To Heal All Wounds

Eddie Munson vs His Fucking Anxiety

Billy and I aren't...

I'm not...

We're just...

The inside of Eddie's head had been a pinball machine stuck on go from the moment Steve had left for work that morning. His final broken sentences had formed three little steel balls that ricocheted around Eddie's mind, setting off alarm bells and flashing lights, denting the inside of his skull whenever they made an impact. They made Eddie cringe when he remembered them, when he remembered how they had sounded falling from Steve's lips. How they had sounded so confused. So... desperate. A cadence that, under any other circumstances, would have sounded so pretty in Steve's voice but at that moment... at that moment it had made Eddie run cold.

They sounded like rejection.

Rejection of both him AND Billy.

Wasn't that just a complicated thought that uncovered all kinds of gross things in Eddie's already frazzled mind? Because Eddie would have to be a grade A idiot to now know Billy's feelings for Steve. Billy hadn't so much as said that he was smitten with Little Lord Harrington, but there was enough in his words to make that out. Billy was lovesick and giggling. Giggling. Actually fucking giggling over some of the shit Steve said at the cafe. And knowing that laid a whole new layer of shame over his already insurmountable regret over his behavior. It made his stomach sour because he was doing every terrible thing everyone who had even heard the word polyamorous or pensexual had ever thought. He was slutting himself around, throwing himself at every pretty thing that looked at him. He was inconsiderate of the boundaries of others.

Even when he knew he knew Billy was totally fucking gone for Steve, he'd still thrown himself, dick first, at Steve. And Billy was just starting to warm up to Eddie too, coming over after work and for a few hours on his days off. Shooting the shit outside, leaning on the hood of his car like a god damned model and Eddie did not have time to process that one. Not now at least, while his standing with Steve was so in the air... and now so was his standing with Billy because he couldn't very well not tell Billy that he was as gone for Steve as Billy was at this point.

Or maybe he could.

Maybe Eddie could bundle that up in a little black handkerchief and tuck it away in his back pocket, like a dollar bill long forgotten in a wallet. Maybe he could set it aside and forget it. Let Billy have one god damned win because he deserved it, and not just because he was also a Hero of Hawkins. He deserved it because he was a god damned human person who hadn't had enough wins in life to count all the way up on one hand.

Yeah, Eddie could do that. He could not tell Billy what he did because it was only once, and then safely pack the memory and his stupid crush away in a box under all of the litter in his brain until...

Until...

No, no until. No hope. Just bury it, forget it, and be done.

But forgetting was easier said than done, especially when Steve's words were shooting around his head at top speed, creating little silver blurs as they passed. They kept evading his grasp as he tried to grab them and fling them out of his head. But they kept whizzing passed his outstretched hands, knocking painfully against his knuckles when Eddie got too close to them and causing him to draw back. And as they zoomed, they kept doing what they did, reminding him of his achingly humiliating faux pax until all he could do was stand in the middle of his bedroom in his only pair of unripped jeans, covering his face like a school girl as he tried -- and failed -- to forget the single most embarrassing moment of his new life.

God, he'd been so stupid. So caught up in what Billy kept saying about Steve that he'd completely forgotten to read the signs himself. He knew better than to trust anyone else's account of anything. He was smarter than that. Wayne had made sure he was smarter than that but he was just so...