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Eddie Munson is... a lot to deal with, in the best way possible. (Baby boy I’m so sorry for saying that about you ily so much I want to wrap my little goblin man up in a blanket and bonk his head fondly I’m going insane.)
I don’t know, I just feel like Eddie would have known you forever. Both in the physical sense, with you only being a few years apart in school, but also that kind of ‘man I’m living in a dream, this is my soulmate and I’m just a dork standing outside life looking in at nirvana’ kind of way.
The first day he met you, he was too nervous to say anything. Instead, he just turned a blooming red all over his face and neck, latched one of his homemade bracelets onto your wrist, and then ran back into class.
The two of you have always been fast friends since then, but sometimes he would confuse you. Looking back, you were just too young to understand why exactly Eddie Munson would keep looking up at you like that. With that tilted, wide wonderous brown eye look and tense jaw. Sometimes, when you’d go out with a little snotty nosed Steve Harrington (the good ol’ days before he was a cool babysitter) you’d follow Steve’s scrunched up nose and confused head tilt to find Eddie sitting over by himself near the swing set. He’s stopped doodling in his journal, but instead ducks his head and buries them deep into the pages to hide his blush at getting caught by you. Or, he’d be skating back home after school ended, and as he fist bumped you goodbye he would always turn around to give you one last last look before he zoomed off down the boulevard - one warm eyed smile that seemed to burn like sun tinged clover as the sun crested behind his head.
So PHEW man, when he was finally in High School and only a few months away from ‘graduating’ for the first time, he finally mustered up the courage to pour out all the words that have been stuck bouncing around his brain and choked up in his chest over the last lingering years. It was a dank, dusty looking kind of autumn night, one’s where Eddie took his mind off all the revision he was not doing by going out and playing gigs to empty bars. Even with only a few drunkards stumbling about the stools, and even if the place reeked of ammonia and smoke, he could feel his heart pound along to the drumming of his friend when he spotted you slip in through the back doors, coming to cheer him on. When you grinned and waved awkwardly up at him, he finally seemed to understand what true happiness must feel like.
When he drops his beloved guitar and runs down off the stage once the set is over, everything finally just comes blurting out from the pit of his stomach like some frenzied hurricane of messy nonsensical noise.
I’ve got to be honest, dating him isn’t the easiest hill you could have chosen to run up in your life, but it’s by far the most important one you’ll ever choose to take.
He comes to pick you up and drive you both to school every. single. day. My man is impatient (not to get to school, he couldn’t care less about that. It’s just been over seven hours since he last saw you and he’s literally vibrating in his seat), so either be out of the house before he arrives or be ready to try and calm your angry parents when Eddie comes skewing up the road with his hand slammed on the horn. Be prepared as well for him to shove the passenger door open and immediately lean over the gear box to make out with you for a hot minute before you’ve even had a chance to sit down properly. Even though he’s just had his tongue slipped between your lips, he always acts like a flustered little field mouse when he pulls away and smiles at you. He’s such a cutie pie - still nervous and all shy when he leans down and pulls a bag of croissants out from under his seat that he bought you for breakfast.
I mean, you spend half the time eating it, and half the time taking a bite and then shoving it into Eddie’s face so he can share it with you while he’s driving, but you always appreciate the sentiment.
I mean, like... you HAVE to be part of the Hellfire Club right??? Eddie couldn’t bear it if you were away from him that long, so honestly despite how heated and intense the roleplaying sessions can get, they’re also pretty sweet at the same time. Mainly cute looks from Eddie from behind his manual, throwing you heart filled side eyes any time you roll the die. Or, when someone else is deciding their turn, you see a slight grin tug on the side of Eddie’s lips before you feel a thump against your foot under the table. He can’t help the way his chest starts to shake with laughter as you begin to play footsie hard enough to shake the table, even if he’s pretending to be all official and looking straight ahead at the game. In the end, Mike’s had enough and pretends to fake gag at the two of you, which usually ends with Eddie steamrolling his character with a terrible event in revenge lmao.
But by GOODNESS seeing you in one of their Club shirts??? My man will literally roll his eyes back in his head, stagger back into the lockers and clutch a hand over his heart before he falls to his knees pretending to faint every time he finally sees you in the corridor between lessons. Hearing you laugh always makes him burst into those sweet, high-pitched and hair swirling giggles, and that’s all he wants out of life. The sound is the most magical feeling in the world, and suddenly everything seems to make sense as he looks up at you with that bright smile and eyes near bursting with all the love the Universe can barely contain.
He’s definitely a full body kisser - the kind where he just grabs you by the elbow as you pass by in a blur of warmth, cups your cheeks as you turn to look at him in surprise, and kisses you silly. The kind where his back completely hunches over so you’re all encompassed by him, and his cheeks are so smashed against your own while he presses his plump lips against yours that you swear you can feel infinity. And then the little cheek will just swagger off to his last period as if nothing happened. You can always catch him looking back at you with a proud smirk and the softest ass eyes you’ve ever seen, despite his cocky strut.
Eddie pretends to be all confident 24/7, but honestly he struggles to play properly with his band unless you’re there with him. He feels like you’re his lucky charm, the one good thing in his life gifted to finally get his life in order (86′ is his year baby!) Mainly though, he just likes to show off to you during band practice, prancing around the stage and doing very dramatic twirls and reckless looking headbanging to make you laugh.
The two of you usually sneak off to hang out in the forest behind the school, once you’ve finished eating lunch with the rest of the Hellfire Club. With his arm around your shoulder, the two of you saunter off and away into the welcoming mists. He puts up a nonchalant façade as the two of you chat familiarly and warmly, but you know deep down that the things people write about D & D, the way other students whisper about the devil behind his back do get to him. This is the time of the day when he allows his softer, gentler side to come out to you - a rose blooming in the dirt in spite of the thorns. Do NOT tell anyone though, otherwise he gets all flustered and hyped up about it, but he does like to come out here to the outskirts and sit with you on the bench for a while. It’s always an intricate ritual, one well known but well versed so he can feel safe for a while. He starts by placing his head on your shoulder while he’s talking, and then a few moments later you can wrap your arm around his shoulder. Then he collapses sideways into your chest, and you just sit there hugging him for as long as he needs, rocking back and forth every so often.
On the days when he’s feeling brighter and more revved up due to a mixture of the excitement of starting a new campaign, and the continuous revelation that he’s here!! With you!! With you!!! he’ll shove you down onto the dirt before collapsing down beside you. Lying hip to hip and forehead to forehead, he feels more calm and at peace than he ever has in his twenty years of life. Putting his hands behind his head, you lean up to rest against his elbow as he makes up stupid stories about the shapes of the clouds. He always ends up turned to face you, though, his larger hands gingerly caressing the top of your arms as he bops his nose against your own fondly.
These are the kind of times when he likes to invent up these big, grandiose and ostentatious plans about how the two of you are going to escape Hawkins... move out somewhere on the coast, where he can become a tattoo artist, or perhaps a science fiction writer, and the two of you will be happy and free forever.
Some people think he wouldn’t be much into PDA, but my boi is HUGELY into it. He’s constantly got his hand resting on your knee under the lunch table, before biting his lip and trying not to smirk as he hears your breath hitch from where he’s gripped your thigh. Or when you’re cleaning up after the latest campaign has ended, he likes to pull you against his chest and drag you away from your very disgruntled and head shaking friends. He likes to rest his head on your shoulder, burrowing in like a puppy searching for treats, looking up at you from behind his fringe with a dopey smile and lightning struck eyes. He adores it when you play with his curls - Eddie will give exaggerated shivers and fall backwards onto the floor, curling up in laughter and gazing at you as if you hung all the stars in the sky.
He always gives you his jacket when he walks you from his car back to your doorway after school. He tightens his hand on your shoulders and leans forward to press a kiss to your forehead when you try to shrug it off and give it back to him. He winks and walks off, shouting behind his shoulder that it ‘looks way hotter on you than it ever will on me!’ He’s a strangely observant man, so he always does small things like this if he thinks something’s wrong or that you’re uncomfortable in any way.
This trait has nearly got him in trouble many, many times. Mainly due to the fact that any time you’ve had a falling out with someone, or the usual jocks are being rude to you due to your association with the freak Eddie Munson, he climbs up onto the tables at lunch and starts shouting across the hall at the person. Dustin manages about half the time to grab his leg and pull him back onto his seat before a teacher grabs him by the collar and gives him yet another detention.
On the weekends, when he’s at band practice and you’ve chosen to spend some time hanging out with your other friends Steve and Robin at ‘Family Video’, he’ll come sneaking in all innocent looking before sliding up to the counter. He’ll pretend to be busy looking at the snacks for sale, before overplaying the way he taps Steve’s shoulder.
‘Excuse me my good sir, I’m looking for the perfect move to impress the hottest, most badass person in Hawkins. Big plans, you ask? Why if you must know, it’s for me, I’m the hottest-’
The sentence ends with him earning a shove in the ribs from you.
He gets quite lonely, being all by himself at the trailer while his Uncle’s out working nights. So, he rings you up and promises that if you come over right now (the night before a class test, may I add), he’ll cook dinner for you. And, to be fair... he kind of does? But he also manages to cook the fringes of the kitchenette curtains, burn half the counter space, and set the bottom of the cabinets on fire. You end up managing to wrangle a very fed up sounding Steve into picking up and driving over to drop off a peperoni pizza to the two of you, before spending the night cuddled up on his bed watching the absolutely terrible movie he picked up at said movie store mentioned earlier. He cannot keep his hands to himself, though, man is so fidgety. If he’s not distracting you by crawling onto your lap and trying to kiss you through the bracket of his arms, he’s sliding his palms under your legs and trying to flip you over to straddle him. He’s spending the night climbing over your body like a sloth going wild, until he’s finally comfortably latched on and has fallen fast asleep. By the time the end credits roll, your legs are completely asleep due to the weight of his own on top of them, and he’s snoring with his nose pressed against your cheek.
Sometimes he’ll wake up for a moment, eyelashes fluttering open to a strange tickling sensation on his skin. Turns out, you’re just letting him sleep, silently running your pointer finger over the outline of his tattoos in the hope of soothing his dreams. When he looks down and notices the bracelet he gave you on the first day of school still roped onto your wrist, he nearly starts crying against you.
When poor Chrissy Cunningham gets... well, he’s almost surprised to find you lifting up the boat tarp and immediately falling onto him to wrap him up in the tightest hug your body could muster. He starts weeping into your neck, his own arms holding you in so tight a vice you fear you may burst right there and then. He was just so afraid - not of the cops, or that the town might think he’s a murderer, but that you would believe the lies they were spreading about him and never want to see him again.
You refuse to leave him. So, while the others go out to get the shattered looking man some groceries, you just sit with him for as long as needs. For a few hours it’s just the two of you on the boat dock, sitting side by side with your knees pressed up against your chests. He’s still too shaken to speak properly, in full sentences without choking back a sob. Every time his mouth blubbers open, and he turns to you with those misty, terrified wild eyes, you just grab his hand and squeeze it gently as you rest it on your knee. Every time his bottom lip starts shaking, and his breath hitches as if he’s about to pass out, you cradle his face and coo at him about how everything is going to be alright, and you’ll never ever leave him again. He burrows those words into his heart like a man desperate for air, leaning slowly forward to press a shaky kiss against your lips. He refuses to pull away, instead simultaneously pressing his forehead against yours, gasping for breath as he tugs your hand to hold against his heart.
Something had drawn the two of you together for as long as either of you could remember, and you would be damned if the wolves of Hawkins or some damn curse was going to rip you apart when your lives were just beginning.