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Chapter Text

Eddie pulls over the truck on the side of the road some ways out of the National Park. His hands are shaking on the wheel, and it takes him a moment to steady them. His dad - definitely gone. So many bodies. A bear - on fucking cocaine??

He snaps back to the present to the feel of the dog - Rosette (??), something like that - licking him on the back of his hand. He glares at the dog, but she doesn’t stop, instead tilting her head at him inquisitively. He sighs, then looks across to Daveed. 

Gone is the faint grey tinge to his skin - something that had looked a bit out of George Romero’s finest - after he’d sucked down half a bottle of water one of them had abandoned in the dash on the way up to the forest. He’s sleeping now, deeply, seemingly unconcerned by the loss of his fingers.

And the near loss of both of their lives.

Eddie shakes his head, willing his dad out of his thoughts, and drives all the way home. 

He clutches his son in his arms and presses, “I love you,” into his hair. Somewhere far away, he can feel his dad telling him to stop being such a pansy, to keep all that emotion inside, but he’s alive, his son is alive, Daveed is alive, and he’s not stuck in a fucking forest with a rabid bear anymore.

Sometimes his dad needs to shut up. 

Of course, then the dog eats Daveed’s fingers, and Daveed sighs and says, “Well, they weren’t going to reattach them anyway,” and claps a hand on Eddie’s back, leading them all into the house. He collapses down onto one of the couches, Eddie onto the other, and Gabe settles down onto the beanbag between them, and goes back to watching Scooby’s Mystery Funhouse like Eddie’s not felt his whole life rewrite itself in the last twenty-four hours. 

There’s things he should be doing, Eddie thinks. Calls he should be making. But the sound of the cartoon is calming, familiar - except when he was a kid it was The Flintstones and The Jetsons, not an animated dog with a weird voice - and he feels his eyelids drooping, his world falling away into sleep. 

“Dad.” The hushed voice of Gabe wakes him from his fitful doze sometime later. He swallows, licks his lips. His mouth tastes claggy. 

Gabe is standing over him. 

“What’s going on?” Eddie asks, voice rough. He thinks it’s about dusk. 

“There’s cops…” Gabe says, and he almost sounds disappointed. “At the front door.” 

Eugh. His head is pounding. He sits up, looks around, spots Daveed on the other couch. For a moment, he thinks he isn’t breathing, and something tightens a vice grip around his heart, but then Daveed exhales, shifting slightly in his sleep, and the pressure in his chest releases. He sighs. “I’ll deal with it.”

He doesn’t even know how they found him, but he guesses that the lady cop with the kind eyes had something to do with it. They take all three of them down to the station, where the Lieutenant takes one look at the bags heavy under Eddie’s eyes, and Daveed’s missing fingers, and sends for an ambulance and several cups of coffee.

He takes Eddie’s statement in the hospital’s waiting room. Gabe’s flipping through a woman’s magazine, looking curiously at all the bright pictures, and Eddie’s on the verge of a migraine.

Why did he let Daveed talk him into coming back? 

He could be in a bar somewhere crying over a plate of plain pasta but instead he’s got to deal with being an adult and having the most fucking insane story in the world. His dad’s dead, his best friend’s in surgery, and now he’s got a kid again.

What the fuck.  

At least they’re not trying to pin it all on him. Something about the - insane amount of corpses - having bite and claw marks might have something to do with that. He takes a breath, tries not to cry, and starts to recount his story.

“Dad.” Gabe asks, from over in the corner, “What does lusty mean?”

Oh for fuck’s sake.

He’s at Daveed’s bedside when he comes out of surgery, a thick bandage wrapped around his hand with his remaining fingers poking out, and Eddie feels nauseous about the whole thing all over again. 

Gabe’s been taken home by a neighbour - and what’s worse, Eddie can’t even remember the neighbour’s name, just that she smiled nice and Gabe was happy to see her, cause it’s some unholy hour of the night. The cops had asked if he’d needed anything more before they left, and aside from a drink (bad idea) and something to remove his memory of the last 24 hours (even worse idea), he’d not been able to think of anything. 

The Lieutenant, who had had a thick moustache and an even thicker drawl, had pressed some Tylenol into his hand and said, “We’ll come by if we need anything else,” in a way that suggested that they definitely wouldn’t but he felt sorry for them all the same.

What an absolute dry fuck of the last couple of days. 

Eddie reaches out, squeezes Daveed’s uninjured hand, feeling something quiet and a little strange bubble up within him - a tenderness, perhaps. Then, he looks back up to Daveed’s face and realises he’s awake. He’s looking at him.

Eddie’s brought back to another time, years ago, when they’d shared a similar moment. It had been long before Johanna, and something does heave in his chest when he thinks of her - back when he’d been drifting about, doing jobs for his dad, where nothing mattered and there were no consequences. 

It’d been dark in the alley behind the bar and he didn’t know the other man’s name, but his cologne was doing something to his head and so was his hand on his dick - it had felt something akin to Heaven.

Which was when Daveed had come round into the alley, clearly looking for him - the town was big but it weren’t that big - and they’d locked eyes over the other dude’s shoulder. Eddie had frozen, suddenly terrified, but Daveed had said nothing, just backed away, something small and a little complicated crossing his face.

He hadn’t said anything since.

This time, it’s Eddie who breaks first. He looks away. “Thought it might have been it for you this time, bud.” 

“Not me, not me.” Daveed says, sleepily. His voice is very raspy. He raises his wounded hand up to his face and blinks at it. “Do you think I’m supposed to still feel the ones that got bit off? Cause I do.”

“Probably not.”

Chapter Text

So Daveed gets out of hospital and they have a yard sale, selling off all of Eddie’s dad’s old junk. Antique wood cabinets with white powder pressed into the corners, a liquor cabinet with whiskey older than Eddie, one of the beds that stinks of his old man. There’s a handful of bedrooms in the house, and by the time they’ve got rid of all the junk the place actually seems like it’s fit for humans again.

Eddie doesn’t cry. 

He thinks he’s all cried out. The thought of his dad just makes him feel… tired, maybe. Heavy. Like he’s a ship’s anchor, tossed out to sea. 

Gabe helps, though. And Daveed. And the dog, surprisingly enough. She’s a pain in the ass to brush, but it’s surprisingly meditative. When the nightmares of that fucking bear have him up late at night, pulling a comb through the dog’s wispy hair sometimes makes his heart beat a little slower. 

He misses his dad, maybe, but not as much as he misses Johanna.

Johanna was beautiful, fiery, and really into women’s lib. She’d slumped down opposite him while he was waiting outside the town’s main phone booth, waved a hand in his direction and said, “You Syd White’s kid?”

“Yeah?” He replied, not really sure where she was going.

“I fucking hate that guy.” She had replied, and from then, they’d gotten on like a house on fire. She had a laugh that could be heard from the next house over, a love for bad horror movies, and had taught him the meaning of the word ‘bisexual’. 

She had been everything, and it all had been gone too soon. 

He knows that wherever she’s ended up, she’s pissed with him leaving Gabe with his dad, and he swears to do better. 

At least that’s what he tries to think, but his nightmares have other ideas. 

It’s 2am, he’s sitting up against the wall in the living room lit only by the light from the streetlight outside, and he’s awake. Painfully, upsettingly awake. Cocaine bear + parental trauma + general bad vibes does that to a guy. The sweat congealing on the back of his neck ain’t that much fun either. 

Rosette’s nails clicking on the kitchen floor shock him out of his daze, and so does the feel of Daveed dropping down the wall to sit next to him. 

“Hey.” He says, barely higher than a whisper.

Daveed gives him what seems like a second of consoling silence before he says, “Nope. No way. My back’s not up for this, man. If you’re gonna be all sad, come sit on the couch.” 

Well, under the sweat and unease running across his skin, he thinks Daveed is right. He settles on the couch next to Daveed, Rosette jumps up between them, snuffling slightly, and maybe he feels a little warmed by it all. “No sleep for you either?” 

“I keep on dreaming of being eaten by that fuckin’ bear.” 

“No shit.” 

“Dude, you asked.” Daveed shoots him a withering look that only seems to matter a little. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know.” He doesn’t, really. He wants Daveed to acknowledge it, maybe. To appear panicked. To give him something other than that look. “How does everything seem to run off you like water?”

“It… doesn’t?”

“You’ve lost fingers and you’re still fine with that.”

Daveed shrugs. He takes a moment before replying. “I’m not fine with that. It’s scary as hell, Eddie. Just… someone’s gotta keep it together, cause if we both lose our shit then who does Gabe have?” 

The fact that he cares is… something. But then again, Daveed has always cared. “I’m not… losing my shit.”

Daveed shrugs again. “Alright. You’re still going through it, though.”

“Yeah but aren’t we all?” He sits back, pressing his head back against the couch. The enormity of the moment seems to hit him all at once, a series of feelings he’s been pushing back and pushing back for days rushing over him in a wave. “Oh my God, what am I gonna do?” 

“With what?”

“I’ve gotta deal with this place and find a job and Gabe’s gotta go back to school after Christmas and I don’t know how to be a fucking dad, man. I have no idea how to be a dad. What the fuck. What the fuck?” Eddie presses his head into his hands with a pained whimper, something dull and a bit achy echoing down in his heart. “I’ve never been good at this stuff.”

“True.” 

“What?” Eddie’s definitely not crying again. He looks up at Daveed, through his fingers.

Daveed’s just sort of looking at him. It’s not pitiful, but it is steady. “Eddie, you’re a shit dad. You’ve been a shit dad. But now you don’t have to be. Use this for something. I don’t know.”

Daveed’s hand thumps down, wide and heavy across his back. It’s probably supposed to be comforting. It would be more so if Eddie could feel anything more than just ‘Oh my GOD, I’ve fucked my life up’ness. The wrongness of the whole moment makes him chuckle wetly, and he breathes, through salted tears, “Coulda swore you didn’t use to be this wise.”

“Someone’s gotta be.” Daveed gives him one final conciliatory pat on the back and stands up. “Go to bed.”

And so, Eddie does.

That’s the thing, really. He’s never truly been able to say no to Daveed. 

What’s fucked up, though, is that the next morning, there’s an awful banging on the front door. When Eddie stumbles out to open it, there’s a skinny teenager with an ugly backpack standing on the stoop. A recognisable skinny teenager. 

“What the fuck.” Eddie says, and doesn’t have much more in him than to stare as Stache grins.

He, worryingly, doesn’t look surprised at all .  

Chapter Text

“What the fuck.” Eddie repeats, cause it bears repeating. Ha. “How the hell did you, of all people, survive?” 

Stache shrugs. His smile drops, and so does the bag. “Lots happened. On the road. My buds died?” His voice cracks at the end. “Can I come in?”

Well, no, ideally Eddie wouldn’t let a random teenager with strangely good advice and a duffel full of cocaine just come in but… something something Cocaine Bear Survival Club something. “Yeah.”

“No,” is the first thing Daveed says when he spots Stache lying on the couch. The grocery bags he’s got don’t quite crash to the floor, but it’s a near thing. “No. What the hell, man. He tried to kill me.” 

“Oh, so am I supposed to leave a child out on our stoop?” Eddie asks, indignantly. 

“I’m nineteen.” Stache says.

“A child. ” Eddie says. He maybe even points a bit. “That’s fucked up.”

“Fine. Whatever.” Daveed’s eyes narrow. “Does that duffel have cocaine in it?”

The long and the short of it is that Stache had tried to shill the cocaine in New York, had a bad time cause he’s a useless teenager, and decided to return it to the source. “The source” being Eddie’s house, ‘cause somewhere along the long walk to the gazebo in that horrible, horrible forest, he’d let spill both his last name and his address in a fit of teary pique. 

So now, the cocaine duffel sits on Eddie’s dad’s coffee table - the one with all the bumpy corners and unvarnished wood. It sort of feels like it’s staring at him. 

“I could get it back onto the street?” Daveed says, sort of hesitantly. He eyes the duffel with much the same wariness. “Some of the old guys might take it.”

See, the thing about the little horror show in the forest was that Eddie’s not all that keen about getting back into the cocaine biz. Sort of completely against it, in fact. But they need money - maybe not now, but sometime in the future, and cocaine this good could very easily get them some. He knows that much. “Do you think the Colombians would trace it back to us?

Daveed shrugs. “Maybe?”

Never a good sign. He knees Stache, who’s dozing on the couch still and not really participating. “You have any thoughts, kid?”

“Not a kid.” Stache murmurs, after blinking the sleep out of his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“We could turn it in to the cops.” Eddie says, instead. “Get it out of our hands. They might even give us a reward.”

Daveed snorts. “No way. They’ll lock us up and there’s no way your skinny ass would survive in jail.”

“Hey.” Eddie rejects that. He’s not that skinny. “I’m not skinny. I’m- built.”

“Built like a pencil.”

“ Hey!”

“You could get a lawyer.” Gabe says. “They fix things like that, Dad.” 

In all the excitement, Eddie had sort of forgotten that he’s even in the room. Which, in hindsight, sounds bad, but Gabe’s not really a troublemaker, and is actually pretty competent for a kid his age. How he got that competency is another thing that Eddie definitely still isn’t having nightmares about, but regardless, “How do you know so much about lawyers, Gabe?”

“When granddad left me here by myself there was a Magnum, PI marathon. I watched aaallll of it.” 

Jesus Christ. Eddie’s so going to hell.  

The lawyer that they find is a friend of Daveed’s friend. She’s wiry, dressed in pinstripes, and from the tone of her Bronx accent, clearly no-one to fuck with. 

“The way I figure.” Susie drawls, once they’ve explained it all. “You have three options.” 

“That’s a lot of options.” Stache says. It’s been two days and he’s still on the couch. Maybe he’s grown into it.

“One.” She holds up a finger. Her nail polish is bright red and a little chipped. Dark, deep red, like the blood now dried onto Daveed’s jacket. “You take it to the cops. They might give you the benefit of the doubt, ‘cause of the whole “surviving a bear massacre” thing, but they might not, cause you’re literally drug dealers.”

“Former drug dealers.” Daveed says. “We gave it up.”

“And I wasn’t, really.” Eddie adds.

The lawyer shoots him a withering look. “Splitting hairs. They’ll see it all the same way. Syd White’s son? They’ll probably chuck the book at you, and none of y’all would do very well in prison.” 

Eddie’s already queasy. “And options two and three?”

 “Two, you wipe your fingerprints off the bag and ditch it somewhere. Maybe the woods?”

Eugh. Maybe not. Not after the bear. “And the third?”

“Give the cocaine back to the Colombians and beg for your life?” 

What the fuck. Eddie shoots a glance at Daveed. “You sure she-” No, wait. He’s better than this. He turns back to the lawyer. “You sure you’re a real lawyer?”

Her withering glare deepens. “I’ve been fixing people’s fuckups since before you were in diapers.” Well, that’s definitely not true cause she’s only a little older than him. “I gave you my professional opinion. You gonna take it?”

Well, fuck. 

They decide on the Colombians. Really, all the options are terrible, but at least they might get some money out of it. That’s not all that likely but it’s good to have hope. They also could die, but Eddie’s stared death in the face maybe six times in the last month (and cried nearly every time) so he thinks he can maybe handle it.

Tomorrow, though. That’s a tomorrow problem. He sits on his porch, long after he’s tucked Gabe in and Stache has passed out, and wonders. How the fuck did he get here?

“Can go by myself, you know.” Daveed plonks himself down on the other side of the stairs. “You don’t have to drag your ass with.” 

Well, yeah. That’s also an option. But he kinda sorta thinks he does. “I’d feel pretty shitty if you died ‘cause of my shitty dad.”

Daveed nods. “Don’t feel like dying. Don’t feel like you dying either.”

“Great.” Eddie replies. He feels kind of hysterical, faint in the head and nauseous, all at once. “Great. Well, this will all go awesomely and nothing will go wrong, and we’ll all come out of it great, and-” Holy shit, he’s freaking out. He’s freaking out and he can’t breathe and-

Smack! 

Daveed claps right in front of his face and Eddie’s so surprised, he doesn’t even think about panicking. “Holy shit.” He gasps, chest heaving. “What the fuck.” 

“No freaking out.” Daveed says, surprisingly soft, one hand resting on Eddie’s knee. “We’re gonna drop that shit off to the Colombians, come back, kick that kid off your couch-”

“I mean-” Stache is kinda a dick but mostly harmless, very much just hiding real fear underneath a lot of bravado. Eddie’s definitely never done that before.

“-you can disagree with me about that later. We get it done, come back here, and you can eat all the plain penne you want. Okay?”

Eddie smiles. He still doesn’t really feel it, but he closes his hand over Daveed’s own. “Okay.”

Chapter Text

Eddie is two minutes from crapping his pants. Why the fuck are they doing this? Why would anyone consider doing this? He’s going to ruin his pants and then also probably puke and then that’s another shirt he likes gone and why the hell did he not just run away from his dad when he had the chance?

It’s so like his dad to be an asshole from beyond the grave. 

The cocaine brick’s in his backpack. He didn’t even really know he had a backpack but Daveed had pulled one from somewhere. It’s got a picture of a cartoon character on it that Eddie feels like he should recognise but he doesn’t. Maybe it’s Gabe’s. Fuck, Eddie is such a shit dad. 

If he survives this he’s gonna go to parenting classes, like immediately. 

They’re in the truck. Daveed is driving, ‘cause Eddie’s pretty sure if he did he’d crash the car from how much his hands are shaking. He is terrified. This is pathetic. The ghost of his dad’s really itching at the back of his skull. He wipes his shaking hands over his forehead and fails to hold back a pained whine. 

“It’s gonna be fine.” Daveed says. He doesn’t sound all that convincing but it’s nice that he’s trying.

“You’ve got a whole lotta faith.” Eddie says, through gritted teeth. His head really hurts. 

“Not faith.” Daveed replies. He offers Eddie a grin that’s only kinda sincere. “We’ve seen enough shit so far that anything’s gotta be better than what’s already happened, right?”

Eddie wishes he had his brain. But as it stands, he doesn’t, and he can only grab onto the legs of his jeans and try not to freak the fuck out. 

They get to the meet. It’s some building off a dodgy alley in the ass end of nowhere, Eddie doesn’t even really remember how they even got there, so anxious he’d been on the ride. It’s Saturday morning. The sun hangs high in the sky, and the vibe is pretty rancid - and he’s not even stepped out of the truck yet. 

Someone knocks on the window and he jumps. 

It’s a beat cop, in a motorcycle helmet, who waves at him to roll the window down. Eddie shoots a panicked look at Daveed, who just shrugs. There’s a goddamn cocaine brick sitting in a backpack with a cartoon cat person on it between them. 

The beat cop knocks on the window. 

Eddie’s shitting himself.

Not literally.

But it’s close. 

He swallows hard and rolls the window down. “Something the problem, officer?” He asks, and his hands are shaking.

“Yeah.” The officer says. Up close, he’s got a large, greying mustache. He sticks his head up right next to the truck, clearly glancing inside. “I hope you two boys know what you’re doing.”

“How’d you mean, sir?” He’s gonna die. He’s gonna die before they even get to the Colombians and then Daveed will have to return the cocaine all by himself, and that’s really mean to put him through all that and - this whole thing sucks. 

“Pretty bad place to park.” The officer finishes, pulling away a bit. “Lotta shit goes on in these streets. You don’t wanna get robbed.”

“Thanks, man.” Eddie says. Daveed is quiet behind him, which is probably safest. Cops tend to treat him worse. “Appreciate the knowledge. We aren’t gonna be long.”

The cop nods. “Fair enough. Don’t come crying to me if you do get your truck jacked.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind!” Eddie chirps, very, very shaky. Behind him, Daveed presses a hand against his back. It’s probably supposed to be soothing.

The cop nods again. He steps away, clearly done with the chat, but then turns back. Oh God. This is it. Eddie’s gonna go to jail for a million years. The cop squints into the car- directly at the backpack. Oh God.

“ Thundercats, right?” The cop says. 

“What?”

“ Thundercats. ” The cop waves at the backpack. “My kid watches that shit. Where’d you get it?”

“Uh-” Eddie has no fucking clue what is happening.

“Target.” Daveed says, from behind him. His thumb presses in a little, rubbing over the notches on Eddie’s spine. “Birthday present. Remember I got it for Gabe?”

Eddie doesn’t remember. He’s sorta narrowed in on the cop’s gun, which is on his waistband and really fucking visible. “Yeah.” He just manages to squeak. “For his birthday.”

“Thanks. You boys stay safe.” The cop says, already walking away. He gets back on his motorbike, and the moment he roars away, Eddie sags, all the tension dropping from his body. 

“Holy fucking shit.” He breathes, checking to see if his heart is still working. It is, fortunately.  Unfortunately?

Daveed thwacks him over the back of the head. It doesn’t really hurt, but it does sort of wound his feelings. “Man, you need to get it together.” 

“I know.” He turns back to Daveed, who looks about equal parts exasperated and fond. “Sorry. I’m a mess.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Daveed says, but it’s not as heated as it could be. “Can you hold yourself together for this convo or do I need to do it myself?” 

Well, as much as he wants to let Daveed do it by himself… it wouldn’t be fair. And he… kinda wants to meet them, y’know? He wants to see what the guys who caused the whole bear bullshit look like. “I can… make it work.” 

The squeeze Daveed gives him on the shoulder is almost enough to keep him upright as they both get out of the truck and crunch across broken glass and garbage towards the building. 

Fuck. 

What is he doing?