Enter the 80s verse, part 1: Johnny Boy
Summary: What if John Bender from The Breakfast Club was Eddie’s cousin?
Rating: Mature, pre-eddie x you
Pairing: none
Warnings: Suggestion of violence, parental neglect and abuse (non-sexual), the off screen death of a minor character, mild drug use.
Series Playlist: Enter The 80s Verse
A/N I wrote this post about wanting to see Eddie connected to every character from every 80s film I’ve ever loved in some barely plausible way. The Breakfast Club came out in 1985. John Bender is a two-time senior in that film, making him about the same age as Eddie in 1986, however I’ve made him a year older here for the sake of a little cousinly hero worship. I had to pick a name for Eddie’s mum and I picked Lilly Dalley for some God unknown reason. Just roll with it.
Enter The 80s Verse Masterlist - Masterlist
When Eddie was seven, he’d wanted a “tattoo like John’s”. His mom had been so confused - John, her sister’s kid, was only 8, so there was no way the kid had any ink. But later, over dinner, Eddie had snatched the cuff of his cousin’s long sleeved tee shirt up so she could see the “tattoo” on his arm: four or five shiny, pink patches of skin, about the size and shape of the cherry on a cigarette.
“Let your cousin alone,” his mom had said and reached across the table to pull John’s sleeve back down and pat the back of his arm. After dinner, she’d sent Eddie to is room to make a bed for his cousin on the floor. Eddie had dragged a bunch of blankets and pillows in there from the hall closet, and then come back to find his mom hugging John to her chest, whispering soothing sounds as she carded her fingers through his long chestnut hair.
When Missy, Eddie’s Aunt, had arrived to pick John up a couple of days later, Eddie had heard his mom and her having one of those grown up fights, the kind you feel more than hear.
“He gives as good as he gets,” Missy had said, her arms crossed, defiant. Eddie’s mom had just shaken her head and crossed her arms too.
“He’s eight years old, Missy,” she’d said, and it had sounded less like a statement than an accusation.
Then she’d looked up and seen Eddie lurking by the ranch slider.
“What have I said about listening at doors, Edward James Munson?”
Eddie hadn’t heard the rest, he’d just run, as fast as his legs could carry him into the woods.
He didn’t see John again till he was 16, and John was 17, and the world had ended.
He was wearing an ill-fitting suit, and his hair was really long now, but that cocky, defiant air, Eddie recognized that straight away. He slouched into the church behind his mom and an older guy, heavy set, with a long greaser beard and a leather jacket, that Eddie had never seen before.
They’d come up to Eddie and Wayne, and his aunt, red eyed and pale, had hugged him.
"She loved you so much, kid," she'd whispered.
She hugged Wayne and then drifted up the aisle to sit near the front.
“It’s a fuckin’ shame,” the older guy said, shaking Wayne’s hand. “A fuckin' shame. She was one of the good ones.”
Next to him, John had been silent, looking Eddie up and down before raising his chin in a nonchalant salute. His father turned to him just in time to see it, and Eddie felt the change of mood in the air.
Without warning, his dad open-palm slapped him around the ear, harder than Eddie had ever seen a kid get slapped by an adult before, and he’d seen and felt some shit.
“The fuck you think you are?” John’s father said, as John cringed into the gaping neck of his suit jacket.
Eddie had felt Wayne tense next to him. It made him want to say something to his cousin’s dad, tell him to stop or something. But Wayne put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder and squeezed a warning.
Wayne may have been a Munson and everyone in Hawkins knew Munsons were trash, but Wayne had been looking after him since the day his mom first got sick and he’d never once raised a hand to Eddie. If anything, living with Wayne was the first time Eddie had ever been treated with kindness by a male relative.
“'M sorry for your loss,” John had mumbled, before moving quickly up the aisle of the church, hand cupped around his ear.
“Fucking kids,“ the guy had said to Wayne, too loud for the little church. “You don’t put ‘em in their place, they'll walk all over you. Johnny Boy’s a real handful.”
He’d given Eddie a sideways look, before followed his son up the aisle.
“Those Dalley girls sure knew how to pick ‘em,” Wayne had said, half under his breath as if he didn’t even know he was saying it out loud.
At the wake, Eddie found a place to hide, out by the back porch of the church hall. He’d had his cheek pinched so many times that day, they were practically bruised. He was also completely over being told to look after his uncle Wayne - he fucking loved Wayne, but Lillian was his mom. Wayne wasn’t even related to her, not really, he was just her brother-in-law. How come he had to look after Wayne when it was his life in the toilet now his mom was dead and his dad was in jail?
Eddie felt a surge of something hot and painful in his chest. They hadn’t even let his dad out for the funeral. Wayne said it was because his folks were only “de facto” whatever that meant. Fuck the Goddamned police. Fuck this podunk fucking state.
“What the fuck do you do around here for fun?”
It was John, sidling out the back door of the church, and jumping off the porch. He flicked his hair out of his eyes, and it looked so cool, Eddie wondered if he could get his hair to grow like that.
John had taken his tie off, tucked his suit pants into his combat boots and tied it around the top of his boots. He’d taken of the suit jacket and replaced it with a denim one, swapped his starchy white shirt for a plaid work shirt, and topped it all off with a long, brown wool overcoat. He looked fucking deranged, like a street warrior pirate or something. Eddie wondered if he could slip his stupid tie off and maybe tie it round his head, like a ninja, or one of those guys from that film he went to with Wayne, a Cobra Kai karate guy. That shit was badass.
Eddie had to think about what they did for fun round here.
“Ride our bikes?” He said, like he wasn’t sure. “Band. I play guitar. Dungeons and Dragons? D&D? Do you….”
The blank look on his cousin’s face told him that John Bender did a lot of shit and none of it involved dragons.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” John said, slouching over to sit next to Eddie. “She was cool.”
Eddie didn’t say anything because he couldn’t. She was fucking cool, and he couldn’t even talk about that yet without crying like a goddamned girl. He just nodded instead.
“You got a girlfriend?” John asked out of the blue.
“Sure,” Eddie lied.
“She got any friends?”
“Why?”
“Why the fuck not?”
“You got a girl back home?” Eddie had asked, curious.
“Some.” Replied John, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of the coat and lighting one up. He offered the packet to Eddie, who’d never had a smoke before but would rather have thrown himself off the top of Sattler Quarry than let John know that. He took one and held it awkwardly between his fingers.
“Some? Like more than one?” He said, floored at the idea of having even one girl give him the time of day, let alone multiple.
“Some of them are my girlfriends, and some of them I just consider.” John leaned over and cupped his hand around the end of the lighter, and lit Eddie’s smoke.
“Consider what?” Eddie sucked, hollowing out his cheeks, trying to copy the way John had Bogarted it to get it to catch
“Whether I want to hang out with them.. Whoa, fuck, are you OK?”
Eddie was coughing so hard he thought he was gonna be sick. It was the fucking worst taste he’d ever encountered, ashy, dirty and foul.
“Gimme that,“ John said, pulling the cigarette out of his hand and stubbing it out on the porch steps. “You’ve never smoked before? Jesus.”
Eddie hacked a little longer, gasping for air, and John landed some heavy, helpful thumps on his back.
“Here,” John said, when Eddie could breathe again. “It’s like this, smaller pulls, don’t breathe it in so deep, till you’re used to it.”
He handed his own cigarette to Eddie and held it while Eddie sucked a little bit. It still burned, but not so bad, and it tasted less of ash than a clean metallic tang of tobacco.
“There you go, big boy. You’re smoking like a champ.”
John took a long drag and blew a smoke ring.
“Now you’ve mastered nicotine, I’ve got something else you can try,” John said, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a little plastic bag of what looked like oregano or something. “Lets ditch this popsicle stand.”
Eddie suspected the stuff in the bag was drugs - weed, reefer. He’d seen a film about it at school, Reefer Madness it was called. They’re tried to make it look like a a life ruining nightmare, but there was no way his life could be any more ruined than it was right now.
Besides, one of the key things they warned you about was the fact it made you not care about anything anymore. Made your feelings turn off.
“Yeah, OK, “ Eddie said. “I know a place. No one ever goes there. We’ll be fine.”
John looked at him sideways.
“I promise,” Eddie said, and started walking in the direction of the woods behind Hawkins High.
Part 2 coming soon!
