Work Text:
Steve didn’t go to the funeral.
He tried to go. He really did. He told the volunteer people at the high school he needed the afternoon off, he ironed his best dress shirt, he even polished his fucking shoes. And then he got in the car and he just sat there, both hands on the wheel, staring at his watch as the minutes passed.
Fifteen minutes passed. The wounds in Steve’s sides, put there by the same little demons that had killed Eddie, were starting to close. The bandages caught on the fabric of his nice shirt. It felt grossly uncomfortable, so he tugged at his shirt to try and keep it off the bandages. It didn't work.
Thirty minutes. He’d be so late if he left now. People would stare as he walked in. He couldn’t handle that right now.
An hour. It was just that Eddie had always had so much life to him, you know? Always moving, drumming his fingers on something or making some stupid face at whatever happened to be pissing him off. He’d had such bright eyes, so intense, so full of fire. Steve couldn’t picture him ever lying still.
Ninety minutes. Steve’s tie was choking him. He thought about Eddie, in his dirty jeans and Hellfire shirt. They’d probably put him in a suit for the funeral. The unnatural feel of it all made Steve want to puke.
Two hours. He at least needed to go to the burial. Dustin would be so pissed if he didn’t. The thought was almost enough to make him turn the key in the ignition, but still, he hesitated.
Three hours. Really, what right did Steve have to be there anyway? He’d only been close to Eddie for, what, a week? What was that next to Dustin or any of the other kids in Hellfire? Jesus, what was that next to Eddie’s uncle? Kids like Steve had tortured kids like Eddie in high school. He had no right.
Steve heaved out a shaky sigh, pulled the key out of the ignition, and went inside.
~~~
Dustin was pissed, of course. He called Steve about ten minutes after he walked back into the house, and didn’t even give him the chance to say hello.
“Where the hell were you?” He demanded.
“I was just…” Steve’s mind wasn’t here for this conversation. He was frozen in place, wrapped in fog, brain not making sense of the words as he said them. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know where you were?” Dustin echoed.
“No, no, I just – I was in my car, but I…”
“But what? But what , Steve?” Dustin’s voice was starting to go shaky now. Steve was officially the shittiest person on Earth.
“I couldn’t.” The words were completely hollow. Steve barely even registered them as his own voice.
“You fucking asshole. Eddie gave his life to make sure those bats wouldn’t get you and Robin and Nancy and you can’t even–” Dustin’s voice wavered on the last words before breaking completely. Steve wanted to say something, anything, any words of comfort, but his tongue was heavy as lead in his mouth and his hands were too frozen to even move to hang up. All he could do was sit there and listen to the staticky noises of his best friend crying over the phone. That damn tie felt as tight around his throat as one of the vines in Creel’s house.
Eventually, Dustin hung up on him. Steve thought about trying to call back once he’d collected himself a little, but he was sure Dustin wouldn’t be interested in anything he had to say.
Dustin, who’d been all alone while he watched Eddie die, all while Steve was busy not-killing Creel five miles away. Some fucking babysitter.
Jesus. All of this and Creel was still fucking out there. Hawkins was in ruins. They hadn’t even won.
Steve took off his tie, balled it up, and hurled it at the wall.
~~~
It was three weeks before he could bring himself to visit the grave. Yesterday had been a truly perfect April day, one of the first lovely days of the year, but today it was back to feeling almost like winter – about 45 degrees and threatening rain. Maybe Steve was just more of a sucker for cliches than he liked to admit, but that seemed more appropriate. It wasn’t like weather meant much in downtown Hawkins, anyway, with the Upside Down starting to spill its way through, but his destination was outside the town proper. The air was a little clearer.
He bought flowers on the way to the cemetery. Lilies. He didn’t really know why. They smelled nice, and it just seemed like the thing to do. Plus, it felt bad to go in empty-handed.
The stone was nice. Nicer than Steve thought the Munsons could probably afford, which he immediately felt awful for thinking. It was dark and shiny and reached almost up to Steve’s waist. In a stately, elegant font, it read:
EDWARD MUNSON
1966-1986
“The brightest flame burns quickest.”
Steve smiled weakly and got to his knees in front of the stone, setting the lilies down in front of it. He was glad to see that the vandalism had died down – Dustin had told him that right after the funeral, people had been putting all sorts of horrible graffiti on it, painting pentagrams or phrases like “MURDERER” or “REST IN PIECES”. Whoever had washed all that off did a good job. Steve was grateful to them.
He shifted slightly where he sat, looking from the stone to the lilies to the smoking sky in the distance, then back to the stone. All at once, he found his voice.
“Uh, hey, man,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “Sorry it, um…took me so long to come by. I didn’t…well, I don’t know. Don’t have an excuse, I guess. Just being a shitty friend.” He placed a hand on the lilies. “Brought you these. Does that make up for it?”
He cleared his throat. “Look, I know this is gonna sound stupid, because we didn’t know each other very long, but everything’s weird without you here. It’s like, that’s kinda how it is when you’ve had the past couple years that I’ve had. That Nancy and Robin and the kids have all had, too. You barely know someone’s name, but you go through shit like this with them…yeah, they become inner circle pretty quick. Don’t know if that’s, like, healthy or whatever, but I wouldn’t trade all those idiots for the world. Or you, either. Not that I ever got the chance to make that trade, I guess.
I still have your vest, by the way. The one you gave me after those bat things got me. I kinda wanted to bring it today, but I know how cemeteries work. I know they’d just toss it, and I don’t want that. I think maybe I’ll give it to Dustin, but I gotta wash it first, and Robin says all those patches you put on there might come off if I put it in the machine like normal, and I don’t want that, either. I’ll figure something out.
When I said earlier that everything’s weird…it’s like, you being d– not being here just feels incorrect. It’s why, um. It’s why I didn’t come to the funeral?” Tears were gathering in Steve’s eyes, but he desperately blinked them back, pressing his lips shut together before he continued.
“I just thought about them burying you in a suit. I thought about you in a church. I thought about…” Steve choked out a bitter laugh and rested his hand on the engraving of Eddie’s name. “ Edward . I mean, who the hell is that, man? None of that is you. And maybe it’s selfish – no, it is, it’s definitely selfish – but I wanted to remember you differently. But I should’ve been there for Dustin, man. He’s a fucking wreck without you.”
Anger flared in Steve’s chest then, hot and sharp in his chest. “I told you not to be a hero,” he whispered, voice quivering. “I told you no cute shit. Dustin says you almost made it back. He says you were on the goddamn rope ladder . You could’ve made it. You asshole, you could have made it.”
How was any of this fair? Steve should’ve been the one in the fucking dirt, he thought. Those vines were seconds from killing him. He was weak, incapacitated, defenseless. He only survived because of a miracle. And yet Eddie, who had had shit under control, Eddie, who knew what the plan was, was dead because of the ridiculous idea that running when it was smart to run made you a coward.
Eddie shouldn’t be the one out of the two of them who was dead right now.
Steve was overcome with the unfairness of it all. The fingers brushing Eddie’s headstone curled inward, and with a scream building in his throat, he drew back and slammed his fist into the stone. Pain flared through his knuckles, and Steve curled forward, shaking. Tears ran freely from his face, but he couldn’t tell when he’d started crying for real or when he’d stopped, because his face was blank as he watched blood start to trickle from the split skin on his hand. The stone was fine, of course. That was what mattered. Steve could handle a bit of pain.
As he pulled himself to his feet with a mumbled, awkward goodbye and started heading back to his car, he told himself that he deserved worse.