eddie munson had just witnessed the rather gruesome death of chrissy cunningham.

yeah. uh. not the best way to wind down after an intense d&d game.

he'd fled, naturally, after seeing her laying eyeless and shattered on his stained trailer's carpet, now stained with more than beer and other questionable fluids. crimson-soaked with the smell of iron thick and migraine-inducing in the air.

he didn't exactly know where he had planned to flee to- reefer rick's place had been his first idea, even though he really, desperately did not want to go there. like, he'd have had half a mind to stay at his place with the body if that was his only option.

but thank god it wasn't.

your place was much safer, and it was significantly less likely anyone would check for him there. check for eddie 'freak' munson, nestled in the house of an integral member of the popular crowd? nobody would have even had that passing thought.

eddie and you were...odd with each-other. not a relationship- god, no, you wouldn't be caught dead in public with him (or so he assumed, as you hadn't asked to be official yet)- but very pressingly not nothing.

you hadn't ever ridiculed him. that's how this entire thing had started- you weren't a complete dick. and you were, in his opinion, rather attractive. you'd gotten paired up with a science project about a year ago, and lord, things had escalated since then.

that thing sort of...happens, when you're openly gay in the eighties.

you'd offered some sort of vague protection over him in exchange for his continued secrecy about the whole ordeal- it was all very good luck, babe!.

but he got bullied less, and he had someone that lessened his pent-up-ness, and you both had long formed what had all of the emotions of officiality but none of the strings and none of the publicity.

and nobody- not even in eddie's web- knew.

perfect, really, if you set aside the emotional turmoil it occasionally sent both of you spinning into. so, mostly perfect.

what you were not expecting from this, however, was for him to crawl into your window at eleven at night and crumple numbly to the ground.

his hair was a fucking mess- he was wearing the same clothes he had at school today. hellfire t-shirt, pin-covered vest, black jeans that made him look very good.

he was shaking harder than you'd ever seen him shake before, the keys to his van clutched in his chipped black nail polish adorned hands so tightly they were making indents in his palm.

"she's dead, man."