Chapter Text
Eddie doesn’t even know why he’s at this stupid party. It’s full of jocks showboating for their girlfriends, clustering together and giggling, like watching Tommy Hagan do a keg stand is somehow dreamy. He’d had an entire beer spilled on his shoes, been heckled out of the kitchen into the backyard, and left to brood out by Harrington’s ostentatious, heated in-ground pool. And it’s barely been an hour.
Within that hour, he’s made enough money to buy two months worth of cigarettes. That’s the rub of it all, isn’t it? Counting his time with packs of cigarettes, and bald tires that need replacing. Stupid things like food for their barren fridge and heat in the trailer once fall fully bleeds into winter. Wayne can only do so much, with rolling blackouts hitting the plant, and rent increasing a little more every year.
So Eddie goes to parties full of people he hates, lunch box secured to his person with the chain at his hip, switchblade stuffed in his back pocket. Just in case.
This party is only ramping up, people trickling out from the overstuffed house to loiter on the back porch, occasionally stopping by to procure his services. As the first hour dwindles into the second, Eddie’s supply is getting dangerously low.
He’s just considering leaving when he notices the King himself trailing after two girls he vaguely recognizes as the two that have been haunting the edges of the jock table in the cafeteria the past few weeks.
The brunette is scowling, hand wrapped tightly enough around her redheaded friend’s wrist to make the skin turn unnaturally white as she yanks her along none too gently, her short legs making ferocious strides that have both her captive friend and Harrington stumbling to keep up.
Harrington’s got his hands up like he’s placating a spooked horse, talking too quietly for Eddie to hear over the pounding beat of the music. The girl isn’t spooked though. Despite being the shortest of the group, she looks like a predator on the hunt, just waiting for a slip up to make her kill.
Whatever Harrington is saying must not go well. The brunette shoves her friend behind her, stabbing her finger into his chest, voice rising in rage. “–know he meant it, Steve!” she yells, flatting her palm to push him back harshly. She spins on her heel, continuing her trek past Eddie’s spot by the pool and out toward the open gate to the driveway. “As long as he’s here, we’re not going to be!”
“Don’t be like that Nance,” Harrington placates, following in her wake. “Tommy’s just drunk.”
“I don’t care about Tommy!” the girl snaps. “I care that you’re friends with such a despicable person.”
“Nance–”
“I thought you were better than this, Steve Harrington,” she says.
Then they’re both through the gate and gone. Harrington doesn’t follow. He stands there, staring where the girls had been, his back to Eddie. He’s still as a statue for a long, endless minute before growling, low and angry, pulling his fist back and punching the side of his house.
The hit makes a meaty squelching sound of breakable skin striking an immovable object and parting under its pressure. It almost echoes through the yard in the silence between songs, the whispering from all the onlookers starting up just before the next top forty song begins blaring.
Harrington spins, glaring out at the clustered people on the porch, hands on his hips, blood dripping down onto the green of his sweater, the light blue of his jeans. It’s a little thrilling to see the King bloody, even at his own hands. Like a true royal, he snaps, “go inside,” voice demanding obedience. And they obey, scuttling back into the house in small clusters, shutting the sliding glass door behind the last of them.
Harrington sighs, shoulders drooping as he lifts his injured hand up to look down at it. He still hasn’t noticed Eddie in his spot by the pool.
“Trouble in the kingdom, Your Majesty?” he asks, jumping up from his cross-legged position on the pavement to saunter up to the other boy. He leans into his space, smiling coyly as Harrington leans back like he carries an airborne disease. “Anything this lowly court jester can do to help?”
He looks shocked at Eddie’s presence, like he never even considered that his decree wouldn’t be obediently followed by everyone in his backyard.
Eddie smirks, fishing in the pocket of his denim vest for his cigarettes. He taps one out, and holds it out–ever the consummate servant–to Harrington, who curls his lips up in disgust and takes a step back away from him. Eddie shrugs, stuffs the pack back into his pocket and fishes his lighter out of his jeans.
“Munson?” Harrington asks, squinting like he’s never seen Eddie before, despite living in the same janky town, and going to the same schools for the past five years. “Who invited you?”
Eddie takes his time lighting his cigarette and taking a drag, marveling as the little divot between Harrington’s eyebrows grows deeper with every passing second. He holds the smoke in, feeling it settle his nerves as he stares daringly into Harrington’s eyes. Eddie doesn’t look away as he exhales, smoke blowing into the other boy’s face. He doesn’t cough, just gestures his hand in front of his face impatiently to clear the smoke, looking one more insolent move away from smacking Eddie in the face.
“Someone has to sell party favors to Hawkins’ elite,” Eddie replies, shaking the lunchbox where it’s resting just below his hip.
Steve scoffs. “Well, the party’s just about over so why don’t you fuck off, man.”
He gestures behind him to the open gate. Eddie takes another drag, ashing his cigarette on the pristine concrete below him. Harrington balls up his fists before immediately releasing the tension with a wince, shaking out his injured hand.
“Looks like it’s in full swing to me.” Eddie gestures to the sliding glass door back into the dining room. The curtains are closed now, but Eddie can see the darkened silhouettes moving to the beat still pumping through the house.
“I’m kicking them out.”
Harrington crosses his arms, seemingly once again forgetting about the bloody state of his hand. He’s almost pouting now. Eddie has the insane urge to boop him on the nose. He takes another drag.
“Upset your little girlfriend wouldn’t put out?” he asks, jutting his bottom lip out, trailing a fake tear down his own cheek with his free hand. “Poor little rich boy.”
“What the fuck is your problem, man?”
“Me?” Eddie asks, dropping the burning filter of his cigarette to the ground and using the heel of his boot to smear it into the pavement. “I’m dandy. Who wouldn’t want the undivided attention of the King?”
He smiles then, condescending and bright, planting his feet as Harrington’s gaze darkens further.
“I always knew you were a freak,” Harrington snarls, drawing out the F sound like he’d rather use a different word that begins with the letter F.
“And a startling comeback from the King!” Eddie calls, showboating like he’s DMing for Hellfire in the dingy drama room. “How many F words did your Daddy teach you?”
Eddie didn’t realize that Harrington wasn’t angry before until all the light leaves his eyes. They go blank, soulless, like there’s no real person behind them. He uncrosses his arms, fists once again clenched, not even seeming to realize that it further splits his knuckles as he takes a threatening step forward. It’s a little scary, the way one question seems to have flipped him into an entirely different person.
Note to self, do not mention the absentee father. Eddie takes a step back on reflex as Harrington uses his bloody finger to jab into his chest, hard enough to sting. He looks down as blood smears, idly grateful that he’s wearing black.
“You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about,” Harrington spits.
Eddie, having never learned to bite his tongue, opens his mouth to crow about this new F word in Harrington’s repertoire, when he hears a sound behind him.
It sounds almost like the foxes that sometimes chitter in the woods surrounding the trailer park. But there’s something wrong with it. It’s high pitched, cutting in and out, and staticky, reverberating behind him like the white noise of the television between channels, but worse. A recording of television static sped up too fast and fed through three long distance phone calls.
Eddie’s hands tremble, something animalistic coursing through him at the sound–fight or flight kicking in with only one option left. In front of him, Harrington’s gone quiet, eyes wide and unblinking as he looks fixedly past Eddie’s left shoulder.
Then, abruptly, the sound cuts out, replaced with a guttural growling so deep he can feel it pulsing through his muscles, urging him to run. It unsticks his feet, but before he can dart through the open gate, or maybe to the shut sliding glass door to hunker down with the other party-goers, Harrington shoves him backward. Hard.
He loses his footing, loses his breath, until he’s choking on chlorinated water. He comes out spluttering, coughing up water until it burns, his layers of clothing doing their best to drag him down into the bottom of the pool to drown.
His eyes are closed against their stinging, ears clogged with water where he’s struggling to tread in the deep end of Harrington’s stupid heated pool that the King himself just shoved him in.
It’s a low enough moment that Eddie can feel his mind covering up the impossibilities of the night, paving over them to rewrite the story to make sense: King Steve saw him, set up some speakers to spook him, and then shoved him in the pool. Nothing unexpected there.
But then Eddie opens his eyes.
Harrington’s on the ground and fighting against the grip around his wrist, pulling him toward the water Eddie’s struggling to stay afloat in.
It’s not a person dragging him. Not a practical joker wearing a suit. It can’t be. The thing is standing upright, sure, but it’s too tall, too thin, too featureless. Its forearms are uncannily long, fingers twisting and look as if they have too many joints facing the wrong directions where they curl around Harrington’s wrist, claws sharp enough to make him bleed. Its ribs are showing. And there’s no face at all, just creased flesh puckered together where a mouth ought to be.
At least, that’s what Eddie thinks until Harrington struggles harder, fingers of his free hand digging into the crack in the pavement, momentarily stalling their forward momentum. Then, the seams where its head connects open, like a flower toward the sun, if each petal was fleshy and covered in dozens of sharp looking teeth. And it screeches, ear-splitting and horrible, as if reprimanding Harrington for not laying immobile like a good little live meal.
It tosses Harington into the pool. He hits with a splash, immediately flailing out, smacking Eddie on the side of his face. Eddie reaches out on instinct to pull the guy toward him, trying to keep the both of them above water while Harrington reorients himself.
It shouldn’t have taken long. Harrington is the captain of the swim team. He should have been able to kick his feet under him and been off to the other end of the pool within seconds.
It wasn’t fast enough.
Eddie doesn’t even see it move, it’s so fast. He’s holding onto Harrington, arm slung around the other guy’s waist, clutching tightly at the front of his sweater. Then, Harrington’s being pulled forcefully to the bottom of the pool, Eddie along with him.
All of his orifices are burning from the chlorine–throat, nose, eyes, ears. He feels blind, deaf, lost, anchorless, except for the feel of Harrington’s skin beneath his hand, so he clutches, hooks his hand through the guy’s belt to keep his hold.
There’s a sensation, like meat parting around him. Then he’s breathing, sucking in oxygen, eyes still closed, head spinning. Harrington’s ribs are rising and falling rapidly. It lasts only a moment, the pair of them breathing and touching and panicking in tandem.
Until there’s that sound. Foxes chittering, but it’s echoing now, weirdly like they’re in a cave forty feet underground.
Eddie opens his eyes. The sky looks wrong–darker than it should be, and it almost looks like it’s snowing. One of the flakes hits Eddie in the cheek and he rubs at the spot, feeling it flake apart and smear across his face. Not snow. Dust? Ash?
They’re in some sort of pit made of concrete, cracked under the force of the sickly vines crawling across its surface. It’s deep enough that Eddie’s not sure how they’re going to get out.
It’s not until he sees the ladder at the edge of the hole that he realizes where they are: impossibly, in the bottom of Harrington’s pool, somehow drained of water and decayed and made wrong, in a matter of seconds.
The chittering turns to a growl. Harrington jumps up. Eddie’s hand, where it’s still tucked into his belt, jerks violently up with him, pinky getting stuck between belt and pants as he hastily tries to extract it. Harrington darts away, and Eddie’s pinky pops. It’s barely audible beyond the growling, but he feels it as a release of pressure and then sharp pain.
Eddie looks down at his now free hand. There’s chafing on his palms, and his pinky sits at an awkward angle, already swelling around the knuckle where it connects to his hand.
Nausea rolls through him–shock, maybe–at the sight. More than the pain, it looks like another wrong thing in a long line of wrongness that makes up his night, this time, attached to his own body. He heaves, water spilling out of his mouth, burning with chlorine as Eddie forces his eyes away from his hand.
Harrington’s across the pool, holding some sort of pole with a torn net at one end, thrusting it into the creature’s mouth, farther and farther. But the metal’s warping, almost decaying under the saliva in the thing's face, pole becoming shorter and shorter until it’s almost upon Harrington.
Without thought, Eddie jumps to his feet, stumbling behind the thing and bashing his lunchbox into its head.
It’s probably the surprise of the hit that makes the thing stumble. Harrington wastes no time, jabbing the rest of the pole, fast and deep into its maw. It wails, the strike fast enough to get through whatever was melting the metal, piercing something deep inside the thing.
Eddie’s not stupid enough to think it’ll stay down. He skirts around the thing, latching onto Harrington’s wrist and pulling him along in his wake. He doesn’t hear the pole clatter to the cement of the bottom of the pool, hopes that means they have a little more time, doesn’t dare turn around to look as Eddie drops Harrington’s wrist to climb, hand over aching hand, up the ladder and out of the pool.
Nothing looks better once he’s topside. The sky is still wrong, filled with ash and discolored light. There’s vines up here, too. And it’s quiet, so quiet he can hear every sound Harrington makes as he scrambles up the ladder behind him.
Eddie doesn’t wait for him. He runs, fast as he can to the sliding door, wrenching it open and falling past the curtain into the house. He hopes, hysterically, that no one sees him making such a fool of himself, hopes somewhere deeper that someone does and will put themselves between his fleshy body and whatever comes through the door behind him.
But no one’s there. Harrington’s kitchen is dark, the living room past it dark as well, a disturbing red light glowing faintly through closed curtains like he’s landed himself in a scene straight from Evil Dead. There’s no shadows of partygoers moving, no top forty, no drunk teenagers to spill beer on his shoes.
He stands, frozen, something horrific building in his throat, like a scream or a sob as he stares, unmoving, curtains brushing against the small of his back until something slams through them, pushing him to the cold linoleum.
He pictures teeth, swears he hears a growl, but when he twists wildly from his prone position to scoot backwards on his ass, arms preemptively raised, he sees Harrington sliding the door closed and clicking the shitty plastic lock into place.
It's hilarious, like the thing they’d both seen back there would be stopped by a little piece of plastic, or doors, or the safety of his house. Eddie bites back the laugh that’s fighting its way up his throat like chlorine, burning and not where it’s supposed to be.
Harrington’s back is shaking with the force of his pants as he yanks the curtains closed. He pivots, face devoid of anything as he bends down and yanks Eddie up by his wrist hard enough to sting.
“Harrington, the people–” he starts, but his wrist is yanked harder as he’s led up carpeted stairs and into a bedroom.
Eddie gets only a sense of plaid and emptiness before he’s being shoved into a closet, Harrington stumbling in behind him and closing the doors quietly and squatting down next to where Eddie had fallen. The outside of their thighs are pressed together. Something hysterical bubbles up his throat again at the irony of the moment. He bites his lip against it.
Harrington’s feet are beneath him, ready to jump and fight anything that might follow them up here. Eddie can’t seem to get his ass off the floor, the lethargy of shock making him complacent, the knowledge that he’d never stand a chance against that thing making the effort of vigilance not seem worth it.
Harrington looks fierce, like he really is in a horror flick, an action hero, the final girl, the one who’ll get to the end of the movie by any means necessary. But Eddie can feel his body shaking where their legs are pressed together. Eddie gets the insane urge to hold his hand.
It feels like hours pass like this, Harrington at the ready, Eddie succumbing to his sleepy shock, before Harrington slowly lowers himself to sit on the ground beside Eddie, knee overlapping his as he sits crisscross, still looking at the door.
“Harrington, what–”
“I don’t know, Munson.” His voice is a sharp whisper, biting in its carelessness. He doesn’t even look away from the closet door.
“Your house is just empty, man.”
That gets him a scoff and a loosening roll of his shoulders as Harrington finally turns his head to the side and meets his eyes. Eddie tries not to notice the way it slides his thigh more firmly atop his own.
“That’s what you’re worried about?” Harrington demands, and for a moment, Eddie’s afraid he somehow heard his thoughts, another in a long line of indignities in this new world they’ve found themselves in, but he continues, “–the people? Not the flower monster that tried to eat us, or the red sky, or the shitty vines all over my house?”
“People means help! Who’s going to help us now?” Eddie demands, voice rising higher than it should. He swings his hand wildly, less of a gesture and more of a limb seizing with panic until it hits the closet’s wall with a hollow thwack, sending a bolt of pain from his pinkie finger down his wrist.
Harrington turns violently, almost climbing in Eddie’s lap in his bid to both cover his mouth and wrench his hand away from the wall and clutch it tightly in the space between their chests. Eddie bites his own lip at the pain of the squeeze. It’s dark, but he can see the way Harrington’s eyes are widened with fear, the whites too visible.
“Shut up,” he hisses, hand squeezing a little tighter around Eddie’s cheeks.
They sit in the silence of the moment, staring at each other, ears straining for the sound of anything coming for them.
All is silent. Harrington’s hands ease away and he slowly shuffles out of Eddie’s space.
“Sorry,” Eddie says, almost reflexive.
Harrington doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t turn away either. They’re still both staring at each other. Eddie’s too tense to feel awkward about it.
He sits in the silence. He’s never been good at it—the quiet. It eats at him, picks away at his skin until he’s back in a run-down apartment with a Father in jail and Mom gone from the room even as she rots away on the couch. The silence eats and eats and eats, until he can almost smell the mildew of the always-closed windows, can feel the springs of his old mattress digging uncomfortably into his back.
The springs prod him, and he blinks into the closet, Harrington’s finger jabbing into his side.
“Don’t crack on me now, Munson.” He’s not smiling.
“Aww,” he replies, trying to make his tone its usual cloying flirtation, “didn’t think you cared, Your Highness.”
He twists his mouth up at the side. It doesn’t quite land on a smirk—he can feel the way it wobbles. If Harrington notices, he doesn’t call him on it.
With a roll of his eyes, Harrington responds, “like you said, no people means no help, means you’re all I’ve got.”
“Don’t sound too happy about it,” Eddie mutters, but the house is too quiet and they’re sitting too close together.
Harrington scoffs, but he leans back further, settling fully on his ass for the first time since he’d dragged Eddie into the closet with him, like all he needs to feel at ease is Eddie being a dick. He’s not sure whether or not that’s infuriating or charming, but the knot in his throat that feels suspiciously like tears eases when Harrington leans back on the heels of his hands.
There’s something to the ease of Harrington in this moment that makes Eddie wonder if he’s ever actually seen him relaxed before. When Eddie had watched him across the lunch room, eyes unwillingly drawn to the jocks table, his shoulders were always loose, mouth always turned up at the corners, but there was still something so stiff about him. Eddie’s not sure he’s ever seen him lean back like this.
It's almost like, without eyes on him—or with only Eddie’s—his body has gone ragamuffin. A marionette with all its strings cut. It’s like. Like—
It’s like hiding from a horrific Lovecraftian monster in the alternate dimension version of his own closet with Eddie Fucking Munson is the first time Steve Harrington has felt comfortable in his own skin. Either that, or Eddie’s spiraling.
“Stop staring at me, man,” Harrington says, draping a hand over his eyes to block out the nonexistent light.
It’s only then that Eddie realizes he has been staring. He snaps his gaze to the floor, running his fingers through the soft shag of Harrington’s fancy carpet. It’s things like this that got him marked as queer within weeks of moving here.
“What’re we gonna do?” Eddie asks, like a broken record.
Harrington sighs, drooping further into the carpet. “I vote we go to sleep and hope this was all a bad dream.”
And as if his word had been decreed, Harrington stretches out as much as he can in the confined space, using a pile of dirty clothes as a pillow, and closes his eyes. The side of his leg ended up pressed across the entire side of Eddie’s thigh.
Eddie stares, struck dumb by the audacity of Harrington checking out in a moment like this. When his silence gets no reaction, he slumps down, dragging his cheek into the soft carpet as Harrington slumbers beside him. It feels like hours until he falls asleep.
***
Steve doesn’t sleep that night. It’s a bad idea to put them both on the bench, and Munson was spiraling. He’d let him sleep until morning, and then they’d have the worst team huddle Steve’s ever been a part of and get the fuck out of here.
When Munson’s breathing finally evens out, Steve rolls onto his back, batting the dangling sleeve of his letterman jacket out of his face. Munson rolls, throwing his arm atop Steve’s calves and cuddling them to his chest. Steve lets him be.
The feel of his breath shifting the fabric of his jeans is almost comforting. Even if it’s just Munson, he’s not alone here.
He’s less alone than he ever has been. Here of all places.
It’d been instinct, when the fear hit, to drag Munson into the closet and hunker down. That’s what he’s always done–hide away. It’s not usually this quiet when he’s in here.
Without thought, Steve reaches out to clasp Munson’s spindly ankle in his hand. Munson snuffles in his sleep, but doesn’t wake. Steve resolves to wait out the night.
Except it never gets lighter. Time’s passed, he’s pretty sure, but the light stays that same muted red that gives him the creeps. Maybe the quiet is making him crack up just like Munson? Maybe the stress of the night has thrown off his internal clock? Maybe it’s been ten minutes, and he’s getting short of breath and panicky for no reason at all.
It takes lifetimes for Munson to wake up.
He snuffles again before shoving Steve’s calves away from himself and launching into an upright position, whacking his face into Steve’s hanging clothes. Munson makes an undignified squawking noise. Steve’s still just trying to breathe.
“Steve?” Munson whispers. “Are you having a nightmare?”
Steve continues to not breathe as Munson bends over him to shake his shoulders, eyes wide. He doesn’t know how to tell him that this just happens sometimes, where the air goes all wrong but only for him.
“It’s still dark out,” he says. It almost comes out normal, like he’s commenting on the weather and not the horrible lighting of the hellscape they’ve landed in amidst an acute episode of not breathing.
“Are you still tired?” Munson asks. “Hungry? Thirsty? What’s happening here, are you dying?” His words trip over themselves in his haste to spit them in Steve’s face.
“Munson, we didn’t wake up.” He laughs, feels half cracked. “The sky’s still fucking red.”
Munson stares at him, mouth hanging open, eyebrows scrunched. He reaches out his hand, and pinches the loose skin of Steve’s wrist hard between his fingers.
“Ow!” It’s not Steve that says it.
Munson pulls his hand back, shaking it. Steve can barely make out the way the pinky finger on his hand is at an unnatural angle, bulbous in the diluted light.
Something snaps back into place at the sight. His lungs fill and empty like they’re supposed to. He pushes Munson out of the way, ignoring the way he curses as Steve forces his way out of safety.
It’s a little lighter in his bedroom, but it’s all still red.
Munson stumbles out after him. Steve grabs his shoulder and shoves him to his bed, pushing him to a seated position.
“At least buy me dinner first,” Munson says, voice breathy and shaking.
Steve ignores him, kneeling down at his feet to examine his finger in better light.
It’s dislocated, pulled cleanly from the socket and given time to swell around the injury. It’s going to be a bitch to pop back in. Steve walks back to his closet, grabs a shirt, and throws it into Munson’s face.
“Put this in your mouth.”
“Excuse m–”
Steve kneels back in front of him, grabbing his injured hand and pulling it up to the other boy’s face. “This is going to hurt like a bitch to fix. We can’t afford to have you screaming, Munson.” He picks the shirt up from where it fell in Munson’s lap and holds it up tauntingly. “Bite down.”
Munson does. Steve brings his attention back to his hand, wincing in sympathy. He grabs the injured finger just above the knuckle, grimacing at the whine Munson lets out. He wrenches it back in place, hears it pop almost wetly back in its socket. Munson doesn’t scream–he gasps.
“Sorry, no ice,” Steve says. He’s in triage mode, half-remembered modules from high school health class and first aid training for lifeguarding duty running through his mind. “I think we should wrap it and maybe, like, hold your hand above your head? I think it helps with blood flow.”
“Thank you Dr. Harrington.” It’s clearly supposed to be sarcastic, but Munson’s teeth are clenched, uninjured hand gripping tightly at Steve’s shirt.
Steve doesn’t comment. He gently removes Munson’s hand and moves into his en suite bathroom, shuffling through drawers until he finds one of the cloth headbands he stole from his Mother. It’s a dark maroon–a perfect fit for Munson’s whole goth vibe.
“Pressure should keep the swelling down,” he says as he carefully wraps the finger as tight as he dares.
“Fuck fine,” Munson says. He pushes Steve back, less with a shove and more with the sheer force of his gesturing hands. “What now?”
Well, then. Time for the worst team huddle in existence.
***
Their planning session didn’t bear much fruit. Harrington had tried the water in his sink and it came out a murky black. When he pulled snacks out of a hidden bottom in one of his dresser drawers, each unopened pack was full of mold and ash.
They had no weapons, no food, no game-plan, and the sky was still red. In short, they were fucked.
The bickering was kept barely civil by the need to control their volume.
“–just think we should consider scoping the place out!” Harrington was whispering but enunciating like a shout. “For all we know there’s good food at the store, or a way out of here right where we went in, or at least some water at the quarry!”
“You want to drink quarry water? That shit’s inedible even when there’s not toxic ash particles floating in it!”
“That’s not the point!” Harrington’s passing in front of him, raking his hand through his drooping hair. “We can’t just hide in my room forever. No one’s coming to save us!”
“Not forever, man.” Eddie replies, leg twitching from where he’s still sitting at the edge of Harrington’s bed. “But that thing’s still out there. I don’t know about you, but I think we should have a better idea for surviving it than just hoping it’s not out there!”
Harrington droops, shoulders, mouth, hair, and then drops to the carpet where he was standing. “Shit, okay, okay, you’re right.”
That same thrill goes through him at seeing Harrington beneath his feet. He squashes it down, scooching off the bed to sit across from Harrington on the floor.
“Hey,” Eddie says, voice gone quiet and kind at the look of desolation on Harrington’s face. “We’re gonna figure this shit out, man.”
Harrington laughs, and it sounds remarkably like the laugh he always heard across high school hallways and cafeterias and gyms. Hollow. Eddie has the absurd urge to throw his arms around him.
“Okay man, how about we start by raiding your closet. I don’t know about you, but my clothes reek like your rich-boy pool.”
Harrington scoffs, but dutifully levers himself off the floor to shuffle through his open closet. He throws a navy blue long sleeve in Eddie’s direction, followed by an awful pair of bleach-washed jeans, socks, and a pair of underwear.
Then, like Eddie’s another jock and they’re in the locker room after practice, Harrington starts stripping with no regard to modesty. Eddie quickly turns his back from the sight and begins to do the same. His jeans jangle when he drops them on the carpet, chain and lunch box rattling when they hit the floor. Eddie holds a silent memorial for all the dignity he was about to lose.
He’s just pulled the slightly short pants on and buttoned the fly when he hears the little “huh,” Harrington lets out.
Quickly pulling the shirt over his head, he turns to see what Harrington’s on about. Luckily, the other boy still has his underwear on. Unluckily that’s all he has on as he crouched down and stared at the ring cradled in his hand. Absurdly, Eddie thought of Gollum and had to bite his lip on the laugh in his throat.
“Whatcha got there, Stevie boy?”
Still crouched, Harrington held the ring up toward Eddie, clutched between pointer finger and thumb, looking like a man picking the worst possible moment to propose marriage.
“This yours?” he asks.
It was. “Where’d you get that?” he demands, snatching it from Harrington’s grasp.
“Fell out of my pants.”
Eddie looks down at the little ring in his palm. It was his Mom’s–the perfect size for only his littlest fingers. He remembers the pressure and sudden pain of his finger being wrenched out of where it was tucked into Harrington’s pants. He hadn’t even realized it was missing.
Slipping it onto his other pinkie, Eddie murmurs a quiet “thanks,” cheeks blooming with color at the implications.
Harrington doesn’t respond, but Eddie can feel his gaze on the back of his head as he walks over to Harrington’s horrific plaid curtains and twitches them back to look outside. There’s nothing to see but the same red sky, the same vine-covered pool, the same empty backyard they’d fled last night. The only difference being the extremely inconvenient absence of pool-portal. Because of course it closed while they were hiding in a closet from a flower monster.
Not wanting to stare at the hopeless sight anymore, Eddie bends down to pull the borrowed socks and his slightly damp boots back on his feet.
Eddie can hear the sound of clothes shuffling behind him, refusing to turn back around until the sound stops. But then Harrington gasps out, “Nancy?”
Eddie turns, expecting to see Harrington’s girlfriend miraculously in the room with them, but there’s nothing except Harrington spinning wildly around the room, looking for something Eddie can’t see.
“Nancy?” he says again, louder this time, still at nothing.
Eddie’s sure he’s gone around the bend, and he’s going to have to put him down like old yeller, but then he hears it, “-would he have gone?” It’s quiet, muffled, but there.
“I don’t know, Nancy,” another voice replies, sounding exasperated. “Maybe he’s off with his parents vacationing in Europe or something. Who cares? Can we go before someone calls the police?”
“Barbara?” Steve calls again, growing louder still.
Eddie still can’t see anyone, but he calls out “Nancy?” desperate to be heard.
“Will is missing, though!” Nancy replies. Her voice sounds shrill—less like she’s panicking and more like she’s about ready to lose it and sock her friend in the jaw. “Do you really think that’s a coincidence?”
“Yes!”
“Nancy!” Steve calls again, this time loud enough to echo through the room.
Eddie’s yanked open the closed door to Harrington’s stupid en-suite bathroom, like Nancy and her mystery friend will suddenly appear in the bathtub, hanging out like the world is still normal. He’s even poked his head into the dark interior of the closet they’d slept in, but no dice.
Harrington is still screaming his head off to the two girl’s who are either playing the world’s cruelest prank or simply can’t hear him, when Eddie opens Harrington’s bedroom door.
It happens before he’s taken even one step out into the hallway. There’s that sound that makes his hair stand on end. Foxes chittering, television static trapped in an enclosed box and made horrific and animal. Eddie closes the door.
Harrington’s still screaming as it grows louder, grows closer.
“Harrington,” he snaps, voice cracking on each syllable.
He doesn’t stop screaming until Eddie’s backed up right into him, unable to look away from the door as he trips over Harrington’s feet. His shoulders are steadied.
Nancy’s still talking. Eddie can’t hear her over Harrington’s ragged breathing, over that thing chittering up the stairs.
“Munson, what’s—” He must hear it because he stops talking, and his nails really dig in, little pricks of pain that Eddie wants to lean back into.
He finds himself bargaining in his brain to some nebulous being he doesn’t believe in. He’ll let Harrington beat him bloody if that thing doesn’t come into this room. He’ll tell Wayne he loves him more. He’ll stop skipping P.E. He’ll go to church, god damn it! But none of it works. The sound grows louder.
Harrington’s forearm is suddenly in front of his sternum, pulling him backwards. Eddie stumbles further into him, letting his weight drop onto Harrington fully. The bastard doesn’t even seem to notice, as he continues dragging Eddie bodily away from the door.
Nancy’s friend is talking now. Eddie has no idea what she’s saying, only that her voice turns angry and shrill just as Harrington begins to slide his bedroom window up. Just as that horrific nightmare of a monster busts down Harrington’s bedroom door like it’s a cardboard playhouse.
He’s paralyzed, rooted to the spot as the thing opens its gaw and screams, twining horrifically with the mundanity of two invisible girls arguing. The blinds clack together as Harrington lunges through them, pulling Eddie out the window behind him. He can hear the strings holding them together snap–knows the sound intimately from all the guitar strings he’d broken while learning.
His back scrapes painfully on the top of the sill as he’s crammed through the opening. He doesn’t care what shapes Harrington configures his body into as long as he keeps pulling him away from that thing.
His opinion holds as Harrington drags him bodily across the shingles of his roof. The monster lunges, stuck halfway through the too-small window, as Eddie’s hauled upright.
“Fucking, go,” Harrington yells, shoving him toward the sheer drop off the roof. He’s just considering jumping when he continues, somehow finding the energy to sound exhausted, “the gutters, man. Shimmy down. I do it all the time.”
He’s not looking at Eddie anymore, back turned like somehow keeping the monster in sight will stop it from swallowing them whole.
Eddie eyes the gutter. It looks flimsy and too smooth to hold onto, but the horrific sounds emanating from Harrington’s bedroom make a compelling argument. He kneels, latches his hands into the loop of the gutter and swings himself off the roof.
Vertigo almost takes him down, but Eddie manages to hang on, shuffling quickly down as he hears glass begin to splinter from above.
Harrington’s foot catches him in the shoulder before he makes it all the way down. His fingers slip–he falls.
It’s not a long fall, but he lays, winded in the aftermath and watching Harrington leap and roll like some goddamn action hero, before he’s yanking Eddie up and dragging him blindly away from the house.
It’s quiet by the time they reach the woods. Eddie can’t hear Harrington behind him past his own ragged breathing. He only knows he’s there by the warm hand clutched tightly into his vest, like he’s a school child fond of running into the road. Eddie doesn’t mind.
He minds even less when, once fully ensconced in the trees, Harrington pushes him against a trunk and pulls him down beside him.
It’s reminiscent of those first moments in the closet. They’re close together, Eddie can’t catch his breath, and they’re both staring, horrified in front of them waiting for the big bad wolf to come eat them.
Harrington is holding his hand.
***
“We should go to the store,” Steve says.
He says it mostly to get Munson’s blood up. The silence is digging into his head, making every breath the other takes sound like the ragged wail of that fucking monster.
The longer he stays there, crouched in the trees, the harder it is to tell how much of the ache in his stomach is fear, and how much is hunger. They should find food, water, shelter, a way out of this bullshit.
Munson scoffs. “Looks like you’re getting your way, huh King Steve?”
Steve stands, legs unsteady. His feet are cold and bare in the dirt, gone numb around the ants under his skin. His hand aches from clutching the other boy’s. He drops it, shaking out the clenched nerves. “Yeah,” he says, channeling all the bitchiness Carol had hammered into his head over pseudo girls nights, “I summoned that thing into my bedroom just because I really wanted to go on a shopping date with you Munson.”
He starts through the woods in the general direction of the store, smiling at the sound of Munson sputtering incoherently behind him before the other boy jogs to catch back up.
“Careful there, big boy.” Munson leans into his space, smile saccharine around all its cracks. “I might just go and catch feelings.”
Steve rolls his eyes, shoving the other boy a few steps away. He can’t stop looking around for a threat, or some tear in the air that’ll lead them back home. He wants to be warm.
The rest of the trip to Melvald’s is quiet, but every time Steve glances his way, Munson’s biting his lip against the words practically bursting from him.
He’s always been a talker. In the hallways, on cafeteria tables, even beneath the bleachers when he’s trying to keep a low profile. His voice carries. It’s almost painful to watch him try and suppress it.
No wonder teachers are always cursing his name.
Prying the door open is louder than Steve wants—metal creaking on hinges aged decades in a matter of hours. It echoes off the vacant shops loud enough that both boys stop, staring into each other’s panicked eyes as they wait for a sign that something is coming. The silence echoes around them, bouncing off the storefronts like a physical force.
Nothing stirs.
Steve pries the door open a tiny bit more, gesturing Munson inside. He does a dorky little curtsy on the way, pulling the gaping knees of his jeans like they’re the hems of a skirt. Steve rolls his eyes, but follows him in.
The door resists closing, but Steve pulls it shut, around the sounds of its own groans. The illusion of safety and all that. Munson must feel the same because he immediately starts chattering.
“Is this how you feel all the time, Harrington?” he asks, bounding over to the cereal aisle and pulling a luridly orange box down from the shelf. He pries the box open, pulling at the seams of the bag like an impatient child on Christmas morning. “No budget, no coupons, just—shit.”
He drops the box around his startled expletive before immediately ripping into a new one.
“What?” Steve asks, but he’s already following in Munson’s wake and reaching down for the abandoned box. Before he even pulls the plastic bag out, he can smell the stench of food gone off. He pulls it out anyway.
Just like the door, and the street, and the water in his tap—the cereal in the bag has seemingly aged years in a matter of hours. Each wheaty bite has shriveled into itself, turning an off-putting gray and smelling like a stack of cardboard left to mold in the rain.
Munson’s still picking up and discarding boxes, movements growing more frantic with each new discovery.
In a state beyond horror, Steve wanders over to the water aisle. There’s no light on in the store, but the bottles almost seem to glow—an unholy green, murky and brackish in their pristine bottles, still lined up like it was opening day. It looks like some sort of gone-wrong science experiment from those science fiction movies Carol pretends she doesn’t like to watch. They look just like the sludge in his pipes back home.
Munson is cursing up a storm as he rounds the aisle, but he goes quiet when he sees Steve. He’s not sure what he looks like, but Munson’s hand reaches out and lands on his shoulder. Steve can barely feel its warm squeeze—can’t bear to tear his eyes away from those bottles.
It’s becoming a pattern, the way they’re always stuck together in horrified silence. It’s also becoming a pattern that one of them breaks said silence with some convoluted bullshit.
“Where’s your shoes, man?” Munson asks, like he’s only just noticed the flesh beyond the caked-on mud.
Steve sighs, shrugging off the other boy’s hand. His toes are numbed past the point of pain as he limps to the first-aid aisle, Munson trailing in his wake.
He ends up on the ground, clutching a roll of bandages, staring down at his feet. The bandages are soft and spongy. Clean. But he can’t even see the abrasions on the bottoms of his feet past the dirt and mud. There’s no water. There’s nothing. So, he just sits there, feeling nothing.
He’s still on the ground. Time must be passing but he doesn’t feel it, can’t see it in the dank light of the store.
He blinks and Munson’s sitting in front of him, Steve’s right foot in his lap. There’s a crumpled pile of used wet wipes beside the other boy’s hip, the brown and red from his own feet smudged across their normally pristine white surfaces.
The package crinkles as Munson pulls the plastic lid open to tear off a fresh wipe. It’s already a suspicious brown color straight from the package. Steve doesn’t stop him, knows without a doubt that it’s the cleanest thing in this place. Munson’s gentle enough that it tickles slightly between the toes and on the arch of his foot as Munson scrubs the last of the dirt away.
Steve clears his throat.
Munson snaps his gaze up, fingers twitching hesitantly on his foot, but doesn’t stop his ministrations. “You back with me?”
Steve nods. He wants to ask where he was before but can’t force the words past his constricting throat. He feels alarmingly close to tears.
He feels like he’s been sucked out of his body and into a very small tube, compressed until his breaths come in short, punched-out bursts that never fully enter his lungs.
“I think you’re having a panic attack,” Munson says, voice even. He’s looking down at Steve’s foot again, stroking it almost soothingly with the dirtied towelette. “I need you to breathe with me, okay?”
Munson’s breathing gets loud and purposeful—long breaths in through his nose, longer breaths out through his mouth. Steve stares, enraptured, and gasps along.
Time passes. Steve’s shoulders slump. His fingers are tingling like they do sometimes at the end of a long basketball game. Sweat dripping down his face, body buzzing with excited adrenaline, fingers buzzing with the need for the ball.
The squeeze of Munson’s hand around his ankle catapults him out of the tube and back into Melvald’s.
Embarrassment crashes into Steve. He crawls to his feet, using the shelving behind him to steady himself. He stands, with creaking knees and hobbles stiff-legged out of the aisle, tossing “I’m going to to find some shoes,” over his shoulder.
“Okay,” Munson replies, so quietly Steve can barely hear it.
There’s a thank you stuffed deep in Steve’s throat, trying to crawl its way past his mortification. There’s gauze wrapped around the soles of his feet, containing the damage. He’s not sure when Munson even did it.
There’s not a single fucking shoe in any of the aisles–not even a fucking pair of slippers. He’s three seconds away from duct taping the bottom of his feet and calling it good when there’s a tap on his shoulder. He whirls, slipping as his gauze covered feet try to keep traction. Munson steadies him with a hand to his elbow.
There’s a pair of ratty sneakers clutched in his other hand, and he’s smiling, dimples popping.
“Where’d you get those?”
Munson beams, skipping in place like a kid playing hopscotch. “Found them in the breakroom,” he says. “Do you think Your Highness can lower himself to wear a poor, lowly working man’s shoes?”
His eyes are fucking twinkling. Steve’s heart twitches. This whole thing is too deranged for him to handle.
“What size?”
Munson cackles, tossing the shoes into Steve’s chest.
Steve bends down, pushing his sockless feet into the shoes, hoping the gauze will do enough to keep blisters at bay. They’re a little loose, so Steve adds a bit of extra gauze inside the toes and ties the crumbling shoelaces tight, hoping against Munson’s fucking dimples that they don’t break. He double knots them. They hold.
“Thanks,” he says, still looking down at the ratty things.
“Gotta clothe our knights properly for battle!” Munson says. Steve looks up just in time to see that same goofy curtsey.
“I thought I was the King?” he asks. “Have I been demoted?”
Munson laughs again, bringing a curl to his face, as if to hide his grin. “I don’t see any of your subjects around,” he says. It should be mocking, but the elbow he drives into Steve’s side is good-natured. Playful. “Besides, knights are way cooler.”
Steve sighs, can’t believe he’s devolved to playing along with this level of nerdom. “Where’s my sword then, huh Munson?”
Munson sweeps his arms wide, encompassing the entirety of Melvald’s in his gesture. “You’re down on your luck, Sir Harrington. You’ve lost your noble steed and your enchanted sword to a seductress from a rival kingdom. Now you’re on a perilous quest to reclaim your property, and regain your rightful place by the King’s side!”
“And where are you in this whole mess?” Steve asks, already kicking himself for playing along.
“Well, I, Sir Steven, as the King’s devoted Jester, am on this quest with you to save you from a fate worse than death.”
“Oh, yeah?” Steve asks, inching closer to Munson, unsure of why. “What’s that?”
“Boredom, of course!”
Munson’s hair is a mess. It’s more fly-away than contained. His skin looks a little oily around his forehead, and he looks absolutely ridiculous with Steve’s clothes on. But his eyes are shining, and his smile is beaming, and Steve wonders how someone can be that bright in the literal bowels of hell.
“Shove off, Munson,” Steve laughs, shoving his shoulder lightly as he walks past.
Munson skips up to keep in pace. “Now, what, my liege?”
“So what, I’m the King again?”
Munson puts a hand over his heart, gasping dramatically. “You’ll always be a King to me.”
Steve feels warmth in his cheeks, pushes it down, doesn’t think about it. What now, he says. What now?
“Now,” he says, thinking aloud as he eyes the aisles around them. “We collect anything useful around here and go.”
“But–”
“We’re not going to last much longer without water, man.” he replies.
Munson sighs. “The quarry?” he asks, sounding like he’d rather say anything else.
“The quarry,” Steve agrees, feeling just the same.
***
Eddie’s filled a shitty back-to-school backpack with anything useful he can find. There’s more wet wipes, and gauze, and antiseptic, and a hammer. He’s got a lighter, a few newspapers, and a few shitty plastic cups. In a fit of whimsy, he stuffs a pack of playing cards in there as well.
They go.
Hawkins is bigger than he remembers. Eddie’s not sure if it’s just the fatigue, the general atmosphere of this place, or it’s another fucked-up thing that’s just a little off. Hawkins, but not.
And god, he didn’t ever think he’d be homesick for Hawkins. His trailer, sure. Wayne, of course. But Hawkins? No way.
But he’s pretty sure he’d give his left kidney to be walking down 2nd street with all its pearl-clutching residents crossing the street to avoid him. The street stretches out before him unnaturally. It’s quiet. There’s ash in Harrington’s hair where he walks by his side. Eddie’s never felt more out of place in his life.
“Do you think we’ll make it back?” he whispers. It’s so quiet, it still feels like his words bounce across the town.
Harrington’s gait stutters. It could be from his fucked up feet. Eddie doesn’t think so. His brows pinched, lips pursed, skin golden under its ashen sheen.
“Someone will have noticed us missing by now, right?” He doesn’t sound sure. Eddie can’t fathom why.
“It’s…Sunday, Right?” Eddie asks, not waiting for an answer before continuing, “I’m supposed to be at band practice. The guys will notice.”
Harrington nods, starts walking again.
“What about you?” Eddie asks.
Harrington’s eyes are shifting back and forth like he’s watching the ghosts of the real world in this fucked up mirror dimension. Hell, maybe he can.
“Nancy noticed,” he says, quiet enough that Eddie barely picks up on it. He’s looking down at his feet and he looks small. Unsure. Before he looks up at Eddie from the corner of his eye. “Right?”
Eddie looks at this guy he’s hated for years, this guy who Eddie’s sure didn’t even notice him enough to hate him back, and says the only thing he can, “Right.”
“She’s smart.”
“Nancy seems like a badass,” Eddie says, even though she doesn’t. It makes Harrington smile down at his borrowed shoes.
Eddie reaches out, squeezing lightly at Harrington’s elbow in comfort before skipping a few steps ahead, feeling his ears burn red. Harrington jogs to catch back up. They walk in silence after that.
The walk down the winding path surrounding the quarry is harrowing. It’s long, sure, but the way the red sky is reflecting back off the water’s surface has his gut sinking into his boots and weighing his feet down. It doesn’t look promising.
It looks even less promising up close. But beggars can’t be choosers, and Eddie feels one second away from falling to his knees and begging to a deity he doesn’t believe in.
He pulls out one of the stupid plastic cups, toes of his boots dipping into the red water as he bends over the reservoir and fills the cup, handing it to Harrington. Might as well take advantage of his tagalong jock test dummy, and all that.
Harrington grabs it from him, staring down at it dubiously. He tips it sideways, eyeing the liquid speculatively as it pours out of the cup and onto the concrete at his feet.
It’s hard to tell if it’s actually red, even watching it drip onto the ground. The light’s too fucked, but it’s at least translucent. It’s not blood, or at least not only blood. Eddie’s more concerned about the ash mixed in, to be honest.
Harrington’s still staring down at the remains of his cup like he’s not sure what to do with it.
“Wait,” Eddie says. “Don’t drink that. Hold on, lemme just –” he trails off.
Harrington doesn’t reply, but he can feel him watching as Eddie digs through his bag, pulling out a drugstore T-shirt and the second cup. He snatches Harrington’s cup from his fingers, puts the T-shirt overtop, and then puts the other cup on top of that, before flipping the cups quickly.
Some of the liquid splashes out as it pours into the second cup, but most of it makes it to its rightful destination. Eddie pulls the T-shirt away and eyes the cup. He pours it out again, humming in pleasure when there’s no ash floating in the puddle at his feet.
A glance in the original cup makes him gag. Harrington sidles up to peer over his shoulder at the congealed black sludge left at the bottom, smeared with ash and dirt.
“I’m glad I didn’t drink that,” Harrington says.
Eddie laughs, handing the remnants of the second cup back over to Harrington. The look in the other boy’s eyes tells Eddie he knows he’s the guinea pig in this arrangement, but he gamely takes a sip. Eddie holds his breath when Harrington makes a disgusted face, but when he doesn’t keel over and die, he takes another sip.
“Tastes like shit,” Harrington says, downing the rest.
When Eddie filters the next cup, he can’t help but agree. It tastes like too-strong coffee mixed with blood, and Eddie’s never liked coffee.
“How’d you learn to do this?” Harrington asks as they squat next to each other, Eddie filtering water, and Harrington filling the water bottles they’d collected from Melvald’s.
“I didn’t,” Eddie says, wringing the T-shirt out. When Harrington scoffs, he continues. “I just read about it in a book one time, and thought maybe it’d work.”
Harrington snorts. It sounds like a pig. Eddie hates himself for finding it endearing.
“You’re such a nerd,” he says, nudging his shoulder into Eddie’s. From his crouched position, Eddie almost goes tumbling into the water, but Harrington snags his shoulder and yanks him back, laughing all the while.
“Fuck off, man,” he says, but it lacks its usual heat.
It’s hard to completely hate a guy who dragged you bodily out of a window and away from your untimely demise. It’s hard, but damn if Eddie’s not going to try.
They fill the water bottles. It takes longer than it should, as Eddie tries to find a clean enough spot on the T-shirt to make filtering the water as clean as possible, but they manage.
Eddie doesn’t put the soiled garment in his backpack before slinging it onto his shoulders. It’s heavier now, but something in him eases with its weight. Days of survival have stretched out to weeks.
He thinks of that Thing again and wonders if that’s a good thing at all. With the way Harrington is grimacing as he slings his own pack onto his shoulders, he’s having similarly grim thoughts.
They both stare up at the steep path they’d come down, hours before.
“What now?” Eddie asks.
Harrington sighs, and starts trekking back up the hill. Without any better ideas, Eddie follows.
***
“What now, he says,” Steve mutters, quietly enough that hopefully Munson won’t hear him where he’s jogging to catch up to Steve’s long strides. “How the fuck should I know?”
His hands clench where they’re tucked around the straps of his pack, knuckles turning white. Munson’s right behind him now, almost walking on his heels, and Steve does his best not to scream, but all he can hear is Munson’s stupid little “what now?”. As if Steve knows. As if Munson isn’t a good year older than him. Why is it his responsibility to figure out what the fuck they should do?
He wants to go home. He wants to see Nancy’s brow furrow when he says something stupid, and he wants to put his potatoes on Tommy’s lunch tray when he’s not looking. He wants to hide in his closet. Hell, Munson can come with, if he wants. Steve’s sure he’ll be markedly less annoying when the sky’s not red, and the quarry water doesn’t feel like it’s crawling through his stomach.
“What now?” Steve says again. It’s still quiet, but the irritation has bled out of his tone. “What now?”
Munson pivots around him to walk by his side, shoulders bumping companionably. It makes his fists loosen.
“We should kill it,” Steve says. He can still feel the thing’s claws around his ankle where it had dragged him down.
Munson squawks, “we can’t kill that thing!” It’s too loud, echoing off the rocks and up into the sky.
Munson’s eyes are wide as Steve slams him into the wall of rock that makes up the right side of the trail. Steve’s hand curls into Munson’s hair, stinging from where it was cushioning the idiot’s head from the blow. His other hand snaps up, slapping over Munson’s stupid fucking mouth.
They’ve gotta stop finding themselves in these same positions – Munson’s lips are starting to feel familiar on his palm.
“Shut. Up.” It comes out as a hiss more than words, but Munson nods like he got the message, the rapid way he’s moving his head digging Steve’s hand further into the rocks. Then, the little bastard licks his palm like the consummate shit-stirrer he is.
He drops him, turning around to continue making his way up the path. He doesn’t feel relieved when he hears Munson’s footsteps following in his wake. Really, he doesn’t.
“Uncle Wayne has a shotgun,” Munson murmurs, less like he agrees, and more like he’s appeasing a wild animal.
It doesn’t make Steve feel great.
He imagines Munson crouched on top of a roof, gun cocked and ready, Steve playing convenient bait for the monster below. Would he be able to aim from that high up? He’s basing all his knowledge of guns on the war movies his dad likes, and that one failed hunting trip when he was eight. He’d come home branded a failure in his father’s eye – a pansy, not a man. It’s a stain he’s never been able to scrub off.
“How close do you need to be to kill it?” Steve asks.
Munson squawks, “I don’t know–” before seeming to catch himself and dropping his voice low. “I can’t kill it,” he hisses.
“Look, it hasn’t given us much of a choice.” Steve says, finally stopping his upward trek to lean against the rock wall, trying for casual, like they’re just chatting in between classes and not planning a murder in a hell dimension. “It’s us or it man, okay?”
Munson’s staring at him, eyes wide, mouth hanging. Steve reaches across the distance to squeeze his elbow, and Munson’s cheeks pinken as his eyes shift down to their single point of contact before shifting away, back down the path they’d just come up.
“I don’t know how to shoot.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how to shoot!” Munson throws his hands in the air, shrugging Steve’s hand off in the process. He’s as close as he can get to shouting while still managing to maintain his whisper. It’s almost impressive. “I’d love to fucking kill it, Harrington but I’ve never shot a gun in my fucking life. Okay?”
“But you’re–”
“What, poor?” Munson interrupts. “Not all trailer trash shoot beer cans and squirrels for sport!”
Steve looks at the tattoo peeking above the collar of Munson’s shirt, the ripped off sleeves of his vest, and the black shit-stomping boots the other boy’s wearing and decides not to contradict Munson’s assumption of where he’d gotten that idea.
He sighs and starts walking again, ignoring Munson’s angry muttering from behind him.
“I went hunting with my dad once.” It comes out like pulling teeth without laughing gas. Feels like it, too.
Munson huffs, amusement and anger all tangled up together as he jogs to catch up. “Of course you did.” Munson nudges their shoulders together, but it doesn’t feel friendly this time. “Little rich boy.”
“It was a long time ago dude, I was just a kid.”
Munson laughs. “Well, shit.” he says, slapping the back of his hand into Steve’s elbow once, twice, thrice. “Do you think you’ll even be able to find the trigger?”
“Pray to god I can, Munson.”
Munson looks up at the sky, the red shining off his eyes hauntingly and replies with a twist to his mouth that Steve can’t quite read, “I’ll be praying to someone, that’s for sure.”
***
Eddie may not have thought this through. The walk to the trailer doesn’t take long, even with the limp Harrington’s trying to hide and the weight of their backpacks.
Eddie wants to stretch out each step to last hours, even as the bottom of his feet ache, and his stomach rumbles its displeasure. But sooner than he’s prepared for, there it is: home sweet home.
Unfortunately, in the light of a red-hellscape day, his trailer looks shittier than usual. Its sky-blue paneling is blocked out by the vines crawling their way up its sides, coiling atop the windows like it’s a choice. There’s dirt caking it, like the vines dragged up all manner of mud and debris on their trip toward the sky.
It’s a beacon of piss-poor rural American life, and King Steve Harrington had just brushed past him on the doorstep to shove his way inside without even a by your leave.
Eddie’s not embarrassed by his life with Wayne. There’s a light in his heart for him that will never go out. He’s given him so much – a room of his own, consistent meals in his belly, someone to ask him what his plans are for the day over morning coffee. This is the best it’s ever been for Eddie Munson.
But there’s something curdling in his gut that feels an awful lot like shame. He imagines Harrington in there now, perusing Uncle Wayne’s mug collection with a derisive curl to his lip. Judging the way some of their logos are faded, the little chips in the handles and lips. The way none of them match. The way springs stick out in a few places in the pull-out couch. The television that’s at least ten years out of date. The hole in the bathroom door where Eddie’s foot had gone through when he’d been trying to learn how to cartwheel at thirteen.
All the little things he never even thinks about, stacking up in the face of King Steve’s perfect hair and perfect house. It’s curdling his insides, sinking like cement, weighing him to the stoop for a few moments more.
He takes a deep breath, pulls the dangling hem of his vest in tight, and shoves through the door like he hadn’t just been having a stupid breakdown over class warfare while trapped in a hellscape and being hunted by monsters.
Harrington’s not in the living room or bathroom. And Eddie’s bedroom door is still firmly shut. He follows the rustling sound to the kitchen where he finds Harrington, stooped over and rifling through the cupboard below the sink.
“Whatcha doing in there, big boy?” There’s a curl of satisfaction at the way the other boy jumps, smacking his head against the cupboard door.
He pulls his head out, grimacing up at Eddie and rubbing the back of his head. “Looking for anything useful.” He ducks back under the cupboard. Eddie stands there, listening to the rustling of his first-aid cabinet as Harrington digs through it. He resists the urge to yank Harrington out by his hair.
Almost as if he heard the thought, Harrington bolts upright, narrowly missing hitting his head for a second time as he turns to Eddie, eyes wide. “Shit, sorry. I forgot this was like, your house.” He looks at the window, the light half obscured by the vines crawling over its glass and amends, “well, sort of.”
Eddie can’t help the way he laughs at the other boy’s awkwardness. “You’re good dude,” he says, patting Harrington’s shoulder lightly. “But I don’t think you’ll find anything down there that we didn’t already get from Melvald’s.”
Harrington sighs. “Well, then,” he says, “where are the goods?”
Eddie retrieves Wayne’s shotgun from its place of honor behind his recliner, grabbing a box of extra shells from the little cupboard above the fridge.
The way Harrington grimaces as Eddie hands it over doesn’t inspire confidence, nor does the way he eyes the thing like he’s never seen one before, finger twitching toward the trigger before appearing to think better of it.
“How long ago was that hunting trip, dude?” he asks, trepidation leaking into his tone.
“I was eight,” Steve murmurs, barely audible.
“That was almost ten years ago!” His voice breaks in the middle. A pit has opened up in his stomach, and Harrington is going to throw them both in it and send that thing in after them.
“Do you have a better idea?” he hisses.
The kicker? Eddie really really doesn’t.
***
The gun feels wrong in Steve’s hands – simultaneously a toy and something so horrible he wants to throw it across the street and start running. But he can’t.
Because Eddie fucking Munson is in the street causing a ruckus as Steve stays crouched behind some boxes in the alley by the arcade, eyes trained down the length of the barrel, finger brushing the trigger. His back aches from the poor posture he’s forced to hold, knee scraped raw from where it's squashed into the rough pavement.
He's existing sometime between eight and seventeen. The wall beside him looms like his father, while Munson, flighty and frantic in front of him, plays the deer.
He’s eight, and his father’s hand is squeezing hard into his shoulder, urging him to, “take the shot, goddamn it, Steven, now!” He does. The shot hits the deer’s flank. It falls in the hollow between tree roots, but he didn’t do it right. It’s still breathing, chest rising and falling rapidly as its life force escapes through the bullet hole between its ribs.
He leans over and throws up into the dirt – the remnants of the scrambled eggs his mom made him that morning painting his shoes. His father smacks him so hard he falls into the dirt, still heaving, and goes to put a bullet between the buck’s eyes.
He’s seventeen and Steve pictures the same bullet hole in Eddie’s eyes. He feels bile rise but swallows it down, watching the other boy rant and flail and pace. Forgets the deer. Forgets his father. Just… forgets.
Steve should have given Munson credit for staying quiet before, because when he’s trying, he’s loud. He’s rattling the metal lunchbox he fished from his pack, yelling about the patriarchy and how the Man wants to keep them down, like this is one of his lunchroom confessionals and not a half-assed desperate plan to kill before they can be killed.
The only giveaway to Munson’s mounting fear is the violent tremor running through his hands, shaking as he gestures with his usual frenetic energy kicked up a few notches.
Steve’s bounces his knee with the need to move, to call a halt to this stupid fucking plan. He doesn’t, couldn’t even if he wanted to.
There’s the sound, reverberated through the alleyway. Like growling static. Like chittering foxes. Like the devil is welcoming him home. Munson spins, eyes wide as he looks at where Steve’s crouched before his gaze travels up up up, like he’s going to look up at the clouds.
There’s a clicking on the pavement. Nails on cement. A dog on a walk. But then there’s that sound again, closer now. Growling. Static. Silence.
Steve turns around.
It’s in the alleyway, standing tall, face puckered, arms outstretched.
“Steve—” He’s never heard Munson sound like that before. Like Steve’s breaking his heart and he’s terrified over it. He doesn’t have time to think about it.
The thing’s face unfurls slowly, then all at once, like petals toward the sun, but instead of pollen in the middle, it’s just teeth, all the way down. And the sound. It’s shrill, reverberating through his brain, shaking him where he stands.
It charges.
Claws swipe, catching Steve in the shoulder, bringing him down. It stops to screech, flower head puckering and unfurling. Teeth teeth teeth, all the way down, but none of that matters. None of that matters because it stalks right past him and straight for Munson.
Steve has the shotgun up before his next breath, fires on the inhale, holds the air in his lungs as the thing screeches in pain, stumbling in its forward momentum. The bullet is lodged in its ribs.
Munson’s on the ground and scrambling backward, hand over hand in a desperate bid for survival.
Steve fires again, knicks the thing’s neck, fires again when it turns to screech at him, sending the bullet straight through the things gullet.
It doesn’t go down like it should, but it doesn’t keep coming, either. The thing turns tail and runs away.
Steve drops the gun, still staring at the spot where it had been standing.
“Shit shit shit shit shit,” Munson says, each one faster than the last, as he scrambles out of his crab-walk and bolts toward Steve.
“Are you okay?” Steve asks, just as Munson drops to his knees in front of him, hitting the pavement and letting out a loud crack.
“Am I okay?” Munson asks. He sounds hysterical, and he’s crying a little as his hands hover over Steve like he’s a wounded deer. “It got you!”
He scoots closer, almost hovering over Steve as one of his hands settles onto Steve’s elbow. That brings the pain. It radiates from his shoulder, hot and dripping onto the pavement. He groans.
“Shit shit shit.” Munson rifles through his backpack, pulling out the bandages from the ransacking of Melvald’s and pulls them tight over his shoulder. The groan turns sharp, reverberating across the walls of the alley they’re still in. “I know, I know, sorry – shit!”
Munson lets him breath for a minute, before pulling him up, arm around his waist as he leads him away. Steve keeps his grip on the shotgun, knuckles turning white as he clutches onto it through the waves of pain.
“Time to go home,” Munson says.
Home. What a concept.