[ 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?
[ part of steve actually thinks he might be over-assuming in a lot of this. because yeah, alright, he's had his fair share of nightmares. of sleepless nights where his brain never really turns off and the worries stack higher and higher until he's fairly certain he's going to collapse under the weight of them. he knows the creeping, unexpected fears that wrap themselves around your ribcage and slowly tighten until you forget what it is to take a full breath for the first time, and he knows the bone aching exhaustion that follows.
but eddie..eddie died. eddie was torn apart by bats. eddie was left in the upside down because they'd all thought it was over, and he found his way back. found some way to communicate, to get steve's attention, to keep going. eddie was left behind in the upside down because he had been dead, and now he was breathing, and steve couldn't even begin to think what that could do to someone's brain. vecna's influence, the upside down's shadow, the demobats' scars. those are grounds for nightmares, and maybe steve is being an ass by being here. if he's inserting himself into the aftermath of every one of eddie's bad nights because some niave part of him thinks that if he can't fix his own shit, maybe he can help eddie's.
a while eddie repeats, and part of steve thinks he said something wrong, while a larger part seems to relax at the companionship in that repeat. in the fact that maybe, somewhere in the early morning and the shadows of the guest room lamp, they both understand.
eddie shifts a bit in how he's sitting, and steve kind of just lets himself watch. lets himself be a bit selfish in how it does help some distant part of him just to watch eddie moving. to watch him breathe, talk, just...move. and maybe it's because these are the hours of the night that steve is usually the most lonely. when he's the most out of touch. there's something about eddie just being here that has been grounding for him, even when he is curled over himself, the tight curl of his frown when he says i guess you can imagine.
and steve just nods, because yeah, he can imagine. he remembers seeing max lifting up into the air. remembers the fear, the panic, the way he'd just screamed. and max had survived. but eddie? the guilt returns, there, turning his stomach in some kind of way that steve almost misses the hum. almost misses the question. but when he catches the end of it, his brows lifting like he's coming back from zoning out. ]
The nightmares? [ even if he'd known that was what eddie meant. still, steve asks, and then whether or not eddie answers, he gives a small shrug of his shoulders. ] Sometimes I think they are, but then other times they're worse than ever. You get kind of used to them, though, which helps. Kind of.
[ there's a pause here, before steve seems to deflate. just a hair, just a breath, but enough. ]
[ maybe this entire thing is based on over-assumption. over-assumption in staying, over-assumption in how eddie feels around steve — quieter, familiar, safe — or how he wonders how steve feels about all of this. about sitting on the floor, not quite criss-cross-applesauce, not quite just hanging out, because the breathing is still broken, still fumbling around the post-nightmare haze. crazier things have happened, he’d have to argue, than king steve wanting to spend time sitting on the floor talking about how neither of them could sleep.
the true depth of the events behind them haven’t exactly caught up with eddie. perhaps there’s cerebral understanding in the fact that he was dead, once, but there is a lack of comprehension. there is still the unshakable dread, that sickly sort of cold that feels sticky on his skin and he can still feel the dark. maybe — maybe the upside down takes more from you than just a pound of flesh. and in all of this, dying had ultimately been the easier part. not in any of the events that led up to it, not the fear or the pain, but — well, he’s not sure how to define it. a part of him didn't want to. but then there was the first breath back, and then everything was moving and thinking and doing and trying to get out, and if it wasn’t for steve, he hates to think how much longer he’d have need to spend down there. so no, steve wasn't ass. steve was a goddamn hero.
eddie turns back around to steve, only to catch him already looking. he blinks, but it’s slow, and the edges of his frown lessen; tightness around his eyes softens. it seems like steve is caught up in his own head and eddie waits with quiet patience, and finds himself wanting to know more of what’s rattling inside there in the first place.
sometimes they’re worse than ever, and eddie deflates at that too. deflates because it givens the unspoken understanding between them shape.
his laugh is sardonic and dry. ] I wouldn’t call it sleeping, Steve. I’d call it losing the battle, maybe.
I’d call it avoiding the inevitable, and you can only run from that for so long, so — [ he exhales, defeated, though the humor seems to be at his own expense. running again and this time from his own mind and doesn't that ever feel like a step down. ] — so I don’t know. Probably got as much sleep as you did, man. [ a gentle callout, if anything, holding steve's gaze for a moment. ]
It feels like it takes a part of you, right? Sometimes I think I'm still there — [ he shakes his head, feels bad for even speaking of it again. ] — if you hadn't come for me, man. If you hadn't —
[ he cuts himself off with a shaky laugh. it's — not that eddie was particularly afraid of being vulnerable as much as maybe he wasn't good at it. and it's just that this particular vulnerability comes with a particularly sharp sense of guilt. the feeling that maybe he's in large part responsible for steve's sleepless nights. sure, even if he stayed dead, it would have stayed the same (over-assumption?) but steve still had to return to go and get him out. because he was too weak and scared of doing so himself. his next words are muttered, quiet and only for the space between them. ] — sorry you had to come down there again. If that — I don't know. Made it worse somehow.
[ there is something about seeing eddie soften that curls, almost dangerously, in steve's chest. or, maybe it's not curling necessarily, but unfurling. loosening something that had been intentionally wedged tight. eddie's frown eases and the lines in his face are a little less defined, his eyes on steve while steve's are back on his.
the sound of his laugh is nice, it's a reminder, even if there is a dark tint to it that steve wishes he could reach across and rub away, like film across a window pane. i wouldn't call it sleeping, steve and steve can't help the way his face does break into something of a self deprecating smile. because yeah, yeah, okay. it's dark, it's kind of edged, but it's true - neither of them are really sleeping, are they? and maybe losing a battle is a sort of over exasperated, dramatic way of putting it, but it's so very eddie that steve can't help but get wrapped up in it. ]
Yeah, yeah, alright. [ and eddie's right, because of course he is. they can't always run from this, they can't always run from everything, and sometimes in those late nights when steve is trying his damnedest just to turn his brain off, it feels a little bit like running.
there is a moment where steve almost tries to make a joke of it, to match pace with eddie's sardonic laugh, to say something about how he bets eddie munson never could have imagined talking about shared nightmares on the floor of steve harrington's guest room. but before he has the chance to open his mouth, eddie's already talking again, saying still there and if you hadn't come from me and sorry and any of steve's smile, any of the humor he'd been holding on to because eddie had offered it to the space between them, slips away. instead, steve just finds himself back to looking at the other boy again. really looking.
steve drops one of his legs flat to the carpet, reaching it over so that his foot pushes at eddie's. he doesn't know why that is what he goes with. why he feels a very sudden need to just have some point of contact, and how that contact can obviously only be shared in a sort of shove, but steve...he doesn't know. he just needs to. ]
Dude. [ because that was the purpose, wasn't it? to get eddie's attention back from whatever thoughts he just lost himself in. to pull him back to this moment, in the semi-dark, while they're sitting on the floor together. and steve...when he speaks next, it's with a kind of exhausted honesty. something he doesn't even try to filter, no matter how vulnerable, or honest, or direct it comes out. ] It can feel that way sometimes, sure, but you're out of the Upside Down, you're never going back. And if for whatever weird, insane, impossible reason you did end up back there, I would go back in there again to get you back. However many times it took. Okay? [ because that's the easier part, and steve - with one leg still outstretched so that his foot is pushed up against eddie's calf and steve's arms still crossed over his chest - smiles, in that exhausted sort of way, as his head falls back against the bedside table. lets his eyes fall closed. ] And if anything, going back in there to get you made my nightmares better, not worse. So don't...don't apologize for any of that.
[ in the time and space that seems to be reserved for only them, in the quiet hours of not quite-morning that brings everything to that liminal pindrop standstill, eddie finds it difficult to look away from steve's face and all the thoughts that pass along the tired, sharp angles. from the easing expression, that beginnings of a smile that further quirk up a corner of his own. that starting hint of humor that seems to come to the surface until eddie keeps talking and that expression changes. that lightness , such as it was, is wiped clean and its back to something serious and dire and eddie hates himself a little more for it. its what makes him stop the flow of words, and look away, back to his knees.
thinks its likely back to something tense, or regrets that he kept talking, until steve's foot is shoving up against his calf and it has him looking back over with some marked sense of surprise and he'd be lying, he'd so be lying if he said his heart didn't skip a beat at the moment when he looks to steve and that tired smile and those honest words as his head falls back against the bedside table, as his foot just sort of flattens against his leg. eddie's eyes fall to the column of steve's neck, with how his chin tips up. to the fading, though no less angry mark encircling around it.
he swallows against a lump in his throat. ] ...Yeah. Yeah, okay. [ voice low, the beginnings of rough, because he's again met with the undeniable fact that he is not, simply, alone. for every moment he doubts it, for every moment he thinks there could be a wall built back between him and the guy he was inexplicably jealous of days before, steve comes careening through all of it with a defiance of expectation, and settles further and further into eddie's ribcage until eddie isn't sure if he'll ever be able to be without him. maybe its dramatic, but eddie had a particular penchant for dramatics anyway.
his leg, gently, gives a single push back against him and that dimpled smirk, that single corner of his mouth tipping back up. ] I mean, I'm definitely not planning on it. On going back, I mean. But — [ he sighs, and maybe there's that penchant for theatrics again, but it doesn't lessen the vulnerability in his own tone, thick with sentiment. ] — I would if I had to, you know? [ he looks surprised, as though he hadn't expected that from him either. ] Like if you had to do your hero shit again and go back in for any other reason, I guess — I guess I'm just saying I'd have to go in after you too. [ it feels like a messy sort of confession. ] 'Cause, you know, now that I owe you like, a Wookiee life debt and all.
[ it's a poor joke, and maybe it won't land, but eddie tries to soften it, to tie it all together with a light pat atop steve's shin. ] So, ugh — right back at you.
[ you made my nightmares better, he'd said. eddie wants to ask if he could stay, for the rest of the night; if they needed rooms separating them. he's so much less afraid now. except for the fact that — he still holds his tongue. and yet, it seems that neither make to move away from this any time soon. ]
[ it does feel like their own space, doesn't it? something safe, even when they both know better. something theirs, even if the room itself is sterile, like something out of a magazine. eddie's been staying here for a couple of days now, sleeping in this room, making his mark on steve's life. and honestly, that is probably why this place feels safe at all. because it's not just the guest room anymore. it's eddie's - little details left around, things messed up, a bed that hasn't been made in days.
he huffs a kind of laugh when eddie agrees with him, the relenting in the yeah, yeah. eddie pushes back against steve's foot, and it has steve cracking open one of his eyes, just in time to see the smile. the dimples. the dramatics in everything he does. but the words that follow are what settle in steve's chest - i would if i had to - and that wipes whatever smile off of steve's face again. that has both his eyes open, his head lifted up from where it had been leaning on the bedside table, because he suddenly feels like he can't let this go. like there's something else in those words that he can't quite catch.
and it's not just the fact he...does not recognize what a wookie is. ]
A what debt? [ because he just doesn't....know. what that is. he blinks, and then shakes his head, his eyes going immediately to where eddie's hand is in his shin, and then back up to him. there's the smile again, as if he's offering something here. like there is something he is handing over across this space, something he hopes eddie can take. will take. what it is, he's not even sure, but it feels...fragile. hopeful, but fragile. ]
Listen, Eddie, this whole shit- [ and honestly? steve doesn't even know what he's saying. and whatever it he's trying to say, he's probably saying wrong. but it feels...important for him to say something. so he just. keeps talking. ] I'm sorry you got wrapped up in it. It sucks- like. Really sucks. But we'll get something figured out- or, I mean, Dustin and Nancy and the rest of them will be the ones to get it figured out. I won't be a lot of help there. But it will work out, it always does.
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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?
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but eddie..eddie died. eddie was torn apart by bats. eddie was left in the upside down because they'd all thought it was over, and he found his way back. found some way to communicate, to get steve's attention, to keep going. eddie was left behind in the upside down because he had been dead, and now he was breathing, and steve couldn't even begin to think what that could do to someone's brain. vecna's influence, the upside down's shadow, the demobats' scars. those are grounds for nightmares, and maybe steve is being an ass by being here. if he's inserting himself into the aftermath of every one of eddie's bad nights because some niave part of him thinks that if he can't fix his own shit, maybe he can help eddie's.
a while eddie repeats, and part of steve thinks he said something wrong, while a larger part seems to relax at the companionship in that repeat. in the fact that maybe, somewhere in the early morning and the shadows of the guest room lamp, they both understand.
eddie shifts a bit in how he's sitting, and steve kind of just lets himself watch. lets himself be a bit selfish in how it does help some distant part of him just to watch eddie moving. to watch him breathe, talk, just...move. and maybe it's because these are the hours of the night that steve is usually the most lonely. when he's the most out of touch. there's something about eddie just being here that has been grounding for him, even when he is curled over himself, the tight curl of his frown when he says i guess you can imagine.
and steve just nods, because yeah, he can imagine. he remembers seeing max lifting up into the air. remembers the fear, the panic, the way he'd just screamed. and max had survived. but eddie? the guilt returns, there, turning his stomach in some kind of way that steve almost misses the hum. almost misses the question. but when he catches the end of it, his brows lifting like he's coming back from zoning out. ]
The nightmares? [ even if he'd known that was what eddie meant. still, steve asks, and then whether or not eddie answers, he gives a small shrug of his shoulders. ] Sometimes I think they are, but then other times they're worse than ever. You get kind of used to them, though, which helps. Kind of.
[ there's a pause here, before steve seems to deflate. just a hair, just a breath, but enough. ]
Have you slept at all the last few nights?
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the true depth of the events behind them haven’t exactly caught up with eddie. perhaps there’s cerebral understanding in the fact that he was dead, once, but there is a lack of comprehension. there is still the unshakable dread, that sickly sort of cold that feels sticky on his skin and he can still feel the dark. maybe — maybe the upside down takes more from you than just a pound of flesh. and in all of this, dying had ultimately been the easier part. not in any of the events that led up to it, not the fear or the pain, but — well, he’s not sure how to define it. a part of him didn't want to. but then there was the first breath back, and then everything was moving and thinking and doing and trying to get out, and if it wasn’t for steve, he hates to think how much longer he’d have need to spend down there. so no, steve wasn't ass. steve was a goddamn hero.
eddie turns back around to steve, only to catch him already looking. he blinks, but it’s slow, and the edges of his frown lessen; tightness around his eyes softens. it seems like steve is caught up in his own head and eddie waits with quiet patience, and finds himself wanting to know more of what’s rattling inside there in the first place.
sometimes they’re worse than ever, and eddie deflates at that too. deflates because it givens the unspoken understanding between them shape.
his laugh is sardonic and dry. ] I wouldn’t call it sleeping, Steve. I’d call it losing the battle, maybe.
I’d call it avoiding the inevitable, and you can only run from that for so long, so — [ he exhales, defeated, though the humor seems to be at his own expense. running again and this time from his own mind and doesn't that ever feel like a step down. ] — so I don’t know. Probably got as much sleep as you did, man. [ a gentle callout, if anything, holding steve's gaze for a moment. ]
It feels like it takes a part of you, right? Sometimes I think I'm still there — [ he shakes his head, feels bad for even speaking of it again. ] — if you hadn't come for me, man. If you hadn't —
[ he cuts himself off with a shaky laugh. it's — not that eddie was particularly afraid of being vulnerable as much as maybe he wasn't good at it. and it's just that this particular vulnerability comes with a particularly sharp sense of guilt. the feeling that maybe he's in large part responsible for steve's sleepless nights. sure, even if he stayed dead, it would have stayed the same (over-assumption?) but steve still had to return to go and get him out. because he was too weak and scared of doing so himself. his next words are muttered, quiet and only for the space between them. ] — sorry you had to come down there again. If that — I don't know. Made it worse somehow.
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the sound of his laugh is nice, it's a reminder, even if there is a dark tint to it that steve wishes he could reach across and rub away, like film across a window pane. i wouldn't call it sleeping, steve and steve can't help the way his face does break into something of a self deprecating smile. because yeah, yeah, okay. it's dark, it's kind of edged, but it's true - neither of them are really sleeping, are they? and maybe losing a battle is a sort of over exasperated, dramatic way of putting it, but it's so very eddie that steve can't help but get wrapped up in it. ]
Yeah, yeah, alright. [ and eddie's right, because of course he is. they can't always run from this, they can't always run from everything, and sometimes in those late nights when steve is trying his damnedest just to turn his brain off, it feels a little bit like running.
there is a moment where steve almost tries to make a joke of it, to match pace with eddie's sardonic laugh, to say something about how he bets eddie munson never could have imagined talking about shared nightmares on the floor of steve harrington's guest room. but before he has the chance to open his mouth, eddie's already talking again, saying still there and if you hadn't come from me and sorry and any of steve's smile, any of the humor he'd been holding on to because eddie had offered it to the space between them, slips away. instead, steve just finds himself back to looking at the other boy again. really looking.
steve drops one of his legs flat to the carpet, reaching it over so that his foot pushes at eddie's. he doesn't know why that is what he goes with. why he feels a very sudden need to just have some point of contact, and how that contact can obviously only be shared in a sort of shove, but steve...he doesn't know. he just needs to. ]
Dude. [ because that was the purpose, wasn't it? to get eddie's attention back from whatever thoughts he just lost himself in. to pull him back to this moment, in the semi-dark, while they're sitting on the floor together. and steve...when he speaks next, it's with a kind of exhausted honesty. something he doesn't even try to filter, no matter how vulnerable, or honest, or direct it comes out. ] It can feel that way sometimes, sure, but you're out of the Upside Down, you're never going back. And if for whatever weird, insane, impossible reason you did end up back there, I would go back in there again to get you back. However many times it took. Okay? [ because that's the easier part, and steve - with one leg still outstretched so that his foot is pushed up against eddie's calf and steve's arms still crossed over his chest - smiles, in that exhausted sort of way, as his head falls back against the bedside table. lets his eyes fall closed. ] And if anything, going back in there to get you made my nightmares better, not worse. So don't...don't apologize for any of that.
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thinks its likely back to something tense, or regrets that he kept talking, until steve's foot is shoving up against his calf and it has him looking back over with some marked sense of surprise and he'd be lying, he'd so be lying if he said his heart didn't skip a beat at the moment when he looks to steve and that tired smile and those honest words as his head falls back against the bedside table, as his foot just sort of flattens against his leg. eddie's eyes fall to the column of steve's neck, with how his chin tips up. to the fading, though no less angry mark encircling around it.
he swallows against a lump in his throat. ] ...Yeah. Yeah, okay. [ voice low, the beginnings of rough, because he's again met with the undeniable fact that he is not, simply, alone. for every moment he doubts it, for every moment he thinks there could be a wall built back between him and the guy he was inexplicably jealous of days before, steve comes careening through all of it with a defiance of expectation, and settles further and further into eddie's ribcage until eddie isn't sure if he'll ever be able to be without him. maybe its dramatic, but eddie had a particular penchant for dramatics anyway.
his leg, gently, gives a single push back against him and that dimpled smirk, that single corner of his mouth tipping back up. ] I mean, I'm definitely not planning on it. On going back, I mean. But — [ he sighs, and maybe there's that penchant for theatrics again, but it doesn't lessen the vulnerability in his own tone, thick with sentiment. ] — I would if I had to, you know? [ he looks surprised, as though he hadn't expected that from him either. ] Like if you had to do your hero shit again and go back in for any other reason, I guess — I guess I'm just saying I'd have to go in after you too. [ it feels like a messy sort of confession. ] 'Cause, you know, now that I owe you like, a Wookiee life debt and all.
[ it's a poor joke, and maybe it won't land, but eddie tries to soften it, to tie it all together with a light pat atop steve's shin. ] So, ugh — right back at you.
[ you made my nightmares better, he'd said. eddie wants to ask if he could stay, for the rest of the night; if they needed rooms separating them. he's so much less afraid now. except for the fact that — he still holds his tongue. and yet, it seems that neither make to move away from this any time soon. ]
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he huffs a kind of laugh when eddie agrees with him, the relenting in the yeah, yeah. eddie pushes back against steve's foot, and it has steve cracking open one of his eyes, just in time to see the smile. the dimples. the dramatics in everything he does. but the words that follow are what settle in steve's chest - i would if i had to - and that wipes whatever smile off of steve's face again. that has both his eyes open, his head lifted up from where it had been leaning on the bedside table, because he suddenly feels like he can't let this go. like there's something else in those words that he can't quite catch.
and it's not just the fact he...does not recognize what a wookie is. ]
A what debt? [ because he just doesn't....know. what that is. he blinks, and then shakes his head, his eyes going immediately to where eddie's hand is in his shin, and then back up to him. there's the smile again, as if he's offering something here. like there is something he is handing over across this space, something he hopes eddie can take. will take. what it is, he's not even sure, but it feels...fragile. hopeful, but fragile. ]
Listen, Eddie, this whole shit- [ and honestly? steve doesn't even know what he's saying. and whatever it he's trying to say, he's probably saying wrong. but it feels...important for him to say something. so he just. keeps talking. ] I'm sorry you got wrapped up in it. It sucks- like. Really sucks. But we'll get something figured out- or, I mean, Dustin and Nancy and the rest of them will be the ones to get it figured out. I won't be a lot of help there. But it will work out, it always does.