Fight or Flight (Eddie Munson x Y/N)

32. "Master of Puppets"

The next month crawls by, and now it's December, close to holiday break . Every day feels the same: numb, muted. You go to school, you go home, sometimes you see Stacy, Steve, and Robyn to do something easy like see a movie or grab lunch, but really you just want to be by yourself.

The two-hour detention you served the day after the meeting in Principal Higgins office was brutal. You tried to slip Eddie a note: Can we talk...please? Now that you knew why he didn't want to be with you, you wanted to try and fix it, tell him how you feel about him, that he's more than enough for you. That you don't care where he comes from or that he plays D&D or that he's not going to college. You know he's smart. You know he could apply himself if he had you around to push him, to give him a reason to care by showing him you care about him.

You finally get a chance to throw the note into his lap about an hour into the detention. He catches it, looking up quickly to make sure the teacher on detention duty wasn't watching. They had become too involved in the latest issue of the Hawkins Post to bother to look up at the sound of crumpling paper.

He sighs quietly before unraveling the paper to read it. His mouth forms a straight line, lips tight. You can't read the expression on his face, as hard as you try. He continues to stare at the note, as if reading it over and over again, before he quickly shoves it into his jeans, not responding, not saying a word, looking straight out the window on his other side.

You feel your chest constrict and a lump in your throat begin to rise. That was the moment you knew that it was really the end for the two of you. You purposefully turn your head away from him, too, for the remainder of the two hours, which, given the circumstance, felt like two full days. You couldn't even bare to see his outline in your peripheral vision. That wild hair, the nervous way he was spinning his rings on those long fingers, the way he bounced his leg impatiently up and down, just as anxious to get out of there as you were.

When the teacher had told you all you were free to go, they only got halfway through their sentence before Eddie was abruptly out of his desk, stomping out in his white Reeboks. It's only then you allowed the tears you'd been holding back to silently spill over, before you grabbed your messenger bag to leave.

It doesn't help that you and Eddie go to the same school, have the same English class. You make sure after that next day at school you get to class early so you can ask Beth, one of the girls in your class, if you can switch seats with her for a while, at the opposite end of the room.

You notice Eddie pause when he walks into the classroom, but tries to recovery quickly as if he doesn't. He takes a loud seat, the desk scraping against the floor on impact. You see Jason smirk out of the corner of your eye and you want to punch him in the fucking face. He's ruined everything for you. And you're going to make him pay.

It takes a few weeks to find Chrissy when she's not surrounded by her gaggle of squad friends or within eyesight of Jason, even though they were still broken up. You didn't want to chance any of them seeing you talking to her. You didn't want anyone to know what Chrissy was telling you. You were impressed by Chrissy's resolve, though, touched even. Of all the horrible things he did to her, his involvement with your trauma was the final nail in the coffin for Chrissy's relationship with Jason.

One early November morning, you're in the girls bathroom stall, not necessarily to use it but more as an excuse to get out of class and take a break for a few minutes. You flush and leave the stall to go wash your hands when you see Chrissy come in. She stops short and her eyes meet yours. They seem scared, apologetic. She pauses mid-inhale, one foot raised and seemingly decide whether to stay or go.

"Hey...Chrissy," you say quietly.

"Y/N, I..." her eyes look pained. "I'm so sorry for what I told you," she begins, taking steps toward you. "I don't know how that changed things between you and Eddie, but...I've been feeling so guilty over the past few weeks thinking I shouldn't have told you. I should've just let you move on from all of that. You seemed really happy with Eddie..."