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alex

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Reintegrating into regular, everyday life is going to be basically impossible. By this point, Eddie has accepted it, he knows things will be different, and he thinks he's doing pretty well with that knowledge. He's mourned a bit, he's been angry -- not with Lestat, not ever, but with Darrow for having put him and Lestat in that position in the first place -- and he's been sad.

There's no more wandering around Darrow during the day. No more sun, like Lestat had warned him. He has to hold himself apart from his friends, from Chrissy, at least to a certain extent. Any time he wants to be around them, he has to make sure he's eaten first, so he's not in any danger of losing control. The days are spent in a light proof box -- more or less a coffin -- and he's had to pretend he's developed some sort of sun related illness so his boss will only give him night shifts at the record store.

He misses the customers, he misses the feeling of the store itself, and while he gets a bit of it between sundown and close, most of his shift is spent after hours, stocking and placing orders, doing all the administrative stuff that doesn't get done during the day. It's fine, but it's not the job Eddie wanted.

DnD has fallen off, too, because he can't force everyone to meet after dark every single time, but their Dungeon Master is now a vampire and it's sort of his only option.

At this point, he's seen everyone except Alex. If he thinks about it, he's afraid to see her, afraid she'll blame herself for what happened. It isn't her fault they got separated and it isn't her fault he was attacked, but he carries this fear she won't be able to let it go.

And maybe it's stupid that he hasn't gone to see her earlier for that very reason. He should be there to tell her none of this is her fault and Eddie groans as this thought occurs to him, halfway between his apartment and hers, pacing on the street after dark. He's such an idiot and he grabs his phone, texts her a question.

u at work or home?

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The door opens and Alex looks up. She's curled on the couch, dressed in sweats and a t-shirt that Darlington left behind when he left. Eddie looks different, moves different, in a way that she can't quite put her finger on, but seems obvious all the same.

"Hey," she says, head tilted. He's not a grey, but he's something, and she finds herself wary, for a moment.

“Hey,” he answers and he lingers by the door. Before he gets too close, he needs Alex to have all the information. He can’t expect anything here, that’s what he’s told himself over and over. If someone needs to not be around him because of what he is now, then he has to accept it.

This is different than Hawkins. Back there people were just stupid. Here, he could actually be dangerous.

“Y’know how we got separated?” he asks. “In that weird, shitty, ashy version of Darrow. I, um. I got attacked by this bird thing. It was really bad.”

She winces when he says it but, otherwise, she doesn't move, her dark hair smooth as water on either side of her face, her eyes almost black and watchful. "I'm still sorry about," she says. She's said it already, but it bears repeating. "I got pinned down and it took me a while to get out of it and I couldn't...." She looks down. "I couldn't get back to you."

“It’s not your fault,” Eddie says and there’s a fierceness to his voice she may not have heard before. “Anything else I tell you now, it’s not your fault and I don’t ever wanna hear you say otherwise, okay?”

He exhales slowly and then leans against the wall.

“I would’ve died,” he says, looking at the ceiling. “I was, uh… bleeding out. Lestat found me, though.” She’s seen them play, she knows who Lestat is, even if they haven’t met. Eddie doesn’t know if they have. “He’s a vampire.”

It feels kind of like her fault, but she also isn't about to argue about it. Alex Stern has left bodies in her wake and not thought twice about it because, maybe, she isn't wired that way but, she figures, she's always going to feel a little bit guilty about leaving Eddie behind.

"Yeah, I've...We've met." A muscle in her jaw ticks. Lestat's always given her the heebie jeebies, and she could never put her finger on why. Now, she knows.

“He, um. He saved me, I guess,” Eddie says, looking down at his feet. “In a way.”

When he looks up at Alex again, his eyes are gold, eerie and otherworldly. His teeth are sharp, only because he’s still learning to control that and he shifts his mouth again a little, trying to make it so they don’t look threatening. He doesn’t mean any of this as a threat, he just doesn’t know how else to explain what happened to him.

“I’m okay,” he says. “I mean, I’m safe to be around. I’m still me.”

Alex's face doesn't change, but she feels her heartbeat speed up. She's seen some weird shit over the course of her life, for as long as she can remember. It's not that she doesn't scare easily; it's more that she's used to being scared.

"How do I know that's true?" She says. She doesn't look in the direction of Edie's bedroom door, but they both know she's there.

“I guess you can’t,” Eddie admits and he doesn’t mean to, he doesn’t try to get into Alex’s head, but the sudden flash of Edie he sees is from her, he knows it is. It breaks his heart that he might never get to see her and hold her again, but he also knows Alex’s first priority will always be her.

And he’ll understand if she wants him to stay away.

“Will you let me try to prove it?” he asks. “I know that’ll take time and I can stay away from your home and whatever you want really.”

Part of Alex -- the part who's always been scared of monsters -- wants to tell him to get out of her house, away from her kid. But then there's part of her that loves him, really loves him, and knows that her kid loves him too. She's lost so many people, too many, and, at the end of the day, she's selfish. She's not ready to lose Eddie, too.

"Yeah," she says, clearing her throat. "You can try."

Eddie exhales unsteadily, relieved and still terrified all at once, and he nods, ducking his head for a moment. He wants to get all his changes under control, when he looks at Alex again, he wants to look like himself.

When he looks up again, his eyes are brown, his smile is entirely his own, even if it’s unsteady.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It was really the only way. I wouldn’t be here.”

When he looks up at her, there he is again, and she can't help but smile back. She shifts over on the couch, making more room for him, if he wants to sit. It's not like it'll be the first time they've curled up on this couch together. "I know," she says. "I get it. I've done a lot of stuff to survive, in my time."

Eddie sits beside Alex, relieved but still cautious. He doesn’t want to freak her out, he doesn’t want her to think he might do something, so he’s slow and he’s careful.

“So… I’ve learned a lot,” he says, mostly speaking down at his hands. “Lestat is teaching me so I can be… not like, a decent vampire, just so I can survive. A lot of stuff is different. It kinda has to be. But one thing he said is that I’m still me, just like, enhanced.”

He grins then and looks at Alex. “Like I wasn’t already too much, right?”

"You definitely have your moments." Alex turns her head, studying his profile for a long moment, idly stroking the black lines of the tattoo on the inside of her wrist with the pad of her thumb. "Does this mean you can never go out in daylight again? That must suck, knowing that."

“No sunlight,” he says, nodding. “Honestly, weird as it all is, that’s the worst of it. I had to switch my whole job, I don’t get to go out anywhere with Chrissy or with my friends. The blood thing is… I don’t know, it’s not that bad. There are a lot of people willing to, uh… donate, I guess? So I don’t need to hurt anyone.”

He makes a face. “But not seeing the sun anymore? Yeah, that one sucks.”

Not hurting anyone is good, Alex figures. She'd spent too much time with too many men who hurt people casually, and it would have made her sick to think of Eddie as one of them. She's glad he's figuring that bit out, at least. "Kind of fits your aesthetic, though," she teases, plucking at the t-shirt he's wearing. "We'll have to figure out times you can see Edie. Around her bedtime."

“Yeah, I guess if I had to turn into a monster, a vampire was the right one,” he agrees and his heart gives a lurch when she says he can still see Edie.

“I’d get it,” he tells Alex. “If you want to wait, if you need some time to make sure I’m really still me before I see her. She’s… the fucking best, she’s everything. I get wanting and needing to protect that.”

"I don't think werewolf would have suited you," she says, and she nudges him with her elbow. It's not much, but it feels like something, anyway. "I know you love her, Eddie," she says. "And I think...you'd rather die than let anything happen to her. I believe that. She loves you. She's lost enough. I want you to be able to be around her."

Eddie has to blink back tears, because he doesn’t want to do that, not yet, not when he’s just told her. Blood trickling from the corners of his eyes probably wouldn’t be the best thing in this moment and he looks down and nods.

“I do love her,” he says. “And you. I’d rather die than let anything happen to either of you.” He’ll walk into the sun before he lets them be hurt. If it’s in his power to prevent it in any way, he will.

"I love you," says Alex, because she does. She's lost so much -- Kavinsky, Hopper, Steve -- Danny, who makes the rest of it feel like nothing. She's not about to lose Eddie when he's right in front of her. "I'm...kind of weird too, aren't I?" She scrubs her hands over her face. "God, I hope Edie grows up aggressively fucking normal."

“The only way that’s gonna happen is if she has a rebellious stage,” Eddie says with a smile. “Your kid is way too fucking cool to just turn it normal.”

For Eddie, being a freak has always been a badge of honour. He’s always felt like a freak, acted like a freak, and having people notice it meant they saw him at all. It was also a shield, something to hide behind, so he gets what Alex is saying, too.

"I just don't want her to turn out like me," says Alex, because that's something she worries about, all of the time. She watches Edie for signs that she's seeing greys. She hasn't seen anything yet, but she's so little -- so much is make-believe when you're that small. Alex doesn't remember the first time she saw one. They were just always there.

"She is fucking cool, though. I just...want her to turn out more like her Dad than me."

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