Bark At The Moon
Part 17 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Ao3
1885 words
Vecna is real.
Demogorgons are real.
The Mind Flayer is real.
Eddie's entire world feels as though it has been both punched in the gut and also flipped over a shoulder and onto a ground covered in super sharp spikes simultaneously. It feels like a cruel joke, some horrible sick twisted bit of comedy some sicko thought he would enjoy.
“Oh Eddie.” They would say. “We know about how much Dungeons and Dragons means to you so we decided to surprise you with making it real! Except you are all level one humans who haven’t figured out what class you want to be and you will all be fighting the worst monsters in the history of the game! Isn’t that fun!”
Only the thing is, Eddie is the only new player here. He’s the only level one newbie who doesn’t know his class. He’s on the outskirts of a party already formed. They already have their fighter, their rogue, their paladin. They already have their mage and cleric. Their archer, their bard.
Eddie might as well be an NPC brought in only for a single campaign to fail a roll and die!
But that’s not true.
This isn’t a game, this is real.
This is very real and Chrissy is very dead and Eddie is very fucked.
And to top it all off: Vecna is fucking real!
Eddie feels like he’s going to vomit. That’s normal right? No one else looked like they wanted to vomit- well maybe Steve, but that’s Eddie’s fault.
It’s easy to assume that everyone in Hawkins believes that it’s all Eddie’s fault too.
Maybe that’s why he wants to vomit so bad. The whole most likely being the leading suspect and everything. He- he can’t even come up with a joke. He’s so fucking scared.
Both hell and here want him dead.
He hears a noise and jumps, stomach lurching and heart leaping into his ears. He doesn’t even have time to react properly when the door swings open- how could he have been so out of it- goodbye cruel world- and oh- it’s his little sheep.
His heart settles down as he curses it, the poor thing embarrassed. He ignores the little flutter it gives as Steve gives a little wave and holds up a bag of food. It’s never learned the importance of time and place… or person.
At least now it’s confirmed that he’s the main man wanted- knowing is almost worse. “Hunt the freak, right?” He gives a dry laugh, eyes uncomfortably dry. He cried all the tears he had to give for Chrissy while the others were gone anyway. He’s looking at Robin when he says it, but Steve’s frown is not an easy thing to miss.
He doesn’t understand why Steve looks so sad. It’s not as if he’s Nancy or Robin. He’s not Dustin for fucks sake. He doesn’t know why this makes him so mad but it does. He wants Steve to look at him like that, but it will never be with the meaning and the history behind it that he craves.
Forever ago he had thought Steve and Robin were a thing, but that was very quickly shot down by Eddie overhearing Dustin beg Steve to “go for it” after a campaign- which Steve had firmly shot down. He looks between them now. Platonic with a capital P huh? He wants to protest it, but he can visibly see their friendship. The two might as well be twins.
He smashes down the hope building in his chest with one word. One person. One hope to escape one more chance of being fucked over by a third thing.
Nancy.
It’s an easy distraction from the awful conversation they are having anyways.
The plan is set in his mind as the others all leave him alone with the taste of honey combs and yahoo left over on his tongue. Listen, okay- he understands how this looks- he’s not stupid. He just needs some semblance of control, something he can distract himself. Will it break his heart? That’s not the question anybody should be asking.
It’s not the question anybody cares about anyways.
Well anyway: the plan.
Get them back together.
That’s… that’s all. It’s more of a goal than a plan, but it’s something. And he needs something right now.
Anything to distract himself from the drowning feeling of panic that comes hand in hand with sitting and waiting an sitting and fucking waiting for all the more experienced party members to return with their skill and loot.
He ignores the churning in his stomach as he imagines how Steve and Nancy used to be, running down the halls and kissing against lockers. It was ‘disgustingly sweet’ as others have said, to Eddie it was just plain out disgusting. He hated Nancy for a while there. He only stopped when the two broke up.
Funny thing that is.
It’s crazy how the two are not connected in any way at all. A super boring and no way telling coincidence.
If he’s an NPC he’ll be a damn good one and help the plot move on.
He fights off a groan, fear keeping him silent as he stops throwing random shit into a can halfway across the room and checks through the window for the hundredth time this hour. When are they going to be back? But it’s in doing so that he sees the very fancy very not Steve’s car pulls up into Rick’s driveway. He curses, scrambling for the walkie that Dustin had instructed him on using in case something goes wrong. His voice cracks as he hisses into it, begging for a response but none comes. He watches as Jason and two of his fucking jock ass friends step out of the car with weapons.
Shit. “Shit!”
He’s pretty sure that all of this must be some kind of exposure therapy to his apparent overwhelming anxiety, because all he can think of to do is hide in a crouch under the window and scream-whisper into the walkie-talkie. “Dustin- Wheeler- anybody?!” He peeks out the window to watch as the trio of jockness and violence walks into Rick’s.
He feels himself shaking, almost blinded by his fear as he shrinks in on himself with his back pressed almost painfully against the wall. He’s forced to breath through his teeth as panic surges through him, eyes becoming dry with how wide he keeps them open. Don’t make a sound the rational part of his mind tells him. This time, he decides to listen.
Time slips from him in this state, the sun setting as he’s stuck in a loop of checking and hiding and checking and fucking hiding. It’s here that the worst possible outcome occurs. He makes eyecontact with Jason fucking Carver. He ducks again, hissing at himself as he scrambles around for a weapon- something- anything. Jason and them will be here any second now and- what the fuck- what the fuck. His eyes catch on the boat and a stupidly moronic idea pops into his head, but it’s all he’s got.
He makes quick work of taking down and dragging the boat to the shore, teeth clinched so his strain isn’t heard. So far so good. He shoves it into the water, scrambling into it and holding on as it rocks under his weight. A nervous laugh escapes him as he grips the sides, relief flooding into him as he sees the paddle Steve must have left in the boat under his feet. He grabs it just as he hears yelling from behind him, forcing himself to work through the pain in his arm as he splashed the paddle into the dark water. The boat doesn’t move nearly fast enough.
He hears Jason and his friend- only the two- behind him closing in as he gives up on the paddle, turning to the motor and near begging it to work. His cursing grows loud as it doesn’t, fearful tears prickling his eyes as the yards turn to feet between him and the men who want to murder him. He grabs the paddle, swinging it like a mad man and yelling for all he’s worth at them to stay back.
He hopes their fear of what they think he stands for is enough to stop them- if only for a second.
It seems to do the trick- at least for Jason’s friend that it- as the teen stops cold in the water. Eddie holds his breath as Jason stops too, turning around to look at his fellow jock. “Come on, let's go! We almost have him!” Jason breathes heavily, treading the water splashing around him as his friend- what is his name- looks around with a fearful expression. Eddie stops swinging his oar.
“Hey, Patrick!”
Eddie swallows the lump in his throat as Patrick doesn’t respond to Jason’s calls.
“Patrick?!” This time Patrick does look, locking eyes with Jason for a split second- mouth opening as if to say something- before screaming as he’s dragged underwater.
Jason seems to forget Eddie, Eddie nearly forgets Jason- the both of them staring into the empty mouth of the dark lake as Jason screams for his friend. The oar trembles in Eddie’s hand as his mind whispers the name of the man he’s already seen the crimes of. Vecna.
The water around where Patrick had disappeared erupts, the mass of a body that may as well already be dead catapulting into the sky with such a force that the waves knock Eddie off his boat. He falls, back first into the darkness without even a breath to prepare. He flounders for a few seconds in the dark, fearing that he might meet the same fate of the man above the water- Jason’s screams muffled with the evidence. But then he manages to escape the water, sucking in a breath of air and coughing out what he accidentally swallowed. He jerks around, watching as Patrick’s limbs contort like Chrissy’s did, how his jaw snaps and his head jerks unnaturally. He falls like a ragdoll into the water, the splash sickening as the blood from Patrick’s eyes mix invisibly into the darkness around him.
Eddie snaps back into his body as he watches Jason lunge for Patrick, turning tail like the coward he is and swimming with all his might to the opposite shore. He can hear Jason’s sobs behind him as he runs, the night air cold as it whips against his face. He stumbles, the water weighing him down in more ways than one. Is Patrick’s blood on him? Is his death now on his hands too?
He doesn’t quite know where he’s running to, the trees and brush around him blurring all under the ache that thrums through him. He falls to his knees the second he finds the clearing of skull rock, palms scraping and knees aching as the reality of everything crashes into him all at one.
And as police sirens wail distantly in the night Eddie wails into the dirt, tears muddying the ground as he mourns Patrick, Chrissy, his future. Even for Jason, for the briefest of moments, he cries. Because if Eddie knows anything, he knows the pain of what it’s like to lose a best friend.
Part 18
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