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Eddie Munson does not do sleepovers.
He’s never actually had one. Before uncle Wayne came into the picture, it was him, his sickly mother, and his fucked up old man. He wasn’t allowed to have friends over, he hardly had the temperment for friends, and he was weird to everyone who met him. The freak, the idiot, the kid who came to school with weird bruises.
Even his teachers labeled him as a troubled kid, one who got into fights on the streets.
If your role models tell you the weird bruised up kid with the long hair who rarely answered questions right and roleplayed by himself on the playground is bad news, or react badly to him, you go along with it.
So he’s never had sleepovers. It has officially become a thing for him, he never had people over to his house, he never goes over to other people's houses. What few friends he acquired were by convenience, they weren’t really friends friends.
The night after it all goes down so to speak, Vecna, the Upside Down, the weird little girl with super powers, etcetera etcetera, Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley, and Nancy Wheeler all refuse to let him go home.
Steve does it by being persistent, but acting like he doesn’t really care. Implying he’s only doing it because everyone else is doing it, and that Eddie may as well. What’s the harm, he says.
Robin does it by being annoying, talking and talking and talking about all the terrible things that could happen if they get separated. How it’s smarter, safer, to stick together for a night. Maybe even two.
Nancy does it by being stubborn. He hadn’t known the previous potential queen of Hawkins High and now nosy female journalist would be so stubborn. She doesn’t try to persuade him with reasons, she says he’s going to come with them, and she says it until he relents to all three of their determined protests.
They pile into various cars, all of the kids, the teen-adults present, all of them, and they drive back to Steve Harringtons place. He knows what it looks like, he doesn’t often miss parties unless he’s having a day and can’t stand to deal with all the people and the noise. It’s good business.
It’s different to see it so empty, though. A big, modern house full of people feels small, crowded, full. It feels like nobody lives here without all of that.
But then all the kids pile inside, Robin drags Steve by the hand with a rambling mouth yap, yap, yapping about tending to his wound and getting some real bandages on it and maybe even getting a shower.
Nancy looks between him and Steve, before telling him to follow her. She’s gentle and awkward, tending to what few wounds he sustained distracting the demobat horde from reaching the real world– from reaching Dustin. He thinks he’s going to have nightmares about that for months.
It’s nothing too bad, a few bite marks here and there, but you’d be surprised how much running you can do when you’re filled with spite, protective panic, fear, and adrenaline.
She tells him to clean up, that she’ll see if Steve has any clothes lying around that would fit him, and leaves him to shower.
By the end of the night, everyone is packed into Steve Harrington’s second living room– “It’s bigger than the main one, and the couches are way comfier, trust me.”-- with Eddie tucked into a loveseat. He’d been fine taking the floor, his mattress at home isn’t much comfier than it, but everyone ganged up on him about his injuries.
That’s the reason Steve and Robin get the pull out bed. Robin’s the only one in the room who’s comfortable sharing a bed with Steve, and vice versa, which was only brought up because Nancy implied she could and that got several pinched faces throughout the room.
The kids are all spread onto the floor with pillows, blankets, and the two sleeping bags Steve found. Eleven is tucked into the only chair, Mike and Will on the floor just in front of her. He thinks this is important, mostly because the three only separated for their showers since he saw them for the first time after… everything.
This is all relevant, or close enough to it, because Eddie Munson has never had a sleepover, and he’s also a raging insomniac, who’s just been through an incredibly traumatizing adrenaline filled event. You would think that last thing would mean he’s exhausted, but it feels like all that energy is still coursing through him. Like something more is going to happen.
So he can’t sleep. He counts the paintings and photos in the room, and then the wood panels on the accent wall, and then the amount of panels in the ceiling, listening to nine people sleeping around him.
There isn’t a TV on, like he’s used to hearing from beyond two thin walls, or a radio like he plays when he stays up. There’s nothing to keep him occupied unless he gets up, but if he gets up he has to wade through several tiny bodies and then he’ll just be wandering, still bored, through what is essentially a strangers house.
So he tries to fall asleep.
It’s the fact that he’s up that he hears it.
First it just sounds like someone, Steve or Robin, he can’t tell in the dark, are moving around a lot on the bed. His first thought is gross, before he realizes it’s definitely not that kind of noise. Would’ve sucked if the people he just trauma bonded with were creeps who fuck while there’s like six kids in the room with them.
Then the movement turns into the obvious signs of a nightmare.
Eddie Munson has no idea what to do in this situation.
He knows it’s Steve, now. He’s muttering and rolling around, occasionally there’s a solid thunk like he tried to hit something in his sleep. Eddie’s crossing his fingers, praying to a god he doesn’t believe in, that Robin wakes up and deals with it.
That woman is as asleep as the fucking dead, he swears. She doesn’t get up when Steve’s quiet mutterings turn into audible pleas, ones he can make out the words of– Please, not her, take me. Please. Please, don’t kill me, please. Don’t kill us. It’s not my fault. I’m sorry!-- and heavy breathing. She doesn’t do more than roll over when he hears flesh meet flesh from Steve’s thrashing.
How blissful her life must be to not wake up at the slightest movement. Once Eddie realizes that if Robin’s not going to wake up, nobody is going to wake up, and he’s the only one who can wake up the ex king of Hawkins High.
And it’s once he’s put aside his anxiety of getting hurt in the process, stepping on someone, or any other myriad of bad things that could happen, and sits up that Steve Harrington sits stock straight.
It makes Eddie flinch, too much sudden movement in the dark so soon after being in the dark looking for any movement.
It’s accompanied by gasping and frenzied breathing, like he was drowning moments prior. Eddie freezes midway through sitting up, half propped by his elbow, watching Steve. The man is hunched over, his hair a mess.
He doesn’t dwell on his nightmare long, pushing the covers off himself and extruding himself from the room, despite the minefield of children and the dark. Eddie goes entirely unnoticed.
Realistically, he could lay back down, pretend to be asleep. Not deal with Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington post nightmare, because who knows how he’d react to comfort from the school drug dealer. He might be the kinda guy who gets violent after nightmares.
He also might be the kinda guy who gets really depressed after nightmares, or paranoid and freaked, so Eddie gets up. He steps on only one child on his way out of the room, and said child grumbles but doesn’t wake up.
He finds Harrington out in the kitchen, hunched over the island with a glass of something clear– hopefully water– midway through throwing back two nondescript white pills. Eddie clears his throat, “Hope you’re not doing hard drugs while you’ve got kids in the house, Harrington.” He jokes, leaning on the doorway.
Bad move, he realizes, when Harrington chokes on the medication and knocks his glass over. Water sprays across the kitchen island and floor, the cup cracking. He winces, “Holy shit, Munson. Don’t fucking do that.” Steve breathes, slumping.
“Sorry, man. Didn’t know you’d go all…” Eddie waves his hands around, the reference slipping his mind, “Yknow.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Steve waves him off, foregoing the now broken cup to get a new one, “I’m not. Taking– yeah. It’s just tylenol.”
“Tylenol? At…” He checks his watch, brows hiking up, “Four in the morning? Post nightmare?”
“Yes, Munson, at four in the morning post nightmare.”
“Testy, testy.”
“Yeah, well, I’m being accosted by- by– by you after having another nightmare because we all almost died and it stirred up all this- this- all this fucking crap in my head and I can’t stop thinking about it, and it’s giving me a goddamn migraine so yeah, Munson, I’m a little fucking testy.”
Eddie straightened out on, stepping back and raising his hands in surrender, “Damn, Harrington. Sorry.” He scoffs, “Just tryin’ to lighten the mood.”
Harrington sighs, leaning over the counter and running his hands up and down his face. “It’s fine. Sorry, I didn’t… it’s just a lot right now, yknow?”
“Yeah, man. I get it. Better me than one of them kids o’ yours, yeah?” He jokes. Steve snorts.
“I think if I snapped at one of those kids they’d gang up on me and never let me live it down.”
“Damn right.”
“I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“Nah, I can’t sleep on the best of nights, and in some weirdos house post almost apocalypse with five kids on the floor around me? Not exactly the best of nights.”
“It’s six kids.”
“Not any better, Harrington.”
Harrington smirks, taking his empty water cup back to the sink. Eddie watches him pull out a towel and wipe up the previously spilled water, throw away the glass shards, and then start pulling out ingredients from the cupboards.
“You’re not seriously about to start cooking at four am, are you?”
“Nope. I’m baking at four am, Munson. Get it right. You gonna help, or what?”
“What? I am not the baking type, man.” He waves his hands, strolling into the kitchen. He wasn’t going to get any sleep, so even if he has no intentions of helping– which he doesn’t, because the last time he tried to bake he practically set the kitchen on fire– he can bug the only other person in the house who’s awake.
Steve’s got his back turned, now, but Eddie just knows he’s rolling his eyes. “All you gotta do is help me stir shit, okay? Can you handle that?”
Eddie makes a face, but Steve is handing him a large mixing bowl and a whisk, so he thinsk fuck it and takes them, “Fine. Whatever. But don’t think I’m ever doing this again.”
“Yep, got it, never ask to bake with you at four in the morning again. Will do, Munson.”
Eddie rolls his eyes, setting up a space on the island while Steve gets ingredients. He’s handed measuring cups of stuff, told how to mix it, and quite a few times does Steve scold him for putting something in the wrong way or stirring ‘weird’. Before this, Eddie didn’t even know that it mattered what speed you stirred something, or if you added the eggs all at once or one at a time.
And, before either of them knew it, it’d been four hours. There were four trays of cookies– two chocolate chip, two frosted sugar cookies– a tray of muffins, chocolate chip, blueberry, and plain buttermilk waffles, and Eddie had baked more than he’d done his entire life.
“Nobody’s even going to be awake soon enough to eat this, you know?” Eddie points out, leaning against the fridge while Steve flips the first of the french toast, “I mean, if I could sleep I would’ve slept until noon, at least.”
“Not these kids.” Steve snorts, “Certainly not Nancy, or Will. Nancy wakes Mike and Jonathan up, Will wakes up Dustin, who wakes up Lucas, who wakes up Max, and all the noise wakes up Eleven.” He lists off, tossing the stick of eggy-cinnamon-y-sugar-y toast onto a plate.
Eddie’s never had french toast before. He’s kinda glad for that, at the moment. It looks kinda disgusting.
“Christ. What kinda crazy kids are you lookin’ after, Harrington? No sane child should be waking up that early for anything but school.”
“Or the end of the world.” Steve drawls, the egg hissing on the pan, “I’d bet you ten bucks they’re out here in the next fifteen minutes, Munson.”
Eddie glances at the clock that reads 8:03 in clean, white on black print. He smirks, “You’re on, Harrington.”
Twelve minutes later, at 8:15, Nancy shuffles into the kitchen with Jonathan on her heels. Both of them look like the dead, but neither seem surprised at the spread Steve has had Eddie spread out on the nearby dining table. They take seats side by side, and plate themselves breakfast without a word.
Eddie starts the coffee.
It’s not long before the entire party is out of the second living room and feasting. Eddie’s nursing a mug of coffee and digging into Steve’s surprisingly good food. Eleven had joined him in the kitchen once she’d had a cookie, and the two of them made enough scrambled eggs to feed an army.
You could tell who made which batch, as Eleven’s were always a bit too runny from too much milk, or overcooked because she got distracted talking to someone, but Eddie’s eaten worse than some poorly done eggs.
Steve and Eddie both wind up crashing on the couch two hours later, midway through some kids movie the kids had decided they needed to watch after finding out Eleven hadn’t seen it. Eddie woke up when the sun had set, a thick duvet draped over top of him, and Steve Fucking Harrington’s feet in his face.
He’d not hesitated to shove the highschool graduate off the couch.