edsmcnson:
*
as much as his uncle and lori had insisted that it was no bother to have him stay with them, that, in fact, it was a delight to have him around, especially since they only saw him on rare occasions, eddie could see the strain his presence put on the both of them. their place, despite being a significant upgrade from that shitty trailer wayne and eddie had spent the first nineteen years of his life in, was already pretty small as is. with eddie and all his baggage, both emotional and physical luggage, it didn’t take long for the bungalow to get croweded. stuffy, even, with no way to air out all the pent up trauma eddie had brought along, or all the love and affection his uncle and his wife were trying to offer him, which he just couldn’t find it within himself to accept.
plus his image around the town, certain townspeople. it would be difficult for anybody, and the last thing eddie wanted was for lori and wayne’s relationship to take a toll because of him. so, he did what any responsible nephew would do, prepare a nice romantic candlelight dinner in the kitchen, pack all the essentials into a worn-out crossbody bag, throw that into the back of his car and speed off into the night, to grant the two of them a little much needed space. god knows eddie needed it , too.
he’d popped the first of many tapes into his car’s old radio, the sisters of mercy’s iconic album ‘flood’, as he began his aimless driving around the town. driving had always calmed him down, he didn’t know why. maybe his parents had taken him into the car when he was a baby, so the humming of the motor would calm him down and put him to sleep, he couldn’t be sure, he barely remembered anything about them, after all. or at least he chose not to.
but if you’re busy supressing one unpleasant memory, another is bound to surface, and soon enough eddie found himself gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white, clenching his jaw so hard it was borderline painful as he was suddenly plagued by unwanted flashbacks. memories, like visions, of the time immediately following their defeat of vecna. so, reall, it was, like … flashbacks of flashbacks, of his near brush with death in the upside down. being chained to a hospital bed, confronted with the death of so many, most of whom people thought you were responsible for.
it was the album that triggered it, wayne had brought it to the hospital and for a solid while, that was the only possession eddie had been allowed to have. while he was still officially the prime suspect of a murder investigation and all. ‘flood’ was irrevocably tied to a lifetime of trauma and of fucking course, it was just eddie’s luck that, when he aggressively tried to hit the eject button, it feel right off. the tape now stuck in the radio, his trauma forever on loop. “motherfucker - are you fucking kidding me right now? are you fucking kidding -”
eddie cut himself off as his car came to an abrupt halt, slamming the steering wheel a few times, only stopping when he accidentally hit the horn a little too hard. “shit. for fuck’s sake.” he really had no choice here. eddie pulled over to the side of the road, grabbed his bag and locked his car. he couldn’t drive all the way back with that stupid tape stuck in there - every song made the cluster of scars on his stomach ache more and more - but … could he walk home? it was too late for a bus. cab’s weren’t exactly an availabilty in buttfuck, indiana and… well, with so many people still blaming him for shit he wasn’t even fucking convicted of !!!! eddie wasn’t gonna take his chances of walking home. it was too far anyway.
so, begrudgingly, he rang the only doorbell that had a familiar name next to it. “harrington! hey there… uh, long time no see, huh. uh…uh, my liege. i humbly request entry into the kingdom of - ah, fuck it.” already half-committed to an extravagant bow, eddie stopped himself mid sentence and got back up, dragging a hand down his face. seeing the look on steve’s face, however, he quickly straightened up. “shit! uh, yeah, yeah, man. everything’s fine. no freaky upside down shit, i should’ve - should’ve cleared that up right away. sorry.” stupid. if steve had showed up on his doorway in the middle of the night looking disheveled, eddie would’ve expected the worst too. which in this case meant monsters and shit. alternatively, eddie would’ve thought he was dreaming but that all depended on whether or not steve was declaring his love for him and ripping off his shirt soon after.
“i … my car, like, broke.” he shrugged. wasn’t really a lie, was it? “this is super weird and you can totally say no but - could i, like, crash here?”
the last person that he had least expected to show up at his door at that hour was eddie munson. well, scratch that, the last person he expected to show up at his door would be someone like the president of the united states, but steve was pretty surprised to see eddie on the other side of the door. the two hadn’t been exactly close over the years, steve only getting certain news about eddie from robin. not even before that they had been close. they had shared a couple of moments that confused steve, remembering the conversations that they had in the upside down - even if it was a bit foggy, since twenty years had passed since then. and after that, eddie had left and steve barely had any contact with him, if any at all. steve wasn’t sure why he had decided to show up at his door, of all people. there was max, lucas... even dustin, even if he had heard about their falling out, only knowing it from dustin’s side.
steve watched as the man did some sort of bow and he was immediately confused. “oh, uh... yeah, sure, right, come on in.” steve was sure that his brain was still half asleep from his small nap earlier, but he watched as eddie walked into his apartment. it was a mess, but steve decided that he would clean it up when he actually had some time for it and he wasn’t tired. “right... why would there be anything related to the upside down?” he asked, frowning a bit. in his head, that had been solved all those years ago, when him, robin and nancy had shot vecna until he was dead. a memory that still played in his head, even after all those years. he felt a shiver going down his spine as he thought about the possibility of it returning - but was it really out of the picture? things had been weird for a while, ever since joyce’s funeral. there were the nails in his bed, which he hadn’t assimilated yet... but he decided not to think about. just as he decided to not think about luke still being gone. they were going to find him eventually.
focusing his attention back on eddie, he nodded his head slowly as the man explained his situation, a soft smile on his face. he wasn’t about to turn him away. plus, it would be nice to catch up with eddie, if he was up to it. they had been encountering each other more and more often, which was a given considering they hadn’t seen each other in years. “of course you can stay here. i don’t have an extra room though, but... the couch will do just fine.” he said, motioning towards the couch and then his eyes widened at the sight of ford’s toys spread out all over the couch, only the spot where he had been sitting in being free. “right, right, i’ll just clean that up.” he said as he moved over to the couch and got rid of all of the toys, before he turned back to eddie, his face slightly red from embarrassment.
“are you alright? you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as he held onto one of his kid’s plushies and waved it in front of eddie. “if you want you can cuddle mr. cuddles, but i think you’ll have to give it back to ford once he’s home.” he said, a soft chuckle escaping his lips.
