Chapter Text
March 21, 1991
The landscape on the drive up from Nashville has reached that specific, midwest kind of shabbiness that tells him he’s close. The welcome, ensnaring cover of Tennessee trees and hills fell away when he reached Kentucky to roll past quaint horse farms tucked away in their nooks. Green, open, untouched fields speckled with sun. And then there’s Indiana. Her ugly sprawl of cornfields cut by dilapidated roads. Just mile upon mile of desolation and dread he has no choice but to cover like some doomed pilgrim’s journey. The town of Hawkins creeps closer, unmissable by those that know it, but unremarkable. The roads steadily become familiar even miles out, and finally, he sees the sign.
There’s a convenience store on the edge of town where he used to buy beer without being carded because he sold to the guy behind the counter. It’s gotten a paint job but looks no more inviting than it had before, with its cracked pavement and busted ice machines outside.
He pulls up to a pump and hops out of his van. It’s a different one than he used to lurk around in back in the day. Not new, but more life left in her, and less stalling that he could never work out the root cause of.
He stretches his arms open wide and then over his head to loosen his shoulders as he breezes across the parking lot for the door, his knees aching with the last few hours he’d spent behind the wheel.
Inside, he takes a leak first, grabs a Coke, and then he finds himself standing in front of the beer yet again, trying to feel out if that’s something he even wants right now, when someone calls his name.
“Eddie?”
He turns to look over his shoulder.
Jeff and his ever-cheerful, always contagious smile beams back at him.
“Hey man, what’re you doing back here?” Jeff says upon confirmation that it's really him. As if no time at all has passed, he opens his arms for a hug.
It isn’t reluctance to the embrace itself Eddie feels when he hesitates a fraction of a second before stepping into it. Not that at all. It’s a weariness, that in this town, even as he’s only just arrived, in this half familiar place, with his consciousness already feeling torn from his physical body in the beer section, he’s now unable to ignore. Even still, the surprise of seeing an old friend balms him a little bit. He just loathes the universe for having him cross paths with someone so soon. But in a place like Hawkins, what was he to expect?
He smiles in return and greets Jeff affably, both hands clapping him on the back over his slick blue windbreaker. “Hey, man. How ya been? Got your big fancy degree yet?”
Jeff releases him, shoves his hands into his pockets and digs the sole of his sneaker against the waxed tile.
“I did, I did,” he says. “But you know…”
He gives a self-conscious shrug.
“Things happen, and I guess I’m kind of in between jobs right now. I’ve been bartending at Skip’s. It’s kind of a new place downtown. My girl’s pregnant, so… you know.” He shrugs. “Gotta pay the bills somehow.”
“No, man. No shame in that. You’re taking care of business,” Eddie says, feeling no reaction at all to the news that Jeff’s going to become a dad. Feeling nothing at all, really. Those things happen. Especially now that they’re all reaching the summit of their mid-twenties, Eddie in the lead.
“Of course, of course. So what’ve you been up to, man?”
“Oh you know…” Eddie shrugs and rolls the Coke can in his hand. “Working here and there, down in, um… down in Tennessee. No particular reason. Just… ended up there I guess.”
He tries to keep his tone lighthearted but it doesn’t work. It sounds off, falls flat, and Jeff can tell.
The pleasant surprise at seeing his old friend, his old bandmate, old battle buddy, seems to drift from Jeff’s face at his answer. Surely he’d been expecting some wild and spinning tale that took Eddie in and out of bar fights and jail cells and drugs rings, and had been expecting Eddie to deliver it with his trademark pageantry. But Eddie does not.
“What’re you doing back in town?” he asks levelly, and Eddie tries to appreciate the fact that there’s no judgement, no inquisition in it. Just curiosity between friends.
Eddie shifts.
“Wayne, uh…” he starts. He’s never told anyone yet. Not aside from his boss. He hangs his head, eyes Jeff from behind the length of his hair. “Wayne has cancer. Has had. So… Yeah.”
“Shit, man, I’m….” But Jeff stops himself and looks at Eddie for a moment or two, though Eddie can’t find it within himself to really look back.
“You know,” Jeff says consideringly. “It’s been a few years, but I think we’re good enough friends for me not to give you the typical platitudes.”
He can’t spare the energy to show it, or read into exactly why, but Eddie feels some nervous tension within him ease.
“Thanks, man,” he says.
“But I… Honestly… That’s heavy. If you need anything, you can reach out. No worries. Okay?”
Eddie nods. There’s a big scary split within him, rising and coming into focus at Jeff’s sincerity, and Eddie wrestles against instinctively trying to cover it up. “Yeah. I… I uh… I will. I’ll let you know.”
“Ok man.” Jeff claps him on the shoulder. “Hope I’ll see you later.”
Eddie murmurs some semblance of the same, and they go their separate ways, Jeff up to the cash to pay, and when Eddie finally decides against a six pack, he distantly hears the bell above the door signaling his old friend’s exit.
When Eddie nears the register, the woman behind the counter—a chick his age with dark hair, dark lipstick, dark nail polish—throws a thumb over her shoulder, gesturing out to the parking lot.
“That guy put ten bucks on your pump,” she says, smacking her gum at the back of her teeth.
Eddie’s gut twists with guilt. “Ah. Thanks.” The can of Coke drops to the counter with a metallic thunk. Eddie fishes in his pocket for his wallet. “I’ll take a pack of Camels. And…”
He looks up at the display of cigarettes in their paper and foil packages, nestled neatly behind their plexiglass barriers above her head.
“And Marlboros. Both red. Thanks.”
He shoves the Camels in the pocket of his vest, keeps the Marlboros in the bag and forgets about the Coke by the time he’s back in the van.
More of Hawkins rolls by as he makes his way to the hospital, everything remarkably unchanged but somehow strangely less familiar, less rote than it had been to him five years ago, as if things have shifted a little in a level of detail that he cannot see.
A nauseating, sick feeling rises in his gut when he glides through the glass doors into the claustrophobic lobby. It’s exactly the state of body one was supposed to feel upon entering a hospital, as if all who entered were swallowed up and subsumed as part of the disease that grew within it.
He gives his name to the woman behind the front desk, and she gives him the floor and the room.
He’s practically fighting off a fugue state by the time he’s looming in the correct doorway, though it took no time at all to find it, looking in on Wayne thin as a rail in the bed, and a portly doctor with close cropped grey hair looking down at him, murmuring about something he can’t hear.
The doctor goes quiet when he takes notice of Eddie entering in without invitation.
“Uh oh, here comes trouble,” he says jovially and looks down at Wayne. “This your boy?”
“Yeah,” Wayne says, looking up at Eddie with the tiniest trace of pride. Relief. His voice is a harsh rasp that tears a knife through Eddie’s gut. “That’s him.”
He seems to gauge Eddie’s visceral reaction and coughs to clear his throat. It does not make the sinking in Eddie’s chest any better.
“He ain’t no trouble. He’s a saint, doc.”
Eddie smirks despite wanting to double over and puke. He comes to stand near Wayne’s bedside, grinds his nails into the lining of his jacket pockets, through the thin slip of it, and deep into the palms of his hands.
He looks at Wayne, his bony shoulders under the drape of the cheap hospital gown that has sickness woven into it by nature. His thinning hair is nearly gone by now, and his hands, worn by years of work and weather—work that has been primarily for Eddie’s benefit—are now gnarled and gaunt and taped over with lines to deliver exactly what, Eddie does not know. The break Eddie felt within him earlier spears open a touch wider and he senses a disgusting, splintering rage surge up from within it. He reaches out to press his trembling fingers into the edge of the mattress, brings himself in closer. He looks. He looks and looks, stares this disease right in its maw and does not let himself look away. He wants Wayne to look at him too. Needs Wayne to look at him. But he doesn’t. His gaze has returned firmly to the doctor there beside him.
The doctor goes on.
“Well, I’m Dr. Owens, your father’s main attending.” No one stops Owens to make the correction. He continues without pause. “I was just telling him the game plan. Good news is the fever’s gone. All it took was a little kick of antibiotics, so all those flu-ish symptoms he came in with are clearing. We’ll continue to monitor of course, but looks like we’re on the right track.”
Owens gives Eddie a bolstering nod, like he’s bringing him into the huddle. The fury in the split flares again. He tries to smother it away.
This wasn’t just the fucking flu.
But something must show, because Eddie feels a faint pressure on his sleeve and looks down at the pale, sick, diminished web of bone and muscle of Wayne’s hand. His uncle gives the soft worn leather of his jacket a pat. Eddie ducks his head and peers at Wayne—who still isn’t looking—sidelong, his lips pressed into a tight thin line. Wayne should not have to be concerned with reining him in right now.
“But your blood count’s still a bit too low for my comfort,” Owens tells Wayne in his easy demeanor. “We’re going to go ahead and prescribe a transfusion this afternoon. Should help you feel a bit stronger. We don’t want your heart working any harder than it has to. We’ll see how your body responds to that, see what happens and we’ll work from there.”
Wayne nods emptily, unmoved but perhaps not entirely unwelcome to Owens’ tact.
“Alright. Good plan.” Owens says assuredly and touches Wayne’s shoulder. “Well, I’ll leave you two to catch up, and I’ll see you later in the day once we’ve prepared the unit for transfusion. Let the nurses know if you need anything at all. Want to be sure you’re comfortable.”
He throws Eddie a clear but slightly stiff smile and is gone.
A heavy silence settles in the room, not because either of them have nothing to feel or to say. In fact, there’s more than enough. Perhaps it's that there seems to be not enough space in this room to untangle it all.
“You get all that?” Wayne remarks, dry as autumn cover, and finally he meets Eddie’s eyes. His usually bright blue irises are sallow gray under the swallowing white light that glows from above his bed. He looks haggard, defeated, and weary. He actually looks acutely ashamed. To be so exposed as he is now. To be so robbed.
Eddie takes a step backwards and falls heavily into the nearby chair. He pillows one elbow on the arm, presses white knuckles behind gaudy rings to his lips.
“You ok?” Wayne asks, as if all of what the doctor said is every day talk to him by now. No surprise. Nothing to worry over.
But every bit of Eddie’s energy is wound up in trying to keep himself from falling apart in tears. Wayne’s stare that’s bearing into him now tells him he sees it. And he knows for certain that even if he does cry, Wayne will not tell him to stop it. Somehow this makes an entirely different snare of anger flare up within him. An anger entirely primal, rooted deep down in generation upon generation of men.
“Might be the longest length of time I’ve ever heard you be quiet,” says Wayne.
Eddie hears what he really means. Say something. I need you to say something.
The rift inside threatens, threatens, dares him to speak, and wrestles his wordless, useless response from his mouth.
He lifts his chin to blink over into the far edge of the room. He shakes his head.
“I should’ve…” is all he manages before he stifles it with an agitated growl, because he knows it’s wrong, it’s all wrong, and he launches himself from the chair to pace the room, only getting so far before he stops himself, reels himself in.
“I’m gonna make a rule right here and now,” Wayne says from behind him. “There’s not gonna be any of what you should’ve done, because there was nothing you could’ve done. You ain’t gonna blame yourself for any of this mess.”
Eddie seizes upon the opportunity to deflect.
“Well shit, now that it’s a rule,” he murmurs. He drops his gaze over his shoulder, though he can’t see Wayne from this angle. Perhaps his uncle cannot even see him from behind the fall of his hair.
But Wayne has been wise to his bullshit for a very long time now. It’s such weak bullshit anyways.
“Come to think of it, I’ve got another one,” Wayne says. “We aren’t gonna talk around this. Aren’t going to pretend like it’s not happening. Even if I get out of here, go home. We aren’t going to ignore the facts of things. It’s something that's happening. It's something we’ve got to face. No kid gloves.”
Eddie turns to face him properly.
He’s always been thin. That’s just their make, the both of them. But there in the bed, he looks so ill, so much less the sturdy, dependable man Eddie never ever feared but always relied upon.
It’s at least a relief to hear his old dogged stubbornness, his sharp eye, hasn’t left him.
“Fine,” Eddie says bitterly. He sniffles. “Deal.”
Apparently considering everything settled, Wayne reaches over to the bedside table and picks up a copy of Outdoor Life, already folded open to a place marked page. With a shaking hand, he slides on his reading glasses and pretends to read for a second.
“Need you to go check on the house for me,” he says without looking up.
They’ve known each other far too long. Wayne can call him on his bullshit, but Eddie can bat back, and for better or worse he’s never exactly been afraid to. Especially now, five years out from underneath a third run at senior year that was weakening his favor.
He takes a step towards the bed, hands gliding back to bury in his pockets.
“No kid gloves?” he tests, sharply.
Wayne looks up from over his glasses. Takes them off.
“I need you to go check on the house,” he repeats with renewed firmness. “All you’re gonna do here is pace around like a caged tiger like you already been doing…” He indicates the floor with a wave of his glasses. “I need you here. Honestly I do. I want you here. But I want you clear headed. So… you’ve seen the state of it.” He gestures weakly at himself. “Go home, get settled, have a beer, have a joint for godsakes. One of us ought to. I’ll have them call you if anything happens. And I don’t wanna see you back here til tomorrow.”
Eddie comes to stand at the edge of his bed again.
“Don’t think you’ve read me my rights like this since I was nineteen,” he says.
“Which shows what a good kid you are. Now go on and get.”
Still, Eddie does not. Not yet. He reaches up a hand, and now the rift inside him fears, wild and thrashing. He ignores it and clasps his hand gently over Wayne’s shoulder, feeling no warm well-worn flannel, no hearty canvas work jacket. Just a weak cord of muscle, and bone under papery cotton.
He looks his uncle in the eye, and this time, Wayne meets him without delay.
Eddie draws in a breath.
“I…” he starts, but then achingly, despairingly, it all tangles up. Eddie swallows hard against it. He sighs angrily through his nose.
Wayne reaches up and over to pat the hand on his shoulder. Eddie gives the web of medical tape across the back of his palm a hard and angry glare.
“It’s alright, boy,” Wayne drawls knowingly. “I hear you.”
But Eddie sucks a sharp breath and sets his jaw, shakes his head at him, brows furrowed. He’s going to say this if he has to stand here all day to summon the breath for it.
“I love you, old man,” he says, making sure it’s his clearest voice.
It takes Wayne a moment to dig up the sentiment, only because it’s not a thing he grew up saying, and Eddie knows that. Wasn’t for him either. Not til the custody papers were final.
“Love you too, boy.” Wayne pats him again. “Now get the hell out of here.”
So Eddie goes.
He goes back through the hollow labyrinth of halls, out into the noonday glare.
Outside he can breathe, but back inside the building behind him, Wayne is on his own, at the mercy of medical treatments and his own failing body, diverted only by articles on bear traps and fishing tips whose advice he will never get to put to use.
Eddie yanks open the driver’s side door of his van and hauls himself inside.
In the passenger’s seat is the plastic bag from the convenience store.
His hands tremble with the new, unfamiliar, unspent anger now free to bubble over as he snatches the tissue-thin plastic. He wrestles with it for a second before he can get a grip on the pack of Marlboro Reds inside, tearing them free and swatting the bag away.
His temple drops against the steering wheel, eyes squeezed shut, breath surging out of him in one big seething blow.
The cardboard packaging holds out with its sharp edges and corners, but eventually it crumbles and yields within the vice of his fist.