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Eddie loved the stars.
He always has.
One of the things he remembers from his mom, those nights when his dad got too drunk. His mom would take go to his room in their shitty appartment. They would climb to the firescape and climb to the top. His mom would point out constellations and he would try to remember, but they all looked the same. But his mom told him what they were called every time anyway.
He never cared for the names, he liked watching them. How they twinkled, freckled in the sky. Feeling as if someone put them up there just for him to see. To find comfort and safety in.
He never stopped loving them, not even after the funeral. In cliché fashion, it rained that day. Not that Eddie cared, he was crying to hard to see the sky. But before the day was over, when his dad was passed out on the couch, the sky cleared. He went up to the roof and looked up. He saw the stars for hours that night, after the sky turned colors, he was there. Watching.
He watched the stars from the back of the police car as he was taken to his uncle. He could barely see with the black eye his dad gave him, but he knew they were there, and that was confort enough.
He watched them from the roof of the trailer on his 14th birthday with a cupcake Wayne had brought him, a single cande letting out smoke. Both of them on the roof laying on blankets as they just watched.
He watched them every night in the boathouse. Crying, pleading, hoping they would listen. They didnt.
He watched as a boy rose from the lake, the stars, his stars, in the backround. Watching this kid get butchered in their presence. Another mutilation burned into his eyes, ruining two of his homes.
But he also watched a boy with a soft yellow sweater in the same backdrop risking his life for some kids. He saw that same boy get ready for battle, one where the sky is always dark but doesnt have twinkling lights, twinlking at the rythm of your heart.
He didnt feel like a hero, like it was really real when he lied down, bleeding out, looking up. The thought of dying without the stars there to recieve him scared him more than the bites at his side. The stars were not going to recieve him, take him to the warm embrace of his mom waiting for him out there.
But as fate would have it, he didnt die under the starless sky.
He woke up in a hospital bed, facing a window. He first saw the sky, red and blue, his stars nowhere in sight. But he also felt a loose grip in his hand next to him.
The boy with the yellow sweater was there, holding him softly, as if he was about to fade. He squeezed that hand and the sleepy eyes that looked at him, lighting up at the sight of him awake. Now that was a... new feeling.
Something the stars didnt have was a voice. He always wondered what they would sound like. He could only hope they could compare to the sound of the laugh of the yellow sweater boy. The same voice he quickly got addicted to. The morning hoarsnes, the late night whisper, the sleepy sighs, the inquiering whispers, the soft giggles into his hair.
He didnt think he would ever see the stars again, but he could live with the boy who brightened the room just by being in it. His own personal star. But he missed the stars anyway. And he told the boy this.
He saw stars that night, not the real ones, but something as close as he could get. For some reason he debated which were better. The stars or the soft glow of plastic glow-in-the-dark stickers, put up there by the people he loved. Now that was some fierce competition.
They stayed in that room until they didn't need to. They fought under the red sky until they didn't have to. They kissed under the clearing sky until they couldn't anymore. Smiling too much into the kiss, panting into the night sky. He crued when he finally saw them again. His stars. His stars with his arms wrapped around his sun.
The week after they won, he brought the boy to the roof of his new trailer. They sat there and looked up. He tried to tell the boy the names, bit he couldn't remember. But the boy only wiped away his tears and layed down. The boy named them all, like his mom used too.
He didnt learn the stars names that day either, too busy looking at the boy to see the sky.
That was the night Eddie found he liked seeing the stars reflected in his boys eyes more than he ever did in the sky.