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undead-supernova · 39 minutes

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I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF READING THIS! It is so incredibly detailed and gorgeous and I had an absolute blast reading this. You truly moved me and floored me and eviscerated me with your talent.

All of these got me so good. Incredible. I’m just reeling from this and will be thinking about this for a WHILE! I have so much to say and yet none of my words are coming out correct.

Thank you for sharing this excellent work!

Cruel Summer - Part 18

First - Previous - Masterlist

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 13.5k

warnings: slight angst, MAJOR fluff, semi-suggestive themes, swearing, medical descriptions, mentions of death/violence/slight gore

A.N.: wE MADE IT TO THE FINAL CHAPTER OF CRUEL SUMMER. A BIG thank you to @fracturedarkness @inarinine @reysorigins and everyone else who has been here from the beginning to see this monster come to a close.

Eddie’s never felt so awful in all his life.

To say that every single part of his body hurts would be an understatement, simply because what he is feeling is beyond pain.

Almost like he’s transcended it, skipped over the feeling in leaps and bounds, and come to settle in the quiet limbo of something he cannot quite place.

His head is pounding, he can’t help but get the sense that his ribs have been smashed and splintered into oblivion, and he’s burning all over like he’s been injected with liquid fire, slowly making its way through his veins and central nervous system.

The pounding, aching, burning of his insides, however, is nothing to say about the state of his skin, if he even has any left – he’d dreamt he’d lay there helplessly while every inch of his body was peeled back and stripped away, leaving him a bloody mess of muscles, tendons, and sinew – flayed is the word that comes to mind.

He feels more like the anatomical suggestion of Eddie Munson, rather than the real thing, and if he were to look in the mirror, he is half afraid he would not recognize the gory visage staring back at him.

Worse than any of that, however, is the heaviness in his chest. He can’t seem to catch his breath, can barely even take a breath, almost as if someone were sitting on him, bearing down with all their weight in an effort to smother him.

He feels bad in a way that cannot be so simply explained, but if he had to describe it, and he’s not entirely sure he can, Eddie would say that he feels like he’s died.

Like he’s been chewed up, spat out, and forced back into the shape of something only vaguely human… but it’s not entirely unbearable, because those arduous expanses of agony are regularly punctuated with intermittent moments of feeling almost okay.

More than okay. For as awful as he feels, Eddie actually feels pretty great.

In those brief intervals, he finds that he can just about catch his breath, and laying there, breathing deep, his head goes fat and heavy, and his body gets all tingly and warm in an exceedingly lazy way.

It’s like a really good high… or maybe more like the empty seconds of absolutely nothing in the wake of a super intense orgasm, when his body is blown out of focus, fuzzy and shapeless before his brain kickstarts into working action again.

It gives him the strangest sensation of simultaneously floating and sinking as if his body has suddenly taken on the consistency of wet sand, and if he tries to sit up, he’ll break apart into a hundred pieces and melt away with the tide.

Maybe he is dead, and this is just what dead feels like. If that’s the case, then it’s not so bad, being dead.

Regardless of the state of his being, he’s awake now and growing restless and laying there for an indiscernible amount of eternity has started to give him a cramp in his leg, so he moves.

Eddie breathes deeply as he stirs, chasing the apparent high of death and filling his lungs without realizing that he’s standing on the other side of the border of that lovely little limbo of fat heads and buzzing limbs. As a result, he feels every inch of the pull of fresh stitches across his body and the scream of his expanding ribs, creaking and groaning like the hull of a splintering ship.

Suddenly, dead is not as much fun as it was before, and all he feels is pain.

Pain like fire in your veins, like salt in the wound, like the pull of hundreds of tiny teeth eating him alive – and if he’s being eaten alive, that certainly must mean he’s not dead... right?

Then again, maybe not, because didn’t he already go through all that? Isn’t that what killed him in the first place?

Eddie’s lungs spasm as he struggles to fill them and he chokes, breaking into a violent fit of coughing and seizing that lights up another dozen different points of pain in his body that he didn’t know existed.

It’s just about unbearable for half a second before he crosses the threshold and is once again swaddled in the blanket of that wonderfully conflicting sensation of cold and warm, easing his cramping muscles, opening his lungs, and numbing the pain with a dreamy sigh.

And there he goes feeling great again, floating along the high orgasmic nothing until suddenly there is something.

A hand on his forehead, knuckles gently gracing his cheek. A straw guided to his lips, urging him to drink deep the gathering gloom.

He does as he’s told because, in his state, Eddie can only obey – the soothing rush of water eases the tight rawness of his throat and floods his mouth with the stale tang of blood.

With it comes the cool rush of relief, he sinks back into the pillowy softness of the bed with a stuttering sigh and goes back to being dead again.

Good. He’s happier that way – only his heart is pumping blood now, breathing life back into him and stirring his heavy limbs with pins and needles. There is sweat beading on his brow from the exertion of the previous moment, and now that he is awake, there is no stopping the world from rushing back in.

Oh well, death was good while it lasted.

Eddie gradually becomes aware of the sounds of the room, the gentle mechanical beep and whir of machinery — a soft chirping playing along with the steady thrum of his heartbeat. He fists his hands in the sheets and very slowly crickets his legs feeling the pull of skin on skin, coarse hairs snarling against each other and snagging.

He’s lying in a bed somewhere, and wherever that somewhere happens to be, he’s got no pants on, which in and of itself is a mighty sobering realization.

Slowly, carefully, Eddie dares to open his eyes. They roll heavily in his sockets like billiard balls as he does his best to take in his surroundings beyond the dark fluorescent bulbs and water-stained ceiling tiles waiting to greet him.

There's not much to see in the dimly lit room. It’s all blurry shapes and shadows melting together, the odd burst of muted color from a flashing light, though it occurs to him that that could very well be a result of his own physical state.

His eyes, chief among all his other currently muted senses, aren’t working so well.

Eddie blinks sluggishly and waits for his vision to adjust against the dark and the sandpaper of his lids … and waits... and waits... and waits... and feels an odd pang of confusion stirring in his midsection as he fails to recognize his surroundings.

He wracks his brain in an attempt to make sense of the room and its furnishings, but trying to muster any coherent thought is currently an effort in trudging through wet cement.

Eventually, something clicks over and there are shapes, images, and sensations all slowly coming together to paint an almost familiar picture of a cold black sky and a perpetual crimson lightning storm illuminating the trees and the bizarro version of his neighborhood, and he realizes it’s got a name, this terrible place...

The Upsidedown.

The thought of it is enough to send Eddie’s heart into gentle palpitations, because he may not know where he is now, but he remembers that place all too well.

Back there, he was hurt, he was scared, he was dying, and yet here he finds himself, lying in a bed staring at the monochrome grays and sickly greens of the room’s pallet.

He’s not there, he's back on the other side, the right side of the world, as if there ought to be such a thing, and something is telling him over and over that he’s safe.

He’s not certain he believes it, but he doesn’t have the fortitude to disagree right at the moment, so he doesn’t fight it. He's too tired to keep fighting...

Fluorescent lights creep in from the distant hallway to hurt his eyes and set his brain throbbing lazily in his skull. He hears the not-so-distant monitor keeping careful beeping time with the throbbing of his heartbeat, feels the scratchy, clinical bedsheets clinging to his skin, and eventually, one word manages to make it through the soupy mire of his thoughts and to the front of his mind: hospital.

Hawkins General, Eddie might have realized if his brain was not sloshing so thickly in his skull with all the consistency of oatmeal.

So, if he’s on the right side of the world, and if he’s in the hospital, it probably means that he’s not dead, and that there is a very good chance that the gently euphoric feeling he’s currently experiencing is just drugs.

Awesome.

The atmosphere is sharp with a stark, clinical air – the tang of medicinal balms and ointments fills his nose and burns his throat and only thinly masks the acrid, metallic smell of something like copper and meat, lingering heavily on the back of his tongue. Eddie doesn’t need the use of his faculties to recognize that the odor is blood.

His blood.

He may be lost in the reeds of everything else, but he remembers the blood, spurting, gushing, spilling out of him with every panicked beat of his heart, faster than he can put pressure on the wound to try and stop it.

No, not him, he was just lying there bleeding, you were the one doing all the work – you and your babysitter’s knowledge of basic first aid, way in over your head, doing anything and everything you could to try and save his life.

Eddie supposes you must have succeeded in that endeavor, considering where he currently finds himself. Thankfully, all your blood sweat, and tears — so much blood and so many, many tears — didn’t go to waste, and there you went, just saving him again and again like it paid your goddamn bills.

But how could he expect anything else?

All along the way, in the boathouse, in the woods, in the field, in the quiet of his bedroom, and even back there, in that terrible place, you’d promised him again and again that he was going to be okay, and the thing about you – that funny little thing that he has loved from the start – is that you always keep your promises, for better or worse.

Somehow, you got his ass up off of the pavement and out of that cold, dark place, and by some twist of fate, Eddie is alive.

Whether or not he is going to thank you for that is, however, still up in the air.

He gradually becomes aware of the press of fingers on the inside of his wrist and realizes with a sluggish start that he’s not alone in this room.

It would be frightening if he had the fortitude to feel anything but the effect of whatever it is they are steadily pumping into his veins, but all it does is make him sluggishly curious.

Turning his head is almost impossible. Beyond the strange sensation of some kind of thick brace keeping his shoulders squared and his head facing strictly forward, Eddie’s neck is unbearably tight – even the most subtle of movements stretches the torn muscles there in a terribly uncomfortable way.

It’s not quite pain, thanks to the brace and the drugs, but he has to move his shoulders to even make an attempt at turning his head, and to move his shoulders, he’s got to twist at the waist.

All that does is pull at the tenderness over his midsection and belly, where there is evidently nothing in place to stop him from making that sort of movement, nothing but the bright burst of agony that lights up along his ribs, warning him sharply to stop what he’s doing with a very strong hint of “or else.”

Or else what?

Or else hundreds of sharp little teeth will keep digging into him, rending his flesh, eating and eating and eating and tearing him into little, tiny pieces until there’s nothing left—

Eddie inhales sharply as he turns and tenses his muscles against the pain it causes, which only sends him around and around in a vicious cycle of pain and tensing and gasping against the pain.

This is all starting to feel like the worst idea he’s ever had, and “or else” is suddenly ringing in his ears loud and clear.

He silently begs himself to lie still and go back to being dead again, but with the lingering effect of that weird floating feeling he’s still dealing with – thanks again to the drugs – now that he’s started moving, he can’t stop.

So, he turns and turns and turns, hurting the whole way, and just as he expects his head to turn all the way around to the other side and snap his neck, he finds you sitting there.

You’re positively divine, sitting tucked into a chair far removed from his bedside with one leg pulled up to your chest and looking about as rough as he currently feels, in your own hospital gown with your own bruises and your own bandages.

It might have just been the drugs, but Eddie thinks you’re the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, sitting there looking like you’d gone through hell and traffic just to make sure you’d be here to meet him when he woke up.

And because you’re just so wonderful, part of him thinks that maybe you had.

It makes his chest swell with something indiscernible from guilt and pride, and it hurts so bad, but he can’t help the dopey smile from spreading across his face — God his face hurts, too — one of those Stupid Cupid hearts in his eyes smiles you’ve always managed to pull out of him, from the very beginning.

It’s like he’s seeing you for the first time, and it leaves him feeling like he’s dreaming – he’s got to be, because how else would either of you be here, after everything that happened?

He doesn’t really care – he’s never been so happy to see anyone in his stupid, goddamn life.

Then, just as he’s about to try and say your name, a monolith of shadow slides across his vision, blocking you from view and startling Eddie with enough force that he hears the sound of his heart monitor spiking.

He recoils away from the shadow as best he can and feels all those points of pain go hot again. Through the fog of his drug-addled mind, Eddie forgets where he is. He can no longer discern what is real and what is merely a panicked hallucination, and suddenly, the room goes dark as he is thrust back into the Upsidedown.

Hundreds of little leathery bodies are crawling over every inch of the trailer, spilling out of the ceiling in his bedroom, flapping wings and slashing claws and teeth teeth teeth, blocking out the light, swarming him – swarming you, wrenching you out of his grasp and snatching you away from him.

Eddie opens his mouth in an attempt at making some kind of a sound – maybe even a scream – but his throat is packed with cotton and no amount of exerting effort brings anything but sharp, sticky pain jumping up from his esophagus.

That copper flavor is flecking up at the back of his throat again, and in place of your name, a panicked whimper bubbles up from his throat like blood and spills past his lips to dribble down over his chin. He imagines it slopping down his front in a thick, crimson tide, staining his bandages and the hospital gown, pooling thickly in his lap.

Eddie shifts in the bed, frantically trying to push up and get away from the blood, to get away from the shadow and the bats and the Upsidedown, but his limbs have gone numb and heavy, and he can barely move.

That horrible sound comes up out of him again, louder this time, and some part of his subconscious thinks that it must be his best attempt at a pained cry after having his throat cut – he imagines his vocal cords, severed and useless, failing to scream as the monsters descend and swallow him whole.

In his panic, Eddie is only vaguely aware of a flurry of frantic sounds and movements breaking out around him as he sinks further and further into the dark. It’s all shrill monitors beeping and gruff voices admonishing him for existing, Hawkins closing in on him to finally stamp him out for good and rid themselves of their boogeyman.

He is drowning, powerless to resist the crushing pressure on his shoulders, forcing him back down into the sucking pull of the bed like quicksand, and for half a terrifying moment, he is dreaming again in his waking death.

He remembers you were holding him in the dark, and something else was there with you, something he could not see, trying to take him from you. At the time, Eddie hadn’t had the presence of mind to be afraid of it, considering how warm and loving it seemed as it peeled back your fingers and gently worked to coax him away with all the right words, promises of relief from the pain and rest eternal.

He realizes now that it had been true death calling him home, and that he may have been inclined to follow it down into the dark if it had not been for you.

He remembers now that you called his name, and he fought like hell to stay awake, stay alive, stay a little longer in your arms, simply because you’d asked him not to go – if there is one thing that has always been true, it's that Eddie would do anything for you, including but apparently not limited to dying and coming back from the grave.

“Eddie. Look at me, Eddie.” a voice he knows better than anything in this world says gently, a hand plunging down into the dark to seize him and pull him up, “It’s okay – you’re okay,”

That’s what you’d told him back in the other place where he’d lay dying, and it had been easy to delude himself into believing you then. Laying here now, living, it’s not such a stretch to do the same, especially as the familiar press of fingers scrabble across the back of his hand and squeeze as tightly as they dare over his knuckles, swathed in bandages as they are.

“I'm here, Eds. I’m right here.”

He hadn’t been aware of the way he’d been trying again and again to say your name, to make the sound eke out of his throat until you answered him.

Blindly, Eddie grips your hand and tries to make himself breathe as you tell him again and again what he’s not sure he’d really known until that very moment.

He’s okay. He’s safe. He’s alive.

When he finally feels calm enough to open his eyes again, he is almost relieved to find that the monolith of shadow separating you from him is not some terrible force from beyond. The room is the same grey-green as it was moments ago, and there are no bats or otherworldly wizards hell-bent on destroying the world.

There is only you and the night nurse.

A titan of a woman who Eddie thinks he knows, if only vaguely through fleeting moments of lucidity, taking vitals, scribbling on charts, and muttering nasty, damning things to the patient she thinks cannot hear her speak.

Eddie’s nurse does not like him. That much he can tell from the way she manhandles him as she futzes around and pushes him back into the bed when he tries to sit up again — more of a Hulk Hogan than a Florence Nightingale type.

He wonders stupidly if he’d actually done anything to earn that opinion or if it is just one of those residual feelings left over from a run-in with the deplorable Al Munson.

The world may never know.

Regardless, Eddie gives himself as much of a cursory looking over as he can manage without moving when she turns her back and is relieved to find that he is not slicked down with blood the way he’d imagined, and that you are still holding his hand as tightly as you dare from your chair at the side of his bed.

Thank God for that.

He'll have to wait for the nurse to leave before checking on the state of his vocal cords – he doesn’t dare make a sound until she’s gone on the off chance that she takes some bizarre offense to it and decides to do something nasty.

There’s a long moment more of checking vitals, checking charts, checking checking checking, all the while you speak soothing, inaudible niceties to Eddie in a way that feels almost absent-minded, like you’ve been doing it for so long that it has become second nature.

He wonders, not for the first time, just how long he’s been lying there in that bed.

Then, the night nurse says something Eddie can’t make out and something you don’t seem to hear, he’s not entirely sure who she is even speaking to, and when neither of you responds, she turns sharply on her heel and thrusts a thick finger at you – the object of her tirade – speaking again through that garbled filter of dialogue, like something half submerged in water.

She’s clearly angry about something – possibly just your proximity to that no-good Munson boy – somehow Eddie can’t help but get the sense that this is just her natural state.

It takes him what feels like a very long time to untangle her string of snarling words through the sluggish processor of his mind.

“...so if I come back in twenty minutes and you’re still here, there’s gonna be hell to pay,” She warns you.

Eddie would be filled with a righteous indignation on your behalf if he wasn’t so busy fighting the way he is still sinking down into the drowning-deep of his mattress as a result of the nurse’s aggressive shoving.

Distantly, you turn a sheepish gaze down to your fidgeting fingers and submit to the authoritative disdain of her gravelly tone.

“Yes, Nurse,” you mumble, and when the monolith of a woman turns her back, you stick your tongue out at her in an act of juvenile defiance.

Eddie holds his breath as she lumbers past him with the great, squeaking steps of sensible rubber-soled shoes moving across polished linoleum, and in the half minute it takes her to reach the door, his lungs have already begun to burn.

Thankfully, with her work seemingly done for the time being, the nurse vacates the room, taking all of the tension of the previous moment with her.

“Good,” Eddie exhales once he is sure the coast is clear, “Got you all to m’self,”

His vocal cords are thankfully more or less intact, but talking is no easier than anything else he has attempted to do over the last several waking minutes.

Jesus Fuck, talking hurts worse than his lack of skin or his broken ribs or his pounding head, but he’s never been the kind of person who knows when to quit, and he’s not about to start getting wise now.

Eddie’s not even entirely sure he’d said anything halfway intelligible until your head snaps back over to him and your eyes go bright and wide.

“Hey!” you gasp quietly, gliding forward to close any gap of distance left between you and reaching out with both hands to curl all ten of your fingers around the hand you’re already holding, “Hey … hi, Eddie,”

Your voice is thick with emotion — relief, maybe? — and it sends a pang of something sharp lancing through Eddie’s chest.

His vision has not fully cleared just yet, and as a result, you’re little more than the fuzzy impression of his girlfriend, perched at his bedside. He can’t help but feel that were he able to see you, your eyes would be bright and brimming with tears.

He knows he shouldn’t, but he’s already talking again before he can stop himself.

“Aww… don’t be sad, Sweetness.”

The words come slowly, slurring together into one long stream of dialogue that sends the metallic tang of old blood flecking up over the back of his tongue as he tries to remember how to do this very basic human function.

You shake your head and quickly dismiss the notion.

“I’m not.” You assure him, “I’m not sad. I’m happy. I’m so, so happy.”

It takes some work, but Eddie manages to give you his closest approximation to a nod, braced as he is.

“Tha’s good.”

You sniffle, despite your previous insistence, and clear your throat before speaking again.

“How are you? How do you feel, Baby?”

Damn right, I'm your baby... is what he would have said if he had any sort of control over his responses, maybe to save you from having to know the true state of his being, but without his higher faculties, all Eddie can do is be honest with you.

“Mmmmbad.”

You make a quiet, distressed sound in the back of your throat and hesitate before speaking again.

“Oh... should I...? Do you want me to call the nurse back?”

Absolutely fucking not.

Eddie thinks he hears you say something about Wayne that he absolutely intends to address, but all thoughts of his uncle or anyone else he might have been eager to see before that moment are cast to oblivion as he tests the waters of shaking his head and feels his brain slosh back and forth in his skull when he does.

All he has thoughts for are you, and the gentle point of contact where he realizes he can feel the faint fluttering of your heart, beating in his hand.

“Jus’ gimme some sugar, Sugar,” he says.

You breathe a sigh of laughter through your nose that sounds somewhere almost halfway contented, and Eddie feels his heart throb behind his ragged, broken ribs when you press a kiss to the back of his hand.

Oh, yes, that’s what he’s been waiting for — the really good shit. He makes a pleased sound of thanks in the hollow of his throat and tries to lift your hand and bring it to rest against his chest, the way he likes to do, but he’s hardly got the strength left to curl his fingers around yours.

His blinking is growing gradually more sluggish and with every passing moment, it’s getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open.

“Poor Eddie,” You hum somewhere to the right of him, lacing your fingers with his as you turn your head to press your cheek to his marred flesh.

You ask him a question that he doesn’t quite catch, only the tail end of the sound reaches him and it’s too faint to understand, but, all the same, Eddie nods.

It’s an instinctual reaction that he gets a little more than lost in, the drunken up and down of his head going on forever and ever, lulling him into a stupor that has his eyes sliding shut for good this time.

Christ, he's suddenly so tired, or perhaps more accurately, he is so… fucking… high.

Somehow, despite his ruined state, he hears the next question you posit.

“…how’s that morphine drip?”

Oh, Morphine, huh? The good good shit.

It takes Eddie a very long time to answer, long enough that even he begins to wonder if he’s fallen asleep, particularly with the way his head rocks back into the pillow.

“So… good.” He slurs.

Eddie hears the musical lilt of your gentle laughter somewhere in the room, but the sound is floating around like a summer breeze, and he can’t decide where he thinks you are anymore, despite the way he can feel you turn his hand over to begin tracing the lines in his palm.

He doesn’t hear what you are saying until you prompt him again with a gentle murmur of his name.

“...you okay?” You ask him, sounding suddenly very far away.

“…m’sleepy…” Eddie sighs, fading fast, already dreaming ...drifting.

“…try to stay with me, Eddie… just a little longer,” You murmur, a gentle request that gradually grows frantic, panicked – crimson lightning flashes overhead illuminating the terrible dark of that place as Eddie’s body goes slack, eyes falling open, clouded and unseeing as you shake him ferociously.

“No - NO! Don’t go, Eddie – stay with me!” You scream.

The sound startles him into waking, out of the memory of the place that had killed him and back into the muted grey-green hospital room, heart monitor beeping steadily in a gentle contrast to how he can feel the muscle beating itself senseless against his ribs – somehow a little less tender than they had been a moment ago.

Adrenaline stings him down to the very tips of his fingers and toes, and he is suddenly wide awake.

Eddie can’t tell how long it’s been since he dozed, the room is just the same as it had been moments before, but that’s not a solid indicator of anything.

His palm is empty when he flexes his fingers and curls them shut – hadn't you been holding his hand before?

The sudden lack of your touch is startling, and Eddie goes looking for you without realizing how he is about to meet the consequences of trying to move like that.

At some point during his dozing, someone evidently went and removed his neck brace, and in the absence of it, he suddenly has full range of movement where he didn’t before. It’s a learning curve he did not expect to have to tackle, and Eddie grits his teeth against the tenderness in his neck as he turns a tad too sharply toward the place at his bedside where he’d last seen you.

Something pops, there is a momentary tightness, but Eddie’s head does not go rolling off his shoulders, so he doesn’t give himself the time to worry about that, not with you sitting there at his bedside.

Thankfully, you’re not gone as he had feared, though you have also not been spared the evident changes that have taken place in the room in the mere seconds it's been since he last closed his eyes.

You’re out of the hospital gown you’d been wearing before, and dressed in an old, oversized t-shirt – the kind that grandmas wear to the beach, with the exaggerated drawing of a super curvy body on the front, big cartoon tits spilling out of an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot – great, now I'm gonna have that song stuck in my head.

Your hair is wet and neatly slicked back out of your face, and even with his newly retained faculties, Eddie can’t help but feel slightly disappointed at the notion that you showered without him, he would have really liked to join you.

Unhelpfully, his subconscious drums up a host of images, bombarding Eddie with what he knows you look like standing beneath the rush of hot, steaming water, with hands wandering across the expanse of your bare body – his and yours.

It makes something stir halfheartedly in the pit of his stomach, and Eddie silently chastises himself for having such a thought – Get your mind out of the gutter, Munson. Not the time, or the place.

Still, a guy can dream, can't he?

Evidently not, as the sentiment is lost, taking the image of your unexpected nudity with it as he realizes he has no idea how long it’s been since last he was awake to see you sitting in that same spot.

Under any other circumstance, losing time like that might be ever so slightly jarring, but once again Eddie doesn’t care about it, because he’s just so incandescently happy that you’re still here.

You haven’t noticed his attention just yet, you’re far too entrenched in whatever it is you’ve got perched in your lap.

It takes him half a moment too long to realize it’s a book, and that you’re reading aloud to him. It makes his chest swell, and he can’t tell if it hurts a little less than last time, or if the pain is sharper – Eddie doesn’t presently have the faculties to decide how he feels just yet as he settles back into the pillow and watches you pour over the text.

“If he had simply imagined the Elder Folk, he could go back to the caves, and sleep, and never give a thought to the mysterious sword again.” You narrate in an even, unhurried voice, “But he knew he would think about it. And Ruadh, who would never be free unless he, Coll, killed the Wolf King with the sword that was never cast.”

The gentle, steady rhythm of your reading is soothing, almost enough to lull him back to sleep, but he fights with what little strength he has to keep his eyes open between sluggish blinks.

He watches your lips move and feels the first tickle of a cough stirring deep in the hollow of his chest cavity. Eddie does his best to stifle it.

“Slowly, he walked back to the tarn, where the caracle still waited, and paddled back to the opposite shore. He no longer felt afraid of the open moor – more desolate than ever now in the blinding snow – just weary and indifferent. The first gray of dawn began to lighten the night sky as he clumped up to the mouth of the cave near the waterfall…”

Eddie tries to clear his throat as subtly as he can in an attempt to diminish the pesky cough, which has since crawled up into his throat.

He hates to interrupt your flow, but his efforts to banish the cough only pulls at his stitches and forces him to draw a sharp intake of breath, which he promptly chokes on.

Your eyes flit up, ending your gentle narration and the moment with it. Just like that, Eddie Munson exists again, a hacking and coughing image of the person who has been disrupting the flow of your life for years now.

If it bothers you – if it has ever bothered you – you make no show of it.

Your brows pinch and you twist in your seat to pour from the plastic water pitcher Eddie hadn’t seen sitting on the tabletop just beyond his field of vision.

He accepts the cup when you offer it, foregoing the bendy straw in favor of gulping greedily at the cool water.

The plastic edge bites into the cracked and tender flesh of his chapped lips, but he remains undeterred by the sensation and the way it dribbles out from the corners of his mouth and over his chin, leaking down into the bandages that have since replaced his neck brace.

The wetness is a cooling balm against his raw skin as it saturates the thick gauze and cotton.

“Hey,” you say gently, taking the empty cup when he’s done and setting it back on the still-hidden bedside table.

“Hey yourself,” he croaks, slightly dismayed to find that the state of his vocal cords has not improved since last he tried his hand at talking.

The light is an unknowably cold and muted fluorescent hue spilling in from the drawn curtains of the room’s inner windows and under the crack in the door. With the blinds drawn, there is no telling what time of day it is, let alone what time of year.

If it weren’t for the lingering battered state of your being, the yellow-green bruise ringing your left eye and the half-healed stitches splitting your brow from the blow Jason Carver dealt you back on the rocky shores of Lover’s Lake, it could be Christmastime for all Eddie knows about how long he’s been in and out.

Mostly out.

“You were talking in your sleep,” You tell him.

“Was I?” Eddie mumbles, for lack of anything better to say rather than out of genuine curiosity.

You nod.

“What were you dreaming about?”

He's not sure he's ready to tell, considering he is fairly certain it was not a dream, but a memory you’d been listening to him talk through.

Eddie might lie and say he didn't remember if it weren’t for the way your scream is still echoing in his subconscious. He can’t imagine what must have happened for you to make a sound like that.

Like the hollow crack of Chrissy’s bones twisting up out of shape or the emptiness that hung in the air between him and Wayne after the accident when he asked when he could see his mother again, the way you’d screamed back on the other side of the world is going to haunt Eddie for the rest of his life, and he hopes he never has to hear something so terrible ever again.

“Eddie?” You say, drawing him back out from the cloying mire of his thoughts.

“I was dreaming about you…” He says, and it’s not a lie, despite the quick decision he makes to spare you the gory details for his own sake as much as yours, and shrugs as best as he can manage – it hurts. “...Naked in the shower…”

You snort undaintily but beyond that, remain wholly unaffected by the answer – a genuine Eddie Munson response.

“Good dream.”

“Sure,” Eddie mumbles, feeling strangely shot through with holes, “… what time is it?”

He squints against the unpleasant throbbing of his frontal lobe in the too-little light and watches as you fold his tattered copy of Ann Turnbull’s The Wolf King neatly in your lap with the kind of reverence a well-loved book deserves – he wonders if that means you’ve been back to the trailer.

Then, you check your wrist reflexively for the watch that isn’t there, and your face pinches briefly into a mask of annoyance as you twist again in your seat, looking for the clock on the wall.

You stare at it for what feels like a very long time before finally twisting back around.

“Half past two.” You yawn, stretching your arms above your head until it causes your body to seize in little micro-spasms.

Eddie opens his mouth to ask if that was an AM or PM deal, but you slump back down into your seat and turn your gaze up to look at him with hazy, wistful eyes that turn him suddenly shy and shut him up before he can work himself up to it.

You’re so pretty, even battered and bruised as you are, dressed in something he imagines you rifled out of a lost and found box, it makes his tongue go fat and clumsy in his mouth.

“You should go back to sleep,” You tell him, sleepily folding your hands over the guard rail at his bedside and resting your chin atop them.

Not a chance in hell, he wants to tell you, not with what is lurking in his subconscious – tragically not you, naked in the shower – but he’s too busy noticing how exhausted you suddenly look to think about that anymore.

You look about as much as he feels – bone tired, right down to the marrow, like after everything you’ve been through, no amount of sleep is ever going to make you feel normal again.

“When’s the last time you slept, Sweetheart?” Eddie asks you softly as he watches your eyes droop.

You shake your head.

“I’m okay.” You breathe out dreamily.

He would point out that that wasn’t what he asked you, but the notion is smothered by the creeping realization that if he sends you off to catch a few hours of sleep somewhere, it would mean sending you away because he's not about to let you sleep upright in a chair. Some recessed part of Eddie's mind is still deeply worried that the second he takes his eyes off of you, you’re going to disappear.

Eddie will keep you as near as he possibly can if he has any say in it – he'd bring you up into this bed if he thought that was an option.

Still, you’ve taken such good care of him that he can’t help but try and return the favor.

“You look tired.” He tells you, and you roll your shoulders in a good-natured shrug.

“I am tired.”

“Then you should go and get some sleep.”

You wrinkle your nose in that specific way he loves so much and breathe a burst of soft and airy laughter through your nose.

“But I don’t want to stop looking at you,” you whine, which is almost funny considering how your eyes have already slid shut.

The feeling is mutual, and even after all the time he’s loved you, it’s still so weird how you’ve got that uncanny ability to read his mind in little moments like this.

Eddie winces as his brows jump up toward his hairline, where the fresh stitches in his forehead happily remind him of their presence.

His reaction is not lost on you as your eyes flit open again in time to regard him sleepily.

“… that one looks like it hurts…” You hum, reaching out to brush your fingers oh-so-gently across the stitches in Eddie’s forehead, “You know, you were pretty out of it last time we talked… are you feeling any better?”

Eddie scoffs in a “funny you should ask” sort of way.

“Not really. I kind of feel like I died,”

The statement is enough to banish all traces of drowsy whimsy from your features and, suddenly, you’re wide awake. Of course, he’d only said it in a fatalistic attempt at twisting the truth for some kind of wry humor – something like trying to claw his way back to feeling normal – but your reaction has him regretting it instantly.

You stare at him, wide-eyed and with the faintest hint of something Eddie might almost call fear, brows tweaking up and inching toward one another to form the beginnings of the deep crease of worry he knows so well.

You don’t respond, not right away, despite the strange sound that stirs in the hollow of your throat, something that might have been an attempt at a laugh if it hadn’t fallen flat on its face.

The ambiguity of that sound paired with the look you’re giving him leaves a sinking feeling in the pit of Eddie’s stomach, and he watches carefully as you sit up straight, chewing the inside of your lip like you’re trying to decide whether or not to tell him something.

He has to muster his courage to work himself up to ask you what's on your mind, though some minuscule part of him is already fairly sure he knows what’s got you spooked.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” He asks cautiously.

You worry your lower lip and hesitate, long enough that Eddie is starting to get nervous.

“Well,” You start after a very long moment, dropping your voice to a nearly inaudible tenor, “You gave it your best shot.”

Eddie feels himself go hot, then cold, and hot again, and suddenly he feels like he’s swaying in his seat. He grips the sheets for stability and swallows hard against the cobwebs blooming in his throat.

“What do you mean?” Eddie asks, despite his better judgment, because deep down he knows exactly what you mean.

“...You stopped breathing, Eds…” you tell him, and he’s not sure he would have heard you had the room not been so quiet.

Despite how unsurprised he is to hear it, the news is sobering, like a sucker punch to the gut and suddenly, Eddie can hear you screaming again, echoing out from somewhere in the furthest reaches of his subconscious.

He stopped breathing. Which is to say he died.

Right there in your arms, if he had to guess, just like in his dream.

Boy, he hates being right all the time.

Eddie barely hears a word of your explanation as you wade cautiously into the tide-pool of events that happened after he lost consciousness.

He lost a lot of blood – that much he already knows – but as you explain it, he’s got Steve to thank for his return ticket from the river Styx.

He supposes it makes sense that Harrington would know CPR; man is about as close to being a Boy Scout as you can get without wearing the uniform. Steve got him breathing again – he certainly broke a few of Eddie’s ribs in the process, but he got him breathing all the same, and at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.

He guesses in some sense of karmic justice that he and Steve are even now, the burden of saving his life has been sloughed off of his unwilling shoulders, the scales are balanced, and all is right in the world.

Or so it ought to be, somehow, Eddie can’t seem to bring himself around to that line of thinking.

“After that, you were in surgery,” you explain, adopting a droning sort of monotony to your tone like you’re reciting something deeply uninteresting that you’d spent hours and hours memorizing, “...and we were all just waiting around to see what would happen… for a minute there we didn’t know if you were gonna make it – you were…” You pause as your voice hitches and threatens to break, “It was – God, Eddie – it was so scary. I was so scared you weren’t gonna…”

Weren’t gonna survive?

Well, it's like you said, he went and gave it his best shot, didn't he? Eddie suppresses a shudder as he is bathed in the memory of lying there in your arms, gripped in fear for his own impending death … he’d been so afraid of dying…

You do your best to perk up then, sniffling and blinking back any sort of wetness attempting to collect at the corners of your lashes.

“Well, it doesn’t matter…” You say, shoulders jumping in feigned nonchalance.

Eddie has to bite his tongue to keep from shouting.

“It does matter,” he says instantly, a little too loud for the confines of the room.

Eddie rethinks his tone when he sees how his timbre causes you to flinch, but he won’t apologize. He’d come so close to losing this, losing you and the quiet comfort of just sharing your space, and he can’t stand hearing how hard you are trying to seem like his near-death hasn’t affected you, like it’s just one of those things.

For what ... for his sake? He’s the one who died, he doesn’t need you protecting him from that.

Still, he supposes that this is entirely new territory for both of you, and you’re only trying to do what you think is best – what happened to him happened to you too. He can’t forget that.

Eddie reaches for your hand so that you will know he isn’t angry, and you give it to him so quickly that the room rings out with a hard clap of dry skin on skin.

“It matters to me, Sweetheart.” He whispers, and you nod.

“You’re right...” You say softly, “It does matter... it matters that you almost died. And it matters that I thought I was going to lose you again – after I just got you back?" You make an indignant sound that presents itself as something a lot closer to a sob than a scoff, "How is that fair? I didn't know how I was going to live with that... I didn’t want to live with it, without you... and I don’t care if it’s selfish to say, but I'm so glad I don’t have to... I'm so glad you came back to me...”

As if he even had a choice – you’d told him once that given a choice between him and anything else, you would always choose him, and Eddie suddenly can’t stop thinking about how relieved he is to see you, how sitting here together feels strangely so much like that moment he’d whipped open the door back in Rick’s boathouse and, against all odds, found you – beautiful, wonderful, inimitable you – standing there … because you chose him, you always choose him, so of course he would choose you, without question.

How’d you find me? He’d tried to ask you then, stumbling and stammering and choking on his own inexorable relief … what was it you said to him?

Eddie has to clear his throat to try and keep his voice from wavering, and even then, there is the faintest hint of a lilt when he speaks.

“Heard you calling,” He says in a clipped tone, “Came running.”

It doesn’t have nearly the same effect coming from him – you’ve always been so much cooler than he is – but even with his failed attempt at being a smooth talker, it still garners the best response possible.

You laugh – a high, watery thing that wrenches itself out of you with enough force to startle you and make you laugh all over again. Even Eddie feels its effects, biting the inside of his lip to try and keep himself from smiling too wide because of a faint and lingering memory of how that had hurt the last time he’d tried to smile at you.

You sit there, giggling and sniffling and wiping your eyes, and it makes his insides ache.

It feels like it’s been years since he’s seen that smile.

It takes some time for you to compose yourself, caught in the throes of exhaustive giggles as you are, though once you finally manage to calm down, you stick Eddie to the spot with a pointed look of feigned annoyance. The effect is more or less lost with how you can’t keep a straight face, grinning at him the way you are.

“You keep using my lines like that and I’m gonna have to start charging you, Munson,” You tease.

“Put it on my tab,” He says, reaching for you with both hands so that he might pull you close and hug you tight.

The motion is stopped short with a harsh jerk and a deafening clank that rings loudly through the room, drawing his attention to the polished silver cuff fastened to his forgotten wrist.

The sight of the angry gleaming metal keeping him firmly tethered to the guard rail furthest from you causes Eddie to break into a cold sweat.

He's handcuffed to the goddamn bed.

“…And then there’s that…” You mutter.

He gives you an incredulous, bleary-eyed look and feels himself go hot, then cold.

Somehow Eddie had thought they would be done with this, that he’d already been through the worst of it – out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak, running from the police only to find himself swamped in the rushing tide of all this paranormal otherworldly bullshit – but when has he ever been lucky enough to be let off the hook for something like that?

Chrissy is still dead, after all.

Suddenly, he feels like he could be sick. It doesn’t seem fair that he should have endured everything he did on the other side only to come back to find all the problems of the real world waiting in the wings.

“Hey,” You say then, drawing his attention back and doing your best to quiet the rushing tide of his mind working itself into a tizzy with worry, “One thing at a time, okay? Right now, let's just focus on getting better, and then we’ll worry about the rest of it…”

Eddie nods, and despite the shackles, he tries again to reach for you, attempting to pick up where he left off despite how this latest development has rattled him – his movement is jerked short again with another one of those hard, metallic clangs, and Eddie’s sudden and violent need to touch you is only amplified by his hampered movement.

Desperation wells dangerously in his chest, and Eddie curls his fingers into fists to stop himself from trying for you for a third time.

“What about you, though?” He rasps, desperate to think about anything beyond the fact that after all is said and done, he’s still probably going to go down for Chrissy’s murder.

He can’t think about that, he can’t think about her, so he forces himself to think about what is right in front of him.

You furrow your brow.

“What about me?”

“I mean are you okay? Last time I saw you, you were…” He trails off as he is assaulted with the image of his own trembling hands slick with blood down in the dark.

Yours or his, he can’t be sure, but Eddie shuts his eyes against it and grits his teeth.

He gets the faintest hint that he’s slipping again, sinking back into the bed and headed straight for the wrong side of the world, the dark and the dank and the perpetual lightning storm.

Before the world can close in on him, however, you snatch him back with a gentle hand closing around his fingers.

“I’m okay.” You tell him with a quiet assurance, “Everybody’s okay. A little worse for wear, but everybody’s breathing… and that’s what counts, right?”

Normally, Eddie might have said something dismissive about that – fuck everybody else – but that wouldn’t be fair of him, not after all the work Steve and Dustin and the others put in to pull his ass out of the fire, but he’s too busy trying to compartmentalize everything to think about anything beyond what is currently right in front of him – you. And you’re telling him that everything is alright, so he supposes that’s good enough for him, at least for now.

“Right…” Eddie hums, clinging to the warm sense of calm radiating out from you and bleeding into him from your point of blessed contact, “Okay... good.”

He fidgets with his fingers, gently tucked into the palms of your hands, and can’t help but notice that something feels off.

It's not a sense of something wrong so much as a lack of weight, and a cursory inspection reveals to Eddie with a sickening start that his rings are missing. He doesn’t know why, but it sends a sharp pang of grief stabbing through his chest, and suddenly, his eyes are growing frustratingly wet and blurry.

He tries in vain to swallow the lump forming in his throat. He can feel you watching him, and he begins to wonder with no small amount of embarrassment whether he’s really about to start crying over something so trivial as his rings.

It’s not like they were special, like a family heirloom or a physical holdover from some cherished instance, they were just something that had caught his eye in a pawn shop a few years ago. He doesn’t know why he’s getting so upset over their loss, except that they were his, and he doesn’t have a lot of things that are expressly his.

He suddenly feels like that flayed Eddie-shaped thing again, like he’s been stripped away, picked clean down to the bone, and ravaged over by scavengers – it’s not enough that he only went and fucking died, the world is not going to be satisfied until it takes everything from him, his van, Sweetheart, you – even those goddamn rings.

It’s not fair. It’s just not fucking fair.

And it’s not the rings so much as how he’s been teetering on the edge of this precipice for days – the rings, Eddie supposes, are just his breaking point.

Which is fucking stupid, if you ask him.

And then, as if you could read his thoughts and were privy to the idle distress bubbling up in Eddie’s chest, you rock backward in your seat and fish a wadded-up bundle of damp tissues from a hidden pocket at your hip.

“Here,” You say.

He watches as you carefully unwrap the bundle in the palm of your hand and reveal the jumble of burnished silver there.

A pig’s head, a skull, and an iron cross, not lost or stolen but safely tucked away, and Eddie chokes on the sound that rises in his throat – something caught halfway between a laugh and a sigh of unabashed relief.

“Where did you –?” he starts to ask but cuts himself off with a slow, uneven breath.

Calm down, Munson. Just calm the fuck down, will you?

“I took them when they put you in the ambulance,” You admit, “They were all full of blood, and I didn’t want you to have to see them like that… so I cleaned them off and held on to them until I could give them back to you,”

What you don’t say, however, is why you really took them – not for safekeeping, but for souvenirs, so you would have something of his on the off chance that Eddie didn’t pull through.

It’s a sobering thought that settles in the pit of his stomach like a stone – he can’t even be mad about that, for as morbid as it is, because he would have wanted you to have them. He would have wanted you to have anything you wanted to keep him close in case he couldn’t find his way back to you, he only hates that there was ever a moment that you thought you needed something like that.

Eddie watches you staring at the jumble of rings sitting in your hand, staring without really seeing them, he thinks, and then you tilt your head over to press your shoulder to your ear and give him a wry look.

“Your piggy friend gave me the worst trouble, there. All those wrinkles…? Took me about an hour to get him clean – I guess that’s why they call it being pig-headed...”

Eddie startles himself then with a burst of watery laughter, almost a mirror image of the way you’d laughed before, and you bite the inside of your lip to try and stifle the way you’re giggling right along with him as he reaches out to trace the cold silver lines of his beloved trinkets with trembling, reverent fingers.

You catch his hand with feline grace and, one by one, slide the rings back into place over his battered fingers. Once they are settled snugly where they belong, you give him an easy, contented smile.

“There.” You tell him, “Now you’re perfect,”

Eddie hums out his thanks because it’s all he can do to keep himself level with the emotion welling up inside of him over that gentle act of reverence. He’s not going to break down into a blubbering mess of sloppy tears over it, but the danger is ever present, so Eddie cautions himself to tread carefully.

He wants to tell you he loves you, but he’s fairly certain he’s exhausted the phrase over the last… eventually he’s going to stop trying to drum up some random interval of time, he doesn’t know what day it is, and he doesn’t know how long it’s been since you all stood together in the kitchenette of his trailer and made your own individual suicide plans.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he told you… maybe he ought to say it, just to cover all his bases…

“What’s the matter?” You ask him suddenly.

“Nothing…” He says quickly, and it’s the truth, despite the way he can tell you don’t believe him.

You love him, just like you’d told him back in the woods and in every meaningless little gesture since the day you’d met, he might argue. He can’t believe he ever doubted that for a second.

You love him, and he loves you. Circle of life.

The sound rumbles thickly in the hollow of Eddie’s chest as he does his best to hum through the ravenous need welling up in him.

He feels like he is fraying at the seams, and in the event that he comes apart, goes scattering to the wind and every corner of this room, you’re the only thing that is going to be able to hold him together.

He needs you so badly, in his arms, at his side – the familiar press of your body stretched out along his and the gentle thrumming of your heart, beating in tandem with his is the only cure for what ails him, always has been, always will be.

For the sake of his own self-preservation, he sighs out a throaty chuckle and shakes his head as much as he dares. The wound in his neck does not thank him for it.

“What’s the matter, Eds?” you ask again.

“It’s stupid.”

“Tell me anyway.”

He hesitates, and presses his lips into a tight, flat line in the hopes that what he’s about to say isn’t too cheesy, too much to ask.

“I just… I reeaallly wish I wasn’t handcuffed to this bed…” he hums, stretching the word comfortably and feeling like something only vaguely Eddie Munson shaped, “Could really use a cuddle right about now…”

The corners of your lips curl ever so slightly, and you stick him to the spot with wry, hooded eyes.

“That so?” You hum.

Eddie nods, glancing up from his rings to gaze at you through his lashes. He feels the distance between you in the marrow of his bones, a deep and wretched aching propped up by the hospital bed and the handcuffs and his injuries and everything he knows he shouldn’t ask for right here and now, in this place.

“You’re so far away,” He admits, feeling frighteningly vulnerable, “Feels like if I don’t reach out and touch you, you’re gonna disappear,”

You pull a face that is more sympathetic than anything else he might have normally expected.

“I’m right here, Eddie.” you insist, curling your hands around his and pressing a chaste kiss to the ridge of his battered knuckles – it makes the lump in his throat swell, “I’m right here.”

“Yeah…” he hums, sniffs, then hums again, “... yeah…”

Dark eyes flit back down to the dull burnished silver of his rings, glinting under the dimmed florescents, and Eddie feels the heat of your gaze on the side of his face more intensely than the press of your fingertips. He knows the look you’re giving him, the same one you always adopt when he gets vulnerable, shares something unsavory about his childhood or a hard lesson he’d been forced to learn in some scandalizing way.

He pictures the deep crease of concern that forms between your brows, tweaking up at the inner corners, and imagines smoothing it away with the pad of his thumb. He thinks about all the ways he’s hurt you and wishes he could take everything back, every harsh word, every clumsy faux pas.

If wishes were horses, or whatever that dumb saying is…

The sound of your movement draws his attention, and when he looks up again, you’re twisted around to glance over your shoulder. Eddie follows your gaze and stares at the empty glass set into the wooden door.

Beyond, there is the gentle din of activity, the shadow of movement muffled by the swing hinge barrier – freedom, just out of reach and held at bay by the clutch of stupid, silver handcuffs.

When you turn back around to face him, you’ve got a mischievous glint in your eye instead of that strained, melancholy look he’d expected to see, and it stirs his chest with a familiar giddy feeling.

“Okay, so,” you begin, “I’ve got a pretty stupid idea if you’re up for it.”

Intrigue breathes a bit of levity into Eddie’s bloodstream, and he tilts his head as far over to the side as he can go before he begins to feel the tightness in the muscles there – it’s not very far.

“I love your stupid ideas.” He says, face splitting up into a smirk as you lean forward over your knees and drop your voice to a low, rumbling timbre.

“If you promise to behave yourself…” You begin slowly, and Eddie feels the stitches in his forehead bite at him again when his eyebrows jump.

Suddenly, the air is thick with possibility, and he tilts forward to meet you, hanging on your every word, “...I’ll climb up into that bed with you and give you a cuddle. How’s that for a stupid idea?”

He’s nodding before you can even finish speaking and already doing his best to shift over and make room for you on the creaky twin mattress.

“The nurse isn’t gonna like that,” He tells you as he fidgets with all his tubes – IVs, monitors, oxygen, he’s really more machine than man right now – gathering and adjusting and moving them out of the way so that you can be cleared for landing without bringing Nurse Ratched running by accidentally ripping the IV out of his arm.

“Fuck the nurse,” you say with no small amount of indignation as you fiddle with something at your side.

There is the hard metallic sound of something clicking into place and you sit up again, bracing your hands on the bizarrely curved arms of your chair that suddenly and strangely look a lot like wheels.

Eddie pays no mind to the apparent Avante Guard construction of the hospital furniture and is practically giddy as he admonishes you for such course language. He loves it when you curse.

“D’you kiss your mother with that mouth?” He taunts, pushing the boundaries of the unbearable stiffness in his midsection by sitting as far forward as he dares.

You give him another one of those wry looks and push up from your chair to bend over the side of the bed and meet him in the middle.

“Nope, just you.”

And then you close the gap and seal your lips against his in a firm press – which, he’s not going to lie, definitely hurts – but leaves Eddie grinning like a loon and more than a little lightheaded when you pull away with a loud, wet smack.

His eyes slip shut dreamily and he hums contentedly, licking his lips in search of the sweet, sweet honey of your taste.

“Hmnurse?” Eddie slurs, half drunk on your affection, “Could use a little more of that medicine, if y’don’t mind...”

Somewhere to his right, you snort out a breathy laugh and mumble something about “fucking the nurse, alright,”. Eddie opens his mouth to tell you not to tempt him because he’s supposed to be behaving himself – it would be so, so easy for you to swing those pretty legs of yours over his waist and straddle him right here on the bed, he’s got no pants on, after all – and pries his eyes open just in time to see you taking a measured step away from your chair – scratch that, wheelchair.

The words die on his tongue.

You’re in a wheelchair … what the hell are you doing in a– Eddie’s heart seizes with momentary panic as the rest of it comes rushing back to hit him like a brick to the face.

He remembers the van. The gut-wrenching terror that clawed at him as he stood frozen, listening over the radio as it rolled down the embankment with you inside, pumping liquid fire in his veins as he made the jaunt out to the road and pulled you out of the deathtrap he’d sent you to, turning his fingers to stone and as he’d fumbled with his belt to tie a tourniquet around your leg.

He sent you out to the van … he did that to you.

“Oh, God…” Eddie rasps, suddenly breathless “Oh, Christ, Sweetheart…”

You seize his hand before he can get any further down the path of blaming himself for something that he might have been able to see was arguably out of his control, had he been able to see anything from behind the spots splashed across his vision.

Blessedly, you bring him back to Earth by squeezing his hand until he feels his metacarpals creak. He zeroes in on the pain and makes himself look at you.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” you tell him. “They just don’t want me putting pressure on it until the stitches can heal… anyway, you ought to see the other guy,”

It doesn’t make him feel any better because Eddie saw the other guy — it was the crushed and mangled carcass of the van, bent impossibly out of shape, windows blown out on all sides. He’s the reason you were there in the first place – this is all his fault.

And now you’re just gonna climb up into the bed like it’s no big deal? You were right, this is a stupid idea.

Only you don’t seem to care about any sort of mobility issues you may or may not have as you brace your hands on the guardrail and slowly — so, so carefully — ease up onto the mattress.

Eddie watches you tentatively shift your weight, favoring your good leg and working carefully to avoid putting any sort of pressure on the bad one. The moist pink tip of your tongue pokes its way out from the corner of your mouth, your face scrunched in careful concentration as you move, and once you’re satisfied, you lift up and over with no small amount of effort and knock his knee with your hip as you come down to land and crawl up to meet him.

The mattress sags beneath your combined weight, and Eddie reaches for you, despite the hard clang of the handcuff reminding him of his predicament. Locked rubber wheels creak as you crawl up to meet him, slotting yourself in where you belong, tucked in at his side in the crook of his arm and perfectly beneath his chin.

“How’s that?” You ask, turning your face up toward him in search of guidance.

Not great, but he’ll never tell.

“Fine,” Eddie says immediately, despite the way even the slightest hint of pressure from your body pressed against him causes his ribs to creak painfully – whether it’s because of the uncanny ability you’ve always had to see clear through his bullshit, or just the face he’s making, you clearly don’t believe him.

“Are you sure?” You ask, pushing up in an attempt to take some of the pressure of your weight off him, “I can move over… here, I’ll just–”

He does his best to stifle the sharp intake of breath he has to take when you twist over onto your side and make the final adjustments to try and settle in comfortably against him. He lays a firm, free hand on you to hold you still and pull you snugly against him, and you immediately cease your fidgeting.

“It’s fine, just like that, Sweetheart. You’re perfect.”

You breathe in sharply, still giving him that tight, concerned look and searching his face for any hint of a lie. When you evidently come up empty, you breathe out a measured sigh and nod, and the room settles with you.

Once all the little points of pain in Eddie’s body have stopped throbbing, he does his best to relax and takes his time looking you over.

He indulges himself in staring down the length of your body, at the oversized novelty t-shirt laying draped over the suggestion of your form and the barest hint of your shorts hidden carefully beneath its hem, at the stretch of your legs crooked neatly forward toward his beneath the blankets, and Eddie finds his ogling interrupted as he gets stuck staring at the bandage wrapped tightly around the meat of your upper thigh.

He tries not to think about the deep, ugly wound lurking beneath the cotton, or how he had been so certain he could see the ghoulish white of bone peering back at him from the split in your flesh as he fought with clumsy fingers to pull his belt tight.

“Does it hurt?” Eddie asks, reaching out impulsively to trace the fraying edge of the bandage with the edge of his nail.

“Some.” You say idly, shoulder jumping as you turn your eyes up on him, “What about you?”

He gazes back at you and feels his heart throb behind his sore ribs – you could have been asking about any number of his injuries, as extensive as they are, but rather than asking for specificity, he just nods.

“Some.” he says softly, “Better now that you’re here.”

Your brows creep toward one another and suddenly your eyes are bright and brimming.

He reaches up with his free hand to tuck a stray lock of your hair behind your ear and cup your cheek so that he might be prepared to catch any stray tears that are likely to fall.

The position is awkward, to say the least, but you dutifully lean into the touch.

“That’s cheesy,” you sniff, and before Eddie can open his mouth to say something witty in response, you turn your face in to hide in the crook of his neck and breathe out a shuddering sigh that sends goosebumps crawling across the expanse of his body.

“Don't ever scare me like that again,” you whisper, saying it like it’s a secret that is only safe to share in such proximity.

“I won’t, Sweet Girl,” Eddie tells you, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You promise?” You ask, turning big wet eyes up at him and sounding painfully girlish.

He does his best to give you one of his winning smiles and clicks his tongue at you for ever doubting it.

“‘Course I do. Cross my heart and hope to–”

You don’t let him finish.

All Eddie manages is another one of those breathless bleats of laughter as you push up and kiss him again, harder this time. He leans into it, tilting forward to grind his forehead against yours (which hurts, because he forgot about those damn stitches again) and relishing the way he can feel every inch of you when you twist your body to curl your arms around his neck.

Eddie wishes he could hold you as tightly as he needs to, wrap you up in his arms, and squeeze until he feels your ribs creak and forces the air out of your lungs, but he’ll just have to settle for one arm.

One is better than none, he supposes.

The kissing subsides all too soon, giving over to needy little pecks you leave over every inch of his skin that you can reach, over and over and over until even the microsecond it takes to pull back before going in for another is too much distance. For a long moment, it’s all either of you can do but sit there with the sides of your noses pressed together, breathing in tandem, promising to never let the other go again.

Eventually, it starts to hurt, laying like that, so you make an exception to the promises of the previous moment and shift down to accommodate something a little more bearable, with your ear pressed to the hollow of Eddie’s chest, and your hand resting comfortably over the space where his heart thrums gently beneath aching ribs.

“Say something, Eddie.” You hum after a while.

“Okay... what do you want me to say?”

You shake your head.

“Anything. I just want to hear your voice.”

Eddie tilts his head down until he can press his lips to the crown of your skull and resists the urge to tease you about that. It’s just a little too touching to poke fun at.

“You want me to tell you a story?” He murmurs into your hair, and you nod against him, “Alrighty – pass me the book, will you? Let the master show you how it’s done.”

You shift over to fetch the tattered paperback from where you’d left it in your chair, holding on to Eddie by the wrist as you lean away, as if to tell him you’re not going far.

Once it passes between hands and you’re tucked safely back into place, he flips through the pages of a book he’s read so many times he practically has it memorized and clears his throat dramatically before he begins reading.

He has to adjust his tone early on into his narration as the damage to his throat will not allow for extended use of his favored Dungeon Master voice, but he soon falls into a familiar rhythm that feels enough like getting back to enough of a normal that Eddie almost forgets the circumstances under which he is laying there at you side, reading to you like he has done so many times before – you could be back home, lying in his bedroom, listening to the ambient sounds of the trailer park for all either of you knew.

You make short comments here and there, like you always do, and he shushes you, like he always does, but after nearly an hour of flipping pages and struggling to keep characters separate with individual voices, Eddie can't help but notice that it’s been some time since your last snarky comment about a character’s name or motivations.

“Still with me, Sweetheart?” Eddie calls, closing the book to gently card his fingers through the lingering dampness of your hair.

The angle at which your head is pressed against his chest makes it difficult to see much of your features, just the slope of your brow shadowing your gently fluttering lashes, the line of your nose, and the faintest pout of your lips.

Gripped in a sudden, sneaking suspicion, Eddie holds his breath and watches you for any subtle sign of movement, and after a moment, he groks the gentle up and down of your deep and measured breathing.

In and out. In and out – fast asleep, as you should be.

He hums contentedly and settles back against the pillows, happy to rest his weakening voice and aching back, and just feel your heart beating against him as he curls his free arm around you.

It’s right that you’re sleeping at this ungodly hour where only ghosts and lovers are awake to whisper back and forth to one another.

How you must have worried yourself sick over him, watching him closely to make sure he was still breathing, comforting him during a nightmare, waiting for him to come back to you.

Eddie knows he ought to be sleeping too, just like you told him.

Maybe if he drifted off he could find you somewhere in dreamland and tell you everything he is too tired to say now, but all he can do is gaze fondly at you and follow the measured tide of your REM cycle, gradually being lulled to sleep by the rise and fall of your breathing.

Suddenly, the world is not so complicated, and the future is not so uncertain. With you, asleep in his arms, Eddie can even believe that everything will be okay, and in time, everything might even go back to normal… well, maybe not normal – after everything that’s happened, nothing is going to be normal ever again.

Still, right now, this moment pressed against one another in the gentle quiet of the muted green-grey room, is enough. Eddie tilts his head down until his cheek finds the top of your head, and he sighs, feeling the hard grind of your skulls knocking against one another.

He nods to himself and relishes in the stinging itch of your stitches shaking hand with his, your bandages exchanging pleasantries. What a pair you make, vanquishing your own dragons and laying down your lives for one another like something out of an epic tale.

In another life, they would write stories about you, the Maiden and her Fool, and their journey to the end of the Earth. All the foes fought and vanquished, detailing every drop of blood spilled in the combined effort of laying down their lives for one another – your lives – hurdling toward a hard-won victory and everything else that led you to this moment, to the harmony of quiet breathing and thrumming life support machines, swaddled in a loving more intense than either of you has ever felt.

And then, just as the long, gnarled fingers of sleep begin to creep up and wrap their fingers around Eddie’s consciousness, he feels that same old instinct rising in him – the powerfully aching need that will not be beaten back no matter how hard he fights.

He fills his lungs deeply, carefully, and breathes out one last sigh of contented consciousness.

“I love you, Sweetheart.” he mumbles.

You stir briefly against him, nuzzling deeper into his chest before settling and humming out an incoherent response.

“...love you too, Eds...”

#hehehe #eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 1 hour

Text

Yeah these got me the worst. I’m….speechless at how intricate and well fleshed out you made Wayne. I have such a deeper appreciation of him more than I already did. Wow. Just wow.

Cruel Summer - Part 17

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 10k

warnings: angst, swearing, medical descriptions, mentions of death/violence

A.N.: i had to split this last part up, we were near 25k words, Chat. Wayne Munson continues to be the greatest man alive and continues to suffer for it

“Are you the father of Edward Munson?” The woman’s voice is short and terse, and Wayne feels his heart seize erratically in his chest for it.

He’s been waiting all week for a call, biding his time between shifts at the plant and days at the Motel 6 where he’s been sequestered out on the interstate while his home languishes in police custody.

He sits by the phone, chain-smoking and flipping channels, doing everything he can to avoid any and all news perpetuating the ouroboros of misinformation about his nephew, but there is only so much he can do when it’s everywhere he looks.

Nothing catches people’s attention quite like murder in Middle America, especially if there is even the faintest whiff of a Satanic connotation to it.

That’s what they were saying about him last he heard, that it was ritualistic, that they’d brought in an expert to “consult” … that his boy had sacrificed that poor girl, like something out of a goddamn movie.

It makes Wayne’s stomach turn, because how could they think something so terrible?

How could they not?

He was the one who found her, lying there in a twisted heap of limbs. He hadn’t known what to think, dragging his sorry carcass home after finishing up a mind-numbing twelve-hour shift, only to find that waiting for him.

Really, he didn’t think at all – he saw what was left of that girl, and he turned right around and went back out to his truck where he closed himself up in the cab and smoked half a pack of cigarettes just to try and stop himself from shaking.

He wanted to tell himself that whatever happened wasn’t his business, that he ought to just turn away and pretend he didn’t see that girl, lying there on his floor, but this is not the type of thing you can just shut your eyes against and ignore.

Wayne is a simple man leading a simple life. He likes it that way. He doesn’t concern himself with things beyond his ken and as a result, the world more or less leaves him be — as a man like himself in a town like this, it’s more than he can ask for, but sitting there staring unblinkingly at the open doorway, at the single socked foot he could still see from the cab, he knew two things for certain: that girl was dead, whoever she was, and he needed to call the police.

When he finally managed to get his legs working again, he made the half-mile hike to the nearby 7/11 to use its payphone to report what he’d seen, because there was no way in hell he was setting one foot inside his home while the dead girl was lying there.

It wasn’t until Wayne was hanging up with the 911 operator that the shutter finally clicked over and his brain jumped back into working order.

Suddenly, all he could see was the glaring problem with this scenario, the angry red sign flashing over and over, demanding he ask himself what is missing from this picture. Better yet, who is missing from this picture?

Eddie.

Oh, Christ… where the hell is Eddie…?

Before Wayne could untangle his thoughts enough to understand what he’d just done, the Hawkins PD was turning off of the road beyond and roaring down the dirt path like a swarm of bats out of a flashing red and blue hell.

Despite knowing exactly nothing about the finer details of whatever it was that had occurred in his living room the night before, Wayne barely had time enough to consider what he ought to tell them and what he was better off keeping to himself as they came screeching to a halt in his front yard and piling into his home like invading forces.

Suddenly, it was all questions, a hundred and one right after the other before he could even begin to answer the first.

Nothing he said seemed to satisfy them, and no matter what they asked, they always circled back to one question, again and again like a bastardization of those ominous public service announcements striking fear into the hearts of parents across the Midwest:

It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your children are?

Mr. Munson, do you know where your nephew is?

Of course he didn’t. The boy’s business was his own, always has been, but with all these questions and thinly veiled accusations flying around, Wayne found himself wishing he’d paid a little more attention to his nephew’s comings and goings as he scrambled to provide the boys in blue with some kind of a credible answer.

He was desperate to drum up an alibi for the boy, but he couldn’t do it, much to his patent dismay, because he didn’t know where Eddie was, and he didn’t know what’d he’d been doing or where he’d been during those crucial hours during which the girl apparently died.

Wayne almost exclusively works the night shift out at the plant, so how could he possibly know what kind of shenanigans his nephew gets up to in the wee hours of the morning?

He tried in vain to tell them how he thought Eddie might have said something about staying after school to play that game of his – which can last for hours at a time, he explained, but that didn’t explain how the dead girl ended up on the floor in his living room.

It doesn’t explain where Eddie is now, or why their neighbor heard him screaming bloody murder and come flying out of the house like the Devil himself was snapping at his heels.

In the end, Wayne was helpless to do anything but watch as the police came to their own conclusion, and very quickly their story fell neatly into place, like meticulously placed dominos.

They were seen leaving the school together, Eddie and that girl.

Now she is dead and Eddie is missing.

Despite those glaring truths, Wayne knows without a shadow of a doubt that his nephew did not lay a finger on that girl, but more than that, he knows how hard it is going to be for people to believe that. Wayne is under no delusions about how people regard his family. He knows how this looks, and what people think of his nephew, but he knows better.

Eddie couldn’t have done something like this, not even if his life depended on it, but all he has to back that up is his word, and what is the word of a Munson against self-righteous small-town prejudice?

They don’t know him. They don’t know that the boy would rather lie down and die than hurt somebody, that he very nearly did last summer over the guilt hurting you caused him, but that doesn’t fall in line with the narrative they’ve worked so carefully to craft.

As far as the people of Hawkins, Indiana are concerned, that’s not the Munson way, though only because no one has taken the time to separate Eddie from the image of his father, burnt into the memories of this town. Nobody cares enough to do so.

People in a place like this are always going to need a monster. Al was more than happy to play the part for a good long while, and when he went away, they were happy enough to fit his son into the space he’d left in the zeitgeist.

It must have seemed like a fair trade to them, what’s one Munson for another? The boogeyman is the boogeyman, after all, only they didn’t realize what they were doing, forcing a boy into the role that had been held so long by a man.

You want to talk about a sacrifice?

These good, God-fearing people may as well have offered his nephew up on a platter, the way they’re tripping over themselves to corroborate the story they’ve already decided on.

That Eddie Munson is evil, and he killed that girl.

Jesus wept.

The press junket began with a relatively harmless photo of Eddie — one of his school portraits from his first year of high school, fresh-faced and bright-eyed, still riding the high of being freed from his father’s custody, before the world came crashing in and Eddie learned better than to hope for anything out of life.

Wayne’s got no idea how the family photo album made its way out from underneath the couch, but suddenly there it was, on ‘round the clock display, occupying people’s homes throughout the duration of the morning, noon, and nightly news.

The invasion of privacy makes his skin itch.

Still, he knows the picture well, that first one they used. Wayne can see it when he closes his eyes: Eddie is still growing his hair out, and his face is stretched into that big goofy smile of his, teeth poking out, cheek indented in the illusive dimple the kid is more or less shy about. He was still under the hopeful delusion that he had a chance at winning his classmates over, back then. He didn’t know any better.

You can’t tell by looking, but Eddie has got a cast on his arm in the picture, sitting just out of frame. It was a final parting gift from Al Munson to his son, the straw that broke the camel’s back and lost him blissful custody of the boy after he marched him into Hawkins General with a broken arm and a lame excuse about how the boy had fallen off the bicycle he did not own.

One quick check from Social Services put the last nail in that tired old coffin, and the matter was finally — mercifully — put to bed.

Eddie went to live with Wayne that summer between eighth and ninth grade, Al was in prison for good by Christmas, and the rest is history.

Wayne can still see his nephew giving him an awkward thumbs up from beneath the plaster as he dropped him off that first morning school went back into session in August.

“Give ‘em hell, Kid.” Wayne had told him as he hopped down from the truck and slung his beat-up Jansport over one shoulder, and Eddie proceeded to do exactly that and then some for the next six years.

There are only faint traces of the boy in that photo left in Eddie now, and yet here it is identifying him as the prime suspect in a homicide – condemning him.

Ain’t that a kick in the teeth?

That was days ago, back when Wayne was still glued to the television set watching the story unfold, guts seizing with every repeated instance of his home standing empty beyond some talking head speculating on what could have happened and who could have been involved.

Even before any names were named, the sight had Wayne’s throat closing up with anxiety – as if anyone in this nice little backwater hamlet was going to see that place and not immediately know who lives there.

And then there was the photo of Eddie, all sweet and smiling.

Seeing him on the news like that was a death knell rattling in the creaky halls of Wayne’s heart — they said his name.

It was almost fine when it was all just speculation, when it was just him and the Hawkins PD, quietly turning over stones, looking for the boy while Wayne held out the hope that you would complete the secret mission he’d entrusted to you before anyone else would find him.

If he was really lucky – which he had never been before – by the time anyone turned up any shred of evidence, you and Eddie would be hundreds of miles away, and in time people would forget about his nephew.

But they went and said his goddamn name, and there’s no taking that back.

Regardless of how this all plays out, whether they catch up to him or you manage to get him far, far away from here, the name Eddie Munson will forever be synonymous with that dead girl … but at least they used that picture.

At least he was smiling.

It was about as much solace as Wayne could take in the situation for the few hours it lasted.

The way he figures it, some ladder-climbing station executive must’ve decided that a big smiling face didn’t make Eddie Munson nearly scary enough for their ratings.

Probably the same ratfuck who thought it was a good idea to run that photo of a six-year-old Ed and his mother posing with a mall Santa under the caption Mother of a Monster – and God damn them for having the audacity, for bringing her into this.

Not half an hour later, every channel had replaced the school photo with something a little less sanitized, an older, harder Eddie at some party, all done up in his chains and leather and ripped jeans with a cigarette pinched between his lips, making a rude gesture at the camera – it was the version of Eddie that they forced him into when Al went away, and it seemed to satisfy their craving for blood more than the smiling visage of a fourteen-year-old boy could.

Wayne lays a thousand curses upon the head of whoever it was that sold that picture to the media – from that moment on affected devil horns, rock music, and midwestern fears went on to paint a bastardized image of the boy he’d fought so hard to raise right.

All it took was one photo to solidify him as the monster they all so desperately craved, and one slip-up from some fast-talking news anchor who insisted “...the whereabouts of Alan Munson are still unknown…” and there it was.

What this was really all about.

The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children…

God damn this town and God damn his goddamn brother.

With morning shows all the way to Terre Haute doing segments on the Munsons like they were the Mansons, Wayne turned off the news after that. Seeing his life and what is left of his family twisted so wildly out of proportion to fit their narrative is too much to bear.

He can’t turn the television off entirely, however, because worse than the endless chatter is the silence. In the quiet, his mind starts to race.

He starts thinking about his boy, scared and alone somewhere, lost to the gnashing teeth of the world, and about that poor girl, lying twisted beyond comprehension in his living room.

In the quiet, Wayne starts to wonder what on God’s green earth could have possibly happened to leave her like that, and his inability to come up with any kind of rational answer is what scares him the most.

So, he leaves the television on and focuses on the background noise of sitcoms and sports broadcasts, going to work, coming home to the new normal, waiting and waiting and waiting for the phone to ring.

And ring it does.

“Sir?” The voice comes again.

Wayne’s lungs rattle with the beginnings of a smoker’s cough as he removes his hat and wipes his brow with the back of a calloused hand, trying to remember what exactly it was the woman on the other end of the line had asked in the first place – Are you the father of Edward Munson?

“Er, no, ma’am.” He says quickly, clearing his throat, “That’d be my brother, Al, but – uh – well, he’s out at Pendleton … been locked up goin’ on seven years now.”

Above him, a fluorescent bulb hums with a thick static that makes Wayne feel like he’s underwater.

He received the call at the plant, and it’s there he finds himself, standing in the breakroom at the telephone he’d been instructed to “pick up and dial 9” by the omniscient voice of the God that is Powerplant Administration.

He can’t tell if he’s relieved about that or not.

Work was supposed to be a time of distraction, the other half of his life where he could busy himself with anything and everything that wasn’t the ramping helplessness he felt, swelling like a balloon behind his ribs with every hour that passed with Eddie missing.

Electrical technicians are the happy little worker bees toiling away in their subterranean hive, tending to the lifelines that provide power to the towns beyond, and tonight they are buzzing like someone just went and kicked the hive, thanks entirely to that bizarre earthquake that went and knocked out half the power to Roane County about forty minutes back.

He’d been fully entrenched in the backbreaking duties of repairing connections, happy to have the distraction from the endless scroll of his thoughts when new instructions came through: collect call for Wayne Munson, please proceed to the nearest telephone.

The list of folks who would be calling this late and would know to ask for him by name is not exactly long, he can count them out on one hand, but collect means one thing: whoever is calling is doing so from outside the plant, maybe even outside the county line, and it has him scrambling.

Work is supposed to be safe, but nothing is safe while Eddie is missing.

Wayne dropped what he was doing and all but ran across the plant floor (at least as much as his middle-aged knees and tar-caked lungs would allow) past the nearest telephone and straight to the freight elevator that would carry him up three subterranean flights to the outside world where he could speak in relative private – no prying eyes or listening ears watching the man with the murderer for a nephew speak covertly into the phone while his co-workers discussed the game or the Russians or whatever it was that presently held their attention.

Across the moon-bleached earth to the standing trailer that served as the technician's upper deck breakroom, Wayne vaulted the steps and whipped the hollow core door back hard enough to hit the flimsy siding with a loud bang that shook the entirety of the trailer.

There was no one there to berate him for such an excitable action as it was thankfully empty, but that was to be expected, considering how this was the smaller, less desirable of the two break rooms provided for the technicians.

His coworkers tended to avoid this one unless absolutely necessary due to its lack of vending machines and central air, and normally Wayne does too, but tonight it serves him just fine as he picks up the phone and punches the third button down on the right.

He finds no relief on the other end of that line. There is no calm and collected “Hi, Wayne,” in the chirpy lilt of your voice waiting for him on the other end of the line, though perhaps more disappointing, there is no long, guilty pause followed by a tentative greeting from his nephew, desperately trying to gauge Wayne’s frame of mind before diving into a stream of conscious tirade.

No, just the next in a long line of brusque, terrifying questions that continue to knock the wind out of him.

Do you know where your nephew is? Are you the father of Edward Munson?

He would have sat down if he’d thought there was a chair there, but Wayne doesn’t fancy putting his ass down on hard flaking linoleum, so he locks his knees to keep them from buckling and stays standing.

“Very well, sir this is –” He forgets the name the moment she gives it to him, all sense of identity washed clean by the direct follow-up of, “–from Hawkins General Hospital, we have an Edward Munson in our custody and we’ve been trying to get into contact with his parents—”

Wayne does his best to breathe deep against the tightness forming in his chest as he fights to string together a coherent sentence through the bevy of thoughts and words and new information whirling around his mind and refusing to gel.

He is suddenly and woefully confused. If this woman is calling from Hawkins General, why in the hell would she use that word?

Custody.

It would make half a lick of sense if he was getting a call from Chief Powell or Florence, the Hawkins PD’s resident secretary for going on fifteen years now, but neither of them would very well be asking him how to get into contact with Eddie’s parents, would they?

They also wouldn’t be so goddamn formal about this whole thing – weirdly enough, that’s almost as jarring as any of it. Nobody calls the boy Edward, except for his mother and she’s dead, so what is Wayne supposed to do, direct this woman to the prison dispatch up at Pendelton? He imagines she’d have better luck with a Ouija board.

“Oh.” he says dumbly, for a lack of anything better to say, “Right. Well – uh – it’s-it’s like I say, the boy’s father’s locked up and likely to stay that way another twenty-odd years…”

“And his mother? Our records indicate her name is–” A short pause punctuated by the rustling of papers is the only buffer between Wayne and the name he is still not prepared to hear spoken aloud, even after a decade of distance – he grits his teeth to try and shield himself against it, “–Sherri Munson?”

It hits him like a fist to the gut and Wayne makes himself breathe out as slowly as possible to keep from choking as his confusion deepens.

First Al, now Sherri? Like specters of the people who once populated his life, he sees their faces before his eyes and has to blink to banish them again.

What are they asking about her for? Everybody in this goddamn town knows what happened to her, what Al did, even if only indirectly.

Shouldn’t the good folks down at Hawkins General have that sort of thing on file? Death certificate or something? She only went and died on a slab in their custody.

The word settles heavily in the pit of Wayne’s stomach as the situation finally begins to dawn on him.

Custody. They have Eddie in custody, which means something has happened.

“She’s, uh—” he clears his throat in a futile attempt to remain calm, “She’s since passed.” He says slowly, “I look after the boy–”

The woman doesn’t wait for him to finish speaking before she starts again.

“You look after him?” She echoes in a way Wayne can’t help but feel is ever so slightly condescending, “Are you saying you’re his legal guardian?”

He nods quickly before remembering that the woman cannot grok non-verbal responses over the phone and scrambles to correct himself.

“Ah-yes, ma’am. I took custody after his folks…” He suddenly can’t bear to make himself say it, “Well … it’s like you said. I’m Eddie’s legal guardian.”

“Your name, please, sir?”

“Wayne Munson, ma’am.”

Another pause, the faint sound of a scribbling pen across whatever form this woman is clearly filling out.

Wayne swallows hard and when his mouth stays dry and cottony, he swallows again. Somehow, he can’t shake the feeling that something terrible has happened, that this is not simply a courtesy call informing him of his nephew’s whereabouts so that he can come and pick him up.

Wayne does not have to wait long to have his suspicions confirmed.

“Mr. Munson, I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but there’s been an accident –”

He doesn’t hear much else of what she says after, his ears are ringing too loud.

There’s been an accident… now, where has he heard that before?

Wayne doesn’t remember the drive from the plant to the hospital, whether he informed his supervisor or even punched out before he hit the breeze.

He doesn’t remember whether he pulled into the structure or right up to the front in the ambulance bay, he only knows one minute the phone was slipping from his hand to dangle on its chord, and the next he was flinching under the gust of frigid air blasting down across his neck and shoulders as automatic doors whisked open for him.

Wayne is accustomed to coming to Eddie’s rescue one way or another, but walking into this hospital is shades of the boy’s childhood in the worst way – the bad old days.

One very specific bad day, in fact. The last time Wayne was here, and the last time his family was intact.

Stepping through those double doors, he is reminded of it so completely that Wayne half expects to see his good-for-nothing kid brother handcuffed to a chair, half out of his mind on something and trying desperately to convince him what had happened wasn’t his fault, as if anything ever was where Al was concerned.

The ER is a warzone – every inch of the waiting room is crawling with folk he can only assume have been affected by the earthquake that he has very conveniently forgotten about until now.

There is no sign of Eddie, and Wayne can’t decide if he’s relieved about that or not, though with the violent way his guts are seizing, he’s leaning toward not.

“There’s been an accident,” is actually an extremely vague turn of phrase when he really thinks about it, and a bigger part of him than he is readily willing to acknowledge had almost been expecting to find his nephew sitting slumped in a chair off in some corner, a frightening mirror image of his father but otherwise fine, sulking and awaiting collection and the subsequent lecture to follow on the long drive home.

No such luck.

Wayne has to fight to make his way to the check-in – the frazzled young nurse stationed there visibly pales when he tells her his name, and who he is here for.

He watches, all but dumbstruck as she jumps up and runs for a doctor. Literally runs. That’s never a good sign – that’s what happened last time.

The room is all but the same as it was the night Al went and wrapped Sherri’s sedan around that telephone pole out on Cornwallis – the one that is still cracked and half bent over from being struck at sixty-five miles per hour by a rusty blue Volkswagen Dasher.

People leave flowers at its base sometimes, and Wayne can’t help but marvel at the incongruity of it all, that this town would condemn Eddie Munson in one breath and in another, pay homage to the spot where his mother had been sent sailing to her untimely death through the windshield of her car.

The waiting room has remained virtually unchanged in the decade it’s been since that night, save for the way it is suddenly filled to brimming with desperate souls.

For as familiar as it all is – the squeaking of shoes across mottled linoleum, the arctic central air chilling him through his canvas jacket as he stares out at the same cluster of back-breaking chairs, the same hotel art, and informative posters he’d spent hours staring at a hundred years and a short lifetime ago – it’s completely foreign because Eddie isn’t sitting home safe this time.

He’s here somewhere, caught in the quagmire of whatever the hell just happened to this town.

Cursed town. Cursed family, more like.

Wayne still remembers the look Eddie gave him that night, the last time someone had been very sorry to tell him that “there’s been an accident” after he shook him awake and informed him he’d be going next door to Mrs. Downes’s trailer.

That news went over about as well as expected.

“That lady smells like cat piss,” an eleven-year-old Eddie mumbled with a mighty pout and little fists crammed into angry, sleep-swollen eyes.

Wayne couldn’t even fault the boy for his language, because as kindly as she was that lady did indeed stink something awful of the half a dozen cats she kept, but among all his neighbors, she was the only one who could be trusted to look after the boy for a few hours.

“Yeah,” Wayne muttered, snatching up the same canvas jacket he wore now and ushering his moody, pajama-clad nephew down the steps, “That’d be the cats.”

He had no idea just how long that night would be back in the summer of ‘77, and standing here now, he can’t help but get lost in a creeping sense of Deja vu.

It takes no time at all for the doctor to arrive, a short bespectacled man with his face pulled into a severe grimace. With a shy hand at his elbow, he coaxes Wayne into the back hallway for “a quiet place to talk”, and his removal from the public eye has him breaking into a cold sweat.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is a very bad sign when a nurse runs for the doctor. And when that doctor pulls you out of the way for a quiet place to talk, it means he’s got something really hard to say, and he wants to make sure you hear every syllable of his hushed words.

That’s another thing about hospitals that Wayne hates, how doctors drop their voices to impossibly muted tones when they know they’ve got to ruin your life, leaving you hanging on their every word.

It was true back then, and it’s not different now, standing in the hallway behind the nurse’s station, watching the Doctor’s lips move in a desperate attempt to make out what Wayne cannot hear him saying.

It’s a lot of medical jargon, most of which goes right over his head, but he gets the cliff notes.

Your nephew is in the ICU. Severe trauma. Emergency surgery. Touch and go…

A lifetime and only a few years ago, he’d been told more or less the same thing in the same way.

Your sister-in-law is in the ICU. Severe trauma. Emergency surgery. Touch and go…

“Can I see her?” the Eddie who belonged to that different life whimpered, looking so small, still in his pajamas with the soundtrack of Saturday morning cartoons playing in the background as he sat stuck among the fraying couch cushions with wild hair and big wet eyes — his mother’s eyes.

“‘Fraid not, Bud…” Wayne had told him with a quavering voice, speaking softly as he ruined his nephew’s life.

It feels like some kind of karmic justice, having to relive this moment, tragically reversed. Wayne’s never felt so small, so helpless.

“…C-can—” He clears his throat with a harsh grunt that echoes much too loud in the silence of the hallway, “Can I see him?”

The doctor pulls a pained face that Wayne imagines is meant to read as sympathetic.

It skews more indigestion than apology.

“Ah—hmm… I’m afraid not, Mr. Munson,” The man says, skipping over the syllables of his name like most folk do when they extend him the courtesy, “Not until we can get him stabilized… your nephew has lost a lot of blood…”

It’s the vagueness of that statement that hits him, like a fist to the gut – it’s only then that he notices the sleeve of the doctor’s coat, the faintest hint of red staining the hem. He feels his knees wobble and lies to himself that it’s just pen.

Doctors carry lots of pens, the cheap kind that leak if you look at them wrong – only ink doesn’t have the funny little way of drying dark, and the stain on this man’s sleeve is suddenly much more brown than red.

Wayne manages to stay on his feet, though only just barely, because Sherri didn’t do any of her bleeding on the outside, and he doesn’t realize just how fiercely he’s been clinging to the terrible familiarity of that night until its cold light is snuffed out, leaving him shivering in the dark.

The conversation fizzles from there. The doctor scurries away as he receives a page and leaves Wayne to find his meandering way back to where he belongs.

He is in shock as he makes his way out of the hall, relying heavily on muscle memory as he takes the long march back to the slow doom of the waiting room.

Waiting… waiting… waiting…

The door whooshes quietly shut behind him and the din of half a hundred people all in varying stages of the worst day of their lives comes rushing back in, giving him an instant headache.

He needs a smoke – more than that, he needs an excuse to get out of here, at least for a little while, but his legs have turned to concrete, and he can’t make his feet move far enough to carry him out to the curb, so Wayne slumps into the nearest chair he finds and stares blankly at a frame of muted pastels he thinks is supposed to be some kind of pastoral scene.

If he had been cognizant enough, he might have noticed that it was the exact one he’d spent hours staring at last time, but he’s too caught up in his racing thoughts and his thundering heartbeat as he braces against the misery roiling over him in crashing waves like the high tide as he tries to untangle the web of everything that has happened in the last week.

He stares at the picture, watching it begin to shift and move and blend together, and he’s reminded of a story he’d once read, of images of women creeping behind swatches of grotesque yellow wallpaper, rattling their bars, demanding to be let out. He’s reminded of Sherri.

Folks like to say that Misery loves company, but she doesn’t love anybody like she loves the Munsons.

Wayne never pictured himself as a family man, partially because of his natural proclivities, but mostly because of the funny little way that the men in his family tend toward turning into raging monsters when they have children, if they stick around long enough to even meet those children, that is.

Even before Wayne knew he didn’t like girls – which he has known since he was old enough to realize there is a difference between boys and girls – he swore he would be different, and more to the point he wouldn’t give himself the chance to prove himself wrong.

Al could never be bothered to worry about shouldering the task of breaking that cycle of violence and apathy, he was too busy indulging in his worst whims. Al Munson’s top priority had always been and would always be Al Munson, and everybody else could choke.

Wayne knows he should have been a little more worried about what was to come when Al met Sherri, but he wasn’t. At the time, he didn’t rightly care, he was just glad someone else was finally going to be in charge of cleaning up his brother’s messes.

They got married fast – too fast if you were to ask him, but nobody was, and it was none of his business, anyway.

When they picked up and moved to Indianapolis, just a couple of wild and crazy kids in love, Wayne shelved the matter entirely, relieved that he could finally go back to living his own life, free from the responsibility of collaring his brother and once again safe from the monster in their genes that made life unsafe for anyone who hadn’t already survived a childhood as a Munson.

It was less than a year before Wayne received that first call, like some kind of bad joke, run ragged and kept in the closet to be trotted out at family gatherings: Al got drunk and had knocked the shit out of Sherri, busted her lip and broke a couple of her ribs, because of course he fucking did.

What else did anyone expect?

Their grandfather had been a monstrous alcoholic who regularly beat his family within an inch of their collective lives before dying thankfully young of cirrhosis of the liver, and the terror of his youth had turned their father into a flighty man who could never seem to make up his mind about staying or going.

And now here was Al, falling dutifully into place, continuing the cycle of violence.

Sherri was frantic when she called, talking a mile a minute through a bad connection from some payphone halfway between there and Indi. She was out of gas, and she’d run out of the house without stopping to grab her bag. She had no money, no plan, and not even a pair of shoes as Wayne would see when he went and picked her up.

She didn’t take a breath in the forty minutes it took to get back to Hawkins. Anyone who thought Eddie could talk and talk and endlessly talk until he was blue in the face had obviously never met his mother.

That woman spent the duration of the ride to safety working herself into a tizzy.

She was practically foaming at the mouth, ranting and raving about what a bastard Al was, how blind she’d been, and how she wasn't going to stand by and let him treat her that way.

She swore she’d kill him first, and by the time the headlights hit the front of the trailer, Sherri had made up her mind about leaving Al. Wayne advised her to do exactly that if she knew what was good for her, and he warned her, perhaps too late, that the only thing you could trust Al to do was disappoint you, and the safest way to love him was to do so at arm's length.

Of course there was no way he could know that by then it was already too late. In all the talking she did from Indianapolis to Hawkins, she very conveniently failed to mention that she was pregnant, already nearing her second trimester, and ever the smooth-talking snake that he was, Al pulled out all the stops to convince her that this was their second chance at doing it right.

One last second chance for Al Munson, just so he could slam the bars shut on his wife before she could escape, trap her behind the peeling yellow wallpaper.

Sherri’s disappearing act began slowly during her pregnancy. Suddenly she was styling her hair differently and wearing big thick sunglasses in a blatant attempt at covering the bruises Al put there.

There was nothing Wayne could do to save himself from the guilt that ate at him, watching as the months and abuse chipped away at her until there was almost nothing left of the woman he knew.

His friend.

They met while working at the plant. They were friends, and he knowingly fed her to the gnashing teeth that was his kid brother. Some part of him knew better, that there would be nothing but misery waiting for Sherri down the line with Al, but after a miserable six-month stretch of letting his brother crash on his couch while he got clean, Wayne was desperate to foist him off on someone else.

He’d stupidly thought it would be different with Sherri. She was tough in a very kind and endearing way – she didn’t take people’s shit, and he’d thought that maybe she could straighten Al out, be a gentle guiding hand to lead him back up the destructive path he’d been headed down since he was fourteen, back to the person Wayne knew and loved. Back to his brother.

He should’ve known better than to hope for something like that. He made a choice, and Sherri paid for it.

If he had been a little kinder, a little braver, maybe Wayne would have taken responsibility for his actions and done everything in his power to free Sherri from his brother’s captivity.

He would have put her on a bus with her baby boy, sent her somewhere far away from his cursed family, and done everything in his power to keep his brother from ever finding them again, but he wasn’t, and he didn’t, and as a result his hands would never be clean of Sherri’s blood.

Al was driving the car that night, but Wayne was the one who introduced them, who stood by, who put his head down and minded his own business while the bruises got bigger, darker, more prominent, so which one of them was truly responsible for her death?

And who is the one who continues to pay the price for the sins of the past? Eddie.

Wayne was never supposed to have a family, but he fought like hell to make sure he got custody of the boy when Al lost it. Call it penance for what he did to Sherri, he was going to do right by that boy, even if it meant he was never going to get his life back on track, even if it killed him.

He never wanted kids, but the moment Sherri thrust Eddie into his arms, Wayne would have done anything for that boy.

Six weeks old, red-faced, and screaming his little head off like he was absolutely furious at the very act of having been born, Wayne knew.

Without a shadow of a doubt, without a thought for himself or what was right or even decent, he knew.

He would do anything for that boy, including but certainly not limited to beating his kid brother within an inch of his life in front of God and everyone in attendance of Sherri’s funeral.

Thankfully, all the good folks who had been decent enough to remember her had extended that decency far enough to put in a word for him when the police were called, and the only one of the Munson brothers to be taken away in handcuffs that night had been the younger. Al went to sleep it off, and Wayne went to find Eddie, because Wayne always went to find Eddie — his boy, from that first moment he'd held him and looked down into those big, wet eyes.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Sherri had muttered, half out of her mind with exhaustion, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was your boy, right there.”

She was joking, even if only half so, but never had a truer statement been spoken into words.

This was his boy.

His boy — who was always too kind for the world he’d been thrust into.

Who stayed out all night tending to stray kittens, waiting for their mother to come back when he knew well enough that he’d seen her carcass spread flat on the road on his way home.

Who shared his meager lunch at school with the kids less fortunate than him, even though there arguably were no kids less fortunate than him in Hawkins.

Who at the age of six turned world-weary eyes up to his uncle and told him in a voice wise beyond his years “I wish you were my dad,”.

Who lives a little too loud and feels everything a little too big. Who tries and tries and tries so hard, bashing his head against the powers that be, trying not to be vulnerable, to protect himself, and still getting his heart broken wondering “Why don’t they like me?”

Eddie is the last of them, and in spite of all their efforts, the very best of them.

All Wayne has known his whole life is loss, he can’t lose anybody else. That boy is all he has left in this world.

He can’t lose Eddie.

It’s been decades since Wayne set foot in a church. He stopped going to Mass after his mother died, she was the only reason he ever crossed that threshold in the first place, considering he and God never exactly tended to see eye to eye, but like a security blanket, like a crutch to lean on, Wayne suddenly finds himself muttering a familiar string of words under his breath.

There’s nothing he can do for Eddie; he’s got to leave it in the hands of the doctors. He won’t presume to leave it up to God, because he doesn’t believe in the bastard, but Wayne is not so jaded that he doesn’t recognize that this is one of those moments.

Those thresholds of faith that people tend to come to in times of great strife, where they must decide between two outcomes, only there are no choices waiting for Wayne on the other side of this. There’s just the darkness, the fear, the guilt.

He doesn’t know what to do, so he prays.

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven...

Wayne might have been shocked that he still remembers the words after all this time, but good old Catholic guilt is the kind of thing that’s not so easy to shake, and the words fall in line one right after the other without any hint of hesitation like God’s just been waiting for him to come crawling back. He hates to give him the satisfaction, the all-powerful son of a bitch, but it's as they say, desperate times and all that bunk...

He stares at that same pastel pastoral without seeing, twisting itself into images and faces that aren’t really there. Somewhere, the doctors work to save Eddie’s life while Wayne watches the painting move and mutters those tired old phrases under his breath – he prays.

He prays.

He prays until a commotion draws Wayne’s attention, and then – moving like he’s submerged in molasses – he turns.

There at the nurse’s station stands a handsome boy with sharp features and a half-deflated hairdo, arguing with the lady in the scrubs whom Wayne had spoken to when he first arrived – the runner.

The boy is caked in the gray-green layers of something that can only come from having lived through a natural disaster, but much more curious is the way he’s spattered in something indiscernibly viscous, black almost like blood but thicker – darker.

The blood on the doctor’s sleeve was dark enough… Eddie’s blood.

The handsome boy is openly bleeding from a long cut, sliced across the expanse of his high cheekbone, and there is an angry black and purple bruise wringing his neck like he’d recently escaped the pull of a noose.

“We can’t wait any longer, Lady,” He stresses, slapping an open palm on the counter before gesturing wildly to the far end of the room, “She’s bleeding like crazy–”

Wayne doesn’t know why the statement catches his attention — he tells himself it’s nothing but good old-fashioned American curiosity and not the morbidly cathartic need to witness somebody else bleeding their life away.

Your nephew has lost a lot of blood.

He follows the boy’s aggressive pointing across the room over to a far corner where he spies a gaggle of kids, all roughly Eddie’s age, standing in a tense huddle. They’re all torn up, battered, and bruised, and dressed in a bizarre collection of costumes like they’d gone rifling through the bargain bin of an army surplus store.

Every one of them is caked in the same weird muck as their friend, looking like little commandos straight out of the bush as they stand fretting over whatever it is that has their attention, the object of the handsome boy’s tirade – someone sitting in a chair, Wayne realizes, the she who just so happens to be “bleeding like crazy.”

He can’t see her, but he is struck as he realizes that under the dirt and grime, they are not all entirely unfamiliar, that group of kids.

There stands that boy, the one with the braces who had been sitting in his living room with the rest of Ed’s friends, playing that game of his only a few months back – the same one he’d witnessed come flying into Benny’s like a bat out of hell looking for you.

Strangely, it lights a fire in Wayne’s belly and breaks up the stone casing holding him to the spot.

He moves with no real idea of what he means to do, pushing up from his chair and shoving past the handsome boy, still arguing with the nurse. That curly-headed boy, whatever his name is, has got a guilty look about him, and somehow Wayne knows he’s wise to what happened to Eddie.

That boy knows something.

He’s not looking to blame someone – he learned long ago that it doesn’t do anybody any good, shit happens, people get hurt, and pointing fingers doesn’t change that.

But answers — answers change everything.

Shouldering through the crowd, Wayne makes a beeline for the far corner of the waiting room where the boy stands with the other kids – the strangers.

Strangers are no good when it comes to Eddie, strangers can’t be trusted to do right by his boy — it makes his blood boil.

He’s never put his hands on a kid before, but he’s got half a mind to seize the boy by the scruff and shake him until the answers start to fall into place, then he steps aside, and Wayne sees what it is that’s got the boy arguing with the nurses so worked up.

It’s you – it stops his nervous heart in his chest.

He supposes some part of him figured that with Eddie here, you’d be hidden away somewhere too, but he’s been too caught up in the nurse’s reaction, the doctor’s words, the blood on his sleeve – your nephew has lost a lot of blood – to even remember that you exist.

That part of him wants to be relieved to see you, that you kept your promise, that you’re here, but somehow, he can’t muster anything but blinding, gut-wrenching horror.

It’s not your presence that stopped him in his tracks, it’s the sight of you.

Beneath the cuts and bruises (of which there are many), you’re a hollowed-out version of yourself, pale, gaunt – the ghost of the girl he knows, sitting slumped in your chair, trembling, and staring off into space.

Worse than that is the blood, soaked through the front of your shirt, flecked up over your face and arms, streaking down where it has dried sticky over the expanse of your bare legs to darken the scrunched cotton of your socks.

There’s so much of it, too much of it, and Wayne suddenly can’t imagine that it’s all yours.

Your nephew has lost a lot of blood…

“Oh, my–!" someone squeaks to his left, startling him back into semi-working order – it’s that boy, the one with the curly hair and braces. "M-Mr. Munson–!"

He’s staring at him, wide-eyed like the Devil himself just parted the crowd to approach their group, and Wayne has to take another one of those wheezy breaths to center himself, to try and remember what he was doing here.

Answers… he was looking for answers about Eddie.

‘Where’d, uh – when-when did you get here?” The boy stammers. “I-uh-I guess you heard about…”

He trails off under the hard look Wayne gives him, just daring him to say Eddie’s name.

Still, he can’t think about that right now. He can’t bear to think of his boy on a slab, tubes, and scalpels, and emergency surgeries, so Wayne pivots to the next best thing, the most pressing matter in front of him.

You. Why aren’t you being looked at?

He stares back at the boy as the gears in his head turn and he tries to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. It doesn’t make sense.

Folk are milling around the waiting room in varying degrees of distress, but you are arguably worse off than any of them, so what are you doing just sitting there like that?

Why don’t you have a room and a bed and your own team of doctors and nurses fretting over you? He imagines that’s what the boy at the nurse’s station was going on about.

We can’t wait anymore, he’d said. She’s bleeding like crazy, he’d said. Wayne can see as much for himself, so why aren’t the nurses looking at you?

The pieces of this puzzle don’t mesh - it’s the square peg round hole kind of nonsense that only comes with the Munson territory, and though you aren’t a Munson by name, you’ve certainly tied your wagon to their train, and by the looks of you you’d gone and paid for it.

Just like Sherri – too much like Sherri.

Wayne is still staring at the curly-headed boy, long enough that he’s starting to fidget under his steely gaze, then he thrusts an accusatory finger out to you, and the boy flinches.

He doesn’t take his eyes off him as he speaks, mostly because he can’t bear to look at you again just yet.

“Why’s she just sittin’ there like that?” Wayne growls, “How come she ain’t been looked at?”

The boy pales and shakes his head.

“S-Steve’s–” he starts before thinking better of whatever it is he was about to say, “He-he’s already… th-the nurse said–”

“I don’t give a shit what the nurse said. That’s your friend sittin’ there bleedin’, so quit your woolgatherin’ and go and get her some help.” And when the boy remains frozen to the spot, he grits his teeth, “Now.”

The boy takes off like a shot, hobbling across the room and fighting to squeeze through the throng of people.

He’s got an impressive limp, and Wayne feels the first rumblings of remorse for having gone and bitten his head off like that – he didn’t realize the boy was hurt – but the thought passes through his mind without taking root and is instantly gone again because you’re in dire need of attention.

You’re not alone, sitting in the chair. You’re flanked by two other girls and one of them he recognizes as the one who’d come asking about Victor Creel, the reporter.

She’s got a delicate hand resting on your shoulder in what he can only imagine is an attempt at comforting you as your trembling form shakes with every ragged breath you take.

The other kids edge away as Wayne’s attention snaps over to you, clearly not keen on receiving any portion of whatever is left of the vitriol he’d just dealt their friend, but the reporter stays where she is, watching Wayne with a cautious eye.

He calls your name, perhaps a tad too brusque for the situation, but he’s never been great at regulating his tone when he’s scared. And if there is one thing that is true in this moment, it’s that Wayne Munson is scared out of his wits, standing there in the waiting room, still bracing against the rushing tide of misery battering him from all sides.

You fail to respond to his call, which would be troubling even without the blood and the way you’re sagging low in your seat – there is a terrifying, far-away look in your eyes, dim and empty, glazed over like you’re staring without really seeing anything.

When he gets close enough, Wayne kneels in front of you, despite the way his knees curse him for it.

He steals a glance at the reporter girl, and she purses her lips in a way that seems almost apologetic – he can’t help but wonder what that could possibly mean, what she’s got to be sorry for.

Wayne says your name again, trying in vain to bring you back from wherever it is you’ve gone. He needs to talk to you, to ask about Eddie — out of anyone here, you’ll know the truth and more to the point you’ll tell him with unflinching honesty, but you’re not answering him when he calls, and he can’t get the words out around the lump swelling in his throat.

The guilt is creeping up his spine again, clawing at his throat. This is his fault, whatever happened.

He asked too much of you, expected too much. He knew you wouldn’t refuse him when he saw you come stumbling out of the trailer, led by the same hands of the police sifting through his home and preparing to point the finger of blame at Eddie. You were there when you were needed, a tad too little too late, sure, but you were there all the same.

You came running without being asked to and that meant something, didn’t it? It was enough to leave Wayne feeling justified in asking a little more than was rightly fair, at least.

And was it really such a selfish thing to do? All he asked was that you find Eddie and that you don’t leave him, no matter what – keep him safe. Easier said than done, he’s sure, but what’s moving heaven and earth when it comes to his boy? His son? Nothing – child’s play.

Only suddenly he is starting to realize how he may come to regret that request. The price, it seems, is far steeper than he ever imagined it would be when he’d pressed the crumpled billfold into your hand … when he gestured aimlessly to Al’s scruffy form and introduced him to Sherri.

Wayne rests a tentative hand on your knee and gently tries one more time to rouse you from your catatonia.

It’s the touch that finally does it, and just like that, you’re back in the land of the living.

“Huh?” You stammer, blinking rapidly as if you’d only just woken from a deep slumber – the way you’d been staring, Wayne would not be surprised to learn that you had.

“Where are you bleeding, Honey?” He asks quickly, heart pounding against his ribs – it's not the question he’d had waiting in the wings, what happened to Eddie was what he’d intended to say, but the state of your emergency has suddenly trumped all other thoughts in his head.

You’re clearly hurt bad. He suddenly can’t help but get the feeling that he’s under the threat of a ticking clock here.

You stare back at him, unseeing and unknowing, looking too long before recognition finally flashes across your features.

“...Oh – Wayne…” You rasp.

He does his best to smile.

“Hi, Sweetheart.” He says gently, “Tell me where you’re bleedin’ from.”

You blink sluggishly, brows furrowing like he’d said something unbearably cryptic, and you have to work to untangle the secret message hidden in his words. Then, you make a slow effort to look yourself over, scrunching your features like you can’t quite be sure what you’re looking at.

You’re a visitor from Mars as you regard yourself, wrists turned to the sky, hands shaking. A glint of silver draws Wayne’s eyes down as you uncurl your fingers, and his mouth goes dry: there are Eddie’s rings, clunky burnished silver sitting in a slick wet jumble, pooling red in the palm of your hand.

He makes himself breathe in deep through his nose to keep from reacting and lies to himself that it doesn’t expressly mean anything.

The doctors are working on him… the doctors know what they’re doing … just like they’d known with Sherri?

It’s the wilting sound of distress you make that rescues him from that line of thinking. When you turn your gaze back up at him your eyes are swimming with tears.

“It’s—it’s not mine.” You rasp, looking through him rather than at him. “It’s not…”

You get caught on a sharp intake of breath like a gasp that rattles audibly in your chest.

Yeah, that’s what he was afraid of… Wayne can't stand to consider what that indicates, but more so he can’t stand the look in your eye, an unbridled terror like you’re seeing something beyond, something terrible.

A lazy drip drip drip of something pooling shallowly on the linoleum beneath you finally draws Wayne’s attention, notice of the dark strip of cloth you have tied off at the top of your thigh, and more specifically, the belt pulled tight over the space above it - tourniquets.

He realizes with a start that he recognizes the buckle – the gaudy handcuff that Eddie had once argued was purposely offensive, and his chest swells with pride at the thought of his boy acting quickly, trying to save you from whatever happened, maybe at his own expense.

Your nephew has lost a lot of blood…

Suddenly, Wayne is awash with a strange parental clarity and he moves without really thinking about what must be done.

He couldn’t save Sherri, and there’s nothing he can do for Eddie except try and follow in his fumbling footsteps. Wayne can finally do some good for once, break the cycle, and try like hell to do something for you.

“...It’s not mine...” you’re still saying, a muttered utterance of those three words over and over like it’s the only thing keeping you tethered to your body.

“Some of it is,” Wayne tells you, then takes gentle hold of your elbow, “Come on, Babygirl, let’s get you looked at.”

#eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 2 hours

Text

Cruel Summer - Part 16

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 9.5k

warnings: angst, swearing, horror descriptors, TW: violence/blood, major character death (f o r g i v e m e)

A.N.: here we go kids...

Eddie lies to himself that he knows what he’s doing, that this is all still part of the plan, and that things are not as well and truly fucked as they actually are.

A bigger part of him than he is willing to acknowledge is screaming at him to turn back, to do the smart thing for once, and save his miserable hide, but there is only one clear path for him, as suicidal as it may be.

You’d told him this wasn’t the type of thing he was going to be able to save you from if things took a turn for the worse, and part of him agreed with you – that’s the part of him that he’s imagining is ringing the alarm bells right now, but self-preservation be damned, he’s never been the kind of person to make “smart choices” and he’s not about to start now.

He’s going to get you out of here and back through to the other side, even if it kills him.

The bats are stuck to the outside of the trailer like so many screeching winged barnacles when Eddie bursts through the door, flying down the steps and across the lawn toward where the Wheeler’s bikes are still laying in a jumble on the front lawn.

It’s something that on the other side of the world would be so banal – the indication of a gathering of friends, everyone piled into someone’s living room to play Atari or watch tv, the tell-tale sign of a camaraderie that Eddie has been denied his whole life.

Here and now, it’s just a means to an end. When he gets the bike, he’ll whip out to the highway where the van is parked on the shoulder, where you’ll be tucked safely away, waiting for him, despite how the horrendous cacophony they’d sat listening to tells him otherwise.

He tells himself you’re going to be there because you have to be. You’ll be there and you’ll be okay, you’re going to make it through this no matter what.

No matter what.

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do once he finds you, but that’s not important right now. Right now, he’s just got to get to the bikes in one piece.

Eddie was never really the kind of kid who rode bikes.

He was the kid who sat in his room all summer, teaching himself to play guitar, teaching himself to draw, trying to mold himself into the type of person he thought the kids on his block would want to be friends with, not the shape of the social pariah they were steadily forcing him into.

Eddie wasn’t the kind of kid who rode bikes growing up because, beyond the fact that all the other kids in his neighborhood went around treating him like he was diseased, he didn’t learn how to ride one until he was ten years old, which had been a starkly humiliating experience he doesn’t relish in reliving.

The wheels feel shaky and untrustworthy as Eddie pulls the bike up and swings his leg over, but sticky pedals and screeching gears are nothing compared to the cloud of teeth whirling overhead in a morbid murmuration.

He tries not to think about that or scraped knees and elbows as he wipes at the blood still oozing from the gash in his forehead – it stings unpleasantly as the motion pulls at the torn flesh there.

Eddie didn’t feel the bat’s teeth when they pierced his flesh, but he sure as hell felt them scrape along the ridge of his skull – worse than that, he heard it. He knows he’s going to need stitches, that it’s gonna leave a scar and he’s gonna have to grow his hair longer to cover it up – he doesn’t have time to be worried about that, because the bats were always going to get through into the trailer.

The same old fatalist part of himself he’s never been able to tune out always knew that the same way it always knew you were going to end up in the van – always expect the worst to happen and you’ll never be disappointed when it does.

Still, he’s bleeding a lot, and he knows he should probably be concerned about that, but if there’s one useless thing Eddie learned in the brief time Al Munson spent single parenting him – and most everything he ever learned from that man has been more or less useless – it’s that “head wounds bleed,”. He’d told him as much in a rare moment of fatherly clarity while tending to his cuts and bruises after breaking up a fight between Eddie and another boy.

It made him angry at the time, mostly because there was never a time in those handful of years when he wasn’t violently angry at his father, and any advice he was sure to give him was tantamount to bullshit, but here and now that almost seems like wisdom.

Maybe it’s because he’s scared shitless and ever so slightly concussed, but Eddie repeats the words like a mantra as he drops down over a curb and pedals like a shaky, uncoordinated madman.

He pedals and tries not to become overwhelmed with the sudden memory of flowery training wheels and iridescent tassels and the monstrously pink bicycle his mother had borrowed from their six-year-old neighbor in an effort to teach him to ride that Saturday afternoon in the spring of ‘76, when his reputation went it’s grave.

Word travels fast in Hawkins, and by 2 pm that day, all the neighborhood boys had turned out to watch Eddie Munson attempt to ride a little girl’s bike with his mother tailing after him, fruitlessly shouting instructions on how not to crash.

Easier said than done — that endeavor cost him two teeth and what meager savings they had in dentist’s bills.

Two years later, she was dead, and those same shitty boys took advantage of the open wound of Eddie’s grief, luring him out of the house with the promise of the summertime camaraderie he so desired.

Naturally, it was nothing but a great big joke to them, and it ended spectacularly with the lot of them riding out to the plant to throw things into the industrial crusher – rocks, cans, a basketball one of them had managed to balance on their handlebars the whole way, and Eddie’s bike – the one he’d received for his birthday only a few months earlier.

It was a rusty old Schwinn that Wayne had paid twenty bucks for at a garage sale in Bloomington, and decidedly uncool compared to the tricked-out BMX bikes all the other boys rode, but that didn’t make it hurt any less to lose it.

Eddie vividly remembers the sickening sensation that settled over him as he stood there, helplessly watching the angry metal teeth crunch the last of its spokes into oblivion – his prized possession, gone in one instant of shocking violence.

Of course, looking back now, it’s painfully obvious that this was those boys’ intention all along, to take something precious from him, scare him, and force him further from their ranks into the fringes where he exists now.

Eddie doesn’t last long on the bike before one of the bats kamikazes itself in the spokes, sending him flipping headfirst over the handlebars. He lands hard on his shoulder and feels something pop – that’s never a good sign – but he doesn’t stay down, because he’s got seconds before the bats descend, and he’s not sure you have even that much time.

Eddie runs the rest of the way, quickly shucking off his spear and shield because it’s hard enough to run in combat boots when you haven’t been chain-smoking since you were fourteen, and they’re only slowing him down.

He’ll worry about protecting himself later, right now he needs all the help and speed he can get.

That night, after losing his bike to the crusher, Eddie lay in bed crying an endless tide of silent tears over it. Little pearls of young desperation streaked down into his ears as he did his best to stifle his sniffles – not because of the loss of the bike or the hell he caught over it when he ended up having to call his father to come and pick him up, or even because he had been stupid enough to think those boys really wanted to be friends with him.

It was because he had nothing, and somehow, they still managed to take something from him.

Eddie’s never had a lot of things that are expressly his, and what he does have he’s had to work for. A helluva lot of blood sweat and tears earned him the van, his guitar, and you – the van is gone, Sweetheart too for all he knows, but you…?

He’s not going to let this place take you from him, not while he’s still standing.

Eddie crashes through the trees and into the underbrush, not giving a damn where he sets his feet down or whether Vecna knows he’s there — because if the Dark Lord Fucker isn’t wise to something funky going on in his domain by now, then they’ve got bigger problems than the bats or the hivemind.

These woods feel different, darker, denser — dangerous. It’s not the same as they were when he was walking along, having his silly little heart-to-heart with Steve.

Maybe it’s because this is a different patch of woodland, or maybe just because the urgency to get through them is through the roof, but it leaves him feeling like he’s running in place, treading water, that the road is getting further away with every step he takes and he’s never going to make it to you.

Eddie’s always been decent with direction – living your whole life in the same town comes with the benefit of basically always knowing where you are but crashing through the woods like this, he’s operating on dead reckoning. He’s running on a hope and prayer, which is a dangerous game considering that God’s never liked him much.

He runs until he begins to feel a deep and existential paranoia that he’s gone too far, or worse, that he’s headed in the wrong direction. It causes his inner compass to spin erratically with woeful doubt, and just as he starts to ask himself whether he ought to double back, the trees break, and there stands that same lonely stretch of road, sky wheeling overhead.

Everything is more or less exactly as it had been back on the other side, including the stark absence of the van.

Eddie’s heart drops into his ass as he comes to a skidding halt on the cracked and ruined asphalt.

He spins in wild desperate circles looking for any sign of what happened here, where you could have possibly gone, because it’s not that the van is missing altogether — there is in fact a great deal of evidence scattered across the road to suggest that, up until very recently, it was exactly where he’d left it in November of 1983 when time came to a screeching halt.

That evidence comes in the form of broken glass, smashed vines and debris, bits of twitching little bodies, since crushed and torn asunder beneath the mass of something roughly the size of an eight-thousand-pound Chevrolet Beauville Sportvan.

Somehow, that is worse than if it had never been here in the first place, because of what it suggests: that you ran for safety only to find yourself headed straight for a metal death trap.

It makes his blood run cold.

The debris trails heavily across the road, easily followed from one side to the other, over the asphalt, through the trees, and down a steep embankment.

There at the bottom lies the van, crushed and misshapen on its side, spattered in the results of its quick and violent departure from the road.

Eddie feels his legs go wobbly and his guts seize as a cold sweat breaks out across his brow. Suddenly he’s torn between hoping with every fiber of his being that you aren’t inside and praying irrationally to any deity who might be listening that you’re down there.

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do if you’re not — he can’t imagine trailing back to the gate empty-handed.

If you’re not down there, he’s not leaving this place until he finds you, that’s for damn sure.

Slowly, a sound reaches him and Eddie realizes with a start that he can hear something coming from the van – the faint and broken tinge of a voice, someone calling out.

He slips and stumbles in the underbrush as he goes down the embankment at a pace, following the path the van carved into the earth when it evidently rolled.

The windows are all blown out, and in their absence, the voice continues to eke out into the still, heady air, growing louder as Eddie gets closer.

It’s something out of a recurring nightmare he thinks he’s had, some variation of you being thrust into a terrible danger he’s powerless to save you from — it feels like losing you at a party in a sea of people who have nothing but the worst intentions for him — for you.

Eddie shouts your name on instinct, cringing at the sound of his own desperate voice bouncing back at him – and then, terrifyingly, something mimics him, and shouts your name right back, crunchy and chewed up through static, like a voice being fed through a paper shredder.

It doesn’t take him long to recognize it.

It’s Dustin, calling you over the walkie-talkie, desperately crying your name and trying to get you to answer him.

“—Eddie didn’t follow me through the gate!” He wails, speaking so quickly and frantically Eddie can barely understand him, “H-he cut the rope – I don’t know where he’s going! Oh, God, oh, Jesus! – If you’re there, pick up! Please–”

Little fucking narc. Eddie thinks, gritting his teeth against the twinge of annoyance that blooms in him over being told on.

He swallows the feeling in favor of shouting your name again, long and loud, stretching it almost past the point of recognition.

This time, you answer.

“...I’m here…” You call weakly from somewhere behind him – inside the van, Eddie realizes with a start.

He can’t decide if he’s relieved, considering how weak the sound is.

He’s at the back doors before you finish speaking, and his heart jumps up into his throat when no amount of tugging garners any sort of movement, smashed and bent out of shape as the doors are.

Even pulling as hard as he can, Eddie can’t get them to budge.

It takes him far too long to remember that the doors at the back are not the only point of entry to the vehicle, and when he does, he scrambles around to the side, heart spasming erratically against his ribs as you call out to him again.

Your voice is tiny and fragile, and suddenly you sound like you’re about to break into a hundred tiny pieces.

“Eddie…?”

“I’m coming!” He chokes, bracing himself on his hands to hoist up onto the side of the van tilted up to the sky.

He tries to think light thoughts as he sits on his toes, perched on the runner and fumbling with the handle of the side panel door.

“I’m coming, Baby, just – just gimme a second to get this door–”

He tugs on it with the same force he’d exerted to no use at the back and cuts himself off with a startled yelp as it slides open with no resistance. Eddie very nearly topples over backward into the dirt, narrowly avoiding the door as it snaps off its hinges and whips past him, crashing down into the underbrush with a thunderous cacophony.

He grits his teeth against the sound and watches as it bounces and rolls off to disappear into the brush with a heavy thud.

Something is bound to have heard that, and if he wasn’t on a ticking clock before, he certainly is now. He’s got to get you and get out of here, figure out what his next move is before anything can come circling back around to finish the job.

When Eddie turns his attention back to the belly of the van, there you are, pushing up from where you lay on your side in a bed of broken glass and twisted metal – he’s never been happier to see you, considering the circumstances.

He drops down into the carcass of the van and lands beside you as softly as he can manage in steel-toed combat boots.

“Hey–” Eddie says, resting a tentative hand on your hip as you push up from the crumpled heap you’re lying in. “Baby... Sweetheart, are you okay? Come on, talk to me.”

You shake your head like you’re trying to clear a fog that has descended over your senses and press the heel of your palm against your forehead, making a pitiful sound as you do.

“Okay – I changed my mind,” You groan. “I don’t wanna be bait anymore.”

His hands migrate up to brace against your arms, trying in vain to steady you as you rock back into a seated position. You suck in a sharp breath and hold it, eyes screwed shut as you work through something – pain? Confusion? He can’t tell, and he can’t express how much that scares him.

“So, I guess this is the part where you tell me you told me so,”

Eddie surprises himself by laughing – a short wet bark that is just a little too loud in this enclosed space.

“You bet your ass I did.” He says, trying his best to sound easy, like maybe if he can laugh about this it won’t seem so bad.

It’s your turn to laugh then, a shaky exhale through the nose tinged ever so slightly with your typical mirth. And then you just sit there for a long moment, breathing in, breathing out, like you’re trying to center yourself or come back to yourself, or something, before you finally heave a sigh.

It takes you a moment longer to open your eyes, and when you do, your gaze flits up to meet his.

Your eyes immediately go wide, and it’s only then that Eddie remembers he doesn’t look so hot himself.

“Eddie – Oh, my God!” You gasp, reaching up to push his bandana back. “What happened?”

The material shifts with a gritty drag that sends a shiver of discomfort rocking through Eddie’s body.

“Nah, I’m okay.” Eddie says quickly, catching your hand and squeezing your fingers in a way he hopes is reassuring, “You oughta see the other guy.”

Then, just to show you it’s okay, he wipes the back of his hand across the cut on his forehead, growing sticky as the blood finally begins to coagulate. Eddie’s not willing to admit that he’s relieved about that, or that he’d seriously started to worry that these bats have some kind of anticoagulant in their saliva, like normal vampire bats only turned up to eleven.

How stupid would it have been to bleed out before he could even get you out of here?

You eye him warily, seemingly unsatisfied with the display, but unwilling to argue.

“Come on, we gotta get out of here – can you stand, Sweetheart?”

“I think so…” You say, bracing yourself against the way Eddie snakes his hands under your arms and gently eases you up onto your feet. “Ah– shit!”

You flinch and tense under his touch, causing Eddie’s insides to tighten with the fear of hurting you. He has to remind himself not to immediately release you, lest he drop you back among the broken glass and debris.

“Sorry!” Eddie says immediately, but you’re already shaking your head, refusing any sort of apology he might offer.

He knows he ought to be treating you with kid gloves especially if you were in this thing when it crashed and rolled like he highly suspects you were. He doesn’t know what's wrong with you, where you’re hurt, and he doesn't want to do something to inadvertently make a bad situation worse.

“What hurts, Babes? Your arm? Your ribs…?”

“My leg.” You hiss, craning your neck to look down at the thing – Eddie follows your gaze and notices the blood too late.

Big thick rivulets of it, streaking down to slick the inside of your thighs a bright and sticky crimson. It’s a lot of blood – too much blood, he might say if he was allowing himself to think about that, which he isn’t. Still, it takes him a panicky moment to find the source of the bleeding, and when he does his breath catches in his throat.

There, tied off around your upper thigh, is what he can only imagine is a piece of your shirt, torn off and fashioned into a tourniquet. The flesh below it is split into a long, jagged slice, lazily oozing over the expanse of your exposed skin. Eddie feels his stomach heave as he realizes he can see the faintest hint of muscle and sinew there.

He can’t get the words out to properly ask you what happened, but he sees the source of the wound before he has the time to really get worried about that. A thick, jagged piece of glass sits at your feet, at least four inches in length, and two of those inches are coated in a slick layer of blood – your blood.

Oh… shit.

He swallows hard in a lame attempt at regaining a bit of composure.

“What – uh – what do you need me to do here?” Eddie asks uselessly, feeling his mouth go dry.

The long and short of it? You need his belt to tie a better tourniquet, and while Eddie has never thought twice about unbuckling his belt for you, his fingers are trembling so badly as he fumbles with getting it unnotched and pulling it from his jeans that he nearly drops it twice before he gets it free.

He hates himself for the way you hiss out in pain when he slips the belt up over your thigh and pulls it tight – tighter even when you tell him to.

Eddie does as he’s told, despite his reluctance to hurt you, because you clearly know better than he does.

“How’s that–how’s it feel?” He asks once the belt is notched and looped, tight enough to cause your skin to discolor in places.

He’s on his knees in front of you now, eyes flitting back and forth between his work and your face, hands hovering aimlessly over the spot like he half expects it to spring a leak like some kind of rusty pipe.

“Tight.” You say through gritted teeth, and when Eddie feels his brows come together in concern, you shake your head and assure him that “Tight is good.”

After that, working together you manage to coax the back doors to fall open with a thunderous crash that has Eddie sucking in a tense breath. Your ticking clock is steadily running out, and he’s only thankful that you can more or less stand on your own two feet and walk yourself out of there.

Still, he has to carry you up the embankment, bridal style with your legs tucked over his arm – he’s hyper-aware of every one of his movements as he goes, suddenly so paranoid that any wrong step is going to tear something and set you to bleeding again.

Over the black river of pavement and through the woods, back toward home, you go – slowly, step after agonizing step you lean heavily on Eddie and hobble to safety. One foot in front of the other, baby steps one might even say – it’s agonizingly slow going, but it’s distance all the same.

The further you go, the more Eddie can’t help but start to fool himself that things are going to be okay – you’re going to make it.

He should know better than to hope for something like that.

Eddie doesn’t notice the bats at first, he’s too busy watching you for any sign of distress, and as a result, he only realizes something is wrong when he sees you stop short and recoil. Your eyes widen in fear and you gasp through your teeth, then he follows your gaze and sees them.

Like they knew he was going to eventually have to come back this way, like they’d just been waiting for him, there they are. Hundreds of bats, maybe even thousands, swirling and ducking and diving, a cloud of teeth and claws and winged screeching death swirling overhead.

“Eddie–” You gasp, fisting your hands in the side of his vest and trying your damnedest to tuck yourself in behind him.

“It’s okay – it’s gonna be okay.” He says, doing his best to swallow his own fear because how can that be expressly true when you can’t run?

How are you supposed to make it out of this one? The sobering truth settles in the pit of his stomach, cold and heavy like a rock, threatening to pull him down into the depths of sickening realization: you’re not.

Holy, shit. He can’t help but think. We’re going to die down here.

Strangely, Eddie can’t stop thinking about that moment back in the boat house with danger bearing down on the pair of you – he’d stressed that you had to get the fuck out of there, right now, and you’d more or less agreed … only, not the both of you.

There will be no more running for Eddie the Banished…

If he can buy you some time, find a way to lure the bats away from you, maybe you can make it back to the gate – but there lies the problem with your being unable to walk without his support. It’s a terrible conundrum, how to give his life to save yours when you need to use him as a crutch? He’ll burn that bridge when he comes to it.

“What are we gonna do … Eddie?”

Eddie twists to face you then, taking your face in both hands.

“Hey, look at me – we’re gonna be fine, we're gonna walk—”

“We’re not gonna make it!” you say in a clipped, panicked tone, eyes wide and reeling in their sockets as he holds you firmly to the spot and forces you to look at him.

“Doesn’t matter.” He says immediately, shaking his head, “We gotta try. So, we’re just gonna walk, okay? One foot in front of the other.”

You shake your head.

“They’re gonna see us.”

Eddie nods slowly.

“Yeah— yeah, they’re gonna see us, but it’s gonna be okay. Listen to me. Whatever happens, it’ll be okay ... you trust me right?"

"I trust you." You say slowly.

He rolls his shoulders in a shrug he hopes is half as calm and casual as it feels.

"So let's just walk, see what happens."

“...Okay.”

If he thought your pace before was slow, this is like trudging through wet cement. One foot after the other, just like he said, you make your way out into the open.

Eddie does his best not to breathe and he squeezes you tight against him, doing his best to sync your steps and hold as much of your weight as he can take without outright carrying you.

You get barely half a minute of peace out in the open before razor-sharp claws come flying down to rake the side of your face and send you staggering with a strangled scream.

Eddie manages to keep you upright, but only just, and he barely has time to decide where to go let alone process what the hell just happened before you’re hit again, this time from the right.

It’s actually astounding the way he’s already doing such a bad job at this – he came out here to protect you, didn’t he? Save you?

Maddeningly, no amount of thrashing or shouting seems to draw the bats' attention to him, like he’s not even there. He tries to put himself in front of you to act as some sort of a buffer against the attack as they swarm, but the bats just keep coming, and in the end, all he can do is pull you along at a staggering pace to try and keep the bats off of you.

In the distance, Eddie suddenly spies the discarded spear and shield lying in a heap and he feels the tips of his fingers sting with adrenaline. Suddenly, there’s a chance.

Forget the gate, if he can just get you to that shield, maybe he can protect you.

He turns to tell you the new plan just in time to see you enveloped in a pair of wings, and in a moment, your fingers slip from his.

“Shit– no–!”

“Eddie!”

Before he can grab you, something grips Eddie’s ankle and wrenches him off of his feet. He hits the ground and scrambles to try and find purchase on the pavement, blunt fingernails splintering in the earth as he’s dragged backward, away from you.

You’re wide-eyed, mouth hanging open in a silent scream as you reach for him – fingers just miss each other, and then you’re gone as Eddie is wrenched away and you disappear into a cloud of flapping wings.

Oh, my God — Jesus fucking Christ, this can’t be happening, he thinks watching the frantic thrashing heap where you had been only a moment before.

That’s supposed to be him getting swarmed, not you… you’re supposed to make it… he’s supposed to save you — he’s got to save you.

Eddie kicks out and thrashes until his boots come away and he is free of whatever it is that has a hold of him. He scrambles to get his socked feet underneath him, but before he can straighten up he is hit again, hard enough in the back to send him sprawling forward.

His chin strikes the pavement, and stars burst across his vision. Eddie tastes copper as his mouth begins to fill with blood, but all of that is immediately secondary to the way his lungs have flattened in his chest and no amount of effort will inflate them again – he can’t breathe.

He can count the number of fights he’s been in on one hand, and most of those ended with him on the ground getting kicked in the ribs— this feels a lot like that.

In a slow, jerky motion, Eddie tries to curl in on himself, to protect the softer, more fragile parts of his body from any sort of real damage.

He’s too stunned from having the wind knocked out of him, and before he can tuck in and bring his knees up to his chest, he’s wrenched over onto his back by that same violent force that pulls him off his feet moments before.

In an instant, he’s spread taught like a pinned moth, arms and legs pulled nearly to the point of hyperextension, facing the sky as the bats lay him out.

There’s nothing he can do, no amount of kicking and thrashing to try and free himself this time. He’d barely held his own against one of these monstrous little fuckers back in the hall outside of his bedroom, there is nothing Eddie can do when half a dozen descends.

His mind begins spinning in desperately frantic circles, trying to work its way out of this – somebody’s coming to his rescue, right? Any second Steve or somebody much braver than him is going to come riding in to save his ass and pull him out of the fire. Somebody is coming – he’s not going to die like this, he’s not going to be eaten…

It takes them a moment to get through the padding of the army-grade vest, long enough that Eddie’s lungs finally inflate again, and gasping in a greedy intake of air, he manages to get one arm free enough to wrench his elbow down toward his midsection. The motion dislodges the bat tearing at him, preventing it from getting at his insides, but it leaves his throat exposed in the process.

The bats take no time to jump at the opportunity he has opened for them.

Time slows to a screeching halt, and this time Eddie feels the teeth breaking his skin. Every little puncture sinking deep into the tendons of his neck and pulling pieces of him away is amplified and, for half a second all he feels is a sting, then a series of pops and snaps before the warm wet gush of something flooding up into his hair and down over the expanse of his chest – blood, he realizes, his blood.

What had you called them? Giant vampire bats?

Paralyzed by the shock of having a literal bite taken out of his neck, Eddie’s body goes momentarily slack, and then he begins to feel the other points of pain as the bats make it through his armor and begin to tear into him.

Christ, they’re gonna eat him alive, and nobody is coming to save him.

The horror of such a statement is too much, it cracks Eddie’s brain open and he feels a part of himself slip away. He doesn’t shut down like he always imagined must happen to people in moments of great mortal peril, however, he stays tragically conscious, he stays lucid, and the bats keep eating at him.

Eddie shuts his eyes against it and fails to suppress a scream, as much as in pain as terror.

This can’t be the end, can it? Is this really how he’s going to die? Held down and eaten alive like some kind of Promethean cautionary tale – like something out of one of his campaigns?

What a stupid fucking way to die.

Then, inexplicably, just as it becomes too much to bear, it ends with a tremor. Small at first, enough to startle the bats away from their meal. Little faces slick with bright red blood pop up to look around, chitter curiously at each other, and then the world begins to shake, rattling Eddie’s bones as the earth quakes beneath him with a strange and deafening roar.

There is the rush of something being swung over him, a desperate shout and the bats screech and lift off like they mean to escape it – whatever it is – leaving Eddie lying where they left him. He watches them wink off into the dark with hazy eyes as the world endeavors to come to an end.

Things go dark then, and Eddie wonders with a stark burst of potent fear if this is the end and if he’s finally begun to die, but he’s still far too painfully aware of everything – of the rumbling, the fleeing bats, the burning and stinging and bleeding across the expanse of his body. Of the other body pressed against him, curling tight over him to try and shield him from whatever is happening, screaming in competition with the sound as it amplifies to a deafening roar.

And then it’s over, as quickly as it started, with a whimper rather than a fiery bang.

The rumbling silence that follows is punctuated by the sudden wet smacking of the stone-dead weight of a hundred bats dropping out of the air, like terrible, heavy rain. They hit the space above Eddie with heavy metallic thumps and he wonders briefly why he doesn’t feel their impact as they fall – he doesn’t really care; everything hurts too much.

Despite everything he’s still here… at least for now.

Even when the world grows still, he doesn’t move. He can’t. His body still screams in the absence of the assault where he feels every abrasion, even tear in his flesh, every bruised bone in his body all crying out at once.

It occurs to Eddie that he’ll die if he doesn’t get up, but that thought is lost under the pain, the way he can feel his life leaking out of him from several key points in his body with every panicked thump of his erratic heart. He knows he’s got to stop himself bleeding, but his limbs are heavy and sluggish — he can’t move – it hurts too bad to move.

Then stop moving, Stupid. Just lay there and die like you’re supposed to.

Something shifts above him, and the darkness is suddenly gone. He can see the sky as he begins to die, that terrible crimson flashing of lightning, and nothing else.

Eddie’s life doesn’t flash before his eyes – he isn't imbued with sepia-toned home movies of his first steps, scraped knees, and birthday parties.

When Eddie dies, all he thinks about is you.

You— crouched in the student parking lot in the first moment he ever really noticed you, gathering the contents of your spilled backpack, cracking a self-deprecating joke, and apologizing for bumping into him - treating him with the most basic human kindness where no one else ever extended the courtesy.

You — sitting on his bed with your knees pulled up, pouring over some homework assignment that isn’t due for at least another week, and ignoring the nonsense song he’s making up on the spot to try and distract you.

You— belly laughing at a joke that isn’t funny with your eyes squeezed shut and your nose wrinkled in the way that made him fall in love with you – You, blasting Duran Duran and jumping on your bed trying in vain to get him to dance with you – You, illuminated by some terrible slasher and shoveling tense fistfuls of popcorn into your mouth while you sit waiting for the impending jump-scare.

You – kneeling over him in this terrible place, battered and bruised, looking like the prettiest goddamn thing he’s ever seen – an honest to Goddamn angel – still clutching the slapdash spear and shield you’d used to save him.

Wasn’t that supposed to be the other way around?

You cast the trashcan lid away from where you’d held it propped above the both of you with a grunt, gasping out the effort and flinching against the harsh sound it makes when it strikes the pavement.

You’re hurt, more than you already were – blood is flecked across your face and oozing from various cuts, blossoming across the heathered grey of your shirt where it isn’t already drying black from before. It’s on your hands, leaving cold smears across Eddie’s skin as you frame his face, forcing him to look at you the same as he had done before.

“Eddie? Eddie.” You say, frantically looking him over, “Look at me – hey, you’re okay –”

Your voice is strange and lilting as you tell him again and again that he’s okay, but your face betrays any affected facade of calm you may have been trying to hold.

You’ve never been a good liar, especially when you’re scared. Not that Eddie needs to take a cue from you – he already knows he’s fucked.

It’s one of those existential feelings that settles in his bones, something he doesn’t need to be told to know, like when he knew he wasn’t going to graduate his first senior year, only worse.

“Bad, huh?” He grinds out, eyes rolling in his sockets as he tries to keep himself focused on you.

He can feel himself slipping and it’s terrifying. He searches you face, focusing on your features and trying to commit them to memory like maybe if he can just keep his eyes on you, he’ll be okay.

Maybe he’ll still make it.

You give a quick shake of your head that feels decidedly more ominous than it should.

“No – no, you’re okay,” You say again, “Can you-can you sit up? Try and sit up for me, Eds.”

He can’t imagine how he’s meant to do that, considering as far as Eddie can tell the bats have stripped him clean and he doesn’t have anything left between his ribs and his hips but empty spine.

Then again, you seem optimistic, and he can feel a sharp stab of pain in his belly when your hand comes down to rest over it, so he’s willing to try… or at least he’s willing to let you try.

“Let’s sit up, okay?” You say again, gently trying to guide him into a sitting position. “We’re gonna sit up and catch our breath, and then we’ll get out of here, okay?”

“Okay,” Eddie mumbles.

Slowly, he lets you coax him up, but then his waist begins to bend and Eddie’s body lights up in a hundred different points of agony.

Suddenly he’s on fire.

He screams out the agony, startling you with the sound, and you release him immediately, hands jerking back as fast as if the touch of his body had burned you.

He hears you swear hearshly from somewhere to his left — he can’t see where you’ve gone, he’s too busy laying there, trying to make himself breathe and waiting for the pain to pass.

It doesn’t – all he feels is the white-hot burning of half a dozen points where he’s busy bleeding his life away.

“Shit –” You say with a trembling voice, reappearing at his side, “Okay, on second thought, don’t try to move.”

He wasn’t planning on it.

Eddie’s only vaguely aware of you moving, putting that first aide certificate you’d once proudly shown off to good use. You gently try to coax him to lift his head, and he complies, whimpering and choking as it puts pressure on the wound in his neck – yeah, that’s the bad one — that’s the one that kills him.

“I know, I know it hurts —I’m sorry—”, you’re babbling as you press something to his throat and do your best to navigate the problem of applying enough pressure to stop the bleeding without choking him out.

Slowly, Eddie becomes aware of the way his hand has come up, trembling violently as he stares back at his fingers and tries to make his eyes focus on them. If he can just stay conscious, he’ll be fine. In the intermittent flashes of light, he sees the slick wetness of the blood coating his digits, rolling down his wrist into his sleeve in thick rivulets. He realizes with a start that one of those little fuckers took a bite out of his hand.

“Oh, shit…” he huffs, “…S-Sweetheart…?”

“You’re okay.” You say again, reaching out quickly to curl his hand in on itself and bring it back down to rest over his heart.

You keep saying that, but Eddie knows better. It’s too much blood — he’s only got so much of that stuff, and he’s fairly certain he’s lying in a good deal of it, pooling beneath him.

Still, it doesn’t seem to deter you as you maneuver him so that you’ve got your hands hooked under his arms.

“Listen to me, Eds,” you start, sounding winded as you speak, “We gotta get you to a hospital, so you gotta get up.”

“You said don’t move.” He whimpers, gritting his teeth and bracing himself for more pain.

You ignore his whining.

“I’m gonna count to three and you’re gonna stand up, okay? I’m gonna help you.”

“Okay,” he says weakly, wincing when you shift beneath him, one leg tucked under yourself, the other bent, ready to push up.

The subtle movement alone is enough to send a sharp and lancing pain screaming through his body, and Eddie imagines for a moment that even if his wounds don’t kill him, your attempts at trying to save his life will.

There’s no good choice here. Everything hurts, and it’s not going to stop hurting, no matter what he does. not if he gets up, and not if he just lays there until he dies.

“Ready?”

“No.” Eddie pants.

Your fingers tighten against him and Eddie braces himself for what’s about to happen. He’s not sure how you expect to do this, but the only certainty here is that if he doesn’t get up, he’s going to die, and more than anything, Eddie doesn’t want to die, not down here in the dark.

“You start,”

He takes a series of quick breaths, one right after the other, then holds it — this is really gonna hurt.

“—One.”

You don’t wait for the rest of the count, and Eddie doesn’t know why he’s so surprised about that when he’s the one who taught you that kind of behavior.

You push up and pull with all your limited strength to try and move him with you. Pull him up onto his feet, and Eddie feels like you may as well have dropped him into a vat of acid, it’s the worst pain he’s ever experienced, and he’s fully convinced that he’s breaking into dozen of little pieces as you drag him up — there’s nothing he can do to stifle the screams that wrench themselves out of him as you go.

His voice is a strange, hollow sound against the flat air, and you almost instantly collapse under the combination of his dead weight and your own weakened state.

Eddie gasps out in relief when you fall backward, having done little more than wrenched him up into your lap. He lays back against your chest with his head resting on your collarbone and waits for the pain to pass… and waits… and waits… it’s not going to stop hurting, he’s going to die before it stops.

He can feel your heart hammering against your ribs like a subtle tapping at the back of his neck. You’re both gasping for air, gritting your teeth against your own individual pain, and speaking at the same time.

“Oh, God— oh Christ, don't-don’t do that again,” Eddie pleads, “Please don’t—”

“Sorry – I’m sorry – that wasn’t nice,” You say, “Give me a second and we’ll try again, okay?”

He shakes his head.

“No,”

“Eddie, I can’t do anything for you down here.” you stress, “We have to get you to the hospital right now. Come on, let’s try again.”

“I’m not—” he starts weakly, gritting his teeth and swallowing hard before forcing out a breathless chuckle, “I’m not gonna make it, Sweetheart.”

He hates to say it, but it’s nothing if not entirely on brand — he is, after all, the pessimist between the two of you. It doesn’t make the statement any less startling, like the clanging of a bell that rings out in the hollow silence that blooms between you.

“No,” you say with a potent tinge of panic, “No, don’t—don’t be silly, of course you are. You’re gonna be okay, you just have to—” your voice breaks as a sob forces itself up into your throat. “—Y-you just have to get up. Please get up…”

It breaks his heart to do it, but there’s no sense in pretending like you both don’t know he��s a goner. Eddie slowly shakes his head and watches your features crumple.

“Not this time.” he croaks, only just managing to get the sound out through the lump in his throat.

Your face contorts into a twisted mask of grief and you heave out a strangled breath, slumping forward to bury your face in the crook of his neck. For a moment, it’s all you can do but heave under the duress of trying not to cry.

It doesn’t work.

After a moment of silence, you push up again, sniffling and wiping in vain at the tears that refuse to stop falling from your lashes.

Eddie forces himself to look at you and face the finality of this moment. He watches the big fat tears defy all your attempts to stifle them, dripping down to collect at the point of your chin.

He hates himself for making you cry like that, but there’s nothing he can do — it’s just another one of those inevitabilities that some fatalist part of him always knew: the bats were always going to get through, you were always going to end up in the van, and he was never going to leave this place.

Eddie reaches up to brush the tears away, smearing blood across your face as he does. He would feel bad about that if he could make himself, but a strange calm has washed over him, and suddenly everything doesn’t hurt as badly as it did a second ago.

In the back of his rational mind, he knows that’s a bad sign, that it’s the beginning of the end, but he doesn’t care about that — all he cares about is you.

“It’s okay,” he hums, “Baby— it’s okay … but you gotta— you gotta go now, go to the gate – Dustin’s waiting–”

“No, not without you.” You sniffle, violently shaking your head, “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

Eddie’s heart leaps in panic as his vision wells up and goes blurry as tears begin to collect at the corners of his lashes. You can’t stay down here, but he knows there’s nothing he can do or say to make you go – nothing he’s willing to say, at least.

Suddenly, Eddie is struck with the thought that these are the last minutes of his life, there are no do-overs after this, no second chances. When he closes his eyes, he’s going to die, and this is the last time he’s ever going to see you — what a terrible thing that is.

You’re gonna go on, keep on living your life, hit all those milestones you’d planned together, and he’s gonna be so sorry to miss it. How terrible a thing it is that you could love something death can touch – he would tell himself that he’s happy to die so that you can live, but somehow he can’t muster the feeling.

“At least I didn’t run away this time, huh?”

Eddie tries to smile like he’s laughing at himself for being so stupid, but all he manages is a pained grimace, a horizontal stretch pulling his lips into a tight line — his mouth is full of blood.

You smile, a weak and wilting mirror image of the look he’s sure he just gave you, and you shake your head.

“No,” you sniffle, brushing back his hair in a helpless attempt at soothing him, “You ran toward the danger, like a big dumb brave idiot… you saved me.”

Eddie heaves out a stuttering sigh, a desperately melancholy thing, and shuts his eyes tight against the feeling welling up inside of him.

Grief? That’s for certain, because you’re both going to die down here if you stay, but he can’t bear the thought of being parted from you, not here when he needs you most.

Suddenly, he’s that eleven-year-old boy standing on his uncle’s front steps, only this time he’s begging himself not to go.

“Stay with me, Eds…” You tell him.

“F-fuck,” he stutters, “I’m so— God, I’m sorry. I really tried this time, Sweetheart… I tried to stay, but I–” He breathes out harshly because he'd rather waste a breath than time choking on the sob welling in his throat, “–I don’t – I don’t want to go… I don’t wanna go.”

You shake your head and shush him, gently caressing the apple of his cheek with your knuckles.

“...I know, Baby.” you murmur, “Look at me … I’m right here, okay? I’m not going anywhere.”

The words strike him one after the other, harsh and potent stabs of fear pincushioning him and holding him there where he lays in your arms.

You have to go, he wants to tell you, if you stay you’ll die. But he can’t get the words out fast enough. His speech is sluggish and slurred, clumsy on his tongue.

“You can’t—”

You don’t let him finish.

“I made a promise, Eddie.” You press, “I said I wouldn’t leave you. So, if you’re staying, I’m staying.” And then you bring his hand up to draw a shaky x over the left side of your chest, “Cross my heart.”

It’s simultaneously the worst and best thing he’s ever heard. Maybe there is something poetic about it, spending eternity down here together, your bodies decaying and intertwining, falling together until you’re nothing but a jumbled heap of bones, yours indiscernible for his — together is better.

People are eventually going to forget about him … but you? No one will know what happened to you, not your friends, your parents, not Wayne – oh, fuck … Wayne.

Eddie’s heart thumps a slow and heavy rhythm in his chest as images of his uncle’s face swim before his eyes.

It’ll be hardest for Wayne, the not knowing.

He’s going to spend the rest of his life searching, wondering what happened to him, waiting for a sign that he’s okay, that he made it – or some sign that he didn’t – and it’s never going to come.

He’s going to die not knowing what happened, and somehow that’s the worst part of all of this.

Suddenly, Eddie can’t stop thinking of all the people he’ll never see again, everyone he’s letting down, dying like this. Gareth and the band, everyone in Hellfire —Dustin, God, Dustin’s gonna be crushed.

He feels his face contort into a mask of terrible sadness before he draws in a sharp, pained breath and holds it. Hot tears well up and spill out from his lashes, streaking down over the side of his face to collect in the shell of his ear.

“It’s okay, Eddie, I’m here…” You say gently, “I’m right here.”

“I love you,” He says shakily, desperately.

You nod.

“I know, Honey – I love you too… so much.”

You continue stroking the side of his face as he feels himself begin to fade, his limbs growing slack, his aches and pains easing away.

Finally, it’s like he can breathe again, and the air is cool and sweet. If he really wanted to, Eddie thinks he could delude himself into imagining that you’re lying out in a field somewhere, hundreds of miles from Hawkins and the Upsidedown and everything that means him harm, that means you harm.

It’s just the two of you, in this peaceful place, the grass is soft, the birds are chirping — he’s back home in the Shire, Mordor long removed from the horizon.

It’s hard to force the words out through the way his teeth are chattering – he’s suddenly so goddamn cold, he’s surprised he can’t see his breath clouding in front of his face – but he tries.

God, does he try.

“For the quest is achieved–” Eddie stutters, “And now all is over,” He opens his eyes, and the illusion is gone as the crushing darkness of this place comes rushing back in.

He’s so cold, he can barely feel your hands anymore and he has to look to make sure you’re still there, smiling sweetly, tears cutting thick rivulets through the dirt and grime caking face.

Eddie heaves out a sigh as he finishes the quote.

“I’m glad you’re here with me –“ He tells you, “Here, at the end of all things.”

Everything is muffled now. Eddie doesn’t hear the voice calling his name in the distance, calling yours – he watches your head snap to attention, watches the expression on your face change, and then change again.

Shadows are creeping in on the edges of his vision when you look back down at him, your features are growing fuzzy, but he can see your brows suddenly pinched tightly over your eyes as a newfound urgency etches itself across your face – God, he’s so damn lucky he gets to see your face one last time.

He tries to commit you to memory, but suddenly you’re nothing more than a blown-out silhouette of yourself, working your mouth, curling your fingers in tighter around him.

You’re saying something, but Eddie can’t understand you, the words are garbled, like being spoken underwater.

He would be sad about that if he were able.

He wants to tell you he loves you again, one last time before he goes, make sure you know for certain before it’s too late, but he’s already slipped beneath the surface by the time the thought crosses his mind.

Somewhere, he thinks he can hear you talking to him, still stroking his face in that lovely way you always do. He imagines you asking him to stay stay stay… he would if he could.

#the tears rolling down my cheeks are….sure rolling #no words #eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 2 hours

Text

Cruel Summer - Part 15

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 8k

warnings: swearing, horror descriptors, violence/blood, characters being in danger - people are getting fucked up, but the worst is yet to come (I'm so sorry)

A.N.: I couldn't do it, Chat, I had to split this chapter up into two parts - shit has officially hit the fan

Running is not your favorite activity. Never has been, never will be, and yet here you inexplicably are, hauling ass through the woods of your nightmares like your life depends upon it – which it absolutely does.

There is no question in your mind as to what will happen to you if you are caught, and it is that very thought that spurs you on. The Demogorgon ate Barb, and if you are not quick, and careful and extremely fucking light on your feet, these bats are going to eat you.

Somehow, you don’t imagine they’ll do you the courtesy of killing you first, either.

So no, running is not something you particularly enjoy doing (it’s a wonder you went and willingly volunteered for this – the things you do for love). You might even be inclined to say that running is awful.

Always has been, always will be.

It’s nothing but the terrible sensation of feeling every part of your body moving, shifting awkwardly under the duress of being suddenly thrust into motion, forcing you to become painfully aware of yourself in ways you are typically content to ignore.

But you’re not thinking about any of that.

You’re not thinking about the way your lungs are heaving and quickly growing tight and raw, how your knees and ankles are already stinging with every pounding step you take.

You’re not thinking about the walkie-talkie strung around you, thump thump thumping awkwardly against your side, strap chafing against your neck, corner digging sharply in, and grinding a bruise into your hip.

You’re not thinking about the trees and branches reaching out to snag you and slow you down at every turn, and you’re absolutely not thinking about the cloud of certain death tailing not so distantly behind you.

You’re not thinking at all— you’re just running.

Faster than you ever have, faster than you ever thought you were capable of, so fast it feels a little bit like flying.

The only indication that the bats have taken the bait is the rushing sound of hundreds of flapping wings and wiry bodies moving through the trees around you like crashing thunder. You know you should be scared out of your wits – you’re sure you would be if you were any smarter, but you’re not.

You’re just running.

Suddenly it’s like the forest is not even there. There are no bats, there is no Upsidedown, no impending doom brought upon you by some bullshit wizard out of Eddie’s imagination – it’s just you and the wind upon which you glide.

You’re too caught in the half-drunken state of giddy nerves and adrenaline to be worried about not being scared. The absence of your fear leaves you feeling more than a little bit astounded at how well you’re doing.

You marvel at your pace – how you haven’t stumbled or faltered even once, how fast you are.

You could almost laugh out loud at the feeling of it, the freedom – then again that could just be the heady intoxication of running for your life, but you can’t presently be bothered by things of the rational world.

You’re winged Icarus taking flight, skirting the sky, chasing the wind, led on by the distant themes of the loving Metallica tribute raging on.

You run hard and fast, without abandon or fear of things like the fragility of your squishy mortal form, flailing desperately as you take flight.

Nothing can touch you — nothing but cruel irony and raised tree roots.

In an instant, it all comes crashing down. Your foot snags, and you stumble with a harsh, breathless expletive, very nearly tumbling ass over teakettle, and the terrible sobering reality of your frailty comes rushing back to you.

Suddenly, you remember that running is terrible, and you’re actually very bad at it.

It’s all chaffed thighs and twisted ankles, huffing and puffing and feeling every drop of sweat that comes cascading down from all the nooks and crannies in your body that you spend the duration of your days mostly unaware of.

You’re no golden icon stealing their freedom on a wing and a prayer, you’re nothing more than a mediocre student with a shitty car, oblivious parents, and no academic ambition – more than that, you suddenly have the very good sense to be afraid again, and it hits you like a brick to the face.

This isn’t some agonizing fifth-period excursion into the sadistic tendencies of your gym teacher – this is honest-to-God danger. You are being hunted and if you are caught you will die.

You may very likely die anyway – that’s just the name of the game.

Suddenly, you can feel your blood turning to sludge in your veins, your legs starting to tremble, and your lungs beginning to spasm with each greedy intake of air, but despite all of that, you keep running.

You run, because what other choice have you got?

The wailing screech of Eddie’s guitar is the guiding beacon, tugging on the strings of your heart and sending you sailing through the woods toward safety, but the squeeze of Dustin’s watch strapped to your wrist is a ball and chain, dragging you down further and further into the loamy earth with every second that ticks away too fast.

As if to drive the notion home, the watch pipes up, beeping a shrill call, an unhelpful reminder of what will happen if time runs out before you make it back.

You resist the urge to check the time – you know you’re already behind schedule, but you don’t think about that.

You don’t think about tripping or the bats or how slow you are, and you certainly don’t think about getting caught, being torn limb from limb and eaten alive — just like Barb — don’t think about it, don’t think about it — don’t think just run!

You focus on your breathing, and you try to remember what Steve told you.

In and out. Deep, slow breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

Don’t gasp for air. Don’t hyperventilate. Don’t pass out — don’t trip.

Oh shit!

Your foot snags another tree root and for a second you imagine they must be sentient, lifting up to purposely slow you down like something out of The Wizard of Oz.

You always hated that movie.

You stagger, arms windmilling, legs kicking out – your palms kiss the ground but you don’t fall.

You keep running.

Beep beep — the goddamn watch is mocking you.

It’s got to be, because how else can time be passing so quickly when every bit of physical education you’ve ever endured has existed in a bizarre never-ending loop of slow motion.

Why is this so different?

Because you’re running for your goddamn life, Stupid.

Beep beep — Better pick up the pace.

Master of Puppets is still a distant sound, and despite how far you think you’ve come, you’ve still got so far to go.

It’s not getting any closer… why isn’t it getting any closer?

Slowly, the nagging pull of hideous reality creeps up and begins to whisper to you. You hear it over the rip and pull of your breathing, murmuring terrible secrets through the thunder of your footsteps, the hammering of your heart, the roaring of your blood, like poison in the ear.

It tells you all the things you don’t want to hear – it tells you you’re not going to make it.

Desperately, you try to find your bearings and locate yourself out in the dark without taking the time to look around. You can’t afford to take another tumble, but without looking you’re running with blinders on.

Everything is so different on this side, in the dark landmarks are only vaguely familiar and trees all look the same. That much is true up in the real world, but down here it is multiplied tenfold.

That voice is still whispering, telling you that somehow you’ve turned yourself around, that you’re headed away from the trailer and thats why the music isn’t getting any closer.

Suddenly, you can’t help but get the irrational sense that you are headed toward the Creel House instead of away from it, and it’s enough to send your heart rocketing up into your throat like it means to escape and abandon you to your ever slowing pace.

Somehow, cooler heads prevail, and you swallow back that fear like bile rising in your throat. You know you can’t afford the luxury of second-guessing yourself – not with hell snapping at your heels like this, so you dig in.

You run, and you trust, and you hope beyond hope that you’re headed in the right direction.

Fuck running, fuck Vecna and his shitty stupid bats, and fuck this fucking place.

There is no gradual end to the woods.

The tree line stands a stark barrier, still and silent until you shatter the illusion of peace. You burst through the trees, out into the open ground, and shockingly cold air that has you gasping out, like being submerged in a freezing pool.

Out of the woods, you are freed from the bone-crushing haze you hadn’t realized had descended upon you until it is gone. The open air fills you with a strange clarity, and suddenly, like lifting a veil, you can see – the edge of the trailer park lies beyond.

The music is loud now, loud enough that you can feel every chord striking in your back teeth.

You laugh out a loud, breathless thing that presents itself as much more a desperate shout than anything else. In the distance, you can almost see Eddie and Dustin, crouched atop the trailer.

Little victories are victories all the same, and you watch with something that could almost be misconstrued as glee as the bats shift up in one dark cloud of movement, suddenly much more interested in the sound that drew their attention in the first place. The potential for a larger, more appealing meal than the one you present.

Another beep yelps at you from your wrist, and this time you dare to steal a foolish glance at the watch. The numbers count down at a rapid pace, just as you imagined they would, pale glowing green signifying a head-on collision with your doom — t-minus sixty seconds, less than a minute to go.

You kick your knees up higher and throw your arms out in the hopes it might make some minute difference.

Must go faster… must go faster!

You can see them now, no real details, just the suggestion of figures perched atop the trailer, backlit with every angry flash of lightning.

You see Dustin crouched beside the amp, and you see Eddie thrashing against Sweetheart in time with the wailing screech of the solo you’ve long since stopped hearing over the roaring blood in your ears.

You’re in the home stretch — you’re going to make it.

You take another hard step, and without any sort of prelude to the danger awaiting the ground crumbles beneath you. Your attention snaps to your feet on instinct and your stomach bottoms out in what can only be described as pants-shitting terror as you realize too late that the road is gone.

Scratch that — the ground is gone, replaced instead with a yawning chasm of darkness, like a terrible grinning maw, splitting the land open to swallow you whole.

You gasp out a breath you can’t spare and try in vain to dig your back foot into the loamy brush that isn’t there, desperately hoping somehow, you’ll land on solid ground and not go cartwheeling into the abyss.

It’s always the hope that kills you.

Before you can react, gravity reaches up to snatch your forwardmost foot and drags you over the edge. Overhead, the swarm pays you no mind as you plummet, still hurdling on toward the deafening sound of Eddie living out his wildest Metal-God wet dreams.

Sweetheart wails out a keening cry of ecstasy on a high note, the sound is tinged with the faintest hint of a terrified shriek as you drop out of existence.

You fall, something reaches out and snags you, and just as quickly as your plunge begins, it ends.

You come to a hard, lurching stop, and your head snaps backward, cracking against something sharp and solid. It sends stars and colors skittering brightly across your vision before they are quickly banished by shadows creeping in like the tide, and you lay where you landed, dazed and spinning.

Don’t pass out, You tell yourself as you sink further and further into the darkness below, don’t pass out…

...

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

The sound is a faint stabbing thing, prodding you back to life. You groan out a ragged sound as, slowly, you begin to come back to yourself, shifting and attempting to sit up to middling results.

Your head feels fat and swollen – it protests the way you attempt to shake your senses back into place with the bright bursts of an oncoming migraine. The harsh jerk of your head sends your brain buzzing frantically in your skull before bursting, leaving you terribly nauseous and with the vaguest sensation that you are spinning.

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

It takes a very long moment for you to remember where you are and what happened to get you there.

You remember falling, the harsh start and stop of the motion, how you’d cracked your head on something when you landed — a rock maybe?

Everything hurts, but at least it’s an indicator that you’re not dead — now if only you could open your eyes. Your lids slide over your eyes like sandpaper and you are almost half convinced that you imagined the sensation when the darkness does not disperse. You blink, once, twice, three times to no avail – your vision does not clear, and slowly, you come to the terrifying realization that sometime in the last few minutes, you have gone inexplicably blind.

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

You’d once seen a Dateline special about a man who was hit in the back of the head during a bar fight and had his retinas snap as a result — a one in a million chance, they’d called it, but the thought causes your stomach to heave all the same.

How far-fetched would it be to assume you could be that one in a million, considering the rotten turn of your luck over the past few days?

Oh God oh Christ! You think, opening your eyes as wide as they will go against the wall of black in a desperate attempt to kickstart your vision into working order.

Your mind screams at the thought of being stuck down at the bottom of some pit, dying down in the dark without even having the courtesy of seeing what kills you.

Suddenly, there is a flash to your left – you scream and recoil only to be met with another on your right as something flails pathetically in your peripheral vision.

After a heart pounding moment, you heave out a sigh of relief as you come to realize that it is only your hands, windmilling above you as you instinctively fight the gentle swaying of your body in what’s left of your momentum.

A cursory glance upward confirms what you knew all along, that you haven’t been struck blind, after all. In the intermittent flashes of light, you can see your dingy sneaker snagged in a gnarled swathe of roots and branches, jutting out from the side of the open earth, holding you suspended only a few feet down — thank fuck for that.

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

Dangling upside down by one foot, staring into the impenetrable dark of an apparently bottomless chasm with little to no hope of escape is not the worst-case scenario, not by a long shot, but it’s certainly not ideal.

As you begin the arduous task of getting yourself upright again, you become aware of the hot bloom of blood spreading across your scalp from whatever you’d smacked it on.

Suddenly, you can’t help but imagine it dripping from the ends of your hair, down into the dark to pique the interest of something else – something ancient and terrible slumbering deep down in the dark.

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

You remember then that there are other things to be afraid of down here, other beasties than the bats still wheeling overhead.

You don’t know what a Demogorgon is supposed to look like or whether it happens to live at the bottom of highly inconvenient chasms in the earth only to be summoned by the smell of fresh blood and stupid girls overexerting themselves, but you aren’t expressly keen on sticking around to find out.

You haven’t seen that movie, but you have no interest in starring in the sequel, and it is enough to light a fire under your ass … or over it, considering your upside-down state.

You twist and bend at the waist until you can catch a fist full of roots and begin the Herculean task of trying to navigate free of the tangle without losing your grip and dropping off into an inky black eternity.

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

You try not to think about the last time you did a sit-up as your abs burn and your back creaks and you grunt out the effort of trying to pull yourself up and out of the darkness.

You twist and tug and finally — finally — manage to get yourself sitting upright again, and then you climb.

Fingers in the earth, hand over fist, you claw your way up and over the lip of the chasm and haul your sorry carcass out of the pit.

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

Back on solid ground, you lay panting, shivering for the overexertion of your muscles and the way the dank air has settled on the sleek sheen of sweat coating every inch of your body.

You roll over onto your back and watch the bats wheel overhead. You keep breathing, the storm keeps on raging, and very slowly the horror of this strangely peaceful moment begins to dawn on you.

It’s quiet.

Holy shit – holy fucking shit, it’s quiet.

“Oh, shit!” You gasp, lurching up with enough force that your head threatens to start spinning again. “No, no no no no!”

There’s no music, no screaming orgasm of a guitar solo, no voices shouting your name and urging you to get up off your ass. There’s nothing but the incessant beeping of the watch.

You’re on your feet before your body has anything to say about it, hands fisted in your hair as you scan the horizon, desperately searching the trailer tops for any signs of human life.

Dustin and Eddie are gone.

Your heart jumps up into your throat and lodges itself there before beginning to swell, choking you and stopping you from making any sort of sound.

The trailer is teeming with bats, not a scrap of the dingy tin siding is visible beneath the writhing mass of bodies — even under the squirming mess of fear that your brain has devolved into, you know you couldn’t get within ten feet of that place if your life depended on it, which it does.

You missed your window. The bats beat you back to the trailer, and that means you’re trapped out here.

When your heart finally slips back down into your chest, it settles there with a deafening thump and pulls loose the stopper on your bottled fear — you’re filling your lungs before you’re even aware of what you’re about to do.

“EDDIE!” You scream, your voice breaking in a potent combination of desperation and sheer volume.

You don’t remember a time you’ve ever screamed that loud – you’ve long since been conditioned to stay quiet and well-behaved by parents who were far too busy to have a rowdy child on their hands, but desperate times call for desperate fucking shouts, and it leaves your vocal cords raw and trembling.

There is nothing but the hollow sound of your voice echoing back at you, less muted than it had been back at the Creel place, but no less haunting.

It’s a very foolish thing to do, especially when only moments before you’d been gripped in the very rational fear that there are other things skulking about — things much more likely to hear you than Eddie will be, closed up in the trailer a hundred yards off, but you’re just about ready to come apart at the seams watching the bats overtake the structure.

You suddenly feel hideously exposed.

You fist your hand in the front of your shirt, clawing at the space where your heart ought to be, where you can feel it beating against your ribs as you feel the black grip of panic closing in on you.

You know what you’re supposed to do, but the trailer is there – it’s right fucking there — and you can’t get to it.

You spin around in aimless circles, looking for somewhere to go, some way around this bullshit hole in the ground and the bats that will surely tear you to pieces once they notice you standing there, and you come up empty.

There’s nothing you can do, no way to get Eddie’s attention without alerting the bats… you’re supposed to go to the van…

And then you remember the walkie-talkie.

Your mind detaches from your body as you reach for it and find nothing but air. It’s not slung across your body like it had been only moments before, a constant companion bouncing against your hip and digging deeper and deeper into the bruise it made with every step you took from the Creel House to here.

Your stomach drops into your ass, and you feel like you’re going to be sick as you realize it’s in the pit.

Gravity must have taken it when you fell, taking with it any hope of communication, of rescue. You stand frozen, staring into that terrible darkness that your eyes refuse to adjust to. Its churns and writhes and remains impenetrable, unknowable, and you feel your hands curl tighter in on your chest.

Suddenly, you’re six years old again, trembling in the aftershocks of a nightmare and facing the immense darkness of the hallway that leads to your parents’ bedroom.

Salvation is right there, and you can’t get to it.

And then the darkness speaks.

In a moment of profound panic, your mind goes hideously blank and your name ekes up out of the pit.

Look into the abyss and the abyss will look back …

The noise comes again, strangely familiar in a way that makes your skin crawl, until you realize why.

It takes a long, terrifying moment to realize that your name is not being spoken by some kind of horrible eldritch beast – it’s coming from the radio – it’s coming from Eddie.

A bloody red flash of lightning reaches as far down into the dark as it dares and there you see it. The walkie-talkie, hanging by its strap, clinging on to a particularly gnarled root as it sways under its own weight — suddenly, there’s still a chance.

You drop instantly to your belly and inch forward, resting your chin on the lip of the crevasse and spitting dirt as you extend your reach for the boxy piece of tech. You’ve got to get it, but you’re not about to go any further back into the pit then you absolutely must — you reach for the thing, waggling your fingers like somehow, it’s going to Go-Go-Gadget extend them far enough to snag it, but it’s no use.

Your arms aren’t long enough, and the walkie remains far out of your reach.

Something strikes you — raking talons come down to tear across the top of your head to snag your hair.

Bats… how could you have forgotten the bats?

It wrenches you backward, tearing from you a loud cry of alarm before you jerk free of its claws. You briefly entertain the notion of abandoning the radio and heading for the hills, but if Eddie is going to save you, you’re going to tell him what’s happening, so against your better judgment and every natural instinct you have, screaming at you to RUN, you scramble forward again, desperately reaching for the radio all while doing your best to brace against the monsters wheeling overhead.

You’re not nearly close enough to reach the thing, but you’ve come too far to give up on it.

Your name comes up from the pit again, garbled and half cut off in the static of the interference of this place.

“–o to– an!” The walkie commands you.

Caution be damned, you push out further than before, bracing your hips over the crumbling edge of the earth and extending your arm far past its reach, trusting in some higher power that you will not go tumbling into that great expanse.

You wince under the way your shoulder clicks painfully on the edge of hyperextension, and you reach reach reach as that same garbled command is fed through a paper shredder and out from the walkie-talkie, Eddie imploring you to do something.

“Go–t– th– va–!”

Your fingers brush the strap once, twice, three times. You teeter further than is rightly wise and hook a finger in the Mylar just as the ground shifts beneath you again. You blink back visions of toppling forward, of things rising from the earth with grabbing hands to drag you down into the depths, and you close your fist, scrambling backward just as more of the loamy earth gives way.

You don't even wait to catch your breath before you bring the walkie up to your mouth, pressing the button on the side and shouting down the line.

“Eddie help me I can’t get to you the road is gone and the bats are everywhere I don’t know what to do!”

The second you take your thumb off the button, your instructions come screaming over the radio, loud and clear.

“Go to the van!” Eddie shouts, “RUN!”

You’re only granted a microsecond to wallow in the despair of that command before another one of the bats strikes the ground hard beside you – a big one, easily the size of a golden retriever, scrambling forward with a toothy screech as it reaches for you.

You scream, pushing up with a desperate gasp, and bolt back into the trees, back the way Eddie showed you on the other side.

It doesn’t take long to get through to that lonely stretch of highway. There sits the van, just as Eddie had promised it would be, though suddenly looking much more like a tired sagging animal on this side than the crouching beast you know so well.

Time is stuck down here, he’d said, it’s still November ‘83, he’d said.

Somehow, the van doesn't seem to have gotten that message.

It’s long abandoned, listing hard to the right on flat tires. It’s caked in thick layers of dirt and grime and wrapped in a constricting swathe of vines that reminds you far too much of a snake strangling its prey than you’re comfortable with, considering you intend to barricade yourself in the belly of the sad creature before you.

You don’t have time to ask whether this is actually a good idea or not, because the bats are swarming, snapping at your heels, whipped into a frothy tizzy over the trailing scent of freshly spilled blood and fleeing prey.

You hit the van at a flat sprint, crashing into the side panel with a bang as you slap your open palms against it in a desperate search for the handle. You don’t find it until you’ve circled halfway around to the back door, and even then, it takes several hard tugs to pry the thing open.

A bat strikes the panel beside your head, and then another, cracking the glass and startling you into screaming as you crank the door open as far as you dare and squeeze through the gap.

You slam the door and throw your body across the truck bed in one swift movement, colliding heavily with the back of the driver’s seat and curling in on yourself, watching the hazy shadows of dozens of little bodies come crowding together in the spot where you were just standing, blocking out any semblance of light there is in this place.

Your body throbs with adrenaline and burns in a hundred different places where the woods tore at your skin and clothes, all while your heart hammers against your ribcage like it means to burst forth. Dark spots and flecks of light burst in the dark and you sit there gasping for air, just like Steve had warned you not to. Your head swims and suddenly you can’t help but get the sensation that you’re swaying.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know you’ve strayed the line into hyperventilation, and that you’re going to pass out if you don’t manage to slow your breathing.

If you pass out you’re dead, you got that?

You swallow hard against the copper you can suddenly taste flecking up from the back of your throat and pull your knees up to your chest, squeezing your eyes shut and channeling all your limited focus into taking deep, steadying breaths, just the way you’d practiced.

Deep breath, in through the nose. Out through the mouth. Rinse and repeat until you don’t feel like you’re this close to fainting any longer.

It doesn’t work so well with your lungs spasming under duress and refusing to inflate again.

Then you can hear the crackling sound of someone calling your name over the radio.

You fumble frantically in the dark for the walkie-talkie, hearing the sound of your name getting a little more desperate with every passing moment. When you finally get your hands on it, you snatch it up and press the plunger.

“I’m here,” you gasp, “I’m here.”

“No, you’re not!” Dustin fires back, “Where the hell are you?”

You open your mouth to try and explain, but before you can get a word out, Eddie’s voice comes ringing frantically over the line.

“What happened? Baby– what happened?”

You don’t get the chance to answer him before something hits the side of the van with enough force to rattle the windows and send it swaying on its creaking shocks.

For half a moment you don’t dare to breathe as you’re flooded with images of the constricting vines stirring to life and crushing the van flat with you trapped inside.

You realize with a sickening start that not only was this very bad idea, but that your safe haven is very likely about to become a corroded steel coffin. And then it happens again, and again, boom after thunderous boom like being caught in a torrential hailstorm, or a fucking tornado. The van rattles and rocks and shifts violently as dozens of bodies strike the steel paneling, hitting the vehicle on all sides.

When the first of the indents begin to implode inward, you throw yourself to the bed of the van, scrambling to hide in the filthy blankets and things that belong to an Eddie that doesn’t exist down here.

Then, without much in the way of warning, the left-hand side of the van caves in entirely and splits open. There are suddenly dozens of little creatures there, fighting to get through to you, fighting each other, and the sides of the torn metal digging into their ugly little faces as they try and force their way through.

You watch in horror as the jagged edge peels back their skin, flaying them alive and spilling their thick, black blood, and they just keep coming, thrashing, and reaching and screaming like they don’t even feel it, like they’re just that desperate to get to you.

You scramble backward, but before you can realize that there’s nowhere to go, the van is struck again with that same force. This time, the van rocks up on two wheels, sending you sprawling as it lists hard to the right. With a sad and ominous groan, gravity takes it, sending you scrambling for purchase, reaching out to brace yourself against something – anything – as the van tips and begins to roll.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The commotion that comes pouring over the radio is absolutely terrifying, like nothing Dustin has ever heard. A roaring static boom of crunching, creaking metal, and breaking glass, intercut with a healthy dosage of angry static and the chewed-up sound of your screaming.

Dustin feels like he’s going to break into a thousand tiny pieces as he stands paralyzed, listening to the soundtrack of something terrible and violent happening to you. He doesn’t know what to do – he’s got to do something, help you somehow, but his mind has gone blank.

For all he knows he could be listening to you die, and he can’t do anything about it – he’s got to save you, but he knows there’s nothing he can do.

You didn’t make it…

Dustin’s fingers are trembling as he fists them into the gray sweater he’d shrugged into for battle and tries to convince himself that you’re okay.

Maybe it’s not even you making those awful sounds, maybe you lost the radio somewhere, escaped whatever the hell is happening on the other end of the line, and are headed back to them as they speak. Maybe you just got sidetracked and you’re about to come pounding down the back door, screaming to be let in.

Maybe he’ll wake up in a second and discover this was all just a terrible dream and none of this ever happened. Chrissy’s not dead, Vecna’s not real, and everything is sunshine lollipops and rainbows.

Maybe maybe maybe…

After a moment that feels like an eternity, the sounds finally stop, and then there is nothing but white noise – Dustin can’t breathe.

Eddie hits the button on the side of the walkie, cutting the static and speaking your name into the silence. His voice is uneven and immediately betrays the facade of his calm.

Nothing.

Once more, he presses the button and calls your name, same tone – same wavering lilt in his voice.

“–come in…”

Static.

Dustin can’t decide if he’s about to vomit or burst into tears.

“Eddie–” he starts, unable to keep his voice from quavering with emotion, “What—what do we do?”

But Eddie doesn’t hear him, or he just plain ignores him, and Dustin’s heart is in his throat for it. For lack of anything better to do, he asks again.

“Eddie, what do we do?”

Silence.

The muscles in Eddie’s jaw flex as he grits his teeth, and the walkie-talkie begins to tremble in his hand. He inhales sharply in a highly disturbing way that leaves Dustin suddenly half afraid that he’s about to come apart at the seams.

He hates this he hates this he hates this — why did Eddie tell you to run? Why couldn’t you make it back to them? Why won’t Eddie just talk to him?

Dustin hiccups and seizes Eddie by the sleeve of his jacket, tugging hard on him, like somehow, it’s going to snap him out of whatever trance he’s in, like somehow it’s going to bring you back.

“Eddie–!” He cries.

Eddie wrenches his arm free and shushes him harshly, calling your name once more, louder this time, failing entirely to keep his voice steady.

He has officially lost his cool.

“–Come in, Baby… come in, come in, come in Goddammit! We really need a sign of life here…” he pleads, growing more frantic by the second, fisting his hand in his hair and breathing hard like he can’t get enough air, “I-I need— I need a sign. Just give me a sign – just tell me you’re okay … Baby, please—”

BOOM.

Their heads snap up toward the sound like meerkats moving in tandem as an air of doom settles heavily over the room, slicing through any kind of premature settling grief.

They’d been so worried about what was happening with you that they’d conveniently forgotten to be afraid for their own lives. Just because they are inside does not mean they are anywhere within the arena of safety.

As if to punctuate that fact, outside, the screen door begins to rattle loudly on its hinges like it’s caught in a hurricane. It thrashes and whines against the barrage of whatever is happening just outside the door before there is the scream and pop of it being torn away entirely.

The bats are through their defenses.

“Eddie?”

“...Oh, shit…”

BOOM.

The front door rattles under the duress of the bats all hurling their weight against it, scratching and clawing and beating their wings in a frantic attempt to get in.

“Eddie!”

“Oh, shit!”

The clock is ticking. Phase Two is now in effect, and it’s time for the pair of them to get the hell out of Dodge, but you’re not here, and you’re not answering.

BOOM.

They’re swarming the trailer, scrambling all over the reinforced tin siding, and scratching at the windows.

They have to get out of here. They’re going to die if they stay, but they can’t just leave you. Steve explicitly told them not to be heroes, but somebody has to do something.

BOOM.

Dustin never should have brought you into this, he should have left you alone, kept you far removed from this place and everything that goes with it. You have no business in the Upsidedown, he has no business in the Upsidedown. What the hell does he think he’s doing here? He’s not a hero, he barely made it through the last three times this happened, with the Demogorgon, with D’art, the Mindflayer – he’s just a kid… then again, kids always make it out of horror movies, don’t they?

BOOM.

Then again, maybe not.

“What do we do?” Dustin yelps, flinching hard against the way the door bends inward ever so slightly before snapping back into shape, “—Eddie, what do we do?!”

BOOM.

This time the sound comes from the other end of the trailer, from Eddie’s bedroom – the ceiling is shaking.

Before Dustin can stop to consider why that is happening and what that means for them, Eddie is a blur, sprinting down the hall faster than Dustin has ever seen any one person move.

He reaches the open door the moment the ceiling caves in.

Suddenly, there is a mess of leathery writhing bodies fountaining down into the room like water rushing from a burst pipe. He is vaguely aware of screaming as a flurry of wings and talons rear up in the room beyond.

They’re in the house. Dustin thinks, Jesus Christ, we’re gonna die down here…

Eddie reaches for the doorknob, and something reaches back, rearing up and knocking into him hard enough to send him sprawling backward.

For a terrifying moment, Eddie stays down and Dustin stands frozen, watching with unbridled terror as he thrashes and writhes beneath the thing that has him pinned – a bat, easily the size of a bulldog — snapping and biting and doing everything in its power to make a meal out of him.

Dustin hasn’t even realized he’s even moved before he watches his foot collide heavily with the bat. Its features cave in and squelch grossly around the toe of his sneaker before bouncing off and back into the room.

He has no idea how or when he crossed the room, but suddenly he’s got his hands in Eddie’s jacket and is trying to pull him back down the hall.

He can’t save you, wherever you are, but he can save Eddie — or at least he can try.

Eddie surges forward out and grips the knob, whipping the door shut with a heavy slam before falling backward onto his ass, taking Dustin down with him.

For half a moment, it’s all either of them can do but sit there on the floor in stunned silence, gasping for air.

Dustin’s still got his hands fisted in Eddie’s jacket, holding him to the spot where he’s half pressed against him, leaning back over him where he landed. He’s a lot heavier than he looks.

“Holy shit.” Eddie grinds out between breaths, “Christ, that was fucking nuts — did you see that?”

Dustin nods, though only because he can’t breathe well enough yet to speak.

When he fails to provide a verbal answer, Eddie twists around to look at him, eyes as wide as dinner plates and rolling in terror.

“Are you okay? You good?”

Dustin can’t decide how to answer that — no, he is absolutely not okay, but he’s alive, which is more than he thinks he can say for the bat he just spiked into the far corner of Eddie’s bedroom.

He opens his mouth to answer but the sound dies in his throat when he notices the thick trickle of blood bubbling up from a deep gash in Eddie’s forehead, oozing down to collect and drip from the end of his nose.

It turns Dustin’s stomach.

“You’re bleeding.” He gasps, more a general statement of gut-wrenching terror than anything else.

Eddie’s brows inch toward one another, disturbing the wound between them. He reaches up with a shaking hand and he wipes at the bridge of his nose – his fingers come away stained crimson, and it leaves a hollowed-out look splashed across his features, the same one Dustin can feel gnawing at his insides.

That thing went for his face … it tried to eat his goddamn face.

BOOM.

The front door heaves under the until-then-forgotten duress of more bats, still trying to get at them, and wrenches them back into the moment. There’s no time to assess the gravity of the situation, just how well and truly fucked they before the bedroom door shudders – a violent response to the question before that sees Eddie scrambling backward an inch.

Dustin doesn’t blame him. It’s well past time they got the hell out of here.

All around them, the doors continue to rattle on their hinges – bedroom door, front door, and now the bonus of the side door, all bending and creaking, somehow miraculously keeping their shapes under the violent battery of the things desperately trying to get in – the things that want to eat them.

Before Dustin realizes what’s happening, Eddie pulls him to his feet and back through the length of the trailer, and suddenly he’s standing bathed in a pool of golden light.

He flinches and recoils as something long and cylindrical hits him in the face — thankfully it’s only the bedsheet rope. He realizes with a start that he’s standing below the gate, looking up into the relative safety of the real world just beyond.

Yes, of course that’s where they should go, because that’s where the bats are normal sized and not inclined to eat faces, but suddenly there is the nagging press of the question: what are they going to do about the bats once they get up there?

How are they going to stop them from following them through?

“Go on,” Eddie says quickly, wiping hopelessly at the blood coating his face, all he does is smear it, “Get up there.”

Dustin just stands there, blinking back at him.

He’s frozen to the spot, unable for the life of him to make his legs move as he watches the blood bubble up from the wound in Eddie’s forehead and leak down into his eyebrow.

That thing went for his face. Jesus Christ, it literally tried to bite his face off! Things like that are not supposed to happen to them. Other people get killed – Barb and Mews, Bob Newby, Billy Hargrove and all the people who were assimilated by the Mindflayer, but not them — they’re kids in a horror movie, they’re supposed to be safe!

“Dustin–!” Eddie snaps, seizing him by the shoulders and shaking him, effectively cutting off the long tide of panicked blubbering Dustin hadn’t realized he’d devolved into, “Stop talking and climb the rope!”

When he still doesn’t react, Eddie takes matters into his own hands and gets under him, boosting the boy on his shoulders with only the slightest grunting effort.

One thing about Eddie is that he’s a lot stronger than he looks.

Dustin seizes the rope and clings to it if only so he won’t fall flat on his face.

“Get your ass up there, Henderson.” Eddie snaps from below, giving him a hard shove for good measure.

It makes the rope swing and Dustin is half surprised when it doesn’t disrupt the gravitational rift and cause the whole thing to come falling through.

It holds, because it has to, and Dustin climbs because there’s nothing else to do.

Hand over fist, inching up as quickly as he can while the thrashing against the doors intensifies.

He tells himself that this is all part of the plan, as terrible a plan as it suddenly seems. Stick to the plan. That’s what Steve said, no matter what, stick to the plan… and don’t get killed – Eddie added that little zinger out of what Dustin had assumed was fatalist humor, but right here at this moment, it’s the driving force to get him up that rope as fast as humanly possible.

Through one side and out the other, he flops gracelessly to the squeaking mattress below and tucks immediately into a barrel roll, clearing the way for Eddie to come crashing down after him – he never arrives.

The rope stands swaying — empty — and when he inches forward to look back through the gate, there Eddie remains, standing on the other side staring up at him – or is it down? He’s still not sure, not that it really matters, because they don’t have time for him to sit and work that out.

“Let’s go – we gotta go!”

Something solid and clunky comes flying up/down through the gate, narrowly missing Dustin’s head and scaring the hell out of him. For half a terrifying moment, he thinks it must be a Demobat, screaming in to herald his violent and imminent death.

He lurches back as he follows the arc of the thing, then stands staring at it where it's landed — it takes him a moment too long to realize it’s the walkie-talkie.

It takes an even longer moment for him to realize that he doesn’t understand what’s happening.

“Eddie – what…?” Dustin begins, and then when he looks up, he sees the blade gripped in Eddie’s hand – his stomach heaves, “What are you doing?” the words barely manage to squeak their way out of Dustin’s throat — his tongue feels fat and clumsy in his mouth.

He knows exactly what Eddie is doing: he’s buying him a little more time, he’s going to get you from wherever the hell you’ve ended up — he’s making a big goddamn hero out of himself.

In the Upsidedown, with the doors rattling on all sides, still bleeding from where one of the Demobats had just tried to make a meal out of him, Dustin watches helplessly as Eddie seizes the rope with his free hand.

“Eddie — don’t—!”

He slashes out and there is the quick sound of tearing fabric as the bed sheets split. For a brief moment, it hangs suspended, quivering as the dual gravity struggles to decide what to do. When they finally pull away from each other, torn ends trail like extended fingers, desperately reaching for one another.

The rope drops over Dustin’s hand and down to the floor in a smooth, cotton pile, and he watches helplessly as Eddie gives him one final look before disappearing.

Dustin scrambles for something to do, somewhere to go. Somehow, he’s got to get back up there, but the predicament of how to ascend twelve feet into the ceiling without the use of a rope or ladder is an impossible one to solve.

He’s got to do something, he’s got to save Eddie — what was the point of the last week if Eddie gets himself killed down there? What was the point of any of this if he can’t save him?

In a fit of desperation, Dustin seizes the walkie talking and jams the button with his thumb, screaming down the line for you — you’ll know what to do, you always know what to do — you’ll fix this.

Dustin’s voice is frantic as he screams your name, and begs you to pick up — Eddie didn't follow him through the gate.

Eddie’s going to die down there.

#okay I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine I’m actually very much not fine #eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 3 hours

Text

Cruel Summer - Part 14

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 8k

warnings: fluff, allusions to sex/sexual content, swearing, slight angst (Edward J. Munson continues to be the most dramatic person on the planet) mentions of Barb's death/violence

a.n.: this was a much longer chapter that I had to split up for the sake of my sanity - taglist continues to be broken, sorry chat! if you would like to stay updated you should probably just follow me at this point because we're seriously almost done here

It takes you much longer to make it back to the trailer than it had to leave it behind, simply because Eddie can’t stop himself from pulling you close every couple of steps to kiss you again. Long, sloven presses of lips and swiping tongues begging for passage between your mouths. It’s all teeth and ragged breath and soft touches and the honest-to-God biblical revival of unchecked teenage hormones.

You have to get back, this he knows very well, but now that he’s got you back, he just can’t stop loving on you. Kissing you has always been too easy - as natural as breathing, and you’re such a receptive lover – always have been, from the very start.

And it’s not like you’re doing much to stop him, giggling and pushing against his chest without any real intention of separating yourself from him. Breathless insistences of “we really need to get back” that don’t mean anything at all when you’re fisting your hands in his jacket and pulling him right back to you for another round.

Not that Eddie’s complaining. He’s too busy fighting the overwhelming urge to bend you over right here in the underbrush.

The only thing really stopping him from popping the button of your jeans and wrestling you out of them is the nagging threat of his inner voice reminding him what a patently bad idea that is, because “that’s how you get killed in a horror movie”.

It’s the only reliable basis of logic anymore. As far as Eddie is concerned, over the course of a very short week, his life has inexplicably devolved into the plot of a bad horror movie, which, in this scenario, regrettably makes you the horny couple who gets slaughtered whilst bunnyfucking out in the woods.

As appealing as that sounds, he’s not about to let that happen.

Because you hate a cliche and you have to get back, for reasons that are extremely hard to rationalize when you’re pressed up against him and making all those pretty little sounds.

Eddie casually catches your southbound hands before they can find their way to his belt buckle and expertly replaces them on his shoulders, tut-tutting the way you whine out your displeasure with the move.

Bad girl, he thinks, Needy girl.

It’s the honeymoon phase and then some, a speedrun of that long expanse of ooey—gooey fairytale bliss that sees the both of you unable to keep your hands off of each other. Only this time around it’s not the halls and alcoves of Hawkins High witnessing your very public displays of affection, but the trees and the whirling cosmos and everything beyond that Carl Sagan ever promised – it’s super fucking romantic.

You spent the duration of the not-so-long walk back making your own, much more tangible promises.

“I love you,” You tell him for what must be the hundredth time, eager to make up for lost time.

“I know,” Eddie assures you, cradling your face and ducking down for the next in a long line of all the kisses he owes you for every time you say it. “But we gotta go.” he says against your lips, “Harrington’s gonna be pissed.”

You whine pathetically. It’s a muffled sound that Eddie feels more than he hears.

Normally that would have been enough to sway him considering you’re usually the one with the functioning brain, and he’s the raging pit of electric hormones,

Still, hearing you all needy like that tends to cause the rational part of Eddie’s brain to shut off. Many occasions of you pawing at him just like that have ended with a thick and wanton utterance of “aw hell” that sees Eddie throwing caution —and very often, your panties— to the wind.

But this is neither the time nor the place (though more the former than the latter, because it would not be the first time you’d gotten your rocks off out in the woods – horny teens don’t tend to make smart decisions about location when the mood strikes them that hard).

Still, one of you has got to retain some of your faculties, because you really do need to get back, despite the way his lizard brain doth protest.

Get back? Where? Harrington who? What’s he so goddamn pissed about and who even cares?

“More,” You plead, and you always get what you want with him.

“Okay,” Eddie says, lips clicking with a lewd, wet smack when he parts with you, “One more for the road.”

He didn’t need to even give you that kind of permission, because you’re already chasing him again the second he parts from you.

“Okay,” You hum, snaking your arms up around his neck and pressing yourself bodily against him, backing him into the tree he hadn’t realized was behind him until the bark is digging painfully into his spine.

He doesn’t care, not when you’re rubbing up against him like that.

You’re both so unbearably gross and horror movie logic be damned, Eddie just can’t help himself.

“Maybe just one more.” He hums, hand snaking unwisely up the back of your shirt to twist at the clasp of your bra.

“Okay,” You sigh into his mouth.

When you finally make it back to the park, stealing across the grounds hand in hand, all smiles and giggles and clothes pulled out of shape like kids stumbling home well past curfew, Steve is indeed raging.

He’s there to whip the door open and bathe you in the accusing orange glow of incandescent light that has you balking as you come clambering up the steps. His looming, perfectly coiffed figure is almost comedic, backlit in the doorway with his hands on his hips, literally tapping his foot, and he’s quick to lay into you like he thought he was your goddamn father or something – not Eddie’s father, of course, which would have been an arguably terrifying turn of events, and not even much like your father, who Eddie has still never met, and at this point is not entirely sure he ever will.

He’s not even sure your parents really know he exists outside of general rumor – they certainly don’t know what he does with their daughter out in the woods, considering they barely acknowledge the fact that you exist.

That’s fine by him, it just means he gets you all to himself.

Steve grabs you by the elbow and yanks you over the threshold and back into the warm, cozy embrace of home – what good is a house when you’re all the home Eddie needs – already halfway through a lecture about how you’ve been gone “way longer than ten minutes” and demanding to know “what the hell took you so goddamn long” because, in case you haven’t noticed, the fate of the world is oh so casually resting on your collective shoulders.

Not that any of that currently matters, Eddie isn’t listening. He’s completely blissed out, far too busy watching with wrapt attention as you pull your pretty pink, kiss-bitten lips in past your teeth in a miserable attempt at trying not to smile while Steve goes blue in the face.

It’s so unbearably You, though he thinks perhaps only as a result of him rubbing off on you in the worst way – or in the best way, who can say? – giggling in the middle of a dressing down, really playing into the hand you’ve been dealt.

Christ, you’re adorable … and you love him.

You love him you love him you love him – and he loves you, he should tell you - no, he needs to tell you…

It takes every bit of Eddie’s limited capacity for self-control not to seize you and drag you right back to him. He’s not finished loving on you just yet – he quietly hopes that there will never come a time when he’s ever finished.

He’s never been the type to give a second thought to laying a big sloppy kiss on you in front of whoever the fuck happens to be watching, but he knows how public displays of affection make you uncomfortable and he’s not so love-drunk that he can’t respect your boundaries.

He cannot, however, stop smiling. He knows he’s got to look a goddamn fool, grinning ear to ear like the fate of the world and all their lives don’t hang in the balance — his face is starting to hurt.

He hasn’t realized how he’s missed that until now, the cramping of his facial muscles against something he’s powerless to resist.

There’s an entire conversation going on in front of him without his knowledge – he couldn’t repeat a word anyone has said in the past five minutes if someone put a gun to his head, but he could talk endlessly about all the soft little noises you’d been making only a short while back.

He could go on about those for days, write tomes of essays and sonnets waxing poetic about them, but the loud shouting voice of Dustin returning to the room from whatever odd corner of the trailer he’d been hiding in cuts the lecture thankfully short.

“There you are!” He squawks, stomping out from the hall.

He’s standing there looking suddenly very small dressed in an overlarge grey sweatshirt and the deconstructed pieces of the Gilley suit someone had thought to grab from the War Zone. It is his carefully selected uniform for bat-tle, as he’d put it back in the field – you’d booed and hissed at the audacity of such a terrible pun, much to Henderson’s patent chagrin.

“Do you have any idea how long you two were gone? We were worried sick!” He squawks.

“Now, where have I heard that before?” You hum, casting a sly, sidelong glance in Eddie’s direction before squeezing past Dustin to disappear down the hall toward the bathroom so you can wash the woods off of you.

“You know your shirt’s on inside out,” Dustin calls moodily after you. “And backwards,”

You ignore him.

Eddie watches you go and gets a little lost in the familiar swaying of your gait. Suddenly he’s back at school, watching you skip away down the hall toward your next class, the tantalizing promise of later hanging in the air. You glance back at him and smile sweetly, and he’s instantly shot full of holes.

You love him, you love him, you love him.

“Eddie!” Dustin grouses, drawing him back to the close quarters and warm, incandescent glow of his living room — and he realizes, once again, he’s missed every word of the boy’s outraged spiel, “Are you even listening to me?”

“Sure am.” Eddie lies.

Dustin narrows his eyes.

“Then what did I just say?”

He shrugs and shoves past him as he spies the carefully folded pile of items from the jaunt to the army surplus store, though more specifically one decidedly metal bandolier sitting in a burnished brass pile on the dining table.

It sets Eddie’s magpie brain to fluttering and he’s reaching for it before he’s even realized he’s moved.

“No idea,” Eddie says good-naturedly, clapping a hand fondly down on the top of Dustin’s head as he passes him by.

He can feel the boy’s eyes on him, turning to follow as he saunters across the room.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Dustin demands.

“Not a thing, Henderson,” He assures him, electing to snatch the belt up rather than confess the undying overwhelming vice of puppy love he’s gripped in.

He turns the thing over in his hands, eyeing it with great interest - it’s just about the coolest damn thing he’s ever seen.

"You sure about that?"

"Hundred percent," Eddie says, "Everything's just fine."

After that, it’s twenty-five minutes or so of finishing touches before Eddie slinks off to his bedroom.

Everyone has armed themselves in some kind of battle garb, armor picked up from the War Zone for the impending task, but nobody had thought to grab anything for you. It hadn’t even crossed their mind because back then you didn’t need any sort of protection, not while the most you’d been expected to do was stand watch in the living room for any curious onlookers come to peek in on the murder scene at the Munson residence.

Now, with such a daunting task ahead of you, Eddie knows you’re going to need all the help you can get. So he upends his dresser drawers, looking for something — anything that might put some kind of a barrier between you and the flurry of teeth and claws that await you.

Steve’s already returned the battle vest, decidedly worse for wear but not bad enough to be decommissioned, and Eddie fully intends to swathe you in it. It’s not much, but it’s better than the same torn jeans and old t-shirt you’ve been wearing for the last three days. It’s something, at least,

His room is dark compared to the rest of the trailer. It hadn’t seemed like a smart thing to go flipping on any more lights, on the off chance that someone noticed and decided to come snooping. He doesn’t mind much, considering his aversion to flipping on the overhead light in the first place – Eddie much prefers the ambiance of the table lamp, and he is well-practiced in navigating the dimly lit space

The front room is abuzz with noise and ambivalent movement. Voices filter in and out and saturate the room in the warm glow of company, the aural equivalent of the incandescent bulbs burning overhead.

It reminds Eddie of something he has only felt very few times in his life: what it feels like to belong, to be a part of something, even if that something is nothing more than camaraderie forged in the face of impending doom. Somehow he can’t find it in him to be worried about it, not while he’s among friends.

The mere thought of the word brings a bitter scoff rising up from the deepest part of his chest, and he has to work very hard to swallow it back down again.

It’s what gets him more than anything, more than the danger of the Upsidedown or the armed hicks crawling the streets, hungry for his blood – it’s that after everything he’s been through over the past few days, suddenly he’s back home and (relatively) safe, because of his friends.

Not Gareth or Jeff or Adam or even Wayne, but astoundingly thanks to Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley, and Dustin (less baffling but still bizarre) —his strange collection of new friends, who put their lives and reputations on the line to find him and bring him back from the precipice, despite barely knowing him.

It’s more than a little jarring, and Eddie isn’t quite sure how he feels about it.

Whatever the feeling is, it’s largely a positive thing. He’s glad they’re all here – and it goes without saying that he’s glad you’re here.

He’d say it anyway.

He’s glad you’re here when you have every reason not to be, but you’d promised that you loved him even when you hated him, which actually might have hurt his feelings if he wasn’t so goddamn relieved to hear it.

Without you, he’s not sure he would have such a strange new group of friends rallying around him, embracing him.

And maybe that’s not a fair assumption. Maybe Dustin had more of a hand in facilitating his rescue than he’s accounting for— credit where credit is due and all that — but Eddie will be the first to admit that he’s totally and completely biased. You’re far and beyond his favorite person here, and he’s not shy about admitting that.

The thing he really hates to admit, however, is that he’s glad you’re coming with them to the other side – which seems stupid.

He was being smarter when he was angry that you were crazy enough to go volunteering yourself to play the bait, but hadn’t he spent the duration of the last jaunt to the Upsidedown bombarding you with psychic postcards? Wish you were here doesn’t even begin to cut it.

He almost forgets to care about how aggressively he’d rejected the idea of you putting your life on the line only a few hours ago because when it came down to it, that’s what it took to win back your love.

Not that he ever really lost it in the first place (and not that he actually knew that) but Boy Howdy hadn’t you done your utmost to tow that line and make him work for it?

If only Eddie had known it would be that easy – it wasn’t easy, it was the worst suffering he’s ever experienced – he wouldn’t have fought so hard to keep you from running headlong into peril.

More than that, if he had any idea of what the two of you were going to get up to on your walk back through the woods, he would have thrown you to the wolves and jumped right in after you.

Maybe not, but the sentiment feels dramatic and appropriate for the status quo as it currently stands.

Danger, it seems, has become his new middle name. Or maybe it’s yours, considering you’re the one who keeps getting him into these situations … except that’s only true because Eddie initially dragged you into all this, so maybe the name belongs to the both of you.

Maybe you married into the name and now you’re Mr. and Mrs. Danger.

It’s a stupid thought, and it makes him laugh.

Snickering to himself in the dark, Eddie upends the last of his drawers and makes a mental note to tell you that joke after all this — if either of you survives this, that is.

It’s a dismal thought that makes quick work of chasing away any sense of the levity he’d felt moments before.

Once he’s satisfied with the excavation of everything he owns, Eddie lays out a series of choices across the stark bed: the first-generation Hellfire shirt, the black one with the short sleeves and white collar, a grey Hawkin’s Phys. Ed shirt with “Munson” scrawled across the nameplate in obnoxiously large print (his old gym clothes), and a super faded Misfits tee he’s had for years and years.

None of them are particularly significant, only that they are some of the only clean articles of clothing he could find, and he wants you to have options.

He wouldn’t presume to make the decision for you, because somehow this feels important, as silly as that seems. You deserve to choose what kind of armor you’re going to wear to herald the doom they bring to Vecna.

Eddie finds you in the kitchen with Steve, running through a series of stretches, learning tips and tricks on how to breathe so as best to oxygenate your muscles, and having the very basics of general athleticism explained to you.

It’s a lifetime of athletics boiled down to a five-minute lecture – Eddie only catches the tail end of it, but it’s riveting stuff.

“The worst thing you can do when you’re running hard like that for distance is start to hyperventilate – you know, gasping for air,” Steve tells you, and Eddie half expects you to roll your eyes and make some snappy remark about being molly-coddled like that, but oddly enough all you do is nod.

For once, you’ve got nothing snide to say – remarkably, Steve has your undivided attention, and even he seems a little unsure of what to do with it as he continues.

“If you start in with that, you won’t be able to catch your breath and you’re gonna pass out.” He says matter-of-factly, “If you pass out, you’re dead, you got that? That’s worse than a worst-case scenario, that’s a game over.”

“Yikes,” Eddie can’t help himself from saying, summarily drawing your attention.

In the span of a microsecond, you go from serious as a heart attack and nodding like your life depends on it – which it very likely does – to dopey grinning, staring wistfully up at him with honest-to-god heart eyes.

Eddie wonders if you and Steve can hear his heart beating against his ribcage.

Just like that, the lesson is over, because now that Eddie is here, Steve is never going to get your attention back.

“Sorry to butt in,” He says tentatively, curling his hands around your shoulders, “D’you mind if I borrow Barry Allen here for a second?”

Steve levels him with a blank if not highly irritable look as the reference sails clear over his head.

Harrington, Steve: Fucking jerk Not so bad, I guess. Worshipped by Henderson. Doesn’t know who Ozzy Osbourne is. Total fucking cheeseball. Has apparently never heard of The Flash.

You, thankfully, are not so hopelessly ignorant.

“Nerd.” You scoff, shoving Eddie playfully – then you notice the thousand-yard stare gracing Steve’s features, and you’re quick to explain, “Barry Allen is–”

“I don’t care.” He says – it doesn’t feel mean so much as deeply uninterested, “Just try to remember what I told you.”

“Sure. Don’t pass out.” You say with a lopsided shrug.

“Exactly. And no more sneaking off.” Eddie can’t help but get the sense that the second part is more for him than you, especially with the knowing look Steve gives him.

He just can’t help but tease him a little.

“No need,” Eddie says, curling his arms around you and jerking his head back down the hall. “Bedroom’s right back there, Big Boy — care to join us?”

“Oh, gross—”

“For the love of…”

Steve rolls his eyes and breathes the beginnings of a long-suffering sigh – Eddie is quick to let him off the hook.

“I’m kidding.” He assures the both of you.

You shove your way out of his arms and Steve shakes his head, in a clear attempt at trying to mask how visibly relieved he is to hear it.

“Yeah well, who can ever tell with you two,” he says, reaching out to clap Eddie on the shoulder before turning his attention to all the other hundreds of little preparations that still need to be made.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You call indignantly.

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve replies, “Your shirt’s on backwards, by the way.”

After that, it takes no effort at all for Eddie to coax you down the hall. Back in the relative dark of his bedroom, you choose the Hawkins Phys. Ed shirt graffitied with his name, and he can’t help but puff up a little with the warm glow of satisfaction for the choice as he watches you shrug out of your clothes.

Out of one shirt and into another, both of them his – the forest green gym shorts are yours, though, and it’s only pure happenstance that they’d gone unnoticed when he packed you away last fall. Stuffed into the back of the drawer they remained, since who knows when – from one of the hundreds of times you’ve slept over, he’s sure.

It feels a little bit like fate, if he believed in such a thing. Like they’d sat waiting for you, knowing you’d need them here and now, the matching pair to Eddie’s old gym shirt.

Once the shorts are tied tight and the shirt is over your head, you pull it taught by the hem to regard the chicken scratch scrawling of Munson with what he hopes is satisfaction.

Good, he thinks. Let the name do some good for once, let it shield you from anything that means you harm. Everything means you harm down there, even the air you breathe, but he can’t think about that right now, lest he succumb to his wits and try once more in vain to talk you out of this.

At least this way he can wrap himself around you, make a shield of his things.

“How’s that feel?” Eddie asks tentatively, watching you turn to regard yourself in what bit of the mirror you can see around Sweetheart.

You level him with a dour look.

“Like gym class.” You answer, flapping your arms at your sides matter-of-factly, “Why do you still have these?”

Eddie shrugs, pushing up from where he’s been sitting on the edge of the box spring with one leg tucked neatly beneath him.

“‘Cause I’m full of school spirit, remember?”

You roll your eyes.

“Right. How could I forget? You’ve got pep in your step.”

“Go Tigers.”

Eddie holds his battle vest dutifully in place so you can fit your arms through the holes, then pulls it snugly around you like a worn, patchy, denim hug – you’re swimming in it, and normally it would be incredibly endearing, but his heart is suddenly thumping solidly in his chest, and his insides are churning.

The fear is creeping in again.

“Anyway, have a little respect, will you?” he says, poking at the scrawling of his name across your belly. “This is lucky.”

Your brows marry over your eyes, and it’s almost enough to distract from the gnawing dread settling into his bones.

“How d’you figure?”

“Munsons are resilient.” He explains, “We’re hard to kill,”

Like some kind of unwanted household pest, skittering around Hawkins and coming back time and time again no matter what this town does to try and eradicate them.

Like cockroaches, he thinks miserably, but of course, he won’t tell you that.

“Good for you, I guess,” You say, “But not all of us have the good fortune of being a Munson.”

It’s ever so slightly shocking, hearing you say that. He’s never heard anyone refer to his family name as being one of good fortune, and suddenly he doesn’t know what to do with that endearment.

Nobody wants to be a Munson. He imagines the way his mother must have panicked when she came to realize the terrible mistake she’d made in hitching her wagon to his father, but by then it was too late because he’d already taken root in her – Eddie had always been the ball and chain that stopped his mother from escaping the name, what it did to her…

No, nobody wants to be a Munson… but maybe it doesn’t have to be like it’s always been.

Eddie tilts his head left to press his shoulder to his ear as he considers the notion – then raises his hand to make a slow, gentle chopping motion down against your shoulder – one, then the other – summarily knighting you.

“I dub thee: Honorary Munson.” He teases.

You bite your tongue against the giggling suddenly bubbling up inside you and roll your eyes.

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” You say.

“Oh, so suddenly you’re the expert?”

“It’s just not very official, is all.”

He stares at you a moment, letting the words sink in and feeling his heart beat heavily against his ribcage.

Suddenly he can’t stop thinking about where you’d been this time last year, propped up against one another on the sofa in the next room.

Eddie had been sick as a dog that whole week, certain he was always just moments from death’s eternal embrace, and yet laying there with his head in your lap, watching some forgettable movie of the week, he was happy. Happier than he would have been stuffed into the van for sixteen hours, at least.

That’s all he ever wanted, a life of quiet intimacy, where everybody was content to mind their own damn business, leave you to your devices.

Let all his grand plans and schemes fall through, so long as it means he gets to spend the rest of his life doing nothing with you.

Filthy rich or dirt poor, he doesn’t care so long as it's with you.

That’s all he wants, all he’s ever wanted, and he’s been certain of that since way too early on in your relationship, and it was a problem.

You weren’t even friends yet the first time he lost himself in a flight of fancy over how the rest of your lives would play out – the milestones you’d hit together.

Eddie shrugs against the way his heart is in his throat as he makes quick work of removing the ring with the dark stone from his finger. He reaches for your hand and hopes you can’t see the way he’s trembling as he slides it easily back into place over your middle finger – it’s nothing really, you’d already asked him for that ring a year into your relationship and worn it proudly up until last summer.

All he’s doing is righting a wrong, putting something back where it belongs, but somehow, this time it feels more important than that. This time it feels like a promise.

“There,” He says gently, feeling unbearably vulnerable as he watches you closely for your reaction, “How’s that for official?”

You’re beaming as you bring your hand up to look at the ring, admiring the scuffed, dingy stone like it were some kind of glittering diamond he’d spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on rather than the forgotten heirloom he'd found stashed in a dusty corner of his grandmother’s house a hundred years ago.

“Cool.” You hum.

“So cool.”

He reaches up to pull the vest tighter around you again before he’s realized he’s even moved, and then suddenly Eddie’s got his arms around you, hugging you tight against his body — his natural state of being, it seems.

You respond in turn by burying your face into the crook of his neck and sighing against him as he presses his cheek to your temple.

For as long a moment as he dares, he just holds you like that while the fear creeps up again.

Don’t go don’t go please don’t go.

“Can I ask you something?”

Your response buzzes against his flesh and sends goosebumps crawling across his body.

“Always,”

Eddie’s hand comes down to trace the length of your arm, a gentle up and down, grazing the pads of his fingers along the soft and tender flesh he knows so well.

His insides go tight and squirmy, and he feels a potent cocktail of nerves and nostalgic shyness bleed into his bloodstream.

He never actually asked you out the first time around. You sort of just mutually fell into the routine of scrambling to spend every spare second you had with each other, until one day he looked up and your lives were woven together.

It feels stupid to suddenly be shy about it, but he can’t let you cross that gate without putting it out there, even if you say no, even if you laugh in his face.

Eddie clears his throat to try and steady his voice.

“When all this is over — if we make it out, I mean — can I take you to the movies or something?”

You don’t answer, not right away, but he feels you still against him in a way that makes his nerves scream. After an agonizing moment, your hands snake up to rest on his shoulders and you push against him, though not with enough force to dislodge you from Eddie’s grasp more than a few inches.

He grips you by your elbows and holds you there, reluctant to let you go until it is absolutely necessary as you lean back and stick him to the spot with a wry look — eyes narrowed, lips curled.

He knows you’re about to tease him, considering everything you’ve been through, but those nerves are quickly turning sour in his stomach and Eddie doesn’t think he can stand to hear you say something sarcastic right now, not when he’s teetering so close to the edge.

Why does it suddenly feel like if he lets you go he’ll lose you all over again? His eyes feel puffy with the notion, and you thankfully pick up on it, like you always do, reaching up to stroke the highest point of his cheek with the backs of your knuckles.

The scratchy fabric of your bandage tickles him and he swallows the ragged breath threatening to burst forth from his lungs.

Eddie clears his throat again to middling results before he continues.

“I bet that stupid Gremlins ripoff is still playing in the city…” He says thickly, then rolls his eyes and offers a lopsided shrug he hopes appears as casual as he means it to be, “I mean … unless you already saw it or whatever.”

“Critters.” You posit.

“Right.”

You shake your head.

“Haven’t seen it.”

“Right.” He says again, because it’s all he can do to stop himself from falling to his knees and begging you not to do this.

He’d do just about anything to make you stay here where it’s safe, even if that means marching himself into town and right into the hands of the Hawkins Police.

But that’s not gonna stop Vecna, and if they don’t stop him then there’s no point to any of this.

They need you there on the other side, and it's tearing him to little melancholy pieces.

Your lips quirk up into a wry if not entirely sympathetic smile.

“Are you asking me out, Munson?” You ask, gently teasing him in a dutiful attempt to try and leaven the mood.

Eddie forces out a thick, wet bark of laughter and tilts his head forward to rest against yours.

“Nah, no way. ‘Course not.” he sniffs, “What, d’you think I like you or something?”

You hum thoughtfully and twist your head to the side so that his forehead is pressed against your temple and take a long hard look at the ring sitting snugly on your middle finger. It’s the wrong one, but the intention is still there.

Same as before, same as he’d felt way too early on in your relationship, Eddie would marry you tomorrow if you’d have him – make a real Munson out of you and do it better than any of the previous generations before him ever managed to. Break the cycle and finally do things right.

Neither of you may be around to indulge in that whimsy tomorrow.

You wrinkle your nose.

“Yeah, you know, I kind of got that impression,”

“Well, that’s stupid.” Eddie rasps, “And gross.”

“So gross.” You hum, pushing up on your toes to slant your lips against his.

It's only a chaste peck, made a little less so by a cheeky swipe of your tongue against his bottom lip – it’s all you have time for before there is a rapping of someone’s knuckles against the door frame, cutting the moment short.

You drop back down and spin around to face whoever it is come to intrude on your moment – only Nancy, thankfully, lingering in the doorway. You stand in front of Eddie with your back against him, like you mean to shield him from prying eyes until he can collect himself again.

If she notices the way he quickly brushes the wetness from his eyes, she doesn’t mention it, because Nancy Wheeler is nothing if not entirely classy.

“It’s time, you guys.” She says softly, and Eddie feels his guts seize in terror.

As if you anticipated the feeling, you reach back and squeeze his hand, nodding curtly.

“We’ll be right out,” you promise.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sliding through the gate is probably the worst thing you have ever experienced in your entire life, made all the worse by the way you’d had to ask Eddie for a boost because you’ve always been hopeless at the rope climb and you’re not about to start down the journey of self-improvement now.

“Cheerleader-style,” you’d explained, showing him what position to get into when he asked how best to do that.

He’d rolled his eyes and taken your foot in his hands.

“That’s not Cheerleader-style,” He snarked, which made Steve choke on a surprised bark of laughter.

And that’s how you knew the world was well and truly coming to an end. Because Eddie made a stupid sex joke and it was enough to make Steve Harrington laugh.

You’re so, incredibly fucked.

The reverse suction of gravity pulling you down through at the highest point of the gate and turning your world topsy turvy is the second worst thing you’ve ever experienced, and it sees you landing hard on your ass on the other side.

Your fall was mercifully broken by the bizarro version of Eddie’s mattress — somehow more disgusting than its real-world doppelgänger — which Steve had thankfully thought to pull out from the other room.

You’d only just managed to slide off of the thing before Eddie came crashing down after you, landing gracelessly on his back with a hard thump mere inches from where you’d been only moments before.

Everything moves much too quickly after that.

You follow A Team out into the murky underdark waiting just outside the tin door and have to plant roots in the ground to stop yourself from turning right back around and going for the safety of the gate.

Suddenly, faced with the dark and the debris and the perpetual bloody thunderstorm, sitting watch and babysitting the hole in the ceiling doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. But it’s far too late to start thinking about changing your mind, especially when B Team comes shuffling down the front steps to see you off.

You distract yourself by playing Mother Hen, turning around to fuss needlessly over your boys.

Your boys, your precious boys…

You pull Dustin’s hood up and secure it in place with the headband he’d chosen to add to his armor, straighten the Gilley suit, and tweak his nose for good measure, garnering an indignant squawk from the boy before you move over to Eddie.

You’re less frantic with him, and you can feel his eyes on you as you pull the zipper of his army-grade vest tight up to the collar, the demon-faced logo of the Hellfire club winking out of existence as you do. You can’t help but smooth your hands across his chest, attempting in vain to press out the wrinkles there and banish your nerves alongside them.

It’s not enough, you think, this isn’t gonna stop anything from hurting him.

You have to heave a sharp, steadying breath to quell the sick feeling suddenly stirring in your stomach, and you tell yourself it’s better than nothing.

It’s certainly better than what you’ve got, which is to say nothing at all – at least he’s got layers to protect against scraping claws and gnashing teeth, he’s got a shield and one of those wicked-looking spears the Sinclairs had prepared back in the field while you’d wasted precious time goofing off.

You wish you had a suit of armor, but you’ve got to move faster than you ever have, you can’t afford to be weighed down by any more protective layers than a pair of cotton shorts, Eddie’s vest – you’re thankful to have it, it’s the next best thing to carrying him with you (along with the faintest tinge of Steve, regrettably) but somehow you know it’s not going to be enough if something down here decides to try and make a meal out of you.

You’re cold, at least you think you are, somehow simultaneously shivering under the heavy, dank chill of the Upsidedown and growing sticky with sweat in the cloying humidity.

This place is a fucking nightmare — this place is where Barb died.

Suddenly you can’t stop thinking about that night in ‘83, about the party she disappeared from. You don’t know much about it, only that it had been Tommy and Carol at Steve’s place — your old friends who had at the point only recently ejected you from their circle.

Barb was only there because they had a vacancy to fill in the form of Nancy, and she came along by default. Suddenly you can’t help but feel that if Eddie hadn’t waltzed in and turned your world upside down, you would have been at that party, and it probably would have been your face on all the missing person posters and milk cartons.

Barb would still be here, getting ready to take her SATs and live the rest of her life, and you would have been dragged screaming into the abyss, never to be seen again.

You’re thankfully rescued from the spiral of trying to determine how your karma tallies up against the guilt you feel over it and pulled from the mire of your thoughts by the sound of your name tumbling gently from Eddie’s lips.

When you glance up at him, he’s giving you a deeply concerned look, and you wonder how much of the journey through your thoughts had been reflected across your face.

You feel the corners of your mouth twitch in your best attempt at offering him a reassuring smile, but you know it doesn’t reach your eyes.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Eddie says.

“No, yeah of course. It’s gonna be fine.” You mumble, painfully aware of how the tremble in your voice betrays that statement, so you try again, “It’s gonna be fun.”

It’s not even convincing enough to come across as sarcastic — you’re terrified.

Then, like he’s only just remembered something vitally important, Dustin perks up and begins patting himself down, frantically fumbling in his pockets as you watch without really seeing. He produces a clunky black Casio, the kind with a calculator built into the face, and immediately goes to work strapping it to your wrist.

“I already set it up to count you down.” He explains, “All you have to do is hit start and go, it’ll keep us in sync.”

You swallow hard as you stare at it — you remember the year he got the watch for his birthday, how excited he was about all its features.

You’d thought it was unbearably sweet that he was so thrilled about a cheap watch from Melvald’s General Store, but you desperately wish you were back there now, timing Dustin to see how fast he could run around the block (the answer was not very fast at all, and he’d been royally pissed when Mike beat his time by nearly half.)

He nudges you to bring your attention back again, this time he’s holding a walkie-talkie out to you.

You take it and sling it around your shoulders.

“It’s gonna be fine,” You say again, somehow less convincing than before.

However, neither Eddie nor Dustin gets the opportunity to say otherwise because Steve is suddenly there, sending you leaping damn near out of your skin with the simple act of resting a tentative hand on your shoulder.

“You ready?” He asks.

No, you want to tell him, but your throat is closing up and you don’t think you could have squeaked out an answer even if you tried.

You swallow hard against the tightness there and nod.

“Okay,” He says solemnly, turning his attention to B Team - Team Distraction, “Keep your radios on – stay in contact, stick to the plan—”

“And don’t get killed.” Eddie pipes up, winking at you.

As you turn on your heel and trail after the others across the park, you curl your hands into fists and silently hope you can manage to do all of those things at once.

It takes every bit of willpower you possess not to turn around and look back – if you look back you’re going to lose what tiny bit of nerve you’d been able to muster – but you didn't look back the last time you’d walked away from Eddie, left him standing there at the foot of those stairs.

The radio crackles, at your hip, and through it comes Eddie’s voice, calling your name.

“–Copy.”

You snatch the walkie-talkie up so quickly that you nearly crack yourself in the mouth, twisting around and stumbling over your feet, almost crashing into Robin as you do.

“What’s up, Eds?” You answer.

You can barely see him out in the dark, but he’s still there, watching you go. You can’t make out his features, but somehow you know he’s grinning that stupid grin.

“You’re supposed to say over – over.” He teases, voice lilting in that same old sing-song tone.

You roll your eyes.

“What do you want, Eddie … over.”

“Just to tell you your butt looks great in those shorts –”

You’re instantly blushing as Robin makes a harsh sound of undainty laughter at your side.

“Eddie–!” you hiss.

“Over and out.”

It’s not a long walk to the Creel House, but it’s made that much shorter by the cloud of doom hanging over your head.

You’d always done your utmost to avoid the place, what with its reputation for being haunted. It’s eerie enough in the daytime, but here and now, with the darkness crushing in on all sides, you can’t help the chill that creeps down your spine.

When you were thirteen, you’d very nearly had a falling out with Carol Perkins, who was still your best friend at the time, over your refusal to enter the house on a dare.

With high school looming, she was at the start of a sudden and violent transition that would inevitably see her become the mean girl she is today. As such, she was subsequently worried that you were making her look bad in front of her cool new friends, who wanted absolutely nothing to do with you, but were still busy making up their minds about her.

She called you a pussy, and you happily accepted the title, staying safely outside of the house while the older girls all filed in to play with the Ouija board one of them had brought along.

Carol stayed with you, out of some lingering sense of misplaced loyalty, you imagine, and as a result lost some of the budding clout she so desperately craved from the others — from that day on to the eventual implosion of your so-called friendship three years later, she never let you forget it.

Knowing what you know now, pressed up against Nancy sitting crouched beneath the rotting jungle gym across the street, you can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief that you’d always had enough foresight to stay out of the house – Vecna’s home.

Suddenly, you think you can see movement. Figures skulking around in the dark on the third floor, a ghoulish face peering out at you from the attic window.

You tell yourself the house is empty, that Vecna isn’t up there, despite how patently untrue you know that to be. Part of you wants to take some sort of comfort in knowing that you won’t have to enter the house, but all you feel is the violent buzzing of your anxiety.

You gasp out loud when the radio crackles, slapping your hands over your mouth and startling yourself as much as your companions.

“B Team to A Team, do you copy?” Dustin’s voice comes rasping over the static.

You watch as Steve brings the radio up to his mouth without ever taking his eyes off of the house, you wish you were half as calm as he looked.

“Copy.”

“We’re all set back here – go for Phase One?”

“Ready when you are.”

You feel yourself break into a cold sweat.

Phase one means you’re one deck. This is all happening very fast – too fast, if anyone were to ask you. Nobody is asking.

Then, in the distance you hear the first crunch of chords, a rippling echo of a sound that knocks you on your ass, right back to nights and weekends at the Hideout and half a hundred other dingy dives across Roane County.

Your breath catches in your throat.

If you close your eyes, you imagine you could picture yourself sitting parked behind a slapdash Corroded Coffin merch table set against a far wall, piled high with t-shirts, bumper stickers, and boxes upon boxes of cassettes.

In your mind’s eye, Eddie leans into the microphone and introduces the band to middling enthusiasm.

“This one goes out to all the ladies,” he says, like he always does before the first song because of how you’d once expressed vehement disdain for front men who would dare do something so cheesy.

Your nerves are a swarm of bees in your bloodstream as you suck in a breath through chattering teeth and the sound continues, three descending notes that bleed into a quick, hard riff that shoots adrenaline like lightning down to the tips of your fingers.

It only takes you half a moment to realize you know this song, and the buzzing of your adrenaline surges, thought differently than before – blinding terror has suddenly bled away to be replaced by the kind of heart pounding excitment that comes from standing in the crowd at a rock concert.

Oh my God, You think, He’s so fucking cool…

It breathes a spark of courage into you, and with a series of short, deep breaths, you fill your lungs and ready yourself to move. Without the necessary prompting you’d all agreed upon, you scramble out from beneath the jungle gym much to Steve’s hushed chagrin.

You curl your hands into trembling fists as you pad across the grass out into the street, stopping just short of the curb and turning your gaze up at the looming Victorian. In the intermittent flashes of crimson lightning, you can see the bats crawling across its visage, like thousands of teeming maggots, squirming in the belly of a roadkill carcass.

You suck in a breath and hold it, watching, waiting.

Eddie’s guitar has piqued their interest, just as you’d planned for, now you’ve got to make sure they follow through with that curiosity and clear a path for Nancy and the rest.

Phase one is in effect – time to go to work.

#absolutely eating it up #love love love your writing! the description the tension the HUMOR TOO?#uughghghgh #eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 3 hours

Text

Cruel Summer Part 13

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 11.5k

warnings: swearing, descriptions of violence/the Demogorgon ate Barb, angst, fluff

A.N.: Happy Birthday to me and a very merry unbirthday to all of you! Thank you to everyone who sent such nice comments and asks after the last chapter, I really hope you all enjoy the update!!! if you see typos, no you don't :D

Dustin can’t decide who hates this plan more, Eddie or himself.

They’ll split into three teams, one at the Creel House to draw Vecna’s attention on this side, and two in the Upsidedown, one to lure the bats away from the house and hold them, and one to send the bastard to kingdom come while his guard is down.

Simple and more or less straightforward… until a very frustrating though decidedly no less valid question is raised: how do you know the plan is even going to work?

Which is to say, how are you going to make sure the bats will do what they’re supposed to and leave the house unguarded when Team Distraction turns the volume up?

Because if Dustin and Eddie can’t guarantee that their distraction will lure the bats — all of the bats — then Steve, Nancy, and Robin won’t be able to get into the house, and if they can’t get in the house, then they’re dead in the water before they’ve even begun.

As so often happens when the dark storm cloud of sobering truth rolls in on the horizon, they all come to the same simultaneous conclusion.

It strikes like a bolt of lightning in the distance — a brief purpling flash that is so sudden you can’t be sure it was even there until its presence is validated by the staggered clap of thunder following dutifully behind.

That’s what the realization feels like. Loud, pervasive, numbing. It leaves Dustin’s ears ringing in the hollowness it leaves behind.

One of you is going to have to get out there and do something to lure the bats away — one of you is going to have to be bait.

Naturally, nobody is exactly eager to throw their name into the running for that prestigious task, least of all Dustin, who is under no delusions about being an athlete of any capacity.

He’s a Hawkins Middle AV club alumnus for Christ’s sake, not exactly the picture of physical prowess.

The notion itself is enough to set something cold and heavy settling in the pit of his stomach, like something out of a stress-induced nightmare — he knows no one is going to ask him to be the bait, but there is still that nagging pressure of worry.

He can’t imagine what he’ll do if the task falls to him, he can’t imagine what any of you will do. More to the point, he can’t imagine any of you being stupid enough to willingly go and put your life on the line like that.

Only that is not expressly true. Steve would do something that stupid, and he doesn’t even have to imagine it as the older boy steps bravely forward into their Socratic huddle.

“I’ll do it,” He says, nodding solemnly like he’s just presented himself to steward the one ring to Mordor … though probably not, because Steve wouldn’t get that reference in the first place.

He’s not Frodo Baggins, he’s just a big brave dog too stupid to know when to stay quiet and save his own life.

Thankfully, the suggestion goes over more or less like a lead balloon.

“That’s not gonna work, Steve,” Nancy says, a messy halo of curls dancing about her features as she shakes her head, pursing her lips.

The sting of her rejection is immediately evident across Steve’s face, and Dustin has to wonder just how much of that bravery is actually just plain, old fashioned peacocking to try and impress her.

Even if it isn't, there is not much of an argument to be made against the refusal of his offer, considering the general consensus of the room is more or less in agreement with her.

It leaves him visibly deflated.

Dustin doesn’t fault him for suggesting he be the one to do it. It is nothing less than entirely on brand for Steve — big damn hero that he is — but in this specific case, it’s more of bonehead thinking rather than the noble gesture he imagines he thinks it is.

“Why not?” Steve presses, speaking to Nancy more than anyone else in the room, “I’ll lead them away and double back — it’ll take ten minutes tops.”

He makes a show of dusting his hands of imaginary grime before presenting her with his empty palms, impressing absolutely no one, Nancy especially.

“Yeaaaah…” Eddie says through his teeth, stretching the word like he knows he’s got something to say that Steve won’t thank him for, “Only that didn’t work so good for you last time, did it, Bud?”

His head lolls left to press his ear to his shoulder as he levels him with a knowing look, squinting at him and scrunching his features in a way that could almost be misconstrued as apologetic.

And he’s right, Steve does not thank Eddie for so graciously pointing out the shortcomings of his last expedition to the Upsidedown.

“Last time I wasn’t running away, Bud.” Steve deadpans, hurling the pet name back at him with perhaps a tad too much vitriol. “They caught me off guard, I’ll be ready for them this time.”

It does nothing to breathe any confidence into their group as a dissenting murmur passes through the cabin of the RV.

Dustin thinks deep down they all know they probably should let Steve do it, despite their misgivings.

He’s really the only one among them with the prerequisite skills for the job – all those sports he played – but there is still a glaringly obvious issue with that plan because Steve has already assigned himself a pivotal role, one Robin is all too happy to remind him of.

“Listen, Stevie.” She starts, “We all know you’re super impressive or whatever, but this is one thing we don’t need you Galahading yourself over — you’re supposed to be running point up at the house so Nancy can light Vecna’s ass up, remember?”

“Well, I don’t see anyone else volunteering.” He snaps, crossing his arms over his chest and making a point to scan the room in an expectant glare, suddenly towering over them like some kind of angry lighthouse sweeping the shoreline for signs of life.

Dustin does his best to shrink out of his line of sight when it passes over him.

He’s got no business volunteering for something like this, and even if he did, he’s already got his own job with Eddie, acting as his roadie of sorts — at least he thinks so, that’s how Eddie had described it and for his lack of expertise on the matter all he can do is agree.

If he had to pick someone, Lucas is probably the best substitute for Steve, but he’s got to stay with Max on this side just in case Vecna’s hold grows a little too tight and a musical intervention is needed.

It’s a moot point, anyway, because they’ve already left that group at the Creel House, and Dustin can’t feasibly see doubling back for them just because the plan has changed.

As far as he can tell, Steve is right, and there’s no one else left to be the bait.

“I can do it.” You offer then, speaking in a small, tentative voice from where you’ve tucked yourself in at the other side of the camper.

There is a shift in the group as everyone moves at once to find the source of the voice, staring in an almost stunned silence like they’d forgotten you were there.

Dustin feels his heart seize in his chest in a violent spasm that has his intestines responding accordingly.

Oh, God!

His eyes go wide as he whips around to regard you with something that can only stem from the gut-wrenching, pants-shitting terror he is suddenly gripped in.

Not you, anyone but you!

Beside you, Eddie mirrors the motion, head snapping up so quickly Dustin is half surprised it doesn’t roll right off his shoulders and across the length of the RV.

Under such tense scrutiny, you wilt ever so slightly, glancing nervously around the room, looking for any kind of a reaction.

And nobody outright rejects the suggestion like they had with Steve, much to Dustin’s abject horror.

“I’ll do it.” You say again, this time with a little more confidence, giving a subtle nod as if to punctuate the affirmation.

Dustin, of course, is ardently against it, but has found that he has been rendered suddenly and woefully mute by the complete and total shock of your suggestion.

Eddie is thankfully not caught in those doldrums, and he is all too happy to tell you exactly how he feels.

“Like hell you will,” He gawps.

For the lack of any higher functioning brain power, all Dustin can manage is a stupid, emphatic nodding, and when the initial shock begins to fade and more of his brain starts to switch on again, he searches the room for the naysayers of the earlier moment.

He waits for the dissenting murmur, the interjections from prevailing cooler heads going on to explain exactly why you cannot, in fact, be the bait, but they never come.

It’s just Eddie, telling you you’re crazy if you think he’s gonna let you get out there, and Dustin frantically nodding along like a goddamn bobblehead.

“Why not?” You demand, sounding almost offended that he would disagree.

“Because it’s a suicide mission.” Eddie presses, putting harsh emphasis on the last two words.

You narrow your eyes.

“Oh, please,” you start, but he doesn’t let you finish.

“Babe,” the pet name causes Dustin’s skin to prickle uncomfortably, Eddie doesn’t seem to notice, “You weren’t there, okay? You don’t know what’s down there–”

“Giant vampire bats?” You deadpan, quirking a brow.

He wires his jaw shut and glares at you.

“And a whole network of vines and tentacles and creepy crawlies that report directly back to the fucker himself,” He presses, only he doesn’t know the half of it.

“Not to mention the Demogorgon,” Dustin says.

The room reacts appropriately at the mention of the foe of their past.

You remain unimpressed where you stand, but Eddie twists slowly to regard Dustin with a highly suspicious look.

“...I’m sorry…” He begins slowly, “The what?”

Steve answers for him, dismissing the question with a vague gesture.

“It’s like I told you, Munson,” he says, “We’ve been through all this before,”

“Only this time, we don’t have the benefit of having a girl with—” Robin starts, but Eddie cuts her off.

“Superpowers, yeah, you mentioned — can we just circle back to that Demogorgon thing?”

“…that’s what happened to Barb.” Nancy says then, getting this strange, haunted look in her eyes as she speaks – the color drains from her face, “… what really happened…”

The room goes eerily silent, leaving Eddie fumbling to understand what such a cryptic comment could possibly mean.

He looks from face to face, confusion etching itself deeper and deeper into his features as he waits for someone to elaborate.

“What do you mean what really happened?” He finally demands.

They don’t have to say it, their silence speaks volumes — Barbara Holland’s disappearance had been big news for almost a year — almost bigger than Will’s disappearance, death, and subsequent resurrection.

An honor student ups and skips town out of the blue? Not a chance in hell, not Barb, at least.

As far as Dustin can tell from the hushed conversations he’d overheard his mother having, most people didn’t outright believe it, even if only quietly so.

They preferred to keep their heads in the sand and keep the horrific alternative to themselves: that something terrible had happened to Barb right there in their sleepy little town, and she was never coming back.

It's no wonder the good people of Hawkins had grown progressively more wary of things that didn’t expressly fit their happy little narrative over the last couple of years.

If only they knew just how right they were to be afraid.

Eddie blanches as it dawns on him – the bats aren’t the only thing down there that can and will eat you alive if you’re caught.

“Oh, shit.” He mumbles.

Then, like you hadn’t heard a thing they’d just said about the bestiary of horrors waiting for them on the other side, you shake your head.

“I don’t care what’s down there –” You scoff, dismissing the truth of Barb’s horrific and untimely demise with a flippant gesture.

Eddie whips back around to level you with an incredulous look – eyes out on stalks and as big as dinner plates.

“You gotta be kidding,” He stresses, “Didn’t you hear what they said? Something down there ate Barb.”

“Nobody said that.” You snap.

“Henderson—!” Eddie practically shouts, whipping around to glare at Dustin, though he hardly thinks the look is meant for him, especially with the way Eddie thrusts an accusatory finger back at you, “Tell her!”

“The Demogorgon ate Barb.” Dustin drawls.

Somewhere to his left, Nancy flinches and he can’t help but feel a pang of regret for putting it in such crass terms, but it is very important to him that you understand the ramifications of what you were about to do. The danger you are putting yourself in.

You roll your eyes in that same maddening way you always do that lets Dustin know exactly what you’re thinking – that this is all nothing more than D&D bullshit and that they’re blowing it out of proportion to try and scare you out of volunteering. He wishes it were as simple as all that.

He wishes that he wasn’t stuck thinking about the faceless horror that has haunted his dreams since that night in 1983 back at Hawkins Middle.

And then he feels eyes on him, boring holes into the side of his face. Dustin turns to find Eddie staring at him, brows pulled tight over his eyes, still wide and fearful as the question he doesn’t want to ask forms on the tip of his tongue.

It hadn’t occurred to Dustin that Eddie didn’t actually expect him to back him up like that, that he didn’t really believe that’s what happened. He was just being dramatic, like always, how was he supposed to know he was right on the money?

It’s visibly sobering, and Eddie clenches his jaw as the urge to ask about it escapes him, and he levels Dustin with a knowing look, nodding curtly.

Yes, the Demogorgon had, in fact, eaten Barbara Holland, as plain and simple and horrific a fact as that. Nothing more need be said about it.

And honestly, a lot more could be said, because that’s not even the worst thing that has happened since the Upsidedown came crashing up into their world, but somehow Dustin knows that nothing he says is going to be enough to deter you.

“Look, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m the only one who doesn’t have a part to play in this.” You huff.

You bet your ass you don’t.

You had, in fact, been excluded by design, because that’s the way Eddie wanted it, and Dustin was only happy to agree with him, much to your patent dismay.

Every single one of your arguments had come with just as many explanations as to why you couldn’t go — the least of which were that, despite the new bandages Karen Wheeler had wrapped your hand in, you’re still injured, just as you had stressed on the shore of Lover’s Lake the night before.

“So what?” Dustin huffs.

“So, it’s not fair.” You grouse, halfway to whining about it before Eddie shuts you down.

“Life’s not fair, Sweetheart,” He says. “The sooner you realize that the better.”

Harsh but true, Dustin thinks.

Anyway, what you said is not expressly true – you do have a job. An important job that keeps you very far removed from danger of any kind — you’re supposed to guard the gate in Eddie’s living room from this side in the unlikely event someone comes snooping, and you’re extremely unhappy about it.

Normally, that would fill Dustin with some sort of gut-wrenching guilt, but as far as he can tell he doesn’t give a shit about how you feel right now.

He only cares about keeping you safe.

You’d already sat arguing about it back in the field when the details of the plan were laid out, nearly spoiling what was just about the closest thing Dustin has experienced to a perfect moment with you in months — running around and playing in the grass in a fit of euphoric, childlike whimsy. It was almost enough to make him forget that there was anything wrong in the world.

That all came crashing down the moment Steve called you back to the camper.

“We really should have someone standing by in case the cops come poking around,” Dustin had tried to explain to your angry, pacing form after they’d broken the news that you were not invited to cross the gate with them. “A-and since you’re so good at thinking on your feet—”

It did nothing to soften the blow of rejection. You’d silenced him with an angry look and spent the next half hour quietly fuming in the furthest corner of the RV you could squeeze yourself into.

And now you’re volunteering to smear yourself in blood and go willingly into the lion’s den, and no one is disagreeing that it should be you. If that isn’t some form of cosmic justice…

That’s perhaps what distresses Dustin the most, that you’ve volunteered to go and die, and everyone is just going to let you do it.

In a shocking turn of events, suddenly he and Eddie are the only sane ones among you.

“This is ridiculous , you guys–”

“No, you’re not doing it.” Eddie says, slicing the air in a clipped gesture, “End of story. Harrington? Tell her.”

You scoff and open your mouth to protest the supposed finality of the statement, and by extension what Dustin can only imagine is a healthy dose of outrage over any kind of decision involving you being left up to Steve of all people, but he is quick to jump in before you can say anything.

“Steve!” He stresses, “Tell her!”

It catches him woefully off guard and Dustin watches as something a little closer to panic than he is comfortable with flashes across Steve’s features. Like being unexpectedly called on in class when you haven’t been paying attention.

Thick brows shoot up toward that immaculate hairline before bouncing back to furrow over Steve’s eyes.

He flexes his jaw and breathes in deeply through his nose, and after a moment’s hesitation, he finally opens his mouth to say… nothing. Dustin can’t believe it.

He could scream.

In all the time he’s known him, Steve has never been caught without some kind of a smooth one-liner, a witty comeback. Of all the time Dustin has known him, he has never once been rendered speechless.

There’s a first time for everything, sure, but why on God’s green Earth did it have to be now? It’s just bad timing.

Steve stands there, working his jaw like a gaping fish for another agonizing moment of deafening silence, even turning to Robin and Nancy for some kind of support – they have nothing to offer but incredulous stares – but it’s no use, he well and truly has no idea what to say.

You’ve started in again before he can get much more out than a bitten-off “Uuuuhhh….”

“I’m not just gonna wait around babysitting a hole in the ceiling while you all put your lives on the line,” You bite, and somehow Dustin can’t help but get the sense that even though you’re addressing the room, you’re speaking directly to him – to Eddie, who has spent the duration of your spiel violently shaking his head in outright rejection.

He hardly lets you finish before he makes a harsh sound of incredulous disbelief.

“No.”

“Eddie–”

“No!”

“Will you shut up and let me do this?” You shout, “I’ll lead the bats away from the house and make them chase me back here–”

Eddie barks out a bitter laugh that has you clamping your jaw shut with enough force that Dustin hears your teeth click together.

“Right, just like you led Jason and those fuckers away from Rick’s place?” He snaps, his words dripping with disdain, “How’s the hand, by the way? Still hurts?”

Despite their united front, Dustin can’t help the stirring sense of injustice Eddie’s tone kicks up in his chest, rattling around like embers in his ribcage.

He’s not the enemy here, regardless of what his guts are trying to tell him, but the urge to defend you has long since been stronger than any of Dustin’s natural instincts.

Of course, you don’t need him to come running to your rescue – you never have, and he’s starting to suspect that you never will. Some small part of him aches with the grief of that realization. He doesn’t know why, but it feels like a loss.

Suddenly it’s like you don’t even know he’s there anymore, with the way you’re looking at Eddie. Glaring at him like you’re the only two people in the room. It’s strangely charged, almost intimate, and it makes Dustin’s insides go squirmy like he’s witnessing something torrid.

Somehow it feels like the scene playing out before them is not for their eyes, and Dustin wonders briefly if they ought to leave the room, leave the two of you to this moment.

He watches you bristle, sees your gaze turn to white hot steel, and feels his insides clench for it.

His concern swings hard away from you to land on Eddie’s shoulders, then. Under the molten heat of your anger, he is surely about to whither and melt down to the bone.

Dustin thinks he ought to do something to try and protect him from that, but he doesn’t dare put himself in your line of site. Eddie is made of much stronger stuff than he is, he doesn’t need his help.

“Don’t be an asshole,” You warn him through your teeth.

Eddie throws up his hands and offers you a sarcastic smile, tilting his head ever so slightly like this is all just good, harmless fun.

“Babygirl, I’ll be whatever I need to be to stop you from doing this.” He says, “Because this is a stupid fucking plan, you’re gonna get yourself killed and when you do, I’m gonna say I told you so.”

Each point is punctuated by a sharp poke to your shoulder with his index and middle finger, firm enough to jostle you each time he hits home – you slap his hand away before he can poke you again.

“And here I thought chivalry was dead.” You hum, a harsh, clipped thing oozing with disdain.

Thankfully, before either of you can really start to fight about it, Robin interjects.

“Children – enough!” She shouts, breaking the spell - you both shrink away from the moment, settling back with arms crossed tightly over your chests, doing your utmost to avoid looking at one another.

Robin continues.

“We don’t have time to sit around and watch you two go another ten rounds, okay? We’re on a ticking clock here so both of you need to grow up or go in the back and bang out whatever the hell is going on here. Get it out of your system.”

A momentary if not bone-crushing silence falls over the cabin as Robin’s words hang heavy in the air.

It does nothing to help the awkwardness of the moment when Eddie perks up, brows jumping toward his hairline as he gestures toward the pullout haphazardly folded up at the back of the RV.

You roll your eyes, and Dustin pulls a disgusted face.

He looks to Steve for some kind of commiseration only to find him and Nancy fidgeting awkwardly and trying to avoid looking at each other.

Robin looks decidedly pleased with herself as she continues, evidently more than happy to have made the moment exceedingly more awkward than need be.

“Now,” She says, “Everyone is making valid points on both sides. Is this gonna be dangerous? Yes. Is she more than likely going to get seriously injured if not violently dismembered attempting this? Absolutely, but that doesn’t make it an excessively bad plan—”

“It doesn’t?” Eddie scoffs, which only serves to draw Robin’s attention as she sticks him to the spot with a very pointed look.

“Eddie...” she drawls.

He squares his shoulders and levels her with an expectant if not uninterested look, hugging himself that much tighter like he’s bracing for whatever it is she’s bound to hurl his way.

Robin continues, gesturing to you as she speaks.

“She’s a grown woman – fully consenting – if she wants to get out there and get her ass eaten, that’s her decision to make, not yours.”

Dustin doesn't realize there’s any sort of innuendo behind the words, intended or otherwise, until Eddie makes a harsh, choked sound in the back of his throat.

Almost immediately, his hand drifts up like he means to clap it over his mouth but switches gears at the last moment to rub at the faint hint of stubble shadowing his jawline, trying his damnedest to hide a less-than-subtle smile.

“Jesus – that’s one way of putting it.” He says, pulling his lower lip in past his teeth.

“Eddie.” You say then, voice lilting in a gently critical tone as your brows come down over your eyes.

The tension of the previous moment evaporated in an instant, and Dustin doesn’t understand why everyone is suddenly fidgeting and rolling their eyes.

Nancy makes a soft sound of disapproval in the back of her throat, and suddenly he feels like something has flown right over his head.

He hates being the only one not in on the joke. Max might have been able to explain it to him if not entirely unwilling, maybe even Lucas, but on his own he is hopelessly lost among this group of older kids.

“What?” He can’t help himself from asking, looking from face to face as everyone quickly avoids his gaze, “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” You say immediately, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

Dustin still doesn’t get it, but there’s no air in the conversation to ask what exactly he’s missing before Robin addresses you in turn.

There is the faintest pink tinge to her cheeks as she says your name in a commanding if not entirely sheepish way.

You lean over to smack Eddie’s quivering shoulder as he continues to fight the losing battle against the fit of giggles still threatening to overtake him.

Before Robin can speak, Steve swoops in, taking her by the arm and literally tugging her back from the center of the huddle.

She wrenches her arm out of his grasp and levels him in a harsh glare.

“Come on, Rob, give it a rest–” He starts, but Nancy quickly cuts him off.

“No, she’s right,” She says, then turns to you, “You ought to know what you’re volunteering for”

You, in turn, tilt your head to the right to press your ear to your shoulder.

“Running like hell and hoping they’ll try to make a meal out of me, right?” You deadpan, quirking a brow.

Like cracking a window at forty thousand feet, all the air is immediately sucked out of the room, taking any sense of levity with it as your words hang heavy in the air.

Dustin can’t stand it.

“Oh, come on… come on! There’s gotta be another way.” He presses, “Somebody has got to have a better idea than this.”

A heavy silence falls over the room, one that leaves a hollow ringing in Dustin’s ears as he waits for someone – anyone to speak.

Somebody has got to have something in the back pocket, some kind of last-ditch hair-brained scheme that doesn’t require anyone to make prey out of themselves.

It’s so quiet he’s half surprised he doesn’t hear the telltale chirping of crickets.

“Seriously?” He demands, “Nobody?”

When Dustin looks to Eddie for help, even he has suddenly become far too interested in his sneakers, hanging his head until his features are obscured by a frizzy curtain of hair.

It’s madness. It’s got to be some kind of spontaneous contagious insanity that only he is immune to, Dustin can’t think of what else could have such a hold on your tiny group that they’re actually genuinely considering letting you do this.

Steve rolls his neck in a halfhearted shrug, like this time he’s the one with something to say that is going to be hard to swallow.

“It’s the closest thing to a guarantee we have,” He mumbles, rubbing sheepishly at the back of his neck. “And she’s the only one here freed up to do it…”

“No way!” Dustin says, whirling around to level you with a horrified look, “You know this is crazy, right? You’re gonna get yourself killed!”

“We’re all gonna get ourselves killed.” You argue. “But if I can buy us a little time before that happens and make sure we take Vecna with us…?”

He shakes his head violently back and forth, hard enough that it just about dislodges the cap from his head.

“Let Steve do it.” He begs, “Steve, tell her you’ll do it–”

He knows he’s whining, he sounds like a petulant child who has just been told something they don’t want to hear – totally uncool – but he doesn’t really care.

He wants to grab you by the shoulders and shake you until it knocks this parasitic idea loose from your brain and you see reason again.

“Steve’s gotta make sure Nancy gets to Vecna.” You snap.

It drives him to the desperate edge, and before he even realizes what he’s doing, Dustin hurls himself out after you into the abyss.

“Then I’ll do it.”

There, finally, comes that dissenting murmur again, snatching him back from the precipice and placing him gently back on the ledge. It’s a rescue that comes too little too late and for the wrong person because you’re still freefalling.

The room fills with a dull discordant roar as all of a sudden everyone seems to have something to say, admonishing him for even suggesting the notion.

On one side he’s got Steve already halfway through a lecture about what will happen to him if he lets Dustin go and do something that stupid, meanwhile, Eddie is reminding him that just because he can do something in D&D it doesn’t qualify him to do the same thing in real life.

Everyone talking at once is at best, mildly overwhelming, and at worst, giving Dustin a headache, but at least everyone is focusing on him rather than agreeing to let you offer yourself up in the Upsidedown.

It feels almost like a chance, like maybe somehow he can grab you and whisk you away from all of this while everyone is distracted.

Maybe he’ll be the one to save you this time – if no one else will do it, he has to save you.

He should know better not to hope for things like that.

“Enough,” You snap, silencing everyone with the sharp utterance of the word – you level Dustin with a look that has him wilting under its heat, “This is happening. It’s gonna be me whether you like it or not. It has to be me.”

There’s no arguing with you because there’s never any point in it when you get like this. You are a mountain and he is the wind, and no matter how he gusts and howls and rants and raves, you will not be moved … a big stupid, stubborn mountain, and that’s that.

As quickly as it began, the debate fizzles out, and the decision is made. Everyone quietly moves to take their places in the RV again.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The sun is setting when you arrive, fiery claw marks cut the horizon to ribbons and set it ablaze with oranges and pinks and the faintest smear of purple. It sends a strange chill running down your spine, despite how relatively safe you still are on this side. The danger isn’t here, it’s lurking just below your feet.

For obvious reasons, you leave the RV parked among the trees and cross the threshold back into the Forest Hills trailer park on foot. You move silently, single file like good little ducklings weaving in and out of the trailers, broken down lawn furniture, and laundry lines.

It’s strangely abandoned, eerily so.

The only sound other than the gentle hum of the odd generator or the quiet murmuring of a television is the crunch of yellowing grass underfoot. Every step is like breaking glass and you have to work to remind yourself to breathe.

You’re leading the way, which is not something you would have typically volunteered for, but among the lot of you, you’ve got the most experience sneaking around the trailer park (besides Eddie of course, but he’s not exactly the ideal candidate to go playing Percy Faucet) so it’s you, just like you’d told Dustin back in the RV.

It has to be you.

He’s actively ignoring you now, which is not something you’re sure you’ve ever experienced.

Sure, he’s been mad at you for one reason or another over the years, it would be hard to spend so much time as an authority figure in his life and not have some kind of disagreement crop up between you eventually.

But this time he’s pissed at you for good reason and you can’t rightly blame him for feeling so.

There’s nothing to be done about it. The plan needs bait and you need to feel included, one way or another – you know he’s got to understand that, even if he refuses to admit it.

Even Eddie is resigned to the fact that you’re the only person for this job, as much as you know it’s eating him up inside.

You arrive at the Munson trailer in no time at all and hold the door as you usher your companions inside – Eddie first.

His mattress remains where you left it, along with the cascading fall of bedsheets knotted together, standing in suspended animation. You do your best not to look at it, or anything else you don’t expressly have to as you follow the last of your party through the door and shut it tightly behind you.

You tell yourself that you’re not going to look at the hole in the ceiling again until you have absolutely no other choice, which is to say until you’re crossing through it.

A shudder passes through your body at the thought, grinding through you like the crunch of tectonic plates – you’re still not entirely convinced the thing isn’t going to sprout teeth and snap shut on you before you can slip through to the other side.

You’re also not entirely sure you even want to go to the other side, the place where bats had nearly liberated Steve’s head from his body and where Barbara Holland had evidently been dragged screaming into an untimely, violent death – but what choice do you have?

You have to go, especially after the fuss you’d kicked up in the RV.

Before you can get very far down the line of trying to decide whether or not you’ve made a terrible mistake, Eddie is there, pressed to your side and snaking his hand down to link fingers with you.

You’re close enough that when you turn to look at him, your noses are nearly touching, and all your senses are flooded with him.

The rough pads of his scarred fingers brushing against your skin, the smell of his sweat intermingling with tobacco and something earthier. Some small part of you is worried it’s too intimate for the company you keep, but the way his presence soothes the fearful fluttering of your heart won’t let you protest the proximity.

He pacifies your worries with just a touch and suddenly you don’t care about the hole in the ceiling or the lapse in gravity or the monsters on the other side or anything else threatening to break your brain, all you think is Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

“Come with me.” He says quietly and pulls you back through the kitchenette.

You follow, and for half a moment, you think he may be leading you back toward the bedroom.

Your numbers make for tight quarters in the trailer, especially with everyone trying to maneuver the mattress laid out in the middle of the floor, you imagine if Eddie needed a private moment with you, there isn’t a better place to find one than the bedroom.

Before you can make it too far down the hall, however, he pivots left and twists the handle of the side door leading to the porch.

An interesting development – you are suddenly gripped in the vice of curiosity and feel the gentle pattering of your heart as a hundred different possibilities race through you.

“Where are you going?” Dustin calls from where he’d been sulking somewhere behind you, and when Eddie ignores him, he raises his voice, “Eddie! Where are you going?”

He’s already halfway out the door when he pauses, hardly turning to acknowledge Dustin as he speaks.

“We’ll be right back,” Eddie says.

You’re almost relieved when Dustin’s eyes flit over to you, silently gesturing at you in the expectation that you’ll give him some sort of answer you don’t have.

All you can do is shrug as Eddie pulls you through the door with a gentle tug.

Your unexpected departure kicks up about as much fuss as you expect it would.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” Steve grouses, nearly stumbling over the coffee table in his hurried attempt to follow you to the door. “What now?”

“We shouldn’t split up, you guys,” Nancy calls, following Steve, “Not when things are so close.”

Eddie pays them no mind as he heads for the rickety staircase, half rotten from disuse as much as years under the elements.

You’ve never known him to use it, opting always to leap down from the elevated porch instead, garnering many a twisted ankle in his day. You wonder if it’s only his insistence on playing follow the leader that has him taking the safer route for once.

“Don’t worry about it,” Eddie assures them.

“I am worried about it!” Steve snaps, “Eddie – you’re the most wanted person in Roane County and you guys are just gonna… what, you‘re gonna run off and find a quiet spot to … hash things out real quick?”

“What’s the problem, Steve?” You sigh, stopping short on the top step and holding Eddie firm to the spot below you.

You don’t have time for an argument, particularly out in the open air where any one of his neighbors could take a peek out the window and spy him standing there.

Steve is right, but you don’t have to let him know that. As always, he’s all too happy to spell his point out for you.

“The problem is they’re out there looking for him.” Steve drawls, aggressively stretching the words like he thinks you’re stupid or something. “What part of this seems like a good idea?”

Eddie levels him with a poisonous look.

“Hey Man, this is your stupid plan–” He bites, “You’re the one who said we need the goddamn bait, so we’re going out there and we’re gonna walk the route as many times as it takes for her to memorize it.”

If that’s true, it’s news to you and you can’t say you’re expressly pleased to hear it.

You’d always done your utmost to avoid the Creel House, considering its reputation for being haunted. That doesn’t mean you don’t know exactly where it is from anywhere you’ve spent a decent amount of time in the duration of your life in Hawkins, if only to make damn sure you steer as clear as you possibly can.

You don’t need Eddie to walk the route with you, but you’re also not going to contradict him when he’s in a mood like this.

Steve, unfortunately, is not clued in enough to pick up on the venom coursing through Eddie’s veins.

“It’s a straight shot through the woods from here to there, what’s to memorize?” His tone is oozing with sarcasm, but you refuse to let him ruffle your feathers.

Whatever this is is important enough to Eddie to risk exposure, so you’ll humor him, and in the meantime, you’ll play nice with Steve so that he’ll let you go without a fight.

You shake your head and offer him a lopsided shrug.

“It’s like you said,” You say innocently, “It’s a straight shot, so that means we’ll be back in no time.”

Robin appears in the doorway beside him then and pokes her head out, looking curiously between the standoff.

Your eyes meet.

“How long did he say it would take him?” You ask, “Ten minutes tops?”

Ten minutes running, maybe, much closer to twenty-five at a walk, hurried as it is sure to be. Still, she snorts out a burst of undainty laughter.

“You did say that, Steve-o.” She hums, elbowing Steve in the side when he doesn’t respond.

A thought flashes briefly across your mind, and you make quick work of undoing your tattered watchband.

“Here,” you say, tossing it to him, “You can even time us if you want.”

Steve catches the watch with the ease of a lifelong athlete and turns the thing over in his hands, staring down at it and evidently weighing the pros and cons of letting the two of you slip off to God knows where – you could not have told him if your life depended on it.

For all you know, you’re on your way out of town, getting out of Dodge before the shit can well and truly hit the fan.

Yesterday, you might have jumped at the chance, but there are bigger things on the horizon now than the promise you’d made to Wayne out on the road between the trailer park and Benny’s.

Whether you like it or not, you’ve both suddenly got a big part to play in all this. The window of opportunity to just slip away has long since slammed shut.

After a moment of chewing the inside of his lip, Steve finally relents, heaving a long-suffering sigh and running a hand through those perfectly stunning bouncy tresses.

“Fine.” He says, “Whatever, but you two better come right back. We’re short on time as it is, we don’t need any unexpected variables —” which is to say they don’t need to stage a rescue mission in the event that someone catches you out in the open.

He snaps his fingers into a point and aims the unbelievably smooth gesture at Eddie, “One time out and back, no detours.”

His shoulders drop as a little bit of the tension brimming there visibly goes out of him, and he gives a curt nod.

When Steve turns his pointing on you, you give him an enthusiastic if not ever so slightly sarcastic thumbs up.

“10-4, Good Buddy.” You say.

Eddie wastes no time after that leading you down the steps and across the park into the nearest copse of woodland, stealing away from the prying eyes of the neighborhood like a couple of horny teenagers sneaking off to fool around.

Somehow you don’t think you’ll get that lucky.

The sun is nearly gone by now, and despite the way it still holds the park in the warm luminescence of golden hour, the woods are steeped in deep blue shadow.

Eddie doesn’t say a word as you walk, he just holds tight to your hand and pulls you along. You do your best to keep up, but his legs are longer than yours and he’s like a man on a mission, cutting through the trees at such a pace.

Had you been paying any kind of attention to where you were walking, you would have very quickly noticed that your route is not angled toward the Creel House as he’d suggested, but you’re not focused on anything but the silent walking wall that is Eddie.

Staring at the broad stretch of his back, you can’t help but feel shut out. You wonder if he’s mad at you, but you swallow the urge to ask him about it. You know you’d only sound pathetic and whiny if you did.

Still, he’s giving you extremely conflicting signals, speaking so softly to you the way he had back at the trailer, holding your hand with such a gentle reverence, but pulling you along behind him to wherever you’re going with no sense of tenderness, all the while actively ignoring you.

Of course he’s mad, you tell yourself.

He’d been under the impression that this saga would come to an end without you taking part in it, far removed from danger, but he should know better that you won’t be content to just sit on the couch and wait this out while everyone puts their lives on the line.

A misplaced twinge of annoyance bites at your insides at the thought that Eddie could actually be angry at you over this, that he would be pig-headed enough to think you wouldn’t put up a fight over being so summarily benched.

You know he knows you better than that, which means he’s sticking his head in the sand and being stubborn for stubbornness' sake.

You might have laid into him about gender roles in situations of peril, the same you would have had it been you and Dustin out here in the woods, but you’re tired of fighting, so you bite your tongue and trudge along in silence, doing your best to match his gait.

The further you go, the darker it gets as the sun disappears from the world and night sets in. You have no idea how long you’ve been walking before the trees part – much longer than ten minutes, you’re sure.

When you finally reach a break in the woods, you realize with a start that you are not standing in front of the Creel House.

It’s the highway.

A lonely stretch of road somewhere nearer to the fairgrounds than the spooky Victorian, if you had to guess.

It is abandoned, pitch black save for the cosmos wheeling overhead. Hawkins has always suffered from an inexplicable excess of backwood roads completely lacking in streetlights of any kind, making for a rare lack of light pollution in this modern world.

Good for stargazing, but bad for walking anywhere after dark.

Where normally you curse the powers that be for its shoddy infrastructure, you’re thankful for the oversight now as you step out onto the shoulder, confident that in the shadows, you will remain blissfully hidden from sight.

Eddie hangs back as you pad carefully to the road and take a good long look in both directions. No impending cars, so far so good.

Once you’re satisfied that you’re alone, you twist back around to look curiously at him.

“What is this?” you ask.

He’s fidgeting with his rings, twisting the burnished pig’s head back and forth over his middle finger, and you get the sense that he’s not as mad as you’d thought he was. Much more anxious than anything else.

Suddenly you feel rather foolish for being angry at him for nothing at all.

“Remember back in ‘83?” He begins quietly, sounding almost shy, “When you were driving me around ‘cause the van died and I couldn’t afford to get it fixed?”

You nod, because of course, you do. You cherish those days.

Those first few tentative weeks you spent driving around with Eddie Munson in your passenger seat, flipping through your cassettes, messing with your rearview mirror, trading a hundred and one inane questions in an attempt to get to know each other better — you remember the thrill of scandal, how anyone could have looked in and seen the two of you together, going along almost conspiratorially.

You know for certain that you would have been the talk of the town had anyone cared to notice, but the good thing about being more or less an invisible person was how you could get away with something like quietly falling into step with Eddie Munson without anyone batting an eye.

By the time someone thought to check in on you, the two of you were already attached at the hip, and there was nothing to be done about it.

You wouldn’t have it any other way.

Eddie gestures to the spot at the side of the road.

“Time’s stuck down there. It’s still November ‘83,”

You pull a face, wondering idly if he can even see you at this distance.

“Yeah, I’m still having trouble with that one.” You tease, skipping back across the gravel to close the gap between you and Eddie.

He remains unamused by the levity of your mood – contrary to what you’d almost fooled yourself into believing, this is, in fact, not a romantic jaunt in the moonlight, and Serious Eddie has come out to play.

“Pay attention,” He presses, “This is important.”

You can’t help but roll your eyes – where had you heard that before?

“Important like that story about the raccoon?” Your attempt at humor falls flat and Eddie gives you a stony look – Serious Eddie is no fun, but you relent and raise your hands defensively, “Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry… so, time’s stuck. What does that mean exactly?”

It’s a subtle change, but you watch his shoulders drop as a little bit more of that lingering tension from back in the RV eases out of him.

“It means,” He says, “That the van’s gonna be sitting right here,”

You follow the motion when he points you back to the shoulder of the road, and you stand trying to imagine the big-bodied vehicle sitting there like a crouching beast, the way you’ve seen hundreds of times before.

“…and?” You prompt, stretching the word lyrically as you turn on your heel to face him again, gently urging him to get to the point.

It’s nearly pitch black now, and the others will be expecting you back. The last thing you need is Steve getting his panties in a twist and sending out a search party.

“And… if something happens – if things go wrong and you can’t make it back, I want you to go for the van.” Eddie says solemnly, reaching down and taking your hand, “Shut the doors and barricade yourself inside. You’ll be safe there until I can come and get you.”

You feel your face pull into a frown.

“That’s not part of the plan.” You tell him, gently admonishing him for trying to change things in secret.

Eddie heaves another one of those world weary sighs and shakes his head, messy curls dancing silver in the moonlight across the broad stretch of his shoulders.

“Fuck the plan.” He bites. “It’s a stupid plan.”

You open your mouth to protest such a dismissal — it’s the only plan you’ve got — but he’s quick to continue before you can get a word in edgewise.

“Look, I’m not gonna sit here and try to convince you not to do this – you’re so goddamn stubborn, we’ll be here all night – but I am gonna do everything I can to make sure you’ll be safe when things go wrong.”

“None of us can afford that luxury…”

He shakes his head.

“I don’t want to fight about it. Steve’s right. We’ve gotta make sure we’ve got our bases covered, including but not limited to the worst-case scenario.”

Which is to say in the event that everything goes horribly wrong and the monsters eat you alive and Vecna destroys the world.

Or maybe just in case the inevitability that you realize you’re not a track star and this being an impossible thing you’re trying to accomplish catches up to you.

How fast can you run? More importantly, how long can you keep up a sprint like that?

The answer is not something you’re expressly sure you’re ready to consider, but of course Eddie has to consider those possibilities — he’s a cynic.

Bad news first, always. Lucky for the both of you, you’ve always been more of an optimist.

“It’s a little over a mile from the Creel place to home,” Eddie says, and you glance reflexively down at your watch, conveniently forgetting that you’d given it to Steve before you left.

You give a lopsided shrug to try and mask the motion.

“Steve said ten minutes… I can totally do that.”

Eddie frowns.

“You think so?”

No, you really don’t, but you’re not about to let him know that because if you do you’ll never hear the end of it. So instead, you offer a vague gesture that you hope is at least half as casual as you mean for it to be. It doesn’t feel like a successful move.

“Yeah,” You say, your voice squeaks out an octave higher than normal, and you press your lips into a tight line against how scared you suddenly sound, “Sure, why not?”

Because you’re not a track star? Because you’d nearly killed yourself just jogging across town less than three days ago and now you’re out here pretending like you’re some kind of Olympic gold medalist preparing for the hundred-yard dash?

Eddie gives you a hard, indiscernible look that makes your insides squirm. Somehow you know he can see right through the bullshit coating to your gooey, terrified center.

You watch as he searches your face for the answer to an unknowable question, and you see a quick flash of the feeling you’d only just managed to suppress. It’s brief, but it’s clear as day, illuminating his features like a bolt of lightning in the distance.

Doubt.

You know he’d never say so, but he clearly doesn’t think you can do this. Usually that would have been enough to stir up some kind of violent indignation in you, but suddenly you’re not entirely sure you can do this either.

Sure, you’d done your fair share of sprints in gym class, but this isn’t jogging a twelve-minute mile just to scrape by with a passing grade, this isn’t even making a mad dash from the boat house to the woods to try and escape Jason and the others – which had failed miserably, as Eddie had so graciously pointed out to you.

This is running as hard and fast as you can until your body is pumping battery acid and your legs threaten to buckle beneath you. It’s running for your goddamn life and the lives of everyone else involved.

If you don’t make it, no one does, so no pressure, right?

“How far did you say it was?” You squeak, swallowing hard to try and conceal the tremble in your voice.

“A mile…” Eddie says, “Maybe closer to two.”

Well, shit.

Still, you scoff and dismiss the notion with a wave.

“Easy peasy–” You lie.

He shakes his head and chides your flippancy with a gravelly utterance of your name, which you candidly ignore.

“–lemon squeezy.”

Eddie says your name again, harsher this time, and grabs you by the arm in an effort to try and bring you back down to earth from the cloud of your delusions, but a sudden flash of lights stops your arguing before it can begin again.

Headlights on the road warn you of the car coming around the bend and send your heart rocketing up into your throat.

Eddie swears harshly under his breath and takes your hand as you scramble back toward the treeline.

He pulls you down into the underbrush and you don’t even mind the way your hip lights up in pain as you land awkwardly, holding your breath as you watch the pickup come into view.

It rolls down the road at a glacial pace, adorned with four angry floodlights that illuminate your little copse of woods and briefly blind you.

Through the spots and colors dancing across your vision, you can only just make out the handful of bodies stuffed into the cab, two more kneeling in the truck bed with roving flashlights in one hand and guns in the other.

Christ, they’ve got guns…

You sink a little lower and move instinctually closer to Eddie as if somehow you’ll be able to shield him from them if it comes to it. As if your fragile, fleshy visage would do anything to protect him if they came out guns blazing.

Smarter than trying to make a human shield out of yourself would be to run, but could either of you really outrun a truck if your lives depended on it?

Not likely.

It makes you wonder how you ever expect to outrun these supposed giant vampire bats…

You suddenly feel trapped, like a rabbit, crouched and shaking in the underbrush under the threat of baying hounds, watching with wide unblinking eyes until the truck has passed on and the crunch and pop of tires on pavement fades into the night.

When it’s finally gone, you do your best to breathe deep against the stinging adrenaline coursing through your veins like a swarm of angry hornets, but suddenly your chest feels impossibly tight.

Steve was right, this was not a very smart thing for you to do and it's well past time you ought to be getting back.

Before you can think to say something, you feel Eddie’s touch as he guides you to look at him with a kind pressure on your jaw. You let him turn you and as you stare back into those big, sad eyes of his, you can’t help but feel a cold wave of doubt bleed into you.

How the hell are you going to do this? How could you be stupid enough to volunteer in the first place and why’d you put up such a fight about it?

What’s going to happen when you let everyone down?

You’re all going to get yourselves killed, that’s what.

For a moment, it’s all you can do to keep yourself together as you surge forward without thinking, nestling into the crook of his neck and his welcoming embrace. You sigh under the press of his arms as he pulls you close.

You take a handful of deep, staccato breaths, breathing him in and filling your head with the heady musk of everything that is wholly Eddie — sweat and smoke and sandalwood.

It takes you half a minute to stop shaking, and half a minute more before you feel whole enough to emerge. You offer him a weak smile when you do.

Eddie tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear and grips your shoulders firm enough that you’re half inclined to think you might bruise.

“Listen to me. Nobody needs you to be the hero here, okay?” he tells you, giving you a gentle shake for good measure. “You’ve already done enough, you don’t have to do this,”

You, in turn, reach up to bracket his face. He leans into it in a way you must think is instinctual at this point, and when your grip slides down to frame his neck, gracing the columns of his throat, you think for a moment you might kiss him, and if you don’t he’ll certainly kiss you.

Oh, how you wish he would.

Your eyes dart southward to regard the pillowy softness of his lips, cracked and chapped as they are, and you try to believe his words, despite how patently untrue they are — he still needs you.

“Everybody’s counting on me, Eds.” You hum, then tear your gaze up and away to meet his.

You watch as something flashes across his eyes, an indiscernible look that is tinged with an unmistakable sadness.

“Then promise me you’ll go for the van if you don’t think you’re gonna make it, okay?… Sweetheart, please… just do this one thing for me.”

You don’t answer, because you’re not entirely sure you can make that promise.

His expression softens and he breathes out a shaky, uneven breath, shoulders sagging as he tilts forward and presses his forehead to yours.

“What you said back at Rick’s goes both ways, you know?” He murmurs, “…I can’t lose you either… Not again.”

Your heart swells and thumps heavily against your ribs.

“What are you getting at, Munson?” You tease, because it’s all you can do to keep your emotions from bubbling up. “Spit it out.”

Eddie shakes his head, looking positively miserable as he speaks.

“I love you.” He says, “More than anything – more than everything, and I can’t … Jesus Christ, I’m so scared something’s going to happen and I won’t be there to save you…”

The sound tumbles out over your lips before you’re even aware of it bubbling up inside of you.

You giggle, and Eddie jerks back from you like the sound had jumped out and snapped at him.

You can’t help it, but it doesn’t make you feel any less guilty to see the hurt look he gives you, like a freshly kicked puppy.

You’re not laughing at him, per se, but you can understand how it might seem like you are. Nobody likes to be reminded of their shortcomings, so you’re quick to correct yourself.

“Oh, Eddie…” you sigh, smiling sweetly at him in the hopes it will ease the sting of what you’re about to say, “I love you, but this isn't the kind of thing you can save me from.”

It shouldn’t be startling, because it’s true. He'd said it himself, this is a suicide mission at its very best.

What is startling is the way Eddie reacts to hearing you say it, physically recoiling like you’d reached out with the sentiment and slapped him across the face.

“What did you just say?” Eddie gasps.

Suddenly he’s as serious as a heart attack and you’re worried you’ve misread the room. It leaves you reeling.

“...You can't save me?” You squeak out, half afraid of the hurt the statement is going to cause him if you ram it down his throat, despite how maddeningly true it is.

If things go as bad as he expects them to — which, to be quite honest, they very likely will — you don't expect Eddie is going to be able to pull you out of the frying pan, or the fire that follows, no matter how badly he wants to.

Still, his eyes grow bright and he shakes his head violently, sending his curls flying out in all directions.

His voice is tiny as he speaks.

“No ... before that." He says. "... you said you love me."

You blink back at him in a way you imagine must look owlish and quite stupid, and you watch as he grows strangely shy.

It only serves to deepen your confusion.

"...Did you mean that?" Eddie asks tentatively.

You don't answer right away, though not because you don't, only because the question is startling and you don't expressly know what to say.

The silence that hangs between you is charged and infinite, and suddenly you’ve left the question unanswered too long.

You watch as something akin to disappointment shadows his features. He sighs and pushes up from your hiding spot in the underbrush, and stalks away out toward the road.

It occurs to you much too late that a stunned silence was perhaps not the best way to answer that question, but it had been jarring at worst and deeply confusing at best.

Of course you love him. You feel it so fully with every particle of your being that at times you feel like it’s going to tear you apart, even now after all this time when things ought to have evened out between you.

You’ve certainly told him as much often enough that you’ve worried in the past that the words are losing meaning … how could he think that you don’t?

When was the last time you told him? Surely, out in the field? …No? Well, you definitely told him back in the clearing in the woods after he told you that stupid story and set your hand? Then again maybe not… Back at Rick’s place? No, that was him…

Your heart drops into your stomach as the truth dawns on you.

Oh shit... you haven’t told him.

How could you have not told him?

You scramble to your feet and nearly topple over in your mad attempt to get through the underbrush to follow him.

“Eddie, wait–” You start, taking clumsy steps toward him before he staves off your progress with a wave of his hand.

“Look, it’s fine, okay? I know you don’t feel the same way, but I don’t want you to say it if it’s not true.” He says, "I don't need you placating me just so I won't have hurt feelings or something—"

“Who says I don’t?” You demand.

It stops him in his tracks.

"What's that mean?" Eddie asks moodily.

"Who says I don't feel the same way?" You say a little slower, putting precise diction into each word, and spelling it out for him on the off chance that there has been a sudden and rapid decrease in IQs out here on the road.

The effect misses its mark. He just stares back at you, bewilderment etching a mask into his features so deep, you wonder idly if you’re ever going to see him make another expression again.

A sticky silence bleeds between you as you both wait for the other to speak.

Finally, you throw up your hands in frustration as you realize that between the two of you, you're the one who has suddenly become exceedingly goddamn stupid.

How could you have let Eddie go on thinking you didn't love him? What were you thinking? Nothing at all, apparently. You are a mean and foolish girl, and you cannot believe how incredibly careless you've been.

“I love you, Eddie," You start, "I’ve always loved you, from the moment I met you. That didn’t stop just because you got in your head and decided you weren’t good enough for me or whatever it was… I loved you even when I hated you … I mean — God — I always thought we were gonna get out of Hawkins and get a little place somewhere together... I thought we were gonna…" You roll your eyes and suppress the urge to hide your face then, gesturing vaguely to try and cover the color creeping up your neck, “...you know… get married and stuff…”

You try to imagine how your old friends would have reacted to hear you admit that. How stunned they would have been to find you when you still belonged to them, already daydreaming about wedding bells and little chapels, secretly scrawling your name sandwiched between Mrs. Munson all over your notebooks.

It’s embarrassing, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

It’s part of what had made the breakup so goddamn hard — you hadn’t seen it coming, you’d fully expected to spend the rest of your lives together.

Eddie makes a choked sound that is somewhere caught halfway between a scoff and something harsher. He blinks back the wetness suddenly brimming in his eyes as he reaches up to rub a calloused hand at the back of his neck.

“Guess I really went and fucked that up for you, huh?” He sniffs.

You shrug.

“Who says?” You ask, and when Eddie rolls his eyes, you double down, “Nothing’s changed, Eds—”

“Everything’s changed.” He stresses, stalking back across the clearing to close the gap between you, "How can you say that after all the shit I said ... everything I did? Everything is changed."

Suddenly you’re standing toe to toe, just like you had all those months back in front of the trailer, last summer.

Somehow the roles feel reversed now as you meet his watery gaze and feel the looming threat of the same choice hanging above your head like a guillotine.

He's right. Everything has changed, but who says you have to accept that? You know he would take it back if he could — the terrible choice he’d made — so who says you have to make the same mistake here and now?

You know better.

You shake your head and watch something akin to terror flash briefly across Eddie’s face at the prospective rejection.

How pleased you are to be able to prove him wrong.

“Not for me,” You say matter-of-factly, “I still love you.”

Like breaking the surface, he breathes out harshly through his nose and his shoulders sag under the effort of it.

“...You do?” Eddie asks, painfully hopeful, boyish even.

You can’t help the way your face begins to split into a slow, delighted grin. Finally, you get to mend something that is broken rather than being the one who broke it in the first place.

You nod.

“I do.”

“...Say it again.” He pleads, eyes flashing with strange and wild desperation, despite the way he’s begun to mirror your smile even before you say it.

You love him and he knows it, he has to know it.

“I love you,” You repeat, reaching up to curl your fingers around his biceps and giving him a gentle shake for good measure, “Even though you’re a big stupid jerk.”

He breathes out a wet, shaky laugh and suddenly he looks so fragile you can’t help but pull him a little closer.

Before you can admonish him for being so foolish as to think anything otherwise, his hands come up to frame your face, and he presses a searing kiss to your lips. It steals your breath and your eyes roll shut without your prompting.

You barely have time to process that you really ought not to be doing this so exposed, as chaste as the little kisses he’s begun peppering your face with are. He kisses you again and again, like he physically could not stop himself from kissing you if he tried.

You don’t think he’s trying very hard.

You’re in danger of being seen, standing so close to the road like this. Still, each gentle press of his lips is punctuated with a shaky utterance of his gratitude, blessing you for the reciprocation of the feeling, like he’s been holding his breath just waiting to hear you say it.

He pulls back a moment to stare reverently at you, searching your features like he's trying to commit them to memory.

You don't let him go very far, clinging to him like you're afraid you'll lose him if you let him go.

"You love me?" he says breathlessly, less a question than a statement of fact.

He nods slowly to prompt you to do the same, and you obey, but he hardly lets you.

Any need to hear you say it again is evidently superseded by the need to keep kissing you, this time it is a hard, wet thing pressed so forcefully to your lips you can hardly move against it.

A peal of joyful laughter bubbles up out of you and you love, love, love.

You feel the curl of his mouth as Eddie kisses you again, muffling the sound with his lips and pulling you that much tighter against him, tight enough that you finally feel him slip back into place to fill the hole he’d left in you last summer, and for the first time in almost a year, everything is right. It fills you with joy.

Blinding, unadulterated, stupefying joy.

It’s almost enough to make you forget the danger looming, and how once you turn around and head back to rejoin the others, you’ll very likely be going to your deaths…

#okay this is also one of my favorite parts of this series I’m !!!!!#eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 4 hours

Text

Cruel Summer Part 12

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 11k

warnings: swearing, horror adjacent descriptors, angst, super saccharine fluff

In a less than shocking turn of events, you’d ended up running from the cops because, at the end of the day, that is really the only possible way the clusterfuck of the interrogation in the Wheeler’s living room could have ended.

And that’s not even the strangest thing that’s happened in the last hour, because Eddie and the others are trapped behind Watergate and in dire need of rescue… whatever that means.

You’d discovered as much by speaking to them… through a Light Brite of all things.

Your patience for this scenario was very swiftly growing thin before that happened, when all you’d had to try and wrap your head around was the fact that they were calling for your help via Morse code through a flickering light … because that makes sense.

Worst still is how you couldn’t even dismiss that one as a fluke, considering you were the one to notice it.

You truly cannot wait for the world to start making sense again, and you have a sinking suspicion that you’re going to have to wait a very long time for that to happen.

The Hawkins PD had spectacularly lost control of the room after the not-so-secret information of your relationship with Roane County’s Most Wanted came to light – no thanks at all to Erica, who has never been your biggest fan in the first place, so, really, you have to ask yourself why you’re even shocked that she would take the first chance presented to throw you under the bus.

In an effort to try and reign things back in, they’d decided to start one-on-one questioning, making the very poor decision, to begin with Max, which was likely to end the interviewing process before it even began.

You wondered idly if they realized the gravity of their mistake as they led her into the other room and shut the door behind them.

Thankfully, the spotlight gradually faded from you as the room dispersed into a plethora of individual huddles to discuss other things of evident import.

Suddenly it was like you weren’t even there, the closest thing to a status quo you have experienced since your parents moved away. It used to be a point of significant grief to you, moving through the world largely unseen and unheard by the people around you.

In your youth, it had always been your fondest wish to be the kind of person who lit up a room when you entered, you wanted to turn heads and have people look at you the way Dustin did, like you hung the moon.

The closest you ever came to skirting that dream was the brief interval in High School when you were still attached to Carol Perkins, who put you into the proximity of the likes of Steve Harrington back when he was still King of Hawkins High.

You were never promoted to anything more than serving as Carol’s shadow, an unwanted tag-along who people didn’t miss if you weren’t there.

It was one of the things that had made it so incandescently easy to slip unnoticed out of your put-together world and into Eddie’s, but here and now, you’ve never been more thankful to be ignored in your life.

You’d almost even managed to steal away before Claudia Henderson caught you in the doorway, beside herself and blubbering, as is her natural state. She had a hundred and one questions for you, none of which she could properly vocalize as she dabbed at her nose with a crumpled tissue and went on and on about the state of her poor nerves.

Because you’ve never been the type of person to be unkind, particularly to someone who has been nothing but good to you, considering the circumstances, you did your best to assure her that things were not as dire as they seemed.

You told her that there was a completely rational explanation to all of this (though you failed to provide one) that you would rather cut off your own arm than even think about putting Dustin in danger, and yes you promise you are still coming to dinner next Wednesday like you always do.

Every word of it was true, save for the last part, of course, considering you’re supposed to be halfway to Timbuktu with Eddie by next Wednesday.

How you’re going to manage that with no car, no money, and now no Eddie, you have no earthly idea. It strikes you with a miserable pang that suddenly you’re back at square one, no better off than you had been two days back, trudging up Kerley Street with Wayne’s money in your pocket and wondering just how in the hell you expected to conquer this Sysiphean hurdle.

On a hope and a prayer, you suppose, though now you can’t even afford to skirt by on that considering the money had been stuffed into the pocket of the jacket you’d been liberated from in your struggle to be free of Jason and his toadies.

It was your favorite jacket, and you wonder miserably what’s become of it.

Life is a bitch and then you die, and that’s just the way of the world.

This is a right mess, innit, Edward?

Suddenly, as if answering the inane question of your inner dialogue, there came a subtle flickering of the overhead lamp in the foyer. The pulsing of the light was a violent thing, a sickly orange glow stabbing you in the eye and demanding your attention.

Claudia Henderson was still sniffling in front of you, and if only for good manner’s sake, you tried to ignore it, but the blinking light was absolutely incessant. Try as you might, you could not stop looking at the damn thing.

It was so pervasive that you’d ultimately had to excuse yourself from the room to casually go and investigate what you imagined could only be a failing lightbulb.

You assume that you must have looked completely insane, standing beneath the lamp, glaring up at it and willing it to shut the fuck up, but perhaps more insane was just how familiar its nagging was.

You couldn’t help but feel that you’d summoned it somehow, particularly so when you realized how bizarrely reminiscent the flashing bulb was of the way Eddie used to subtly prod you for your attention during the brief, ill-advised quarter you’d been seated next to him in eleventh-grade History class.

You hadn’t learned a damn thing in those few short months, nothing except that Eddie inexplicably knows the tiniest bit of Morse Code and will drum out call signs onto your leg when he’s bored.

Most commonly, it would be the same pitiful cry for help when Mrs. O’Donnell’s pedantic lessons about the Napoleonic wars became too much: dot dot dot - dash dash dash - dot dot dot…

You tried to tell yourself that it wasn’t the exact sequence the light was flashing in, but the longer you stood and stared, the less you believed that.

dot dot dot - dash dash dash - dot dot dot…

Suddenly, you had a sneaking suspicion. A notion you knew could hold no water, but if it was even remotely possible how could you live with yourself if you ignored it?

dot dot dot - dash dash dash - dot dot dot…

You glanced carefully over your shoulder, making absolutely sure that no one was around to see, that no one would witness what you were about to do.

You knew you would have no way to explain it if someone asked, but you also knew you had to try.

You turned your face up to the light and spoke to it in an almost inaudible whisper.

“...Eddie?”

The light flared so brightly then that it left spots of color blooming across your vision, evidently answering you as the blinking became that much more incessant.

dotdotdotdashdashdashdotdotdotdotdotdotdashdashdashdotdotdotdotdotdotdashdashdashdotdotdot!

You gasped without really meaning to, clapping your hands over your mouth a moment too late in an attempt to muffle the sound. You stared at the light until the flashing colors completely overtook your vision and the pulsing was all you could see, then you blindly began twisting in manic circles, looking this time for someone, anyone to come and see what you were seeing.

No, not just anyone. Dustin. You needed Dustin to see what you were seeing.

You found him standing around the kitchen island huddled in tense conversation with the Sinclairs. You didn’t greet them as you made a beeline for the teen boy. He didn’t have the time to even finish saying your name before you seized him by the elbow and wrenched him back out into the foyer.

“Come look at this–” You’d hissed, dragging him into the next room with Lucas and Erica quickly tailing behind.

You directed their attention to the lamp with a sharp jab of your finger and leveled Dustin with a tense look.

“Am I crazy, or is that light speaking in Morse code?”

Despite being thoroughly convinced it was Eddie somehow making that light flash from wherever he was, some tiny rational part of your brain still hoped that maybe Dustin would discount the flickering lamp as nothing more than a latent concussion from Jason Carver’s special brand of chivalry.

You had to be crazy, right? Because lights don’t speak… right?

Still, it wouldn’t be the craziest thing any of you had ever heard that week, and as outlandish as it seemed, if there was even the slightest chance that it was Eddie calling for help, you couldn’t in good conscience ignore that, so you all sat and very carefully counted it out.

Dot dot dot – dash dash dash - Dot. Dot. Motherfucking dot – blinking as clear as day, assaulting your senses just like the silly little rubber love taps of Eddie’s pencil against the meat of your thigh in Mrs. O’Donnell’s class.

… S.O.S. …

You don’t know how he was doing it, you don’t even really care, you only know that if he put his mind to it, and was extremely fucking determined, he would find a way to make that light flash, to invade your space and make you understand in no uncertain terms that he needed your help.

Then came the nonsense with Holly’s Lite Bright, which you had little hope of following as Dustin shouted questions into the ether and the screen lit up with vague swirling answers and symbols.

You were right. It was Eddie. That much was evidently clear, and you still don’t exactly know how to feel about it.

Much less clear was the message being passed through to you, how the others had passed through the thing Dustin was calling Watergate and had been cut off.

Now they needed a Plan B, an alternate method to find their way back.

How Dustin gleaned all that information from a few dozen flashing bulbs is beyond you, though you suppose now it’s no different than how you’d decided in the first place that it was Eddie calling for help through more or less the same means. Still, it left you feeling like the odd man out, like there was some kind of vital prerequisite knowledge you were missing, as it was apparently not all that confusing to everyone else, frustratingly so.

Lucas, Erica, and even Max, who had been absent during the entire lamp episode, processed the information about so-called gates and seemed to understand immediately what needed to be done.

To them it was simple: the others were trapped. They needed another gate, and they knew exactly where they needed to go to find it.

No one apparently seemed to think it was important to explain to you what any of that meant.

They just kept repeating those same basic phrases and ushering you around with varying degrees of annoyance, as if you were completely on board with what needed to be done next and were just being willfully obtuse about the whole thing.

The next thing you knew, you were perched on the back of Dustin’s bike while he peddled like a madman, the shouting voices of the parents at your back, imploring you to stop and growing quieter every second.

You swallowed any anxiety you felt about the impending doom that awaited you and armed with a plan you still weren’t exactly clear on, you made the speedy escape across town.

It didn’t take long for you to realize where you were headed. After all this time, you could have made the journey in your sleep: the Forest Hills trailer park.

And here you find yourself back at the Munson trailer, which is probably the last place you’d expected to go in search of whatever gate it is Dustin keeps going on about.

It’s a welcome sight, as always. Even under the circumstances, seeing the dingy tin siding and mismatched patio furniture feels more like coming home than your own home does.

You can’t help but feel a pang of strident relief to see that not only is the police presence gone, but someone thought to shut the front door.

You wouldn’t outright admit it, because you knew it was highly implausible, but once you’d realized your destination you’d spent the duration of the ride trying to wrestle down the irrational fear that somehow Chrissy’s body would still be lying there in the doorway like it had been the last time you were here.

You knew rationally that it wouldn’t, cops don’t leave bodies lying around at crime scenes, but if you’ve learned anything from the past few days, it’s that you can’t depend upon rationality to prevail in this world.

Not anymore.

The lights are on, though as you file up the steps behind the others like a gaggle of good little ducklings, you tell yourself that doesn’t expressly mean anyone is home.

Dustin barges in, and you have to bite the inside of your mouth to stop yourself from telling him to knock as you cross the threshold and try to take some semblance of comfort in the cloying familiarity of the place. It’s difficult to do with no one home.

No Wayne sitting in his chair watching his shows through the snowy static of the rabbit-eared television.

No Eddie, shut away in his room with manic melodies rattling the door on its frame.

You survey the room without really meaning to, turning in a slow circle to take stock of everything – all of Wayne’s knickknacks and keepsakes remain in their rightful place, thankfully spared from evidence impound.

With all the lights on, the room is bathed in that same amber glow that always comes in the evening, giving the place a cozy feeling, but you can’t help but suppress a shiver at how empty it all feels.

How devoid of life.

It strikes you with a sudden and potent spike of anxiety that you don’t know what has become of Wayne. Standing there in the living room, you can see every inch of the trailer, save for the bathroom tucked away down the hall and Eddie’s bedroom, the door of which stands ajar.

When is a door not a door?

You resist the urge to go looking for him, knowing full well that if he were here, tucked away somewhere, the commotion of your arrival would have brought him out to investigate.

You suddenly find yourself hoping beyond hope that, for lack of knowing what else to do and unwilling to just sit on his hands waiting for some kind of news – good or bad – Wayne simply went to work.

You know what he would say.

"Rent's due when it’s due. Rain or shine, bills gotta be paid. The world don’t stop for nobody, no matter what. Better to stay busy."

It makes you sick to think of him worrying about Eddie with no hope of impending relief. How lonely it must be, working the factory floor, pretending everything is as it should be, meanwhile his nephew is in the wind?

Still, it’s a better thing to consider than the alternative, that his coming to your rescue landed him in trouble and he’s not at the plant, but sitting in a cell at the Police Station.

You won’t let yourself consider that notion, if only because you don’t know what you would do if that were the case.

You barely have time to consider the possibility of how you might intend to bail him out were that the case, as you finish your turn about the room and find your attention is yet again demanded by something in the ceiling.

This time it is not something so banal as a flickering light — you’d never get that lucky twice.

You noticed a lot of things that didn’t expressly belong when you’d stepped through the door of the trailer, stray lines of abandoned police tape floating in the breeze outside, chalky black debris of fingerprinting powder smeared across almost every flat surface in the room, but what you hadn’t noticed, was the angry red sore in the ceiling, throbbing and pulsing and glaring back at you like the Eye of Sauron set atop its perch at the fortress of Barad-dûr.

That seems… wrong.

For a moment it’s all any of you can do but stare at it.

“What the hell is that?” Erica asks, voicing the sentiment everyone must surely be feeling and doing her best to sound tough despite the way you can feel her inching to move behind you in an attempt to hide from the thing.

You let her do it without so much as a sideways glance, despite how you’re still pissed at her.

“The gate.” Dustin says solemnly, “The one Vecna used Chrissy to open.”

The information causes your heart to seize with terror. All this talk of gates, of this elusive one and of the gate the other half of your party had gone in search of at the bottom of Lover’s Lake, you never thought this is what would be waiting for you.

A fleshy open sore growing out of the drywall like an ulcer.

You don’t know what you’d been picturing this whole time, but it certainly hadn’t been that … and Vecna had used Chrissy to open it…

The notion causes a violent shudder to rip through your body. You still don’t know how you feel about this whole Vecna nonsense, but you’d seen what happened to Chrissy by way of Patrick’s demise.

It’s still close enough to send your heart skipping a few beats faster, just the one time had been enough to damn near ruin you, but Eddie had had to see it twice…

Oh, Eddie… You think, briefly submitting to the despair of it, My poor, sweet Eddie…

You swallow the feeling and your silent wish that he was here, standing by your side and sharing the horror of it all. You wish he was here, but you’re glad he isn’t, because for as bad as the brief sojourn to the Wheeler’s house had been, it would have been decidedly worse with him present.

Still, if this thing really is the gate where you were meant to meet the rest of your party, then where are they? What are you meant to do now that you’ve found it?

You feel your stomach tighten with worry, standing in the trailer and wondering not for the first time that week where the hell Eddie could possibly be, hoping to God the answer doesn’t lie within that … thing.

You’re vaguely aware of a conversation occurring around you, Lucas says something to your left, and Dustin answers to your right. You don’t acknowledge them, however.

You’re too busy looking at the fleshy, pulsating sore in the ceiling, trying to quantify how something like that could come to exist in the real world, outside of all the horror movies and urban legends and your worst nightmares.

You’re so busy staring up at it, half afraid that if you take your eyes off of it, it’s going to move and snatch one of you up into its capacious maw like it’s the goddamn Blob or something worse, that you don’t notice when your charges come to a decision or see when Dustin retreats to the hall closet to retrieve the broom.

You don’t see him come trotting back into the room brandishing it like the spear he intends to use it as, and you don’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late.

Suddenly, he’s standing directly below the thing, prodding at it experimentally with the long wooden handle.

Your heart leaps up into your throat, and before you can even open your mouth to protest such an obviously suicidal action, he thrusts up with as much force as he can muster and the broom pierces the fleshy veil with a sickening snap.

You watch in horror as the thing tears open … inwardly, which is highly disturbing, and you scream, as is the only natural way to react to something like that.

Thankfully the sound is more or less masked by the harmonized screaming of the frightened teenagers around you.

Worst still is the way the noise echoes back at you as a group of disembodied voices answers, screaming from the other side of the gate, if that's what it actually is – it is yet another highly disturbing development that sends the lot of you scrambling backward, tripping over the odd piece of furniture – and each other– as you go.

Max, Lucas, and Erica converge around you in a tight huddle – you can feel three sets of nervous hands fisting at your clothes and suddenly it’s like you’re all little kids again. Normally you would have made a mental note to tease them about it later, Erica, especially after such a violent betrayal at the Wheeler’s, but you’re too gripped in your own terror to even consider it, let alone realize that Dustin is not among your little fear huddle.

He’s still standing fixed to his spot below the thing, looking directly up into the gaping maw of the hole in Eddie’s ceiling.

For a very long moment, no one dares to breathe – no one but Dustin, who is grinning ear to ear at whatever it is only he can see.

“Dustin–” you hiss, swiping at him with a clawed hand. Your fingers brush the hem of his sleeve, but you don’t dare move to try and get a better grip on him, “Get away from that thing!”

He glances over to regard you in a way that is much too casual for your liking and, inexplicably, shakes his head.

“It’s fine,” He assures you, casually gesturing for you to approach, “Come see.”

No. Your most primal instincts tell you, Absolutely not.

Gate or not, something in the furthest reaches of your mind is telling you that thing is an Eater, whatever it is. If you get any closer it’s going to snap you up and swallow you whole.

But Dustin is still there… it hasn’t eaten him.

Every rational bone in your body is screaming at you to stay as far away from the hole in the ceiling as humanly possible. Still, the fact that Dustin remains unharmed causes the shutter of your mind to click over and awaken some patently unwise part of your lizard brain.

You’re suddenly dangerously curious to know what is on the other side.

You’ve seen enough horror movies to know it’s a patently bad idea, a surefire way to end up another tally on the kill count, but it’s not every day you happen upon a fleshy otherworldly portal growing in the ceiling of your ex-boyfriend’s home.

Dustin beckons again with a crook of his finger and you silently weigh your options. If nothing more, you can grab him and get him out of the way in the event that the thing is just playing possum… still, the urge is not entirely selfless.

You can’t help yourself. You have to look.

You edge forward, much to the alarm of the others who dig their fingers in tighter and silently will you not to move, all while doing absolutely nothing to stop you.

Together, you creep across the floor in millimeters, one tiny step after the other. It’s dark on the other side, but what little you can see is strangely familiar, if only in the gut-wrenching sense of the uncanny valley. You take another step, and another, features and fixtures coming into view, painting the scene of a room you know far too well.

A room you’re currently standing in.

Your brain creaks under the weight of what comes into focus as you move further and further, until finally, you come to find yourselves below the thing, staring up at the people looking down at you through the ceiling in a mind-bending mirror image.

For half a moment, you can feel your brain stall and begin to make crunchy sounds as it struggles to keep itself intact.

It’s the Munson trailer, or at least some bizarro version of it that has been abandoned for at least ten or fifteen years.

But how can that possibly be?

Everything you can make out in the darkness is covered in thick layers of dust and grime, including the group of people standing huddled in the singular pool of light cast into their world from yours.

“...O-kay…” Max begins drolly beside you, “...What?”

Out of everything you expected to find on the other side – which is not much considering you’d drawn a total blank in that department – you never considered you’d find the rest of your party on the other side.

That was perhaps stupid of you, but it feels like a fitting assessment, as you are starting to feel very stupid, staring up at the harrowed faces of Nancy, Steve, Eddie, and Robin all gawping back down at you … or maybe it’s up … you can’t say for certain which you think it is and it's starting to give you a headache.

Maddeningly, like they aren’t caught in a weird inverted interdimensional portal in the ceiling, everyone on the other side reacts with varying degrees of relief, laughing even.

Dustin is just as inappropriately pleased with the outcome of his actions, offering you a smile and gesturing to the missing half of your party in a way that is just a little more casual than you’re comfortable with, considering the circumstances.

Oddly, you find that you’re not entirely sure why you’re so surprised. Dustin had called it a gate, after all.

And wasn’t that the plan from the start? Meet them on the other side and bring them through? It only then occurs to you how little you’d truly comprehended your so-called plan.

He’s grinning at you, everyone is grinning and laughing and calling back and forth to one another, and suddenly you feel like you’re going to scream.

You swallow the intent and open your mouth to speak calmly, quietly… it doesn’t work.

“What the fuck.” You can’t stop yourself from saying – Dustin’s features drop. “Dustin?”

Part of you is well aware of just how shrill you’ve become, but it is summarily drowned out by the title scroll of your inner dialogue screaming unintelligibly at the Lovecraftian madness you’ve unceremoniously encountered. You’d always thought it was a lame cop-out, the hero who lost his mind at the sight of horrors he could not comprehend, things beyond description.

You can comprehend a lot, and it has always felt like nothing more than a cheap literary trope to avoid having to describe a monster. Yet suddenly here you are, desperately trying to hold the broken pieces of your brain together, failing to comprehend what you’re seeing right in front of you.

You’re freaking out. You’re totally freaking out.

Dustin seems to sense your dangerous proximity to madness, as he says your name, calmly and slowly, putting his hands out as he approaches, like you’re some kind of wild animal backed into a corner, and you would slug him if he were any closer.

“Don’t freak out, okay?”

“Don’t freak out?!” You mimic, willing yourself in vain to calm down. You gesture angrily to the gate, “Are you fucking kidding? Dustin–!”

He doesn’t let you finish.

“This is all completely normal — trust me,” He assures you, speaking quickly and still using that stupid tone of voice that you imagine is meant to be calming. “We’ve all been through this before, right guys? Steve? Nancy?”

Before anyone can vouch for the truth of that statement, Eddie interjects from somewhere above you.

“Uh, yeah… hate to break it to you, Bud, but nothing about this is normal…” He deadpans.

Your head snaps up to regard his frizzy-haired form, splattered and smeared in dark grey muck and grime, looking very much like he’s just crawled through some kind of interdimensional crawl space.

When your eyes meet, he presses his mouth into a tight line that you imagine is meant to be a smile and he waves awkwardly at you, like he isn’t quite sure what else to do.

For half a moment your heart seizes in something you can’t differentiate as fondness or panic as you try to decide whether or not the dark substance splattered across his hands is blood.

“Eddie–!” You start, but the words get caught in your throat.

“I know — I’ll fill you in later,” he huffs.

It does nothing to calm you. You can’t wait for later. You want to ask what’s happened, if he’s hurt, but your throat has slammed shut and try as you might you can’t make the sound come out, so you end up gaping stupidly up at him, working your jaw like a dying fish.

You can only imagine how goddamn foolish you must look, losing your shit in the middle of his living room. You’re supposed to be calm, level headed. Shit doesn’t phase you, you’re cool.

Dustin calls your name again, pulling your attention away from Eddie and back into the real world. Thankfully, you’re suddenly furious, and it’s more than grounding enough to hold your shit together.

“Somebody had better tell me what the hell is going on,” You start, “And I mean right. Fucking. Now.”

Dustin heaves a long suffering sigh, one that garners a wide-eyed, incredulous look from you. Then he’s shaking his head like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” He says, gesturing to the portal. “That’s the Upsidedown.”

It just about damn near breaks your brain. The Upsidedown is real, which means Jane Hopper (who you know for a fact isn’t actually related to the late Chief), or El, or whatever Mike’s weird girlfriend’s name is, really does have superpowers, and this is all actually happening.

Oh, Jesus…

Your vision swims and goes spotty and for half a moment you feel suddenly like the trailer has been set adrift at sea. The floor roils beneath your feet and you moan pitifully, doubling over to brace your hands on your knees.

“Uh oh…” someone says from above you. Maybe Robin, you think.

“I think I’m gonna be sick.” You hum.

It causes a collective dissenting hum to pass through both the upright and inverted versions of the room. You’re vaguely aware of Eddie calling to you from somewhere above you.

“Oh, shit – okay, sit down a put your head between your knees!” He says.

“That never works,” Steve argues, and an instant commotion breaks out all around you.

It's overwhelming, though you suppose some part of you understands.

Nobody wants to see you blow chunks all over your sneakers, least of all you, but then again you didn’t ask to have the curtain pulled back like that with not even the courtesy of being told to pay no mind to the man you found there. Oz is on the horizon with Kansas swiftly slipping out from under you.

The Wizard isn’t real, but the Upsidedown is, which means everything else you think you know is probably a lie.

It’s totally cool and not scary at all, and you’re definitely not about to pass out. Nope, not at all…

Once again, a unanimous decision is made without your input – they found the gate, and now they’ve got to bring the party through. Someone moves you to the side as the room breaks into a flurry of motion, and you watch miserably from the couch as you wait for your bout of hysteria to pass.

Eddie’s mattress is dragged out into the living room, and rude comments are made about the state of his laundry. You wonder idly when he last changed his sheets and distract yourself by assuming it was probably the last time you changed them.

So, what… a year? Gross.

When prompted, you move aimlessly to the linen closet in the hall and begin retrieving bedsheets by the handful until the cupboard is bare. Then, you sit and help knot them together to form a makeshift rope.

It’s mindless work that you’re happy to do. As the elder Munson says: better to stay busy.

When the rope is finished and passed through the ceiling to the other side only to hang in suspended animation between the two worlds, you decide that you’ve had quite enough of the Upsidedown for today and slip wordlessly away from the group.

No one sees you go, and just like that you’re invisible again. Good, maybe if you’re lucky you can fade out of existence and escape the madness of everything that’s happened in the last half hour.

Down the hall and into the back bedroom, you pad across the threshold of Eddie’s door and sink down onto the exposed box spring, carefully tucking one foot beneath you and taking creature comfort in the familiarity of your surroundings as you do your best to center yourself.

Breathe in, breathe out.

You try to tune out everything from the trailer beyond by turning your mind to Eddie’s room. You look hard at everything, all his posters and knickknacks, dirty laundry and papers, and Sweetheart, his prized possession in its rightful place backed by the mirror.

Breathe in, breathe out.

The image reflected in its surface shows you movement as someone arrives in the doorway, and you ready yourself to be moved as Lucas or Max or someone else comes looking for yet another thing needed in the ongoing rescue of the others.

Breathe in, breathe out.

No one asks you to move, but a strong, calloused hand curling around your shoulder draws you back to yourself. You don’t need to look to know who it is. Even without his reflection in the mirror or the heavy metal press of his rings, you know Eddie’s touch like nothing else in this world.

“Sorry I’m late, Sweetheart.” He says softly, and you catch yourself wondering for half a moment whether he’s talking to you or the guitar.

You have your answer as, slowly, you turn to regard him and follow his movement as he sinks down to sit beside you on the bed.

You watch Eddie watching you, taking in his grimy features, the damp ends of his hair where it has not completely dried yet. There is something black and viscous spattered across his hands, and his nail beds are crusted with dried blood from where you know he’s been picking at them. Nervous habit.

It takes what feels like a very long moment for him to speak, and when he does, it almost feels like he has no idea what to say. You don’t blame him. What is there to say after all that madness?

“You doin’ okay?” Eddie asks gently, his voice barely a whisper as he turns shy eyes up at you.

Part of you hates the way he’s clearly treating you with kid gloves like he isn’t sure just how fragile you are right now and he’s leery of pushing you over the edge, but the rest of you is just so unbelievably happy he’s back.

You would throw your arms around his neck and squeeze him until he tapped out if you could make yourself move.

Still, with Eddie here, somehow all of this nonsense seems slightly more palatable if only because you know he’s got to be as lost in all of this as you are.

You offer him a lopsided shrug.

“Got your message,” You mumble, “Came running.”

He breathes an airy laugh out through his nose.

“You always do.”

You feel his hand slide down the length of your arm, never letting go as he pulls your hand into his lap and laces his fingers with yours.

You hadn’t even realized that he was still touching you, and now you’re stuck staring at the point of contact, your hand in his.

You still can’t tell what the dried muck spread all over his hands is, you’re not certain anymore that it’s blood, but you’re also not certain it isn’t — you almost don’t hear Eddie calling your name.

Slowly, you lift your eyes to meet his and find him looking at you expectantly.

You hadn’t heard what he’d said.

“Are you okay?” He asks again when you force yourself to focus on him, brows knitting tightly over his eyes.

You pull your shoulders up to your ears and briefly debate whether you ought to tell him the truth.

No, you absolutely are the furthest thing from okay.

Everything you know is a lie and you’re pretty sure nothing is ever going to go back to being normal. Somehow you can’t manage it, as sitting there, looking at him, suddenly all you can feel is relief. Suddenly square one doesn’t seem so bad.

Slowly, you feel the corners of your lips begin to creep up. You reach across to brush his hair back from his forehead, tracing the dirty planes of his face before coming down to cup his jaw. He catches your hand and holds it there, turning in to press a chaste kiss to your palm.

You smile and nod.

“I’m okay,” You tell him, and start down the path to fooling yourself into believing it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Upsidedown was bad, but it wasn’t the worst thing Eddie has witnessed all day, because they’d all taken their turns climbing the rope to slip back into the real world and left it and all its hive-mind bullshit behind.

Watching Nancy slip into the catatonia of Vecna’s curse and tearing his room apart in a panic looking for the elusive “music” everyone was suddenly crying out for was an excursion in brief but blinding terror. Somehow – he doesn’t know how – she’d snapped out of it, rendering it, not the worst thing that has happened all day.

Boosting his shitty neighbor’s Winnebago had been almost fun until Eddie realized that, inexplicably, he’d picked what was perhaps the worst getaway car in the history of mankind.

He’d picked it because it was a home as much as it was a vehicle, something they could all take a moment to breathe in, and because he knew how angry it would make the particular couple who owned the thing. He didn’t give a shit, he wanted a nap and a shower and to get as far away from the place that was supposed to be his home as fast as humanly possible.

Harrington was driving like a bat out of hell, and he was almost proud of him until noticed everyone getting thrown around, desperately trying to cling to any surface they could find. Eddie realized his mistake with a sickening start.

Seatbelts.

There were no goddamn seatbelts in the RV.

Visions of car accidents and open-casket funerals nearly sent him over the edge and Eddie seized you by the back of your pants.

He pulled you firmly into place to sit in his lap where he could hold you in a constricting embrace and protect you from whatever kind of vehicular disaster they were surely headed for, all the while barking orders at everyone to sit the fuck down and hold on to something.

Despite the way it triggered violently sepia-toned memories of the last time he ever saw his mother alive, it still wasn’t the worst thing he’d witnessed all day.

No, all of that he could manage, compartmentalize alongside all the other crazy shit he was electing not to think about… but The War Zone? That was a beast in its own category.

They’d rolled in expecting to find the parking lot empty like it has been every other time Eddie made the jaunt out to the Army Surplus store, for one reason or another, and yet they found the place teeming with life.

Everyone and their mother, it seemed, everyone Eddie has known his whole life, turned out to arm themselves to the teeth like they thought they were the cast of Red Dawn and the Russians were at the gate.

If he didn’t know better he would have thought the good people of Hawkins were readying themselves for war.

But it wasn’t the threat of war that had whipped them into a frothy bloodlust, only the lingering threat of a Munson among them. They were getting ready to hunt their newest boogeyman, root him out and string him up for all the world to see.

A warning to anyone who dared to be different in any capacity.

They’d done the same with his father once upon a time, not that the bastard didn’t deserve it, but now they were getting ready to hunt him, and that was so much worse…

Worse than the Upsidedown or the near miss with Nancy and Vecna, was the knowledge that this town hated him bad enough to arm themselves with bear traps and grenades.

It left Eddie feeling like he’d been wrenched out of himself and discarded, leaving nothing more than an empty shell devoid of any higher function than the primal urge to run.

Every single person in this god-forsaken, nice little midwestern town, this backwater hell wants him dead… he’s never going to get out of Hawkins.

He’ll die first.

The sobering realization of the violence his neighbors are capable of weighs heavy like a cinder block tied to his ankle dragging him deeper and deeper into the darkness.

He can hardly breathe for the pressure it puts on him, and by the time they reach the field, Eddie is just about ready to spin out.

The door swings open and he’s out of the RV before the wheels have even stopped rolling, gravel crunching underfoot and grass swaying as he stalks out into the field at a pace. He doesn’t know where he’s going, he just needs space, distance — quiet.

Behind him, he’s vaguely aware of hearing Dustin calling after him, followed very quickly by your hushed,

“Let him go, Dustin …”

Thank God for that, he doesn’t think he can stand any semblance of human interaction right now. He can’t grin and bear it and pretend he’s okay, not when he’s ready to fly apart at the seams.

Eddie walks until he can’t hear the idle chatter of the group anymore, feeling something akin to a balloon swelling in his chest. He doesn’t know what will happen if it bursts.

He can’t breathe.

He doesn’t understand what he did to make those good people hate him so much. He’s never understood it, and suddenly he feels like he’s eleven years old again, walking down the interstate, wiping blood and tears on the sleeve of his suit jacket because nobody loves him, nobody is on his side and he wants to scream, hurl himself to the ground and rant and rail and cry about how unfair his stupid life is until he’s empty.

He doesn’t do any of that, though, he just stops and breathes deep the clean air.

It’s heavy with the smell of rain, wildflowers, and water and Eddie sinks to his knees and prays for the ground to open up and swallow him. Let him go back to the Earth, let him cease to exist.

After all, that’s what everybody wants, right? To wipe away any trace of him having ever existed?

How cruel it was that his parents didn’t smother him in the crib, they could have saved everyone an awful lot of grief.

Why else was he born if not to suffer, to feel all the hurt, and misery, and pain in the world? They ought to have ended his suffering before it even began.

He wipes moodily at the breaking damn of his tears, streaking uncontrollably down his face, cutting rivets through the dirt caked into his skin, and he hates, hates, hates…

It’s not fair — it’s just not fucking fair.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed before the gentle crunch of approaching footsteps reach him, growing gradually louder, and louder.

After a moment Eddie feels a hand creep up between his shoulder blades and rest momentarily in the space there. He knows it’s you without even looking up from where he’s ripping up fistfuls of grass like a petulant child.

Who else would be it? Who else is brave enough to face the monster?

You slowly come to circle around and sink down quietly to sit in the grass in front of him. You’re close enough that your knees are nearly touching, and the proximity is not enough.

Eddie wishes you would reach for him, wrap him up and hold him in your arms and tell him it’s going to be okay until he believes it.

He wishes you would love him again like you used to.

He wishes it were that easy.

He doesn’t ask for it, because he doesn’t deserve it, and you don’t speak, you just watch and wait.

Eddie can’t help but feel so slightly ashamed, of what he doesn’t rightly know – maybe for storming off like he did, maybe for this whole scenario, but he suddenly can’t meet your gaze and the idle wishing continues.

He wishes none of this had happened and he wishes more than anything that he’d swallowed his pride and just gone to your stupid graduation ceremony.

Maybe if he had you’d be a hundred miles away now, living together somewhere in a tiny little apartment, struggling to pay your bills, sharing every meal and every night and morning, living your lives blissfully removed from Hawkins and Chrissy Cunningham and Vecna and everything else that has come together to unceremoniously ruin Eddie’s life in the span of a week.

He sniffs, wipes the back of his hand across his nose, and clears his throat to try and banish the bullshit emotion welling up inside of him.

He can’t place it: Fear? Anger? Frustration? Exhaustion? He doesn’t know what the feeling is, he only knows it’s big enough that if he’s not careful it’s going to swallow him whole.

He thinks if he could trace it, he would find that it manifested the moment he walked into his living room and found Chrissy frozen to the spot. Though maybe sooner, maybe it started the afternoon he’d spent shamelessly flirting with her at the picnic table behind the school or the moment he tried to drink himself into oblivion last summer.

Maybe it started when he stood there and watched as you walked out of his life.

He shouldn’t have let you go, and he’s sick with the notion.

You’re still watching him, waiting for him to speak.

As always, Eddie is happy to indulge you – he furiously scrubs his hands over his face to try and banish any residual wetness from the tears that have, thankfully, since stopped.

“Everybody in this goddamn town wants me dead.” he croaks – his voice is thick and creaky from disuse.

You don’t miss a beat.

“And everybody in this goddamn town is going to have to go through me to get to you.”

In spite of himself, Eddie can’t help the bitter snort of laughter that bubbles up in him.

After a moment, you nudge him with your knee.

“Hey, I promised Wayne I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” you say, “and I’m not about to start breaking my promises … especially to Wayne.”

Eddie hums thoughtfully, well aware of the consequences of such an unforgivable action. There’s not much in this world that is as terrible as getting caught under Wayne Munson’s disappointed gaze.

It makes him think of all the ways he’s let his uncle down in the last year, all the deeply tired sighs and sad eyes he’s had to endure because of the bad decisions Eddie can’t seem to stop making.

“Do you wanna hear something crazy?” He hums, quickly changing the subject for the sake of his own self-preservation - he doesn’t need to relive all the guilt he’s built up in disappointing his uncle on top of everything else presently weighing on him.

You nod.

“Always.”

“So… on the other side–” He gives you a knowing look, because he’s not about to start calling it the Upsidedown like it’s a normal place with a normal name.

Thankfully your brows jump up toward your hairline and you roll your eyes - you are, in fact, picking up what he’s putting down. Good.

Eddie continues.

“They’ve got these bats, right? But, not like normal ones—” He pauses a moment to try and find a way to properly explain the most immediate threat waiting for you just below the surface, “Remember in Temple of Doom, all those establishing shots—?”

Your eyes flash with clarity and in an instant you’re nodding, finishing the thought for him.

“Giant vampire bats.” You say, then pause like you’ve only just realized what it was you said, “Oh, great. So nothing too terrible…”

The sarcasm in your tone is thick enough to cut with a knife.

Eddie shrugs.

“I mean they damn near pulled Steve’s head off last time, but yeah, no big deal…”

You pull a face.

“...I was wondering what happened there.”

You gesture to your throat in emphasis – it had been hard to miss the dark bruises wringing Steve’s neck, but between what happened with Nancy, stealing the RV, and navigating the parking lot of the army surplus outlet, there had been almost no time to explain any of it.

"Too bad," you continue, "It might have done something to reign that ego in..."

“He’s not so bad…”

Eddie lets the words hang between you a moment before finally turning his eyes up to watch for your reaction.

Your expression is, for the moment, an unreadable thing if not tinged with the slightest hint of disbelief, so he continues.

“Steve apologized to me,” He clarifies, “For being an asshole back at school.”

It takes you a moment to react, but when you do, your brows come together in a pinched mask of strident disbelief.

“Bullshit.”

It’s about as much as he’d thought you would say. Eddie lays a palm flat across his chest and raises the other, pantomiming the swearing of an oath.

“Hand to God, he pulled me aside for a gen-u-ine heart-to-heart... I guess facing your mortality like that tends to put things into perspective … not that I would know, I’ve never really been the 'learning lessons' type…”

You laugh, and it’s almost enough to banish all the bad feelings weighing heavy on Eddie’s heart. He bites the inside of his cheek to try and stifle the smile the sound of your laughter brings to the surface.

“That must have been awkward.” You giggle.

“Yeah, it was, but it was also really … I don’t know, it was nice.” Eddie shrugs, “You know, people aren’t exactly striving for accountability when it comes to the way they treat the town freak.” And then, “They’d rather just come after me with torches and pitchforks.”

The sentiment wipes the smile right off your face, and it might have sent a pang of regret lancing through Eddie’s midsection if it wasn’t so patently true.

It’s not like you can deny it, you saw the multitude of masses at The War Zone as clearly as he did. Good simple folk whipped into a tizzy over rumors, practically frothing at the mouth with a sudden and violent need for blood.

His blood.

Eddie watches the gears in your head turn as you work something over, trying to decide what to say. Only there is nothing to be said, so you make a hollow sound in the back of your throat and you let your gaze drift past him to fix wistfully on the scene beyond.

If he turned, he would see their party spread out, preparing themselves for the insurmountable task ahead, crafting weapons and armor and all the other fixings of battle.

They’ve got a plan to try and stop Vecna, to save Max from the curse, and to clear his name. It’s a very bad plan, in his opinion, an honest-to-God suicide mission, but he supposes if he’s going to die, he might as well do it on his own terms rather than waiting around for the angry mob to descend.

It doesn’t scare him any less.

Despite his best efforts, his voice is trembling as he speaks.

“... I can’t see the end of this…”

You turn your attention back to him, but you don’t answer right away. You just stare at him like you’re trying to commit his features to memory, almost like you’re worried something is going to happen and you’re never going to see him again.

Probably because you know how bad the plan to stop Vecna is and you’re all going to die the second you set foot back in the Upsidedown.

“The end of what, Eds?” You finally hum.

“This.” He says, gesturing vaguely to the air, “The saga of all this … bullshit.”

“What do you mean?”

For some reason, the wide-eyed innocence of your tone sets his teeth on edge.

“I mean I’m scared, Sweetheart.” He presses, “I don’t know how I’m gonna – how any of us are gonna survive this.”

“...Oh.” You say quietly, and then like you have no idea what to say but you’re desperate to say something to try and provide some sort of comfort to him, “You know, it’s okay to be scared–”

He can’t help but scoff bitterly.

“Don’t patronize me, okay–” He bites the words off before he can finish the thought.

It would be so easy to get mean because you’re not the one everyone is gunning for, nobody wants to see your head on a pike, but none of that is your fault.

There’s no sense in biting your head off over something neither of you has any power over.

Eddie sighs and tips his head forward before starting again.

“All the shit that’s happened?” He says, “It’s like it doesn’t even phase you.”

You roll your eyes and scoff like it’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard.

“Oh, Eddie, come on. You think I’m not scared? I am barely holding it together,”

He shakes his head.

“Well, you’re real damn good at hiding it because you could’ve fooled me.”

“Only because I’ve had years of practice.” You huff. “Come on, what’s this really about?”

He hesitates because it feels stupid to admit what he’s thinking, but now that he’s started, he knows you’re not about to just let him drop the subject.

Anyway, it’s like you said, he’s justified in being scared. It’s not like you’re about to turn around and judge him for it, at least he hopes.

He takes a deep, steadying breath to try and center himself before explaining himself.

“I’m not a hero, you know? I run at the first sign of danger, and I didn’t know that about myself until this week.” Eddie sniffs, “I spent all this time thinking I was pretty brave… turns out I’m a fucking coward.”

“You are brave.” You insist, “Eddie, you’re the bravest person I know.”

It hits him like a bolt to the chest and suddenly there’s a knot in his throat, threatening to strangle him with emotion.

Eddie lifts his hand to press the heel of his palm into his eye until it bursts with colors and stars, and he sniffles pitifully, willing himself not to get stupid and teary-eyed again.

He’s just feeling sorry for himself, and it’s not a good look.

“No, I’m not, But you? You’re a goddamn superhero, you know that? I don’t know how I got so lucky that you’re always riding in to save my ass, but… well, look, I think we both know I’m not the guy who lives to see the end of this movie.”

“This isn’t a movie.” You press.

“No, I know that it’s just… I guess what I’m trying to say is … this is so fucked on so many levels, and you’re just… I mean you’re amazing. I’d be dead without you,”

Complimenting you is his default setting, he cannot help but do it, especially when it comes as a substitute for any kind of a straight answer, and you know this better than anyone.

You pull a face and he’s quick to continue before you can argue the point.

“You know it’s true." Eddie insists, "If it weren’t for you, I’d probably still be hiding under a tarp at Rick’s place… or worse..”

You have to know what he means, strung up by Jason Carver and his lackeys and everyone else in this town desperately gearing up for the hunt and their own brand of Good American Justice. You’d never let that happen. You’d burn Hawkins to the ground before you let anyone harm him… he still believes that, in spite of all his faculties telling him otherwise.

Eddie suddenly feels the weight of the situation it bearing down on him like it means to crush him, and it’s too much. He heaves out a shuddering breath and leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hands.

Immediately, he feels your reassuring touch, rubbing up and down the length of his calf.

“Hey, listen to me. I know you’re scared – I’m scared too– but we’re gonna figure this out–”

He drops his hands to hold yours in place at his knees and nods emphatically, quick to assure you that he’s okay and definitely not about to go to pieces.

“I know,” He assures you, “I know, that’s not what I’m trying to say. There actually is a greater point to this pity party, I swear, I just – Jesus – I just have to find it again...”

Eddie is painfully aware of how he has begun to ramble. He knows what he wants to say, but suddenly he can’t find the words.

He can almost hear Steve chastizing him for putting his foot in his mouth so spectacularly, urging him to just tell her how you feel.

The advice seemed so heartfelt and eloquent at the time, but under the heat of your gaze, Eddie’s intentions have slipped from his grasp.

He feels like he’s fourteen years old again and terrified of talking to pretty girls – shades of the way he used to feel around you before he knew you.

You’re looking at him with so much patience and so much adoration, the way you did when he was a shy and stammering mess, before you’d finished dancing around each other in those first few tentative months.

It ties his tongue into knots and makes his throat feel like it’s closing up, and he has to clear his throat to try and keep his voice steady.

It doesn’t work.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is…” He trails off, heaves a defeated sigh, and shakes his head for how completely stupid he is sure he must sound, “...is that I don’t know what I’m trying to say… I’m just feeling sorry for myself…”

“Liar.” You say gently.

Eddie can’t help the airy chuckle that rises in him, he must not be as good a liar as he thinks he is, because you always manage to see through his bullshit.

A sticky silence blooms between the two of you, and after a long moment of nothing but birdsong and the grass moving in the breeze, you nudge his knee with yours again, drawing his attention.

“Spit it out, Munson.” You prompt, giving him a curt nod.

He would if he knew how.

He wants to tell you he loves you and that he’s sorry, but he’s said it so many times lately it’s started to lose all meaning, and with such diminishing returns he’s afraid to push it past the point of no return.

Eddie hesitates, suddenly worried about overstepping his bounds, but you’re looking at him and batting those pretty eyes so expectantly that he has to say something.

“Whatever happens,” He begins slowly, “I want you to know I’m just so, so glad you came looking for me … even if you only did it for Wayne,”

You’re quiet for what feels like a very long time, long enough that Eddie starts to get nervous that he said the wrong thing.

You push up then, standing and brushing the dirt from your jeans before reaching down for his hand.

He gives it to you so quickly your palms clap together in a sound that rings out loudly across the field.

Eddie lets you pull him to his feet and lets you help brush off the dirt and grass from his jeans. It’s almost intimate, the proximity, the gentle touching.

If he wanted to, he could fool himself and read further into it than he has any right to do, but then he turns and catches you standing there, watching him with a subtle smile spread across your face.

“What?” He asks.

You shake your head.

“Nothing,” You say, “Just enjoying the show.”

It causes the moth in his stomach to kick up a ruckus, and he can’t help but stand a little stunned as you cross your arms over your chest and turn on your heel, starting back across the field toward the camper.

He knows he’s blushing.

He’s got to be, and he feels extremely stupid about it, watching you go, trying not to get too caught up in how he’s suddenly noticed the way your jeans hug your backside – are those the same jeans you were wearing before?

Were they always that tight?

Almost like you’d read his mind, you stop short after only a few paces and twist back around to face him.

“I didn’t do it for Wayne, you know…” You call, matter of factly, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

It hits Eddie like a fist to the gut, and he does everything in his power not to hope… and yet… he nearly stumbles over his own feet in the rush to close the gap between you, the trek made all the more difficult by the nervous habit of wiping his palms down over the front of his jeans.

“You didn’t?” Eddie stammers, half breathless from the sudden burst of exertion and the hint of possibility hanging heavy in the air.

You pull your shoulders up to your ears and tilt coquettishly forward, leaning into his space just as he makes those last few steps to you.

“I did it for you, Dummy.” You whisper.

Oh shit, oh shit oh shit!

His tongue feels fat in his mouth and Eddie has to swallow hard against the way his throat suddenly feels dry.

He could kiss you so easily right now, all he has to do is lean forward.

He’s not sure you’d thank him for it, he has no idea where you stand these days, but, like always, he can’t help but give in to his impulses.

Just as Eddie begins to lean in to meet you, you turn again and start back in the direction of the others once more

“And I did it for me…” You say, shrugging, “Mostly I did it for me.”

It’s enough to drive Eddie just a little bit crazy, and suddenly his heart is hammering in his chest. He shouldn’t hope for anything, because it’s the hope that kills you, so they say.

“Why?” He asks, lengthening his stride in order to fall into step with you.

In the distance, Dustin stands crouched over a pair of galvanized trashcan lids, hammering wicked-looking carpenter nails through their surface area, the sound rings out across the field like the ticking of a clock, counting the seconds as Eddie waits for you to answer.

You walk along, watching your feet as you go, and he thinks he can see the faintest hint of a smile quirking up the corners of your mouth.

When you glance up at him from the edge of your vision, he can’t stop himself from grinning at you, not even if his life depended on it.

You don’t answer, you just smile and keep walking.

He knows why, at least he hopes he does.

For half a moment he’s overwhelmed with the notion, with the white heat of your gaze. It’s too much, and he has to tear his eyes away for the sake of his own self-preservation… and to keep from stepping into a gopher hole and breaking an ankle.

Eddie glances bashfully down at his sneakers and reaches up to scratch at the stubble he knows must be shadowing his jawline – it’s been days since he showered and he’s suddenly painfully aware of it.

You giggle beside him in a way that feels secretive, conspiratorial even, like it’s a secret shared between you. He can’t help but smile.

It has Eddie suddenly thinking back to the earliest days of your relationship. To nights laying on your bedroom floor, staring up at the sea of glow-in-the-dark stars, tripping the light fantastic with the dulcet tones of Knights in White Satin playing a soft soundtrack to the cosmos alit in your eyes.

Your parents aren’t home, but when are they ever?

He can picture your lips, rosy and swollen for the soft languid kisses you’ve been trading for the better part of two hours. Your clothes and hair are in a state, pulled hopelessly out of shape where he’s been pawing at you to gain access to the most tender parts he craved, like some sort of depraved creature, starved for the taste of sweetest flesh.

He’s so incandescently happy he imagines he could sink into the floor, become a ghost and spend the rest of his days haunting these walls if only to always be near you.

He heaves a contented sigh into your mouth as you push forward to knock foreheads with him, ever so tenderly.

Another kiss, just one more… The faintest whisper of your lips graze his, the pads of your fingers trace the lines of his face, your body is pressed into perfect alignment with his, and he’s so caught in the anticipation of you, so drunk on the heady film of proximity that he almost misses it.

He feels those three words more than he hears them, like three bolts to the chest that hit home and sink beneath the surface to permanently embed themselves in the tender flesh of his heart.

The first time you’d ever told him you loved him is a shining jewel in the collection of treasured memories that live in the secret spot behind his lungs, and he’s been chasing that high for days.

“Yeah… well…” He mumbles, the memory breathing a little courage into him, enough daring to steal a glance back up at you where he is once again overwhelmed by the way you’re still gazing at him — echoes of the same way you’d looked at him that night if he was being really foolish.

But he was always a fool for you.

“Well?” You prompt.

“Well… maybe I need to hear you say it.”

You stop short and level Eddie with a sly look when he comes to stand beside you.

“Do you?” You ask, turning your gaze up at him.

The moth flutters against its bars and Eddie has to clear his throat to keep his voice steady.

“Yeah…” He says, nodding, “Yeah, I think I do.”

The assault on his stomach turns violent when your face splits into a wide, playful grin then. You bite your lip in a failed attempt to stifle it and rock back on your heels.

Eddie feels a nostalgic warmth flood his chest cavity, swirling like the tide against his ribs – he knows that mischievous look very well, and he realizes with a start just how long it’s been since he’s seen it grace your features.

Too long.

If he’d had his wits about him, he might have known what was about to happen next. It would have given him time to reach out and grab you, hold you to the spot.

“You’ll have to catch me first,” you purr.

It takes him a moment too long to feed the sentence through the gears in his mind, and by the time Eddie realizes what’s happening, you’ve already turned tail and bolted across the field.

“Hey–!” He shouts after you, the bright sound of your laughter ringing across the grass as you angle yourself toward Dustin.

He chases you, and suddenly it’s just like old times, running rampant circles around each other, playing, shouting, and laughing, only this time with the added bonus of Dustin being thrown into the mix.

Once he gets over the initial shock of you using him as a human shield, shoving him between you and Eddie, he’s more than happy to join in your game.

Were anyone to look over, they would surely be disgusted by the cloyingly saccharine display – the three of you wrestling in the grass like it’s just another spring afternoon and nothing could possibly be amiss in the world.

#this is maybe one of my favorite chapters and my heart is THUMPIN #CALL ME THUMPER I SUPPOSE!#eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 5 hours

Text

Cruel Summer - Part 11

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 8k

warnings: swearing, some angst (as always) discussions of closeted queer folk (just in case) probably a lot more - will go back in and edit as needed!

A.N.: I'm back, Chat! After a million years and some change, I really hope you like this chapter even though to me it feels a tad like filler, so sorry it took so long to get back into the swing of things!! - Also, my taglist is broken, so if you would like to be put on it for the chapters going forward, please let me know!

To call the last few days a blur would be an understatement, more so considering how everything that had happened over the course of the last few hours could have filled the duration of those days themselves.

And everything happened so fast, events falling into place one after the other in such quick succession that Dustin has barely had time to process all the steps he’d taken down the road since he and Max first left his house in search of Eddie – in search of you.

Presently, he’s stuck trying to rationalize just how he’d come to find himself sitting huddled on the Wheeler’s sofa, stuffed in between Max and Lucas under the tense scrutiny of the Hawkins PD and the worried coterie of their parents.

Though perhaps “how” is not the question, but why, considering he knows exactly how it happened: they found Eddie, then they lost him, and after a very tense few hours, subsequently found him again, camped out with you at Skull Rock, looking very much like you’d been to hell and back.

From there their road circled back to Lover’s Lake, and now here they find themselves, in police custody with half of their party lost to the gate beneath the water.

It’s the closest thing Dustin can imagine to a worst-case scenario.

That’s not true, he tells himself, Eddie’s still in the clear, so it’s not all bad… not yet…

Still, it’s beyond bizarre to be sitting and getting lectured on the Wheeler’s sofa with Mike so far removed all the way in California.

Karen is nice, sure, and Ted is … well, Ted is Ted, hardly intimidating, but something about being under the direct scrutiny of the Wheelers and the Sinclairs and his mother and the Hawkins PD, all of whom he is actively lying to, has Dustin sinking further and further into the plush cushions in the hopes of somehow shrinking out of existence.

How badly he wishes he was anywhere but here.

It’s not that he’s intimidated or anything so foolish, particularly by the bespectacled likes of Officer Callahan, only that Dustin is painfully aware of how this looks, their merry band of misfits camped out at the water’s edge directly opposite an active crime scene with binoculars in hand. Worse still, he’s painfully aware of how it sounds.

“What were you kids doing out at the lake?” Callahan asks.

It’s as good a question as any, but it leaves the lot of them reeling with just exactly how to answer it.

What are they supposed to tell them, the truth? That they were busy sending half their party through an interdimensional gate at the bottom of the lake to the Upsidedown?

No.

Under absolutely no circumstances will he be telling them the truth, not unless he wants to see the inside of a padded cell.

He could have told Hopper the truth (or at least some summarized version of it), but Hopper isn’t here, so Dustin and his friends open their mouths and all begin to speak at once as they fumble for some sort of credible answer as to what they were doing out at the lake.

“Swimming—” Dustin says immediately.

Max shrugs her shoulders and offers what would have been the most practical answer…

“Nothing—”

… if not for what came tumbling out of Lucas’s mouth.

“Taking a long romantic walk under the moonlight?” He squeaks, voice lilting an octave higher as his sentence comes to a close, making the statement sound much more like a question than anything else.

The silence in the room is deafening, and Dustin suppresses a wince, fully aware of just how well and truly cooked their collective gooses are as he exchanges a horrified glance with you, sitting in a plush chair opposite the couch, wide-eyed and gaping at him from the other side of the room.

It’s a wonder you’re even here, considering Dustin had been sure that you’d go right along with the others, but in a stunning turn of events, you’d elected to stay behind.

It was because, as you said; “I’m the babysitter, it’s literally my job…” – Dustin had been decidedly pleased about that, in stark contrast to Eddie, who had just about capsized the boat right there on the shore trying to reach for your hand.

“Don’t be silly,” He’s insisted, despite how unbelievably practical you were being. “There’s plenty of room,” There was not, as had been evidenced by Dustin’s own rejected application to join the expedition. “– come on,”

But there was no arguing with you, as was always the case when your mind was made up. For as many reasons as Eddie could drum up for you to go, you had just as many reasons to stay, the least of those being that you were injured.

“I’ll only slow you down,” You’d assured him with a slow shake of your head, “It’s gonna be fine, we’ll be waiting right here when you get back.”

It’s yet another thing that is driving Dustin to the very edge of anxiety-induced nausea: they won’t be there waiting on the shore when the others get back … if they get back.

The adults are still gawping at their little group, eyes wide as dinner plates in patent disbelief of their swimming–nothing–romantic moonlit walk at the lake.

“It was kind of, sort of a … field trip scenario…” Dustin says, gesturing flippantly as he fumbles through the poor excuse for an explanation.

“To the lake…” Callahan deadpans.

“Yeah…”

“In the middle of the night…”

It’s less a question than an accusation.

Dustin resists the urge to correct the deputy, considering it’s hardly the middle of the night, and he nods, swallowing hard against the cotton blooming in his throat.

“...I mean, it’s Spring Break.” he croaks, “...No school…”

“Dusty…” His mother presses, “Somebody was just murdered there!”

It sets his teeth on edge.

“We didn’t know that at the time.” He insists, well aware of just how lame this all sounds.

Desperate to claw back some shred of credibility, he elbows Lucas in the ribs. It startles the boy to attention and his head snaps around to regard Dustin with an incredulous look, as if to ask what the hell am I supposed to say?

Max takes the hint for him.

“What’s the big deal?” She starts, “So, we were down at the lake — it’s called healing your inner child, look it up.”

On the other end of the couch, Dustin is vaguely aware of hearing you breathe out harshly, muttering something that sounds very much like “Oh, boy…”

Before he can stop this snowball from rolling, Lucas is nodding emphatically, suddenly very eager to add his two cents to the notion.

“Right, w-we were just trying to …” he trails off, swallowing hard as the rest of his sentence escapes him, and then, “… yeah, like Max said… do that.”

If Dustin thought the first silence was deep, this one is a yawning chasm of infinite depth. They’re great at this, actually, not at all amateurish.

“Right…” Powell says slowly, “...and this has absolutely nothing to do with Eddie Munson?”

Once again, they’re all speaking simultaneously, shaking their heads, gesticulating, and doing anything in their power to make themselves even remotely believable.

No really, they’re doing great.

“No, not at all.”

“Of course not.”

And then, because this is already going so well, Dustin opens his big mouth.

“That weirdo?” He scoffs, refusing to refer to Eddie by any harsher language, and cringing at the way his voice breaks on the word, “We don’t even know the guy.”

Erica Sinclair erupts into a bark of incredulous laughter from her position in the far corner of the room, and Dustin realizes his mistake the moment the words leave his mouth.

Erica… how could he have forgotten about Erica, who very recently had been caught up in the brief euphoria of reading from the Good Book of Eddie Munson.

Erica, who has just caught Dustin in what is perhaps the most blatant lie he has ever told and is trying her damnedest to strike him dead with the daggers she’s hurling in his direction from the other side of the room.

Oh, whoops… it’s the understatement of the century.

“You know they’re lying, right?” She snarls, “The whole couch is on fire.”

Her mother is quick to silence her with a harsh utterance of her name.

Dustin can’t help but feel a sharp stab of betrayal as he gawps at the younger Sinclair.

He’d thought, perhaps foolishly, that their triumphant victory against Vecna during the last Hellfire meeting would be some kind of a turning point for their friendship.

He kicks himself for being so naive and sinks a little further into the couch, pouting as she sneers back at him.

To make matters worse, the police are clearly not buying what they’re attempting to sell. Chief Powell and Officer Callahan exchange wary looks before, slowly, their gazes slide across the couch and over to you.

You begin to fidget under their collective scrutiny, doing your utmost to look anywhere in the room besides directly at the officers.

It’s only when Powell addresses you with the firm and formal usage of Miss followed by your last name that you finally look at him.

It takes him what feels like a very long time to speak.

“Care to chime in?” He finally asks, gesturing to the absolutely bafoonery of the couch.

You glance at Dustin, and he feels a stab of anxiety lance through his midsection as he fails to decipher the unreadable look splashed across your face.

Your attention snaps back over to the police when Powell repeats his overly formal addressing of you, the well of his patience growing ever shallower.

You pull an innocent face and gesture dumbly to yourself.

“Me?” You chirp, like you can’t imagine how they could possibly think you’re involved in this.

You? No, surely not you, who had pulled Dustin and the rest into a quick huddle and quietly instructed them on how best to lie to the cops when they’d found themselves ambushed at the lake.

Dustin had been caught somewhere halfway between impressed and appalled, but he’d stopped himself before the question could even take root in his mind: how do you know anything about lying to the cops?

Eddie. Naturally.

Officer Callahan doesn’t seem to have the same patience as his direct superior for your act. He heaves an overdramatic sigh and rolls his eyes behind his glasses.

“No,” he scoffs, “The other delinquent in the room.”

The mask of innocence slips immediately from your face as you level the man with a hateful look.

“Oh, sure.” You snap, “Because name-calling is the best way to ensure cooperation — real mature, Phil…”

“Wha— how did you—?” Callahan splutters indignantly before clamping his mouth shut and setting his jaw.

Strangely, Chief Powell coughs harshly into a closed fist, and Dustin only realizes that the man is masking a chuckle when his deputy levels him with a dour look.

After a moment to collect himself, Callahan returns to you and shrugs.

“Okay, fine – why don’t we put you in a pair of handcuffs and take you down to the station, see if that makes you feel any more cooperative.”

You blanch at the prospect and Dustin’s heart seizes in his chest in outrage. Before he can leap to your defense, however, the Sinclairs and Wheelers alike erupt into loud protests of the notion.

The collective vitriol of the adults is enough to cause Callahan to balk and suddenly he’s standing a little less tall.

“Oh, really, Officer!” Dustin’s mother tuts, “There’s no need for that — I’m sure whatever it was they were doing was completely innocent,”

He’s not entirely certain how sure she is of that, but evidently enough that she’s managed to overcome the horror she’d previously been experiencing at the thought of them going down to the lake where someone was just murdered.

Still, considering you’re more or less an honorary member of the Henderson household, she goes on to paint a shining picture of you, insisting that you are a good girl – responsible.

The others respond with varying degrees of enthusiastic agreement and Dustin’s chest swells with warm, golden pride.

Damn right.

While you were only ever officially his babysitter, it never stopped the Sinclairs from asking you to carpool Lucas and Erica to and from school twice a week, or Karen Wheeler from enlisting you to look after Holly when she had the odd errand to run – though perhaps more specifically, covering for her last summer and remaining the soul of discretion when a momentary slip in judgment regarding a certain public pool lifeguard had seen her very nearly destroying her marriage and perhaps by greater extension her family as a whole.

Karen Wheeler would have defended you like one of her own children if it came down to it, as is evidenced by the way she comes flying to your rescue.

“She’s their babysitter, for God’s sake.” She scoffs, gesturing toward you in a way that makes the chunky bracelets sitting on her slender wrists clack loudly together, “She takes the boys to the arcade and plays that …fantasy game with them – I mean, really… what kind of trouble could they possibly be getting into?”

Unfortunately, as Dustin realizes too late, the Hawkins PD happens to know exactly what kind of trouble you could be getting into, and they are all too happy to share.

“Listen, folks…” Chief Powell sighs, taking the floor and rubbing a tired hand over his face, “I’m sure you mean well, but I’m afraid that your word just isn’t enough – the fact of the matter is that your babysitter has been caught trespassing at two active crime scenes in about as many days.”

Callahan is quick to chime in.

“Not to mention she’s a known associate of Eddie Munson.”

Dustin bristles. He’d been waiting for that shoe to drop, and now that it has, he feels a thin sheet of ice beginning to form across his stomach lining.

A sticky silence falls heavily over the room as the adults all exchange bewildered looks. Not even Karen knows what to do with that reveal.

“What does that mean?” Charles Sinclair demands, brows furrowed tightly as he turns a hard eye on Lucas, as if his son somehow held the answer.

He freezes like a deer in headlights, but Erica is more than happy to explain, pushing forward to stand in front of her father and remind everyone that she is still there, hands propped up on her hips as she levels you with a particularly snotty look.

“It means he’s her boyfriend.” She drawls, peering back at the denizens of the couch and looking entirely too pleased with herself.

Dustin’s heart seizes with terror.

How the hell does she know that?

“Shut up, Erica!” Lucas hisses.

She reels on him.

“You shut up!” she snaps, and her mother quickly admonishes her for it.

“Erica!” She hisses.

“What? It’s true – I used to see them at the mall all the time, swapping spit, sticking their tongues down each other’s throats… you know, making out?” She makes a show of visibly shuddering before twisting to address you, sitting mortified with your hands fisted in your hair and your face flushed crimson, “You guys are super nasty, by the way…”

“Er-i-ca!” Her mother warns her sharply.

She puts up her hands defensively and retreats a step.

“It’s just the facts!”

Still, the sentiment causes a nervous murmur to pass through the adults… you and Eddie Munson?

Apparently, your dating habits had been as shrouded in mystery to them as it had been to Dustin, and unfortunately, they are less likely to be as forgiving about it.

His mother’s voice quavers as she turns to you and quietly says your name. He watches as, in spite of yourself, you shrink back a little further into the cushions as if you yourself had been hoping that information would not come to light.

“Is that true?” She squeaks.

You don’t answer right away, but to your credit, when you do you try to laugh it off.

“Which part?” You scoff, “The dating thing or that incredibly vivid description Erica just painted for us?”

The attempt at humor falls short on the adults, and in the silence that follows, Dustin can’t help but feel a little angry at how ridiculous this all is.

True, the descriptors were a bit much, Dustin doesn’t need to be picturing that any more than he already had been, but they’re all acting like she’d placed you at the scene as an accomplice to the murders, like you and Eddie are some kind of modern teenaged versions of Bonnie and Clyde, which is ridiculous – Eddie wouldn’t harm a fly, and if anything the truth bomb Erica just set off in the middle of the room means you’re the one who can personally vouch for that.

It would be a pointless endeavor, of course, they’re only going off of what they know of Eddie’s reputation, one that is currently telling them that he is a cold-blooded killer going on a rampage through the Hawkins High School student body…

Dustin feels himself begin to sweat.

Suddenly everyone is holding their breath to see how you will react, and how everyone else will if the truth comes out.

“...Technically we broke up…” you mumble sheepishly, tugging a the hem of your worn t-shirt.

The room erupts in a cacophony of noise.

All at once, the Wheelers and the Sinclairs find themselves split down the middle over whether they find that information credible, waffling between thrusting accusatory fingers at you, at the police, at the couch, and every direction in between.

Ted Wheeler and Charles Sinclair demand to know if they’re lying to the police and what kind of trouble you’re getting their kids involved in, and their wives insist on returning to the rescue of your character, assuring the men that this is all a huge misunderstanding and that you would never dream of putting their children in danger.

Boy, if they only knew the truth.

Dustin’s mother begins to weep, wailing about the state of her poor nerves, all the while you sink further and further into the cushions and do your best to become invisible.

It’s a madhouse.

Dustin wishes, not for the first time, that he was back on the shore of the lake, and silently hopes Eddie and the others are having a better time than they are.

Wherever they are, he hopes they are okay.

+++

Eddie is absolutely positively not okay. He can’t speak for the others, who all seem to be doing a much better job at handling the whole “crossing through a portal into another dimension” thing.

They’re calling it the Upsidedown like it’s the next town over, like they simply hopped in the car and drove down the interstate to arrive in this bizarro version of Hawkins with monsters and nasty shit.

They’ve apparently been through this before, so Nancy says, and Eddie can’t even begin to wrap his head around what that could possibly mean.

That they’ve swum to the bottom of the lake where someone has just been psychically murdered and passed through to another dimension only to narrowly avoid being eaten alive by a swarm of demonic bats? Somehow he highly doubts it’s that specific, though only because he’s having a very hard time coming to terms with the fact that basically, everything he thought he ever knew about Hawkins is complete and utter bullshit.

Eddie supposes he always knew Hawkins was one of those places, the cliche of the happy little midwestern town pretending everything is nice and shining and wholesome meanwhile grandma’s skeleton is rotting in the hall closet. He’d always assumed there was something going on just beneath the shining veneer, just not on the level of “a literal hell realm existing right beneath his feet”.

Nancy is maddeningly calm about all this as if she didn’t just go diving into the pitch black of the unknown to rescue Steve, or rip off the bottom panel of her blouse and tie a tourniquet around his midsection to keep his guts from spilling out.

Harrington himself is taking the whole “almost being eaten alive” thing in stride in a really frustrating way, already walking and talking like someone died and made him king of the goddamn Upsidedown.

In fact, the only one who seems even remotely in the realm of appropriately manic about this whole thing is Robin, talking a mile a minute about rabies and the logistics of bat bites in the Upsidedown, but as far as Eddie knows, Robin is just like that.

Naturally manic, naturally caffeinated, probably on some kind of prescription drug like Ritalin if he had to guess… not that he’d hold any of that against her, Robin’s cooler than most.

They’d had intermediate band together one semester before he realized he’d actually be expected to wear that stupid uniform and dropped out.

They’d even been somewhere halfway to friends during that brief period of time, though that “friendship” could be summed up to nothing more than the casual snide, sarcastic remarks during class, a joke here and there, and one instance of Robin getting way too high on half a joint they’d smoked under the bleachers.

It resulted in her becoming paranoid that Eddie was trying to get into her pants, which he most certainly was not, and inadvertently coming out to him in a moment of panic.

He swore to take her secret to his grave, quit showing up to class, and they didn’t speak again until she came riding in alongside everyone else on Dustin’s little rescue mission.

Eddie wonders if she remembers any of that…

He supposes it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, particularly since Eddie seems to be the only sane one among them, which is to say the only one teetering on the edge of losing his shit, and it’s really pissing him off because none of this is normal.

It’s a fucking nightmare.

Beyond the dark, however, the perpetual red lightning storm, the alien network of hive-minded vines, and literal goddamn monsters trying to kill them, Eddie is, foolishly, most concerned about you, as always.

He’s well aware of just how stupid that is, to worry about you up on the surface with all the subterranean dangers that pose a direct threat to his life and limb - he’s not even sure that’s the correct way to quantify it, but it sure as hell seemed like he’d swum through the bottom of the lake and crawled out on the other side of the world.

He wishes more than anything that you were here if only because then at least he’d have someone who he could turn to and know with confidence would agree, “Yes, Edward, this is in fact insane.”

Normally he rails against the utterance of his government name because the only people who call him that are typically authority figures preparing to dole out some sort of capital punishment, or his mother when she was royally pissed at him – “Edward Munson if you think I’m about to let that slide you have got another thing coming,”.

And you, of course, though you only ever do so with the utmost fondness… and very often in an affected English accent, which despite being one of the worst impressions he’s ever heard, Eddie actually likes very much.

What he wouldn’t give to have you right here, trying to liven the mood by doing that stupid accent. He can almost hear you chewing through it.

“We’re in a right mess, innit, Edward?” You’d say, “Pip-pip cheerio and the lot…” or whatever.

Still, a decent-sized part of Eddie’s brain is attempting to crawl out of his skull and abandon him to the madness of this place, and imagining all the ways you would try to make the situation seem less dire if you were there is doing nothing to help.

Because you’re not there.

Why in the hell hadn’t you come with them in the boat?

He knows why, of course, rationally so – there was no room, someone needed to stay with the kiddos, and most of all you’re hurt – but there are spiders in his skull, skittering around and irrationally whispering that the real reason you stayed behind was that after everything that happened, you couldn’t wait to get away from him.

A larger part of Eddie than he is ready to acknowledge is pissed about it because you’d only just finished agreeing not to split up anymore.

Together is better, you’d promised him that, but another part of him understands why you might be desperate to get away.

First Chrissy, then Patrick? He’s got to be cursed, why else would he be made to bear witness to those deaths?

Eddie is laden with the feeling, wrestling with the guilt and the misplaced anger and the confusion, and everything else his body is trying to feel all at once as he trudges through the nightmarish woods.

Step by aimless step he follows, careful to avoid the network of vines and the concerned gazes of unlikely companions, who all continue to treat this like it’s nothing more than a casual stroll through the woods, like this is just another Tuesday.

Is it Tuesday? He has no idea what day it is… and he can’t stop thinking about you, playing the moment on the shore over and over in his mind. Thinking about the way he’d reached for your hand, and how instead of taking it you’d carefully curled his fingers back in on themselves, shaking your head and insisting you’d only slow them down.

“Hey, you doing okay?”

The voice startles Eddie, wrenching him violently – thankfully – from the mire of his thoughts.

Steve is there, giving him a strangely concerned look, having fallen back into step with him at some point over the last few contemplative minutes.

Eddie blinks back at him, not entirely sure how to answer and wondering just how long he’s been there. He almost doesn’t realize he’d asked him a question until Steve’s brows jump up toward his hairline.

“Me?” Eddie scoffs, he briefly considers lying, but the truth is out before the notion can really take hold, “No, Man. I’m pretty goddamn far from okay.”

Harrington nods solemnly, in a way that seems, weirdly enough, almost remorseful, like it’s his fault they’re down here in this mess… which, it technically is, if they’re pointing fingers here.

True, Eddie didn’t have to follow them out of the boat, he could have sat there and waited for them to come back, but he knew they weren’t coming back, and he didn’t have to swim to the bottom of the lake, he could have just as easily swum to shore …

It hits him like a brick to the face.

Why the hell didn’t he swim to shore?

Steve casts his gaze down to his feet, exposing the dark, angry ligature marks ringing his throat and Eddie fails to suppress a shudder.

That’s why – because Steve was in trouble, and some repressed kernel of do-right in Eddie, the same one that drove him over the side of the boat and down into the depths to the bottom of the lake, wanted to help.

Or at least it didn’t want the shame of having to look Robin and Nancy in the eyes if he didn’t help and the bats went and pulled Steve’s head off anyway.

Ego is a funny thing, sanity even more so, because as crazy as it had seemed at the time to dive in after Robin, crazier still was the concept that had he not, it could have resulted in yet another death – or deaths, perhaps – that he would have been indirectly responsible for.

Still, his body is still thrumming with adrenaline from the fight, and not in the good, buzzy way either.

He’s been picking at the blackened, drying blood on his hands for the better part of an hour now, and part of him has started to wonder if it’s ever going to come off, if any of the blood on his hands is ever going to wash away.

Before he can get very far down the road with that line of thinking, Steve tries again.

“Thanks for this… by the way,” he says, plucking at the collar of Eddie’s battle vest sitting across his broad-shouldered form in a sorry state.

It’s filthy, splattered with ichor and viscera, and several patches have torn loose, much to Eddie’s dismay, but it’s the strangest combination of freezing cold and unbearably humid down there, wherever they are.

The way he figures, Steve needs it more than he does – that and it’s the only thing shielding their eyes from the knitted sweater he has got sprouting from his chest.

He basically had to hand it over, if for nothing more than modesty’s sake.

Still, the sentiment startles him– gratitude? Really?

Unaccustomed to basic human pleasantries from the likes of Steve Harrington, he finds himself at a loss and he suppresses the urge to twist around and make sure he’s actually talking to him.

For lack of anything else to do, he gives a lopsided shrug and gestures vaguely.

“Oh… yeah – no worries.” He stammers, “Least I could do.”

“...And thanks for... s-saving me… that was–” Steve clears his throat in an attempt to keep his voice steady – it’s awkward, “Yeah… anyway. Thanks for that.”

Eddie gestures vaguely, suddenly unsure of whether he wants the burden of Steve’s gratitude.

“Wheeler did all the work, I just tried to stay out of her way…” He mumbles, “She’s badass,”

Steve chuckles in a way that feels oddly secretive.

“You have no idea.” He says.

Of course, Eddie can’t possibly know what that means, but it’s compelling, nonetheless, and entirely true.

He makes a mental note of it in the Rolodex of his mind:

Wheeler, Nancy: Good grades, pastels, kinda prissy. Dated that douchebag, Steve Harrington – Badass.

A sticky silence bleeds between them after that, and Eddie passes the time stealing a handful of looks at Steve, casually walking alongside him, on purpose.

He can’t help be feel ever so slightly amazed.

If his shitty friends could see him now – only he’s fairly certain Steve isn’t friends with his shitty friends anymore, at least so he’d heard.

Normally it wouldn’t be enough to wash away the history of torment between them. Steve had, for a time, been the driving force behind a campaign to make Eddie’s life a living hell, but this situation is just too bizarre, too outlandish to discount – there might be some merit to Dustin’s hero worship of the guy after all.

Suddenly he can’t help himself.

“That was pretty metal what you did back there…” Eddie posits, and when Steve casts a curious look his way, he continues with tentative enthusiasm, “Biting that thing’s head off? Major Ozzy energy.”

Steve furrows his brow.

“…huh?”

Uh oh. In an instant, the feeling is gone, replaced by the much less desirable panic of an impending social failure.

Eddie scrambles to explain himself and bridge the valley between their interests.

“Ozzy Osbourne?” He tries to no avail, “Bit a bat’s head off on –?” Steve’s face remains unbearably blank, so Eddie abandons ship for his own sake, “Nevermind…” he hums, “It was – yeah, it was cool…”

Another one of those awkward silences falls heavily across their shoulders, and because he’s never learned to leave well enough alone, Eddie simply cannot leave it undisturbed.

Surely Steve has got to know what he’s talking about, even if only indirectly. It’s not like Ozzy is an obscure reference.

“You know Ozzy though, right?” He tries, “Black Sabbath?”

He pulls a face and shakes his head, much to Eddie’s chagrin.

Shit. Okay, lesson learned.

Harrington, Steve: Fucking jerk. Worshipped by Henderson. Doesn’t know who Ozzy Osbourne is.

He dismisses the notion too late.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Thankfully, they are not doomed to yet another unbearable silence as Steve quickly changes the subject, sweeping the interaction away with a wave of his hand.

“Hey, so… look, I’m sorry for what I did back there… starting that fight between you and...” He trails off when he realizes the reference has flown right over Eddie’s head, “Back in the boat house?”

Oh. He doesn't know how to respond to that. Eddie is not entirely sure anyone has ever apologized to him for anything... ever.

Still, it strikes him as an odd thing to say.

Almost everything Steve has ever said to him has been something worth apologizing over, but try as he might, Eddie can’t think of any particularly noteworthy zingers from the last few days.

And he does try, wracking his brain and coming up empty – but he doesn’t trust it, whatever this is, so Eddie levels Steve with an unimpressed look.

“So, this is the part where you get all mushy and remorseful because you almost died, right?” He starts slowly, “You’re gonna tell me you’re sorry for being such a fucking asshole back in the day and I'm just supposed to forgive you because you almost had your head pulled off?”

Strangely, it doesn’t elicit the expected response - no defensive comebacks, no biting retorts, just a weighted sigh that carries the heavy burden of guilt.

“Oh, shit… wait, seriously?”

Steve runs a hand through his hair, which is still somehow maddeningly perfectly coiffed – it makes Eddie feel frizzy and unkempt.

“Look, we’re not in high school anymore…” He starts, then stops like he’s only just remembered that isn’t expressly true, “– well, you know what I mean…”

“Careful.” Eddie warns.

Steve forces out a hard, frustrated breath and rolls his eyes – he’s barely even begun to make his point and he’s already fallen flat on his face.

“What I mean is that there are bigger things happening here,” He huffs, “It kind of puts things into perspective and makes all the stupid petty shit seem…” He trails off as he searches for the right word.

Eddie is more than happy to help.

“...Stupid and petty?” He offers.

“Exactly. I was an asshole – I’m still an asshole, and I’m working on it, but some old habits die harder than others–”

“Clearly,”

Steve clenches his teeth and flexes his jaw and apparently resists the urge to make some kind of snide remark, electing instead to swallow the blow and nod.

He's doing it on purpose, and Steve knows that as well as Eddie does, even if it's not an overt show of effort. Part of him figures if he can get under Steve's skin and rile him up, it will make him drop whatever bullshit act this is and they can go back to hating each other like normal. But try as he might he can't seem to break him.

This may, in fact, be a genuine show of remorse.

He can’t make heads or tails of it, except that Steve had very nearly died less than an hour ago, and nothing sets someone’s head on straight like facing the precipice.

Eddie can’t help but feel a little more than dumbfounded, because this has never happened even in his wildest flights of fancy. He almost can’t believe it, and what’s more, part of him knows he shouldn’t believe it.

He should know better, that at any moment the rug will be pulled from beneath his feet and he’ll find out it’s nothing more than a big elaborate joke, he’ll be doused in pig’s blood and find out he’s not actually the Prom Queen, and that will be that.

Still, he seems genuine, as if Eddie would know what genuine even looks like one Steve.

Maybe Robin’s right and those bats are affecting him in stranger ways than they realize.

“I guess what I’m trying to say,” Steve continues, “Is that I treated you like shit and you didn’t deserve it, and I’m sorry about that.” he averts his gaze then and gestures vaguely in Eddie’s directly, “I mean, Henderson says your decent, and he’s usually a pretty good judge of character...”

Eddie fails to repress a sardonic snort of laughter, though not at Steve so much as the concept of Dustin being a good judge of character when he's out here double teaming friendships with people who are meant to be enemies.

“Is he though?” He presses.

Steve fails to repress a smirk and shrugs broad shoulders beneath torn, dingy denim.

“Yeah– well. The kid’s biased, anyway, he’s pretty much obsessed with you." He mutters, "It’s annoying as hell.”

It strikes Eddie that this is the first real conversation he’s ever had with Steve that didn’t involve him antagonizing him one way or another.

Still, he can't help himself

“Don’t tell me Steve Harrington, arguable deposed King of Hawkins High, is jealous of the town freak?”

Steve pulls a face, brows pinched tight over his eyes and glares back at him.

“Don’t be a dick," He says, though his tone is oddly not malicious, "This is embarrassing for me, okay? I’m opening up here.”

Part of him wants to hold Steve on the hook for it, out of some long-buried yearning for payback for all the shit he has put him through over the years, but in spite of everything and against his better judgment, Eddie suddenly feels a bizarre, misplaced fondness for the guy.

You used to say that Steve was a mean girl with a God complex, but looking at him now, Eddie can see he's really never been much more than a big fish in a small pond.

Popular kids who don’t extend their shelf life by way of scholarships and collegiate glory tend to fizzle out and implode, and Eddie imagines that every day Steve spends in Hawkins, that little pond gets a little smaller, and he shines a little less brightly.

“So…" Eddie begins tentatively, crossing his arms over his chest and hugging his biceps, "You’ve been holding on to this for a long time, huh? The guilt?”

Steve mirrors his posture and casts his gaze down to his feet, shaking his head.

“You have no idea.” He chuckles.

Eddie scoffs.

“Don’t I?” He counters, “Guilt is my bread and butter, Man… I was raised on that shit.”

He doesn't seem to know what to do with that knowledge. The sheer valley between their upbringings is evidently too wide a gap to bridge, so Steve pivots and yet again changes the subject.

“So, are you and the Psycho getting back together or what?”

It only takes Eddie half a moment to realize Steve is talking about you.

He gives him a terse look of warning, but when Steve raises his hands in an show of no offense, Eddie shrugs.

Before he can think better about divulging the intricacies of his lingering heartbreak to the likes of Steve Harrington, the words come tumbling out.

“I don’t know…” Eddie hums, “Things are pretty much fucked in that department.”

“What’s the problem?”

He swings his foot to kick at a rock, send it skittering across the forest floor, but remembers where they are and thinks better of it at the last moment, electing instead to roll in under his shoe as he passes it over.

“It just feels different now. Kind of like we’re just pretending…”

Another one of those heavy pauses passes between them.

“Hey, listen, Man, I don’t wanna step on your toes or anything, but you guys broke up." Steve says, "Things are always gonna be different the second time around. That doesn’t make it any less real. Don’t be so goddamn cynical–”

It's hardly a blow, but in spite of himself, Eddie bristles. He levels Steve with a hard, armored look.

“Look, don’t patronize me, okay? I’ve got no delusions about what I did. I made my bed, now I’ve gotta be a big boy and burn it.”

“I don’t think that’s the saying.”

“You know what I mean.” He snaps.

He supposes Steve means well, but Eddie can’t help but get defensive. It's like he said ... old habits and the like.

Still, Steve meets his gaze stares back at him long enough to make him regret his tone. Long enough even to make Eddie uncomfortable with the proximity, and so he clears his throat, averting his gaze and staring down at his sneakers, tinged nearly black from the ichor of bat’s blood.

He realizes with a start that Steve is still barefoot and wonders how much further they've got to go before they're out of this mess.

“Did you cheat on her?” Steve asks suddenly.

It hits Eddie like a fist to the gut.

“No,” He says immediately, feeling ever so slightly winded.

Steve nods then, pursing his lips like he understands what happened.

“Got in a fight and called her a bitch or something?” He says, "That's what did Tommy and Carol in–"

The notion makes Eddie's heart seize in his chest because beyond the fact that it makes him sick to have his relationship (or lack-thereof) compared to the likes of Tommy Hagan and Carol Perkins, he would never stoop so low, no matter how angry he was, no matter what you did.

He may have been raised with a shocking lack of social skills, but Wayne had made damn sure that he knew better.

Of course, Steve could never know something like that, but he can’t help the way it leaves him bristling.

“No.”

Steve continues to nod slowly, then pauses a moment like he has to really process the information before he knows what to do with it.

“What was it then?" He asks, "What’d you do?”

“Nothing –” Eddie insists, feeling suddenly foolish for how defensive he sounds because it wasn’t nothing and Steve can see that as well as anyone, “I broke up with her – and I was kind of a major prick about it… I mean, not just kind of… I was mean about it.”

“Why?”

He’s loath to admit it, but now that the stopper is out, it’s hard to put it back in, and the truth comes spilling out.

“... I got scared…” Eddie mumbles, crossing his arms tighter over his chest and reaching up to tug at a snarled lock of his hair.

“Scared of what?”

Eddie exhales harshly under the duress of this bizarre interrogation, hating the way he can feel his guts seizing up. When he got in the boat that evening, he didn't expect he was going to have to relieve all the mistakes of his recent past.

“Jesus, what are you some kind of cop? You’re kind of intense, you know that?”

Steve rolls his eyes and makes a chattering little mouth of his hand to mimic Eddie’s whining.

“Quit deflecting and just answer the goddamn question, Munson – what scared you bad enough to end your annoyingly perfect relationship?”

He could almost laugh out loud at the concept of Steve not only referring to his relationship with you as perfect, but apparently to the point of being annoyed by it.

“Perfect relationship?” Eddie splutters, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Come on, Man – she and I used to run in the same circle, remember? I was there when you showed up. Don’t pretend you didn’t come in and sweep her off her feet like something out of a goddamn movie.”

It takes Eddie a moment longer than he'd like to admit to realize Steve is teasing him. Once again, he doesn't know what to do with that information.

Finally, Steve prods him sharply in the chest in a way that could almost be construed as good natured.

“What happened with you two?”

“Nothing happened…" Eddie insists, and wills himself to shut up about it after that, but now that he’s started he can’t stop, "That’s the problem." Goddammit. "It was the same as it always was and I started getting scared that it was getting too good to last … that she was gonna wake up one day and realize everybody’s right about me.”

The silence the follows is deafening with Eddie's confession hanging in the air between them. He braces himself for a tirade of teasing and razzing and all the other kinds of verbal abuse he can expect from anyone else in this town, but instead Steve just nods sagely.

“So you pushed her away – hurt her before she could hurt you and inadvertently proved that everybody is right about you? That sound about right?”

It's the kind of observation he might have expected Wayne to make, if he'd actually had to stones to open up to him about what happened with you like this, and it leaves Eddie reeling.

Well… what do you know, turns out Steve Harrington is actually pretty goddamn insightful.

For lack of anything better to do and more than just a little bit indignant at being so easily read, Eddie stuffs his hands into his pockets and pushes his shoulders up toward his ears.

“Pretty much.” He sniffs.

“You fucked up,” Steve says matter-of-factly.

“Sure did.”

“...And what about that makes it so unforgivable that things are never going to be okay again? How come she's never gonna forgive you?”

Eddie shrugs and wonders idly how getting trapped in another dimension had turned into receiving a lecture about love.

“Because I broke her heart.”

Steve scoffs.

“Nah, that’s bullshit.” He says, dismissing the notion with a flippant wave, “It’s a speed bump."

Eddie realizes too late he's staring at Steve when he quirks one of those thick eyebrows at him.

"What, you’ve never gone over a speed bump? No way, I've seen the way you drive." He says, and then all the teasing goes out of him and he becomes the one things Eddie never expected to see, sincere.

"Listen," Steve starts, "I know for whatever reason you can’t see it, but ask anyone here – she’s crazy about you, Man. Trust me. Apologize for whatever you said, or whatever you didn’t say – don’t roll your eyes, that goes a long way with girls – and let her know how you feel.”

Eddie shakes his head, more than a little frustrated that he could think it’s as simple as that, like he hasn’t tried apologizing again and again and blanketing you in his affection – smothering you, more like.

“I’ve told her, Man,” He sighs, "Over and over again..."

“So you tell her again. Keep trying until something sticks. It’s all you can do.”

He supposes if he really sat down to think about it, it's as good advice as any.

Still, he can’t wrap his head around the fact that he’s standing there getting unsolicited relationship advice from Steve Harrington, who’d once spectacularly thrown him into a dumpster behind the movie theatre.

He reaches out and claps him on the shoulder, and Eddie fails to suppress a flinch.

“You guys are gonna be fine – hey, who’s the expert here?”

“I’m sorry …Expert?” Eddie snorts.

Steve shrugs like it wasn’t the dorkiest thing anyone has ever said in the history of mankind.

“Yeah, they don’t call me the Love Doctor for nothing.”

Nevermind, that’s the dorkiest thing anyone has ever said or will ever say in the history of mankind and the world forever.

Harrington, Steve: Fucking jerk Not so bad, I guess. Worshipped by Henderson. Doesn’t know who Ozzy Osbourne is. Total fucking cheeseball.

Eddie cannot wait to tell you about this.

“Nobody calls you that.” He’s almost giddy as he says it.

Steve dismisses the notion with a flippant wave of his hand.

“That’s not the point, the point is trust me. I’ve been around the block — I know crazy when I see it, and that girl? Totally crazy about you, and I mean certifiably bat shit…”

Eddie shrugs.

“You aren’t wrong – she’s pretty much nuts.”

“Hey, crazy’s not always a bad thing…” Steve says, and Eddie follows his gaze up the path to where the girls walk far ahead of them, blazing the trail.

He can't help but notice the faintest hint of longing pass across Steve's face, and Eddie feels his face begin to split in a wry smile.

“You know, Nancy’s pretty fucking crazy, diving in after you like that?" Eddie starts, "I mean, you wanna talk about what’s real? That’s as unambiguous a sign of true love as these cynical eyes have ever seen.”

He forces himself to swallow the bitter lump swelling in his throat and along with it the silent wish that he could somehow be different, be better, be a version of himself worth going after that like that.

Eddie clears his throat to banish the notion.

"You sure this isn’t some elaborate scheme to win her back?”

“No.” Steve says firmly, “Absolutely not.”

Eddie is not convinced - he gives a lopsided shrug.

“Well, I sure hope it isn’t Buckley you’re trying to impress, because I think you’ll find you’re barking up the wrong tree with that one.”

Steve's head snaps around so quickly that he's half surprised it didn't twist all the way around to the other side.

“What?" He yelps, "No, I mean – no. Look, let’s get one thing straight, Robin and I are completely – we’re just friends and I would never… h-how do you know about–? I mean… what do you mean?”

Eddie can’t help but roll his eyes at Steve’s fumbling attempt to stop himself from what he can only assume is outing Robin.

It’s noble, to be sure, and he’s got to give him credit for that, but Eddie’s no fool. Even if she hadn’t outright told him, he’s lived long enough in Wayne’s company to recognize the signs of a closeted person living in a conservative midwestern town, faint as they may be.

"What do you mean?" Eddie counters.

The question seems enough to stagger Steve, though not for the obvious reasons, it would seem.

“Nothing." He says quickly.

"You sure about that?"

"This isn’t about Robin, okay? It’s about Nancy – I mean – no, it’s not! But even if it was… look, it doesn’t matter because she’s with Jonathan now, and they seem… fine…”

Eddie stops short and reels on Steve, causing him to stagger a step in an attempt to keep from crashing into him.

In the distance, Robin and Nancy continue on none the wiser.

Eddie drops his tone and leans in to invade Steve's personal space. Steve inches back ever so slightly, out of impulse, he imagines, and Eddie smirks.

“And yet, you will notice that Jonathan is conspicuously absent from this endeavor.” He says slowly, quiet enough that Steve is hanging on his every word.

He lets the notion hang between them, breathe a little, and waits to see if Steve will catch on.

He doesn’t, he just gives him another one of those quizzical looks as the yawning chasm of Jonathan Byers's absence grows louder and louder, and Nancy disappears further up the path.

Eddie tilts his head toward Steve and raises his brows, willing him to understand.

He only knows Jonathan in passing, and from one social pariah with a mean daddy to another, he typically commiserates with him to a degree. He might feel bad about failing to discourage such behavior, but some opportunities are not worth passing up.

If Jonathan is the type of guy to stay out in California and leave his girlfriend to spend spring break swimming in Steve Harrington-infested waters, that’s his poor decision to make.

If it were you, and you had some stupid new boyfriend off in another state, Eddie would not hesitate. He'd go and bang down your door.

Steve shakes his head, still failing to see what Eddie is practically spelling out for him, and he wonders with a brief astonishment whether he could really be that dense.

“What do you –” He starts, then stops as it dawns on him, and his eyes go wide, “Wait… did she say something?”

Eddie shrugs and stalks off.

“Not to me,” he calls over his shoulder, casually lengthening his stride in order to catch up to Nancy and Robin.

It leaves Steve standing dumbfounded at the revelation, and in an instant, he’s scrambling to catch up.

“Do you think Nance is into me?” He asks, and then when Eddie doesn’t respond, “Hey… Eddie–!”

Eddie laughs.

“You tell me. You’re the Love Doctor.”

#chewing glass thank you !!!!!#yum yum the best glass #eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 6 hours

Text

Cruel Summer - Part 10

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pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 10k

warnings: Angst, some fluff, descriptions of violence, mentions of throwing up, so sorry if I forgot anything!

A.N.: Part ten!! A little later than I had hoped to get it out (you know... life) honestly I think we can all just agree that Jason Carver is a douchebag — if you see typos, no you don’t I posted this while I’m at work lmao

It’s all weirdly fucked in the worst way and Eddie is not sure it’s entirely his fault, despite how you’re certainly endeavoring to make him feel that way, and how his psyche is pulling out all the stops to help.

It had been such a bizarre fight, one he was only semi-conscious of as just as it had last summer, Eddie’s brain clicked off the moment you started in on each other, rendering him useless to defend you from whatever hurtful things his psyche drummed up.

He shouldn’t have said what he said, he knows that… but goddammit if you didn’t break his heart a little saying what you said.

Maybe he was a fool to think you could pick things up where you left off, that things going forward would be okay again… maybe he’d allowed himself to get lost in a flight of fancy that you’d come looking for him out of anything beyond the promise you’d made to Wayne.

Maybe he was just feeling sorry for himself.

At the time, Eddie didn’t know if he was glad you followed him to the back of the boathouse, on account of the black cloud of violent hatred his hurt feelings were endeavoring to stir up in him to muddy his mind. That part of him, the rational part, was only glad that everyone else had taken the hint and left the room because they’d already seen enough, and if you two were going to fight he much preferred not to have an audience.

Only you aren’t that couple, you never fight.

The way Eddie sees it, most things aren’t worth fighting about, but the problem with when you did is that neither of you is willing to back down and let the other win.

You’re both just too damn stubborn.

“So, what, you’re hanging out with Steve now?” Eddie had asked sullenly, cutting off the apology you were trying to make and gesturing to the house.

You recoiled in response, eyebrows jumping up to your hairline, blinking rapidly as you shook your head like it was the most ridiculous thing you’d ever heard.

For some inexplicable reason, it only made Eddie furious – maybe because the rational part of him knew it was ridiculous but it was an easy irrationality to jump to, a quick way to get angry, and he was angry with you, just not for that reason

“Steve?” You choked, “What are you — Eddie, that’s bullshit. We aren’t even friends,”

“Coulda fooled me,” he sniffed, “‘Cause you two? Oof, gettin’ real heated — lotta tension there … And jumping in to save him like that? From me, no less—”

“Stop that,” you spat, “Don’t be mean over nothing,”

The word struck him like a slap to the face and Eddie had to fight very hard to stay calm.

“Nothing.” He echoed, taking the time to breathe before really reacting because you’d just thrown him away like garbage in front of everyone and now you were calling it nothing?

Talk about bullshit.

The fight went on from there, needless and stupid until you finally threw up your hands and made a harsh, aggravated sound.

“Why are you being such a jerk? I mean why are we even fighting?”

Eddie bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood in a futile attempt to keep his mouth shut, but just like with everything else in his life, he just couldn’t help himself.

“Well, Princess, it’s like you said, I’m not your fucking boyfriend.” He sniffed, feeling a bit too much like he’d just opened his mouth and breathed in a lung full of water to drown himself, considering the way he knew how much you hated that pet name — Princess.

Your jaw flexed as you clenched your teeth and fought the rush of tears suddenly shining in your eyes and, like coming back to his senses, Eddie could feel himself breaking the surface too late, just like last time.

“… and you don’t love me anymore — silly me, how could I forget,” you spat, and the venom in your tone burned him down to the bone.

Oh, that’s not fair… it’s just not fair…

Despite the deep and penetrating ache swelling behind his lungs and all his hurt feelings, hearing you say it made Eddie’s guts seize and his vision go briefly spotty.

The blame swung around and hit him with enough force to leave him winded, one final blow before the ringing of the bell, and just like that it was over. As suddenly as it had descended, the black cloud of his anger lifted, leaving Eddie alone in that room with you and the ringing echo of what he had just said.

He’d done it again.

It’s not fucking fair.

You turned on your heel and stalked off into the house before he could even try to think of what his next move was — should he defend himself? Apologize?

He didn’t do either, instead, he followed you and called your name only to have it drowned out when you slammed the door and left him standing there, feeling like an asshole with everyone staring at him.

You didn’t speak to each other the rest of the night following the departure of Dustin and the others. Eddie didn’t even see you again until the following day, as you stayed in the room you’d closed yourself in, and he took the couch because you needed your space and he was too ashamed of himself to try and go face what he’d done.

In the morning Eddie was a little braver, and when you finally reemerged, eyes red and swollen – from sleep or crying, he couldn’t rightly tell, he wasn’t quite brave enough to ask – he’d tried a whole host of jokes, and comments to test the waters. He complained about his sore back, gently teased you about sleeping in Rick’s bed, wondered idly if this is what Wayne imagined you’d be doing when he sent you to find him, anything he thought might get a reaction out of you.

None of it garnered any sort of response, save for you gently asking him to leave you alone.

Eddie could hardly believe he’d heard you correctly.

“Are you serious?”

You wouldn’t look at him as you twisted the sleeves of your jacket down over your hands, just like Chrissy had in the hallway only a few days ago – Christ, that felt like years ago now…

His whole life came rushing back to him in a second, and Eddie remembered with a start the conversation he’d had with Ms. Kim – he’s graduating … he needs to tell you that he’s finally graduating … but you won’t look at him.

“I just need some space, okay?" You'd sighed, "You stay on your side of the room and I’ll stay on mine and we’ll leave it at that until we’re both ready to talk about it.”

He was ready to talk now, but much as it hurt to do so, as much as it felt like you were hurtling down the road toward breaking up all over again, Eddie took the hint and left you alone.

It's a miserable day, sitting together in the deafeningly quiet house, weighed down by the miasma of everything you’d said to each other the night before.

By the time the sun sets again, Eddie is crawling out of his skin.

He needs to apologize, beg your forgiveness, but he doesn’t want to make things worse by trying to talk to you before you are ready. So far he’s been smart enough not to push it, but it’s dark now and you haven’t so much as looked at him all day – he can’t stand another minute of this bullshit tension.

He doesn’t care about what you said, he doesn’t care that you hurt his feelings, he just needs to fix what he’s broken so that you can move past it already and try to get back to the good part.

From his spot on the couch, he can see you sitting at the kitchen table, shuffling a deck of cards you’d pulled out of a drawer a few hours earlier – he’d seen you do it and asked if you wanted to play Hearts, but you’d pretended you hadn’t heard him and slunk silently into the other room.

He wishes you would look at him, that he could crack a stupid joke and be certain that you’d level him with that same dour look and pretend you don’t think it’s funny like you always do.

It’s now or never, he supposes.

Eddie swallows hard and fights to bring the words up around the knot in his throat.

“Hey,” He calls.

He feels tender and bruised under the harshness of his voice, ringing strangely against his ears after not speaking all day.

Slowly, you glance over at him. You hold his gaze for a brief moment before looking away again, and Eddie tells himself it’s a good sign. At least you aren’t ignoring him anymore.

He takes it as permission to approach and leaps up from the couch to cross to the kitchen with an odd desperation, practically tip-toeing as he goes like he’s afraid to make too much sound.

When he reaches the table, he lingers at your side, standing idly for a very long moment and anxiously wiping his palms across his jeans as he waits for you to say something.

Silence.

Eddie gestures awkwardly to the chair.

“Can I sit?”

You shrug.

It’s not a no – Not-a-No is a win in Eddie’s books – so he whips back the chair beside you and plants himself in it, realizing too late that maybe the one across from you would have been the safer option, but he’s too committed now to get up and move.

You don’t acknowledge him as he settles, you just keep shuffling those damn cards.

It’s another long moment of watching your hands move before Eddie musters the courage to address the nasty little elephant in the room.

He clears his throat and your hands stutter over the cards.

“... So… about last night,” He starts, “About what I said–”

“I don’t care.” You bite, and Eddie feels his heart seize.

Oh… shit.

Thankfully, before he can drive himself crazy beginning to try and decipher what that could possibly mean, you heave a sigh that carries the weight of the world and finally — finally set the cards down.

“I mean I don’t want to talk about it,” You clarify, folding your hands neatly in front of you and twisting the cheap silver ring you have sitting on your middle finger.

Eddie hadn’t noticed it before, he can’t help but stare at it with a strange and misplaced vehemence before glancing reflexively at the ring with the dark stone sitting on his own hand.

He resists the urge to take your hand and slide the delicate silver band off of your finger to replace it with his own as you continue.

“I’m over it.” You say, shaking your head.

“...Even so–” He insists – he's been quietly practicing his apology all day and he'll be damned if he doesn't get to say it.

You don’t let him finish.

“Look, we both said things we shouldn’t have, but there’s no taking them back and now we’re just going to have to live with it.”

Eddie doesn’t know what that means – just live with what?

All he wants is to bask in the euphoria of you finally talking to him again, but he doesn’t like the jagged edge of what you're saying. It sounds too final, like you’re going to suggest that once this is all over, you should go your separate ways and never speak to each other again.

He doesn’t know if he could handle something like that, even if it would be fair, he thinks it might break him.

“...All I want to say is that I’m sorry.” Eddie says in a rush, tentatively reaching out to trace his index finger along the ridge of your knuckles, “And that I do love you…”

You breathe out hard through your nose and furrow your brow.

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.” You bite, glaring at him from the corner of your eye, but you don’t flinch out from under his touch, so he uses it as permission to take your hand, in spite of his better judgment.

He turns it over in his, lacings his fingers with yours, and searches for comfort in the familiarity of how his hand dwarfs yours in size.

“I’m sorry…” he says again, and then because he’s been silently rehearsing this speech all day, he can’t help but finish the line, “I love you…”

If things weren’t so heavy, he might have tried to lighten the mood by prompting you to return the feeling.

Now you say it back, he would say, but he doesn’t dare, despite how desperate he is to hear it.

It’s the fourth time he’s told you he loves you in less than twenty-four hours – not that he’s been counting – and he hasn’t been able to keep himself from getting stuck on the fact that you haven’t said it back…

“…I know,” You mumble, hanging your head and picking at a piece of laminate, flaking up from a deep groove in the tabletop.

It hurts more than he’s willing to admit. Part of him wants to brush it off, chalk it up to nothing more than a Star Wars reference – Empire Strikes Back no less, which under normal circumstances would be very fucking cool of you – but another part, smaller if not decidedly louder, is insisting that you’re refusing to tell him you love him because you simply don’t anymore – it makes Eddie feel like his throat is closing up.

That part of him wants to grab you and shake you out of this weird, sad version of the person he inadvertently manufactured – it wants to tell you he loves you until he’s blue in the face and you have to say it back so that he doesn’t keel over and die from the apparent lack of your love…

Eddie doesn't get the opportunity to address it, however, as suddenly there is the sound of an approaching vehicle, drawing your collective attention and cutting the moment short – tires crunching on gravel, the dull roar of an engine pulling closer before cutting out, and the whine and thump of car doors opening and slamming shut.

“Finally,” You sigh, “I was wondering where those guys had gotten to.”

Eddie watches as you push up from the table and breathes out harshly as he tries to swallow the emotion rising in his chest.

It’s not fair that after a full day of radio silence, they would show up now when he’s trying — and failing — to bear his soul to you.

He wants to ask where you stand, if you’ve got any chance at a future after all this, but he’d gone and wasted the whole day trying to muster the courage to say his piece, and now he’s just going to have to wait.

Still, he tells himself that it’s probably better this way. With Dustin and the others here, it will give him something to distract from the gaping question mark that is your relationship and whether you’ll ever want to see him again after this.

Only suddenly Eddie can’t help but wonder why they would pull the car right up to the house after all that talk about laying low, not drawing attention to his whereabouts – that seems… wrong.

You cross the room to the front window just as a cold and creeping foreboding begins to ooze into Eddie’s veins, like the jelly from inside an ice pack – something is not right, and the feeling is only amplified by the little voice quietly but persistently warning Eddie to proceed with caution.

When the first of the flashlight beams cross the window, Eddie feels his heart drop into his stomach and ricochet right back up into his throat. He chokes on it.

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

“What the hell are they doing?” You ask no one in particular, inching toward the window to steal a peek through the shuttered blinds.

“Sweetheart, don’t—” Eddie starts, jumping up from the table to reach out and try and grab you, but then your body goes rigid and you rocket backward, colliding bodily with him.

There’s that trilling alarm once again, screaming run! Only this time you’re there to back it up, which is highly disturbing.

“It’s not them.” You gasp, curling your fingers into his jacket sleeve as you twist around to face him.

Of course, that’s exactly what he was worried about, but being right doesn’t do anything to alleviate the way Eddie’s body is attempting to send him into cardiac arrest.

“Shit —”

You take him by the hand and pull him through to the living room as the shining of the flashlights intensifies through the kitchen window. You move as quickly and quietly as you can, slipping through the inner door and back out into the boathouse which has suddenly become that much worse by darkness and imperceivable danger.

Eddie had foolishly hoped he wouldn’t have to go back out here, what with the spiders and the lingering atmosphere of your fight, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and any creepy crawly creature is suddenly much more palatable to whoever it was you’d seen out the window.

You shut the door behind you with a loud thump, and he holds his breath as he can only imagine the sound must have rung out through the house like a gunshot.

He didn’t see you grab the walkie-talkie, but suddenly you’re holding the big clunky device out to him and imploring Eddie to take it.

He doesn’t need to be told what to do with it as he switches over to channel two and presses the button on the side.

“Dustin, come in Dustin— are you there?” No response, just loud, screaming static. “Hello?”

Of course, it is absolutely fucking typical of his luck that no one would be on the other line. What else did he expect?

You’ve got your ear pressed to the inner door, listening for any apparent signs of movement inside the house, which is extremely unnerving.

“Who is it?” Eddie asks, not daring to raise his voice above a whisper

You don’t answer, electing instead to put a finger to your lips.

“Sweetheart —” you shush him harshly, and he turns his frustration with it back on the radio “Dustin, do you copy? It’s me, Eddie — remember me? Pick up, pick up, somebody pick the fuck up!”

Nothing but static.

Eddie can feel himself breaking into a cold sweat as he watches you move from the door to one of the tiny windows, peering carefully out into the darkness. He strains to listen for any sort of movement – in the house, outside of the house – thinking back to the blinding terror he’d experienced in the moments before he’d discovered you skulking around outside the day before.

For a long moment, there is nothing but the whirring white noise of the walkie-talkie and a very tiny part of Eddie starts to wonder if maybe they’d gone, whoever they were. That part of him, foolish as it is, hopes that maybe you jumped the gun on panicking and it’s just Wayne out there, coming to meet up with you.

Somehow Eddie can’t imagine he’ll get so lucky twice.

“Sweetheart—” He starts, hoping to circle back to the looming question of just who the fuck it was you saw out there, but you drop from the window and steal a glance back toward him before he can get the words out.

“It’s Jason Carver.” You say flatly.

Eddie feels his blood run cold.

“Shit —”

Surely this has got to be some kind of sick joke the Universe is playing on him, some kind of karmic justice for all that thinking about corrupting Chrissy just to spite Jason.

“Hey, Dustin, it would be really great if you would pick up because we’re in serious need of help here!” He hisses into the radio.

Static.

He is so fucking stupid, and he is so, so fucked… and now he’s pulled you into this, and no one is coming to help.

“Dustin? Fuck— anyone! Please!”

Nothing.

In a fit of desperate frustration, before he realizes what he’s doing, Eddie swears harshly and whips the walkie-talkie to the side. He regrets it immediately as it collides with a heavy tackle box and sends it and its contents scattering to the floor with a thunderous crash.

Eddie exchanges a wide-eyed look with you and for a moment it is all either of you can do but hold your breath.

There are muffled voices then, sending you skipping across the creaky floor back toward him.

“Please tell me you’ve got a plan,” Eddie says in a quiet rush, feeling ever so slightly dizzy from the blood pounding in his ears as you come together in a huddle, “Because we’ve gotta get the fuck out of here right now.”

He watches you think, biting your lip then like you’re frantically wracking your brain for solutions. Then your brow smooths and your eyes go wide as something like a lightbulb going on flashes across your face.

“...Not both of us,” you say slowly, “...just you.”

He thinks he must not have heard you correctly because that sounds an awful lot like you’re suggesting he leave you behind.

“What?” He stammers.

You jerk your head toward the space behind Eddie, and he turns to see the boat launch, the moon shining on the black water behind him. He feels a cold lump forming in the pit of his stomach.

Surely, you must be joking.

“Get in the boat.” You say, “Make a run for it. I’ll try to buy you some time.”

Yeah… that’s what he thought you meant.

“…What are you nuts?” Eddie practically shouts, whipping back around to gawp at you – he drops his tone when you put a frantic finger to your lips, imploring him once again to shut the fuck up.

When he fails to act, you push past him to begin untethering the dinghy. Eddie follows, doing absolutely nothing to help and everything to try and make you see reason.

“You’re just gonna go out there and… and what? Talk to those guys? Just act totally casual and pretend like you haven’t seen me?”

“Yes.” You insist, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world as you unwind the last bit of rope anchoring the boat to the post.

It drops to the water below with a thunderous splash and makes Eddie feel sick.

“No —” He says, fervently shaking his head, “No, no way, this is crazy – Babe, they’re crazy. They’ll tear you apart!”

“We don’t have a lot of options here, Eddie.” You argue, taking him by the shoulders to twist him around so that he is facing the boat.

This is so crazy, he hates every part of this stupid plan.

“We have at least one other option –” he insists, “We both get in this boat and get the hell out of here!”

Eddie takes an involuntary step forward when you give him a gentle shove and suddenly he’s standing with one foot in the hull and one foot on the deck.

“Look – see the motor?” You say, pointing, “It’s pull to start, just like a lawnmower.”

He turns to look, dutifully, but barely gives himself the chance to register what he’s supposed to be looking at – the motor? Fuck the motor – before he turns back and says your name, begging you to reconsider.

“Please tell me this is a big stupid joke and you’re about to tell me the real plan.”

You aren’t listening to him anymore, your attention is fixed on the outer door where the sounds of voices are growing steadily louder.

You are very quickly running out of time here.

“Go,” You say, dismissing him with a wave that feels entirely too flippant for the gravity of what you’re suggesting – what, just leave? Without you?

Fuck that.

Before he’s realized he even moved, Eddie is grabbing at you, pulling at the sleeve of your jacket to try to coax you down into the boat with him.

“Come on,” He says, “We can go. Let’s just go.”

You tug against him, but he refuses to release you.

“We won’t make it if we both try to go.” You say, and he hates how rational you sound, “I’ll be right behind you, I promise – just go.”

As you turn to leave, Eddie snatches your hand up and holds you firmly to the spot – he’s so sorry he ever picked a fight with you because this has got to be some bizarre way of punishing him for saying all those things, trying to push you away a second time.

He can’t imagine what else it could be considering you’re not that stupid to go risking your life for him like this – he’s suddenly so afraid that if he lets you go out there, he’ll never see you again.

He’s losing you again, watching you slip away with you standing there right in front of him.

“Baby, please — please, just come with me —”

You jerk your hand out of his grasp and whirl around.

“Will you get the fuck out of here already?” You hiss, raising your voice as much as you dare.

Eddie’s heart is in his throat, throbbing, and swelling and threatening to choke him, and he’s halfway to panicking that if he leaves you behind something terrible is going to happen, and it’s going to be his fault.

He can’t let you go out there and face Jason and the Argonauts on your own, but you won’t listen, no matter how he pleads with you.

You’re really going to do this. Oh, Jesus fuck, you’re going to get yourself killed. For what? For him? No, no no no please no.

“You said you wouldn’t leave me.” Eddie chokes, getting caught on the jagged edge of his breathing and fisting his hand in the front of his shirt as the pervasive skittering of panic begins to wash over him – it always hits him in the worst moments…

“Eddie, I’m not leaving you.” You insist, staring back at him with wide-eyed desperation, “I’m trying to save your goddamn life.”

Of course, some part of him knows that, but it’s still shocking to hear you say it, like the clanging of a bell.

He’d been so caught up in the rush of having you back and the concept of losing you again so soon that he’d completely forgotten that this isn’t about your relationship — Eddie remembers too late that he is in danger. Real danger. He’s still that animal caught in a trap, and suddenly he’s lingered too long. The hunters are closing in and there is a very good chance that they will kill him if they catch him.

The crunch of gravel beneath approaching footsteps reaches you and Eddie stands paralyzed, helpless to stop you as you rush to the door.

You latch the flimsy lock – some good that will do if those fuckers decide to kick the door in.

This is wrong, this is all so wrong. He’s not safe, and you’re here which means you’re not safe and he can’t let you go but if he stays he’s going to die. He doesn’t know what to do, and it has him frozen to the spot.

Eddie doesn’t know when he took that second step back, but suddenly he’s standing in the boat and you’re kneeling on the deck above him and you’ve never felt so far from him as you do now.

Your hands come down to bracket Eddie’s face and you force him to look at you – you have to say his name twice before it makes it through the haze of his panic.

“Eddie – you have to go, now.” You plead, and he can’t help but shake his head, like a petulant child – he’s got to run, but he won’t leave you, and you’re very clearly hell-bent on staying — somehow he knows there is nothing he can do to change your mind, and it makes him feel like he’s about to come apart at the seams.

“Please go,”

“Not without you,” he argues, hands coming up to grip your wrists.

“Eddie–”

“No, Man – I’m not gonna leave you here!”

You stare at him, brows pinched tight over your eyes as you search his face for the answer to an unknowable question.

The faintest hint of something he can’t make out flashes across your features and you make a harsh sound of aggravation before pushing forward to slant your lips over his in a hard, frantic kiss. It’s startling, in a brightly euphoric sort of way, but it is a rushed thing that is over before it’s even really begun.

Still, it does the job of breathing a little rationality back into Eddie’s shaking form.

There is no time for sentiment, but when you pull away it is only to press your forehead tightly against his.

“Why do you have to be so goddamn chivalrous all the time?” you grind out, and in spite of everything it pulls a short burst of airy, relieved laughter out from Eddie’s lungs. His head is swimming from the kiss, from the sudden and inappropriate levity of the moment, and how desperately he loves you — only he realizes too late you weren’t being funny.

You breathe out harshly in a way that is more of a sob than a sigh and the sound is disturbing enough to startle Eddie into a strange clarity.

“Eddie… please just go.” you whimper, fighting a losing battle against the tears collecting on your lashes, “I can’t – I can’t lose you again.”

Hearing you say it causes his heart to thump solidly in his chest, and suddenly there’s no arguing with you. You’re not calm, you’re scared, scared enough that you’re willing to risk life and limb to make sure he gets away because you don’t want to lose him — it’s the closest thing to I Love You he’s heard since August, and he decides in an instant it’s enough.

Now he has to go.

Eddie can hear Jason’s voice barking orders right outside the door, and he feels you bristle under him.

It’s now or never. Move or die, Man.

“You’ll be right behind me, right?” He prompts, failing to suppress the anxiety spiking in his midsection when you nod against him

It’s not enough, he needs to see your eyes when you say it — he puts a hand on your neck at the base of your skull and pulls you back to make you look at him, really look at him.

“Yes? You promise?”

“I promise.” You breathe, red-faced and sniffling.

“Okay… okay… get out of here.”

You push up in a flash and bolt to the inner door shared by the boat house and the house proper, and Eddie stands in the boat, turning in useless circles and fumbling with anything else he thinks he needs to do to escape. Any kind of proper nautical procedure flies right over his head – he doesn’t know boats, he barely knows cars except for how to hotwire them, and he’d gained that knowledge against his will.

You don’t know anything about cars or boats, but he wishes you were coming with him.

He can’t shake the feeling that this is about to go horribly, terribly wrong, because as much as he hates to admit it, you have never made the best plans.

You’ll be right behind him, you promised, but suddenly, there is an old familiar voice screaming at Eddie to call out to you, the same one that had implored him to call out to his mother the last time he saw her.

Just in case, it tells him, and the suggestion of it seizes his heart in a cold panic.

“Hey!” He bites, perhaps a little too loud, whipping around to look at you where you’ve paused at the door, hovering just over the threshold, “I swear to God, if I don’t see you in two minutes I’m coming right back for you, you hear?”

You nod breathlessly, then disappear back into the house. Eddie stands listening, stretching what borrowed time he still has to the nanosecond until he can hear the faintest sound of your voice calling out to the interlopers. It is met by their own shouting, and the sound of receding footsteps as your challenge is met with a chase.

Another wave of paralyzing fear threatens to wash over Eddie, but he shakes it off with a harsh exhale and twists around to become acquainted with the motor.

Pull to start, you’d said, just like a lawnmower … Eddie’s never mowed a lawn in his goddamn life. He thinks he hears a desperate shout, but he brushes it off.

He tells himself that you’re fast and you’re smart, smarter than any of those meathead jocks, you know what you’re doing, even if he doesn’t know if he really believes it himself.

You’re fine, you’re going to be fine.

He does his best to steady the rock of the boat as he takes one, two, three steadying breaths, then rips back on the rope with everything he’s got.

The engine roars to life.

+++

It was a bad plan from the start, you’re big enough to admit that, but you never in your wildest imagination thought it would take the turn it did.

The fingers of your right hand are broken – bent and twisted up out of shape like Patrick McKinney’s body, lying at the bottom of Lover’s Lake, and the pain is bad.

Worse than anything you have ever experienced, worse even than the time you’d foolishly let Dustin get behind the wheel of your Toyota and he proceeded to back the car over your foot.

That idea had been just as stupid as the thought that you could just lead Jason and the others away from Eddie with no trouble.

Worse than the pain is the image burned into the back of your eyelids. You can’t stop seeing it every time you close your eyes, can’t stop hearing the way Patrick’s bones snapped, the wet smack of his body hitting the water as he dropped.

It makes you feel like you’re going to be sick.

The memory combined with the throbbing pain in your hand is too much, and before you have time to realize what’s about to happen, you double over to empty your stomach contents into the underbrush creeping up around your ankles.

You’re so glad you didn’t eat those Spaghetti-o’s.

You cough and spit, and then miserably kick at a pile of leaves to cover the mess before twisting away from it. You’re exhausted, you’re cold, and you’re starting to think you’ll never feel anything but pain and fear ever again.

You’d walked all night through the woods, and Eddie spent half as much time walking as he did turning around to make sure you were still there, like Orpheus leading Eurydice out of the underworld.

Only you didn’t fade away under his gaze, you were there every time he turned back to look at you, dutifully trudging along after him, cradling your hand against your body and offering only the briefest hints that you heard him when he asked for the hundredth time if you were alright.

You’re really not, but you couldn’t seem to answer him, no matter how many times he asked.

Your jaw had wired itself shut and your brain had deflated in your skull to the point that you were really only even vaguely aware of everything around you. The pain in your hand shooting up the length of your arm, the dull throbbing of the bruise you were sure was forming over your eye, the crunch crunch crunch of Eddie’s footsteps as he led you on through the woods.

Sometime after the sun had risen, you reached the clearing, and Eddie set you down on the big flat rock that you’re currently perched on, promising he’d be right back before disappearing through the trees beyond.

You don’t know how long ago that was, you don’t even know where you are in relation to the lake, to town, to anything, you only know that you should have just gotten in the boat with Eddie and made a run for it, but you didn’t, and you paid dearly for that spectacularly bad decision.

You don’t know why you thought you could outrun Jason and the others, except that you’d fooled yourself into believing it for Eddie’s sake.

You needed him to run, but he wasn’t about to leave you behind, the big dumb chivalrous idiot that he is, so you made a promise you weren’t optimistic about keeping – you told him you’d be right behind him.

You suppose you were, though not in the capacity you’d imagined.

You went out to face the tigers, and you ran when Jason and Patrick chased you – that was the extent of your plan.

Get them to chase you, find a way to give them the slip, and then go find Eddie on the other side of the lake.

Lots of moving parts, lots of variables, and lots of ways it could go wrong, and you’d very conveniently forgotten how your plans always seem to go wrong.

Maybe you thought you could reason with the basketball team. You’d been the herald of their celebrations not even forty-eight hours earlier, after all, maybe they trusted you enough that you could simply send them on their way with a false lead and a phony promise of honesty.

Then again, you’re good enough friends with Lucas that you had no doubt in your mind he would have vouched for you, had he been with them. He wasn’t, of course, because that’s just typical of your rotten luck.

You ran when they chased you, and they caught you because you foolishly hadn’t accounted for the fact that they would split up in their search for Eddie. It was Jason and Patrick lurking outside of the boathouse, and it was Andy, the fucking skeezeball, who’d caught you coming out of the house and held you by your hair until Jason could catch up.

“Where’s your freak boyfriend?” He taunted you as you thrashed under the grip of his sneering toady.

You didn’t have time to answer, as the roar of the dinghy’s engine cut the air and answered for you — well what do you know… he’s right there.

Jesus Christ, you really didn’t think this one through.

You did, however, take the opportunity of their distraction to escape, bracing one foot in the gravel and kicking out hard with the other. Your foot collided with Jason’s stomach and forced you backward into Andy, who toppled over backward with a surprised grunt and pulled you down with him.

Escaping his clutches was as easy as slipping out of your jacket, and once you were free, you scrambled to your feet and made a break for the shore.

You knew well enough that you hadn’t bought Eddie enough time to put any kind of distance between himself and the shore, but then again he’d only given you two minutes to throw these guys off the scent, so really, bad plan all around.

Still, you thought maybe if you could reach the water you could swim for it, get out to the boat and to safety — no such luck.

You’ve always been fast, but you’ve never been a star basketball player running purely on rage, adrenaline, and the blind determination to catch the girlfriend of the guy who apparently killed your girlfriend.

Vengeance is one hell of a motivator.

Jason was on you in an instant, tackling you and wrestling you to the ground – you managed to slip from his grasp if only briefly, but you cried out in strangled protest when he seized you by your ankle and wrenched you right back.

The sound echoed across the lake like a skipping stone, alerting you to the fact that it was suddenly much too quiet over the water — you could no longer hear the boat’s motor running, but you could hear the faint trilling of Eddie trying to reason with the piece of shit. Your heart seized with the realization that he was now stranded out on the water, and you twisted and thrashed in an attempt to claw your way to freedom.

That’s when Jason’s foot came down on your hand. There was nothing you could do to stifle the scream that tore itself out of you when you felt the bones in your fingers snap, giving way and folding beneath the force of all his weight pressed into his stupid sneaker.

He was saying something to you, monologuing about Chrissy you’re sure, or maybe about what he was going to do to Eddie when he caught him, but you could hardly hear him over your own pitiful sobbing.

How had this gone so, so terribly wrong so goddamn fast?

Then that same stupid fucking sneaker came down to collide with your midsection, driving the breath from your lungs with a harsh gasp and a fit of coughing.

You rolled onto your back, trying simultaneously to shield your abdomen and cradle your ruined hand as Jason straddled you in the sand and held you pinned. You thrashed beneath him, kicking and screaming and fighting for an escape until your good hand came free, then you thrust the heel of your palm up into his face and dug your nails in, scratching deeply where you could find purchase across his skin.

He seized you roughly by the front of your shirt – Eddie’s shirt – and jerked you forward. And then he hit you, a hard crack to your brow that sent stars skittering across your vision as your head snapped back into the dirt.

Your mouth filled with the tang of blood as your teeth snapped closed on the tip of your tongue and you made a harsh, pitiful sound. Somewhere in the distance, you thought you could hear Eddie shouting your name, kicking up a wild, desperate fuss, but your ears were ringing too loud to hear any of it.

You could hardly believe any of that had just happened. You could almost dismiss the whole breaking your fingers thing, but he’d punched you in the face.

Jason Carver punched you in your goddamn fucking face and you’re pretty sure you’ll never get over that.

You don’t even think Billy Hargrove, the equal opportunity motherfucker that he was, would have sunk so low as to sock a girl in the face like that, but apparently, Jason Carver would – some upstanding fella he turned out to be, truly one of Hawkin’s finest.

Strange to think that getting punched in the face and having your fingers stomped into oblivion wasn’t even the worst thing that happened in the time it took to flee Rick’s place and find you sitting on this rock in the middle of the woods.

Your clothes have not dried yet, and you sit shivering where Eddie left you, feeling the chill and the horror of what you’d witnessed seep into your bones.

Much of what happened after is a blur, you don’t know how you finally managed to get away from Jason, you only know the shock of the cold water when you finally hit the lake was enough to stop your head from spinning enough to force some clarity to the front of your mind.

You remember swimming, you remember Eddie pulling you up into the boat, and you remember him grabbing you and trying to shield you from what was happening.

“Jesus Christ – don’t look–!”

You remember thinking his voice sounded strange, high, and panicked like that, and when you looked Patrick McKinney was fifteen feet up in the air, rigid and trembling – you’re gonna think I’m crazy, she started fucking floating…

You choked on a strangled scream when the first of his bones snapped up out of place, and you staggered back a step, instantly forgetting that you were not standing on solid ground. You weren’t even really aware of your body moving, jerking backward in alarm, but then you collided with Eddie, the boat listed, and you were in the water again.

The dream was bad enough, but dreams are dreams. Dreams are bullshit, what happened to Patrick was all too real, and somehow you know you’re never going to stop hearing the sound of his bones breaking.

A ruckus draws your attention to the copse of trees standing ahead of you on the other side of the clearing. Your head snaps up in alarm, and you hold your breath, bracing yourself for the gold and greens of the Hawkins Tigers catching up to you, but it’s only Eddie who comes crashing back into the little hollow that has become your temporary haven.

You force a harsh sigh of relief out through your chattering teeth and watch him lope across the clearing toward you.

He has a new walkie-talkie strung around his body and a white plastic case swinging in his hand – you realize with a start that you don’t know how long he’s been gone. It could have been fifteen minutes, it could have been two hours.

You don’t care, you’re only so desperately glad he’s back.

Eddie skids to a halt and drops to his knees in front of you.

“Hey,” He says breathlessly, discarding his new items and reaching out to grab you and rub his hands up and down the length of your arms, trying to create some kind of friction against the way you’re shivering, “Sorry that took so long, how are we doing? Are you good? …talk to me, Baby.”

You shake your head and squeeze your eyes shut, because how are you supposed to be okay after something like that?

“I threw up,” You say honestly, breathing hard against the way his touch jostles you and makes your arm throb.

Under normal circumstances, you might be ever so slightly embarrassed about admitting that, but the only thing you can manage to think about is how badly your fingers fucking hurt.

“That’s okay,” Eddie hums, “Hey— I’ll tell you a secret. I did too. After Chrissy…?” He trails off under the harshness of your gaze.

It doesn’t make you feel any better, you don’t want to talk about Chrissy anymore.

Almost as if he can read your thoughts, Eddie drops the subject quick and releases you. He turns his attention to the little white case, flipping the lid open then to reveal a host of standard first aid equipment — bandaids, burn cream, gauze.

“Where’d you get that?” You manage to grind out through your clenched, chattering teeth.

Eddie dismisses the question with a quick shake of his head.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, but you are worried about it. You know Eddie to be a lot of things, but discreet has never been one of them. You watch him carefully as he sifts through the little case.

“Did you steal it?” you press.

He flinches and hesitates, glancing warily at you like he’s afraid to admit it.

“...Construction site,” he says after a moment, and you feel your stomach bottom out. “Nobody’s gonna miss it.”

But of course, that’s not the point. He’s perhaps the most wanted person in Roane County by now, and he’d gone off on his own for the indiscernible amount of time it took to find the walkie-talkie and the first aid kit. Someone could have seen him.

“Eddie…”

“We need it more than they do.” He mumbles.

You can’t argue with that sentiment, as much as you hate to admit it.

“Okay, let me see,” Eddie says once he finally finishes taking inventory of the first aid kit. He reaches for your ruined hand, and his brows come together over his eyes when you hesitate. “Let me see it, Baby.”

It takes you the better part of half a minute, but you finally relent and peel your arm from where you’ve had it pressed to your body. The movement alone is enough to send a lancing pain surging through your broken digits, but when you feel the pressure of his fingers on the throbbing flesh, as gentle as you’re sure he’s trying to be, you flinch involuntarily away from him and draw a sharp intake of breath – fucking shit that hurts.

He releases you quicker than if he’d put his hand on a burning stove and makes a distraught sound in the back of his throat.

“Christ — okay, it’s okay.” He says immediately, breathing out a shaky sigh to try and steady himself, you can’t be sure if he's saying it for your benefit or for his own.

By the time you went in and out of the water and finally got to the shore on the other end of the lake, Eddie had been a wreck — of course, you hadn’t accounted for that in getting stuck out in the doldrums like he had, he’d been forced to sit helplessly in the boat and watch Jason kick the shit out of you.

You’ve lost track of how many times he’s apologized to you since you crawled out of the water.

It takes all of your willpower to resist the overpowering urge to jerk your hand back, as you know that the movement of doing so is going to hurt just as much as his tender probing does.

You whine out a pathetic noise as he turns your hand over, pressing down on the palm of your hand with his thumb to try and assess the damage.

“Shh, I know,” Eddie assures you gently, “I know it hurts.”

You swallow hard against the sentiment and watch him in an attempt to try and gauge his reaction.

It’s not good. You knew that from the moment it happened, but part of you hopes that maybe it is not as bad as it seems.

Somehow you are having a very hard time trying to convince yourself of that.

Your ring and smallest finger are bent and twisted out of shape where Jason crushed them under the heel of his shoe, the purpling bruise is spread across the length of your hand, stretching up nearly all the way to your wrist.

It throbs unbearably under even the faintest ghost of Eddie’s touch.

It takes him a long time to react, and when he does, he makes a strange lilting sound in the hollow of his throat, an uneven, shaky thing he hums out as he tilts his head.

“Oh, it’s not so bad.” He lies, and based on the way his tone does not match his words, you know it must be for your benefit because it actually is that bad— he clicks his tongue, dark eyes flicking up to regard you with a wry smile that he has trouble holding, “Look at you. Such a baby, making all this fuss over nothing.”

You know he’s joking, trying to lighten the mood, but the only problem there is you don’t think it’s funny in the slightest. There’s not a lot that is funny about what happened over the last few hours, despite the way something deep inside your psyche is imploring you to try and lighten the mood.

You can’t muster the effort, so you just sit there and try to breathe against the pervasive ache that lances up the length of your arm with every throbbing beat of your pulse.

A moment of heady silence bleeds between you as Eddie finishes his assessment of your broken hand.

“Okay.” he finally says, “So d’you want the good news or bad news first?”

You don’t have to think to answer.

“Good news,” you force yourself to say. “Always.”

Eddie breathes out an airy laugh and tries to bite back the smile quirking up his lips as he shakes his head, sending his shaggy curls dancing across his shoulders where they are still damp at the ends.

“Good news, huh?” He hums, then, “Okay, yes ma’am. The good news is it looks like that fucker only really got these two little guys on the end here,”

Eddie reaches for your fingers like he means to tug on them, but stops short as he thinks better of it and shows you his instead, waggling his ring and pinky finger at you.

He holds your gaze when you glance up at him and waits for you to acknowledge him.

You give a curt nod.

“Good girl.” He says, “Now the not-so-fun part – the bad news is … I’ve gotta set ‘em.” He hesitates a moment before continuing, “…it’s gonna hurt, Babe. I’m so sorry”

Your heart leaps up into your throat as suddenly he’s got your twisted fingers pinched delicately between his own.

“No, don’t — please don’t!” you gasp, seizing him by the wrist with your good hand and trying to jerk the wounded one away.

Eddie holds you to the spot and levels you with a deeply apologetic look.

“I can’t fix you up with ‘em bent like that.” He insists, but you shake your head.

“Eddie—”

You don’t know what it was you planned to say, how you planned to reason with him, but he doesn’t give you the chance to say it.

“Don’t worry, Sweetheart, it’ll be over real quick. I promise,” then, strangely, he perks up ever so slightly. “Hey – I’m a child of abuse, remember? I know what I’m doing.”

It’s yet another joke that doesn’t land.

“That’s not funny.” you snap.

Eddie offers you a lopsided shrug.

“It’s a little funny.”

You breathe out hard and feel a hot and burning panic welling up in your chest. It already hurts so badly, you can’t imagine what it’s going to feel like when he tugs them back into place.

You won’t dare ask what his exact qualifications are, how many times he’s done this before – you don’t want that kind of context, but you’re smart enough to know it isn’t going to be like it is in the movies.

A harsh tug followed by a loud click, and a manly grunt, then miraculously you're healed? Not a chance in hell.

“I don’t think I can do this.” You whimper, leaning reflexively into Eddie’s touch when his hand comes up to cup your cheek.

“Sure you can,” he says gently, “Come on, Babygirl, you’re way tougher than me — we'll go on three, okay?”

“Eddie, please…” you whine, “Let’s just wait, let’s just…” you trail off.

Just what? Just find a hospital? Sure, just go waltzing in with Eddie in tow and try to explain what happened to a doctor. There’s no good option here, it’s all so fucked.

“I ever tell you about my pet raccoon?” Eddie says suddenly.

It leaves your ears ringing. You feel your brows come together over your eyes as you gape stupidly at him.

“…What?”

“Yeah … I’ve made some stupid decisions in my day, but that one … well, it’s up there. Gotta be top three at least.”

You don’t answer right away, though only because you don’t expressly know what to say. You can’t say you’re exactly shocked, it’s a very Eddie thing to say, it’s only just that you cannot possibly fathom what has possessed him to break into a story about a childhood pet.

“What has this got to do with anything?”

“Shh, just listen, it’s important,” He says, “So, when I was a kid, all I wanted was a pet – this was before I went to live with Wayne, so it’s not like we didn’t have the room. The old house had a backyard and everything, it wasn’t exactly what you might call nice, but it was a legitimate house, y’know? So every year, all I asked for was a pet. Christmas, birthdays, it’s all I wanted. I was obsessed with it, but my old man didn’t like dogs and my mom was allergic to cats, so no dice in that department. Then one day, I get it in my head that if I can’t have a cat or a dog, I’ll just have to go and get myself some other kind of pet… so I’m like nine or ten, and somehow, I managed to lure this big fat raccoon into the yard and trap him under a milk crate – I know, hey I was a kid, I didn’t know any better–”

“Still don’t,” you can’t stop yourself from saying.

Eddie pulls a face.

“Hush – so I get him in the house, and I’m so proud of myself. I run my ass down to Benny’s where my mom worked, just like, so excited to tell her, show her how clever I was rigging that trap, right? The whole way home I’m hyping it up, I’ve got this big surprise and I won’t tell her what it is because I want her to see first hand. Only problem is that raccoons – they’re smart little fuckers, right? Getting out of traps is like their bread and butter, and this guy… man, this guy was crazy. Like, certifiably. He got out and he just went ape shit. We get home and the place is trashed, curtains are torn down, scratches all over the couch, pillows are ripped to shreds. My mom starts to freak out, so I panic and go looking everywhere for him like I’m gonna find him and fix it, right? I end up cornering him in the kitchen, you know, like an idiot, and what does this fucker do? He bites me–”

Without warning, Eddie jerks your fingers straight and they snap back into place with a loud click that you feel more than hear.

“Oh, fUCKING—SHIT!” You gasp and cry out, slumping forward to press your face against his shoulder.

For half a moment it is all you can do to suppress the urge to be sick as spots and colors explode across your vision.

The agonized sounds you make are muffled by the layers of denim and leather as Eddie rubs wide circles into your back and whispers reassuring, sweet nothings into your hair, punctuated by a litany of soft kisses.

“It’s okay, Sweetheart —I know — you did so good — try to breathe.”

You do, sucking greedily on a deep inhale and shouting out your pain and frustration and alarm and everything else you’re currently feeling.

“What happened to three!?” You wail, rocking back to level Eddie with a tense, incredulous glare.

He pulls a face that is almost halfway apologetic.

“You’re right, that’s on me.”

He reaches for your hand again, and you are reluctant to give it to him, for obvious reasons, until you see the ball of gauze in his hand. You relent, and watch him make quick work of binding your fingers, individually at first and then together.

It takes a long moment for the worst of the pain to fade back to the dull ache, and even longer for the urge to punch Eddie in his stupid, handsome face to go away. You won’t do it, especially considering the outrage you still feel over the fact that Jason punched you.

“So what happened after?” you sniff in an attempt to try and distract yourself – Eddie’s brows furrow in confusion, “What was so important about the raccoon?”

You watch as he goes through a strange journey of several emotions flashing across his face all at once - realization, chagrin, and humor even, and you feel your stomach sink as you can guess what it is he is about to say.

“Nothing,” he says honestly, and shrugs. “I needed to distract you,”

You aren’t sure if it’s the lingering effect of having your fingers pulled back into place or the bell-clanging shock of his response, but your ears are ringing again.

You could kill him.

“You’re the fucking worst—!” You shout, shoving him hard enough to knock him from his knees onto his ass. You regret the decision immediately as you remember your broken fingers and yelp as they light up in white-hot pain.

Eddie is laughing as he tries and fails to catch himself.

“It worked didn’t it?”

You ignore him in favor of stoking the fires of your indignation because as much as you hate to admit it, he’s right. He’d held you enraptured in the palm of his hand with that stupid story, and you hate that you’d let your guard down like that.

Then again, this is Eddie, isn’t that what you’re meant to do with him?

He watches you, groping aimlessly in the dirt, digging up handfuls of leaves and tossing them to the wayside as he waits for some kind of reaction you are unwilling to give him.

“If it makes you feel any better, that story ends with me getting a rabies shot.” He hums.

“It doesn’t.” You snap, but immediately regret it when he gives you a weak smile. You breathe out hard through your nose and chew at your lower lip, “...Was she mad? Your mom?”

Eddie huffs out an uneven breath and shrugs.

“Yeah, she was fucking pissed.” He says, casting his eyes down to his sneakers and smiling to himself in a way that feels secretive, “Only time I was ever in real trouble with her.”

Suddenly, inexplicably, you feel like you’re intruding on the moment. You are not oblivious to what it means, the fact that he shared that memory of his mother with you. You’d have to be living underneath a rock to miss the size of that gesture.

It hits you like a bolt of lightning – Skull Rock, not too far from your old house, and almost guaranteed to be abandoned in the middle of the day like this. It's the perfect place to hide.

“...I know where we should go.” You say suddenly. “Where we might be safe? For a little while at least…”

Eddie glances up at you with those big, dark eyes and nods to himself after a moment. He stands, brushing the detritus from his knees and backside, and offers you his hand.

You give him your left – the good one – and let him pull you to your feet.

“Lead the way, M’lady.” He says, still holding tight to your hand.

You stare down at the point of connection, then look back up at Eddie and feel a sudden and overwhelming rush of affection for him. All that fighting, the stupid way you’d ignored him all day – what did any of it mean in the face of everything happening here? Considering all the time you'd spent without him, missing him, what is the point of fighting about who said what when you’re together?

You surprise yourself by pushing forward then, closing what little distance there is between you with two short steps and wrapping your arms around his neck. You can’t help the sigh of relief you breathe when he pulls you tightly against him without a moment’s hesitation.

“I’m sorry–”

“It’s okay.” Eddie says immediately, stopping you before you can clarify what it is you are in fact sorry for, “It doesn’t matter,”

The sentiment makes your chest hurt.

“It does though…” You insist, stepping back so you can meet his gaze. “It matters to me,”

He purses his lips into a tight, horizontal line like he really has to think about it, then nods.

“Okay …” He hums, “No more splitting up though, okay? I know you’re out here being all brave and shit, trying to save me, but no more hero stuff. Together is better.”

You nod, and he gives you a very pointed look.

“Let me hear you say it,” Eddie prompts, and you nod again.

“Together is better.” You repeat, dutifully.

“Good girl,” He says. He adjusts the strap of the walkie-talkie across his shoulders and nods to you, “Let’s go.”

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#obsessed #eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 7 hours

Text

Cruel Summer - Part 9

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 11k

warnings: swearing, descriptions of Chrissy's death, fluff, slight angst, awkward situations/second-hand embarrassment (lmao but honestly some people need it)

A.N.: Part 9 is here baybee! Now that the honeymoon phase is passed we're gonna get some questions answered whether we like it or not -- also? don't ask me why like half of the taglist is refusing to work, I hate technology :|

You hadn’t planned on falling asleep, but the overall stress of the day added to a lack of any kind of proper sleep the night before had lulled you into a false sense of security and sleep’s gravitational pull.

You were out before you’d even realized you were dozing — the press of a hand gently shaking your shoulder jolts you into waking.

It’s dark now, and for half a terrifying moment, you have no idea where you are, pushing up and glancing around the room with your head on a bleary-eyed swivel. There is only the faintest light shining in from elsewhere, casting strange shadows, illuminating the unfamiliar room and all its furnishings in an uneven amber glow.

There is a figure kneeling on the dingy carpet in front of you, but you don’t have time to be scared before his familiar features come into focus and everything comes rushing back to you – the shag rug, the dark green walls, the outdated seventies furniture – Rick’s place on Lover’s Lake.

That’s where you’d found Eddie.

You feel your heart thump in your chest at the realization and use it to anchor yourself to the moment, to him, kneeling in front of you.

You breathe a marked sigh of relief and sink back into the dingy couch cushions as Eddie reaches up to tuck a stray lock of hair back from where it has fallen into your face.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” he says softly.

You reciprocate the greeting, mumbling it as you crush a fist into your eye to wipe the sleep from it.

Somewhere in the very far back of your mind, you’re reeling with how exceedingly gross it is to know that you’d been sleeping on Rick’s couch.

You don’t want to know what kind of disgusting secrets are lurking beneath the cushions where you’re currently sitting, but you’re not even really thinking about it — you’re too busy looking at Eddie, all dark eyes, long lashes, and messy curls that you can’t help but instinctively reach out to smooth down.

His eyes are puffy and red-rimmed, and his clothes are dirty and pulled out of shape, but he looks happy, incandescently so, with the same big lazy smile spread across his face that always warms your insides.

He’s a wreck, and he’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, though most importantly, you can’t believe he’s actually here.

Part of you had been so certain you’d imagined the whole thing – finding him here, wrapping yourself up in his arms, kissing him breathless – how many times have you dreamt some version of this exact scenario over the past eight months? How badly had you wished it would be as easy as that, to simply stumble upon him like he’d just been sitting around all this time, waiting for you to find him?

Of course, you have to remind yourself that it actually hadn’t been “that easy”, not in the slightest, and you have to subtly pinch yourself just to make sure you aren’t still dreaming.

The location does nothing to help because honestly, Rick’s place? Of all the places in Hawkins — in the world, really, it makes perfect sense he’d be here, considering it’s the last place you would ever think to look, and you feel rather stupid about that.

“What time is it?” you rasp.

“Quarter to seven.”

His answer leaves you a little more than dumbfounded.

So much for your grab-and-go mission.

“Jesus.” You yawn, body trembling as you stretch your limbs to the furthest point of their reach.

“Yeah, you were dead to the world there for a minute, Sweetheart.” Eddie hums.

You can feel yourself pulling a face, one that Eddie mirrors, pushing his lower lip out in a gentle, pouting mockery of you.

“Hungry?” He asks, patting your knee as he stand, “I made dinner.”

You watch him retreating back to the light in the other room, and quickly come to realize that it is the kitchen.

There is a little table and several mismatched chairs sitting together just past the doorway, illuminated by a bare, incandescent bulb hanging from the ceiling and casting harsh shadows.

You can’t imagine what could possibly constitute “dinner” under these circumstances, but the pervasive growling of your stomach betrays your wariness of anything prepared in the meth lab that is Rick’s kitchen, so you push up on stiff legs and follow Eddie across the worn shag carpet to the other room, hugging yourself tightly as you go.

“Is it a good idea to have that light on?” You ask warily, suddenly recalling hearing something about Rick’s most recent arrest, “What if somebody sees?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be careful.” Eddie calls from the other room, you stop short as he pokes his head out to give you a wry look, “Unless you’d rather sit around in the dark?”

He’s gone again in an instant, leaving you chewing your lower lip.

You really wouldn't, considering Rick’s house is creepy enough in broad daylight, but you don’t have to tell Eddie that.

Your sneakers make soft sounds on the stained linoleum as you cross the threshold from carpet to kitchen, where you find Eddie standing at the stove, stirring something sticky in a dented silver pot.

For half a moment, it’s all you can do but stare at the broad form of his back, the stark familiarity of him, standing there cooking as casually as if the stove were his own.

You can hardly wrap your head around it, suddenly being here in the same room like nothing ever changed. Strange as it is, it fills you with a calming sense of contentment that is almost enough to make you forget the time you’ve spent without him — then he twists at the waist to look back at you over his shoulder, licking his lips where he’d just tasted whatever it is he’s cooking, and he smiles that same old lopsided grin.

It hits you like a bolt to the chest.

He’s here… he’s really here.

You move before your mind can catch up, and whatever it was Eddie was starting to say is cut off with a harsh grunt as your body collides firmly with his. You snake your arms around him and hug him back tightly into your chest and breathe a contented sigh, pressing your cheek into the space between his shoulder blades.

You feel his hand come up to rest over yours instantaneously, and for a moment you both just stand there, holding one another, swaying ever so slightly to your own circadian rhythms.

“You okay?” Eddie asks softly after you breathe out another one of those long sighs.

You would tell him you’re fine, happy even, incandescently so, but there is an inexplicable lump of emotion forming in your throat, rendering you momentarily speechless.

When you don’t answer right away, he tries to turn to look at you. You press tighter against him because suddenly you’re just about ready to cry.

“I missed you so much,” your voice is tight and thankfully muffled against layers of denim and leather, but you can feel the gentle rumble of his own contented sigh rolling through Eddie’s body and into yours.

“Yeah — yeah, I missed you too, Baby… God, you have no idea...”

You’d expect the reciprocation of the notion to fill you with a happy emotion, like some kind of wonderful relief, but for some reason, it fills you instead with memories of the previous summer’s grief, and it makes the knot in your throat swell painfully.

All that pain and misery and he’s just been sitting around missing you too? It doesn’t make you feel any kind of happy emotion, in fact, it makes you feel terrible.

A heavy silence fills the room, bringing with it a tangible weight. He feels it as sure as you do.

“Hey, come on — what’s the matter?” Eddie asks, and you can’t help but get stuck on the harsh breath you’d been trying to steady yourself with.

“Nothing,” you lie, propping your chin up on his shoulder, “…it’s just — what happened to us, Eds? Why’d you shut me out like that?”

You feel him tense ever so slightly beneath your touch, and very quickly he turns his attention back to the stovetop.

“Nothing happened…” he mumbles.

“Then why’d we break up?” You press, jerking him back and jostling him like you intend to try and shake it out of him.

He sighs, slow and shaky like he’s been anticipating you asking him that question — dreading it.

“I don’t know…” Eddie shakes his head, causing his shaggy curls to dance across his shoulders and tickle your nose where you’re leaning on him, “It was just a lot of change really fast and I couldn’t get out of my head over it. I guess I freaked out.”

Your mind rejects the answer and you bristle against the growing tension you can feel bleeding into the room — suddenly and infuriatingly, you can’t get Steve’s maddeningly condescending tone out of your head.

Oh, you freaked out? Is that what we’re calling it?

“Nothing changed.” You huff.

“You graduated,” Eddie insists, turning his head to look at you – you glower at him over his shoulder but he continues before you can object, “I didn’t … and suddenly everything was so different, I got scared that things were never gonna be like they were … just you ‘n me, you know?”.

“No, I don’t know…” you press, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Eddie, what was different?”

“You were.” He says flatly, like he hates to admit it.

It hits you like a slap to the face and you can’t help but recoil from it ever so slightly.

“Me?” You choke.

“I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but it was like all of the sudden I wasn’t important to you, and … fuck, I don’t know… it hurt my feelings.”

The feeling is mutual, and suddenly you feel a heady defiance rising up to replace the knot in your throat.

“That’s stupid.” You mutter sullenly, petulantly even, because how could Eddie ever be anything but important to you? He should know that, but the sentiment strikes a chord in him.

“Is it?” He bites, “The way you kept blowing me off to hang out with your old friends…what was I supposed to think?”

He says it like it’s a dirty word, and you can’t even manage to get your feelings hurt over it, because, despite the venom in his tone (which you don’t appreciate) he’s right — you knew he wasn’t graduating, and you knew he was upset about it, even if he never said so.

You suppose if you really wanted to be obtuse, you could make the argument that he never brought it up because Eddie has always been a chronically bad communicator of his feelings, so how could you have possibly known anything was wrong?

But then again, you always know when something is wrong, and you chose not to ask him about it in favor of wrapping yourself up in the preparations for your own graduation – not out of some malicious selfishness so much as careless oversight – and the subject went entirely ignored as a result.

You would tell him that you’d only been hanging out with your old friends because he was acting so weirdly distant and ignoring you, but you can’t muster the fight.

In an instant, all the defiance goes out of you, replaced this time by a sickly sense of understanding.

All this time you’d been stuck feeling sorry for yourself over how Eddie had pulled away from you, shut you out, you realize much too late that from his perspective it must have seemed like you’d done it first.

It makes your chest hurt to think how self-centered you’d been – maybe your initial instinct about the breakup had been right, maybe it was all your fault.

Eddie clears his throat then and makes a soft, defeated sound that shoots you full of holes.

“I dunno… I guess I figured you were finally getting sick of me or something…” He sniffs.

“What do you mean finally? …Eddie—”

He is quick to continue before you can finish, giving a lopsided shrug that he uses to mask the way he wipes his cheek on his shoulder.

“No big deal,” He says unevenly, clearly struggling to mask the tremble in his voice. “Bound to happen eventually.”

Oh, Eddie… your poor sweet boy…

You hug him a little tighter.

“No, it’s not,” you insist, “… I’m so sorry I made you feel that way.”

He hums out his answer, a gentle laugh that has his smile faltering ever so slightly.

You press a kiss to his neck and nuzzle him there. Eddie leans into your touch and chuckles.

“…I wish you would have said something.” You sigh.

“Yeah, well, you know me, I’m stupid.”

Then you grit your teeth and poke him hard in the ribs.

“No, you’re not,” you growl.

Eddie flinches against the jab and laughs out loud, and you don’t even manage to feel bad about it because as much as you know he hates to be tickled, he knows how much you hate it when he self-deprecates like that.

“Take it back, Munson.”

“Okay, okay, I take it back — go sit down, will you? The food’s gonna get cold.”

You don’t immediately release him though, as the thought of staying like this and holding him a little longer is suddenly much more appealing than food.

When you linger too long, Eddie says your name firmly, in a way that you suppose is meant to be a warning, if not without a good dose of humor.

You heave a moody sigh and relent, releasing him and retreating to the little dining table – though not so little as the one back at the trailer. You sink into one of the rickety folding chairs, tucking your hands between your thighs, and pulling your shoulders up to your ears as you watch Eddie put the finishing touches on your meal with a dramatic flourish that sends salt scattering to every corner of the kitchen.

“What did you make?” You ask.

You hadn’t been able to see into the pot over the slope of his shoulder and now curiosity gnawing at you. He turns and triumphantly reveals the slimy contents of the pot and you feel your stomach clench.

Spaghetti-o’s.

You don’t know why you expected anything different considering Eddie’s culinary skills are expressly limited to: microwaving leftovers, boiling water for top ramen, and throwing a can of condensed bullshit into a pot.

Still, you wrinkle your nose and make a harsh sound of disgust in the back of your throat.

“Oh, don’t give me that. Beggars can’t be choosers,” He chides you, “You wanna eat or not?”

You eye him warily, biting your cheek and hating yourself for even considering it.

Sure, Eddie’s going to eat it too, but he is like a raccoon. He’s lived so long off of processed foods and junk that his stomach lining has since turned to steel, so he can eat most anything and not bat an eye. Your stomach, however, is not so strong, and it is cramping with memories of a particularly intense bout of Spaghetti-o-induced food poisoning – still, you haven’t eaten all day…

Eddie tips the pot and shakes it at you in a way you imagine is meant to be tantalizing, and in spite of your better judgment, you nod sullenly.

He rewards you for it by filling your plate with a wet smack of sticky o’s, sauce, and freeze-dried meatballs.

Fantastic.

Eddie falls into the seat across from you and sets the pot down onto the woven trivet sitting on the placemat in front of him – you’re surprised that Rick has even got amenities like trivets floating around in his kitchen, or placemats for that matter.

You watch as Eddie immediately tucks in with the wooden serving spoon which, you can’t help but note, is almost too large for his mouth, stuffing his face like it’s his last meal.

Your attention does not go unnoticed.

“What?” He barely manages to get the word out through the mouth full of processed pasta he’s got, his face smeared in a Glaswegian smile of sticky red sauce.

“You’re not even gonna use a plate?”

Eddie levels you with a blank stare as he chews, like he’s really got to think it over. Then, after a moment of contemplation, he swallows, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, and extends it to you across the table.

“Hi, I’m Eddie, nice to meet you.”

You smack his hand away and roll your eyes — eight short months, and somehow you’ve forgotten just who it is you’re talking to? You’re a fool.

Eddie breathes an airy laugh through his nose and you can’t help but try and suppress your own smile at the bizarreness of the situation you’ve found yourself in, eating Spaghetti-o’s in Rick Lipton’s kitchen like you haven’t got a care in the world.

Once again, you are struck with how it’s like nothing has changed, sitting across from Eddie and sharing a meal like this. It’s familiar in the most comforting way, despite the circumstances.

If you closed your eyes, you could almost imagine you were back at the trailer, sitting together at the littler-than-this-one dining table after a long day, unable to decide if you were more disgusted or amused by the painfully audible smacking and slurping of Eddie’s eating habits.

He finishes the pot in record time, then furrows his brow and gestures to your untouched plate.

“You’re not gonna eat?” He asks, tongue darting out to lick the excess sauce from where it is smeared across his face.

You shake your head, deciding in an instant that you can stand to sustain your hunger a little longer.

“You can have it.”

“You sure?” though he doesn’t wait for you to answer before he drags the dish back towards himself.

You give him a pointed look, to which he shrugs and sets himself to the task of inhaling his second helping.

You avert your gaze and turn a wandering eye on the dingy little room, taking in Rick’s knickknacks, what few of them he has.

It’s sparse and messy and makes you miss the comfort of the trailer’s clutter, all of Wayne’s mugs and hats and keepsakes… the treasured Garfield mug that you had won the highest honor of being allowed to use, much to Eddie’s complete and total outrage (he is not allowed to do much more than look at that mug because of his tendency towards dropping anything and everything that passes through his hands.)

You wonder with a quiet despair how much of the clutter is still there and how much will be impounded as evidence.

Then suddenly, much to your despair, you can’t stop picturing the trailer the last way you’d seen it, cordoned off with police tape, harboring the ruined, twisted body of Chrissy.

You feel your stomach heave and have to resist the urge to press the heels of your palms into your eyes until you see stars like you’re half afraid they’re going to fall out of your head – like Chrissy’s had.

You can’t stop your brain from going around and around in a desperate attempt to fill in the blank as to what could have possibly happened to her.

You know you’re never going to be able to stop yourself from thinking about it, and it’s going to drive you insane. As much as you hate to bring it up, you have to know what happened to Chrissy…

You watch Eddie carefully, fully entrenched in the task of filling his stomach and blissfully unaware of how you are about to ruin his evening.

“Eds…” You start slowly, chewing nervously at your thumbnail, “Can I ask you a question?”

He hums absently in response but doesn’t look up, still too busy shoveling Spaghetti-o’s into his mouth, one spoonful after another.

You hesitate, and the prolonged silence is enough to finally make Eddie glance up at you through the thrush of his dark lashes. He’s licking his lips again, looking so painfully boyish as you watch the shadow of anxiety creep in to shroud his features.

You bite the inside of your cheek and watch him watching you, fruitlessly wracking your brain for the most diplomatic way to ask.

Only there is no easy way to ask about something like this, so you just ask.

“...What happened to Chrissy?”

He flinches and instantly breathes out a harsh, shaky breath, almost as if you’d socked him in the stomach with the question.

Eddie drops the spoon into the dish with a muffled clang and pushes back in his chair like he’s suddenly lost his appetite, and for a very long moment, he is a sphinx, completely and utterly unreadable.

It makes your insides squirm with unease as you watch him fidget. The tip of his pink tongue darts out to sweep across his lips as he averts his gaze, he twists the clunky silver ring on his middle finger and clears his throat.

It’s nearer to half a minute before he finally answers, though only after being prompted a second time.

“Eddie…?”

“She didn’t – it wasn’t – I don’t know,” Eddie quickly shakes his head and starts picking at a flakey piece of laminate, curling up from the tabletop. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

You feel something sink inside of you to be so summarily dismissed.

“Okay…” You say carefully, suddenly afraid you’ll say the wrong thing and cause him to shut down completely – you hate to do it, but you have to know, “Well… can I ask what she was doing at your place?”

His head snaps to attention and you watch color bleed into his cheeks in a hot flush, almost like you’ve just accused him of something untoward – or maybe more like you’ve just caught him – you banish the thought before it can finish forming.

He sits gawking at you, wide-eyed like he cannot possibly imagine how you could know that Chrissy had died in the middle of his living room. You try to smile, almost apologetically, but you only manage to press your mouth into a tight horizontal slit.

“It’s the first place I went looking for you…” You explain, offering him a lopsided shrug, “I…Christ – I saw her, Eds.”

“You saw her?”

You nod, chewing your lower lip and hating how it feels like an admission of guilt, like you’d been intruding on something that you were not meant to see – which is to say a literal crime scene – but you hate even more the way it forces Eddie to move to defend himself.

“I didn’t do that to her.” He says immediately.

You barely let him finish before you’re leaning across the table and shaking your head, desperate to assure him that you don’t assume that for a second

“I know,” You say immediately, “Believe me, I know … but –” He’s watching you warily now, like he doesn’t trust you and it makes your insides twist in on themselves, you have to take a deep, steadying breath before you can continue. “… Eds, I just need to know what happened. I need you to help me understand.”

Eddie hesitates a moment before scrubbing at his face with his hand. He slumps back in his seat and swears harshly under his breath, then lingers in a long silence like he’s trying to decide what to say.

You, in turn, sit and wait with what you tell yourself is an infinite well of patience and not a bundle of nerves perched on the literal edge of your seat.

“She just…” He starts before stopping again. “Nothing happened, okay? Between me and ... and Chrissy?” He insists, leveling you with an edgy look and turning his hands over on the tabletop like he means to show you he’s got nothing to hide. “I need you to understand that before we go any further..."

You feel your heart begin to palpitate. It wasn’t what you’d meant in asking him what had happened, but it doesn’t shock you any less.

"Okay..." You say slowly, unevenly, suddenly unable to stop hearing Gareth's words about whatever Eddie did with Chrissy...

It seems to put him at ease, at least a little bit, and you're not entirely sure what that means.

"She only came over to buy..." He says firmly, "I swear."

You can't help but choke a little on that tidbit of information.

“Chrissy?”

Eddie nods.

It takes all your willpower to suppress the hard scoff of bitter laughter bubbling up in your throat because you can hardly imagine soft-spoken, sweet, angelic Chrissy so much as speaking to Eddie without bursting into flames or something, let alone soliciting drugs from him.

“Chrissy Cunningham wanted to buy drugs... from you?” Your tone is much harsher than you’d intended, but there is nothing you can do to suppress the biting edge of cold jealousy creeping in on you.

It’s stupid to be jealous of a dead girl, you remind yourself, but you can’t help it.

Eddie nods again, slower this time, and you can’t decide how you are supposed to react to this information, considering the recessed part of your brain that has been subtly attempting to drive you crazy wondering what they were doing together last night.

He’s not even technically your boyfriend anymore… so why does it feel like he just told you he’d cheated on you?

You don’t know how you feel, so you tell yourself you’re relieved, because at least now you know she wasn’t there to fuck him, which, in the grand scheme of things, would have somehow been more believable than the concept of Chrissy soliciting drugs from Eddie.

Still, you can feel your face flushing bright and hot with stress as your mind turns the argument over and over, asking yourself did he? All the while simultaneously assuring yourself that he didn’t—wouldn’t. Would he?

You grit your teeth against the conflicting voices as a louder thought shoulders its way to the front of your mind – one tiny little detail screaming at you to tell you it doesn’t make sense.

“… So… why couldn’t you just sell to her out of the back of your van like you do with everybody else? Why’d she have to come over?”

Eddie fidgets with his fingers and shrugs, and you feel your stomach tighten as you realize he’s actively avoiding looking at you.

“She wanted pills because she said she couldn’t sleep – nightmares or something, I don’t know.”

You’re suddenly — unhelpfully — reminded of a conversation you’d had with a particularly snotty ex-friend one afternoon at lunch in your tenth-grade year, back when the extent of your interactions with Eddie was strictly limited to stealing shy glances at one another across the lunch room.

“Oh gross, are you swapping eyes with the Freak?” She’d scoffed when she twisted around to see who it was holding your rapt attention.

You’d quickly muttered an excuse about just being friendly and fixed your gaze on your lunch, blushing under the heat of your friend’s calculated gaze — and then she’d leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially to you.

“You know I heard he’ll trade weed for head,” and you’d nearly choked when she continued. “I’ll bet if you let him fuck you in the back of his van he’ll give us some blow,”

You’d gone on to learn that Eddie did not, in fact, sell cocaine — just weed and pills, he’d assured you — and you never asked him whether the rumors were true about trading his stock for sexual favors. In the grand scheme of things you didn’t care if they were, but now you can’t stop thinking about what Jeff had told you about the last he’d seen of Eddie — headed out to his van with Chrissy…

You can’t get out of your head over it.

“…So you brought her home?”

His eyes widen in alarm as you can only assume he has finally come to realize how this all sounds.

“No — it wasn’t like that, I swear — Sweetheart, come on, you know I don’t carry pills around – you know that.”

You do know that. Very well in fact — still, you have to bite the inside of your lip to keep from asking the terrible question your psyche keeps poking you with: did you fuck her? Or perhaps rather, were you planning to fuck her?

Stop it stop it stop it stop–

“…So she came over, but I couldn’t find my stash – the place is always a fuckin mess, I mean… you know how it is –”

You wish he would stop telling you what you know and cut to the chase. You make yourself nod because Eddie is giving you this strange, sidelong look that you can’t decipher, and you want him to know you’re listening, despite the way your brain is busy tearing itself in half.

“...And I wasn’t even gone a minute, but when I came back she was just standing there, like – like she was hypnotized or possessed or something.”

You can feel a cold dread creeping in on your chest, like icy fingers closing around your heart as your dream comes rushing back to you.

“And I was shaking her, trying to get her to come back, but she wouldn’t wake up… she just wouldn’t wake up… and then the lights started going on and off. Flickering like… like it was a goddamn horror movie or something… and then she –”

Eddie’s voice hitches and goes tight as you watch the color drain from his face and his eyes glaze over like he’s reliving the moment — you’re doing your best to keep yourself from reliving it too – the ubiquitous cracking of bones snapping up out of place, eyes being wrenched back into their sockets.

You fail to suppress a shudder, but thankfully Eddie is too far off in his own head to notice.

His hands are shaking where they’re still turned up against the cracked and stained tabletop, his rings clinking ever so softly against each other.

Absently, you reach across the table to steady them, if only as a force of habit.

In spite of your fears and what your mind is telling you he did or didn’t do, you remind yourself that whatever happened was traumatic enough to send him running for his life, and whatever happened, he deserves the chance to explain himself.

This is about Chrissy and how she ended up like that, not whether she slept with your boyfriend — ex-boyfriend— before it happened.

“One minute she was fine and then she wasn’t moving and I tried to get her to come back but – I swear to God, you’re gonna think I’m crazy – she started fucking floating…”

It makes you feel sick, and you still can’t pinpoint exactly why – maybe because some irrational part of your brain had been holding out on a hope that it had only been a terrible dream, that maybe you were experiencing a weird but brief bout of insanity that was bound to pass, that none of this was real.

“…Floating,” you hum, your frustration with the situation causing you to inadvertently sound skeptical of the whole thing.

You watch in horror as Eddie’s face contorts with disappointment.

“...Oh, Christ… you don’t believe me, do you?”

You try to suppress the spike of anxiety it sends lancing through your midsection – shit, fuck – because this was exactly what you had been worried about.

“Hey, no, that's not what I –” You start, attempting to try and backpedal, but Eddie is already shaking his head, like he cannot believe what he’s hearing, like somehow you’ve betrayed him.

“Jesus – you think I’m making this up?” He asks, his voice lilting with despair. “Why would I lie about something like this?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“What, you think I cheated on you and now I’m lying to cover my own ass?” Saying it out loud only serves to convince him that it’s exactly what you think, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

All the jealousy and paranoia goes out of you as your heart beats erratically with the need to fix this before it goes too far.

“Eddie, please, just listen–” You press, but he cuts you off.

“No, stop it— don’t do that —I know how crazy this sounds, okay? I get it, but that’s what happened and nobody is going to fucking believe me because it’s so goddamn crazy!” He cries, fisting his hands in his hair and hanging his head.

You could kick yourself for how spectacularly you’d fucked this up, but you’re afraid to say anything to try and smooth it over for fear of only making it worse, so you sit and hold your breath and wait for Eddie to react first.

You listen to him breathe, a harsh in and out punctuated by flushed, simmering emotion threatening to boil over.

It’s a long time before Eddie comes down again enough to come out from where he is hiding behind his hands. His face is flushed and he sniffles, wiping the back of his hand across his nose before he makes himself take a deep, steadying breath.

“Why are we even talking about this?” He huffs. “Seriously, what have I ever done to make you think I could cheat on you?”

You fidget anxiously in your seat, trying to decide how to explain yourself, and decide in the last moment to shift the blame a little – it’s not untrue, after all.

You give an uneven shrug.

“Jeff told me he saw you getting in the van with Chrissy and I guess I let myself go a little crazy over it …”

He makes a harsh sound and rolls his eyes.

“Fucking, Jeff — you know he was probably just trying to make you jealous, right?”

“Yeah… guess it worked…” You mutter, trying and failing to hum out a humorless laugh. “It was stupid… sorry.”

Eddie just shakes his head. His voice is thick and he barely manages to keep it from trembling as he speaks.

“Baby, I promise, I’m telling you the truth,” He insists, “Chrissy came over to buy pills. That’s it. Okay? I didn’t kiss her, I didn’t fuck her — she didn’t even sit down, Man. Nothing. Happened.”

Only something did happen last night, and Eddie knows that as well as you do. He rolls his eyes and moves like he’s going to cover his face again before stopping himself, “Jesus — nothing except…” He trails off.

He can’t say it, but he doesn’t have to. Nothing happened except that she died.

You set your jaw and try again to smile, deciding in an instant that it’s enough and that you can set aside any jealousy or suspicion or any of those other ugly feelings – you can be angry about it after this is all over if you still need to, but for now, you’re on Team Eddie, no matter what.

“Okay,” You say simply, “I believe you.”

Eddie gives you a flat look and tucks his arms that much tighter over his chest. You watch his jaw flex as he considers it.

“What, so it’s just that easy?” he scoffs.

You shrug.

“It can be.”

He shakes his head and sucks his teeth like he doesn’t believe that for a moment and averts his eyes again, electing to turn away and stare off at a point in space rather than look at you.

You don’t know how any of this became your fault — except that you’re a goddamn moron continuing your string of making the worst decisions possible — but if blaming you is what makes Eddie feel better, you’ll shoulder it.

You sit together then in a tense silence as you try to wrap your head around this whole thing.

It doesn’t make any sense, hypnotic trances and floating up off of the ground, but then again how could something like that happen to a person? More importantly, it’s just like Eddie said, why would he lie about something like that?

He wouldn’t.

Eddie’s a lot of things, but he’s not a liar. You know that for certain, which means this is real, whatever the fuck this is, and you’re both in way over your heads.

At least you can share in that dilemma together, that is if he’ll still have you after this titanic fuck up.

Under the table, you push forward to nudge his shin with the toe of your sneaker, offering an apologetic smile when his inky gaze slides over to you.

“...So, she started floating,” You prompt, “What happened next?”

Eddie heaves a sigh and uncrosses his arms, almost like he’s forgiven you for your perceived lapse of faith. Almost.

“She started floating…” he gives you a pointed look, like he’s daring you to question it a second time, “...and then —”

He trails off, and for half a second he clenches his jaw as his eyes are wet and shining with tears again, but he swallows the emotion and lets his lids slide shut as he grits his teeth and forces the words out.

“And then that was it." He says, "Then she was gone…”

You know he’d spared you the gruesome details, which your psyche is more than happy to deliver to your inner eye.

You believe him — not so much that part about Chrissy wanting ketamine— but you have this terrible sinking feeling that it’s not going to be enough, and no one else is going to, no matter what you do.

Even if somehow you miraculously come up with bulletproof evidence, a literal smoking gun, you know it’s still just going to be Eddie’s fault because he’s a Munson and that means the town will have already decided his guilt— that’s why you need to go, get as far away as fast as possible.

“Okay… obviously that’s a lot to take in, but thank you for being honest… it was really brave of you.”

He snorts bitterly.

“Not that it’s gonna do any good – I mean, even without my name dragging me down, who in their right mind is gonna believe any of that?”

The complete and utter defeat in his voice is heartbreaking, and you’re suddenly so desperate to snap Eddie out of this pathetic version of himself, this exposed nerve of a person.

You purse your lips and shake your head.

“I wish you would stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself,” You mutter, glancing up to see if Eddie takes the bait of your tough love.

He does, sitting up to blink incredulously at you – you just shrug.

“It’s like I said, we’re gonna figure this out.”

“How?” He sniffs.

“I don’t know,” you say honestly, “But we will.”

After a very long moment, nods in a way that makes you think he doesn’t expressly believe that, but there’s nothing he can do about it.

“…Okay…okay…” he says, almost like he’s trying to convince himself.

It takes another one of those long, shaky breaths to steady himself enough before Eddie sits up and viciously scrubs his hands over his face.

He sniffs and clears his throat, and offers you a weak smile, and you feel your insides warm a little.

“So what now?” he asks.

“Now… we get you as far away from here as fast as we can… don’t ask me how, I haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Well, whatever we do it’s gonna have to be in your car because the van’s gone.” He huffs, gesturing vaguely, “Crashed it in a ditch out near the quarry.”

“You– you crashed?”

“Yeah, it’s totaled. I don’t really wanna talk about it.” He mumbles.

You know you shouldn’t laugh, but you can’t stop yourself from snorting undaintily, and you have to clap your hand over your mouth to keep your cool.

“Eddie…” You press.

He gives you an incredulous look, brows furrowing over his eyes as he stares back at you because you’re laughing at him. He just told you he crashed his van in a ditch and you’re literally shaking with the effort to keep yourself from laughing – it’s a losing battle.

“It’s not funny,” He presses, despite the way you can see him fighting the upturn of his lips.

It only spurs you on and you grin at him.

“It’s a little funny.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re such a brat,” He huffs, still fighting to keep himself from smiling as you sit there fully entrenched in a fit of giggles, “I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m laughing…” you gasp, breathless from the way your stomach muscles have begun to cramp, “It’s just … God – it’s been a really long day.”

“Really? That's a bummer because my day’s been great.” Eddie says sarcastically, propping his chin up on his fist and drawing aimless circles into the cracked and flaky linoleum. “I mean, clearly you know how fucked my day has been – but anyway, I’m sick of talking about me. How was your day, Dear?”

He folds his hands neatly in front of him when he says it and smirks at you.

You roll your eyes.

“Well, I almost got arrested this morning – it’s a long story, I was looking for you.” you huff when Eddie’s eyebrows jump up to disappear beneath his curly fringe.

Then you remember your little Toyota sitting abandoned in Benny’s parking lot.

“Oh, shit, and my goddamn car died.”

“Shit indeed. That leaves us pretty much stranded.”

You heave an aggravated groan and wrestle with a strange hope that nobody decides to tow it, despite how useless it is to waste any energy on that kind of thinking, because once you get out you’re never coming back – now you just have to get there.

“Hey, come on, Sweetheart, take a dose of your own medicine, we’re gonna figure it out, remember?” Eddie teases, gently kicking the toe of your shoe beneath the table. “So, what’s plan B?”

Good question. You chew the inside of your mouth and wrack your brain for solutions.

“Well…” You start, “Wayne gave me some money—”

It’s enough to snap Eddie out of whatever is left of his pity party and he perks up to the closest thing you’ve seen to his normal self yet.

“You saw Wayne?” he asks, voice lilting up with surprise.

You nod.

“Yeah, this morning,”

Eddie narrows his eyes at you.

“Before or after you almost got arrested?”

You can feel yourself pulling a face again as the memory of how foolish you’d been to go barging into a crime scene like that returns to you in full force.

“After,” you mumble sheepishly, “He kind of, sort of bailed me out.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Eddie hums, deflating a little as he begins to fidget with his rings again – you suppress the urge to reach across and take his hand to make him stop – one of these days he’s gonna break his finger, twisting it like that. “… is he pissed at me?”

You feel your brows come together over your eyes, and you realize a moment too late that you’re more or less glaring at Eddie, but you can’t really help it.

You can’t imagine why he would even ask you that, how could he ever imagine that Wayne would walk in on what he’d found waiting for him at the trailer that morning and immediately jump to anger?

Fear, sure, for the scene he’d stumbled upon, for the lack of ability to find Eddie afterward and all the hideous possibilities his absence implied, of course, but anger?

You realize with a start that it’s probably how Eddie’s father would have reacted, had he been in Wayne’s shoes.

You don’t know much about the man, there’s a reason Eddie won’t talk about his childhood after all, but you know he is a son of a bitch, wherever he is, and you have to swallow the misplaced anger that realization stirs in you.

“No, Eddie, Wayne’s not pissed at you. He’s the one who sent me to come find you.” you press, and when he continues staring back at you like a freshly kicked puppy, you dig your hands into your pockets and fish out the crumpled bills.

“Look,” you say, laying them flat on the table between you, “He gave me this and told me to get you out of town… he made me promise I wouldn’t leave you… not that I would anyway … even if you are a jerk.”

In spite of everything, it pulls a short burst of laughter out of Eddie, which leaves the faintest hint of a genuine smile spread across his face.

It’s so good to see him smiling again.

“Aw, man,” he breathes, chuckling softly to himself, “So, I guess you kind of like me, huh?”

You scrunch your nose and feign disinterest as your insides go warm and fuzzy when Eddie looks at you in shades of the same way he’d stolen those shy glances at you from across the lunch room all those years ago.

You love him so much you can’t stand it, so you shrug.

“You’re alright, I guess.”

Eddie hums thoughtfully, still fidgeting with his fingers.

“That must’ve been weird.” He begins, “Seeing Wayne?”

The question strikes you as odd, and you answer honestly without really thinking.

“Not really,” you say, “I see him all the time.”

Of course, it’s only then that you remember that there is no possible way Eddie could know that, and you feel a strange sense of alarm jump up into your throat when he pulls a face, like you’d let slip a secret you’d sworn never to reveal — only you’re the one who had made Wayne promise not to bring Eddie up in any way shape or form including but not limited to not telling him about your weekly visits.

He doesn’t get the chance to ask you about it before there is a sudden and violent banging at the front door.

It sends the pair of you leaping out of your skin.

Eddie hits the floor as the doorknob begins to rattle, and you jump up out of your seat with enough force to send the chair clattering backward to the ground.

You jump up, much too late, and pull the chair for the overhead light, instantly plunging the both of you into darkness. It draws the attention of the newcomers instantly.

You hear Eddie say your name frantically from somewhere in the dark and you feel your heart leap up into your throat.

“Go hide!” You hiss but you can’t see well enough to tell whether or not he obeys.

Suddenly, the knocking and rattling are punctuated by voices, most specifically a high drawn-out shouting.

“HELLOOOOO – REEFER RICK! ARE YOU THERE–?”

It takes you a long, terrifying moment to recognize the voice, but when you do you are flooded with relief.

It’s only Dustin – thank God for that – and he’s not alone.

“Dude… what the hell, don’t just shout that.” Steve hisses. “Have a little discretion, will you?”

You heave a sigh, clapping your hand to your forehead as you rock back on your heels. The tips of your fingers and toes sting with adrenaline as you rush to the door and whip it open, flooding the room with what little light there is from their flashlights and startling the group of familiar faces just outside.

You’d all but forgotten they were coming, but just like that you suddenly have a Plan B.

+++

Dustin knows he should be happy considering how miraculously everything fell together.

They found you, and you found Eddie, just like he knew you would.

He knows he should be pleased, but that feeling is hampered by the very small part of him that had begun to hope beyond hope that they would not find the two of you together, that maybe they wouldn’t find Eddie at all and he’d never have to think about the two of you making out in a photo booth in the Starcourt mall ever again.

And he's unfortunately been thinking about that all day. It's really kind of ruining things for him.

But now here you all are, together, just like he’s wanted all year, and Dustin feels like he’s going to crack a tooth for how tightly he’s clenching his jaw.

You’d whipped the door open and damn near given everyone heart attacks in doing so, hurried them all inside to the weird, dated house that stank of weed and burnt spaghetti, and then promptly realized as you switched the kitchen light back on that Eddie was nowhere to be found.

It set Steve off immediately, much to Dustin’s chagrin. He’d really hoped you two had moved past the bickering, but he was quickly coming to understand that it was probably a fool’s hope.

“Seriously?” Steve snapped, watching you turn in fruitless circles around the house, looking for Eddie, “You had one job here and you lost him?”

“Eddie? Okay, game’s over, you can come out now!” You called, doing a very poor job at hiding the rising anxiety in your voice by calling out in a lilting, sing-song way, “Olly olly oxen free!”

“Steve, come on.” Robin chided quietly, as you slipped into the other room, “Give her a break,”

“You come on, don’t you think it’s just a little bit ridiculous?” Steve huffed, running a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair, “What kind of babysitter loses the goddamn kid?”

You took the opportunity to come back into the room then, if only to defend your reputation.

“He’s not a kid, okay? He’s a grown-ass person. And I didn’t lose him, thank you very much, I told him to hide when you morons came banging down the door like you were trying to wake the dead.”

“First of all, that moron you’re talking about is all Henderson—”

Dustin did not appreciate the sentiment, but he didn’t have time to stand around complaining about it, so he cut Steve off before he could get really catty about the whole thing.

“Did you guys set up a designated hiding spot or something?” He asked.

You shook your head, resting your hands on your hips and frowning and you gestured to the room.

“No, but this isn’t a big house. There are only a handful of places he could be.”

That’s what they’d said about Hawkins proper, and it had still taken them hours to stumble upon this lead, but Dustin wasn’t about to start naysaying his own operation, so the party split up and went looking for Eddie — you, Max, and Robin stuck to the house while Steve and Dustin slipped out into the boathouse and promptly found Eddie hiding under a tarp.

Steve nearly lost his head for it.

Dustin froze and stood helpless as Eddie jumped up and slammed Steve against the wall with more force than he would have guessed the metalhead could muster, and thankfully the commotion brought everyone running.

And then you’d all but tackled Eddie to the ground to pull him off of Steve, which Dustin couldn’t deny was kind of amazing, despite the very tense few moments it took to talk Eddie down after.

The next few minutes were an exercise in patience.

They needed to know Eddie’s side of the story, clearly, so they waited as he explained what happened as best he could.

Dustin did his best to remain impartial, because regardless of whatever he was currently feeling, Eddie deserved the chance to explain himself. Still, it was very distracting, watching you watch Eddie — looking at him like he was the only person in the goddamn room, and Dustin couldn’t help but get a little bent out of shape over it.

If anything, it was rude, ignoring everyone else in favor of one person? Certainly very uncharacteristic of you, who always went out of your way to make sure everyone felt included.

This was much more like that weird dopey version of you that existed under the spell of your stupid boyfriend – Dustin had to quickly remind himself to merge the two images, because there was said stupid boyfriend, sitting on the floor of the boathouse, looking like a kicked puppy. Eddie freakin Munson.

God, he hates this so much.

And then it was his turn to explain things, which Dustin quite possible hated more than any of it because suddenly he was having to lay it all out there, everything he never told you about the double life he’d been keeping from you over the past few years, about Eleven and the Upsidedown.

You didn’t take it well, because how does anyone take the news that there is another world just beneath your feet full of monsters who periodically violently claw their way up into yours? That everything you think you know about what has happened in your town over the past few years is a conspiracy to keep that world hidden?

No, you don't take it well at all, particularly when it leads to a bizarrely frank discussion about what they thought could be behind this — some kind of spell caster, Dustin and Eddie collectively decide, Vecna.

You make a harsh sound of disbelief, snapping everyone’s attention to where you stand with your arms crossed and your brows furrowed.

“I’m sorry, Vecna?” you say, “Like in your stupid D&D game?”

It hits Dustin like a fist to the gut and suddenly he feels too winded to defend himself, despite the way he tries.

You never thought D&D was stupid before, but he supposes it’s never been anything but a game until now.

“It’s not stupid—” He insists.

“It’s also not real, Dustin,” You snap, “Something seriously fucked up is happening here and we need to figure out how to deal with it before something arguably worse happens.”

God, you’re mean today.

It’s Steve’s turn to make a snide noise then.

“Worse than what happened to Chrissy?” He huffs.

Eddie flinches and you bristle, immediately reeling on him.

“Steve— do not fucking start. I swear to God, you’re only making things worse.”

And just like that you’re back to fighting, the same way you had been in Family Video.

It’s exhausting putting the two of you together, honestly, Dustin doesn’t know how he ever thought you could be friends.

“How the hell am I making things worse?” Steve chokes, “Your boyfriend’s the one who came at me with a bottle.”

Dustin feels his insides heave and go tight at the mention of it, though not as violently as they do as you proceed to perhaps the worst thing anyone can possibly say at a moment like this.

“He’s not–” you bite the sentence off in an instant, like you only just realized what it is you’re about to say, and more importantly, who you’re about to say it in front of.

Of course, everyone knows what it is you were about to say.

Strangely, it makes Dustin’s heart seize, because for as jealous he is, he is suddenly very aware of the way Eddie’s head snaps to attention. His brows come together over his eyes in that same hurt look that always makes Dustin feel like he needs to protect him.

The room grows eerily silent, and you clamp your mouth shut, eyes wide and cheeks burning as you stand stock still.

“Not what?” Steve prods, and Dustin could wring his neck for it.

For all his good qualities, the worst thing about Steve is how he just can’t leave things where they lie.

“Hello?" he says, making a show of waving his hand in front of your face, "Who’s not what?”

Dustin knows you might have slugged him had you not been so caught up in your dreadful misstep.

“Nothing, nevermind,” you say, shaking your head dismissively.

“No, go ahead and say it,” Eddie says then, a little quieter but with no less bite than Steve had – he’s standing behind you, ever so slightly removed from the rest of the group and looking a little too rough around the edges for Dustin’s liking.

You blanch and whip around to face him, shifting your weight from foot to foot as he stares you down, and Dustin resists the urge to put himself between you.

He honestly doesn’t think he could move if his life depended on it,

“She’s talking about me,” Eddie informs the group, as if everyone didn't already know, then addresses Steve, “– that’s what you said, right? That I came at you? So it’s me…”

Finally, Eddie turns his gaze back to you and it’s the worst thing Dustin has ever seen, watching someone who knows they’re about to have their heart broken prepare for the worst. It’s like watching a car wreck, terrible and ugly and frightening but you can’t look away.

Suddenly he doesn’t know who is the bad guy here, who he needs to step in to defend.

“Eddie, it’s not–” you start, your voice is small and clipped, and you barely manage to squeak the sound out.

He shakes his head slowly, like he doesn’t want to hear whatever excuse you might be drumming up.

“I’m not what?” Eddie prompts you again.

“...You’re… you’re not – fuck – you’re not my … my boyfriend.” You stammer, glancing nervously around the room, down to your toes, and then sheepishly back up at Eddie, “You’re not my boyfriend, Eds…”

Then tension is unbearable, like you finally saying it had sucked all the air out of the room. Even Steve seems to be feeling particularly shitty about this whole exchange.

Dustin exchanges a tense look with Robin, who looks like she's trying with all her might to shrink into her jacket and disappear.

Somewhere further into the room he hears Max mutter something to the tune of “Yikes”, and he can’t disagree with her.

For a long moment, nobody says anything, and the silence is a yawning chasm ringing in Dustin’s ears.

Eddie breathes out hard and rocks back a step, almost as if you'd reached out and stabbed him.

He grits his teeth and pulls a face like he’s trying to smile, and nods.

“...Yeah,” he says, “That’s what I thought you were gonna say,”

“Eddie—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” He snaps in a way that makes Dustin bristle.

You recoil ever so slightly, and he watches a strange, hurt look flash across your face as Eddie turns and stalks to the other side of the room.

You follow and Dustin’s insides go tight – how did that go so wrong so fast?

He moves like he means to follow you but Robin grabs him by his sleeve and quietly ushers him and the rest of the group back toward the house.

He follows, but he can’t stop looking back over his shoulder, trying to catch one last glimpse of you and Eddie standing huddled in the back of the boat house before the door closes behind him.

After it's shut, everyone proceeds to stand in a stunned silence, all seeming to share the sentiment that what they just witnessed was painful enough to make them all feel like they’d just been broken up with. Dustin feels like he could vomit.

“Well, that was excruciating,” Steve mutters.

Max scoffs from where she’s sunk down onto the couch.

“Only because you didn’t have to listen to them break up the first time,” she says flatly. “By the way, what just happened in there? Totally your fault.”

Steve recoils sharply like she’d socked him in the face and opens his mouth to protest – nothing comes out. He looks to Robin for assistance, but she shuts him down in an instant with a slow shake of her head.

“Take the credit for that one, Stevie.” She says, “You’ve graduated to wrecking other people’s love lives as well as your own.”

The sentiment seems to hit him hard, as suddenly Steve is sinking down into a particularly ratty-looking armchair and staring off at nothing in particular with the faintest hint of distress masking his features.

“Jesus Christ, I’m a menace,” he says, a little more than stunned by the information that has suddenly come to light.

Dustin stands watching the door, wondering whether he ought to intrude, play mediator.

That’s what you do when your friends are fighting, right? Mediate, make them come to some sort of agreement, and shake on it? Only it’s not Mike and Lucas fighting in there, and Dustin is suddenly way in over his head.

Part of his rational mind is telling him that it’s none of his business, he ought to just let the pair of you work out whatever is going on between you, but the rest of him is too muddled with the conundrum of everything he has learned today.

Eddie broke your heart last summer, so that makes him the enemy, but Dustin is pretty sure he just stood there and watched you break his right back, which is good in terms of the mission to avenge you, but terrible considering Eddie is the object of his current mission – to find him and protect him at all costs, and he just stood there and let you trample him into oblivion.

Some avenger he is.

It’s a goddamn mess and Dustin is damn near ready to tear himself apart over it. He knows it’s not his business, but curiosity gets the better of him and before he knows what he’s doing, he’s got his ear pressed to the door.

He thinks he can hear you saying something, and he certainly hears Eddie raise his voice. Everyone hears it, in fact, and it brings their attention to where Dustin is pressed against the solid core.

“Dustin – what are you doing?” Steve calls, sounding suddenly very dejected.

Dustin dismisses him with a wave, but Steve’s admonishment of him is very quickly backed up by Robin.

“Leave them alone.” she insists.

Dustin shushes them harshly, he can’t make out what you’re saying, but you’re clearly arguing.

“I’m just trying to make sure they don’t need me to step in!” He hisses, missing the sound of approaching footsteps.

The door whips open and Dustin staggers forward, very nearly falling flat on his face at your feet.

You sidestep him without so much as a second glance and storm through the house to disappear down the long hall off of the living room.

Dustin watches as you go, helpless to do anything but stand there as his insides twist themselves into knots, and then Eddie appears in the doorway, stumbling over his own feet in his attempt to follow and looking exceedingly chagrined as he calls your name.

Somewhere further into the house, a door slams, rattling the walls and the clutter tacked to them.

Dustin feels a strange and bitter sense of schadenfreude wash over him as he watches Eddie flinch against the sound and slump back.

He swears harshly under his breath and pushes his hair out of his eyes.

“Good job.” Dustin says flatly and prides himself in the way he withstands the dirty look Eddie gives him. “Are we ready to make a plan now? Or do you two want to fight some more.”

Behind him, Dustin hears the dull rumble of a chorus of disappointed sounds from the rest of the group, but they all get up and file back into the boat house to give you a little space while they discuss the next course of action.

The strange hostility that jumps up in Dustin’s midsection is a bizarre contradiction to the strong pull of friendship he feels toward Eddie, but every time he starts to come back down, he thinks back to the polaroid photo strip he’s still got crumpled in his pocket, and the fire revs up again.

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, plans are set in motion. Eddie is safe, for the moment — even if he is a stupid jerk — which means Dustin can relax a little.

Now if only he could stop his mind from spinning around in circles wondering just what the hell Eddie must have said to you to make you storm off like that.

Dustin can’t help but notice the way Eddie keeps glancing at the door every few seconds, like a helpless puppy just waiting for you to come back.

He has to resist the urge to tell him to give it up because you’re not coming back – he really hopes you’ll wise up this time and not come back — but at the same time he is gripped with the urge to sidle up to him, assure him things are gonna work themselves out.

The conflicting notions are going to drive him crazy.

Dustin snaps his fingers for Eddie’s attention.

“Hey, you wanna do us the courtesy of paying attention while we’re trying to save your life?” he snaps.

Eddie blinks stupidly at him, brows furrowed like he can’t believe his audacity, but Dustin doesn’t wait around to hear what he has to say about it.

It’s well past midnight by the time the plan is finalized, and you still haven’t emerged from the room you’d shut yourself into.

It had been decided that they’ll go back into town and run their own reconnaissance mission, Eddie will stay put with a walkie-talkie, and everyone will remain in regular contact until they can get a handle on whatever the hell is going on. Now Dustin just has to figure out where you stand with all of that.

He finds you in the back bedroom, sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed with your legs crossed. It reminds him of the way you used to sit on the floor in his bedroom playing Atari – Dustin wishes you were back there, in happier times before you had to worry about things like stupid boyfriends and monsters and interdimensional spell-casters.

“Hey,” he calls from the doorway, startling you to attention.

You sit up a little and offer him a meager smile, though he can tell you’ve been crying what he imagines were angry tears. Your cheeks are streaked with them.

“Hey yourself.” You sniff, quickly brushing any lingering wetness from your face and wiping your nose across the back of your hand.

Dustin wonders briefly if you’d let him hug you – he contemplates joining you on the floor, but he can hear Steve in the other room rallying the troops.

“We’re headed out, in case you wanna hitch a ride.” Dustin says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

You sit silently for a moment, staring through him rather than at him, then sniff and dismiss the notion with a flippant wave.

“Nah, I’ll stay.” You say.

It makes his stomach clench. He’d so hoped you would come with them, even if he knows it's better that someone stays to keep tabs on Eddie.

Why does it have to be you? A tiny, nagging voice is crying out from somewhere inside him, though he knows the answer well enough. He’s got photographic proof crumpled up in his pocket.

“Really? Even after…?” Dustin trails off, unsure of how to really describe what he’d just witnessed as anything but a lover’s quarrel, which he is violently opposed to.

You wrinkle your nose and shrug, smiling for what he thinks must be his benefit. It doesn’t reach your eyes.

“Yeah…” You mutter, “Somebody’s gotta stay and babysit him. Figure it ought to be me.”

Dustin can hear Steve calling his name from the front room – wheels up, let’s go – and he hesitates, before venturing to take a step toward you.

You watch him carefully as he does.

“You don’t have to, you know.” Dustin assures you, “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

You force out a quiet chuckle, and the corners of your mouth twitch as your smile begins to fail.

“Of course he will, I’m gonna make sure of it.” You say.

Steve is honking the horn now, and shouting Dustin’s name, which is completely counterintuitive to everything they just went over about keeping a low profile.

Christ, he could strangle him.

“You better go,” you say, gesturing through him toward the car, “Daddy’s callin’.”

It’s not you saying it though, just like all those other times you said something that was wholly uncharacteristic of you, and entirely your boyfriend.

Eddie, Dustin reminds himself. It’s Eddie.

Just a little too mean for no good reason at all. Somehow it’s a little less jarring to hear, now.

He’d always wondered how someone could rub off of another person like that, how you could pick up their little phrases, begin to talk like them, but he supposes Eddie is Eddie – his favorite person in the world besides you, of course, he doesn’t know how you could know him and not have him rub off on you, just a little.

Dustin takes the walkie-talkie from where it is strapped across his shoulders and hands it to you. You take it and turn the clunky device over in your hands, still smiling that hollow smile as you fidget with the dials.

“We’ll be back tomorrow, but in the meantime—”

You don’t let him finish.

“Yessir, call you if we need anything.” You say, making a show of saluting. “Channel two, right?”

“R-right.” he says.

That’s the frequency he and the party always used before Will moved away, and Dustin is more than a little touched that you would remember.

Of course, then he can hear you chiding him gently, because how could you ever forget? You were a party member, weren’t you?

“DUSTIN!” Steve shouts from the front yard, “WE ARE LEAVING WITH OR WITHOUT YOU.”

And then he hears Eddie calling from the front room.

“Henderson, will you get the fuck out of here before he blows a gasket? Jesus Christ!”

Dustin looks back to see you staring out toward the front room again, frowning, and he feels a sudden desperation pulling at him.

The party doesn’t split up – you should be going with them.

“… You’re sure you don’t wanna come with?” He asks sheepishly, suddenly feeling like that same eight-year-old kid who was so desperate to impress you the first time you babysat.

You roll your eyes and push up to your feet, taking him by the shoulder and leading him to the door.

“Bye Dustin.” You say and shut the door firmly behind him.

Dustin lingers a moment, breathes a deep, steadying breath, then jogs down the hall into the living room.

Eddie is sitting slumped on the couch fidgeting with his fingers – he glances up at Dustin when he feels him staring.

“I gave her the walkie.”

“Cool.” Eddie says flatly, and then when Dustin continues to stare at him, “What?”

“...Be nice to her, okay?”

Eddie levels him with a dour look and Dustin half expects him to make some kind of snide comment, but he thinks better of it and breathes out a heavy sigh.

“Okay,” He mutters, sounding more or less defeated.

Dustin turns to leave, then stops short.

“Are you guys gonna be okay–?”

He doesn’t let him finish.

“Bye Dustin,” Eddie says, in a strangely perfect mimicry of you that sets Dustin’s teeth on edge.

It's one thing to hear Eddie speaking through you, but you speaking through Eddie?

Christ, that's just weird...

And then the roar of the engine indicating that Steve is actually trying to leave him behind lights a fire under Dustin's ass.

He whips around and bolts out the door to catch Steve's Mercedes just as it's pulling out of the driveway.

Dustin slides into the back beside Max and barely manages to get his door closed before Steve hits the gas again, ignoring the way he chides him for making everybody wait, and doing his best to suppress just how goddamn stressed he is that things are about to take a turn for the worse.

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#losing my miiiiiiiiiiiiiind #eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 8 hours

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truly believe one of my greatest joys in life is smoking before cooking dinner and listening to some good music

#dancing around the kitchen #august talks #eighties music is saving the day again!

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undead-supernova · 8 hours

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STEVE HARRINGTON & ROBIN BUCKLEY 4.01: The Hellfire Club

#literally one of my favorite scenes of the show #I love the way she goes DONT SAY BOOBIES!!!!#steve harrington #robin buckley

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undead-supernova · 8 hours

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STOP IT IM LOSING IT IM REALLY LOSING IT

Cruel Summer - Part 8

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 12k

warnings: swearing, mentions of Chrissy's death, fluff, just really saccharine fluff, sappy love, if you know you know

A.N.: Babysitter!reader part eight, newly formatted to make jumping between chapters easier! Mean!Girl Steve is in full force, and I kind of love it, Dustin finally learns the truth.

When you finally get back to Benny’s, the parking lot is full, indicating that with the passing of mid-morning into afternoon, the masses have finally descended.

The diner is swamped with regulars and newcomers, a whole host of the same onlookers you’d seen standing around gawping back at the trailer park. They’d been staring at you then, trying to get a good look while you were being forcibly removed from the Munson trailer and unceremoniously interrogated, and they’re staring at you now, whispering amongst themselves as you push through the doors and stalk across the diner floor.

Your coworker is running back and forth like a freshly decapitated chicken, berating you for leaving her to fend for herself, but you don’t stand around long enough to listen to her dig into you for abandoning your post.

You’ve wasted enough time as it is.

You’d been detained by the Hawkins’ boys in blue for the better part of an hour, and the walk back had been unceremoniously long. With the weight of Wayne’s money sitting heavy in your pocket and his words even heavier on your shoulders, you’d walked, repeating them to yourself like they were the lyrics to a song you were trying to memorize, a desperate attempt to ward off the paralyzing fear they stirred in you.

You said them over and over again until that fear subsided and gave way to something more grounded, over and over until it was all you could think: Find Eddie, get out of town, don’t come back.

You’re muttering the words to yourself as you slip into the hallway between the kitchen and the dining room, where a short row of beat-up lockers stand beside the punch clock.

There you find Earl, looming in the doorway behind you with his thick arms crossed over his barrel-chested form, staring tiny holes into your back as you snatch your things from the locker you’d stashed them in that morning – jean jacket, bag, car keys, find Eddie, get out of town, don’t come back.

“– Are you even listening to me?” Earl snaps.

You twist at the waist to blink at him, stupidly you imagine because you had not heard a word he’d just said, so caught in the mire of your thoughts as you were.

“No,” You answer honestly, followed directly by, “I’m leaving.”

The tone of Earl’s flesh deepens until he’s turned nearly purple and is all but frothing at the mouth as you skip back through the diner. He follows, as any self-respecting employer would, you imagine, hurling threats at your back.

You’ve already made it to the door by the time he manages to get out from behind the counter, making one last-ditch effort to stop you.

“You step out that door and you’re done here, Missy!” He shouts.

The proposed loss of your income does nothing to deter you.

You don’t miss a step as you shove the door open with a familiar chiming bell that you imagine you will be hearing for the last time.

Fine — Good riddance.

Your triumphant exit is, however, not punctuated by the cheers and swelling music you’d always imagined it would be. It is, in fact, wholly uninspired as you leap down off the curb with Earl still shouting at you how you best not come crawling back, blah blah blah, and make your way across the lot to your little Toyota, left all but abandoned.

It is only after you slide into the driver's seat and jam the keys into the ignition that you discover, much to your chagrin, at some point over the last couple of hours your car’s battery has died.

Just fucking typical.

You don’t have time to run around trying to find someone to jump it for you, so you shoulder your bag and bid a silent farewell to your trusty little car before starting up the road towards town at a swift jog.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know it is going to be a problem when eventually you find Eddie and have to figure out how you’re going to get him out of Hawkins without the use of a car, but you’ll just have to cross that bridge when you come to it.

You’ll get this done if it kills you, one Sisyphean hurdle at a time.

Of course, you have no earthly idea where you are even meant to start looking for Eddie, and it is only by sheer dumb luck that you somehow miraculously find yourself headed past Adam’s house.

Miraculous, considering you’d only cut into the neighborhood in a panicked attempt to avoid the cop car you’d seen nestled in its speed trap on the shoulder of the road, but all the more so because, like a stroke of divine intervention, you’ve somehow found yourself stumbling across an honest to God, Corroded Coffin jam session.

What are the odds?

Like nothing has changed and somehow the encroaching cloud of doom has not yet reached this part of town, Jeff, Adam, and Gareth are all there, standing huddled together in the open garage like they were waiting for you.

The coincidence of it all drives you a little crazy, especially considering Eddie is not with them. You can’t help the pang of bitter disappointment you feel as you have to remind yourself it was never going to be that easy – nothing with Eddie ever is.

The band, sans its frontman, stands staring at you wide-eyed and gawping like they’re seeing a ghost as you bolt up the driveway, shouting their names and waving your arms for their attention as you come screeching to a halt.

Your body is surging with enough adrenaline to almost make you forget how your lungs are burning. You’ve done more running today than you have all year, and your body is not happy about it – funny how quickly you get out of shape once things like regularly mandated physical education become thing of the past.

“Whoa, holy shit, Dude!” Jeff squeaks out, stumbling over your name and the chord of his electric guitar as he moves towards you, “H-hey! It’s been a minute,”

You don’t let him finish, you don’t have time for a game of catch-up.

“Where’s Eddie?” you demand, well aware of how you are starting to sound like a broken record even if only to yourself. “Have you seen him?”

The question seems to shock them. Adam and Gareth exchange nervous glances, meanwhile Jeff makes a harsh sound in the back of his throat that is a little closer to disgust than you like and recoils like you’d threatened to slap him.

The reaction might have confused you if not for the fact that you are well aware of the way he’s always had a big crush on you and the tension it has created between him and Eddie as a result.

You are not in the least bit surprised to see that it has not changed, but you have neither the time nor the patience to be nice to him about it.

You don’t care about Jeff’s feelings, you only care about finding Eddie.

Gareth has to elbow him in the ribs to stop him from saying something snide as he answers you.

“Not since Hellfire last night–” He begins, lamely fumbling for the excuse he doesn’t get the chance to trot out before Jeff cuts him off with a scoff.

“I saw him.” He says matter of factly, garnering horrified reactions from his friends.

Gareth’s eyes widen as his head whips around so fast you half expect to see it spin all the way around.

He and Adam are staring daggers, silently willing him to shut up, and suddenly you get a strange, sinking sense of betrayal like they are grappling with something big and unwieldy that is not for your eyes.

You swallow it, you can process it later if your feelings are still hurt.

“You did?” You gasp.

Jeff nods.

“Dude— don’t.” Adam hisses.

He narrows his eyes and shoots Adam an unimpressed look.

“What? It’s not like she isn’t gonna find out.” He says, sounding almost like a mocking reference to a conversation they’ve had before. Adam glares at him but says nothing, and Jeff looks almost smug as he turns back to regard you, “I saw Eddie,”

Your heart is in your throat and you can’t quite decide if it’s for excitement or nerves. You’re practically vibrating for it and you have to ball your hands into fists to stop yourself from grabbing Jeff by the front of his shirt and shaking him.

“Where?”

He shrugs.

“In the school parking lot after the game. He was headed out with…”

Jeff trails off under the chorus of Adam and Gareth swatting at him and telling him to shut him up. It sets the band to bickering aggressively and your skin to crawl.

You can’t stop yourself from bouncing up and down in a near panic as you try to reign their attention back in.

“You guys, come on, please focus! I have to find Eddie, it’s an emergency!”

It is enough to silence them.

“Jeff — you saw Eddie in the parking lot after the game…” You prompt him.

After a moment's hesitation, Jeff averts his gaze and clears his throat. It causes your stomach to churn with dread. Despite how fairly certain you are you already know what he’s going to say, you suddenly aren’t sure you want to hear him say it.

He nods in a way that is almost halfway sheepish, like he’s only just realized what it is he’s about to say and who he is about to say it to.

“... I saw him getting into the van with Chrissy Cunningham… you know, that cheerleader?”

Bingo.

Stupidly, it hits you like a fist to the gut, winding you ever so slightly.

You suppose you already knew that Eddie and Chrissy had been together last night in some capacity — how else would she have ended up dead on his living room floor — but in the midst of the morning’s panic, you hadn’t allowed yourself to consider the reasons why they were together, and now your insides are burning as your mind races with the suggestion of hideous possibility.

You swallow hard and clench your teeth – it’s stupid to be jealous of a dead girl, you know this, and yet…?

Gareth pipes up then, grabbing your attention before you can go down the tantalizing road of bitter self-destruction by imagining Eddie and Chrissy together in any kind of intimate capacity.

“What’s going on?” He asks tentatively, “Why do you need to find Eddie so bad?”

You open your mouth to speak before you’ve decided what you should or should not tell them about what you know. Do you tell them the truth or do you make up a sanitized version of things to try and save face, to protect Eddie?

You’re suddenly so conflicted that you feel as if your throat has filled with cotton, rendering you speechless.

It takes you half a minute to finally force something out, settling on, “He’s in trouble.”

Which, in the grand scheme of things is a relatively banal statement. Eddie is always in some kind of trouble, but you hope your presence is enough to clue the band in on the gravity of the situation as you swallow hard against the tightness of your throat and the black pit of jealousy forming in your stomach.

Gareth’s brows come together over his eyes.

“What kind of trouble?”

The worst kind.

You shake your head, partially because you don’t know where to begin but mostly to try and banish the image of Chrissy’s gaunt, screaming face from where it has shouldered its way to the front of your mind.

You set your jaw and breathe out a slow, shaky breath, but you don’t get the chance to gather your thoughts before they’re scattered to the wind again.

“Oh, shit…” Adam mumbles, “Is it that bad?”

You don’t answer, though only because you don’t expressly know how to answer. It is that bad, and it’s worse.

After a long moment of silence, he blows out a harsh breath and shrugs.

“You know, you’re not the only person looking for Eddie,” Adam says, sending a pang of white-hot fear lancing through your midsection for what that could possibly suggest, until, “Dustin Henderson called about twenty minutes back asking basically the same thing.”

Your heart leaps into your throat as a cool wave of relief washes over you. In spite of yourself, you feel a bright and dangerous hope welling in your chest, banishing the black pit swirling there.

Dustin! Of course, wonderful, sweet, amazing Dustin would know where to look!

The bright feeling lasts only the briefest of moments before it is dashed to oblivion because Gareth is giving you a very tense look, like he’s busy putting the pieces of a puzzle to paint a terrible picture of the truth.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with that girl who got killed… does it?” He asks.

It’s shocking, like the clanging of a bell ringing in your ears and deafening you.

You feel your heart seize in your chest and are aware of how your jaw falls open ever so slightly, betraying any discretion you might have hoped to keep regarding the situation at hand.

Trust Gareth to always see straight through to the greater underlying truth.

Adam and Jeff exchange nervous glances as you fail to answer. You feel suddenly very small under their collective gaze as words fail you, and all you can do is stare back at them.

Unfortunately, your silence speaks for itself, and you watch Gareth’s jaw flex as the gravity of the situation finally starts to sink in.

You suspect they must have imagined it was just the typical Eddie trouble and no real emergency. What are you if not their friend’s ex-girlfriend, banging down the door and demanding to know where he is after he goes off with some cheerleader for God knows what – you think you can probably make a pretty good guess for what — don’t go there, don’t do that to yourself…

It makes sense that they would close rank around their friend, “bro-code” being what it is – it’s bullshit, but in the fucked up logic of the masculine brain, you suppose it’s bullshit that makes sense.

It doesn’t mean you have to like it.

“…It’s Chrissy…isn’t it?” Gareth asks then, his voice trembling and so soft you would not have heard him had he not been standing so close, “The dead girl?”

The silence that falls over the garage is deafening.

Your stomach bottoms out and you are struck with a wave of cold nausea. You wire your jaw shut, suddenly reluctant to answer on the off chance that despite being Eddie’s friends, somehow their collective consciences lead them to the same terrible conclusion you are certain everyone else in this backwater town is going to jump to.

You would protect him from that if you could, in spite of everything, be his shield, but your body betrays you, and you’re nodding before you can stop yourself.

They react with varying degrees of horror, faces blanche, swears are uttered, Adam covers his face in his hands and you can hear him muttering “Jesus Christ” to himself over and over. It leaves you wondering if he’s swearing or praying.

Gareth takes you by the arm, then, and leads you away from the cloud of hysteria you have created among them, back towards the drum set crouching in the shadows of the garage.

He doesn’t immediately speak to you, he can hardly even look at you, which is not expressly fair considering you’re only the messenger. The color has drained from his face, and for half a second you think maybe he’s about to keel over or throw up, or something.

After a very long moment, he finally makes himself breathe out a harsh, shaky sigh. His hands are shaking as he cards them through his hair – he glances back at his friends, at his feet, and then at you, like he’s trying to decide what to say.

You can’t blame him. What does someone say to something like that?

You imagine if you hadn’t been so single-minded in finding him you would be reeling too – you’d seen Chrissy’s body, afterall.

“He-he didn’t…? Fuck– did Eddie—”

“Stop.” the word wrenches itself from somewhere deep within you in a breathless gasp. You can’t bear to hear him say it, “Don’t you dare ask me that…”

Gareth sets his jaw and levels you with a strange, hard look before finally giving a short nod. You’re not sure what it means, but you don’t like the jagged edge of the way he’s looking at you.

You do your best to steady yourself, but your voice is trembling as you speak.

“Look, I know this seems really bad, I get it, but… but Christ, G, this is Eddie we’re talking about, okay? It’s Eddie. We know he’s not like that, he would never do something like this… I mean, come on … he won’t even kill a spider.”

Gareth is shaking his head, but somehow you don’t think he disagrees with you.

It is, after all, a point of favored teasing among the group – Gareth in particular. Big tough Eddie Munson is scared shitless of spiders … and all flying bugs, you might add, but now is neither the time nor the place to offer that little tidbit of information.

Still, your brain offers you the rather unhelpful mental image of Eddie last January, leaping up out of bed and literally sprinting to the safety of the trailer’s front porch, where he’d stood shivering in his boxers as you quickly relocated a particularly large wolf spider from the nest it had made in a dark corner of his bedroom.

You wish you were back there now, arguing with Eddie as he refused to be coaxed back into the trailer, despite the subzero temperatures, instead of standing here in this terrible moment, wondering where in the hell he could possibly be.

“What happened?” Gareth sniffs, squeezing his eyes shut like he hates to ask but he has to know.

You cross your arms over your chest and cast your gaze down to your grease-stained keds.

“I don’t know,” You mumble, “But it’s only gonna get a lot worse if I don’t find Eddie right now.”

A sticky silence blooms between you, but it barely has a moment to settle before it is whisked away.

“Uh oh,” Adam calls from the front of the garage. “Jerk alert,”

“Jesus, what are they doing here?”

A cursory glance toward the front of the garage reveals Jeff and Adam staring at something out on the street.

You follow their gaze to see the butched-out Jeep Cherokee that has pulled up to the curb and your heart seizes in your chest as you come to recognize it and the great many basketball players that begin to spill out of it – the Hawkins Tigers, with Jason Carver at the lead. This is bad, this is very bad.

Since graduating, you don’t keep up with the interconnected gossip of the Hawkins social elite, like who is dating who, but it occurs to you all too late that you are, in fact, very well aware that Chrissy Cunningham had been Jason Carver’s girlfriend.

At least until last night.

Adrenaline spikes through your limbs and you’re struck with the same nagging urge to run that you’d woken up with that morning.

If Jason is here, then it can only mean that news of her death has reached him, though more importantly, it means Jason knows who Chrissy was with when she died.

You have to find Eddie, now.

Before you can even think to move, Gareth grabs you by the sleeve of your jacket and drags you deeper into the garage, leading you to the wall where a dozen boxes are stacked up against a disused side door.

He begins pulling at them, doing his best to dislodge the cardboard barrier standing between you and your escape. He speaks with a hushed urgency as he works, looking back over his shoulder at the scene unfolding at the mouth of the garage.

“Go.” He says, wrenching the door open as far as it will budge, “Find Dustin, if anyone’s gonna have a line on Eddie, it’ll be him. We’ll try to buy you some time.”

It’s a tight squeeze, but you hold your breath and manage to push through with the meager sacrifice of two buttons from the front of your dress and only the slightest amount of scraping.

Before you can slip out the other side, Gareth catches you by the wrist and says your name.

His brows are pulled tight over his eyes as you glance back at him.

“He didn’t mean it.” He says thickly – you don’t have to ask to know who he means, “Whatever he did with… with Chrissy?”

Gareth trails off then, shaking his head like he isn’t sure he ought to even say her name, let alone try and make excuses for whatever did or did not happen.

You dismiss the notion with a quick shake of your head. The jocks are getting closer, and you’re running out of time to escape.

“It doesn’t matter–”

He cuts you off.

“No, it does. Just… just let me say it, in case he’s too chicken shit to do it himself.” He huffs, “Eddie’s been fucked up over you all year, okay? Trust me, whatever he did, whatever happened between you? He’s killing himself over it… he still loves you, Man, he’s just too stupid to do anything about it.”

You swallow hard to try and stop any kind of reaction from spilling out of you.

You don’t have time to fall apart, but the coincidence that he would use those exact words? He still loves you? What could possibly have possessed Gareth to tell you that, why now?

How much had Eddie told them about what he’d said to you that night last August?

Before you have time to consider the notion, to muster any kind of proper feeling about it, Gareth pushes you through the door and shuts it behind you.

You stagger gracelessly into the grass on the other side of the wall, only just managing to stay on your feet as you hear the telltale scrape and thump of Gareth putting the boxes back in place.

You’re off and running again as the first of the jock’s voices reach you, body surging with adrenaline despite the way your legs are trembling as you go.

Find Dustin, you tell yourself, You’ve got to find Dustin.

+++

This is the fourth time Dustin has tried you at home over the last hour, and yet again the phone rings and rings and endlessly rings with no sign of picking up.

Behind him, Max and Robin pace back and forth, dialing every number they can get their hands on, attempting to oh so casually inquire after Eddie to any of the citizens of Hawkins who might happen to have some inkling of where he could be.

So far no dice.

Not even getting Adam on the phone had drummed up any kind of result, except for Dustin having to make a very rushed, very lame excuse about why he couldn’t stay on the phone and reminisce about the previous night’s awesome session.

It had been awesome, and under normal circumstances, he would have loved the opportunity to relive the glory of Vecna’s defeat, but Dustin has to find Eddie as soon as humanly possible, and before he can do that, he has to get a hold of you.

Both of those things are seeming more and more improbable an outcome as the minutes tick past.

The phone continues to ring, and Dustin watches Steve with a misplaced vehemence as he skirts around the floor, assisting and suggesting and being an overall excellent Family Video employee like he was going for goddamn employee of the month or something.

He is very obviously doing everything he possibly can to avoid assisting in the search for Eddie, and it is very un-Steve of him.

In Dustin’s opinion, he is being very uncool about this whole thing, about looking for Eddie but also about getting you on the phone.

“You’re wasting your time,” he’d said the second time Dustin had tried your number, in that same cryptic way he always referred to you when the subject of Eddie came up.

Dustin had no patience for it today.

“Steve, quit being such a douche,” He’d said, hurrying to finish his thought before Steve could get pissed about it, “I’m telling you — she’s good at this stuff, finding lost things? You don’t have to be her friend, just try to be nice to her for once, okay? She’s our ace in the hole.”

To his credit, Steve just huffed out an annoyed breath and rolled his eyes, which was a win considering he was within his rights to bite Dustin’s head off over the insult.

“Not if the lost thing is something she doesn’t want to find.” He'd muttered.

“What does that even mean?”

But by then a slender brunette had walked in through the door and Steve had completely lost interest in the conversation.

The phone is still ringing, and Dustin has to remind himself for the hundredth time that it does not automatically indicate that you’ve been arrested, as Max suggested.

You’re probably at work, even though your mean coworker had already informed him that you’d gone running out the front door without a word, like a bat out of hell — headed for the trailer park, if I had to guess, she’d said.

It makes Dustin’s stomach curl to imagine it – you, mixed up in whatever weirdness was going on down there, with Eddie – his two missing friends.

It makes no goddamn sense.

On the ride to Family Video, Dustin and Max had unanimously agreed that said weirdness very likely had something to do with the Upsidedown, which stresses Dustin out to no end, considering the fact that half of their party is presently all the way in California and unable to help if another gate has cropped up; not to mention how tirelessly he has worked to keep you safely removed from all that, and yet there they were, and here you were not.

The phone is still ringing.

With a dejected sigh, Dustin resigns himself to the fact that you’re still not home. Just as his fingers have come down to rest on the switch hook, ready to end the connection, there is suddenly the telltale click of the receiver picking up.

Dustin’s heart leaps to his throat as he snatches his hand away from the phone and finally — finally, your voice comes through the line. You answer, loud and breathless, like you’ve just finished running for your life as you all but shout into the mouthpiece.

“Eddie!?” You gasp at the same moment that Dustin bleats your name with a similar fervor.

It confuses him, though not nearly as much as the rush of relief that floods your voice as you course correct and immediately begin speaking a mile a minute.

“Dustin!” You shout, “Oh, thank God – Did you find him? Have you heard from Eddie?”

It leaves him more than just a little bit stunned.

“No, not since last night…” he hears you heave an overloud sigh of frustration and is quick to continue in a juvenile hope of pleasing you, “B-but we’re calling around and asking everybody we can think of…” and then a thought worms its way to the front of Dustin’s mind, “Hold on a second, how do you know Eddie—”

You don’t let him finish. Over the phone, Dustin can hear a cacophony of crashing and banging, the rustle of clothing and you swearing harshly under your breath, like you’re busy ransacking your apartment.

“Where are you right now? Are you home?”

“No, I’m at Family Video, Max and I—”

“Don’t move. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

And then there is the hard clang of the receiver being slammed into place followed by the monotonous droning of the dial tone, and just like that you’re gone.

Dustin drops the phone from his ear and stares at the receiver as he tries to understand what the hell just happened.

You’re very clearly not sitting in a jail cell, that much is clear, but somehow you’re already out there looking for Eddie?

He can’t decide if it’s fortuitous or just plain bizarre.

It’s fortuitous because it means he doesn’t have to waste any time trying to convince you to help, but it’s wholly bizarre because up until this point Dustin had been under the impression that you don’t even know Eddie.

How did you know he was in trouble? And why do you sound so stressed about it?

Dustin supposes it doesn’t really matter if the means add up to his intended end, but it’s just one more thing in a long list of things stacking up to make today unbearably weird.

His confusion does not go unnoticed.

“Hey, what happened?” Robin asks softly, craning her neck towards Dustin and holding the phone just far enough away from her ear so as not to mix conversations.

He blinks at her as he tries and fails to untangle it himself, then shrugs and puts his phone back on the hook.

He explains as much as he knows: you’re on your way over, you’ll be here in five minutes.

It’s closer to ten by the time he finally spies you through the front windows, darting across the street and only just avoiding the passing traffic as you cross.

You’re flushed and jumpy as you push through the door with a loud clanging of the bell.

The sound of your arrival brings Steve whipping around a shelf from the romance section, eyes bright with possibility and diving into his bullshit spiel before he sees who has come in through the door.

“Hey there, welcome to Family — oh, it’s just you.” His face visibly falls as he turns on his heel and heads back towards the counter with a sigh, “Dustin, your babysitter’s here.”

He says it’s like a dirty word, gesturing to you with a flippant jerk of his thumb that makes Dustin’s skin feel hot and prickly with indignation – he’d told him to be nice.

Dustin knows very well that you and Steve don’t like each other, and he doesn’t precisely know why, except that it has something to do with something that happened back in High School, before Steve came around and joined the team.

He has tried and failed on many occasions to plead his case, to convince you that Steve is not all that bad, but you would not relent in your opinion of him.

You’re speaking before Dustin can make any sort of effort to defend you.

“Eat shit, Steve,” you huff, taking the words right out of his mouth and looking very agitated as you follow him across the carpet to the desk.

You greet Robin with an absent wave when she gives you a big, friendly smile.

She either can’t or won’t speak for the tension between you and Steve, but she likes you just fine and as far as Dustin can tell, you have no issue with her.

Of course, this isn’t about your mysterious feud with Steve, this is about finding Eddie, so he does his best to ignore the way you’re staring daggers at each other.

“Where’ve you been?” Dustin demands once you reach the counter.

He can’t help but notice the way you’re gripping the edge of the linoleum so tightly your knuckles have turned white.

“I’ve been calling you all morning! Max said—”

You shake your head.

“It doesn’t matter,” You say, which Dustin finds to be particularly outrageous because of course it matters when Max is out here spreading rumors that she’d seen you getting arrested.

You’re talking again before he can voice any of those concerns.

“Where’s Eddie? What do we know?”

Not much, unfortunately, and he hates to admit it.

Dustin’s cheeks puff out with a heavy breath as he turns his attention back to the long list of crossed-out names and phone numbers they have been meticulously calling for what feels like hours now.

All this time and all those people and still they are no closer to Eddie.

“Only what Max saw.” He says simply.

Your eyes widen and your head snaps around to the redhead, pacing back and forth behind the counter as she talks on the phone. She casts a sidelong glance your way and scrunches her nose as if to say ‘quit staring at me’.

It takes a very long moment before you finally turn back to Dustin.

“What did she see?” You demand.

He doesn’t know why, but having your undivided attention like this makes his stomach tighten with anxiety – you’re just a little more intense than he is comfortable with right now, and strangely he’s nervous about telling you the truth.

“Eddie and Chrissy together at his place.” He explains slowly, bracing himself for your reaction.

You clench your jaw and something indiscernible flashes across your eyes, but you prompt him to continue with a short nod.

Dustin takes a breath.

“Then a little while later the lights go wonky and she hears him screaming like he’s being killed, next thing she sees is Eddie hauling ass to get out of there.”

He feels oddly proud, in the grand scheme of things, saying it all out loud helped to make it seem like they knew a lot more than he'd previously thought, but disappointingly you heave a dejected sigh and your shoulders fall.

“So, she didn’t see anything,”

It leaves Dustin feeling strangely indignant.

“She saw Chrissy.” He posits, deflating a little when the information fails to impress you.

“Yeah,” you say bluntly, “So did I.”

Dustin doesn’t know what that means, but he can’t shake the feeling that there is some terrible reality behind that.

You’ve got this far-away look in your eyes, and you bodily shudder. He can’t imagine what must have happened to Chrissy to send Eddie running for the hills, big tough Eddie who everyone was so afraid of, who wasn’t really all that big or tough at all once you got to know him.

A sharp pang of protectiveness lances through his midsection and Dustin finds himself eyeing you warily as he sees how your brows have come together, an angry scowl etched into your features.

He suddenly can’t stop thinking about the conversation you’d had with Eddie on the campus phone, how quickly it had turned before you’d inexplicably hung up on him – it leaves Dustin wondering just how you know Eddie, why you’d never mentioned him before, and suddenly he is very worried about your opinion regarding his guilt.

You want to find him, that’s for sure, for whatever reason that may be, but wanting to find him doesn’t expressly mean you want to help him, particularly if your opinion of Eddie is any shade of similar to your opinion of Steve.

Dustin hates to be suspicious of you, normally he would swear you don't have a mean bone in your body, but it's been a long time since you've been normal...

“You know he didn’t do it.” Dustin says firmly, “...right?”

He watches you carefully as your head snaps up and you regard him with a strange look.

“Eddie.” He clarifies, “He’s innocent.”

Then your brows come together over your narrowing eyes, pulling a face that is somewhere within the realm of the same familiar look you always get when he says something you think is stupid or outrageous.

It’s oddly comforting, despite the way it makes his stomach clench with instant regret.

“Of course, he didn’t do it,” you snap. “Dustin–”

He puts his hands up in surrender before you can admonish him for whatever it is that has offended you.

“Okay! I just wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page here–”

“Well, hold on,” Steve interjects, rocking up to lean beside you on the counter. You shift away from him, “We can’t just say Munson’s innocent and call it a day just because Princess Daphne here has got a major hard-on for him.”

He jerks his head towards you and you recoil like he’d reached out and slapped you.

“Excuse me?” You snap.

And Dustin can’t say he feels any different, he can’t believe what he is hearing.

“Steve, what the hell?” He yelps, trying his damnedest to be outraged and not to think of you dressed as Princess Daphne, which is easier said than done now that the image is in Dustin's head.

Even Robin is unimpressed, glaring at him from behind the counter.

“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” she huffs.

Steve, in turn, immediately goes on the defensive, throwing his arms wide and raising his voice like he can’t believe no one is agreeing with him.

“Oh, come on, people, he fled the scene! That’s pretty much an admission of guilt right there”

You level him with a hateful look.

“He didn’t do it.”

Steve stares at you a moment before shrugging and giving you a halfway apologetic look, almost like he hates to say it, but in a very condescending way.

“Well, of course, you’d say that,” he says matter-of-factly. “You’re biased,”

Dustin watches warily as you bristle.

“Biased.” You mimic, curling your hands into fists.

“Completely,”

For half a moment, he thinks you might swing at Steve, and you wouldn’t be wrong for doing so, he’s being a complete and total douche.

To your credit, you take a deep, steadying breath before you come back with your rebuttal.

“You don’t think maybe I’d say that because I have just a little bit more insight on the matter than you do?”

Steve scoffs, and just like that, all sense of diplomacy has gone out the window.

“Oh, okay, insight? Is that what we’re calling it?” He prods, crossing his arms and staring down at you, “Insight?”

Once a mean girl, always a mean girl.

“Fuck you.” you snap, and Dustin takes it as his sign to intervene.

He does his best to separate you, but unfortunately, he’s on the wrong side of the counter to do much more than reach out and grab the both of you by your sleeve.

“Okay guys, take a breath.” he urges, rather helplessly considering how you and Steve have gotten into each other’s faces now.

He’s halfway to panicking because he doesn’t know what he’s going to do if you start to fight, like, really physically fight.

Dustin doesn’t think Steve would sink so low to hit a girl, he’s got principles even when he’s being an unhinged half-reformed mean girl, but he can also hear you berating him for being a sexist at the notion – “Girls can get in fights too, Dustin, don’t be such a –”

“I think I’ve got a lead.” Max says suddenly, slamming her phone down into the cradle and mercifully cutting the tension enough to draw everyone’s attention. “Some guy called Reefer Rick? Apparently, he’s Eddie’s dealer and I guess he crashes at his place sometimes,”

For half a moment no one reacts, and then Robin snorts with laughter.

It is almost loud enough to cover the harsh sound of indignation you make.

“Reefer Rick? Is that his legal name? Like, do you think it says that on his driver’s license?”

Max just rolls her eyes.

“Did you get a last name?” Steve asks then, leaning over the desk on his elbow.

“What, suddenly you care?” Dustin scoffs, “Two seconds ago you were ready to call the cops.”

“Listen, I’m just trying to be realistic, you little creep — any way you’re biased too, you’re obsessed with the guy,”

The comment goes largely ignored, as Robin slides into the computer chair and immediately begins typing.

“Maybe if we can find this Rick guy, he can point us in the right … direction…?”

Robin trails off when she notices how you’ve spun on your heel and started across the lobby.

“Where the hell is she going?” Steve asks, reaching across the counter to shove Dustin for his attention when he doesn’t answer right away.

“How should I know?”

Steve narrows his eyes in a way that would have left Dustin half inclined to slug him were he the type of person with those types of inclinations.

He’s really in rare form today, and Dustin is almost certain at this rate someone is going to punch Steve by the end of the day.

“She’s your babysitter.” He drawls.

Again, he says it like a dirty word, and Dustin bristles.

“What, so like I can read her mind or something?” He snaps, scrambling out from under the desk and nearly tripping over his feet in an attempt to go after you.

You’re out the door in an instant, the chiming of that stupid bell signifying your escape.

Dustin staggers out after you, blinking against the sun and shouting your name. He has to say it three times before you slow enough for him to catch you.

“Where are you going?” Dustin gasps, winded from having to dash after you so quick.

You’re practically vibrating, eyes bright as you stare back at him.

“I know where he is!” You say.

“Who?" He demands, then feels his brain melt a little, "Reefer Rick?”

Your brows come together and you roll your eyes.

“Oh please,” You scoff, turning to leave again.

Dustin grabs you by the sleeve of your jacket and holds you there, stopping you from dashing off to the odd corner of the world.

He doesn’t notice the strip of paper that falls from your pocket, too busy fixating on you.

“Stop!” He pleads.

You pull against his grip and glare at him, the slightest twinge of annoyance coloring your face as you jerk your arm out of his grasp.

“Dustin!” You start, swinging hard into your serious babysitter voice, “I have to go!”

He knows this, despite how annoying it is, but he’s desperate to make you stay, anyway he can.

“Just – wait a second, will you? You don't understand how goddam stressful this whole day has been, first with Eddie, then you–"

Your eyes go wide as you gesture to yourself incredulously.

"Me?"

It sets Dustin's teeth on edge.

"Yes, you! I've been trying to reach you all day. Max said you were in jail and when I couldn't get a hold of you..." He trails off as he realizes just how whiney he sounds and feels his cheeks burn for it.

All that talk about how he was too old for a babysitter and here he is wailing and moaning like a little kid.

You stand a moment, searching his face before your features grow soft in the strangest way. Dustin’s heart leaps up into his throat as you surge forward and embrace him.

"It's gonna be okay, Dusty, I know where he is now." You say against his ear.

Only at that moment, Dustin could not have guessed who you were talking about or what they'd all been doing only moments before if his life depended on it. Eddie? Eddie who? All he can think about is you and how good you smell.

It’s a quick hug, much to his chagrin, and it leaves him standing struck dumb enough that he doesn’t notice you skipping away until it’s too late.

You’re halfway up the street by the time he comes back around.

“Where are you going!” Dustin shouts,

You twist around and offer him a big bright smile, one he hasn’t seen in what feels like years.

“To find Eddie!” You call, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world,

The sound is lost to the afternoon traffic, and as quickly as you’d arrived, you’re gone again.

Off to whatever corner of Hawkins Eddie is hiding in, he supposes. Dustin doesn’t know how he feels about it.

For some reason, his insides feel cold and squirmy, like they’re about to jump up into his throat. It feels like jealousy, but he can’t rationalize why he would be jealous.

You don’t know Eddie, except apparently you do, well enough to come running at the first sign of trouble. He can’t wrap his head around it.

He’s not worried you won’t find him, he’s only worried that after you do, he won’t be able to find you, like somehow you’re on the cusp of slipping through his fingers and he’s never going to see you again.

With a dejected sigh, he turns on his heel and starts back toward the video store, then he spies the long strip of paper lying on the pavement where you’d just been standing.

Dustin stoops to retrieve it, guessing you must have dropped it in your rush to leave. He turns it over in his hands and his heart seizes.

It’s a photo strip, one from the many kiosks they’d had at the Starcourt Mall before the Mindflayer took care of it.

The pictures are all more or less the same: it’s you and Eddie.

Eddie giving you bunny ears and you sticking your tongue out, followed by Eddie pretending to bite your face while you laughed, followed by Eddie kissing you, and you kissing Eddie, and… and and and …oh God.

Dustin feels like he’s going to be sick.

So that’s how you know each other… that’s why you’d been down at the trailer park this morning, why you are so desperate to find Eddie.

Finally, here is the missing piece of the puzzle, landing perfectly in place with an earth-shattering crash, threatening to knock Dustin off his feet.

Your stupid boyfriend, the one who had plagued Dustin’s life for years, skulking around the periphery of his brain, slowly pulling you away from him, the one who had so callously broken your heart and left you sobbing pathetically on his couch last summer, who Dustin had sworn to avenge you against… is Eddie.

Of course it is, it makes perfect sense now that he really thinks about it, and Dustin hates every second of just how much it makes sense.

Who drove around in a shitty panel van blaring over loud rock music? Your stupid boyfriend — Eddie. Whose silver ring with the dark stone had you been wearing up until last summer? Your stupid boyfriend’s — also Eddie, as Dustin had noticed during his first session at Hellfire and done an incredible feat of mental gymnastics to convince himself that it wasn’t the same ring.

Who had he seen picking you up outside his house that night he’d torn down his curtains in a jealous rage? Who had he seen lean over the center console to kiss you? Your stupid boyfriend — Eddie Eddie Eddie. All signs point to Eddie, and Dustin’s mind is reeling for it.

Now he knows why you’d never once mentioned Eddie or Hellfire in all your hours of doomsday prepping, and why Eddie had been so periodically weird and sulky and withdrawn. Dustin had long suspected it was a breakup that was ailing Eddie, especially considering Mike had acted the exact same way in the weeks following Will and Eleven’s departure for California.

Behind him, the door to the video store chimes as it whips open, and Steve calls out to him.

“Hey! Come in man, we’ve got a lead here!”

Dustin crumples the photo strip without thinking and stuffs it into his pocket, hoping somehow he might forget he ever saw it, forget he knows what he now knows.

He whirls around and does his best to stuff down all the big unwieldy feelings threatening to burst out of him, making his way back toward Family Video.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming. Keep your wig on.” Dustin mumbles, swallowing hard to keep his voice from trembling as he goes.

+++

Eddie doesn’t know what happened to Chrissy, but he knows somehow it is his fault.

At least that’s what everyone is going to say.

He was there, he had his hands on her, trying to snap her out of whatever terrifying fugue state had suddenly gripped her, sure, but fingerprints are fingerprints, and his are all over her.

She was there, and then suddenly she wasn’t; now she is dead.

It all happened so fast, and yet it won’t stop playing in his head in a constant loop, like a slow-motion instant replay scorched into the backs of his eyelids that he’s destined to relive every time he closes his eyes until the end of his days.

He’s never seen anything like that, never heard anything like it – he didn’t know a person’s body could bend like that, that bones could make that sound.

When he was thirteen, his father purposely slammed his arm shut in a car door in the weeks leading up to his final arrest. Why he did it didn’t matter – that was just the old man for you – what mattered was how Eddie had heard the bones in his forearm break and sat staring in the blissful ignorance of shock at the bend in his arm that didn’t belong before he ever felt any pain.

That was nothing like the noises that had rung out when Chrissy’s arms and legs snapped up out of place or the unnatural way she’d hung there, limbs bent out of shape.

He hopes Chrissy wasn’t present enough in those final moments to feel any pain.

He can still see it when he closes his eyes like the image is forever burnt into the back of his eyelids. He doesn’t know if he’s ever going to stop hearing that sound.

And now he’s hiding out in Rick Lipton’s boat house, which is probably the most incriminating place he could have chosen to hole up considering the circumstances, but it’s not like Eddie had a lot of options.

It’s dark, dingy, and full of all kinds of nasty dust and debris that hurts his lungs to breathe, and all of that would be positively fine if it weren’t for the spiders. So many goddamn spiders in this shitty crumbling boat house.

Normally he would have bolted straight for the safety of the house at the first sight of them, but things are anything but normal right now, and Rick is supposed to be in jail.

In spite of being currently half out of his mind, Eddie knows well enough that it would do him no good to draw someone’s attention with signs of life in the house, so there he sits, miserable and terrified and itching with the sensation of phantom legs crawling up and down his body.

He would say that things could not possibly get any worse, but he’s worried he’ll jinx it.

And then, like it was just waiting for its cue, a sudden commotion startles Eddie into leaping up to his feet.

A crashing bang of metal and glass out in the yard causes him to damn near leap out of his skin. Trash cans, he rationalizes, but what knocked them over?

Eddie balls his hands into fists and tries to convince himself it’s just raccoons, he's heard them skulking around outside the trailer for years, causing a ruckus, but he could have sworn he heard someone swearing under their breath.

Last time he checked raccoons don’t go around muttering “Goddamn— son of a bitch,”

He crosses his arms tightly over his chest and hugs his biceps protectively. He holds his breath, listening hard for any kind of sound.

It’s faint, but it’s there.

The telltale crunch of gravel, moving from one end of the building to the other, footsteps, drawing closer with each passing second.

Fuck.

There’s someone outside.

Oh fuck.

They’ve found him.

Fuck fuck fuck shit oh fuck.

Eddie’s head is on a swivel, looking for somewhere, anywhere to hide – there are dozens of places, plenty of dark corners and tarps he could tuck himself into, but the threat of spiders keeps him frozen to the spot.

Move or die, Man! his inner voice screams, now is not the time for irrational phobias, but his legs have turned to jelly frozen in concrete. If he moves they’ll shatter and he’ll fall.

The footsteps are getting closer.

Eddie’s mind races with every terrible possibility, his subconscious whispers hideous things to him and urges him to run, but he still can’t move.

He knows he needs to get as far away from here as he can as fast as humanly possible, but the tiniest, nagging thought has him paralyzed — where is he going to go?

Who’s going to help him?

Wayne’s bound to be tied up in police tape by now, Rick’s in jail and so is his father, not that he would ever dream of going to the old man for help, his mother is dead, and his friends all think he’s an asshole, so who is there in the world left to help him?

Chrissy was the only one left around who was even halfway nice to him and he saw what happened to her. She’s the reason he’s in this mess.

Who would even believe him if he tried to explain it?

He’s tired — so goddamn tired he can’t think straight, and he doesn’t want to run anymore.

He’s been running all night, hasn’t closed his eyes to so much as blink for fear of seeing Chrissy’s face again, and he’s dead on his feet… so incredibly fucking tired that he tries to tell himself he doesn’t care what happens to him now despite how untrue that is.

He ought to just give himself up.

The footsteps are closer now, nearly to the door.

So what if someone is out there? So what if he’s found? He knows he didn’t do anything, but how far is his word going to take him in this town?

How much is he willing to bet the court system will take one look at his name and decide his guilt without so much as a thought for things like motive and evidence?

What’s the worst that can happen? Prison. Just like his father.

His heart sinks at the thought, despite how he tries not to care.

Of course, like always, the problem is that Eddie cares too much— how unfair it is that he’s spent his whole life doing everything he can to get off that train, be good (as good as he can, considering it all) stay out of trouble, and keep his head down, only to end up in this mess.

Worse than getting picked up for carjacking or possession or just because the cops in this town just plain don’t like him, if Eddie goes to prison for Chrissy’s murder, he knows he’ll never get out again.

Not alive, in any case.

If he runs he’s going to spend his whole life running, if he stays he’s going to die. What kind of options are those? He suddenly feels like an animal in a trap, presented with the prospect of chewing off his own leg to survive.

Does he have the fortitude to do something like that? He doesn’t know.

The footsteps have stopped, and Eddie realizes with a burst of hot stinging adrenaline that whoever is out there skulking around is right outside the doors and he doesn’t know what to do.

You would have known what to do… wouldn’t you? Probably not, but it would have made him feel a whole lot better not to be doing this on his own. Not to have to do any of it on his own.

Instinctively, Eddie jumps forward and grips the door handle, the cool metal bites into the flesh of his palm and sends a shiver up his spine. He tells himself it’s to stop anyone from entering if they try the door, but apathy is clawing at him, urging him to twist the handle, open the door himself.

Better to get it over with, he thinks, and in a moment of despair he makes his decision.

He doesn’t want to run anymore…

He takes a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth, and another, and then one more for good measure as he tries to gather his courage.

He grits his teeth, and whips the door open.

In an instant, all the air has left his lungs in the form of the loud, terrified shout that he is powerless to stop as it tears itself from somewhere in his chest cavity.

You scream too, leaping damn near out of your skin and covering your ears like you always do when you get scared like that.

It’s you — holy shit, it’s you — clutching your chest like you’re attempting to recover from the mini heart attack he’d just given you.

The feeling is mutual.

Eddie suddenly thinks he might pass out as he feels his heart seize erratically in his chest before dropping into his stomach. His vision goes spotty for the briefest of moments and his legs tremble under his weight.

“Jesus—”

“—Christ!” You gasp, like you’re finishing his curse for him. “God, Eddie!”

You stomp your foot when you say it, like he’d jumped out and scared you on purpose, and the way you say his name makes Eddie’s heart thump painfully in his chest.

“You scared the hell out of me.” You breathe, shaking your head and fisting your hands in the front of your shirt — his shirt, he realizes with a start.

It’s inside out, funny enough, but he doesn’t miss the faded Metallica logo, backwards and staring up at him from between your fingers.

It’s painfully endearing, and his heart is beating so fast it makes his chest hurt looking at it, at you, two of his favorite things, long since written off as lost, mourned and now miraculously found again.

All this time and you still had it.

He tries to breathe but it catches in his throat.

Holy shit holy shit.

Out of everything and anything he could have imagined he would find on the other side of that door – police, national guard, an army of angry hicks, the re-animated corpse of Chrissy come to feast on his flesh – Eddie never once never imagined someone would be coming to help him.

He never imagined it would be you standing there.

Somehow his mind is simultaneously going ninety miles an hour and moving at a snail’s pace. He can’t think, and yet he can’t stop the tide of thoughts and feelings and everything he suddenly needs to say to you fighting for real estate at the front of his brain.

For half a moment, it’s all either of you can do but just stand there staring at each other.

Finally, you gesture awkwardly into the room.

“Can I…?”

It takes him a moment too long to realize you’re asking to come in, and Eddie all but leaps out of your way, staggering to the side to make room as you jump up over the threshold and shut the door behind you.

You make a wide circle around him, surveying the room, and he watches you carefully as you do, still not entirely convinced he hasn’t just been breathing toxic chemicals all day and is now hallucinating you.

You cast a sidelong glance in his direction and he thinks he sees the corners of your mouth quirk humorously.

"Take a picture, Eds, it'll last longer." you hum.

"...Sorry." he mumbles.

He knows he’s staring at you, but he can’t stop.

He can’t believe what he’s seeing. After all those months he’d spent dreaming about you, imagining he was hearing your voice or seeing you turn a corner, always there but just out of sight? He doesn’t trust it — he can’t.

You try again to make idle conversation.

“Rick’s boat house, huh?” You say, glancing at him over your shoulder in a way that is enough to make his knees tremble.

His throat closes before he can even think to answer you, and it forces Eddie to settle on a meager response, nodding stupidly.

He doesn’t know what else to say about it and it’s driving him crazy.

Eight months of memorizing all the things Eddie thought he would say to you if he ever saw you again and suddenly here you are and he can’t remember a goddamn word of it.

He tries to speak, but words fail him. Still, he tries, opening and closing his mouth in an attempt to force the words out, gawping stupidly at you like a fish out of water.

He wants to ask what you’re doing here, how you found him, but he realizes in an instant that he doesn’t care how you found him, he only cares that you’re here.

Your eyebrows come together in stark concern and you finally take a step toward him.

He’s this close to panicking about it.

This was not how he’d imagined reuniting with you would go. His palms have become sweaty and he resists the boyish urge to wipe them down the front of his jeans.

Eddie makes himself swallow hard to try and wet his throat where it has suddenly bloomed with cobwebs.

He can’t keep staring at you like this. He’s got to say something — anything. He blurts the first thing that comes to mind.

“That’s my shirt,” he chokes, for lack of anything better to say.

His voice cracks and his mouth slams shut. He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous.

You blink at him, like you have absolutely no idea how to respond.

“You left it in my room.” You say petulantly.

It’s almost enough to break the tension hanging heave between you … almost.

He left a lot of things in your room, most of which you’d given back to him, but he won’t say that, for fear of sounding like he isn’t happy to see you, it’s just with the way you’re staring at him, he can’t make any kind of coherent thought come through the fog of his mind.

“What are— h-how did you—?”

You shake your head and heave and airy sigh, giving him this strangely pained look, smiling with your nose scrunched and your eyebrows turned up.

“...Heard you were in trouble.” You say, your words punctuated by a wet sniffle, and then you shrug and roll your eyes, like you always do when you’re halfway embarrassed by what you’re about to say, “Came running.”

Jesus–

You might as well have stabbed him for how his lungs flatten in his chest.

Eddie rocks back a step, without really meaning to, shaking his head in awe of the specter of you, miraculously standing there in the dingy light of a place you by all rights have no business being, staring at him in too close a shadow of the way you’d looked standing at the bottom of his front steps last summer.

Eddie finally makes himself breathe, sucking greedily on a sharp intake of breath before he realizes the distance he’s put between you, that he’s still putting between you, and something in him snaps.

He needed you and you came running.

“—Oh, my God.”

Eddie surges forward and seizes you, crushing you against his body.

He curls his arms around you and hugs you so tight you’re bent nearly backward. You make a faint sound as his embrace forces the air out of your lungs, almost like a whimper and Eddie buries his face in your hair as he presses his cheek to the crown of your head.

The movement kicks up the familiar hint of your shampoo and conditioner, cutting through the murky, mildewy tang of the boathouse like a breath of fresh air.

He breathes deep — your perfume is different, something soft and faintly floral, but it is not enough to mask the subtle sweetness of your flesh.

Christ, he’d nearly forgotten your smell, and now he’s forgotten everything but you.

His mind is caught in a flurry of spinning thoughts and feelings that are quickly overwhelmed by a strange calm, seeming to radiate outward from your point of contact and bleeding down into his limbs to react with the adrenaline still surging there. It brings with it a sensation Eddie has only felt very few times in his life;

Walking home from the diner hand in hand with his mother while the setting sun guides them home, climbing the steps of Wayne’s trailer the last time it was ever just that and the first time it was home, laying in your bed at three o’clock in the morning with your head on his chest, watching your lashes flutter and listening to the slow pace of your breathing, a deep breath in followed by a slow breath out.

Little moments that live like glittering jewels tucked safely away in the spot behind his lungs lead him to one, gentle, all-encompassing feeling: he’s safe.

Somewhere, very far back in his mind, Eddie knows he isn’t, that there are people looking for him who think he’s done something terrible.

There is still the faintest alarm trilling danger, danger, Will Robinson! in his deep psyche, but how can he make himself think about anything else with you in his arms? How is he supposed to care about anything besides the fact that, somehow, in spite of everything he’d said, everything he’d done to hurt you, you’ve come back to him?

Eddie breathes out a shaky sigh he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as he feels your arms snake up around his body — for a brief, terrible moment he’d worried you wouldn’t reciprocate, that he was really well and truly kidding himself that you were here for him, but those fears dissipate the moment he feels the press of your skin beneath his jacket and vest.

The warmth of you burns him even through the thin fabric of his shirt, and it is such a relief to be under your touch again. You hold him so tight that he thinks at any moment you could slip beneath his skin and live there, and he’d let you do it because now that he’s got you again, he’s never going to let you go.

Then suddenly you’re carding your fingers through his hair, stroking his face, looking up at him with your big pretty eyes, and speaking softly to him.

“Hey—” you’re saying, “It’s okay, Eddie... hey, look at me — you’re okay, I’ve got you.”

He sniffles and dips his head to wipe his cheek on the soft denim covering his shoulder because there’s no way in hell he’s letting you go for something as trivial as wiping his face.

He almost whimpers when you take your hand away from where it’s been resting on his side, and when you reach up to brush the pad of your thumb across his cheekbone, he realizes with a start that his face is wet, he’s trembling under your touch, body heaving – he’s crying.

He doesn’t even have the presence of mind to be embarrassed about it, he’s too busy looking you over, trying to commit your face to memory in case this is just a terrible hallucination and he’s never going to see you again.

He takes your face in his hands and reverently compares what he sees now to what had lived in his mind before, trying to decide what, if anything, is different.

Your hair maybe? Your clothes? He doesn’t know, he suddenly can’t remember anything before this moment.

"You’re here, you’re really here…" He hadn't meant to say it out loud, but running on nothing but adrenaline has his brain all but malfunctioning.

Your face scrunches up in the most heartbreaking look, much too similar to the way you’d been looking at him when you pounded on his door last summer as your hands come up to shadow his on either side of your face.

“Oh, Eds…”

It makes him feel sick — his skin is suddenly hot and prickly with it.

He never wants to see that look on your face again.

“What are you doing here?” He finally manages to choke out, “You — you shouldn’t be here,”

Eddie regrets saying it as soon as it tumbles past his lips. Particularly with the way your face ever so briefly contorts with the shadow of the same look you’d given him when he’d told you he didn’t love you, when he'd lied to hurt you — even with you here he feels his heart break all over again just at the thought of it.

He’d meant you shouldn’t be here in the sense that it wasn’t safe for you as much as it didn’t make any sense, because hadn’t you moved away? Left Hawkins behind? Left him behind?

You shift backward, like you mean to step away from him and Eddie feels himself grow panicky about it.

“Do you want me to–” You start, but he doesn’t let you finish that terrible thought.

“No!” He cries, surging forward to catch you, “No, please don’t go, just… just…”

Eddie grips you tightly by your shoulders like he needs to hold you there so you won’t disappear, but it’s not enough.

His hands move, scrabbling higher and higher even still until they come up to grace the curves of your throat. He’s desperate for more of you, desperate to kiss you, but he doesn’t dare.

He can’t shake the sense that your being here is balancing on the edge of a knife, and any wrong move will send you running for the hills.

In spite of that thinking, you lean into his touch and his heart thumps painfully in his chest.

“How’d you know I’d be here?” Eddie asks.

Your face softens as you take his hands in yours.

“I always know where to find you, Dummy.”

He doesn’t know why that’s the thing to set him off, but it does.

Eddie chokes on the steadying breath he’d been trying to take as the dam breaks, wrenching it out of him in a hiccuping sob.

He tries to cover his face with his hands but you don’t let him hide, you take his wrists and pull them away to wrap around you instead, and you hold him.

He doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve this chance with you, doesn’t know how he got so lucky to even have it, but he’ll take every moment he can get while it lasts.

Eddie clings to you, weeping pathetically into your hair and babbling incoherently, apologizing for anything— everything— an endless tide of all the things he’s wanted to say to you all year, since the moment he’d stood there and watched you leave that terrible night in August.

He should have fought harder for you, he should never have let you go.

Eddie tells himself he’s got to stop crying, to stop talking, to try and pull himself together, but it is just another thing he has no power over.

His brain had all but switched off after what had happened to Chrissy, and his body has been operating on primal instinct in a desperate attempt just to try and get somewhere safe — he’s held it together up until this point, but he’s never been so scared in his goddamn life.

“God, I’m sorry,” he whimpers, “I’m so sorry, Baby, I don’t know why I said any of that stuff, I’m a fucking idiot, I didn’t mean it— I swear on my life I didn’t mean a goddamn word of it. I love you. I love you so fucking much it hurts, Jesus Christ, I’m just so fucking sorry—”

As much as he’s talking, you’re nodding, pushing his hair back, stroking his face, and all the other lovely little gestures you’d always done before when things were still fine, when you were still his.

“I know,” you tell him, pressing your cheek against his temple and carding your fingers through the hair at the base of his neck. “I know, Baby. We’re gonna figure this out, okay? Me ‘n you, whatever it takes. We'll fix it.”

He can’t help the startled, watery laugh that bursts out of him to hear you say that.

It fills him with a bright and dangerous hope that maybe this is real, maybe you can pick up the pieces where you left them, maybe you still love him.

“Yeah?” Eddie sniffs, brushing your hair back out of your face. “You promise?”

You catch his hand on your cheek and bring it down to draw an x over the left side of your chest, smiling sweetly and sincerely at him as you do.

"Hope to die."

Without the use of his higher functions, all Eddie knows how to do is love you, deeply, to his very core, and to hold you is not enough.

He knows he has no right, but he cannot help himself.

Eddie presses forward and kisses you, a wet, forceful thing that you can barely move against as he frantically crushes his mouth against yours.

He kisses you with a desperation he’s never felt before, and he blesses you for how you lean into it, fisting your hands into the front of his shirt and doing your best to pull him that much closer to you.

It’s all scraping teeth, ragged breath, and reverent groping hands, only breaking apart in the briefest of intervals when the need to breathe and tell you how sorry he is outweighs the need to make up for all the time Eddie has spent not kissing you over the past eight months.

He tells you he loves you, again and again, breathing the words into your mouth, whispering them against your lips.

He chases it hungrily, starved and greedy for your love, and wonders how he could have ever forgotten how much he needed it? How did he ever survive without it? Without you?

He would remind himself that he hadn’t been doing a very good job at it, but his mind is blown wide and bleached of all thoughts but you.

Had he been able to really think, Eddie might have been afraid he would hurt you like he’d somehow hurt Chrissy, but the only thing he can muster is relief, because you’re here and that means something. Maybe there is at least the slightest chance you still love him.

Thank you thank you thank you–

Even when you finally part, he does not release you, only holds you that much tighter. He presses his forehead to yours and he loves, loves, loves, bursting with the feeling like your touch has miraculously restored him after having been so wretched for so long.

For the longest time, all either of you can do is lean against one another, swaying ever so slightly like you’re drunk on the euphoria of being together again.

After a while, he lets you coax him into the house, and you collapse against one another on the sofa as exhaustion creeps into Eddie’s bones.

He can barely keep his eyes open, laying back with you spread over him, your face tucked into the crook of his neck where every now and then you’ll leave a gentle little kiss. He hums in response to each press of your lips, and he would thank you for each and everyone one, but his limbs are quickly turning to cement.

He’s so goddamn tired, but he fights against it, afraid that if he falls asleep he’ll wake up and find that he’s dreamt this whole thing. He's worried if he submits himself to Morpheus's embrace, you'll be gone when he wakes up, despite the way you’re tracing lazy patterns across his chest, how he can feel your steady heartbeat thumping in time with his own, the gentle rise and fall of your body with every breath in and out, in and out, in…

A burst of soft, lilting laughter bubbles up from inside you, and Eddie startled awake, feeling himself light up for his favorite sound in the world, his favorite feeling as you smile against him.

“What’s so funny?” He asks, thick and groggy.

He pushes up a little higher on the couch in the hopes it might stave off the need for sleep a little longer and pulls you with him.

You shift to accommodate this higher position, sitting on your knees and pressed into his side.

You shake your head and laugh against the way your eyes are suddenly brimming.

“I just can’t believe you’re here,” you sniffle, tilting back ever so slightly so you can look at him. “I was so scared I wouldn’t find you,”

Eddie doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he pulls you into his lap and hugs you tight.

He’s still having trouble wrapping his head around the concept that you’d been out there looking for him in the first place, that you’re here now, after all the time he’d spent wishing for this, how he would have given his right arm just to hold you again.

He doesn’t know how you knew he needed you, what kind of unearthly force intervened to send you to him, but he’s so goddamn thankful you came running.

“But I did it,” you continue, sounding so endearingly proud of yourself, “I found you.”

Your hands come up to stroke his face and brush at the dried tacky lines of salt left struck down his face. And then you say again, quieter this time like you’re in awe of it.

“I found you…” Your eyes are bright and sparkling with admiration and tears and relief and a hundred different happy emotions that spill out of you and into Eddie.

He can’t help but laugh, a thick, watery sound dripping with relief and half muffled by your lips as he dips forward to kiss you. Once, twice, three times for the sentiment, precious little thank yous because he can finally breathe again. He’d spent the last eight months drowning and you finally pulled him up to break the surface.

You saved him, just like you always do.

“Yeah, Sweetheart, you did,” he sighs, letting his eyes slide shut as he holds you tight and breathes a deep, contented sigh, “You found me.”

Taglist: @harrys-tittie @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e @itsrainingbisexualfrogs @thicksexxualtensionaltension @ganseysgff @scoopsr0binn @peanutbutter-y-jams @audhd-dragonautagonaut @clilxlxx @alexandriaemily200 @averagestudent03 @but-vanessa @cosmictime45 @timelordfreya @forever-war @munsonzzgf @chervbs

@irisabrams

#my toes are curling and feet kicking like a lil girl and I’m all emotional #eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 9 hours

Text

Cruel Summer - Part 7

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 11k (you guys i'm sorry i tried)

warnings: swearing, mentions of violence/death (get Vecna'd), some angst, some fluff

A.N.: Babysitter!reader part seven! The shit has officially hit the fan ...

You silt bolt up in bed from a dead sleep, screaming and shattering the quiet calm of the morning.

“Eddie!” you cry out, but there is no one is there to hear you.

The sound of your own voice bounces off the walls of your apartment and echoes back to you, and you sit trembling with residual fear as you do all you can to come back to yourself … It was only a dream. A terrible, terrible dream.

You had only managed a few hours of sleep in the first place, caught in the quagmire of the dreaded closing shift made that much worse by the Hawkins Intramural Boys Basketball team — now apparent state champions — descending upon the diner to celebrate their victory.

They’d trashed the place, and it had taken you the better part of two hours to get the diner anywhere clean enough to call it a day. To his credit, Lucas Sinclair (ever the sweetheart) had begged you to let him stay and help you clean, but considering the fact that he could barely stand for how drunk he was, you’d sent him away with the rest of the Tigers and promised not to tell his mother.

It was well past midnight by the time you got home. You hadn’t managed to do more than get out of your shoes before you’d slipped into the vice of Morpheus’s grasp, and you were dreaming by the time your head hit the pillow.

And then your mind swam with visions of Eddie.

You still dream about him most nights in one way or another, and you imagine you will more than likely continue to do so for years to come if not for the rest of your life, but this had been a nightmare, and it had felt so real.

Something terrible had happened, not to him, but with enough proximity to put him in danger, and there was nothing you could do to save him.

I can’t save him.

Of course, as you eventually come back down, you try to rationalize the feeling by telling yourself that it’s not your job to save him, considering how he’d broken your heart, but it is an intrinsic instinct that has proven very hard to unlearn, putting yourself between Eddie and any sort of threat.

It’s only natural to want to protect the ones you love, and you do still love him, as much as you hate to admit.

It only sends you into a downward spiral of guilt and anger and all the other nasty little emotions you don’t have the presence of mind to dredge up on some random morning in April, running on maybe three hours of sleep and already late for your next shift.

Spring Break, your mind informs you rather unhelpfully. It’s Spring Break.

Adrenaline has made you dreadfully nauseous, and you breathe a shaky sigh as you press your hands into your eyes until you see colors.

You suddenly have to work very hard to ignore the terrible sensation it dredges up as your dream fights to make its way to the front of your mind again.

Lights winking on and off with enough gusto to be seizure-inducing, illuminating the scene of eyes wrenching back from their sockets and limbs twisting up unnaturally, snapping out of place…

You’re fine, it’s fine, everything is fine… just breathe.

Somehow you can’t quite convince yourself it’s true.

It is hard to feel anywhere even remotely in the realm of fine when you wake with the sudden and desperate screaming notion to run!

The feeling only persists as you rise from your bed and try to go about your morning, jumping at every slightest sound.

Run! Your brain tells you, and you have no idea where it is you ought to be running to, except maybe the Forest Hills trailer park, as your irrational mind tells you that you won’t be fine until you know Eddie is fine, and you’re not about to go banging down the door of the Munson trailer just because you had a bad dream.

That would be wildly embarrassing, even for you.

It takes you the better part of an hour to banish the residual fear of your dream, showering away the sweat that has dried tacky on your skin, wolfing down a quick breakfast, getting dressed and ready for the day in your scratchy grease-stained work uniform, all the while trying to deafen yourself to the ubiquitous echoes of cracking bones, silently willing yourself to calm down, calm down, calm down.

It isn’t working.

Even outside the realm of your dreams, you can’t stop thinking about Eddie. Though perhaps more importantly you can’t stop thinking about the fact that it’s spring break, which means it’s been nearly a year since you’d last seen him.

You’re having a very hard time trying to suppress the nagging feeling that wherever he is, Eddie needs you and you’re borderline obsessing over the thought that if you don’t find him, something very bad is going to happen.

Of course, that line of thinking puts you in a rather awkward position, because you’re still not quite sure you’re physically capable of handling the concept of seeing Eddie again. This is made all the more evident considering the way you’d thrown your telephone across the room like it had jumped up and tried to bite you after having inadvertently found yourself on the phone with him last month.

It leaves you feeling hopelessly stuck, so to try and distract yourself from the crushing sense of impending doom, you indulge yourself in a little self-harm, recalling how last year you had planned to spend Spring Break road-tripping...

It took the two of you weeks to plan the trip, mapping out the route, everywhere you would camp, all the roadside attractions you would hit, budgeting your pooled money down to the penny. You would be flat broke by the time you got home, but you had convinced yourselves it would be worth it.

It was never meant to be.

Beyond the fact that the heavens had decided to open up and dump what you assumed must have been all the rain for the rest of the entire year in one weeklong downpour, the van’s transmission went out the day before you were meant to leave, stranding Eddie and the band on the highway halfway between Hawkins and the next town over, as is always the way.

So you drove an hour and a half through the torrential downpour to go and rescue him at the random interstate pay phone he'd called you from. He slid into your passenger seat, soaking wet and positively fuming, ranting and raving about the piece of shit van and his stupid friends and the whole goddamn situation as you went and collected the rest of the band, left to sit huddled in the relative warm but most importantly dry van.

Then, with Gareth, Jeff, and Adam crammed like Sardines into the back of your little Toyota, the heater cranked up and the stereo turned down, you’d all sat shivering in relative silence as you followed the tow truck back to Hawkins, taking with it the van and all the money you’d saved for your trip.

The guys pooled their money to cover the tow, as they came to figure was only fair (with a little prompting from you). The repairs themselves came out to cost a whopping twelve hundred and sixty-seven dollars and thirty-nine cents, quite conveniently the exact amount of money you and Eddie had saved between the two of you, though that price only came to be after the mechanic overheard your hushed conversation about what you could afford — don’t you hate it when that happens?

So, road-tripping dreams dashed to oblivion, you’d spent Spring Break sitting on Eddie’s couch. You’d assigned yourself the role of his sick nurse, making sure the cold he’d caught while waiting for you in the rain didn’t develop into pneumonia, all the while tirelessly assuring him it was fine that you didn’t get to go, that there was nothing to be sorry about, the road and all its attractions would still be there next year, and no he absolutely was not allowed to pay you back.

“Consider it back-pay for all the gas money I owe you.” You’d told him, brushing his hair back from his clammy forehead as he lay pressed into your side, coughing and sneezing miserably.

All things considered, it hadn’t been too terrible a way to spend a week off from your last year of school, building a massive blanket fort in the living room in which to marathon movies, play board games, eat your weight in snacks, and fool around once Eddie felt a little better.

(Funny how he always seemed to be miraculously healed of whatever ailment held him in its clutches at death’s door when sex was on the table.)

It was one last hurrah of adolescent fun, stretching the Endless Summer just a little further before having to face graduation and the impending threshold of adulthood… well, at least for one of you.

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since all that. One quick turn around the sun and suddenly it’s Spring Break, and Eddie needs rescuing again – or so insists your subconscious.

You should go see him, a tiny nagging voice inside of you presses, You should go check on him.

“No, thank you,” you tell the stupid little voice as you snatch up your keys and head out the door of your apartment.

You’ve got to go to work, and somehow getting verbally abused by the patrons of your shitty waitress job is so much more appealing than the thought of trying to make awkward small talk with Eddie after eight months of nothing.

You can’t imagine he’d be pleased to see you, considering it all.

You can only just picture yourself standing at the bottom of the steps, trying your best not to look at him while wringing your hands and struggling to explain that you’re standing on his doorstep because of a feeling.

Boy howdy, doesn’t that just sound like the best time a girl could possibly have?

Still, it feels a little too much like denial, deluding yourself into assuming he’s fine just because you don’t want to go see him. It does nothing to settle your nerves, and by the time you get to work, you’re just about ready to puke for how your insides have twisted themselves into a Gordian knot.

You bid an absent hello to your co-worker and skirt around the back of the counter to stash your things, ignoring the way she berates you for how she had to finish cleaning up what you had left undone the night before.

She doesn’t like you much anymore since you’d had to tell her you wouldn’t be watching her demonic children, and she is not shy about making it known.

Normally you would have said something to try and defend yourself, told her to blame the Hawkins Tigers, but you are understandably too preoccupied to consider doing so.

Maybe Wayne can check on Eddie for you…

“Stop it.” You hiss at no one in particular, biting the inside of your cheek and reminding yourself for the hundredth time in the last half hour that Eddie is still a jerk and that you and Wayne have made a silent agreement not to talk about him.

It was a very complicated way of simplifying the weird patchwork friendship you’d built up with the elder Munson in the ashes of your relationship with his nephew, but that is how you preferred it remains.

You are not going to ruin your streak of very successfully avoiding the topic of Eddie by asking Wayne about him just because you had a bad dream.

A really, really, really bad dream.

Of course, it’s a highly plausible scenario considering Wayne is due in today for your weekly session of catch-up. You could very easily get an indirect report on Eddie’s wellbeing if you really wanted to, but you banish the thought before it can fully form.

You know if you ask, Wayne is just going to tell you to go see him, and you are not going to go see him.

You tie your apron tight enough to dig uncomfortably into your sides and clock in and try every mental exercise you can think of to try to stop the constant loop of Eddie Eddie Eddie passing through your brain like a weather report scrolling along the bottom of the television screen during the morning news.

It is unbearably slow at the diner, just like it is every day, though today there is a patent strangeness to how particularly empty the dining room is. Benny’s has never gotten much traffic to begin with, not even when Benny himself was around, but even the morning regulars seem to be missing today.

It’s wholly bizarre and does nothing to quash your nervous feeling, particularly as the first hour of your shift comes and goes without a single customer.

“Kinda slow, huh?” You hum, hoping a little conversation might aid in distracting you.

Your coworker stands leaning against the counter, filing her lacquered nails. She gives you an uninterested look.

“There’s some kinda commotion going on at the trailer park.” She says flatly, “Folks probably all went down to see what’s what. They’ll be here soon enough, don't you worry your pretty little head.”

You ignore the biting sarcasm dripping from her tone and swallow hard to banish the spike of anxiety that grips your stomach and forces a knot up into your throat.

Trouble at the trailer park.

Oh no.

You struggle to keep your voice steady as you speak, almost too afraid to ask yet unable to keep your mouth shut.

“What kind of commotion?”

Your coworker shrugs, not bothering to look up from her filing as she answers you.

“Who knows.” She huffs, and before she can elaborate, the cook, who also happens to be your boss, pipes up from the kitchen.

“Some girl got killed or somethin’,” he calls, and you feel the blood drain from your face.

You dig your nails into your palms to try and ground yourself as you are struck with the hideous feeling of deja-vu.

Your coworker is apparently less affected by the information. She heaves an angry sigh and throws her hands down, chunky plastic bracelets clacking loudly and sounding much too similar to snapping bones for your liking as she does.

“Now, how in the hell could you possibly know that, Earl?”

“I got my sources, anyways, I seen them cop cars go roarin’ down the street. They only haul ass like that when there’s a body. Like when they found that Byers kid down in the quarry.”

You suppress a shudder as once again your dream rushes to the front of your mind. You retreat from it, electing instead to hide in the memory of the night they’d thought they found Will —

—you’d been with Eddie. It was one of the first times you’d really hung out together, not a date, just one on one time in the earliest stages of whatever it was going on between you. More than a friendship, not quite a relationship, back when all you knew was that he was so strangely different than all your friends had warned you, and you had a ridiculous crush on him that you’d hoped beyond hope was mutual.

You’d seen that exact procession of cop cars go whipping past you on the road, and Eddie – who had just been very glad he wasn’t being pulled over – made a flippant comment along the lines of “guess they found that missing kid,”

He hadn’t meant anything by it, and he’d been very chagrined when you called him up later that night after learning they had in fact found Will. You couldn’t have expressly explained why you called Eddie that night, except that your parents weren’t home, it didn’t feel appropriate to be at the Henderson’s right then, and in the mire of your reeling mind, your empty house was suddenly terribly frightening.

You suppose you called Eddie because he made you feel safe.

“Do you want me to come over?” He’d asked, quickly and quietly, and when you sheepishly asked if you could go over to his place instead, he’d agreed to come and get you without a moment's hesitation — you could hear his keys in hand before he even hung up, promising to be there in five minutes.

That was how you’d found yourself sitting on your front steps, shivering in your pajamas while you waited for him, making the excuse that it would be easier to lie about where you’d been rather than try to explain what a random boy was doing in your house if your parents happened to come home.

Of course, that line of thinking suggested that anyone could have stepped in to comfort you that night, and that was just patently untrue.

Even then, you only wanted Eddie, pulling up to your house and driving you back across town to spend the night glued to his side, lying in his bed, whispering back and forth conspiratorially like kids having a sleepover, like you’d known each other for years and were privy to the deepest secrets of each other’s hearts.

You were barely even friends, and yet somehow you knew, from flipping through the yellow pages to find his number to drifting off to the hushed sounds of his voice while he read aloud the first few chapters of some fantasy novel, you would never want anyone else but him.

You are vaguely aware of how you’ve been subtly pinching yourself to try not to think about how, if you were really honest with yourself, that had been the night you’d fallen in love with Eddie — it only makes your chest ache with anxiety as you remember the crushing sense of danger from your dream like suddenly the whole world is bearing down on him.

I have to find him…

It is an intrusive thought, new and terrifying as the notion of needing to find Eddie indicates that somehow he is missing. It is enough to move you to panic.

Behind you, your coworkers continue to bicker, but you don’t hear them. You’ve moved to stare out the window, at your car sitting lonely in the lot, watching for any kind of traffic, any sign of things to come … any sign of Eddie…

The trailer park is not far from here, maybe half a mile at the most, and you rationalize that you could feasibly make the distance in less than five minutes if you ran.

You aren’t sure why your brain decided to deliver that information to you, only that if you were the religious type, you would have been praying to whoever might be listening that whatever trouble is happening down at the trailer park has nothing to do with Eddie.

I have to find Eddie. Eddie, Eddie Eddie Eddie—

And then, like a part of your brain has clicked off, suddenly all you know is action.

Somewhere in the very far distance, you think you can hear your boss calling your name, but you don’t hear him, not really. You don’t hear anything but the skipping record of your mind moving you.

You don’t think, you just go.

Out the door and practically sprinting, the hoarse shouting voice of your boss falls on deaf ears as you skirt right past your car and disappear into the woods.

You don’t care about your pride or your hurt feelings, or whether or not Eddie will be happy to see you, all of that nonsense is the furthest thing from your mind as you run. You’ve got to see him, you’ve got to find him, no matter what.

If there are cops at the trailer park, they’re going to be blocking the road, so you convince yourself that you can avoid them by going through the woods, exiting the treeline and making a break for Eddie’s bedroom window.

Twigs snag the skirt of your dress as you move through the thicket at a pace, the crunching of leaves and detritus is thunderous under your sneakers as you go.

It is only a matter of minutes before you emerge from the first line of trees, flying across the backroad without a second thought for traffic and pushing through the last stretch of the woods until finally, the trailer park opens up before you.

You pause a moment to catch your breath, doubled over resting on your knees and listening for a hint at whatever lies ahead.

It’s eerily still, despite how beneath the gentle flapping of laundry on the line and the hum of generators, you can hear the buzz of movement, voices speaking, and crackling radios much closer than you’d accounted for.

You’d never been much for trouble before you met Eddie. Your experience with the Hawkins police begins and ends with distracting them so that he could slip away undetected, and it occurs to you perhaps too late that this could very easily end with you being arrested, which would be at best very inconvenient and at worst?

Your parents don't live in Hawkins anymore, so who would be there to bail you out if that happened? Claudia Henderson? Wayne? How would you make sure Eddie is okay if you’re sitting in a jail cell?

Still, you can’t let your wariness of trouble stop you now, not after you’ve already come most of the way.

You would always rather come running to Eddie’s rescue when he doesn’t need you than risk not being there when he does, and it is enough to refill the well of your courage.

You bite back the same urge to run you’d felt that morning when you woke up and stay low.

Despite having not set foot on these grounds for the better part of a year, you retrace the path through the park with patent expertise, like no time has passed at all. Then again, nothing ever changes down here, and you are sure you could find your way to the Munson trailer in the dark with your eyes closed if you had to, and suddenly there you are.

The police are there as well, much to your dismay, right on the other side of the trailer, milling about the circular drive at the center of the park, talking amongst themselves and into their radios.

You know you’ve only got a very brief window of opportunity to slip inside unnoticed, and your heart is hammering in your chest as you rap your knuckles on the glass as sharply as you dare.

The only person you need to hear you is Eddie, though of course that would only be possible if he happens to be in his room, which you’re willing to wager he isn’t, especially with a heavy police presence right on his front step.

If he isn’t the cause of the trouble, you can be damn sure he’s standing on the porch, watching the trouble unfold.

He’s nosy like that.

Disappointingly, your knocking garners no response.

You swallow hard and push up on your toes to grip the windowpane, tugging on it. It takes a few tries before it finally slides open with more than a little resistance.

You bite your lip against its harsh sound, metal scraping on metal, and quickly brace yourself on the pane to hoist yourself up and over before anyone can investigate and find you there.

Your world briefly goes topsy-turvy as you tumble forward into the room and land with a hard grunt and muffled utterance of “ow – fuck”, sending tapes and other knickknacks tumbling to the ground around you.

In days past when you’d done this exact thing, you would have had the benefit of the bed to break your fall, but of course, in those days you were just as likely to land on top of Eddie as an empty mattress.

As much as he liked it when you snuck over like that, he was not partial to being kicked in the head, and you’d both decided that it was better to knock over a side table and make a mess than it was to risk giving him a concussion, so you’d made the executive decision to move the bed into the position where it rests today, sans Eddie.

You have to sit for a moment to catch your breath, because beyond the sprinting and the acrobatics you’d just engaged in, it’s been eight months of nothing but memories, and suddenly you’re in his room.

You hadn’t accounted for how that was going to affect you — strangely it’s like no time has passed. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust against the relative dark, but it’s easy to see that the room remains unchanged since last you were here, all metal posters and discarded clothes and papers, the two guitars, the amps, the unmade bed.

It smells like weed and tobacco and dirty laundry and the pervasive undertone of something that is so wholly Eddie that you suddenly forget why you are here, sitting where you landed beneath the window.

You look around the room, surveying the familiar mess, and, unable to help yourself, you reach out and pull a t-shirt from the overstuffed dresser drawer, sitting ajar where it had been forced unsuccessfully back into place.

You hug it to your chest and repeat one of Eddie’s five stupid jokes to yourself.

“When is a drawer not a drawer?” He would have said, grinning ear to ear like he was about to blow your mind with the oldest joke in the book.

“When it’s ajar…”

You can’t help the disappointment that lances through your midsection not to have found him there, because as much as you try to convince yourself that it doesn’t expressly mean something terrible has happened to him, part of you had hoped it would be that easy.

You turn the shirt over in your hands and trace the faded script spelling out the name of the band you can barely make out – you think at one point in time it must have said “Misfits” – and without really thinking, you bury your face in the fabric, breathing deep and flooding your senses with him.

Once again, all you can think is Eddie Eddie Eddie, and before you know it you’re drunk on his smell, familiar as childhood and tugging at your heart. Like being wrapped in a security blanket, you feel a strange sense of calm wash over you, not daring to promise that anything will be okay so much as assuring you that you are on the right track.

You heave a sigh and slump back against the wall, kicking your leg out – your foot collides with something.

There is the corner of a box peeking out from beneath the bed.

Were you in your right mind, you might have thought twice about investigating, considering you know all too well what kinds of things teen boys keep stashed under their beds, what Eddie has had under his bed in days past, but you recognize your own handwriting scribbled across the side of the box and very suddenly you’ve surged forward to pull the box free before you even realize you’d moved.

It’s all pictures, posters, polaroids, band-tees, memories, and other things you don’t expressly remember packing into that box back in late August.

It’s everything that had been Eddie in your life with the addition of everything that had been you in his, carefully tucked away, miraculously still here — not trashed or burned or even remotely destroyed.

Preserved.

You marvel as you pluck at a long polaroid strip of photos with the Starcourt Mall logo splashed across the top and fail to stifle the water laugh that bubbles up from somewhere inside you.

You turn it over in your trembling hands and see the two ticket stubs for Teen Wolf stapled to the top.

You don’t remember a moment of the movie, but you vividly remember the day, sliding into the booth to take photos, laughing and playing, and pulling at each other while the camera flashed away.

It’s Eddie giving you bunny ears and you sticking your tongue out, followed by Eddie pretending to bite your face while you laughed, followed by Eddie kissing you, and you kissing Eddie, and Eddie kissing you…

It’s just a little bit too much, suddenly having photographic evidence of the things you had almost convinced yourself had never actually happened after almost a year of wallowing in self-pity and denial and anger and everything in between.

It makes you feel a little crazy.

You’re just about ready to come apart at the seams when you hear sounds coming from the front room, the screen door swinging open, heavy footsteps thumping across the floor.

And of course, because you aren’t in your right mind, you make a leap in logic and ignore your better judgment as you decide who you think it is that just walked through the door.

“Eddie—” you gasp.

You shove the box haphazardly back beneath the bed and scramble to your feet, absently stuffing the photo reel into your apron pocket as you crawl over the bed and throw open the door.

You fly into the living room without a second thought about who or what you are going to find there.

You are woefully unprepared.

Eddie is not there, only a handful of police officers who you have just given what might have perhaps been the worst scare of their lives had it not been for the mutilated, twisted body of what you think must have very recently been a girl, lying on the floor in front of the open door.

You stagger and stop and freeze, unable to tear your eyes away as you immediately come to recognize her, despite her ruined state.

Red blonde ponytail tied with a green scrunchie, half wrenched out of place, heavy blue eyeshadow stained and shadowed where her lids droop down into empty eye sockets, ever so slightly crooked front teeth on display where her mouth hangs open in a silent scream.

It's Chrissy Cunningham.

The police react to you with appropriate alarm, considering the way you’d come hurdling out of the back room and the blood-curdling scream that wrenches itself from the depths of your core, like you were some kind of banshee.

The sound tears itself from your lungs without your consent, but you don’t think you could have stopped yourself from screaming at that moment if your life depended on it.

Suddenly you can see it so clearly — the flashing lights illuminating Chrissy’s body as it rises from the ground, trancelike and trembling, her limbs twisting themselves unnaturally, snapping and cracking before her eyes wrenched themselves back into the depths of her skull.

This is what you’d dreamt — your nightmare.

Chrissy is dead and Eddie is missing.

+++

Dustin sits perched on the edge of his seat, eyes glued to the television. He barely hears what the reporter is saying for how loudly the blood is pounding in his ears.

There is a cold lump in his stomach.

Beside him, his mother sniffles as the anchorwoman drones on about another dead girl, and he knows what she’s going to say — it’s too much for her poor nerves, she can’t take it.

He can’t help the way his mind strays to the terrible possibilities of the moment, what could have happened, who it could be laying dead in the Forest Hills trailer park.

Dustin fights the urge to look out the front window, to the house across the street where you don’t live anymore. In days past he would have run across the street and pounded on your door, just to make sure you were home safe and not dead on the other end of town, but he tells himself that he’s just being paranoid.

He can almost hear you telling him not to worry about you, but how can he not worry about you when he’s made it his full-time job?

Dustin sits and silently works out the logistics of what going to check on you would look like and very quickly decides there is no cool or casual way to go about doing that.

He’d have to haul ass all the way into town to your apartment, and even if he did there was no guarantee he’d even find you there.

He tells himself there’s no way he’s going to go check on you just because he saw something on the news.

You're probably at work anyway — he glances reflexively at the clock on the wall — ten-thirty on a Saturday morning? Yeah, you're definitely at work.

Still, he can’t help but imagine the scenario in which he did, how touched you would be if he came riding in like a knight in shining armor.

He imagines you smiling big and broad, brows turned up with emotion, and clasping your hands together.

“Oh, Dustin,” you would say, “You came all this way for me? You didn't have to do that, you could have just called—”

He should just call you.

Dustin leaps up from his seat, thoroughly startling his mother as he runs for the phone.

“Dusty what on earth?!” She cries, twisting around to try and see what has put a fire under his ass, “Where are you going?”

He’s already punching in the last digits of your number as he answers.

“I gotta make a call!”

The phone rings and rings and rings. He stands and listens to the droning sound with mounting anxiety, holding his breath as he waits to see if you will answer.

He hopes beyond hope that you’re just at work, that nothing has gone terribly wrong – they said it was a high school student, but nobody ever accused the Hawkins local news of being accurate when it came to the facts.

Disappointingly, the phone clicks over to play the message on your answering machine. Your sweet voice rings through the receiver to vibrate against Dustin’s ear, telling him to leave a message after the tone, and he heaves a dejected sigh, when…

BANG BANG BANG

Dustin’s head snaps around as suddenly there is a thunderous pounding at his front door. He slams the phone into the box hard enough to make it chime and flies across the room.

“I’ll get it I'll get it I'll get it!” He says in a rush, fingers closing on the doorknob before his mother can even think to get up.

He wrenches the door open, half expecting to find you there, and can’t deny how summarily disappointed he is to see Max standing there, looking particularly out of breath.

Her face is flushed, eyes wide, chest and shoulders heaving as she openly pants like she’d just run a great distance.

Rode her bike was more likely the case, Dustin surmises as he glances over her shoulder to see where her bike lays on the lawn, wheels still spinning, clearly having just been thrown down.

He hardly has the opportunity to wonder what’s got her so excited before she's pushing past him to force herself inside

“I need to talk to you,” she says, stalking down the hall toward Dustin's bedroom at a pace.

He follows her, having to jog to keep up, then shuts the door, and listens as Max tells him everything — about Chrissy, about Eddie, about what she’d seen and heard last night and this morning.

It paints a terrible picture, and it horrifies Dustin to hear what Max is suggesting, but he can’t help the wave of relief that floods his body to hear the dead girl isn’t you.

He knows he ought to feel bad about it, but all he can think is Thank God it’s not you – that’s when the confusion sets in.

“Chrissy?”

“Yes.”

“Chrissy Cunningham...”

“Yes.”

He folds his arms over his chest and tries to make sense of it, because Chrissy and Eddie?

“...Are you sure?”

Max furrows her brow and gives him a much more intense version of the same look you would have given him when you thought he was condescending or being sexist or a male chauvinist or whatever you would have called it.

On you it would have been mere admonishment, on Max, it warns him that he is very close to getting punched, so Dustin backs off.

Still though, the arguable Princess of Hawkins High and the Freak? It doesn’t make sense outside of some kind of cliche Hollywood romance, not in real life though.

He can’t get his head around it. Dustin doesn’t think he’s ever even seen them in the same room – then he remembers.

He has seen them together. Thursday afternoon. Fifth period.

He’d been on his way back from the bathroom and stopped to get a drink at the water fountain to kill a little bit more time when hushed voices drew his attention.

That’s when Dustin saw them standing together at the far end of the hall.

Eddie and Chrissy.

He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could see Chrissy smiling shyly, and he’d been very confused not to see Eddie’s typical manic energy – it’s like he was calm, for once in his life.

If he had to describe it, Dustin would almost say that he thought they were flirting, but that can't be right... because Chrissy Cunningham? And Eddie Munson? How does that math add up?

It had been one of the stranger things Dustin had witnessed in the past few weeks, and he’d fully meant to ask Eddie about it, but with how vicious he’d been over the potentiality of postponing the Cult of Vecna, Dustin had completely forgotten it.

And now Chrissy is dead.

And Eddie is missing.

His stomach is in knots at the thought. Like the weight of the world is suddenly bearing down on his shoulders, he sinks onto his bed.

He thinks back to the news report, to the trailer sitting in the distance behind the anchorwoman – was that Eddie’s place?

Dustin can’t remember, he’s only been there a handful of times, always in the dark, and he’d never thought to pay much attention to what the facade of the trailer looked like… it could have been Eddie’s place, but it could also have been any number of nearly identical trailers in the park.

Still, he can't shake the sick feeling that is settling in his abdomen.

Christ. Was it Eddie’s though?

Dustin shakes his head to stop that line of thinking before it can really get going. He can’t go there, he can’t afford to let that seed of doubt plant itself in his mind.

Everyone is going to blame him, because of course they are – there’s a dead girl in the trailer park and he’s Eddie Munson, the town Freak.

Dustin can suddenly hear Eddie’s words in his mind, see the persecuted look he’d had on his face that day at the campus phone – I guess that’s enough in this town, huh?

He has to do something, he has to try and help him.

“He didn’t do it,” Dustin says immediately.

Max scoffs.

“We don’t know that…”

It leaves him reeling and suddenly Dustin cannot believe the words coming out of his friend’s mouth. Sure, he supposes Max doesn’t know Eddie like he does, all she has to go on is the facade he puts up, that first day he’d approached them in the lunchroom way back in November.

Even so, he’d never in a million years think she’d just assume he was guilty along with everyone else.

Max should have known better than that.

"Don't say that!" Dustin gasps.

"Well — we don't."

He’s fully aware of how he is gawping at her, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide. It makes her uncomfortable and suddenly Max is fidgeting.

She makes a show of throwing up her hands, shrugging her shoulders.

“Dustin… come on,” She says, “I saw him–”

It’s his turn to cut her off then.

“No, you come on. Come on! You don’t know what you saw!” Dustin surprises himself by snapping.

Max’s eyes widen and she recoils, and he immediately begins to backpedal

“...Look, I know you don’t think much of him, but Eddie is –” He sighs, “When we got to school? He was the only one who was nice to us. He’s the only one who gives a shit about losers like me and Mike. Now he’s in trouble and you want to just let that go because you think you saw something? No way. We can’t just sit back and let this happen. They’re gonna tear him apart, we have to do something.”

For a long moment, nobody says anything.

Max rolls her eyes, but to her credit, she is clearly chagrined enough to hang her head in a way that could almost be construed as sheepish.

Regardless of what she decides to do, Dustin knows he has to save Eddie, find a way to clear his name, he just doesn’t precisely know how to do that — and then something tiny in the back of his mind pipes up with your name.

Maybe you will know what to do.

It’s like a lightbulb clicking on, and Dustin leaps up from his bed.

“Holy shit.” He says.

"What?"

He's beaming at Max when he answers.

"Lady Midnight!"

The reference goes right over her head and she stares back at him, uncomprehending. She doesn't play D&D with them, she doesn't know, but Dustin does, and more importantly, you would know.

“What – hey!” Max has to jump out of the way to avoid being trampled as Dustin goes tearing down the hall to the phone.

“Holy shit holy shit!”

Of course, you'll know what to do, you're the purveyor of secrets and forbidden knowledge. You always had creative solutions to seemingly impossible problems.

You'll help them find Eddie, or at least help them approach the situation from a new angle with a fresh set of eyes.

"Dustin, where are you going?" Max calls, her voice lilting with annoyance as she follows him back down the hall.

He doesn’t answer. He’s already halfway through dialing your number again before he remembers that you aren’t home, and he hangs up with an aggravated growl.

More frustrating, he doesn’t know the number for Benny’s off the top of his head.

Adrenaline surges through his body.

“Mom, where are the yellow pages?” He shouts.

His mother, still glued to the television, twists around and gives him a funny look, then her face brightens as she regards Max, like she hadn’t even realized she was there.

“What– oh, hello Max.” She says wetly.

Max shuffles on her feet and gives an awkward wave, and Dustin makes a harsh sound of annoyance.

They don’t have time for this.

“Mom! The yellow pages!”

His mother furrows her brow and immediately gets huffy with him.

“Don’t shout, Dusty! They’re right there in the kitchen drawer, for goodness sake!”

Dustin rounds the corner of the kitchen island and rips the drawer open with enough force to tear it off its slide.

Pens, paperclips, rubber bands, and other pieces of clutter go scattering across the linoleum along with the yellow tome listing every registered number in Roane county.

Dustin drops to his knees and begins flipping through the pages like a man possessed while Max stands looking on in a mix of horror and confusion like she is witnessing him have a complete and total breakdown.

“Who could you possibly be calling?” She demands.

Dustin looks up at her and says your name incredulously like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

It does nothing but deepen the confusion spread across Max’s face, so Dustin goes on to explain.

“She’s probably already at work, so I need to number for Benny’s–”

Max shakes her head.

“She's not there.”

“Well I already tried her at home, and she didn’t answer–”

“No, Dustin, you don’t understand.” Max insists, “I just saw her, she’s at Eddie’s.”

The gravity of her tone is jarring and Dustin immediately forgets the phonebook as he looks up at Max. Suddenly his mind is spinning at Mach-five trying to process all the information that has been fed into it in the last two minutes.

“...What?” He splutters.

First Eddie and Chrissy, somehow together, now you, apparently at the trailer park, at Eddie's place where by all accounts he should be and you should not? Where Chrissy is dead? He can't make heads or tails of it.

“What’s she doing there?”

Max hesitates and bites her lip like she’s not entirely sure she ought to say – Dustin has to prompt her to get her to finally spit it out, and when she does, he feels like he’s going to faint.

“Honestly? I’m pretty sure she was getting arrested.”

+++

You’re dragged out of the trailer by your elbow, like a naughty child who needs to be disciplined.

It’s then that you finally see Wayne, standing off to the side being interviewed by a number of officers.

You’re half frantic as you call out to him – for help or just relief that he’s there, you can’t quite be sure, but it does nothing to help the crazed energy of the moment.

“Wayne!”

His eyes widen in alarm to see you, and he makes like he means to move forward, do something to help you, but the officers stop him before he can start.

“Hey– hey leave her be!” He shouts.

It’s startling. In all the time you’ve known him, you’ve never once heard Wayne raise his voice.

Chief Powell follows you out, positively fuming as he crosses the small strip of grass that serves as the front lawn. He thrusts an accusatory finger at you as he addresses Wayne.

“Mr. Munson, I do believe you previously told us that nobody was in the house.”

Wayne nods.

“Yessir, that’s correct,”

“Explain to me, then, why this girl just came running out of the back bedroom like a bat out of hell?”

All eyes are on you then. You struggle against the hands that hold you and feel your heart palpitate – it’s a very good question, you hate to admit, one you don’t have a great answer for.

Somehow, it seemed like a good idea at the time, just doesn’t seem like it’s going to cut it.

The Chief is waiting for an answer, and Wayne finally has to just shake his head, because of course, he doesn’t know why you were in Eddie’s room either.

Powell reels on you then, and your stomach bottoms out. He gives the officers restraining you a harsh look and they release you.

You stagger, struggling to stay upright on your feet and tug on your dress to straighten it. You brush your knuckles across your nose and avert your eyes, shrinking under the Police Chief’s hard gaze.

After what feels like an excruciatingly long time, he finally speaks.

“How long have you been hiding in there?” He demands.

You shrug your shoulders in a way that is perhaps too flippant for the gravity of the situation you have found yourself in.

“Like two minutes.” You sniff, “And I wasn’t hiding, I just came in through the window.”

He gives you an incredulous look.

“Why?”

“I was looking for…” you trail off and glance over at Wayne, staring at you with his features screwed up in patent confusion.

You begin to fidget with your fingers, twisting at the cheap silver ring you’ve since started wearing to make up for the one you’d packed up with the box of everything else sitting under Eddie's bed.

You clear your throat to try and sound a little less like a whiney child.

“I was looking for Eddie…”

“Eddie Munson?”

You nod.

Powell stares at you a little longer before he sighs and shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger as he rocks back on his heels.

“So you don’t know what happened in there?”

You shake your head and try not to glance at the crumpled figure of Chrissy you can still see lying in the doorway.

Powell sighs again, rests his hands on his hips, casting his gaze down to his feet before looking back up at you.

"And I don't suppose you would know where Eddie is?"

Again you shake your head.

The police chief levels you with another hard stare, like he’s working something over in his head, trying to decide or understand, you can’t be sure. For a long moment, it is all you can do but focus on trying to remember how to breathe as you wait to see if he’s going to put cuffs on you.

He doesn’t.

Instead he turns and stalks back across the grass towards Wayne.

“Do you know this girl?” Powell asks.

“Yessir,” Wayne says quickly, then proceeds to rattle off basic information about you, including but not limited to your name and an explanation about how you’re a friend of his nephew’s who he sort of looks after you since your folks moved away.

For some odd reason, your stomach goes tight and fluttery to hear Wayne refer to you as Eddie’s friend.

That’s how he’d addressed you when you’d first met.

“So, you’re a friend of Ed’s, huh?” He’d said.

You’re suddenly wracked with guilt – this is not how you imagined this scenario going at all.

You’d imagined you were going to be this big hero, swooping in to pull Eddie out of a trouble you’d only known about through some kind of bizarre clairvoyance.

Instead, turns out you’re a stupid fucking idiot who should have taken a moment to think before you went climbing in through windows.

You force yourself not to look away this time when Powell looks back at you – he stares, you fidget, and then he returns his attention to Wayne.

You don’t hear what he says, as he’s dropped his voice to a low tenor and you can’t see his face to try and read his lips.

You watch as Wayne puts up his hands defensively.

“Listen to me,” He says quietly, “She’s a good girl. I promise you she didn’t have nothin’ to do with this.” and the guilt you feel becomes all-encompassing.

Stupid girl, more like.

It’s another few excruciating minutes of back and forth before the tension finally breaks. You are, however, not turned loose, much like you'd expected to be.

After it’s established that you’re not an immediate threat, standing there in your torn up sneakers and waitress uniform, you’re set to lean against one of the various cop cars parked on the lawn.

You know Eddie, so they’ve got to interview you, much to your chagrin.

This is exactly what you’d been trying to avoid by climbing in through the window.

Great job.

It’s Officer Callahan, in all his insipid glory, who comes sauntering up to you shortly after, hands resting on his gun belt in a way you suppose is meant to be intimidating.

It doesn’t come across.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” He starts, fishing his pad of paper from his belt and making a point to loudly click his pen. He uses it to point at you, “You know, you’re in a lot of trouble, Missy.”

You stare back at him and hope he feels every bit of disdain you hold for him.

Callahan sucks his teeth. “So, what were you doing hiding in the bedroom like that?”

You heave a frustrated sigh.

“I already told you, I wasn’t hiding. I climbed in through the window to find Eddie.”

“Right, so you said.” He huffs, glancing up at you from his pad briefly before doing a halfway comical doubletake.

Something like recognition flashes across his face and you have to stop yourself from rolling your eyes because of course this dingus wouldn't recognize you.

You'd always wondered how Clark Kent could get away with disguising himself with a change of clothes, turns out most people are just patently stupid, Officer Callahan included.

“Oh, wait a minute, I know you – you’re Munson’s little girlfriend.”

Bingo.

Bizarrely, it sets your teeth on edge and your mouth is moving before your brain can catch up.

“I’m not his girlfriend,” You say perhaps too quickly.

It draws the attention of everyone within earshot, Chief Powell and Wayne included.

You shrink under their gaze and kick yourself for how you realize too late that it sounded like a renouncement of Eddie. It was only a knee-jerk reaction, an intrusive thought built up to defend yourself from the random waves of grief that still hit you now and then. You hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

Officer Callahan side-eyes you and snorts with humorless laughter.

“Coulda fooled me,” he scoffs.

You would argue, except suddenly you’re thinking about all the times you’ve been with Eddie when he’s been pulled over and hassled by the Hawkins police. By Officer Callahan and then still Officer Powell specifically.

He’s technically right – just not regarding the current state of affairs – because you had been Eddie’s girlfriend during all those previous incidents.

Still, you cross your arms over your chest and avert your gaze.

“Not that it’s any of your business…” You start, confident at first before you second guess yourself and a misplaced sheepishness creeps into your voice, “...but we broke up,”

Officer Callahan scoffs and the reaction leaves you indignant.

Rude.

“Okay, so I get it now. You break his heart, and he’s pissed but won’t take it out on you, so he takes it out on poor Chrissy in there, huh?”

Callahan gestures to the open trailer door with his pen, and you can’t help but get a little stuck staring at the body still laying there – you start to wonder why they haven’t covered her up yet, but then he snaps to draw your attention back.

“That sound about right?”

You furrow your brow.

“…It sounds like you’ve been watching a lot of true crime documentaries.”

He glares at you.

“It’s motive.”

“It’s bullshit.”

Officer Callahan’s eyebrows jump up from where they’d been previously hidden beneath the thick rim of his glasses.

The brusque nature of your answer seems to stagger him a bit. You’ve never had so much bite behind you in all the times you’ve interacted, electing instead to try and kill them with kindness so as not to get Eddie into any more trouble.

It leaves him stammering for a response.

“Hey now—” He begins, thrusting an accusatory finger at you like he means to lecture you.

“No.” You insist, and when he puts his hands on his hips and glares, you hug your arms tighter around your midsection and double down, “No – he broke up with me, okay? So no motive. Eddie didn’t do this,”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know him,”

Callahan rolls his eyes, missing the hateful look you throw his way as he does.

Somehow you know nothing you say is going to matter when it comes to Eddie. They’ve already decided his guilt.

“Oh, you know him?” Callahan huffs sarcastically, “Okay, fine … since you know him, when’s the last time you saw him?”

Shit.

You bite the inside of your lip and fidget under his condescending gaze, knowing well enough that your answer is going to do nothing to help your case.

“… August.” You mumble.

He chokes a little and shakes his head, blinking rapidly like you’d said something outrageous… and honestly, it was a little outrageous, but you didn’t appreciate the attitude he had about it.

“Aug- August?” He splutters, “August.”

You breathe out slowly and nod.

“Yeah…”

“You’re telling me you haven’t seen him in eight months and you’re trying to — you’ve been broken up … for eight. Months. And you just come running at the first sign of trouble? You expect me to believe that?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

You stick him to the spot with a dour look.

“You don’t know much about the human heart do you, Officer Callahan?”

Behind him, you see Chief Powell cough to try and cover the laughter threatening to burst out of him.

He clears his throat when Callahan twists around to glare at him, and you take the opportunity to steal a glance at Wayne.

He’s like a caged animal, fidgeting, pacing – you assume he must have been the one to put in the 911 call. You can’t even imagine what he must have thought coming home and finding Chrissy like that in his living room, and now he’s got to worry about vouching for you?

Your heart thumps in your chest when your eyes meet and for lack of anything better to do, you offer him a subtle wave.

He shakes his head – not the time.

“So, how do I know you’re not just covering for Munson again?” Callahan says, bringing you back to the annoying moment you have found yourself in.

Your eyebrows jump and you feign innocence, gesturing to yourself like you could never imagine doing that two years ago at a party after they’d busted Eddie for possession and you’d made a scene to draw their attention so he could run away. You would never.

Officer Callahan narrows his eyes and crosses his arms,

“How do I know you’re not involved?”

In spite of yourself, your heart leaps into your throat. It’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard, but suddenly your brain is screaming – this is it, this is how we get arrested.

Luckily, Wayne immediately jumps up from the porch and tries to come to your rescue.

“Hey, no. She’s not—” He begins, but Officer Callahan cuts him off with a wave of his hand and a roll of his eyes.

“Thank you, Mr. Munson, if we have any further questions for you we will let you know.” He sighs when what he really means is “go away”.

You clench your fist and resist the urge to knock that smug look off his face when he turns back to face you, looking very much like he’s caught you red-handed and is so pleased to have figured it out.

“So, here’s what I think happened.” Callahan begins,

This should be good.

“You said that Munson kid broke up with you? Okay, fine. So maybe he does, and he gets a new little girlfriend. And you’re jealous. You come to confront him, find her here, things go a little too far, bada-bing-bada-boom, poor Chrissy ends up dead."

You're fully aware of how you're gawping at him.

"I'm sorry, what?"

He continues.

"And since you’re apparently such a good little girl you don’t want to ruin your reputation, so you take steps to make it look like he did it–”

You have to suppress the shudder that threatens to tear through your body at the concept of Officer Callahan referring to you as a “good girl”, even if it is done so under the guise of mocking Wayne.

Luckily your disgust is overwhelmed by the patent hilarity of what he is suggesting: you killed Chrissy and are trying to frame Eddie… yep… way too much true crime in Officer Callahan’s diet.

“Did you even see her?” You ask, “Look at me. How the hell do you suppose I did that?”

Callahan opens his mouth to respond and comes up short.

“...Forensics will get back to us on the cause of death after the autopsy…”

“Okay, fine. Riddle me this, Dick Tracy, if I was trying to frame Eddie, why would I be sitting here telling you he didn’t do it?”

Officer Callahan pulls a face.

“How do you know who Dick Tracy is?”

Then it’s your turn to pull a face. You’ve never missed Jim Hopper more than you do at this moment.

“Can you do me a favor and try to be a little less condescending while you’re accusing me of murder?”

Another cough from the chief of police to cover another laugh, it turns the tips of Officer Callahan’s pink.

“Alright, smart ass, you got an alibi? Because things aren’t looking so great for you right now. You’ve. Got. Motive,”

Each word is punctuated by his sharp prodding fingers poking you in the shoulder. You breathe out hard through your nose and swallow the rage boiling up from the pit of your stomach.

Trespassing is one thing, mouthing off is another, but you don’t need to be charged with assaulting an officer.

What follows is a rapid-fire back-and-forth volley of questions and answers, each one more charged than the last as you count the seconds ticking past, time wasted when you could be out there looking for Eddie.

“Where were you last night?”

“Benny’s.”

“Why?”

“I work there.” You huff, tugging at the skirt of your uniform.

Officer Callahan gives you a dismissive look, like he wants to argue but expressly cannot because you’re still wearing your nametag and your goddamn apron. He clears his throat and shifts on his feet.

“Can anyone confirm your presence there?”

It feels incredibly stupid to say, but only because of your crazy stupid luck – yes, there are in fact many people who can confirm your presence at the diner last night.

“The Hawkins Tigers.”

He gives you an incredulous look.

“The Basketball team?”

You nod, and very quickly you can feel him losing steam. Every single one of your answers thus far seems to have flummoxed Officer Callahan beyond his ability to comprehend.

He turns from you and crosses the grass to hold a hushed conference with Chief Powell. You watch them, struggling to try and read their lips as you stuff your hands in your apron pocket – you brush the sharp edge of the forgotten polaroid strip stashed there and curl your fingers around it.

You have to find Eddie.

They make you sit and wait another twenty minutes finally – finally – you hear the words that set you free.

“She’s just a dumb kid, send her home,”

You would protest the notion if you weren’t feeling so summarily stupid for this whole endeavor, but you’re just happy that the interrogation is finally ending.

With Powell’s prompting, another officer steps up to escort you out of the trailer park, much to Callahan’s chagrin. You can hear him begin to argue against it.

“Chief, I don’t think it’s such a good idea turning her loose.” He says, “I mean look at her. She probably knows exactly where Munson is hiding.”

“...No,” Powell says after considering it for a moment, “I don’t think so.”

Callahan shakes his head,

“I just think–”

Then the chief cuts him off.

“Maybe don’t think about it so much. She’s not going anywhere, right?” He says it loud enough for you to hear.

It’s not a question so much as an order, and he makes a point to stare at you, clearly waiting for your answer. You glance at Wayne, who at this point has moved to sit atop the nearby picnic table, chain-smoking to try and calm his nerves – he glances at you, then looks away.

You don't blame him.

Somehow, this suddenly feels like it’s all your fault, like it all traces back to that terrible night in August. You should have fought a little harder for Eddie, you shouldn’t have stayed away.

You turn your attention back to the officers, then finally you take one last parting glance at what you can see of poor Chrissy, still lying uncovered in the doorway.

There is a cold lump forming in the pit of your stomach, under the hard gaze of so many people, that same sense of impending doom slowly crushing down on you.

Somehow you manage to shrug.

“Of course not.” You say, “Where am I gonna go?“

To find Eddie, before anyone else can.

The officer escorts you off of the trailer park grounds and sends you on your way down the road and around the bend.

You scuff your feet in the dirt as you walk, the sounds from the trailer park steadily fading into the distance. You run your thumb over the sharp edge of the polaroid strip in your pocket until it hurts, using the unpleasant sensation to keep you grounded as your brain spins.

Where in the hell are you meant to start looking? Who might even know where he is? You don't know where Hellfire meets these days, or where the band practices, you don't know even who his friends are anymore. Adam and Gareth maybe? Jeff was always borderline with Eddie, you wouldn't be surprised to hear if they'd had a falling out. Maybe Dustin knows something, he's in Hellfire now, along with Mike and Lucas... but you can't imagine Lucas is even going to know his own name after last night so that rules him out...

It's an insurmountable task, finding Eddie, like trying to find a needle in a haystack that is gunning for said needle, but you don't have the option not to try.

Who else is going to do it if not you? You have to find him first.

A shrill whistle draws your attention and your head snaps up to the person jogging up the path to meet you.

Wayne.

You slow to a stop to let him catch up with you, half wondering how the cops ever let him follow you – surely that is a conflict of interest, letting witnesses speak to each other, but you barely have the time to give him a proper greeting.

“You haven't seen him, then?” Wayne asks quickly, his voice is hushed and tight. “You don't know where he is?”

The way he says it makes your chest hurt, like he'd spent a great deal of time and energy hanging all his hopes on the possibility that you might know where Eddie was, that he might even be with you.

Hadn't you been doing the same?

You shake your head, and it breaks your heart a little to have to disappoint him like that.

“No... but I’ll find him.” You say, your insides are knotted and squirming with anxiety — you don’t know how you’re going to find him, you just know that it’s going to be you who does.

It has to be you.

Relief passes over Wayne in a tangible wave as his shoulders drop and he stands a little taller.

You can’t imagine what he must be going through, what it must have been like to come home and discover that waiting for you in your doorway. You suddenly feel very stupid for how precious you’d been all day about having a nightmare while Wayne was living one.

You know perhaps better than anyone that Eddie is all he has – he can’t afford to lose him any more than you can.

Wayne sniffs and clears his throat, casting a wary look over his shoulder like he’s worried someone might be listening.

“Good — good.” He hums, like he’s trying to convince himself that it’s going to be alright, then he leans into you and drops his voice, “When you do, I want you two to go. Just… go. Take him and get out of town.”

It startles you. You don’t know what you’d expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. You know you must be frowning for the way he doubles down.

He fishes his wallet from his back pocket and flips it open, pulling a stack of bills from the fold and closing it in your hand. He squeezes your fingers tightly around the money.

“I don’t care where you go,” He says, shaking his head, “California, Timbuktu — it doesn’t matter, send me a postcard when you get there — you just find him and get him as far away from here as possible, you hear?”

It is too much to ask, you know he must know this – he’s asking you to leave your life behind, your apartment, your job, everyone you know.

For all the time you’ve known him, everything he’s ever done for you, Wayne has never asked you for anything, but he’s asking you now — that much you understand – he’s asking you to choose Eddie, in spite of everything.

It’s an easy decision to make.

You close your fingers over the money and nod, gritting your teeth to keep yourself steady as you watch Wayne’s eyes shine with tears.

“I will.”

He breathes a shaky sigh and blinks back the emotion, banishing it as quickly as it arrives.

You’ve never seen him like this — he is so afraid, and whether it is in response to the horror of what has already happened, in his home, to his family, or the uncertainty of what is going to happen, you cannot be sure.

The Munsons have already lost so much.

You have to find Eddie, if only so that you never have to see this look on Wayne’s face again.

His hand comes up to grip you by the shoulder then, and your spine stiffens under the directness of his gaze.

“Don’t leave him.” he says quietly. “Promise me you won’t leave him.”

You shake your head in defiance of the thought.

Never, you want to say, you would never leave him.

Why else would you still be here after everything that happened? But of course, he knows this, so you push forward and throw your arms around Wayne’s neck, startling him with the act of hugging him.

“I promise.” You say against his shoulder.

He hesitates, tensing ever so slightly. After a moment he pats you awkwardly on the back, and you take it as your signal to let the moment end.

Eddie always said the Munsons weren’t huggers.

Wayne sniffs and wipes his knuckles beneath his nose — he coughs.

“Okay,” he says gruffly, “Get going.”

Wayne nods towards the road and you follow his gaze. You know what he means; find Eddie, get out of town, don’t come back, and you can’t decide if the feeling welling up too big in your chest is fear or determination.

Your mind begins to work on its own, drawing a map of all the possible places you might find Eddie.

You can do this, you’re fine, it’s going to be fine.

When you turn, Wayne has already started back down the road, and you’re hit with the sudden and overwhelming urge to call out, to say something to somehow make things okay.

You wonder briefly if you're ever going to see him again.

“Wayne —” you call, he turns and glances back at you with big, watery eyes, “…I’m gonna find him.”

“I know, Sweetheart.” He huffs, “I'm counting on it.”

So, no pressure, right?

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#NO ONE TOUCH ME IM UNWELL #this is so good I’m like scaling the walls trying not to scream #eddie munson x reader

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undead-supernova · 10 hours

Text

Cruel Summer - Part 6

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

word count: 15k (YIKES)

warnings: swearing, mentions/descriptions of child/spousal abuse, death, funerals, grief, ANGST, panic attacks, fluff, allusions to sex and smuttiness towards the end of the chapter

A.N.: Babysitter!reader part six is here! This one is a MAMMOTH you guys I was gonna cut it down but you all gave me some pretty positive feedback about long chapters so... here you go :) Wayne Munson continues to be the best man in Hawkins, meanwhile, Eddie's father is the literal worst -- Eddie has TRAUMA

I'm gonna be sad about the Munsons for the rest of my life

Hellfire met and played at the Munson trailer for the better part of a month before the drama room finally became available again. Eddie could not have been more relieved if Publisher’s Clearing House had shown up on his doorstep with a million-dollar check. It was only three sessions, considering the club only officially met on Fridays, but each and every one of them had been punctuated by a special kind of weirdness that Eddie could not stomach another second of.

He’s never been so happy to be back on school grounds.

First and foremost, Gareth had been correct. Wayne was very clear that he didn’t want them playing D&D in the trailer anymore, not after a particularly rowdy session had seen Jeff and Adam engaging in a wrestling match that ended with them falling over and absolutely decimating an antique coffee table that had belonged to Eddie’s grandmother.

Eddie damn near pulled his hair out over it, considering it was arguably the nicest piece of furniture they owned and something Wayne had been very careful about preserving, scratches and water rings and all. The moment only got worse from there, as before Eddie could even finish saying “oh shit—you guys, my uncle is gonna kill me!”, there was Wayne, stepping in through the door mere seconds after the table collapsed … well, exploded was probably the better word to describe what had happened to it when Jeff and Adam came crashing down with all their collective weight like they thought they were a pair of pro-wrestlers or something.

Pair of assholes, more like.

It would have been hilarious if it had been any other piece of furniture in any other house, but then that was just Eddie’s luck, wasn’t it? That it would be the single piece of furniture they owned that his uncle was precious about.

Eddie never met her, considering his father was all but disowned by everyone but Wayne by the time he was born, but he knew well enough that his uncle was a mama’s boy through and through, and Grandma Munson was revered in that household, even in death. What few remaining heirlooms of hers there were that hadn’t been pawned or lost to time were tantamount to sacred, so needless to say, Eddie was in deep shit.

Wayne stood surveying the scene as the smoke cleared – dice, pages, and character maquettes scattered to the wind, sweaty teen boys still wrapped in the vice of their wrassling, laying amidst the rubble of Munson family heirlooms – and he miraculously did not kill his nephew. He did, however, breathe out hard through his nose and go right back out to chain smoke and try to calm down.

Wayne didn’t get mad easily, his temper was a slow-burning fuse in contrast to his volatile younger brother’s, but still, it made Eddie panicky. Being in trouble with Wayne was an exercise in “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed,” and arguably worse than any insult or abuse his father could have hurled at him in the same situation. Eddie would have given blood to avoid finding himself in the line of those big, sad eyes as he rushed everyone out and did his best to clean up and piece the table back together. The effort was in vain, there was no saving the table and no amount of apologies could save Eddie from the long tired sigh of disappointment Wayne heaved when he finally came back inside.

Wayne didn’t have many hard rules – respect the space, don’t do anything too stupid while he’s gone, do your damn dishes – but that night he made a new one. No more D&D in the trailer. Eddie promised, though more importantly, they shook on it, which was binding among Munson men. Of course, the nasty little problem there was that Eddie had also sworn to himself that he would never set foot in Benny’s diner ever again, not even if his life depended on it … not even if he thought he was going to find you there.

He honestly didn’t think he could physically make himself go through that door, and he was panicking about it, because how was he supposed to explain that to anyone?

How to explain that even after ten years, the diner was still so stifling with the lingering atmosphere of his mother’s presence that he couldn’t breathe? Too many memories of days after school spent waiting while she moved back and forth behind the counter, hours and hours sitting in the squishy pleather booths doing his homework (when he still did his homework) or perched on his knees on the rickety stools and spinning around and around and around until he couldn’t see straight. Watching the clock and counting the minutes left in her shift, walking home hand in hand, telling her about his day, and enjoying a brief interval of peace before his father got home.

Enough time has passed that those days are fuzzy now, bright little jewels of memory that have turned to sepia-toned shards of glass embedded in his mind. They are still painful enough to keep Eddie away from the diner permanently. How is he supposed to explain that he’s afraid he’ll taint what is left of those memories if he returns as he is now, so far removed from the version of himself that his mother knew? The best version of himself.

He can’t do it. He won’t.

So he swallows his pride and calls Wayne at the plant and begs him – literally begs – to let Hellfire play in the trailer. He doesn’t know precisely what it is that wins his uncle over, maybe he’d blown the whole coffee table thing out of proportion in his mind and Wayne wasn’t actually that upset about it (he was) or maybe it is just because he just thinks Eddie really needs a win after the last few months, with you and what happened that afternoon at Rick’s and not graduating again (he really hopes it isn’t that, despite how stridently true it is) — really what is the harm in letting them play a little D&D? Especially after Eddie’s long, drawn-out spiel about how he swears they will be on their best behavior and they won’t get too rowdy or make a mess and he’ll make sure everyone uses coasters if he wants them to, and Wayne listens to his nephew talk a mile a minute before finally cutting him off mid-stream — because they aren’t the type of people who worry about things like coasters — and he relents.

“Take a breath, Bud, it’s alright. You can bring your friends over.”

And Eddie practically sobs with relief, which is embarrassing, but it had been a very tense few hours fighting off panic attacks and wrestling with the very real thought of canceling Hellfire entirely just to try and avoid ever having to set foot in that diner again.

Somehow he gets the sense that Wayne knows all this because he’s always had that weird sort of omniscience that parents have when it comes to their kids (good parents, at least) even though Wayne is not his dad and Eddie is not his son – Wayne always seems to know exactly what’s wrong with him at any given moment and it would be maddeningly frustrating if Eddie didn’t rely upon it completely.

The Munsons have never been good at talking about their feelings, and Eddie feels so much all the time.

He thanks Wayne profusely and swears he’s going to make it up to him.

“Just don’t let the big guy break any more furniture.” Wayne huffs down the line, wrenching a watery laugh from somewhere deep inside Eddie.

He would have said something smart about how the only thing that’s going to get broken is Jeff’s neck if he doesn’t behave himself, but he’s already too far gone in his memories as he hangs up and switches over to autopilot to go about getting the place ready for guests…

It was late summer, 1977, and Eddie sat on the steps of Wayne’s trailer, back when it was just that, before it was home— sulking because she was leaving him there again.

It wasn’t her fault, and he didn’t blame her, because he knew she didn’t have any other choice.

Still, he did not want her to go.

His father had gotten himself arrested again, for dealing or boosting a car or any number of his other nefarious pastimes, and his mother was preparing to go through the long, arduous process of bailing him out. That meant Eddie would be spending the night on the couch at Uncle Wayne’s, and while those nights were never bad — it was all television and take out and the novelty of being treated like an adult without being scandalized in the process, like when he was nine and his father took him out to a strip club on the interstate (it was the angriest Eddie had ever seen his mother – she’d blown a gasket) – it was always just the circumstances that sent him to Wayne’s that Eddie hated.

His mother sat crouched in front of him on the stairs and pinched and poked and tried to make him smile. She always teased just a bit too much when things were bad, always told him he was too young to be so serious.

He pouted and told her that she ought to just leave his old man there to rot, not for the first time (though unknowingly the last). She’d wrinkled her nose and agreed with him, pulling him forward by his elbows to wrap her arms around him and blow a raspberry into his cheek. He would have told her he was too old to be treated like that, but in spite of himself, he snorted with laughter and let his mother kiss the offended flesh before standing to talk to Wayne.

Eddie felt the brief warmth of humor give way to anxiety tugging at his heart and covered his ears – he didn’t want to hear her say anything too serious. Serious on Eddie’s mother was always too close to sad, and he hated when she was sad (too many mornings sitting and watching her try to mask last night’s bruises with caked on cover-up, biting back tears and doing her best to smile for him.)

Her voice was hushed and thick with emotion as she spoke.

“I’ll be back when I can, but…” he heard her suck in a sharp breath, “I don’t know, Wayne, it just — it took so long the last time –”

Wayne cut her off, patting her on the shoulder and speaking in a soft, reassuring voice.

“I know, Darlin’. You take as long as you need,” and then he made a point to perk up, raise his voice to try and make himself sound chipper, for Eddie’s sake – chipper is an emotion that has never worked on Wayne. “We’re gonna be just fine. It’s gonna be fun. Right, Bud?”

He nudged Eddie gently with the toe of his boot, but the only response he could muster was a dejected sigh, propping his head up with his fists, elbows perched on skinned knees.

He reached down to ruffle his hair and Eddie jerked moodily out of his touch and buried his face in his knees as his mother tut-tutted him.

“Hair’s gettin’ real long…” Wayne mused, sucking his teeth, “Maybe we’ll give you a trim while your mama’s gone,”

The thought of it set Eddie’s heart beating at a pace – his father was always trying to cut his hair, spitting hateful slurs and insults about the “kind of men kept their hair long” – thankfully, his mother spoke up.

“Oh, no, don’t.” She said quickly, reaching down and running her fingers fondly through Eddie's curls, “We like it long, right, Baby?”

He didn’t answer, but he could feel her looking at him, waiting patiently. A sprig of defiance wormed its way up through his midsection, and Eddie decided he would stay quiet for the rest of his life if he had to.

His mother just sighed – she didn’t have time for a tantrum, the one his father was sure to throw was arguably worse than the one Eddie was kicking up. She had to go, so she turned on her heel and started down the gravel drive.

“I’ll be back soon. Love you, Teddy Bear!” She called, waving over her shoulder— her massive collection of keychains jangled loudly as Eddie peeked up from his knees to watch her make her way back to the car.

The Munsons were all packrats in their own way – his mother collected keychains and magnets, Wayne collected novelty mugs and baseball caps, and his father collected felonies and arrests… Eddie supposes now that he collects regrets. He wishes he’d done more to commit her to memory, he wishes he’d done something to make her stay…

“I love you!” She said again, louder, stretching the phrase lyrically and trying to bait him.

He wired his jaw shut – maybe if he didn’t say it back she’d stay until he did. Maybe he’d never say it again and she’d never leave him.

Still, a sudden spike of anxiety flared in his chest as something screamed at him to call out to her, make her turn around and look at him one more time. Just in case.

Just in case what? Just in case you never see her again.

“Don’t let him drive!” Eddie shouted at his mother’s back, pushing up to stand on the steps like if somehow he were a little taller it would help drive the message home.

Don’t go. Don’t go. Please, don’t go.

She stopped as she pulled the driver’s side door open and smiled – a wry, crooked thing that indented her cheeks with dimples.

“I never do.”

She winked, and slipped in behind the wheel and out of his life because no matter what she assured him, she didn’t ultimately have a say in who drove home that night, no matter what his father had taken or how fucked up he was.

He drove. They crashed. She died.

The funeral was open casket, and Eddie refused to move from his seat. He didn’t want to see her, not like that – he wanted her here, smiling and laughing and teasing too much and collecting stupid novelty keychains and breathing, not cold in the fucking coffin his father had put her in.

The son of a bitch had tried to drag him up there to “pay his respects”. He seized him by the scruff and told him not to be a pussy, but his arm was in a sling from the accident and he couldn’t get a good enough grip on Eddie to hold him to the spot when Wayne stepped in and pulled his brother aside for an extremely tense, hushed conversation.

The repast had been at Benny’s because she’d worked there long enough that the staff was like family and their house was too small to host. His father somehow managed to get himself completely blackout drunk, despite the lack of any booze being served, and made a huge scene – like he always did, and Eddie sat there trying to endure the violence of his hatred for the man.

Why couldn’t he have just let her drive? Why did it have to be her? Why hadn’t she been wearing her seatbelt? Why why why…

His grief was too big, he didn’t know what to do with it or where to put it, and it made Eddie so angry. Angrier than he had ever been in his life. It made him brave— or perhaps vitriolic— and when his father shouted and slurred and swatted at him like he always did, Eddie grit his teeth and spat the venom right back.

For all the times he’d sat helpless, for all the times she’d sent him to run and hide, he finally stood up.

He paid for it, of course, with a hard crack to the face that knocked him right back down, and before his brain could stop rattling around his skull enough to catch up to his body, Eddie hit one of the first of many hard limits he would pass with the old man over the next few years.

With a bloodied, broken nose, he bolted from the diner and ran all the way out to the interstate. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he meant to get as far away as humanly possible, from his father, from Hawkins, from his grief and the terrible life he knew he surely faced without his mother to act as a buffer. Even at eleven years old, he knew he didn’t have a chance if he stayed.

This town would kill him if he stayed.

The first and only car to pull up beside him had been a rusty pickup – it was Wayne, because of course it was, and he rolled alongside Eddie in the truck at a glacial pace on the shoulder of the wrong side of the road for the better part of twenty-five minutes as he tried to talk his nephew down.

Eddie continued to walk, wiping blood and tears on the sleeve of his suit jacket and refusing to be coaxed into the cab until he’d learned that the cops had picked his father up and he wouldn’t have to go home that night. When Eddie finally relented and climbed up into the passenger seat, he saw that Wayne’s knuckles were cracked, swollen, and bleeding on the steering wheel.

He didn’t have to ask to know what had happened – he hoped his father hadn’t been too drunk to feel every second of the beating Wayne had given him — Eddie hoped it hurt as bad as it did when Wayne set his broken nose later that night, sitting perched on the edge of the sink, gritting his teeth and biting back tears.

It would be another two and a half years of days like that before the old man would finally go to prison.

With Wayne’s blessing, Hellfire resumed at the Munson trailer, and by 8:30 that Friday in April, everyone was piled into the little living room, huddled around the replacement, decidedly less nice coffee table, and Eddie could finally breathe again.

Except that Jeff was fully committing to the bit of being bizarrely hostile, in his own completely non-threatening way. Eddie thought it was exceedingly strange – and more than a little rude considering he would have been meek as a mouse if he had found himself allowed back into a home where he’d so unceremoniously destroyed a treasured piece of antique furniture, but he couldn’t really kick up the gusto to be angry about it, because Jeff was being hostile no matter where they were.

“Hey, what the fuck is Jeff’s problem?” He’d asked Gareth one day, sitting huddled over his notebook in the back of second-period English Lit while Mrs. Faulkner droned on about some old dead guy.

Proust or some shit.

Gareth had merely shrugged his flannel-clad shoulders in feigned ignorance and done his best to look innocent as the color drained from his face and his eyes went wide. Of course, that reaction suggested he knew exactly what Jeff’s problem was, but the old harpy had screeched a warning at them about cross chatter and threatened detention from the blackboard before Eddie could press him further on it.

The issue with doing everything with the same group of people is that when you have a problem with one of them, you have to see them everywhere you go. Jeff is a member of the Hellfire Club as well as Corroded Coffin, so Eddie has to deal with his snarky, backhanded remarks pretty much wherever he goes.

It is, at best, mildly annoying and at worst, deeply confusing.

Eddie can’t wrap his head around the shift in his attitude, except that once, when you were still very new to each other — the first time he’d ever brought you to hang out with the guys as his officially official girlfriend, in fact — Jeff had pulled him aside at the end of the night and drunkenly warned Eddie that if he ever hurt you, he would kill him.

It had been an intense and slightly off-putting way to end what had been a generally pleasant evening, but Eddie had just chalked that up to Jeff being… well, Jeff. Poor social skills and all too easily impressed by nice girls who showed him even the slightest bit of kindness or attention.

You’d laughed about it on the car ride home, not unkindly, though. You thought his crush on you was sweet, like the crush the kid you babysat had on you. And then you’d sat in the car eating ice cream and discussing life’s most important questions; who would win in a fight – Jeff or Eddie...

Eddie had just been happy to get to share you with his friends and integrate you into the group without it being weird so that he didn’t have to parcel out his time between the band, D&D, and you.

He knows you would have won out over his friends every time, though he’s not sure they could have held it against you.

He used to love how much they loved you until he told everyone about the breakup.

He’d said it was mutual, and maybe he’d let them believe that it had been more your idea than his — he doesn’t know why, maybe he’d thought it would be easier to stomach if he could manage to be pissed at you, but he couldn’t muster it and it didn’t make him feel any better to say it.

Despite everything, Eddie can’t help but shake the feeling that all of his friends have taken your side. Somehow they know he hurt you, and he supposes if Jeff had meant he was going to annoy him to death it’s working marvelously.

And then there’s Dustin.

Dustin Henderson, who spends all his time talking about his babysitter and hangs out with that pretentious douche Steve Harrington when he isn’t following Eddie around like a lovesick puppy.

He can’t deny he has a soft spot for the kid, even if he is annoying as hell, and Eddie does feel bad about biting his head off over the whole situation with the diner. He’d thought it was actually very cool that the kid even tried to find them an alternate place to play, and he’d been sincere in his apology at the campus phone, but he also knows he’d gone a little overboard in the teasing, especially with that bizarre conversation with Dustin’s babysitter that followed.

It hadn’t been Eddie’s fault, not entirely.

He’d already been feeling too manic, his senses dialed up to eleven at the thought of having to go back to Benny’s, but Dustin was also just entirely too easy to tease. He was, perhaps, just a tad too flirtatious with the babysitter on purpose, just to ruffle Dustin’s feathers — Eddie is big enough to admit that that was a fuck up on his part.

The connection over the payphone had not been the greatest, just as much static as voice, and somehow he’d fooled himself into thinking the girl on the other end of the phone sounded a lot like you. So much like you that if he tries very hard, he can convince himself that it had been you on the phone that day. It wasn’t, he knows this, but in his heart of hearts?

The teasing, the cadence of her speech, the specific little phrases she used, her laugh? Christ – the way she’d laughed had been enough to make Eddie weak at the knees because he swears to God, Tiamat, Ozzy Osborne, whoever is out there listening, that it had been you laughing on the other end of that phone call — but then she’d hung up on him, and Eddie knew he’d been deluding himself, projecting you into some random girl he’d probably scandalized.

He imagines some snotty cheerleader on the other line, lying on her bed, twisting her perfectly manicured fingers in the phone cord, popping bubble gum, and kicking her feet —painting the picture of a pretty little fantasy until she realizes who she was talking to, until he tells her his name. Then he pictures her sneering and slamming the phone into the box with a harsh grunt of disgust.

She probably felt like she needed to take a shower after that, to wash the freak off of her.

Eddie still can’t believe how badly he’d let his feelings get hurt over it, all because he’d let himself pretend he was talking to you.

Then there was the way Dustin and Wayne acted towards each during that second Friday playing at the trailer. It was a rare day off, and it had seen his uncle rolling up unexpectedly and coming through the door halfway through their session.

Everyone instantly shut up and mumbled their own overly formal, awkward greetings as Wayne surveyed the group. He greeted the boys he knew, regarded the ones he didn’t with a curt nod as Eddie introduced them – Mike and Lucas, and then he clapped eyes on Dustin, and he got stuck. He stared hard and set his jaw, and Eddie could practically see the gears turning in his uncle’s head as he tried to work something out.

It would have made him nervous if he hadn’t noticed the way Dustin was staring right back at him with the same intensity. Like they recognized each other but they didn’t precisely know where from.

Weird.

And then the moment passed, like fixing a skipping record.

“Y’all been playing long?” Wayne hummed, setting his wallet and keys down on the little dining table shoved against the opposite wall.

His addressing Eddie brought the game to a screeching halt and everyone held their breath and waited to see what he would say.

“Few hours, yeah.” he replied cautiously, “Why?”

There was a tiny nagging voice in the back of his mind that warned him they were about to get kicked out and they would have to finish their session with flashlights in the back of his van, but Wayne just shook his head, like it didn’t matter why he’d asked.

He fished his cigarettes from his pocket and patted himself down in search of his lighter, coming up empty.

“You got a light?”

Eddie tossed him his lighter— he caught it effortlessly.

“Well, don’t stop on my account, gentlemen.” He said, pushing a cigarette up to his lips and going right back outside.

The door clicked shut and a collective sigh passed over the room as everyone turned back to the game board and began chattering amongst themselves.

“You think he’s still pissed about the table?” Adam asked sheepishly.

Jeff and Gareth both began to voice their dissent – no, no way that was so long ago — and Eddie had to grit his teeth to stop himself from saying anything too mean about it because it may have been long ago to them but he still hadn’t heard the end of it.

“Of course, he’s still pissed – you guys, shut up about the table already,” Eddie huffed, flipping through the beat-up Player’s Handbook balanced precariously on his knee.

Of course, that only spurred them on to talk more about it. And when Mike piped up, asking “what table” Gareth was all too happy to launch into the story, much to Eddie’s annoyance as everyone lost interest in the game and began laughing and talking.

He propped his chin up on his hand and heaved a dejected sigh, continuing to flip through the book and waiting for them to be done. He just wanted to play D&D, was that too much to ask?

And then he could feel eyes on him. He glanced up to find Dustin staring at him expectantly from where he sat on the floor like he was waiting for the answer to a question he hadn’t asked yet.

Eddie waited. Dustin waited, and for a long moment, they both just sat, staring, waiting for the other to speak.

“What?” Eddie finally prompted.

Dustin began slowly.

“So…” He said, giving him a quizzical look and shuffling just a little bit closer to where Eddie sat with his knees up in the lazy boy. “How do you know that Wayne guy?”

Eddie wouldn’t say that the question floored him, but he didn’t quite know how to respond. He supposed he could have just answered the question – he’s my uncle – but he was much too caught on the other end of it.

“How do I–? How do you know Wayne, Dustin?” Eddie snapped, well aware that he was biting the kid’s head off over nothing again. “Don’t ask me stupid questions like that.”

He could practically hear you in the back of his mind, reminding him that there were no stupid questions, but Eddie stridently disagreed. That was a very stupid question.

Dustin didn’t have a response. He looked more put out than dejected as he threw up his hands and shook his head, but someone kicked up with a concern about snacks or drinks or something variably more important to a group of teen boys before Eddie could chase the thought any further.

It was another twenty-five minutes of trying to corral the group before they finally resumed their session and when Wayne finally came back in, Eddie spent the rest of the night trying not to get distracted by the way he and Dustin sat glancing at each other as he did his best not to lose his flow.

Wayne didn’t have much to say about it later on.

“Do you and Dustin know each other or something?” Eddie asked after everyone had gone, gathering the last of the books and character sheets, and dice.

Wayne sank heavily into his chair — the lazy boy that had served as a poor substitute for Eddie’s throne — with a sigh and beer. He scratched his stubbly chin and furrowed his brow like he had no idea what his nephew was talking about.

“Who?”

Eddie grit his teeth to keep himself from snapping.

“Dustin— the kid with the hat? Braces?”

“Oh.” Wayne said.

He hummed deep in the hollow of his throat, like he was considering whether or not to tell Eddie something, then he picked up the remote and flicked on the tv.

“Nope.”

That was the end of the conversation, no matter how long Eddie stood there in the living room, waiting for his uncle to elaborate. He didn’t, and Eddie finally had to just turn and stalk back to his room with an agitated sigh.

He can’t help but feel that there is a huge piece of the puzzle missing there, one he isn’t sure has anything to do with all the weirdness that has punctuated his days since school started. He tells himself he doesn’t care, so why does he suddenly feel like there is some kind of big conspiracy between everyone he knows going on behind his back? He racks his brain for what the possible connection could be and comes up empty.

He is so goddamn relieved when they finally get back to playing in the drama room.

+++

The counselor’s office looks the same as it always does, all of Ms. Kim’s pictures, degrees, and personal items are still where they were when Eddie was last here, same time last year.

Christ, has it been a year already?

He knows he’s fidgeting more than usual, bouncing his knee and digging his nails into the arm of the chair as he waits for the guidance counselor to speak.

So far she’s just sitting there, staring at him and it's making him very nervous.

The last time he’d been pulled out of class to see Ms. Kim, she’d told him he wasn’t graduating again… and graduation is only a month away now. He’d be lying if he said his stomach wasn’t in knots.

She is smiling sweetly at him from across her desk, hands clasped neatly in front of her and Eddie is still frantically bouncing his knee.

“How are you doing, Eddie?” She finally asks, tilting her head thoughtfully and leaning forward ever so slightly.

He resists the urge to ask her to just cut to the chase. He would much prefer to rip the band-aid off and get it over with – none of this beating around the bush with mindless pleasantries.

Still, his mother had done her best to raise him right, in spite of it all, and he would be damned if he didn’t at least try to be civil with Ms. Kim. She’s never been anything but kind to him, which is not something he can say about most of his teachers.

“Okay, I guess,” he mumbles.

Her face pinches into a mask of concern.

“I heard you’ve been having a bit of a rough year.”

Eddie clears his throat to cover the bitter snort of laughter that tears itself out of him.

“Yeah well, nothing ever really changes around here, does it?” He says, smirking and shifting uncomfortably in his seat, “Same shit different day – sorry.”

The silence that blooms between them is more than a little bit awkward. He hadn't meant to swear.

Ms. Kim straightens the stack of papers set out on the desk in front of her and Eddie’s gaze flicks down to try and discreetly see what they are – he can only make out his name.

“So, I've got your transcripts here,” She begins, “And I wanted to talk to you about your future at Hawkins High School…”

Eddie’s heart drops into his stomach – he suddenly feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Oh come on, my grades can’t be that bad…” He chuckles. It is a humorless sound.

He is going to be devastated if she tells him he’s not going to graduate again. He doesn’t think he can stand another year of this…

He half expects her to give him a piteous look, scrunch her features and turn her eyebrows up in apology, but instead, they jump up towards her hairline and she shakes her head.

“No, actually, quite the opposite. Your grades are…” she trails off, shrugs, “Well, I’m not going to lie to you, they’re still pretty low, but considering what they were this time last year?” and then her lips quirk up into a big smile, “I think you might be on track to graduate next month.”

Eddie would have been less shocked if she’d pulled a gun on him. He's fully aware of how his mouth has fallen open as he stares at her.

“Shut the fuck up!” He gasps, and then, “Sorry – I’m so sorry – I just… y-you’re serious?”

"I'm serious."

"You're not just bullshitting me, right?" Goddammit, Munson, language, "Ah– sh-shoot – sorry."

Despite his language, Ms. Kim is still smiling and nodding – and Eddie doesn’t think she would lie to him about this. Educational staff wasn’t allowed to pull practical jokes, were they? Prank the guy with the worst grades in school by telling him he was graduating? That would be a major conflict of interest, probably illegal even, which means she’s not kidding, and he’s really – finally – going to graduate if he can keep his shit together.

Holy shit.

“I know it’s a little premature to say, but congratulations.” Ms. Kim says.

Eddie almost doesn’t hear her.

He feels like he’s going to burst, though for the first time in a long time it’s from happiness and not some kind of devastating attempt to hold himself together. Eddie only realizes how broadly he is smiling as his hands come up to clasp either side of his face. Shock is the only word he can think to describe what he feels, elation maybe? Dumbfoundedness?? Mostly, he can’t believe his stupid luck.

No, not luck, hard fucking work is more like, he’s been kicking his own ass all year and it’s finally paying off. He suddenly can’t wait to tell someone, everyone, get up on a table and shout it at the denizens of this wretched place – take a good last look, everybody, Eddie Munson is finally getting out of here.

“That being said–”

God dammit.

“–you’ve got one grade that you need to pull up. Mrs. O’Donnell’s class–”

Eddie's heart sinks a little. He's not sure any one of his teachers hates him more than Mrs. O'Donnell does. She would fail him just to spite him if it didn't mean she would have to endure another year of him in her class.

“– you’re close though, D is a passing grade. I should mention, however, that if you don’t manage it–”

“Oh, Christ – don’t say that!”

Eddie’s not superstitious, but he can’t help but jump forward and wrap his knuckles sharply on her desktop with both hands. It’s made of sheet metal – shit.

Is it bad luck to knock on wood when it’s not made of wood? He doesn’t know.

You would have known because you always had little bits of random information for him like that.

You were a purveyor of secrets and forbidden knowledge – you were Lady Midnight.

God, he wishes he could tell you the news, wrap you up in his arms and spin you around and around until he can't stand up straight.

Ms. Kim carries on about how there’s no shame in getting his GED and how best to stay on track for graduation, but Eddie isn’t listening anymore.

He’s too busy picturing the alternate universe where you still lived in Hawkins. Maybe you had a place together, one of the tiny apartments above or behind or in the basement of one of the buildings on Cherry Street.

He imagines he’d go straight from Ms. Kim’s office to find you at work, wherever that was – maybe you worked at Family Video with that asshole Keith and he’d find you behind the counter, or maybe you had some office job that he’d pick you up from every night at five.

He imagines the way your face would brighten when he told you — Baby, you won’t believe it, I’m finally fucking graduating! — your eyes would go wide and you’d scream and throw your arms around him and jump up and down. Everyone would stare because everyone always stared at the both of you, but you wouldn’t care because Eddie was graduating.

You’d be so excited that he would have to pry you off of him, and then you'd take him by the hand and insist you go out to celebrate immediately.

“Let’s go to Enzo’s and get drunk and eat our weight in breadsticks and lasagna,” You’d say, sidling up and tucking yourself beneath his arm.

And Eddie would scoff because there’s no way either of you could afford Enzo’s, but he would never deny you a good time.

“Sounds great, Sweetheart, we don’t have to pay rent this month,”

Of course, that was never going to happen.

Realistically, he thinks if he had the chance to tell you, your face would scrunch in sadness or maybe even anger, because you’d worked so hard tutoring him last year, all for nothing. All for him to break up with you just because he was jealous that you’d graduated and he didn’t, because you’d promised you weren’t going to leave him behind and he hadn’t believed you.

Maybe this was the start of Eddie finally getting his shit together, but what is the point of moving on if you aren’t going to be there waiting for him?

He’d spent so long imagining the moment when his life would finally jump out of stasis — graduating, moving on, moving out, getting his own place, getting a real job, and maybe – if he was really lucky – even someday getting married. Settling down with someone kind and fun and funny and eventually having a couple of little Munson brats of his own, running around wreaking havoc and living the childhood he always wished he’d been lucky enough to have.

He doesn’t want any of that on his own, he doesn’t want it without you – as cheesy, sappy, rom-com bullshit as that sounds.

He'd spent too long imagining his life with you.

Whatever scenario he drummed up for his future self — whether the band took off and he made it big and became this ridiculously famous rockstar living in a mansion out in LA, or even if he just got a job at a mechanic’s shop somewhere that barely paid him enough to make rent — you were always there with him.

Filthy rich or dirt poor, you were supposed to be hitting those milestones together.

He’s going to graduate next month and you’re not going to be there.

Eddie's heart is hammering against his ribs again, and he flexes his fingers to keep his hands from shaking.

It always hits him in the worst moments...

There is no rhyme or reason to his path after Ms. Kim turns him loose. For lack of anywhere better to go, Eddie heads straight for his locker, because he doesn’t think he can stomach sitting through class — he doesn’t know what he plans to do when he gets there.

Maybe he’ll grab his shit and leave — cutting class is not a good look when you're trying to graduate — maybe he’ll slam his head in the door until the blood stops roaring in his ears or his head falls off or something — can't graduate if you're dead — can't have a panic attack if you're dead either.

He fumbles with the lock until he can get the door open then, for lack of anything better to do, sticks his head inside, hands gripping the metal tightly as he tries to take deep breaths.

It’s nothing compared to a sink full of ice water, and the relative dark is not enough to be calming, but it’s better than nothing.

Calm down calm down calm down calm down calm–

“Are you okay?” he thinks he hears you ask.

Eddie whips back from his locker and cracks the back of his head against the door – ow – and it’s not you standing there, staring at him through your lashes, of course, it’s a cheerleader.

Chrissy Cunningham, he remembers after a moment of static. Red-blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail, sweet face, heavy blue eye makeup. She’s wearing jeans and a soft white cardigan and Eddie realizes he didn’t recognize her without the greens and golds of her cheer uniform. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her out of it.

The phrasing makes him feel like he could start blushing.

She’s staring up at Eddie with big, wide eyes, filled with concern, and maybe something halfway to fear. It takes him a moment too long to realize she’s waiting for him to answer the question she’d asked.

“What?” He asks a little too loud, swallowing hard.

Her voice is very quiet when she answers.

“I just … asked if you’re okay…?”

“Oh… Yep— I mean — yeah, no. Yes. I’m fine.” Real smooth, keep talking cool guy, “I was just— I was looking for something.”

He gestures nervously to his locker, glancing at its messy contents before reaching out and snatching the first thing he sees. A broken pencil. Great.

Eddie has never been good at thinking on his feet — there is always as good a chance that he’s going to make a complete fool of himself as he is going to come across as smooth. Even when he’s confident that things will go well, his brain has this nasty little habit of betraying him at the last moment and short-circuiting, as had happened that first moment he’d tried to talk to you in the lunchroom.

He may as well have just stabbed himself with the broken pencil for how thinking about that makes his chest hurt.

Still, he holds the pencil up to Chrissy, like he needs to prove that he’s okay. He’s not.

“Found it.” He says.

She stares at him, wide-eyed and blank for what feels like an excruciatingly long moment, and then she smiles — giggles even, in spite of herself, pursing her lips and casting her gaze downward. It’s a soft, shy thing that carries shades of the way you’d looked at him the first time he’d ever spoken to you. It makes Eddie’s heart thump.

In a moment he remembers himself and slams his locker door shut, putting the pencil behind his ear and crossing his arms over his chest like he suddenly feels the need to protect himself.

Cheerleaders don’t usually talk to him unless it is to say something nasty or to try and buy from him … or that time in his first senior year when the cheer captain cornered him in the bathroom at a party and tried to coerce him into having sex with her out of some kinky, rebellious fantasy she’d wanted to fulfill before she graduated — you’d thankfully come to his rescue before anything could happen.

Girls like Chrissy Cunningham, who wear their innocence like a veil and date sports stars most certainly don’t talk to guys like Eddie.

It makes him nervous.

“Uh … sorry, did you… want? Something?”

Her eyes grow wide, like she’s been accused of something untoward and she looks away again, scratching nervously at her ankle with the toe of her immaculate white sneaker.

“Oh. Yes… actually.” Chrissy says, “Um, s-so… I was told that you— like … I mean if I wanted to get … something? You would have it.”

It takes him a long moment to untangle the sentence, and he’s a little dumbfounded when it finally comes undone. Maybe he was wrong about her because according to his translations, Chrissy wants one of two things from Eddie: sex or drugs.

Somehow he doesn’t think she’s coming on to him so that just leaves option two, which doesn’t leave him any less flummoxed.

“You wanna buy?”

It sounds much more like an accusation than he intended.

Chrissy twists a delicate finger tightly in the hair at the nape of her neck, garroting the tip of her digit and doing her very best not to look directly at Eddie. Her face is ever so slightly flushed pink as she bites at her lower lip and nods.

In spite of the bizarre situation, Eddie does think she is really very pretty, in a way he’d never noticed before.

He swallows and clears his throat to stop his voice from cracking as he continues.

“…What, uh— what were you in the market for… specifically?” He asks.

Chrissy glances at him from the corner of her eye and twists her sleeves down over her hands. She hesitates like she has absolutely no idea how to answer the question. Suddenly, her eyes are bright and shining, like she is ready to cry, and Eddie’s heart is in his throat.

He can’t stand to see people crying – girls, in particular, it makes him feel helpless, too much like watching his mother put makeup on over the bruises on her face. His hands twitch at his sides as the impulse to somehow try and comfort her becomes nearly overwhelming.

“Hey — hey… it’s okay. I’m not gonna bite you.” He says softly, resisting the urge to take a step toward her.

And do what, hug her?

That’s what he would have done with you, pulled you close and held you tight until you’d calmed down. Eddie doesn’t dare cross that line to touch Chrissy, he’s half convinced she might combust into flames if he did, innocent little bird that she is.

Innocent little bird trying to buy drugs.

He hopes she knows he means no harm as suddenly she becomes very interested in her sneakers, tugging at the hem of her big cardigan.

Eddie dips his head to try and meet her gaze, make her look at him – all she’ll do is glance at him, and he smiles at her when she does, in a way he hopes is reassuring. The moment of emotion thankfully passes quickly and Chrissy comes down again – she’s no longer on the verge of tears and Eddie can relax… at least a little bit.

“You good?” He asks.

“Yeah— yes. I’m sorry… I’ve — I’ve never done this before.” She mumbles, chewing the inside of her lip.

“That’s okay…” He assures her, shaking his head, “Everybody starts somewhere… I guess – uh – I guess I should’ve asked what kind of results you’re after?”

She blows out a tense breath and purses her lips like she really has to think about it.

“I don’t know… I—um… I've been having …n-nightmares?” She mumbles, then shudders bodily, like a sudden chill has ripped through her. “Terrible nightmares.”

For half a moment, she gets this scary, far-away look in her eye and it’s enough to stop Eddie from thinking about how her admitting that feels a tad too much like oversharing, considering they don’t know each other…

That’s not true, He tells himself, You do know Chrissy… second grade. Project on manatees – she came over and mom helped us work on it…

And then like being struck over the head, he’s reminded of another seriously unhelpful bit of information for the moment Eddie has found himself in.

She came to Mom’s funeral…

Eddie nods sagely, “You wanna sleep better.” he hums, trying to banish the image of black clothes and sorrowful faces standing around as a coffin is lowered into a grave — a much younger Chrissy stealing a shy glance at him before ducking back to hide behind a pair of legs.

Eddie wonders if she remembers any of that.

Chrissy returns the motion, a sharp jerk of her head in affirmation. It’s reassuring. At least he knows what he can sell her now.

“Okay.” He feels himself smiling without really being aware of how it got there, and he shrugs, “Well, hey, I’ve got the cure—“ Eddie stops short and tries to blink the living room at Rick’s place back on its axis — I’ve got the shit for what ails you — he’s quick to correct himself, shaking his head to try and clear the sudden smokey haze from his mind, “I’ve got something for that,”

Chrissy nods again and then brings up a hand Eddie hadn’t realized she’d had clutched in a fist. Slowly, her fingers unfurl to reveal a crumpled hundred-dollar bill.

“How much will this get me?”

Eddie almost laughs out loud at the sight of it. It’s more than he’s ever even paid to refill his whole stash.

Much more than you’re gonna need, Sweetheart, he wants to say, but he can suddenly taste whiskey on the back of his tongue and his head is buzzing with static.

Eddie rubs his hands down his jeans where his palms have become sweaty, and he tries to pass the nervous motion off like he’s searching his pockets.

“Well, I don’t— I don’t have anything on me right now…?”

“Oh!” Chrissy chirps, eyes widening to the size of dinner plates and freezing a moment as her fingers snap closed on the money again. “Sorry–”

“It’s fine, I’ll just...” Eddie makes a show of jerking his thumb over his shoulder, but Chrissy is shaking her head before he can finish the thought.

“No, no that’s okay—I just thought… nevermind, it doesn’t matter…”

She trails off, color bleeding into her cheeks as the interaction suddenly starts to feel like it’s fizzling out.

Eddie is quick to try and smooth things over because strangely he is suddenly very concerned with what Chrissy thinks about him. He suddenly wants so badly for her to think he is nice.

“No, I mean — like, if you wanna come back around tomorrow?”

An awkward silence blooms between them as she considers the offer.

“Tomorrow?” She echoes, a soft, lilting question that has Eddie smiling at her again.

He notices that her two front teeth are ever so slightly crooked in a way that is painfully endearing. She’s much too sweet for this, he shouldn’t be agreeing to deal to her, but he suddenly feels the closest he has felt to his old self in months, standing there in the empty hallway, talking to Chrissy Cunningham — Eddie before you.

“Yeah.” He says gently, “Yeah—we could meet after school…”

She hesitates, worries her lower lip, and continues to avoid looking at Eddie. It doesn’t feel malicious so much as bashful, like maybe it didn’t matter that it was him she was talking to, like she would have been this shy trying to buy drugs from anyone.

Her brows come together, scrunching down over her big pretty eyes.

“Tomorrow’s the pep rally,” Chrissy says softly, like she’s letting him down.

It hits Eddie like a fist to the gut, and darkness begins creeping in at the edges of his vision. He takes a slow, deep breath in through the nose and blinks rapidly.

“You don’t want to go to the pep rally.” He can suddenly hear you saying, somewhere very far away.

Eddie digs his nails into the palm of his hand until it hurts in an attempt to try and banish you.

“Right.” He says, forcing himself to breathe normally.

Chrissy finds the courage to finally look at him then, if only briefly — her eyebrows are turned up apologetically.

“…And the championship game,” she says.

“You just want to go and antagonize the basketball team…”

“That’s also true.” Eddie hums, nodding.

He’d caught you on your way out of class, throwing his arm around your shoulders and trying to steer you towards the gymnasium before you’d shrugged out of his reach.

No, of course, Eddie didn’t want to go to the pep rally, but an injustice had been delivered upon the Hellfire Club by said Hawkins Tigers, and by code of law, action begets action. He didn’t know what he planned to do – make a scene, probably heckle and taunt the players from the bleachers, be generally disruptive – but you wanted absolutely no part of it.

Your refusal was an idle thing, yet dagger sharp.

Eddie staggered, throwing himself back against a row of lockers and gasping dramatically as he pantomimed being stabbed. You hardly reacted, rolling your eyes and leaving him behind as you made your way further down the hall toward your locker. You were used to his antics by now. He watched you go.

“Me? Antagonize the basketball team?” Eddie called, jogging to catch up, “I would never–”

“No, of course not.” You said, the sarcasm oozing off of you thick enough to leave a gooey trail in your wake. “Because you’re just bursting with school spirit, right? – Go sports!”

Eddie couldn’t help but laugh, coming to a sliding stop at your side as you found your locker amidst the row.

“Oh, come on, Sweetheart, give me a little credit here. I’m peppy as hell. I’ve got pep in my step,” The statement was punctuated by Eddie jumping up and down beside you.

Again you rolled your eyes, and turned your attention to fidgeting with the sticky padlock clipped to your locker.

“Look, if we go, it’s gonna be weird that we’re even there in the first place and you’re just gonna push it and push it until one of those meatheads decides he’s offended by something and causes a big scene – because that’s what always happens – and it’s just so much easier not to go and avoid all that drama in the first place.”

You were right, because you were always right, but Eddie didn’t have to tell you that.

“How dare you,” He gasped, feigning offense, pressing a scandalized hand to his chest, clutching phantom pearls, “Here I am, bearing my heart and soul, and you won’t even entertain the idea of being seen in public with me. Heartless – that’s what you are.”

Of course, by then you were openly ignoring him and his antics, which absolutely would not do, so Eddie changed tactics. He reached out and pinched the flesh of your cheek between his thumb and forefinger.

“Hey, can you blame a guy for wanting to support the home team?”

You jerked out of his touch and swatted angrily at him.

And then, perfectly on cue, there came the basketball team. The hallway parted like the sea as people made way for Hawkins’s best and brightest (and most popular) flanked by the ever-present cheerleading squad, like a green and gold cloud of preppy little gnats.

Eddie clenched his teeth as he watched the group pass, feeling judgment rolling off of them in tangible waves, like invisible daggers hurled in his direction – worse still in your direction, because they’d offered you a choice and you’d picked him over them.

He just couldn’t help himself.

“Go Tigers!” Eddie shouted, pumping his fist in the air.

The phrase “if looks could kill” passed briefly through his mind as they turned to regard him. He felt a strange mixture of satisfaction and chagrin as they did their very best to kill him dead, satisfaction for how he’d gotten under their skin without doing basically anything, and then chagrin as he saw how their disdain for him extended to you.

That made it less fun – still, he committed to the bit.

“See?” Eddie said, gesturing down the hall towards the group of fading athletes, “Think about how fun it would be to sit through three whole hours of that.”

You watched them go – your old friends – and turned to look at him. Something fluttered across your face, and for half a moment Eddie was afraid he’d gone too far and hurt your feelings somehow. Then you narrowed your eyes.

“I thought Eddie Munson didn’t do school functions?” You teased, though there was real bite behind it.

Eddie cringed bodily – he understood that reference.

In the weeks before he’d mustered the courage to ask you out, you’d asked him if he was going to that night’s Sadie Hawkins dance. Eddie had scoffed and told you “I don’t really do school functions,” like it was some kind of running joke.

The Hellfire guys had laughed, and you’d tried your best to join in, but he’d seen the look of disappointment flash across your eyes and the way your face fell. You’d mumbled a quiet, “oh, okay, nevermind then” before quickly excusing yourself. It only occurred to him that you’d been asking him to the dance several hours later, while he was sitting on his bed working out the chords to a song you’d said you liked.

Eddie was sure his neighbors must have thought he was being murdered with the way he’d screamed when it hit him. He was a fucking idiot, and he knocked over just about every piece of furniture and clutter they owned in his panic to get to the phone and call you. It was too late for the dance, and he barely let you get a word in edgewise as he stumbled over apologies and excuses and promises to make it up to you somehow – he was still making it up to you.

“You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?” He groaned, thumping his head against the locker beside yours.

You gave him a sly, sidelong glance, your lips quirking at the corners and eyes flashing in triumph as you finally managed to jimmy your locker open.

“Never.” You purred.

Flirting with Chrissy seems like a real funny way of trying to make it up to you, but still, Eddie tries to make himself smile in a way he hopes is reassuring. He hopes it looks a lot more convincing than it feels.

“What if we meet up before the game?”He posits, and Chrissy doesn’t seem convinced, so he keeps talking, “D’you know where that old picnic table is? Out in the woods past the field?”

She nods, still tugging at the sleeves of her cardigan.

There is a soft crease of worry between her eyebrows and Eddie feels a strange combination of warmth blooming in his chest and guilt cramping his stomach as he resists the urge to smooth it away.

She really is very pretty...

“Yeah,” she says, slowly with a newfound sense of surety, “…Okay. Before the game.”

He lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. A sigh of relief.

“Okay. So… I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

"Okay."

She offers him one more shy smile before turning on her heel and scurrying down the hall.

He watches Chrissy go and very quickly feels the afterglow of talking to a pretty girl give over to guilt as something crumples inside of him.

“Come over tonight?” He’d asked, leaning against the locker beside yours.

You’d cast a sidelong glance his way and offered an apologetic smile as you tucked away your textbooks.

“I can’t – I’m babysitting.”

Ah, the old babysitting excuse – Eddie knew it all too well, and it was not enough to deter him.

“That’s okay, I’ll come to you.” He said, eliciting the expected response, your face scrunching up in the way he loves, brows coming together, eyes narrowing.

“No, you won’t.” you’d huffed, like he’d suggested something positively scandalous.

The suggestion of it was there, of course, a perpetually lingering shadow of arousal that lived between any two people in a consenting adult relationship (particularly if they happened to be a couple of horny teenagers) – still, Eddie couldn’t help but feign innocence.

“Why not?”

“Because.” You pressed, stretching the word, “I’m not gonna be one of those cliche babysitters who sneaks her boyfriend over to make out all night. That’s how you get killed in a horror movie.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, hand dropping idly to crook a finger through your belt loop and tug you towards him.

“Oh, come on,” He said, “We’re not gonna make out all night.”

He moved to tuck a wayward lock of hair behind your ear and somehow managed to get lost along the way. Suddenly his hand had come to rest at the curve of your throat, which only went on to suggest a strident contrast to what he’d just said.

No, you weren’t gonna make out all night, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do everything in his power to get you out of your jeans.

“Eddie…” You warned him.

"Ed-die."

You furrowed your brow at his mocking and he just smiled. He knew that tone, it meant “don’t start”, but the way you sighed his name betrayed your steadfastness. It was reminiscent of the way you said it when he had you in a compromising position, with his hands all over you – all whiny and a little desperate, face flushed, lips bitten.

Uh oh, he thought, feeling the stirrings of something in his abdomen that was never so easily banished. Dangerous territory. Proceed with caution.

For the sake of his dignity, and considering you were both still at school, Eddie pivoted – it was a rare act of self-preservation.

“Come on, Babycakes,” he said, sounding perhaps a tad whinier than he’d intended, “I wanna meet the little twerp who’s been trying to steal my girl.”

Your brows came down in stark contrast to the way your face split into a wide grin as your fingers came up to grip the hand that had drifted south to rest over your collarbone.

“Your girl huh?” You purred, tilting your head down to gaze up at him through the thrush of your lashes.

Fuck. He loved it when you looked at him like that, but he knew if he wasn’t careful, he was gonna end up with a raging hard-on – at school, no less – and then what was he gonna do?

Eddie swallowed hard and ran his thumb over the plush spread of your lower lip, despite how it nudged him just a little further down the path of ruin. He had to fight to resist the urge to push the digit past your lips, press down on your tongue.

“Gotta scope out the competition.” He said thickly.

You scoffed then, thankfully cutting the tension with the harsh sound as you jerked your head back, pulling out of his grip.

“He’s not competition, Eds, he’s twelve.”

Eddie shrugged. “Even better, I’ll let the punk know who’s boss.” He could tell you clearly weren’t buying it, so he doubled down, “Hey– hey, I’m great at babysitting — I get those babies flat as a pancake every time.”

Your eyes flashed indignantly and before he could think to move, you jabbed him sharply in the ribs with your knuckle.

“Ah—shit!” he gasped.

“That’s my joke, Munson.”

Eddie hissed a sharp intake of breath and jerked away from the skittering feeling over his ribs as you poked him again and again.

“Baby don’t—ahh!“ He cut himself off with a cry as your hands came down to squeeze at his sides.

The worst thing that had ever happened to him was how you had so unceremoniously discovered just how goddamn ticklish he was, one afternoon when you’d engaged him in a wrestling match. You’d started it, but Eddie had easily flipped you over and pinned you down, holding your hands over your head and ready to torment you until you said “uncle”, but little did he know that you were an incorrigible brat who would not go down without a fight. Not a fair one, at least. Somehow, you’d gotten a hand free and immediately jabbed him in the ribs, pulling an embarrassingly high-pitched yelp from somewhere deep inside of him, startling the both of you. It was all over from there.

Eddie has not known a day of peace since, and today it seemed would be no different.

In some small attempt at self-preservation, he seized you at the wrists and pulled your hands around his back, jerking you forward and forcing you to hug him so that you couldn’t tickle him.

It was not the most ideal solution, considering the growing state of his arousal. You were suddenly pressed flat to him, head forced back so that your chin was resting at the dip of his sternum, gazing up at him with the faintest hint of mischief glinting in your pretty eyes.

If you were a cat, your tail would have been twitching with anticipation.

"Oh good, now that I've got your attention," He started, breathless and a little lightheaded as you tilted your chin down ever so slightly.

And then you sank your teeth into the soft flesh of his chest and Eddie yelped. He bit the sound off with a shout of laughter and pushed away from you.

You chased him, because of course you did, vicious harpy that you were – talons extended and reaching to grab at him again. He easily skirted around you in a wide circle, and suddenly you were both laughing and shouting as Eddie proceeded to run up and down the hall, fleeing the threat of your tickling fingers like he was running for his life.

It was an exercise in stamina, as even though he had longer legs, you were the faster runner, and as such, you were on him at every turn, squeezing and poking and pinching.

You really were in rare form that day. Super bratty. Part of him knew he was gonna have to hold you down and teach you a lesson later if you kept it up. That same part of him really hoped you would keep it up.

Your classmates passed you idly in the hall as you played, staring in varying degrees of discomfort as they made their way to the forgotten pep-rally, admonishing your dopey public displays of shouting, laughing affection with sidelong glances and the singular utterance of “get a room.”

In quite the athletic feat, Eddie finally managed to outmaneuver you enough to grab you from behind, pulling your hands across your chest and pinning them there so that you were stuck in a straight jacket of your own body. Once he was certain you were restrained, he walked you back to your locker, compensating for your presence between his legs by taking large awkward steps.

The action was closer to skipping than walking, and by the time Eddie deposited you back to your locker – the both of you noticeably winded from the game – you were giggling hysterically, spinning in his arms and rocking back against the cold metal door. You made no effort to stop him from caging you in there, hands coming up to rest on either side of your head as you lingered a moment, working to catch your breath.

Your face was flushed the prettiest shade of pink from exertion, eyes bright, chest heaving. Eddie watched your tongue poke out to swipe a thin sheen of moisture over your lips, and he swallowed hard.

He had to force himself to drag his gaze up from your mouth.

“So anyway, about me helping you babysit tonight—"

You heaved an overdramatic groan and rolled your eyes as Eddie rushed to continue before you could cut him off.

“Just hear me out— you said he’s a little nerd, right? That’s perfect. Nerds love me,”

“No, they don’t.”

“They do.” He insisted, beaming, “We can play D&D! Like a mini-campaign. Just the three of us – it will be so fun, I promise.”

The corners of your mouth quirked with humor.

“Can I be the Dungeon Master?” You asked.

You were teasing, but Eddie just dipped his head forward to brush his lips against the highest point of your cheekbone.

“Baby, you can be whatever the hell you want if you just say yes.” He said, pressing a kiss to your temple.

You hummed thoughtfully and let your head thump back against the hard metal like you were really considering the suggestion.

Eddie pulled back ever so slightly to watch the gears of your mind turning visibly on your face, though he very quickly became distracted as his eyes dipped to the exposed columns of your throat. He had to work very hard to resist the urge to put his mouth on you and suck a bruise into your flesh.

He wondered what the student body would think about that? The Freaky couple going at it in the hallway while the pep rally went on unnoticed? How’s that for school spirit?

Finally, you shrugged your shoulders.

“…I mean… he would love that, actually.”

“Yes!” Eddie cheered, pumping his fist in victory.

He grabbed you by the wrist and jerked your hand up for a high-five, the force of which rang out with a loud clap, echoing through the now-empty hallway and leaving his palm stinging.

You were giggling again, chewing your lower lip like you meant to contain the sound.

“Really though, he’s gonna love you. You guys like all the same nerdy stuff,” you said, rapping your knuckles against his chest. “You’ll be best friends and then I’ll just be that girl from across the street who used to be cool. Last year’s toys —totally lame.”

Eddie caught your hand and held it there, brushing the pad of his thumb across your knuckles and telling himself he didn’t need to tell you just how cool he thought you were, how much he loved you.

He was too caught in the way his heart was suddenly thumping in his chest over the sentiment.

Nobody ever said “oh you should meet Eddie Munson, you’re gonna love him,” — at least not without a heavy dose of sarcasm.

Nobody loved Eddie. Except for you … and the kid you babysat, apparently.

It made him feel like he could burst.

Eddie wanted to linger in the feeling a little longer, bask in its glow, but because he was who he was, he just couldn’t help himself.

“Of course, he’s gonna love me, I’m awesome.”

You snorted with a burst of undainty laughter.

“And so modest!” You teased, eyes growing soft as you walked your fingers up over his chest. “And smart, and funny, and handsome…”

Eddie felt his stomach do a cartoon flip-flop – he was still learning to take compliments like that, and you’d made it perfectly clear that you wouldn’t stand for his self-deprecating comments, which left him standing hopelessly defenseless in moments like this.

He rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to hide his face in the crook of your neck, if only to hide the warmth he could feel creeping up into his face.

“Aw, babe…” he mumbled, “You’re gonna make me blush.”

Then your hands drifted southward to rest on the buckle of his belt, and Eddie felt something inside of him begin to throb.

He couldn’t tell if it was his heart or his dick.

“Let me come with you.” He suddenly couldn’t stop himself from saying, perhaps a little too earnestly as he did his best to ignore the way your nose wrinkled at the unintended innuendo.

You giggled, and Eddie pushed his lower lip out and pinched his brows in a mock pout.

“No, stop it, I’m trying to be sweet.” He huffed.

You breathed a sigh of soft laughter through your nose and nodded, relenting.

Eddie dropped his chin and nudged your nose with his, glancing up at you through the thrush of his lashes in a gentle mockery of the way you’d looked at him moments before.

“Please?” He pleaded, softly.

At this point, despite how you’d gotten him all worked up, he didn’t even want to have sex with you (that was a bald-faced lie, he would have fully taken you right there against the lockers if this were some kind of cheap porno and if he thought he could get away with it) he just wanted to be near you —always— sit on the couch and watch a movie with you, cuddle you, hold your hand, breathe you in, kiss you, hold you and never let you go.

Truthfully, Eddie just wanted in on the piece of your life that you had yet to share with him, because he was infinitely curious about how you spent your nights entertaining the kid you babysat.

Selfishly, he wanted every part of you to belong solely to him. He was, in fact, more than just a little bit jealous of how much of your time and attention that kid held in his grubby little hands.

It was stupid, he knew that, but you had a knack for making him just a little more stupid than was normal.

You brought your hands up to smooth the wrinkles out of the front of his shirt and drummed your fingers over his heart.

It was a nice prelude to the gentle rejection hanging on your lips.

“Not tonight, Eds.” You mumbled.

Eddie made an unabashedly whiny sound of disappointment in the hollow of his throat and put on a show of pouting as he dropped his head to press his forehead against yours.

“Fine,” He sighed – rather pathetically in the hopes that you would take pity on him enough to reconsider.

You didn’t, but you did surprise him by suddenly fisting your hands in the front of his jacket and tugging him closer, as if that were even possible.

He was fully pressed against you now, pinning you to the lockers, and that little sparkle of mischief was back in your eyes.

“…You should come over after, though.” you breathed against his lips.

Eddie felt heat flaring in his chest, the possibility of “after” dripping down to pool in the pit of his abdomen – he could feel his face splitting in a slow smile as he rocked back on his heels.

“Yeah?”

You nodded slowly, “My parents are in Chicago until next week — and I should be done tonight by eleven-thirty? Then we can hang out, watch a movie, and stuff.”

If he was grinning any wider, his face might have started to peel off, so Eddie bit his lip.

“And stuff, huh?” He echoed, tilting his head in curiosity, “What kinda stuff?”

He knew exactly what kind of stuff you were talking about, he just wanted to hear you say it.

“Oh, I dunno.” You hummed innocently, “Maybe play some games?”

“I like games.” Eddie said, nodding emphatically, “What kind of games do you want to play?”

You blew out a breath and rolled your eyes up like you were thinking, even going so far as to tap your chin with your index finger. You were so goddamn cute, Eddie’s fingers twitched with the urge to squish your face.

“Well, there’s Candyland… Twister… Chutes and Ladders?”

It was a stretch, to be sure, but nobody ever accused him of being mature, and in spite of himself, he snorted with laughter.

Chutes and Ladders… Dumb joke. Really trashy. Barely even an innuendo.

Still, he tried and failed to compose himself.

“Sounds good. What next?” Eddie asked, still chuckling.

Your eyebrows jumped, like you couldn’t believe the audacity of him to even think to ask.

“What, and ruin the surprise?”

The surprise was ruined the minute you put your hands on his belt.

It was sex.

You meant sex, but you were too shy to say it outright.

You were the type of person who wasn’t shy about initiating but did so by rolling up with your hands behind your back, eyebrows jumping as you coquettishly asked if he wanted to “fool around”, and it was so incredibly cheesy Eddie couldn’t help but fall a little more madly in love with you for it.

His heart was so full with the feeling, the declaration of it lived perpetually on the tip of his tongue, but how many times a day could a man feasibly tell the object of his affection he loved her before the words started to lose meaning?

The danger of semantic satiation was ever-present.

“You,” he said, taking your face in his hands and pressing a gentle kiss to your lips, again and again, each following word punctuated with another chaste peck, “Are,” Kiss. “An incorrigible,” Kiss. “Tease.” Kiss kiss kiss. “And a mean, mean girl. How am I ever supposed to make it to eleven-thirty?”

You stuck him to the spot with a sly look, quirking your brow and pursing your lips.

“You’ve got hands, don’t you?” You said, deadpan.

The boldness of the statement hit him like a slap to the face, and as if it weren’t enough to say it, you punctuated the statement by bringing your fist up and making a slow jerking motion.

“Oh, my God!” Eddie shouted, hands flying down to grip you by the shoulders as he barked out a burst of sharp, incredulous laughter. “Who are you?”

In the distance, he could hear the marching band beginning to play, signifying the start of the pep rally.

You smiled, looking awfully proud of yourself for being so naughty, and then you were serious again, pouting.

“Well?” You prompted, “Edward. I asked you a question.”

Eddie bristled at the sound of his full name and gave you a hard, disapproving look. You just smiled, a cat in cream – you were really gonna pay for that one tonight, and he had to wonder if you knew that.

His fingers scrabbled up to rest at the junction where your shoulders met your neck – because he couldn’t not touch you – fingers gracing the curve of your throat, and he met your gaze.

“Yes.” He said matter-of-factly, “You’re absolutely right, my darling little weirdo. I’ve got hands.”

And then there was that look again. You were pleased as punch and his head was spinning for it.

He bit his tongue to resist the urge to tell you he loved you again.

Eddie had never been this stupid about someone in his entire life – he’d been with other people, had little crushes here and there, some reciprocated, most not, but he had never been in love before, not like this.

Nobody had ever matched his energy the way you did. He knew he could be too much, but his feelings had always been big and unwieldy. Eddie did nothing in small measures, least of all love, and he didn’t know how to parcel it out in manageable bites. Once he was in, he was all in, and he threw everything he had to offer at the object of his affection. You were the first person who had ever accepted it without hesitation, and perhaps most thrilling of all, you’d given it right back.

He could hardly stand it.

He would have married you tomorrow if you’d have him, but that was a secret, something shiny to take out and admire in private moments. That was just for him.

Eddie pulled you into a tight hug, and pressed yet another kiss to your temple. He hummed contentedly when he felt your arms snake up around his waist under his jacket and the soft rumble of you sighing against him and he loved loved loved — but still, he just couldn’t help himself.

“I’ve also got a blanket in the back of my van.” He said crudely into the line of your hair.

Then it was your turn to shout with laughter, pushing against his chest. Eddie only held you tighter, deciding he could stand to indulge himself, and you could stand to be squeezed a little.

“Come on, Sweetheart.” He said, teasing a little too much as he hugged you and stretched the words in a singsong way, “Let’s go out to the vaaaan.”

“I don’t have time!” You laughed, the strain of trying to break free of him evident in your voice.

Eddie nuzzled his face into the crown of your head and felt the tickling of static kicking up over his nose and cheeks.

“Sure you do.”

You continued to struggle, and Eddie continued to hold on.

“I don’t want to be late.”

“You can be a little late.”

“No—"

“Yes.”

“Eddie.” You whined, that authoritative warning creeping into your tone again.

Christ, he loved it when you got bossy.

Still, Eddie released you, though only to seize you roughly by the jaw and pull you back to him, slanting his mouth against yours in a forceful kiss. He coaxed you to open up for him just a little more with a swipe of his tongue and the little moan you breathed into him as he licked the roof of your mouth shots all the way down to his balls, kind of like a bolt of lightning, kind of like getting kicked there.

It was not entirely unpleasant.

You were more than just a little bit breathless when Eddie finally released you with a wet, vulgar smack, feeling satisfied enough to start purring, like a cat in cream as he licked his lips. He watched you struggle to open your eyes and hummed contentedly at the sight.

He still had a gentle hold on your jaw, and he was not entirely convinced he wasn’t just going to kiss you again and again, holding you to the spot until you were late to babysit, just because you were that sweet, with your pink lips parted ever so slightly and your face flushed bright red.

Instead, he squished your cheeks in his hand and shook your head back and forth, fondly, before finally releasing you.

“Alright, that’s enough out of you.” He said, “Begone Succubus! And tempt me no more.”

“Don’t be mean,” you huffed, taking your bag from Eddie as he offered it to you and shouldering it.

Eddie spun you away, and crooked his fingertips to hold on until distance demanded you part. Off you went, looking back at him with a bashful smile and starting down the hall.

He sighed, and watched you go. Eddie pressed his hand to the left side of his chest where he could feel his heart thumping and felt utterly dopey, drunk on your love and lost in the promise of “after”.

Then, he remembered almost too late that he couldn’t just let you go — he had to get you back for biting him— and because you were a brat and he had absolutely no handle on his impulsivity, Eddie took a big step forward and brought his hand down to clap you on the ass with a loud smack.

You yelped and leaped damn near out of your skin, hands flying down to cover the offended spot and face burning as you turned back to glare at him. You stuck your tongue out at him and he could feel the muscles in his face start to hurt from how widely he was grinning.

“See you tonight!” He called, watching you scurry down the hall, shoulders pulled up to your ears because of course —of course— he still wasn’t done, so he raised his voice and shouted, “—you know— FOR THE SEX!”

“Eddie!” You hissed, “Shut up!”

Eddie watches Chrissy go and breathes out a hard, shaky breath to try and banish the way he’s getting dangerously misty-eyed.

When she’s gone, disappeared around the corner, he sinks to the floor to stop his knees from buckling underneath him, and crouches at the foot of the lockers. He groans and crushes his palms into his eyes until he sees bursts of color.

Eddie misses you more than he’s missed anything in his stupid, pathetic life, and he feels guilty for it because he has no right to miss you after he’d so carelessly thrown you away.

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

He can’t shake the feeling that with the perfectly innocent interaction he’d just had with Chrissy, he’s wronged you somehow, betrayed you — more than he already has — and he has to remind himself that flirting isn’t cheating.

You can’t cheat on someone you aren’t with.

He sniffs pathetically and runs the back of his hand under his nose.

He wishes the ground would open up and swallow him. He wishes he could feel normal again, free from this pervasive guilt, these stupid panic attacks, the crushing vice you still hold on his life after almost a year. He wishes he could be rid of you, and he wishes he would cease to exist for even thinking that.

Nobody’s fault but your own, you fucking loser.

Eddie makes himself think about Chrissy, because that feels easier than missing you. He thinks about her long legs in her short little cheer skirt, the gentle pout of her pink lips, her big wet eyes.

He thinks about how he’s going to see her again tomorrow.

He tells himself he’ll keep on flirting with her if she’s open to it, because she’s nice and she’s pretty and because there’s danger in it.

He knows he’ll definitely end up having sex with her if she comes on to him, because it’s been eight months since he’s felt the gentle press of your body and his hand has been a poor substitute.

Eddie knows Chrissy has a boyfriend, but he doesn’t care, because fuck Jason Carver and the shining white horse he rode in on.

There is a delicious sense of satisfaction in thinking about how goddamn pissed Jason would be to find out Chrissy had been talking to him, let alone soliciting drugs from him.

His perfect little princess.

Eddie thinks he could ruin her and have fun doing it.

No, he wouldn’t. He would do it and feel awful about it afterward because all he seems to manage to do these days is destroy himself a little more.

The thought of using her like that makes him feel sick, but he doesn’t know what to do with all the love you left behind in him. He doesn’t know where to put it. He won’t part with it — it’s all he has left of you — but it’s becoming a weight much too cumbersome to carry.

Eddie tells himself that maybe a rebound is the answer, maybe it’s what he needs to finally start to feel halfway normal again. Maybe it’s time to finally start thinking about moving on… the thought of it breaks his heart all over again.

If he closes his eyes tight enough he can still see you walking down the hall, glancing back at him over your shoulder – sticking your tongue out at him because you think he’s an asshole.

You'd wanted to see him.

He wants to see you so badly it makes his chest hurt… but instead, tomorrow he is going to see Chrissy...

Taglist: @harrys-tittie @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e @itsrainingbisexualfrogs @thicksexxualtension @ganseysgff @scoopsr0bin @peanutbutter-y-jams @audhd-dragonaut @clilxlx @alexandriaemily20 @averagestudent03 @but-vanessa @cosmictime45 @timelordfreya @forever-war @munsonzzgf

#combusting actually!!!!!!#eddie munson x reader #I cried and I laughed and I lost my mind

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