Fight or Flight (Eddie Munson x Y/N)

3. "A Deal with God"

You strum your fingers on the blue counter top, waiting for the phone to ring. Stacy usually called you when you were at work. She was your best friend when you were at Hawkins. You had lost touch with most of your friends since leaving three years ago but you and Stacy always kept in touch.

She was an enigma like you. That's the way you'd always refer to yourselves. She was a cheerleader. Pretty, with curly brown hair that bounced as she walked. A perpetually rose pink pout, adorned in lip gloss. Long and leggy, graceful and preppy. Every guy's dream, although she didn't care to be the fantasy of any of the boys at school. She loved older men. Went out with them often. Sometimes picked them up from the dive back The Hideout. You were the only one that knew. And you didn't care. You knew, regardless of what your parents or the church congregation your parents forced you to be a part of said about people like Stacy. Stacy was an amazing friend with a big heart, and that's what mattered to you.

And as for you, you were always smart, always serious about school, always wanting to do the right thing, please your folks even though you often felt they were smothering you. 

Until that rebellious...blip...the summer before freshman year at Hawkins High. It was the summer Stacy brought you into the fold of new "popular" friends--the cheerleaders and the football players. Jason Carver and Chrissy Cunningham--the king and queen of Hawkins High....and their infamous parties. Stacy had always been different from them but they shared her wild side so she partied with them, and brought you along, despite the disapproval of your parents. That's how it had started, that's how everything had changed. 

You went from a smart good girl who just happened to like metal music, to someone who was testing out a wild streak. You were drinking, trying whatever drugs the boys brought to the parties, making out with boys, although you never let it get any further than that. You lost your goodie goodie title but not your self-respect, you told yourself. At least, until that night... 

After what happened to you, you found metal music, which your parents basically thought only devil worshipers listened to. You didn't think it was music that created evil. You didn't think the music was against god. Quite the opposite in fact. You found Metallica shortly after what happened three years ago. It help you process the anger, the senselessness of it all. It was your salvation. Your opportunity to speak about it without having to tell anyone at all. Something about the grittiness of the vocals, the frenetic, pleading whines of the guitar. It gave you permission to release those feelings inside of you.

You didn't blame Stacy for what happened, for introducing you to that crowd. She was testing them out as friends just as much as you were, and she stuck by your side after it happened. She didn't judge you. She wrote them off. Started hanging out again with Steve Harrington and Robyn Buckley.

Of course she couldn't tell all this to your parents. That you'd begun to listen to the devil's music. That you wasn't even sure, after the summer after your freshmen year at Hawkins, that there was a god at all...

You're startled out your esoteric daydream to the shrill cry of the phone you'd been waiting for to ring. You let it ring a second time before you gingerly pick up the receiver.

"Blockbuster video," you say in the conditioned sing song voice of an employee, shutting your eyes tight in frustration for letting those thoughts come back to your conscious mind. It was one thing when you dreamed about it subconsciously; it was another to give those thoughts, him, intentional power.

"Hi, yes, do you have 'Debby Does Dallas' available to rent?" you Stacy purr into the phone, rolling her young afterward for extra effect.

"Ew, perv," you giggle. "We don't carry adult films, Hargrove. Guess you're out of luck."

"Shame," she sighs. "I'm bored as hell. I'm stuck babysitting Max."

"I'm sorry," you say. "If it helps I'm stuck here at work until 10."

"Yeah. It kind of does," you hear her smile into the phone. "Still beats being here. But like I've always said: it's better than when my shithead step brother lived here."

"I mean, I've never met him...but could he really have been that bad, Stacy?" You've never asked that question before. It kind of just came out. Now that you've experienced true evil, you wonder where the line is. What breeds of bad lurked in the shadows... you want to know but you also regret the question the second it comes out of your mouth. It's just been unspoken understanding to never bring up the infamous Billy.

"You have no idea," Stacy quietly replied. "He was...angry. Dark. He would beat on me because of how much he despised me and my mom. We were the reason he didn't have a mom in his mind. Even though she had died long before we came into the picture. He was relentless," she whispered now. "Anyway," she continued quickly and loudly, replacing vulnerability with callousness. "Like I said, it's better without that asshole."

"Right. Well hey listen, can I call you back later? A customer just came in and my mom was really weird before, saying she and my dad needed to talk to me tonight."

"Yeah sure. Call me later. Don't let them take you to a Jesus camp."

"I won't" you laugh. "Bye Hargrove,"

^Author's Note: I know you're patiently waiting for Eddie. He's coming. I have to create the backstory first!