Chocolate Button Eyes - Joseph Quinn & Characters Stories

* "Save Me A Dance?" - (Part 1) - Eddie Munson

TW- Swearing, alcohol, mentions of smut.
None of the wild shit in the ST storyline happened - they're all pretty average kids.
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I'd been away from Hawkins for college in Chicago for almost 3 years now, leaving my little brother and all my friends behind me back in Hawkins. I used to come home every Christmas and extended break for school but then I'd gotten a job in a record store near my dorm and used my time off from classes to work and save up to stay in Chicago after graduation. I loved Chicago, it made Hawkins look and feel like a fucking ghost town in comparison to the bustling and diverse streets of Chicago. Even with the 400 mile distance from my family, Chicago felt like home.

Today I was making the long drive back to Hawkins, my old best friend, Jocelyn, or Jojo as I called her, was getting married tomorrow to her high school sweetheart, Peter at only 20-years-old in a big white wedding paid for by her parents. I hadn't seen her in about 7 months but was of course elated to get the invite and make the trip for her. It had been more than a year since I'd last been back, only seeing my family when they'd come a visit for a little while or whenever my brother had a gig he wanted to go to in Chicago. Before I moved here, my parents would never had let Gareth go such a long way for a show, but knowing I was right there and knowing he would even be crashing at my dorm made them feel more comfortable with it.

The roads were surprisingly quiet the whole drive, the warm sun beaming through the windows of my beloved crimson red BMW 733i as the breeze from the slightly opened windows tussled through my hair. The lowly sounds of Ozzy Osbornes voice mumbled through my speakers from the new tape deck I had installed just last week, the whole car was a birthday gift from my parents, but the tape deck was a belated special addition from my baby brother, Gareth. Gareth and I shared a taste in music, I'd introduced him to metal early on and when I got my guitar I'd play him whatever I'd learned right away and he loved it, even got my parents to buy him a drum kit so we could jam together. When he started a band with some guys from school, he didn't play with me anymore. But it's okay, I was just glad he continued him passion for metal music either way.

The roads through Hawkins looked exactly how I remembered them, it was like a town forgotten by time, frozen in place from the moment I left. Nobody ever seemed to move out of Hawkins these days, and seldom did anybody move into it anymore. It was full of the same old, if not slightly aged faces as when I left this dump. Most of the people I went to school with ended up staying in town to work, going to the community college at the edge of town or just going to college in Indianapolis, barely anybody I knew acutely left Indiana after graduation. I couldn't help but feel a little smug that I'd done exactly what all those judgemental bastards said I wouldn't do and made it out of Hawkins, the one thing they all bragged that they'd be doing by now.

Round the little cu-de-sac where my old home was, I could hear the sounds of thrash metal blaring for the garage, the unmistakable sounds of my favourite band booming through the quiet neighbourhood, Corroded Coffin. They weren't super famous, or famous at all for they matter, and they weren't exactly Metallica, but I had a soft spot for the members of this amateur metal band. My baby brother, who I can't fucking believe is 17 now, was the drummer of this group of weirdos, alongside his friends and D&D comrades from school. I pulled my car up onto the dirt tracked lawn beside the house, my usual parking spot, before quietly making my way round the wall toward the open garage door just as they were coming to the finale of their symphony of thrashing angst.

The rupturing sounds of my applause and cheers brought their self celebrations to an abrupt end as Gareth's eyes widened, his face lighting up with an excitable smile at the sight of me standing in the threshold old the wide garage entrance. "Encore! Encore!" I cheered loudly, my hands crashing together in wild support for the wonderful boys I'd watched flourish into a pretty decent ensemble over the years. "Holy shit! Y/N? What the fuck are you doing here?" Gareth came hurtling towards me with his arms outstretched, sticks still clenched in his hands as they wrapped around my neck, my face forced into his shaggy crop of curls as he squeezed the air from my lungs. "Hey Gar, god I've missed you!" I breathed as my arms snaked around his waist and held on tightly to my stupid baby brother, taking in the scent of his that I'd missed so fucking much while I'd been away. It'd been almost 6 months since I saw him last and he hadn't changed a bit.