Chapter Text
Volume One: Pale Shelter
MONDAY NOVEMBER 7TH, 1983
Bleary eyes and a clang from the door; Eddie wakes to raw ice in his chest and a gritty feeling in his mouth, like road salt. Padded bench thin and utterly uncomfortable beneath him. It takes a second for vision to meet brain and connect; he says a silent prayer for his neurons, fried by whatever Rick gave him last night, those precious little jumper cables. Maybe something really is listening, because, eventually, they spark. He recognizes the room.
“He wakes,” someone says. The guy opposite him, an older guy with a belly, baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes like a sleep mask. “Thought you were dead for a second there, kid, how much did you drink?”
Nothing, and that was the problem, wasn’t it? Drinking, Eddie could do. Easy. The new stuff– not so much. He pulls himself into a sitting position, feeling for the damp stain of drool on his cheek, checking his features are all in the right places. First time he was here it wasn’t his fault, exactly, just drunk enough to resist the usual knocking around, say something stupid, do something stupider, get his lights punched out for his trouble. At least this time there’s no break in his nose.
“Jesus, how old are you?” the guy says, squinting at him.
“Seventeen.”
The guy shakes his head disbelievingly. “Kids these days. Hell, we were all drinkin’, but not drinkin’ ourselves stupid and certainly not gettin’ caught for it.”
Eddie shrugs. “What can I say?” His tongue feels heavy and unwieldy in his mouth. There’s something sparking up his arms from his fingers, something twitchy and nervous, the way a paranoid weed high feels, though by rights he should be halfway through the comedown by now. What the fuck did he take? “Maybe I’m just stupid.”
The guy scoffs. Then the door opens, and Eddie shoots around to look at it, moves in a way that makes things tense up and zoom out sort of like vertigo. Not really a nauseous hangover, just something vaguely wrong inside his brain. Not like that’s a new feeling, really, for him.
“I catch you in the drunk tank again, kid, and you’re gonna go the way of your old man.” That’s Powell, he sorta remembers, cynical no-nonsense face under a hat that’s no match for the Chief’s own. It was the Chief who picked him up, he thinks? Khaki schmutter, not blue, so it has to have been.
“Well, considering he can’t stand me, I think that would make everyone rather unhappy.”
“Funny. You’re funny,” Powell says, face like a stone. “C’mon, your uncle’s here. I hope he chews you out for all you’re worth.”
Eddie thinks about making the quip: so not very much, then. But it’s by the officer’s good grace that he’s getting out of here at all, so he keeps his mouth shut and eases himself off the bench, not enjoying the way his heart skitters in his chest as he stands up. Why does he never remember that comedowns make him anxious? Fucking idiot. Idiot who can’t remember what he took last night. Fuck.
“Wayne,” he says, when Powell takes him out to the Corridor for Relatives Posting Bail, at least that’s what Eddie reckons it’s called, and shit, Wayne didn’t have to post bail, did he? Was he arrested? Was that–
Wayne is sitting with his hands clasped between his knees, shoulder brushing the shoulder of the woman next to him, Joyce, Eddie thinks maybe, recognizes her as the clerk from Melvald’s and something else too, something he can’t yet place. She’s hunched over and when Eddie speaks her eyes jump to him, big and wild and desperate like she’s waiting for someone, and when he’s not the person she’s looking for her eyes dip to the floor in defeat.
“Eddie,” Wayne says, getting to his feet, and oh, he’s angry. Voice mild, but Eddie can tell. The iron stiffness in his shoulders, and shit, he worked last night, didn’t he, he should be sleeping right now–
Eddie approaches him slowly. The lights are too bright overhead; it’s doing weird things to his vision, like zooming in and out. “Sorry,” he mumbles. Wayne doesn’t say anything.
“Did you see Hopper?” That’s Joyce, looking up painfully from her seat, where her fingers are curled around the edge of the plastic.
Eddie shakes his head. “Sorry.”
Her eyes drop back to the floor. She doesn’t respond. Eddie wonders idly what’s wrong, what’s the matter. She had a no-good husband, didn’t she? Lonnie Byers. He remembers he was friends with Eddie’s dad. Shit, that’s why he recognizes her, which–
He follows Wayne outside without looking back.
Outside, the sunshine is painful. Eddie squints and then thinks better of it, pressing his thumb and pointer finger into his eyes, letting Wayne’s stiff hand on his shoulder guide him to the car. He feels painfully here, is the problem. The hard asphalt through the soles of his boots, the tug of cold air at his growing-out hair. And he’s only in a fucking t-shirt, he realizes now, did he leave his jacket at Rick’s?
He’s pushed against the car, cold and solid at his back, and he opens his eyes to see Wayne’s tired, bitter face.
“Fuckin’ take it, kid, Jesus.” He’s holding out his corduroy jacket, the one lined with sheepskin, his hand still warm through Eddie’s t shirt.
Eddie stares at him for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he says again.
“Just take it.”
Eddie takes it, shrugging it on, feeling some of the ice in his chest melt at the sudden warmth, the smell of cigarettes and engine oil the fleece gives off. “Thanks,” he says, getting in the car. Across the parking lot, he glimpses the Chief’s Blazer pulling in, the guy himself getting out with a grim, hungover expression. Then he looks back at Wayne, whose hand is hovering over the parking brake. “Can we go before you chew me out? I really need a Tylenol and maybe a nap.”
Wayne sighs and begins to back out of the parking lot. “Y’know you’re supposed to be at school, right? It’s nearly nine. If they try to suspend you again–“
“Who’d suspend me?” Eddie says, grinning, and some of that ice in his chest loosens further at the twitch of Wayne’s lips.
But then Wayne is frowning again, and he does look fucking tired, is the thing, tired enough to tie Eddie’s stomach in guilty knots. He shouldn’t do this, he knows. He doesn’t know why he does it. “Look, I ain’t your dad,” Wayne starts. Which, fucking great. Great start. “I ain’t gonna– gonna go round tellin’ you what you can and can’t do. But I’m just gonna say that you–“ He flexes his hand on the wheel. His fingernails are grimy, dirt from the plant embedded up to his nail beds. “I thought you had a handle on all this, kid. I thought we had a handle on it.”
Eddie’s hands are trembling. He digs his fingers into his thighs to try to still them, their frantic jittering. “We do,” he mutters. “It’s not– it’s not like that, Wayne, it’s not–“
Wayne presses his lips together like he doesn’t quite believe him. “Sure. Okay. I just– it worries me, kid. You gotta look after yourself. I can’t watch you just–“
He stops, something weird in his voice, and Eddie can’t look at him suddenly, can’t look anywhere but out the window at the streets flickering past. He runs his hands over his jeans again, tugs on a loose thread in the rip at his knee. “I know,” he says haltingly. “I know, I’m– I’m sorry.”
“Are you gonna be good to drive yourself to school? God knows where you left the van, but you can just drive the car as long as you bring it back before my shift.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Something inexplicable is crawling up his throat right now, which, shouldn’t this have happened earlier? In the drunk tank, or meeting Wayne’s eyes for the first time in the hallway? But it’s happening now, the tightening in his chest, the clamminess in his hands, the feeling like he has to get away and he should have expected this from the moment he let whatever Rick gave him dissolve on his tongue but he is stupid, isn’t he, so why would he have thought about that? When he’s not the sort of person who thinks about it? And now Wayne’s eyes are heavy on him and Eddie can’t fucking meet them because why is he even–
“Breathe, Eddie, it’s okay, breathe for me,” Wayne’s saying, and the car’s stopped, why has the car stopped, they should be getting back so Wayne can get to sleep so he can wake up for his shift so things can keep ticking over the world can keep spinning–
“You should– you should be– mad,” Eddie gets out. “Why aren’t– why aren’t you– mad?”
A silence. He becomes aware — as the ringing in his ears recedes — that that Pat Benatar song is playing faint on the radio, not really either of their tastes, not really something either of them would put on by choice. Love is a Battlefield. He listens to it as he waits. And waits. Eventually he twists in his seat and looks at Wayne, finally, who isn’t looking at him, eyes on a chip in the windshield.
Eddie bites his tongue and then says it anyway. “Y’know, hasn’t it ever occurred to you that it might just help if you– if you got fucking mad for once, if you just– if you–”
Wayne puts the car in gear and they start moving again. “It does make me mad, kid. I never said it didn’t. I just think it– shit, I think you’re probably torturin’ yourself worse than anything I could say, and I always said I wasn't gonna be like–“ He takes one hand off the wheel and scrubs it over his face. “Like my damn brother, so here I am, keepin’ my mouth shut.”
A silence. Eddie doesn’t know what to say to that. He keeps his mouth shut too.
They get back home; Wayne slumps down on the pullout and begins snoring immediately, unlit cigarette slipping from between his fingers. Eddie stands in the doorway and thinks about not going to school at all. But Wayne’s right, is the thing, about the suspension. He’s missed too much class already, and the ones he hasn’t missed he’s not doing great in, let’s be honest, and it’s only November but he’s got a plan, this year, is the thing, the plan to get the fuck out of dodge the second the year ends, and that plan involves him graduating.
So he has to go to school.
He risks a shower and it pays off — hot water, for once, it’s been on the blink for weeks but maybe today’s his lucky day — and he brushes his teeth while trying to avoid his reflection in the mirror, all sunken eyes and an unhealthy hue to his skin. He looks like he spent the night in jail.
But then again, he’s never been very good at trying to be anything he’s not, so the honesty sort of suits him.
It’s nearly ten when he gets to school, his hair still damp and beginning to frizz in the air. He takes a second in the parking lot, hanging his head before the wheel, taking a long breath in and a long breath out. Serves him right for going on a bender on a Sunday, right?
Then he cuts the engine, killing AC/DC in the middle of that recent single he’s not quite sure about, and goes inside, gets greeted by Mrs. Argus’ drawling disdain, So nice of you to join us, Mr. Munson, and slouches in his seat and tries to get his brain to focus on History, which is a losing game, really, they’ve known that for a while.
He feels eyes on him, from the back of the room. He doesn’t look round; he knows whose they are. Knows the person won’t approach him, either, won’t pass a note or whisper down the row like guys get to do to girls. Just stare, and catch him in the bathrooms when he thinks they’re empty, a little shred of privacy in the hallways where privacy doesn’t exist–
Which he does. Catch him in the bathrooms.
Eddie comes in and finds him — Tommy C., the guy from last night, the guy who was watching him in class — laughing at Steve fucking Harrington’s impression of Miss. O’Donnell. Tommy C. with his head thrown back, adam’s apple dipping as he laughs, leaning back against the shitty tiled wall, looking at Harrington, Harrington in a polo and slacks and barely glancing at Eddie as he enters, letting just enough disdain drip from the line of his shoulders to let Eddie know he’s been spotted.
“Well, see ya, man,” Harrington says, skirting around Eddie without looking at him, and the bathroom door slams shut behind him.
“Good friends with King Steve, then?” Eddie says neutrally, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, after making sure they’re alone.
“Basketball,” Tommy C. says, checking himself out in the mirror, running a hand through his hair. (Maybe Harrington’s towering mop is making him feel inferior.) Christ, he’s a shallow prick. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks.” Eddie thinks about moving closer and then decides against it. Harrington’s presence is still hanging in the air between them, like a bad smell. “You’re gonna have to explain what happened last night, y’know, because I’m pretty sure I lost a few brain cells along the way.”
Tommy C. looks at him, finally. He’s tall, a little taller than Eddie, a lot taller than Tommy H., which really must make it grate all the more, that he has to be Tommy C., that he can’t even own his own first name. Lost the right to be surname-less to a fucking junior. “You said you were gonna walk home. Seemed mostly coherent at the time, too, but I guess that didn’t work out the way you thought.”
“Worked out with Hopper throwing me in the drunk tank,” Eddie mutters, raking a hand through his own hair, less vain than bedraggled and exhausted. “How do you not look like shit?”
“Maybe you’re just a lightweight.”
Which– okay. Eddie isn’t going to admit to that, no way, but yeah. It might be true, at least when compared to Tommy C. Eddie’s been smoking weed for a while, drinking much longer, but harder stuff? Coke? K? The psychoactive shit they did last night? He’s fairly new to it all. He’s not sure he’s enjoying it. Meanwhile Tommy C. seems old hat at it, seemed right at home the first time Eddie came over to Rick’s and found him trying to blow smoke rings from a bong, the two of them staring at each other for a moment, tall wide jock and local freak, a tacit acknowledgement that the both of them were running from something, here, and they may as well run side by side. Hence, last night.
Tommy C.’s got a weird concentrated look on his face, eyebrows knotting in the middle, kinda cute, if Eddie thinks about it, but he’s sort of telling himself not to think about it, because it’s a bad idea to go down that road. A bad fucking idea. He has half a mind to ask what the fuck are you confused about before Tommy C.’s leaning forward and pressing a shy, but deliberate, kiss to his lips, and oh, yeah, that’s what he’s confused about.
“Thought we weren’t doing that,” Eddie mumbles, looking at the tiles.
“We’re not,” Tommy C. says, grinning that grin. The one that first caught Eddie’s attention way back in freshman year when he was too repressed to even think about it.
Tommy C. claps a hand on his shoulder, like they’re jock friends, and leaves the bathroom too. And suddenly Eddie remembers last night, remembers the sheer euphoria of running off into the woods with Tommy C., the moonlight somehow tender on his skin, how could a single tab of acid make the world feel kind? And Tommy C. pulling him against a tree and kissing him there, kissing him deep, and the way that unreality made so much sense because it was only ever something unreal, only ever something they did high, only ever–
And that’s when the trip went bad, wasn’t it. Colors distorting, the deep of the lake getting deeper, pulling him in as he stood on its shore, trees bending and calling for him in the dark– the dark calling– panic choking him, as he looked at Tommy C.–
Saying, ‘M gonna walk home. How the fuck did he seem coherent?
(His only thought in that moment was Wayne, he thinks. I need Wayne. So in his fucked-up brain, walking home was the answer. Only he never got that far, because a mile or two in the bad trip deepened and it wasn’t just a feeling of horror that gnawed at him, not then, it was visions of the stuff — darkness warping around him, a rustle in the woods too large too fast to be a bear something white and sinewy and even as he knew he was tripping it felt too fucking real–
So he ran, down the middle of the road, matching his feet to the center lines like that would save him, ran for his life, ran almost directly into the hood of the Chief’s Blazer as he was backing out of the Hideaway’s parking lot.)
Maybe that’s what the kiss was about, he thinks, just now. A sort of apology. Eddie brings a hand up to his lips, feels for the ghost of Tommy C.’s touch. Shallow prick. Eddie’s fucked.
At lunch he sits with Janie and the two sophomores Janie’s picked out, Gareth and Jeff, and realizes belatedly that he hasn’t packed himself any lunch, which is fine, he’s not all that hungry, he thinks, as Janie takes a large bite of her PB&J and a glob of jelly lands on her chin.
“Where were you?” she says, pointing at him with her sandwich. He shrugs and pulls one knee up, resting an elbow on it. “I’m serious, man, you missed homeroom.”
Eddie thinks about telling her the story. Not the Tommy C. part, she doesn’t know about that, no one does, but the other stuff. The drugs and the hallucinations in the woods and the waking up in the drunk tank — but Gareth and Jeff, the sophomores, are kind of staring at him with something big and uncomfortable (he feels uncomfortable, anyway) in their eyes so he doesn’t. He just shrugs. “Had a rough night, slept late, you know the drill.”
“Sure.” She does know the drill. The number of times they’ve smoked up in the dead of night because she just can’t stand to be in the house with her mother anymore, some small-minded woman who blames her for the fact her father went back to China — not Janie’s fucking fault that Hawkins is a miserable place — and he sort of feels bad for evading the truth, with her, though he has a sinking suspicion she’s going to outgrow him. She’s not the one getting Fs because she can’t study, is she, after all. “Whatever, there are definitely at least two prime candidates for Hellfire in junior year, I scouted them out when I was tutoring that girl on Friday, plus that Byers kid, the sophomore? Do you guys know him?” She directs this at Gareth and Jeff, who shrug.
“He’s kind of a loner,” Jeff says. “You try to talk to him and he just gives you this kinda blank stare until you go away. He’s, like, weird.”
“Gentlemen,” Eddie says, deliberately, because Janie sort of likes it when he calls her that and he hasn’t quite worked out if it’s a joke or not, “Are we not all like, weird? Is that not the very essence of Hellfire?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Tommy C. pull Tommy H. into a joking headlock as Carol and Harrington laugh their fucking heads off. “Yes, it is,” Janie says, stabbing her ballpoint into her notepad as if for emphasis. She’s working on her History homework as they talk, Eddie realizes, with a sudden premonition of loss. They have better colleges in China than in buttfuck-nowhere Indiana. And she misses her dad. “With any luck, guys, Eddie and I will be long gone this time next year. So why don’t we make this year a fucking great one, okay? If you get new blood in maybe Eddie will finally be convinced to write an actual campaign instead of a bunch of oneshots, wouldn’t you like that?”
The sophomores nod eagerly. Eddie buries his face in the crook of his elbow, still balanced on his knee, in an effort not to groan. It’s not like he doesn’t want to do an extended campaign, sure. For a while it was what kept him sane. But right now–
“What about her?” Jeff says, and Eddie looks up, following his gaze to the tall redhead girl in the line. “Barb. I have math with her, she seems kinda nerdy.”
But Gareth is shaking his head, so vigorously it makes his curly hair bounce off his forehead. “No way, man, she’s totally tight with Nancy Wheeler and Nancy’s dating Steve Harrington.” (Said strangely mournfully.) “No-go.”
Eddie doesn’t know who Barb or Nancy are; he does know that staying clear of Steve Harrington and his type is his only sensible course of action. (He says, after giving Tommy C. a handjob last night, but hey. Who said he was sensible.)
Janie joins him for a smoke after, in their spot behind the bleachers, and it takes only a few puffs in silence before she’s looking at him with an eyebrow raised and saying, “So, either you’ve got a drug problem or you’re fucking someone or you heard from your dad. So which is it?”
“What makes you think that,” he returns flatly, inspecting his cigarette instead of her. It’s making him faintly nauseous. He hasn’t eaten anything since a slice of cold pizza at Rick’s.
“Point one: usually you’re much better at hiding how depressed and anxious you are, unless it’s a comedown. Point two: I know what you’re like. I was there for your thing with Martin last year, remember? Point three: you’ve been weird since they put him away and you’ve been weirder this last week, so I’ll ask again, which is it?”
Eddie gives up on the cigarette and stubs it out against the wall, which is scored with similar ashy marks from all the lunchtimes they’ve spent here doing the same thing. This wasn’t their spot, this was a general smoking spot for all and sundry, until Eddie got tired of sharing and did the one thing that people might respect, rather than punish, which was take Janie’s face gently in his hands and kiss her the second someone came around the corner, that someone being Steve Harrington, who Eddie can’t seem to stop seeing.
(“Guess he’s not a fag after all,” Eddie overheard Tommy H. saying later on, and Harrington scowling, “Whatever, I don’t wanna see them sucking face every time I want a smoke, let’s just find somewhere else, okay?”)
(Eddie apologized to Janie for that as soon as he did it; they’d talked about it before, but he’d sort of assumed she was joking right up until the moment seized him and she looked like she was daring him to. She just laughed in response: “Don’t worry, I know better than to fall in love with you, man.”)
“Try all of the above,” he says finally, folding his arms over his chest and kicking his foot up against the wall.
Her eyes widen. She pushes up the sleeves of her flannel, businesslike, showing off the dark-inked snake on her forearm. “He called you? From prison?”
Eddie exhales, wishing he hadn’t thrown away his smoke. “A letter. Arrived Friday. I didn’t read it. I’m not going to.”
“Hence the…”
“Hence the stupid shit, like getting too high last night and hooking up with someone I really shouldn’t be hooking up with, yeah. Continuing to hook up with. That started before the letter.” He rubs the back of his neck, tugs on his hair, as he started doing like to reassure himself it’s all still there, all still growing out, his fucking dad be damned.
“Right.” Janie’s not really a woman of many words, when it comes down to it. She’s logical to a fault and doesn’t say a word more than she needs to; really, she’s sort of the opposite of Eddie, which is maybe why they’re friends. “If you’re not gonna read it, you should throw it in the trash. Otherwise you’re gonna keep torturing yourself over it.”
“Yeah.”
“And stick to weed. You look like shit.”
Eddie loves her. He does. But he could do with a bit of softness, couldn’t he, just now and then. Just a little bit. He nods and they don’t really say anything more, just head to class, math, which is her worst subject and even then she’s got a pretty healthy B in it which, what does that say about Eddie’s horrible grades?
That evening he has to go get his van from Rick’s, and he thinks about asking her to drive him over there, make it easy, make it quicker. But he doesn’t want her to meet Rick, or more to the point see the way he’ll twitch and flinch as they go through the section of woods where the acid showed him the monster. Shit, dude, you’re fucking yourself up more than anyone else ever could, he imagines her saying, and the way that echoes against Wayne in the car earlier, I think you’re probably torturin’ yourself worse than anything I could say, and he grits his teeth and decides to walk. In silence, because he’s been spending the little money he has on equipment to create music, more than listen to it, like a walkman.
He does buy more cigarettes on his way, when he passes the general store. Joyce isn’t working, Melvald himself is, and Eddie gets a suspicious look from him, Eddie’s tattoos and longish hair and Iron Maiden t-shirt. “Thank you,” he makes sure to say, smiling wide, and Melvald just gives him more evils until he leaves the store. Absently, he wonders about Joyce. What she was doing there, at the station this morning. Not waiting for her husband, the way she would have been a while ago, before they divorced. The way Eddie’s mom would have been waiting for her husband, if they’d been married, if she wasn’t long gone.
His efforts to convince himself not to panic, approaching the woods down Cornwallis, do little to make it not happen. He counts the loose stones he kicks and breathes out evenly and gets startled out of the whole thing by voices ahead, shouting, Will! Will Byers! and he slows.
There are police cars, parked on the side of the road. The khaki figure of the chief, in the distance, standing on the curb strip with his hands on his hips, eyes scanning the woods like he’s looking for something. Someone. Will Byers?
Eddie doesn’t really want them to see him. Not after scraping it out of the drunk tank this morning, Powell’s accusing eyes. But he’s not going into the woods itself, not until he has to, the long looming trees and shadows stretching out, so —
“Munson,” comes Hopper’s voice, when he thinks he’s gotten away with it. Fuck. “What’re you doing out here?”
Eddie turns. Thinks fuck it, he’s got nothing to lose by being honest. “Well, I left my van down here, and I didn’t exactly have a chance to get it when you arrested me, did I?”
Hopper grunts. “S’pose it’s better than you driving under the influence.” He casts another look back at the woods, eyes full of anxiety, and oh. Something real is happening here. Something new. “Go on, kid, get outta here,” he says, just as someone deeper in the woods shouts Hey, chief, we got something–!
Eddie kind of wants to stick around. Find out what the hell’s going on — Will Byers, Joyce’s son, right? — but if his dad taught him anything, he taught him to be smart, to take the chances he gets, never to look back. He’s not gonna push his luck. He’s gonna keep walking.
Half an hour more takes him to Rick’s place, the lake stretching out grey in front of it. His van is there, slotted in next to Rick’s scratched-up Merc (got it in trade, he says, when a regular had no cash left), and for a second he thinks about just driving off without saying hello but also he could really do with a joint, actually, jittery from the woods and Will Byers and he used up his stash in the first wave of oh fuck my dad sent me a letter from prison before he realized grass wasn’t quite enough to dull that particular horror hence–
He raps on the door. It takes a second, but then he hears footsteps, the unmistakable sound of a bottle being set down, and the door opens.
Rick grins wide. “Eddie. Back already?”
Eddie sees the bottle he set down was some cheap-looking red wine, half-empty, sitting on the table in the hall. Rick’s in a wifebeater and shorts, a lot of tattoo-less, middle-aged flesh on display, freckles to go with his scraggy red-ish hair. He opens the door wider to let Eddie in and picks up the wine again — “Drink?” — which Eddie thinks about, he really thinks about, but he’s eaten nothing all day and he has to drive home past a bunch of cops and Janie’s face is sticking with him, logical and cold and you’re fucking yourself up–
“Nah, man. I’ll, uh– I’ll take some grass, though, if you got it.”
Rick’s grin widens. “Sure thing, kid, sure thing.” The house smells like weed, and damp, and plasticky cheese — there’s an empty box of Mac N Cheese out on the counter — and Eddie fights that same earlier nausea as he lights a cigarette and leans back in roughly the same spot he was standing when Tommy C. first kissed him, nearly three months ago, when Rick was out for more beer.
“There’re a lot of cops sniffing around, by the way. Some missing kid, it sounds like. Down on Cornwallis and Kerley.”
“Ri-ight,” Rick says, taking a swig of wine. “What kid?”
“Will Byers, they were shouting for. Lonnie’s kid.” He tries to say the name all neutral, hates showing weakness to Rick, but it does come out sort of strangled. Because Lonnie Byers is a short hop to Bruce Munson, drinking buddies and more, Lonnie the fence for the cars Bruce stole, Bruce who later turned to drugs and became a direct competitor and Rick knows of them both, knows the jump to make, and indeed he does. Make the jump.
“Shit, Lonnie’s kid?” Rick says, after another swig of wine. “Well, Lonnie’s a piece of shit, but no kid deserves that.”
“You only say that because he–” Eddie stops. Does not want to finish the sentence.
He’s not sure whether to be grateful that Rick ends up finishing it for him: “Because he was my rival’s fence, in this salubrious business of mine? Hardly. Your dad only got into the drug scene when Lonnie’d left town, fucking idiot. Drugs aren’t cars, anyone could’ve told him that. But hey. He’s not my problem anymore, so we’re all good.”
“Lucky you,” Eddie says, under his breath, thinking of the unopened letter he’s slipped between the pages of The Shining on his nightstand, stamped Indiana Department of Correction. It could be blank, for all Eddie knows, and maybe it is. And that wouldn’t fucking matter, because the impact of the envelope is the same, the very fact of being sent something is the same.
Get out, his dad said to him, in the heat of the argument as Eddie’s dislocated shoulder shot through with pain, as Eddie spat in return I want nothing to fucking do with you–
And here it is. Something to do with him.
“So, you and Tommy have a good night after you left?” Rick says, sitting down at the kitchen table and beginning to portion out a baggie of weed. “You can roll yourself, can’t ya, kid?”
Eddie nods. “Yeah, it was alright.” He has no desire to mention the cops; Rick was blasé enough about the search for Will Byers, but when it comes to his stash…
“Now there’s a kid can roll.” Rick takes a swig of wine and a few drops of it spill from the corner of his mouth, red on his chin, like blood. “You two make a strange pair, but what can I say? Drugs bring people together.”
Eddie has never been able to work out quite how much Rick knows, about what Eddie and Tommy C. get up to. About crossfaded handjobs and kissing smoke into each others’ mouths; about the two times they’ve tried to actually fuck and the single time it worked because they had lube instead of dry-mouth saliva; about the time Tommy k-holed, and Eddie sat with him silently until he came back down. They’ve kissed sober only once before today, and that time Eddie kissed him, unthinking, and Tommy shoved him back and stared at him with so stricken a look it was like all their high, dreamlike attachments were just that, a dream. A fucking dream.
Not so this morning.
“He’s alright,” Eddie settles on saying, lighting a cigarette as he watches Rick’s hands. Finally, Rick holds the baggie out, and Eddie digs some cash out of his pockets. Fuck, he’s running low.
Rick looks at him. “Y’know, if you need any extra, I’m always looking for someone to cater to the high school market. Most of them get antsy about it, buying from someone like me. But someone they know? Easy pickings.”
Someone they know. Like ninety-eight percent of them don’t despise him; like they don’t refuse to associate with him, like there’s some kind of bad smell hanging around him, the way they call him freak and fag like they can tell, how the fuck can they tell–
“I don’t know, man, I don’t want any more trouble, y’know?”
Rick arches an eyebrow. “Your call, kid, your call. Offer’s on the table.”
He likes Rick because he’s nothing like his dad, Eddie thinks, and sort of hates it, the way even his rebellion from his dad is based on his dad. But here he is.
When he drives back home it’s beginning to rain, heavy sheets of it hammering on the windshield, and in the darkening woods he doesn’t see anything, though he keeps his eyes peeled, stupidly, because it was just a bad trip. That’s all it was.
Wasn’t it?
