Chapter Text
It was Henderson’s fault. Clearly. That was the only way Steve could even begin to understand what was happening to him. The kid must have absorbed some of Eddie’s weirdness and rubbed it off on Steve, like one of those cats that trails round people’s houses and gets fur all over their pants. There was no way in hell Steve would be tolerating more than 5 minutes max with Eddie fucking Munson if the kid hadn’t desensitised him to some hardcore nerd stuff over the past few months. The guy was insufferable, never shut up, was always moving around, always had to be doing or saying something or else he got weird. Creepy weird. Steve hadn’t even been around him that long but he’d sure caught on to the fact that a quiet Eddie was a spiralling Eddie, and a spiralling Eddie was always about 2 seconds away from doing or saying something custom-designed to make you feel flayed open.
He was a lot like Robin in that sense, except where Robin’s brand of weird kept a steady pace in the background of Steve’s day, Eddie’s weird put him on edge. He couldn’t stop thinking about earlier when Eddie had suddenly leaned in like he had wanted to be inside Steve’s ear or something. Personal space, apparently, was about important to Eddie Munson as leaving Hawkins the hell alone was to the Upside Down. It kind of made him feel like he was going crazy too. His chest felt like it was buzzing with flies and his face kept on heating up. Maybe his wounds were infected, something was up, he hadn’t felt this untethered since-
“She somehow created a time warp with her power-”
He stopped on the stairs as the others carried on ahead without him.
“Dustin?”