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Eddie is looking at Vecna—also known as Vecna the Maimed Lord, Vecna Lord of the Rotted Tower, and, Eddie's personal favorite, Vecna Master of the Spider Throne. Vecna is looking back at him. He honestly looks even more scrotum-ish than Eddie had imagined. Eddie can hear the deep rasps of his lungs as he breathes, kind of like Darth Vader, and he can hear the struggling pumps of his heart as it barely beats in his chest. He can even smell him, which is sort of like breathing a wet rag dipped in Upside-Down-Juice and decay.
Vecna's also looking at him expectantly, like he's expecting Eddie to talk first.
"...So, dude. Can you get your villain monologue out of the way so that we can finish this?"
When Vecna speaks, his voice is scratchy and low, almost like he's hurt. "Do you know why I brought you here?"
Eddie glares. "I brought myself here."
"You really think that? I birthed you, Eddie Munson. I have power over you the same way that I have power over all creatures of this world."
"What do you want, for me to call you mom?" Eddie lifts his (Steve-inspired) baseball bat, nails sticking out at every angle. "And you clearly don't have as much power as you think."
Vecna, entirely unamused, just stands there, looming over him. "What do you want me to call you?" He leans forwards. "Kas?"
Eddie's chest clenches up.
"That's right, I see inside of your head. I know what you're afraid of."
"If you expect me to be your Kas you picked the wrong guy, you fucking sentient foreskin."
"I don't expect anything from you today." Vecna says, just as cryptic as he always is. "What I need from you right now is just a simple favor."
"...Which is?"
Vecna, very seriously, steps even closer, folding his hands together. "You will turn me."
Eddie's mouth goes slack. He wonders if he misheard, almost wants to ask Vecna to repeat himself, because there's no fucking way. "You want me to do what?"
Vecna doesn't repeat himself.
"...That's, like, objectively silly, you know that, right? You, Vecna, asking me, Eddie, to turn you into a..."—He wiggles his fingers—"vampire."
Vecna pins him with an icy stare. "You don't even know, do you? What you're capable of?"
Eddie snorts. "What I'm capable of? You mean throwing up if I try to eat regular food? You mean having to sleep for days if the deli's out of black pudding? You mean being able to smell every single time somebody in the nearest one-hundred feet of me goes sh—"
"No." Vecna interrupts, "I mean what you can do." He trails a sharp-nailed hand down Eddie's face, the way his fingers scrape against him making his skin crawl. "You have no idea."
"...And why can't you do this for yourself? Go piss off some bats and let them get you?"
"It's different when a human gives you the gift." Vecna says, like he's an idiot who should somehow already know that. "It's purer. That's why Max Mayfield is more...attuned than you are."
"You shouldn't insult someone if you want them to do you a favor." Eddie says, swinging the bat up to let it rest on his shoulder. "I'm guessing you're not going to tell me why you want it?"
Vecna just smiles, the marred skin over his mouth twisting upwards, which is a deeply unsettling sight. "No."
"...Okay, well, whatever you say, man, but I'm not going to do that." The thought of biting into Vecna's fucked-up-ventricle-neck alone is enough to dissuade him completely, even outside of the more obvious reason, which is that if a villain wants something you probably shouldn't give it to them. Eddie doesn't wait for Vecna to respond, just lifts the bat and drives it down, connecting with Vecna's shoulder, and Vecna takes a half-step back, looking incredibly irritated but not that hurt.
