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Eddie Munson never, not in his wildest drug-induced dreams, thought that he would die a hero’s death. A tragic death, maybe. A pathetic death, almost certainly. Maybe even a stupid death. (A coward’s death hadn’t been something he’d considered, either, but apparently that was also on the table these days. Go figure.) But a hero’s death? Not a chance. Not in a million years. Not for this loser.
And yet…
And yet.
This is hardly Pelennor Fields, and he is hardly King Théoden. The Upside Down is anything but picturesque; it is dark and cold and grimy. He is, at best, Frodo lying on the ground outside of Mount Doom, the One Ring cast into the fire but knowing there’s no hope of making it home again. But as he lies on his back, surrounded by the bodies of his fallen enemies—fucking demobats—he lets himself feel a little proud. He went down fighting for his people—his Party—and isn’t that what matters? He is—not exactly at peace (why is it that only while dying has he realized how much he actually wants to live?) but resigned when a small body flings itself onto the ground beside him. It’s screaming his name.
“It’s bad, huh?” he asks.
He knows it’s bad. Something wet is clinging to him all over—his shirt, probably—and he’s not a medical professional, but he knows that can’t mean anything good. Rusty-tasting liquid dribbles out the side of his mouth. Another one for the Not Good list. He tries to smile at Dustin and knows there is blood on his teeth. Dustin is weeping openly, alternating between screaming Eddie’s name and shouting for Steve, for Nancy, for anyone more adult who can help him—help Eddie. Leave it to this little shit to prevent him from dying in peace. A warmth unrelated to blood loss settles in Eddie’s chest. This kid, man.
“It’s not that bad,” says Dustin. Tear tracks cut through the grime on his cheeks. Even without their betrayal, it would not be a convincing lie. “You’re gonna be okay, Eddie, really.” But then he turns over his shoulder and bellows, “STEVE! FOR FUCK’S SAKE—STEVE!”
“You’re a bad liar, dude.” A laugh huffs through him, and it’s the feeling of a thousand razor-sharp teeth all over again. “Eurgh, not good. Shouldn’t do that.”
“Just hang on, Eddie, okay? I see Steve and Nance and Robin, they’re coming—”
“Dustin,” he says. The words are thick as molasses, sticky in his mouth, but he unglues his jaw. It has to be said. “Listen.”
“Okay okay okay okay, I’m listening, Eddie, I’m here, I’m here, just—shit—just hang on—”
Eddie’s fingers itch to rub his hand over the kid’s head, mess up his hair a little, but his body is rebelling. His arm lifts a little, then thuds back onto the ground with a sad thump. Traitor. “I love you, man,” he says. The words choke him a little, and it’s not the blood. Emotion constricts his throat in a way that he hasn’t felt in a very long time. So this is what it’s like, to love and be loved by people. Why’d he wait so fucking long to figure this out.
“I love you, too, Eddie, but you’re gonna be fine, okay? We just gotta get you out of this shithole.”
“Shithole,” Eddie breathes. God, that had better not be his last word. What an epitaph. He smiles another bloody smile. Darkness creeps in on the edges of his vision. The sky above him is narrowing to a finer and finer point. Somewhere in the distance—it is so hard to tell how far—there’s a pounding of feet, shouting. A clammy hand finds its way into his and he squeezes it, or hopes he does. “I’m glad that you’re here with me,” he says. His throat feels too tight. “Here at the end of all things, Sam.”
From a very long way away, Dustin yells, “EDDIE?”
For a second, minutes, hours, there is blackness. When he wakes—comes to—he is being lifted into the air. It is not gentle; his body (and maybe his mouth) lets out a scream of protest. There is pressure under his armpits and at his ankles. It feels a little like flying. It’d be great, if he weren’t in so much fucking pain. His eyelids flutter, but there are weights tied to them. They stay closed. He whispers, “Gwaihir?” and blacks out again.
It takes a staggeringly long time—longer than Eddie thought the kid could hold out—before Dustin finally gives him the talking-to that he knows he deserves. The fact that it’s taken so long is a testament to how worried about him the kid has been; every time Eddie so much as sneezes, Dustin looks like he’s ready to call 911. But he’s managed a few weeks now without so much as scraping his goddamn knee (there was a second when one of his guitar strings snapped and nearly caught him on the face and the thought of how metal he’d look with an eyepatch was kneecapped by the thought of what Henderson’s face would look like when he found out Eddie was hurt again) so the kid is starting to relax. Which means it’s finally time to yell at him for being such a shithead.
Eddie shuffles his DM papers into a pile, having graciously waved the children away from the table at the end of their session. Something prickles at the back of his neck, that sensation of being watched. This feeling has never meant anything good for him—usually it means someone is about to shove him or slash his tires or call him a slur. Every muscle in his body tenses, preparing to flee, until he catches sight of the shiny wood table beneath his papers. The carpet is soft and springy under his feet. This is Steve Harrington’s house, not the high school cafeteria. His shoulders uncurl themselves from near his ears. It’s safe here. He is safe here.
(When Steve Harrington became synonymous with safe is a concept that deserves some further consideration, but not right here, in this fancy dining room. Not right now, when The Hair himself is leaning against the fancy woodwork across the room, shooing children out the door, waving a dish towel like he’s launching a ship.
He thinks about the practicality of breaking a bottle of champagne over the doorstep of the Harrington house. It’d make a mess. This rich bitch place could use the character.)
When Eddie lifts his head, it’s just Dustin Henderson looking at him from the other end of the Harringtons’ long dining room table.
And he looks pissed. “We gotta talk, Eddie.”
“Session not to your tastes, Henderson?” His fingers limply push at his papers a bit more, but it’s impossible to feign nonchalance. He feels, abruptly, like a man walking to his execution.
It is a strange, fragile thing, having loved ones. Eddie has always had Wayne, but that’s different. Uncle Wayne is family. But these people? Dustin? They pulled him into their orbit on purpose, folded him into their weird little found family as neatly and efficiently as a baker folding chocolate chips into cookie batter. Eddie was not used to being folded. A degree of detachment was always necessary for his own protection—an arm’s length between him and everyone around him, even his bandmates. The world wanted him to be a hardened outcast—the freak—and he gave them what they wanted because as much as it painted a target on his back, it kept all of the breakable parts safe.
And then he had been wanted for murder and had been so busy trying to save the whole fucking world that he’d forgotten that his heart was made of porcelain.
He can almost hear it teetering on the edge of something, like a teacup spinning toward the edge of the kitchen counter. It is such a tiny, sad sound. He balls his hands into fists and presses them down onto the top of the table. The wood dents a little under the pressure from one of his rings. Good. Even if they throw him out, he’s left his mark. They can’t erase that he was here at one time. That he was, however fleetingly, part of them.
Of course, they can always just get a new table.
His veins are cold.
Dustin crosses the dining room with a few ungainly steps. He lifts his hand, and Eddie takes a step back. He doesn’t really think Dustin is going to hit him, but it’s a reflex born out of years of being Eddie “The Freak” Munson, professional weirdo. Dustin’s hand clamps around his bicep, harder than Eddie thought the shrimp had in him, but it’s not a threat. It’s an entreaty. Stay here , it says. Don’t run away from me.
Hadn’t he made it clear that he wanted to stop running?
“I’m really mad at you.”
It’s the simple sincerity in the way Dustin says it. It hurts him more than a slap across the face or a punch ever could. Since when had he started caring about what others thought of him? About what this kid thought? He’s supposed to be untouchable, removed, one step outside of everyone’s orbit. Not necessarily too cool for school, but maybe too weird for it. Ever since Dustin Henderson showed up at his Hellfire table, the kid’s been chipping away at the mortar that’s holding together the wall protecting his teacup heart. And when Eddie wasn’t paying attention, he’d made a sizable hole and climbed right on through, bringing the rest of his gaggle of lunatics with him.
He gapes at Dustin like a fish, because what the hell do you say to that?
Dustin needs no prompting to continue. He never does. “What you did in the Upside Down, Eddie, it was—” His eyes look like they’re just puddles at this point, but his voice is firm “—it was a shitty thing, okay? It was absolute bullshit. You know better than anyone that it’s always a mistake to split the Party.”
He doesn’t point out that they had already split the Party once, because Dustin is still right. The corner of his mouth tries to curl upward, but it is an effort, and he doesn’t think it quite makes it. “Listen, kid—”
“No,” Dustin snaps, and Eddie blinks. “ You listen. You cut the sheet and you ran off and no matter how loud I yelled for you, you didn’t come back.” He pauses for emphasis, puppydog eyes surprisingly steely through the tears. “You didn’t fucking come back. You said at the hospital it was because you were tired of running away, but you did run away. From me. It was really not cool, Eddie.”
His palms are slick. Bile is rising in his throat because oh god here it comes. Dustin is going to tell him it was a mistake, trying to be his friend. He’s not worth the time, the effort, the aggravation. He’s going to throw Eddie out and tell him to get lost. Dustin Henderson is going to cast Banishment on him, Eddie Munson, and Eddie will be right back where he started before this little squirt shoved his way into Eddie’s life, standing in the rubble of his deconstructed wall, and then—
“You can’t do that again, okay? Next time, just stick to the plan. Or take someone with you.”
Again.
Next time.
What beautiful words.
The teacup slows its rotation, rights itself.
Eddie can breathe again. He tries to regain some of his composure, straighten his shoulders and lean back into a swagger, but he only half manages it. This kid has a way of forcing him to be real, because for some reason, that’s the version of him that he wants—the real one, warts and tattoos and porcelain heart and all. He knows his eyes are saucers, huge and round with anxiety and relief. Cow eyes, someone had called them once. He had cow eyes.
(Chrissy was the one who’d told him, riding shotgun in his van on the way to his trailer the night that—that night. He’d turned to smile at her, his real smile, because he wasn’t trying to frighten her, and she’d looked at him with her head lilting to one side and said, “You have cow eyes.”
He’d yelped out a laugh, nearly swerved the van. “What the fuck does that mean?” he’d asked, good-naturedly.
She’d giggled, too, her hand over her mouth a second later like she couldn’t believe the sound had come from her. Eddie had wondered what the fuck was going on with her, that laughing took her by surprise. “They’re just big and round and dark, you know? Like a cow’s. It’s a good thing!” she’d added, because he hadn’t known how to take that.
He’d turned to look at her, widening his eyes for effect, and she’d giggled again and hadn’t covered her mouth that time. Thinking about it now made him want to punch something or throw up or both.)
“Yeah,” he manages. His voice sounds like he’d smoked two packs of cigarettes. “Yeah, I—” Part of him still wants to dredge up the old bravado, hide behind his DM persona like his notes shelter behind his DM screen. Being on the back foot is not new to him, but it’s still new not to spin on his heel and take off. He plants his feet more firmly on the Harringtons’ expensive carpet. “I’m sorry, man. Really. I won’t do it again.” He draws an X over his heart and then lifts his hand, three fingers raised. “Scout’s honor.”
Dustin’s face rearranges itself into something puzzled. “You were a Boy Scout?”
Eddie snorts, dropping his hand. “Fuck no. Shit. They don’t teach you how to hotwire in the Boy Scouts, kid. That was all my old man.” He softens his smile. “But seriously, man, I’m sorry.”
Dustin studies his face for a long time, then finally nods. “Apology accepted.” He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m not giving up on you, Eddie. None of us are. You’re one of the Party now. And besides,” he says, and something mischievous is sparkling in his smiling eyes, “The journey’s finished. But after coming all that way I don’t want to give up yet. It’s not like me, somehow, if you understand.”
A huff startles its way out of Eddie’s mouth, amused and indignant all at once. He inclines his head. God, this damn kid. “Very well, Sam.” His hand finds the top of Dustin’s baseball cap and shoves it side to side on his head, mussing the curly mop underneath.
Will Byers appears in the front door, two-strapping his backpack and with his papers clutched to his chest. “Dustin, are you coming? Jonathan doesn’t want to miss the movie.”
Dustin looks back at Eddie, who holds up his hands, releasing him from his obligation. “I am suitably chastised,” he says. “Go, get outta here.”
It’s like being hit by a small cannonball, being hugged by Dustin Henderson. It should be impossible to generate that much force when he’s standing so close. He thumps into Eddie’s chest hard and fast, rocking him on his feet—he has to grab onto the back of the chair beside him to keep from falling over. So easy with their affection, this Party he’s found himself in, and he an undeserving object. He pats Dustin on the back once, twice, then spins him and sends him on his way to the door before he can look up and see that Eddie’s cow eyes are a little misty.
Henderson bounces out the door, pinballing off Steve and the doorframe and then Steve again before he and Will Byers are over the threshold and Steve and his dish towel are finally shutting the door.
( Bon voyage! Eddie thinks, inanely.)
He feels more than sees Steve standing in the doorway of the dining room while he finishes gathering his things. Once the papers are all stacked together, he taps the pile on the table to right them and looks up, eyebrows high.
“You gonna yell at me, too?”
“Nah,” says Steve. He waves a nonchalant hand. “I already yelled at you at the hospital. Kid’s right, though. Can’t believe he waited this long.”
“Yeah.” The papers go into his bag. He starts to fold up his DM screen. “Should’ve done it right in the hospital when I was still high on pain meds.”
“That’s what I said.”
It’s weird how not weird it feels, to be standing in Steve Harrington’s house, talking about how he nearly died, after playing D&D on Steve Harrington’s dining room table. The Hair still swears he’s not interested in their “nerdy dice game,” but Eddie sees him during sessions where he thinks he’s hiding behind the kitchen cabinets, listening anxiously as the kids get themselves into trouble, fist pumping when one of them lands a blow on the Big Bad. Henderson thinks it’s only a matter of time before they get Steve to sit down at the table, but Eddie isn’t holding his breath. Nice that he lets them use his house, though, now that the school isn’t so keen on Hellfire Club being hosted in their basement anymore. Whimps.
“Hey, uh, I’ve been meaning to ask. What’d you call me?”
Eddie sweeps his dice off of the table and into his palm and looks up cautiously. “Sorry?” He’s called Steve a lot of things, mostly in his head, for a good amount of years, especially when Harrington was still a dickhead and when he was jealous of Dustin’s worship of him, but he’s reasonably sure he hasn’t said any of that out loud, especially not lately.
“In the Upside Down.”
Steve clearly thinks his clarification explains everything, but Eddie is still confused. A tumbleweed rattles around inside his head while he tries to dredge up some kind of coherent memory that’ll explain what they’re talking about.
“When we—” Steve brandishes the dish towel like a baton. “When we saved you in the Upside Down. Robin and me picked you up and were carrying you back to the portal—you’re welcome , by the way—and you called me—something.”
It’s difficult to recall memories of when you almost died. One would think it would be easy—should be easy—but so much of that time is fuzzy. The blood loss, the trauma. He remembers Dustin’s clammy hand in his. I’m glad that you’re here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam. The feeling of pressure under his armpits, at his ankles. How it might have felt a little bit like flying if not for the pain.
Aha.
He snaps his fingers and points at Steve, finally remembering. “Gwaihir! That’s what I said. I was thinking about how it was kind of like flying.”
Now Steve is on the back foot. “Gwa-hoo?”
“The Windlord? Lord of the Great Eagles?” He flaps his arms to demonstrate. Steve looks like he thinks Eddie might have lost his mind. “From Lord of the Rings ? Because we were in Mordor and—yeah this is a lost cause, isn’t it, you have no idea what the hell I’m talking about.”
Steve puffs himself up indignantly. “I know!” he says. He points a finger randomly around the room, gesturing at everything and nothing. “I know the stuff. Mordor and elves and shit.”
The laugh escapes Eddie before he even really knows it’s coming. It startles them both. He dumps his dice into a pocket in his bag. “Yeah, man. Mordor and elves and shit. You got it. Here.”
He plucks his own battered book from his bag and slides it across the table at Steve. It stops short before the edge, and Steve peers at it like a soldier trying to decide if whatever just fell into his foxhole is a grenade or something harmless, like a potato.
“Borrow it. Give it a shot. If you haven’t started it before our next session here at casa Harrington, I’ll take it back. You might actually like some of this nerd shit if you give it a shot.”
Steve picks up the book like he’s still not entirely convinced it isn’t a grenade, but he holds it in one hand and turns it over a few times. “You want me to read?”
“Yeah, I assume you can, right?”
“Shut the fuck up, Munson.” But there’s no heat in it. Steve flips through the pages, not reading but just taking it in, different colors of pen flashing by as the pages turn past places Eddie has underlined. Given Steve’s academic record—not that Eddie’s is anything to be impressed by—it’s surprising the care he takes with it, turning it over in his hands like it’s a priceless artifact or the heart of one of his kids. Actually a good dude, indeed. There’s something Eddie can’t figure out on his face when he lifts his head and asks, “You read this a lot, huh?”
Eddie shrugs. Suddenly it feels as if it might have been a mistake to give his copy to Steve, a little too personal, too clear a window into his own soul. His fingers twitch, itching for it back, but he curls them into his palm and leans his fist on the table again to prevent himself from snatching it back. “That’s the good shit, Steve. More than anything I peddle, that is the good shit. No, uh—” his eyes cast around the room, even though he knows he won’t find it here, Harrington’s weapon of choice “—no baseball bats, but plenty of swords. That’s like a baseball bat that’s really sharp and pointy,” he adds, and Steve flips him the bird good-naturedly.
If anyone had told him a year and a half ago that he’d be handing Steve The Hair Harrington his personal copy of Lord of the Rings , that he’d be playing D&D in Steve’s house, he’d have asked what drugs they were on and where they’d gotten him, because it was better shit than anything he had in his trailer. It’s funny what an apocalypse can do for your social life.
Steve is still looking at the book, and this moment is getting weird, so Eddie clears his throat and knocks his rings against the table, less to get Steve’s attention and more in a welp, I’m gonna go kind of way. “Anyway. Next week, Harrington. If you haven’t started it, or if you decide you hate it, I’ll take it back. But give some of this nerd shit a try. You’re one of us just as much as I’m one of you now.”
The face Steve makes is one Eddie’s become familiar with, the eye-roll and the open mouth with his tongue half hanging out like a strangled cartoon, a yeah sure okay whatever you nerd expression. Strange, how he’s grown to know all of the nuances of these people in such a short amount of time. There’s a warmth in his chest that runs all the way down to his hands, still leaning on the table. It’s not so bad, maybe, being Known.
“No promises, Munson,” he says, and he points the book at him like he pointed the dish towel a minute ago.
Eddie slings his bag on his shoulder and offers a crooked grin. “Sure, Harrington. See you next week.”
Steve sees Eddie out, without the boat launch dish towel waving, and Eddie ambles for the passenger side of his van to toss his bag in, lighting a cigarette on the way. A weird few minutes, a weird few months, a weird few lives. He feels at rest for the first time in a very, very long time “What a tale we have been in, Mr. Frodo, haven’t we?” he asks himself. “I wish I could hear it told.”
He turns back to look through the big front window of casa Harrington. Steve never shuts the blinds, has a bachelor’s or an idiot’s (or both) thought of privacy, so it’s easy to see as Steve lowers himself onto a couch in the front room, the book in his hands. He stares at the cover for a while, then nods to himself, just once, and cracks it open.
Eddie grins around his cigarette. Maybe Dustin was on to something, after all.