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alchemistc · 1 year

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shoulda been a rockstar

Corroded Coffin makes it. Despite all odds, despite all the shitty crap that went down in '85, Corroded Coffin goes on to have an illustrious career - they win awards and hit the top of the charts and people genuinely fucking love them. They change the fucking genre and then just keep growing from there.

They break up for a time in the aughts, and then when they're all in their middler ages they have a drunken night together and decide to get the band back together - they've got kids now, wives and families and a million other things and one day Gareth's kid pulls out a tape from one of the boxes Gareth hasn't opened in thirty years - spends a week searching thrift shops and ebay for a cassette player even though his dad definitely could find one way quicker and when he finally listens to it he's a little transported, because this stuff is - this stuff is raw, and it's just a bit mean, and - and the vocals are all wrong, the voice is -

Gareth's son brings it to the studio and they all sit around the booth and listen with wistful sad smiles and -

"That's Eddie, bud," Gareth tells him, and he struggles with the memory, trying to think of where he knows that name from but -

"I think we recorded this when you were still a freshman," Jeff says, but that doesn't explain who -

"You mean that guy who murdered those people in your home town when you were in high school?"

And they all sort of blink and pause and hem around the point for a bit but -

"Eddie wasn't - listen, bud, I know what the official version of events is but Eddie - he didn't -."

"He died, right?"

And they all nod solemnly and share quiet looks between them and he thinks probably that's the end of that, and he feels sort of bad about reminding them of their dead maybe murderous friend, but he's a teenager, so he sort of forgets about it after that.

---

The dudes he runs into on his way to the booth give Paul sort of a shifty look, and Paul takes them in - they're both about the same height and they both look very vaguely familiar but they're in the studio and Paul never pays much attention to his dad's colleagues - ones got thick rimmed glasses and a crooked nose and a weird scar on his neck, and the other has a nest of short dark curls piled artfully atop his head and a nervously giddy grin plastered across his face and they're holding hands and Paul doesn't know them, so when he asks his dad about it he just shrugs and tells him they're trying some shit out for the reunion album.

Paul promptly forgets about them, too.

---

Corroded Coffin releases three singles before the start of the reunion tour that fans go absolutely batshit insane for. Jeff doesn't sing in them, which Paul thinks is weird as fuck, because Jeff's vocals are like a cornerstone of Corroded Coffin but the singer in all three songs reminds him of -

"You told me he was dead," Paul says, arms crossed and the tape he'd tossed at his dad still laying in his dad's lap, and his dad sort of maybe panics a little.

"Paul, you can't - he is dead. Eddie Munson died in the earthquake and that's what the whole world knows."

"Who the fuck is Steve E, then?" Because that's what the vocal credits on the song say, and there's definitely royalties going to this Steve E guy, and -

"Paul, you can't tell a soul. According to all government documentation Steve E is Teddy Eller's husband, and he's the vocals on those songs."

"And the truth?"

"That's - complicated."

Paul's not going to tell anyone, but it still sort of pisses him off that his dad won't at least tell him because he can keep a goddamn secret, okay?

---

"You can't play them live," Paul predicts, the day before their first show, and he thinks they all kind of look like dweebs, dressed like they haven't all spent the last eleven years filling out and aging, but they're excited, and they're letting him go on the first leg of the tour, so. Whatever. They can do what they want, a bunch of aging rockers trying to relive their glory days.

But they can't play the new singles live. Not when those songs have a voice that distinctive and that voice is apparently attached to a face that's supposed to be dead.

"That - those songs, we didn't really record them for - it wasn't for us," Gareth tells him, and he maybe, sort of, kind of gets it

It's a shame though, because of everything he's ever heard from CC's discography, these are some of the best.

"You could make it a gimmick, you know. Like - Corpse, or Daft Punk, or - that weird band you like, the ones with the cartoon avatars "

"The Gorillaz aren't weird, Paul, they're art."

He doesn't even bother to respond to the suggestion, and - that's that, Paul guesses.

---

"Shit shit shit -," the guy standing in the wings says, and Gareth sighs, rolls his eyes, grabs Paul by one elbow and the curly haired guy by the bicep and he drags them both further into the bowels of backstage.

"Where's Steve?" he asks, and the other middle aged guy from the studio with a different set of glasses on this time guiltily pops his head out from behind a massive amp.

"Hey Gare," he says with a dorky little finger wave, and Paul stares at them for a beat.

"Holy shit you're Steve Harrington." In his dad's freshman and sophomore yearbook, his dad has drawn devil horns on the preppy kids face. He only remembers because when he pointed it out, his dad had laughed hysterically for like ten minutes and muttered "I didn't draw that shit, his fucking soulmate did that when he was pretending he still hated his goddamn guts."

"Not technically?" Glasses says. "I changed my name when I got married."

"YOUR FAKE-DEAD HIGH SCHOOL FRIEND HAD AN ENEMIES TO LOVERS ROMANCE WITH THE PREPPY JOCK?"

Glasses blinks. Curly haired vocalist grins. "When you put it that way it is kind of cliche. Steve, I want a divorce."

"Oh gross," Paul says, because they're looking at each other all fond and lovey like his parents do right before they start playing shitty 90s love ballads really loudly from their bedroom.

"Super gross," his dad repeats, but he's darting his gaze between the two like he's watching one of those romcoms he pretends to hate whenever mom picks the movie.

"Eat my shorts," Curly Hair says, and it's the single most embarrassing thing Paul's ever heard so he sort of just sneaks away before his dad has a chance to figure out why the fuck they're hanging backstage like they're going to crash the bands show.

---

Paul still calls him Teddy even though the rest of the band drops the "T" any time they're not surrounded by managers and publicists and adoring fans. He's - the single most annoying person on the planet but also the only person Paul knows who can actually hold his weight when Paul starts debating about some obscure piece of music trivia. Teddy runs a D&D game in breaks between cities and fights Paul on game mechanics constantly because Paul hates min-maxing and Eddie doesn't give a shit about it as long as the RP is good, and Steve still puts on one of those stupid fucking masks once in a while and pretends to sing Teddy's vocals while Teddy wistfully watches his husband showboat in the wings of the stage.

His last night with the band before CC heads overseas and Paul has to go back and figure out how to do a summers worth of reading in two weeks, he corners Teddy halfway through a super-embarrasing gyration Steve's doing onstage to a lyric Paul hadn't realized was so suggestive until that very moment.

"Don't you hate it?"

Teddy looks at him sharply, and Paul knows - knows he fucking hates that this is the closest he'll ever get to that rockstar dream he probably spent his formative years imagining. He's got a limp that never goes away, and one time they'd all snuck into the hotel pool after hours and Paul had seen the map of scars across Teddy's torso, and sometimes Teddy reaches for the air close to his neck and makes a surprised face like he was expecting to have something their to dig his fingers into. And sometimes Teddy and Steve get maudlin and quiet and haunted and the band sort of pretends it's not happening until they snap out of it

"You ever heard of Damien Echolls?" Teddy asks instead of responding to the question, and it takes him a second but his mom is obsessed with true crime podcasts and it clicks, eventually. Paul nods solemnly, and Eddie gestures to the stage, where Steve - who is way too old to be as fit as he is, Jesus - is hopping around and hamming it up and actually doing a pretty good job of playing at a rockstar. "I'm alive and I didn't spend a couple decades locked in solitary and that stupid idiot loves me so much that sometimes I can't even imagine not loving everything about me, too."

Paul makes a gagging noise, and Teddy gives him a noogie.

"Yeah kid. I fucking hate it. But there are worse things."

---

It takes him twelve years and a whole ass law degree, but when Eddie Munson is posthumously exonerated, the band releases an EP with a dedication to the founding member of Corroded Coffin and Steve E on vocals. They're new songs, and they get away with it by pretending they'd found an old notebook buried in a storage unit and decided to honor their friend, but Teddy sort of cries a bit when he sees the songwriter credits.

He cries a lot, actually, but then, so does Paul.

#corroded coffin #steve harrington x eddie munson #steddie fic #outsider pov #steddie #i kinda hurt my own feelings with this one #eddie munson you shoulda been a rockstar

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mutenized · 1 year

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Celebrity Skin

Eddie Munson x Rockstar!AFAB! Reader

It’s 1991 and Robin forced all of her friends to go to a concert with her for her birthday. Without listening to the band, Eddie agreed to go without knowing what was to come. Who knew being considered a ‘freak’ all his life would lead him to find a kindred soul in the grunge-rock’s princess.

Word count: 2k

CW: 18+ MINORS TURN AWAY. SHOO. mentions of drug and alcohol abuse, small mention of distressing and manipulative/abusive father, mention of a Playboy Magazine.

A/N: it’s 1991 in the story so Eddie is 25 and reader is 22. Thank you for the support on the first part! I don’t know if I should make this a mini series or an actual series, you all let me know! Also my requests are open if you want any concepts to be done or you have ideas to be written about!

Part one / / Masterlist

Eddie edit by @eddiemunsons-missingnipple

Fate was never a concept you believed in. It was never a ‘right place right time’ scenario but that all seemed to change the moment you screamed “Goodnight Indianapolis!” into the microphone and disappeared off the stage where a cool towel and ice water awaited you in your managers hands. Thanking her as you chugged the bottle and wrapped the towel around your shoulders, you began to notice her dismayed face and the thin line between her brows which only appeared when she experiences ‘great stress.’

Spring had been like a mother to you from the moment you ran away at eighteen, the only thing you had was your guitar and a trash bag filled with what clothes your dad didn’t drench in gasoline before using it a tinder for the large fire in the backyard.

“Shoulda known you’re jus’ like your life ruining mother. First the fuckin’ loud ass music then these whore clothes. Then comin’ home marked up?!” The venom in his alcohol-laced rage sent you on edge as you watched him throw your signed Siouxsie Sioux vinyl into the pile of burning rubble that once was your beloved items. That’s when that snap broke and began to pack up what you could fit into the back of your run down car. You didn’t care if it broke down, as long as it did thousands of miles away from suburbia.

That’s what you got. Finding home in Brooklyn, you had found a spot on the street and began to make the backseat your new bed. After a few days of watching you, Spring and her partner Mac knocked on your window.

Okay, maybe that time was right place right time. The question you were about to ask died on your tongue as Mac made their way up to you and the rest of the band who now joined you off stage.

“The openers dropped out of the rest of the tour.” They informed you, the thin line between Spring’s brows reappearing as a groan left Ryder’s lips. Your guitarist, and best friend, had a bad feeling about them when they were interviewed for the spot months ago. This was his ‘I told you so’ as he shot you a side glance, walking beside you as the band and the team moved down the narrow hallway.

“Goddamn, what does the label say? It’s the beginning of tour, we need an opener!” Thalia, the band’s bassist, declared which earned her a sharp stare from Mac and Spring. “They said it’s up to us and to let them know. Our next show is in two days. Within that timeframe we need to find a band that aligns with us, who can sign a contract agreeing to tour, and that the label likes.”

Spring rubbed her temples as Mac handed her a cigarette from behind their ear before lighting it for her. “I had an idea.” They spoke, pausing before the door that led to the crowd of fans that sat waiting by their tour bus. “We’re going to be here for a few days. I’m from Indianapolis and their underground music scene has always thrived. How about open auditions?”

Before, the band and management had three bands to pick from that the label had pre-approved. This time, it was free rein, all together chaos. You loved it. “Let’s let them know when we get into the bus. I don’t know where we’ll hold it but let’s do it.” Your voice was sturdy and in control which was a shock for the two managers, more afraid that you’d tear down the venue and end the lives of each of the opening band’s members. That you’d dream of, already having to be talked to by executives about your loud, party girl nature. If any of your antics got publicized your band would be cut. Not wanting to put you and your friend’s dreams at risk so you turned down the copious bottles of alcohol and small baggies filled with nose candy that you would partake in only once in a while. Instead of engaging that, you disappeared for two months to a rehab facility to cut yourself clean of your vices, though an occasional joint and cigarette didn’t hurt.

Mac only hummed as Spring and her assistant disappeared to start calling up studios in the area to see if they had two open days free. Meanwhile, Mac guided Thalia, Ryder, Marcus, and you out into the cool night, the breeze welcomed as sweat still lingered on your skin. The peaceful moment hidden behind the brick walls of the alleyway was disturbed by the screams of fans once they caught sight of Ryder’s bright red Mohawk and angular face as he stepped out into the streetlights.

This part of the night never got old, no matter how big the began to get. The fans who helped the group’s dreams come true, supporting them through every aspect. The least you could do was sign some magazines and take some photos for someone to later get developed and paste on their wall. Today, though, excitement filled your veins with a joy unlike any other drug could have. You were searching for those doe eyes and the messy, curled hair that reminded you of your friend, Chris Cornell’s. All night the two of you would meet gazes, a wink or suggestive lyric being dedicated to him just to get under his skin which made the other male he was with howl with laughter as his face kept turning a red shade. Then, like magnets, your gazes connected again.

As soon as you stepped off the stage, Eddie shoved whatever cash he had to Steve who was already doing a merchandise run for Nancy and Robin. Steve shot him an eyebrow wiggle before chuckling when Eddie shoved him away all before grabbing the other two of his friends and shoving through the equally as eager crowd with no care as he was yelled and glared at. The two girls apologized enough for him, though they didn’t truly mean it. That man was on a mission and without him, they wouldn’t be leaned up against the same metal bars as before, the ones that held them in like cattle.

Chatting between his small group, Eddie pulled Steve in as he tried to politely nudge his way through the crowd. Once finally with his friends, Nancy laughed before fixing his shirt. “Should have let Eddie give you that makeover he offered. You stick out like a sore thumb, in the worst way possible.” Her words made Steve roll his eyes and let out a playful ‘blegh’ while handing the cassette Robin requested to her as well as the tank top she eyed but wouldn’t buy for herself. A gift from Steve to her. Nancy gently grabbed the tour exclusive vinyl that she had read about in Rolling Stone, holding it to her chest hopefully. For Eddie, though, Steve held back a laugh before handing him the recent Playboy magazine which starred you as their cover and centerfold. “So you have something of sustenance.” He smirked, handing him the bundle set of cassettes for his van.

Just as Eddie was going to return an equally snarky jab, screams and hollering erupted like a volcano from the crowd. Instantly, his chocolate colored orbs desperately searching for yours like it was his dying wish. The moment they met, a smile fell on his pierced feature and his breath stuttering for half a moment all before you began to saunter your way over to him, greeting other fans on the way over.

Your breath caught in your throat as the distance between the mystery man and you closed. Now you stood in front of him with a smile, hand outstretched for Robin as a huge, genuine grin played on your features. “Happy birthday, bitch!” You exclaimed, poking the button before pulling out a marker and perking a brow. “The band wants to take you out for a round of drinks, if that’s cool with you guys? We just have to freshen up and all, don’t want to be sweaty around pretty people such as yourself.”

A blush dusted Robin’s freckled features as she struggled to form an answer while you signed the cassette tape in her hands. “She is meaning to say yes.” Steve laughed, staring at his best friend with wide eyes as if to say ‘what the fuck, get it together dude.’ “Yea! Yes!” Her voice broke, wide eyes settling on you as your hand glided over Nancy’s vinyl with ease.

“Perfect,” accentuating the ‘per, “give us half an hour after we leave, we’re at the Biltmore down the rode and there’s a bar there.” Sending her a wink, your eyes focused back on Eddie, nerves now subsided as you’re presented with your playboy spread. A devilish smirk overcame you, tapping the capped tip of the marker on the paper. “God choice. Made sure all money spent on these would go to women’s rights movements as well as LGBT protecting foundations.” Signing right above your head, you look up to Eddie through your lashes with your bottom lip coyly tucked between your teeth.

To say he was stunned was an understatement, his eyes taking you in as Nancy placed a hand on his back. “Eddie is his name. He’s been drooling over you since the moment you walked out. Birthday bitch is Robin, that’s Steve, and I’m Nancy!” Her smile was bright and you swore you could see her being chased after promoters to be a model.

“Hey!” The taller male choked out as you moved on to continue signing things for other fans, a laugh leaving you as you took in his nervous voice crack. “Well Eddie, I hope you come along for drinks. I’d love to see you there.” Sending him a wink, your attention went back to conversing with other fans all before disappearing into the unmarked vehicles that were set up behind the large tour bus.

Turning to leave, a loud voice caught their attention which paused the group in motion. “EVERYONE!” Mac shouted, a megaphone pressed to their mouth, “due to unforeseen circumstances, the opener for this tour has dropped out. We will be hosting open calls tomorrow and Saturday at Velocity Records starting at 10 AM. Be there early to secure a spot! Note that you MUST be ready with a set before joining us, as you will be thrown right into the swing of things. Thank you, get home safe!”

Three pairs of eyes bore holes into Eddie’s skull, his mouth agape. Fate, this must be fate.

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munsontm · 1 year

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“you’re allowed to need help sometimes.” from robin!

Something told him that she'd had a similar conversation with his other half at some point. How did he know? Because Steve, too, was an achingly tough nut to crack open when he felt the need to stay inside his shell. Poor Buckley, he felt sorry for her in that respect. Dealing with the two of them daily had to be no easy ride, and a bubble of guilt popped deep in his belly at the thought of how his behaviour might be causing her some unwanted anxiety. But nevertheless, Robin was his friend; he only wanted the good things for her in life.

Going on a bender wasn't uncommon for Eddie. Heck, he'd been at it since the age of fifteen. It helped him forget his problems, his past, and his worries about all the other tenses for just a few days because Munson benders were anything but XS-sized. Quite often, they tended to last a few days, and it was always evident what he'd been up to when the comedown and hangover began to set in. There were bags under his eyes that put goth makeup to shame, and the whites above them remained an ugly shade of red around his pupils. His hair was limp and in good need of a wash. He couldn't remember when he last changed his clothes, and a shower was probably a dire need right about then. Yep, he sure looked a sorry sight but only offered a pained shrug in response. Everything hurt. Why? Fuck, if he knew why.

"Please don't tell my sugar honey baby?" Eddie said, ignoring Robin's offer of help. Steve would only worry. He attempted to smile delightfully but felt something stuck between his teeth, so he grimaced instead before pulling a blade of grass out of his mouth. The fuck? He thought, staring at it as if it were the strangest thing he'd seen in his life.

After a long moment of astonished silence passed between the two friends, Eddie offered a sly "Moo?" Robin punched him in the arm for that, to which he promptly reacted as if he were about to die. Didn't she know he was a delicate and pathetic little nerd flower? The nerve of this woman and her love. He couldn't even flash Robin a large-eyed stare in hopes of gaining a bit of sympathy. Robin was simply far too gay to fall for it. He couldn't rock that power against her superior brand, so he caved with a prolonged sigh. "C'mon, cut me some slack, Rob. I died for, like...I dunno how long. But, ya know, I was all shades of fucked up before that. This is just how I deal. I never said it was a good way to deal with stuff. And being stuck in this freaking podunk hell hole of a town ain't a real help either." Eddie's usually bright eyes suddenly dulled, and his gaze fell to the floor. "You try dealing with complete strangers telling you that you shoulda died instead of that nice Cunningham girl and her wonderful boyfriend, Jason." He could only take so much before bad urges crept up on him. At least he wasn't suicidal, not yet, anyway. And he didn't want to be.

"M'sorry you're seeing me in my rockstar debauchery. And I'm sorry if I worried you. That's not what I wanted to do, okay? I'll go take a spa day or something." Aka, shower and sleep, and hopefully never talk about this incident again for as long as they live, and never involve Steve in it. But somehow, he could already picture them having this conversation again sooner rather than never.

@scoopstrooptm

#ᴅʏɴ ⯮ 𝙁 𝙍 𝙀 𝘼 𝙆 𝙎 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗿𝗺𝘀 ᴀɢᴀɪɴꜱᴛ ʀᴇᴀɢᴀɴ'ꜱ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ( munsontm 🎸 & scoopstrooptm 🎺 )#scoopstrooptm #oops :')

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