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1.
Unlike the majority of the kids Eddie had brought around, mostly other nerdy boys like him, who seemed to be much more interested in talking about sorcerers than sports, for example, and the two, Jeff and Grant, who had stuck as part of his little band (at that time apparently hotly debating whether to call themselves Satan’s Fingers or The Killers)... this one was, well…
The kid was younger than Eddie, than any of Eddie’s friends had been so far, clearly from the middle school, and apparently lured in during one of the “campaign strategy” sessions Eddie had thrown himself at the library (which seemed to be an excuse to pull down every book Hawkins’ Public had on mythical creatures, cartography, and physics of movement (there had been a stick-based trebuchet slowly taking shape in the woods at that time, which Wayne was not supposed to know about).
The little mousey child hadn’t spoken at first, but had been introduced as “Gare”, odd name, and whisked away to Eddie’s room, where the sounds of “metal” began to emerge shortly thereafter.
Both children had emerged to eat spaghetti after a reasonable number of requests, and Wayne had been thanked by the youngest kid in a soft, high voice that made him do a double take.
The kid seemed much younger than Wayne expected.
Still Wayne didn’t put the full picture together, until several weeks later, when he arrived home to fine a little girl in a clearly mud-ruined blue sundress curled up in a corner of his porch.
She scrambled to her feet and looked like she was about to tumble over the railing and dash into the woods, as Wayne began to climb the stairs, so he stopped only half way up.
“Can I help you?” he’d said, alarm growing as he clocked the tears on the kid’s face, and what looked like a bruise forming under the mud on her left knee. “You okay?”
The kid pulled herself together, and stood clearly as tall as she could, and said .
“I’m waiting for Eddie, sir.”
And Wayne did a another double-take at the kid’s voice and- oh.
“It’s Gare, right?”
The kid nodded.
“Eddie’s friend Jeff has some new book for that monster game y’all play, and he was going over there after school today.”
Gare’s face fell, and the kid looked about to cry again. Wayne hated to see kids cry.
“He should be back before sundown, though, for dinner.” Wayne squinted at the kid. “Your parents know you’re over here?”
Gare looked down at muddy maryjane shoes.
“... I can’t go home right now.”
Wayne tilted his head.
“You hurt?”
Gare shuffled in place.
“Not really, sir.”
“You eat yet?”
Gare shook a head of messy, longer than was typical of a boy that age, now Wayne thought about it, curls.
“Alright, kid, you hang on a minute, and we can wait for Eddie.”
When Eddie had gotten home forty-five minutes later, it was to find his little friend bundled up in the biggest towel they owned, like a blanket, and eating warm Spaghettios out of a mug.
Wayne gave Eddie his own mug of the pasta, and left the kids to it, though he intentionally stationed himself beside the open window once back inside, just in case.
… and got to overhear the whole sorry tale of a kid who hated wearing dresses, and wanted to cut their hair shorter, and was harassed at school by the big kids for not dressing like a girl, and clearly also when they did dress like a girl, and how they just wished they could disappear, run away someplace where no one knew he was a girl, or, or find the warlock that had cast the spell and made him a girl, and cure it-
By the time Wayne’s nephew had calmed his friend again, and they were mostly-cheerfully discussing the “stat block” of a “fay” they would have to defeat to “win a boon”, Wayne knew where he was stopping after work as soon as he could manage.
Weeks later, Eddie would come up to Wayne out of the blue and hug him, maybe the tightest Wayne had ever been hugged to that point, and he wouldn’t say anything, but the little stapled booklets Wayne had left out on the table (suggested and given for free at a certain theater and bookshop Wayne had visited in Indy, after he explained the situation to Reina, the proprietor) were gone.
More than a month after that, Eddie would usher his friend in more formally than ever he had before, and introduce Wayne to “Gareth, when it’s just us and the other guys”, and Wayne will shake Gareth’s hand.
“Nice to meet you, Gareth.”
2.
When Al Munson dumped Eddie on Wayne’s doorstep all those years ago, one of the very few pieces of info he left with Wayne was that the kid was “probly one of your kind anyhow”, which Wayne saw few other ways to interpret than that Al thought the kid was queer (and thought it confidently enough that he took the time to tell Wayne that- notable since he didn’t see fit to tell Wayne, for example, where Eddie has been enrolled in school, or what grade he was).
Now, Wayne didn’t exactly have a problem with receiving his nephew- he’d been half expecting it for a long time, actually. After Al’s wife died and Al immediately started escalating the same reckless shit he’d been getting arrested for since he was a teenager, Wayne figured it was only a matter of time til he got locked up for a long stretch, and Kate not having any living family Wayne (or Al, to hear it told) knew about, that pretty much left Wayne.
That in mind, he’d made a regular thing of inviting his brother and nephew out (which they rarely took him up on) and sending Eddie letters (which he rarely got back), just so the kid wouldn't feel completely unwanted, should rehoming ever occur.
Quite a bit of time passed, however, once Eddie was living with him (and once he figured out what grade Eddie needed to be, and what his medical history was, and what foods he liked, etc), before Wayne had any hint of the other thing, aside from what Eddie didn’t talk about.
Honestly, Wayne was beginning to grow concerned that Eddie wasn’t gay, wasn’t straight or bi, wasn’t even the kind who wasn’t interested in any of it- but was some New thing like dragon-sexual, and Wayne was going to have to go ask around for pamphlets or something (did anyone even make pamphlets for that kind of stuff?).
Gradually, though, Eddie’s little notebooks began to be filled, on the occasions Wayne caught a peek or Eddie was excited enough to actually show Wayne what he was working on, with various monsters and mythic figures of a distinctly male form, rendered in intense (if not all together accurate) detail.
Still though, Eddie never seemed to talk about his own interests in that area, nor pick up on any of the hints Wayne dropped… and Wayne was hesitant to do anything as confrontational as sit the kid down and explain outright.
For the one thing, if the kid felt cornered, he might take off, literally or metaphorically, run or withdraw. That was what had happened during the beans era, where Wayne, attempting to feed his young charge a cheap but nutritiously balanced meal had been relying heavily on the presence of said vegetable, only to discover that his nephew hated the texture so intensely, that he had been throwing up, afterwards, and hiding it.
When Wayne put the bathroom trips together with the way Eddie would get quiet and subdued for specific meals (and the way the kid stopped gaining weight- something Wayne had very much been working on, skinny ragamuffin anyhow), and finally pinned Eddie down, gently as he could, Eddie had panicked (Wayne would learn later, because Al had at least once lost his temper on the kid for not eating a supper, and the kid had internalized those rules about Food Your Guardian Provided, because of course he had).
Eddie panicked, and ran, and it was several hours before Wayne (with the support of about a third of the residents of Forest Hills Trailer Park, was able to track him down, and find him hiding in the hollow of a large tree, wet, muddy, thoroughly miserable, clearly having been crying, and looking like nothing so much as a half-drowned Raccoon.
It had taken an hour to get him to come back to the trailer, and hours more to get him calmed, clean, and willing to just fuckin tell Wayne what was wrong.
(in the years since, they’ve learned that peas are actually acceptable, sometimes, and refried beans are almost always safe, if they’ve been pulverized enough and have enough cheese and other stuff in them)
That being only the first of several similar incidents, yeah, Wayne didn’t want to scare the young man off.
And the other thing…
Wayne didn’t think Eddie would have a problem with Wayne being mostly gay- Wayne had never known Eddie to say anything to that effect- even in the casually cruel way teenagers often did.
But, since taking Eddie in, Wayne had also been careful to keep any of his own dalliances well separate of his life with Eddie, and he knew very few in Hawkins itself who were of his persuasion… and none of them were public about it, of course. So it wasn’t like they could casually have a conversation about a mutual acquaintance.
And Wayne couldn’t help but worry that, if he had missed something, and Eddie was gonna have a problem about it, that coming right out with the truth had the potential to wreck Wayne’s life and Eddie’s, if Eddie reacted badly, or told anyone, or decided he felt unsafe and didn’t want to live there anymore…
So Wayne kept his cards to himself, mostly, for a long time.
And then Eddie’s little friend began coming around.
After that, it was an open secret between them, a thing they still weren’t talking about, but which sat heavy in glances sometimes, in silence, in the way Eddie would linger for a moment before heading to his room. Wayne wasn’t sure if it was better to let Eddie start, to not risk pinning him about it, or if the waiting was worse for both of them.
Finally one night, after supper, in the hour of wind-down before Wayne would leave for his shift (when Eddie had left the room, returned, stood there, left again, and was hovering in the hall a second time), Wayne gave up.
“Eddie? You in hearing range?” as if he couldn’t tell the gangly boy was breathing too-careful in his bedroom doorway.
“Uh, yeah Uncle Wayne?”
“Come here- I got something to talk to you about.”
There was a long pause, but Eddie came, creeping almost.
“Yeah?”
Wayne nodded.
“Now, I know we never talked about it, but I think we’re both thinkin about it, so I’ll say it plain-”
“I think I’m gay!” Eddie squeaked, into the middle of Wayne’s sentence.
Wayne blinked, nodded, pivoted.
“Thank you for telling me son.”
Eddie looked at the floor.
“Do I need to, um, move out?” he asked, quietly.
Kid was pretty much green.
“Make me a hypocrite if you did, kid. Under no circumstances, until you want to, some day.”
Eddie’s head shot up, surprise painted clear across his face.
“Wh- You?”
Wayne nodded.
“Mostly. There’ve been some women, but yes. Mostly men, for me. How’d you think I knew where to get that stuff for your friend, huh?”
Eddie shrugged one shoulder, but the color was coming back into his face.
“I don’t know. You, um, maybe you’re a wizard, and you just know stuff.”
Wayne frowned.
“Don’t you need a beard for that? And aren’t they really old? I know I ain’t shaved in a minute-” and he was cut off again, as Eddie pretty much slammed into him, in a hug.
Alright then. Looks like directness wins the day.
Wayne had pamphlets ready, this time. He didn't give a shit how embarrassed Eddie was gonna be, either. If you're old enough to be thinking about it, old enough to say it, then you've gotta know how to be safe about it, especially in this day and age.
3.
The Harrington boy was another thing-
Wayne heard Eddie talk about him, now and again, over the years- mostly dry and biting, a little cruel, but in a way that, well… Wayne knew what was up, when all you could think about to criticize was how much time a person spent on their appearance. Even if he hadn’t met the Harrington parents more than a few times in years gone (mostly to his detriment), he thinks he probably could have picked Steve Harrington out of a lineup just based on Eddie’s increasingly elaborate descriptions.
What he did not expect was for their first meeting to be at the bedside of his half-dead nephew.
Or for Steve Harrington himself to also be in a hospital gown.
The story he gets, in bits and pieces (from Harrington, and also from the kids that keep coming by) is a stranger one, but Hawkins has been a strange town for a long time.
But what he does follow is this- Eddie was a hero, much as any of his characters, in any of his stories. All these kids were, probably, and Wayne thinks he can see it, when he looks at them, especially at Harrington- there’s a look he’s seen before, overseas, in his friends, and the mirror.
Wayne never wanted that for Eddie, thought maybe he wouldn’t have to see it, times changing as they were.
Well. Better the look of a kid-turned-soldier, than a dead kid, he supposes. At least they’re all alive.
It takes awhile for Eddie to come around to regularly lucid- loosing that much blood will do it to you, but once he is (and the Harrington boy is fully dressed all the time again, except when someone helps him change his own dressings, nasty wounds to his abdomen that look a lot like what Eddie’s got but all over), Eddie spends as much time peeking at the Harrington boy as he does clinging to Wayne. (well, holding Wayne’s hand, which is pretty much clinging, these days.)
Wayne is still surprised, though maybe he shouldn’t be (because didn’t that boy have stuff to do other than hover over Eddie for a week?), that even once Eddie is home… Steve sticks around. Keeps coming by, and keeps coming by. Keeps Eddie company, picks up groceries, picks up books.
When Wayne starts back up at work again, having gotten a neighbor to agree to check in on Eddie… they don’t end up needing her.
Because Steve is there.
Now, Wayne has an idea how Eddie feels about Steve- If Eddie thought he was a attractive before, he clearly thinks Steve is an angel now, or maybe a knight or something. Wayne knows his nephew, and thinks his nephew’s interest could probably been seen from space, or something, is almost certain the other boy must have noticed, must know.
But sometimes, Wayne knows from experience, straight men can’t see that kind of thing. Or, maybe won’t let themselves see that kind of thing. So maybe not.
But then Wayne starts to think. Well. Now. Why has Steve been around so much? Yeah, maybe Eddie saved some people, sounds like Steve did too. This is… hm. Maybe not an impossible amount of work to do for a new friend, but… well…
He wonders.
And the girl, Robin, keeps coming around too. She’s the first girl Eddie’s let around in a long time, but it appears as though She’s some kind of package deal with Steve. That was part of what threw him off of the possibility that Steve was pursuing Eddie in the first place- that the kid kept bringing his girlfriend by.
But Robin came by on her own, too, and She and Eddie listened to music, an talked instruments (and sometimes shut the door to talk, but Wayne wasn’t exactly worried about that. Eddie was grown, really… and also very, very gay. And Robin was…. Well. Wayne had a feeling, was all).
And that feeling is confirmed one afternoon, when Eddie is away on his first long visit to see his corroded coffin boys.
It’s a bit of deja vu, coming back to find two kids, too big to be kids really but still, curled up on his porch swing, waiting for Eddie.
They pop their heads up, when Wayne gets out of his truck, and are standing, looking nervous but hopeful, by the time he climbs the steps.
“How can I help you kids? Ed’s at Jeff’s.”
They both nod, quick to assure him they know, but neither comes out with the dilemma, whatever it is.
He lets them in, starts pulling mugs down for… something. Coffee or soda or water. He doesn’t need coffee himself, needs to sleep soon, and deep, but he could have some of that tea, maybe, that Joan gave him-
Robin looks ill, and and Wayne wonders, but Steve puts his arm around her shoulders and whispers, not quite quiet enough-
“I can ask, if you want. I can say it’s for me.”
Robin shakes her head.
“Um, Mr. Munson.”
“Wayne is fine, for Eddie’s friends.”
Robin shuffles in place, and Steve gives her another reassuring half-hug.
“Eddie said you, um, knew stuff?”
Wayne nudges a cup of coffee to Steve. He knows how the boy takes it, now.
“I know stuff, I guess. What kind of stuff?”
He pulls out a coke for Robin.
Robin looks like she’s gonna throw up, and turns, scared, to Steve. Steve squares his shoulders, and looks Wayne dead in the eye.
“Uh, information about, like, uh, being gay. For… me. To give to my parents. To come out to my parents?”
Wayne blinks.
“Son, I wouldn’t say anything about that to Richard Harrington, ever, even if I was paid and holding a shotgun.”
Steve deflates, but before Wayne can figure out where to go next, to assure the kid he’s got support, if it happened he did need it, Robin Buckley apparently finds her courage again.
“He’s just trying to help me, sir.” She says, and they shift focus back to her, instead, “Eddie said you, um, were safe for this kind of thing, and that you, uh, found stuff for a friend of his one time? And I want to- I think…” Steve’s arm went back around her again, “I think I need to, um, tell my parents. That… That I’m…” She blows out a breath, “That I’m a lesbian. I want to do it before I leave for college, but I want to be… prepared. I want to…” she trails off, again.
“Her mom is an argue-r?” Steve offers, frowning at his own language choice, “She argues. It’s where Rob gets it from. She’s gotta have all the information in triplicate, or whatever, before you can make any, like, progress, so we were thinking, if there were like books on this stuff-”
“Real ones,” Robin agrees, warming to the topic, “real ones that talk about how it really is, not just a throwaway line in a textbook that says it happens. If I could just say it, tell her, and then give her time with the facts… i think maybe that could… I don’t know.”
“We hope.” Steve says, “And if it still goes bad, she can stay with me until it’s time to go- my parents would think it was great I had a girl over if they even ever came home, so-”
Wayne nods.
“Alright. Well. I don’t have anything like that here, lord knows-” and Wayne stops himself, because it’s obvious Eddie was careful not to say why Wayne knew stuff, not to out Wayne himself, and the kids hadn’t really said they knew about Eddie, so if somehow they didn’t, Wayne didn’t want to change that for him “- Lord knows I never had to look that up much, being mostly a gay man myself-” and he see’s a little more tension go out of them both, good, “But if you can keep a secret, I can tell you who will know. Or go look myself, later.”
And Robin drinks her soda, and Steve drinks his coffee, And Wayne tells them about the movie theater, and the book store, and the people that look after them. He listens while they make plans to go, and he sees the way Steve looks after Robin- the ways it’s similar to how he looks after Eddie, the boy is a good friend to have, clearly, but also the now very obvious ways it’s different.
And he wonders…
Before Eddie is due back, the two of them start shuffling towards the door, thanking him, again, and again, and he just keeps waving them off.
Robin heads down the steps to Steve’s car first, but Steve lingers, a moment.
Wayne gives him time.
“Uh, you said, in there, sir,” Wayne doesn’t correct him, doesn’t want to interrupt whatever it is he waited the whole time to say, “You said, ah you were ‘mostly’ g- gay?” Wayne doesn’t let anything show on his face, as he hears the stumble.
“That’s right. You asking how that’s so?”
“Um.. yeah?”
Wayne nods.
“Some people, they don’t know what they like until they try it, maybe til they try it all. For a long time, I though that was me. Thought I liked girls cuz I had to, you understand," and Steve is nodding, Wayne can see, on his periphery, "but then found out I liked men better. But... turned out that wasn’t the truth of it either. I like both, sometimes, and other folks too, even it’s mostly been men, for me.”
Wayne cut a glance to the side, and Steve’s eye’s were enormous.
“So, uh, is that… normal? To like both? All? Uh, anybody?”
Wayne tilts his head.
“Normal as any of it, I think. It’s… the walls, the-” Wayne gestures with a hand, “In a world where people can be so many different ways, I think the… boundaries get fuzzy. I don’t talk about it much, but usually I would say I was gay. It’s simpler. But some people would say bisexual, I think, or something else.”
Bisexual, he sees Steve’s mouth make the shape, and then the boy is bolting-
“Uh, thank you, sir!”
-and he’s jumping the last two steps, and getting in his car, and immediately in apparently intense conversation with Robin, even as he pulls out.
And Wayne’s pretty sure he can see the shape of it.
+1
Wayne thinks the kids must have done it, because he doesn’t hear anything else on the subject... but Robin is around less, and no one seems upset about it. Must have gone okay.
Steve’s still around just as much, though, and there’s an ease to him that’s different.
Wayne can see that Eddie doesn’t know what to do with it.
And also that even though Eddie’s still got work to do in his recovery, he’s come around the corner from feeling breakable, to being irritated at the lingering limitations (like range of motion, flexibility, weight limits).
One afternoon, he drops the can opener while he’s trying to put together a beans and rice thing for dinner before Wayne goes to work, and before he can do more than cuss in irritation at himself, Steve’s there, Steve’s on the ground, grabbing the thing, and looking up at Eddie from his knees.
Eddie blushes as red as he can go, pretty much, even as Steve smiles sweetly and gets to his feet, and goes back to boiling the rice.
Eddie looks like he’s been stabbed.
Good, Wayne thinks, at least it’s an actual person, and not a "dark elf” or something.
And, well, Wayne can stir the shit a little too, sometimes.
“Got yourself a real situation there, boy.” He says, lowly, as he passes Eddie.
(Steve’s hearing is worse than Wayne’s, it’s fine, and also is why Steve can’t ever tell how quiet he’s being)
Wayne gets home one morning, and even though Steve’s car’s there (not unusual, now Robin’s off to school. He thinks… Wayne thinks, based on some of the cagey behavior in his household, that this setup won’t last much longer. He thinks, there’s a strong possibility that he’s about to end up a, whatcha call it, empty-nester. It’s fine, he’s been telling himself, it’s exactly what you wanted: him to go when he was ready, when he had people he was ready to go with, when he knew where he was going. And Chicago is not that far- probably why Robin picked it, whether she knew they were gonna follow her or not).
Steve’s car’s there, but there’s no one obviously around, when Wayne steps in. No music, or anything else, either.
And then he hears Eddie cry out in pain.
He’s half-kicked off his boots, but in an instant he’s rushing down the hall- did he fall? Is he hurt?- only to freeze at the next next sound through the bedroom door-
Which is pretty certainly not one of pain.
A groan, distinctly flavored and-
“Fuck, Steve, I can’t-”
“Bet you can.”
“You don’t even care about this stuff.”
“I like that you like it. Hot, that you remember it all.”
“Wayne’s gonna be home any time, we can’t-”
“Better be fast, then.”
And there’s a very wet sound, and Wayne needs to not be hearing any of this, actually,
“Gargoyle. Gas Spore. Gelatinous cube-”
What the hell?
“Ghast. Fuck. Ghost. Ghoul-”
“Don’t cheat. If I can’t cheat, you can’t either. There’s too many left to do, anyway. If you repeat stuff, we’ll never get to the other thing you said you were gonna do.”
“You were paying attention? Fuck, you’re gonna kill me, Stevie. Those are actually- fuck! Uh. uh. Giant. Gnoll. Gnome-”
Wayne is gonna smoke on the porch for a while.
The boys are fine, anyhow.
It was alright, maybe, if Wayne never understood… all of it.
Someone did.