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You lightly knocked on the door to Wayne Munson's trailer, lifting the bag of groceries higher on your waist. Even though you visited every day, the anxiety of being caught was terrifying. The rest of Hawkins thought that Eddie was one of the ones missing after the earthquake, and you and Eddie's uncle, along with Dustin, did all you could to further that rumor. You hung up missing posters and replaced the defaced ones, and you visited the trailer every day to "see Eddie's uncle and help him cope".
Eddie's uncle answered the door, and you smiled at him softly. You needed to keep up the ruse until the door closed and you were safe inside the trailer. "Hi, Mr. Munson," you said. "I brought you some groceries."
"You're kind," Eddie's uncle sighed, and he stepped aside to let you in. "Have they started classes back at school yet?"
You shook your head as you stepped into the trailer. "Not yet," you said. "They probably won't for a while."
The door closed behind you, and Eddie's uncle took the bag of groceries from you. "He's having a bad day," he told you, and he set the bag down on the countertop as he started to unpack it. "He won't let me touch his neck, says it hurts too much."
"I'll check on him," you told him, and you quickly kicked off your shoes before stepping to the back of the trailer, where Eddie's bedroom was. It was completely dark as you opened the door, not even the TV on. You and Dustin had Eddie-proofed the bedroom, putting up blankets in the window so that nobody could see his distinctive silhouette, and you had moved the television from the front room into Eddie's room, right by his bed. Usually, he was watching some movie that either Steve or Robin had managed to smuggle to you to give him, but, that afternoon, it was dark and quiet.
You knew he wasn't asleep, though, and you flicked on the light and earned yourself a hiss at the sudden brightness. "Jesus Christ, baby," Eddie mumbled, and you saw him lumped up under the covers of his bed, just a bit of hair peeking out. "Could've warned me."
"Sorry," you mumbled. "What's going on, honey? Your uncle said-"
"I heard," Eddie said quickly.
"Okay, what's with this attitude suddenly?" you asked. "C'mon, sit up, I'm gonna look at your bandages."
"No," Eddie mumbled. "It hurts."
"I know," you sighed, and you sat down beside the Eddie lump under his blankets. "But I gotta look at them, we can't let either of those get infected. Just for a second, baby, please."
Eddie was quiet under his blankets, and he finally mumbled, "Can I get a kiss?"
You rolled your eyes and chuckled at him, and you said, "Yes, Eddie, you can have a kiss. But only after I look at your neck and side, okay?"
"I'll take it," Eddie mumbled, and you carefully uncovered him to see him. His hair was especially curly and frizzy, purple shadows under his eyes; he didn't look his best. A flash of a memory, of him in your lap, came to you, his mouth bloody and eyes moonish and wet, and you sighed; anything was better than that.
"Did you get any sleep last night?" you asked, carefully undoing the paper tape that secured down the thick bandage on his neck. There was a spotting of blood on the white bandage, but the wound itself looked normal. Not normal, exactly, but definitely better than a week ago.
"No," Eddie mumbled, wincing as you tugged the entire bandage up and off the skin of his neck.
"Bad dreams?" you asked. You kept a stash of bandages in the bathroom under the sink, and you pressed a quick kiss to Eddie's forehead before you stood up and went to retrieve them.
"Yeah," Eddie replied. "I kept dreaming that you got hurt... Died in my arms... I would wake up screaming every time."
You grabbed the bandages and some antiseptic ointment, and you came back to the bed and quickly went about cleaning him up. You weren't sure exactly how to respond to him, so you mumbled, "Well, I'm here now."
"And you're okay," Eddie nodded. "I hate being in hiding."
"I hate it too," you said softly. "But think about it. One day soon, when you're all healed and fixed up, we'll be able to leave Hawkins. Everything will be fine and everyone will be okay."
"Has anyone asked about me?" Eddie asked, and you shrugged.
"Yeah," you said. "A few of the jocks found me at the store and asked after you. They seemed really set on the fact that I, like, was hiding you or knew where you were or something." Eddie snorted at your sarcasm, and you kissed his cheek as you taped a new bandage to his neck. "I had to start crying and telling them that you were missing and that I was scared you were dead. The crying made them back away."
"You're pretty when you cry," Eddie told you, and you rolled your eyes.
"You think I'm pretty all the time," you told him. After a moment of pause where you were firmly pressing on the tape on his neck, you added "You seem like something else is bothering you." Softly, you began to undress him, tugging up his shirt to get at the wound on his side. "What's wrong?"
Eddie sighed, and he winced again at the pull of the bandage on his wounded skin as he lifted his arms and helped you undress him. "I'm just worried," he began. "What if my nightmares aren't nightmares? What if Vecna is... I don't know, doing something to me? Making me see the future? What if you do get hurt?"
You sighed heavily. There wasn't exactly any way to disprove his theory, thus no way to calm him down, and you said, "Then, we deal with it," you told him. "If Vecna returns and hurts me, we'll... We'll deal with it."
"How?" Eddie asked.
"I don't know," you told him. He made a small noise of pain as you settled some of the ointment on his flesh, and you frowned at his discomfort. You hated seeing him hurting, especially after the last time, and you chewed on your lip. "I don't know," you repeated softly. "But we'll figure it out. The good thing is that we don't need to figure it out now." You placed a fresh bandage on his side, just under his ribcage, and you studied the tattoos that littered his chest and arms. "I love you, Ed. You know that?"
Eddie nodded, and he pulled you into his body as you finished with his bandage. The bed was small, hardly big enough for Eddie, and adding you wasn't easy, especially with his injuries, but you made do, curling up in his non-injured side. "I know it," he told you. "Thank you for taking care of me."
"Soon you'll be all better," you said. "We can leave Hawkins and go somewhere else, somewhere better."
"Detroit," Eddie said, and you grimaced in confusion. "It's a big city, good place to keep a low profile. And Detroit Rock City, baby."
"Of course you'd decide that based off a song," you chuckled. "But we'll be able to leave and nobody will know us, we'll be able to live. Just be ourselves and live... But you have to get better first."
"I'm doing what I can, baby," Eddie said, and he frowned. "Wow. '86 was not my year, was it?"
"It's only April," you shrugged. "Once we leave Hawkins, you can make '86 your bitch."
