hi

Enjoy~

(y/n)'s POV

I woke up for second time in my bed. I could recall wobbling up the stairs and my mother setting me up under a cover. There was a plate of half eaten food on my bedside table, which confirmed why I didn't think I have an empty stomach. I remembered that Steve and Robin had been up here too. Robin had given me a hug and I could tell because my clothes smelled like green apples and lake water. The lake water was because she had been out on the lake with Will, but the green apples was familiar. She always asked me if it smelled childish, but I thought it suited her. My body was aching but my head luckily didn't hurt so much anymore.

I had been unconscious, I was well aware. While my brain had been a little scrambled in between waking up and falling back asleep in my room, I could remember what it felt like to be unconscious versus exhausted. At some point, I had shifted from nothingness to a state in which my brain was whirring but my body was too exhausted to wake up. It was like being trapped in my own head, where I couldn't get enough mental rest while my body recuperated. It was why I had fallen asleep up here.

I also recalled that Eddie had been here. I wondered where he was now and wondered about my brother and sister. A yawn wracked through my body and I let my neck fall side to side, cracking. I quite had to use the bathroom right now, so I tossed the covers up. I used the wall behind my bed to help myself up, staggering towards the bathroom. When I got there, I couldn't help but notice I looked like shit. I ended up running a wet hand over my face a few times, trying to wash off my tiredness and miserable expression.

I just made my way back to my room, pausing at Will's door. He was fast asleep still, in his bed. He looked okay, which made me happy. I stepped across the hall to El's door, creaking it open. She wasn't sleeping, but was sat under her covers. She was drawing as a form of entertainment. El turned to look when she heard her door.

"Hey."

"Hello. You feeling alright?" she asked. I had forgotten that she was used to this sort of thing. I just nodded, leaning against the door frame.

"You?"

"Yes. Just resting. We've...closed the gates."

"Feels weird to think," I said. Though I hadn't thought about it yet, I knew that I wasn't really going to let it set in just yet.

"I think that too," El said. "I cannot sense the Upside Down now. I wonder if Will feels the same."

"I'm sure he does."

"What memory did you have?" El asked abruptly. I paused, stepping into the room towards her desk. I sat down, letting out a sigh.

"Is it just one for you?" I asked.

"My mother."

"Yeah I thought it would just be one, like that," I said. "But I just kept cycling through different stuff. DnD with the boys. Mom. Hopper. Steve and Robin. You."

"I think that just means you are strongly connected with everyone," she suggested and I nodded.

"It's hard not to love you all," I said. "I just...thought I'd just stop in and check in on you."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. And thank you for all you've done. Closing the rifts 2 times."

"I had your help," she said. I just nodded, helping myself up.

"Love you," I said, patting the door frame when I stopped.

"Love you too."

I made my way back to my room, thoroughly exhausted. I thought I might fall asleep again. I realized that I was not wearing my jeans anymore. I had a pair of pajama pants on. I assumed that my mother helped me change, but my shirt was still the Hellfire's club uniform. I pulled it up over my head with my good arm, tossing it in my hamper. I grabbed a new shirt, slipping it over my head and climbing back into my bed. There was a soft knock on my door.

"Yeah?"

"Oh you're awake, good," my mother said, letting herself in. She approached my bedside, giving me a painful smile. "Your shoulder feeling alright?"

"Yeah," I said, placing a hand on my bandaging. It was stiff and sore, but not painful, much like my leg now.

"Can I get you anything?"

"No, I think I'm good. Thank you," I said. She sat down beside me, probably to have some sort of talk. I braced myself for what she had to say, figuring she was going to scold me for putting myself in the line of danger.

"I'm very proud of you (y/n)."

"What?" I blurted, not expecting those words to come out of her mouth.

"I'm proud of you. I'm proud of all of you kids," she said. "I just wanted to let you know that I am proud you were able to help close the rifts and that you protected your group."

"Oh...uhm...it's no big deal."

"It is, sweetheart," she stated, placing a hand on my knee. I felt boxed in now, being berated by compliments. "You always impress me and...I used to fear that you would someday turn into me. But, I see you in myself more and more everyday and I like what I see. You're such a good kid and I like to think that I must be doing something right. Raising you."

I felt myself well up and almost start to panic. I didn't know how to handle this kind of attention. It was so much it was almost suffocating and for the second time in 2 days, I felt like I couldn't breathe. This time, I wasn't so supported by El in trying to close the rift. I was drowning right now. It hurt how nice it felt to receive such praise.

"And--"

My mother was, thankfully, interrupted by the doorbell.

"You get my point," she said, turning to me with admiration. "I'll go get that. You think about what you might want for dinner."

She disappeared from my room and I let out a sigh of relief. I wasn't sure how much more I could take before being smothered to death. As I settled again, I looked to the clock in my room. It was indeed dinner time, which meant that I had slept for a long time. From my unconsciousness yesterday afternoon to now, was near a full 24 hours of sleep. Maybe I was hungry after all.

"(y/n)! Guest for you coming up to your room!" my mother called. I paused, furrowing my eyebrows. I figured it was probably Robin; she was most likely getting off work if she was there today. There was a knock, despite the announcement.

"You can come in," I said, sitting up and crossing my legs under the covers. I glanced up to see a head of dark and frizzy curls poke though the crack in the door. Eddie was looking the opposite way but turned his head to look towards me in my bed. I was surprised to see Eddie. Trying to recall everything that had happened yesterday morning was sort of freaking me out, I wasn't sure what Eddie had been doing. The fact I couldn't really remember what happened to me very well was also not reassuring.

"Hey," he said, opening the door and scooting in. He pressed his back up against my door so it closed. He seemed like he didn't want to step foot in my room.

"Hi."

It seemed like Eddie was here to talk about the night in the motel. We hadn't really talked before closing the rift and me passing out for a while. I recalled the awkwardness I felt, holding back a cringe as my mind danced carefully around that night's events. For someone I just met and suddenly was thrown into chaos with, I had managed to remain rather calm around Eddie up until this point. Now, bitterly reminiscing about the poor judgements I made, I was unable to sit still. I had really walked around with no pants around this guy. I had washed his damn hair for him. I had readily jumped on an interdimensional rat to save him. The fact the latter of those things was the least awkward really said something about what my life had become. Obviously, the circumstance by which we were getting to know each other were not great. Now, I suspected he wanted to come talk about my scars and everything--which made me feel sick. The fact Eddie Munson had seen my scars. It was worse than if he had actually seen me naked.

I felt the heat of my worry crawl up the back of my neck, reddening my face and ears. I wanted to throw back the covers of my bed now, starting to nervously sweat and all he had said was hello. Maybe he just wanted to talk about this morning, about what happened. We could just put the whole thing past us and start fresh. I had already tried for a fresh start with the brownies, so I wonder if I had exhausted the limit of fresh starts already. I wasn't sure how things would go, if things would just get more awkward. I couldn't help but feel like even the poorest of decisions made last night weren't so bad because Eddie was the company and not someone else. He seemed like a good guy at least, maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought.

"Uhm--what's up?" I asked, dragging myself out of my own head.

"I just, figured I'd check up on you," Eddie said, his hands behind his back. He was fidgeting with the door knob to my bedroom, still plastered up against my door. I didn't know if I should stand to talk to him or just stay where I was. "And...I wanted to talk to you."

"Yeah?"

"I wanted to...apologize," he said, shaking out his hands while he talked. I watched as he shoved them deep in the pockets of his jeans and I could see his hands curling into fists underneath the denim. "For the whole scar thing. I shouldn't have been so pushy or asked a deep question like that. Even if you did remember, it's none of my business. So...I'm sorry. That was like from 0 to 100 on the whole question scale."

I peered at Eddie with great curiosity. On one hand, it looked like Eddie had never apologized for anything. Yet, at the same time, it seemed like he was much more humble than he let on. It seemed like he was also not afraid to say that he was sorry, like most guys were around here. Eddie had a sincere humility to him. It was really sweet. Especially since he had come all the way over here to apologize.

"It's o--"

"Wait--don't brush it off or anything," he interrupted, tugging his hand from his pants' pocket and holding it up to me. I paused, shutting my open mouth. "You don't have to say it's okay. It's not and we're just going to move past it."

Eddie looked to me with a meek swell of his chest, burying his hand away again. He awaited my response and I could help but relax against my pillow with a soft, understanding smile.

"I appreciate your apology. Really...I sort of jumped down your throat about it," I said. "So I'm sorry too."

"Don't be," he said, letting his chest deflate. He had been holding his breath apparently. I just looked down to my comforter, picking at the small pieces of lint and flicking them away from me.

Why was this so awkward?

"We can just start over."

"Really?" I asked, turning my head up towards him. He simply nodded. "I think the circumstances of officially meeting were a little screwed up to say the least. Now that the rifts are closed, so I'm told, we can just...get to know each other."

"Cool," he said, clearing his throat. "If we're good now, I'll just get going now."

"You have somewhere to be?" I asked.

"Uh...no."

"You can stay," I blurted, even though I was getting warmer and warmer with him in my space--despite him being as far away as possible. "You came all this way and if we're going to get to know each other, then we have to hang out at some point."

"You want me to stay?" he asked, gaining a sudden, airy confidence about him. He was being smug, of course. I raised an eyebrow at him. I also noticed that he had been staring at me intensely the entire time he was here. Despite the 180 to an annoyingly charming flirt, it seemed like he not only wouldn't step closer into my room but wouldn't look at it either. His gaze refused to stray around my space.

"Just--come in and sit down," I said, moving the covers aside. He paused and finally did look around the room for a place to sit. His eyes moved quickly, seeing that he could sit in my little desk chair. "You can sit on the bed. We've been through more awkward shit. It's fine if you sit on my bed."

Eddie, for a moment, considered sitting in the desk chair anyways. He turned and sat down at the foot of my bed, still away from me.

"How you doing?" he asked, looking up at me.

"Head hurts a little, but its not super painful. I'm just tired. What the hell happened? I can't remember past the tremble," I said, trying not to take offense to his apprehensiveness.

"Tremble?" he asked.

"There was a tremble, like the night Mike tried," I stated. "When I went to open my eyes to protect myself, I was like...in this darkness."

"There was no tremble," he stated, "besides the shaking when the rifts closed."

"Oh...I must've imagined it then..."

"Well you were there with your eyes closed for a while. You opened them at some point," Eddie said, "but your eyes were rolled back in your head, like what happens with Vecna."

"Oh..." I said, glancing down. "Maybe because of El, I mean they were trained in the same place. Vecna got into people's heads and that was what happened to them, right?"

"Yeah, make sense," Eddie agreed. "Well, you were just sort of stood there. I didn't know if we should put music in your ears or something, to snap you out of it. I had your brownies, by the way. I pretty much stress ate the half I didn't give to my uncle. They're great by the way, you're an excellent baker. The whole vecna thing is no fun—hence why I ate all...the brownies. You seemed okay though, until...you started choking? I don't know it was like you couldn't breathe."

"I...remember that," I added.

"Yeah? What was happening?"

"I'm certain that when El had to take a hold of us, that it was like her...occupying our headspaces. Can't have 2 people in one body like that, even if its not actually 2 people physically there," I said.

"What was it like? I know, curious cat, but I just have to know," Eddie said.

"Uh, well like I said it was just darkness. I looked around and I could see El and Will," I explained. "She just asked for us to find a memory to uphold so that she could connect with us better. Not sure how it works, you'd have to ask her."

"What memories? Like you're drowning kind of memories?"

"No...I don't know I cycled through quite a few. Leaving work with Steve and Robin, playing DnD with the boys, my family," I listed. I looked up to Eddie, meeting eyes with him. There was a focused crinkle around his eyes and his lips were parted slightly. "Stuff like that."

I wasn't about to admit that he was in my memories nor the fact he made my face hot when he was that close--bandaging me up. Maybe it was good he was nearly falling off the edge of the bed...so far away.

"Huh, that's...so strange."

"Yeah, it was just like shifting through memories. It was an odd sensation, but when I settled into the memories I started to struggle with breathing. It didn't feel like I was going to pass out inside my own head, it was just...hard to breathe."

"Yeah...and before that you were sort of crying," Eddie pointed out. I glanced up and before he continued talking, he examined my face. "But it might've been just some eye watering issues or something. So, then after that you woke up but ended up unconscious again. I just carried you back to the car and everything."

He avoided asking why I had been crying. It seemed as though Eddie was stepping carefully after prying into something I didn't want to talk about.

"You carried me?" I asked.

"Well how else do you suppose we got you out of there?" he countered.

"But you're...injured."

"Eh, it's fine," he stated, brushing me off. "Oh--so I guess I owe you a second apology. For driving your car."

"Why...would you be sorry about that? Did you crash it??" I asked.

"What?? No, no. I'm just a notoriously bad driver," he said. "I have my license, I promise. I'm just not so good."

"Oh...I mean you don't have to apologize for that Eddie."

"Ah, I just figured I'd cover my bases."

"Right," I said, shaking my head. I quickly realized how awkward it was to invite him to stay, when a silence settled over the room. Now that things were explained, we had nothing to talk about. This wasn't normally how you made friends. It had felt good to laugh and eat with him before, at the motel. How was this different? Why was it so horribly awkward?

"So...you do know how to play DnD? That wasn't a fib," he said.

"Yeah, Will taught me," I replied, shrugging.

"I'll have to see that," he commented. I glanced to my closet, where I had thrown the Hellfire shirt in the hamper. Eddie's eyes followed mine, to which he ended up scanning around my room. "Cute room Byers."

"Thanks?" I said, confused as to whether that was a compliment or not.

"You mind?" he asked, getting up and touring the small space.

"You're already walking," I pointed out and he just smirked back to me, head turning quickly towards and away from me. I watched as he looked around my stuff...feeling weirdly exposed. It wasn't like I had anything to hide, but it just seemed like Eddie and I were never going to have a normal introduction to each other.

"Awe," he said with slight sarcasm, pointing to a polaroid of me and my brothers.

"Is this your way of saying I'm boring?"

"Ah you're a keen thinker," Eddie said, pointing to his temple and then to me.

"Shut up, your motel room isn't much better. It's typical metalhead."

"Typical? You hurt my feelings fair maiden. How could you say that?" he asked. He was still smiling, indicating that he was joking. I just rolled my eyes and scooted towards the end of my bed as he continued. I heard him open up my music box. "You dance?"

"Ah I did when I was younger," I said, watching him step aside, revealing the plastic ballerina spinning on the inside of the box. "That and gymnastics, but I hated gymnastics a lot more."

"What's this? Where'd you get this?" He asked, pulling my necklace with the first letter of my name and a small gemstone.

"My mom got it for me," I replied. "I usually wear it all the time, but I took it off. Luckily so, considering we got covered in Upside Down guts."

"Ah, it's nice."

"I know my room is not really helping the case that I'm not boring."

"Just a nice girl then," he said, smirking. It seemed as though he found it funny how on the surface we seemed like opposites. Maybe we were just a nice girl and a bad boy. Though under the surface, it felt like we were just 2 losers down on our luck. That seemed better, honestly.

He didn't say anything else and I watched his back, seeing him snatch something off my shelf and turn his head back to me. He had an open mouth, in amused shock. He was hiding something up against his chest.

"What?" I questioned.

Eddie showed me another picture in a decorated frame. It was Will and I at a renaissance fair. He had asked to go for his birthday and because Mike couldn't come, he had gotten me to dress up with him. He had his wizard gear and I was dressed up in a princess get up. I felt my face heat up immediately, eyes widening slightly. Eddie practically jumped with giddiness at my reaction. So maybe I did have something to hide from Eddie specifically.

"Fair maiden? Princess?"

He gasped.

"Warrior Princess!"

"Shut it."

"Oh this is just...can I have a copy of this?" he asked.

"No. Asshole."

"Please this is just too uncanny," he pleaded. "I was definitely wrong, you're not preppy or anything like that. You are secretly dorky as hell."

I just held up my middle finger to him. He raised an eyebrow at me.

"That's not very regal behavior. You may be a warrior, but you're still a princess," he stated. I