Beyond his own shit, everything else is weighing on the others, too, Eddie can tell: Will is still barely speaking to any of them after what happened the other day, El is getting quieter by the day, all of the building pressure paired with their joint inability to find Vecna a heavy burden to bear, and Max is a lot like Eddie, plagued by nightmares and irritability, enough so that she snaps at Lucas in front of everyone when he asks her if she's okay.
Eddie keeps giving her guitar lessons, which seems to be one of the only things keeping them both sane, these days.
"It's not like it was last time." She says, trying to strum an F chord and having trouble making her fingers reach. "It's like...last time I knew it was Vecna because I could feel him, you know? I was seeing things, hearing things, and even though they felt so real, there was still part of me that knew. But this..."
"It's not like that." Eddie finishes for her, reaching over to adjust her fingers.
"No. I mean, I know I'm probably acting like a jerk, but I don't think that's him, right? Unless...it is?"
Eddie wishes he had anything helpful to say, but he doesn't, too caught up in his own dwindling sense of certainty. "Unless it is." He agrees. "I'm sorry that I don't know. I'm glad that somebody gets it, though."
Max gives him a small smile. "I'm glad, too. Are you...holding up?"
"Oh, you know." He drawls, playing a little riff to have something to do with his restless hands. "Not really."
"Yeah, I don't think anybody is." She says. "Will, especially, but...everybody's fighting or miscommunicating or sneaking off. It's the last thing we need."
Eddie tilts his head. "Sneaking off?"
"...Well, yeah, I can always hear them go. There's some weird love triangle thing between Jonathan and Steve and Nancy, I think, but I honestly don't know."
Eddie's stomach drops somewhere around his shoes. "What?"
Max moves back to a D chord, repeatedly placing her fingers every time it comes out slightly wonky to try and get it right every time. "...Yeah, none of us know, really. But Nancy and Steve have been spending a lot of time together when we're out doing all of her tests, and Jonathan seems bothered by it."
She doesn't know better. Eddie knows she doesn't know better. It's an easy assumption to make; it's the one he'd made back when he'd first seen Steve and Nancy, back when he was convinced that Steve was the most heterosexual dude he's ever met, that him and Nancy were clearly having some sort of revival of whatever old shit they used to have.
Then, well, everything else had happened: days and nights spent together until that kiss, which was followed both by many more days and nights spent together and many, many more kisses. There's no doubt that Steve is into him now, not after two months of this little thing they've got going, of doing every relationship-ish thing in the book, of movies and flirting and mixtapes and really, Eddie cannot stress this enough, so much making out.
Still, though, he feels something burn in his chest, every memory he has of Steve mentioning his old relationship with Nancy building up into this awful ache, every memory of Steve reaching for his hand around everyone else then changing his mind compounding the ache into something sharper.
"Your pinkie needs to be higher." He says quietly.
"Thanks." She says, sliding her pinkie up. "Are you good? I just felt this, like, jump in your heart."
"Just worried about what's next." He says, not technically a lie. "I kind of want to lay in the dirt and just give up, you know?"
"Here," Max says, setting her guitar down and pulling something out of her pocket before holding it out expectantly. It's a mixtape. "I wanted to let you borrow this."
Eddie takes it gently, strangely touched. "What is it? Another vampire mix?"
"Something like that." She says, giving a wry smile. "You can look at the songs and see if you can figure it out."
There's no title, just a list of thirteen songs:
Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) - Kate Bush
Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
How Soon Is Now? - The Smiths
Sea, Swallow Me - Cocteau Twins
Pictures of You - The Cure
Edge of Seventeen - Fleetwood Mac
I Want You Back - The Jackson Five
Psycho Killer - Talking Heads
Vienna - Ultravox
Stand So Quiet - Altered Images
Temptation - New Order
Army Dreamers - Kate Bush
Heroes - David Bowie
"Hmm." Eddie says, scrutinizing each song. "The Jackson Five is jumping out at me...especially followed by Psycho Killer."
"That was Lucas's contribution." She laughs, already looking lighter at the mention of it.
"Is it...your favorite songs?"
"Sort of. It's more like..." She trails off, like she's looking for the right words. "When I woke up, I was so completely overwhelmed with... everything. I couldn't see, so there was the terror of that, of knowing that I never..." She clears her throat, a resolve settling over her features. "That I never would again. But I also had all these new senses, these smells and sounds and feelings that I had no idea what to do with, how to control. And literally the only thing that helped was music. And so I would listen to your vampire mix, and the one of my own that I made, but also...this. It's all of the songs that remind me what I love about life. About music. And I want you to hold onto it for right now, for when you're afraid."
Eddie stares down at the tape, a lump the size of Indiana lodged in his throat. "...Are you sure? Don't you want it right now?"
"Oh, I'm definitely expecting it back." She says. "...Plus you'll probably not be able to handle a mix without a single metal song."
"No, I love it." Eddie says emphatically. "Metal or not." He feels insanely protective of her, all of a sudden, of everyone in this little bunch, and he knows he'd do anything for them. "...Thank you, Max. This is badass."
"Don't thank me for a tape! You literally saved my life."
"Yeah, but only because your boyfriend yelled at me to." Eddie points out.
Max gives a small smile. "Still counts."
