#Depressed steve harrington

[steviewashere]

Pacific Waters

Rating: Teen and Up CW: Depression, Minor Suicidal Thoughts, Self-Negativity Tags: Post-Canon, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hopeful Ending, Steve Harrington Whump, Depressed Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington Has Self-Worth Issues, Steve Harrington Feels Like a Burden (again), Steve Harrington Has Bad Parents (Sorta), Steve Harrington Talking About His Dreams, Steve Harrington Has a Special Interest With Marine Biology, Neurodivergent Steve Harrington (If You Squint), Eddie Munson Comforts Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson is a Sweetheart, Steve Harrington is a Sweetheart, Steve Harrington Loves Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson Loves Steve Harrington, But There's No Love Confession, And They Very Much So Don't Get Together Here, Water Imagery, Ocean Imagery Well, this is the depressed Steve at the beach fic I've had in my drafts for a couple months. This is the original draft of "My Scars Are Hiding (My Branches Don't Show)", but obviously this draft was heavily modified in the final version. Sorry if the ending of this is overly sweet, I just didn't want it to be super depressing.

🌊————————🌊 The sand clumps between his toes as he digs them further underground. Wind slaps him across the face, one-two, one-two, one-two. They’ll be ruddy and well blotchy when he makes it back inside. Hair wild around him, catching tangles into his eyes. Ocean water rushing up to the very tips of his toes, kissing them with pecks, receding back.

He tightens his arms harder around his knees. Legs folded up to his chest, chin resting on his knobby joints. Fuzzy skin to his baby faced chin. Sunglasses squished up the bridge of his nose, nearly one with his brow bone. T-shirt billowing lightly at the hem, air tickling up his ribs, and smoothing the shirt back down with the same featherlight fingers.

Eddie wades in the shallow water. Ocean to below his knees. Holding up pant legs in his tight, naked fingers. Hair in thick wisps above and angled to the left. He’s looking out at the horizon, at the midday sun, at the crystal catch-alls of sunlight. There’s peace cascading down his body—evident in the relax of his shoulders, the loose straightness of his spine. It’s him rippled by a calm, a sense of wonder.

“I’ve been to the beach before,” Eddie had told him, “many, many years ago. Down in California on a Disney trip paid for by my grandpa. I haven’t seen it since. I’m going to take you.”

Steve thinks Eddie looks good like this.

Wishes he could figure out how to be like Eddie in this moment. Instead of some knot tethered in the sand, in the fine dust of eroded rocks and shattered beer bottles and crumbled crustacean shells.

He swallows around nothing, breathes through his nose. Tongue like tongue—a wet sponge in his mouth, a muscle that jumps when he unclenches his teeth, an organ. His whole mouth tastes like grief; of things he never did, things he should’ve done, things he can’t wait to do. It’s cardboard and salt and smoke. Staleness, too, that he figures is from forgetting to brush his teeth this morning, last night, the day before, and the day before that one, too.

No matter where he goes, his brain follows. It follows with tension. With unknown fear etched deep in the webbings of his fingers, splinter-riddled where he gripped that nail-bat. Bloodshed and blood soaks, where he laid his hands, where he squashed, where he protected when need be. Memories of knuckles to his cheeks, ribs under his palms, blank stares into sterile rooms; broken bones and white irises and floating half-corpses; anger, so much anger.

Confusion. Anger. Confusion. Anger.

Grief; so much grief.

It all sits deep within him in this very moment: a pulsating, shiny, inflated to burst ball in his stomach. Uneasy and nauseous. Nothing digested inside him.

Eddie looks over his shoulder at him. He can’t quite make out the expression on his face. But there’s that heavy weight of being stared at. Steve unfurls his right hand, where it had been tight on his opposite forearm, and sends a finger-wave. Makes his lips do something like a smile, but it’s tight, pinching his cheeks, makes the corners of his mouth ache.

“You good?” He thinks Eddie mouths.

Steve lifts the same hand and shifts it side to side. Sort of.

As soon as he splays his hand back on his own forearm, Eddie begins wading out of the water. He folds his pant legs to rest cinched on his knees. Stomps through the sand, arms out at his sides, fingers splayed as he keeps his balance. And then he plops down next to Steve, breath huffing and puffing as he catches it. He knocks their shoulders together.

“Why so-so? Should we head back to the cabin?”

He shrugs, no matter how little. “Just feel sorta…blank, I guess?”

“Blank,” Eddie echoes softly. He looks out at the horizon, then back to Steve. His mouth opens and closes like a floundering fish—something like Steve feels. And sighs through his nose. Then, soft still, “I’m worried about you, sweetheart.” A hand to the center of Steve’s back, fingers brushing the knobs of his spine.

Steve sighs into the touch. Reaches up to his sunglasses, dragging them into his hair once the sun dips lower and lower still. He blinks at the sudden change of lighting, but doesn’t look over at Eddie quite yet. Instead, he unfolds his legs so that he’s criss-cross and barely sinking, knee hitting Eddie’s thigh. He worms his right hand under the sand, combing fingers through it as if he’s petting the fluffy back of an animal. “How so?” he musters.

“It’s like…like…you’ve disappeared into yourself now that the world isn’t ending,” Eddie murmurs, “like something up and left.”

He sniffs, scratches the skin of his neck, looks over at the sand falling from his grip. That’s me, he notes, the sand. “Hm,” Steve grunts. But he leaves it at that.

“You can talk to me,” Eddie whispers, “if you need somebody to just listen.”

“I know,” Steve returns in the same volume, “I just…it’s just…”

“Just?”

He shrugs again. “It’s just stuff, y’know.” Steve drags a heavy breath through his lungs, heaving them as if lifting weights. The sand keeps passing through his fingers. Not slowly. Not within seconds either. Just…falling. Melting back into the rest of the sand, sitting right where it initially belonged. And yet…yet the imprints of his fingers has disturbed the original mound it had been in. It’ll never go back to that original mound, unless he were to reshape it. But even then, he’s not sure how to do that. Steve swallows around nothing again. “Like…have you ever felt like, no matter what you do, your life isn’t yours?”

Eddie inhales sharply. His whole torso seizes with it. “Sure, in some ways,” he answers, “before I moved in with Wayne. When everything I did was controlled by fear—of my dad, of bullies…my own hands, sometimes.” A gentle pet down Steve’s back, down and up, resting warmly between his shoulder blades. “Is that…is that how you’ve been feeling?”

The sand passes and passes, dust and dust—kuh-shhh, kuh-shhh. There’s the ocean, crashing hard and unrelenting, but the sea-foam kisses soft. He digs his thumb underground until he finds a large shard of shell. Picks it up between his index and middle finger, dangling just above the indentations in the sand. Eyeing it: where the stray sun rays glow the edges, the speckles of sand caught in the fine crevices, leftover chalky residue coating his fingertips.

When crustaceans no longer fit their shells, they find a new one. Molting. Once they can no longer justify fitting in the same shell, they molt; survival, a need.

He always wanted to be a marine biologist. Work out in the ocean. Saltwater cold against his diving gear. Gloved hands brushing sea rocks, the gentle sculptures of coral reefs. It had to be freeing, to work a job like that—to swim with the fish, zig-zag and snake-like. To be free.

Then, his dad thrusted him into sports—outside of his pick of swimming. Not that he didn’t enjoy playing, he did, but it hadn’t been his choice. It hadn’t been his choice to involve himself with the business clubs or the student council. Hadn’t been his decision to get popular. Hadn’t been his decision to cater. It was all just expected of him. That he’d graduate high school, go directly into college, graduate from there with honors, land a big shot career—business, like his dad—find a nice girl, settle down, have kids…big house, picket fence, and a little dog, too. Parts of that he liked the thought of. A lifelong partner. A dog. Good career. But everything else wasn’t him.

At least some of his decisions lead to the Party and to Robin and to Eddie. He chose to help Nancy and Jonathan. Everything else, though, it felt like people were relying on him to do the job, to be there, to take over. He did it, of course he did. He shouldn’t have to be responsible like that, though; he shouldn’t have had to take it all on.

He shouldn’t have to sit here with the remnants of himself, scattered and unfit like the sand below.

“I wanted to be a marine biologist,” he murmurs to Eddie after some thought.

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. Wanted to swim with the fish. Wanted to study their homes, their ecosystems. Wanted to know what they ate, how they travelled with each other, who their predators were.” Steve rests the shell in his flat palm and hovers it above his folded lap. There’s sand scattered across his bare shins, his knees right where the shorts don’t cover. “My mom used to take me out here to the west coast, used to stop by the beaches. She’d run around with me. Chase me up and down the sand dunes, help me pick up shells—like this one”—he displays it to Eddie—“this one’s a mollusk; think it’s a scallop, based on the rounded edge of it? She and I would identify them all because of this book I had.

“It was a thick book. Full of pictures and definitions and biological names for all the different mollusks and crustaceans. She’d ask me what shell I wanted to find, and I’d tell her, and we’d go. And we’d find it.” He shimmies the piece of shell so it rests between his fingers again. Holding it up the pale night sky. It’d probably be a pink or purple-pink in the daylight. Here, though, it’s dark and blue and muted. He sighs. Continues, “Now…now I’m afraid to swim in even my own fucking pool. And I just sit around my house, waiting for somebody to fill it. I’d call, but everybody’s busy. Everybody’s always so busy.

“Steve has the nail bat and Steve has the car and Steve is the babysitter. And I enjoy that gig, most of the time I do, but what about his company? I have company, how about that? Steve has another concussion and another concussion and man up, Steve, man up, stop crying, stop it with the nightmares, stop with your unrealistic dreams—be this, do that. That’s not okay, that’s not right; you need to apologize—oh, but I did nothing wrong—apologize anyway! Hey, wanna come watch a basketball game with me? No, Steve, that’s stupid. That’s jock shit—you’re bullshit, Steve, it’s all bullshit.”

In a last second decision, Steve closes his fingers tight around that shell shard. He clenches as hard as he can, knuckles turning white, nails starting to bite the skin of his palm. And when he opens his fist again, the shell is nothing but dust. Sand. It falls between his fingers, something he can no longer grasp onto. He watches it pour over his naked legs, into the well of sand below him, dissipating into just another small pool of erosion beneath him.

It becomes a fine nothingness.

He swallows around nothing once more. Words that should dry up just stuck in his throat, hard to digest.

“My life is bullshit,” Steve croaks, “it’s never mine. Just everybody else’s to have, to use. I’m a sex god, I’m a great kisser, I’m a lonely guy trying to get his fill. I’m King Steve and a jock and a nerd and a dingus and utter horseshit. I’m a wash-up, a smudge. A burden.

“I’m a burden to my own fucking brain, Eddie”—he smiles something sickly and small and humorless—“I’m just…just stuff. Just this with nothing else to it. Sitting here on a beach I used to know the feel and sound of, cowering at the rush of waves that used to meet me as I ran to it. Sitting in complete darkness, feeling awfully sorry for myself. And for what? Why am I here? Doing any of it?

“I…I…never mind. Never mind,” he mutters, shaking his head. His lips roll tight against his teeth, he drags his sunglasses to sit over his eyes again, and he keeps his face pointed at the ocean. At the calm waves. At the coral reefs he wanted to explore. At a dream he left behind in order to chase what everybody else expected of him. Expectations. Steve Harrington is full of other people’s expectations. “Sorry,” he whispers, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have laid that all on you like that. Guess I’m just stuck right now. Outside of my body, that kind of shit.”

Eddie’s hand is still. Marked flat in the center of Steve’s back. Silenced. “Steve,” he breathes.

He shakes his head once more. “I shouldn’t have said it all like that. Just…just…yeah. I’m stuck, that’s it. That’s all it is.”

“Steve,” Eddie whispers. Voice somehow cutting over the crashing waves, over the distant bustles of a city rising to nightlife, over boats sailing far away. He blinks behind the sunglasses, but makes no other movement. “Look at me,” he demands featherlight, “look at me, Steve.” The waves kiss his toes again, frothing frozen over his skin, receding. “Please,” he hears plead in a murmur, “please, Steve, look at me.”

Damn him. Damn you, Eds.

If there’s one thing he’s going to do since March, it’s listen to Eddie. Obey commands. Or…really, give himself over to the aching. To the incessancy. To a desire he’s been trying to chase away—melting into Eddie, no matter what.

Reluctantly, he pries the glasses off his face, twiddles them around in his grainy palms, and drops them into the sandpit between his legs. And then, one arduously slow second at a time, turns his head over to Eddie’s voice. His jaw twitching hard, locking right into place. Nostrils flaring, brine air coating and sticking to his nose hairs. Eyelashes heavy, clumped by the salt when he blinks once more—blinks to clear the image, to focus the surroundings, blur the background and soft-spot Eddie. Already, he fizzles, pops, and burns like the bonfire they prepared the other night. Where sticky s’mores melted over their fingertips, frothy beer stuck center to Eddie’s stubble, and their laughs rivaled seagulls making their way homebound. And he was flickering, brave and gentle and anew, for just a moment—the flame in the cold, at the center of it, alive.

The hand on his back travels. Fingers trailing and bumping over spine knobs. Nails shifting the thin fabric of his t-shirt. A palm finally landing, warm and soft and cautious on his neck. Some sort of peace offering; a pheromone; a slurry of words during a panic episode, nestled in the corner of the couch, eyes dropped to his knees so he won’t be startled when he comes to, and a hot drink waiting. Waiting for him to come back. To look.

To see.

“Thank you,” Eddie says softly, “for letting me know what’s going on. Okay?” He nods once at Steve, so he bobbles back—not really an understanding, doing it just to do. Eddie’s eyes flicker like those flames, back and forth and dancing over his face. Dark and searching. Effortlessly adventuring like owls on prowl. “And I’m sorry”—

“Ed, it’s not”—

“No,” he firmly interrupts. “No, Steve. Listen. I don’t…I don’t wanna tell you what to do, but just listen to me. I am sorry, okay? I’m sorry that I might’ve played a part in all this, even in the short amount of time I’ve been able to know you. Because I know, Steve. I know, in some way—whether you wanna approach that hill or not—that I’ve been a part of this.

“But I’m sorry that not only has the world been unkind, but your own fucking life. You deserve to have control and you deserve to have your own purpose and you deserve everything you could want. Even if…even if you feel like you don’t. I get that part, okay? I get it, sweetheart, I do.

“It’s unfair, though. It’s unfair you’ve been treated like some trophy on a shelf. High on a pedestal. And…and…Steve. Steve, I need you to know that your life isn’t over. You’re talking to me like it is and I can assure to you, in this moment, you aren’t done with it. I won’t let you be done with it—that’s one thing I’m gonna dictate over you. The only thing.” Eddie’s other hand comes up at that, too. Slow-like and gentle. Cupping the right side of Steve’s face, his remaining palm going to the left side. Holding him in place between his hands, as if Steve is an entire universe, a planet meant for observing.

Steve swallows, but this time around a lump. A sour lump, solid and immovable lodged deep inside him. It’s the pulsing sphere in his stomach, it’s the tears he has yet to give name to, it’s build-up. Calcium on a shower-head. “Ed,” he mutters, voice wavering, “you don’t…you don’t mean any of”—

“I do!” Eddie exclaims softly. “I do,” he then whispers. “You want a star? I’ll buy you one. You want a garden? I’ll bring you the seeds and the soil. You want to just sleep? I’ll tuck you in. Don’t you get it? Don’t you?

“I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m not asking you to just accept the words tumbling out of my fuckin’ mouth. I’m asking nothing of you. But I care. I care about you, Steve. I care so much about you—if something happened, I don’t know what, but if something were to happen to you, it’d be like Hell all over again. So, I’m gonna ask you a question. Just one question. Just…answer me. However you want, I want you to answer me. That’s the only other thing, okay?” His eyes are flickering again, harder this time, aggressively. The flames of the bonfire tore higher and higher, cascading to the sky; his fingertips had been melded together by marshmallow guts and chocolate tears; the beer sloshed inside him like he was a boat in the ocean; but Eddie held his hand and helped him put it out, helped him find the solution. This is that. The flames. A fire.

He nods once, not much movement, not much to give—head still held between hands, sure and firm and still—but he gives just this one thing.

Like he did in the Upside Down, Eddie does it back. “Okay,” he whispers, “Steve.”

And he blinks, eyelids heavy, stinging. Heat tears down his cheek, biting him all the way to his chin where it wobbles precociously. Doesn’t stop it. Doesn’t want to.

Tenderly, Eddie catches the droplet on his thumbs. Not even acknowledging it with a breath. Then, “What do you want? Out of anything in the world, what do you want?”

A lot of things, he doesn’t say.

My parents. A bedtime story. Hot dinner with a loud house.

To be wanted like a friend, not a fighter.

Maybe a dog or two? Small, though. To keep me company?

You. Your eyes. And your mouth. And your smile. The words you have for me. For your hands to keep holding me forever. A flicker to engulf. For us to be here, at the beach, under this sky with the stars and the birds sleeping on the water and the boats, shells under our legs and for me to identify them all for you while you tell me about Dungeons & Dragons and for us to be happy, stuck in time.

A few more tears trail down his cheeks. He darts over Eddie’s face this time. Not really looking, more just recognizing. Something, he’s not sure.

“To be a marine biologist, Ed,” he murmurs, “to not be afraid of getting in the ocean with you. And I can stand there, pointing out all the…the creatures and shit at our feet. Be taken seriously as I talk about what I love. The seashells. The wildlife.”—he swallows the lump, warm and sleepy, somehow content after it all—“To be free.”

There’s a soft, small smile on Eddie’s face. Just barely stretching. “Will you do something with me? You can say no, but I just wanna…wanna try something. That alright?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“You see the tide right now?” Eddie stretches out his left arm, finger pointed at the foaming edge of the water. His hands fall away from Steve’s face. Following where Eddie’s pointed, he hums his acknowledgement. “I think—if you hold onto me—we can kneel in that bit of water there. And maybe you can talk to me about any shells we can find?”

Looking closer at the tide, Steve blindly reaches out and wraps his hand on Eddie’s wrist. Squeezing hesitantly, yet tightly. “I…I don’t know if”—

“We don’t have to,” Eddie whispers, his voice close—it’s as if his head is turned, his mouth directly next to Steve’s ear, but he can’t bring himself to look. “I just thought that, well, if you want to be a marine biologist, then we gotta start with the basics. Right? So…this’ll be exposure or something. Again, though, we don’t have to”—

“And you’ll be there? You won’t…you won’t let go, right?”

“No,” he murmurs, shaking his head—a stray curl whips the side of Steve’s head. “I’ll keep holding on as long as you want me to.”

Nodding thoughtfully, Steve hums. He takes a slow, deep breath. Lets it out just as slowly. “Okay,” he says, “but not too far in.”

At that, Eddie gently rises from the sand, pulling Steve up with him. They tread over the sand, wobbly footing and knees shaking as they keep their balance. Far enough that the tide meets the soles of their feet, but doesn’t rise farther than the tops. However, Eddie doesn’t kneel down until Steve begins to. Going just as slow as Steve needs, one moment at a time.

“It’s cold,” Steve whispers, still kneeling down.

Eddie breathes out a tiny snort. “Yeah, I should’a mentioned that, sorry.”

“’S’okay,” he murmurs, “just watch out for jellyfish. We’ll have to go back inside if they sting you.”

“Duly noted.”

Finally, when Steve is fully sat back on his haunches, Eddie meets him in the sand. The water laps around their shins. Foamy and cold and biting. But the water doesn’t rise, doesn’t try to knock them down.

It’s odd, both distant and full, how Steve welcomes the water back to himself. Nothing like being under it, though, swimming his heart out—until it’s pounding and he’s heaving for breath and needing to get out because he’s pruning. But it’s still comfortable, for now, at least.

Eddie’s left hand digs into the sand at their knees. Rummaging and digging and burrowing until he makes a small, “a-ha!” and presents a shard of something up in Steve’s line of sight. “What kind of shell is this, Stevie?”

He snorts, taking in the object that’s held right in front of him. “Eds, that’s a shard of a beer bottle. That’s not a shell.” Before he lets Eddie get too downtrodden, Steve is searching in the sand, too. Holding up his own find. “This one’s a sand dollar,” he explains softly, “it’s not a shell. Not technically. In fact, it’s not even dead.”

“It’s not?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve can see Eddie tilt his head slightly. It’s cute, if only he could work the courage to say that. But venturing into the little bit of water is enough for tonight. He shakes his head. “No, it’s very alive. A very alive, flat sea urchin. See how this is super dark?” Lifting the sand dollar up higher, he lets the bit of light from the moon brighten it. “This one’s almost black. Kinda like a deep purple. And if I flip it over”—which he does—“you can see all these little things on the bottom.”

The underside glints and shifts, but shadows with how Eddie moves closer. “Whoa,” he lightly gasps. “What the hell are those things?”

“Bristles,” Steve answers, “they move kinda like worms or, and this is kinda gross, like maggots do. Squirming. See?” He tilts the sea urchin again, holding it closer for Eddie to see. Taking in the even tinier gasp that elicits out of Eddie, he knows he’s done his job. “They act as little legs or arms for the urchin. Dragging microorganisms—like plankton—to a small opening in the center of these bristles. Essentially bringing the plankton in for eating. It’s cool, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Eddie murmurs, “shit, Steve, this is probably the coolest biology lesson I’ve had.”

“You’re only saying that because you used to fall asleep in biology, Eds.”

“But I’m being honest! Seriously, Stevie, this is genuinely super cool.” Eddie gets closer again, nearly stitched into Steve’s side. “Will you show me other stuff? How ‘bout…”—he digs in the sand again—“…how about this one?”

This time, Steve actually full bodily laughs. “Eddie,” he sighs. “Ed, that’s another glass bottle shard.”

“Well, how am I supposed to know?”

“I’ll find some more, Eds. Help me dig?”

Eddie gives him a sloppy salute on his forehead. “At your service, future marine biologist.” Steve rolls his eyes, but before he can get too far into his distracted digging, Eddie’s pulling on his arm. He looks over, curious—mainly to see if it’s yet another glass shard that he’s being shown—but he’s met with Eddie’s soft, beautiful face. “I’m serious, Stevie. I’m gonna help you get to that dream career again, no matter what it takes.”

He smiles. Soft and personal and just for Eddie. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it, sweet”—

“No, Eds,” he murmurs, “thank you for listening. For…for trying to help me. It means a lot to me.”

“I’ll always listen, Steve. No matter what, sweetheart. Now, let’s get digging; I’ve got some learning to do.”

Tonight won’t fix it all, but it’s a start. And Eddie’s right. His life isn’t over yet. This is a new beginning.

🌊————————🌊

[sarahmadisonxoxo]

After the events of Season 3 Steve is left completely blind. As with anyone the sudden loss of his sight takes a large toll on his mental health sending the man into isolation for so long most assume he'd been killed in the fire. Of course those who know Steve know that he's not dead. They know the loss he's currently dealing with and are working to give him space to heal, but at the same time eventually try to start working their friend back out into the world because isolation is good for no one.

In that time of isolation Steve turns to the things he knows. He struggles with cooking like he used to, causing injuries that make him reconsider if its better to just order in. Finally he settles back with piano. His mother had forced him to take lessons as a boy claming it made him more cultured. At first he didn't care much for it preferring to be outside playing with Tommy or whichever kid on his block was able to stay out past dark. In time he found himself enjoying it, never so much that he fully fell into it, but enough to practice . to improve. The feeling of the keys under his fingers felt natural. Music came to his heart , and even if it was just a generic pop thing youd hear over the radio it still brought him joy because it was his. His to be created. His fingers pressing the keys to make the sounds, controlling the tempo.

What if Eddie's first meeting with Steve is not with a bottle pressed to his throat ( as hot as that is) , but in tow with the team coming into a darkened home that was full of sound.

[nymime]

FW: suicide thoughts, suicide ideation, self harm.

Steve was staring his hand, watching his finger flinch and twitch with sudden spams of stress. He was so tired, not a sleepyhead or lazy way, but just drained out of all energy and motivation to do anything more than breath. The brunette can feel his lung get full with air, he hold it until his view start to get black and fuzzy, he exhaled deeply and slow, he do it again.

Steve was laying on his bed since Friday, now is Monday. he only get up to go and pee, he didn’t eat anything since the breakfast of Friday, his stomach feels numb and it hurts, but he don’t care, Steve don’t have the energy to care. His breathing got stuck for a shaky breath he got, his eyes start to get blurry, he can feel the tears stuck on his lashes. He blink, than twice, he can’t do the tears go down, Steve was so tired for try to cry. His middle and ring finger flinch, the boy sigh again.

Why he was even alive? He don’t deserve to be here, he was just a stupid rich boy that he couldn’t be smart enough to do something good, he fail on the propose of his birth; be a competent heir to his father’s company, his old man hate him since birth, always away to not see the failure of son he has. His mother don’t care about him, not anymore, not after she found out that he have the same illness as his grandmother, what a lost of time he was to her, have a disorder of personality, borderline worse! Even have the nerve to develop severe depression. She couldn’t care less if he tries and go kill himself, Steve is convince that his mother would do a party if he dies, he can’t blame her if she do.

He was just a waste of space. If he weren’t here, Robin wouldn’t got on all that shitty situation of Upside down and Russians, she would be on some place doing so much things. Steve sure that she will meet a good girl and establish, far away of him.

Steve was just so tired, his fingers flinch once again, why he can’t move? Why his body was so fucking heavy? What a bothersome thing. He sigh again, having the little energy to roll over to his other side, he do it. Now he was on his left flank, the simple action of roll make him a lot more tired than before, what a shame of living thing he was. He continue staring his fingers, wondering if he would die laying on his bed and who would find his body. Maybe Robin? Or maybe Dustin with Eddie, he didn’t know. Steve hasn’t hear anything of them since Friday, clearly he didn’t was missed for them.

He couldn’t care less, he was tired.

[wynnyfryd]

Trailer Park Steve AU part 4

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

September

He doesn’t talk to the Munsons much. (Doesn’t talk to anyone, really, aside from his mom and Robin and that one older woman who keeps renting and returning Gone With The Wind as an excuse to leave her house.) He keeps his head down and his nose clean, doesn’t care to make friends with the neighbors; just wants to get by.

One day Eddie approaches their door, waving a gas bill that got mixed up in their mail, and Steve greets him pleasantly enough.

“Stab anyone today?”

“Eat glass, Harrington.”

So it goes.

Steve watches the world pass and the weather turn, lets the hours bleed into weeks and squeezes his eyes shut against the flashbacks when they threaten to overwhelm.

Things with his mom are weird.

They don’t really speak, preferring to shrug their way past each other with careful, tight-lipped nods, and his mom takes these pills the doctor gave her that keep her perfectly pleasant and calm. Silent. Physically present but not really here.

And he can’t imagine how it feels to be her: Florence Harrington, ripped from the comforts of the upper crust and left to rot in a tin can seven miles across town. She spends most of her time letting out weary little sighs as she swans from room to room, drifting like a shade on the banks of the River Styx. (He can make that reference now because Robin won’t shut up about mythology. “It’s so gay, Steve. The Greeks were literally so gay.”)

Anyway.

Shit’s weird with the kids, too. He still drives them around — lets them loiter at Family Video when it’s slow; hangs around when they need a ride to the arcade or the movies or the skating rink; and he’s still on the hook for ‘ice cream. for. life,’ so…

It’s just not the same.

Like. Not to be dramatic, but who the fuck is Steve Harrington without the house and the pool and the free-for-all fridge? Just some kid with a car and a bat and a punchable face. And he can barely afford to keep the car now, anyway, so pretty soon they won’t need him for that, either. They’ll learn to drive; they’ll get their own jobs. Maybe Lucas builds enough muscle to take over as the party tank.

Maybe it’s better if he shelfs himself now before they realize he’s become obsolete.

“Oh, my god, you’re being pathetic,” he groans to himself. His voice is muffled where he’s lying face down on the couch. Ridiculous behavior, because everything is fine; Steve is fine. In the grand scheme of things where there are monsters and melted corpses and all kinds of crazy, horrible shit?

Yeah.

He’s being obnoxious. It’s a lovely sunny Saturday afternoon with just the right Autumn breeze going — gentle but cool; long sleeve polo weather; his favorite kind — and he’s sitting inside throwing himself a pity party.

Fucking absurd.

…Five more minutes.

Just five more minutes, then he’s getting off this couch.

He gets to a minute and a half when he hears the crunch of tires against the gravel, the clanging of a little bell from the handlebar of a bike, and then:

“STEVE!!!”

And that’ll be Dustin, trying to bang the door off the hinges and piss off the whole park at the same time. Kid’s nothing if not a multitasker. Steve lets another aggrieved groan loose into the couch cushion.

His mom’s out with the car; the lights are all off. Maybe he can just play dead ‘til Dustin leaves? He loves the kid, he really does, but his left ear is full of static, and he just wants to fucking sleep. Or sulk. Or both.

“STEVEN CHRISTOPHER, I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE.”

Jeeeeesus Christ. “Okay, chill,” Steve grumbles as he hauls himself upright and throws open the front door. His limbs feel like lead; there’s drool on his chin. “Wake the whole goddamn neighborhood, why don’t you?”

“It’s two in the afternoon.”

“Yeah, and half the people here work nights.”

“Oh-kayy,” Dustin drags out the word, “but you don’t.”

Ugh. Whatever. He’s not gonna be shamed by a toothless teenager for his depressing loser tendencies. “Did you need something?”

Steve scratches at his belly hair through his shirt, feels a muscle twinge in his shoulder and send a spark of nerve pain skittering up to the base of his skull.

Dustin either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that Steve’s body is falling apart where he stands, because he just rolls his eyes and says, “Uh, yeah. I need to know why you’re avoiding everyone? Mom’s tried to invite you to dinner six times now.”

“I was working.”

“All six times?” Dustin glares. Steve feels a little pinned by it, feels guilt seeping through the cracks as he fidgets with his bad ear. This kid’s gonna be the scariest lawyer some day. “She’s worried.”

Goddammit.

Guilt squeezes hard behind his ribs; he knows Dustin uses his mom as a mouthpiece for the feelings he can’t express. “I’m fine,” he sighs, letting his eyes and voice go soft. “Honest.”

Dustin holds firm, gaze fierce and fists clenched. “Bullshit,” he insists.

“Man, don’t—”

“Bull. Shit.”

Suddenly, their impromptu interrogation gets interrupted by a crashing drum fill, a shriek of electric guitar as Munson’s van squeals into the lot. He’s blasting some melodramatic metal shit about wizards or whatever; Steve doesn’t know. He only knows that the skitter of nerve pain he felt is ramping up to a fullblown migraine now because this guy has to listen to his racket at full fucking volume, apparently, and isn’t this all just “fucking great.”

—

part 5

[munsooooon]

Steve hates very much to be called "Steven" not even as a joke, he has not talked about it with anyone but implicitly everyone senses it in some way or another and therefore they do not call him that way, it is always Steve or Harrington or some nickname. That's because when his parents called him that it was because they were incredibly angry or drunk and therefore punished him in horrible ways, when they called him Steven he usually ended up getting beaten up. When they called him Steven in public it was enough to make him freeze and make him shiver, eventually he would be silent and terrified for the rest of the evening.

Now being older if someone calls him Steven, he immediately assumes they are fighting with him or that he did something wrong and depending on the situation or the person he will react with sadness or anger, for example, when Tommy called him Steven, it ended in a awful fist fight. It really makes him feel very bad, in recent years sadness is what he felt the most when he hears his name, because it hurts him too much to disappoint the people he loves.

Eddie doesn't know it, but he doesn't call him Steven either, it's always a nickname or Stevie, or Steve or even Harrington. Until one night, when they were in Steve's room kissing fiercely and passionately, Steve was under him doing whatever it took to feel Eddie rubbing his skin, between gasps and accelerated breaths, every little movement Eddie made or every little touch Steve felt, he reacted effusively with his whole body shuddering, he was and felt hypersensitive, he couldn't keep still.

"Steven" Eddie whispered with softness and a beautiful smile, Steve looked at him surprised. "Stay still, I need to take your clothes off, love"

Steve loved that. It was the first time someone pronounced his name with such love. He stood for a few seconds, processing what was happening. He began to shake in anticipation of what Eddie might give him. His brain was short-circuited, and all he could think of was Eddie calling him "Steven" with that authority and that beautiful softness that only he had. He felt loved.

"Are you okay? Do you want us to stop?"

Steve took a few seconds to appreciate him, ran his face gently, because the words wouldn't come out even though they were in his throat. He was always silent when he shouldn't be but he couldn't help it.

Eddie kissed the hand that was on his face, not intending to go any further, and Steve melted once again, he wanted to speak and express loudly the pleasure the other boy was making him feel but he couldn't. Instead, he took Eddie's hand and directed it to his pants to make him feel what he had provoked, to make him understand that he didn't want to stop.

"No, I don't want to stop" Steve said as he sat on Eddie's lap. "Call me Steven again, just you, just you Eddie, call me love, baby, tell me I'm your princess and never stop"

Steve was incredibly loud that night, moving his hips against Eddie's lap, trying to fuck himself harder, deeper. He spoke his name softly and lovingly, until he began to cry, begged for more as tears flooded his face. Eddie held him tight with his arms to keep him right where he wanted him but also to keep him safe to hold him as he released a weight he seemed to be carrying for years.

Eddie couldn't utter a word, it was unbelievable. Eddie was always loud and Steve was quieter, but in the dark, in the security of their love, Steve could be whatever he wanted and could act however he wanted, so he was being loud as he wished because in Eddie's arms no one could punish him.

"You're such a good boy, don't you?" Eddie says softly.

"Yeah?" Steve asks as he chases Eddie, he moans loudly as Eddie once again hits that place on his body, his mouth stays open as he moves on Eddie, soft sounds keep coming out of his mouth, he closes his eyes, because he can feel Eddie all over his body, even though he moves slowly.

"Yeah. You're so sweet, my baby boy, I can't even explain how much I love you, princess"

Steve smiles with his eyes closed. He looked precious, his cheeks were flushed, his lips red, and somehow the tears made him incredibly beautiful.

....

Steve still hates being called that, he finally confessed it to Eddie but also gave him permission to call him that on special occasions. Plus, he told him that he would love to tell his parents what he does with the traumas they caused him. Because now every time he's called Steven it's because he's loved, because he's revered and because he's being fucked incredibly well.

Steve get his name back, Steven belonged to him and Eddie.

[lexirosewrites]

For slick sunday, I’m having big Steve Feelings and I needed to share them. This is fully inspired by your post and others about Steve being so happy and in love with his first born baby that he starts crying because he doesn’t get how his parents didn’t love him.

What if, after the immediate high of birth fades, O!Steve develops postpartum depression but doesn’t know that, all he knows is that he was so excited for his baby and suddenly he doesn’t feel connect to them anymore. (He’s also feeling less connected to /everyone/ but he’s so focused on the pup that he doesn’t realize that for a while.)

He panics, obviously, because he was so sure that his parents not loving him was a them issue, that he would be different. He and Eddie were so excited to be parents, he was so happy right after he gave birth and when he held his little baby for the first time. What happened, is he broken? Are Harringtons cursed to hate their children?

He puts on a really good show of pretending nothing is wrong. Such a good show that Eddie doesn’t even notice - though that’s also from his new father exhaustion, he forgets to put socks on most days so it’s not his fault. Robin is the first one to notice. She had been away for work and had been calling all the time to talk but she had finally been able to go home. She didn’t even go to her house, she went to Steve and Eddie’s place with all her luggage to see her little niece. At this point it’s been a month or so and after seeing both of them for about an hour she starts getting suspicious. Then she sees Steve barely flinch when the baby cries from their room and she corners Eddie about it. He says he doesn’t know what she’s talking about but he’ll watch Steve closer.

Now that he’s looking he starts to see what she meant. Steve hesitates at night when the baby cries, if only for a breath before he gets up. His smile drops when he thinks Eddie isn’t looking and he’s holding the baby.

It all culminates in Eddie going out to grab dinner for them and when he comes back Steve is holding their daughter and both of them are sobbing. They end up having a long talk and Steve admits to all the feelings he���s been hiding. He expects Eddie to hate him but Eddie just wraps his arms around them both and tells him he’s going to take Steve to see his doctor.

The doctor’s appointment changes a lot for Steve. Some things are slow, the overall exhaustion and apathy, the connection with his baby, the happiness. But some are fast, especially the guilt. When his doctor tells him that many moms experience these sorts of symptoms, that it doesn’t sound like he doesn’t love his baby, he just needs some help, Steve starts crying from the relief.

And then a few months later, when Steve realizes that he’s been so happy to see his baby every day for days now, he cries a little too. The Harringtons may have been cursed, but the Munsons aren’t.

everytime one of you brings up postpartum depression omega steve, i take 100 damage

[artiststarme]

Steve could always see the dead, since his grandma died when he was six and his papa when he was seven. He’d have conversations with them at the side of his pool about his day until the breeze swept them away. He’d always liked the dead more than the living, not that people would understand if he’d told them.

He’d sometimes go out and sit in his pool chairs to talk to Barb, the girl that hated him alive and even more now that she’d died. She never blamed him though. She’d rant and she’d rave about the injustice of it all but unlike Nancy, she never blamed him for her death. She just let him listen to her dreams and hopes that would never occur.

After Vecna and their last encounter with the Upside Down, Steve would talk to Eddie. They’d lay side by side in his bed surrounded by plaid and talk about what could’ve been. Big metal tours, traveling, dreams being made, guys, girls, even the kids on occasion. They’d even talk about what they could’ve been, once upon a time. But when night turned to day, Eddie would fade away and Steve would be left all alone again.

He might be able to see both alive and dead but through it all, he was alone.

[dreamwatch]

Know When To Hold 'em

Written for @corrodedcoffinfest

Day #17 - Prompt: This One's For You | Word Count: 999 | Rating: T | CW: death of a parent, depression, grief, referenced drug abuse, alcoholism | POV: Steve | Pairing: Steddie | Tags: Wayne Munson, Eddie needs a hug, protective Steve, hurt/comfort

I'm sorry. :(

The first time it happened totally out of the blue.

It was their first big show in Indy, their home show, and of course Wayne wanted to be there, as much out of curiosity as anything. He didn’t hear a thing; Steve gave him a set of ear plugs and it was like he’d been handed a pot of gold. “I could have done with these years ago.” But he saw everything and he talked about that show to anyone that would listen, and a few that wouldn’t.

Eddie was over the goddamn moon about it so he told the audience, “My Uncle Wayne’s here tonight, everyone say 'hi Uncle Wayne!'” and five thousand people just— did it. Because Eddie asked them to. Even through the ear plugs Wayne heard it. Steve’s not sure he’s ever seen the old man blush before.

So it became a thing completely by accident. If Wayne was there they played The Gambler as the last song of the encore; like the flag at Buckingham Palace telling everyone the Queen was home: Uncle Wayne was in the house. The fans latched onto it straight away, and it was one of only a couple of songs that Eddie would sing. Wayne didn’t see the band play often but it didn’t matter where they were, the moment that song started up the crowd went wild; the roar of “Hi Uncle Wayne!” rolling through the audience before everyone sang along. And Wayne there at the edge of the stage shaking his head, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Eddie was in Germany when Wayne died. 

‘The best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep’, sang The Gambler, and that’s exactly what he did. Wayne would have got a kick out of that.

Breaking the news to Eddie was the most painful thing Steve’s ever had to do.

Tonight is their first night back after a two month hiatus. It feels too soon, but there are contracts, missed shows, obligations, and there’s only so much their manager can do to keep the label, promoters and lawyers away. 

Eddie’s dead eyed and lethargic; he’s started drinking again, Steve discreetly hid his pain medication when he noticed the bottle emptying faster than it should have. He sleeps with a belly full of Ambien and spends his day wrapped in Zoloft. Neither help.

But the show must go on, right? 

Despite everything, the grief, the fog of depression, when he walks out onto the stage he’s a supernova, the brightest of lights in the deepest of darks. He’s fucking dazzling. 

The crowd at the Market Square Arena are on fire, they explode when the band run on stage but Steve doesn’t miss the extra noise when Eddie gets out there. Eddie loosens up as the gig goes on, and by the end, when they take a bow together, he looks like a different man to the shell thats been haunting their home. 

There will be a crash later. Steve is already prepared for it.

The band come off drenched with sweat. Steve can see the pinched expression on Eddie’s face, the exertion after all this time lying around like a ghost has taken its toll on a body that has seen better days. But he still smiles at Steve as he hands off the guitar to his tech, his Sweetheart, only brought out for the encores now. 

“Was it okay?” Eddie asks him, towelling the sweat from his face.

“You were amazing,” is all Steve can manage right there, but he’s buzzing inside and there’s more he wants to say. But that’s for later, when it’s just them.

The band are handing off instruments, roadies scurrying around, breakdown already underway. There’s a lot happening, and you know, Steve’s hearing isn’t that great these days but there’s nothing wrong with his eyesight. He sees the little commotion over Eddie’s shoulder, the way people halt, ears pricking up like labradors. Jeff turns to Steve with wide eyes and Matt has stopped in his tracks. And then he sees the exact moment Eddie picks up on it, the furrowed brow, the soft tilt of the head.

The crowd are singing Wayne’s song.

Everyone stops. Roadies stand there like marionettes with their strings cut.

And Eddie…

He looks devastated, his hand flying up to his mouth like he’s trying to bury a sob, stopping the grief from breaking containment.

Steve can see the band over Eddie’s shoulder, heads nodding before they’re grabbing guitars back from their techs. He knows what they’re going to do, but there’s no way Eddie is up to it, they have to know that. Jeff slings an arm over Eddie’s shoulder, pulls him in, knocking his forehead against Eddie’s. And then Matty does it, Matty who doesn’t have a sentimental bone in his body, but Gareth is long gone, already running back onto the stage, crowd cheering at the sight of him, before Matty and Jeff follow him out. And they pick up where the crowd are and they play. Eddie usually sings it, but Jeff takes it tonight. 

Steve grabs Eddie’s hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. “C’mon,” he says, pulling Eddie toward the side of the stage.

Steve loved Wayne, so fucking much. And maybe with all the help and care Eddie needed afterward, still needs, maybe Steve didn’t get a chance to grieve properly. He feels the ache in his chest, before he notices the calloused fingers wiping his tears away.

“He loved you, Steve.” He can’t reply, just nods, and Eddie holds him like he should be holding Eddie. And then he’s gone, out on to the stage, back with his band. No guitar, just sharing a mic with Jeff and joining as much as the tears will allow. And then the music cuts, Matty and Gareth joining them at the mic, and it’s just voices, nineteen thousand and four. Corroded Coffin, arms slung across shoulders, singing Wayne’s song. 

Singing to Wayne.

Yeah... I went there.

So, I had this idea months ago and parked it because I didn't know what to do with it. And then this prompt came along and BOOM!

[flowercrowngods]

based on this concept of steve and mike coming out to each other

🤍 also on ao3

The sun is setting in beautiful hues of pink and purple, tinging the town of Hawkins, Indiana, in a light of serenity and beauty it doesn’t really deserve. Steve’s hands are gripped tight around the steering wheel as he carefully scans the road and the houses he passes.

He almost misses the bike where it’s lying on the curb, carelessly discarded by the looks of it, and a tinge of worry shadows his frown. Worry that doesn’t quite dissipate when he spots the figure sitting on the roof, almost black against the lilac colour of the sky, but he breathes a sigh of relief. He considers grabbing the radio to let the others know he found Mike, but decides against it. Something tells him that maybe they’ll take a while. Something tells him there’s more to Will’s stunned silence and Mike’s sudden departure from where they were all hanging out at Steve’s after another successful Hellfire session. 

With a sigh, Steve cuts the engine and gets out of the car, keeping his eyes on Mike the whole time — ready for him to take off again, ready to go sit a while and wait for him to come back. But Mike doesn’t move, even after he shuts the door and approaches the Wheelers’ house. He doesn’t acknowledge Steve when he pulls himself up to the roof, easier this time than the first time he did this. 

There’s a snide comment in the air between them, a version of Mike that would have lashed out at him, made fun of and insulted him. But this one just sits there, hands in his lap, frown on his face, and stares ahead. 

“What do you want,” he asks eventually, though it doesn’t have the kind of heat that Steve expects. He barely even sounds like a teenager. Just sort of… dejected. Steve aches for him; just a little bit. 

“Just making sure you’re alright,” Steve says, shrugging, looking ahead as well so Mike doesn’t feel watched. Or seen, maybe. 

Because the thing is, Steve does see him. He sees the way he looks at Will sometimes, and the way his eyes fill with something that can only be described as yearning, or aching, followed by regret and fear. Which always, always turn into anger. Into frustration. Into snide comments and rolled eyes and walls that keep getting an inch added to them each day. It’s never directed at Will, that anger, and rarely at the rest of the Party, but Steve still sees it. Gets the worst of it and takes it, because he knows something about how that feels. 

He knows something about looking at someone like that, about feeling that fear, that regret, that worry that come with it. He knows something about never really daring to meet someone’s eyes for fear of what they would see. 

“I’m alright,” Mike says, sounding anything but. There’s a bitterness in his voice. Frustration in the way his thumb is picking at the skin of his fingers. Confusion in the tension of his shoulders, and Steve feels like he only needs to make one wrong move, say one wrong word, make a single sound that’s off key to the melody of this moment, and Mike will jump off the roof and take off again with his bike. 

So all he says, after a moment’s consideration, is, “Cool.” Like he believes him. Giving Mike room to breathe, room to pretend. He knows something about that, too. 

He knows and he sees and he feels. 

And suddenly he wants to say something he’s never said before, something he didn’t even get to tell Robin because she knew and saw and felt, too, taking something from him that he hasn’t yet been ready to reclaim for himself. 

And maybe it’s because he sees something of himself in the way Mike holds himself, in the way he snaps at anyone willing to listen, in the way he frowns in regret and barely meets anyone’s eyes except when it’s in challenge — and, most of all, in the way he never, never meets Will’s eyes. In the way he looks away when the other boy turns to him, and in the way his eyes will snap back and take in everything about his best friend when he’s not aware of it. 

Maybe it’s because the sky is pink and lilac and purple above them, allowing for a certain magic to happen, allowing for a bravery that doesn’t come easy to him; but as he sits on the roof next to Mike Wheeler, the only one of the Party he never really connected with, he closes his eyes against the breeze that catches in his hair and opens his jacket a little further, slithering beneath the fabric as if in a brief embrace, a nudge, a sign to take this leap, and takes a deep breath. 

His heart is picking up its pace inside his chest, taking this leap along wit him, and pulls up one of his legs to wrap his hands around it — just to have something to hold onto. 

He opens his mouth once, twice, three times, but the words never really come out. They don’t know how, and he’s beginning to tremble a little with it, tension building in his chest where the words are still locked away, hidden among layers of truth. 

Mike looks over with a frown and eyes him warily. It makes Steve want to laugh, this sudden change of pace, but he just keeps staring ahead; even when Mike asks, “Are you alright?” 

“Yeah,” Steve says. And then then dam is broken and breaking further, and with another deep breath, still not meeting Mike’s eyes, instead focusing on the tree tops in the distance that shine in hues of purple, he finally says, “I’m kind of dating Eddie Munson.” 

And just like that, it’s out. He’s out. 

He doesn’t know if the world still spins, if time still passes, if he still breathes, because for a moment there is only silence. Mike stops picking at the skin of his fingers, Steve stops trembling, and neither of them moves. 

It’s both anticlimactic and momentous, this silence between them when their eyes meet. When the words unfold and grow wings, when Mike understands, his eyes growing big with something that Steve can’t quite read with how tense he is despite his best efforts. 

The silence stretches between them, surpassing comfort and overstaying its welcome, and suddenly it’s Steve who feels like he’s about to take off if Mike so much as twitches his brows. 

“You… What?” 

Forget it, Steve wants to say. Nothing. 

But also, I’m in love with Eddie Munson. And I used to be in love with Nancy. And that’s okay. Both of that, it’s okay. 

He ends up repeating his words, though, because they know what it’s like to be spoken now. “Eddie. I’m kind of dating Eddie.” 

“But…” It’s Mike now whose mouth is opening and closing without saying anything. Mike who’s blinking, trembling a little, twitching, picking at his skin again, moving further along his hand this time to pinch the skin between his thumb and pointer finger. Steve almost reaches out to stop him, but he doesn’t really dare to. 

“But?” he prompts after a while, not quite comfortable with this loaded kind of silence. 

“Eddie’s a boy.” 

But Tammy Thompson is a girl. 

“I know,” Steve says, his tone carefully neutral, wanting to see, to wait where Mike takes this, to hear what’s on his mind, to watch the wheels turn and the gears shift. He feels awfully raw and open, vulnerable with someone who hasn’t been treating that with care yet. But there’s something about this moment that feels bigger than his own fears, bigger than the light nausea settling in his gut; far more important than the way he wants to run and hide, away from the scrutiny. 

“And…” Mike continues, still battling the words inside his head. Steve wonders if there are too many or none at all. “But you… You loved Nancy.” 

Ah. Smart boy. “I did,” Steve says with a small smile. “And it was never a lie. But I found that… Yeah, I can kinda like boys, too, y’know? And that’s, like, okay.”

A beat. A frown. A confused, hopeful, small, “It is?” 

Steve just nods, smiling in reassurance and relief at equal measures. Silence settles once more, now that the sky has darkened into a deeper, darker blue; but it’s not as loaded this time, not as tense. It’s an invitation. An offering. A promise of I’m here, I’m with you, you can take as long as you need. To get down from the roof, to come back, to come out of wherever you think you need to hide from the world. 

Mike takes it. He stays, pulling up his leg, too, mirroring Steve’s pose and staring ahead, but not as far away. He seems alert, seems to be thinking rather than dwelling, seems to be gearing up for something. Steve watches and sees and knows, remaining patient beside him, his chin resting on his knee as Mike learns to deal with this new world that has been presented to him. This new world that comes with opportunities and chances and possibilities that are scary and big and difficult to make. 

“Y’know,” Mike starts at last, interrupting the silence, playing with it, his voice hushed and quiet to keep it from disappearing completely. “Lucas, when he had that championship game? He told us, Dustin and me, that we didn’t have to be the losers this time. The nerds. The outcasts. Different. And all I wanted was to scream at him, because…” 

Mike swallows his words, keeping them from tumbling out of his mouth, and Steve aches for him again. He wants to reach out, wants to say it’s okay, tell him it’s alright, to take his time. But he waits in silence, lets Mike find the bravery he needs on his own, and waits. 

“Because how could he say that, you know? How could he, when… Will wasn’t there. And all I did, all I ever did anymore, was miss him. And I loved El, I knew I did. And she was gone, too, but…” 

He trails off again, and this time Steve picks it up. To let him know he’s not alone. To let Mike know he understands what he’s saying. He understands. “But she’s not Will. You needed Will.” 

“But I shouldn’t!” Mike explodes suddenly, riled up because Steve adds fuel to the fire, because Steve has that same fire, too; and because they are so, so similar when they want to be. “And now he’s back and it should be fine, I shouldn’t be feeling like this, it doesn’t even make sense! How can I…” 

Steve looks at him, at his expression that is nothing but lost — completely and utterly. He’s seen it on the bathroom floor at the mall; high out of his mind as he was, he’ll never forget the way Robin looked at him, the sheer crestfallen expression. All that confusion, all that fear and frustration and, in the end, resignation. He’s seen it in the mirror, and he’s seen it in those pretty brown eyes that he just can’t get out of his head anymore. 

He offers, gently, “How can you need him when he’s right there? How can you love him when a year ago you loved El?”

And Mike just looks at him before he deflates completely, his shoulders falling along with his face. He nods. Shrugs. Looks away and hides his face behind his leg. 

Steve sighs softly, watching the boy and speaking the words he wants to say the sixteen year-old version of himself. “I don’t know,” he says truthfully. “I really don’t, and it sucks sometimes, having this need to, like, decide. Or understand. Or stop and be like the rest of them.” Like Robin and Eddie, or like the rest of the world. “But I like to think, sometimes, that maybe it’s a good thing. That there’s just… I don’t know, it sounds corny as hell, but like, there’s just so much love to give, we can’t even stick to only boys or girls, y’know.” 

“That does sound real corny as fuck, man,” Mike says, and back is that long suffering tone of his, back is that eye roll and the twitching elbow, ready to nudge Steve in the side. It’s still tinged with that vulnerability, not quite Mike yet, but it’s an offering.

One of many tonight, it seems.

Steve grins, a bit lopsided and raw, shoving Mike gently as he remembers something he overheard once. “Sorry, mister Heart of our group, but I don’t think you have any leg to stand on here.”

That makes Mike freeze, though, and he stares at Steve wide-eyed; caught. Exposed. Reminded.

“What did you say?”

“Uh,” Steve falters, not sure where he went wrong — or if he went wrong at all. “I overheard Will calling you that, talking about you to, uhm. Someone. I don’t know. Why, what’s— What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Mike says, way too quickly, pulling away again with everything he has, hiding behind those walls once more, and Steve feels whiplash from it.

“Mike,” he says, his voice quiet and gentle as he turns to face him completely.

“No.”

“It’s okay,” Steve says. Promises, as much as he can.

“Shut up!”

“You’re not wrong or bad or broken. It’s okay, you’re okay.”

“I said, shut up, Steve.”

“You should see the way he looks at you, too. You should go talk to him. You—“

Mike lashes out, finally coming out from behind those walls again, only to shove at Steve, to push him away — hard enough for him to lose his balance and almost fall off the roof, clenching one hand on the edge, the other in the rainwater gutter with a bitten-off curse.

“Shit, I’m sorry!” Mike reaches for him immediately, snapping out of whatever anger Steve caused, and pulling him back until he’s safe again, apologising over and over, dead to Steve’s promises that it’s alright. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, Steve, I’m so—“

He pulls Mike against his chest, finally reaching out to hold the boy who always pushes people away when they get too close — quite literally, too.

But he doesn’t shove this time, doesn’t move out of Steve’s grasp as the mumbled apologies become heaving sobs.

“It’s okay, you’re okay, you’re so okay, Mike,” Steve tells him over and over as he holds him. The sky above is almost black now and Steve lets Mike cry into his chest.

It takes a while for Mike to calm down, but Steve just holds him through it, ready to let go whenever Mike wants to pull back and snap out of it again — but he never does, and Steve feels a certain kind of affection for the boy that is usually reserved for Lucas or Dustin.

At last, when he’s calmed down, Mike pulls back a little. “Do you really… Does it… Is it really okay?”

Can it be okay? Can I really like both? Is that not just me, being broken and wrong and bad? Will I get the chance to not be alone?

Steve swallows hard, and his voice is hoarse when he says, “Yeah. It’s really okay. ‘N’ I’m with you, yeah? If someone gives you shit for it. Or if you need a reminder.”

And Mike — puffy eyed, snotty nosed, so, so young — looks at him with those trusting eyes and nods, like he believes Steve. Like he trusts him. Like he hopes.

“Just don’t fucking shove me off your roof again.”

Ans just like that, the spell is broken, the tension is lifted, and silence has left them, as Mike almost chokes on a laugh and shoves at him again, lightly this time, before jumping off the roof so Steve can’t retaliate.

“Asshole,” he mutters, shaking his head as he, too, jumps off the roof, dusting off his pants as he watches Mike grabbing his bike. “Hey, Micycle,” he calls, cackling when Mike flips him the bird. “You want a ride back?”

Mike stops, considering as Steve casually flicks his keys into the air and catches them expertly. “What kinda music do you got?”

“The Clash, ‘cause Eddie hates them.”

“Yeah, that’s because they suck!”

Steve snorts, opening the driver’s side door. “Y’know, they’re one of Will’s favourites, actually.”

He watches Mike freeze with a grin on his face, knowing there’s no way the boy would take the bike.

“You’re so annoying,” Mike sighs as he brings his bike close to the garage and carefully lays it on the grass this time before hurrying over to Steve, getting in on the front, rolling his eyes when Steve cackles. “I don’t know why Eddie would date you—“

His words are drowned out when Steve turns up Train in Vain, drumming along on the steering wheel with a shit eating grin. Though the atmosphere is wildly different now, the spell broken and the bubble burst, it’s undeniable that something happened between them. Something big, something important.

Something that makes Mike’s annoyed, long-suffering expression be broken by the smile he’s trying to hide. It makes Steve laugh, elated and feeling something that’s much, much bigger than he himself ever could be.

It’s going to be okay. So, so okay.

Before they know it, they’re pulling up to Steve’s and he turns off the car, is about to get out when Mike makes him still again.

“Hey, Steve?”

“Hm?”

“I think it’s cool. You and Eddie.”

He smiles, relief and fondness washing over him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.” He reaches over and ruffles Mike’s hair — a wild mane these days, but they could make it work with some care and some products. “Now go get your man, lover boy.”

“God, you suck so much, you’re so annoying!”

Steve’s cackling again when the passenger door slams shut and Mike lets himself into his house.

He spots a figure in the dark, their face lighting up when they take a drag of a cigarette — and Steve’s heart stumbles in his chest. He scrambles to get out, attempting to look calm and collected, even though Eddie always manages to see right through him.

“Hello, stranger,” he says, leaning against the wall beside Eddie, hiding away in the dark, where the world won’t see their shoulders touch, or their fingers tentatively playing with each other before they can’t take it no longer and lace their hands, holding on tight.

“Hi,” Eddie breathes. “How’d it go?”

“Fine, I think. But, uhm… I told him. About me. About us. That, uh. That okay?”

Even in the dark, Steve can feel eyes on him, but he just stares ahead, opting instead to give his warm hand a squeeze. He smiles when Eddie’s thumb begins to draw patterns on his palm.

“Hmm. Very. You think they’ll be okay?”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, stealing Eddie’s cigarette from his mouth and pulling it between his own lips. “Yeah, I think they will be.”

[suspiciouslackofclowns]

Steve is normally pretty good at bouncing back from things. Minor inconveniences and catastrophic disasters alike, and then some.

Today is the fourth day in a row that Billy has come home to find him tucked into bed before five o’clock has even come to pass, when the sun is still a while off from setting and the crickets have yet to chirp.

It’s safe to say that whatever he’s hit must be sticky, because the bounce back isn’t coming anytime soon either.

Billy goes about his routine as usual. Unlaces and kicks his boots off by the door, empties his pockets on the entryway table, and makes for the bedroom.

The first tell-tale sign that something’s wrong is the darkness in the kitchen — nothing heating on the stove or in the oven, no spices lingering in the air or onion skins piled on the counter. Steve will open the windows and busy his hands washing vegetables in the sink, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood as he pours through one of several cookbooks, trying to make something new and interesting.

It’s part of his evening routine. Helps him decompress, in a way, because he can focus on the words on the page and using his hands without having to talk or listen to anything but the calm sounds around him.

Then once Billy gets home, he blabs on and on about whatever comes to mind, and Billy listens as he eats whatever’s been made.

It makes for a good night when Steve cooks.

When he hasn’t, like tonight, a significant ripple disrupts Billy’s routine. Only he couldn’t give two shits about the food being ready when he gets home.

He gently knocks on the doorframe before he pushes the door open, letting a rectangle of light spill into the room. A sliver of it touches the bed, enough to highlight a partial figure under the covers, and Billy’s brows crease together as he slowly approaches.

“Hey, Stevie,” he coos. Sits on the edge of the bed and reaches a hand out to feel over the blanket, palm resting against Steve’s bicep. “Long day again?”

“Mm,” Steve hums.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t beg for a kiss like he usually does, and Billy frowns.

“You okay?”

“Mm.”

“Did I do something? Feel like I haven’t seen you all week…”

For a few beats, Steve just lays there. Then, he sighs.

“No.”

“Then what’s wrong? I’m walkin’ on eggshells here because I’ve felt like you’re pissed at me.”

“Didn’t ask you to,” Steve grumbles.

Billy furrows his brows.

“Well, shit, Harrington, I’m glad we cleared that up. Next time I feel like caring about my boyfriend, I’ll just go fuck myself instead.”

He stands up and steps toward the door, stopping before he’s crossed the threshold. Behind him, he hears a sniffle, and sighs as he rubs a hand over his face. Turns back around and makes his way to the bed again.

“‘Kay, I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry,” he says. Sits back down and fiddles with his ring on his middle finger. “I’m worried about you, baby, but I can’t help if you don’t talk to me.”

It’s quiet between them for a moment. Steve sniffles again, and there’s movement under the covers — presumably him lifting his hand to smudge the tears away from his eyes.

Billy scoots closer and sets his hand on Steve’s arm again for reassurance, rubbing softly up and down.

“I’m just— I feel useless, I guess. I don’t know,” Steve says.

His voice is low and raw. Vulnerable. Billy wonders if he’d been crying before he came home.

“Feel useless how?”

“I don’t… I don’t have anything. I’m nothing.” Steve lets out a shaky sigh and curls closer to himself. Billy’s expression drops. “I’m not smart enough to go to school and make a future for us, and, like, I know working minimum wage isn’t bad, but I want to… I want to have more for us than this, y’know? I’m a failure at everything I fucking try, and I’m scared this is it.”

The brunet chokes out a hushed sob. Turns his head to bury his face in the pillow to muffle the sounds of his strangled breaths.

Billy leans over his partner in a half-hug, laying his head on his shoulder and pressing him down into the mattress. It has Steve taking a somewhat slower, somewhat calmer breath. The first of more to come.

“How long have you been feeling like this?”

Steve swallows thickly, and his throat clicks.

“A while,” he manages. “I try not to think about it.”

“Sweetheart, not thinking about it isn’t gonna help you. Trust me, been there.”

Below him, Steve huffs.

For the first time in a while, Billy’s mind wanders to places he thought were forgotten. Closes his eyes and nuzzles his cheek against Steve’s shoulder as he rubs over his back.

“Y’know, I never told you this before, but I used to think I was unlovable. Wasn’t anyone’s first choice for my whole life ‘til I met you,” he murmurs. Steve’s breathing slows, and Billy spreads a little smile. “If you don’t have anything, Steve, you have me. I’d choose you and our shitty apartment over some sugar daddy with money and a mansion any day of the week.”

Steve sniffles.

“Yeah?” he rasps.

“Mhmm, and you’re not a failure, and you aren’t stupid. Just ‘cause you have hobbies that you don’t make money off of doesn’t mean you aren’t talented either — your customer service skills are honestly scary and I think I’d gain five hundred pounds if you got any better at cooking.”

Billy cracks a grin when Steve snorts. Turns his face downward and kisses his shoulder.

“Five hundred pounds, huh?”

The blond quirks a playful brow.

“How many servings do you have to make when you cook for us, Bambi?”

“I dunno, like, four?”

“And how much do we usually have leftover?”

There’s a short pause, and then Steve chuckles.

“None.”

“Uh-huh, exactly.” Billy props himself up on his hands and gently pushes Steve’s shoulder until he rolls onto his back. “You’re smart, you’re passionate, you’re somebody, okay? If anyone ever tells you otherwise, I’ll buy a gun.”

Steve laughs, and Billy leans down to kiss just below his jaw.

“You’re a dork.”

“No, I just love you.”

Arms slide out from beneath the covers and drape around Billy’s neck, guiding him closer.

“I love you too.”

Steve tilts up into a kiss when Billy lifts his head. The blond hums against him, chewing his lip when they part.

“Wanna come heat something up and cuddle on the couch?”

Steve shrugs, his eyes lingering on Billy’s lips in the short distance.

“How about we order out and take a shower? You smell like motor oil.”

“You like it when I smell like motor oil.”

Fingers card into Billy’s hair, and he exhales a small sigh when they tug lightly.

“I like scrubbing it off of you even more, though,” Steve lilts.

Billy snickers and brushes their lips together again, melting down into his partner like sugar in a sun-warmed glass of tea. When they part, he lingers close, mere millimeters away from sharing another kiss.

“Lead the way, pretty boy.”

[blue-blue-blooms]

When Love Isn't Enough

Steve Harrington x Henderson!Reader

Part 1

1.6k words

Summary: Steve can feel you pulling away. You haven't been yourself in a while, becoming more and more withdrawn. It doesn't help that there's an evil wizard on the loose and you meet the checklist for the perfect prey.

Warnings: Some angst. Talks of depression, loneliness, and suicidal ideation.

"Y/N hasn't been herself lately. And, I don't know, she's been pulling away recently. Not physically. More, like, she's there but she isn't. She's in the room with me and she's pretending to listen, but I can tell she's thinking about something else. And it isn't like she's bored or, like, daydreaming, she just seems...distant. She keeps saying she's fine, but I know that she's not. I mean, she thinks I haven't noticed, but she doesn't eat much anymore. She barely sleeps and she claims it's because of school, or work, or whatever excuse she has...Robin, are you listening to me?" Steve rambles, one hand on the steering wheel and the other running through his hair in frustration, as he drives Robin to the pep rally. 

"Yes, yes, I'm listening!" Robin exclaims, desperately trying to keep her hand steady as she applies her mascara. 

"Really? What'd I just say then?" Steve asks.

"Something about how obsessed you are with Y/N and the smell of her hair," Robin guesses, immediately backtracking as she sees the look on Steve's face, "I'm sorry! But there's always so much going on in your love life. I can't fully grasp the labyrinthine complexity that is your and Y/N's relationship!"

"It's not that complex, I'm worried about her!" Steve says, "Like just today, she calls me and says not to drive her and Dustin to school because they're biking. She doesn't even own a bike!"

Robin stops applying her makeup for a second and looks over. Realizing the severity of Steve's emotions, she lets out a little sigh and gives him a gentle nudge with her hand. 

"I'm worried about her, too" She confesses, "I don't think she's mentioned this to anyone so please don't bring it up with her, but her grades have been slipping. A lot."

"Really?"

"Yeah, and I've seen her at the counsellor’s office" Robin admits.

"Ms. Kelley?"

Robin nods. 

"Well...Why didn't she say anything to me?" Steve asks, his face falling as he tries to come up with reasons as to why you aren't opening up. 

"I...I don't know. She hasn't been speaking to me, either. We sit together during lunch, but she barely talks to me. I just talk at her, and she just sits in silence," Robin replies, "Have you tried bringing this up with her?"

Steve pauses for a bit then says, "No...I didn't wanna push her. It just feels like...like she's teetering on the edge these days, and if I say the wrong thing, she'll run."

♡♡♡

Most days start like this: you wake up gasping for breath, one hand on your chest and the other stifling your sobs. Another nightmare. Sometimes it's about the Russians, sometimes it's about finding a Demogorgon eating your cat, sometimes it's about Billy and the Mind Flayer, sometimes it's about losing Hopper, but every time it hurts just as bad. You wish you hadn't gone to Mike Wheeler's that day to check up on Dustin. You wish you hadn't found out about Eleven or the lab or the Upside Down. But everything in your life is so deeply intertwined that you would have found out one way or another. It's beyond you how everyone else in Hawkins has remained so oblivious. 

Even though you wish you could rewind and take back every moment that led you to where you are now, you know in your heart that you wouldn't. If it wasn't for all the shit you had to go through, you wouldn't have the people you have now. You wouldn't have ever befriended Nancy Wheeler. You would've never met Robin Buckley. You and Dustin would never have grown as close as you are now. You wouldn't have the golden-dusted, happy memories that you made last summer with Max and El. You never would've learned how to play DnD with Will. And you never would have fallen in love. 

You never saw Steve coming. Well, you did see him coming that day when you and Dustin were at the Wheelers looking for everyone. He had roses in his hands, and he was mumbling to himself. For a second, you thought he'd caved into the insanity of what he'd gone through and lost his mind. 

"Are you talking to yourself?" you'd asked loudly, making him quickly turn around, "Do you need help?"

"What? No! I was just-" he'd stuttered, "What're you two doing here? Actually, who are you?" The last question was directed at you. 

"Who am I? The bitch that sat behind you in English for two years. I've been lending you pencils for months. Are you serious-" you'd snapped at him, a little offended at him for not recognizing you. 

"We don't have time for this!" Dustin yelled, interrupting you, as he took your hand and dragged you to Steve's car. 

You always laugh a little when you remember that particular memory. It wasn't the first time you two had met (maybe for Steve) but it was the first time you'd both become aware of each other. And it was like something had clicked into place because now that you both knew each other, you couldn't drift away. Suddenly Steve was everywhere. The summer after El's bitchin new makeover and the whole debacle that was closing the gate to the Upside Down, you and Steve spent every day together. He'd started working at Starcourt and you worked at the Kiosk across from him, which meant you saw each othera lot. Soon, those days of eating free ice cream in the back turned into shy glances, nervous laughter, and stolen kisses. You were his and he was yours. It was almost perfect. Almost. 

Because even with all this love, joy, and friendship, you can't forget that you're rotten to your core. That there is something deeply wrong with you, something gory and disgusting that's been eating you alive. You don't know how to tell Steve that he doesn't know. If he knew you, he'd leave you. You're so broken inside that it's almost comical. Every day starts and ends with a nightmare. Then the headaches. Sometimes the nosebleeds. Always the loud voices in your head reaffirming the beliefs you have of yourself. You're not good enough. Never have been. You're a fraud. Always have been. You don't know what's worse, when you can't breathe or when there's too much oxygen. 

You call Steve and tell him you don't need a ride. Then you make Dustin bike to school, and you wait for your mother to leave for work before climbing back into bed. These days, it was getting harder and harder to do the mundane, everyday tasks. You couldn't get out of bed. You couldn't take a shower. Everything required willpower that you just didn't have.

God, I'm so pathetic. 

You've nearly fallen back asleep when you hear a knock on your door. You ignore it, hoping whoever it is goes away. The knocking continues, growing louder and louder. You let out a curse and hop out of your bed, begrudgingly going to the front door. You open the door and find Steve standing outside. 

"I knew it!" He exclaims, "Why aren't you in school?"

You don't have the energy for this. You just want him to leave. 

"I'm sick," you lie, adding a half-assed cough, "You should be at work."

"If you were sick then why didn't you just say that when you called this morning?" Steve enquired, folding his arms across his chest, and raising an eyebrow. 

"I got sick after" you shrug, "How'd you know I wasn't in school."

"Dustin, he called about some DnD shit and mentioned you weren't in when I asked why you couldn't play," Steve explains, his eyes scanning your face, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," you say.

"No, you're not" Steve replies, coming in through the door and making his way into your room. You silently follow and fall back into bed. 

"Baby, what's going on?" Steve asks softly, getting into bed behind you and laying down.

"Just a headache," you mumble, "I'm fine."

You feel him padding his fingers through your hair and you find yourself lulling back to sleep. But before you can, you hear him start to speak again.

"Not just today, Y/N. What's going on with you? You haven't been yourself lately."

You don't know how to answer this. How do you articulate the absolute mess that is your mind? How do you tell him that you feel like you're on the verge of going insane? How do you tell him that all you feel is agonizing despair and the only reason you're alive is because you're too much of a coward to die?

"I just...haven't been feeling well," you say, "Just haven't been doing so well."

"How can I help? Can I do anything?" Steve asks, holding you close as he brushes the hair out of your face and lays a soft, lingering kiss on your forehead.

"I don't think anyone can fix it," you reply, turning to face him.

The sun peeks through your blinds and you can just about make out his face in the dark. You lean over and softly kiss him. He's everything that you're not but you're too selfish to let go.

"I just wish you'd speak to me, tell me what's going on in your head. I just feel locked out, baby." Steve whispers.

The only response you can manage to give is a mumbled sorry. But there's so much more you'd like to say. Sorry that you're stuck with me, you deserve better. Sorry that I'm like this. Sorry that I'm this broken, this wretched. Sorry that I've fooled you into thinking I'm better than I am. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

You close your eyes and lay your head on his chest. In the darkness of your room, you pray that this moment lasts forever. But as another nightmare sinks its claws into you, you're not sure if you'll make it out alive.

[steviewashere]

My Scars are Hiding (My Branches Don't Show)

Rating: Teen and Up CW: Suicidal Thoughts, Depression From a Young Age, Depression Tags: Post-Canon, Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hopeful Ending, Depressed Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington's Mother is a Sweetheart, Steve's Mom is Depressed, Eddie Munson Has Depression (Implied/Referenced), Eddie Munson is a Sweetheart, Cuddling & Snuggling, They Love Each Other, Eddie Munson Comforts Steve Harrington This isn't great, fuck it isn't even good—just not how I usually write. But also, I've been feeling like muddled dog shit and this is the only way I can think to just get it out. So, yeah. It's probably not even all that complete, but it's something. Title is from "Take Me Down Easy" by James Henry Jr.

🫂—————🫂 Still laying in bed. Making marks in the ceiling. Wasting time.

There’s quiet. A gentle rush of wind against his bedroom window. Distant ticks of a grandfather clock he keeps forgetting to dust, a dog barking at something down the driveway, some rustles he can’t quite place. Low hums from the refrigerator. Just easy noise, easier than he’s used to.

His chest weighs. Concave between his pecs, digging in as if something has set itself where it doesn’t belong. Heavy. Too heavy. He takes a breath, but fizzles out with it—nostrils wheezing and mouth dry and his chest just…aching.

When he was little, he’d have days like this. Eight years old and laying down, lost in his bedsheets, eyes melting into his cheekbones, and his stomach hungry for anything. Sometimes, his mom would come in and brush the hair off his forehead, ask him sweet things—“Do you want Mommy to make you a grilled cheese? How about I take you out for some ice cream, huh?”—and those little moments were strange. He’d stare up at her from deep within his own pillowcase. There’d be something in her eyes. Something he couldn’t place then, but thinking of it now, it’s clear she was recognizing a sour part of herself; this sour part of herself now inherited in her only child. She was trying and that was something in its own right.

She hasn’t been home in a while. Off on another trip with his dad, the untrustworthy bastard. Trying to mend her marriage, calm her brain, keep her wit. They talk on the phone; hours long conversations—racking up that bill—passing love you like cold mashed potatoes. Still edible, still digestible, still nourishing even in the blandest way.

The last in-person conversation they had was about shit like this. This day, this feeling. They were sitting across from each other in the living room—him in the recliner, her on the middle cushion of the sofa. Glasses of iced tea on coasters. Television on just to make background noise. She asked him how he was doing. And for once, he didn’t lie. Looked at her. Desperate and honest and aching. He admitted it, this feeling.

And admitted, too, “I’ve been thinking of…what if I…Mom, what if I want to die?”

Silence stretched, much like it does now. The grandfather clock ticking and the gentle rush of wind and the dog and the refrigerator. And then she cried. Scooted closer, opened her arms, held him, and cried. “We’ll fix it. Let’s fix this. Okay, honey? Can’t lose you, you’re my baby.”

He wants her to fix it. Fix this pulsing, aching mass inside his chest—so thick and viscous and bloody. Heavy inside him, working its way through his throat, ready to burble out of his mouth.

Steve takes a breath, quietly gasps with it, but doesn’t move from the mattress.

He was supposed to be up a few minutes ago, already dressed, out the door. Going to Eddie’s home to pick him up. A date.

And yet. Jesus, here he is.

Here he is, melding into his mattress, mouth burbling and chest heaving. What if I want to die?

Time must pass, as it does when he’s like this, and within the distant quiet noises, his bedroom pushes open with subtle squeaks. He peers over and immediately cringes, guilt pooling under that pulsing mass—a blood puddle underneath this rawness. “Eddie,” he murmurs, voice crackling awful like a house on fire, “what’re you doin’ here?”

Eddie stands in the doorway, eyebrows furrowed deep on his face, arms at his sides, fidgeting with the chain on his wallet. “You didn’t…thought we had a date?”

He nods into his pillow. “I know,” Steve whispers, “was about to get up and get ready, promise.”

“You sure?”

Steve swallows rocks. Am I? He blinks and breathes and gasps—quiet still, but treacherous. “Yeah…yeah, Eds. Promise, okay? Just…just need a couple minutes.” His body is still stiff and his whole self aches something fierce, deep in his bones, under the fibers of his muscle. Fuck, can I—

“Did you sleep okay, Steve? You look…you look tired, sweetheart.”

A chuckle escapes him, humorless and awful. “Guess you could say that. Think I just need a few minutes and then I’ll get up.” He blinks at the doorway, Eddie’s timid figure. “You can come in, baby. I promise we’ll go.”

Bed-bound and waxy, Steve remains. This fixture in his bedroom, the way he will be, the place he’ll exist. And in this slimy bubble of self-loathing, of sacrilegious hatred, of suicidal despondency—Eddie encroaches. He settles himself on the edge of Steve’s mattress, barely close, hardly moving. But the bed dips and so he looks on.

Eddie’s face set with…concern and half-recognition. Something balmy in his eyes and his fingers ever tender as they reach across the comforter to trace the parts of Steve’s face that exist as nothing—no emotion, no explanation, just exhaustion. Some grief. He’s breathing slow and steady, easy in comparison to those gasping convulsions Steve keeps doing; a reminder of sorts to keep on because he forgets to do, to be.

He swallows as Eddie’s touch gets heavier. Mouth humid, grotesquely fuzzy, and gamey. The way it is when he hasn’t brushed his teeth in a few days, which is the case—the unfortunate case if they want to get any closer. His scalp tight and heavy from the weight of his unwashed, stringy hair. Malaise jagged in his stomach. There’s a film to him and despite it, Eddie still soothes him with the tips of his fingers.

And soon his palm, as it cups the left side of his face. Thumb running diagonal, then horizontal, then diagonal again in slow smears; as if attempting to work away the imperfections from a clay sculpture.

“Steve?”

He tries a hum, but it’s more of a croak.

“How are you feeling today? Be honest, baby.”

More rocks down his raw esophagus. “Dunno what words to use,” he says, “kinda like I’m not…” His eyes dart over Eddie’s soft, freckled, patient face. Dipping into the dark depths of his irises. Part of his mom is starting right back. “I’m not much of a person, Eds,” he finally murmurs—the words acidic and vile and staining black on his tongue, these horrid things to string together, and yet they come out calm as ever. Nonchalant as they’ve been for more than a decade, even when the words didn’t exist yet, and even when he was tired of defining them.

“Like you’re incomplete?” Eddie asks quietly.

Those careful words, spread across the mattress, cozied against Steve’s muddled brain. Ones that make sense in such a vastness of nonsense.

“Yeah,” he whispers and nods, “kinda like that.”

Eddie drags his palm away, smoothing it over Steve’s chest in the process—over his heart and his saturated lungs. Looking on at the wall across from him, eyes bouncing over the pattern, finding something. Then, when he grasps it, he stares back at Steve. With softness. With care. “These are always the worst days,” Eddie says, “they always just make me not wanna move. Not wanna care. Like, one time, I stayed in bed for a whole week! Wayne thought I was sick—which I guess I was—dude kept bringing me bowls of Campbell’s. The soup didn’t make me entirely better, but it was nice that he was trying.”

Steve settles his head deeper into the pillow, not quite moving closer, but something like. “You…you know what this is like?” Wordlessly, Eddie just nods at him. Still calculating Steve, though, carefully checking invisible boundaries. He sighs like an elderly dog. Quietly, “I’m glad you have Wayne.”

A wistful little smile. Dimples just making themselves known. “He’s great,” Eddie murmurs, “but I also know what it’s like to be alone through this. And…and, if you’ll let me, I’d like to try and keep you company, that okay?”

“But what about our date?”

“We can have our date here, no biggie. I’ll order in some pizza and we can hang out. If you aren’t able to bring your all, then I can bring my all to you. Figure out what works, get you feeling a bit better.”

In the face of Eddie’s optimism, it’s hard to say no.

It’s also hard to get the rest of him to spew. All the other swirling thoughts, ones he admitted to his mom, they won’t bubble like the rest of him. And maybe Eddie knows them, too. Maybe he understands that desire, those abyssal thoughts that seem to just swallow rather than swarm. Dragging him deeper into the cave of this murk that is him today—and yesterday, and the days before that one, too.

It’s hard to be a person. To just be anything. But if Eddie’s willing to just stay here, then—

“Are you okay with just sleeping, Eds?”

“Baby boy, I am the master of cuddling. You wanna sleep, then we sleep. If you wanted to go fucking ice skating right now, I’d take you. Seriously, sweetheart, I go with who you are and what you can do.” Blearily, Steve registers Eddie worming the sneakers off his feet—unlaced and so Eddie it makes him ache with something softer, sweeter, almost a cavity. Eddie grunts with the last tug of one of his sneakers. “So,” he breathes, “sleep? Big or little spoon?”

And he watches with a low lick of fondness in his chest as Eddie carefully slides himself onto the bed, right up next to Steve. Earnestly shining—glowing—at Steve like the sun shines out his ass, even like this. It’s not enough to mend him. Satiate the thoughts and the fog and the slime and the pulsing raw sphere inside him, but it’s certainly soothing him. Enough that he scoots over a little more, making more space between them.

Just so he can turn over on is side, his pale face and slick hair and sickly everything pointed at Eddie. “Little spoon, please,” he murmurs. Without much else to say—not that there are words to give, nothing to really say in the face of all of him today—Eddie is bringing him in. Encompassing him in his warmth, arms tight to his torso, snuggling his head into the rise and fall of his slimmer chest. His nose buried between scars and half-tattoos. Welcomed into Irish Spring soap and cheap cologne. Musk and sweetness. “I’m sorry we couldn’t have our real date, Eds,” he whispers into the hollow of his throat.

“Nonsense,” Eddie says back at the same volume, “this is real enough for me, sweetheart. Just you—no matter how much of you—right next to me is enough.”

“Okay,” he mutters, cozying in closer.

The wind gently rustles against the window and the grandfather clock ticks, a distant dog and other misplaced noises. And then, unexpectedly, the light smack of lips against his forehead—sticky and warm and pressing. “Okay,” Eddie whispers, “okay, baby boy.” Hands still on his back, firm in their hold, legs entangled with his, lips stuck to his temple.

Breaths, mingling air that settles—steady and warm and regular.

He sleeps.

🫂—————🫂

[bookshelf-dust]

let the light in

steve harrington x fem!reader

word count: 2,177

warnings: (this is a heavy fic! please be aware before you read if any of this is triggering for you!) swearing, reader suffers from depression/is in a depressive episode, allusions to passive suicidal feelings and self harm (not explicitly stated), trouble eating/drinking, wooziness, side effects of self-neglect, trouble with self care, one use of y/n, slight hair description—essentially reader is just very depressed

a/n: hello! it’s been quite a while since i wrote anything, but alas i have remembered how. i used this fic as a way to deal with things i’ve been going through and provide myself some comfort, but i’m hoping that it will reach anyone else who needs that or understands these sort of feelings. i really need a steve, and maybe you do too. please be kind! this is a tentative attempt at getting back into writing. also as a small note, this is meant to bet set in the mid 90s, so reader and steve are in their twenties. happy reading <33

————

The phone is ringing again. For the third time. 

You know who it is without having to answer. It’s not like there are a plethora of people with your number anyway. 

But for the third time, you let it ring. When the shrill noise stops, you think you’re in the clear—only for the sound of Steve’s voice to reach your ears. He’s leaving you a voicemail.

Fucking answering machine. 

You stare at the wall, your arm dangling off the bed, while you listen to him say everything you knew he’d say. That he’s worried. That he’s coming to check on you because your lack of an answer is freaking him out. 

And you gave him a key all those months ago, so it’s not like you can stop him. You wouldn’t have the energy to anyhow. 

You roll over and tuck your hands under your cheek. You have no idea what time it is, but the little light your curtains had let in is gone, leaving your room dark. There is a small night light though, just under your window, that Robin bought you because it looks like your favorite flower. Other than that, your small apartment has succumbed to the darkness of a winter evening.

That pressure behind your eyes builds, and without knowing why, you begin to cry. Steve is going to see you like this, and you want to be alone. You don’t have it in you to talk about it or be berated for letting yourself go. 

But you’re also angry. You don’t understand why he gives a shit about you, or why he can’t just leave you alone. Why he can’t just let you go. Why he won’t let you go.  

Most of all you’re angry at yourself for being this way. For being so fucked up. For being alone and for having to watch everyone else be happy and content. 

In your emotional haze, you fall back asleep. You’re not sure how though, considering you shouldn’t even need the rest anymore. But that tired feeling ever goes away, does it?

You wake to the sound of footsteps, to the feeling of your mattress dipping behind you. There’s a gentle weight on your side. Steve.

“Hey, honey,” he starts. “Did you get my message?” 

Steve’s hand rubs softly back and forth over the dip of your waist. You hate the pitying tone in his voice. Even if you know it’s not pity. It’s pain. He’s too big of an empath, and he hates seeing you this way. It breaks his heart, not knowing what you’re feeling and having to see you in a way that embodies nothing more than a shell of the you he first met. 

“You need to go home, Steve,” you say, refusing to face him. He’s turned your lamp on, and something about that pisses you off. 

Your voice is pleading, and it brings tears to Steve’s eyes. He pushes his glasses up onto his forehead. 

“You know I can’t do that. I won’t leave you here like this.”

You roll your eyes and shift onto your back. Steve’s stomach drops at how drained you look. 

“I want you to leave. I need to be alone,” you say, staring at his hand where it’s moved to your stomach with the change in position. 

Your words are harsh, thick with emotion, and you look at Steve like you’re begging him to see how much you’re hurting and need him to go away. You want him to listen and leave you here to slowly disappear. That’s all you’re asking for. So why can’t he give you that much? 

It’s killing him to see you like this. To watch you try and push him away. He knows that’s part of your plan. That way it’ll be easier, in the end. But this is not the you he’s always known. There was a time before it got this bad. Before you lost yourself in it. 

“When’s the last time you ate?” he asks, rather than fueling your frustration. 

You roll onto your side, completely facing him now, and pull the blankets up to your chin. Your eyes fill with tears, so you close them. Something about being asked that upsets you. You don’t feel like eating and he’s going to make you.

Steve puts a hand on your leg and waits for an answer. 

“Yesterday. At breakfast. I had a Pop-Tart.”

He keeps himself from sighing, but his heart might as well have dropped out of his ass. You haven’t eaten in 36 hours, and he’s sure that if he hadn’t shown up you might’ve made it more. You’re clearly not worried about eating, and there’s not a single cup in your room either.

“Please don’t make me eat, Steve. I don’t feel like it. Please don’t make me do anything.”

You look up at him with pleading eyes. You want to be left here until your body gives up on you.

“Honey, I’m not going to force you. But I came here to help you, and I need you to try and let me.”

Your vision goes blurry, tears rushing to the surface because the idea of taking care of yourself in any way upsets you more than anything. You cover your eyes, but can’t hold back the sob that lurches up your throat. 

“Y/N, sweetheart, come here.” 

Steve slips a hand around your back, coaxing you upwards. You oblige, happy to let him hold you for a moment. You ignore the fact that your vision blurs again, due to the fact that you haven’t sat up in who knows how long, and fall into him. 

“I can’t, Steve. I can’t do anything or remember a damn thing. I’m so tired. I don’t feel like being alive. I don’t want to move.”

Hearing you express those feelings through your cries, hearing you tell him how bad it’s gotten tears him apart. He wants to make it all better. He can’t bear seeing you like this. And he doesn’t want to imagine what you might’ve done to take these feelings out before he got here. 

Steve holds you until you stop wailing, and even when you pull away the tears still come, hiccups making you hold your breath. Your eyes are swollen and your nose won’t quit running. It doesn’t bother him one bit. 

“I know you probably don’t want to do anything, so I have a plan for you, okay? I’m gonna turn the shower on and let you hop in while I get you something small for dinner. I’m gonna take care of everything.”

You sigh. You can’t leave your bed. Besides, who knows if you’ll even be able to stand with how little you’ve put in your body lately.

You press your face into Steve’s shoulder and shake your head. “I don’t think I can.”

He places both hands gently on your cheeks and lifts your face to get you looking at him. 

“You can. I’m going to help, I promise. You won’t have to do anything too demanding.”

Steve slides off the bed and stands. He gently pulls the blankets back from your lap, revealing criss crossed legs and socked feet. He taps your knee and you brace yourself against the mattress, moving your legs over the side, toes feeling for the floor. 

He holds out his hands and you grab hold of his forearms, letting him pull you upwards. Just as suspected, your vision swirls and your body goes all tingly. You sway a little, but Steve holds onto you still, waiting for the moment to pass. After a few seconds, your sight clears, your ears stop ringing, and you can stand on your own. “I’m okay now,” you say. 

He presses a sweet kiss to your forehead, and your heart sinks into your stomach. You don’t deserve this. He needs to stop being so good to you when you’re falling apart.

“Stretch a little, alright?” Steve looks at you over his shoulder before going for your dresser and opening your pajama drawer. 

You try to do as he says, ignoring the way you feel compelled to tell him not to take this so seriously. You press your hands to your back and lean so your hips pop, raise your arms so your shoulders do the same, and bend so harshly that your vision goes out again. Your body is so angry with you.

You’d closed your eyes, but open them when you hear the shower start running. Steve leaves your small bathroom and walks toward you.

“I laid everything out for you, okay? You don’t have to stay long if you don’t want, you only have to cover your bases. You’ll feel so much better after, I promise.”

You nod, and Steve is surprised by the way you hesitantly walk into the bathroom and mentally prepare yourself to shower. 

“Yell if you need me,” he says, smiling before he closes the door behind you. 

You’ve never wanted to shower less in your life, but the water is already running, and you have to get it over with. You quickly undress, avoiding the mirror and anything that might cause an extra ache. Though you do run a hand over the tender skin of your thigh before opening the door and stepping in. You know you have to be kinder to yourself. 

As for bathing, you’re quick, but you wash and condition your hair and make sure to wash your body just as well. You’d never admit it, but being clean does help some. At least you’re physically taken care of. 

When you’re finished, you realize you hadn’t gotten a towel, but your eyes soon find what Steve had laid out for you.

Two towels. Underwear. Your robe. Clean pajamas and socks. Not to mention the lotion and hairbrush he slid forward on the counter so you’d reach for them. He did all of this to make things easier for you. And that makes your heart grow in size. 

You towel off and make the effort to put lotion on as best as you can. Usually you can haphazardly do your back on your own, but you’re so tired now, you realize. You haven’t moved this much in days. 

You gently pull the bathroom door open. “Steve?” you call. He’s there within seconds. 

“Yeah? All done, sweetheart?”

“Almost. Do you think you could put lotion on my back for me? I might need help with my hair, too. If you don’t mind.”

He smiles so sweetly at you. “Of course I don’t mind. Come on.” 

You watch as he pumps some of your lotion into his hands, sniffing it just to make you grin. You move your robe down off your shoulders so that he can get to your back, careful to keep your chest covered. Not that he’d dare look anyway. 

His hands are gentle and soft against the nape of your neck, up and down your spine, on your lower back. He covers the area for you, taking the time to massage it in and hopefully provide you a little relief. 

When he’s finished, you pull your robe up and tie it around your waist. You don’t have the chance to reach for your hairbrush because he’s already got it, fingers gathering your mass of hair towards your back. You can feel the heat of him behind you, and the ache for physical contact surfaces in your chest.

Steve is incredibly gentle when detangling your hair. He starts at the bottom and works your way up, apologizing each time it snags. It feels so nice, so mundane and comforting, that you close your eyes and let yourself feel his hands on your scalp, on your shoulders. You let him take care of you without complaint. 

When that’s over he allows you to finish dressing. You slip into the pajamas he’d chosen for you, not disregarding the fact that the shirt is one of his. 

You patter out to the kitchen, where Steve has fixed you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, cut into triangles. You sit next to him on your couch and eat in the quiet of the evening, you enjoying being less alone and him glad to see you eating. 

He takes your empty plate from you shortly after, noticing how sleepy you look. 

“Come on, honey. Let’s go lay down, yeah?” He helps you up and holds your hand on the way to the bedroom. He’d changed your sheets while you were showering.

You sit down on the bed, watery eyes looking up at him. “Are you leaving?” you ask.

“No, sweetheart. I was going to offer to stay.”

“Please. I don’t want to be alone.”

Steve slips into bed beside you. “You don’t have to worry. I’m right here.” He takes your pinky in his. “I promise you won’t have to suffer through this on your own. I’m not going anywhere.”

You squeeze your pinky against his, and in that moment, the pain in your chest eases just a little bit. 

————

please let me know if you liked this! feedback is always appreciated!! comments and reblogs mean more than you know. <33

[thissortofsorcery]

what about. what about billy experiencing seasonal depression for the first time after he moves to hawkins because he's from sunny california. and steve noticing and helping him through it with idk. companionship and winter fun. what then.

[delta-piscium]

When Steve and Eddie start dating Wayne pulls Steve aside and is like “I know this sounds odd but you’re gonna have to take him on walks every once in a while.”

And Steve is just like “?? Sir? He is not a dog?”

Wayne gives him a slightly haunted look, muttering “sometimes I wonder,” under his breath before clearing his throat and telling Steve to just trust him on this one. 

Steve thinks this is probably something Wayne had to do when Eddie was a child to get him out of the house but the man is a full-grown adult now, Steve is not gonna walk him.

He kind of forgets about it until one day. Eddie’s been staying at Steve’s for the week and he gets home from work only to find the kitchen absolutely wrecked. He finds Eddie in another room standing in a pile of books. He very slowly approaches him, putting his hands out and making his voice soft and as carefully as he can being like, “Hey, babe, what’s up?”

Eddie whips around, eyes big and wild, rambling almost too fast for Steve to understand. “I needed to make a cake but I didn’t have a recipe so I improvised and that did not work so I went to find a recipe and did you know there are like fifty-year-old medical books here? There are so many descriptions of gross stuff in them.” He waves one of Steve’s granddads old books around and Steve has to lean back to not get smacked by it. 

“Yeah… my granddad was a doctor,” he says all while eyeing him warily. 

His hair is frizzier than usual and he’s about to turn around to grab more books and Steve does not know what this is or what to do? Should he do something? That’s when he remembers what Wayne said about walks and the way he had looked, a bit stressed and disbelieving. It’s about how Steve is feeling right now so he might as well try, right?

So he grabs Eddie, pulling him along towards the door, making up the first excuse he can think of. “Speaking of my granddad, he built a tree-house for me in the woods behind the house, let’s go look.” 

He walks into the woods at the wrong opening, leading them kind of far in before turning around to wander and pretending to look. He finally steers them back to where the tree-house actually is, all in its tiny rotten glory, and right at the edge of the lawn.

“Guess it was closer than I remember,” he says with a shrug as if dragging Eddie around for twenty minutes insisting it was further in is in any way a believable mistake. 

Eddie gives him a look like he’s acting insane, which, okay fair but Eddie did start it. And anyways he looks better now, judgmental as all hell but better.

“Cool,” He eventually says then stomps back inside. 

Eddie spends the rest of the day making fun of Steve for getting lost in the woods where he grew up but he’s not climbing the walls anymore so Steve counts it as a win.

After that he brings Eddie on regular walks, tells him it’s because he doesn’t do sports anymore and needs to move, doesn’t always feel like running and it’s boring going alone. Eddie accepts it easily but also says it’s so weird because Wayne will also drag him along on walks, and, like, what about him attracts these people who need to go on walks all the time and can’t do it alone?

Steve and Wayne have a pact to never tell Eddie, they do not even want to imagine how that would go because Eddie is a drama queen at heart and their system is working (until years later when Steve and Eddie live together hours away and Steve goes on a trip with Robin, he comes back to Eddie on his way to turn their living room into a greenhouse)

[hbyrde36]

Caught in the Undertow

Chapter Six

WC: 4380 | R: Explicit | TW: Suicidal ideation/depression | Ch 6/10 | AO3

Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 <-

Steve watched the glow from the streetlights dance along the walls of his bedroom as a gentle breeze coming in through the open window sent his curtains fluttering.

The smell of tobacco smoke still clung to his shirt and hair from the cigarettes he and Eddie had shared out back. Normally he would have showered to avoid letting the odor settle into his sheets and pillow, but the usually acrid smell now just reminded him of Eddie, and he found himself turning over onto his stomach to press his face into it, breathing deep.

Which… okay. 

That—that was definitely not normal. And decidedly not something Steve had ever done thinking about a friend before. Sure he loved Robin, and the smell of her body spray was comforting and familiar, but he’d never felt the desire to roll around in it.

Of course, he’d never before felt a lot of the things he did where Eddie was concerned. 

And that whole interlude earlier with the cigarettes. He could pretend it was only due to the fact that Eddie’s lighter had been broken, but it would be a lie. It was unmistakably a move.

He’d pulled a move on a guy.

He’d pulled a move on Eddie Munson, and it’d felt like the most natural thing in the world.

It was as sure a sign as any that maybe it was time to let himself consider it, to let himself examine everything he’d been pushing to the side for way too long now.  

Steve cast his mind back to the first time he’d truly seen Eddie. Like he’d told Wayne, they’d been aware of each other in school, Hawkins was a small town after all, but they hadn’t actually interacted all that much. 

No, the first time Steve had looked—really looked—into those big sad brown eyes was in the boathouse, wide and terrified from the moment Eddie had jumped out from beneath that blue tarp, and pinned him against the wall. 

Steve had instantly recognized the pain in those eyes, the way it echoed his own, and before Eddie had even told his story he already knew there was no way the other boy was guilty of anything more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

In that moment something fiercely protective had settled in his chest. Right up there with Robin and Dustin, Nancy and the others, though he barely knew the guy at the time, Eddie’s name was penned in permanent ink on the growing list of people he would lay his life down to keep safe.

It only got worse from there. More confusing.

All throughout that awful week Steve had felt drawn to Eddie, completely unable to resist the pull. Anytime they were together—in the boathouse, walking through the Upside Down, sitting in the RV—he always found himself right next to Eddie, drifting into his space, or else searching out his gaze.

Those moments when they weren’t together, when they’d been forced to leave him behind to keep him hidden, Steve had been completely consumed with worry.

He almost lost it the day they came back to the boathouse to find Eddie gone and the place crawling with cops. Those few minutes before he managed to radio them from Skull Rock had been dark, leaving Steve ready to tear the entire town apart to find him.

But nothing could hold a candle to the way he’d felt on the night they’d nearly lost Eddie for good. When Steve had stupidly left him and Dustin behind to deal with the bats on their own. He’d convinced himself, or tried to, that it was Dustin his heart was breaking for when he didn’t find a pulse, as he desperately tried to keep Eddie’s heart pumping with his own two hands. 

But he realized now—and honestly, deep down he’d sort-of known even then—that it wasn’t the full truth.

In those hopeless moments his heart had shattered for Dustin and for the boy laying all but lifeless under the press of his palms. A beautiful soul who still had so much to offer the world. Steve mourned the lost potential, had shed tears for everyone who had ever loved Eddie. And yes, cried for his own loss too, and everything about himself that he hadn’t realized was there until it was almost too late.

Somewhere between the near-apocalypse, the hospital, and his own ill-fated party the other night, Steve had fallen—hard.

It was a shocking realization, but also, somehow, not surprising at all.

Maybe he should have felt some type of way about the fact that Eddie was a boy and that meant Steve was probably not as straight as he’d always assumed—okay, it definitely meant that—but somehow that realization was less of a concern than that fact that it was Eddie he had these feelings for. 

Eddie, who’d hated him less than twenty-four hours ago. 

Eddie, who had enough to deal with right now. 

Eddie needed a friend, not someone desperately crushing on him. He had so much on his plate already, and certainly didn’t need the added burden of Steve who was notoriously too clingy, too needy, just plain too much when he was in a relationship.

Relationship. 

Steve actually scoffed out loud at himself for the thought. As if Eddie would even be interested in him like that. It was ridiculous. They were polar opposites.

It would never work.

And yet, a part of him still thought they might just be perfect for each other.

Or maybe it would ruin everything.

He slipped out of bed and quietly tiptoed to the bathroom, splashing a bit of cold water on his face, deciding ultimately—after a brief panic at the thought of coming clean about it—that his little epiphany didn’t have to change anything. 

No one had to know. 

He could handle it. It would be no different than the months he’d spent pining after Nancy when they broke up, and eventually, just like with her, he’d get over it. They’d be friends and it would be fine, because that’s what Eddie needed right now.

A muffled bang and wordless shout sounded out somewhere in the house. It must have been pretty loud, or at least close by for Steve to have heard it from all the way up here. He stuck his head out the bathroom door, planning to sprint to his room for his bat before searching the house, until it happened again. A voice, coming from Eddie’s room, repeated heartbreaking cries of Dustin’s name.

Steve lunged for the door, hoping it wasn’t locked. 

It wasn’t, to his relief, and he rushed inside, stomach dropping at the sight of Eddie screaming and crying, thrashing around violently in his bed. 

A nightmare, it had to be. Steve had never really seen it from the other side before. Robin slept over from time to time, and she’d been struggling with insomnia off and on since her first foray into the dark side of Hawkins, but when she did manage sleep it was generally a peaceful affair. 

Lucky her. 

Or maybe not, because watching Eddie go through this now was frightening, and Steve knew Robin had seen him in a similar state more than once. 

He approached the bed, sitting on the edge of it as he took Eddie gently by the shoulders, shaking him lightly, hoping not to scare the guy any worse than he already was.

“Eddie?” Steve said softly. Then a little louder, “Eddie? Can you hear me?” 

Eddie’s eyes flew open and with a rough gasp he sucked air into his lungs like a swimmer who’d finally reached the surface of deep waters.

“It was just a nightmare.” Steve spoke calmly, trying to soothe though the sight of Eddie in such distress made him want to cry too. Without thinking he released his hold on Eddie’s shoulders and instead reached out to gently cup his damp cheek. “You’re okay, I’ve got you. Dustin is fine, everyone is fine.”

For a second Eddie only stared up at him, chest heaving and lips parted, but then he nodded, making his warm cheek press into Steve’s hand a little more and he realized what he’d done—how close they were.

He tried to pull away, put some distance between them. Barely an hour into admitting his feelings to himself and he’d already overstepped. 

It was time to go.

He’d done his part, he’d woken Eddie up and—

Suddenly Eddie’s hand shot out, twisting into Steve’s shirt with a grip like a vice, tugging him back.

“Stay?” Eddie begged, voice cracking as he forced the words out. “Just for a little while. Please?”

It was a bad idea.

The worst.

“Scoot over,” Steve breathed, crawling into the bed and under the covers Eddie lifted for him in invitation, his stomach doing somersaults as he became enveloped in Eddie’s warmth, now shared between them as they settled together beneath the heavy blankets on their sides, facing each other. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really. It was…” 

Steve vividly remembered how jarring his nightmares had been in the months after he’d faced down that first demogorgon with Nancy and Jonathan, and worse still after the demodogs and the tunnels, when his evening terrors began to feature four little guest stars in mortal peril. Again without thought for the consequences he slid his hand along the sheets until it found Eddie’s, holding it tight, giving whatever comfort he could. “I know.”

Steve didn’t mean to fall asleep. He hadn’t planned to stay all night, just until Eddie felt better enough to be alone, or maybe until Eddie himself fell asleep, but being cozied up surrounded with the other boy’s scent, with their fingers still laced and their conversation tapering off, it was all too easy to let go and drift away.

Had that been it, it would have been manageable. 

With a bit of distance, a bit of time, Steve might have been able to guard his heart better, keep his feelings from growing to the point that he was fit to burst with them. But as it was, night after night he found himself in Eddie’s bed, comforting him as he came down from yet another nightmare, where they inevitably fell asleep together to wake in the morning with arms thrown over waists, and legs tangled.

Neither of them ever acknowledged it, and it was threatening Steve’s ever dwindling sanity.

It took less than a week for him to break and tell Robin what was going on in his head. He’d been unusually quiet during their daily check-ins, typically letting her steer the conversation towards school, or the kids, or Vickie, and he suspected she already knew something was up.

“Ahoy, sailor!” She announced loudly through the receiver, answering on the first ring. 

Steve could picture her laying on her bed, phone pressed to her ear with one hand, giving her ceiling a mocking salute with the other. It made him smile despite himself. “What if it was someone else calling you?” 

“Meh, it’s not the weirdest way I could answer the phone.” There was a rustle over the line as though she were adjusting her position. “How's it going? How’s Eddie today?”

“He’s…” Steve trailed off, swallowing to soothe his suddenly dry throat. He’d fled for the downstairs only seconds ago after happening upon Eddie as he was coming out of the bathroom after a shower, wearing nothing but a towel slung low around his waist. It left his scars on full display, but to Steve they only enhanced the view and served as a physical reminder that Eddie had survived.

“He’s doing really well.”

“Oh good!”

“Yeah,” he sighed out, the sound overly dramatic even to his own ears.

“Is that… not a good thing, Steve?”

“I have to tell you something,” he rushed out before he could change his mind.

“What do you—” Robin gasped loudly. “Oh—Oh! Oh my god, really? Are we finally doing this?”

He groaned, ”Robin—”

“Sorry, sorry, I'll let you tell me.” She took a deep breath, as though she were the one about to confess a secret. Not that it was exactly a secret, apparently. “Go ahead.”

“I think I’m in love with Eddie”

Her sudden silence was deafening.

“Are you still there?” Steve asked.

She huffed, “I hate you right now.”

“What did I do?!”

“Leave it to you to blow right past the crisis part of your bisexual awakening, skip the crush, and fall head over heels for the first boy who made you think twice!”

“You told me to!” He nearly shouted, cursing himself as he pulled the receiver away from his ear, listening for footsteps in case Eddie came to see what was going on.

Thankfully, he heard nothing.

“Nope, no you do not get to blame this one on me,” she was saying as he tuned back in. “I was merely a witness. An innocent bystander. I just wanted you to admit you thought he was cute! I knew you had a thing for him or something, but Steve—”

“I know,” he whispered into the phone with his hands cupped around it, still paranoid of being overheard, but he couldn’t help the smile that stretched over his face. It just felt so good to have finally said it out loud. “I don’t even know when it happened. I feel… I like him so much it makes me feel crazy sometimes.”

“Well, don’t leave me hanging, what did he say?” She asked, plowing ahead as usual without letting him actually answer. “I can’t believe you got a boyfriend before I’ve even had the chance to hold hands with a girl. You just had to one up—”

Steve cut her off. “What makes you so sure he’s, y’know.”

“Seriously, Steve? He's kinda obvious. Wait, are you telling me he turned you down?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“What do you mean you haven't told him?!” She screeched.

“I can’t, for so many reasons. I just can’t.”

She let out a disgusted puff of air. “Explain it to me.”

“Rob—”

“No!” She interrupted. “I’m not letting you off the hook that easily. Is this some self-loathing sacrificial crap, or do you really have a reason?“

“It’s–it’s not the time. He’s got enough to deal with right now, he doesn’t need this too.”

“You know you’re not a burden, right? That loving you, and being loved by you isn’t a chore?”

Steve wanted to believe her, really he did, but it couldn’t be true. 

He knew Robin loved him, she’d proven it time and time again, but she was the only one who’d ever stayed. Nancy said she loved him, then turned around and called it all bullshit before running straight into Jonathan’s arms. Even his parents had left. And yes, he’d chosen to stay behind but he’d seen the subtle look of relief on his fathers face when he’d told them he wasn’t moving with them. He could remember all too well how many days he’d come home from school to an empty house as a kid. How many nights he’d slept in his parents' bed just to feel close to them when they both went away on his father’s business trips. 

Robin was the exception to the rule. 

He must have been quiet for too long, and she spoke again. “Anyone would be lucky to have you, and I know it’s scary but I think you should tell him. He might feel the same way. Whatever reasons you think you have, isn’t it worth the risk for a chance to be happy?”

“I’ll think about it,” he conceded, if only to shut her up for now.

“Good,” she said, the relief in her voice making him feel guilty for lying about his intentions. “Are you sure you don’t need to have a gay crisis with me?”

“Pretty sure.” Steve chuckled softly. “I guess I’ve always found some guys attractive. I thought it was like, objectively? But I guess not. There’s just something about Eddie, how he makes me feel. I don’t care that he’s a guy, or that having feelings for him makes me less than straight. It doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t change the way I feel, or what I want.” 

When Eddie asked to come shopping with him, Steve had worried about what It might do to his progress if people reacted badly to seeing him out and about. 

On the flip side, they’d been happily living in their own private world here, and maybe Steve was being dramatic again, and more than a bit selfish, but he felt like this little adventure to the grocery store could be the beginning of the end to that.   

It turned out, Eddie’s reaction wasn’t the one he should have been worried about. 

As they walked back into the house, arms laden with heavy bags, Steve couldn’t stop replaying the whole thing in his mind. He’d wanted to beat the shit out of Andy for talking about Eddie like that, for looking at him like that. Had Eddie not stepped in and stopped him, he would have done it too, right there in the middle of the aisle without a single doubt.

And as they set the bags on the counter and began to unpack their groceries, Steve also couldn’t seem to stop staring.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Eddie said after a while.

“Sorry.” Steve felt his cheeks begin to burn. He moved away to hide it, shoving a few things into the refrigerator. He was usually under more control than this, but nearly getting in a fight to defend your crush’s honor had a way of exposing your nerves.

“Hey,” Eddie said when he turned back, trying to catch his eye. Steve tried to resist but as usual he fell right into the twin traps that were those big brown eyes. 

“I'm okay, I promise,” Eddie went on. “I'm not gonna go off the deep end or whatever you're worried about, ok? Screw that asshole and everyone who agrees with him. We know the truth, and that’s all that matters.” 

At least he didn’t seem to understand what exactly Steve was struggling with at the moment. “Sorry. You’re right,” he said, playing it off. “You did great. I'm the one who lost it. I just—I hate that anyone thinks that way about you.” It was the absolute truth, the only one he could offer right then.

“Steve—” Eddie hesitated, worrying at his bottom lip. “Why, and I swear I'm not being a dick this time, but, why are you doing all this for me? Why do you care?”

“Eddie…”

Those words, that question and the sincere look on Eddie’s face was all it took for Steve’s resolve to crumble. He couldn’t let Eddie walk around on this planet for one more second without knowing how much he really cared, how much Eddie meant to him.  

The thing was, over the last few days whenever the feelings hiding just beneath the surface of his skin became too much, when he couldn’t stop himself from gazing longingly at Eddie, sometimes he caught Eddie looking back. 

And it made him wonder.

“I care because it’s you,” Steve began, trying hard to put all of it into words. “Because you’re one of us. Because you’re my friend. Because…” With a shaky breath, he stepped forward, closing the distance between them. Eddie stood there, frozen but not moving away even when their feet touched and Steve took the can he was holding out of his hand and set it on the counter. 

This close up he could see the fan of Eddie’s dark, full lashes, the brush of color sweeping across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, the dip of the cupid’s bow above his top lip. 

“Because…” Steve’s words failed him, as they so often did, and he only knew one other way to convey everything he felt. As he leaned in, pressing his body against the length of Eddie’s, he prayed he hadn’t imagined it, that all the mornings they’d woken up in each other’s arms had meant something to Eddie too. 

A soft press of lips. 

The hint of stubble scratching at his chin. 

The taste of coffee and cigarettes. 

It was far from Steve’s first kiss, but for the first time he got what people meant when they talked about feeling sparks fly. He’d told Dustin once to go for it when you feel the electricity. Honestly, he’d thought it was just a metaphor, but now with his mouth on Eddie’s and every nerve ending in his body on fire, he finally understood. 

When it’s right, it feels like nothing else. 

For a moment he was on cloud nine, but it was with a slow dawning horror that he realized Eddie was frozen beneath his touch. That he wasn’t kissing back. 

Steve jerked away, stepping back with his hands raised near his shoulders. “I-I’m so sorry. I thought—”

Eddie was still unmoving and silent, his face paler than Steve had ever seen.

“Oh god. Eddie, I’m—”

Without a word Eddie turned and ran, his footsteps pounding up the staircase all the way to his room. 

A door slammed in the distance.

Steve sank to the floor on numb legs, his back leaning against the cabinet the only thing keeping him upright.

He knew this would happen. 

It was the whole reason he hadn’t said anything, and now he’d gone and fucked everything up. Eddie was probably packing his things right now, desperate to get away from him. 

Steve pulled his knees to his chest, hugging them tight as he hid his face. 

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, wallowing, wishing he had the courage to get up, or at least run away himself and hide until Eddie was gone. 

How could he have been so stupid. 

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

“You're not stupid.”

Steve sucked in a breath as Eddie’s voice washed over him. He didn’t dare move his head to see but felt it as the other boy sat down next to him on the floor, resting a hand on his elbow.

“Would you look at me, please, Steve?” Eddie said softly when he didn’t react.

Reluctantly, Steve did. “Are you mad?” 

Eddie scrunched his face like he was in pain. “Of course not.”

Steve shook his head. “You’re clearly not happy about it.”

“You surprised me, is all.”

“Not the good kind of surprise then, huh?”

“I just–I don’t understand,” Eddie said, letting go of Steve's arm to rake his hands through his mass of curls. “I thought you were straight?”

Steve snorted, looking away. “Apparently not, or so I’ve realized.”

“Right.” 

There was a soft thunk to Steve’s left as if Eddie had banged his head back into the cabinets. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn't have…” Steve shook his head again. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. He wanted to go back in time and take it all back. “I get it, If you hate me now.”

“Steve, how could you even think that?” Eddie asked incredulously, as though the idea were shocking.

Steve rolled his head back to look at him, raising both eyebrows. 

“Okay, that’s fair.” Eddie grimaced. “I’m sorry, I shouldn't have walked away from you like that. I just needed a minute to think.”

“And what–uh, w-what do you think?” 

“Steve, I’m—” Eddie dropped his eyes to his lap, rubbing his hands together and fiddling with the rings there. “Flattered, which is the understatement of the century. You are one of the best people I know. I feel so incredibly lucky to have you as a friend after everything, but I… I can’t do this.” Eddie raised his head, holding Steve's gaze as he went on. “And I need you to believe me when I say it has nothing to do with you, this is all me. Okay?”

Steve forced himself to smile and nod, hoping that it would hide the fact that he was dying inside. Eddie could say whatever he wanted to, but Steve knew better. Whenever someone said—It’s not you, it’s me—that was almost never the case. “Sure, y-yeah. I get it. No–no problem.”

The act must have been convincing enough, or maybe Eddie was being kind. He returned Steve’s smile and rose, extending a hand to help him up.

It was awkward then, moving around each other, finishing the process of putting all the food they’d gotten away, out of step in a way they’d never been before. It had Steve itching all over again with the need to escape, to hide in his room and maybe call Robin to cry about it, but he was determined not to make things any weirder than he already had.

“Do you think the kids would want to come over tonight?” Eddie asked as they were finishing up. “I feel like it’s time for me to try and make up for ruining their party.”

A few hours ago Steve would have asked Eddie if he was ready for that, but if today had proved anything it was that he was doing just fine. This could be the best thing for them now anyway. A buffer, a distraction, something to focus on instead of his own horrible lapse in judgment.

“Yeah, they’d love that,” Steve answered with a touch more enthusiasm than he felt. “You should call Dustin. He’d be happy to hear from you and I'm sure he’d take care of getting the rest on board.”

Eddie nodded, moving to grab the phone off the wall.

“What about Robin?” Steve asked before he could dial, quickly adding, “we don’t have to have all the older group over, just her.”

Eddie shot a grin at him over his shoulder. It felt like a knife in his chest. “Sure, big boy. It’s your house. I guess I probably owe Buckley a bit of an apology too, huh?”

The name, which before made butterflies take flight in Steve’s stomach, now only made it turn sour. 

How was he ever going to get over this? 

At least he’d have Robin to console him tonight, once he could get her alone and tell her what an idiot he’d been. 

Thanks and love to @penny00dreadful and @pearynice for all your help and encouragement with this!

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