Chapter Text
It was always in the back of his mind — his father. Steve knows that he isn’t a good man, that real fathers shouldn’t act the way he does. But knowing something and accepting it are two widely different things.
It’s been building for all his life. This anger, this hatred, this loss, that he’s been harbouring since he was born. Really, he’s been building up to this confrontation for years and just wasn’t aware of it, didn’t want to acknowledge — because if he just pretended everything was alright, then maybe it all would be.
Maybe it’s because he didn’t truly know what it was meant to feel like. That love, that happiness, warmth, that you get when you’re around the people you care about, the people who care about you. And now that he has those people, so many of them who he holds close, he wants that confrontation.
He wants to tell his father, his mother, how bad they hurt him. How he doesn’t forgive them, how he’s leaving the house, how he’s happy, how he will never be what his father wanted, will never be his carbon copy, and that he’s proud of that.
And, maybe, in a different time, he would have done this on his own. Would have done this with nobody else around him, nobody else to lean on.
He takes the call in the privacy of his childhood bedroom, ugly wallpaper peering into his soul, with Eddie and Robin, Joyce and Hopper, Jonathan and Nancy, all waiting for him. No matter what happens after.
“Okay,” He tells himself. “I can do this. I call, I say my peace, I hang up.”
He puts in the number, hears it ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Beep.
“Mr. Harrington is currently not available to take your call. Please leave your message after the tone.”
(Steve feels like he shouldn’t even be surprised. They didn’t pick up when he was calling from hospital three years in a row, they didn’t pick up when he was asking how to use the stove, they didn’t pick up when he wanted to call to say goodnight.
He leaves his heart on his father’s voicemail, all the anger and fire burnt out. It comes out a little afraid, a little more watery than he wanted it to be, and when he stops the message, places the phone back down on the receiver, he realises that it hurts.
It hurts so fucking much that, even in the end of it all, when he’s there to show how much he’s changed, when he’s there to tell them how they couldn’t ever truly ruin him — they don’t even pick up).
When he descends down the stairs, sullen, unhappy, he opens his mouth to try and force the words out. They choke his chest as he says them, feels his knees fold, his body crumple to the bottom of the stairs.
With his face in his hands, his heart on his sleeve, he feels the warmth of his family surround him, arms slung across his shoulders in comfort, fingers through his hair in love. A warm mug is pressed into his palms, and when he looks up to the face of Joyce, tastes hot chocolate, he thinks there’s something so different about a mother’s love.
— — —
“You are not in charge of decorating.”
“Steve, I’ve seen your wallpaper. How could I do any worse?”
He huffs, overly-dramatic, hands on the wheel. “Okay, and? If I let you do everything I’m never going to see anything but the colour black.”
From the corner of his eye, Steve can see Eddie kick his feet up on the dash. And, you know what? He can admit that his wallpaper is atrocious. It’s ugly. It’s an eyesore. He can deal with a little wallpaper-related slander. It’s not like he chose it, anyway. But feet on his car?
Steve raises one hand to swipe at Eddie’s legs, earning an affronted hey! when his palm meets black jeans.
It was a surprisingly easy conversation to have. Moving out.
Maybe it’s because it was already written down, listed, on the sticky note on the fridge. Maybe it was because, now, they both remembered the death; the importance that the words held. Steve tries not to think about dying, together, tries to focus on living, together, instead.
(With the wind coming through the open window, sun under his eyelids, Eddie softly humming by his side, Steve finds that it’s lot easier than he would have thought).
He feels a tap on his thigh, telling him to turn left at the next stop. He turns the wheel around, catches a glimpse of a smile on Eddie’s face as he takes his eyes off the road. It sends speckles of warmth down his spine.
The stereo plays their horrible mis-matched mixtape, the Songs to Save the World abandoned, for now, at the bottom of the decorated box, underneath the passenger seat. It doesn’t flow and tell a story in the same way that Jonathan’s tapes weave, but it’s theirs. Steve finds that, and he’s never going to admit it aloud, he’s coming around to the prospect of rock and metal.
Steve lets the music wash over him, take him away as he drives down the road. Eddie makes little grabby hands in the corner of his eye, so he takes one hand off the wheel, palm up. When cool fingers thread themselves between his, rings clunky against smooth skin, he smiles.
It’s been months since he’s restarted a loop, but there’s still a little part of him that expects to wake up on the boat, hands on his laces, failing to change fate and death. The roads are uneven with potholes that haven’t been filled since he was child, but at least it’s not the gates, red spanning across Hawkins.
“Stop the car!”
What? Steve slams down the brakes, feels his body shift forward uncomfortably with the movement. “Eds, why do we—”
Eddie moves, unbuckles his seatbelt and clambers over Steve. His knee narrowly misses the stick shift, half of his body pulled across so that he’s balanced precariously across the seats, Steve, and the window.
Eddie moves to cup his hands around his mouth, propel his voice, and, in turn, nearly falls out of the fucking car. Steve leans forward to grab onto the back of his shirt, and gets a dumb smile in return. Idiot, he thinks, fondly.
“You need a hand with that, Sinclair?”
Steve glances out the little amount of window that Eddie isn’t covering — sees Lucas attempting to wrangle an insane amount of small dogs, on the footpath by the road.
“Nah I’ve got—” Lucas is lurched forwards as one dog tries to run away from the confines of its lead. “I’ve got it!”
Steve huffs a little bit of a laugh at that. He had heard of Lucas taking up dog walking to earn a little bit of cash on the weekends, but he had imagined like, two small poodles. Someone’s golden retriever. Three dogs, max. Seeing him try to herd what Steve thinks is eight dogs? It’s a little funny. Just a bit.
He leans his head out next to Eddie’s, pushes curly hair out of his face, gives a two fingered salute. “We’ll leave you to it, then!”
“We?” He watches as Lucas does a double take of the car, Steve’s car, and he can almost see the cogs turning in the Sinclair’s head. From the corner of his eye, he can see Eddie give him a toothy grin. “Wait, are you guys actually apartment hunting? I thought Mike was joking—”
A dog lurches forward again, and, this time, Lucas is brought with them.
“Should we, like, help him?”
“Nah. He’s got it.” Eddie clambers back into his own seat, buckles himself in. They turn around to watch as Lucas is propelled down the street. “Probably.”
Steve laughs softly, feels Eddie’s hand slot itself back onto his thigh, and drives on. He has a good feeling about this one.
— — —
They reclaim it together — the quarry. Jonathan and Steve don’t go out to the edge, don’t want to see over the water, but they go to the quarry, regardless.
“We should shout it all out. All the pent up feelings.” Jonathan says. “Because ever since that call with your dad, I’ve seen you just floating through it all. We all have.”
Steve knows what he means. After the not-call with his father, he shifted back into a form that was adjacent to people pleasing. When a door was closed too loud, or a voice too harsh, he felt like he was going to jump out of his skin.
“You’re allowed to take.” Jonathan says, stands by Steve’s side. “So let’s shout it out across this fucked town, this fucked water. And once it’s out of you, breathe deep and— and let it go.”
Maybe Steve is a little bit embarrassed to do this. Because, yeah, him and Jonathan are close friends, but with all the shit they’ve gone through, it feels so stupid to be worrying about the things he’s thinking about.
“Leave my fucking siblings alone!” Jonathan shouts. “They’ve been through so goddamned much — they deserve to be kids! Fuck California and fuck Angela!”
Steve hears his voice echo back to them. Watches as Jonathan breathes deep, counts to three. Lets it go.
When Jonathan turns back to him, face a little bit looser, eyes a little bit clearer, Steve takes a step forward, doesn’t think about how to say the right things, doesn’t care about if the words are jumbled or make sense or are nice.
The thoughts swirl around his head, vulgar and repetitive and sharp and ugly, nothing like the way that he’d wanted to say them, exactly the way he thought them. They are everything and nothing like what he said on the voicemail, nothing and everything like the boy who was left alone in the big, empty house.
“Fuck you and your fancy car and your work trips and your stupid fucking pool!” He breathes in. “Fuck your wallpaper and your phone calls and you! Fuck you!”
He breathes deep, listens as his voice echoes across the water, as it bounces along the walls, at it surrounds him, affirms him. He counts to three. Lets it go.
Jonathan leads him to sit on the hood of their car, further and further away from the edge of the quarry. They sit there, talk about their dads being assholes, laughing and crying at the horrible anecdotes and rites of passage that they share.
“He never once said he was proud of me for my school shit. Not even a good job, Jon. Hell I’d have settled for a nice!”
“That happened to you too? Wait, did your dad also—”
(Yes. The answer is almost always yes.
And it hurts to know that someone else went through what he did, but hearing it come from Jonathan? Hearing it come from someone else, someone who can say that was wrong, someone who can say that wasn’t your fault? Maybe it helps Steve realise just how fucked his dad is).
— — —
When Eddie brings up the list again, they drive to the old trailer park. He had gotten out the words sticky note and two cats and strays and Steve was quickly ushering him to the car, ready to drive to wherever the fuck he needed to go because? Uh, hello? Two stray cats combined with the want of having two cats?
“So,” Steve drawls. “Where are they?”
Eddie, crouched on the ground, shushes him. “Hey, I haven’t been back in months — they’re probably a little pissed at me right now.”
He makes little grabby hands toward Steve, so he passes over the cans of cat food and plastic plates. Steve watches as Eddie dumps out the food, eyes set on the treeline for the little balls of fluff to appear. As Eddie makes a noise with his mouth, soft and soothing into the open air, Steve turns to look at him for just a moment.
And promptly jumps about eight feet in the air when something brushes against his leg.
Steve peers down at his feet, and he sees two green eyes staring back at him. The cat is a patchwork of orange and white and mostly black, adorable and fluffy and oh my god she’s tiny!
“Oh, baby,” Steve says, slowly moves to crouch down to her level. The cat dances around him as he sits on the dead grass, letting out a little inquisitive mrrrow? when he places his hand out for her to sniff.
When he looks towards Eddie, the plates of food in front of him, he sees a black cat wolfing down the food. Steve reaches over to the other plate, puts it in front of the calico cat, watches as she inspects it before eating it.
“Are you sure we can just take them?”
“I put up posters of them when I was younger, just to see if anyone was missing them,” Eddie said, fingers busy with giving scritches to the black cat — plate empty. “Nothing. They’ve been here for years, but we never had the space in our trailer.”
Steve shuffles himself closer to the black cat, watches as it headbutts Eddie’s outstretched palm. “We need to name them.”
“Mmmm, I was thinking Fangorn for this little bastard here.”
“Baby.”
“Yes?”
“No—” Steve laughs, “The name of the other cat! Baby. Baby and Fangorn.”
Eddie nods in agreement as he picks up Baby. Steve gathers the plates and the empty food cans, moves to bring them to the boot of his car, as Eddie wrangles the two monsters into the pet carrier.
And, it happens a lot more often than he liked. Because, even though Eddie’s status as a murderer had been legally cleared, and most of the town accepted it, there were still those who wouldn’t let it go. Sometimes assholes were just that: assholes.
Steve’s started to notice it — the look that someone gets in their eyes, shoulders pulled back when they look at Eddie.
The man in the trailer park makes to move towards where Eddie is still crouched near the two cats. His baseball cap is hiding greasy hair, a wheeze to his breath as he shifts closer. Steve steps away from the car, walks to meet the man a good few metres away from Eddie.
“Son, I don’t think you want to get in my way.” The man says, drawl in his voice as if he’s giving Steve a crucial piece of advice. “He’s a killer!”
“Oh, yeah, because that,” Steve points to where Eddie is carrying both Baby and Fangorn, attempting to place them into the pet carrier, “Looks like a murderer to you? Don’t waste your breath — we were just leaving.”
Steve gives him a tight lipped smile, turns away from the man, doesn’t even wait for the next remark to come out of his mouth. He isn’t worth it. He jogs up to Eddie, stands with his hands on his hips as the two cats wriggle within his arms.
“Need help, Eds?”
“No I’ve got—” Fangorn jumps out of his hands, landing on his feet before weaving in and out of Eddie’s legs. “Okay, yeah. Maybe.”
(After the cats have been wrestled into the carrier, after the car ride filled with two screaming cats, they’re both deposited into the bathroom in Wayne’s apartment, for the night. Steve and Eddie sit in the cramped room for a while, watching the way they interact with their new surroundings, cross off the cats from the list).
— — —
The dinners are a constant. Whether they be at the Byers’, or Hop’s cabin, or at Eddie and Wayne’s apartment, the dinners are a constant. Sometimes Steve is the one cooking, ornate dishes and comfort foods, and other times, people cook for him.
This time, Eddie has joined him at Hop’s cabin to have dinner. Hop has been trying to learn how to cook, and Steve is more than willing to teach him. It’s fun seeing who he used to think was the Stoic Chief of Police who Didn’t Care About Anyone but Himself wear a patchworked apron, face serious and set, as Steve taught him the proper way to cut vegetables.
“Your hair’s so long now!” Eddie walks through the door before him, hands ruffling through El’s curls. Steve closes the door behind him, is enveloped in the warm yellow glow of the lights, catches the tail end of El batting Eddie’s hands away from her hair.
Once El spies Steve, she raises both of her arms above her head, eyes closed and face expecting. Steve pretends to roll his eyes, before picking her up by her waist, twirling her around the living room, careful not to knock anything over.
She cheers, arms raised to the roof as he places her back down onto solid flooring.
“We need to do a piggyback race.” She says, eyes twinkling and determined. “You will be on my team.”
“Mhmm,” Steve hums, watches the way Eddie sets down his bag by the couch, falling back into it. “And who would Eddie be with?”
“Hopper.”
He catches her eye, tries to imagine it in his brain. El, on Steve’s back, running across the forest that is their backyard. Hop, attempting to wrangle Eddie shouting at him to stay still for the love of god.
El and Steve make eye contact, turn back to where Eddie is trying to contort his legs in such a way that couldn’t be comfortable. When they turn back to each other, trying to hide their smiles, trying to be serious, it burst out of them, makes them lean on each other.
“What did I miss?” Eddie asks. Steve pictures Hopper pretending to drop Eddie, wheezes at the thought. “What?”
His cluelessness makes El break into a wider grin, before she’s bounding over to the couch, flopping herself onto the soft cushions. When Eddie moves to roll his sleeve up, Steve knows that he’s going to show her his new tattoo: a baseball bat with nails hammered through it.
— — —
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Robin asks. “Because we could always just pretend it doesn’t exist.”
The list is mostly completed, with Eddie starting a new campaign that included Will and Steve, and them on the hunt for an apartment. And if Steve breaks his thoughts away from the pool, he can imagine Baby and Fangorn are probably lounging and sleeping in Eddie’s room at Wayne’s place.
He wasn’t actually going to swim in the pool. The pool water is as terrifying, as calming, as it was when he had used it to reset, a lot more mundane and haunting in the afternoon sun. Steve wasn’t going to duck his head under, go below the waist. Just dip his feet in, stand.
“No,” Steve says, eyes on the water. “I want to.”
Eddie nods beside him, holds onto his hand, eyebrows pulled together.
When they had told Robin about the list, about the pool, she had asked if Steve wanted her there. He knows that she remembers it — the countless times that she would hold his hand by the water, wait the time with his body before he was able to solve things. Steve’s happy that she’s with him.
With his jeans pulled up just below his knees, he holds onto Eddie and Robin’s hands as he takes moves into the shallow steps of the pool. The water is cool and sleek against his toes, sharp and taunting as he takes another step down.
“You okay?” Eddie asks.
Steve nods, moves to let go of their hands. When he’s standing in the pool, a graveyard of a hundred deaths, he lets it wash over him. He thinks of resetting— dying, all those times for the sake of fixing things. He thinks of the first time, when he didn’t know, when he couldn’t have known, and he had still slipped under.
Steve stares into the water, watches as his own face ripples in the soft wind. He sees the vague makeup of white scars, tiny and scattered, across his complexion. He sees the death and the pain and years. When the wind barrels through the woods, water convulsing in tiny waves, the mirror of himself disappears, until only he is left.
Steve reaches for the outstretched, waiting, arms of Eddie and Robin, steps back onto the safety of the tiles. When the hushed whispers of I’m proud of you and I love you wash over him, he leaves the pool behind, feels the warmth of love settle into his skin.
— — —
To everyone’s surprise, including his own, Steve and Robin haven’t been fired from Family Video (yet). He thinks it’s less to do with their work ethic, and more to do with the fact that nobody else is applying.
If he’s cursed to work with Robin for the rest of his life (or, for the rest of the time she decides to be in Hawkins before inevitably escaping to college), he doesn’t even mind.
“You come here often?”
It happens when Steve is restocking the shelves of the last returns. People still haven’t seemed to realise that the be kind, rewind stickers on the front of tapes are asking them to rewind them. Robin has complained about it at least three times in the last hour, stuck in the backroom doing the monotonous task.
Now, Steve isn’t new to being hit on. High school was a cesspool of hormones and popularity, and when combined with his title? He wasn’t new to it.
“I work here?”
“Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
The girl leans against the shelves in a way that Steve thinks is meant to exude cool, but really, it just stops him from doing his job. He and Robin haven’t been fired yet, and he really isn’t gonna take any chances now.
The girl’s eyes flick down to his crooked name tag on his vest. “Steve? I think you—”
“Could you—” Steve motions his hand towards the hidden shelf, tilts his head down towards the trolley of tapes in front of him.
“Oh, shit, sorry I’ll—”
“Yep. Thanks.”
As he puts back Sixteen Candles, he readies apologises and excuses in his head. Sorry I’m actually really busy and I’m not interested. Maybe he’ll even sneak in a I’m not looking to date anyone at the moment, get people to stop coming up to him during work.
(It’s a little harder than he thought — coming up with excuses. Turns out, people start to notice when you go from having at least one date a week to none in the past few months. Recently, when people ask, he’s been saying it’s because of what he went through with the, uh. ‘Serial killer’).
The girl shifts on the balls of her feet in front of him. Her long brown hair is straightened in a way that reminds him of Argyle, and she has her hands clasped behind her: nervous.
“Does Robin work here? She said that if I couldn’t find her I should try and find you.”
Steve stares at her for a second, before it clicks back into place. This wasn’t what he thought it was, this was— oh!
“Oh my god you’re—!” He places the tape back into the trolley, task forgotten. “Yes! She’s just— I’ll go get her right now. Don’t go anywhere!”
He slides over the counter, doesn’t care for the selection of tapes that have been organised and stacked, and rushes to the backroom, closing the door shut behind him. Fuck the job, fuck the tapes — this was important! Robin takes her head off the table and turns to look at him.
“She’s here!”
Robin bolts up in her seat. “She’s here?”
“Yes! Up, up, up! Go, she’s waiting!”
Steve waves his hands, claps them together as Robin scrambles to get out of her seat, pauses by the mirror by the door. He places his hands on her shoulders, steers her towards the door and out of the staff only room.
He watches as they disappear into the aisles of Family Video, as he hears them laugh and talk in hushed tones. Steve keeps his eye on the door, makes sure that nobody else will come in and disrupt their moment.
There are things that happen past the three weeks that he lived. Things that change. Because, yeah, it didn’t end up working out for Vickie and Robin — too different, too awkward, still friends. But there are things that still surprise him, things that he hasn’t lived through before.
When the girl walks back out of Family Video, and Robin turns to him, cheeks red and dimpled, Steve finds that his face mirrors hers.
(Later, they go back to the hill with the flowers to celebrate. Steve has finally figured out how to tangle the stems just so that they stay together, even just for a moment, so that he can quickly snap a photo before they’re billowing off into the wind, the town.
Robin still makes his crown, but they dance around the tall grass and the wildflowers looking for meanings and colours together. Sure, her creations are a little more put together, a little more neat, but it doesn’t matter.
Lily of the valleys and daphnes are intertwined by their sleek stems, clunky and misshapen from caring hands. Narcissuses are weaved into sections on the crown, and Robin shows Steve how to hook the alyssums into the bare spaces.
When they sit like this, legs crossed and tucked beneath them, arms raised in tandem to delicately place worth and words atop each others heads, he doesn’t mind the boring, the mundane.
And, yeah, Steve’s is a little more fucked and lopsided than Robin’s, but when the flowers have nestled into her hair, and she smiles in a way that is so impossibly bright, he doesn’t think either of them notice.
“We match.” She whispers.
“Yeah,” He answers, voice warm. “We match.”).
— — —
While their apartment is being set up for them, they started to pack away a lot of his shit. Steve didn’t actually have that many things that he wanted to take with him, with most of it taking the form of clothing and photos and plants.
So packing shouldn’t take that long. But with every photo that he pulls off the fridge, every guitar pick that he finds that has fallen between the wall and his bed, it makes him a little sentimental. He finds a tube of Nancy’s chapstick, one of Jonathan’s lighters. He finds dnd dice that could belong to any one of the kids, and somewhere between fourteen and three-hundred hair ties.
Each item is placed into a cardboard box, sharpie stating that it was trinkets. As he spins to look around his empty room — all the personal touches gone, it reminds him so much of how it looked in 1983. Cold, imposing, generic.
He gathers up the last two boxes, stacks them atop each other as he descends the stairs.
“—off my property!”
Steve hears the end of the sharp voice, speeds up his pace, takes the steps three at a time. He makes to round the corner, to get to the front door, boxes still in hand, heart beating. The kitchen has been swept of magnets and plants and polaroids, the living room no longer being home to movies and music and blankets. He does a once over of himself in the mirror before Eddie’s voice is washing over him, steady, in the doorway.
“When was the last time you told Steve you loved him?”
It makes him hold his breath. Because Steve knew, could play the scene out in his head of the last time he heard his father say it. When he was younger and more complicit, quiet and attentive.
“What?”
The school had commended him for his work. He had made a poster about the book his teacher read aloud — a crude drawing of a giant made from metal in the middle of the white paper. The colours were splotchy and out of the lines, and when he handed in his poster, his teacher had smiled.
“Go on.” Eddie waits. “When was the last time?”
Steven had come home with the poster in hand, high grade marked in red on the corner of the page. He had left his schoolbag by the door, had rushed inside of his house to present the project to his dad. Steven had rounded the corner to the kitchen, drawing on display, had heard his dad say I love you, had let it thrum through his veins, hadn’t even noticed his father on the phone.
“Of course I tell Steven I love him!”
Steve holds the boxes tight in his grip, walks up to the front door. And he knows who it is before the door even opens, because of that voice, those words, but he is still so baffled.
He is one part afraid, and two parts angry — his father didn’t pick up when he called, didn’t care when he was hurt, never told Steve that he was proud, and the last time that Steve remembers I love you coming out of his father’s mouth, it wasn’t even directed at him.
Of course a meeting between them couldn’t be on Steve’s terms. No, it had to be on Mr. Harrington’s.
“The one time I don’t want you here and you decide to show up.” Steve states, eyes hard. He feels Eddie’s hand press against his back, away from the prying eyes of his father. “Typical.”
The man’s ugly smile drops from his face, his nose that he has bestowed upon Steve snarling and as he speaks. “That is no way to address your father!”
“Yeah,” Steve says, dismissive, tired, furious. “Heard that one about a hundred times now, and, you know what, dad? I’m sick of all of your shit. So I’m going to ask you to kindly get the fuck out of our way.”
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your little phone calls that you’ve been making. It is completely unacceptable, Steven.” The man says. He still holds himself high, back straight, the perfect gentleman, as he spits. “You can’t leave.”
“Who’s gonna stop me? You?” Steve laughs, places the boxes into Eddie’s van. “Fuck you.”
The man goes to take a step forward, and Eddie moves from his place between them, places a hand on his stark white dress shirt. “I’d back off, if I were you.”
Steve rounds the passengers seat, hears Eddie close the boot. His father disappears into the empty shell of a house, slams the door shut behind him.
Steve reaches for his seatbelt, yanks it to try and get it to go into place. It stops short, locking as he tugs on it harshly. He lets it go, tries to pull it with shaky hands. Once, twice, three times. He bangs his fist against his leg, one hand in his hair, the other clutching the plastic.
Cool fingers work the seatbelt from his grip. Steve closes his eyes, lets Eddie buckle himself in, feels the hum of the car as he starts driving.
When he was in the moment, when he was facing off his dad, he felt righteous, powerful.
Steve was angry and frustrated and tired and he just wanted to shout at him, tell him everything he did on the phone, tell him so much more than that. He wanted to scream at him, make his words be known, make himself be known. He wanted the man to be the quarry, silent and imposing and terrifying, the death of him, listening and taking it all in — his hurt.
But now? He feels like he’s going to cry.
“You okay?” Eddie asks, hands on the wheel. Steve presses his fingers down into his thighs, and feels grateful that he’s not the one driving.
“Not right now,” Steve says. “Can we— can we stop the car for a second? I think I really need to—”
Eddie pulls over on the side of the road, far enough away from the Harrington Estate to feel safe, still in the middle of nowhere, Hawkins. The door to Steve’s side is opened by Eddie, arms spread wide. Steve fumbles with his seatbelt before he’s throwing himself at him, tucking his head into his shoulder, breathing deep.
“Sorry that I just—”
“Hey,” Eddie whispers, draws circles into his back. “No need to apologise. Remember what your therapist told you?”
“Right sor— yeah. I remember.”
He counts to ten in his head, lets Eddie slightly rock them from side to side. Tries not to focus on his father or his voice, how he had looked exaclty the same as when he was younger. Tries, instead, to focus on the boxes in the van, the new home that awaits them.
“Better?” Eddie asks.
“Getting there.” Steve answers.
— — —
“That’ll be $8.50.” The cashier says.
Steve digs pulls out his wallet, gives them a tenner before holding out his hand for the change and the snacks. It was Jonathan’s turn to choose the movie this month, and, as much as Steve loves him, he knows that the movie that he’s chosen is going to be some high quality artfilm that Steve’ll think is incredibly pretty, but not understand.
“Harrington?”
He turns towards the voice, out of the line for the concession stand, and finds… someone that he vaguely remembers from high school. Steve politely raises his hand in a half-wave, before the guy is walking across the way, and talking to him.
“Man, thought that was you — I just didn’t peg you for the type ot hang our with your ex and her ex!”
Steve gives a noncommittal hum, either agreeing or disagreeing, trying to wrack his brain for this guy’s name. Jack? James? Jake? He feels like he should feel a little sorry about not remembering his name, but the way he’s still wearing his Hawkins High varsity jacket stamps down any sorry-ness that could have existed.
Before he can think of a way to escape, he hears a voice behind him.
“Never been on friendly terms with your exes?” Nancy turns to face the guy, and Steve sees the way that his jacket is too small. “That seem more like a you problem than an us problem.”
Steve watches as Jonathan gives the guy a little pat on the shoulder, lets the two of them bracket his sides as they move to their viewing.
When the movie ends, swirling music and beautiful stills stuck in his mind, as he climbs into the passenger seat of Nancy’s car, as Jonathan rests his hands on their headrests, he feels happy.
— — —
“Holy shit!” Eddie says, spins in a circle in the living room.
Steve places the last box down, watches as he spins in place. “I know right?”
“Holy shit!”
Laughing, Steve crosses the room, holds Eddie’s hands in his, twirls him in his arms.
To be fair, Steve was feeling the same reaction in his bones. The apartment that they got their hands on isn’t massive. It’s unfurnished and dusty, and there’s a window that doesn’t open properly in the spare bedroom.
Baby and Fangorn are inquisitively exploring each and every open room, and Steve just hopes that they know where their litter boxes are. They have boxes upon boxes of their clothes and appliances and random shit that they need to sort through and unpack. And that’s not even counting the furniture that’s all piled in the corner of the living room right now.
But none of that matters, because it’s theirs.
“Wait!” Eddie says, stops still in Steve’s arms. “I have something for you.”
“Eds, you do know that this is your place too, right? You didn’t need to get me a housewarming gift.”
Eddie waves his hands away, dives into the mountain of boxes to try and find something. He pushes aside the ones labelled clothes and essentials, shifts toiletries and cat stuff to the corner of the room. Steve watches as he pulls back his hair, ties it up and out of the way.
When he finally finds it, something small that Steve barley gets a glimpse of before it’s hidden behind his back, Eddie is stalking towards Steve, telling him to close his eyes.
He does so, a small smile on his face at the theatrics. The sounds of the apartment are soothing to his soul; calming and quiet and soft. There is no pool to stare up at him from the confines of his bedroom window, no horrible plaid wallpaper and unfeeling carpet. Steve feels his hands held in Eddie’s cold ones, feels fingers in-between his own, feels—
“Open your eyes.” Eddie says.
Steve looks down at their intertwined hands, sees—
“Holy shit.”
A ring.
Eddie looks into his eyes, looks back at the ring. He looks at it with such soft eyes in the light streaming through their living room window, before he’s doing a double take and his mouth is moving. “Wait. This totally seems like I’m asking you to marry me, which I’m not opposed to, but that’s moving a little fast, and also? I’m like, eighty-seven percent sure that marrying a guy is totally not legal, but then again, I’m not exactly the poster-boy for following the law, but this isn’t—”
Steve wraps his arms around him, lifts Eddie off his feet and twirls him around the empty house. The silver ring on his finger, one that matches the bat bracelets that Steve had given him for graduation, catches the light of the sun, warm against his hands.
He knows that it’s not a proposal, knows that they might never be able to have that. It’s not a proposal but it is something much better, much softer. As Steve raises his palm in the air to rest on Eddie’s, comparing, he knows that the ring means I love you.
— — —
The kids pile out of Eddie’s van, each of them saying their thank you’s, racing towards the movie theatre. There was a rerunning of Alien that Will had wanted to watch with everyone else, to introduce El to the wonderful world of Ellen Ripley and her cat.
He watches as Lucas and Max race each other to the entrance, as Dustin times them on his watch. Steve waves to Will and El who jump up and down, shout, the movie ends at eight! before racing to catch up with their friends.
(They came yesterday to try and badger Steve to drop them off at the arcade, but it was one of those days where his bones felt on the edge of bending too far, the lights felt a bit too much. It was one of those days where moving felt like a chore, so he sat in his bed, Eddie laying by his side.
When they had knocked on the door, and Steve had clambered down the hallway, Eddie fast asleep, they had asked if he could drive them to the arcade. When he had said no, had started to apologise, they just smiled and told him to rest).
“Thank you,” Mike says, still sitting in the car, leg bouncing. “For driving us but also, just, being here.”
Short-circuiting, Steve turns, gives him a smile. “Hey, no problem. Have fun at the movie, alright?”
Mike smiles a little more at that, nods at him and Eddie before bolting to catch up to where Will and El have waited for them. When they’ve all disappeared into the movie theatre, Steve turns to Eddie, face incredulous.
“Did you put him up to that?”
“He’s your kid—”
“Okay, first of all, I think you mean our kid—”
“—But, no. I mean, he’s a teenager. He’s probably realising how emotionally constipated he was.”
“Huh.” Steve says. Feels that affection build up in his chest.
— — —
It’s weird — the quiet. Steve used to hate it as a child, wished for the loud to take over his house and his body. But after everything that he’s been through, post-Vecna Loop, he finds that he can find comfort in the quiet, in the boring.
Maybe, he thinks, it’s because of the people. The warmth and the comfort that he can find in them, now, how he has people to be loud if only he asks. Before, the loud was empty. Hollow noise that would thrum through his house, his veins, his body, as he danced and drunk and closed his eyes.
Eddie had mentioned how the mornings suited him. He had brushed it off as a little joke, the same way the girl had said he was like the stars, but then Steve had felt fingers thread through his hair, a quiet voice in the bedroom light.
(“It makes you soft,” Eddie says. “When the sun comes through the windows, you get these highlights in your hair, flecks of gold in your eyes.”
Staring up at Eddie from his lap, Steve shifts, tries to get a good look. Eyes already trained on him, Steve searches Eddie’s eyes for something, waits for it: the lie, the joke, the reprimand. He digs deeper and deeper, tries to find the punchline, only to be met with warmth.
“You’re beautiful.” Eddie says, brings a hand to rest on his cheek).
As he lets the early sun filter through the nearly-closed curtains of Hop’s kitchen, Steve finds that Eddie was right — mornings do suit him.
For once, he’s awake before everyone else. He knows that El and Hop would sleep in until noon if they were allowed, and maybe that’s why. And he knows that he doesn’t have to prove himself, is trying to work on the idea that he’s allowed to just exist, but he’s awake before everyone else, and the house is quiet and warm in the morning, and he’s doing last night’s dishes.
Steve knows that it’s different. That he isn’t doing this to prove anything, trying to be useful. Really, this is because it’s quiet, and he’s bored. The actions are methodical enough for him to get lost in them — fork, knife, plate, cup. Wash, rinse, dry, repeat.
It’s so methodical that, as Steve stares out of the crack in the curtains, he goes through his mental checklist for the day. Meet with Eddie after having breakfast with Hop and El, go to therapy at 12, feed the cats, finish the last of the unboxing.
It’s not a lot.
(Some days even just one task will feel like it is, will feel like it spans over the hours, will make him antsy until it’s completed, lethargic once it’s done.
It was something that he had brought up with his therapist. Steve had gone to see her, had talked about it in a hushed tone, ashamed. And she had reassured him, told him that nothing was wrong with him, had brought up different ways to try and work around it).
It’s so methodical — fork, knife, plate, cup — something easy to do with his hands as he watches the morning light, is reminded of something warm and soft and vaguely shaped liked Eddie. It’s so methodical that, as he gets to the final set — fork, knife, plate, cup — as he goes to dry the glass cup against the tea towel—
He drops it.
The quiet and sunlight of the morning is broken, easiness and comfort in the silence gone. The blue shards stare up at him, taunting and dry, from their place on the floorboards. As Steve puts the tea towel down on the counter, shuffles socked feet closer to the mess, he feels as if his heartbeat is booming through the house, on display.
He drops to his knees, slowly. There are things that he could catch on to quickly, realisations that he can switch to. Eddie meant what he said about the morning, Steve’s dad was an asshole, he doesn’t have to prove his use. But there are other things, so deeply ingrained into his heart, etched into his skin.
He’s going to be mad. I’m going to get in trouble.
Steve dives his hands into the shards, tries to gather them up in the palms of his hands, cradles them close to his chest, even as they dig in to callouses and soft flesh. He moves fast and careful, fingertips scratching against the floor to pick up the tiny flecks that had the capacity to hurt. And when they’re all gathered up, blue glass and heart beating, he shoves them into the depths of the bin — hidden.
Steve brings his shaky hands up to his hair, runs his fingers through them, sees the abandoned tea towel, fork, knife, plate, cup. Fork, knife, plate, cup. Fork, knife, plate. He counts to three, breathes in.
“Jesus, are you bleeding?” Hop filters in through the doorway, edges softened by the light and the ugly sweater that Joyce had made him. He crosses the distance quickly, eyes awake, picks up the tea towel. “Here, put this— yeah you got it. I’m gonna get the first aid kit.”
Steve presses the fabric into his palm, shifts so that his body hides the bin. He shoves his hip into the counter, tries to will the shards of glass to disappear behind him, as Hop rummages through the sterile metal box for bandaids.
“You want the one with the princess or the superhero?” Hop asks, holding two large bandaids, with children’s characters on them.
Steve nods his head to Sleeping Beauty, tries not to think of how calm Hopper seemed. Instead, he sticks his hand out, tea towel dulling the sluggish flow of blood, and watches as Hopper peels the princess onto his palm. When Hop makes a move to pack away the first aid kit, Steve steps in.
“No, I can do it.” He says. It’s the least I can do, he thinks.
He rolls the gauze back up, tucks it into its compartment. The boxes of hero and princess bandaids are slotted back into place, and the scissors are laid on top of them. As he finishes it all, closes the lid and turns to place it back on top of the fridge, Steve realises his mistake.
The bin.
Back faced towards him, Hop shifts. Head dipped down to stare at the blue shards that undoubtedly catches the sunlight — pretty and broken. Steve waits and he waits, first aid kit in hand, still. Waits for a reaction, reprimand, rage. Anything.
(Nothing).
“You’re not mad at me?”
Hop turns, dropping the wrapper of the bandaid into the bin. There’s an unreadable expression on his face — not anger, disappointment, sadness. It makes Hop’s eyebrows furrow, but his shoulder haven’t tightened, still calm.
“It’s just glass,” Hopper says. “It’s replaceable.”
And Steve is good at reading people, can hear the words without him having to say it. You’re not.
The bandaid on his palm stretches his skin weirdly, the wound in an awkward position. Steve moves up to the kitchen counter, is waved away, by Hop, to the dining table as soon as he nears the stove. So Steve sits on the rickety dark-wood chair, watches as breakfast is made in the morning light.
It’s weird — the quiet. It used to mean loneliness, an empty house, cold eyes and soundless anger. Steve sees Hop flip a pancake into the air, narrowly catching it and softly cheering when it lands. He thinks that, just like his lover and his friends and his family, it’s something that he’s starting to grow accustomed to.
— — —
“Are the streamers too much? I feel like the streamers are too much.”
“Nance, the streamers look great,” Steve pats his hand on her shoulder, steers her away from the doorway of the living room. “And, really, you didn’t have to get us anything.”
“Steve,” She says. “This is huge! You and Eddie have an apartment! Of course I had to get you guys something.”
Her gift, a joint one between her and Mike, were a set of nice fluffy towels. Steve won’t admit it, and he sure as hell doesn’t think Eddie will either, but they both… kinda forgot about some of the basic necessities.
(Everyone else seems to have them covered on that front, though. Joyce had bought him pillow cases and linens, Robin had gotten him a pan that he’s been looking at since their Scoops era, Jonathan and Argyle bought them ashtrays and cups, and the set of nice cutlery were a gift from Hop.
Even the kids had pitched in, even though Lucas was technically the only one of them earning money. Will had painted him and Eddie portraits with pride colours, El had sewn Eddie a series of scrunchies, and Max had bought them a tarot card deck. There were three different colours of nail polish, curtesy of Lucas, a set of handmade coaster from Dustin, and a fully painted miniature of Steve’s human barbarian for their campaign from Mike).
The kids are all congregated in the living room, having a heavy debate on which movie to watch. Jonathan and Robin were talking about film and polaroids, and Eddie and Argyle were scheming in the corner of the room. Steve thinks that Hop and Joyce just made an excuse to go out the back to have a quick kiss before coming back inside, but. Who’s he to stop them?
Nancy gives him a quick hug before jogging over to the kids, instantly taking El’s side on watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, despite the movie only coming out a couple weeks ago and not being on tape yet. Steve picks up a beer from the kitchen, moves to open it before a cheery chime is ringing through the hallway.
The doorbell rings, and when Steve rushes to the door, opens it to the face of the Dmitri, he almost wants to reenact their first meeting. It’s a little tempting, but then they’re smiling at each other, and Steve is ushering him inside, asking him to slip off his boots by the door.
“How’s Mikhail been?” Steve greets, presses a cool beer into Dmitri’s palms. They do a little swapsies — Dmitri placing a small pot plant into Steve’s empty hand.
He chuckles, accent still thick and ever-present. “He’s taking to English well. Jim’s daughter is helping him out with her dictionary — said something about a word of the day.”
Steve feels a flicker of recognition behind his eyes, is reminded of how El, essentially, had to learn English all over again. He’s makes a mental note to check in on them, see how Mikhail is going with reading and writing.
“Aha!” Dmitri says. “And this is the famous boyfriend?”
Eddie stands at the end of the hall, two sodas in his hands, and the most questioning expression on his face that Steve has ever seen. It makes him think if this is what he looked like in front of Hop and El, when he had first met Dmitri.
“Yes?” Eddie says, but it sounds more like a question than anything. He holds up one finger in a be right back motion before disappearing behind the hallway.
“This is going to happen all night, isn’t it?”
“Oh, totally,” Steve agrees. “But that’s all on you, buddy. You’ve been here, what? A good five months and haven’t introduced yourself to the party?”
Dmitri turns to him, eyebrow raised and dead stare on his face, before Eddie is bounding back down the hallway, hair bouncing across his shoulders, as he joins them near the door.
“Okay, so, is this one of those moments where you’re someone from the previous years of monster fighting that I don’t know about, or have we met before and I just completely forgot your name?”
“Eddie, this is Dmitri, the one who helped Hop in Russia.”
Dmitri sticks out his hand in greeting, palm out. The information seems to click in Eddie’s mind, because his mouth is open in a silent ohhhhhh! before he’s enthusiastically shaking his hand up and down with Dmitri.
“You’re new to all this monster shit then, too, right? Please tell me I’m not the only one who shits themselves whenever a past worldly horror is mentioned.”
“Yes,” He sighs. “They all think monster fighting is normal — I heard that most of the group are children?”
Steve slowly nudges them down the hall, into the room decorated with streamers, places the plant on the windowsill by the kitchen. He can hear the voices of Eddie and Dmitri slowly fade out into the living room as he grabs his own drink of choice: cider.
He leans against the counter, hears a slow second of silence before the loud voices of the kids are filtering through his home. Steve tries to make sense of the overlapping speech, hears who the fuck and nobody told us and hey Dmitri! before Hop is rounding the corner, placing his hands on Steve’s shoulders.
“I know today is all about celebrating you and Eddie’s new place but,” He sighs. “I needed to get this out before it eats me up.”
“What’s up?” Steve asks, hopes that it isn’t the deaths.
Hop takes a deep breath, leans against the counter, next to him, voice low.
“We were taught things in the force. Signs to look out for. Small things that normally wouldn’t mean anything, but when they built up, they meant everything.” Steve takes a sip of his drink, watches as Hop crosses his arms across his chest. “And I know I already talked to you about the phone call, but it was so much more than that. I’m sorry I didn’t step in sooner, kid.”
“You’re always on my ass about apologising for shit that we can’t change anymore. Plus, it really wasn’t that—” Hop turns to give Steve a look, and it makes him think back to two weeks ago. “Okay, yeah, he is that bad, but I’m okay now.”
“But you still deserved to have a father.” Hopper says.
Steve shifts on his feet, sentence spilling from his lips before he can stop them. “You’re more of a dad than mine ever was.”
He turns back to his drink, doesn’t take his eyes off the perspiration that is seeping into his fingers. There’s a voice in his head telling him that he shouldn’t have said that, a stronger part of his heart telling him that it didn’t matter — what he said was true in every sense.
Warm, steady, arms are wrapped around his shoulders before his thoughts can spiral further, Hop mumbling a c’mere kid as his head is pressed into the soft fabric of blue flannel. He sniffles a little bit, tries to quell tears that are starting to arise, but not— not sad tears, he’s not—
Steve tries to organise his thoughts. He breathes in deep, counts to three. When the tears roll hot against his cheeks, he buries his face further into Hop’s shirt.
Because maybe these weren’t entirely sad tears — it was that cross of happy-sad that permeated the title of dad, bottlenecked and ready to blow since he was a child. But when he thinks of the title, of who he would consider his dad, his father, his mum, his mother, his parents, it’s not even a contest. Mr and Mrs Harrington are a stain on his conscience, slowly being washed away, yarn and thread layering over them to create the outlines of Joyce and Hopper: warm, comforting, content.
Steve pulls back, wipes his tears, sees Hop use his palm to dry his own cheeks. When they make eye contact, they give each other the watery, happy smiles that come with the title of family.
“Jesus, and I thought today was meant to be happy.” Hop laughs, grabs a couple tissues from the box on near the fridge.
“Who said I wasn’t happy?” Steve asks, accepts the offered paper towels to wipe at his eyes and his red nose.
They sit there for a moment, in the fading light of the kitchen, listening to the muffled sounds of the party, the pop music playing from the stereo, clinking glasses and soda being opened. When their eyes are dry and they give each other the once over, a nod of approval saying that they looked presentable, Hop claps Steve on the back.
“Okay,” Hop says. “Now we’re gonna go out there, and we’re gonna have some goddamned fun. You deserve it, kid.”
Steve nods, grin toothy, feels the happy-sad feeling fade into something warmer. He and Hop make their way back to the warmth of the living room, and before he’s even fully in the room, Eddie has rounded on him, fingers intertwined, smile on his face as he fills Steve in on what he missed.
(Later, when the cake has been cut, and stories have been shared, and the kids have gotten over the existence of Dmitri and a new kid that they could indoctrinate into their dnd campaigns, they slowly fade out into their sleeping bags on the floor.
“Steve!” Joyce jumps up from her place on the couch, hops across the sleeping bodies of the party on the ground, narrowly missing Max’s outstretched leg. She comes up to where Steve is perched on the love seat next to a sleeping Eddie, waves her hands towards herself. He passes his cider to Hop, links his arms with Joyce as they spin.
Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy streams through the stereo, and Joyce makes her way to the middle of the living room, as much open space as they can have from where the bodies of love fill the room. The sounds of smooth vocals and harmonies are softened by the lamplight, amplified by the dancing.
He holds hands with Joyce, revels in the way that they quietly mouth the words at each other. Steve finds that his cheeks hurt with the amount of smiling that he’s done tonight, finds that he doesn’t want to stop. His arms are swung to the side, left, right, and then Joyce is standing on her tippy-toes, arm raised high, and Steve is ducking under it in a mis-coordinated, elaborate, spin.
“This song reminds me of you and your lover boy!” Joyce says, dimples in her cheeks and eyes filled with love.
Steve smiles at the reminder of Eddie, spins so that he can look over his shoulder to see him, asleep, on the couch. When he gets a good look at him, and the song has switched to something by Madonna, he sees his eyes snap shut.
“Oh, you are not getting out of this,” Steve drawls, mirrors Joyce’s previous actions, waving towards himself.
Eddie peeks one eye open, and Steve motions harder, Joyce joining in. He watches as Eddie dramatically rolls off the couch, clambers over to the two of them. Steve grabs onto his arm, a little bit more than tipsy, and they clumsily shuffle their feet and whisper the lyrics to the shitty pop song on the stereo.
Dmitri laughs from his place on the couch, and Steve sees him and Jonathan and Robin talking to each other in the mess of the living room, wrapping paper and streamers and sleeping children littered across the ground.
There’s a soft click! the distinct sound of rolling film, and Steve turns to smile at the group, try to convey even a fraction of the tenderness within his bones).
— — —
It’s still hard to say a lot of things out loud.
Steve’s been getting better at writing, has figured out a way that works for him. He spins the pen in his fingers, before pressing it back onto the page, bleeding ink into a dot in the corner. He’s written a few (a lot of) letters. Some of them are addressed to his friends, himself. Some of them are addressed to the Harrington’s. Most of them don’t get sent, read, by anyone once they’re sealed and stored away.
There are thank you’s and fuck you’s and sorry’s. Once, Eddie had brought him a small wooden box, lid uneven and rickety, had admitted that he and Jonathan made it for Steve. Each envelope and worry, unread and unsent, out of his body, his mind, were placed into the gift, slid under the desk.
He shifts his pen from lined paper, turns to where Eddie lounges on the bed beside him. “This look good?”
Eddie leans over Steve’s shoulder, hair tickling his neck. “Mmmm, I think I should add—”
The pen is worked out of his hand, and Steve watches as little notes and additions are made in the margins of the page. He sees him cross out the sorry’s, replace them with little blue hearts. When Eddie leans back into his own space, his hand comes to rest on Steve’s hip.
“I think this is it.”
Steve smiles, reaches towards the stack of envelopes on the bedside table. He writes down the names of his friends, his family, seals each letter smoothly and surely. Most letters don’t get sent, are left to be unread — out of sight, out of mind. Each note is short, a page long at most, but they’re important.
(He gathers up the letters, puts addresses on them. When morning comes, and Eddie is already awake, and Steve is groggy and warm from the sun, they’ll go to the post office, and the words will be known).
After packing away the old sticky note from the fridge, completed, there comes a new list. One made in the daylight, slow morning, before either of them had to go to work. Yeah, Steve didn’t swim in his pool, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t about ducking his head under the water, it wasn’t about doing laps and becoming a lifeguard. It wasn’t about crossing things off a list — it was about healing.
So there’s a new list, the old one mounted in a little wooden frame by the mantlepiece, right next to an ugly not-working mug, a small hand-painted artwork with colours that sing true in his blood. There’s a pressed set of flowers, an amalgamation of hair ties and guitar picks, blue glass hung by strings that shine and chime in the wind.
The fridge doesn’t have an inch that isn’t covered with polaroids and film photos, shopping lists, recipes, notes, letters. None of the magnets match: a heart, a cat, a spaceship. Sometimes, when he opens the fridge too fast, the papers dance in the air.
The fridge and the mantelpiece — it isn’t just them. It’s the whole apartment, disorganised, with no rhyme or reason to how anything is set out. The colours of their home clash with each other, dark blues with soft yellows, each gift and memory in a different shade of personal warmth, horrible and wonderful and beautiful and theirs.
When they slide their mixtape into the stereo, when him and Eddie slot their hands together, matching rings and bracelets, twirl in the sunlight, in the moonlight, the warmth and the cold of each other — opposite, the same, never expected, always wanted — when they cry to the happy songs and laugh to the sad ones, misstep, belt out the wrong lyrics, turn the music up as loud as they possibly can, because, truly, finally, after everything, after dying, after living, after remembering, enduring and surviving and hurting and being moulded by monsters and fathers, who sometimes held the same titles and anger, after crying and shouting, voices raw and wrecked in the face of death, in the face of the quarry, in the face of themselves—
Steve knows that he’s loved. That’s he’s allowed to be loved.