Kicking Around on a Piece of Ground in Your Hometown - Chapter 8
Fandom: Stranger Things
Pairing: Side Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Chapters: 8/27
Warnings: Trauma, Addiction, Mild Gore (much later on), canon-typical violence, canon-typical swearing, grief, parent death, alcoholism, sexual situations,
This is an OC fan fiction. She is Eddie's older sister, a former alcoholic. This story is a non-linear timeline going through Eddie and Anna Beth's childhood and the present day where she is trying to get to Eddie. This is not a romance-forward fic.
Description:
"Do you remember Tommy?" she asks, words feather soft.
Just saying the name was like her senses were flooded with him. Olive skin...blonde hair...green eyes..
Eddie lights up. "Yeah of course. How is he? Does he write from Santa Barbara?"
Anna Beth doesn't cry, but she wants to. Her thoughts become cells on a film reel. The smell of blood everywhere. Screaming. Tommy's...Dewey's...and loudest of all, her own.
"He's not in Santa Barbara." Her voice shakes. "He's not anywhere. He's dead."
Eddie's hands are unwrapping a Twix but he drops it on the ground. His wide eyes meet hers and there are tears in them. Tommy had been important to Eddie too.
"But they said-"
"They're liars." she all but growls. "Don't trust the cops. Don't trust the adults. And for fuck's sake, if you ever see anything you can't explain...run the other goddamned way."
OR
Anna Beth Munson got out of Hawkins by the skin of her teeth. One phone call brings her right back to the scene of the crime. Her brother Eddie is dead - except Anna Beth knows better. Anna Beth has seen things. Lost things...
Her baby brother is still alive, and she'll be damned if anyone tries to tell her otherwise.
Chapter 8
Hawkins, Indiana
March 29th, 1986
She lied before.
She did buy alcohol when she went to the liquor store.
She didn’t drink it, though, even though her conversation with Hopper made her teeth itch and her chest pull in that way it does when she needs a drink. She smokes out the window of the Pacer instead, blasting Kiss so loud she can’t hear the sound of her own crying.
When two o’ clock hits she pulls into a shopping center off the backroads behind Melvald’s. Her head rests wearily on the steering wheel. The afternoon chill has cut through all her layers. Curse her stupid fucking window.
As she sits she replays her conversation with Hopper in her mind. Replays the last time she saw Eddie (last summer the day before classes, they did a big movie marathon of all the horror movies they could find). Replays moments from her childhood, from her teenage years, from college. Observes the past parts of her life like a film student watching their favorite film. Ignores the anxiety she feels when things are uncomfortable to think about, basks in the warmth of the moments that are good.
The last movie she and Eddie had watched together had been A Nightmare on Elm Street. The video had a skip over the part where Tina is being dragged across the ceiling, so one second she’s being dragged and the next she’s being ripped apart. It made them laugh so hard they were falling all over each other, gasping for breath, rewinding and rewinding until tears were streaming down their faces.
That makes her think of Dustin, who has evaded her for the entire afternoon. He is not at the arcade or the park or the pizza place. Claudia Henderson slammed the door in Anna Beth’s face after telling her he wasn’t home, clutching her sweater close to herself like it would protect her from trailer trash. Like it was a blanket and she was a monster.
As frustrating as his evasiveness is, she understands him. He saw Eddie die, this kid.
Even if he’s wrong, even if Eddie’s alive…whatever he saw must have gutted him. Must have made his heart skip like that tape. Did he look away and look back, blink and you’d miss it, just as Eddie was torn to shreds like Tina?
She imagines her brother flying up the wall, sees the image skip, sees his insides on his outside. She hears a boy screaming, a boy that must be Dustin cobbled together in her mind. His voice is a mystery to her, but the voice in her head belongs to him, she knows that to be true.
Her hand pops open the driver side door of the Pacer from the outside and she lights another cigarette, leaning against the side of the car. Despite the chill it’s warmer than it was yesterday and afternoon sun is framing the low-built shops in attractive shadows. There’s a pawn shop a few doors down, a place that you only went to if you were on drugs or running away from a husband. Next to that was a smoothie shop, a slightly newer addition she’d noticed two summers ago.
She takes a drag of her cigarette, then eyes the green storefront in front of her.
Well, shit.
Family Video. The same video place she’d been going to since she was a kid. The same place she’d rented that Nightmare on Elm Street.
What were the chances it was there? The same exact tape?
Barely half smoked, her boot stamps out her Marlboro and she marches inside.
It smells the same, like moldy carpet and cheap cleaning fluid. In her classes she learned how businesses could effectively gas themselves if they store their chemicals a certain way. The Family Video smelled like that, like the kind of place that would gas themselves by accident.
“Welcome to Family Video!” says a blonde girl, rail thin and full of energy. She shakes with it like a chihuahua.
The boy next to her she recognizes. Steve Harrington.
“Hey, welcome, whatever.” He doesn’t look up from his magazine.
Anna Beth ignores them both and finds her solace in the Horror section, where the sight of bright green circular stickers makes her feel at home. How many hours had she spent in this section? Horror was her favorite, and Eddie’s too.
Shaking herself out of those thoughts, she finds the C section. Craven, Craven, Craven.
“Aren’t you two like besties?” she can hear the girl saying, her voice raspy. Harrington chuckles, but it’s more of a scoff.
“You know he’s going through it right now.”
Carpenter…Cunnigham…Curtis…
“I think what he needs is to be surrounded by the people he loves.” the girl responds.
“Are you saying he’s in love with me? That’s gross, he’s a kid.”
Coppola…Corman…
“You know what I mean.”
Cronenberg…
“Henderson is a big boy. If he needs me, I’m sure he’ll say something.”
Craven.
Anna Beth swipes the Nightmare on Elm Street. It's the same tape. The box is fuzzy at the edges from overuse. Her spine goes unnervingly straight as Harrington's words register.
He just said Henderson.
“Hi there!” The girl squeals when she places her tape on the counter, her smile too big. Anna Beth smiles weakly back. Her puppy-dog eyes light up in appreciation when she sees the title.
“Oh, great choice. Nancy is a total badass. One of the best final girls in recent years, and Freddy is a top notch villain.”
The girl, whose nametag reads Robin, scans the tape. Anna Beth accidentally makes eye contact with Steve, and he looks at her like he’s trying to find something wrong with her.
“Something in my teeth?” she asks him.
He winces. “No, sorry. I just…was..staring into…space.”
Anna Beth nods, accepts the lie. It doesn’t matter if he knows her, or if he doesn’t.
“I should warn you!” Robin says, just before she takes Anna Beth’s card.
“The tape-”
“Skips. In the bedroom scene. I know.”
Robin gives her a little confused smile, but takes her card to finish the purchase anyway. “You been here before? I’ve never seen you.”
Steve’s eyes are on her again, she can feel them.
“Grew up here. I rented this when it first came to the Family Video. It was a joke between me and my brother.”
Robin hands Anna Beth her card back. “I love that! Are you going to watch it with him?”
It’s hard to decide who to look at between the two of them. They’re both gazing at her so intently she feels like she’s being watched, judged for something.
“Uh, no. He, um, passed. In the….earthquake.”
Robin’s hands cover her mouth entirely. Steve stares, but there’s a recognition there. Does he sense who she is?
“Ohmygod I am such an idiot. Please, forget I even asked. Seriously, I need to develop some sort of filter between my brain and my mouth.”
Anna Beth shakes her head, a little jarred by Robin’s seemingly unstoppable authenticity.
“No, don’t. I brought it up.”
Anna Beth places her card in her wallet and waves like she’s going to go, but it’s all an act. Planned.
“Um, hey…you wouldn’t happen to have known him, would you? I’ve been trying to find out more about his death, but…it’s….”
Robin and Steve grow rigid. It is subtle, but Anna Beth notices these things.
“What’s his name?” Steve asks. His look is severe.
“Eddie. Eddie Munson.”
They both react to that. Robin goes still for the first time, and in contrast Steve’s hands begin working, wringing and trembling. It’s like they’ve switched bodies.
“Shit.” Steve whispers. “Yeah..I knew him.”
Robin is still motionless.
Anna Beth comes forward, tethering herself to Steve. Begging him silently.
“Do you happen to know a Dustin Henderson?”
Harrington nods. Eyes glassy.
“I really want to speak with him about it. Can you help me find him?”
He wants to say yes, wants to do whatever he has to do to get her to speak to Dustin. All he has to do is say yes. Say yes, she thinks, desperate.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Robin comes back to life like a horror movie killer, and strikes her dreams dead.
Anna Beth reluctantly looks over at her. “Why is that?”
Robin is suddenly very nervous, a little cagey. Either she’s hiding something or she’s afraid of conflict or both.
“It was really hard for him…to see what he saw..”
How does she say her true feelings without knocking over every single rack of tapes in this goddamn building? How does she say to these strangers that she would have given anything - ANYTHING - to be the one to watch him die? To make his last moments meaningful, to kiss his forehead when his breath stopped, to wipe the blood from his cheek and let his last sight be someone he loved, someone he felt safe with?
How does she tell these people that what is hard for him would have been easy for her if it meant that she could get closure?
“Right…”
There’s whispering behind her as she retreats to the exit, so tired that it feels bone deep. She’d watch this tape and rewind the skip until her eyes were bloodshot, then she’d pour herself a generous drink and pass out on Eddie’s bed. Tomorrow is a new day. This one had grown torturous.
The bell of the door jingles from above as she pushes through the door, her feet working double time. The sooner she can get out of here the sooner she can forget.
The bell jingles again.
“Hey, wait!”
The footsteps behind her are so fast that once she spins around, Harrington is already right there.
“Yeah?”
There is something familiar about Steve in the way he holds himself. The way he is taller than her, but not too tall. It is in the way he dioesn't shy away, but instead leans into her, the way his eyes stayed trained on hers. It isn’t attraction - he is way too young, and she is way too fucked up, but it reminds her of something she can’t place. Something lost to her.
“Look, Dustin’s having a hard time with this whole thing, but…he and I are friends. Robin thinks - Robin, that’s the girl inside - she thinks he needs coddling. So does his mom, and his friends…But I think he needs this." He swallows, and with real conviction he says " I think he needs you.”
“I think…”she starts slowly. “I need him too.”
Steve looks relieved. His hands find his hips, tongue darting out to wet his lips. “We all need…a little closure.”
Something about his voice when he said that…Anna Beth has to give him a quick once over. But whatever it was, it is gone as quickly as it came.
“When can I meet with him?”
Steve tilts his head toward the sun, face scrunching. “Look, I have to talk to him first. Make sure he’s cool with all of this. But I’m pretty sure he will be. Give me your phone number and I’ll call you once I’ve got it planned out.”
Anna Beth shifts the tape in her hand so she can begin searching for something to write with. “Do you have a pencil?”
“I have a pen…” Steve offers, and she takes it. The tape is the perfect writing tablet, and she places her receipt on top and scribbles the number to Mo’s on it.
“That’s a bar by my house. We don’t have a phone in the trailer. Leave a message with Fish.”
Steve takes a quick glance at the number, then gives her a suave grin. It's the grin he must have used on the girls of Hawkins High back when he was King Steve.“Weirdest way I’ve ever gotten a girl’s number by the way. To set her up with my underage friend and talk about her dead brother.”
A laugh avalanches out of her. It takes the wind out of her. Steve watches her with a pleased little smile.
That’s what she couldn’t place. Steve is so much like Tommy it throws her off balance.
“Thank you.” she says with as much conviction as she can manage.
“'Course.”
Steve retreats back into his place of work, and Anna Beth laughs again, both with relief and sadness. Two futures.
Dustin could squash any hope of the good future in one little sentence. He can take her hope and ball it up like paper, throw it in the trash. He could ruin her life.
She switches her tape to Journey - Evolution. Third song on the track.
Her and Tommy’s song.
“Lovin, touchin, squeezin….each other….”
She sings along loudly. Too loudly. It feels good.
It’s a short drive back to the trailer. Her hand seeks out the bag from the liquor store on the floor of the passenger seat, careful to watch the road. It takes a few tries to get what she needs, but her hand wraps comfortingly around a miniature of Jameson.
“Na na na na na! Na na na na na na!”
At a stop sign she unscrews the cap, goes to take a swig.
SHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
The song screeches into static, a keening whine that rings her ears like a bell. The noise is so loud and unbearable she tosses the miniature out the window to clasp her hands over her ears.
“What the fuck!?” she pants, the radio still electric and deafening. Her hand goes for the ignition and she turns off the car, sighing in relief when the noise stops.
“Waste of a drink…”she mutters and throws her hands over her face as she gets her wits about her.
And then the radio starts again.
“What the fuck!?” she cries again. The noise is a droning cry, something that hits her like a dog whistle hits a German Shepherd. It’s the afternoon, but she can just see her headlights beginning to brighten. The light intensifies and grows so bright she screams in fear that her headlights will pop.
It’s like her car is possessed. The windshield wipers start going and that’s what prompts her to get the hell out. She’s seen this movie and it’s called Christine. No way she’s gonna let herself get offed by a goddamn car.
The noise lessens once she is outside the confined space of the Pacer. It is still exceptionally loud. If she weren't on the backroads, someone would surely have called Hopper and said the town slut is causing a disturbance. Or, god forbid, Callahan.
The radio warbles and sputters and begins to find a peak. She’s thinking about lifting the hood and checking the engine when it just…shifts. There’s a little tuning noise, like the radio’s trying to find a station. It's a familiar sound. This happened before, she realizes. At Mo's. Her feet carry her closer to the Pacer. She has a feeling that this might be more than just a malfunction.
A voice becomes interlaced with the static. It’s hard to tell at first what it’s saying. The frequency is wrong, or the signal is weak.
Inching closer still, she listens. Her head pokes through the driver’s side window. From the outside she must look insane, bent over the window of her own car, listening to a ghost radio.
The signal strengthens. Or the frequency takes. It’s hard to say what it is.
But the voice becomes clear. Clear as fucking day.
“Beth I hear you calling…
But I can’t come home right now…
Me and the boys are playing…
And we just can’t find the sound…
Just a few more hours ..
And I’ll be right home to you..
I think I hear them calling..
Oh Beth, what can I do?
Beth what Can I do?”
That’s Eddie’s voice. Eddie Fucking Munson is alive.