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#Steve who’s partially deaf and somehow is never in the room when she drops tidbits is very confused
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All this talk about shovel talks and nothing about Claudia Henderson. Like where’s her giving steddie shovel talks?
Claudia is eternally grateful to Eddie for saving her Dusty’s life, but she sees the pain her boys were both in after his sacrifice. She hears the screams at night from Dustin’s room. She watches as he either radios whoever was sitting with Eddie—usually Steve—or calls if the person doesn’t have a radio. Always asking for updates in the morning. Making sure the other boy is still there. Still alive.
Steve on the other hand is hiding his pain as he always does. She still sees Steve sitting vigil at the young man’s bed when she comes to bring real food and good coffee to Steve, Wanye and occasionally Dustin’s middle school science teacher Mr. Clarke. She sees the way Steve took extra care washing the other’s vest. All under a guise of being a good friend and not wanting Eddie to wake up alone.
When Eddie starts tagging along with Steve to their dinners occasionally she slowly watches as the two go from friends to pining to something else entirely. It’s when she’s certain that Eddie and Steve have become EddieandSteve that she starts doing it.
She would never give a shovel talk to Eddie. Steve’s a grown man, and can protect his own heart, but she’s already seen the pain Eddie had unwilling caused him. She’s seen the way Steve held the metalhead’s vest as it was his anchor to this world. She knew Eddie would never cause him pain like that again, but that doesn’t mean she can’t have a little fun scaring Eddie.
It starts innocently enough, she’s just sharing fun facts.
“Did you know,” she says to Eddie while Steve and Dustin are clearing the table, “that pigs can eat a human body. It can take some time, but sixteen pigs can do it in about eight minutes actually.”
She hides her smile as the younger squirms uncomfortably and replies “um, no I didn’t know that.”
She didn’t think anyone else but Eddie heard her, but she was wrong. Dustin says something about remembering going to Claudia’s cousin’s farm shortly after his dad left them, and thinking it had pigs. She had an even harder hiding her smile after Eddie went as white as a ghost with that information.
She continues to give Eddie little fun facts like that, and one time confirming that Eddie is in fact allergic to cinnamon, because she’d hate to forget that when baking him something.
She’d never ever be the cause of Dustin and Steve’s pain, or give her new found friends Wayne and Scott the panic she had in spring break not knowing where her Dusty was, but she does like seeing Eddie squirm on occasion.
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