Dirty Little Secret| Eddie Munson x Reader

Serpents

*CW: depressive ideation, underage drinking*

YN's POV
Saturday, November 16th, 1985.

Sixteen days. It'd been sixteen days since Eddie left me. Sixteen days, droning and monotonous, lacking in color, lacking in life. It hadn't gotten worse, at this point, but it hadn't gotten easier, either. It still felt raw, sticky and sore, like a wound you couldn't help but pick at, you couldn't let heal. Pick at it, I did. Each night, I awoke in the wee morning hours, when the sun had not yet peeked over the horizon, gasping for breath, coated in a damp, clammy sweat, as I convinced myself I'd heard his phantom snores beside me. That I'd felt his sinking mass dipping into the mattress behind me, slowly, soothingly dragging his blunt fingernails up and down my back. That I'd felt his warm breath kissing over the shell of my ear, whispering his lovedrunk sweet nothings over and over. Each night, upon realizing it'd been all in my head, his hand reached into my chest and ripped my heart out all over again, leaving behind a gaping, aching abyss in its wake. A hole he used to fit so snugly into before, the warm blood now run cold dribbling out its edges and staining deep red onto my shirt. Each night, instead of patching up that gaping hole, I'd clawed the wound open still as I slid out the cardboard box from its home underneath my bed and plucked out his tattered flannel, holding it to my face, inhaling the last traces of him deeply before sliding it over my shoulders. Now sixteen days later, the ratty shirt had fully lost its scent, his scent, as my own took it over, a muddied stench mixed in with the stale eminence of the old Reebok box, as the first bit of his memory crumbled out of my consciousness. I was beginning to forget a lot of the little things, them being lost from my mind forever, each little tid-bit of Eddie-isms dwindling away faster and faster as he stopped showing up to school, as he sat on the complete opposite side of the class on the off chance he did show, his adamant distancing himself from me accelerating the erasure of the impressions of his love from my brain. Each scrunch of his nose, each bit of his tongue peeking on to his upper lip, each tickle of his hair on my cheek, each calloused finger tip trailing over the mounds and valleys of my frame, dropping off one by one from my psyche, lost forever to time. Despite my body forgetting the intricacies of the sensations of his affections, it felt the absence of them tenfold. As I sat on my bed this afternoon, wrapped in the tattered flannel, now become some security blanket to me, with its frayed hems, missing buttons, cigarette burns in the sleeves, I was fully aware of how ridiculous I was being, how absurd it was that I was so affected by such a short lived relationship. But to me, our connection, though short lived, came to be something I cherished, something I held dear, something I leaned on in times of unease. And now it was gone. To even lose our friendship, something so intrinsic, so innate, so pure to my heart, was the most devastating thing I could imagine. I didn't expect anyone to understand but me. And so with that, on the sixteenth day of my grief, I was still raw, still sticky and sore, still picking at that hollow cavern in my core, as I slid the cardboard box back under my bed for the last time.

I'd sat still in place, the only indication of me being alive being the shallow rising and falling of my chest as I stared out my window for hours and hours, watching the pale sun streak across the sky in its daily trek over the expanse of Hawkins. Once the sun barely kissed the horizon in the west and the sky turned a brilliant orange and red, I knew I had to move, that I had to get up and do something with my day.

It was Nancy's birthday today. The big eighteen. Our friends had made plans to go out to a bar celebrate, with Steve gifting Nancy a fake ID. I dragged myself to the bathroom and turned on the shower, stripping out of the wrinkled, red and black plaid button up just long enough to wash myself and change into a black mini-dress under it before slipping it back over my arms. I detangled my hair and brushed my teeth before slapping some foundation under my eyes to hide my sleeplessness, smudging some eyeliner around my lids and combing some mascara through my eyelashes in an attempt to distract from my bloodshot corneas. I didn't bother with my hair, not having the will to do anything with it. I didn't even have the will to go out tonight, but I didn't want to be the drag that skipped out on Nancy's special day, so I hunkered on. Not long after me getting up, Steve's signature car horn honked outside my house and I shoved my feet into my converse before skipping down the stairs and outside. I waved an unenthusiastic hello to Steve and Robin up in the front of the car before sliding into the backseat and buckling in, looking out the window as Steve's excited ramblings on tonight's festivities filled my ears. After a short drive downtown, Steve parked the car in front of an all too familiar alleyway as I got the sinking realization that the bar we'd be going to tonight was none other than the Hideout. I pulled the sleeves of the flannel over my palms, gripping them tightly in my clammy fists as our trio filed out of the car and onto the sidewalk, where we met up with Nancy and a boy I didn't recognize.