#I also wasn't quite sure I ever wanted to pick a name for Eddie's wrist bc the whole point is that it doesn't matter!

[laundrybiscuits]

(soulmates AU: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4)

When Eddie Munson was almost fifteen, his soulmark showed up overnight.

Oh fuck oh god oh fuck oh god he’d thought in a loop, horrified eyes stuck on a wrist thrust as far away from himself as his gangly limbs could manage. 

All year, the hope had been growing and growing in him that he’d dodged a bullet. Turns out it was just a little slow.

Because, see, when Eddie Munson was almost eight, he asked his mom why can’t we just go away somewhere, like—like, just us, and Sarah Munson kissed his head and said your daddy’s my soulmate, baby. It’s gonna be okay.

And then because he was a little shit who routinely broke his mom’s heart, he tore himself out of her arms and yelled if you loved me he wouldn’t be your soulmate, which didn’t even make sense to himself at any point, he’d just been hopping mad with nowhere to put it except a woman who had only ever done her best to love him. 

He didn’t blame her at all when he got sent to live with Wayne, pretty soon after that. Not, like, the next morning or even the next month, but close enough that when he got told he was going, it all sort of made sense in his eight-year-old mind. It all connected.

When his fourteenth birthday came and went without the heavy hand of destiny landing on his wrist, he’d slowly started to relax. He’d gotten all wound up worrying about it, the whole year he was twelve, concocting increasingly elaborate scenarios in his mind: a popular girl who would sneer resentfully at him for the rest of their lives, or maybe some bizarro girl version of Eddie who would hate him even more.

Sometimes, guiltily, he’d wondered what would happen if it wasn’t a girl’s name at all. He’d never even heard of anything like that happening, but he’d been starting to get the feeling that if there was ever going to be a freak of nature like that, it just might be him. 

As much as the thought of getting chained to a girl for life was starting to make him feel like running and hiding and clawing off all his skin, the thought of getting a name that wasn’t a girl’s name—that would be so much worse. Sure, he couldn’t picture any girl who’d be pleased to have his name on her, but some guy who had to bear Eddie’s chicken-scratch scrawled across his wrist like the mark of Cain? He’s pretty sure people have gotten put in the ground for less. The week before he turned thirteen, he had three nightmares in a row about it. 

Maybe it should’ve been some kind of relief to see SANDY FOWLER, who could be a girl but honestly probably wasn’t, someone he hadn't even ever met and couldn’t guess anything about. A reprieve from having to know for sure either way: as close to a blank canvas as anyone like him could get. A million-to-one shot. Instead, he'd just felt the fear in his gut curdle and turn to a cold kind of fury.

Fuck this, he’d thought, and reached for the beat-up Bic on his bedside table.

———

People get real weird about it, especially once he gets it covered up all the way instead of just stabbing ink into his skin any which way, driven by nauseous determination to fuck it up any way he could. 

When Wayne had come home that day and seen Eddie on the bathroom floor, covered in blood and ink and the snotty tears he couldn’t hold back after a while, he'd yelled at Eddie for the first time in Eddie’s life. 

He hadn't kicked Eddie out afterwards, though Eddie’d still slept with his backpack tucked under his bed for weeks, just in case. Instead, Wayne had asked around awkwardly, and one of his old trucking buddies had known a guy called Frank out in Ohio who ran a side business for desperate folks. 

Frank had made some kind of face when he saw what Eddie had done; nodded at Wayne and said, "You did good bringing him here."

Wayne had just nodded back in that taciturn way he got around strangers sometimes, and helped Eddie up into the chair. 

He'd gone back one more time when he was eighteen, just to get it patched up and smoothed out again. Frank hadn't recognized him at first with his fresh new metalhead look and the way he'd been shooting up like a weed. They'd joked about covering his whole arm eventually, and Eddie thought maybe it wouldn't even be a joke in another few years. He's not in a rush. He feels a kind of vicious, candy-sweet relief when he looks at his arm now, so everything else is just a bonus. 

But yeah, people do get real weird about it. He’s pretty sure some of them think he never had any kind of name under there, that he’s just a poser who wants to act all badass like he’s rejecting something he never had, but the joke’s on them because Eddie really fucking wishes that were the case. The ones who do think he has a name probably think it’s covered in Sharpie or something, like Eddie gets up early every single morning to reapply the felt-tip for shock value. 

It’s not a huge shock when Steve Harrington gets a little squeamish about the whole thing. It’s maybe a little surprising that Steve hasn’t heard the rumors about it already, but he guesses they’ve moved in pretty different circles. 

Every time they’re in the same room now, Eddie’s got a mental timer ticking away until Steve’s eyes drop down to his wrist. He’s pretty sure Steve doesn’t even know it’s happening, most of the time. 

Of course he knows about the Nancy Wheeler thing. Everyone fucking knows about the Nancy Wheeler thing. Steve hadn’t been shy about it at any point; it’s not all that common to meet your soulmate real young, so it had been pretty big news in the halls of Hawkins High. It was bigger news when Wheeler dumped him very publicly and, it seemed, very permanently. 

Eddie hadn’t cared so much until that point. Sure, it was a little unusual, but who gave a rat’s ass? You could see that kind of thing in any insipidly brainless rom-com you liked. The break-up, though. He’d never have guessed that Wheeler had the big brass balls to pull that kind of thing. And shacking up with creepy weirdo Jonathan Byers like that—there had to be some real juicy story there. He’d even heard some of the adults around Hawkins talking about it, like it was actual news or something. 

The whole thing makes a lot more sense when Nancy finally gets around to telling him about it. He’s kind of a captive audience at first, just blearily nodding along as she perches on the chair by his hospital bed and nervously, haltingly fills the silence when he’s too hazy to contribute much to the conversation. 

She ends up telling him a lot of stuff that he’s not a hundred percent sure she meant to say, or at least he’s not a hundred percent sure she meant to say it to someone who’d actually hear her.

“I liked him,” she says. “I did. I’m positive. I wasn’t being forced into it, or anything like that. I liked him so much. I wasn’t…I wasn’t lying when I said I loved him.”

Eddie’s only mostly awake at that point, but he sees her press the heel of her palm into her eyes and take a deep breath. “I wasn’t lying. Not on purpose. God, I don’t know. Maybe I was lying. I didn’t think I was when I said it, anyway, and that’s—that must count for something, right?” 

She laughs a little. “You’re not even awake, and I’m having a complete breakdown at you.”

With a truly herculean effort, Eddie rouses himself to make some kind of acknowledging noise. 

She flinches a little in her chair, so she really must’ve thought he was out. “Oh! Eddie, um—are you okay? Do you need anything?” 

“S’okay,” he manages. “You can—keep talking. If you want.”

Nancy pauses and looks at him, pursing her mouth in that prissy, thoughtful way. “Okay,” she says at last. “I will.”

#not!soulmates au #hey it's been a while! turns out I'm making a transatlantic move so my life's been a little chaotic #and hey looks like I missed the anniversary of this blog. I've been here for a whole year that's wild. #but here's some more of whatever this is #I put SO much effort into finding a reasonably contemporary name that could semi-plausibly be unisex #I also wasn't quite sure I ever wanted to pick a name for Eddie's wrist bc the whole point is that it doesn't matter! #ultimately though it felt like it was building up an unnecessarily mysterious vibe. idk. #anyway my favourite writing game is 'show that the POV character is fucked up in ways they do not understand or acknowledge'