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It’s going to take time to move everything out of the home he shares with Chrissy and Robin and Rue. For now, Eddie has taken his guitar, the acoustic, the electric kept safe where he and Lestat record, and a few changes of clothes, but not much else.

It’s only once he’s outside at three in the morning he realizes he doesn’t know where to go. Not so long ago, he would have gone to Will’s place, let himself be mothered by Joyce, lose himself in being a normal kid with a normal best friend, but Will is gone, too. He could get a room at a hotel or something, but the only hotel he can think of off the top of his head is the one with all the clowns and he’d really like to not go there.

Besides, it isn’t safe. Nothing like that will be safe enough. A cleaner might come in, open the curtains, and Eddie goes up in flames.

Perched on a bench in the park, he takes out his phone and texts Lestat.

need to come stay. that ok?

Louis could say no, he realizes, and then he’s kind of fucked.

Lately, with long nights at his disposal, Eddie has been thinking a lot.

Mostly about life, the one he was going to have, the one that was taken from him in Hawkins, and he wonders if it would have even been that good at all. He’d be dead, most likely. Arrested for murder, if not. Put on trial with no one to defend his side of the story who would have been believed. Eddie Munson’s life in Hawkins was nothing to be excited about.

Darrow was a reset. A life; Chrissy alive and loving him the way he loves her. Friends, a job, a chance to play real music on a real stage with another real musician and not just some high school buddy half-assing it. Yeah, Darrow was weird, but he loved it.

He loves it still. If for no other reason than knowing Chrissy gets to be here. Alive. She gets a life.

A life he’s not exactly supporting in the best ways any longer.

He doesn’t do anything intentionally to hurt her, but the very fact that he’s a vampire now is enough. She tries to keep his hours, which doesn’t do her any good, because she still needs to exist during the day. He doesn’t eat anymore, which he knows is triggering for her. She’s tired and drawn and she still always has a smile for him. He loves her so much and he knows this isn’t good for her anymore. Maybe it isn’t good for him either, maybe he’s struggling because he’s something else now and he’s trying to be a certain way for her.

What he cares about most, though, is that she deserves a better life than this. A better life than he’s giving her. This is all he’s capable of now and she deserves more.

It’s taken him weeks to come to accept this, then longer to gather enough courage to talk with her. When he enters their bedroom, he pauses in the doorway, smiling at her.

“Hey,” he says. “Can we talk?”

Reintegrating into regular, everyday life is going to be basically impossible. By this point, Eddie has accepted it, he knows things will be different, and he thinks he's doing pretty well with that knowledge. He's mourned a bit, he's been angry -- not with Lestat, not ever, but with Darrow for having put him and Lestat in that position in the first place -- and he's been sad.

There's no more wandering around Darrow during the day. No more sun, like Lestat had warned him. He has to hold himself apart from his friends, from Chrissy, at least to a certain extent. Any time he wants to be around them, he has to make sure he's eaten first, so he's not in any danger of losing control. The days are spent in a light proof box -- more or less a coffin -- and he's had to pretend he's developed some sort of sun related illness so his boss will only give him night shifts at the record store.

He misses the customers, he misses the feeling of the store itself, and while he gets a bit of it between sundown and close, most of his shift is spent after hours, stocking and placing orders, doing all the administrative stuff that doesn't get done during the day. It's fine, but it's not the job Eddie wanted.

DnD has fallen off, too, because he can't force everyone to meet after dark every single time, but their Dungeon Master is now a vampire and it's sort of his only option.

At this point, he's seen everyone except Alex. If he thinks about it, he's afraid to see her, afraid she'll blame herself for what happened. It isn't her fault they got separated and it isn't her fault he was attacked, but he carries this fear she won't be able to let it go.

And maybe it's stupid that he hasn't gone to see her earlier for that very reason. He should be there to tell her none of this is her fault and Eddie groans as this thought occurs to him, halfway between his apartment and hers, pacing on the street after dark. He's such an idiot and he grabs his phone, texts her a question.

u at work or home?

Eventually, he tells Lestat he's ready to go home. Truthfully, he's still completely petrified, worried he'll do something stupid, hurt Chrissy without meaning to, but he's being sent home with a full belly, without the slightest bit of hunger pangs, and he's still himself.

It comes down to that every time he worries. He's still himself, he's just more.

But the more scares him. He can hear things now, peoples' thoughts, and it feels invasive and uncomfortable. He doesn't want to hear Chrissy's thoughts, he doesn't want her to ever be in a position where she has to worry he's listening in. There's also the matter of her being human, needing to exist in the sun, her life being normal and regular, not like his will be anymore. Yeah, he's still himself, but he can't go into the sun and he has to drink blood and he needs to sleep in a coffin.

Maybe not a coffin specifically, but all the light needs to be blocked. That's what Lestat has told him. The easiest way to get that level of safety is a coffin. That's going to be weird, having a coffin in their home, and he doesn't want to make anyone uncomfortable, so he's already thinking about putting it in an unused bedroom. God, he hopes Robin doesn't want to kick him out because of it, though he'd understand if she did.

It's dark, it's safe, and Eddie slinks home, gold eyes almost glowing in the dark. He realizes, once he's home, that he can't enter. He unlocks the door and swings it open and has to stand outside on the front step before he sends Chrissy a text.

u have to invite me in, babe

Eddie is clean, rested, and a fucking vampire.

He's called Chrissy, but he hasn't gone home. After getting back, he had needed to let her know he was safe, physically, that he was alive and okay, in a sense, but also maybe that he wasn't safe to be around. That he needed to figure some things out before he came back home to see her. He said he loved her and nothing had or ever would change that, he only wanted to make sure she was safe.

From what? From him.

Now he's sitting in Lestat's home, his arms wrapped around his knees, thinking about what the fuck he's done and how everything is going to change. There's still no regret, no matter how heard he thinks about it, no matter how deeply he searches himself, because he's here and he's alive, for the most part, and that is preferable to having died back in that awful place.

But he's different. He's changed. He only needs to look at his reflection in a mirror to see that, his eyes an eerie colour of gold, his canines sharpening into fangs when he feels a strange rumble of hunger. That's the thing that keeps him from going home. If he goes home hungry, will he hurt Chrissy even if he doesn't want to?

The sun has set, he's pretty sure, or it's nearly there, and he squeezes his knees tighter to his chest for a moment, then stands and begins to pace. He needs Lestat to wake up.

He's been here too long.

Eddie doesn't know how long, if it's been days or as long as a week, he just knows it's been too long. His face is streaked with ash, his hair dirty and tangled, and there's blood on the t-shirt he'd been wearing to work the day he'd ended up here. His blood maybe. Or the blood of those weird little children that had attacked him at some point.

That's how he'd ended up with the knife in his hand. He'd taken it from one of them, stabbed them back, stabbed them over and over, chopping at their grabbing hands. Their blood is on his shirt and his hands and he hasn't slept in way too long, but he's afraid to let himself rest in this place. All he wants is to get back to Darrow, back to his familiar bedroom and his friends and his band and his job.

He's tucked into a small corner in what he thinks is some fucked up version of Petros High. Eventually he'll have to move. He keeps hearing things shifting out there in the dark, skittering on a thousand legs like a bug, but bigger. Too big.

Big enough to hurt, he knows.

It's just that he's terrified. Broken. Something inside him is unravelling, because when he was in the Upside Down, at least he was never alone, and now he's by himself. He's found and lost people, seeing them just ahead before they disappear into the ash. Right now, he thinks it's likely he'll die down here, die again, and no one will ever know what happened to him.

Hawkins can go on thinking he's some kind of devil worshipper, he doesn't care, but he wants Darrow to think better of him. He wants people to know he didn't just leave.

The skittering gets closer and Eddie forces himself to move. He leads with the knife, the blade trembling in his hand, then hurries to the door of the office he's hidden himself inside. Behind him in the dark, the bugs get closer and he throws open the door, then rushes down the hall toward the exit.

Outside, the ash keeps falling. It never lets up.

Eddie inhales too deeply, breathes some in, and starts to cough. It's too loud, he's drawing too much attention to himself and he tries to step back into the school, but something has closed the door behind him and locked him out. Something else screams overhead and Eddie goes still, frozen in terror, as a shape materializes from the sky. It's not a bird. Not a bat, and not one of the awful bats that had followed him to Darrow. It's bigger than that, razor sharp talons on the ends of its feet, and they're coming right for Eddie.

At the last second, he thinks to raise the knife, but he just barely nicks the thing. It screams again, awful and loud, and dives for him, talons ripping at his upraised arm, his shoulder, across his neck. Eddie can feel hot blood coursing down his arm, soaking his t-shirt, and he stumbles back, then falls down the front steps of the shitty Petros High.

He's going to die here. He's going to take his last breath on this ashy sidewalk in another version of hell.

The flying monster shrieks and dives again, talons slashing, one cutting across his chest. He alternates between hot and cold as he stabs with the knife, still trying to defend himself, but the talons just keep coming, keep tearing at him, ripping into skin and muscle, sending more blood cascading down his front.

"No," he whimpers. "No, please."

This is not what Eddie had planned for the day. Not even close.

"Shit," he breathes as he presses back against a brick wall, his eyes squeezed shut tight against the ash falling from the sky, as if he'll be able to wake up if he just tries hard enough. Because this has to be a dream. It has to be. There is no way in hell he turned a corner while walking to work and found himself in the fucking Upside Down.

Darrow is full of bullshit, he's well aware of that, but someone would have told him if this was possible. Someone would have, because they wouldn't want him to end up here completely unaware that it was possible, without a weapon, without a hope in the world of actually surviving.

Eddie doesn't know the last time he's been this scared. It isn't just sweaty armpits and shaking hands, this is bone deep, ice cold dread that paralyzes his muscles and closes his throat and makes it so he can't do anything at all but think about running.

Run, his brain says. Run, run, run, runrunrunrunrunrun...

He opens his eyes and he's still here. Ash still drifts down from the dark, stormy sky. And somewhere out there in the shadows, very large teeth gnash together, something snapping between them, the sound of a brittle bone breaking into pieces.

Something lurches around a corner up ahead, a jarring movement on long legs and Eddie stares, disbelieving, as the fucked up version of someone in a sexy nurse costume staggers forward. Two more follow, their faces covered by something he can't make out from this distance. They seem blind, but then he shifts slightly, his jacket scraping against the wall, and all three turn in his direction. More follow around the corner.

Runrunrunrunrunrunrunrun.

Eddie turns and begins to run.

This is bullshit.

Darrow can be dangerous, Eddie is well aware of that, but most of the danger can be avoided if one is careful. Eddie is careful, most of the time anyway, and maybe one could argue that his friendship with Lestat isn't careful, but he doesn't see it that way. He takes care not to put himself in situations where he might end up dead or even maimed, because he very much likes being alive and having all his parts. He likes his life in Darrow.

It's probably his fault he and Chrissy are stuck in this situation now. The Purge had sort of seemed like a joke. He knows Will and a bunch of others are holed up in a bunker, which had honestly seemed kind of dramatic to him, and while Eddie loves a good bit of drama, he also hadn't wanted to freak Chrissy out.

And it had sounded too insane to be real. A night where all crime is just suddenly legal? That's fucked up.

But people are howling in the halls of their building and Eddie can hear other people screaming amidst the sound of breaking glass and pounding fists on doors. At one point, he's pretty sure he even hears a gunshot and now he's freaking out.

"We should try to get to the bunker," he says to Chrissy, wishing he had some kind of a weapon besides a shitty pocket knife. It isn't going to do much against a gun.

Eddie feels kind of dumb about all this, but the longer he keeps it to himself, the worse it gets. Ever since the end of last semester at Barton, where he had barely scraped by with passing grades, he's been rethinking the whole college thing. At first, it had felt like a bit of a victory, getting into college even after all those teachers at Hawkins High proclaimed him to be a failure. A middle finger in their general direction, because he, Eddie The Freak Munson, had gotten into college.

But then he'd gotten there and while he had liked parts of some classes, he'd also had to write papers and do research and take real tests and exams. Being in theatre apparently didn't automatically exempt him from having to sit at a desk with a pencil and scratch little circles into a piece of paper, as if that was the best way to measure someone's intelligence.

Eddie isn't stupid. He'd never let the teachers back in Hawkins convince him of that, even though they tried. He knows he's smart, but he's also come to the conclusion that he's just not cut out for traditional school.

That's why, in early August, he had gone to campus and withdrawn himself from all his courses for the year.

If Chrissy has wondered why he's only going to work and not school, she hasn't asked. She's good like that, though, she gives him space about things when she senses he needs it, and it's not as if Eddie is having a hard time otherwise. He loves his job, he's having an amazing time making music with Lestat, and all things considered, his life here is pretty cool.

He just worries he might be letting people down who expect more out of him.

And so he has to tell someone before he loses his mind, which is why he's at the apartment Will shares with Joyce, hoping to high hell Chief Hopper isn't around as he knocks on the door.

lestat

ANSWER ME

dude, im at work you need to come visit me here right now

Eddie drums his fingers on the front counter at the record store, staring at his phone, waiting for Lestat to acknowledge his fucking existence. And yeah, okay, it's not like they're the sort of friends who do a lot of texting or any texting, really, but he knows Lestat at least looks at his phone from time to time. Eddie figures if he can get annoying enough, he'll eventually get an answer.

Or Lestat will jump out at him from the shadows when he leaves later, but either way, he'll at least be able to tell him what he's discovered tonight.

seriously

He waits another minute.

i will text you until you answer me or SHOW UP HERE

Thirty seconds this time, then he sends a series of vampire emojis.

He gets interrupted by actual customers, rings three people through, staring at his phone the entire time, waiting for an answer, then jumps right back to it to keep making himself the most annoying person Lestat de Lioncourt has ever met in his however many years he's been alive.

im not joking this is so serious i need to see you right now!!!!!!

It's Chrissy's birthday and, as with Christmas, Eddie is painfully aware he's not really sure how to do all these important things.

Christmas had gone well. It had gone really well, actually, considering where they're at now, so he's also doing his best not to overthink any of it and just go with the flow. If Chrissy hated that, she probably wouldn't want to be with him at all, so he visits her on the actual day, then promises her they're going to do something fun on Friday night.

They're doing an escape room.

Eddie had only heard about them about a week ago and, given his love of games, he'd immediately started researching and found a place in Darrow where there were some rooms meant just for two people. Date night game rooms, as they were advertised on the website, and Eddie had excitedly booked one.

First, though, he's going to her place with a big bouquet of flowers he'd helped put together himself. Soft blooms, white and pink and blue, hydrangeas and lilies and tulips, and Eddie is honestly pretty proud of himself as he knocks on Chrissy's door.

On the morning of December twenty-fourth, Eddie panics.

He'd asked Chrissy if she'd want to hang out, do something for Christmas, and he'd tried to make it sound as casual as possible, because he knows there's no way she could ever like him. Not the way he likes her, which he knows for certain now after their kiss, even though it had been framed as friends rescuing each other. That should be enough, he knows, to just be her friend, and it is. It's enough.

It still makes hanging out with her difficult at times. He'll get over it, but for right now, every time he sees her, he thinks of the kiss up at Kagura and how warm her mouth had felt against his. The scent of her shampoo or perfume or maybe even just soap, he doesn't know what it had been, only that he'd felt like he could drown in it. He thinks of the light touch of her hand on his arm and he knows he can't think all this stuff if they're going to keep being friends.

So they're friends. They're just friends, but Eddie is still panicked, realizing he's invited her to come over to his place on Christmas Eve, only it looks like a twenty-year-old single guy lives here and he can't let her see his place like this. She hadn't judged the trailer, but honestly, she'd had a lot going on at the time and he could blame that on Wayne. This mess is his fault, though, and so Eddie throws himself into cleaning for perhaps the first time in his life.

When that's done, he goes to get groceries. Maybe it's a mistake on Christmas Eve, the stores are crazy busy, but he needs to have something at his place. He doesn't really know how to cook, so he gets the most expensive frozen pizzas, figuring they're probably the best quality, and he gets snacks, and he gets soft drinks and iced tea and on a whim, he grabs a string of white Christmas lights that are marked down to forty percent off, due to it being so late in the season.

Back home, the groceries get put away and Eddie doesn't have a tree, so he strings the lights up over the window behind the couch, then plugs them in to make sure they work. When he turns off the rest of the lights, they make the apartment glow and, for the first time, it actually feels like Christmas.

On the coffee table sits the one thing he's had ready all this time. A neatly wrapped box with a bow on top, Chrissy's name scrawled in his writing on the tag. Inside is her gold chain, the one she had given him, but the pendant has changed. Around his neck, he still wears the gold 86 alongside his pick. In the box is a similar pendant now, but this one is a 23.

This next year is her year. He can feel it.

Eddie meets Steve Harrington's confusingly badass girlfriend by complete accident.

He's kicking around the community college campus, definitely not looking at it as a place he might be able to go eventually, but also absolutely looking at it as just that, when she walks by. Long dark hair with pale violet ends, blunt cut bangs, pierced and tatted -- knuckle tattoos, Eddie notes, which is just so fucking cool -- and wearing all black with a big leather jacket. She's totally metal and he's pretty sure if she wasn't Steve's girlfriend and if there wasn't a burgeoning crush he's completely confused about, he'd be drooling on his own shoes over her.

That she's Steve's girlfriend makes it easy to approach her, though. A lot easier than it would be otherwise, because while she's super hot, she also looks a little scary. On purpose, he's willing to bet. Pretty girls put up with the worst shit.

"Hey," he says, hurrying to keep up with her, but also keeping his distance. Her boots look like they would sincerely hurt if one were to connect with his balls. "Hey, hi, I'm a friend of Steve's."

"Good for you," she answers, barely giving him a glance.

Damn, maybe he'll fall in love anyway.

"I'm Eddie," he offers. Maybe Steve has mentioned him.

She stops at that and turns to face him, eyebrow arched. "Yeah," she says. "I know. You're the reason he got himself bitten by a bunch of creepy demon bats, right? My idiot boyfriend gets himself into enough trouble on his own, he doesn't need help, thanks."

"Right," Eddie says, cringing a little. "Okay, fair point, you're completely on the nose there and I apologize. Sincerely. The demon bats were not my idea of a good time, I promise."

Maeve relaxes a little, still staring at him with a cool gaze, and he wonders how many dudes she's caused to slink away with just that look. He's about ready to do it himself.

"I'm Maeve," she says finally.

"I know," he answers, then risks a grin. "Do you go here?"

"No," she says. "But my boyfriend does."

"Right," Eddie says, then laughs. "Meeting him, that makes sense. When he's out of class? We could hang for a bit..."

By the time Steve finds them at the nearest coffee shop, Eddie has lost count of how many times Maeve has rolled her eyes at him, but he's made her laugh, too. And he's absolutely not into Steve's girlfriend, he's definitely into someone else -- which he also realizes he kind of wants to talk to Steve about -- but he thinks he could be. In another world.

Honestly, these days, Eddie thinks his Uncle Wayne might be a little proud of him.

He's been here awhile now, almost two months, and he's nearly finished with summer school, which will finally get him set with his high school diploma, and he's got a job. A proper one, too, not selling drugs out of a tin lunchbox, but working part time at a record store, with Steve Harrington, of all people. So yeah, he thinks his uncle would probably be sort of proud, even if they were both kind of garbage at ever talking about their feelings.

Wayne was a good man, though, and he'd been good to Eddie since he'd started taking care of him all those years ago. Most of the time, Eddie doesn't mind being a bit of a fuck up, but the times he does mind, it's only because of his uncle.

Maybe Darrow is good for him in that regard. Maybe the Upside Down had been, too. He had learned a lot about himself in those five days, he's learned a bit more in the past two months. It feels kind of good.

But Eddie isn't about to become a completely different person and he's still curious by nature, interested in things that people in Hawkins would have considered weird or even wrong and that's why he's standing outside a store called Leviathan, looking at it with wide, excited eyes.

When he opens the door, he sees a familiar head of white blonde hair and a grin lights up his features.

"Well, holy shit, if it isn't my fireball throwing saviour," he says cheerfully.

For someone who has only just started working at a part time job that barely pays him enough to consider any big purchases, Eddie spends a lot of time window shopping for expensive things.

First was the guitar. She's still there, still waiting for him, sleek and black and perfect, but she's also way too expensive for him right now. Then there was the leather jacket. He'd found a good denim replacement at a thrift shop, which is right in his price range at the moment, but the creaky looking leather jacket on the mannequin in the window of the same store calls to him. The price tag makes him want to cry, but the jacket calls all the same.

Then there are the dice. In game shops across the city are sets of dice Eddie could have only dreamed of back in Hawkins. Dice carved from bone, made of stone, gems, crystals, items suspended inside, painted with gold, painted to look like the centre of the universe, translucent, opaque, pink and glittery, black and angry looking. He had even seen a set with tiny ships suspended inside, complete with sails.

A good set of dice, while still pricy, is reasonable.

He's standing by the game shop he's come to prefer, looking at the sets through the window, and when he senses someone nearby, he asks, "What do you think? Black with gold number or something like those translucent red ones?"

Then he turns and looks up. And up.

"Holy shit, you're tall."

Eddie has to wonder how many people get to Darrow and end up with a date within a month. He likes to think, even if it's not true, that he's just that smooth.

By the time he figured out how to make the call to Jules, a few days had gone by, but at least she seemed to think it was funny that he didn't know how to work the thing. He'd needed Harrington to help him with it in the end, which was humiliating, but also kind of funny in its way. Shit like that, it makes him wonder what the people of Hawkins would think and just how much they'd hate this place, guys like Eddie and Steve talking to each other, Eddie hanging around Chrissy, and Chrissy actually seeming to want him to.

They'd lose their minds.

Stuff like that buoys Eddie's mood and he looks at himself in the mirror of the bathroom, giving his hair a bit of a fluff before he leaves the apartment, locking the door behind him. He doesn't have a ride here, which sucks, but the Home isn't that far, so he walks, then heads right inside to pick up Jules. It doesn't occur to him to use the phone to let her know he's arrived, so someone working at the front desk has to go get her.

Eddie's plan isn't spectacular, but he's taken time. Jules isn't eighteen yet, which rules out one of the clubs, but he's found another place that has an all-ages night and that's where they're headed. Eddie leans against the front desk as he waits, then waves at a little kid staring at him from the doorway of what looks like a rec room.