Darling [Steve x Eddie]

Chapter 12

When Eddie woke again, it was late in the evening and crickets were chirping outside. The light that was bursting through the trailer's windows was dying softly and leaving behind a deep blue sky. He could see the warm lights of the trailer homes surrounding his and somewhere in the park, a little kid was calling out to their mother.

Eddie sat up and looked around the living space with calm indifference to the mess.

"Dinner first, clean later," he declared aloud.

As if in protest, the phone began to ring loudly from it's place on the coffee table.

Eddie suppressed a groan of annoyance and reached out to lift it off of the receiver.

"Hello?" he asked, his voice crackly from sleep.

There was a low rumble from the other side of the phone and then Robin's voice mumbled something unintelligible into his ear.

"You're going to have to raise the volume a tad, Buckley," he said, leaning back into the couch and watching the telephone cord dangle over the edge of the cushions.

"I said: what did you do to poor little Steve?" Robin repeated, this time much louder.

Eddie was bewildered by the question.

"What do you mean, what did I do to him?" he asked in a huff. "I didn't do anything even remotely compromising!"

He could practically hear Robin's eye roll over the line.

"Then explain why he just showed up at my house after work, red-eyed and babbling about you," she retorted.

"What? What did he say about me?" Eddie sat up in a flash, mind racing through the possible things that Steve could have to say about him.

The biggest thing was the blood and the cuts and the fainting.

"Shit," he swore sharply.

"Can someone please fill me the fuck in here?" Robin demanded. "I haven't been able to pull a single sensical sentence out of Steve's mouth since he got here!"

"Love the alliteration, babe," Eddie remarked jokingly.

"Eddie!" she cried, snapping her fingers into the receiver. "Focus, please!"

"Right, sorry," he apologized meekly.

"So?" she asked.

Her impatience was practically leaking out of the phone.

Eddie pressed his lips together, thinking of what he could say that wouldn't result in her showing up at his door in the next two minutes.

"Well, Munson?" She interrupted his train of thought with a lengthy sigh.

"God, I'm thinking! Just give me a second, okay?"

Eddie hated how much his voice was already wavering. It sounded like he was about to start crying and everything.

He took a deep breath.

"So... I've been struggling a bit. Or, a lot, I guess. You know, with everything that happened—Steve's not in the room with you, is he?" He interrupted himself, suddenly worried that Harrington would be able to listen in to their conversation.

"No, no, he's in the kitchen, I'm in my room," Robin answered quickly.

He heard the creak of her bed as she did what he could only imagine to be a bellyflop onto it.

"You were saying?" she prompted him, after a minute of muffled readjustments on her end.

"Well, I just haven't been quite the same since the Upside Down stuff." He swallowed nervously. "I—I haven't been totally kind with myself."

He could hear Robin's breathing through the phone and it was oddly relaxing.

"Mhm..." she hummed softly.

Eddie took it as a sign to keep talking.

"Umm..." He breathed out heavily. "I don't like myself anymore. It's as simple as that. I... hurt myself, I drink too much... and I get high every night that Wayne isn't home because I can't stand the sight of myself, the feeling of being in my body, the way my mind works."

Robin was silent.

Eddie blinked back tears and breathed in slowly. Exhaled slower. Again. And again.

And again.

"I should have checked on you more," Robin whispered eventually.

She sounded like her eyes were just as red as his.

"You're always supporting me, like when Vickie pulled that shit, but I haven't been there for you at all. God, I've been so self obsessed and concerned about what I'm doing with my own life, that I just left you to yours, like a complete asshole!"

Robin was crying now, her words attaching together in streams.

"It's okay, none of this was your fault," Eddie reassured her.

"See? You're doing it again. Making me feel better, when I should be hugging you right now."

"Can I come over?"

The idea of one of Robin's ultra-tight hugs was already making the trip to her house worth it.

"Steve's here," she reminded him carefully.

"I don't mind."

"Then I don't know why you didn't get here three minutes ago!"

Eddie decided that the mess could wait.