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“I still can’t believe that you’re a nerd who used to deal drugs,” Steve says.
“Excuse you,” Eddie says, “I’m a rock musician and nerd who used to deal drugs.”
It’s a Thursday afternoon, and the two of them are spending it in the Munsons’ new trailer, courtesy of government hush money. Eddie and Wayne finished moving in a few days ago, though they haven’t thrown out all the empty cardboard boxes yet. They’re stacked by the front door, below where Wayne’s wall of baseball caps has been reconstructed.
Eddie and Steve sit on opposite ends of the couch in the living room, legs tangled together. The window behind them casts soft golden light onto the brown carpet and creates a mirror out of the blank TV screen.
Thank God it isn’t hot enough to need air conditioning. Steve needed to get out of his parents’ house, and he’s glad he could come here.
“An even better combination,” Steve says. “I just can’t believe you were able to dispose of all your stuff after Vecna without getting caught.”
“Hey, I never dealt anything hard. Just party drugs, weed, stuff like that. With Hopper back, though, I quit the illegal shit. He’s more perceptive than Callahan, and I don’t feel like getting drug charges pressed on me. He saw enough of me in high school. Now I just get alcohol and backer for high school kids who want to party a bit.”
“Backer?”
Eddie looks at him like he’s stupid. “The shit that goes in cigarettes? I know you’ve been clocked in the head a lot, but you’re not that dumb, sweetheart.”
Rude, Steve thinks to himself, then says, “Do you mean tobacco?”
“Yeah. Backer.” Eddie has the beginnings of a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Who the hell says ‘backer?’” Steve asks.
“Me. Wayne. Pretty much everyone who grew up in Appalachia.”
“What state is that in?”
Eddie barks out a laugh. “Christ, Steve. It’s a region. Appalachian Mountains? Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky…”
“Oh, Appalachia?”
“You’re saying it wrong. It’s Aah-puh- latch -uh, not Aah-puh- lay -cha.”
“You say ‘tobacco’ wrong.”
“You say ‘backer’ wrong,” Eddie teases. “I can’t believe you’ve never heard anyone say ‘backer.’ I didn’t grow up super far from here.”
Eddie doesn’t talk too much about his life before Hawkins. Before this, Steve just assumed he was born here and didn’t notice him before everything with the Upside-Down.
Steve didn’t notice a lot of things before the Upside-Down. He’s glad he’s more perceptive, now.
“Where did you grow up?” he asks.
“Well, I moved around a lot,” Eddie says. “Spent a little time in West Virginia, but mostly switched between Ohio and Kentucky.”
Steve might not be a genius, but he’s emotionally intelligent enough to realize when a thread of conversation ends. “What else can’t you say?”
“Oh my God. Fine.” Eddie takes a deep breath before he says, “Tow-back-oh.”
It’s so stilted and awkward that Steve can’t help but laugh.
“Fine, laugh it up,” Eddie snipes, but there’s a smile on his face, too. “You say ‘backer,’ now.”
“Backer,” Steve says, and now it’s Eddie’s turn to lose his mind.
“The hell? You’re saying ‘becker,’ not ‘backer.’”
“I’m saying ‘backer!’” Steve protests.
“No, you’re not!” Eddie gets out between laughs.
“Why do you only say that word weird?” Steve asks when they’ve both settled down.
“It’s not weird, it’s how I talk,” Eddie defends. “And it’s just something that stuck. I can say most other things without my accent, and I can remember not to say ‘ain’t’ and ‘minding’ most of the time, but ‘backer’ just stuck.”
“Why don’t you speak with your accent?”
“Because I’m fucking incomprehensible to you people when I do.”
“It can’t be that bad,” Steve reasons.
Just then, the front door opens, and Wayne walks in, carrying his bag and hard hat under his arm. Eddie had said he switched to day shifts in the summer, but Steve can’t help but be a little startled when he walks in.
He doesn’t move his legs, though. He doesn’t want Eddie to feel like he’s a secret.
“Boys,” Wayne greets them.
“Hiya, Uncle Wayne,” Eddie chirps, and Steve can definitely hear a bit of a drawl.
That’s cute, says a voice in his head.
And then Eddie says something that only might be English.
And Wayne responds.
And Eddie says something else.
And Steve is lost.
They speak slowly, so Steve is able to pick out words he recognizes, and most of the time he can guess at others. But the vowels are different and he’s never heard some of the words before and he has only been this confused once before, in Mrs. Click’s chemistry class when they were talking about equilibrium.
Just like during that hellish class, right now he feels like his brain is going to explode. Not just because of the mental gymnastics he has to go through to understand the two of them.
But also because Eddie talking like that is inexplicably attractive.
When Wayne leaves the room, saying something about going out again later, Eddie leans over and whispers, “Told you. Incomprehensible.”
“It’s kind of hot,” Steve murmurs, then immediately wishes he hadn’t.
Eddie stares at him, incredulous. “It’s literally just me talking.”
“I know.”
“I had to change how I talk so people here could understand me and stop thinking I was stupid.”
“Oh.” That’s really sad, actually. Steve knows Eddie is a little insecure about how people doubt his intelligence. It’s really unfair that this town heard him open his mouth and immediately dismissed him.
“And now you’re telling me that it’s attractive?”
“Yeah,” Steve says.
Eddie bites back a smile, then drawls, “You’re somethin’ else, you know that, Stevie?”
And Steve feels himself blush from the tips of his ears to the bottom of his neck.
Eddie cackles.
“Shut up,” Steve mutters, staring at the floor.
“I can’t believe you think it’s sexy,” Eddie says. “If you thought ‘backer’ was bad, wait until you hear what I called jeans growing up.”
“What did you call jeans?”
“Britches.”
“What the hell? ”
Eddie throws his head back and laughs again, and Steve, being the sap he is, thinks it’s the most gorgeous sound in the world.