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Eddie falls asleep in the booth at the diner.
No one else notices, because he had been sitting with one leg drawn up, arms wrapped around it, and still and watchful in a way he usually wasn’t, but Steve, seated right beside him, does. He sees Eddie’s head drop the last few inches, forehead on his knee, arms going slack around his leg.
“Hey,” Steve says, nudging him. Eddie doesn’t stir and Steve wonders if perhaps he’d witnessed the most controlled fainting episode ever. He nudges him again. “Eddie.”
“Dude, is he sleeping again?” Dustin asks with a sigh. “I swear to God, he’s like my grandpa: asleep as soon as he sits still for a minute.”
“My turn to wake him,” Mike says, and he fishes an ice cube out of his water glass.
“Unless you want ice down your shirt, you better wake up,” Steve says to Eddie, giving him a firm shake.
Eddie blinks awake, Mike stopping his advance when Eddie looks at him.
“I wasn’t,” Mike says quickly.
“Wasn’t what?”
“Even thinking about it,” Mike says, dropping back in his chair and tossing the melting ice cube onto his plate.
“Smart,” Eddie says, rubbing his eyes and then his neck, wincing.
That’s something Steve has noticed, too; Eddie is always rubbing his neck, or stretching it, in subtle movements that once Steve picked up on became impossible to ignore. He asked Eddie about it just the other day, and got “Slept weird” for a response.
“Has Eddie been falling asleep around you a lot?” Steve asks as he drives Dustin home. Dustin wrinkles his nose.
“Yeah, and I don’t know what’s wrong,” Dustin says. “He just seems tired all the time.”
“Maybe he’s having trouble sleeping at night,” Steve suggests. “You know how your first encounter with the upside-down and its ever-so pleasant inhabitants can screw with your head.”
Dustin sighs. “Yeah, maybe.” He looks at Steve expectantly. “What are you gonna do?”
“Do? Me?”
“I think you forgot the ‘re’ in there.”
“Why me?” Steve asks.
Dustin shrugs. “You’re the only dude close to his age in this town who actually knows what he went through. I think that will go a long way toward breaking down the barrier.”
“What barrier?”
“The one that keeps males from having emotionally open and honest conversations,” Dustin says without missing a beat.
Steve sighs as he turns down Dustin’s street. “You gotta stop watching so many shows with your mom.”
“They aid in my emotional maturity,” Dustin says. “You should try them out; maybe work on some of your more toxic traits.”
“I don’t have any toxic traits!” Steve protests, pulling into the driveway.
“Not many,” Dustin allows. “But you really need to work on seeing that being vulnerable isn’t a bad thing.” He throws open his door. “Good luck with Eddie.”
“I never said I—don’t slam it!” Slam.
“Bye, Steve! Thank you,” Dustin yells as he runs into his house.
“Bye, Steve, thank you,” Steve mimics as he reverses out of the driveway. The sky is a light pink, still a couple hours from dark. Steve drives home, and changes the sheets on the bed in the guest room because he can’t even think of how long its been since someone actually stayed in there.
When he figures it’s dark enough, late enough, he gets in his car and drives to Forest Hills. He parks in front of Eddie’s trailer, glancing across the way at Max’s. He can see the flickering light of a tv through the half-open curtains of her living room.
Steve looks between Eddie’s van and the trailer, then knocks on one of the van doors.
“Eddie? It’s Steve.”
One of the back doors opens, and Eddie hops out, carrying a handful of cassettes.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, then shakes a tape at Steve. “I was just alphabetizing my Sabbath tapes—”
Eddie is wearing a loose black t-shirt and black sweatpants. The light from one of the trailer park lamps is enough for Steve to see the bunched-up blankets and pillows in the back of the van.
Steve motions at Eddie. “Come on,” he says.
Eddie doesn’t move. “Steve—”
“Dude, don’t sleep in your van,” Steve says, exasperated. “I have a spare room.”
Eddie frowns, looking down at the cassettes in his hands. He looks back up at Steve, mouth thin.
“Okay.”
The drive back to Steve’s house is quiet.
Steve doesn’t really know what he’s doing. He’d played a hunch and ended up being right, and now he’s going to have Eddie sleep in his house, and that’s good, right? That’s all he wanted.
They get to his house and he leads Eddie inside, showing him the bathroom and Steve’s own room before going two doors down.
“I work at ten tomorrow, but if you’re still sleeping when I leave I’ll put the key under the mat at the front door.”
Eddie looks at Steve like he grew a second head.
“What?” Steve asks.
“…nothing,” Eddie says, and Steve can feel him holding back the truth, but he doesn’t push.
“If you need anything, just come get me,” Steve says. He gives an awkward wave and backs out of the room. “Goodnight.”
“Night,” he hears Eddie say faintly before the door closes tight.
As Steve had guessed, Eddie has nightmares.
Pretty fucked-up ones, judging by the sounds Eddie’s making in his sleep, little pained whimpers. Steve stands over him, muzzy with sleep, and says, “Hey, Eddie.”
It’s harder to wake him here than the diner. By the time Eddie is finally blinking his eyes open, Steve is pushing a box of Kleenex at him. The room is quiet except for Eddie’s ragged breathing. He doesn’t look at Steve, plucking a tissue from the box and blowing his nose. When he speaks, his voice is thick with choked-back tears.
“It’s not usually this bad.” He tenses when Steve sits next to him on the bed, keeping his face hidden behind his tousled hair.
Steve pulls the empty wastebasket from under the desk with his foot, and Eddie drops his balled-up tissue inside.
“Three years ago, I thought Nancy was cheating on me with Jonathan,” Steve begins, “and since this was the height of my king Steve era, I was an asshole about it, and in a rare moment of guilt, I went to his house to apologize. Nancy was already there, and I started thinking, well, shit, I was right. They kept trying to get me to leave, and then the ceiling collapsed and a Demogorgon dropped onto the floor.”
Eddie sniffs again, raising his head a bit. “Did you say a—”
“Demogorgon, yep,” Steve says. “It had a face full of teeth and wicked sharp claws, and all it wanted was to kill us.” He pauses, because even though its been nearly three years and he’s seen a lot more shit, that terror still sits with him. Eddie is still beside him, almost turned towards Steve.
“I had never thought before about dying,” Steve continues. “I mean, it was always an abstract thing that happens eventually but not, you know, to me. Not when I’m sixteen years old, and not because of some nightmare creature. It didn’t kill me, obviously—” and he makes a grand, sweeping gesture towards himself, as if saying see, I’m still here—“not that night, anyway. But its been almost three years, and it still rips me apart in my dreams. Or Nancy, or Jonathan; just a pinwheel of people I care about dying messily in front of me.”
He looks to his right, to meet Eddie’s dark gaze.
“It does get better,” he says quietly. “But not if you keep it to yourself. Shit like that, it can eat you up from the inside.” Steve shrugs. “I’m always here to listen.”
He lets the words sit between them, feeling the growing tension in the man next to him. He doesn’t look at Eddie, doesn’t want to do anything that might make him feel rushed or pressured into saying something he doesn’t really want to.
The silence stretches long enough that Steve is starting to slouch on the bed, faintly disappointed that Eddie isn’t going to take him up on his offer, when he hears a shaky inhale.
“I always hear it first,” Eddie says to his lap, hands fisted in his sweatpants. “Her bones breaking. It’ll be, like, a normal dream, like I’m in school or at band practice, and then I hear the…the snapping. I always try not to look but I can’t help it.” His left shoulder is just brushing against Steve’s; Steve can feel it tremble through his thin cotton shirt.
“It’s always Chrissy,” Eddie says, “Sometimes she’s running at me and, like, contorting as she goes. I see her in that boathouse, I see her in the trailer, I see her—” his voice breaks and he angrily wipes at his eyes. “She’s trying to get me to help her but I can’t. Even my own stupid brain knows I can’t help her.
“And it’s at the point now, where even when I’m awake, I just remember, standing there, watching, just fucking watching her lift up and slam into the ceiling and not even trying to help—” Eddie is trying to speak through huge, shuddering gasps, fingers clawing at his pant leg, and Steve reaches out and takes Eddie’s hands in his own, squeezing tightly. He doesn’t say anything, though; Eddie’s not done.
“I can’t get her face outta my head. I met her in the woods and she was—” Eddie laughs a bit—“she was completely different than I expected. And I sat there and talked to her and thought, wow, Chrissy Cunningham is actually pretty fucking decent. And she was freaked out about—well, I know now, but I didn’t at the time, and I…I never even tried to help. Just, here, take your drugs and fuck off.”
He’s crying, words nearly unintelligible, and Steve pulls him into a side hug that Eddie immediately squirms out of, getting to his feet and glaring down at Steve.
“Don’t,” he orders shakily, backing away from the bed. “Don’t try to comfort me like I deserve it, like I’ve done anything to earn it. I didn’t wanna come here.”
“Eddie,” Steve says, standing, “look, I don’t know—”
“That’s right, you don’t!” Eddie snaps. “No one does. No one can! You didn’t see a cheerleader crumpled up like a dollar bill! You didn’t stand there like a useless fucking muppet while her eyeballs were sucked into her head. You didn’t think that you were next, so you better run like the fucking coward you are outta there and leave her behind in a shitty goddamn trailer.” He collapses, digging his hands into his hair, sobbing.
Steve drops next to him, hands reaching out tentatively but stopping before making contact, mere inches from Eddie’s heaving shoulder.
“It’s so fucked,” Eddie says, sniffling loudly. “She had her whole life ahead of her, a-and she was so nice, to me, and I actually thought, I could see us being friends.” He laughs. “Me and C-Chrissy Cunningham, fucking hanging out at the mall, and I even said, like, come see our band, and she laughed, man, she laughed but it was with me, not at me.”
Steve pulls Eddie into a hug, unable to resist another second. Eddie’s arms wrap around him, his tears soaking Steve’s shoulder in seconds.
“I’m sorry,” he cries, shaking in Steve’s arms. “I’m so fucking sorry, Chrissy, I’m so fucking sorry.”
Steve blinks back tears of his own, looking up at the ceiling and sniffling. He keeps a tight hold of Eddie, puts one hand on the back of his head and pulls him in closer.
Steve thinks it’s safe to say the barrier has been broken.
In the morning, Steve sits in the kitchen with a pot of coffee and two mugs. Eddie comes down around seven, freezing in the doorway when he sees Steve.
“You want anything to eat?” Steve asks, nudging the empty mug a bit further along the table. “I usually just make toast.”
“Just coffee is fine,” Eddie says after a moment, walking into the kitchen and sitting down across from Steve.
Steve knows Eddie won’t be the one to break the tension; he knows because if their roles were reversed he sure as hell wouldn’t do it. Eddie would do it in his own way, but all Steve has is his.
“Do you want to talk about last night or do you want to pretend it never happened?” He watches Eddie’s fingers tighten around his mug.
“I’m sorry about that,” Eddie says, looking into his coffee. His voice is hoarse, his eyes bloodshot.
“That’s not what I asked,” Steve says gently.
“Maybe the second option,” Eddie says, glancing at Steve and away.
Steve nods. “Okay,” he says, and Eddie frowns. “What?”
“Thought you said it’s bad, not to talk about it.”
“Well, yeah, it is,” Steve says, “but if you don’t want to, I can’t force you. All I can do is be there for you if you ever want to.”
Eddie lifts his mug like he’s going to take a drink, then sets it down just as quickly. “Why do you, like, care so much?”
“What do you—”
“About…about me,” Eddie says, looking flustered, “my mental health and shit; you’d think you get a pay-off if you claw me back from the brink.”
“Because we’re friends,” says Steve. Eddie just looks at him. Steve’s heart does a funny kick-flip. “Aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says after an eternal pause, “but—” he trails off, finally taking a drink.
“But what?” Steve asks. “That’s a thing friends do.”
Eddie hmms and keeps the mug in front of him like a shield. “Never had a friend like you before,” he says, and even behind the mug, Steve can see the faint smile.
“Well, you do now,” Steve says firmly. It’s a little cheesy and Eddie snorts at him.
Steve drives Eddie home. They stop in front of the trailer and Eddie turns to him.
“So, not to make it weird, but if you don’t see me around for a few days, just, it’s fine, all right?” He gives Steve a weak smile. “I might…need some space.”
“All right,” Steve says, “but you know if you—”
“Need anything, you got it covered,” Eddie says. “Yeah, thanks.” He climbs out of the car, and the front door of the trailer opens, his uncle stepping out.
Steve backs the car up and turns it towards the exit. He looks in his rearview once, getting a glimpse of Eddie and his uncle embracing.
He doesn’t see Eddie except for in passing for the next few days. Steve was a little disappointed but not altogether surprised when Eddie didn’t show up the first night, and knew not to expect a return visit. Eddie meets Dustin and the rest at the arcade, and Steve watches through the windows of Family Video as they all congregate on the curb, each teenager vying for Eddie’s attention. He looks tired, Steve thinks, still haunted around the eyes, but he grins with Dustin and corrals all the children into the arcade.
An hour later they come charging into the video store, clamoring about Lucas’s new high score and bickering over what movie to choose to watch at Mike’s house. Eddie walks up to where Steve stays behind the protective barrier of the counter, giving him a little grin.
“They got kicked out of the arcade,” he says. Steve raises a brow.
“For what?”
“I told Donkey Kong he’s a nut-munching bastard ass,” Dustin says matter-of-factly, piling a stack of movies on the counter. Mike and Lucas snicker while Max rolls her eyes.
“Bastard ass?” Steve repeats, exchanging a look with Max. He looks at Dustin, wrestling with Mike over a tape. “Jesus, you really are twelve.”
“It was the heat of the moment!” Dustin insists, before emphatically saying “No, Mike, I’m not watching that.”
“You picked all three movies,” Mike protests.
“Because we’re watching a trilogy,” Dustin says slowly, “so we need all three movies.”
Mike looks imploringly at Eddie, who’s drumming his fingers to some unheard beat on the countertop.
Eddie points at Dustin. “Henderson has logic on his side—” Dustin smirks at Mike, who groans—“but Wheeler has the VCR, so, the nation remains divided.”
Max snickers while Mike cheers and Dustin boos. Eddie snaps his fingers at them.
“Hey! Anyone who wants me to drop them off at Wheeler’s, be in the van in—” he looks sideways at Steve—“how long does it take you to cash someone out?”
Steve folds his arms. “Thirty-four seconds with exact change.”
“Forty-five seconds,” Eddie declares. “That’s all you got.” He gives Steve a little grin, then walks out to the parking lot, drawing a cigarette out from a pack and sliding it behind his ear.
Max knocks Dustin’s tape out of the way of three of her own.
“Pay him,” she says to the three boys, and marches out after Eddie, climbing into the front seat of his van. Steve doesn’t bother hiding his grin as he scans the three movies while Dustin grumbles about watching goddamn Poltergeist for the fiftieth goddamn time.
“You’re just scared of it,” Lucas scoffs, dropping a stack of quarters on the counter.
“I am not scared, and if I was, it would just be a testament to the cinematographic skill of the filmmakers!”
“Twelve seconds,” Steve says, and outside an engine revs. They end up overpaying by almost a dollar in their mad dash to get out the door, and Steve watches the van disappear down the street. He keeps the extra eighty-three cents, then resumes standing behind the counter and doing nothing.
An hour later, Steve has his eye on the clock and a stack of fourteen pennies and counting in front of him. He groans inwardly when the door opens. Of course someone is coming in last-minute.
“Oh, hey,” he says when he sees Eddie standing just inside the door.
Eddie waves. “I know you close soon—”
“No, man, you’re good, come in,” Steve says, but Eddie stays where he is.
“I, uh—” he stops and glances around. “No one else is here?”
“Just me,” says Steve.
“Right. Um, I went to the library a couple days ago, and for the first time in my life, did some research,” Eddie says it like it’s something unpalatable, shifting his rings around on his fingers. “And—well, it was something I was thinking about anyway but I didn’t know, uh, if I could, but, yeah, every book seems to recommend the same thing.” He looks at Steve, as if he’s said anything that makes sense.
“Uh,” Steve says, recognizing Eddie’s nervous but also at a complete loss, “what did they recommend, exactly?”
Eddie twitches back like he’s going to slip back outside. “Closure,” he says, “like, visiting her— grave. Since I didn’t exactly make the funeral.”
“Oh,” Steve says, nodding. “Okay, yeah, that…makes sense. What, uh, what were the books?”
“Um, like, self-help, or dealing with grief, death, that kinda thing.” The words tumble out and Eddie looks anywhere but Steve.
“Good for you,” Steve says, and smiles encouragingly when Eddie glances at him. “I hope they help. So, you’re going to go to the cemetery?”
“Yeah, and I was wondering if, you know, totally depending on your schedule, I mean there’s no rush, but maybe you could, I dunno, come with me.”
“Eddie.” Steve waits until he’s stopped fidgeting and actually looks at Steve. “Anytime. Just let me know.”
Eddie nods. “Okay, cool, that’s— cool.” He nods again, turns to go, then tuns back again. “Tomorrow morning? Maybe, like, ten, when everyone’s at work.”
Steve mentally clears his schedule for the day. “Okay. You wanna meet there, or…?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “At ten.” He leans against the door, pushing it open.
“See you there,” Steve says, and watches him go. No one else comes in after Eddie, and Steve locks up three minutes early, fuck you very much, Keith, and walks out to a parking lot lit up under the full moon.
Eddie is sitting on the curb outside of the arcade, staring at the sky. Smoke curls up between his fingers, and he lazily turns to Steve when he sits down beside him.
“You think we could go tonight?”
“A cemetery at midnight?” Steve asks.
Eddie snorts. “It’s barely eleven.”
“It’s a full moon!”
Eddie looks up, moonlight reflecting in his eyes. “Good night for ghosts.”
Steve drives them to the cemetery. It’s a different one than the one Billy is buried in, where Max had her close encounter of the Vecna kind, for which Steve is grateful. It’s surrounded by wrought iron bars, gleaming under the bright light of the moon. The headstones are nestled in the well-kept green grass, multiple footpaths branching off to wind between the graves.
Steve and Eddie stand just outside the gate. It’s open, which strikes Steve as odd, because if there’s going to be a gate around a cemetery shouldn’t it be closed at 11:16 on a Saturday night?
“So,” Steve says after a minute, when Eddie has made no move to go in, “what—”
“This was a dumb idea,” Eddie says, abruptly pushing off the car and walking around the side of it. He looks at Steve, expectantly, a bit desperately. “Let’s go.”
“Why is it a dumb idea?” Steve asks. Eddie shifts on his feet, looking edgy.
“Because,” he says, “it’s a cemetery at midnight and it’s a full moon.” He sighs.
“Well, what did those books you read say about it?”
Eddie makes a face. “That it’s a way to feel connected to the dead person; that seeing their grave can help convince your mind they’re gone; that if you see physical proof of them six feet under you’ll maybe stop seeing them everywhere else.”
Steve feels a chill run down his back. “Are you seeing things, Eddie?”
Eddie’s gaze slides to the right in a way that makes Steve turn, too, scanning the area. “Not really,” Eddie says after a moment. “At least, not in the interdimensional hellscape way.” He knuckles his eyes, huffing out a breath. “I’m just tired, man, but, since we’re here…”
“Take your time,” Steve says, as Eddie walks hesitantly through the gate. He seems to know where he’s going, picking his way to the eastern side of the cemetery, stepping in patches of silver moonlight.
Steve watches until he stops, far enough that he looks like one of his own painted figurines. He wonders if, as the dungeon master, Eddie has one of those little figures. Steve thinks, if he did, it would have a cracked shield, but underneath it would be shining rays of light.