Chapter Text
The walk from the bench to Eddie’s trailer wasn’t even that long. Less than a minute, for sure. He made the walk several times a day, he ought to know. And yet, for some reason, the walk seemed to take an eternity tonight. Every inch of him felt hypersensitive and on edge, and every dark shadow between trailers or under a forlorn tree made him jump a little, feeling watched and uneasy. His boots crunched in the gravel, and the gentle breeze hissed in his ears, disturbing the perfect silence of a semi-rural summer night.
The trailer was in view when Eddie finally let himself breathe easy again. He clenched his hand around his lighter and keyring as he approached the warm glow of the kitchen light, which he had left on for himself. At this time of night, it was always the only light on, and gave him a sort of beacon when he got so baked at the park bench that there was no other way he would be able to find his way home. Jingling his keys in his pocket, Eddie stepped out in front of his van. Through the open window, he could see the warm illumination of the piles of dirty dishes and opened cereal boxes that littered the Munson kitchen.
So, it was completely without warning when something solid and heavy and warm whacked into Eddie’s side, flying out of the darkness of the shadowed side of his van. His vision tilted shockingly, and he hit the ground with a solid sound more attuned to two human figures hitting the ground than one. His skin stung as gravel scraped along his cheek and hands, scratching his shoulder through his shirt. The breath fled from his lungs and he lay there, gasping, shocked and a bit stunned, ears ringing.
“Who…who’re you?” The words sounded much weaker than Eddie would have liked. He was still struggling to inhale, and his heart was pounding wildly in his chest, hammering out a warning.
The soft sole of an expensive pair of leather sneakers stroked down the side of Eddie’s cheek, and he suppressed a shudder with a slightly crazed grin, hoping it would turn his attacker’s attention away from his trembling hands.
“No need to get so intimate so soon,” he drawled, hoping his voice didn’t shake too much, “It’s probably warmer inside the trailer, if that’s what you want.”
His fevered brain supplied a second later that that might be exactly what his assailant wanted, and Eddie fervently hoped that this wasn’t the case. However, the shoe withdrew as though its owner had been burned by Eddie’s cheek. The form that he now realized was looming above him took a step backwards, and seemed to shake itself for a second before bending forwards, looming between Eddie and the safe, warm light of his kitchen. He tried to shrink back into the gravel, recognizing the demeanour and outline of the person as it got closer. There was no fucking mistaking Jason. The part of his brain that wasn’t still reeling with disorientation and fear chuckled a bit at his own flirtations. No wonder Jason had pulled back like a shocked deer from a fence.
“My shoes are too expensive to use to kick your face in, freak,” Jason hissed, Eddie shutting his eyes to block out the blast of hot breath, “But I guess since I’ve got such a good opportunity, I can make an exception.”
Eddie caught sight of two more figures, smaller than Jason, looming behind him. He grimaced, hands flattened against the gravel underneath him. He took a shuddering breath, knowing there was no way he could talk his way out from under Jason and his misplaced desire for revenge.
“Hey,” he shrugged, once again fighting to keep his voice steady and his heart from leaping up his throat, “If it’s what gets you off, I’m not fucking judging. Though I wouldn’t be against you making a different choice about whose face you wanted to kick in.”
The anticipation of pain didn’t make it any less shocking or unpleasant. Eddie tried to roll with the blow, to take a bit of pressure of his ribs, but Jason’s far leg stopped him. His side smarted, and he gasped, trying to regain his breath even as stars burst before his eyes and fire flared in his ribs.
“I guess it still hasn’t got through your head that while the rest of Hawkins may have conveniently chosen to ignore the fact that you murdered three people, I haven’t forgotten. I think about you killing Chrissy every single fucking day. I think about how you probably wouldn’t have if I’d been there to fucking kill you first.”
Eddie winced as Jason’s expensive leather shoe came down on his cheek again, this time grinding his face into the coarse gravel. He scrabbled a bit, and felt someone else lean a painful amount of weight into his wrists, effectively pinning them to the ground as well.
“If the police aren’t going to do their job and punish you the way you deserve,” Jason continued, “Then I don’t have much of a choice but to do it for them.”
The shoe disappeared from Eddie’s head, and he had the barest moment of respite before his side was kicked brutally for a second time and a flurry of kicks rained down on him. He curled in on himself, trying to wrap his arms around his head, but everything was moving too quickly, and Eddie felt like he was trapped in molasses. Someone wrapped a hand in his hair and pulled back, leaving his throat exposed and his mouth open, gasping. Then, a fist connected with the side of his temple and left him reeling and dizzy, too disoriented to protect himself from any more blows. His breath came in a staccato of reedy wheezing, and what was either a tear or sweat impeded what little, blurry vision he had left. His head smacked back into the gravel for a second time, stars bursting before his eyes.
“Awww,” a cruel voice cut through the fog of pain, “Are you really fucking crying? After what you did to Chrissy, you think you have a right to cry about this? About getting what you fucking deserve?”
Eddie didn’t think he could respond, and when he tried, all that came out of his mouth was an exhale that sounded like a moan, and a spurt of hot blood. He choked and coughed on the metallic, thick taste of it, trying to brace himself on his elbows before he was pushed roughly back down.
“Fucking lie there and take it, Munson. You asked for it the second you decided to re-enact one of your little freak fantasies on Chrissy.”
At that point, Eddie knew that it wouldn’t have made any difference to try and defend himself. But his addled, foggy brain kept pulling an image of Chrissy, broken and wrong, floating on the ceiling of his trailer. He coughed, tried to force out the words I didn’t kill her, but nothing came out besides a choke of agony as one of Jason’s friends kicked him so hard that he slammed back into one of the tires of his van.
There were voices overhead now, tense and stilted.
“He’s had enough, Jason. You’re gonna kill him.”
“So what if I do? It’s not like anyone will miss him.” Another kick connected with Eddie’s aching ribs, and he coughed.
“Dude, he’s got friends. He’s got that club. Someone will notice if he just doesn’t fucking show. Come on, man, before you do some real damage. Leave him alone and let them all think someone else did it. Wouldn’t be the first time someone got beat within an inch of their lives on this end of town.”
Eddie wasn’t entirely sure he could trust his ears at this point, but he had to agree with Jason’s friend. Much more of this and he didn’t think he’d be alright without some sort of medical intervention he definitely couldn’t afford.
“He killed Chrissy, man.”
“You think Chrissy would want you to go to jail for killing him? C’mon, man, let’s go. He won’t talk. Not if he knows that we’re close enough to do this all over again. Eh, freak? You won’t talk, will you? Be a good boy and keep your mouth shut if you wanna keep all your teeth, huh?”
The last part of the conversation was punctuated by a hand grabbing Eddie roughly by the jaw and twisted his head to the side. He saw sparks, spat blood onto the gravel, and managed a weak nod that increased his vertigo tenfold.
“See, Jason? He won’t snitch on us. Too fucking scared. Not as scary as you seem, huh?”
Eddie didn’t have the energy to respond. Everything was swirling around him, night sky and darkened figures merging together into a sickening miasma. His hands clenched two fistfuls of gravel, and he willed himself not to throw up until Jason and his henchmen had gone back to whatever suburban hell they lived in.
With a parting kick to the ribs, the three boys towering over Eddie crunched off down the gravel road of the trailer park. He could hear their footsteps receding with painful clarity, his brain still on high alert, ready for the next attack. Meanwhile, his head bled sluggishly, and he could feel bruises spreading over cracked ribs. A cough sat at the back of his throat, and he tried to will it away before accepting his fate and hacking miserably until, finally, mercifully, he blacked out.
Eddie mocked Steve at least once a week for how much he worried. Called him a mother hen, bugged him about being attached to ‘his kids’, as they had been affectionately dubbed. Quite frequently, Eddie would make threats about what would happen if Steve ever started treating him with the same nervous vigilance.
“I’m a fucking adult. I live practically on my own and I’ve been earning my own money since grade school. Save your worrying for someone who needs it, or I swear I’ll destroy every cassette in your car.”
It had become a bit of a joke between them, as they had grown closer in the months that followed Vecna’s defeat. Eddie had ended up camping out on Steve’s couch while he found a new trailer to live in, and while he recovered from his demobat-inflicted injuries. There had been a few weeks where he hadn’t been able to walk, and Steve had brought him everything he needed. Unsurprisingly, he had spent the whole time protesting that he could do it himself, that he wasn’t useless, until Steve had needed to sit him down and ask him who had told him he was useless in the first place. The resulting conversation had been the beginning of something…more. Something that made Steve feel nervous and young. And something that made Steve worry even more about Eddie than he had when they had originally returned from the Upside Down.
All this to say, Steve Harrington fostered more than a healthy amount of worry for Eddie Munson. Worry, that was all it was. Worry that his friend hadn’t shown at his door, after they had planned to drive his van to the ass end of nowhere and play music together while they smoked weed.
Eddie always showed. Sometimes late, and usually dishevelled, but he never missed a plan, never didn’t arrive for the kids’ DnD campaigns. And Steve had called him, with no answer. Eddie always picked up, unless he was blazed out of his mind, in which case Steve was usually with him, these days.
After a half hour of pacing, and an irritated look from Dustin, who was over at Steve’s to use his computer, which he claimed was faster, the older boy had made up his mind.
I’ll just go check. He’s probably just sleeping in, and he’ll be annoyed when I get there that I woke him up, and we’ll go for a drive, and everything will be fine. But it’s better to check. You’d never forgive yourself if something happened and you didn’t go, you know that.
“Eddie not here yet?” Dustin called.
“No. I’m gonna go pick him up, he probably just overslept or something. I’ll be back in a while, okay? Use the walkie if you need anything, there’s stuff in the fridge to eat if you’re hungry or if you have anyone else over.”
Dustin rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, mum.”
Steve chose to ignore the jibe, slipping on his Vans and a jacket before grabbing his car keys off their hook at the front door and heading outside. The day was absolutely beautiful – still relatively early, since Eddie liked to start his campaigns with enough time for all the carefully planned variables to come into play. There were birds singing, and the insect-laden, romantic haze that only accompanied summer days. If Steve hadn’t experienced it firsthand, it would have been hard for him to believe that a few short weeks ago, the world as they knew it had been ending. Everything seemed so…normal, now. Steve felt a bit as though everyone had moved on, leaving him and his friends caught in the limbo of their own trauma. It was a difficult thing to bring himself to terms with – that and the fact that there was little he could do for the others, besides be there for them, and hope they were okay.
The freshness of the morning rather ruined for him, Steve wrenched the car door open and sat down in the driver’s seat, jamming his keys into the ignition. The car roared to life beneath him, and he backed out without even putting on a cassette. Somewhere in the last weeks, cassettes had become Eddie’s job. He always seemed to have some new music somewhere on his person, usually concealed in one of the many pockets in his denim vest. Steve had stopped trying to convince him to play Tears for Fears and Falco. Instead, he sat through the Metallica and Black Sabbath while Eddie headbanged (sometimes while he was driving, much to Steve’s horror) or hummed along.
The drive to the trailer park was pretty quick, all things considered. Not that Hawkins was that big to begin with. But Steve liked the dirt road outside the town, the trees that lined it and the moths and grasshoppers that flew up from the ditch as he roared by. He drove past a few spots he knew Eddie would sometimes walk to and smoke, with no sign of the other man. Worry increasing slightly, he pulled into the park, taking the turn towards the new trailer that Wayne and Eddie had relocated to after the destruction of their old one. Wayne was away right now – working some factory job up North. Steve had asked Eddie if he wanted to come stay in town, but Eddie had said he didn’t want to be a bother.
Next time, Steve resolved to force him to stay. Less worrying. Less heartache.
Not that Steve would call it heartache. Eddie had absolutely no connection to his heart. None at all. It was just worry, worry like the way he felt after Dustin hadn’t come to school while he was laid up with the flu, or whenever Nancy went traipsing off to God knew where to report on some horrific occurrence. Nothing more than that.
Eddie’s new trailer was a bit out of the way, and it faced a wide-open field, the short drive looping around in front of it in such a way that left the battered old van unexposed from the main trailer park road. Steve parked at the end of the road itself, then hopped out and slammed the door. It was cacophonous in the early morning air, and he hoped it would rouse Eddie from what he assumed was just a bout of oversleeping, giving him some time to compose himself before Steve started banging at his ratty screen door.
As he rounded the driveway, though, Steve’s heart did a swooping drop, a pit of sickening dread suddenly taking over the spot usually occupied by his stomach.
“Eddie! Fuck, Eddie!” He broke into a run the second he saw the younger man’s boots sticking out around the side of the trailer, the usually well cared for leather scuffed and covered in dust from the gravel road.
As soon as he came around the side of the trailer, any trace of hope he’d had that maybe Eddie had just dumped his boots outside vanished. The boots materialized into legs clad in dark jeans, and a torso wearing a red flannel top, topped by riotous curls that splayed across the driveway, blowing gently in the morning breeze. Eddie didn’t move when Steve yelled his name.
“Hey, hey, Eddie, it’s me. Hey, you okay?” Steve realized this was possibly the stupidest thing he had ever said. It was very obvious Eddie was anything but okay, and the closer he got, the more apparent that was becoming. His face was decorated with bruises and cuts, and now that Steve was close, he could hear Eddie’s breath – it was raspy and shallow, like he was inhaling his entire lungs’ worth through a plastic straw.
Kneeling in the gravel, ignoring the way it poked into his knees, Steve placed a gentle hand on Eddie’s shoulder.
“Hey,” he said, more gently now, recognizing the enormous gash and bruise around Eddie’s eye as the telltale sign of a concussion, “Hey, don’t freak out, it’s just me. Open your eyes, huh? You’re freakin’ me out a little bit here, y’know.”
Steve tried to hide the tremor in his voice. Eddie would be fine. He had survived so much worse.
As he squeezed his friend’s shoulder gently, Eddie’s eyes fluttered, squinting painfully and then slamming tightly shut with a soft, whispery groan.
“Ah…fuck…hurts.”
Trust Eddie to manage to insert an expletive into the first three words he got out of his mouth after a traumatic injury.
“Yeah, I know, man, it sure looks like it does. But I’m gonna need you to stay awake for a little while, okay? Just long enough that I can get you inside. I know I look tough and all, but I don’t think I can carry you without a little help.”
Steve shot Eddie a weak grin, but the younger man’s brow just contracted in confusion.
“Steve…s’that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Just need you to stay with me, okay? Focus on my hand, can you feel it on your shoulder?”
“Uh huh…Steve…what happened t’me?”
Steve sat back on his heels, trying to control his breathing. Head injuries were never good news. But Eddie seemed so confused, so out of it. He couldn’t even open his eyes, for God’s sake. Trying to think rationally, to take control of the situation, Steve squeezed Eddie’s shoulder a bit tighter. Focus now. He could worry about the intricacies of Eddie’s injuries once they were out of the chilly morning air and his friend was no longer exsanguinating into the gravel.
“I dunno, Eddie. But we’ll figure it out and get you feeling better. All you need to do is stay awake. Stay awake and help me get you back inside the trailer and into bed. Think you can do that, man?”
Eddie scrunched up his face again, wrinkling his nose as a stray curl blew across it. Steve brushed it away before even thinking about it, fingers warmed by Eddie’s soft exhale.
“Y-yeah. Jus’…dunno if I feel so good. I…everything’s moving, Steve. It all…ahh…it all hurts. Fuck…can’t fucking move. You’ll help me?”
The last question ended on such a vulnerable cadence that it broke Steve’s heart. Eddie seemed so much smaller without his dramatic affectation, his capricious personality and constant gesticulating. Now, lying on the dirt as the birds sang in the field beyond him and the rising sun painted him in a golden-pink glow, he looked vulnerable and afraid and desperately confused. Steve squeezed his shoulder a bit tighter, trying to ignore the way his heart was pounding in his chest. It was nothing. Just worry. Worry for his friend.
“Yeah, I’ve got you. I think you’ve got a concussion, so we’ll take it slow, okay? Trust me, I know how much this hurts, but you gotta sit up.”
Eddie nodded and immediately seemed to regret it, his face and mouth tightening with lines of pain.
“Yeah, try not to move your head,” Steve grimaced sympathetically, heart squeezing a bit tighter, “Just stay still, I’ll help you up. You just gotta give me a hand when I get you standing, okay?”
Steve took Eddie’s hands in his own, trying to ignore a small thrill that ran through him. Eddie’s fingers, normally so brilliantly adorned, weren’t covered in rings right now. A few of his fingers were also swollen and bruised in what looked like the pattern of boot prints. Steve tried to swallow his rage. He could deal with that later – whatever had happened to Eddie, it hadn’t been spontaneous. When he was feeling more awake and himself, Steve knew he’d have to get the full story. And probably splint those fingers.
He managed to get Eddie halfway to sitting, holding both the younger man’s hands in his own right hand while his left cradled his head and back. Eddie looked more and more sick the closer they got him to sitting, and finally gave up and pitched forwards, directly into Steve’s shoulder. His head hit Steve with a jarring bump, and he immediately started gagging. Steve had barely a second to hop to the side, one hand on the front and back of Eddie’s torso, before he was throwing up into the space between his legs. He looked fucking miserable, head hanging, hair surrounding him like a curtain, lips parted and a string of spit hanging off his lips. He kept on coughing, then whimpering in pain at what Steve assumed were broken ribs, then coughing up more vomit and bile.
“Hey, hey,” Steve tried his best to put on a calm front, “You’re okay, you hear me? Just your head, yeah? You’ll be a little dizzy, but I’ve gotcha, you’ll be just fine.”
Eddie gave no sign that he’d heard him. He slumped over, shaking now, shivering so hard his teeth were chattering. Every time Steve thought he might be done throwing up, he would gag again, bruised fingers gripping weakly at handfuls of gravel in some sort of attempt to calm himself down. All the while, Steve could do nothing but encourage him to breathe through it, tell him that he’d be okay, to just keep breathing.
It must have been nearly twenty minutes before the vomiting finally stopped. By this point, Steve was near to calling an ambulance, insurance be damned. Hell, he’d commit insurance fraud before he let Eddie die, concussed and confused, in his own driveway. When Eddie finally looked up, tears tracing down his dirty cheeks, flushed from exertion, Steve nearly cried from relief.
“Hey,” he smiled weakly, “Good to see you’re still alive.”
“Dunno…” Eddie mumbled, “Don’t fuckin’ feel…alive. M’head…what happened, Steve?”
Dustin had said Steve had been similarly confused after his own concussion.
It’s fine, it’s normal, he just needs to rest. Steve repeated the mantra over and over as he tried to give another encouraging smile.
“Dunno, Eddie, but we’ll wait until you’re feeling a little bit more yourself before you gotta tell me. Right now I just want to get you inside and into bed, okay? C’mon, you made it this far, just gotta get you standing and into that dingy trailer of yours, and then I’ll leave you alone.”
“Steve…don’t.”
“What?”
“Leave me ‘lone. Don’t…I don’t…fuck,” Eddie stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose between two bruised fingers, clearly trying to get hold of his thoughts, “I don’t want you to go. They’ll come back.”
Steve decided to leave that last, alarming admission be for the moment, instead focusing on the sudden warmth that appeared to have blossomed amidst the worry in his gut. It had been happening more and more often recently, the warm feeling. He couldn’t connect it to Eddie’s sudden appearance in his life. That would be far too dangerous an admission. One that risked what had quickly become one of the best and most consistent friendships in his life.
“Okay, okay,” he sighed, leaning forwards, and letting Eddie slump against him, forehead against his shoulder, “I won’t. But we still gotta get you inside. You’re shivering.”
Eddie looked down at his own shaking hands as though surprised by just how bloodless and cold they looked. His teeth started chattering even harder now that he had apparently taken notice of it.
“’Kay…”
“Good. I’ll help you up, just try not to fall over or throw up until we’re inside.”
With a bracing breath, Steve slung Eddie’s arm around his shoulder, maneuvering the injured man so they were sitting side by side on the gravel driveway. Leaving himself as little time to think as possible, Steve hauled them both upright, bracing for much more weight than he found himself carrying. Eddie was hanging off his shoulder, limp and gasping, but he weighed next to nothing. It wasn’t the first time Steve noticed how thin he had gotten since everything had happened with Chrissy and Vecna, but it was the first time it was presented to him so starkly.
“Hey man,” Steve tried to joke, hoping to get Eddie to smile through the pain that currently had him shaking and gasping, unable to support any of his own weight, “Didn’t know all those rings you normally wear weighed a literal ton. You’re a fucking feather without them, aren’t you?”
Eddie mumbled something, but his words were thick and garbled, probably due in part to the fact that he looked seconds away from throwing up again. Steve clamped his own mouth shut. This wasn’t helping anyone. He doubted Eddie could even understand him properly right now. They needed to get inside.
“Think you can walk? Just up the stairs and inside?”
A negatory hum. Steve sighed. At least carrying Eddie to his bedroom wasn’t going to be as downright impossible as he had originally assumed.
“Okay, princess. But don’t think I won’t be telling Dusting and all his friends about how I had to get you home.”
Steve scooped his other arm under Eddie’s legs, trying to jostle him as little as possible as they got adjusted to this new position. Eddie wasted absolutely no time in lying his head against Steve’s shoulder. His nose was dripping blood, and with his black eye and lacerated forehead, he looked an absolute mess. At least he didn’t seem to be shaking as hard now that Steve’s warm body was pressed up against him.
Steve had to quickly abandon that train of thought as he made the few steps from Eddie’s van to the trailer steps. Now was not the time to deal with whatever was bubbling rather aggressively below the surface of his worry for his friend. He could do that later. At home. While not thinking about the way Eddie’s hip felt pressed against his stomach, and the way his curls felt blowing against the back of Steve’s neck.
The trailer door was unlocked, though it didn’t appear that the inside had been rummaged through. Steve tried not to think too hard about that – or about the fact that it pointed to someone having come after Eddie to hurt him specifically, not to rob him. Instead, he made his way up the rickety steps and winced when the screen door rattled shut behind them, before making the sharp right turn down the little hall to Eddie’s room at the back of the trailer. Eddie’s boots scraped against the walls, and he groaned softly, hand clenching into Steve’s jacket.
“Nearly there,” Steve muttered, “I swear to God, if you throw up in the hallway…”
Eddie squeezed his eyes more tightly shut in response, and clamped his mouth shut as well. Steve resisted the urge to praise him like he might have done with one of the kids – Eddie was right, he was becoming a fucking parent at the ripe age of 19.
Eddie’s room was disastrous, bordering on hazardous. Steve had to pick his way around discarded DnD guidebooks, piles of clothes and a suspicious-looking heap of baggies filled with what looked like at least a pound of marijuana. Definitely not a robbery then, that shit had to be worth at least a grand.
“Y’know, you could keep it cleaner in here. I’ll probably fall and concuss myself, and drop you in the process, and then where’d we be at? Two concussed assholes along in a trailer in the middle of the ass end of nowhere.”
“S’ry…wasn’t expectin’ company…s’better normally.”
“Yeah,” Steve teased gently, “Next time make sure to clean before you go and get your ass beat. Maybe give me a call too, give me a bit of time to prepare.”
Eddie hummed quietly, more an amused sound than a pained one, which was a start, at least. Steve picked his way through the mess before arriving at the unmade bed, also half covered with clothes, and sporting an ashtray that didn’t look like it had been emptied since Eddie had moved from the other trailer. Steve dumped his charge as gently as he could on the one corner of the bed that hadn’t been completely taken over by clutter, before setting the ashtray on the bedside table and sweeping the clothes into a haphazard heap on the floor.
“Hey…” Eddie slumped over dizzily, looking up at Steve from beneath his bangs, “Don’t mess with my shit, man. S’a whole system.”
“Is it really?”
“Mhmm…” Eddie was slumping over, head in his bruised hands, elbows on his knees, and Steve had to hurry over to push him upright before he landed face-first on the floor.
“Hey, man, no falling asleep on me yet. Gotta check you over first, yeah? Maybe get a shower or something, you’re covered in dust.”
Eddie jerked upright and placed a hand against his forehead with a wince. He was still shivering.
“No showers…m’tired.”
Steve got him lying down against a mound of pillows that were so squashed that even about eight of them barely made any difference. Hair splayed around his face, half-dried blood trickling down his forehead, Eddie looked so vulnerable. He was worrying at his slightly split lip, and Steve had to resist the urge to brush away the blood that was starting to gather at the corners of his mouth.
“I know you’re tired,” Steve said, feeling pretty damn exhausted himself, “I’ll let you sleep in a little bit. You got any painkillers in this shithole, or are you too metal for that?”
“Kitchen. By the cereal.”
“Of course it is. What about blankets? Some that don’t look like you brought them back from the Upside Down with you?”
“Couch.”
Steve nodded, pulling up the one blanket that was on Eddie’s bed to cover him before he left.
“Don’t die while I’m gone, huh?
“Doin’ my best…”
Steve shook his head and tried not to smooth Eddie’s hair back from his forehead.
“I’ll fix you up in a bit.”