[ eddie is no stranger to long and sleepless nights. but those had been typically spent high or a few beers in, with metallica blasting in the background and learning to play along on the strings, or staying up too late re-reading a beat-up copy of lord of the rings or planning the next sick d&d encounter. most of those times had been spent alone, in his uncle’s trailer, hours filled other things. but that was simpler then - idyllic in a sort of fucked up way those things can be now.
and now instead the sleepless nights are this and there’s too little of them yet to call it a habit but it will inevitably turn into one, that much he can tell. that this isn’t just a bad week of dreams, of parsing out reality to a messed up dreamscape, that something about that place, about the upside down and vecna and everything there had sunk its reach straight into eddie's mind and made its home there, insidious and sharp. that he can still feel the place crawling along his skin, leaving gooseflesh along its wake.
and in that newly forming habit, panic, wake up, ignore, rinse and repeat — there sits steve harrington and eddie can’t help but wonder if he, too, will become a habitual fixture. a part of eddie hoped so. steve harrington, coming so far out of left field, and nearly being the only thing that made any sense.
they sit on the floor in the guest room, eddie in an old shirt that still smells of harrington, one leg outstretched and the other folded under him. he wrings his hands together, twists around the rings and there was never a single moment where munson had thought to ask steve to leave him alone. ]
A while, [ he repeats, eyes back on steve, cast in a sidelong glance. see, say what you will about eddie (the freak) munson, but he liked to think of himself as fairly perceptive when he wanted to be. it was easier to be, in the quiet space of some 2:36 am, when it was just them, with a big house cloaked in pin drop silence. when steve held his entire focus, there in the dim light of the bedside lamp, flicked on or never turned off to begin with. he’d be embarrassed about that, but it lets him see enough of steve’s expression too, of the pupils blown as wide as his own, of his own come-down of a bad proverbial high.
he thinks that if this was bad for him — how much worse it must be for harrington, just considering that this wasn’t his first stint with things worse than make-believe. not even his second.
he folds inward, draws his legs up and props his elbows to his knees, head propped between his hands. fingers threaded back through hair. ] It’s like — you’re so tired but, man. Fuck sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see — [ he cuts himself short, as though remembering just who he’s talking to, mouth twisting up in a slight frown, before gently saying: ] — I guess you can image.
[ he considers it for a moment longer, hums. ] They're not better for you yet, huh, Steve?
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and now instead the sleepless nights are this and there’s too little of them yet to call it a habit but it will inevitably turn into one, that much he can tell. that this isn’t just a bad week of dreams, of parsing out reality to a messed up dreamscape, that something about that place, about the upside down and vecna and everything there had sunk its reach straight into eddie's mind and made its home there, insidious and sharp. that he can still feel the place crawling along his skin, leaving gooseflesh along its wake.
and in that newly forming habit, panic, wake up, ignore, rinse and repeat — there sits steve harrington and eddie can’t help but wonder if he, too, will become a habitual fixture. a part of eddie hoped so. steve harrington, coming so far out of left field, and nearly being the only thing that made any sense.
they sit on the floor in the guest room, eddie in an old shirt that still smells of harrington, one leg outstretched and the other folded under him. he wrings his hands together, twists around the rings and there was never a single moment where munson had thought to ask steve to leave him alone. ]
A while, [ he repeats, eyes back on steve, cast in a sidelong glance. see, say what you will about eddie (the freak) munson, but he liked to think of himself as fairly perceptive when he wanted to be. it was easier to be, in the quiet space of some 2:36 am, when it was just them, with a big house cloaked in pin drop silence. when steve held his entire focus, there in the dim light of the bedside lamp, flicked on or never turned off to begin with. he’d be embarrassed about that, but it lets him see enough of steve’s expression too, of the pupils blown as wide as his own, of his own come-down of a bad proverbial high.
he thinks that if this was bad for him — how much worse it must be for harrington, just considering that this wasn’t his first stint with things worse than make-believe. not even his second.
he folds inward, draws his legs up and props his elbows to his knees, head propped between his hands. fingers threaded back through hair. ] It’s like — you’re so tired but, man. Fuck sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see — [ he cuts himself short, as though remembering just who he’s talking to, mouth twisting up in a slight frown, before gently saying: ] — I guess you can image.
[ he considers it for a moment longer, hums. ] They're not better for you yet, huh, Steve?