"Oh shit," Alex says, jolting back into consciousness. She'd been asleep for no more than a couple hours, all of which had been plagued by nightmares. These nightmares were concerning to her, considering the curse spreading through Hawkin's teenagers like a plague. But nightmares weren't a rarity for her, and she had plenty of other, more important things to worry about.
Max kneels before her, her hand still resting on Alex's shoulder where she'd shaken her awake. "You were having a nightmare," Max says, frowning.
Alex glances around to try and orient herself. She's in the Wheelers' basement, where everyone had regrouped after the absolute terror that had ensued the night before. Everyone around her snoozes away, including Dustin who was supposed to be keeping an eye on Max.
"Unfortunately not all that uncommon," Alex mutters, then changes her attention to Max. "How are you doing?"
"Fine," she answers. "Sounds like the Wheelers are awake upstairs. I wanted to head up there before someone else wakes up and stops me."
"Yeah, sure," Alex says cautiously. What happened to Max yesterday was unimaginable, and Alex was shocked at how well Max was holding it together. The group had devised a plan to have shifts to ensure that someone was watching Max at all times throughout the night. The group probably wouldn't be too happy with Alex letting Max go upstairs, so Alex isn't too keen on allowing it. But she knows that Max needs some time to do things on her own accord. "You'll keep your headphones on the whole time, right?"
Max nods and waits as Alex collects her backpack. "Are you coming too?"
"I'm going to take a quick shower first," Alex says. "If anything happens–anything at all–you come knock on the bathroom door right away."
The two depart at the top of the stairs. Max joins Holly at the table, who has papers and crayons strewn about. Alex approaches Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler in the kitchen. "Is it okay if I take a quick shower?"
"Is it okay if I send you our water bill?" Mr. Wheeler asks without looking up from the daily newspaper.
Mrs. Wheeler elbows him, a spatula in her hand. "Of course it's okay! We really do love having you back."
Alex thanks them and heads to the bathroom with one last glance at Max. She showers quickly to save Mr. Wheeler on the water bill. She has to put the black pair of jeans she had on yesterday back on, but she pulls the Hellfire shirt Eddie gave her out of her backpack. If the jocks were going to try and hunt Eddie down, she might as well give them a reason to hate her too–though she realizes that they already have several. She slips her jacket onto her shoulders to complete the look.
Once outside the bathroom, she is delighted to find Max still very much okay. She heads back downstairs to drop her backpack off when she hears Dustin's walkie crackle to life. "Hey, Dustin, this is Eddie the Banished. You there? Dustin? Earth to Dustin?"
Alex practically leaps over a sleeping body to grab the walkie. She pulls the antenna up and speaks into the device. "Eddie! I'm so sorry! It's been a rough couple days."
She feels awful leaving him in that boatshed for so long, and he never quite left her brain the whole time she was dealing with Vecna the past couple days. She's elated when she hears that his tone softens.
"Alex, hey! I would really appreciate a food delivery like, really soon."
"Yeah, totally. I'll be there as soon as I can."
"Also–could you pick me up a six-pack? I know, it's stupid as shit, drinking right now, but a cold beer would really calm my jangled nerves."
"Of course." She'd buy him anything she could to try and make up for leaving him alone for so long, but then she remembers that she's never bought alcohol before and she's not twenty-one. "Wait, does the liquor store in town card?"
"No, especially not pretty girls," Eddie says.
Alex's chest buzzes in excitement so much that she nearly forgets that she needs to respond. She lifts the walkie to her mouth for a final time and stammers, "Uh, yeah, be there soon, Eds!"
She is still buzzing from his last statement, so she doesn't even think about how she just gave him a nickname as she returns the walkie. She tiptoes over to Steve's sleeping figure. She whispers into his ear. "Hey, Steve, I'm going to steal your car for a bit. That cool?"
Steve mumbles, mostly asleep, "Mmm, sure." He may or may not kill her for this later.
Alex fumbles around the various items on the coffee table until her hands find Steve's car keys. She jogs upstairs and meets Max who sits with Holly at the table. Max presses one of Holly's crayons across the paper.
"Hey," Alex says, trying to softly approach so as to not scare Max. She waits to speak until Max has pulled her headphones off of her ears, but she keeps her voice low so no one else will hear. "Eddie needs some food, and he's been alone for so long. I'm gonna' run him some food real quick and then I'll be back in, like, an hour."
Max lies the crayon down and shakes her head. "The others will be awake soon. You should definitely spend some quality time with him."
"You sure?" Alex asks, then changes the subject when Max nods again. "What ya' drawing there?"
"Work in progress," she answers, then with a wink: "Now go to your boyfriend."
Alex leaves the Wheeler residence, mesmerized by her friend's resilience. She gets into Steve's car and starts the engine. It was her first time driving in quite a while. She had to admit that she wasn't the best driver, nor was it something she had a ton of practice at. But she passed her driving test fair and square, so she had every right to be on the road.
She stops first at one of the liquor stores in town. It's still the morning, but liquor stores in small, midwestern towns like Hawkins often have nearly twenty-four-seven business hours. She enters the store a bit weary, but exits successfully with a six-pack of beer. Eddie was right; they didn't card.
She had planned to run to a nearby convenience store for actual sustenance, but she notices the lights on across the street at Alv's. She wonders if it's perhaps a mistake, but she drives the car across the street anyway. To her surprise, the sign on the door says open. She tests her luck for the second time this morning and enters.
Inside, it's empty of course, but the same man from the last time grumpily walks out of the kitchen when he hears the door. "The hell are you doing here?"
"Are you not open?" Alex asks.
"We are," he says. "But no one ever comes this early. No one comes here at all. 'Cept you and your little boyfriend. Didn't realize I was the local hotspot for freaks."
Alex knows she should be insulted by it, but she's so used to being called a freak that it doesn't faze her at all. People would at least do good to develop some originality. She smirks, and bites back, "How's the gambling going?"
His eyes widen and his demeanor completely shifts. "What would you like?"
She orders, satisfied that she was able to make him think twice about insulting her. She realizes that for the first time in her life, she stood up for herself after an insult being hurled at her. It feels good.
She drives out to Reefer Rick's but parks Steve's car down the street in a discreet area. It's difficult for her to carry everything, but she knows that it wouldn't be good to park Steve's car outside of a known drug dealer's house in broad daylight. Unfortunately, it means she has to leave her backpack behind for now.
She opens the metal door to find the place appearing empty, until Eddie pops up from the boat. The second he sees her, he launches himself out of the boat and meets her by the door.
"Heard a noise, was hoping it was you," he says, helping her by taking some of the items from her hands.
She smiles, happy to see him after being away from him for so long and having such a rough couple days. Then she smiles again when he smiles, too. But suddenly his smile falters, and her heart drops.
"Are you… okay?" He asks, brows furrowed.
"Is something wrong with me?" she hurriedly asks and begins wiping at her face and smoothing down her hair.
He grabs her hands and holds them steady. She stares up at him, feeling like she's about to fall into a trance from his dark brown eyes, but he speaks and pulls her back. "No, you look great, of course. Just… seem tired and upset."
To say Alex is shocked is an understatement. She had always been good at hiding her emotions, so good that it sometimes caused rifts between her and those closest to her. Somehow, Eddie is able to read her like a book, and it surprisingly makes her heart swell.
"It's been a rough couple days," she finally responds. "I'll explain while we eat."
They sit on the floor and lean their backs against the wall while she passes out the food from Alv's. "Cheeseburger with tomato and pickle, but no lettuce because the lettuce is super soggy and gross. Medium fry because the large fry is ridiculously expensive. And a chocolate shake, to share."
He beams at her, his hand dramatically over his heart. "You remembered my usual?"
"I like to try and keep the people I care about around."
His eyebrows lift. "So you care about me?"
She smirks and blushes. "Jury's still out on that one, Munson."
The mood turns somber as they eat and Alex rehashes everything that happened in the past couple days, from the jocks' manhunt, to her family being unreachable, to Vecna's curse on Max.
"Damn, and I thought I had a bad couple days," he attempts to make the mood lighter, while he stuffs their trash from the meal in the sack it came in.
"I swear if that shit wouldn't have happened I would've been back here in a heartbeat."
"All is well dear Alex," he says. He discreetly wraps an arm Alex, who indiscreetly collapses into his side. She's had a rough time and she begrudgingly admits that she needs comfort.
He's not wearing his jacket, which leaves his arms bare. Alex leans over, and before she knows it, she's tracing the tattoos on his arms. When she realizes she stops. "Sorry… I'm touchy."
She looks up at him to see a slight smirk dancing on his lips. He glances around the area. "Oh, sorry. I was just looking around to see if there was someone else here who was bothered by it."
He slips her jacket off of her shoulders and traces his fingers up and down her bare arms, sending shivers down her spine. "What about you? You have any tattoos?" He saw her without her jacket on Friday, so she knows he knows she doesn't have any tattoos.
She laughs. "No, I mean I thought the nose piercing would be a lot for my mom to handle at first, so I figured I would wait. Besides, I don't have a lot of extra spending money."
"Let me know when you want one I can hook you up with something."
"Mmm, thank you," she mumbles, starting to get sleepy while nestled in his arms.
"Nice shirt by the way, it's really complimented by that ring on your necklace."
"This cool guy gave them to me." She yawns and nestles closer.
"Sorry that the shirt's a bit big."
"It's not that big. Fits me much better than all those band shirts I wear that I poorly tailored myself."
"I thought they looked nice."
She gives a tired laugh and rubs her eye, thinking back to the first time she wore one of said shirts. She had recently gotten into metal in middle school and looked around the thrift store for a band shirt. She couldn't find anything in her size, so she wandered into the mens' section where she found a shirt that was much too big for her. She bought it anyway, thinking that her mom could help her fix it. When her mom had been too busy, she decided to do it herself. It had looked ridiculous, of course, and she'd been laughed at all day at school when she wore it. But she never stopped wearing it.
Eddie says something else, but her eyes are too heavy for her to stay conscious any longer. She awakens sometime later, with her face pressed against something. She lifts her head and looks around in disorientation. She finds an amused Eddie staring back at her, and she notices a wet spot on his thigh. Her hand flies to her mouth where she finds a streak of drool painted across her cheek.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" She sputters, wiping at her face. "Why didn't you wake me up?"
He shrugs. "You seemed to really need the sleep."
"Ugh, so you let me drool on your thigh?" She laughs. "How long was I asleep anyway?"
He glances at his watch. "Just a little over an hour."
Alex glances around and notices five empty beer bottles to Eddie's side. He must've spent the last hour drinking.
"I saved the last one for you." He produces a bottle opener from his pocket and pops the bottle cap off of the last bottle.
Alex takes the bottle and sips it, the flavor being foreign to her. "I've never had a beer before," she admits. "I only drank one other time, at a party sophomore year."
"How was it?"
"I wasn't even trying to get drunk. I had just a few drinks of this horrible concoction and got decently drunk. It was the only party I've ever been to. We were only there for like, ten minutes, because Nancy got too drunk and Jonathan took her home. I waited in the car while he took her inside and I just… cried." She laughs at her younger self.
"Cried? About what?" He asks her, peering deep into her eyes.
"Just stupid drunk stuff…" She says, though at the time she had actually cried about pent up self-hatred concerning her perceived reasoning on why her brother had went missing the year prior.
Alex continues to sip away at the beer; the taste isn't great, but she doesn't hate it. By the time she finishes the bottle, her body feels warm and a bit fuzzy. She doesn't feel like she did at the Halloween party a couple years back. She believes she's experiencing what people call "being buzzed" for the first time.
"Are you drunk?" She asks him.
He's sitting back against the wall with a goofy, yet relaxed smile on his face. A strand of hair is curled around his fingers, and he plays with it absentmindedly. "Just a bit," he answers, then asks, "Are you?"
"A bit," she mutters back. She knows he has a good alcohol tolerance based on what she's seen, so she didn't expect him to be hammered from five beers. He seems more relaxed than usual. She likes this side of him, though she's fairly certain she likes every side of him.
She places her head gently back on his thigh and relaxes. She's enjoying the warm, buzzy feeling in her body when she feels one of his hands playing with her hair. "I've never sat with someone like this before," Alex says.
She almost regrets it the second she says it, but her brain is telling her to be bold.
"Never?" He asks. "Not even with Harrington?"
Alex rolls her eyes, but Eddie can't see them from his position. Feeling more bold by the minute, her fingers dance along the hole in his jeans right above the knee. "I told you this before, Steve is just my friend. I wish it were more normal to people for a girl and a boy to be friends with no ulterior motives. But to answer your question, no, I've never sat this close with anyone."
He hums, like he doesn't quite believe her.
"Have you done this with a lot of other people?" She asks, the boldness from before vanishing for a brief second at the idea that maybe this wasn't special to him.
"No, but of course that makes sense for me. I don't know if you noticed but I'm kind of considered the town freak."
She turns her body, so that the back of her head rests against his thigh and her face peers up at him. He readjusts his hand to rest just beside her cheek. Alex is thankful for the beer and her low tolerance so that she's just the right amount of relaxed, otherwise her heart would beat right out of her chest. "You know, I'm not exactly everyone's first pick to take to prom. Most people around here consider me a freak, too. Though I did just recently find out that I was–or am–the talk of the locker room. They bully me my whole life, but then want to find out who can be the first one to bang me? How messed up is that?"
Eddie looks down at her, a comforting smile on his lips. "Unfortunately, I'm aware. Ever wonder why exactly I hate the jocks so much?"
She sits up suddenly at his revelation. At first she thinks maybe he was joking, but she quickly realizes by his somber smile that he's being truthful. It's at this exact moment that she realizes she most definitely has a chance. Maybe she always had a chance.
Eddie leans in a bit, and Alex copies his movements. She's feeling bold–not bold enough to be the one calling the shots in this situation–but bold enough to follow Eddie's lead. His hand finds her waist, and it ignites fire across her torso. She reciprocates by letting her hand slide behind his neck. They lean so impossibly close that they can undoubtedly smell the beer on each other. It's not the most romantic, but neither really seem to care.
They've almost closed the distance between them when they hear a foreboding noise from outside. Eddie's hand squeezes Alex's waist, and they pull apart. They share one glance before hurrying toward the window and crouching. The view through the dirty window shows Jason and Patrick exiting Rick's house. The relaxed feeling visibly leaves both of their bodies at the same time. Without words, they hastily throw their jackets on. Alex grabs his arm and pulls him toward an open window at the side of the boatshed, but Eddie stays rooted in place.
"What are you doing? We can make it to the car," she pleads.
He shakes his head, and pulls himself from her grasp. "They know I'm here, but they don't know you are. Don't let me ruin you."
She tries to argue with him that there's no way he could ruin her and that she's not leaving him, but he's already pushing her out the window with guilty eyes and a downtrodden face. Once through the window, she lands on the ground with a thud. She backs into the edge of the woods, her heart hammering as she watches Eddie slowly row the boat into the water. Patrick and Jason are on his trail in an instant, yelling insults and threats before diving into the water after him. She peels her eyes away from the water, when she sees Andy walking around the edge of the boatshed. She tries to disappear into the woods, but her foot catches on a tree root and sends her tumbling to the ground.
"Who's out there?" Andy says loudly, straining his eyes in the darkness.
Alex hides her body behind a tree trunk, Andy getting dangerously close to discovering her. She has nothing to protect herself with, and even if she did, she knows she could never fight him off. She can barely see through the darkness, but when Andy has his back turned, she tiptoes her way toward the water. Silently, she submerges herself in the cold water. Andy's footsteps begin approaching the water, and Alex dunks her head under the water to hide. She has no way to tell if he's still there or not, so she holds her breath as long as humanly possible. She reemerges, inaudibly gasping for breath. Andy isn't anywhere in her sight, but she sees Eddie in the boat, with Jason and Patrick right behind him. Heart thudding, she begins swimming toward Eddie with haste and no plan whatsoever. She's still considerably far away, when Patrick's body suddenly shoots into the air above the water. He levitates in place for a moment, before each of his limbs is horrifically broken. Even from this distance, the scene is grotesque. His lifeless body falls back to the water, and once Alex refocuses her attention on Eddie, she finds his figure swimming toward the other side of the shore. She takes a moment to stop herself from hyperventilating, and she follows after him.