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It happens on one of Eddie’s smoke breaks. He’s just a sophomore in high school, but based off his grades already, he thinks he’s probably going to end up repeating this year pretty soon.
He’s outside sitting on his car, puffing out smoke and trying to figure out how to make it into rings. Puffing smoke rings would be cooler than just smoke, of course, and all the best metal artists can definitely manage a smoke ring, right? It’s a necessary step for being part of a popular band.
The icy wind ruffles through his thick curls, and he grumbles about the winter weather as he shrugs his jacket ever-closer. It’s a smidge too tight for him, pulling at his elbows with his growing pains. Acquired from the one and only sports game Eddie graced with his presence, Hawkins High is emblazoned against the black of the jacket. Sometimes, Eddie thinks it’s a metaphor that’s a bit too on the nose.
This jacket is Hawkins, and Hawkins is the jacket - he just doesn’t fit it right, and every time he tries to squirm himself into a comfortable position it pulls at his skin like it might start tearing him apart at the seams.
So. Smoke rings. Part of a never-ending effort to get out of this hellhole town.
He’s so caught up in trying to get the O-shape right that he misses footsteps headed his way. Yet another failed puff, and he throws his head back in disgust.
“Mother fucker -!”
“Munson?”
The voice makes him damn near fall off the car, an ungainly squawk escaping his lips as he jerks upright to stare at the kid standing in front of him.
Brown hair, scruffy kid, basketball sweatshirt - fuck, he oughta know this brat. What was his fucking name? One of the Hellfire middle schoolers had been bitching about this one’s friends…Tommy Hagan, always flanked by Carol Perkins, and they’ve lately had the addition of this new kid.
“Uh, hey?” The kid’s voice breaks Eddie’s desperate scrambling for his name, and he gives up in favor of pulling theatrics around himself like a familiar cape. He leans forward, trying to emulate the coolest musicians he can think of, trying to lounge like a big cat.
“What’s a middle schooler doing in the Hawkins High lot, huh? Haven’t you got better places to be, pipsqueak?” He purposefully drawls, trying to loom from his place on the car.
The kid doesn’t move a bit, staring back at him with ridiculously dark brown eyes. Eddie gives it a beat, two beats, then a frown starts to tug at the corner of his mouth.
“I don’t have all day, kid. I’m not selling to a fuckin’ - what, seventh, eighth grader - shit, ask your jackass buddies-“
“Are you the guy who does tattoos?” The kid interrupts, and Eddie grinds to a halt.
“Tattoos?” He parrots dumbly, and the kid just raises a brow.
Well - yeah. Eddie does tattoos. Shitty stick-and-pokes, of course, he’s no apprentice, but he can get ink to stick pretty well, if his collection of three-year old skulls and bats from his own middle school days says anything. He’s gotten better over time, but the cobra wrapping down his leg is taking fucking ages. It’s still not the reason anyone approaches him: most kids want drugs, not tats.
“You’re sure you want a tattoo?” He asks dubiously, sizing up the kid in front of him. “You look like you’re a fuckin’ jock, what would you even want?”
Lips purse, and the middle schooler glances away. Eddie sits up somewhat, trying to discern what the closed expression means, and then remembers this kid is friends with Tommy Hagan and decides it doesn’t matter.
“I… want this covered.” The younger boy forces out after a minute, and before Eddie can ask what the hell that means, jerks up his sleeve.
There’s a little number on his arm, right by the wrist. Eddie reads it, and feels his brows raise.
“Double-oh-seven? Who the fuck agreed to put a James Bond reference on you at like, ten years old?”
“I’m thirteen,” the kid says with a definite petulance to it, the most personality Eddie’s gotten out of him yet. “I just - I don’t want it anymore.”
“Yeah, that’s what happens when you put something permanent on you when you’re in fuckin’ elementary school-“ Eddie shoots back, although he slides off the car to take the kid’s arm.
“I didn’t,” the kid starts, but he’s ignoring him to peer closer at pale skin. It’s really impressively straight, straight enough to pull off something boxy, too large to cover with something small and stupid like a star or a cross that some white-bread kid like this would want.
“Whatcha want over it? Pick something you can tattoo over again when you’re older,” he warns, straightening up. The kid stares at him a second, then hesitates.
“I - I don’t care.”
Eddie’s brows try to merge into his hairline from how fast they shoot up.
“You don’t care?”
“N— no. I just want this gone.”
“You’re giving me free reign?” Glee sneaks into Eddie’s tone. He’s gonna give this brat the nerdiest thing he can figure out. See how Tommy’s friends like that. That’ll teach him to fuck with nerds.
“...yes,” the kid says, eyes sliding to the side. “Can you?”
“After school’s fine,” Eddie says, and the kid bites his lip. “After?”
“Yeah, takes forever. And I've gotta make a design, yeah? So meet me here, pronto, once the bell rings.”
Brown curls bob when the kid nods, and takes a hesitant step away. “..okay. After school.” Then he turns his back and starts away.
“Go on, scram. Get back to class!” Eddie calls after the retreating figure. No acknowledgement follows, but he sits still to think about that.
“....the fuck was that?” He finally mutters to himself, befuddled. The bell lets out a shrill scream, and he swings off his car in a smooth motion.
In class, Eddie can hardly pay attention. The teacher is talking, scribbling something in chalk on the blackboard, but all he hears is his own mind running at a million miles an hour.
Boxy, straight lines. Nothing too big - the kid is a middle schooler, he’s gonna squirm insanely if Eddie just inks in a black square, even if that would hide the numbers just fine. What’s he gonna do about the zeroes?
He doodles errantly on his notebook. What’s something that’ll stick out as nerdy but not unrecognizable? There aren't enough curves in 007 to pull off a book and there are too many for a d20 die. Dragons don't work either. He could maybe ink in the spaces between the letters and go from there?
He thinks about it, then draws a rectangle over the letters and fills it in with extra diagonal lines and curved edges. Moving on instinct, he adds a swirl then scribbles it out, adds an extra set of jutting handles.
It takes Eddie most of a sheet of paper to pause, look over his work, and nod again to himself.
Finally, Eddie’s got it.
A sword. A sword with a gemstone in the pommel and an eye carved at the base: the two zeroes, hidden masterfully. Diagonal lines are crisscrossing the blade itself like old scores and marks, hiding the seven, but the blade is whole.
It's cool, still fucking nerdy as hell. The kid’s just lucky that Eddie was nice enough to leave out writing something from Lord of the Rings on the blade.
007 might still, faintly, come through if you’re looking very hard. But who would be?
It’ll work. And honestly, if Tommy Hagan does think it’s stupid as hell, what does Eddie care? He’s surprised the school hasn't been talking about the ‘cool kid’ stupid enough to tattoo a James Bond reference on his arm as a kid.
If Eddie maybe put a bit too much work into it for some kid he doesn't know, well, he can blame it on the fact that he doesn't get to tattoo much. He likes it, and not many of his friends are willing to let Eddie stick a needle into them a hundred times. This kid just told him anything. Anything!
The rest of the day passes in a blur. He laughs off somebody shoving his shoulder in the hall, ignores the football player dogging his steps out the back doors, dodges a handful of cruel words in the parking lot by flipping a pack of baseball guys off, then immediately gets chased by said baseball guys all the way to his car.
An empty bottle bounces off his spine, making him halfway stumble, but he catches himself to keep running.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, he’s made better decisions than pissing off the dudes who run three miles every morning. They’re fucking fast, but not quite enough, and he thanks his lucky stars that he didn't take a potshot at the track team. His ratty black boots carry him all the way across the lot just in time.
Bodily tossing himself into his car, he locks the doors just as they catch up with him. Fists bang on his window, and he flinches even as he smirks at the group like a smug cag just out of the reach of barking dogs. A foot slams into his side door, the boys circling like the mongrels he just compared them to, faces twisted into scowls, and Eddie starts his car.
They surround him anyway, a fist beating on his hood and another trying his door handle before punching where his face is in the window.
Normally it’s at this point that he would have to rev his engine to make them back down. But today, something muffled calls loudly, and the boys pause.
All six high school baseball players turn to stare at the brown-haired kid from before, whose hands are shoved into his jacket, spine straight and eyes hard. He’s gotta be a foot shorter than most of them, but his stance radiates a confidence Eddie’s pretty sure he never had in middle school and still might not have now.
Tommy Hagan and Carol Perkins slink out from either side of the kid like panthers emerging from the shadows behind a villain, weirdly cinematic, and their twin sneers are jarring.
Fuck. He forgot the kid was supposed to meet him here. Clearly the kid didn't though.
He can’t hear the conversation entirely from his windows, so he rolls one down slightly out of morbid curiosity. They’re facing off against the main baseball player, the star - Travis Jennings, the one who decides everything. King Travis, depending on who you ask. If you ask Eddie, calling any kid “King” is dumb as hell, but Hawkins just can't let it go.
“Wasting time on the freak? Wow, you must be bored as hell,” Tommy Hagan laughs, setting up the shot, and Carol grins as she delivers the knife behind the words.
“Guess it only makes sense, since Maria Jackson ditched you for Christopher Jameson, huh?” And usually it’d be a one-two hit from Tommy and Carol, but the kid jumps right in.
“Who could blame her when you're just so charming. Charming enough to get in Brenda Anderson’s car when Maria wasn’t looking.” The kid finishes, brown eyes dark.
That’s - that’s new gossip, clearly, given how all the baseball players look briefly at Travis with wide eyes. Travis turns an alarming shade of red, starting to sputter and draw himself up. Just as Eddie's considering whether or not he needs to rev his engine after all to save three mean middle schoolers, the school bell shrills again to indicate it’s time for sports practice.
“Walk it off, yeah?” The kid snorts at Travis, and the older teen takes a threatening step forward. Tommy and Carol bristle on both sides of the curly-haired boy, and Travis - huffs. He backs down, astonishingly, and stalks away with his brutish shadows following him.
The trio stays strong as the players leave, not breaking formation until the last player has started jogging towards the field. Only then does Carol push the kid’s shoulder.
“All that for the freak Munson! I was gonna use the Brenda thing next week,” she moans, but something tells Eddie it’s all playful. The boy offers a flicker of a smile back at her as Tommy sizes up Eddie. Eddie sizes up Hagan right back, cause he doesn't like the kid and the kid doesn't like him either.
“Sorry, Carol.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Go get whatever you wanted.”
“Keep on your toes around the queer,” Tommy interjects with a grin, and the kid gives him a confused little look. Hagan rolls his eyes and points at Eddie, who narrows his eyes.
“Watch it, Hagan, you're still in front of my car.”
Tommy scoffs back, but shuffles surreptitiously out of the way. Carol snickers slightly, so quiet Eddie almost doesn't hear it, and bops the curly-haired kid’s shoulder.
“Don’t overpay for the weed!” She says gleefully, and he rolls his eyes. Interesting. Didn't tell his preppy friends about the tattoo, did he? Turning on his heel, the kid approaches Eddie’s window.
“Can we go now?”
“Wh–what?” eloquent, Eddie, good job. Sounds exactly like his favorite hobby is wordsmithing wondrous worlds of fantasy and rhyme.
The kid’s eyes narrow. “Go? For the..?”
“Oh! Fuck. Fuck, yeah, get in. Stuff’s at my house.” His brain kicks back in, and he unlocks the car. When the kid slides in, Hagan and Perkins wave.
Eddie pulls out of his parking space, some of the adrenaline from the confrontation calming as he drives.
“Yeesh,” he says to himself once more, and the kid looks his way.
“...Yeesh?” he repeats.
“Fuck yeah, yeesh. You don't see three middle schoolers take shots at Travis much.”
“...I guess,” the kid says, looking out the window.
“You’re sure a chatterbox, aren’tcha.” Eddie mumbles to himself, rings clicking as he taps his fingers on the wheel. “So where the fuck did you get a James Bond tattoo that young?”
Silence. The kid stares harder at the window like he could melt it with his mind.
“Come on, give me a hint here. Some big city where they don’t regulate or something? It has to be, or you’d be going to them instead of a random high schooler, even as cool as me.” Eddie’s just thinking out loud now. The kid doesn't answer.
“Vacation?”
Nothing.
“How about,,, uhhh.. fuck, I dunno. You got a cousin who tattoos?”
Silence.
“Damn, kid. You get it from a carnival? The circus? Maybe some back alley piercer? Your friend do it, trying to get some practice?”
This time the kid exhales out of his nose audibly.
“Don’t sigh at me! You’re the one not giving me any hints, dude,” Eddie says, pitching his voice dramatically. He tries guessing dumber just for a reaction.
“Is it a reaaaally weird birthmark? Or is it a sign you're a werewolf? Youuuu got it from a doctor, cause you're an X-man, or what?” That gets a twitch, brown eyes looking his way again. The kid doesn't smile, though.
Tough crowd.
“Ugh, whatever. We’re almost to my place.”
Soon they’re rolling up to the trailer park, the kid’s eyes wandering over the houses with a certain curiosity. Eddie scoffs to hide the slight burn in his chest as he gets out of the car.
“What, you've never seen a house before?” Based off the kid’s nice clothes, maybe never a house like this.
Dark brown irises turn his way again. “I have,” the kid says, but hesitancy colors his tone. Liar.
Eddie swings out of his car, trots towards the house. His uncle Wayne won't be home til midnight, so he’s got time to get Mr Silver Spoon out. Footsteps crunch near-silently in the grass behind him, like a little ghost.
He opens the door, lets the smell of cigarette smoke and weed bleed into the air, and goes straight back towards his room. “I gotta get my kit, stay put!” He calls back, pausing to grin at his shiny new guitar with affection before snatching up the rubbing alcohol and a needle.
Ink, ink, where did he put the ink pens…? Rummaging through drawer after drawer, he shoves aside weed and a truly horrendous plague of hair clips to locate a box of fresh ink pens, jet-black.
“Here we go–” he says triumphantly, grabbing the box. Hightailing it back to his living room, he finds that the kid hasn’t gone far at all. He’s actually just standing there, hands in his pockets.
“Hey, got the stuff. Let me throw a towel on the couch and then we’ll clean up your arm,” Eddie tells him, already grabbing a probably-clean towel from the top of his laundry pile on the floor.
“Clean it up?” The kid echoes, and he snorts. “I don’t want you getting gangrene any more than you do, sooo yeah? We’re gonna clean it, I'm gonna sketch on your arm and then the tat.”
Brows furrow, and the kid asks: “Gangrene?”
Ah, the joys of public middle school education. “Yeah, you know, bacterial infection, happens when you make a wound and don't treat it.”
After a moment the kid hums, and sits down once Eddie puts the towel down. Prepping is simple, although the kid still isn't talkative. Usually popular types are chatty when they’re nervous, can’t stop making up excuses and justifications even as they acquire what they really want. He’s seen it a million times, but this one isn't anxious at all.
Instead, the kid just holds out his arm and watches with nothing other than an inquisitive tilt of his head as Eddie traces the design from his notebook.
“What’s that?” He asks once the sword is fully transferred. Abruptly, Eddie feels sheepishness bleed in. He doesn't like the feeling, so he just gets louder.
“It’s a sword, dude. You know.”
“A sword,” the kid repeats, “huh.”
That was a very neutral huh . Not disapproving, Eddie thinks, maybe polite confusion. But there’s no way this kid doesn't know what a sword is.
“Yeah? These numbers are such a straight line, just makes sense to make them part of a blade, and the eye seemed cool,” why is he the one justifying now? “And swords are cool.”
God dammit , Eddie.
“If they’re cool,” the kid says with a shrug, and goes back to staring at the ink box.
Feeling like a complete idiot, Eddie fills the needle. Although he'd been sure initially that the kid would squirm during the process, it oddly doesn't surprise him now when he sinks in the needle and the kid doesn't even flinch.
The tattoo goes smoothly. He’s never had someone hold so still before. There’s no shifting, no tears, nothing like he's had happen with his buddies.
One thing that keeps catching Eddie’s mind like a nick in a record, though, is how nice the numbers are. They’re professional, in perfectly straight lines with all the pomp of a printing press font would provide. It screams that whoever tattooed this kid knew what they were doing and was using a real machine instead of a pack of pens from the grocery store a town away.
So why aren’t they the ones this kid would ask to cover it?
Questions, questions, but no answers.
“I like your house,” the kid says randomly halfway through, and Eddie groans.
“Don’t distract me–”
“Sorry.”
A pause, and Eddie lets incredulity bleed into his tone. “And what do you mean, you like my house?”
The kid blinks, and glances around. Eddie follows the look. It's strewn with clothes, with Wayne’s stuff, with his old guitar from being a kid and sheet music everywhere. Every inch of wall that Wayne would let him is plastered in old posters, dulling color. His ashtray is also filled with Eddie’s extra rings, since he can never remember anywhere else he leaves them.
“It’s…” the kid thinks, “it’s nice. Interesting.”
That gets a shake of his head from the older teen, and he moves to get working on the tattoo again. Losing himself in the rhythm of ink, needle, skin, and ink again Eddie can’t help but break the silence. Sue him, he likes to talk.
“So, you really used to like James Bond?” He guesses.
“...You said that name before,” the kid says warily, and Eddie feels himself grind to a halt, accidentally digging the needle in much deeper than he meant to.
Blood wells up and the kid doesn't jerk away at all but Eddie does. His eyes must be as wide as saucers. “You don’t know who James Bond is?”
“Of course I do,” the kid says slowly, some of that smirk he gave Travis earlier reappearing. “I’m just fucking with you, man.” The words sound rehearsed, with that same twang Tommy Hagan adds to the word man.
Shoulders dropping from his initial surprise, Eddie remembers the blood on the kid’s arm and curses as he gets up for a tissue to stem the flow. “Fuck, kid, don’t mess with me like that when I've got a needle in your arm-”
“It was a joke,” that voice is getting firmer, more convincing now, but something still strikes Eddie as wrong.
“Yeah, why the hell else would you have seven on you,” Eddie grumbles, and the younger teen tries for a snort-laugh. “Yeah, why else,” he parrots.
With the blood gone, he picks the needle back up. This time they don’t talk. The rest of the tattoo is muted somehow. Eddie finishes the last line to turn the first zero into a carefully faceted gemstone, and leans back.
“There we fuckin’ go-”
He grabs a cloth to wipe down his work, and a bandage. Before he puts the bandage on it, he admires his work: it’s a cool fucking sword. Maybe he should've saved that design for himself, honestly. He adjusts to let the kid see, and the boy can’t stop the jerk of wonder in his expression even though he’s been watching the whole time.
Brown eyes stare at the sword in obvious fascination, and Eddie preens as the kid turns his pale arm this way and that, mesmerized.
“...Swords are cool,” the kid decides to himself, then rummages in his pocket to pass Eddie a - is that a fucking hundred dollar bill? Controlling his face doesn't seem to have worked, based on how the brunette’s brow raises, but the kid offers the money anyway.
Shit, well, if the kid can afford it. He takes the bill.
“Don’t let this shit get infected. Don’t put anything gross on it, stay out of pools, blah blah blah.” He tells the kid firmly, getting those dark eyes to focus on him seriously. “I’m gonna put the bandage on. Leave it for a bit. Swelling’s normal near the tattoo.”
“Thank you,” the younger teen says as he finishes wrapping up the tattoo - he pulls his arm close once Eddie lets him go, instinctively shielding the sore limb.
“Looks metal as fuck, doesn’t it?” He brags, and that gets a small curl of lips. “Looks pretty fuckin’ good,” the kid answers, and he punches the air to himself.
“You’re fuckin’ welcome. You know how to get home?” He’d normally never think about offering to take the kid back, but. This kid’s weird.
A head nod answers him, the kid getting up.
“Yeah. I’ll walk.” And that seems to be that. He trots to the door, letting himself out into the chilly air. Eddie follows him to it, eying the distant dirt road.
“Hey,” he starts, questions bubbling in his throat, but they all dry up when the kid looks his way.
“Didn’t get your name?” It feels like the wrong thing to ask.
The kid considers him anyway, their eyes connecting, and the blackness of his pupils are all-encompassing. For a minute Eddie feels something . Like picking at a hangnail and discovering it peels up your finger and arm. Like he just got turned inside-out and his organs are being picked through by a scavenger. His hands shake. His heartbeat picks up, blood rushing audibly in his ears as something bitter makes itself known on his tongue. It vibrates in the back of his throat, bile in his saliva, and the kid blinks.
The feeling is gone, but his fingers tremor anyway.
“Harrington,” the kid says. “Steven Harrington.”
He turns his back on Eddie and starts down the road with steady crunches of gravel underfoot. Eddie stares after him, and has the sensation of a mouse when a hawk’s shadow harmlessly floats past.
Swallowing, he closes his front door.