Chapter Text
Eddie Munson was different. He always had been, from the moment he came into this world. Because Eddie...well, he wasn't exactly born right. He was born into a different music taste, a different style, with different interests. Eddie was also born in the wrong body.
Even as a child, he hated being called that name. "Aurora". It was just so...not him. At all. Too girly, far too pink and frilly and feminine, although these words didn't enter his vocabulary until middle school. In his childhood and elementary years, his name was simply just "ew", to quote him. When he got to middle school, he requested that everyone call him Rory or Rora, but even that was too close to the original.
Eddie, or "Edward", was a stroke of genius, gifted to him in the playground one day, where he was searching for wands and staffs (big sticks) in the grass. A mother had called her little boy, who was swinging on the swings, and Eddie had looked up on gut reaction. Instinct drew him to Edward. And thus began the great journey that led him to creating "Edward the Enigmatic", a character that could keep Kas, his DND character, company.
Edward was hard-core metal, and an outcast that led an amazing double life selling magic and spells on the black market in his small village in Dalacar. He didn't mind being alone, and Eddie found that Edward and Kas got along swimmingly whenever he imagined their interactions. He became obsessed with Edward, constantly speaking like him, and acting in the same way he would. And then, at the age of 13, right before Eddie finished Middle school, he made the hardest decision of his life. He took his uncle's razor and buzzed his head, shaving his long curly locks off, and erasing any sense on femininity from his person.
He burnt all his dresses, got rid of any skirts or shirts that were too girly, and he went into Hawkins town and robbed all the clothes stores he could find, building himself to be Edward. Eddie. Finally, he was Eddie inside and out. He debuted his new look to his uncle first, who, after the initial shock of seeing his "niece" bald, nodded and moved on. No argument, it just was how Eddie was. He had to forge his own path, and Wayne would never stop him.
When Eddie went to the school talent show, his first day back since he shaved his hair off, everyone laughed. Eddie wanted to shrink into the ground, wanted to crawl under the desks and hide away from their excruciating stares. He watched Chrissy Cunningham from backstage and wondered why he couldn't just be like that. Chrissy, she was so comfortable in her skirt and her pom-poms, jumping and waving around the stage like she didn't have a care in the world. And in that moment, not for the first time, Eddie wished he'd been born like everyone else.
And when Eddie took the stage and played his music with his band behind him, and they could hear laughing coming from the students and the parents in the audience, he felt shame well in his chest, and his vision blurred as tears threatened the ever embarrassing journey down his cheeks. But he didn't let them fall. Eddie would never let them see him cry. Corroded coffin finished their set. Chrissy clapped. So did a few other students.
Others jeered as they descended from the stage, and Eddie made it the whole way to the back corner of the library, in the history section where no middle schooler ever went, before he curled up in a ball and let his tears fall silently. Never loud, not at school anyway. It was only when he was safely home with Wayne later that night did he let himself cry properly, shame and guilt and hatred washing over him.
"They're all so horrible, Uncle Wayne, they all think I'm a freak" he sniffed as the tears rolled down his cheeks, his face red and puffy, and his eyes sore. Wayne merely put an arm around Eddie's shoulders.
"They're small minded people in a small minded town. But you, kid? You're made for much bigger than Hawkins. Much bigger than anything those kids could ever think or do or say" he replied, and then he ordered pizza for dinner and let Eddie pick whatever music he wanted to play. Eddie chose Black Sabbath, and sat listening to the dulcet tones of Ozzy Osbourne until he'd forgotten why he'd ever been upset to begin with.
So began the life of Eddie Munson. His peers began to catch on. They stopped addressing him as Rora, and then stopped calling him Aurora, and eventually, they stopped talking to him at all. The names of Eddie Munson were synonymous with one label: "The Freak". When people heard the corroded coffin members calling him Eddie, they began using it to mock him. He was Eddie "The Freak" Munson. And Eddie began to feel alone again. So he made himself desirable. He made it so that people needed him. And he started hanging around Reefer Rick. Rick gave him his ticket to society in the form of plastic baggies full of nature's finest. Suddenly, Eddie was a hot commodity amongst that Hawkins High stoners. He was needed by the high schoolers. And that was all Eddie really wanted. To be needed by someone.
As time went on, and Eddie neared the end on his senior year, he began to dream of all the things he would do once he graduated. Move from Hawkins, definitely. Maybe take Corroded coffin audition tapes to the different music labels in the neighboring cities. Hell, he could go wherever he wanted. Although, he'd desperately miss Hellfire club.
Hellfire had been a project of his since his freshman year of high-school, a way to find like minded people, people he could convince that he wasn't a freak before everyone else worked against him. It had grown into a recognised school club, with Eddie Munson as its founder. And he was so proud. They had their own club room and everything, a small room, with just a table and some chairs, and Eddie decorated it to look like a dungeon, gotten his uncle to craft him a throne, as he was dungeon master, and decked the table out with all sorts of different campaign ideas. Eddie adored Hellfire. And it would be a shame to see it go, but he was so ready, ready to move from Hawkins, far away from where he was known for the wrong body and the freaky sense of style and-
***
F
F
F
D-
F
F
***
Eddie stared at his SAT results in confusion and shock. He knew he wasn't the best student. He knew his grades were bad. Hell, he'd even known why they made him drop classes. But Eddie wasn't prepared to see it on the page in front of him in black and white. Not by a long shot.
So as he sat in the principal's office with his guidance counselor to his right, and all his teachers to his left, with Principle Higgins in front of him, he felt a strange numb sensation. One thing remained eerily clear, he couldn't stay here. He couldn't keep going home upset every day. He couldn't keep being the freak. Eddie couldn't keep being alone. He couldn't do it.
That night, Eddie got absolutely fucking trashed. High and drunk out of his mind, he stumbled through the woods, coming to the edge of them and stopping. He was at a cliff. The cliff overlooking the lake where they found that Byers kid washed up a few years ago. Eddie felt this pull, like a magnet, forcing him forwards. It wasn't until he was two steps from the edge that Eddie realised just how quiet it was out there, how easily someone could disappear and come up weeks later. How simply Eddie could just step forward and make it all stop. The noise, the hatred, the awful feeling muddled in his chest whenever someone called him by his birth name. How easily he could solve the issue of failing everything, how simply he could put to bed the problems he faced if he just took one more step.
Just one more step.
It could all be gone. No more going home in tears, no more bullying or harassment or beating him up, simply because he was different. Eddie stood on the edge and looked down. It was a far drop, he wouldn't suffer. It would just take one more tiny step.
His foot slipped.
Rock scattered down the cliffside as he scrambled back, his heart in his throat. Eddie didn't want to die, not really he didn't think. He was just so damn lonely all the time. And he was tired, he was just so so tired all of the time. Sick of being the outcast, sick of being mocked, and although he could take it on the chin like a man, he would rather if he didn't have to.
Eddie stumbled home that night, covered in mud sweat and tears, and when he got home Wayne didn't say a word. But he gave Eddie that look.
The same look he gave him when he shaved his head. The same look he gave him when he wouldn't respond to "Rora" as a kid. The same look Eddie got every time he couldn't fit the mould.
But Eddie couldn't fit a mould that was made for someone else.
***
Eddie watched his class walk across the stage and collect their diplomas from Principle Higgins, each one excited and nervous at the prospect of moving on after today. Colleges, families, kids, it was all waiting for them. They had their lives planned, mapped it, and now they'd get to go live it. They'd leave Eddie behind.
Steve Harrington walked across the stage then. Bright smile, stupid fucking smirk, asshole walk and dumbass wave to the crowd, like a king addressing his subjects.
"Dick move, Harrington" thought Eddie as Steve got down from the stage and Eddie watched as he was greeted by his friends. Nancy Wheeler, Junior Princess, soon to be Senior alongside him. Jonathan Byers was there too, looking awkward as hell beside Nancy, not looking at Steve. Robin Buckley, from Band, and worked at Scoops with Steve over the summer before the fire that killed Billy and Heather and countless others. Eddie sighed. Robin was nice. Robin was really cool. She just happened to hang out with the biggest dick in Hawkins. There were a bunch of kids there that Eddie didn't recognise, but he knew Wheeler's brother and Byers' brother from all the paper coverage a few years ago. There was another boy there, with his arm around a girl, a curly haired red head who looked happy for Steve but a bit distracted. Billy's sister, Eddie realised as he watched her. His gaze shifted back to Harrington, who had hoisted one of the kids up onto his back in untamed joy. The boy in question had curly brown hair and a baseball cap on that read "Thinking Cap". Eddie watched them with a smile. There was another girl there too, smaller than the others with brown wavy hair. She looked slightly under fed, but only a little bit. Eddie hadn't seen her before, but he did know that Chief Hopper apparently had a daughter that he'd adopted from out of state. Eddie guessed this must be her.
Eddie's eyes were drawn back to Steve and the curly haired boy, and he just watched as Steve dropped him off his back and they hugged. They were talking, and loudly at that, but not loudly enough for Eddie to make out what they were saying. Eddie noted that Steve's parents weren't around, and for a moment he felt sorry for him, until he remembered douchebag Harrington and his blindness for those who abused Eddie in the halls. This particular breed of stupidity happened to originate from the exact people Steve kept as company, and turned a blind eye to.
Eddie hated Steve Harrington.