Chapter Text
They always said a person’s life flashes before their eyes when they die. Supposed glimpses of every major moment they’d experienced in whatever amount of years they’d been allotted on this planet. The first recollection of his mothers touch, the echoing memory of the only time his father had ever taken the time to say he loved him, childhood fishing trips with Wayne, or even the feeling of elation when the very Queen of Hawkins High had recalled the name of his small town garage band.
These are the images Eddie Munson expects to see as the vision around his doe eyes starts to get fuzzy, whether from tears or the probable loss of blood he isn’t sure, but as he lies in the arms of a sobbing Dustin Henderson his mind can only wonder to you. The way the sunlight danced in your eyes the first time you met.
He’d just dismounted the cafeteria table after one of his famed rants, his sudden appearance making you jump and drop your lunch tray to the cracked linoleum floor. Spaghetti sauce shrapnel splattered across the expanse of your bare legs and his tight and tattered jeans. He’d expected you to yell, even ridicule him for being the freak he’d always been told he was, but you hadn’t. You’d laughed, a real, genuine kind of laugh. The kind that shook your frame and had you reaching out to steady yourself against him, and was a sound Eddie found more beautiful than any Iron Maiden song he’d ever learned to play.
There’s commotion around him. A desperate Dustin shouting pleas as he tries to lift his broken and bleeding body from the scorched earth of the Upside Down. Eddie wants to protest, but visions of you once again flit into his line of sight, the angry red of the flashing sky above him somehow morphing into the neon lighting of your first date.
The sounds of jingling coins and ricocheting air hockey pucks fill the air in the local arcade. Middle school kids running amuck to get the high score on PacMan. Eddie hadn’t expected you to have a competitive streak, but the warmth that spread in his chest when you jumped up and down after crushing him in Skeeball was more welcome than the holy burn of stolen whiskey shots. He marveled at the smile dancing across your lips and the way you flirted with your impressive stack of paper treasures.
“Come on Munson, lemme get you something pretty.” You had winked, wrapping a strand of tickets around the back of his neck to pull him into a kiss. The first kiss the two of you had ever shared. You’d done it so casually, like it hadn’t mattered that his entire center of gravity had suddenly shifted.
“Munson! Hey, Munson!” It’s a new voice now, not the melodic and liquid honey sound his tired mind wants to hide in. More stern, almost angry in the most concerned way. “God dammit why doesn’t anyone fucking listen to me?” He’s being jostled now, dead weight on tired legs.
“Robin, Dustin, grab his legs!” That one’s Wheeler. The urgency and command is so heavy in her tone, that it can even break through to him.
More jostling now. The painful and unbalanced rocking of his body being supported by others as they gallop away from whatever the fuck the five of them had just faced, lulling Eddie into another favored memory. Harsh and inconsistent waves of pain through his body shifting to that of gentle ripples hitting the side of a pink inner tube floating a top Lovers Lake.
You’re perched and watching, all giggles, messy hair, and drunken anticipation as he circles the floaty. A dangerous predator wading just out of reach of perfectly manicured hands. A smile stretches wide across his features before he dips below the surface of the water, fine winding tendrils of curly, chestnut, hair billowing around his head like that of a halo he’d never admit to wearing.
You squeal when he rockets back through to the light of day, toppling out of the safety of your floatation device and into the stronghold of his lean and tattooed arms. He adores how soft you are against him. Skin slick with lake water and the sunscreen you’d insisted the two of you apply. A contrast of the calloused fingertips of a guitarist and the unscathed perfection of his muse.
He’d kissed your palm as you shifted locks of hair away from his face. Squeals long since silenced by the bubbling happiness of a rapidly beating heart. Your eyes melted into his, a light pink hue blossoming across your cheeks and into the most breathtaking color he’d ever seen.
“I love you, Eddie…” You were so quiet, even the nervous laugh that had left your parted lips after your quiet confession had been just barely above a whisper.
He’d never seen you so shy, never had such a strong urge to coax you back into the confidence he’d always seen you in.
“Me too!” He fumbled, much louder than the quiet bubble you’d provided in the middle of the empty lake. “I- I mean, I love you too. Not me, you… I love you too.”
Eddie had been shy in his own right, stuttering over the words like that of a man learning a new language as his arms tightened around you. He’d always felt it, from the second Ms.Click had made the two of you stay after lunch to scrub the floors of your spaghetti rendezvous, but he’d never said it. As if what the two of you had was fragile enough to shatter with those three little words.
You’d laugh again after that. Jovial and reassured as you leaned into him with such vigor that it knocked him off his balance, plummeting the two of you back under the surface of the lukewarm water.
His back bounces off the thin mattress laying on the trailer’s floor. Pain bursting forth and causing his vision to fully blur in a flash of hot white pain.
“Shit, Eddie! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” Robin rambles as she frets over him gasping for what feels like his last breath. He thinks about all the cigarettes you’d made a face at when he smoked.
“Those things will kill you.” You’d say, snagging the lit stick of tobacco from between his lips to dowse it in a forgotten glass of water. If he wasn’t in such agony he feels like he could almost laugh at the memory. Like a quiet “I told you so” in regards to the way he’s going out.
His momentary joy is cut short by a cacophony of surrounding arguments and the rummaging through countless drawers. Even in his daze, Eddie can hear each sentence and foot step as they collide into one another above what he feels is his final resting place. A pathetic excuse of a mattress on the floor of his uncle’s rundown trailer.
Who’s going to get Red and the Sinclair kids?
Where can they take a wanted man for medical care?
Does Wayne even have a first aid kit?
Where the fuck are the keys to his van?
He closes his eyes bitterly, fighting against bile rising in his throat as the surrounding voices melt into a twisted version of yours. You’d stood on the porch of the trailer, fists clenched at your sides and cheeks stained red with freshly shed tears.
“So that’s it!?” He doesn’t make eye contact. Eddie Munson had been the spectacle of Forest Hills a thousand times over, but this had been his most miserable experience to date. “You think you can just drop me off and never speak to me again?” Your voice is cracking with emotion, a sound that he’d never quite been privy to before, and he hoped he’d never have to hear it again.
You’d graduated the first time around. Salutatorian well on her way to a Nursing Program at your first choice in schools. You’d taken a year off when he failed. Took a job bussing tables at the Hideout under the guise of wanting to gain a little life experience before burying your head back in a stack of books. He’d let himself believe that bullshit for a while too, took every second with you that he could before Ms. O’Donnell slighted him into his third year as a Hawkin’s High Senior.
The second he watched the class of 1985 walk across that stage without him, he’d made up his mind about letting you go. The people of Hawkins Indiana could call him a lot of things, say whatever they wanted about his interests or his upbringing, but he’d never let them say a single thing against you, and that included you being held back by a deadbeat that couldn’t even graduate highschool.
“Answer me, Eddie!” You’re shaking now, as your roommate's stolen car idles in his driveway.
He wanted so badly to pull you back into his arms, to let deep chocolate eyes meet with that of yours, to allow himself the pleasure of allowing your name to slip through parted lips in a rush of relief, but he didn’t. For all intensive purposes, Eddie stood completely still in the doorway of his home, eyes glued to the rotting wood of his tiny front porch. For the first time in your two year relationship, he let himself fall back into the worst of all his habits.
In stark silence, and absolute rejection of your demands for answers; Eddie Munson ran away.
“I loved you…” you whisper, body wracked with broken sobs and the hard “d” of past tense affections.
He almost feels like it's appropriate for this to be the last flash of a memory he gets to see before dying. Not that he’d really lived much since watching your retreating form get back into the open door of some beat up Ford, peeling out of the dirt road leading to his house never to be seen again.
The broken whimper of your name somehow breaks through the chaos around him, silencing the room of panicked teenagers as Eddie’s body finally pulls his mind into unconsciousness.