Chapter Text
It took a while, but I think I finally did it. I finally rekindled my friendship with Eddie. That might or might not have been due to the fact that I knew where he would be at 6.30pm everyday. Maybe the fact that we smoked the same cigarettes. A bit of the fact that Steve and him got close because of their friendship with some freshmen. But mostly it was due to the fact that something inside me told me it was the thing I was meant to do.
"Whatcha thinking about, Alex?" Eddie stood facing me, playing with his rings. H seemed to do that a lot. He also seemed nervous for some reason.
We were sat on some old sinking wooden table in the forest near school, a place where apparently "no one comes", as he told me when he told me we should go here. I didn't know why we couldn't just sit in the parking lot or at Skull Rock, like we had done for the past few weeks, but he insisted on being here today.
"Why here?" I looked back at him, gesturing around. I figured I might as well ask. I liked how blunt Eddie was, we had that in common. Everyone else at school would say something but mean something else, I thought it was so stupid, but on top of it being stupid, it was hard and confusing for me to grasp.
With Eddie, it was sort of a breath of fresh air? I thought Steve and Robin were it, that those were my people in this town and it would only be us three. Yet here I was, in the middle of nowhere with Eddie Munson and I had that same feeling. I felt… happy. I was sitting in comfortable silence with mister drug dealer, oddly not doing anything illegal.
Eddie looked back down at his rings, then down at the ground.
"Right. Well, here because… I was tired of being bothered by horny teenagers while we were trying to talk" he said. It was a fair point, we kept getting told off while couples came at the one and only make-out spot.
"But also because I thought, you know I thought you were so cool when you made the Hellfire design. You just looked at one of my campaigns and you just, got it?" Eddie's eyes met mine and for a second I could see myself in them.
"Yeah, we've talked about Freshman year countless times at this point, I remember it just as you do. Come on, talk to me."
"Ok okokok… ok. So!”—he slaps his hands on the table as his rings meet each other letting out a clank—”It got me thinking that you don't actually have the shirt that you made. And I just thought-...averystupidthought- that maybe you could get one so you have it for down the line, memories and all you know?"
I didn't break eye contact. "Hell yeah. I mean, I deserve to have the coolest shirt in the world, given that it was made by me, no?" I chuckled.
"Wait, yeah?" he said, as if in his head the conversation went another way.
"Yes, Eddie, I'm saying yes! Now… what's the catch?"
"My my Sunwell, you know me so well.." he grinned. His smile be damned. Mischievous but just the right amount of cute. His smile was… everything it should be. I should probably look back into his eyes now.
There's always a catch with Eddie Munson. Always a "You can use my lighter only if you give me your cigarette" or a "Sure, eat my apple today, but tomorrow I eat yours".
"But this time there's no catch. What, is it so hard to believe I can be a decent man?"
Now it was my turn to smile. I bet I looked like an idiot. Eddie got me smiling and has been getting me smiling more than usual. At least we were both idiots. Smiling idiots.
He suddenly climbed onto the table, the birds around us getting scared and flying away. I just stared at him from below. He reached his hand down and offered it to me. I wanted to move. I wanted to grab his hand, feel his rings. I screamed inside because of how badly I wanted to get up and be on top of that table with him. But I couldn't. Why couldn't I grab a goddamn hand?
"Come on, let's go get it. I don't have the shirt up my ass." His voice finally got through to me and allowed my body to unfreeze. I laughed it off, gently grasping his fingers.
We counted down and jumped off the table, essentially flying as we ran all the way to the parking lot and into his van. As soon as Eddie turned the keys, music started blasting and I laughed. I just laughed because it was funny to me how happy I was at that moment.
Once we reached his trailer he invited me in. I waited on the couch and opened myself a beer, one of the many laying around.
He came out of what I assumed was the bedroom and gestured for me to come in, which I did, only for my face to be covered by a shirt. I smiled, already knowing what to expect.
"Hold my beer, Eddie!" but he had already grabbed it from my hand.
I changed into the shirt, which was big for me, but comfortable nonetheless. I turned back to Eddie, grabbed my beer and layed down on his mattress. I could feel his eyes tracing me in the shirt, which felt nice in a weird way.
"Ah, I knew it would be big" he said, a bit disappointed. "We don't have the budget to make new ones so, this is actually an old one of mine from a few years ago."
When he said that, it made sense. The shirt suddenly got comfier and I could breathe in the Eddie scent off it: mostly cigarettes and cheap deodorant.
"I like it a lot. And, you know, if we keep smoking together everyday it won't lose its scent!" I said only half-joking as I smiled and looked down at it, then back up at Eddie.
He gets up, the mattress sinking as he positions himself gently next to me, leaning forward. He tilts his head up and stares at me from below, as if he’s about to share some devastating news.
“Remember how I said there was no catch?” He intrigues me.
“Son of a bitch! I knew there was a catch. Come on, out with it!” I play along.
He leans in, and for a moment I get scared that this was going to go differently. He grabs me by my shoulders, and I have no idea what’s to come. That’s sort of half the fun with Munson.
He whispers in his low but somehow not harsh or sharp voice “You, Alex, are now.. OFFICIALLY PART OF THE HELLFIRE CLUB” he screams the last bit as he starts shaking me and his hair and my hair and oh God everything is shaking.
It feels nice, the shaking. It feels nice with Eddie’s hands on my shoulder and his rings on my neck. It feels nice to know that there will be many more of these moments now that I can finally say I have more than two friends.
It all feels so nice, in fact, that in that moment I get this overwhelming urge to hug Eddie to stop the shaking that’s making the room spin. And so I do. He indeed stops moving around like a maniac, pulls back from the hug and faces me, a question mark basically hanging from his lips.
“You know if you just asked I would’ve gladly said yes, right? I fucking love that game” I answer his question before he asks it. And there we were again, smiling fucking idiots: matching shirts edition.