Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The warm spell continues into the next week. It’s a blessing, really, because heating has always been a contentious thing in the trailer, despite Harrington senior’s improvements. Eddie sleeps the first night on top of the blankets, dreaming again of an IHOP, only his father’s not there anymore.

It was his liver, apparently. Hepatitis A. It’s common in prisons; they’re starting to vaccinate inmates for it en masse, except they haven’t gotten around to Indiana Reformatory yet. A yellowing of the face and eyes, like nicotine stains. A collapse of the digestive system. The first day after, the Monday, Eddie goes to the library and looks it up. Hepatitis A. Serious, rarely deadly. This being the rare deadly exception.

The fact of his father’s death is something he’s aware of only abstractly. Bruce’s absence from the world is the same as his absence from Eddie’s life — prison or dead, they add up to the same. This isn’t even something Eddie is telling himself, pushing real feelings down. Perhaps he would like to feel real feelings. Currently, all he’s feeling is empty.

His uncle cries once. It’s late at night on the Sunday, the early hours, and it’s quiet. Eddie only knows because he hears him moving around on the porch and sees his reddened eyes in the morning; Wayne doesn’t meet his gaze, guilty, almost, like in being sad he’s betraying Eddie. Eddie doesn’t feel betrayed. He feels numb. He didn’t say much in response, when Wayne told him. I, uh, I got a call. From the prison. They said- well. It’s your dad.

Your dad, then. Bruce all other times. Did that mean Eddie has to feel sad? Like, it’s his filial duty, whatever the guy did, however little the guy feels like a father otherwise (felt)–

Eddie said, “He’s dead?” like he already knew.

And Wayne said, “Yeah, he is,” like Wayne knew he knew too.

Monday morning Eddie appears early, schoolbooks under his arm, and Wayne looks at him carefully and says, “Y’know, you don’t have to go to school. Not today. People will- they’ll understand.”

“Will they?” Eddie says. Then he adds, “Higgins gave Jeff a month off, yeah, but I’m not Jeff. And Bruce wasn’t Jeff’s dad.”

So he goes to school. And he doesn’t tell anyone.

He doesn’t mean not to tell anyone. He’d say it, if it came up in conversation. But somehow it never does. Jonathan, smoking with him outside, talks about the strike and the newspapers. At lunch they’re all full of music ideas, Jeff and Gareth and Aaron are, songs they can cover and venues they can play, and Eddie drifts through the day, like the knowledge he carries apart from everyone else has made him slip anchor.

Hepatitis A. It feels too neat: the prison called, your father’s dead, it was Hepatitis A. Not B or C. A. Details are important.

He doesn’t know a single other detail about his father’s time in prison — who his friends were, his enemies, the fights he got in, the food he ate. They say you turn gay in prison. Wouldn’t that be ironic. No, all he knows is this: Hepatitis A.

And even then, as simple as it is, he struggles to put it in words.

Except–

One time, late on Monday afternoon. He’s leaving school, getting his shit out of his locker, when he feels a feather-light touch on his shoulder and jumps about a foot in the air to see Nancy, her eyes wide and serious, hair tucked behind her ears. “I’m sorry,” she says, “about your dad.”

He stares at her. “How did you–“

A silence, like it’s taking a second for their parallel tracks to cross. “Oh, yeah, I– I saw it in the paper. Buried way down, it’s not a big article. Because I’ve been taking them, the papers, every day. You can read it if you want, I’ve got it in my locker–“

“No. Thanks. I, uh–“ He casts a glance down the hallway. “Have you, um, told anyone?”

“No. I didn’t think it was my place.”

“Right. Um, well, I’d appreciate it if you, y’know, continued not to tell anyone.”

She’s frowning. Perhaps she doesn’t understand his rejection of the efficient solution: let the word spread, and you never have to say it yourself. But he can’t. Not like that. “Okay,” she says. “I understand.”

She doesn’t, but he appreciates it anyway.

The first few days sweep by. On Tuesday he catches Steve in the school parking lot — the ban on their talking to each other in public apparently wordlessly lifted — and when Steve says, “Hey, man, you okay?” Eddie just shrugs and says, “Same old, y’know,” not quite sure why.

Steve shrugs too. “Yeah, I feel that.”

“Your old man still giving you a hard time?” Jesus, Eddie must be a masochist. Perhaps he’s checking to see if he can still feel anything at all.

“The usual. Still grounded til Friday, like I’m really gonna go out partying when my head is still killing me.”

Steve does look better. The swelling’s gone down further, and he’s back to styling his hair. He’s in a red sweatshirt, tactically chosen, since it diminishes the alarm of the red in his cut-up face. “Oh, yeah, no wild nights for us,” Eddie says, touching his side and miming a wince. His rib and his shoulder have both calmed into a numb fog, small mercies, not that he’s grateful. A little pain might shock him into a normal way of responding to this, whatever that might be.

“He’s kinda forgotten about me, anyway. It’s all hands to prevent a sort of Hawkins general strike, from what he’s yelling on the phone.”

Eddie smiles privately, says, “Jesus, we really are princes of opposing sides, huh?”

“Isn’t there a play about that? Some Shakespeare thing?”

“Romeo and Juliet,” Eddie says slowly. “You’re talking about Romeo and Juliet.”

“Yeah, that one.”

He stares at Steve, who looks back blankly. Maybe not blankly. Maybe unreadably — or maybe Eddie’s reading too much and it is blankly after all. “You know they’re– you know it’s– um. A sorta star-crossed lovers type situation. Romeo and Juliet.”

Steve doesn’t blink. “Yeah, no, I know. I’m just talking about the vibe, y’know?”

Jesus, and isn’t this guy a wonder. Eddie doesn’t have the space in his brain to reckon with that. “Sure, whatever.”

“My parents are going to Duluth for a couple days tomorrow, you want to get high?”

“What happened to all hands on deck for the brewing storm of workers’ liberation?”

Steve shrugs again. “Duty calls. My dad’s very good at delegating.”

Of course he is. Eddie takes his time to respond, feeling himself involuntarily pulling away from the notion that now, here, finally, is a reason to say it. Actually, I’m not around tomorrow, I gotta drive to Indianapolis for my dad’s funeral because his mom — who’s a total bitch, by the way — wouldn’t let the prison just quietly bury him and let us forget he ever existed. He says instead, “I would, I really would, believe me, but I gotta do something with my uncle tomorrow.” At Steve’s surprisingly crestfallen expression, he hastily adds, “I’ll be back Thursday? Or Friday, if they’re, uh, still away?”

“Yeah, I mean, we don’t have to. I don’t want–“ Steve looks down, awkward. “I don’t want you to think I’m just– asking because. Y’know. You sell.”

Ah. Eddie’s been so caught up in everything else he hadn’t even made that inference; it’s a nice look on Steve’s face, that hesitance. Nevermind that he might not be selling much longer, if Rick drops him, which he probably will. It’s been a long, suspicious silence from that quarter. “I’ll smoke you out, Harrington, and I won’t even charge you. It was fun last time, right?”

Steve smiles, a loose, casual smile. “Yeah, it was. Feels like fucking ages ago.”

“It really does. I’ll, uh, I’ll call you when I get back? Thursday afternoon?”

“Sure,” and the smile stays easy, and honest, and Eddie finds himself mirroring that smile except it feels stretched over his face, false. He’s not certain if Steve notices that falseness. They just say a friendly goodbye to each other and then Eddie drives home, where he has his first panic attack about the whole thing, though certainly not the last.

Eddie doesn’t own any funeral clothes. This becomes immediately apparent as he’s getting dressed in the morning. No pants that aren’t jeans, some of them ripped; no collared shirts except Wayne’s old flannels and the one he wears with his band uniform. He chooses his only black jeans without tears in them, and in the end a black t shirt whose only insignia is a very small zeppelin where a breast pocket would go — his nod to the music that kept him alive the years before he left. Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You. Well, someone certainly did.

This is what he chooses for the journey. Wayne riding shotgun, in his own stiff shirt and pants, his corduroy jacket over the top because he hasn’t had to wear a suit jacket in so long his only one is full of moths. Eddie, in his leather, feels a little more comfortable at that. He turns on his Led Zeppelin cassette and cranks it up loud, knowing today of all days Wayne won’t protest. He winds the windows down and they smoke while he drives, both of them, and it feels a little like that moment people talk about when you first realize the parent you always considered a god is actually just a fucked-up human like you. Wayne weary and silent and letting himself be taken somewhere he didn’t want to go.

“Shelley, she wants us at the funeral. Apparently there’s gonna be a funeral. Fuckin’ why, I don’t know–“ Wayne had said, hanging up the phone on the Monday morning. He’s called his mother Shelley for as long as Eddie’s known him, the same way Jonathan calls his father Lonnie.

Eddie just said in response, “Okay.”

“What? You know we don’t have to go. This is her sick goddamn way of blamin’ us for all this, I know it–“

Maybe it is our fault, Eddie thought, though the thought didn’t gain any traction in his head and the feeling of guilt slipped off him like water. He had nothing. He was an empty cup. “It’s the end of it. It makes the end of it, right? Don’t people talk about, y’know, closure?”

“That’s a thing they say when you’re rich and payin’ for some asshole to sit there and tell you why you’re sad anyway, even though you got money. It ain’t real.”

Eddie thought about the new purchase he’d felt he had on his life after leaving the prison last year. That was probably something like closure, right? And he needed something, anything, to make this a real thing. And short of dropping acid — making the world so unreal this became real by comparison — the funeral would have to do.

So here they are.

The sun doesn’t let up, even as they’re entering Indianapolis itself. It stays warm and bright and stubbornly nice, a nice day, and Eddie has to squint as the sun reflects off windows and cars, sending the glare into his eyes. He should be unhappy about this; it should feel like another cruelty of the universe, that it seems so gleeful in the absence of his dad. He should feel as though it’s being rubbed in.

Instead, he just blinks tiredly at the signs, leaning forward over the wheel to see where he’s going. He gets them to the funeral place, parks in the parking lot, lets Led Zep die. Then he sits there, unmoving.

“Like I said–” Wayne starts, but Eddie shakes his head. “Eddie–”

“I need a minute.”

“Okay. You got all the time you need.”

Eddie lights a cigarette compulsively. His hands are still. The funeral place is a squat little building, turning dull beige under the sun. Kind of a church but not really. There’s a laundromat next to it. He’s not sure how much he likes cities — Indianapolis in its gray provincialisms, the gay bars just small spots of color in a dreary picture, Chicago in its dark anonymity and nervy potential. Hawkins sucks but Hawkins– well. Eddie knows who he is in Hawkins.

Wayne hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still sitting in the passenger seat, watching a couple dark-suited people drift towards the entrance. More mourners than Bruce Munson ever had a right to. Eddie wonders if Lonnie’s going to be there, and it’s this — this, more than anything else, loyalty to a living family more than bitterness towards the dead — that makes him realize he isn’t going to do this.

“Y’know, I– yeah. Maybe you’re right. I might just, um. Go.”

Wayne looks at him. “Okay, kid. Do what you gotta do. I’m gonna go in, I think, but–”

“It’s okay,” Eddie says, reading the line of guilt in his uncle’s eyes. “You do what, uh, what you gotta do too. I’ll come pick you up from the wake?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” A silence, then Wayne reaches over to ruffle Eddie’s hair. “You’re a good kid, Ed. I hope you know that.”

Eddie feels a hot itch at the back of his throat, a sudden sting in his eyes, and wonders at this, that this is the closest he’s so far come to crying about the whole thing. Even his panic attacks have been abstract, felt more as a physical closing-in than any sense of emotion. Then Wayne gets out of the van and goes inside, and Eddie does the only thing he knows how to do in this city, which is drive to a gay bar.

Midday, it’s a very different atmosphere from late nights. They’re playing low, mellow pop overhead, some Barbra Streisand song. The dance floor is mostly taken up by extra tables, which he’s only ever seen pushed to the side, and there’s only a couple of patrons, mainly older guys nursing bottles of beer, some of whom give Eddie a slow, appreciative look as he comes in. He ignores them and heads for the bar, where he buys his own bottle of beer, and sits there feeling not at all out of place, like he’s just stepped into his own future: Wednesday daytimes in the bar where he spent his midnights twenty years earlier. He’s come here with Victor before; Victor said to him then, in a haze of flashing lights and heavy music, this place has a whole Jekyll and Hyde thing going on, daytimes it looks almost like any normal bar, except for the cruising that goes on in the bathrooms.

He turns and his eyes find the bathroom sign. Imagine. Baby’s first real grown-up cruising adventure, while they’re putting his dad in the ground. Just imagine. What a fuck you that would be.

He looks back to his beer and takes a long swig, intending to just get on with it. The bartender’s disappeared somewhere, so much for getting a second drink. There’s now some song about fading to gray playing, more new wave than the Streisand. Steve would probably enjoy it.

Then the bartender comes back, except it’s not the same bartender. The guy’s tall, brown-skinned, with hair bleached to white-gold. Eddie eyes him with distant interest, watches him as he bends over to restock Bud Lights. Then the guy turns around, and– oh.

It’s Martin.

Martin, whom he remembers only as a blur of soft skin and tennis whites, crooked grin and the first guy he ever–

Before Martin left, without saying goodbye.

Their eyes meet; for a moment they’re frozen, looking at each other in the contention of surprise. Martin breaks first, leaning forward on the bar on his elbows with an easy grin. “Eddie goddamn Munson. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“Do they pay you to say that? Is it part of your job description, bartender with all the cliches?” Eddie says reflexively, automatically, while he’s taking all this in. Martin’s got a nose piercing now, a little hoop through the side of his nostril, and two further hoops in his right ear. A tight dark t shirt, his dyed hair a bright spot in the darkened bar. He looks good.

“Something like that. What the hell are you doing here, man? You’re not exactly our usual Wednesday daytime clientele.”

Eddie smiles thinly and lets the truth speak through him. “Dodging my dad’s funeral.”

Martin looks at him. Takes him in, then says, “The next drink’s on me.”

He takes two glasses and pours out two measures of whiskey, small, but not too small. Eddie watches the expert tilt of his bare forearms — he’s only human, after all — and says, “What happened to the big tennis career? Thought you didn’t drink.”

Martin sips his whiskey and shrugs. “I fucked my knee, first match of the semester. Tennis is more of a hobby now.”

“Shit, didn’t you go to college on a–”

“On a tennis scholarship? Yep. You think a tennis star has to work in a gay bar to keep a roof over his head?” Martin doesn’t look especially put out by this, really. Perhaps he’s simply gotten used to the idea. “Can’t say my mom was pleased, but hey. I like it here. You meet a more interesting class of people than the repressed fucks on the tennis court.”

“And you’re not, uh, you’re not among them anymore? The repressed fucks?”

Martin smiles. “Not anymore. Fully blown fag now. Oh, if Hawkins could see me now. Cleaning up semen in the bathrooms.”

“Glamorous,” Eddie says, taking a pull of his own whiskey. It’s harsh, acrid on his throat. Cheap. But hell, it does the job. The silence lengthens; overhead the song changes again, something Soft Cell now. Martin keeps looking at him. Eddie remembers what his skin tasted like. He doesn’t know why this makes him say, “I nearly went to the funeral. Hence the– y’know. Black clothes.”

“I had the impression this was what you usually wore,” Martin returns archly.

“Jesus, the gays made you feisty, huh?” Martin just shrugs. Eddie looks down into his drink. “But– couldn’t go through with it. In the end. I guess.”

“Closure’s overrated.”

“They pay you for truisms too?”

“I mean it. I didn’t say goodbye to a single person in Hawkins, y’know that? Not my friends, not my grandma, who I’m not actually supposed to talk to but I did anyway, sometimes, and I didn’t even say goodbye to my dad, not really. And you know what? It feels fucking fine.”

“Does it?” Eddie says softly, dragging his fingers through his hair then resting his chin on his hand. “When’s that supposed to start?”

Martin just gives him an enigmatic look. This is turning out exactly like most of Eddie’s DnD tavern interactions. (He’s fond of a cynically attractive, wise and frustrating barkeep.) “So, what. You decided to give cruising a go instead?”

“Suppose I did.”

Martin finishes his whiskey, downing it with his chin tilted up to expose a long brown throat. Then he moves across the bar and opens the glass washer, takes out a martini glass, begins to polish it with a dishcloth. “It’s slimmer pickings than it used to be. So I’m told. I don’t have to tell you why.”

And yet somehow–

Martin did have to tell him why. Eddie feels as though he’s missed a step in the dark. As though he’s forgotten a vital facet of his own identity, the innate presence of Death dogging his every move close to catching up the second he lets his guard down, and here he is, letting his guard down. And he forgot. Or he didn’t forget. Or coming here, it wasn’t so much of a fuck-you as a–

He finishes his own whiskey and lays his palms flat on the bar, a little sticky. Look, officer, I’m unarmed. He wonders if Martin knew what he was saying, when he said what he said. If, even after all these years, he still knows Eddie’s self-destructive streak well enough to want to get in its way.

Martin watches him, as he polishes a highball glass and then sets it on the shelf. Says, with unreadable eyes, “So what are you doing now? Post-graduation?”

Eddie’s startled into a laugh. “Dude, haven’t you heard? I, uh, I wasn’t enough of a loser already. I’m a super senior now.”

“Shoulda played tennis. They’re willing to overlook all manner of sins if you’re good with balls.”

And yes, Martin’s ridiculous smirk says that innuendo was intentional. “Implying you had sins that needed to be overlooked.”

“My math grade was totally abysmal. I couldn’t add for shit, I could only count from love to fifteen to thirty to forty, which isn’t exactly what they’re after. Plus I was letting lowlifes like you smoke weed on the tennis courts.”

“What, you associated with more than one lowlife? I’m offended.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“No, I’m not.”

They look at each other over the bar, an edge to it. Like this is any safer than cruising. Maybe it is safer than cruising.

There’s a new song playing, what seems to be a synth blues version of that Moody Blues song, It Ain’t Necessarily So. Eddie listens along for a second, then says, “What happened to good honest guitar?”

“You’re not one of these old bears, so don’t act like one,” Martin says, pointing at him with the dishcloth. It reminds him bizarrely of Steve. “And I won’t hear any Bronski Beat slander, not in my bar.”

“Bronski Beat?”

“Yeah, they released their debut like a month ago, there’s all this buzz for them, and deservedly so. They’ve got this one song–” and Martin stops, and looks at Eddie analytically, and then continues, “You might like it. This song called Smalltown Boy, it’s about running away from all the ignorance in your hometown, finding a new life away from your parents someplace else, where you’re, y’know. Yourself.”

“I don’t think I’m gonna like any song with a synthesizer involved,” Eddie mutters, and feels like he’s covering for something, though he’s not quite sure what. Martin was never this perceptive back in high school, was he?

Maybe that’s what they’re paying him for.

They talk for a while longer, not about anything serious, just casual things like Martin’s college hook-ups and the dull trivialities of life in Hawkins still. Eddie feels time ticking on and wonders if his father’s in the ground yet. Closure’s overrated. So why is he even here?

Time ticks on, and he makes no move towards anyone else in the bar. That’s something, he supposes. Even as he feels Martin’s gaze as something purposeful, deliberate. Loaded with intent. Eddie’s not exactly opposed to that intent.

But he has to pick up his uncle; he promised. Stranded at that wake with Mama Munson, Jesus, is there any fate worse under the sun? So the hours pass, and Eddie feels the alcohol fade out of his system, and eventually pushes back from the bar. “I gotta go pick my uncle up from the wake.”

“Eat some of those little sandwiches for me,” Martin says. “I mean, they always look nicer than they are, but eat some anyway.”

The thought of eating anything — but especially a couple triangles of egg mayo sandwich — makes Eddie’s stomach turn. He shakes his head, shrugging his jacket over his shoulders. “It was, uh, good to see you.”

“It was.” Then, “I get off at five. If you’re around after you rescue your uncle.”

Eddie’s opening his mouth to decline, but something holds his tongue. He just smiles crookedly. “Daytimes at the gay bar. They really got you working the graveyard shift, huh?”

“That’s your opinion. The bathrooms might disagree with you.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and waves goodbye as he leaves. Then he gets in his van and has to reckon with the fact that he’s driving back towards everything he decided not to face in coming here — but hey. There won’t be any Bible shit going on anymore, which is what counts, right? He regrets the solemnity of his outfit now. What he wouldn’t give for a Judas Priest t shirt today — that would really shake them up.

Still, he’s hiding behind his leather jacket and his hair as he goes in. Keeps his head down, digs his hands in his pockets, searches out Wayne through the shroud of his bangs. There are a reasonable number of people here, actually, faces Eddie recognizes but only hazily, and he won’t look at them long enough to place them. Doesn’t really need to.

Then there’s a hand on his shoulder, turning him around, and he’s looking at a short older woman, face lined and hair black with wide streaks of gray. Something familiar about her, the way there’s something familiar about everyone here, but more about her. Her yellowing teeth and sunken cheeks, a grim twist to her lips. He knows that fucking grim twist: Bruce wore it often. Wayne wears it still, in his more sardonic moments.

“Edward, yeah?” she says. She’s got a deep Kansas accent, and Eddie knows who she is.

“Eddie,” he corrects, and his grandmother doesn’t smile. “Have you seen my uncle?”

“You weren’t at the goddamn funeral. You ain’t got the right to come in here like you’re–”

“I’m picking my uncle up. Where is he?”

She steps forward and takes his jaw in her hand, too sharply fast for him to pull away, like a striking snake. Her hands are cold and firm. Her eyes search his face; he’s not sure what she’s looking for. At length, he pulls away. “You look like him. You ain’t got the right to look like him, neither.”

“It’s not exactly, uh, my choice. Trust me.”

She sets her jaw and scowls. She’s sun-browned, though not freckled, like she spends a lot of time outside. Verona County, it’s a farming area, right? Not that he’d fucking know. “I wanted you at the funeral. Not showin’ up like you’re just the goddamn taxi driver after. You owe your father that much.”

“I don’t owe him a goddamn thing and he died knowing that,” Eddie snaps.

“And maybe that’s why,” she snarls in return. “Maybe this disrespect from his only son, maybe it–” She stops, working her jaw. Her voice drops, and it’s like she’s not talking to Eddie anymore. “You ain’t supposed to die from it. What he had. So there was somethin’ else.”

This is her sick goddamn way of blamin’ us for all this, isn’t that what Wayne said? And Eddie ignored him. Because Eddie didn’t know his grandmother. But now he does. He feels a great rise of fury and says, “What, you’re expecting me to believe my darling dad, famously a sensitive character, of course– you’re saying he died of a broken fucking heart?”

“Don’t speak that way to me.”

“I’ll speak whatever way I–”

“Eddie,” Wayne says, appearing by his shoulder and brooking no argument.

“Keep your nephew under control, Wayne,” she says, and next to Wayne Eddie can see it, the matching thinness in their faces, the large shadowed eyes. The soft crease between Wayne’s eyebrows against the bitter line between Shelley’s.

“We’re leavin’, Shelley.”

“Thank you for comin’,” she says, not sounding thankful at all. They stand looking at each other for a moment, the three of them, each waiting for the other to speak again. Then Eddie notices Wayne’s hands, twitching by his sides. And the only thing he can do, the only thing he knows how to do, is walk away, and hope Wayne follows.

Wayne does follow.

They make it outside, into the gray sunny parking lot. Wayne doesn’t follow him into the van immediately; he leans back against the wall instead, looking down at his hands as he lights a cigarette. Hands which are trembling.

Eddie leans beside him, watching him carefully, wondering idly why his own hands don’t shake.

“So, that’s my– my goddamn mother,” Wayne says on an exhale. “Charmin’ woman.”

“How was the funeral?”

“It was a funeral. Shelley said some pieces from the Bible, glared at me the whole time. I’m glad you didn’t come.” He inhales audibly and scratches at his jaw, the side of his beard. “Woulda been– woulda been hard for you. It was hard for me.”

“Uncle, are you–”

Wayne waves this off with a hand. “You come to expect it, y’know? She’s been like that since we were kids. Woke us up with Bible passages, like Jesus would have somethin’ to say about oversleepin’.”

Wayne’s never really spoken about his childhood, his and Bruce’s. The words have a rough edge to them, like he’s never had to find a shape for them before.

“Our dad–” he says, and grimaces. “Well. Shelley didn’t get in his way, when he was– whatever he did. Knew better than to get in his way, maybe. This thing with Bruce, where she’d– she’d overlook whatever he did, whatever fucked up shit it was, it was the same as what she did with our dad. But I kinda made it worse.”

“How’d you make it worse?”

Wayne laughs, then, and Eddie’s so startled he drops the cigarette he was getting out. He leans over to fetch it as Wayne says, “The day Bruce was born, our dad was in a rare good mood. Didn’t happen often, but that day, he was happy. And Shelley, she wanted to call him somethin’ from the Bible, somethin’ like John or Peter or Joshua. But our dad, he was a spiteful sorta guy, and when he was up, Shelley was down. So he said no, and you know what he said?”

Eddie shakes his head.

“He looked at me, and he said, what do you wanna name him, kid?”

“No way.”

“Yeah. And I was a five year old kid, and the thing I loved most in the world, though I didn’t really understand it yet — it was Batman.”

And suddenly, Eddie understands. And he laughs too.

“Ungodly bullshit, Shelley considered it, which is why my dad agreed to it. Bruce would be Bruce, to my Wayne, and together–”

“Bruce fucking Wayne. I did think, y’know, that was a weird coincidence. Jesus Christ.”

“Ain’t a coincidence at all.” Wayne smiles thinly. “But, yeah, it meant Shelley always had this weird sympathy with him, like I’d somehow cursed him by givin’ him this awful name, and he became her fuckin’ angel even though I was– y’know, I was a kid, and if it was anyone’s fault it was my dad’s, but she didn’t–” The smile drops. “She didn’t see it that way.”

“Shit,” Eddie says. “That is, uh, remarkably fucked up.”

“Yeah. Remarkably.”

“You should’ve got up there and said that at the funeral. Better than all the Jesus shit. Read out a quote from the Batman comics instead.”

“Yeah. She might’ve tackled me to the ground to stop me doin’ that, but yeah.”

Eddie smiles narrowly and doesn’t say anything.

“Where did you end up, instead of the funeral?”

“I, uh, met up with an old friend, actually. Someone who used to go to Hawkins High.”

“Oh, yeah? Anyone I know?”

Eddie just lets it out. “Martin. Martin Hall, he was a big tennis star, moved to the city for that. He’s fucked his knee, though, he can’t play anymore.”

“Avni’s grandson?”

Eddie looks at him. Remembers my grandma, who I’m not actually supposed to talk to. Avni’s estranged from her daughter, right? So, yeah, it makes sense. Though strange, in a way. The idea of Martin visiting with Avni in the trailer park — Martin in the trailer park’s context, without Eddie involved. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Small goddamn world, Hawkins, huh?” Wayne shakes his head and drops his cigarette, grinding it into the asphalt with his shoe. “You don’t wanna stay in Indy for the night, see him again?”

“I said I’d drive you back to Hawkins.”

“I’m going that way,” says another voice, emerging from the building, and Eddie turns with a little jolt, like an electric shock. It’s Lonnie. Of course it’s Lonnie. “If Eddie wants to stay here, and you need a ride.”

Both Eddie and Wayne regard him suspiciously. Lonnie’s never been known to do anything out of the good of his heart, the same way Bruce never was.

“I’m going to see my kids. Visitation, y’know. Stuff like this, it just reminds me how short life is. How you gotta make the most of it.”

Somehow, Eddie doubts that it will be well-received. He says, “I’m not sure Joyce–”

“You want a ride, or not?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Wayne says, cutting Eddie off, and Eddie looks at him sharply. “You goin’ now?”

“Wayne–”

“Yeah, if you’re ready to go. Said your goodbyes, and all that.”

Wayne nods, like there were any real goodbyes to say, and then claps Eddie on the shoulder before following Lonnie towards his gleaming black Oldsmobile. Eddie watches him go, biting the inside of his cheek, frustrated by feelings he struggles to name.