#steve harrington has trauma but so does dustin dammit

[devondespresso]

hi today we're thinking about Dustins parental (figures) trauma (because i love him)

like Dustin now has experienced 4 different instances of an older brother figure running into danger to protect him and every time said older brother figure got more and more injured

the first day Dustin meets Steve, Steve leaves the bus with the demodogs to be bait and comes back a bit shaken and with a couple scratches but basically unharmed. hes doing this to protect all the kids but at this point he's known Dustin the longest (maybe an hour or so more but still they had actual conversations in that hour)

then they're at the Byers and Steve fights B*lly for Lucas (and Max i think because he was officially there to take her home) and we hear the kids screaming at B*lly, specifically we hear Dustin scream "you're gonna kill him" and Steve very obviously has a concussion afterwards

then theres season 3. Steve and Robin hold the door while Dustin and Erica escape through vents and when they meet up again both teenagers are drugged and Steve has a black eye, bloody nose, and a split lip and is covered in blood and sweat and thats just what you can see (he mentions ears ringing, difficulty breathing and feeling like his eye is going to fall out, all of which probably comes up later off-screen because hes doing a lot of strenuous activity for someone in his condition)

and then Eddie. Eddie who was asked by Steve to look out for him and Eddie who made sure Dustin got through the portal safely before risking his own safety to help the team. Eddie who so far in canon (duffers please bring him back) died in Dustins arms and kept a smile on his face in his excruciating death to try and ease the blow it'd have on him

and even if you write aus where Eddie does live he's frequently in the hospital for several months or in a coma

now Dustins a child, he's in middle school during all of steves sacrifices and in his freshman year of highschool for Eddie's. He doesn't have a present father and while his mother is very loving she's not the most emotionally stable

and when you think about it, Dustin doesn't really have any parental figure that is 100% stable for him to rely on

His mother gets very stressed and panics a lot (which is fair because shes a presumably single working mom and joyce is in a similar situation but regardless it does put stress on their kids), and we see Dustin immediately stepping up to comfort his mom when their cat Mews is "missing" despite having to see and clean up his cats dead body alone from out of his bedroom

Steve is a relatively emotionally stable figure for him with lots of confident advice and its confirmed that Steves a very safe person for him to go to with both upside down and normal problems

but Steve has gotten hurt A Lot and often times the responsibility of taking care of him falls on Dustin (and I'd go as far as to say Dustin takes on this role himself based on how hes used to taking care of his mom). Dustins the one holding an ice pack to Steve's head when he wakes up in B*llys car and he's mostly the one looking after Steve and Robin while they're drugged. Steve is emotionally safe, but Dustin does have to worry about his safety pretty often (he so easily could've died in season 3 just from repeated head injuries alone)

Then with Eddie its clear Dustin looks up to him as a role model of this cool guy who doesn't care what others think of him, but then Eddie gets involved with the upside down. they meet in the boathouse we see Dustin immediately stepping up to calm him down and help him work through the upside down trauma (and to protect Steve who's once again in physical danger) (and then Eddie dies later so hes not really stable in either aspect rip)

So aside from the upside down trauma having the kids have to grow up too fast and having their childhoods taken away (and this definitely applies to all the kids and teens but we're talking about dusty today), Dustins a character that is consistently looking for a stable parental figure and consistently loosing the stability he finds in them. Which leads him to have to step up, shelf his own emotions, and be a source of stability for his parental figures instead.

i know its wishful thinking at best to hope for a comedic character to have their trauma properly addressed in this show, but id really like to see Dustin struggling with some of this

he probably feels responsible for a lot of shit that happened especially to Steve and Eddie because he was there to witness their injuries and they both got injured to protect him

maybe he struggles talking about certain things with steve despite him remaining emotionally safe because his experiences with comforting his mom and Eddie makes him assume thats normal. maybe hes afraid hes going to wake up one day and Steve will be dead.

maybe he puts himself down the same path steves on now, not his highschool jock path but the self-sacrificing hero path. maybe the party will be in some sort of trouble with no adults around and he'll put himself between the party and the danger because he feels responsible for making sure they're ok.

we've already seen he feels the need to mediate conflict with his friends (mike and lucas's fight in season 1 and asking eddie to postpone hellfire on lucas's behalf) and that he admires Steve's hero stunts (fighting the demodogs in season 2 Dustin says hes awesome when max comments hes insane)

i just want to see people talk about Dustins relationship with responsibility and the lack of stability in his life. i also grew up being The Responsible Friend in my friend group and its fucking exhausting. I just want my guy to get a break, maybe some assurance that Steves not going to fucking die and maybe a moment where he can just let go of tge stress hes holding onto (i don't know tbh if i knew how to fix this feeling i wouldn't need therapy lol)