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Eddie’s new pack of freshman recruits were weird. It was why he’d collected them in the first place — sitting huddled at a table at the edge of the cafeteria, looking amusingly solemn and a little bewildered — he knew they’d make a good addition to the club. Besides, he was a bit of a bleeding heart and they looked like little sheep all left out in the cold to fend for themselves.
At the beginning they were mostly normal-weird, Eddie’s kind of weird, Hellfire’s kind of weird. Henderson was an overconfident know-it-all, Wheeler was a little bitch, and level-headed Sinclair joined the fucking basketball team. They talked about their girlfriends like Eddie and the rest were supposed to believe they existed, they knew too much about D&D and how to work a radio — normal weird nerd shit they’d get bullied for if Eddie wasn’t there to take the heat.
After a couple weeks, though, he realized they were weird in other ways too — weird even for him. For one, Henderson never left the house without a walkie-talkie strapped to his bag like a security blanket. They always travelled in a pack, even when Sinclair went to basketball practice the other two would just wait outside the gym until he was done. None of them ever passed up the opportunity to wax poetic about Steve fucking Harrington — and wasn’t that a goddamn shock to the system. Sometimes they’d say shit that sounded like an inside joke but without context would just be really fucking concerning.
The most innocuous bit — and yet somehow the one that stuck the most in Eddie’s brain — was the way they talked about their moms.
Nothing CPS-worthy — nothing worrying at all, even. It was clear their moms all cared about them a lot — taking them out to lunch, hosting sleepovers and movie nights, driving them all around town to do whatever shit they’d decided on a whim — it was just, well… Eddie could never figure out which of their moms they were ever talking about. It was all “Mom did this” “Mom said that”, none of them ever said my mom.
He’d chalked it up to a quirk, probably something born from all those endless sleepovers they’d been having. Maybe they were just all really close with each other’s moms.
It sat with Eddie, though, like an itch. He was a DM, a storyteller at heart, and he knew when there was more to something than met the eye. The brats — his brats — were weird, and they were definitely hiding something.
Eddie managed to stay, well, normal was a bit of a stretch, but not-fucking-neurotic about it for the first couple months. Sat through Wheeler’s bitching, Sinclair’s missed sessions due to basketball practice, Henderson’s spontaneous Ode-to-Harrington declamations. Ribbed them a bit about their weird hero-worship of Hawkins’ own fallen jock. Didn’t ask them any weird fucking questions.
It wasn’t anything in particular that made Eddie break. He’d try and blame it on one of the others, but Uncle Wayne raised him to take responsibility for his own actions and Eddie wasn’t a goddamn quitter.
They’d just finished another session, halfway through one of their longer campaigns, and everyone was taking a little longer to wrap up than usual. The middle sessions tended to be a bit slower — Eddie liked a good journey, sue him — and they were more likely to sit around chatting when they weren’t hyped up on adrenaline.
Eddie was absentmindedly rolling a couple of his dice, listening to the way they clinked around the quiet conversations, when he caught something Henderson said.
“Yeah, but Mom said Robin doesn’t get out of band practice for another fifteen minutes.”
There they were again, talking about their collective franken-mother. Eddie propped his chin on his hand and listened.
“You think if we get there first one of us can steal the front seat?” Wheeler had his arms crossed, looking comically like his sister. Sinclair laughed.
“Obviously not, Robin’ll drag you out while Mom does that—” He put his hands on his hips and gave them an unimpressed look. They all snickered for a moment.
“I gotta ask,” Eddie said before he could stop himself, watching as the three of them jumped, “‘cause you guys are fucking impossible to follow — which one of your moms is coming to pick you up tonight? Actually, now that I think of it, is it always the same one? Do they take turns?”
Bewilderingly, all three of them went bright pink.
“Gotta say I’m curious too,” Gareth added, “you all talk like you have the same one mom.”
Henderson heaved a huge dramatic sigh while Wheeler looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him whole. Sinclair just looked mildly embarrassed, which was why he was the only one Eddie respected — or he would be, if he didn’t keep ditching them to play fucking basketball.
“You need to understand that it started as a joke—” Henderson started.
“It’s still a fucking joke,” Wheeler grumbled, “we’re making fun of him.” Which was not a sentence that made sense.
“It’s like, half a joke,” Sinclair said, tilting his hand in a so-so way.
“We don’t say it in front of him,” Henderson continued, “we’re not entirely sure what he’d do if he thought we were serious.”
“Probably cry,” Wheeler muttered. Henderson smacked him on the arm.
“Stop being a dick, Mike,” Sinclair said.
“Don’t pay attention to him,” Henderson said blithely, “he’s just mad ‘cause he’s not Mom’s favourite.”
“Am not,” Wheeler protested, slapping his hands on the table. He turned to look Eddie in the eye. “Dustin’s just cocky ‘cause he thinks he’s Mom’s favourite.”
“He kinda is,” Sinclair said. Wheeler scowled at him but Sinclair just shrugged.
“Not our fault you weren’t there when we were fighting the… dogs in the bus, and at the mall,” Henderson said smugly. What the fuck. What did that even mean. “Those were bonding experiences, Michael.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up Dusty-bun.”
“Hey!”
“Besides, I was there for the end of the mall!”
“We were all there for the end of the mall.” Henderson could make a good living as someone’s manager, with a tone like that. Christ, his kids were assholes.
“I’m sure you’ll get your chance to be on Team Mom eventually,” Sinclair offered.
“Don’t say that!” Wheeler yelped.
“Oh god,” Henderson moaned, “you’ve jinxed us.”
“I didn’t mean to! I just meant—”
“No, no, don’t say anything else! What if you just make it worse?”
“Max is gonna kill us.”
“Mom is gonna kill us.”
Eddie would pinch the bridge of his nose if it wouldn’t make him feel like some kind of uptight suburban dad.
“Can someone please explain what the fuck is going on?”
That was, of course, the moment when everything decided to go even more sideways.
“Dustin?” A voiced called from down the hall. It was a familiar voice, the kind that was nice to listen to but made Eddie feel annoyed on instinct.
All three boys went white.
“Oh shit,” Henderson said. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“Lucas? Mike?”
“In here!” Sinclair called. He turned to the others. “Mom’s gonna kill us.”
“We’re not that late,” Wheeler rolled his eyes. He paused. “Right?”
“He always comes looking five minutes after the scheduled time, you know, in case things go a little upside down,” Henderson gave the other two a meaningful look. Eddie expected Wheeler to roll his eyes again, but all three of them looked surprisingly serious about it.
They all turned their heads when the door swung open.
In hindsight, Eddie really should’ve expected it. In the moment, though, he’d been a little too busy reeling over the fact that Steve fucking Harrington was standing in the doorway. He put his hands on his hips and, wow, Sinclair really had that look spot-on.
“You little shits were supposed to be out there five minutes ago,” he said, frowning down at the kids. “I thought something happened!”
“We’re fine, mom,” Wheeler rolled his eyes again, and Eddie realized that was the first time he’d ever heard the kid say it sarcastically like that. ‘Making fun of him’ Eddie’s ass.
“C’mon,” Harrington started waving them up, “everyone out! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Robin’s out in like ten minutes and if we’re not there when she gets there me and her are both gonna freak.”
“They have a codependent relationship,” Henderson informed them, like Eddie actually gave a shit. Harrington didn’t even bother to deny it, he just sighed.
“Hazards of working at the mall,” Harrington smiled, like that meant anything. Sinclair snorted.
The kids all filed into the hallway, Harrington bringing up the rear. He grabbed Henderson around the shoulder and pulled him into a one-arm hug as they walked.
“Next time just radio me, or something. You know I always keep that thing with me.”
“You leave it in your car,” Henderson said judgementally.
“Yeah, ‘cause it’s like a brick! Just ‘cause I don’t carry it around like a baby doesn’t mean I don’t have it handy, though.”
Eddie watched them walk away, feeling a little bit like the entire world was spinning in reverse. A new revelation, something that made the sun shine a little differently. It was like he’d just witnessed the last step in the hero’s journey after missing all the previous ones.
Of course, he’d discover later that this was only the introduction to his call to adventure.
For now, though, Eddie would go home and think about the way Harrington looked, hands on his hips. The way even little bitch Wheeler called him Mom and meant it. The way he apparently cared about those kids as much as they cared about him.
He’d let them keep their secret for a little while longer. He had a feeling he wasn’t ready to process however Harrington reacted to being called mom by a bunch of tweenagers, he had enough weird kinks as it was.