Dead Girls in Common
Dark, wet, cold. The ground squelches beneath his feet. A scream, blonde hair draped across the ceiling, blood dripping and bones cracking, it should have been me. Like an angel being pulled up to heaven she lifts to the sky. Like a human she falls, a loud squelch and a snap. A child sobs and flesh becomes caught between small teeth. Please leave me here to rot with her, please. The air stinks of metal and he’s covered in something thicker than water.
—
Steve is awoken by a choked cry coming from beside him, he turns to see Eddie sitting upright in his bed gulping for air, sounding almost as if he’s suffocating.
Disoriented from sleep Steve is caught off guard by the sight, this sort of sickening fear washes over him at the sound. He reachs out instinctively, a hand on Eddie’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” He asks hurriedly, heart racing. Eddie just turns to him, his eyes wide.
“Hey man, it’s okay it’s- just, breathe,” he inhales slowly to demonstrate, motioning with his free hand. Whatever’s going on has got Eddie so panicked he’s choking on air, letting out these desperate inhaling whispers trying to force oxygen into his lungs. If he doesn’t slow down he’s going to end up making himself pass out.
“Slowly, breathe slowly.” He affirms as Eddie looks up at, his eyes are wet with tears. “Slowly.”
Eddie squeaks, trying to slow down his breaths, he looks terrified. Without hesitation Steve takes the hand that rests on Eddie’s shoulder, running it up and down his spine, trying to calm him by rubbing circles there.
Eventually Eddie slows down, and with a few heaving breaths, is back to normal.
Steve reaches over and hands Eddie a glass of water from the night stand. He almost gulps down the whole thing.
He breathes out heavily, passing the glass back, “Jesus, thought I was gonna fuckin…suffocate or something.” He pushes out, breath still heavy.
Steve hasn’t moved his arm away, gripping onto Eddie as if he might crumble if he lets go.
“Are you okay?” He asks carefully. Like an animal treading onto ice he’s careful not to cause Eddie to crack, careful not to push too hard.
Despite it all Steve has come to know that Eddie is wrong about himself. He doesn’t run when he’s afraid, he lashes out, quick words and quicker wit.
Maybe it’s the dark or maybe it’s the dream but something in him feels different. He doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head.
It makes him look so small, so frightened and it tugs at Steve’s heart a little. Eddie lies back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling.
“Nightmare,” is all he says, voice low but quiet. Steve nods, he gets them too, a lot more than he used to.
He remembers when they were normal, not linked to any sort of creature from another dimension.
He remembers waking from a nightmare as a child and wanting nothing more than to crawl into his mother’s bed and lie in her arms. That was always his first thought even now, some deep instinct that he could never shake off. He had tried it once or twice when he was small. Seven years old and accidentally waking his father as he tried to crawl into the double bed. His low voice telling him to go back to his room, and to “Start acting your age, Steven”. So he’d walked back alone, determined not to be scared no matter how much he trembled.
He remembers being eight years old, waking up crying. Gently alerting his mother, hoping to sleep in her embrace only to be walked back to his room and told to “be a big boy”. She made sure to emphasize to him that she had work in the morning. He had interrupted a fragile routine and his mother was disappointed. She didn’t say it because she didn’t have to, it was clear already. He didn’t try again after that.
He looks over at Eddie, he’s still shaking a little and Steve honestly just wishes he could hold him. A loud feeling drowning out the melancholic nostalgia that rests beneath it.
Steve lies back on his bed, twisting to face Eddie. He places his hand on Eddie’s shoulder again, leaning towards him. Eddie tenses under his touch so he moves to pull away, embarrassed by the miscalculation, his fingers twitching slightly. But Eddie relaxes, shifts a little closer. It should feel awkward, the sudden jump to something so vulnerable and intimate, but it doesn’t, it just feels good.
Steve trails his hand up over Eddie’s shoulder, pulling him closer until he’s holding him, Eddie’s head in the crook of his neck, his arms snake around Steve’s back in a hug.
“Wanna talk about it or forget about it?” He whispers into the dark, this routine and this question was a common occurrence between himself and Robin during the fall of ‘85. Lying there holding each other as if the other were a life line to the real world, still halfway between the dreamscape of Starcourt Mall and the monsters that wait inside.
He feels Eddie’s breath ghost along his collar bone, shifting back a little to look up at him.
“I-“ he starts, clears his throat,
“I dunno,” he breathes. He looks somewhere south of frightened— haunted almost.
“Chrissy, she just…” he croaks. He scrunches up his face, eyes still wide,
“I can’t,” he shakes his head, “I just can’t,” he repeats, his breath quickening again.
“Can’t— forget about it.” he lets out, strained and sharp.
“She died in my fucking living room, man she- if I didn’t sell to her maybe… I don’t know maybe Carver and his team are right. I might as well have killed her myself.”
The silence in the room is deafening now and Steve aches. A familiar feeling lurching in his gut, that same frightfulness he’s known all these years.
“Did I ever tell you about Barb?” He whispers.
“Holland?”
“Yeah,” he sighs shakily, “she uh, she died here… at my house.”
Eddie doesn’t say anything, just looks at him.
“I didn’t know at the time, I mean-“ he chokes on his words, clears his throat,
“I didn’t notice her, or really care either… I uh- I even snapped at Nance when said she wanted to report her missing.”
“I just… let it happen, I left her downstairs alone… I knew she’d be there alone.” A cold tear runs down his cheek onto the pillow.
“Back then I never really gave a shit about her, I barely realized she was even there the whole time and she died here. Her whole life just… ended, here, because of me. She had friends and a family and dreams and goals and hopes for the future and-“ his voice cracks, “and I barely even saw her as a real person.” He looks back at Eddie.
“What I’m trying to say is I get it, all the guilt and the nightmares. I’m not gonna judge you. You can talk to me.”
—
Eddie feels like this past year everything he knows to be true has been crumbling around him. From Hawkins, to Chrissy to the Upside Down and yet again, Steve. He feels like he’s been given a puzzle with half the pieces missing and every time he thinks he’s got them all, another appears.
Steve’s eyes are glassy and wet.
“That wasn’t your fault man, you can’t blame yourself for crazy shit from a world that you have no control over. You didn’t…kill her or anything it was just… wrong place wrong time.” He says, mostly to comfort Steve but also to deflect from himself.
“Thanks, I feel like I should tell you the same thing.”
Eddie laughs bitterly in surprise,
“Maybe. Feels different though.”
“Why’s that?”
“You don’t have the rest of the town telling you otherwise. Hell, sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone crazy. That I did really kill her and all… this— the upside down, all of it, is just a fucked up coping mechanism.”
“I think your stories are usually a little more interesting than that.”
Eddie barks out a laugh,
“You been listening in to my DND sessions?” He says, grinning despite the dark twisting feeling still present in his stomach.
“Nah, Dustin just never shuts up about you,” he smiles.
Eddie laughs, the memories of Dustin putting him at ease just a little. He sighs,
“Man that kid…”
“Yeah,” Steve exhales, “where would we be without him?” He chuckles.
A warmth settles in his chest at the thought of Dustin talking to Steve about him. Something in that sense of community that they had all started to build. A group of people who know. It’s this thought that he sinks into, allows to take hold of him until his heart rate has slowed and his breathing has evened. As the conversation with Steve fizzles out Eddie eventually drifts off again. Back into the unpredictable landscape of his unconscious mind.