Chapter Text
Wake up, Eddie kept telling himself over and over. In his head, out loud - he could hardly even tell the difference at this point. Please, please, please wake up.
But he was already awake, of course. He knew that. He just couldn’t help holding onto one last shred of hope that this was all some horrible nightmare, concocted in his subconscious by fusing together bits of Dungeons & Dragons games with pieces of his real life and scraps of his worst buried fears.
Reefer Rick was not at home, which was both good and bad. Good, because Eddie didn’t have to explain to him why he had turned up here at one in the morning, scared out of his wits. Bad, because out here alone in the pitch-black woods, every rattle of wind and every creak of a floorboard plunged Eddie further and further down into a spiral of panic.
He didn’t dare turn the lights on. Max’s last words before he’d driven off into the night still rang in his ears, making him hear police sirens in every bird call. And he couldn’t stop seeing the way the lights in his trailer had flickered when it had happened. When Chrissy had…
Eddie let out a faint, inhuman sound as he sank to the floor, burying his face in his hands. He couldn’t stop seeing it.
He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like this, crumpled on the old wooden planks of Rick’s kitchen floor. He only knew that at some point, the terror inside him morphed from a force that pinned him to the ground into a force that dragged him to his feet. He had to move; he had to do something.
His body moved quicker than his mind, and he found himself opening and shutting random cabinets and drawers, looking for - he had no idea what. He flung open the refrigerator door and flinched back from the light. Seeing what was inside, though, an idea struck him, and he seized one of the dull brown bottles on the shelf. Bottle opener - knife - he’d seen things like that in one of the drawers. He rummaged through a few of them until one yielded up something decent, then wrestled with knife and bottle until the cap went flying, skittering away into the dark. Contemplating the bottle for a moment, he shrugged to himself - no sense wasting it - and knocked it back as fast as he could. As soon as it was empty, he hefted it in one hand and hit the neck against the counter, wincing at the sound of breaking glass.
Eddie turned the now-jagged beer bottle over in his hands, holding it up so that it caught what little moonlight reached through the trees. It wasn’t much, and he had no idea what he would actually do it with it, but just holding it made him feel marginally better. How many times had he told Hellfire to have their characters improvise weapons for a fight against an unexpected monster?
He gave a shaky laugh - God, he was really losing it now - and then froze as a new sound hummed in the distance.
Car engine.
He was sure of it this time, and more sure as the hum drew closer.
“Shit,” he mumbled, what little sense of calm he’d gained evaporating in a second. “Shit, shit, shit.”
He cast a wild glance around the dark little room. What should he do? Hide? Run? The broken bottle would be no help at all against cops.
He was halfway out the back door before he realized that there weren’t any sirens. Probably not the cops, then. Probably just Max coming to check on him.
Except Max didn’t have a car.
Hide, then. Outside, where running could still be an option if necessary. Clutching the jagged bottle in one hand, he slipped out the back door and crept around to the boathouse. He made it there just in time to see headlights poking their way through the trees.
Eddie ducked inside the boathouse and peered through the wooden slats to watch.
The headlights drew closer, glowing eyes that drowned out the possibility of seeing anything else around them. When they finally shuddered to a stop a few yards away, Eddie had to blink several times to rid his vision of the burning holes they left behind.
The engine died away, and car doors thudded open. Voices sounded, low and muffled and definitely too young to be cops. The iron grip on Eddie’s chest loosened slightly. Smaller pinpricks of light blinked into view - flashlights, four of them, bobbing through the trees. Eddie could just make out a glint of red hair on the shadowy figure carrying one of them. For a brief, insane moment, he thought it was Chrissy - floating, floating on the ceiling, eyes rolled back in her head - and it was all he could do to keep himself from drowning in the panic again.
He stayed hidden, breathing shallow gulps of air, waiting to see who Max had brought along with her.
“Eddie!” one of the shadows called out in a voice that was unmistakably Dustin Henderson’s. “It’s okay, you can come out, it’s just us!”
A taller figure caught up with Dustin, grabbing hold of his shoulder. “Don’t yell, man,” this one said in a voice that was lower than Dustin’s, but still loud enough for Eddie to hear it.
Eddie stiffened, every muscle tensing again, ready to run. Unless he was very much mistaken, that voice, that hair, and that BMW all belonged to Steve Harrington.
“It’s Eddie,” Dustin was saying. “It’s fine.”
“Yeah, sure, but we don’t know what else could be…” Steve’s voice dropped here, and Eddie couldn’t make out the rest of what he was saying.
Eddie drew further back into a shadowy corner of the boathouse, still keeping an eye on the proceedings out front, still ready to bolt if needed.
Harrington. There was something Eddie would never understand. A year or two ago, Eddie had him chalked up as one of the most obnoxious types at Hawkins High: rich, popular basketball star who could get anything he wanted and knew it. But for reasons unclear, Steve Harrington had lingered in Hawkins after graduating - something that Eddie would have never known or cared to know about, if it weren’t for the fact that Henderson, Wheeler, and Sinclair talked about him all the damn time. Steve was helping Lucas out with basketball training. Steve was going to give them a ride home from Hellfire today. Steve was refusing to give them a family-and-friends discount on movie rentals because he said there was no such thing. Steve was the best, Steve was being annoying, Steve would fix things for them, just don’t ask him for help with homework. He was, apparently, a cross between a revered older brother and an exasperating parental figure to them all, but Eddie could never for the life of him figure out why.
“Guys, I really don’t think we should split up,” the fourth flashlight-wielder was saying - a girl, but too tall and not red-headed enough to be Max. Robin Buckley, most likely, given who else was in this party.
Eddie watched as Robin tripped over a tree root, and Steve threw out an arm to steady her. That was another thing. Robin, as a band geek, fit. It was reasonable enough that she might be acquainted with Henderson and his crew. Far less reasonable was the fact that Robin and Steve had apparently, somehow, at some point within the last year or so, become best friends. They weren’t even dating, which was odd, too, although Eddie had a few theories as to why that might be the case. But even if Robin was the connecting piece between the boys and Harrington, there were still many, many other links missing. Did it have something to do with the fact that Harrington used to date Wheeler’s sister? Were the boys paying him to give them rides everywhere? Was this all just some kind of bizarre community service project for him?
Eddie shook his head as if to clear it. None of this mattered right now, of course. The bottom line was: could Steve Harrington be trusted?
“Door’s unlocked.” This was Max, her voice floating over from the front stoop of Rick’s house. “You guys coming or what?”
“Maybe we should check this shed over here.” Dustin’s flashlight swept across toward the boathouse.
“Right. I’m going in first.”
As Steve drew closer to the boathouse, crunching cautiously through the underbrush, Eddie saw that he was carrying something else in the hand that wasn’t holding a flashlight. Something that looked very much like a baseball bat covered in nails.
Son of a bitch.
Eddie had about ten seconds to decide what to do. Every bone in his body was screaming at him to run out the back door, jump in the lake, do whatever it took to get away. That people like Steve Harrington might as well be cops.
Dustin and the others trust him, though. Red clearly trusts him.
Eddie glanced down at the broken bottle in his trembling hand.
Harrington appeared in the doorway. Before his eyes could adjust to the pitch-dark, before his flashlight could sweep its way into the corner, Eddie was at his side, holding the jagged bottle edge at his throat.
“Drop the bat,” Eddie said, distantly surprised at how calm his voice sounded.
“Hey, man,” Steve said, in a voice that also sounded much too calm for the situation. His eyes darted to the side, taking in both Eddie and the bottle. “We were just looking for you.”
“Steve?” Dustin’s flashlight bobbed closer. “Everything okay - Eddie! There you - hey, hey, Eddie, easy. It’s okay. Steve’s okay.”
“They’re all okay, Eddie,” Max said, appearing behind Dustin. “I wouldn’t have brought them otherwise. You can drop the bottle.”
Eddie’s hand was still shaking slightly, although he wasn’t sure anyone could see this except him and possibly Harrington. “I drop the bottle when he drops the bat.”
Dustin shot Steve a look. “I told you to leave it in the car.”
“All right, easy, man,” Steve said, holding up his free hand in a placating gesture. “You’re not what I’m worried about, anyway.” He slowly lowered the bat to the ground, still not taking his eyes off Eddie.
As soon as the bat hit the ground, Eddie withdrew the bottle from Steve’s neck. It slid out of his suddenly weakened grip and shattered again as it fell against the doorframe.
For a few moments, no one spoke. Eddie took it all in: the four teens with their flashlights, looking varying degrees of concerned and wary, but not nearly as terrified as they should be feeling - as he was feeling. The baseball bat lying on the ground, spiked with nails that had clearly been hammered into it long ago. Steve Harrington, of all people, leading this ragtag group, and worried about - what, exactly?
Eddie drew in a deep, shuddering breath, as if he’d only just remembered how to do so.
“What the fuck,” he said, “is going on?”
The other four exchanged glances.
“We’d better sit down for this,” said Robin, her voice unexpectedly gentle. Pitying, almost.
They all trooped into the boathouse, Steve sweeping his flashlight into the dark corners and peering underneath the tarps and boats. Robin moved the nail-studded bat aside so no one would trip on it, but Eddie noted that she kept it within easy reach. Dustin heaved a backpack off his shoulders and began unloading things - a walkie-talkie, another flashlight, a pocket knife. They looked for all the world, Eddie thought, like a battle-weary adventuring party.
“We’ll start at the beginning,” Max said. She stood apart from the others but closest to Steve, her arms folded, a grimly resigned look on her face. “Dustin?”
Dustin sighed, dropping down to sit atop an overturned crate. “Okay,” he said. “Eddie, do you remember our friend Will that we always talk about? The one who… went missing, a couple of years ago?”
As if Eddie could forget. Little Will Byers’ disappearance and subsequent reappearance had been the talk of Hawkins for at least a year - longer, if you factored in how much Wheeler still talked about him these days.
“Yeah, of course.”
Dustin took a deep breath. “That’s when it all started.”
It occurred to Eddie that he was about to find out exactly why, and how, all these seemingly incongruent people had become friends - and that he was not going to like it one bit.