There’s a table in the school library that’s nestled in the corner, right by a radiator; Steve has claimed it ever since his double block of ‘private study periods’ began.
Not that he’s planning on doing any studying: it’s the last day of school before the winter break, and while his face has healed up from the whole Billy Hargrove Incident, he still finds himself feeling wiped at random—like his body’s having a delayed adrenaline crash ever since he pulled Dustin out of that freaky vine-infested tunnel.
So really, this spot should be ideal for a couple hours of not having to think.
And it would be perfect, if his eyes weren’t instinctively drawn to movement at the front desk.
Because for the past god-knows-how-long, Eddie Munson has been in a back-and-forth with the librarian.
It had started when he ambled up to the desk with a healthy pile of books in his hands, placed them down neatly, all ready to be stamped. Flashed a charming smile.
Steve was too far away to hear the words, but he got the gist that whatever the librarian had said amounted to no, absolutely not, because Eddie scooped the books back up, dumped them on a table a little distance away from Steve’s, then hemmed and hawed before returning to the desk with a more modest pile than before.
He was sent away again with presumably the same refusal, and so the pattern repeated until this very minute: he’s returning with just one book in his hands, his smile less charming now, more desperate.
But… no luck.
Eddie slouches back to the table in defeat. Just stands there, staring down at the books.
And goddamn it, Steve thinks, now he’s invested.
“Hey. Munson,” he says in an undertone. “What’s up?”
He doesn’t miss the weird kind of double take Eddie gives him, but at least Steve knows it’s not because of his face being a mess this time—seriously, drawing looks from students when all he wanted was to get in line for crappy cafeteria pizza had not been fun.
“Nothing,” Eddie says with a shrug, and he flashes another wide smile that makes Steve think bullshit. “Apparently I racked up a mountain of late fees. Who knew?” He sighs, glancing at his wristwatch. “Guess I’ve got enough time to just read the—oh. Um. Hey?”
“These books?” Steve confirms, having already stood up to look at them.
Eddie blinks a few times. “Yeah, these—uh, Harrington, what the fuck do you think you’re—?”
Steve heads over to the front desk with the books. It’s not all that difficult of a decision to make; he remembers Tommy H had his own library late fees in freshman year, but got nothing more than a simpering, “Just make sure it doesn’t happen again, sweetie,” just because his mom knew someone on the school board.
“For checking out, please,” Steve says, not bothering with a smile as he hands over his library card.
The only resistance he gets is a raised eyebrow from the librarian before all the books are stamped.
“What the fuck,” Eddie says, voice flat; he doesn’t take the books when Steve tries to give them to him, so Steve just shrugs and goes back to his seat, sets the books pointedly on the edge of the table.
“Look, man, it’s up to you, but I’m not gonna take them. They’ll just be sitting here.”
Eddie huffs. He goes over to the books, his hand twitching towards them before drawing back, like he’s at war with himself.
“You—you didn’t have to do that,” he gets out as if it physically pains him to do so.
Prickly, Steve thinks.
“It’s no big deal,” he says. “My account’s gathering dust, so someone might as well get the good of it.”
At hearing that, Eddie looks a little less defensive. He chews on his lips for a few seconds, then says, his tone serious, “Harrington, I’ll—I’ll forget. Like, with the holidays… like, I guarantee you, even if I write a million fucking reminders, I’m gonna take these books and forget to bring ‘em back for months.”
“Oh, no,” Steve says dryly, “lemme go alert the press, I just heard a blatant confession to a crime. Dude, just take them, what do I care if your homework takes you months to—”
“It’s not even for school,” Eddie interrupts through gritted teeth, “it’s dumb, it’s just—”
“Jesus Christ. Lemme call the press again, sounds like you’re reading a book for fun.”
Eddie stares at him. Steve raises an eyebrow in challenge—he could do this all day; just the other week, he’d beaten Mike in a brutal staring contest that felt like it went on for hours.
Eddie breaks first. “Fine,” he says with another huff, but he’s less agitated when handling the books—lingers thoughtfully on their titles, puts a couple in his backpack. The rest he opens at seemingly random parts, but it looks like he knows what he’s searching for.
And then it seems as if he’s just going to pick up the remaining books and walk away—Steve expects him to, honestly—but he ends up staying where he is, gives Steve a look of consideration, almost like he’s a book worth reading, too.
“You stole my table, you know?” Eddie says.
“Uh, no,” Steve says automatically, then adds with more confidence, “I was definitely here first.”
Eddie snorts. “Nope. My senior year, uh,” he shrugs self-deprecatingly, “the first time around. That was my spot. Was pretty possessive over it too, think I signed the table, like, underneath.”
Steve’s eyebrows rise in interest; he runs a finger along the underside of the table and soon feels it: an E.M scratched into the wood.
“Huh,” he says. “Guess you’re right.”
A pause.
And then Steve surprises himself.
“There’s, um, room here, if you want? I’m not gonna use the whole table.”
Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up. There’s a long enough silence in which Steve considers just telling him to forget about it, but then—
Eddie sits down opposite him.
It’s not as awkward as Steve was expecting: Eddie seems focused enough on his books, on bringing out a battered looking journal with sheets of paper that look like they’re hanging on by a thread. He roots around his backpack some more, retrieves a ballpoint pen with a quiet, triumphant, “Aha!”
He either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that Steve isn’t even making an attempt to look busy; his own side of the table is bare.
“Didn’t know you were left-handed,” Steve says after a moment.
Eddie looks up from his note-taking. He smirks, waggles his eyebrows briefly. “Fitting, huh? Spooky.”
“Oh, I’m terrified.”
And Eddie actually laughs—hushed, but it still counts as one.
He soon returns to being absorbed in whatever it is he’s writing, which means Steve has less of a distraction when the familiar wave of tiredness washes over him.
He tries to sit up as well as he can, conscious of the fact that he’s not alone, but the radiator is the perfect temperature, and the steady scratch of Eddie’s pen has a soporific effect. He’s distantly aware of the fact that his head is nodding down with dwindling energy to try and stop it—hears Eddie’s voice, as if from very far away, rising in question.
Steve sniffs sharply, jerks his head back up and blinks hard. “What?”
“Oh, sorry,” Eddie says quickly, and he sounds genuine. “Didn’t know you were sleeping.”
“I wasn’t,” Steve says.
“Uh, okay,” Eddie says. His lips twitch. “That was an awfully long blink then, Harrington.”
“Shut up,” Steve retorts mildly. He stretches slightly, hides a yawn behind his hand. “Did you actually want something or—”
“Nah, wasn’t important.”
Steve frowns, unconvinced. The side of Eddie’s left hand is covered in ink, and Steve can see where his pen has started to die on him as his writing gets more faded across the page.
Steve puts a hand in his pocket, brings out another ballpoint and throws it at Eddie.
The pen bounces along the table, and Eddie manages to catch it one-handed.
“Good catch,” Steve says.
“Thanks,” Eddie says. He sounds almost uncertain.
Silence falls. It only takes another minute or two of hearing Eddie writing away for Steve’s determination to stay awake to waver again. He slumps forward with a mumbled, “M’just gonna…” and lays his head down.
Eddie stops writing.
“Hey, man, are you… okay? Like, if you feel… if you wanna go home I could take you to the nurse? Or—”
“I’m fine,” Steve says into his folded arms. “S’just… the aftermath of… stuff. No big deal.”
“Oh?” Eddie says tentatively.
Steve lifts his head up a bit, squints dubiously. “C’mon, Munson. You must’ve heard the rumour mill.”
Billy Hargrove had spread it all over the school, how he had ‘taught King Steve a lesson.’ In all honesty, Steve hadn’t cared all that much about how he himself came across in whatever story Billy created, was just relieved that at least Max and Lucas’s names had been kept out of it.
“I don’t put much stock in rumours,” Eddie says carefully. “Folks can say… all kindsa things.”
Steve nods faintly. Fair point.
“Okay, but you can take a little bit of stock in this one. Like, a smidge.”
Steve demonstrates with his thumb and forefinger.
It’s only when Eddie doesn’t smile in response that Steve realises he’d been hoping to make him laugh again. Maybe.
“Huh. Well. For what it’s worth… I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Steve says tiredly.
“Harrington. I’m not stupid, y’know? That was more than a… a stupid fight after school or something. Like, I can remember what your face looked like.”
“Gee, thanks.” Steve sets his head back down, closing his eyes.
“I didn’t—I just meant whatever it was, it… it went too far. Way too fucking far.”
Steve yawns again, doesn’t bother hiding it. “Yeah. Something like that.”
He’s resigning himself to the thought of waking up with a stiff neck before Eddie sighs and says, “If you’re gonna sleep, Harrington, don’t be an amateur about it.”
Steve looks up in time to see Eddie reaching underneath the table with one leg, hooking his ankle round the empty chair next to Steve and shoving it closer to him.
“Three or four’s probably the best amount for stretching out on,” Eddie says. “Uh, speaking from experience.”
Steve smiles. “Noted.”
He manoeuvres himself until he’s lying much more comfortably across the seats, using his backpack and coat as a pillow.
Frustratingly but predictably, despite his fatigue, sleep doesn’t come easily, so Steve looks underneath the table and asks, “What’re you writing about, Munson?”
He can see Eddie’s boots, how one foot is tapping away, as if in time to a song no-one else can hear.
“Um, I was just… getting inspiration for… it’s kinda like. Like a story, but—”
“Don’t hurt yourself, dude,” Steve says, “I know what a campaign is.”
The foot tapping stops.
“Aren’t you just full of surprises?” Eddie says.
He sounds a bit far away again, though Steve knows that’s just in his head; he can feel his eyelids drooping.
“You’ve got…” He sighs, voice trailing off as he finishes, “No idea…”
Eddie launches into a speech; Steve can follow it well enough for a little while, Eddie rambling about the kind of decisions he thinks his players will make in the game, but eventually the words become a blur, and he drifts off just like that, into an unexpectedly peaceful sleep.
He wakes with the lightest of touches to his shoulder, a soft, “Steve?” that nevertheless makes him jolt to full alertness in a blink, reaching for a bat he doesn’t currently have.
“Jesus Christ!” Eddie yelps, almost falling back against the table. “What the hell kinda military training d’you have, Harrington?”
“Just have good reflexes,” Steve says, hopes it sounds casual enough as he breathes through his suddenly racing heart.
“Yeah, that’s one way to fucking put it. Anyway, uh. Sorry, didn’t mean to, like, startle you, but you slept right through the bell, man.”
Steve sits up; the library is empty apart from them, the librarian shooting them a not so subtle glare. And he realises that while everyone else was rushing out of school, eager for the holidays to start, Eddie must’ve stayed. Waited for him.
Steve runs a hand through his hair, quickly puts on his coat.
“God, sorry, you didn’t have to—if I’ve made you late, I’m—”
“Nah, don’t sweat it.” Eddie puts his backpack strap across one shoulder. “I wasn’t in a hurry. Um, are you… like, good to drive? I can give you a ride, if—”
“I’m okay,” Steve says, struck by the consideration behind the offer. He means what he says though; he feels pleasantly refreshed. He smiles self-effacingly. “Think I need one class where I can just sleep, and then I’ll get through the day.”
Eddie gives a playful scoff. “That’s already a thing, Harrington, it’s called first period.”
They walk out of the library together, and Steve finds that it’s kind of… nice, honestly. He keeps waiting for some awkwardness to creep in again, but it never does.
“Big holiday plans?” Eddie asks, smalltalk that should be stilted, but it just sounds like he’s sincerely interested in the answer.
Steve shrugs. “Not really. Oh, I’ve got—you know the Snow Ball thing tomorrow, at the middle school? There’s this kid I know, I’m gonna give him a ride there, but—”
Steve breaks off with a fond shake of the head, knowing that there’s this kid I know doesn’t really give it justice, doesn’t say the full truth: that Dustin Henderson has somehow wormed his way into Steve’s goddamn heart forever.
“His mom’s invited me over for dinner tonight,” he continues. “Think he wants, like, a dress-rehearsal of his outfit or something, which is probably the closest he’ll ever come to admitting he’s nervous. I kinda feel for him, honestly. God, do you remember being thirteen? Everything seemed to matter so much, and most of it was just… stupid shit.”
They’ve reached the parking lot, and Eddie gives Steve a sideways look with a bemused smile.
“Woah, Harrington, we’re still in school, remember? Don’t think we’re meant to sound so world-weary yet.”
Steve chuckles. “Yeah.” He gestures at Eddie’s get-up. “Bet you’ve never once cared about the stupid shit, though.”
What people think.
Eddie’s smile turns more knowing. “Shockingly, Harrington,” he says, “I didn’t come out the womb like this.”
They both hesitate; they’re at Steve’s car now, Eddie’s van parked in a space that’s further away. There’s no reason, really, for the conversation to continue any longer.
But Eddie still lingers.
“Uh, enjoy your dinner, I guess. If the… dress-rehearsal goes shit, just tell the kid it’s good luck for the real night.”
Steve laughs. “He’s in the Drama Club, so that might work, actually. Thanks, Munson.” He opens the car door as Eddie nods, starts to head off to his van. Seized by a sudden impulse, Steve calls, “Happy holidays!”
“Yeah, you too.” Eddie turns, tapping at his temple exaggeratedly. “Won’t forget about the books, I promise.”
Steve rolls his eyes. “You better not,” he says, tongue-in-cheek.
He starts the car and heads for Dustin’s house, honks the horn when he drives past Eddie’s van, catches Eddie waving.
Steve thinks he quite likes the idea (regardless of whether it’ll put his library account in jeopardy), of the books finding a permanent home at Eddie’s place. Briefly imagines Eddie writing with an ink-stained hand, curled up safely in a world of his own—where the only monsters are the ones that live in between the pages.
