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wheels-of-despair · 1 year

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Eddie Munson and the Best Anti-Valentine's Day Ever Pairing: Eddie Munson x You Summary: Eddie hated everything about Valentine's Day… until he met someone who hated it more than he did. Contains: Female reader, first Valentine's Day together, high school bullshit, alternative V-Day plans, awkward jokes and excessive sarcasm, director yelling "cut!" before the good shit. Words: 2.8k-ish

This is a sequel to Eddie Munson and the Worst Valentine's Day Ever. You can read that first, read that after and pretend it's a flashback, or fine, be that way, don't read it all, see if I care. (Please read it.)

Eddie Munson hated Valentine's Day.

After an unfortunate incident in the 2nd grade, Eddie did his best to avoid the stupid non-holiday, but he was never successful. There was no escaping it. It was everywhere. He scowled when the stores would turn an entire aisle red and pink. He glowered at the ridiculous decorations littering every hallway and classroom at school. He rolled his eyes when jewelry ads took over every commercial break. He hated that people lucky enough to have someone to love waited until that one corporate-approved day to show it.

Yes, Eddie Munson hated Valentine's Day.

Until he met someone who hated it more than he did.

You hadn't been together very long. He'd been so worried about getting your first Christmas together right - which he did - he'd completely forgotten about Valentine's Day. When he realized that it was right around the corner, and he finally had someone who would expect him to acknowledge the occasion, he panicked.

Does he buy flowers or chocolate? Flowers and chocolate? What kind of flowers? What if they didn't have your favorite kind of chocolate in a heart shape? Is regular chocolate okay? What about the teddy bear situation? Would you swoon and fall into his arms, or laugh at him? Should he just tell you why he hates Valentine's Day and hope that you understood? Why was this so hard?

He expressed his concerns to Wayne, who knew how Eddie felt about the holiday. He'd caught on pretty quick to Young Eddie pretending to be sick every February 14th so he wouldn't have to go to school on Valentine's Day. Wayne had laughed at him, in that loving you're being an idiot, but I love you anyway way, and told him that "It doesn't have to be flowers and teddy bears, son. Just do something she'll like." That was not helpful, Uncle Wayne.

And then one day at lunch, about two weeks before the dreaded non-holiday, something happened that confused Eddie even more.

A cheerleader was making her way from table to table, selling chocolate roses for some dumb fundraiser. Eddie half-expected, and fully hoped, that she would just pass on by the freak table. But since the universe had it out for Eddie Munson, she stopped.

"Hi! I'm Tanya! Would any of you like to buy a chocolate rose for Valentine's Day? It benefits the basketball team's new uniform fund!" The Hellfire Club was so stunned that there was a cheerleader in their vicinity, everyone suddenly forgot how to speak. Eddie bit his tongue, trying to think of a nice way to dismiss the bubbly blonde. Until you did it for him.

"Nope, I think we're good." You picked the tomato off your burger and plopped it on Eddie's tray without looking up.

"Are you sure? It's only $1 a rose! You just fill out a card and write the name and homeroom of the person you want to send it to on this," the cheerleader shakes her hot pink clipboard, "and we'll deliver it on Valentine's Day! Everyone's doing it. It's a great way to show your friends you care, or let someone know you have a crush! And the basketball team gets new uniforms! Everybody wins!" Tanya giggles.

The Hellfire Club, finally coming to their senses, begins to shift uncomfortably. But Tanya and her dumb-ass clipboard weren't going anywhere. You turn to her and offer a tight-lipped smile. "You know what, that sounds great. Why don't you let us talk it over, and if we decide to buy, we'll come find you?"

"Okay!" she giggles again. "But make sure you buy from me! We're having a friendly competition to see who can sell the most, and nobody else wanted to ask…" Her face falls. Your gaze turns to steel.

"Ask what?" Your voice holds a challenge. The freaks? The weirdos? Eddie is stunned, not sure what the hell is happening. The rest of Hellfire remains silent, watching with wide eyes.

"N-nothing, I've gotta go meet my friend, please come find me if you decide to participate!" She vanishes quicker than she appeared. The tension in the air is so thick, Eddie could cut it with his pocketknife.

You survey the awkward teenagers surrounding you. It's the longest you've ever seen them quiet since you moved here.

"Oh, I'm sorry," you begin with a mock sincerity that quickly turns into a decent impression of Tanya, "did you guys wanna, like, support the basketball team by purchasing overpriced candy from the only cheerleader brave enough to speak to the freaks and weirdos? 'Cause I can call her back!" No takers.

"Wouldn't want anyone to feel left out when they're the only person in class who doesn't get a ten-cent chocolate rose during this month's popularity contest." You were going for sarcasm, but the way your voice softens toward the end of the sentence gives you away. Eddie feels a tightening inside his chest. Had you gone through it too?

Gareth cracks a joke about ten-cent hookers, and the dark cloud over the Hellfire table lifts. Everyone laughs, and the conversation returns to normal again. But Eddie watches you carefully, more worried than ever about how to approach the V-word with you.

Exactly seven days before the dreaded event, he gets his chance.

"What do you want to do for Valentine's Day?"

You're lying on your back on his bed, head hanging off the edge next to where he sits on the floor. You'd already finished your essay on Romeo and Juliet - wow, Romeo and Juliet for Valentine's Day, how very creative of the Hawkins High English Department - and were on standby to help Eddie with his. The question had come out of nowhere, and though he'd been thinking about it nearly nonstop for weeks, he still had no idea how to answer.

"Uh… I don't know?"

"Very helpful Edward, thank you."

"What do you want to do?" You turn your head and meet his curious but hesitant eyes. You inhale deeply and stare at the ceiling, preparing for a long one.

"I demand flowers and candy and a teddy bear holding a velvety red heart. Balloons are optional, but encouraged. You will wear a suit to school and present me with these treasures in front of the largest crowd possible, preferably on one knee. You will then take me to the Valentine's Day Dance in the prestigious Hawkins High Gym, which definitely won't reek of ball sweat like it usually does. Afterward, we will make sweet, passionate love on a bearskin rug in front of a roaring fire, and you will surprise me with a diamond of some sort." You were impressed with yourself for not breaking your deadpan during the delivery of your ridiculous demands.

You stare at each other for a few seconds, then burst out laughing.

"Oh, I'm sorry, is the corporate-approved Valentine's Day plan not good enough for you?" you tease, trying to catch your breath.

After the laughter subsides, you flip over onto your stomach to see him better. He's turned to lean his back against an amp rather than the bed, so he doesn't have to turn his head to look at you. Lacing your fingers and resting your chin on them, you change gears.

"We don't have to do anything if you don't want to. It's a dumb holiday. I just thought it would be weirder if we didn't acknowledge it at all."

He fidgets with the corner of a blanket hanging off the bed. You're not sure which one of you is more nervous at this point.

"I want to do something. But not like… a traditional something," he finally says.

"Okay," you nod. "So are we talking like a horror movie marathon, or destruction of public property, or anal?"

He chokes.

After another laughing fit, the two of you make a plan.

The Monday before Valentine's Day, which was on a Thursday, you and Eddie walked into school together and both froze. You took in the sights around you and slowly turned your heads toward each other with wide eyes before bursting into laughter.

It looked like Cupid's elementary-school aged children had thrown up in the halls of Hawkins High. Red and pink hearts made from construction paper were everywhere. And chains! Paper chains! How old did they think you were?

"Hi guys! Do you have your tickets for the dance already?" someone far too perky for this early hour chirps at you from behind a table a few feet away.

"Nope, we have other things to do that night," you inform the girl you've never noticed before, probably an over-achiever on the decorating committee, not wanting to be completely rude.

"You have other things to do the night of the Valentine's Day dance?" she asks indignantly. And to think, you'd tried to be polite.

"Those virgins aren't gonna sacrifice themselves," Eddie says in a low voice, before you can think of a sarcastic response. She gulps. You bite back a laugh and tug him along, to anywhere but there.

You'd decided not to do anything special on the corporate-approved day of romantic acknowledgement. Your plans would wait until Friday: An Anti-Valentine's Day Date. Hopefully the first of many.

The next few days were relatively uneventful. Well, as uneventful as life can be with Eddie Munson as your partner in crime.

On Thursday, the shitty construction paper littering the halls wasn't the only thing that was annoyingly festive. You'd never seen so much pink and red in your life. They must've cleaned out the mall two towns over. Not a fuzzy sweater or a heart-patterned sweatshirt could have survived this shopping spree. You're surprised you haven't seen something about it on the news. Breaking: High Schoolers Clear Out Entire Red-Hued Inventory. Dye Industry May Never Recover. Pastels Definitely In for Easter, Possibly 4th of July.

"God help us," you mutter as you grab Eddie's hand. Two figures clad in black weave their way through a sea of red and pink toward homeroom. He walks you to your classroom and gives you a peck on the forehead. "Homeroom, homeroom! Parting is such sweet sorrow," he quotes wrongly. You roll your eyes with a smile and give him a playful push toward his own classroom, located four doors down.

The student council member with the honor of delivering the morning announcements is bursting with joy as she informs everyone that the cheer squad broke the school's previous fundraising record with the chocolate roses they sold for Valentine's Day. Greeeat, you think. Those will be delivered during this period.

You hate waxy, overpriced candy. You hate the basketball team. You hate the cheerleaders. But more than anything, you hate the thought of your friends feeling excluded. You'd fallen in behind a pair of airheads discussing the number of roses they'd sold in the hall one day last week. What's-her-name wasn't lying when she gave Hellfire her sales pitch. Everyone was doing it.

So you'd found the only cheerleader brave enough to talk to the freaks and shelled out a few bucks to send each member of Hellfire a chocolate rose. You were weak. You were soft. You were hard candy coating with a squishy marshmallow inside. You were hopeless.

As if on cue, a pretty brunette with poofy hair came in with a pail full of chocolate roses. It was a small lump of red tinfoil, stuck on a green plastic stem with a fake leaf or two on it, and a little white card attached with a ribbon. That's all. It was just as underwhelming as you'd imagined.

Instead of watching her make her deliveries, you decided to spend the rest of homeroom writing a dirty, overly dramatic love letter to the Dungeon Master of your dreams. Depending on how filthy it turned out, you might even sign it "Love, Principal Higgins" and stick it in his locker before lunch.

You were adding extra emphasis to the words "engorged member" with a red pen when a rose was dropped onto your notebook. You looked up in confusion, but she had already moved on to the next desk. Putting down your pen, you reach for the card bearing your name, attached to the thin plastic stem with a cheap red ribbon.

"Hail Satan."

The Hellfire Club was practically vibrating at lunch. Nobody wanted to admit that they'd received one of those stupid chocolate roses from an anonymous admirer, or that it had made them all so unreasonably happy. But you knew. You looked over at Eddie. He knew. Despite your attitudes and outward appearances, you were both just mush on the inside. You shared a knowing smile and intertwined your fingers under the table, silently agreeing to never speak of what you'd both done.

Supporting the basketball team. Honestly.

After school on Friday, the day after Valentine's Day, you and Eddie had gone on a Hawkins-wide store tour and purchased several bags full of discounted candy. Your reward for surviving another V-Day.

You'd also stopped by Family Video to grab a few things to watch during your Anti-Valentine's Day Date Night.

"If you're looking for anything romantic, we're out," the exasperated clerk informed you the second you stepped in the door. Eddie shook his head, laughed, and led you to the horror section. You left with four $1 rentals: Old creature features. Bad ones. The bottom of the barrel. The shittier the effects, the better. You couldn't wait.

That night's meeting of The Hellfire Club went off without a hitch. Progress was made, nobody died, everyone was in high spirits and pumped full of candy. Was everyone's good mood due a great session, to surviving the least awful Valentine's Day in recent memory, or the massive amounts of sugar? Who's to say.

After everyone cleared out and you helped Eddie clean up, he took you home. You'd spared no gory detail when you told your mom everything you had planned for your Anti-Valentine's Day Date, and she'd agreed to let you stay with him for the night. After all, who'd want to get frisky after playing a nerdy game with a bunch of sweaty virgins, filling up on cheap candy and cardboard-like frozen pizza, then finishing the night by watching disgusting monster movies in their rattiest sweats?

You and Eddie Munson, that's who.

The next morning, you woke up before he did, and decided to make him breakfast. Your Anti-Valentine's Day Date was over, so you could do cute couple-y stuff now. You knew Wayne would be home soon, so you made yourself look moderately respectable before heading into the kitchen to forage for food.

Eddie stumbled in while you were making pancakes, wearing nothing but his favorite black sweatpants and a sleepy smile. He saunters up behind you, places his hands on your hips, and rests his chin on your shoulder.

"What, no heart shapes? Just plain pancakes? Some girlfriend you are." You swat at him with the spatula and he laughs, kissing the top of your head and making his way to the coffee maker.

He wants a special pancake? You'll give him a special pancake. Lifting a plain circle out of the pan and dropping it onto the stack of boring pancakes, you get a little more creative with your next pour.

"Will you clear off the table so we don't make a mess of this?" He grumbles and does as you ask, sitting down at the cluttered table to start separating the junk mail from the bills that had been accumulating. You don't care about eating at the table, you just don't want him to see his special pancake yet.

You flip it. It's perfect. When it's done, you plop it onto a plate and grab the syrup bottle, heading toward the halfway-cleared table. You place it in front of him with a wicked grin.

"Is that…"

"Yup."

He tilts his head from his special breakfast to you, an incredulous look on his face.

"That's a dick."

"Yup."

At that very moment, you hear a car door slam. Wayne's home. Shit. You and Eddie are frozen in place; Eddie still shocked by his dick-cake, you panicking about Wayne seeing it.

The door opens. Eddie grins. You gulp.

"Hey Wayne, look at the special Valentine's Day breakfast that--" Eddie's mouth is suddenly filled with a dick-shaped pancake, leaving him unable to finish his sentence.

"Good morning, Wayne. Would you like a pancake?" you ask sweetly, wiping the crumbs from your hand onto your pants.

"Sure, darlin'."

You return to the stove, your face as red as one of those stupid construction paper hearts that were probably still littering the halls of Hawkins High. Thankfully, Wayne thinks nothing of Eddie shaking with laughter at the table, his cheeks stuffed full like a chipmunk's.

Maybe this Valentine's Day stuff wasn't so terrible after all.

Did you read the prequel that reveals why Eddie hates Valentine's Day? Click Here!

#writings of despair #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x valentine's day #i am aware that i did not reveal exactly why the reader hates v-day #because apparently everyone on tumblr had That One Incident In School That Scarred Us For Life #so you can pretend you told each other your v-day horror stories on date night if you want #or make up something better #i believe in you

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