+++

eddie munson in stranger things s04e01 ↳ chapter one: the hellfire club, “’86, baby!”

cassieconrads·:

Cassie gave a nod at Eddie’s question, noticing his demeanor shift as she mentioned the Wheelers. As he described how he was friends with Mike, things started to make sense: maybe her new companion wasn’t that much of a stranger, after all. “Yeah, I came back with Nancy from the summer from college,” she explained, “we’re in the same sorority there, and they kind of all suck, so we bonded over it. Mike, though? I’m trying to get him to like me better than Nancy’s boyfriend, who somehow managed to follow us across the country to try and win her back, or some shit.” Cassie shrugged.

She let out a laugh, supposing he was right: Eddie certainly wasn’t the kind of guy she saw on the streets of Boston or San Francisco. “Shit, I’m sorry. I mean, I’m from California, and we had nothing like that going on there. Honestly, more has happened in the past few weeks that I’ve been here than my whole life there.” Including, but not limited to, a weird night at the graveyard and an entire diner burning down. “I’m Cassie. I appreciate the personal escort.”

+++

see, any friend of nancy’s that nancy trusted and liked enough to invite to stay with her over break surely wouldn’t mean no harm and eddie immediately relaxed. the...unfortunate encounter with ‘unnamed asshole slash jason carver carbon copy’ still had him somewhat shaken, looking over his shoulder more often than usual. and, at the mention of a dubious boyfriend that had followed them across the country, he slowly began to connect the dots. hoped to god that he had connected them all wrong. “that, uh, that boyfriend of hers - does he, like, have a little temper problem? and, like...does he sort of look like a ken doll right out of the box? “

he chuckled at her statement, shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “yeah, hawkins sort of does that to a person. lived here all my life before i moved to chicago, twenty years of, like, constant mayhem. and not, like, the good kind of mayhem, either.” 

but he spared her the gory details, the story of how, two years ago, he had nearly died while being attacked by vampire demon bats in the literal hell version of hawkins underneath the town. “well, pleased to make your acquaintance, cassie.”, he said with a grin and gave an over-exaggerated bow. “may i inquire what brings you to the library on such a fine day?”

Stranger Things - 4x08 - Papa

zccming​:

max narrowed her eyes while eddie showcased his outfit for her. she nodded, hand thoughtfully on her chin. “i don’t know, eddie.” she sighed as if she had bad news, then reached out and smacked her hand onto his shoulder, “you’re looking like the spitting image of callahan these days.” max grinned, then stepped back, crossed her arms, and resumed examining the storefront. max knew it wasn’t going to open if all she did was stand there and before she got the chance to sit on it some more, eddie was running through the inciting events with her. she didn’t deny the way he framed it. in fact, max nodded along, until she just had to interject, “okay? have you ever had karen wheeler look at you funny? it gets brutal after like…” she muttered a couple numbers under her breath, “five times.” 

there was an easiness that came in interacting with eddie. most of the time, max had to force herself to listen to and engage with other people. when it came to eddie though, she just did it, like it was built in. if she was inching anywhere near an edge of truly snapping in the face of this inconvenience, eddie’s laugh pushed her about fifty steps back. she gratefully accepted his hair pin, “yeah yeah. so beneath me.” max started for the back of the building. an exit without insult or profanity could be chalked up to a thank you from max. with eddie’s help and the guarantee of a few beers now on her side, she’d consider this outing a score. 

max took a grand total of fifteen minutes to round up all she needed to avoid mrs. wheeler’s stare of death before crossing the street back over to eddie’s van. she tossed her bag and then her skateboard inside without much care, then followed in suit. “we got like an hour before we should show up.” max announced, “we could go now but…” she sucked in on her teeth, “i don’t think we want be in the first wave of guests.” it was an annoying truth, but if max arrived to the wheeler household with eddie munson before the droves of people piled in, well, about a quarter of that target audience wouldn’t bother coming at all if they caught word. not needing to explain that, she flatly posed the next step, “so, how are we going to kill an hour?”

+++

he scrunched his nose, grimaced. “callahan?” listen, he’d heard a lot of insults in his life but this? and coming from max? “wow, that’s, - that’s the worst name i’ve ever been called. and isn’t that, like, before your time? aren’t you, like, twelve or something?” at her comment about wheeler he just shrugged with his palms held out. he’d never met the woman, didn’t usually hang about that part of town, but the way max described her - well, eddie wasn’t sure if inviting himself to that cookout was such a good idea after all. but fuck it. “the hell did you do that made mrs wheeler stare at you funny five times, max? that sounds more like a you problem if you ask me.”

and off she went, eddie looked around, made sure that no one around had seen her sneak off before he went back to his van. resisted the urge to turn up the music because they really didn’t need to draw any attention to themselves. he left the doors to the van wide open, sat side-ways in the driver’s seat, legs dangling out the door. then max returned with her secured goods, he lazily turned his head and watched as she climbed into the passenger seat. “sweet haul”, he said and nodded his head towards the stolen yield. “what did you get?”

he blew a raspberry. “an hour.”, he mused, fingers drumming on the dashboard. he’d been ready to slam his keys into the ignition and speed off but now, here they were, in the middle of downtown hawkins, after robbing a store on memorial day, with an hour to kill. eddie shifted so he sat properly in his seat, pulled the door shut and rolled the window down. “i don’t know, man. we could, like, chill in the sun somewhere? or hey, maybe the arcade’s open today?” he shrugged. “anywhere but here, dude. your choice. your wish is my command.”

mayorstjames·:

who: spencer st. james & @eddiemcnson·

where: near city hall

spencer was done with his day at work. it hadn’t been that stressful now that he thought about it, but it hadn’t been that interesting either. it had been dull, if anything. but now he could finally go home and so he made his way towards his car. it was almost getting dark outside, which didn’t surprise him. as he unlocked his car, he noticed a familiar face walking by. a face that he hadn’t seen in a while, but definitely a face he remembered. it was impossible to forget the face of eddie munson, the purp who had been the suspect of all of the mystery deaths in 1986. and the one who had caused so much trouble.

turning to stop the other on his tracks, standing in front of him, spencer looked at the other with a small smile on his lips. a fake one, obviously, but nevertheless a smile. “edward munson, right?” he asked. he knew exactly who he was. but he wanted to see how the other would react. “now, that’s a face i never thought i would see again. i didn’t know you were back in hawkins.” he said. not that he knew of his whereabouts in the past two years, but it seemed like he had disappeared after everything that happened, so he only assumed that he had left town.

+++

another day, another visit to family video. to catch up with robin, flirt with steve until he was all blushing and flustered, eddie counted today as a success as he walked back to where he’d parked his van near city hall, hand sin his pockets, an uncharacteristic smile on his face. whistling the melody of quiet riot’s ‘cum on feel the noize’ to himself. the sun was shining, the heat off the day slowly cooling down. no, yeah, today was a good day. and eddie was going to go home and smoke, maybe hit up max, too, and he was going to make it an even better day.

it was funny, in hindisght, how quickly a good day could turn into a great one, and how a great day could turn into a horrifically bad one. all thanks to the sight of one unfortunately familiar face. eddie stopped walking abruptly, nearly tripped over his own feet. brows furrowed, he nearly grimaced. he scoffed. “uh, yeah. eddie. but whatever.” pretending like he didn’t know exactly who he was. eddie fought off the urge to roll his eyes. 

“back for the summer, mayor spencer. assuming it still is ‘mayor’?” eddie mirrored his smile, it was equally fake and equally difficult, as he was going against his body’s natural instinct of looking at the other with an expression of pure disgust. but he was going to play it nice and safe. after all, his uncle still lived here - and presently, thanks to the border shenanigans, eddie was in no position to leave the town.

cassieconrads·:

Cassie let out a half-snorted laugh at the mention of Thad, who she could tell without even hearing about his conversation with Eddie how it must’ve gone. Thad was probably the most judgmental person she’d ever met, which was saying a lot, given the current state of her sorority life. Eddie was made for somewhere like Hawkins, Indiana, while Thad, quite simply was not. “He sucks, and I cannot express how sorry I am that you had the misfortune of meeting him. I could literally go on forever about how horrible I think that man is, and I’ve tried to very subtly bring it up to Nancy many times, but she won’t budge. I don’t know why, but maybe someone here can help her see the light more than I can.”

Though they’d only really driven through Chicago, Cassie couldn’t imagine what could have possibly brought someone back to Hawkins from a big city like that. “And you came back?” she asked, raising a brow. 

She gave a theatrical curtsy in response to his bow, unable to hide a smile. “You as well. I might have to start stealing all of Nancy’s friends for myself, if you’re all this cool.” Cassie didn’t want to bring up the cemetery or her vision to someone she’d literally met on the street, but maybe he knew something about the girl she’d been. “Right, well, I was looking through Nancy’s yearbook, and there was this whole page memorial kind of thing that sparked my interest. Some cheerleader girl, did something happen to her or something? I was just looking for anything that might be in the archives, I was … just curious.”

+++

he scrunched up his nose in disgust. so that was wheeler's infamous boyfriend. truly, eddie could not imagine how she'd moved on from steve to... whatever the hell this guy's deal was. "can't imagine that she'd value herself so little to  willingly be with this guy. you sure he's not, like, blackmailing her or something?"

just as cassie had said, eddie, too, hoped that someone would help nancy back onto the right path. not - not that that someone had to necessarily be steve, mind you. no, eddie really wasn't keen on a repeat of the 'upside down flirting with your ex while trying to fight vecna' debacle. he valued both steve and nancy's company greatly, but the thought of the two of them shamelessly flirting made him want to gag.

he shrugged, nodded. "yup, sure did. my boss is traveling the states for the summer, gave me a couple months off. thought I'd check back in with the crew." namely the people he'd spent spring break of '86 fighting an evil monster from a hell version of hawkins with. and the teenagers he used to play dnd with. " my uncle still lives here, too. only family i got."

eddie's smile slowly but surely faded as cassie continued talking. as if someone had punched the air out of him, he felt nauseous all of a sudden, hands cold and clammy. eyes darting around nervously. cheerleader. dead cheerleader. dead cheerleader in nancy wheeler's graduating class.

"chrissy cunningham.", he blurted out, voice meek and close to breaking. "what do you... why do you wanna know what happened to her? what is this, some kind of - are you trying to mess with me? is that what this is?"

stevehharringtcns·:

now that had been a turn of events that steve hadn’t been expecting when he set foot in the carnival. everything had happened so fast. he had gotten into a fight with jack and heather, he remembered that. he remember being bruised when he punched jack, which was weird. and the next thing he knew… he was at the hospital. apparently it had been a full day ever since those events and when he woke up and learned that eddie had been arrested, he felt sick to his stomach. at least he saw that max, dustin and robin were okay. even though, everyone else didn’t seem to be. how had things escalated so fast?

he found it easier when he had his eyes closed, although it was hard to get some sleep with all of the pain he felt. the explosion had left him with a couple of broken ribs, a broken wrist and some other bumps and bruises. he would have thought that his face looked the worst however, with whatever had happened with jack. he was still trying to figure out what had happened, but his brain was too busy thinking about other stuff. he hadn’t seen eddie ever since the carnival, and he was starting to get even more worried about it.

he lied in his bed, mostly because there was nothing to do. he kept his eyes closed, now used to the noises that the nurses made when coming in and out of his room. at least he had been able to charm the nurses to get more cups of jello, which he didn’t mind at all. he didn’t know why people complained so much about the hospital food - it was good in steve’s opinion. the noise of the door closing didn’t bother him, keeping his eyes closed as he took a deep breath, his insides aching a bit because of the broken ribs and then he heard a voice calling for him. a voice that he knew all too well.

opening his eyes slowly, he saw eddie approach his bedside and he felt relief. actually, he thought it was just a dream at first, but he quickly realized that it wasn’t. he couldn’t help but to give the other a weak smile. “eddie…” he said weakly, nodding his head slowly. “hey…” he said, smiling at him. he wished he had the strength to wrap his arms around him and hold him close, but any movement he made, made his body ache. he would get better eventually. “are you okay?” he asked, looking at the other’s face.

+++

he practically sprinted the last couple of steps to steves bedside as he hear his voice perk up. a relieved exhale basically ripped out of him, eddie blinked repeatedly, gasped a little at the feeling of hot tears streaming down his cheeks. "oh my god, oh my god, steve." he sobbed, crashed into the chair conveniently placed next to the bed. bottom lip trembling so much it made it hard to breath, eddie sucked in a breath, choked on it, erupting into a sputtering cough as the true emotional and physical weight of the past day and a half came crashing over him like a wave. his whole body ached, eyes sore, he wanted to scream.

eddie had to physically hold himself back from pulling steve into a bone-crushingly tight hug,but he needed to reach out and touch him, make sure that this was real, this wasn't just some vecna nightmare scenario thing, where everything started off good and then went horribly wrong. but the other looked so pale, weak. frail and delicate, eddie's hands shook as he softly reached out to let his knuckles ghost across steve's cheek. "god, im sorry.", he croaked, buried his face in his free hand as he let the sons rock through him for a moment. "i should've - i should've been there, i should've done something." something other than run. he dragged his hand down his face, exhaled with a groan.

"you - you're seriously asking me if i’m okay? you're the one in the hospital bed, not me, princess." a smile, an incredulous chuckle broke through eddie's crying, he shook his head softly in disbelief. "don't worry about me, ill be fine. always am. how are you, stevie? you’re okay, right? you’re going to be okay?"

stevehharringtcns·:

who: steve harrington & open

where: middle of the road

what was he doing? was he really about to go to a barbecue that was being thrown at the wheeler’s house? he had been invited, of course, but something didn’t feel right on just showing up there. how was he going to react when he saw nancy? and worst of all, how was she going to react? all of these thoughts were going through his mind as he drove - he should have been paying the attention to the road, but luckily he snapped out of his own head just in time to spot someone crossing the road right in front of his car. without even thinking, steve hit the brakes as hard as he could, his body leaning forward with the abrupt stop and before he knew it, he was honking the horn in protest, before sticking his head out of the window to get a better look at the person who was standing in front of his car.

“what the hell are you doing, dingus? you can’t just… walk in front of my car like that, you could have damaged it! i mean, you could have gotten hurt.” steve said, shaking his head as he ran a hand through his hair - both of them had been lucky, he thought to himself as he took a deep breath. “you going to the wheeler barbecue or what?” he asked, once it got awkward enough - they couldn’t just be there forever and the person didn’t seem to move, and steve definitely couldn’t run over them.

this was, objectively, awful. eddie was walking along the side of the road - not totally sure where he was - heaving and groaning and overall in a sour mood, dragging his feet like a little kid tired of walking. who'd have thought hawkins got this fucking hot in summer? he'd looked forward to getting away from the vicious chicago sun but had found his former hometown positively scalding, temperatures steadily climbing. he'd gone out to chill at his former favourite spot, that bench in that clearing in the woods behind hawkins high, to get a little piece of mind, have a smoke, be alone with his thoughts for a moment. he'd gone out there at, like, 12 this morning.

now, eddie wasn't sure what time it was, he'd forgotten his watch at home, but it was definitely past 12. he hadn't meant to fall asleep, it just happened. he'd only wanted to close his eyes for a couple minutes, next thing he knew he'd dozed off and awoken to bright piercing sunlight and what was definitely going to be a wicked sunburn on the back of his neck. some punk had stolen his bike so eddie was reduced to finding his way back to the trailer park.

he didn't know how long he'd been walking out there, leathe racket tied around his waist, only wearing a muscle shirt - he'd left the vest at home, which was inherently stupid because that vest was his best feature - pants cuffed, familiar black bandana dangling out of his back pocket. no cars had passed him, until -

- "harrington....?" eddie blinked a couple of times, made sure that this wasn't a heat induced hallucination. no, definitely, without a doubt, that was steve harrington's car. his fave lit up immediately, lips twisting into a big smile as he did the only thing he could think of. which was jumping in front of his car.

"harrington!", he called out, skillfully ignoring steve's outraged comments. he waved at him eagerly, then made his way around the hood of the car and yanked open the door to the passenger seat. "are my eyes deceiving me? do I truly find myself within the presence of king steve?"

he climbed into the passenger seat, stopped himself short of pulling steve into a hug. pull yourself together, man. the grin never left his face, leg bouncing excitedly because holy hell, that's steve and eddie's been looking forward to seeing him again for ages now.

"the wheelers barbecue? - well, im going now.", he said with an eager nod, pulled the door shut. "wheeler won't mind if you bring a plus one, will she?"

where: blue quarry mall who: eddie + cole ! @colemontgomeryx​​

despite the inital apprehension, because he really didn’t need the hawkins police department all up in his business again, not when he’d been a murder suspect barely two years ago, eddie slowly felt himself relax, some of the tension slipping from his body. not all, ever since that upside down debacle he hadn’t been able to relax fully. but the beer helped - bless that kid who’d brought the keg - and the general air of...insanity that lingered amongst the party-goers and protesters.

the sounds of black sabbath filled the mall, eddie felt himself nodding along to the tune, and, hey, he really didn’t care that most of the people here had never heard of ozzy osbourne in their lives. they all seemed to have a great time, anyway. so he didn’t even need to whip out that tape of 1988′s top of the pops he’d recorded, just in case they’d want to burn him at the stake for seducing them with his evil satanic dnd music.

he leaned against a pillar, let his eyes wander among the crowed, took a sip of beer and - hey, there he was, that kid with the keg. definitely not a kid now that he got a proper look at him. eddie tilted his head, his mouth dropped open slightly and he craned his neck, pushed himself off the wall, because... wait a minute.

wait a damn minute. he narrowed his eyes, looked down and. holy shit. well, if his eyes weren’t deceiving him then that - yeah that - that was a bandana. dangling from his - cole’s - back pocket. on display. he nearly choked on his beer, coughed and, taking another sip to ease said cough, he booked it across the mall, tapped him on the shoulder.

“hey, man - cole.”, he said, held eye contact with him for perhaps a tad longer than was appropriate. cleared his throat, gestured down towards his own back pocket. a quick look left and right, they weren’t in hearing distance of anyone else. still, he lowered his voice. “hey man, are you... are you flagging?”

scribblcs·:

WHO: gabe diaz & @eddiemcnson· WHAT: gabe spots a familiar face WHERE: downtown hawkins

gabe was settling into hawkins nicely. sure, it was vastly different from chicago, but this small town quiet was something he might be able to get used to. he’d seen a few patients already, but he still had a lot of downtime. on an ideal day, he walked to downtown in the morning, tried some coffee, read the paper, then went to work. following sessions, he liked to walk the town again, try some more coffee, then return home. gabe was really making an effort to immerse himself with the civilians. he’d gotten tangled up in a deep conversation with an elderly gentleman inside of melvald’s late in the afternoon, and they strolled about town together for a while before they parted ways, leaving gabe to finish out his walk alone at dusk. 

at least, he’d thought it would be alone. a couple feet ahead of him, an unmistakable mound of hair veered around the corner and gabe curiously squinted. that bandana certainly looked familiar…tailing the other for a while, he remained inconspicuous until he stole a glimpse of the other and got confirmation that he was in fact, eddie munson, a client from back in chicago. laughing in disbelief, gabe cupped his hands together and warmly called, “eddie!” last he’d heard from eddie, he was taking another trip back to his hometown, how was he to know that it was hawkins? despite how in depth they had gone about how horrible it was for him there, they’d never gotten on a first name basis with the place. gabe knew he made frequent visits, but typically, they weren’t this long, and when gabe left town to take up this new job, he worried about how eddie might react upon his return to find out his therapist had up and left him. luckily, those worries were quickly erased as soon as gabe saw how well eddie seemed to be faring. approaching him, beaming, gabe went in for a hug. oftentimes his heart seemed to get in the way from successfully preventing professional bleeding into personal and such was the case with eddie. he was one of many clients that gabe took a personal liking too, worried a little more about, and hoped extra harder they’d have an emotionally rich future. pulling back from the hug, gabe laughed in disbelief, “i have to admit, i’m quite surprised to see you here. i’m sure you could say the same.” 

while this was all well and good, it gave gabe second thoughts about hawkins. if this was the town that was such a source of hurt for one eddie munson, maybe it wasn’t as nice as he was starting to believe. 

+++

today was ... weird, to say the least. having previously ridden the high of managing to make steve all flustered and blushed when he’d stopped by family video, eddie’s modd had been dampened significantly by his run in with mayor spencer, leaving with a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach as he turned the corner, made his way back to his car. maybe he should park closer to family video next. re-route his evening walks to go through the woods instead of downtown hawkins. lost in thought, he’d barely even taken notice of the figure that had started to follow him, jumping slightly, hand on his heart as he ehard someone call his name.

turning around, prepared to lock eyes with someone who was definitely not fond of seeing him around town, eddie found he was pleasantly surprised as his former therapist came into view. slowly, he lowered his hand, squinted. “.... dr. diaz ? what - what are you- “ doing here, he thought as he was interrupted by gabe’s arms puilling him into a tight hug. one that eddie eagerly returned, wide smile on his face. “yeah... well, my boss is travelling the states for the summer, gave everyone an advance and closed up shop. thought i’d stop by here, pay my uncle a visit, you know.” he shrugged, non-chalantly, as if he hadn’t described hawkins as ‘hell on earth’ to gabe during therapy sessions for the last, like, three years. “and you? what brings you to hicksville, indiana?”