The party had dialed past a ten on the insanity scale, like, two, maybe two-and-a-half hours ago.
Eddie probably should've dipped out well before then. Shit, he was normally gone with the wind once he sold out, but something about this party had him sticking around a few extra minutes that had, in the blink of an eye, transformed into a few extra hours.
Maybe it was the feeling of the last hurrah. The final graduation party of the season at Andy Doucheface's house before everyone fucked off to campus tours and early move-ins or whatever-the-fuck university freshman did.
Or maybe it was because, as soon as no one was paying attention, Eddie'd started siphoning spare beer and snacks and digging through the belongings of The Parents Doucheface.
(Maybe he'd pocketed a couple of super nice tools to ninja slip into Wayne's toolbox at a later time and also a framed picture day photo of Andy from elementary school that he was gonna toss in the lake in an effort to devastate the people who'd raised such a Doucheface. Who could say?)
He'd already loaded his provisions into the van. Literally only came back to make a final circuit for any spare, unopened handles of liquor – he didn't want jock cooties, ew – when he found it.
The Holy Grail of a party of this caliber.
Eddie looked around, but he was definitely alone in the garage. And the jockstraps inside were raging, music gradually getting louder and still hard to hear over the shouting of drunk voices. With a gleeful, maybe slightly maniacal giggle, Eddie grabbed the paint - red, his lucky day - and got to work creating a masterpiece on the interior walls of the garage.
Lost in the artistic haze of poorly rendered dick and balls jizzing onto Andy's face, Eddie didn't hear the uptick in commotion outside the garage. He was finishing up the first "s" in "ass" (as in, "Jason Carver loves eating hairy ass") when the garage door suddenly burst open.
Now, listen. Eddie's fight-or-flight is pretty fucking reactive, and he tends to automatically lean toward fight. He has, of course, relied on flight to get out of many a pickle, but generally his fists were out before his feet were moving.
So, when that door hit the wall with a loud bang!, Eddie had his lighter in hand and the spray paint up in a half-second, just about ready to burn the hair off whatever drunk asshole was coming to start shit.
But the drunk asshole squeaked, ducking down beneath where a fireball would've been if Eddie hadn't caught himself.
Because it wasn't, in fact, a drunk asshole.
It was Chrissy Goddamn Cunningham.
And she really did not look drunk at all.
Oh, be still, his cynical, stupid fucking heart. Why the hell did it skip a beat?
He'd heard, through the endlessly riveting rumor mill churned out by the ridiculous Hawkins grapevine, that she'd finally kicked ol' Carver to the curb once they'd walked the stage. But he hadn't actually run into her at one of these stupid ass parties all fucking summer. He'd been hoping for, like, one chance encounter before he took off for Chicago, but alas.
The stars were not shining on Eddie Munson the past couple months.
"Well, shit," Eddie said as the door she'd come through swung shut. "You stumbled upon my lair, Cunningham. Sorry for, uh, almost flame-throwing you."
Her eyes, which had been wide with fear when she walked through the door - valid, considering the circumstances of her entrance - blinked as she took in Eddie's handiwork.
"Oh," she breathed, reading Eddie's crass statements he'd semi-permanently stamped onto the walls. Her eyes going from Andy's Dick Sundae to Carver's Ass-Eating Preferences as her cheeks split with a smile. "Oh, gosh, Eddie, what--? Gosh, that's so funny."
No fucking way she was building up his ego while he publicly ragged on her ex.
"Yeah?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at his twin masterpieces. Relishing in her grin with a shit-eating one of his own. Taking the opportunity to finish spelling out 'ass' on the drywall "I, uh, take commissions, you know. Something pretty to hang in your dorm room."
"Not something about Jason eating ass?"
"Only if you ask nicely."
God damn it. That made her giggle. Eddie was going insane.
"I wish I had my camera," Chrissy sighed, stormy eyes bright as she reread Eddie's dig at Carver. "Andy's parents are just going to make him paint over this. It won't be memorialized."
"Should I make a pit stop at the 7-11 billboard on my way home? Let the town know what Jockstrap McGee and his Pearl Necklace Sidekick plan on getting up to in college?"
Chrissy blinked at him, tilting her head to one side.
Suddenly, back in the house, the sound of glass shattering resounded down the hallway just before someone yelled, "Scatter!" and Chrissy's eyes widened again.
"Oh, shoot! We gotta go!"
But she was already grabbing his hand and hitting the door to open the garage. But, instead of waiting for the door to come up, she yanked open the side door and pushed him through. Fingers firmly clasped, Chrissy took off, dragging a very confused Eddie behind her as she sprinted around the side of the house and bypassed the gate to run into the neighbor's yard.
"Cops!" she whisper-yelled at him as they ducked through a grove of trees. Eddie chanced a glance back, barking out a laugh that was maybe a little too loud when he saw the flashing red and blue lights.
"Fuckin' knew that was gonna happen," he whispered back, pulling her to a stop where they were hidden behind some bushes. A metric fuckload of kids were spilling out of the house, many too drunk to run properly. Chance fucking rammed into McKinney, who fell to the ground and immediately started barfing all that alcohol out of his system.
A couple of piggies suddenly rushed through the open garage door, looking left and right for the culprits that had used to escape. Eddie could barely see them, tucked away as they were and from a less than stellar vantage point, but suddenly Chrissy's opening it made sense when the two cops took off running in the opposite direction.
"Excellent method of distraction, Cunningham," Eddie murmured, barely discernible over the shouting. "You run from cops a lot?"
Beside him, Chrissy shrugged.
"I watch a lot of horror movies," she responded, shuffling a little so they were crouched closer together. So he could hear her, he assumed, but holy shit she was close enough that he was gonna spontaneously combust. "Whenever the heroine has an opportunity to distract and doesn't, I always get so mad!"
"Are you the heroine in this story?"
Oh. Oh damn. She had jokes. And that sly look in her eye, tongue tucked between her teeth as she bit back a giggle.
She was gonna kill him, and he'd thank her.
"You know, I held onto this," Eddie said, holding up the can of paint he hadn't thought to pitch. "We could, uh. We could make a trip to the 7-11 billboard together, if you want."
She fucking sparkled in the moonlight when she looked at him. Some airy disbelief written across her features that Eddie could not possibly comprehend. Shouldn't he be the skeptical one here?
"I may or may not have snuck some shit off Andy's property, though." Eddie grinned. "You ain't gonna tattle on me, are you, sweetness?"
"Not if you got the good stuff," Chrissy answered with a shrug just as Hopper and Callahan burst through the front door, various drunk kids in tow. "Where are you parked?"
Eddie nodded around the corner before taking the chance of a goddamn lifetime. Reaching down, he took her hand with his again, holding his breath to see what she'd do.
He should've inhaled, because the moment she laced their fingers together, he forgot he needed air altogether.
"Alright," he said, fucking breathless. Squeezing her fingers, he looked at her for a long moment. A moment where she met his gaze head on, some awed determination set there that he wanted to know fucking everything about. Looking back at the house, he watched the cops as they paraded drunk teenagers onto the porch. "Ready?"
Chrissy, beside him, in the weirdest goddamn event of his life, nodded resolutely.
