?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be teaching it to kids.”

“No. They should know. The fall comes for us all.”

There’s a suspended silence. You get this feeling like you’ve emptied your purse on the table and you still can’t find that thing you’re looking for, despite sifting through everything.

“How does that even happen?” you question, biting at the skin on your little finger. Not Humpty Dumpty, the Eddie thing. It comes out idle, but you pray that Nancy, with her feelings scalpel and surgical precision, doesn't decide to answer it.

Instead, she says, “You need a photographer for that piece.”

Thatta girl. Your dimmer switch turns up. “Fred hasn’t even okayed it yet.”

“I’ll deal with William Randolph Hearst, okay?” Nancy says derisively and tosses her eyes to heaven. She pushes her chair back. “Ask Jonathan Byers.”

“He hasn’t taken photos for us in a while,” you remark, eyes searching Nancy. She’s readying herself to leave, so totally dodging this line of questioning before you can even cast it. Clever.

“No, he has not,” she sighs, winding her scarf around her neck, “But he’d be good for this. He knows how to capture action. And his kid brother plays DnD with mine, so this’d be, like… nice for them.”

And this is just as much me making amends with Jonathan Byers as it is you, backwards as it may seem, you nearly hear her say. Or you’re making that up.

Shame Nancy is so dead set on becoming the next Nellie Bly. Under the right circumstances, she’d make a hell of a normal person.

Good thing you prefer freaks.

—

Jonathan Byers is a notoriously hard boy to get a hold of, it turns out. Nancy passed along his number (which, you actually already had but you didn’t bring that little detail up) and when you finally punched it in on the yellowing phone nailed to the wall of your trailer, it rang and rang and rang.

Which, after the fourth time, was just rude. Do the Byers have a thing about not answering the phone, or something?

“Jonathan!” you holler across the parking lot, emerging from the passenger side of Nancy’s car this time.

College guy was decidedly busy and despite the hanging tension, you’d toyed with the idea of asking Eddie for a ride. Alas, the boy in the Dio patched battle vest was nowhere to be seen. His van hadn’t been there since the weekend and he had been MIA from school the last couple of days, actually, which was itching at you.

It also made you miss when you had a goddamn set of wheels at your disposal.

Anyway, Jonathan looks at you with flaring eyes, kind of like you’ve just stuck a shotgun to his snout and there’s no hope of him making a getaway. “Um…”

Now, keep in mind that these are the first words you’ve spoken to him in a measurable high school forever, so his surprise is entirely justified. It’s just not within the beam of your patience right now.

“Hi. Can we chat?” you say, falling in step with him as you head towards the front door. You don’t bother asking for permission, and forgiveness won’t be necessary. “I was hoping you could help me out with a piece for the Streak.”

Blink, blink. Jonathan’s grasping for words– seems to be a lot of that going around lately.

You strike your hand through the air. “Let me put it to you like this– you are going to help me out with a piece for the Streak.”

“Why?” he asks, and it’s prickly.

“Becauuuse,” you draw out, “I need a photographer. And god knows whenever Nicole attempted to work a lens, those snapshots were so out-of-focus they looked like an optical illusion.”

“And, you’re not talking to Nicole right now,” Jonathan nails you, but not totally. In your mind, you revisit flashes of Nicole recounting, in gloriously erroneous detail, those photos Jonathan had taken of Nancy. You had pretended to be scandalized and rolled your eyes, thinking what’s a little peep show among losers.

“Even if I was,” you say, dogging Jonathan all the way to his locker, “I still wouldn’t ask her. This is important to me.”

That avoidant Byers reserve stands strong, with Jonathan grabbing books in hurried succession. He is trying to get away from you, but that’s not happening without an emphatic yes!

“I don’t even really–”

“Take pictures anymore?” you pfft, pointing to his messenger bag, “Twenty bucks says your camera is in there and the film’s half shot.”

“I don’t have twenty bucks.”

“Me neither,” you shrug, “Spent it on that new Echo & the Bunnymen.”

Jonathan hesitates a bit, fingers strumming against his biology textbook. A thread of something long forgotten by the listening booths of Main Street Vinyl tugs between you both, but it’s not weighed down by the prospect of will we kiss about it. He kind of smiles.

“What did you think? I haven’t gotten down to hear it yet.”

You thought it made you want a flowing dress and a place to prance. Like if the more whimsical end of Fleetwood Mac didn’t exhaust you. Those last four tracks snapped your heartstrings like suspenders, with comical aplomb.

“Grandiose! That ‘Killing Moon’ song? It’s got Jonathan Byers written all over it,” you chirp, and mean it. “I’ll make you a copy if you put that camera to work for me.”

He shrugs, but you can see you’re wearing him down. “I’m not much for shooting pep rallies.”

“Liar. Wheeler says you’re top banana in the action shots department,” you counter, “But how about players? I think I want some portraits, too. Non-corny ones.”

“What team?” Jonathan screws up his nose. The distaste for jockery runs deep, and rightfully so.

But you shake your head, face curving into an expression of near excitement.

“No team. Better, and worse, depending on what side of the cafeteria you’re sitting,” your hands splay out, and for god’s sake, you feel like Munson himself, “Hellfire Club.”

Jonathan looks like his record’s skipped. Eyeballs sort of jiggle in his skull and he mouths, oh, like the association of you between Hellfire should mean something. Suspiciously like Nancy, and just suspicious period. Your eyebrows start to inch towards one another.

“What’s that look? Does that mean you’ll do it?”

“Um,” he dillies, then dallies, “Sure. Yeah. You know, my kid brother loves DnD.”

Ah, yes. The other Byers boy, the one who’d gone missing all that time ago. You remembered. Actually, you remembered not being able to figure out how you should feel about it– how you should act, other than falling in line with the majority of people who were giving Jonathan shit at the time. You regret that now, with a chill that runs right down to your toes.

“Could be cool for him to see, no?” you try, corner of your mouth lifting, “A little niche in the midst the high school horrors. To look forward to, y’know.”

The look on Jonathan’s face is more than a little bit screaming, that’s rich, coming from you, you were the high school horror. But he shakes it off, because he’s nicer than you are, even though he doesn’t need to be.

“Yeah… whatever you say, Lacy. When do you need me?”

You tell him Friday and he agrees, much to your satisfaction. You’re just about to punch him on the shoulder like teamwork, buddy! before he saves you such a wildly out-of-character display by dodging toward his homeroom.

You sail toward your locker like the bastard that’s risen alongside the cream, only to be greeted by something… strange. Scratches, all around the maudlin gray paintwork of your combination lock. Like it’d been tampered with, or something. A blaze of paranoia burns at the base of your skull, and you instinctively try to recount where your journal is… in your bag. Phew. Fine. This could be… anything.

Fingers reach forward to twist your lock, and with the slightest touch, the door is forced open by a push from the other side. A flash of bright red, then SPLAT. Yellow, SPLAT, blue, SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLAT! You shriek a real ear-piercing shriek as at least a dozen water balloons spill out of your locker, hitting the floor with an obscene smack. Water dashes everywhere, and you’re barely able to move out of the splash zone in time.

“What the fuck!’

Within seconds, there’s a hubbub and a crowd’s gathering, trading sickening snickers with one another as you peer into the dark of your locker. You gingerly step through the puddle, suede boots irreparably spattered, and yank the door the whole way open. There, sat atop your schoolbooks and a stray water balloon that hadn’t made the fall, is a horribly familiar set of test tubes.

In one of them sits a squirt of blue liquid and that offensive strip of plastic. And scrawled across it in clumsy black marker?

IT’S A FREAK!

Realization hits you like Carol did, making your head swim among all the murmurs of oh my god… and gross! and told you–trailer trash and unconcealed cackles. A voice sparks up like a sizzling ember in a swathe of darkness.

“Where’s your baby daddy at, Lacy? Get tossed in the slammer with your old man?”

The languid tones of none other than Billy All-Balls-No-Brains Hargrove drift by you, sailing right past the back of your head as you stare a hole through the innards of your locker. Then, your stupid hippocampus gears up– Robin, mentioning ‘your whole thing’ while Genovese baby-barfed her guts up, Ronnie urging her to shut the fuck up, even Jonathan Byers was privy to this hot little piece of gossip.

This theory that you were up the spout with Munson Junior Junior.

How many people had seen you, stupid little you, coming out of that drugstore hiking that Advance box over your head like the championship cup? Seen you hopping into Eddie’s van– and out of it, and back in again on what now seemed like countless occasions?

Nobody could have suspected it was Nancy’s test, because nobody saw her. They saw you. That was the whole idea. You just didn’t consider the blowback.

“What’s going on out here?” the softly-coated concern of Ms Kelley rings out in the hallway, doing absolutely nothing to disperse the peanut gallery that’s set up around your locker.

“Lacy?” her voice points to you. Even the goddamn guidance counselor uses your beloved nickname.

You don’t react. You don’t even know what you’re doing until you come to a couple of paces down the hallway, feeling the thin, straining rubber in the palm of your hand. Your footsteps make heavy, wet, slapping noises against the linoleum as you follow the half-slouched shouldered swagger of Billy Hargrove down the hall.

Down, and down, and down towards the boy’s locker room and he doesn’t even register it, and you don’t even register that Ms Kelley is still calling your name–your full name, now–until she’s two dozen paces behind you, losing you in the throng of students making their way to class and you shove past half-dressed seniors in the locker room who guffaw at you in a way that feels like a knife in your gut and you yell, voice shaking–

“Hey Billy!”

And launch the water balloon, making square contact with his smug face.

“Cute fucking prank!”

His reaction, predictably, is way too slowww moooootion for your fucking liking, so you don’t even give him a shot to fully wipe his face off and mumble, “What the fuuuuck is yourrrr probbbblemmm, ssssllluuuutttt…”

You just go for him with the ferocity of a jumping jackal. Hands ball in his stupid sleeveless flannel (it’s winter in Indiana, you West Coast jackass!) and you shove him against the lockers with– well, with the strength only an ex-cheerleader brimming with suffocated rage would have.

Metal clatters and one empty unit even careens over like a big tin domino and you say, “Come up with that idea all by yourself, you fucking nimrod?”

Billy just smirks at you in half-speed, mullet sopping, as if this is a come-on. “I had a little help.”

It occurs to you that right here, right now, you could sell Nancy Wheeler down the river. You could be the you you once were, and you could say, well, primo observation skills, that pregnancy test wasn’t even for me!

But you don’t, because a pinky promise is a fucking pinky promise.

You let go of Billy’s shirt. Step off. “You’re pathetic,” you spit, but it feels more pathetic coming from you. All that molten blood in your veins makes you want to eviscerate him and whoever else was involved in orchestrating this stupid, stupid, stupid prank. But you come up lacking. Fuck!

Tears prickle at the corners of your eyes and you start to rush out of the locker room– but you’ve given Billy a reason now, and he’s gonna follow you.

“Shit, are you crying? Those hormones must have you really messed up, huh?” he faux-croons, the thunk-thunk of his poseur motorcycle boots following you to the back entrance, by the sports equipment. Your eyes are streaming freely now, lashes frantically blinking a path to vision.

But Billy isn’t letting up. And like the Pied Piper of slimeballs, he’s drawing followers– not least of which include Tommy Hagan.

“What about that college dropout you’re banging, Lacy?” his nasally tone slices through Billy’s tarry taunting. “He know you’re knocked up yet?”

“Jesus Christ, Doevski! I’m impressed,” Billy laughs, “Just how many loads are you taking?”

An abandoned baseball bat lies on the ground, having rolled out of the sports closet; instinct behind the wheel of your personal van, you stoop to pick it up and shove through the doors. You can nearly feel the breath of Hargrove and Hagan and all of these horrific, horrific boys with nothing better to do than to torture you hot on the back of your neck.

“Not yours, that’s for fucking sure,” you manage, your voice thick. The bat, at least, feels solid in your hand.

“It’s fun not being frigid, ain’t it, Lacy?” Billy goes on, and you squint against the sunlight as you round the building. “Tell me this, Munson teach you how to suck cock yet? ‘cause if not, I got a little time on my hands.”

Forging ahead, you cross the tarmac of the parking lot. The soft frost hasn’t even totally thawed out yet, sparkling atop the paintwork of Billy’s blue Camaro.

“That a fact, Billy?” you say, tears drying in quick streaks in that brisk morning air, leaving rivets in your made-up face.

You use your momentum to launch one foot onto the hood of Billy’s car, then the other. You nearly slip against the icy exterior, but steady yourself fast. Bat dangling at your side. Stomp. Stomp. You stand on the roof, and turn to face this congregation of assholes. You do not let sense set in, despite it threatening to inch through the white hot flame of your rage.

“What the fuck are you doing,” Billy outright cackles and Hagan and company guffaw along with him.

“Billy,” you sigh, a little breathless from the speed at which you’d booked it from the locker room to the parking lot, and the sheer vigor of your shock, awe and rancor, and everything else, “What the hell am I supposed to do with your limp dick in my mouth? Chew on the fuckin’ thing?”

Billy repeats himself, a touch darker now. “What the fuck are you doing.”

“I’m serious!” you say, a little shrill, a little stomp to punctuate that last word, “One thing you can say for Eddie Munson, is at least the motherfucker can get hard!”

Motorcycle boots advance towards you, and you point the bat at him like a broadsword.

“Do not. Come any closer. Or I’m gonna start doing some serious damage to this ugly piece of overcompensation.”

“She’s bluffing,” Hagan crows, and you turn your flaming glare on him. You wish you had a mirror– you wonder if crazy becomes you. Billy takes a pointed step forward and you raise the bat above your, head bracing for action– that’s enough movement for him.

“Gimme that bat, you stupid fucking cunt–!” But Billy’s cut short by a body barrelling into the side of him, knocking him askew. A jangle of denim and leather. The bat slips a little in your grasp.

“Get the fuck off of me Munson–”

“No way to talk to a lady, Billy!” Eddie gasps, tossing Billy back and letting his limbs hang. “You kiss Karen Wheeler with that mouth?”

Billy rounds on him like a triggered animal, spittle flying.

“Some fucking lady!” he snarls, “Got downgraded to that trailer park and now her snooty ass is spreading it for half of Hawkins! Desperate! Stringin’ you along like the dumb piece of shortbus shit you a–”

Activated, you throw that bat to the fucking wayside and scramble off the fucking car– nobody talks to him like that!

But you’re not fast enough, nobody’s fast enough, nobody can compete with how huge and booming and definite Eddie’s voice sounds when he says, smile glimmering, sun breaking through the bleak midwinter…

“You know what I like about you, Hargrove?”

THKUNCK. Bone to bone, fist meet fucking flesh–

“Nothin’.”

A scuffle goes up, and Eddie can’t even feel the hits of Hargrove’s hands connecting with his face, chest, ribs, wherever– all he can feel are your arms locking in vice around his waist, putting yourself in the eye of the storm in order to yank him back.

—

You got an elbow to the crown of the head, which isn’t too bad, even if you feel like a cartoonish lump should be rising there. But look at these other guys.

Billy with a black eye that’s bulging up rapidly, Eddie with a split lip and more than a couple of scratches on his knuckles. In that fray, he hadn’t exactly considered the implications of punching a guy with all his goddamned rings on. The implications being that shit hurt like hell. There is this radiating pain in his hand, not letting him unfurl his fingers completely.

There’s also this radiating feeling of dread cloaking his entire upper half as you sit three-to-the-wall outside Higgins’ office. You had, in Eddie’s estimation, incredibly bad timing.

See, considering the events of his past week, he was slowly making peace with the fact that he should probably be avoiding you entirely, even if that meant he died a little inside. He should have been doing that from the jump– but you, unbuttoned and reckless now apparently, kept requiring interventions so you didn’t get killed, or worse.

And Eddie couldn’t help himself when it came to you. Especially not when you were standing on top of Billy Hargrove’s sick Camaro, swinging a baseball bat and getting called some shit that no one should ever be calling you.

You’re out of control. Totally unsheathed. End of your rope. Unlaced.

And he’d do just about anything to keep you safe.

Even fuck up his guitar-playing hand. Which is also his…

“I can’t believe you fucking suckerpunched me,” Hargrove mumbles from your left. “With those ugly fucking rings on.”

Eddie can’t help himself, the last shred of propriety knocked out round about the time a knee to the ribs had winded him. “Aw. Billy. Don’t be so hard on yourself–”

“Eddie…,” you start, tone warning in a way that makes him want to pinch you, kind of. He leans towards Hargrove, meaning he’s leaning over you. Hair brushing across your shoulder. You notice that it smells distinctively skunkier than usual. Camping out at Lipton Landing?

“--honestly! You’re no sucker!” he implores, eyes shining in jest, “You totally had that coming!”

You hear Billy seething from his end, Eddie snickering from his and launch a well-timed arm in front of both of them before they can snap at it again.

“Cut it out, assholes! This is becoming increasingly more pigheaded.”

“And you’re the voice of perfect reason now, huh?” Eddie sneers, not giving you much breathing room. “Where’s the bat at, Babe Ruth?”

“In the parking lot, waiting to finish you off,” you grit back, nearly nose-to-nose with him, because you don’t know how to digest the guilt of his aching fingers.

“What are you mad at me for?” Eddie hisses, a smirk threatening to break his scowl, because he doesn’t know how not to provoke you.

“Knocking her up, probably,” Billy mumbles from the side.

“Shut up, Hargrove!” you both snap, eyes never leaving one another.

Higgins’ door creaks open and a quietly livid Ms Kelley says, “Lacy.” She jerks her head, motioning for you to up and at ‘em. You do, but not without one last look at Eddie, cradling his hand. Round, bottomless irises meet yours for a moment, then dart away with an impact that thickens your throat.

His poor hand, you find yourself thinking.

“He needs an ice pack…” you find yourself mumbling, Kelley shuffling you into Higgins’ office. The principal sits behind his beat-up desk, fingers steepled. You absently wonder if he’s been campaigning for a new, shinier, possibly more oaken desk because this doesn’t paint the picture of threatening figurehead that he so clearly wants you to tremble under.

You accidentally kick the thing, crossing your legs as you sit. “Sorry.”

“You should be,” Higgins declares. Here we fucking go.

“Permission to state my case?” you attempt. This hadn’t been your first time in the principal’s office; minor classroom infractions, a saccharine we’ll do everything to help that we can after your dad’s arraignment, but this time was certainly the worst.

“Denied,” he shoots you down.

“Permission to submit a plea of temporary insanity, then,” you try, patting at the sore spot on the crown of your head. “You know this doesn’t bode with my track record. You think I climbed on top of Billy Hargrove’s car completely compos mentis? Please.”

A tense silence from Higgins’ and Kelley’s end.

“You saw what Hargrove did, didn’t you? That disgusting prank?”

Again, nada.

“I’m a honor student, for Chrissake!” you exclaim, and Kelley plucks herself from the windowsill behind Higgins’ desk.

“Were an honor student, Ms Doevski,” she corrects. “Your grades have been slipping since– the events of the last couple of months. You’ve dropped cheerleading, you’ve made really puzzling false claims about peer tutoring, you…”

“Yes! Yes, the events of the last couple of months, if by which you mean familial imprisonment, then yes, I’ve been a little distracted!”

Higgins kicks back in his seat just as you hitch forward in yours, too angry to be pleading but too desperate to defy. His turn to mutter here we fucking go.

“I can turn this around,” redirected to Ms Kelley and her ever-sympathetic expression, “I can turn this around.”

“College applications deadlines are within touching distance, Lacy.” She of little faith.

“I know that!” As if your hands aren’t itching every time college guy mentions Ithaca or… wherever the fuck it is he goes. As if that isn’t a crack in the assuredness that you were going to take flight out of this town in a spectacular fashion.

“Ladies– can we dispense with the hysteria and deal with the here and now?” Higgins insists and you and Kelley, despite your opposition, share a look.

World class, this guy. Top of his field, asshole-wise.

“Two week suspension should do it,” he says, jotting something down.

You open your mouth in protest and Kelley quells you– you’re in no position to start bargaining down.

“Technically, she didn’t do anything,” and for good measure, but pressed, “Sir.”

“She climbed on top of that boy’s car with a baseball bat!” Higgins barks; now who’s hysteric?! “She had intent to do harm!”

“It was justified.” You can’t help yourself.

Kelley stares him down, and that woman’s charm is something that should be studied in a fucking lab, because he relents right away.

“Two weeks of Saturday detention, then. Christ. Am I going soft?”

You shake your head, all the knots in your body releasing just a little bit. You try to dig out what’s left of your once-famously refined charm, while simultaneously dashing towards the door before he can change his mind.

“Au contraire. You’re a paragon of masculinity, sir. Regan could take a hint. Door open or closed?”

Higgins grimaces. “Send in Hargrove. Tell Munson he’s suspended. I don’t have time for both of those pricks today.”

Eddie’s voice travels through the crack in the door. “I heard that, sir.” A beat. “I miss you, sir.”

You bite back a deeply reluctant laugh and jerk your head toward Billy. You’re up, champ.

Then, it’s the two of you. You and Eddie, Eddie and you. Alone, save for the ever watchful jam jar eyes of Janice the secretary. Eddie is still nestling one hand in the other like it’s a baby bird with a broken wing. Shit, you really hope it isn’t broken.

“You’re suspended. They told me to tell you.” It’s a statement made to turkey-stuff the silence more than anything.

The way Eddie lolls his head back makes you want to reach out and push it in the opposite direction. You don’t know why.

“You’re a regular town crier, ain’t ya.”

“Hear ye, hear ye.”

A leaden pause. Your hearts might have thumped both in time just now.

“Wanna get out of here?” he asks.

“No leaving school grounds,” Janice unhelpfully squawks.

Eddie gets up, drawing himself to his full height. Your eyelids flutter. There’s a little purple around that cut on his lip, which you bet is starting to throb something awful. You feel dwarfed beside him, and he uses his good hand to turn you by the shoulder and shuffle you past the nosy secretary’s post.

“I meant the sick bay, Janice,” Eddie pelts, giving each vowel sound a hard flick. “I’m wounded. And she’s apparently pregnant. Or didn’t you hear?”

—

The nurse’s office is tiny and cramped, smelling of bleach with a glaring fluorescent overhead. Eddie has a hard time figuring out why anyone would come here to feel better. Especially given that Nurse Lydia is barely ever present.

Eddie carpes the opportunity to slam himself down on her rolling saddle chair, gliding into your path as you try and snoop around for first aid materials.

“I don’t think you should be driving that thing,” you remark, “You could be concussed. You’re acting concussed.”

“It’s keeping me awake!”

Eddie watches you, digging through drawers and pulling out tongue depressors, your teeth making an indent into your bottom lip. Your eyes are doing that darty thing, quietly frantic in place of an apology. You don’t know how to say sorry you got wailed on by Hargrove for me. Instead, you’re acting like he’s bleeding out.

“Lace, just wait for the professional.”

The clip of your nickname makes you toss your stare over your shoulder, hardness framing your eyes like mascaraed lashes. Eddie stops rolling around at once.

“I am the goddamn professional, as far as you’re concerned.” Your little chin jerks towards the exam table that’s beat into the corner of the room. “Get on the bed.”

Whack-a-mole. Woodpecker. Other euphemisms for his cock developing a pulse. Eddie has to physically restrain his jaw from dropping.

“Yes, Nurse Ratched.”

Scoffing out a little fuck you!, you go about scrambling together supplies and Eddie obediently launches himself onto the bed, the ancient thing creaking beneath him. When you finally approach him, you seem to be holding a lot of alcohol pads.

The look before you admit to a shortcoming is one he wants framed. You always flick your eyes around like a guilty cartoon character, like Betty Boop on her way to gaining a doctorate in the pretentiousness of the English language, and pout. Lean your neck in, like you’re swearing him to secrecy.

“I actually don’t know anything about first aid. Beyond the rudimentaries.”

Eddie chuckles. “You were a cheerleader. You were getting thrown in the air a whole bunch, if I recall. Feels like you should know how to like, resuscitate.”

“Rudimentaries, I said!” and you grab his injured hand a little roughly, alcohol pad torn out and ready, “Like, I obviously know alcohol disinfects a wound, ice for a bruise… I don’t know how to, like, reset a bone. Besides…”

You inch closer to him now, wiping at his torn and tender knuckles a little too carefully. They’re just stupid cuts, Eddie thinks, his breath beginning to shallow.

“...that Cat People remake was premiering at the Hawk the day we had first aid training. Like I was going to miss that.”

He can feel heat radiating off your body, a core change for cold little you. Feel the fabric of your skirt brush the rip in his jeans. A little choked, he mumbles, “Cat People is a remake?”

“Based on the 1942 original,” you nod, flicking the tiny used pad in the nearby trash can. “I like it. But I like that David Bowie song more.”

“That song sucks.”

“You’re injured and wrong. What a shame.” Your fingers close around Eddie’s wrist and slowly, slowly press his forearm to his chest. “Keep that elevated.”

“It’s not broken,” and he’s staring at the quiet tremble in your bottom lip.

“Could be sprained,” head cast down again, tearing open another pad, and he can smell your hair, “Does it hurt?”

Eddie doesn’t answer right away, because he’s waiting for you to look back up. Because he thinks he’s going to carpe something else.

You fall for it, and your eyes sucker him in. He feels weak in the joints. You repeat yourself. “Does it hurt, Eddie?”

He just nods, boyishly. Nearly passes out when your fingertips tilt his face towards the light. Skin buzzing underneath them, you peering at his mouth like you know what you’re doing. The slit in his lip feels raw and strained.

“This’ll hurt, too,” you murmur, and he feels your breath against his jaw. A sharp prick from the alcohol against his cut doesn’t make him wince– worse. As you swipe the cotton against his bottom lip, he whimpers. Unh.

Oxygen stops short in your throat, hearing that. That noise. It sends a wave of motion through your lower body. You’re leaning awfully close to him, closer than you need to be. In fact, his knees are settled either side of your hips. How did that happen. When did that happen. How did you allow this.

How are you allowing your fingertip to trace against his lip, alcohol evaporating without a hope or a prayer. How are you allowing yourself to look at him through the fan of your lashes, his injured hand still obediently propped against his chest. His good hand pressing into your lower back.

You taste the vagueness of the disinfectant on his lips as he presses them into yours.

Jerking back, you’re not far enough away from him to create a distance that matters. All you see are Eddie’s eyes, flickering open, apologetic in themselves. About to tell you he’s sorry.

No.

Hands fly, one woven in the curls at the base of his skull as you kiss up into him, tongue an impolite peak. This is not the closet; this is arguably far more dangerous, with the nurse’s door still open a courteous gap. This is the harsh light of day. This is Eddie’s hand moving your skirt further up the curve of your ass.

He’s grabbing onto you as best a one-armed man can, and your hand travels in turn. A jagged, fevered path drawing up his thigh until, under your palm, is the hard outline of him. The pressure of your hand over the denim-bound curvature of his cock makes him groan sharply, the sound pressed against your cheek.

Face angles back for a look at him. Because this is bad, mindless, reckless, stupid. And he’s always worth a look.

You spot a tiny speck of blood on the pink of his lip from where his cut had split.

And your curious tongue flicks at it.

Eddie’s eyes flare. You, unable to unglue your stare from his, suck his lightly bleeding lip between yours. Fragile. Crushable.

He did this for you.

No one’s ever cared, or known you enough, to do something like that for you.

Desire moves you like a shockwave and your hand leaves his crotch to help you clamber onto the exam table, clamber into Eddie’s lap.

Downright idiotic.

You cast a glance to the door, Eddie’s fraught breath puffing against your neck.

Thought you were a smart girl.

You look right into his face, the poster boy for sheer distraction, pre-occupation, skin-searing annoyance, nervous charm, surprising wit, magnetism, oh my… and feel his fingers edging far past the hem of your skirt, past the binding top of the thigh-highs you’re wearing because it’s fucking laundry day and stopping at the gusset of your panties.

He can feel how wet you are.

Lips a breath away from each other, one set bleeding, one set housing a gasp. Eddie nudges his forehead against yours, the both of you blind to consequence.

“Just friends, right?” His breath is jagged and unconvinced, and your hips kick toward his hand.

You do not answer.

Unbruised fingers push the fabric covering your radiating heat aside and you have to tighten your grip around the back of his neck so as not to tumble over. Eddie is not deft, because this isn’t the moment to be deft. He plunges two fingers into the plush of your pussy and looks to you with pleading eyes. Eyes that say, is this good, eyes that say, don’t make a sound.

You nod in the affirmative to both and he drags his digits out slowly. Rhythm picks up and you’re clenching around Eddie’s hand in a matter of minutes, lower muscles seizing and het-up moans being gratefully swallowed by him. Pad of his thumb moves to create rough, clumsy friction against your clit that elicits a sharp, high, wanton ah! from you, grinding against him in an unquenchable search for more.

“Does he do this? Does anyone do this for you, Lacy?”

Eddie’s eyes keep searching you for approval and you’ve lost the ability to appease or deny him– all you know is the blind, nonsensical want that’s pouring out of you is being lapped up. Lapped up. His tongue, you want his tongue everywhere, but it’s working at your earlobe, your neck, sucking, whispering, “Just friends? Lacy?”

And when you cum, it’s fast and hard and suffocating, an achievement you’re close to angry at him for– because no one has ever been able to break you apart that fast.

Or at all.

He can never know. He’d be so insufferable about it… some bare fragment of a thought passes through your brain, synapses busy firing elsewhere.

You’re rocking against him through the crest, pressing your forehead to his with such a force that you’re frightened it’ll splinter, you’re murmuring, “Eddie… Eddie, d–hmn, fuck…”

And you can tell by the way he’s attempting to press his body against you that he wishes he hadn’t bust that stupid fucking hand of his, so he could hold you properly– and you’re right. You’re right, you’re always fucking right, but you told him to keep it elevated and he’s going to do what you say.

He’s got no choice when it comes to you.

He needs you safe. Needs you happy. No matter what.

Which is why he’s got to pull this bullshit move.

Eddie is patient and watches you regain a little consciousness, faster than he’s sure you’d like. He extracts his hand and, sticky with you still, wipes it on the thigh of his jeans. Heart thundering in his ears, he tugs you into one more breathless kiss and wonders if you can still taste the rust sharpness of his cut in between your lips. He’s strangled himself against cumming up till this point, and this doesn’t help matters. An imperceptible spot of pre-fun lies in his lap but the thing is, the really fucked thing is–

Eddie gently shoves you away, mind silently babbling for the right thing to say. I’m sorry is something you’d see right through, get off is too harsh, oopsie is too fucking whimsical–

But you, ever-perceptive you, you realize your place. Knock yourself back into reality so fiercely that he’s afraid it’ll bruise you, lovely, awe-inspiring you that just softened into his hands like that. You clumsily clamber off the exam table in a hot flash of rejection, which– no, god, no, he doesn’t mean that…

“I–”

“No, I know,” you grit, prickly all over. Thumbing at the edge of your blurred lipstick. “I know. I certainly know.”

Eddie dares to look at you and you dare to look back at him. His lips looking worse off from you, but at the very least kissed. At the very least kissed, but you could cry with the empty feeling inside you. A cavern of a girl. You nod curtly, like this is the conclusion of a particularly charged run-in of acquaintances, not like you wanted him to swallow you whole moments ago.

Slipping out of the nurse’s office, you run right into the myth that is Nurse Lydia.

She looks tan.

“He’s,” you struggle, “He’s waiting for you.”

—

Cheating out sick from school and taking a shift at The Bookstore following the latest in a series of apparently neverending aftershocks was probably not the smartest call– but hell, you’re fresh out of smart calls.

Ivana smells a rat, and she doesn’t take to rats lightly, so she gives you your space.

The morning ticks on at a pace that feels supernatural; like you’re witnessing outside of your body, like you can’t orient yourself in the right direction. You attempt to arrange and rearrange poets from alcoholic to puritan. You sell someone a copy of The Fountainhead without giving them their free blistering evisceration of Ayn Rand.

You’re at a loss. A shameful, dangling loss that almost makes you feel pious. Like you should go to confession.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned… I let my one-time best friend, current-cloudy object of my affection get beat up for me then bring me to climax in the nurses’ office.

You retread the same sentence in your over-thumbed copy of Save Me the Waltz like a table corner you keep stubbing your toe on.

We couldn’t go on indefinitely being swept off our feet.

You said it, Alabama. Something’s got to land.

And, because someone down there wants you dead, land it does.

The bell of the store’s door clashes upon opening, and all of the energy draws toward one magnetic point. A shock of silver hair, standing on end catches the lamplight, glowing almost eerily.

You feel a zzzzip of static. The air feels charged.

He doesn’t face you right away. Kind of slinks into the place, edging along the shelves.

“Say, Lacy. Ballpark me somethin’,” his Southern drawl is barely contained within the Midwestern flatlands of his accent, bursting through the baseline like a corpse that hasn’t been buried deep enough. “How long… do you think…” His fingers tap along the worn spines of the display, creeping closer to the counter, “...it would take… to read all these books?”

The lilt of his voice is so familiar that you recognize it instantly. Even the way your name falls out of his mouth. Like a funhouse mirror, a distortion of a voice you’d come to…

Well. Let’s not get into that. Let’s get into this.

A roguish smile with a couple decades of road wear on it and a tacky Hawkins High class ring on his finger. You could’ve sworn Eddie told you he dropped out.

“How many years in the big house with nothin’ better to do?” He finally stops and pivots on his heel. The way he looks you over makes you nauseous and lightheaded, like he took a long, long sip out of you. Jammed a straw in your jugular and sucked.

Lot of blood play happening ‘round these parts.

“Hello, Al.”

“Hello, sweetheart. You filled out.”

author's notes: christ alive. i mean WELCOME BACK! i really missed you guys. happy new year, thank you for keeping me on the level with writing this chapter, it was so much FUCKING harder than i anticipated! was it too much warped angst? are the feelings complicated? does the pope shit in the woods?!!!!! you betcha. anyway, be seated for today's lesson - "less oedipus-y, more ea--..." there is an ending to that joke that i felt was too crass for the moment but if you can guess it you win a prize - the patchwork girl of oz is the seventh book in the wizard of oz series by l. frank baum! obviously. it's actually a laugh riot, you should check it out. scraps, the eponymous patchwork girl, is a full tilt lunatic who's kind of a bit of me. but theoretically, the patchwork girl made out of a thousand different scraps of everything else... bit of lacy innit - the mage in the mink coat is self referential lmao we've gotten to THAT point in the story - gravity's rainbow is a book that guys i dated used to recommend to me constantly which is like infinite jest for people who are ran through - i'm really fucking with college guy at this point, making him drive a ford cortina. because i think it is ugly - the plot of the annotated book that lacy gives eddie, still life with woodpecker by tom robbins, is... interesting eye emoji eye emoji. tom robbins also wrote even cowgirls get the blues which was adapted into a feature film starring, say it with me, robin's mom - the link wray song that soundtracked the lipton landing visit in question - "charlie? or linda kasabian?" go ahead and read the white album by joan didion for me wouldja buddyroo, just like lacy and nancy already have - fun fact, i played a two person game of gin rummy with myself to get into the mindset for this chapter. i suck at it - torchy blane is another one of my pre-code wonders-- glenda farrell plays an intrepid newspaperwoman, and this character actually went on to inspire lois lane from superman - and I KNOW some of you are going to be mad at lacy for fucking college guy, but... shit happens when you're a booksmart lovedumb eighteen year old that can't face up to her feelings! i don't wanna hear it! - fred benson i love you baby! i'm almost sorry i called you william randolph hearst, newspaper magnate and all around lunatic and the inspo behind the diss track citizen kane, but i'm not! - nancy wheeler has a photo of nellie bly in her locker where a photo of her beau should be - so echo & the bunnymen's 1984 album ocean rain is obviously most famous for the killing moon (jonathan byers you ARE my donnie darko) but may i point your attention to motherfucking seven seas - OH YOU KNOW I (EDDIE) HAD TO DO IT TO 'EM. this was shameless but i've had this in my heart for over ten years babe - for the purposes of this timeline, you know eddie is keeping higgins in pills. which is why he hasn't been kicked out of hawkins high so fast his lunchbox would combust - nurse ratched, obviously from one flew over the cuckoo's nest and that ill-fated ryan murphy series....tf was that...but also from this fucking sick tune! - save me the waltz is by zelda fitzgerald! my loves, thanks for hanging in for this chapter. i know it was a wait, but i hope you enjoyed! i also know it was a little more angsty pants than my usual fare-- but look baby. we need grist for the mill, okay? as always, reblogs, comments and likes are FIERCELY appreciated! love u all so much. my little hellcats. to die by your side etc

#e. munson by powder #published by powder #in progress #hellfire & ice #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x oc #rmr when i used to write 4k chapters.... god be with the days #anyway i love these fuckheads

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tojiscumdumpster · 4 months

Text

CHAPTER SIX - TOJI/READER

⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀✧ summary page

Toji’s POV

“Don’t forget the parent-teacher conference today at three, then I need to go buy things for school this week.”

The hardest thing about being a parent is having to remember shit. Had Megumi not reminded me, I would’ve forgotten.

Partially because I genuinely didn’t remember, and the other reason is because Y/N has taken over my mind. It’s been like this since I’ve met her, but it definitely heightened after our morning together this past Saturday.

Accidentally seeing her naked, then dry humping her the next morning has me desperate for her pussy. I wasn’t even fucking inside of her and she had me coming in my damn boxers. I just know if her pussy was wrapped around my cock, I would’ve nutted quicker than I did.

I needed relief. Once I came back home, I fisted myself in the shower. I got out of the shower, caught up on some sleep, then woke up and jerked off again.

And again.

And again…

I never been this fucking horny before. What other woman’s name have I moaned out while beating my cock? I visualize Y/N. I visualized her on top of me, under me, on her knees for me. Fuck, the day she lets me have my way with her, I’m going to take my time to please her, but fuck her like she’s my favorite toy.

And I want to say it’s only a sexual attraction with Y/N, but I would be lying.

We agreed to get to know each other. Not boyfriend and girlfriend. Not dating. Just talking. Not as friends either because what I feel for is not friendly. She just… intrigues me.

I don’t want to say I’ll end up falling for her because that’s fucking unlikely. I don’t even have any more love left in me to give. But I know I want Y/N to myself. I want to claim her as mine.

She is mine.

The extra hour we spent together on Saturday was nice. Y/N said she was going to lunch with a friend, so we sat and ate fucking Cinnamon Toast Crunch while talking.

Imagine me, a gruff forty-two-year-old eating a bowl of sugary cereal. Kong would say I’m whipped. Probably even clown me about it.

But see, the thing is about whatever shit me, and Y/N have going on—it feels natural. She doesn’t always talk. I don’t always talk. Maybe I’ll stare at her like a creep because she’s so damn pretty but being in each other's presence is enough.

She affects me in ways I can’t describe, and it’s only been a week. And within that week, we’ve only been around each other three times.

I fucking know her. I know I do.

“Dad,” Megumi calls me. “Did you hear what I said?”

I clear my throat. “Yeah. Yeah, kid. Meeting at three, and school supplies.” I go back to fixing his lunch. “Want to go tomorrow? I’m off.”

“Why are you still packing me lunch? I’m not a little kid anymore,” he asks, annoyingly.

I throw my head back and laugh. “You rather eat that shit they serve you at school? Chocolate milk with pizza?”

His cheeks redden. “Whatever.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I mock. “So, tomorrow?”

“Whatever.”

“ Whatever , whatever . Those the only words you know? Maybe I need to talk to your teacher about extra lessons.”

“Dad, just make my lunch. I’m going to finish getting ready.” The kid didn’t even let me get a response out before he stormed out the kitchen.

Megumi has been putting up with me these days. I’d like to describe my kid as “moody.” One minute, we’re able to hold a decent conversation. The next, he completely shuts me out and acts like I don’t exist. I don’t pressure him, though. Whatever he wants to give, I’ll take it.

Just parenting him feels like I’m parenting myself because I know I would act how he does. He’s still adjusting , that’s what Y/N would tell me if she was here right now. Her reassurance helps because when that damn voice in my head reminds me how shitty of a dad I am, I think about what she told me.

“Grand Finale takes the lead around the far turn!”

Gambling, one of the guilty pleasures I fucking suck at but still do because it’s easy money. Well, when I’m not losing it. Do I ever win? No. Though, lately, my bets haven’t been getting dirt last.

Top five is at least my goal.

The security gig pays well, but there’s nothing wrong with a little extra cash every now and then. If I’m not at races, I’m in the casino, which they have a lot of in the States. Probably my favorite thing about this country.

My chances of playing at those slot machines are definitely higher than these inconsistent races who take up a shit load of my earnings.

Before, when I was kicked out of the Zen’in Family, any penny I had I would blow on gambling. Now, I try to be mindful since I have another mouth to feed. Last thing I need is to be one of those dads that spent their life savings on some bullshit, getting nothing in return.

I don’t want to look like that now, at least.

“Pilot Apollo is coming up on the outside!”

Pilot Apollo. About fucking time. I’ve been betting on this racehorse for months. Every time he comes up on fifth place, some shithead jockey passes him, and he falls behind.

“How did I know you were going to be here?” Kong stands behind me, smoking probably his twentieth cigarette for the day.

“Maybe because you keep fucking stalking me,” I retort. “Aren’t you supposed to be back in Japan? What are you still doing here?”

He takes the seat near me, skipping a chair to keep a comfortable distance. “Bought a one-way ticket, and I didn’t even get to see my godson yet.”

“Grand Finale has passed Apollo Pilot. He’s closing in on third. Now second!”

My back straightens. “Apollo Pilot, what the fuck?”

Kong takes a puff of his cigarette, chuckling. “You know you’re not good at this crap. Easy money doesn’t suit you, Fushiguro.”

“What do you want?”

“The contract is still up for grabs. Better money. Frankly, something you’re actually good at.”

I clicked my tongue. “I remember telling you no. I don’t do shit like that anymore, Kong. You know that.”

Gambling and sleeping with random women for money was inconsistent. Gambling, because I lost money as soon as I won it, and being a boy toy because sometimes I didn’t feel like fucking married women who were unhappy with the cock they were getting at home.

Kong introduced me to a form of income that was consistent and paid very, very well.

Killing people.

Well, becoming a contract killer. Same difference.

I needed good money. Fast money. Money, I knew I could get because of my skills, no thanks but thanks to those Zen’in fucks. So, I started taking contracts here and there. One signing could last me six months if I didn’t blow it all on gambling.

But I stopped taking contracts after I met Megumi’s mother—my wife. She doesn’t even know I used to do it. Information like this stays between me and Kong.

Just thinking about Y/N’s words, saying how I’m a decent man circulated my memories. Wonder if she’d feel the same if she found out the joy I got out of those contracts.

“And besides, we’re in America now. The systems are different from back home,” I argued. “Can’t afford getting caught.”

“The contract is based in Japan.”

You don’t need that kind of money right now, Fushiguro. You and Megumi are good.

Shut up.

I raise a brow. “Why the fuck are you so adamant about me taking the contract? Trying to set me up?”

He throws up his hands, mocking me, “Damn, you got me.” This motherfucker. “No, dumbass. Because my cut is based on the performance and if the job actually gets done. I hate complimenting you, but you were a good client, Fushiguro. I like money just as much as you.”

“Apollo Pilot has fallen behind. Newbourne passes, taking fifth place. Fourth. Third! Second! Newbourne is now in second place!”

“You got to be fucking shitting me,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Grand Finale is coming up on Newbourne, who takes the lead. Neck to neck, these two!”

I stand up and curse, not caring about the looks I’m attracting. “Five hundred dollars, Apollo Pilot. Move your fucking tail. Place fifth!”

“Oh, but Newbourne is coming in strong. He’s back in the lead on the inside.”

“Fushiguro, you’re embarrassing me,” Kong snorts.

“Shut up.”

“Oh my goodness, Grand Finale with the ultimate comeback. He has striked. Ladies and gentlemen, Grand Finale has won the Wooden Star derby!”

Sixth fucking place for Apollo Pilot and five hundred dollars straight down the drain. This is what I get for trying to enjoy my afternoon. And nothing makes it better than having Kong in the background taunting me.

“Fuck you, man.” I crumbled up the betting ticket I had and threw it on the ground. It’s time for me to head home so I can get ready to go to this meeting. “And I’m not taking the contract.” I tell Kong as I walk away.

“Think about it,” he says, waving goodbye. “Oh, and I’m coming over for dinner soon.”

Reader’s POV

Okay, maybe I did take some extra time this morning to get pretty because of my three o’clock parent-teacher conference in the next ten minutes.

A fresh wash and go. One of my favorite overall dresses with a white under tee. Light yet flirty makeup. My favorite creamy vanilla and warm berries fragrance. Gosh, I feel like a high school girl getting ready to see her crush. That damn Toji Fushiguro just makes me feel so light inside.

And after Saturday, I know my vibrator is getting tired of me.

Sex didn’t happen, but the dry humping… it felt so good. How Toji was thrusting into my hips with so much passion and aggression, I shouldn’t be surprised I orgasmed off of that alone.

I mean, let’s not forget to mention how he played with my nipples… sucked on my neck… the animalistic look in his eyes. It’s been too long since I’ve felt desired that way, like a high I didn’t want to come down from.

And I know how desperately he wanted to fuck me. I did, too. Well, I do, too. But I want to talk to him more. It’s not about making him wait to see if he’s the one because words can’t describe how badly I want him.

It’s just the ball of feelings I have for him that rests in the pit of my stomach—I want them to grow organically. I want to feel him emotionally without feeling him inside of me, physically.

When the time is right.

Honestly, this past Saturday would’ve been the perfect time, but I did not have enough energy to take him. Not with his size.

Breathe, Y/N.

I also can’t help but feel that I’m feeling for Toji too fast. With the little conversation we had, and the short time I’ve known him for, I might be a bit ahead of myself. We don’t know each other, is what he said to me last Friday.

… It’s the truth I didn’t want to hear.

Yes, it’s true. But I won’t hold back how I feel, and what I feel around Toji Fushiguro is just a like.

It’s a quick job, then I’ll come back to you. . . He said he’s not coming.

These words have been replaying in my mind lately. Is my conscience trying to tell me something? Who’s not coming? Is it…

A knock on my classroom door reminds me of my reality. I look to see the man that has been constantly on my mind lately, lips curving into a small smile.

Realistically speaking, my reactions are first to be giddy and excited to see him, but I keep that inside. Right now, it’s teacher mode.

I walked to the door and let him in. First thing I picked up was his scent. Earthy and woody with a touch of amber. He’s wearing his all black, three-piece suit that I saw him wearing at work. His midnight-colored locks are slicked back, different from his usual style that I know him for.

It might be an over exaggeration, but Toji Fushiguro is probably the sexiest man I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Masculine. Mature. Rough. His body, that waist that’s accentuated by his suit. . . Fuck me.

Calm down, Y/N .

I know, I know.

“Y/N?”

I give him a teasing smile. “Miss L /N,” I corrected. “It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Fushiguro. Please. Come take a se-” My words were cut off by Toji grabbing me by my waist from behind to pull me into him.

His lips are at my neck, and I can feel him smiling while softly kissing my skin. I have the urge to melt but I fight it.

“Toji, not here. I’m at work.”

He deeply inhales and pleasurably exhales. “You smell so good. You always do. And you look pretty, sweetheart.”

“Thank you.” I want to stay like this. I really do, but the last thing I need is to have someone catch us like this. “But move. We have a parent-teacher conference.”

He chuckles, eventually releasing me. “Fine. Just surprised you’re Miss L /N. I think you failed to tell me that this past Saturday.”

“Maybe I like surprises?”

“Ha, a surprise it is. Megumi has told me about you.”

I sit behind my desk and Toji takes a seat in front of me. “Good things, I hope.”

“Seems like you’re his favorite teacher. I asked Megumi how his teachers are, he gave an eh response, but said you were pretty nice.”

Being a teacher isn’t easy, and the pay isn’t great. However, I do it because I genuinely enjoy teaching. Hearing reassurance from my students, no matter how big or small, feels good.

“Megumi is a good student,” I start. “He’s only been here a week, but volunteers reading quicker than newer and even seasoned students. Sometimes he seems shy because of his English, but I try to help him with the little Japanese I know.”

“How’d you learn?”

“When I taught elementary kids, it was for like three years in Japan. I was their English teacher,” I explained. “Also, uhm, my ex-fiancé… he’s Japanese, too.”

He hums, and if I didn’t know any better, I saw his jaw tick. “I see. Well, yeah. He likes reading. The kid has a lot of books. I think it helps with his English, too. We jump between Japanese and English at home.”

“I think that's good practice.”

“Does Megumi have friends?”

I tap my pen against the desk, thinking. “Throughout the school, I’m not sure, but I did sit him next to another student I think he would pair well with. His name is Yuji. Really sweet and bubbly kid. He’s also Japanese, so I think he warms up to him a bit because of that connection.”

“That kid is stubborn like his old man,” he teases. “I tell him to make friends and he says he doesn’t need any. I don’t want him to end up like me.”

My face softens. “Be kind to yourself, Toji.”

So much for teacher mode.

Our eyes are on each other, and he knows exactly how I'm feeling. Little by little, Toji opens up about his relationship with his son. We talked about it a bit on Saturday.

I can tell he’s not the kind of man that shows his emotions, but I can feel his energy. How he talked about Megumi holding small conversations with him lately seemed to make him happy. Toji told me there was one point in their lives after his wife died that Megumi didn’t talk to him for a whole year.

I could only imagine the strain their relationship has.

I’m not condoning him being a neglectful father for seven years, but I’m not going to diminish his grief either. It’s just when you’re a parent, there’s times you have to put on a facade and put your feelings on the back burner to make sure your kids are alright.

Toji’s trying to make amends now, and I’m glad he didn’t wait until Megumi was old enough to completely resent him. His patient is amicable.

He gives me a wryly smile. “I’ll keep that in mind. . . Miss L /N.”

“Someone has to keep the foreplay going.”

He arches a brow, standing over my desk to brush his lips against mine. “That’s what this is to you? Foreplay?”

Toji’s minty breath and soft pink lips are making it hard for me to not jump on him and be clingy. Again, classroom setting. Can’t afford to get caught.

Alternating my gaze between his lips and rich eyes, I look at him through my lashes, smiling and say, “Back to our discussion at hand, Mr. Fushiguro?”

He laughs quietly. “Of course.”

I try to keep the conference quick and simple (since Toji has work at four), going over the class curriculum, the expectation of Megumi, and all the supplies he needs throughout the school year. With a bit of flirting here and there, seeing how involved he wants to be in his son's school life really warms me.

Unfortunately, not all student’s parents are like that. Hence why a lot of my conferences last fifteen minutes or less.

“This is the parent portal you can download on your phone as an app, mobile web, or access on a computer to keep up with Megumi’s grades. Not only in my class, but his other classes.”

“What’s his grade now?” he asks.

“Since he’s new to my class, there’s not much to grade, so you’ll see it as blank,” I answered him. “Next week we have a test on a book we’re finishing up in class. That’ll be his first major grade.”

He nods. “Alright. Anything else I need to know?” Toji asks with genuine concern. Not like a man that has somewhere to be, even though he does.

“It’s four fifteen.”

“Not worrying about work. They know I’m going to be late.”

I softly smile. “Okay, but no. Nothing else. Any updates will be posted on the parent portal. My email and number are within that folder as well.” We began walking to the door so I could see him out.

“Can I use your number outside school reasons?”

“Use my number however you please, Mr. Fushiguro.” My voice is suggestive. I find Toji rolling his tongue against the inside of his cheek while smiling, incredibly sexy. It’s like he’s doing this on purpose.

“Going to let me kiss you now?”

I managed to look over his shoulders to see if there’s anyone walking through the hallway but it’s empty. “A quick one and make it appropr-” A good way to shut me up.

His lips are on mine before I’m able to finish, kissing me like he’s been without me for a lifetime. Kissing Toji is addicting but makes me feel like I’m on a cloud. How he nibbles on my bottom lip or sucks my tongue into his mouth.

His hand that rests on the small of my back that feels possessive, pulling me further so I don’t break away. How he groans when tasting my mouth because us kissing has just as much of an effect on him as it does me.

The words that he says. The look in his eyes when he watches me. How his touch burns sensuality and temptation onto my flesh. My friends always told me I’m a lovesick fool, and Toji Fushiguro will be the one to show it if this keeps up.

“You look pretty like this,” —he breathes after breaking our kiss— “and you expecting me to keep it appropriate?”

“I wanted to look nice for you,” I admit, shyly.

“For me?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“If only you knew,”—his hand slides to my ass to squeeze, pulling me further into his now hardened erection—“how fucking beautiful and enticing you are.”

I have times where I’m the most confident woman in the world. Then, I also have times where I can show a bit of insecurity. But I don’t show that side to everyone. Probably no one. However, Toji is just that exception.

Tucking my coils behind my ears, I say, “You’re just saying that.”

He grabs me by my chin with his free hand to force me to look at him. “I’m not.” Is all he says, sounding more certain and genuine than ever.

“Okay,” I responded, holding eye contact. “Thank you.”

He looks at his watch, time being four thirty. “Can I take you out?”

“Hm, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to go out with my student’s father. No?”

Toji repeatedly pecks my lips. “I work day shift on Friday. I’ll see you at eight?”

My crush on this man almost frightens me.

“Yeah. Friday at eight,” I confirm.

“Alright. I have to go. Okay for me to text you later?”

“Remember, Mr. Fushiguro” –I tiptoe to give him one more kiss– “use my number as you please.”

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discussion question #2 — reader knew that toji is megumi's father before toji found out that she's megumi's reading teacher. now that toji knows, do you think him seeing reader will cause a rift in his already strained relationship with megumi once he finds out? Or maybe cause them to grow closer? What are your thoughts?

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