Fear of the Dark - Iron Maiden

When Beck wandered backstage, Eddie had already set up the table and was twitchier than usual, tapping his kneecap with his knuckles and rings. He popped up and kissed her hard, catching her off guard but making her smile.

"Someone is ready for the final session," she teased. She started setting up her character next to him and kept her voice low as she asked, "So this customer of yours? What's going on?"

He opened his mouth to answer but Todd and Jeff strolled in so instead he whispered that he would tell her later. She was annoyed but it was just repeated bad luck today. He squeezed her hand to console her as the guys circled around him to try to peek at his notes and give him shit before the game started.

Mike and Dustin hurried in then with… a girl Beck had never seen before wearing an American flag as a cape. Immediately, Beck was on board with whoever this girl was.

Eddie looked the new girl over and then with no pretext said, "Absolutely not."

"You asked for a sub," Dustin said and pointed. "We delivered."

"This is the Hellfire Club. Not babysitting club."

"I'm eleven, you long haired freak," the girl shot back and Beck grinned for the first time that day.

Beck leaned forward so she was in Eddie's sight-line and couldn't be ignored. "Surely you're not saying that because she's a girl, Edward."

Eddie was blushing angrily but Beck blew him a kiss with her fingertips and then folded them over so it flowed into a playful middle finger. That cracked a smile from him and some of the tension dissipated.

He pushed to his feet and met Dustin's sub in the middle of the table. "So. What's your name, child?"

"Erica Sinclair."

"What's your class and level?"

"My name is Lady Applejack and I'm a chaotic good, half-elf cleric level fourteen."

Beck's grin broadened as Erica laid out the stats of her character, ending with, "So we gonna do this or are we going to keep chit chatting like this is your mommy's book club?"

"I like her," Beck said, leaning back in her seat.

"Really?" Todd said.

"She has a cape and a kickass character," Beck shrugged.

Eddie let a slow smile grow across his face before saying, "Welcome to Hellfire," and holding out his hand.

Erica shook his hand and they all got down to business.

"The hooded cultists," Eddie was saying moments later after their party finally entered the hideout they had discovered the last session, "chant Hail Lord Vecna. Hail Lord Vecna! They turn to you, remove their hoods. You recognize most of them from Mochmar. There is one you do not recognize, his skin shriveled, desiccated."

Beck watched him closely and saw him starting to stand. Well that meant nothing good was coming for sure.

"Something else," he said. "He is not only missing his left arm, but his left eye!"

"Fuck off!" she yelled as the rest of the table erupted with her, insisting Vecna was dead, killed by Kaz himself.

"So it was thought my friends, so it was thought. But Vecna lives!"

Beck dropped her head on her arms as Eddie said, "You are scared. You are tired. You are injured. Do you flee Vecna and his cultists? Or do you stand your ground and fight?"

Dustin finally said, "I say we fight. To the death!"

The table agreed with him one by one and Beck lifted her head to grin wickedly as they all chanted To the death and Eddie started to laugh.

Mike was the first to die, failing three death saves in a row while the cultist held off Erica's cleric from being able to heal him and Beck failed to stabilize him.

Then Jeff. Then Todd. Then Gareth which had Eddie literally on the table arguing until Gareth accepted there would be no rule bending.

A punishing blow to her character made him cackle wildly and Beck narrowed her eyes at him. It was down to her fighter, Erica's cleric, and Dustin's ranger. They badly needed the spellcasting since she had leveled as many of the cultists as she could and Vecna was incredibly hard to hit with her melee weapons. Her character had been able to take cover with Dustin's but Vecna was after her in initiative order and Erica had no cover in sight.

"Your turn," Eddie told her and she tore out a sheet of notebook paper, scribbling on it furiously.

"I ready an action," she said, folding it and handing it to him. He took it while looking at her with obvious suspicion, but there was no room for him to argue. It was a completely correct way to use a turn.

And then Vecna did exactly what Beck had suspected. He turned Flight of the Damned on Lady Applejack, the cone of pure hell certain to engulf her.

"I use my action!" Beck called as Eddie rolled fifty points of damage.

He stopped and unfolded the paper she had given him, his eyebrows shooting up into his bangs as he read.

"Beck…" he said, "are you sure?"

"I use my fucking action," she snarled at him and he shook his head in disbelief.

He took her mini and moved it to where Erica's had been before moving Lady Applejack beyond the range of the cone.

"Our elf fighter rushes Lady Applejack and hits her with an unarmed strike that sends her flying. Lady Applejack, you take four points of damage as you skid across the floor, watching the one who saved you eviscerated by Vecna's spell."

"What?!" Dustin screamed. "How?"

"It's more than my HP," Beck sighed, knocking over her own mini.

"Time out! Time out!" Todd yelled and they all circled up on the far end of the room. Dustin argued that Vecna only had fifteen hit points left and Eddie tried to goad them into quitting by saying there was no shame in running, but of course there was.

After a plan was in place, they came back, the players standing behind Dustin and Erica as they stood ready for their last two rolls and Eddie tossed them a D20.

Dustin missed and Eddie took way too much delight in it as Beck's stomach dropped. Come on! she thought. Her sacrifice needed to be worth something.

Erica was the last thing between them and an inevitable TPK which would mean restarting with new level one characters or admitting total defeat. She released the dice and Eddie leaned forward as it bounced off a cultist mini, spinning around before finally stopping.

It was a motherfucking Nat 20.

"Crit hit!" Erica yelled and Beck screamed with the rest of them and hugged the younger girl hard.

Eddie was as delighted and stunned as the rest of them, pulling his hands to his chest with a noise of surprise surprise before laughing and clapping while yelling, "That's why we play!"

He dramatically unfolded his arms and bowed them, to Erica, acknowledging his own defeat graciously. And in that moment Beck felt her heart burst with love for him. They would be okay. This day was shitty but it would end and it would end in victory.

After the guys and Erica had left, Eddie was immediately on top of her.

His skin almost burned with the adrenaline flooding through him and Beck was all too willing to give him an outlet for it. She pushed against him until the back of his knees hit the DM "throne" and he sat down hard. Both unbuckling and stripping off their pants, Beck rode him hard as he held so tight to her hips and ass that she knew she would have little fingertip bruises later.

When he couldn't take the limited range of movement any more, he lifted her onto the table and leaned forward so she was on her back with his forearms on either side of her head. He pulled out almost completely before slamming back into her until she came.

He then thrust wildly and Beck pulled her knees back to her shoulders which allowed so much skin to skin contact that his mind spun. And when she teasingly called him her master it was so incredibly hot that he came almost immediately.

Once they had gathered themselves and started packing up his binders and maps and minis, Eddie's mind returned to the session.

"You should have let Applejack bite it," he said as he handed Beck her mini. "You could have made that hit as well. Seemed like a waste."

"Tactics say protect the healers and spellcasters and my initiative order would have been after Vecna's next turn," she shrugged.

"I just don't get why you would do something so suicidal," he argued, genuinely perplexed.

"It's not suicide," she said, meeting his eyes. "It's sacrifice and I would do it for you in a heartbeat."

He didn't really know what to say to something that unguarded so he kissed her instead, hoping that his emotion would translate in ways he couldn't verbalize.

They continued packing up and Beck snapped her fingers as she remembered he had been trying to tell her something since the end of school.

"Hey! Your customer!" she reminded him and Eddie tried to hide how his expression fell.

He caught her hands in his, hoping to stave off getting hit, and said, "I met Chrissy Cunningham."

Beck exploded, wrenching her hands out of his. "Do you have a death wish?!"

He let her storm and swear at him, repeating everything he had already worried about, until she seemed to burn herself out and finally turned her attention back to him.

"It's over, right? She has gone home with some weed and nothing will come of this?"

Eddie blushed hard. "I'm taking her back to the trailer after the game," he murmured. "She wanted something stronger and I have some special K somewhere…"

Beck just stared at him and he now wished she was yelling.

"Fine," she said, grabbing her stuff. "Fucking fine."

She pushed past him and he chased her, begging her to stop.

"She's clearly worried about getting caught!" he tried to explain. "She won't tell anyone."

"And if she doesn't handle it well? Or she takes too much? Who do you think Jason will come looking for?" Beck snapped as she finally stopped.

Eddie didn't have an answer for her and he stared hard at his shoes, remembering that Beck hated these shoes.

"This is a lot more money than I usually have a chance to make, Beck," he finally said into the stifling silence between them. "Like could-pay-your-rent-for-a-month money."

"I want you to be okay more than I want money!"

"And maybe I want you to be okay! Maybe I want to help you and this is all I've got! Maybe I don't need you protecting me when I'm trying to protect you!"

And that did get her to be quiet though it took him a minute to look up and realize she was close to tears.

"I hate this," she finally sniffled. "I hate everything about it. I hate that we can't have both."

Exhausted, Eddie pulled her into a hug and felt her tears soaking through his shirt. "Yeah me too," he admitted.

"Please go to my place when you are done," she finally said. "Please don't stay there, just in case."

"No objections here," he soothed and she nodded, wiping roughly at her eyes.

"Everyone's going to be on a high after that young Hitler speech from Jason and their surprise win. You've also pissed him off twice already, so be careful."

"I will absolutely take the flee action if needed," Eddie said with a sad smile as he ran his fingers through her hair. "Come on. We need to get you to work."

Beck was all nerves as she waited for her shift to end. The Over Easy was busy late into her shift, with students crowding in to hang out after the big win. She had finally cleaned up everything from the mess they left when her shift ended and she forced herself to not run all the way back to her apartment.

Eddie's van was nowhere to be seen which wasn't actually unusual so that didn't cause her any alarm. A lamp was on as well which also calmed her; he was here as he had promised.

But when she opened her door, her eyes landed quickly on the large kitchen knife sitting on the kitchen countertop not too far from where she stood. Someone was rushing at it so she lunged, sure someone else beating her there would be worse. She realized with horror that it was Eddie and she swept the knife away from both of them, sending it clattering into the sink.

"Eddie!" she yelled as he slammed into her. "What the hell?!"

He held her arms so tightly she winced and when he met her eyes, her skin prickled with cold panic. He had clearly been pulling at his hair and his eyes were wide and looked almost manic.

Then he sank to the floor and burst into sobs. Beck had seen him cry before, but not like this. This was hysterical and uncontrolled.

She grabbed him in a vice-like hug and pulled him forward so all his weight rested on her. As he sobbed she felt over his arms and legs and torso, not finding any obvious injuries or blood. He didn't seem to be hurt, which was almost worse because now she had no idea what could have happened.

Eddie knew he was scaring her but he couldn't stop. He was scared himself.

"What happened, love?" he heard her whisper into his ear.

"I can't," he managed between sobs. "I don't know."

"Eddie!" she said more forcefully, putting one of his hands on her chest. "I need you to breathe."

She held one hand under his chin so he had to look her in the eyes and kept the other pressed tight against his chest until she could feel his breaths as they started to deepen.

"Beck, this is going to sound insane," he finally said, voice hoarse from crying.

"Tell me anyway," she said, taking both his hands in hers.

"I took Chrissy to the trailer. She asked about who lived there and I couldn't find my kit so I had to dig around in my room for a while. When I came back… it was like she was having a seizure. Her eyes were all rolled back and her eyelids were flickering but she was frozen in place. Just standing there."

Eddie watched Beck pale to a weird almost green color but she nodded for him to continue.

"I kept telling her to wake up and I tried snapping my fingers in her face and finally I shook her a little bit. And then…"

He could feel the tears starting to roll down his face again and his stomach rolled. He lurched to the side and gagged viciously. He had already thrown up several times and there was nothing left but his body did not care.

"You're scaring me," Beck whispered, unmoving from where she still sat on the floor. "What happened to Chrissy?"

Eddie winced and pushed through the crazy part in one burst: "The lights were flickering and buzzing and then she started lifting off the ground. She slammed against the ceiling and then her arms snapped. And her legs snapped and then her jaw… it snapped sideways and her eyes were… sucked back into her head and crushed."

Beck's look of horror now mirrored his own though he was unclear on whether she was terrified for him or terrified of him.

"I ran, Beck. I came here like you asked but… her body is still there."

Beck continued to stare wordlessly at him, processing as fast as she could. Had he been high? Had they taken special K together and this had been some horrifying vision? Was this some insanely bad trip that would go away when Wayne found a cheerleader sleeping on his couch later?

But that wasn't like Eddie. He didn't mess with things harder than weed and he knew she didn't want him spending time with Chrissy.

And of course that insidious, terrible thought: did he kill her? Was there really a dead girl in his trailer and this was a psychotic break? Had something happened and this was a traumatized re-imagining of self-defense or outright murder?

"Beck, please say something," he begged, increasingly worried the longer she stared at him.

"I don't know what to say," she finally managed.

"Oh god..." he moaned, falling forward to bury his face against his knees. "You don't believe me. You think I'm crazy."

"I have no idea what to think, Eddie!" Beck snapped, unconsciously pulling her foot back so he didn't touch her. But Eddie noticed that too and that was too much for him. He needed her. She could think he was crazy but she could not think he was a murderer.

"I didn't kill her, Beck. You know I wouldn't kill her!"

Beck met his beautiful brown eyes, now red and puffy from crying. She loved him so much and she knew when he was lying and he was not lying. If he had lost his mind or been high or his brain had rewritten something, they would figure that out. But he wasn't lying.

"Did you hurt her?" she whispered and when he winced like she had slapped him it hurt her too.

"Beck, I didn't touch her not one time until after the lights started flickering. And then I tried to get away from her and tripped over the table and fell."

Hearing that was an unexpected relief.

"I believe you didn't hurt her," Beck said, suddenly certain. Whatever had happened, it hadn't been him that hurt her, if Chrissy was indeed injured or dead. "Did anyone see you when you left?"

"I don't know," he moaned miserably.

"Until there's news or something is reported, I want you to lay low here okay? We don't… know what happened."

Eddie could see that she had not in any way accepted that Chrissy had floated to the ceiling and then been gruesomely murdered by unseen forces but he was grateful she at least knew he wouldn't kill the cheerleader.

He agreed to stay there and Beck finally got off the floor, some pinkness returning to her skin as she dug around under her bathroom sink. She pulled out a bottle she had taken from her mom ages ago and handed him a white rectangular pill and a cup of water.

Grateful, he took the Xanax and she helped him off the floor and helped him back to her room as Eddie swayed with exhaustion. The two of them fell into her bed fully clothed and almost dizzy with the relief of knowing he was safe for now and that he had not killed anyone Beck spooned him tightly, face buried in his neck and hair.

"Beck…?" he asked before he drifted off. "What's going to happen to me?"