Work Text:
The snow continues to fall. Not in harsh breezes, not in violent torrents, but slowly. Quietly. It creeps down from the clouds on fields that were just beginning to bud with life. If Steve was feeling any less cynical and tired, he’d say the flakes fell almost guiltily, self-aware of their untimely descent. But he knew nothing connected with the Upside Down could ever be capable of feeling sorry. It was them, the people who had to deal with it, that carried constant guilt and a feeling of wrongness.
He stares at the white flecks, feeling that familiar feeling of things happening at the wrong time. He never had the best timing. He’s beginning to think that’s his curse or something.
It’s snowing in April, and it’s too late to think about Eddie Munson’s smile right now. So he tries not to, and looks down from the window.
It’s turning into mush down there: it’s not quite cold enough for the snow to stick properly, so it’s steadily becoming grey wet sludge. He eyes the layer of it with mild disinterest. Standing so close to the window makes the hairs stand on his arms, but he thinks the cold air might ease his head, so he stays put. It’s been a long day of doing volunteer work, where everybody’s emotions are laid out bare, everyone is hurting for different yet such achingly similar reasons, and Steve’s own hurt is pleading to be let out too. But it’s all too much; there’s so much to do to help others, and he doesn’t know where to put all that… that, anyway.
He shakes his head to himself, refocuses his gaze on the ground which was threatening to turn into a zoned-out blur.
There are faint dents on the sludgy ground that vaguely look like footprints that he swears weren’t there five seconds ago. They lead towards the house, but directly at him.
He has a confusing moment to himself, a second or two, where he wonders why a postman – or whoever it is – would be stupid enough not to find the main entrance to the house, and whether anything he sees is real anyway.
And then…
Then Eddie’s at his window, rapping his knuckles against the glass.
Steve is already opening the window before he believes his eyes. Well, he doesn’t think he can believe them. He can barely breathe, and his hands feel slack and tense at the same time, but he manages to fumble the window open. Believing can come later, if it ever will.
It’s Eddie. Steve shivers at his small grin and the cold air that sweeps in with him.
“Harrington,” Eddie greets him. “Your folks home? The house looked empty. Mind if I come in?”
There are snowflakes in his hair.
“This is a dream,” Steve says, just in case.
Eddie tilts his head, a twinkle in his eye. “That’s so sweet of you.”
Steve ignores his teasing sarcasm.
“You- how? How? Dustin said…,” Steve starts, but something catches in his throat. It overwhelms him; he feels like he can’t breathe soon.
He steps back from the window, looks away. Looks back.
Eddie’s still there, looking at him.
“Sure, come in,” Steve says instead, gesturing around the room aimlessly.
His eyes sweep over Eddie frantically as he clambers in. He looks…
Not dead, for starters. His hair’s damp from the snowfall, but still its curly, recognisable mess. In the quiet glow cast by the nightlight in the corner, he looks a little pale and drawn but so… vivid. His keen eyes find Steve’s and he feels taken aback at their intensity. Looking away for a moment, he notes that Eddie’s wearing a different outfit he remembers seeing him last in, now all-black with a simple, black leather jacket on. There are some dark stains on his shirt, but nothing that makes him look like he’s just crawled out from… That he’s come back from -
“Dustin said there was so much blood,” Steve blurts out. He has to breathe in several times before continuing, and Eddie’s just staring at him patiently. “He saw you die.”
“I almost did, man,” Eddie says lightly. He must have seen a desperate look on Steve’s face, because his manner becomes more serious. “That superhero kid of yours? She did something. I don’t know what, but I just woke up, got the hell out of there and… I’ve been pretty much hiding since. I’ve gotten pretty good at that.”
Steve didn’t know El could even do something like that, but whatever happened to Max wasn’t normal either – you don’t just come back from the dead out of pure luck. Miracles don’t exist in Hawkins. But it’s too big to wrap his head around. He can’t. Not when Eddie’s there, looking at him.
“We left you behind,” Steve realises with a pang.
“I don’t blame you. You’re lucky you made it out too.”
“But…,” Steve tries. He doesn’t know what to think, his head is swimming. “Dustin-,” is all he can manage.
“Don’t tell him,” Eddie interrupts. “I want to do it, I just don’t know how to yet, and I don’t want to shock the poor kid. You’re the only one who knows. As far as everyone is concerned, I’m dead.”
The word stings. “But you’re not,” Steve says stupidly, for reassurance.
Eddie just smiles at him.
“And it’s not a dream?”
Eddie steps closer to him.
“But you…,” Steve hesitates as he looks him over again. He pictures Eddie hiding in Hawkins in the cold weather and wonders at his appearance. Although he’s pale, his cheeks have some redness to them. “Look good? Considering.”
“You flatter me, Harrington,” Eddie laughs. His grin is a bit more reserved than it used to be, less wide. But it still causes a swooping feeling in Steve’s stomach. “I’ve been able to find shelter. Lots of abandoned houses around these days.”
Steve nods absently, still eyeing Eddie’s cheeks and wondering whether Eddie’s lying to him and it’s fever instead. But his eyes don’t have that half-glassy look of being sick. He looks sharp, present, assessing.
But Steve can’t help but worry.
“Mind if I take your temperature?” he finds himself asking.
Something flickers in Eddie’s face, as if he’s suppressing a flinch.
“Don’t. I’m fine.”
“Oh,” Steve says. He feels disappointed in some way. He wants reassurance of something; he suddenly wants to touch Eddie, unsure whether for his own comfort or for Eddie’s. He supposes it’s both, and the want turns into a need with such a desperate speed that it almost makes Steve want to cry.
“Can I, I don’t know,” Steve says quickly, “Hug you? Or something?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says quietly. He offers Steve a small smile, but not a self-conscious one; there is something about Eddie that’s different. There’s more intent to him, a stillness in between his actions and words that wasn’t there before. Maybe survival had given him a new-found confidence. In any case, Steve is relieved for it, for it’s what’s keeping him in place as he wraps his arms around Eddie hesitantly. At least one of them feels steady when nothing makes sense.
Eddie returns his hug, lifting his hands slowly up Steve’s back. Steve squeezes his eyes closed and rests his head against Eddie’s shoulder. He’d never expected this to happen, and so he’d had no expectations; all he knows is that it feels good to have Eddie’s solid weight against him. Eddie’s hands find their way briefly into Steve’s hair, and his head dips as he smells Steve’s neck.
The tip of Eddie’s nose brushing against his skin tickles him, and the hair that sweeps over Steve’s cheek feels damp and cold. Steve shudders.
He doesn’t want to let go, but the intensity of the moment overwhelms him. He’d never had the time or strength of mind to accept the fact that he might have had feelings for Eddie and then he’d lost him, and now he’s back and it feels… it feels so big. And Eddie is so close to him.
He lets go and takes a full step back to clear his head. Eddie only gives him an inquisitive gaze.
“I’m sorry,” Steve says. He’s not sure what for, but his vulnerability feels embarrassing enough to apologise for. He also realises that he’s not being the best host, considering Eddie has had to live in hiding again.
“Don’t be,” Eddie says.
“But, you must be starving,” it occurs to Steve.
“Not really,” Eddie shrugs. For once, his eyes roam around Steve’s plaid wallpaper instead of his face. “I’ve snuck around gas stations. I promise I’m fine.” He lets out a small, fond laugh. “Now that I’m here, anyway.”
“Oh.” Steve still feels the need to offer him something. “Well, if you want or need anything, just let me know, okay?”
“Hmm. Alright,” Eddie says, and the return of his gaze to Steve feels startling, especially when he doesn’t look away again. “I want something.”
And then he steps forward, back to being close to Steve.
Shit.
Steve doesn’t know how to react. He didn’t expect him to be so forward with him, but then again, wasn’t he always teasing Steve even when they were, still are, barely more than strangers? Maybe it’s the joy of being alive that’s made him even bolder. Or maybe something in Steve’s face gave his own feelings away, he thinks with a sleepy kind of alarm.
For he doesn’t really feel panicky – it’s just, he doesn’t really know how to react. Only his heart does: it starts hammering in his chest as he lets Eddie get closer to him for another hug.
The hug turns into an embrace, and it’s so exhilarating that Steve doesn’t care that it’s sudden, because Eddie lets out a contented hum, or a chuckle, and his face is in Steve’s neck again, and his breath is warm –
“He told me I could play with my food,” Steve thinks he hears Eddie mutter against him, but he isn’t sure with all the blood rushing in his ears.
“What?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” Eddie says and actually giggles, in a breathy way.
And then his tongue is on Steve’s neck, and he can’t think. Doesn’t want to. Doesn’t need to. He just closes his eyes again and entangles his hands in Eddie’s damp curls.
But just as Eddie starts to slowly kiss up and down his neck, somehow getting even closer to Steve, something disturbs them from their haze. That something being the doorbell, being rung in annoying bursts, only stopping for three seconds before starting up again.
It’s Dustin. He knows it’s him, that’s exactly his style.
“Eddie,” Steve says, nudging him with his shoulder. “That twerp biked all the way up here. In the snow. It’s gotta be something important,” he points out, although a large part of him wants to ignore him right now.
“Mmh,” Eddie hums. He backs away, but not without brushing his knuckles briefly against Steve’s cheek.
Steve stares.
And rolls his eyes at the constant ringing. He’s pretty sure Henderson will be throwing rocks at his window next.
“I’ll be right back, okay?” Steve says before running downstairs.
Dustin is talking a mile a minute at him. Something about tracks in the forest, clues, weird things happening in the night – it would sound far-fetched and irrelevant, but Steve knows well enough to believe that he might be on to something. He can’t not believe him, not after that spring, not when things have been left unresolved and nothing makes sense and there’s snow on his windowsill. And an Eddie in his room. But at the same time, he wishes he could scoff at Dustin’s detective work. Wishes he could believe everything was normal, or as close to normal as Hawkins could get, so he could ignore everything and just focus on whatever’s happening in his bedroom.
When he returns upstairs after telling Dustin he’s grabbing his stuff, Eddie’s gone.
Steve’s swapping two grocery bags around in his hands and clumsily juggling a pack of sodas in between as he searches for his car keys. He finds them, drops them on the gas station parking lot next to his car, tries to pick them up, and drops one of the bags.
He sighs tiredly and stoops on the wet tarmac to pick up whatever bag of chips he’s spilled when a pair of dirty sneakers appear in his field of vision. And a pair of legs in black jeans.
A hand reaches for the chips, turns them around.
“Cheese and onion?” Eddie wonders out loud. Lucas’s go-to. “Kids leave you all alone to do their grocery run?”
With his free hand, he tilts Steve’s chin up to look at him from where Steve’s crouching. Steve tries to remember how to formulate sentences; he didn’t know when to expect to see Eddie again, and what he would like to call his usual suaveness is evaporating into thin air. He just gapes at him.
“Hey, you,” Eddie says, and drops the chips into Steve’s hands.
“I – yeah, everyone’s busy working on the house – wait, you don’t know about the house yet, never mind, what are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here, there’s people,” Steve flounders, eyeing the half-deserted parking lot quickly. The streetlight above his car is broken, so there’s at least some darkness to cover them. But still.
“I won’t stay long. I was just famished,” Eddie explains with humour in his voice, but of what Steve can see in the semi-darkness, his face does have a sharp, hungry edge to it.
“Shit, you okay?” Steve asks, and lifts one of the grocery bags towards him out of worry.
Eddie laughs for some reason, and the hand that’s still under his chin brushes up against his jaw.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I almost got a taste for something.” He gestures distractedly towards the gas station with his other hand but has his eyes on Steve.
Steve furrows his eyebrows.
“I’m okay. Keep your groceries,” Eddie reassures him, shaking his head in amusement. He drops his hand away from Steve’s face and stoops for something else on the ground. The keys. He twirls them around in his finger and eyes Steve with an assessing look. “What did he want? The other day.”
“Dustin?”
“Mm,” Eddie nods and turns his back to Steve to open his car.
“Oh, stuff about dead hares and tracks and so on. He’s still working on it, but he’s onto something,” Steve says, getting up unsteadily. “You’d know if you’d stayed.”
Eddie huffs a quiet laugh. “Maybe I’ll stay longer next time.”
The car locks click open, and Eddie turns his head to glance at Steve, his curls bouncing a little with the movement.
“Your parents home?” he asks.
“They are actually, for once. They’re considering selling the house, so they’re around sometimes for all the paperwork and shit and whatever ‘better’ plans they’re making,” Steve sighs.
Eddie considers something for a moment. “Meet me somewhere?”
“Where?” Steve asks at once.
“Lover’s Lake?”
“Absolutely not,” Steve shakes his head, unsure whether that was a joke or not.
Eddie eyes him with an upturned corner of the mouth, like it was a joke. He reaches into Steve’s car, rummaging around for something. He emerges with a road map and a pen.
”Let’s see,” he says and flicks through it. Picking a random spot somewhere in the woods, he circles it with the pen and looks up at Steve intently. “Here. Tomorrow night. At ten. You free?”
Steve gets lost for a moment in those round, dark eyes, and scrambles to remember if he’s supposed to be anywhere else that time. He can’t think of anything, can’t think of anything that would even matter more.
“I’ll be there,” he says.
Eddie’s already waiting when Steve walks up to him. He would be almost indistinguishable from the shadows, if a ray of moonlight hadn’t hit him, if he hadn’t turned his face to Steve at the sound of his footsteps.
Some insignificant conversation follows. Steve has a hard time focusing on it, because Eddie is staring at him with such need in his eyes. It doesn’t take long for Eddie to back him against a tree, and -
And then Eddie’s biting sharp kisses into him.
It feels like he’s all over him; it’s too much, it’s perfect, it hurts, and it’s – it’s intoxicating.
Steve can vaguely register the cold rain that’s dripping down through the trees and falling on his face, but the feeling of it is secondary to everything else. It’s almost as if he can feel what Eddie’s feeling – pure elation – and it’s far more interesting than the reality of the dark forest. His head feels heavy with want and his eyes keep slipping closed.
He's never known he could feel a connection like this. Didn’t know that even when his eyes do fall shut and a sanguine darkness rushes over his vision, he feels more present than when he looks at the dark treetops silently swaying in the spring night. He doesn’t want the stars glittering above, he wants to feel the warm chuckle that Eddie laughs into his neck forever. He does wish he could look at Eddie, but he doesn’t want to pull away from his tight embrace. Wouldn’t be able to, if he tried.
So he holds on to Eddie’s hair and lets the rain soak them, lets the wet grass seep into his sneakers. The piercing chill of it feels like nothing after all, nothing compared to Eddie.
Steve doesn’t remember how he gets home.
Eddie is whispering something to him. Something that feels soothing, but he isn’t sure why he needs to be soothed. They’re together, alone, as Steve is dimly aware that his parents aren’t home that night. He’s forgotten the overhead light on in his room and it’s too bright. The colours in the walls look strange in the yellow light, and if Steve traces the lines in the wallpaper for too long, they begin to sway and blur together.
Something aches in him, a pain that reverberates from his nerves and stings in his bones. Eddie kisses it better.
Steve turns his shaking hands around, inspecting them in the pallid streetlight’s glow. A ringing starts in his right ear, long and tinny, and the combination of it and the radio playing now too loudly make his head feel heavy. He’s glad he stopped before he got dizzy, although there’s nobody on the roads that night.
Leaning his head against the window, he tries to remember if he’d drank or eaten anything recently. At Hopper’s house, right? With everyone?
For a second he wonders if he’d even been there, but he had. El and Will sitting under the same blanket, sharing a packet of cookies. Joyce bustling around everyone. Dustin and Nancy swapping theories.
Something makes him feel as if he’d been absent, like he could have been just a piece of furniture, or not there at all, and it wouldn’t have made a difference.
To whom? Him? He doesn’t know.
He takes in a deep breath. The ringing in his head is slowly subsiding, so he carefully twists around to search for a half-drank bottle of water from under the seats.
And jumps, because Eddie’s in his backseat.
His heartbeat picks up, and a startled heaviness seeps into his limbs: a mixture of adrenaline and unexpected horror. He hadn’t heard him come in at all, but he must have, during his dizzy moment. And yet, he’s achingly relieved to see him. He never knows how to find him or when, but somehow, he does. Or Eddie does.
“Did I scare you?” Eddie smiles at him.
“A little,” Steve admits. Hiding a blush, he glances around the seats. “Can you see a bottle of water there?”
“Here.” Eddie tosses it to him. “Keep your strength up,” he laughs.
Eddie climbs over to the passenger seat and fiddles with the radio stations while Steve drinks. He huffs and laughs in turn at either the news or the selection of music being played.
“I have some tapes, but… they’re probably not to your taste,” Steve says apologetically.
“Yeah,” Eddie says absently, eyeing Steve’s progress with the water.
Feeling self-conscious, Steve finishes the bottle and throws it to the back. “Do you miss all your music, your stuff? Your house?”
Eddie frowns and looks away for a moment.
“Nah.” He doesn’t seem to want to elaborate.
“You haven’t seen your uncle yet? Or told anyone? Dustin?”
“No.”
“Or El? Would she, I don’t know, sense you? If she brought you back?” it occurs to Steve to ask.
Eddie scratches the back of his head with a quick movement that feels very Eddie-like. Steve doesn’t know why he feels surprised by it.
“I don’t think so. Probably an accident. And Steve?” he says, turning his serious gaze on him. “You can’t tell anyone. Understand?”
“No, I know,” Steve promises. “I won’t.”
“Good,” Eddie says appreciatively. He sweeps his brown eyes over Steve’s face in a way that makes him blush again.
“I don’t know, I just wish-,” Steve, flustered, starts to babble, but stops mid-sentence. What? That people knew about Eddie so that they could do something normal, like go on dates? The idea feels silly, and he feels embarrassed, but Eddie is watching him, so he finishes lamely, “We could go to the movies or something.”
He laughs self-consciously, but Eddie only tilts his head with a small smile.
“Then let’s go see one,” he says.
So they go to Steve’s empty house to curl up on the couch, but almost the whole time they watch the movie – Steve can’t remember what it was, some cheesy horror flick – Eddie is just eyeing him, and Steve can’t find it in himself to care about what happens to the screaming couple being chased and ripped apart on his TV.
Not when the glow of the screen illuminates Eddie’s face in a way that make his eyes gleam with a hunger that’s directed at him. And when Eddie climbs over him to claim his place above his jugular, he thinks it was madness to wish for anything else than this, him and Eddie in the near-dark, and a sharp bite that makes Steve feel that it’s him that’s dying for a moment.
Lately the wintry thunderstorms in Hawkins have turned the sky a dark red with their violent bolts.
In the dark night, the flash of a sudden lightning illuminates the hand rising towards the back of his neck, bathes it in rubies.
A warm mouth meets his cheekbone, his jaw, moves under his ear.
Finds his neck.
Steve opens his arms, lets him closer.
“And besides, did you see the shape of them? That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Mm, yeah,” Steve replies. He’s not sure what Dustin is talking about. He’s not even sure what they’re looking for in the forest.
“Dude, are you listening?” Dustin squints up at him.
“Yeah, yeah.”
He feels out of place. It’s a sunny spring day for a change, but the sun is a pale watery thing struggling for life, and he’s fucking freezing in his jacket and scarf. He wonders why he can’t be in his room right now, a soft, curly head of hair between his fingers, a low, teasing murmur in his ear that promises closeness.
When he’s not with him, Steve feels like he’s haunted; he can’t tell anyone about Eddie, and a part of him fears that he’s not real until he sees him again, that he’s just experiencing the ghost of a desire for Eddie that never got expressed. That all of this is either a good dream or a nightmare depending on the way he looks at it. He doesn’t want to wake up, but he feels like he’s losing his touch on things.
“You’re dawdling,” Dustin complains.
“Oh, shut up,” Steve says but picks up the pace, hoping it would warm him. His feet feel heavy.
Eddie’s lips are on his, demanding yet soft, and so warm, so good. Steve kisses him back, a whine building up in his throat. He’s exactly where he wants to be.
He can taste a tang of something rust-like. Metal.
It was very metal, what you did, Steve remembers absurdly, and the memory makes him chuckle and ache with something. Eddie leans his head back and laughs with him, and his eyes crinkle adorably.
There are dark streaks of blood dripping down his mouth.
He does his volunteering work with Robin, but the hours and days blur together: sometimes he’s folding clothes and listening to Robin’s rants, and then he’s dropping the kids off at some or other’s house or the hospital, and he has to try his best to not pass out at the wheel. He doesn’t want to worry anyone, including himself, with how he sometimes doesn’t know how he got somewhere, or what day it is, or what happened in between, because all of them are exhausted and burdened by what happened that spring. And besides, there are bigger things to worry about. Bigger things that fly over his head. So, he goes through the motions; he’s great at keeping secrets.
Steve’s breath quickens. The lights are off, but the moonlight gives the room some illumination. It takes him a moment to recognise that the room he sees is his; he has to keep squinting against the light and the dark, neither feeling right, there is something that he can’t make sense of. He feels lost, he has a sinking feeling like he’s drowning, but the walls feel solid under his hands.
Exhausted, he clambers to his bed, but the sinking feeling becomes stronger. He unsettles something, his hand sinks into something sticky. He tries to see, but it is only after his whole body is drenched in something that he realises his bed is full of blood, that the surface of it keeps rising up and over his body. Droplets trickle down on the floorboards and continue spreading, but the bed never dries out. There’s always more of it, the mattress sinks with the weight of it and the warm blood covers Steve. He's too tired to get out. He wants to cry, but the tears become thick and dark in his eyes, so dark that he can’t see anything anymore.
He gives into it, and it’s only after letting go that the nightmare dissipates. It’s dark when he wakes, and he doesn’t want to go back to sleep after that. But he’s so tired, and the smell of leather and cigarettes soothes him back to sleep.
It takes Steve a moment to notice he’s trembling; he’s grown used to being cold these days. Eddie is stroking his hair with an apologetic look in his face – he’d chosen an abandoned, rickety storage building for their meeting, and the wind is blowing harshly through the broken windows.
“Man, it’s not your fault we’re having this messed up winter-summer,” Steve says with a shaky laugh.
Eddie touches Steve’s cold bottom lip with his thumb and ponders something.
“You’re too good to be wasted like this,” Eddie murmurs, mostly to himself.
Steve doesn’t understand what he means, only that Eddie’s brows knit together and he looks conflicted about something. Steve wants to make that look disappear, so he leans forward and kisses Eddie on the nose.
Eddie lets out a surprised little laugh and shakes his head a little, seemingly to clear his thoughts.
“Do you like the sound of eternity, Steve?” he asks him.
“I don’t know,” Steve replies, confused.
“Would you like to go with me?” Eddie tries to clarify.
“Where?”
Eddie pauses, thinks. Gives Steve a serious look. “Home.”
Steve doesn’t know how to answer, except that he finds himself nodding almost shyly anyway, even though a strange dread lodges itself in his chest. He doesn’t want to understand what Eddie means, he just wants whatever Eddie gives him, never wants to lose him again.
“Yeah,” Steve says aloud. “I just want to be with you.”
Eddie cups his face with a satisfied smile and kisses him briefly before nuzzling home to Steve’s neck again.
Steve forgets about the cold, goes comfortably numb. The sharpness of Eddie is the only thing that feels real.
“You’ll be ready soon,” Steve hears Eddie whisper to him before his vision blurs.
There’s a ringing that won’t stop. Coming from somewhere in the depths of the house, it sounds familiar, but too distant to matter.
Steve turns on his side, lets it lull him to a nightmare.
The next time Steve becomes aware that Robin’s there, there are tears on her face, and it takes a moment to realise that Robin’s been trying to speak to him.
“Steve, please,” Robin pleads. She’s clasping her hands in front of her.
Steve takes one of them, looks around. They’re at work, at one of the empty rooms where they keep all the bags of clothes. There are piles and piles of them, under bright fluorescent lamps that cast everything into a harsh light. Cold sweat beads at his temple.
“What’s wrong?” he asks her.
Robin’s face scrunches up with something – worry – and fresh tears bloom in her eyes.
Oh.
They’re for him.
Steve eyes the distinct and sore puncture wounds on his neck, the dark blue bruises around them. The alarm that comes with the sight of them feels tangible yet difficult to process. He doesn’t want to look at them - his eyes keep wanting to twitch away from them, but Robin is standing right next to him in front of the mirror, holding on to his shirt, forcing him to look.
He feels a surge of anger at her for a moment, and the surprise at the feeling makes him feel as if he’s broken surface and emerged from somewhere dark. It makes his breath catch.
He looks at how pale his face is next to Robin’s. The odd absence in his own eyes.
Outside the bathroom, he can hear the kids clamouring and running around. He hears his name being said in frantic conversations, and it takes everything in him not to close his eyes and press his hands over his ears. He thinks of Max, the way he’s let her down by not visiting her. Of Dustin, who had to find out this way. Of each and all of them that Eddie could have chosen as his victims.
But he chose him.
And – he’s never felt so wanted.
After a while, Robin lets him slide down to the floor.