Chapter Text

Volume One: Pale Shelter

Bleary eyes and a clang from the door; Eddie wakes to raw ice in his chest and a gritty feeling in his mouth, like road salt. Padded bench thin and utterly uncomfortable beneath him. It takes a second for vision to meet brain and connect; he says a silent prayer for his neurons, fried by whatever Rick gave him last night, those precious little jumper cables. Maybe something really is listening, because, eventually, they spark. He recognizes the room.

“He wakes,” someone says. The guy opposite him, an older guy with a belly, baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes like a sleep mask. “Thought you were dead for a second there, kid, how much did you drink?”

Nothing, and that was the problem, wasn’t it? Drinking, Eddie could do. Easy. The new stuff– not so much. He pulls himself into a sitting position, feeling for the damp stain of drool on his cheek, checking his features are all in the right places. First time he was here it wasn’t his fault, exactly, just drunk enough to resist the usual knocking around, say something stupid, do something stupider, get his lights punched out for his trouble. At least this time there’s no break in his nose.

“Jesus, how old are you?” the guy says, squinting at him.

“Seventeen.”

The guy shakes his head disbelievingly. “Kids these days. Hell, we were all drinkin’, but not drinkin’ ourselves stupid and certainly not gettin’ caught for it.”

Eddie shrugs. “What can I say?” His tongue feels heavy and unwieldy in his mouth. There’s something sparking up his arms from his fingers, something twitchy and nervous, the way a paranoid weed high feels, though by rights he should be halfway through the comedown by now. What the fuck did he take? “Maybe I’m just stupid.”

The guy scoffs. Then the door opens, and Eddie shoots around to look at it, moves in a way that makes things tense up and zoom out sort of like vertigo. Not really a nauseous hangover, just something vaguely wrong inside his brain. Not like that’s a new feeling, really, for him.

“I catch you in the drunk tank again, kid, and you’re gonna go the way of your old man.” That’s Powell, he sorta remembers, cynical no-nonsense face under a hat that’s no match for the Chief’s own. It was the Chief who picked him up, he thinks? Khaki schmutter, not blue, so it has to have been.

“Well, considering he can’t stand me, I think that would make everyone rather unhappy.”

“Funny. You’re funny,” Powell says, face like a stone. “C’mon, your uncle’s here. I hope he chews you out for all you’re worth.”

Eddie thinks about making the quip: so not very much, then. But it’s by the officer’s good grace that he’s getting out of here at all, so he keeps his mouth shut and eases himself off the bench, not enjoying the way his heart skitters in his chest as he stands up. Why does he never remember that comedowns make him anxious? Fucking idiot. Idiot who can’t remember what he took last night. Fuck.

“Wayne,” he says, when Powell takes him out to the Corridor for Relatives Posting Bail, at least that’s what Eddie reckons it’s called, and shit, Wayne didn’t have to post bail, did he? Was he arrested? Was that–

Wayne is sitting with his hands clasped between his knees, shoulder brushing the shoulder of the woman next to him, Joyce, Eddie thinks maybe, recognizes her as the clerk from Melvald’s and something else too, something he can’t yet place. She’s hunched over and when Eddie speaks her eyes jump to him, big and wild and desperate like she’s waiting for someone, and when he’s not the person she’s looking for her eyes dip to the floor in defeat.

“Eddie,” Wayne says, getting to his feet, and oh, he’s angry. Voice mild, but Eddie can tell. The iron stiffness in his shoulders, and shit, he worked last night, didn’t he, he should be sleeping right now–

Eddie approaches him slowly. The lights are too bright overhead; it’s doing weird things to his vision, like zooming in and out. “Sorry,” he mumbles. Wayne doesn’t say anything.

“Did you see Hopper?” That’s Joyce, looking up painfully from her seat, where her fingers are curled around the edge of the plastic.

Eddie shakes his head. “Sorry.”

Her eyes drop back to the floor. She doesn’t respond. Eddie wonders idly what’s wrong, what’s the matter. She had a no-good husband, didn’t she? Lonnie Byers. He remembers he was friends with Eddie’s dad. Shit, that’s why he recognizes her, which–

He follows Wayne outside without looking back.

Outside, the sunshine is painful. Eddie squints and then thinks better of it, pressing his thumb and pointer finger into his eyes, letting Wayne’s stiff hand on his shoulder guide him to the car. He feels painfully here, is the problem. The hard asphalt through the soles of his boots, the tug of cold air at his growing-out hair. And he’s only in a fucking t-shirt, he realizes now, did he leave his jacket at Rick’s?

He’s pushed against the car, cold and solid at his back, and he opens his eyes to see Wayne’s tired, bitter face.

“Fuckin’ take it, kid, Jesus.” He’s holding out his corduroy jacket, the one lined with sheepskin, his hand still warm through Eddie’s t shirt.

Eddie stares at him for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he says again.

“Just take it.”

Eddie takes it, shrugging it on, feeling some of the ice in his chest melt at the sudden warmth, the smell of cigarettes and engine oil the fleece gives off. “Thanks,” he says, getting in the car. Across the parking lot, he glimpses the Chief’s Blazer pulling in, the guy himself getting out with a grim, hungover expression. Then he looks back at Wayne, whose hand is hovering over the parking brake. “Can we go before you chew me out? I really need a Tylenol and maybe a nap.”

Wayne sighs and begins to back out of the parking lot. “Y’know you’re supposed to be at school, right? It’s nearly nine. If they try to suspend you again–“

“Who’d suspend me?” Eddie says, grinning, and some of that ice in his chest loosens further at the twitch of Wayne’s lips.

But then Wayne is frowning again, and he does look fucking tired, is the thing, tired enough to tie Eddie’s stomach in guilty knots. He shouldn’t do this, he knows. He doesn’t know why he does it. “Look, I ain’t your dad,” Wayne starts. Which, fucking great. Great start. “I ain’t gonna– gonna go round tellin’ you what you can and can’t do. But I’m just gonna say that you–“ He flexes his hand on the wheel. His fingernails are grimy, dirt from the plant embedded up to his nail beds. “I thought you had a handle on all this, kid. I thought we had a handle on it.”

Eddie’s hands are trembling. He digs his fingers into his thighs to try to still them, their frantic jittering. “We do,” he mutters. “It’s not– it’s not like that, Wayne, it’s not–“

Wayne presses his lips together like he doesn’t quite believe him. “Sure. Okay. I just– it worries me, kid. You gotta look after yourself. I can’t watch you just–“

He stops, something weird in his voice, and Eddie can’t look at him suddenly, can’t look anywhere but out the window at the streets flickering past. He runs his hands over his jeans again, tugs on a loose thread in the rip at his knee. “I know,” he says haltingly. “I know, I’m– I’m sorry.”

“Are you gonna be good to drive yourself to school? God knows where you left the van, but you can just drive the car as long as you bring it back before my shift.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Something inexplicable is crawling up his throat right now, which, shouldn’t this have happened earlier? In the drunk tank, or meeting Wayne’s eyes for the first time in the hallway? But it’s happening now, the tightening in his chest, the clamminess in his hands, the feeling like he has to get away and he should have expected this from the moment he let whatever Rick gave him dissolve on his tongue but he is stupid, isn’t he, so why would he have thought about that? When he’s not the sort of person who thinks about it? And now Wayne’s eyes are heavy on him and Eddie can’t fucking meet them because why is he even–

“Breathe, Eddie, it’s okay, breathe for me,” Wayne’s saying, and the car’s stopped, why has the car stopped, they should be getting back so Wayne can get to sleep so he can wake up for his shift so things can keep ticking over the world can keep spinning–

“You should– you should be– mad,” Eddie gets out. “Why aren’t– why aren’t you– mad?”

A silence. He becomes aware — as the ringing in his ears recedes — that that Pat Benatar song is playing faint on the radio, not really either of their tastes, not really something either of them would put on by choice. Love is a Battlefield. He listens to it as he waits. And waits. Eventually he twists in his seat and looks at Wayne, finally, who isn’t looking at him, eyes on a chip in the windshield.

Eddie bites his tongue and then says it anyway. “Y’know, hasn’t it ever occurred to you that it might just help if you– if you got fucking mad for once, if you just– if you–”

Wayne puts the car in gear and they start moving again. “It does make me mad, kid. I never said it didn’t. I just think it– shit, I think you’re probably torturin’ yourself worse than anything I could say, and I always said I wasn't gonna be like–“ He takes one hand off the wheel and scrubs it over his face. “Like my damn brother, so here I am, keepin’ my mouth shut.”

A silence. Eddie doesn’t know what to say to that. He keeps his mouth shut too.

They get back home; Wayne slumps down on the pullout and begins snoring immediately, unlit cigarette slipping from between his fingers. Eddie stands in the doorway and thinks about not going to school at all. But Wayne’s right, is the thing, about the suspension. He’s missed too much class already, and the ones he hasn’t missed he’s not doing great in, let’s be honest, and it’s only November but he’s got a plan, this year, is the thing, the plan to get the fuck out of dodge the second the year ends, and that plan involves him graduating.

So he has to go to school.

He risks a shower and it pays off — hot water, for once, it’s been on the blink for weeks but maybe today’s his lucky day — and he brushes his teeth while trying to avoid his reflection in the mirror, all sunken eyes and an unhealthy hue to his skin. He looks like he spent the night in jail.

But then again, he’s never been very good at trying to be anything he’s not, so the honesty sort of suits him.

It’s nearly ten when he gets to school, his hair still damp and beginning to frizz in the air. He takes a second in the parking lot, hanging his head before the wheel, taking a long breath in and a long breath out. Serves him right for going on a bender on a Sunday, right?

Then he cuts the engine, killing AC/DC in the middle of that recent single he’s not quite sure about, and goes inside, gets greeted by Mrs. Argus’ drawling disdain, So nice of you to join us, Mr. Munson, and slouches in his seat and tries to get his brain to focus on History, which is a losing game, really, they’ve known that for a while.

He feels eyes on him, from the back of the room. He doesn’t look round; he knows whose they are. Knows the person won’t approach him, either, won’t pass a note or whisper down the row like guys get to do to girls. Just stare, and catch him in the bathrooms when he thinks they’re empty, a little shred of privacy in the hallways where privacy doesn’t exist–

Which he does. Catch him in the bathrooms.

Eddie comes in and finds him — Tommy C., the guy from last night, the guy who was watching him in class — laughing at Steve fucking Harrington’s impression of Miss. O’Donnell. Tommy C. with his head thrown back, adam’s apple dipping as he laughs, leaning back against the shitty tiled wall, looking at Harrington, Harrington in a polo and slacks and barely glancing at Eddie as he enters, letting just enough disdain drip from the line of his shoulders to let Eddie know he’s been spotted.

“Well, see ya, man,” Harrington says, skirting around Eddie without looking at him, and the bathroom door slams shut behind him.

“Good friends with King Steve, then?” Eddie says neutrally, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, after making sure they’re alone.

“Basketball,” Tommy C. says, checking himself out in the mirror, running a hand through his hair. (Maybe Harrington’s towering mop is making him feel inferior.) Christ, he’s a shallow prick. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.” Eddie thinks about moving closer and then decides against it. Harrington’s presence is still hanging in the air between them, like a bad smell. “You’re gonna have to explain what happened last night, y’know, because I’m pretty sure I lost a few brain cells along the way.”

Tommy C. looks at him, finally. He’s tall, a little taller than Eddie, a lot taller than Tommy H., which really must make it grate all the more, that he has to be Tommy C., that he can’t even own his own first name. Lost the right to be surname-less to a fucking junior. “You said you were gonna walk home. Seemed mostly coherent at the time, too, but I guess that didn’t work out the way you thought.”

“Worked out with Hopper throwing me in the drunk tank,” Eddie mutters, raking a hand through his own hair, less vain than bedraggled and exhausted. “How do you not look like shit?”

“Maybe you’re just a lightweight.”

Which– okay. Eddie isn’t going to admit to that, no way, but yeah. It might be true, at least when compared to Tommy C. Eddie’s been smoking weed for a while, drinking much longer, but harder stuff? Coke? K? The psychoactive shit they did last night? He’s fairly new to it all. He’s not sure he’s enjoying it. Meanwhile Tommy C. seems old hat at it, seemed right at home the first time Eddie came over to Rick’s and found him trying to blow smoke rings from a bong, the two of them staring at each other for a moment, tall wide jock and local freak, a tacit acknowledgement that the both of them were running from something, here, and they may as well run side by side. Hence, last night.

Tommy C.’s got a weird concentrated look on his face, eyebrows knotting in the middle, kinda cute, if Eddie thinks about it, but he’s sort of telling himself not to think about it, because it’s a bad idea to go down that road. A bad fucking idea. He has half a mind to ask what the fuck are you confused about before Tommy C.’s leaning forward and pressing a shy, but deliberate, kiss to his lips, and oh, yeah, that’s what he’s confused about.

“Thought we weren’t doing that,” Eddie mumbles, looking at the tiles.

“We’re not,” Tommy C. says, grinning that grin. The one that first caught Eddie’s attention way back in freshman year when he was too repressed to even think about it.

Tommy C. claps a hand on his shoulder, like they’re jock friends, and leaves the bathroom too. And suddenly Eddie remembers last night, remembers the sheer euphoria of running off into the woods with Tommy C., the moonlight somehow tender on his skin, how could a single tab of acid make the world feel kind? And Tommy C. pulling him against a tree and kissing him there, kissing him deep, and the way that unreality made so much sense because it was only ever something unreal, only ever something they did high, only ever–

And that’s when the trip went bad, wasn’t it. Colors distorting, the deep of the lake getting deeper, pulling him in as he stood on its shore, trees bending and calling for him in the dark– the dark calling– panic choking him, as he looked at Tommy C.–

Saying, ‘M gonna walk home. How the fuck did he seem coherent?

(His only thought in that moment was Wayne, he thinks. I need Wayne. So in his fucked-up brain, walking home was the answer. Only he never got that far, because a mile or two in the bad trip deepened and it wasn’t just a feeling of horror that gnawed at him, not then, it was visions of the stuff — darkness warping around him, a rustle in the woods too large too fast to be a bear something white and sinewy and even as he knew he was tripping it felt too fucking real–

So he ran, down the middle of the road, matching his feet to the center lines like that would save him, ran for his life, ran almost directly into the hood of the Chief’s Blazer as he was backing out of the Hideaway’s parking lot.)

Maybe that’s what the kiss was about, he thinks, just now. A sort of apology. Eddie brings a hand up to his lips, feels for the ghost of Tommy C.’s touch. Shallow prick. Eddie’s fucked.

At lunch he sits with Janie and the two sophomores Janie’s picked out, Gareth and Jeff, and realizes belatedly that he hasn’t packed himself any lunch, which is fine, he’s not all that hungry, he thinks, as Janie takes a large bite of her PB&J and a glob of jelly lands on her chin.

“Where were you?” she says, pointing at him with her sandwich. He shrugs and pulls one knee up, resting an elbow on it. “I’m serious, man, you missed homeroom.”

Eddie thinks about telling her the story. Not the Tommy C. part, she doesn’t know about that, no one does, but the other stuff. The drugs and the hallucinations in the woods and the waking up in the drunk tank — but Gareth and Jeff, the sophomores, are kind of staring at him with something big and uncomfortable (he feels uncomfortable, anyway) in their eyes so he doesn’t. He just shrugs. “Had a rough night, slept late, you know the drill.”

“Sure.” She does know the drill. The number of times they’ve smoked up in the dead of night because she just can’t stand to be in the house with her mother anymore, some small-minded woman who blames her for the fact her father went back to China — not Janie’s fucking fault that Hawkins is a miserable place — and he sort of feels bad for evading the truth, with her, though he has a sinking suspicion she’s going to outgrow him. She’s not the one getting Fs because she can’t study, is she, after all. “Whatever, there are definitely at least two prime candidates for Hellfire in junior year, I scouted them out when I was tutoring that girl on Friday, plus that Byers kid, the sophomore? Do you guys know him?” She directs this at Gareth and Jeff, who shrug.

“He’s kind of a loner,” Jeff says. “You try to talk to him and he just gives you this kinda blank stare until you go away. He’s, like, weird.”

“Gentlemen,” Eddie says, deliberately, because Janie sort of likes it when he calls her that and he hasn’t quite worked out if it’s a joke or not, “Are we not all like, weird? Is that not the very essence of Hellfire?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Tommy C. pull Tommy H. into a joking headlock as Carol and Harrington laugh their fucking heads off. “Yes, it is,” Janie says, stabbing her ballpoint into her notepad as if for emphasis. She’s working on her History homework as they talk, Eddie realizes, with a sudden premonition of loss. They have better colleges in China than in buttfuck-nowhere Indiana. And she misses her dad. “With any luck, guys, Eddie and I will be long gone this time next year. So why don’t we make this year a fucking great one, okay? If you get new blood in maybe Eddie will finally be convinced to write an actual campaign instead of a bunch of oneshots, wouldn’t you like that?”

The sophomores nod eagerly. Eddie buries his face in the crook of his elbow, still balanced on his knee, in an effort not to groan. It’s not like he doesn’t want to do an extended campaign, sure. For a while it was what kept him sane. But right now–

“What about her?” Jeff says, and Eddie looks up, following his gaze to the tall redhead girl in the line. “Barb. I have math with her, she seems kinda nerdy.”

But Gareth is shaking his head, so vigorously it makes his curly hair bounce off his forehead. “No way, man, she’s totally tight with Nancy Wheeler and Nancy’s dating Steve Harrington.” (Said strangely mournfully.) “No-go.”

Eddie doesn’t know who Barb or Nancy are; he does know that staying clear of Steve Harrington and his type is his only sensible course of action. (He says, after giving Tommy C. a handjob last night, but hey. Who said he was sensible.)

Janie joins him for a smoke after, in their spot behind the bleachers, and it takes only a few puffs in silence before she’s looking at him with an eyebrow raised and saying, “So, either you’ve got a drug problem or you’re fucking someone or you heard from your dad. So which is it?”

“What makes you think that,” he returns flatly, inspecting his cigarette instead of her. It’s making him faintly nauseous. He hasn’t eaten anything since a slice of cold pizza at Rick’s.

“Point one: usually you’re much better at hiding how depressed and anxious you are, unless it’s a comedown. Point two: I know what you’re like. I was there for your thing with Martin last year, remember? Point three: you’ve been weird since they put him away and you’ve been weirder this last week, so I’ll ask again, which is it?”

Eddie gives up on the cigarette and stubs it out against the wall, which is scored with similar ashy marks from all the lunchtimes they’ve spent here doing the same thing. This wasn’t their spot, this was a general smoking spot for all and sundry, until Eddie got tired of sharing and did the one thing that people might respect, rather than punish, which was take Janie’s face gently in his hands and kiss her the second someone came around the corner, that someone being Steve Harrington, who Eddie can’t seem to stop seeing.

(“Guess he’s not a fag after all,” Eddie overheard Tommy H. saying later on, and Harrington scowling, “Whatever, I don’t wanna see them sucking face every time I want a smoke, let’s just find somewhere else, okay?”)

(Eddie apologized to Janie for that as soon as he did it; they’d talked about it before, but he’d sort of assumed she was joking right up until the moment seized him and she looked like she was daring him to. She just laughed in response: “Don’t worry, I know better than to fall in love with you, man.”)

“Try all of the above,” he says finally, folding his arms over his chest and kicking his foot up against the wall.

Her eyes widen. She pushes up the sleeves of her flannel, businesslike, showing off the dark-inked snake on her forearm. “He called you? From prison?”

Eddie exhales, wishing he hadn’t thrown away his smoke. “A letter. Arrived Friday. I didn’t read it. I’m not going to.”

“Hence the…”

“Hence the stupid shit, like getting too high last night and hooking up with someone I really shouldn’t be hooking up with, yeah. Continuing to hook up with. That started before the letter.” He rubs the back of his neck, tugs on his hair, as he started doing like to reassure himself it’s all still there, all still growing out, his fucking dad be damned.

“Right.” Janie’s not really a woman of many words, when it comes down to it. She’s logical to a fault and doesn’t say a word more than she needs to; really, she’s sort of the opposite of Eddie, which is maybe why they’re friends. “If you’re not gonna read it, you should throw it in the trash. Otherwise you’re gonna keep torturing yourself over it.”

“Yeah.”

“And stick to weed. You look like shit.”

Eddie loves her. He does. But he could do with a bit of softness, couldn’t he, just now and then. Just a little bit. He nods and they don’t really say anything more, just head to class, math, which is her worst subject and even then she’s got a pretty healthy B in it which, what does that say about Eddie’s horrible grades?

That evening he has to go get his van from Rick’s, and he thinks about asking her to drive him over there, make it easy, make it quicker. But he doesn’t want her to meet Rick, or more to the point see the way he’ll twitch and flinch as they go through the section of woods where the acid showed him the monster. Shit, dude, you’re fucking yourself up more than anyone else ever could, he imagines her saying, and the way that echoes against Wayne in the car earlier, I think you’re probably torturin’ yourself worse than anything I could say, and he grits his teeth and decides to walk. In silence, because he’s been spending the little money he has on equipment to create music, more than listen to it, like a walkman.

He does buy more cigarettes on his way, when he passes the general store. Joyce isn’t working, Melvald himself is, and Eddie gets a suspicious look from him, Eddie’s tattoos and longish hair and Iron Maiden t-shirt. “Thank you,” he makes sure to say, smiling wide, and Melvald just gives him more evils until he leaves the store. Absently, he wonders about Joyce. What she was doing there, at the station this morning. Not waiting for her husband, the way she would have been a while ago, before they divorced. The way Eddie’s mom would have been waiting for her husband, if they’d been married, if she wasn’t long gone.

His efforts to convince himself not to panic, approaching the woods down Cornwallis, do little to make it not happen. He counts the loose stones he kicks and breathes out evenly and gets startled out of the whole thing by voices ahead, shouting, Will! Will Byers! and he slows.

There are police cars, parked on the side of the road. The khaki figure of the chief, in the distance, standing on the curb strip with his hands on his hips, eyes scanning the woods like he’s looking for something. Someone. Will Byers?

Eddie doesn’t really want them to see him. Not after scraping it out of the drunk tank this morning, Powell’s accusing eyes. But he’s not going into the woods itself, not until he has to, the long looming trees and shadows stretching out, so —

“Munson,” comes Hopper’s voice, when he thinks he’s gotten away with it. Fuck. “What’re you doing out here?”

Eddie turns. Thinks fuck it, he’s got nothing to lose by being honest. “Well, I left my van down here, and I didn’t exactly have a chance to get it when you arrested me, did I?”

Hopper grunts. “S’pose it’s better than you driving under the influence.” He casts another look back at the woods, eyes full of anxiety, and oh. Something real is happening here. Something new. “Go on, kid, get outta here,” he says, just as someone deeper in the woods shouts Hey, chief, we got something–!

Eddie kind of wants to stick around. Find out what the hell’s going on — Will Byers, Joyce’s son, right? — but if his dad taught him anything, he taught him to be smart, to take the chances he gets, never to look back. He’s not gonna push his luck. He’s gonna keep walking.

Half an hour more takes him to Rick’s place, the lake stretching out grey in front of it. His van is there, slotted in next to Rick’s scratched-up Merc (got it in trade, he says, when a regular had no cash left), and for a second he thinks about just driving off without saying hello but also he could really do with a joint, actually, jittery from the woods and Will Byers and he used up his stash in the first wave of oh fuck my dad sent me a letter from prison before he realized grass wasn’t quite enough to dull that particular horror hence–

He raps on the door. It takes a second, but then he hears footsteps, the unmistakable sound of a bottle being set down, and the door opens.

Rick grins wide. “Eddie. Back already?”

Eddie sees the bottle he set down was some cheap-looking red wine, half-empty, sitting on the table in the hall. Rick’s in a wifebeater and shorts, a lot of tattoo-less, middle-aged flesh on display, freckles to go with his scraggy red-ish hair. He opens the door wider to let Eddie in and picks up the wine again — “Drink?” — which Eddie thinks about, he really thinks about, but he’s eaten nothing all day and he has to drive home past a bunch of cops and Janie’s face is sticking with him, logical and cold and you’re fucking yourself up–

“Nah, man. I’ll, uh– I’ll take some grass, though, if you got it.”

Rick’s grin widens. “Sure thing, kid, sure thing.” The house smells like weed, and damp, and plasticky cheese — there’s an empty box of Mac N Cheese out on the counter — and Eddie fights that same earlier nausea as he lights a cigarette and leans back in roughly the same spot he was standing when Tommy C. first kissed him, nearly three months ago, when Rick was out for more beer.

“There’re a lot of cops sniffing around, by the way. Some missing kid, it sounds like. Down on Cornwallis and Kerley.”

“Ri-ight,” Rick says, taking a swig of wine. “What kid?”

“Will Byers, they were shouting for. Lonnie’s kid.” He tries to say the name all neutral, hates showing weakness to Rick, but it does come out sort of strangled. Because Lonnie Byers is a short hop to Bruce Munson, drinking buddies and more, Lonnie the fence for the cars Bruce stole, Bruce who later turned to drugs and became a direct competitor and Rick knows of them both, knows the jump to make, and indeed he does. Make the jump.

“Shit, Lonnie’s kid?” Rick says, after another swig of wine. “Well, Lonnie’s a piece of shit, but no kid deserves that.”

“You only say that because he–” Eddie stops. Does not want to finish the sentence.

He’s not sure whether to be grateful that Rick ends up finishing it for him: “Because he was my rival’s fence, in this salubrious business of mine? Hardly. Your dad only got into the drug scene when Lonnie’d left town, fucking idiot. Drugs aren’t cars, anyone could’ve told him that. But hey. He’s not my problem anymore, so we’re all good.”

“Lucky you,” Eddie says, under his breath, thinking of the unopened letter he’s slipped between the pages of The Shining on his nightstand, stamped Indiana Department of Correction. It could be blank, for all Eddie knows, and maybe it is. And that wouldn’t fucking matter, because the impact of the envelope is the same, the very fact of being sent something is the same.

Get out, his dad said to him, in the heat of the argument as Eddie’s dislocated shoulder shot through with pain, as Eddie spat in return I want nothing to fucking do with you–

And here it is. Something to do with him.

“So, you and Tommy have a good night after you left?” Rick says, sitting down at the kitchen table and beginning to portion out a baggie of weed. “You can roll yourself, can’t ya, kid?”

Eddie nods. “Yeah, it was alright.” He has no desire to mention the cops; Rick was blasé enough about the search for Will Byers, but when it comes to his stash…

“Now there’s a kid can roll.” Rick takes a swig of wine and a few drops of it spill from the corner of his mouth, red on his chin, like blood. “You two make a strange pair, but what can I say? Drugs bring people together.”

Eddie has never been able to work out quite how much Rick knows, about what Eddie and Tommy C. get up to. About crossfaded handjobs and kissing smoke into each others’ mouths; about the two times they’ve tried to actually fuck and the single time it worked because they had lube instead of dry-mouth saliva; about the time Tommy k-holed, and Eddie sat with him silently until he came back down. They’ve kissed sober only once before today, and that time Eddie kissed him, unthinking, and Tommy shoved him back and stared at him with so stricken a look it was like all their high, dreamlike attachments were just that, a dream. A fucking dream.

Not so this morning.

“He’s alright,” Eddie settles on saying, lighting a cigarette as he watches Rick’s hands. Finally, Rick holds the baggie out, and Eddie digs some cash out of his pockets. Fuck, he’s running low.

Rick looks at him. “Y’know, if you need any extra, I’m always looking for someone to cater to the high school market. Most of them get antsy about it, buying from someone like me. But someone they know? Easy pickings.”

Someone they know. Like ninety-eight percent of them don’t despise him; like they don’t refuse to associate with him, like there’s some kind of bad smell hanging around him, the way they call him freak and fag like they can tell, how the fuck can they tell–

“I don’t know, man, I don’t want any more trouble, y’know?”

Rick arches an eyebrow. “Your call, kid, your call. Offer’s on the table.”

He likes Rick because he’s nothing like his dad, Eddie thinks, and sort of hates it, the way even his rebellion from his dad is based on his dad. But here he is.

When he drives back home it’s beginning to rain, heavy sheets of it hammering on the windshield, and in the darkening woods he doesn’t see anything, though he keeps his eyes peeled, stupidly, because it was just a bad trip. That’s all it was.

Wasn’t it?

Chapter Text

“–an assembly on the football field in support of Will Byers and his family. All are encouraged to attend. Volunteer assignments for search parties are still–”

Eddie is only half listening; he still doesn’t enjoy the sound of the name Byers, even in other people’s mouths. He shoves his books into his locker and then rests his forehead against the cool metal surface, feeling the effects of his sleepless night — sleepless not because of drugs or the drunk tank, not this time, but because of the letter, because of tossing and turning with The Shining staring at him from his nightstand, the envelope poking out from inside it–

Someone knocks into him from behind, shoving him into the lockers, and when he turns he sees Tommy H. disappearing down the hallway along with Carol and Harrington and also the girl Jeff pointed out yesterday, the redhead, Barb, with a shorter brunette he works out is probably Wheeler, which, hey. Seems like a good call not to tap her for Hellfire after all.

There’s a missing poster on the noticeboard, he sees, as he passes on his way to English. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? and a cute little photo of Will Byers, this tiny kid, a thought that makes Eddie’s stomach turn, because what the hell can have happened to him? Where the fuck can he have gone? In Hawkins, of all places?

Still, he has bigger things to worry about, right now, like the way Miss O’Donnell frowns up at him — she’s tiny, scarcely more than five foot one (makes up for it in spite) — when he doesn’t have any homework to give her, passing her desk on his way into her classroom. Fuck. He didn’t even forget it this time, is the thing. Got two paragraphs into a paper about The Grapes of Wrath before something else caught his attention and that was it, the paper abandoned. Still lying there on top of the pile of sheets on his desk, he’s sure, which is one better than the piles of sheets on the floor.

“What, no excuses this time, Mr. Munson?” she says, arching an eyebrow, tapping her foot on the floor. “Did the trailer park dog eat your homework?”

He hears several people snicker. He doesn’t let his face heat up; he says instead, coolly, “Maybe it tasted good.”

She pinches her lips together. “Detention, Mr. Munson. Today after school.”

Eddie shrugs and slopes off to his seat near the back of the class, though the pronouncement makes his skin crawl. He doesn’t want to be in this godforsaken building a second longer than he has to be. Fucking shit. And he can’t get himself to concentrate, as class goes on, each word he reads sort of bouncing off his brain like there’s a protection spell cast on it — protecting it from John fucking Steinbeck, is the problem, when there are worse things that protection spell doesn’t seem to give a shit about.

Near the end of class he’s startled out of a reverie by something hitting the back of his head — a paper airplane. He follows its trajectory back to Tommy C., in the last row, whose cruel-edged smirk has something else underneath it, even as his friends laugh around him. Eddie holds his gaze as he bends to pick up the airplane. Written on it, in a slanting scrawl that isn’t Tommy’s, Eddie doesn’t think, is TRAILER TRASH.

Cute. Imaginative.

“Must’ve taken you hours to think of that one,” he says, leaning back, and watches Tommy as he says it, the way his eyes twitch over Eddie’s face, something truly fucked up in this guy’s head, Eddie thinks, but hey. Gay in a small town? He’ll take what he can get.

“Almost as long as it took you to land in detention again. What is that, the third time this month?” Another of Tommy’s friends — Nicole, maybe, not that Eddie really cares — says, and Tommy laughs.

“And it’s only November 8th.”

Eddie wonders what the consequences would be, then, of telling the truth. Standing up and telling the world that yesterday Tommy C. kissed him in the school bathrooms; that the day before that, he gave Tommy C. a handjob in the woods, got one of those rare crooked smiles from him that everyone thinks are reserved for girls and game wins — but they wouldn’t believe him. Of course they wouldn’t. Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson? And Tommy C.?

The freak wishes, he imagines Tommy saying, standing up and laughing. He can’t even tell the difference between fantasy and reality anymore, Jesus. Got them all mixed up in his sick queer head.

“Sounds like someone’s keeping tabs,” Eddie says. Sees Tommy’s face tighten with anger. “Maybe someone likes this trailer trash a little too much, huh?”

He jumps out of his seat before Tommy can lunge for him, though he doesn’t, actually, why was that what Eddie was expecting? But he’s standing up now, and he’s already got detention, so he may as well just walk the fuck out.

“Where are you going, may I ask?” Miss O’Donnell says pointedly, when he’s already halfway to the door.

He smiles broadly at her. “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten my date with detention. Just thought I’d make you feel like I really deserve it, y’know?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Munson, I’m sure you deserve it.” There’s something cold and vaguely foreboding in her stare, but what the hell. He’s got less than a year and then he’s out of here, baby, so where’s the harm in provoking her a little? He flips Tommy C. the bird as he exits the classroom; behind him, he hears Miss O’Donnell saying under her breath (but not really under her breath), “That boy’s never going to get anywhere.”

But he is going to get somewhere; and that’s somewhere’s anywhere but here. Somewhere his dad doesn’t know his address.

On his way to his smoking spot, he hears the hissed whispers of two younger voices — freshmen cutting class, probably — from under the steps, laughter of a malicious kind. “Byers totally killed him,” one of them says. “Perverted freak.”

“Someone definitely killed him. I heard the kid’s a queer, too.”

Eddie surrenders to the impulse to lean over the railings and stare down at them, making his scariest face: “Boo!”

Both freshmen, two boys, shriek. “What do you want, freak?” one of them says, an arrogant-looking blond kid in a Tigers uniform.

“I want you to stop talking about shit you don’t understand, ‘kay? Why don’t you babies run off to class. I heard there are kids going missing out there.”

The other boy’s frightened squeak has him maybe feeling a little bad, for threatening two fourteen-year-olds, even asshole fourteen-year-olds, but then the first kid points a finger at him (a real I’m telling my father type) and says, “If you threaten us again, I’m calling the cops.”

“Let’s go, Jason,” the other one hisses, tugging on his arm.

“Go ahead,” Eddie says airily. Jason scoffs at him, but they scramble to their feet, heading in a direction that’s definitely not back to class but hey, Eddie couldn’t give a shit, really. He proceeds to his and Janie’s spot and smokes three cigarettes in quick succession, trying not to think about Will and Jonathan Byers, trying not to think about Tommy C. Maybe he’s making a horrible mistake, here. Maybe there’s nothing harmless about kisses in the dark in a haze of smoke outside Reefer Rick’s; maybe there’s nothing harmless about the heavy way Tommy C. looks at him, the peculiar malice in his lips as he says the things everyone else says, lips that Eddie knows the taste of. What’s that expression about playing with fire?

At lunch, he slings himself down next to Jeff, who’s saying something earnest about “...should show our support, y’know? Poor kid,” and Eddie gathers he’s talking about the assembly tonight, which, more time at this fucking school? Jesus. He may as well live here.

“Yeah, but what the hell’s an assembly going to do for him, really?” Janie, opposite, has raised her eyebrows. “It’s all just for show.”

She looks at Eddie like she’s expecting him to agree with her. Someone on another table is playing music loud on a radio, which, really? That Prince song that’s everywhere right now, Delirious. He tries to ignore it, though it’s sending his brain scattering across the cafeteria, never very good at isolating a distraction.

“Yeah, fuck the man, right?” Gareth says.

“Well, yes, fuck the man, but this isn’t the man, this is just some poor kid who could be dead for all we know–”

“So if he’s dead,” Janie interrupts, and Jeff frowns, “then to be totally honest, he’s not gonna know any different, is he? It’s just all those assholes who probably treated him like shit, trying to feel better about themselves.”

“Probably,” Eddie echoes, and Jeff nods resignedly, like that’s the end of it, which makes Eddie feel all strange and queasy inside, actually, because is the kid’s mistreatment a reason not to show up for him? “We should go anyway.”

Janie’s eyebrows climb. “Seriously?”

He thinks about I heard the kid’s a queer, too. “Seriously. We freaks have got to stick together, right? Even if that happens to be beyond the grave.”

Her lips part like she’s about to object; then she closes them again. There’s a silent little apology in her eyes, actually, when she looks at him, which he’s going to try not to unpack right now.

The song changes to something new and horribly Duran Duran. He resists a groan and thinks longingly of the safety of his van, where he might blast Dio to his heart’s content, and then realizes he’s signed himself up for another few hours at least before he can get to that bit. But still, all in a good cause, right?

He makes it through the remainder of his classes without any further incident, and then he’s slouching down in his seat in detention as Mr. Ryan stands at the front and says in a monotone, “You both know the drill, I presume, get on with your work, no talking, I got a lot of Xeroxing to do so I’m gonna be in and out but there’s only two of you so that won’t be a problem, will it?” Mr. Ryan looks between them skeptically, like he finds it hard to believe they could get into mischief together. Which, Eddie realizes, looking over at his fellow detention-haver, is pretty accurate, because it’s Steve fucking Harrington.

“So, what brings King Steve to my neck of the woods?” Eddie says, after ten minutes of silence, when Mr. Ryan’s left the room. Because he’s had detention a hell of a lot in his school career, and he’s shared it with Harrington only a handful of times. Stupid stuff, like cutting class to make out with his girlfriend or drink a couple beers, thinking he’s rebelling, is what Eddie imagines. He’s not unconvinced that under that pretty head of hair, Harrington’s got nothing but All the Right Moves playing on loop inside his brain.

“He told us to be quiet, man.”

“Oh, come on, old Ryan doesn’t give a shit. As long as he gets his Xeroxing done in peace, we’re good. So tell me. I’m curious.”

Harrington looks at him finally. “Why the hell are you talking to me?” It’s not the accusatory, don’t look at me, freak type tone that Tommy H. likes to use. It’s just a little curious, really, a little bewildered.

“Humor me,” Eddie says, leaning across the desk, propping his chin on his hand. (Fuck the Steinbeck essay he’s supposed to be finishing — starting — this is more interesting. For some reason. Harrington’s stupid big hair, a swoop of it above his forehead, his faintly stupid eyes.)

“Jesus, man, I just cut class, okay, is that what you wanna hear?”

“Not really. Where’s the panache? The pizazz? You’re a cliché of yourself, Harrington.”

“Oh? And why are you here?”

Eddie pinches his lips together. Fucking smartass. “Skipped one paper too many.”

“Original. Not a cliché at all.” Harrington shakes his head like he’s disbelieving, bending his head over his homework. “Why don’t you get on with your work, man, since that doesn’t seem to be your strong suit?”

His cruelty is sort of instinctual, softened, like shoes that have been worn over and over. Eddie lets it wash over him. “I don’t know, close quarters with King Steve, can’t you forgive my curiosity?”

“You really are weird,” Harrington says. Eddie imagines Tommy C. saying that to him, Isn’t Munson a fucking freak?. And earlier, And it’s only November 8th. Them laughing, Harrington and Tommy, and Tommy H. and Carol and all the fucking rest. Janie saying it would be funny, fond. You’re so fucking weird, dude. Tommy C. saying it, that weird mixed tone of his, half desire and half contempt: You’re a weird fucking guy. But Steve just– says it. Like it’s a fact. Like he has no interest in and no capacity for challenging it.

Eddie looks back down at his paper. He’s written seven words: In Steinbeck’s seminal novel, the sense of

Seminal. No doubt Harrington would find that amusing.

Mr. Ryan comes back in, looks between them resignedly, and then leaves again. When he’s gone, Eddie leans over to Harrington’s desk again and says, “Shouldn’t you be at basketball practice?”

“Shouldn’t you be minding your own goddamn business?” Harrington looks at him, eyebrows raised emphatically, but really he’s wearing a polo shirt so how is Eddie supposed to take that seriously? “How do you know when practice is, anyway?”

Coach Benson is gonna kick my ass on Tuesday, I know it, Tommy C. said on Sunday, Eddie remembers in a sudden flash. But what’s he gonna say, oh, yeah, the basketball guy I’m screwing told me? Not that they’re screwing, really, just screwing with the idea of screwing, messing with it. Messing around. Eddie’s only ever had real sex a couple times in his life, thus far.

“Whatever,” Harrington says, when Eddie doesn’t answer quick enough. They lapse into silence. As Harrington works on his homework, Eddie kicks back in his chair and watches him openly, because fuck it. What’s he got to lose? So he stares at Harrington, at his fine, roman profile (you can tell the guy’s rich, Christ, practically shaped by the gods to look like an aristocrat) and the way he keeps looking at the clock.

“You got somewhere to be, Harrington? Can’t get away from me fast enough?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know what you’re expecting, Munson. I figured you’d be used to it by now.” Harrington lets this out as a sort of muttered rush, even-toned, not exactly flooded with vitriol but not a nice thing to say either, not that Eddie was expecting nice, because hey. Harrington’s right. He’s used to it by now.

He lets the silence stretch on, this time. Can’t really summon the effort to break it again — not quite sure what he’s hoping for in doing so. Harrington is an asshole. And it’s just the two of them, no one to impress, no one to protect. Just detention. Just their homework.

(And yet something about Harrington gets under his skin–)

He’s been here enough times to measure the schedule of Mr. Ryan’s Xeroxing. He returns twice throughout, Eddie knows, and the third absence lasts the longest, usually more than half an hour. So right after Mr. Ryan disappears the third time, Eddie gets out of his seat and takes his pack of Camels over to the window, hoisting himself up to sit on the sill and pulling one knee up as he lights it.

“You’re a fucking moron,” Harrington says from his desk, pausing in his work and propping his chin on his hand as he looks at Eddie. “You know someone’s gonna smell that shit on you, right?”

“They’d have to get pretty near to me for that. Wanna come up here and find out exactly how close you gotta get?”

He says it to watch the curl of disgust across Harrington’s lips; he’s not sure why that appeals to him. But there’s no such curl. Harrington just looks back down at his desk, a lock of hair falling across his forehead, and his expression is hidden from view.

Eddie smokes his cigarette out the window in silence after that, idly watching the basketball team running a frigid circuit around the track under harsh floodlights, dusk falling over them. Tommy C.’s ass looks good in those shorts.

“Y’know, I can’t believe you don’t want to be out there, freezing your butt off with the rest of them,” Eddie says after a while, not taking his eyes off Tommy C.

“Don’t you listen? It’s not up to me. Didn’t goddamn choose this. Jesus, man, do you ever do any work? I’m gonna graduate before you do at this rate.”

“Aw, anyone would think you cared.” Eddie finishes his cigarette and stubs it out through the window, sliding back into his seat to confront the looming blank page of his essay. The thing is, Harrington’s goddamn fucking right. Because of course he is. If he doesn’t get his brain to knuckle down and actually do something — anything — then he’s not gonna pass the year. Not gonna graduate. Not gonna get out of Hawkins, and fuck that.

He cranks out an eighth word on his paper, and a ninth.

When the clock reaches six p.m. and Mr. Ryan waves them off with a hand full of copied papers, they sort of walk out to the parking lot together. Sort of. Harrington a few paces ahead of Eddie, Eddie dropping back behind, hands slung in his pockets, not in the mood for a confrontation with the basketball team, who send outraged calls over to Harrington from the track where they’re finishing the last of their drills — “Harrington, what the hell, man, you missed practice!” Tommy C. says, as Tommy H. ditches the drills entirely and jogs over to Harrington with a towel around his neck.

“You ready for tonight?” Tommy H. says with a grin, slinging an arm around Harrington’s shoulders, and somehow Eddie doesn’t think he’s talking about the assembly for Will Byers.

Cold in the icy November air, Eddie shivers and slopes off to find his van. When he turns the engine over, his Holy Diver cassette blares to life and for the first time all day he allows some of the tension to deflate out of him. Something about loud music, the right music, reaches some antsy, frantic part of his brain that nothing else can reach and tells it to calm down, and it works. (He thinks that’s maybe why Wayne forgives him the metal played at hours most reasonable people don’t think metal should be played, even though it probably keeps him awake, when he’s not working nights — because it helps. For some reason. Somehow.)

He drums his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the beats of Rainbow in the Dark as he drives downtown, to Benny’s, where he’s supposed to be meeting Janie and Gareth and Jeff for food before the assembly. It’s dark, mist creeping over the road and coiling under the streetlamps, dark enough that the red and blue siren lights are visible from way off down the road.

He slows the van to a crawl. For once, he hasn’t done anything wrong; but there’s a lick of foreboding curling in his gut. A feeling like the feeling he got walking past Hopper and the cops in the woods, calling emptily for Will Byers, like the feeling he got in the dark on Sunday night, so high out of his mind he saw a monster.

Turns out it’s not his lucky day, because the lights are coming from the parking lot at Benny’s. He turns in and hovers in the van — maybe this is a sign, maybe he should just go the fuck home — but then he spots Janie, leaning against her car with a blank, sullen look as she talks to a cop. Anyone else, he would have made himself scarce, but it’s Janie, so he cuts the engine and goes out to join her.

“They’re closed,” she says when he gets near enough, cutting through whatever the cop’s saying — Callahan, Eddie recognizes, and fucking hates that he recognizes, because why does he know the goddamn cops’ names?

“What happened?”

“Suicide, it looks like,” Callahan says. “I’m afraid you’re gonna have to find someplace else to eat.”

“Shit, suicide?” Eddie looks furtively at the diner’s darkened windows. He’s been to Benny’s quite a few times, a favorite of Wayne’s, Wayne who was a friend of Benny’s — greasy fries, greasy burgers, food that’s more about comfort and distraction from the cold world outside than tasting the food itself — Benny who’s killed himself. Benny who–

“C’mon, I’ve got Gareth and Jeff in the car. We’ll have to go somewhere else.” Janie thumbs back at her car, a beaten up Ford Pinto. Eddie pinches his lips together and nods; and together they walk away from Callahan, and Jeff opens the passenger door to talk to them, and Gareth leans in and says something along the lines of “My mom can make us dinner,” which is how come Eddie ends up tailing Janie’s Cortina back uptown into buttfuck-suburbia where the houses are pretty and small and full of annoying little sophomores like Gareth and Jeff. Why the fuck is he doing this, again?

“Who are your friends, Gareth?” is what Gareth’s mom says, when they’re awkwardly hovering in the kitchen, the kitschy cute kitchen plus Janie in her leather and tattoos, plus Eddie in his leather and tattoos —

“Eddie and Janie, mom. Mom, Eddie and Janie. And you know Jeff.”

“Ooh, are they gonna be in your band? That’s exciting.” Gareth’s mom leans her hip against the counter and crosses her arms over her apron-clad chest; she’s got intricately curled brown hair and doesn’t really look like she knows anything about bands. Which, band? Since when did Gareth have a band?

“I told you, I don’t have a band, it’s just me and Jeff. They’re just– friends from school.” Gareth scuffs his socked toes on the carpet — a shoeless household, Eddie had to shed his Docs at the door — and then looks at his mom with an easy grin, and fuck, that easy grin makes Eddie’s stomach turn. “Are you maybe making mac and cheese for dinner?”

“Yep. We got plenty for your friends. Why don’t you go and show them the garage while you wait?”

So Gareth leads them to the garage. While Eddie’s skin itches, walking down this carefully-decorated hallway, family photographs, all the evidence of a perfectly nice life going on. Perfectly happy. Mother and father and son. Suburbia. Fuck. He wonders if Gareth’s mom would be so accommodating if she knew Eddie’s dad was in prison; he wonders if she wouldn’t be more accommodating, and the way that would just make it worse.

The garage is some amateur practice space, a drumkit and a couple amps and little else, save for a couple posters on the walls, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath and Dio, and hey, maybe Eddie can work with this. Maybe he can.

“So, you’re a drummer?” he says to Gareth, who’s twitching by the door like he’s regretting showing them this. The big scary seniors. Sure.

“Yep.”

“Who’d ya wanna be? Ringo Starr?”

Gareth shakes his head emphatically. “John Bonham, man. Of course.”

Eddie lets a smile grow on his face, because okay. That’s cool. That is cool. “I sing,” Jeff interjects suddenly, and Eddie looks over at him. “And sometimes play guitar. Jimmy Page is cool. Jimi Hendrix too. But I kinda– I don’t know, I wanna be Ronnie James Dio.”

“You’re damn right,” Eddie says, allowing the smile to broaden. “So all we need’s a bassist, and we got ourselves a band.”

“Wait, seriously?” Jeff’s eyes have gone big. And yeah, maybe Eddie’s surprising even himself in this moment. Investing in something. He hasn’t felt able to invest himself in something in a while. But, like, what the hell. What the fuck. Why not? People are going missing and killing themselves out there. No time like the present.

“So I gotta find you guys a bassist, then?” Janie’s leaning against the wall, raising an eyebrow. Her socks are pink, a fact rather at odds with the rest of her dark leather, ripped denim outfit. It’s kind of a nice touch. Throws the rest of it into sharper relief. “Because I’ve had so much luck finding people for Hellfire.”

“Killjoy,” Eddie says, and she sticks her tongue out at him, but it lacks its usual bite and wait, she’s got her shoulders hunched, something uncomfortable in her face. Like she’s regretting this, bringing these two sophomores in. Like she’s feeling left out. But before he can step closer and say something — no idea what, Janie rarely lets any sort of emotion show and even rarer is the occasion she needs reassurance — Gareth’s mom is poking her head around the door, calling them in for dinner all domestic-like, all Norman fucking Rockwell and Eddie could scream. He really could.

Gareth’s mom (Andy, she tells them, Andrea but really it’s Andy) spoons out homemade mac and cheese into bowls and directs them to a cute yellow dining room, where she hovers in the doorway and says something to the extent of, “It’s really good of you kids to go to that assembly, you know, for that poor missing boy. My friend Karen, she knows the boy’s mom, it’s just horrible–”

Eddie wonders at that. At how many people are gonna start saying oh, yeah, I was friends with Will, oh, yeah, him, I had Chemistry with him, oh, he was a sweet kid– when they don’t have any right to. And the more tenuous connections, this friend of a friend of his mom. Maybe Eddie should stand up and say my dad was friends with his dad, before my dad went to prison. How would that go down, he wonders? How entitled to the homemade mac and cheese would he be then?

“You dread to think of it happening to your own kid, of course.” Do you? “I remember once we lost Gareth in a Kroger. It was like the floor dropped out from under me, you know, I just felt like I was falling… of course, we found him trying to lick up spilled milk in aisle five, but you never forget that fear, do you?”

“Mom,” Gareth mumbles, cheeks red. “I was four.”

She smiles fondly, ruffles his hair. “Oh, Jeff, how’s your dad doing, by the way? I dropped off some flowers with your mom the other day but I didn’t have the time to stop in.”

Jeff shifts in his seat. “He’s about the same. It’s–” an uneasy look at Eddie and Janie, like he’s afraid of being judged, which, seriously? “–it’s a lot on my mom, y’know, looking after him, but we’re doing okay.”

“Good, good, I’m glad. You just let us know if you ever need anything, okay?”

She smiles at him and then goes back into the kitchen, leaving Jeff studying his bowl with a concentrated, awkward expression, until finally he seems to pluck the courage to look up and say, “My dad, he’s got leukemia.”

“Shit,” Eddie says. Janie echoes it. He resists the tired platitudes — a dad in prison is different from a dad dying of cancer, but he gets the sense that the feeling is the same, of hearing I’m sorry once and never wanting to hear it ever again — and draws the kid into a conversation about Led Zep instead. And Led Zep leads to Ramble On, leads to Tolkien and The Silmarillion and stuff Janie likes too, and it’s a palpable shift in the air, actually, the moment Jeff and Gareth relax. Remember that oh, yeah, these two seniors may be seniors but they’re no more cool than we are. And fuck coolness anyway.

After dinner, they drive back over to the school, where a surprisingly large number of people are gathering in the parking lot, funneling through to the field, talking and laughing, sure, but here for Will Byers nonetheless. Some undefeatably cynical part of Eddie can’t help but believe they just want a piece of the action — the inexorable pull of notoriety. How cool is this, a kid went missing from our town! Our little town! Maybe we’ll make the Big Three!

No Harrington. No Tommy H. or Carol either, though he does spot Tommy C. over on the bleachers with a few cheerleaders. He’s not sure what that makes him feel; whatever it is, he pushes it down. Just stands with Janie and Gareth and Jeff in the cold night air, under full white floodlights, watching some teacher from the middle school light some candles and say some shit about God bringing Will Byers home safe, mostly snatched away on the wind, thankfully, really, because what the hell is God gonna do? But people around him are nodding gravely, closing their eyes to pray, including the arrogant freshman, Jason, from earlier, Eddie sees, holding the hand of some strawberry-blonde girl with a vaguely familiar face.

He closes his eyes too, but not to pray. It’s more so he doesn’t let out a fucking scream at the kid, for being here, for having the goddamn audacity. Someone definitely killed him. I heard the kid’s a queer, too. Where the fuck do they get off? Saying shit like that? And then wanting a piece of the grieving pie?

Will Byers, Eddie thinks. If you’re out there, you’d better come the fuck home, if only to shove it in these assholes’ faces.

When the assembly’s over, the crowd begins to disperse. Eddie’s walking alone back to his van when he hears running footsteps catch up with him, and he spins around with his keys in his hand (not the first time he’s been jumped) to see some nondescript senior he doesn’t really know, Jack, maybe? And Jack leans against the van with a twitchy smile and says, “How much?”

Eddie stares at him, uncomprehending. “What?”

Jack leans closer, dropping his voice. “Y’know, how much? For, like, I don’t know, half an ounce?”

Holy fucking shit. Eddie drops his eyes and runs a hand over his face, unable to resist the urge to laugh. “Yeah, uh, no. I don’t know where you got the impression I sell from, but, uh, I don’t. So.”

“You sure? ‘Cause Tommy was talking about it, and, like–”

“Tommy?” Eddie wheels around, looks at him sharply. “Which Tommy?”

“...Tommy C.?”

He slumps back against the van, all the righteous tension going out of him. Tommy C.’s been spreading that shit about him? When– when Tommy C. knows about his dad. When Eddie’s been so out of it it’s just come spilling out, the arrest, the remand, the court case and the verdict and the years he was sentenced to, not that Eddie was around for any of that but he had to hear about it anyway–

Saying it drunkenly, slurring into Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy listening and not saying much and giving him a handjob afterwards, Eddie’s face pushed tearily into the side of Tommy’s neck.

Tommy should fucking know better.

“For fuck’s sake,” he lets out softly, pressing the tips of his fingers into his eyes. “I don’t goddamn sell, okay? So fuck off.”

Jack raises his hands, backing off defensively. “Hey, just asking. Jesus. Woulda thought you’d need the cash, anyway, but hey.”

“Wanna pay me to suck your dick, too? You like that? Fuck’s sake.” Jack shoots him a disgusted look and slopes off into the dark, leaving Eddie alone by his van, staring into the night and feeling the urge to hit Tommy C., hard, closed-fist. But he’s not that sort of person. Never has been.

Maybe if he was, things would be easier. But he’s not. And they aren’t.

Chapter Text

“You gonna open that goddamn letter, kid, or is it just gonna sit there in that Stephen King book for the rest of your life?”

Eddie looks up from pouring Honeycombs into a bowl as his uncle drops his keys on the counter, his hat on its peg, bones creaking as he leans against the counter and lights a smoke. He smells like cold and the plant, sharp chemicals and winter air, but it’s sort of a comforting smell. “Who says I haven’t thrown it out?” Eddie argues, sloshing milk over his cereal and then replacing the carton in the fridge. (Ignoring the various bills Wayne’s stuck there using novelty fridge magnets.) It’s a rare morning he eats breakfast — usually too late/hungover/deep in a comedown (choose your own adventure) — but since Sunday he’s been giving it a rest. Keeping it clean.

“I do. ‘Cause I know you, Eddie, and you ain’t thrown that shit out. So get on with it.”

He eats a spoonful of cereal. Watches the curl of smoke drift upwards from Wayne’s cigarette. “He doesn’t get to talk to me.”

“No, damn right he doesn’t.”

“But I can’t just– don’t I owe him that? At least?”

“You owe him shit all, kid, and you’d better remember it.” Wayne’s eyes are stern.

Eddie just shakes his head, trying to dodge that gaze as he rounds the counter and absently switches on the TV. It’s a news program, some reporter standing outside Benny’s, the whole place bracketed with yellow crime scene tape. “...second tragic incident to befall this usually-sleepy town. The police deny the two events are connected, but as the search for Will Byers continues, residents can only–”

Eddie turns it off again. He feels Wayne moving behind him, coming to stand beside him, eyes on the blank television screen. “I just can’t believe it,” his uncle says, voice sad and weary and resigned. “Benny– shit, he was such a character, y’know? Had time for anyone. Wouldn’t suffer fools, but had time for damn near everybody else.”

“Yeah,” Eddie allows, having been on the receiving end of the not suffering fools more than once, but hey. The guy was nice enough. And now he’s dead.

Eddie’s walking across the parking lot from his van when he passes Jonathan Byers in his own car, stereo blaring some Talking Heads song about washing that love away — what the fuck is he doing here? Is he seriously coming to class two days after his brother disappeared? Eddie, if Eddie were Byers, would be taking any goddamn excuse he could get. And it’s a pretty good excuse. But when Byers gets out of his car and they walk sort of adjacent to each other into the school, he soon peels off in the direction of the darkroom. Not that that’s any less weird. Photography? Now? But whatever. Who is Eddie to judge?

In the hallway, he passes Harrington and the Wheeler girl necking by the lockers, which, that he’s definitely allowed to judge. That’s just gross. Equally gross are Carol and Tommy H. making sex noises at the two of them in the cafeteria that lunchtime, as Eddie sits down next to Gareth, who turns to him eagerly and says, “Do you think Jeff and me should join band?”

Janie rolls her eyes. “Dude, we’re supposed to be convincing him to DM our next campaign, not distracting him with something new and shiny. Focus!” She snaps her fingers, which is a little uncalled for, maybe, though Eddie just flips her the bird in response.

“Absolutely not,” he says. “School-sanctioned music is a wheel that crushes all creativity in its path.”

“But you’re in band,” Jeff points out.

Eddie shrugs. “They won’t let me quit.” And a grin: “I’m just that good.”

“Do girls like band?” Gareth says, and Eddie wants to laugh, because who the fuck is he asking?

“They like bands. Not band,” Janie huffs. “Don’t tell me Hellfire is gonna be about impressing girls from now on; I swear to god, I’ll quit.”

“Of course not,” Gareth says, hurriedly, and great. Just fucking great. Judging by his mom (not that Eddie really believes in that Freudian bullshit, but still, he doesn’t have a mom and look at him—) he’ll be after some brown-haired suburban type, kind and cookie-cutter and just a little bit intelligent, and just like that, Eddie can track the direction of his gaze over to Harrington’s goddamn fucking table.

“You do not have a thing for Wheeler.” Eddie can’t quite believe his eyes. “Oh my god. Steve Harrington’s girlfriend. You have a thing for Steve Harrington’s girlfriend. What the shit, dude?”

“Shh!” Gareth hisses, eyes darting around the cafeteria.

Jeff rolls his eyes. “Worse than that, he thinks band is the way to her heart.”

“Oh, my friend, you’re way beyond help.” Eddie gives him the approximation of a sympathetic look. Empathetic, maybe, because can he really talk? Tommy C. Fucking Tommy C.

Which, speak of the devil–

He pushes back from the table and hurries out of the cafeteria after Tommy C., deaf to Janie’s call behind him, because he hasn’t seen Tommy C. all day and he needs a fucking minute with him, okay? So he’s standing by Tommy C. by his locker, which is not something he’s ever done, actually, not really something he’s allowed to do, here where everyone can see, but fuck what he’s allowed to do. Fuck it.

Tommy must see some of this fuck it emotion in his face, because the angry slope of his brow eases into something more like confusion. “What is it?” he says, glancing around and ducking his head, still. Asshole.

“We need to fucking talk.”

Another furtive look. “After school, okay? That spot in the woods.”

Eddie doesn’t want to say okay. He wants to grab Tommy’s chin and force him to look at Eddie, not at the hallway and the people and everyone he’s afraid of displeasing but Eddie, just look at Eddie, for once– look at him and see him– he wants to say fuck the woods, talk to me here, talk to me now, give me what I deserve–

But Eddie doesn’t know what he deserves. Won’t know, maybe, until he opens that fucking letter. So he just nods, cold, and turns away.

He’s got half an hour after school finishes before he has to play in band for the stupid fucking sports game, so he has time. The second the bell rings he gathers up his stuff and goes out past the track, ducking into the woods, gathering his jacket around him against the oncoming evening. He’s hung out with Tommy here before, here by the lonely picnic bench and a whole lot of dead silence. No one ever comes out here. That’s why they chose it.

Tommy emerges a couple minutes later, wearing his Tigers jacket with his hands slung deep in his pockets. He sits on the table next to Eddie, a couple feet away, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch him or not, or else he just doesn’t want to. Which, the latter’s probably more likely, let’s be real.

“So, what d’ya wanna talk about?”

Eddie presses his mouth into a thin line, a deep breath before responding. “You’ve been telling people I sell.”

“I haven’t. I just mentioned you and gear in the same sentence, that’s all. People draw their own conclusions.”

“Right.” Eddie’s skin feels tight, ill-fitting, itchy. Faintly ill. “Just like they’ve always done, right?”

“Eddie–“

“Why the fuck are you even talking about me? Doesn’t it– I don’t know, doesn’t it make you feel weird, calling a guy a freak right after you kiss him? Isn’t that a little bit, uh, messed up? In your head?”

A silence. Eddie risks glancing over at him; he’s studying his hands, a strange, twisted look on his face. “You’re right. What we’re doing is messed up.“

“What– that isn’t–“ Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“Isn’t it, though? I mean, we’re nothing alike. And you’re a guy, and this is just–“

“–your dirty little secret. Yeah, I know the drill. Two halves of your life, ne’er the twain shall meet, et cetera et cetera.”

“My dad would fucking kill me.”

Another silence. Eddie doesn’t really know what to say to that. “Well, my dad nearly did, so.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Eddie snaps, pushing off the table and walking a few paces away. He hears the scuffle of leaves behind him, Tommy C. hurrying to follow.

“I just meant– he already thinks the shit I care about is pointless. Going to college, and all that. He just wants me to inherit the store and never go anywhere, never get out of this shitty town. Going hunting on the weekends is his only idea of fun, like–“

Because of course, it’s easy to forget that Tommy C. isn’t quite like Tommy H. Like Harrington, or Carol, or that little shit Jason in freshman year. Smaller house, more local ambitions. That’s the reason he’s the second Tommy, after all, instead of the first.

Maybe that’s why he’s clinging to all that crap so fucking hard. A foot in both worlds. “Can you just cut me some goddamn slack, please?”

Eddie doesn’t want to. Eddie wants to walk away and never look back, surrender to the itching in his skin, maybe scream a little bit. But who else is going to look at him like Tommy C. does? That heavy look? Who else is going to touch him? He can’t just throw that away.

Gay in a small town.

“Fine,” he says, closing his eyes as he exhales and turns back around. He feels Tommy’s hands settle on his shoulders, pulling him closer, their foreheads pushing together. He feels Tommy’s sigh of relief, breathed over his cheek. He feels the way Tommy wants him, and hates that he wants him, or wants to hate that he wants him but can’t quite manage it all the way.

Tommy kisses him lightly, furtively. He tastes like cigarettes and gum. Face rough with the hint of stubble. Eddie feels like an idiot. Maybe he is a fucking idiot. But he can’t get this anywhere else, can he? The way Tommy drags a hand through the long hair at the nape of Eddie’s neck, makes him feel held, for a sec, just a sec. Shit.

They walk back to the parking lot together, arms brushing, fingers linked for just a moment before they get to somewhere people can see them and their hands fall apart. The parking lot is strangely busy, actually, for this time of day, people milling by their cars all circling around a central focus, one car, Jonathan Byers’ car. Eddie frowns and leans back against his van, lighting a smoke, watching the commotion from a distance, watching as Harrington sends Byers’ camera crashing to the ground with an audible crunch.

“C’mon, let’s go, the game’s about to start,” he says to Tommy H., to Carol and Wheeler too, but Wheeler doesn’t follow immediately. She crouches down with Byers and helps him pick up the torn-up pieces of paper littered on the ground, glossy photo prints, the reason he was in the darkroom earlier? And Eddie has to look away, because there’s something about that, isn’t there, the careful movements of Wheeler’s hands, the way Byers is frozen on the asphalt.

“Shit, I wonder what he did,” Tommy C. says softly, behind him, and Eddie’s almost shocked he’s still there.

“What makes you think he did anything?” Eddie defends reflexively, though really he has no reason to, actually, because what has Byers ever done for him? But he went to the assembly for Will. But they’re both freaks. But that means something.

“Call it a hunch.” Tommy shrugs easily. “You coming to the game?”

“Remind me, what mindless ball sport is it this time?”

“Like you do anything mindful. It’s football.”

“Oh, how I wish I could say fuck no. I’m in band, remember?” Eddie watches the flicker of uncertain dismay across Tommy’s face, the little bit of disgust he can’t quite hide. Get the hell over it already, Eddie wants to say. This is what you signed up for. He doesn’t say this; he just gets his guitar out from the back of his van, his fucking awful uniform, and heads back into the school, feeling sort of strange about the way Tommy follows along with him, only peeling off to go elsewhere when Eddie starts plugging his guitar in.

He’s not sure anyone in band really likes him. Most of them are quieter types, hiding behind clarinets and trumpets and drums (there’s no way in hell he’s letting Gareth join band), the way he likes to hide behind long hair and the Saxon t-shirt he still wears under his uniform. Plus there’s no avoiding the contemptuous suspicion a lot of them seem to hold him in, like he’s cast some spell on the band director to let him play the instrument he wants to play. Because granted, it is unusual. An electric guitar at the halfttime show with the marching band? Who knew Hawkins could be modern? But hey, gift horse, mouth. So he just sets up his guitar, and when he’s done he wanders over to the stands to listen with half an ear to the gossip, did you see what Steve Harrington did to Jonathan Byers–

“More like what Byers did to Steve,” someone else says. “You know the creep took photos of Steve and Nancy, like, undressing?”

“Jesus, that’s totally gross.” The girl nearest Eddie is leaning back, trumpet held loosely in her hands, craning her neck as if to dive into the conversation more deeply. It’s being held between a girl with an oboe and a guy with a saxophone, both juniors, Eddie thinks, neither of whom seem to pay the trumpet girl much heed. “So what did Steve do?”

“He broke the creep’s camera,” saxophonist says impatiently, not really looking away from oboe girl. Trumpeter sort of deflates.

“And tore up the photographs,” Eddie offers her, in a low tone, as the two juniors’ conversation moves on. He recognizes someone trying too desperately to fit in; clearly, she hasn’t quite learnt she doesn’t have to yet. “Harrington did.”

“Jesus,” the girl repeats, looking at him with wide, wary eyes. For fuck’s sake, he thinks about saying. Take what you can get. “Sorry, I’m– I’m Robin.”

“Eddie.”

“I know.” She winces at herself as his eyebrows climb.

“My reputation precedes me, et cetera?”

“Something like that. I’m sorry. You– uh, you play guitar?” She nods over to his place by the sideline, where he won’t need to be until halftime.

He mimes strumming a few chords. “Sure do. Since way back in middle school, actually, I don’t know if you remember the talent show, but…”

“Oh, I remember the talent show.” Robin looks at her shoes — beat-up red converse — and then back at Eddie, a flush coloring her cheeks. “Aside from me not making a sound because there was lint in my trumpet, I had a great time watching everyone else embarrass themselves too. They never did it again, did they?”

Eddie smiles, a little gleefully. “Never again. I believe Principal Coleman called it a colossal disaster.”

She laughs. “Right. That’s funny.”

They settle into a comfortable silence as the stands fill up, ready for the game to begin. There’s something about her, something Eddie can’t really place. The clumsy awkwardness, the cynicism, the earnestness beneath it. She’s got chipped black nail polish and eyes that go wide when they find Tammy Thompson trying to talk to Harrington in the stands.

His own eyes land on Tommy C. Sitting behind Carol in the stands, watching the game intently. Not sparing a glance for the band — why would he?

At halftime, he goes down to the sideline and plays along with it all as Robin and the rest do their thing on the field; he’s glad he doesn’t have to march around with them, at least. He needs his music class to graduate — if Mr. Tapia was a little more conservative, he’d be stuck playing the flute or something, but as it is he can settle into the familiar rhythms, moving his fingers up and down the fretboard as his mind wanders. He doesn’t hate band, he thinks. Hates the uniform and the sneering looks from the people who play what they like to call real instruments, but he doesn’t hate being in band itself.

After the halftime show he rejoins Robin in the stands, because the trade-off with Tapia is that he gets to play his guitar but he has to show his support at all times, meaning he can’t just sneak off now his part is done. And when the game’s finished (Eddie doesn’t even know the score, having spent the whole thing trying to think of a way to work in a Tolkien reference to the last song he wrote, nearly a year ago), Robin glances over at him and he takes the opportunity to say, “Hey, you ever been interested in DnD?”

“The thing with the– with the dice, right?” Her eyes are bright for a moment, pleased she’s being invited to something, before something clearly connects in her mind and her smile dims. “Wait, are you inviting me to that Hellfire Club? Because, I don’t know, isn’t it all a little bit– loud?”

Keeping her head down. Willing to be a band geek, but no weirder than that, and hey. He can understand that. If he’s right about the way she looked at Tammy Thompson, he can definitely understand that, but he’s also learned that it doesn’t serve you very well, if you’re weird enough anyway. Innately. Naturally. They seek it out in you; they find it regardless. He learned that at the start of his junior year and tried never to look back.

So she declines, and mentally he wishes her luck with this whole fitting-in thing she’s trying to do. May it work out for her better than it worked out for him.

When he gets back to the trailer, his uncle’s there, smoking out front — never a good sign — and he cuts the engine, Judas Priest’s You’ve Got Another Thing Coming dying into silence, stepping out with his hands twitching nervously over each other. Never a good fucking sign. Last time his uncle was waiting on the porch like this — in hot summer sunlight, air humid and clammy and sweating — Wayne had stepped forward and said, without preamble, “It’s Bruce.”

(Wayne doesn’t like to call him your dad. Feels wrong, he says. Eddie appreciates that.)

“What’s he done now?” Eddie had said, kicking dried-up dirt off his boots as he climbed the steps, more for something to do than because they were really dirty. He’d been at the big record store a couple towns over, buying the new Motörhead album, which was wrapped in brown paper and tucked under his arm.

“They arrested him. It’s bad. Drugs, and some shit, god, I don’t goddamn know– didn’t know it was this bad, shit.”

The first thing Eddie felt then was a deep-seated relief, a relief so strong his knees went weak underneath him and he sat down heavily on the bench, holding the record in both hands. Numb, he had unwrapped it and looked at the cover for a moment, tracing the orange and blue whorls of Snaggletooth’s tusks with trembling fingers. Because he wasn’t just relieved, was the thing. He was horrified. A horror that took root in his bones and didn’t want to let go. Because this was something real. Something he couldn’t ignore. Living with his uncle, he’d been able to pretend his dad was away on business, or ill, perhaps, chronically (but not terminally) ill and would one day be better and back to scoop him into a better life — these were his dreams, his denial-filled dreams, and that his father’s Badness had been recognized by the government, now, by the law, something immutable and written down, a matter of record–

There was no going back.

This is the memory that greets him, with the sight of Wayne on the porch. But Wayne is quick to wave off his stricken, edge-of-panic look with a cigarette-bearing hand, though his uncle’s frame is still tense: “Car’s fucked,” he says, tightly. “Sorry, kid, didn’t mean to scare ya, but…”

Perhaps selfishly, Eddie’s first thought now is like fucking hell I’m taking the bus to school. His newfound confidence — start of junior year — was earned to coincide with his newfound freedom, namely, having a vehicle of his own. Not having to hunch down around the middle of the bus, getting pinched in the arm and gum stuck in his hair, which was still fairly short, then, an awkward length that hung around his ears where everyone could tell it was growing out of something worse. On the bus, he was an easy target — and no walkman, worse, so having to listen to whatever Top 40 bullshit alongside the itching, grating voices from every angle, the way it was too much sometimes and he’d have to lock himself in a bathroom stall before class to get his anxious, irritated nerves to quit screwing around. He’s far from keen to do that again.

“You dropped it off at Thacher’s?”

Wayne nods. “He says it might not be fixed til Monday; that’s if they can fix it at all. Drove there on goddamn fumes.”

It’s not news that bodes well. Eddie knows what Thacher’s like — even worked at the garage under him last summer, when he was saving up for his guitar, and had been hoping to work there again this recent summer but the news about his dad had been all over town, and Thacher wanted to run a clean business, whatever the fuck that meant, so he went jobless. The guy has a tendency to over-promise, not a great tendency for a mechanic, so if there’s doubt it’s even possible then it’s probably not possible at all.

So they’ll need a new car. Shit.

“I can– I can, y’know, drive you to work. And pick you up, and stuff?” He lets his voice rise in question at the end, hesitant about it, not wanting Wayne to turn it down out of misguided pride and also not wanting to end up on the fucking school bus. (He thinks if he has to catch that bus ever again in his life he’s going to lose it, just go completely and utterly insane. Full mental break type shit.)

Wayne looks at him for a moment. Scrubs a hand over his face, and then waves it dismissively. “Yeah, that’d probably work. We’re gonna need to–” He stops. Beckons Eddie inside, and when they’re inside he stubs out his cigarette and pulls both hands over his face and then takes the bill from the fridge, letting it fall to the counter between them. “Things are gonna be tight, Eddie. If I need a new car…”

Eddie feels hot and tight and anxious at that. Money was never really an issue when he lived with his dad, mainly because the asshole was always doing illegal things to source it, though Eddie never really had anything in the way of his own money. The one time he filched five dollars from his dad’s wallet he wound up with a black eye that stung and swelled and got worse when his dad hit him again, because he said so it’s alright when we steal from other people, but not when–

Maybe he’s just not used to it yet, the constant gnawing of worry in his stomach. Wondering what would happen, if the worst happened. Could they end up on the street? Unable to afford the rent for the spot in the trailer park? And maybe that’s why he hasn’t tried hard enough to get a job. Because he’s not used to it. If he’d argued harder against Thacher, or took the stuff he learned at Thacher’s Tires someplace else, someplace they wouldn’t deny him just because of his last name–

“Stop that,” Wayne says, frowning at him. “This ain’t for you to catastrophize over, kid. I mean it. We’ll work it out.”

Eddie takes a deep breath in, realizing suddenly that he’s gone lightheaded. “Yeah. Sure. We will.” Then he registers something. “Wait, shit, you need to be there tonight, we should–”

“I called ‘em. Told ‘em about the car. I don’t work til tomorrow night, now. Night off.”

Eddie smiles at that, pushing his nerves aside. Because it’s a rare occasion that they get to spend the evening together; Wayne working the nightshift has them passing like ships in the night, overlapping only for stupid shit like picking him up from the drunk tank. So he’s glad.

“How about you drive over to the video store and find us a movie while I make us dinner? Nothin’ too gory, you know I don’t like that shit.”

He grins wider. “So Grease 2 then, perfect.”

“Not that shit either!”

Eddie laughs to himself as he gets back in his van. The counter at Family Video is manned by some acne-ridden guy who graduated last year, maybe, who looks at Eddie with a bored, sleepy expression when he presents the VHS to pay. He’s gone for the Life of Brian, but if he was hoping for any sort of scandalized reaction from this guy, he’s disappointed. He’s amazed they’re allowed to rent it, actually, he doesn’t even have to show any ID. Though in the eyes of Hawkins’ congregation, he’d be less sinful renting an XXX rated porno.

He’s seen it before, but Wayne hasn’t; he’s toeing the line a little bit here, though he knows Wayne isn’t exactly God’s biggest fan. But no gore, right? When The Evil Dead looked so tempting from its shelf across the aisle…

When he gets back, the trailer smells homey and inviting. Wayne’s making biscuits and gravy, and frying up eggs and bacon in a pan — breakfast for dinner, which is maybe Wayne’s best skill. Eddie’s first few nights living with him he didn’t eat anything, not until the Friday night when Wayne brought out sausages and eggs and biscuits and told him to eat, no, that ain’t a suggestion, boy, and eat he did.

“You get somethin’ good?” Wayne says, without turning from where he’s stirring the gravy.

“The Life of Brian. You’re gonna love it.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

Eddie sets the tape down on the counter and leans back to watch Wayne cook, his easy steadiness, solid and here in a way that Eddie’s not, has never been. He doesn’t know how his uncle puts up with him, sometimes, and that’s the sort of feeling that makes his eyes sting so he puts it away as firmly as he can manage.

“So, what’s goin’ on, kid? You feelin’ better now?”

Eddie knows what he’s asking. It’s not a question about the comedown, about his nausea and dizzy head. It’s about wanting the reason for the comedown in the first place — it’s about handling things, dealing with them, and Eddie’s sick of being shit at dealing with them. “Yeah,” he says, quietly.

“Y’know you can talk to me about things. Whatever they are. Right?”

“Right,” Eddie mumbles, without looking at him.

“Like how about that hickey I caught you with the other week–”

“You said we weren’t gonna talk about it!” He pulls at his collar reflexively, though there’s nothing left to hide anymore, flushing furiously.

“We’re not, if you don’t wanna. Just wanna make sure you’re safe, is all.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” Eddie buries his head in his hands. “I’m being safe.”

“It ain’t just that, this– this GRID thing, I mean. I just want you to be treated right, that’s all. You’ve had a rough goddamn year and you deserve someone treatin’ you right. You do.”

He doesn’t really know what to say to that. He hunches over and fiddles with his rings, twisting them over and over around his fingers. “Thanks,” he manages to say, as Wayne starts spooning the food onto plates. Distractedly he sets their little table and then sits down, as his uncle brings the plates over and then says, “You want a beer?”

Surprising even himself, perhaps, Eddie shakes his head. Wayne sits down opposite him and draws him into an easier conversation, one where Eddie does most of the talking, as he usually does, and he winds up saying something like, “I might, uh, resurrect Corroded Coffin. Y’know, that band I had, in middle school?”

His uncle smiles. “Oh, yeah? How come?”

“These sophomores that Janie brought in, they’re into music, y’know, the drummer kid wants to be John Bonham, so. I thought– I don’t know. It could be fun.”

Wayne clearly has no idea who John Bonham is (though he did like Stairway to Heaven, when Eddie made him sit through all eight minutes of it in silence) but he’s smiling wider, genuine warmth in his eyes. “You should do it. You’re only young once, right?”

“I don’t know, I plan on being young my entire life. I’m also never gonna die.”

“O-kay, and how’re you plannin’ on managin’ that?”

Eddie shrugs, smiles easily. “Magic.”

Wayne laughs. “You’re somethin’ else, kid, I swear. One of a kind.” Then he goes quiet and serious again, something weary and afraid flitting across his face, settling there like a stone. “I worry for you. Y’know that, right? I need you to look after yourself.”

Eddie looks at his plate. “I said I was–”

“I know, I know. But, just– with all this Will Byers stuff goin’ on, the shit people are sayin’...”

“Saying? What are they saying?” he says sharply, looking up to find his uncle’s eyes tired and a little lost.

“There’s rumors, kid. Rumors that maybe– someone hurt him. Because of what they think he is. And if there’s someone like that out there– hurtin’ people for being–” Wayne breaks off, voice quiet, heavy. Eddie feels a little sick. “I ain’t sayin’ stop bein’ you. I know that’s a losin’ battle anyway. But– be careful. Please?”

“Yeah,” Eddie manages to say, throat dry, and it comes out hoarse. He looks down at his dinner and finds he isn’t really hungry anymore.

But he summons the energy to laugh along to the movie, which Wayne winds up enjoying, in the end, neither of them immune to I have a very great friend in Rome called Biggus Dickus, and when they’re sniggering on the couch together it’s easy to push Will Byers to the back of his mind. But he can’t do it entirely, and when he’s lying on his bed that evening, smoking one of the joints Rick gave him (surrendering to the impulse, a panic attack trying to claw its way up his throat and sometimes weed’s the only thing that helps), he thinks about it again. Thinks about Will Byers, about that asshole Jason, about Robin and Byers and Harrington and Tommy C.

Chapter Text

Eddie wakes up painfully early the next morning, to dim dawn light filtering through the gap in the curtains, and he turns over and presses his face into the pillow and wishes for a sleep that doesn’t come. He’s had this problem as long as he can remember, wakefulness that digs its claws into him and doesn’t let go, mind spinning out with a thousand different thoughts and ideas with decreasing degrees of coherency the longer they keep him awake — at least he got a few hours, this time, he reasons. He sits up and lights a smoke.

The Shining is still watching him from his nightstand. He lets his hand hover over it for just a second. Lets himself consider taking out the envelope, unsealing it, reading whatever horrors, whatever cruelties lie inside. After the last time they spoke, an argument that never quite finished because Eddie ran away in its climax, his dad getting the final word in? Hi son, this is me officially disowning you, in case that wasn’t clear enough. Because you need my permission to be disowned. Because I’m not letting you disown yourself. Because I’m not letting you have the goddamn fucking last word, because you don’t deserve it, you [insert uncreative homophobic slur here].

Or, it could be worse. Hard to imagine worse, true, but it would indeed be worse if his dad wasn’t cruel at all. What if he was kind? What if he said something like I hate the way we parted and I hate the way I brought you up; you always deserved better and I’m sorry I didn’t give it to you. I hope you can someday forgive me.

That would almost certainly be worse.

So he leaves the envelope where it is, and goes out to the kitchen in his sweatpants, the whole place lit up in dawning orange light. There’s a saying about that, isn’t there? Shepherd’s warning, or whatever. His uncle’s snoring still on the pull-out, an arm thrown across his eyes against the light. (Crappy goddamn blinds.)

Eddie doesn’t want to disturb him, so he shrugs on Wayne’s fleeced jacket and goes out to the porch, shivering in the early morning chill. It’s a bright, beautiful morning. He squints in the sunlight and sits down on the steps, sucking in a great lungful of smoke and scanning the quiet trailer park. No one’s around yet. Too early for the respectable, and too late for the addicts who like to shoot up on the grass with regularity around four a.m.

Rick’s their supplier, Eddie knows, though he hasn’t yet presented Eddie and Tommy C. with anything harder than coke and acid. Tommy wouldn’t touch smack or meth if you paid him — cool kid with college aspirations? you’ve got to be joking — and Eddie supposes he doesn’t come across as desperate enough, not yet. And fuck no is he ever getting that desperate. Fuck no.

He sits up straighter when a car pulls in, a tired-looking Chevy Monza in a bleak matte gray. The woman who gets out is mid-sixties and has a keen look in her eye as she casts a glance over the trailer park as a whole, like she’s prospecting it. He’s trying to recall her name — he’s sure he knows her, if only vaguely — when she spots him and makes her way over, picking her way across the patchy wet grass, still damp from overnight’s rain. “Wayne Munson’s nephew, correct?” she says, and her tone sets his teeth on edge.

“Yep. That’s me.”

“You’re aware your rent is overdue.” Her voice is bored, nothing of a question in it. More like a veiled order.

“Uh, yeah, we’re gonna– just, car trouble, y’know, payday is–”

“I really don’t need to know the specifics. Just get the money in, all right? There are plenty other people who’d like your trailer pad spot, who can keep up with the rent.”

“Because this is such a desirable place to live,” Eddie mutters, digging his teeth into the inside of his cheek as she gives him a long, cold look. She sort of reminds him of Miss O’Donnell. “Is that why you’re here at six a.m., to collect late rents?”

She pinches her lips together. “No. I’m here to see what can be done to tidy the place up, ahead of the buyers’ viewing next week.” She looks over his trailer, and then back towards her car, over the grass. Eddie thinks he can see a discarded syringe. “You don’t happen to know anything about these addicts, do you? Wasn’t your father–”

“No,” Eddie says tightly. “I don’t know anything about that.”

She gives him a once-over and comes out of it looking like she’s decided there and then that his worth to her is approximately nil. “I suppose I should be grateful that your trailer’s fairly presentable. If you hear anything about these addicts or, even better, who’s supplying that crap to them, give me a call, will you? Maybe I’ll be slightly more forgiving on your rent.”

He looks at her. He could tell her right now, save everyone a lot of trouble. Send Rick to join his dad in prison. But she’s selling the park, so what good will a verbal agreement with its previous owner do? It’s empty words, nothing more than that. He stays silent.

She fishes in her handbag and produces a notebook, in which she writes a number and tears out the page, handing it to him. He takes it because it’s easier than not taking it, though really he wants to ball it up and throw it in her face. Then she turns and walks up towards the Carlsons’ RV, parked where it’s always parked, sleepy and squat in the early light. They’ve got a dog that shits all over, and they had a bonfire over the summer that burnt a black patch in the middle of the grass which still hasn’t faded. It’s gonna be tough as hell to clean this place up before next week.

“What did she want?” Wayne says when Eddie comes back in. He’s smoking at the counter while the coffee brews.

“Shouldn’t you still be asleep?” Wayne didn’t go to bed until something like four, not wanting to lose the rhythm of his night shifts. And he hasn’t got to do anything he goes to work this evening.

But he shrugs. “Gonna start lookin’ for a second job, ain’t I? I’m guessin’ that’s what she was talkin’ to you about. Money.”

Eddie bites his lip. “Yeah. Money.”

“See?” Wayne even manages to whistle a fucking tune, while he’s making the coffee and flicking ash from his cigarette — Johnny Cash, Eddie recognizes, Ring of Fire. “Not every day, y’know, but a little somethin’ just to tide us over.”

“I should go back to Thacher,” Eddie mumbles. “If I– if I just–”

“You’re gonna focus on school, is what you’re gonna do.” Wayne’s tone leaves no room for argument. “I ain’t havin’ you worryin’ about money when you should be thinkin’ about graduatin’. Absolutely not.”

Eddie opens his mouth and then cuts himself off with a sudden jolt of panic. “Oh, shit, school, fucking– fucking homework, I had math homework, how did I fucking forget again–” He dashes for his room and sifts through his stacks of papers, piles of homework he’s never handed in or never even started, mixed in with scraps of sketches and half-finished lyrics and notes for campaigns he doubts he’ll ever get around to running. The math homework isn’t here.

If it was English lit, then it would be fine. Just grab a new sheet of paper and write some bullshit about whatever novel they’re reading, that he probably hasn’t read, if he can get his brain to deem it important enough in the Hierarchy Of Things To Pay Attention To, alongside the Carlsons’ dog barking outside and the way his Judas Priest poster is beginning to fall down, that needs more tape, maybe he’ll just do that now–

And so an essay gets abandoned. But this time he can’t even abandon it, because he can’t start it because he’s lost the fucking worksheet and it’s due first period and he’s on thin ice with Mr. Connor as it is–

And his uncle’s expecting him to graduate. And he needs to graduate. And Wayne’s expecting him to graduate. And how the fuck is he going to do that if he can’t even keep track of a single piece of stupid paper–

There’s very little air in his lungs. Stupidly. Also stupidly, he does the thing where he forgets this is a thing that happens to him and he feels a lot like he’s about to die, gasping for breath on the floor in his room surrounded by fallen papers and records and books, palms sweating as he pins them between his knees. And how stupid it all feels, when he’s about to die. All the things he cares about, the guitar, the posters, the DnD miniatures — how trivial. Useless. All his theatrics, all his– when really he’s just– he’s just–

Just the junkie kid with the criminal dad, can’t afford rent, can’t get a job, can’t graduate high school. Can’t do anything except sit here on this floor and feel his own tears land damp on his t shirt. His mouth tastes like ash. Trapped. Fucking stuck. What’s even the–

the point–

Slowly, he starts to breathe again. Despite its suddenness, its surprise, he managed to hold onto his practice well enough, it seems, to keep quiet enough that Wayne hasn’t come running. Not that Wayne’s really the type. His uncle knows, moments like these, that sometimes he has to wait for Eddie to come to him. Sometimes being run to doesn’t help, because that then opens up all sorts of questions like why do I deserve someone running to help me why would they do that don’t they know that I’m– and so on. So best not to, really.

Once his hands have stopped shaking, he finds himself a pair of jeans and an Anvil t shirt. As he’s putting it on, he glimpses his reflection in the mirror and finds a pattern of bruises down his side, bruises he doesn’t remember receiving. Not that that’s new. His skin’s always taken any opportunity to mottle and bloom, purple and green a common sight edging underneath his clothes. It always frustrated his father; even a hand on his wrist would leave an array of blue fingertips, braceleting his bones. Still, his dad never really cared all that much what other people thought. Something Eddie supposes he’s inherited.

“You okay, kid?” Wayne says, when he comes back through. His uncle’s folded the sofa bed away, and he’s watching the news with a bowl of cereal in his hand.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, fumbling for another cigarette so he doesn’t have to meet Wayne’s eyes, but it turns out to be pointless anyway, because his uncle’s attention is soon captured again by the news: “...now, to go back to our top story this morning, the body of the missing Will Byers was discovered in Satler’s Quarry last night, by state trooper David O’Bannon. State police will be mounting an investigation into the cause of his death, but preliminary findings suggest there was no foul play involved. The coroner–”

“No foul play,” Wayne echoes. “That’s– shit, that’s a relief.”

“But the kid’s dead,” Eddie says quietly, something hollow and empty opening up inside him. He didn’t know the kid at all; he has no reason to be grieving. No real reason. But there’s something so inescapably bleak about it, about the death of a twelve year old, about Benny’s suicide, about–

His third cigarette constitutes breakfast, after that.

School is abuzz with nothing but the name Byers, as Eddie finds his way through the crowds to his locker and tries to think of an excuse for the math homework. Between the drama with the camera last night and Will’s body–

“We’re living in crazy times,” Janie says to him, when they’re walking to math together. No one sticks a leg out to trip them, or knocks into their shoulders as they might usually do — no one even spares them a glance, too embroiled in their hurried gossip about it all. Eddie thinks he’s heard the name Byers enough for a goddamn lifetime at this point.

“Crazy,” Eddie echoes, wondering if people are so distracted they wouldn’t notice him having another panic attack in Math.

They’re not that distracted, is the answer, though his panic doesn’t get all the way, just something tight and uncomfortable crawling up his throat as Mr. Connor stares down at him and asks where his homework is — “Sorry,” Eddie mutters, lacking the energy to make a show of it, as he usually would, and when he’s given detention that afternoon he accepts it almost meekly.

“What’s up with you?” Janie asks him, brows creasing in a frown as she leans over the desk. “You’re all– scattered, this morning.”

He thinks about the pinched face of the owner of the trailer park; of Tommy C.’s close, uncertain touch; of the body of the missing Will Byers. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

“You wanna skip History later and talk about it?”

He looks at her, shocked. She’s not usually one to advocate skipping classes, too brutally efficient — detention’s a bigger waste of time than the class would be, is her line — but there’s something in her eyes, her gaze heavy on him, like she thinks this is more important. Not a waste of her time. Which he doesn’t really know how to feel about, to be honest, doesn’t know how to feel about any of it, Wayne’s concern and Janie’s concern and even Gareth’s fucking mom’s concern– “I’m already slipping behind,” he mumbles. “Can’t keep cutting class if I’m gonna pass the year.”

She looks at him for another long moment, then withdraws back to her own desk, clicking the end of her pen. “You’d better start doing your homework, then,” and there’s something tight in her voice, cold, rejected. He didn’t mean it like that, throwing back the olive branch. He just meant–

She still accompanies him to his locker, though. She leans against them with her arms crossed, hair slung over her shoulder in a long dark braid, watching as he opens it and finds a folded note.

“Assholes,” she says, reading its text over his shoulder. It says FREAK on it, in large, deliberate handwriting. But when he turns it over, he finds written on its other side meet me fifth period, the woods, and Janie must see this too, because there’s a sharp intake of breath. “Who is that?”

“No one.” He crumples up the note and shoves it in his pocket, getting his History book out of his locker and trying to act nonchalant until she puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him back into the hard metal, eyes searching.

“Is this why you’re so freaked out? This guy you’re fucking?” She says it in an undertone but he’s tempted to shout it back to her: Yeah, it is about the guy I’m fucking, how about that, wouldn’t everybody like to know–!

“I’m not gonna tell you who he is,” Eddie says stubbornly. “So if that’s what you’re after, then–“

“If it’s one of those assholes on the basketball team, like goddamn– goddamn Tommy H. or someone–“

“Tommy H.? Why the fuck would it be Tommy H.?” Eddie asks, genuinely bewildered.

“Come on, Eddie, there’s no way that guy’s straight. Have you seen the way he looks at Harrington?” She shakes her head. He hadn’t even thought about that. “But if it’s not him–“

“I can’t tell you. He’d– he’d kill me,” he admits, quietly, and she looks at him for a long moment, her monolid eyes sharp and keen.

“Sounds like an asshole to me,” she says simply, and moves off down the hallway, leaving him to follow.

Despite Janie’s words, at lunch he goes to the spot in the woods and finds Tommy C. waiting with a joint already rolled and tucked behind his ear; as Eddie sits down, he offers it to him, and Eddie sticks it between his lips and lights it with a shaky inhale.

“Does that make up for it?” Tommy says, smiling at him. A loose, careless smile.

“Make up for what?” Eddie feels a degree of his jittery nerves decrease, with the blunting edge of the grass.

“Y’know,” Tommy says, a little uncomfortably, like he wasn’t expecting to have to explain himself. He sits sideways, stretching his long legs out on the bench. “It all.”

Eddie isn’t in the mood to be belligerent about it, so he just passes the joint over. “Careful. You show a knack for trading joints and the next thing you know you’ll be working for Rick.”

“Oh, yeah, because a criminal record’s definitely gonna get me into college.” A beat, where Tommy looks like he’s regretting saying that, because he says next, “I know it’s– complicated, and shit. With your dad. But I’d have thought that if Rick wanted someone, then you–” He stops.

Eddie looks at his hands, fiddling with his rings, instead of at Tommy. “Y’know someone nearly died in the trailer park a couple weeks ago? Drug overdose. Her friends, the other addicts, they wouldn’t let anyone call an ambulance for her, no insurance or anything and too scared of the cops, so Avni from across the way, this tiny little old woman, she used to be a nurse until they fired her for drinking — she sat with this woman through it all, cleaned her up, held her hand. Kept her alive. And Avni’s sober, now. Has been for years. It’s like– there’s this one image, of what we are, the trailer trash, drug addict scum of the earth who deserve what we get, and it’s just not–” He takes a deep breath. He doesn’t dare look at Tommy, to see what he thinks of all this. “Even the ones who are junkies, they’re junkies for a reason. And if I– if I start dealing I’m just doing what everyone thinks I’m doing, just like when they call me a fag but at least when I’m being a fag I’m not hurting anyone–”

Tommy starts coughing, choking on thick smoke, and when he’s caught his breath he looks at Eddie almost reproachfully. “I don’t think it’s worth overthinking,” he says, skirting the fag issue like the plague. “Dealing’s just something you do for extra cash, it doesn’t mean anything. Plus, it’s not gonna be heroin or anything like that, is it? Just a bit of weed, a bit of special K or molly. Harmless shit.”

Eddie looks at him suspiciously, like maybe Rick put him up to this. Pitching the job. But Tommy’s never been that devious, really, never that willing to buy into Rick’s schemes. So Eddie just takes the joint back and runs his finger over a crack in the damp table’s wood, tasting cold winter in the air. “Who said I didn’t want to go to college too?”

A silence. “Really? You never said.”

He doesn’t. The thought of a single further year of education, conformity, rules and discipline and homework– he’s never been one for all that, not really. Interested in dragons and guitar solos more than anything else. But for some reason it stings, the assumption.

Eddie takes his time going back for class, trying to let the cold breeze erase the smell of weed on his clothes, trying to let his faint high wear off. (He misses it when it goes.) Tommy kisses him goodbye, just briefly, and Eddie has to resist the urge to say What exactly are we doing here, Tommy? because he knows it’s not a question that would be well received.

In the hallway he passes Harrington, who looks strangely subdued, tired and sad and hungover, big circles under his eyes. No successful party after the game last night, then, or perhaps too successful? Should have been a good week for him, that party on Tuesday and the game on Wednesday. Eddie’d thought he’d be crowing his probable success with Nancy Wheeler from the rooftops, hungover or no, not keeping his eyes on the floor and barely responding as Tommy H. sneers by his shoulder.

(There’s definitely something in that, Eddie thinks now. The way Tommy H. looks at Harrington. Janie’s got a good eye.)

Four p.m. finds him in detention, scratching out equations as his mind wanders. He doesn’t find math that difficult, actually, all the practice with DnD coming in handy, it’s more a matter of tricking his eyes into looking at his paper long enough to write the answers down. None of which prevented Mr. Connor declaring him the least able mathematician I’ve ever had the displeasure of teaching in a moment of rage in front of the whole class last year — but you can count on Connor to go apeshit in an honest way, at least. He’s not sneaky like Miss O’Donnell. Eddie’s still sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop with her.

It’s Mrs. Argus running detention today, who’s more of a sarcastic-comments kind of teacher than a flip-their-shit kind of teacher or a cold-tricky-malice kind of teacher, so she’s easier to handle. She spends it sitting at the front reading the local newspaper, whose front page is taken up entirely by WILL BYERS: BODY FOUND IN QUARRY, alongside a disturbing shot of the quarry late at night surrounded by ambulances and cop cars. He’s squinting his eyes to read the text of the article, something like The body of missing boy, Will Byers, has been found in Satler’s Quarry. It was discovered at around seven p.m. last night, November 9th, by state trooper, David–

“Terrible business,” Mrs. Argus says, interrupting his reading. By her raised eyebrows, it’s clear the wandering of his attention has been noticed. “Poor boy.”

“Yeah,” he says, looking back down at his paper. He’s the only one in detention this afternoon.

After another twenty minutes of grinding out numbers and resisting the urge to get up, walk a circuit around the room, and light a smoke, she clears her throat and folds up her paper. “Alright, you can go. It’s too tragic a day to sit in detention.”

He doesn’t need telling twice. He shoves his stuff in his bag and goes, ducking through the hallways, eager to make his escape. As he’s passing the darkroom the door swings open and Byers comes out, followed by Wheeler of all people, and Eddie stops and stares at them for a moment, trying to make sense of the sight. Byers developing film again? On the day after he knows his brother’s dead? And Wheeler with him, after the whole illicit photos thing–?

“I, um– I’m sorry about your brother,” Eddie manages to say, and gets a distracted sort of frown in response.

“Yeah, thanks,” Byers mutters, as Wheeler tugs on his arm, barely looking at Eddie.

“Y’know, if there’s anything–”

“There’s not,” Wheeler cuts in, impatient and sharp, before she seems to remember herself and softens slightly, “thank you.”

Eddie lets them go, staring after them in the hallway until long after they’ve disappeared. What the fuck is going on in this town, honestly.

At eight, he drives Wayne over to the plant. It’s cold and dark outside and his uncle is weary ahead of his nightshift, silent as Eddie drives. He’s put on that Johnny Cash Greatest Hits cassette he got Wayne right back when he moved in, Folsom Prison Blues going along at low volume. It’s the only thing his uncle listens to, really, on his drive to and from work — Eddie could probably sing the whole album start to finish from memory, if he needed to. He can respect a bit of Johnny Cash.

At the gates to the plant Wayne sits up, frowning, like something’s off. There’s a cluster of people manning the security barrier, a big white van parked beside it, Hawkins Power and Light. Eddie rolls the window down as he approaches, and Wayne passes across his worker ID to show the group, all stern-looking people in suits and long coats.

“And who are you?” the lead guy asks, looking closely at Eddie. There’s something about this he doesn’t like.

“This here’s my nephew. He’s droppin’ me off; my car’s in the shop. That a problem?” Wayne’s tone brooks no argument, but the guy moves back to consult with his companions anyway.

Eddie takes the opportunity to look frowningly at his uncle: “What the hell is this? I didn’t know you worked in the goddamn Pentagon.”

“Neither did I, kid,” Wayne says grimly, as the guy comes back and waves them through. Eddie drives them into the parking lot, where there are more Hawkins Power and Light vans, a bunch of guys in white forensic suits walking into the building like it’s a crime scene. Thing is, they’re not even in Hawkins. Why would Hawkins Power and Light have anything to do with this plant? A town over?

“I don’t like this,” Eddie says, under his breath, because call him crazy but crazy shit is happening every direction he looks.

“You don’t gotta like it. I’ll see you in the mornin’, okay?”

“Okay.” Eddie watches his uncle get out of the van and head towards the entrance, mingling with the white suits until he’s lost from sight. Eddie doesn’t like this at all. But there’s nothing he can do, and this place — bright white floodlights and looming concrete towers under a dark, heavy sky — is giving him the creeps, so he drives back out as fast as he can. He’s driving along listening to Frankie’s Man, Johnny, tapping his fingers on the wheel to the beat, when he registers he’s running low on gas, so he pulls into the first gas station he sees, a Standard with only one other car by the pumps.

Something strange about gas stations at night in the middle of nowhere, actually, the long darkness stretching out from the painfully bright station lights. He fills the tank up and then goes in to pay, casting a spare glance at the other car, which is a sleek Oldsmobile 442. A pretty cool car, if you care about that sort of thing. Eddie doesn’t; but he began to recognize makes and models his summer working for Thacher.

The store is cold, almost colder than outside, like they’ve got the air conditioning going. A full cold breeze is wafting from the fridges, stocked with essentials like beer and milk. The presumed owner of the Oldsmobile is browsing said alcohol section, a bottle of Stoli already tucked under his arm. Eddie moves towards the counter and then jolts as the guy turns around, saying, “Hey, don’t I know you?”

No words are forthcoming. What can he say to that? What can he say to Lonnie Byers?

Because that’s who it is. Lonnie Byers. Older-looking, grayer, still with a sly look to his face. Shit. “Yeah, I do know you. You’re Bruce’s kid, right?”

Eddie can’t look at him. He stares beyond him, at the rows and rows of beer, Miller and Budweiser and Schlitz, as he answers without really hearing what he’s saying: “Yeah, I am. Eddie.”

“Eddie, damn. Look at you, all grown up.” Something contemptuous in it; he can feel Lonnie’s eyes moving over him, making note of his skinny arms, his long hair. “I heard you ran out on your dad.”

I heard you ran out on your family, Eddie thinks. I heard your son died. But he can’t say these things; he’s frozen, caught between fight and flight, remembering long cold nights waiting for Lonnie and Bruce to conduct their deals, hunched in the car fiddling with the radio getting a cuff on the ear when the rock station he’d found got too loud, watching them get drunk together watching Lonnie flirt with a blonde bartender despite the wife and kids at home– Lonnie saying shit like don’t want my kids to turn out queer, y’know, I try to be tough on them and his dad agreeing, his dad nodding fervently and saying you gotta be tough, it’s the only way–

“D’ya talk, kid?” There’s nothing fond or kind in the way he says kid. Nothing like the way Wayne says it.

“I thought you went to Indianapolis,” Eddie says finally, against the ringing in his ears, though he knows why Lonnie’s back. His face is hot. “Thought you– yeah, you left.”

“I did. Glad I did. But, well, my kid–” For the first time, Lonnie looks uncomfortable. He rubs the back of his neck with the hand that’s not holding the vodka. There’s some America song playing faint in the background, Inspector Mills. “Hell, you live in Hawkins, you probably know.”

Eddie does. He does know. He feels a little like shit, then, because sure Lonnie’s awful but Lonnie’s still the kid’s father, and the kid’s still dead. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m, um, sorry for your loss.”

Lonnie responds kind of like the way Jonathan did — a furtive glare, like he’s blaming Eddie for speaking what happened and trying to make it real. But he just says, “Yeah,” and looks closer at Eddie again. “Your dad, he still around? We lost touch after I moved.”

On some perverse level, maybe if Lonnie hadn’t moved then Bruce would never have gotten into the drug scene and wouldn’t be in prison right now. And Eddie would still have to contend with the threat of running into him in the store, in the street, in the gas station like this one. So maybe Eddie should be grateful. “No, he’s, uh, he’s in prison.”

“Shit,” Lonnie says, eyebrows climbing. “Goddamn pigs.”

“Goddamn pigs,” Eddie echoes, looking at his feet. “I’m gonna– I’m gonna go pay.”

He can’t get his heart rate to slow down. The clerk, a friendly-seeming woman of about forty, looks at him with a frown as he hands over a couple bills, her eyes careful as they meet his — “You okay, kid? He ain’t–” nodding subtly at Lonnie “–botherin’ you or nothin’?”

“No,” Eddie says, stung, resenting that he seems like he needs saving. He doesn’t. He shouldn’t. But the urge to flee is opening up wider inside him, like a cloying black well, and he’s never quite been able to shake that, not really. The aura of victimhood. He cloaked himself in it the moment he stole away from his dad’s apartment and turned up at Wayne’s in the soaking rain, the cloak now forever bonded to his skin. Please help me. I’ve got nowhere else to go.

He doesn’t say anything to Lonnie, who’s now buying cigarettes, as he leaves. He just jolts for his van and steps on the gas and arrives back at an empty trailer in the dark, the dark that feels dangerous and close, full of evils, so what he does is he drives over to Janie’s and knocks on her window like he hasn’t done since before the summer, and when she emerges she just looks at him wordlessly and seems to understand.

“I think my dad fucked me up, uh, irrevocably,” he says later, lying next to her on the roof of his van and staring up at the clouded, cold sky. “Like, through and through. Plus I think something’s wrong with this town.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she says, and he laughs.

Chapter Text

Eddie’s running on something like four hours of sleep when he goes to pick up his uncle the following morning. It’s a gray day, early, misery in the sky. He has to show his driver’s license at the gate to the plant. But at least there’s less commotion this morning, less white-suited scientists and people in vans he has a horrible feeling are deliberately mislabelled. “You sleep well, kid?” Wayne says, as he gets in, looking tired and out of it himself.

“Like shit,” Eddie returns, with a faint grin.

“Good, that’s good.” Wayne yawns, turning in his seat like he’s trying to make it more comfortable, and he’s asleep a moment later. Eddie envies that. He got to bed at something like two, and woke up with a nightmare at six on the dot, something dark and scary already receding from his mind. He turns the stereo way down and drives with more care than usual.

When he gets to school, he’s accosted immediately by Gareth, who’s twirling a drumstick around his fingers and wearing a shit-eating grin. “What d’ya say to practice, this weekend? I know we don’t have a bassist, but just you, me and Jeff would be–”

“I, um– maybe not this weekend, okay?” Eddie winces as the kid’s face falls. He wants to, is the thing. Jam on his guitar with them and forget about everything else. But Gareth and Jeff don’t know him, not like Janie does, don’t know anything about the spirals he falls into, the long late nights, the way sometimes he needs something loud to keep himself alive. And he owes Janie, for last night. Feels wrong to hang out without her. But Gareth’s looking at the floor, awkward and sullen, now, and Eddie feels a little bad so he adds, “Maybe another time, okay? When things are less– insane.”

Gareth just looks confused at that. Which, fair enough. He’s probably taking each tragic event as it comes, as abstract background noise in his otherwise ordinary life. He’s got no connection to any of it — neither does Eddie, really, but still. The cops and Benny’s Burgers and Lonnie. Maybe it’s unforgivably egotistical of him to feel involved, in some way, but it’s not like he wants to be, in whatever this is. He’s never wanted to be involved. Sort of why he ran away, to tell the truth. Oh, the official story’s the dislocated shoulder, the violent eyes, the slurs — but Eddie’s an idealist at his core, embarrassing as it might be to admit, clinging on to the hope that he can be something better than his father is, and he realized that night (cradling his shoulder, shot through with pain and humiliation and hatred) that he could never hope to make that happen if he stayed there.

A louder, defeated part of Eddie is convinced that he left it too late. Got dragged down into the muck anyway, despite all his leaving.

But Gareth doesn’t need to know that.

They’re heading the same direction, so they walk together for a while, and Eddie watches him out of the corner of his eye, seeing the kid scan each passing face — the girls in particular — and dropping his head after every disappointment, silent and sullen. “You’re looking for Wheeler, aren’t you?” Eddie says, after three minutes of this.

“That’s not what I–”

“Listen, kid, we’ve all had crushes on people we can’t have. Believe me.” He winces a little at the way he sounds about thirty-five, saying this, but it’s true — he’s no stranger to the horrors of unrequited lust. And even when it appears to be requited, it’s so goddamn murky and complicated. “Nothing to be ashamed of, right? Just a part of life, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Easy for you to say,” Gareth mumbles, head down. “Steve Harrington isn’t going to use your guts for a noose to hang you with.”

Eddie snorts. “Wanna bet?” He’s pretty sure Harrington would do worse than that to him, if he learned what Eddie’s been up to with Tommy C.

“Can I ask you a question?” Gareth says suddenly, stopping in an empty corner and turning to look at him closely.

“Uh, what kinda question?”

“About you and Janie. If that’s, like, okay.”

Eddie gets a sinking feeling in his gut. Yeah, he knows where this is going. Christ. “Yeah, okay, shoot.”

“There’s– rumors. About the two of you. And I just wondered– yeah, if you are together. Like people say. Because the people who don’t say that, they say–” and then Gareth’s voice breaks off, eyes nervous as they dart over Eddie’s face.

“I know what they say,” Eddie says, softly. “And I really don’t care, true or not true, any of it. It’s none of their business, is it? It’s no one’s business, no one’s but mine, right?”

Gareth looks at him for a moment. Eddie hasn’t exactly denied it, the allegation. Because it’s clear what Gareth was actually asking. But the complex cloud of emotions on his face doesn’t resolve itself into disgust, which is all Eddie can hope for, really, and after a moment he says, “Right.”

And then they walk on, falling into an easier conversation about The Dark Crystal, so much easier it’s like the earlier moment never even happened.

A hallway later they slow to a stop, having reached Gareth’s classroom, and Eddie grins. “Have fun in– whatever goddamn class this is, I guess.”

“I won’t,” Gareth returns, with a wry smile, and there’s something likable about the kid, Eddie can admit. Something easy to like.

The break between second and third period sees him in the smoking spot, resisting the urge to try smoking three cigarettes at once (these breaks are never long enough), and after a few minutes Janie rounds the corner, already pulling out her own pack. “You look like shit,” she says, without looking up from her cigarettes.

“So do you. Anyone would think we had a late night,” he says, and sees her grin. It’s a nice grin. Maybe in another life, it would have been Janie and him. Janie and Eddie. Jane and Edward, written all fancy on a marriage certificate. They go well together, in a way. Her all quiet and efficient and logical where he’s loud and frustrating and disorganized, benign theatrics to her cool ruthlessness. Opposites attract, so they say. Too bad he doesn’t swing that way; plus he’s never been sure what Janie likes, but he knows it isn’t him. “Gareth asked about us.”

“Oh, god, us. Will I ever live that down?”

“Nope. I left it open-ended, anyway, which is the nice way of saying I’m pretty sure he knows the truth, now.”

She looks at him finally, putting the cigarette between her lips. “Shit, Eddie, that’s– You could’ve lied. That’s brave.”

He scoffs. He’s not sure what it feels like, but he doesn’t think it feels brave. “It’s just what everyone says. I didn’t even confirm it, just didn’t deny it.”

“Still,” she says, something foreign in her face, strange. Almost– envious. And she confirms this suspicion with her follow-up: “Not everyone can do that.”

He looks at her. He’s had his suspicions, is the thing, pretty much ever since he was old enough to know what being different in that way really meant. They’ve been friends since third grade, when she arrived in Hawkins as the new girl who didn’t look like most everyone else, who loved The Hobbit just as much as he did and never came to class in a dress. They were inseparable, all through middle school, and remained that way when the people around them started to notice the opposite sex — guys watching girls in the hallways, girls giggling and talking about guys behind their notebooks. Eddie’s developing attractions were a private thing, something he knew instinctively he could share only with his own reflection and the tattered edition of Blueboy he’d found by some miracle on the sidewalk by the theater one time, which he kept carefully concealed inside a Deep Purple record sleeve under his mattress. (It’s something he’s never been able to shake, the feeling that someone out there in this shitty little town is the same as him, someone knew themselves and what they were doing well enough to know where to buy that sort of thing and brought it back here with them, like taking a walkman back to the dark ages. Even long after his father tore the magazine into fifty brightly-colored shreds.) And while he shared these attractions with Janie eventually, she never returned the favor, always one to keep herself to herself, private to the last. Still, he wonders.

“Thanks,” he settles on saying, after a longer silence. “It’s not– yeah. You know where it comes from. You know where I come from. I guess at some point you get tired of denying things that are true.”

She’s giving him a heavy look, but warm, a smile opening out on her lips as she starts to say something, but before she can get there she’s interrupted by someone else coming around the corner, tall and utterly uncharacteristically anxious — Tommy C. She goes silent and stiff.

“Eddie–” Tommy says, and there’s desperation in his voice. Eddie’s never heard him desperate before. “I need– need to talk to you–”

“See you in class,” Janie says to Eddie curtly, dropping her cigarette and giving Tommy a wide berth as she leaves. Eddie watches her helplessly, feeling something like what the fuck now–

“It’s my dad,” Tommy says in a rush. “He and Uncle Henry, they went hunting yesterday and they never came home, and Auntie Bev thought it was a drinking thing but they still weren’t home this morning and I have no fucking idea what to do–”

“Shit.” Eddie leans back against the wall, feeling the hard bricks against his back. He twitches his cigarette between his fingers. Why is Tommy coming to him, is his first question. Instead of all his friends, the ones with money and connections and–

Oh. Eddie knows why. Because Tommy spends all his time pretending, around them. Attempting to forget what he really is, which is the son of a small-town store owner who drinks too much and kills things for fun on the weekend — and with Eddie, he doesn’t have to pretend about that, because Eddie’s situation is far worse.

Maybe that’s the reason for all of this. For the stolen kisses, the fragile intimacy. Maybe Eddie makes him feel better about himself.

But today, his father is missing, so Eddie’s not gonna hold it against him. “Have you called the cops?”

“Auntie Bev did this morning, they’re gonna get back to us but they thought it was just another binger–”

Eddie winces. Tommy’s got this wild look in his eyes, manic, and he looks younger like this, less assured of himself, less tall. “What the hell are you doing in school, man, like–”

“I came to talk to you.”

Oh. Right. Something strange about that, something uncomfortable, the way the first time he’s being prioritized in this guy’s life it’s because the guy’s dad’s disappeared. But hey. “So, what do you want to do?”

“I want to go looking for him.” Tommy turns away, paces a small circle, comes back running his hand through his hair. “Come with me?”

Eddie presses his fingertips into his eyes, dizzy all of a sudden. He can’t just– he’s got English class next period. Miss O’Donnell hates him enough already. Plus he only slept four hours last night and he doesn’t want to be involved in any of this, whatever this is, it’s all dark and foreboding like the guys at the plant last night, like Lonnie’s cold eyes–

And yet. Tommy looking at him like that. How can he say no to that?

So he nods. “Yeah, uh– yeah. Okay. I’ll help you look for your dad.”

“Thanks.” Full of relief. Eddie follows him out of the school, follows him in his van down to Cornwallis and Kerley, where they were last seen, and wait, the cops in the woods looking for Will, the thing in the woods he hallucinated on Sunday–

Eddie doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like this at all.

But he parks up behind Tommy’s two-door Ford LTD, gets out, follows Tommy into the woods. What else can he do?

The woods are large and silent, trees stretching up above them, bare branches twisting and blocking out the light. Eddie shivers and digs his hands into his pockets, sparing a glance at Tommy, who’s walking with desperate purpose to his steps. “What are we looking for, exactly?” Eddie asks, skirting a fallen log and then half-jogging to catch up.

“Anything, I don’t know. A sign, evidence, or– like, if they’re injured, somewhere, caught in a bear trap or–” Tommy stops, going pale. If there’s anything in these woods, a guy trapped in a bear trap won’t have lasted the night. And the thought that they might be looking for bodies–

“Suppose it beats O’Donnell any day,” Eddie mutters, to no response. She’s probably busy devising some horrible punishment for him — he remembers last year she made him write lines, I must not disrupt the class, over and over and over again until his hand was sore, fingers numb. Still, it’s not so bad. Not worse than having your father go missing, though, again, Eddie would have a lot of complicated feelings in that case. He looks at Tommy again. “You told your mom?”

“Why would I tell my mom?” Tommy says, sounding genuinely confused. “It doesn’t have anything to do with her. Plus it’s not like there’s anything she can do, not from Boston.”

It’s almost funny, actually, the way Eddie’s life is just a worse off copy of Tommy’s, shit in the same places, sure, but still overall worse. Tommy’s dad drinks, but he’s not in prison. Tommy’s dad is homophobic, but he doesn’t know about Tommy. Tommy’s mom isn’t in the picture, but he still knows where she is. Is that what Eddie is to him? A reminder that things could be worse?

They lapse into silence again, Eddie regretting that he came. Every rustle in the leaves has him on edge, every twitch of the branches above him. After a while of this, Tommy turns to him and snaps, “If this is freaking you out so much, why don’t you just go home?”

Eddie bites down on the inside of his cheek, hard enough to taste blood. How can he explain the feeling of foreboding, pressing down on him with the weight of stone? The way he knows something’s wrong? “No, it’s fine.” They continue walking for a moment, then, “I just– what do we think happened to them, exactly? To your dad and your uncle. Because we’re just– following them. To where they went, and didn’t come back from.”

Tommy turns on him, grabbing him by the collar and pushing him hard against a tree. They don’t say anything for a moment, Eddie pinned there with Tommy’s hand so close to his throat, Tommy’s thumb digging into the skin above his collarbone, eyes wide and locked on each other, breathing into each other’s space — “I said,” Tommy grits out, “if you don’t wanna be here, then fuck off. I can do it alone.”

Eddie’s not actually sure whether he’s turned on or not. His heart is pounding frantically in his chest and he doesn’t like the way Tommy’s looking at him, all darkened eyes full of a desperation that doesn’t really see Eddie, he’s looking at Eddie without seeing him and it makes Eddie prickle with discomfort, even as he knows that someone truly seeing him would be just as scary. Maybe scarier.

Tommy’s eyes flit over his face, searching for something. He’s pressed himself flush against Eddie, trapping him there against the tree, fist tight around the collar of his jacket. You’re gonna stretch it, Eddie wants to say. You’re gonna tear it up. But he doesn’t say this.

He says, “I want to be here. I want to help. I just– think we should be careful about it, y’know?” His voice trembles a little, and he winces involuntarily. He doesn’t like this, he’s decided, but there’s nothing he can do. Tommy is strong, taller than him, something like six foot two (making him the tallest on the basketball team) and Eddie hasn’t done any exercise since his last dislocated shoulder disqualified him from gym a month ago. So he doesn’t bother to struggle. Just lets himself be held there, waiting, eyes locked on Tommy’s as Tommy takes a deep breath and then lets go.

“Shit,” Tommy says, moving a few paces away and running a hand through his hair. “Shit, sorry, I just–” He looks like he’s losing control. Like things are slipping out of his control. Welcome to the club, Eddie thinks. “That wasn’t– yeah. I know you want to help. Sorry.”

“Give a man a warning next time, okay?” Eddie pushes off the tree and picks crumbling pieces of bark out of his hair. “Let him know if you’re planning on kissing him or killing him. Just so he knows what to expect.”

Tommy doesn’t laugh. Good. It wasn’t a joke. Eddie moves to light a cigarette and finds that his fingers are shaking too badly to hold it; he drops it somewhere in the leaves and can’t bring himself to move to pick it up, not wanting Tommy to see how badly he’s affected him, how he feels weak at the knees and not in a good way, this time, not at all. He wishes he was in Miss O’Donnell’s goddamn English class.

He walks off deeper into the woods, hearing Tommy’s footsteps behind him but not turning to look. They walk for at least another hour in silence, in what Eddie slightly suspects is a circle, until they’re nearing the road again and his stomach growls and he realizes it’s past lunchtime and he didn’t eat any breakfast just as Tommy says, with the offer of peace in his eyes, “Lunch?”

Eddie nods without really looking at him. They wind up getting burgers at the other burger place in town, the place not owned by a guy who killed himself a few days ago, and eat them quickly, the functionality of it all — rather than enjoyment in each other’s company — plain.

“I’m sorry,” Tommy tries. “About– earlier. I’m just worried, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, looking at his burger instead of at Tommy. He’s found that people rarely mean it when they apologize to him. “I’m sure he’s, um, fine. Your dad. I’m sure it’s just–“

“Are you?” Tommy returns, and when Eddie looks up he’s got his eyebrows raised.

“No,” Eddie says, maybe surprising himself. Something about how the conviction that everything will be just fine is for other people, people who don’t live in trailer parks and get asked to spy on their drug dealing friends to pay rent. “I thought I’d say it anyway, y’know, to be nice.”

“You’re not nice,” Tommy says, half a jest in it, but Eddie looks down at his hands and feels something cold move through him. Is he not nice? Is that true? Eddie’s not sure he tries to be nice; equally, he tries never to be cruel, and doesn’t that count for something? “But thanks. For coming with me.”

“Yeah,” Eddie mumbles, pushing his burger away. He’s not really hungry anymore.

They park up closer to town this time, since they started closer to Lover’s Lake. Eddie takes a minute in his van, wondering what ridiculous selfless streak (or self-sabotaging, probably) has led him here, and how much farther it will lead him still. He hasn’t bothered with a cassette this time, too distracted and frazzled and tired, so it’s some Spandau Ballet song playing at low volume. To cut a long story short, I lost my mind. Well, that’s fitting, he guesses. Even if it is fucking new wave.

He’s walking over towards Tommy, who’s leaning against the hood of his car with a cigarette in his mouth, when he hears another engine on the road behind him and turns to see Steve Harrington’s goddamn BMW slowing to a crawl as it passes them. Well, shit.

The passenger window winds down and Tommy H. pokes his head out, a wry, cruel smirk edging its way onto his face — “What’re you doing hanging out with the freak, Coe? Creepy little cult session in the woods?”

Tommy C. doesn’t even miss a beat. “Car trouble.”

Eddie feels his skin prickle with something uncomfortable at that, but he doubles down. Why not. “School’s resident mechanic. At your service,” with a mock doffed cap and all, really ham it up and they don’t know what to do with you, he’s learned.

Tommy H. rolls his eyes. Beyond him, Harrington’s in the driver’s seat, recognizable by the silhouette of his infamous hair. Bored-looking. “Suppose he’s got some use, then,” Tommy H. says, sounding annoyed that Tommy C. had a legitimate excuse. Which, are we just ignoring the real legitimate excuse he could give? What the fuck? “You going to Trish’s thing later?”

For the first time, Tommy C. looks wrongfooted. He glances at Eddie and then at his cigarette, held loosely between his fingers. “I don’t–”

Say it, Eddie thinks. C’mon, say it. I fucking dare you. Drop the act for one goddamn minute.

But Tommy C. doesn’t say it. He shrugs. “I think I have a family thing, actually, dinner with my aunt or whatever.”

“Your loss. Careful with this one, alright?” Tommy H.’s eyes are heavy on Eddie — Eddie stares back unflinchingly. “Make sure he puts everything back in the right place. Just because his brain’s wired wrong, doesn’t mean your car should be too.”

“Can we go already?” Harrington says from the driver’s seat, and Tommy H. flips him off and then waves goodbye to Tommy C., mouthing freak at Eddie with a crazed expression as Harrington drives them off. Then they’re left alone on the side of the road again, a cold breeze tugging at their hair.

Eddie should’ve expected it, really. Doesn’t Harrington live around here? When he looks back at Tommy C., he’s sort of hunched in on himself, arm braced over his middle like he’s holding his guts in. “Come on,” Tommy says, walking out into the woods without an answer, and Eddie whispers fuck under his breath and then follows him.

“Are you gonna tell me what the fuck that was about?” he says, hurrying to catch up with Tommy’s rapid, uncompromising stride. Long fucking legs.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, acting like everything was fine back there! Supposedly, those assholes are your friends. Care to explain why you just happened to omit the part about your dad and your uncle going missing?”

A silence. Tommy stops walking, finally, which is good, because they’re never going to spot anything they’re looking for at that pace. “They wouldn’t get it,” he admits, finally, looking at Eddie, and Eddie looks back at him with something sort of angry rising in his chest.

“And I would.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. You do get it! Like I knew you would! And that’s not– I needed someone who would get it. Obviously. They’ll– everyone will find out soon enough, if we can’t find them today.”

Eddie scoffs and turns away, dragging a hand over his face. Shit. What the fuck has he gotten himself into? “I really was just trying to be nice, y’know. When I said I’m sure he’s fine. Because it’s, uh, highly likely that he’s not.”

“What–”

“But you don’t know that, do you? Whatever you say. You’re still clinging to the fantasy that you can be like them, like Tommy H. and Carol and fucking Harrington, that– that if you don’t mention it, then it hasn’t happened, and we’ll just find them wandering in the goddamn woods and everything will be just fine and you can go to Trish’s stupid party or whatever–”

“That’s enough,” Tommy says, voice tight, furious, but Eddie’s on a roll now.

“But that’s not how it works. Not in the real world, and they don’t live in the real world, sure, but we do. We fucking do. Shit like this — it doesn’t happen to people like them. It happens to people like us.”

“People like us,” Tommy echoes, and he’s gone cold and quiet and really that’s not a good sign at all. When Eddie risks a glance at him, he’s not looking at him. He’s looking at the carpet of leaves, fists clenched by his sides. Something like a sneer in his face. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Eddie laughs humorlessly. “Take your pick. You’re in denial about absolutely all of it, so, yeah. Take your pick.”

He’s expecting it when Tommy lunges for him, shoving him back into the nearest tree with a hissed, “Watch your goddamn mouth, freak.”

And Eddie laughs and says, “See? Denial,” and then he’s not expecting what Tommy does next, which is lean in and kiss him furiously and sloppily, desperately like he’s trying to prove something but what the fuck is he trying to prove? That he’s messed up in the head? That his brain’s wired wrong? Because he’s succeeding. Showing Eddie he is indeed people like us.

Eddie pushes him away, and Tommy lets him, but something about the angle’s wrong and Eddie tries to use too much force and his shoulder pops out.

This is something he’s very familiar with, objectively, but all the familiarity of memory can’t prepare him for the subjective experience of pain as it happens, shooting down his arm and his spine, sending him to his knees on the forest floor as he lets out a yell — “Fuck, oh fuck,” he hisses through his teeth, tears springing to his eyes as Tommy backs away and stares at him with something like fear.

“Shit, are you–”

The pain brings with it clarity, however, a clarity that cuts through the fog of tiredness and the weird neediness he feels when Tommy C.’s around, a clarity that lets him look up at Tommy and say very clearly, “Please fuck off.”

“What? But you–”

“You’re a fucking asshole and really I want nothing to do with you, so just– just go.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tommy says. “For the record, I’m nothing like you.”

“Good, then we’re both agreed.”

Eddie waits until Tommy’s footsteps have receded out of earshot before he allows himself to hunch over and cry, pain and frustration alike making his throat sting, because how many months has he wasted on this? How many sleepless fucking nights? When Tommy C.’s trying so hard to be something he’s not. When this is how it ends up.

“Oh my god,” someone’s saying behind him, a girl, who the fuck is that? He lifts his head, vision blurry, and vaguely recognizes Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers. Because of course, he can’t just be left alone for an hour or two. Of course not. “Are you okay? We heard a yell–”

Eddie’s in too much pain to be anything other than honest. He pulls himself up into a sitting position, leaning back against the tree, and says through gritted teeth, “Dislocated my fucking shoulder, fuck.”

“Okay, shit, we should take you to the hospital–”

Eddie shakes his head, closing his eyes. “Not necessary,” he says, with a grimace, laying his other hand on his upper arm and pushing until–

He feels the joint slide back into place; he feels a burst of pain a second later, like his brain’s only now catching up with his body.

“Fuck,” he hisses, another bastard tear slipping down his cheek. “There we go.”

“Holy shit,” Byers lets out above him, almost like he’s impressed, not that dislocating your shoulder every couple of months is a very impressive feat. He supposes he should be grateful it’s usually the shoulders; he’s heard kneecaps are far worse. He cradles his arm across his chest and leans his head back against the bark, exhaling through his nose.

“Look, I’m not sure why you kids are out here, but I’m sure it’s not to watch some guy pop his shoulder back in, so. Why don’t you run along, okay?”

Both of them frown at him, likely annoyed that he’s calling them kids, but hey. They’re sophomores, probably only fifteen, and while he definitely does not have his shit together right now he can admit very clearly that he was a kid at fifteen. Still is a kid, probably. “I still think you should go to a hospital,” Wheeler says, crossing her arms over her chest, stubborn. The action calls attention to her hands, and what she’s holding, and what she’s holding is–

“Is that a fucking gun?” Eddie says, forgetting to be nervous about it because it’s tiny Nancy Wheeler, cul-de-sac Nancy Wheeler, Harrington’s pretty girlfriend and all-around good girl, by all accounts–

Byers is holding a baseball bat. Huh. Okay. What the fuck?

“No,” Wheeler says reflexively, pushing the revolver under her arm out of view. Eddie just raises his eyebrows at her and she relents, flushing a little. “Yes, okay, it’s a gun. We’re–” She exchanges a look with Byers, who’s sullen and silent. No help forthcoming. “Look, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing. If you mind your business, we’ll mind ours.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You were out here with Tommy C. I don’t know what you were doing, like, drug dealing or whatever–”

Eddie laughs. People really love to assume that, don’t they? “Listen, Wheeler, whatever you’re involved in, I want no part in it. So I’ll take that deal.”

“And the hospital–”

“No insurance,” he says, getting stiffly to his feet. His gaze catches on Byers’, and there’s something like recognition in his eyes, like he gets it in a way that Wheeler never can, which makes sense. He wonders if Byers knew Bruce Munson the way Eddie knew Lonnie.

And thinks idly, as he’s walking away, minding his own business, that a combination like Wheeler and Byers is not going to work for long. It never does.

Chapter Text

The shoulder’s not so bad as it’s been in the past, but he knows from experience he can’t just ignore it. He swings home and doses up on Tylenol, digging out the sling he used last time, ruing the awkwardness of it and willing his joints to just work normally for once, is that so hard?

Wayne’s sitting at the table, which is covered in bills and other paperwork, a calculator before him and one hand pressed permanently to the lines at his temples. Eddie doesn’t even want to ask, really, not after the day he’s had, so instead he looks at the television, which is playing the news at a low volume. He moves closer to hear it: “...latest misfortune to befall the town, the disappearance of Henry Mooney and Dale Coe while hunting yesterday afternoon–”

Eddie turns it off. His uncle grunts, not looking up from the paperwork. “You did your shoulder again, kid?”

“Yeah. It did the thing it does, apparently, just went like that.” Eddie snaps his fingers to emphasize the point.

Wayne looks up, and there’s something heavy and tired and worried in his face. Brow pulled down low. “I’d take you to a doctor, but–”

“Doctor? Me? I’m fit as a fiddle, Uncle, you wound me.” He mimes being stabbed in the heart with the arm that isn’t in a sling, and Wayne rolls his eyes. His uncle gets a health plan with the plant — not a great one, but insurance nonetheless — but Eddie’s only been a legal dependent for a few months now, legally adopted when his dad went to prison, and he has a nasty feeling some of the paperwork got lost on the way. So — a homemade sling and Tylenol it is.

There’s an ashtray on the table next to Wayne; it’s overflowing. Shit.

“What’s going on?” Eddie asks, finally, because he knows he has to.

“We’re overdue on more shit than I realized. The car’s really, uh, puttin’ us in a tight spot. I’ll work it out, but…”

He feels a faint rise of nausea. His uncle rarely gets worried like this; when he does, it’s bad. And if they’re selling the trailer park, new owners, running a tight ship, less forgiving– and Eddie can’t get a job because of his goddamn father–

“You’re gonna focus on school, you hear me? Like I told you, this is somethin’ for me to be worryin’ about. Not you.” Wayne looks down at his watch then, frowning. “Hey, ain’t it a little early for you? Shouldn’t you still be–”

“Shoulder,” Eddie says, which covers a multitude of sins, always has. He dislikes lying to his uncle, really, but it comes strangely naturally. Automatic, almost, like a long-worn pair of shoes. Honesty hasn’t been broken in yet. “I’m gonna– I said I’d go and see Janie. I’ll be back at eight to take you to work, okay?”

“Okay,” Wayne says, returning his eyes to the stack of bills, and Eddie leaves with a queasy feeling of responsibility in his gut, like he needs to do something about this. This, the latest in a long line of what’s going on in my life? moments, increasingly frequent as of late. Maybe it’s something in the air.

He does indeed drive over to Janie’s, though the planned visit was a lie. He wants to see her, suddenly, all the shit with Tommy C. swirling around inside him and now that it’s over he can tell her, right? Tell her the whole of it, get it off his chest?

He has to take the sling off to drive, which maybe he should have thought through, but his uncle’s got no car and he has to drive at some point so why not grit his teeth and go for it now, the fierce ache lighting up each time he turns the wheel. The worst part isn’t the pain, actually, it’s the way the pain reminds him of Tommy C.’s sharp eyes and the way Eddie was just being used, the whole time, just a way for Tommy C. to reconcile the fiction of his life with the fiction he was maintaining on the inside, a way to outsource the way he hates himself.

Fucking asshole.

Janie doesn’t live that far away, this little house on the outskirts of the north of town, rundown and cheap and hardly a suburban ideal. Eddie pulls up and tugs the sling back over his head, unable to restrain a hiss of pain as he adjusts his shoulder, and is this going to be his life forever, he’s thought in the past and is thinking now — a series of injuries more annoying than dangerous, just a parade of inconveniences and sharp, distracting pains until the day he dies? Really?

It’s not Janie who opens the door, but Alice, her mom. Alice has long black hair tugged up out of her face and a slight accent; she looks at Eddie searchingly for a moment before turning and calling into the house, “Janie, your boyfriend is here!”

Janie appears in the hallway behind her, eyes narrowed and still wearing her jacket, like she only just got home from school. “Not my boyfriend, mom.”

Alice ignores her. “Living room only. I won’t have any– activity in the house.”

“Activity? Gross,” Janie protests, as Eddie only barely restrains his laugh. “Mom, can you–”

Alice looks between them, eyes narrowed. “If this means you won’t call your father tonight, then good. All your international calls, they’re costing me such a ridiculous amount and I don’t see why you have to talk to him so much when he left us–”

“Because he goddamn cares,” Janie shoots back, but clearly this is a familiar argument, because Alice just raises her hands in surrender and walks back into the house. She’s skinny, tall and willowy to Janie’s short, strong frame. “Listen, this isn’t such a good time. I really do have to call my dad.”

Eddie looks at her helplessly. “Can I just– shit, can I just drink tea on your couch for a bit?”

A moment. Then she nods, beckoning him in with a jerk of her head. Shoes off at the door like always. Then he leans against the counter in the kitchen as she prepares a teapot of oolong — her mother’s concession to where she came from, Janie’s told him in the past, though she’s discarded just about everything else, too furious with her husband’s return to China to keep it. Janie’s boombox is playing quietly, House of Salome by Kim Wilde, from the cassette Eddie bought her for her birthday last week. Strange, really. Janie doesn’t cultivate an image that would suggest she likes Kim Wilde. But then again, images can be deceiving, and Eddie knows that all too well. No point in pretending to be something you’re not.

“What happened to your arm?” she asks, as she hands him his mug.

“The usual.” It hurts to shrug, like a bitch. He takes a sip and burns his tongue. “What time is it in China? Isn’t it, like, stupidly early?”

“Like, four a.m. But he gets up early for work; it’s the best time.” She says it easily, eyes defiant, like she’s used to arguing about it. Maybe with her mother. Eddie doesn’t have the energy. He just nods, and lets her lead him over to the couch, which he’s always found wonderfully comfortable (lacking a decent couch in the trailer, really, most of the space needed for Wayne’s sofa bed) and pulls his legs up underneath him, leaning back and letting some of the tension in his muscles relax. “What happened?” he hears her ask, while his eyes are closed, and he shakes his head.

“You were right,” he says. “The guy’s an asshole.”

She snorts. “Yeah, no shit. They all are.”

He opens his eyes, traces the lines of her features. She’s got a soft, pretty profile, full cheeks to go with her clever eyes. “Wouldn’t it be so much easier, if it was just the two of us? Y’know, living a normal life. Married. Growing old, and shit. Working stupid jobs and– and dancing to Kim Wilde in the kitchen.”

“You hate Kim Wilde,” she says, voice uncharacteristically soft, strangely soft, actually, and that’s that.

She leaves him on the couch as she goes over to the phone, and he lets his eyes drift closed again as she talks to her dad in a mixture of Mandarin and English and something in between. “Mom’s doing fine,” she says at one point, which makes him feel all weird inside to hear, really, because didn’t the guy abandon them? Didn’t he move all the way back across the world? And he’s asking how his ex wife is?

The thought is an abstract one, his last before he drifts into a short, fitful sleep, where he dreams that the trailer’s being taken away and they’re locking Wayne in prison too, right alongside his dad, Callahan laughing snidely only Callahan isn’t Callahan, he’s Tommy C., hand tugging at Eddie’s belt as he says something like shoulda sold me a half-ounce, (not Tommy C. now, Jack instead) maybe then you could afford a lawyer–

He jolts awake with a sick, ugly feeling of regret in his chest, though he hasn’t done anything to regret (or failed to do anything that might save them) yet, the trailer still theirs, Wayne not in prison and everything still fixable, right now, stuff he can just click back into place like his shoulder joint–

“Are you okay?” Janie asks seriously, coming over to sit beside him. It seems she finished her phone call a while ago; it’s nearly pitch dark outside, he sees through the window. “Is it your dad? Is it–”

“It’s everything,” he says, scrubbing his hands over his face. His talkative mood, the desperation to sort things through and explain them to her, has dissolved. Maybe because what his dream showed him he has to do isn’t something she’s going to condone, and he can’t face judgment, not now. He needs a friendly ear. Someone who’ll tell him what he wants to hear. “I gotta– I gotta go. Sorry.”

“Eddie–”

“Thanks for the tea,” he says, and then he bolts. Which he’s rather good at, he’s noticed. A particular skill of his. He gets in the van and drives south, back through the center of Hawkins and out the other side, and then he gets to Cornwallis (dark and cold and threatening, now, the trees looming up) and has to pull over, breathing hard, dropping his forehead against the wheel. What is he doing? Really? Going to see his fucking drug dealer for a job? What is that going to solve, really? Just get him in more debt to Rick, more trouble. Trouble like his dad.

There’s a loose link in the chain on his jeans, he notices, as he looks down at his lap. He tugs at it impatiently, trying to bend the metal back into shape by prying at it with his nails, and succeeds only in tearing the skin open on the side of his thumb.

“Fuck,” he lets out, bringing it up to suck on it. It fucking hurts. Blood gathers in the corner of his thumbnail and he tastes it, coppery in his mouth. Today’s just not a good day, huh?

He first met Rick when he was fifteen, giving up on his year of attempted sobriety after he ran away (I want nothing to do with my dad turning into this fucking sucks and I need a way to deal with that), following a rumor and expecting some greasy teenager in his mom’s basement, not Rick’s sharp, clever operation out by the lake. Not a guy who looks like someone’s dad. Reefer Rick? he thought. Really? But Reefer Rick he was; and the only reason Eddie was let in, hovering on Rick’s doorstep with his shoulders hunched and his still-short hair stuffed under a baseball cap, all unruly curls he’d never seen before and didn’t know what to do with (The buzzcut makes you anonymous, his father saying, you want the cops to remember you? Or worse, catch you because they could grab your hair?), was because he introduced himself completely, first and last name.

“Munson’s kid, huh. Wondered what happened to you.”

And Eddie looked at the floor (his confidence taking longer to grow out than his hair) and said quietly, “Please don’t tell him I’m here.”

Rick had laughed, and waved him in, and offered him a joint: “That’s a direct competitor of mine now, kid, only reason I’d talk to him is to tell him to beat it.”

9 to 5 by Dolly Parton was playing on the radio in Rick’s kitchen, Eddie remembers that distinctly. Remembers admiring the organization of the place, the way the evidence of the business was present but tidy, discreet, save a stray line of coke on the counter that Rick snorted up as he watched, with a crisp fifty dollar bill, the kind of bill Eddie hadn’t seen for nearly a year — “Don’t usually indulge in my own shit,” Rick said, “but, hey. What’s the point in it without a few perks?”

He didn’t charge Eddie for a while, actually. Strangely. Always let him crash, when the feeling of safety at the trailer felt too safe, too strange, and he wanted some place he could be jumpy without making someone worry about him. The summer he got his job at Thacher’s, he spent his earnings on a guitar and weed.

Maybe this is what all that was leading up to. All Rick’s perceived kindnesses in the beginning, his charity, just waiting to turn his rival’s son into an employee, into something just like his father only–

Only, what? What’s the difference, really? Eddie never knew his grandfather, but he finds it unlikely that his father was treated well. No doubt Bruce Munson felt the same resolve, once: I will not be like my dad. And where did it get him?

But there’s nothing they can do about that resolve and its inevitabilities, not really. The way Tommy C. used what he was to convince himself it was what he wasn’t — the way he toys with his identity to protect himself from it, and will fail in the end, Eddie knows. They all fail to deny what they are. And what is Eddie, if not a scrawny teenager in a trailer park where dope’s as common as blades of grass, strapped for cash with nowhere to turn except back to where he started, back to where his life’s been heading all along. Back to Rick’s to ask for a job.

He lifts his head, looking out at the darkened road ahead, the woods along either side. There’s something close, daunting about them. As he shivers and moves to put the van in gear, wincing as he shifts his shoulder (gotta stop driving after this shit, really, he has to stop)–

He sees something.

Something big, moving in the trees. In the dark. The trees moving, even, like the thing’s so big and so fast it’s felling each branch in its path, unstoppable, moving, moving and coming towards the road coming towards Eddie but wait there’s people in front of it, running too, bolting desperate running for their lives and the thing it’s on the road it’s tall it’s huge sinewy white no face no face no fucking face–

He puts his foot down.

The van jerks forward — might be a piece of shit but hell if she can’t accelerate — and slams into the creature. There’s a crunch and a shriek, a shriek so loud and unearthly Eddie would reach up to cover his ears, if his hands weren’t clenched so tightly on the wheel that they’re numb. And then he blinks and it’s gone, the creature’s gone, the big sinuous white thing that shone up yellow in his headlights only a second ago–

“Holy fuck,” he whispers, taking his hands off the wheel. They’re shaking. “Holy fuck, holy–”

Someone opens the passenger door, eyes wild and serious and determined, oh, that’s Jonathan Byers, that’s– is that why he was– “We need to get out of here,” he says, tone leaving no room for argument. Behind him is Wheeler, who looks different now, actually, almost bedraggled, hair dark and dirty and plastered to her face. She looks frantic and distant. Almost hysterical, and fuck, Eddie doesn’t blame her. Byers pushes Wheeler into the backseat and then says, “If you can’t drive then I can, but we need to go.”

Eddie’s gone beyond the range of a panic attack; he thinks his brain is floating somewhere near the moon. But when he puts his hands back on the wheel, they seem to know what to do. And then they’re driving off down the right side of the road and Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell is playing like– like nothing ever happened, like Eddie didn’t just hit a monster without a face with his car–

“My house,” Wheeler’s saying shakily from the back. When Eddie looks at her in the rearview, she’s running a hand over a damp, sticky strand over hair glued to her cheek, and that hand is visibly trembling. “My house is– is best.”

Byers doesn’t argue. “Further away. Yeah.”

Then Wheeler looks up, stricken. “But your mom, oh my god, that thing is out there and she’s–”

“I don’t think it will come after her in the house. Last time, it was after Will. And also, Lonnie’s there, so. I’m sure she’ll be fine.” Said quietly, bitterly, and wow. Boys and their fathers. Not that Eddie could get a word out to comment on this new irony; his tongue feels frozen to the roof of his mouth. “My car, though, shit, I need my car–”

“Take us further up Cornwallis, to Furling Way.” Wheeler’s voice is coming through stronger, like she’s rallying, which, good for her but Eddie is not. “We can just drive back to my place together, Jonathan, and then tomorrow–”

“Okay, what the fuck,” Eddie manages finally, and his voice comes out all scratchy and feeble, a great rush of panicky breath. “What is– that thing had– it had no face and like what do I– I hit it, God, what does that even– and how do you– shit, oh, shit–”

“Jonathan…” Wheeler’s saying, warningly, and Byers turns sharply to Eddie and says, “Pull over,” and Eddie just numbly obeys. Then he opens the door and gets out on weak knees, sinks to the ground, maybe pukes. He doesn’t know. He does know that when he looks up it’s only Byers there, watching him warily, lit gold by the headlights in the dark. Wheeler’s nowhere to be seen, though he thinks he can hear her crying somewhere. Maybe not rallying, then.

“Have I completely lost my mind?” Eddie manages to say, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The asphalt is freezing beneath him.

Byers laughs humorlessly. “Weird how we seem to be asking ourselves that a lot these days.”

“But that thing, it wasn’t–” Then something dawns on him, something sick and vertigo-inducing. “Shit, I saw it before.”

“What?” Byers sharpens, staring at him.

“I saw it– on Sunday, late, I was– I was tripping, or I guess I thought I was tripping, I didn’t think it was real.”

“Did you– did you see my brother? Sunday night?”

“Your brother? What’s–”

“It took him. The monster.” Byers turns, dragging a hand through his hair, aiming a loose kick at the tires. “I don’t know what to–”

“We need to go,” Wheeler says, emerging around the hood of the van, tear stains evident in the tracks of grime on her cheeks. “The woods, we can’t just– it’s going to come back.” She looks at Eddie, at his hands, eyes lingering on the trail of blood on his thumb. Then back at Byers. “We’re close to your car, right? Steve’s isn’t far away from here.”

Steve’s? Is goddamn Harrington involved in this? Eddie stares at her. “Whoa, no, what the fuck, you can’t just– I want to know what the fuck’s going on.”

But Byers shakes his head, voice quiet. “No, you really don’t. Just trust me, okay? You’re not involved, and you don’t want to be, so just go home. Really.”

They stare at each other, the three of them, in the dark. With the woods large behind them. Fuck, what the fuck, maybe he’s still asleep on Janie’s couch and he’ll wake up with this all some horrible dream–

The thing is, he’s not the sort of person who gets involved. He’s not the sort of person who runs towards danger, instead of away from it, and he tried to help today, with Tommy C., and where did that get him, exactly?

And he has to take his uncle to work at eight. And that’s not something that goes away, when you meet a monster in the woods. That’s not something you can get around, the same way you can’t get around the bills on the fridge or the FOR SALE notice by the trailer park gate. No matter what happens. Shit like this — it doesn’t happen to people like them. It happens to people like us. But for once, it hasn’t happened to Eddie. It’s happened to someone else. Who is he to tempt the universe into realizing its error?

So he nods, shortly, and somehow finds the strength to get to his feet. “Good luck,” he says to them, and then Wheeler catches his eye — “You can’t tell anyone about this,” she says.

He laughs, a hysterical edge to it. “Who’s gonna believe me, Wheeler? They already think I’m a junkie.”

She just looks at him, big eyes wet and a little sorrowful, slightly kind, uncommonly pretty even in all the dirt and maybe Eddie can see where Harrington’s coming from. Where Byers is coming from too, probably. And she lets him go.

He gets so high that night, when he’s taken Wayne to work with the front of the van crushed in (a deer ran out, you know what they’re like, just desperate to get closer to my Sabbath tape) that for several hours he can’t really move, just frozen heavy in his bed with all the air weighing down on him. Plus he swears he can see a shadow moving in the corner of the room and it’s been a while since he greened out like that, dizzy and sick, and it’s fitting for the day he’s had, actually, that he can’t find any relief even in his substance of choice. Eventually he drifts into sleep, dark and fitful, and he wakes groggy and late, pale light almost mocking his fear of the dark. Aching all over, his joints, his very bones.

It doesn’t feel real, in the morning. Over a cigarette and a bowl of cereal. It feels like a hazy, distant dream. But his eyes find the cut on his thumb, an angry red slash, and when he presses on it it stings, real enough, and he remembers the way Wheeler looked at it, like it was a clue. A piece of a certain puzzle. Only this is the only piece he has, so what does he do with it?

But maybe it’s not.

He thinks about it. About the thing in the woods on Sunday, and missing Will Byers. Dead Will Byers, if reports can be believed, no foul play, but Eddie’s distrust of authority has gone absolutely nowhere and when there’s a monster on the loose…

And Tommy C.’s dad and uncle, lost in the woods. All that shit about Cornwallis, Cornwallis and Kerley, localized, like maybe the monster’s got something to do with them disappearing too–

You’re not involved, and you don’t want to be, so just go home. But the thing is, Eddie is involved, isn’t he? Just a little bit. Dragged in by Tommy C. Trying to help out an asshole, and he’s done with Tommy C. now, he knows that whole thing was a lost cause and really a bad idea to begin with but also–

He thinks Tommy C. loves his dad. And your dad, loved or not — that means something. Knowing what happened to him means something. Knowing where he is, safely out of reach or not.

He showers before he goes. No hot water this time, so he hunches over against the tiles as he waits for the cold jolt of shock to ease from his system, and after he catches a glimpse of his back in the mirror, skinny and splotched with red-purple bruises. From Tommy slamming him into trees yesterday, probably, but hey. It’s as good a reminder as any that this is not a social call.

More Tylenol, against the pain in his shoulder. Two more cigarettes. That Billy Idol song he’s got a weakness for, White Wedding, all eight minutes and twenty seconds of it. He even considers The Shining, the envelope tucked inside it. Indiana Department of Correction. Nothing like seeing a real monster to make your dad less scary, right? But in the end he decides against it. Not today, anyway. One asshole at a time.

So then he bites the bullet and goes.

He knows where Tommy C. lives only because he looks the Coes up in the phonebook: Dale and Tommy Coe, right beside the Mooneys next door. Cherry Lane. They live near Janie, actually, the northern outskirts, just slightly more suburban. Eddie drives his beat-up van past the small, tidy houses and still feels out of place, though it’s no Loch Nora. No Hagans or Harringtons to be found out here.

When he doesn’t get an answer at the Coes’ front door, he goes one house over to the Mooneys’, where a scraggly-looking terrier yaps at him from the fenced front yard. There’s a U.S. flag tacked up on the wall, too permanent-looking to be a remnant of yesterday’s Veterans Day.

It’s a woman who opens the door, thick blonde hair and red-rimmed eyes, a cross on a chain around her neck that her hand comes up to clutch at when she sees Eddie, which is a little bit offensive, Jesus. “Is Tommy here?” he asks, sharper than he means to, but hey. Not a social call.

“I’ll– I’ll go get him,” she says, giving him another wary look. But then she does go get him. Tommy C. emerges with his arms crossed over his chest, leaning defensively in the doorway and not giving an inch.

“What do you want?” he says, voice flat.

Eddie can’t help but match the tone. “Oh, I don’t know, I just had something I thought you might wanna hear, y’know, considering it’s your dad who’s gone missing, but hey, I can come back, if you’re that busy–”

Tommy takes a step forward. Eddie had promised himself, on the way here, that he wouldn’t let himself be cowed or cornered, not this time, but some treacherous instinct within him has a bent towards the cowardly and he can’t stop himself taking an equal step back. “What is it?” Tommy says, something harsh in his voice. He’s different here. He carries himself differently. Less of a proud tilt to his head. More of a twang to his vowels.

“There’s something out there.”

Tommy frowns, uncomprehending, edging closer into Eddie’s space. Eddie’s dad was taller than him, too, when he was fourteen. Liked to loom over him. Make him feel small.

He swallows, forces himself to continue. “In the woods. There’s something–” winces, thinks about the dark and the headlights and the thing without a face “–awful, out there. A kind of– monster. I think it– it took Will Byers, and I think maybe– maybe your dad and your uncle too.”

“A monster,” Tommy says evenly. “Really.”

“Really.”

“So you’re telling me — let me get this straight —” and he walks in a circle, around the yard, and comes back only a few feet away from Eddie, leaning against the chain link fence with one hand “— you think you saw some kind of monster, in the woods, and you think it took my dad.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Jesus fuck, what have you been smoking?” Said with a half-laugh, humorless. “Or else this is just your way to fuck with me because, what, I’m not gonna go steady with you? Because I’m not a fucking queer? I can’t even give you credit for imagination, can I, because all that monster shit’s just copied straight from that nerd game you play.”

Eddie stares at him. “This isn’t a fucking joke, man, I mean I know I’m an excellent storyteller and all but really–”

“Really what, Eddie? What are you doing here? What the hell do you want from me? Because, like, I tried. Y’know, I knew you wanted more than just what we were doing. So I tried. Kissing you in the bathroom, and shit. Tried- tried apologizing for making people think you deal, which, I don’t know why you’re trying to get rid of that reputation, I know for a fact you need the cash– and it wasn’t enough for you. You wanted– what, you wanted me to hold your hand in the hallways? Tell the world I’m gay for you? Which would be a lie, by the way, because I’m not. If you stopped living in your queer little fantasy world for a while maybe you’d get that through your head.”

“You think I– you think that’s what this is about? Me and you? Me wanting there to be a me and you?” Eddie shakes his head disbelievingly. “You know, I fucking meant it, when I said I want nothing to do with you. I don’t. I’m just trying to be a decent goddamn human being, not an asshole, like you.”

Tommy shoves him back into the chain link; it hurts his shoulder, his bruised back, but he doesn’t back down. Doesn’t drop his eyes, doesn’t let himself be cowed again. Fuck that.

“I’m just here to let you know that I think your dad was taken by a monster, and, believe me, I wish this was just some part of DnD. Then I might be able to kill it with a well-developed character and a d20.”

Tommy’s grip has slackened, enough that Eddie can slide past him and away down towards his van, shoulder twinging but not popped out this time, thank fuck.

“Nice flag,” he says, gesturing to it with his thumb.

Tommy lurches forward and shouts, “Fuck you!”, as if jolting out of a stupor, and Eddie just gets into the van and drives off silently, ignoring the hammering of his heart.

Chapter Text

Eddie’s driving along to the tune of Iron Maiden’s The Trooper when he reaches for his cigarettes and finds the pack empty, the box folding uselessly in his hand when he squeezes it. Shit. He’s sure he probably made a note of needing more cigarettes, at some point, but like most things it drifted out of his head as soon as it went in there. His (let’s face it, not even burgeoning, just full on thriving) nicotine addiction waits for no man, much less a faceless monster, so he pulls into a parking spot near the movie theater and sits there for a moment, bracing his shoulder with his other hand, because it’s starting to hurt like a bitch again and it can only be Tommy’s fault. Fucking Tommy. You try to warn a guy, help him, and what do you get in return?

Eventually he gets out, gritting his teeth and wondering if a joint wouldn’t be a better idea than a cigarette at this point, but hey. He’s going to want a less illegal smoke eventually, so he makes his way to the store on the corner, the opposite end of the street from Melvald’s. That annoying Bonnie Tyler song is playing overhead when he enters. He drifts towards the cigarettes and then thinks again, moving towards the painkillers too before he returns to pay for both, Camels and Tylenol, a pretty hungover combination.

The clerk’s some girl who graduated a couple of years ago, maybe, he recognizes her dreadlocks — not all that common a sight, in a town like this — and she’s humming along to the song as she counts out his change. “Have a nice day,” she says vaguely, politely, as he turns to go. (He thinks he’d rather do anything, than do a job like this.)

Then someone else comes in, another twenty-ish year old, who looks at the clerk with bright, gossip-fevered eyes: “Holy crap, Tilda, did you hear about Steve Harrington–?”

Eddie’s had enough of asshole jocks for one day, he thinks, monsters or no, so he just leaves the store with a shrug–

A shrug that sends pain shooting down his arm, because shit, he forgot about that. He stands there on the sidewalk, tucking his cigarettes and the bottle of pills under his arm as he probes at his shoulder. Could it have slipped out of joint again, without him noticing? Is that a thing that can happen? God, he fucking hopes not.

His gaze drifts idly over the street, wondering about whatever Steve Harrington’s done despite himself. It’s a stupid habit, getting himself involved in the lives of assholes. An addiction. And that’s not a word he just throws around, being lightly hooked on pot himself. But what’s pot ever done to him? What’s it done that Tommy C. hasn’t?

His bottle of Tylenol slips from under his arm and lands with a rattle on the sidewalk, rolling a little way towards the parked cars. He swears and crouches down to pick it up, which changes his angle on the corner of the street, allowing him to see all the way down to the movie theater and the guy scrubbing at something written on the marquee.

The guy, who’s Steve Harrington. The something written, which is SLUT WHEELER, underneath the title for All the Right Moves. Presumably there was more to it, but Harrington’s doing a good job, scrubbing away like he’s getting paid. What the fuck?

Cursing his strange addictions, Eddie moves for a closer look. Harrington’s up a ladder with some theater usher holding the base, and he’s affording everyone on the street a healthy view of his admittedly very attractive ass. He’s got a concentrated frown on his face as he wipes at the T of SLUT and wait, he’s all bloody, too, handsome lines of his face puffed up and bruised. Is this what there is to hear about?

Eddie can’t resist. “So, what, someone slandered your girlfriend and you punched his lights out, is that the story?”

The usher holding the ladder, a scrawny guy with a smirk, scoffs and says, “No. It was this clown that ruined the marquee in the first place, him and his asshole friends. And he got what he deserved when Byers pummeled him.”

“Thanks for that, Jerry,” Harrington says, scowling down at him. “But, yeah, that’s pretty much what happened. What do you care, anyway, Munson?”

Eddie really shouldn’t care, is the thing. Really. Hasn’t he learnt his lesson by now? But also — yeah, he’s interested. And Wheeler last night, Steve’s isn’t far away from here. How does Harrington go from being involved in this monster bullshit last night to calling Wheeler a slut this afternoon? What does it mean? So he sets down his Tylenol, shoving the cigarettes in his pocket, and moves closer to the ladder. He waves Jerry off — “I’ll do it,” — to which Jerry shrugs and concedes, going back inside with his hands slung in his uniform pockets, and holds the ladder himself. “Call me a concerned citizen.”

Harrington looks momentarily disconcerted that it’s now Eddie holding the ladder, holding his safety in his hands, but then he turns back to his task. “Whatever, man.”

“So what did Wheeler do? To cause you to display your high school villainy in such a disappointingly literal way?”

“What are you even talking about? I just–“ Harrington’s hand stills, and he wipes his forearm over his face. What he says next comes out as a mumble. “Saw her with Jonathan, and I was pissed. It was– stupid. A stupid thing to do.”

“And he knocked some sense into you, huh?”

“Yeah. He did.”

“I mean, if it helps, I don’t think getting chased by a monster counts as a romantic stroll in the moonlight.”

Harrington stops. He turns to look down at Eddie, bloodied, pretty face creased in confusion. He’s cleaned off most of the graffiti by now — it’s just a lone ELER that remains, in crudely painted red. “A monster?”

Eddie almost rolls his eyes. “Yeah, y’know, the thing in the–” and then stops. Because, oh, maybe Harrington doesn’t know. Clueless Harrington, with the fine profile and widened eyes. Byers didn’t even break the fucker’s nose, which would have done them all a favor, really, because then Eddie wouldn’t find himself doing something so stupid as to say, “She hasn’t told you about it, then,” like he’s offering to explain. Shit.

Harrington stares down at him for a long moment. Like he’s sizing him up, wondering to what extent Eddie’s fucking with him, wondering if he should say something cruel and push the threat of the truth aside. Because the truth is a threat, Eddie’s learned in the last twenty-four hours. To people like this, it’s always a threat.

So he waits for his rejection.

But it doesn’t come. Harrington just nods, turning back to his nearly-finished task. “Give me ten minutes,” he says, scrubbing at the next E, and Eddie would move away but he’s sort of in this now, this holding the base of the ladder business, so he just leans there and tries to work out a way of lighting a smoke one-handed while his shoulder throbs insistently every time he moves.

Finally, Harrington’s done cleaning. He clambers down the ladder, brushing past Eddie as he goes — he smells like cologne, fuck, the expensive stuff, probably, did he really put cologne on to call his girlfriend a slut in front of the town? Maybe he thought it would get her hot, who knows how these assholes think — and then moves without speaking down the sidewalk, towards an alley. Maybe Eddie’s about to get murdered. He follows him anyway.

And, oh, surprise surprise, the cruelties don’t end there. Someone’s spraypainted Byers is a perv on the wall, with a little smiley face. Cute.

“Listen, I’m only even talking to you because what I saw back there — you cleaning off that shit you wrote — surprised me. I thought hey, y’know, here’s Steve Harrington doing something unexpected. That’s interesting. And I’m, like, totally giving you the benefit of the doubt, here, man–” Eddie’s voice has crept up at least an octave, hitching with nerves. Not that he can bring himself to feel embarrassed about that. After the week he’s had.

“Just, explain? Because I swear to god, I do not have time for any creepy little games from Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson–”

“Nice. That’s nice.” Eddie leans back against the wall and shakes out three Tylenol; he swallows them dry. “There’s something in the woods, and it’s taking people. Will Byers, and Tommy’s dad–”

“Whoa, wait, Tommy? Tommy H.?” Harrington looks legitimately distressed at that, holding a hand up. Eddie can’t really decide whether that does him credit or not.

“Tommy C. His uncle too. But it’s not– look, whatever, that’s what Wheeler and Byers were doing in the woods last night, I think. Going after this– thing. And they mentioned your house, so I just assumed that you were in some way involved in this–”

“Wait, my house?” Harrington’s got a distant look going on, like something’s dawning on him. Like he’s remembering something. “This– thing. I– shit, I must be going crazy. Oh, this is crazy. But this thing, it didn’t– did it have a face?”

A flash of the creature in the dark; long white limbs and that evil, uncanny face. Horror worse than any movie Eddie’s ever seen. “No,” he whispers, and just like that, Harrington is willing to believe him.

Fuck, Harrington is willing to believe him. After Tommy C. not believing him, after not believing himself– just a bad trip, he told himself, just the wires crossed in your brain–

And maybe it’s not full belief, not yet. It’s not Harrington going okay, that’s terrifying, I’m so sorry you had to see it, what do we do — not that he’d ever say these things anyway, and why is that the fantasy that Eddie’s brain conjures up in this moment? Really? The two of them working together, and worse, Harrington offering comfort? Jesus. Focus, Eddie. Fucking focus.

“Okay, let’s say– let’s say there really is something out there. Something without a– without a face.” Harrington paces up and down the alley and then comes to lean against the wall a yard or so away from Eddie. He scrubs a hand over his face and then winces, like he forgot it hurts. Silently, Eddie hands him the bottle of Tylenol and watches him take a couple, watches the line of his throat as he throws his head back and swallows. “And Nancy and Jonathan, they’re– they’re after it. Or they were, I guess.”

“They were?”

“Jonathan got arrested. Maybe Nancy too, I don’t know.” Harrington at least has the decency to keep his eyes on the ground as he says this.

Eddie’s eyebrows climb anyway. “And you didn’t? What, was it your winning personality that charmed you out of the cuffs, or did you namedrop your daddy? I don’t think you’re the Chief’s type, so–”

Harrington jolts, a sharp movement that has Eddie pressing himself back into the wall. He doesn’t know why he does this. Any of this — the provoking or the flinching, like poking a fucking bear and then letting freeze win over fight or flight. But Harrington doesn’t hit him, doesn’t pin him against the wall. Just shrugs defeatedly, hanging his head. “I ran, actually. We all did. And then Tommy nearly beat me up too, so I ran away from him, and currently I don’t think I have a single person in the world who likes me, so.”

“I find that very difficult to believe.” Eddie looks over at him, feeling a little like laughing. “C’mon, King Steve? Crown prince of the Harrington property portfolio? Sure, maybe Byers and Wheeler aren’t so hot on you right now, but hey. Byers is a freak anyway, and what do the opinions of us freaks matter, right?”

“I’m trying to– I’m trying to make things right,” Harrington mumbles.

“It’s probably a little late for that.” Eddie’s lost that charitable nudge in his chest, the one that made him hold the ladder and follow Harrington over here. Instead he feels tense and itchy, hot. “You called Wheeler a slut for all the world to see because you saw her helping a guy avenge his little brother, and now you’re throwing yourself a pity party when no one’s out there looking for this monster because you got them arrested–”

Harrington’s head lifts. “You think someone needs to? Go and look for it, I mean?”

Eddie closes his mouth. “I don’t– is that what I said? I don’t think that’s what I said.”

“Yeah,” Harrington says, pushing off the wall and pacing a circle, and whatever idea he’s had has a hold of him now, it’s clear, and there’ll be no stopping it. Fuck. “Yeah, someone needs to, right? That’s what they were doing in the woods. And I can’t run from everything, right, and if I run towards this then maybe she’ll–”

He stops there, but Eddie can guess at what he was about to say. Of course he can. Something like maybe if I prove I do listen to her, prove I think what she does is important and worthwhile, worth risking my life for, then maybe I’m not so unlikable after all and maybe she’ll forgive me for–

Et cetera, et cetera. Heterosexuals are exhausting.

“Listen, man, while I’m sure this whole quest of yours is very nobly intended, very chivalrous, and all that, I’m not sure you’re quite getting it. See, this thing is huge. And terrifying. And I’m pretty sure it can teleport, because when I hit it with my van it just vanished into–”

“You hit it with your van?” Harrington interrupts, a weird note in his voice.

“Yeah, but that’s not the point, the point is you can’t just go off alone into the woods and–”

“Who said I was going alone?”

Eddie stares at him. Oh, no. No way. He’s done his good deed for the day, letting Harrington know the score, setting him on the right path like a helpful NPC, oh, no, there’s no way he’s getting involved any further, no siree–

“You can show me where you saw it.”

“You’ve lost your fucking mind. It may be in your interest to play the white knight, Harrington, but some of us don’t have health insurance.”

“You don’t have health insurance?” Harrington’s frowning at him, like he’s confused, like he’s almost– sad for him, and oh, no, Eddie’s not going down this fucking road. No fucking way.

“That’s life, Harrington, a lot of people don’t have health insurance, and they sure as hell don’t go chasing after monsters in the woods–”

“But who’s gonna stop it taking someone else? If it’s– if it’s taken all these people already, who says it’s gonna stop there?”

“No one, but–” Eddie stops. Sighs. “Do you really believe me? Because either you’re a fucking idiot with no sense of personal safety, or else you don’t really believe me.”

Harrington’s eyes are on Eddie but he’s not really looking at him, not really. “Nancy mentioned it to me. The thing without a face. And I didn’t believe her then, and now– well, we’re here. So– I don’t know if I believe you. But I want to. For her sake. To make things right.”

“Well, ain’t that a noble little gesture.”

Harrington’s face twists. Maybe because of Eddie’s little rural inflection — it just slips out sometimes. (He chooses to call it his uncle’s influence, rather than his dad’s.) He can’t imagine Harrington ever saying ain’t. “Look, man, you stopped and talked to me for a reason. God knows what it was, but you did. Clearly you’re already involved in all this shit. So just– show me where you saw it, and then we’re good. I’ll even tell Tommy H. to leave you alone.”

Eddie laughs. “You sure know how to sweeten the deal.” How to explain that Tommy H. has disappeared into a non-entity, inside Eddie’s head? That he doesn’t really care anymore about what they call him, about what lockers they shove him into. He doesn’t care. What’s a little bit of high school cruelty, to everything else?

Tommy C.’s cruelty hurt. Because he knew where to hit, because he knew where it would hurt the most. Tommy H. and the others, they’re just guessing. Swinging blindly and hoping something lands. Which is the solution, right? Not letting them get close enough to see.

And yet–

He did stop to talk to Harrington. For no real reason. For the reason that it was Harrington doing something he’s never been expected to do, something that doesn’t fit, and that appealed to Eddie, the notion that someone could still surprise him. Like maybe he looked at Harrington, after Tommy C., and thought, in what way are you pretending to be something you’re not? Is it an interesting way? Is it a way that will succeed? (The answer, inevitably, being no.)

And he’s got nothing else to do today.

So. Fuck it. “Okay, whatever, sure. I’ll show you. But I swear to god, Harrington, you get yourself killed, I am not languishing in prison for your manslaughter.”

Harrington honest-to-god smiles at him then, ridiculously, this wry little smile that even underneath all the blood has something unfairly attractive about it. (Eddie must be some sort of masochist, lining himself up to get his heart broken twice in one day.) “I’ll follow your car, then? Where’d you park?”

Eddie rolls his shoulder experimentally and gasps as it lances pain down his arm — so that’s a hard no, then. He knows when he’s pushed it too far. He digs in his pocket for the sling he took off when he drove. “Yeah, uh, great plan and all, but I don’t think I can, um, drive? Right now? Bum shoulder.”

Harrington watches him slip the sling over his head with wide eyes. “What happened?”

“Well, if Tommy hadn’t fucking shoved me into–” He closes his mouth. Remembers who he’s talking to. “It’s not a big deal. Happens all the time. Y’know, it’s a curse of mine, holding me back from achieving my full athletic potential–”

“Oh, yeah, because you’d totally be on the basketball team.”

Eddie laughs. “Yeah, totally.” He can’t really tell whether he’s being genuinely mocked or not; at a certain point, they begin to sound the same. “So, if we’re doing this–”

“My car. Right.” Harrington leads them out of the alley, towards his sleek maroon BMW, and Eddie has to take a second to wonder if this is how it all ends. If Harrington will dump his body out of this same BMW in a couple hours’ time, which is a stupid thought, made more stupid by the earnestness in Harrington’s beaten face. But, hey, he’s going out to look for a monster unarmed with a shoulder that refuses to work correctly, so maybe his night might end that way anyway, Harrington or no.

“Hey, uh, I don’t suppose you got some sort of weapon tucked into those Levi’s of yours, do you? Other than the obvious.”

Harrington turns to glare at him, which, ouch, that’s a sharp glare. “My dad has a gun,” he says. “We can pick it up on the way.”

Oh, yeah, because going to the woods with Steve Harrington bearing his father’s gun is such a good idea. But hey. When’s Eddie ever led with good ideas? “Okay, well, let’s go.”

He regrets this decision as soon as Harrington turns over the engine and Tears For Fears blasts out, the one about a mad world, which, at least it’s appropriate to the situation. Harrington turns it down a little but doesn’t turn it off. As he’s backing out of the parking space, he does the thing where he puts his hand on the back of the passenger headrest to twist around in his seat, leaning over right near Eddie, the line of his throat painfully on show, and Eddie’s only human, after all. He has to remind himself not to stare.

(Basketball player, he thinks. Jock. Asshole who doesn’t speak cruelty like he means it but speaks it anyway, and that’s enough. That’s more than enough. And yet–)

“So what happened?” he asks. “With Byers? That’s a real shiner you got there.”

Harrington takes a little while to respond, flexing his hand on the wheel. “I said some shit about his family, y’know. Called him a queer, and shit, so. I probably deserved it.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says softly, stomach turning. “Probably.”

“Anyway, guess I underestimated how hard he could throw a punch, or else, I don’t know, I was asking for it. Wanting it, or something, I don’t know.” He laughs a little at that, at himself, breathily. Eddie sort of wants to stop him doing that, stop him laughing it off. Take yourself seriously for once, he wants to say. Stop pretending. But he doesn’t say this, because who knows how Harrington would react? Who knows what he’d say in return? “I just– saw them together, last night, and after what he did to us–“

“The photos,” Eddie surmises. The music’s moved on to what he presumes is the next track on the album, another equally dire new wave song about pale shelter and cold hands.

“Right. I just don’t understand why she’d–” Harrington closes his mouth, glancing over at Eddie like he’s said too much. Maybe he has. But who’s Eddie gonna tell? “But if there’s some sort of– of monster out there, then, yeah. Maybe that changes things.”

Oh, you’ve got it bad, Eddie thinks. Hoping for there to be a monster out there? So you don’t have to hate your girlfriend? Or else so you can earn your redemption for it? Though maybe it’s about more than just the girlfriend, he wonders, looking back at Harrington over the gearbox. Maybe it’s more about currently I don’t think I have a single person in the world who likes me, and maybe that runs deeper than the shallow assumption Eddie’s made.

But he’s not here to psychoanalyze the guy. He’s here to show him where to find the monster and then get the hell out of dodge before it all goes wrong.

“Why were you out there, anyway? Last night?” Harrington says, after a silence. “The woods down by Cornwallis are way beyond the trailer park.”

“What, you know where I live now?”

“Everyone knows where you live, man.” It’s said quietly, awkwardly, like he’s trying to be nice about it. Fuck that. “I’m just asking.”

“I was–” Frankly, Eddie’s had enough with pretending for a lifetime or more, so he thinks, what the hell. Why the hell not. “I was going to visit my drug dealer, all right? I suppose that fits perfectly well with your image of me, what with you knowing where I live and all.”

To his credit, Harrington doesn’t try to deny it. That’s something, at least. Something that gets a little more astounding when they pull into Furling Way and the Harrington house opens out in all its glory before them, all gray and modern. There’s a sleek black S-Class Mercedes on the drive. “Stay in the car,” Harrington says, and doesn’t wait for a response before he cuts the engine and goes inside. Eddie’s sorely tempted to follow him, despite the order (who does Harrington think he is, anyway?) but when he opens the door he gets a blast of frigid air and it sends a fresh ache through his joints, so he decides to concede the point.

He does have a smoke out the window, though, rolling it down and hanging his elbow out. It goes some way — but not all the way — towards settling his frazzled nerves. Fighting with Tommy C. and then ending up in Steve Harrington’s car; this is certainly not how he pictured his day going. The monster’s really a side concern.

After a while, longer than expected, Harrington emerges again. He hurries across the driveway and gets in without speaking, driving off with less conspicuous safety-consciousness than last time, like he’s desperate to get out of there. Huh. It falls to Eddie to break the silence: “So, did you get it?”

“Have you been smoking in here?” Harrington says, wrinkling his nose and wafting a hand.

“Well, did you?”

“Did I what?”

Eddie stares at him. “Visit Mars! Jesus Christ, Harrington, did you get the gun or didn’t you?”

“Oh, yeah, I got it.” There’s something different about Harrington now, something distractible and nervous. “So, uh, where am I going?”

“Just– a bit further down Cornwallis. Listen, man, are you– like, are you okay?” Eddie says haltingly, wincing even as he says it. The awkwardness is palpable in the air.

Harrington barely glances at him, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, yeah, just my dad being an asshole, it’s fine.”

What kind of asshole? becomes the question. Probably not the Bruce Munson kind, the Lonnie Byers kind — and even if it is the same kind, it’s not. Even if Harrington’s father hits him, it’s not the same. The violence engendered in a mansion and behind the wheel of a Mercedes is different to the sort in a trailer park; different to the sort that puts you in jail.

But hey. Eddie supposes he can empathize anyway. “You know it doesn’t have to be fine, right?”

Harrington laughs without humor. “Uh, no, I’m pretty sure it does.”

There’s nothing Eddie can say to that; they lapse into silence again, to the tune of Tears For Fears. What he wouldn’t give for his Dio cassette right about now. He tells Harrington where to pull over — somewhere around here, anyway, it was dark and he was half out of his mind at the time — and gets out himself, scanning the road for evidence. Blood, or something. Sure, the front of his van’s crushed in and Byers and Wheeler confirmed it but still. Alone in the woods with Harrington, the sky gray and bleak and threatening dusk above them, he feels a desperate desire to prove it happened.

“So, around here?” Harrington’s got the gun out, a Dirty Harry-style revolver, and he’s holding it twitchily, fingers loose around the grip. Not a big gun fan, then. Eddie supposes that’s something.

“Around here,” Eddie confirms, walking further down the road with his eyes on the asphalt. He hasn’t found anything yet. Maybe there’s nothing to be found — the thing just disappeared, after all. Vanished into thin air. “What are you, uh, intending to do? When you find it? If you find it?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Harrington says, not turning from where he’s staring into the trees.

“Yeah, there is no ‘we’ in this situation, Harrington, in case you’d forgotten.”

Harrington doesn’t say anything. He’s screwed his face up, rubbing at the cut on his cheekbone, and his fingers come away bright with new blood. Eddie’s been beaten up enough in his life to know how much it hurts, and also how the worst thing you can do is touch it. So stop fucking touching it, Jesus.

Then there’s a rustle in the trees behind them.

It’s still daylight, so it takes Eddie a second to feel afraid. Feels wrong, to be scared in the daylight. Like nothing can get you except in the dark.

Turns out the horror movies are wrong.

“Uh, Steve?” he says, backing towards him, not taking his eyes off the woods, the thing moving in the woods, the thing coming towards them– “I know you said you wanted to find it, but, uh– it’s, uh, it’s found us.”

“What are you–”

Harrington turns around.

He has a moment to see it, as it emerges from the trees. They both do. Full daylight, now, on the edge of dusk, nothing hiding its horrors — the long white limbs, bony and sinewy and slimy, the face that’s not a face, the face that opens up into a mouth as it roars at them–

“Run,” Eddie whispers, backing up so far he knocks into Harrington’s shoulder. Harrington’s frozen up, transfixed, the gun so slack in his grip he may as well drop it, for all the good it’s doing them. “Run,” Eddie says again, louder, and when Harrington still doesn’t move there’s only one fucking thing for it and that’s grabbing Harrington’s wrist and pulling him away into a run as Harrington trips over his own feet and they nearly go sprawling but then Harrington seems to get his shit together because he starts to run faster, getting into his stride, outpacing Eddie their hands no longer linked you don’t have to outrun the monster, you just have to outrun me–

Eddie’s foot catches on a root. He lands in the dirt, hard, the ground frozen solid and cold, shoulder shooting through with pain as he tries to catch himself and fails. Monster coming up behind him. Monster nearly here, fuck, if this is where he dies–

Harrington nowhere to be seen.

“Steve!” he shouts uselessly, trying to drag himself up but he’s shaking too badly, skinned knees won’t hold him, tumbling back into the earth as the inhuman footsteps get louder behind him, the thing looming up, monstrous saliva dripping down into Eddie’s hair, he closes his eyes–

A gunshot.

Another gunshot, and then a hand on his arm, pulling him forcefully up, not giving him the option to do anything but run and that’s Steve Harrington’s hand, that’s Steve Harrington not letting him go and dragging him down the road down a track towards a barn and pushing him inside and barring the door after them — “Holy fuck,” Steve says, voice faint, sagging against the door. “Holy fuck.”

Eddie sinks down to the ground. He thinks he’s trembling all over, like with cold, but he’s not really sure. His knees are bloody and raw, jeans ripped even worse than usual, but if they hurt he can’t feel the pain. Even the pain in his shoulder is dulled. Adrenaline, he thinks, that’s adrenaline. Good old adrenaline.

“So there is a monster, then. Fuck.” Steve sits down too, beside Eddie, kicking his legs out and letting the gun fall to the floor. “Do you think it can– do you think it can get us in here?”

Eddie looks around the barn. It’s dimly lit, full of farm equipment that makes threatening shadows. But maybe that’s a good sign, because if they’re at a farm then they have to be at the edge of the woods and something about the creature suggests it likes the woods, wants to stay in the woods, so maybe they are safe here. Maybe.

Then he looks at his bleeding knees and thinks again.

“Blood,” he manages. “I think it– it goes after blood.”

“What?”

“Last night, when I hit it with the van. It was coming towards me, I mean, I thought it was chasing– chasing Wheeler and Byers, but I think it was chasing me. Because I was bleeding, I cut myself on my– on my belt. And just now, you opened up that cut on your face–”

Steve brings a hand to his face, eyes wide. “Your knees,” he says. “We need to stop the bleeding.”

Eddie nods. He stretches his legs out, wincing as the stinging pain begins to make itself known. The knees of his jeans are ripped to shreds, so all he has to do is pull the loose threads aside to expose the wounds, not deep but bleeding pretty insistently.

“We should clean them first, I mean, who knows how much forest dirt you got in them–”

“One thing at a time, Harrington. Let’s wait until we’re not being chased by, uh, by a monster without a face to worry about infection, shall we? Besides, do you see any antiseptic around here?”

Steve’s cheeks color, which is sort of cute. “Yeah, right. Sorry.”

Then it’s Eddie’s turn to blush, because what is he doing? Steve’s shrugging off his jacket, pulling his green shirt over his head to reveal a thin white undershirt, which he also takes off, and great, Steve Harrington’s now shirtless in front of the local queer.

Eddie looks away hastily, but not before he takes it all in: Steve’s long pale arms, the strength in his torso, the dusting of hair on his chest and trailing down in a line from his navel to the waistband of his jeans.

It’s nothing Eddie hasn’t seen in the showers after gym class, true, the few times he hasn’t cut it or else been forced to sit out because of his shoulder. But there’s something different about it now, in the dim stream of light in the barn as dusk sets in. On the dusty floor as Steve tears his undershirt into pieces and presses a wad of it to the worse of the two knees, hard enough that Eddie inhales sharply, Steve’s concentration unwavering.

“You know I can– do that myself,” Eddie says, though he’s rather enjoying Steve’s shirtless proximity right now. “It’s not like I haven’t patched up my fair share of wounds, Harrington.”

“I’ll be faster,” Steve says, with a pointed look at Eddie’s hands, which, oh, he hadn’t realized they were shaking quite that badly. “Y’know, they’re probably gonna start bleeding again when you walk, so I should bandage them up.”

A silence. They stare at each other; Eddie isn’t sure what he’s asking.

“So if you could take your jeans off–”

Right. That hadn’t occurred to him. His immediate reaction is no, absolutely not. Straight dude Steve Harrington getting shirtless in front of another guy is one thing — easy, acceptable, unimpeachable — but Eddie? Taking his jeans off?

There’s no way Steve doesn’t know the rumors about him. Whether he believes them or not, there’s no way he’s not aware of them at least. And Eddie has to consider for a moment — just a moment — whether he’s being stupid, here. In trusting that Steve is Steve, is the guy who saved Eddie’s life in the woods back there, make no mistake about that, saved his life, and forgetting the King Harrington bullshit. Ignoring all of that. Is he making a mistake?

He can’t forget Tommy C. this morning, after all. They’re all of a kind, these rich assholes and assholes pretending to be rich. He’d be a fool to forget that. And yet–

Steve’s looking at him impatiently. “C’mon, man, if you keep on bleeding all over the place then we’re dead. Wasn’t this your idea, the blood thing, anyway?”

Steve saved his life. Steve’s saving his life right now, actually, bandaging Eddie up with pieces of his own t shirt, so fine. Fine. Eddie lifts his hips and unbuttons his fly, pushing his jeans down around his shins, and sits there shivering in his boxers as Steve winds the strips of cotton around his knees. “Y’know, I wasn’t kidding. I can do this myself. I don’t think anyone’s cleaned up my knees for me since I was, like, five.”

Steve looks at him then, eyes dark in the gloom. “Me either,” he says softly, and oh. Okay.

So Eddie lets him do it, Steve’s big hands careful as they move over Eddie’s skin, almost gentle. (Thank fuck it’s so cold in here and Eddie’s still half scared out of his mind: no danger of a boner. Thank fuck.) Then Steve’s finished, and Eddie hurriedly pulls his jeans back up, fumbling at the fly with numb fingers. Steve pulls away and uses the last strip of his undershirt to wipe at the blood on his own face, which is dried and crusty again now, a truly horrendous shiner, and then puts his green shirt back on. More’s the pity.

The evening is stretching out into darkness, Steve’s face getting harder to find in the gloom. “We can’t sit here all night,” Steve says, picking up the gun again.

“Did you get it? When you shot it, did it–”

“I missed the first one. The second shot, I think it hit, but it only slowed the thing down. Whatever it is, it’s fucking bulletproof.”

“Great.” Eddie pulls himself to his feet, wincing at the pain in his shoulder, wincing at the pain in his knees. He’s gonna do an even worse job at running this time, if it comes to that. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

“So, what, I guess we go back for my car and hope that thing’s gone.”

Eddie opens the door and peers out, squinting across the track in the dark. He can just about make out the sign: Freeling Farm. He knows where that is; he knows where they’re near. He goes back into the barn. “The Byers’ house is closer than the road. We’d be safer going there.”

“The Byers? How do you know where–”

Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose. “My dad knew Byers senior, it’s a long story. We should just get out of here.”

They look at each other for a moment in the gloom. A silent understanding. Let’s not talk about my dad, and we won’t talk about yours.

Eddie’s never had that understanding with anyone before. It’s sort of nice.

Chapter Text

The Byers’ house is a fifteen minute walk away, through the darkened woods. Eddie sticks close to Steve, because Steve has the gun. Flinching a little at every sound around them. Eddie’s worst secret is that he’s afraid of the dark, which is ridiculous, really, because how un-metal is that? To be scared of the dark? And yet here he is. And yeah, the monster came upon them in the daylight earlier but it feels so much worse when you can’t see what’s following you.

So he sticks close to Steve.

“Uh, thank you, by the way,” he says, after the silence stretches on too long and he feels too alone in it. “For saving my ass, back there. You’re a regular white knight.“

“I couldn’t just– let you die, man.” A strange note in Steve’s voice; Eddie can’t see his face in the dark, the dirt track lit only by the moon as it strains through the clouds, but he thinks it’s something almost ashamed. His next words are a whisper: “I’m sorry I nearly did.”

Eddie has no patience for nearlys and what ifs. He could have died; he didn’t. That’s what matters right now, that he didn’t. “Listen, we might be nothing like each other in every other aspect, but in this? In the– the survival instinct? I would have done the same thing. I might not even have come back.”

“You don’t know that, man. Not until it happens. And I guess–” Steve’s voice is closer, suddenly, like he’s leaning further in. “I guess I wouldn’t blame you. If you hadn’t.”

“What?”

“I mean, after all the shit we’ve done to you over the years–”

“It’s fine, Harrington. Really.” Eddie regrets starting this conversation now. Far easier to let his partnership with Steve — temporary, as it no doubt is — go unspoken. Undiscussed. Why should they unpack all the shit from the past, which doesn’t really have anything to do with Steve, let’s be honest, it’s always been more about Tommy H. and Tommy C., when no doubt they’ll go back to ignoring each other in the hallways after all this is over–

They finish the walk in silence. Which silence has fresh panic creeping up Eddie’s throat, but he’s not going to make that Steve’s problem, so he just hunches his shoulders and tries not to twitch at every creak of the branches above them. And then the Byers’ house is before them, squat and brown and empty-looking, no cars in the driveway. They approach it slowly, cautiously, like something’s going to jump out at them from the porch, from the shabby little birdbath, Jesus, no wonder Lonnie and Joyce got divorced. Eddie can’t imagine Lonnie Byers enjoying the company of a woman who buys a birdbath.

The door’s unlocked. They make it inside and Steve slams the door behind them as Eddie takes a step inside the house, staring around wide-eyed, because, uh, what?

The place is crowded with Christmas lights, strung up wall-to-wall and so dense they almost cover the ceiling, except none of them have bulbs attached — they’re all scattered on the table, a dense nest of colors. There’s also an alphabet drawn on the wall. And a raw gaping hole in the opposite wall, covered only by a tarpaulin, discarded papers and broken glass littered all over the floor.

“What the fuck?” Eddie whispers, taking a step forward into the mess. Maybe there’s more to this, than just the thing without a face. There has to be.

“We should clean up your knees,” Steve says. His eyes go wide as he takes in the state of the house, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Maybe he’s trying to be polite. That sort of makes it worse.

It’s that, that and Steve’s butchered attempt at an apology earlier that makes Eddie shake his head. “I’ll do it myself. I, uh, I’m sure they have a first aid kit somewhere.” In the barn in the dark was one thing, Steve breathing in the silence as he moved his hands over Eddie’s bare knees, but here? In the bathroom, in the glare of a lightbulb? That’s quite another.

This time, Steve doesn’t argue with him. Just lets him go.

So Eddie goes and finds the bathroom, some small tiled thing in 70s avocado green. The first aid kit he finds under the sink. Under painful fluorescents he strips his jeans off and unwinds the makeshift bandages, wincing as they unglue themselves from his drying wounds. The antiseptic is worse; he bites down on his tongue to avoid swearing, not wanting Steve to hear any sound of complaint through that paper-thin wall. Jesus, he’s a mess. He tapes gauze over his knees when they’re clean — none of the bandaids are big enough — and dry-swallows a couple more painkillers against the ache in his shoulder. Then he pulls his jeans back up and leans over the sink, staring at himself in the mirror. Fuck.

He’s in dead Will Byers’ house, which looks like it was ravaged by a light-obsessed psychic (ouija style); he’s here with Steve Harrington, who recently saved him from certain death at the hands (well, claws) of a monster without a face. And what they don’t tell you in the horror movies is that your shoulder and your skinned knees still fucking hurt.

There are deep circles under his eyes, like there have been all week, actually. Or, scratch that, all month, months, all the time since his uncle first said They arrested him, under the glaring summer sun. Which Eddie shouldn’t be losing sleep over, really. Faceless monsters are much more legitimate. And yet they’re so much more like icing on the fucking cake, and icing’s not the important part, is it? You can have too much icing. Can’t have too much cake. Cake’s what fucking matters. Fuck.

If Steve can tell he’s been losing his mind a little bit, when he comes out of the bathroom and finds Steve perched awkwardly on the edge of the couch, thumbing through some random magazine, he doesn’t let it show. He just nods to Eddie, like they’re friends and this is a normal thing to be doing, camping out in the house of the guy who may have stolen your girlfriend while you hide from the monster outside, and Eddie sits on the couch next to him.

“You think they’d mind if I smoked?” Eddie says.

Steve gestures to the ashtray on the cluttered coffee table. It’s brimming with cigarette butts, practically overflowing. So Eddie’ll take that as a no, then. He gets out his pack and lights one one-handed, mindful that the more he uses his damaged arm now the more it’s gonna bite him in the ass later. He exhales a long stream of smoke. Then he looks over at Steve, who’s staring at the words in the magazine without really seeing them, it seems, and feels that strange charitable urge rising up in his chest again. (Maybe he should see someone about that. Maybe it’s contagious.) So he offers the cigarette to him, holding it outstretched between middle and forefinger.

Steve looks at him. And Eddie realizes what it is, actually, beyond charity. Not charity at all, but a challenge. He’s challenging Steve. Scared to share saliva with me? is the question. Exactly how much do you know about me? is the question. How much do you believe in it? What will you do with it, if you do?

Steve takes the cigarette.

So they smoke in silence for a couple minutes, until Eddie leans his head back against the wall (dripping with slick black paint, really, what the fuck happened here) and says, “So, we’re, what. Just waiting for Byers to get back from jail? Because I can tell you from experience, if he’s in jail, we might be waiting a while.”

Steve glances over at him. “You’ve been arrested?”

Well, no, that wasn’t really what Eddie was getting at, but hey. He supposes, sort of. “Kinda. It’s– long story.” Silent deal, remember? Let’s not talk about my dad, and we won’t talk about yours. Eddie’s not sure why he’s finding that so hard to stick to.

“Well, yeah, I guess we just wait. I don’t think Jonathan’s gonna end up in jail, y’know, it was just– just a couple punches, and I’m not pressing charges or anything.”

Someone like Steve Harrington could probably set a cop on fire and still be home in time for dinner. Other people, not so much. But Eddie doesn’t say this, just takes the cigarette back for a final puff before he says, “I was going to ask for a job. From my drug dealer. Last night, when I hit the monster on Cornwallis.”

“Jesus.” Steve shifts on the couch, running a hand through his hair. His fucking hair. “Why are you– like, why are you telling me that, man? I mean, I could tell someone. I could do– anything with that information.”

“I know,” Eddie says, stubbing the cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray. “I know you could. Guess I’m banking on your good nature, aren’t I?”

Steve looks at him. It’s a strange look, confused, wary, like he’s saying I already saved your life tonight, man, why are you pushing it, and Eddie doesn’t know. Why he’s pushing it. Can’t he just take what he can get?

Finally, Steve looks away, burying his bruised-up face in his hands for a moment. “I’m not a narc, man. You do what you want.”

Eddie sits back, strangely disappointed. He lights another cigarette, for something to do with his hands. Steve goes back to his magazine. And the silence is heavy, stretching on too long, extending in the way that makes Eddie’s sides itch and he’s getting to the verge of breaking it again when there’s the sound of tires and an engine outside.

They both stand up, moving further apart by some unspoken understanding, though they weren’t that close together to begin with. A little guilty, almost. Like they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t. Strange.

“Steve?” is what Wheeler says, tone incredulous, when she opens the door. Byers is right behind her, a similar expression of startled confusion on his face. “And Eddie, what are you–”

“So, uh, we saw the–”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, cutting Eddie off. “About what I said, and about the fucking graffiti, it was so stupid and I totally wasn’t thinking, and I wanted–”

Eddie’s had enough of this already. Fucking Harrington, wearing his heart on his sleeve. Apologizing. (Eddie’s not quite sure why that irritates him so much.) “While that’s all very heartwarming, can we wait to conduct your little soap opera until after we’ve dealt with the monster currently terrorizing the town?”

Steve shoots him a cold look. Eddie ignores it as Byers steps forward: “We need to bait the monster. Distract it. My mom and the Chief, they’re going into the Upside Down to find Will and they’re just gonna be sitting ducks for the demogorgon if we don’t do something.”

“Okay, like, twenty steps back, find Will? I thought he was– uh, I thought he was dead.”

“What the fuck is the Upside Down?” Steve cuts in. “Or the demogorgon?”

Byers shakes his head impatiently. “Will’s alive, he’s just trapped there, the Upside Down, it’s this, like–” He looks at Wheeler for help.

She just says in a low tone, “Are you sure we should be telling them all this? I mean, it isn’t safe.”

“Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure we know it’s not safe, thanks.” Steve glances at Eddie then glances away. “That thing nearly killed us earlier. The– the demogorgon?”

“Wait, demogorgon? Like the DnD monster? That’s– kind of appropriate, actually.” Eddie wonders who came up with that. He can’t imagine Wheeler or Byers looking to the Monster Manual for guidance.

“Look, they’re clearly in this now, and who knows, maybe they can help,” Byers says to Wheeler, hushed, and then turns back to Steve and Eddie. “We need to bait the demogorgon.”

“It can sense blood,” Wheeler adds, and Eddie can’t resist a little hiss of satisfaction, “I fucking knew it,” digging an elbow at Steve, forgetting himself. Steve gives him a cool, wry look in response. “So our plan is to lure it here, and kill it.”

“Simple. Effective. I like it,” Eddie says sarcastically, because he doesn’t fucking like it. Bad enough when they were out trying to find it — now they’re wanting it to find them? “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.”

“How the hell are you going to kill it, Nance? I shot the thing and the bullet practically bounced off!”

“You shot it?” She sounds impressed. Eddie might puke. “We’re going to set it on fire.”

“Why is it that for the second time this evening I find myself asking who the fuck is ‘we’?”

For once, Steve seems to agree with him. “I don’t know, Nance, is this even gonna–”

“If you can’t handle it, then go home,” she snaps, and oh, that’s a different Nancy Wheeler. That’s a new Nancy Wheeler. Eddie almost wants to stand to attention. “You can be in or you can be out, but we’re running out of time and you need to decide now.”

Eddie looks at Steve. Steve is thinking about it, sure, cogs whirring behind that thick fall of hair, but Eddie already knows what the guy’ll decide. He was stupid enough to go looking for the thing this afternoon, after all. What’s a little bit of baiting this evening? How else is he going to liberate Princess Wheeler from Byers the Creep’s clutches?

Eddie has no fucking reason to be here. Eddie should just go the fuck home right now. He’s not the sort of person who does this, throws himself into danger for noble reasons, saves the girl, saves the town. He’s the sort of person who accidentally hits the demogorgon with his van on his way to see his drug dealer. That’s who he is. Someone raised in a world where there are no heroes, or if there are, they’re more like interlopers. Like they arrive on the U.S.S. Enterprise, orbiting around Eddie’s shitty trailer park planet for a while, and then they leave again, just as efficiently and inexplicably as they came. People don’t become something else.

And yet–

Steve came back for him. Steve saved his life. Steve bandaged up his knees and worried about infection and might be about to save Byers and Wheeler’s lives too, in a sec, and that doesn’t make sense with what Steve’s supposed to be. It doesn’t make sense at all. And yet–

Is he really gonna let Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington outshine him here?

“Okay,” Eddie says, in a rush. “Fuck it, okay, let’s kill the bastard.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and it’s only when he moves his eyes back to Wheeler that Eddie realizes Steve was looking at him. “Let’s do it.”

The plan goes as follows: hammer nails in the baseball bat, set up the bear trap, pour a trail of gasoline across the hallway. Wheeler looks at Eddie, at his arm held awkwardly across his chest, and suggests that he be their getaway driver. “You can drive with that, right?” she says, and Eddie thanks whatever’s listening that Steve’s out of earshot, reloading the gun.

“I’ll keep the engine running,” he promises, though he’s not sure at all. Hoping adrenaline will kick in, is more the idea. He gets the chance to test it when he drives Byers’ Ford around to the side of the house, over cold, slippery grass — closer to the window in Will’s room, if it all goes wrong. Fuck. He’s not sure any car could outrun the demogorgon, much less this old beat-up thing. But still. He’s in this now.

He gets out and rejoins them inside as Byers hammers the last nail into the bat; it looks evil, now, capable of more violence than any baseball player should be permitted. But hey, the only one of them who plays baseball is Steve.

It doesn’t look right in Byers’ hands. The way the Dirty Harry gun doesn’t look right in Steve’s. But what else can they do?

“This is so fucking insane,” Steve says, as Jonathan and Nancy get knives out. (Eddie’s decided he may as well call them by their first names in his head, since they might all be about to die together.) “This is so–”

Nancy looks at Eddie. “Go start the car,” she says, and he mock salutes and then goes to start the car.

And then he waits.

He’s got a view of the window in the hall and the window in Will’s room, which isn’t much of a view at all. Who knows what’s happening inside, and the thought makes his heart pound, the thought that maybe the demogorgon could turn up and massacre them and Eddie wouldn’t even fucking know until he goes inside there maybe an hour later and finds their ruined bodies–

But he’s not going to be able to drive if he’s having a panic attack, so he counts out his breathing and turns the radio on. It’s set to some moody rock station, very on brand for Jonathan, Eddie thinks. The song is that one that was on the charts for months earlier in the year, Twilight Zone, and he turns it way up for a minute or two to get his heart rate down, then thinks better of it and turns it down because what if he can’t hear them in the house? What if they need his help?

What help he could offer, he doesn’t know, but he’s in this now. Whatever that means. So he waits.

About half an hour later, there’s a flicker of light. He sits up straighter, staring hard at the windows, the bulbs blinking faster and faster in the hallway like maybe the monster’s here like maybe it’s actually happening–

Then darkness. Then silence. No flare of fire in the hallway, where the demogorgon’s supposed to be caught in the bear trap. Nothing.

He contemplates getting out, going in there, hoping to fucking God they’re not dead. But Nancy was firm about that: stay in the car. We’ll come get you. And this new Nancy Wheeler isn’t one he wants to argue with, so he stays in the car. Heart racing. Waiting.

Waiting.

And then–

The lights flicker again. Rapid, so rapid it hurts his eyes to look at the windows but he looks anyway, desperately, craning his neck to see, not that there’s anything to see, not that there’s–

Then a yell, through the open window.

“Steve!”

That’s Nancy and she’s desperate, afraid, voice cracking as there’s a crash and an inhuman shriek and a gun going off and Eddie takes a moment, just a moment, to make a decision. To decide who he’s going to be tonight. If maybe he can be someone else. Go in there, help them out, save their lives.

Roll for initiative. Go.

And then, decision made, he hurls himself out of the car and round the front of the house, throwing the front door open, bracing himself, staring at the scene finding Steve on the floor pinned by the demogorgon Jonathan thrown to the side Nancy trying to reach for her gun scattered at the other end of the hallway–

Steve’s gun lying discarded by Eddie’s feet. Eddie having one chance, and one chance only. Picking up the gun. Saving Steve’s life.

It’s two shots. The gun kicks back in Eddie’s hands, hard, sending a sharp shock through his damaged shoulder but he doesn’t let go. Can’t let go. Fires at the demogorgon and yeah, the thing’s hide seems mainly bulletproof but it still flinches, still looks up from where it’s snarling in Steve’s face without eyes and finds Eddie finds him standing there moves like it’s going after him next, swipes and sends the revolver clattering out of his hands–

Another gunshot. Nancy’s found her gun. And Steve’s rolling out from under the monster, grabbing for the fallen nail bat, springing to his feet swinging it around landing it with a crunch in the thing’s awful back the thing faltering, Jonathan dragging himself up and grabbing the fallen gun, Jonathan and Nancy and Steve driving it back together like a team, seamless, in sync, driving it back until it hits the bear trap and shrieks as the jaws close around its leg and Eddie knows what to do, knows what he has to do.

Finds his lighter in his pocket. Ignites the flame.

He throws it at the monster; the gasoline catches; the thing bursts up into fire. It screams so painfully Eddie has to cover his ears. Then Jonathan’s grabbing the fire extinguisher and putting the flame out, flooding the hallway with clouded spray, and in the time it takes to clear, the demogorgon disappears.

Disappears.

Leaves the hallway empty. Only burn marks on the carpet and a harsh, acrid smell left to show it really happened.

“Where’d it go?” Nancy says, coughing in the smoke, edging towards the bear trap.

“It has to be dead.” Jonathan’s voice is weary, desperate, catching his breath. “It has to be.”

There’s a spatter of gore on the teeth of the bear trap, melting, bubbling flesh that stinks like something rotting. Eddie stares at it, trying to catch his breath. Steve’s holding the bat like it’s just an extension of his arm — baseball player, right, as well as basketball. He’s not sure why they didn’t give him the bat before.

And Steve wields it naturally as he spins to face the trail of lights, glowing gently in a line back down towards the kitchen. He’s shoved himself in front of the three of them, Eddie and Nancy and Jonathan, even though he’s got a bat and Nancy and Jonathan have guns but hey, the bat seems like the most effective weapon against the thing anyway.

The lights take them out the front door again, until the lamppost flickers and then darkens, like the monster’s moving out of range.

“Where’s it going?” Nancy asks, and Eddie’s inclined to ask the same question. Where is it going?

But Jonathan shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s the monster.”

They all look at him, the three of them, but he’s transfixed. Something almost psychic about his eyes, which, okay. Eddie’s had enough adrenaline for one day. He really needs to sit down.

They go back inside and Eddie sinks down on the couch, head in his hands, feeling the shakes move through him again. Fucking Christ. The couch dips as someone sits next to him — Steve — and the next thing he knows his pack of Camels is being taken out of his breast pocket, the click of a lighter sounding next to him, Steve’s hand on his arm as he offers him the cigarette.

“Thanks,” Eddie mutters, taking it and breathing in, though it was his cigarette in the first place. Jonathan sits down heavily on his other side, exhaling through his teeth, and Eddie takes pity, holds the cigarette out. Jonathan takes it warily. “So, what. Is it over? Or is that thing gonna come back?”

“If we distracted it long enough for Mom and the Chief to get to Will, then maybe it is over,” Jonathan says, the cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth.

“But it isn’t dead.” Nancy’s tone is low, furious. She’s the only one still on her feet. “If it isn’t dead, then what’s the point?”

“It’s not gonna bring Barb back, Nancy,” Jonathan says, softly, with this big gentle look in his gaze and Steve’s eyes have gone wide and Eddie’s really caught in the fucking middle of this, Christ.

Her face swims with something for a minute before she turns away, going down the burnt hallway into the bathroom, and Jonathan looks torn, like he wants to follow her, but then his eyes land on Steve and it becomes clear what’s stopping him. But Steve’s not looking at Nancy anymore. He’s studying his hands, which are bloody now, whose blood is that? And Jonathan clearly takes that as permission, because he disappears down the hallway after her and then it’s just Eddie and Steve again, alone on the couch.

“Thanks, by the way,” Steve says, after a while. “For coming back for us, back there. We nearly–” He breaks off.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “I mean, just returning the favor, right?”

“Well, I guess, consider it returned.” Steve stretches his legs out before him and then gets up. “Y’know what I’m craving? Coffee. God, I want a fucking coffee.”

“Personally I want a six pack and the fattest joint of my life, but you do you, Harrington.” Eddie watches him cross the room towards the kitchen, out of Eddie’s field of vision. He feels strangely calm right now. Which is definitely weird, since they all very nearly died in the last ten minutes, but there’s something almost euphoric in that. In surviving. In being the kind of person who — against all the odds — survives. Because god knows he’d be one of the first to die if this were a horror movie.

After a while he gets up and wanders after Steve into the kitchen, finds him brewing a fucking pot of coffee. Jesus Christ.

“Y’know, I think you’re the weird one,” Eddie remarks, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms (more like cradling the shoulder that hurts, but hey, Steve doesn’t need to know that).

Steve scoffs. “No way, dude.”

“Uh, yes, way. Here I thought I was having a mixed-up sort of day, and then here you are, derogatory graffiti and fisticuffs followed up by risking your life against an otherworldly faceless monster not only to save Wheeler and Byers but also to save the one and only yours truly, Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson, then in turn followed up by a goddamn pot of coffee. Shit’s weird, man. Weird.”

Steve looks at him for a moment. Eddie sort of regrets saying it, for some reason he can’t explain. It feels too true, too honest, to tell Steve how wrongfooted he is by all this. By Steve turning out to be nothing like he’d expected him to be. But then Steve gets this honest look too: “I could say the same about you, y’know.”

“What?”

“I mean, you deciding to stay and help and everything. And, like, coming back in here to save us– there’s something brave about that, man. It was cool.”

Eddie’s eyebrows climb. “Cool?”

“Just– not what I expected of you. That’s all.”

And maybe it shouldn’t, but it makes Eddie bristle. It feels strange, wrong, that Steve should have expectations of him. Ideas. That he should exist — or, rather, a version of him should exist — inside Steve’s head. Or maybe that’s not what rankles. What rankles, really, is that Steve’s notion of Eddie is too close to Eddie’s notion of Eddie. That Eddie surpassed his own expectations, too.

So they lapse into silence again, a silence that lasts the time it takes to brew the coffee and pour out four mugs and smoke two more cigarettes together. Eddie takes a sip of his coffee and burns his tongue on it, which he guesses is a sign, because coffee usually just makes him tired so really he shouldn’t be drinking it, but anyway. Special occasion.

A little while later, Nancy and Jonathan emerge from the bathroom, and Eddie wonders. Wonders if Nancy really is breaking type here, if they’re all defying expectations tonight. But Nancy looks at Steve, then, and it’s clear her decision hasn’t yet been made. Whatever. Eddie’s not getting in the middle of that shit. He leans back against the counter and casts his eyes over the stack of unpaid bills on it, a stack to match his own. Hey, Byers, he wants to say. Are you really buying this? These two?

But Jonathan looks pretty sold, so.

“So how’d the Chief get involved, anyway? Didn’t peg him for a believing in monsters sort of guy.”

“Neither did I,” Jonathan mutters, eyes on Nancy as she moves over to Steve and they exchange words too hushed to hear. There’s a dark look on his face. “I guess this week’s been full of surprises.”

“Some more than others,” Eddie says mildly.

Jonathan frowns. “How did you even end up out here with Steve anyway?”

“I saw him cleaning up the mess he made. Guess I decided to take pity on him, more fool me. Also, you guys sorta gave me the impression he knew more than he did, so, uh, thanks for that.”

Jonathan shrugs, taking up his own mug of coffee. Now he’s looking distant, unfocused, like Steve and Eddie and even Nancy are just passing concerns. And Eddie can’t say to him I’m sure your brother will be fine, because he’s not sure of that, and false hope’s never served anyone well. It didn’t serve him with Tommy C., after all. He thinks he’s learned a lot of lessons this week. He’s not sure what they are, but he’s learned them.

Eddie doesn’t get to finish his coffee (which, good, because he’s already got bone-numb weariness tugging at his limbs), because there’s the sound of an engine outside.

They all jolt into action, Steve grabbing up the nailbat, Nancy raising her gun, Jonathan holding–

Is that an axe?

Jonathan catches him looking. “Not a big gun person,” he says, quietly, and Eddie can recognize the look in his eyes. One he’s seen in the mirror, all that crap. Eddie’s gonna have to ask the question one day: does the thought of my dad scare you the way the thought of yours does me?

But not today. Today they face the door in a sort of line, the three of them and then Eddie, weaponless, shunted to the side. Which he gets. He’s not a hero; he’s also not sure he could hold a weapon without dropping it, right now. So he hunches and watches and waits, and then the door opens and it’s the Chief.

He stares at the four of them for a moment. “You can drop the weapons now, kids, it’s just me.”

Jonathan lowers the axe. ‘Will-”

“Is in the car with your mom, that’s why I’m here. She said you’d be here at the house, she wouldn’t let us go straight to the hospital without getting you–”

Jonathan sags in visible relief. Nancy’s hand winds up on his arm. “Wait, the hospital?”

“He’s in bad shape, but he’s alive. Now let’s go.” Hopper gives Eddie and Steve a strange look, but nothing more than that, like he’s used to the weirdness by now. Eddie knows the feeling.

“Jonathan–” Nancy starts, as he follows Hopper out of the house and towards the Blazer.

But Steve’s right behind her, saying, “I can drive us to the hospital,” and she turns and smiles at him but then she says, “Wait, we should go to the school first, for the kids,” which is how Eddie winds up driving Jonathan Byers’ LTD to Hawkins fucking Middle School, following Steve Harrington’s taillights, thinking to himself, what fucking kids?

Chapter Text

The kids turn out to be a sleepy bunch, two of them at least. Eddie’s sitting with his hands knotted between his knees, too anxious to drift off right now, envying them hugely as his gaze sweeps the room. Henderson and Sinclair, he thinks they were introduced as. Next to them is Nancy’s brother, a lanky kid with something desolate about him. But Eddie isn’t gonna go over there and say anything to him because Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler are also here, just on Steve’s other side — so two chairs away from Eddie — and they’ve already given Eddie several suspicious looks.

It’s not his fault it’s fucking hot in the waiting room, so he had to shed his jacket to reveal the shirt with Motörhead’s Snaggletooth on it and push up the sleeves to show off the bat tattoo. That’s not his fault. But hey.

There’s also an oppressive stillness, heavy in the room. People lost in their thoughts, all that shit, which, great, but when Eddie’s lost in his thoughts it generally involves a lot more pacing and smoking and listening to loud music. Stillness doesn’t really do it for him. Puts him on edge. Plus the Chief’s here, just gone to find a vending machine, and the memory of the drunk tank is too raw to enjoy that very much.

So.

“Will you quit twitching, man? Jesus,” Steve says, after a while. His arm is brushing Eddie’s.

“Well, sorry that I’m finding it difficult to believe that we’re suddenly not in danger anymore after we nearly died, like, an hour ago–”

“Why don’t you go for a smoke, okay?”

Despite the close stillness of the room, Eddie’s strangely reluctant to leave it. These are people — Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler excepted, of course — who know what’s going on. Who’ve known what’s going on, this whole time, even the kids. As Eddie was made aware when they went to pick them up, Wheeler junior already with his parents but Sinclair and Henderson brimming with the story, about some girl called El destroying the demogorgon with her mind (“She was totally gonna be our mage, but then– I guess–” with a downcast look, and Eddie suddenly understood why the demogorgon got named the demogorgon).

But Steve’s right. He needs some air.

He thinks about inviting him, Steve. Offering him another cigarette. But Steve’s eyes are on Nancy, that soft hopeful look in them, so Eddie leaves on his own.

And walks straight into Hopper, because when has he ever been lucky?

“Munson,” Hopper says, voice gruff tonight in a way that sounds deliberate, like he’s covering up how raw it is. Which is fair. Eddie’s not going to blame him for that.

“Chief,” Eddie says, offering a sardonic salute with the hand holding his pack of Camels (the other in the sling across his chest again).

“Can we talk?”

Eddie’s stomach sinks. But he nods and follows Hopper out the nearest fire exit into the dark. It’s freezing outside, and he shivers, pulling his sleeves back down, and then stiffens in surprise as he feels something heavy settling over his shoulders, the fabric rough and smelling of cigarettes but still warm against the chill.

Hopper leans back against the wall, now jacket-less, and lights a smoke, cupping his hand against the wind. Eddie pulls the jacket tighter around himself warily, like any second the offer of warmth is going to be snatched away, or else he’s going to have to give something in return.

Which, maybe he will. He doesn’t know what this is about.

“It wasn’t me who busted your dad,” Hopper says. Whatever Eddie wasn’t expecting, it wasn’t that. “Back in the summer. It was a DEA operation out of town; they busted him and his supplier at the same time. I’m sure you know that.”

Eddie didn’t know that. He lights his own cigarette with numb, trembling fingers.

“I guess I’m just trying to say, kid, that you don’t– you don’t have anything to prove. Okay? Not to me, not to anyone. Now, whatever happened on Sunday night, that’s another story. I’m not having you go the same way as your old man, you understand? It’s a waste.”

“A waste of what,” Eddie mumbles, tasting ash on his tongue.

Hopper looks at him. “Jonathan, he told me what you did back there, y’know. Both times. I mean, crashing your van into the monster? Jesus, kid. You got a pair.”

Eddie doesn’t see it that way, but he doesn’t really want to argue with the Chief, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“What happened to your arm, kid? I find it hard to believe you were involved in all that shit over Wheeler. If there’s something else going on– if you need to get it looked at–“

“I don’t,” Eddie says tightly. “It was nothing.”

Hopper looks at him closely for a moment, then takes another drag of his cigarette. “Look, I know what your old man’s like, and I know you’ve been having a rough time, so I need you to listen to me when I say this: they know that too. I don’t know how much you know, with Hawkins Lab and all that mess, but they’re gonna come and ask each of you a bunch of questions and get you to sign a big thick NDA at the end of it, but that’s the worst they can do to you, okay? I need you to remember that, because they’re gonna give you a really hard time about all this shit. Kid, they’re gonna have you wondering if you know what’s real and what’s not, thinking that you’re crazy, thinking that your friends are lying about you. They’re just trying to intimidate you. It’s all about power.”

“Why are you telling me this? Why not–” Eddie gestures back at the door with his cigarette “–any of them?”

Hopper exhales through his teeth. “Because the kids are kids, they’re not gonna get that treatment. And Wheeler, her parents are here, and she and Harrington, well. Harrington’s got a lot of money, and when you’ve got that much money you tend to feel less like the government might black-bag you and dump your body somewhere. Which is a stupid assumption to make, ‘cause they can do that to anyone, but it’s an assumption that sticks. And I think they’d have a hard time telling Joyce and Jonathan not to believe in each other, don’t you?”

Eddie looks at the ground. “So, what, I’m the odd one out. Most likely to be brainwashed by the government, Jesus. D’ya think they should put that in the yearbook?”

Hopper snorts. “You got an uncle, right, kid?” Eddie nods. “Call him.”

Hopper drops his cigarette and goes inside, without asking for his jacket back. Eddie digs the hand that’s not in the sling into the pocket, against the chill, and his fingers wrap around something plastic and rattling — a pill bottle.

He takes it out. It’s prescription Tuinal, but the name isn’t Hopper’s. There’s no name on it at all, in fact, and huh. That’s interesting. That’s very interesting. Rick’s the only major dealer in town — Eddie wonders if that’s where Hopper gets it, the Tuinal. Or if he’s got a thing going on with some quack doctor or something. But, whatever, it’s not Eddie’s business. He shakes a pill out, removing the cigarette from his lips to swallow it dry. Hopper will probably notice the missing pill, but hey. Consider it payment for all the shit Eddie had to do today.

When he goes back inside, the Tuinal’s already kicking in. Less itching in his skin, less churning in his gut. Briefly he spares a thought for how nice it might be to get prescribed something like this himself, and how that’s a distant dream until he can get himself added to Wayne’s insurance. He’s calm enough to sit back down next to Steve and stay still for a while, avoiding the eyes of Mrs. Wheeler, who’s moved to sit next to Nancy opposite. Then Jonathan emerges, says, “He’s awake,” and the three kids jump to their feet, rushing out into Will’s hospital room, and Nancy follows, leaving Mr. Wheeler and Mrs. Wheeler and Eddie and Steve.

Okay, that’s weird.

Mr. Wheeler’s asleep; Mrs. Wheeler’s examining her handbag with what looks like great interest. Eddie reckons it’s safe enough to lean closer into Steve and say, “Hopper thinks we’re gonna be questioned, by the, uh– by the government.”

“Shit, really?” Steve’s eyes have gone wide. “Do we need to, like, think up a story together, or something?”

“I think he just wants us to tell the truth.” They’re so close together that Eddie can see the spattering of moles over Steve’s cheek, running down the side of his throat. “Deep shit, right?”

“Deep shit,” Steve echoes, eyes on the doorway where Nancy disappeared.

Eddie supposes it’s as good a time as any (meaning not at all) to call his uncle, so he digs a few loose coins out of the Chief’s jacket pocket (again, compensation) and finds a payphone. It takes a couple rings, but then Wayne’s picking up the phone. There’s the edge of worry in his voice already. “Wayne Munson.”

“Hey, Uncle Wayne. It’s me.”

“Eddie? Where are you?”

“I’m, uh, I’m at the hospital. It’s not for me,” Eddie adds hastily, before Wayne can start to worry about the insurance thing again, “It’s, um, a long story. I just–” He thinks about what Hopper said. About the way he is the odd one out here, neither rich nor well-supported, just him and his uncle who already has enough to worry about. Hopper’s implication that he should call Wayne and get him to come here, come be here for him. Except fuck that. And how would Wayne even get here, with the car in the shop? “It’s for a friend. So I don’t know when I’ll be home, y’know, so don’t wait up?”

“Eddie,” Wayne says, and there’s a question in that. Are you okay? What happened? Y’know you can talk to me about things. Whatever they are. Right?

“Wayne,” Eddie says, and that’s that.

When he heads back towards the waiting room, he passes the vending machine, where the kid with curly hair, Henderson, he thinks, is violently punching numbers into the keypad. “Son of a bitch,” the kid mutters, aiming a kick at the base of the machine.

“You know, those things don’t generally respond well to shows of brute force.” Eddie comes up to stand beside him, raising an eyebrow down at the kid.

“What do they respond to, then? Because I’ve already tried asking politely.”

He leans down and pushes the flap up hard, letting it fall back down with a snap, and when he’s done this a few times, Henderson’s 3 Musketeers bar comes clattering down with it. “My liege,” Eddie says, bowing as he presents the snack. “You: hammer. Me: scalpel.”

“Holy shit,” Henderson says, taking it from him. “Who are you, exactly?”

Eddie supposes he doesn’t blame him for not really remembering. It was chaos in the school parking lot a couple hours ago — ambulances, worried parents, dead agents. Jesus. “Eddie Munson, at your service. Senior, head of the Hellfire Club, and I guess recent inductee into whatever we’re gonna call this screwed-up little group. Survivors of the Upside Down, or some shit.”

“What’s the Hellfire Club?”

“Just happens to be Hawkins High’s only redeeming feature, of course. It’s my DnD club.”

“Hawkins High has a DnD club? Holy shit, oh my god, I thought all high schoolers were totally boring and lame–”

“Oh, they totally are. Most of them, anyway. Not me. I’m cool.”

Henderson actually looks like he agrees with that assessment, and maybe for the first time all week Eddie feels on an even keel. Because this is what he knows how to do — getting people to believe in what he says when he’s spinning a story, sitting at the head of the table behind his screen and creating a world, getting people to look up to him for a moment. He has missed that, actually. DMing. Maybe Janie’s right; he should do a campaign again.

“Now, a little bird told me that our entire understanding of what happened this week is based on DnD, so if you want to give me a rundown–”

Henderson jumps at that, eager, and talks almost incessantly all the way down the hallway until they’re back at the waiting room and realizing very rapidly that there are suddenly a lot more people in it. People in dark suits and inscrutable looks, cold. The government.

Eddie contemplates taking another Tuinal.

“Eddie Munson?” one of them says, a man with graying hair and a face as blank as stone. Eddie sort of wants to throw up. He nods. “We’re interviewing everyone who was involved in this week’s events separately. We can do this at your home or we can do it here, or at a third, secure location; which would you prefer?”

None of them. He looks over at Steve, who’s talking to another agent; beyond him, the Wheelers are getting ready to leave with someone else, Henderson and Sinclair trailing along with them. “Here’s good, I guess.”

The agent smiles. “Excellent.”

So Eddie’s led to a little doctor’s office. There’s a radio on the desk, playing quietly even though no one’s here — some Police song Eddie doesn’t know — and the agent reaches to switch it off, forcing them into cold, uncomfortable silence.

Then the agent sits down behind the desk and Eddie has to sit on one of those lower visitor’s chairs like the agent’s about to tell him he’s got cancer or something, which. There’s definitely some weird irony in that, but he doesn’t have the strength to unpack it, not tonight. He settles for worrying at the edge of the surgical tape where it’s poking up through the holes in the knees of his jeans.

“First, let me introduce myself. I’m Agent Faraday. Now, this is going to be a very informal interview, Eddie. That’s what you prefer to be called, isn’t it? Eddie? Not Edward?”

“Yeah, Eddie,” Eddie says. Edward makes something inside him shrivel up.

“Okay, well, Eddie, like I was saying, you’re not a suspect or anything like that, I’m just trying to ascertain a few facts. It’s been a very troubling time for all of us, and we’d all like to see everything resolved as cleanly as it can be. With that in mind, it’s important that you tell us everything you remember, leaving nothing out. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yeah, I– yeah.” Eddie’s really wishing he’d taken that extra Tuinal. Too late now.

“What happened on Sunday evening?”

Eddie looks at Faraday. Would they arrest him for the drugs? You can never be sure. But underage drinking is probably way below this guy’s paygrade, right? “I was, um, drinking with a couple friends by Lovers’ Lake. I knew I was over the limit, so I, y’know, decided to walk home. But there was something in the woods. I didn’t–” He looks at his hands. “Didn’t think it was real, for a while.”

“You thought you were hallucinating?” Faraday’s eyebrows climb. “Because you were drinking?”

“I– yes.”

“Which friends were these?” The agent’s got a notebook out, pen twitching over it. Shit. Some of Eddie’s hesitation must show in his face; Faraday shakes his head. “That’s okay. Did any of them see the creature? Or just you? I need you to be honest with your answer.”

“Just me,” Eddie says, relieved he can answer honestly.

“Okay, good. Now, when did you next see the creature?”

“Um, Friday night. Last night.” It feels like a fucking lifetime ago.

“And did you again think it was a hallucination, or–?”

“No, I knew it was real this time. I hit it with my van.”

Once again, Faraday’s eyebrows rise. He notes something down on his pad. “When did you see the creature again?”

“This afternoon. In the woods.”

“And again you believed it was real.”

Eddie nods.

“And what was the difference between these occasions and the first, that made you think it was a hallucination the first time, and real the next?”

Eddie just looks at him.

“You say you hit the creature with your van, but can you be certain of that? Are you concerned about your mental health in some way, that you so readily assumed it wasn’t real the first time?”

“I– I don’t–”

“Your family has a history of encounters with the Drug Enforcement Administration, doesn’t it?”

Eddie closes his mouth. Of course they know that. Isn’t that what Hopper said? They know everything, and they’re more than willing to use it against him. Still, it makes him feel small. Alone. “I wouldn’t consider Bruce Munson my family, so, no, actually.”

“But wouldn’t you say it’s interesting that the very center of all the chaos this week, Will Byers, is the son of one of your father’s close friends? In fact, not only a friend, I believe, but a business associate. It’s curious, isn’t it, that you just happened to find yourself in the woods on three separate occasions, when the creature just happened to be nearby? I’d say that’s curious.”

“Yeah, well, unfortunately I didn’t just happen to be in the woods each time,” Eddie snaps. “The only reason I saw it the third time was because Steve fucking Harrington wanted to go looking for it–”

“Oh? And how did he know about it?”

Eddie swallows. “Because I told him.”

“So, let me get this straight. You felt firm enough in your conviction that it was real to tell people about it, even though you’d previously believed that it was a delusion? Who else did you tell?”

“I didn’t tell anyone else.” The lie feels heavy on his tongue, and Faraday looks at him sharply.

“Think carefully, Eddie. It’s not in your best interest to lie to me. No harm will come to whoever you told; they’ll be required to sign an NDA, same as you.”

Eddie drops his head. “He didn’t believe me anyway,” he mumbles. “Tommy Coe.”

“The son of Dale Coe, and nephew of Henry Mooney?” Faraday’s pen scratches against his paper. “Thank you for your honesty. It does leave me wondering, though, why you would tell Steve Harrington and Tommy Coe about this. Are they close friends of yours?” He says this skeptically, like he’s already spoken to them and discovered this is not the case. Maybe he has.

“No, I– I told Steve because I thought he already knew. And Tommy, I mean, we already went out looking for his dad in the woods yesterday, I couldn’t just– sit on that information–”

“When you’d decided it wasn’t a delusion.”

Eddie swallows. “Yeah.”

“So, if you and this Tommy Coe aren’t friends, why were you looking for his father? The search parties for Dale Coe and Henry Mooney didn’t begin until late last night.”

Eddie bites down on the inside of his cheek; the pain is grounding, somehow. “He asked me to help him.”

“And why is that, do you think?” Faraday sits back in his chair, something proud and satisfied about him, like he’s good at his job. Fuck him.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. I find that difficult to believe, Eddie.” Something almost gentle in his tone, patronizing. “Was Tommy one of the friends you were with on Sunday night?”

Eddie smiles bitterly. “No comment.”

“You don’t have to do that here; we’re just having a conversation, aren’t we? When Tommy didn’t believe you about the creature, do you think that was for the same reason you doubted yourself on Sunday night? Does he, too, have doubts about your mental state?”

His brain’s wired wrong. That’s what they say about him. What he says about himself, sometimes. Forgetting all his homework, brain scattering off somewhere else whenever he needs to focus. Panic attacks eased only by loud music and drugs. Wired wrong enough to be delusional? Maybe some people think that. Shit. “He’s just a prick,” Eddie mutters, and Faraday smiles.

“A prick who asked you to help him find his father. Was there anything else he asked for?”

And suddenly Eddie gets it, the insinuation. Referencing the DEA, all that bullshit about his mental state. It’s not about that. It’s about the drugs — and more than that, it’s about ensuring that Eddie knows exactly who’s in charge here. Exactly what will happen, if he refuses to cooperate.

“How about this, then? Did you tell anyone else about what you saw?”

Eddie shakes his head.

“No? Not even your uncle?”

He feels a sudden rise of nausea. “No, I didn’t– my uncle’s got nothing to do with this.”

Faraday notes something down. “You’ve been driving him to and from the Icex plant this week, haven’t you?”

“I mean, yeah, but how did you–”

“Seen anything unusual, on your journeys? Or perhaps at the plant itself?”

Something strangely casual in Faraday’s tone, eyes on his notes, and oh. Oh. Eddie thinks about the Hawkins Power and Light vans, the men in white suits, all congregating in the plant’s parking lot. The way they checked his ID. Something was going on there, wasn’t it? Something related to all this.

But Faraday’s eyes are sharp, watching him intently. Waiting to see how he’ll respond. Waiting to see how he’ll interpret this, how he’ll understand it for what it is after everything else he’s said — a threat. See anything unusual, on your journeys?

And the answer he’s expected to give is no.

But instead he says, “What, Icex is in your pocket too?”

Faraday smiles humorlessly. “That isn’t what I asked.”

“No. It’s not.” Eddie studies the floor; he wants to flip the desk. Wants to shout and scream and say fuck you, you think I’m helping you? You think I approve of anything you’ve done here?

He’s always had problems with authority, after all.

But he doesn’t say this. Can’t. Can’t say anything at all, something crawling up his throat, and clearly Faraday feels the need to hammer the point home.

“Icex is your uncle’s only source of income, isn’t it?”

Eddie nods dully.

“Your friends, they don’t understand that, do they? Tommy Coe or Steve Harrington or Nancy Wheeler. They don’t understand what’s at stake. They could say–“ Faraday waves a hand “–anything, about themselves, about you, without understanding the consequences. But you understand the consequences, don’t you, Eddie?”

Eddie digs his fingernails into his palm and tries to breathe. Could they really do that? Take his uncle’s job away? If he does the wrong thing, says the wrong thing, if Steve says the wrong thing–

“Don’t you?”

His ears are ringing again. He can’t really focus on Faraday’s face, things beginning to blur, and his hands are going clammy. Fuck. Fuck. God, he needs to– he can’t– he needs– Wayne–

“You’re going to stop this interview right now,” someone says, a woman, hoarse and unyielding, and he turns. Joyce Byers is standing in the doorway, arms folded over her chest, the sleeves of her turtleneck pushed up. “He’s just a kid. Did you even offer him the chance to have an adult present?”

“Mrs. Byers–“ Faraday starts, and Eddie registers distantly that Joyce has entered the room further and laid a hand on his uninjured shoulder, fuck, it’s weird to have someone do that– a mom–

“Enough, for God’s sake. He’ll sign whatever you want him to. Just– enough. Of all of this. For all of us. Haven’t you done enough?”

Joyce’s hand on his shoulder is weirdly steadying. He finds himself able to look Faraday in the eye as the agent shrugs, cowed, and says, “I’ve gotten what I needed, anyway. Wait ten minutes or so, and we’ll bring you the NDA to sign.” He puts his notebook away and stands up, straightening his tie, leaving with a cold smile, and then it’s just Eddie and Joyce. Which is weird.

“Thanks,” Eddie says, shrugging off her hand, lighting a smoke.

“Jonathan says you saved his life. His and the others’. Twice, actually.” She leans against the wall and drops her head into her hands, like she’s allowing herself to be tired for a moment, only a moment, before she straightens up again. “I should be thanking you.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. He takes a drag from his cigarette and tries to shake the deep-seated dread coming to rest in his bones, the feeling that he didn’t say what he was supposed to in the interview, that he said it wrong, that that’s going to fall on his uncle and there’s nothing he can do about it now. But you understand the consequences, don’t you, Eddie? He’s been trying to understand the consequences all his life. Trying to avert them, do the best he can. Maybe he hasn’t succeeded.

“Have you got someone coming for you, Eddie?”

Her voice is unbearably soft. He can’t look at her. “My uncle’s at home.”

“Are you sure he shouldn’t–”

“I don’t want him involved in this,” he says. “This shit isn’t exactly family-friendly, is it?”

“You’re not allowed to tell him any of it,” she says, with the tone of realization. Something dull in it. “God.”

“Yeah. God.”

“Well, listen–” She steps forward, businesslike suddenly, shaking the exhaustion off. “If you ever need anyone to talk to, we’re here, okay? Me, and Hop, and if you want to talk to someone your own age, then Jonathan–”

“Okay,” Eddie cuts in. He can’t imagine himself going to her. He can’t imagine himself going to anyone, but especially not to her. What could she give him? A reminder of everything he never had?

“Okay,” she repeats, and then Faraday comes in with a stapled document half an inch thick, still warm from the fax machine, and Eddie skims it before he signs it but he’s too jittery to really register anything it says but they’re not going to let him leave until he signs it so he does — E. Munson, in rushed unpracticed scrawl. He’s not often asked to sign his name.

Then he goes out into the hallway, and finds Steve by the vending machine, taking out a fucking New York Seltzer of all things. It’s enough to startle Eddie out of his strange, anxious fugue: he stares at Steve for a while and says, “What the fuck is that, Harrington?”

“This?” Steve holds up the bottle. It’s fucking cherry flavored. “It’s seltzer.”

“You nearly died today and you’re drinking seltzer? Oh, you’re so definitely the weird one.”

“All right, what would you choose?” Steve wrinkles his nose like he’s offended, but he can’t really be offended, because he gets another coin out of his pocket and holds it out to Eddie like a challenge. Eddie takes it and slots it into the machine, choosing a perfectly respectable Coke. “Jesus, you act all mysterious, but really you’re just a square.”

“Ah, but the things I’m pretentious about are worth the pretension. That, Harrington, is just a fucking seltzer.”

Steve rolls his eyes. There’s something habitual about the action, proud, like he knows he looks good doing it, like it’s more an affectation than anything natural. He uncaps his seltzer and takes a long, deliberate swig, Adam’s apple bobbing at his throat as he swallows.

“Whatever,” Eddie says, looking away. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Nance went home with her parents and her brother. So did the other two kids. I guess Jonathan and his mom are staying here all night– I don’t know about the Chief–”

“So just you and me, then,” Eddie says, just to see what Steve will do.

He doesn’t do anything. Just shrugs, and then in an even more shocking turn of events, says, “Your van’s still by the movie theater, right?”

“Right,” Eddie says slowly. Unsure where this is going.

“I’ll give you a lift, if you want.”

Eddie can’t stop himself from questioning it. Gift horse, mouth, you fucking idiot, he thinks to himself, even as he says, “Isn’t that, like, the opposite direction from your house? Don’t you just want to- I don’t know, go to fucking sleep after all this?”

“Sure,” Steve says easily, infuriatingly. “But somehow I don’t think it’s gonna be that easy, do you?”

Shit. Eddie looks at him for a moment, then nods. But it takes a second for his limbs to catch up with his brain, a second for him to actually register that oh, they’re leaving now. That they’re allowed to leave. That the world hasn’t ended, and he’s survived, and he has to go back to school on Monday.

What the fuck.

“So how was your interview?” Steve asks, as they’re walking out to the parking lot.

Eddie shrugs. “Well, they threatened to get my uncle fired from his job and turn me in to the DEA, so wonderful.”

Steve stops walking, staring at him. “Shit, they really said that?”

Eddie smiles humorlessly. “Let me guess what they said to you, then. Hmm, I don’t know, something to the effect of don’t you worry about a thing, darling boy, we’ll make sure the peasants take the fall for it.”

“Jesus, man, I do you a favor and you just throw it back in my face.” Steve’s eyes have turned nasty, which is a relief, almost, that Eddie hasn’t been utterly wrong his whole life.

“I’m sure you’ll survive it.”

“No wonder they say you’re never gonna get anywhere.”

Eddie’s face twists. “Yeah, handouts from people like you are really gonna get me out of the trailer park. Jesus, you’re a prick.”

“You’re not so nice yourself,” Steve snaps, and there it is, the Tommy H. in him. The Tommy C.

Eddie’s almost pleased to see it. “There you are,” he says, standing back, smiling bitterly again, and Steve falters.

Steve falters? What?

He’s looking at the ground, something conflicted crossing his face, cheeks flushed under the white parking lot floodlights. He runs a twitchy hand through his hair.

“They threatened my family,” he whispers eventually, and Eddie stops. Shit. “Not like I have a big family, or anything, just my– just my parents. And not like they’re the greatest parents in the world, right, but they’re– yeah. My parents.”

Eddie wouldn’t know about that. About the love you feel out of obligation, tradition. He cast off those impulses when he ran away at fourteen. But he guesses he gets it, a little. “Shit. I’m, um, sorry. I shouldn’t have just assumed–“

“I shouldn’t have said you weren’t gonna get anywhere,” Steve says quietly. “It’s okay, man, it’s been a day.”

“Yeah. Some day.”

Chapter Text

At some point earlier Steve must have switched out the Tears For Fears cassette, because now they’re listening to that rockabilly style Queen song as Steve maneuvers out of the parking lot. Doing the thing he did before, hand on Eddie’s headrest, profile lit in the glow of the headlamps. Eddie tries not to stare and fails miserably.

Because Steve’s hot, okay. He can admit that to himself. Hates that he’s admitting that to himself, Mr. Bouffant Hair And Polo Shirt, fuck’s sake, but still. He has a type. Knows he has a type. Martin, Tommy C., Steve?

Not that this Steve thing is going to go anywhere. Not that it’s a thing. But hell, they nearly died together, didn’t they? That counts for something. Means something.

Means Eddie can’t stop staring at Steve’s profile in the dark.

When Steve pulls up by Eddie’s van, they sit there for a moment. Eddie feels some inexplicable reluctance to leave; Steve doesn’t tell him to go. They look at each other.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Steve says finally, no more than a whisper. “Now that we know that there’s– there’s–”

“Monsters in the woods?” Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Another dimension? A conspiracy by our government?”

“A girl who can move things with her mind?” Steve adds, and they don’t laugh but the air lightens anyway. It’s ridiculous. God, this whole thing is ridiculous. Nothing more ridiculous than Steve Harrington sitting here next to him, not looking like he wants him to leave.

“I meant it, y’know. I’m smoking a fat joint when I get home. What are you gonna do?”

Steve shrugs. “Try to explain to my parents why I’m home so late, I guess. I’m technically grounded.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, the beers, at the– at the fucking party, Jesus. Jesus. I feel like nothing’s mattered less in my entire life.”

Eddie wonders what it’s like, in a vague sort of way, to have lived your life so casually. Not to have to cling onto each good, nice moment because you know just how easily they can be stripped away. Not that Eddie’s very good at that. He can’t shake the tendency to let the bad moments consume him. Steve’s right, in some sense: what good is a party, after what they’ve seen? What good is a grounding?

So.

“Wanna share that joint with me?” Eddie says, his next offer of charity that’s not charity at all.

Steve looks at him. “Yeah. Okay.”

It’s not until Eddie’s slipping into the trailer — in and out, he doesn’t want his uncle to see who he’s with — that he thinks about this. About sharing a joint with Steve, finding a common interest in running away from something, the way he found it with Tommy C. And look how that ended.

But, hey, Steve’s not a closeted queer, so. Maybe things will go differently this time.

“You goin’ out again?” Wayne asks, from his position on the couch with a beer.

Eddie halts in his movement down the hallway and says, “Yeah, Janie’s having, uh, kinda a rough time.” The lie feels thorny and uncomfortable inside him, not least because his uncle has so few nights off and Eddie’s choosing to spend this one with Steve Harrington.

Wayne frowns at him. “You okay, kid? You look– different.”

“Different how?”

His uncle peers at him for another moment, then shakes his head. “Nevermind,” he says, never one for putting his thoughts into wordy prose; he says what he means, and sometimes doesn’t say it at all. Eddie says far too much and he means most of it but that counts for little. “Your friend okay? From the hospital?”

Eddie bites the inside of his cheek. “I can’t really talk about it,” he admits, honesty at last. “But I think they’re gonna be okay.”

“That’s good,” Wayne says, taking a sip of his beer, and Eddie smiles at him and then goes through to his room. He finds the little case he keeps his joints in and grabs a couple of cassettes for good measure, stuff that King Steve might not resent too harshly. Possibly. Then he goes back outside and half-jogs out to the entrance of the trailer park, where Steve’s BMW is idling in the cold. He’s half surprised that Steve’s still there.

But he is, so Eddie gets into the car and lets Steve drive him to some park or other, frigid and empty in the early hours. They’re near Loch Nora, Eddie thinks, which is why the park is clean and well-maintained.

“Iconic as Freddie Mercury might be, I refuse to listen to Queen while we do this, so. Take your pick.” He fans out the three cassettes he chose, and Steve frowns at him before choosing the Pink Floyd album, Wish You Were Here. Eddie’s almost impressed. Then he tugs Hopper’s jacket tighter around himself and sits on the hood of the car next to Steve, slipping the first joint between his teeth and cupping his hand against the wind to light it. After a long, healthy drag, the earthy smoke warming his throat, he hands the joint over to Steve.

“Thanks,” Steve says, as the opening notes of Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I–V) sound out behind them. He takes an expert pull, a long inhale, a long exhale of thick smoke. Doesn’t cough.

“So where’d you learn to do this, Harrington? Smoking like a pro, choosing an album that was practically made just for getting high.” Eddie pulls his legs up to sit cross-legged, wincing as it stretches his skinned knees.

Steve hands the blunt back. “Tommy C. smoked us out last year. He keeps us supplied.”

Eddie takes his time answering, inhaling deeply and letting himself grow lighter. He’s not thinking about Tommy C. now. He’s not thinking about everything Tommy C. did and said, because what does it matter? After everything else? Fuck Tommy C. Tommy C. wouldn’t have come back for him in the woods, probably, and Eddie might not have come back for him in the house. You’re not nice. “Are you gonna be doing much more of that, d’ya think? With the Tommys and the basketball lot? This schism, I mean. Are we talking a week’s time out or a total divorce? Irreconcilable differences, and all that?”

“Why do you talk like that, man?”

“Like what?”

“Like, constantly making everything into something else. Making it bigger than it is. Giving it big words, like you’re narrating something. Like everything’s part of your weird– weird game.”

“You know there’s a game. Consider me flattered.”

“C’mon, dude, answer the question.”

“Dude, wow, you get so intimate when you’re high–”

“Eddie–”

“Technically your question was only asked so you could avoid my question, so I think I’m entitled to wait for your answer first.” Eddie passes the joint over and feels the warmth of Steve’s fingers against his own.

Then Steve lies back against the windshield, looking up at the darkened sky as he answers. “I don’t know, man. Everything’s– changed. Like maybe if it was just the Nancy thing, we could– Tommy H. and me, we could work it out. But now I can’t even see a point in that. In, like, anything. Going to school on Monday, basketball practice on Tuesday. But we– we fought for our lives today, and– and I don’t even know what life is supposed to mean, now–”

He breaks off. Eddie twists to look back at him, surprised by this show of vulnerability. “Whoa, already at the meaning of life stage? Careful you don’t green out there, Harrington.” Steve flips him off loosely, his hand flopping back down to his side afterward. Yeah, he’s getting very high. “I don’t think we can separate what happened today from life in general, is the thing, man. For those of us who bad shit happens to, that’s what life is. The bad shit. Alongside the good, I guess.”

Steve looks like he’s thinking very hard about this, as he puffs on the joint. “But this isn’t the usual bad shit. Is it?”

Eddie’s not sure whether he’s pleased or not that Steve doesn’t deny it, the us vs. them dichotomy. That Steve is very firmly one of them. “No. That’s true. But I don’t know how to rationalize it otherwise.”

“Jesus Christ. I guess I just can’t– like, what the fuck would Tommy H. even say to this? What would Carol? I don't think they're capable of taking anything seriously.”

“Who said I was taking this seriously?” Eddie says, finally surrendering to the impulse to lie back next to Steve. It’s the kind of thing he imagines doing on a date, lying back on the hood of a car and staring at the stars, passing a smoke between them. He’s never really been on a date. “I don’t know, Carol seems the type to be very handy with a can of hairspray. You set that shit on fire and everyone gets out of your way pronto, and I’d bet that’d include the demogorgon.”

“She’s not the only one,” Steve mumbles, and Eddie turns his head to stare at him.

“What?”

“The– hairspray.” It’s too dark to see, but Eddie, through some self-indulgent impulse, imagines that Steve’s blushing.

“Seriously? Am I seriously hearing this? I mean, I don’t know why I’m surprised, of course Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington maintains his luscious locks somehow but the fact that you’re admitting it–”

“You tell anyone that and you’re dead, Munson.”

“Oh, I know,” Eddie says, and it doesn’t quite sound enough like a joke for either of them to laugh. A silence comes over them.

Steve breaks it, eventually, when they’re on their second joint. Eddie is pleasantly high by this point, eyeing Orion as it rises in the sky. (He likes putting constellations in his DnD campaigns, extra detail that really makes the world come alive, that’s the only reason he knows them.) Steve says, “I don’t know how I’m ever gonna sleep again.”

And Eddie says, “Me either.”

“That really happened, right? All of today?”

“I don’t know why you’re asking me. I’m widely known to have a couple wires crossed.”

Steve looks at him. The cassette’s made it to Wish You Were Here now, all mellow beats that make Eddie’s head feel light and spacy. “You know I don’t think that, right?” Steve says, tone serious. “I think you’re– you’re fucking weird, and you’re different, and maybe some of what they say about you is true but this? I don’t– you’re not insane. Or crazy or loony or whatever they say.”

“Loony,” Eddie tries out. It feels loose and weird on his tongue. “We’re all loony now, Steve, didn’t you know? They called Joyce Byers crazy and look where it got us.”

“So you’re saying we should be crazy.”

“Something like that.” Eddie closes his eyes and lets the second half of Shine On You Crazy Diamond wash over him. The first time he got high to this song he was fifteen trying to drown out everything else, thinking about funerals, thinking about how Shine On You Crazy Diamond would be a great funeral song, thinking about death. It was a bad high.

Not that this is a good one, necessarily, but it’s better. Lying here next to Steve Harrington in the cold. Someone else here, at least, someone who’s been through what he’s been through, for once. At least today. The rest of the shit excluded.

He thinks he drifts off for a minute, as Steve’s talking some shit about how nice the stars look. Apparently grass makes him wax lyrical. It just makes Eddie sad and thoughtful and tired.

When the high’s worn off, a couple hours later, and Eddie can feel the chill in his very bones, Steve drives him home. Something like three a.m. at this point. They’re listening to another one of the cassettes Eddie brought, Heartbreaker by Free, the deep thrumming notes of Wishing Well filling the silence as Eddie drifts in and out of sleep in the passenger seat.

“You gonna be okay?” he wakes to, when they’ve pulled up by the trailer park and Steve’s cut the engine. It’s a strange question. Sounds strange coming out of Steve’s mouth.

“Are you?” Eddie asks, and Steve shrugs.

“Might never be able to swim in my pool again, but yeah. Sure.”

“Sure,” Eddie repeats, and opens the door. “See you at school on Monday, then. Or tomorrow. Fuck, I guess it’s tomorrow now.”

“Jesus, man, why’d you have to remind me how late it is–“

“Oh, I’m sorry for assuming party king Steve Harrington could handle a late night or two.”

“Shoulda known you were nocturnal.”

Eddie raises his eyebrows; Steve is smirking at him, like he’s proud of himself for holding his own. Fair enough. Eddie salutes him and then shuts the door, hurrying across the trailer park and keeping his head down as he does it, skirting the circle of people on the grass whose hands are twitching over syringe plungers. In the trailer, Wayne’s already dozing on the sofa bed, lights turned off, a note on the fridge that says HOPE YOU GOT HOME SAFE KID, which has Eddie pausing as his eyes begin to sting. What does his uncle know? More than Eddie’s told him, that’s for sure. He’s never written a note like that before.

Sleep, surprisingly, does arrive. Fitful and anxious, has Eddie waking in starts with heart pounding, but it’s better than none. He’ll take what he can get. (Sleeping with a light on, that’s true. He was already scared of the dark. There’s no way he’s toughing it out tonight, no siree. Tonight he’s allowed to be cowardly, after so much out-of-character bravery.)

His uncle works Sunday night, but he’s around and awake all morning, so they watch The Wrath of Khan over eggs and toast with sun filtering through the blinds. Wayne didn’t even make a caveat about gore this time, so Eddie could have chosen something really out there, but somehow–

Not today. Not after yesterday. Not after–

He still has to pause it halfway through to go breathe for a while in the bathroom when he can’t keep the image of the demogorgon at bay any longer. What do you do, the day after you nearly died? What does anyone do? Watch Star Trek and pretend it didn’t happen? Get high and abstract it so much that it feels like it doesn’t matter that it did?

He considers going to Rick’s for only a second. Because after everything that happened, everything bad– he also got something good out of it. The tentative conviction that maybe he can do something right, in his life. Something his father wouldn’t have done. The way Steve did something Tommy C. and Tommy H. wouldn’t have done. And he can’t just let that conviction go to waste, not yet. Not for a while. So he leaves his dad’s letter where it is and his van too, spends the day at home until he has to take Wayne to the plant and then doesn’t take a detour on the way back, just goes home and goes to bed early and drifts in and out of feverish insomnia all night.

Doesn’t even take anything for it.

He finds himself looking for Steve in the hallways at school, the next day. He can’t help it. For exactly a day they were a team. A unit. Working together, not exactly seamless, but as good as they could be, given the situation. They did what they needed to do.

And it’s sticking with him, what Steve said late the other night. You know I don’t think that, right? And sure, he was high, they were both high. Rick provides good weed, what can Eddie say? But weed isn’t like alcohol, it doesn’t blur shit in the same way. He can’t help but believe it, what Steve said. Maybe that’s stupid. But he can’t.

His distraction lasts all the way through History and Music and Biology until he’s sitting in the cafeteria as Janie frowns at him, something unsettlingly seeing in her eyes. “What is with you today?” she says, leaning forward on her elbows as Gareth and Jeff dive into a conversation about the guitar solo in Highway Star, like two normal teenagers who didn’t face a monster this weekend. “Is this about–” And she raises her eyebrows emphatically, shorthand for The Guy, and Eddie almost wants to laugh.

“No,” he says. “Actually, it’s not.”

“Really? Because–”

He stops listening when he sees Steve walk into the cafeteria, all big hair and healing cut-up face. He’s wearing a fucking yellow sweater. And he looks around the room, looks at Eddie for a moment, just a moment, and Eddie thinks about what it would be like to invite him over. Hey, come sit with us. What a stir that would be. There would be a riot, probably, people standing on tables and throwing food everywhere. He’d pay to see that shit. But Steve wouldn’t accept, probably, and Eddie won’t ask, probably, so Steve’s eyes sweep over where Tommy H. and Carol and Tommy C. and Jack are smirking together on their usual table and then he leaves the cafeteria again, alone, the way people like Jonathan do.

So maybe he meant it. Everything’s changed. That it really fucking has.

“Is it Steve Harrington?” Janie hisses to him, voice so low he can scarcely hear her.

“Is what Steve Harrington?” he says, turning back to her with a frown, and she frowns back.

“The guy you’re fucking.”

He stares at her. He’s more confused than anything else, really, because the possibility just seems so absurd. Even more absurd than Tommy H. “Whatever you’re smoking, it’s totally not cool that you haven’t told me where you got it, because–”

“Jesus, it’s just a question. You’re looking at him really weirdly.”

He opens his mouth to say Yeah, well, how else do you expect me to look at a guy who saved my life the other day? But then he remembers he can’t say that. All the paper he signed tells him he can’t say that. Can’t say anything. So he just shakes his head, putting an extra hit of drama in it to really get the point home: no, I’m not fucking Steve goddamn Harrington. If only that was the weirdest thing in his life.

When he goes outside to smoke she follows him, that determined look in her face that tells him he’s not getting away with it so easily. Fuck.

“So what is it, then? Did you open the letter finally?”

“What’s it to you?” he returns tiredly, leaning back against the wall. His shoulder still feels tender and achy, and the prospect of bearing any weight on it sends the memory of fear and pain through him again. He hates this bit, when he can’t trust his own body for a while afterwards. Or, scratch that, he can’t trust it ever, really. The same way he can’t trust his brain to remember his homework.

“Excuse me for fucking caring.” She gets her cigarette out and doesn’t look at him, smoking it in the other direction. “I really don’t get you, man. Half the time you’re showing up at my house, asking for tea, saying shit like if only you were straight or whatever and then half the time–”

“That’s not what I said.”

She turns and looks at him, eyes sharp. “I don’t know what to do with you. I don’t know what you want from me. I’m trying to be here for you but some of us have shit lives too, it’s not only you–”

“That is not fair,” he says quietly, and she shrugs.

“Maybe not. But it’s true. And I gotta focus on applying to college, I gotta keep my GPA up and my mom on my side so she lets me visit my dad in China and I don’t have time to keep asking you what’s going on, if you’re not gonna tell me. I’m sorry. I don’t.”

He can’t stop himself from laughing, then, emptily and cruelly. He hates being cruel. It makes him feel a little sick, even as he does it. “If you only knew how much bigger everything else is–”

“Jesus Christ, you’re pathetic. Fuck the guy or don’t, I don’t care. And open your fucking dad’s letter, since it’s apparently the biggest thing in the world.”

She walks away before he can say anything, before he can look her in the eye and try to let that speak for him, the weight in his gaze, the truth behind his words. How sorry he is he can’t explain. How furious he is with himself for saying the wrong thing, for fixating on the things he shouldn’t be fixating on and letting her own issues pass him by, for being selfish. For doing it wrong. How furious he is with the world.

But he isn’t furious at all, and that’s his problem, isn’t it? Letting the world walk all over him.

In the wake of everything else, cutting class doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore, so he finishes up lunchtime heading in the opposite direction to his next class, towards the bleachers instead with the plan to sit out all of shop and then return in time for O’Donnell’s English. But when he reaches them, crouching down to fit into the comforting, safe-feeling gap, someone’s already there.

Crying. Nancy Wheeler. Crying. Shit.

It’s too late to back away; she’s looking up at him, blinking away the tears even as more form in the corners of her big eyes, biting down on her lip and wiping at her wet cheeks. “Hey,” she says, the evenness of her voice at odds with her appearance. “Sorry, I should go to class anyway, you can–”

“Hold on,” he says, making the decision as he speaks. He lowers himself down and sits opposite her in the space, looking at her carefully. “What’s going on, Wheeler?”

She looks at him for a moment, like she doesn’t want to say it. He can understand that, sure, but from where he’s sitting it’s clear she needs to talk to someone, and hey, maybe he’s the best person for the job. He’s not an interested party, after all. Who knows what sort of bias Jonathan and Steve have going on.

Finally, she waves a hand. She’s wearing rings, like he is, but they’re dainty, delicate things. Expensive, probably. “Just– being back in school, after everything. It’s hard. Without Barb.” This last part emerges as a whisper.

“Yeah,” he says quietly in return. “I mean, I get it. Feels the same for me. And I, uh, I didn’t even know her.” He pauses. “How come you’re even in school? Like, surely–”

She shakes her head. “I have to be here. Focusing on something. If I stop doing things, then–” She closes her eyes. Yeah. He gets that. “The world looks different now. It’s like– someone just turned the lights on. And I turn around and she’s not here anymore. And in that light, I get to see how suddenly– suddenly alone I–”

She stops. There’s self-reproach in her eyes, a crease between her eyebrows. He doesn’t get the sense that she enjoys talking like this, or that she does it very often. He supposes he’s honored. “You’re not gonna be alone for very long, I don’t think, not if Harrington and Byers have anything to do with it.”

She flushes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and her tone sounds more like an eye roll than any coy girlishness.

“My mistake, being told how attractive she is never cheers a girl up, how could I be so foolish–”

Nancy snorts a laugh and then rapidly closes her mouth, like she didn’t mean to do it. Her eyes go wary. “If that’s you throwing your hat in the ring, I’m really not–”

“Oh, trust me, Wheeler, you’re not my type.”

She looks a little offended at that. Maybe she’s not the rumor-believing kind. “I don’t know what to do about that,” she admits quietly, stretching her legs out in front of her. “About– about Jonathan, and Steve. Every second I’m not thinking about Barbara I know I should be thinking about her, and yet I can’t stop–”

Another abortive sentence. He gets the gist. “I’m far from the expert on guilt-free hookups. Or guilt-free anything,” he adds reflectively. “I guess it’s about who you want to be. Who you are, if there’s a difference. If you want to be a cul-de-sac girl for the rest of your life. Or if you want a life that’s gonna be far from a walk in the park.”

“What does that mean?” Her voice is sharp.

“You know what it means,” he says, holding her gaze, and eventually she looks away. Because she does know what it means. Of course she does. And unlike Steve, she had the temerity to try to deny it.

“He might not ask me,” she whispers. “Jonathan. But I know Steve will.”

And that’s the thing, right? She knows her own kind. She doesn’t know his. Her friend might be dead but Jonathan’s got problems in the here and now: his brother’s hospital bills, his family’s trashed house, his father. His slimy piece of shit father. It takes a lot out of you, all that crap. Eddie knows from experience. If she’s waiting for Jonathan, she’s probably gonna be waiting a while.

He doesn’t have any homework to give Miss O’Donnell, when his lit class comes around, and the scariest thing about it is the way she just nods coldly, like she’d expected nothing better, and waves him off to his seat. Like maybe she’s given up on him. Or else is devising some long, convoluted punishment to spring on him when he least expects it. But he had a really weird weekend, okay? Jesus.

He’s walking back to his locker after classes finish, desperate for a smoke and still searching for Steve in the crowd, when the hallway narrows into a clot of people and no one’s moving. He peers over their heads and– oh. Because of course.

It’s Tommy H., face manic and alive with something almost desperate as he stands in the middle of the circle of people, holding someone’s book away from her as she tries to reach it, and that someone is Robin from band.

Robin’s taller than him, by a little way, but he’s quick and she’s clumsy and with a deft movement of his foot he sends her sprawling to the ground, where the crowd parts around her and doesn’t protect her from his laughter. He holds the book up in the air for all to see, then leafs through it scathingly. “The Well of Loneliness, Jesus, what is this? Some book for sad dykes?”

It’s a baseless comment, an aimless guess designed to hit her where it hurts (Tommy H. couldn’t get that just from a few skimmed pages), and it does. Hit her where it hurts. She tenses up and her face goes red and blotchy, eyes swimming with the start of tears. Tommy smiles triumphantly. He’s not usually so loud and reaching about his cruelty, is the thing. It’s almost like he’s got something to prove.

Eddie doesn’t have something to prove. He thinks he proved it on Saturday night, coming back for Steve and Nancy and Jonathan, doing the thing he never expected of himself. And it’s this, knowing he’s already done it, that makes him brave enough to push his way through the crowd and snatch the book out of Tommy H.’s hands.

He’s taller than Tommy H. By a good few inches. He can look down at him as he hands the book down to Robin, who’s getting to her feet, rubbing angrily at her eyes. “What, you want some of this too?” Tommy H. snarls, shoving at Eddie, and it jostles his shoulder but he doesn’t back down. He’s in this now.

“Some of what, exactly? Last I saw you were stealing a girl’s book like we’re in third grade.”

Tommy H.’s face twists, and his eyes land on someone in the crowd beyond, someone who steps forward to reveal himself as Tommy C. Because of course it is. And Tommy C. looks directly at Eddie as he says, “Shoulda figured. Queer sticks up for queer.”

You would know, Eddie thinks, and knows Tommy C. sees him thinking it. But bravery only goes so far, right? There’s no way he can say that. No way he can make that accusation here, in the throng of people, people who’ll jump on him the second he confirms they’re right about him, Tommy C. or no. He can’t do that. So he’s opening his mouth to say something else, anything else, not sure what, but he’s cut off by another voice.

“Just leave them the fuck alone, man.”

It’s Steve.

Steve emerging from the crowd, all tall and world-weary in his yellow sweater and beaten-up face, and Tommy H. swings around to smirk at him, ready for a challenge: “What, coming back for round two, Steve? Byers didn’t beat the shit out of you hard enough?”

“Aren’t you just tired of all this shit? Because I am. Why don’t you just let people live their lives, huh?”

Both Tommys look at him for a long moment, as Steve looks at Eddie. Which is strange. Tommy C. following Tommy H. and Steve following Eddie. Where did that come from? How did that happen?

Then Tommy H. shrugs. “If you want to side with the queers, Harrington, then be my guest. I’m not gonna stop you.” He stalks off into the crowd, Tommy C. following close behind without looking at Eddie. Good. Don’t fucking look at me. Coward.

Because he feels like he can do that now, on some level. Call out other people’s cowardice. Now that he’s confronted his own.

“You okay?” he asks Robin, who’s staring between him and Steve, bewildered.

“Thanks,” she says, almost wary. “That wasn’t– I mean, my book, that isn’t–”

“It’s okay.” Eddie looks down at the book in her hands and then back at Robin, her reddened eyes, her lips pinched together. “I get it.”

Her eyes widen, like she understands what he’s saying. Good. He nearly died this weekend; he doesn’t really care if people know he’s gay. But if it helps–

“What was I saying about a white knight?” he says to Steve, whose eyes dart over his face and then away again, running a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck. They look at each other for a moment; when Eddie looks back to Robin, she’s gone.

Chapter Text

That irritating upbeat song about breaking my stride is playing overhead in Melvald’s when Eddie stops in for a greeting card. Well, no, scratch that, he’s not here for a greeting card. He’s here for milk, because he forgot to buy it when he meant to buy it last night, when he got distracted by the cigarettes and bought a pack of Camels instead. He came in here for milk and then he saw Donald Melvald’s frowning face and thought about Joyce Byers and remembered that Will’s out of the hospital today and wait, he should probably buy a greeting card, hence why he’s now leaving Melvald’s without milk but with a cute little card with a rainbow on the front of it, because he just couldn’t resist.

The milk can wait, he reasons. He doesn’t really drink much of it anyway. So he drives over to the Byers’ with his Screaming For Vengeance cassette blaring — much better, thank you — and scribbles a message inside the card in their driveway with a shitty ballpoint he found in the dashboard. Or, more like hovers over the card for a while, not knowing what to say. What do you say? To a kid who died but didn’t die, who had a fake funeral while he was running for his life in a hell dimension?

Metal. That’s pretty fucking metal.

That’s what Eddie would say, but you can’t really put that in a card. Not one the kid’s mother will probably read, anyway. So he settles on sketching out a dragon, since he knows these kids like DnD, with a sweet little get better soon, from eddie in the corner. It will have to do.

There’s still a hole in the wall, he sees when he approaches the porch. Which shouldn’t be surprising — they’ve spent the last six days in the hospital, of course they haven’t had time to fix the wall — but it gives him pause anyway. He shakes it off and knocks on the door, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He doesn’t know how Jonathan’s standing it. Living here, after everything. Just standing on this porch is making Eddie itch.

It’s Joyce who opens the door, looking tired and grim with a cigarette between her fingers, which are trembling faintly as she leans against the doorframe. But she smiles warmly when she sees him, gesturing for him to enter: “Eddie, hey, it’s nice to see you.”

Well, that’s something no one’s ever said to him before. He decides to move straight on past it, following her into the house. There’s music playing somewhere, Age of Consent by New Order, muffled through the wall. “I, uh. Have a card. For Will.” He holds it out awkwardly, the cheap yellow envelope, the cheap rainbow card inside. Get Well Soon! He may as well have gotten one of those unhappy cat pictures, Hang In There, Baby! Christ.

But she smiles again. “That’s really sweet of you to do, I’m sure he’ll love it.”

“How’s he doing?”

She shrugs, smile falling away into something that (perhaps unfairly) looks more natural on her, the lines of stress around her mouth and eyes. “Better than he was. I think he’s glad to be out of the hospital. I mean, we all are.”

Eddie knows the feeling. He’s been in the hospital a couple times — the first few dislocated limbs, before his dad decided it clearly wasn’t worth the bother, a few broken bones, a bout of bronchitis. Never since running away. Since running away, he’s patched himself up. He’s not gonna put that shit on Wayne. That shit being the way he gets in the hospital, even more antsy and on edge, and that’s without considering the cost.

“Do you want cocoa? I was making some for Will.” She’s already moving over to the kitchen, which is the only area that’s been cleared of all the mess. The rest of the place is still cluttered and chaotic: the Christmas lights are gone, but the alphabet’s still painted large on the wall.

He doesn’t get the chance to say no as she lifts the saucepan and begins pouring it into mugs, four mugs. She offers him one with the old Chee-tos Mouse on it, and he smiles a little, reminded of his uncle’s collection.

“I’ll bring this in to him,” she says. “He’s sleeping, but he drinks it cold.” She wrinkles her nose as she says this, fondly disgusted by it in that way he guesses mothers are, though he doesn’t know. Then she disappears down the hallway as he sips his cocoa, sort of wanting to escape. He’s not sure he was expecting to be invited in. He’s not the kind of person who gets invited in.

“Oh, hey, man,” Jonathan says, emerging out of what’s presumably his bedroom with a burst of louder New Order before he closes the door behind him. “Mom made cocoa?”

“She did.”

Jonathan moves to take a mug and then leans back against the counter, running a hand through his hair. It’s far from the practiced, vain way that Steve does that same movement. It’s unconscious, anxious. Like it’s another way to cover up his face, the few moments his hand is there in the way. “Have you seen Nancy?”

Jonathan’s voice is carefully neutral, but Eddie can hear the desperate curiosity behind it. “I feel like I should be asking you that.”

Jonathan closes off. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know, just the, um, weird love triangle bullshit the three of you seem to have got going on.”

“There’s no love triangle.” Jonathan ducks his head behind his hair. “I’m just wondering, that’s all. How she is.”

“She’s doing okay,” Eddie says, relenting. “I mean, as okay as she can be doing. As anyone can be doing.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re really telling me you haven’t talked to her?” he asks, though he’s not actually all that surprised. Different worlds, different problems. When would Jonathan have had the time?

“She hasn’t spoken to me either.” A little note of defensiveness there? Interesting. “I’ve been busy. I mean, it’s not like my brother’s been in the hospital or anything.”

Eddie finds himself startled into a laugh at that, at Jonathan’s unexpected spikiness. “Touché, Byers, touché. You got bigger fish to fry than your little love triangle.”

“Yeah, I do.” Jonathan’s looking at him a little warily, a little defiantly.

“You work at the movie theater, right?” At the look on Jonathan’s face, Eddie shakes his head and adds, “You do realize I live in the trailer park? If anyone’s gonna judge you, it’s not gonna be me.”

“Oh,” Jonathan says, cheeks coloring. “Right. Yeah. I know.”

“And, I mean– we have shit in common, right? Shitty dads, and all.”

His eyes narrow again. “What do you know about my dad?”

Oh, shit, Eddie’s going to regret bringing this up. But he forges ahead anyway, keeping his voice quiet: “My dad, your dad, I don’t know, they– uh, worked together, for a while. Before your dad left town.”

“That’s not–”

“Yeah. He did.” That’s Joyce, returning to lean in the doorway, looking tired and resigned to this conversation. “Your father was Bruce, wasn’t he? Bruce Munson?”

Eddie nods, not trusting his voice. He shouldn’t have brought this up. Stupidly thought he could handle it. Can’t even handle throwing a stupid fucking envelope in the trash.

“Yeah, they knew each other. Your dad got Lonnie into a lot of trouble, you know. I had to bail him out more times than I care to remember.”

Eddie smiles thinly. “Yeah, he’s good at that. Getting people into trouble.”

“He wound up in prison, didn’t he?” Joyce’s voice is soft but her words are unyielding; there’s no escape from that, from those words. Eddie nods again. “I spent a while thinking Lonnie would end up there too. Sort of wanting it, maybe. At least then he’d be out of our lives.”

“Fucker deserves it,” Jonathan mumbles, burying his face in his mug, and Joyce looks at him but doesn’t say anything about his language. Is that what mothers are meant to do? Pull you up on your language?

“So does mine,” Eddie says lightly, and that’s the end of the conversation. He’s not sure he’s glad they had it. He feels all weird inside, all tense and hot like he’s wearing too many layers. But Joyce lays a gentle hand on his arm for a moment and that makes him feel sort of better, which he’s not going to think about, the way her hand on his arm makes him feel lighter. Is that what mothers are for?

He wouldn’t know.

When he’s finished his cocoa and thanked them for it, he opens the door on his way out and nearly collides with Steve Harrington.

He hasn’t seen Steve since Monday, since the circle of jeering teenagers in the hallway and Robin on the floor, like he’s been keeping his head down. Like maybe he hasn’t been in school at all. The bruises on his face have mellowed into a discolored green, the swelling around his cheekbone beginning to go down. He’s starting to look more like King Steve again. But his eyes aren’t, is the thing. His eyes are hesitant as he looks at Eddie and beyond, to the Byers’ trashed living room.

“Thought maybe you’d fled the country,” Eddie says, leaning in the doorway instead of doing the sensible thing, which would be letting him in and then leaving himself. “After you stuck up for the freaks the other day.”

Steve shrugs. “I haven’t got a passport.”

“Really? I thought rich people traveled. Aren’t you a citizen of the world, Steve?”

Steve snorts. “Sure, if Palm Beach counts.”

Of course Steve’s been to fucking Palm Beach. Eddie shakes his head and steps aside to let Steve in, since there’s a chill in the air that has them both shivering. “What brings you here?”

Steve takes on what’s almost an embarrassed look, as he glances around the room with his hands in his pockets. “I wanted to see if there was– y’know, anything that needed doing. Anything I could help with, I guess.”

Eddie stares at him. “Every fucking day, Harrington.”

“What?”

“Every goddamn day you do something more surprising.”

Steve sighs, like he’s tired of having this conversation. Eddie’s tired of it too, of being amazed by the guy, but he can’t help it. He finds himself following Steve back into the kitchen, where Joyce smiles at them and Jonathan looks up warily. “Hey, Mrs. Byers. Uh, how’s Will doing?”

“He’s doing okay,” she says. “Do you want cocoa? I can make some more.”

“No, that’s okay, I was just wondering if– if you, uh, needed anything doing, y’know, around the house.”

She looks at him evenly. “Well, y’know, I think everything needs doing around the house, but I’m not going to ask you or anyone else to do it for us. It’s our mess.”

“Technically I’m the one who set your hallway on fire,” Eddie says, and everyone looks at him. He winces. “Sorry about that.”

Jonathan snorts and then looks away like he’s pretending he didn’t. A smile twitches over Joyce’s mouth. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have someone tear up the carpet. I need to buy some first, though, so come back on the weekend.”

“Sure,” Steve says easily, immediately, and because Eddie’s a– well, he doesn’t even know what he is at this point, but he says, “See you then.”

“See you then,” Joyce allows, and great. So he’s signed his weekend over to doing DIY with Steve Harrington, just great. The weirdest part is how that sounds almost appealing.

When he gets home, Wayne’s sitting at the table with the calculator out again and Eddie’s heart sinks — the way he’s been ignoring this, the way he hasn’t been to see Rick, hasn’t wanted to, thought maybe they would get by — until Wayne looks up, and he’s smiling.

“Hey, kid.”

“Wayne? What’s–”

“Thacher called. I can pick up the car tomorrow.”

Eddie stares at him. “It’s– it’s fixed? He fixed it? How much did that–”

“A lot,” Wayne admits, “but not so much we can’t afford it. It’s gonna be okay, Eddie. Against all the odds, it’s gonna–”

He’s cut off with an oof as Eddie launches himself at him, flinging his arms around Wayne’s neck, exhaling a trembling breath of relief into Wayne’s smoke-smelling flannel. He doesn’t hug his uncle very often. Eddie didn’t like to be touched at all, not for a long while after he ran away from his dad, and then when he found he needed someone to touch him — a kind hand on his shoulder, soft arms to fold himself into — he didn’t know how to ask. How to say to Wayne, yeah, I know you’ve been keeping your distance because that’s what I wanted and you don’t know any better, neither of us do, what the fuck do you do in this situation, but could you maybe–

He couldn’t say that. But the message got across anyway, somehow. His uncle’s still hesitant about it, but less so: a hand on his shoulder, a ruffle of his hair. It’s enough. It gives Eddie permission to do this, pull Wayne into a hug so tight Wayne grunts in surprise, a hug full of relief and the release of tension.

“Hey,” Wayne says, voice rumbling in his chest — Eddie’s cheek still pressed against his flannel — “You okay?”

Eddie becomes aware that he’s trembling. That he wants to cry. Maybe it’s something like the relief that he doesn’t have to be what everyone’s been saying he is — what his life might have been drawing on to, naturally. He doesn’t have to go down that road. Down to Rick’s. He can do something else, the way Steve is doing something else, turning up at the Byers’ to tear up their carpet.

He can do that.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he manages, pulling back and wiping at his eyes discreetly, but not discreetly enough.

Wayne frowns at him. “I told you this is my problem, kid, if I’d known you were gonna– I don’t know, take it on yourself–”

“I already live here for free, you think I’m gonna–”

“Now, enough of that already. You live here ‘cause I want you to live here.” His voice is stern. “Besides, you already paid me back more than enough by drivin’ me to work every night.”

Eddie opens his mouth to protest, but his uncle’s glare silences him. So Eddie lets it go, withdrawing and wiping his nose and trying not to be too embarrassed by the whole thing. His good mood is enough to override it, really, the sheer elation of the news, so he puts music on while he makes them both dinner, the Jefferson Airplane record he knows Wayne’s sort of fond of, when he’s not listening to Johnny Cash. He hums along and smokes a cigarette and drives Wayne to the plant for the last time with a light feeling in his chest, a feeling like maybe things will be fine.

Thinks about the things that are going strangely well, this week, as he’s driving back: the warmth of Joyce Byers’ smile, the tentative friendship from Jonathan and Nancy, the way he’s sort of looking forward to DIY on the weekend with Steve. Steve who came back for him in the woods. Steve who stood up for him and Robin in the hallway, Steve who volunteered to fix up the Byers’ house. That Steve.

Huh.

But he hasn’t seen Janie for a while.

This is an issue that weighs down on him, puts a damper on his good mood. He knows he needs to talk to her, apologize, but she avoids him at school like the plague. Sitting across the room in their shared classes, dodging him in the hallways. He doesn’t get the chance. He sits with Gareth and Jeff at lunch, Janie nowhere to be seen. (Steve nowhere to be seen.) Gareth launches straight into it: “What do you say to a jam session tonight? Just, like, seeing if it works?”

Eddie opens his mouth to say no and then stops himself, because why is he saying no? What reason does he have to say no? He’s not a drug dealer. Not a monster hunter. Not even someone’s queer fuckbuddy. So he has time to be a guitarist, doesn’t he? Just a guitarist. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Why not?”

Gareth’s face lights up. Jeff’s conspicuously silent, picking at his food, and Gareth nudges him and says, “Jeff?” and Jeff looks up.

“Uh, yeah, I mean–” He pushes his tray away from him, voice a quiet rush. “My dad had a bad night last night. Chemo’s really, y’know, taking it out of him. I think my mom and him just want me out of the house.”

“Shit,” Eddie says, as Gareth gives Jeff one of those close, heavy looks that don’t need words, they’ve known each other for so long. The kind of look Eddie usually gives Janie, except Janie’s not here. “If you’re not feeling–”

“No, no, I want to. Something to take my mind off shit, right?”

“Right,” Eddie agrees, knowing it all too well. He gives Jeff a contemplative look. He doesn’t know all that much about the kid, beyond that he likes DnD and metal and singing and his dad’s got leukemia, but it’s something that Eddie gets, the need for distraction. These aren’t half bad, these kids that Janie picked out. If only she wasn’t avoiding him.

So after school he goes to collect his guitar, and then drives over to Gareth’s cute little suburban neighborhood, trying to drown out how quaint and clean it all is with his Motörhead cassette. His beat-up van looks so out of place next to the Westleys’ pristine Ford Escort, God help him. He runs a hand through his tangled hair as he rings the doorbell, wondering how long he’d have to be standing out here for someone to call the police. Not all that long, probably. Then Gareth’s mom, Andy, he remembers, is opening the door with a widening smile and beckoning him in and saying, “Isn’t it wonderful, about Will Byers? Really gives you some hope for the world, doesn’t it?”

And Eddie smiles privately and thinks no, not really, since it was our government that faked his death but hey. You’re right. He did survive.

Jeff’s already here, setting up with Gareth in the garage, picking out a few notes on his guitar. The creases of worry haven’t eased around his eyes, but he seems to be doing a good job of ignoring them, so Eddie resolves to ignore them too. No one wants their shit brought out when they’re trying to think about something else, right?

Both guys’ eyes go wide when he gets out his guitar. His baby. He’s affectionately named her Narsil. She’s the most expensive thing he owns and he hasn’t really touched her lately, not in all the upheaval with his dad, lost in the mire of feelings about what Bruce is and what Eddie might turn out to be — didn’t want to contaminate her with that, in some way.

But hey. He’s proved he’s a lot of things he thought he wasn’t, this week. He reckons she’ll be okay.

“Jesus, dude, that’s a cool guitar.” Gareth’s twirling a drumstick around his fingers, eyes wide in admiration, and Eddie likes that, the admiration. Likes the way these sophomores look up to him.

“A guitar is only as cool as the songs you can play on her,” he says, and then smirks. “But yeah, she’s pretty cool.”

They fool around for a while, cutting together various slices of Led Zep songs, until Eddie gets them trying to work out the harmonies for a song he wrote a couple months ago, back when he still wrote songs. Jeff’s got a good voice, he recognises. Eddie can sing too, sure, but there’s not much range to his voice, not much of interest beyond the lyrics and the guitar he’s playing behind it. Jeff’s actually got something going on. And Gareth applies himself to the drums with the same tenacity with which he applied himself to defeating the owlbear in the one and only campaign they’ve played together, a oneshot Eddie wrote high out of his mind a couple weeks ago.

So, all in all, this might actually go somewhere.

Jeff’s plucking out the chords to some song by that new metal band, Metallica, when Eddie cuts through it and says, “So, I’d say we need a bassist, right?”

Gareth jumps up from his stool. “Does that mean–”

“Hell yeah it means.” Eddie grins. He unhooks his guitar from around his neck and stretches his shoulder out, wincing at the pain that thrums through it but really that pain is secondary, irrelevant. “I’m in, all the way in, signing away my soul to the satanic cult of heavy metal, et cetera et cetera. Do you guys have a band name? Or will Corroded Coffin do?”

“Holy shit, that was your band in middle school,” Jeff says, snapping his fingers. “I knew you played!”

“Band is a loose term, let’s say. It was me and my acoustic guitar plus Drew Payne on the drums and Janie with the fucking triangle, but the name was a good one, at least. I can’t think of a more worthy subject for its resurrection.”

Gareth grins wide, as Jeff starts talking practicalities: “I know a girl who plays bass but I don’t think she’s into metal. She wants to be, like, Kathy Valentine.”

“What, the fucking Go-Go’s? Jesus, there’s no taste in this town.”

“Is there anyone in band?” Gareth says, tucking a drumstick behind his ear. Again with the fucking band. Eddie is not letting this little sheepie anywhere near that soul-sucking clusterfuck (the sports part, he means, since the actual music isn’t so bad), thank you.

He shakes his head. “I don’t think anyone who’s ever worn that uniform is interested in metal — myself excluded, of course.”

“What, those frilly little ruffles don’t scream Dio lover to you?” Jeff smirks. Eddie flips him off, but he’s smiling. Because Jeff seems lighter, now, after the session, forgetting his troubles in a bit of loud music. Never fails.

“We’ll find someone,” Eddie says, waving a hand. It’s something he feels optimistic about, for once, the way he’s never once doubted that he’d find people to play DnD with, when the guys who introduced him to it graduated. Freaks don’t go away, not even when society really really wants them to. Granted this feels easier to believe in when it’s about metal and tabletop fantasy, rather than something more personal, something more innate to Who You Are, but still. “Robin from band owes me after I saved her ass on Monday, maybe I can make her learn the bass.”

“Wasn’t it Steve Harrington who saved both your asses, more accurately?” Gareth has wrinkled his nose, like the thought is vaguely repulsive. Eddie gets the weird half-panic, half-thrill jolt in his chest that Steve’s name tends to cause these days (that’s what happens when you fight a demogorgon together, he guesses) and thinks, you’d be surprised how often that seems to be happening to me.

“I really don’t get that, like, at all,” Jeff says. “Did he and the Tommys fall out, or something?”

“Something like that,” Eddie says evenly, very aware that both sophomores are looking at him like he holds all the secrets of the universe inside his head. You don’t want these fucking secrets, he wants to say, thinking about Tommy C. pushing him against the tree, against the fence, kissing him a way he didn’t want to be kissed. About Steve pinned to the floor by a thing without a face. It’s easy to pretend it was all a dream, a nightmare, and sometimes he’ll forget about it entirely. Then something will trip him up and he has to take a second to remember how to breathe again.

“Your mom wants to know if your friends are staying for dinner,” someone says, Gareth’s dad, presumably, coming into the garage. He’s in a brown suit with the tie loosened, like he just got home from work, and he looks like Gareth. A nice, friendly smile that’s slightly too wide for his cheeks. “Hi, Jeff. And you are…?”

“Eddie,” Gareth cuts in, eyes darting between them like he’s worried about the impression each will make on the other. Like Eddie’s gonna judge him because his dad isn’t cool, or something. “Yeah, do you– do you guys want to stay for dinner?”

Eddie would rather die than sit at the Westley family dinner table, mom and dad talking about their day, how was your day at school, dears? And Jeff shuffles his feet and says awkwardly, “I don’t know, I should probably get home and make dinner for my parents, my mom won’t have time to–” He closes his mouth.

“I can drive you home, if you want,” Eddie says, the offer only formulating as he says it. He doesn’t know where the kid lives — it could be miles out.

But when Jeff tells him, it turns out to be only about fifteen minutes away, so Eddie loads his shit back into his van — Jeff leaves his guitar and amps at Gareth’s, apparently — and then he drives them off, turning (We Are) The Roadcrew down but not off. “Damn, I wish I had a car,” Jeff says, looking around the van enviously, admiring the furry d20s hanging from the rearview (Eddie’s prized possession, after his guitar). “We used to live on the same street as Gareth, which, like, it was so much more central, but now–”

He goes quiet. Eddie glances over at him, letting the silence stretch on.

“Medical bills, y’know?” Jeff says finally. “My dad, he was diagnosed two years ago. He couldn’t work when he was having the chemo the first time, and it was so expensive–”

“You don’t have to justify it, man. Not to me.”

Jeff sags back against the seat, tension going out of him. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I guess it’s just– Gareth and his parents, they’re nice about it, like, really nice, but they don’t really get it. What it’s like. My mom has to work all the time and when she’s not working she has to take care of my dad, and my sister has to come back from college every other weekend and it’s just–”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, not getting it and getting it all at once. “You’ve known Gareth for a while, huh?”

Jeff nods. “Since we were kids. Grew up on the same street, y’know?” That’s something Eddie doesn’t know. Kicking about in a quiet suburban street, living next to your friends, moms sharing casserole dishes at potlucks. Not in his neighborhood. “Yeah, they’ve been great, like, before and– and now, I’m not gonna say they haven’t been, but when we had to move away–”

“It’s different,” Eddie offers. “Makes you different.”

“It does.”

“Listen, man, if you ever need– I don’t know, to talk or some shit, or just to get out of the house, you can hit me up, okay? I live in the shittiest trailer park off Kerley, you can’t miss it.”

“It’s also the only trailer park, so that makes it the best one too,” Jeff says, smiling, and Eddie smiles too. Okay. He can work with these kids.

When he gets home, he finds his uncle on the porch with Avni from across the way, her iron gray hair pulled out of her face and her eyes sharp and bright against her weathered brown skin. She’s smoking, and she lifts the hand holding the cigarette in greeting as Eddie approaches, not breaking off from her conversation with Wayne.

“...shifty-looking, you know? Creeping around the place, taking their notes. Gawking at us like visitors to a zoo. Like we’re living in a fucking zoo.” She shakes her head and flicks ash to the ground. Her accent is steeper than usual today, like it gets when she’s agitated.

“What’s going on?” Eddie says, climbing the steps and leaning against the door.

Wayne huffs out smoke. “Avni’s tellin’ me about the viewin’ they had today, people comin’ to buy the park.”

“And there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s what stings, right? Fucking Diane Jonas decides she wants to sell and boom, we all just have to go along with it. It’s enough to drive a woman to drink.” She smiles wide, sharp teeth, to show she’s joking. In Eddie’s limited experience of the woman, it’s a common joke. Somehow she maintains her sobriety by treating it flippantly — whatever works, he guesses.

“She said she wanted to clean up the place before the viewing.” Eddie glances around; it doesn’t look very clean to him. “Think it’ll sell regardless?”

“Oh, sure. There’s a lot of money to be made out of us, you know? The dirtier the better. It just makes us more desperate.”

“Jesus,” Wayne says, stubbing out his cigarette. “I guess you didn’t see who it was, thinkin’ of buyin’?”

Avni shakes her head. “I saw, but I didn’t recognise any of them. Just some realtors, I guess. We’ll find out who actually owns us soon enough. Should have a few months, though.”

Eddie feels a little sick at that, but she’s right: there’s nothing we can do about it. Nothing at all.

He tries to keep a hold of his good mood that evening, the liberation of playing his guitar as loud as it would go in Gareth’s garage, the prospect of tearing up some carpet with Steve on the weekend. Tries to focus on all that more than Janie’s avoidance. The way he misses Tommy C. sometimes, misses the way they’d touch each other even if they didn’t talk about it, even if they couldn’t. The pinched look between his uncle’s eyes.

Chapter Text

Saturday morning, early, Eddie drives over to the Byers’. He’s antsy and on edge, dosed up on painkillers against the ache in his shoulder and twitching after dreams filled with the thing without a face. He turns up Iron Maiden’s Children of the Damned almost loud enough to drown out his mind (but not quite) and tries to do the same to the heating but it’s acting up, leaving his fingers numb on the wheel, fingernails tinging blue. When he pulls up in the driveway he sits there for a second, rubbing his hands, looking at the house. So innocuous, in the gray daylight. Squat and brown. Hard to believe they nearly died there.

(Hard to believe Jonathan can still stand it.)

He’s still trying to get circulation back in his hands when someone knocks on the window, and he jumps practically out of his skin. He opens the door, heart still pounding; it’s Steve.

“Jesus, man, you okay?” Steve says, leaning with one arm against the roof of the van. The position has his sweater creeping up, under his jacket. A red one this time. There’s a strip of skin on show above his belt — isn’t he cold? Eddie thinks. He must be cold.

“On edge,” Eddie says, getting out of the van and lighting a cigarette. He’s getting little white spots on his tongue, yellowing fingertips. He needs to cut down. “Aren’t you?”

Steve shrugs. There are dark circles under his eyes. When Eddie’s taken a puff of smoke, Steve’s hand reaches out and plucks the cigarette from between his lips, placing it between his own and–

Eddie looks away, feeling the sting of contact at his mouth, the lingering warmth of Steve’s fingertips. Kinda queer, right? Taking a guy’s cigarette? he thinks, but doesn’t say it. Of course he doesn’t say it. His shoulder’s still too tender to get shoved around.

“Nice morning,” he says eventually, exhaling a breath that fogs in the cold morning air. The sky is breaking into sunny blue past the thick gray cloud, and he has to squint against the glare of the light.

“If you say so,” Steve says, handing the cigarette back. “It’s fucking cold.”

“Let’s go inside, then.” Eddie leads the way, knocking on the door with only the slightest vein of hesitation. Jonathan opens it, looking tired and pissed off in that fucking horrible uniform from the movie theater. “Hey, man,” Eddie says, and Jonathan just grunts, opening the door wider. He looks at Steve and Steve looks at Jonathan and whoa, Eddie is not getting in the middle of that, so he ducks inside and stubs his cigarette out in one of the myriad ashtrays he finds, scattered on pretty much every surface. The place is still in a state of mess, though the Christmas lights have been cleared away.

Joyce appears in the hallway, fussing with a satchel slung over her shoulder — she’s in the blue work smock they wear at Melvald’s, a little nametag fixed to the front pocket. “Oh, hey, you’re here,” she says, looking up, something anxious and frazzled about her. Eddie knows the feeling. “I thought since you– since you’re gonna be here, both of you, it’d be okay if I picked up a shift while Jonathan was working but if that’s not–”

“That’s fine,” Steve says smoothly, appearing behind Eddie. Eddie wonders at the way a short hour fighting a monster can make Joyce Byers trust them with her son — but desperate times, he thinks. Desperate measures.

Some of the tension sags out of Joyce’s shoulders; she scrubs a hand over her face and then nods. “Okay. Well, I’m going wallpaper shopping with Hop after my shift, so I won’t be back til late afternoon, probably.”

Eddie allows his eyebrows to climb. (Because, c’mon, he’s not immune to the rumor mill.)

“Don’t you look at me like that,” she says, though there’s color in her cheeks. “He’s helping us out, that’s all. The same way you boys are.”

Jonathan makes a sound behind them, like a derisory snort. Eddie tries to imagine how he’d feel if his mom was around and started seeing someone new, and fails resoundingly. It’s too far beyond the way his life actually is.

“Jonathan…” Joyce says wearily, like this is an argument she’s had many a time before.

He shrugs at her and then opens the door again: “I gotta go. Have a good shift, Mom.”

“You too.”

Eddie feels a spike of something anxious in his gut at that, though he doesn’t know what or why. Why Jonathan having a mother makes him feel slightly sick. But whatever: he watches Joyce gather her shit together and then head towards the door herself, eyes darting anxiously back down the hallway — “You’ll– you’ll call me, right? If anything– happens?”

“We’ll call you,” Eddie promises, and she hesitates in the doorway for a few seconds longer, fingers worrying at the strap of her bag, before she takes a visibly deep breath and goes.

And then it’s just Eddie and Steve, alone in the house with Will Byers asleep in the other room.

“Is it fine?” Eddie finds himself saying, because apparently he can’t keep his big mouth shut.

Steve turns to him with a confused look. “Is what fine?”

“You said it’s fine. That, y’know, we’re gonna have to stay here until one of them gets home. That we’re babysitting, though that’s not what we signed up for.”

Steve frowns at him. “I said it was fine, didn’t I?”

Eddie leans back against the wall, waving a hand exaggeratedly. “Well, yeah, I heard that, but it’s kinda hard to believe from a guy whose favorite pastime was, until very recently, shotgunning beer and watching Tommy H. give nerdy freshmen swirlies.”

“He hasn’t done that since sophomore year,” Steve says defensively, and Eddie just raises his eyebrows. “Listen, man, I’m just trying to– trying to do everything I wouldn’t have done, like, a week ago, so can you just let me do it?”

“The anti–King Steve,” Eddie muses. “King Steve’s evil clone. Or good clone? Yeah, good clone. Looks like you just stepped out of the Mirror Universe, Steve.”

“I don’t know what any of that means,” Steve says, shaking his head, a little strain of annoyance in his voice. Good. Eddie doesn’t know what to do with him when he’s not annoyed.

“Just be glad you don’t have a little goatee,” Eddie says, and laughs, a little out of relief, because the thought of Steve with a goatee suddenly makes him markedly less attractive, and he needs that, for Steve to seem less attractive. “Okay, whatever, we should probably get on with whatever needs getting on with, right?”

“Right,” Steve says, suddenly uncertain, even as he takes his jacket off and pushes up his sleeves. “The carpet first?”

“Sure,” Eddie says, and they go through to the hallway, Eddie ignoring the way the acrid smell makes his heart jump in his chest. Joyce has left a toolkit on the floor for them and he finds a pair of pliers in it, which he digs at the corner, but the thing won’t budge, stuck too firmly down. So Steve passes him the knife from the toolbox and he cuts an admittedly messy slice out of it, enough to get a handhold, and together they peel it back, slicing as they go, until they’re rolling it back in strips and the big black stain is long folded away.

“Shit,” Steve says, sitting back on his haunches after an hour or so, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his elbow. It’s that strange temperature where objectively they know it’s cold in the house, but the labor they’re doing has them uncomfortably hot without relief. Eddie’s already stripped down to his Dio t shirt, arms bare, which feels strangely vulnerable, actually, though Steve’s already seen him without his jeans on. “D’you think we’re supposed to lay the new carpet too?”

“I’m not sure Mrs. Byers is gonna trust two seventeen-year-olds to lay a new carpet in her hallway, even two seventeen-year-olds who did fight a monster last weekend.”

“Sixteen,” Steve says.

“What?”

“I’m sixteen.”

Eddie stares at him. Sure, objectively, that makes sense. Steve’s a junior — why wouldn’t it make sense? But mentally Eddie’s been tallying him with the Tommy C.s of this world, a senior older and taller than Eddie, if only by a few months and an inch or two. Something strange about it, like it puts them on more even ground. “When’s your birthday?”

“December.”

“Wow,” Eddie says. He’s nearly a year older than Steve. That shouldn’t feel as weird as it does.

“Wow? I don’t get what’s wow about that, man.”

Eddie shrugs. “I’m just shocked that our ruling monarch is but a child, a wee boy with the weight of the kingdom of his shoulders– heavy is the head that wears the–”

Steve shoves at his shoulder. It’s light and jokingly meant, sure, but it doesn’t feel joking when pain shoots down the joint and Eddie slumps back with a hiss, trying not to look at Steve as Steve’s face changes immediately from a light-hearted glare to something deeply concerned, which is more unbearable than any malice would have been. He grits his teeth and probes at his shoulder, relieved to find it hasn’t gone anywhere this time.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t even think–” Steve is saying, eyes wide and apologetic, fuck, Eddie preferred Mirror Universe Steve. King Steve. Steve who wouldn’t care.

“It’s fine,” Eddie gets out, consciously forcing his limbs to relax so some of the tensed-up pain falls out of him. He wonders if Rick has any codeine going. “You didn’t know, man.”

“So, like, your shoulder– it still hurts?”

He exhales through his nose. “It, uh, takes a little while to feel normal again. Plus at the slightest opportunity it’s gonna do it again, so. Gotta be careful with it.”

“And that’s just– a thing that happens to you?”

“Yep.”

“Shit,” Steve says, running a hand through his hair. “Well– yeah, dude, I’m sorry.”

“‘S okay,” Eddie says, dragging himself to his feet. He needs a fucking break. He goes outside to smoke on the porch, shivering in the chill breeze. The brief sun from earlier has disappeared again, swallowed by unyielding gray. There’s the smell of snow in the air. He remembers Nancy saying something about salt, they used road salt for the girl’s sensory deprivation tank. Maybe they’ll cancel school.

When he goes back inside, the house’s close silence has dissolved into music, Fleetwood Mac drifting out from the boombox laid on the kitchen counter. Steve’s working on the carpet again, nodding his head and singing quietly along to the music, I’m just second hand news.

“Really?” Eddie says.

“What?” Steve returns, without looking up. “I’m not gonna hear a word against Fleetwood Mac, man. Plus I think it’s Mrs. Byers’ cassette, so be nice.”

“I didn’t say anything.” Eddie rolls his shoulder experimentally, feeling out whether it can take another hour tearing up carpet. It twinges, but doesn’t make him want to cry, so that’s progress. He’s about to kneel down beside Steve when a door in the hallway opens and Will Byers comes out.

He’s a tiny kid, skinny, huge eyes in a sunken pale face. He reminds Eddie of himself, actually, back when he was that age, except it’s a bowl cut instead of a buzzcut and he’s got a mother who loves him, at least.

“Hey, kid,” Eddie says, straightening up again.

“You’re Eddie and Steve, right? Mom said you were coming today.” Will picks his way across the bare floorboards in socked feet, and Eddie winces, thinking of all the tacks that could be sitting there waiting to stab him, but the kid makes it across unscathed. “I don’t think she likes that you’re here.”

“What?” Steve says, sounding offended. He sits back on his haunches.

Will shrugs. He’s wearing a blue turtleneck so big it reaches nearly to his knees. “I know she’s grateful, sure, I think she just hates depending on people.”

Eddie can understand that. Steve makes a little noise, looking back at the floor like he’s embarrassed. Eddie brushes past it: “How are you faring, young Will? Did you like my card?”

The kid’s face lights up. “That dragon was so cool, you’re such a good drawer–”

“Your friends told me you were into DnD. Will the Wise, right?”

“Will the Wise,” Will says, beaming, and they occupy the next ten minutes with a in-depth conversation about campaigns and hit points and nat20s, as Steve’s face gets more and more confused, which gives Eddie a perverse sort of pleasure, he has to admit. Then Will’s brightness fades: “The demogorgon. That’s what got me, in our– in our campaign, and in real life.”

“Yeah, I know. We saw it too.” Eddie glances at Steve, who’s picking at the end of the duct tape roll. “Pretty metal, kid, surviving in that– other world, so long. It’s cool.”

Will smiles, looking at his feet. “Jonathan said it was cool too. It was mostly just scary.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Steve mutters. “It was scary on this side.”

Will disappears into the kitchen, mumbling something about making toast, and Eddie watches him go with a strange feeling in his chest, like he’s just gone back in time. Like he’s watching himself from a different angle.

Not exactly the same, sure, Eddie at twelve liked to externalize everything wrong inside him, kick and scream and shout until his father showed him it wouldn’t get him anywhere, quite the opposite, actually. He’d steal things and get into fights and generally make an ass of himself because his dad didn’t want him to call attention, and by God was he going to do the opposite of what his dad wanted, and that’s not Will Byers. But there’s something in it anyway.

“Help me with this last section?” Steve says, bending back over the carpet, and Eddie nods, moving to join him. It’s a small area, so he has to get close to Steve to do it, Steve who smells like sweat and Eddie’s cigarettes and probably expensive cologne. His watch glitters on his wrist.

The cassette’s made it to The Chain now and Steve hums along, nodding his head as he works, strong hands tugging at the strips of carpet. Eddie needs to stop looking. Eddie needs to get this through his head: Tommy C. was gay, and it still turned out like shit. How much worse would it be with Steve Harrington?

At one point Steve pricks his thumb on a tack sticking up, drawing a spot of blood, and he curses, bringing his hand up, sucking on the wound. Jesus fucking Christ. Eddie swallows and looks away, thinking about how if Steve knew what he was thinking they wouldn’t be sitting this close on the floor, wouldn’t be sitting on this floor at all.

Steve and Tommy C. look alike, in some ways. The same structure to the jaw, the same pride in the eyes, though Steve’s hair is dark where Tommy’s is fair. Eddie can’t keep doing this.

And yet–

“There,” Steve says finally, sitting back on his haunches again and surveying their work. He runs a hand through his hair and smiles. Something dumb about that smile. Genuinely pleased, and isn’t it strange, that Steve Harrington should genuinely be pleased by tearing up a carpet?

“We’ll make a pauper of you yet, Harrington,” Eddie says, grinning. He sits back and lights a cigarette, holding it out to Steve almost habitually now. Steve takes it. “Ripping up carpets yourself? Whatever next? Changing your own oil?”

“Fuck off, man,” Steve says, an edge to his voice, and that edge makes Eddie’s hackles rise, because what right does he have to be offended? Really? What right?

“Jesus, if the idea of doing shit for yourself is so offensive to you–“

“I guess you’re making the most of your chance to mock me, right? Get one up on King Steve.” Steve shakes his head, not looking at Eddie, rubbing his jaw. The cigarette held loosely between his fingers.

Eddie sort of wants to say yeah, that’s exactly what I’m doing, and who are you to resist it? Who are you to say I can’t say what I like, after everything? After it all?

But Steve’s gone quiet and cold, sullen. Eyes on the floor. And Eddie regrets it, like an idiot. Regrets losing the easy camaraderie they shared, when the task wasn’t yet done. The way he’d regret every sharp comment that pushed Tommy C. further away from him, and oh, no, stop that right there. For fuck’s sake.

“Sorry,” Eddie finds himself saying, voice quiet. You’re not nice. Maybe Tommy was right about him. “You’re helping out, and I shouldn’t be so–”

“You’re right,” Steve says, surprising him. “I don’t know how to change my own oil.”

“To be fair, I was a mechanic the other summer, so.”

“At Thacher’s, right?”

Eddie’s eyebrows climb. “What, you keeping tabs on me, Harrington?”

Steve shrugs. “You fixed Tommy C.’s brakes one time. He told everyone about it, like he was trying to embarrass you, or whatever.”

Oh. Yeah. Eddie remembers that, remembers Tommy C.’s faintly unsettling stare as he got the job done in his grimy overalls, grease smeared over his cheek. They weren’t anything to each other back then, not beyond a little asshole jock-queer freak rivalry. Little did they know. “Woulda been more embarrassing if I’d done a shit job. He put his life in my hands that day, right? Brakes are no joke.”

“So you’re saying he owes you.”

“Yep.” Eddie reaches out and takes the cigarette from between Steve’s fingers, deliberately not focusing on the warmth of his skin. “I’m saving it for a rainy day.”

“I don’t know what Tommy C. could offer you, man.”

Eddie looks at Steve sharply. Is this it, then? Steve deriding Tommy C. because his dad runs a local store and his house isn’t a mansion? “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you seem pretty resourceful, I don’t know. He’s great at basketball, but that’s about it.”

“Well, that’s it right there. I can’t do anything more strenuous than a jog without fucking up my joints.”

“So get other people to do that shit for you. Not Tommy C.”

Eddie looks at him. There’s something strange in his eyes, something Eddie can’t read. He takes a drag of the cigarette because otherwise the silence feels unbearable, the weight of it. He doesn’t know what to do with it. The silence. What Steve just said.

Steve breaks it by getting up, grunting as he moves, running his hand through his hair again. Eddie moves to follow him but his knees complain and he wavers for a moment on the way to his feet, until Steve’s hand closes on his arm and tugs him up.

“Thanks,” Eddie says, suddenly out of breath. “Guess you jocks are good for something after all.”

“All part of the service,” Steve says dryly, as they go through to the kitchen.

Will’s sitting at the table, eating toast with one hand and coloring in a drawing with the other. It’s a good drawing, knights facing off against something like a wyvern, and Eddie grins. “Shit, kid, that’s great. It looks like my tattoo.”

Steve gives him a mild glare, presumably for swearing in front of the kid, which he ignores. With Lonnie Byers for a dad Will probably heard a lot worse in his time. Will’s eyes, meanwhile, have brightened with curiosity, and Eddie takes that as a sign to twist his arm to show it off, carefully, though it’s not the one that hurts. You never know.

“Oh, that’s so cool!” Will enthuses, eyes round.

“That’s, like, actually good,” Steve says, eyes on Eddie’s arm, again that foreign look in his face. “I can’t believe you found someone to do that in Hawkins.”

Eddie snorts. “I didn’t. Had to go to Indy for this baby.” He and Janie went together, both times, for both their tattoos. Her for the snake and the crossbow on the nape of her neck; him for the wyvern and the bats. He has plans to get more, lots more, but he’s running out of cash. Rick probably knows someone who’d do it for cheaper — all the underground types in Hawkins seem to know each other, or at least of each other — but Eddie’s trying to exercise some separation in his life, right now. And he doesn’t really want to die of sepsis because he couldn’t afford a classier sort of criminal. “Why? Have you ever been tempted, Harrington?”

The look on Steve’s face makes him laugh. Will laughs too, and Eddie reaches over and ruffles the kid’s hair. Steve makes them sandwiches for lunch, with turkey ham out of the Byers’ fridge, and while they eat Will wheedles them into putting on his brother’s London Calling cassette, which is to neither of their tastes, really, but who are they to deny the kid? Then they turn their attention to the wallpaper in the living room. There’s no denying it — those huge dark letters, in slick black paint — it has to come off. So they set to spraying it with the old homemade stripping solution Will finds for them in the shed, scraping at it until it starts to come off in sheets, and by the time they’re finished for the day the house looks like more of a mess than it did when they started.

Steve lets out a dissatisfied sigh, wiping his wrist over his forehead and putting his hands on his hips as he surveys their work. Eddie smirks.

“Trust the process, man. Mrs. Byers will come home with new wallpaper and tomorrow we can stick it up, and voila. Good as new.”

“If you say so.” Steve huffs out another breath and then allows himself to smile. “Same time tomorrow?”

“What, you mean the asscrack of dawn?”

Steve snorts. “Yeah.”

“Great. Can’t wait.” Eddie pushes sarcasm into his voice but really it’s true — his fraught, anxious mood from the morning is almost entirely burnt off, like fog by the rising sun, and he’s not sure what to do with the fact that he enjoyed himself. DIY with Steve Harrington. There are stranger things out there, but Eddie has yet to meet them. And that includes the demogorgon.

It’s only a little while later, when Steve and Eddie are watching reruns of M*A*S*H on the couch because it’s the only thing on, that Joyce returns, Hopper in tow. Her eyes take in the progress they’ve made, wide, all different sorts of emotion in them like gratitude and relief and worry.

“Shit, you kids did a good job,” Hopper says, lifting up the trashbag full of discarded wallpaper.

“You’re back early,” Steve says, frowning at his watch.

She rolls her eyes at herself. “I forgot my wallet before work. I need it to buy wallpaper.”

“No, you don’t,” Hopper mutters, and she twists around to glare at him. Eddie would not want to be on the receiving end of that glare. He turns his attention back to the television as she searches through the mess on the coffee table, and then he freezes.

“Listen, Doc, I’ve watched you around the hospital. You care about people.” The character whose name Eddie thinks is George says, and Hawkeye, sharp as ever, responds: “Some of my best friends are people.”

And Eddie’s seen this episode before. Another rerun, back in the summer of ‘80 when he was new to living with Wayne and spent hot, listless days lying on the couch and forgetting how to move, the television his only company when his uncle was at work. The way he sat up and stared at the TV as it said the words, and one homosexual, flinched and pulled his arms around himself like he was expecting a blow.

He doesn’t show it this time, keeps it buried deep within, but inside he’s feeling the same. All panicky and afraid. Heat rushes to his cheeks and he keeps himself very still, aware he’s tensed every muscle, eyes fixed on the TV. And George says it again, homosexual, and Eddie can’t look at Joyce or Hopper. Can’t look at Steve.

Perhaps he’s imagining the sudden tension in the room. He hopes he is. But he can’t help but feel it, the weight of it, like they know. Like they’re making the connection. George on the TV and Eddie on the couch. His tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth, throat dry.

“Found it!” Joyce says triumphantly, holding up her wallet, and her voice unfreezes him, allows him to say, “Change the channel.”

“What?” Steve says, not moving to touch the remote, which is balanced on the armrest beside him. He’s not looking away from the television, and Eddie can’t bring himself to decipher whatever it is that lies in his face.

“Change the channel. I want to see what else is on.” Eddie tries his best to keep his panic out of his voice; he’s not sure he succeeds. Steve glances at him, frowning.

“We tried that, remember? There’s nothing else.”

“Nothing wrong with a bit of M*A*S*H, kid,” Hopper says. “There’s not that many shows out there that try to show war for what it is, which is a goddamn nightmare, and M*A*S*H is one of them.”

He fought in ‘Nam, Eddie remembers abstractly, in the only corner of his brain that isn’t screaming at him to escape. He doesn’t understand why they’re not reacting to this, like maybe they haven’t heard it, but the whole episode’s about George being gay and how some people hate him for it and some people try to save him, there’s no way they can miss it, not if they keep watching. It’s going to click. And he can’t be here when it does.

He gets up, knees suddenly wobbly, and moves to the door, getting his smokes out with shaking fingers when Joyce questions him — he doesn’t trust his voice to say Just going for a smoke without trembling, without giving him away. Why else would he be so freaked out, after all? If he’s not a homosexual too?

Outside it’s freezing, and immediately he misses his jacket. But he just braces himself against the cold, blowing warm air into his hands before he lights his cigarette. All the peace of the afternoon, the easy working dynamic between him and Steve —

It feels stupid, now. To have enjoyed it so much. When Steve doesn’t seem to know what Eddie really is. (Or he’s pretending he doesn’t, which– why? And is that worse?) When whatever– friendship they’ve got going on is based on a truth no one else knows, sure, the truth of Steve bandaging up Eddie’s knees in a darkened barn, the truth of Steve saving Eddie’s life and Eddie saving Steve’s, but it’s also based on a fiction. The fiction that Steve’s maintaining, pretending, ignoring the reality, which is that Eddie’s a queer and Tommy H. seems to know that so why doesn’t Steve?

He remembers Will, then, in a sudden flash of panic. Sort of stupidly, because he doesn’t actually know that about the kid, that he’s gay, and he’s only twelve — he probably doesn’t know that about himself yet, if he is — but he worries anyway. Where’s Will, while that episode is showing? With his mother and Steve Harrington and the police chief in the room?

But he’s in his room, Eddie remembers. He got tired in the afternoon and went back to sleep, which he probably needs, after a week in an alternate dimension. So he’s safe.

Eddie’s breath trembles as he exhales smoke, and then he jumps as the door opens behind him, and he doesn’t need to look to know it’s Steve.

“You okay, man?”

Eddie shrugs, looking out at the patchy grass instead of at Steve’s eyes, because who knows what he’d find in them. “My nicotine addiction was calling my name, you know how it is.”

“It’s not like you couldn’t smoke inside. Somehow I don’t think Mrs. Byers would mind.”

“I just needed some fresh air, okay?” Eddie snaps.

“Jesus, man, I just can’t work you out. Like, fuck, what’s your problem?”

“What’s my problem?” Eddie laughs. “I’m me, right? Isn’t that my problem, according to you and your friends?”

They’re staring at each other now, angry. Eddie feels like something’s trapped under his skin. “Maybe your problem is a fucking chip on your shoulder,” Steve says, tilting his chin up, and Eddie wants to say do you realize you do that, man? Literally look down your nose at other people? But he doesn’t say it, because he’s sure Steve knows.

“Oh, yeah, and I wonder fucking why.”

“I saved your life.”

“I’m so glad you’re not holding it over me or anything.”

They glare at each other mutely for a moment, before a car pulls into the driveway — Jonathan’s Ford LTD. He gets out, frowning at them, and Eddie tries to take a breath to calm down. “What’s going on?” Jonathan asks, looking between them suspiciously, still in his theater usher’s uniform.

“Nothing’s going on,” Steve says sharply, and Jonathan looks at him with equal sharpness and Eddie isn’t letting that escalate, oh no.

He slides in between them easily and says, “I didn’t want to watch M*A*S*H. Harrington’s a big fanatic, so we had this spat–”

“I am not a M*A*S*H fanatic,” Steve mutters. “I’m not, like, forty.”

“Don’t let the Chief hear you say that. He loves that shit.”

“What’s he doing here, anyway?” Jonathan says, indicating the Blazer parked up behind him.

Steve shrugs. “Your mom forgot her wallet.” And on cue, Joyce and Hopper emerge from the house. They say another goodbye, something about dinner to Jonathan, and then Hopper drives them off in the Blazer, while Jonathan goes inside. Leaving Steve and Eddie alone on the porch again. Great.

“Sorry,” Eddie says haltingly. “Just, um, on edge. After everything. I feel like I– I fucking don’t know what to do with myself, man. I feel like the whole world’s moved a couple inches to the left.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs hard. “I’m sorry too. Like, every time you provoke me, I rise to it, and I– I shouldn’t do that, y’know? It’s not gonna make it better.”

“It’s hard to make it worse.” Eddie says this quietly, so quietly it’s barely audible.

Steve looks at him for a long moment. “But the carpet and shit, that helps, right? We helped. It’s– things can go back to normal. Right?”

“It’s gonna take more than a carpet, Steve,” Eddie says, because c’mon. It is. It’s so–

It’s so Steve. So Harrington. To think erasing a few marks, a few stains, will erase what happened. Make it okay. It might never be okay. Will still went missing; Will still died, legally, and sure now he’s un-died but you can’t erase that people went to his funeral. You can’t. You simply can’t. Carpet or no carpet; wallpaper or no wallpaper. There’s another world out there and it’s bluer and colder than their own, and now that they know it exists there’s no going back. None.

But still, they’ll put up the wallpaper, because what else can they do?

And it will help. The wallpaper will help.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, man,” Eddie says, and Steve nods, and Eddie goes.

Chapter Text

Eddie wakes with a jolt to someone knocking on the door. It’s far off enough to be the front door, rather than the door to his bedroom or the side one to the porch, but it sends a thrill of urgency through him anyway and he sits up. Agent Faraday, he thinks blurrily, he fucked up somehow and Agent Faraday’s come to take his uncle’s job away, come to–

When he gets to the hallway, still shrugging a sweater over his t-shirt (it’s freezing in the trailer today, probably linked to the hot water problem), it’s not Agent Faraday, and he manages to take something of a breath. This breath doesn’t last all that long, though, because then he sees it’s Avni, it’s Avni with a pinched, worried look on her face and Eddie’s always liked her but he’s growing to dread the sight of her.

“They sold it,” she says. “They fucking sold it.”

“What does that–”

“The park, the goddamn park. Someone new.”

Eddie feels a rush of vertiginous panic, the same thing he’s felt every time this shit has been mentioned, because god. God. How can his life be so subject to the whims of other people? Of another person, whoever this person is? “Shit,” he says in an exhale, already reaching for his smokes. Only yesterday he tried to still the trembling in his yellowing fingers and decided he ought to cut back — now that feels like it lacks a point.

“Is your uncle here?”

Eddie shakes his head. “Work. He should be back around eight.”

“Okay, well, I’m calling a meeting.”

He raises an eyebrow. “What, of all the residents? When the hell did that last happen?”

“It didn’t,” Avni says grimly. “C’mon, go and get dressed and then you can help me get everyone together.” She leans in the doorway as she lights a smoke, the intent to wait for him clear, so he tries to shake the lingering tiredness off and goes back to change into jeans and an old turtleneck of Wayne’s, big and wide knit and soft from years of wear. It’s too cold for anything else, the grass frosted outside his window, and more than that–

He doesn’t feel like being so much of himself today. The guy who ran away from home and calls his uncle Wayne, who wears t-shirts with names on them that make Hawkins’ general congregation flinch. He doesn’t want to mark himself out, not today. Today he just wants to be a kid, his uncle’s kid. Someone who’ll listen when they tell him what he should do.

Avni sends him over to the Carlsons’, the Winnebago squat and grimy in the early daylight. He knocks on the door, already bracing himself, and still has to take a jumpy jolt back when Mel Carlson slams it open and sends him the full force of her glare. “Do you have any idea what fuckin’ time it is?”

“Yeah, I do, actually,” he mutters, dragging a hand through the hair by his ear and casting a rueful glance back at Avni, who got the more enviable task of waking up nice old Mr. Harris. “Listen, I’m just the messenger, ‘kay? Don’t shoot me.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she snaps, and yeah. Okay. Dumb thing to say. Everybody knows Barry Carlson keeps a shotgun loaded in the back.

“Avni says we all need to talk. About the trailer park sale? Well– yeah. Apparently it sold, and we need to, I don’t know, discuss what we’re gonna do?”

She shrugs. “What is there to do? ‘S out of our hands, kid. Just gotta get on with it.”

“It won’t take long.” Eddie has no idea how long it will take; he only knows Avni will be furious with him if he doesn’t get everyone to come, and he has no desire to visit that upon himself. “C’mon, you guys can come to the meeting and have a great time looking down on the rest of us who are panicking instead of just getting on with it.”

Mel looks at him through narrowed eyes for a moment. She’s considering it, at least. He’s always surprised at his own ability to convince people. “Not long, you say?” He nods, holding his breath. “We gotta be at church at nine sharp, y’know.”

Pretty sure you won’t go to hell for being five minutes late, Eddie thinks, but then again, he’s already going to hell for a myriad of things, so he has no reason to care. Maybe Mel Carlson’s a saint. “I know.”

“Yeah, okay. Where’re we meetin’?”

He breathes a sigh of relief. “Avni’s trailer, in ten minutes.”

She nods and closes the door; he sags against the side of the RV for a moment as he lights a smoke. Avni only told him to get the Carlsons, perhaps anticipating they’d be a challenge. They’re not bad people, really. No one here is. Despite the reputation. Despite the state of the grass, the loose syringes, and the way Charlie Neil got taken to Pennhurst when he knifed the electrician because he thought the guy was there to spy on him. Despite all that.

And still they’re passed off from rich person to rich person, none of whom want to get their hands dirty but are plenty happy to accept their money. Because that’s what matters here. The money. Nothing else.

A couple minutes later he heads over to Avni’s. Her trailer is pretty similar to Wayne’s, small and cluttered and cigarette-smelling. There are photos of her daughter everywhere, old photos, her daughter as a pretty sixteen-year-old before, as Avni’s told him, the drugs really started to kick my ass and it was decided she shouldn’t live with me. They haven’t seen each other since, apparently. Something like twenty years.

“Eddie,” she says, waving him in. There’s a loose circle already formed in the front room, old Harris and Edna V. and Maria and a bunch of people whose names Eddie should know but doesn’t because his memory’s always been a little bit shit. He drops down on the floor, cross-legged, though there’s room on the couch next to Maria. He likes being lower down. Likes feeling small, feeling like he doesn’t know what’s going on but that’s okay because the others are in charge, so it’s okay. So it’s fine.

Avni clears her throat. “It’s Harrington.”

So it’s not fine.

Eddie unfolds his legs and pulls his knees up to his chest as if he’s in a dream; his ears are ringing, her next words coming distant and muffled. “Fucking John Harrington and his little — large — portfolio, he’s collected us. Profiting off the rich wasn’t enough for him. Apparently he’s seen there’s also money to be made out of those of us who don’t have any.”

“And this is a problem why?” Mel Carlson says. Eddie looks at her without seeing her.

“Why? Because the first thing someone does when they buy a trailer park is hike the rent. I talked to my friend over at Oak Walk, they got bought out a couple months ago and the rent jumped by fifty bucks one month to the next.”

“But we knew this was happenin’.”

“We didn’t know it was happening now, so goddamn soon. They only viewed it on Friday.”

We didn’t know it was happening because of him.

Eddie doesn’t know Steve’s dad, has never once met the guy. But he’s got a reputation around town. The same way Steve’s got a reputation. Rich, significant, rich, ruthless, rich again. Rich because he knows how to spend his money, and isn’t that a funny thing? Ain’t it? Spending money to make money? What are you supposed to do if there isn’t any money in the first place?

An asshole to Steve, maybe. Eddie’s not totally clear on that score yet. But what Harrington senior most definitely is is a problem to the residents of Forest Hills trailer park. Because now he runs it. And he can do what he likes with their futures, their lives. (And it makes Eddie feel all mixed-up inside.)

They’re still talking above his head but he’s not really listening. Stuff about a rent strike, moving someplace else, challenging the sale with a lawyer. Nothing that’s gonna work. Nothing that’s gonna prevent this from happening.

He puts his head between his knees and knots his fingers together at the back of his skull, through his tangled hair, greasy because he didn’t get a chance to shower and the water would have been fucking freezing anyway. He thinks about putting up wallpaper with Steve today. He thinks about helping someone else out, someone who has a house. Someone who owns her house, Mrs. Byers, and wouldn’t that be nice, if he and Wayne owned something. Somewhere. Because a trailer’s useless if you’ve got nowhere to put it.

Steve and his father. Shouldn’t Eddie have known?

He wants to ask, suddenly. Ask if he was so wrong to believe in Steve for a moment, believe that Steve isn’t like his father, in the wake of so sharp a reminder of what said father really is. Like a test, even. A test of what Eddie’s trying to believe in.

So after the meeting he gets in his van — how long will he have a van, he wonders? How long can he and Wayne afford both vehicles? — and drives over to the Byers’, like he was supposed to. Only there’s none of yesterday’s warmth in him. Only a cold weight, the reality of fear. Steve, he imagines himself saying. Steve, did you know about this? When we were laughing together yesterday? When you asked me what my problem was? Did you already know? Are you just always one step ahead?

“What happened to the asscrack of dawn?” Steve says when Eddie comes in. “You’re late.” Steve’s got a mug in his hand, the smell of coffee strong, and Eddie’s taken back to that dreamlike night, Steve getting up off the couch with his face all bloody and surprising Eddie yet again. What is he doing here? Really?

“Well, we had a bit of a trailer park emergency, so. Y’know. Poor people.”

Steve frowns, but he doesn’t get it, not yet. Or else he’s playing dumb. Eddie doesn’t know. Eddie feels dangerously close to crying, actually. A lump in his throat, sting in his eyes. He tries to swallow the feeling down but Steve’s just looking at him, standing there and looking at him and fuck–

“C’mon, Harrington, don’t fucking do that.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend like you don’t–” Eddie feels his voice about to break, a fault line spreading out along his next words, and stops himself before it can. Something masochistic about being here, Steve’s clueless eyes. Steve’s clueless fucking eyes.

He doesn’t know what he’s going to say next. No idea what he can say, and it’s a sick, lost feeling, the way he believed one thing and then started to believe another and now has no idea what to believe at all. Who is Steve Harrington, really? The guy with the fine profile and strong arms, who saved Eddie’s life and patched him up afterward? Or the guy everyone else thinks he is? The rich douche everyone loves, sexy and popular and cool and made of nothing so much as unearned charisma?

The guy whose father bought the trailer park. Or the guy whose father doesn’t like him?

Then there’s a knock on the door, and they look at each other for a long, tense moment, a frozen one, before Steve goes to answer it. It’s one of the kids from the hospital — Henderson, a mop of curly hair and missing front teeth. He frowns up at Steve: “You’re not Jonathan.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Steve snarks, with maybe more bite than necessary, and he looks down at the floor after he’s said it like he’s disappointed in himself. Huh.

“Whatever. I’m here to see Will.”

Steve stands aside and lets the kid in, who has a nervous-looking mother waving him off from her car. Everyone’s on edge after Will, Eddie guesses. If only they knew. “What about all the rest of your little brood?” he asks, somehow managing to keep his voice even.

Henderson rolls his eyes. “Mike and Lucas are at church. My mom is agnostic, and Will’s mom is non-practicing Jewish, hence, we can do fun stuff on Sundays instead of listening to a bunch of bullshit about God.”

“Cool,” Steve says absently, and Henderson takes that as his cue. He disappears down the hallway and Eddie looks at Steve, that prickly feeling hot under his skin.

“Not a churchgoer then, Harrington?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said.”

“Jesus– no, I’m obviously not a churchgoer. Like, I used to be, my parents– but they stopped caring.” Steve says this last bit quietly, the proud tone dropping away, and Eddie doesn’t know what to feel, he really doesn’t.

“You know much about your parents, Steve? Involved in your dad’s business?”

“What?” Steve frowns at him, like he doesn’t get it. “I’m a high school junior, man, it’s not like I work for him.”

“But still. The family money, and everything. You know where it comes from, right?”

“What the hell are you getting at, man?”

Eddie feels his heart stutter in his chest at the thought of coming out with it. Asking it, just like that. Do you know what your dad is doing? He doesn’t know why it terrifies him so much, the question. The potential answer. But Steve is looking at him sharply, unyieldingly, and in a rush Eddie ends up saying, “I’m getting at the fact that your dad’s about to make my life a hell of a lot fucking worse and you don’t even seem to know. Or, uh, care.”

Steve sets his coffee down. It’s a deliberate motion, careful. Like he doesn’t want to break one of Mrs. Byers’ mugs.

It’s that, actually, Steve’s care with it, his deliberation, that makes what’s been churning in Eddie’s chest all morning tighten around his lungs until he can’t breathe, and he feels the narrowing of his vision into a sick horror and the room shifting around him and Steve looking concerned and Eddie isn’t fucking handling that, the concern, he isn’t– he isn’t–

But he has to. Because he’s not doing this in front of Steve. He’s not.

So he fixes his gaze on the fucking shelves, cluttered with random objects his eyes refuse to make sense of right now, fixes it there and tries to count in his head — one breath, two. Three, and four, and he feels a tear slip down his cheek and his hand shakes when he reaches up to wipe it away but it’s something, it’s better than nothing, he’s still in control. Still in charge of some element of his life.

“Eddie?” Steve says cautiously. Eddie forces the panic down. It feels like a fucking spider in his throat, is what it feels like, something crawling around in there and he can’t get it out. “Are you– okay?”

Eddie inhales sharply through his nose, which is beginning to run, alongside another tear. Fucking snotty, messy, greasy hair because no hot water because trailer park because money because–

And Steve always so put together. So clean.

“What, does it– look like– I’m–?” Fuck. He can’t even get the words out. He takes another breath and says, “I’m fine.”

Steve’s staring. “What did you mean? About my dad?”

You watch a guy pull himself back from the brink of a panic attack and you immediately ask him about the thing he’s freaked about, nice. “Your dad–” Eddie backs into the couch and sits down, pinning his hands between his knees in an effort to stop them trembling. C’mon. Get the fucking words out. “Your dad is– he bought the–” Another breath. It gets easier, actually, the more he talks, the way he has to focus on the words instead of the breathing so the breathing sort of tags along anyway. “Your dad bought the– the trailer park. We knew it was– selling, but in a couple months or– something, not now. And the, uh, the first thing they do is– is raise the rent, and we can’t–”

Steve doesn’t sit down. He’s got his arms crossed over his chest, and Eddie can’t read whatever’s in his face. Fuck. Fuck.

“Did you know?” Eddie asks, closing his eyes as he says it. Like if he closes his eyes it won’t be real.

“I didn’t know,” Steve says. His voice is quiet and neutral; Eddie thinks he believes him. He thinks. “So you said– it was gonna be bought anyway? Eventually?”

Eddie opens his eyes and looks at him. “I mean, yeah, but you don’t understand how–”

“And how do you know he’s gonna raise the rent? Like, did he say something? Was there a notice, or–”

“Because that’s just what fucking happens, Harrington! It’s how the world works! It’s how this fucking town works! I guess you’re either, um, naive, or you’re just being a prick.”

“Jesus, I’m just trying to understand, like, if my dad didn’t do it then someone else would have, right?”

“That’s not the point!”

“Then what is the point?”

They look at each other for a long, silent moment. Eddie feels like the naive one, now. Eddie feels like the fool. Because of course this is Steve’s reaction, whether he knew or not. Of course Steve doesn’t understand. A guy can save your life but it doesn’t make him get where you come from; it doesn’t make him nice about it.

But equally–

What is the point? Why is Eddie so worked up by this? Oh, the money, sure, but it’s feeling like more than that. It’s feeling like he shouldn’t have driven over here, shouldn’t have started this conversation, shouldn’t be so deeply upset that it’s Steve. Why is it Steve?

“The point is–” and Eddie has to make a deliberate effort to prevent his voice breaking “–the point is that it’s your fucking dad. And I thought– I thought you–”

“What did you think, man? What, that I’m gonna convince my dad not to raise your rent? I can’t do that. And it’s business, right? It’s not–”

“Don’t you fucking finish that sentence, Harrington, I swear to god. I swear.” It’s not personal. But it doesn’t fucking matter, personal or not, it doesn’t. Because the outcome’s the same. The fucking consequences are the same. “God, I can’t believe–”

Can’t believe what? What is he going to say? I thought you were different. I thought you could be something else. And I thought if you could be, then I could be too. And instead–

Instead, he’s gonna have to go to Rick’s for that job after all, and all of this was for nothing.

This is what you turned me into, he wants to say. What I guess I’ve been all along.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, but he doesn’t mean it. Not really. Eddie knows. “Y’know, I wish I could do something, make it different, but I can’t–”

“I know, Harrington. I know you can’t.” And Eddie’s not sure he’s ever felt so defeated. He looks around the room, the stripped wallpaper, the stripped carpet down the hallway, their work. The work they did together. Steve probably could have paid someone to do it. But he did it himself, and it feels like a lie, now, that he did it himself. That they did it together. It feels empty and hollow because Eddie’s still going to wind up a drug dealer and Steve’s still going to wind up working for his father — making deals, hiking rent, ruining the way Eddie believed in himself for just a week of his life.

“Eddie–”

Because they fought a monster, sure, but some people are too different. Some people it just doesn’t work.

“Where are you–”

Eddie doesn’t turn from where he’s heading to the door. “See you around, Harrington,” he says, and he goes.

He’s not sure where he goes. He drives aimlessly, in a sort of fog. He doesn’t really feel like he’s living inside his body right now. There’s some Springsteen song playing on the radio, The River, and he feels bizarrely the same way he did driving away from Tommy C., a week and a bit ago. Disjointed and meaningless, in the grand scale of the world. Without the definition of Tommy or Steve to shape himself against.

All he knows is suddenly he’s parked up outside Rick’s place, the lake cold and still out in front of him, van slotted next to Rick’s old Merc and getting out of the van going up to the door knocking and not really feeling real as he does it–

“Eddie,” Rick says, with a broad smile. Like he knows. Like he’s been waiting. “Come in, come in.”

Eddie goes in.

“So, what can I do for ya, kid?”

Eddie’s tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth; he can’t get a word out. Doesn’t know what he’s planning to say.

Rick shrugs, eating a spoonful of cereal from the bowl in his hand. Fuck, it’s still pretty much breakfast time. Fuck. “You know your options. Grass, oxy, special K, acid, coke — you name it, pal. What are you after?”

Eddie imagines himself giving the same pitch. What can I getcha? Like the girl in the store near the theater, a lifetime ago, ringing up customers for cigarettes and painkillers, a lighter sort of drug. Like that.

“Eddie?” Rick says, looking closer at him, a crease appearing between his eyebrows. “What’s up?”

“You know your–” Eddie tastes bile at the back of his throat. He swallows it down. “Y’know what you said. About– maybe wanting someone to deal– at the high school.”

Rick smiles. “Sure do. You interested?”

No.

I thought I’d gotten away from this. I thought I was free, I thought in saving Steve and being saved by Steve I was free, I freed myself from all this. I thought it could be different. I thought–

“Yeah,” Eddie says softly instead, tugging at the baby hairs at the nape of his neck. “I am.”

It’s a simple enough process, really, as Rick explains it to him, though Eddie’s not really listening. Attention skittering across the room, to the Big Country record on the radio, to the lapping of the water on the shore, to the numbness in his fingers, his hands, all over. What is he doing? He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

He knows exactly what he’s doing.

He makes it home, somehow. He doesn’t know how. He lies down on the couch with shitty daytime TV on low and every time the memory of that morning reoccurs to him he feels himself flinch, a physical jolt of his shoulders back into the cushions, one time his cigarette slipping from between his fingers and landing to burn a scorch mark in the laminate floor until he collects his mind together enough to reach to pick it up. What is he doing, what is he doing, the constant stream of thought in his mind–

And no answer, none except the one he thought he didn’t have to give.

But he keeps it together. Mainly.

Keeps it together until Wayne comes home. Until Wayne comes in laden with groceries in crinkling brown paper bags, hey, kid, I think I found a second job, I think we’re gonna–

“Uncle Wayne,” Eddie manages to say, as his breathing picks up. “Wayne–”

Wayne sets the bags down. Comes over to the couch. Sits down next to Eddie and lays his hands on Eddie’s knees, gingerly, like he doesn’t want to scare Eddie off. Wise. Eddie kind of wants to run and never stop running, the way he ran from his dad, the way he– the way he–

“Breathe for me, kid,” Wayne says, hands warm and firm on Eddie’s knees, he smells like smoke and cold and outside, Eddie thinks about going outside and flinches again and wants to run at the same time as he wants to stay here forever, warm next to Wayne in the trailer park they can’t afford but they own the trailer at least the trailer’s theirs it’s–

Hot tears slide down his cheeks, can’t catch his breath, can’t get past the soggy lump of dread in his throat can’t breathe–

I I thought he was he was okay I thought Steve was I thought and he and he could be I could be better I could be I could help and they and Rick I’m sorry I’m–

The words spill out of him, halting and wild between frantic breaths until the breaths slow down and it’s more about the tears, more about his uncle folding him into his arms and letting him cry there into the rough warmth of his uncle’s jacket, the crook of his uncle’s shoulder, crying until he’s snotty and tired and his head hurts. And Wayne just sits there through all of it, letting Eddie make a mess of his jacket, letting Eddie cry out all the horrors inside him. Because that’s what this was about, Eddie recognizes now. The way something inside him got twisted up the night he saw the demogorgon. Wires crossed.

“Eddie,” Wayne says softly, eventually, when Eddie’s still and quiet against him. That’s all he says, but Eddie can recognize it for what it is: a question.

“Can’t– talk about it,” Eddie manages. “Can’t.”

Wayne sits up a little then, so Eddie has to sit up too, and Wayne looks deep into Eddie’s eyes. “Eddie– I don’t wanna guess about your life. It’s your life. But everythin’ lately, and your shoulder, not talkin’ about it– what’s goin’ on? Is someone hurtin’ you? This Steve?”

Yes, Eddie wants to say. This Steve is hurting me very much. But it’s not even true, is the thing. It’s not Steve. It’s everything Steve is, everything he represents — it’s Steve saving his life and that changing nothing, Eddie saving his and that also changing nothing. A monster still not being worse than the prospect of being homeless. “Something– bad happened. Not– to me, really. But it happened. And I can’t tell you anything else.”

“Not to you,” Wayne repeats, like he doesn’t really believe him. That’s fair. After the whole– thing, Eddie’s eyes swollen and stinging still, Eddie wouldn’t believe himself. “I’m here, kid. I’m always here.”

“I know,” Eddie says, and it comes out faint and scratchy. He shifts down again, closer into his uncle’s hold.

“I ever tell you about your aunt Carolyn?” Wayne’s voice rumbles against Eddie’s cheek where it’s pressed into his uncle’s chest. He has told Eddie about his aunt Carolyn, they both know that, but it doesn’t hurt to hear it again. Helps, maybe. So he doesn’t say anything — can’t, he finds — and so Wayne continues. “I met her a couple years after I moved here. It was the goddamn library, of all places, can you imagine that? Me, in a library? I was returnin’ a lost book. Found it lyin’ around at Benny’s, thought, hell, why not do a good deed? And she saw me, asked me if I’d read it. It was some Austen book, that one with Prejudice in the title maybe. Obviously I hadn’t. Didn’t bother to lie, neither, and for some reason she liked that. Me not lyin’. And sure, hell, I’d had relationships before. Nothin’ serious though. Nothin’ special; not until her. Her, she was… I’m no good with my words. You know what she was. You can guess it. She was a schoolteacher, taught at that school you hate so much. Better teacher than yours, I’m sure. And she thought you were the cutest kid anyone’d ever seen, when Bruce’d leave you with us for the night. Big goddamn brown eyes, y’know? She loved you. Loved you like hell. Just the most amazin’ lady I ever–”

Wayne’s voice wavers, as much as it ever does, which isn’t much. There’s a silence. Eddie nudges his head closer into his uncle’s shoulder, like it will help.

“She never took any shit. A schoolteacher, a pretty middle class one at that, back then? Seein’ a worker from the plant? No one liked it. But she didn’t care. Didn’t care I was some hick could barely read. Didn’t care whatever shit my damn brother got into, didn’t care whatever he–”

He breaks off again, arm tightening around Eddie like he’s afraid to let him go.

“I’m sorry, kid. That I let it completely take me over, when she passed. And that I didn’t– take notice of what was goin’ on. What was happenin’ to you.”

And oh. Eddie feels cold. Despite the warmth of his uncle’s arms, he feels cold. Because does Wayne think that’s why– why Eddie’s like this? Why there’s something wrong with him? Does Wayne blame himself for that?

Maybe that is why, deep down. The way Eddie’s father treated him. The way he’s not sure he’s ever felt safe since. But that’s not on Wayne. That’s not Wayne’s fault. It isn’t. It isn’t.

But what can he say? How can he convince his uncle of that? How can he– when–

“It was him,” Eddie says quietly. “Not you.”

“Yeah,” Wayne says. “But still. Someone coulda put a stop to it. I coulda. It didn’t have to happen.”

Didn’t it? Eddie feels he’s lost all perspective of what is and isn’t right, what is and isn’t real. What’s inevitable and what’s earned, and what’s neither and happens anyway. Maybe Steve’s dad was always going to buy the trailer park. Maybe the demogorgon was always going to come out of the woods. Maybe Eddie’s dad was always going to hurt him.

Eddie doesn’t have the answers to any of these things.

Any but the last, actually. Because he doesn’t know what lies in that envelope, Indiana Department of Correction, but it might tell him something.

Chapter Text

So Eddie carries the envelope around with him, is what he does. Which is stupid. The thing tucked into his fucking jacket pocket where it could get lost, fall out, someone else read it. Maybe one of these things is what Eddie’s hoping for — that the letter will be taken away from him. That he’ll have no choice in the matter, knowing or not. But he does have the choice. And he chooses to carry it around fucking school.

His morning goes something like this: waking at five-ish with heart racing, shadowy corners of a nightmare lingering behind his eyes, cigarette in the freezing pre-dawn as he runs the fingers of his other hand over the letters on the envelope: Indiana Department of Correction. And his name and his address. The address that might not be his for much longer, if John Harrington has anything to do with it.

His cigarette turns into four.

These cigarettes suffice for breakfast, and he drives to school with his hands tense on the wheel. The radio gets two-thirds of the way through Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) before he changes the station and gets some Quiet Riot instead, which still doesn’t satisfy him, still doesn’t erase the feeling of the envelope burning a hole through his jacket, his shirt, right through to his ribs and heart and hurting him there, not that that’s a cliché or anything, fuck, he’s all tied up in knots–

He sits through Mrs. Argus’ History class and doesn’t even attempt to pay attention, just scratches drawings into the margins of his paper and looks at them later to realize they’re of nothing that has a shape, just indefinable shrouds of darkness, the one discernible figure lacking a face. Fuck.

“Confused about the class we’re in, Mr. Munson?” Mrs. Argus drawls, when she passes by his desk and her eyes catch on the doodles. Eddie hears a titter from behind him — Tommy C. no doubt — and he doesn’t look around. He’s used to this, the humiliation in front of the class, (even Tommy’s scorn isn’t new) but today he feels unbalanced and afraid and it makes his cheeks burn. “See me after class, Mr. Munson.”

He thinks about his aunt Carolyn. Better teacher than yours, I’m sure. He wants to say fuck this; he wants to say I’m not staying in this fucking class a second longer, don’t you know what I’ve seen? Don’t you know what I’ve done? Don’t you know it didn’t matter at all?

But he doesn’t say this. He just nods, bending his head back over his paper and forcing himself to scrawl out the title written on the blackboard.

As Tommy’s leaving the room, Eddie lingering back with something churning in his chest as he awaits Mrs. Argus’ pronouncement, Tommy drops something on his desk. A folded note, small, too small to have anything of substance written on it. Eddie contemplates throwing it in the trash. Probably just reads FREAK, right? Like they usually do. Since Tommy’s so firmly positioned himself back where he wants to be.

Instead, he opens it. Funny how he can bring himself to open this one and not the other, right?

It reads Nicole wants ½ oz grass. woods after school?

Has this so easily become his life again? Sure, the dealing is new. Making the implication a true one. But meeting Tommy in the woods? Propositioned with a note in terse, degrading script?

And the worst part of it, really, is the way Tommy looks as he’s leaving the room. Over his shoulder, a little magnanimous smile, like he’s doing Eddie a favor. Like he’s forgiving him. Forgiving him for what, Eddie wants to know, but then again, everything about the last few weeks is so twisted up inside his head. He can barely remember why he and Tommy were so mad at each other.

And how does Tommy know?

He must have seen Rick last night, Eddie realizes, and feels cold and betrayed at the realization. Because Rick has always been shared, is the thing. Never private, never something Eddie could keep to himself, his own escape from the worst of the world. He and Tommy were always running together, remember? They’re still on parallel lines.

“Eddie,” Mrs. Argus says, when the room’s empty. “What’s going on?”

He stares at her. She’s got graying red hair, swept big over her shoulders in an approximation of what’s fashionable. It makes her seem washed out and pale, ghostlike, which is ironic, since he feels like the dead one this morning. Worse than that, she suddenly looks concerned.

“God knows you’re usually distractible but today was particularly bad, and if you tell me why, maybe we can work on it.”

Eddie bites down on his tongue and shakes his head mutely, twisting a ring around his finger, the one he didn’t take off when he fell exhausted into sleep last night. It’s somehow more confusing to him when someone like her is kind; it leaves him off-kilter, off-balance. He moves his fingers to his wrist and scratches at it.

“Because not letting me help is going to do you so much good,” she says, something terse coming into her voice. “You and Janie have had a falling out, haven’t you?”

“How do you know that?” Eddie says, startled.

“He speaks.” Mrs. Argus crosses her arms over her chest and leans back against her desk. “We’re not idiots, you know. Teachers. We notice things. We notice the way people treat you, and we notice that little note Tommy Coe just left on your desk. What did it say? More of the same?”

“It’s nothing,” he mumbles, folding it over again until it’s barely the size of his thumbnail. “Look, if you’re– um, if you’re gonna give me detention then just give me detention, okay? I really don’t care.”

She sighs. “If you’re that eager.”

He’s not eager. He wants to do what she’s asking — explain what’s going on, explain what’s so fucked up in his head right now, or else not be fucked up in the first place, just concentrate on class and do his homework and graduate, he wants to graduate — but he can’t. He’s been shown he can’t. And talking to her makes his heart pound, something about the way she looks at him, standing above him at the desk, What’s going on? Something about it like — though nothing like — What happened on Sunday evening? And Do you think you can do that? And you understand the consequences, don’t you, Eddie?

And he does. Understand the consequences.

So he shrugs, digging his fingernails into his palm hard enough to hurt as he swallows down the lump in his throat. She looks at him searchingly for another moment, before she nods briskly and turns to note something down, something that probably reads NB: Eddie Munson is a lost cause. But hey.

He doesn’t see Janie at lunch. He does see Jeff, who looks tired and wan as he scratches out numbers into his math homework in the cafeteria — “No time to do it this weekend,” he explains, around a mouthful of food. “We were at the hospital the whole time.”

“Shit,” Eddie says, sitting down beside him and glancing over the questions, spread open in the textbook. “You missed the minus sign.”

“What?”

“There, you missed–” Eddie closes his mouth. He’s probably not helping.

But Jeff frowns at his page and then turns his pencil over, rubbing the answer out with the eraser and tapping the lead against the paper as he thinks. “So what should it be?”

Eddie pulls the textbook closer to himself. It’s sophomore math, so it’s not all that difficult, and he’s hardly a prodigy but he can work it out. So he spends a couple minutes trying to explain to Jeff what to do with the minus sign, which he manages, actually, no diversions or digressions or distractions, who knew talking it through would work? And Jeff nods along and seems to get it when they’re finished, and Eddie feels a little more at ease in his own skin. Which.

Who knew?

“So, how was your weekend?” Jeff asks, sitting back and focusing fully on his lunch now that his homework’s not a problem. “Better than mine, I hope.”

Eddie thinks about stripping wallpaper with Steve. The line of bare skin where Steve’s top rode up. The way Eddie enjoyed it, for some reason, the work. The companionship.

And after. When he realized there was nothing to enjoy — just an illusion. Nothing real.

What did you think, man? What, that I’m gonna convince my dad not to raise your rent? I can’t do that. And it’s business, right? It’s not–

“Pretty terrible, actually.”

“Shit, dude, it sucks when the weekend’s bad. School’s garbage anyway.”

Jeff’s eyes are wide, empathetic. Eddie thinks about taking the letter out. Because this is what he’s been searching for, right? Why he brought the letter to school. So he might have someone to read it with.

But how can he lay that on Jeff? Jeff who spent the weekend in the hospital with his dad, who loves his dad, who doesn’t have any of the awful mixed-up complicated feelings about his dad that Eddie holds about his own? Just the grief of watching him suffer and the hope that he’ll get better — Eddie doesn’t feel that. Eddie doesn’t know what he feels.

He can’t put that on Jeff.

So he lets the moment pass.

It’s Janie he really wants to talk to, he thinks, when he spots her by the lockers after lunch. She’s got her hair pulled back in a knot on her head, revealing the crossbow tattoo on her neck, which earns her a few wary glances from the people passing — glances she ignores, the way she always has. He wants to go over there, suddenly, desperately. Wants to tell her everything. Wants to tell her sorry. Wants to tell her what’s in the letter, the letter he hasn’t opened yet.

But she glances down the hallway and her eyes catch on his and there’s almost a question in them, as they look at each other: have you sorted your shit out yet?

And he can’t say anything, because hasn’t. So she just looks back at her locker and then moves off down the hallway, swamped in an old denim jacket he’s pretty sure was once his. The thought is strange, though it shouldn’t be. They’ve been sharing clothes since they were small.

He gets nearly to the point of opening the letter when he passes the bathroom — lock himself in a stall, rip the band-aid off, get it over with — but when he opens the door he finds Steve at the sinks, so that’s a no-go. They stare stricken at each other for a moment. Eddie’s cheeks are hot again.

“Eddie,” Steve says, taking a step forward, shaking water off his hands.

“Nope,” Eddie says. “Nuh-uh, not doing this, sorry–”

“Eddie, for fuck’s sake–”

What the fuck do you want from me? he wants to say. Want me to open this fucking letter with you? What are you going to say then?

He can imagine what Steve might say. What were you expecting, man? C’mon, everyone knows he’s not a good guy. I don’t know why you were thinking any different.

“Just get on with your fucking life, Harrington, like the rest of us are trying to do.” Eddie’s voice comes out in a rushed snap; he turns around and walks back the way he came, letter unopened, itching underneath his skin. Maybe he’s being unfair to Steve. But when’s life ever been fair?

Fuck.

He’s late to detention, because of course he is, but it’s old Ryan again so it doesn’t really matter. He slumps into his seat and taps his fingers on the desk and only notices who’s sitting next to him when the guy leans over — “Hey, man,” — and it’s Jonathan.

“Shit, hey,” Eddie says. (Mr. Ryan’s already left the room.) Jonathan looks tired and drawn, bored out of his mind to be in detention, which Eddie guesses is better than the permanent lines of stress he’s been carrying around otherwise. “How come you’re even in school, dude?”

Jonathan shrugs, tilting his head so his hair falls into his eyes. “Have to come back sometime, right?”

“What did you do?”

“I punched Jack Ogden.”

Eddie stares at him. “Shit, you know, you’re making a habit of that.”

Jonathan ducks his head and hunches over in his seat. The knuckles on his right hand, where he’s gripping his pen, are raised and red. “He said some shit about my mom,” he mumbles. “I’ve had enough of all of it.”

“Yeah, uh, I got that from the state of Harrington’s face the other week.”

Jonathan’s face does a strange thing then, twisting into something like a grimace, like a flinch. “I shouldn’t. Hit people. It’s– what my dad would do. And I don’t–” He looks at Eddie and then away again. “I’m just tired of fucking taking it.”

“It’s not what my dad would do,” Eddie admits, and Jonathan looks at him sharply. He keeps going. “My dad would– fucking, I don’t know, way overblow the situation. Bring a gun to a knife fight type of deal. So he wouldn’t have any danger of losing, I guess, though look where that got him–”

“I asked Mom about him.” Jonathan’s voice is quiet. “Your dad, and mine. How they knew each other.”

Eddie’s throat feels hot and tight; he doesn’t say anything. Just waits.

“He’d be with my dad, when she went to see him sometimes. She didn’t like him. Thought he was getting Lonnie into trouble, which–”

“–he was,” Eddie finishes for him.

“She said she knew your mom too,” Jonathan says, and Eddie sort of goes blank for a moment, because oh. Oh, he didn’t know that, and he should have known that, but he didn’t. Didn’t cross his mind. Because his mom lived here too, for a little bit. Just a little bit. Not long enough to matter — but long enough to count.

Weird to think he ever had a mom at all.

“She said–” and then Jonathan doesn’t get to finish, because Mr. Ryan walks in and fixes them both with a silencing glare and sits there for the next hour just watching them, like he didn’t when it was Steve, which tracks, actually, because someone like Steve can get away with anything. Of course he can.

But after, they walk out to the parking lot together, shoving their hands in their pockets against the cold and the dark, and Eddie leans against Jonathan’s car and offers him a smoke.

Jonathan accepts it, warily. Does he ever do anything otherwise?

“I, uh. Got a letter. From my dad.” Eddie lights his cigarette and huffs out a breath, not looking at Jonathan as he says it. Who else is he gonna tell, right?

“Jesus,” Jonathan says. “I’d throw it in the trash.”

“Would you?”

A silence. “I don’t know.”

Eddie digs it out of his pocket and holds it up in the glare of the parking lot lights. “Well, I, um– didn’t. So.”

“You’re gonna open it now?” Jonathan’s voice is faintly incredulous. Eddie hadn’t really planned on it, not really, but now he’s being asked the question he finally finds that the answer might be yes.

So he opens the envelope.

It’s underwhelming, really. An anticlimax. If this was one of his campaigns, Eddie thinks, it would have been a far more exciting reveal — a ten-page long tome, regrets and recriminations and relief, or else something would fall out of the envelope, a cursed amulet, a lost treasure, a shiv. Nothing like that. The real world’s not like that. The real world’s like this:

Eddie,

You should come visit. Visitation Saturdays 8-1. Write back to address on envelope and they’ll add you to the list.

Dad

He stares at the note for a moment — note, not letter, he can see that now — as the words struggle to align themselves inside his brain. It’s so matter of fact, is the thing. So taken for granted. Why should it be that easy? It shouldn’t. It’s not.

And yet–

“He wants me to go see him,” Eddie says faintly, abstractly, like his voice is coming from far away. He feels absurdly like laughing.

“Fuck that,” Jonathan says, and then goes quiet. “I mean, I guess– unless that’s what you want?”

“I don’t fucking know what I want.” Eddie takes a long drag of smoke and reads the note again, traces the rushed scratch of handwriting with his gaze. He didn’t see his father’s writing very often. It’s not all that familiar — only slightly, with the haze of a half-forgotten memory. I don’t want to be like him.

I’m not sure I want to be like myself, either.

“Fucking anticlimax, right?”

“I don’t know, man. I think that’s a pretty big deal.”

Eddie huffs a humorless laugh, looking at the ground. “Yeah, I know, and I’m trying to act like it’s not, and you’re really not helping, so, uh–”

“Mom asked me to find out if you were okay, y’know.”

Eddie looks at him. “What?”

“Yeah, she, uh– she was worried when you didn’t stay yesterday. To help Steve. And she heard about the sale, so–”

He feels himself stiffen in the cold, shoulders going tense. Tearing his gaze away from Jonathan before it can go sour and furious, though it’s not his fault, not really.

“I told her you wouldn’t appreciate it. Us digging into your business like that, y’know? But she worries.”

“Thanks,” Eddie mutters, not sure whether he’s grateful or not. Not sure what he’s feeling at all.

Dad. What gives him the right to put it like that? To say that, when– when–

“Hey! Munson!” someone calls across the parking lot, and Eddie jerks up from where he’s leaning on the LTD, a jolt of hypervigilant panic coursing through him — always easily startled, but more today, maybe — and sees the guy crossing the asphalt, tall, unmistakable silhouette. Tommy fucking C.

Is he ever going to catch a break?

“What the fuck do you want, man?” Eddie says, dropping back loosely against the car.

Tommy looks at Jonathan and then back at Eddie, dismissal in his eyes. Like Jonathan’s a nothing. Like it doesn’t matter what Tommy says in front of him, and fuck that. “We were gonna meet. In the woods.” Another sideways glance. “For Nicole.”

“For Nicole. You’re such a goddamn liar, Coe. Jesus.”

“Hey,” Tommy snaps, and then Jonathan steps in between them. Tommy laughs disbelievingly. “Christ, you freaks really do stick together.”

“Well, he’s already punched Jack Ogden and Steve Harrington, so. I’m sure he’d love to add you to the collection,” Eddie drawls, with more confidence than he feels. The note is still clutched tightly in his fist. “If Nicole wants something, she can ask me for it herself.”

“So you do sell.”

Eddie bites down on the inside of his cheek. “Not to you.”

If Jonathan’s reacting inside to this new information, he doesn’t show it. He just glares daggers at Tommy, like a fucking attack dog, and usually Eddie would chafe at being protected like this (by a sophomore! But a sophomore who nearly beat Steve to a pulp, so) but not this time. Not today. Not by Jonathan.

“Eddie–” Tommy tries, and Eddie’s had enough of goddamn fucking basketball players.

“I said no, okay? Go back to not talking to me, please. I preferred it that way.”

Tommy goes silent but doesn’t move away, eyes on Eddie, desperate. Desperate?

Because, oh. Yeah. Tommy lost his dad. And that’s something Eddie sort of forgot about, in the shuffle. The grief of that. The chaos. But Eddie’s got chaos of his own, hasn’t he? And he’s not crawling back to Tommy. He hasn’t sunk that low, at least.

And what does Tommy think Eddie can do? Distract him? Forgive him?

Not anymore. Because Eddie may have been wrong about a lot of things, in the wake of everything that happened. Wrong about how much it shook up the world, like how different he or Steve could become in the face of it when they couldn’t really change that much at all, but he’s not wrong about this. About realizing he doesn’t want a thing to do with Tommy C. anymore, after it all.

Tommy must see some strain of this decision in his eyes, because he scoffs and turns away and that’s it, Eddie thinks. That’s that.

“I don’t even want to know,” Jonathan says, when Tommy’s walked away.

Eddie looks at him. “Really?”

Jonathan shakes his head, taking a last drag of his smoke. “No way. You think I don’t have enough to worry about?”

It’s a nice change, actually. Refreshing. Eddie offers him a thin smile and there’s nothing more to say, really. So Eddie walks away too.

But he doesn’t go home.

He intends to. He gets behind the wheel and turns up his In Through the out Door cassette as loud as it will go and then turns right instead of left on the intersection at the end of the road — it’s a stupid idea, he knows, but he’s read the letter (note) now. He’s done what she asked. So why shouldn’t he try?

And then he’s standing before Janie’s front door, the note still crumpled in his fist.

“I’m sorry,” he says, when she opens the door.

She looks him up and down. He can’t read her expression. “You read it.”

He swallows. “Yeah. I did.”

She beckons him in with a jerk of her head. This time they don’t go through to the living room, but further along, into her room. She gestures for him to sit on her bed, which he does, underneath a new poster of Debbie Harry in Videodrome. She stays standing, arms crossed over her chest. Fair enough.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and she shakes her head.

“Just stop. What did it say?”

He holds it out. She takes it and reads it, a crease deepening between her eyebrows. Then she hands it back, and for a second he doesn’t want to keep it. Wants to leave it between her fingers, let her throw it in the trash where it belongs. But he doesn’t do this. He takes it from her and folds it up again, pushes it into the pocket of his jeans.

“What are you going to do?”

He looks at the carpet. “I don’t know.”

“I’ve got no solutions for you,” she says, and her tone is warning. A little frosty.

“I’m not asking for solutions,” he says in a rush, words coming out like a hurried sigh — “I just, uh. Fucked up. And it’s been a fucked up week — couple of weeks — and I need you to– I need us to–” He stops. “School’s fucking boring without you.”

She laughs. “Yeah. It fucking is.”

“So– I’m sorry. I didn’t mean, um, what I said. About things being bigger than you. And I shouldn’t have said it.”

“You’re a goddamn fucking drama queen sometimes, you know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

Something changes in the air. The line of her shoulders softens, and she runs a hand through the loose strands of hair around her face. “It has been a fucked up couple of weeks.”

He resists saying you have no idea. The truth is bubbling up inside him, hot like acid, but he can’t let it out. He can’t tell her. He’s not allowed.

And as much as he chafes at authority–

As much as he trusts her–

(As much as he can trust anyone–)

So he just lies back on her bed, eyes catching on the Joan Jett poster on the ceiling, and says, “It was Tommy C. The guy I was sorta fucking.”

He feels the mattress dip as she lies down next to him. “Shit,” she says, sort of speculatively.

“He’s a fucking asshole. And he has no way of comprehending how not to be an asshole, really, it’s a stupendous combination. But he– his dad. Y’know. And my dad, and– fucking– your dad too, Jesus, what is it with this town?”

“Men,” she says. “They’re the problem.”

“Truer words never spoken.”

Her voice goes quieter, almost hesitant. “Every time I talk about it, y’know, me visiting him, he clams up. My dad. Goes all– weird about it. He’s said I can, like, he said you should come and see me! And I thought, great, yes, I’ll go and see him, when I’ve saved up and Mom lets me and all that shit. But now that I’m actually talking about it, trying to sort it out, he just– gets weird. Like maybe he doesn’t want me to.”

“Shit,” he says. “That’s an asshole thing to do.”

“No kidding. But I just– want to see him. I really want to see him. It’s been years.” Then she looks at him, face inches from his own. “You don’t feel like– you miss him? Your dad?”

The question catches in his throat, makes it difficult to breathe for a second. It takes him a few beats to get his voice back. “Yeah,” he ventures. “I guess. But not– not him as he is, y’know? Just him as I, um, wanted him to be.”

“But how do you tell the difference?”

A long silence. Eyes on the ceiling. Fingers worrying at the outline of the note in his pocket. “I don’t know.”

They lie there for a while, not saying anything. The feeling is familiar, the angle of the ceiling familiar. The way the bedspread feels underneath him. He’s done this countless times before, lying here next to Janie, always when her mother’s out because she doesn’t let them go in Janie’s bedroom unchaperoned. He had his first real, grown-up panic attack here, he remembers, a scrawny twelve year old curling up into himself insisting he was dying feeling like every touch burned — and she didn’t freak out, didn’t panic too, just sat with him until he could breathe again and the world felt a little less painful.

(A little.)

“So, Tommy C., huh? Was this a Martin type situation, or…?”

He turns his head and rolls his eyes at her. “You’re never gonna let that go, are you?”

“Nope.”

He sighs. “Painfully similar, actually. Jesus Christ.” Because it is, now he thinks about it. The smoking, the unspokenness of it all.

He met Martin on the school tennis courts, late evening in September ‘82. Eddie was sixteen and stupid enough to believe he could smoke out there without anyone finding him, which resulted in Martin’s eyes staring down at him through a dusk-tinted haze, eyebrows raised, You’re stinking the court up, man.

And Eddie had jerked to his feet, not knowing where to look — Martin had never spoken to him before, never so much as glanced at him, though Eddie had been nursing a wistful attraction from afar for months now — and settling on the sharp corner of Martin’s jaw, too nervous and at the same time just high enough that he couldn’t say anything, didn’t have anything to say, just stared and waited for the inevitable beat-down.

But Martin’s face had eased, something almost amused in his eyes, when Eddie finally found himself able to look at them. “Yeah, okay, I won’t tell. Go do that shit on the sideline and don’t get in my way, okay?”

Eddie had obeyed. So he sat there, abandoning the idea of a second blunt in favor of watching Martin practice his serve, over and over and over again. Long brown arms — a tennis tan, shoulders paler (though not white) where his sleeves rode up — arcing gracefully through the air, sweat sticking at his back, his polo turning translucent against his skin. Eddie was transfixed.

Worst of all, Martin had offered him a smile upon departing. An hour or two of drills, the guy’s dark hair damp and tangled in his eyes, beads of sweat dripping down his skin — a warm evening, September still aflush with the remains of the summer, a similar flush high on Martin’s cheeks–

And fuck. Eddie was fucked.

“Major problem,” he’d admitted to Janie later, after a week spent trying to strangle that wistful affection as it threatened to turn into full-blown gay obsession, for Martin who seemed above it all, Martin who floated magnanimous over all the high school drama who wore his tennis whites everywhere and didn’t smoke because of sports — Martin who was the latest reason Eddie wasn’t getting any sleep. She’d let him talk through this major problem and not really offered much in the way of sympathy, because she had been even less forthcoming then, just gave him this startled wide-eyed look a couple days later when Martin had come into their newly claimed smoking spot and handed him the lighter he’d been looking for all week.

“You left this on the court,” Martin had said, easily, like he’d been waiting this long. What the fuck? And suddenly Janie had disappeared and Martin was in his space tall and dark-eyed saying “I won’t tell anyone, if you want to smoke out on the court again. When I’m around, of course. So you don’t get in any shit for it.”

Martin was a couple inches taller than him; Eddie had looked up at him like he couldn’t believe his ears, which he couldn’t. And he’d agreed. Of course he’d agreed.

And he’d gone over to Janie’s that weekend, flopped down on her bed next to her like he is now, trying to do his best to ignore her Laura Branigan cassette as he’d said well, it’s a different sort of problem, now, and there’d been something weird in her eyes as she’d taken this in, the hickey he showed her below his collarbone, the way Martin had known what he was doing (more than Eddie did, though it still wasn’t much) and was almost nice about it.

Didn’t last all that long, of course. Shit happens — it always does. Martin’s parents got divorced; he went to live with his mom in the city, where the tennis teams were better and he might actually get a scholarship and Eddie never heard from him since.

They didn’t talk about it, what they did. Four times in all. They just let it happen, and let it stop happening. Didn’t even say goodbye.

So–

Was Tommy C. a Martin type situation?

Yes, but Martin was never such a prick.

“I can’t keep doing this shit with– with guys in Hawkins. It’s a terrible place to be gay.”

Janie snorts. “Where isn’t?”

Eddie turns his head to look at her again. “Y’know what we talked about, before? Going to the city?”

She looks at him too. “Indy?”

“I mean, Chicago’s probably, um, better, but Indy’ll do. Right?”

“We’ll need fakes. I guess Rick can do that for us, right?” There’s an edge to her voice as she says this. Right. She’s probably heard. Or maybe she can just guess.

But he nods. “It might take a couple weeks.”

“A couple weeks, then. Hey, we can get more tattoos in the bargain. Two birds, one stone, yeah?”

He feels the first flutter of nerves in his gut. So they’re doing this.

He thinks about his dad — You should come visit. Fuck that. He’ll go to a gay bar for the first time instead.

Chapter Text

Janie declares herself as the driver before he can get a word in edgeways, so it’s her choice of music. Which means a mainstream-ish radio station, which means that fucking Waterboys Christmas song, December, polluting the inside of Eddie’s van. His van, because it’s snowing and neither of them trust her Pinto in this weather. He still hasn’t fixed the heating, so it’s freezing — her hands are clad in fingerless gloves as they grip the wheel — and she didn’t bother to pull her hair out of her sweater when she pulled it on earlier, sending him shivery death glares, so it’s bunched up loose around her face.

He’s drumming his fingers on his knee, pulled up to his chest. Antsy and nervous for reasons he can’t explain. He’s got the fakes in his bag, ready to go; he’s also got a load of beer and a couple joints. He was considering bringing something stronger, too, something more appropriate for the club, but Janie wouldn’t like it and he doesn’t want to push it. They’re cool now, things are casual and easy and nice, and he knows she disapproves of the whole Rick thing he’s been doing the last few weeks but she hasn’t said it, not yet. He doubts she will, not if he doesn’t bring that shit out right in front of her.

Hence, just weed and beer. Which is why he didn’t really argue when she said she wanted to drive. She’s better than him, more careful. He does not want to risk getting pulled over.

“I don’t suppose there’s any use in me telling you to stop twitching?” she says, without taking her eyes off the road.

He smiles thinly. “None.”

She snorts. He looks out the window and for a moment his eyes catch on a bimmer parked up on the side of the road, a dark red one, fucking Christ. Steve’s car, he thinks, though they pass it too quickly in the snow to see. What’s Steve doing all the way out here, near the Leaving Hawkins sign? A romantic date by the Eno River in the snow?

It’s a pretty spot, true. Though he hadn’t thought of Nancy as the outdoors-y type.

To make matters worse, the song has changed to fucking Gold by Spandau Ballet, which only makes him more convinced that that is indeed Steve’s car and the universe is fucking with him tremendously. He hunches down in the seat and tries not to grind his teeth.

He hasn’t really spoken to Steve since that painful Sunday morning, the Sunday morning he feels like broke him apart. Something that dramatic, definitely. Eddie’s always had a flair for it but it feels a little wrong, right now, a little to the left. Like why should the drama have taken a week to catch up with him? Why should he have had a meltdown over a property sale, versus the utter alteration of the world as he knew it?

But it happened, the meltdown. So. Now he’s off to Indy with Janie and Steve’s on a date with Nancy and it feels like everything and nothing has changed at once; it feels like, watching Steve tracing the inside of Nancy’s wrist by the lockers on Wednesday, everything that happened in November was a dream, just as it feels like, meeting Steve’s eyes and then tearing his gaze away like he’d been burned, he’ll never be the same again.

Eddie had asked Jonathan about it, one time when they were smoking in the school parking lot. So Wheeler went back to her prince, huh? And Jonathan looked at him unreadably and shrugged and said some variation of it’s none of my business, or else I hadn’t really noticed. Whichever it was — Eddie’s been distracted and forgetful, lately — it was surely not the truth, but he didn’t push it.

“Can you change the station, dude?” Eddie now says, not even bothering to push something casual into his voice. He’s tired of lying to Janie. He already has to do it too often.

She glances over at him with a frown. “What, Spandau Ballet not doing it for you?”

He just raises his eyebrows, and she reaches to change the station. They get a fucking Dolly Parton Christmas song instead — I'm barely getting through tomorrow — but hey, at least it’s not a Steve Harrington Special. So he settles back down and tries to let the tension go out of him as they leave Hawkins far behind.

Wayne had looked at him strangely, when he’d said he and Janie were going to Indy together. Eddie doesn’t like to lie to his uncle — again, he’s been doing enough of that lately — but it wasn’t something he could say out loud, exactly. Hey, just so you know, we’ve got fake IDs and we’re going to hook up with people of the wrong gender in a big, strange city. Bye!

(He’s not actually sure if hooking up is a part of Janie’s plan. It’s only loosely part of his — a vague, hazy idea that Hawkins boys are godawful and he needs something from someone else, someone who isn’t going to make him question his entire place in the world just by looking at him.)

So, he didn’t say that. He and Wayne aren’t usually explicit about it all anyway, save when Wayne gets all close and serious and anxious about this GRID thing. Eddie just said some shit about seeing Janie’s friends in the city, staying the night with them, getting a new tattoo because suddenly he’s rolling in it (not that he said this to Wayne either, though he’s been putting extra bills in his uncle’s wallet, creased and grubby from high schoolers’ hands), and Wayne had looked at him strangely.

“You are lookin’ after yourself, ain’t you, kid?” his uncle had said, haltingly, like it wasn’t quite his place, which– well. If it’s not Wayne’s place, it’s not anyone’s, and isn’t that a little sad?

Eddie had looked at the floor, not knowing how to answer. Tugging on the hair at the nape of his neck. He isn’t really sure what he’s been doing, this last few weeks. Or how he’s been doing. A month since the world got turned upside down — the problem being, his world was on an uneasy kilter already.

They pass the turning for the Icex plant, which startles him out of his thoughts. He watches it rush past in the snow and feels something strange uncoil within him, though nothing about his uncle’s job seems to have changed. But still. Icex is your uncle’s only source of income, isn’t it? He’s never going to forget that.

“Your dad used to work at Icex, right?” he finds himself saying.

Janie’s lips twist. “Half this town has worked at Icex at one point or another,” she says. “But sure. He did. They treated him like shit, though. He comes in with an Engineering degree but because his transcript’s not in English he’s working the plant floor — it’s fucking unfair. That’s why he went back home.”

Eddie did know that. He glances at her, feels out the fault lines in her expression. His uncle Wayne works the plant floor. But his uncle Wayne doesn’t have a degree in Engineering — doesn’t have a degree at all — so what do they do with that? With the fact that she so clearly believes her father was meant for better, and with the fact that that’s probably true?

And yet they’re stuck where they are, all of them.

“The weird thing is they were gonna give him a decent job initially,” she says. “A whole interview, he even had his first day of work, he told me. And then suddenly– boom. I guess maybe they checked out his credentials later, or thought his English wasn’t good enough, or whatever. He gets all quiet and weird about it. Why do you ask?”

He shrugs. He doesn’t really know. A half-formed thought, disappearing as fast as the Icex sign in the rearview mirror.

An hour or so later, they’re pulling into Indianapolis (to the tune of some Stevie Nicks song), and Janie’s parking up and wrapping a hand around his wrist and tugging him up the shitty apartment building’s staircase — not usually a touchy sort of person, she must really be excited — and rapping her knuckles on the familiar door and who opens it but their tattoo artist, Victor, who grins broadly at them and beckons them inside.

It’s a cramped, cluttered apartment, to match the guy’s skin, which is crowded with dark ink. One of the tattoos is slung right across his collarbones — VICTOR RUEDA, it reads, the guy’s own name. Eddie guesses it’s better than getting someone else’s name put there. No one owns the guy but himself.

“We’ve got a couple hours to kill before shit gets lively,” Victor says, lighting a cigarette and then gesturing with it between his fingers. Eddie follows the movement unthinkingly, really: it’s sort of a habit of his, to watch the movements of men. Victor’s not unattractive — rich dark hair tangling around his jaw, warm brown skin, a smattering of freckles — though he’s probably at least five years older than Eddie. He’s got a faint Spanish accent and a soft, tilted lisp to his voice, the kind of lisp you’d hide in a town like Hawkins, which is how Eddie and Janie sort of knew.

Well, knew in the sense that Eddie ignored it, sure he was wrong, until Janie said something like maybe Victor will know the best place to go in Indy and Eddie cursed himself for being so wilfully blind. Because another queer person? Right here? Older, sure of himself?

It feels strange, though. Like Eddie’s uncomfortably seen. Maybe that’s why he was in denial about it.

“Dinner for the kids?” Victor finishes, and Janie rolls her eyes.

“I think after you’ve tattooed us you can no longer call us kids.”

“I think I can call you whatever I want to, niños.” He grins around his cigarette. There’s a gap between his two front teeth. “I’ll take that as a yes, yes?”

It is indeed a yes. So he takes them to a pizza joint around the corner, where they get a pale imitation of deep dish glory, according to Victor, not that Eddie’s ever been to Chicago. Victor talks a blue streak about a client of his who thought an infection almost certainly caused by a hot tub justified getting a switchblade out, moving his head emphatically, a lock of hair falling incessantly in front of his ear before he reaches to tuck it back again. He’s got a long silver earring dangling from his right earlobe.

Eddie eats and listens, mostly. Not sure quite what to do with someone older than him, everything he is but wiser about it. Sophomores, Eddie can handle. Freshmen. Fucking middle schoolers like that Will Byers and that Henderson kid. But Victor? No way.

(He’s beginning to realize, in an uncomfortable flash of self-awareness, that it’s not just parents that freak him out. It’s anyone with even a smidge of authority. Which, for fuck’s sake. It’s like he walked right off the page of one of those psych textbooks he hates so much.)

“You like the earring, huh?” Victor says suddenly, and Eddie flushes, aware that he was staring. “Could do one for you, if you want. It’s quick, easy.” Victor clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, sharp, as if to demonstrate just how fast it would be. “Painless.”

It’s not the pain Eddie minds. He’s well accustomed to it.

Victor must read some of his doubt in his face; he raises his eyebrows. “Let me guess. Left is right, and right is wrong. You know no one knows what they’re talking about with that shit, right? If they’re gonna call you a fag, they’re gonna call you a fag.”

Despite these bold words — words that make Eddie jolt, in the quiet hum of the pizzeria — Victor keeps his voice low, as he says this. Like to go that far would be tempting fate. “Sure, I know,” Eddie says, just as low. “But I’ve, um, I’ve had enough trouble lately. I’m kinda looking for a quiet life, y’know?”

Victor looks at him speculatively for a moment. Janie’s silent by his side, watching the conversation with narrowed eyes, and Eddie doesn’t like the incisiveness in them. It’s been a fucked up week — couple of weeks, that’s what he told her, all he was allowed to tell her, and how far did she read the truth in it? She couldn’t possibly guess at the whole of it. No one could. It’s too much to be believed. But still. He feels open, naked, under her gaze.

At length, Victor shrugs and goes back to his pizza. Which, hey, he doesn’t owe Eddie anything. Quite the opposite, actually. Eddie owes him. But still, maybe Eddie was hoping for more. A question he wouldn’t be allowed to answer. Some fragment of curiosity, at least.

(He’s never going to ask for these things; he should stop being disappointed when he doesn’t receive them.)

After dinner, they go back to Victor’s and start drinking with some salsa record spinning away on Victor’s turntable — “Grupo Niche,” he tells them. “Their new album is to fucking die for, and don’t even try to argue with it because I will throw you out on your asses for disrespecting my home country,” with which, of course, they don’t argue.

The alcohol has a loosening effect on Eddie. Some of the tension inherent in his shoulders eases; he begins to have a good time. Janie, who’s always been somewhat of a lightweight, bobs her head along to the music as Victor changes into a shirt that’s made of what can only be described as fishnets. Eddie’s wearing his tightest pair of jeans and an old Judas Priest shirt with tears in the sides, but now he feels overdressed. He drinks a little more to compensate, and lets Janie drape her arm around his shoulders as they walk to the club.

Club. Gay club. Fuck.

It all — Hawkins, Steve, Tommy C. and Tommy H., the thing without a face and the stack of NDAs and the letter from his dad — feels fucking light years away, as they walk in. As some fucking Freeez song pounds so loud it drowns out his heart, under rich red lights, Victor immediately recognizing a whole group of people and dancing himself into their circle, hips swinging to the music, one of them bearded and seven feet tall in heels and makeup and–

“Thank you,” Janie shouts in his ear. He looks at her uncomprehendingly. She’s tied her hair up again; she looks boyish and carefree. “For making us do this.”

“I didn’t make us–” he tries, but the music’s too loud and she shakes her head.

“I would never have done it on my own!” she yells at him, and then without further warning grabs his wrist and tugs him through the crowd towards the bar. She dithers over what to order until some girl with an afro and a wicked grin leans over to the bartender and shouts three B-52s, which turns out to be some insanely sweet shot that the bartender sets on fucking fire — “That’s fucking metal,” he says, to an audience of approximately no one, he realizes, since Janie’s bent her head close to the girl’s in yelled conversation. But he’s not alone for long, the sweet orange aftertaste still burning on his tongue, as Victor sweeps him into the circle and tries to get him to dance along to Donna Summer and he’s drunk enough that he sort of does.

Dance, that is. He dances alongside Victor until Victor starts kissing some guy with white-blond hair, taller than him, and then he dances with Victor’s friends and across the room he sees Janie leaning ever closer to the girl and as he’s looking away from them his eyes catch on someone who’s looking at him — a guy.

Broad shoulders, fluffy hair. A sort of look in his eyes, the way Tommy C. would look at him when they got high together, when he wanted something. When Eddie wanted it too.

He draws closer, weaving through the crowd. He wants this. This is what he’s here for, isn’t he? I can’t keep doing this shit with guys in Hawkins. It’s a terrible place to be gay.

The song’s changed again. Something ABBA, he thinks, which ordinarily he’d hate but. But. The one about the man after midnight, take me through the darkness to the break of the day–

The guy looks a little like Steve, he thinks, as he pushes through the crowd and faces him lips only inches from another at the same time as he realizes the lighting’s gone from smooth red to something blinking white and dark and he can’t see Janie anymore can’t see Victor only this guy whose hair is like Steve’s silhouetted in the dark in the light in the like the flickering of like bulbs like the the–

Eddie has the presence of mind to get himself outside, at least, before it all totally consumes him. Chest tightening and mind going blank of any thought but panic, any feeling but panic, panic made worse by drinking like it always is but he never learns, of course he doesn’t, and maybe it was naive to think this wouldn’t happen think it was over think he would be okay after it all–

The wall is freezing and wet when he leans back into it. This, the sudden cold shock, is enough to jolt him into a more physical awareness. Freezing because it’s snowing. Hands shaking as he raises them, watches snowflakes settle and dissolve into his palms. Something idly therapeutic about it. Like watching something inevitable. Something no one can take away. The snow doesn’t care about the Upside Down, doesn’t care the entire world is something different from what they thought it was. It falls and melts anyway.

He fumbles for a cigarette, holding the other hand splayed out over his chest to feel his heartbeat slowing down. Shit. Shit.

His numb, shaking fingers can’t get the lighter to ignite. He tries for several seconds, unwilling to give it up, until someone offers a spark of flame into his field of vision, a large hand with long painted nails. He lets it light his cigarette.

“Jesus Christ, honey, you look drowned.” The voice is deep, at odds with the high painted brows and long lashes. Lipstick on the lips that show through the beard. “What, someone pour their drink on you? Or is it snowing just that much?”

Eddie looks weakly up at the sky. It would probably qualify somewhere between a snowstorm and a blizzard, at this point. He looks back down at his hands and takes a deep breath around the knot in his chest.

“How long you been out here, baby?”

Eddie shakes his head. Not quite sure he can speak just yet. He also doesn’t know.

“That’s okay. C’mon, stand under this– I don’t know, fucking– alcove, whatever.”

He feels himself being led across the alley, into some alcove, whatever. He smokes his cigarette and realizes the drag queen — because that’s what this person is, a drag queen — is a full foot taller than him, wearing a hot pink dress and somehow not looking cold.

“I’m Stevie, by the way,” the drag queen says, and Eddie chokes on his inhale. Stevie continues on like Eddie hadn’t made a sound. “It’s not the drag name, but I don’t think you’re in a drag sort of mood, are you, honey? Pretend the makeup’s not there. We’re just two guys, right?”

Eddie snorts, something loosening in his chest. Stevie grins. “Eddie,” Eddie says, and finds his voice rough but usable, finally.

“Nice to meet you, Eddie. I mean it, did something happen in there? I know the guys on the door, they’re angels, they’ll kick anyone out I ask them to.” Eddie doesn’t say anything. Stevie tilts his head, studying him. “Just got a little too much?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, looking at his cigarette. And suddenly the words are forthcoming: “Which is, y’know, fucking stupid, since I’m also generally known as too much and it’s fun, I’ve had fun, I just– the fucking lights and I was– I was back there–”

He closes his mouth. Even drunk, dizzy on lingering adrenaline, he knows he can’t talk about this.

And he can’t even talk about it with Janie. And he burnt his bridges with Steve. And Jonathan’s got enough to worry about– Nancy doesn’t get it–

He drags a hand through his hair, damp with snow and sweat from the club, and feels horribly alone.

Stevie sighs. “Okay, Eddie, well. I’m about to tell you a very big, horrible story, on the condition you understand it happened a very long time ago, because I’m very old, and I’m over it now, I’ve moved on, so I don’t need any of your sorry’s and oh no's, okay? I’m telling it because it might make you feel better.”

Eddie looks at him, wide-eyed, and nods.

“My parents were the sort that loved each other in a really nasty way, y’know? Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. But they would fight, get violent, mainly about their pudgy effeminate son, and when it would get violent they’d lock me in my room so I couldn’t see. Or hear, though I could definitely fucking hear. Either way. Problem was, my room was in the basement. Pipes through the ceiling, through the walls, and they’d creak. Drip. A goddamn nightmare if you were trying to hold in a piss. I digress. One night, a long night, stormy, the power went out. I was locked in my room — the basement — with nothing, no light, just sound. Just my parents yelling, throwing stuff the floor above. And the dripping pipes. All night, until the yelling and the throwing stopped, until it was the pipes and nothing else, me and the pipes until dawn when my mom opened the door and said my dad was gone.”

“Shit,” Eddie lets out, and Stevie raises his eyebrows. Eddie shuts up.

“There’s lots wrong with this situation, of course, but this isn’t even about my parents. It’s mainly about the pipes, actually. See, a couple years later, I was a horribly gay teenager whose voice broke months before everybody else’s and I still sounded gay, tell me, is that fair? But anyway, locker rooms, you’re a kid, you know what it’s like.”

“Fucking awful,” Eddie mutters, and Stevie nods.

“Bingo, baby. So there’s this kid, this– I don’t even remember his name. Let’s call him Phil. So Phil’s the last to finish in the showers, we’re all getting dressed, I’m keeping my eyes studiously to myself. And he leaves the shower dripping.”

Oh. Eddie might know where this is going.

“At first– I ignore it. It’s not like it’s a sound you don’t hear, right? Dripping water. But something about it, there, around all these kids who took any opportunity to tear me apart– I couldn’t take it. I asked Phil to turn it off.” Stevie smiles humorlessly. “And Phil says no. He looks at me, dead in the eyes, he’s fucking naked and I’m trying not to look at his cock because the moment I do I know I’m dead– he says no. And it feels like the dripping sound’s getting louder. And I could fucking scream, suddenly, I’m all wired like an electric shock and he won’t turn the shower off and I’m a big kid, wider than him. So I hit him. And he gets a concussion. And I get suspended from school. And I can’t listen to a faucet dripping without losing my fucking mind, not for a couple years, anyway.”

Stevie laughs, then, suddenly and unexpectedly. And it’s a genuine sound. Not ironic, not scathing, and it’s weird, actually, weird to hear someone laugh without irony.

“But now I can. Because I talked to people. I found myself a new fucking family. And I don’t hit people anymore, and I’m as well-adjusted as a man in a dress can be. So if you think you’re going crazy, I’ve been there, sweetheart. I don’t need to know what you went through to know that it was awful, and also that you’ll survive it. Because everyone does.”

Because everyone does. It sounds so simple, when he puts it like that. This drag queen whose name is a syllable from Steve Harrington’s, and like him in absolutely no other way at all. Is it really that simple?

“But you do need to reckon with it. Face it. Whatever happened. I beat up– what did we call him? Phil? I beat up Phil because a part of me was still a fucking seven year old in that basement, locked in, and I didn’t ask anyone for the key. So, find your key, honey. Get out of your basement.”

Eddie takes in a great lungful of cold, sharp air. He nods. And Stevie laughs again, and takes the last drag of Eddie’s cigarette, and Eddie follows him inside.

They dance to Sylvester and Janie emerges from the crowd, holding the girl from earlier’s hand; Eddie feels less mixed-up about that now than he did half an hour ago. Victor’s circle of friends has yet widened. Eddie sticks close to them and tries not to get lost in the crowd, and he succeeds all the way back to Victor’s place, where Victor cracks the windows open despite the snow and puts some salsa mixtape on as Eddie reaches for his joints. And then he’s sitting on the window ledge, Eddie is, one leg dangling out over the white-blanketed street, relishing the warm burn of grass in his lungs as Victor coaches the girl Janie was with — Monique, she said — into a gentle, drunken salsa.

“Watch the edge,” Janie says, coming to sit next to him with her legs planted firmly on the right side of the window. She reaches out for the blunt and he gives it to her.

He surprises himself by laughing, the way Stevie laughed, careless and free. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I still plan on living forever.”

She smiles at him, but there’s a distance in her eyes. Maybe it’s drunkenness. Maybe that’s what that is. But he’s been noticing it coming, approaching from far off on the horizon, like a slow-moving train. A train has to leave the station, doesn’t it?

“Monique’s cool,” he says, and watches her reaction. She looks away, at her hands, at Monique, whom Victor is twirling under his arm, then back at Eddie. She looks pleased but she also looks tense.

“Yeah. She is,” Janie says, noncommittally. “What about– what about you? Did you, y’know…” and she trails off. Usually so forthright. If Eddie hadn’t had such an exhausting evening, and wasn’t on his way pleasantly crossfaded by now, he’d be feeling a thrill of unease.

“No,” he says. “I, um– I don’t know. I think I need a break from all that, actually. My head’s all fucked up.”

She looks at him for a moment. Maybe she’s startled by this — a show of maturity, whatever. He feels like he’s aged about ten years. For her, it’s been four weeks.

At length, she goes back to Monique, who pulls her into a teasing, smiling kiss, and Eddie looks away. Like they’ve switched places, almost. It feels strange to be here alone, on the outside, on the threshold. Janie all the way in.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Eddie knows things now. Knows there’s a boundary to the world. Knows something lies beyond.

The room is hazy and full of smoke; Monique and Janie are dancing slowly together, Victor’s friends draped languidly over the furniture and the floor. Victor himself comes to lean against the wall beside Eddie, smoking a cigarette with one hand and drinking a glass of wine with the other.

“You and Janie–” Victor starts, after a long silence. Eddie doesn’t say anything. “Now, are you sulking over here, or–?”

Eddie stares at him. “I’m gay, you do, um, realize that, right?” (Even in the haze and the high, the words still make his heart jolt within his chest.)

Victor shrugs. “I didn’t want to assume. Some people like both, you know? Like Janie.”

Eddie frowns. He didn’t know that about her. He didn’t know any of it about her; she never said.

And Victor catches the frown. “Oh, god, I don’t want to get myself in the middle of all this but– okay. Let’s just say, if you’re not sulking, then it’s a good thing she’s moved on to Monique.”

“Moved on?” Eddie asks, something sinking inside his chest. That shrinking in Janie’s eyes suddenly making sense.

Fuck. Fuck.

And Janie doesn’t even know everything about him. Didn’t even before November, and now–

He doesn’t deserve it. Doesn’t feel like he deserves it. What has he done to warrant this, whatever this is, whatever this means– why would she– when he’s not even– when she knows–

“She didn’t say anything,” Victor says. “It’s a guess. I was wrong about you, right? Maybe I’m wrong about her.”

Maybe he is. Eddie hopes he is.

But what will that change?

Wrong or right, he’s feeling increasingly like he’s lost her. Like things will never be the same. Like they’ll get to next year, to June, to graduation, and she won’t be around anymore.

And will he even graduate? After it all, the way he can barely even read without itching out of his skin, the way he forgets things, the way the sight of the back of Steve Harrington’s head does something strange to his chest. All the things Janie doesn’t understand. Will he graduate? Make it out? Get out of the basement?

“Maybe you are,” Eddie allows, finishing his joint. He leans further from the window, ducking his head out to feel the snowflakes settling on his cheeks. When he looks back into the room, Monique and Janie are gone.

Chapter Text

Eddie wakes up painfully early on Christmas Eve. He needs to — he’s got a fuckton to do today — but it happens more out of tense anticipation than anything else. Something churning in his gut, pulling him into wakefulness. He runs through his routine, cleans his tattoo, the new one Victor gave him the morning after the club in Indianapolis, smokes a cigarette. When he goes through to the other room, Wayne’s nodding his head along to his old Johnny Cash Christmas album as he stirs up eggs in a pan, a cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth.

“You got off early?” Eddie says, thrown for a moment.

Wayne shrugs. “Christmas Eve. Maybe they’re feelin’ charitable.” But there’s an edge to it, something else in his voice. “You sleep well?”

“I slept okay,” Eddie says, though he slept like shit. He leans back against the counter and tries to run through in his head all the shit he has to do today. He should have made a list. Like a gift list, fuck, he has to buy gifts as well–

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to say, some kid called askin’ for you yesterday? Dustin something? Wants you to help out with some sorta settin’ up this morning, at– let me see, the Wheelers’? That mean anythin’ to you?”

Eddie raises his eyebrows. Henderson’s started pestering him semi-regularly, now that Will’s well enough to play a campaign again. Which the Wheeler kid, their DM, fucking hates, apparently, and Eddie wouldn’t usually want to tread on another DM’s toes — bad etiquette, and all that — but Will deserves to have the best time with this one, he really does, so. It’s for the greater good.

“Yeah, I guess I’ll drop by,” he says, mentally adding it to his list, the middle two items of which he’s already forgotten. He really should write this down.

His uncle being home early means they can get a headstart on the first task, which is driving over to O’Dell’s Christmas tree farm in the bright, chill morning and choosing a tree that will fit in the corner of their cramped little trailer, the trailer they still have, the trailer that’s theirs. Eddie walks down the rows, chin buried in the scarf Wayne foisted on him as they were leaving the trailer. That piece of shit leather jacket of yours ain’t worth a damn against thirty degrees. His knee’s acting up, for some reason; he can feel himself limping slightly, his body unconsciously protecting itself against the twinge. It was worse a couple days ago, until he smoked so much grass all the feeling fell out of his body entirely.

“How about this one?” Wayne says, a couple yards behind. He’s examining a tree about his own height with a critical eye.

“It’s a bit, y’know. Rotund.” Eddie pulls his hands from his pockets to gesture at the tree’s size — he places them ridiculously far apart, for emphasis. Wayne laughs. “What about that one?”

Wayne follows the direction of his point, and shakes his head. “Too short.”

“Too short? Need I remind you, uncle, that we live in essentially two rooms?”

“I’m the one who’s gonna be sleepin’ in the room with this thing. If I wanna have it loomin’ over me all the time, then I get it loomin’ over me all the time. That’s my choice. Besides, it’s only a week or two.”

Eddie shrugs, conceding the point. They wind up choosing a middling one, tall but not too wide, and he stands back to let Wayne swing the axe at it. (Because Eddie’s not sure he trusts his shoulder to bear up under the challenge, and his uncle wouldn’t hear of it anyway.) Then they drag it back to the van and load it up, shedding pine needles over all Eddie’s shit in the back but it’s for a good cause. Then they decorate the thing, a string of lights and some tinsel, nothing extravagant, slightly Charlie Brown but they make do.

It’s been a tradition of theirs since Eddie moved in. Since longer, actually, since the days Eddie was small and would spend warm, confusing Christmases with Wayne and Carolyn because his dad was off somewhere the way Eddie grew to like it. Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, not a day earlier, mainly because Wayne never had the time otherwise. Eddie feels fairly ambivalent about the holiday as a whole. He likes it because Wayne likes it; he hates it because it means driving through the richer side of suburbia and watching loved kids in precious little nuclear units enjoying a better class of Christmas, which, surely that’s not what it’s about? Vis a vis Jesus, and all?

(Not that Eddie would know.)

When the tree’s done, he hugs his uncle goodbye — not something he does all that often, but it’s Christmas, and there’s something heavy in his chest — and drives over to the Wheelers’. He parks a street away, like he usually does, because it’s ingrained within him to be nervous in respectable surroundings (and he wishes he could say fuck it to their sneers, to their rules, but today he can’t) which means he’s already walking up the driveway when he sees Steve’s car.

Oh.

He really doesn’t need this today.

There’s no snow settled on it, so it wasn’t parked here last night for the snowfall. That’s something, at least. Though even that thought feels strange to him, because why should he be relieved? Should he have expected Henderson to warn him? It’s not like Eddie hasn’t seen Steve around, the last few weeks. Mainly with Nancy. It’s not like they can’t be civil.

So he ducks his head and shoves his hands into his pockets right after he knocks on the door, and watches Mrs. Wheeler’s face as she opens it, the spark of confusion and suspicion and eventual recognition, because they were at the hospital together, waiting for Will. Waiting for the NDAs. Waiting for–

“Oh, Eddie, hi, Dustin said you were coming. Come in, come in. Are you having a nice Christmas Eve?”

“Hey, Mrs. Wheeler, uh, yeah, it’s going okay.” It’s only eight thirty. The Wheelers’ house is decorated to the nines: they pass a twist of fake foliage wound around the bannisters on the stairs, mini Christmas trees glowing on every other surface. Some sixties Christmas album is playing jauntily from the kitchen. It figures, Eddie thinks — it all figures. Figures worse that Steve is in the kitchen.

He’s got his sleeves pushed up, leaning one hip against the counter and humming along to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree as he rolls out fucking pastry for a fucking pie. He looks good, face all clean and healed, hair a little longer. He’s wearing a fucking Christmas sweater. He’s taken his watch off, like he doesn’t want to get flour on it.

“Oh, that’s great, Steve, thank you for doing that!” Mrs. Wheeler says, going over to take the rolling pin from him, and Steve gives her a smile as he turns and then he sees Eddie and the smile sort of drops.

Eddie feels disheveled and out of place. The way he always does when he’s in a room with Steve — Steve who looks so fervently like he belongs here, making pastry cases for Nancy’s mom and nodding his head to sixties music. Wearing a sweater with fucking reindeer on it.

“Hey, man,” Steve says, warily. Is that a hickey on his neck, or is it just shadow?

“Hey,” Eddie mirrors, worrying at his palm with the nails of his other hand.

Mrs. Wheeler looks between them with a wry expression. Teenage boys, she’s probably thinking. Equally no idea how to talk to each other. But really that’s not it at all; really, they all know which side she’s on. She lays a light hand on Steve’s shoulder and says to Eddie, “The boys are in the basement.”

So Eddie, dismissed, goes.

He does indeed find the boys in the basement — Wheeler and Sinclair and Henderson, at least, Will isn’t here yet — and Wheeler greets him with narrowed eyes and a begrudging, “Dustin said you’re a really good DM, so. I mean, I know what I’m doing, but–”

“We wanna make this as amazing as possible for Will,” Sinclair cuts in, voice firm and eyes sharp on Wheeler’s sullen form. Maybe he’s just a sullen kid, Eddie thinks, or maybe– wasn’t there a girl? Who never showed up again?

Eddie spreads his hands and offers a curtsey. They all laugh, which is sweet. Give them a few years and they might not find it so funny. “Consider me at your service, gentlemen.”

He lets Sinclair and Henderson talk at him about their characters for a while — a ranger and a bard, respectively, which latter is usually Eddie’s go-to, solidifying his fellow-feeling with the kid to a full-blown fondness, until Wheeler ushers them out of the room so he can talk to Eddie about the campaign.

And the kid’s all right, it turns out. He’s creative and sharp, animated when he really gets into it, bright and enthusiastic about what he’s doing despite the way the world most likely beats him down for it, the way it beats down everyone.

“Y’know, they’re gonna be furious with you for this,” Eddie says, when Wheeler’s done outlining. The kid frowns at him. “You’ve left a lot of it hanging. What about the lost knight? And the flowers in the cave, people always pick up on that kind of shit. Unless you’re planning on extending this into a full campaign–”

“I want it to be a win,” Wheeler argues. “Like, surely it’s nicer to defeat the thessalhydra and then have the medal ceremony and just–”

“Nicer? My dear Michael, DMing is never about being nice. When I say give young Byers a good session, I don’t mean make it easy. Give them a challenge! Make them feel like they’ve earned it!”

Wheeler sighs. “My mom won’t let us play after seven. Christmas Eve dinner, it’s like this thing in my house, and for some reason Steve’s staying for it–”

Eddie’s mouth goes dry. He swallows and forces the thought away. “So make it bigger. Have today be one episode of many. The flowers, that’s a mystery right there, if you get some lore going then they’ll eat that shit up.”

“Yeah, I guess– yeah.” Then Wheeler’s fragile smile dims, and he looks at his hands. “It’s the lost knight, is the– is the problem.”

Eddie senses that this isn’t a plot sort of problem. He sets the kid’s notes down and looks at him. “In what way?”

“In the way that I–” Wheeler’s gaze flickers to a corner of the room, a blanket fort by the back door. “The knight, they’re based on Eleven. The one who saved us, who killed the demogorgon. And she hasn’t, um, come back. And I can’t just– let them find the knight, when we can’t find her. I can’t write her story and make it up when I know she’s out there, I can feel it, I’m sure, and I can’t just write over that when she’s going to come back and everything’s going to be different.”

The kid’s words are halting, sure, like he’s hesitant to tell all this to Eddie, but his voice doesn’t waver. He’s convinced. Sure of himself, sure that this girl is going to come back from wherever she’s gone, and it’s endearing. Even if it’s naive. Eddie sort of misses being naive. “Yeah,” Eddie allows. “I get that. But I think you can, uh, y’know. Have a few ongoing mysteries. Reveal everything else slowly, ongoing through each session, and then keep that one back. Wait until Eleven comes back. And you can write the real ending then.”

Wheeler smiles. “Yeah. I can.”

When Eddie goes back upstairs, Steve’s still in the kitchen. He’s beating eggs in a mixer looking stupidly fucking domestic and Eddie can’t resist it, can’t resist saying, “I never figured you for housewife material.”

Steve looks at him with his eyebrows raised. “I’m just helping out.”

“You and not your lady wife? Where is she, anyway?”

“Helping her mom wrap gifts.”

They look at each other across the island in silence. They’re alone in the kitchen. The music’s changed to the fucking Beach Boys, which is probably what happens when Steve’s left unsupervised. No sound but the Beach Boys and the electric drone of the mixer, its whisk hitting the side of the bowl. Again. And again.

And Eddie and Steve looking at each other.

Steve shuts the mixer off; he opens his mouth to say something; Will comes in and says “Hi, Eddie!” and the moment is broken. Steve goes back to his baking. Eddie smiles at Will and shakes the tension off. And when he’s done saying hi, Steve’s back is turned resolutely towards him, and there’s nothing more to say.

But the trials in the Wheeler household don’t end there, it seems, because as he’s walking out to the door Nancy appears, hair half-up in a sweet yellow sweater. She looks as far away from November’s revolver-wielding badass as she’s ever been — the same way Steve, in his reindeer-adorned knitwear, seems different from the guy who bore a nail bat.

“Hey,” she says, and even her voice is soft. “You’ve been–”

“Missing in action?”

“Hard to find.”

He looks at her. She’s folded one arm across her middle, a vulnerability to her stance that he’d begun to think of as uncharacteristic. “What’s going on, Wheeler?”

“I feel like we’ve–” She pinches her lips together. “The four of us, we went through this thing and now–”

He doesn’t say anything.

“No one else knows what happened to Barb,” she says, voice low. “No one but you, and Jonathan, and Steve. And the kids and Joyce and Hopper and that’s it, no one else, and I just wish–”

“What did you think, that we were all gonna have sleepovers and talk about our fucking trauma together? Come on, Wheeler, I know you’re smarter than that. It’s you and Steve, one side, and me and Jonathan, the other. All the demogorgons in the world aren’t enough to bridge that gap.”

She sighs, like she’s tired of this argument. Where has she heard this before? From who? “But Jonathan–”

“Jonathan’s been just as absent as me recently, right?” Her face flickers; he knows he’s right. “Look, I don’t know whatever goes on behind the scenes of your royal little power couple. I don’t really care. I just know that it’s–“ He bites the inside of his cheek. “Nothing you can get away from. Nothing any of us can get away from.”

She looks at him carefully. He wonders what she’s thinking — whether she’s heard the rumors, had classmates talking about it, hey, I can hook us up for the party this weekend, Munson does a good deal. He can’t imagine perfect princess Nancy Wheeler approving of all of that. Of course not. But it’s what he does, who he is. Who he has to be. And she doesn’t know anything about it and that’s her problem, her blessing.

Her privilege.

“So you’re saying– what. Everything else, we can get away from? What happened to Barb? To Will? None of that matters?” She shakes her head. “I can’t just forget about it. I won’t.”

Must be nice, he thinks, the edge of bitterness sharp enough to cut himself on. But that’s not really what he’s thinking at all. Because it’s a cruel thing, right. To envy her. He doesn’t envy her. He doesn’t envy what she lost; he doesn’t even envy what she still has, exactly. Just resents how little he has by comparison.

“None of us should,” he allows, and she nods, once, blunt. Like maybe they’ve reached an understanding.

She touches his arm again, long slender fingers wrapping around his wrist for a moment before letting go. “Don’t be a stranger?” she says, and he smiles just as thinly.

“I’ll do my best.”

She looks at him for another moment. “Merry Christmas,” she says, and then she turns and moves past him to the kitchen, to Steve, to where she’s supposed to be. He can’t blame her. He’s got somewhere he’s supposed to be too.

But first, one more stop.

He drives over to the Byers’ to the tune of Thunder Road, one of the last songs on the old Judas Priest cassette that he’s been neglecting in favor of the more recent Screaming for Vengeance, and idles in the driveway for a moment. He knows Will is at the Wheelers’; Jonathan’s car isn’t here. It’s only Joyce’s tired little Pinto, a fond little deathtrap of a car he ought to be discouraging her from driving, mechanic’s code of honor and all, but hey. He knows how it is.

He’s sort of afraid to see her. Ridiculously. Maybe he thinks she’s going to talk him out of this. Maybe that’s what he wants, wants and doesn’t want, and he’s sitting here because he doesn’t know. Paralyzed by indecision: all that shit.

But he can’t keep doing this. Can’t sit here forever. So he gets out, lighting a cigarette as he goes because he knows she won’t mind, and knocks on the door.

When she opens the door, her eyes are wide and a little frantic, hand grasping at her collarbones. “Eddie,” she says, slightly breathless. “Shit, I– sorry. Come in?”

He steps inside warily. “You, uh– you okay?”

She smiles self-effacingly, closing her eyes. “Never better, y’know, I just– um. Haven’t let Will out of my sight since– it all, so. I’m just– on edge.”

“Yeah.” He takes a drag of the cigarette and feels it calm his own nerves; he wonders if it’s a Hawkins thing. A poor-people-in-Hawkins thing. A faced-a-monster-and-won-but-not-quite thing. “I didn’t mean to, um, just turn up, or anything. I just wanted to– I guess, wish you guys merry Christmas? Not that– I mean, you probably don’t even celebrate it, I just–”

She waves a hand. “We do, sorta. Lonnie was very into all the Christian holidays, we brought the boys up that way. It stuck, y’know? I’m trying to get more in touch with who I was before I married him, but– it’s hard.”

Her frankness puts him at ease, even as he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He lets his shoulders drop, and he rubs his wrist over his forehead, the hand that’s holding the cigarette. “Shit, well. That’s not even the reason I’m here. I don’t know why I said that.”

She looks at him kindly. “Go on.”

“I just–” The words come out in a rush. “Jonathan said you knew my mom.”

“Oh, honey.” She moves to sit down on the couch — the room all clean now, clean and tidy, no Christmas lights, though a tasteful little tree in the corner — and makes it clear with a look that she wants him to join her. He doesn’t want to. He wants to stay where he can get out, close to the door. This house still has him tense and itchy, after all.

But he does join her. He sits down on the couch a couple feet away and twists his hands together between his knees.

“I did know your mom, for a while. We worked together, the summer of ‘65. Hilly’s Diner, I think it was called back then. It’s the Hideaway now. I was trying to earn some money so I could try to go to college; she was just working to pass the time, I think. She had all these ideas. She was a big dreamer, y’know, your mom. All these plans: Hilly’s was just a stopgap, I knew. I mean, sure, it was the same for me, but she was so joyful about it. Had this sense of life about her. She wasn’t gonna let Hawkins tie her down.”

“What–” He swallows. “What was her name?”

Joyce looks at him for a long moment, like she’s trying not to disclose any pity or surprise. She succeeds, sure, but Eddie can feel it anyway. lingering in the air. “May,” she says, eventually. “May Kettering.”

May. It’s a nice name, he thinks. Too nice. And suddenly he can’t listen to any more; suddenly he can’t hear it. Not from Joyce. If he’s going to learn these things he has to learn them from the right person — from the person who knows the whole story, the good and the bad.

“I’m going to see my dad.”

“Oh, honey,” Joyce says again. “Are you sure that’s–”

“A good idea?” Eddie laughs hollowly. “Nope. But at this point I’m not sure what else, um– what else there is to do. So. I’m doing it.”

She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at him, eyebrows creased together, like she’s worried for him. Like she cares. But he’s got shit to do today and he can’t afford to fold; he considers her look for what it is, an offer of kindness, and gently but firmly turns it down.

Hasn’t she got enough to worry about, after all?

In the van, the Judas Priest cassette loops over to You Say Yes and he lets the whole B-side play out again as he drives out of town. He’s got his paperwork on the passenger seat; he’s cleaned out his van, stashed away all the joints and scattered baggies he’s been collecting, thrown out all the trash. It’s clear and empty and still reeks like cigarette smoke, which isn’t a smell he’s ever going to shed, he knows that much, even as he sticks one between his teeth and lights it one-handed, the other on the wheel as he cranes his neck at the road signs. He’s never driven here before. It’s not a long drive. When the cassette finishes for the second time he switches it out for Wild Life by Wings, one his uncle bought him right in the beginning not really knowing what metal was but trying his best anyway. Eddie still listens to it, for sentimental reasons. Comfort.

Paul McCartney’s crooning They think that having love is like having money in the hand when he pulls up in the parking lot and cuts the engine, hanging his head over the wheel and catching his breath. Already having shown his ID at the gate. Already looking up at the big red brick building and thinking– oh.

Fuck.

Indiana Reformatory.

My father’s in there.

It’s not too late to turn back, he knows, just like he also knows he was looking for Joyce to stop him. But she didn’t, and he didn’t let her anyway, and–

And.

He went back for Steve and Nancy and Jonathan. He went in there and saved their lives even as his every fiber was screaming at him to run, to get out, to go–

He didn’t go. He stayed. And sure, he was wrong about a lot. About who Steve is, about how much that can extend to who Eddie can be. But it happened. He did it. And if he can do that, then–?

So here he is. Here he goes.

They search him on the way in, as he was warned to expect. They scrutinize his ID (the real one this time) and look critically over his long hair, tied in a knot at his nape, his all-dark clothes. He’s gone for the plainest shit he owns, just jeans and a black t-shirt under his leather jacket and Wayne’s scarf. No jewelry. But there’s something about him, right? Something everyone else seems able to pick out anyway, and these officers are no exception. They look at him hard and cold as they tell him the rules and he listens as best he can with a ringing in his ears, jumpy and nervous in the face of all this authority, half afraid they’re going to arrest him too.

But they don’t. They just direct him down the hallway until he’s by a bank of phones like you see in the movies, glass grimy and smudged with fingerprints, the ghosts of past inmates and their visitors and current inmates and visitors sitting there now–

The place feels exposed. Violently open and public, crowded with despair and boredom and cigarette smoke, and Eddie can feel his hands shaking. He digs them deeper into his pockets and finds his seat. Plastic. Hard, difficult to get comfortable. It’s cold in the visitation room. His fingers tremble as he lights a fresh cigarette, since that’s what everybody else seems to be doing.

The seat opposite him, behind the glass, is empty.

And doesn’t that just make sense? Half of him — perhaps the whole of him — is expecting it to remain empty. He can’t imagine his dad moving through the hallways towards him right now, existing and alive and breathing in the same building, the same county, the same world. Like he winked out of existence the moment Eddie ran out into the night. Which of course he didn’t, that’s not how it works, but maybe Eddie was hoping–

And yet he’s here. Why is he here?

His cigarette slips from between his fingers. He bends to pick it up, cursing under his breath as his back pops (like a fucking old man) and when he straightens up his dad’s looking at him from behind the glass.

Gesturing to the phone. Holding his end already, impatient, and in a haze Eddie picks it up.

“Ed,” his dad says. Voice crackling down the line. Smiling. “You came.”

It’s a strange smile. It’s a smile Eddie knows better than he knows his own and yet it’s a strange smile — always small and wry like he thinks he’s being clever, this time with a pull to his lips where there’s a bumpy red line cutting down to his chin. A scar that wasn’t there before.

“You’re startin’ to look like me, y’know. You got a nose like mine.”

“Eddie,” Eddie finds himself saying, voice distant to his own ears. His heartbeat jerks and stutters in his chest. “It’s Eddie, not Ed.”

A flash of something across his dad’s face — irritation? Sure, maybe, who fucking knows — and then a deeper smile. “Okay. Well. I got your address right at least, didn’t I? Since you’re here, and all. Still livin’ with my brother.”

“Yeah. I’m still living with Uncle Wayne.”

“Y’know, I tried to get him to visit too — not a word. Knew I could count on you, kid.”

Eddie laughs disbelievingly. “Did you? Really? Because– shit, you do know I ran out on you, right? For a goddamn reason? Y’know, I ran into– into Lonnie, the other day. Lonnie Byers. He knew all about it.”

“Lonnie still kickin’ around? He didn’t wind up in some other shithole like this one too?”

“Nope,” Eddie says, and finds his voice quiet and sullen like he’s fourteen again, after a cuff on the ear or worse, like he’s falling back into the old ways of living like he never even left, like no time passed at all. “How come you’re–” He gestures to the phone, to the glass, to the guard watching them boredly by the wall.

“In max? This shitty state prison? Don’t fuckin’ ask me, Ed, I did what my damn lawyer told me to do. Kept my head down, behaved all nice around the judge. Where does it get me? Where that fuckin’ rat wanted me, I tell you.”

“Rat?”

His dad rolls his eyes and brings his hand up to pick at the scar on his chin, fingers twitching with the unconsciousness of a habit. Like maybe he’s itching for a fix. “You left me in the goddamn lurch, y’know. When you left. You were gonna be a huge part of it, my plan. We coulda made it big. We woulda gone legit in the end, kid, it was the money in the drugs was gonna lead us to better things–”

“You dislocated my shoulder.”

“Like that didn’t happen to you all the fuckin’ time. Anyways, if you’re so goddamn sore about it, what the fuck are you doin’ here?”

Eddie pulls the mouthpiece away from him so he can breathe without his dad hearing it down the line. “Good question,” he says, where his dad won’t catch it. He never could stop running his mouth; he just learned to turn the volume down. Then he says over the phone, holding his breath so it comes out strained, “Why did you want to see me?”

A silence. His dad contemplating him, fingertips tapping on that scar. He looks pale and thin in ugly orange, strung-out. Eddie finds his eyes tracing his dad’s arms, searching, but he doesn’t find anything. Though it’s irrelevant, really, since there are plenty other ways to be an addict. Eddie should know. “You know much about prison, Ed?”

Eddie shakes his head.

“Yeah, well, good. It’s fuckin’ boring. The others, they’re all talkin’ — when they let us talk — talkin’ about their wives, their kids, waitin’ for ‘em on the outside. Figured I’d get myself somethin’ to talk about.”

Eddie looks at him disbelievingly — but hey, more fool him, right? And the surprise is more a distant bitterness than anything real, just an empty feeling of back here again, like I never left. “What about your wife?”

His dad laughs. “You know damn well there ain’t no wife.”

It’s Christmas Eve, Eddie registers vaguely. The girl next to him, maybe only fourteen, she’s opening some gift, nose and eyes red, like she’s had to give it to herself, the man behind the glass beyond her reach. Thank you, she’s saying tearily. I love it. It’s fucking Christmas Eve.

“What was she, then? My mom? You never even told me her name.”

“That’s really what you want from this?” His dad shakes his head. “Kid, it’s a lost cause. She wanted nothin’ to do with you or with me. I never told you about her ‘cause there was nothin’ to say.”

Eddie thinks of Joyce this morning, the whole story she was going to come out with until Eddie stopped her, warning to hear it from someone else. Or not hear it, maybe, since on some level he knew his dad wouldn’t give him what he wants. Wouldn’t give him anything at all.

“You been keepin’ your nose clean, I guess, since they let you in here. No juvie or nothin’?”

Eddie doesn’t respond. He knows what his father is asking. The family tradition, and all that. What Eddie was taught to do: first the cars, a hotwire and a surface refit and pass them on to Lonnie to fence; then the drugs, cut out the middle man, make a shitload more money until–

His dad isn’t asking if Eddie’s breaking the law. He’s asking if Eddie’s being smart enough to get away with it — if he can be proud of his son. For that.

Like it’s a given. Because how did he know? That Eddie would fall into that pattern, easy as breathing? That the things he was taught just won’t go away?

Because it was inevitable? Because it happened to Eddie’s dad with his own father, too?

“I’ve been arrested a couple times,” he admits. It feels sort of good, good and horrifying, like the jerk of adrenaline when you run down a slope and the momentum overtakes you, to say this to his father. To reject the urge to please him. “I’m hardly a criminal mastermind.”

“What, not like your convict dad?” His dad grins, sort of shark-like, more scathing than humorous. Sharp. “You had to make yourself recognizable, huh? Couldn’t do something so easy as cuttin’ your hair. You look like a mess.”

“They didn’t catch me because of my fucking hair, they caught me because I was high in the street,” Eddie snaps, and watches the way his dad’s face changes at the word high, the muscles around his mouth tightening, pulling on that scar. Withdrawal, then. “How the hell did they catch you in the end, if you’re so anonymous?”

His dad’s face twists. “Fuckin’ rat.”

“Rat, what rat?”

“You didn’t hear?” He snorts a cold laugh. “Guess they got it sealed up good.”

“What?” Eddie feels cold, unbalanced. He’s missed something. What has he missed?

His dad gets that sharp, annoyed look he always used to wear when he thought Eddie was being stupid. Less to do with his terrible grades and his inability to concentrate (he got plenty of disapproval for that elsewhere) than not being street smart enough, not being canny enough, not taking an advantage when it was offered. “You not even curious about your old man? You didn’t look me up, didn’t ask around when it happened?”

“When what fucking happened?”

He shakes his head. “A girl got knocked up, her family hated it, she hated her family, she hated the people she wound up with too. Enough to rat.”

“A pregnant girl? You– what does that even–”

“You asked me why I’m here, right? State, instead of federal? That’s fuckin’ why. That girl.”

Eddie tastes bile at the back of his throat. “What the fuck did you do?”

His dad rolls his eyes. “Give me some goddamn credit, son, I ain’t some sorta predator. I tried to help her. She decided she didn’t like my business; she lost the kid. She’s probably in fuckin’ witsec now.”

Eddie can’t help but imagine it, as his ears begin to ring. The girl, anonymous, faceless, just a small, almost androgynous shape on the ground, curled around her middle as Eddie’s father aims a kick–

He doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure he can say anything. His dad hasn’t told him all that much, sure, could mean anything to anyone else listening, but–

But.

Eddie knows his dad. Knows the reason he left that house, out into the evening dusk, nothing but the clothes on his back and hand trembling over his shoulder, his father having graduated from sending him to the doctor to ignoring it to inflicting it himself–

Knows what his dad has done.

“So that’s why you’re here,” Eddie says, voice dull. And why is Eddie here? Because he wanted to wallow in it? Take a look at what he was going to turn into, what he was born into? What he can’t help but become? “Because you–”

“Because it’s a state crime, not federal. The drug shit, they had less evidence for that, she backed outta tellin’ ‘em much after. They got me good for her kid though.”

Eddie wishes he’d brought something in. Smuggled it in. Strong, like his dad’s clearly craving. But not for his dad. Anything to fucking– get rid of what he’s just heard. Erase it. In all the ways he imagined this going–

Not this way. He never imagined it this way.

God, he wants a fucking joint. A beer, or a half of vodka. A tab of acid or a key of ket or a–

His dad’s itching at his wrists, eyes darting around the room, desperate, not caring what Eddie now knows, acting like he was stupid for not knowing it already the way he always acted like he was stupid and worse, pretending like that night didn’t happen, pretending like it’s all okay and Eddie will show up which he did anyway but that’s before he knew what his dad did–

His dad has opened his mouth, he’s saying something, but Eddie can’t hear it. Not because his ears are ringing, which they are, but because he’s set the receiver down. Muffled through glass, Eddie can’t hear his voice anymore. Eddie doesn’t want to hear his voice ever again.

A thud on the glass: his father’s fist. Trying to catch his attention. Was that what it was all about?

Yet, no. Eddie’s still pushing his chair back, getting up, moving away from the glass. Like it’s that easy. Like it was that easy before.

The way it’s easy to get out — easier to leave than to come in. He winds Wayne’s scarf around his neck in the parking lot and breathes a breath of fresh, clean air, free air, because he’s not in prison yet.

And he’s never going to throw anyone down, kick them, cause them to lose a child. Never going to get into fights, have his chin split open. Never going to have a kid and raise them to hate themselves. Never going to hurt anyone.

So maybe he never will be.

And maybe it’s as easy as that.

So he takes another deep breath, lets his lungs fill with air, deep and slow. He feels a flake of snow land on his cheek and he lets it melt. Then he gets back in his van, turns the engine over — Wild Life flares to life, rich and mournful and bleak — and starts the white, wintry drive back to Hawkins.

Chapter Text

Volume Two: Heartbreaker

He can sense each drop of rain as though it’s landing on his skin like a stone; it feels louder than his own heartbeat. It’s gray-green-blue in the air. He can see it through his high open window, feel the cold damp settling over his face, becoming his face, the water soft and welcoming and alive. Is he out in the rain? he wonders. He’s not sure he knows.

It’s six thirty-three in morning (the clock seems to be floating somewhere in the upper right hand corner of his vision) and Eddie’s never been this high in his life.

Which, at this point, is actually a notable record.

He began with a blunt to help him sleep around three a.m. — when that, and a second one, didn’t kick it (having developed a pretty high tolerance now) he started on the Special K. Which he has a sort of fondness for. It doesn’t last too long, doesn’t fuck him up too bad if he doesn’t take too much of it. There are worse drugs out there.

He tries not to deal them. Don’t push your luck, kid, Rick said to him, early on when Eddie didn’t really know what he was doing. The lighter stuff, no one cares. They look the other way. But some rich junior dies overdoing it on crack? No one’s gonna let that shit go.

So, the K. It’s already wearing off, and the way he feels vaguely disappointed by that is enough to tell him he hasn’t overdone it yet. When it gets to relief — relief his limbs are working again, relief he’s able to climb out the hole he put himself in — then he’s in trouble. Because soon enough that feeling would swing right around to disappointment again, disappointment he hasn’t yet buried himself completely, and that’s a road he’s not particularly keen to go down.

He’s trying this new thing, see, of recognizing his limits.

A ten year old girl on a street corner, goes the Rolling Stones song spinning away on his record player. (He’s divided his music into two kinds — driving and taking drugs. Interesting 70s shit like this goes in the latter pile.) Sticking needles in her arm, she died in the dirt of an alleyway. Her mother said she had no chance, no chance!

The guitar riffs lead his eyes over to his own guitar and with an effort he gets himself up off the floor, reaches out for it, thinks, wait, shit, shouldn’t wake up Uncle Wayne–

Remembers Wayne’s at the plant, called in for a rare Sunday night shift–

(Rare now because Wayne put his foot down, now that there’s more money coming in, not that Eddie’s told him where it comes from, not that Wayne doesn’t know anyway–)

His fingers are numb on the strings, not quite working how they should. He picks out a few chords and sags his head back against the wall, wondering in a high sort of way if Gareth and Jeff and Aaron would object to being called up and brought over here to jam this feverish, uncooperative energy out of him. They could finally finish the song Eddie’s been writing for months, the song he’s got no chorus and no title for, the song whose meaning he doesn’t quite know.

He doesn’t do this: luckily the phone seems insurmountably far away. He just lets Narsil go loose in his hands as the record moves on to Angie, the last song before he has to turn it over, which also seems like the most difficult task in the world. Sometimes he regrets getting high alone.

Which makes him think of Tommy C., idly, briefly, and he laughs to himself. He hasn’t seen Tommy since Tommy graduated, not even smug-looking like the rest of the graduates (Eddie not included, left behind another year, as he knew he would be) walking the hallway for the last time. Just bitterly relieved.

(The place he lost his dad, is what Eddie’s last thought was as Tommy’s back turned, never to be seen again. This fucking town.)

So he doesn’t turn it over, when it gets to the end of the song. Just listens to the crackling pop, rhythmic and comforting, until his eyelids drift closed.

This isn’t how he was intending his night to go. He had a productive Monday night, did his homework, even, after band, before arriving only a couple minutes late for his scheduled meeting around the back of the arcade at eight. Selling pimply Keith Parrish a quarter ounce and receiving a couple bills grimy with Chee-to dust in return. Eddie would have preferred to do this at school but a lot of people don’t like that, don’t like being seen with him in the context where it matters. Not that Keith is cool. Very uncool, very slimy in the way he watches Nancy across the cafeteria. Not stupid enough to do anything about it, of course. Steve’s arm around her shoulders is enough of a deterrent for anyone.

But Keith is one of the hopeful types. Real American dream type situation, faith that things will get better for him, that this time the girl will choose him and not the basketball player, that this shift will be the one that earns him the cash to get out of this town. Trying for a better life than he’s ever going to get — hence avoiding people like Eddie like the plague.

Except, of course, when he wants something.

So Eddie was standing there after the deal, smoking a cigarette and listening with irritation to the Sparks thrumming through the arcade wall, mind on yesterday’s Corroded Coffin practice, when someone walked out the side door and stood there staring into the sky and Eddie straightened up because he recognized Will Byers.

He opened his mouth to call out to the kid — and then closed it again. Unsure why, exactly, just something weird about the whole thing. Will’s frozen form, just staring. Rigid, as if with fear — not even a panic attack, because Eddie knows what those look like. Knows what to do with them. No, this was something else.

So he held back. Hesitated. Until the kid seemed to startle himself out of it, looking around bewildered and trembling, eyes wide and scared and that’s when Eddie made his presence known, approaching slowly like you’d do with a wounded deer.

“Hey, kid,” he said softly, and Will jumped about a foot in the air.

“Eddie,” he said, when he’d sort of caught his breath. “What are you– what are you doing here?”

Eddie shrugged easily. Dealing drugs, he imagined himself saying, and just as quickly buried that thought. Leave these kids innocent as long as possible, right? Like his dad didn’t do for him. So he said instead, “Renting some tapes,” nodding his head in the direction of the newly opened Family Video the next storefront over.

Will followed the direction of his gaze without really seeing, it seemed, and Eddie looked closer at him. He was pale, shivery. Thin, like he’d lost some of the healthy weight he’d put back on since last November. That couldn’t be a good sign.

“You, uh– you okay?”

Will withdrew into himself and mumbled something like yeah, I’m fine, which, Eddie knows that trick.

He sighed and put his cigarette out. “Speaking as the expert on weird shit, my friend, that was weird. Now, I don’t know whether we’re talking Upside Down freaky monster weird or, I don’t know, whatever normal problems a boring eighth grader has weird, but I do know you don’t look fine to me.”

“Boring?” Will was frowning. Maybe that didn’t come out right.

“Well, yeah, whatever– um, whatever problems some preppy blond kid who listens to Huey Lewis has. Y’know, a boring kid.”

“So–” Will looked like he was thinking very hard about this. “I’m not boring?”

Eddie was startled into a laugh. “Byers, you’re Will the Wise. I wouldn’t call that boring.”

“But that’s just–” Will dug his hands into his pockets and scuffed the asphalt with his shoe. “I’d rather be boring than whatever I am now.”

Eddie couldn’t really blame the kid for that. He lowered his voice and asked carefully, “And what are you now?”

“I’m–” Will looked over his shoulder, at the spot of sky he’d been staring at so intently. It was dark and clear, stars peering out faintly from behind cloud. “I don’t know,” he finished lamely, sullenly, a strain of Jonathan in his voice now and Eddie was pretty sure he’d reached the limit of his powers.

“Well, if you ever want to, uh, talk– or, not so much talk, I’m not great at that but what I can do is make your problems into monsters in a DnD campaign so you can beat them up, y’know, metaphorically. Or, like, offer you music that isn’t Bauhaus.”

Will almost smiled. “Jonathan doesn’t listen to Bauhaus,” he protested, and Eddie shook his head.

“Like hell he doesn’t. You wanna know why he doesn’t smile? It’s because he’s got Peter goddamn Murphy singing in his ears about death all the time.”

“Isn’t metal about death too?”

Eddie grinned. “Only maybe fifty percent of it.”

“Eddie? What are you doing here?” Mike had emerged from the arcade, concern in his eyes as he looked at Will turning to something warmer as he turned to Eddie. For some unknown reason, these kids actually liked him.

“Tapes,” he said, pointing.

“Cool. You wanna help us win Dig Dug? There’s some interloper who totally thrashed Dustin’s high score and he’s losing his mind about it–”

Eddie raised an eyebrow. “Michael, you vastly overestimate my fine motor skills. Besides, another person beating Henderson just doubles the defeat, right? Every man for himself.”

Mike shrugged, like that was fair. “Will, you want a turn?” he said, and Will looked quickly at Eddie before looking away again and then nodded. Eddie waved him off, watched them both go back inside, lit another cigarette since he wasted the first one. Went and rented The Thing, since he was here, and watched it that night over a sad grilled cheese.

But he couldn’t get it out of his head, was the thing. The way Will looked at the sky. The emptiness in his eyes before he came back to himself, the strange fear that shook through him. I’m fine.

“Like hell you are, Byers,” Eddie muttered to himself as he lit his first joint of the night, failing to find any other way of getting his mind to stop racing around and around it, which joint turned into two, and then the K, and then the haze of sleep as he began to come back down again.

He wakes to Wayne’s knock on the door — “Eight thirty, kid, you’re gonna be late,” — and has to drag himself out of the corner he’s folded himself into, limbs and neck stiff and aching, the room flooded with cold from the window he left open, listening to the sound of the rain. He ties his hair in a loose knot and finds himself jeans, a t-shirt, drags it over his head, moves with the care he knows he has to when he’s pushed his body like this.

(Sleeping against the wall with the window open — is that really all it takes?)

When he goes out, Wayne’s watching him tiredly by the counter, cereal already poured into a bowl and waiting for milk — or else waiting for Eddie to reject milk, since he has a thing about eating it dry. There’s a smudge of something on Wayne’s cheek.

“You sleep okay?” he asks, and Eddie shrugs around a mouthful of cereal. Okay doesn’t really mean anything. “You gotta start settin’ an alarm, kid, you’re gonna miss school one day if I’m runnin’ late on the way back from work–”

“I know.” Eddie sets the bowl down and his eyes catch on his palm, where he’s written in large black sharpie DND WEDS — PLAN. Right. What he was supposed to be doing last night, or rather what he could have been doing all the hours he was in that altered state halfway between awake and asleep. “Has the car been doing that thing again?”

Wayne grunts. “Whatever you did, it worked for a hot five minutes.”

Turns out Eddie’s a better drug dealer than mechanic. He shrugs and washes his bowl, feeling habitually for the temperature of the water — hot again, like it’s been hot the last few months, like some minor (major) miracle. Maybe John Harrington did something right with all the money he took when he raised the rent. Then he turns back to his uncle and says, “Long night?”

Wayne rubs his forehead and his hand comes away greasy. “You could say that, yeah. How’re we lookin’ to pay Thacher’s?”

“It’s not a very friendly bill, put it that way.” Eddie knows this off the top of his head, from both the months he spent at Thacher’s and the income he pulls in now, scattered deals around school and beyond. He’d wanted to work at Thacher’s again this summer but hadn’t quite been able to face asking the question, after the rejection the year before. Because of what his dad did. Now that he knows what his dad did. (Now that he knows it’s– well, fair enough.) “Y’know, enough people in this town work for that place. Can’t they put on a, um, a bus, or something?”

“That’d require a little bit of common sense,” Wayne says dryly, and Eddie smiles. “Okay, well, have a good day, study hard, all that.” Wayne sits down and begins to pull his boots off, face set in a grimace, which Eddie takes as his cue to leave. It’s something his uncle’s started saying, study hard. It makes Eddie feel sort of cold inside, given it’s only a recent development, only the last few months since he started senior year again.

But whatever. He goes.

He blasts Slide It In on the way to school, pulls into the parking lot to the tune of Love Ain’t No Stranger and ignores the scathing looks he gets from permed, pastel sophomores. Getting out of his van he nearly leaves his homework behind, until his eyes catch on the sticky note he’s attached to the rearview and he reaches back over to get it. His new system, writing things on his hands, sticking little notes everywhere he looks. Maybe that’s what will get him to graduation this time. That and a fucking miracle, like getting Miss. O’Donnell to like him, like getting himself to concentrate more than two minutes at a time…

With the result that he’s a little distracted, walking through the parking lot, and it takes Aaron stepping all the way in front of him at the entrance to get him back to his surroundings.

“I talked to the guy at Lucky Bicycle,” Aaron says, without preamble. “He said he might be able to convince the manager but only when we’re all eighteen.”

Eddie’s been over eighteen for a long while; Aaron, Gareth, and Jeff less so. He sighs. “Shit, I really thought they’d be our best bet, y’know? They’ve definitely done worse than let minors in there to play some fucking music.” He knows this firsthand, from watching Lonnie and Bruce treat the place like their personal criminal playground. “We’ll work something out.”

“Oh, and we need to play some W.A.S.P. You’ve listened to them, right? Their song Animal is insane–”

“Yes, Aaron, I’ve listened to them,” Eddie says, an edge to his voice. He likes Aaron, he does, their newest recruit, a junior who moved here from Seattle in September — long way to come for not much, Eddie thinks — but there’s something. Like maybe they’re too similar, highly strung, pretentious. They haven’t quite got the measure of each other yet.

“Jeez, well, anyway. We should play some. And we should…” but then Aaron trails off, gaze moving further off down the hallway, and Eddie rolls his eyes, already knowing what he’s looking at. (Or rather, who.) It’s a girl in Eddie’s history class, Heather, all dark hair and doe eyes and daddy’s wealth. Rich enough to give Steve a run for his money, probably. Not that she flaunts it in the same way as Steve does (did?), but you can tell. You can always tell.

“Still pining, I see.”

“I gave her a pencil last week. She recognized me, I think, but she didn’t say anything.”

“Dude, I don’t know what to tell you. Your mom being her dad’s secretary might just be too tenuous a connection.”

Aaron shakes his head stubbornly. “Office Christmas party, I’m telling you. Her family’s hosting and we’re going to talk, I just know it.”

“I believe you.” They reach Eddie’s locker and he begins unloading his books, half an eye on the hallway, so he catches a glimpse of Steve’s head over the crowd, taller than the girls around him. Which girls aren’t there because Steve’s deliberately collected them, unlike last year. He’s a whole new man. Settled down, studious, the socialite fallen from grace. Or so Eddie hears. He hasn’t really spoken to Steve in months.

“Have you heard anything from Jeff?” Aaron says, tone shifting so fast Eddie gets whiplash.

He shakes his head. “No, you?”

“Nothing. You think he’s, like, okay?”

Eddie closes his locker and rests his palm on the cool metal surface for a moment, strangely graffiti-free, the way it has been since the year started. Like maybe Tommy C. and the rest graduating, Steve relinquishing his crown, changed something around here. Like the freaks are being left alone. “I think it’s, uh, it’s probably pretty hard to be okay with something like this, right? I mean, not that I would know. I’d probably be glad if my old man keeled over. But, hey, special case.”

Aaron looks at him guardedly, warily. Like he doesn’t get Eddie yet, which, Eddie doesn’t get him, so. Whatever. It’s not fair to hold that against him: it’s not fair to hold his not being Janie against him.

And yet.

“Well, homeroom. Enjoy the trials and tribulations of your day,” Eddie says, with a flourish and a bow, and Aaron cracks a grin, loosens up a bit. So there is hope.

His first class of the day is fucking biology, but he’s decided to spend this year keeping his head down and getting on with it, so he finds his seat and hopes for a quiet day, avoiding Tommy H.’s eyes as he sits down.

But no such luck. Barely five minutes in, the door opens and a new guy appears. Tan and muscular, from what Eddie can tell under the denim, with a curling mullet and wispy mustache and what already feels like a bad attitude, the way he tilts his chin up and glares around the room like a dare, the way he takes them all in, takes Eddie in, and curls his lip.

Eddie’s run drugs and seen faceless monsters: he likes to think he knows trouble when he sees it. So he thinks shit, as he meets the guy’s stare, as he tries to work out how to play this, as inevitably he will have to.

“Class, this is Billy. Billy’s joining us from sunny California. Must be nice.” Mr. Ryan, practically an old friend at this point, sounds thrilled by all this. He gestures to the empty seat at the front and Billy slouches into it, eyes still scanning the room with a look that Eddie knows well — the sharp tension to his shoulders, the curl of his fingers into unconscious fists. A look half vigilant, half proud. A look spoiling for a fight.

The worst thing about all this?

On the other side of the room, Tommy H. is perking up. Or rather, leaning back, lifting his chin, trying to look cool. Like this Billy is the new King Steve, which, how can the mood in the room have shifted so fast? How can everyone tell? Are they really so bound to the cliched little rhythms of high school life, dictated to them by movies and crappy TV, that they accept their fate without a word? Their new supreme leader, come to rule among them?

Eddie pulls his hair out of its knot, letting it fall in its usual tangled curls around his face, but takes care to push it out of his eyes. He can feel himself being watched, by Tommy or Billy or no one, who cares, and he refuses to look up.

Roll for initiative.

Let’s go, fuckers.

The other shoe refuses to drop quite yet, however, so he makes it to lunch without incident. Sits down next to Gareth and pulls one knee up on the chair, surveys the way the mood in the cafeteria has changed. No sign of Billy yet, like he’s too cool to eat with them. But something different in the air anyway, and they can all feel it, even if they don’t know what it is. Gareth keeps twitching, tapping his fingers on his tray. Aaron’s wearing a frown.

Eddie hears his name called behind him and nearly jumps out his skin before he turns, finds Robin standing there instead of a tan jerk with muscles choked up on roids. Robin in eyeliner, hair cut to her shoulders, a smile on her face combating her simultaneous eye roll. “You dropped these in band last night, dumbass,” she says, holding her hand out. It’s his fucking D20s — he is a dumbass — and he takes them gratefully. “You just carry those around all day?”

“Lucky charms,” he says, grinning. She shakes her head. “Hey, did Mr. Tapia say anything about–”

“Don’t worry, he moved the practice on Wednesday. I think even the popular kids care about Halloween, so he was sorta overruled. Your nerdy little game is safe.”

“You’re a godsend, Buckley.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Just the messenger.” Then she walks away again, not exactly defiant but not hiding who she’s been talking to either. Eddie likes the way she’s grown into herself, into who she is. Not narcissistic enough to say it’s his influence, but–

It’s nice.

“What’s the deal between you and Buckley, anyway?” Aaron says, drawing Eddie’s attention back to the table. He’s looking meaningfully at her departing form, like there’s some larger significance to this interaction in the school’s social ecosystem.

“There is no deal,” Eddie says, and lets his lips twist into a smile at the private joke. Robin’s never bought from him — never bought from anyone, as far as he’s aware. It’s strange, having such a window into his peers’ recreational lives.

Gareth laughs, looking between Aaron and Eddie like Aaron’s being an idiot. Which– yeah, if he means the question like that. Maybe the rumors just haven’t reached him yet; maybe they’ve died down without self-hating Tommy C. to spread them. Whatever. Eddie will tell him one day.

“So what–” Aaron starts, and then gets drowned out by a clatter and a crash, some blond sophomore (Jack? Jason?) sneering over a scrawny kid with glasses who has somehow ended up face down in his tray.

“Say that disgusting thing you said about Patrick’s sister again. Go on, I dare you,” Jason says, voice icy cold and authoritative, like he isn’t just a kid. Like this isn’t just a high school pot boiling over.

“I just said– she was– lucky to be–” the kid gasps out, from where Jason’s got his foot planted on his back, and Jason leans in but then one of the other basketball players is going over there and steering him away, talking to him quietly, talking him down, and someone else picks the scrawny kid up and everything is as it was.

“What the hell was that all about?” Gareth says, pinching his lips together.

Eddie shakes his head. He’s not going to say anything so cliched as There’s a new King in town, clearly, even though they’re all thinking it, even though he can see Steve sitting quietly in his corner with Nancy and a couple of her friends on the cafeteria’s other side.

After lunch Eddie goes to his locker, tucking a cigarette behind his ear, and he’s opening it to get his math book out when he catches a flash of orange and finds a slip of paper tucked down the side.

TINA’S HALLOWEEN BASH, it reads, with a crude little drawing of a ghost and a bottle of wine. Come and get Sheet Faced.

He snorts despite himself, even as he’s wondering if this is some prank or else it’s been put in his locker by mistake. But then he turns it over and sees an additional note, handwritten: bring stuff for lots of $$$.

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie says under his breath. He feels sleazy, a little like a hooker, but hey. She’s not lying. All the moneyed kids of Hawkins will be there, most likely — Carol and Tommy H. and Heather and Tina, Nancy, Steve too. A lucrative business opportunity. So he folds the invite into quarters and slips it in his pocket before going out to smoke, staring out at the pitch in the cold air and thinking about money. $$$. Maybe that’s how they’ll fix Wayne’s car.

“Hey, man,” Jonathan says, as he steps up beside Eddie against the wall. Eddie hands him a cigarette habitually, almost without looking at him — because he doesn’t need to. He knows where Jonathan stands, where he stands, the exact width of the distance between them. They’ve got it down to an art.

“Hey,” Eddie says, exhaling smoke. “Good Monday evening?”

He sees Jonathan shrug out of the corner of his eye. “Mom was freaked about Will going to the arcade, so, nothing new. She’s taking him into the lab today.”

Eddie blinks, thinks about Will’s frozen, unnerving form. A shiver runs through him. “Is that really, um, the best idea, since, y’know–”

“Yeah, I fucking know,” Jonathan returns darkly. “Trust me, I’ve tried. But I told you, she thinks it’s the only option.” He kicks at the ground, jaw set in a line. “Whatever.”

“Has she–”

“Can we drop it?”

Eddie looks at him. “Yeah. We can drop it.” He considers it a miracle he’s got this far with Jonathan at all, from terse cigarettes smoked in silence starting in January to– whatever it is they do now. Eddie doesn’t really know. He just sort of goes along with it, the way they share snippets of whatever’s pissed them off lately. He thinks maybe it’s Jonathan’s way of preventing himself from punching things. “Have you heard about the new guy?”

“Billy, right? The girls were talking about him in the darkroom just now. The new Steve, or something.”

Eddie puts his cigarette back between his lips so he doesn’t have to answer that. When he’s taken a satisfactory drag he says, “Is it just me, or is there, uh, a general sense of doom hanging over us all today?”

Jonathan scoffs. “There’s been a ‘general sense of doom’, if that’s what you want to call it, since this time last year. Scratch that, maybe since we were born.”

Eddie knows that feeling. He watches a bird wheel around overhead and thinks about what it would feel like to leave. To get out of here. Graduate, go someplace else, the way Tommy C. got out, the way Janie got out. He’s not sure he can quite imagine it for himself.

He has to see Rick after school but he goes home first, pulls up outside the trailer to find a flatbed truck alongside his uncle’s car, and he frowns. It’s rare Wayne has visitors — a solitary sorta guy, outside of his occasional trips to the Hideaway when he has an evening off and an old friend to catch up with.

But Eddie distrusts a flatbed truck (dusty and speckled with mud) far less than he would a gleaming black sedan, so he goes inside with only a little tension in his shoulders. He finds Wayne sitting at the table, the truck owner on the couch — a guy older than Wayne, dark-skinned and graying in a denim jacket. He stops talking as Eddie comes in and looks him over critically.

“Eddie, this here’s Eugene. Eugene, my nephew Eddie,” Wayne says, and Eugene nods gruffly. Eddie nods in return and moves over to the kitchen in search of a snack. He keeps one ear on their conversation as it continues:

“I’m tellin’ you, Merrill needs talked to. He keeps goin’ around accusin’ the rest of us of shit, he’s gonna be the only farmer left in this place, and we’re havin’ enough trouble already. Have been ever since this place became more about goddamn steel than crops back in ‘65 when Brimborn opened.”

Wayne sighs. “Yeah, well, speakin’ as somebody who moved here for that plant–”

“Oh, I ain’t blamin’ you. It’s good work. More reliable than the farm, sure, ‘specially when what happened to Merrill happens.”

“What happened to Merrill?” Eddie cuts in, despite himself.

Eugene looks at him. “He’s got rot in his pumpkin field, and he’s accusin’ me of sowin’ it with poison. Which, just ‘cause he stole my idea doesn’t give him the right to go makin’ accusations like that. I was with Jenny all night, I told you,” he adds, turning to Wayne almost pleadingly. Eddie wonders idly how his uncle managed to get involved in this.

“I know you were. I don’t know, I think you can’t rise to it. He ain’t got no proof, right? It’s gonna make everythin’ worse if you make the situation bigger than it already is.” Wayne’s voice is slow, tired, but calming somehow. “Like you said, the industry’s gonna die if you all don’t stick together, you’ll get big farmin’ giants comin’ in–”

Eugene makes a hacking sound of disgust. “You know he went to the goddamn cops about me? Accusin’ me? Tell me, what kinda solidarity is that?”

Eddie imagines Hopper dealing with this dispute, farmers coming into his office to complain about pumpkins, and restrains a snort. Maybe it makes a nice change, after last year’s chaos. Maybe that’s what Hopper wants.

He goes through to his room and spends a couple minutes trying to focus on his math homework before giving it up as a problem for later and deciding he may as well go see Rick now. He’s got to hand over some of his profits, receive his next batch of product, maybe talk the guy out of antagonizing his neighbors again. They like to go fishing on the lake, see, and Rick takes great pleasure in throwing things at them when he’s drunk. Which seems sort of weird, that Eddie is to some degree his impulse control, Eddie who can’t graduate high school and has to snort ketamine to sleep, but hey.

The pay’s pretty good and it gets him out of the trailer park for a while.

He rolls the windows down as he drives over there, feels the cold woods air rush over his face. Hard to believe what happened in these trees a year ago, in the daylight now with Scorpions on full volume–

And yet not that hard to believe at all, when he considers the shadows under the clouds, the shadows under his eyes, how empty and eerie Will seemed last night. Like a year isn’t so much time after all.

Then he passes someone running on the road — and he realizes it’s Steve. Only a glimpse, but Eddie sees him clearly as the van rushes past: t-shirt, shorts, long limbs damp with sweat. Headphones attached to a walkman probably playing that new Wham! album. A wild look on his face, like something’s catching up with him.

Chapter Text

Perhaps he’s got a death wish; perhaps it’s just Halloween. Either way, Eddie decides to wear eyeliner to school the next day, unable to resist the feeling of fuck ‘em, and I may as well push my luck. But nothing really happens, no real consequences for his bravado: he gets some strange looks, some sneers, but everyone that matters is wrapped up in conversations about Tina’s party and they must dismiss it as a Halloween thing rather than a this is who I am thing because no one even says anything.

No one except Gareth, who grins at him crookedly over lunch and says, “Cool costume, dude,” knowing full well it’s no such thing. “You got a party we don’t know about?”

Eddie shrugs. The intention had been for them to hang out on Halloween, him and Gareth and Jeff and Aaron. But Jeff’s sort of out of the picture right now, and it didn’t seem right to celebrate without him. Hence, no plans. “I’m DMing this oneshot for Jonathan’s brother and his friends, if you’ll accept that definition of ‘party’.”

“Since when did you become a babysitter? But also, hell yeah, that’s my kinda party.”

“They’re sweet kids,” he says, though he’s surprised at himself too. The arrangement arose out of Henderson pestering him for tips all the way through spring, and gradually letting slip that Wheeler wasn’t really interested in running any campaigns anymore — in that he still did it, but with less enthusiasm each time, lazier plot twists, underdeveloped NPCs. Eddie remembers talking to him last year, telling him to keep it going, keep it exciting, wait for the girl to come back but don’t let the adventure die in the meantime–

But it’s been a year, with no sign. And Eddie had his own off period last year, sure, scarcely able to put together a character sheet he was so wrapped up inside his own head — so, yeah. He gets it. And was willing to step in, a little bit, on a casual basis. Oneshots only. Hellfire’s still expecting him to put on campaigns for them too, after all.

“And if we didn’t accept that definition of ‘party’?” Aaron asks, sounding more curious than hostile, though Eddie still turns to look at him. “Not saying I don’t.”

Eddie sighs. “Tina invited me to the quote-unquote Halloween bash tonight. Not to enjoy myself, you understand. Business only.”

Aaron raises his eyebrows. “Damn, it’s alright for some. Heather will probably be there, right?”

“Probably,” Gareth agrees, setting his fork down and resting his chin on his hands. “Wittle Aaron with his wittle crush.”

“Fuck off,” Aaron says, going red. Eddie smirks as he remembers the time it was Gareth fawning over a girl who’d never looked at him twice, before said girl got herself involved in a monster conspiracy and nearly chose Jonathan Byers over Steve but didn’t, in the end, for reasons that everyone can agree make sense. The thought makes Eddie look over the cafeteria by habit and his eyes find Nancy and Steve in their corner, Nancy looking listless and distracted and not really eating, which makes Eddie frown, and maybe think about trying to talk to her, see what’s up, but the thing is he gave up that relationship early in the year when he didn’t reach out to her and she stopped reaching out to him — in a sort of cold January haze, processing too much personal shit and too lost in the truth about his dad to want to remember everything else that happened the way she wanted him to so–

So. He looks back down at his lunch.

The kids are going trick or treating at seven thirty sharp, so they start DnD as soon as school finishes — congregating in Mr. Tapia’s music room, since Eddie’s earned himself some favors continuing to show up to band for so long. He doesn’t put his costume on but they show up in theirs, four little Ghostbusters all ready to take on Eddie’s worst. (Or, that’s what they think. Really, he goes easy on them.)

“Amazing commitment, my friends. Surely the best costumes at the middle school?” he says as they sit down.

But Henderson just looks glum. “The only costumes at the middle school.”

“No shit. Really? What a boring place.”

“Super boring,” Henderson agrees, “except for this girl, Max, we invited her trick-or-treating with us–”

“You what?” Wheeler says sharply, folding his arms over his chest under the embroidered VENKMAN label. “You didn’t even ask me–”

“Oh, you’re not in charge of us, Mike.”

“This is a democracy! You can’t just–”

“Will agreed. That’s three against one, so, because it’s a democracy, we win,” Sinclair cuts in, and everyone turns to look at Will, who’s pale and wide-eyed and non-confrontational as ever. (His costume, Eddie notices, is less polished than the others. A hand sewn logo, a slightly different color.)

He decides to intervene. “As thrilling as it is that you’ve discovered that girls also go to middle school, shall we begin?”

They all nod, chastened, and Eddie begins. It’s a good campaign, worked out mainly in the early hours last night with Led Zep’s Carouselambra on loop (his go-to DnD song, since something about how repetitive it is scratches a constantly-distracted itch). He sends them into a catacomb situation and watches them scramble to find their way out; he lets them accept a witch’s offer of help to escape until she turns around and demands they find her mother as payment, which mother turns out to be a dragon.

It’s a pretty metal oneshot, if Eddie does say so himself. He’s got a deft hand at writing a twist.

“Holy shit, dude, I can’t believe it wasn’t a banshee. I totally didn’t see any of that coming!” Henderson enthuses when they’ve wrapped it up, totally earnestly.

“You thought it was a banshee, Henderson, because I wanted you to think it was a banshee. A little skillful misdirection. Watch and learn.” Eddie taps the side of his nose and can’t restrain his smile as he snaps his binder shut. “You looking forward to swindling Hawkins’ wealthy out of their hard-earned candy?”

“It’s gonna be awesome,” Sinclair says, then turns to Will. “Hey, didn’t you say Bob was gonna lend you his JVC?”

“Oh, yeah, but I’m not gonna have time to get it because of the campaign,” Will returns, looking like he’s surprised to have been asked.

“Can’t Jonathan just–”

“Okay, you’ve lost me,” Eddie interjects. “JVC?”

“Bob’s video camera,” Will says, turning to Eddie with something like relief in his face, like he doesn’t want to confront the Jonathan question. Like Jonathan’s support is getting grating. “My mom’s boyfriend.”

Joyce’s boyfriend. Huh. Jonathan hasn’t mentioned that, in their weird close-not-close talks around a mouthful of smoke. Then again, there’s a lot Eddie doesn’t mention either.

He walks out with them to the parking lot, where — speak of the devil — Jonathan’s LTD is idling in the twilight. As the kids squabble over who gets which seat, Eddie leans in to talk to Jonathan: “You’re driving them to– let me guess, Wheeler’s house?” It’s a decent neighborhood to hit up, if you’re serious about candy. Affluent enough to buy the good stuff.

Jonathan makes a sound between his teeth. “Going around with them too.”

“Seriously?” Eddie raises his eyebrows. “What, no Tina’s Halloween Bash for you? Come and get sheet-faced?”

Jonathan snorts. “Nancy told me to come to that,” he admits. “But mom gets so–” And then he stops, and looks away, jaw working. Nancy invited him? Eddie feels a sudden surge of deja vu, like last year’s playing on loop in the same patterns, same mistakes.

“Well, if you change your mind and want to talk to someone who isn’t a total airhead, I’ll be there. Y’know. Peddling the wares.”

Jonathan nods, looking distractedly out the windshield. “Yeah, uh, sure, maybe see you there.” Then Eddie steps back and he drives the kiddies off, leaving Eddie to get ready for this goddamn fucking party.

He sort of hates parties.

Not necessarily the basic concept of them: the drinking in a room with music and the people you like, that sounds good to him. But it’s the people you don’t like, the people who like partying the most, who crank up the Madonna and spill sticky sweet punch on each other’s perms from solo cups as they shout at each other inanities like they’re the most profound statements in the world–

It’s insufferable, most of the time. But whatever. He’s got a business to run; while the kids are off taking advantage of the rich folks’ candy, he’s doing the same with their money. All in the spirit of Halloween.

So he gets there and dons his mask — made primarily of duct tape — and his cloak, sticking a cigarette between his teeth as he gets out of his van and lighting it leaning there, hesitant for some reason. It’s hardly the first party he’s dealt at since he started selling last year, but it might be the biggest. (He got invited to deal at the class of ‘84’s graduation party; he turned it down. He had no interest in watching Tommy C. and the rest go and celebrate getting on with their lives.)

The new guy, Billy, is also an unknown element here. Everyone else Eddie knows and has the measure of, mainly to what extent he can push them before he risks bodily harm. Billy? Who knows.

There’s some recent Frankie Goes to Hollywood song drifting across the driveway — Are we living in a land where sex and horror are the new gods? — and Eddie’s fairly early but there’s already someone throwing up in Tina’s mom’s rose bushes. Nice. The scene’s a little better inside, where most people are still upright and they’re actually dancing instead of discreetly trying to fuck each other. Eddie takes a beer from the six pack on the counter — consider it advance payment — and nurses it as he waits for the inevitable approach.

He doesn’t have to wait long. Soon enough some girl in a Siouxsie costume is coming towards him, a little sideways like she’s not quite sure she’s got the right person. He tilts his chin up to help her out a little.

“Nice costume,” he says, because it’s better than the dozen greasers, vampires, and Playboy bunnies he walked past on his way in here.

“Thanks,” she says, narrowing her eyes through the makeup. “What’s yours?”

He makes a show of bowing, spreading the cape out behind him. “You’re telling me you haven’t seen the best film of all time, ‘74 classic Phantom of the Paradise?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Isn’t that a musical?”

“It’s a musical and so much more. I’m Winslow. Or, if you prefer, the Phantom.”

It’s a little ironic, perhaps. He’s aware that it’s ironic. Winslow framed for drug pushing because the cops thought he was a queer — maybe it’s meta, huh, Eddie’ll take that. He just likes how spooky he looks in all black, cape, mask over half his face. It’s Halloween.

“What can I getcha, Siouxsie?” he says at length, recognizing that she’s not gonna ask for it if he doesn’t offer. The music’s changed to something from the Scarface soundtrack, which Eddie is surprised he remembers, actually, since he and Jeff watched it stoned out of their minds.

“Nothing insane,” she says. “I don’t usually– but parties like this, y’know, I’d rather be outside taking the edge off than–”

“Say no more,” he returns smoothly, producing a single joint from his cigarette case. (It’s a slim, dainty thing he found in the back of a drawer at the trailer when he realized he needed a way of transporting a lot of them at once — he has a sneaking suspicion it belonged to Carolyn, but he’s never going to ask.)

She pays him and disappears back into the crowd, saying over her shoulder, “Thanks, Winslow,” which is nice, he guesses. He finishes his beer and reaches for another and that’s when Steve arrives.

The thing is, Eddie can’t stop making a note of that. Spotting Steve whenever he walks in a room, keeping subconscious track of where he is in that room until he leaves it again and then feeling the subsequent absence rather more keenly than is fair. Because it’s just Steve Harrington. Just the kid of the guy who owns the trailer park — what kind of connection is that? — and many more properties besides. Just the fallen King of the high school, who barely gets a glance from anyone else in the room as he ladles out two cups of punch and hands one of them to Nancy, who’s dressed as the hooker in Risky Business to — you guessed it — Steve’s Tom Cruise.

Point one: of course he’s Tom fucking Cruise. Point two: of course he uses the fucking ladle instead of scooping up some punch with the cup like a normal person, Jesus Christ, Eddie’s driving himself insane over here and he’s only had a beer and a quarter.

Steve says something in Nancy’s ear and she laughs, taking his wrist and leading him over to the dancefloor — kind of to the side, where before he’d have been in the thick of things, but looking entirely unbothered by it. They look right together. Like they make sense together. And Nancy seems to have perked up since lunchtime, laughing again as Steve puts his sunglasses on her face like neither of them have any cares in the world, like they aren’t coming up on a year after the thing that was meant to change their lives.

Whatever. Eddie turns away and swigs his beer.

Turning away has the advantage — if you could call it that — of a view out the kitchen window to the driveway, where there’s suddenly a much bigger crowd than before. Tina, in a typical Madonna outfit, is one face among many, all circling round a beer keg someone brought — Tommy H. probably, who’s got a manic look in some costume from Karate Kid as he urges someone over who just arrived–

That Billy guy. Shit.

He’s shirtless under a leather jacket, his costume (the Terminator?) probably a very thinly veiled excuse to show off muscles that look as hard as iron. Eddie would consider him attractive, is the thing, if he wasn’t trying this new outlook called if someone seems like an asshole then they probably are and that’s not a good thing, actually. So he ignores the muscles and the hair and focuses on the way Tommy H. seems to have found himself a new god.

As Billy bends over the keg a new song comes on, which improves Eddie’s mood a hundredfold: Mötley Crüe’s Shout At the Devil. It’s not his favorite off the album — Helter Skelter takes that spot — but it’s an immeasurable improvement on the pop rock garbage it replaces.

Everyone else doesn’t seem to think so, however, since suddenly there’s a veritable queue of people leaving the dancefloor and approaching him for substances to make them feel better. He sells several blunts and a smaller quantity of other stuff, mainly ket and coke. He didn’t bring anything more exciting, like acid, figuring it’s a pretty boring crowd. The coke goes to Heather Holloway, which shouldn’t be surprising — she’s got the money, after all — but it has him thinking about Aaron and what he’d make of that. Which again is a problem of them not knowing each other all that well, is the thing. Eddie knows Janie would hate the idea; he knows neither Jeff nor Gareth really have a problem with it.

“...really letting him sell that crap in your kitchen?”

He turns. That preppy sophomore, Jason, has got his arms crossed as he glares at Tina by the counter, who tosses her hair and shrugs. Neither of them are looking at Eddie, though they’re clearly discussing him, but hey, he’s used to that.

“I invited him, Carver, and I invited you too, so maybe pipe down a little. It’s not every day a sophomore gets to come to a senior party.”

“You invited that freak? How is that–”

Like Eddie said. A storm’s brewing.

Tina steers the kid away and lets Eddie deal in peace, but he feels less comfortable in it now, handing the goods over discreetly with no small talk. He knows he’s not welcome here; he’s known it all his life, since he first turned up at school in clothes that didn’t fit with a bruise on his cheek and an attitude that didn’t understand why he shouldn’t be entitled to the space he took up, because he didn’t know better, not back then.

He still has that attitude today, of course, but it’s in full understanding of what it means. It’s defiance, now, not innocence. Hence, when Jason’s turned away, Eddie hops up on the counter and takes a third beer and refuses to let the kid disrupt his profitable night.

Billy seems to be carving swathes through the crowd, he observes. Girls fawning, guys squaring up and then shrinking back like the mangy stray dogs in the trailer park do, and continuing the dog simile, Tommy H. is behaving like a fucking Shih Tzu. Following Billy around, passing him fresh drinks, hyping him up for no ostensible reason. Something a little queer about it, maybe, though equally maybe Tommy’s just missed having someone to validate his superiority complex, since Steve refuses to do it anymore.

He’s so intent on observing this little dynamic — to the tune of Prince, When Doves Cry — that he almost misses Nancy pulling herself up next to him. Swaying a little into his shoulder. A few drops of punch spilled down her white shirt, red like blood. Steve nowhere to be seen.

“Hey, Lana,” Eddie says, when she doesn’t say anything. She’s looking fixedly at the kitchen tiles in that way you do when everything’s spinning and you’re trying not to puke. “You doing okay?”

“Aren’t you gonna dance?” she says, voice low and messy where she’s usually so refined. “Aren’t we– aren’t we all supposed to dance?”

“If I’m gonna dance anywhere, Wheeler, it’s not gonna be Tina’s Halloween Bash.”

She bites her lip and looks crestfallen. He hates that. He opens his mouth to say something more but then there’s a girl, Ashley, maybe? approaching them, fingers twitching over her pocket in a way that says she wants something, and that something is stronger than weed, turns out.

“Tempted?” he says, watching the way Nancy’s eyes follow Ashley away again, the baggie between her fingers.

Nancy looks at him. “Does it help?” she asks, softly.

“A little bit.”

She looks down again. “That doesn’t sound like enough.”

“Enough for what?”

She doesn’t say anything. He knows what she’s after. Knows he was wrong in his earlier assessment, that she’s moved on, that she’s not feeling the anniversary just as keenly as he is if not worse. Because what happened to him, really? He saw a scary thing, set it on fire. No one died. No one except Barb and Tommy C.’s dad.

“Wheeler–”

“But isn’t that the point of all this? Just– doing what we don’t want to do? Not– not wanting to do it and doing it anyway?”

He looks at her for a long moment. Is it Steve? Is that what this is? Did she make the wrong choice because it was the only way she could handle it, pretending it didn’t happen?

“‘S’all a fucking joke,” she mutters, before he can say anything else, and she pushes herself back off the counter and moves back towards the punch bowl. He watches her helplessly — because she needs someone to talk to, that’s plain, but he’s not sure it’s gonna be him. Not sure they have much to say to each other. Because there was accusation in her eyes as she walked away — the accusation that he’s pushing everything down in favor of forgetting it ever happened. But it’s a luxury to remember. One he doesn’t have.

Steve appears by her side, trying to stop her getting another cupful. Bad idea, Eddie knows that firsthand, getting between someone trying to drown out the world and what they’re drowning it out with — and sure enough she struggles with him, sends the punch all down her front, Carrie-style. The crowd goes silent under the Duran Duran.

“What the hell,” she hisses, syllables slurring, and stumbles past Steve into the bathroom. Steve follows her and Eddie feels strangely like he’s watching people ruin their lives from the outside for a change.

He’s sort of losing the will to be here. He doesn’t want to watch Nancy and Steve emerge from the bathroom, either cold and silent and furious with each other or else happily reconciled, the golden couple once more — he doesn’t want to see that. He’s tired of their joys. Tired of their sadnesses too.

But by the door he spots a familiar face, talking to the Siouxsie girl from earlier — Jonathan. Costume-less, but that’s to be expected. Eddie grins and lays a hand on his shoulder: Jonathan turns sharply and then smiles an uneasy smile too. “Hey,” he says. “Well, this sucks.”

“Tell me about it,” Eddie returns. “Does it beat trick-or-treating with the kiddiwinks? Uh, probably not.”

Siouxsie girl’s looking between them with her brow furrowed, lingering closer to Jonathan than to Eddie, and– interesting. That’s interesting. But Jonathan doesn’t seem all that intrigued, craning his gaze over the crowd to try to spot Nancy as soon as she emerges from the bathroom. What a strange picture they make: the school creep, the school freak, and Siouxsie Sioux.

(Robin would probably like that, Eddie thinks: she likes Siouxsie, anyway.)

“Who are you supposed to be?” Jonathan says eventually, when no Nancy is forthcoming.

“He’s Winslow from Phantom of the Paradise,” Siouxsie cuts in, and for a second it’s difficult to tell who she’s trying to impress.

Jonathan raises his eyebrows. “Isn’t that a musical?”

“That’s exactly what I said. The cape is kind of cool though.”

Eddie shakes his head. “No taste, Byers, no taste. What the fuck are you dressed as, then?”

“He’s someone who hates parties,” Siouxsie supplies, and Jonathan grins awkwardly.

“Yeah.”

If Eddie had any sense, he’d leave them alone, but equally Jonathan doesn’t seem to want that and Eddie’s having too much fun watching this little exchange try to work itself out. He wonders if Siouxsie’s high yet. “That’s a garbage costume, man, if I were Tina I’d kick you out.”

“Maybe that’s the aim.”

Eddie laughs and then watches Jonathan’s eyes dart to the bathroom door as it opens and Steve comes out alone, hand held up over his mouth and nose, looking at the ground as he pushes his way through the crowd — and Jonathan doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t hesitate, just slips through the path Steve carved and enters the bathroom.

Leaving Eddie and Siouxsie awkwardly alone. Leaving Siouxsie to drift off, spurned, into the dancing throng; leaving Eddie, lacking anything better to do, to follow Steve outside.

The night air is freezing, full of weed smoke and beer. He finds Steve lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers, leaning against the wall around the side of the house, face hidden in shadow. Eddie takes the mask off and approaches him slowly, carefully, out of practice for this. For talking to Steve. How did it work, again? How did it go?

(Why is he doing this?)

“Can I bum one?” he settles on, though he has a few left.

Steve doesn’t look up. “Aren’t you–”

“The font of all substances? Yes, but even a drug dealer runs out of cigarettes.”

The music, muffled now, pounds through the wall: smoking guns hot to the touch, would cool down if we didn't use them so much. Steve takes his time getting another cigarette out, his own still unlit between his lips. Hands with a tremor Eddie’s not sure he’s ever seen in Steve’s hands, only his own.

Finally, Steve passes him one and lights his. The quick spurt of flame illuminates his face, flickers and shines in the tear running down his cheek.

Shit.

“Are you–”

“Why are you even talking to me, Eddie? Why do you even–”

Eddie takes his time lighting his own cigarette, waiting for Steve to finish the sentence. Go on, he thinks. Say it.

“We’ve barely talked for a year. Now suddenly you’re at this party asking me to–”

“I’m not asking you to do anything,” Eddie says. He takes a long drag of smoke and tries to let it clear his head. His next words come out as a mutter: “Jonathan’s talking to Nancy, so. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

Steve wipes his eyes and stares at him. “What does that even–”

Eddie doesn’t know what it means. But it felt right as he said it, so he lets it sit there in the widening silence, holding his cigarette between his lips as he rubs his hands together in an attempt to warm them. Fucking bad circulation.

“She said I’m bullshit,” Steve mumbles, at length. “Said that she– or, like, our love, that’s bullshit too. I don’t know.”

“People say stupid shit,” Eddie says. “Shit they don’t mean when they’re sober. Trust me, I know.”

“Yeah, but that’s not– not what it felt like. This morning, y’know, she said we should tell Barb’s parents what happened. And I told her we couldn’t, told her what they’d do to our– to our families, if we did that, but she’s just so convinced that we–” Steve exhales. “That it’s our fault. That we killed Barb. And I can feel it, y’know, I can feel her thinking about it when she looks at me and I’ve just been– because it goes away, right, that feeling? Things go back to normal. They have to.”

He sounds vaguely desperate. Eddie’s answer isn’t one he’s going to want to hear. “Nothing has to do anything. The world owes us shit all.”

“But that’s–”

Eddie laughs without humor. “That’s not what your fucking father taught you? Great, I’m so glad for you. I can’t say the same about my own.”

“That’s it, then? Why you stopped talking to me? Because of my dad?”

Eddie stares at him. He’s little more than a silhouette in the dark, illuminated dimly by the glow of his cigarette. “What the fuck do you care?” Eddie says, and it comes out less harsh than bewildered.

“You just– disappeared, man, there was that stuff about the trailer park and then it’s like you went somewhere else.”

“That doesn’t explain why you care,” he insists, though he’s feeling a bizarre sting of guilt — why? Why should he be guilty, when it was Steve’s fault? When he couldn’t see past the ivory tower he’s sitting in? “And I, uh, I didn’t go anywhere. I’ve been here this whole time.”

“Not until tonight,” Steve says, and they look at each other in the dark, at an impasse. Like maybe Steve’s focusing on this to distract from the real thing, the big thing, the Nancy’s had enough of him thing. Like maybe Eddie’s doing what Tommy’s doing, seeking out the comfort of a familiar social structure, reminding himself why he stopped talking to Steve in the first place.

Maybe.

“What the hell are you dressed as, anyway?” Steve says eventually, with a strange discomfort to his voice like he intended to say something else. He still sounds a little choked up.

“I’m a songwriter whose music about selling your soul to the devil is stolen by a man who sold his soul to the devil.” Steve seems blank. “It’s from a movie, man.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and there’s silence again. Silence until, “What if she’s right?”

“What?”

“Nance. About– us. About what we did, and not– not being able to forget about it. About, like, not deserving to move on.”

“I don’t know whether it’s about, um, deserving, y’know? If you’re totally over it then fine, we can talk about that, but are you? Is anyone? You’re really gonna tell me you don’t wake up– soaked in sweat, losing your fucking mind because you thought that thing–” Eddie breaks off, his own nightmares inescapable.

“Yeah,” Steve whispers. “I do.”

“So why don’t you focus on what you can do? Instead of what you should do.” Eddie doesn’t know if this is good advice; he doesn’t know whether it’s a policy he’s even following. But he’s trying, at least, has been trying since he left Indiana Reformatory in Christmas Eve snow and resolved never to return. “And if you can’t look back–”

“Can you? Look back?”

Eddie shrugs. “Don’t ask me, Harrington, I spend most of my time high as a fucking kite.”

Steve takes a shaky breath in. Eddie wonders if he’s about to ask Does it help? the way Nancy did. Poor little rich kids, lost in a world they’re only just realizing is bigger than them. But instead he says, “If Nance and me weren’t seeing each other, then Barb wouldn’t have been at my house. Right? And she wouldn’t have died. We both know that. We don’t talk about it, but we know it. And I feel like that’s– what she sees, when she looks at me.”

“If you and Wheeler weren’t seeing each other,” Eddie says slowly, “maybe it would’ve been you.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, just scuffs his shoe on the asphalt and stubs out his cigarette. Eddie wants to talk to him more, suddenly, wants to forget the last year’s silence and remember instead what it felt like to laugh with him on the Byers’ ruined floor — but would that be too much like looking back? When the only reason they ever knew each other was the thing they’re trying to forget?

“Sorry I disappeared,” Eddie says suddenly, surprising himself.

Steve smiles thinly in the gloom. “Sorry for being a dick,” he returns, and then they go their separate ways home.

Chapter Text

When Wayne gets back from the plant the next morning he bustles around the kitchen like he’s getting ready to go out again. Eddie watches him from the couch, smoking a cigarette with the news on in the background — more shit about the election, Reagan greeting the adoring middle classes wherever he goes, and something about an assassination in India. “You going somewhere?” Eddie asks, flicking ash into the novelty ashtray on the armrest.

“Goin’ to see Eugene again, he’s brought all the farmers together.”

“You’re not a farmer.”

“Really, kid? I hadn’t noticed.” Wayne gives him a look and takes a last bite of toast before putting his hat on again — “The idea is, we plant workers help them out, and they help us out, when the time comes.”

“Solidarity,” Eddie notes. “Isn’t there a song about that?”

“Knowin’ you, you could find a song for anythin’.”

Eddie smiles and lets Wayne ruffle his hair on his way back out. The time is fast approaching when Eddie should leave too, should get his shit together and get in his van and not forget his homework, but the prospect fills him with unreasonable dread. Last night’s party, maybe, the way the room felt like it was simmering with a threat that didn’t materialize. Like maybe that threat will make itself known today.

Or maybe it’s just talking to Steve for the first time all year last night, and not really knowing what to do with that. Because he doesn’t. He doesn’t know why it twists him up inside, everything Steve says, even seeing him across the hallway. There’s no reason for it. No reason beyond what’s happening on the TV: Mondale derided as a wimp who would give away the earnings of hard working Americans to lazy welfare queens driving Cadillacs.

And yet.

In the end, Eddie bites the bullet and goes. He chooses Judas Priest to soundtrack his drive, pulling into the parking lot just as The Sentinel finishes, and when he cuts the engine he becomes aware of a competing stereo blasting metal across the asphalt — Van Halen’s Hot for Teacher, if he’s not mistaken. He frowns and spots the unmistakable source, a blue Chevy Camaro with its windows rolled down and Billy fucking Hargrove popping pills in the front seat.

What kind of pills they are, Eddie doesn’t know. Could just be Tylenol for the inevitable hangover, depending on whether those muscles are natural or not, since a guy who genuinely commits himself to protein and push-ups isn’t gonna use chemicals to get his kicks– but, whatever. None of Eddie’s business.

(Exactly Eddie’s business.)

Billy gets out of his car and stalks past Eddie’s van, while Eddie makes the mistake of watching him go. He gets a violent glare in response — “What the fuck do you think you’re looking at?” — and Eddie shakes his head, looking down at his hands, since he’s not interested in getting beaten to death in a near-empty parking lot today, thank you very much.

What an asshole. Maybe it’s the hangover — but no, Eddie has a sneaking suspicion this guy is just like that. Which, great way to set the tone of the day. Just perfect.

He’s late to English class, which has the typical effect of Miss O’Donnell staring him down, cold and unimpressed, eyes saying what she’s stopped bothering to voice: another toe out of line and it’s — you guessed it — detention. Oh, also, not graduating again, because I can do that to you, no matter what mitigating reasons you might have for being fucking stupid.

This is what he’s focusing on, the imagined threat of having to sit here another year after this one and so the urgent need to catch up on what he’s missed, instead of the rest of the room. So it takes him a second to notice the buzz all around him, the hive of gossip: did you hear about Nancy Wheeler and Steve Harrington last night?

I heard they broke up.

I heard he threw his drink on her–

No, she threw up on his shoes–

No, they–

For fuck’s sake. Does no one have anything better to talk about? “Actually,” he says, turning to look at the loudest of the gossipers, “she broke up with him because she’s a Soviet spy, and she loves her country too much to be with him. Real star-crossed lovers type shit.”

The gossiper in question gives him a disgusted look and turns away, but the chatter quiets down. If nothing else, Eddie finds it impossible to concentrate on two things at once, so at least now he has a better shot at working — but also it makes him prickle with discomfort, the way they’re all talking about shit they know nothing about. If they knew the real story–

Then it wouldn’t be very different, would it? Because people are fucking stupid, and the immensity of the situation is far too serious for high-schoolers like these to comprehend. He remembers something Steve said once, last year, about how Tommy H. and Carol can’t take anything seriously. Then he curses himself for remembering it.

But that’s where Nancy’s wrong, about telling people. The fewer people get sucked into this shit, the better.

After class, he goes to take his usual shortcut across the gym and then realizes very rapidly it’s actually a Thursday — basketball day — so he can’t. But he stands there by the door for a minute anyway, eyes picking out Steve as he jogs across the court, shorts and a shirt plastered to him with sweat, and then Billy — shirtless, as anyone could have predicted — swooping around him and knocking him to the ground with a crash that echoes around the gym.

Eddie feels a hot flash of adrenaline at the sight. Because it’s hard to unlearn that, right, even after all these months — the fear for yourself and the guy standing next to you when you’re facing down death. Billy’s no demogorgon, and the rules of engagement are different, and yet–

He takes these feelings as his own cue to leave.

Still no sign of Jeff when he sits down at lunch. Eddie frowns at Gareth and says, “Still no word?” Gareth shakes his head.

“We gotta– give the guy time, right?” Aaron says uncertainly, which Eddie will credit him for, the recognition that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“I don’t know, man, if it were me I’d probably need someone to remind me the outside world existed. Y’know, just, like, decaying in my room.” Gareth says this easily, like it’s that simple to imagine what you’d do if your dad died. Like his uncomplicated grief is something he can take for granted.

(Eddie has no idea what he’d do.)

Aaron’s in the middle of a response when there’s a stir in the cafeteria and he stops, looking around warily — learned habit, apparently, Eddie gets the sense he was bullied back in Seattle — and it’s the basketball team, so fair enough. Tommy H. is crowing and whooping, getting everyone’s attention, and then he grabs Billy’s arm and jerks it into the air: “Ladies and gentlemen,” he shouts, “we got ourselves a new MVP! This guy right here is gonna win us the championship — Billy Hargrove, everybody!”

Billy sneers, which is probably the closest he ever looks to happy. Eddie doesn’t spot Steve in the mix, as most people in the cafeteria start cheering — go Tigers, or whatever — like he’s well and truly been supplanted. Aaron hunches his shoulders and looks at the table, Gareth too, and actually all around the cafeteria people are doing the same, if they’re not celebrating with the rest. Robin is looking blankly at Billy under heavy eyeliner from her seat with the band kids, though when one of her friends catches her eye she gives a broadly fake smile.

So Eddie looks around at all this submission, this worship and appeasement, and thinks, fuck that. So he tilts his chin up. So he says loudly to his table — loud enough that really it’s for the cafeteria as a whole — says “Funny how they think we care about their stupid game, right?”

Aaron stares at him, makes a what the fuck are you doing stop it before they murder you face, which only makes Eddie double down harder. Because fuck this. What gives these assholes the right to fill the cafeteria with fear?

The room has fallen silent. Everyone is looking at him, including Billy and Tommy, who slowly walk towards him.

“You wanna say that again?” Tommy snarls, but Billy raises a hand. It’s a false mercy, however, Eddie can tell, even as Gareth makes the mistake of letting his shoulders drop.

“And who the hell are you?” Billy stares Eddie down and Eddie stares right back. There’s something off behind his eyes, the unsettling quiet before something utterly uncontrolled and brutal, a fucking cyclone. Eddie remembers the look well from watching it across a kitchen table, across a gearbox, across a phone and a screen of glass designed for his own protection. Just his luck, right, to find a double of his father in this goddamn fucking high school.

Eddie looks at Tommy instead of answering. He raises his eyebrows, lets his face say what he’s too good a drug dealer to speak out loud: you sure you wanna fuck over the guy who fuels your party drug habit?

Tommy’s fury dissipates a little, and he glances sideways at Billy. “He’s a nobody. Not worth it.”

Billy catches the look, and some of that dark anger deepens in his face, which has Eddie sitting up ramrod straight, hot sparks of adrenaline coursing through him. The instinct to talk and talk, let his smart mouth take over and give these people what they want — something tangible to destroy — rather than the stonewalling silence they hate, the silence that makes them all the angrier in the end, is nudging at him insistently. But he won’t give in. Not to this guy.

“A nobody, huh? And what makes you, a nobody, think you have the right to an opinion on what we do?” Billy’s got a lot of natural menace in his voice; maybe Eddie’ll try to imitate it for his villains in DnD.

“Well, if you’re going to come in screaming about it to the cafeteria where we’re all sitting peacefully trying to enjoy our little lunches — what are we supposed to do? Not listen? You probably wouldn’t like that, right?” Eddie smiles crookedly, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“You think you’re fucking smart?” Billy leans over him, something alive in his eyes like this is just what he’s been waiting for, these three days since he first got here–

“Not particularly, since I, y’know, failed senior year the last time. Second go around, baby — nothing you say can surprise me.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Billy hisses, teeth clenched together, glare going wild, hand on the back of Eddie’s chair and Eddie waits for it, waits for the inevitable crash of the floor rushing to meet him, fists in his face and a kick in his ribs, something dislocated in the process, it’s always what happens–

It doesn’t happen, though. What happens is Coach Benson shows up and calls “Hargrove!” across the cafeteria, and Billy stops and looks up and lets some of the rage (because it is rage, now, and Eddie’s heart is pounding) clear from his face.

Lucky escape, the tiny little logical part of Eddie’s brain tells him, as Billy walks away because the incentive of making the basketball team is clearly greater than whatever primal joy he might get out of beating Eddie to a pulp — Eddie matters less. He slumps forward in his seat and rests his face in his hands, breathing through a sudden jolt of panic. Shit. What is he doing?

“What the fuck are you doing?” Gareth hisses, genuine fear and upset in his voice. “You’re fucking crazy.”

“I know,” Eddie says, as the pounding in his chest begins to retreat. He feels cold and off balance. What is it about guys like that? People like that? “Fuck me, I know.”

Aaron’s looking at him with a strange glow of– awe? Eyes wide and admiring? What the fuck? He doesn’t say anything, but it’s there. That sense. And Eddie doesn’t know what to do with it, because he doesn’t want to lead these people into darkness, doesn’t want to take them where no man should follow. His own death wish isn’t for imitating.

“I’m getting the fuck out of here,” he says breathlessly, pushing back from the table and standing up. He can feel eyes on him again. He’s getting used to it.

“You’re fucking cool, man,” Aaron blurts out, and Gareth digs an elbow into his side, hissing don’t encourage him, not that their approval or otherwise is why Eddie does these things. He doesn’t really know why he does these things. It’s his general opinion that he’s a healthier person than he was this time a year ago, all things (faceless dimension-shifting monsters) considered — but times like this, he wonders.

In the parking lot, he spots Jonathan and Nancy sitting atop the hood of the LTD. She’s got a fierce, sharp look on her face, and Jonathan’s nodding along like he’s fully game for whatever scheme she’s cooking up and Eddie just hopes he’s still looking out for himself in all this. He showed restraint last year for a reason, after all, the way Eddie did.

But he tries not to think about that. He doesn’t want to think about any of it, any of the shit that might have screwed him up in a way he’s been ignoring; he wants to remind himself he’s a decent, normal person, who looks out for his friends. So he drives to Jeff’s.

He hasn’t been there often. More often lately, when Jeff’s dad was really sick and they all tried to help as best a couple teenage boys who don’t know what the hell they’re doing could. It’s nice, if small, not that Eddie can really say anything, since pretty much anywhere is larger than his own place. He pulls up a street away out of habit and walks down with his hands in his pockets, resisting the urge to light a smoke. (Jeff’s mom doesn’t like it.)

He rings the doorbell and it’s her who opens it, looking tired and sad and ground down by the world in general, her brown skin dull, her eyes empty. But she musters the energy to smile at him in greeting: “Hi, Eddie. You’re here to see Jeff?”

He nods. “Yeah, thanks, Mrs. Grant. Are you, uh– how are you holding up?”

The smile dims. “Michelle,” she reminds him, and, “Probably best not to ask, y’know? We’re doing okay. Best we can do.”

He nods, knowing the feeling and at the same time not knowing it at all. He wouldn’t know what to do with all the sympathy, for a start. A quick look around the hallway evidences cards, flowers, empty casserole dishes. An outpouring of community sympathy, how are you holding up, and god, that question must be exhausting. Eddie regrets having asked it.

She leads him to Jeff’s room, where he’s curled on his bed reading Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany. Eddie smiles a little — it’s his own copy, battered and ink-stained with doodles, given to Jeff when he was complaining about the long boring shifts in hospital waiting rooms. It kept Eddie company the last time he had to wait for them to pop back in his dislocated shoulder — the last time he thought it worth going to the doctor at all for that shit. A couple years ago now.

“Hey,” he says, and Jeff looks up with a glazed expression that says he wasn’t really concentrating on reading.

“Hey,” Jeff returns, and closes the book. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

Eddie sits down on the floor, folding his legs and twisting a ring around his finger. “Probably. But so should you.”

Jeff shrugs listlessly. “Higgins gave me as long I need, whatever that means. I don’t know if I can deal with everyone being so fucking–” He stops, something bitter and sharp in his voice. “No one takes anything seriously. And, y’know, when something serious has happened to you–”

“Yeah,” Eddie says quietly, swallowing the taste of bile. “I know.”

Jeff looks at him. “You ever hear from your dad?” There’s something strangely open and desperate in his eyes, as he asks this question he knows better than to ask, but he’s asking it anyway like he needs to hear the answer. Like he needs to know Eddie’s doing better than he is — or worse.

“No.” Eddie picks at a loose thread in a hole in his jeans, a bad habit of his he’s been trying to kick. It’s not that he regrets coming. Perhaps this is what he was looking for, the same way he was itching for a fight in the cafeteria. Things have been too good, too calm, and last night he talked to Steve and he feels like there should be some consequences to that. Like he doesn’t deserve it to be that easy. So he’s here, letting Jeff’s words sting at him the way he knew they would.

“I don’t know how to talk to Gareth about it,” Jeff admits, pulling his knees up to his chest. “He wouldn’t get it, y’know?”

“What makes you think I do,” Eddie says flatly, tiredly. “Gareth can probably, uh, imagine it, at least. Feeling the way you probably do. Me? I got no fucking clue.”

They stare at each other for a moment. Jeff almost looks angry — nostrils flaring, eyes dark — but then the look softens, and drops away. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “Sorry. I forget people’s lives are shit in different ways from mine.”

Eddie hasn’t had that luxury since he crashed his van into a monster in the woods; it’s all he’s been thinking about, over and over, how shit comes in different levels, now, different dimensions of shit. All hitting the fan at once.

He shakes this thought off with an effort. “How’s Dhalgren going?” he says, after a silence. “It’s fucking weird.”

Jeff laughs hollowly. “Yeah, you’re telling me. I just got to the bit where Kidd and Tak have, um, have sex? I think?” He sounds a little amazed at himself to be saying it out loud. Eddie looks at him steadily — but there’s nothing weird about his voice beyond his own embarrassment. Which is fine. Eddie’s never told him about the gay thing but he probably knows, the way everybody knows, and he’s never said anything either way. Like he doesn’t care. Which is cool.

“Right, yeah, well, trust me, it gets even harder to figure out what the fuck’s going on. If I ever write a campaign that confusing, please shoot me.”

“With pleasure,” Jeff says, rolling his eyes, and Eddie settles into the comfortable back-and-forth like earlier’s moment of tension didn’t happen, except it did, and that’s why Eddie feels better now. Which is fucked up, he knows. Knows deep down he gets a soothing, calming kick out of the things that make his heart twist. Hurts in a good way, somehow. A way it shouldn’t.

“I love it, though. It reads like an acid trip.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jeff says, and something about the way he says it prompts Eddie to say in return, “Well, if you ever want to find out, you know where to find me.”

Jeff stares at him. “Seriously?”

Eddie shrugs. “Yeah, man, why not? If you’re gonna drop acid with anyone it’s gotta be with a friend.” The first person he did acid with was Tommy C.: it felt friendly at the time. Friendly in the way that they felt each other up beforehand, hands twisting under waistbands and teeth bruising at throats — friendly. But Eddie hasn’t had a really bad trip, not unless you count the one where he saw the demogorgon and really that wasn’t the acid’s fault, was it?

“Cool. Thanks.” Jeff smiles to himself in the vague, guilty way you do when you know you shouldn’t smile because the world is too shit to smile but you’ve found something tiny to be happy about anyway — and Eddie smiles too.

“Also, please come back to school soon. Aaron’s driving me insane and I, uh, I might get myself killed without your calm, mediating influence–”

“What does that mean?”

“There’s this new guy, Billy Hargrove, he always looks about half a second from succumbing to roid rage and tearing your eyes out with his bare hands, he’s been totally adopted by the fucking basketball assholes, and, yeah, because there’s something, uh, deeply wrong with me–” Eddie swallows, feeling himself getting too close to truth. “Well, I decided to stand up to the guy.”

Jeff’s eyebrows climb. “And you’re alive to tell the tale? My god.”

“Stop looking goddamn impressed, okay, why does no one seem to understand that this is bad–”

“Oh, it’s unquestionably bad, man, like, a total suicide mission. But it’s metal at least. You’ll go out in a blaze of metal glory.”

Eddie groans. “That’s the worst part, the asshole was playing Van Halen in his car this morning–”

“Shit, well, we gotta kill him then.”

He snorts a laugh. He’s missed Jeff at school — his dry, no-bullshit presence, the way he nonetheless keeps this wide-eyed enthusiasm that Eddie feels like he grew out of before he even quit the womb — and he means it when he says he needs him there. To balance out Gareth and Aaron. To make Eddie feel a little less insane.

He heads out about half an hour later, when Mrs. Grant — Michelle — calls up the stairs, “Jeff! Your uncle Andy’s on the phone!” and Jeff drags himself up off his bed to answer. Eddie waves goodbye and then walks back to his van, taking a deep breath of cold November air and looking up at the sky, which is bright and clear. There’s a Mondale Ferraro sign on the Grants’ lawn, one of the few Eddie’s seen in this town.

(He knows the Westleys support Reagan. The Hagans and the Wheelers and the Vance-Taylors — Aaron’s family — too. Harringtons go without saying, though they don’t have a sign out front.)

The cassette player in his van’s been screwing around, so he gets halfway through Some Heads Are Gonna Roll, driving through the woods, before it cuts out and sends him to radio, some horrible song by The Fixx which it refuses to let him change so he’s stuck with it — and this is what he’s trying to fix–

–when a girl steps into the road and he screeches to a halt so he doesn’t flatten her.

She falls back into the asphalt, more likely out of shock than anything else, but he scrambles out of the van to help her up anyway — only he finds her already getting to her feet.

She stares at him; he stares right back. She’s got wide dark eyes and brown curly hair, shorter than any girl’s hair he’s seen in this town since Janie cut hers right before graduation, and some strange open fear in her face. She can’t be older than fourteen.

“Shit, kid, I nearly ran you over,” he says, dragging a hand through his hair and letting out a shaky breath. She doesn’t say anything, though her hand twitches over her own hair, like she’s mimicking him. “You okay?”

The question seems to ignite some urgency in her, or else a flight instinct. She tenses up and her eyes move behind him, to the van, gaze focusing in a way he can’t quite make sense of — then there’s a pop, the sound of shattering glass.

He turns to find one of his headlamps blown out. His brain stutters over the sight, trying to make sense of it, and when he looks back at the girl she’s racing towards the treeline.

And several things align themselves very quickly inside his head at once.

“Eleven!” he shouts.

And she stops.

“Eleven,” he says again, quieter, suddenly breathless. Holy shit. Holy shit. No way, right? No way it can be her. She’s dead.

But the headlamp– and Wheeler’s quiet assertion that she’s still out there– and the way she stopped, and is turning around even now, a small trail of blood running down to her lip–

He finds himself laughing stupidly. “Shit, I think I just made Wheeler’s year.”

But she comes forward, eyes raw and desperate suddenly, says, “No. You cannot tell him you saw me. You cannot tell anyone you saw me.”

He looks at her searchingly. She doesn’t look like she’s been hiding out somewhere in the woods, exposed to the elements, stealing food from people’s kitchens. She looks healthy, well-fed. In clothes that fit. “But you’re–”

She does that weird thing with her eyes again, the focused, intent look, the scary look — all Kubrick stare like she’s Jack fucking Nicholson — and he feels faintly like he’s being threatened. “No,” she says again, fiercely. “No one can know I was out. No one can know I was–” and then her voice cracks, and she drops the stare, and she looks like nothing more than a sad, frightened teenager again. “It’s stupid. And he doesn’t need me.”

He bites down on the inside of his cheek. “Okay, kid. I won’t tell him, or anyone else. But can I, uh, at least give you a ride wherever you’re going? So you don’t step into the road again?”

“Sorry,” she says quietly. “I have not been– out much.”

“I’m also notoriously a, um, a terrible driver, so. Sorta my fault too. About that ride?”

She looks at him carefully for a moment. “You know Mike?”

“Shit, sorry, I know so much about you and you don’t know anything about me at all. Eddie Munson, at your service. I play DnD with Mike and his friends sometimes, y’know, Dustin and Lucas and Will? I, uh, was there last year, with Mike’s sister and Will’s brother, when they fought the demogorgon.”

“DnD,” she repeats, eyes narrowing, like it’s a word she’s heard before but never quite understood. He’s almost overcome by the urge to explain it to her, this nervous, earnest girl with hair he now realizes is just growing out of a buzzcut. He knows the feeling. Knows the weird half-stage where it’s springing into curls you didn’t know you had and you don’t know what to do with it because you’ve never had this much agency over your hair before, or your appearance in general. Maybe it’s this that has him so suddenly concerned with her welfare.

“It’s the game all your friends play, with dice and character sheets and things. I DM — that means I create the story and run the game, throw all sorts of horrible monsters in their path. All fantasy, of course,” he adds, as her eyes widen. “Wheeler may not have told you this, but you’re an honorary member of his party. Their mage, right? It’s a great class.”

She smiles a little at the mention of Mike and then her eyes dim again, like she’s remembering something. She steps past him without saying anything and climbs into the passenger seat of his van.

Well. He guesses that’s happening, then.

He gets into the driver’s seat and glares at the radio, which refuses to let him switch back to cassette mode no matter how many buttons he presses. He’s stuck with Bowie’s Blue Jean, which isn’t the worst of songs, but still it grates on him as El watches his struggles curiously. Eventually he gives up and turns to her. “Where to, then, O magical one?’

She frowns at him like she doesn’t understand him, but gives an answer anyway: “North. The woods. By the river.”

He interprets that as the Eno, which is the only river to the north of Hawkins if you’re not going miles and miles away, which they’re not, since she clearly walked. He starts turning around as she settles into the passenger seat, looking around the interior like she’s trying to puzzle him out — like a study of the objects in his life will help her do that. She’s probably right. The D20s hanging from the rearview, the sticky notes on the visor, the cigarette butts piling up in the ashtray he keeps in the passenger footwell. Christ, that’s not a good look. To distract from that, he occupies himself with saying, “So, am I allowed to ask where you’ve, uh, where you’ve been? All this time?”

“Hopper,” she says, and he tries very hard not to react to that the way he wants to, which would be to shout what the fuck. Because, what the fuck? Hopper? He’s been hiding Eleven?

No wonder he’s sort of disappeared, this past year. And he’s not the only one — at least it turns out he had a valid excuse. “Um, okay. And am I right in thinking you’re not actually allowed to be out?”

She nods tightly, staring out the window at the woods flashing past. “I went to see Mike,” she whispers. “But he doesn’t need me.”

“El, that’s not true, the kid’s practically quit DMing because he doesn’t want to finish his campaign without you–”

“He was with a girl,” she says, turning to look at him, face miserable. “And that means he’s–” her voice takes on a strange, artificial quality, like she’s imitating something she’s heard or seen on TV “–moved on.”

“What are you–” He can’t imagine Wheeler with a girl. Not in that sense or in any sense, actually. He would have heard about it. And the only girl the kids have mentioned is this Max they invited trick-or-treating, and Wheeler did not seem pleased about that at all. “Are you–”

“I don’t want to talk about Mike,” she says, leaning her head against the window.

“Okay. Sure,” he says. He can’t argue with that.

They drive in silence for a while, long enough to hear the song change, and Bowie is replaced by Pat Benatar, Heartbreaker. It’s not exactly what he likes but it’s got a great guitar line and he’s not immune to something he can bang his head to. So he taps his fingers along to the beat on the wheel, and out of the corner of his eye he sees El lift her head, listening intently. He turns it up a little. And on the next chorus he gives in and sings along, an octave lower at least and his voice rough and untrained and slightly out of tune but it seems to make El smile, which he’s heavily invested in encouraging all of a sudden, for reasons he doesn’t really understand.

“You like Pat Benatar, huh?” he says, when the song’s finished (moving to Rebel Yell, Billy Idol) and he’s turned the radio back down a bit.

El nods shyly.

“Well, you’ve got okay taste, I’ll give it to you. But just wait until you hear some real guitar. Some Black Sabbath or Led Zep will totally rock your world.”

She smiles at him, though it’s clear she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Then she’s directing him to pull over and he does, in a stretch of woods that looks like any other stretch of woods. She gets out and when he moves to follow she stares at him again, like it’s a habit she can’t kick, but nothing happens. He stays in the van.

“Don’t–”

“I won’t tell anyone, kid. Promise.”

“Friends don’t lie,” she says, strangely, like it’s some golden rule the world isn’t allowed to break. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her it’s rarely true.

“I promise,” he repeats, and she nods, satisfied.

Then she gives him a closing look and walks off into the woods, and he watches her go, suddenly queasy in the early dusk.

Chapter Text

The phone is ringing when Eddie gets back home. It’s shrill, still startling to Eddie though they’ve had it a few months now — Wayne muttered vague things about contacting his coworkers, working out a rideshare if the car croaks, things Eddie didn’t really know how to respond to — and he frowns over at the sofa bed, where his uncle sleeps. He usually leaves the phone off the hook when he’s sleeping. Which is why Eddie considered it pretty pointless, since he sleeps most of the hours any reasonable person might call. But Wayne’s not here, and the phone is ringing.

Eddie answers it with a vague twinge of unease. Which unease deepens at the voice on the line: Will Byers. “Hi, um, Eddie?”

“The one and only,” Eddie says, leaning back against the table and worrying at a notch in it with his finger. Will’s voice sounds small and empty and alone.

“Sorry, I know– you were probably just kidding, when you said– that I could talk to you. But–”

And he stops, and doesn’t say anything else. Eddie wonders how he’s been roped into babysitting two sort-of-supernatural kids in one afternoon. “No, that’s, uh, that’s okay. What did you want to talk about?”

A silence. “Could you just– come to my house? My mom gets stressed when we’re on the phone too long.”

So it’s going to be a long conversation, then. Which with a kid who spent a week in another dimension–

Not a great sign.

And yet– there’s always the other thing. The thing Eddie has a pretty strong suspicion he’s right about, a suspicion that only gets stronger each time he talks to the kid, especially around his friends, who are different, sure, but not different in exactly the same way.

So he reserves judgment.

And if nothing else, it’s actually convenient, since Eddie’s got a deal to do with Robbie Freeling, who can’t get away from the farm long enough but is willing to pay however much it takes. Idly Eddie wonders what his uncle, in the newfound plant worker-farmer alliance, would make of Eddie selling his wares to Pete Freeling’s son. But it’s the reason they’re still afloat, so. So.

His van’s cassette player is officially broken, it seems, so he’s stuck with Rod Stewart on his way over to the Byers’, the woods now dark and cold around him in a way that makes him unwilling to look at them too closely. He hunches over the wheel and lights a cigarette one handed (something he’s pretty good at, now, with the amount of time he spends with one arm out of commission) which he hasn’t quite finished when he arrives, pulling into the driveway to find Joyce’s Pinto tucked in next to an almost-as-small Toyota Camry. Eddie struggles to place it for a moment — did Jonathan get a new car between now and lunchtime? — before he remembers– right. Joyce. Boyfriend.

He knocks on the door with his cigarette still between his lips, taking a final few puffs, and the guy who opens the door seems to be the boyfriend. He’s a short, stocky guy, vaguely familiar, like Eddie’s run into him in town before. He takes in Eddie’s appearance — long hair, ripped jeans, leather jacket, the cigarette hanging out his mouth — and a crease appears between his brows. “Uh, hi,” the guy (Bob?) says. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Eddie,” Eddie says, resisting the twitchy, nervous feeling he’s getting under the gaze of someone so obviously made of dad material. “Here to see–”

Joyce appears beyond Bob’s shoulder and cuts him off. “Oh, Eddie, hi, sorry– Eddie, this is Bob, Bob, this is Eddie. Eddie– uh, Eddie babysits Will sometimes.” She looks frazzled, eyes large and tired, hand resting on Bob’s shoulder for a fraction of a second before twitching away again.

“Oh, okay,” Bob says placidly. “Come in.”

“Will’s in his room,” Joyce says. “I don’t–” She looks at Bob and then looks away tightly, like she’s regretting asking him over. “He’s had a rough day. And Jonathan’s out, I don’t know where, but Will said he wanted you to come, so–”

She sounds apologetic, so Eddie says, “I offered, actually. That he could talk to me. If anything– y’know, if he needed to.”

She bites her lip and nods, eyes drifting to his nearly-done smoke. She grabs an ashtray from the table and he stubs the cigarette out in it; then she directs him to Will’s room. Past the hallway where they set the beartrap, where Eddie and Steve tore the ruined carpet up afterwards, something heavy in the air they didn’t know how to name.

Will’s sitting cross legged on his bed, staring into space as Jonathan’s boombox plays from his desk — Somebody Got Murdered by The Clash, so loud it nearly drowns out Eddie as he speaks. “Hey.”

Will looks up, a distant shadow shrinking away in his eyes. He seems to shake something off. “Hey,” he says. “Can you–” He gestures to the boombox.

Eddie turns it down, and then sits in the desk chair backwards, resting his arms on the back. “So what’s going on, O Will the wise one?”

Will scratches at the back of his neck. He looks different, somehow. Something eerie about him that Eddie can’t quite place. A stillness, maybe? Not in the way he moves and fidgets, which is the same as always, but in his face. His eyes. “I feel like I’m going insane.”

Eddie looks at him closely. Now that, he’s an expert on. “There are many ways to feel insane, kid, which way are we talking?”

“The way where I– where I’m feeling something that isn’t really happening, because it’s all in my head, but I can’t stop feeling it and I don’t know how to get rid of it and I–”

He stops again. Eddie takes a deep breath. “Have you talked to your mom about this?”

“No. I– I can’t. Because she already knows about the episodes and if she knows they got worse–”

“So why are you telling me?”

Will hesitates. He hesitates and twists his fingers in the sheets, biting down on his lip. “Because– because you’re not like them, like Mom or Jonathan. Because you’re not so invested but you’re also not so–”

“Yeah,” Eddie says quietly, because he doesn’t really need to say anything else. Eddie understands it already. “I know what you mean. But why don’t you tell me more about it anyway, huh?”

Will takes a visibly deep breath. It’s strangely cold in his room, and when Eddie looks to the window he sees the closed curtains fluttering in a faint breeze, like the windows are open. “I’ve been seeing the– the Upside Down. Just– for a moment, sometimes, but it’s like I freeze out of the world, the right-side up, for a second. And I’m caught between both. On a– on a threshold. And there’s this thing, this– shadow–”

Will shudders, tone going shaky and thin. Eddie leans forward in the chair.

“Bob told me to stop running. He said– if I could just tell it to go away– like he did with Mr. Baldo–”

Eddie frowns, not understanding the reference, but Will continues on anyway.

“But it didn’t go away.” His voice is barely a whisper. “It got me. It got– it went– everywhere–” He’s visibly trembling now, and Eddie can’t help it now, he gets out of the chair and sits down on the bed beside him and lays a hand on his shoulder. “Is it because I kept running? Because I didn’t– didn’t confront it sooner? Because I was just a– a coward?”

“Will,” Eddie says, voice serious enough that Will looks up, eyes wide. “Running isn’t– it isn’t like that. It isn’t, uh, something that deserves punishing. Sometimes it’s what you have to do. Sometimes it’s what keeps you alive, what’s the– the bravest thing to do.”

“Really?”

Eddie thinks about his dad. Thinks about running into the dark to the life it now feels like he was meant to have all along, he was just a little late to it. Thinks about leaving his dad behind in Indiana Reformatory and never looking back. “Really. So don’t go blaming yourself for running.”

“But I stopped running. And that didn’t work either.”

“Whatever’s after you — whether it’s some fucked up monster thing or else it’s just inside your head — a lot of the time that shit doesn’t care what you do. It just comes after you anyway. And overthinking it– acting like it’s about deserving it–”

Eddie stops. He’s not sure he’s qualified to say this. Not sure he should be saying it, as a notoriously bad example, as someone who nearly got Billy Hargove to kill him this morning because he talked to Steve last night. What does that say about deserving? What does that say about blame?

But Will looks a little less miserable, around the eerily dead look in his eyes. Eddie doesn’t know what to do about that. But he smiles at the kid, and engages him in a conversation about Ghostbusters — one that doesn’t involve Sigourney Weaver, which is what most boys who’ve seen the movie seem to care about the most — and even lets him put on the theme song, from a goddamn Ghostbusters: Original Soundtrack Album cassette (Lucas’, Will explains, with an abashed look that probably has more to do with money than taste in music).

But there’s something strange about him anyway. Like he’s a step removed from the conversation the whole time, a step removed from his body. Eddie leaves the room that evening with a sense of grave alarm ticking away at the back of his mind, a threat his body doesn’t really know how to respond to because it’s neither real and immediate nor totally imagined — just something in the air.

“How is he?” Joyce says immediately, when Eddie emerges into the kitchen, where she’s sitting at the table smoking what must be her tenth cigarette of the night. Bob’s sitting next to her, doing a goddamn Number Place.

Eddie doesn’t say he’s okay, because he’s not sure it’s true. He settles on, “He’s feeling, uh, weird. Do you think it’s–” And then he stops, because Bob is here, and that’s rule number one of the NDA, right? Random well-meaning strangers, boyfriends or not, can’t know what happened.

After all this time, the rule feels a little like relief. Because Eddie wouldn’t know how to say it to someone now, if he had to. And no one could understand it. Not if they didn’t go through it — so really it’s better this way all around.

Joyce exhales smoke and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know,” she says quietly, spreading her hands. “I called Hopper and he wouldn’t pick up.”

“You called Hopper?” Bob’s voice is mild — probably terminally mild — but by the way he says it Eddie can tell this has been a point of contention before.

Joyce’s face pinches. “I told you, he was involved in what– what happened last year, he’s comforting to Will–”

“Okay,” Bob says, suddenly soothing, and Eddie supposes he can get why Joyce likes him, after the harsh impatience of a man like Lonnie. “Do you want some tea, Eddie? I was just making some.” He gets out of his chair and the way he’s switched it up, the difference from his unfriendly presumption at the door — the way one word from Joyce changes his mind completely — has Eddie prickling with discomfort, so he shakes his head.

“No, I, um, I should get back. Thanks.”

Joyce follows him to the door. When they’re out of Bob’s earshot, she says softly, “Thank you. Bob’s doing great with him but– I know it means a lot to have people he can really talk to about the, y’know, the whole thing.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, looking past her back to the kitchen, where he can just glimpse Bob boiling water, moving like he knows his way around. “So, Bob?”

“Don’t you start.”

Eddie raises his hands in submission: “I wasn’t gonna say a word. Just– like him better than Lonnie, that’s all.”

Joyce ducks her head. “That’s not hard,” she mutters, and then looks at him. “Have you– have you talked to Bruce at all?”

He knew the question was coming; it still twists something up in his throat. “No. And I’m not going to. I don’t– yeah.”

He recognizes it in her, the same thing he’s trying to do. Choosing a Bob rather than a Lonnie; choosing not to return to the prison, at the cost of learning more about his mom.

(His mom. He hasn’t thought about her in a long while — has been burying the thought, mostly. The idea that she’s out there or otherwise, alive or dead, only a name to go on. But he put that behind himself too, when he left Indiana Reformatory in the snow.)

“Good for you,” Joyce says, smiling thinly, though the smile quickly fades into the usual jittery worry. “God, I wish Hopper would pick up the goddamn phone.”

Something connects in Eddie’s brain. El, saying Hopper’s the one hiding her — Joyce, who doesn’t have a clue. That’s where Hopper’s been all this time, and indeed Eddie knows exactly where to go: that patch of woods up in the north of Hawkins near the river. But he can’t tell Joyce this. He promised.

So he just nods, and goes.

He’s got half an hour to kill before the drug deal with Freeling, so he lights up a smoke in the van and sets to fixing the cassette player before he goes. He coaxes out a few strains of Night Comes Down before it cuts out again, sending him to Talk Talk, and maybe this is the real punishment for talking to Steve last night, huh? Cursed to listen to Steve Harrington Music for all eternity. For fuck’s sake.

He hasn’t been to Freeling Farm since last year. Since the chase, the skinned knees, the hushed closeness of the barn. Steve taking his shirt off. It’s a weird feeling to drive back over there in the dark with drugs in his dash and no monster behind him — though, by the way Will Byers is acting, maybe there is. He parks in the woods a little way down and hesitates to get out, even though they’re meeting around the back of the barn. A little further down the woods break open into wide, bare fields, looming cold in the dark. He’s not sure if he prefers that or the trees, which rustle with every movement and make him tense.

Eventually, he gets out. He digs his hands into his pockets and walks through the woods, the barn a dark, solid shape ahead of him. It’s not unnatural to feel afraid of these woods. Not after what happened, is what he tells himself. Spine prickling with unease. Heartbeat loud in his ears — he could go for a joint right about now, if it wouldn’t blunt his reflexes and make him unable to run, if he needs to. Which is something you have to consider in Hawkins. Dulling your fear but not to such an extent that you can’t do anything about it.

There’s no one in the spot by the back of the barn when he gets there, so he stands there and lights another smoke and tries to breathe around the lump of fear in his throat. Scared of the dark, Munson? he imagines a voice saying, but he’s not sure who the voice belongs to. Tommy H.? Billy? Tommy C.? Steve?

Each one casts it in a different light, but perhaps not different enough.

“Oh, great, you’re here,” someone says out of the dark, and he jolts, stepping back, cigarette falling from between his fingers. Then he wrinkles his nose and lifts his foot, the ground soft and sticky somehow beneath his boot. What the fuck? He becomes aware of a smell, musty and off, like decay. Like something rotting.

“You burying bodies out here or what?” he says, voice shakier than he’d like it to be.

The someone laughs, drawing closer to reveal himself to be Robbie Freeling — short, stocky senior-age guy who isn’t actually a senior because he dropped out to work on the farm. “No bodies,” he says. He’s got a faint lisp that he covers up by deepening his rural accent — or more like distracts from, really, since the lisp hasn’t gone anywhere. “Some kinda contamination, I don’t know, it’s why I couldn’t get away from the farm to come meet ya. Thanks for comin’ all the way out here.”

“It was on my way,” Eddie shrugs, which it kind of was. “You wanted weed, right?”

“You got any meth?”

Eddie stares at him. Freeling looks totally serious, slightly stupid eyes under a thicket of blond hair. “Like hell do I have any fucking meth.”

“Why not? I heard you sell ket, coke, acid — what’s a little meth?”

What’s a little meth. Eddie doesn’t know, exactly. All he knows is Rick doesn’t sell it, at least not around Eddie, and that means Eddie doesn’t sell it either. Rick gets his supply from bigger dealers in the city; meth is something homegrown. Something people like Robbie Freeling make in their barns themselves, or at least get some enterprising friend to make, someone who vaguely knows their way around a chemistry set. “You want anything else? That’s fine. You want meth, my friend, you’re gonna have to look someplace else.”

“What if I did want somethin’ else, then? And the weed too.” Freeling gets his wallet out and counts out a few bills in the gloom, looking sideways at Eddie. Eyes crawling over him slowly. Eddie gets a bad feeling.

“...what?”

“I know I don’t go to that school no more, but I still hear things. About you. I heard you deal, right? I heard somethin’ else, too. So, that’s what I’m askin’. For somethin’ else.”

Eddie feels a little shudder of revulsion run through him. It isn’t what Freeling is asking for that revolts him, necessarily, nor that it’s Freeling who’s asking. It’s more that a year ago, Eddie might even have said yes.

A year ago, strung out unpracticed on acid and Tommy C.– that letter from his dad burning a hole in his nightstand–

He takes the baggie of weed out and hands it over; takes the right amount of cash. “That’s it,” he says, somehow keeping his voice even, if cold. “All you’re getting.”

“Alright,” Freeling says, raising his hands. “Just thought I’d ask.” He slopes away into the dark and Eddie feels his knees go weak; he leans back against the wall of the barn and tries to catch his breath, tries not to throw up. What a fucking night.

Friday finds him in school again, trying to dodge the basketball team’s watchful eyes. Clearly he’s been calling too much attention to himself, if someone like Robbie Freeling’s been hearing things. Unwanted attention. So he ignores the way Billy Hargrove looks at him, when they have chemistry class together. Ignores the burning stare which is contemptuous and sort of- obsessed, in equal measure. What is it about Eddie that incites this in guys like these? Tommy C., Tommy H., this fucking clown.

But again, Billy doesn’t do anything. Eddie ducks out of class as fast as he can and then gets stuck in the crowd in the hallway, cringing in expectation of a hand on his shoulder, tugging him around, where do you think you’re going, freak? but no such touch arrives. Billy pushes through the crowd past him like he doesn’t even see him, face full of a sneer. Well, it’s better than what he was expecting, though it fills him with unease, like he’s still left waiting for the next shoe to drop.

So he doesn’t go to the cafeteria at lunch, but eats in his van, tormented by Dionne Warwick on his still-broken stereo. It makes him think of Eleven, and he wonders what she’s doing right now. Up somewhere in the woods. Hidden away, and that can’t be healthy for a kid that age, right? Or any age. Kids need friends, teachers, parents. Not that he can really talk.

And who knows, maybe Hopper is dad of the year.

He watches the parking lot idly. It’s populated mostly by kids like him, trying to avoid the wrath of their social betters or the stigma of sitting friendless in the cafeteria. Not that Eddie is all that friendless, or does this very often. It’s the coward’s way out, the acceptance of an oppressive social norm under which Eddie refuses to bow, thank you very much, but sometimes–

And sometimes, someone unexpected joins them. (‘Them’ being the losers in the parking lot.) Someone like–

Steve Harrington?

Eddie straightens up as he watches Steve come out of the building. His hair is damp, flatter than usual, and he’s walking with his head ducked and his arms crossed over his chest, gym bag over his shoulder. Curiously despondent, though perhaps not so curiously, since the school is aflame with the rumors. Nancy and Jonathan skipped class yesterday and haven’t been seen since. Somehow Eddie doubts they’re on some sexual marathon, though really who knows. Maybe Byers has a few surprises in him.

It’s starting to rain. Fat, slow drops hitting the windshield, the sky drawing in gray. Not an appealing day. The sort of day that makes Eddie want to drive home and smoke a bowl or snort a key while listening to the rain pattering down outside, the safety of indoors. A safety he no longer takes for granted, even if it’s an illusion.

But Steve’s outside. Scanning the parking lot for his car, like he’s forgotten where he put it in a daze this morning. And Eddie feels sorry for him. And Eddie’s got cigarettes, which always cheers him up, so it might work on Steve too.

He opens the door and leans out — breaks the cover of the parking lot losers — and calls across the asphalt, feeling rain land in his hair, “Hey, Steve.”

Steve looks over. And Eddie can feel him considering it, the pros and cons. Weighing it up. Be seen with the latest guy to hit Billy Hargrove’s shitlist, no matter the way his social status has been inching up ever since he started dealing. That’s a con. But a little company, a guy who gets it, who knows exactly what Nancy Wheeler possibly dumping him means, vis a vis otherworldly monsters and NDAs and general trauma — that’s got to be a pro, right?

Finally, Steve walks towards him, and climbs into the passenger seat of the van. Eddie hastily turns the radio down, but not before Steve raises an eyebrow: “I feel like I should be worried that you’re listening to Rockwell. You been replaced by an imposter, man?”

“The fucking cassette player’s broken,” Eddie mutters. “Don’t make me regret inviting you in.”

“Why did you invite me in?”

“Cigarette?” Eddie says, offering him the pack, instead of giving him the real answer, which is something sappy like you looked sad.

Steve takes a cigarette, just the way Eddie knew he would. “I can’t work you out man, really I can’t.” He says this quietly, lowly, voice exhausted. Leans his head back against the window as he lights his smoke, the way El did the day before. “Am I– what. A game to you?”

Eddie lights his own cigarette and speaks around it: “The jocks really did a number on you, huh? I’m not playing a– a fucking game with you, or whatever. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m far too self-centered for that.”

“So what are you doing?”

“Offering you someone to talk to.” A silence. “Because I heard about what happened with Nancy.”

Steve scoffs self-deprecatingly. “What, worried I’m gonna graffiti the Hawk marquee again? Nancy ‘can’t let go of the past’ Wheeler?” Then he frowns at himself, looking at his cigarette. “Shit. I gotta stop saying shit like that.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “So it’s true, then.”

“I don’t goddamn know, do I? Tommy and Billy have been holding it over my head all morning but they’re dicks, they’re just–” Steve exhales slowly. “I don’t know what I should think. Or do, maybe I shouldn’t do anything, I don’t know. I don’t know how to make it better.”

“I’m really not an expert on this, I gotta say.”

Steve looks at him, eyebrows creased together. Does he get the inference? Is he thinking, an expert on women? Or an expert on relationships in general?

If Robbie goddamn Freeling knows, then surely Steve does too.

So instead of talking more about that, because Eddie really doesn’t want to, suddenly, he says, “There’s something weird going on with Will.”

Steve’s face drops further, if such a thing is possible. “Shit, in what way?”

“I don’t know, exactly. He’s just– acting weird, and having these episodes, and he talked about this shadow monster thing but no one else can see it so he thinks he’s going crazy, which, maybe he is, but–”

Steve breathes out shakily. “Great. That shit really– y’know, puts things in perspectives, huh? Like if there’s a fucking demogorgon out there again and I’m worrying about my relationship with Nance–”

“We don’t know if there is,” Eddie says. “But– yeah. I know.” It’s sort of why he hasn’t done anything, felt anything, for this long fucking year. He’s noticed Steve’s fine profile in the hallways, sure, admired the line of Tommy C.’s jaw in their last class together before the guy graduated. But it’s felt so goddamn trivial. Pointless, and he’s been telling himself he doesn’t need any more trouble than he’s got. Because it is trouble for him.

“Like, even my dad, who gives a shit about my dad, really, when–” “What happened with your dad?” Eddie asks, curious despite himself.

Steve sighs, closing his eyes as he speaks like he’s bracing himself. “He’s trying to develop what used to be O’Dell’s farm for, y’know, housing, but they’re having all these issues with the groundwork because of this rot problem in the soil–”

“Rot problem?” Eddie thinks of the ground by Freeling’s barn. Its mulchy, sponge-like texture. It can’t mean anything, can it? Right?

So preoccupied with this, he almost misses what Steve actually said. He’s trying to develop what used to be O’Dell’s farm. O’Dell, the nice guy who sells the Christmas trees, gone. Maybe he died and his relatives sold the place; maybe he sold up himself, and moved away. Maybe he ran out of money. Either way, suddenly it makes sense in Eddie’s brain why Wayne’s been spending so much time with the farmers — why solidarity is a word they’re using. Steve’s dad. Why is it always Steve’s dad?

“They can’t work out what’s wrong with the area, apparently, and the crews are making noise about contamination. Of course, my dad’s spitting blood, since he and my mom are supposed to be in Denver this weekend.”

“Shit luck,” Eddie says neutrally. Shitter luck for the people who actually have to farm those lands; shit luck too for the building crews who will no doubt be forced to work on it anyway.

“It’s mainly him being an asshole,” Steve says, and Eddie blinks. “Like, if the farms are contaminated we’ve got bigger problems than his project running late and it’s gonna, y’know, affect people, right? But he doesn’t care about that. He’s a miserable asshole.”

“Shit,” Eddie says, and can’t restrain the creep of appraisal in his voice. Because– yeah. Shit. “You’re a whole new man.”

“A year’s a long time,” Steve says. Even and expressionless, and Eddie can’t tell what that means. His heart does a little jump in his chest.

“Steve–”

“I’m gonna go,” Steve says. “Get out of this fucking school for the day, god, I can’t stand it. Hargrove and the assholes like him acting like any of this matters when it just–”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and can’t quite bring himself to read it as an invitation. Which he’d like it to be, suddenly, wants those days back when they’d get high together on the hood of Steve’s car with Pink Floyd in the background — misses that, such as it was. But he’s not sure Steve would feel the same. “No, I, uh, I know the feeling.”

“Well,” Steve says, glancing out at the rain and then back at Eddie: “I’ll see you, I guess?”

There’s an awkward thread of tension stretching out between them. He can’t quite work out what it means. “See you,” he agrees, and then Steve goes.

Chapter Text

Saturday morning, early, Eddie walks out to the mailbox at the front of the trailer park. It’s bright and mild outside, the rain having washed away the clouds and the cold air. He digs his hands in his pockets and averts his eyes as he walks past what used to be old Mr. Harris’ trailer, sitting there waiting to be sold. The guy died of pneumonia, apparently, only a couple weeks ago. Couldn’t afford the hospital so he just wheezed out of existence quietly. Only a hundred or so yards from everyone else in this trailer park, and nobody knew.

This while the place is cleaner, the grass greener and healthier and less scattered with used syringes. This while John Harrington got what he wanted, a profit-spinner to be proud of — profit because people like Mr. Harris were forgoing their insurance payments to afford the rent.

There’s three envelopes in their mailbox — two for Wayne, and one addressed to Eddie. He recognizes the handwriting, and it’s marked Shanghai, China, and there’s only one person he knows in Shanghai, China. Janie.

He goes back to the trailer to read it, lighting a smoke and sitting on the porch cross-legged. Eddie, it starts — she’s never been one for formalities. Things are about the same as they were the last time I wrote. My dad spends most of his time working, so I barely ever see him, though he makes me dinner sometimes which is nice. He has a new girlfriend and she’s convinced he’s going to marry her, which I wouldn’t trust him with, to be honest. Not that he doesn’t like her. He’s just so aimless, I guess. Weird and hot-and-cold. I don’t really know what he’s doing out here. He doesn’t seem any happier than he was when he lived at home.

Shanghai is cool, though. I think you’d like it. China as a whole feels so much broader than Indiana, so much less provincial, if you see what I mean. Not that it doesn’t have its own close-mindedness, of course, but it feels like there’s more opportunity here. Fuck the American dream, right? Maybe that’s why my dad came back.

I met someone, too. He’s a student at the University — which is good and bad, apparently, I’ve been hearing all about it, maybe I will come back to America for college after all — and his name’s Xiaoping. Maybe it’s weird for me to tell you this. I don’t know. But he’s cool, and you’d like him. He’s really smart, studying Engineering, and he loves cooking. I’m in his kitchen right now, actually, as I write this. He’s practicing his jiaozi for Chinese New Year, though I keep reminding him it’s months away. He’s from a province in the north, anyway, and apparently there they eat them all year round. He’s a total perfectionist about the stuff he does but he’s also chill about everyone else? Which is nice. Like, he holds himself to a high standard but he’s not a snob. I get the feeling his family’s very traditional, though, like sometimes he says stuff about me being so ‘American’ and I mean yeah I am very American, I was born there, but it’s a weird thing I guess. I thought I’d feel so at home here but I’m not quite at home anywhere, almost. I keep turning around to make pop culture references to you, only you’re not there and no one else really gets it.

Anyway. Aaron sounds interesting. I’m glad the band’s going well. You should think about performing somewhere — like, if a tree falls in a forest with no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? That, but for your band. You’ve got to have an audience. What does Wayne think? Has he heard you guys yet?

I should probably ask how my mom’s doing. So: how’s my mom doing?

Also, there’s no point in sending me your homework questions. If I answered them you’d only receive it about five weeks too late. Though, judging by your usual organization, that might be right on time.

I hope Hawkins isn’t too dull without me.

Love,

Janie.

He folds it in half again and looks up at the sky, sharp blue in the fresh of the morning. Funny, how she can be so much more open in a letter than she ever was in person. Or perhaps it’s not a distance thing, more of a time thing. Time heals all wounds, as they say, and as much as it pains him, Eddie’s pretty sure he was a wound to her. Back when.

Not so much anymore.

He does actually have an answer for her regarding her mom, however. A couple weeks back Wayne came home with the surprising announcement that Alice Qu is seeing the foreman of the steelworks — surprising because everyone knows that Icex and its poor treatment of her husband is the reason he left Hawkins in the first place. Eddie wonders how he might put that in a letter. Your mom’s dating the racist bastard who ruined your life. Because that would go down so well.

The last time he saw Janie, she was disappearing into the departure gate at Indianapolis Airport. He drove her there, since her mom wouldn’t. He even allowed her to put her own music on in the van, the debut album of some band called The Bangles which had only been out a month or so. Feet on the dash, elbow hanging out of the open window, she rode shotgun with her now-short hair blowing around her head, a wide grin on her face, I’m finally getting the fuck out of here, look at me go, and he couldn’t quite swallow the knot at the back of his throat. He was hungover, too — they’d spent the evening toasting her departure, their first gesture towards the friendship they used to have since the end of ‘83, too little too late, or perhaps that was the point — and he couldn’t quite distinguish the cold feeling in his chest from that or from the knowledge that in an hour or two, Janie would be gone, and she wouldn’t be coming back any time soon.

“Good luck with your dad,” he’d told her at the gate.

She’d smiled at him dryly. “Thanks. Don’t fucking listen to yours.”

And then she was gone, and he drove back to Hawkins alone.

Now he makes himself some toast and eats it standing up with the radio on, some local thing about crop failures. It’s couched in vague, inoffensive language — like it’s something ordinary, like a drought, a simply bad year. Contamination, Eddie thinks, remembers Steve saying. A slow current of suspicion runs through him. A suspicion he’s beginning to learn, after the seamlessness of the cover-up last year. Not that he’s got any proof, of course, or any facts. Just a vague, hard-to-shed fear. Like what if all Wayne’s unionizing won’t do any good? What if it just makes it worse? Agent Faraday last year is hard to forget, after all. The cold, abstract threat. And if–

But no. He’s not doing this today.

He’s drowning out the loudness of his thoughts with a blaze of Motörhead — Killed By Death — thinking how nice it is to have control of his own music again and contemplating how he might go about fixing the van’s cassette player, when the phone rings. A bit early, he thinks, until he registers the clock and realizes he’s been drifting about the place for nearly two hours and it’s already ten a.m. So he can forgive it, he supposes, despite today being a Saturday.

“Munson residence,” he answers it, in his best butler voice. (Wayne gets pissed if he cheeses it up too much, sure, You’ve reached the humble abode of the Munson clan, how may I direct your call? but he said nothing about tone.)

“Eddie,” the person on the other end of the line says, a girl, confident and declarative. Then she gets less confident, voice halting as she goes on: “Five fifteen Larrabee. Can you take me?”

And he recognizes it then, the voice. From only a couple days ago. “Eleven.”

“Can you take me?” she repeats, impatience creeping in. Because of course he couldn’t have a normal weekend. Of course.

“It’s probably–” he reaches for the local map on the shelf by the table, opening it up and scanning it “–five one five, kid, not five fifteen. Is it in this county?”

“County?”

“Y’know, Roane County. The place we live.” He finds it difficult to believe he’s found himself in this position — explaining the geographical facts of life to someone, since usually they’re explaining them to him. He pinches the bridge of his nose and finds Larrabee in the index. It’s not so far away after all, only an hour or so. Desolate in the middle of nowhere, with not even a convenience store for ten miles or so. “Why’d you want to go there?”

“Mama.”

Eddie sucks in a breath and tries very deliberately not to react to this on any real emotional level. The kid’s looking for her mother, okay, sure. Fine. He can help her do that. Nothing to do with his own failure to do the same; the way he gave up on trying. “And she lives at 515 Larrabee?”

“Five fifteen.”

Eddie laughs despite himself, a little breathlessly. “Okay, sure. Five fifteen. You want me to drive you there? Why can’t Hopper do it?”

“He’s not here.” A silence, then, “He doesn’t want me to go out.”

“So surely–”

“I have to see her. He told me she was– gone. But she’s not. Friends don’t lie so I have to–”

“Okay,” Eddie says, very rapidly making a decision. What the hell else is he going to do, anyway? Get high and ignore his homework? Plus there’s that same iron conviction in her voice that he saw in her eyes the other day, a conviction that tells him she’s going to go to 515 Larrabee with or without him, if she has to fucking hitchhike. Which he’s not letting her do, so. “I’ll come pick you up, are you–”

“I’m at a– phone. In a box. By a playground.”

“A payphone?” He raises his eyebrows, a little incredulous. “How did you even–”

“A nice lady. She gave me– money, and showed me how. I found your number in the book.”

“You found my number in the book,” Eddie repeats distantly, feeling rather out of his depth. The girl can’t simply have superpowers, can she? She has to be resourceful too. “Well, I guess you walked from that spot in the woods, right? By where you’re living? So, uh, go back there and I’ll come pick you up?”

“Okay,” she says, and immediately hangs up.

Eddie paces a circle around the room, hands twitching — what the fuck, what the fuck, this kid is on the run from the government, this kid is– she kills people with her mind– how is this is problem this is way above his paygrade this is–

But it’s only an hour’s drive. How dangerous can it be?

He finds her by the side of the road as arranged; she hops in the van and hugs her satchel to her chest, all naive and sweet-looking like she couldn’t make a man’s brain bleed by looking at him. Eddie wrote a campaign like that once. A demon in the shape of a child his players thought they were rescuing — a demon that very much did not need rescuing at all.

Still, El isn’t a demon. There are far worse things than her out there.

He’s turned the stereo way down in an attempt to prevent mainstream radio’s assault on his ears, but it seems to catch El’s attention; without asking, she reaches over to turn it up. But hey, he signed himself up for this, right? For Laura Branigan, Self Control, a song he unwillingly knows all the words to, since Janie was obsessed with it from the moment it was released. El nods her head along and mentally he begins a list: Branigan, Benatar, okay, there’s a pattern forming. He can work with it.

(Something he finds himself doing, around new people. Using music to understand them. Steve’s slotted neatly under New Wave Second British Invasion, for example; Eddie resents that Billy shares the category he calls his own. Couldn’t the fucker be into country or something instead?)

“So tell me what we’re, uh, what we’re walking into here? You said your mom lives at this place, at 515 Larrabee?”

“Yes. But she is– something is wrong. I must speak to her.”

“How’d you even find any of this out?”

“A box. Under the floor. While I was cleaning up. Then I visited her, and she was–”

“You visited her?”

She looks at him impatiently. “Yes, and she saw me. No one else can see me when I do that. But she disappeared and now I have to find her. In– real life.”

Eddie remembers someone — he can’t recall who — telling him about that, last year. El lying down in a kiddie pool full of salt, sensory deprivation or whatever, finding Will with her mind in the Upside Down. So she can just– do that for anyone? Find anyone?

But he’s not going to go down that road — not right now, anyway. He’s already thought of his mom twice today and that’s twice too many. So he just nods and tries to ignore the way his mind is jumping at him like a dog straining on its leash.

515 Larrabee turns out to be off a truck stop, big white trucks lined up like slumbering beasts down the little road towards the house. It’s got a red door, a cute little lace curtain in the window, even the name sort of sweet and inviting, like the gingerbread house in Hansel and Gretel. Larrabee.

He looks at El as he cuts the engine. “Do you want me to– um, come in with you, or–?” He’s really hoping she’ll say no, actually, since this is the part he’s not at all good at. Adults, mothers. Christ. But she nods, taking a visibly deep breath before getting out of the van, and, well, looks like he’s in this now. So he follows her out.

She rings the doorbell as he loiters behind her, unable to really look — for a starter, what if she’s got the wrong house?

No answer. El starts hammering on the door, which, Eddie’s really not keen on getting escorted off the property with probably a bunch of truckers watching–

The door opens. “Look, I don’t want your Thin Mints, alright, kid?”

“Thin Mints?” El says, in that innocent sort of way.

“Or your religious mumbo–” The eyes of the woman behind the door catch on Eddie and she falters, eyebrows drawing together in a worried frown. What? he thinks about saying. I don’t look like a Jehovah’s Witness to you?

El senses a gap in the woman’s resolve and she presses forward. Says, “I want to see Mama,” with that intensity to her gaze, and the woman swallows and her eyes dart back to El and she says weakly, “I don’t know what you’re…” but can’t even finish it, like she doesn’t have the strength to lie.

Inside, the house is homey, cluttered in a way that’s more about nice objects and day-to-day living than real disorder, like the mess of Eddie’s floor. He lingers awkwardly as the woman introduces herself — Becky Ives, she says, El’s mom’s sister. And she shows El through and Eddie has little choice but to follow so he loiters in the doorway with Becky as El–

El approaches her mom.

Becky, a foot or so away from him, reeks of cigarettes. He could really do with one about now. El’s mom is vacant-looking, sickly, rocking slowly in her chair with her eyes on Family Feud: “Visit with other employees,” Richard Dawson says on the screen, as El says, “Mama,” and her Mama doesn’t seem to say anything at all, just random words, just rainbow, three to the right, four to the left, breathe, sunflower, and over again.

“What’s wrong with her?” Eddie says, despite himself, unable to look away. El draws closer, moves to kneel in front of her mother, who doesn’t even look at her. Not one glance.

“This government program she was in,” Becky says tiredly. “They gave her all these drugs, fried her brain up good. She doesn’t have any idea what’s going on around her, y’know, I wouldn’t want to call her a vegetable but–” She stops herself, eyes on El even as she speaks to Eddie. “Sorry, who are you?”

“Eddie,” he says. “I’m, uh, babysitting.”

“Sure you are,” she returns, sounding like she doesn’t believe him at all. Which is fair. He’s not sure he’s very convincing.

“Why won’t she answer?” El says, looking back at them from the floor. Eyes wide and plaintive like a fucking kitten. Eddie sort of wants to run away. “Why won’t she–”

“C’mon, sweetie,” Becky says, gesturing to the kitchen. Her face is twisted up like she’s trying to hold some emotion in, though her voice comes out steady. When she sits down, she looks sad and strung-out against the red gingham curtains, fluttering in the breeze of an open window.

“She hasn’t been responsive for years,” Becky says. “Ever since she– well, she lost you–” Her face twists again and she looks at her hands. “She said you were alive. But no one believed her.”

“I’m here now,” El says. “But– she won’t get better. Will she?”

Becky looks down. “They don’t think so, no. But she’s not in any pain. She’s just stuck, they think. Like in a dream. A long dream.”

“A good dream?”

Eddie hunches down in his seat, something tight in his chest like he can’t quite get enough air. They gave her all these drugs, fried her brain up good. Some CIA program, isn’t that what they said? But all he hears is drugs, can’t get the word out of his head. Of course he can’t. It’s his trade, his dad’s trade, and this is someone’s mom–

“I’m gonna go for a smoke,” he mumbles, pushing his chair back and making for the door. They let him go. He doesn’t look at Terry Ives on the way out; can’t bring himself to. This is more than he signed up for. He signed up to drive the kid somewhere, not– not this–

The nicotine is a little calming, though not as much as it was when he first started smoking. He’s worn his body’s tolerance down, or something, the same way he has with the drugs. An amount of Special K that might have had him comatose last year is now what he’d term the sweet spot, just right for dulling what misfires in his head.

He wonders if he could ever end up like her. Like Terry Ives. Drooling in a rocking chair with nothing behind his eyes. It’s a sobering thought, sure, but he knows his limits. Right? He’s in control of his limits. Not like Terry, not like the government sticking needles in her arm. Fuck the government. Eddie’s going to manage his own destruction, if it has to happen. A vegetable on his own terms.

There’s another rocking chair on the porch. A well-kept blanket draped over it, marked by signs of frequent repair. A house with care and attention in it; a house that contains love. It reminds him of Joyce’s porch, a little. He’s not going to be so lazy as to call it a feminine or maternal touch. It’s something both deeper and less innate than that. It’s a sort of– hope in the world. Or in people in the world. Or else a fuck-you to it, look, I’m here still caring about things, still surviving, despite everything you did to me–

Eddie smiles a little around his cigarette. He likes that idea.

He spots movement across the way. A big guy, bearded, a baseball cap on his head, moving towards the line of trucks. There must be a diner or even a public bathroom somewhere around, unless he was pissing in the woods. He seems to notice Eddie, because he raises half a hand in greeting, then lowers it again with a frown. Eddie can’t deny his own incongruity. Rural, working idyll; he can’t exactly pass for an electrician, or whatever. Just here to fix Ms. Ives’ circuit breaker.

“I ain’t seen you around here before, kid,” the guy says, approaching. He’s got his keys in his hand, jangling as he swings them around his finger. “You visitin’ Miss Ives?”

Eddie exhales a cloud of smoke. “Something like that.”

“Somethin’ like that?” The guy is frowning. Eddie’s suddenly very aware of how much taller and wider the guy is, how many pounds he’s probably got on Eddie. All the better to do something violent with.

Eddie shifts, light on his feet, getting ready to run. He’s always getting ready to run. “I’m, uh, a friend of a relative of hers, y’know? I drove the kid here to see her aunt. Thirteen’s a little too young to get behind the wheel, right? I’m just helping out.”

A silent moment. Eddie wonders if the guy has a gun; wonders if he’d even need it to totally ruin Eddie’s day. But then the guy smiles. “I don’t know, you gotta get ‘em there early, make it feel natural. I know I was raised on drivin’ my old man’s ‘47 Chevy pick-up truck round rural Kansas roads. Sure, I totalled the thing on a goddamn chughole, deepest one I’ve ever seen, like a grave, it was, an open goddamn grave in the middle of the road, but I sure am good at dodgin’ those little shits now.”

“I bet your old man liked that.”

“Oh, yeah, he was thrilled to pieces. But my brother ruined his tractor the followin’ week, so really I got out of it pretty quick. He always loved the tractor more.” The guy regards him speculatively. “That a Kansas twang I detect in there, son?”

Eddie frowns at himself. The Munsons hail from a little town south of Topeka, not that he’s ever been there. It’s an accent learned from his dad and his uncle simply by proximity. And he doesn’t have much of it at all, except when he’s truly out of it or, apparently, around strangers from the same place. “Kinda, yeah. My dad was from Kansas.”

“Shit, kid, sorry.” The guy gives him a sympathetic look, and Eddie realizes what he said. “Losin’ your dad, it’s tough.”

“Yeah,” Eddie mumbles, scuffing his foot on the porch floor. The thing is, it doesn’t feel all that wrong. To put his dad in the past tense. To say, that part of my life is over now, thank you. Chapter closed. To imagine his dad dead and buried. “So, you, uh, you know the Ives, or–?”

“Yeah, I drive this route pretty regularly. Miss Ives offered a cup of coffee and a place to piss when the bathrooms were out of order one time, and I’ve had a few more cups since. Nice lady.”

Eddie looks over his shoulder through the door, though El and Becky are nowhere to be seen. He wonders what El’s thinking. If she’s glad to be here. If she’s beginning to consider it home. “I guess.”

“Which is why I came to check on you, I guess. Make sure you ain’t makin’ trouble for her, y’know? But you seem like a good kid. I get instincts about people, good and bad, and I can tell you’re a good one.” Eddie doesn’t really know what to say to that. He ducks his head. But the guy continues: “Whereabouts in Kansas you from, kid?”

“Verona County,” he says, flicking ash to the ground. “But I’ve never been. Don’t even know which town it is.”

“Verona County,” the guy repeats. “I’ve driven through it a couple times, it’s nice. You should go back.”

Eddie feels his mouth twist in a humorless smile. What could he possibly find there waiting for him? Some cousin he’s never met? The grandmother Wayne doesn't talk about? The lingering ghost of his father’s bad reputation? “Maybe.”

“I’m from closer to Wichita myself, near the Oklahoma border. Born, bred, and married in the same town, how about that, huh?”

“How about that,” Eddie echoes, as he hears movement behind him and Becky emerges from the house. She’s got her arms crossed over her middle, mouth set in a nervous line.

“Hey, Earl,” she says, and the guy nods.

“Miss Ives. You okay?”

“I’m fine, thanks. You want– uh, you want a cup of coffee?”

“No, no, I should get on the road. Thanks, though. You’re a gem.” He gives her a little salute, and nods to Eddie, then heads back up the path to his truck, clearly having determined Eddie to be no real threat. Eddie watches him go, wonders if anything lies behind the satisfied, peaceful surface he puts out. How about that, huh? Are there really people so at ease with their provincial circumstances? With their circumstances in general?

“Can I talk to you?” Becky says, when Earl’s disappeared from view. Eddie turns to her and has to force himself to take a breath, rolling the tension out of his shoulders. He nods, and she leans back against the wall, lighting her own cigarette. “Who exactly are you two, really?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean–” a shaky inhale, like something’s got her freaked out, “kids don’t just appear like that, with– with secret powers, y’know, she’s saying she can talk to Terry inside her head and that isn’t even– how is that even possible?”

He laughs. “Believe me, it’s possible. And she’s exactly who she says she is. So am I. I mean,” and he looks closer at her, discerns some strangled thread of doubt in her eyes, “if you’re asking me to drive her back home, well, I don’t think she’s gonna let me.” He closes his eyes and takes a breath. “She wanted to find her family.”

“And she has,” Becky says suddenly, voice sharp. “I just–” She deflates again, scratching at her forehead with her cigarette held loose between her fingers. “It’s a lot to believe in, isn’t it?”

No more than mending and mending that blanket on the porch, like it matters, like Terry can even feel its warmth. Becky believes in that, right? Becky believes in that as a kindness, as a hope. She’s not the tough, stringy recluse she made herself out to be at the door — Earl’s concern is testament enough to that. Eddie feels the bite of something strangely like longing. The feeling that maybe there are other people in the world who are better than they make themselves out to be, people maybe like his mom. (Certainly not his dad.) The desire to trust in that feeling, to let it thaw him out. That’s the thing that’s a lot to believe in. “Maybe it is. But you gotta let her try, right? You owe her that much.”

Becky takes an audibly deep breath. “Yeah,” she says. “I do.”

When they go inside, El’s sitting at the kitchen table, eyes bright with impatience. “I’m going to talk to Mama,” she says to Eddie, as Becky pulls a kitchen towel out of a drawer and folds it into a blindfold.

“Don’t you need a– y’know, a pool, or whatever, for that?”

She shakes her head. “I am stronger now. And Mama is right here, not Upside Down.”

Eddie looks sharply at Becky, but she doesn’t react. Maybe she’s passing it off as just another of the cryptic, weird things El says that don’t make any rational sense. Which, hey, that’s exactly what it is, so. But he can’t prevent the thrill of adrenaline through his veins anyway. If she calls someone– if they’re listening–

It wouldn’t be totally unreasonable to think they’ve got this house bugged, right? Would it?

Which means–

God, Agent Faraday would have expected him to turn El in. Right? As soon as he saw her, alive and breathing and very much rightside-up? Government property, and all? Which, Eddie would never do that. Not on his fucking life. But this isn’t on his life, it’s on his uncle’s life, and it’s very much in his interest to ensure he and El remain under the radar on this one. Then again, if he tells Becky her niece is wanted by the government she’s going to flip her shit, which is sort of fair, since who wants a kid on the run under their roof? But this is El’s family. Her home, even, if she wants it. So if he’s going to break the news, he’ll need to do it gently.

El leads them through to the other room, where she turns the television to static and kneels before Terry again. Eddie’s not sure he can watch; he’s also not sure he can look away. She puts the blindfold on and faces her mother. Is this how she found her, too? he thinks. Is this how it works?

And would it work for someone else?

Chapter Text

El surfaces out of whatever trance she’s in with a ragged gasp, tugging the blindfold down her face as blood drips from her nose and Becky makes an awkward sort of move to comfort her. Eddie takes a step forward too, unable to help himself. Unable to shed his curiosity.

“She showed me– so many things. Over and over again,” El gets out. “She showed me– the hospital. And– a baby– and the sunflowers– she broke into the Lab, she had a gun, she– she shot someone, and she got into the rainbow room and there was another girl there and then they took her away and they–”

El’s face crumples. Eddie doesn’t even want to imagine what she might have said. Becky meets his eyes as she hugs El from behind, a heavy, apologetic look in her gaze. Like, yeah, it’s a lot to believe in, and now she’s believing in it.

They make it to the kitchen, where Eddie gets the job of brewing tea. He heats water on the stovetop while listening to their conversation behind him: “And it just kept repeating?”

“Repeat?” El questions, the way she often does.

“Like a circle? Just showing you the same image over and over?”

“She kept showing the girl in the room.”

“The rainbow room?” A silence. Eddie turns around and they’re staring at each other like they’re trying to read each other’s minds, like maybe that would be easier. Maybe it would. Eddie has enough trouble communicating with his own uncle, and he didn’t have his language stunted by growing up in a lab. “What did the girl look like?”

“Different.”

“Different than you?”

“I think this is why Mama wanted to talk.”

“To show you the girl?”

A pause. “I think she wants me to find her.” El almost whispers this, like it’s too profound to disturb the peace of the room. Like this is what it’s all been about, and oh no, Eddie did not sign up for this. He signed up for a short hop to Larrabee and back, two hours on the road and that’s all, this girl could be in fucking Canada for all he knows.

But then Becky’s going through to the study and rifling through a filing cabinet and when Eddie says, “Now, wait a second–” no one listens to him. Who’s not believing now? he thinks to himself, with a twist of bitter irony in it. But this has very rapidly gone from cutesy family reunion to–

To the kind of shit he got involved in last year, and he’s not here for that. He’s signed stacks of NDAs and kept his head down and tried to forget a girl called Eleven ever existed, not that he met her back then, and now–

But this is happening with or without him, it seems. El’s found the girl among all the files and she’s holding the picture up, tracing it with a wondrous finger. “I can find her with this,” she says, and Eddie’s heart sinks.

He doesn’t watch her do it this time. He goes outside for another smoke, breathes in rapidly cooling air, finds the sky deepening into the last half of the afternoon. He isn’t sure why he’s so mixed up about this, exactly. Perhaps something to do with the fact that El uses photographs to find people, apparently, and he hasn’t got a single one of his mom.

It was a hope that lasted perhaps an hour. Really, he should know better. Where would it have led him, anyway? A crack den? A cemetery? Better not to know.

After a little while, El comes outside. She looks downcast, wiping blood from her lip, her face cast in a soft rose color from the sunset. “I didn’t find her,” she says.

Eddie takes a breath. “So, does that mean we’re–”

“I want to stay.”

“Uh, okay.” His hands twitch; he doesn’t know quite what to do with them, now he’s finished his cigarette. “I mean, I should probably get home, y’know, if you’re okay with me, um, leaving you here–”

Is that an okay thing to do? Becky’s her aunt, right, surely that’s okay–

Ah. But there’s the whole wanted by the government thing, which he hasn’t quite got around to explaining yet, and he’s willing to bet El hasn’t breathed a word of it. She probably doesn’t quite understand it, actually, and he, being the responsible adult of the two of them, is in charge. Fuck. “El, what if the– y’know, the government people, what if they’re watching this house?” He thinks about the trucker who came over to talk to him. Earl. Friendly enough, acting like he was just concerned about Becky, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe he was too curious. “She doesn’t know anything about it, does she? She can’t protect you if she doesn’t know what you’re running from.”

“Running,” El repeats, and her face twists. Eddie gets a strange sense of deja-vu.

“El–”

“This is important. I know it’s important. I have to keep looking for the girl.”

He sighs helplessly. “Okay, well, why don’t you, uh, why don’t you try again.”

She looks at him for a moment, then nods. But she doesn’t go back inside; she just sits down in the rocking chair, holding the photograph tight in her fingers as she closes her eyes. He crosses his arms over his chest and waits, fidgeting with the sleeve of his jacket. It’s getting cold out. His breath is misting in the air, the trees rustling around them. It’s getting fucking creepy again, he thinks, as he watches a trail of blood slide down El’s lip. Why does it have to be creepy again?

Her eyes fly open; she jolts upright. “I found her,” she says, and then jumps to her feet, rushing into the house to tell Becky this too and he follows, only Becky’s on the phone. In the other room, but they can hear her clearly: “...gave me this number, and he came here looking for her. I thought maybe he could help me. Yeah, Jim Hopper, he came here with some woman named Joyce Byers?”

Eddie freezes. Just ahead of him, El’s done the same, her shoulders tensing into a hard line. Right, because she’s running away from Hopper too. But that’s not what Eddie’s worried about. Eddie’s worried about Becky talking on the phone — talking about El, referencing her, connecting her with other names the government knows, names they’ll be looking out for in the haze of phone chatter across the lines–

Shit. Oh, shit.

“We gotta get out of here,” he says lowly, urgently to her. “If they’ve tapped your aunt’s phone–”

She nods. So quietly, carefully, they creep back out of the house and to his van. He doesn’t check his wing mirrors to see if Becky comes out after them; he sees El looking back, out of the corner of his eye, and when she turns around her cheeks are wet.

He clears his throat. “Y’know, surely you’ll be safest in Hawkins–”

“I have to find her,” El insists, her voice steady despite the tears. “Chicago. She’s in Chicago.”

“So you want to– to go to Chicago? Tonight?”

“Yes.”

He takes a deep breath. Moves one hand off the wheel to pass it over his face with a grimace. “It’s gonna be pitch dark soon, kid, it’s gonna be–” But then he thinks about the alternatives. Her sneaking off and catching a fucking Greyhound, or else not letting him turn around at all. Using her magic powers on his stick shift. It’s not like he’s really got an option. And the government men might expect her to go to Hawkins; they wouldn’t expect her to go someplace else. So — “Okay. Okay, fine, whatever. But I gotta call my uncle when we pass a payphone, tell him I won’t be home.”

“Thank you,” she says, and for the first time her voice wavers. “I can’t– go back to Hopper. I can’t.”

He looks sideways at her. “That have anything to do with Hopper not being home this morning?”

“We– fought. I broke the windows. But he broke the TV! And he wouldn’t let me see Mike!”

Eddie flexes his hand on the wheel and, not for the first time, wonders how the hell he got here. It’s not like this is really a thing he knows, guilt after a fight with his dad. More likely the ache of whatever joint had been jostled out of place in the process — nothing so complex as remorse. Fuck remorse. But then again. “Y’know, I– I live with my uncle. Because my dad, he was a prick. Just– a total piece of shit. So, I left. But getting used to being around my uncle — it was tough. We didn’t know how to handle each other. We’d fight sometimes and I’d just, uh, I’d just get so angry, completely disproportionately angry, like I was reacting more to the memory of something else than what he was actually saying to me. Do you ever– y’know, feel like that?”

A silence. He remembers he’s in the car with a bad-tempered psychic thirteen year old — that so transparent an attempt at empathizing with her isn’t likely to go well. But then she nods. “Yes. Sometimes. I– I said he was like Papa. But he’s not.”

“And your papa, he was the prick, right?”

“Definitely. A–” she tries it out “–total prick.” He grins, despite himself. He couldn’t get this far without teaching the kid to swear, after all. Then she looks at him with a frown. “What happened to your dad?”

He thinks about saying it. (Lying.) He died. It feels true enough, in the back of his brain. What might my dad be doing now? he can ask himself, and he can’t even picture it. Eating lunch off a prison tray, sleeping in his cell. Picking a fight with another inmate. These are ideas that occur to him abstractly, as things that happen in prison. Not necessarily to Eddie’s dad.

So yes, in some sense, he may as well be dead.

But Eddie doesn’t say this. He says, “He’s in prison, actually. Has been for– I don’t know, a year and a bit?”

“For– being a prick?”

He laughs. “Pretty much, actually, yeah. I suppose he got his just desserts.”

“Just desserts?”

“Like, he got what he deserved. That’s what just desserts means.”

“Papa got just desserts. He died.” El doesn’t sound very happy when she says this, though; her face is grim, her voice quiet. “It wasn’t me.”

He glances at her, trying to conceal the shock in his tone: “You wish you’d, uh, killed him?”

“Maybe.” She doesn’t say anything else, just stares out the window at the night fields rushing past. He swallows and tries to think rationally.

Because, yeah. He thought about it himself, once or twice. How much easier it would be if he could just–

But he was a kid. Skinny with joints that didn’t work — don’t work — and it was never a realistic possibility, for him. Just something he’d daydream about, and be able to daydream about simply because it could never happen.

But El is different. El can do whatever she wants. Which is her right, really, when someone’s treated her that way — but it feels oily and dark, queasy in his stomach as he thinks about it.

About an hour later he spots a gas station with a payphone by it; he parks up and turns to tell El to stay in the van, but she’s got her head knocked against the glass, mouth slightly open as she sleeps. It only brings it home quite how young she is, and he bites down on the inside of his cheek to prevent himself from just turning around and driving them both home. She needs this, he tells himself.

Wayne picks up after several rings, so many Eddie’s half given up hope. He sounds sharp and busy: “Wayne Munson.”

“Uncle Wayne, hey. You in the middle of something?”

“Just got back from a meetin’ with Pete Freelin’. What is it?”

Pete Freeling. Eddie thinks idly back to what Robbie Freeling asked of him and gets a little shudder. “Just letting you know I’m not gonna be home tonight. You’re not working, right?”

“No, I ain’t workin’. Are you– what, you goin’ to the city, or…?”

Wayne’s tone is hesitant, a little awkward, because they both know what going to the city means. Not that he’s done it in a while, or even did it that regularly when he did. A few weekends here and there, until they gradually petered out over the summer. He got bored, he tells himself. It just began to feel cold and lonely, especially without Janie. “Yeah, I am. Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

“No, that’s okay. You– uh, you be safe, okay, kid? You look after yourself.”

“I will,” Eddie says softly, and hangs up. He looks around the gas station lot carefully, remembering they’re sort of on the run right now — could they be followed? Who’s that in the red sedan? The cashier in the store, under ugly fluorescent lights, is he looking at them funny? Is Eddie being paranoid?

He swallows the sudden jolt of anxiety down and gets back into the van. El’s blinking awake, eyes luminous in the dark. “You called your uncle?”

“Yeah, I told him I wouldn’t be home. Don’t worry, I didn’t mention you.”

She smiles at him, a small, warm smile, and then tucks herself back against the window to sleep. He keeps on driving with the radio down low, some The Fixx song he’s gritting his teeth to because it’s better than driving in silence. And then soon enough he’s spotting signs for Illinois, for Chicago, and he says, “El,” gently, but enough to wake her again. She looks around with wide eyes, the city taking shape around her — she’s probably never even seen a city, he realizes — and then directs him (apparently more out of instinct than anything like concrete knowledge) towards a sketchier area. He drives not uneasily, exactly, since he’s been to plenty of neighborhoods like this before, but he keeps his eyes open. Stays watchful. It’s a natural instinct, something he slips into as easy as a well-worn sweater. A cloak he wears, as he parks up somewhere out of the way and follows El down an alley.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” he hisses to her, as he skirts a couple used syringes. (Then again, also not a sight he’s never seen.)

“Yes,” she says in return, so firmly and earnestly that he has no choice but to believe it. Then eventually she halts opposite a derelict warehouse, covered in graffiti. A visible deep breath. “Here,” she says. “My sister is here.”

Eddie stares at the building, wondering what the fuck he’s walked himself into. But hell. He’s here now.

“Hello?” El calls out as they go in, before he can stop her. Best not to draw attention to themselves before they know what they’re dealing with, in his experience, but hey. She’s the one with superpowers. Inside the warehouse it’s cool and damp-smelling, water dripping in puddles on the floor. Nice place to live, huh.

He finds himself wishing he had a weapon. Not that he’d be any good at using it, but– just something there. Then again, something else he learned in the years he ran schemes with his dad — never escalate the situation yourself. Never turn a fistfight into a knife fight; any weapon you have can be taken and used against you. And would be, since he’s about as strong as a newborn foal still finding its legs.

El doesn’t really have that problem.

“Hello?” El calls again, rounding the corner, and there, there they are. ‘They’ being three punky figures in dark clothing, huddled around a trashcan bonfire — two dark-skinned girls and a white guy with a mohawk, which guy stands up as soon as he spots them, a switchblade flicking out from his sleeve.

“Now, who the fuck are you?” he says, stepping closer with the knife pointed at them. He’s got an inch or so on Eddie and a manic sort of look in his eyes, the kind of look Eddie’s seen in these circles before. But there’s also something predatory, strangely piercing, in the way he scans Eddie up and down.

“I’m looking for my sister,” El says.

The two girls shift by the fire, one of them scoffing. “Get them the hell outta here, Axel, couple loonies walked in off the street.”

“Like we’re any different,” the other girl says sharply, standing up. She’s tiny, barely five feet tall, but the intensity of her gaze has only one match — El’s. She comes forward and pushes Axel’s arm down, pushes the knife down. Eddie releases a breath he was only half aware of holding. “What do you mean, sister?”

El, without moving a muscle, snatches the knife from Axel’s hand and lets it float in the air between them. Eddie feels a change in the atmosphere — certainly he, himself, is unable to speak. Because sure, he’s heard about it. Not really seen it, not until now, not beyond a smashed headlamp and a psychic mother. And now Axel is backing away, shaking his head, and the other girl by the fire has sat up straight and the girl in front of them– she’s not backing away, she’s not cowed or awed or anything she’s just–

–curious. Interested. And Eddie doesn’t even need to hear what she says next to think okay, yeah, maybe this is her.

“What is your name?” the girl says, moving in a circle around El. Eddie feels himself ignored, shunted to the side, and really he’s quite happy with that.

“Jane,” El says. Eddie glances at her, wonders if that’s what he should call her now, or if it’s some deliberate plan. Protection.

“How did you find me?”

“I saw you. Mama showed me you, in her– dream circle.”

“Dream circle?” Axel scoffs, but a glare from the girl silences him. She stands directly in front of El and reaches for her arm; El lets her. They compare bare skin, and when Eddie leans forward he sees what they’re looking at: matching tattoos. 011 and 008.

Like they’re in a fucking James Bond movie.

“Sister,” El whispers.

“Sister,” the girl says in response. “I am Kali. It’s so good to meet you.” She draws El into an embrace and El returns it, the tension sliding out of her like everything’s suddenly okay. Eddie wonders what it would be like, idly, for a puzzle piece to slot into place that way. For the world to just make sense in one smooth movement.

And then they’re looking at him. “Who are you?” Kali says, and her tone is even but distinctly icier than before.

“Eddie,” he says. “I’m just the driver.”

“He’s a friend.” El’s voice is fierce. “He helped me find you.”

Axel rolls his eyes. “Great. Oh, great. So we’ve got Shirley Temple and Black fucking Sabbath over here, that’s gonna do us so much good–”

“Okay, Johnny Rotten, who the fuck are you to talk?” Eddie snaps, and Axel stares at him as Kali and the other girl begin to laugh.

“He’s got ya there, Axel,” the other girl says, coming over. “I’m Mick. Bullying Axel like that, you’ll fit right in.”

“Hey, we don’t even know who the fuck these people are yet,” Axel hisses, “you’re gonna–”

“Yes, we do,” Kali says, in a tone that brooks no argument. “Jane is my sister. She comes from the same place I come from, and she belongs with us. I’m going to go and talk to her a little more, okay? Why don’t you ask Eddie what his intentions are, if you’re so worried?”

Eddie sets his shoulders and hopes that that amounts to nothing more than a polite conversation. El looks at him worriedly: “No one can hurt him.”

“And no one will. Right?” Kali looks at Axel and Mick in turn, then back at Axel, eyes stern. Axel has to be older than her, though maybe only by a couple years, but he seems to obey her orders pretty much without question. So then Kali and El are disappearing off upstairs, and it’s just Eddie and Axel and Mick in the drafty, damp warehouse.

“You a city boy?” Mick says, settling back into her chair by the fire. He draws closer hesitantly.

“No fucking way, man, he’s as country as Shirley Temple, just hides it better.” Axel sits down too, shaking his head in disgust. “The people we associate with, honestly.”

“What, because I grew up knowing what the color green looks like?” Eddie shakes his head too, getting out a cigarette and moving to put the pack away — then thinking better of it, and offering it out to the pair of them. Mick shakes her head; Axel takes one, eyes mapping Eddie’s face as he does it.

“Green’s overrated. And yes, before someone gets smart, I mean that in the recreational sense too. Now, give me a nice shot of horse, that’s the stuff…”

“I thought you were sober,” Mick says, with careful carelessness.

“Doesn’t mean a man can’t daydream, all right? ‘S about the only fix I get these days, except the jobs, and let me tell you, the horse was better for my blood pressure.”

“So what are you doing it for, then?” Eddie asks, and receives blank looks in return. “The ‘jobs’. It’s pretty obvious what you mean. You got Halloween masks over there–” he nods to the table where they lie discarded in a pile “–and somehow you guys don’t seem the, uh, the trick-or-treating types. The warehouse, the trashcan fire, isn’t it a little, I don’t know, cliche? You’re robbing places, right? I’m guessing smash and grab, maybe you’re hitting low- to mid-profile banks. My question is, what are you doing with the cash? Because you’re not exactly blowing it on rent.”

Axel jumps to his feet but Mick grabs his arm — “Kali told us to play nice, remember?” — and he slowly sits back down. “You seem awfully knowledgeable for a hick, asshole.”

“You think there’s no crime in rural Indiana?” Then Eddie smiles crookedly. “But the bigger stuff happened in the city, I’ll give you that. You, uh, you haven’t answered my question.”

“Because you were wrong,” Mick says. Eddie frowns.

“We’re not after money,” Axel continues for her. “As nice as it might be to eat something better than artery-rotting takeout all the time, that’s not the point. Wealth of the soul, rather than the wallet, et cetera. We’re not actually hitting banks or department stores or whatever. Or, if we do, it’s not to empty the register. That’s just a bonus. What we’re really doing–”

“–is taking something else that we’re owed.”

They all turn: Kali is standing at the top of the steps, El a little way behind her. She looks elated, steady. Like she belongs.

A dramatic pause. (Eddie can respect that much, a little melodrama — it goes a long way.) “Revenge.”

He feels a strange foreboding creep through him. “Against who?”

“Anyone,” Axel drawls. “Anyone who hurt us. Though money would be nice.”

“Axel is deeply concerned with material possessions,” Kali says. “The rest of us, not so much. It’s simple. We track the people who hurt us, find them, and kill them. It’s only what they deserve.”

“Just desserts,” El whispers, and it echoes in the large space. Fucking no, Eddie thinks, she’s not doing this, she’s not doing this to herself–

But it’s not up to him.

“We’re going out tomorrow night. Jane–” and then Kali looks directly at Eddie “–and Eddie, too, are you with us?”

El doesn’t say anything, but her jaw is set in a hard line. Like she wants to, or else feels like she has no choice but to. Eddie, for his part, takes a shaky breath and tries not to look weak even as he says, “I don’t–”

“Aw, baby’s never killed anyone,” Axel says.

Eddie thinks about setting the demogorgon on fire a year ago. The thing’s sinewy limbs going up in flames; the way it screamed. Granted, he doesn’t think it died, but does that count? What about the drugs he’s pushed, the cars he’s hotwired, the cash he’s stolen? How many lives did he ruin, how many people did he inadvertently kill doing that?

But actually kill?

“Fucking criminal know-it-all hasn’t even gotten his hands dirty. Jesus.”

“Relax, Axel. We don’t need him too. Unless he’s got some magic ability he’s not telling us about?” Mick says, and Eddie shakes his head. “Yeah. So he can just– go home, I guess, or hang around, I don’t know. It’s up to Kali.”

“It’s up to everyone, Funshine and Dottie too,” Kali says. “But you would have to earn your keep some other way, if you did not come on jobs.”

“No, that’s– that’s okay,” he says hurriedly. Doesn’t even think about it, even though perhaps a few years ago he would have been leaping at the opportunity, a life he was familiar with but on his own terms, nothing like the harsh awakening of shelter and kindness at Wayne’s–

He’s different now. Softer, maybe, that’s true. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.

“I, uh, I’ve gotta get back at some point, but I’m gonna hang around for– Jane for a little while. Make sure she’s okay, y’know?”

“What, when we’re such a cute and cuddly bunch.” Axel grins, showing off bad teeth — a brush with meth, too? — and then waves acceptance. Mick and Kali nod, and then that’s that. Eddie staying for the night, not sure what he’s doing here (trying to talk El out of it?) and then leaving tomorrow. Like the whole thing was a fever dream.

The two other members of the group, Funshine and Dottie, appear a little while later, bearing bags of Chinese takeout. They’re clearly the junior members of the group, in terms of a pecking order, since they don’t raise much of a fuss or even ask many questions about the presence of Eddie and El. They just pass them a box or two of noodles.

Later, they’re shown places to sleep. Eddie tosses and turns on a low spare mattress for a while, with a spring digging into his back (found it on the side of the road, if you can believe it, PLEASE TAKE, like, what kind of lucky is that?) and feeling acutely aware of the whine of sirens in the distant night. He could use a joint, but El’s sleeping on the other side of the room, in a real bed, and he’s not gonna disturb her with that shit. So, when his racing heart refuses to slow for the second hour in a row, he rolls out of bed and quietly creeps back down the stairs to the main warehouse, where the fire is burning low. There’s already a figure sitting by it, recognizable by the tall tower of his hair. Axel.

Eddie rolls his eyes but doesn’t retreat; he’ll have been spotted by now anyway. But he also doesn’t get his joint out. Axel’s sober, right? It would only be rude.

“Quitting while you’re ahead?” Axel’s voice echoes in the space, breaking the damp silence. “Don’t blame ya. It’s not for everyone.”

“Here for a smoke, actually.” Eddie lights one and offers the pack to Axel; again, Axel takes one. Maybe a little cowed apology in his eyes, flickering in the lighter’s flame. “You on the night watch?”

“It’s my shift,” Axel says, grinning crookedly. He picks up a bottle of beer from the floor beside his chair and holds it out. “You want a swig of this?”

“Thought you were sober,” Eddie says, not yet moving to take it.

“I am. Of drugs and heavy liquor,” Axel adds. “I mean, beer and cigarettes, you gotta have a reason to live, right?”

“Right.” Eddie shrugs, thinks what the hell, and takes the bottle of beer. It’s lukewarm and somewhat flat, but on a stomach empty but for half a box of noodles, it begins to take the edge off. “There a story there, or…?”

“Not much of one. Same thing that happens to everyone, really, you take shitty adults with no money who don’t want a kid and you give them one and you sorta expect it to go wrong, don’t you? You expect it to lead you someplace like this. At least I got my own back.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything; he refuses to parse that sentence for the meaning he already feels he knows in his chest.

“Tried NA for a minute or two, not that it did a bit of fucking good. You know it’s all about God? Hitting your knees to pray every night. Please, God, don’t let me succumb to the substance today. Please, God, forgive me if I do. Problem was, I was too used to hitting my knees for a different reason, one all those church-y types didn’t approve of, funnily enough.”

Eddie looks at him. Tries to work out if he’s saying what it sounds like he’s saying, and then decides that yes, he is. It’s strangely easy to say in return, “They never do.”

“Nope. They never do. And the ones they don’t approve of, we gotta stick together, right?” Axel’s eyes on him are heavy, then. Suggestive. The same way Robbie Freeling’s eyes were suggestive. But, even though Axel must be at least five years older than Eddie, it feels like they’re on more equal terms. Because Axel’s not hiding anything away, is he? Not making payment or exchange. Just– offering.

And Eddie thinks about it. Truly considers it. It’s been a while. And it’s not like he likes Axel all that much, he’s abrasive and cynical and whatever might be handsome in his face is tempered by the erosion of hard drugs, but did he like Tommy C. that much? Did he like Martin?

(Though actually he did. Like them. Which was his problem, really. Liking people who didn’t deserve to be liked, and Axel’s a different sort of beast. Look fouler, feel fairer, some shit like that.)

He inhales deeply from the cigarette and then takes out of his mouth, replaces it with the beer before passing the bottle back across. Not tonight, he thinks. It’s been a long day — a long year — and he’s mindful of what his uncle said on the phone, you be safe, okay, kid? Because it’s a risky endeavor. No matter who he does it with, but here? In Chicago, with a guy who’s probably shared needles in the not-too-distant past?

No. Not tonight. Even as he feels a sting of ugly guilt at his own assumptions. Can’t be too careful, right?

So he stubs out his cigarette and gets to his feet again. “I’m gonna give sleep another go, y’know, we’ve got a, um, a big day tomorrow, right?”

“We do,” Axel says, raising an eyebrow. “Not sure about you. But sure, nighty-night, sleeping beauty.”

Eddie mock salutes and then goes back upstairs, finds El exactly where he left her, curled up like a child. Because she is a child. And she shouldn’t be doing this.

But he’s not sure he can stop her.

Chapter Text

The room is cold when he wakes up. El is still asleep in the bed, snoring softly with her mouth open. She’s kicked the sheets off to leave her legs, in borrowed sweatpants, open to the cool air, so he eases himself up and tugs them back over her. She doesn’t stir.

Pale gray light is seeping in through the gaps in the boarded-up windows, early still. He’s come to accept his own status as a terminally early riser. It makes no fucking sense with anything else about him — his chronic tardiness, his general scattered disorganization in every direction — but he’s living with it. Doesn’t mean he goes to bed any earlier, he just sleeps less.

“–don’t even have a new ride yet, Kali, what am I supposed to–”

“So we swap plates. We have plates, right?”

Eddie slows his step as he draws nearer to the group, though they’re clearly indifferent as to whether he hears. Kali and Mick are staring each other down by the table; Dottie is sitting cross legged on it, picking her teeth. Funshine and Axel are nowhere to be seen, like maybe Axel’s catching up on sleep after his late night.

“Or,” Mick says, “we don’t take stupid risks and use someone else’s car.”

Eddie realizes, belatedly, that she’s looking at him. And then so are Dottie and Kali. He stops.

“I mean, you drove here, right?”

“I did,” he says, calmly, though his mind is sort of screaming at him bad fucking idea bad bad not a chance no fucking–

“So. We switch out your plates, put our spare ones on, different vehicle, different plates, no one will be able to catch us. Then we get back here, change the plates back over, and you’re clear.”

He doesn’t exactly know how to say no — if he can say no. He’d be aiding and abetting fucking murder, here, if he gave them his van. More than he is already. But it would take nothing more than a moment, a flick of El’s head, for the keys to float out of his pocket and the choice to be made for him anyway. Not that he believes it of her, necessarily, but of the rest of them? Axel’s got his knife, Funshine’s broad and tall. Kali’s probably killed more people than Eddie has fingers. So.

“I’m not going to force you into this,” Kali says, slicing through the sudden tension in the air. “Just think about it. Is Jane still asleep?”

He nods, moving forward warily to sit by the table and pull out his cigarettes again. There’s no breakfast in sight, so this will have to do. His mouth tastes sour and ashen already, and his fingers ache with cold. Strange, now, how he can’t imagine living like this. When before–

“This guy thinks too much,” Dottie announces, to the room at large. She’s studying him with her eyes narrowed. “I don’t like people who think too much.”

“Well, someone has to, or we’d never get anywhere.” Mick produces her own cigarette and lights it, pulling one leg up on her chair. “If we’re gonna fucking do this, Kali, we gotta get this show on the road.”

“Let her sleep for a moment,” Kali returns. “She’s tired.”

Eddie looks at her without saying anything. It’s a bold claim, on her part. She’s tired. Which, it’s a reasonable guess, but it’s not her place to make it. To decide what’s best for her, when she’s the one putting the kid in this position.

“We’re all tired,” Mick mutters, crossing her arms and puffing on her smoke. “You know the last time I drove anywhere and I wasn’t being chased? Just me and the road and a Heart cassette. You know how fucking long ago that was? Jimmy Carter was still president, that’s how long ago it was.”

“Heart, not bad.”

She turns to look at him suspiciously. “Huh,” she says, and he can’t tell whether she’s reevaluating him or just a bit pissed off. He’s not going to push his luck, so he doesn’t dive into the conversation he’s always itching to have — it goes down better with some people than with others.

“I miss New York,” Axel declares as he strides into the room, mohawk still defiantly sticking up like he didn’t sleep on it or else he’s spent the morning grooming it back into place.

Mick rolls her eyes. “We were in New York for five fucking minutes, what’s so great about that?”

“Exactly. It felt like a vacation. This–” Axel waves a hand around the room, including Eddie in his assessment “–doesn’t feel like a vacation.”

“Axel,” Kali says, that’s all she says, and he shuts up. Like she’s got him on some kind of tight leash. Eddie sits there and resigns himself to never quite understanding the dynamic going on here. He’s sort of glad about that, on some level. That he doesn’t move, think, in the same patterns as they do.

An hour or so later, Kali disappears to wake El up as the rest of them, Eddie excluded, finish up their crappy poker game, using matchsticks as chips. From what he’s worked out they don’t bet actual money, just random crap they have lying around, which is how Dottie winds up winning four elastic bands, a lighter, a photograph of Funshine’s mother (which she then gives back), nine cigarettes, a filched library copy of The Bluest Eye, and a roll of film. She’s crowing over her winnings when Kali and El come down, El still blinking sleep from her eyes but something taut and alive in the way she moves, the way she stands.

Eddie feels taut too, itching and fidgeting, but for a different reason. For the reason that poker sort of makes his skin crawl and he’s certain his dad plays a lot of it in prison. For the reason that he’s been in rooms like this before, seedier and uglier, sure, but still smelling like damp and cigarette smoke and beer and people doing things they aren’t supposed to.

Maybe he isn’t suited to all this, this life. Maybe he should go to Rick and say you’ve got the wrong guy.

But he’s proven to himself that he’s good at it, that part at least, the cowardly part, so hey. Whatever. Here he is.

Here becomes out in the biting November air, watching across a railroad track as El strains to move a train car with her mind — he hasn’t been here before, though it tracks with the general weirdness of his life as it accelerates into overdrive. “This is fucking insane,” Mick says beside him, as El lifts her head from where it’s bowed to her knees, surveying the magnitude of her success. “This is so fucking–”

“Are all you hicks like that?” Axel says.

Eddie can’t read his face. “Nope. Just her.”

Axel laughs. “I thought so.”

Eddie catches El, when they’re going back inside. The others are chattering to each other about the plan, about what to do next, so Eddie takes her wrist — dimly aware his hands are trembling — and tugs her into a corner. “Maybe we should think about this,” he says.

She looks at him. “I have thought about this.”

“But what she wants you to do–” He stops. Rubs a hand over his forehead, exhales through his nose. “That’s shit you don’t come back from.”

“But I’ve already done it.”

“What?”

Her voice is, as ever, earnest. “Killed people. I’ve already done it. I killed the bad men at the school, when they came for us.”

“That’s– that’s different.” He looks at her helplessly. “There’s gotta be a better way than getting yourself involved in this. I can’t, um, I can’t believe this is what your mom wanted when she sent us here.”

“Me. She sent me here.”

He bites the inside of his cheek. “Right.”

“The bad men need their just desserts.”

He feels a great rise of frustration, then, frustration and desperation, and he says louder than he means to, “That’s just something people say, it’s not– it’s just something I said, it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean you have to be the person who gives it to them or anything like that–”

“So who will?”

He throws up his hands. “Sometimes no one! Sometimes–” And he stops. Like he’s been running as fast as his legs will carry him and now suddenly he’s reached a cliff: the drop stretches out below him. Like shit, maybe she’s right. And he’s doing the cowardly thing not only by bowing out of this before it gets hard but also by trying to prevent her doing it at all — which he told himself he’d stay out of it, told himself he’d– and now he’s–

She’s looking at him intently, eyes wide. In a sort of haze he wants to reach out to her and say you’re just a kid and I don’t know how to handle that maybe because you remind me of me but that just makes it worse, because back then he could have done with some revenge. It would have made him feel better.

And isn’t that the point? Why he’s still here, to look out for her, to make sure she gets out of this alive?

She’s opening her mouth to say something but then Axel reappears around the corner, lips pinched together, saying snappily, “Come on, get to it, we don’t have all day,” and she glances at Eddie then him then Eddie again before going back into the warehouse — and the moment ends.

He follows them inside.

They’re arguing about plates again, about routes and money and maps but mostly plates, and it’s almost painfully unthinkingly that he steps up and says, “You can use my van.”

They look at him. Axel’s eyebrows climb, like he’s scathing, or else impressed. Kali is impassive. She just nods, says, “Good. Mick and Dottie, switch the plates out. Funshine and Axel, get our weapons together. I’ll find them masks.”

“He’s coming?” Mick says disbelievingly.

Kali doesn’t look at her, just looks at Eddie. “Is he not?”

He swallows. So maybe he is.

Right before they’re about to go, Dottie sits El down and decides, in her own words, to dirty up that Shirley Temple sweetness, which involves slicking her hair back and dusting black makeup around her eyelids — “Bitchin’,” Dottie says, when she’s finished. El in an oversized black blazer over her jeans. Eddie might laugh hysterically; he settles for filching some of the eyeshadow for himself, in the interest of feeling a little bolder.

It’s this boldness that enables him, when they’re walking out towards his van, to say without ceremony, “I’m driving.”

Mick starts. “No fucking–”

“You’re driving,” Kali repeats, holding a hand up with an edge to her smile and Eddie’s not sure but he doesn’t think she’s doing him a favor, somehow. Still, he gets to drive.

And when he turns the engine over he gets Paul Engemann’s Scarface song, because of course he does, because the cassette player’s still fucking broken and Axel starts to laugh as Mick flips him off and says, “Hey, I fucking like this song,” and then Eddie just concentrates on driving instead of the pounding of his heart. What a story he’ll have to tell, he thinks. What a story he’ll never tell to Wayne. This time two days ago he was in class, twitching in his seat as he waited for the inevitable crash of Billy Hargrove’s fist. If he returns to Hawkins having killed someone–

He’s not going to do that.

(Isn’t that what he’s doing?)

Kali directs him to pull into some convenience store, Oscar’s Gas N Go. “Stocking up,” she says, by way of explanation, and with the ease of self-preservation he lets his own muscle memory take over. He knows what this is, after all. Ducking any security cams (not that Oscar’s Gas N Go is any sort of Fort Knox), subtlety on the entry, speed when the guy’s distracted. Kali makes him think his bathroom is flooding and then they set to the shelves; Eddie finds himself grabbing his go-tos, like cigarettes and lighters and painkillers, which maybe he’s embarrassed about until he spots Dottie’s sunglasses and Tampax and El’s box of Eggos.

Axel goes for the till. Eddie, right next to him, sets the cigarettes down and helps him fill his brown paper bag, speed over haste, catching grubby bills between his fingers and willing the adrenaline to still their tremor. It’s easy. It’s always easy.

Right up until–

“Hey!”

And the sound of a cocking gun.

“Put that back or I’ll blow your heads off. You hear me, freaks?”

The cashier, having overcome the bathroom’s distraction, advances. Gun pointed right at Axel, then Eddie, then Axel. Then Eddie again. Perhaps he can’t decide which subculture is worse. Punk or metal, take your pick. Both will steal your cash. Eddie almost smiles, wryly, privately, with the feeling that he’s not entirely inside his body right now. Hasn’t been since he made the decision to drive.

“Put the gun down,” Kali says, rounding the aisle.

“Stay back. Stay back!”

“Darrel, your money is insured. We’re only stealing from the war criminal billionaires who own this place. You won’t even lose a dime.”

Oscar’s Gas N Go, Eddie thinks, really? Billionaires? Everybody’s gotta have a cause, he supposes, and it takes a hell of a lot of mental effort to stay at war with the whole world in general.

“I said stay back.”

“We’re on the same side. I promise.”

“Stay. Back.”

Then El jumps out and raises her hand and flings the guy back into a display; he clatters to the ground and Axel whistles, “Damn, Shirley,” and they all look at each other with more triumph than relief.

They’re back on the road in short order, Eddie clinging on to his residual adrenaline like a lifeline, stay with me you bastard, knowing if it slips away he’ll have to drop out onto the berm and dry heave. He wraps his fingers tight around the wheel and focuses his mind on the directions: left turns, right turns, highway exits. “You’re a good driver,” Axel says to him at some point, voice curiously free of sarcasm. “Better than Mick.”

“Asshole,” she grinds out, flipping him off without looking at him. Eddie keeps his eyes on the road, though he can feel Axel breathing over his shoulder.

“My driving’s been called many things,” Eddie says. “Never good.”

Axel laughs. “Good in my vocabulary probably means something different than what it means in everybody else’s, then.”

In that this is what he’s good at. In that he’s never been good at anything else.

Eventually, they pull up on some nondescript street in the nondescript darkness. Eddie cuts the engine and Mick clears her throat: “Alright, we should case the place, stick to the routine. We have time.”

“We also have her,” Kali says, without even glancing at El, but it’s clear who she means. “Can you look?”

El closes her eyes. They wait only a moment before she opens them again. “He’s watching television.”

Mick shakes her head. “Is he alone?”

“I saw him. No one else.”

“Good enough for me,” Kali says, and Eddie gets hit by a jolt like a suckerpunch. Good enough for me. Like his dad’s saying it, though he can’t remember why or when. Just the words, the tone of voice. Lackadaisical enough to get them all caught when it matters the most to be diligent, but maybe that’s what makes them right for it, the carelessness. The lack of concern for your own life.

He wonders if that’s what sent his dad to prison. Checking the deal out, thinking it was fine. Good enough for me. But a sting nonetheless, and Eddie wonders how he knows that. If he knows that. He can picture it so clearly, his dad’s narrow face, a warehouse just like this one, smoke curling out of his mouth as he smiles crookedly behind the scar he doesn’t yet have — “Good enough for me,” he says, and it all goes to shit.

So clearly it’s almost like Eddie was there. Though of course he wasn’t.

He’s shaken out of the not-real memory by Funshine saying, “Let’s do this,” which — as he seems the most levelheaded — is the deciding factor.

“Keep it running,” Kali says, eyes sharp as they meet Eddie’s.

“We’ll meet you round back,” Mick says, tone brooking no argument. So she doesn’t trust Eddie on his own — that’s fair. You gotta trust your getaway driver. You gotta trust your crew, gotta believe they’re not leading you someplace bad. Someplace you can’t get out from.

He watches El go with a sinking feeling deep in his chest, cold like a stone in icy water.

And then–

Well, then it’s a matter of waiting. Like always. Like it always is.

“You do this before?” Mick says, studying him from the passenger seat. He wonders if he’s got a tell. If maybe it’s the fidgeting — though actually he’s not fidgeting, not now, more eerily still in a way he never is.

“Something like it,” he says. The words feel angular and unwieldy in his mouth. How does he even explain it to her? Because he can, right, like he’s already facilitating a home invasion and a probable murder, what’s a little broken NDA? Logically, he can, but in practice? In words? “It was actually more dangerous than this, believe it or not.”

She scoffs, like she’s choosing not. He doesn’t blame her. Maybe envies her. He’s far less scared of the law than he is of the dark things creeping out from the woods.

But still, it has a similar feeling to it. The waiting, the watching. Not knowing what’s going on inside, just hoping and praying they all make it out alive, souls included. Fucking souls. Honestly, he doesn’t know who the fuck he is anymore.

Then — distant, far off, but getting closer — the sound of a siren.

They look at each other in the dark. Eddie nudges the van forward even as his pulse spikes, craning his neck to look for them in the stairwell. Fuck, what the fuck’s his uncle gonna say when he gets arrested in Illinois? How the fuck’s he gonna pay bail? What’s gonna happen to El? What’s gonna–

“Alright, that’s them, that’s them!” Mick shouts, and Eddie floors it, lining up the doors with the exit just in time as the other five pile into the van, panting and twitching and dragging their masks off — Eddie doesn’t need to be told. They go.

“What happened?” he says urgently, swerving to avoid a trashcan and keeping his shoulders hunched low over the wheel.

No one responds, but in the back Kali is speaking, low and furious: “If you wanted to show mercy, that is your choice. But don’t you ever take away mine. Ever. Do you understand? Do you understand?”

El doesn’t say anything. Eddie hardly dares to hope, even as he tries to catch her eye in the rearview mirror. Hope that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t do it after all.

“What happened?” he asks again, because he can’t not ask. Again, no one answers. “What–”

“Slow down!” Mick shouts suddenly, and he brakes hard as flashing blue lights and a siren sweep past, a cop car racing back to the scene of their crime. What crime it is, he doesn’t yet know. He’s still speeding for another couple of yards and he takes a deep breath, tense as he waits for that cop to realize who he’s missed and turn around to come after them — but the lights disappear into the dark, and the road goes silent once again.

“It doesn’t matter what happened in there,” Mick says. “What matters is, they’re after us anyway.”

“It does matter,” Eddie returns. “It matters because they’re gonna get away with a lot more if murder’s their excuse for it. You kill someone, especially someone no one wants dead, and that’s an X on your back forever.” He knows that much from visiting his father, when he finally got the truth out of him. The reason he’s in a state max security prison instead of a lighter federal place, which is where the drugs would have put him. The reason everyone spits his name with such disgust.

“Like children,” El says softly. “People no one wants to be dead.”

His heart stops. “You–”

“He had children. They were there. We didn’t kill anyone.”

He exhales, long and shaky. Fuck. Fuck. Thank fuck.

No one speaks the whole way back to the warehouse.

When they get there, he follows El upstairs, stands with his arms folded over his chest as she hunches down on the edge of the bed, hands twisting in the sheets. She looks small and tired and totally unsuited to this, like a kid who needs to go home.

“I feel like– two things at once,” she admits eventually, voice miserable and raw. “There’s Kali and the– the bad men, and Mama wanted me here.”

“You don’t know what she wanted,” he says, keeping it quiet, like she’ll startle. “She did her best to talk to you but it was tough, y’know, she’s sort of beyond being able to tell you what she wants, and I, um, I find it hard to believe she’d want you to–” And then he closes his mouth. Because he’s not exactly an expert. “What’s the other thing? You said there were two.”

“There’s also you, and Mike. And Dustin and Lucas. And Hopper, too, and I–” Her face scrunches like she’s trying not to cry. “I want to go home.”

“So let’s go home.”

“But they don’t need me.”

Eddie thinks about Will’s unfocused eyes, the cold chill sweeping through the Byers’ house. Mike’s angry desperation, the general feeling of darkness descending on the town as he left. “How can you be sure of that?”

She looks at him. Then, as though that’s all he needed to ask, she takes out her blindfold from Becky’s house and ties it over her eyes, like she’s going to find out. Eddie exhales through his teeth and waits.

And doesn’t have to wait long, because soon enough she’s tearing the blindfold off, eyes wide and startled and afraid, eyes that meet Eddie’s as she says, “Something’s happened.”

Because of course it fucking has.

They go back downstairs together, find the others playing poker with real money this time, no doubt the money they took from the gas station. Axel’s the first to look up, and his face goes hard and flinty with what he must see in their eyes. “Going somewhere?”

“My friends are in danger,” El says. Something apologetic in her voice. Eddie’s done with being nice to these people.

“Boy, you sure do have a lotta friends. I thought we were your friends. Aren’t we in danger too?”

“Axel,” Kali warns, stepping out from the corner, eyes fixed on El as her voice softens. “What about your mother? What about avenging her?”

El glances up at Eddie, then back at Kali. “She can’t tell me what she wants. If she would want that. But my friends– I have to help them.”

“We belong together. Your mother, she can’t tell you, but she showed you, remember? She showed you we belong together. You’re meant to be here. There’s nothing for you back there, they cannot save you, Jane.”

“No,” El says. “But I can save them.”

A silence. For a long moment, Eddie wonders if they’re going to be allowed to leave. They might not be, right? Kali might choose to take this weird sister bond she’s managed to forge and hold onto it tight, grasp it like it’s the only thing she has, and she doesn’t have much. Axel’s got a gun, Funshine’s huge. El might be able to take them but would she want to? Would she really fight her way out, when half of her doesn’t want to leave at all?

Then–

“Go,” Kali says, voice breaking on the single syllable. “I cannot make you stay.”

“Sister–”

“You have made your choice.” Then her eyes thaw a little. “You have a home to return to. A living family to protect. If I still had these things, maybe I would do the same.”

El takes a step forward. Tugs Kali, stiff and unyielding, into a hug. “Thank you,” El whispers into her shoulder. And then they go.

The interlude feels increasingly dreamlike, the further they drive from Chicago. Their journey played out in reverse, the return to a life where he’s not a getaway driver for rogue assassins, a life where he’s just a small town drug dealer, a queer with something wrong with him but no murder to his name, at least.

“You okay?” he asks into the silence (the radio turned way down) when they’re nearing the Indiana border. The road is dark and mostly empty.

She takes her time to answer, uncurling herself from her stiff huddle against the window. “Yes,” she says, voice thick with the red-rimmed aftermath of tears. “I think– what you said. About your dad. Leaving him behind, letting him be– in prison. That’s better.”

“Better than what?” His voice is barely a whisper.

“Than– making it worse. Making the hurt worse. The bad man, he said Papa was alive, but he was lying. Papa is dead. And I should let him be dead.”

Eddie feels some strange tension drop out of his shoulders. Like this was his dilemma at all, which it wasn’t, but still. He feels the relief. “That’s, uh, a good way of thinking about it,” he says. This is her walking-out-of-Indiana-Reformatory, her breathing-in-the-snow and knowing-things-can-be-better — this is her making the right decisions five years earlier than he did.

“Thank you for coming with me.”

He glances at her. “No– no problem, kid. No problem. So, uh, where are we going now?”

“Hawkins. Mike and Hopper are in trouble.”

“What about everyone else?” He can’t help it. He can’t help the way suddenly awareness of Hawkins slams into him like a brick wall, the memory of everything he’s conveniently managed to put out of his mind — Steve and Nancy and Jonathan, the kids and Joyce and Hopper and a threat a whole lot less tangible than the police. Steve. He hasn’t thought about Steve in what seems like years; now his throat constricts and Steve’s face is all he can see.

“I will see,” she says, closing her eyes. He turns the radio to static.

When she opens them again, there’s the now-familiar trail of blood running from her nose. She wipes at it and he has to restrain himself, has to flex his hand around the wheel to keep himself from hissing what’s happening are they okay is there what’s–

“Lucas and Dustin and another boy, Steve? And a girl–” her face dims “–they’re setting a trap. For the monsters. But it’s too dangerous, it isn’t–”

“Monsters? What– where are they?”

“The junkyard.”

“Where’s everyone else?”

“Mike and Hopper and Will and Joyce are at the Lab.”

He thinks. “The junkyard’s on the way to the Lab. We’re not too far away, we can– we can make good time, if we hurry, we can go to the junkyard first and then–”

He doesn’t really know, and then. And then what? And then El waves her hand around and makes it all go away. And then they all live happily ever after. It doesn’t mean anything, does it? It doesn’t change a whole lot.

But Steve. Lucas, Dustin, the girl (Max?), and Steve. It’s too dangerous. They have to try.

Chapter Text

They blast down the I-65 in what Eddie is tempted to call record time. But he’s not gonna push his luck, and he takes his corners nice and easy when they come off the freeway, like the very fact that they’re driving into danger makes the road more dangerous too.

Still, it doesn’t take them too long. Soon enough the Welcome to Hawkins sign is flashing up before them and he turns the radio down again — quieting some Kim Wilde song Janie fucking loves — in a sudden burst of nervous adrenaline. Craning his neck over the wheel like he’s gonna spot Steve at the kids around every corner, though of course he won’t. They’re still at the junkyard, El confirms. Has been confirming every ten minutes for hours.

“When we get there–” he begins, eyes flickering over the road and her face and the road again.

“I will protect them,” she promises, like somehow she knows exactly what he was asking. She’s not telepathic too, right? Not that anything would surprise him at this point.

“Okay. Because, uh, just so you know, I’m not exactly the, um, the best in a fight. Screwed up joints and shit, so. Not so great at fighting off–” he shudders “–monsters. Demogorgons, et cetera.”

“I will protect them,” she repeats. “I will protect all of us.”

Great. So glad that’s clear. He’s going to be protected by a thirteen year old girl, which, sure she’s got psychic powers but she’s also got a shitton of issues and he’s not convinced he’s not adding to them, here, but–

Trauma comes after, right? Surviving happens first.

“Just what the hell are we walking into, anyway?”

“You’ll see.” Her voice is soft and maddeningly unhelpful. He’s never been very good with trust.

But on some level–

Well. Maybe it comes easier when it’s a teenaged girl with superpowers, and not a violent middle aged man.

So– then. Then he’s pulling into the junkyard in the dark, creeping mist drawing over the scrap metal, ruined cars like skeletal husks that could be hiding anything, anything at all, cutting the engine and they get out of the van and round the corner and then he spots–

He spots Steve.

A solitary figure in the fog. Holding the bat in his hands, the one with the nails in it, from last year. Suddenly it’s like Eddie hasn’t seen him in years — the way he’s so focused, so determined, ice cold and immoveable. Like he’s seen some shit in the last few days. Or maybe just the way Eddie’s seen some shit, the last few days. Maybe it’s changed the way he looks at things. Looks at Steve.

El creeps forward. Eddie wants to call out to Steve, Steve, are you safe? What are you doing out here? What are you– but he doesn’t want to break his concentration. If there is something out here. Something Eddie can’t yet see.

He’s speaking, Eddie realizes. Steve is speaking, lips moving quietly, too low for Eddie to hear, eyes fixed on something in the middle distance. Swinging the bat slowly.

Eddie draws nearer, and begins to hear the words.

“...Come on, buddy. Come on. Dinner time.”

Dinner time? What does that–

Then, he hears something else.

A low, chittering growl. Foul and unearthly. He feels it running up his spine, like something knocking on his vertebrae. Like something that doesn’t belong here. Something with sinewy limbs and a face that’s not a face that opens up like a flower into thousands of rows of fangs–

He doesn’t need to look to know what he’s going to see. But he looks anyway. Turning slowly, breath caught between his teeth. Maybe if he stays still it won’t leap, maybe if he pretends it’s not there it won’t–

But it is there.

Smaller than the other one, the one from last year, that’s true. On four legs, rather than two. With strange patterns on its oil-colored back, visible in the faint shine of moonlight. Looking at Eddie. Standing there and looking at him, as Steve looks at another one, as El looks at–

Everything happens very quickly after that.

There’s a crack, the sound of the demogorgon’s spine breaking, as El’s head jerks and blood drips from her nose as she whips around to deal with the other ones as Steve swings his bat hits one sends it flying Steve’s shoulders sharp and strong as he moves as he turns meets Eddie’s eyes opens his mouth to yell as El moves again and something else falls dead behind him–

Then the night is still.

Steve takes a step towards them, face full of slack, open shock. There are dead monsters on the ground, swallowed by mist. El is breathing hard with blood dripping down her face.

Then the door to the broken-down bus opens with a clang and out pour Lucas and Dustin and a girl, the girl hanging back as Lucas and Dustin race towards El and grab her into a hug, shouting to each other like they’re throwing out their adrenaline and speaking of adrenaline Eddie’s knees go weak.

He leans against the grimy hood of a nearby car, cold and wet with frost through his jeans, and tries to catch his breath.

“How the fuck do you have her?” is the first thing Steve says to him. “If that’s– I mean, if that’s who I think it is, what the hell are you– holy shit, man.”

“Holy shit,” Eddie agrees. “Nice to see you too, Steve.”

“Who are you?” the girl says, before Steve can say whatever he was going to say, something poised in his look which Eddie has no way of decrypting. Her face is sharp and discerning, witty. Eddie likes her already.

“Eddie,” he says. Lacking the energy for his usual theatrics. She doesn’t seem like she’d have much time for them, anyway.

She folds her arms over her chest and glances back at Lucas and Dustin and El before saying, “Max,” short but with a softness in it, like it’s been shaken out of her by the fucking nightmare she’s just witnessed. Eddie doesn’t blame her. “Is that–”

“The girl with superpowers? Yep.”

“How the hell did you know we were here, anyway?” Steve says, suddenly sounding drained. The bat’s still held loosely in his hand by his side, shoulders slumped. “How did you–”

Eddie nods at El. “She knew.”

“Stupid question,” Steve mutters, passing a hand over his face. “I don’t suppose you’re gonna tell me where, or– or why, or how–”

“Or what the fuck,” Max supplies helpfully. Eddie definitely likes this kid.

“It’s a long story. What are you guys doing out here? What– um, those demogorgons–”

“It’s a long story,” Lucas supplies, coming over to join them, Dustin and El in tow. El, Eddie notices, is studiously not looking at Max. He tries to reason that out for a moment and then gives up. He can think about it some other time. It’s been a fucking day.

Dustin’s babbling. “That was so cool, Eddie, the way you guys just came in here– and Steve, ohmygod, going out there just with your bat to fight them off–”

Eddie reaches over and ruffles his hair. It’s not like Eddie did much, really, but the appreciation–

Well. It’s sort of nice.

“So what now?” asks Steve, the question on all their lips, the one they don’t know how to answer. Eddie shivers in the chill air and waits for someone else to speak. Hey, he’s just the getaway driver.

“The lab,” El answers. Her voice is thin, more hesitant than he’s yet heard it. Right. It’s a bit like asking him to go back to his dad’s house, kind of. Not somewhere he’d go in a hurry. He puts a hand on her arm, just lightly, letting her know he’s still with her. She sends him a quick, unreadable glance. “Mike and Hopper and Will and Joyce, they’re there. Something is happening.”

“What?” Lucas sharpens. “Why are they at the lab? What’s–”

Max frowns. “The lab? You mean the–”

“The super-secret evil lair conducting highly illegal experiments on kids with psychic powers that we’re not allowed to tell you about? Yeah, that lab,” Dustin says, snappy, and Eddie looks down at him, wondering what he’s missed.

“It’s gotta have something to do with those dogs, right? I mean, no way is that place not involved in all this.” Steve’s crossed his arms over his chest, leaning the bat against his leg. Still within easy reach, of course. “Well, if superpowers girl says we should–”

“She has a name, you know,” Lucas retorts.

Steve blinks. “I know,” he says, mildly. Looks at El, and then — unbelievably — says, “I’m sorry. El.”

El looks at him for a second, like she’s accepting his apology, then back to the group at large. “We need to go.”

So they go.

They pile into Eddie’s van; Eddie concentrates more on backing out of the tangles of snarled, rusting metal than on what’s going on around him, until he turns and finds Steve in the passenger seat. Eddie stares at him.

“What? Privileges of not being a child.”

“Age before beauty, you mean!” Dustin yells from the back.

Steve scoffs and tosses his head back, like he’s subconsciously disproving it. Which, well. He sort of is. But Eddie doesn’t say this; he just turns his eyes back to the road. “Doing a real good job of acting like one, though,” he says.

“Hey, I had to deal with these assholes while we tried to trap a monster in a junkyard. I think I’m allowed to act how I want. Where have you been, anyway?”

“Chicago.”

“Chicago? What? Why?”

“Annual lowlifes convention. You know how it is. Gotta keep going, otherwise they won’t renew my membership.”

Steve makes a sound, a little scoff. Almost (if Eddie’s ears aren’t deceiving him) a laugh. “You’re not half as funny as you think you are, y’know.”

“Considering I think I’m, um, hilarious, that means I’m still pretty funny.”

“Asshole,” Steve mutters, turning his gaze out the window to watch the woods flashing past. Eddie turns his tone over in his head and decides that yes, that was friendly, though he can’t always be sure. He looks in the rearview and finds Max looking at him, a frown creasing her forehead. God knows what that’s about. Lucas and Dustin and El are talking to each other rapidly, as rapidly as El ever speaks, catching each other up on what they’ve missed, and maybe that’s Max’s problem. The odd one out.

(Eddie certainly knows that feeling.)

No time to dig into it, though, because then they’re hurtling down the road towards the lab, towards the very solid fence gate with the guard to let people in except there’s no guard and the place is dark, the whole lab looms up dark ahead and where is everyone? What the hell is this?

Eddie slows the van but he doesn’t need to. The gate slides back seemingly of its own accord, though not, because he knows better by now. In the rearview, he catches El wiping the blood from her lip. Then he drives on, and keeps it slow, because they have no way of knowing what they’re walking into.

“Anyone else have a really bad feeling about this?” Max says into the silence. No one answers her.

They’re all craning their necks up at the building as they pass beneath the bridge towards the entrance, huge and dark and concrete, unforgiving, El quiet in the back, they’re all staring at it in that way you do when you’re watching a horror movie and a silence goes on just a second too long and you know something’s gonna jump out at you, any second now, you know it but still it scares you–

That’s what happens when the lights come on.

Bright, startling, all at once. Several of them let out yells of surprise. Eddie almost jumps out of his seat, screeching the van to a halt. Steve’s left hand slams the dashboard; his right grips the handle of the bat, held loosely between his knees; Eddie feels inexplicably safer at the sight.

“What the hell was that?” Dustin demands, leaning through the gap in the seats to crane his neck up at the building, shoving his shoulder past Eddie’s and getting in the way of the stick shift.

“I don’t fucking know, do I?” Steve mutters, pushing him back. “Give Eddie some space to drive, jeez.”

Then Eddie’s eyes catch on the wing mirror and there are headlights behind them, who the fuck else is here tonight, who the fuck else is–

And those headlights resolve themselves into the shape of Jonathan’s LTD, and really he should have guessed.

The LTD stops; Jonathan and Nancy jump out and appear, breathless, alongside the van. “Steve? Eddie? What are you doing here?” Nancy says, furious and more than a little confused, Eddie can tell, simply by the harshness of the line of her jaw (she hates being confused).

“What are you doing here?” Steve returns.

“We’re looking for Mike and Will.”

“So are we,” Lucas says grimly from the back.

Jonathan peers into the van, his face freezing as he spots El in the shadows. “Is that–”

“Hi,” El says softly.

Nancy lets out a gasp. “Steve? Where the hell did you find her?”

“I didn’t,” Steve says, gesturing at Eddie. “He did.”

“It’s a long story,” Eddie says, with the funny feeling that he’s gonna be saying that a lot tonight. “Shouldn’t we– y’know, whatever’s–” He waves loosely at the building high above them. As if on cue — as if they’re in a fucking DnD campaign — there comes a piercing, unearthly shriek, echoing around the concrete, and they all look at each other and Eddie takes a deep breath and latches his hands onto the steering wheel to stop them shaking; and Nancy nods.

“We should,” she says, and without saying anything else she hurries past the van towards the entrance.

Jonathan follows, and Eddie nudges the van forward until it’s right by the doors as Steve starts to get out and then stops, glaring around at the kids: “Stay here.”

They all begin to protest. El and Lucas get out anyway; Steve shouts at Lucas but not at El, his face sort of lost when it comes to her, like how do you even handle a kid like this? What is he even supposed to do? Is she a fighter, or a kid?

These are the questions Eddie still doesn’t have an answer to, after two days with her, but he’s erring on the side of kid.

Still, she marches after Nancy and Jonathan without another word.

Eddie begins to get out too, but Steve shakes his head. “If things go south we gotta get out of there quick, right?”

“Right,” Eddie says, and they look at each other for a moment. The thread of deja vu between them thin and yet unbreakable.

Then Steve goes.

“This is so goddamn unfair,” Dustin says, as Eddie feels a shudder of panic catch up with him and bends his head over the wheel. Which, like, yeah. In the grand scheme of world justice maybe it is unfair, that they’re the kids and he’s the one who can’t do anything but drive. But that is the world. Who’s he not to live with it?

What he’s finding harder to live with — this place. The sounds, the night. The sense of everything that happened last year, Agent Faraday and the threats and the NDAs, the demogorgon and the lights and the dark–

“Hey, are you okay?” Max says quietly, hesitantly. Like she’s not sure she’s allowed to ask.

He doesn’t look up. Takes a deep breath in and then says, “Sure, y’know, mental breakdown a day keeps the doctor away. Look where the fuck we are, Jesus.”

“Hey, you’re supposed to be looking after us, shouldn’t you be keeping it together?”

Eddie drags his head up and sends a glare around at Dustin, who becomes even more irritating under pressure, it seems, though his face is white, so Eddie sort of relents. “Steve’s the one looking after you. I’m just the driver.”

How many times has he said that this weekend?

“Look!” Lucas shouts, leaning out of the van’s open door. Eddie looks. There’s movement at the building’s entrance, people running out, Mike and Nancy and Steve, Steve carrying someone’s limp form over his shoulder, a hospital gown, is that Will? And gunshots behind them, the creatures’ screams, Jonathan running out too with his hand on Joyce’s arm, Bob close behind them (what the fuck is he doing here?) trying to keep some other middle aged guy upright– then Hopper backing out still firing what looks like a fucking machine gun, El next to him with blood streaming down her face–

They pile into the van. Eddie’s got one job and he’s actually pretty good at it, turns out, since he doesn’t hesitate. Just floors it. Just gets them the fuck out of there.

“We gotta drop Owens off at the hospital,” is the first thing Hopper says.

“Who the fuck is Owens?”

“That’s me,” the unknown middle-aged guy says, voice weak and wheezing. Eddie glances in the rearview and sees a fair quantity of blood pooling all over his belongings, so he grits his teeth together and keeps his eyes on the road. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it. Jesus.

“We’ve got to get somewhere before Will wakes up,” Mike says, voice fast and urgent. Before Will wakes up? What the fuck does that mean?

“It was a– a pretty big dose, I think. He’ll be out for a while.” That’s Joyce, her own voice only slightly wavering. Beneath that a core of iron. “Hopper’s right, Owens is bleeding out.”

“But still.”

“Hold on, hold on, Hopper’s car is here, right?” Bob interjects. Eddie sits up a little as the seismic shift in his attitude. “Why don’t we–”

“So’s my car,” Jonathan cuts in. Not looking at Bob. So nothing’s changed there, at least. “I can take Will back to the house and you guys get Owens to the hospital.”

A silence, then, “Okay. Good. Let’s–”

Eddie jerks the van to a halt right by where Jonathan left the LTD. Like– fortuitous timing, or whatever. He’s not thinking about mythic fate bullshit. He’s just trying to survive. Jonathan and Nancy and Joyce and Bob and Will, held in Jonathan’s arms, pile out; Hopper gets out too, then stops, looking at Eddie.

“We can’t move Owens,” he says. “Or– we shouldn’t. So I’ll drive your van, get him to the hospital–”

“We can’t all fit in your car,” Dustin points out, mind ten steps ahead as usual. “Some of us will still have to come to the hospital.”

“Look, we don’t have time to–”

“It’s okay,” Steve cuts in. “Eddie and me, we’ll take him. You take the kids back to the Byers’ house and we’ll meet you there.”

Eddie glances over at him. It’s a good plan. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised.

“Five kids still can’t fit in the Blazer,” Hopper says, eyeing the two of them like he doesn’t trust them with this, which maybe he shouldn’t but this guy is literally dying in Eddie’s backseat and he’d rather not drive a corpse around, thank you–

“You really gonna haggle over traffic laws when this guy’s about to– uh, about to bite the big one?”

Jonathan cuts in. “We have my car, remember?”

It takes Hopper a millisecond to agree. A millisecond, but really it feels like eternity. Then he’s jerking his head back towards the parking lot and the kids are clambering out of the van and Owens is letting out a groan as the person whose knee he was leaning on — Lucas’, it seems — leaves. Steve gets into the back to prevent him bleeding out, or whatever, Eddie doesn’t want to think about it too hard. He hits the gas again.

“What a fucking day,” he says.

“I think my day–” Owens hisses in pain “–has been pretty categorically worse than yours, actually.”

“Wanna bet?” Eddie mutters, but doesn’t push it, just eyes him worriedly in the rearview.

“What do we do if he dies?” Steve says, even though the guy’s right there listening. Probably won’t remember this, if he survives. Blood loss and all that. “Like, if we’re driving a fucking dead man around Hawkins–”

“Hey, this was your idea, man, not mine.”

“It was the only thing I could think of!”

“What happened in there, anyway?”

A silence. Steve exhales through his teeth. “It was a fucking– horror movie, man. Jesus. We went in and we found this guy, Owens, they were– attacking him. Eleven stopped them. Then Hopper and Mike and Joyce come running around the corner, with Will just, like, unconscious– a goddamn ragdoll– and Hopper and me, we manage to get Owens up and we get out and the other guy, Bob, they nearly got him but El and Hopper stopped them in time. But there was–” Eddie glances in the rearview. He’s looking away at the wall like he can’t bear to watch his own hands pressing a bloody ball of cloth into the mess of Owens’ leg. “There was so much blood. Jesus. So many dead people.”

“How the fuck did we get here?” Eddie says, biting down the edge of hysteria so it comes out as a sort of croak. “Once, sure, I can let it slide, but twice?”

“It’s like– once you know about it, you’re in it, y’know? And you can’t do anything but be involved. Because you know what’s happening. And ignoring it would be–” Steve breaks off again.

Eddie doesn’t look at him this time, is a little afraid of what his face might look like. Or maybe it’s more like recognizing that this is Steve Harrington saying this would just be too much to bear. And he’s borne a lot already this weekend.

“Owens! Hey, man, c’mon, look at me, Owens!” Steve’s suddenly saying, panic accelerating in his voice. “C’mon, wake up, Owens–”

There’s a weak splutter behind Eddie. “‘m awake,” the guy slurs.

Eddie takes a deep breath. “Steve, you gotta talk to him, man, you gotta keep him talking and awake.”

“Uh, okay, okay, um– Owens, you married? You got– I don’t know, you got a wife?”

“Yeah,” Owens gets out.

“Great, great, okay, what’s her name? Tell me about her. C’mon.”

“Cathy. Name’s Cathy. Makes– meatloaf. Best goddamn meatloaf. And she–” He splutters again and Eddie wonders if tonight’s gonna be the night he learns what a death rattle sounds like. But then Owens seems to rally, finds the strength to keep going: “Smokes pot. Thinks I don’t know Peter got her– into it in the– in the seventies.”

Steve laughs helplessly. “Who’s Peter?”

“My kid. Just turned– thirty. Teaches–” a pained wheeze escapes “–teaches scuba in Florida.”

“Teaches scuba in Florida. Damn, that’s gotta be nice,” Eddie contributes, catching Steve’s panicked eyes in the rearview. “He like it in Florida?”

“Who wouldn’t,” Owens murmurs, like he’s slipping back into sleep, and not a moment too soon Eddie catches the sign for the hospital and swings the van around the corner into the parking lot with hands that tremble around the wheel. Grinds the van into park with a jolt and leaps out to help Steve carry Owens between them, Christ he’s heavy and Eddie’s not at all strong, Steve carrying most of the weight over the emergency room threshold as nurses come running towards the trail of blood dripping over their linoleum–

Then Owens is being wheeled away on a stretcher. Then it’s just the two of them in a sudden bubble of quiet, of calm. Looking back at his van, Eddie very rapidly realizes he could just drive off back home. Just get out of this shit. He doesn’t owe them anything; he’s done more than enough to help them already. He could say fuck no and get out while he still can.

“Back to the Byers’?” Steve says, though his voice is tired, though he’s swaying slightly and there’s blood all down his front.

“Back to the Byers’,” Eddie agrees, and they go.

They drive back in a strange, exhausted silence. Owens’ blood is still pooled in the back, drying and flaking off Steve’s hands. He’s picking at it, Eddie sees out of the corner of his eye. Scratching his nails into his palms with his jaw set tight. Something uncomfortably tense in the way he studies his skin.

“How’d you even get involved this time, anyway?” Eddie offers, in an effort to distract him. Break this horrible silence.

“Henderson,” Steve says, like that explains everything, which it sort of does. “He tried to adopt one of those things. It ate his cat.”

“It ate his cat? Oh my god. Of course it did.”

“And, of course, because absolutely nothing is ever simple in this goddamn stupid town, now we’re here. Wherever here is.”

“Still Hawkins, my dude. Unfortunately.”

“Really?” Steve mutters. “Doesn’t feel like it anymore.”

On the contrary, Eddie thinks. Otherworldly horrors aside. Hawkins has been a place to survive, rather than live, all his life.

When they pull into the Byers’ crowded driveway, Eddie takes a second after cutting the ignition. Just a second. He breathes and lets his hand drift to his battered pack of cigarettes, nearly empty, though he knows there’s no time. Maybe he can smoke inside. A lot of kids around, sure, but it’s dire circumstances. Extremis, et cetera.

“You okay?” Steve says, startling him. His hand twitches back to the wheel on reflex. Driving to school is gonna feel nightmarish for weeks.

“Yeah. Sure. I’m okay.”

They look at each other for a moment in the dark. Steve doesn’t believe him, which is fine, because Eddie doesn’t believe himself. But that’s pretty much baseline right now, right? Not being okay. How can any of them be? This is worse than one monster in the woods, one kid on the underside of the world. This is a whole fucking army.

“Let’s go,” he says, steeling himself, swallowing back the lump of fear in his throat. Together, they walk inside.

It’s a scene of chaos. Everyone’s rushing about the house with random materials and tools in their hands, disappearing out back then coming back for more. Eddie and Steve just stand there a moment, aimless, out of place, before Nancy grabs Steve’s arm — “You’re tall enough to help me with the tarp, come on,” — and Steve lets himself be pulled away with a wary, vague look of surprise.

“What’s going on?” Eddie asks Max, who’s on the floor in the kitchen messing with a roll of duct tape.

“Will’s gonna tell us how to defeat the– uh, the Mind Flayer. But he can’t know where he is when we wake him up, so we’re covering the whole shed to make it unrecognizable.”

“What? Why not?” He elects to ignore the DnD reference, knowing by the name alone he’s not going to like it.

“He’s, like, possessed, or something? I don’t know, I’m new to this.”

“Yeah, you are,” Mike says, from where his head is buried in a kitchen cupboard. Eddie hadn’t even noticed he was there. Then he pokes his head out and looks across the kitchen, smiling almost dreamily at–

El. Yeah. Of course.

She’s sitting on the counter eating a sandwich. Which is the most incongruent thing Eddie’s pretty much ever seen, this kid with the psychic powers in the punk outfit with blood on her nose, eating an overstuffed turkey ham sandwich and getting mustard on her chin while the rest of them prep for fucking doomsday around her–

She smiles back at Mike. Then she waves.

Soon enough they’re ready, as ready as they can ever be to question a possessed kid about how to prevent the end of the world. Hopper’s carrying Will’s limp form out to the shed and Eddie sits down at the kitchen table to wait with all the others, scattered listlessly across the house, his knee jumping beyond his control and his stomach twisting. Every so often he finds his gaze dragged unwillingly towards the hallway, the clean, unmarred carpet he and Steve laid down where before there was fire, and blood, and a nightmare he’d thought was over–

“Feels like yesterday, huh?” Steve says lowly, from his position leaning against the counter behind Eddie. Eddie blinks. He hadn’t realized Steve was there. “Feels like nothing’s even changed.”

Eddie turns to look at him. His face is in shadow, eyes unreadable. Eddie wonders how the talk with Nancy went. If they’re back together again — but then he looks to Nancy, too, who’s leaning against the wall by the phone with her arms crossed and her eyes on the middle distance. Not on Steve. And she arrived with Jonathan to the lab, right, and he’s gotta ask them what they were doing but it doesn’t feel the way it felt last year.

They sit in silence for several more taut minutes. Then Steve pushes off the counter and goes into the other room, bat held loosely in his hands, and starts to swing it through empty air. Eddie watches the line of his shoulders, the skilful arc of his arms. Steve’s a good baseball player. He hits his fair share of homeruns; Eddie’s seen enough games to know that. Usually in a band capacity, sure, but there were times in April and May, breezy, when Eddie would do his deals behind the bleachers and then linger, eyes on the guys at practice. Eyes on Steve. Twitching with a shiver of adrenaline each time Steve wielded that bat, nailless, the way some sights just come to mean something no matter how different the context.

Then the lights flicker above them. Eddie jerks out of his seat; everyone rushes to the window, like that’s going to tell them anything. Then the flickering stops, and they’re back to waiting. Long silent time that stretches like taffy; Eddie bites the bullet and lights a cigarette.

He’s nearly finished smoking it when the door opens and they come striding in, Hopper and Joyce and Jonathan and Mike and Bob, Hopper dropping into the seat opposite Eddie at the table and hastily scribbling something down.

“What happened?” Dustin says, voice sharp.

“I think he’s talking, just not with words.”

Eddie leans over, finds him drawing a series of dots and dashes on the back of an envelope. “What is that?” Steve asks, leaning over Hopper’s shoulder.

“Morse code,” Lucas and Dustin and Mike say at once.

“H-E-R-E,” Hopper spells out.

“Here.”

“Will’s still in there. He’s talking to us.”

“Like Mama,” comes a small voice from the corner of the room. El. Everyone turns to look at her and she bites her lip, eyes darting between them. “She couldn’t talk, not normally, but she made the lights flicker. So I knew she was there.”

Hopper’s staring at her. “Uh, yeah, well, I guess like that,” he manages. With a sudden flicker of wry nerves, Eddie wonders what he’d make of the Chicago interlude.

“So what can we do?” Nancy says, pulling the focus of the group back to the matter at hand.

Hopper passes a hand over his mouth. “We gotta draw him out.”

Joyce nods. “Somehow we have to tell him we know he’s there, keep him anchored with us.”

“What about music?” There’s a silence; everyone looks at Eddie. Eddie refuses to surrender. He speaks to Jonathan: “You share music with Will, right? The Clash? There’s gotta be an album, a song–”

Jonathan snaps his fingers. “I got it,” he says, and pushes his way through the group to go down the hall.

“You can radio us what he’s saying,” Dustin says. “And we can transcribe it from here.”

Hopper nods. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Then they go back out there, the four of them, nearly five until Joyce tugs Bob aside and says, in a heartbreakingly soft undertone that Eddie probably shouldn’t be listening to, “I don’t want to crowd him.”

Bob’s face dims. “I mean, I feel like I’ve been– I’ve got a connection with him, I think, but, uh, sure. Okay. I’ll wait here.”

“Thank you,” she says, leaning forward a little like she’s about to kiss his cheek but then she stops herself, and turns away. Goes back outside and Eddie snaps his gaze to the table when Bob turns around, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping.

They position themselves around the table, all of them, Eddie and Nancy and Bob sitting down as Steve and the kids lean over them. Eddie lets Nancy and Bob do the work of listening and transcribing, watching with twisting nervousness as the word begins to form in rough red crayon. CLOSEGATE.

And that’s when the phone rings.

“Shit. Shit!” Dustin lets out, running over to the phone and slamming it back into its cradle. Eddie jolts out of his seat, moves abortively towards him.

It rings again.

Which is when Nancy tears it out of the wall and throws it down the hallway; Eddie blinks. He’s sort of forgotten who Nancy actually is, this past year.

“Do you think he heard that?” Max asks, eyes wide.

“It’s just a phone. It could be anywhere. Right?” Steve’s voice is adamant, carefully blithe, like even he doesn’t believe that.

Sure enough, Bob shakes his head. “Actually, ringtones can be pretty diverse. Most people would recognize the sound of their own phone ringing.”

“Most people,” Eddie echoes, with a shudder of unease rippling through him. He’s tempted to light another smoke — god knows he fucking needs it — but what if they’ve gotta run? What if–

A sound outside. Distant, sure, but that doesn’t mean anything. The demogorgon moved fast. (Eddie’s knees sting a little, as he thinks about it.)

“What was that?” Bob says quietly, hardly a question in it, like they all know it doesn’t need an answer.

The door opens again; they all bolt inside, Will held carefully in Jonathan’s arms. Jonathan takes him down the hall as Hopper emerges with two guns, Jesus, a shotgun and that fucking automatic, Eddie backs himself against the wall though it’s a cowardly thing because what’s he gonna do? In this situation? What can he possibly do? Too many of them to play getaway driver right now. No time.

“Can you use this?” Hopper insists at Jonathan, when he comes back in, and he goes twitchy and quiet as Nancy says, “I can,” and then–

“Wait.”

The simmering tension in the room doesn’t go anywhere, but Eddie feels less like his skin’s crawling with fire ants as El steps forward.

“Whatever is coming, I can stop it. I don’t want you to be hurt.” She looks around the room, eyes lingering a second on each of them, even Max. “Anyone.”

“You can’t get hurt either!” Mike lets out, voice wobbling, “You can’t–”

“We don’t have time for this,” Nancy says. Holding that rifle in expert hands, where the hell did she learn to do that–

Eddie’s found himself right behind Steve, who’s holding onto the nailbat the same way he did last year, a gallant fucking knight, Christ how the hell are they in this situation again–

“Holyshitholyshitholyshit,” Dustin’s whispering under his breath. Holy shit doesn’t even begin to cover it. Eddie’s aware only of his hands, not the rest of his body, just his empty hands, tingling and clammy and numb and useless in a fight, useless if El and Hopper and Nancy and Steve aren’t fast enough–

Crash of glass. Something dark through the window. Sinuous and agile and quick but El’s quicker, Hopper’s quicker, he’s unloading sharp ear-shattering rounds into the thing as El’s head jerks and–

Just like that, it drops to the floor. Dead.

No one dares move. Like any second there might be more; like any second it might jerk to its feet, reanimated, zombie-like, are there zombies in the Upside Down they called Will zombie boy Eddie knows that but that’s got nothing to do with–

He breathes. Safe. For now.

Chapter Text

“Nancy’s going with them?”

Eddie regrets speaking as soon as Steve looks over his shoulder at him, arms crossed as they stand on the porch watching taillights disappear into the dark. Something distant, resolved in Steve’s face. Like this is a little interlude, a sojourn now they’ve made up and everything is fine, like he’s saying a goodbye to her that really means hello–

“Yeah, she is,” Steve responds. Half a challenge in his voice, and then it dies. “I told her it’s okay. I told her we’re–”

Oh. Oh. And Eddie doesn’t know quite what to make of that, as Steve moves past him back inside. Of being wrong, and maybe really wrong. Maybe wrong for good. (Though he thought before–)

“I don’t wanna hear anything else about you and my sister,” Mike mutters, pushing past Steve into the kitchen. Eddie catches him wiping his eyes when he thinks no one’s looking.

“What do we do now?” Max says, crossing her arms. Eddie would love to tell her. He kind of wants a nap, and a coffee to knock him into that nap, and maybe a cigarette (or twenty, or scratch that a joint, or make it a bump) to top it all off. He can’t do any of those things, except maybe the cigarette or the coffee; all he can do is wait.

Wait while El and Hopper head off into danger, into the depths of that place they only just escaped to close the gate. Wait while Joyce and Jonathan and Bob and Nancy, apparently, try to burn the Mind Flayer out of Will and what a fucking sentence that is, huh? What a sentence.

“We need to preserve this,” Dustin says, from the other room. Eddie doesn’t even want to know.

Lucas does, apparently. “Preserve what?”

“The demodog. It’s a specimen. We have to keep it cool, to slow the decay. Steve?”

Steve lets out an honest to god groan. “What.”

“Can you help me put it in the fridge?”

Eddie rounds the wall and stares at the kid, who’s not even looking up from the carcass, oozing fascination. “You want to do what to the Byers’ fridge?”

“Relax, if we keep this we’ll all be rich and then I’ll buy them a new fridge.”

“That doesn’t just happen overnight, you know,” Lucas rejoins. Eddie shakes his head, lost for words (and that doesn’t occur often, mind you) as Steve finds a blanket and wraps the thing in it and then picks the thing up. Like he’s cradling a goddamn baby.

“Jesus Christ, did you, uh, did you lose your mind this weekend while I was away, Steve? What did I miss?”

Steve grimaces. “You have no idea how annoying this kid can be. No idea. Henderson, open the fridge.”

Dustin opens the fridge; the problem very rapidly becomes apparent. No room. Which, of course Dustin’s immediate solution is to start dumping the contents on the floor, jars clinking together and plastic packets falling open. Eddie decides it’s time for that cigarette.

The last of the shelves lands on the floor with a clatter and Dustin turns. “Alright. It should fit now.”

“Is this really necessary?” Steve says. Eddie thinks about saying you’ve already got the fucking thing in your arms, Steve, it’s a bit late to ask that.

“Yes, it is, okay? This a ground-breaking scientific discovery. We can’t just bury it like some common mammal, okay? It’s not a dog.”

“All right, all right, all right. But you’re explaining this to Mrs. Byers, all right?”

Eddie watches in sardonic disbelief as the two of them manhandle the thing into the fridge, leaving its sticky blood in a trail over the floor and the fridge’s off-white surface. When it’s done, Steve reaches over and makes a move like he’s ruffling the kid’s hair, except the kid’s wearing a hat.

Dustin moves through into the other room and Eddie says in an undertone, “Jesus, you actually like the kid, huh?” half expecting a laugh and a swift denial in response.

But Steve just shrugs, rinsing his hands under the tap. “He’s not bad. He’s annoying as hell, sure, but it’s kinda– I don’t know. Endearing.”

“Endearing? My oh my, do my ears deceive me? I did not just hear Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington call some nerdy middle schooler endearing–”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, man.” Steve’s voice is flat, weary. Eddie looks away at that, wondering where it went, that ease between them — and holds out his cigarette. Peace offering. Steve, after a moment, takes it. He closes his eyes as he inhales, exhaustion slumping his shoulders. Tilts his head back to breathe out smoke. Eddie watches the line of his throat without thinking about it, and then thinks about it and looks away again.

The kids’ conversation drifts in from the other room: “...swarming with hundreds of those dogs.”

“Demodogs!” Dustin corrects at a yell.

“The chief will take care of her.”

“Like she needs protection.”

Steve hands the cigarette back and moves closer to them, still holding the tea towel he used to dry his hands. “Listen, dude, a coach calls a play in a game, bottom line, you execute it. All right?”

“Okay, first of all, this isn’t some stupid sports game,” Mike snaps. “And second, we’re not even in the game. We’re on the bench.”

“Right- uh, so- so, my point is…”

Eddie decides to take pity on him. “There’s nothing we can do. Spinning plates, my friends, we can’t get in the way.”

“Spinning plates?” Mike repeats, wrinkling his nose.

“C’mon. It’s better than the sports metaphor.”

“There might actually be something we can do,” Dustin says, slowly, in the tone he uses when he’s about to do something particularly brilliant (and annoying, as the DM who has to react to it) in DnD. “I mean, these demodogs, they have a hive mind. It’s all connected.”

Lucas picks up the trail. “So if we get their attention…”

So do the others: “Maybe we can draw them away from the Lab.”

“And clear a path to the Gate.”

“Yeah, and then we all die,” Steve snaps, spreading his hands with the tea towel slung over his shoulder. Eddie eyes it, but keeps his mouth shut.

“That’s one point of view.”

“No, that’s not a point of view, man, that’s a fact.”

“The guys in the Lab,” Mike says slowly. “They said there were tunnels. Extending for– for miles, underneath Hawkins. And they were burning them, that’s why Will collapsed, because of the hive mind. The tunnels are connected.”

“What are you saying?” Max asks, bright hair swinging as she looks at him pacing up and down.

“I’m saying — what if we burn them? The tunnels?”

“Oh, yeah? That’s a no,” Steve says. Everyone ignores him.

“The mind flayer would call away his army.”

“They’d all come to stop us.”

“And then we get out again and–”

“Guys,” Steve tries again.

“By the time they realize we’re gone–”

“El would be at the Gate.”

Steve claps his hands together. “Hey, hey, hey! This is not happening.”

Eddie’s inclined to agree with that assessment. “We don’t even know where the fuck these tunnels are, we’re not just gonna walk out into the night looking for them on some blind hope with, I don’t know, a bunch of gasoline–”

“Exactly. Look, I promised I’d keep you shitheads safe, and that’s exactly what I plan on doing. We’re staying here. On the bench. And we’re waiting for the starting team to do their job. Does everybody understand?”

“This isn’t a stupid sports game!” Mike snaps.

Eddie shakes his head. “Actually, it isn’t a game at all, so why don’t you sit down and listen to what the adults tell you, ‘kay?”

A mutinous silence.

“Okay?” Steve takes up, voice hard.

Still no one says anything. Steve takes a step forward, maybe to press the issue — and then.

The rev of an engine outside. A sports engine, obnoxious. Proving a point. Eddie gets a sinking feeling in his chest, though really it could be anyone, but it’s not just anyone, is it. Their luck’s not that good.

Max runs to the window, peering out at the driveway. There’s the faint hint of metal battling with that engine, metal Eddie subconsciously finds himself trying to pick out, as Max hisses, “It’s my brother. He– he can’t know I’m here. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill us.”

“Brother? What–”

“Fucking Hargrove,” Steve mutters, eyes wide and alert like he’s making a plan. Billy is Max’s brother? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, this guy isn’t just gonna go away and it’s not like Steve can use the nailbat on him– (right?)

The music is Quiet Riot, Sign of the Times, Eddie realizes, just as the guy cuts the engine and it all goes silent and dark. Just as Steve goes out there, alone.

(A quick, hissed conversation: I’ll go out alone, tell him to fuck off. Just me, he’ll think it’s weirder with anyone else. Steve’s eyes on Eddie, like he thought Eddie was going to argue. Which, maybe he thinks Eddie’s nobler than he actually is. Braver.)

Eddie’s heart is hammering against his ribcage. He listens; he can hear their conversation through the window, Billy’s arrogant voice against Steve’s measured, weary one.

“Am I dreaming, or is that you, Harrington?”

“Yeah, it’s me, don’t cream your pants.”

Eddie feels a smirk twitch across his lips unbidden, despite everything, despite the way he’s having to fist his hands in his pockets to keep them from trembling. Nice one, Steve.

“What are you doing here, amigo?”

“I could ask you the same thing. Amigo.”

“Looking for my stepsister. A little birdie told me she was here.”

“Huh. That’s weird, I don’t know her.”

Max glances back at Eddie from her position hunched by the window. There’s something pinched, pale in her face, strung like a taut wire. Guilt? He’ll kill me. He’ll kill us. Eddie’s stomach turns; he wishes, for one violent moment, that he was someone else, someone who could go out there and–

No. He doesn’t. He just feels empty, empty and sad at that girl’s pinched face.

Their conversation’s gone inaudible outside. When Eddie crouches a little he can see through the window, see the way they’re squaring off at each other, Billy gesturing with his cigarette, his red fucking shirt open all the way down his chest. It’s fucking November, asshole, put some clothes on. Billy’s face twists at something Steve says; Eddie hopes it was a gut punch. Then–

Oh. Then Billy’s looking right at them. Through the window. Pointing with the glowing hot end of his smoke.

“Shit! Did he see us?” Dustin says, panicked, as Eddie looks back up through the window to see–

Shit. Steve’s on the ground.

The door slams open; Billy stalks his way in like he’s muscling through a crowd, shoulders swinging. Max is somehow closest to the door, somehow, fuck, how did Eddie let that happen–

“Well, well, well,” Billy says, in that fucking evil voice of his. He slams the door shut behind him. “Lucas Sinclair. What a surprise. I thought I told you to stay away from him, Max.”

Lucas? What’s he–

It clicks. Eddie feels a violent stab of loathing towards Billy, then, loathing strong enough it has him striding forward and placing himself firmly between Billy and the kids. “What, harassing us all in the cafeteria isn’t enough for you, asshole? You make house calls now?”

Billy stops. Stares at him, like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. “Jesus, what a sorry collection of fucking freaks.”

“Apparently, you’re not hearing me. Go. Begone. Fly.”

Billy’s rage-dark eyes flicker over him. Sizing him up. Wondering– what. Wondering if he’s worth it. If he’ll make a real fight. Are you man enough? Will it be easy or will it be a challenge? And these guys, really, they’re looking for both.

So Eddie’s in trouble.

A strong, heavy hand on his shoulder wrenches him to the side, shoves him into the wall, head knocks against it, slumps down a little dazed but not the target just a distraction — easy, Eddie thinks dizzily, Billy decided he’s easy — shoulder running through with pain though not the bad sort, not the jerking it back into place sort, not yet, anyway, Eddie’s never been a guy for a physical fight though really he was born to them–

Billy’s slammed Lucas into a cabinet, yelling into his face, Eddie tries to drag himself up but he’s slow, aching, awkward–

“So dead, Sinclair! You’re dead,” Billy snarls, reeling back from Lucas’ well-aimed kick.

And then Eddie can only slump back and watch as Steve passes in a blur down the hallway, grabbing Billy’s arm and forcing him back around: “No. You are.” And he lands a punch.

Good punch, Eddie thinks, great punch, but it’s gonna take more than that to keep a guy like this down. He finally manages to get himself to his feet as Billy begins to laugh like a fucking madman: “Looks like you got some fire in you after all, huh? I’ve been waiting to meet this King Steve everybody’s been telling me so much about.”

“Get out,” Steve says. Two fingers lightly prodded into the guy’s bare chest.

Eddie flinches. Sees the shift in Billy’s eyes at that, the sudden darkening into fury, knows a lighter touch will always go down worse than a punch. Guys like these, they don’t know what to do with that light touch, except kill it.

And then the fight begins.

Eddie’s frozen, useless on the sidelines. Kids yelling encouragement as they tussle across the kitchen, crashing into the table, the counter, plates clattering on the side, plates–

Eddie sees it coming before Steve does. “Steve!” he shouts. Too late. Plate smashes into the side of Steve’s skull; Steve goes down. Can’t go down in a fight like this, this guy’s not gonna let up, can’t roll over and show your belly you gotta be strong–

For the second time in five minutes Eddie lunges in without thinking. Grabs another plate from the side and crashes it into Billy’s back, maybe Steve won’t fight dirty but Eddie certainly will, shards all over the floor and blood through Billy’s shirt as he turns with a snarl curling his lip like a dog, an animal as he grabs for Eddie’s collar and slams him sideways back into the table–

Eddie feels something break. Or, he’s aware of something breaking.

Strange awareness of a little crack inside his torso and he’s huh, that’s– what’s that? right up until the floor and the pain hit all at once and he lets out a yell, “Fuck,” fuck, oh, fuck, that’s a rib, that’s a broken rib right there as he curls around himself and tries not to breathe because each breath suddenly feels like a knife right there in the side of his lung–

He can hear yelling, muffled, as if from very far away. But he knows it’s not far, knows it’s– knows it’s Steve, it’s Steve, he has to do something, he has to– has to–

Drags himself up again. Hands on the table, all his strength as his insides scream at him, wills his adrenaline to kick back into gear come on you fucking prick of a body let’s go–

By the time he makes it to the other room, Max is sticking a needle into Billy’s neck.

Billy stands up from where he’s straddling Steve’s hips, Steve who’s all but passed out, Steve whose arch, finely boned face is a mess of blood– Steve–

Billy sways. Staggers, then falls. Lands heavily on the floor, where he keeps on laughing, fucking psycho, fucking–

Max grabs the nailbat from the corner. Holds it up over Billy’s splayed legs. “From here on out, you leave me and my friends alone. Do you understand?”

“Screw you,” Billy slurs.

Max doesn’t hesitate. She slams the bat into the floor just inches from the guy’s crotch. “Say you understand! Say it. Say it!”

“I understand.”

“What?” Max demands.

“I understand,” he repeats, louder, and Eddie tries to find some sick satisfaction in that but he’s coming up empty. Billy’s eyes slide shut. The fight is over.

“Holy shit,” Dustin whispers, eyes darting between Max and Eddie and Steve, Steve who’s prone on the floor. Steve. Eddie moves stiffly, hand clutched to the spot on his side no doubt blooming purple and red, the spot underneath which a rib is broken, moves stiffly and then drops to his knees by Steve, almost afraid to touch him.

“Steve?” he says. “Steve, c’mon, man, wake up.”

Steve’s eyes flicker open then closed again, or at least the one that’s not swollen shut does. He groans something unintelligible. His face is a wreck, swollen and puffy and way worse than this time last year when it was Jonathan’s fists that ruined it. Maybe Jonathan was pulling his punches. Maybe Jonathan’s not a fucking sadist. Steve’s breath is rattling through his mouth, nose too broken to breathe through, but hell, at least he’s breathing at all. He doesn’t make any effort to get up.

“I think he needs a hospital,” Eddie says, and is ignored. The kids are talking at each other, fast and urgent, making plans to go find somewhere to get into the tunnels to burn them– “Hey!” he snaps. “Still here, y’know.”

“You won’t be if El doesn’t make it to the Gate,” Lucas says, voice dark and serious. “None of us will be. We have to help her.”

“And I don’t wanna be here when this asshole wakes up,” Dustin adds, making as if to nudge Billy’s prone form with his foot and then freezing at the last second. “Do you?”

“All we have to do is work out where to go.”

Eddie stares at them, feeling small and out of his depth on his knees by Steve, who shifts on the floor and then lets out a groan, eyes still swollen closed. He imagines a hundred of those dogs bursting in here, tearing them all to shreds, defenseless. Having torn El and Hopper to shreds first, in the cruel depths of that place. That place El looked so pale at the thought of going back to. This whole weekend has been about protecting her, right? That’s what it’s been about. Going to Chicago, driving her and her scary friends around in his van. Can he really stop that now?

“I think I might have an idea,” he says slowly, the realization forming in his mind even as he speaks, even as he wonders if he’s going to regret this. “About where we can get into the tunnels.”

“Where?” Dustin demands.

“First we gotta– um, we gotta clean Steve up a bit, we can’t just leave him here when he’s– like, what if he chokes on his own blood or something–”

“Okay,” Mike says immediately, rushing from the room and then returning with a first aid kit, like he knew just where to find it. He and the other kids probably grew up in and out of this house, and for a second Eddie feels the unease of dissonance, the knowledge that this was a house of violence while Lonnie was around and warmth when he was not, but that maybe the two overlapped and he’s not sure how to reconcile with that, their ability to coexist.

Eddie takes the kit from him, dabbing at the worst of Steve’s cuts with the antiseptic wipes and biting down on the inside of his cheek as Steve hisses, semi-conscious. “I know, man, I know it hurts.”

This can’t be a good idea. Taking Steve with them? It can’t be. But they’ve got no choice, not really, and Eddie’s certainly not leaving him in a heap right next to Billy, Billy who’s a lot bigger and stronger than Will and will wake up from the drugs soon enough. So–

He manages to get Steve awake enough to support him, limping, into the back of the van. Halfway through his head lolls onto Eddie’s shoulder, weight going dead and slack as he passes out again, and Eddie grits his teeth against the sudden strain in his side and the surge of panic both, heaving him into the back with Lucas doing his best to help. “This is a terrible fucking idea,” Eddie mutters, surveying Steve’s awkward sprawl of limbs. “We should be driving him to the hospital.”

“We don’t have time,” Dustin calls across the driveway, where he’s hurrying to grab cans of fuel. Max appears behind him with shovels in her hands, ready to dig, because they’re going to need to.

Jesus Christ, this is stupid.

But here they are.

The radio flares to life with Billy Idol as he turns the engine over and backs haphazardly out of the driveway, wincing at every bump, knowing what a head wound feels like and kind of wishing he didn’t–

Because it’s Billy Idol, no one comments, for which he’s grateful, because if he’d had the misfortune to be landed with Tears For Fears or Madonna or something he’d never hear the end of it, which is a stupid thing to be thinking about now of all times, honestly he’d be glad to be teased by the middle schoolers forever if it meant they were all alive to do it–

His rib twinges. He ignores it.

It’s not a long drive, which seems out of place. Shouldn’t it take longer to race towards certain death? A long, painful journey during which they have time to contemplate the gravity of their choices, the inevitabilities and the tragedies that led them here — that’s how he’d write it, if they were in DnD. They’re not in DnD.

So when Steve stirs in the back, slurring, “What’s goin’ on?” Eddie’s already swinging the van onto the dirt track to Freeling Farm.

“You have to be cool, Steve, you’ve got a concussion,” Dustin says soothingly, not that it’s going to help.

“Okay, we’re here,” Eddie says, jerking the van to the side of the road and cutting the engine. He looks over his shoulder. “Steve, maybe you should–”

“What the fuck,” Steve grits out, “are we doing.”

“Steve!” Eddie snaps. They don’t have time for this. He’s made a decision here, and by God he’s gonna see that fucking decision through. “Are you with us, or do you need to stay in the car?”

A silence. Steve, through all the blood and swollen mess, looks taken aback. A little pissed, maybe, to be spoken to like that by Hawkins’ resident nobody. But they’re all nobodies here. A demodog doesn’t know Steve’s famous hair from Eddie’s ratty own.

“I’m with you,” Steve mumbles thickly, finally, spitting out a glob of blood. Eddie doesn’t want to know where it landed, but equally there’s enough blood in his van already, what’s a little more?

He gets out and rounds the back, helps the kids carry the shovels, the canisters of gasoline, the various scarves and goggles they collected to protect them from whatever sick air they’re going to find down there. Each movement hurts, side ablaze with pain and breathing an effort, but he can handle it. He’s handled it before.

Then they set off towards the barn, dimly visible through the dark trees, trees Eddie isn’t going to think about right now. What could be lurking in them. Fuck that. They have a job to do.

The idea is one that came to him with almost supernatural ease: the memory of the mulchy, foul-smelling dirt by Freeling’s barn, almost forgotten in the weight of what Robbie Freeling asked of him there, but remembered now, remembered when it matters. They said it was all connected, right? The contamination of the farms, the growth of the tunnels. This has to be a way in.

So then, setting his jaw tight against the pain, he swings the shovel into the earth.

The kids all join him, Steve too, when he’s finally made it over from the van, swaying a little. Somehow, he manages to wield the shovel, more efficient than any of them except maybe Lucas, who has a little bit of jock in him, Eddie thinks, not that he’s annoying about it like the other jocks are, just quietly digs alongside them until–

Lucas’ shovel hits something. Not solid, necessarily, but ropey and firm and–

“Ugh,” he says, wrinkling his nose in the gloom. “It’s, like, slimy.”

“This is it,” Dustin says, peering down the hole. They’re all covered in grime already, but he clearly takes this as the moment to add, “Let’s cover up our faces, okay?”

They do. Eddie’s through arguing with the kid, at least for now. Then they bash their shovels at the eerie, crawling tendrils until all at once they give way and reveal the empty darkness beneath–

They each look at each other over the pit. Eyes masked by goggles, breathing hard through damp scarves. Eddie really thought being the getaway driver for an assassination would be the craziest thing he did this weekend. But, hey, it’s technically Monday right now, so it’s a whole new ballpark.

“Let’s get this fucking over with,” Steve says, muffled, and jumps down into the tunnel.

He helps the rest of them get down, or at least offers a hand that most of them reject, Eddie included. He’s not sure he could take it, Steve’s touch right now. Ever, probably, but that’s something to think about when they’re not in a subterranean hellscape about to fucking die. It’s cast in sickly blue, the walls glistening with some viscous, foul-smelling substance, tendrils creeping over the ground like roots.

“So let’s find someplace big where we can attract the most attention,” Mike says, and starts off down the tunnel without waiting for an answer. Eddie’s heart is hammering against his ribs but he’s trying not to think too hard about breathing, since anything beyond a shallow wheeze sends great burning pain all around his chest, fucking hell is he really doing this–

He follows them down the tunnel. He’s doing this.

“You okay?” Steve says, in a low tone, like he wasn’t the one totally passed out about ten minutes ago. “When Billy threw you into the table–”

“It’s fine,” Eddie says, concentrating on his feet, concentrating on the weight of the gas canister and the way the kerosene sloshes around inside it. “Why don’t you focus on not passing out again, man? And maybe not letting Wheeler get us lost?”

“No need,” Dustin calls from behind them, where he’s unspooling a length of fucking string. Isn’t there a Greek myth like that?

“Talk about through the fucking looking glass,” Steve mutters, turning back to the path ahead, and Eddie stares at him.

“Was that a goddamn literary reference, Steve?”

“Shut up. I’m concussed.”

“Yeah. No shit.”

But Steve’s not listening anymore. Mike’s disappeared up somewhere ahead and Steve quickens his pace: “Hey! Hey, Wheeler! Any of you little shits die down here, we’re getting the blame, dipshits!”

He rounds the corner and doesn’t come back; Eddie swallows the acidic bite of fear and follows. He finds them clustered together in a larger space, like a burrow, almost, for some huge and horrible creature, like the sandworms in Dune. At least a dozen tunnels all branching out from this one space — perfect for attracting the most attention.

They’re already dumping gasoline on the vines. The harsh acrid smell competes with the musty decay already filling the air, noticeable even through Eddie’s bandana. He hurries to join, moving stiffly to uncap the canister, biting down on his tongue as the action of pouring it jolts the muscles down his side. It’s hard, quick work, done all too soon because then they have to do the real job. Fuck.

They move to the side of the hub, the place where Dustin’s line of string is visible disappearing into the dark. They crouch ready, muscles wired like springs, knowing they’ll need to run. By god, will they need to run. Steve at the front. It’s gotta be Steve at the front. Even concussed, he’s the fastest.

“Alright, you guys ready?” he says, getting the lighter from his pocket. Weighing it in his hand.

“Ready,” they all say, even Eddie.

Dustin looks at Steve. “Light her up.”

Steve sparks the flame. “I am in such deep shit,” he says.

And he throws it. And the place bursts into fire.

Tendrils lift from the ground, wave and writhe in apparent pain, a shrieking emanating from the very walls like the whole place is crying out its agony, its furious agony, Steve jumping to his feet and grabbing Eddie’s arm and tugging him along, running back down the tunnel, running until Mike falls, something caught around his ankle pulling him down and Eddie grabs at it, tries to pull it away but Steve’s there swinging the bat down and it lets go and they run again–

A growl. A shadow, darting into their way. Sinewy and awful and no telekinetic girl to save them this time, no, just Steve and his bat, just Eddie and his bum shoulder and a bunch of kids from middle school.

Dustin steps to the front. Holding his arms out protectively — why does Dustin step to the front? Why is Steve letting him do this? Why is–

“Dustin,” Eddie says, and Dustin holds up a hand to stop him.

“Dart,” Dustin says. What the hell?

The thing just looks at him. Looks as much as it can, anyway, without a face.

“Dustin! Get back!” Max shouts, but Dustin raises his hand again.

“Trust me. Please.” He moves forward. The demodog does too. Slowly, slowly, like they’re two wary animals approaching each other on a territorial border. “Hey. It’s me. It’s me. It’s just your friend, it’s Dustin. It’s Dustin, alright? You remember me?”

It chitters. Is that a good sign?

“Will you let us pass?”

It snarls, face opening up to all those goddamn fucking teeth and Eddie jolts, grabs at whatever’s in reach, which is Steve’s shoulder, tense as a wire as he raises the bat–

Dustin’s voice has gone inaudible, maybe because he’s speaking quietly or maybe because Eddie’s hearing has whited out into panicked static. Dustin tosses something to the creature, a fucking– a fucking 3 Musketeers– feeds it pieces– beckons them past–

Eddie doesn’t need telling twice. He scrambles towards their exit, nearly tripping on a vine but catching himself before he can, hearing something in the distance like the thud of his heartbeat but it’s not it’s coming from out there it’s coming from further off and it’s–

Steve rushes to his side. Starts pushing the kids up the rope, one by one, all of them until it’s just Dustin left with the two of them, Dustin and Eddie and Steve, and there’s a shadow on the wall fuck it’s too late to too late to get out they’re coming they’re–

The dogs run right past them. So close they brush against Eddie’s jeans, the rank smell overwhelming, the air so close he can scarcely breathe — they run past them.

They’re safe.

When the tunnel is empty again, Eddie feels a tension around him ease, and realizes Steve had grabbed onto him tight.

Chapter Text

They know it’s over when the van’s headlamps flare into bright, blinding light, illuminating all the barn and the woods around, Eddie leaning heavily on a shovel as he tries to catch his breath without breaking any more ribs — bright, golden light, El’s light, and then a soft slide into darkness, into peace.

Over. Over again.

Eddie breathes. Clamps a hand over his side, where the rib is stabbing at him, and passes the other hand over his forehead, damp with sweat where the plastic band of the goggles lay. It’s running into his eyes and making them sting, though he can’t be sure he’s not also crying, just a little bit. Just out of exhaustion and fear and relief.

“We did it,” Dustin says. “Right? Did we do it?”

“We did it, dipshit,” Steve says, tone almost fond, and he’s the first to start towards the van. And it’s this — his easy calm, his steady walk — which relaxes them. Which catches them off guard, stops them reacting, when his legs fold and he hits the ground.

“Steve!” several people yell, Eddie among them, he thinks, he’s not sure where his voice has gone, and he dives to Steve’s side what did he miss what did he miss did the demodogs hit him after all–

Steve blinks his eyes open in the gloom, dull confusion in them. “Why am I on the ground?” he mumbles, attempting to sit up, getting pretty far before they gather their wits together and push him back down.

Eddie’s about two seconds away from panic. “Holy shit, okay, holy–”

“He needs a hospital,” Max says, tone brooking no argument. Yeah, he loves this kid. “There could be damage we don’t know about–”

“Right, right, yeah, okay, let’s– uh, let’s try to get him up–”

Steve takes that as his cue, apparently, because he shrugs off their hands and gets to his feet, not even swaying, somehow steady, how did that even–

Then he begins to slide again, toppling to one side, and Eddie’s just about quick enough to catch him, head landing heavy in the crook of Eddie’s good shoulder, Eddie’s muscles screaming at him for taking the weight until it lightens with Lucas’ and Mike’s support too. They stand there awkwardly for a moment, more of Steve touching Eddie right now than there’s ever been, the smell of sweat and grimy Upside Down gunk and, underneath that, hair product.

“Eddie?” Steve says after a few more seconds, shifting his head back up, and Eddie knows they have to move before he passes out again so they do, the four of them uncomfortably together, propping Steve up between them until they reach the back of the van. Eddie feels a little like passing out himself, lightheaded, knees trembling, but he’s gotta drive back to the fucking hospital first and Jesus Christ could this weekend (week) give him a break maybe–

“Everyone get the fuck in, let’s go,” he says, no patience left. They get in.

What does he get on the radio? Fucking Talk Talk. He nearly crashes into a tree reversing, saying over his shoulder, “Hey, Steve, you gotta stay awake for your shitty music,” then realizes where the rear is headed and slams the brakes hard enough the whole van jolts and shakes–

The music cuts. Silent for a few seconds, whirring, then, when they’re steadily on the road again–

The first rich drum beats of Judas Priest, Heavy Duty. Sweet, sweet metal. He could cry again. It’s bizarrely uplifting, though Steve’s going through whatever he’s going through in the pool of Owens’ blood in the back — or grounding, at least, since there’s some hypnotic effect to the repetitive beats that matches up with Carouselambra, in a way, and there must be something really screwed up in his head if the only thing can set it right is a monotonous bass and guitar.

“How’s he doing?” he says, glancing in the rearview.

“I’m fine,” Steve says, though he doesn’t sound fine, and he doesn’t look fine either, sitting up beside Dustin and then very rapidly sinking back down. Is this how concussions usually go? Eddie’s had a few, he doesn’t really remember them, maybe this is why, but still–

Plus Steve’s an athlete, right? So he’s probably had his fair share. And they get worse every time, right, cumulatively? So what if–

“If you start panicking, then Max drives, so calm down,” Dustin says, suddenly by Eddie’s ear. Eddie calms down.

And somehow, they make it to the hospital. They get Steve out the van; they get him into the emergency room; they let him be taken away, though it makes Eddie’s pulse jump to do it, hands trembling into fists by his sides. Any relevant medical history, allergies, underlying conditions? Eddie could only shrug helplessly. Antiseptic smell sharp in his nostrils. Hub of sound going in and out, machines beeping, people talking but what if it’s not safe. What if it’s not over what if something else what if they can’t just what–

“Eddie?” Dustin says, approaching him under bright white lights like he’s talking to a wounded deer, talking to Eddie the way he was talking to that demodog and really Eddie can’t do this now, he can’t, he really physically can’t because every breath feels like a knife to the chest except breathing’s all he can seem to try to do right now and it hurts–

He thinks he expresses this. Maybe. Cries out, or something, with the pain of it, because then there are hands on him, clinical, sanitized hands, hands he nonetheless doesn’t want but he’s in no shape to argue, not now. Steering him into an examination room and doing their best to help except–

“Stop,” he says, interrupting the doctor in his speech. He looks a little taken aback, but he waits. “I’m fine, okay? I’m just gonna–” keep a lid on this fucking panic attack until my broken rib has healed, great, what a stellar idea that is “–take a painkiller, okay, I’m fine. Thanks anyway.”

The doctor looks at him. He knows what that means; Eddie knows he knows what that means. Must see it, hear it, all the time. No insurance. Dime a dozen. It’s Reagan’s America; and come tomorrow (fuck, it’s tomorrow), it might still be.

The doctor lets him go.

“That was quick, are you okay?” Lucas says, jumping up from the bank of seats by the desk as he emerges. The other kids stand up too, and for a moment Eddie takes in the picture, the four of them covered in otherworldly grime with scarves still slung around their necks and adrenaline still racing behind their eyes, just children but with so much more weighing on them than anyone else in this room–

He sits down heavily, tightening his jaw against the pain. “I’m okay.”

“What about Steve, what do we–”

“They should come out with news,” Mike says. “Does anyone have any cash? I’m hungry.”

They all look at each other blankly. Fucking middle schoolers. Eddie must be a damn fool, because he gets his wallet out of his beaten-up, dirty jeans and hands him a dollar. “Get something we can share,” he says to Mike’s already retreating back, lacking the energy to raise his voice. Everything fucking aches.

Lucas flops back down beside him, and Max takes the next seat over. They both seem perfectly content to doze off, Max’s head slipping onto Lucas’ shoulder (patently adorable), and Eddie can only envy them. Strung tight like a fucking tripwire, just like the last time he was sitting waiting in a hospital, the last time they dealt with this shit.

Dustin is pacing up and down, shoes squeezing on the linoleum. Eddie raises an eyebrow at him tiredly. “What’s your problem, man?”

“My problem? Steve just passed out on me eleven times and you’re asking what my problem is? What’s your problem?”

“Fond of him now, are we?” Eddie crosses his arms over his chest and attempts to lean back in his seat. His back groans at him but there’s some new ease in stretching his legs out in front of him, especially when Dustin has to step over them. “My, uh, my problem is I don’t think I could express a single emotion right now if I tried. Tired to the goddamn bone, dude. How you have the energy to freak out and pace, I don’t know.”

“I–” Dustin starts, then stops, hands falling to his sides, dropping into the other chair. “I don’t, really. But it felt like someone should.”

“He’s gonna be okay, Henderson,” Eddie says. How sure he is of that, he doesn’t know, but it sounds good. Sounds like the right thing to say to a kid. “Right as rain. Give him ten minutes and he’ll be bounding out of there humming some ridiculous British new wave song–”

“He does love Tears For Fears.”

“Damn right he does. It’s heinous. What about you? What do you like?”

Dustin shrugs. “I don’t know, stuff. Michael Jackson.”

“Michael Jackson? C’mon, man, I know you’ve got something more interesting in you than that.” It’s painfully transparent as an attempted distraction, but Eddie’s got nothing else, and the kid’s face is thoughtful, so maybe it’s even working.

“I don’t know! I just listen to, like, what other people like. I like– what’s that song about ice?”

“Uh, Cold As Ice? Foreigner?”

Dustin snaps his fingers. “Yes. That one. That’s cool.”

“Hmm, you’ve got some promise. It’s kinda theatrical, actually, you into theater?”

Dustin’s cheeks color. So that’s a yes, then, and Eddie supposes he should be flattered Dustin thinks him cool enough to be embarrassed by it.

“Y’know–” Eddie says, thinking. “You should check out Supertramp. If you like that sorta– melodramatic feel, edging into prog rock. Crime of the Century, that whole album, it’s great, though Breakfast in America’s a bit lighter to start, probably, less me–”

Dustin’s eyes have gone wide. A little– well. Sad, and shit, what’s Eddie done now? “I will,” he says slowly. “But that’s– it’s just weird, don’t look at me like that, it’s just– my dad liked Supertramp.”

“Liked?” Eddie repeats, equally slowly. No idea what ground he stands on right now.

Dustin shuffles his feet and shrugs again, more forcefully flippant this time. “Yeah, I mean, I don’t really remember, I just remember my mom bought him that album with the snow on the piano on it for his birthday once.” And then, quieter, “He died. When I was seven.”

“Shit,” Eddie says.

“Yeah. I haven’t really talked to anyone about him much, except my mom. I don’t even remember much.”

“Do you, uh– do you miss him?”

“I guess I miss the idea of it more than anything else. Since I don’t really remember him all that much. Did you know children’s long term memory begins between the ages of two and seven? Meaning some of the stuff I do remember about him, I might have just extrapolated it from photos, so they’re not real memories at all.”

“You can’t– um, you can’t value them that way, though. Right? Like whatever you feel you know about him, that’s what’s real.”

“Well, I know he liked Supertramp. That’s real. So maybe I will listen to them,” Dustin says, a sudden resolve in his voice, eyes meeting Eddie’s, and it’s Eddie who has to look away, because these kids whose dads have died — they seem suddenly so much braver than him. So much stronger. And acting like his own dad is dead is the cowardly way out.

Mike reappears at the end of the hallway, waving a bag of Skittles and a box of Runts bought with Eddie’s hard-earned (drug) money, but hey, at least he bought things they can share. Eddie’s now realizing the last thing he ate was a bag of chips one of the gang shoplifted from the gas station, and before that leftover Chinese in the early hours, so he’s fairly ravenous. He sits up a little and watches Mike come down the hallway — and then Eddie’s eyes drift beyond him and with a jolt he recognizes someone else.

Painfully, he gets to his feet and hurries down past Mike, who frowns at him but doesn’t say anything, until he’s close enough to call out, “Uncle Wayne?” and Wayne, who’s leaning against the wall lighting a cigarette with deep tiredness etched in his face, looks up.

“Eddie?” His expression flickers through a dozen different things, too fast to read, but Eddie catches a hint of relief, and he sags with guilt. Because it’s been a day longer than he said it would be, right? Just a night in the city, that’s what he said. Now he’s in the hospital with pain written all over his body and otherworldly dirt on his cheeks.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call, I know I– I’m sorry. It’s been a–” He sucks in a deep breath and immediately regrets it, pain flaring up in his side. All he wants, suddenly, is to fold into Wayne’s arms, cry into his cigarette-smelling sheepskin. “It’s been a fucking weekend.”

“Eddie, what are you doin’ here? In the hospital?”

Eddie almost laughs. Remembers last year, remembers calling Wayne from this same fucking hallway, here for a friend. “My friend, he’s, uh, concussed. Our friend,” he adds, indicating the ragged bunch of kids behind him. Then he sharpens, realizing: “What are you doing here?”

Wayne sighs, exhaling smoke and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Andy O’Dell. He was checkin’ out his old place, seein’ what sorta mess the groundworkers were makin’, except–”

“What happened?”

“It ain’t him, he’s okay. But there was this big hole in the ground, nothin’ to do with groundworks at all, and one of the workers was still stuck down there like he’d been there all damn weekend, couldn’t get out, all bloodied up from the fall so O’Dell called me and we managed to get him out, but Jesus. I knew there was somethin’ wrong with the site, problems gettin’ crews to work it, safety issues, but goddamn Harrington had to keep ‘em on schedule, right? And now there’s a man here might never walk again. And the worst about it is there ain’t nothin’ to be done, not legally, anyway, ‘cause O’Dell shouldn’t have been there at all, Trespassin’ on what used to be his own property, and you can bet Harrington’s gonna come down hard on that.”

Eddie stares at him, chest hurting something worse than the pain of his rib. Contamination at the farm, a hole going through to the network of catacombs underneath — all too familiar. And once again, it’s the name Harrington coming up. Suddenly he doesn’t want to tell his uncle who the friend is. “Can’t the guy just claim he got out himself? Someone else stumbled upon him, or something?”

Wayne shakes his head. “I don’t know, kid, I ain’t no lawyer, but– I don’t know. This world’s got no reason to treat any of us fairly.”

And ain’t that true. Even if they did get to court — what would they say the guy fell into? A network of otherworldly tunnels manifested by some evil fucking being of another dimension, all the fault of the government except we’re not allowed to talk about that, about any of it, and the court transcript would come out as nothing but a series of redacted black lines, and the verdict would be resounding: no fault, no blame, not guilty. That’s how this works.

“Where’s O’Dell?” Eddie says.

“Callin’ the guy’s family. We finally managed to work out who he is. We ain’t gonna leave ‘til they get here, so–”

“Yeah.” He looks at the floor, a sudden flush of pride coloring his cheeks, pride he doesn’t know what to do with. “I need to make sure my friend’s okay, and if they let him go I should probably take him home–”

A sharpening in Wayne’s face. “This friend — I know him?”

Eddie shakes his head, scuffs his feet. “No. No one you know.”

And that could mean anything, really. He knows what Wayne might take it to mean, and maybe that’s a better assumption than the truth. The truth being that John Harrington might turn up here in this waiting room at any moment; that this situation might yet explode even further, and Eddie’s not sure he wants to be in the middle of it.

“Okay,” Wayne says, his eyes loaded with his misunderstanding, and Eddie lets it sit there. He lights his own cigarette and they trade idle talk until O’Dell returns, at which point Eddie goes back to the kids, taut and hesitant to interact with O’Dell and his big frame and his wide hands. The Skittles are gone, though they’ve saved him a couple Runts.

“Who’s that?” Dustin says, looking at Wayne. He doesn’t say is that your dad? Like he knows better.

“My uncle. Jesus, this town is way too small.”

“Steve!”

Eddie looks up with a jolt. Steve’s wandering out from around the corner, face all cleaned up and held together with surgical tape, one eye swollen shut. A doctor by his elbow, and they all hurry forward. “Are you the family?”

They glance at each other. Weighing up the cost of saying yes: probably not wise, in the long run. “Kinda,” Eddie supplies.

“Well, Mr. Harrington here has a concussion. He’s going to need monitoring for the first 24 hours: he should be woken up every four. Is there someone at home who can look after him?”

Eddie thinks about this hallway, thinks about his uncle and O’Dell waiting with this unnamed groundworker just because, thinks about how there’s still no sign of Harrington senior. “Yeah, I’ll take him home and keep an eye on him.”

“It’s very important he doesn’t hit his head again for a while, at least a month, okay? Which means no contact sports, no risky activities. He’s going to be foggy for a while, and he might pass out again, but that’s normal, so long as there’s no further head trauma and you’re able to wake him up.”

Risky activities. Well, hopefully those are over for now, though with Hawkins, you never know, right? Meaning someone else will have to wield the baseball bat, and fuck, it’s not gonna be Eddie. Eddie’s just the driver.

“C’mon, man, I’ll drive you home,” he says, as the doctor leaves.

“My house?” Steve says, something weird in his tone, which dips and slurs more with tiredness than anything else.

Eddie looks at him, then at the kids. Makes the decision. “No, let’s, uh, let’s go back to the Byers’. Make sure everyone’s okay, debrief and shit. Sound good?”

“Good,” Steve says, his eyes sliding shut. Eddie tenses, ready to (try to) catch him if necessary — but Steve stays upright, shoulders slumped, all the adrenaline finally gone out of him and ready to fucking sleep. Eddie knows the feeling.

Somehow, they all make it back to the Byers’. Everyone’s alive, everyone’s in one piece. That’s all that matters; Eddie finds himself unable to focus on anything else, eyes blurring when he keeps them open too long, assisting in the rearrangement of furniture and mattresses with deadened, painful limbs. Billy’s gone from the floor, the Camaro gone from the driveway. Good riddance.

He tells someone Steve needs to be woken up every four hours, though he’s not sure who, and the next thing he’s aware of is bright morning light streaming in through a gap in the curtains as he blinks groggy sleep from his eyes, every muscle aching, the sleeping mat under him not nearly thick enough to defend against the solid floor. He’s half under the dining room table, pushed up against the wall to leave room for the mattress where Lucas, Dustin, and Mike are still sprawled out, dead to the world.

His watch tells him it’s just past nine: not nearly enough sleep, not after the weekend he’s had. But wakefulness has the downside of awareness of his body, and the slow insistent stabbing in his side every time he so much as breathes, and it’s not gonna let him roll back over to sleep again, so–

With an effort, he drags himself up to his feet.

The house is still. Quiet, save for faint snoring and rustling, the sounds of a dozen other humans sleeping peacefully in the aftermath of the storm. He looks over to the front room and sees Hopper laid out on the couch, feet hanging quite a way off the end, while Max and El share another mattress, looking more at ease with each other now than they did in wakefulness.

Steve. Where’s Steve?

Hand on his ribs, he edges his way down the hallway, peering into each doorway, left slightly ajar. (Deliberately, he thinks.) Jonathan’s room is empty, though the bed is rumpled, slept in. In Joyce’s, he finds Will curled up beside Bob, a gap between them whose previous occupant doesn’t take much guessing. And then in Will’s room–

Eddie releases an unexpected tension. Steve’s there, ruined face smushed into a blue pillow, each breath a rattling snore since he probably can’t breathe through his nose.

Eddie draws closer and lays a hand, feather-light, on his shoulder. “Steve?”

He doesn’t wake, so Eddie tries a little harder with a fresh surge of worry, before Steve shifts and groans, blinking one eye open owlishly in the dim morning light. “Ugh.”

“Still alive?”

“Yeagh.” He turns his head, burying himself back in the sheets.

“Need more than that, Steve. Alive: check. Vegetable…?”

“Not a vegetable,” he says, voice muffled. “Fuck off, Eddie.”

“There we go. Okay, you can go back to sleep now.”

Steve doesn’t respond, probably asleep again already, and Eddie lets a tired smile twitch across his face as he limps back out to the hallway, making a beeline for the bathroom, where he shakes out a couple Tylenol into his hand and swallows them dry, hoping that will tide him over until he can go home and really take the edge of. Jesus, he’s daydreaming about ketamine. But he’s not sure he can be blamed for that, not today.

But, hey, he’ll settle for a smoke. He grabs a coat from the peg by the door — some heavy brown corduroy thing that probably belongs to Jonathan — and shoves his hands in the pockets against the cold as soon as he’s outside, since it’s a bright, frigid morning, and he’s not in it alone.

Joyce is on the porch swing, face drawn and hollow, a half-full ashtray balanced on the seat beside her and a fresh cigarette between her slender fingers. He looks at her for a moment, debating going back inside, but then she’s looking at him too and he has no choice but to join her.

He sits down with a creak, of the bench and of his bones, and he can’t restrain the hiss of pain.

“Are you okay?” she says, frowning at him.

“I’m fine,” he says. (How many times has he said that in the last twenty-four hours?) She doesn’t look like she believes him, but maybe she’s saving that battle for another day, because she just offers him her pack of smokes. Camels. Good taste.

“Seems silly, doesn’t it?” she says, at length. Looking out at the driveway, dusted with frost, and the cool, still woods. Everything dappled in sunshine. “A morning as nice as this. After everything that happened.”

“I don’t know, I’ve, uh, I’ve learned not to put too much stock in how nice or otherwise the days are.”

Her face twists into a smile. “Smart.” Her voice is hoarse, and as he looks at her, her hand comes up unconsciously to her throat, covered by a high blue turtleneck, and when she turns her head to the side he gets just a flash of deep purple bruising.

“What’s that?” he says, unthinkingly.

Her eyes snap to his. But she doesn’t reply, just keeps looking at him, like she doesn’t know how to say it. Like there are no words for saying it, and suddenly he knows what they are. What her son was turned into, for one night only, the echo of everything she thought she’d banished a year ago–

The echo of violence. The echo of Lonnie.

“Yeah,” he says, on an exhale, which hurts. “It does seem silly.”

They smoke in silence for a while. They watch a rabbit dart across the grass, ears back, determined but not frightened, and Eddie wills it on. It disappears among the trees without looking back. Something about the peace of a morning, after it all. Maybe not silly. Maybe just right.

“So,” he says, wincing as he breaks the silence. “Bob knows everything now, huh?”

Joyce sinks her face into her hands, pressing her fingertips into her eyes. “Yeah. Something like that.” She looks up again, sinking resolve into her voice. “Y’know, he saved our lives. In that– place. The Lab. If he didn’t know that coding-thingy language we couldn’t have got the doors open, and then–”

“Lucky he was there.” Eddie keeps his voice nice and even. He doesn’t even know where he’s going with this, really. Bob seems nice. Perfectly nice.

She sighs. “I wouldn’t have wanted him to be. No one else should have to be involved in this– in this shit. But. Here we are.”

“Here we are,” he echoes, flicking ash from his cigarette. When he looks up, it’s to the crunch of tires and Jonathan’s LTD pulling into the driveway, Nancy in the passenger seat. Eddie sits up straighter as they get out. Jonathan makes a beeline straight for the front door, barely stopping to nod at Eddie and his mom — checking on Will, most likely — but Nancy slows, her arms full of newspapers, eyes large and dimmed.

“Catching up on the, uh, the news? Any interesting stories?” Eddie says, gesturing.

She smiles thinly. “No. No interesting stories.” Then a sigh, “Not yet, anyway.”

“Not yet?”

She glances between Eddie and Joyce, fingers curling around the thin pages. “We went to see a journalist. Jonathan and me. Or– well, an investigator. He used to be a journalist. I managed to get them admitting it on tape, that they were at fault for what happened to Barb, so we took that to this guy and– well. It might not come to anything. It might take a while. But I needed to check.”

Eddie stares at her. “You’re taking down the Lab?”

Her cheeks color a little. “Trying, at least. It’s not as easy as it sounds.”

“Well, it doesn’t sound particularly fucking easy, I gotta say, so. Jesus, Wheeler, you’re impressive.”

“While that sounds very dangerous, I’m inclined to agree with Eddie,” Joyce says, voice soft and mild, the edge of a smile tugging at her face. Eddie surrenders to the same impulse, lets the thing take over despite the exhaustion, the pain, the hankering for something stronger — he just smiles. Because maybe good things are happening too.

Joyce and Hopper, the unofficial parents of whatever the fuck this is (Bob as some weird, benign uncle), seem to have made the executive decision of no school today. So they spend the day in various stages of wakefulness, talking in quiet corners, playing half hearted games of cards or Ludo, beginning the tiresome process of cleaning up the house. Turns out Jonathan and Nancy bought groceries, too, good thing, since Steve and Dustin dumped out the contents of the fridge for the dead rotting thing which is now in its rightful place, buried in a shallow grave at the back of the yard. Hopper and Jonathan come in from this task sweating despite the cold, faces grimy but decidedly happier now that the monster’s no longer in sight. No longer in the fucking house. (Despite Dustin’s complaints.)

Eddie wakes Steve up again after lunch, bowl of Mac N Cheese in hand in the hopes of placating him. It takes a lighter touch on his shoulder this time; he stirs immediately, forehead creasing as he squints at Eddie and then hisses as it stretches the wounds on his face. Which is more swollen than yesterday, probably due to get worse before it gets better. “What time is it?” Steve says thickly.

“Like, half past one. Did you sleep well?”

“Like the fucking dead,” Steve says, moving to sit up. Eddie realizes his hand is still on Steve’s shoulder and promptly pulls it away. “Is that–”

“Mac N Cheese? Yeah. Thought you’d be, y’know, hungry. Sleeping all day while the rest of us clean up is hard work.”

“Hey, I did my fair share last night,” Steve says, reaching for the bowl, hanging his head with his hair flat and his back pressed against the headboard and Eddie isn’t sure what’s gotten into him but he finds himself saying, “Yeah, you did, man. You really did.”

And Steve looks at him sharply, like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. But there is no other shoe. No strings attached, whatever the fucking metaphor. Eddie hands him the spoon.

After a moment, Steve drops his eyes again, and begins to eat. Slowly at first, then ravenously. “Damn, this is good.”

“What can I say, I’m a man of many talents–”

“Really?”

Eddie laughs. “Fuck no. This is straight out of a box, and I sure as hell wasn’t the one who cooked it. Thank Bob for that.”

“...remind me who Bob is again?”

“A little foggy, are we, Steve?” Eddie looks at him closely. It’s normal, right? A bit of memory loss. Plus last night was such chaos anyway– “Joyce’s boyfriend. He’s all involved now, supposedly, knows everything we know. I can’t quite tell if she’s pleased about that or not.”

“Well, it fucking sucks to know, right? I’m sure they’ll be over with a stack of NDAs as tall as we are soon enough.”

“Not if Nancy’s got anything to do with it,” Eddie says, half to himself, and doesn’t miss the little flinch that runs through Steve at the name. “But, yeah, it does suck, but I don’t know if that’s why Joyce is being so, y’know, weird about it.”

Steve looks blank, like he’s never once considered the intricacies of Joyce Byers’ love life. Which, fair enough, but Eddie’s sort of caught up in this family dynamic, right? After Lonnie. Shit.

“Just eat your fucking macaroni.” Obediently, Steve goes back to eating. Eddie figures this is as good a time as any to broach the major question. “I don’t know if you remember this, but, uh, last night, the doctor asked if you had anyone at home to look after you. And I just said I’d bring you here, that you’d be fine, which, y’know, you are, so you’re welcome, but–”

“You want to know why my parents weren’t there.”

They look at each other. Steve quiet, resigned. Eddie regrets asking.

“They’re in– Detroit? I think? Work. My dad’s work, anyway. Mom’s got nothing better to do. Since the summer they’ve just been traveling, like, all the time. I don’t think it’s going as well as he wanted it to, the expansion of his portfolio in Hawkins. He’s trying to get into bigger markets elsewhere.”

Eddie swallows. Fights the thing inside him that’s trying its goddamn hardest to take this personally, because–

Because. Asshole gets to buy the trailer park and buy the farms and kill the residents, kill the workers, and just– move on? Because he’s bored? Because he’s–

But it’s not worth it. What was it Wayne said? This world’s got no reason to treat any of us fairly. And it doesn’t. And it’s not personal, and that’s what fucking stings.

But Steve–

It is personal for Steve. Steve whose dad this is. Steve whose dad couldn’t come to the hospital because he was a state away, and might not have even if it was just a street. So–

“Asshole,” Eddie says softly. “Wait til he hears you’ve been adopted by the town crazies.”

Steve smiles, though it looks like it hurts. “Kidnapped, maybe. Pressganged.”

“Shut up. I made you macaroni.”

“I mean, you literally didn’t, but–”

“Just eat it,” Eddie says, smiling as he walks away.

Chapter Text

Monday night Eddie’s sleeplessness catches up with him; he crashes on the couch before Wayne’s even left for work, and wakes up disoriented and stiff some time after midnight. Tired enough still that he can drag himself through to his room and sleep in his own bed for the first time in what feels like fucking years.

He wakes slowly, dragging himself up into awareness like swimming through molasses. His first thought is fuck, it’s been over four hours, need to check on Steve — until he remembers where he is, the trailer, and where Steve is, the Byers’ house, where they decided it would be best for him to stay until he could face his parents coherently — Eddie not in the equation, because of course, why would he be? What’s Eddie got to do with it?

He’s tempted to call, though. Just in case. But no news is good news, isn’t that the saying? They’ll tell him if Steve is worse. Someone will tell him. So for now–

He finds himself fresh jeans, his old Saxon t-shirt. Getting it over his head is a struggle, every muscle lighting up with pain as he tugs it down, a quick glance in the mirror showing a great purple horror shrouding his side — he’s always bruised easily, true, but this is a little way beyond that. He thinks of Billy’s crazed eyes and winces.

Going down the hallway, he finds his uncle watching the news with a cigarette, a half-full ashtray balanced on the sofa arm beside him. It’s an update on the election — a reporter outside a polling station, figures in red and blue flashing up at the bottom of the screen — and Wayne’s leaning forward to stare at it intently, elbows balanced on his knees.

Eddie feels as though he’s stepped through the looking glass for a moment. Like this is the weird sight, and everything that happened over the weekend the norm — like watching Reagan’s numbers creep up is the real horror story.

“There’s not gonna be any real news for a while, right?” Eddie says, stretching and then immediately regretting it. Wayne looks at him suspiciously.

“No, sure, but we gotta keep in the loop. When you gonna go vote?”

Eddie weighs his options, most of which involve skipping today’s most undesirable class, which is probably biology — fuck, definitely biology, because Billy’s in his biology class and that is not a confrontation he wants to have, particularly, today, with a broken rib and nerves fried from everything. “I might go pretty soon, actually, then just go to school afterwards.”

Wayne nods. He’s big on Eddie going to class, doing his homework, passing the year, of course, but he can be relied upon to keep the political in mind as well. Now, anyway. The development of his political ambitions has been sort of recent. “I’ll come with you. No sense passin’ out on the couch and wakin’ up when the polls are closed.”

Once he’s agreed to this, the notion of going to wait in line with his uncle, assimilating himself among Hawkins’ all and sundry who have no fucking clue about what nearly happened to all of them this weekend — the idea gets less appealing. He felt a little like this last time, he thinks. This weird cold sweat down the back of his neck at the prospect of an oblivious crowd.

The middle school gym is serving as the polling place, which means the middle school is closed for the day, lucky bastards. Eddie drives them there without issue, strangely enough, a close calm settling over him the second he climbs into the driver’s seat, as though it’s there and only there he can tap into a reserve of battle-ready adrenaline and easy preparedness. When he pulls up in the parking lot and cuts the engine, he feels Wayne’s eyes on him.

“Somethin’ different about you today, kid. Your drivin’, maybe.”

“In a good way?”

Wayne laughs. “Any change to your drivin’ is a good change, in my book. Somethin’ more careful about it, maybe, though you could still stand to go a hell of a lot slower.”

Eddie shrugs, smiling a little sheepishly, the way he only does around his uncle. He uses that feeling, the young, soft feeling he spent so long suspecting and rejecting, to overcome the sudden rush of panic he gets at stepping out onto the busy asphalt, towards the queue forming by the entrance, red and blue voters alike all waiting their turn–

He’s never voted in a presidential election before. It feels paradoxically trivial, more so than the primary in May, the first thing he’d ever voted in and somehow so goddamn world ending, like if he chose the wrong guy then the other side would win and life would get only worse, like it was down to him to make the world better–

Now, it feels like punching a hole in a card. All the less important because if a Gate to another dimension doesn’t change anything, why should this? If this still happens after that, then–

“Hey, Eddie,” someone says behind them in the line. He turns: it’s Joyce. Looking tired and drawn, still in a high green turtleneck.

“Hey.”

Wayne looks between them, a little question in his face, resolving itself into an unhappy understanding. He was aware of the connection between Bruce and Lonnie, after all, so maybe he thinks this is some sort of solidarity thing — which, sure, it is, but not for that reason. For something probably worse. “Mrs. Byers,” Wayne says, nodding his head politely.

“Joyce, please.” She pinches the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes with a deep breath. Her fingers are trembling, Eddie notices, and there’s a cigarette in her other hand. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

Her words are quiet, likely not intended for them, but Wayne answers anyway: “Doin’ our bit for democracy, huh?”

“Democracy,” she repeats softly, and meets Eddie’s eyes. Some democracy, she’s thinking. Some government we’re voting for. He knows this because he’s thinking the same; and they can’t tell Wayne a thing. “Hopper’s home with Will. He thinks I’m crazy for being here, y’know, but I thought– well, and Bob can be convincing.” Bob. Eddie looks around for him; Joyce adds, “He’s parking the car. Told me to save a place in line, so we wouldn’t have to wait so long.” She closes her eyes again and smiles, though maybe it’s more of a grimace. Eddie’s not sure he can tell.

The hard, resigned look in Wayne’s face gets a bit easier at the mention of Will. Like maybe he’s revising his idea of their knowing each other — because Eddie plays DnD with the kids. That’s something a lot easier for the mind to handle.

“How’s–” Eddie starts, with a furtive glance at his uncle, then continues anyway, the urge unbearable, “–Steve?”

“Oh, he’s okay. A little tired, confused, his short-term memory’s shot to shit but it shouldn’t last too long. I’ve seen plenty of concussions in my time. He’ll be fine.”

He doesn’t doubt she’s seen plenty of concussions. It’s not exactly something he enjoys hearing her say out loud. He can feel Wayne’s eyes on him. “I might, uh. Drop by? After school?”

“Oh, sweetie, you’re welcome any time.”

Eddie looks at the ground. He hates that tone of hers. But there’s no time to wallow in this feeling, because then Bob arrives, looking the same as he always has, the everyman in the Radioshack shirt who slings his arm around Joyce’s shoulders like he belongs there, though it looks less possessive than hopeful, like he’s hanging off rather than surrounding her. “Oh, good, the line’s not too long. Hi, Eddie, you okay?”

Eddie feels his fingers twitch. Feels his rib stab at him. Presses a hand to it, as subtly as he can manage, and nods. Though he wants to scream. Though he wants to yell, right here in front of the Republicans and Democrats and blank open sky, how the fuck does this not change you? How the fuck do you stay the same?

The problem isn’t that the world has turned upside-down; it’s that it remained rightside-up, with him now walking on the ceiling.

After they’ve voted, Eddie catches up with Wayne smoking a cigarette outside, eyes distracted and vague. “Y’know, I overheard some guys in front of us, while you were talkin’ to Mrs. Byers and Newby. Talkin’ about the construction work goin’ on up in North Hawkins. A mall, they’re sayin’. Wonderin’ why they’re wastin’ their time on some asshole who cares more about the Ruskies than anythin’ real that affects them, like the corrupt guys at the top underpayin’ and overworkin’ and not givin’ a shit about real lives in this town. Can’t say I blame them.”

Eddie lights his own cigarette and leans back against the wall. Not that he wants to hang out by the polling station, particularly, but clearly Wayne has something to say. “But voting’s good, right? I mean, the laws, they come from the top down. If there’s, uh, a better guy at the top, then surely–”

Wayne shakes his head, smiling humorlessly. “It ain’t so simple. That’s how Reagan thinks it works with the economy, this trickle-down thing where if the rich are richer then so’s everyone else, as if more coins will fall outta their pockets and the poor can pick them up and that’s fine. But the ones with the power and the money, you think they’re interested in changin’ much for us? Really? Sure, we’re here, and I voted and you voted and we can’t not exercise that right, it’s important, but really? Our own lives? The big shit ain’t gonna happen to us. The Ruskies ain’t a concern to us, not unless they actually launch somethin’, in which case we don’t gotta worry about anythin’ at all much longer. We ain’t got the luxury of considerin’ a bigger picture.”

Eddie receives this without reacting, without responding, without even having much of an opinion on it. Because he understands it, where his uncle’s coming from. The way last year they defeated the monster and still the car was broken at the end of it; that didn’t go away. The trailer park didn’t go away. But equally, well, he’s not in a smaller picture frame of mind right now. Not yet.

“This Steve,” Wayne starts, in an apparent digression. “He the same one you talked about last year?”

“I don’t think I, uh, I talked about him. Did I? I just–” Eddie closes his mouth, already in too deep. There are plenty of Steves in this town.

“He’s stayin’ at Mrs. Byers’ place? With a concussion? I guess he’s the friend from the hospital, huh?”

“Wayne,” Eddie says quietly, tapping out.

Wayne looks at him. His worn face tight and unreadable. “I sure hope you know what you’re doin’, kid.”

“So do I.”

And that’s the matter closed. But Eddie doesn’t feel the relief he expected, more a cold weariness. It settles over him and isn’t disturbed even by the fresh flush of panic he feels as Wayne takes the driver’s seat to drop him off at school — why is someone else driving I should be driving what if he can’t what if something I need to I need.

The music’s on radio again, some Huey Lewis song, and Wayne’s gotta drive back home to this so Eddie makes the effort to change it, finding something a little less current, a little less pop — Which Side Are You On, Pete Seeger. Certainly fitting, though hardly appropriate for radio. Maybe the DJ is feeling political. Wayne doesn’t say anything about it, just shoots him a glance over the stick shift. Then they’re pulling up to the high school and Eddie feels another flurry of panic, but fuck it. Big picture, small picture. He can handle high school.

And he can. He makes it through his classes til lunch, matches O’Donnell’s evil stare with a neutral, not-quite penitent one of his own. There’s little buzz in the hallways, all the drama of Steve and Nancy and Jonathan having cooled off over the weekend. Thank god. Eddie’s not sure he could take it; as it is, he’s doing a pretty admirable job of not retreating into a bathroom stall and hyperventilating for a couple hours, or else smoking a joint.

When he sits down for lunch at their normal table, there’s a pleasant surprise, at least: Jeff in the usually-empty seat beside him. “Hey, man,” Eddie says, sitting down loosely and pulling a knee up, then regretting it at the last second because fuck does that stretch his side.

“Hey. You hit by a truck this weekend or what?”

“What?” Eddie says, letting a little playful offense into his voice.

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks, man, always great to hear from you.” Eddie does indeed look like shit, however, he’s aware of this even without looking in the mirror. Lines of pain pulling taut in his face, from suffering the broken rib with the as yet sole help of his good friend Tylenol. Not to mention the stress. Jesus, he deserves compensation money. “Were you here yesterday?”

“Nope. First day back. Mom was coming to the middle school to vote, so she dropped me off.”

“I didn’t see her, I guess she was earlier than we were.”

“Shit, I forgot you were eighteen. That’s so cool.”

Eddie’s halfway through constructing a denial when he closes his mouth and just accepts that, yeah, to Jeff, it is so cool, and Jeff is entitled to find it cool, and just because Eddie’s whole perspective on the world has been totally ruined doesn’t mean anyone else’s has to be. “It’s mainly just standing in a line, but yeah. Kinda cool. Feeling like you have a choice in the way the world works, y’know?”

“You said ‘we’?”

“Yeah, I went with my uncle.”

He watches Jeff’s eyes dim. Right. Like he’s asking himself, who’s gonna take him to vote when it’s his turn?

His mom, of course, and that thought brings with it its own sourness, for Eddie this time. He pushes it down and offers a smile to Aaron and Gareth as they arrive, setting their trays down with a clatter and grim looks. He lets the smile slide off his face. “What’s going on?”

“Hargrove’s a prick, is what’s going on,” Gareth says, and his glare is directed entirely at Eddie. Right. That is sort of his fault. “He tripped me in the hallway and nearly punched Aaron for standing too close to his locker.”

“I’m amazed the guy even knows he has a locker. I believe he’s of the opinion that nice pecs and a wispy mullet will get him into college.”

“You think that guy wants to go to college?” Gareth says, shaking his head.

“Maybe the college of being a fucking asshole,” Aaron mutters, also glaring at Eddie. Nursing a grudge, maybe. Small concerns, big concerns, interdimensional concerns. Eddie tries to keep this in mind.

“I swear, it’s like he’s given some of his steroids to Tommy H., too, the guy’s gone completely insane–”

“We had such a nice balance going on, us freaks and those assholes, we had a mutual respect for the order of things. Someone like Hargrove comes in–” Eddie shakes his head. Then he thinks of Max with the bat in her hands, her warning. Even the threat of castration can’t change a guy’s nature, not really.

“Someone like Hargrove comes in and it sets you off. Provokes something, I don’t know. I wish Janie were here. She could talk some sense into people. Into you.”

“Janie was your friend last year, right? Who graduated?” Aaron hasn’t yet touched his lunch. Eddie feels a pang of hunger at the sight and wonders if they’re too mad at each other for Aaron to give him some.

“Yeah. She lives with her dad in China now.”

“Janie aside. What are we going to do?” Jeff says, speaking for the first time all conversation, leaning in. Eddie blinks at him.

“It’s the same old. There’s nothing you can do.” Aaron’s voice is glum. He pushes his tray away from him; Eddie takes the opportunity to steal a forkful of carrots. Aaron lets him. “At least some people don’t like him. I saw Heather giving him a really scornful look when we were by my locker.”

“I think that was probably wishful thinking,” Gareth says, as Jeff says, “Really?”

Aaron scowls. “She’s not like the rest of them.”

Eddie thinks about the coke at the party. Not that he’s one to really talk. But still. “At this point, my friends, I’m going to elect to be a flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda guy. And no more provoking the beast. Hand on heart.”

They each frown at him suspiciously, Jeff’s eyebrows raised. But there’s nothing larger they can extract from him, promise-wise, so they’ll have to be satisfied with that. And the conversation moves on, and in the hallway he catches Nancy and pulls her aside, says, “Anything?” and she shakes her head.

“No one’s talking about anything but the election,” she says, “And the mail, it won’t have–” She stops herself. Exhales. “But soon. It has to be soon. I’m gonna buy all the papers every day until it happens.”

“Y’know, I might have already said this, but, uh, what you did, getting Owens admitting it on tape, taking it to the investigator, that’s pretty fucking metal.”

She has a rather sharp-edged smile, he thinks. Her real smile, not the fragile pretty one she puts on to get what she wants. “Thanks. How are you doing, after the fight? I know Steve is–”

Her tone is loaded, of course it is, syllables skirting around Steve breathlessly like she can’t get the name out of her mouth fast enough, but there’s also no upset in it. Something about this makes him feel honest. “Cracked a rib, I think, but other than that. Y’know. Peachy.”

“A rib? Have you seen anyone?”

“It’s a rib, Wheeler, there’s nothing they can do. Just let it knit itself back together on its own.”

She studies him carefully. He wonders what she’s thinking. If she’s remembering the time last year he pushed his own shoulder back in because he didn’t have insurance, a problem that remains to be solved, in that they have to think about things like deductibles anyway, healthcare or no, and so–

But she nods. And he smiles crookedly at her.

She’s walking off into the crowd when he feels a hand on his shoulder and he jolts, which of course sends a flare of pain felt too often to really be worth mentioning again down his side, alongside the customary spike of panic. But it’s just Robin, wry look and all. “You’re friends with Nancy Wheeler now?”

The honest spell hasn’t quite worn off, so he shrugs. “Somehow, god knows how, I think yes?”

She laughs disbelievingly. “Nancy Wheeler. Really.”

“She’s not quite what she seems.”

Robin looks unconvinced. She could interpret that in a drugs way — what most of his interactions entail, when they’re not with Hellfire or Robin or Jonathan — or in an earnest way, and she doesn’t seem to be capable of settling on either. “You look sick.”

“Jesus, what is with everyone today? Did I wake up in a universe where the concept of, uh, manners and decorum simply doesn’t exist anymore–”

“Sorry. But you know what I mean.”

He sighs. “Unfortunately I do know what you mean. Should I just skip the afternoon?”

“You’re asking me that question? You’re asking me that question. Well, from what I’ve heard all your teachers hate you, as do some of your friends when you ditch them among all the horrible boring band-lings–”

“Oh, shit. Band. Last night.”

“Yup.”

He winces. “I’m sorry, Buckley, I– y’know, I am actually sick. Death’s door, y’know. Couldn’t make it to band.”

“Oh, sure. Well, Mr. Tapia’s pissed, and if he revokes your guitar privileges and you quit I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.”

“Quit yourself. Come join Hellfire.”

“And sit in a room rolling dice for hours? Without getting to play the trumpet? My mother hates when I practice in the house. Playing with band is the only chance I get.”

“It’s not entirely dice, y’know. Just… mostly. And your mom doesn’t let you play? But you’re pretty good, surely–”

“I think she’d prefer I made zero noise, good or otherwise. Children are supposed to be seen and not heard, don’t people say that? I think she read one Victorian novel and decided that was how life was supposed to be. She’s just pissed she can’t send me to the workhouse.”

“Please, sir, may I have some more?” he quotes, and she smirks.

“More? You want more?”

They laugh. “And what does your dad think of your mother’s Dickensian values?”

“I think he’s just glad she read a book so they have something to talk about. He must have every book Dickens ever wrote, and Trollope, and Fielding, and Swift, and Eliot. He’s impossible to have a conversation with if you haven’t read Middlemarch. You know, one time I really made the effort because it was his birthday and I didn’t have the money to buy him anything so I just decided to read one of his favorites, it was Tom Jones–”

“Like the singer?”

“No, not like the singer. Well, yes, like the singer, but not actually the singer. Like, two hundred years older than the singer. Anyway, I read Tom Jones, I mean I actually read Tom Jones, all one thousand twenty-three pages of it, it was flying by by the end — so on his birthday, I gave him his gift, which was his own dog-eared paperback, and I said to him, So this dude Blifil’s an asshole, huh? and you should have seen his face, he got so excited, we were talking for ages until my mom came in and she just looked so– I don’t know. Pissed. Bitter. Like she’d sucked on a lemon. And she said you have better things to do than sit here talking for hours about things that aren’t real. I’ve told you you talk too much, Robin, and Joseph, you shouldn’t be encouraging her.”

Eddie looks at her. “Shit.”

“Yeah, well. It’s not even like he’s some great academic, or whatever. It’s just the only way he knows how to relate to people. It’s why he likes the big social novels, I think, the ones with lots of characters and this whole detailed historical world behind it. He can live in it, I guess, and all its relationships make so much more sense. I kinda see what he means.” She shrugs, looking away from Eddie, like maybe she’s said too much for the middle of day in the high school hallway. He wonders what he’d be like, if he had a mother and his mother was like hers. Sour and unforgiving.

“So do I,” he allows. “DnD’s a bit like that, y’know. I really think you’d have fun.”

She opens her mouth to respond, probably a denial, hopefully not, and then someone knocks into her shoulder, causing her to stumble into the wall.

“Seems like someone needs a visit to the eye doctor, buddy!” Eddie snaps on impulse, then freezes as the guy turns around. It’s Billy Hargrove. Of course it’s Billy Hargrove.

He looks unchanged, though the last time Eddie saw him he was as prone as a tranquilized horse on the Byers’ floor. Shirt unbuttoned, mullet curling around his neck even as his hands curl into fists, staring at Eddie. Glaring. No doubt those hands remember how it felt to throw Eddie into a table; Eddie’s side certainly hasn’t forgotten.

Billy won’t forgive being called buddy, not by Eddie. He won’t forgo the chance of a rematch. No way. Eddie braces himself, regrets starting this, regrets putting Robin in yet more danger (his promise to Hellfire a short-lived one, apparently) — and Billy doesn’t move.

Billy doesn’t move.

He just looks at Eddie, something muted in his eyes like he’s pulling at an invisible leash, and then turns and walks away. Walks away. Jesus. Eddie feels the urge to look outside and check Hawkins High hasn’t suddenly moved to the moon.

“What was that?” Robin whispers, coming out of her corner. “He looked– I don’t know. Scared of you.”

“I’m reasonably convinced he’s a psychopath. And I don’t think psychopaths are scared of anything. But I’ll, y’know, I’ll take it. Whatever it was.”

Perhaps the threat of a nail-studded bat to the balls is an effective deterrent after all.

He’s still riding this high of disbelief as he drives over to the Byers’ that afternoon, having dragged himself through his afternoon classes. His side hurts. He’s pushing himself, but is he pushing himself? He no longer knows. After so long spent with intermittent pain, like a stranger who passes in and out of town so often they’re no longer a stranger and more of a friend, he’s capable of anything. Of doing anything, no matter what his body says. But should he be? Should he be capable of this? Is it damaging him further? You can bleed internally with a rib, he thinks, but he has difficulty applying the abstract mechanics of his body to the fact of its pain, which is always surmountable with a little chemical help, and if the pain should be surmountable then so should everything else. Right?

So he continues to push himself.

Still, he feels tired and strung-out as he pulls into the Byers’ driveway, and doesn’t let himself hesitate after he cuts the engine, hang his head over the wheel and just ache, the way he wants to. Instead he gets out and knocks on the door. It’s Will who answers it.

Eddie looks at him for a long moment. He’s pale and drawn, the way Eddie feels pale and drawn, but otherwise he looks utterly normal. Nothing at all like he spent the weekend possessed by an eldritch horror. “Hi,” he says. “We just ordered pizza.”

Eddie drags a hand through his hair and shakes his head. Of course the middle schooler is handling this better than he is. “Steve’s up and about, then?” Will opens the door wider to reveal Steve on the couch, limbs slung everywhere as he watches TV through swollen eyes. Eddie steps inside and grins. “Steve, man, I have your homework.”

Steve flips him the bird without looking at him, eyes still on the television, though nothing about his position suggests he’s actually paying attention. Inability to focus, isn’t that something concussion does?

Still, Eddie can’t resist: “Murder, She Wrote? Showing your age a bit, there, Steve.”

“Angela Lansbury isn’t even in this scene,” Steve says. “Which means you also watch Murder, She Wrote, if you can recognize it that fast.”

“I’m older than you. Practically a senior citizen. Ergo, it’s acceptable for me to watch Murder, She Wrote.”

“It’s not acceptable for anyone to watch Murder, She Wrote,” Jonathan says darkly, coming out of the kitchen to lean against the wall with his arms folded. “There has to be something else on.”

“I haven’t even heard of this show,” Will says.

“It only started like a month ago,” Steve says, still fixed on the television, and maybe he is actually watching it.

“How can you all have such strong opinions on a show that’s only been airing for a month?”

“There’s not a lot to do in Hawkins, Byers, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Eddie sits down on the couch next to Steve, letting some of the tension drop out of his muscles as he leans back in the cushions — and feels his head touch something that’s very much not a cushion, namely Steve’s arm. Steve glances at him but doesn’t move his arm away, and it would be weird for Eddie to move again, right? It would make it obvious what’s going on here, which is that Eddie’s heart rate has picked up.

Jonathan, despite his professed hatred for this show, sits down in the armchair. Perhaps he’s in the mood to talk. And indeed he says, clasping his hands together between his knees and leaning forward, “Mom’s out buying a new fridge with Bob.”

“A new fridge?” Eddie says, with a look at Steve.

“Turns out putting a hundred pound monster in it wasn’t great for our old fridge’s hinges, or whatever. Hopper says there’s gonna be compensation money, for what happened to Will, not that–” Jonathan looks up at Will and then back down again. “Not that I think we should take it. But with the fridge and the window–”

Eddie’s not sure if he’s forgotten Steve’s in the room. In that the fridge is sort of Steve’s fault (and sort of Eddie’s, and sort of Dustin’s) and Steve isn’t the kind of person they have these conversations with. But maybe Jonathan’s just stopped caring. “Hush money,” Eddie says. Carrot and stick. He remembers that from last year.

“Something like that. To keep us from suing, or whatever, not that we could sue. One word to a lawyer or a judge and it’s, I don’t know, prison? Funny how we just signed those NDAs without really thinking about what they’d do if we broke them.”

“Probably best not to think about it,” Steve says without much emotion.

“I saw your mom and Bob at the middle school today, to vote,” Eddie offers. “She said Bob talked her into it.”

“Funnily enough, I actually sorta agreed with him. No one tell him that.” Jonathan sits back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. “He’s just trying very hard right now to be– I don’t know. Something he’s very much not, to us. Like we need a man of the house, a– a dad, or whatever, right now, because of what we’ve been through. Because of what happened. Like Mom can’t handle going out to vote or buy the fridge on her own.”

“I’m pretty sure your mom could handle literally anything the world threw at her at this point and she, uh, she has. But yeah, y’know. I guess it’s kinda nice?”

“I think, after everything, it’s pointless to care about nice.”

Eddie shrugs, conceding the point. They watch TV in silence for a couple minutes, before he says, “Where’s Nancy?”

He feels Steve’s arm tense behind his head. What’s life without being a little thoughtless now and then? No one answers for a second, like they’re jostling for position. Once it would have been Steve; now it’s probably Jonathan.

Indeed, it’s Jonathan. “It was Holly’s birthday yesterday, but she missed it, because she was here, so they’re doing something today. She’s supposed to be at home all evening.”

“Holly being…?”

“Their little sister. Mike’s there too,” Will cuts in.

“Feels weird, doesn’t it?” Steve says. “Not being together with everyone anymore.”

It’s a strange prospect, when few of them have any reason to coexist in the same ‘everyone’ at all. It’s also true; it does feel weird. But is Steve saying this because Nancy is part of that ‘everyone’, now, for him? Because ‘everyone’ is the only context in which he might still see her?

Steve’s arm still hasn’t moved from behind Eddie’s head.

Chapter Text

“What, you’re into horses now too?” Eddie says, as Rick hangs up the phone. “Drugs not a risky enough business on their own?”

“If you’re good at it, it’s not risky. Anyway, it’s this new Breeders’ Cup, it’s gonna be the biggest event in racing all year except the Triple Crown or all that European crap. If you’re gonna bet on anything, you gotta bet on that.”

There’s some Police song playing on the radio, Canary in a Coalmine. Rick’s sitting on the counter next to it, eating a PB&J. Weak morning light is filtering across the kitchen and the whole room smells like weed. Eddie’s dad was never a betting man; he had his vices, but not that. The same couldn’t be said for Lonnie. He had a big win, so they say, in 1976 on Bold Forbes in the Kentucky Derby, and he splashed out his winnings on a new car and a lot of booze and nothing at all for his family. It’s still remembered fondly in Hawkins, a success story of the prodigal son, an inspiring reminder that things like that really can happen to people from here.

“You want a PB&J?”

Eddie shakes his head. He’s tired, still sore, sullen from a week of fraught tension after Reagan’s win. His uncle had reacted to the news in just the way Eddie would have expected, by sighing calmly and lighting a fresh cigarette, a hand rubbed over his forehead the only sign of any real distress. The following days have been spent in conference with farmers, construction workers, his peers at the plant; Eddie’s begun to suspect he no longer sleeps. When his uncle switched from uneasy indifference — this here’s our lot, and we gotta deal with that the best we can — to revolutionary ringleading he’s not sure.

“How’s it been going, then, the selling? Your clientele still reliable?” Rick cracks a grin.

“Rich high schoolers enjoy ketamine just as much as ever, if that’s what you mean.” This is the right answer; Rick’s grin deepens, and he puts his sandwich down and goes into the other room, returning with a fresh bag of supplies. The assorted favorites: coke, ket, ecstasy, acid, a fuckton of weed. Eddie knows it’s his turn. He digs in his pocket and comes up with a wad of bills, which he places on the counter.

“Ah, Eddie, you’re the best employee a guy could hope for.” Rick takes the money; Eddie reaches for the bag, but stops as Rick speaks again. “I got another task for you, kid. It shouldn’t be very difficult, especially for a smart guy like you. It’s more a matter of driving somewhere.”

Driving somewhere. Well, Eddie’s good at that. “Where?”

“Chicago.”

Eddie feels a little shudder run through him. He does not want to go to Chicago. He wants to forget Chicago ever happened. He doesn’t want to look up on the street and see Axel’s grinning face, Kali’s unsmiling one. He lights a cigarette. “Why?”

“The guy I get my stuff from, he can’t get into Indianapolis this week and I can’t go to Chicago myself, so if you want to keep it coming, then…”

Eddie’s no fool. He can hear the wily shiftiness beneath Rick’s tone, his sly persuasion, the hint of some other reason he wants Eddie to go. The question that remains is how benign or otherwise that reason is. If it’s going to do to Eddie something worse than no stash would — than no income would.

With the car acting up, with Wayne making waves his employers aren’t going to like–

Well.

“When do you want me to go?”

Rick writes down an address, circles a spot on a roadmap. Sends him off for the day, and Eddie lights a further cigarette before he pulls out from the driveway, the lake glittering beyond the trees. Nice spot. If this is what drugs and horses get you–

Eddie drives past Furling Way on his route out of town. He slows only fractionally, only a little habitually, leaning forward over the wheel to catch a glimpse of Steve’s house. Steve’s parents are back in town, and he’s grounded for the week, since a black eye and a broken nose can only ever be a sign of trouble in their book, it seems. So Eddie hasn’t seen him since Wednesday, when he dropped by the Byers’ on his lunch break and Steve was getting his shit together to go back home. I think they’ve got, y’know, bigger things to worry about than me, Steve had said, something Will did earlier, I don’t know, I can’t fucking remember what it was — concussions are so fucking annoying — but it’s got Mrs. Byers all freaked out again.

Eddie had felt a further dose of alarm at that, but Bob was around and Hopper was not, which was a reasonable indicator that the trouble wasn’t interdimensionally serious, not this time. Just mentally.

The point being that Eddie can’t go see Steve today, which makes him feel a little like he got out of the wrong side of bed.

Instead he blasts the recent Iron Maiden album, Powerslave, and tries not to think about how much gas he’s using driving to Chicago twice in a week. It doesn’t take him too long, not much traffic on the roads. In the daylight he can more clearly see the billboards flashing past, one after the other, WHAT WOULD JESUS THINK OF PORNOGRAPHY? followed directly by one advertising a sex store, JESUS IS LOVE & JOY & MERCY preceding a thinly veiled promotion for antidepressants. There are surrealler ones too, HELL IS REAL and THOU SHALT BE SAVED and IF YOU DIED TODAY, WHERE WOULD YOU SPEND ETERNITY? He’s fairly inured to them, living in a town like Hawkins, but one of them particular sets his teeth on edge: if you’re looking for a sign, THIS IS IT.

It’s the lack of God or Jesus or sin that makes it disturbing, he thinks. The simplicity of it, almost jokey, but cruel, like the joke’s on the person looking at it. THIS IS IT. All very well, if you know what you’re looking for.

He lights another cigarette one-handed and is flicking its last ash out the window when he reaches the sign for Chicago city limits, and he leans over to check the map. He’s onto Accept’s Balls to the Wall, now, and he taps his fingers on the wheel in time to the beat. So nice to have a functioning cassette player again. So nice to–

Behind him, the sudden shrieking whine of a siren.

His heart begins to pound. Automatically he revs the engine, puts on a burst of speed before his brain catches up with his body and he registers quite how bad an idea that is. Because either they’re not after him, and some van speeding away will make them suspicious, or else they are after him and, well–

He’s already beginning to slow down and pull over, the cop car stopping behind him on the side of the road, his hand reaching out to cut the radio automatically, when he realizes what city he’s in and what his van was used for the last time he was here —

And that he didn’t change back the plates.

Somehow he manages to restrain his urge to panic. Instead, a strange calm settles over him. He cuts the engine and lays his palms on the wheel, deep breath in, deep breath out.

“License and registration?” the cop says first, standing a little way back so Eddie has to crane his neck to look at him.

“They’re in the glove box,” Eddie says. He’s not really sure what his voice sounds like. The cop nods permission and Eddie reaches in, finds the documents. He’s suddenly hyper aware of all the evidence they could find in this van. Shreds of loose weed, grains of ket trodden into the floor. That’s not to mention Owens’ blood, which Eddie did his best to clean up, he really did, but blood’s a tricky one and there was only so much face-to-face with the stuff he could stand–

He’s also aware of the cop’s tension behind him. Whole body rigid, arm lingering by his side, hand on his gun? Like Eddie is dangerous. Eddie couldn’t hurt a fly.

He hands over the documents and waits. He could make a break for it now, if he wanted, but he wouldn’t get very far. Cops radio in about traffic stops, he thinks, and indeed he can see the guy’s mouth moving as he sits in his vehicle a couple yards behind. And now he has Eddie’s license so he knows where he lives so–

He has to sit there. Waiting.

Finally, the cop returns. “Sir, I’m gonna need you to exit the vehicle.”

“Why? What’s–”

“Get out of the van.”

Eddie complies. He can do nothing else. The cop’s hand is on his gun again.

“Turn around.”

And oh, yeah, he should have expected this. Expected the hard click of cuffs on his wrists, the way putting his hands behind his back wrenches his already-stiff shoulders and sends a shooting pain through his side. Expected the shit they always say, you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be–

Except the cop doesn’t say it. Why doesn’t the cop say it?

He just steers Eddie back towards the cop car, pushes him into the backseat and closes the door firmly on him, though now Eddie’s heart is racing and he might throw up. No Miranda rights. Not even the vaguest pretense of a regulated system, no, he’s not in Kansas anymore.

The cop gets in the front, radios a bunch of unintelligible codes out, says something about a search. Searching Eddie’s van. Fuck. Then he does something again stranger; he drives off, leaving Eddie’s van where it is, until he spots a payphone. They pull over again, and he gets out and uses the payphone. Eddie’s decent at lipreading, but the cop turns away, like he doesn’t want Eddie to see. And Eddie’s found himself strangely sharp in these situations, sharp enough to connect a secretive phone call and an illegal arrest to the NDAs he hasn’t yet been given to sign and last year’s cold eyes of an agent in a doctor’s office — sharp enough to know that he’s a problem which transcends this cop’s paygrade. Shit.

He thinks he must quit his body for a second there, because he’s next aware of a cold, hard room with a mirror and a table and his wrists cuffed to that table; maybe he was read his rights sometime during that blankness, but he doubts it.

Everything aches. His bad shoulder particularly, jostled by the cop who cuffed him, with the looseness that tells him it’s not totally dislocated but also not quite right either plus his side hurts and really he’s so fucking tired of feeling like someone put him down a garbage disposal.

But hey. He’s in a police interrogation room. So his body’s the least of his problems.

He waits for a while. This part is not unexpected; they’re probably enjoying watching him sweat. Except he’s not. Sweating, that is. He feels strangely icy cold. An image flashes across his brain: his father in a chair like this, at a table like this, in a room like this. Finally brought to account by a higher authority than himself, except he’d never respected that authority and — maybe his fault — neither had Eddie.

Eddie just waits, aching.

As all things must, eventually the waiting comes to an end. The door opens and he looks up coolly, though his hands want to twitch over each other, though his breath jumps in his chest and sends a spark of pain through his rib. It’s an anonymous-looking guy in a suit. Of course it is.

“Hello, Edward,” the man says, pulling out the other chair but not yet sitting down. “My name is Agent Blass.”

“Your first name is Agent?”

Blass regards him dispassionately. “My first name isn’t in discussion here, Edward.”

“Eddie.”

“Neither is yours.”

They look at each other in stalemate. Or, what Eddie would like to believe (positive attitude) is stalemate. It’s probably more something like Blass sitting there like a stone while Eddie itches. “I wasn’t read my rights,” Eddie says eventually, cringing as he does it, knowing he shouldn’t be breaking the silence and knowing also he sounds petulant, like a child.

Blass raises an eyebrow. “The officer wasn’t arresting you.”

Eddie stares at him, not breaking eye contact as he rattles the cuffs attached to the table. “These would, uh, beg to differ.”

“The officer wasn’t arresting you; I’m arresting you.” Eddie shuts his mouth. “Your vehicle, a vehicle registered to your name and place of address, was intercepted bearing the license plates of a vehicle involved in a burglary and attempted murder, which vehicle matches the description of your vehicle. There are also traces of illicit substances and of blood in the vehicle. Can you explain this? Can you explain the fact that your van bears different plates to those registered to it? Or that your vehicle was seen fleeing the scene of the crime?”

“You still haven’t read me my rights,” Eddie manages, throat dry. Blass doesn’t say anything, so he adds, “I want a phone call.”

“I don’t think you’re quite understanding what’s going on here,” Blass says. “You’re in the jurisdiction of the Department of Energy. I am under no legal obligation to read you any rights nor provide you with a phonecall.”

Eddie feels a surge of panic, overriding the calm, splitting him apart. It’s going to hurt if he breathes too much but there’s nothing he can– is this really happening? After they solved the Department’s fucking problem for them now he’s stuck here with–

“If you answer my questions, this will go much more smoothly than it otherwise can. It’s up to you.”

Eddie takes a deep breath, rejecting the pang it brings with it. “Sam Owens. You know him?”

Blass’ face changes, just a little bit. Enough that Eddie can push the panic down.

“I, uh, I saved his life on Sunday. My friends and me. If you call him up, he’ll remember me.”

“Dr. Owens is currently indisposed.” But Blass’ voice has gone stiff — stiffer than before, at any rate. “Am I to take it you were involved in the incident at Hawkins National Laboratory last weekend, then?”

Eddie doesn’t know whether this will save him or make it worse. But it feels better than sitting there in silence, so he leans forward on his elbows and nods. “Owens will tell you. I’m not gonna tell you anything until you talk to Owens.”

“Like I said, Dr. Owens is–”

“In the hospital? Yeah, I know, I fucking drove him there, that’s why there’s traces of blood in my van.”

Blass stares at him. For the first time maybe ever, Eddie feels a little powerful. “I will talk to Owens,” Blass says, standing up from the table. His chair screeches on the floor. And then he’s gone, not another word, and Eddie sags back and wonders if they’d give him painkillers.

Probably not, what with the illicit substances in his van. Thank fuck this happened before he met with Rick’s supplier and not after. Which, the supplier’s gonna be mad, and Rick’s gonna be mad, and maybe Eddie won’t be able to sell again–

These ideas occur to him distantly, as though far off figures on a darkened horizon. One problem at a time, he’s been taught. Has had to learn. He thinks about Steve instead.

Steve’s damaged face, still well-constructed and magnetic, somehow, despite all the puffiness and bruising. Steve somehow doing a 180 in Eddie’s head, turning warm where before he was something cold and arch to be kept at a distance — things are different this time. Somehow, they’re different.

He’s not sure how many hours he whiles away staring into the blankness and rehearsing the events of the past year, but it must be several, because when the door next opens it’s Owens himself.

Not so indisposed, then. He’s white-faced, leaning heavily on crutches as he maneuvers awkwardly into the room. The door shuts behind them and leaves them alone, though Eddie’s not naive enough to believe no one’s listening. He watches as Owens folds himself into a chair, wincing, and says, “I discharged myself for you, kid. I owe my doctor a nice bottle of apology whiskey.”

Eddie shifts and regrets it, every muscle having stiffened up in the hours he’s been here. The pain must show in his face, because Owens digs in his pocket and pushes a pill bottle across the table: Eddie allows himself to get his hopes up until he reads the label and finds it’s only aspirin. He pushes the bottle back across the table without taking one. “I’m allergic.”

“That’s too bad. I’d give you a codeine, but I’m not sure how wise that’d be, huh?”

Eddie’s throat feels dry and itchy. He hasn’t had a drink of water in however many goddamn hours it’s been. “So that Blass guy, he, uh, he told you what’s going on?”

“He did.”

They look at each other. Eddie isn’t getting out of this for free.

“I told him what you did for me, you and Steve, was it? I’ve explained how helpful you’ve been to us, in containing this mess. He understands that there’s no need to be antagonistic with you.”

“So I can go?” Eddie says, with the edge of a humorless grin, faintly desperate.

“Unfortunately, Eddie, and I know you understand this, there’s the problem of Eight. Or Kali Prasad, as I believe you know her.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, kid, these people–” Owens gestures to the mirror “–they think they’ve got you dead to rights. The thing with the plates on your van, it looks bad. If you deny it, you’re letting these people out there say whatever they want about you. I can help you, but only if you tell your side of the story.”

“I saved your fucking life, man, this isn’t–”

“Eddie,” Owens says, and Eddie closes his mouth. Because there’s something behind his eyes, the way he looks at the mirror. Emphasizes it a little, like he’s making sure Eddie knows they’re being watched. “Tell me about Kali and her friends. How many of them are there?”

Something tells him Owens already knows. “Five of them. Including Kali.”

“So six of you altogether?”

Eddie blinks. So either he doesn’t know about El, that she was in Chicago, or he does, and– “I wasn’t– I just came across them. I wasn’t part of their, uh, their group.”

“No, of course you weren’t. We’ve been aware of their activities for some time, though they’ve proved very difficult to track. We believe they’ve left Chicago; do you know where they might be headed?”

Eddie remembers Axel’s fondness for New York. He says, “I don’t know, I think– I think they were headed west? Vegas would probably suit them.”

Owens chuckles, a full jolly-uncle type chuckle, then looks like he’s painfully regretting it as he says, “No doubt it would. We’ll alert our people out west. Now, if you could just tell me your own version of events, starting from why you were in Chicago at all last weekend?”

And so the lies begin. A curious way of lying, in that they’re both aware he’s lying, like they’re performing theater with each other. Owens nods thoughtfully at Eddie’s responses, probes at the stronger lies and skims over the flimsier ones with such skill Eddie’s a little unnerved. He thinks Owens is on his side. A little bit on his side. He’s protecting El, certainly, so they’re allies for now.

Eddie’s a good liar. A born criminal, they might say. Rick might say. But he hurts, and he’s tired, and his answers get shorter and sloppier until finally Owens sits up straighter, looking a little drained himself, and says, “You know the drill regarding confidentiality by now, I guess? I’ll send Blass in with an NDA that covers both the events in Chicago and the situation with the lab, and then you’ll be free to go. Thank you for being so cooperative, kid, and thank you for saving my life.”

“Uh, you’re welcome?” Eddie watches him hobble out, and then drops his head into his hands, the sudden surge of relief overwhelming his last reserves of energy. When’s the last time he ate? What time even is it now? The room is dim, windowless. It could be midnight for all he knows.

Blass comes in a few minutes later, face cold and pissed-off, probably because on the face of it Eddie doesn’t deserve to be let go. Not on the evidence, not the way this government works, but apparently the good deed he committed with Owens is going to be rewarded, not punished, so he just lets Blass uncuff his wrists and signs his name on the NDA.

Standing up is a challenge. His body’s not designed to bear the stress of– what. Sitting in a room, apparently. Each one of his joints aches and his shoulder seems to be mocking him with its precarity: it will be the most innocuous thing, he knows, that finally makes it give way. Walking wrong. Moving in his sleep. He folds his arms across his chest in an effort to cradle the shoulder and says in his head, I swear to god, you fucker, wait until I’m home.

So there’s this.

There’s also the sudden bone-tiredness that hits him as he’s walking out into fucking dusk, of all things, how is it already getting dark? And he hasn’t eaten all day. And it’s not that he’s hungry, just– faint. Stretched thin.

And the third thing. The everything. The traffic and the wind and the voices of the cops talking in the parking lot — the sudden presence of life and sound where before he was in a hermetically sealed box for ten hours, where before he had too much silence and now there is too little, now the jumble of noise makes no sense, makes his head spin, makes–

He drives back, somehow. Black Sabbath’s Paranoid on as loud as it will go certainly helps. Takes his mind out of his painful body for the hour or two necessary, and then he’s passing the Welcome to Hawkins sign and the panic slams back into him full force.

It’s not necessarily a logical decision he makes, as he’s gasping over the wheel and knowing he needs to go somewhere to ride this out — though it makes logical sense when he’s justifying it to himself later. Can’t talk to his uncle. Doesn’t want Joyce to know the extent of what he’s been doing. Can’t really talk to anyone else who isn’t familiar with it so–

He breathes again, and in all that time, he’s made it to Steve’s.

Now that he’s here, he has to start thinking again. He parks a ways up the street — the Harringtons would never accept his beat-up, now criminal, van in their driveway — and walks down, keeping his head low, hands dug in his pockets. The ache in his shoulder remains, but the pain has a stabilizing effect, trying to spark some life into his frayed neurons. The Harringtons’ driveway is empty, save for Steve’s bimmer, and there’s only a couple lights on.

He doesn’t have enough left in him for caution. He just rings the doorbell.

After a little silent while, in the dark cold of evening, Steve opens the door. He looks tired, bruised face beginning to pale into splotches of yellow and green, cuts scabbed over. Still swollen, but it’s starting to melt back away to reveal the fine bones beneath. Eddie’s had these thoughts before. He still doesn’t know what to do with them.

Steve looks at Eddie dully for a moment, like he’s unsurprised, then the surprise catches up with him and he grabs Eddie’s arm — the good one, thank fuck — and pulls him into the house, hissing, “What are you doing here? I’m grounded, dude, and if anyone sees that it’s you–”

Eddie laughs. “Right. Of course.”

“Eddie–”

The laughter does something inside his chest, like he’s tripped over into it and now he’s just in freefall, lungs straining to catch up. He sucks in a breath that’s too shallow and leans against the wall. “Your parents here?”

“No, no, they’re out at a business dinner, what’s–”

“Good,” Eddie manages. “How about–” breath “–painkillers? You, uh, you got any of those?”

“Do I have painkillers,” Steve says darkly. He starts climbing the stairs; Eddie mutely follows. He’s getting fractured little shards of awareness, details about Steve’s house — the rich softness of the rug, the grandeur of the chandelier, the weird fucking checked wallpaper in Steve’s room — and Steve’s room, Steve’s carpeted floor as Eddie lets his legs fold, lands heavily with his back to the bed and balances his arms on his knees as he breathes in, and out, and in.

“You can thank Hargrove for those,” Steve’s saying, holding out a palm with pills in it, and Eddie’s still got mind enough to ask, “Those aren’t– aren’t aspirin, right?”

“They’re naproxen.”

Eddie takes them out of his hand and swallows them dry. Then he goes back to hanging his head between his knees and letting his whole body shake, like he’s cold. Funny, he thinks in some distant corner of his brain, this time last year he was running away from Steve at the first hint of this. And now–

“What’s going on?” Steve says slowly, and Eddie appreciates that, the slowness.

“I’m kinda– having a panic attack. Kinda– it’s not– actually there yet. Or, I’m trying not to– let it get there–”

“Shit, uh, what can I, y’know, do–?”

“You can’t– can’t do anything, Steve, just sit there and– look pretty.”

He’s not looking at Steve when he says this, so he doesn’t know if there’s any reaction. It just slips out. Which, maybe he should be more worried about that, what he might say, what he’s already said, what Steve still hasn’t acknowledged that he knows about Eddie and therefore is a kind of elephant in the room, the room being Steve’s bedroom, Steve’s awfully decorated bedroom–

Eddie laughs again. This time, it seems to have the opposite effect, in that it shocks his lungs into a more regular rhythm, slows his heartbeat down. Stills the shake in his shoulders, his hands. The pain comes back but hey, small mercies.

When he finally looks up again — takes his time, gotta be cautious — Steve’s staring at him from across the floor, leaning against the wall opposite Eddie, his legs kicked out. “I thought you were having a panic attack,” Steve says.

“I was.”

“So what’s so funny?”

“Please tell me you didn’t choose this wallpaper.”

Something in Steve deflates, some tension, and is that a hint of relief Eddie sees before he rolls his eyes? “I’m not answering that question.”

“Pleading the fifth, I see,” Eddie says, then the smile slides off his face at the reminder of the fucking day he’s had. “I got arrested. That’s why–” He gestures to himself loosely.

“Who the fuck arrested you? Hopper wouldn’t–”

“In Chicago. Because of what happened with El last weekend.”

Steve sits forward. “What happened with El in Chicago?”

So Eddie tells him all of it. And it strikes him, as he’s telling it, that they’ve never really done this. Actually hung out, not been together out of chance — but been together because they wanted to be (or Eddie wanted to be), and talked about the shit. It makes the telling easier, this realization. It keeps the choke of his lungs at bay.

When he’s finished, Steve sits back again and passes a hand over his ragged face. “I honestly don’t know which of us drew the short straw there, y’know. El’s a good kid, I think, but– shit.”

“So’s Dustin,” Eddie offers. “So are all of them, really.”

“Yeah. They are.”

A silence. Eddie can feel the minutes ticking by, imagines the painkillers dissolving in his stomach. They don’t tell you this, he thinks. They never tell you how much this shit hurts. He’s not sure how he’s ever going to get up off this floor. “Uh, thanks, by the way. For, y’know. Letting me in.”

Steve blinks at him. “That’s okay, man, I wasn’t gonna–” His voice goes a little flat. “I wouldn’t have just left you outside.”

“Yeah, I know.”

They’re silent again. Then Steve says, “Why’d you come here, though? It’s not exactly, um, on the way, if you were coming from Chicago.”

One coldness is answered with another; Eddie tries to find a way of answering that. “Who am I supposed to talk to about this, y’know? Who are any of us supposed to talk to? I couldn’t talk to my uncle, or my friends. Not allowed, remember? And you’re–” He stops, embarrassed. He could have gone to Jonathan. To Nancy. “I guess you just felt like the right choice.”

Steve doesn’t say anything. Eddie risks a glance at him, and finds his face slack, shaken into some complicated expression of surprise, of disbelief. Is that so outrageous a thing to say? Isn’t Eddie entitled to try to be friends with him, even now, even after last year? Can’t they try it again?

“Well–” he says, attempting to get up and halting at the last second as his stiff muscles complain.

“Thank you,” Steve says in a rush. “For, y’know, coming here. Instead of anywhere else. I’m glad you did.”

They look at each other. There’s the feeling that some boundary between them has been irreversibly broken through, and Eddie doesn’t yet dare to enjoy that.

Chapter Text

“Okay, where the fuck did this come from?” Eddie says, holding up Steve’s The Smiths cassette. They’re still on his bedroom floor, and Eddie’s making a close examination of his music collection — vinyl records and cassettes alike. They’re mostly the expected duds, British new wave in an alarming quantity, scattered with a few more acceptable albums like Bowie’s two most recent, and tempered by the absolute horror of the Footloose soundtrack on vinyl.

Steve smiles an awkward smile. “Nance got me into them. Mainly I think because Jonathan got her into them,” and ah, that is a little awkward. “This Charming Man’s probably, like, my favorite song.”

“What, it isn’t Holding Out for a Hero? Let’s Hear It for the Boy?”

“Let’s not,” Steve says, flipping him off. “I don’t know where you get this goddamn superiority from. Isn’t all the music you like just, like, drums and screaming?”

“Drums and screaming and guitar,” Eddie corrects. “Don’t forget the guitar.”

“How could I? I remember that fucking talent show, y’know.”

Eddie stares at him. Of course, he knows that he and Steve have been in the same school since they first knew what school was; that they’ve lived in the same town all their lives, and known each other’s names for most of that time. Still, it’s odd to reconcile Harrington, preppy rich boy and the person to know from even the youngest age with Steve, sitting cross-legged on the carpet with his beat-up face and his loose, casual smile.

Though perhaps not that odd. He remembers Steve’s entry in the talent show, another musical thing — at that tender age before all the voices broke and parents stopped indulging their children’s whims to sing — in a group with Tommy H. and Carol, Tommy H. and Steve singing Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust while Carol did a sort of routine which involved some very age-inappropriate dancing. Tommy H. wasn’t a great singer, made worse by the way he’d intentionally deepened his voice to match his friends’, theirs having broken and his having not. But Steve–

“You were pretty good, y’know,” Eddie says. “Did a good job of being Freddie Mercury for a couple minutes.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “I’m amazed you remember that. What song did we–?”

“Another One Bites the Dust,” Eddie says immediately, then adds, “I’m a music guy. I remember these things. Nah, you were good, Tommy H. and Carol were decidedly not.”

It’s an understatement. At fourteen, Eddie had been a distractible, jumpy kind of kid, prone to fixating on things and people and then casting them aside when their proximity frightened him — so he noticed Steve’s easy grace, even as a kid, the way he embodied rockstar charisma and for a moment, singing, just a moment, it wasn’t endowed with the habitual shroud of meanness. It was just Steve.

Steve as he’s now, he thinks, come to know him.

‘Thanks, man,” Steve says quietly, tone colored by surprise. “I can’t say I really know what good means, when it comes to the, um, drums and screaming and guitar, but Principal Coleman hated it, so I can say I’m a fan of that.”

Eddie laughs. “I’ll take it.”

“So I’ve told you my favorite song. What’s yours?”

“Oh, Steve, what a question. What a question. An impossible quandary for a musical expert like me–”

“You’re doing it again,” Steve says. “Where you talk like that. Just– be a human being.”

Eddie’s a little stung by that. He reads a tacit apology in Steve’s eyes, in the silence, and eventually responds, “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You. Led Zep. Stairway to Heaven’s a close second, I guess I’d have to think about bronze.”

“Hey, I’ve actually heard of Led Zeppelin. Not too bad.”

“Well, now I’ve got Steve Harrington’s glowing stamp of approval–”

“I’m just interested, man. That’s all.” Steve’s voice is dim. Eddie looks at him curiously, opens his mouth to respond, and then hears a sound downstairs.

Keys in the door. The door opening.

They’ve been here for nearly two hours, Eddie registers, as he looks at the clock by Steve’s bedside and then back at Steve’s face, which is pinched, stricken. “My parents,” Steve says, getting to his feet with a wince. “Stay– stay here.”

Eddie has no desire to meet with John Harrington, the proprietor of Forest Hills Trailer Park, so he nods and doesn’t move. But then Steve disappears downstairs and very shortly afterwards there are raised voices, fury in deep male tones that still make Eddie flinch, and, well, he’s only human. He can’t help it. He nudges the bedroom door open and peers out, just catching a glimpse of the hallway, where no one’s visible except a tall, proud-jawed woman with honey-brown hair and a studied distance to her eyes, Steve’s mom; she folds her arms over her chest as someone, Harrington senior, bites out, “If you didn’t get yourself into such a godawful state–”

“Oh, great, because getting a concussion is so totally my fault–”

“Knowing you,” Steve’s dad says, and ouch. A little touch of recognition. Eddie feels like he’s been here before.

“Steven, this is a pivotal time for your father’s portfolio, and getting into trouble like this will jeopardize our position in an already unstable situation.” This is Steve’s mom; she’s soft-spoken, Eddie registers with surprise, a tone at odds with her sharp jaw and cool eyes. “You know how important it is to present a good face.”

“Right,” Steve says, a reckless laugh to his voice, and Eddie pictures his bruised face, the fierce abandon in them, the way he looked facing the demogorgon, the demodogs, the fire in the tunnels. “The portfolio. Because we’re the ones in an unstable position.”

“What’s gotten into you? What–”

“They say concussion induces personality changes,” Harrington says. “Don’t worry, Helen, I have faith he’ll be right as rain soon enough.”

Steve’s mom — Helen Harrington — presses her lips together and doesn’t say anything. There’s a country club, Westchester sort of vibe about her. What are you doing here? Eddie thinks. God knows there are enough rumors about John Harrington’s fidelity, or rather the lack of. She’s not short of reasons to leave, and isn’t that what mothers do?

“If you want to be anything but grounded anytime soon, you’re going to keep your head down and work on your college application and try to remember what exactly keeps you in this comfortable lifestyle, okay?”

“That’s why you grounded me, isn’t it? Not because I’ve been getting into fights, or whatever. You don’t care about that, you know I haven’t been fighting with anyone who actually matters, for the sake of appearances and all that shit.”

“Steven.”

Steve continues, voice rising with disbelief. “It’s because I missed the stupid goddamn early application deadline, isn’t it?”

“It wasn’t a difficult deadline to meet. It shows a blatant lack of effort and attention–”

“I didn’t miss the deadline.”

A silence. Eddie finds himself leaning forward, but he can only catch the back of Steve’s head.

“I didn’t miss it. I deliberately didn’t put the application in.”

“Why on earth would you do that?” Mrs. Harrington says, some of the hardness in her face going slack and soft. There are lines around her mouth, and they could be smile-lines or grimace-lines, Eddie can’t tell.

“Because it was crap. It was bad, and I know it was bad, and I don’t–” Steve sighs, a great heave of frustration. “I don’t think you’re understanding the problem here.”

“You’re a slacker, that’s the problem.” Harrington’s voice, by contrast, has not lost any of its sharp edge. “You didn’t put in the work, of course it was going to be bad.”

“Why won’t you ever listen to what I’m trying to goddamn–”

Eddie slips back into Steve’s room and closes the door. He knows, with a hot, itchy feeling, that he’s heard enough. Too much. Perhaps because if he had parents, instead of an uncle, then this conversation would be all too familiar.

He sits back on the floor and flicks idly through the photo booklet from A Night at the Opera’s vinyl sleeve, admiring Freddie Mercury’s long hair and the expanse of hairy chest exposed by his plunging white jumpsuit. Eddie’s only interest in Queen is a gay interest, and would be recognized as such; Steve’s the kind of guy who’s in it for the music. Straight people do like the gayest bands.

Eventually, Steve comes back in, looking pinched and tired and upset. He says, “They’ve gone to bed. They won’t see you if you leave now.”

It’s a dismissal if ever there was one; Eddie doesn’t take it personally. He slides the booklet back into its sleeve and gets to his feet with a grimace. Steve leads him downstairs, glancing over his shoulder at the landing like he thinks his father’s lurking there, just waiting to catch him with an unsavory influence. Eddie laughs a private laugh.

“Sorry,” Steve whispers, when they’re outside. “If my dad knew you were here–”

“I think I might be crossing a picket line, being here, what with my uncle, so the feeling’s, y’know, mutual.”

“A picket line?”

Eddie looks at him in the dim porch light. His honest, clueless eyes. “You should ask your dad more about that unstable position you’re in.”

Something in Steve’s face changes as he realizes he was overheard; then that tension drops just as easily as it arrived. “Maybe I will,” he says, and Steve of a year ago wouldn’t have said that, which makes Eddie feel a little better as he turns to go.

That night, Eddie dreams strange dreams.

He dreams he’s in the prison again, by that bank of glass and telephones, except on the other side it’s not his dad but a woman, a woman in orange scrubs with a face he can’t quite catch, like something just glancing out of the corner of his eye. The woman picks up the phone and he goes to do the same to find he’s already holding it; and her voice isn’t her voice at all but the prison warden’s, the warden who says come quick, there’s been an accident, and when Eddie gets up he finds that the booth along has been turned into a door. He walks through the door into something that turns out to be an IHOP and the woman is there again, serving pancakes, deliberately skirting around the collapsed form of a man he recognizes to be his father on the floor.

Clean this, his father says, holding out his liver with both hands. It’s slippery and dark. Clean it. It’s infected.

Eddie tries to clean it. But the napkins turn to sodden mush when they touch it, and it’s hard to keep a hold of, slick and unwieldy in his hands, and with the certainty of dreams he knows his father’s going to die because he can’t clean the organ in time.

It’s Bob Newby who takes the liver from him and lays it in a little coffin of its own.

Eddie wakes up with a sick, cold feeling to dim morning light and the sense that he’s forgotten something, maybe even something that hasn’t happened yet. It takes him a while to convince his limbs to move, his muscles stiff and aching as usual, and he lights a cigarette, ignoring the pitiful tremble of his fingers. He’s had weird dreams. Everyone’s had weird dreams. None perhaps so close to home, not in a while, anyway, and it sets his teeth on edge. He’s been dreaming in more straightforward ways lately — demogorgons and gates and blood in his van, that sort of thing. Not his father’s liver in an IHOP.

His first sight of Wayne, smoking a cigarette while reading the paper in a strip of yellow sunlight, stirs up the memory of the day before, and guiltily, tightly, Eddie disturbs the peace of the morning with no preamble: “I think we’re, uh, about to have money problems.”

Wayne lowers his paper, looking at him evenly. “How’d you mean?”

“I’ve, well. I’ve been earning, y’know, and I think I’m about to be not earning for a while, at least until I can– um. Get the job back.”

His uncle knows very well what he’s been doing, Eddie is sure, but he can’t bring himself to come out from the cover of the euphemisms. He thinks about Rick’s certain cold anger when he learns of the failure of the task, the way he’s going to refuse to supply him anymore, and a shudder runs through him.

Wayne doesn’t say anything. He finishes his cigarette and immediately lights another, scratching his forehead with the smoke held between his fingers. Eddie can’t bear the silence and lights another of his own; the room reeks of it, a smell that they’ll never get out.

Finally, Wayne says, “Well, if that’s the way of it, then that’s the way of it. Half the reason for partnerin’ with the farmers is we have each other to fall back on, if things don’t work out, or if somethin’ like this happens. We’ll get by.”

“Why aren’t you mad?”

They look at each other. Those words don’t seem to come as easy as they used to. “Ain’t nothin’ to be gained by bein’ mad at you. It’s better to be mad at the reason you needed to do that job in the first place, since then we actually stand a chance of changin’ things. If we direct that anger in the right place.”

Eddie exhales, the familiar tobacco taste a source of comfort. “When’d you get so political?”

“You gotta do somethin’ to survive. I got tired of bein’ economical. Bein’ political feels less like you’re bailin’ out a boat with a hole in the bottom. More like– I don’t know. Patchin’ the hole.”

His uncle, never given to metaphor, flicks his paper back up and returns to stoic silence. Like that’s the matter closed. It’s enough to jerk Eddie out of his anxious post-dream fugue, such that he even feels a jab of hunger and makes some toast. He nearly burns it, but catches it just in time, and scrapes a few grains of blackened carbon off into the sink before adding butter and taking the plate over to the table, to sit opposite Wayne. Wayne sets his paper down and looks at Eddie with that even, faintly nostalgic half-smile he gets, like the happiness he feels is always sourced out of something in the past.

“So how’s it going?” Eddie says, taking a bite of his toast. “The peasants’ revolt.”

“Don’t let anyone hear you callin’ it that,” Wayne warns, with an easy look. “It’s a matter of gettin’ people to sign the authorization cards, at the plant. If we get enough, we can form a union and they can’t say no. Or, they can say no, but then we strike.”

“What happens if you strike?”

“Well, obviously we ain’t gettin’ paid to strike. But with the farmers on board, we got money to keep it goin’, and the more people get involved–”

Eddie thinks suddenly of the Hawkins Power and Light vans, the ID check at the gate to the plant. Agent Faraday’s cold eyes as he asked about Icex. It’s involved with the Lab, it has to be, and these people — it’s beyond a strike. It’s dangerous to strike. “Are you– y’know, is it, uh, safe?”

“Safe? Why wouldn’t it be safe, kid?”

Eddie bites down on the inside of his cheek. He feels it as a pain in his side, his shoulder, that he can’t tell his uncle the truth. “Just– the government’s got– got shit in Hawkins, and probably in Icex too. There’s all that secretive shit with the Lab. I’m just–” He swallows. “I don’t know.”

“I ain’t gonna sit back on the threat of what they might or might not do to us. And this country may be damn messed up in a lotta ways, but we got the right to a union, and I mean to exercise that right.”

Eddie looks back at his plate, knowing that’s the best he can do, and nods. They pass the rest of breakfast in a comfortable silence, Eddie tugging the paper out of Wayne’s hands when he’s done with it and frowning over the crossword — Robin likes crosswords, he recalls, while Eddie hasn’t quite got the hang of them yet. He tries it a minute before his attention wanders off and then he’s flipping back through the pages, searching, scanning the headlines, slumping back when he doesn’t see it.

“What’re you lookin’ for?”

“Something Nancy told me to look for, I don’t know. I’ll know it when I see it.”

“Nancy?”

Eddie registers his mistake immediately. Somehow Nancy has integrated herself seamlessly into his awareness, like all the rest have, like Steve has. He decides to double down. “Yeah, uh, Nancy. Nancy Wheeler. We’re friends now, I guess, since she’s dating Jonathan.” Another slip — he doesn’t know for a fact that she’s dating Jonathan. Though really it’s obvious to anyone with eyes.

“Wheeler, huh? Her dad’s Ted Wheeler?”

Eddie nods.

“Of Warr, Wheeler and Riverton?” At Eddie’s frown, Wayne expands: “Practically the only law firm in these parts. Your friend Jonathan’s done well for himself.”

There’s a coolness in Wayne’s voice, and Eddie frowns. “That’s not the point.”

Wayne looks at him for a moment, then softens. “Yeah. It’s not. That was a stupid thing for me to say.” He scratches the side of his cheek and then adds, “But- I know you know this, you’re a smart kid, but– be careful around those people. It ain’t their fault what they’re born to, no more than it is ours, but it still makes them different from us.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “I know.”

After breakfast, he drives to the Byers’, more out of habit than anything else. Bob’s Toyota is nowhere to be seen, which fills Eddie with irrational relief, and there’s a pile of bikes by the door, so the kids are here. Good. Eddie could do with the distraction of being annoyed for a couple hours.

Jonathan opens the door, offering Eddie a wary smile. Behind him, the kids — Dustin, Max, El, and Will — are sitting on the floor in a circle, playing Go Fish. “No Wheeler or Sinclair?” Eddie says, dropping onto the couch.

“Church,” Dustin says, examining his hand of cards with probably far more concentration than a game of Go Fish has ever been granted in history.

“I’m supposedly sick, or else I’d be there too,” Max says, lounging back with her cards held loosely by her knee. “Guess I’m gonna burn in hell for that, huh?”

“Well, considering none of the rest of us are there, either–”

“There’s a lady on my street who thinks atheists are devil-worshippers,” Dustin says. “Ie. because they don’t worship God they still have to worship someone, so the devil it is. It’s such a binary that makes no allowances for the huge multitude of religious ideas out there–”

“Fuck church,” Max says.

“Fuck church,” El agrees amiably, having apparently made her peace with Max since last weekend.

Eddie laughs and says, “Stop teaching her bad words. Hopper’s gonna think it was me.”

Max smirks challengingly and says, when Will asks for nines, “Go fucking fish.”

“Henderson, where’d you find her? She’s way cooler than you.”

“That is so unfair and in fact grossly– Hey!” Dustin splutters as El lays down four aces. El just smiles winningly.

“We’ve discovered she’s a baby card sharp,” Jonathan says, coming to sit next to Eddie with two mugs of coffee, one of which he hands to Eddie. “Good week?”

“Well, I got arrested yesterday, so. That’s up for interpretation.”

Jonathan chokes on his coffee; the kids look up. Eddie somewhat regrets saying it, even if he did enjoy the melodrama for a moment, because now he has to explain — and he does explain, eyes on El as he tells them about his intentional misdirection, I think they were headed west. And he concludes by saying, “I don’t know if you have some, uh, some weird psychic bond type way of contacting your sister, but it might be an idea to, y’know, warn her.”

El nods, eyes wide. “I can try. But only Mama has ever been able to see me when I visited.”

He thinks about it, then, the thing he’s been trying not to think about. El in Becky Ives’ living room, the newspaper photo clutched in her hands, the way he doesn’t have a photo of his mom. But El doesn’t even know what she’s capable of.

But really, Eddie thinks, remembering the faceless woman in the IHOP of his dream, maybe it’s better not to know.

“Where’s your mom?” Eddie asks Jonathan, suddenly itching under the attention. He’s not quite ready to convert his time in Chicago into a heroic adventure narrative just yet.

“She’s–” Jonathan makes a face “–getting breakfast with Bob. He’s trying to be all romantic, or whatever, like that’s gonna make what happened not have happened. Like they can go back to normal at all.”

Eddie watches him, the stiffness in his shoulders, the dark look in his eyes. Eddie says, “You wanna go out for a smoke?”

“Sure.”

They step outside into the chill sunshine. There’s a horseshoe ornament hanging on the back door, supposedly lucky. Idly Eddie wonders if Rick won much of anything in the Breeders’ Cup. He hands Jonathan a cigarette and his lighter, then lights his own, inhaling and ignoring the yellow in his fingertips and the permanent background taste of ash in his throat. “Bob continues to be around, huh?”

“Bob continues to be around.” Jonathan flicks ash and sighs. “I don’t know what she’s doing. I don’t know what he’s doing. He wants us to move to Maine.”

“Maine?”

“Apparently the weather isn’t bad enough here, we gotta go someplace even worse.”

“She’s not actually thinking about it?”

“I don’t know.” Jonathan slumps back against the wall, like all the energy’s gone out of him. “I don’t know what she’s thinking. She’s not really handling it, I think. Like, she’s eating, sure, but I don’t know how much she’s sleeping, and she’s smoking a lot, and I think burying herself in this thing with Bob is the easiest way she can pretend like nothing happened.” A silence, then, lower, “She did the same with Lonnie. When her dad died.”

Eddie doesn’t dare breathe. Jonathan’s never been this open with him, not ever. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, she– I mean, she doesn’t really tell the whole story, but I can put it together. She went to college, left Lonnie behind, had to come back because her dad got sick. Got back with Lonnie when he died. And Bob’s not Lonnie, like, I’m not that stupid, it’s not about some sort of chip on my shoulder, I just– worry. Am worried. About her.”

It must be exhausting, Eddie thinks, to worry about your mother. “I mean, she’s, y’know, she’s a lot older now than she was then. She probably knows what she’s doing.”

Jonathan smiles grimly. “She’s better at all this Upside Down shit than her relationships, is all I can say.”

“Weirdly, I think that goes for most of us.”

“Maybe.”

“Speaking of, how’s the lovely Miss Wheeler?”

Jonathan’s smile goes a little smaller, a little warmer. “I haven’t really seen her that much. But, yeah. She’s good. She’s still buying all the papers.”

“It will take a bit of time, right?”

“Yeah. She said to me last night–” Eddie raises his eyebrows. Jonathan’s cheeks color, but stalwartly he continues, “She said to me she could see herself doing that. Y’know, reporting, journalism. Later on.”

“Not the family trade, then? Law?”

“She said it’s all very well, y’know, getting justice in the courts. But the story’s got to get to the courts. So that’s what she wants to do.”

Eddie thinks of Wayne, and wonders. If perhaps there are common goals here after all. “And what do you wanna do?”

“Photography.”

“Oh, yeah, ye whose realm is the darkroom.”

“In fact–” And Jonathan moves further down the side of the house, reaches up through his own open window, brings out a camera from the sill. “The light’s great out here.”

Eddie’s not sure what it is, perhaps the earlier conversation about atheists and devil-worshippers, but something makes him put his hands up by his head and give himself devil horns as Jonathan snaps a picture. Devil horns, his Sabbath t shirt, it’d give religious types a field day. The thought makes him smile.

“You’re such a weird guy,” Jonathan says, putting his camera back on the windowsill.

Eddie smirks. “Us freaks gotta stick together, right?”

“If you say so.”

When they go back inside, Max is checking Dustin’s watch, a little color gone from her cheeks. “I need to be home before they get back from lunch,” she says, by way of explanation to Jonathan and Eddie. “Dustin biked me here–”

“I’ll drive you,” Eddie says easily. “Where d’you live?”

“Cherry Lane.” It’s said with perhaps less defiance than it would have been in the presence of Mike or Lucas, or Nancy or Steve; she’s in good company. (Dustin, Eddie thinks, is somewhere in the middle.) “I mean, you don’t have to.”

“I’m not doing anything else. C’mon, that’s apparently all I do around here, drive people places. I don’t mind.”

Hesitantly, she nods. Eventually, he thinks, he might even have to accept he likes being nice to these kids. He takes her out to his van and they head off, to the tune of Judas Priest’s Jawbreaker, until he sees the cold, distant look in her eyes and turns it off. Billy likes metal too, he remembers with scorn.

“Your brother playing nice?”

“He’s not my brother,” she says reflexively, then adds, “well, kinda. I guess. He’s been okay.”

“He backed off from me at school the other day. He’s being a shit to my friends, sure, but not to me.”

“I couldn’t, y’know, fucking change him completely. No one can, I don’t think.”

“Yeah. Guys like that–”

“I wonder,” she says suddenly, seriously, and he can feel her eyes on him as he drives, “y’know, what makes them like that.”

It’s not speculative or curious; it’s cold. Inward-directed, he considers, not towards him. He tries to think before he speaks. “It’s, uh, hard to know, I guess. Sometimes, for some of them–” And he stops himself. He can’t say that, can’t say violence is all they know, not if she’s asking this for the reason he suspects she’s asking it.

She seems to catch it anyway. She looks back out the window. “He always hits Billy where no one can see it. Billy doesn’t do that. Billy hits where–” She stops abruptly.

He. Eddie knows his shit; he doesn’t need to ask. He already knows who he is. “Maybe that’s why. Like, he’s trying to prove to himself — Billy, that is — something about what he is and what’s been done to him. I don’t know what that something is. And that’s, like, the point here, Red.” The nickname just slips out. “We don’t know about this shit. None of us know what we’re doing, and if– if someone’s hurting you, that doesn’t make you bad. Doesn’t, y’know, make you likely to hurt someone too.” Is this true? He doesn’t know if this is true. He’s just talking. “You can’t think about that, you just gotta– think about yourself. What you’re doing, not what people are doing to you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

There’s a silence. “Sometimes I wish–” And then Max’s voice closes off, choking a little, and he’s not going to push her to continue. He has a sick little feeling of what she might have said, the same thing he thought before, the same thing El had a chance of making real only last week. It doesn’t need to be spoken. It shouldn’t be spoken; why let these people make them say it?

So they don’t say it, and he drives her home.

He’s thinking about his dream on his way back. He’s thinking about passing an IHOP, though of course he doesn’t, since there’s no IHOP in Hawkins. He’s thinking about Max, and Jonathan, and Steve — he’s thinking about how fathers must be the worst thing in the world, every single one. The sky is brightening into clear sun; it suddenly feels unseasonably warm. He rolls the window down and takes a great breath of fresh air. Turns Judas Priest back up.

And then he pulls up on the patchy grass by the trailer and he sees his uncle on the porch; and his uncle stands up, squinting in the sun, a hand held up to frame his worn, grief-blank face, and Eddie doesn’t need to be told what’s happened. He knows. He already knows.

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.

Chapter Text

He’s got nothing else to do, now, if he doesn’t want to stand here waiting for Shelley and the rest of his father’s friends to come out, so he gets back in his van and drives over to the bar. Checks his watch and discovers it’s half past four, so he sits there and lights a smoke, instead of going in there and looking stupidly eager. He’s absorbed in changing the cassette — Led Zeppelin to Stay Hungry by Twisted Sister — when someone knocks on the window and he jumps nearly out of his seat.

There’s a woman standing there. Maybe in her late thirties, with dull blonde hair tucked into her coat collar, despite the warm weather, and a disarming softness to her features, like she hasn’t quite grown up yet. She mimes rolling the window down.

Could she be an agent? She could be an agent, right? They probably employ the most unlikely-looking people, just to deflect suspicion. But why would she be–

Despite the way it reminds him of the traffic stop, of the cop and Agent Blass, he rolls the window down.

“Hey, I hope you don’t mind. I thought I recognized you, back at the wake. You have something of your mom about you, I don’t know, maybe it’s the nose. You have a nice nose.”

“I’m sorry, what–”

“I hope you don’t mind. I followed your van here, it’s–”

“You–” Eddie takes a deep, shaking breath, feels a pang of his rib, tries not to whip around to check the bar’s facade and make sure it’s not too obviously gay. Tries to keep the sudden panic out of his voice, learned, since this is a woman who knew his dad and his dad– well. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“My name’s Ciara Malone. I knew your mom.”

Things are moving too quickly; it takes a second for his brain to catch up. Then he stares at her. “You knew–”

“I saw you, at the funeral, and I thought, y’know, he’s right there, I’m not going to get another chance to talk to him, so why not now? And then you left, so I–” She has the grace to look a little shamefaced. “I followed you.”

“But why do you, uh, why do you want to talk to me?”

She stares at him, like the question hadn’t even occurred to her. Like it was inevitable, obvious that she would talk to him. Without even any idea what they might talk about. “Because– I knew your mom. Don’t you want to know about her?”

Eddie can’t think about this now. He can’t. Not after the way Wayne’s hands shook, Shelley’s cold voice, and Rick and the funeral and patterns and faults and–

You ain’t supposed to die from it. What he had. So there was somethin’ else. And Martin’s mom, pissed he lost his tennis career. Max’s mom, doing nothing to prevent–

He’s been offered this already. Joyce, too, knew his mom. Told him her name. But he cut that off, decided he’d hear it from his dad or no one at all, and now his dad’s dead, which leaves no one at all–

(Terry Ives, an empty husk in a rocking chair.)

Maybe that’s better.

He can’t think about this now.

He shakes his head. “She left. That’s what I know about her.”

Ciara doesn’t seem to have a response to that. She looks at him helplessly. No excuses, at least, he’ll give her that. No fucking excuses. “Well– I don’t know. If you do ever want to talk about her, you can call me,” she says, and pulls out a notebook. She tears out a page and scrawls a phone number on it, handing it over. He doesn’t want to take it, but his limbs won’t obey his brain and he slips it into the dashboard.

Then he watches her walk away in the side-view mirror.

At five, he goes into the bar, where Martin’s switching places with his replacement and offers Eddie a broad grin as he finds them a table. He gets free drinks, he says, courtesy of being an employee, so there’s no point going anywhere else. They order and sit down and ease into mindless conversation, Eddie’s head somewhere else, until he says into a lull, words distant to his own ears, “So, you’re related to Avni?”

Martin smiles, running a finger round the salted rim of his cocktail glass. He’s drinking a margarita. There’s some song about West End Girls playing overhead, another synth nightmare. “Yeah, she’s the grandma I’m not supposed to talk to. Because my mom, as a teenager, she wasn’t allowed to live with her. My grandma.”

“Because of the drugs.”

“Because of the drugs. My mom was, what, sixteen? And my grandma, she got fired from her nursing job because she was drinking, and then she just got worse, got into worse shit, and child services found out, and– well. But she’s sober now. Doing well.”

“I know. She’s my neighbor.”

A silence. Martin doesn’t look as thrown by that as Tommy C. would be; as perhaps Steve would be. He searches Eddie’s face. “I keep her surname, now. My mom’s surname. I took it when we moved to the city, I guess trying to keep in touch with my roots, whatever the fuck that means. Agarwal. I’m Martin Agarwal now. It’s easier to be him in the city. I mean, people can tell I’m brown when they look at me, but Hawkins was a whole– I don’t know. What a fucked-up place, man. I didn’t need to give them any more ammunition.”

“It’s a totally fucked-up place,” Eddie agrees, sipping his own beer. (Martin had rolled his eyes, repeated his spiel about you’re not one of these bears.) “Agarwal,” he tries, testing it on his tongue. “It’s nice.”

“I’m glad it meets your approval,” Martin says, raising his eyebrows, a little edge to it, but then it fades. “How is she? My grandma?”

“I haven’t seen her a lot. She did a lot of, uh, organizing, last year, when there was this uncertainty about who was gonna own the trailer park. She was great. But, I don’t know, lately my uncle’s just been so caught up in this stuff with the farmers and the plant, and I’ve been–” The words die in Eddie’s throat, if there even were words to start with. He can’t begin to say what he’s been doing. “But she’s okay, I think.”

“Good,” Martin says, taking a sip of his drink, leaning a little closer over the table. “Better than your grandma?”

“Unaccountably better than my fucking grandma. Jesus. What a dragon.”

Martin tips his drink and doesn’t say anything, just smiles. Fucking enigmatically.

“So, you wanted me here. What are we, uh, what are we doing?”

“We’re having a nice drink together.”

“Martin.”

“Jesus, you’re tough to please. What do you want to do? You’re pretty familiar with the scene in this city, right?”

“Kinda,” he says. “I mean, I have friends who–”

Martin shakes his head, like he’s impatient, like he’s not interested in that. “Forget your friends. I mean, you buried your dad today, this is your fucking day. What do you want to do?”

Eddie thinks. Takes a sip of his beer, and thinks. Then he says, without much thinking at all, “I want to– like, forget I have a body. Just– totally numb. In a good way. Y’know?”

“I do know,” Martin says. “Yeah. I think we can achieve that.”

Something in the way he says it — vaguely suggestive, just firmly confident above all — sends a shiver of something through Eddie. They order a second drink each, and drink it fast. Then another. And then Martin disappears behind the bar and calls someone, Eddie doesn’t know who, his eyes lingering on Eddie as he talks into the receiver, and then immediately they’re leaving the bar, Martin’s hand snaking around Eddie’s wrist as they cross the floor then slipping away as they go outside, a sly grin on his face disappearing into the dark.

Eddie’s already a little drunk. He gets drunker. They go to an apartment, where Martin knocks on the door with the casual ease of someone who knows he’s going to be let in, and they are let in, by a tall bearded guy who leans his hip against the counter as he goes back to mixing a drink and says, “If you’re after a party, honey, even drag queens take Wednesdays off.”

Eddie frowns; the voice is vaguely familiar. He’s trying to place it as Martin rolls his eyes and says, “Sure, but Eddie’s here dodging his homophobic dad’s funeral, so I think we’re obligated to show him a good time.”

The guy turns around. “Well, in that case.” He looks Eddie up and down. “Don’t I know you?”

The realization hits. Makes the ground feel a little unsteady, actually, that he and Martin have been moving in the same circles for so long without a single clue about it. “Stevie, right? We met at some club last year? I was, uh. Well.”

“Having a little wobble,” Stevie supplies, with a grin. “I’m impressed you recognize me in my Clark Kent get-up.”

“You know my uncle named my dad ‘Bruce’ because he was called ‘Wayne’?” Eddie says, through an alcohol-weakened filter.

They both stare at him, then Stevie starts laughing. “Oh, it’s like you’re living in a novel. That’s too good. So what am I doing? Am I calling up the usual crowd?”

Out of drag, Stevie appears less ageless, less otherworldly; he looks like an average guy, probably in his thirties. There’s a tattoo edging out from the sleeve of his t shirt, indiscernible at this distance, and it’s this that makes Eddie say, “Do you know Victor Rueda?”

“Do I know Victor Rueda,” Stevie repeats. “Honey, I’ve fucked Victor Rueda.”

“Jesus, is this city really that goddamn small?”

“When you’re gay, it is. Tell me you’ve fucked him too, then we’ll really have a party going.”

Eddie laughs. “No, he’s, uh, he’s just my tattoo artist.”

“You’re a lucky kid; he’s incredible. Take a look at this, this is one of his.” Stevie pulls his sleeve up and shows him the tattoo, which is a crisply detailed hyena, spanning the width of his bicep.

“Holy shit, I love that.”

“There’s this passage of the Bible where they say you’re not allowed to eat hyenas, because they’re lecherous, and change their gender around all the time. Hence, the hyena.” Stevie smiles, rolling his sleeve back down. “What did he give you?”

Eddie takes his jacket off, revealing his bare forearms — the bats on one, the tattoo he got a year ago on the other. Stevie and Martin both inspect the latter with interest, and Eddie looks at it too: for something permanently inked on his body, he doesn’t look at it often. Painful memories, maybe. Because it’s a demogorgon. Not what they’ve started calling a demogorgon, the single-headed sinewy thing with a face like a ravenous flower. No, a good old DnD demogorgon, two-headed and baboon-faced with a reptilian body, snarling at the onlooker from his blue-veined skin. Something about taking control of it, whatever. He’s not sure it worked; but he likes the way it looks. “It doesn’t really, y’know, mean anything. It’s just pretty metal.”

Martin reaches out and traces a finger over it, a light, insistent touch. Eddie knows where this evening is going to go. He’s known since the moment Martin turned around, dimly lit, in the empty bar. He’s okay with that.

Stevie invites a few people over, some of whom Eddie recognizes, some of whom he doesn’t. He stays on the couch beside Martin and gets progressively drunker, as people keep handing him drinks with vodka in them and everyone’s singing along to Radio Ga Ga by Queen, himself excluded; Martin introduces him to people at a shout, since apparently all it takes is a phone call from Stevie to get a party together, even on a Wednesday. When the song changes to the next on the album, he starts to enjoy himself a little more, nodding his head along to the heavy rock chords, as Martin drifts ever closer to him, until their shoulders are pressed together and Martin’s got one long leg slung over Eddie’s knee. Martin’s drunk too; there’s a flush high in his cheeks, and his movements are sloppy, disorganized. It’s a stark contrast from the usual tennis-player’s poise, the deliberation in every economical shift. Eddie’s not sure whether he likes it or not.

Then Stevie’s ushering them out, urging them down the street — “I chose this apartment because of the gay club on the corner, and I’m not ashamed to admit it,” — and just as quickly Martin’s tugging him into a dark, red-pulsing room, some dance hit overhead, and it’s a question of readjustment. Of reconciling himself to the fact of being here, after being there — at the club, after being at the wake. Of being this version of himself now, after being another, and being here with Martin, who was only ever tennis whites and joints on the court and lazy fucks in Eddie’s bedroom in the trailer, Martin who’s now dark sweaty crowds and wry comments about cruising, Martin who knows Stevie and Victor and kisses Eddie here, openly, for anyone to see.

It’s a short kiss, at first. Like it’s another readjustment. Getting used to the new way they fit together. Then they kiss again, longer, and the music and the crowd and the lights disappear around them, for a while, at least, until Martin pulls back with a grin and shouts, “More Bronski Beat, listen!” and Eddie, unwillingly, does.

The night unfolds rather as expected after that.

They dance for a while; they drink a bit more; Stevie passes around a little amber bottle, a sniff of which gives a sudden rush of lightness that has Eddie leaning on Martin’s shoulder, tilting his head back, laughing. “Are you numb in a good way yet?” Martin says into his ear, and Eddie grins up at him, says, “Yeah, just what the doctor ordered.”

They go back to Martin’s apartment.

They have sex in close, heavy silence, nothing but traffic outside and their own labored breaths. More practiced than before, though clumsier, since they’re both drunk and Eddie’s feeling a keen desperation that belies the way breathing still sort of hurts — a desperation that isn’t lust, exactly, but he’s not gonna think about what else it might be.

But the silence, at least, is familiar. All Martin’s sly teasing disappears, when it comes down to it; naked, he’s uncommonly serious. And afterwards, much the same: Martin lies back, brown skin gleaming with sweat, a cigarette between his fingers, the other hand absently tracing through Eddie’s hair, and says nothing, just exhales smoke and looks at the ceiling.

Eddie lights his own cigarette. Martin smokes Marlboros; their respective packs clash together on the nightstand. Clothes strewn across the floor, a tied-off condom in the trash — all the evidence of what they’ve done. All part of a picture, intelligible to anyone who looks.

Eddie’s rib hurts.

Unexpectedly, Martin breaks the silence. “I know a guy. Or, I knew a guy. He died a couple months ago, died of the thing everyone’s dying of. And you know what he’d say? Before he got it, or knew he had it, people would ask him if it was safe, sleeping with him, letting him suck their dicks. And he’d say are you interested in living in a world where it’s not?”

“Shit,” Eddie says.

“Yeah. I think about that everytime, afterwards. How close I might have come to death, in doing what I just did.”

“Morbid,” he says lightly, another cover. Because really, well. Now he’s thinking about it too. And death, death in general, the idea seizes somewhere in his throat. Let’s talk about something else. Anything else.

Martin seems to sense this. His hand stills in Eddie’s hair. “Too much death today, huh?”

“I get the sense it’s all about death,” Eddie says softly. He gestures to the room with the hand holding the cigarette, though really he’s gesturing to more than that. “All this.”

“I can’t speak to what it used to be like. But now–” Then Martin stops. “Well, not even now. The point is we don’t let it be about death, even though death’s, like, everywhere.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, inhaling and exhaling slowly, feeling all too in his body again. The dancing, the sex, his body’s making its complaints known, but it’s more than that. It’s beyond that.

“And that’s what people like Bronski Beat are singing about, y’know? Like–” And Martin shifts beneath him, gets out of bed. Eddie lays his head on the pillow and watches sideways as Martin digs through his record collection, comes out with a silver 12” single. He slides the record out of the sleeve, places it carefully on his record player. Then he comes back to the bed and lies down next to Eddie, fetching an ashtray off the table and laying it on the mattress between them. “Now, listen to this. This is Smalltown Boy. The long version, because it’s better.”

“Jesus, you’re really on the Bronski Beat agenda. They paying you for this?”

“If only. Now shut up and listen.”

Eddie listens.

It’s not his thing, he’s standing by that. He’s never going to be a new wave, synth-y sort of guy. It’s lacking that nice sense of fury that takes him out of his own head for a while — quite the opposite. Humiliatingly, he feels his eyes stinging, and he wipes at them before Martin can see. Music is so much to him, is the thing, and music that’s designed like this, no matter what it sounds like–

It feels like everywhere he’s been. Perhaps everywhere he’s going. And maybe this feeling, it’s because of everything that’s happened today, everything that’s happened in the past week, two weeks. Year. Years. Maybe this — the first tear he’s shed, really, since his dad died — is about his dad. Or maybe it’s not. Either way.

The song, all nine minutes of it, fades out. The crackling sound of the record skipping replaces it, and Eddie leaves his eyes closed, waiting for Martin to get up to turn it over. Martin doesn’t move. So they listen to the fuzz of the record’s blank emptiness, dead sound. Martin’s hand lands in Eddie’s hair again, fingers tugging at the curls, tugging him closer, and Eddie lets himself be tugged. Lets himself be drawn into another kiss, which deepens, and they shift closer together across the mattress–

And then there’s the distant sound of the apartment’s front door opening, and loud laughing voices, two of them, a man and a woman, clear despite all the walls between them.

“–never do fucking tequila again, I swear, and it’s like my ancestral drink– and that Billy Ocean song? That’s enough to make me sick on its own,” the woman says. The guy laughs, and then the door to the room next to them opens, and closes, and there’s the sound of the toilet seat, and someone retching.

Eddie wrinkles his nose and looks at Martin, still half on top of him, nose to nose. “Roommates?” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Martin whispers back. “Just one, Maria. She’s okay, just brings annoying guys back really late every night, and there’s no fucking soundproofing here at all.”

“Oh, and you’d never bring annoying guys back.”

“Annoying straight guys.”

Eddie smirks. But he shifts back on the mattress, further away from Martin, the moment having passed. He’s not sure what he feels like now. Cold, and out of sorts. Perhaps a little embarrassed, skin ill-fitting, though he doesn’t know why. The idea of the room as evidence of their encounter feels only worse, now, with someone else in the apartment to witness it.

The toilet flushes; the faucet runs; whoever it is goes back out and continues their conversation — Maria, it seems, and some guy. And Eddie has to lie there, listening, with Martin, who seems to be falling asleep.

The whole thing feels a little less appealing now. He kind of wants to go. But he’s still drunk, he recognizes this, so he can’t drive back to Hawkins, and he has no desire to run into Maria and the guy in the hallway–

So he lets himself drift into sleep.

He wakes to the bed empty, the room empty, the record no longer spinning on the record player. He’s cold and stiff, his side full of fresh pain from the previous day’s exertions, his head heavy and dull. It’s an effort to think about things, so he doesn’t, though there’s a nudge of anxiety in his chest. He doesn’t let it grow and sits up to find his clothes.

He doesn’t want to see the roommate, but he’s got no choice but to go out into the kitchen, since there’s no sign of Martin. They’re both there, Maria and Martin, Maria short and Hispanic with thick hair and wide-set eyes, which light up when Eddie emerges groggily into the morning light.

“Oh, he’s cute, you didn’t say he was cute,” she says, leaning on her hand to inspect him. She’s in sweatpants, a baggy The Who t shirt, the circles under her eyes uncovered by makeup.

“I didn’t say much of anything,” Martin says from the stove. He’s frying eggs. “Egg?”

“I’m okay,” Eddie says, easing himself to sit down opposite Maria. She goes back to what she was doing, which was fiddling with the radio, a frown of concentration on her face. Eventually she produces strains of glam rock, some T. Rex song, which elicits a large smile on her face. She’s got a chip in her front tooth.

She catches Eddie’s frown. “What? I like T. Rex. I can be Cuban and like T. Rex.”

“I’m, uh, I’m not saying you can’t. You’ve just got better taste than your roommate, that’s all.”

“Oh, I like him,” she says to Martin. “I don’t care what you do, I want to keep him.”

“Be that as it may,” Martin says. “You want an egg? Shut up and go eat it in your room.”

“Ugh. Fine. If you two have kitchen sex, I’m not cleaning up the mess.” She folds her arms and hums along to the song as Martin finishes cooking, plating up the eggs and handing her one with a meaningful look. Eddie’s not sure he wants her to leave. Not sure he wants to be left alone in a heavy, meaningful silence with Martin, Martin who seems to expect something now. No idea what.

Maria salutes him and disappears down the hallway. Martin comes to sit where she was sitting, opposite Eddie, and cracks a window open as he lights a cigarette. “How are you feeling?” he says. “Hungover?”

“Only a bit. I’m okay.”

“Yeah. You said that.” An evaluative look, and a long silence. Eddie lights his own cigarettes, the last of his pack. He’ll have to buy more on his way back to Hawkins. “You went somewhere, last night. Where did you go?”

“What?”

Martin waves his cigarette about, sending curls of smoke into the air. “I know this isn’t really something to you, or to me, and that’s okay, that’s not what I’m talking about. I just– am aware that yesterday was a day for you. Like, a rough day. And we– y’know, we talked about death and shit afterwards, which I’m sorry about, it was sorta insensitive. And you– went somewhere. I don’t know where you went.”

Eddie exhales. “I’ve just, um, got a lot going on. I didn’t think I–”

A silence. He’s not quite sure how to finish that sentence. Martin looks at him. Voice serious, soft. “This isn’t something, is it?”

Eddie looks at his hands. Thinks, unaccountably, of Steve. “No, I, uh. I don’t think so.”

The little shiver of disappointment in Martin’s eyes vanishes as soon as it arrives. “Yeah, I mean. I could see it, y’know. In your eyes.”

It’s a strange feeling, being the one to pull away, the one to disappoint. Eddie’s never really done that before. Martin pulls himself up and eats his eggs; he makes jokes about tennis and gays and even makes Eddie laugh. They sit there for an hour or so, drinking coffee, Martin making more eggs (athlete’s diet, I’m not out of the habit yet) and then Eddie getting to his feet, saying, finally, “I should get going.”

“Yeah,” Martin says, taking him to the hallway. “It’s been good to see you.”

They’re not old friends running into each other at a roadside diner; they’re kind-of-exes who spent the night committing sodomy. But there isn’t a polite way of expressing that, so Eddie just nods. “Yeah, strange twist of fate, huh?”

“You believe in coincidence?”

Eddie thinks about everything. Everything that’s happened. He shrugs. “Jury’s out on that one.”

“Well–” Martin kisses him, just lightly, a parting kiss. “I’ll probably see you in Indy again, since we apparently know all the same people.”

“Apparently.” Eddie feels strangely reluctant to leave, suddenly. Because this isn’t something, and that makes it easier than going out in the world to face things that are something, his dad and the Upside Down and Steve. Steve, whatever the hell that means, and why should he look at Martin and think of Steve? But he does. And so–

And so, he leaves. And drives back to Hawkins.

The Welcome to Hawkins sign emerges out of gray cloud, a dull day, but still fairly mild. He feels every jolt and chuckhole like a rattle in his bones, muscles and joints and ribs aching, and all of this cumulative agony means it’s a blessing to pull into the trailer park and limp into the trailer, slump down on the couch. His uncle’s not there. Probably out unionizing, best of luck to him. Eddie just wants to sleep for a thousand years. (He’s not good at sleeping in a bed with someone. Has only ever done it with Janie, and Martin the once, before last night. It makes him tense, nervous, that there’s someone there to touch.)

He dozes on the couch, neglecting the possibility of school. Fuck school. His father died.

Eventually, he registers it’s late enough that Steve might be home, so he drags himself out of his half-sleep and reaches over with a wince to dial, finding the number in the phonebook, blinking a weary haze from his eyes. Steve doesn’t take long to pick up. “Harrington residence,” he says on the other end, voice tired and orderly. He’s probably been coached.

“Hey, uh, Steve?”

“Oh, Eddie, hey, man.” Is it an illusion that Steve’s voice has brightened? “You called.”

“I called,” Eddie allows, leaning back on the arm of the couch and twisting the cord idly around his finger. “Still want to get high?”

“If you’re offering.”

“Tomorrow sound good?”

“Tomorrow sounds good,” Steve says, tone touched with relief. Why should he be relieved? What, that Eddie’s not standing him up? Has the world turned upside-down? “After school?”

“School, Jesus Christ. Right. Yeah. After school.”

“I know, it feels stupid, doesn’t it?”

“It always does. But particularly stupid right now, I’ll agree.”

“I still gotta work on my college application.” Steve’s voice goes grim on those words, the way it did when he was arguing about it with his father. “But, yeah, anyway. Come over to my place at, like, six? I’ll buy us a pizza.”

“What a gentleman,” Eddie says, with a sudden rush of vertigo at the confirmation of the plan, at the something unfolding before him. It’s not in the Martin league, of course. It’s smoking weed and eating pizza with a straight guy who’s moping about his breakup. But Eddie’s taking what he can get. “See you then.”

They hang up; Eddie looks at the dull ceiling, the dim room. The place where so much has happened and yet so little. Just the same, always. The same for years. The same mugs, hats, photo frames. None of Bruce or Shelley or Eddie’s grandfather, whose name he doesn’t even know. None of Eddie’s mom.

He realizes, in a jolt, that all these people who’ve mentioned his mom, Joyce and Bruce and Ciara, they’ve never said–

–whether she’s alive or not.

Which, she probably isn’t. Let’s face it. The state of things, in Eddie’s life, in the context of his surroundings — he finds it easy to picture her in a gutter somewhere, veins pitted and dark, eyes unseeing as a fly crawls across her swollen cheek. This, he can imagine. But alive? Her alive?

Even the image of the waitress in the IHOP, faceless, remains just that. Faceless. Stubbornly vague behind a veil. Which, a dead person can’t hurt him. A faceless ghoul can’t hurt him. His self-imposed measures of distance, they’re what protect him, he knows this. He knows there’s a reason he had to turn Ciara away; a reason he had to turn away from the funeral. Running away. Smalltown fucking boy.

He’s still not feeling it yet, whatever pain he’s meant to feel, now his father’s dead. So all his running — maybe it’s working.

And yet, the IHOP. He passed one on the way back.

Chapter Text

The news comes bright and early Friday morning; Eddie’s blearily making his way down the hallway just as the phone rings, and Wayne appears, holding the receiver out: “It’s for you,” he says, looking grim and dirt-smudged after a night at the plant.

Eddie takes it. “Yeah?”

“Eddie, my friend, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you.”

It’s Rick, because of course it’s Rick, and Wayne may know about Eddie’s little job but he still turns away to face the window, dropping his voice. “Rick?”

“That’s me. I expect you’ve been waiting to hear from me for a while.”

“Yeah, I- uh, I can explain. About Saturday.”

“Oh, shit, no, explain? It’s all in the past, kid, forget about it. I certainly did. You know I won enough money on Saturday I could get out of the business for life?”

“The, uh, the Breeders’ Cup?” Eddie’s casual tone is forced; he finds it difficult to believe he’s gotten away with it.

“Yep. Thousands I won, Eddie, thousands. Those horses are almost enough to make you believe in something, huh?”

“Huh.” Eddie looks sideways at his uncle; he’s writing something in a notebook at the table, tapping the end of the pen on his teeth.

“Almost. So, y’know, I thought I’d let you know the good news, which is that I’m phasing out of the business. Aiming for a carefree life, such as it is. So unfortunately our little business connection’s gonna have to end here.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Sell what you got, and give me the same cut as always, but after that, I’m afraid the well’s run dry.”

Rick’s tone is always unreadable; over the phone, he may as well be a computer, for all the real emotion discernible in it. Eddie can’t tell if he’s telling the truth or not. If he really did win big or not; if he’s getting out of the business or not; if Eddie’s being fucked over or not. He doesn’t have the strength to question it. “Okay. Well, uh, thanks for everything.”

“You’re welcome. And hey, give my regards to that Tommy kid, if you ever see him. Damn, that kid knew how to smoke.” With a click, Rick hangs up, and that’s that. Eddie’s brief career as a drug dealer, such as it was, is over.

It doesn’t feel quite like a relief.

Wayne’s looking at him as he sets the receiver down. Eddie waits, but whatever he’s expecting doesn’t come. Wayne just says, “You sleep okay?”

“Sleeping’s more of an abstract concept to me, personally.” Then he catches Wayne’s deepening frown and adds hastily, “Which means I slept fine, thanks.”

“Good, good. I got a meetin’ this afternoon, I’m gonna crash out until then, if you’re–”

Where did this sudden hesitance to leave him alone come from? “I’m fine, Wayne. Get some rest.”

Wayne looks at him for a moment, then nods, and takes his jacket off. Eddie lights a cigarette and pours Honeycombs into a bowl as quietly as he can, as his uncle begins to snore on the sofabed. The mundanity of breakfast isn’t a refuge, exactly, since he’s never been one to eat it regularly anyway, but he can admit it’s nice to focus on the simplest of tasks. Bowl, spoon, cereal. A few spoons dry, then adding milk, because, yeah, okay, it’s kind of psychopathic behavior to eat them dry. Then he finds a jacket and his homework, which is admittedly a pitiful excuse for homework, but hey, he’s had a rough couple of weeks.

And, like nothing ever happened, he drives to school.

He listens to the latter half of Stained Class on his journey; Beyond the Realms of Death is just closing out as he pulls into the parking lot. Fitting, he thinks, with a wry smile that stays internal. Somehow he can’t summon the energy to make his lips twitch.

He coasts through his first couple of classes, or perhaps treads water. Chews on the end of his pencil when he craves a cigarette and tries not to stare out of the window too much. There has to be a threshold of weird shit you’ve been through where you can’t tolerate something so ordinary as school anymore. There has to be a limit, right? Owens coming in here, saying, Oh, yeah, there’s been a mistake, Eddie here doesn’t have to come to school anymore, on account of his dad dying and his drug boss firing him and him and his friends saving the town. He’s having prophetic dreams: he shouldn’t have to focus on pre-calculus.

There’ve been no more of them, the prophetic dreams. Such that he’s beginning to doubt his recollection. Was it really his father’s liver in the IHOP? Was it really his father at all? Perhaps these are things he imposed upon the dream afterwards, looking at it in hindsight, trying desperately to make sense of this thing he could otherwise never have seen coming —

He doodles a stack of pancakes on the side of his worksheet and then scribbles it out. It would almost be nice to feel sad. Then he would have a name for it, for this mess he’s feeling. Or not feeling. Jesus.

He dodges Jeff in the hallway and decides to eat lunch in the parking lot. Because he can keep lying, sure, or he can tell the truth, but making that choice? In front of Jeff, who’s genuinely sad? It’s not something Eddie knows how to do. So he puts his books in his locker and heads down the hallway towards the exit, fingers running over the reassuring edge of the fresh pack of Camels in his pocket. The hallways are fairly empty, most people already in the cafeteria, or doing whatever lunchtime extracurricular pursuits people who are going to college do. He peers curiously through the door to one classroom he passes, where freshmen look to be rehearsing Shakespeare soliloquies, and then snaps his head back around when he hears a yell around the corner.

Because he now apparently runs towards danger, rather than away from it, he follows the sound. Rounds the corner to find Jonathan. Jonathan pushing Tommy H. up against the wall, cornering him, hissing fury as Nancy tries to pull him away in some weird echo of last year, Jonathan strong anyway but made stronger by rage, apparently, and Eddie’s pretty content to let him murder Tommy H., since if that’s what he wants to do, hey, that’s what he wants to do, and there’s not much Eddie can do about it.

“–always knew you were a fucking psycho,” Tommy is snarling, voice coming out a little strangled, a little wobbly, like he’s aware of the precarity of his position. “And Wheeler, well, were you screwing them both all year or–”

“Fuck you,” Nancy says. “Jonathan, c’mon, someone’s gonna come by any second–”

Jonathan bares his teeth. “Did you hear what he said?”

“Do you really want detention again?” Nancy says, “For this asshole?”

“Ouch,” Tommy says, as footsteps sound around the corner and they run out of time.

“Incoming,” Eddie hisses, jolting forward to grab at Jonathan’s arm, tugging, “Byers, you fucking idiot, come on–”

Eventually, not a moment too soon, Jonathan relents. He lets Eddie and Nancy drag him down the hallway and out into the sunlight just as Miss O’Donnell rounds the corner, which wouldn’t have gone well for anyone. Then they catch their breath by the parking lot, Eddie once again longing for something to take the edge off. It’s getting boring, hurting all the time. He thinks he only managed Wednesday night on alcohol and sheer force of will.

“What was that about?” he says, leaning back against the rough brick wall.

Jonathan scuffs his sneakers on the ground and shoots the school building as a whole a venomous look. “Fucking asshole.”

Nancy sighs and looks at Eddie, hair swinging around her face. “Tommy H. had some things to say about my breakup with Steve.”

“And I– lost it.” Jonathan throws his hands up, then inspects them critically. “There’s something wrong with me.”

Nancy reaches out to him, like this is an argument they’ve been having for a while. “Jonathan–”

“There is. There’s something wrong with me. That’s just what my fucking dad would have done–”

Oh, shit, Lonnie’s back in town, isn’t he? Eddie somehow managed to forget about that along the way. He offers Jonathan a cigarette. Jonathan takes it but doesn’t light it immediately, a rattled, distant look in his eyes. Eddie decides to take it slow. “Your dad?”

Nancy shoots him a look, which he ignores.

“Yeah, he’s– y’know, he’s back in town. Or was yesterday, anyway. Mom didn’t let him stay very long. He turned up saying some shit about how life is short and he wants to be in our lives, which is total fucking bullshit, and then Bob turned up at the house and you can imagine how that went–”

“Not well,” Nancy intones tiredly, running a hand through her hair and then leaving her palm on her forehead, as though she’s got a headache. Her satchel is overstuffed with books, the strap digging into her shoulder.

“So it was a totally pointless five hours, really, like a total waste of everyone’s time, just like he always is, he just traumatized Will a bit more for the fun of it, and of course Bob had to sweep in at the end like he’s trying to be dad of the fucking year–”

“Jonathan,” Nancy says, a little bit of warning in her voice.

He looks at her. “What?”

Then Nancy looks at Eddie, and oh, no, he isn’t having this conversation. No matter how upset or otherwise he should be by what Jonathan is saying — fuck that. They look at each other in silent stalemate for a moment, a long moment, as Nancy’s eyebrows draw together and she stares at him like she can’t understand him, which, good, because she can’t. Eddie’s not giving her the satisfaction of saying anything, just stands there. Stonewalling. He sticks a cigarette between his lips and tries to light it; the flame won’t catch.

Eventually, with a twist of her mouth that says she’s not pleased, she says, “Eddie gets it, okay?”

Jonathan frowns at her. “Well, yeah, I know he– but what–”

“Fuck’s sake,” Eddie says, as the lighter slips from between his fingers and lands in the dirt. He crouches to pick it up and it’s only down here, where he can’t quite see their faces, that he feels at all able to say, “My dad died.”

All the energy leaks out of him at that. He shifts so he’s sitting down, back to the wall, knees up to his chest, and he breathes out a shaky breath, the unlit cigarette held between his fingers. Digs the fingers of his other hand into the earth, closes his eyes. They buried his father. It’s done.

When he opens them, Jonathan and Nancy are both on the ground too — Nancy in her nice blue pants, leaning on Jonathan’s shoulder to steady herself as she gets comfortable — in some sort of circle of misery. “Sorry,” Jonathan says, at length. “For, y’know, going on–”

Eddie smiles a little. “Hey, complain about the living all you like. The dead aren’t coming back.”

“Are you– uh, are you okay?”

“I don’t fucking know, honestly. I don’t know.”

“Yeah. I get that.”

He’s glad it’s Jonathan, suddenly. Jonathan, who he’s fucking bonded to for reasons beyond the human and reasons beyond the supernatural. Jonathan actually looks at him like he gets it. “I haven’t, uh, been able to talk about it. Haven’t talked about it, whatever. No one really knows.”

Jonathan looks at Nancy then. “You shouldn’t have–”

Her eyes go sharp. “Well, you were saying all this stuff that can’t have been nice for Eddie to hear and what was I supposed to do?”

“Let me say it,” Eddie says, knowing full well he wouldn’t have said it, not unless forced. So it feels a little unfair. “It’s my fucking dad.”

“I know it’s–”

“You don’t know.”

She sets her jaw. “I know it’s hard. But you can’t just keep this to yourself for the rest of your life. It’s in the papers, Eddie. And I’m sure Hopper knows, and he’s not gonna think you’re not telling people, so it’s gonna get out and when it does–”

“What?” he bites out. Jonathan’s gone silent and grim.

“It’s better to tell your own story. Isn’t it?”

He looks out over the grass, the parking lot beyond. Not the most fitting of places to be having this conversation, but then again, nowhere in Hawkins ever is. He scratches at the back of his neck and says without looking at her, “It doesn’t give you the right to– yeah. It’s my story. My fucking life.” It comes out meaner than he intends. He’s all out of sorts.

“I didn’t–” she starts, then stops. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

There’s another silence. Eddie drags a hand through his hair and looks at Jonathan. “You said Lonnie upset Will?”

Jonathan grimaces. “The usual, really. Will still– y’know. Misses him. Wants him to be around. So when he turns up for a bit and things don’t go the way they’re supposed to–” He shakes his head. “As if our family wasn’t fucked enough. I think this might be Bob’s last straw.”

“You think, or you hope?”

“At this point, I’ll just settle for us not moving to Maine.”

“I’d rather you didn’t move to Maine,” Nancy says lightly, and Jonathan turns and puts his face close to hers, and that’s a little too much romance for today, thank you. Eddie painfully gets to his feet and leans a hand against the wall, contemplating the entrance. Class. Does he want to go to class? Is he going to go to class?

Jonathan and Nancy, diligent students as they are, disappear back into the building before the next period. Leaving Eddie to think fuck it and go back home.

His uncle’s gone already when he gets there. He settles on the couch with The Left Hand of Darkness, plucked off his shelf at random since he hasn’t read it in a while and maybe something absorbing will do him good. But he can’t get his mind to snap into focus; it wanders, itches. He leafs through the bills on the counter and turns the TV on and off and designs a fifth of a DnD campaign for the kids before he’s read five pages. He wonders if Hopper would let him visit El. He even considers calling up one of the other kids to ask, before realizing it’s still school hours and no one’s home.

Eventually, he brews a cup of coffee and knocks himself out on the couch. He dreams of the feeling of sinking, like quicksand in the movies. A darkness closing over his head. And he wakes with a start, a gasp that jostles all his bones, and he squints in the trailer’s sudden dark — Steve. He’s supposed to see Steve at six. If he’s missed it–

He hasn’t missed it. It’s a quarter to six; he’d intended to shower, but he doesn’t have time. He just throws a different t shirt on, a trusty Judas Priest one, and ducks out of the trailer with the weed in his jacket pocket. And his Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow cassette, to add to the collection of metal in the van, in case they’re short on music. Knowing Steve, they’ll be short on music.

A strange flutter of nerves in his gut, though this is Steve. Probably because it’s Steve. Probably because, well. It’s better to tell your own story. Which means– he’s gonna have to fucking tell it.

Still. He puts on a brave face, ringing Steve Harrington’s doorbell.

Steve answers the door without much delay, a smile spreading on his face. “Hey, man, come in. Oh, god, what are those?” He’s looking at the cassettes in Eddie’s hand.

“This is good music, Steve, I’m not surprised you don’t recognize it–”

Steve flips him off. “Pizza first? Or pizza when we’re baked?”

“That’s up to you. You’re the lightweight.”

“I’m not the– okay, well maybe I am the lightweight, of the two of us, but I don’t smoke very often, okay?”

Eddie smiles and pulls himself up onto the kitchen counter. “Order the pizza, dude. We’ll put it to the test soon enough.”

Steve gets on the phone and makes small talk with the guy on the other end, asking how his day’s been, how busy they are, all that shit that makes him charming, the kinda guy you take home to meet the parents. When he hangs up, pizza ordered, he sits in a chair — house-trained, too — and says, “Did you ditch school today, too? I didn’t see you around.”

“Oh, I was, uh, I was keeping a low profile. I ran into Nancy and Jonathan, though. Jonathan was about three seconds from beating Tommy H. into a pulp.”

“Jesus,” says Steve, examining his hands. “Any particular reason?”

“Does he need a reason to beat Tommy H. into a pulp?” Then Eddie relents. “It was, um, about Nancy. People are saying bad shit about her, I think.”

Steve scrubs his hand over his face. “Yeah, I mean, I knew that. I’ve been trying to stop them saying it, but– well. I’m not exactly in the social graces either.”

“Welcome to the club. Wait, you should join Hellfire. That would really clinch the deal.”

“Yeah, uh, no. Not happening.” There’s an edge to his voice, a little thread of the old contempt, and Eddie eyes him warily. But it’s gone as soon as it appears, and Steve’s face rearranges itself back into this new softness he’s found, a sort of dumb-puppy look Eddie can’t help but consider to be genuine. They’ve nearly died together twice, saved each others’ lives. It has to be genuine.

“But yeah, I ditched the afternoon. I just– can’t really bring myself to do it, right now. Too much is– um, too much is happening.”

“Yeah. I get that. My dad’s so set on me going to college, so I need to do this application, and get the grades for it, but I just–”

Eddie could be cruel here, if he chose. Could take his pick: actually, that’s not what I’m talking about. The strike, or the funeral. Either one. But he doesn’t; he just says, “You don’t have to go to college, y’know. If you don’t want to.”

Steve’s brow furrows, like the concept isn’t even conceivable. “Well, no, I kinda do. It’s what my dad wants, and if I don’t go, I’ll end up working for him anyway, so better to get out of here for a couple of years while I still can.”

“Do you always do what your dad wants?”

Steve shakes his head, though it seems a pointless gesture. “I’m not high enough for this conversation.”

“You can say that again. Where are we smoking?”

“Upstairs, there’s a spot on the roof. Do you wanna, uh, roll them, or–”

“Already rolled, baby. I’m a professional.” Eddie gets out his little cigarette case and opens it, showing off the joints.

Steve looks at the case with interest. “Where did you get that?”

“It was my uncle’s– well. Girlfriend, I guess you’d call her, Jesus. I’m pretty sure it was hers, anyway. I haven’t asked. She was the kinda woman to have something like this, I think. I don’t really remember her. More through my uncle’s stories, which, if you believe Henderson– children’s memories begin between two and seven, so who knows what I actually remember, and what I’m just inventing.”

“It’s nice,” Steve says. “Did you like her? In these– I don’t know, half-fake memories?”

“I think so. I like what my uncle says about her, anyway. She was called Carolyn, she, uh, she died of cancer when I was six.” He remembers warm arms, soft dark hair. He remembers books, too, would it be overly romantic to imagine that’s where he got his interest in reading? “Jesus, this got morbid.”

Steve shrugs, ducking his head behind his hair. Eddie’s not sure he’s ever seen him do that before. “I don’t know, I think it’s nice. Carrying a nice piece of your childhood around with you.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Eddie feels the prickle of discomfort and guides the conversation somewhere easier — and soon enough the doorbell rings with their pizza, and they take it upstairs, out to the flat section of roof outside Steve’s window, where the night spreads out even and mild before them. Steve puts his own cassette in his music system, against Eddie’s protests, and soon enough there emerge the opening beats of Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A. “When will I know peace?” Eddie drawls, sprawling himself over the roof with a dash of customary melodrama.

“C’mon, it’s better than Wham!. I know you think it’s better than Wham!.”

“Damn right I do. But only because Springsteen is the people’s hero.”

“Well, whatever, he makes good fucking music.” Steve lays out beside Eddie, putting the pizza between them, taking a slice as he nods his head along to the song. “Ugh, this is just what I needed.”

Hesitantly, Eddie takes his own slice. It tastes greasy and like nothing but cheese, the way all cheap pizza tastes, perfect for combining with an illicit substance or two. They eat a few slices each; then he slides the first joint between his lips and lights it, cupping his hand against the wind. Takes a long, burning drag, then hands it over to Steve. Steve takes his own drag and sighs.

“This, too. God, I needed this.”

“You have no idea,” Eddie says, taking the joint back and sinking into the faintly rising high. “No fucking idea.”

“My dad’s convinced I already do this anyway. Y’know, getting high out here every night. Weed and much worse. So I figured, why not make it true? If he’s so fixated on it?”

It just slips out. “My dad’s dead.”

A silence. Steve lifts his head. “Shit, I didn’t–“

“It isn’t, like, a competition thing. I’m not trying to, y’know, trip you up, or whatever, I’m just– Nancy said I should tell people, so–“

“Oh.” Steve exhales audibly. “You– because you do that, sometimes.” Voice quiet. “When you’re telling someone something serious, or someone’s telling you something serious– you trip them up, man, you– it’s like you’re trying to stay a few steps away.”

“My dad dying isn’t about you, Harrington.”

“Yeah, I fucking know that, I’m just saying you–“ A silence. “When did he die?”

Eddie can’t lie about that. “Sunday.”

Steve takes the joint but doesn’t inhale, just stares up at the sky for a moment. Then he looks at Eddie. “Do you trust us?”

Another silence. Eddie stares at him. “What kind of question is that?”

“Do you trust us? Because– I don’t know. You didn’t tell us.”

“I can’t believe you’re taking this fucking personally. This isn’t– what the hell are you even–”

“Hawkins is a dangerous fucking place. All right? We can accept that?” Slowly, Eddie nods. “And if we’re accepting that, then we have to accept that trusting each other– telling each other our shit– it’s the only way to survive. Right? The good and the bad. Everything. You have to know we’d be there for you, right?”

Do I? Eddie thinks. Would you? But it feels naive to say that. Like he’s falling into Steve’s little trap. Being tripped over himself. “You’re gonna sit there and say we’re– what. Gonna bare our hearts to each other, huh? That you’re gonna bare your heart to me? Confessions under the moonlight? Come on, Steve. We’ve both changed, but not that much. Survival be damned.”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying– I don’t know what I’m saying.” Steve goes quiet for a moment, stretching into a while. His face is in shadow, lit only by the glowing end of the joint as he inhales. “It’s not about telling each other everything. But it’s about– y’know, not lying, either.”

“I’m not a liar,” Eddie says, feeling false even as he says it. Perhaps he is a liar. Perhaps it’s a skin he wears, habitual as the first smoke he lights up when he wakes up in the morning. Perhaps he does lie.

“How about this, then? Thanks for telling me.”

Eddie inspects his profile for sarcasm, and finds none. “You’re welcome.”

“Do you want to– I mean. Context clues, you probably don’t, but I’ll ask anyway. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know. Jesus, I don’t know, people ask you that but you just don’t know. I should be sad, but I’m not sad, but actually I can’t really tell if I’m sad, and then on the flipside maybe it might be nice to feel relieved but I’m not feeling that either. Nice in the sense that, y’know, it’s a more, uh, pleasant feeling than this– this dull sort of nothing I’ve got going on right now. Not nice in the sense that it would make me a good person.” Eddie laughs thinly. “I don’t think anything about this is making me a good person.”

“Would a useless saying make you feel better? I’ve got tons. These things take time. Healing is a process.”

“Jesus, did you swallow a self-help book?”

“My mom has some lying around.”

Eddie takes the joint back and takes a long, numbing drag. “Keep ‘em coming, man, it might even be helping.”

“There’s a remedy for everything except death. That one’s Italian, from my mom’s side.”

“Can you say it in Italian?”

“No.” Steve smiles lopsidedly, like he’s oblivious to the loss he betrays when he says, “My grandma was Italian, so my mom can speak it but she doesn’t, really. Trying to fit in and seem more American, or whatever. She never taught it to me.”

“Not a word?”

“Not a word.” Steve’s smile dims a little. “How about we are not in the grave, the grave is on us?”

Eddie feels a little shudder go through him, as that sits there in the silence. “What does that one mean?”

“I don’t know, really, I think it’s sorta about– death not being you. Death just being something that sits on top of you.”

Like it’s a way of returning the dead’s identity to them, a person still, but Eddie’s not sure he’s really capable of seeing it that way. It puts him in mind of his dream. The sense of sinking below a dark surface, closing over his head, like death is something that drowns you, puts its hands on your shoulders and drowns you, grinning all the while. “I think that’s enough proverbs for today, huh?”

“Probably,” Steve agrees. “Let’s just get really fucking high instead.”

Eddie likes that idea. And he’s pretty good at it, when he sets his mind to it. One of his limited talents. They spend several hours on the roof, ability to use their limbs going in and out, the sky stretching out above them starry before it dissipates into dark cloud. They listen to the entirety of: Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen; Tonight, David Bowie; Ghost in the Machine, The Police; and Heartbeat City, The Cars, when Eddie’s tired enough he can no longer protest. Then Steve plays the first song off Heartbeat City again, Hello Again, and though Eddie’s coming down the lyrics seem to elongate about his head — when there's nothing, nothing left to lose, you leave it all to fade to blue. Maybe it’s pointed.

Finally, they’re left in nighttime silence. The weed is long finished. Eddie comes back to his body with a strange feeling of disappointment, but it brings with it his awareness of Steve as a body, too, just across the roof from him, only a couple feet. Thinks of Martin saying this isn’t something, is it?

And neither is this.

Sex and death, it’s all tied up together, Eddie knows this. The point is we don’t let it be about death, even though death’s, like, everywhere. But we’re not in the grave, the grave is on us. It’s fucking there, waiting. And his father caught an infection and died.

When he’s sober enough, he drives home. His uncle’s long since left for work. The trailer is dark and cold, and he’s not in the grave, the grave is on him, and he’s got to run from that the only way he knows how. So he gets high again.

Chapter Text

It’s two a.m. He’s not intending it to go this far, necessarily. He’s intending a couple lines of ket, enough to tip him over back that sweet, sweet edge into comfortable oblivion. It’s a painkiller. People are always telling him to take painkillers: he dislocates his shoulder, bam, you should take something, Eddie, pain puts stress on the muscles, and isn’t this the same? Relieving stress. Making it all go away. He said to Will, didn’t he, that it’s okay to run. It’s okay to run away from what’s inside your own head.

He starts with Steppenwolf, listens the whole album through as he lets the first few bumps settle through his body. Which body fades to a hazy knowledge just outside of his awareness, which isn’t far enough, so he snorts some more. Plucks out a few chords on his precious guitar, reflects on quite what a shame it is he’s been barely able to touch her lately. She deserves better than that. But his fingers are numb and uncooperative, cold, and he’s not doing her justice, so he lets her go. Puts her back in her case.

After that, he goes back to the ketamine.

He starts to feel like he’s playing brinkmanship with his own life when he reaches the end of the album and every movement feels like wading through molasses. It’s not like he hasn’t been here before; but he also hasn’t been here and kept on going. Tonight, fuck it, he’s going to keep on going. When you’re going through hell, keep going, isn’t that the phrase? That’s the fucking phrase.

So he puts on Led Zeppelin III, with all the dexterity he has left, and gets even higher.

And for a while, it’s just right. It’s floating on an inky surface, a long way from shore, where he’s left his body far behind — it’s detachment from the reality of death, the reality of the grave. He can regard his trailer with nothing but curiosity, all the things that usually have such sentiment attached — the Stephen King book he kept his dad’s letter in, the letters from Janie on the desk, the total absence of anything relating to his mom — each of these things becomes another discrete item in a list of things, a universe of things, and what use are things to him, in this great big nothing?

Then, he’s calm. He feels good. He feels as though his dad and Martin and Steve are organizing themselves into the correct perspective in his head; he feels as though they finally make sense. He likes the way this surface feels.

It’s at this point, of course, that the surface begins to suck him under.

Since I’ve Been Loving You is playing, desperate, mournful. He’s aware of that, even if he’s aware of increasingly little else. Shadows getting wider. Things opening up in empty space before him, a void in front of and behind him, the sense that he’s falling back through the couch and yet forwards too, all at once, forwards into the imagined light of sunshine and snow in a place he’s been, the prison parking lot, and this is where the grief comes from — not in the inky lake, not in the trailer, not in his body, really, but in this parking lot, in cold white flakes spotting damp on his cheeks and the sense of leaving someone or being left by someone behind — the knowledge that here, this is where the sadness lies, not anywhere else, but here that sadness remains and does exist, though he’d thought it didn’t —

Then he’s not in the parking lot. Then he’s in his old bedroom, still, aware of his body not as a body but as a blotch of angry pain, like a stain in the air, and the knowledge of the reason for that pain just outside the door, fresh and ready to inflict yet more of that pain, and there’s nowhere he can go — he’s just there, in that room, existing with the bitterness and none of the grief. It hurts. Ketamine’s not supposed to make it hurt.

He surfaces again, shaking, after an unaccountable amount of time. He’s trembling all over. Sweating. Nausea rising in his stomach, a great dead lethargy weighing his limbs down. His heart is racing like he’s got an energy with nowhere to go, frozen within this dark mire of paralysis and he doesn’t want to do this anymore, he doesn’t– he can feel it swooping over him, the dark surface, sucking at him like the sinking in his dream–

He drags himself across the floor, with what little control he has over his limbs. Crawling, like a child. Everything dull and blurring, his sense of reality going in and out. Too much, he thinks, taken too much, and then as he’s thinking that he’s already by the telephone, how did that happen?

He sinks against the wall. Grabs for the telephone, clumsily, sends it clattering out of its cradle. Takes it up and dials, through the shakes running through him. He knows the number. He remembers the number.

“Steve,” he whispers into the phone.

Steve breathes into the phone, tiredly, like Eddie’s woken him up. Sounds unnaturally loud. “Hello? Who–“

“Steve,” Eddie says again, feeling a wave of unnecessary panic. Panic that thrums through his chest and has him hunching deeper against the wall, half longing for half dreading that sweeping tide of dark distance–

“Eddie,” Steve says, voice sharpening. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m– I’ve–“ Eddie can’t get his tongue to match his words to match his thoughts. Everything feels slow and muddled. “Too much. I’m–“ He rides another jolt of panic, feels distinctly like he’s going to throw up, covers his mouth and says with all the energy he has left, muffled, “Fuck, taken too much. ‘M– scared.”

He’s not sure what Steve says to that. He thinks he passes out. He drifts through that dark surface and the depths beneath it, echoes of what he saw before but with less clarity, now, more creeping shadows and horrors just outside his plane of vision, the separation between mind and body less calm and more threatening in that anything can get in between–

The second time he surfaces, there are lights on and people talking and someone’s moving him, shifting him onto his side, he’s not sure, numbness is going in and out, and he tries to look up at them but he can’t quite make his head lift all that way and he doesn’t know who they–

“Steve,” he says, and he can’t really hear his own voice over the viscous way the room spins and he thinks maybe he’s dying; his chest hurts. “Steve.”

“I’m here,” Steve says, voice so sweet so soft-sounding Eddie could sink into that and fall asleep and he thinks he does for a second before his head jerks up and heart pounds so hard he’s afraid it’s going to leap right out of his chest and run off somewhere, fuck, he can’t chase after his own heart– “Shit, Eddie, does he– should we keep him awake–?”

“Keep him awake, keep him breathing, don’t let him choke on his own vomit,” someone says, a woman, as if from very far away. Who’s him? Eddie wants to say. Who’s Eddie? He doesn’t think he exists anymore. There is no him, only some pitiable creature melting into the carpet, into the walls, disintegrating even as someone grabs him by the arm and hauls him up, dizzy, his limbs aren’t working the way they should–

He really feels like he’s dying. He says as much, slurred, because he can’t get his jaw to do what he wants and then the person holding him up lets him go and the room tilts as he sags to the floor in the bathroom, tiny bathroom, tiles he cleaned last week so why is there dirt crawling out of the grout why is there oily dark seeping out towards him–

He thinks he cries out. He’s not really sure. Sure only that then there’s hands on his arms someone’s eyes Joyce Byers why is Joyce Byers here and why is she saying “Shh, Eddie, listen to me, sweetheart, you’re safe, okay? You’re safe here, you’re with us, you’re safe. It’s gonna be okay,” because it’s not gonna be okay he thinks he’s losing his mind he feels like he’s not even here–

He throws up, a little bit on himself, a little bit in the toilet bowl as Joyce holds his hair back and rubs circles over the line of his spine, “You’re doing so good, you’re okay, sweetheart, you’re okay,” and that has to be proof that this isn’t really happening, right? That this isn’t really him? Because that’s something people say to other people and people don’t say to him?

His first concrete awareness of sensation is the cold hard rim of the toilet bowl pressed against his forehead. He pushes into that feeling and becomes aware, too, of the trembling in his hands, so forceful his fingers are rattling against the tiles, kneecaps aching on the floor — and all these awarenesses do nothing to prevent the catch of air in his throat and the panic attack that follows. A hand on his back, all the way through it all. Soft, gentle voices. He cries, finally. He cries. Tells someone, he doesn’t know who, that his chest hurts. In his head, though he manages to keep this in, he means more than that.

Eventually, the surface slides on into morning.

He wakes in his bed to a strip of gray light. It’s cold in his room; there’s gooseflesh running up his arms, bare in his t shirt. He smells bad. Smells like sweat and sick. He doesn’t move for a moment, half afraid he won’t be able to, half unsure why he’d even need to bother. Just lies there under the weight, this morning, of nothing but what happened the night before.

“You’re awake, then?”

He turns. Relieved to find his muscles still work, though they ache with a wintry cold, like he slept outside.

Little old Avni from across the way is sitting by his bed, in a chair dragged in from the kitchen, reading his battered copy of Firestarter. She’s not looking at him, her eyes flickering across the page, as she says, “That was a fucking rough night for you, I’d imagine, but you’ll live. You did have a seizure, which is something you should keep an eye on, and I’ll let your uncle know. I gotta be honest, I was expecting worse. I brought my naloxone kit and I’m damn glad I didn’t have to use it.” She looks at him; there are deep, grim lines in her face, worry and resignation and irony all at once. “That isn’t to say this isn’t bad, Eddie. What did you take? Ketamine?”

He nods silently.

“Okay, well, it’s unlikely to kill you on its own, but you mix that shit with anything and all bets are off.” She pinches her lips together. “This isn’t a happy road to go down, kid, and I think you’re aware of where it ends. You’ve had a rough life but don’t make it any rougher, okay?”

She makes to get to her feet. He says, unthinkingly, “I saw your grandson in Indy a couple days ago.”

She stiffens. “Martin? How is he?”

“He’s– he’s good.” There’s nothing really else to say.

She nods and stands up, the book still in her hands; she holds it up. “Mind if I borrow this?”

“Go ahead.”

She smiles narrowly and goes out. Like he can be trusted to be on his own, now, like he’s not going to slip into a coma spontaneously or else take more drugs. He stares at the ceiling and unfolds his aching limbs from their cramped position curled up; he’s all too aware of his body now, which was sort of the point, avoiding it, and where has it got him? His head hurts. His mouth tastes sour and vile. There’s a glass of water left for him on the nightstand; he reaches for it with hands that won’t quite cooperate and spills half of it on the floor before he gets it to his mouth.

But it helps, enough that he finds the strength of will to get out of bed. Cold, he reaches for Wayne’s sweater, left on the back of Avni’s chair. He tugs it over his head, breathes its cigarette smell in, pulls the sleeves down over his hands. Then he goes through to the other room, following the quiet hum of the television.

Avni’s gone. Joyce and Steve are side by side on the couch, both slumped back tiredly, a half-full ashtray balanced between them as they watch TV, what looks like an old Good Times rerun. They’re not really laughing, though Steve lets out a little snort occasionally, like he’s making an effort.

Eddie drags a hand through his hair, overcomes the sudden tide of dread to say, “Hey.”

They turn to look at him. Steve looks tired, his hair flat. Joyce’s eyes are deep in shadow. But she says, “Hey,” voice impossibly soft, and Eddie has to take a great gulp of air to keep his eyes from tearing up.

“Hey, man,” Steve says, like they’re just passing each other in the hallway on their way to their lockers.

Eddie looks at the cigarettes on the table. “One of those going?” he says, and wordlessly Steve passes the pack up to him. He starts smoking in silence. It’s rare he’s left without anything to say; but today, this morning, he’s coming up empty. More that he doesn’t know what to say to them, because really, if he wasn’t out of his mind like he was last night and he had to choose–

He wouldn’t have chosen them. Wouldn’t have chosen anyone, really, but wouldn’t have chosen them. He had a fucking seizure, for Christ’s sake. They shouldn’t have had to see that.

“I need some air,” Joyce says finally, standing up. “Eddie, come keep me company outside?”

It’s not a request. Eddie follows her outside, feeling Steve’s eyes on him as he leaves, but he doesn’t look back. Just blinks in the dull light as he leans against the wall beside Joyce, watching her light another cigarette, the trailer park damp and gray with dawn before them. It must have rained last night; not that he’d really know. Her Pinto is parked next to Steve’s Bimmer, a contrast that on another day might make him smile, and there’s few people around. It’s nearly seven-thirty. His uncle will be home from the plant in an hour or so, his car joining theirs. Fuck.

“Steve called me,” she says eventually, “after you called him. He was worried. Really worried. And I called Avni.”

“How’d you know Avni?”

“It’s a small town, Eddie. She–” Joyce squeezes her eyes shut, looks at the ground, opens them again as she looks back up. “When Lonnie was– at his worst, I couldn’t, y’know, afford to– and right after he left, too, my health insurance was all screwy so if anything happened– Avni was who we went to.”

Another connection, threading across Hawkins, which is a small town but not that small, not really. Not small enough that this can mean anything other than what it means, which is that they’re both poor, both victims of violent men. “She’s pretty good.”

“Yeah, she is. Eddie–” Joyce is smoking with the other arm held over her chest, fingers hooked onto her collarbone, like she’s holding fractured pieces together. It strikes him that she’s probably having just as bad a week as he is. Still, he braces himself for it — the lecture, the put-down, the inevitable disappointment. Instead, she says, “I’m sorry about your father.”

“Are you?”

She smiles tiredly. “Not really, no. I’m sorry for you, that you’re hurting. I know it hurts, even when you don’t think it should.”

He opens his mouth to deny this; to say no, actually, the problem is it doesn’t hurt — only that’s not quite true, is it? Last night he found the hurt within himself, and it’s there, lingering, peering out of that door he left open, the one he didn’t even know he’d closed. “Thanks,” he says, in return. “Fucker doesn’t– um, doesn’t deserve this. Me, y’know, me doing stupid shit and losing my fucking mind over it, like I didn’t make the choice to leave that behind. Leave him behind. Like he’s still fucking me over from the grave.”

“That’s what they tend to do.”

“Yeah.”

She puts her cigarette to her lips, inhales. When she takes the cigarette out of her mouth, she says, “I know what it’s like, Eddie. I know what you’ve been through, and you’ve been through a lot. I’m not gonna condemn you for not handling it, okay? But this thing with the– with the drugs, that’s got to stop. It’s not safe and it’s not fair.”

He looks at the ground. “Yeah.”

“Your family and my family, they’re somehow– I don’t know. We’ve got a lot in common, and Will– he recognizes that. He’s perceptive. He can see it, he sees himself in you, he wants to be like you, and I’m worried that–” She sighs. “I don’t want him seeing you and start dealing with it all–”

“–the way I’m dealing with it,” Eddie finishes for her.

“Yeah. God, this fucking situation, it just–” She presses her hand to her face, thumb and forefinger to her eyes. Then she looks at him again. “Maybe take a step back, okay? Just until you’ve cleaned yourself up. I mean they’re tough kids, all of them, but I’m his mother and I just–”

“Yeah,” he says, softly, looking at his hands, which are still trembling. He gets it. He wouldn’t think himself a good role model either.

Her hand lands on his arm. “It’s gonna be okay, honey. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it’s gonna be okay.”

His eyes sting again. This time, he can’t prevent the tear that slides down his cheek, and Joyce makes a shushing sound as she pulls him into her arms, slight and short but strong as she holds him close, warm, and good at the soothing nothings he’s heard other people’s mothers say, but never his own.

“You’re gonna be okay,” she whispers. He’d love to believe her.

She leaves fairly soon after that, citing her Saturday shift, and Eddie goes back inside, where Steve’s still watching TV. He looks up as Eddie comes in, eyes flickering over him with attention that feels all too unbearable now, right now, after last night. Eddie sinks into the chair and puts his head in his hands to avoid looking at Steve.

“You okay?” Steve says, turning the TV off. So he wants to talk. Great.

“I’m fine, Steve.”

“What did she say?”

“She was nice.”

“Eddie–”

“She said some shit I already fucking knew, okay, you think when someone takes too many drugs they don’t know it’s a bad thing? You think I did this for my own fucking health?”

A silence. Eddie looks up and finds Steve staring at him, eyes wide, unreadable. His voice is quiet when he says, “So what did you do it for?”

“I–” Eddie leans back, lets the chair catch him as he loses the energy to hold himself up. “I don’t know.”

Steve’s face twists. ‘I– I’m sorry, if I– getting high with you, saying we should– if that–”

“This isn’t anything to do with you, Steve.” It comes out cold and drained. Eddie hasn’t got anything left; he doesn’t care whether it’s true or not. Maybe he is a liar. “If you’re just here because you feel, uh, guilty, or whatever, then–”

“I’m not.”

“So why are you here?”

They look at each other. The moment stretches out, until Steve breaks it, looking away as he scratches the side of his jaw. “Because you asked me to be, man.”

Oh. And Eddie did, come to think of it. Maybe not in so many words, but he called Steve, he remembers calling Steve, and what else could that mean? “Well. I– thanks, I guess.”

Steve looks like he wants to say more, but he settles for, “You’re welcome.”

“Fuck,” Eddie says, rubbing his forehead. “Just when you were beginning to wonder why people always warned you to stay away from me, here’s, uh, here’s a reason right on a silver platter–”

“Don’t say that. I’m not thinking about that.”

Eddie drops his hands, spreads them. “What are you thinking about, Steve? I mean, I can’t– I can’t get a fucking read on you, man. I never can, not really, but today? Last night you, uh, you saw trailer trash, super senior, Eddie ‘the freak’ Munson at his most pathetic, and, what, you’re just gonna– sit there? Just– like that?”

“I guess so,” Steve says. “I guess I am gonna sit here. I mean– what are you even trying to say? You did too much ket so now I’m just gonna fucking– go back to Carol and Tommy H. and forget we were ever friends?”

“I don’t know what you’re gonna do. You’re a– you’re a fucking mystery to me, man, really.”

“Well, you’re a goddamn mystery to me, too, Jesus, every time I think we’re actually getting somewhere it’s like you want me to be what I’m trying not to be, King Steve, or whatever–”

“I don’t–” Eddie drops his head into his hands again, the headache surging up. “God, I don’t fucking know. I don’t want you to be that. I, uh, I like this Steve.”

“Well–” Steve sounds a little wrongfooted by that, though Eddie doesn’t lift his head to check. “Good. Thanks.”

“Nothing about this is fucking easy, is it?”

“No,” Steve agrees. “It isn’t.”

Steve goes soon after that — my parents will be home in an hour or so, technically I’m still grounded — leaving Eddie to await his uncle, from whom he can’t really hide this, not really. Avni will tell him, anyway, so he’s going to have to–

But he doesn’t think about that now. Now, he sits down to write a letter.

He hasn’t written to Janie in a while. It’s hard, putting pen to paper. Harder still when there are monsters trying to kill you. But here he is; and if he’s going to talk to anyone, he has to talk to her. So he writes.

Hey, Janie.

It’s been a long time, right? Or, I don’t even know how long it’s been, maybe only a few weeks since I got your letter, but those weeks have been big weeks. For me. For America, too, you know Reagan got reelected? Asshole. And things are kicking off with the workers in town.

He considers writing about the contamination more explicitly, but decides against it; who knows who might read this letter. Agents Blass or Faraday would love to nail him on that, he knows.

Wayne’s getting involved a lot. Organizing meetings and shit. They’re all calling the trailer, like he’s the one they look to for advice. O’Dell — you remember O’Dell, the guy who sells the Christmas trees? Or used to sell the Christmas trees — had an incident with a worker who’s doing the construction on his old farm, and who did he call to help? My uncle. For some reason. Not that Wayne isn’t capable, he’s fucking capable, but still. It’s strange that the revolution’s being run out of my own house. Or trailer. I guess that’s the point.

Writing all this, I realize I’m delaying what I’m really writing to tell you, so here it goes: my dad died. In prison. I didn’t see him — I haven’t seen him since that time at Christmas. We found out from a phone call, the prison called us. He died of Hepatitis A. Writing this, I’m also realizing it’s easier to write it down than say it. Or maybe it’s easier to say it now too. I’ve been having trouble with that, and people are getting mad at me for it. It’s just complicated. And you know me, complicated instructions always twist me around. I think I somehow got lost on the way, A to B. A being him dying and B being me dealing with it like a healthy, rational adult.

Instead, I’ve been dealing with it the way you’re probably afraid I’ve been dealing with it, having read this far. Yeah. Sorry. I think you saw this coming, last year, with all the Tommy C. and the Rick stuff. I started working for Rick because I felt like I had no option, and now I still have no option but that’s over, really, I don’t have a choice anymore about that. Maybe that’s a good thing. Less tempting, fucking whatever. You know I had this conversation with Max the other day, she’s friends with the kids I DM for — her brother’s a total piece of shit, because his dad’s a total piece of shit, and she was trying to reckon with the whole cycle. She’s convinced she’s gonna turn out to be a total piece of shit too. And, you know, I tried to do the whole ‘it gets better’ thing. Think about yourself, not what you’re afraid you might turn into. And here I am, and I just couldn’t help myself. And now I’m someone who gets ‘tempted’. Jesus fuck. Maybe the whole world is nothing but a cycle.

I don’t even know why I did it, really. It wasn’t that I was trying to numb my grief, or whatever, because I’m still not convinced I’ve got all that much of it. Before last night I thought I was feeling nothing, and I kind of was feeling nothing, and then last night I somehow saw inside myself, like back to my own memories and I was in those memories but not in them either, and it was like I could see the grief in that memory? And in another memory, I could see the anger? And they were separate but also together, since they’re both part of me, and I mean I know it sounds like hippy-dippy crap but I had this sense of myself not as ‘myself’, exactly, but as something made up of lots of other things, bigger and smaller than me, and the whole nightmare of it was trying to make sense of that mess. I still don’t know what it means, or what I feel about it. If it’s a good feeling or not. It’s hard to think it should be a good feeling, right? And yet.

I don’t know what I’m saying, really. I guess it’s mainly guilt. In that everyone’s telling me to be honest and you told me that too, last year, so this is me righting my wrongs, or whatever. You don’t have to read this. (It’s a bit late to say that, sorry.) I guess I just want you to know you were ahead of the curve.

I hope you’re doing well, you and your dad and Xiaoping. He sounds cool. It might not be so bad to be away from American pop culture for a bit, though maybe that’s the hangover talking. Everything feels very gray and unappealing right now. I saw Martin a couple days ago, which was interesting, though it sort of accelerated whatever spiral I was going down. Everything’s about death here. Death and class, that’s the true American dream. What a happy letter for you to read over your breakfast.

I haven’t really been thinking about the band. It would be fun to perform, if we can find somewhere, but as you can imagine my mind’s a bit all over the place. Plus I think Aaron is pissed at me, and Jeff’s obviously got shit to deal with too.

Your mom’s doing okay, I think. I don’t really know. I hear she’s dating someone new, who might be the Icex foreman, but that could be a vicious rumor. You didn’t hear it from me.

Hawkins is, unfortunately, not at all dull without you. Dull would be nice. Come back and make it dull again, in a good way. Maybe I wouldn’t have gone quite so insane if you were here.

Love,

Eddie

Chapter Text

There’s Madonna playing overhead in Melvald’s, Like a Virgin. Eddie wrinkles his nose as he and Jonathan come in, the bell ringing on the door, Joyce looking up from the counter in her navy smock with a warm smile. “Hey,” she says, rounding the counter. She looks better than she did, a little less gaunt. “Are you in for your photos?”

“Yep,” Jonathan says, with a roll of his eyes. Eddie’s heard a lot of complaints from him on the way — it’s so much better to develop my own, I hate not having that control over the process — because they’ve temporarily closed the school darkroom after two juniors were caught having sex in it.

“Coming right up,” she says, playing up the customer service voice (shoot Eddie if he ever works somewhere like this) with a grin. She disappears behind the photo counter and Eddie leans over it, tapping his rings on the surface.

“This Madonna song,” he says, “it’s a conspiracy. To ruin all our eardrums.”

“Tell me about it,” Jonathan says, leaning beside him. “Give me some Joy Division any day.”

“Oh, Christ, I should know better than to empathize with a new wave fan.”

“Yes. You should.”

Joyce reappears, an envelope of photos in her hand. She pushes it over the counter and says, “There had better not be too many of me in there.”

“They’re just going into the album, Mom, and it’s nice to have photos of everyone.” He picks up a couple more rolls of film and she rings him up.

“If you say so,” she says, as the bell dings again and another customer comes in. “Okay, shoo, you two, I gotta work.”

They go back outside to Jonathan’s car, where Eddie slides into the passenger seat and peers with interest over the stick shift as Jonathan opens the envelope and sorts through the photographs, glossy in the light. Lots of the kids, playing cards and Clue and sword fights in the autumn-swept yard. Nancy, a lot of Nancy. One particularly close, soft one, warm-toned against bedsheets, her shoulders bare, and Jonathan flicks past it quickly with a flush rising on his cheeks. Some of Joyce, mainly in the kitchen. Bob and Hopper flicker in and out of these pictures, ephemeral presences in the constant of the family life. And then there’s Eddie and Steve, background but sometimes subject, Steve posing for the camera where Eddie mocks it.

They’re good photos. It softens something inside him, seeing them. The way their images all sort of belong together, now. Slotted together in an album.

“Look at that light leak, Jesus, this is what I get for not developing them myself.” Jonathan’s frowning at a picture of Will and Max, with a great blur of blue light swallowing half of Max’s face.

“It’s abstract. Arty, whatever crap. It’s cool.”

“Thanks,” Jonathan says vaguely, slipping the photos back into the envelope and then sliding it into the dashboard. “It still feels weird. Someone else’s grubby hands all over– I don’t know. They’re just photos, but they’re not.”

“We used to get people like you at Thacher’s, when I worked there. Really nice cars, muscle cars but not always, sometimes it would just be a dependable Ford, but they’d be so precious about them. Make me promise I’d take good care of their baby, whatever, even though I was mainly just the guy who did the intake and operated the scissor jack.”

“You’re saying my camera’s a dependable Ford.”

“I’m saying it’s, y’know, an expensive piece of heavy machinery.”

Jonathan rolls his eyes again and turns the engine over. The cassette player clicks into life with that The The album, This Is the Day cutting in loud where it left off on their journey here. Eddie shakes his head as Jonathan puts the car in gear, backing out of the space without half of the attention Steve gives it, but, hey, Eddie shouldn’t be thinking about Steve’s profile right now. Focus.

They had breakfast together early, he and Jonathan, eggs and coffee in the town’s remaining diner, since Benny’s still doesn’t have new management. It’s a thing they do now, alongside smoking on their lunch breaks. The same way Steve’s stopped inviting him to get high; everyone seems to have developed healthier habits, just for him. It grates even as it’s nice, because yeah, breakfast feels better than cold spitting rain stinging his cheeks as he puffs on acrid hash. Fucking of course it does. Doesn’t mean he likes being coddled.

“Mom says Melvald’s worried,” Jonathan says. “I mean, the mall’s not even open yet, and business is already falling off. Who knows what it’s gonna be like in this town in six months.”

“Worse than usual?” Eddie guesses. “It would be nice if we could stop living in a, uh, a Dickens novel anytime soon. Off to the fucking workhouse we go.”

Jonathan grunts in response, tapping his fingers on the wheel. Everyone’s muttering about retail, now, the death of downtown, whatever — less Wayne’s area, so Eddie isn’t so involved anymore. It changed almost overnight, with a single newspaper article and then suddenly a flood: Nancy and Jonathan’s story reaching national news. The buzz of it all over Hawkins; Barbara Holland’s funeral the talk of the town.

They can’t resist us now, Wayne said, when it first hit the news. That’s proof of contamination in the ground. They can’t deny it now, so all the farmers they’ve been turnin’ away– they’re gonna get their due. And it was true, as far as Eddie’s understanding of the union went; the farmers were vindicated, and so their support meant more, went further, and the plant workers grew bolder too. All this only suspected until a dark-suited man knocked on the door of the trailer and came in, grave, to sit on their shitty little couch with an offer of terms:

“Mr. Munson,” the guy began, “you and your colleagues may appreciate a bus service to and from the plant for each shift.”

And so it went. The Lab closed; Icex announced it would be hiring. Pay increased and pressure lessened. Eddie’s loss of income began to feel less like a catastrophe and more like an inconvenience — not solely because it limited his access to drugs, a disappointment he’s firmly denying is a disappointment. It’s not a disappointment.

And things keep turning; and the strike ends. Death by a thousand cuts, the expression goes, and it doesn’t obviously apply here but Eddie’s got it in his head anyway. The memory of Hawkins Power and Light vans at the entrance to the plant, Faraday’s eyes cold as he mentioned it. Something worse going on and all of them just pawns in a larger game. It was always going to be like this. Foolish to think it could be different.

“What Christmas presents are you buying?” Jonathan says, voice blunt and utilitarian.

“Aw, shucks, I guess I can’t give everyone drugs this year,” Eddie says, grinning crookedly just to see the vague twitch of discomfort across Jonathan’s face. “God, I don’t know. Wayne, obviously. But– y’know. I haven’t bought for anyone but him for years, not even Janie.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan says, frowning. “I– y’know, I usually just do Mom and Will, but Nancy gave me a camera last year and I feel like– I mean, I gotta get something for her. But then there’s everyone else.”

Everyone else. There is the strange sense of obligation, now, that because they’ve nearly died together twice (once being just a fluke) they owe it to each other to at least purchase some gifts. Fucking gifts. It’s a rich people’s holiday, Christmas, the way most holidays are. Problem is, he can’t even begin to conceive of what he’d give to people. To Steve. (Steve being, as is increasingly regular, his first thought.) “Didn’t we all, like, save each others’ lives? Isn’t that gift enough?”

“You’d think.” But Jonathan’s pulling up into a parking spot on Main Street anyway, stopping the car and draping his arms over the wheel as he examines the storefronts. It’s busy today. All and sundry are out, huddled in coats and scarves and doing cute shit like holding lots of shopping bags and each others’ hands. “I am actually gonna do my Christmas shopping now, if you don’t mind.”

“Go ahead,” Eddie says, waving a hand. “I guess I should, uh, do the same.” They get out of the car and join the goddamn throng. Eddie’s never been good at shopping; the whole thing sets his teeth on edge. He trails around after Jonathan, eyes drifting listlessly over the shelves. “Isn’t this the kind of thing you should be doing with your girlfriend?”

“Nancy did her shopping with her mom yesterday.” Jonathan stops in the middle of the aisle, so suddenly Eddie nearly crashes into him, and drags a hand through his hair. “Also, it’s not– it’s easier not to shop with her.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, she just–” He shakes his head. “Her attitude about it is a little different.”

It’s not surprising. Eddie can imagine it, the ease of someone who grew up knowing that all this — the festively decorated storefronts, the artful arrangement of goods — was meant for them. Eddie and Jonathan, they’re interlopers here. “Well, I’m an excellent second choice. Y’know why? Because I have shit all idea what I’m doing and will make you feel really good about your own ability to shop. Like, you’re gonna feel talented at it by the end of today.”

Jonathan smiles. “Let’s get it over with, then.”

There’s a mournful sense to it this year, Eddie decides, as they walk down the icy sidewalk. A dim, hazy quality to the light, snatches of Christmas music escaping each store when the door opens. Perhaps it’s because everyone is aware, on some vague level, that Hawkins won’t be the same next year. The joke’s on them; Eddie’s known that for a while.

Things get vaguely more interesting when they go into the music store. Jonathan spends a while examining things, pulling out records and then putting them back again (snobbery, maybe, Eddie can respect that), while Eddie reluctantly pulls himself away from the metal section towards the regions of folk, blues, country, et cetera. Music is always a reliable gift, after all, and if Eddie can expand his uncle’s repertoire from solely Johnny Cash then that has to be a good thing. He ventures into the extensive Bob Dylan collection and picks out Desire, since it’s got Hurricane on it, and that’s a cool song. Then someone behind him says, “Hey, Eddie,” and he turns and it’s Robin, grinning at him as she taps black-painted nails on the record she’s buying — Siouxsie and the Banshees, Hyæna — along to the Sparks Christmas-not-Christmas song playing overhead.

“Christmas shopping?”

“If buying for myself counts,” she says. “Is it totally selfish of me to look at the dwindling funds in my stupid little piggy bank and want to spend them on, I don’t know, nice things instead of some stupid chintzy knickknack my mom won’t even display even if she likes it because it came from me?”

“Definitely not.”

She smiles at him. “Good. Because that’s what I’m doing. What are you doing?”

“Christmas shopping,” he says, holding up the Bob Dylan cassette. “For my uncle.”

“Nice. Nice of you, nicer than me.”

“C’mon, Buckley, give yourself a break.”

She shrugs. “I’m gonna need a job this summer if my mom’s expecting anything beyond a lukewarm hug for Christmas next year. Maybe the mall, if it’s open in time.”

Me too, he thinks grimly, though the pressure’s off, but the pressure won’t be off for long. It never is. America will forget about Hawkins’ chemical spill and it won’t mean anything anymore, meaning they’ll all be back to square one. At least Barbara got her funeral.

Jonathan waves by the door, indicating he’s going out. Eddie sticks around talking to Robin for a little while longer, until a tall russet-haired woman appears in the doorway, face brooking no argument, and Robin says with a sigh, “My mother,” and follows her out. Leaving Eddie to pay for his cassette and go outside, where the crowds are unfamiliar and suddenly overwhelming. He rounds the corner into the sidestreet, the kind of street where Tommy H. wrote BYERS IS A PERV last year, and lights a cigarette. One vice he’s certainly not going to kick anytime soon.

“Hey!”

He turns. He was followed: this is his first awareness. They followed him. It isn’t as surprising as perhaps it ought to be. He tilts his chin up and sets his jaw as he takes them in, just two of them, juniors, he thinks, he’s seen them hanging around that blond prick in sophomore year, and hanging around Billy and Tommy H. too. One of them might be called Patrick. He doesn’t fucking know.

He keeps his voice even. “Sorry, business is closed for the holidays. It’s a family time, you understand.”

“You’re goddamn sick,” the one who’s not called Patrick hisses, lunging forward, and Eddie’s never unlearned his startle reflex so he flinches back flat against the wall. “Jesus, even now, he’s saying stuff like that, did you hear that, Patrick? And would you look at this coward, he can’t even stand by the things he says. Can’t even stand his ground.”

Patrick’s staring at him hard. Not the usual glance, the contemptuous sneer that slides off him like he’s not worth more than a single moment’s attention — no, this is a real stare. Like this Patrick kid’s actually feeling something here, instead of enacting the usual shitty social rhythms. “He deserved it,” he says suddenly.

Eddie’s lost. “What?”

The other guy grabs him by the collar and shoves him back into the wall; Eddie lets himself be pushed around. Not that he could do much else, but it’s a self-preservation thing. That way his joints might stay where they’re supposed to. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know. Your piece of shit father, that’s who. Got exactly what he deserved.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fucking aware of that, believe me. I agree with you.”

Patrick’s face twitches, like he’s got a stray nerve not behaving, or else like that isn’t what he wanted to hear. “Andy, let’s just go, he isn’t worth it.”

Andy turns to stare at him. “Seriously? After what his dad did? That was this guy’s dad, he’s the one who–”

“Leave it,” Patrick says tightly. “C’mon.”

With a grunt of disgust, Andy releases Eddie. Shoots him another dark glare before following Patrick back out of the alleyway, throwing his hands up and already saying, “I thought you wanted to–” as they disappear out of view.

Eddie sinks down to the damp, cold ground, his legs refusing to hold him. A little dizzy, a little rush of nauseous ache, fuck, fuck. It’s not like that kind of thing hasn’t happened before; it’s not like he’s not used to it. He’s even getting good at it. But something about that–

Maybe because it felt like they actually meant it.

When he’s recovered enough energy, he pulls himself to his feet and walks in the direction of his van, left at the diner several blocks away, but he can’t face going back into the crowd to look for Jonathan, not now. It takes him something like half an hour; he’s not really sure. More like he blinks and then he’s in the parking lot. He drives home and tries to keep ahold of himself. Tries not to think, oh, wouldn’t a little bump of something go down so nicely right about now. Wouldn’t it help. Because it would help, and that’s the problem, so he’s been told. Not even because he’s an addictive personality — he’s not sure he is — but because his life’s just the wrong side of shit so he ought not to risk it.

When he gets home, Wayne’s sitting at the table staring at a Christmas card. A shitty cheap one, with Mary and Jesus on the front. He hands it over to Eddie wordlessly. It doesn’t have much in it, just the standard printed greeting and then, at the bottom, in cold cramped script, Shelley.

“Did she send it to us by accident?” Eddie says, setting the card down. “I mean–”

Wayne spreads his hands. “No clue. If that’s her attempt at us all bein’, I don’t know, friends again– it ain’t gonna work.”

“Well, good.”

“Yeah.” But Wayne’s staring at the card, eyes dark, tapping his fingers absently against the table. Eddie lights a cigarette to replace the one he didn’t get to smoke. Wayne looks up again, face clearing, and says, “You okay?”

That, too. His uncle asks if he’s okay now. He’s fucking okay. “I’m fine. Full of festive cheer, you know me.”

Wayne huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, we’re all just brimmin’ with it in this town.”

“The important question is, where the hell are we gonna get our Christmas tree?”

“That’s the important question. I saw an ad in one of those papers back there–” he gestures to the messy stack on the kitchen countertop, “–if you wanna take a look. We might need to go further out, away from Hawkins. It’s a godawful crop this year, they’re all sayin’, though at least now we all know why.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, with the familiar dryness that accompanies a lie. “Any other mail?”

“Oh, yeah, there’s this.” Wayne digs out another envelope, brown, and hands it over. Eddie turns it over in his hands for a moment, brain refusing to catch up with what he’s reading on the front. It’s his own letter to Janie, her address in his scrawny handwriting, his own address on the back, and a big red stamp all over it: UNDELIVERED. “You get the address wrong, or somethin’?”

Eddie shakes his head. “I don’t know, I– maybe, I guess. Maybe she, uh, she moved.” His words sound empty to his own ears, matching a growing emptiness in his conception of the world. It doesn’t feel right that he doesn’t know where Janie is. Feels like another tip in his sense of balance. And he needed her to hear those things he told her. He needed her to know them, just so someone else would. So he wouldn’t just be talking to himself.

They sit on the couch together watching corny Miracle on 34th Street, because it’s on, and then Wayne has to get ready for work, since they’re pulling extra shifts before the holidays — but it ain’t like last time, not yet, anyway, Wayne made sure to say, when he was telling Eddie about them; they’re payin’ us overtime.

“You got any plans for the evenin’?” Wayne says, as he shrugs his jacket on. It’s always been a loaded question, first the gay thing, now this.

Eddie shrugs. “Some friends are chaperoning that Snow Ball thing at the middle school, I might hang out with them after.”

“Sounds good. Look after yourself, okay?”

“I always do,” Eddie says, and regrets it, because Wayne’s smile tightens and Eddie can’t hold his gaze. The way all their conversations have gone, since Wayne got back home that morning in November, the morning after the night before. A new strained heaviness, to the thing, to his eyes, like for the first time Eddie was something difficult. Which isn’t to say he wasn’t difficult before. When he first ran away, arrived on Wayne’s doorstep, he was difficult then. Flinching and snarling, feral fucking cat. It wasn’t so much parenting he needed as patching up. Coaxing, maybe. Wayne knew what to say then.

Now–

Well, maybe, now, Eddie’s finally gotten to be a little bit too much.

Then Wayne goes. And Eddie’s left in the dull, dust-mote silence, and the stillness makes him itch, so he goes and sits on the porch to wait for Steve.

He had to be careful with the timing. Checking when Steve was dropping Dustin off; making sure he’d only be later than that, not early. Can’t have him running into Wayne, Jesus, what a bust-up that might turn into. And it feels a little like running a secret life. A secret life on a smaller scale from the big one, i.e. the whole interdimensional fucking monster thing.

Sure enough, it’s a close-run thing. Not long later, Eddie spots headlights coming up through the trailer park, and the low hum of bass, cut through with saxophone that reveals itself to be, as the Bimmer draws closer, Wham!’s Careless Whisper. Fucking hell.

“Should I be worried?” Eddie says, uncurling his legs but not standing up as Steve gets out of the car, the music cutting into silence. “That’s a pretty heavy breakup song.”

“Well, I have recently been broken up with, so y’know what? I’m allowed to listen to it. Plus, it’s fucking great. Seriously great.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. Steve comes up onto the porch, looking down at him in the gloom, their breaths misting in the air.

“It’s cold out here, Jesus, why are you sitting here?”

Eddie shrugs. “I get– twitchy. Sitting still inside too long.”

“Well, I don’t really want to freeze my ass off, so I’m gonna go inside.”

“You win.” He follows Steve inside, curls into the corner of the couch as Steve sprawls out all long-limbed and proud. But there’s something in his face, something despondent about the line of his mouth. “You okay?”

“Yeah, sure, I’m okay. I just– well. Have recently been broken up with, is all. Which is fine when I forget about it, which isn’t often but I’m pretending like I’m forgetting about it, which kind of works, but then I remember it again and– yeah. Less fine.”

“You saw her tonight,” Eddie guesses. Steve nods, passing a hand through his hair.

“Yeah, just through the– Jesus, this sounds pathetic. Just through the doors. All dressed up nice, and everything, and I really– y’know, I thought we’d go to prom together. Stupid as that sounds, at this point, given everything that’s happened. Like, why do I still care about prom? And I don’t, really, I just– wanted to go with her.”

Eddie’s really got nothing to say to that. Their frames of experience are so wildly different it’s laughable. “Yeah,” he says. “So, what, you’re not gonna go to prom at all now?”

“I don’t really know why I would.” Steve’s voice is low. “Y’know, like, who do I even like in my year? There’s a couple decent guys left on the sports teams, people I sit next to in some classes, but I’m not really friends with them. There’s you, but you’re not going to prom, right?”

“Nope,” Eddie says automatically, as he catches up with what Steve just said and then has to look at his hands, a stupid little flush rising on his face at the barest of compliments. “So don’t go.”

“It feels wrong not to go, I don’t know. But yeah. Maybe I won’t go.”

A silence descends. Eddie shifts and says, “How was Dustin?”

“He was good,” Steve says, with that same tone of fondness he always gets when he’s talking about Dustin. “I showed him how to– how to do his stupid fucking hair, and he did it and he looked, y’know, pretty cute, even though his hair type’s completely different from mine–”

“Am I about to learn a Steve Harrington trade secret?” Eddie says, raising an eyebrow.

Steve scowls. “No. But, yeah, he was pleased with it. Nervous, though.”

“And what did you say to that? I’m, uh, I’m imagining that’s not a problem you’ve had.”

“You’d be surprised. I just– y’know, gave him some advice. Fake it til you make it type shit. Just act like you’re above it all, and you will be.”

“But then you’ll be above it all,” Eddie points out. “Not actually in it.”

“It’s a figure of speech, Jesus.”

Yeah. Eddie knows it’s a fucking figure of speech. But that’s the difference between them, isn’t it? That Eddie lets the crazy fly, talks before he thinks and thinks as he talks and does all of that a little wrong, just a little to the left all the time, and all that weird miasma he carries around is something he gets used to, and people get used to, but it never stops being strange, that little disconnect, that little moment of tense gap where there’s someone normal and there’s him and it’s like someone spliced Black Sabbath and Wham! together, which is actually exactly what it’s like.

Eddie scratches the back of his neck and says, “Beer?”

“Yeah, please,” Steve says, with only a little suspicious hesitation. It’s not about the alcohol. Eddie’s told him that. It’s about the drugs. The ketamine more specifically, he can handle weed, but he’s playing nice. Keeping to his limits. It’s about the drugs, and he can drink a fucking beer.

Eddie gets two out, cold as he hands one to Steve. Steve takes it; somehow their fingers don’t touch. Then he sits back down and says, “How’s the college application?”

Steve takes a long swig of beer and his face draws down into a scowl. “Let’s just say I’ll probably be very around next year.”

“Nah, I’m getting the fuck out of this town. If I graduate. That’s not a certainty with me, as we know.”

Steve grimaces and then looks at his hands, says softly, “I don’t know. I’d feel– bad, leaving. Just in case.”

“You mean, if all that shit started happening again?” Eddie shakes his head. “Shouldn’t we want to be as far away as physically fucking possible, in that case?”

“I mean, probably. But it feels wrong, y’know? Knowing about it, and walking away. Even if nothing else happened. There’d just be this– history here, that no one else knows about, if we all leave. No one will know what really happened here.”

“No one’s gonna know what really happened here anyway, Steve.” Eddie’s voice comes out unexpectedly gentle. “No one’s ever gonna know. We’re not allowed to tell them.”

“Yeah,” Steve says heavily. “No, I– I know. Fuck. All that time with Nance, I kept telling her we couldn’t tell anyone, I was so focused on keeping things the way they were I wasn’t even hearing her. She wanted justice. She wanted people to know what happened and I didn’t even care, and now– I get it. Too little, too late.”

“What she did, it’s really, uh, it’s really done something, y’know. You and her aside, that’s– that’s something we can all be proud of. If the news hadn’t come out when it did, then the strike–”

“Yeah. That’s true. Anything that pisses my dad off has gotta be a good thing.”

“Really? Wouldn’t he be more pissed if there had been a strike?”

“I don’t know. I just know he’s– well, he’s not a nice person to work for, so people aren’t doing it anymore. There’s more opportunity in this town now, with the mall, and Icex starting up the bus route and paying better, and they don’t have to put up with my dad. He’s barely been here all month. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just, y’know, went away and stayed away one day. At least then I’d have the house to myself for real.”

“Steve–” Eddie says, and stops, helpless. He doesn’t know how to fix Steve’s relationship with his dad, of course he fucking doesn’t, look at the now-permanent state of his own. He sips his beer and longs for something, he doesn’t know what, something like a different time, a different place, a different world. Steve seems so close and so fucking far away. And Eddie can’t take drugs anymore and he’s been trying not to think about what that might mean next time his body flares into pain; and people are dying, queer and not, all over the world, supernaturally and not, and something about his dad’s death makes him feel acutely alone.

Steve lights a cigarette, inhales deep, takes it out of his mouth; the line of his throat, the curve of his lips, a face Eddie could look at for days. Eddie plucks it from between his fingers and takes a drag. It doesn’t taste of anything but ashy nicotine, a little damp with Steve’s saliva. Eddie supposes that’s the closest he’ll ever get.