To Heal All Wounds

Busted

Eddie looked up and all he saw was red.  Red and lightning and endless, evil, black clouds.  He was on his back, his body felt like a ruin, and he couldn't move his lips.  Above him, Dustin sobbed.  Eddie wanted to reach up, to stroke the boy's cheek and try to reassure him, but when he tried to make a sound, all that came from his lips was blood.

He was heavy.  Like there was a physical pressure pushing him into the ash-covered ground beneath him.  And he was cold.  Colder than he'd ever been in his life, and he'd gone several Indiana winters with no heating.  It was like this bone-deep chill that he couldn't shake, no matter how much he trembled.

He glanced to the side and there was Steve, suddenly holding his hand.

"Come on, Eddie," he begged through his own choked sobs.  Too cool to really cry, Eddie supposed.  "Come on, man, stay with us."

"Get him on your shoulders," Nancy instructed harshly, and Steve did.  Getting Eddie's blood all over his cool guy clothes like it didn't matter.

Did it matter?

Did any of it matter?

When Eddie opened his eyes it took him a moment to realize where he was.  The thunder had died down to a low rumble, which he distantly knew was only the foot traffic on the floor above him.  The room faded from blood fucking red to dusty dawn-blue.  It smelled less like blood and more like dust and age and earth.

But Eddie couldn't move.

The pressure from the dream kept him pressed, face down, into the mattress below him, restricting his breathing until he felt like he should be wheezing.  In his chest, his heart thrummed and beat itself against his ribs, trying to rip itself out of his body so that it could flee without him.  He tried to blink, but his eyes, opened wide with panic, refused to budge.  He only stared next to him where Chrissy had been laying.

Had been laying.

It was enough to take his focus from the fact that he could not move and jostle his system into slightly fuller awareness.  The pressure lifted from his back and he was able to blink, tears welling in his eyes from what he was going to swear forever was the dryness of the air.

Slowly, gently, as though being careful with the body he was worried was still broken, he reached out to where Chrissy had been sleeping.  The sheets had cooled almost completely.

Eddie shouldn't have been surprised that Chrissy was gone. He knew that she had just followed what she had been told all her life and listened to the police. He knew that she was probably down at the station right now being accounted for. And he knew that he couldn't expect her to hide with him forever, right?  Still, he couldn't help the slow rise of sadness in his gut.

Because it had felt dangerous and sexy running through the night with her.

Because she had fit so perfectly against him in the night.

Because she had the cutest little kitten snores when she slept.

She belonged with her parents, not Eddie. She belonged to other people, not Eddie. She belonged in other places. Not with Eddie.  And even though he knew these perfectly rational and reasonable things, a thought, intrusive and unwelcome, crept into his mind.  It slowly unfurled poisonous fingers and grasped at every cell he had until it had blackened every thought echoing in Eddie's mind.

Had he frightened her away by admitting to her who he was?

What he was?

The thought kept creeping unbidden about his brain like an evil shadow.

She hadn't seemed disgusted or even a little off-put at the time but... maybe he was just too tired to detect it. Or she was too tired to truly understand what he had told her.  Or maybe she was just really good at hiding it. She wouldn't have been the first one to have left him because of that, and she was unlikely to be the last. Never gay enough for men. Never straight enough for women. Always too much for anyone.