Eyes open.
I feel the ground rush up to my skin and I catch the doorframe just before my body finishes crumpling.
This isn't anything new.
I'm gasping for breath and my insides are churning, but it's happened before.
I press my face into the side of my arm and force myself to relax into the doorframe.
It usually takes three minutes for my heart to stop racing. Four if you count my reluctance to breath properly.
It's not by choice.
I sit with a steady thump shattering the interior of my chest.
I've never spoken a word about this to anyone, these daydream moments that turn into small panic attacks and fits of dizziness.
Apparently, according to my wobbly self diagnosis, I cannot stay in the dark, even of my own eyelids, for more than a few minutes before an unquenchable wave of trauma knocks me over.
Fun, isn't it?
I wonder how I ever slept before, because I certainly don't do so now.
The only way that it's even possible is because falling into a bed that I'm already lying in is much less destructive to my body than other things. So I try not to fall asleep standing up.
I touch two fingers to my wrist, wait a quiet moment. Then again to my throat.
Seventy three glorious beats per minute.
I can feel them jolting my body awake and setting my skin into a fire of prickles.
"What are you doing?"
I don't need to look up to know who's face the question belongs to.
"Eddie..."
My own voice sounds strained and cautious.
"Before you ask, I know."
I'm surprised. I look up.
Eddie stares down at me, a sweetly familiar smile toying with his lips.
He looks different.
It's not a heavy change, but there is a new glow around his body. He looks like a sunflower.
"How?" I ask.
Now I sound strained, cautious, and small.
"Robin."
I press my lips together and nod slowly.
I guess I should thank her, because I never would have said a word to him, but a nagging feeling is telling me to make sure that she hasn't told anyone else outside of my knowledge.
"And why are you up here?" I follow up.
"Also Robin."
"Ah."
Clearly she chose meddling today.
"Well, you caught me at a bit of a bad time, so...." I trail off.
Hopefully Eddie takes the hint and leaves me alone. I can't handle the perfect way that he is looking at me.
"If you think I'm leaving after what I just witnessed, then you are very much mistaken, Steve."
I will admit, a thick feeling of happiness just touched against my chest.
He called me by my name.
"What about your new friend?" I can't help, but ask the question that's burning in my throat.
Self destructive is a phrase that can often be used to describe my day-to-day actions. This is no exception.
Eddie chuckles lightly.
"New friend?" he repeats as a question, still softly laughing.
The fire in my throat is now a shipwreck at the bottom of my stomach.
"So they are more than that?" I question again, if only to keep my eyes from becoming wells.
Eddie sits down in front of me and takes my face in his hands, two things that I was not expecting after my predictions for this conversation.
"They are not coming," he says softly.
His eyes are tunnelling into mine.
"They never were," he finishes.
I don't breath once as he speaks.
And neither do I after.
Eddie grins and pulls himself closer to me, hands still pressed into my jaw.
And then he does something unexpected.
And I'm not sure if I am going to ever recover from what it does to me.
