Archive of Our Own

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!

Steve hates people who can’t move on, who stick around in a situation where they’re unwanted making everything a million times more awkward.

Then how the hell did he become one of them?

He loves a quick exit, leaving a space before he’s told to. He’s done that a million times with his parents, halfway up the stairs to his bedroom before they can tell him they’re leaving for the evening or the weekend or the next three weeks. Steve doesn’t stick around to be told to go.

Nancy never told him to go but she wouldn’t tell him to stay. Just looked at him with her deliberate blue-eyed confused gaze. The bitterness of his words in reply came easily to him. What didn't come easy, what he almost choked on, was the asking, the practically begging for her love. The cry for her love was wrung from him. And if she thought he was just going to stick around and wallow in the aftermath she was wrong.

"So tell me."

"Tell you ... what?"

"You love me."

It’s been months. Hawkins is back to normal. Well, as normal as it ever was.

Everybody seems to be moving on, the kids, Nancy, Jonathan. At least the kids talk to him. Dustin won’t leave him alone which is a mercy and a relief against the loneliness, when Steve can admit it. Which isn’t always.

Because the truth is—Steve is just stuck. Same life, without the good parts. Same food but he can’t taste anymore. He knows there are bigger problems than his love life. That doesn’t make any of it any easier to bear. Is this what heartbreak is? This never-ending monotony? No sheen, no shine, no glamour. Just this dull anguish.

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,

And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.

It’s a rainy Wednesday afternoon in February when Steve decides to skip school. The senior skip day isn’t until May but if his classmates think that Steve is waiting around for the endless arguments and back and forth about the best day to skip they’ve got another thing coming. He doesn’t know where he’s headed as he pulls out of the Hawkins’ high school parking lot at 9:05, he just knows it’s far away.

Speeding down the road, music blasting, the wind ruffling his hair through the rolled down windows, his spirits starts to lift. Some of the rot around his heart begins to fall away.

Nancy is not the only girl in the world.

All the broken hearts in the world still beat.

Tears can be mended, gates shut.

He pulls off the road a mile or two away from the next town at a rest stop surrounded by scattered blue pines. Watery sun is beginning to break through the clouds and morning shadows dance over the strips of parking lot pavement.

A wooden bench stands in the middle of a clearing, a ways from the road. The surrounding trees frame a patch of sky above it. It looks peaceful and non-threatening in the morning light.

It’s a perfect place to watch the stars, he thinks as he takes a seat. He used to love doing that with his parents when he was little, driving far away from Hawkins and finding a good place to stargaze, always somewhere off the beaten path. It only happened twice but feels like a hundred times.

The bench is built for two and in a flash he can see Nancy’s smiling pointed face framed by tousled curls next to him, can feel her delicate warmth under his arm as he points out a constellation in the summer sky.

His throat tightens and a stirring in the February wind definitely dissolves the reverie.

He puts his head in his hands and wonders if this is the place where he finally cries about it all. About the fact that Nancy couldn't answer a question and so said everything that could ever hurt him. Miles from Hawkins at a rest stop where no one can hear him.

Dammit, he whispers quietly.

And then he starts to cry.