Chapter Text
Sometime in 1987.
When he looks back on it, he supposes it started out as most things do.
A miniscule and wholly unimportant moment. A moment that, when looked back upon, may have been the infamous insect in the computer weather model that coined a whole term after its devastating effects. A quantum event (quiet and unassuming) yet spurring a branching timeline in which their lives could be entirely different. It was trivial. It was entirely world-changing. It was his very own butterfly effect.
And he thought about that shit a lot.
Many-worlds theory, alternate realities, hell, even Schrödinger's cat…
If anyone had asked, they would have thought he was fucking with them. He had always been the fantasy nerd, but shit like that? Thinking about how one little action could literally create an entirely different realm of existence? Simply making one choice over the other and then producing a domino-effect of differences? That was the kind of science Eddie Munson didn’t mind reading about.
He won’t lie, though (he’s got a thing about that): it really makes for great story-telling. Sure, he’d always been a fan of classical high-fantasy, but nobody could deny that the thought of all that shit is enough to make the average person’s head swim, and, damn, it would certainly make a great mind-fuck in some D&D campaign in the future.
He’s not entirely sure how exactly he got stuck thinking back on his own butterfly effect moment–the spot in his own timeline at which things may have begun to branch completely out of control into some bizarre, alternate universe. One where he is somehow co-parent to a bunch of high school kids, in debt to Nancy Wheeler for helping him through his final exams, practically joined at the hip to one Robin Buckley with whom he has found a surprising amount in common, and… somehow best friends with Steve fucking Harrington.
Over a year later, Eddie decides what his moment was.
Sure, in the grand scheme of things going to hell in the proverbial handbasket, his quantum event was probably the moment a sweet cheerleader approached him in the hallway. Hell, it may have been the day he pulled three nervous freshmen to the side to bring them into his flock, completely unaware they had ties to an alternate dimension that would someday pull him into the bullshit kicking and screaming.
In the not-so-grand scheme of things, however, he knows his moment was outside Rick’s boathouse, in a small moment of kindness he didn’t appreciate for what it was at the time.
When he lets himself think about it, he knows there’s certainly a branching timeline where he got Vecna’d himself, one where maybe no one could save him due to having nothing but shitty pop music to play (while the psychotic, child-experiment-gone-wrong absorbed his soul or whatever to create a portal to hell).
There’s probably a timeline where they didn’t figure out Henry Creel’s whole deal in time at all , and the portals ripped open with seemingly no warning or explanation (just like in Nancy’s vision). A timeline where their super-powered little friend with her shaved head didn’t piggy-back in a pizza freezer in time (Jesus, what a line). A timeline where every risky thing they did ended up in doom and disaster, and Vecna got to see his hell on earth made reality. Where the entire town of Hawkins got sucked into the Upside Down and the evil of that place seeped out into the rest of the world like a slow-growing weed.
There’s even got to be a timeline where Eddie died, and things just… moved on.
Mind-fuck it certainly is, sitting here and thinking back on it all.
Regardless… in the fucked up beyond all recognition, too crazy to be true, and certainly insane enough to warrant a book’s worth of NDAs version of his life… Eddie knows the best parts of it came from that little moment. The butterfly effect that led to many more, to a boatload of awkwardness and laughter and heartbreak and stupidity (mostly on his part, if he’s totally honest).
And ultimately… to where he finds himself now:
Over a year later, smoking a cigarette outside a bus station in fuck-all, Indiana, realizing he never should have trusted the man he used to call his best friend.
Eddie lets out a sigh that’s mostly smoke, his shoulders slumping.
“God-fucking-dammit, Steve.”
…---…
March 22nd, 1986. The beginning of the end of the world.
It starts out (that wholly unimportant moment) with a nearly empty pack of Marlboro Reds.
In the midst of the end of the world, after having given some real life monster from hell the moniker of the villain from their most recent D&D campaign, Eddie steps outside the boathouse to have a smoke. Steve had made sure the coast was clear, but Eddie still finds himself crouching down, the wall to his back and his head dropping between his knees for a moment as he tries to suppress the rising panic building in his chest–and the combination of cereal and chocolate milk threatening to make another appearance.
If the former king of Hawkins High has anything to say about it, he keeps it to himself, but Eddie isn’t really concerned with what he thinks right now anyway.
After a long moment, Eddie lifts his head and pulls his fingers from the tangles in his hair, in time to see Steve frowning down at the pack in his hand before he holds it down towards Eddie.
“You take it.”
Ah . There’s only one left.
Maybe it’s the way Eddie doesn’t move right away. Maybe it’s the way his brow automatically lifts in response.
“Not my first rodeo, so… go ahead. Figure you need it more than me.”
Considering all the information they had just dropped on him in the past couple days, he really shouldn’t be standing there dumbfounded that Steve Harrington is being… nice to him?
Eddie forces himself to stand after he reaches up to take the last cigarette, lighting it with the Zippo from his pocket. He closes his eyes as he hopes the taste of tobacco will stave off the next wave of anxiety that’s due any minute now. Like maybe a bit of nicotine will stall the impending tsunami of complete and total mental breakdown. He hopes it can wait until his red-headed neighbor is done arguing semantics with one of his little lost sheep (that only a few days ago was on his last fucking nerve over a stupid game)…
Eddie passes back the cigarette by muscle memory, as if it’s a joint. He briefly considers it’s not normal to share a cigarette with another dude–but, by similar logic, it’s the only damn one they have, so he may as well not be an ass and puff-puff-pass , so to speak. If Steve gives him a raised brow of his own, he doesn’t notice.
Eddie leans back against the wall of the boathouse, crossing his arms and tapping his long fingers on the leather sleeves of his jacket. If he can focus on the lap of the small ripples in the lake, stare blankly through the trees ahead, ignore the muffled voices on the other side of the wall behind him… then maybe he can save the continued freak-out for later. It shouldn’t be that hard.
He just has to not think about the fact he isn’t crazy (which, at this point, would have been almost preferable). Oh, and the fact that some other-worldly being is able to reach into their own. And the fact that Chrissy had literally died in front of him and he hadn’t been able to help her. And the fact that the entire town thought he did it.
God, they are so fucked.
How is everyone else so calm? How are they not–
Steve bumps his arm, passing back the cigarette with an unreadable expression. He’s calm, though. He’s too damn calm.
“Thanks, man,” Eddie mumbles, although he kind of wants to yell at him.
His lungs burn a bit as he holds the smoke too long, his brain again forgetting it’s not weed and reminding him that he would never be able to get high enough to block out the absurdity of everything unfolding around him anyway. Wouldn’t be able to even if he had managed to find anything of use in Rick’s house (which he didn’t). He checked. Nothing but an old, dirty bong. Damn cops.
Steve doesn’t say anything, and Eddie’s grateful. He’s not sure what the hell they would even say to each other, anyway. The fact that Dustin is a common friend between the two of them is crazy enough, but they wouldn’t even be standing next to each other if it weren’t for the fact that over the last couple days his entire world had been turned upside down. By a place they named the Upside Down. Literal monsters and shit. Jesus.
They stand in silence and smoke until it’s gone too quickly (both the cigarette and the quiet).
Everyone is suddenly leaving. Dustin smiles hopefully with the promise of a plan, Robin grimaces with pity and the promise of supplies, and Max nods with a look of determination and no promises at all, which actually comforts him the most out of the three. Steve’s the last to go. He pushes off from the boathouse with a sigh, patting a hand on Eddie’s shoulder that makes his frame sway a bit since he wasn’t expecting it.
It’s too friendly a gesture from someone whose friends used to make Eddie’s life a living hell. He would have expected a sneer, a rude comment, or a cruel laugh. Instead, he sees a sympathetic smile flash across Steve’s face, and it’s such a bizarre sight that it really makes him look like an entirely different person. One that’s friends with Dustin, apparently, Eddie supposes.
“Welcome to the shit-show.” After a few feet, Steve turns around to walk backwards, and he gestures with one hand as the other runs through his hair. “Just, you know, lay low or whatever.”
“Uh, yeah–” Eddie’s voice cracks, and he coughs into a fist wound up so tight that his rings pinch together uncomfortably. He manages to nod. “Yeah, not like I got anything better to do.”
Steve nods back, face once again void of any forced hope or pity or determination like the others. Just sort of… resolved, he supposes, like—well, like it for sure wasn’t his first rodeo. Eddie watches them leave up the hill to the road, wondering to himself how he ended up in this situation in the first place. He realizes that the more his thoughts go down that path, he may as well hide himself away in the boathouse again to have his panic attack hidden away in privacy, so he ducks inside.
The rest of March happens in a blur.
Eddie only remembers it in bits and pieces.
He’s not sure he wants to.