Eddie Munson x Chase Atlantic

into it

"said she wanna fuck me later, girl i'm into it"

Hawkins, Indiana 1992
AU- season 4 never happened

It's been 6 years since you've graduated high school and you still feel like you're trapped in the bubble that is teenage drama and small town blues. The last thing you wanted when you were a senior was to get stuck in this town where your enemies live within a five minute walk and your go to clothing outlet is two stores down from the smoke shop. You get a waft of cigarettes every time you cross the street to go shopping and it gags you, reminding you of the lingering scent that your dad left in the cushions of your couch.

You would kill to be anywhere but here, acting in front of a camera or performing on broadway— but, according to every single person you ever knew, that was only a silly pipe dream. You need to find a real job, one where you're stuck behind a desk in a wooden chair and your eyes are bleeding from staring at paperwork all day. Or, as you translate that to, you need to kill yourself slowly to make just enough money to put food on your table and stuff your dreams in a locker where they'll suffocate until you die.

Therefore, you are stuck here. You didn't go to college and you still live with your parents who forced you to get one of those awful day jobs to pay rent in order to keep your ass under their roof. What they don't know, though, is that every Friday night you sing at the local diner, only earning what people are generous enough to put in your little tin can that rests at your feet. Some nights you'll get a couple of pennies and others you may get a few bucks, but just being able to perform is rewarding enough.

Sometimes you'll get an onslaught of old faces that you went to high school with that come up to you after your performance and ask what you do for a living now. You tell them that you're a performer and you only come back to Hawkins for the familiarity, but everyone knows your lying even if they don't say it. They would know of a pop star who rose to fame from the trenches that is their hometown Hawkins. You'd be the talk of the town just like that one group that had a couple of hits after graduating from your class. The leader of their group being your inspiration to follow your dreams because despite all of the labels that were attached to him in your schooling years, he still made it through.

"Eddie Munson," you hear a voice say and it snaps you out of your thoughts that were oddly about that exact name. Your eyes flick around to find the source of the voice and you see someone looming over you as you pack you bag after your performance at the diner. You had sang for longer than usual and you are exhausted, wanting to just stuff your tips into your duffel, go home, and take a nap.

When the face comes in to light, you see him standing over you, a hand let out as an introduction, as if you didn't know his name. You stand to your feet and shake his hand politely, noting how he still looks the same as he did when you were in high school together. He's probably about 26 now and he still looks like he did when he was in school except maybe for a few more smile lines. His hair is still as long as ever and he still has that sloppy grin that you'd see sometimes in the hallways. He's wearing his signature ripped jeans with a Corroded Coffin t-shirt, the name of his breakout band that you were so unfairly jealous of. The only truly different thing you notice about him is how attractive you find him now, with his deep brown eyes and the tattoos that blanket the area of his arms that aren't covered by his t-shirt sleeves.

"I know who you are, Eddie," you say shaking his hand and throwing your duffel over your shoulder, "we graduated together." He nods his head and returns his hand to his side, seeing how tired you are just by the droopiness of your eyelids.

"I didn't think you'd remember my name," he admits and when his sentence is followed by silence, you wonder what he's doing here. He should be playing venues with his band touring America, not lingering around this shithole in a crappy old diner with crappy old live music. Plus, the people who usually approached you after your sets were typically there to berate you for sticking around Hawkins six years past graduation, so you aren't too thrilled to see where this conversation might go.