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Eddie picked through the records on Steve's shelf, biting his lip.
"Where's all your music, Harrington?" he asked, looking back at Steve.
"That is music, and you have no room to talk." Steve walked over to him, gently putting a hand on Eddie's arm. He leaned down and kissed his cheek, then opened the drawer underneath the shelf. "If you insist on listening to your trash, it's in here. I hid it because my parents were here last week."
Eddie laughed, reaching for a Dio record. "Wish I could be as oblivious as you, Princess."
Steve stepped away from Eddie, allowing him to back up and turn toward the record player. "Where's Red, anyway?"
"She's at the Byers' place, she wanted out of the house. I'm happy to see it, she's been getting more confident about moving around on her own."
"Good to hear."
Steve nodded softly. He watched Eddie set the record up, leaning forward in his chair. He was bouncing his leg. Steve would have assumed, years prior, that Eddie was excited, bouncy in his usual way. Eddie wasn't afraid of much. He certainly wasn't afraid to make a bad impression. He was quite happy to bounce up and draw attention to himself, away from those around him. He'd always been full of more energy than the entire cheer team. But now, having spent time with Eddie, having been one of the people who been there for him when he was adjusting to life after the Upside Down, Steve knew better.
Something was eating at Eddie.
Steve cast a glance to the little statue on the shelf, the gift that Eddie had given him. He remembered the promise he'd made.
Whatever it is, I don't need you to tell me. But I want you to know I support it. And I'm here when you're ready.
He waited for Eddie to stop moving before stepping in front of him. He knelt and laid one hand on Eddie's leg, stilling it with a gentle squeeze; he brought his free hand up to cup under Eddie's chin. Eddie met his eyes, that wide grin firmly on his face like a mask. Steve leaned in and pressed his lips to Eddie's forehead, closing his eyes.
"If something's up, you don't have to pretend to be happy."
Steve didn't immediately pull away. He stayed there for a moment, letting Eddie process the words. Finally, he leaned back and looked at Eddie again.
The mask was dropped.
Eddie's eyes were watering. His grin had fallen away. His leg was practically vibrating under Steve's hand, and his breathing was coming a little difficult. Steve moved his hand from Eddie's chin to his hand, squeezing gently.
"Do you need anything? A moment of privacy, a hug? Something to drink?"
Eddie moved his other hand to fiddle with his watch. Steve waited for him to speak, to answer, to process.
"Can I-" his voice broke. He swallowed and glanced down. He took a deep breath and tried again. "Can I just have a glass of water?"
"Do you want me to bring it to you or do you want to get it yourself?" Steve asked softly.
"Can you get it?"
Steve nodded. "Of course."
Steve headed to the kitchen to grab Eddie a cup of water. He stopped before he left the kitchen, setting it down on the counter. He grabbed a small plate and some strawberries, pulling the tops off. He brought them back into the living room, where Eddie had moved from his wheelchair onto the couch. Steve handed him the water first, letting him take a drink.
"Brought you these too."
Eddie looked up at him, accepting the strawberries, and shifted, looking a little bit uncomfortable. Steve took a step back, so as not to crowd Eddie.
"Do you need anything else?"
Eddie took a moment to speak, instead putting the water on the end table. When he did, he didn't answer his question.
"Stevie? Can we... Talk about something?" His voice had lost the typical, animated fashion he normally spoke with. It was like he'd lost all energy to put into his speaking.
"Yes. Anything. What's on your mind?"
Steve sat on the chair next to him, putting enough space between them that Eddie didn't feel trapped but could reach over and touch him if he needed to. He knew that Eddie's needs changed. He knew sometimes Eddie needed someone close, but he also knew that sometimes Eddie reacted to physical touch like he'd been stabbed.
Eddie started bouncing his leg, fidgeting with his watch. His eyes were trained on the ground.
"Um. Jane."
Steve nodded slowly. "Yeah?"
"She grew up in, um. In a lab. With her powers being studied?"
"Yeah, um. She got out in '83. The same day Will Byers went missing."
"She's... Her emotional and social development were pretty stunted." The fidgeting got worse as he spoke. "She probably still has nightmares, still feels useless when her powers won't do what she needs to get done. She's struggling to fit in with any group, even just the party."
Steve nodded. "Yeah, that's. About it, with her. Her whole life story."
Eddie shook his head. "No. It's not."
"No?"
"Sometime in the late 70s. She would've been about seven or eight. Something happened in the lab."
"Did she tell you about this?" Steve asked, softly. He knew that Eddie'd been taking an active interest in helping El adjust to everything.
"She's only one of the kids from the lab, there were eighteen." Eddie sniffled, and Steve realized Eddie was fighting tears. "One of the kids escaped a few years before that, one of 'em was Vecna. Jane survived."
Steve's arm acted of its own accord, reaching to touch Eddie's; Steve realized and stopped it. His heart broke. He could only imagine what Eddie was going to say. What El must have been feeling when she told Eddie.
"Jane, um." Eddie shook his head. "I'm pretty sure it was quick. For most of them. But the other kids... They died. They all died that day. And Jane was the only one left in the lab, with Papa. With the tests. Do you know what those tests were like?"
"I mean. That's... Not really something she talked about with me. I don't know anything about it."
Eddie shook his head again, more forceful this time with it. "Papa would... Would take the kids into a room and pit them against one another, when they were there. They would, um. They'd have to turn a light on. Make it dance around a circle. If they did it well, they might get something like a candy. There was one time when pretty much it was... It was like a psychic fighting ring. The winner of that one- Jane- she got an hour of free time."
Steve mulled over the information for a moment. "That'd... Probably be living hell. I can't imagine it being healthy."
"It wasn't." Eddie cleared his throat. "I was late. That day."
"What?"
"I was late that day," Eddie repeated, voice quiet.
Steve looked at him, confused. Tears were streaming down Eddie's face. He was still fiddling with the watch, rotating it around his wrist over and over. He held something in his hand, knuckles white with the force of his grip. He was still staring at the ground, leg still bouncing. He was shivering, as though he'd just been dunked below ice-cold water. His voice grew strained.
"I had slept in. That was against the rules, and... You didn't want to break the rules. You didn't want to be in trouble. Papa hurt you if you broke the rules. So I was running. I opened the door and... And I hit the wall. I passed out. I woke up in a car." Eddie cleared his throat. He stopped rotating his watch, instead tapping on the face of it. "I... I don't know her name. I don't remember much about her, at all. But there was a guard who was fired. She brought me out into the woods, told me Papa thought I was dead. She brought me to my uncle, and that's when I moved to Hawkins."
Steve stared at him. His stomach felt like it was hardening to stone as he realized, slowly, what Eddie was describing.
"Eds..."
Eddie swallowed thickly. "It was hell, man."
Steve reached out again, slowly, and wrapped his hand around Eddie's wrist. Eddie turned his head, slowly, to meet Steve's eyes. He didn't pull his arm away, and Steve tightened his grip a little bit.
Steve hadn't seen Eddie look this ruined before. He'd seen him look awful, seen him in pain and exhausted and anemic. But this was different.
This was bags under the eyes that Steve swore hadn't been there half an hour prior. This was a man so exhausted he couldn't muster up the energy for a good, soul-cleansing cry. This was fever-sweat and constant tears. This was fear, of the past, of the future, of the now and of present company. This was remnants of nightmares from last month. This was the Upside Down trapped in Eddie's eyes. It was isolation in a crowded stadium. It was the kind of cold you can't fix with hot chocolate and a bonfire. It was someone who had laid his heart down, watched patiently as it was dissected. Someone who was fully prepared to scoop up what was left and walk away slowly. This was a shattered eggshell of the usual bouncy man Eddie was.
"Eds, does... Are you saying what I think you're saying?" he asked softly.
Eddie didn't answer out loud. He didn't make any noise. He didn't move his mouth or his head at all. Instead, he turned the face of his watch down, undoing the clasp and lifting his arm up. He let the watch, which haven't worked since the lake, fall onto the couch.
Steve pulled his eyes away from Eddie's face, instead looking at his arm. He didn't know quite what he expected; track marks, stitches, a burn. He didn't expect a tattoo, far from the ink Eddie normally used.
010.
Steve bit his lip, looking back at Eddie. He waited a moment, for Eddie to make any kind of movement or say anything. When Eddie just stayed there, near catatonic, Steve moved. He stood from the chair to the couch and pulled Eddie tightly to his chest. The metalhead's arms were pinned between them, to both of their chests. Eddie sat stiffly for a moment, but quickly melted into Steve's touch, curling into his boyfriend. As Steve rubbed his back, played with his hair, Eddie let himself begin to cry.
The force of his sobs shook both of them. They reached into Steve's chest and tore at his heart, scratching at it until he could feel the pain Eddie was experiencing.
Steve gently tapped his fingertips against Eddie's spine, mimicking the record Eddie had turned on a few minutes ago. He hummed softly to him, redirecting the energy of the sobbing and beginning to rock slowly. Eddie pressed himself into Steve, as if he was trying to merge with him, to seek shelter within his body. He stayed there wracked with sobs for almost an hour before he finally started to catch his breath and calm down.
Eddie shook as he came down from the place in his head, but he let some of the tension leave his body. He sniffled and pulled away from the embrace, casting a glance around the room before looking back at Steve nervously.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice hoarse.
"Don't be. Here, drink." Steve grabbed the glass off the end table, offering it to Eddie.
Eddie obliged, taking a sip. He tried to smile, but it took too much effort, so he stopped. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you."
Steve shook his head. "No, no. It's okay. You don't need to apologize." He reached up and carefully wiped Eddie's face. "It's... Not my business unless you want to make it my business. And it's clearly not an experience you enjoy revisiting."
Eddie shook his head softly, letting out the smallest hint of a laugh. "No. It's not."
"Does El know? Wayne?"
Eddie shook his head. "Jane doesn't know. I didn't tell her and I'm pretty sure she thinks we're all dead. Everyone but me, her, and 008."
"And Wayne...?"
"Wayne knows. He's the only reason I survived being brought out of it. He put everything into making sure I'd be able to adjust." Eddie shifted in his seat. "He always did his best for me. He... Never had kids of his own, but he always treated me like his own."
"If... If you don't mind me asking... You and El both talk about Papa. I don't know who that is."
"He was, um. He was the guy in charge of it all. He worked with us all on our powers. We called him Papa, but... I don't think he was anyone's actual dad. He didn't treat us like a dad should, I don't think."
Steve nodded. "So you, what? You can levitate things too?"
Eddie shook his head. "No. I can't do that. God I wish I could sometimes." He waved his hand toward his wheelchair. "My powers are different."
"If... You don't mind me asking?"
"Limited clairvoyance, but I don't practice with that anymore. It's hard to control and makes me sick when I do use it. I knew, before Papa did, I think before 008 did, when 008 was going to escape. I knew something was wrong the day that I escaped, the only reason I woke up at all was I felt sick."
"Did you know something was going to happen to Chrissy?"
Eddie shook his head. "No. Well. I knew something was going to happen. Something awful. But I didn't know who to, I didn't know what it was. I, um. Take drugs when that happens. So I don't have to deal with the feeling. Besides, it's usually something like. A car crash. Nowadays."
"I see..."
"Clairvoyance was only one of 'em. The one Papa really wanted me to use." He cleared his throat. "But there were other ones, too. I can... Affect chance. Like when dice roll. If someone rolls a die, and I want it to land on, like. Two. I can make that happen. In the lab, I did it with a Magic 8-Ball. But I can do it with other things, too, if I can visualize it as a die. If I know the odds."
"Do you use that?" Steve's thoughts wandered to when Dustin would rant about how difficult Eddie's campaigns were.
"Not the way you're probably thinking." Eddie looked at him. "I like to let the dice roll on their own, when we play games. It's the fun of it. But, as you know, I run a lot of the D&D games for the party. If it looks like I threw something too hard at them, I'll change some dice rolls to make sure they can win. I um. I'm also scary good at statistics, and most math. I think because of that."
Steve nodded. He lifted the glass again. Eddie pulled further from the embrace and took the water from Steve's hand. He downed the rest of it before he spoke again.
"There's one more, er. Maybe two. I count it as one because they feed on one another."
"Yeah?"
Eddie turned and pointed to the guitar-and-bat statue on Steve's mantle.
"I didn't just design that. I can... I can make illusions. Pictures in my head of what I want everyone else to see. And if I push myself, I can make whatever illusion I'm casting real. I made that. I make a lot of the dice I play with. I made the ones I gave Max, I made the minis we play with." He nodded toward his chair. "A lot of those magnets and patches, some basic repairs I've had to do on that. I can conjure things, I can fix things. The bigger or more complex, the harder it is on me."
"You keep mentioning 008?"
"Yeah. Me and Jane's big sister. She, um. Our numbers were assigned based on birth order. 008 escaped when we were little. We were like... really little. She had illusions, but she couldn't affect reality like I could." Eddie's leg resumed bouncing. "She ran away using that, I think. It's why we got moved."
"What do you mean, got moved?"
"From one facility to another. We used to live in a facility that was so low-security that an ordinary woman was able to find us. She was looking for Jane. After that... After that, 008 used her illusions to get through the guards. I never saw some of those people again. Or 008. I hope she's doing okay now, hell knows I'm not. Um. We moved, so that it wouldn't happen again. The new lab... It was bigger. We could all fit in the Rainbow Room together. We went there every morning when we woke up, which was nice."
Steve nodded slowly, listening to Eddie speak. It was clear he needed to let it all out. When he stopped talking, he reached grabbed Steve's hand and squeezed gently. Eddie squeezed back and looked at him.
"Please don't tell Jane. I... I don't know where she's at, in her life. I don't know if she's gotten past it."
Steve nodded. "No, no. I don't think that... I don't think it's my place to tell anyone anything like that."
Eddie nodded, biting his lip and looking down. "I still have nightmares about it. If... If we weren't well-behaved, Papa'd put this collar on us. And he had this remote control, and he'd use it to shock us right in front of everyone else. The humiliation made it stick, if we were to believe what 002 said. Or we'd be locked up in isolation for a while. I know Jane's extremely claustrophobic."
Steve's grip on Eddie's hand tightened, grounding him in the moment. It felt protective, safe. Eddie leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
Outside, rain began to fall. It came slow, at first, barely audible, but as the record played out, it got louder. Harder. Eddie listened to it, tilting his head slightly and nodding his head. He didn't have the energy or motivation for a full headbang.
"I'm... Can I call my uncle? I said I was coming home, but... I don't want to go home. I feel safe here. I feel safe there, too, but..." Eddie looked to Steve. "Wayne never went through anything with the Upside Down. He doesn't understand it... It feels less alone when I'm with you."
"You don't have to justify it, you don't even have to ask." Steve leaned over and kissed Eddie's forehead, before pulling back. "What's mine is yours."
Eddie laughed a little bit, then leaned up and met Steve's lips with his own.
Everything felt safer now.