Chapter Text
(A Boy Comes to Town: Chapter 2
Mr. Wright, who has seemed to have fallen into a stupor at his desk, staring blankly at some blank spot on the chalkboard, stirs back to the present and sits up straight. “Mr. Mu—Eddie! Where the heck do you think—” but Munson is gone before Mr. Wright can even get his name fully out of his mouth. Mr. Wright turns to the crowd, “What was that? Where is he going?”
No one says anything. A few students shrug. The rest just look down at their hands. There is a name in the air, but for once, no one says it—Steve. Mr. Wright grumbles, pushing himself up and out of the classroom as if he intends to hunt Munson down, but Billy can’t imagine the boy didn’t break into a sprint just as soon as he had a clear runway.)
Eddie doesn’t stop at his locker to get any of his shit on his way out of school. He can’t even start to think about the books and assignments he is leaving behind. That shit just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even exist. Behind him, he can hear Mr. Wright shouting out his given name, giving a decent go at trying to catch up with him for a whole handful of seconds before giving up, footfalls becoming quieter, longer intervals between each one. Then, Eddie is out the front doors, the heavy metal shutting behind him, blocking out Mr. Wright’s voice and whatever other sounds might try to follow.
Outside, the fall air has a bite to it, stinging at Eddie’s flushed cheeks, but all he can think about is the hazy, summer-cool morning at the very start of September when Steve brought a homemade noose into the woods, and Eddie found that fucking note.
but you understand right?
He forces himself to take deep breaths as he half-runs toward his van. It’s okay, he repeats over and over in his head until it is indistinguishable from the rush of blood in his ears. They’d talked about this. When Steve insisted that he was ready to come back to school, that he was sick of wasting every single day hiding in his mother’s house or in Eddie’s trailer, that he didn’t want anymore time stolen from him—they’d talked about this. If Steve got overwhelmed, he could go hide in Eddie’s van, where the tinted windows would keep anyone from peeking in and seeing him, where he could lock the door and be shielded by steel walls.
Eddie is just being stupid. His heart is thundering for no reason. Everything is okay.
Since Steve has Eddie’s keys, all Eddie can do is knock on his van’s dark side window and hope he gets a response. He knocks. He leans his forehead against the cold, opaque glass, and tries to settle the vibrations running up and down his body. There’s no reply. He waits ten seconds and tries again, hands shaking almost too much to form a fist.
“Steve?” He asks, watching his breath fog up the glass, obscuring his own warped reflection. “It’s Eddie, Steve. Are you there? Please be in there, please, please, please be in there …” his voice decrescendos as he talks, fading into a whispered plea.
The little thunk of the lock knob being pulled up, almost too quiet to hear. Eddie’s shoulder slump like his body had been connected to that lock with a string, and it’s just been cut. He tries the handle, and the sliding panel door slides open.
Steve is sitting in the footwell behind the driver’s seat, curled in on himself until he is just a ball of a boy, face hidden behind his knees, arms holding his legs close to his body. For a moment, Eddie just lets himself breathe. Steve is alive, and no new physical harm has been done to him. That’s the only stable ground Eddie is going to get to stand on, so he lets himself have a few seconds to steady himself on it. Then, he pulls himself inside the van and shuts the door behind him.
It’s dim in here. It smells like tobacco and weed and mildew from a leak he could never find to get patched up. It leaves a perpetual damp in the back of the van. Even in the height of summer, it never seems to dry out.
“Hey,” Eddie says lowly, sitting himself on the backseat, letting Steve maintain a couple of feet of distance. “How long you been in here?”
About an hour, Eddie knows, if fucking Angie McGill’s sister’s account of Steve bolting out of first period just ten minutes in can be trusted. Has he been collapsing in on himself like this the entire time? Did he take the extra pill his mother gave him in case of an emergency already?
“A while,” Steve croaks out after a minute, and Eddie breathes out another bit of relief. He’s talking. Okay, he’s talking. That’s something. Eddie’s bar for something has been extremely low since August. Things haven’t changed much since then.
“Yeah?” he nudges. “You wanna talk about it?”
Steve peeks up, turning his head to rest his cheek on the top of one knee. Eddie can see how bloodshot his eyes are, how raw the skin around his nose, even in the low light inside the van. He must have been crying in here alone while Eddie doodled through the end of US History, as he eavesdropped on the obnoxious new kid’s conversation in English. In addition to being vivid with redness, Steve’s eyes are glassy. It’s hard to tell if it is because of any benzos or just a fresh wave of tears. His throat sounds clogged when he finally forces out words.
“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t-couldn’t fucking do it,” he moans, hiding himself away again, running a harsh hand through the thick needles of his shitty haircut. He brings his fist down against the side of his calf—once, twice. Eddie leans forward, trying to do the calculations: when does he grab Steve’s arm to stop him from hitting himself? When does preventing physical harm outweigh the emotional violation of touching him without permission?
Sobs start to take over again, his shoulders shivering with it. Steve holds his arms crisscross over the back of his neck, contracting himself inward. Eddie can feel pressure at the back of his own eyes. He closes them, trying to push back against that swell of distracting emotion.
It was too soon. Eddie knew it from the first time Steve suggested going back to school two weeks ago. It’s too soon. Steve insisted. He’d gotten into a dozen different fights about it with his mother, who would probably happily keep Steve locked in his bedroom for the next thirty years.
I’m supposed to have my life back, he’d said. I have to actually live my fucking life! I’m not chained in a basement. I’m alive. You wanted me to be alive. An accusation, like they’d committed some crime against him by caring if he died.
“It’s okay,” Eddie mutters mindlessly, knowing that Steve will hardly hear the words anyway, but might register the reassuring mumble of Eddie’s voice.
After this new wave of sobs starts to lessen its grip a little on Steve’s body, he sits upright, hitting the back of his head hard enough against the van that it makes Eddie wince. Steve looks at him, shiny tears smeared all over his face. “Everyone was looking at me,” he says. “They were all talking about me. They—they all know—” fat tears gathering steadily along his waterline, Steve closing his eyes so they are pushed out all at once “—they know what he did to me. The whispering, they all know. They know what he made me. They know what I am, what’s inside. It’s inside, inside, they can see it, they all know—”
“Steve,” Eddie murmurs, his chest throbbing, his mind a tangle of useless reassurances that he doesn’t have the energy to put in order. He knew this was going to happen. He knew it was too soon.
Before he can prepare himself for it, Steve unwinds all his limbs and, in the same motion, propels himself across the van. He lands with his face pushed into Eddie’s chest, his arms wrapping themselves around Eddie’s waist, his knees still keeping some of his balance, pressed into the footwell. Eddie responds on reflex, hugging Steve around the shoulders, pressing his mouth into Steve’s spikey hair. He hums, rocking both of them back and forth, as Steve soaks snot and tears into his shirt.
“They all know,” Steve repeats over and over, and Eddie can’t even deny it. Steve’s name never appeared in print next to the laundry list of Henry Creel’s crimes, but everyone in Hawkins knows. Even with the details left vague, it doesn’t matter. Just a few black and white words are enough to paint an entire picture.
“You survived,” Eddie reminds him when Steve dissolves into senseless sounds. “You’re stronger than they could ever know. You’re so much more than the things he did to you, Steve, so much more. I can see that. I see it.”
Eventually, Eddie runs out of spoken solace. He sings wordless songs under his breath.
It’s a half-hour before Eddie is able to extricate himself from Steve’s embrace and get him to sit upright enough to be buckled in. At that point, the boy is limp and wrung out. He lets himself be maneuvered without a fight. Eddie gets them back to his trailer and immediately rolls a joint for Steve. The living room fills with skunky smoke. Steve loosens muscle by muscle until he is slipping down on his side. Eddie opens the windows for him around the trailer, the ones that can open, so the fresh air can roll through. It’s better when Steve can smell fresh air.
Steve spends the next hour horizontal on Wayne’s shitty old couch, blinking at daytime soaps without comprehension. Eddie goes into the bathroom and cries silently for five minutes before making them both peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch.
When Wayne comes shuffling out of his bedroom, Steve has already shredded his sandwich into little chunks, but only eaten about a quarter of them before abandoning the plate on the coffee table in favor of sinking back down into the comforts of the couch. The old man creaks a bit as he moves, limbs stiff from sleep, and holds one hand pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut, trying to block out even the faint light of the living room.
“Morning, boys,” he says in as easy and cheerful a voice as he can manage with his just-woken-up gravel.
Steve springs upright. The blanket he’d wrapped around himself falls off his shoulders, and he looks like he’s trying to debate through the heavy cloud of weed and whatever anti-anxiety meds he’d gotten off his mother, whether he should fold it up entirely and set it neatly to the side as if he’d never used it in the first place. The tension in him is immediate. He no longer looks as if he is certain he is allowed to sit on the furniture. As if he ass isn’t the richest thing that’s ever touched anything in this trailer.
“At ease, kid,” Wayne says, flapping a hand at him. He turns toward the kitchen and starts futzing with the coffee machine. Steve doesn’t lie back down. He keeps Wayne in the corner of his eye, even as he obviously tries to pretend that he isn’t.
Steve’s always nervous around Wayne. Eddie’s not sure if it is Wayne himself or just that he’s nervous around all adult men. It’s hard to tell because the truth is, Eddie hasn’t seen him interact with very many in the last two months, not enough for a proper sample size. They don’t go places. The arcade a couple time with the kids, where yes, he’s nervous around all the noise and people, but the rugrats seem to stabilize him. There’s been doctor’s visits—and yes, Steve was nervous—and a couple of times when Steve’s dad has been guilted into visiting from where he’s officially moved to the city—and yes, Steve was nervous. But the data’s too muddied.
“It’s okay,” Eddie whispers, resting his hand on the arm of the couch that Steve is leaning against. Steve presses his elbow in Eddie’s pinky. Eddie offers a smile. “It’s okay. Eat your sandwich.” Steve obediently grabs one of his torn-up chunks, smearing Skippy peanut butter across the pad of his thumb. He just sort of holds it, though.
“Mission aborted, then?” Wayne whispers when Eddie joins him in the kitchen. He is very aware of the short distance between them and where Steve still is, staring dull-eyed and tight-shouldered at the television.
“It was too soon.” Eddie shrugs, a sort of what can you do? gesture that he tries not to let it be too hopeless. Too soon doesn’t mean never. Eddie knows that Steve is worried he’ll never have a normal life, that this one horrible year will cast a cripping shadow over everything, forever. He could live another sevety, eighty years, and he’ll never really leave that house with the stained glass window. He’ll never really lose the chain around his ankle.
Too soon doesn’t mean never.
Wayne nods, looking unsurprised. The coffee pot gurgles on the counter, making truly wretched sounds that Wayne insists are normal. Why would they need a new coffee pot? It’s supposed to sound like that.
“You know, son,” Wayne says, throwing a slightly guilty glance over his shoulder at the living room. “Steve can take all the time he needs getting back on his feet, and I’m proud of you for sticking by him, but you’ve got things to worry about for yourself. You can’t miss every day of school—”
“I know, I know,” Eddie cuts off, a little too sharply. First Munson to finish high school, that was the deal when he came to stay with Wayne. Besides Eddie having food in his belly and a cobbled-together sense of self, it’s the only thing Wayne has ever really cared about. But it’s complicated. It feels complicated in Eddie’s chest—this taut, tug-of-war sort of tension, jerking him one direction and then the opposite.
“What was I supposed to do?” he asks.
He’s not skipping class to drop acid at Rick’s place. He’s not skipping class because he stayed up too late obsessing over a song or a Dnd campaign or a Sci-Fi paperback. He’s not skipping class so he can lie in bed and jerk off. He’s done all those things before, but now—now—
What’s he supposed to do?
Wayne sighs, patting him on the shoulder to let him know he understands. There’s enough hot coffee now in the pot that he can quickly take it out and pour himself a mug. A few drops hiss when they hit the hotplate before he replaces the pot, taking a long drag from his mug in a perfected motion.
“Think I’ll take this outside for a smoke,” he says, a little louder, so Steve knows he is leaving the trailer, so he can relax again.
Eddie brings a bag of pretzels with him back to the living room, grabbing a handful for himself and then leaving the bag open on the table with the mouth pointed at Steve to pick at. He doesn’t.
“Is he mad?” Steve asks, shame in his voice. It’s a shame that hurts Eddie to hear, but he’s also very used to it by now. There’s shame in almost everything Steve says.
“Nah,” Eddie says, shrugging. “You know Wayne. He doesn’t get mad.”
“I’m sorry.” It is just a mumble.
“Come on, none of that. I don’t want to hear it. You know I don’t want to hear that shit.”
Steve doesn’t apologize again, but he does pick up his plate and start forcing bits of food into his mouth. Eddie sees it as the weird penance that it is, and he’ll take it. They sit quietly for a few minutes. The only noise is the low jabber from the TV. A woman with a big blowout is crying, collapsed dramatically on the floor, head in the lap of some chiseled-jaw man in a suit as her shoulders shake. He slides off his chair and onto his knees, pulling her into an embrace. It’s all shot through some horribly gauzy filter, amplified by the static of the trailer’s poor reception. Eddie has no idea what’s going on, even though he’s watched more daytime soaps in the last two months than he ever thought he could stomach. Steve seems to like them.
“There was a new guy,” Steve says after the crying on screen turns into a passionate embrace, which turns into passionate kissing.
“Hm?” Eddies hums, gesturing loosely toward the TV. “How can you tell? All these Botox Ken dolls look the same.”
“No, not on Days, at school. In the office, while I was there. There was a new guy starting. First day.”
Eddie frowns, looking over at the other boy, trying to puzzle out why he’s bringing this up or how it could possibly matter. “Yeah. Blonde, curly mullet thingy? He’s in my English class. Billy, I think. Seems like an asshole.”
Steve shrugs, mumbles, “I guess. I don’t really remember what he looked like. It’s sort of …” fuzzy, he doesn’t say. He’s said it enough times before that Eddie knows what he means. Things are often fuzzy in Steve’s mind, even things that just happened. Doctors say it could be a side effect of the meds he is still taking to sleep and to keep from having panic attacks every other hour. They also say it might just be … Steve, now. The trauma. It’s like it punched holes in his brain, and things just sort of leak out.
It’ll get better, they say.
Steve’s plate is finally empty, and he sort of tosses it over to the other end of the couch, settling down lower in his seat once more. He brings up his blanket over his arms, tucking it under his chin.
“What about him? Did he, like … did he say something to you?”
He shrugs again, “I don’t know. It was just kind of … I was just kind of thinking about him.”
“Okay …” Eddie draws out, trying to prompt anything more.
“It was just kind of funny, I guess. He talked to me and … and the way he looked at me. No one’s looked at me like that in—you know, it’s almost a year? It’s almost a year, and no one’s looked at me like—”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, just—like I was just some guy. He was just … just chatting with me. Sort of teasing, a little? But not mean. Just like we were two people. It was—I don’t know, it was just funny, I guess. Maybe Dustin does that a little, but even with him—anyway, that’s all. He just saw me and figured I was just … normal.”
Eddie swallows, a little gurgling of guilt in his stomach. He certainly doesn’t treat Steve like he is just a guy. Just any fucking schmoe passing Eddie in the hallway. He’s Steve. How could Eddie treat him like everyone else?
But is that what Steve wants? Needs? Is that what would help him? Is Eddie just fucking this whole thing up? Are all the worries that keep him awake some nights true? Would Steve be better off with anyone else in Eddie’s shoes?
“Steve …” he starts, unsure of how to ask any of those questions.
“It’s okay,” Steve says, dredging up a little smile, like he knows exactly what Eddie doesn’t know how to say. “I didn’t mean that you—I just meant … it was kind of funny, is all. I was just thinking about it.”
“Sure,” Eddie says, breathless.
“You know,” Steve says, as if remembering something else all of a sudden, something that is hovering just a bit too far away from his consciousness to fully solidify into knowledge. His brow is wrinkled, his bleary eyes squinted. “You know, it almost seemed kind of … flirty?”
“Flirty?” Eddie asks, sitting upright, a whole new flood of emotions washing over him, too rapid to distinguish. He feels suddenly hot, but his hands are weirdly freezing.
“I don’t know, I just remember …. He made me kind of nervous. He—he called me pretty boy.”
And that—
Well, Eddie doesn’t like that one fucking bit.