Boltedfruit Archive

Steve sees him when he sleeps. Eddie. With his squared shoulders and lean frame, dressed head to toe in black and denim, bandana hanging out of his pocket.

That first night, Eddie just stares at him. Seems happy to see him.

Steve wakes up sad for a reason he can’t name.

–

“I wish I never met you,” Eddie tells him, weeks in to these cloudless, groundless meetings. They’re in a void, black on silky black, and Eddie stark and breathing in the middle of it all. Steve an outlier. “Honestly, I wish I never did.”

It stings. “Why?”

Eddie doesn’t answer. Never seems to, if Steve manages to speak in his dreams. It’s vivid, lush and bright in a way his other dreams aren’t. He never dreams of the dead, and yet here they are.

“It hurts.” Eddie looks at the ground.

His shirt blooms red. Grows, spreads to the edges of his jacket. Steve wants to rip it off, away, get at the skin, stitch him up and make him whole again. Bring him back to the world of Dustin, of Robin, of the kids, of his uncle, of Steve.

Eddie smiles.

–

Eddie crouches nearby, notepad on his knee with a pencil in hand, scribbling away.

Steve is standing like he always is here, in this dreamland. This blank blackness. It’s a place to miss the wind if you stay long enough.

Eddie’s hair is frizzy.

“What are you drawing?”

Eddie pauses only a moment before continuing with his work. His arm more frantic the closer Steve gets.

Steve peers over his shoulder. Sees black lines drawn over and over again over words, over doodles, over everything.

“It happened too fast,” Eddie says. “I didn’t have time to say goodbye.”

He keeps scratching out the page, scratches and scratches until the pencil breaks, until his hand is empty and he stands all at once, tosses the notepad out into an abyss. Steve hears it land in a splash.

When Eddie whips around to meet his eyes, his are white, pearls set in marble.

And when he speaks, it’s not his voice that sears, “Blood for blood.”

He lunges and bites at Steve’s neck.

Steve jolts up in bed, chest thudding, the sheen of marble bright behind his eyes.

He has a headache.

–

“Does it hurt?”

“Not really. Not anymore.”

“When did it stop?” Steve asks.

But Eddie ignores him. “Will you stay with me? Here?”

Steve feels more real here in the dark than he ever did back in the real world.

He wishes he could say that out loud. Make it worth something more than his silence ever will.

“I get it,” Eddie finally mutters, smiling, always smiling, good natured, pleasant, easy going, bleeding out, blood for blood.

And Steve wakes up, every goddamn time.

And he whispers into the emptiness, the loneliness, the lifelessness of his room, “I miss you.”