Chapter Text
Eddie woke to the feeling of Junebug's wet nose pressed against his face. She whined and huffed, then licked a large stripe up his cheek. Then, another. Then, more until she decided that wasn’t good enough and pawed at Eddie’s forehead.
“I’m awake, I’m awake,” he grumbled, eyes still closed.
He felt an exhaustion so bone-deep that it almost reminded him of the groggy, drug-induced state he was in when he woke up in the hospital, but he supposed that was what he got for staying up so late.
He hadn’t really meant to, but he wanted to write down all of his ideas for the potential doppelgänger campaign, and simple bullet points turned into sentences, which turned into paragraphs. He didn’t think to check, but he knew it was well past midnight by the time he finally fell asleep, sprawled out with a mess of papers and his monster manual. Ink stains on his hands, pen still in reach.
Junebug whined at him and nudged him with her nose again, as if to stubbornly remind him that she wasn’t going to stop until he got out of bed.
Once he opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of the alarm clock, he didn’t blame her. He was late for their usual routine, and she was probably hungry.
Guilt got him on his feet. He could already tell that his leg was going to give him trouble, so he grabbed his cane from where it was propped against the nightstand and made his slow way into the kitchen.
Wayne was there already, making breakfast at the stove, which made Eddie feel even guiltier for making Junebug wait so long.
He grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door and Wayne piped up, “I got it covered already, son. I fed her and took her out after I got home.”
“Sorry about that. Stayed up late.”
“Ain’t nothing to be sorry for,” he said. He gestured to the cabinet with a spatula. “Alright, boy, soup’s on.”
Eddie grabbed a plate and stood by the stove, only to realize that Wayne had pulled out all the stops — sunny side up eggs, hashbrowns, and sausage links.
It was like this a lot lately, to the point where Eddie stopped asking if it was a special occasion. After he realized how much weight he’d lost over the last month or so, he figured it was Wayne’s way of making sure he kept some meat on his bones, which was working, considering that his ribs were starting to fill out again.
So, he let Wayne pile his plate high with food, even if there was only a slim chance of him finishing it all, and sat down at the table with him to dig in.
“Got a lot done last night?” Wayne asked.
“Yeah, I don’t know if anything will come by it, though.”
“That’s alright. As long as you’re havin’ some fun,” he said, but he couldn’t hide the small smile on his face.
Eddie wanted to tell him the truth — that Hellfire was probably never meeting again, that he didn’t think he could handle it now that he knew what real monsters were like — but who was he to bring his uncle back down to earth when he seemed so hopeful?
He said nothing instead, shoveling food into his mouth while Junebug begged at his feet, and listened to stories of what had been going on at the plant lately. He gulped down two cups of coffee to help stave off the sleepiness he still felt, then washed and dried his plate once he was done.
The caffeine helped more than he thought it would too, because he was back in his room, scribbling down more campaign ideas, as soon as Wayne turned in for bed.
He wrote until his hand cramped up, then switched to the other until that one cramped up, and on it went until Wayne left for work and a knock came at the front door.
Junebug ran for it and started barking, excited to see whoever was outside, but Eddie froze where he was. They didn’t get visitors. Ever. His only thought was that it had to be Jason’s goons, ready to ‘get even’ for Chrissy, even though their righteous leader was behind bars for it all.
He made it to Wayne’s room without a sound audible over Junebug’s barking, then grabbed the gun from its safe in the closet. It wasn’t much — it was nothing if they came in numbers — but it gave him peace of mind as he snuck to the window by the door and took a peek.
It was Steve — VHS tapes, cold beer, and hot pizza in hand — and Eddie let out a breath of relief. He’d forgotten about their movie night.
He quickly went to put the gun away and patted Junebug’s head when he got back, soothing her, before he undid the six locks and opened the door.
“Hey, man,” Steve said.
Eddie stepped aside to let him in, only for Steve to set the stuff he brought down on the table and pull him into one of those awkward ‘bro’ half-hugs where they pat each other on the back. Eddie had only seen them, never taken part, so he didn’t know what to do once he was released.
“Sorry for the wait. I was…uh, I lost track of time.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Steve smiled at him, and if he noticed the nervous glint of sweat on his face, he didn’t acknowledge it.
Silence settled between them, heavy, until Junebug jumped up and put her front paws on Steve’s thighs. He was a good sport about it, immediately dropping down and giving her all the love and attention she could ask for.
“Hi, sweet girl,” he said. He used the same kind of baby voice that Eddie did when he spoke to her. “I know, I know. I should have said hello to you first, that was so mean of me, wasn’t it?”
Eddie smiled. He couldn’t help it. The whole thing felt a little strange, but he was well-versed in all things strange at this point, so what was one more on the list?
They settled in on the couch, pizza and beer within reach, while Junebug laid in-between them for more pets, then started the movie.
Eddie had some reservations. He couldn’t imagine that he and Steve had many of the same interests, considering what little he knew about him, but if Robin vouched for the movie too…well, he would try to keep an open mind. He remembered the look on her face in the boathouse, how quickly she seemed to understand after he’d uttered the words hunt the freak, and though they hadn’t gotten the chance to talk about it, he had the sneaking suspicion that they were the same rarified breed of ‘freak.’
Which, if true, would have been fabulous. The gay population of Hawkins wasn’t exactly large. In fact, Eddie could count on two fingers the number of people he knew of — that being himself and Wayne — and he didn’t exactly feel comfortable divulging into certain topics with his uncle of all people.
Not that Eddie was getting any. There were a few run-ins he had at a bar in Indy, consisting solely of hand and mouth stuff, but those days were long gone, because even if he had the energy to get prettied up for a night out, there were other things that he didn’t have energy for, and explaining the scars all over his body was one of them.
Eddie frowned at the thought, and for a moment, he was angry. Maybe even furious.
Steve picked up on it right away. He paused the movie and gestured toward the TV with the remote.
“Do you not like it or something?”
“No! No, it’s not that. I’m having a good time, it’s just…I guess this is harder than I thought,” he admitted. Steve tilted his head, confused, and it was far too endearing. It almost reminded Eddie of Junebug. “I mean, how do you go back to normal after something like what we went through? How do you act like everything’s the same?”
“You don’t,” Steve said. His tone was blunt, but not cruel. “You can try, but it’ll never go back to the way it was before.”
“Doesn’t that piss you off?”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“So, then, how do you do it? How do you survive?”
Steve’s expression softened, and it made Eddie realize just how heavy his words were. More than that, how honest.
“You take it one day at a time,” Steve said, then he nudged Eddie’s arm. “You do what you can, and when that isn’t enough, you lean on your friends.”
Eddie frowned again. Guilt writhed and squirmed in his gut like a wounded animal.
“I guess those little twerps are pretty worried about me, huh?”
“It’s not just them, man. You really scared us for a while. Honestly, I think a lot of us are still scared.”
Steve’s eyes lingered on the scar on Eddie’s cheek, and the guilt grew tenfold. He had put them through a lot. Not only with the whole ‘dying and coming back and almost dying again’ thing, but with the weeks of radio silence and rejected visits after that. Talking to Wayne was the only way that they knew he was okay — even if ‘okay’ was a strong word — and it wasn’t like Wayne to sugarcoat things.
It was a little unnerving, in hindsight, to think about just how bad it had gotten. He wouldn’t exactly say that he was thriving since they took Junebug home, but he wasn’t staying in bed for days at a time anymore. That had to count for something, right?
He wondered if the kids even knew that he was getting better. His walkie-talkie was back on, so they didn’t have to rely on his uncle, but it wasn’t like he was giving them a lot of updates. Hell, they were probably relying on Max now, as she seemed to be keeping up with the goings on of the Munson trailer.
“I’m sorry,” Eddie said. He had the feeling that it was going to be the first in a long, long line of apologies, but it was a good start. “I wasn’t trying to scare anybody, I just…I don’t know. It’s a lot sometimes.”
“You don’t have to be sorry, Eddie. We know how hard it is to just get thrown into the middle of all this shit. It’s not like there’s some guidebook like in your Dragons and Dumbasses game.”
“Come on, you know what it’s actually called.”
“Do I?” Steve challenged. He had a shit-eating grin on his face that made Eddie smile too.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that lately. Hellfire, I mean. I was up all night and all day writing for a new campaign.”
“I thought you were still in the middle of one. Before everything happened.”
“No, we finished that. Little Sinclair dealt the death blow, it was metal.” Eddie went to twist one of the rings on his fingers, a nervous habit, only to find he still wasn’t wearing them. “Besides, even if we hadn’t finished it, I don’t know how crazy I am about the idea of fighting Vecna again.”
Steve nodded. He had him there.
“So, what’s this new one about?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet. Right now, it’s just a bunch of ideas.”
“Well, I’m sure it’ll be a good one. I know Dustin will freak when he finds out, he’s been bugging everybody about—”
“He’s not going to find out.”
“Wait, what?”
Eddie sighed, heavy and probably a little overdramatic, then rubbed his face with his hands. Junebug set her head on his leg and looked up at him with her big, brown eyes like she knew he needed the comfort.
“I’m not reforming Hellfire,” he confessed. Steve looked personally offended. “It’s not that I don’t want to — or maybe it is, I guess — but I don’t know if I can handle it. Who says anyone would even come back anyway?”
“The kids would. Your band would too.”
“Yeah, right.”
“They still ask about you.”
“What?”
“Your band. They ask Dustin how you’re doing all the time.”
Eddie said nothing. He didn’t know why he was so surprised to hear it. Him, Jeff, Gareth, and Freak were always ride-or-die for one another. He knew that they visited him in the hospital, that they tried to visit the trailer a few times, but that was it. He figured they gave up on him after he had Wayne turn everyone away. Which was downright ridiculous, now that he thought about it. He could never get rid of them so easily.
“Alright,” he said, “I’ll reform Hellfire under one condition.”
“And that is?”
“You have to play with us.”
Steve pursed his lips, considering it, before he shrugged.
“Yeah, okay, but I have a condition of my own. You have to come to a party with all of us.”
“What?”
“You heard me. The kids have their homecoming dance coming up, and there’s a huge party afterwards. It’s at Tina’s place, you know the one who went all out for Halloween? Everybody’s invited, not just high schoolers.”
Eddie scoffed. Rolled his eyes.
“Somehow, I don’t think I’m included in ‘everybody.’ The only reason she tolerated my presence for Halloween was because I brought the party favors.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Steve insisted, but Eddie maintained his frown. “You can dance, you can get drunk, you might even hook up! And I can be like a bodyguard, if that’d make you feel better. Just in case.”
It was just about the last thing that Eddie wanted, short of a portal to the Upside Down opening up in the middle of his living room again. He didn’t feel like listening to the worst of the Top 40s while everyone gave him the evil eye. Or worse.
But, Steve looked at him with such a hopeful expression, practically begging, and Eddie couldn’t have resisted if he tried. He was screwed.
“One party, and then you join Hellfire. Deal?”
“Deal,” Steve said, from hopeful to downright smug.
Eddie was so, so screwed.