Eddie isn't great at dealing with the bad days.
They're happening more and more lately, and where he might've once been able to shake himself out of it with a little self-awareness, now he's trapped in a kind of perpetual state of knowing that his shit is being messed with, but not really having anything he can do about it. He tries really, really hard not to think about Frodo and the ring, about Kas slowly becoming a vampire while trapped in the Plane of Ash, about any other wholly unhelpful fictional examples of characters losing their fucking marbles that his brain wants to fixate on.
Mostly, he smokes and stares at the dead flies in the windowsill, tiny corpses littering the ripped old windscreen. He thinks about them a lot, a constant reminder that death is everywhere around them all the time, waiting patiently (and sometimes not-so-patiently) to tear them apart, to pick a new lamb for the slaughter. Lambs like Chrissy, her thin, pale limbs cracked open like eggshells, her soft eyes rolled back, her body bent and crumpled on the floor. The memory still makes him feel like vomiting when he thinks of it, the feeling that he should've done something, anything, that wasn't just running away.
He also listens to what is objectively a concerning amount of Cocteau Twins songs (introduced to him by Max), the unintelligible lyrics about drowning and dead moths and the ambient instrumental tracks making him feel like he's almost back there, in the Upside Down, in the Plane of Ash, everything around him hazy and dreamlike and terrifying yet not terrifying at all, far too familiar to ever really be scary. He wonders if that's where he belongs. He remembers the intensely settled feeling of sleeping there, like he was hibernating through the winter, snowflakes settling on him until he was covered in a fine layer of ash-crystals, a blissful kind of freeze.
He feels further away from the physical things he loves, things like tattoos and tabletop games and records and hand-sewn patches and bad horror movies and his Warlock, like it's harder to understand how to use his fingers to interact with the strings, clumsy and thick when he tries.
When Steve shows up that night, Eddie doesn't even look up, just continues to stare out the window. "I'm never going to be able to come back, am I?"
"...Like, to public?"
"To life."
"Eddie, you're not dead." Steve sits cautiously next to him. "That's kind of the point."
"Sometimes I wonder."
Steve gently turns Eddie to face him, taking his wrist in his hand and placing two fingers on it. "That feels like a pulse to me." He rests his hand against Eddie's chest, fingers splayed. "And that feels like breathing. Very much alive, if you ask me."
"I tried to pierce my ear." Eddie says, apropos of nothing. "It closed up right away."
"...Well, yeah, that's speed-healing, for you."
"It's just...d'you think that means I can't get any more tatties?"
"...I dunno. Maybe? They're kinda wounds, right?"
Eddie gives a frustrated growl, flopping backwards onto the floor and kicking his legs up. "God, that's a fucking bummer. I was saving up for this dragon on my chest, man, it was gonna be sick."
"It's probably good that you didn't get that. If it turned out anything like the bats, you would've ended up fighting a dragon." Steve tries.
"Good one." Eddie says, completely deadpan.
"Come on, Eddie." Steve tries to pull him up. "You need to talk to us—to me—about what's going on."
"What's going on is that I can't get any more tattoos or play in Corroded Coffin or go literally anywhere where people are or get any fucking sleep or have any real idea where Vecna is or what he has planned for me or kiss my fucking boyfriend anywhere but this awful fucking trailer."
"...What?"
Eddie groans, frustrated with himself. Why does he have to make shit about him? Especially right now? "It's just, like, I'm Alison and I need to brush my hair and wipe my eyes off and wear an ugly pink blouse, right?"
Steve looks completely baffled. "Eddie, what are you talking about?"
"...I don't know."
"You...you really internalized The Breakfast Club that much?"
Eddie sighs. "No, sorry, I'm rambling about nothing." He sits up, hair falling in his face that he doesn't bother to fix, shaking his limbs out to make them stop twitching with all of his extra energy. He's exhausted. And upset. And starving.
Steve seems like he can tell, dropping slowly down next to him like he always does when he can tell Eddie is hungry, carefully folding his legs and, eyes full of implication, asking, "Hungry?"
They do what they always do. Eddie makes a joke about being a creature of the night (though his heart isn't really in it this time), then Steve tenses at the pain of Eddie's fangs before immediately going limp again, his head lolling back. Eddie drinks for longer than he normally would, but Steve must be able to tell he needs it, only lifting his hands to push at him once Eddie's eyes start to slip shut. He pulls back, licking his bottom lip, and Steve immediately leans in to kiss him, which is also what they always do.
Eddie immediately feels more present, more alive, something like warmth back in his body and the feeling of enveloping trust in Steve calming his frayed nerves. He lets himself drop forwards, his body sagging in Steve's arms and his face pressing into the comforting firmness of his shoulder. He can hear his heartbeat, fast the way it always is when Eddie bites him. "If it makes you feel better I can get the tattoos that you want on me, instead."
Eddie breathes a laugh into his t-shirt. "I don't think you're prepared for what that would entail. Especially because most of mine are stick-n-poke cheapos that my friends did, not the crazy shit I would get with limitless Steve Harrington cash."
"Oh, man, like what?"
"Chest dragon, giant bat across my shoulder blades, full arm sleeves, probably my knuckles and maybe some bigger pieces on my legs, maybe a sea monster somewhere..."
"...Okay, maybe you can pick one. And it has to be somewhere hirable."
"Hirable." Eddie echoes. "That's totally a capitalist myth designed to limit our self-expression. But okay, fine. I'll think of a good one."
After a quiet moment of Eddie clinging on to Steve like a baby koala, Steve speaks again, sounding indulgent. "Feeling better?"
Eddie doesn't let go, eyes blinking open as he stares over his shoulder, back at the window, at the dead flies. He doesn't answer.
