Chapter Text
“It’s for you.”
Robin dangles the phone across the counter with an exasperated look, prompting Steve to stop messing with the candy display and to take it from her with an arched eyebrow. “Family Video, this is Steve,” he recites, pulling at the cord so he doesn’t have to crane his neck.
“Harrington. Need a ride,” someone slurs back. It takes Steve all of ten seconds to figure out that it’s Eddie’s voice. It takes him another to figure out that Eddie sounds completely plastered out of his mind.
“Where are you?” he sighs. Then he pulls the receiver an inch away and mouths keys at Robin. This is hardly the first time their new monster-fighting acquaintance has called them at work in the hopes that either of them were available to drop everything and come pick him up from whatever shithole he’s stranded himself at.
Robin ducks her head to quickly rummage around the counter below the register where they keep all their junk, popping back up a second to drop Steve’s (ridiculously large, according to her) keychain into his palm.
“Home,” Eddie answers, which immediately makes Steve pause.
“Why do you need a ride if you’re already home?”
The next part is muttered into the phone, quiet enough that Steve has to ask him to repeat it.
“Need to go to the hospital.”
The phone slips out of Steve’s hand and he fumbles for it blindly before the cord catches on the edge of the counter and it clatters loudly. When Steve picks the phone up again, he can hear Eddie giggling manically through the receiver.
“Did you just drop the phone? Careful man, that’s company property. That Keith dude hates you enough already.” He sounds mumbly and amused and entirely out of it. An ice-cold panic shoots down Steve’s spine.
“Why do you need to go to the hospital?” he demands, making Robin’s eyes widen with alarm.
“Cut myself pretty bad on a bottle. Thought it was a twist top but the neck broke off. It’s probably fine, I don’t need an ambulance or anything. But I’m a little drunk and there’s a lot of blood coming out and I don’t think I can really drive myself. I mean, I could if I tried —”
Steve waves his hand wildly even though Eddie can’t see it. “Okay, okay, shut up. I’m on my way. Just put pressure on it until I get there, okay?”
“M’kay.”
“I’m handing the phone back to Robin now.” He shoves the phone back over the counter into Robin’s hands. “Cover me for an hour?” he asks, and she nods affirmatively and shoos him off.
“Go, go.”
So Steve goes. Thankfully, Eddie’s place isn’t far. He doesn’t live in the trailer park anymore because his uncle lost his second job and they couldn’t keep staying there, and now they’re living together on the top floor of a shitty duplex about a mile away. Eddie’s van is the only car parked in the driveway when Steve finally pulls up, meaning that his uncle is either working a graveyard shift or has conveniently decided to fuck off for the night and leave Eddie alone to his own devices. Which, as of recently, hasn’t been turning out so well.
It’s been hard for all of them. The aftermath of all of it. Most of them haven’t really given themselves room to feel relief yet, even after driving a metaphorical stake through Vecna’s heart and watching him dissipate before their eyes. Steve has been fooled a few too many times by now to think that whatever’s going on with the Upside Down is truly over. Part of him thinks that it’ll never be over. When he admitted this to Dustin the other day, Dustin snorted at him. “Of course it’ll never be over, dude. Even if the physical stuff ends—which I doubt it will—we’re always going to have these memories. We’re like soldiers. PTSD and all that. We just gotta deal with it.”
And maybe that’s easy for him to say. Easier, at least. Dustin and the rest of the kids are young enough that they’ve still got room for hope. But for people like Steve, Nancy, Robin, and Jonathan, it’s different. They don’t have that room left. They’re all at points in their lives where they have to make a decision: stay in Hawkins or move on.
It’s especially different for Eddie. Eddie doesn’t have the experience that the rest of them do in dealing with the aftermath. Eddie doesn’t have the means to move on yet.
Steve remembers how he’d felt in the weeks following the first Demogorgon attack—how he’d been unable to sleep for weeks, how every time he closed his eyes there was a creature lunging at him from the darkness behind his eyelids. He remembers shutting himself in his room and using up his entire stash, smoking with his head out the window and a towel shoved under the crack in the door so his parents didn’t suspect anything. He remembers only coming out to grab food from the kitchen or swipe a beer from his dad’s fridge in the garage. He remembers being in that dark place.
He figures that the same thing has been going on with Eddie. But since Eddie has always been more… eccentric than Steve, it’s been a whole lot more obvious. Instead of locking himself in his house and drinking himself to death, he’s been doing it shamelessly out in the open.
But, Steve gets it. Robin gets it. They all do. So they all deal with it.
When the front door finally opens and puts an end to Steve’s incessant knocking, the first thing Steve notices is that Eddie is shirtless. His brain goes blank for a moment in utter confusion, then he realizes that Eddie has repurposed said shirt into a bandage that’s tied haphazardly around his left hand.
“You really couldn’t have found another shirt to do that with?” he asks, frazzled.
Eddie shrugs like it’s no big deal. “Already had one on me.”
Steve suppresses a groan and pushes past him into the living room, eyes darting around in search of some sort of article of clothing that will provide Eddie some level of decency when they have to deal with the ER nurses. He spots a black denim vest tossed over the back of a ratty armchair and grabs for it.
“Come on, Munson,” he says after shoving the thing into Eddie’s chest and ushering him out of the house, down the steps towards Steve’s idling car. “Ándale, ándale.”
“I’m coming, man. Jeez. This isn’t life or death.” Eddie holds his hands up in surrender, the vest hanging off his elbow as he’s only managed to get one arm through.
Steve opens the driver’s side door roughly. “Alcohol thins your blood. Lose too much and it will be life or death.”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” Eddie insists in a bad British accent as he plops down in the passenger seat. When Steve only gives him a blank look, his grin falls. “Monty Python and the Holy Grail? No? Come on, dude, how do you work at a video store?”
About forty-five minutes later, they’re sitting in the hospital waiting room after a determination by one of the nurses that Eddie’s wound wasn’t fatal and therefore wouldn’t require immediate attention. Eddie looks more than a little ridiculous slumped in the yellow plastic chair across from Steve with his half-bare chest and his legs stretched out in front of him, watching an infomercial for some kind of light-up kids toy with his lip curled. His hair is a mess, his bangs matted to his forehead while the harsh overhead lighting accentuates the unwashed frizziness framing his face.
He doesn’t seem to be in pain, which Steve thinks is a relatively good sign. But he’s also still a little out of it, his head tipping forward every so often when his gaze is fixed for too long in one place, like he keeps dozing off by accident. That’s the part Steve is concerned about.
He gets up at one point and feeds a handful of quarters into the vending machine near the front desk, returning with two bottles of water and dropping one in Eddie’s lap. “Drink.”
Eddie eyes it warily for a moment, then holds it up with his good hand and twists the cap off with his teeth. He spits the cap back out and takes a long swig, his Adam’s apple bobbing noticeably. He doesn’t say thank you, but Steve is fine with that. It doesn’t really matter.
“Kids these days are so lucky,” Eddie mumbles after a while, eyeing the infomercial with disdain. “We didn’t get those kinds of toys. When I was little my uncle would lock me out of the house and I’d just go around putting bugs in my pocket. That’s the type of shit I had to do for fun.”
Steve, chin in his hand, spares a glance at the TV in the corner but doesn’t reply. He lifts his head up to check his watch. It’s past ten o’clock, and he should really be getting back to the store to help Robin close before eleven. She’s got some sort of band thing in the morning that she can’t miss, and—like always—Steve is her designated chauffeur. But he doesn’t want to leave Eddie here without a way home, especially if he has to get stitches or something. He’s not that much of an asshole.
A few more minutes trudge by. He feels Eddie’s eyes on him. “What?”
“I bet you got those kinds of toys when you were a kid,” Eddie says, tilting his head and observing Steve with the same kind of mild disdain he’d directed towards the infomercial.
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, you’re kinda rich, aren’t you?”
Steve rolls his eyes towards the linoleum ceiling. “Depends on what counts as ‘rich’ in rural Indiana.”
“Rich enough to afford fancy toys. Rich enough to not have to play with bugs and mud.”
“I still played with bugs and mud.”
Eddie narrows his eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
Steve opens his mouth to defend himself, to argue that yes he was a gross kid and he did in fact have a jar of ants that he used to keep in his room during second grade, but he’s cut short by a nurse appearing in the doorway and calling Eddie’s name off her clipboard.
When Steve stands up and begins to follow him into the hall, Eddie stops and gives him a look. “You gonna talk to the doctor for me, Mom?”
Steve frowns and shoves at his shoulder. Not too hard, though. “You’re still half-drunk, Munson. Gotta make sure you don’t say something stupid.”
“Okay, alright. Whatever you say.”
As Eddie sits on the edge of a stiff-looking hospital bed, the nurse holds up one of those charts with all the different smiley faces and asks him to rate his pain on a scale of one to ten. He rates it a modest three and she raises her eyebrows, seeming impressed. Then her cheeks promptly turn a ruddy shade of pink as Eddie smirks and shoots a wink at her.
Steve turns and frowns at him once she’s gone. “Seriously?”
“I swear, that works on them every time,” Eddie replies, leaning back against the headboard and looking smug. “Apparently pain tolerance is crazy hot for nurses. If only they knew how much stupid shit I’ve gotten myself into. I’d be unstoppable.”
“Right, ‘cause you’re such a chick magnet.”
“Ooh, is that jealousy I’m sensing?”
Steve scoffs. “Uh-huh. Sure.”
“It totally is.” A shit-eating grin spreads across Eddie’s face. He reaches out to pinch Steve’s arm, causing Steve to yelp and swat him away. He throws his head back and laughs. “Pain tolerance, man. I’m telling you. That’s the key.”
The nurse returns a few minutes later with a bowl of warm water and an armful of cleaning supplies. She instructs Eddie to untie the shirt from around his hand and soak it in the bowl before she begins cleaning it. Then, when she lifts Eddie’s hand out of the bowl, she frowns at his assortment of large rings and begins pulling them off one by one, explaining to him how heavy jewelry can slow down circulation and disrupt the clotting process. Clearly he’s not listening, eyes unfocused somewhere beyond her head, so Steve listens for him.
Fortunately, the cut isn’t deep enough for him to need stitches. Unfortunately, that means he’ll have to keep his palm wrapped in gauze and bandages for the next two to three weeks, redressing and applying antiseptics at least twice a day. It also means he won’t be able to drive for at least a week, and Steve knows what it means when Eddie looks at him and produces a gleeful little smile.
“Don’t you have other friends who can drive you around?” Steve asks once they’re back in the parking lot, loaded up with enough antibiotics to last Eddie well over a month.
“Yeah. But you’re the most gullible.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
It’s almost midnight by the time they pull away from the hospital, which is kind of ridiculous considering that they got here before ten, and Eddie—quite literally—only had a flesh wound. Steve takes the long way back into town so he can swing by Family Video to see if the lights are still on, but they’re not. Robin probably closed without him. He hopes that she also punched out his timecard for him, otherwise Keith will definitely have his ass.
“You good to go home?” Steve asks, glancing over at the passenger’s side. Eddie is picking at a loose thread on his brand new bandage, and Steve feels the urge to reach over and shoo his fingers away from the wound. He’s only going to make it worse by doing that.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
The drive back to his place is relatively silent, save for the low music filtering through Steve’s shitty speaker system. Eddie turns it up a little, then frowns and turns it back down.
“Shit. I just realized I probably can’t play guitar with this thing, huh?”
“Probably not.”
“Fuck,” Eddie groans, thumping the back of his head against his seat. “That fucking blows. What am I supposed to do now?”
“I don’t know, dude. Whatever you do when you’re not playing guitar.”
“So… sit around and get high.”
Steve squints at him. “Are those your only two personality traits? Smoking and shredding?”
“And drinking. Don’t forget drinking.”
“Okay, so what about D&D? Isn’t that pretty time-consuming? I doubt Dustin is busy this week.”
Eddie snorts. “Yeah, but I’d have to start a whole new campaign. Our last one ended a while ago.”
“So, do that. Start a new one.”
“Start a new one,” Eddie mimics irritably. “Easier said than done, Harrington.”
Steve throws his hands up. “Jesus, fine! I’ll just stop trying to help you I guess.”
“That would be great, actually,” Eddie snaps back. They both fall silent, staring determinedly out the windows in different directions for a long moment. Then Eddie speaks up again, sounding a tad apologetic. “That was rude. I do appreciate you helping me. Really. I think I’m just fucking mad at myself or whatever and you’re the closest thing to take it out on.”
It’s a surprisingly honest admission.
“That’s okay,” Steve assures because it’s not like he’s actually mad or anything. “I get it. You’ve had a bad day.”
“A bad month, more like.”
“That too.”
There’s another long silence, broken only by Eddie blowing air through his lips noisily.
“Well. I certainly made this awkward. Sorry about that.”
Steve shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
He slows to a stop in front of Eddie’s duplex. All the lights are out, and his van is still the only vehicle in the driveway, which means he’ll most likely be alone tonight.
“Hey,” Steve says before Eddie closes the car door behind him. “I’m opening tomorrow but I’ll be off around four. If you need anything or you get bored just—call, or swing by, or whatever. Only if you want.”
Eddie pins him with a stare, processing his words. Steve is struck in that moment by how brown Eddie’s eyes are—the deep kind of brown that’s actually made up of a ton of different colors all jumbled together. At one point in his life, before all the interdimensional dark wizard bullshit, Steve probably would have found that stare unnerving. Now, he’s not quite sure what he feels.
“I might take you up on that,” Eddie finally says, patting Steve’s dashboard with a sense of finality before climbing out of the car. The window is rolled down on his side, and before he goes he ducks down again and curls his long fingers over the edge of the door. “Thanks again, man. I mean it.”
“Anytime.”
Eddie shoots him a smile, and it’s different from all the other ones that Steve has seen tonight. It’s a genuine one—not a sneer or a smirk. It’s… it’s refreshing.
The house is dark when Steve gets home that night, meaning that he’s the last one awake. And even though he knows he has to get up early tomorrow to pick up Robin before his shift, he’s not quite ready to hit the sack yet. Instead, he toes off his shoes in the foyer and takes a detour down to the basement where his parents keep all their old VHS tapes. He flicks the light on, then crouches down and traces a finger across the spines until he finally lands on what he’s looking for: Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
He pops the tape into the small television set in his room before climbing into bed, settling against his pillows and watching through lidded eyes as the opening title scrolls across the blue-hued screen. He falls asleep about an hour later to the sound of coconut hoof beats and to thoughts of long hair and brown eyes, a trace of a smile gracing his lips.