"Eddie! What the fuck!?" She squealed as the van sped up around the curving roads. Her body slid in the seat as he snapped the wheel around. Her giggles made his heart skip beats.
He headbanged to the song as he drove. The wind from the open windows shot through their ears. Tendrils of dark curly hair whipped around the car from the two of them.
The clunky van flew through the night as he drove them down the winding roads that lead to the edge of Hawkins. He was high off the Corroded Coffin show he had just performed, still wanting to kick and scream and thrash around.
Ellie had jumped onto a small round table and danced to the music. The show had gotten real crazy when one of the drunks had reached up to her and firmly grabbed her thigh, his fingers digging into her fishnets. Eddie hadn't seen her face as it happened but he did watch as she jumped off the table and onto the guy like she was Spider-Man. She was pummeling him, sitting on his chest with one boot firmly planted on the floor and the other pinning his arm. Eddie had stopped the set and joined her. Eventually he began to feel bad for the man and pulled her off of him after a solid ten minutes of her punching him.
He would be lying if he didn't admit he had found it hot.
He looked over to her and as she whipped her head back, her hair flew up over her skull and he could see her face, a slight sheen of sweat and smudged eyeliner in a moment where the streetlights flashed through the windows.
She now wore three small fingernail scratches on her face which was all the man had been able to get in.
He could see the faint marks on her neck that he had given her; she hid it with a thick choker and chain necklace. The tape ended and she leaned against the headrest, panting.
"That drum solo, Eds, god, it fucking gets me!" She laughed, trying to push her hair out of her face. He popped out the tape and his hands fumbled in the console as he grabbed another, placing it in his mouth.
His voice was muffled as he said her hair.
"Oh, gimme that," she gingerly grabbed it from his mouth and shoved it into the stereo. It slowly began to build up and Eddie began waving one hand as he spoke, the other gripping the wheel.
"This song, Ellie," he turned it up louder with a twist of the dial, her ears felt like they were going to burst, "has some of the best shit you're ever going to hear! I mean that guitar solo after the chorus is killer!"
"But it's no-" She began with an eyebrow raised. He continued to speak but now had taken both hands off the wheel.
"It's no Master of Puppets," he screamed over the stereo, his hair flying wildly around him. "Exactly, Els! Nothing beats Metallica!"
The van served and she reached out for the wheel, her hand landing on his as he pulled it steady. They smiled at each other.
"Here we are," he pulled the car over and the car rocked as he put it in park. She looked around, seeing the expansive lake in front of them surrounded by trees and fireflies. Houses reflected off the other side, their light rippling off the water. Eddie hopped out of the van and ran to her side while she took everything in.
"Milady," he chuckled as he opened the door, extending a hand to her. She grabbed it and slid out, his other hand on her back to steady her.
"Eddie, this is gorgeous," she said, looking at the clear waters and then back at him, her face glowing. He grabbed a mint tin from inside his dashboard and pulled out one of the fuzzy blankets he used to protect the band's equipment.
He laid out the blanket and plopped down with his legs crossed, motioning her to join him. She sat in his lap and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
"What goodies are in there?" She asked as he pulled the tin out and a lighter from one of his many pockets. He grabbed a joint from inside it and began passing it back and forth.
"I like it out here," he began, taking a hit, "it's really quiet out." She nodded and passed it back. "This ones really chill."
"I think you could get lost out here."
"Might not be a bad thing." He snorted and then sighed, looking down with his eyes narrowed, "my dad is coming to Hawkins."
"Oh, that's bad isn't it?" She asked, eyebrow raised and a hand nervously in her hair. She rested against his chest as he solemnly nodded. "You could stay at my house- if you wanted to of course." Her nerves got to her a little as she had been too embarrassed of its disarray to invite him over.
"Maybe." Old bastard would never think he'd be in the Creel House. "My uncle already told him he wasn't welcome but he never listens. Good fucking behavior my ass," he chuckled, the lit end of the blunt lighting up his scrunched face. He took it in deeply.
"My bed's pretty cozy," she wiggled her shoulders and winked. He laughed, his hand rubbing her back. She laid her chin on his shoulder, curly hair tickling her cheek.
He rested his head against hers. "What're your folks like?"
"Pricks," she choked out, the smoke filling up her lungs. "We don't talk anymore." He remembered one of their first conversations.
'I was embarrassing' she had said. That's how they described her.
"Does it bug you? I mean they weren't always awful right?" He asked, feeling the smoke coursing through him as he laid down on the blanket. He held her as she held the joint and his shoulder.
She shook her head and played with his hair absent-mindedly. "I was always a little off, y'know. My grades never good cause of my dyslexia. My mind always raced so I couldn't focus. I went to a trade school so I'd actually pass high school after I got kicked out of the catholic school-"
"Wait, you went to a private school?" He then remembered she had come from money. They were so alike but so different.
"I've got a secret," she said, hand on his cheek as her cheeks hollowed from sucking in the blunt. "I'm not like everyone else."
"I gathered that-"
She sat up on her hands as he inhaled it. "Eddie, I like both."
His eyebrows furrowed, confused.
"I got kicked out for kissing a classmate." He placed an arm behind his head and absorbed that. "A female classmate cause it was an all girls school."
"Is that why they sent you out here?"
"Not entirely. My father, with the biggest stick up his ass said it was a lapse in judgement," she laughed out, "they brushed it under the rug and I was supposed to marry someone like Jason Carver after college and get that stupid fucking picket fence."
"I think he might have the hots for you like maybe almost hitting you with his car was supposed to be a hint."
"Oh, I'm sure," the sarcasm dripped from her voice as she took the last hit and snuffed it out on her boot. "I got my first job and moved out with some friends from this club I had been sneaking into." She sighed, "It was chaos and I fit right in and then I met the hottest girl you'd ever seen."
"That's you babe," he snickered, watching her face and how her eyes got dreamy.
"No, no, no, Eds, like Janis had this spiked inky hair and the most intense blue eyes," she began waving her hands around her head to show how big Janis' hair had been. "I loved her and then we went out one night to this punk show and these skinheads started with us."
He saw her swallow hard, her throat bobbing. He pulled her back down to him as a tear fell from the corner of her eye. "We had kissed and they chased us into a back alley and we split-" Her voice started to break. "We split up and I got away and I thought she had too-"
He held her close, rocking her. Eddie knew where this was going.
"I ran back when I couldn't find her and she was on the ground and they were kicking her and I screamed and I-" She took in a breath. "I went after them and they beat me up, broke a few ribs." He kissed her forehead. "But Janis- Janis was gone, Eds, and I laid in the street until the police showed up."
She took a deep breath. "You're the first person I've spoken to about it and, yeah, that was two years ago and my parents left me in the hospital to keep me tamed. Now- now I'm here because I wasn't going to get out unless I took his deal."
"Fuck, Ellie," he squeezed her in his arms. His father was an awful human being but he never had any kind of control over him. Could never destroy Eddie and Wayne's lives.
So similar. Broken by the people who had made them before they even had a chance.
They went to Eddie's trailer and he shoved some clothes into a plastic bag and told his uncle where he'd be for a few days until his father had left town. He'd come back soon and gave him Elle's number.
Wayne walked out with him and went up to the passenger's window. He was a gruff looking man. He sized her up with her weird cross earrings and ripped up shirt.
"Take care of my nephew," he asked her. "He's a little much at times but he's got heart." She smiled warmly at him.
"I will, Mr. Munson. If you need anything give me a call. I'm not too far." He brushed it off.
"It's Wayne to anyone who treats my boy half as good as you." She nodded.
"Got it," she hesitantly added his name.
Eddie ran out of the trailer with his baggie and gave his uncle a hug before hopping into the driver's seat.
They were both tired as they drove her her house quietly it was almost two in the morning. She closed her eyes and the road lulled her to sleep for a moment.
Her eyes shot open when Eddie jerked the van and started screaming.
"Stupid fucking hick!" No one had been behind him and then all of a sudden a pair of headlights had flashed, they were on his ass. Ellie jumped up and rolled down the window to look behind them.
It was a red corvette. It nudged his bumper and pushed them forward
"Not just any fucking hick," she hissed as Eddie's foot slammed on the gas. "It's Carver!" Eddie pulled onto a dirt road hoping the corvette was too precious to ruin on the rocky road.
Had he been waiting for Eddie? Everyone knew he played at the Hideout on Tuesdays but why hadn't he done this sooner?
The corvette followed them, its engine broke through the night. She shuffled in her seat holding on for dear life when her boot hit something. Ellie looked at the garbage at her feet. Cans of soda and fast food wrappers that Eddie would never clean out.
She unbuckled her seatbelt and grabbed a soda can, twisting her head out the window.
"Ellie!" His eyes darted to her and then the road and then the rear view mirrors. "Ellie! What the fuck are you doing?"
"Fighting back!" She started chucking his garbage at the car behind them. He took a hard turn and she held onto the bar above her window.
"Fuck, sorry! It's bumpy up here!" He looked at his speedometer, his car was not going to match Jason's.
She grabbed a half full can of soda and hurled it back with all her might. There was a spider web of cracks on the windshield and the car began to slow behind them.
She saw Jason's eyes; blue and bloodshot. His body was taunt, his jaw clenched as he look at the van driving away.