Chapter Text
Steve Harrington was a lot of things;
Handsome.
Caring.
Smart when he wanted to be.
Loyal to a fault.
A little bit of a jackass sometimes, but only because he cared so much about how people saw him.
Insecure.
A little bit broken.
The world’s best babysitter.
And contrary to what he believed, a really great boyfriend.
He was the kind of person who, without being asked, ran headfirst into danger to fight the unknown to save his ex-girlfriend and the boy he thought she left him for. Who followed and helped and protected some random kid, which turned into four random kids he barely knew, from the unimaginable. Who threw himself against a door he knew would never hold to fight off a human monster this time, so that his family could have a chance.
He was the kind of person who, despite never winning a fight, never stopped entering them, so long as he was doing it for someone else.
He was a protector, a lover, and a friend. He survived what should have been a hero’s death more times than he could count, but he always made it to the other side.
Until he didn’t.
~
He should have known it would end this way, really. Steve Harrington was a lot of things, but more than anything, he was the person who would die to protect his family. His family, which didn’t include his parents but consisted of seven children he’s not at all related to, his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend, his best friend, the chief of police, and the mom he always wanted.
These people he loved more than life itself. Who he’d gone into battle with before, who shared similar scars on their bodies and their minds. They’ve fought inter-dimensional monsters and evil Russians and Billy fucking Hargrove. They’ve gone into battle with the impossible and won.
So, of course, it would be the mundane that would finally beat him.
Besides, he’s won every fight he’s ever had against things that shouldn’t exist, but he’s lost all of the ones against the ordinary. The human.
That’s life sometimes, it's full of irony. And he would laugh if he wasn’t dying in the middle of the road. He would scream if Dustin wasn’t by his side, crying and begging for someone, anyone, to help.
He knows this story too well, though; he's lived it his entire life. No one is coming to help.
He can see it now; his life. Like watching a videotape that’s rewinding. Greatest hits and most traumatic failures, and damn it if he didn't wish there were more in the former category.
His parents, who never loved him. Being left alone for the first time when he wasn’t even tall enough to reach the freezer. Struggling to make friends because he was sad at school more often than he was happy, and kids don't like things out of the ordinary. Being so goddamn lonely in such a big house, with no one to fill it. Being told that he had 'issues' with attention and focus, and that he would fall behind everyone else if he didn't try harder. Not knowing how to try any harder. His teachers sending home well-intentioned notes of concern because he cried sometimes. Okay, maybe a lot of times. The day his father cornered him in his room, hands gripped around his wrists until fingerprint-shaped bruises were left, telling him to man up or he'd "give him something to really cry about". All the times he made good on that promise. Joining basketball, and then baseball, and then anything he could to make people like him. To prove that he could do something, be something, that he could be good. (he promised he could be good.)
To make his parents proud of him.
But they never were.
He wonders if they would be proud now, when they hear the news of their only child who died because he pushed his little brother best friend out of the way.
Will they cry?
Will they care?
He’ll never get to know.
He reaches the memories he’d rather forget, of Tommy and Carol; they never loved him either. His parents' idea of good company. They simply used him for his money and his house. The things he would inherit if he could just keep his mouth shut and his eyes down. Obsessed with the idea of who he could be, what he could do for them. He learned the hard-fought lesson that joining the crowd left one less bloody and bruised than standing against it, so he did what he could to be who they wanted him to be, to bite his tongue even when he knew they had gone too far. To make the cowardly trek to the throne of King Steve and pretend as if his life depended on it (because maybe it did), pretend that any of these clothes fit him. So much of his life spent vying for the love and attention of people who couldn't give two-shits about him. Maybe that's okay, maybe that's what he deserved. Maybe false hope and half-baked warmth were all he was ever meant for.
The loneliness was so familiar that it stretched around him like a second layer of skin. Throwing house parties for four, so at least someone was there, sleeping around with girls he didn't know the last name of, in the hopes that it would fill something in him. Anything in him. Like there was even a 'him' to fill.
But then there was Nancy. Sweet, beautiful, kind, unfailingly smart, and quick-witted Nancy Wheeler. She was like pure yellow sunlight pouring through the curtains of his too-dark windows, showing him glimpses of all the things life could be. All the things that life should be.
He thought she loved him. He really did, but maybe this, too, was just wishful thinking. Naivety at its absolute finest. Maybe he put too much pressure on them; wanted too much, more than she could give, more than he deserved. More than he could ever deserve. Or maybe she just could never look at him again without the guilt seeping through.
Barb.
It kills him too, and he wonders if he’ll see her wherever he’s going, and if she still hates him. (its okay, so does he.)
Suddenly, his entire life was turned upside down because newsflash, monsters are real and apparently live in fucking Hawkins, Indiana, of all goddamn places! And then it wasn't just Nancy, but Jonathan too, and they both hated him, and maybe they should have, but it didn't matter because he could protect them. He had to protect them. So he did what he did best, he picked up a bat riddled with nails and swung like his father had beaten into him; feet planted, hips loose, grip locked tight, eyes never wavering. Through this, something shifted in that destroyed living room, not just his internal sense of the world, but for maybe the first time in his entire life, he felt useful, needed, and, towards the end, maybe even a little wanted.
Even if they still only wanted him around for the things he could do, or the things he could maybe one day be, and not for who he already is. At least they wanted something of him, even if it wasn’t real. He could make it real. (He had to make it real.)
So he tried, he tried to change course, to make up for the shitty things he'd done, and the shitty person he was becoming. He tried to make amends and do better, be better. He tried to hold on to that feeling for just a little longer.
But time moved on, whether anyone was ready for it or not. He and Nancy somehow re-found a rhythm, or maybe he had just closed his ears to the discordant notes, pretending like everything was fine and normal. He just wanted everything to be fine and normal. He started working on applications for colleges he would never get into, and training for games they didn't win, hanging up the crown he had never wanted to wear. Trying to understand why everything still felt so tilted, why Nancy was clinging to him and pushing him away at the same time. Why Jonathan accepted the camera but never spoke another word to him. Why the world could move on, but none of them could.
And then there were dinners with Barb's parents, assholes moving to town, drunken parties filled with too many shitty people and not enough air. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, roses and apologies that never got to be said. And then more monsters and tunnels and protecting kids he doesn’t know, but who need someone, and hell, it might as well be him.
Dustin.
He was different. He was the first person who ever needed him. Accepted him. Wanted him around even if he wasn't useful. Loved him.
And then slowly the rest of the kids. And then Joyce and Hopper. Nancy, but in a different way, and hell, maybe even Jonathan.
Life was finally going good, and then surprise attack! Not monsters, but Russians, evil ones at that. Elevators that don't work, endless hallways, and just so much ice cream. He has a new friend now, but she’s different. He doesn't have to protect her (but he will anyway, because that's who he is); she’s not a child looking for a mentor. She’s just a lost person looking for some love and acceptance. Just like him. He thinks he's in love with her, and maybe just maybe he doesn't know shit about love. How could he, really?
And suddenly he has another child, this one younger than the others but smarter too. And god he’ll do anything to protect them. Even if that's getting captured, tortured, and drugged.
Scoops Ahoy! I work for Scoops Ahoy! Please. Please, I work for Scoops Ahoy. I don't know anything. I scoop ice cream for a living. I work at Scoops Ahoy!
He never told anyone how he wakes up screaming that at night. How he could he never go back to the doctors. Could never eat ice cream. Could never use elevators.
But now he had Robin. And Robin had him. She’s the only person he knows needed him just as much as he needed them. And he loves her, though not how he originally thought, but maybe in a better way than he could have ever imagined. She's crude, and awkward, and a genuine genius, and the stupidest person he's ever met (outside of himself), and she's mean, and the best thing he's ever got to have. She calls him dingus with her mouth turned up in a smile she can never quite bite down, and she loves him. She convinces him to hope for things again, makes him write and re-write essays for colleges he might actually get into this time, and she makes him drive her to school even though she has a license and he told her she could just drive his car. She never lets him pick the movie but always lets him choose the records, she talks his ear off about every girl who comes into their work, and listens to him rant about the ever-evolving thing between him, Nancy, and Jonathan, until she swears her ears start to bleed. She makes him make plans for the future and talk about the wonderful, beautiful, insane, and impossible things they'll do when they get out of this godforsaken town. And she loves him.
She loves him.
God, how he wished that were ever enough.
He hopes she won't detach herself from their family now. That she’ll care for Dustin, Erica, and all the kids. Become their new babysitter, though they’re getting too old to need one. Really, they haven’t needed one for a while, save for Erica; they haven’t needed him for a while. But he needed them, in perhaps the most pathetic way possible. He needed to be there for them, so none of them would ever feel the loneliness he had. He needed them to all know how loved they were, how important they were.
He wished he’d told them all more. He wished he’d told Dustin more. How much he meant to him. He tries now, but all that’s coming out of his mouth is blood, and he thinks that's supposed to hurt. And Dustin's crying and screaming so much that he doubts he’d hear him anyway.
This year had been good. It wasn’t filled with monsters and evil and stupid high school and getting his shit absolutely rocked by another fist to the head. It was filled with family and love. Movies and music and late nights spent dancing and laughing like the world would end tomorrow, cause you never knew when it would.
But that’s what’s so funny, the shitty left hook tearing through your blindspot that the audience could see coming the whole time, but you were too distracted by the thunderous applause to heed the lightings warning. Okay and yea, maybe he still gets stuck in weird sports metaphors no one except him understands sometimes, but the point is; he had finally reached that point where he wasn’t expecting the end of days to come when he woke up. He wasn’t afraid anymore that when he went to work that day, he’d find nothing but blood. He’d finally been able to start sleeping through the night again. He’d let his guard down. Maybe that's how he’d ended up here. Maybe he really was always going to end up here.
The truck came out of nowhere, literally. Some drunk idiot, probably. And Dustin wasn’t paying attention; he was too busy trying to get his supercom to reach the rest of the party. Steve saw the truck, but there was no time. No time to warn Dustin to move, no time to try and pull him in another direction. No time. Or maybe there was, Steve really didn’t know. He acted on instinct. Every fiber of his being stringing together to urge him to act, even if he didn’t know what he was acting on.
Because prepared or not, ready or not, he would die to protect his kids. And that's exactly what he’s doing. He pushed Dustin out of the way and was so relieved when he saw him land safely on the grass; he didn’t even feel the impact. Somehow still can't. And he doesn't know a lot about biology (or chemistry, or anatomy, or medicine, or) but he knows that can't be good.
All he feels is numb. Everything is blurry; sounds, visions, it's like he was suddenly pulled underwater. Reminds him of summers spent as camp lifeguard and waves dragging him under on long-forgotten vacations without supervision. He can distantly hear sirens, but what kind he doesn't know. Dustin is holding him so softly that it makes his chest ache; it's the only thing he can feel. But, God, what a thing to feel. For just a second, a blip in his life, really, to feel taken care of. To feel protected, cared for, loved, safe. The way he tries so desperately for everyone else. He's selfish for enjoying it. Because he's so far from safe right now, and Dustin's the one feeling the impact instead of him.
He wants to tell Dustin he’s proud of him. That he loves him. That he’s his family.
And apparently he does, or Dustin just knows. Because he’s whispering over and over again that he knows, that he loves him, that he's sorry, that he’s the brother that he never had but always wanted. And then he’s telling him that it's going to be okay, that help is coming, and he’s going to be okay.
But Steve knows the truth.
He knows how this story ends. How it was always meant to end.
He is going to die here, in the middle of the road, cradled in his brother's arms. And he can't think of a better way to go.
(but still, selfishly, he thinks of how desperately, maybe for the first time, he doesn't want to go.)
~
”Steve Harrington was a lot of things;
Handsome.
Caring.
Smart when he wanted to be.
Loyal to a fault.
A little bit of a jackass sometimes, but only because he cared so much about how people saw him.
Insecure.
Broken, just like the rest of us.
The world’s best babysitter.
Stubborn as all get out.
and the ultimate protector.
My brother.
But more than anything, Steve Harrington was loved.”
Dustin finished his speech only barely; he couldn’t even see his way back to his seat through his tears. Tears that hadn’t stopped haunting him since that day in the street. His eyes burned something violent, red and angry lines seared down his face where the never ending tear-tracks may never fully disappear. Eventually, he finally found Robin’s arms to collapse into. Strong, sturdy, and warm, but shaking ever so slightly as they wrapped around him. She’d held him since she found him at the hospital, and she hasn’t let go since. He’s afraid of what it’ll mean when she finally does.
The news rocked the world of Hawkins. There was barely a dry eye in town, but Dustin knew most of them were for a person who wasn’t real. The dumb jock who lived in a large house and threw great parties. But that person didn’t exist anymore, maybe he never existed at all. Because that was not Steve Harrington.
They had a funeral for that guy, where over half the town showed up, including his parents, who did not, in fact, cry, and Joyce had almost lost it at this, Hopper clinching his broken fist in barely concealed rage. The funeral was filled with sophisticated black evening wear, a stuffy old banquet hall in memoriam, and stories of a kid who had lived up to only the potential that was expected of him, which is to say; very little. Dustin wanted to burn the whole place and everyone in it to the ground.
They had their own funeral for the people who actually knew him. They buried his nailbat because it felt like the best they could do. Everyone sat around and told stories about him. Of not just the things he did, but of who he was. They talked of all the things he had still wanted to do, that he was finally believing he could want to do. That he should have had the time to do. And everyone cried, and everyone screamed. They screamed until their throats were raw, and maybe even a little bloody if the metallic tasted stuck in his mouth was anything to go off of. They screamed about shitty funerals and even shittier people, they screamed about dreams unfulfilled, and lives left untethered, they screamed about truth being buried before it got to be released, and stupid fucking drunk-drivers that the police never did find.
Through all of it though, they were together, and Dustin knows it’s what he would have wanted for them. To lean on each other, and love each other, as he did. As he hopes they did in return.
None of it is okay, and it very well may never be again, but time will keep moving, whether they want it too or not. And, eventually, maybe, it’ll get a little easier. As long as they stay together, as long as they keep the no longer full family together, then maybe it’ll get a little easier. And maybe they’ll manage to make him proud of them all from wherever he is, like they all were of him.
Steve Harrington died to protect his family. They just wish he had known; they would have died to protect him, too.