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Despite the fear that's constantly lurking in the back of Eddie's mind (and, let's face it, the front and sides of it, too), he does find himself feeling strangely more...okay than he thinks he maybe should, at times. It's slightly easier to handle being cooped up and alone most of the time in an actual house, not in a run-down Jesus-y trailer in a near-abandoned trailer park. It's also easier being further away from that gate, from the place where Chrissy was pulled up by nothing, where her delicate bones twisted and broke, where she fell to the floor in the same spot where he used to sit and play board games.
He knows that technically the gate is all around them, that any day the cracks in the ground are bound to flood again, but it's still easier to be here than there, easier to keep the dread at bay. He fills his days much the way he used to, reading and listening to music and, once he gets brave enough to go outside, wandering in the woods close to the house.
The dead trees and silver grass remind him of there in a strangely comforting way, and sometimes he'll sit with his back against a tree for hours, smoking and watching the nearly imperceptible flakes drift up into the sky, the sun burning a hazy red the way it always does these days. Being in the sunlight for so long makes him tired, his limbs heavy and his mind slow, but he does it anyway. It makes the whispering louder, and he thinks that if he really focuses he'll be able to hear what's being said, what the actual words behind the constant sibilant trickle of comedowncomedowncomedown are. Maybe he'll be able to hear when they shift, when the whispers get louder, the way they'll start to pull at him like whispy hands, clutching at his clothes and hair and skin until he can't go anywhere without feeling it, a ghost-caress that latches onto his ankles and pulls him underground.
He doesn't see Dustin, Max, Lucas, Will, and Mike as much, not since they're in school, and El is in hiding like he is, cooped up in Hopper's cabin. He still sees Max for guitar lessons, at least, which she's really taken to—she spends nearly all of her time practicing. Neither of them have said it out loud, but they both know why: it wouldn't hurt for her to have her own Sword of Kas.
He still sees the others when they come over for D&D, which continues to lose its fun as Steve triumphs over every single challenge Eddie throws at him—his bard's patented seduction technique has worked on nearly every foe, even the demon that Eddie had been toying with setting up as their next main villain before Steve's bard won him over with a love song on his lute.
Eddie's working on their next long campaign right now, redeveloping an old homebrew character that he'd made back in his prime, an ancient eldritch being that he's certain will be able to end Steve's reign of ridiculous luck. It has to.
After their latest session Will hangs back after the others journey outside to check the cracks, fiddling with a page of his guide, folding the corner of it up and curling it under his fingernail. "Eddie?"
"Yeah?"
"I was wondering if I could ask you something?"
Eddie can tell he's nervous. His eyes are vulnerable and skittish, flicking away whenever Eddie looks at him for too long. He's seemed nervous all day, if he's honest, and Eddie is really hoping that this isn't going to be a repeat of what he'd asked before, when he'd been desperate for Eddie or Max to turn him. "Yeah," He says, setting his elbows on the table and dropping his chin into his hand. "But if it's a vampire-related question then I have to preemptively say that I'm still not going to—"
"It's not." Will shakes his head quickly. "It's about, um. You and Steve?" He says it like a question, like he's uncertain, and Eddie thinks he knows what he's actually nervous about after all.
Eddie tries to come across as open and dependable as possible, thinking about when he'd still been in school and he'd go out of his way to look for the little lost sheepies like Dustin and Mike and Lucas, kids who didn't fit in—ones with braces and acne and Monty Python t-shirts and new backpacks that their moms bought for them, kids who liked the music and art and games and movies that the other kids didn't. Kids who might not have understand what it is they're feeling, just that the way they look at their best friend isn't the way that other people look at their best friends. Eddie's been there. He thought his shepherding days were behind him, that if Dustin Henderson could watch him die and help fight in a mini-monster-battle and come out of it semi-functional that there wasn't any work left for him to do, but now, looking at Will's worried lamb eyes, at his truly awful haircut, he realizes that there's still a sheep or two in need of some profound Munson wisdom.
