Chapter Text
Technically, Steve was his landlord. Functionally, he was more like a housemate. In the beginning, Eddie shared student housing with Steve, Billy Hargrove, Jonathan Byers, Tommy Hagan, and Argyle Hernandez. Eddie and Steve had sort of become each other’s besties by default since Steve had a very weird complicated history involving both Tommy and Jonathan, who also couldn’t stand each other at the same time and Billy had a problem with Steve right from the beginning (that problem was that he really wanted to suck his dick) and they both seemed to enjoy tormenting him. Eddie was cool with Jonathan but the kid was a bit too deep and intense for his taste. Argyle, the only other sophomore, immediately took him under his wing, so the house kind of naturally divided itself along those lines.
Outside of college, mommy and daddy had gone on another guilt-fueled buying spree for little Steven and that was how he ended up with his own house - four bedrooms with a den and finished basement and far too large and lonely for just Steve to ramble around all night long, even once he and Billy got their shit sorted out (finally) and he let Robin and Heather have the other set of rooms upstairs. Although Eddie rarely got the time to actually come home much and he missed his own bed far more often than he’d like, he was more than happy to shell out the extra money to have the entire basement to himself.
At Steve’s house, no one was going to complain about Eddie spending hours and hours practicing the same set of riffs over and over again or ask stupid questions about why he was up so late or where he was going or ramble about how he was gone for weeks at a time when he was on tour. And he could trust the four of them to take care of his beloved cat.
Course, even today, he could hear Steve say “Hey, man, it’s your house, too. I had the money but I never would’ve gotten my adult shit together without your help.”
Ah, that wasn’t true. Robin would’ve kicked his ass straight into adulthood eventually - whether he liked it or not. There was something to be said for never coming home to an empty house.
But in another basement, he probably wouldn’t be dealing with-
"I just met your wife," Steve declared loudly, flopping down onto the couch shoved underneath the low basement window across from him.
Eddie gave a low whistle without looking up from his guitar, where he was in the middle of replacing a string - her name was Alice, although he’d never told anyone that. He’d have to admit she was named after an Elton John song. Anyway, it was too delicate and important of a job to give Steve's drunk rambling any of his real attention. "Impressive, considering I've been single the whole time you’ve known me. All seven years.”
“You are going to marry her,” Steve insisted, and he wasn’t even slurring, which Eddie found genuinely impressive this time, considering that he could smell the tequila and lime sweating out of his pores from there.
“I wish you’d have told me sooner,” he said dryly, pulling the pencil from the tangle of his hair - swept up into a bun - to make a note on the set of papers in front of him about what chord progression came next. “I haven’t even picked out a ring yet.”
“I’m serious,” Steve said insistently. “The minute you meet her, you’re gonna wanna marry her - she was the singer for The Black Dahlias.”
Eddie made an unconscious little moue of displeasure, setting Alice down on the coffee table in front of him, as gently as if the guitar were a newborn baby. “Man, I already know her. I’ve met her before - YOU’VE met her before. She’s definitely not my wife but she is Argyle’s girlfriend.”
“No, no.” Steve’s eyes went big and wide as he tried to explain him, staring into Eddie’s soul like he was trying to fax the image over into his own head or some shit. “It wasn’t Eden - that’s what I’m saying, dude. They brought in another girl tonight. And she’s totally your wife.”
“Here!” Steve said insistently, still very drunk and very loud, waving his phone in the air like someone destined to drop it off the edge of a dock and into a lake one day. Or maybe the ocean. This was California, after all.
Having experienced Drunk Steve before, Eddie sighed quietly, knowing that he was not going to get away without at least lightly humoring him. Bossy bitch.
The camera phone was shaky and there were some young drunk kids screeching in the background - typical, but that didn’t make it less annoying - but overall the lighting was not too bad. The Funhouse Mirror was not a large venue, but they made a lot of what little they had going. While the Black Dahlias do write and perform some of their own songs, the whole point of the weeklong ‘Rewind’ festival Funhouse Mirror put on was that the performers entered did covers exclusively - some, like Roped, were so faithful that even Eddie would have had a hard time believing that wasn't his own band with his eyes closed because Seth Nichols' voice singing Be Your Master and The Horror Machine was such a close match for Gareth, and Robbie Yardley seemed to have - intentionally or not - picked up a lot of Eddie’s own style and technical quirks when he played. Others, like Glowstick, who did trance metal versions of Wouldn't It Be Nice and Good Vibrations, picked a little something more off the wall, and Eddie had to say that he tended to prefer that approach overall. They were not supposed to be cover bands here, so it didn’t make any sense for them to act like it.
The Dahlias had elected for a kind of middle ground, starting off The Memory Remains with Peter (Eden’s younger brother and the only one to take after her spooky ass) leading on vocals. Because Peter took the lead for that song, Eddie almost didn’t notice her and was about to tell Steve that he might have misremembered which band he was talking about, but then the section where Marianne Faithfull was supposed to take over the vocals in the original came and the rest of the band back away a little to let the young woman come forward, strawberry blond shining almost unnaturally bright among her darker bandmates in the eerie venue lighting, a pair of green faerie wings on her back. Completely out of place and yet, with the swirls of silver across her cheeks like diamond dust and magenta-pink lips, there was no place that would’ve really suited her better.
“Na-ra-ra-na-da-da-da-na-na-da-”
Her voice was haunting and sweet, Marianne’s song-chant a spell that she cast over the crowd, gesturing to the people closest to the stage to come to her and they leaned closer eagerly, reaching for her. Letting her stroke their arms with her small, slender hands.
Eddie was mesmerized but disappointed that she would retreat again as Peter hammered the iconic opening for Down with the Sickness. Except that Blonde Pixie Dream Girl didn’t go away.
Inside she opened her mouth to the microphone.
“Drowning deep in my sea of loathing, broken, your servant, I kneel,” she crooned, with a come-hither gesture to her audience. And then, just when Eddie was having some very impure thoughts about that exact scenario, from somewhere in that tiny body, she came up with the harsh rumble of a death metal growl: “Will you give in to me?”
“Sugar, spice, and everything nice,” Eddie murmured, completely transfixed now, seemingly unaware that he’d just straight up taken possession of Steve’s phone.
“Get up, come on get down with the sickness, get up, come on get down with the sickness,” Pixie Girl sighed, then used that death metal growl to snarl: “Open up your hate, and let it flow into me.”
“She is incredible,” he declared, and Steve let out a sleepy triumphant noise. Eddie glanced up to realize that he was draped across his sofa with the familiar shape of a Tonkinese cat slowly curling up beside him.
Steve was used to this and slurred out a quiet “Hey, Norma” and clumsily patted at her butt as she flopped her tail around her back legs. In continuing with his Elton John theme, Eddie had named his favorite girl ‘Norma Jean’, because even as a child, he’d been fascinated by Candle in the Wind and he thought there was something appropriate about naming his beloved cat, gorgeous but found filthy behind a dumpster of a Burger King in Tahoe as a kitten, after Marilyn Monroe’s birth name.
Norma Jean stared at Eddie, front paws tucked beneath her and squinted her aqua-blue eyes at him adoringly. Even Pixie Dream Girl couldn’t stop him from leaning over to stroke her cheek and she nudged happily at his hand, purring at her master.
He was distracted again when he realized that the Dahlias had changed the rear section of the song - the part that often got censored on the radio - but instead of repeating a section, Peter wound down and slowed his chords out, changing to something else-
“I’ve felt the hate rise in me, kneel down and clear the stone of leaves, I wander out where you can’t see, inside my shell I wait and bleed…”
Wait and Bleed was an interesting choice to blend with Down with the Sickness - thematically they fit well together, but the Dahlias had changed more of the arrangement on the Slipknot song, both in making it slower and adjusting the key to suit Pixie Dream Girl’s voice better, but fuck him, was she making it work for her.
“You haven’t learned a thing, I haven’t changed a thing, my flesh was in my bones, the pain was always free…” Her voice was a sad, wistful ribbon for this back section now, and it truly blew Eddie’s mind how she could manage to make both halves completely different but believable and enjoyable to listen to.
“I’ve felt the hate rise up in me, kneel down and clear the stone of leaves,” she lamented in long, heartfelt wails. “I wander out where you can’t see, inside my shell, I wait and-”
There was a moment of frozen silence before she dropped the microphone, giving an adorable little wave and a crooked smile as the crowd went batshit insane for her.
Eddie realized that the front of his pants felt uncomfortably tight and quickly checked to see that Steve was now fully asleep and drooling into the throw pillows, Norma Jean perfectly content to keep him company.
Turned on and nobody but his cat and his drunk, unconscious roommate around. Jesus. Almost instinctively, his eyes drifted over to his own black phone case. He had a very good solution in mind for this problem. Leaving Norma to guard Steve, he swiped the phone from the coffee table to lock himself in his room at the back of the basement, opposite from the soundproofed room where he usually did his out of studio practicing and any writing work-throughs Jeff and Gareth wanted to get through.
By now, he could find the name in his contacts list with his thumb without even really looking down at the screen - he’d never changed it after Dustin placed it in there.
Getting hooked up to his friends with benefits by Dustin fucking Henderson was probably some kind of sign that Eddie’s life was going in a very strange direction. The kid had wagged his finger at him too while he was doing it.
“She’s a nice girl-”
“Why are you letting me talk to her, then?”
“-so don’t jump into some weird shit with her. She finally dumped that abusive piece of shit she used to date, but they were together since 8th grade, so she’s basically never known anything but him. She just wants to have fun and not get too serious. Show her a good time and be cool, okay? I’m putting my rep on the line to get you some action, man.”
“I sell out international shows, you little turd. I know you find this hard to believe, but I’m widely considered very cool.”
And Dustin had that smug little look on his face, the look that said: buddy, I’ve known you since you were a pimply teenager playing in Gareth’s garage - who do you think you’re fooling?
Damn. Same to you, asshole.
Me
Did you get your present yet?
Sexy Cyber Girlfriend 💖
You wanna see? ;)
Me
Fuck yes
Eddie’s breath hitched as a photo attachment popped up onto the screen: a slim woman wearing a pair of lacy panties, which he’d purchased specifically because there was a small vibrator inside them. And he was the only one who knew the password to the little vibrator’s app controls…
Sexy Cyber Girlfriend 💖
I'm so wet right now not gonna lie
Me
Hit 'record' for me, honey
I'm gonna savor this later
Grinning devilishly, after giving her a minute, Eddie popped over to the app controls and let his thumb slide over the ‘higher’ button.
One Year Ago
If you’d asked Chrissy the day she graduated high school where she would be in life just after her graduating class’ five year reunion, she probably would’ve been vague with her answer but she could guarantee three things: her mother would approve of her profession, she would most likely be back in the Midwest after finishing college, and Jason would be there with her.
“I have no idea what I’m going to do,” she admitted to Eden in a whisper, sitting on her secondhand sofa in Larchmont.
The two of them could not be more different in temperament or interests, but they were in the same college vocal group at St. Mary’s College, both silently fleeing their home states to the east as the eldest daughters of controlling parents and both girls had clicked in a way that neither they nor anybody else had expected. Chrissy had a hidden goth girl inside of her and Eden had a well concealed love for spa days.
She felt like her mascara should be running except that she was so past crying that she couldn’t possibly produce tears now. Then she remembered that she also wasn’t wearing mascara.
Eden snorted.
Chrissy blinked and glared at her. “I thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives together, Eden. We were going to get married. We were already talking about a baby.”
Frank and ruthless as ever, even in an emotional crisis, Eden bluntly said “If you won’t listen to me, listen to Reddit. Because they may be a bunch of strange weirdos on the internet but those people have your situation dead to rights, Chris. You’re not an asshole, and your mom loved Jason because she knew he would do her dirty work of making you feel like shit and not letting you get too many shiny hopes about your potential whenever she wasn’t around to do it personally. He cheated on you because he thinks of himself as the only ‘real’ person in your relationship and what you want has never mattered to him.”
Chrissy ran a restless hand through her hair - messy and unwashed in a way she would be ashamed for anyone but Eden to see, stomach turning with dread. “I can’t ever go back home, E,” she admitted in a whisper. “She won’t ever forgive me. She was already mad that I wouldn’t let go of opening the studio.”
“You shouldn’t ever go back home,” Eden replied, calm but very firmly. “She’s going to tell you the same things she always tells you: she’s going to say that you’re a worthless disappointment and you’re not ever going to do better than Jason Carver. All of that, in case you need me to remind you, is total horseshit, Chris. You don’t need to take him back, you need to go to therapy and stop taking your mom’s calls.”
So that was what she did.
Of course, her mom wouldn’t let it go that easily and eventually, Chrissy had to block her father’s calls, too. It didn’t bring her the same degree of relief - and it hurt quite a bit more - but she supposed it was inevitable that he would eventually cave to doing Laura’s dirty work.
Then there was also the problem of money. And that was a problem indeed. Chrissy did have a certain amount of savings since she’d been desperately trying to gather the raw capital to buy her own studio space to set up instruction, but it hadn’t been large to begin with and then she’d blown most of it away breaking the lease on the apartment with Jason in Burbank. Eden let Chrissy stay with her in Larchmont, but that was a temporary solution.
She needed a job, and she needed a place to stay. She wanted to move on from this and start forging ahead with the future that waited for her. Her real future, this time.
Eden happened to stumble over a fix for that as well. “My parents are looking for a new babysitter for my little sister.”
Chrissy’s brows furrowed. “Why? I thought Cornelius was the youngest. Isn’t Tatum the same age as Tanner? Sixteen is pretty old for a sitter. Also, no offense, E, but I’m not moving all the way to Salt Lake.”
She shook her head. “Not Tatum. Susan.”
“SUZIE?” Chrissy gaped. “Why do your parents want to hire a babysitter for a grown woman?”
The Binghams were an odd family but this was completely beyond anything Chrissy had heard them do before.
Eden grimaced. “They would call it something like a housekeeper, but effectively, you would be a babysitter. The college courses she takes are pretty intense and they want her focusing on them completely. You’d get room and board and a decent wage. Cook one or two meals for her a day, make sure that the household bills get paid, coax her into some exercise if you can, keep her hydrated, and give them updates on how she is.”
Uneasily, Chrissy asked “...they want me to spy on her?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.” Eden rolled her eyes. “But she never calls and barely texts herself - she doesn’t mean to go no contact, but you know how she is when she’s busy and she’s going for a double major - so just a couple of quick messages a week on how she’s doing will probably be enough to satisfy them. The last girl didn’t work out.”
“Why?” Chrissy wanted to know what the standard was for being let go before she ended up agreeing to this.
“Mom said Suzie got annoyed with her - she would keep trying to initiate conversations and interrupt whatever she was working on. She begged Ashleigh multiple times to leave her alone whenever she was actively working on something, but she just ignored her. Suzie finally broke and told Dad she can barely concentrate - every time she sits down to work now, she can’t stop worrying that Ashleigh is just about to walk in and ruin the workflow.”
Chrissy would agree to do it, which just meant that now all Eden had to do was convince Suzie to agree with their scheme.
Suzie eyed Eden suspiciously through the wire frames of her glasses, hands curled around the mug of coffee in front of her. Her big sister hadn’t been a bad or deliberately cruel sibling, but she found her to be somewhat lacking in…warmth or outward affection. In a lot of ways, Suzie understood. The size of their household meant that Eden had been forced to grow up before she was ready to and it led to a certain amount of resentment for all her younger siblings.
As soon as she finished her proposal, Suzie immediately understood that this neat solution was less for Eden’s concern for her and more due to her concern for Chrissy.
Their parents already adored her - maybe to an unhealthy degree, since they probably wished Eden would behave a little more like her - so Suzie knew that they would have no problem agreeing as long as she didn’t have any objections. So really, Suzie had to consider her own feelings on this.
Chrissy, from what she gathered, had suffered through an eating disorder from middle school to the start of college, so Suzie could probably at the very least trust her to cook relatively well-balanced meals once or twice a day instead of blowing their grocery budget on beer and pizza or expensive new electronics, like Caitlyn, the girl before Ashleigh, and she probably wouldn’t make a fuss about Dustin dropping by now and then. And most importantly of all, she was so naturally quiet Suzie might FINALLY get enough peace to study in her own home.
“Okay,” Suzie finally said slowly. “We’ll talk with Father. When can she move in?”
This was a very long way to explain how Chrissy and Eden ended up having whiskey sours and talking about Tinder at the breakfast bar in the small but neat home her parents bought for Suzie when she wanted to double major at UCLA. “I don’t know,” Chrissy finally sighed, swirling her glass a little to watch the vortex spin. “I DO want to try new things and experiment, but the idea of it just makes me so nervous. The sex with Jason was…I don’t know. Fine? It wasn’t bad. It didn’t feel like a chore, it was just…yeah. Fine.”
Eden grimaced, but before she could respond, a male voice behind both them said “Ouch, that’s a fucking indictment if I ever heard one.” They turned to see Suzie’s boyfriend since high school walk by and open the fridge for a Coke. “If that douche-lord hadn’t cheated on you, I’d almost feel sorry for him.”
“I never said it was bad,” she said defensively, blushing to be caught midtopic by a guy, any guy, even one as relatively non threatening and laid back as her roommate’s long term boyfriend.
“Hm, no,” Dustin said, cracking the can open. “You said ‘fine’. ‘Fine’ means you are fucking terrible in bed but your girl is way too nice and polite to say so out loud.” He squinted at her for a moment before shocking Chrissy absolutely speechless: “Can I give a guy your number?”
"Excuse me?" she sputtered, taken aback.
He gestured broadly with the hand still holding onto the Coke. “You said that Tinder scares you - valid, very valid - but you still want to have fun, right? And you don’t want anything too serious?”
Reluctantly, Chrissy nodded.
Dustin beamed. “I know a guy - he’s not bad looking and he’s not an asshole, but he IS super busy, so he doesn’t like to promise commitment when he can’t really give much of his time, you know? I wouldn’t normally do this because he prefers to keep it casual, but if all you’re looking for is some fun experience, I think you guys would really like each other. You are DEFINITELY his type, and I’m pretty sure he’d be yours. If you want me to, I can swap your phone numbers with each other.”
Eden narrowed her eyes at him in a semi-glare. “You aren’t fucking with her, are you, you little pipsqueak? This is a real, live person and not one of your squeaky nerds friends?”
“Well, I mean, he’s kind of a nerd,” Dustin admitted. “He was the Dungeon Master for a DnD club when I first started high school and then later - you guys know I was matched with a Big Brother in the Big Brothers and Big Sisters program? He’s my Big Brother’s roommate now.”
So…Chrissy got a new contact added to her phone: Eddie with the Good Hair. She assumed this was not a real name and had something to do with the Corroded Coffins poster hanging up in her bedroom. More than once, Eden teased her about her tiny crush on lead guitarist Eddie Munson. I have no idea how you ever thought you were attracted to Jason. He is the complete opposite of everything you find appealing in a man, Chris.
Eddie with the Good Hair
Hey
I’m Dustin’s friend Eddie
Little shit thought you might be interesting in a little casual sexting
Sound good?
No pressure
Me
Yes
I’m Suzie’s roommate, Chrissy
She didn’t have too many worries about telling him her name - really only the Binghams still knew her by her childhood nickname. Professionally, it was easier to have a gender-neutral name so most new people knew her as Chris. She’d actually changed her name to keep her mother from attempting to find her and stalk her. Chrissy Cunningham was a dead name for a person that she’d left behind, the name of a Midwestern cheerleader who was molded to her mother’s will. The grown woman was Chris Young.
Me
Well
I’m kinda nervous?
Eddie with the Good Hair
Nervous is fine
Nervous is good
New things are scary, y’know?
Even if they’re exciting
And Chrissy knew, right then. She knew that this could really be something fun, maybe even something easy.
Me
I am excited
Tongue between her teeth, Chrissy let herself waffle around a bit before gathering up her courage.
Me
And, you know
‘Excited’
Eddie with the Good Hair
How do you feel about showing me?
Jesus, he didn’t waste time. Then again, that might be a good thing - at least if he was comfortable being this direct with her, Chrissy wouldn’t always be walking on eggshells, wondering what he liked or what she should do. Isn’t this what they were talking to each other for? Casual flirting, no-strings-attached cybersex?
There was something incredibly naughty, but also incredibly freeing about letting herself lay back on the pillows and sliding a hand down the front of her panties. Chrissy made sure that her face would be cropped out, but he would have a crystal clear view of the pink cotton Victoria’s Secret panties with her hand in the front, knuckles crooked so that there was no doubt she was touching herself, and just a teasing hint at the undersides of her breasts.
Eddie with the Good Hair
Prettttty girl
You look good enough to eat, Chrissy
She sucked in a breath at his return photo - a clever mirror of her own pose, he showed off a flat stomach dusted lightly with dark hair and a well-muscled forearm as his hand lingered just beneath the waistband of his jeans.
A tingle went through her belly and Chrissy realized she was panting a little. It was the start of something that Chrissy had never been before - wicked and selfish and reckless. She wanted to dive right in.
Me
More?