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they don’t talk about it, not really, how the name on eddie’s original birth certificate didn’t match the one on his driver’s license. how there was a packet of sealed files somewhere in a safety deposit box at hawkins federal bank that he had access to once he turned 18 but never had the guts to go and get. how uncle wayne wasn’t really uncle wayne but it was the easiest thing to call him after adopting the scared 8 year old from the trailer park after his parents left.
the munson men learned how to live together in that tiny trailer after eddie officially became one. wayne taught him how to ride a bike and how to make a grilled cheese and the right way to separate out his clothes to do a load of laundry. eddie taught him how to have patience and how to speak softly and what it’s like to stay up half the night wondering where the hell his boy was at 2am.
it’s after everything happened that eddie finally talks about it. hawkins had pieced itself back together with bandaids and craft glue, the powers that be came up with some story to explain it all away and that included why eddie munson was a free man. the money that was wired into wayne’s bank account for his cooperation was swiftly taken out in cash to hide in an envelope between a mattress and a box spring. there’s a chunk missing for a down payment on a real brick and mortar on the outskirts of hawkins with two bedrooms and a real backyard and a dock on loch nora where wayne has his morning coffee.
“this is cute,” steve said as he opened a moving box, photos of a young eddie covering a pile of old school assignments, drawings and report cards. “look how big your hair was!”
eddie’s mouth pulled into a smile, soft at the edges like it gets when steve’s around, and he went to stand by him to look at the old pictures, shoulders touching and hands overlapping as they dug through the old papers.
“yeah, i used to be cute,” he muttered, and if he’s fishing for a compliment, steve was more than willing to take the bait.
“still are,” he breathed out with a blush on his cheeks, ear tips tinged pink, eyes focused on the papers under his hands rather than on eddie’s matching flushed face. “who’s eddie claybourne?”
he hadn’t heard that name anywhere other than in his own memories in years, the ghost of it rattling around in his brain somewhere like an old friend. it forced him to pause and look at the old hawkins elementary progress report card in steve’s hand. the corner was folded, flipped over the less than stellar grades that he had tried to hide from his parents the day he had brought it home.
“used to be me,” he replied after a beat. his eyes flicked up to wayne’s bedroom door, looked through to see the old patchwork quilt covering his bed that he used to wrap eddie up in when he had nightmares and the framed photo of them on his dresser. the walls of this new house spoke to him in ways that made his chest tight. the possibilities of starting over, of leaving behind the bad memories for the sparkling new ones that he’d make with the only family he ever had.
he grinned up at steve, real and light. “but now it’s munson. feels like it’s always been.”