Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“No!”

The sound pierces through the sky. 

And, you know, they’ve lost before. Barb had died, and Bob was killed, and Billy was torn apart, and Alexei was murdered, and Eddie was mauled, and Max died in a coma. They know loss like an old friend, unwelcome, unwilling to let him in, but he forces through regardless.

They know the Upside Down. It screeches and it takes, and it breaks everything in its wake. They know how to fight it. With little girls with superpowers, too young, too battle hardened, nail bats in hand, guns cocked, fists raised. They know this. 

(He thought they knew this. Thought that this was all they ever had to fight).

Time moves slowly around him. Will’s face is falling in the doorway to safety, and El is dropping to her knees, and Jonathan is racing to the spot that was once occupied with—

Steve.

His body drops to the ground, the back of his head crunching against the road. And then time is moving at ten times speed, and Hopper just wants to be able to fast forward, skip this part, forget it, pretend it never happened, skip this part, please, please, please.

It feels like he’s watching himself move around in the madness of it all. He registers his hands reaching for the forgotten gun limp in Steve’s grasp, slips it back into the holster. Jonathan is on his knees and sitting the kid up, and Hopper is grabbing onto his shirt, his arm, lugs him back to the house.

“Barricade the door!”

It’s not him who says it. It should be. He should be commanding these kids, just kids, oh god, and Steve is still laying limp against his arms. Hopper sees Will push the plates and the food, Steve’s cooking, Joyce’s drinks, across the table, tumbling to the floor. He hears the slide of bookshelves and couches and heavy furniture behind him.

“Get him up, get him up!”

And Jonathan and Hopper are pulling Steve up onto the table, laying him down as gently as they can, blood stains and horror and love taking over. It feels like he’s been thrust back into his body, because as soon as Hop lays his eyes on Steve’s face, his forehead, he breaks. 

He turns away, tears his eyes away from the body of the kid, to look at Jonathan and Will and El. 

(The kids who have just lost their mother, the kids who have just lost their friend, preparing for battle and victory and death).

Hopper turns the safety on for the gun. Wishes that he could throw it out the window and never see it again, because it was all his fault, his weapon, his fault—

They know loss. 

And they know the Upside Down. They know the two to be so incredibly interconnected, taking and taking and never giving anything back, and Hopper never thought, should have thought, should have known better, that it wasn’t going to be the Upside Down that killed Steve Harrington.

(He should have noticed. He should have payed more attention. Maybe if he had just talked to him, and reassured him, and made sure that he was held in the way he held the kids, urged him to move out of Hawkins, told him that he was proud—)

“El. El, he’s not—”

“No, he can’t, I’m not letting him—”

“Please, El, please—”

“I— I brought Max back, I can. I can do it! Please, let me—”

Hop turns back to the scene. Of El pressing her palms against Steve’s face, painted in red, rivers flowing down his cheeks. Jonathan, hand on her shoulder, arm around his brother, averting his eyes. Will, pleading and begging, arms reached out for anyone.

“He’s gone.” Hopper says. “Kid, he’s— he’s not coming back.”

(He hits fast forward. 

They make a battle plan. Will calls the party. They make their way to the Byers house. Robin is the first one there, and she’s snuck around the back. She makes her way in, armed with an axe, bag slung across her shoulder, and her face is hard and determined, and she’s opening her mouth and then her eyes swing across to the living room, to Steve. 

And she stops. And Hopper places his hand on her shoulder. And she crumples to the ground. And then Jonathan had made his way over, and lowered himself, and Will was standing in the doorway, and El was still holding Steve’s hand, and the rest is a blur.

Nancy came, at some point. Last. After everyone else was inside the home. Had taken one look at everyone’s faces, the lack of Joyce and the lack of Steve, of warmth, of love, reassurance. Built her walls up, made a plan, didn’t cry, didn’t waver, until after they had won.

Won. They had won. 

Why doesn’t it feel like it?).

At the end of it all, the edge of the world, the wisps of monsters disappearing into cracks in the ground, Hopper cries. When he closes his eyes he sees it, feels it replay in his head. Spine against pavement, gunshot ringing in his ears, a skull against road. 

The sun makes its way up. Hopper can feel it through the broken window in the Byers house, tries to think, to stop thinking, to rationalise. What does he do now? What is he meant to do now?

Steve’s body lays cold against the table. Hop checks his watch. It’s nearly been a full day since—

He runs his fingers through Steve’s hair. Tries to imagine a smile on his face. Hop grabs a rag from the kitchen, runs it under the sink. He sits down next to Steve’s face, presses it gently against his face.

I’m sorry, he wants to say. I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry I didn’t notice. 

The world flickers in and out of view, and Hopper wonders if this is what dying feels like. He sees flashes of smiles and death, laughs and tears. He sees an image of Joyce, fringe in her eyes, hands holding his, mouth moving in a word that he cannot hear. He sees El, hair above her shoulders, wearing a patterned jumpsuit, dancing with Max. 

He sees Sara. He sees her laughing with her mother.

And then the images are slowly fading, swirling and twirling, like blood washed down the drain. Hopper feels like he should grasp onto them, hold them close to his chest, but he lets them go. Watches them mesh and mould into—

Nothing.

— — —

The kids are all crowded around in the cabin, tucked between the couch and the floor. They have pillows and blankets and sleeping bags strewn across the small space from the armchair to the TV, and it’s messy — popcorn and spilled soda, and Hop is pretty sure that his favourite flannel is being used as a towel.

It was an effort, fixing the cabin. There was a hole in the roof from where the physcial Mindflayer had broken through and tried to kill everyone, but Hopper tries not to think about it too hard. It took a while for everything to be habitable again, months of going to thrift stores and accepting gifts, and learning how to make furniture out of wood scraps.

It’s cosy, warm. Homey. 

The kids are all huddled together in a mess around their little nest that they’ve created, and they look happy. Hop thinks he can hear them gossiping about Steve and Eddie, has half the mind to tell them to knock it off, but their voices are filled with so much warmth.

“But it was so real—”

“Max, it’s probably just a nightmare.”

Hopper leans against the kitchen counter, pretends to be busy making breakfast. The kids voices have shifted, and they’re quiet, whispering, soft.

“No, I,” It’s Will. Soft-spoken. Hopper can barely make him out amongst the noises of the cabin. “I had one, too. A dream of Steve dying.”

It feels like a cool flush has taken over him. The pancake mix is abandoned as he turns around to walk towards the kids. The image of Steve laying across the dining table, of wiping away his blood with a wet cloth, of Sara and Joyce and El and Nothing flooding into the forefront of his brain.

“Will,” He swallows. “Did it happen at your house?”

The kids have turned to look at him. They look warm and safe and complete, and Hopper hopes to god, hopes to anyone that will listen, that the thought he had was just that. 

“Yes. You and Jonathan and El were there, and Steve was—”

“I saw it, too, kid.”

Hopper sits on the ground near them all. Brings Will close in his arms. They don’t cry, don’t speak. The rest of the party shift, correct themselves to hold each other, not crying. 

Max is looking at Hopper, eyebrows drawn, before she’s speaking, “We should tell him.”

There are murmurs of agreement throughout the group, but they stay like that, holding each other, mourning a death that doesn’t exist, mourning for someone who fought so hard for them to live.

(Later, Steve knocks on the door, and the kids are mildly apprehensive and melancholy. Hopper watches as his eyes dance around the room, realises the down mood, adjusts and smiles and laughs and plops himself down into the nest of warmth and blankets.

Nobody says a word. Maybe it’s because they see how hard Steve is trying (succeeding) to make them feel better, or because they don’t know how to approach the topic. He floats to the kitchen and uses the pancake mix, and serves breakfast, and laughs and jokes, eyes filled with so much love.

Hopper looks at the scar on his forehead, remembers the piercing sound of a gun, of body falling on asphalt).

— — —

He isn’t the one to tell Steve. Too busy with helping Enzo settle in, and filling in one year gaps with El. Hop goes to bed each night after the vision, the memory, and feels a blossoming of guilt eat through his skin. He tells himself it is because he’s too busy.

When he’s finally ready to confront Steve, to invite him over to the cabin and to talk about how things are starting to come back, how they are starting to remember his deaths— he receives a letter in the mail.

There are only a handful of people who knows where he lives, all of whom he trusts, so he knows it isn’t spam (laughs a little at the thought of spam mail and shitty tabloids tracking him down, just to advertise). 

The letter is sealed, chicken scratch handwriting with his name on the front. When he opens up the envelope, sits in the armchair by the TV, he wants to weep.

It’s a list. A long, long list. Each dot point is labelled with a number and a name, and Hop flicks through the pages until he reaches the end, sees over two-hundred entries. There are two copies within the envelope. One for him. One for El.

Deaths. It’s a list of Steve’s deaths.

(Hopper wants to cry, then. He wants to know which of the kids had to tell their Steve about what they had saw, that they had remembered. He flicks the envelope back over and catches Eddie’s handwriting, knows that, at least, Steve didn’t go through this alone).

There’s a small note, tucked behind the two lists. It’s written in Steve’s unruly handwriting, blocky and soft. 

“Turns out the scars aren’t done showing up, and I maybe-might-have-died a couple hundred times, and you guys maybe-might-be remembering my deaths? I’m really sorry about  I would say I’m sorry, but Eddie is a bully, and isn’t allowing me to.”

Hopper laughs. He’s glad that, at the very least, Eddie is making sure that Steve knows this isn’t his fault. Was never his fault. He turns back to the note.

“We made a list, Eddie and I. It probably would have been a good idea to just… give you the deaths that you would be a part of, but that’s kinda a lot of work and it’s like, 2 AM or something. Everyone just gets the whole shebang. 

It’s… a warning? Caution? I don’t really know how or when you’ll remember it (or if you’ll even remember it at all!), but I just wanted everyone to be ready. I’m sorry that there’s so many pages.

Love,

Steve Harrington.”

Chapter Text

With only the moon as her witness, Robin holds his hand tight. It feel oddly ritualistic — watching as he takes off his shoes and his socks, a mirror of floating above Lover’s Lake. She knows that everything is going to work out in the end, maybe not right now, later, in the future-past. 

(She’s still scared).

She wonders what it’ll feel like, fading out of the loop. Will it rip her to shreds, and tear her apart as she holds his hand? Will she watch as everything dissipates from view; the woods and the pool and the house? Will she stay here, never going back, stuck?

Steve takes one step into the pool. He dips his feet in, lets go of Robin’s hand for only a moment, to descend into the cool blue. She reaches out for him once the water is lapping at the waistband of his jeans, body disappearing further and further, until he’s laying on his back.

“Robin?” He asks, whispers it into the night.

She looks at the stars in the sky, winking and watching, as she holds his hand.

“Steve.” She answers.

“It’s gonna be alright,” Robin braves a glance at his face, squeezes his hand. He’s looking up at the moon, hair flowing in the water. “You’re going to be okay.”

At least he’s not alone. Robin thinks. He has her. The water ripples as he squeezes her hand back, tight.

Steve doesn’t look at her, keeps his eyes on the moon and the stars. Robin keeps her eyes on his face, tries to commit it to memory — every line and mole and imperfection. She traces her eyes across his forehead, sees his slip close.

He lowers himself, slowly, surely, holding her hand. Steve’s body is submerged under the darkness of the water, lights turned off, woods giving them privacy. His hand is hovering just above it, and she watches as the inky blue darkness smothers him.

It’s only hitting her now. Robin sits on the tiles next to the pool, legs crossed beneath her, arm reaching out. It’s only hitting her now, that she is holding her best friend’s hand, watching, waiting, for him to die. To drown, in front of her. The only comfort she could be able to offer was running her fingers across his knuckles.

And maybe Steve was better at reading people than she thought, because he’s right there. Every step of the way. Clutching back just as tight, holding on to her as if they were the last people in the world. She can feel as he mirrors her actions, sluggishly running his thumb in smooth circles, bubbles reaching the surface of the water.

(She does it anyway. Hopes that she can soothe away the pain. She remembers swallowing water and the smell of chlorine at summer camp when a boy had pushed her head down, on accident. Robin remembers the fear that gripped her for that split second in which she couldn’t breathe. 

She watches Steve, eyes closed, under the water. Willing. Waiting. Decides to hold his hand tighter in her grip).

His movement stutters to a stop, slow. The bubbles have gone, no new ones to break the barrier between them. Steve surfaces, face wet. His eyelashes hold drops of water that roll down his face in a sick imitation of tears, his hair floating and splayed around him like a halo. 

Robin wonders if the comfort, the hand holding, the words, were for him, or her.

She waits. Doesn’t know what she’s waiting for. Maybe for a bright white light to appear over the horizon, like a horrifying mockery of the sun. She wants it to swallow her whole, take her away, back to the boat. The hand in hers has gone utterly, completely cold. Still.

The moon goes down. The stars fade back into a light blue. The sun, the normal, yellow, horribly mundane sun, is hung high in the sky. Robin is holding Steve’s hand.

The doorbell rings.

— — — 

In the aftermath of it all, there’s a lot of… nothing.

Like, don’t get Robin wrong, she loves that she’s graduated, and that she still has her job, and that she doesn’t have to fight the new flavour of monster every year, but everything is kinda, boring? If there was one thing that she was connecting with Dustin on, it’s that Steve kinda offered free entertainment with his useless, horrible, flirting.

She’s happy for him. And Eddie. They’re probably the cutest couple that she knows (after Joyce and Hopper, of course), and it’s a running joke that Steve is in on, that his love life, or lack thereof, was the only entertaining thing in Hawkins.

Robin knows that it’s partly true, anyway. Knows that the kids swap stories like baseball cards.

(“You literally can’t trump this.” Dustin says. “Eddie was helping Steve make a character sheet. Steve. Making a character sheet. For dnd.”

He enunciates each individual word, makes them seem like a punch. Robin is leaning against the counter in Family Video, and the party are all sprawled across the shelves, trying to find a correctly rated movie for them, or enough quarters to bribe Robin into letting them check out something R-rated.

She thinks it’s a little funny that they’ve faced death and monsters and all that shit, and yet Hopper and Joyce won’t let them rent out My Bloody Valentine.

“That’s lame. We all knew that Steve was gonna give in and play dnd some day.” Mike says.

“No way!” Dustin calls. “Like you’ve got anything better.”

“You act like I don’t have eyes.” Robin watches as Mike makes his way out of the discounted section, walks towards where Dustin has disappeared into an aisle marked ‘Horror’. “I saw them apartment hunting.”

“You did not.”

“I did too!”

Sometimes she forgets that they’re just that. Kids).

But after everything, it’s boring. Robin knows that it’s probably the combination of no more school, and the helpless feeling of what the hell am I supposed to do now? and the monsters being defeated, and Hopper being alive, and the revelation that Steve has made the Guinness Book of Records for having the most deaths, and still being alive to tell the tale.

The list burns a hole in her pocket wherever she goes. She doesn’t know what the others do with it, if they had kept it locked away, tucked under their pillows, on the dash of their car. Robin keeps hers in the pocket of her jeans, switching with every pair of pants she wears. She thinks it might be the most important thing she owns.

“How the fuck do you tie these together?”

There’s a whole lot of boringness, but Steve goes back to normal (or, as normal as one can be, after everything).

The field they sit in is perched high above Hawkins, and gives them a wonderful view of the town. Robin knows that it’s small, knows that everybody knows every person, but being able to see it all here, right in the palm of her hand? It’s a little jarring. A little scary.

“Dude, you literally just have to fold that side over this one and— no. What did you just do?”

The field is also filled with flowers, and Robin knows how to make crowns. Steve, however, does not. It’s a little funny.

She hears a grunt a little ways behind her, and she turns just in time to watch daisies get launched into the air, swaying down, landing all around Steve. He flops onto his back, arms outstretched, eyes closed. He looks peaceful.

Images and words and phrases flicker through her mind. The moon, the stars, her hand clasped in his, the water lapping at the side of the pool, hair splayed out, waiting, willing.

She’s crossed it out on her list. Like some fucked up little treasure hunt, whispering which memory, Memento as Dustin had called it, had been found. It had happened as she was eating dinner with her parents. 

Her mum had gone to pass her the potato salad, and Robin was halfway to reaching it, when she had stopped. Felt as if she was flung back inside her own body, watching, acting, saying the correct words at the correct times, seeing through her own eyes. It felt like it had lasted forever.

And when she had come back to, her hand holding the bowl, her dad talking about how he was sure his coworker James was stealing his lunch, it was like no time had passed at all.

(He looks the same, she thinks. Eyes closed, arms spread wide, hair flowing behind him. He looks the picture of peacefulness, pretty under the warmth of the sun, and all Robin can think about is how cold his hand had felt).

She looks back to the crown she was making. Robin had picked the flowers with care, finding the correct shapes and sizes and stems, making sure not to take them all. She weaved sea thrifts into heleniums, mint leaves into freesias. All that was left was the daffodils. 

The colours are warm and hearty and complete. Robin knows that the crown is too big for her own head, knows that she didn’t make it for herself. Her fingers work deftly around the thick stems, stripping them down to size, before layering them with the rest of her flowers.

“My liege!” She says, shouts it loud enough to wake Steve from his slumber. Robin bows in such a way that would make Eddie proud. “Your crown.”

Steve sits up on his elbows, grass and daises sticking in his hair. He blinks his eyes rapidly before a smile breaks out, blinds her with his warmth, and he’s kneeling, ready for his ‘coronation’.

Robin lowers the delicate flowers onto his head, doesn’t bother to get rid of the white daises. It fits snugly across his hair, flattening it a bit, maybe, but neither of them mention it.

“Really are King Steve, huh?”

And then the smile has been traded for a grimace. 

“I don’t really like being called that.”

Robin sits down next to him, watches as he adjusts the flowers on his head.

“Can I ask why?”

He pauses, tilts his head side to side before answering. “I don’t like who I was, when people called me that.”

(Robin feels like that isn’t even scratching the surface. Feels like that’s a part of it, feels like there’s so much more there. But she leaves it. Doesn’t want to push).

“I had a Memento.”

“…Oh.”

“One-sixty-four.”

“The pool?”

“The pool.”

The wind brushes across the grass, weaves in-between them. She watches as the remnants of the daises in Steve’s hair floats away, taken. He’s still resting on his elbows, eyes cast across the skyline of Hawkins in the distance.

It’s still sunny outside. Robin feels like it should be raining. Or cloudy. Moodier. This doesn’t feel like a conversation that they should be having in a grassy field, laying on their backs, sun in their eyes, crowns on their heads. Doesn’t feel like a conversation that should be happening, at all.

If you had told the Robin of ’84 that she would be talking to Steve Harrington about how he had drowned in his pool, holding her hand, to reset time and save the world from inter-dimensional monsters that were killing off her friends, atop a grassy field, making flower crowns in the sun, she would have laughed. Maybe asked if you needed to sit down. Or if you had heatstroke.

Because, while Robin feels the boringness now, that was all she had ever known, before. And it’s a little fucked up, to think it, but it’s partially true. She had a crush on a girl that was straight, she had some maybe-friends that she’d sit at for lunch. And then she had worked at Scoops A’hoy and, well. The rest is a mess. History. Present.

(She doesn’t think she’d trade it for the world — finding out about everything. It was terrifying and horrible, and she wouldn’t wish what she had seen, what she had gone through, on her worst human enemy. But she had found friends. Family).

“…Do you wanna talk about it?” Steve asks.

“Do you?”

Steve goes to take the weight off his elbows, and Robin is already reaching forward and waving her arms towards his head, towards the crown of flowers, and he sighs, exasperated and smiling, before moving to sit up straight, legs crossed.

“Nah, not really. But if you need to, you can. I don’t mind.”

The sun is still shining overhead, and the smile is back on Steve’s face. His hair is messy and sprawled around him, illuminated by the warmth of the air. There’s a voice in the back of her head telling her that it resembles a halo, like how the pool had bracketed his hair. She shakes it off. Tells it get fucked. 

Steve turns to her, already rambling about something Eddie or Dustin related, and Robin can’t help but smile.

Chapter Text

It’s harder than he thought. Coming back.

There was a misconception somewhere within his brain, that he would be able to come back, and everything would be alright, and nothing would have changed, and everything would go back to normal. 

It’s three days after the Battle of Hawkins, because there was a battle and Hopper wasn’t here to help. 

It’s harder than he thought, to come back.

It’s after everything is done, after sleeping in his own bed for the first time in a year, and eating a shitty TV dinner, and holding his daughter, holding El close under the moonlight leaking through the ceiling. They had stayed up late and cried and laughed and swapped stories and he had felt so angry when he first saw her.

Because he had seen her cropped hair, remembered it falling just above her shoulders a year ago, and there was no way she had done this by choice, which meant that something had happened, and he wasn’t there to help and Joyce wasn’t there and she was all alone with nobody to—

But they had stayed up late. Ate dinner in bed. And El had curled into his side (and when did she get so big?), and Hopper had pressed his forehead against hers, and they had let their hands flutter against the lack of hair on their heads — matching.

He let himself rest for less than a day. It thrums in his veins, the need to move and to do something, to do so much, because there’s so much that he’s missed, so much that has moved, passed him by.

(He tries not to think about it. About how Jonathan looks older, how Will and Mike are so tall, and Robin has become a permanent fixture, and Steve—)

That’s what leads him to the door, now. Steve Harrington.

He was meant to talk to him, before. Had watched the way he handled the kids, lovingly, softly, cradling them and joking with them. Had watched the way his shoulders fell when anyone waved goodbye.

There was a call, a good couple years ago. Young little Steven had called the police station, non-emergency line, which had been routed to Hop, about how to light the stove. And Hopper had told him to ask his parents, that this wasn’t something he should be calling the police for.

(“But I thought the police were meant to help?”

“With emergencies, kid.” He sighed, scrubbed a hand over his face. Hop had bigger things to deal with — the noise complaint from the Hagan’s, the missing bike from the Wheeler’s. “This doesn’t seem like an emergency.”

The line was silent for a moment, so quiet on the other end. Hopper waited, watched as the seconds on the clock above the door ticked by. He wondered if this was maybe a prank call, if the kid had been put up to it by his friends, backing out when he got in trouble.

“But I haven’t—” 

The kid cuts himself off, backtracks and smooths over his words. His voice had been so small, wavering, but as he speaks now, as Hopper listens from the other end, there’s a steeliness to his voice that chills his bones. A stoic-ness that children shouldn’t have.

“I won’t call again.”).

He presses his finger against he doorbell, hears as it echoing throughout the house. Hop waits a beat, then another. He presses again. The dull chime rings through the house and— maybe it was just too quiet. Hopper bangs his fist against the wooden door, feels it shake under his hand.

(It shouldn’t send a spike of fear through him. But Steve always answers. In the middle of the night, at the dawn of the day, when he’s sleeping, cooking, drunk).

He looks around the lonely neighbourhood of Loch Nora, sees patterned curtains drawn tight against the sunlight, and sprinklers smoothly running over perfectly manicured patches of lawn. Hop kicks the door once, twice, before it’s keening open.

“Steve?” 

Hop shouts his name throughout the house, walking past the wide floor to ceiling glass doors that lead to the woods. He ducks his head into the kitchen, the living room, the office, before he’s running up the stairs.

The hallway is longer, more imposing, than he had ever remembered it to be. Each door is closed tight against its frame, and Hopper opens each one. Bathroom. Guest room. Storage. Bathroom. Master bedroom. Office.

Steve’s bedroom, at the end of the hall, tucked away into the corner, is empty. His bed is untouched, made, neatly tucked into the bed frame. Hop tries to think of where he could be — his car is in the driveway, and it’s too early for work, and the kids are all sleeping.

He stalks into the room, stops in the middle of it, for a moment. There’s something so… off. About Steve’s room.

There’s a checkered wallpaper, a poster of a girl on the wall, and a framed image of a car. Hopper doesn’t think he’s ever heard Steve mention an interest in cars. There’s a small lamp on the desk, but other than that it’s all impersonal.

And Hopper knows that Steve is a neat person. He’s always the one to pack away the dnd campaigns when the kids fall asleep, and by the time that Hop normally comes to pick up El from a sleepover, everything has been put back in place.

Hopper knows that Steve is a neat person, but this? He looks around the room, feels a coldness soak into his bones. This feels empty. 

There are no pictures or gifts or knickknacks to be seen anywhere — and Hop knows how much Steve loves these things. He knows that the kid has a box of tapes in his car that he’s plastered with stickers and lets the kids draw on in markers, filled with more than just tapes. Polaroid pictures of him and Robin and Dustin and Joyce and, fuck, this room is cold.

Hopper walks to the window, sees how the curtains are pulled open, notices that they match the wallpaper. Sunlight leaks through, the only light in the room, and it beckons Hop closer, asks him to open his eyes.

It’s then that he spots it. Him. Floating, in the water.

Hopper has never ran so fast in his life. Not when he was dancing on broken ankles through snow, or when he was facing the edge of the world and a machine burning blue. He takes the steps two at a time, ignores the burn in his chest, opens the large floor to ceiling glass doors, vaguely registers the sound of them clattering against their frame.

He rushes to Steve’s body (no, it’s just Steve, it’s not his body, just Steve), pulls him out, so light, not heavy enough, for what a body should feel.

He puts him on the tiles near the pool, and he’s feeling his pulse, and shoving a hand under his nose to feel a soft puff of air, presses his head down to hear even the faintest thud. But Steve is just laying there. Eyes closed, skin pale, cool, under the warmth of the sun.

(Hopper thinks back to young Steven calling the non emergency line. Asking how to light the stove. He thinks about how empty the house had been — no family photos, no touches of Steve, no warmth, love. He thinks about the years that pass after, and the way that Steve’s face falls when the kids leave, or the way that he keeps everything neat, eyes on the phone, eyes on the door, box of tapes hidden in his car that only has one set of keys.

He thinks about how he had noticed the things, brushed them off, and waited and waited and waited, looking through the glass heart that was Steve Harrington, acknowledging from a distance, questioning and waiting and dying and coming back to find answers only for it to lead to him, eyes closed, peaceful, waiting, alone.

Hop wonders. Can’t help but wonder, as he lifts Steve up, cradles him in his arms, lays him down in his bed, if this all could have been avoided. If he had just told the young boy how to light the stove).

— — —

It comes to him at night. After El is asleep and Steve’s recipe has been butchered, but eaten, by Hopper. It comes to him in the darkness of the cabin, and Hop wants to brush it off, feels the spike of fear that runs through him as he goes through the checklist.

He sees the trees outside his window, mismatched curtains, bedsheets, his lamp, the stars. 

He can feel the blanket, his sleep pants, the pillow, the warm air against his skin.

(He thinks of being in a two story house, ugly plaid curtains pulled back, water tauntingly on display, the shape of a body, face down, unbreathing, cold, mocking—)

The birds, the rustle of wind, the creaking house.

(—The thudding of feet against carpeted stairs, ragged breaths, the slamming of a glass door against the wooden frame—)

Warm rain and remnants of Steve’s cooking.

(—Constricting scent of chlorine, the sickly smell of the woods—)

Tears.

(Tears).

Hop watches as the sun rises. He pulls on a pair of jeans, grabs the first jacket he sees. Leaves a note for El next to her bed. He drives out to Steve’s house, feels a horrible sense of déjà vu as he rings the doorbell and nobody answers.

He presses again, looks around the lonely neighbourhood of Loch Nora, and the curtains pulled tight, and the sprinklers and their laughing spray, water spilling over green grass. He presses the doorbell again.

Hop is halfway back to the checklist when Eddie Munson is opening the door, hair sticking up in different directions, blinking sleep from his eyes. And he’s waving Hopper in, ushering him in, says something about letting the heat out.

“Where’s Steve?”

Eddie presses a finger against his own lips, makes a shushing noise. “Lower your voice, man. He finally went to sleep a couple hours ago. You want me to tell him you came by?”

Hop feels like he should be asking why Eddie is here. In Steve’s shirt and boxers, answering Steve’s door, moving around Steve’s kitchen with ease.

But there’s that spike of fear, again, as the seconds tick by and Hopper can’t see him. And Eddie must understand, somehow understand, because he disappears for a second, and then he’s back just as quick, a groggy Steve Harrington meandering his way down the stairs. 

The kid is halfway through pulling a shirt over his head and Hop finally — finally — feels like he can breathe.

Steve is looking at him in question, before those eyes turn to Eddie.

“You didn’t even offer him tea? Dude, c’mon.”

And he’s awake. Eyes wide, socks padding against the tiles as he boils the water and prepares three cups. Hopper breathes deep, leans his arms on the island counter, watches as Steve flitters around the cabinets, quietly closing them, as Eddie dances around his movements. 

He pretends not to notice the soft touches, instead focusses on the kitchen itself, because there’s something about it, something different than what he remembered it to be in his vision, his nightmare, a past loop.

(When the tea has been pressed into his palms, and Steve is sitting atop the counter near the window, and Eddie is leaning into his side, Hopper realises what it is. 

There are photos of the party and Robin and Eddie on the fridge. A plant by the window. The wallpaper is still ugly and cold and horrible, but there are pieces of warmth and clutter overshadowing it).

— — —

He doesn’t seem to remember it. The phone call.

Hopper tries to mention it in the least invasive way possible, but it’s not just something that can be brought up out of the blue without question. Hey, do you remember when you were a child and called the police? What do you mean ‘why am I asking this’? 

Steve fiddles with the straw of the milkshake in front of him, eyes darting outside the window. His eyebrows are drawn close together on his forehead, before he’s turning back to Hop with wide eyes.

“Jesus, how did you even remember that?” He laughs, flicks his eyes back down the half-eaten plate of food in front of him. “I’m sorry about it, y’know? God, that was stupid of me to do.”

Why would you have to be sorry? Hopper wants to ask. You don’t have to apologise. 

“Why’d you do it?”

“Hm?”

“Call.”

“Oh.” 

Hopper holds Steve’s gaze, properly, this time. Watches as he blinks languidly, fingers stilled around the paper straw. He wants to tell the kid about anything and everything that he remembered in the dead of night. Of the cold, empty house, and blaming himself, and the hours that passed before it all dissolved away.

Hopper wants to reassure Steve, tell him that he’s loved, that Hop is proud of him. That there could be nothing, nothing, that he could do or say that would be able to change his mind. Because he’s seen this kid fight monsters, and be a protector, and drown in his pool, by his empty house. 

“I guess, well. I was young, Hop. And I think it might have been the first time I was left alone in the house.”

Steve is back to looking outside the window, an expression on his face that Hopper can’t place. The sounds of the diner are loud, too loud, for this conversation. He wishes that he brought it up somewhere else.

He’s looking back at Hop, smile on his face, hands disappearing underneath the table. “It was nothing, really. I just… didn’t know how to use the stove.”

And Hopper is imagining it all again, disjointed parts of his mind supplying images of young Steven stood on a stool, too young, by the phone, in the kitchen, with nobody else. There’s a recollection of how Steve’s always the one to cook, to take care of everyone else, to make sure everyone else is safe and happy and warm.

It poses so many questions that Hop doesn’t have answers for. Did it all come down to this? Has it always come down to this?

Hopper watches as Steve brushes off the conversation, not stating it, but Hop can read between the lines, sees the way he says this is not important.

(It feels like it is).

Chapter Text

The photo doesn’t do it justice, Jonathan thinks. It had looked elusive and tall — imposing and terrifying in such a way that he had never seen. Maybe it was foolhardy adrenaline and hatred and anger when he hunted for it in the woods, not afraid, not scared. It didn’t even truly hit him when he was comforting Nancy as she described what had chased her through the other dimension, in the the tree. 

But he hadn’t seen it, really seen it, before now. The monster snarls on top of him, meaty petals unfolding, showing rows and rows of hideous teeth. Something akin to drool drips down its face, onto his own, sticky and sick.

“Go to hell, you son of a bitch!”

Gunshots. One. Two. Three. He closes his eyes.

The monster clambers, languidly, bored, to turn to Nancy. Jonathan fights to keep his eyes open, spiting acidic drool from mouth, getting it out of his eyes, away from his face. He scrambles for the bat, where did it go? Where did he drop it?

The gunshots act like a beating drum, thrumming through his veins like a heartbeat. The lights flicker and blink with Nancy’s shots, and Jonathan is seeing through hazy eyes, hands searching for the weapon, discarded.

He hears the click of a gun — empty. The click sounds again and again, and he hears a shout of Nancy, calling his name, shouting to the lights, and Jonathan can feel himself breathing fast and sharp, because he can’t find the fucking bat—

A grunt. A thud.

“Steve!”

Jonathan turns, sees the outline of Harrington through the darkness of the house, swinging the bat into mutilated flesh, powerful strikes hitting their mark every time. The sound is loud in the quiet of the house, loud against his beating heart. He looks away for a second, standing and searching his pockets for the lighter.

It’s not there.

Another grunt. The lights flicker.

He drops to his knees, palms spread out against the carpet, frantically moving and moving and moving. He feels the wet patches of drool, of gasoline, of blood. He feels rough carpet strands between his fingers, of dirt, until he’s pushing away, and Nancy is shouting his name, and his fingers meet metal.

Jonathan scrambles up, flicks the lighter open on, looks just for a moment to make sure the flame is burning bright, that they can do this, kill this monster, before throwing it towards the beast in the trap.

The fire burns bright and blinds him, momentarily, screeches piercing and loud in his ears. The smell of flesh and gasoline and burning is pungent and repulsive. He hides his face in his elbow, takes a step back.

The lights stop flickering, turning off, and clouding them in darkness for a moment, before they’ve all turned back on at once. The fire in front of them has burned out — taking the monster with it.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

It feels like they’ve collectively sighed. Nancy has placed the gun on the table, moving to sit near the couch, head in her hands. Jonathan makes his feet move, to go next to her. He watches the lights above him flicker, one by one, before they’re moving out the door, onto the street. He doesn’t follow them.

Jonathan turns back, watches as Steve places his hands against Nancy’s cheeks, turning her head left and right, softly, slowly, moving so that he can see her bloody hand through his good eye.

“I’m okay, Steve. Really.”

It doesn’t stop him. Jonathan watches as he nods, runs his fingers over the back of her head in a way he knows is searching for bruises, before he’s turned. Eyes on Jonathan. 

A small part of him expects another hit. Maybe another word directed to him about his family, about who he is, calling him a creep or a freak. Something along those lines. But Steve just crosses the short distance between them, palms against his cheeks, turning his head.

And then he’s nodding and running his hands across the back of his head, just like Nancy, checking for bruises and cuts and hurt. It’s strange. Jonathan watches as Steve sits on the couch, tilts his head back and closes his eyes.

Maybe it’s the elation and the adrenaline, but he doesn’t even notice it. Nancy is already standing back up, inspecting the burn mark on the floor, and Jonathan is moving towards the door, eyes on the road.

“Steve, Jonathan! You might want to look at this.”

Nancy calls them back over to the mark in the hallway, bear trap sizzling with heat, but, with no monster to be seen. Not even chunks of it, melted or otherwise. 

Please be over. Maybe the monster just burnt into the air. He lies to himself.

And maybe it’s the fear and the adrenaline, but he doesn’t even notice it. Doesn’t notice it as he’s staring at the burn mark and empty place with Nancy. Doesn’t notice it until she’s turned, and gasped, and rushed towards the couch. Doesn’t notice it until his feet have dragged his body towards Harrington, slumped against the seat, head tilted back, blood soaking through his shirt.

— — —

He thinks that, maybe, the breakup made them closer. Him and Nancy. There was fighting between them, and some words and conversations that they wouldn’t repeat, but he feels like this friendship, now, means so much more to him.

Yeah, they had their moment apart. Of peace and figuring things out, working out feelings and boundaries and realisations about their dynamics. But, eventually, they gravitate towards each other, no longer lovers, still with the same care, as friends.

They had talked about the list, together. Had compared where their names sat, had cried together when they realised just how many deaths were listed. Had cried some more when they realised that there were deaths Steve didn’t remember.

That leads them to here. Grounded by hands clasped together, on the couch that they had seen it happen, in the morning light, sun just peaking its head over the hills. It’s a realisation that they make together, that they’re sure the rest of the group already know: that the memories of death are shared amongst those who saw it happen.

“How did we not notice?” Nancy asked. 

Jonathan shifted, hands white knuckled as they held each other. “We couldn’t have known. You can’t blame yourself.”

“No, not the— ” Nancy tilts her head towards the couch. She lowers her voice, breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth. “I had you. And the kids had each other.”

She doesn’t have to say anything more.

“He didn’t speak to anyone?”

“No, he never mentioned it to me.”

They put the fractured pieces that they have together, remember how Steve had thrown himself headfirst into danger because it was the right thing to do, no matter the consequence. No matter the cost. 

They recall how he had put himself between the monster and Nancy, the monster and Jonathan. Hadn’t even worried about himself, had checked over hands and faces and arms, pulling people close, checking Jonathan.

Steve hadn’t even known him. Had hated him less than 24 hours before. Had picked a fight and accused Jonathan of stealing his girlfriend, called his family a disgrace, cradled his head in the palm of his hands, ran his fingers against his skull to see if he was hurt.

(Nobody checked on him, he realises. He remembers the feeling of fingers through his hair, remembers watching Steve fuss over Nancy’s hand. They hand’t checked on him).

It makes him feel that much more guilty. That in this timeline, this reality, Steve has never talked to anyone about it. Because Jonathan had Nancy and his family, and Nancy had him, and the kids had each other, and Hopper had Joyce. He had been thrust in, no explanation, no reason, could have just left, should have just left, had no one to talk to about it and still. Still.

— — —

They ask him, together. It’s the first time in a while that the trio has been that, a trio, and Jonathan vaguely remembers that the last time it was just the three of them, was probably the night of the Demogorgon. Steve’s death, his life, the start of it all.

It’s in the basement of the Wheeler’s where it takes place — away from the prying eyes and ears of Hawkins, and the gossip mill that are teenagers.

“Steve, did you lean on anyone?”

She doesn’t even have to clarify. It was something that Steve and Jonathan had talked about — how Nancy had a certain set of her face when she talked about the Upside Down. How you could tell that this wasn’t a joke just from the furrow in her brows.

Steve smiles. “Well, I’ve got Eddie and Robin. Can’t push that shit onto Dustin, y’know? He’s like, what, fourteen?”

Jonathan hates that they’re right. That the pieces fit together perfectly. He watches as Nancy closes her eyes beside him. Jonathan turns towards Steve, leans forwards on his seat, reaches out to lay his hand against the other teen’s.

(It hurts, Jonathan realises. It hurts a lot more to realise that Steve had only relied on those two — the two who had come at the end. What about the start? The years that came before them? What had he done, then?).

“Before that,” Nancy whispers. “Before Starcourt, who did you lean on?”

Steve looks at them, starstruck, maybe. Dumbfounded. Opens his mouth, says the words as if they were obvious and easy and a fact that could never be changed: “No one.”

It’s exactly what Jonathan was afraid of. What he was dreading to hear. That they had all moved on, and Steve had apologised with the camera, not even taking credit, had reconciled with Nancy, had bonded with the kids, had bottled everything to himself.

(Jonathan realises that he might understand it, a little bit. 

When Lonnie had left his mum, and he was left to pick up the pieces, to help Will with his lunch, to help his mum with the washing, he hadn’t leaned on anyone. Didn’t feel like he needed to. Didn’t want to feel like he needed to).

As Steve sits across from him, confusion, and something sad swimming within his eyes, he realises that they might understand each other more than he thought.

“I’m sorry I was never there for you,” Nancy says. Jonathan feels like, for a moment, that he’s intruding. That he doesn’t need to be here for this. But Steve is holding his hand with such fervour, that he stays put.

“You were dealing with your own shit with,” He pauses. “With Barb.”

And the words feel so harrowing, so close to his heart, that he feels it deep within his chest. He had felt it when he saw his mum alone on the couch, smoking in the middle of the night, when Will had gone missing, when he was fighting monsters. 

Jonathan breathes deep, tries to think of a way to say it that won’t scare him away. “You know that we’re here for you, right?” 

It makes Steve smile. Jonathan squeezes his hand back, feels Nancy’s small palm rest atop both of theirs. “Of course.”

“And that means you can come to us with this,” Nancy says. “Whether it’s Upside Down related or not.”

The hands of the three stay clasped on the table. There are no more words uttered, too much to say, too little time to make anyone understand. Jonathan thinks of the arguing, the words that had been said, not meant, still thrown. Maybe the silence is just what they needed.

(There’s a small part of him that wants to revert back. To a time when he had never known of the loop — Steve’s deaths. But his hand is warm against the crest of Jonathan’s palm, and he reminds himself, tells that part of himself, that Steve had done so much for this life, these people. Jonathan thinks that, maybe, it’s time for people to start doing things for him).

Chapter Text

He sits there for what feels like forever. With Steve’s body. 

The Upside Down feels calmer than it ever has been before. The sky is that sickening blue-red, thick, murky air swirling around them. Steve lays on his back, arms by his side, ring around his neck more prominent than ever before.

When the others come back — Nancy and Robin and Eddie — they see him from a distance. Dustin knows they see him from afar, can spot them from the openings of the trailer park, barley bruised, faces pulled tight together.

It’s Eddie that pulls him back, arm on his shoulder, pressing Dustin’s face into his shirt. He feels the build up again, of tears and snot and so many things, so many thing he had wanted to do, to show him, to tell him.

Robin is crouched next to Steve, pressing her forehead against his. Dustin sees the way her shoulders shake, face hidden by her short hair. He closes his eyes.

“We have to bring him back.” Nancy says. And her voice is flat and devoid of anything. She stands behind them all, crestfallen, unseeing, seeing too much.

Eddie peels Dustin away from the body, presses his palm against Robin’s back. Dustin watches blearily as the muddled picture of Robin is pulled away from Steve’s body, hands covering her face, her mouth, her eyes.

“No, he’s not— he can’t be—”

“Robin.” Nancy whispers, wraps her arms around the other girl. 

Dustin watches as Eddie leans down, places his arms underneath Steve’s legs, behind his shoulders. He watches as Eddie hauls his body up, as Steve’s head snaps back, unnaturally turned towards the ground, head reaching for his back.

(He’s going to be sick).

Eddie reaches around with his hand, quickly adjusts so that Steve’s chin is dipping towards his chest. But the damage is done, and Dustin can’t shake the image, tauntingly replays it; blood in his teeth, laying against the ground, head snapped back—

He doubles over himself, empties his stomach onto the ground. He feels saliva build up in his mouth and spits that out too, lips open above the ground, the smell of it making him want to vomit all over again.

“We need to go.” 

Nancy rubs a hand on his back, small circles, soft, calm, hurt. He meets her eyes and sees himself in them, haunted and wanting and sick. She holds his hand on the way to the trailer, other palm flat against Robin’s back. 

When they make it to the desecrated home, the gate peers back at them. The link is gone, and Nancy breaks away from them to create a new one from the bedsheets of the Upside Down. She’s methodical in her movements, tying each knot, as Eddie lays Steve on the couch. 

Dustin pretends not to see Robin holding his hand.

“How are we going to get him up?” Nancy asks.

They all cast their eyes to the gate. Freedom, within their grasp.

“Gravity—” His voice breaks. Dustin rubs his fists to his eyes, doesn’t look behind him to Robin and Steve. “Gravity works normally once you pass the gate. If we get a stepladder, or something, we can lift him from this side, and someone can lower him down.”

Eddie breaks away from the group, eyes uncertain, eyebrows drawn, goes outside. He murmurs something that sounds like I’ll be right back but nobody says a word.

Dustin looks towards Nancy, keeps his eyes on her. Can’t turn around. And Nancy looks at the gate above them, shoulders set, unwavering. He’s not looking, doesn’t want to, can’t, but he can still hear Robin’s sharp sobs behind him.

(I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry).

When the ladder is in place, and Eddie has gone through the gate, coming back and echoing the setup on the other side, Nancy and Robin push Steve’s body through the gaping hole. Dustin holds his breath as it happens, lets himself breathe when Eddie’s feet are back on the ground, and Steve is being laid against the flooring.

His foot hurts with each step of the ladder. When he breaches through, when they’re all through, finally, they’re lost. Dustin sits by Steve’s side, feels like it’s finally sinking in, because there are no dumb remarks, or jokes, or laughter. 

He hears voices behind him, Nancy and Eddie talking about where to go, what to do, feels a blanket against his shoulders, a pillow placed by his side. Dustin lays down there, on the flooring, as close, as far away, from Steve’s body as he can possibly get.

Robin is the first to sleep. Pass out. Eddie soon follows, curled up at the foot of the couch. Nancy must think that Dustin is asleep, because as soon as the other two’s eyes are closed, he hears sharp, fast breaths, pacing, a fist banging against the countertop. 

Dustin tries to commit it all to memory —  Steve. Because he’s already starting to forget the lilt of his voice, and the feeling of his arms around his. He’s already forgetting how his smile looked (was it lopsided? Was it wide and toothy? Was it genuine?), or the smell of his hair. 

He curls into the side of his body, tries to remember what Steve felt like warm.

— — —

In the morning, Dustin is the last to open his eyes. Eddie is awake and distributing clean clothes, and Robin is by Steve’s side. He can make out the figure of Nancy on the phone, shoulders taught, eyes set, and wonders if he had imagined her actions, last night.

“I am not speaking to a secretary—!”

Someone on the other end must say something, because Nancy is bringing her hand up to her forehead, nursing her brow. And then her face has contorted into something ugly and enraged, and she’s slamming the phone down on the receiver. 

Dustin sits, and Robin catches his eye. He tilts his head toward Nancy in the kitchen, hands on the counter, breathing deep. Asks a question without saying the words.

Her voice croaks when she speaks, and she looks like she’s on the brink of tears. “His parents.”

— — —

Dustin has had Mementos, before. They come and go with different lengths — dreams and nightmares, passing thoughts. For a little while, he thought that they might be coming back in chronological order, how Steve had listed them. But when Nancy and Jonathan tell them about their most recent memory, of 1983 and the Demogorgon, he realises that there’s no explanation.

There were so many hours that he dedicated to thinking about the logistics of it all — not chronological, with no standard timeframe, no way to tell that it’s going to happen before it really does. 

(They had all thought that it might be triggered by something. By location or water or weaponry. Nobody had wanted to test it).

This time, it came to him in quick flashes. He couldn’t hold on to a single image, wasn’t allowed to stop time and think and realise what was happening in front of him. Dustin sees a bloody face staring up at him, red stained teeth, smile wide, eyes open. 

He has disjointed words, feelings, flooding through his chest — I’m sorry and  It’s going to be okay and You don’t need to worry about me. It flows through him, unrelenting, angry and horrible, and once it’s finished with him, once it decides that he’s seen it all, he pushes back out of his chair.

Dustin scrambles for the list from where it’s tucked underneath his pillow, goes to the dog-eared page where his name had sat, reads though the dot points that Steve had wrote, the descriptions, the words, the death.

And he goes straight to him. Steve. Rushes to his house in the middle of the night, rings the doorbell. The house is open in a split second, bike discarded on the lawn, and Dustin launches himself forward, into Steve’s arms.

They make their way to the couch, holding each other close. He feels like he can’t breathe. When he looks back up at Steve, he sees images of him, blood in his teeth, smile on his face, lying down, dying.

It sends him spiralling back. It feels like there’s a weight on his chest that is pressing down down down, into his ribs, into his lungs. He knows what it’s called, has seen it happen with El, has helped Lucas through it, has seen Steve and Eddie quietly excuse themselves.

It doesn’t make it any easier. It tears through his lungs, breath stolen, eyes stinging, grasping on for something, anything, holding on to Steve, circles rubbed into his back. He presses his forehead into Steve’s chest, listens to his heartbeat, blood pumping through his veins, his breathing pattern; alive.

When there’s a break in it all, when he feels like he’s able to breathe again, the lights are turned on. A glass of water is pressed into his palms, a blanket draped over his shoulders. They speak in hushed tones under the dim lamp light, and Dustin can already tell that Steve knows what this is about, because his hand is reaching out, making sure to always have a point of contact.

He’s not subtle, but Dustin doesn’t think he’s trying to be.

“Which one?” Steve asks. His voice is sleep muddled, still waking up, paying attention.

“The bats.”

Steve shuffles closer, swings his arm around the back of the couch, around Dustin’s shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

He can feel the beginnings of exhaustion seeping into his bones, catching up to him. Dustin closes his eyes, leans his head into Steve’s shoulder. He breathes deep, and they stay like that. There’s the soft sound of socked feet against carpeted stairs, and Dustin almost wants to open his eyes, until he feels curly hair brush against his cheek.

Eddie’s voice is whispered, quiet. “He remember one?”

“Yeah — you remember how I told you about the distraction?”

Dustin feels himself slump closer between the two as Eddie hums, feels the vibration thrum through his bones. It feels warm. He feels safe. Eddie shifts on the couch, the hair leaving Dustin’s cheek, an arm resting along his back.

His eyelids feel heavy, tinted with sleep. Dustin’s brain is trying to catch up to the conversation happening around him, feels like it’s something that he shouldn’t listen to, feels like it’s something important.

“If I knew you guys were going to remember,” He hears Steve say, “I would have tried harder.”

“Steve.” Dustin hears him sigh, feels the exhale of breath against his skin, an arm crossing over him to reach to where Steve is pressed against his side. “You have nothing to apologise for.” 

“But if I just tried harder then no one would have to,” Steve stops. Dustin can feel him shift, pull away. “None of you would have to go through this.”

“You’re—” Eddie huffs. The hand retracts from over him. The edges of tiredness are unthreading him, pulling him under, into sleep. “You’re allowed to ask for help. And you don’t have to, never have to, apologise for this.”

“You keep telling me that, but I just. I don’t know. I feel like there must have been something that I missed, somewhere.” Steve sighs. “If I could go back and do it right from the start, none of you would be going through this.”

“You died, Steve.” Eddie whispers. “And you’re— you’re saying that you would go back so we wouldn’t remember, but you were the one who died!”

“But I can handle—”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

Dustin nods off for a moment, between the warmth of the two, conversation over his head stalling and picking up as he slept. He breathes deep, catches the smell of mint soap and cigarettes.

“It doesn’t have to be me, okay? It can be Robin or Hop or Joyce or, fuck, Dmitri. Just— talking is good. And we can work towards it; relying on people. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

“Even if it takes forever?”

“Even if it takes forever.”

Chapter Text

“Well, I don’t know much about the logistics of the Upside Down, but I’ve had this weird feeling ever since you dove into the water.” Eddie stops flicking through the magazine to meet Steve’s eyes over his shoulder. “Like something was gonna happen to you.”

“Yeah, well something did happen.” Steve motions towards his— well. His neck, his chest (which Eddie does not linger on), his still bare feet.

“No, I mean, like.” He rolls his eyes, sighs as Steve shifts against the wall. “Something not Vecna or Upside Down related. I don’t know. It’s weird. I’m weird.”

Because how is he meant to explain it? How is he meant to say you look bone-tired and world weary? There’s something about the way that Steve holds himself, Eddie realises, that makes him want to sob. Eddie watches as Steve’s eyes flicker, eyebrows drawn tight. He turns his gaze back to the magazine once he notices him turn.

(Coward. That inner voice says).

He feels his balance shift as his legs are lifted up, before they’re resting down on soft thighs. And, yeah, Eddie probably should feel a little grossed out, cause Jesus Christ Harrington, your pants are covered in Upside Down shit and lake water, but as he catches a glimpse of Steve’s face, he doesn’t even mind.

Eddie sees the tips of red ears badly hidden behind a magazine, feels his heart thump within his chest. Steve looks good in his vest, and, you know what? He’s not afraid to admit that it makes him feel… feelings. Good feelings. Warm feelings.

(He decidedly ignores the inner voice pushing memories to the front of his mind: high school, and watching Steve walk the halls, not even knowing who he was, not even looking in his direction. That little flutter in his chest when Dustin brought up his name. Pushing a bottle against his throat, talking with him in the Upside Down).

But, as nice as it all is, as warm as he feels, Eddie can’t shake that feeling. That dull screaming in the back of his head that’s saying something is wrong every time he looks at Harrington. He takes the chance to study his face, really look at him, for once.

The wound around his neck hurts to look at, almost makes Eddie choke, himself. The redness doesn’t look like it’s gone down at all since the battle with the bats, and that makes him pause. He looks closer. Really peers at his neck.

“You mind turning those eyes somewhere else? Making me nervous over here.” Steve says, making eye contact with Eddie over the magazine, a smile on his lips, a redness to his cheeks, a frown on his brow.

And he should ask about it. Does it hurt? Did they need to stop for proper medical supplies instead of just Wheeler’s dirty shirt scraps wrapped around his torso? Why had no one mentioned it, gone straight inside the store full of weapons? Why hadn’t Steve mentioned it?

But he doesn’t know him. As much as he’d like to kid himself, trick himself into thinking that the soft looks, the talks, wearing his vest, was something more — Eddie doesn’t know him. He wouldn’t know the first thing about flesh wounds or medical help, how to help Harrington.

So, instead, he kicks up his feet again, watches as Steve fumbles with the magazine that he’s just hit out of his hands, says: “I make you nervous, Stevie?”

He looks at Eddie with a blank stare. They hold it for a second, Eddie still swinging his legs back and forth behind him, before Steve breaks. Chokes out a laugh, covers his face with his hands.

“God, you don’t even know.”

(Maybe it makes him feel a flicker of hope. Just a little).

— — —

Eddie’s arm slams into the wall just outside the room, and he turns to glare at Steve, to ask him just what the fuck he thought he was doing, when the door slams shut behind him. He feels a sick sense of dread, blood pounding in his ears, as he bangs his fist against the decaying wood.

“Take me! Come on you fucker, just take me!”

Steve’s voice is muffled by the room that divides them, and Eddie grasps Nancy’s fallen gun in his hands, slams the back end of it into the door. He hears something jostle from the other side. Hits it again. And again. He kicks the door, watches as it flings open to the horrible scene in front of him.

Nancy and Max and Lucas and Robin and Dustin. Bodies lay against the floor, and he wished he could say they looked at peace, wished he could say that they went painlessly. He holds the gun in his hands, trying to avoid the eyeless stare of his friends. Eddie looks up. 

There, in the middle of the room, floating, is Steve. 

(You roped them into this. A voice snarls at him. If you had just left, let them leave, none of them would be dead).

It’s as horrifying as it was with the first time. The lyrics of ABBA are heavy against his tongue, but he still sings them, doesn’t think of what they’ll have to do once Steve is snapped out of this, once they have to look back at Vecna, across the room.

The gun in his hands is wavering, but Eddie holds it tight, white knuckled, sings. Feels the lyrics mocking him. No one to hear my prayer.

It doesn’t work. He sees it, hears it, happen. Watches as Steve’s body drops, crashes into the floorboards, watches as it joins the makeshift grave. The monster across from him opens his eyes, laughs.

Eddie scrambles to hold the gun tight in his hands, pulls the trigger. He watches as the buckshot partially misses the body of the man, watches the tiny metal flecks spit across the room, imbed themselves in Vecna’s shoulder. He reloads the gun. Breathes. 

Mindful of his feet, Eddie stalks closer. He steps over the arm of Nancy, the torso of Robin, Dustin’s head, facedown. Shoots. Hits. He wills himself to move closer, stills the shaking of his hands as he pumps the gun. Doesn’t look to where he knows Lucas and Max are. Shoots. Hits. Eddie’s breathing is heavy in the silent room, and he wants to say something, wants to scream at this monster, be able to show him what he’s taken. Shoots. Hits.

Vecna cackles. He stands at the other end of the room, too close, so far away. 

(He almost wants to beg. Wants to do the same as Steve, who lays in the midst of it all, looking towards the ceiling, cold. Eddie wants to plead to be taken, too. Wants to ask why Steve left him behind. There’s a sick, morbid curiosity of what he would be shown, what this creature thinks his deepest terror, his covered trauma, his lowest point, is. 

Would he see the summer of 1981, sitting in a bathroom stall, his hands gripping at his hair? Would he see his mother, closing the car door, waving at him through the window? He could be shown a myriad of names hurled at him through school hallways, or a teacher with a power trip. A lonely school ball, fists against his stomach in the woods, his first kiss. Would he see Chrissy?

He almost wants to laugh. Thinks of Vecna shuffling the deck of trauma, being able to pull the piece that picks at his skin the most).

Eddie steps over Steve’s body. Shoots. Hits.

— — —

It’s a lot slower, softer, than he thought. Being with Steve.

Maybe it’s the rumours of him being a ladies-man, or the other things that he’s heard in the halls at school about him. After all the fighting and the tears (although he just knows that there’s gonna be so many more tears in the future), they go slow.

“You make a habit of staring, Eds?”

He rests his arm on his chin, lying on his stomach, on his bed. Steve is changing his shirt in front of the mirror in Eddie’s bedroom, hair sleep-mussed, blinking himself awake. His smile is slightly lopsided, filled with sunlight. 

“Just enjoying the view.” He says.

Eddie gets up from the bed, behind Steve, wraps his arms around him. They look at each other in the mirror, sunlight bleeding through the slightly open blinds. And, you know, it hurts, sometimes, to look at him. To see the physical reminder of death imbedded on his skin. Of deaths that existed for him to live.

(He makes sure to trace every one, brush his lips against them as they lay together at night, as they wake in the morning. Does it for himself, in the beginning, after the sparse Mementos that mark his dreams. Keeps doing it when he feels Steve smile against his skin).

Fingers feather-light against Steve’s joints, Eddie traces them. Watches his fingers move against moles and scars, edges he knows hurt more on some days and nights. 

Steve smiles wider at that, slips the shirt over his head, fucks up his hair a little more. He crawls back onto the bed, rests his weight on his elbow, hand reaching out to Eddie’s free one. It’s not really a thought that he ever held, never really had any reason to think it, but there’s something so calming about holding his hand. Maybe it’s the warmth and the grounding, but a part of him tells him that it’s just Steve.

He lets Steve pull him back into bed, holding him close in the warmth of his room. They’ll have to get up, eventually. Because Steve has work at nine, and Eddie has to go job hunting at noon. But for now, they let themselves have this moment.

“Happy?” He asks, hand brushing Steve’s cheek.

“Happy.” Steve smiles.

Yeah, Eddie thinks, watches as Steve closes his eyes and breathes deep. Slow is good.

— — —

“It doesn’t just… snap back?”

He mentions it off-handedly, casually, in the heavy conversation that is recounting a memory of a loop. 

“I thought you knew?”

Eddie is horrified to learn that nobody told Steve about the aftermath. If there was a secret meeting that he missed where the gang discussed not telling Steve about the twenty-four hour boundary of the loop after and before his death, he certainly missed the invitation.

Steve sits back on the bed, brings his hands up to his mouth, legs pulled close. “But I thought that—” He stops. Swallows the words that are bubbling in his throat. “I didn’t think that I’d be leaving anyone behind.”

Eddie crosses the small space between them, sits on the bed next to Steve. “Nobody is blaming you. It’s a fucked situation no matter which way we see it. This isn’t on you.”

His hands have moved away from his face, head turned away from Eddie. He can see the shake of Steve’s hands, slowly reaches out to hold them, weaves his fingers between his. Squeezes tight. Eddie lifts his free hand, fingers soft against Steve’s chin.

“Hey,” He whispers. “Remember what we talked about?”

Steve nods, eyebrows pulled together, lips pressed together. 

“What’re you thinking? Talk to me?”

He sighs, closes his eyes for a moment. Eddie counts to ten in his head as Steve breathes in, watches him breathe out. He watches as he does it again. Waits for him to be ready.

“Could we talk about this later?” Steve whispers, as if he’s not allowed to ask.

“Of course.” Eddie answers. “But you’ll come to me? Once you’re ready?”

Steve fists at his eyes, blinks hard. “Yeah.”

He lets go of Steve’s hand, wraps his arms around his shoulders. Feels Steve echo the movements against his waist. Maybe it’ll take a while, Eddie thinks. Maybe it’ll take forever. But he’s determined to make him see it — that it’s not his fault, that he’s loved.

“I think we’re gonna be okay,” Eddie murmurs, soft. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I, uh. I had another memory.” He feels Steve hold him tighter, feels the slight flinch in his stature. “But not like the normal ones! Nothing really… happened, during it.”

Eddie feels Steve’s fingers toy with the ends of his hair. Feels the questioning hum of confirmation buzz through him.

“Maybe it was wishful thinking, just a dream. But, you know how you told me and Rob about the van I supposedly hot-wired? We were sitting in the back, I was reading a magazine and you—”

“Lifted your legs up onto my lap?”

Eddie feels his eyes twinkle. Like, actually sparkle. Because it was real. 

“Yes! And you tried to hide your red face in the mag, and you said I made you nervous!”

Steve laughs against his shoulder, full body shaking with the movement. Eddie feels over the moon. He was remembering things — not deaths, not the twenty four hours before or after — small snippets and moments that he had with Steve, small moments that they thought they’d lost to time.

“It was only a couple minutes but it was—” Eddie laughs again, runs his fingers through Steve’s hair. “God, we really were pining hard for each other, huh?”

Steve pulls back just enough to look Eddie in the eyes. With his fingers still tangled in short hair, he cradles the back of Steve’s head, watches the way the tears have dried up, made way for that beautiful smile.

“We really made it, didn’t we?” 

Eddie smiles back, feels Steve’s hands reach around until they’re resting on his cheeks. “Yeah we did.”

They come together, cross the small distance to one another, lips meeting, softly, slowly. It won’t stop the nightmares, and it won’t fix the way Steve blames himself. They’ll have to have that talk eventually, have to cry, again, talk about death and the Upside Down and self sacrificing complexes, self worth. It’ll always be on his mind, but he nudges it out of the way, pushes it to the side for a moment.

Eddie smiles against the kiss, thinks that they deserve a little happiness.

Chapter Text

They’ve been fighting monsters since ’83, and Jonathan has never missed it. Not when he was dealing with the disappearance of his brother. Not when he was exposing Hawkins Lab and watching Will howl in pain. Not when he had been fired and injured, limping down a hospital hallway.

It’s weird, not having been able to help. He recalls kneeling by the freezer that held El, watching as she floated. Being able to do nothing, being able to see nothing. And, yeah, maybe it hurts a little (a lot) to come back two days after everything has been done, after the fight has been partially-won, and realise that he hadn’t been able to help anyone.

El, fighting monsters through her mind. Nancy, fighting them in the flesh. His mother, in Russia breaking Hopper who hadn’t actually died escape from a high security prison only to break back in to, you guessed it, fight monsters.

(Jonathan thinks of Will. Of the conversation that he had overheard in the car, eyes split between the road and his brother, his tears in the rearview mirror. A conversation that wasn’t for his ears, never for his ears. About Mike. About Will, himself. He thinks of holding him close as they prepared the freezer.

Maybe he did help someone).

Jonathan lies in the makeshift bed in the basement of the Wheeler’s, waiting for morning. There were so many things that they had to decide, and he already knows that they’re going to stay in Hawkins, has no doubt about it. Because as much as he’d love to cart Will and El away, make everyone move away to the safety of somewhere, anywhere, else, he knows that they want to fight.

He hears the soft breathing of Will, of his mum, asleep beside him. Safe. Jonathan closes his eyes, pushes the thoughts of tomorrow to the back of his head.

— — —

The first thing they wake up to is a call. He makes it up the stairs, blinking away exhaustion and maybe a little bit of guilt, to Nancy. With the way that she’s clutching the phone, eyes set, Jonathan thinks for a moment that it’s all started up again. That the Upside Down has already come back, or Hopper has been shipped back to Russia, or the government had gotten a hold of El.

Nancy must have some sixth sense, because she turns as soon as his thoughts start to spiral, mouths Robin. It doesn’t calm his nerves.

He makes his way to the dining table, politely smiles at Mrs Wheeler, doesn’t mention the lack of her husband at the table. He pours the maple syrup over his pancakes, and by the time Jonathan goes to place some strawberries on top of them, Nancy is already pulling him back down the basement.

“Robin says that Steve is missing.”

Jonathan casts his eyes towards Will’s sleeping form. “Like, missing missing?”

Nancy sighs. “No. She says it isn’t Upside Down related but she,” She pauses, purses her lips. “She sounded more worried on the phone there, then she did when we were fighting Vecna.”

Jonathan lets himself relax. “She’s probably just worried about her boyfriend—”

“They’re very much not together—”

“—And Steve has probably just, driven off, or something. I mean, wouldn’t you? After everything that we’ve been through?”

(He thinks of hideous boney monsters, of Will being possessed, of the Mind Flayer, killing and consuming all of those people. Jonathan tries not to think of the people he knew. Tries not to think of Bob).

Nancy turns her eyes away from him, reluctantly nods her head. “But this is Steve.”

“Yes!” He says, waves his arms around. “This is Steve. Meaning: he won’t be gone for long. He’ll come back to the kids in no time.”

“Okay.” She whispers. Says it again, more confident. “Okay. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

— — —

Later, he goes to clear his head and smoke, by the quarry. It’s one of the things that California didn’t have — a proper space like this one. Yeah, there was the junkyard that had the same emptiness, the same physical space. But there was something intoxicating about being at the quarry, about looking across the water, over the edge.

He brings his lighter out, feels the smoke enter his lungs. Jonathan looks up, exhales. Watches as the smoke plume dissipates into thin air. He walks closer to the edge of the quarry, thinks about sitting down and dangling his feet over the edge (those days are over, he reminds himself).

The drop is a little horrifying to think about. He tips his head over the edge, looks out into the wide expanse of blue-grey that seems to extend endlessly. Eyes swish across the water lazily, looking at the stillness, the ripples, the darkened spot, the fog, the sky, the drop, the—

He turns back. Feels that adrenaline, fingers tingling, legs numb, as he looks at it again. Tries to trick himself into thinking it was something else. The darkened spot. Jonathan hasn’t seen him in months, hasn’t willingly talked to him in years. He doesn’t feel like he’s within his own body as he stumbles his way down to the waters edge.

Steve’s far out. Jonathan doesn’t stop, keeps walking as if the water isn’t there at all, lifts his legs a little higher, takes stronger strides, until the murky water is up to his chest. And then he’s pulling Harrington back to shore, feels the icy chill that seeps into his fingers where he meets skin.

It’s useless, his mind tells him. He’s dead. 

Jonathan presses his hands together, shouts at them to stop fucking shaking, places them on to Steve’s chest, uses all his weight to push down.

“Help!” He shouts. Hears his own voice echo back at him, sneering. “I need somebody, please—!”

He keeps pressing down, tries to see past the water and tears in his eyes, tries not to think of how he never even got to apologise, how he never got to make things better, how he never had a chance to know him.

Jonathan leans down, breathes air into failing lungs. One, two. Pretends that the chill against his spine is from his wet clothing.

He thinks of Robin’s frantic phone call, how Nancy had described her voice. He thinks of how he brushed it off, chalked it up to Steve running away from the madness of it all. He thinks of the way that he had talked about Steve to Nancy at the cabin, mocking. 

He doesn’t, no, he doesn’t think of the bent angle of Steve’s limbs. The stained tackiness behind his hair. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. Jonathan leans down.

Breathe! He wants to scream. Please, fucking breathe!

— — —

It’s weird to think about how it’s affected him. The Mementos. The loops. Jonathan can’t imagine that he would have ever held the same feelings towards Steve if it wasn’t for the knowledge that the deaths had given him (he tries not to think of what might have happened, if no one knew). It’s in the small changes in the way that he acts, how he reacts to certain things. Jonathan is sure that the others are feeling it, too. The difference in themselves.

It’s in the way when they all say goodbye at the end of the night, after a dinner or a breakfast, a short hello in passing, he doesn’t want to let go. It’s in the way that it’s become second nature to put himself between Steve and the drop when they’re near ledges with steep falls and no railings. 

And, yeah, Jonathan has changed. Doesn’t think that he would have made this change if not for the deaths (but it doesn’t stop him from hating them. From cursing them in the middle of the night, glaring up at the moon, asking it, pleading for it to answer, why did you hurt him so?), but he doesn’t think Steve has. 

Because it is so obvious now that he looks, opens his eyes. It’s how Steve throws himself into danger with reckless abandon, rolls with the punches, shrugs them off at the end of the day. It’s how he doesn’t talk, how he fills the silence. It has always been there — but no one had cared enough to look.

As soon as he realises it, it’s hard not to notice. Hard not to think about. And the more he looks, the more he watches the way that Steve blames himself for what everyone else remembers, Jonathan realises that Steve might not even know it. Might not even be aware of it. 

He has to talk to him. Has to make sure that he knows that there is someone here for him. And Jonathan finally gets the chance to do it, weeks after the Memento of the quarry. He doesn’t rush the conversation, prepares himself for it, waits until it is just the two of them, sober.

(They’ve been hanging out a lot, actually. Maybe it is like Murray had said; something about shared trauma bringing people together. Jonathan likes to think it’s because they actually enjoy each others company).

He feels like Steve has had enough heavy conversation for a lifetime. Has had to deal with tears and hugs and snot and death more than anyone else out of their group. And yet. He still feels like this needs to be done, feels like he needs to make sure that Steve knows. So when they are finally alone, he talks, holds Steve close.

“I used to go out to the quarry all the time.” Jonathan says. “And I would tell myself it was to clear my head. I’d drive my car, or I’d ride my bike, or I’d walk the distance from the yard to the ledge.”

He thinks of a loud house. Of sitting by Will’s door until he fell asleep, headphones on. Ugly fluorescent kitchen lights giving his mum a sickly figure. Jonathan thinks of peaking his head around the corner of the wall, Lonnie’s fist around a bottle. Arguing.

“I would sit by that ledge, looking out over the water, every night. I’d tell myself, this is the last time. I’m not coming back tomorrow.”

He feels the stutter of Steve’s shoulders against his chest, hears the sharp intake of breath. There’s a buildup of tears in Jonathan’s eyes, and he grapples on to Steve, lets them fall, lets him know that he has people in his corner. 

“And then I’d go back home.”

Steve’s head is heavy against his shoulder. Jonathan thinks of the Memento. Of going to the edge of the quarry to feel that addicting sense of fear, anticipation, tingle through his fingers, his bones. He imagines Steve there, away from Robin in his house, away from the noise, the people. The drop.

(Jonathan pushes the pieces together. Sees how much they share, how similar they are. Shouldering the horror, not wanting help, convincing himself he didn’t need it. Bottling it all up, and pushing it out in the form of helping. Running away. Hiding). 

“I know, Steve.” Jonathan settles for. He rests his chin on Steve’s shoulder, doesn’t let him fall. Because there is that image in his mind again: arms bent and head dipped and lips blue. There are the flashes of images before it, not deaths, no, something worse, something more.

It’s in the way he averts his eyes, or how Jonathan’s never seen Mr or Mrs Harrington. It’s in the way that Steve is alone, in that big, empty house. How he didn’t have anyone, never had anyone, to lean on before Robin, before Eddie. How he takes care of the kids before himself, how he had let Jonathan punch him, had stayed down on the ground, had let his arms fall, had antagonised him for the sake of a reaction, for the sake of anything. 

There’s a flicker in the back of his head, of a phrase, of a saying. Any attention is good attention.

— — —

“You okay?” Jonathan asks, after. “Don’t feel like you have to be.”

(The tears have since dried up, had come back tenfold when Steve had started talking, had mentioned things that he thought were normal. About how he sees his parents twice a year if he’s lucky, how he learnt how to cook for himself when he was a child, had clung to the bodies, thrown parties, trying to fill the hole.

When he had laid it all out, shrugged it off as if it wasn’t even that bad, Jonathan had shut that shit down. And Steve had tried to justify, tried to say that it was in the past, that he had moved past it, that nothing had even happened, so why does it matter? He had wanted to scream. To shout at him that trauma wasn’t a pissing contest, and you couldn’t compare it. 

Because it wasn’t fine or okay or normal. It had changed the way Steve thought and the way he acted, had changed him so young that nobody had even noticed. 

So Jonathan had listened to him talk. Made sure to reassure him, to tell Steve that what happened wasn’t okay. That it should have never happened. That it was okay to be angry).

“Well, it kinda feels like my whole worldview has been a little bit shattered, and I think this might be the eighth time this month I’ve had a Deep and Serious talk with someone, but,” Steve sighs. Smiles. “It’s… nice. Talking. Being seen.”

Jonathan makes sure to look Steve in the eye, needs to be sure. “So you understand what I meant, right? About your parents?”

He sees Steve pause, but nothing changes in his gaze. Maybe it’s a little more sad, eyes a little more downturned. But he isn’t denying it. Isn’t pretending that it was okay, anymore.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I hear you.”

Chapter Text

There’s a fear of something within his chest, a steady beat, as they all sit above the lake. Maybe it’s because Eddie had fallen out of the rickety boat before — tumbling into the black water, feeling himself be weighed down by denim and leather; Patrick and Jason mere meters away from him.

It had gripped at his throat when he had fallen backwards, trying to create as much distance between the scene that was set before him. The teenager, sinking into the water for a moment, before shooting out in unnatural speed, head yanked back, arms spread wide. 

(He tries not to think about how he still ran away. How Jason would have had to swim back carrying the body of his friend).

“Where we at, Wheeler?” Robin asks.

“Closing in on a minute.”

She breathes out, shaky. “Okay.”

The sounds of the water lapping against the hull of the boat does nothing to soothe him. Robin has her eyes glued to the darkness, exactly in the spot that Harrington had dived through. He casts a glance at Wheeler, sees the way she doesn’t waver her gaze from her watch. Counting, waiting.

It’s a little comforting, he thinks. That they seem so sure of themselves now. Because they had gone through this before, different every year, similar every year, winning, every year. Steve and Nancy have that cool steadiness to themselves, and it makes Eddie realise why they were always the ones leading the groups to safety. 

When he looks to Robin he feels something else, something a little bit like understanding. The rest of the group, excluding Red and Robin, had been here from the start, uncovering the lingering darkness that Hawkins tried to explain away in a fit of small-town weirdness. He wonders if she feels it, too. Feels that sense of desperation, fear, when he thinks of a whole other dimension — the monsters. Feels the sense of comfort when he thinks of Steve and Nancy; strong.

(He doesn’t look over the edge of the boat. Tries not to imagine Jason and Patrick swimming after him, gaining on him, the snapping of bones, a body descending from the midnight, crashing to water).

Eddie itches for— something. A cigarette, maybe. But he doesn’t want to try his luck, see another one of them be flicked over the confines of safety into the murky black. His eyes catch the water for a moment and he wants to scream.

“Hey… how long has he been down there?” Eddie asks, eyes stuck on the lake.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Nancy flick her wrist up, check the watch. Her eyes are blown wide, and Robin is talking fast into the radio, so fast that Eddie can’t keep up, catches the remnants of words, hasn’t come back up and need to go down and go back home, before Nancy is standing up on still-sure legs, boat rocking under the sudden movement, taking a breath, looking at Robin and Eddie and— 

Diving.

As she breaks through the stillness, Eddie watches as the water is disturbed, as it’s splashed back towards him. And both Nancy and Steve are gone, stealing that assured calm, plunging it into the water, out of reach.

He hears Robin breathe out. Watches as her hands shake to hold the seats of the boat, before she’s sitting on the ledge, and Eddie is pleading for her to not go down, to stay here, where it is safe. She turns her head back to the blackness and gives him a sorry smile, tips herself over the edge.

Eddie sees her body disappear into the ripples of the water. Watches as it all goes still. The beating in his chest feels overwhelming, like he’s going to pass out. He looks around the lake, thinks of how it had taken Patrick, how Steve hadn’t come back up, how dark and endless it all seemed — a natural void placed in Hawkins.

He looks up to the stars, takes a deep breath, sinks.

— — —

When he crawls through the gate, he feels as if he’s been reborn. Lake water is met with the slime of the hellish hole between worlds, and he gasps and inhales the thick air of the Upside Down. Eddie blinks away the water, gets a good look at everything — the horror and the wild that is other dimension, that Steve and Nancy have been fighting since 1983.

He turns towards the shouting, sees Robin and Wheeler in the midst of fighting bats, moving in tandem, horrifying and beautiful, knowing each other’s every move. That ugly thing of reassurance crawls its way up his throat, before it is beaten down with the flap of wings, and the latching of claws into his back.

“Fuck!”

Eddie drops his head down, tries to tear his hair away from the unwilling grip of the thing that is attached itself to him, drops to the floor to try and find something to help him. His hands scramble against the slick ground, meeting pulsating vines, lake water, an oar.

He grasps his hands around it, before he’s ducking his head and swinging the sharp edge of the rotting wood to where he thinks the monster is. A high pitched squeal is sounded, and he feels his hair being pulled back with the winged creature, before he’s turning around, hair be damned, and running the broken oar into the bat’s mouth, pinning it to the ground.

It’s terrifying. 

Because he’s created monsters before. Had to imagine encounters in the depths of a kingdom, ambushes at the sides of the road. Eddie has detailed the sets of monster’s teeth — they smell sweetly of sick decay, rotten and yellow, razor sharp against it’s lips — the brutality of death. 

It doesn’t even begin to compare to the real thing.

(There’s a small part of him that wonders, that really really wonders, how the kids can still play dnd. They had given names to their real monsters, stolen from the fictional ones. Eddie wonders if every time he had introduced a Demogorgon, Dustin and Mike and Lucas had thought of the towering mass, skin like ash, running towards them).

And then it becomes still.

The bat beneath him is pierced into the ground, mouth open in an unwavering screech that makes no sound. The sky is illuminated with blue-red lighting, like a storm constantly about to break. But the noise of the monsters and the fighting, have stilled.

Eddie spins around to check on Robin and Nancy, to ask them what the fuck they were meant to do, now. He brings a hand to the back of his head where the bat had latched on, feels a dampness thicker than water there. The girls are silent from where they’ve crouched on the ground, and it feels… wrong.

The thunder cracks throughout the sky, but he isn’t paying attention. There’s a muffled sound that he swears is familiar. He moves closer, feels the wetness at the back of his head dribble down his neck. It doesn’t feel important, right now because, something feels wrong. 

Each step is heavy. 

Each step takes forever.

Eddie reaches his hand out to Robin’s shoulder, tries to turn her to face him because there was no reason for them to be this silent and something was wrong.

“Talk to him — keep him awake!”

It’s Steve. 

Eddie is close enough to see the way that Robin’s body hides him from view, how she’s kneeling by his head, eyes downcast. He sees Wheeler swing her eyes away to look at the sky, searching, scanning, for danger. The sound that he thought was so familiar was— Robin. Crying.

(He looks so small, here, Eddie thinks. That feeling of comfort and steadiness that Steve once provided is fading fast, and Eddie wonders if it was even real to begin with).

Without even thinking, without a second more, Eddie shrugs off his vest. He slides it underneath Steve’s head, tries to give him even a fraction of that calmness he gave Eddie. 

“Hey, Steve, it’ll all be okay, alright?” He says, rambles to fill the space that Rob once did, tries to keep those eyes open. Eddie reaches to where his hand lays, still, against the ground. Holds it tight.

Robin hiccups next to him, wipes her eyes, rests her hands against Steve’s delirious face. “After all of this is over, we can go back to that shitty job at Family Video, and I’ll rewind all the tapes, and you can choose the movie. Anything, Steve, even if it’s fucking Flashdance again—“

Eddie hears a ripping sound, loud against the silence. He looks up to see Nancy tearing the bottom of her shirt up into long strips. She matches Eddie’s gaze, tilts her head towards Steve’s torso. Eddie shifts to the other side of him, leaves his vest underneath Steve’s head.

“Anything you want,” Robin whispers. “Steve, anything you want, just please, please—!”

Putting his hands underneath his battered midsection, Eddie lifts Steve up. Wheeler slides the makeshift bandage underneath the small space he’s made, and he grabs onto it from the other side. He watches as Nancy brings the pieces together, ties them tight at the front of Steve’s body, hastily trying to keep everything together, keep everything inside.

Robin sucks in a breath, and Eddie watches, sees her tears tumble down onto Steve’s face, watches as it clears away the blood from his complexion. The quiet is broken by bats screaming in the distance.

“We need to go.” Nancy says. Her eyes are still on Steve. She doesn’t look like she wants to stand.

Robin whips her head up to glare at Wheeler, palms pressed flat against Steve’s cheeks. “We are not leaving him!”

“I’ll carry him.” Eddie says, fast. “Just— help him onto my back.”

She nods quickly, detaches her hands from Steve to wipe away her tears. He kneels with his back towards them, crouching, hears Nancy and Robin sit Steve up, press him into Eddie’s back. They swing Steve’s arms over his shoulders, and Eddie puts his hands around his legs, stands.

“Promise me that we won’t leave him behind?” Robin says. From the look in her eyes, Eddie can tell that she knows they can’t keep it.

“Promise.”

— — —

They have their softest moments, Eddie notices, in the mornings. And, Eddie isn’t a morning person, no, not at all. He wakes up with the worst bedhead known to man (Steve’s words, not his), grumbling and hungry and needing to piss, restless as soon as he realises he’s awake. Steve, however, is a morning person, a light sleeper, but he somehow manages to always wake up after Eddie.

(“Stevie. Baby. Light of my life. Apple of my eye. How the fuck do you have so much energy when you wake up?”

He laughs from the other side of the room, brushing his hair up and out of his face, meeting Eddie’s eyes in the mirror. Eddie sees Steve smile, placing the brush back down on the desk, framed by the sun and the ugly wallpaper. The space beside him on the bed is only just starting to turn cold, so Eddie turns onto his stomach, burrows his face into the pillows, following the warmth.

“The gang thinks my superpower is looping time, but it’s actually being a morning person.” Steve says. He pauses for a moment, and Eddie inhales the smell of them imbedded in the sheets. “But you know what might make you wake up quicker?”

The sheets are torn off the bed in one swift movement. 

“You fucker!”

Steve cackles from where he stands, eyes closed, head swung back. And, you know, Eddie would call it cute, adorable, even, under normal circumstances. But these are very much not ‘normal circumstances’. This was war.

He launches himself off the bed and into Steve’s stomach, sends them tumbling to the soft carpet, revels in the way the smile is replaced with wide eyes, a handful of Eddie, blankets discarded around them.

Eddie grapples for the blankets that were once in Steve’s grips, before he’s being yanked back down to the floor by the collar of his shirt, nearly knocking heads with Steve.

They stay like that for a moment, nose to nose, on the floor, silent. But then Steve is making that face of his — lips downturned trying to suppress a smile — and they’re making eye contact and filling the silence with sounds of laughter).

It’s a blessing in disguise, Eddie finds, that Steve wakes up after him. Because, yeah, mornings normally sucked because it meant that he had to wake up and get ready and brush his teeth and— you get the gist. 

But the mornings that Eddie got to spend with Steve? The mornings where he, somehow, always woke up before him? The mornings where Eddie got to watch as Steve slowly woke up, blinking himself awake, energy filled and happy? 

Eddie thinks that he might just wake up before him for the rest of his life.

But, not all days are good. Yeah, the mornings hold that warmth, but sometimes it doesn’t last throughout the day, and when the moon is starting to rise, and Wayne has said goodbye to work the night shift, Eddie will sometimes get a call from Steve.

He has to remind himself that healing is not linear. That this doesn’t get rid of everything that they’ve worked towards — that Steve has been building himself up to. Eddie’s heard him say it to the kids hundreds of times; holding them close as they cried, reassuring them that it is okay to cry.

Sometimes he just needs someone to say it back to him. Eddie doesn’t mind taking up the task.

Today is… an alright day.

Today is also the day that Eddie decides that he really fucking hates Mr. Harrington, for lack of better words. 

Because, yeah, he was a kinda-maybe-a-little-bit aware of how shit Steve’s parents were — knew that they weren’t around as much as parents should be. But whenever they talk about their childhood, reminiscing about dumb shit they did as teenagers, Steve would get this… bewildered look in his eye.

It happened again, spiralled out of control into something more. And, so, today is an alright day.

It was one of Wayne’s favourite stories that did it — about how Eddie had broken his favourite mug. They were at his apartment, flittering though the kitchen when Steve had asked about it, the shattered mug, clearly on display, on the counter. 

Eddie remembers it like it was yesterday. He was young, and it was Father’s Day. The sun was bright through the blinds of the trailer, and Eddie always woke up before everyone else, and his young-dumb brain had the most fantastical idea of making Wayne breakfast in bed. 

It didn’t matter that he had never touched the kettle before, or that he couldn’t reach the cabinets that held the plates. He had a vision and determination, and that was enough.

Eddie had jumped up on the counter, lifted himself up on scrawny arms, using all of his upper body strength so that he could sit down by the sink. And he kneeled on the counter, trying to look into those cabinets, finding that one orange mug with the painting of a black butterfly on it: Wayne’s favourite.

But he was young and dumb and stupid, and when he had spotted it, reaching his fingers until they were only just touching the ceramic — it had tumbled out of its place on the shelf, and onto the lino floor. Shattered.

And it was the first time he had broken anything. Eddie was terrified that he was going to get in trouble, get yelled at for messing with his Uncles shit so early in the morning. But when Wayne bounded down the hallway, worry clear on his face, he hadn’t even raised his voice. Just checked Eddie over, swept up the ceramic shards into a pile, told him that it was just a mug.

(“Did it work?” Steve asks.

“What, glueing the pieces back together?”

He nods, hiding a small smile behind his cup of tea. Eddie sees a flicker of something behind those doe eyes. Something that makes him want to hold Steve close, never let him go.

“Fuck no. It looked so goddamned atrocious — it couldn’t even hold water! It had so many holes and we just.” Eddie stops himself, slows down. “Okay, so, neither of us knew how to fix this mug, right?”

Steve nods his head. “Right.”

“But, god, we were determined. And Wayne had pulled out this small tube of superglue, and I was all ‘hey, isn’t that gonna make whatever we drink toxic?’ and he was like,” Eddie deepens his voice as low as he can, revels in the way that it makes Steve snort. “‘Kid, you think I know what I’m doing?’”

They laugh. Eddie casts his eyes towards the offending mug — ugly and misshapen, put back together with stubbornness and love. Steve runs his fingers across the rough edges, searching.

“You guys are sweet.”

“Any broken mug stories to tell me, Stevie?”

He pauses for a moment. Tilts his head to the side, and drops his fingers from tracing the item. Eddie sees it again — that emotion behind his eyes.

“No, I.” Steve turn back to Eddie in the kitchen, sighs. “It kinda sucks but, uh. The one time I accidentally dropped a plate in the sink, my dad sent me to my room.”

Eddie moves forward, places his hand on Steve’s back. He mimics small circles into the warmth of his skin, says without having to: I’m right here. Steve smiles, slightly, thankful.

“And when I woke up, they were gone.”).

So, maybe it’s not for a lack of better words, but instead because it’s truly, wholly, how he feels. Today, Eddie decides that he fucking hates Steve’s dad. So today is alright, but they’re working on it — trying not to let one shitty moment kill the day.

“Fuck him.” Eddie says.

“Yeah,” Steve replies. Pumps himself up a bit, bounces on his feet. “Fuck him!”

Chapter Text

That’s one thing he hated about Hawkins — the streetlamps. California had them dotted in even spaced areas on the sides of the road, illuminating the streets in that warm yellow. It didn’t matter what time of day it was; whenever he was driving, there was that comforting glow behind him.

Hawkins, on the other hand, didn’t have that. The lights flickered every other second, casting their sickly amber across the potholes. There were moments where he was plunged in complete darkness, with only his headlights to guide him. Every streetlamp he passed felt like he was condemning himself closer to death.

Billy pressed the tips of his fingers to his lip, bruised. Maxine couldn’t have just been home tonight, could she? He presses his foot down on the peddle, watches as the road becomes dark, if only for a second.

(This isn’t on her, that voice in the back of his head says. He shoves it aside, shouts at it who else’s fucking fault would it be? Billy reaches for the volume on the stereo, tries to drown out the thought in his brain telling him that he knows who he’s truly angry at).

He slows his car down as his wheels crunch against a horrible mixture of gravel and dirt. The house that he was given directions to borders the woods. Maybe it was just him not being used to the backwoods hick-town, but it was… eerie. The trees seemed to extend forever, staring back him, peering into his skull. He lights a cigarette, tries not to think about it.

Billy was tired, and a little (a lot) pissed off. Because Maxine had stayed out past curfew, and it was his fault that she wasn’t home, his fault that he didn’t know where she was. He rubs his hand over his lip again, feels the thrumming beneath his skin telling him to hit something. To break something.

He turns his car off, shoves the keys in his back pocket. He clambers out the car door, slams it shut against the quiet of the woods, sees Harrington, standing outside the house, hands on his hips. When Billy meets his eyes, brings the cigarette up to his lips, that dull humming beneath his skin is screaming at him to throw the first punch.

That’s another thing he hated about Hawkins — the rumours. Everyone seemed to know everybody, and he preened under the attention, felt powerful when people would move out of his way in the halls. But small towns meant rumours, and Billy couldn’t risk any.

He had heard all about King Steve. How he would throw parties at his house, doors open, everyone welcome. How he was friends with Tommy H. and Carol. How he wouldn’t start fights, would just finish them.

Billy hadn’t seen it. Him. Harrington was too soft, too quiet, not loud enough, not angry enough. Nothing like him. 

So Billy crafts the words in his head before they’re spilling out of his mouth — taunting, antagonistic. Harrington doesn’t even rise to the bait. It’s infuriating. Billy blows smoke into his face to try and make him do something. He feels his own nostrils flare as Steve just stands there. Too calm. not angry enough.

When he mentions his step-sister, Harrington’s stance shifts. Billy feels the edges of his lips curl up,  the thrumming beneath his skin saying gotcha. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees four small faces in the open window. His lip throbs as he speaks.

“I told you to plant your feet.”

He draws his foot back, slams it into Steve’s stomach. When Harrington stays down, it makes him feel powerful.

— — —

When Steve swings, Billy laughs. 

He can smell that sickly sweet metallic, barley feels the punch to his jaw. Because he’s been waiting for this, pushing each and every button, trying every taunt. It hadn’t worked when he mentioned Wheeler, it hadn’t worked when he stole his crown, it hadn’t worked on the court. Somehow, somehow, it was these fucking kids that brought King Steve back.

It courses through his veins, runs hot through his body, and he smiles against it all. Billy snarls a lip up at Harrington, swings heavy and wide. He misses but he doesn’t even care — takes Steve’s punches to the face, the hit to the chest. Billy can feel blood between his teeth and smiles, because the feeling of his skin screaming at him is finally dulling. 

He makes a show of stumbling back into the kitchen counter, near the sink. Revels in the way that King Steve is shaking out his hand — hurt. And Billy hadn’t even hit him, yet. He can hear the voices of the kids shouting at him, trying to get him to leave, but he’s only just getting started.

With his hands sprawled out wide behind him, Billy reaches his hands for anything. Something heavy. Something breakable. Harrington takes one step forward, and Billy feels the edges of cool ceramic plates against his palm. 

He swings his arm around, springs himself up from where he was laying, and slams the plate into Steve’s head — dead centre. Harrington stumbles back, clutching at his eye, but it’s not enough, never enough, so Billy grabs another plate, and another. Watches the way they break across his face, his forehead, his nose.

Billy watches as he falls backwards. Head first. Body tumbling to the side. Sliding across the drawings taped to the ground.

“Get up.” He says. Steve doesn’t move from his place on the floor. Billy stalks closer, feet planted, fingers curling into fists as he wipes away the blood from under his nose. He crouches over Harrington’s form, lifts him up by the collar of his shirt. “Get the fuck up!”

(He’s hurt a lot of people. Seen people crumble, felt like he was going to die, himself. Billy had been the one to start fights before, eyes sharp, tongue sharper. He had been able to sort through rumours and feeling and actions to find the ones that hurt — had made sure to use it against people. Because it calmed that thrumming of his skin, that itchiness in his body, when people swung at him.

There’s something inside of him that screams that he doesn’t start every fight. That sometimes he isn’t allowed to fight back).

Harrington stays on the ground. Unnaturally still. Billy, still holding him up by his collar, shakes him. Watches as Steve’s head listlessly moves with it.

(But when he started fights, they always got back. Always, always, got back up).

There are shards of the plate imbedded in his face. His forehead, his eye, his nose, crooked against his skin. The noise that existed in the house just moments before — the jeering of the kids, of Maxine — are gone. He feels the throbbing of his hands, moves it near his own face, to see split skin.

He drops Harrington to the floor, doesn’t think about the dry thud! that sounds when his head hits the floorboards. Doesn’t think about how he isn’t getting back up. Billy shuffles backwards, feels something shifting beneath his own skin — not the incessant hum of violence, but something akin to fear.

Billy keeps his eyes on Steve. Can’t look at Maxine from where she’s standing in the corner of his eye, because her face is twisted and snarled and furious. There’s a scuffle as the three other kids cautiously move towards where Steve lays.

“Why isn’t—” One of them speaks, curly headed and small. “Why isn’t he moving?”

The Wheeler kid looks like he’s close to tears, hands reaching in a deleted movement to hold his protector, who lies, head lolled back, red splattered across the floorboards and the drawings. 

Billy stands there, in the middle of the room, looking at the teen. The kids are crowded around Harrington, shaking his shoulder, hands reaching for the mess of his face, and Billy was trying to hurt him, yes, had been trying to provoke him since he came to Hawkins, had wanted to fight him, had wanted to smash his fist against his nose, but he never meant to—

(His eyes catch on the shards of ceramic and he feels like he’s gonna be sick).

“Get the fuck out, and don’t come back!”

A bat is swung, stopping a hairs distance from his nose. He feels like he’s going cross-eyed trying to look at it. Billy stops his brain for a moment, registers the voice of Max, her hands clasped around the handle of a weapon, nails almost catching in his hair.

“Maxine,” He says. Tries to keep his voice from wavering. “Put the fucking bat down—”

“No!” She shouts, swings the bat over her shoulder, poised to strike. There’s something dancing in her eyes that he’s never seen before, an expression on her face that she’s never worn. “You are going to leave. And you aren’t going to come back. Do you understand me?”

Billy peers over her shoulder to where the boys are crouched down near Harrington, to— to the body of Harrington. 

“Do you understand me?!”

— — —

Max watched Eddie shift from foot to foot, glancing at Jonathan, a look on his face as if to say you wanna start this? For once, Steve wasn’t the ones taking them home from the Wheeler’s, and when the door had opened, Jonathan and Eddie had stumbled down the stairs, said that they needed to talk.

The idea of them ‘wanting to talk’ really shouldn’t make Max feel like she’s in trouble. Jonathan and Eddie were their friends, no matter how much they acted like parents. Still, thoughts are flittering through her mind of all the illegal shit that she’s done, and then she promptly remembers that Eddie was literally a drug dealer for a large portion of his high school career.

Jonathan sighs, crosses his arms. “I’m sure we’ve all remembered something at this point, right?”

“Yeah, we’ve all had a Memento.” Dustin says.

“A what?”

“Y’know, like, something that reminds us of— never mind. Why?”

Max watches as Eddie leans on the wall, behind Jonathan. “Steve’s blaming himself for everyone remembering.”

The basement is quiet for a split second as the words register in everyone’s heads, and then they’re all shouting in outrage and disbelief, and Max? Yeah, she kinda knew about Steve’s stupid self-sacrificing streak, but she still feels so — not mad at him, not pitying. Just baffled.

Because when he had handed her the list, neat writing and misspellings, numbered and named, she had cried. Whenever she looked at the list, saw the reminders, had a dream about him dying, she thought of how he had died to save her. Hundreds and hundreds of times.

Max had said as much. Had told him how sorry she was, that he should’ve just let it be, let her die, so that he wouldn’t have had to do any of this. And she’s baffled, now, about how Steve is blaming himself for people remembering, because he had reassured her that none of his deaths were her fault.

If he could say that, could make sure that she knew it, why couldn’t he accept that everyone remembering wasn’t on him?

“What can we do?” Will said.

Jonathan shifted, sighed. “You guys are still telling him about every death, right?” He received nods around the room. “And how much are you telling him?”

Everyone shifts uncomfortably. Max thinks about how she had mentioned watching him die, once. How she had talked about holding him as she pressed her palms agains the bullet wound in his side, how Jason had fled down the stairs as soon as it happened. 

“It’s okay to mention it,” Eddie says. “I’m not gonna stand here and pretend it isn’t horrifying, something you can just shrug off. But, Steve knows, okay? He remembers them enough to write them down, and, Jesus, it’s on his skin. I don’t think any of us recounting it is making him feel less guilty.”

“I mean, I could see how he’d get sick of it.” Mike says. “I feel like nobody’s talked to him about anything apart from his deaths in weeks.”

Lucas pipes up from his seat on the floor, the pieces connecting in his head. “And if he’s trying to go back to normal, everyone bringing it up every time they see him must be annoying.” 

There are nods around the room. Assured. Max thinks she knows what Eddie and Jonathan are going to ask before they even say it. If it’s what she thinks, then she’s gonna be agreeing as soon as they finish speaking.

“If you tell Steve about a listed Memento just, I don’t know, say the number of something. He’s not a ghost, and we need to stop treating him like he’s dead, now.” Eddie says, waits for everyone to agree before Jonathan steps in.

“But if you have one that isn’t on there, that isn’t listed? Tell him. He deserves to know.”

The room is silent for a few beats. It’s exactly what she thought it was going to be, what they were going to ask. 

“Has anyone else had a not-death Memento?” She speaks, breaks the silence.

Max looks around the room, sees Eddie nod where he stands by the wall. And then Jonathan is giving her a thumbs up, and Dustin is looking at her with wide eyes, El taps her thigh in a way that means yes, and Will and Lucas are smiling back at Max from their seats.

“Why haven’t we talked about them?” Mike says, incredulous. 

“You could have brought it up!” Lucas says.

“Okay, yeah, mine isn’t Steve-death related, but it isn’t happy—”

“Imagine.” Eddie says. “Couldn’t be me. All my non-death memories are very happy.”

He winks so obnoxiously that Max knows it’s a joke. It doesn’t stop her and the rest of the party from shouting a gross! at him, though.

— — — 

Max is the first to remember it. The first thing she does is call everyone up, set up a party meeting at the Wheeler’s basement. When they’re all huddled together, Mike and Lucas and Dustin and Will and El, they talk about it. Because as much as she wanted to go straight to Steve, to have him hold her in his arms, to tell her that he is alive — there’s guilt stopping her.

Billy, her brother Billy, had killed him. And, yeah, okay, Steve was still alive, and his deaths didn’t stick, but it didn’t matter. It had still happened. She feels that bubbling of ugly guilt, because she had been grieving a man that had killed Steve in another time.

(She tries to shake the thought, hard and fast — away. Max knows what Steve would say, what Eddie would say. Something along the lines of grief does’t spare anyone and sometimes it doesn’t have to make sense and you’re allowed to miss him).

But Steve had died. For them. 

And she remembers, holds the image in her palm so clearly, of the few interactions that they had before the fight. From a distance, helping barricade the bus, watching him talk to Dustin, brandishing the bat in the face of danger, hands on her shoulders as he made sure everyone was in the car before him, walking out of the house when she said Billy will kill me.

She had known him for less than a day, but he had still done it. Kept them safe, kept her safe, in life and death. Maybe if she hadn’t looked through the window first, hadn’t kept looking out when Steve had walked outside, he wouldn’t have died. 

“We have to tell him, right?” Lucas says. And Max knows that he’s feeling it as well — that soul eating guilt. He had stopped her on the way down the stairs, had placed his hands on her shoulders, said this isn’t on you. And Max had looked into his eyes, mirrored his actions, repeated it back to him.

“It’s on the list, but he’s marked it as a question” Will says. 

They had made a promise, to each other, about the list, the Mementos. Because there were hundreds of them, listed in an order that Steve remembered, in a way that you could say a number and he would say the correct death. 

Everyone had just said it, at the start, when they had one. Had raced to Steve, wherever he was, whatever he was doing, just to make sure that it was just that — a memory. Something that happened, that passed, that meant that Steve was still breathing.

But after Eddie and Jonathan had mentioned it, Steve blaming himself, Max had seen it. The way that he had folded in on himself when someone detailed one of his deaths, the way he said he was sorry.

“Okay.” Mike says. “Should we call him?”

“Better to do in person.” El answers.

Max feels that guilt, again. Because she knew it was going to happen, from the moment she saw him in the bathroom. When he had stayed over to help her with dinner, and she had seen the pale, tiny, scars on his face, had mentioned it to him. How he had brushed it off, even then, how Max told him about them remembering.

“Wait.” Max backtracks, gains the attention of everyone else. “He already, kinda, knows about it, right?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“So we confirm it. Nothing more. Remember what Jonathan and Eddie said?” She breathes deep. And maybe when she closes her eyes she sees it — Steve’s crumpled body, unmoving, bleeding. She pushes it to the side, thinks of how Steve is alive now. 

Because, yeah. They were gonna have to talk to someone about the horrifying Memento, work through it all together. But when she really thought about it, talking to the guy who died in the memory seemed backwards.

“We’re not gonna treat him like a ghost, anymore.”

Chapter Text

He has so much he wants to do. It’s the only thing he can think about as he and Steve run away from the gate in the trailer, after falling off their bikes and trying to run, again. But as the bats tunnel around them, above them, Eddie realises that there’s no way he’s getting out of this.

Steve is hauntingly beautiful. His eyes are crazed and frantic, and there is a softness hidden under it all — the hard edges and blood and dirt and anger and pain and frustration. His hands reach out towards Eddie, his shoulders, the back of his neck. Steve cradles him so close as he feels the wind, no, not wind, the air moving beneath the flap of each wing. 

And he looks at Eddie. With such care and softness, beneath it all.

“If I’m going to die, Harrington—”

“You’re not going to die!” Steve says it with such conviction, determination burning in his eyes, that Eddie almost believes him.

“Well our chances are looking pretty fucking slim right now!”

He feels a tail wrap around his neck, a yank to his body as the bat tries to pull him back. But Steve is right there, hands wrapping around the monster, clutching it so hard that his hands turn white, ripping the bat from around him, throwing it back into the void.

When he looks at Steve, at the expression on his face, it feels like time is moving slower. Eddie doesn’t want to die — there’s so much that he’s been looking forward to, so much that he never got (never will get he corrects) to do.

And he’s been working towards it for so long. Graduation. 

He failed the first time because he didn’t care, didn’t worry enough about it maybe, was too worried about everything else. And maybe the second time was purely on him, but he was trying, he’s been trying so hard this year. Because he wanted to make Wayne proud, he wanted to do it for himself, and now, after everything, after seeing her die, he wanted to do it for Chrissy. 

(It was meant to be my year. He tells himself. The bats around him screech and cackle, lightning illuminating them. But who was he kidding? Nothing has ever worked out for him before, why would it start now?)

Eddie wants to do everything that he’s missed out on, everything that he told himself he would do. He wants to adopt the two strays that meet him every morning for food, wants to take them home and have them sleep on his bed and purr by his feet. He wants to name them something dumb and nerdy, something that’ll make Dustin happy, something that’ll make the vets question him.

And, god, he wants to see Dustin. He wants to see Mike and Lucas and the Hellfire Club and make sure that they’re okay, ask those kids how they’ve been dealing with this shit for years and are still acting normal. He wants to meet the Will Byers that they talk about, set up a campaign for all of them, hold them close, tell them that it’s alright to be afraid.

There’s a small part of him, gaping and wide and wanting, that tells him that Wayne doesn’t know, because Eddie never said the words, too scared, not strong enough. The bats circle overhead, and he knows that he’s going to die, knows that there’s no use in asking, or wishing, pleading and begging, so he shouts it into the void, shouts I want to tell my Uncle that I love him! and hopes that Wayne can read between the lines.

His throat hurts with how loud he shouted, trying to be heard over the noise, over the thoughts in his head. Eddie almost wants to turn to Steve, say if you make it out of this and I don’t, can you complete my wants for me? 

Because things work out for him — Harrington. Eddie’s heard snippets of times where Steve had nearly died, year after year. He knew about Jonathan Byers and Billy Hargrove, knew the vague complexion of a nail bat and monster hunting. Nothing has ever gone Eddie’s way, but maybe Steve will make it out of this.

When Eddie turns, breathes deep to say his final want, the last one, the one that he’s wanted since he was twelve, he catches Steve’s eye. Eddie’s brought closer towards him, hands reaching to hold on to something. When Steve brings his hands up to Eddie’s face, palms hovering above his cheeks, he shouts the words and wonders what could have been.

(He tries not to think about all the missed connections. 

Every year, every homeroom that they shared, Harrington not noticing him, coming late to every class, all eyes on him, unbothered.

Later, when Steve would buy weed off him, and Eddie would overcharge, and Harrington would look at him with that incredulous face of his, eyebrow raised, unamused and Eddie would laugh and say you can afford it. He tries not to think about the way that Steve would pretend to frown, ghost of a smile on his face as he payed, waved and disappeared out of the woods. 

He tries not to think about earlier, years earlier, when he was twelve and just learning to ride his bike. Eddie had fell, scraped his knee so bad that he thought he was going to die. There was blood splattered across the fancy pavement, and he had tears streaming down his face, and then there was another boy, his age, brown hair shimmering gold in the sun, offering him a bandaid and a smile).

There’s some fucked up comfort in it all. Steve clutches to his shoulders, then, and Eddie decides, thinks, if this is where I die, I’m allowed to hug Steve Harrington. So he grabs onto the stiff new jacket that Steve had adorned, closes his eyes hard because he doesn’t want to see it happen, tries to apply that childhood logic of if I can’t see it, it’s not real. 

There’s some fucked up comfort, Eddie thinks, in Steve being here with him. He listens as Steve shouts into the void, as his voice breaks, feels hot tears soak into his shirt. He doesn’t need to see it to know that the bats are closing in — can feel the constricting coldness inch closer, his hair moving. 

It’s selfish, and he hates it the minute he thinks it. But then he’s relenting, because, if he’s going to die, he can admit to himself that he wouldn’t want to die alone.

“I’ve got you,” Steve says, pulls him closer, voice wrecked from his wants. “Just hold on, okay?”

Eddie feels the palm of Steve’s hand on the back of his head, tucking his face into his shoulder, away from the noise, away from the monsters, as if he can protect him. With shaky hands he holds on tighter, tries to stay close, together.

(It doesn’t work).

“Eddie!”

He’s yanked towards the void, slides on his back away from Steve, feels his hands on his forearms pulling him back up, hears a shout and a thud! as Steve curbs the monster attached to his ankle.

They’re back together, hold each other close, so close, that Eddie feels like they’re trying to mesh into one. Steve’s body is warm against the coolness of the Upside Down, hands trying to cover Eddie’s ears against the screeches.

He keeps his eyes open, this time, sees it before it happens. One of the bats break off from the towering mass, claws digging in to Steve’s shoulder. Eddie reaches up and slams his fist into it, watches as it flies back to its group, tires not to think about how its skin shifted beneath his fingers. 

Steve lets out a shout when Eddie hurls the bat into the void, places his arms back around Steve’s shoulder and sees— blood. Sees the chunk it’s taken out of Steve’s neck.

“No!” He shouts. Because things always worked out for Steve Harrington, and he was meant to live, be able to go back to everyone, complete Eddie’s wants for him, complete his own. 

Steve hasn’t moved his hands from where they lay around Eddie, barley scared, worried. “I’m alright.” 

“You’re not! You’re—”

Eddie reaches a hand up, tries to forget about the noise, his death, Steve’s death, approaching. He presses his palm to the side of his throat, tries to quell the bleeding in any way that he can, but it just pools, tauntingly, slowly spurting in thick rivets, down his fingers.

A bat latches around Steve’s throat, and this time, neither of them are fast enough. It pulls him into the rush, monsters parting for a split second, and Eddie can see the trailer park, safety, before it’s closed back up again, taking Steve with it.

When the bats descend upon him, as he stares up at the sky, he wonders what it would have felt like, to be loved back.

— — —

Max is gone. It’s all Nancy can think about. She and Robin had watched the way the grandfather clock ticked and reversed, four chimes mocking them as they tried to find Vecna’s body. When she was shooting him, hitting every time, dead centre, Robin throwing anger and fire toward the monster, it felt like they had won.

But there were fracture lines running across the Upside Down, not deep enough to be gates. Yet. She thinks. Not deep enough to be gates, yet. 

When the four chimes had sounded, and they had gone outside and Vecna’s body was nowhere to be found — Nancy knew that Max was dead.

(It should have been me. That voice in her head says. Vecna got me, too. I should have taken Max’s place).

They make the slow walk back to the trailer park. It feels like an out of body experience, as if she’s watching herself walk, watching herself tell Robin that they needed to get back to their Hawkins, need to go back to the one gate they know is safe.

It feels like a rubber band has been slowly being pulled back and back and back, only to hurl her consciousness forwards into her body, snapping, when she saw them.

Robin has rushed towards them, throwing off her pack that weighs her down, skidding across the ground, stepping over monsters, before kneeling before them. Nancy sees them — tangled and wanting, hands reaching as if to hold each other close, even in death.

Nancy stalks forward to see them, to make sure, because it couldn’t be true, couldn’t be real, this was all just images and fears that Vecna had created for her, right? Robin will figure out her favourite song, and she’ll fall back to the floor, and they’ll kill him, and Max will be alive, and Eddie won’t be staring up, and Steve—

She can’t bare to look at the way that his eyes have glossed over. The easy rest that has settled on his face.

Maybe it was fading fast, her memory of his smile, and his laugh, and the way his eyes would light up when they talked about Jonathan or the kids — but as she sees him lying there, she can’t remember a moment when he had looked more peaceful.

Nancy keeps it together. She hears the way that Robin’s breaths have sped up, tries not to think about Steve’s face, how he had insisted to help Eddie because he would just slow her and Robin down, how he wasn’t hurt enough to stay behind with Max. And she had believed him. Let it go.

(She wishes she pushed. Nancy wishes that she just fucking pushed, hates herself for letting it go this one time. The one time that it counted).

“How do we,” Robin chokes on her tears. Nancy places her hand on her shoulder. “How do we bring them back?”

Nancy holds them in — the tears. Because as she looks, as Robin turns towards her for an answer, for guidance, she sees the way that Steve and Eddie are frozen in time, a macabre painting of who they once were, hands reaching for each other. Nancy sees the way that their weapons are so far away, thrown far away, and tries not to think about them, defenceless.

“We can’t.” She whispers. Thinks about how they can’t carry them. Thinks of how they won’t be able to get them through the small hole at the top of the trailer. “Robin, you know we—” Nancy feels her voice break and turns away, looks away to the sky. “We can’t.”

When they tumble through the gate, Nancy boosting Robin up, they hear the frantic sounds of voices through the walkie left on the counter. Tired and hopeful, she hears as they mention how they’re in the hospital, how Max had died for a second, how she had been brought back.

(She tries to keep it together. Because she is Nancy Wheeler: strong and immovable, a force to be reckoned with. Because Nancy Wheeler always has a plan, always knows what to do, shoots in the face of danger, never missing.

She tries not to think about the bodies that lay forgotten, unable to be put to rest, unable to be mourned).

“They didn’t make it.” Nancy says, finger pressed so hard into the button of the walkie that she feels it bruising. “Steve and Eddie.”

The line is silent, the static breaching through. Nancy watches Robin rip her hat off her head, watches the way she slides against the door, sitting down, head in her hands. Clutching the machine in her hold tight, she joins her on the floor.

(She lets the tears fall. Closes her eyes to block out the sounds of radio static and the kids’ voices. Closes her eyes and tries to forget their bloodied faces, tells herself that none of this is real).

— — —

Eddie remembers it exactly two months and fifteen days after Steve tells him about it. It happens while he’s asleep — a series of flashes and jumbled words, his mouth moving without having to think of what to say. It felt like he was watching a movie through his own eyes.

When they both wake up, he tells Steve that he remembers the sticky note on the fridge. He doesn’t mention the death by name, knows that they both understand. 

(Eddie tries not to think about how one of the points was about Steve’s dad. About how he wanted to prove him wrong. How in his last moments of life, all he had wanted was for his dad to be proud).

But they’re working on it, not letting one bad thing ruin the whole day, so maybe they hold each other for a little longer, wait for their breathing to even out, and then they’re piling themselves into the car, turning the stereo as loud as it can get.

They roll down the windows, and Eddie flings his hand outside, moves it up and down like a wave, feels the wind against his palm. They have a horrible mis-matched mixtape that plays their favourite songs, switching between Kiss and ABBA and Metallica and Duran Duran and INXS. 

Steve is shouting his voice out to Don’t Change, fucking up the words he doesn’t know, still shouting them anyway, mimicking the guitar parts with his voice, eyes on the road, sunglasses on, smile plastered on his face.

And Eddie watches him, pretends to play the solo on his fake-guitar, bobbing his head along with the beat, and smiling and laughing as Steve misses the turn down the road. If Eddie cheers when the roads are clear and Steve blares past the speed limit, well. Nobody’s around to tell on them.

They have a destination in mind, but it doesn’t matter how long it takes for them to get there. As Steve shouts out don’t change for you, don’t change a thing for me Eddie realises that nothing matters at all, in this moment. It’s just them.

(Steve’s getting better at it, as the days go by. Talking to people about his shit).

As the song ends, and Steve slows down the car to a normal speed, they make eye contact, laugh. Eddie reaches over and plucks the sunglasses off his face, watches the crinkles at the edges of his eyes as Steve smiles.

He places the sunglasses onto his own eyes, strikes an exaggerated pose that makes him bang his elbow into the console. “How do I look, Stevie?”

Steve smiles back at him, reaches out a hand to lay on his thigh. “Like a rockstar, Eds.”

Chapter Text

Robin is scared. 

She’s fucking scared shitless, because she doesn’t want to die, didn’t think that she’d die next to King Steve of all people, and yet they’re sitting back to back, bound, in stupid little sailor outfits, blue and white and red, so much red, too much red, for it to just be the uniform.

She had hated the uniforms when she first saw them. Hated them more than the idea of working with Steve Harrington. Because Scoops was freezing all the time, and they were making her wear fucking shorts in the stupid ice cream parlour, working minimum wage, with Steve Harrington.

And there would, somehow, always be customers ordering the triple chocolate fudge that never scooped cleanly, scraping against her dumb scooper, making her bang her hand against the metal tubs that held the ice cream. It never happened with Harrington, and wasn’t that the kicker? That he was able to do this thing better than her: scooping fucking ice cream.

There was one time that she had banged her hand so hard against the metal tub, and Harrington was on her in an instant. He had rounded the corner, ushering her to sit down in one of the booths as he held a cool compress (where did he even get it?) against her palm, perfectly scooping the cursed triple chocolate fudge into a cone and ushering the customer away.

Robin had just sat there, hand throbbing, and feeling so fucking idiotic. Because she hated Steve Harrington and his stupid hair, and his stupid asshole personality. And when she had made to get up and go behind the counter, he had stood, hands on his hips, pointed at her and raised his eyebrows and Robin remembers thinking well, if he’s offering to work all day, I’ll take it.

So she had sat on the booth, legs pulled up on the seat, and watched as Steve served customers, and checked on her hand, and scooped ice cream cleanly and smoothly. 

Robin hated the Scoops uniform. It was ugly and the synthetic texture made her skin crawl. But what she really hated, more than anything, was the shorts.

(It happened when Steve was in the back, going to grab another tub of vanilla. The cool compress in her hands had turned lukewarm, and the throb of it had died down, but she thought that maybe, just this once, she was allowed to sit here.

She heard the sharp whistle before anything else. Seeing anything. Robin stood up from the booth, walking back to the break room, because she really wanted Steve to be out here right now, please, come back out the front.

But the whistler had just made a comment, something that Robin couldn’t hear over the pounding of blood in her ears, but she caught the gesture towards her shorts, and Robin was halfway to opening the doors to the back, when Steve had came out.

Vanilla ice cream tub in hand, smile on his face, fucking oblivious, and Robin just wanted to get past him, back into the safety of the break room, because she hated scooping ice cream, and she hated working with Steve Harrington, and she hated the uniform.

Steve had looked at her face and then sidestepped, nudged her behind him, slammed the metal tub down on the counter. 

“Get out.”

The laugh had subsided and the whistler had turned a sharp eye to Steve, as if to say what are you gonna do about it?. Robin pulled her shorts down further, tucking herself behind Steve, in front of the door. 

The whistler opened his mouth to say something, and Steve crossed the counter, pressed his fingers against his chest, eyes hardened, steely.

“What, are you fucking deaf?” 

Steve crowded into his space, stalking forwards still, and Robin watched from behind the counter, watched as his back straightened, and the warmth from before dissipated. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she thought, this is King Steve.

“Get the fuck out.”

Robin remembers the way that he had watched the man exit the shop, eyes tracking him as he retreated into some other godforsaken storefront. She had pulled her shorts down as far as they could, not far enough, still uncomfortable, cold. 

She had watched as concern had flooded into Harrington’s features, his eyebrows had drawn. He stayed on the other side of the counter, asking Robin if she was okay, and she had reassured him, had told him that it happened all the time, and she remembers the flash of something pass by his eyes.

And then he rounded the corner and asked her to follow him into the backroom, and they were turning around, Steve facing the door, Robin facing the wall, swapping their stupid, blue, uniform shorts).

Robin is scared shitless. 

But Steve? He’s calm, antagonising the Russians through slurred speech, because Robin caught a glimpse of him before they were tied together, and there was so much red covering his face and his eye and his hair and, oh god she thinks she’s gonna be sick.

One of the Russians is peeling his gaze away from over Robin’s shoulder, away from Steve’s head which is slightly turned towards him. She feels herself prickle, because his eyes are cold and steely, and she doesn’t want to fucking die.

“You talk to your mother with that mouth?” Steve had laughed.

Robin wants to kick him. But the Russian’s eyes have darted back to him, face pulled into a snarl, and he’s stalking away from Robin, towards the teen strapped to her back, and there’s relief because he’s no longer looking at her and then there’s guilt because if he’s not looking at her then—

The slap is sharp in the empty room. 

“Don’t fucking touch him!”

Steve is laughing, and Robin wants to elbow him to shut the fuck up, but then she hears a whirring of something. She cranes her neck back, tries to see what the hell they’ve turned on, but she can’t get a good enough look, and Steve is nudging himself against her, pushing her back, behind him, out of view.

“Robin, just, look away, okay? Keep—”

“I swear to god if you touch him again, I’ll—”

“—Keep your head forwards, Robin, just—”

“Steve, what the fuck is that!”

“—Don’t look. Close your eyes and— and think of something, anything, else, Rob, please—”

“Stay very still.”

“No! Steve, what— what the fuck is—”

Steve isn’t laughing anymore. 

His head is pressed against hers, and it hurts, and Robin is staring forward and then shutting her eyes and thinking of the too-short shorts of the Scoops A’hoy uniform, and the metal tub of vanilla ice cream, and Steve Harrington ushering her behind him, and the way he swapped shorts with her, and the way he antagonised the Russians when they looked her way, and the machine is whirring and Steve is breathing harsh and loud and fast and then the door is closing and she hears them laughing again and Steve is—

His head has rolled back against her shoulder.

“Robin?” 

His voice is slurred and quiet, and she’s trying, she’s trying, to crane her neck around to look to him, to see what just happened, because she doesn’t care about the shorts or the minimum wage or the too cold break room, or the triple chocolate fudge that doesn’t scoop right. She just wants him to be okay.

“Rob, I don’t think—”

“Hey, don’t talk. We’ll— we’ll get out of this, yeah? And we can go back to scooping stupid ice cream to stupid customers in this stupid uniform.”

“I can’t feel… Robin, I can’t—”

Robin swallows down the shakiness of her voice, tries to imagine herself as Steve, putting himself between her and the world.

“No, no, shhh. It’s okay. I’ll find something, we’ll get out of this, and then you can go back to your bad flirting, and—”

“They didn’t hurt you, right?”

She wants to cry. Because Steve’s head is lolled against hers, slumped his body against her back, not even holding himself up, anymore. And he’s wearing her uniform shorts, blood matted in his hair and his face, and if she closes her eyes she’s going to remember the glimpse of him that she had when they brought him in.

His words are slurred and gurgled and she can smell his blood, pungent and metallic, and Robin can hear thick droplets of it roll to the floor. And he’s asking if she’s okay.

“They didn’t hurt me.” She says. Robin hears him hum slightly before his weight is fully pressed against her, and she’s trying to look around the empty, metal room that they’re stuck in, to find something, anything, fucking please, anything at all.

“Can you tell my dad?”

“Tell him what?” 

She could do this for him. She could do this.

There’s a pause, and a wet breath, a rattle as he breathes in. Robin looks around the room again, doesn’t spot a vent big enough for them to get through.

“I helped, right? I was useful?”

Robin purses her lips, pressed them together to stop the sound from escaping her. Her shoulders are taught with anger and sadness and something else, something protective, because Steve is dying against her back.

And, no, they weren’t going to be okay, because he was bleeding all over the floor, and he said he couldn’t feel his body, and there are tears running down her cheeks, and Steve is asking if he was useful, to tell his dad that he was useful and— Robin doesn’t even have a scratch on her. Not a cut or a bruise, and Steve Harrington is dying against Robin’s back at the bottom of Starcourt Mall, with nobody to know, nobody to come and save him.

“Right, Rob? I helped?” His head is pressed against her shoulder, and she can feel a warmth seep out of him, into her. As if he’s trying to comfort her, somehow.

(She doesn’t want to be comforted. Robin lets the tears roll down her face, hitting the metal floor. She just wants Steve to live).

There’s a wet sound that leaves his lips, and the body against hers feels ten times heavier. Robin can feel Steve’s hair by her neck, head resting against her, looking up to the ceiling. The room is so impossibly quiet, and she scans the walls once more, begs for something to appear.

“Steve?” 

She knows she’s whispering to an empty room, still does it, if only for herself, if only to somewhat make sure that he knew.

“You helped, Steve. You helped me. And I’m sorry if I ever—”

Robin thinks back to the snarl that she held when she realised that she was scheduled with Harrington, the way she didn’t speak to him for the first few weeks of working. How she had glared and whispered; the small smiles that he had offered her.

“I’m scared. I don’t know— what am I supposed to do?” 

She sucks a breath through her mouth, closes her eyes, pretends that they’re just sitting together, in the parking lot, and she pretends that Steve has just closed his eyes for a moment, resting after a busy day of work. Robin keeps her eyes shut as she imagines sitting in the empty carpark at night, the stars above her head, the moon hung high. 

(That’s why it was cold, right? That’s why Steve had his eyes closed, right?).

“I’ll tell your dad, Steve. I’ll tell him how much you helped, how much you did for me because I don’t think that I ever told you how much I—” She leans her head against his shoulder, slumps into her chair, pretends that it’s cold asphalt and not metal. 

“I’m sorry.”

— — — 

The sun has begun to set, and the roads are wet with rain, but Robin doesn’t even care. She’s walking in her pyjamas down to the rich-priss neighbourhood of Loch Nora, and she doesn’t fucking care what they think about her. Draw away the faces of your ten year old bullies and your perfectly green, perfectly levelled lawns, your ugly, expensive curtains. She doesn’t give a single shit.

Robin has had her fair share of Mementos. She had the image of Steve lying on the floor of the Upside Down, vest under his head, tears on his face, burned into her brain. When she goes to swim, she remembers holding a cold hand, and the peaceful moonlight, and the sun rising. 

They’ve been expected. They’ve been on the list.

And it doesn’t make it any better, really. That they’re on the list. Because that just means that Steve remembers it as much as, probably more, than she does. It doesn’t make it better, at all, and yet she remembers feeling a sigh of relief when she woke up, or snapped out of her thoughts, and was able to check the list, check the numbers, her name next to a description, and pinpoint everything.

This one wasn’t there. Robin doesn’t know what that means.

She’s crossed the wet lawn and before she even rings the doorbell, the door is opening. 

“Jesus, Rob, when you said you were coming over, I thought you’d at least be wearing shoes.”

Steve opens the door wide and waves her in with a hurried movement of his hands. Robin didn’t even notice, never realised, just how fucking freezing she was until she’s standing in the heated living room. She peels off her socks, gets thrown a new, fuzzy pair, that hits her square in the forehead.

“I had another one.”

It stops the playful atmosphere instantly.

Not everyone tells him when they have a Memento. Lucas had kept to himself, and Will had refused to tell Steve about his dream. Some of them just tell him, softly, I remembered number one-seventy-three, or I had a Memento, last night. Sometimes it’s easier to just mention that it happened, acknowledge it and move on.

And Robin, for the most part, had done this. She hadn’t mentioned the details, because she’s sure that Steve is tired of hearing them, doesn’t want to hear his death from another person’s eyes, another person who is left with his body for a day before the loop dissolves into nothingness.

(That’s another thing they figure out. That Hop figured out. Some of them remember it, and others don’t. Robin hasn’t had to remember the experience of a loop resetting itself, unthreading at the seams, knitting itself back together. Hopper had. Mentioned how it was about a day after Steve had died. 

When the information had been passed around the group, it was Mike who offered the idea: that the loop corrects itself twenty-four hours after Steve leaves it. Robin had remembered how they stuck with that theory, putting it up on the board, another piece to the puzzle of the loops.

She had remembered how it had been true. How Will had quietly told her that he remembered the dissolving of time and space and Hawkins. How, after him, Joyce had remembered, too. How as the weeks passed they realised it was twenty-four hours before and after. 

Robin remembers how Eddie was the one to tell it to Steve).

But she can’t just tell him she had a Memento, this time. Because this is something that he didn’t remember, that wasn’t on the list, that held last words, promises, that tied everything together. That made Robin understand why.

“You remember the Russians?”

“Rob, how could I forget the Russians?”

She wants to laugh. 

(She wants to cry). 

“You died. Drawing the attention away from me. It was before they had drugged us, and then they had pulled out something and— you died.”

He’s quiet. Robin turns away from him, pulls the socks over her cold toes. 

“You asked me, before you died, if you were useful.” She watches his eyes widen, watches the way that he stills next to her on the couch. “You asked me to tell your dad that you were useful.”

Robin watches as Steve leans back into the seat. Watches as he places his hands in front of him, shakily threads his fingers together. He pulls his sweater cuffs over his knuckles, picks at the loose threads. 

She turns towards him, tucks her legs under herself. 

“You don’t need his permission,” Robin whispers. “You don’t need to prove yourself to anyone.”

“But I do.” Steve answers. Quickly. Deflective. Practiced.

Robin turns to him, slowly brings her hands so that they’re resting on his, clutches them tight. His head turns towards hers, and his eyes are screwed shut, eyelashes fawning over his cheeks, nose red. Steve holds her hands just as hard, grabbing onto her like a lifeline.

“I can’t become him. I’ve seen what he’s done and I can’t.”

He lets go. Brings his hand up to his mouth. Robin floats her own towards his face, presses her fingertips below his eyes, palms cradling his cheeks. 

She thinks of young Steven, alone in this big empty house, of The King, following others, laughing and mocking, fighting it all, thrust into horror, becoming the protector, of her coworker, putting himself between her and the world, of Steve Harrington, diving headfirst into danger, nail bat raised, fists at the ready, losing every fight, taking every hit, and smiling and laughing and dying and dying, only to come back to endure it all, to save everyone, watch them dance and smile and sleep, make them happy, make them want him, make him useful.

Make him useful.

(She’s angry. Robin is so incredibly angry at a man that she’s never met, should have met, should have seen, at least once in her life. Because he had been a faceless name, only having a body for less than ten years before fucking off into oblivion and leaving the destruction of his son behind, making Steve feel like he had something to prove to anyone, to everyone, craving that attention, not good enough, never good enough, for him.

And nobody had noticed. No one, at all. People saw the name Harrington and turned up their noses, expected him to act a certain way, to be a certain person. Moulded, by his father’s invisible hand. She registers in the back of her head that that was her, once.

He didn’t even pick up when Steve died. He re-routed Nancy to his fucking secretary, and they had been left to carry his body, the weight of the world, tell the kids, wake up in the morning and plan how to fight monsters. Real monsters. Robin realises that Steve has been fighting them from the very beginning — before 1983 and the Demogorgon).

Robin looks into his eyes, holds his stare. And she sees them waver, sees the build up of years and years, of words and faces and actions and hurt. She looks into his eyes, past all the names and masks and monikers. Past the persona that he had once been to please someone else, was trying to break with every waking day.

“You are not your father.”

The dam breaks. Spills over and over, down down down. Tears roll into Robin’s palms, cold against her touch. She repeats herself. Whispers the phrase into existence, tries to make Steve understand. Robin holds onto his face, makes sure that he can see how much she means this, how she has never meant anything more in her life. She repeats the phrase. Asks him to say it with her.

“I am not my father.”

“And you don’t have to prove yourself.”

He raises his hands, holds onto Robin’s at the sides of his face. She watches as he closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath.

“I don’t have to prove myself.”

Robin threads her fingers against his, tries to ground him here, and now, make sure that he knows that this is real, that what she’s saying is true, has always been, will always be, true.

“You have people who love you.”

He opens his eyes. “I have people who love me.”

Robin holds his gaze, quirks a smile, if only for a second. She keeps her hands plastered across his face, warm. Thinks of the years that have passed, of the years that he’s lived, where he’s had to think anything different. 

“I’m sorry,” He whispers.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Steve.”

He smiles, chokes a laugh through his throat. “You’re crying.”

Steve bring his hands away from his face, mirrors Robin’s own position. He brushes his thumbs against her wet cheeks, smiles a watery grin.

“You’re one to talk.” Robin laughs, cradles his face in her palm, bring them together. She rests her forehead against hers, pretends that the sob in her throat is something else. Knows that he won’t mention it.

He smiles, whispers, “We match.”

“Yeah,” She answers, voice low. “We match.”

Chapter Text

It was always in the back of his mind — his father. Steve knows that he isn’t a good man, that real fathers shouldn’t act the way he does. But knowing something and accepting it are two widely different things. 

It’s been building for all his life. This anger, this hatred, this loss, that he’s been harbouring since he was born. Really, he’s been building up to this confrontation for years and just wasn’t aware of it, didn’t want to acknowledge — because if he just pretended everything was alright, then maybe it all would be.

Maybe it’s because he didn’t truly know what it was meant to feel like. That love, that happiness, warmth, that you get when you’re around the people you care about, the people who care about you.   And now that he has those people, so many of them who he holds close, he wants that confrontation.

He wants to tell his father, his mother, how bad they hurt him. How he doesn’t forgive them, how he’s leaving the house, how he’s happy, how he will never be what his father wanted, will never be his carbon copy, and that he’s proud of that. 

And, maybe, in a different time, he would have done this on his own. Would have done this with nobody else around him, nobody else to lean on. 

He takes the call in the privacy of his childhood bedroom, ugly wallpaper peering into his soul, with Eddie and Robin, Joyce and Hopper, Jonathan and Nancy, all waiting for him. No matter what happens after.

“Okay,” He tells himself. “I can do this. I call, I say my peace, I hang up.”

He puts in the number, hears it ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Beep.

“Mr. Harrington is currently not available to take your call. Please leave your message after the tone.”

(Steve feels like he shouldn’t even be surprised. They didn’t pick up when he was calling from hospital three years in a row, they didn’t pick up when he was asking how to use the stove, they didn’t pick up when he wanted to call to say goodnight. 

He leaves his heart on his father’s voicemail, all the anger and fire burnt out. It comes out a little afraid, a little more watery than he wanted it to be, and when he stops the message, places the phone back down on the receiver, he realises that it hurts.

It hurts so fucking much that, even in the end of it all, when he’s there to show how much he’s changed, when he’s there to tell them how they couldn’t ever truly ruin him — they don’t even pick up).

When he descends down the stairs, sullen, unhappy, he opens his mouth to try and force the words out. They choke his chest as he says them, feels his knees fold, his body crumple to the bottom of the stairs. 

With his face in his hands, his heart on his sleeve, he feels the warmth of his family surround him, arms slung across his shoulders in comfort, fingers through his hair in love. A warm mug is pressed into his palms, and when he looks up to the face of Joyce, tastes hot chocolate, he thinks there’s something so different about a mother’s love.

— — —

“You are not in charge of decorating.”

“Steve, I’ve seen your wallpaper. How could I do any worse?”

He huffs, overly-dramatic, hands on the wheel. “Okay, and? If I let you do everything I’m never going to see anything but the colour black.”

From the corner of his eye, Steve can see Eddie kick his feet up on the dash. And, you know what? He can admit that his wallpaper is atrocious. It’s ugly. It’s an eyesore. He can deal with a little wallpaper-related slander. It’s not like he chose it, anyway. But feet on his car?

Steve raises one hand to swipe at Eddie’s legs, earning an affronted hey! when his palm meets black jeans.

It was a surprisingly easy conversation to have. Moving out. 

Maybe it’s because it was already written down, listed, on the sticky note on the fridge. Maybe it was because, now, they both remembered the death; the importance that the words held. Steve tries not to think about dying, together, tries to focus on living, together, instead.

(With the wind coming through the open window, sun under his eyelids, Eddie softly humming by his side, Steve finds that it’s lot easier than he would have thought).

He feels a tap on his thigh, telling him to turn left at the next stop. He turns the wheel around, catches a glimpse of a smile on Eddie’s face as he takes his eyes off the road. It sends speckles of warmth down his spine.

The stereo plays their horrible mis-matched mixtape, the Songs to Save the World abandoned, for now, at the bottom of the decorated box, underneath the passenger seat. It doesn’t flow and tell a story in the same way that Jonathan’s tapes weave, but it’s theirs. Steve finds that, and he’s never going to admit it aloud, he’s coming around to the prospect of rock and metal.

Steve lets the music wash over him, take him away as he drives down the road. Eddie makes little grabby hands in the corner of his eye, so he takes one hand off the wheel, palm up. When cool fingers thread themselves between his, rings clunky against smooth skin, he smiles.

It’s been months since he’s restarted a loop, but there’s still a little part of him that expects to wake up on the boat, hands on his laces, failing to change fate and death. The roads are uneven with potholes that haven’t been filled since he was child, but at least it’s not the gates, red spanning across Hawkins. 

“Stop the car!” 

What? Steve slams down the brakes, feels his body shift forward uncomfortably with the movement. “Eds, why do we—”

Eddie moves, unbuckles his seatbelt and clambers over Steve. His knee narrowly misses the stick shift, half of his body pulled across so that he’s balanced precariously across the seats, Steve, and the window.

Eddie moves to cup his hands around his mouth, propel his voice, and, in turn, nearly falls out of the fucking car. Steve leans forward to grab onto the back of his shirt, and gets a dumb smile in return. Idiot, he thinks, fondly.

“You need a hand with that, Sinclair?” 

Steve glances out the little amount of window that Eddie isn’t covering — sees Lucas attempting to wrangle an insane amount of small dogs, on the footpath by the road. 

“Nah I’ve got—” Lucas is lurched forwards as one dog tries to run away from the confines of its lead. “I’ve got it!”

Steve huffs a little bit of a laugh at that. He had heard of Lucas taking up dog walking to earn a little bit of cash on the weekends, but he had imagined like, two small poodles. Someone’s golden retriever. Three dogs, max. Seeing him try to herd what Steve thinks is eight dogs? It’s a little funny. Just a bit.

He leans his head out next to Eddie’s, pushes curly hair out of his face, gives a two fingered salute. “We’ll leave you to it, then!” 

“We?” He watches as Lucas does a double take of the car, Steve’s car, and he can almost see the cogs turning in the Sinclair’s head. From the corner of his eye, he can see Eddie give him a toothy grin. “Wait, are you guys actually apartment hunting? I thought Mike was joking—”

A dog lurches forward again, and, this time, Lucas is brought with them.

“Should we, like, help him?”

“Nah. He’s got it.” Eddie clambers back into his own seat, buckles himself in. They turn around to watch as Lucas is propelled down the street. “Probably.”

Steve laughs softly, feels Eddie’s hand slot itself back onto his thigh, and drives on. He has a good feeling about this one.

— — —

They reclaim it together — the quarry. Jonathan and Steve don’t go out to the edge, don’t want to see over the water, but they go to the quarry, regardless. 

“We should shout it all out. All the pent up feelings.” Jonathan says. “Because ever since that call with your dad, I’ve seen you just floating through it all. We all have.”

Steve knows what he means. After the not-call with his father, he shifted back into a form that was adjacent to people pleasing. When a door was closed too loud, or a voice too harsh, he felt like he was going to jump out of his skin.

“You’re allowed to take.” Jonathan says, stands by Steve’s side. “So let’s shout it out across this fucked town, this fucked water. And once it’s out of you, breathe deep and— and let it go.”

Maybe Steve is a little bit embarrassed to do this. Because, yeah, him and Jonathan are close friends, but with all the shit they’ve gone through, it feels so stupid to be worrying about the things he’s thinking about.

“Leave my fucking siblings alone!” Jonathan shouts. “They’ve been through so goddamned much — they deserve to be kids! Fuck California and fuck Angela!”

Steve hears his voice echo back to them. Watches as Jonathan breathes deep, counts to three. Lets it go. 

When Jonathan turns back to him, face a little bit looser, eyes a little bit clearer, Steve takes a step forward, doesn’t think about how to say the right things, doesn’t care about if the words are jumbled or make sense or are nice.

The thoughts swirl around his head, vulgar and repetitive and sharp and ugly, nothing like the way that he’d wanted to say them, exactly the way he thought them. They are everything and nothing like what he said on the voicemail, nothing and everything like the boy who was left alone in the big, empty house.

“Fuck you and your fancy car and your work trips and your stupid fucking pool!” He breathes in. “Fuck your wallpaper and your phone calls and you! Fuck you!”

He breathes deep, listens as his voice echoes across the water, as it bounces along the walls, at it surrounds him, affirms him. He counts to three. Lets it go.

Jonathan leads him to sit on the hood of their car, further and further away from the edge of the quarry. They sit there, talk about their dads being assholes, laughing and crying at the horrible anecdotes and rites of passage that they share.

“He never once said he was proud of me for my school shit. Not even a good job, Jon. Hell I’d have settled for a nice!”

“That happened to you too? Wait, did your dad also—”

(Yes. The answer is almost always yes. 

And it hurts to know that someone else went through what he did, but hearing it come from Jonathan? Hearing it come from someone else, someone who can say that was wrong, someone who can say that wasn’t your fault? Maybe it helps Steve realise just how fucked his dad is).

— — —

When Eddie brings up the list again, they drive to the old trailer park. He had gotten out the words sticky note and two cats and strays and Steve was quickly ushering him to the car, ready to drive to wherever the fuck he needed to go because? Uh, hello? Two stray cats combined with the want of having two cats? 

“So,” Steve drawls. “Where are they?”

Eddie, crouched on the ground, shushes him. “Hey, I haven’t been back in months — they’re probably a little pissed at me right now.”

He makes little grabby hands toward Steve, so he passes over the cans of cat food and plastic plates. Steve watches as Eddie dumps out the food, eyes set on the treeline for the little balls of fluff to appear. As Eddie makes a noise with his mouth, soft and soothing into the open air, Steve turns to look at him for just a moment.

And promptly jumps about eight feet in the air when something brushes against his leg.

Steve peers down at his feet, and he sees two green eyes staring back at him. The cat is a patchwork of orange and white and mostly black, adorable and fluffy and oh my god she’s tiny!

“Oh, baby,” Steve says, slowly moves to crouch down to her level. The cat dances around him as he sits on the dead grass, letting out a little inquisitive mrrrow? when he places his hand out for her to sniff.

When he looks towards Eddie, the plates of food in front of him, he sees a black cat wolfing down the food. Steve reaches over to the other plate, puts it in front of the calico cat, watches as she inspects it before eating it.

“Are you sure we can just take them?”

“I put up posters of them when I was younger, just to see if anyone was missing them,” Eddie said, fingers busy with giving scritches to the black cat — plate empty. “Nothing. They’ve been here for years, but we never had the space in our trailer.”

Steve shuffles himself closer to the black cat, watches as it headbutts Eddie’s outstretched palm. “We need to name them.”

“Mmmm, I was thinking Fangorn for this little bastard here.”

“Baby.” 

“Yes?”

“No—” Steve laughs, “The name of the other cat! Baby. Baby and Fangorn.”

Eddie nods in agreement as he picks up Baby. Steve gathers the plates and the empty food cans, moves to bring them to the boot of his car, as Eddie wrangles the two monsters into the pet carrier.

And, it happens a lot more often than he liked. Because, even though Eddie’s status as a murderer had been legally cleared, and most of the town accepted it, there were still those who wouldn’t let it go. Sometimes assholes were just that: assholes.

Steve’s started to notice it — the look that someone gets in their eyes, shoulders pulled back when they look at Eddie. 

The man in the trailer park makes to move towards where Eddie is still crouched near the two cats. His baseball cap is hiding greasy hair, a wheeze to his breath as he shifts closer. Steve steps away from the car, walks to meet the man a good few metres away from Eddie.

“Son, I don’t think you want to get in my way.” The man says, drawl in his voice as if he’s giving Steve a crucial piece of advice. “He’s a killer!”

“Oh, yeah, because that,” Steve points to where Eddie is carrying both Baby and Fangorn, attempting to place them into the pet carrier, “Looks like a murderer to you? Don’t waste your breath — we were just leaving.”

Steve gives him a tight lipped smile, turns away from the man, doesn’t even wait for the next remark to come out of his mouth. He isn’t worth it. He jogs up to Eddie, stands with his hands on his hips as the two cats wriggle within his arms.

“Need help, Eds?”

“No I’ve got—” Fangorn jumps out of his hands, landing on his feet before weaving in and out of Eddie’s legs. “Okay, yeah. Maybe.”

(After the cats have been wrestled into the carrier, after the car ride filled with two screaming cats, they’re both deposited into the bathroom in Wayne’s apartment, for the night. Steve and Eddie sit in the cramped room for a while, watching the way they interact with their new surroundings, cross off the cats from the list).

— — —

The dinners are a constant. Whether they be at the Byers’, or Hop’s cabin, or at Eddie and Wayne’s apartment, the dinners are a constant. Sometimes Steve is the one cooking, ornate dishes and comfort foods, and other times, people cook for him.

This time, Eddie has joined him at Hop’s cabin to have dinner. Hop has been trying to learn how to cook, and Steve is more than willing to teach him. It’s fun seeing who he used to think was the Stoic Chief of Police who Didn’t Care About Anyone but Himself wear a patchworked apron, face serious and set, as Steve taught him the proper way to cut vegetables.

“Your hair’s so long now!” Eddie walks through the door before him, hands ruffling through El’s curls. Steve closes the door behind him, is enveloped in the warm yellow glow of the lights, catches the tail end of El batting Eddie’s hands away from her hair.

Once El spies Steve, she raises both of her arms above her head, eyes closed and face expecting. Steve pretends to roll his eyes, before picking her up by her waist, twirling her around the living room, careful not to knock anything over.

She cheers, arms raised to the roof as he places her back down onto solid flooring.

“We need to do a piggyback race.” She says, eyes twinkling and determined. “You will be on my team.”

“Mhmm,” Steve hums, watches the way Eddie sets down his bag by the couch, falling back into it. “And who would Eddie be with?”

“Hopper.”

He catches her eye, tries to imagine it in his brain. El, on Steve’s back, running across the forest that is their backyard. Hop, attempting to wrangle Eddie shouting at him to stay still for the love of god. 

El and Steve make eye contact, turn back to where Eddie is trying to contort his legs in such a way that couldn’t be comfortable. When they turn back to each other, trying to hide their smiles, trying to be serious, it burst out of them, makes them lean on each other.

“What did I miss?” Eddie asks. Steve pictures Hopper pretending to drop Eddie, wheezes at the thought. “What?”

His cluelessness makes El break into a wider grin, before she’s bounding over to the couch, flopping herself onto the soft cushions. When Eddie moves to roll his sleeve up, Steve knows that he’s going to show her his new tattoo: a baseball bat with nails hammered through it.

— — —

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Robin asks. “Because we could always just pretend it doesn’t exist.”

The list is mostly completed, with Eddie starting a new campaign that included Will and Steve, and them on the hunt for an apartment. And if Steve breaks his thoughts away from the pool, he can imagine Baby and Fangorn are probably lounging and sleeping in Eddie’s room at Wayne’s place.

He wasn’t actually going to swim in the pool. The pool water is as terrifying, as calming, as it was when he had used it to reset, a lot more mundane and haunting in the afternoon sun. Steve wasn’t going to duck his head under, go below the waist. Just dip his feet in, stand.

“No,” Steve says, eyes on the water. “I want to.”

Eddie nods beside him, holds onto his hand, eyebrows pulled together. 

When they had told Robin about the list, about the pool, she had asked if Steve wanted her there. He knows that she remembers it — the countless times that she would hold his hand by the water, wait the time with his body before he was able to solve things. Steve’s happy that she’s with him.

With his jeans pulled up just below his knees, he holds onto Eddie and Robin’s hands as he takes moves into the shallow steps of the pool. The water is cool and sleek against his toes, sharp and taunting as he takes another step down.

“You okay?” Eddie asks.

Steve nods, moves to let go of their hands. When he’s standing in the pool, a graveyard of a hundred deaths, he lets it wash over him. He thinks of resetting— dying, all those times for the sake of fixing things. He thinks of the first time, when he didn’t know, when he couldn’t have known, and he had still slipped under.

Steve stares into the water, watches as his own face ripples in the soft wind. He sees the vague makeup of white scars, tiny and scattered, across his complexion. He sees the death and the pain and years. When the wind barrels through the woods, water convulsing in tiny waves, the mirror of himself disappears, until only he is left.

Steve reaches for the outstretched, waiting, arms of Eddie and Robin, steps back onto the safety of the tiles. When the hushed whispers of I’m proud of you and I love you wash over him, he leaves the pool behind, feels the warmth of love settle into his skin.

— — —

To everyone’s surprise, including his own, Steve and Robin haven’t been fired from Family Video (yet). He thinks it’s less to do with their work ethic, and more to do with the fact that nobody else is applying.

If he’s cursed to work with Robin for the rest of his life (or, for the rest of the time she decides to be in Hawkins before inevitably escaping to college), he doesn’t even mind.

“You come here often?”

It happens when Steve is restocking the shelves of the last returns. People still haven’t seemed to realise that the be kind, rewind stickers on the front of tapes are asking them to rewind them. Robin has complained about it at least three times in the last hour, stuck in the backroom doing the monotonous task.

Now, Steve isn’t new to being hit on. High school was a cesspool of hormones and popularity, and when combined with his title? He wasn’t new to it.

“I work here?” 

“Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

The girl leans against the shelves in a way that Steve thinks is meant to exude cool, but really, it just stops him from doing his job. He and Robin haven’t been fired yet, and he really isn’t gonna take any chances now.

The girl’s eyes flick down to his crooked name tag on his vest. “Steve? I think you—”

“Could you—” Steve motions his hand towards the hidden shelf, tilts his head down towards the trolley of tapes in front of him.

“Oh, shit, sorry I’ll—”

“Yep. Thanks.” 

As he puts back Sixteen Candles, he readies apologises and excuses in his head. Sorry I’m actually really busy and I’m not interested. Maybe he’ll even sneak in a I’m not looking to date anyone at the moment, get people to stop coming up to him during work.

(It’s a little harder than he thought — coming up with excuses. Turns out, people start to notice when you go from having at least one date a week to none in the past few months. Recently, when people ask, he’s been saying it’s because of what he went through with the, uh. ‘Serial killer’).

The girl shifts on the balls of her feet in front of him. Her long brown hair is straightened in a way that reminds him of Argyle, and she has her hands clasped behind her: nervous.

“Does Robin work here? She said that if I couldn’t find her I should try and find you.”

Steve stares at her for a second, before it clicks back into place. This wasn’t what he thought it was, this was— oh!

“Oh my god you’re—!” He places the tape back into the trolley, task forgotten. “Yes! She’s just— I’ll go get her right now. Don’t go anywhere!”

He slides over the counter, doesn’t care for the selection of tapes that have been organised and stacked, and rushes to the backroom, closing the door shut behind him. Fuck the job, fuck the tapes — this was important! Robin takes her head off the table and turns to look at him.

“She’s here!”

Robin bolts up in her seat. “She’s here?”

“Yes! Up, up, up! Go, she’s waiting!”

Steve waves his hands, claps them together as Robin scrambles to get out of her seat, pauses by the mirror by the door. He places his hands on her shoulders, steers her towards the door and out of the staff only room.

He watches as they disappear into the aisles of Family Video, as he hears them laugh and talk in hushed tones. Steve keeps his eye on the door, makes sure that nobody else will come in and disrupt their moment. 

There are things that happen past the three weeks that he lived. Things that change. Because, yeah, it didn’t end up working out for Vickie and Robin — too different, too awkward, still friends. But there are things that still surprise him, things that he hasn’t lived through before.

When the girl walks back out of Family Video, and Robin turns to him, cheeks red and dimpled, Steve finds that his face mirrors hers.

(Later, they go back to the hill with the flowers to celebrate. Steve has finally figured out how to tangle the stems just so that they stay together, even just for a moment, so that he can quickly snap a photo before they’re billowing off into the wind, the town.

Robin still makes his crown, but they dance around the tall grass and the wildflowers looking for meanings and colours together. Sure, her creations are a little more put together, a little more neat, but it doesn’t matter.

Lily of the valleys and daphnes are intertwined by their sleek stems, clunky and misshapen from caring hands. Narcissuses are weaved into sections on the crown, and Robin shows Steve how to hook the alyssums into the bare spaces. 

When they sit like this, legs crossed and tucked beneath them, arms raised in tandem to delicately place worth and words atop each others heads, he doesn’t mind the boring, the mundane. 

And, yeah, Steve’s is a little more fucked and lopsided than Robin’s, but when the flowers have nestled into her hair, and she smiles in a way that is so impossibly bright, he doesn’t think either of them notice.

“We match.” She whispers.

“Yeah,” He answers, voice warm. “We match.”).

— — —

While their apartment is being set up for them, they started to pack away a lot of his shit. Steve didn’t actually have that many things that he wanted to take with him, with most of it taking the form of clothing and photos and plants. 

So packing shouldn’t take that long. But with every photo that he pulls off the fridge, every guitar pick that he finds that has fallen between the wall and his bed, it makes him a little sentimental. He finds a tube of Nancy’s chapstick, one of Jonathan’s lighters. He finds dnd dice that could belong to any one of the kids, and somewhere between fourteen and three-hundred hair ties.

Each item is placed into a cardboard box, sharpie stating that it was trinkets. As he spins to look around his empty room — all the personal touches gone, it reminds him so much of how it looked in 1983. Cold, imposing, generic. 

He gathers up the last two boxes, stacks them atop each other as he descends the stairs.

“—off my property!”

Steve hears the end of the sharp voice, speeds up his pace, takes the steps three at a time. He makes to round the corner, to get to the front door, boxes still in hand, heart beating. The kitchen has been swept of magnets and plants and polaroids, the living room no longer being home to movies and music and blankets. He does a once over of himself in the mirror before Eddie’s voice is washing over him, steady, in the doorway.

“When was the last time you told Steve you loved him?”

It makes him hold his breath. Because Steve knew, could play the scene out in his head of the last time he heard his father say it. When he was younger and more complicit, quiet and attentive.

“What?”

The school had commended him for his work. He had made a poster about the book his teacher read aloud — a crude drawing of a giant made from metal in the middle of the white paper. The colours were splotchy and out of the lines, and when he handed in his poster, his teacher had smiled.

“Go on.” Eddie waits. “When was the last time?”

Steven had come home with the poster in hand, high grade marked in red on the corner of the page. He had left his schoolbag by the door, had rushed inside of his house to present the project to his dad. Steven had rounded the corner to the kitchen, drawing on display, had heard his dad say I love you, had let it thrum through his veins, hadn’t even noticed his father on the phone.

“Of course I tell Steven I love him!”

Steve holds the boxes tight in his grip, walks up to the front door. And he knows who it is before the door even opens, because of that voice, those words, but he is still so baffled. 

He is one part afraid, and two parts angry — his father didn’t pick up when he called, didn’t care when he was hurt, never told Steve that he was proud, and the last time that Steve remembers I love you coming out of his father’s mouth, it wasn’t even directed at him.

Of course a meeting between them couldn’t be on Steve’s terms. No, it had to be on Mr. Harrington’s.

“The one time I don’t want you here and you decide to show up.” Steve states, eyes hard. He feels Eddie’s hand press against his back, away from the prying eyes of his father. “Typical.”

The man’s ugly smile drops from his face, his nose that he has bestowed upon Steve snarling and as he speaks. “That is no way to address your father!”

“Yeah,” Steve says, dismissive, tired, furious. “Heard that one about a hundred times now, and, you know what, dad? I’m sick of all of your shit. So I’m going to ask you to kindly get the fuck out of our way.”

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your little phone calls that you’ve been making. It is completely unacceptable, Steven.” The man says. He still holds himself high, back straight, the perfect gentleman, as he spits. “You can’t leave.”

“Who’s gonna stop me? You?” Steve laughs, places the boxes into Eddie’s van. “Fuck you.”

The man goes to take a step forward, and Eddie moves from his place between them, places a hand on his stark white dress shirt. “I’d back off, if I were you.”

Steve rounds the passengers seat, hears Eddie close the boot. His father disappears into the empty shell of a house, slams the door shut behind him. 

Steve reaches for his seatbelt, yanks it to try and get it to go into place. It stops short, locking as he tugs on it harshly. He lets it go, tries to pull it with shaky hands. Once, twice, three times. He bangs his fist against his leg, one hand in his hair, the other clutching the plastic.

Cool fingers work the seatbelt from his grip. Steve closes his eyes, lets Eddie buckle himself in, feels the hum of the car as he starts driving.

When he was in the moment, when he was facing off his dad, he felt righteous, powerful. 

Steve was angry and frustrated and tired and he just wanted to shout at him, tell him everything he did on the phone, tell him so much more than that. He wanted to scream at him, make his words be known, make himself be known. He wanted the man to be the quarry, silent and imposing and terrifying, the death of him, listening and taking it all in — his hurt.

But now? He feels like he’s going to cry.

“You okay?” Eddie asks, hands on the wheel. Steve presses his fingers down into his thighs, and feels grateful that he’s not the one driving.

“Not right now,” Steve says. “Can we— can we stop the car for a second? I think I really need to—”

Eddie pulls over on the side of the road, far enough away from the Harrington Estate to feel safe, still in the middle of nowhere, Hawkins. The door to Steve’s side is opened by Eddie, arms spread wide. Steve fumbles with his seatbelt before he’s throwing himself at him, tucking his head into his shoulder, breathing deep.

“Sorry that I just—”

“Hey,” Eddie whispers, draws circles into his back. “No need to apologise. Remember what your therapist told you?”

“Right sor— yeah. I remember.”

He counts to ten in his head, lets Eddie slightly rock them from side to side. Tries not to focus on his father or his voice, how he had looked exaclty the same as when he was younger. Tries, instead, to focus on the boxes in the van, the new home that awaits them.

“Better?” Eddie asks.

“Getting there.” Steve answers.

— — — 

“That’ll be $8.50.” The cashier says. 

Steve digs pulls out his wallet, gives them a tenner before holding out his hand for the change and the snacks. It was Jonathan’s turn to choose the movie this month, and, as much as Steve loves him, he knows that the movie that he’s chosen is going to be some high quality artfilm that Steve’ll think is incredibly pretty, but not understand.

“Harrington?” 

He turns towards the voice, out of the line for the concession stand, and finds… someone that he vaguely remembers from high school. Steve politely raises his hand in a half-wave, before the guy is walking across the way, and talking to him.

“Man, thought that was you — I just didn’t peg you for the type ot hang our with your ex and her ex!”

Steve gives a noncommittal hum, either agreeing or disagreeing, trying to wrack his brain for this guy’s name. Jack? James? Jake? He feels like he should feel a little sorry about not remembering his name, but the way he’s still wearing his Hawkins High varsity jacket stamps down any sorry-ness that could have existed.

Before he can think of a way to escape, he hears a voice behind him.

“Never been on friendly terms with your exes?” Nancy turns to face the guy, and Steve sees the way that his jacket is too small. “That seem more like a you problem than an us problem.” 

Steve watches as Jonathan gives the guy a little pat on the shoulder, lets the two of them bracket his sides as they move to their viewing. 

When the movie ends, swirling music and beautiful stills stuck in his mind, as he climbs into the passenger seat of Nancy’s car, as Jonathan rests his hands on their headrests, he feels happy.

— — —

“Holy shit!” Eddie says, spins in a circle in the living room. 

Steve places the last box down, watches as he spins in place. “I know right?”

“Holy shit!” 

Laughing, Steve crosses the room, holds Eddie’s hands in his, twirls him in his arms. 

To be fair, Steve was feeling the same reaction in his bones. The apartment that they got their hands on isn’t massive. It’s unfurnished and dusty, and there’s a window that doesn’t open properly in the spare bedroom. 

Baby and Fangorn are inquisitively exploring each and every open room, and Steve just hopes that they know where their litter boxes are. They have boxes upon boxes of their clothes and appliances and random shit that they need to sort through and unpack. And that’s not even counting the furniture that’s all piled in the corner of the living room right now.

But none of that matters, because it’s theirs.

“Wait!” Eddie says, stops still in Steve’s arms. “I have something for you.”

“Eds, you do know that this is your place too, right? You didn’t need to get me a housewarming gift.”

Eddie waves his hands away, dives into the mountain of boxes to try and find something. He pushes aside the ones labelled clothes and essentials, shifts toiletries and cat stuff to the corner of the room. Steve watches as he pulls back his hair, ties it up and out of the way. 

When he finally finds it, something small that Steve barley gets a glimpse of before it’s hidden behind his back, Eddie is stalking towards Steve, telling him to close his eyes.

He does so, a small smile on his face at the theatrics. The sounds of the apartment are soothing to his soul; calming and quiet and soft. There is no pool to stare up at him from the confines of his bedroom window, no horrible plaid wallpaper and unfeeling carpet. Steve feels his hands held in Eddie’s cold ones, feels fingers in-between his own, feels—

“Open your eyes.” Eddie says.

Steve looks down at their intertwined hands, sees—

“Holy shit.” 

A ring.

Eddie looks into his eyes, looks back at the ring. He looks at it with such soft eyes in the light streaming through their living room window, before he’s doing a double take and his mouth is moving. “Wait. This totally seems like I’m asking you to marry me, which I’m not opposed to, but that’s moving a little fast, and also? I’m like, eighty-seven percent sure that marrying a guy is totally not legal, but then again, I’m not exactly the poster-boy for following the law, but this isn’t—”

Steve wraps his arms around him, lifts Eddie off his feet and twirls him around the empty house. The silver ring on his finger, one that matches the bat bracelets that Steve had given him for graduation, catches the light of the sun, warm against his hands.

He knows that it’s not a proposal, knows that they might never be able to have that. It’s not a proposal but it is something much better, much softer. As Steve raises his palm in the air to rest on Eddie’s, comparing, he knows that the ring means I love you.

— — —

The kids pile out of Eddie’s van, each of them saying their thank you’s, racing towards the movie theatre. There was a rerunning of Alien that Will had wanted to watch with everyone else, to introduce El to the wonderful world of Ellen Ripley and her cat.

He watches as Lucas and Max race each other to the entrance, as Dustin times them on his watch. Steve waves to Will and El who jump up and down, shout, the movie ends at eight! before racing to catch up with their friends.

(They came yesterday to try and badger Steve to drop them off at the arcade, but it was one of those days where his bones felt on the edge of bending too far, the lights felt a bit too much. It was one of those days where moving felt like a chore, so he sat in his bed, Eddie laying by his side.

When they had knocked on the door, and Steve had clambered down the hallway, Eddie fast asleep, they had asked if he could drive them to the arcade. When he had said no, had started to apologise, they just smiled and told him to rest).

“Thank you,” Mike says, still sitting in the car, leg bouncing. “For driving us but also, just, being here.”

Short-circuiting, Steve turns, gives him a smile. “Hey, no problem. Have fun at the movie, alright?”

Mike smiles a little more at that, nods at him and Eddie before bolting to catch up to where Will and El have waited for them. When they’ve all disappeared into the movie theatre, Steve turns to Eddie, face incredulous. 

“Did you put him up to that?”

“He’s your kid—”

“Okay, first of all, I think you mean our kid—”

“—But, no. I mean, he’s a teenager. He’s probably realising how emotionally constipated he was.”

“Huh.” Steve says. Feels that affection build up in his chest.

— — —

It’s weird —  the quiet. Steve used to hate it as a child, wished for the loud to take over his house and his body. But after everything that he’s been through, post-Vecna Loop, he finds that he can find comfort in the quiet, in the boring. 

Maybe, he thinks, it’s because of the people. The warmth and the comfort that he can find in them, now, how he has people to be loud if only he asks. Before, the loud was empty. Hollow noise that would thrum through his house, his veins, his body, as he danced and drunk and closed his eyes.

Eddie had mentioned how the mornings suited him. He had brushed it off as a little joke, the same way the girl had said he was like the stars, but then Steve had felt fingers thread through his hair, a quiet voice in the bedroom light. 

(“It makes you soft,” Eddie says. “When the sun comes through the windows, you get these highlights in your hair, flecks of gold in your eyes.”

Staring up at Eddie from his lap, Steve shifts, tries to get a good look. Eyes already trained on him, Steve searches Eddie’s eyes for something, waits for it: the lie, the joke, the reprimand. He digs deeper and deeper, tries to find the punchline, only to be met with warmth.

“You’re beautiful.” Eddie says, brings a hand to rest on his cheek).

As he lets the early sun filter through the nearly-closed curtains of Hop’s kitchen, Steve finds that Eddie was right — mornings do suit him.

For once, he’s awake before everyone else. He knows that El and Hop would sleep in until noon if they were allowed, and maybe that’s why. And he knows that he doesn’t have to prove himself, is trying to work on the idea that he’s allowed to just exist, but he’s awake before everyone else, and the house is quiet and warm in the morning, and he’s doing last night’s dishes.

Steve knows that it’s different. That he isn’t doing this to prove anything, trying to be useful. Really, this is because it’s quiet, and he’s bored. The actions are methodical enough for him to get lost in them — fork, knife, plate, cup. Wash, rinse, dry, repeat.

It’s so methodical that, as Steve stares out of the crack in the curtains, he goes through his mental checklist for the day. Meet with Eddie after having breakfast with Hop and El, go to therapy at 12, feed the cats, finish the last of the unboxing. 

It’s not a lot. 

(Some days even just one task will feel like it is, will feel like it spans over the hours, will make him antsy until it’s completed, lethargic once it’s done. 

It was something that he had brought up with his therapist. Steve had gone to see her, had talked about it in a hushed tone, ashamed. And she had reassured him, told him that nothing was wrong with him, had brought up different ways to try and work around it).

It’s so methodical — fork, knife, plate, cup — something easy to do with his hands as he watches the morning light, is reminded of something warm and soft and vaguely shaped liked Eddie. It’s so methodical that, as he gets to the final set — fork, knife, plate, cup — as he goes to dry the glass cup against the tea towel—

He drops it.

The quiet and sunlight of the morning is broken, easiness and comfort in the silence gone. The blue shards stare up at him, taunting and dry, from their place on the floorboards. As Steve puts the tea towel down on the counter, shuffles socked feet closer to the mess, he feels as if his heartbeat is booming through the house, on display.

He drops to his knees, slowly. There are things that he could catch on to quickly, realisations that he can switch to. Eddie meant what he said about the morning, Steve’s dad was an asshole, he doesn’t have to prove his use. But there are other things, so deeply ingrained into his heart, etched into his skin. 

He’s going to be mad. I’m going to get in trouble.  

Steve dives his hands into the shards, tries to gather them up in the palms of his hands, cradles them close to his chest, even as they dig in to callouses and soft flesh. He moves fast and careful, fingertips scratching against the floor to pick up the tiny flecks that had the capacity to hurt. And when they’re all gathered up, blue glass and heart beating, he shoves them into the depths of the bin — hidden.

Steve brings his shaky hands up to his hair, runs his fingers through them, sees the abandoned tea towel, fork, knife, plate, cup. Fork, knife, plate, cup. Fork, knife, plate. He counts to three, breathes in.

“Jesus, are you bleeding?” Hop filters in through the doorway, edges softened by the light and the ugly sweater that Joyce had made him. He crosses the distance quickly, eyes awake, picks up the tea towel. “Here, put this— yeah you got it. I’m gonna get the first aid kit.”

Steve presses the fabric into his palm, shifts so that his body hides the bin. He shoves his hip into the counter, tries to will the shards of glass to disappear behind him, as Hop rummages through the sterile metal box for bandaids.

“You want the one with the princess or the superhero?” Hop asks, holding two large bandaids, with children’s characters on them.

Steve nods his head to Sleeping Beauty, tries not to think of how calm Hopper seemed. Instead, he sticks his hand out, tea towel dulling the sluggish flow of blood, and watches as Hopper peels the princess onto his palm. When Hop makes a move to pack away the first aid kit, Steve steps in.

“No, I can do it.” He says. It’s the least I can do, he thinks.

He rolls the gauze back up, tucks it into its compartment. The boxes of hero and princess bandaids are slotted back into place, and the scissors are laid on top of them. As he finishes it all, closes the lid and turns to place it back on top of the fridge, Steve realises his mistake.

The bin.

Back faced towards him, Hop shifts. Head dipped down to stare at the blue shards that undoubtedly catches the sunlight — pretty and broken. Steve waits and he waits, first aid kit in hand, still. Waits for a reaction, reprimand, rage. Anything.

(Nothing).

“You’re not mad at me?”

Hop turns, dropping the wrapper of the bandaid into the bin. There’s an unreadable expression on his face — not anger, disappointment, sadness. It makes Hop’s eyebrows furrow, but his shoulder haven’t tightened, still calm.

“It’s just glass,” Hopper says. “It’s replaceable.”

And Steve is good at reading people, can hear the words without him having to say it. You’re not. 

The bandaid on his palm stretches his skin weirdly, the wound in an awkward position. Steve moves up to the kitchen counter, is waved away, by Hop, to the dining table as soon as he nears the stove. So Steve sits on the rickety dark-wood chair, watches as breakfast is made in the morning light.

It’s weird — the quiet. It used to mean loneliness, an empty house, cold eyes and soundless anger. Steve sees Hop flip a pancake into the air, narrowly catching it and softly cheering when it lands. He thinks that, just like his lover and his friends and his family, it’s something that he’s starting to grow accustomed to. 

— — —

“Are the streamers too much? I feel like the streamers are too much.”

“Nance, the streamers look great,” Steve pats his hand on her shoulder, steers her away from the doorway of the living room. “And, really, you didn’t have to get us anything.”

“Steve,” She says. “This is huge! You and Eddie have an apartment! Of course I had to get you guys something.”

Her gift, a joint one between her and Mike, were a set of nice fluffy towels. Steve won’t admit it, and he sure as hell doesn’t think Eddie will either, but they both… kinda forgot about some of the basic necessities.

(Everyone else seems to have them covered on that front, though. Joyce had bought him pillow cases and linens, Robin had gotten him a pan that he’s been looking at since their Scoops era, Jonathan and Argyle bought them ashtrays and cups, and the set of nice cutlery were a gift from Hop. 

Even the kids had pitched in, even though Lucas was technically the only one of them earning money. Will had painted him and Eddie portraits with pride colours, El had sewn Eddie a series of scrunchies, and Max had bought them a tarot card deck. There were three different colours of nail polish, curtesy of Lucas, a set of handmade coaster from Dustin, and a fully painted miniature of Steve’s human barbarian for their campaign from Mike).

The kids are all congregated in the living room, having a heavy debate on which movie to watch. Jonathan and Robin were talking about film and polaroids, and Eddie and Argyle were scheming in the corner of the room. Steve thinks that Hop and Joyce just made an excuse to go out the back to have a quick kiss before coming back inside, but. Who’s he to stop them?

Nancy gives him a quick hug before jogging over to the kids, instantly taking El’s side on watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, despite the movie only coming out a couple weeks ago and not being on tape yet. Steve picks up a beer from the kitchen, moves to open it before a cheery chime is ringing through the hallway.

The doorbell rings, and when Steve rushes to the door, opens it to the face of the Dmitri, he almost wants to reenact their first meeting. It’s a little tempting, but then they’re smiling at each other, and Steve is ushering him inside, asking him to slip off his boots by the door.

“How’s Mikhail been?” Steve greets, presses a cool beer into Dmitri’s palms. They do a little swapsies — Dmitri placing a small pot plant into Steve’s empty hand.

He chuckles, accent still thick and ever-present. “He’s taking to English well. Jim’s daughter is helping him out with her dictionary — said something about a word of the day.”

Steve feels a flicker of recognition behind his eyes, is reminded of how El, essentially, had to learn English all over again. He’s makes a mental note to check in on them, see how Mikhail is going with reading and writing.

“Aha!” Dmitri says. “And this is the famous boyfriend?”

Eddie stands at the end of the hall, two sodas in his hands, and the most questioning expression on his face that Steve has ever seen. It makes him think if this is what he looked like in front of Hop and El, when he had first met Dmitri.

“Yes?” Eddie says, but it sounds more like a question than anything. He holds up one finger in a be right back motion before disappearing behind the hallway.

“This is going to happen all night, isn’t it?”

“Oh, totally,” Steve agrees. “But that’s all on you, buddy. You’ve been here, what? A good five months and haven’t introduced yourself to the party?”

Dmitri turns to him, eyebrow raised and dead stare on his face, before Eddie is bounding back down the hallway, hair bouncing across his shoulders, as he joins them near the door.

“Okay, so, is this one of those moments where you’re someone from the previous years of monster fighting that I don’t know about, or have we met before and I just completely forgot your name?”

“Eddie, this is Dmitri, the one who helped Hop in Russia.”

Dmitri sticks out his hand in greeting, palm out. The information seems to click in Eddie’s mind, because his mouth is open in a silent ohhhhhh! before he’s enthusiastically shaking his hand up and down with Dmitri.

“You’re new to all this monster shit then, too, right? Please tell me I’m not the only one who shits themselves whenever a past worldly horror is mentioned.”

“Yes,” He sighs. “They all think monster fighting is normal — I heard that most of the group are children?”

Steve slowly nudges them down the hall, into the room decorated with streamers, places the plant on the windowsill by the kitchen. He can hear the voices of Eddie and Dmitri slowly fade out into the living room as he grabs his own drink of choice: cider.

He leans against the counter, hears a slow second of silence before the loud voices of the kids are filtering through his home. Steve tries to make sense of the overlapping speech, hears who the fuck and nobody told us and hey Dmitri! before Hop is rounding the corner, placing his hands on Steve’s shoulders.

“I know today is all about celebrating you and Eddie’s new place but,” He sighs. “I needed to get this out before it eats me up.”

“What’s up?” Steve asks, hopes that it isn’t the deaths.

Hop takes a deep breath, leans against the counter, next to him, voice low. 

“We were taught things in the force. Signs to look out for. Small things that normally wouldn’t mean anything, but when they built up, they meant everything.” Steve takes a sip of his drink, watches as Hop crosses his arms across his chest. “And I know I already talked to you about the phone call, but it was so much more than that. I’m sorry I didn’t step in sooner, kid.”

“You’re always on my ass about apologising for shit that we can’t change anymore. Plus, it really wasn’t that—” Hop turns to give Steve a look, and it makes him think back to two weeks ago. “Okay, yeah, he is that bad, but I’m okay now.”

“But you still deserved to have a father.” Hopper says. 

Steve shifts on his feet, sentence spilling from his lips before he can stop them. “You’re more of a dad than mine ever was.” 

He turns back to his drink, doesn’t take his eyes off the perspiration that is seeping into his fingers. There’s a voice in his head telling him that he shouldn’t have said that, a stronger part of his heart telling him that it didn’t matter — what he said was true in every sense.

Warm, steady, arms are wrapped around his shoulders before his thoughts can spiral further, Hop mumbling a c’mere kid as his head is pressed into the soft fabric of blue flannel. He sniffles a little bit, tries to quell tears that are starting to arise, but not— not sad tears, he’s not— 

Steve tries to organise his thoughts. He breathes in deep, counts to three. When the tears roll hot against his cheeks, he buries his face further into Hop’s shirt. 

Because maybe these weren’t entirely sad tears — it was that cross of happy-sad that permeated the title of dad, bottlenecked and ready to blow since he was a child. But when he thinks of the title, of who he would consider his dad, his father, his mum, his mother, his parents, it’s not even a contest. Mr and Mrs Harrington are a stain on his conscience, slowly being washed away, yarn and thread layering over them to create the outlines of Joyce and Hopper: warm, comforting, content.

Steve pulls back, wipes his tears, sees Hop use his palm to dry his own cheeks. When they make eye contact, they give each other the watery, happy smiles that come with the title of family.

“Jesus, and I thought today was meant to be happy.” Hop laughs, grabs a couple tissues from the box on near the fridge.

“Who said I wasn’t happy?” Steve asks, accepts the offered paper towels to wipe at his eyes and his red nose. 

They sit there for a moment, in the fading light of the kitchen, listening to the muffled sounds of the party, the pop music playing from the stereo,  clinking glasses and soda being opened. When their eyes are dry and they give each other the once over, a nod of approval saying that they looked presentable, Hop claps Steve on the back.

“Okay,” Hop says. “Now we’re gonna go out there, and we’re gonna have some goddamned fun. You deserve it, kid.”

Steve nods, grin toothy, feels the happy-sad feeling fade into something warmer. He and Hop make their way back to the warmth of the living room, and before he’s even fully in the room, Eddie has rounded on him, fingers intertwined, smile on his face as he fills Steve in on what he missed.

(Later, when the cake has been cut, and stories have been shared, and the kids have gotten over the existence of Dmitri and a new kid that they could indoctrinate into their dnd campaigns, they slowly fade out into their sleeping bags on the floor.

“Steve!” Joyce jumps up from her place on the couch, hops across the sleeping bodies of the party on  the ground, narrowly missing Max’s outstretched leg. She comes up to where Steve is perched on the love seat next to a sleeping Eddie, waves her hands towards herself. He passes his cider to Hop, links his arms with Joyce as they spin.

Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy streams through the stereo, and Joyce makes her way to the middle of the living room, as much open space as they can have from where the bodies of love fill the room. The sounds of smooth vocals and harmonies are softened by the lamplight, amplified by the dancing.

He holds hands with Joyce, revels in the way that they quietly mouth the words at each other. Steve finds that his cheeks hurt with the amount of smiling that he’s done tonight, finds that he doesn’t want to stop. His arms are swung to the side, left, right, and then Joyce is standing on her tippy-toes, arm raised high, and Steve is ducking under it in a mis-coordinated, elaborate, spin.

“This song reminds me of you and your lover boy!” Joyce says, dimples in her cheeks and eyes filled with love. 

Steve smiles at the reminder of Eddie, spins so that he can look over his shoulder to see him, asleep, on the couch. When he gets a good look at him, and the song has switched to something by Madonna, he sees his eyes snap shut.

“Oh, you are not getting out of this,” Steve drawls, mirrors Joyce’s previous actions, waving towards himself. 

Eddie peeks one eye open, and Steve motions harder, Joyce joining in. He watches as Eddie dramatically rolls off the couch, clambers over to the two of them. Steve grabs onto his arm, a little bit more than tipsy, and they clumsily shuffle their feet and whisper the lyrics to the shitty pop song on the stereo.

Dmitri laughs from his place on the couch, and Steve sees him and Jonathan and Robin talking to each other in the mess of the living room, wrapping paper and streamers and sleeping children littered across the ground. 

There’s a soft click! the distinct sound of rolling film, and Steve turns to smile at the group, try to convey even a fraction of the tenderness within his bones).

— — —

It’s still hard to say a lot of things out loud. 

Steve’s been getting better at writing, has figured out a way that works for him. He spins the pen in his fingers, before pressing it back onto the page, bleeding ink into a dot in the corner. He’s written a few (a lot of) letters. Some of them are addressed to his friends, himself. Some of them are addressed to the Harrington’s. Most of them don’t get sent, read, by anyone once they’re sealed and stored away.

There are thank you’s and fuck you’s and sorry’s. Once, Eddie had brought him a small wooden box, lid uneven and rickety, had admitted that he and Jonathan made it for Steve. Each envelope and worry, unread and unsent, out of his body, his mind, were placed into the gift, slid under the desk.

He shifts his pen from lined paper, turns to where Eddie lounges on the bed beside him. “This look good?”

Eddie leans over Steve’s shoulder, hair tickling his neck. “Mmmm, I think I should add—”

The pen is worked out of his hand, and Steve watches as little notes and additions are made in the margins of the page. He sees him cross out the sorry’s, replace them with little blue hearts. When Eddie leans back into his own space, his hand comes to rest on Steve’s hip.

“I think this is it.”

Steve smiles, reaches towards the stack of envelopes on the bedside table. He writes down the names of his friends, his family, seals each letter smoothly and surely. Most letters don’t get sent, are left to be unread — out of sight, out of mind. Each note is short, a page long at most, but they’re important.

(He gathers up the letters, puts addresses on them. When morning comes, and Eddie is already awake, and Steve is groggy and warm from the sun, they’ll go to the post office, and the words will be known). 

After packing away the old sticky note from the fridge, completed, there comes a new list. One made in the daylight, slow morning, before either of them had to go to work. Yeah, Steve didn’t swim in his pool, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t about ducking his head under the water, it wasn’t about doing laps and becoming a lifeguard. It wasn’t about crossing things off a list — it was about healing.

So there’s a new list, the old one mounted in a little wooden frame by the mantlepiece, right next to an ugly not-working mug, a small hand-painted artwork with colours that sing true in his blood. There’s a pressed set of flowers, an amalgamation of hair ties and guitar picks, blue glass hung by strings that shine and chime in the wind. 

The fridge doesn’t have an inch that isn’t covered with polaroids and film photos, shopping lists, recipes, notes, letters. None of the magnets match: a heart, a cat, a spaceship. Sometimes, when he opens the fridge too fast, the papers dance in the air.

The fridge and the mantelpiece — it isn’t just them. It’s the whole apartment, disorganised, with no rhyme or reason to how anything is set out. The colours of their home clash with each other, dark blues with soft yellows, each gift and memory in a different shade of personal warmth, horrible and wonderful and beautiful and theirs.

When they slide their mixtape into the stereo, when him and Eddie slot their hands together, matching rings and bracelets, twirl in the sunlight, in the moonlight, the warmth and the cold of each other — opposite, the same, never expected, always wanted — when they cry to the happy songs and laugh to the sad ones, misstep, belt out the wrong lyrics, turn the music up as loud as they possibly can, because, truly, finally, after everything, after dying, after living, after remembering, enduring and surviving and hurting and being moulded by monsters and fathers, who sometimes held the same titles and anger, after crying and shouting, voices raw and wrecked in the face of death, in the face of the quarry, in the face of themselves—

Steve knows that he’s loved. That’s he’s allowed to be loved.