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Nothing puts a damper on an evening quite like the introduction of a new-and-improved vampire Vecna.
Steve knows it's stupid, he really does, but he'd kind of been looking forwards to watching Dirty Dancing with Eddie. He'd had Vickie pick it up for him from Family Video and had been planning to put it on tonight with some popcorn that Eddie would get mad at him for eating, complaining about vampire discrimination while still throwing kernels into his mouth for him to catch. There's nothing he likes doing more with Eddie than watching cheesy romances (well, almost nothing) because there's no better feeling than when he wins him over with a particularly good one, getting him to stop complaining about the acting or the plotholes or the predictability of guy-gets-girl plotlines for a few moments as he gets caught up in the big fight or the big confession or the big kiss in the rain.
Now, instead of that, they're sitting in silence, a heavy tenseness settled over the room. They had known that this was coming, obviously, but it's one thing to discuss it in abstract terms and another thing to see Will on the floor, to see Eddie scratching at his face like he's trying to crawl out of his skin.
Eddie almost seems back to normal after the lingering adrenaline fades, but Steve can tell that there's something different, something wrong, like there's a strand of connection in his mind that he can't shake off, one that he can't turn on and off like the others. Max seems to feel it, too, immediately withdrawing into one of her tapes and hiding underneath her headphones while everybody else talks, her shoulder pressed into Lucas's like she couldn't stand not to be near him.
It's objectively bad, they know that, but they all pretend that it's okay anyway, that because they'd seen this coming that somehow means that they're in any way more equipped to deal with it. Eddie does his best to answer everybody's vampire-based questions, ones like Does he feel different now (Yes, but Eddie isn't sure how yet) and Do you know where he is (still no) and do you feel like attacking any of us right now? (A little bit, if they don't cool it on the questions).
Cooling it on the questions means sitting in silence, though, which is worse, but which Eddie seems to prefer, back to his spot by the window. El and Will are slightly more open to questions, but they're similarly light on answers: El will try to find him through her salt-pool later, but she's not optimistic, and Will is mostly still just hung up on the he's happy thing, repeating it as the answer for most of what they ask him. All in all, having four psychic members of their little group doesn't actually seem to be helping very much.
Argyle, Vickie, and Robin give Eddie a wide berth for the rest of the day, sticking to their rooms after everyone else leaves, and Eddie just sticks by the window, staring out at the dark sky and darting his eyes down whenever he speaks, his knee practically vibrating with how fast he's jiggling it. "What...what're you doing?" Steve asks, sliding in to sit next to him, hand on his knee to slow it down.
"Looking for Garfield." He answers, not bothering to explain.
"Like...the grumpy orange cat?"
Eddie shakes his head. "Bat. I connected to her earlier."
"...And you named her Garfield?"
"She named herself Garfield, dude. It was out of my hands."
"...Was she, do you think...tied to what happened?"
"...Nah. She doesn't like him, I could feel it. What happened with him was..." Eddie's arms come up, wrapping around his knees. "Inevitable."
"Inevitable doesn't mean irreversible, Eddie. If we need to...stake him through the heart, choke him with garlic, whatever, we'll do it. No big deal."
