The nakedness helped them stick to each other much tighter than before, intertwined in everything that meant their fleshly form.
From the way she rested her head on his shoulder and he rested his own on top of hers, curving his posture just to lean into her again more, to the way their legs hooked on one another and their hands, even tired, wished to grasp ever the more, caressing and massaging out inertia wherever they reached with minimal movement, Billie and Eddie relaxed completely.
As soon as their breaths properly returned to normalcy, then faded a little further, Eddie whispered something about a ten minute nap.
He has been gently snoring in her ear for the past thirty minutes now.
Billie forced herself to stay awake though.
It wasn't that their time together, though an ecstasy unlike anything she's ever felt before, hasn't tired her bones and made her muscles ache in the slightest. It wasn't even Billie's selflessness, making her think that she could stay awake and protect them both.
No. There was no bravery in her stubbornness. Only fear.
Her eyes were wide open because the silence had grown again and into the dimmed lighting of her room, even without the cursed mirror present, she felt the exhale of the house, haunting her a chill of remembering specks and flashes from the worst of it all. She was terrorized only by the mere possibility that if she blinked a little longer, she'd see the Mirror Man again and God forbid she lowered her guard and heard that wretched voice once more.
The Mirror Man wasn't just a face or a decaying body. Billie was convinced the demon was the fleshed out product of loneliness, of despair, of the carnal sensation of helplessness in front of an inevitable end.
She held her right arm around Eddie and dug her fingertips into his bare skin a little more desperate to hold onto that feeling of safety he kept dragging through her nose and into her system just by being there with her. Desperate to push away again every single intrusive thought, Billie turned her gaze up at him and started the long process of admiration.
His features were so gentle and soft when he was sleeping. It wasn't a sight she got to see too often and it had become a simple vow that she ought to take full advantage of each time she'd be presented with the opportunity to see how lazily his curly hair fell over at least half his face. Up close, as they were, she could see what she had been feeling all night long as the tiny beginning of a mustache wanting to grow under his nose, despite how absolutely determined he's always been to keep a clean shave. His hair, ever rebellious.
No matter how amazed she was by his mellow snores and warm breaths, intoxicating the little air left between their still sweat-beaded bodies, Billie was purged by the bitterness of a tingle. Something left unsaid was stabbing her tongue in guilt, forcing poison down her throat until she hitched her breath and grimaced.
Why did she never tell him just how much she adored him...? She's known from the very first time she gave him a cassette. Part of her hoped he wouldn't return her feelings so it would save them both the pain, but oh, the other side of her was selfish back then. If anything, Billie has always just been scared of loving and like every single damn time, as if the movies never warned her, life gifted her exactly what she was afraid of most.
To get attached, to have another person added to the list of people she could not endure losing.
After her mother died, Billie had fought hard with her own mind to look at her family and not see the possibility that one day, she will be forced to watch them die too.
She adored Eddie Munson and if there really was such a thing as being made to love someone, then they had it; she felt it in her bones, she felt it in her soul, in the air that entered her lungs, in the blood that pumped a little more joyous each time he smiled and in the thoughts of him that kept her company whenever he was not around.
But because she loved him, he was now a name opening up the list, writing itself at the bottom of it and reminding her that everything touched in devotion and rippled in attachment, could as well be taken from her the next day. Self preservation, fear of dying, had stopped her from saying what she should have shouted from the top of her lungs since that backstage kiss.
He deserved her all, but how could she consciously doom him to the risk of her list?
Eddie was asleep now, they were all alone and the curse pouch was outside, in the backyard. With a sigh, Billie parted her lips and made way for her final attempt at ripping off the last bandage over the scars of her past.
"I lov..."
Her whisper hitched into the horrifying sound of the telephone downstairs ringing.
What was she thinking? She'll have plenty of time whispering love poems in his ear after Hawkins is safe again. A darker voice of reason in Billie's mind doubted through a laugh that there will ever be another day of peace in their lives and that, if anything, her little failure was the last chance she was ever going to get. A grim thought, sending a chill down her spine almost as strong as hearing the distantly loud ring of the phone.
Billie sat up in a shortness of breath. She pinched her inner left wrist with the tips of her opposite hand's nails and the sting of pain confirmed that she hadn't accidentally fallen asleep. That phone might have truly been ringing, which could only mean two things: it was a genuine call in the middle of the night or... the Mirror Man was at it again.
Only for the sake of the first option, whose chances were small, but important enough to weigh more, Billie considered getting out of bed, dressing up again to a level of decency and going downstairs to answer the call. But she did none of that before trying to shake her boyfriend awake.
Her left arm slid from under him and her hand immediately tapped Eddie's shoulder. "Babe," she whispered, nudging him at first, then rocking him gently. "Baby, wake up," she tried one more time. His snoring continued. Billie gave up trying to pull him from such a deep sleep and, sighing, she slipped out of her bed. Pulling back on the clothes he removed was not as much of a challenge as holding her steady on her feet and finding the location of her pants in the first place.
Somehow, though it felt like an eternity had passed before she was dressed again and those clothes stuck to her skin a little more uncomfortable than usual, when she opened the door the phone was still ringing. Persistent, without any breaks.
Billie took one more glance full of longing back at Eddie. He was soundly asleep, turning to concrete her choice of stepping out of the room and leaving the door open while she made her way through the unlit house. The slightest of hesitation happened once she reached the stairs and felt the dreadful need to look up.
There, in the night's deepest darkness, the ceiling looked stained. Somehow, Billie guessed that if she stared long enough, frozen at the top of the stairs, she'll start seeing the stain capture the yellow glow of two dots acting as glassy, dead eyes staring her down, so instead of giving in to these fears, she rushed down, two steps at time, her completely loose hair bouncing heavily on her back. Several strands tickled too far on her face and that was the very first time Billie realized: Eddie must have gotten all her hair ties off as part of the hair pulling which was an unexpectedly good sensation when it came from his hands.
Alas, she reached the bottom of the stairs and the ringing phone, catching the impromptu scent of a deja vu: was it the 1985 spring again? Had she gone back in time to the unaware seventeen year old who always woke up in the middle of the night to answer bizarre phone calls that only she heard?
Even if just for a second, her sleep deprivation tried to convince her that she was watching her younger self reach out for the phone, her hand shaking from the dread of hearing that static noise again, that breathy unintelligible mutter no one believed her was there.
Without even taking notice of it at first, her breaths were ragged. They kitchen into a knot when her hand, out of a trance, picked up the phone and the ringing ceased. There was no time to turn on all sides, of every single line of overthinking left in her at that moment, so she took notice only of the swarm, then put the phone to her ear, fully expecting the worse.
"Billie?" Barry's voice met her, hopeful, but oddly strangled too.
No matter that undertone, Billie was relieved enough to let her exhale be loud. "Yeah, it's me," her head leant into the phone to hear her brother better and as she turned her back on the stairs, placing her weight into the now much more relaxed right shoulder finding comfort against the wall, Billie started becoming aware of the background noises her brother was being surrounded by: beeps, chatter, baby cries.
"Are you and dad okay?" she continued with a question.
"We're in the hospital right now," Barry informed, forcing a monotonous tone to what had actually drained him already of shivering weakness, of tears and all that spite against this land trying to cut and divide his family.
"The hospital?" On Billie's side, a chill traveled from upstairs towards the front door, in a direct line she was blocking. Bound to feel the draft, she shivered at it.
Barry, however, was in the hallway at least six doors away from the salon where his dad was surrounded by doctors. A third coffee was waiting for him, half finished, on the surface above the public phone installed there for the use of the unfortunate few having to spend the night in the hospital, waiting on their loved ones. His legs were tired, his mind was defeated under the truth that, at the end of the day, no matter how much he loved Japan, he would never forgive himself if he left his family in danger. He was bound to them more than he was to the duty of his heart.
This tiredness got him to sit down while talking with Billie. The line of the phone extended its curl into a tense straightness and he leant his head back to look at the box coming out of the wall.
"Vecna attacked him."
Billie's heart must have done a flip. "Is he... is he alright?"
She loathed her dad sometimes, but that never once meant that she'd rather have him die. Especially not in a way that turned him to the pawn of some interdimensional monster.
"One arm and one leg broken, about fifteen fractures," Barry explained without filter what had also horrified him since the doctors talked with him.
"Jesus..." Billie shivered. The house was cold and Barry's news was giving her no warmth whatsoever either.
The stairs behind her creaked distantly and momentarily, her attention diverted to looking back over her shoulder. She was met with a growing shadow from whom she recognized the untamed curls and the curve of his jawline. Billie gave a short smile to Eddie and turned back around to hear Barry continue.
"He'll live. But the doctors won't let him move out of that bed any time soon."
"You must stay with him now," she sighed. Apart from herself, that night their mom died, Barry was the only one actually not about to go down without a fight. To know she won't have him by her side this time around was almost as terrifying as thinking she'll have another night like that soon.
"Not necessarily," Barry said and Billie felt Eddie hug her from behind. He dressed back up too, probably because he got cold in her room, without her there. She imagined that's exactly why he woke up and frankly, she was fighting the urge to just turn around and apologize for not thinking of getting a blanket out before she left him.
"What do you mean?" Billie shifted in order to properly allow her boyfriend all the access he needed for that hug.
"It's better I don't discuss this on the call," Barry sighed. "But I will explain, I swear-" Hearing Billie gasp faintly stopped him from continuing on that conversation.
Eddie's hug tightened abruptly and left her a little breathless with the shock of suddenly having her ribcage pressured on such. The gasp was instinct, then Billie controlled herself to just step back and press her back against his chest, adjusting to his need to have such a bone crushing embrace.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I am fine," Billie's voice thinned.
Barry's pause meant that he was uncertain about what she just told him. "You alone in the house?" he hoped his guess hadn't been correct.
"No," Billie uttered quickly. "Eddie's here with me." Almost as a response, Eddie's hug tightened again. Billie bit back another gasp and just when she was going to say something about it, she felt his cold breath on the space where her shoulder met her neck. Hoping this would relax her, Billie tilted her head to the side and got him access to that area.
"What about the others?" Barry wasn't reassured. "Sam and Devin? They aren't there either?"
"Sam went with Steve and the other's. We got a whole plan going and it's going to work," Billie too avoided speaking about this on the phone directly at least. "Devin...," her voice trailed off, half breathless from Eddie, half simply just concerned. "He just went for a walk. He worries me, Barry."
She felt Eddie's lips coldly on her skin, unmoving and just aiming to send chills down her spine with his breath apparently. It worked: her whole skin covered in goosebumps.
"You all worry me. Devin's acting off and drawing bizarre things. Sam is seeing him do bad things. And you... you got anymore episodes like that in front of the door?" Barry paused. "Now that I saw how Vecna operates, I have to admit, what happened to you there was not him. It was the demonic-"
"Mirror Man," Billie corrected him immediately. "Look, let's talk about this when we meet. It won't be long now before it will be over anyway. I am sure our plan here will work out just fine."
While her skin flared in chills, she felt Eddie's lips finally move. His mouth opened, right against her skin.
"I have to go now, alright? I'm trying to keep this line open in case Dustin needs any help."
"Alright. Take care-"
Eddie bit down on her shoulder and in a yelp, Billie slammed the phone back on the wall support.
"That hurt!" She exclaimed and turned around to give her boyfriend an explicit piece of her mind.
There was no one there.
No one stood behind her.
No one came down those stairs.
No one.
The creak of the front door became the sound that clawed its way onto her brain, making her inhale sharply and lose control of her emotions and reaction. In Billie's eyes bubbled tears and she watched, paralyzed, how the streetlight's faded luminance crept through the slowly opening door. Her silhouette blocked some of the light's shape cast on the stairs she was facing.
Billie had to physically grit her teeth and lock her jaw in tightness to build that mindless courage of at least looking over her shoulder to see what opened the door. Her shoulder hurt from the bite and she winced from this movement of turning her head to the side and looking back.
It got easier to fully turn around when she recognized the man standing in the doorway, looking outside and therefore having his back at her.
"Eddie," she cried his name in a whisper. "What are you-?"
"I really thought you'd be different," Eddie spoke.
Until then, some part of Billie had considered that she was imagining things or worse, the Mirror Man was back. But there it was... Eddie's voice, Eddie's usual tone of disappointment, that fluctuation which hoped to be uplifting, but couldn't fight the sadness back enough to do that. It was him.
"What do you mean?" Billie stood, in the shadow he casted now and watched his sigh making his head lean back.
"Do you not love me?"
"What?"
"Is that it?" he huffed a short laugh. Bitter and angry, his tone had turned into a spike he was driving with ease through Billie's heart. "Because if that's the case, you could have just told me you just wanted to fuck me and we would have got it over with without wasting six months of play pretend."
"Eddie, what are you talking about?"
"Do you love me or do you not? It's that easy, Billie."
"I-" Billie hesitated, not because she didn't think of actually admitting it, out loud, at last, but because... how did Eddie just realize that after he's been oblivious for six months already? Her hesitation through that thought lasted long enough to make him bow his head.
"Since you can't say, I will," Eddie sighed. "Eddie," he narrated what he thought she wanted to say, but did not turn around yet, "I never loved you."
"That's not true-" Billie wanted to argue back but he just continued talking.
"But you were fun to hang around, because I am a stupid, rich girl who thinks that she's rebelling by kissing the freak behind the school. In fact, you should have probably figured out just how ashamed I am to be seen with you when I told you I wanted this," his left hand, on which his three rings shone silverly in the streetlight, raised to gesture along, "to be a secret."
"Stop that!" Billie grabbed his jacket's sleeve. "That's not true, stop it, Eddie," she shook his sleeve a couple of times, to turn him around. He didn't budge.
"You should have known I am just using you," he laughed, through hiccups signaling just how shattered his tone should have really been if he stayed true to how he felt. "Thanks for the sex, you'd say then if you even liked that part to begin with. I wouldn't know, since you're such a famous liar. Am I right?"
"No," Billie pulled on his arm this time and Eddie finally turned around. "I love you-!"
Rotten yellow eyes looked back at her from a face that should have looked like Eddie, but instead was purged by grayness and decay.
"Too late for that."
Her nightmare came true, right before her eyes and in the fret of getting away from this, hiding away, Billie forgot all about screaming, all about asking for help and being rational. She rushed to run away, but stumbled instead back onto the stairs she forgot were there. The house dipped in darkness had turned to the home of a red hue she had no idea where it came from, but it burned into her eyes and reflected back Hell, in the blue, in the bloodshot, in her fresh tears.
"Shot!" The radio screamed the beginning of the chorus from a Bon Jovi song. It wasn't just some song. And the Mirror Man knew that, which is why it made it so the volume turned all the way up, scratching Billie's ears and overwriting the good memory she had with it.
"This was the song that played when I truly fell in love with you," Mirror Man taunted her, using Eddie's voice.
"You're not Eddie!" Billie argued, but her voice was a mere whimper against the noise of the music. Tears streamed on both sides of her face and straining every muscle in her body, she started crawling backwards on the stairs, desperately. Up was the only way to go. She needed to get away.
The demon was right though, "Shot Through The Heart" by Bon Jovi played on the radio the first time Eddie offered to drive Billie home after classes, the first time they weren't heading for one of his band gigs and just hanging out, without any cover-up reason to hide behind. It was an overwhelmingly quiet ride, making each of them question, in their own way, if this was a mistake, if things were supposed to be this awkward between them.
Then Bon Jovi came on the radio and Billie's eyes sparked with liveliness. The soft chord strikes, the notes flowing in, setting the scene for an unmistakable voice about to come through, it brushed away all of Billie's rules, all of her moral duties and loyalty to being proper.
Her dad had managed to make her feel so bad about enjoying Bon Jovi in the past year that she had asked Eddie almost too quietly if she could turn up the volume. He remembered far too clearly the artists Sam listed at the window that first day they met not to nod along carelessly and watch the road. He stopped at a crossroad and Billie turned up the volume.
It was a felony to listen to Bon Jovi on anything but the maximum capacity of the speakers at your disposal.
She blasted the song in his car and herself to it. At first it was shy, but Eddie's gaze, in absolute awe, was encouraging her with the opposite of judgment. If anything, Mirror Man must have also known, that was probably the moment in which Billie knew she was going to love Eddie forever. That very moment, in which she moved her head back and forth to a crazy rhythm, that moment, in which he stopped her hands and started doing the air guitar instead, so she could play as the lead singer.
It was that moment, in which four cars passed them honking and they couldn't care less about blocking one way on the road, because they were in his car, acting like children, listening to Bon Jovi.
That was the moment Mirror Man was mocking.
"...as I lay there alone."
Mirror Man was ridiculing the relief Billie found in Bon Jovi's voice, much like it had scared her before, with Michael Jackson's Thriller. Confusion turned her body in a knot of impulses her brain couldn't sort: did she want to cover her ears and close her eyes or did she want to grit her teeth and run back to her room?
"In the dark through the heart, it's all part of the game that we call love."
The demon started mimicking the air guitar like Eddie was playing that day, and unable to have a decisive brain, Billie watched as someone stabbed and slashed a happy memory, murdering it before her eyes. It may have not had Eddie's face, but it fooled her.
"Now you've come back here to say you're sorry," the song continued, distorted sometimes to play faster, other times slower.
"You're not real," Billie whispered under her breath.
"Ha!" The demon laughed with the song and while the music played on, Mirror Man diverged to saying something else, another echo to haunt her up those stairs. "Of course I am real, Billie."
It was beyond her how Mirror Man could imitate Eddie's voice so well, but at least the taunting made up her mind for her and turning around, she started running up the stairs, leaning on the railing, collapsing on the wall. Her feet were heavy as if this was a nightmare and the night was still young.
"I am everything you fear," Mirror Man's voice followed her. "Everything you ever feared and everything you will always fear, from now, until your last breath."
"It could be the man I used to be, girl, but I've grown up and now I'm over you."
A maniacal laugh followed her every movement, even as she bumped into her room's door and fell through. Her left shoulder took the hit before she turned around, ready to scream at the door.
But her wide eyes met darkness and her open mouth gasped instead the absence of a fright. Her pulse decreased on a steady spiral, but her peripheral sight, while she was staring ahead, at the dark hallway, stripped of any color whatsoever, was blurred by her unconscious lack of blinking.
The ruckus of her falling into the room woke Eddie into sitting up from the bed, barely squinting. Seeing Billie not moving and not answering him calling her name... Well that electrocuted him into jumping off the bed. No importance was given to the fact that he was still not wearing any clothes. Eddie posted himself on his knees, in front of Billie and tried to get her shoulders.
Whatever terror she held in was released then and she screamed. It wasn't a reaction of pushing him away, but rather the shout of defensiveness, of cowering away, which she did, away from his touch, away from him, because she didn't trust her own eyes anymore.
"Billie, what's wrong? What happened?" Eddie rushed ahead. His first thought should have been that she perhaps had a nightmare, but she was fully dressed which might as well mean that something happened during his nap... was it Vecna or the Mirror Man was the real question behind his eyes, where brown turned to the only hue ever responsible for being expressive on concern.
He tried again to reach his hand out but Billie moved her own hand up to push his away. The shock of her reaction couldn't even settle in properly, because the same hand that pushed him now shivered a careful touch to the side of his face. Her fingertips, the same ones that had just learnt inside out who he was, now acted as if he was a stranger.
Something was wrong and Eddie forgot how to breathe in the midst of his brain shouting at him panic.
"Eddie," Billie sighed out relieved once she touched and felt his warm skin. A shy tap turned into her whole hand grasping the side of his face, then sliding, faster than ever, down his neck, then around so she unclenched her posture and hugged him, there and there, like her life depended on it.
Was that a sob Eddie just felt?
He had no idea what was happening, but all that clenching fright forced him to hug back, just as desperately. If she needed to be held, he was there, but it would be much easier to understand what she needed if she just talked.
"Billie, talk with-"
"I love you!" Billie breathed out an exclamation, cutting him off completely. Her hug tightened and Eddie felt her tears on the bare skin of his shoulder. That was definitely not the chill he wanted to sense slipping on his skin and kissing trails down to his chest tattoo.
"Billie-"
"I love you," she repeated, with more passion. "Like properly fucking love you, Eddie. I am in love with you, neck deep... No, I am fucking drowning and I'm sorry-"
It was his turn to interrupt her. Eddie took some assertiveness back and placed his heavy hands down on her shoulders. The pressure anchored her and he was able to pry her just slightly away. "Billie," his voice softened and he tilted his head forward, so he glanced at her from right under his eyebrows, under his bangs dipped in the thickness of now dried sweat. Rough thumbs drew a path on the sides of Billie's neck and tenderly allowed only the touch under the big thumbs of his to brush onto her cheeks.
"Babe," Eddie repeated lovingly. "What happened? I can't help you if you don't talk with me." And even then, he had his doubts that he'd be able to help her, but he'd be damned if he didn't try his best, for her sake at least.
"I never told you that I loved you," Billie's head tried to bow in shame.
Eddie was no fool. She didn't directly answer his question, but he filled in the gaps well enough to support the weight of her head and force her away from that instinct of hers to shut off, to hide away. "Billie, where does that come from?" He kept on calling her name, because deep down, Eddie wanted to make sure he wasn't losing her.
Her eyes still avoided him. "The Mirror Man was right." Her words made Eddie's heart sink. "It was unfair of me to not say it sooner..."
"Hey!" Eddie raised his voice. It got Billie to look at him at last. "There," Eddie almost lost all his assertiveness there and then and somehow, it just proved what he was about to say, through a soft, apologetic smile. "You never had to say that you love me. In fact, I never even noticed you never said some stupid words to me. They're just words anyway."
"What?" Billie followed along with a distinct slowness.
"Let me rephrase that before I doom my future self on using those words for good," Eddie hummed to a sharp stop, straightening up as if he was holding back air from exiting. Finally, he exhaled out, "You never had to tell me that you love me, because it has always been obvious you do."
"It has?" Billie felt like crying. She weakly let Eddie hold the entirety of the burden which was holding her head up just then.
"Since the first cassette," Eddie nodded along. "No one starts a gift cassette with Wham! unless they are head over heels." His giggle was shy to sneak back into their conversation, but once in, it was there to stay, like the contagious little shit it was. "But honestly, Billie Jean, all you have to do is look at me and I feel loved. Which is more than words can do. How didn't you know this already, baby? I've literally told you all along, it's not the lyrics that matter about a song, it's the feeling you're left with after having listened to it."
For once, Billie was left speechless. Her eyes dropped a bit slower, but they unfocused downwards anyway and Eddie's grip on her face shivered.
"What else happened?" he questioned, once again, his tone showing all those darker nuances of aquamarine fear and coal worry.
He watched, helplessly defeated, how Billie's lips shivered and thinned while she tried to form words. A sniff, a gulp, then the whisper which shattered his heart.
"The Mirror Man looked like you."
"I'll kill him." Frank and short, that was the only answer Eddie had to give.
Billie looked back up and saw determination, the kind she had only ever seen him wear during performances or moments of anger. Unlike common belief, Billie knew that he wasn't the type to get angry easily.
"I'll kill that stupid demon," Eddie repeated his promise, then broke the seriousness with a sarcastic laugh, letting go of Billie and looking away. "Son of a bitch! Trying to separate us? That's some bullshit, weak, move!" He sneaked in one of his usual outbursts of noise.
"Don't you see it, Billie?' Eddie turned his head to her, madness riddled in everything that meant his expression. She found staring at him endearing.
"See what?"
"Mirror Man is getting desperate," he grinned.
"It didn't really feel..."
Her uncertainty was covered by his borderline angry hype, "No, that's exactly why he went out of his way to get into your head and make you doubt our strongest advantage. Because the Mirror Man understands you are winning, again."
"I am?" Billie asked weakly, but by whatever magic, Eddie's words managed to rile up some determination in her too.
"You are," he confirmed with a series of eager nods. "Babe," he placed his hands on both sides of her face again, gently cupping, "if I was the Dungeon Master behind this, and I wanted my party to fail, but they had someone like you on their side, then I'd want to break your character down first." Managing to slip into the domain he was most comfortable in, the words came easier and the connections were made faster, so that even Eddie started feeling the power behind them.
At the back of his mind, he remembered the ease with which Billie made him feel like he could score straight A's in school. Now, he had to reassure her in return that this demon ain't got nothing on them. "You are getting everyone... you are getting us to victory. Of course Mirror Man wants to make you scared of your own shadow. But oh, not on my fucking watch!" His tone danced and sang on the last sentence.
He managed to make Billie smile.
Her smile, just then, was like cold water in the midst of a night's thirst. It was the blessing of a cold breeze in the hottest summer days, the sweet energy of coffee and the blissful peace of one of his best smokes.
And since it was obvious she looked at him thankfully, Eddie doubled all those superlatives and turned them into the definition of the divine.
"Aren't you a little too naked to battle demons though?" Billie's humor was back in a whisper.
Eddie looked down at himself, then back up at her. Eyes wide, eyebrows raised, he put on one of those wide smiles of his, the type which wanted to seem innocent, but everyone, including himself, knew damn well it was not.
He shrugged, "Being naked sort of happens when you don't have time to get dressed because of some stupid demon trying to scare my girlfriend into breaking up with me." He paused, pointing and looking at the ceiling, "Not cool."
His goal quickly turned to simply making Billie smile a little wider, laugh a bit more often, watch how joy is healing the wounds he cannot just kiss better. Like a true addict, he was hooked on the feeling of her happiness, so he watched her reaction, only a little disappointed to see her pout.
"I wouldn't have broken up with you," she excused herself, drawing out her words. "I just went on and cried out that I loved you, Eddie."
"Not exactly how I fantasized you crying out a declaration of love," he rushed in all the words which had he said them any slower would have made Billie blush in realization under his attention, then slowed down to continue, in a pristine, toothy smile, tilting his head to the side, "but this will do too!"
Without any warning whatsoever, Eddie took her hands and got them both off the floor. He then quickly took a step back to try and fish all of his clothes that just laid around. They've been messy and to properly appreciate how much, while he pulled back on his pants, Eddie glanced up at Billie's bed. It was inevitable to grin.
The shuffling of his clothes played as reassurance enough for Billie to start picking his rings from the floor as well. She just straightened up, deciding, on the spot, to try on one of the less heavy rings. Eddie, just done being smug over the state of her bed, looked up just in time to be in a soft awe at the sight of Billie thinking she was being discreet with the way she liked his accessories. She'd always shown a notch of extra interest for the little things which made him him.
Though her music player was not waiting with any cassette inside, it suddenly turned on and started playing, irritatingly loud, one of the most obvious Michael Jackson songs. Eddie picked up the boot he hadn't put on yet and threw it at the player, just about enough to make it glitch to silence.
"Eddie!"
"What?" He exclaimed back. "No way in hell I am letting Mirror Man ruin Billie Jean for us. Now let's just get out of the house before I have to throw stuff and something scarier than a music player."
The plan was made on the spot, through glances at each other, while they made sure they took their camera with them: they had to regroup with Dustin and the others. Before sunrise, they had to get there and make sure they were alright. Why before sunrise? Well, Eddie was a wanted man, and the sunglasses were not much of a cover-up.
They exited the house, through the front door, holding hands and not looking up, when the quiet street filled with sleepiness got slammed into the red and blue lights of sirens speeding into the line of sight. They had barely just made it onto the sidewalk when the first out of three police cars pulled over in front of them.
Eddie considered his odds: he could let go of Billie's hand, make it look like she was a hostage, to help her get away from the obvious prison. It was shocking, even to him, to realize how fast he considered that over running away all of a sudden, how fast he could go from encouraging her to keep going to now dwelling in the realization that this was the end of the road for him.
Billie held onto his whole arm tighter though. She clung to him, because she wanted to look Officer Phil in the eyes and have him know in an instant that they were not taking Eddie from her. Not now, not ever.
author's note: it feels like forever since i updated, so here we gooo
I did some retrospective thinking while writing this chapter and polishing my rough first ideas into this final form... and idk if anyone else noticed this, but even if Mirror Man was conjured to kill the Carter's, I feel the demon has a special vendetta against Billie since she saved Sam's soul from it. So because of that, Mirror Man is turning everything Billie loves to horror while continuing with its initial job... like it first made her mother's memory into a nightmare, continously uses her favorite songs for horror fuel and now tried to use Eddie against her too.
Damn right, Eddie was correct, Mirror Man is getting desperate because he's running out of things to try and steal from Billie.
I just-
I gotta fangirl sometimes about these ideas too, especially on a chapter solely dedicated to Billie and Eddie being final couple material
BUT LET US ASK THE REAL QUESTION:
how do you think Officer Phil found Eddie's current whereabouts? let the theoriess roll, I can almost bet no one will realize what I planned and set up