Chapter Text
He hears music.
The strumming of a guitar, accompanied by a cheery whistle. It sounds vaguely familiar, like music he’s heard but doesn’t know.
Electric guitar.
Not acoustic.
Eddie?
He turns and looks around, turns away from the sunset, and there he is. Messy curls down around his face and shoulders as he plays, his rings glinting in the dying light. He’s focused on his instrument, focused on just the little bubble immediately around him. Steve breathes in deeper when he sees him pause, grabbing for the little notebook next to him, scrabbling for the pencil before it clatters to the ground. “Damn it,” Eddie’s voice is quiet, annoyed but not angry. He catches it, though, his fingers curling tight around it like it’s a prize. “Hah!”
Steve steps towards him, no longer breathing, and stares at him.
There’s no blood. No on him, around him, anywhere. He’s clean – as clean as Steve has ever seen him – and he looks happy as he goes back to playing for himself. An audience of one.
Why would there be blood?
He bumps into something.
Or maybe he thinks he bumps into something. Maybe that’s the noise that has Eddie looking up at him, dark eyes wide and his sideways grin settling on his lips in a way that Steve had always noticed from a distance but never up close. Even as King Steve, he’d seen Eddie Munson in the background. A strange boy who’d been interested in dice and music and everything Steve’s parents had tried to keep him from looking into.
A boy who could be himself, no matter what anyone around him said or did.
There had always been something about him, about the way he spoke and moved and sang to himself that felt so goddamn free.
“Hey Stevie,” Eddie rearranged himself, arm slung over the body of his guitar in a way that left his hand hanging in free air. “How’s it going?” he shuffled back on the stone bench he sat on, jerking his chin towards the empty spot next to him. Steve moved to sit next to him, trying to figure out what was going on.
Why were they here?
“Same reason anyone’s here, I guess,” Eddie shrugged. “And yeah, you kind of asked that one out loud, big boy.”
He moved to put his guitar down in a case Steve couldn’t remember seeing just a second ago. It had to have been there, right? Had to have been. There’s no way someone like Eddie would risk damaging his guitar by setting it down on the concrete. “It’s sunset.” Steve made himself speak up, the words feeling like a weight on his chest.
“It is, yeah,” Eddie glanced up at the sky. “Guess it’s time, then. Stars out, sun going down. Should be pretty. Ooh, look at that,” he gestured upward, pointing towards something. Steve followed his finger. There was a ghost of a moon, up above them. The thinnest crescent Steve had ever seen, looked so sharp it could cut him. “This’ll be a good one, Stevie, I promise.” He patted Steve’s shoulder, laughing when Steve winced away a little, Eddie’s rings smacking a little too hard. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine,” Steve shook his head. “Just wasn’t expecting it.” He smiled, pulled into the cheer written plainly across Eddie’s face. The guy looked happy, like he was just enjoying being there.
Even if it was with Steve.
“I need to head out, soon.” Eddie’s voice was softer, this time. “I need you to promise me something.”
“Yeah?”
Too soon, too soon, the sky wasn’t even dark yet.
“Take care of the little shits, yeah?” Eddie was smiling again, the edges of it feral. He grabs Steve’s face with both hands, shoving their foreheads together. “They’re going to need it. They always will. They always do.”
“I will,” Steve is breathless as he nods, nearly whimpering at the loss of contact when Eddie’s hands leave his face for a moment. The approaching night is going to be cold; he can tell by the bite in the air. Eddie mutters something, his hands jangling together for a moment, before he shoves something into Steve’s hands and curls his fingers down over it.
“And take care of yourself, man,” Eddie scoffs, shaking his head. Their foreheads are still pressed together, his hands coming back to Steve’s cheeks.
Steve can’t react – maybe he wouldn’t react even if he could – before Eddie is kissing him. It’s warm, hotter than when he’d ever kissed Nancy, and Eddie tastes like something sweet, followed by something that reminds Steve of fries. “Seriously,” Eddie pants when he pulls away to breathe. “Take care of yourself.”
He doesn’t know when he closed his eyes, but when he opens them again—Eddie is gone. His guitar is gone, there’s no little notebook, and the pencil is gone.
There’s just a dark sky above him, scattered with stars.
The sun is gone.
The thing Eddie shoved into his hand, whatever it was –
Steve tries to look at it, tries to stand and maybe chase Eddie. Wants to find him. He stands up, gets a step away from the bench—
He jolts awake in bed.
A week after everything. A week after everything.
Eddie’s dead, Steve remembers as he stares at his ceiling. He died protecting them. Saving them.
He sits up slowly, pushing his fists into his bed, and his left-hand hurts. He’s holding something sharp and hard.
Steve stares blankly at his hand, at the back of it, and tries to piece together his dream. He doesn’t remember much, it had drifted away the moment he woke up, but he remembers being handed something.
When he lifts his hand and turns it over, opens it slowly, he’s counting his fingers. Something about bad dreams and knowing where reality is by being able to count correctly.
He finds a ring on his palm.
It’s a little battered, has definitely seen better days, but he recognizes it. The sight of it sends a punch of grief through him all over again. The mood ring Eddie had worn on his right hand is sitting on his palm, in the too bright of his bedroom. He doesn’t sleep much, anymore, and he definitely doesn’t sleep with the lights off.
He didn’t have the ring when he fell asleep. He knows that for a fact.
He stares at it, trying to understand where it came from. He reaches up to his mouth, tracing his fingers over his lips. He remembers pressure, remembers a kiss. He remembers…
Eddie.
Steve curled his fingers back over the ring for a second, hiding it, before he chokes on something that might’ve been a laugh. Or maybe it was a sob, forced out of him by grief slamming back into him again. He shudders, closing his eyes, as he slides the ring onto his left hand, on the ring finger. It fits there like it’s meant to go there.
Steve let himself drop back onto his bed, his eyes opening to stare at the ceiling again.
He presses his left hand to his chest, covers it over with his right, and holds it there like it’s part of the guy he wishes he could see again. There hadn’t been enough time, there was never enough time, and things in Hawkins always ended up like this.
Their ranks bleeding, gaps ripped open by the monsters.