Chapter Text
When Steve came back into the room, Eddie had already started narrating. He was gesticulating broadly from behind his screen, painting pictures with his hands as well as with his words, evoking what seemed to be an ancient castle well past the prime of its days to his audience of fifteen-year-old heroes. He was talking to them in a deep, smooth voice as this retired paladin character, a veteran of some war or another, his entire person turning imposing and grave. He hadn’t yet seemed to notice Steve standing in the doorway.
Steve hesitated only a little more before crossing the room, depositing the bowl of chips he was holding in the middle of the table. As he passed by him Eddie had thrown him a smile mid-monologue, dimples and everything. Steve averted his eyes, dropped his entire weight on the couch, and pretended to busy himself with a magazine.
Before that night, he had never had the opportunity to see the famed Edward Munson, supposedly “the best GM in the world, seriously, Steve, you have to believe me” in action. Mainly because Steve hadn’t much cared to. And he still didn’t. But, he reasoned with himself, it really would have been a waste to let the occasion pass without finally getting to sneak a look at what was so special about this game, that had Dustin almost replacing him at the start of the year. And it would have been double the waste to throw away the opportunity of observing Eddie from the vantage point of his own home as long as he had the chance.
The kids had come to him at the end of the school year, asking for asylum on behalf of what had remained of the Hellfire Club. Hawkins High School was closing for the summer and its AV closet with it. No one’s house had a table big enough to fit all of them, except the Wheelers’, and Mike’s parents seemed to have some very specific issues with their Dungeon Master, so their basement was off-limits. And really, Steve, you’re our only option left and your house’s like this big and always empty anyway and wouldn’t you like to spend more time with us, your favorite people in the whole wide world? Protests that actually, Robin was his favorite person in the whole wide world went unheard, and the Hellfire Club took residence in his living room on Thursdays after six.
The stinging jealousy Steve used to feel at the mere mention of Munson had given way to curiosity months before when he actually met the guy, and what with barely surviving the end of the world together Steve had let that curiosity grow into a weird mixture of interest and respect. Not that he would ever let Eddie know about it.
As he listened to his back-and-forth with Dustin, both of them in character, Steve had to admit to himself it was getting hard to hide that interest. He’d never seen Eddie look like that. When Steve usually saw Eddie out in the world, back when they still saw each other at school, or at Family Video when Eddie would come in to bother Robin and Steve for forty-five minutes and then maybe rent a tape, he had this sort of nervous energy about him. Not that he would be nervous, or shy in any way. Eddie was always great, sweeping motions, and lack of an inside voice, and booming melodrama. The performance he put up was always spectacular, but it was also, very recognizably, a performance: almost manic in a way that suggested he couldn’t afford to stop moving, to let people easily tell the difference between the genuine and the affected.
Now that he was actually performing, making voices and letting his tone ebb and flow with the tide of the story, Eddie looked nothing like his usual self. This Eddie was comfortable in his own skin and unselfconscious. He had complete control over the room, the teenagers hanging onto his every last syllable, willingly letting him guide them into what was starting to look like real danger.
“You are following Sir Jhaan out of his ancestral home, down a narrow but well-beaten path towards the cliffside. The last sliver of the waning moon hangs low in the sky, its light just enough to make out the towering outline of your new patron. He pauses for a moment –” Eddie’s eyes swept through the players at the table, even stopping for a fraction of a second on Steve’s. He became instantly aware that he hadn’t turned a page of his magazine in over ten minutes. So much for pretending to read. Eddie resumed, a faint smile on his lips, “he pauses for a moment, and when he turns you can see the starlight reflected in his eyes, and you can tell this half-elf has once been a great warrior, someone capable of making entire legions fight and die with him. He looks at you all and says: ‘Watch your step. No one ever comes out here.’”
“Where’s he taking us?” Dustin was fiddling with a pencil.
“It looks like a very small graveyard. It’s ancient, you figure it probably houses the former inhabitants of the mansion you just came out of. Sir Jhaan has opened the heavy stone doors to a crypt and is descending a flight of stairs. Do you follow him?”
Mike Wheeler’s voice was sure. “Yes.”
“You’re all now in the lower level of the crypt. In front of you, there is a single tombstone, overcast by the statue of a human woman in mourning. Her head is covered by a marble veil, so fine that it looks translucent in the light of the torches, and in her hands lies a silver sword. What do your characters do?”
“What does the sword look like?” asked Mike.
“It looks fine and light in a way that belies its underlying strength. It is elven made, two-handed, inscribed with runes that you two” he pointed at Will and Mike “recognize as pulsating with an almost imperceptible undercurrent of divine magic. It is a paladin’s sword.”
“What–”
Mike cut Lucas off immediately: “Can I hold it?”
Eddie smiled, his gaze intense. “You may try.”
“I go up to the statue of the woman and put my hand on the hilt of the silver sword.” Mike looked at Eddie, who gave him an encouraging nod. “I’m looking at the blade. Does anything happen?”
“This sword is ancient but so polished that you can see your reflection as if through a mirror. You see your own dark eyes, the glint of your armor, the reflection of the torches on the wall. If you angled it slightly, you could see Sir Jhaan staring at you with an intense, complicated expression. But you don’t. Because there’s one more set of eyes in the reflection you see, and – you know your companions. You’ve been through dozens of adventures together already, and they are as familiar to you as your own siblings. You would know them in darkness and death, in circumstances far stranger than this. You know the gray eyes staring into your soul do not belong to anyone in the room with you at the moment.” Eddie made a pregnant pause. “I need a wisdom saving throw.”
“FUCK,” Mike pressed his palms on the table and reached to his dice, “fuck, fuck, fuck, shit.”
“I told you, man, how many times –” Dustin had his hands in his hair.
“That’s. Shit. I’m not passing that.”
“What you all saw in these moments was Roland’s back, tense as he inspected the elven blade, and a sudden” Eddie gasped, widening his eyes, and the whole table gasped with him, “intake of breath. Your ally is turning now, sword in hand, so very slowly, and you can all see that while his face is the same, that is not your friend behind it anymore. His eyes have changed from their original black to a gray similar to the color of the sky right before a storm, to the color of moonlight on the coldest of nights. That is not the voice of your friend that comes out of him when he sets his cold eyes on Sir Jhaan and says: “melda…”
Eddie’s voice had dropped at least two octaves, he was almost growling now.
Dustin gasped again, loudly, and said: “Holy shit!” His hands were still in his hair. “No way.”
Eddie was still smiling faintly. As he took a deep breath and fixed a stack of papers behind his screen Steve saw that his hands were shaking a little, hidden from everyone at the table, but not from him.
Lucas’s eyes were going from Dustin to Eddie to Dustin again. “What? What did he say?”
“Who here speaks Elvish? Except for Henderson, apparently, in real life,” asked Eddie.
“I do,” Will said.
“He said ‘beloved’. ”
“What?” Lucas repeated, “Why?”
“Oh, I know why.”
“Shut it, Henderson. Do you ask Sir Jhaan that?”
“Yeah,” said Lucas, “what is that creature that possessed our friend, and why did she call you beloved?”
Eddie immediately shifted into his Sir Jhaan persona, his serious bearing contrasting with the spark of anticipation in his eyes. “I admit I have not been completely transparent with you all. If you’ll allow me, I’ll correct this shortcoming at once. It is not unknown to me what has troubled my castle and the surrounding countryside as of late. In fact, I know exactly who it was. Him,” he said, pointing at Mike, “my husband.”
Steve felt some kind of claw burrow itself in his intestines and pull even before the words completely registered in his mind. He was suddenly and inexplicably very glad no one was looking at him because he had the impression that anyone who looked would have known exactly what he was thinking, even if he didn’t even know what he was thinking himself. Everyone's gaze was glued to Eddie, though. Dustin was looking smug, Will a little green around the gills, Mike and Lucas shocked. Eddie’s leg was jiggling very fast under the table.
Eddie kept talking: “My beloved husband disappeared almost a year ago already. And in the months before… he was tormented. We had just lost our daughter to illness, you see, and he just couldn’t… he couldn’t bear it. He was a powerful wizard, and he started to practice necromancy in secret. Something… something must have corrupted his mind and pulled him away from me. I know I could have helped him if I –” he stopped abruptly. He looked around himself, almost as if searching for a sound he couldn’t quite place. “I need a wisdom check.”
“Four.”
“Seven.”
“Fourteen.”
“Five.”
“Well, that means that while Sir Jhaan is explaining, no one has noticed that the sword in Roland’s hand has been steadily melting for the past few minutes, and drop by drop it has started to create a mirror on the floor of the crypt. The silver in Roland’s eyes has melted down just like the silver of his sword, and he’s coming back to his senses. The mirror on the floor is growing, first the size of a palm, then the size of an open hand, then the size of a small child. On the other side of it something is twinkling, something almost like stars, or… or eyes. And since no one is staring into the abyss, the abyss does not feel at all self-conscious when it–” Eddie stood up and reached with his hand toward the center of the table, making everyone jump, “when it grabs Roland by the leg.”
There was a moment of absolute stillness.
“I need everyone to roll initiative.”
“Motherfucker!”
Steve couldn’t pretend to be uninterested after that. Except for a short break when he went out to pick up pizzas for everyone, he stayed and listened to every word as if through a daze, even the ones he couldn’t understand. After the initial surprise, the boys proved to be enthusiastic in their endeavor to return Sir Jhaan’s husband to him in one piece and exorcized of all malign influence.
It was way past midnight when the adventure finally started drawing to a close, evil mirror destroyed and necromancer redempted. Eddie was leaning toward his screen talking to the kids in his Sir Jhaan voice (why was it perfectly recognizable? How did he keep it that consistent?) and granting them boons worthy of their deeds. The magically reforged silver sword went to Mike, who had deserved it through his courage and loyalty. Lucas got a pair of magic boots, to support him as he supported his allies. When it got to Will’s turn, Eddie-as-Sir Jhaan looked at him with something akin to tenderness in his eyes and offered him an amulet.
“You know, you probably don’t remember this. You probably weren’t even a novice when it happened, but you should know that it was the Patriarch of your Temple who officiated our wedding, many years ago. I believe it is not a coincidence that it was a cleric of the Temple of Helm to give me my husband back then for the first time, and it is now again a cleric of the Temple of Helm to return him to me anew. May the God of Protection bless you in your travels, young adventurer. You should be proud.”
Will sounded a little strangled when he thanked him, but Eddie seemed to think nothing of it, wrapping up the session with a big bow. The surface tension snapped, as the players immediately started compiling the night’s greatest hits under their breath. Eddie was keeping himself out of the conversation, glancing at them here and there as he folded his screen and picked up his maps and manuals.
If the kids felt worn out by five hours straight of tabletop gaming they hid it well, and that didn’t stop Dustin from quietly bragging to Steve, “What did I tell you, Steve-o? What did I tell you? I swear if after tonight you try telling me again that you don’t want to join our next campaign…”
Behind Dustin, for once, Eddie looked like he was in a hurry. “Come on, guys, get moving!” he was already standing by the door, backpack on his shoulders, cartoonishly pretending to struggle to push Lucas and Will out of the way as if they were boulders, “It’s late already, plus I’m driving you all, plus the sacred laws of hospitality demand that we get out of Steve’s most handsome hair no later than one a.m., and the clock’s ticking” he cringes “I meant… you know what I meant. Let’s go.”
“Alright, I’m coming,” said Dustin, sounding exasperated. “Thought you were done being jealous of Steve.”
Will fastened the buckles of his messenger bag and turned to Steve. “Thank you for the hospitality, Steve. And the pizzas,” he added, because he was an angel.
“Yes! Everybody say thank you, Steve, goodnight, Steve, see you next Thursday, Steve. Over and out.”
Eddie sent him another one of his dimpled smiles, this one a bit less blinding than that first one at the beginning of the night, and closed the door behind himself. After a few seconds, the sound of the van going out of the driveway drifted through the windows.
Steve was left alone in his house again.
When he turned to look at the low table in his living room it was almost jarring to see it as it always was, pristine, carefully tidied up by Eddie and Lucas, with no sign of Eddie’s big personality or the teens’ chaos. The only proof they had ever been there just moments before were the crumbs, and even those would disappear tomorrow morning as soon as Steve swept the floor.
The clock ticked on the kitchen wall.
Steve didn’t feel like making it tomorrow morning yet. He didn’t feel tired anyway. He picked up his discarded magazine and turned on the tv for good measure, flitting through the channels in search of something brainless enough to follow while half-asleep and interesting enough to keep his stray thoughts from circling back to the session. The glint in Eddie’s eyes when he managed to fit a particularly impressive one-liner in a dialogue. The fondness when Dustin explained that he and Suzie sent each other letters in elvish. The context of said elvish. There it was. Too late. A whole forty-five seconds. That must have been a new record in patheticness.
Steve’s mind went back to the way Eddie had pronounced the words ‘my husband’ with such confidence. With an assuredness that didn’t leave space for any doubt. Of course his elf veteran guy had a husband, of course their wedding had been officiated at an important temple. The claw was back in his lower intestine.
Why would he put that in a campaign for the kids? Why right then, right there, at Steve’s house? It didn’t feel like a coincidence. It felt like Eddie’s choice was pointed, somehow. Was it supposed to mean something? What could it even mean? Maybe he was proving a point to the kids. Make them know that gay soldier elves were cool and normal. Maybe all of his campaigns had gay elves and Steve just didn’t know ‘cause he wasn’t there. Even as he thought it, he knew that wasn’t true; the kids’ reaction alone proved it.
He was definitely overthinking this. The real reason was probably something stupid, like he made this choice for shock value. For no reason. Or was there a reason? Was there some other critical piece of information that he was missing?
Steve tried to reason with himself. Be rational. Since when did Eddie need a hidden motive to act the way he acted? He wasn’t the type to hide behind hints and subtext. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense to him that maybe Eddie just genuinely cared about this kind of stuff. He was the leader of the most exclusive club of losers in a school that hated him, under his intimidating exterior he was caring and kind, and he always stood up against injustice. Of course he would stand in defense of outcasts all over the world. After all, he had heard more than one rant against Reagan from the man, especially while he was talking to Robin.
And as he thought of Robin, a wave of relief swept over him. As many were the people that would hate her if they found out she was a lesbian, he was now relatively sure Eddie would not be one of them. And wasn’t that a reassuring thought. Steve sighed, letting his head rest on the cushions.
God, why couldn’t he stop thinking about it? It was weird, right? It was definitely weird for a straight guy to be that obsessed with a fictional gay person. And the weirdest thing was that odd sense of dread that closed his stomach and twisted his insides as soon as the words– no, as soon as the implication of the words left Eddie’s mouth. Was he being homophobic? A wave of guilt washed over him. No, that didn’t make sense. He’d shed that type of callousness together with the cape and crown of King Steve. He didn’t have that weird of a reaction when Robin came out to him. Or. Well. He did remember a very strong urge to throw up when the person who would become his best friend looked right at him, tears in her blue eyes, and said, softly, ‘Steve…’ but he’d chalked that up to the Russian drugs and the concussion. He felt the urge to throw up right now .
Steve brought his hands to his face, pressing the heels of his palms hard enough on his eyes that he saw shapes. It was too late for this line of thought. Definitely too late to let himself think that maybe his friends deserved friends who were more like Eddie, open-minded and self-assured, and less like him, who deep down, when no one was watching, probably remained nothing more than a douchebag.
The doorbell startled him out of his spiral.
Steve stood up, crossed his house, and answered the door on autopilot, not expecting at all to be faced with.
“Munson?”
Eddie had an apologetic look on his face while he stood on his doorstep, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“Yeah, I’m really sorry to bother you, man, I really am, I just realized after I dropped off all the kids that I must have left my keys here, probably, I think, and I didn’t wanna bother you this late but my uncle isn’t home ‘cause he works nights, y’know, and I didn’t really wanna spend the night in the van again…”
“Woah, woah, stop.” He moved out of the doorway and motioned for Eddie to come inside, “Come in, let's look for your keys. Wait, what do you mean spend the night in the van again ?”
Steve led the way back to his living room. There was no way Eddie would know what he was just thinking, he told himself. The guy was perceptive, not a mind reader. He just needed to act natural. Eddie wasn’t even looking at him anyway, that nervous energy that possessed him when he wasn’t playing DnD coming back full force.
“Oh, just that this fuckin'. Keeps. Happening. ” He gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “If I make my uncle change the locks for the fourth time in a year and he finally throws me out, I would actually deserve that. They're not in the cushions, shit. He keeps calling me a problem child, I think he still hopes I'll grow out of it someday.”
Steve hummed as he turned around a corner, trying to retrace Eddie’s steps and his own normal social functioning. He took a deep breath. The shuffling sounds from the next room quickly died down, and there was silence.
“They're not in the kitchen either.” Steve peeked into the room to see Eddie draped on the floor, head hidden in his arms on the couch right where Steve was sitting a minute ago. He almost looked like a Greek statue, his torso twisted at the waist, curly hair falling everywhere. Steve felt the weird need to make him smile.
“Aw, come on, man. I’ll babysit you too, no problem.” This granted him a middle finger from Eddie, who kept his face hidden in his arms. Steve decided to put up his most faithful Mrs. Henderson impression: “You would lose your head if it wasn’t screwed onto your shoulders, young man.”
Eddie huffed a little and finally looked at Steve, “Oh, I lost that too. Many years ago.” He was dramatically letting himself sink into the carpet. “Haven’t you heard? It was a tragic affair,” he made a little mock sniffle, “sometimes I can still hear its voice.”
Eddie still didn’t sound happy, but at least the jokes and theatrics were back. He was grinning up at Steve from where he laid, hands on his stomach, Hellfire shirt riding up his studded belt slightly.
Steve hesitated, made a half-hearted attempt at looking for a glimmer of metal, “Listen, upstairs there’s a g–”
“FOUND ‘EM!” Eddie flipped over, his entire arm disappearing under the couch and coming out triumphantly holding a small, round keychain around his ringed fingers. “Thank God. How the fuck did you guys end up down there? Sorry. You were saying, Harrington?”
“Nothing! Just glad you’re not locked out for tonight.”
“No, yeah, that would not have been fun.”
Right. Steve extended his hand, but Eddie was already getting up on his own. He retracted it quickly. “Uh… drive home safely.”
“Oh. Yeah, I really should get out of your beautiful hair, shouldn’t I? Bothered you enough for one night already.” Eddie dusted his knees and took a quick step back, “Sorry. For being such a…” he fluttered his fingers next to his forehead, making the keys jingle.
“No. No, don’t apologize, tonight was– it was fun.” Don’t make it weird, Harrington. “The kids loved it,” he added.
“Yeah?” breathed Eddie, “You think so? I can never really tell with this kind of stuff.”
“Are you kidding?” Steve scoffed, “I’m never gonna hear the end of this. ‘Ooh, Steve, did you see what Eddie did with that sword? Did you see how I killed that undead bat, or demonic chicken, or whatever?’”
Eddie watched him attentively for a second more, then chuckled lightly, fiddling with his rings. “All right. Well. I’m glad. I think I should go now, probably.”
As Eddie opened the door he stopped and turned slightly, a smile in his big brown eyes, and said, “See you around, Harrington.”
“Yeah. See you.”
There were other words in his throat but he choked them down, and the door clicked closed behind his friend for the second time that night.
This time, Steve knew he was going straight to bed.