Star-Crossed
01 | Back to Black
Pairings: Single Dad!Eddie Munson x A-List Singer!Reader Warnings: Referenced child neglect, Grief Word Count: 2,9k Work Summary: "Brought back to Hawkins under grim circumstances, you’re forced to relive buried memories as a face you’d vowed to forget once again plagues your every thought. But life has moved on quickly during the last seven years, and while yours is now shrouded in glamour and scrutiny, his has also changed in the most unexpected of ways. Can you and Eddie leave the past behind you, or is it your fate to forever remain star-crossed?" A/N: The idea of writing Single Dad!Eddie came to me after reading a fic called Trapped Under Ice by DecembersFinest on ao3 a few months ago... such a recommended read and such a cute trope which I just had to explore with my own dramatic twist on the events! I don't want to say much about this story in the notes because it's all about slowly uncovering it for yourself, so enjoy! Masterlist || Next Chapter → Read on ao3 here
“Do I know you?”
The cashier’s voice pulls you from your daydream, all too focused on the distant hum of the local radio station. The latest pop hit barely buzzes from the low-set speakers.
“Maybe,” You clear your throat, avoiding her gaze despite the dark tortoiseshell sunnies already masking you. “I used to live ‘round here.”
“Huh,” She's an older woman, sporting glossy red gel nails and a puffy perm, both impeccable - despite the poor state of her uniform. “That's funny. Coulda’ sworn I'd seen ya’ on a magazine cover, darlin’.”
“Thank you,” You chuckle at the compliment, readjusting the silk scarf hiding your hairdo. “Got quite a few celebrity doppelgangers.”
She scrutinises your face for a few seconds more before turning to the register. “It's $1.25, baby.”
“$10 on pump 2 as well, please.”
“$11.25, then.”
Slapping a 20 on the counter, you grab the coke and donut that lay there and walk out of the dingy gas station. Thank God she hadn't seen your car. She would've probably asked many more questions.
Glittery under the afternoon sun, the Convertible Cadillac DeVille stands proudly next to your chosen pump. Once, you’d been a kid living in the dodgiest trailer park in Hawkins, watching much wealthier folk occasionally drive by from your torn lawnchair. There was a kid in town with that same Caddy, painted a fiery-red color. He was on the basketball team, and your lab partner Paige spent every Chemistry lesson drooling over him. You, however, had always been more interested in his car.
It had been a no-brainer when you’d started to amass what began as a little fortune, and decided for your first splurge to be your very own 1965 Cadillac, painted your favorite color. Many other cars came after that, every single one you’d once seen and wished to have their wheels under your grasp. But the Cadillac has always been your favorite. She had to be the one you took on such a trip down memory lane.
Gas sloshes into the tank as you hold the pump, discreetly looking around. The fact that you’d chosen that specific gas station for your pit stop didn’t just correlate with the fact that you hadn’t had any breakfast - in fact, the reason was that it was the one isolated just at the outskirts of town, surrounded by a mass of forest.
For the time being, you wanted to avoid being spotted in public as much as possible. You didn’t know for how long your stay in Hawkins was to be prolonged, but the last thing you needed during those days was for a flurry of paparazzi to post behind your mother’s well-kept flower beds. Life in the city got crazy, and you knew for a fact that some people did not respect the bounds of privacy at all. Even in the most grim of circumstances.
Shayla, your manager, had advised that you take some sort of protection with you - assign some bodyguards to post by the door, a private taxi service in the driveway - but you’d been insistent on making the trip on your own. Your car had been waiting after the jet had landed in Indianapolis, and you announced that you could take it from there. After all, under the blanket of stardom, you were still a normal person, and you had to deal with normal troubles like most normal people did: by yourself.
You don’t even have the energy to hop into the driver’s seat, a movie-esque maneuver you always liked to pull when the Cadillac was out of the garage. Instead, you just slide into the car and drive away quietly, fishing the donut from its paper-bag confines and taking a hearty bite. Both your dietitian and trainer would simultaneously faint if they saw you right now, you were sure of that. But it was your cheat day - or week. Maybe month.
Coke fizzles out when your manicured nails pull on the tab, which you make sure to slurp up before anything spills on the leather seats. Rows of trees pass you by, breeze flowing into your impromptu headscarf, its end waving up and down like a proud flag. As your index finger finds the radio button, a familiar voice blares out of the speakers. It’s you.
The record label had no telling how Vega had been such a hit - it was not as pop infused, and quite a slower, more romantic take in your third album. Its meaning was also quite convoluted and talked about - countless interviewers had tried prying it out of you, but Vega was your most personal song to date. You wanted to keep it as such, given that most of your life was now so shrouded in scrutiny.
The public adored it, and radio stations kept it popular enough that the album remained a top-seller for ages, even two years after its release. You’d thought Valentine’s Day 1989 would’ve made it reach its peak on Billboard’s Hot 100, but the trend repeated even more widely in 1990, and recently so in the current year. Your love song, the one you'd kept tightly hidden in the lyric notebook you used during your teenage years, had become every lover’s classic.
You never knew how to feel about it. Some would be relieved at the fact that they weren't alone in experiencing such complex feelings. But certain emotions would never cease to feel personal - especially, as you ride into your childhood town with the purpose of burying your mother.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eddie had never been a religious man, and he didn’t believe he’d ever get a bout of sudden faith. But he did thank whoever was looking down at him for their granted small miracles, such as the fact that Ronnie had just fallen asleep against the car window.
He loved his son to death, sure, but nobody was trained to handle the sugar rush a four-year-old’s birthday party could induce. Eddie's face had been drained of any color when he arrived at the park to find a crowd of screeching children being fed sodas, candies, and frosted cake; enough sugar to provide for a whole street full of bakeries.
But Eddie hadn’t complained, even if his inner voice might’ve been cursing a string of colorful choice words when he’d seen Ronnie attempt a double backflip while hopping on the bouncy castle. He’d been wildly excited when Tommy had slipped him a hand-drawn invitation during recess, so much so, he’d come back home insisting for it to be hung on the fridge door alongside his own drawings.
The reason why? Well, Eddie had heard it said somewhere that the Devil made the small town, and his whole existence had been chock-full of proving that statement right again and again. Whispers about his father’s behaviour, after his mother passed away, and when Wayne gained custody of him. Arriving in highschool like he’d been plucked out of juvie, head razored and wearing a permanent scowl that, associated to his last name, made him the one person to avoid in the halls… which then twisted into the discovery of his real self: a nerdy headbanger who spent rainy afternoons playing fantasy games with the friends he’d made in high school, and people found other ways to tease. The talk was relentless and unstoppable.
He’d thought things would fizzle out with him. That he’d be the one to finally put an end to the Munson curse by raising his own child the right way. But he’d failed to recognise the fact that people held biases. Stupid, selfish, rotten biases.
Full brown eyes find his son’s shut ones through the rearview mirror, eyelashes fluttering with exhaustion. Who could ever deny a thing to such a face? And yet, Ronnie had kicked and screamed as Eddie had tried to tie that same little seatbelt months ago, which turned out to be because some kid had not invited him to her birthday party. Eddie had to white-knuckle the wheel at Ronnie’s quiet sniffles, avoiding showing any anger before him.
So, yes, he’d driven Ronnie to the park with a smile earlier in the day, despite fearing the turnout of a kid who would be too hyper to even consider sleeping that night. He felt bad, knowing it would be Wayne’s turn to deal with the fallout, given that he had to work until dawn. But if Ronnie was happy, he was happy, too. Even happier at the fact that he seemed to have burnt all the extra energy by running around in the grass, and immediately skipped to the deep-sleep phase of his high the second he was done rambling about all the fun things he’d done all day. God bless Harrington’s idea to hire a whole inflatable jungle-gym. That guy knew a thing or two about babysitting.
The trailer park was as quiet as ever during sundown. Sometimes, Eddie came to miss the calm which you could breathe in when being surrounded by nature, now relegated to living adult life in a dingy set of apartments. Forest Hills wasn’t the beacon of luxury, but it had become his first real home. Away from eviction notices and midnight cop visits, always forced to stay very still in the cot his father called a bed whenever a pair of officers would come knocking due to some neighbor’s complaint. To him, Wayne’s trailer would always mean security.
In his usual fashion, Uncle Wayne had heard Eddie's car pulling up and was already outside to greet his boys - he also fully expected to have to aid his nephew in taming Hurricane Ronnie, but he's greeted with the pleasant sight of the boy snoozing in the backseat.
“How?” Is the only thing he manages to stammer out, even before a greeting, when Eddie walks around the car to get Ronnie out. “Didn't you say he had a birthday party?”
Eddie shrugs, untying Ronnie's seatbelt with a delicacy similar to someone defusing a bomb. “He ran until he dropped,” He concluded, resting the boy's head on his shoulder and walking towards the trailer. “You should've seen him when I got there. Looked like a feral Gremlin.”
At that, Wayne can’t help but let out a soft chuckle, following both father and son inside. He doesn’t need to motion for Eddie to make his way towards the bedroom - back when he’d started living with his Uncle, he’d been insistent on turning it over to him, but it was now back to being Wayne’s property. Still, the man was hell-bent on letting Ronnie take the bed whenever he had to sleep over, while he relegated to the couch or his ‘good ol’ cot’.
Eddie exits the room with quiet feet, letting out a silent breath of relief. “Crisis averted. You’re lucky, old man.”
“Dunno how that’s even possible, but I’m thankful for it. Picked an extra mornin’ shift at the plant tomorrow,” He huffs. “For the kid’s birthday. Need to be out by dawn.”
“6 works for me,” Eddie mutters in response, mindlessly strolling over to the fridge to fish out a can of beer. “Just make sure he sleeps through the night. I can handle it from there.”
Wayne Munson scans his nephew from head to feet. His style had changed minimally when he transformed into an adult, still sporting his long curls, band t-shirts and ringed fingers. But actual, physical work, as well as having a kid of his own, had toned his build out of the lankiness of his teenage years - as well as given him some early expression lines.
He grumbles something out of Eddie’s earshot: Saturday nights tended to be like this. Only he and some of his nephew’s close friends were wise to Eddie’s precarious financial situation - juggling two jobs during school months, if that one could even be considered as such.
“You gotta stop with this nonsense,” He finally declares, and Eddie doesn’t need to listen to a second more of it to know what this was about. “You can’t raise a kid while one of your streams of income is sellin’ drugs. You know what they could do to Ron if you ever got caught?”
But he dismisses it in return, placing the can on the counter. “Rick knows I can’t sell hard stuff. That way, if I do get caught, Hopper won’t do more than give me a slap on the wrist,” He mimics the action, shaking his head. “I only sell pot. And I need these night shifts to actually make a profit on that.”
“It’s too dangerous, Eddie.”
“It’s what has to be done,” He cuts in immediately, eyes suddenly hard and avoidant. “I can’t feed, clothe, house and spoil a kid off the Rollin’ Records minimum wage. It’s just a pick-me-up.”
Wayne knew that the answer for his query was to cut some expenses, but Eddie was far too tough-headed to give in. He liked having the ability to give Ronnie everything he wanted, whenever it was within the bounds of possibility, and that was what the drug dealing was all about. A bump on the piggy bank.
But as Ronnie got bigger, so did his needs and wants, yet Eddie couldn’t just keep accepting riskier jobs for heftier cuts. Wayne had offered for him to pick some shifts at the plant, given that he was able to work two jobs on the days where he took care of Ronnie, but he’d declined. Of course, drug dealing gave him a much larger margin than he’d ever get working any other side gig.
It wasn’t as if Eddie enjoyed having to deal pot to make a decent living, which seemed to be the way Wayne sometimes phrased it, and it annoyed him. Ronnie and him should’ve been living in some mansion in LA by now, his kid being coddled and spoiled rotten, while Eddie slept with the relaxing notion that millions of dollars sat safely in his bank account from his success as a music star. But life was a bitch, and it always kept aces up its dirty sleeves. He’d learnt that lesson quite early on.
Stirring the conversation around, Eddie glances through the familiar interior of the trailer. Nothing had changed since he left, except for the apparition of some objects relating to Ronnie’s frequent visits: scattered toys in a corner, the straw cup he’d forgotten last week, and a little scarf hanging next to Wayne’s jacket. Then something catches Eddie’s attention.
“What’s all this?” Big leaps take him out of the kitchen and towards that same coat rack, where an ironed suit with its shirt and tie had been laid. “Is this…”
“The same one I let you back in ‘84,” Eddie remembered it clearly. He’d spent the day rummaging through a thrift store bin just to come home with his cheeks as pink as two ripe cherries, having to explain to his uncle that he wanted a suit to go to prom. Thankfully, he hadn’t asked many questions, and just pulled the piece out of the confines of his closet with a knowing smile. “Still holds up after some good ironing.”
“Who’s getting married? Haven’t gotten an invite.”
But despite Eddie’s mocking tone, Wayne’s response never comes, causing him to turn around and look at his silent uncle. Wayne stared back with a somber, almost spooked expression, one hand laid on the kitchen counter.
“You haven’t heard?”
Heard what?
“You’re scaring me.”
Second strike. Wayne doesn’t chuckle nor dismiss his worry, but rather breathes in, an indication that he should be scared.
“I think you remember our neighbor,” Wayne’s uttering of the familiar last name sends a chill through Eddie’s spine. He hadn’t heard it in years - but recently, he thought of it more often than he should. “Well, at least before she got moved out to that big house on Maple Street.”
Wayne takes Eddie’s shift in expression as affirmative. “She passed away last night. Stroke. I…”
A haze of white covers Eddie’s vision, stumbling as he barely manages to sink into the couch. Wayne drones on about how he’d been thinking of attending the funeral, but he seems distant as Eddie’s mind travels far and wide, away from the current moment happening in the trailer.
Her mother had always been good to him. She had so much love to give to just one person in that whole world - she was never able to divorce her husband, who just stayed out of the picture for most of the time. That woman only had her daughter… until her daughter met him, and she had no doubts to take Eddie under her wing. It didn’t matter how damaged he looked, how horrible of an influence he always seemed to be to every other parent he met - she liked him. Was it weird to have come to think of her as the only motherly figure he’d ever had, after his own late mom?
Yet again, life kept playing tricks. She was still young, and had recently started living life the way she deserved. It was all kept pretty under wraps, but news travelled fast in Hawkins. Good lawyers and detectives forced her husband to sign those papers, and she was free. How fast things could turn for the worse.
“...Son?”
Wayne’s hand rests on his shoulder. He knew of his nephew’s close relation to that family, despite the events of the last seven years. Wayne never pried much. But the notion of what was about to happen in the small town of Hawkins was sure to bring all of Eddie’s repressed memories to the surface.