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The little tennis court, nestled in the corner of the old park on the edge of town, had seen better days. Vines crept up the fences, wound around the chainlink so tight it would be next to impossible to tear them down, and the gate had rusted shut some time ago. Cracks marred the dingy green surface around the edges and weeds poked through but the center was smooth enough, devoid of nets and poles and sprigs of green.
A newer park had been built closer to the town’s center, dropped into a location central to the manicured lawns of the nicer neighborhoods, so few people ventured this far out of Hawkins just to use a rusted set of swings and an overgrown pavilion.
A handful of teenagers, kids a few years younger than you but older than the party, smoked on the jungle gym and fooled around by the picnic tables, but they were few and far between. You’d come to an understanding with them, anyway; the park was yours in the morning, when the sun rose high in the sky and cast the overgrown greenery in a warm glow, and theirs when dusk began to fall.
For as long as you could remember, the park was a place for you to disappear. It was the place you went to clear your head - a space you’d claimed as your sanctuary, off limits unless invited by you - and everyone in your life respected that.
The kids, though desperate to see you, always radioed ahead if they couldn’t find you with one of the others your age. Eddie, who rarely left your side, only appeared if you left a note specifically requesting his presence, and usually appeared with a joint and a book, just in case. Robin rarely ventured that far out of Hawkins and, for the most part, only really tagged along if you were expecting the whole group. And Steve, kind, golden hearted Steve, made it a point to avoid the park - and keep the others away - unless it was an absolutely necessity.
Just as he’d been roped into babysitting, playing chauffeur and devoting your every waking moment to a gaggle of young teenagers, so had you. If anyone understood what it was like to need a break, to desperately need a sanctuary, it was him.
However, that was before Vecna; before the world as you all knew it went straight to hell. These days, alone time was unheard of, rarely granted and certainly not going uninterrupted. Therefore, you were wholly unsurprised to see the deep burgundy BMW roll to a stop near one of the parking spots. The lines had faded so badly that no hint of them remained, though it wasn’t as if that really mattered when the only other car in the vicinity was yours.
Steve was the only one who could drive and had likely drawn the short straw, sent to the park to check on you after you left your walkie stuffed beneath a pillow on your bed. Check-in calls were regular and, if left unanswered, understandably called for more desperate measures these days.
From the corner of your eye, you could see the car door open and a familiar figure clad in light wash jeans and a grey jacket step out into the cool spring air. Even over the mixtape playing, tinny and soft through your headphones, you could hear the door click shut with a faint thud and gravel crunch under his feet as he rounded the car to take a seat on the hood.
Instead of moving closer, walking up to the fence and attempting to catch your eye or taking a seat in one of the rusty benches near the gate, Steve remained where he was. He made no effort to interrupt you and seemed content to simply sit and watch.
The roller skates you purchased secondhand from the rink a few towns over had, like the tennis court, seen better days. The leather was scuffed and faded, wrinkled from years of wear and tear; the toe stop had been worn to nearly nothing, rubber giving way to metal; and the wheels grew looser every time you wore them, but they made you happy. Or, at least, they used to.
Before Vecna, skating was freeing. It was a way for you to lose yourself in the wind blowing through your hair and the rush of wheels flying across pavement. Skating was where you felt safest, where you felt happiest, and you were desperate to feel something good.
Two weeks had passed in a blur, March giving way to April, but the weight on your chest had yet to ease. Every breath you took still hurt, sawed its way free of your lungs and barely inflated them upon its return. The tips of your fingers tingled, body in a suspended state of fight or flight, and you wondered if your limbs would ever stop trembling.
Every drag of your eyelids was sluggish, slow and hesitant, as the dark saw a return of all the things you so desperately wanted to forget. The deep red of Vecna’s lair, the inky black sky above the trailer park, the sticky rust of blood as it pooled beneath your fingertips and stained the brilliant white of Eddie’s Hellfire shirt, the angry mark around Steve’s throat, the tears in Dustin’s eyes.
Each image haunted you, pressed on your chest until you felt as if your heart and lungs might burst, and with each labored breath, you sometimes hoped they would.
Though two weeks had passed, everything still hurt. The bruises and gashes that littered your skin were still noticeable, still ached in a way that told you your body may never feel the same. This battle, like the ones before, had left you scarred - physically, emotionally - and every shift of your body served as a reminder of the hell you’d so recently endured.
Still, you pretended.
Desperately, you pretended that Steve wasn’t there, sitting and watching with those warm brown eyes searching for any hint as to how you felt. You pretended that your lungs didn’t burn with every inhale and that you side didn’t ache where you’d been bitten. You pretended that your neck and chest and sides and legs weren’t littered with wounds that felt as if they might never heal. You pretended that you were alone, skating for the fun of it.
You pretended that your life hadn’t been completely and utterly destroyed in only a matter of days.
For a few long moments - what could’ve been a handful of minutes, possibly even an hour - you rolled around the court. Any other time, you would’ve relished in having Steve’s attention completely to yourself. You would’ve shown off, practiced a few spins and dips and pretty moves that made you feel like a goddess, just to see him smile. You would’ve twirled a little, grinned at him as he laughed, but being the center of his attention didn’t feel quite as important as it had only a few weeks ago.
After everything you’d been through, being at the center of Steve Harrington’s attention now felt hollow.
A pang of regret twisted your stomach, already tied in knots, and you struggled to swallow tears. It wasn’t Steve’s fault that you felt this way, wasn’t his fault you lived in Hawkins - the current center of hell - and it wasn’t fair that you’d read too much into something that, to him, likely meant nothing. It didn’t even matter anymore, not when there were more pressing matters at hand, and you refused to allow yourself to focus on it.
Instead, you focused on keeping your breathing even. The mixtape, a combination of your favorites and a handful of Corroded Coffin originals, drowned out the thoughts and made it easier to keep yourself distracted. It drowned out the anguished cries that played on a loop any time you allowed silence to fall, drowned out the little voice in the back of your head that told you you should be in their place, instead - gone, instead of Eddie; lying in a hospital bed, instead of Max - and made it easier to blink back tears.
The whip of the wind against your skin calmed the fire that had been brewing just beneath the surface. It mellowed the burning anger at how unfair this all seemed, the bitter sorrow at the young lives forever changed, the despair at the friends you lost, the hollow resignation that the future you’d just started to imagine would never come to fruition. The wind carried some of the burden away, eased the weight on your chest only slightly, and you took your first deep breath in two weeks, only slightly surprised that you could smell spring flowers.
Peace was never yours to bask in, however, and all too soon, exhaustion - brought about by your lack of sleep, lack of appetite, lack of desire to do anything other than the bare minimum - caught up to you. As graceful as you’d become on your skates, the distraction of the real world crashing into you sent you stumbling.
On instinct, you caught yourself. As your hands slapped against cracked concrete, the rough surface adding to the scrapes already marring your skin, you could hear the rattle of the fence and the thump of sneakers hitting concrete, even over the tinny sounds pouring from your headphones.
Before you could so much as blink, Steve was at your side. He knelt down, set himself at eye level, and helped you shuffle into a seated position. His hands were warm, careful, as they reached for yours. Soft brown eyes, honeyed in the sunlight, studied your skin in search of any damage - anything he hadn’t already seen, hadn’t already bandaged a handful of times by now - and you couldn’t help shrinking away from the intensity in his gaze.
Steve sighed, the sound more common than nearly any other he seemed to make these days, but remained quiet as his fingers ghosted along your palm. Any other time, he would’ve chastised you for not wearing your protective gear. You could practically recite the speech you and Max got every time you even mentioned skating, the plea for you both to at least wear your wrist guards and a helmet, but he knew this wasn’t the time or place. Instead, he tipped his head to glance at your skates.
“Think your toe stop’s loose,” he observed, one hand leaving yours to tap the worn orange rubber. “I might have a wrench at home. Could take a look, if you’ll let me.”
“S’okay.” The acknowledgement was quiet, a whisper into the still of the afternoon as you tugged your headphones down with your free hand and looped them around your neck. Steve still heard you, however, and lifted his eyes to yours. Sunlight reflected in them, gold flecks glittering with each pass they made across your face, and you struggled to keep yours open as you shook your head. “Think it’s time for new ones, anyway.”
The warmth of Steve’s palm bled into yours, heated your body from within as his fingers tangled with yours. He was careful not to apply pressure, cognizant of the fresh scrapes and the sting you were likely to feel, but the gesture still brought tears to your eyes as you ducked your head.
This was far from the first time Steve had touched you, far from the first time you’d found yourself in this position, but it was the first you’d ever felt this way.
With your chin pressed to your chest, lip quivering and eyes stinging with unshed tears, you wondered how long things would remain this way. Part of it was, undoubtedly, due to the fact that this was the first time you’d been alone since that. For the first time in nearly two weeks, there was no Robin or Dustin or Lucas or Nancy or Mike or Will or Eleven to fill the silence; there was no other body to shuffle into the newly reopened chasm that made the few inches of space separating your bodies feel like an endless expanse.
For the first time in nearly two years, you weren’t really sure what to say to Steve and neither, it seemed, was he.
In the beginning, back when you were just the babysitter and he was the cooler replacement, awkward silences were commonplace. They lingered, long and uncomfortable, and you swore that you had nothing in common with Steve Harrington until he began to break them with a less than smooth babble that made you grin despite yourself.
When things changed, when you ventured into the Upside Down together that first time - Steve’s second encounter with the supernaturally shitty but your first - silences grew less and less frequent.
The more you grew to like Steve - and you really, truly, totally liked him - the more talkative Steve seemed to become. He always filled the silence with fondly exasperated complaints about Dustin, stories about customers, quips Robin made that he figured you’d like; little pieces of his day, moments in his life that you weren’t there for but he felt the need to share with you, anyway.
Sometimes, months after he and Nancy ended their relationship and he decided to start trying again, he gave you an update on his love life. For nearly a year and half, Steve sat with you in the comfort of his car and lamented this date with Linda or that one with Stacey. But that was before he’d asked you to take a chance on him.
In February, not long after Valentine’s Day, Steve asked you to take a chance on him. It wasn’t exactly a surprise - you’d come to terms with your crush nearly a year into your friendship and Steve had, in his own words, followed soon after - but you were taking things slow. You weren’t dating, not officially, not yet, but you’d gone on a handful of dates and, since then, silences had become even less likely.
Now, however, the silence felt crushing.
Some small part of you, the part that had been drowning in misery since stepping back into Hawkins, wanted to allow it to linger. You were tempted to allow it to fester, to grow deeper and heavier until Steve couldn’t stand it and left you alone once more, but you’d been brushing him off for nearly two weeks.
Though you hadn’t been left alone since that night, it wasn’t for Steve’s lack of trying. Soft hands found your skin at least once a day, warm fingers ghosting over the scrapes littering your arms and sides and legs, and honeyed eyes met yours nearly every time you lifted your head. But someone else always needed his attention, just before he could beg you for yours.
Steve had been patient, understanding in the way that only he seemed to be, but you knew that this conversation was necessary. There were a million things you both had to say - a million feelings you were both attempting to process - and you knew that there wouldn’t be another moment like this any time soon.
“I’m sorry.” When your whispered apology escaped into the air, soft in the cool spring breeze, you chanced a glance at Steve’s face and watched him frown. His brows furrowed in confusion, not quite certain what you were apologizing for, and you shook your head, eyes dropping back to your lap. “For disappearing, I guess. I just… I didn’t know where else to go.”
The look on his face softened then, shifted into a warm understanding, and you could feel the tears lining your lashes as he moved to sit beside you. Steve shifted closer, his knee knocking against yours, and rested his free hand on your thigh - just beneath a gash that was starting to scar - as he tipped his head to meet your eyes.
“You could’ve come to me.” Though the reminder was soft, warm and gentle and lacking any of the disappointment you’d been expecting, it still made you sniffle as his fingers squeezed yours. Those eyes, capable of seeing right through you, searched your face - for what, you couldn’t even begin to imagine. It seemed as if he found it, however, when he shot you a soft smile. “I know I’ve taken a few hits to the head but my hearing’s still pretty good. I’m a good listener.”
Steve’s gentle reminder should’ve eased the ache in your chest. His presence, so typically charming and bright, should’ve cooled the burn in your lungs and quieted the cacophony of thoughts drowning out rationality, but it only served to make your heart beat just a touch faster.
Regardless of how many times he’d been there for you in the past - when you dove into the Upside Down after a gaggle of children, horrified to learn what lived beneath your feet; when you followed him on a reconnaissance mission and ended up captured, tortured by Russian soldiers beneath StarCourt; when your best friend disappeared, nowhere to be found and suddenly public enemy number one, after the body of a cheerleader appeared in his living room - that was then.
In only a handful of days, everything had changed and this time, you couldn’t fathom letting him in.
The sudden storm of emotions was understandable - something Steve would get, if only you could adequately convey the feeling to him - and no fault of his. He had no control over the town you both lived in, no control over the events leading up to this moment, and no ability to predict anything that happened in the span of two utterly soul crushing weeks.
Still, shutting down seemed easier than letting him when that storm included feelings that, in the grand scheme of things, didn’t seem to matter all that much, anyway.
“There’s a lot of shit going on,” you reminded him, as if he needed it. Regardless, Steve squeezed your fingers lightly instead of scoffing because if anyone was keenly aware of the situation at hand, it was Steve. “Dustin, Lucas, Robin; they’re all coming to you. I just… I didn’t want to pile on, didn’t want to bother you.”
Immediately, Steve shook his head, just as you expected. For all of his confidence, for his wit and the moments of levity he provided, for his past reputation and all the things that entailed, Steve Harrington had a heart of gold. He put others above himself at any given turn and, though he had his own trauma to process, he would do whatever he could to be a shoulder for Lucas or Dustin or Robin or you.
“There’s no way you could ever bother me,” he promised, eyes searching yours as he leaned in closer. “Especially after…” His gaze fell to the silver chain around your neck, suddenly impossibly heavy and blistering the skin it touched, and you lifted your hand to cradle the warm metal of Eddie’s ring. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. We haven’t really talked."
Though Eddie and Steve hadn’t known one another well - they’d shared a handful of classes in school, met in passing occasionally, but their only shared interests were you and Dustin, and Steve had been mildly jealous that not only did you spend your free time with Eddie, he’d managed to capture Dustin’s attention, too - he knew how it felt to have your world upended.
Steve hadn’t lost anyone in the way that you had - not yet, though Max was too close for comfort - but he understood.
That understanding was clear in the way he looked at you, the way his hand caressed your thigh and his fingers wrapped tight around yours, but you still shook your head. Talking about it would make it real, make the ache in your chest burn that much hotter, and you couldn’t stand it. “I should be the one asking you how you’re doing.” You gestured to his side, eyeing the bulk in his shirt where bandages still remained wrapped tight and frowned. “How’s your side?”
“Babe.” Steve’s reprimand was mild, lacking any heat at all, but it still pulled a quiet sigh from you as he knocked his knee into yours.
“Steve.”
With a roll of his eyes, Steve shook his head and gently untangled your fingers to trace the scrapes lining your palm. “It’s starting to scar. I’ll be fine,” he assured you, fingers a featherlight touch dragging across your heated skin. “Talk to me, please.”
There was an underlying desperation in Steve’s tone, a pleading that hadn’t been there the last time he spoke to you, but you weren’t ready to talk about it yet. Nothing felt real - Eddie being gone, Max physically there but hanging on by a thread, Dustin walking around as a shell of himself - and you were afraid that breathing it aloud would make it so.
It took every ounce of your strength to hold yourself together, to cling to the fraying threads of your sanity, and letting Steve know how shattered you were - how empty you felt, knowing that your best friend was gone; how lost you felt, not knowing if the girl you’d come to view as a sister would make it; how devastated you felt, seeing Dustin walk around openly displaying the emotions you swallowed bitterly - would only make it harder to pick up the pieces.
Steve would do whatever he could to help, you knew that, but you didn’t want his help. So, instead of answering him, you shifted the conversation. “Where’s Nancy?”
Though that wasn’t the answer he wanted, it was one Steve had seen coming.
For nearly as long as you’d known him, you trusted Steve with your feelings. If anyone knew how you felt, it was him. However, those conversations were always had on your time. Until you were ready to speak, you would deflect and brush off his questions; until you’d catalogued the emotions for yourself and made sense of them, you moved on to topics you deemed safer.
Everyone gave him plenty of shit but Steve Harrington wasn’t an idiot. He’d seen the whispered conversations you held with Eddie, how both sets of eyes wandered to him and Nancy before everything went straight to hell. Looking back, he knew what it must’ve looked like to you, to Eddie - who was only looking out for his best friend.
Still, he swallowed a sigh as he squeezed your fingers gently. “With Jonathan,” he answered easily, “where she should be.”
“Oh. I just thought…”
The implication was obvious, clear without a need for you to spell it out. Steve knew what you thought. Robin knew. Eddie knew. The kids knew. Nancy knew.
Before the world imploded around everyone, they’d all seen it. Steve hadn’t realized it at the time - a little too caught up in the moment - but he’d been preoccupied with Nancy and you’d felt left out. He’d brushed it off at first, decided that you were busy with Eddie and he was helping out elsewhere, but after talking with Robin, he realized how the situation could’ve been viewed.
Though you’d only been on a handful of dates, it was clear that the events of the previous weeks had you wondering if venturing further would be a good idea.
It wasn’t entirely about Nancy and he knew that. There was insecurity there, a little bit of nervous energy - Steve wore his heart on his sleeve and Nancy still held a piece of it, without question - but you weren’t really that upset. This was just the safest card to pluck from the stack, the one that would hurt the least if it sent you tumbling.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve been with you. I just,” Steve began, voice soft in the cool spring breeze. “I don’t… I don’t have feelings for Nancy anymore, really. I just think I’ll always be a little… Not in love, just, you know when you see the past better than it was?”
His explanation was a little clumsy, a little rushed as he tried to find his footing, but you understood, anyway. “Nostalgic?”
Steve nodded, grateful for the assistance, and continued. “Mm, yeah. Nostalgic. I’m not in love with her anymore but she’s always going to be nostalgic and when all this shit happens, it just brings it back. I got caught up in the past, how easy it was to run from the future, but maybe that’s because I realized she’s not my future, though, not anymore. My future is… different, now,” Steve explained, brows furrowing as he tilted his head.
Warm brown eyes met yours, honeyed in the sunlight, and searched for any hint of understanding. There was a desperation lingering in his eyes, a frenzied panic you’d only seen in the heavy aftermath of one Upside Down adventure or another, and this time, you knew your own held the same.
The weight of his hand in yours, the warmth of his skin, calmed the racing of your heart, if only slightly. His presence made it easy for you to admit, “I kinda stopped thinking about my future a while ago. It’s stupid but I think I’ve only thought of it once or twice in the past few years.”
A denim clad knee knocked into your own, careful to avoid the scrapes and bruises still marring your skin, as Steve nodded encouragingly. “Why?”
“I don’t know. After that first time, following you and the kids into the Upside Down, I just… I guess I figured I’d never get one. It always felt like living on borrowed time after that.”
Though you’d been close for years, friends - with the potential for more now, on the verge of a love that could leave you both shattered - you’d never admitted your fear to Steve. You’d talked about the Upside Down a bit, held him through a handful of nightmares and fearful admissions related to the kids safety and their futures, but you’d never shared your own feelings.
There was never a question that he knew - Steve could read you well, could see through you in ways others couldn’t - and when you spared him a quick glance, you were surprised by the sadness reflected in his eyes. There was an understanding there, a depth you hadn’t expected, and you quickly returned your gaze to your battered skates.
“Before the Upside Down shit, Eddie and I were supposed to move to Indianapolis,” you admitted, voice a whisper in the wind as you squeezed Steve’s fingers. “We were supposed to graduate. Eighty-five was going to be our year. We saved up for ages. I worked at the diner, Eddie worked at Thatcher’s, and we both pulled doubles as often as we could. We had enough to start out, to find a shitty apartment and just get out of Hawkins. Then…”
Steve’s fingers tightened in your own, still careful to avoid anything that might hurt - anything that might cause you pain - but a reassuring weight as you drew in a shaking breath. He knew parts of this, had been privy to a handful of conversations between you and Eddie, but you’d never admitted anything quite so serious and his attention was solely on you.
“Then, we were dealing with all the Upside Down shit and Eddie didn’t graduate and my future fell apart in the span of six months. I could’ve left Hawkins but I couldn’t leave Eddie here to deal with that shit alone. I couldn’t leave Dustin and Mike and Lucas and Will and El and Max. I couldn’t leave you. My future was ripped away and I didn’t want to replace that vision because having it taken from me would hurt even worse the second time. So, I just… stopped.”
As you spoke, Steve’s hand remained steady in yours. You could feel the weight of his gaze on your face, warming your skin, but the blood rushing in your ears drowned out anything other than the need to speak. You’d kept your fears to yourself for nearly two years, locked away, and now, there was nothing you could do but share them.
“If I made it to the next week after all that shit, that was more than I expected. When my parents asked me about school, I didn’t know what to tell them because going to school in Indianapolis felt impossible. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for another gate to open or for something to happen to someone I loved. And then you asked me out and I started thinking about a future, just… It was just a little but I saw a light, you know?” A quiet laugh, devoid of any humor, escaped as you brought your free hand to your face to wipe at tears.
“Nearly a year without any supernatural bullshit, a guy I really like wanting to go out with me, my best friend on the verge of graduating, the kids being happy, Robin being happy. It felt like a future was possible. But… you and Nancy, and then Max, and Eddie, and I just… Honestly, being upset about you and Nancy feels like the dumbest thing in the world right now but everything just feels hopeless. That was just another thing the universe could take from me and now I just see darkness. I don’t see a future. The people I love don’t get one, might not get one, why should I?”
There was little that Steve could say and you knew that. However, that did nothing to stop him from sighing quietly and untangling his fingers from yours. He lifted his newly freed hand to your jaw and splayed his fingers across your wind-cooled skin. His thumb brushed at your skin idly as he tilted your head to meet your eyes. There was a sorrow in them you’d never seen before, a bitter sadness that Steve Harrington had never seemed capable of, and it made the ache in your chest that much heavier as you blinked away tears.
“I wish I knew what to say to fix everything, but I don’t.” Steve’s voice cracked, if only slightly, with his soft admission. It was little more than a whisper in the wind but it lingered heavy in the air as he searched your eyes. “I do know what it’s like to be afraid. I’ve been looking over my shoulder for years,” he confessed, eyes glittering in the sunlight. “There’s always something out there, waiting, especially here in Hawkins. I know that. I’ve seen it. And I know it’s hard to see past that at what could be but that’s what keeps me going. Thinking that one day, all this shit will have been worth it, gets me through the day.”
As warm fingers traced your rapidly heating skin, brushing at the few stray tears that managed to fall despite your best efforts, you couldn’t help but wonder what kept Steve going. What vision of the future could be so motivating as to keep him moving when everything felt so fucking hopeless? So, you asked, “What does this future look like?”
Steve smiled then, a little sad and a little embarrassed, but real enough to make your heart flutter as he tipped his chin toward his chest.
“I always thought I’d stay in Hawkins, but maybe not now. Now, I imagine a suburb outside of the city, maybe, so I could work there and come home to a quiet little neighborhood full of families. The Harrington house would never be quiet, though, because I always see myself with a big family.”
“How big is big?” The answer didn’t matter, not really - not when that big family likely didn’t include you, not when you couldn’t see that family yourself - but hearing Steve speak managed to soothe the shaking of your fingers, if only for a moment. It kept you from dwelling, from throwing yourself into a spiral that would be nearly impossible to come back from, so you tilted your head to glance at him and smiled when his cheeks tinged pink.
“Oh, massive. Like, six little nuggets. Just a whole brood of Harringtons,” he admitted, smiling when you raised an eyebrow. His laughter was a touch more real, genuine and soft, when he shook his head. “I know it sounds insane but that’s always been a dream of mine.”
Despite Steve’s soft, self-deprecating laughter, you were quick to shake your head. “It doesn’t sound insane,” you assured him, a little too quick. It sounded like Steve - desperate to fill a hole left in his heart by his own absent parents, eager to have the family he was never given - and, though the future was dark, you hoped he got it. “It sounds miserable for your future wife because that’s a lot of babies but it doesn’t sound insane. It makes sense for you, honestly. The way you love the kids… You’ll be a good dad someday, Steve.”
Steve hesitated, only for a moment, before lifting his gaze back to yours. “I know we’re not, you know, official,” he began, fingers stroking your jaw as he searched your eyes, “but I’ve had feelings for you for a while. And when I think about the future, I don’t see Nancy beside me. I see you. I know now’s probably not the best time to tell you that. I just hope that maybe someday, you’ll be able to see a future and I’ll be there, too.” A beat of silence passed, in which Steve’s brows furrowed and his mouth curved into a soft frown, before he added, “Max is going to have a future. She’s going to be okay. And Eddie… Eddie would want you to keep going, to make it out of Hawkins and live your life. You deserve a future.”
Realistically, you knew that.
If there was anyone who would’ve wanted you to carry on, to continue living even as you faced down literal demons and the agony of losing the only constant you’d ever had, it was Eddie. He would’ve wanted you to keep going, to live, even if it was under the guise of living for the both of you. However he had to push you, he would have, and that knowledge - along with the realization that Eddie wouldn’t get to tell you that himself - was the final straw.
If Steve was surprised by your tears, he didn’t show it. Instead, he released his grip on your jaw and gathered you in his arms. His hands, warm and soft, stroked your back gently as your hands gathered the fabric of his shirt and held tight. His arms were a comfort, strong and capable of protecting you from the world, and though your world was crumbling around you, you felt safe in his grasp.
“I know, babe,” he whispered, voice soft as he stroked your skin. “I know.”
Though you and Dustin had broken down just outside the ruins of Wayne’s trailer, fell apart even faster when you shoveled dirt into an unmarked plot of land that was nowhere even close to what Eddie deserved, this was the first time you’d cried in two weeks and as the tears fell, it felt as if they may never stop.
After a few long moments, you found it in yourself to speak. “Steve?” He hummed, acknowledging, and waited patiently for you to speak. “I don’t see a future right now but… could you keep me in yours? Just… just for a little while?”
It was potentially unfair, not quite the question that you should be asking in a moment of such vulnerability, but Steve didn’t hesitate.
The arms around your middle wrapped a little tighter, pressed to your skin just a touch firmer, and despite the awkward position, you were in no hurry to move. Neither, it seemed, was Steve. He hummed in your ear readily, the sound reverberating in his chest, as you felt him nod. “Of course, babe. I’ll keep you as long as you’ll let me.”
The future looked dark, bleak and miserable, because the person you’d always pictured sharing it with was no longer with you. However, there was a pinprick of light, way off in the distance, that told you there might be something out there for you, anyway.