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Three days after their trailer is destroyed, when they’ve been assigned temporary housing as the government desperately tries to deal with the aftermath of the ‘earthquake’, Eddie realises something devastating.
“The mugs,” he says, whipping around to face Wayne, who’s standing in the corner of the room. He’s been doing that a lot, lately, as if the couch in front of the TV doesn’t exist. Eddie’s not entirely convinced that Wayne believes they won’t get charged for living here.
“What’s that now?” Wayne glances over, tearing his eyes from the game.
“The mugs,” he repeats, louder this time. It’s hard not to let devastation creep into his tone. Wayne’s collection of mugs, spanning at least the last twenty years — gone, lost, along with the rest of their belongings. “We’ve lost all your mugs.”
Wayne’s quiet, then. When he speaks again, his voice is gruff. “It’s fine, son. I got to have you, that’s all I need.”
He’s upset about it, though. Eddie’s lived with his uncle the past nine years. He knows him better than he realises, and he doesn’t miss the sad look on his face when he goes to make a coffee and stares down at the plain, white mugs.
Not for the first time, Eddie thinks about how unfair the world is. The Munson Curse, Wayne had said once, and hadn’t elaborated.
Well, fuck the curse. He may be a Munson, but Eddie’s going to grab life by the balls and twist ‘em until the situation is fixed.
More accurately, Eddie goes to Nancy, because she’s far more competent than he is and definitely seems the type to be able to twist life’s balls without wincing. And, because Nancy is a beautiful genius, she comes up with just the plan they need.
*
They’re a week into May when Wayne enters his living room to find Eddie sitting on the couch, holding a small box decorated with a ribbon.
That in itself isn’t so much of a surprise. There’s a whole gaggle of people Eddie surrounds himself with these days; statistically, one of their birthdays would fall in May.
Though, he notes, there’s a lot more effort put into the ribbon than he’d have expected from him. That’s interesting.
“That for your boy?” he asks casually, nodding in Eddie’s direction. Amusingly, Eddie flushes a dark shade of red.
“I don’t have a boy,” Eddie lies, as if Wayne hasn’t seen how he hangs about that Harrington boy.
He’s about to say as much when Eddie quickly continues, “It’s for you.”
That stops him in his tracks. He looks back at the box, eyeing it suspiciously.
Eddie only smiles innocently, putting it down on the coffee table and nudging it towards him.
Wayne doesn’t move. “What’s this for?”
Eddie pauses. “Can I say it’s a birthday present?”
“It’s May, son.” He folds his arms, suspicion only rising. “I know I’m getting on a bit, but I ain’t gone enough yet to forget I was born in February.”
“Fine, then it’s a not-birthday present.” Eddie gestures impatiently at the box. “Can you just open it?”
He’s practically bouncing in his seat. Whatever it is, he’s excited about it. If it were anyone else, that would be a good sign, but Eddie is known to get excited over a lot of things, and the venn diagram of things that excite Eddie and things that give Wayne white hairs is almost a circle.
“Depends,” Wayne says carefully. Then, because he can’t resist drawing it out a little, “Is it a frog again?”
Eddie groans, throwing his hands up. “That was one time,” he protests, though it sounds more like a whine, “and I was eleven.”
“Yet the nightmares make it feel so fresh.”
“You are so dramatic.” Eddie tosses a cushion at him. “Please just open it?”
“Patience is a virtue,” Wayne says, but he picks up the box regardless. He has to hand it to him, the wrapping isn’t too shabby.
The box is heavier than it looks, too. He’s careful as he opens it, tearing through tissue paper to find a Garfield mug.
Not just any Garfield mug. It’s one of the mugs he lost when the trailer was destroyed.
He sucks in a breath, gently lifting it free of its wrapping. It’s not an exact replica—this one has a chip on the rim and a small crack running through it—but it’s definitely the same design as the one he used to own.
“It’s not much,” Eddie says, and Wayne glances over to see that there’s a small smile on his face, “but it’s a start.”
There’s a lump in his throat. Wayne turns the mug around in his hands, trying to swallow past it. “S’nice gesture,” he says gruffly. “You did good, boy. Thank you.”
Eddie beams at him, and not for the first time it strikes him just how kind he is. It really is a sweet gesture. The mug collection, in all honesty, had been more than just a collection.
Yes, he had liked collecting the mugs, had liked the way they adorned the trailer, but they represented more than that. People no longer in his life, memories he can’t return to. Simpler, happier times, and comfort during the tough times. Each mug had held a memory, carted from home to home until he’d settled back in Hawkins.
The shelves in their new home are mostly bare. Not much had been able to be salvaged from the trailer wreckage, and what had been salvageable had been badly damaged.
Wayne turns to the shelf above the TV, reaching out to set the mug down on it. “It’ll take years to build the collection back up,” he says mournfully, stroking his thumb over the mug’s rim. “It means a lot that you did this, Eddie.”
“Well,” Eddie says, and he grins, wide and bright. “About, uh, that.”
As if on cue, there’s a knock at the door. Wayne shoots Eddie a curious glance, but the boy just smiles knowingly and gestures at it.
Shaking his head, Wayne opens the door, only to be greeted with what seems to be half the town’s population. Leading the charge are the three that he’s seen floating around Eddie the most these days: the Harrington boy, one Miss Nancy Wheeler, and a Miss Robin Buckley.
Before the ground split open, this combination would’ve struck him as odd. Just looking at them, they don’t have anything in common with one another, let alone his Eddie.
Now, though, the only surprising factor is the wrapped boxes in their hands. Behind them appears to be a whole parade of people — he recognises Eddie’s longterm group of friends, and the kids he seems to have imprinted on, but there’s other kids, too, and their parents, from the looks of it. The formerly-dead chief of police stands off the to side, and normally Wayne keeps a strict no-pigs policy, but he’d pulled strings to help acquit his boy, so.
“Happy belated birthday, Mr Munson,” Nancy Wheeler says, her eyes sparkling. She holds out the box in her hands to him.
“We’ve settled on not-birthday,” Eddie calls from behind him, and Nancy smiles.
“Happy not-birthday, then,” she corrects, polite as ever.
“Thank you, young miss.” Wayne glances down at the box, then back at the circus on his doorstep. “I suppose you’d better all come in, though it’ll be a squeeze.”
Somehow, they seem to defy physics, and everyone finds a space to fit in and around the living room. As they enter, Wayne counts no less than twenty people, and all of them have a gift in their hands.
Nancy’s the one to pass hers over first. She smiles expectantly, snd Wayne notes that this one is meticulously wrapped, to the point where he almost feels bad for tearing it off.
It’s another mug. This one’s shaped like a fishing bobber, the handle small and circular. Bold, black lettering reads GONE FISHIN’, and the bottom is decorated to look as though the mug is afloat.
“Eddie mentioned you liked fishing,” Nancy admits, sounding almost shy.
“That I do,” he confirms, and she lights up, looking pleased.
The Buckley girl is next. Her gift is—shockingly—a mug. It proudly boasts a great trip to Minnesota back in ‘79 which he decidedly did not attend. When he glances back at her, she looks nervous, twisting a ring around her finger, but she smiles all the same.
The Harrington boy—Steve—clears his throat. “Uh,” he starts, looking bashful. “You… might need space to put them. There’s, uh, a lot.”
Wayne looks back at Eddie, who’s grinning again.
“What, you didn’t think I’d leave you with a measly collection of one mug, did you?” Eddie places one hand on his chest as if wounded. Robin coughs quietly, and Eddie blinks, as if suddenly remembering. “Oh! It’s all thanks to Wheeler here. She arranged everything, and everyone wanted to chip in.”
“Chip is right,” Wayne says dryly, eyeing the Garfield mug.
Eddie lets out what sounds like a squawk. “It took forever to find that mug!”
“It really did,” Robin says earnestly. “We went to, like, fifty different yard sales and thrift stores. It was like the world’s weirdest road trip. Or, I guess, the world’s weirdest scavenger hunt. Actually, that’s probably not true, there’s definitely been way weirder scavenger hunts. So—”
Nancy nudges her gently, startling her. Wayne watches, amused, as Robin’s face heats up. Something tells him it’s not embarrassment.
“Right. Um, happy not-birthday, Mr Munson.” She does a tiny tada motion with her hands. “We can’t replace what you lost, but hopefully this can be a head start on your new collection?”
“Argyle found, like, four different Garfield mugs alone,” Steve comments. Someone with incredibly long hair—presumably Argyle—waves. “Guy’s incredible.”
By the time Wayne unwraps the last mug, he’s amassed a whopping total of twenty-two. One from the curly-haired kid in a cap—Dustin?—proclaims him the world’s best grandma, while another names him the runner up of a game of tennis back in ‘81. One mug requests his presence as a bridesmaid for a wedding long since passed. There are, somehow, eight different mugs related to Garfield.
“Well,” Eddie says, now squished between Steve and Dustin on the couch, which is definitely not big enough for all the people who have squeezed onto it. Robin’s sitting in Steve’s lap, and Nancy’s somehow perched herself on Robin’s leg and the arm of the couch. “Wayne, fancy a coffee?”
Laughter fills the room. Wayne has to bite back his own grin.
“I dunno,” he says, wry as ever. “Might need’a wash up a mug.”
That earns him a snort from Steve.
“If you’re offering coffee, Eddie…” The smaller Wheeler, Mike, he thinks, bats his eyelashes innocently.
“Yeah, I’ll have a coffee, Eddie,” Dustin agrees, and suddenly there’s a chorus of requests, ranging from tea to hot chocolate and various amounts of sugar and milk.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Eddie holds his hands up. “I don’t remember offering drinks to any of you assholes!”
Nancy gasps, feigning shock. “You won’t make your uncle a cup of coffee on his not-birthday?”
“Eddie, that’s low,” Robin says, shaking her head.
“Hurtful, even,” Wayne adds, this time unable to help his grin.
“I didn’t say that!” Eddie protests.
“Then I’ll take a coffee. Milk, one sugar. Thanks, Eddie.” Nancy leans over and pats his arm.
Eddie sighs dramatically as he gets up. He grumbles as he gathers an armful of mugs up, but Wayne can see the joy on his face as he shuffles off towards the kitchen.
“You’ve raised a lovely young gentleman,” one of the adults says, and Wayne looks over to see Joyce Byers is smiling at him. He almost raises an eyebrow, but she sounds surprisingly genuine. “You must be proud.”
Wayne takes a moment to take in his new collection, mugs spread out haphazardly across the shelves, the coffee table and the windowsill, and thinks of how much time and effort it must’ve taken to acquire even half of them.
“Yeah,” he says quietly, affection surging within him. “I really am.”