#they found out a couple weeks later that moe walks hazel to her classroom every single day after the bus drops them off

[livwritesstuff]

Something happened while Steve was dropping off his and Eddie’s oldest daughters — Eddie can tell.

He can tell by the look on Steve’s face that something isn’t quite right, which is kinda odd considering all Steve had been doing was walking Robbie and Moe to their new classrooms (third and fifth grade, respectively) while Eddie filled out some last minute kindergarten paperwork for Hazel. It’s standard protocol for the first day of school, so…not sure why anything would be the matter.

Eddie can’t ask Steve about it though, because no sooner is he back do they need to head down the hall to Hazels kindergarten classroom and drop her off too, so that’s what they do.

They walk Hazel to her classroom and take pictures in front of the door, all decorated for the first day, and then they say goodbye and watch her walk into class with her backpack that’s practically as big as she is, and during all that Eddie kind of forgets that something had been off about Steve because, yeah, this drop-off is a really fuckin’ hard one because Hazel is their littlest, which means this is their last very first day of school ever, and Eddie’s sentimental like that these days so he’s feeling that last more than he thought he would.

“Damn,” Eddie said when it was all over and he and Steve were making their way back through the crowded parking lot, “Thaaat sucked.”

“Yeah,” Steve nodded, and again there’s something a little weird in his tone.

Eddie looks at him.

“Somethin’ up?”

Steve sighs as he shakes his head.

“Not–” he stops, shakes his head again, and then starts, “Not really. Moe just didn’t want me to walk her to her classroom today.”

“Shit,” Eddie says, stopping in his tracks and wheeling Steve around by the arm to face him, because he knows how much this stuff matters to Steve, and he’d walked Moe to her classroom on the first day of school every single year since preschool.

“No, I mean, it’s fine,” Steve waved him off, and he kept on walking towards the car (probably so the parking lot monitors don’t flip out on them, not that Eddie can blame him — the Upside Down has nothing on a goddamn elementary school car-line), “I don’t have to walk her to her classroom, and I get that it’s fifth grade and that’s a big deal, and she’s not a little kid anymore. I get all that, and, y’know, it’s not about me, right?”

“Sure,” Eddie replies, because he gets it.

“It’s mostly just that…” Steve pauses, sighs again before saying, “I guess I’m just bummed because I didn’t know last year was the last time she’d let me walk her to her classroom.”

And Christ, if that isn’t a goddamn dagger through Eddie’s chest.