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eddie munson ([personal profile] mordors) wrote in [personal profile] hairington 2022-07-13 07:55 pm (UTC)

[ there’s an odd little moment where things quiet. where the night around them is silent, when all eddie can hear is the sound of their breathing and for a moment somehow that’s more than enough and the air feels cool on his flushed skin and it strikes him, how this cool isn’t the same coldness of the upside down. how the ground doesn’t inspire vertigo with each step. even if it’s a little difficult to tell right now. and how the air feels cold and crisp and alive, instead of the stagnant ash and stale petrichor of the upside down.

steve seems to operate on a beat much faster, much quicker than eddie is able to be on, because he barely even comprehends the fluid twist harrington makes before eddie’s arm is thrown around a shoulder and a hand is wound around his ribcage. there’s an exhaled oof as meanwhile, his brain plays catchup, some stray thought of well, hewas co-captain of the swim team as explanation and where the hell did that come from?

but in the end, he’s silently grateful for this, for how steve moves and leaves no room for argument, because he isn’t sure he’d be walking to the car. he might have been crawling, were he on his own. maybe he’d have crawled into a bush and slept for five days, even if the thought of sleep inspires a weird sort of inexplicable nausea.

grateful for harrington’s incessant need to keep moving and doing and while wheeler might have been the strategist of the group, the master planner with just enough crazy tenacity to make eddie buy into whatever she said, steve was — well, shit. steve was the one running around and making sure everyone was okay, wasn’t he? who dived in first, who thanked eddie for saving his ass when he did it all himself, who ran around the kids like a border collie trying to keep them all in line. who came to get him. who told eddie not to be the hero and in all honesty, munson thought that mantle was solidly and firmly sewn upon steve’s capable shoulders anyway. it still was, and would remain there.

eddie drops into the passengers seat with very little ceremony and more like a bag of bones. he is about to say something — when a pile of items is dumped onto his lap and his grunt of surprise is somewhat indignant and the car door is slamming shut before eddie can rattle off a retort.

within the span of the steps it takes harrington to slide into the drivers seat, eddie turns his gaze down to actually look at the items on his lap. towel, water, snacks. huh. that was…kind of endearing actually. however, with the manic energy of being fucking alive, being out of a hellscape and the realities of being back in a town where he is wanted for murders not yet having caught up, the look he gives steve when he slides into the driver’s seat is deadpan, allowing his old self to seep back in.
] Harrington, stop, you spoil me.

[ — and then steve takes off with a rumble of the engine and while eddie is notoriously insane in his driving, the lurch knocks him back into his seat, and his hand blindly feeling for the door handle to grip onto. ] Yep-okay —!

[ but it isn’t long until he leans his head back, watching the silhouettes of dark trees race by. he doesn’t even care where they’re going. doesn’t ask, or doesn’t think to because finally, finally, after all the senses have been fired up from tension, from the fear and the stress and the pain, it feels downright euphoric to just be sitting. his hands fold over the hem of his shirt, curl tentatively over his side. the fabric is torn up and gray and mottled with blood stains. there’s a grimace across his face, before one hand goes to his neck. it sports similar bruising to what steve had been walking around with days before, and eddie’s eyes, subconsciously, fall to look at steve’s neck in turn.


quietly:
] Hey, ah, Harrington?

Thanks. For coming to get me. [ he shakes his head, and his smile is wobbly, much like the single laugh spilling from a raspy throat. ] Would have been real embarrassing to, you know, die twice.

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