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Mar 27

fate, up against your will (unwillingly mine) | chapter 2

eddie munson x goth!reader.

summary: eddie stands trial and pays a visit to the record store. 6k words.

warnings: eddie is by default bisexual in my mind, and there's a brief joke about him thinking he's about to be forced out of the closet w/ one instance of the f slur in the context of bullying. reader is also implied to have a poor relationship with her mom, which will be expanded on in later chapters with more specific warnings. there's also some very light self-harm or pain-stimming (biting).

a/n: this is an ongoing story that's been exclusive to ao3 until now; i'll be posting chapters here every friday until i'm caught up, and probably finish out the story posting to both sites simultaneously. btw, the "val" mentioned here is a hellfire member of my own creation just to round out the group, but in my mind, she's based on the girl with the very long black hair visible in one of the hellfire yearbook photos!

part 1 | part 2

─── ⋆⋅🔮⋅⋆ ────

When Eddie drops into his typical seat in the cafeteria, the Hellfire table goes silent.

He stiffens immediately. No one will look at him, so he takes his time glaring plentiful daggers into each and every one of their unsubtle heads. Jeff is just on the edge of smiling. Gareth has his nose in his lunch tray, and Doug is staring at absolutely nothing so hard he looks to be having an out of body experience. Only Val’s inattention seems to be natural, flipping through a Swamp Thing back issue with characteristic focus.

“...One of you, spit it out,” Eddie demands.

“Hey, Eddie.”

“What’s up, ma—”

Eddie slams his palm down on the table, and five lunch trays rattle.

“Not what I meant, and you know it.”

The usual cafeteria chatter is just as noisy as it always is, but this particular table end might as well be lodged in the gullet of a black hole. Jeff and Gareth share a glance. Conspiracy. Val doesn’t give a shit. Eddie, as ever, goes for the weakest link.

“...Doug?” He drags it out in that low, rising intonation that hints at imaginary consequences.

Good ol’ Dougie lasts all of three seconds. His shoulders shoot up to his ears. “We heard you were coming onto that goth chick that stabbed somebody.”

Christ, that was quick. Eddie leans back in his seat, tossing a sharp look around, crossing his arms in what he hopes is the same gruffly disappointed, soul-wilting way that Wayne does whenever he puts off a chore for childishly long, or picks a godawful hiding spot for some of his forbidden wares.

“Right,” he says, nodding to himself. “Great. Just—catch me up here. I miss…one lunch period, and suddenly, we put stock in dumbass rumors?”

“We don’t!” Doug insists, with the appropriate level of horror.

“It’s not like that, man,” Jeff chimes in, less affected. “It’s just that…”

Eddie jerks his head to the side. “It’s just what?”

A few more unsure glances between themselves, and he’s about ready to start throwing tater tots around. Gareth looks like he’s been asked to keep his mouth shut and is very unhappy about it, but how they got the little terror to honor that particular request for this long (three, going on four minutes?) is beyond him.

“Sophomore?” Eddie prompts him directly. No way he lets him get away with that.

Gareth rolls his eyes, shrugs, and doesn’t say a word. Eddie lets his eyes bug out of his head for a couple seconds, and then scrubs both of his hands down his face for a reset.

“...Y’know, people are still saying that I shot a police officer last year,” he points out bitterly, snapping back into focus. “How about that rumor, huh? You guys think I actually shot a fucking cop?”

“Of course not, dude,” Jeff says. “We wouldn’t—”

“Exactly,” Eddie says. He slaps both hands on the table this time, and his chair screeches bloody murder as he stands abruptly to his full height, just for the added benefit of looking down upon them. “So why don’t we just let the rumor mill do what it always does, and concern ourselves with shit that actually matters, alright?”

Sweet, unchallenged silence. Eddie’s pretty sure he won the battle; or at least he would have, if he hadn’t miscalculated something vital. Val kind of gives a shit.

“...Untwist your panties, Munson,” she drones, likely peeved to be distracted from her reading. “I saw you talking to her after school.”

Well. Shit. Eddie’s head slumps forward.

“Fine, you goddamn vultures,” Eddie grumbles, dropping back into his seat, gesturing widely. “Yeah, you caught me. I was talking to a girl, so sue me.”

“...Were you really coming onto her?” He isn’t sure if Jeff’s overt skepticism is more compliment or insult.

Eddie gives a lukewarm shrug. “That’s…one way to put it. Sure.”

Given free reign to speak again, Gareth adopts that nasty grin he often does when he’s about to say something repugnant. “So was she…into it?”

Eddie rolls his eyes so hard they nearly fall out of his head. It’s Val who speaks up, slapping her comic down onto the table and leaning onto her elbows.

“Do you always have to be such a little freak?”

“What?” Gareth recoils. “She’s hot! And, shit, if Eddie has a chance, then maybe—”

“Hey!” Eddie’s loud enough to stop him short. “Finish that sentence, sophomore, and I’m dumping that chocolate milk over your head.”

“Fine,” he huffs. “Jeez. We were all thinking it.”

“Speak for yourself, dude,” Jeff mutters.

Who the hell still drinks milk with their lunch, anyway? Children do. Children and babies. At the very least, the kid has the decency to look properly chastened, in his own frowny way.

The conversation moves on from there as Doug launches into a tirade about a nerd skirmish of earth-shattering proportions that he put a valiant effort into down at the arcade yesterday, and for once, Eddie starts to believe he might actually be off the hook.

…

But nothing’s ever that easy for him, right?

It’s a Thursday, and Eddie’s feeling charitable. He decides to leave you alone for the next couple days, allow you some peace and calm before he starts to really get on your nerves. As such, the only things on his mind after English are a cold beer, the last oatmeal creme pie in the cupboard, and maybe an indulgent dose of Deep Purple to get lost in while he ties some loose ends for tomorrow night’s Hellfire session before his shift at the Hideout.

Across the parking lot, the unexpected sight of Jeff waiting for him at his van sloshes all of his modest daydreams onto the backburner.

“Ride requests closed at two,” Eddie calls out once the distance has shrunk beyond the need for shouting. He smiles as obliviously as he can manage, hoping to fend off the near-guarantee of what the fuck he’s doing here. “Better luck next time, man.”

Jeff rolls his eyes lightheartedly. For his birthday back in January, his parents footed a little over half the cost for a neighbor’s lightly tarnished ‘68 Dodge Dart in bronze. She’s just as old as he is, and possibly the one true love of his life.

“Got a minute to talk?” he asks. No joke back or anything? Shit.

No. Fuck no. Absolutely not. “Till my dying breath, Duncan.”

Two weighty doors clunk closed and Eddie’s neck is starting to itch. He turns the van on just for the comfort of this morning’s Slayer racing in the background, and only hesitates a second or two before turning it down to a courteous purr. Well, courteous for a couple of headbangers, at least.

“So, uh, what’s going on, man?” Eddie taps the wheel a couple times and then grimaces at himself. He isn’t fooling anybody.

“Sorry ‘bout the face off at lunch,” Jeff says.

An apology isn’t remotely what Eddie was expecting, so it thunks him right in the head. “Oh. Shit. Uh, no hard feelings.”

“Val told us what she saw, like, right before you got there, so we were just…confused,” he goes on. “At least, I was.”

…Confused. Well. Eddie supposes you can only get the word “FAG” sprawled across your locker so many times before it becomes a point for genuine consideration.

“...And which part is confusing, exactly?” His voice comes out weird, maybe a little cottony, but at the very least, his hair is probably hiding the way his ears are burning.

Jeff gives him a look. Like, a look. “...C’mon.”

What the fuck? The word hits him like the dart of a taser, jolting him in his seat and setting his heartbeat sprinting. He starts to actually regret keeping the music on—the breakneck, racing guitar and hurtling drums make him feel like he’s being dragged kicking and screaming straight into a flustered panic.

“Whuh— What? What is that—?”

“She’s your record store nemesis, dude,” Jeff finally elaborates. “I thought you couldn’t stand her.”

Oh, Jesus Christ. Eddie takes a chasmic fucking breath, hand on his heart, the whole shebang. Of course that’s what he’s talking about. Why wouldn’t it be?

“...Are you good, man?”

“Fine,” Eddie rasps, deciding (for probably the 47th time) to finally burn those fucking magazines shoved dead center beneath his mattress. “...Christ. Okay. So what if she is?”

“So what?” Jeff echoes, incredulous. “Isn’t she the whole reason you refuse to set foot in Main Street Vinyl on Saturdays?”

“Refuse is a pretty strong word.”

“Yeah, it is. That’s why you used it.”

He did, didn’t he? “...Whatever, man. She’s cute. I had a change of heart, okay?”

Jeff just scoffs. Eddie could hardly say it isn’t warranted.

At some point last year, you took up a part time job at Hawkins’ only real record store. Eddie doesn’t know your entire schedule nor any changes it may have undergone since, but as far as he’s been able to tell, you work invariably on Saturday afternoons, and thus, ever since, unless he’s truly desperate, he’s tended to relegate his perusing excursions to the confirmed safety of Sundays. The alternative would be finding some way to not get riled up by your ceaseless judgmental scrutiny and seemingly bottomless well of scathing remarks reserved specifically for that which he holds dearest, which, until extremely recent events, he would’ve considered a deeply blasphemous proposition.

“...I don’t buy it,” Jeff says. “I mean, she’s been cute the whole time. What the hell changed?”

“Why does something have to have changed? Why can’t I just want to talk to her?”

Eddie curses his stupid guilty conscience. Jeff is on the scent, sure, but there’s no way in hell he could ever figure out where it leads on his own. This is way too early for him to be cracking under pressure.

Jeff raises his eyebrows. “Because Eddie Munson doesn’t go back on his principles for no reason.”

That sounds…incredibly overdramatic when it’s someone else saying it. “It’s not for no reason, Jeff. I don’t know if you know this, but there’s this little thing called a ‘crush.’ Tends to be pretty spontaneous, and, y’know, involuntary.”

The look Eddie gets for this shoddy self-defense is, above all, disappointed, and it gives him the fucking heebie-jeebies.

“Don’t bullshit me, Eddie,” Jeff asks. “...Lie to the others if you feel like you gotta, but not me, man.”

Welp, this is it. His life is over, because he’s a terrible person and his good friend Jeff is disappointed in him. And he’s not even half as disappointed as he’s going to be when Eddie spills his rotten guts.

Eddie bends over until his forehead hits the steering wheel and unleashes an entire demented week’s worth of frustrations on a monstrous groan of the word fuck. Once he’s gotten every choppy decibel of it out of his system, he swings back upright and claws his hands down his face.

“...Fine,” he relents. “I’ll tell you. But only if you promise me that not a word of this will ever leave this van. Not a fucking word, Jeff.”

“Sure, dude.”

Eddie’s left eye starts to twitch, and he grasps the center console for dear life. “No, not ‘sure dude.’ This is serious, man, like—life and death. My life and my death. I need you to swear. …Swear on— Fuck, swear on Ozzy.”

“What?”

“Swear on Ozzy, right now, or I’m not telling you shit! Does it sound like I’m joking?”

“Okay, Jesus! I swear on Ozzy.”

“Not a word leaves this van?”

“I won’t tell anyone, man. I promise. What the hell is this about?”

Eddie takes a few deep, dread-soaked breaths. He turns towards Jeff as much as he can and leans in closer, staring wide and unblinking and gravely serious. Jeff seems to be wondering, much like Eddie has been lately, whether this is all some incomprehensible practical joke.

“...Jason Carver,” Eddie mumbles, only a hair louder than the piercing solo of Crypts of Eternity hitting a crescendo in the background. “...is paying me…to date her.”

“...What?”

Eddie’s face pulls taut in frustration. “I said—”

“I heard what you said,” Jeff says. “But…what the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s…a long fucking story, Jeff, but the gist of it is: Carver can’t date Chrissy Cunningham unless someone takes out her cousin first, and for whatever goddamn reason, he chose me.”

“...And he’s paying you?”

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

Eddie eyes him. Not a chance. Jeff stews on it for a moment.

“...So the only reason you’re talking to her is because you’re getting paid to?”

Eddie’s mouth falls open and nothing comes out. Jeff’s upper lip curls in distaste.

“...Dude.”

He can feel his hackles rising, his shoulders tensing up, and his knuckles turn bone white around the steering wheel. “Well fuck, Jeff, when you put it like that—”

“Please tell me you’re fucking with me, dude,” Jeff begs. “There’s no way you’re actually gonna trick this girl into dating you, right?”

“Listen! It’s not like I’m running a long con here,” Eddie hisses. “Carver paid me for one date, maybe two at most. All I’m doing is…trying to get on her good side, if she has one; wearing her down until she caves and lets me take her out. And then, obviously, she’ll get sick of me and call it off, and voilà. No harm, no foul.”

Jeff is not remotely impressed, arms crossed snugly over his chest. “Yeah? And what if she doesn’t get sick of you?”

Eddie blinks and decides to take Jeff’s delusional entertainment of that possibility as a compliment. “Then…I’ll call it off. Same difference.”

“Yeah? You’ll call it off when? When Carver stops paying?”

The stress of this impromptu interrogation hits a sudden peak. He jerks at the steering wheel in frustration, then covers his face with his hands so hard that it sounds (and feels) like a slap. “Christ, Jeff, would you get off my ass? I’ll end it when it’s time to end it, and it doesn’t even fuckin’ matter, cause she can barely stand the sight of me in the first place. It’ll be a miracle if I can get her to go out with me once.”

“...Alright,” he relents. “I got it. But I’m just saying, man, it’s a dangerous game you’re playing.”

Hands falling back to his lap, Eddie rolls his eyes. “She’s not gonna fucking stab me, dude.”

Jeff scoffs so hard it tumbles right into a laugh. “I’m not talking about you. Mess with her feelings, and you could fuck her up for life.”

He knows that, but it thrusts a pang of something unpleasant into his guts anyway. Eddie considers making a joke about how clearly someone has already beat him to it, but it would probably be detrimental at best to his case right now, and the only piece of advice from his father that he’s ever truly taken to heart was not to throw stones from glass houses.

…

On an overcast Saturday afternoon, at roughly 3:43 pm, Eddie parks his van in the Hawkins Public Library lot.

He isn’t quite nervous as he travels the block and a half it takes to get to Main Street Vinyl, but it definitely feels weird. Stepping in of his own free will in broad daylight will be flying in the face of the one sacred rule he’s committed to for almost a year’s worth of Saturdays. But more than that, he’s curious. About a couple of things, but mostly about the look it’ll put on your face as he does.

The bell jingles above his head and there you are, sat as expected on your evil throne—that is, the stool in front of the cash register. You don’t look up because Jerry, the owner, is saying something to you, so Eddie busies himself with thumbing aimlessly through the first record bin that somewhat catches his eye, spying on your quiet exchange until Jerry turns to disappear through the bead curtain into the back of the shop. Then, Eddie keeps his eyes firmly where his hands are.

He can feel it as soon as your stare (or, more likely, glare) lands on him, and considering the thin, prickly little needles that keep jabbing him along his spine as he shuffles around without purpose, pretending to browse, you must be keeping it there. The attention makes him want to smile. Eventually, as naturally as he can manage, his gaze flickers up as if he only just saw you there, and his lips twitch upwards as he flutters his fingers in a wave, but all that does is convince you to look away, picking up the paperback on the desk in front of you and focusing on that instead. Slightly disappointing. He might as well move on to what he’s actually here for.

Approaching the wall of cassette tapes, he quickly locates something for himself, something he’s had his eye on for a while but never got around to—Anthrax’s Fistful of Metal, beautifully grotesque. This is the red herring. Then, he goes hunting for the kicker. It doesn’t take long; the bold, black lettering of THE CURE on a couple of pastel backgrounds catches his eye immediately, and he pries both of them out for examination. A simple, white, smeary cover for Seventeen Seconds, and three dark, multiply-distorted, boldly ominous figures on what declares itself to be Pornography.

Well, he can’t say he doesn’t like the sound of that.

Eddie drops himself at the counter with a deliberate, noisy heft intended to force you to look up from your reading. It does not.

“...Fancy seeing you here,” he says, taking the opportunity of your inattention to look you up and down.

Your eyes are circled with smudgy black as always, but looking down at the book in your hand reveals a smear of muddy purple on your eyelids, slightly shimmery. The rest of you is shrouded in your typical dark layers, blurring the boundaries between one garment and the next. You still smell good, too—he stops himself from leaning a little further over the counter in search of a more concentrated whiff like a humongous creep. You flip the page before speaking, but it looks to him like you’re staring at it way too hard to actually be processing any information.

“....If you’re here to get rejected again, you might as well get it over with,” you drone.

Eddie smiles, not that you’re looking. “You think I’m here to see you, huh? That's cute.”

“Doesn’t seem like you have anything better to do lately.”

“Nope,” he confirms cheerfully. “You’re kinda at the top of my list right now.”

You turn the page again, and Eddie has to bite the inside of his cheek, bracing against a little flutter in his stomach. No fucking way you read that fast.

“...So, how ‘bout it?” he tries.

You seem to have to fight against some resistance to finally wrench your stare up to his face. “How about what?”

“You and me,” he says. “The Hawk. Whatever movie you want, and as much popcorn as your…ghostly little heart desires.”

…You close your book and set it down. Eddie does wonder for a moment if you’d be capable of throwing yourself over the counter at him, but all you do is scowl.

“I'm not half as desperate as I'd have to be to go out with you.”

Eddie blinks. It should probably sting, at least a little bit, but something about the situation—the duplicity, most likely, along with a lingering grudge from the last time you spoke—stops it short, flicks it away before it can gouge itself under his skin.

“...No?” he confirms.

You shake your head. Kind of adorable, like a stubborn toddler. The response that his mind conjures up is almost enough to make him gag, which is perfect.

“Oh, don’t worry,” he says, and he flashes you a smile that could probably piss himself off. “I’ll getcha there.”

The way your frown deepens in repulsion feels like sweet victory. Your hand twitches like you’re itching to retreat back into your novel (which, even with the cover down, he identifies from the spine as Interview with the Vampire, so wholly unsurprising that it makes him want to pinch you) so Eddie is quick to get on with it. He slaps his stacked tapes down in front of you, then slides them a little closer.

“...Ring me up, would you?” he asks sweetly.

You grimace down at his Anthrax tape, its unsightly cover image of a chainmail-clad fist bursting through an angry man’s jaw.

“More shock rock schlock?” you say, utterly dismissive in a way that used to make his eye twitch. For the sake of his own sanity, he decides not to correct you. “What a surprise.”

“You know me so well,” he jokes, and you only nearly roll your eyes, which annoys him more than the jab. Both hands braced on the edge of the counter, he leans into it, tapping the toe of one shoe against the linoleum, using every ounce of self-control he possesses to not stare at your face in obvious anticipation.

Eddie swears that the passing of time eases up as you lazily reach out to reveal the second tape, and as soon as you do, your eyebrows furrow together. Frozen in place, you snap your wide eyed, borderline appalled expression up to his face, and Eddie puts on his most potent facade of cluelessness.

“...What the hell is this?” you ask.

Eddie raises his eyebrows. “...Uh, it's The Cure,” he says. “They’re a—”

“I know what The Cure is,” you hiss. It’s the closest he’s ever heard you come to yelling. Don’t smile, don’t smile, don’t fucking smile. “Why do you have this?”

Eddie lets himself scoff, lightly amused, looking at you like you’re the weirdest person ever. “...Cause I wanna listen to it?

The Anthrax tape thrown carelessly aside, you snatch up Pornography and hold it up to him, as if Eddie was perhaps stupid enough to have picked it up without looking at it.

“I’m not selling you this,” you spit, and Eddie nearly bursts out laughing, unable to hide his grin any longer.

His eyes go wide with joyful affront. “Why not?”

“You don’t listen to The Cure.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“No, you don't."

“You haven’t seen me in here in months,” he counters, leaning a little further over the counter, cocking his head at you. “You have no idea what all I listen to.”

You seem to grit your teeth, staring at him like you’re caught between trying to figure out his angle and just bouncing the damn tape off of his skull in irritation, which is close enough to seeing straight through him to make his chest constrict for a couple seconds.

“...Yeah, alright, it’s not my usual sound,” Eddie admits, plucking the tape out of your hand. It curls into a fist and thuds weakly on the counter. “But…I kinda dig it. It’s cool. They’re, uh…” He gestures the tape in a circle, eyes flitting around for the time it takes to pull something out of his ass. “...Dark, y’know, and like…introspective.”

You narrow your eyes at him, profoundly suspicious, but since you don’t call him out on anything, he figures his shots in the dark must’ve hit acceptably on-target. He places the tape between you again and slides it graciously back to your side with his finger.

“So, if you please…”

Eddie blinks his freakishly large eyes at you until you snap, swiping up both tapes to examine before irritably punching numbers into the cash register.

“...$12.15,” you grumble.

Fucking ouch. “Sure thing.”

Eddie pulls his wallet out of his back pocket and flips through a series of wrinkled, felty one- and five-dollar bills until he hits a crisp and pristine twenty. He tugs it out but hesitates, not loving the feeling he gets at the idea of handing you the very bill he was given in exchange for pestering you, but, fuck, he accepted it, didn’t he? He bites his lips into his mouth as he hands it to you, and then stares at the counter until you wordlessly slap his change and receipt down next to his tapes.

“Thanks,” he says, brute forcing a smile as he bullies the change back into his wallet. “...So, was that a yes or no on the movie?”

“Don’t push your luck, Munson.”

Eddie nods. “Raincheck, then,” he interprets. “Got it. Then I guess I’ll see you at school?”

He gives you an expectant smile, but all you do is keep glaring, arms crossed over your chest. Scooping up his tapes, he saunters backward for a few steps, just to beam his smile at you for that much longer before he turns around to make his exit properly, but just a few steps from the door, a scrawl of blue glitter pops into his mind and he pauses. It sits there like an itch begging to be scratched and Eddie spins on his heels again, traipsing right on back to the counter. Your shoulders rise a little in stress, but your nose is stuffed firmly back into your book as you take an irritated breath.

“Sorry, I’ll leave you alone in a second, I promise,” Eddie says, gooey and sympathetic. “It’s just, um… I heard you do stick-and-pokes.”

You lift your face in genuine (that is, nonhostile) surprise, and just like last time, it makes Eddie’s brain stutter. His mouth hangs open for a couple of seconds, and he squeezes out an airy laugh.

“I, uh… I’ve got some sick ink already,” he says, wrestling his jacket off of one shoulder so he can pull his collar aside to show you his black widow. You actually seem to examine it, and it wipes the expression clean off his face. “And, uh—there’s these guys.” He fixes his jacket and scrunches up his right sleeve to show you his bats, but tugs it back down as soon as the feeling of your eyes tracing over it makes his hair stand on end. “...But, y’know, you could always have…more.”

He shrugs, clears his throat, and stifles a frown at whatever the fuck happened to his charisma in the last twenty seconds. You look at him with your eyebrows raised, incredulous and purely bemused and somehow no longer visibly annoyed by his existence, and Eddie forces himself to ignore the fact that the heat that flares up in his cheeks may very well be visible.

“...I’m just saying,” he goes on with a shrug, a paradoxically desperate attempt at nonchalance. “If you’re ever in need of…a practice dummy, y’know, some willing skin to prick… I’m your guy.”

You snort at him. It isn’t a laugh, but it isn’t not a laugh, either.

“...Yeah, okay,” Eddie gives in with a mildly embarrassed smile. “Hold my breath, right?”

“...Something like that.”

Something like that. Okay.

“Cool,” he says. “...See you on Monday?”

Your sigh sounds a lot like a concession. “Unless you drop dead first.”

…Shit. Alright. He’ll take it.

Eddie surrenders to the compulsive grin of successful mischief as he glides away from the counter again, scampering back towards the exit. The bell chimes once again as he swings the door open and looks back at you one last time.

“Try not to miss me too bad, mmkay?”

Your eye-roll is visible from across the store, and Eddie savors it, bounding down the sidewalk with hellfire at his heels, smiling like a weirdo all the way back to his van.

Inside, his curiosity takes over and he sets up Pornogrpahy in his tape deck before hitting the road. The echoey, staccato drum track plays for all of ten seconds before the guitar drops in, yowling like a dog in pain. The dense, mournful sound of it makes the van feel shrunken and stuffy, and finally, Robert Smith’s whiny vocals round off the heavy soundscape.

It doesn’t matter if we all die.

…Yeesh.

For once, he willingly turns the music down a couple notches. It sounds like getting sucked into a cold, sludgy whirlpool straight to hell, and not even really in a cool way. No wonder you’re so cranky all the time; he would be too if this was the kind of shit he powdered his nose to.

…

The town freak has caught an interest in you, apparently.

You really thought that joke about his dad would be the end of it. The memory of his face still makes you giggle, all red and tight and wide-eyed, that vein in his neck looking close to bursting. If pissing him off that bad hasn’t deterred him, you might have to start getting really creative.

It sort of makes you sick. He doesn’t know you at all, you’ve never spoken to him more than was absolutely necessary to conduct an antagonistic business transaction, and you sure as fuck have never hung out with him. Munson doesn’t seem shy enough to have been crushing from afar for any significant amount of time, and even if he was, your flat rejections and direct insults should’ve been more than enough to burst that bubble.

I heard you do stick-and-pokes.

…Ugh. That definitely isn’t the only thing he’s heard about you. Just thinking about it makes your skin crawl.

You aren’t ashamed to admit that you expected a little better from him, of all people. Given the near universal contempt that not just the school but Hawkins at large holds for the obnoxious king of loser island, based largely on ridiculous gossip and his unfortunate parentage, you never thought he’d end up joining the line of unsubtle douchebags curious to find out just how many of your own rumors happen to be true. Isn't he crazy enough on his own without trying to stick his dick in it, too?

He's cute, though, you'll give him that—much cuter than the hivemind at school would have you think. If he could just keep his mouth shut, those big eyes of his would probably get him pretty far.

…Not with you. But with someone.

The walk from Main Street Vinyl to your mother’s apartment isn’t very far, and it usually pisses you off. Just over three short blocks and you’re already back to the loony bin. No time to think through anything substantial or enjoy the cool evening air (unless you’re willing to sit on the curb for an extra half an hour,) and you’re lucky if you make it past the second track on whatever tape has a hold on you that day.

The purplish, misty glow of the storefront window floats ominously in the distance for the entire two and a half blocks off of Main Street, and even as an indistinct orb on the horizon, it’s still bright enough to give you a headache. At the very least, no one’s idling around outside tonight, hemming and hawing and wringing their hands over some asinine internal battle, pretending they just happen to be there of all places, staring at tubes of red and blue and purple neon, bent into shapes taboo enough to entrance them. Psychic Readings. An open palm with an all-seeing eye at the center. Every time a hesitant would-be client takes your casual entrance as a permissive gesture, following twitchily at your heels like a lost puppy, you only barely resist the urge to slam the door in their face, annoying fucking bead curtain be damned.

There used to be more displayed in the shop window, statuettes and votive figures, occult paraphernalia; a crystal ball, all-colored candles, amulets and crystals, bundles of dried herbs; but after a record three shatterings in a little over a month, your mother finally gave in to reality and cleared it of unnecessary provocations. Now, it only shows a red brocade drapery behind its blinding neon sign.

Walking through the door is like stepping straight into a cumulus cloud of jasmine and frankincense. You slide one headphone off of your ear just to confirm the low, fateful murmuring of your mother attending to a client behind the curtain of the back room, and quickly unhook the chain separating the creaky stairs to the second floor.

Seated on the copper-orange shag rug of your bedroom floor, you run a finger along the columns of your tape rack, woefully uninspired. In the Flat Field, Garlands, Some Great Reward, Ocean Rain, Kaleidoscope, First and Last and Always, The Smiths… Nothing’s grabbing you this evening.

Your nail catches on Pornography and you yank it out with a scowl.

Dark and introspective. …Liar, liar, fucking liar. How the hell did he know?

Rising to your feet, you put the tape into the player on top of your dresser and hit play, cranking the volume just high enough to bleed downstairs before returning to your fluffy rug, flopping onto your back. You rub your eyes, feeling your liner smear this way and that under your fingers.

You’re kinda at the top of my list right now.

The typical seething angst in the back of your mind erupts, violently boiling over, and your hands move with a fury, smearing makeup down your cheeks and up over your eyebrows, dragging at the skin of your face like you’re trying to make it split at the seams. It’s not helping much, so you throw the crook of your elbow over your face, sink your teeth into the flesh there and bite, bite, bite.

What the hell does he want from you? You know what he wants—what every guy wants—even if he’s smart enough to play innocent, but you can’t imagine why he’s so goddamn stubborn about it. You treat him like he’s an ant to grind under your boot, because he is, and what does he do? He shows up at your job, waves your favorite album in your face as if it means anything to him at all, and fucking blushes at you. Multiple times.

He’s a masochist, is what he is. A sick, lying freak.

The phone starts ringing. With an aggrieved groan, you give your forearm a break and flip over, crawling towards your bedside table to yank the receiver off of the phone.

“What?”

“...Oops,” says Chrissy. “Bad time?”

You sigh, already feeling your burst of caustic annoyance start to dull out. “No worse than usual.”

“Are you sure?” she asks, in that angelically nosey way she often does. “You sound kinda angry.”

There’s a stupid, grinning face pulsating obnoxiously in the back of your mind. “I’m always angry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re making me angry right now.”

She giggles in your ear. “Fine, I’ll drop it.”

There’s a moment of shuffling around on her end, and you squeeze the phone to your ear with your shoulder so you can pick at the skin around your fingernails. You have nothing to say.

“...So,” she continues eventually. “...Anything new going on?”

The question makes you frown, pausing in your fidgeting.

“...Nope,” you decide. “...Is that blonde jockstrap still stalking you?”

Chrissy scoffs, just short of a laugh. “Jason isn’t stalking me.”

“Sure he isn’t.”

“He isn’t!” she insists. “He’s just…nice, I swear.”

From there, she goes into a more detailed account of her encounters with the stalker since the last time you talked, interspersed with tangents, tales from cheer practice, and snippets of her upcoming plans, but you’re only halfway listening.

…You could’ve told her. About this…weirdness with Munson, how incessant and annoying and weird he’s being, that he somehow isn’t put off by your deliberate off-puttingness and he apparently, allegedly, might even listen to one of your favorite bands, but for some reason, the thought of doing so makes your stomach sour.

It’s so stupid you could scream. He’s the one making a gigantic fool of himself, so why the hell are you feeling shy about it?

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