Work Text:
Hawkins, Indiana
Steve is not thinking entirely when he tells them about it. Bag packed in the car and a tank full of gas and all.
In hindsight, he also hadn’t been thinking while he was shoving clothes in the said bag, forcing in everything he could fit until it was full and zipping it shut was more a chore than a simple action. In the space of time between his father’s phone call and the subsequent breakdown he had while driving to the gas station to pump his car, the only thing he had thought about in the entirety of it was that he needed Eddie and Robin with him.
“You want us to what?” Robin whispers incredulously, her voice loud in Eddie’s unusually silent room. Eddie himself just stares at him, still caught in the shock of Steve’s proposition.
“Just—I need to get away for a while. I want you to come with me.” He said, not even thinking of the reasons why Robin could possibly be in Eddie’s trailer, given they haven’t really hung out alone before. It doesn’t matter, he thinks. Saves me the trip.
“We can’t just—I can’t—I mean, I could, but—”
“It’s fine if you can’t.” Steve sighs, already turning his back to walk out of the room. “I just—I guess I wanted—I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I’m leaving, anyway, whether you guys go or not, so—”
“We’ll go with you.” Eddie says, cutting him off. His hand freezes on top of the doorknob. “Just—an hour. Give Robin and I an hour. And then we’ll go.”
Steve nods and says nothing else, walking out of the door and straight to his car, sitting in silence until they climb back in, a bag full of clothes in Eddie’s.
When Robin has packed and Eddie is fiddling with his radio and the Welcome to Hawkins sign is far behind them in his rearview mirror, he realizes it had only taken them both forty minutes to pack up and leave.
-
He drives with no particular destination route in mind, ignoring Robin’s curious stares whenever their eyes briefly meet in the mirror and Eddie’s more blatant, upfront gaze. Steve thinks it should probably unnerve him; how it’s been three hours since they passed the Indiana border and the most Eddie has looked away from him was when he was rifling through his own bag to replace the ABBA tape that Robin had shoved in earlier that almost made Steve swerve and crash the car into the barrier separating the lanes.
But, no, Eddie’s gaze does not unnerve him. If he could stray his eyes away from the road ahead for more than a second long maybe he’d look back, too. Maybe he’d find something there. Maybe something in Eddie’s eyes would make him want to stop the car and turn it around. Or, at least, explain why he’s doing this all in the first place.
“We’re going to California.” He says in the silence. “If—Say the word and I can turn this car back around if you don’t want to go. Just—”
“We’ll go.” Robin cuts him off. “We’ll—You have us, Steve.”
Steve’s grip on the steering wheel loosens just a bit.
-
The need to rest outweighs the need to run, and eventually Steve stops the car outside a decent looking motel just a little off the road. It’s only a little over 6:30 PM, and while Steve thinks he could still push beyond Bloomington he also just wants to get on a bed and tell Robin that 1.) he’s not going to kill himself and 2.) he’s not really ready to talk about anything yet.
He ignores Robin and Eddie’s offers to split the payment for their room, telling them they could get the next one. Steve grabs the keys when they’re handed to them, taking no notice of the weird gaze the clerk gives him when he walks away, slinging his bag across his back and picking up Robin’s and Eddie’s. He’s gotten good at that; ignoring things and not caring what people think of him. The question of whether that’s a healthy habit to build himself upon does not matter.
There are two beds, as promised. The air inside the room is stuffy from disuse, and he allows himself a small smile when he sees Robin scrunch her nose at the smell of dust. Eddie’s fingers brush against Steve’s when he takes his bag from his hand, making Steve’s hand twitch when Eddie pulls away. He sets his bag on the bed closer to the window and then offers to share that bed with Steve.
Robin takes one look at him and knows right away.
“No, it’s fine. You can take that bed, Eddie.” She says, walking to the other bed closer to the door. She sits down and makes a grabby motion for her bag still held in Steve’s hand. Steve locks the door, turning the handle thrice to make sure it’s secure before walking over to the bed and dumping his and Robin’s bags on the mattress. “Steve and I will share.”
“Are you sure?” Eddie asks, even though he’s already taken off his shoes and placed his rings on the bedside drawer nearest to him. Even though he already knows Steve as well as he could, and knows that at this moment, while Steve was not turning Eddie’s comfort away, he needed Robin more than anything.
Robin nods in affirmation, and then she turns to look at Steve.
“Do you want to go outside for a bit?” She asks, taking his hand and winding her fingers through his. She waits for him to whisper a yes before dragging him out, traversing the hallways until they find the back exit that leads to the pool.
He sits on one of the pool chairs, sinking into it and pulling his knees up into himself, the need to stay small and curled up overtaking him all of a sudden. Robin sits in the same chair, keeping a respectable distance.
Steve watches the light glinting off the pool, blue reflected all around them, and ponders in the silence. He tries to remember when he was last this close to a pool. Tries to remember the one in his house and when he last stepped foot in it.
There are two things here. First is that Barb was not Steve’s to regret. He barely knew Barbara Holland. She, like most everyone in his life in high school beyond Tommy and Carol, had existed in his periphery. In the corners of his eyes with her bright red hair and the large glasses that frame her face. Nancy Wheeler storming into his life had shifted Steve’s priorities, and Barb—almost entirely for the sake of getting closer to Nancy—became one of the few things he simply had to take notice of.
The second thing to consider is that death is death, and it will leave a mark one way or another. There’s a brief period of denial about what happened to Barb and how she disappeared from his backyard on that cold November night. When Steve had finally learned not to ignore it; finally learned to accept that a girl died in his pool even if it wasn’t actually in his pool, the first thing he did was quit the swim team and shove his lifeguard certification underneath his bed, never to be touched again.
Why are you even thinking about her? He asks in his head. Something is completely fucking wrong with him.
“You know,” he whispers, tired of the silence. “I haven’t been this close to a pool since—I don’t know. January 1984, perhaps?”
“Steve, are you okay?” Robin asks instead, voice drenched in concern. He looks her in the eyes and expects to find pity but there’s none of that there.
“Yeah. I guess—I don’t know. I just needed to be away for a while.”
“Are you—Do you want to talk about it?”
He shakes his head. “No. I don’t—Not yet, I think. Maybe...”
“It’s fine.” She says, closing the distance between them and placing a hand on top of his shoulder. “You’re fine. You don’t have to tell me yet, if you’re not ready.”
“I’m just—I think I’m sad, Robin. Or... I think I have to be sad, and I don’t really know if I should be. Or if I even want to. Just--Can you stay?”
Robin hums and nods, as though she understands. As though she already knows what he wants to say. She couldn’t, of course. But he knows that she knows how he feels anyway. It’s part of the many reasons why he loves her so much. Part of why he clings to her the way he does. Like she’s someone he’s lost and found again. The fact that there doesn’t need to be any other words between them. That they just know.
-
Steve stares at the orange glow of the streetlights against the asphalt, hand clutching a tattered notebook. The leather is fraying at the edges; the material having seen worse over the years. He absentmindedly snaps the garter holding it shut, each thwack of it against his thumb underneath the strap ringing like bells inside the otherwise silent car.
There are, in all, only quite a few entries in his diary. Steve is not very fond of writing. He is neither good nor bad at it. On the days that count he is at most someone that could get a solid B minus on an essay. But Steve is less fond of talking about his feelings, and so writing became the one way Steve used to channel most of his frustrations.
(He would say he’s a man of a few words, but mostly he just thinks he’s a bother. Steve has always operated on the assumption that everybody else has it worse, so why would his problems matter? In comparison to the world’s fate being placed on the shoulders of children whose growth spurts haven’t fully hit yet, his problems just seem miniscule and... well. Incomparable.)
So, all in all. There are a few entries. He flips through some of them.
Dear Diary,
I think it’s stupid to start writing with “Dear Diary”. Who is Diary anyway? And it’s not like this thing could talk to you back. Whatever.
I turned 14 today. I wanted to invite everyone in class but my mom said she really doesn’t want to cook for a lot of people, and my dad wasn’t here at all. I don’t care. He’s never here much anyway. As long as he gives me that bike I’ve been asking for I think I’ll be fine. And Carol and Tommy snuck in here around noon and we hung out here in my room, so it wasn’t too lonely.
Carol gave me a mixtape. Tommy got me a pack of gum. Dickhead.
My mom gave me this stupid thing. I don’t know. She said she keeps a diary too. I mean, not a diary. She has a “journal”. Whatever. Isn’t that the same thing? Shit gift if you ask me. Then she went to Dad’s study to “work” but she and I both know she’s gonna drink again.
She always drinks. I always pretend I don’t notice. I think she knows I know anyway.
What does that say about her?
Steve.
--
Hey.
I turned 16 a week ago. I’m also a sophomore now.
Turns out, when you turn 16, your parents could just magically disappear without telling you where they’re going.
I hope they crash their fucking car.
I just don’t get why. I just don’t understand. I don’t think.
I hate them.
There’s a freshman in my Science class. I don’t even know why she’s there. She’s very pretty. I think she’s nice. She’s neat. Tommy thinks she’s a loser. Carol almost tripped her when she walked by our table at the cafeteria. I had to tug on Carol’s hair so she wouldn't do it. They fucking suck sometimes.
Steve.
--
Hey.
Nancy Wheeler is my girlfriend.
I think I love her.
Steve.
--
Monsters are real. Monsters are real. Monsters are real. Monsters are real. Monsters are real. Monsters are real. Monsters are real. Monsters are real. Monsters are real.
I should have died tonight.
--
The last time I ever remembered asking for a brother was when I was 7, and I think it was because Susan Thompson was talking about how she can’t wait for her baby brother to grow up because then she’d have a playmate forever.
I begged and I begged for a week before Christmas. I was good for an entire year and I wrote a letter to Santa and everything. I said, ‘hey, if you give me a brother I’m never going to ask for anything ever again.’
My parents ignored me, like they always did. And then I found that same letter in the garbage can inside my parents’ bathroom. So I never asked again. Stopped being excited for Christmas then, too. If my parents are ever good at one thing it’s ruining my life.
But that’s not the point. The point is that I haven’t asked for a brother in a while. And that letter to Santa never got to Santa. But I think he heard me anyway. This is so fucking stupid to write I’m like 18 years old . Because now I have a 13 year old kid sitting on my couch and eating my food and listening to my advice. You know. Like a brother.
I think Dustin is cool. I think it’s nice that he’s himself. He even got me to watch Star Wars. And we made a secret handshake. God it’s so fucking stupid. But it’s fun. The kid is fun. Wicked sense of humor. Not afraid to keep up with me. And he calls me out on my shit.
His mom, Mrs. Henderson, helped me out with my job application forms. Pretty shit of my dad to force me to find a job and then not help me at all. She’s nice. Sometimes when I drop Dustin off from the arcade she invites me to eat dinner. Sometimes I don’t accept, but then she makes Dustin give me the leftovers the morning after, so I really have no escape. It would be nice if she was my mom. This is stupid.
Is it weird to call a kid 5 years younger than you your best friend? But I guess, essentially, all little brothers are your best friends, right?
All the shitheads are growing on me. Kind of pathetic, to be honest. Never thought I’d be a babysitter, least of all to the most insufferable danger magnets in Indiana. Totally worth the concussion I got from Hargrove though, the fucking dick. I hope he dies . Stupid fucking asshole.
I’m so glad Dustin will never read this. I’m going to miss the little shit when he goes to camp.
Steve.
--
Dear Diary,
I haven’t started one of these with “Dear Diary” in a while but this seems like a pretty special case.
I think I met my best friend today.
No, actually, I met Robin like five diary entries ago, but I think today is the first day we ever
How do I even begin to describe Robin? She’s annoying. She likes to make fun of me. Enjoys it, like it’s her only pastime. She steals my clothes. ALL THE TIME!!! And then she raids my fridge. She’s like Dustin but worse, because she’s only a year younger than me. She’s hyper. She’s funny. She’s sweet.
I think she likes me. Loves me, even. I love her too. Not in that way. Not like Nancy, back then . Just...
She’s like my sister. Or like my twin. She gets me in a way I don’t think anyone has ever gotten me before. And she knows who I am and knows what I’m afraid of and knows what I really feel and think and she stays anyway. Stays! Like, did not leave me alone even when I locked myself in my room for a week. She climbed the window and got herself injured in the process. She’s crazy. I don’t deserve her.
Robin says I don’t get to decide what I deserve or don’t deserve. She said I should just accept the good things that come my way. I had to explain to her that good things don’t really enter my life or stay for long. She hugged me and then promised she’d never leave. She may be my first real friend ever. It’s fucking sad that it took me nineteen years to get one. I hope she keeps her promise. I hope I keep it. I hope I keep her.
I told her that if we hadn’t gotten tortured together we may never have been friends. Then she just looked at me and then shrugged and said we would have found a way.
I am so glad I didn’t die before I met Robin.
Steve.
--
Sometimes I’m afraid I’m going to be lonely for the rest of my life. Sometimes I’m afraid I’m going to be like my father. Worse, I’m afraid I’m going to become like my mother. Am I like this because of them?
--
When Jonathan ground my face into a pulp and I had to go to the hospital a few days after beating a demogorgon’s head in with a baseball bat full of nails my parents were somewhere in Oregon and did not come back until one and a half weeks later. No mention of the busted lip or the hospital bill I’m sure was sent their way. Did not even bother asking me how I got out of the hospital.
But it’s fine. No big deal. Their stupid son gets into a fight because he was being a dick. Let’s let that pass. And then in 1984 I got my ass handed to me by Billy Hargrove, I hope that motherfucker is burning in hell, and I stay in the hospital again and who signs me out? Joyce Byers. Who took care of me and made sure I wasn’t alone for long periods of time because of another stupid concussion? Dustin and Mrs. Henderson. Even Mike Wheeler had more concern in his pinky than any of them had in their bones. And they’re supposed to love me? Hilarious.
I “save” kids from a mall fire and what does my mother send? A bouquet of flowers and a generic get well soon card. I left it at the nurses’ station. Fuck her.
You would think an earthquake and a huge rift appearing near their house would make them rush back to Hawkins, right? Nevermind their son is spending another year at the hospital with serious injuries. At the very least, they should be checking on their fucking house. Right?
They don’t even call.
I don’t know why I keep expecting anything.
--
I don’t want to be alive.
--
(A series of torn pages)
--
It should have been me. Max didn't deserve it. I should have been there. It should have been me.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
--
Eddie Munson is.
I think Eddie Munson is.
I think I like.
This is so fucking difficult.
Eddie Munson’s stupid ass is laying on a hospital bed right now, and if he ever when wakes up I am going to punch him so hard on the head he’s gonna wish those bats finished him off in the upside down.
He will wake up. He has to. I don’t know what I would do if he didn't.
--
(More torn pages)
--
Mom,
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
I always thought it was stupid, when you gave me this diary. Thought it was stupid to give something like this to a fourteen year old boy. As I grew older, and the more I wrote in it, I began to wonder if you knew, somehow, that I’d end up using it anyway. Not just shoved into my cabinet along with all the gifts I never bothered to open.
You kept a journal too. I wonder if it made you proud, this similarity of ours. That I ended up almost exactly like you, lonely and talking to a stupid notebook. Except for my face though, right? My father’s. All I had were your eyes, and even that I think you hated to. The reminder that there’s a piece of you out here that you didn’t want.
I blame you for a lot of things. I blame dad, too, but Dad never really tried. Never cared. He was angry all the time and I learned to live with that. He wanted me to hate him and he succeeded because I did . I still do .
I think the problem with you is that in the beginning, I knew you tried. When you held my hand every time we’d watch a movie. When you would go to my talent shows and clap as hard as you could and smile at me from the back, even when the smile wouldn’t reach your eyes at all. When you’d lift me up and let me put the star in our tree back when you were still home for Christmas.
At what point did you start hating me? At what point did you stop liking me? I can’t remember it anymore. Over the years you just withdrew, I guess. Then you started drinking. And then you started smiling only when other people were talking to you. And then you stopped calling me your son. Just Stephen. Always Stephen. Like I was a ghost that existed in your house whenever you bothered to be home. Did you like that? Us passing each other in the hallway and pretending we don’t exist?
Sometimes I think it’s my fault. Maybe I was too much. I think. I know. You should have given me up. I think I should have died. I know you don’t like Dad, so did you begin to avoid me when I started looking more like him? When it became his face staring back at yours? I know I was a hard son to raise. You never liked my friends, especially Carol and Tommy. And then you hated Nancy Wheeler. If you’re still. I know that if you were. If you talked to me now I’m sure you’d hate my new friends more.
Not like I care. I stopped caring about what you thought of me long ago, too.
I didn’t want much from you. Never did. Still don’t. All I ever wanted was a mother. I wanted someone to be there and love me. I wanted someone. I wanted you. I wanted you to cook for. I wanted you to be at my graduation. I want. That’s all. Stupid Steve Harrington and my stupid wanting.
I wonder if there was anything I could have done for you to love me. For me to have been enough.
I guess I’ll never know.
Steve.
-
“Do you ever have nightmares?” Steve asks Eddie, whispering into the ceiling and careful not to wake Robin from the other bed.
He sees Eddie tilt his head from the corner of his vision. He turns his head fully, looking at Eddie. Steve traces his face with his eyes, trying to memorize the way Eddie looks as though he’ll never see him again. His eyes flit from Eddie’s forehead to his cheeks, then to his jaw. And then the bridge of his nose. When their eyes finally meet Steve finds himself unable to hold the moment between them for long, immediately looking away and into the curtains.
“I do.” Eddie says after a few moments. He shifts a little closer to Steve. “I have a lot. What about you?”
“I do. There’s a lot, too.”
Steve has many dreams. Many, many recurring dreams. Nightmares, for the most part. He has a long list.
- There’s one where he makes the decision to turn back to the Byers a second too late, and when he gets inside Nancy is already dead. Head crushed and enclosed in the mouth of the demogorgon. Sometimes the dream shifts and it’s Jonathan who is dead. Or it was Steve who died because his bat missed its mark. Sometimes it’s all three of them, because the bear trap wasn’t enough to hold the demogorgon back.
- There’s Tina’s party. Nothing much changes about that.
- There’s the junkyard and Lucas, Max, and Dustin. Back when they were still small brats who made too much noise and demanded so much from Steve. This dream plays out in so many different ways. They all get eaten. Max gets taken and they don’t find her body until days after. Lucas dies because he was the one they assigned to be on lookout and the demodogs got to him first. There’s one where Dustin dies because Steve couldn’t get the door shut in time. There’s one where—There’s a lot. So many. Steve doesn’t remember it all.
- Billy Hargrove killing him. Billy Hargrove coming after the kids because he’s dead. Him killing Billy. He doesn’t feel bad at all about the last one.
- Robin getting shot in the Russian bunker. Robin getting tortured instead of him. Robin’s lifeless eyes staring at him while they drag him away. All variations of Robin dying and him surviving.
- Nancy’s bones snapping in front of him.
- Max’s bones snapping in front of him.
- Not getting to Eddie on time. Eddie dying in Dustin’s arms. Eddie dying in his arms. Eddie getting left in the upside down. Cold, alone. Afraid.
“Did you—Are—Is that why you’re awake?” Eddie asks, bringing Steve back from his head. “Did you have a nightmare?”
No. Or, at least I think it wasn’t a nightmare. It was the last Christmas I spent with my parents. I was looking at my mom and she was looking at me. Snow started to fall. She told me to go outside to play and I did. When I got back they were gone.
“No, not a nightmare.” Steve replies, stuck on how the moonlight frames Eddie’s face. He wants to do something stupid, like kiss him. Hold him. Never let him go. He does none of that. “Just a strange dream.”
-
“Are these your songs? ” He finally asks Eddie, some minutes after they enter the borders of Albuquerque. He moves around in the passenger seat, checking the dashboard and the console between them to look for the cassette storage holding the J-card, just to confirm his suspicions. When he’d fallen asleep, Robin’s Fleetwood Mac was playing, and now there’s an unfamiliar song with a familiar voice crooning from the radio.
A voice that he can admit that he’d know anywhere.
“Yep.” Eddie nods, head banging along to the beat of the song. Steve has to admit they’re not that bad.
Or maybe you just like Eddie’s voice . His mind whispers at him. Steve tells the voice to shut up before he could say something completely idiotic and make Eddie crash the car.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” Eddie chuckles, lifting one hand to push his hair out of his face. Steve resists the urge to tease him about it. “Corroded Coffin classics, princess. Written by the hyperactive and imaginative mind of one Edward Munson. Do you—” he pauses, eyes flitting warily over into Steve’s direction, as though he’s afraid to ask. Or afraid of what Steve may say.
“Do I what?” Steve prompts, hand fiddling with the hem of his jacket.
“Do you like them?”
I love them. He wants to say. I’m never going to understand the things you like. Not in the way you want me to. Why you listen to the songs you do and why you write the things you write. But I love them anyway because they’re yours. Because they’re part of you and right now I don’t think I’d ever hate anything that’s part of you. Because they make you happy, and some days I think the only thing I want to do is to make you happy.
He says none of that. Instead, “Your full name is Edward?”
Eddie laughs. That special laugh that Steve only hears every time Eddie talks to him. The laugh that only Steve could pick up on because he pays attention to Eddie a lot.
“Really? That’s your takeaway from that?”
“You just told me your full name.” Steve grins. “Robin made the mistake once. I haven’t stopped calling her by her middle name since. Well—I only actually do it occasionally. Just to piss her off.”
Eddie glances over to where Robin is asleep on the backseat, head pillowed over Steve’s bag. “You mean Buckley has a second name? You have to tell me.”
Steve shakes his head. “Can’t do that. I will never betray her trust. And also, she will kill me.”
“Come on, friends don’t keep secrets from each other.” Eddie groans, the smile on his face unwavering. He turns to look at Steve again, pouting a little. “I’ll never tell her you told me.”
“Oh, she’ll know. Trust me.” Steve replies, turning his head to look at Robin. “And besides, she’s my friend first. Are you two even friends?” He asks, thinking about the day they left Hawkins and how Robin had been in Eddie’s room. He hadn’t questioned it then, head still swarming with his spiraling thoughts and the need to escape.
Eddie purses his lips, contemplating his answer.
“I don’t—I wouldn’t say we’re friends, exactly.” He says after a few seconds have passed. “But—I don’t know. We could be, one day. But there’s some things we talk about. Nothing bad, just... things.”
And, well, Steve could understand that. Things.
“Yeah. Everyone has those.” He answers, looking back into the road again.
“Everyone has what?”
“Things.” Steve shrugs, pulling his jacket tighter around him. “Stuff they can’t really talk about to everyone else. I get it. There are—Well, Robin and I don’t really keep things from each other. Sometimes—It’s—It may take a while before we can talk about it. But we eventually do, in the end.”
A comfortable silence falls over them, marking the end of their conversation. A pity, Steve thinks. He would have loved to talk to Eddie more. But he knows when to stop and when to push, despite his many character flaws. Robin once told him that it’s one of the qualities she likes about him. That he knows exactly when to quit it and when to keep moving forward. Like a sixth sense, Robin said. Probably a side effect from all the knocks you’ve gotten to the head.
He had pushed her into the pool for that. She paid him back by turning off his alarm and going to work all by herself, making him late by two hours.
“Diane.” Eddie says after a while, making Steve look at him in confusion.
“What?”
“Her middle name.” He says, pointing to Robin in the backseat. “She looks like a Diane.”
“It’s not Diane.”
Eddie raises his brow. “Really? She could be a Diane. Or a Diana. Robin Diana Buckley.”
Steve hums. “Fits her princess attitude, sure, but... no. It’s not Diane. Or Diana.”
“Jennifer.”
“She would rather kill herself than live her life being called Robin Jennifer Buckley. Try again.”
“Jessica?”
Steve laughs. “Really? Jessica? Do better.”
“Marie?” Eddie tries again.
“Hmm. No, not Marie. Though her mom’s middle name is Marie. Melissa Marie Buckley. Lovely woman.”
Eddie turns to look at him. “You know her mom’s middle name?”
Steve rolls his eyes. “Of course I do. I made her a casserole for her birthday.”
“You’re really something else, you know that?” Eddie sighs. “Okay, uh... Louise?”
“Nope.”
“Come on. Uh... Cecilia? Jane? Elizabeth?”
“No. No. And really, Elizabeth? What’s next, Victoria? Margaret? Something old timey like, I don’t know, fucking Constance? Give it up, dude.”
Eddie glares at him. “You know, I have a feeling I already said which one it is and you’re just saying no.”
Steve smiles. “You’ll never know. My lips are sealed and my loyalty is—well—it’s been... what’s the word,” he snaps his fingers.
“Pledged?” Eddie supplies, smiling back at him.
“Yes! Pledged. I’m loyal to Robin. Sorry. Besides, it’s not like you told me your full name.”
Eddie sighs, changing lanes. He rolls down the window and flips off the guy obnoxiously honking his horn behind them. “You already know my full first name is Edward,” he says after he’s checked that Robin is still asleep. “That’s enough for all of us.”
“Can I try guessing? Is it... Albert?”
Eddie snorts. “Do I look like an Albert?”
“You don’t even look like an Edward.” Steve shoots back. “Uh... okay. Anthony.”
“Nope.”
“James?”
“That’s your middle name.”
“We can both be James.”
“Nice try. Alas, I am no James.”
Steve snaps his fingers. “I got it... Julius.”
Eddie squints at him. “Do you really see me as a Julius?”
“Do you really see Robin as a Jessica? He deadpans.
“Fair point. No, not Julius.”
“Fuck—I—Christopher?”
“No, it’s not Christopher.”
“Francis?”
Eddie hesitates. “No, it’s not Fr—”
“Oh my God.” Steve laughs, pointing his finger at Eddie. “It’s Francis, isn’t it?”
“No it’s not.” Eddie says, miserably failing at containing his embarrassment. A spark of delight blooms in Steve’s heart.
“Dude, your ears are like so fucking red right now.” He says, touching the tip of Eddie’s ear. He flicks it once, making Eddie hiss. “I can’t believe it. Edward Francis Munson.”
“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up, Stephen James Harrington.” Eddie snarks, genuinely embarrassed but still keeping a soft smile on his face.
“Oh, you can’t use that against me.” Steve replies with glee. “At least I know I look like someone named Stephen James Harrington. What’s your excuse?”
“Y—Wh—What do you mean, what's my excuse?! It’s not like I named myself!” Eddie thunks the back of his head against the headrest. “You’re so weird. And annoying.”
“Ah, but you like me anyway.” Steve says, relaxing into the seat. He looks out the window, watching the world blur around them in greens and browns. He cranks up the AC.
In moments like these Steve almost forgets why they’re on the road. Why he dragged Eddie and Robin with him. Why he could barely sleep at night, no matter how much he tries. Why he gets a feeling of dread every time his eyes land on a phone. Why the grip in his chest grows tighter and tighter the closer they get to their destination.
“I like them.” He says, breaking their silence in an attempt to ignore the gnawing he feels in his nerves. Eddie’s fingers stop tapping against the wheel.
“I—Sorry?”
“I didn’t answer your question.” Steve explains, still looking outside the window. “About your music. I like it. It’s nice.”
Eddie doesn’t say anything for a while, and Steve remains looking outside, afraid of what he might see when he finally looks.
A soft laugh startles him, making him whip his head back to see Eddie chuckling softly to himself. That same smile he reserves only for when he’s around Steve—soft, tender, and so warm—plastered across his face.
Sometimes Steve likes to think that Eddie smiles like this around him because he already knows what and how Steve feels. Sometimes he wonders if Eddie is doing it all on purpose—the accidental touches, the teasing, the offhanded comments. The stupid smile that makes his inside tie up in knots in the best ways possible.
“Just nice?” Eddie asks, placing his right hand on the console between them. Steve fights the urge to hold it.
He shrugs, instead. “For someone named Edward Francis Munson? More than nice enough.”
Eddie barks out a laugh again, this time loud enough that it jostles Robin from her sleep. She glares at them both, kicking the back of Eddie’s seat. It makes Eddie laugh harder somehow.
“You’re fun, Stevie.” He says once his laughter stops. The sun hits his face just right when he turns to look at Steve, and he thinks he could sit here and just look at Eddie and be okay with doing nothing but that for the rest of his life. “Don’t ever change.”
-
Arizona is supposed to be warm.
Robin tells them as much as she sinks down into the seat of the diner, staring glumly at the laminated menu in front of her. The rain forces them to stop at a dingy diner off the side of the road, Eddie citing a growing headache, Robin her hunger, and Steve agreeing with them both when they said he needed to rest his feet anyway after driving for hours.
It’s not like I could keep driving anyway. Steve thinks, staring at the droplets spattering and racing their way down on the glass. He taps his fingers against the vinyl of the table, shivering slightly against the cold. Might have to find somewhere to sleep here tonight if the rain doesn’t let up.
“Steve, pancakes or waffles?” Robin asks, not looking up from the menu. Her brows are still furrowed, as though the menu has offended her personally.
“Pancakes, Buckley. You act like you don’t know me.”
Robin sighs. “But I want waffles.”
“So get waffles.” Eddie drones out, also staring intently at the menu. Steve doesn’t have one, and he wonders if there’s something in there that pisses both of his companions off. That he’s missing an inside joke, somehow.
“But they only come with chicken and I don’t want to eat chicken.” Robin replies, pouting. She looks up at Steve. “The pancakes come with a fruit salad. Can I have the fruit salad instead?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“How good the pancakes are.” He says, leaning into Eddie’s space to look at the menu. Steve pauses a bit, taking note of Eddie tensing a little before relaxing again, letting Steve trail his finger down the list and have a look at his options.
“It looks fine.” Eddie whispers, pointing to where it is on the laminated paper. Their fingers brush against each other. “Or, as fine as a pancake could be in a shitty diner.”
“Hmm. They all look the same, don’t they?” He says with a smile, noting how close his face is to Eddie’s.
“Probably tastes the same, too.” Eddie replies in a whisper. He wonders what would happen next if he were to lean in and close that gap between them.
“Hey, idiots.” Robin snaps her fingers in front of them, breaking them apart. “If you’re done with your flirting can we please order already? I’m like, fucking starving. I’m so hungry I could chew on this table.”
Steve wonders if the laminated menu is sharp enough to stab Robin with. Or if he’s well within his rights to bludgeon her with the salt shaker. Eddie blushes a vicious scarlet, moving minutely away from Steve’s space and clearing his throat before leaning forward on the table and covering his face with his hair.
He is definitely going to murder Robin.
A waitress comes by at the table, taking their orders and unknowingly sparing Robin’s life.
“How was your dad?” Eddie asks Robin, alluding to her call from their earlier stop at the gas station and breaking the silence. Robin takes a long sip of her coffee before she answers.
“He’s fine. He said mom misses me but not that much. They’re going out of town while I’m away.”
“They—What?”
“They know I’m with Steve.” She replies, rolling her eyes. She reaches across the table to flick Steve in the nose. “They trust him. What about your uncle?”
“He’s fine too. Asked when I’d be getting home but told me I could take my time. Said it was good for me to be out or something. What about—” Eddie hesitates. Steve turns, feeling his gaze on him.
“What about what?” He asks, confused.
“I mean—Are your—Do your parents know you’re out here?” Eddie asks, the same look of confusion mirrored on his face.
Steve scoffs. “My parents don’t give a fuck where I go. But, yes. H—They know where I am.”
“What if they come home and you weren’t there?”
“It’s not like I exist to them anyway,” Steve throws out candidly, ignoring the flash of pity in Eddie’s face and the sadness in Robin’s eyes. “I—It’s really fine. Just—It’s fine. Can we drop this?”
The rest of their time in the diner is spent in silence, quietly picking at the food they’re served without doing anything else. He wordlessly hands Robin the salad, and then he lets her place her chicken on his plate. He steals bites off Eddie’s fish filet and he lets Eddie take one pancake off his plate. They don’t talk at all.
Later, when Robin gets up to go to the bathroom, he feels Eddie’s hand hold his underneath the table.
“You know you have us, right?” Eddie whispers, eyes staring straight ahead. “You don’t need them.” He doesn’t need to say who them is.
Steve just squeezes Eddie’s hand tighter. They don’t let go of each other until they all finally stand up to leave.
-
The problem with Robin, Steve thinks, is that he can’t seem to keep even the slightest shred of his dignity around her. Maybe it’s the side effect of the Russian drugs that gave them. Maybe it put him and Robin in a hive mind of their own. Or, maybe, it’s in the fact that he stood in front of them and begged them to interrogate him first, telling them that she really doesn’t know anything ( even though she was the one who cracked their code in the first place).
Maybe the secret is in the fact that she’s seen him at his lowest, and he’s seen her at hers, and there’s really no walking back from a friendship you’ve forged after you’ve spilled your guts out to each other while covered in blood and vomit and piss and sitting on a dirty bathroom’s floor while Alex P. Keaton’s voice reverberates around you from the cinema speakers on the other side of the wall.
“Hey, Rob?” Steve says from where he’s laying on the bed.
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever feel like you were being... punished, for something?”
He watches as Robin pauses in her scribbling, pen stilling in her hand as she contemplates the question in her mind.
“Elaborate on that?”
Steve sighs. “Like, you did a lot of bad things at some points in your life. Things you never thought anyone would give a fuck about. And then, at some point down the line you get this string of really... shitty things. And it feels like someone up there really has it out for you...”
“And then you realize that maybe it’s punishment because you can’t explain why it’s happening, right? For what you think you’ve done?” She finishes for him. Sometimes he wonders if those drugs gave him and Robin the ability to read and complete each other’s thoughts. Or maybe she just sees right through him.
He nods, feeling small all of a sudden. He watches as she puts her pen down before walking towards the bed, nudging at him with her arm to move to the side as she settles beside him.
“It’s called poetic justice, I think. Like the punishment fits the crime, right?” She tells him. Steve takes her hand in his, tracing the callouses on her fingers that she got from the one summer she told him about where she practiced the guitar almost everyday for three months straight for a girl she was trying to impress, only for the girl to end up with a guy who played drums in a band.
“Sometimes.” He starts. “There’s a small part of me that wonders how different things would have been if Jonathan just, I don’t know, smashed my head hard enough on the ground and then I died. like, how am I not dead yet, Robs? People don’t tend to survive severe brain injuries, right?”
“Steve...”
“Let me... Let me finish, please?” He whispers, feeling her other hand running through his hair.
“Okay.”
“Right.” He swallows the lump in his throat. “So, if I died then... Maybe... How do I—Like, if I died that day then I wouldn’t have had to confront the demogorgon. And maybe Nancy and Jonathan would have died that night—or they would have. I don’t—It doesn’t matter. The point is that I won’t be there for everything else. No demodogs, no concussions, no Russian doctors and their stupid fucking bone saws.
Remember when you talked about how you’d have been happily slinging ice cream with some other schmuck? Maybe you wouldn’t have been dragged into all of this.”
“Oh, Steve.”
“But me dying would have been too easy of a way out. You knew who I was in high school. But, even beyond that... I don’t—I—Life has been shit, Rob. I’ve just been—It’s bullshit, really. I feel like these past couple of years are—what’s the word? Retribution? Whatever. Poetic justice. Ha.” He shakes his head.
“But it’s stupid, really.” Steve ends. “Don’t mind me, I’m just—I think I’m just tired.” And he doesn’t know if he means something else when he says that or if it’s because he physically just is.
The silence grows around them for a while, Steve still tracing shapes on Robin’s rough hand, one of her ankles crossed over is. She’s still carding her fingers through his hair. For every deep breath he takes he can smell her perfume; the old lady perfume that he always says he hates but something he finds comfort in, because it’s Robin and for the most part she’s the only person who could truly make him feel grounded. Feet planted firmly on the ground so he doesn’t float into the bad place his mind always takes him to when he feels just the slightest bit lost.
“I don’t want another schmuck though.” Robin says after a while.
“What?”
“You said you dragged me into this. You—That I would have been happily slinging ice cream with some other schmuck. I only said that because—I—It doesn’t matter anymore. I didn’t get dragged into anything, Steve. I was the one who begged you and Dustin to help translate. I cracked the code. I was the one who found a way to let us in. I was—Steve. Steve. Look at me.”
“I’m looking at you.”
She nods. “Good. Listen to me. I love you, okay? You’re my—Steve, my best friend. I—When I said—It wasn’t a joke when I said we should combine, you know?”
“Oh, really?” He says, lifting his hand to trace the freckles on her cheek.
“No. It’s—I didn’t just mean it about the whole dating thing. Like, okay, we are both shit at romance. That’s true. But—Sometimes I think you’re my other half, Steve. And I love you. And I can’t—There’s no life without you in it, Steve. You—There’s so many of us who love you. Who wants you around. Who cares for you. Just—You need to let us in, Steve.”
“Sometimes I think... I don’t—My mom.”
“What about her, Steve?”
“I think she w—is sad. I think she’s sad, and because of that I’m sad too. Like her sadness is in me. And I can’t—It’s like I don’t know how to be happy. Or how to be okay.”
Robin pulls him into a hug, crushing him against her chest.
“It’s—Steve, you’re not—You’re not them. You’re not your mother, Steve. You’ve—You’re sad, I know. I could never take that from you, even though I want to. But you can be happy. I know it. I can feel it. You just have to accept it. You have to let us love you, Steve.”
“But I’m just so tired, Robs. Like there’s—I’m just tired.”
“And you can be tired. But you can always come home to us, when you are. To me. So come home to us, okay?”
He nods, not really knowing what else to say.
Robin pulls back, wiping her face with the sleeves of her sweater. She wipes the tears from Steve’s face too. “Besides, it’s—I mean, life is always going to be shit. For us, especially. Survivors of the end of the world and all. But you got something good out of all of it though, right?”
Steve looks into her eyes, recalling when they first met at the back room of Scoops Ahoy. How she had glared then, blue eyes piercing into his like he offended her simply by clocking in for a job he applied for. There’s none of that now. Whenever he looks at Robin he just feels how close they are. Like they’ve been broken over and forged into something else entirely. Like they’re something that can’t ever be ripped apart.
She feels like a gift. His Robin. His best friend.
“The best, even.” Steve tells Robin with a smile.
-
“I think I’m gonna tell him.” Steve whispers, careful not to wake a sleeping Eddie in the backseat. Robin looks up from where she’s buried her head on the newspaper.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ll tell him. About everything.”
“Eddie?”
“Who else could ‘him’ be?”
Robin rolls her eyes. But then she smiles, and Steve has to wonder if she’s thinking about their conversation months ago on the floor of Steve’s bedroom. Shoulders pressed against each other and staring at the neon stars stuck on the ceiling of his bedroom. A better coming out than the one Robin had in Starcourt.
“Okay then. I’m here for you, whatever happens.” She whispers back, patting Steve’s arm once before turning back to her crossword puzzle.
-
Steve remembers his first kiss. Jenna Robertson. He was 12 and it was lunch and Tommy had dared her to kiss Steve on the lips and she did. Steve had cried at home that day, locked in his room and hating Tommy for making Jenna his first kiss when he promised himself he’s saving it for the person he loves the most. He spends the next three years convincing himself that the kiss with Jenna didn’t count, because no kiss really counts while you’re in middle school.
He remembers his kiss with Nancy. How could he ever forget that? Back then, when the break-up was still fresh and he still kind of hated Jonathan Byers he’d lay awake at night and prod painfully at the memories that would resurface in his head, picking it all apart scene by scene. Of Nancy leaning towards him, underneath him, beside him. Back then he thought she was it for him. The girl of his dreams. The one he’d spend the rest of his life with.
She was until she wasn’t, and Steve has learned to live with that.
He remembers every kiss after Nancy. Every girl after her. Date after date after date. Their names would start to blur in his head, sure, but he’d remember the kisses they would share.
Steve doesn’t even really get to confess to Eddie, but it doesn’t matter. Diving into the gap between them that has always been too intense, too charged with something to just be friendship.
Nothing matters at all when his lips touch Eddie’s. Not when he’s gotten his first kiss back, in a way, because he’s kissing a boy ( and not just any boy but Eddie Munson. Eddie “The Freak” Munson. Eddie the Banished. Eddie the Brave ) for the first time.
And it’s cold, yes, and the steering wheel is kind of digging on his scar. Robin could be back any minute and the angle is awkward as hell but it’s still sweet. Still good. Still initiated by Eddie about ten minutes after he stopped the car so Robin could call her dad again, so Steve is sure that he doesn’t really need to confess because this is enough confirmation that Eddie likes him back. That all those months of flirting and staying with each other meant more to him too.
He confesses anyway. He says the words. Says I love you like it’s sacred.
“I love you.” A kiss on Eddie’s lips. And then another.
“I love you too.”
“I can be difficult to love.” Steve says, because Eddie has to know. Because he has to know what he’s getting into and what comes with loving Steve. He has to know because if Eddie can’t handle it, can’t handle him, then they have to end it now before he could hurt himself any further. Before Eddie could find it in him to leave, knowing that Steve would let him go without a fight.
“You aren’t. But I’d take the work of it anyway.” Eddie whispers, like Steve is supposed to have known it already.
It breaks Steve’s heart a little, the realization of how much Eddie loves him. The way he holds on to his every word. It almost makes Steve cry. He kisses Eddie again, instead.
-
“When did you know?” Steve asks Eddie later, perched on his lap. They have a separate room this time, Robin two doors down and across the hall from them. She had taken one look at them when they stepped out of the car and demanded her own room, a look on her face that Steve can’t quite get the meaning of. He let her get the room, anyway, a decision fueled by the emotions still lingering in him from the kiss he shared with Eddie earlier.
“When did I know what?”
“That you want this?” He says, gesturing between them. “That you want me?”
“When I woke up from the hospital and you were holding my hand.” Eddie replies, as if it was just nothing. “How about you?”
“I don’t really remember.” Steve muses, fiddling with the rings in Eddie’s hand. “I know I wanted to kiss you a few months ago, though. When I watched you sing for the first time.”
“Shit, Steve.” Eddie blushes. He tightens his one-armed grip around Steve’s waist, pulling him closer. Steve stifles a giggle, pressing a kiss on Eddie’s forehead instead. “We could have—You should have said something. I should have said something.”
Steve sighs. “I don’t know. But—You really never noticed? I thought I was being obvious.”
“No you weren’t.”
“Eddie, I walked across hell and then carried you out so you’d live. If you didn’t think I cared for you then what else could I have possibly done?”
“Well that’s different. You would have done that for anybody.”
“I—Yeah. But still. I’ll do anything for you. You have to know that. The lengths I’d go through. You should know.”
Eddie holds Steve’s face between his palms, looking at Steve like he’s the sun. Steve feels like he’s been flayed open. Eddie’s thumb rests on his lip.
“I think,” Eddie whispers, pulling Steve closer and pressing his nose against Steve’s. “I think I just need you to love me.”
“Is that really all you want?”
“Yes.” He places a soft kiss on Steve’s lips. And then he presses one on his cheek. “That, and you letting me love you back.”
“It can’t be that easy.” Steve croaks out. Eddie shushes him.
“It is that easy, Steve.” He says in a certain tone, like one word from Steve and he’d pull his heart out from his chest and place it by Steve’s feet. As if he’d do anything to prove that this isn’t a dream. As if he’d do anything to get through Steve. And maybe Steve would let him, if Eddie keeps looking at him like that. “Loving you isn’t work. It’s the easiest thing I ever have to do.”
Steve kisses him again. Because he can. Because he wants to.
-
“So, you and Eddie, huh?” Robin asks, licking at her ice cream cone. Steve reaches up to wipe the streak of ice cream on her nose with a tissue. She sticks her tongue out at him.
“Real mature, Buckley.” He says, nudging her knee with his. “And, yeah. Me and Eddie. Is—Are you okay with that?”
Robin’s eyes soften when she looks at him, a smile on her face. She reaches up and tucks his hair behind his ear.
“I think he’s a pretty okay guy. Your happiness, Steve. Remember what I said.” She says, placing her free hand around his shoulders. His hands go up around her waist, as if on autopilot.
“He’s nice. I think I really love him.”
“Good.” He feels her nod. “That’s good. Just make sure he knows I’m going to kill him if he ever makes you sad.”
-
Steve watches the city lights flicker on one by one, darkness descending upon California. In Hawkins the nights are always cold, even in the summer. Here, Steve has to shuck his jacket off, laying it across the bumper of his car so he can sit on top of it.
A single beer can is growing warm between them. His eyes flit, just a little, on the top of the can. The opening. Where he knows his lips have been and where Eddie’s have been, too. He passes the cigarette he’s smoking to Eddie, and he doesn’t think about the fact that Eddie’s lips would be where his was again too. Doesn’t think about the full pack they’re ignoring, tucked in the pocket of Eddie’s jeans.
“I haven’t smoked in a while.” Steve says, breaking the silence.
“How long is a while?”
“Two years.” Steve frowns. “No, actually, it’s three. Three years.”
“What made you stop?” Eddie asks, passing the cigarette back to Steve. He watches the smoke dissipate from in front of Eddie’s face, and Steve grabs his hand and holds it after he takes the cigarette.
“Shit happened.” He says, taking a long drag. “Just... a load of shit happened. My dad used to say these things would kill people but he’d smoke them anyway. I guess—I don’t—I always felt like he was banking on them killing him, you know?”
“What made you start smoking again?”
Steve turns to look at Eddie, face carefully blank. Eddie looks back in the way he always does now. Unafraid. Unashamed. Like Steve was a puzzle he’s trying to solve. Like Steve’s mess is something he wants in on. Like he wants to pick up every shard of Steve’s life that has been scattered across the years and ages and put him back together.
It makes his insides shrivel. It makes him feel warm. Most days he doesn’t know what to do with the love Eddie gives him. He takes it all anyway.
“I don’t know, really.” He replies, pressing the cigarette on Eddie’s mouth. He doesn’t let go when Eddie takes a drag from it, keeping his fingers pressed against Eddie’s lips. “Maybe I’m like my father. Maybe I’m waiting for something too.”
“You’re not like him.” Eddie says. His voice is firm, like he wants to tell Steve to shut up instead.
“You don’t know him.”
Eddie frowns. “But I know you.”
“Do you?”
Eddie sighs, leaning back and laying on the hood. Steve takes one last inhale from the cigarette before throwing it on the pavement, laying down beside Eddie. He watches for a while as Eddie traces shapes in the air, connecting the faint stars they could see from behind the clouds.
The stars are always out in Hawkins. It doesn’t matter where you’re standing. Orion will always be out there with you. It used to make Steve feel small. Insignificant. Like his life means so little when there’s a world so large out there. Now he just misses it. He laughs inside his head and wonders when—between the first time he had to do his own laundry after his parents first left for a week and the time he held Max’s small hand in his as she woke up from her month long coma—he started thinking of Hawkins as home.
“Did you ever know,” Steve says after a while. “I mean. What was your mother like?”
Eddie stills. “You want to know about my mother?”
Steve shrugs. “Is she—You said... Back in the hospital, the week after you woke up, you said to me that you wished she was there. I don’t—I always wondered why you said that.”
When Eddie was hotwiring a camper and talking about living up to the Munson name, Steve knew—even in the back of his mind and with the adrenaline and fear coursing through his veins—that Eddie wasn’t lying. There are simply places in the world where everyone knows everyone, and in a town as small as Hawkins everyone knew the sordid family affair of the Munsons intimately.
Steve was aware of Eddie’s hatred for his father. Had been made aware of it in that same camper and then weeks later while they were drunk in the basement while in a party held at the Wheelers’ house, celebrating the fact that they once again narrowly prevented the end of the world. Four beers in and Eddie had been talking about how thankful he was that he had Wayne, and that he was lucky his uncle put up with him despite everything.
Not once, ever since that day in the hospital, was Eddie’s mother mentioned again.
Steve takes Eddie’s silence as a sign to back off, an apology already teetering from his lips when Eddie speaks again.
“I loved her so much.” He whispers, his hands clenched into fists beside him. Steve takes one in his, loosening Eddie’s grip and winding his fingers through Eddie’s to tether him. He hears Eddie take a deep breath, and then another. “She was—She died when I was young. Young enough to still need her, old enough to know she wasn’t ever coming back. It fucking sucked, man.”
“Tell me about her?” Steve says, burrowing himself closer to Eddie. He lays his head on his shoulder, pressing two soft kisses on the space just below Eddie’s jaw. He feels Eddie turn his head to brush a kiss in return on top of his hair.
“Best person I have ever had the privilege of knowing. She—I look like her, you know? Or, at least I like to think I look like her. Wayne says we do. She had—just this long hair she’d always put up in a bun. Brown eyes, like mine. She never looked at me wrongly, you know? Even when—even when I knew I was being a dick.” His breathing grows ragged. “She was... gentle. Loving.”
“Eddie...”
“It’s fine. I’m okay.” Eddie replies, holding Steve tighter. “I learned about music from her. I think I learned a lot of things from her. She’d read me stories. Lord of the Rings—”
“Mordor.” Steve says, making Eddie laugh.
“Yeah, exactly.” He sighs. “Mordor.”
“How did she die?”
“Good old cancer. It was—The end was pretty bad, for me. She just—I knew she fought so hard. I—But I wanted her to go, you know? I knew she—It would have been worse for her, if she held on longer. I didn’t want her to be in pain anymore.”
Steve stares at the gentle slope of Eddie’s neck, eyes wet with tears, and thinks about his own mother. When she last held his hand and when he last saw her. He thinks about the sadness in Eddie’s voice and wonders if he could ever talk about his mother like that—with the same magnitude of love and warmth. He wonders if he would ever miss his mother’s voice. His mother’s face. He doesn’t look like her, so maybe he’d just forget it.
He doesn’t know if he wants that or not.
“She would have loved you.” Eddie whispers after a while, trailing his fingers up and down Steve’s bare arm. “I think she would have. She’d have been happy for me.”
“She is happy for you.” Steve says back, propping himself up on his arms to look down on Eddie. To watch the love he has reflected in Eddie’s eyes. “I’m looking at her eyes right now.” He wipes Eddie’s tears with his thumb. “I think she’s happy. I think—no, I know. I know.”
He doesn’t know who leans in first. If it was Eddie who surged upwards or if it was him who slid lower. His hand rests on Eddie’s cheek, their lips meeting in between them. He sighs as he deepens the kiss, feeling Eddie’s arms wrap around his neck and melting into him as their mouths move together.
Steve doesn’t know what tomorrow holds for them. He doesn’t know what would happen next when they get to San Francisco. What would be waiting for him when he sees his parents again. But the night is warm and the stars, no matter how faint, were out. Eddie is alive. He’s alive. Robin is waiting for them in a hotel room and they have a long drive ahead tomorrow.
He thinks, for the first time since they drove out of Hawkins, that he may have a chance at being okay after all.
San Francisco, California
The sun is just starting to peak over the horizon when they finally arrive in San Francisco.
Steve watches as it slowly inches its way up into the sky, the sand still cold underneath his feet. Robin’s head is on his shoulder, wrapped in his jacket and his sunglasses perched on her face. Eddie’s to his left, his pinky touching Steve’s. Not wrapped, no, because they can’t quite do that in public yet, but close enough that Steve could still feel him and know that he’s there.
The sunrise casts a beautiful orange glow on them, bathing the sky in vibrant yellows and pinks and chasing away the lingering remains of the night. The wind blows against his face, and Steve takes a deep breath. And then another.
“My mom died.” He finally speaks, because there’s nothing else left to say at this point. He feels Robin freeze up. “I—She’s here. It’s—The funeral. My dad called the day we left. Tomorrow is the last day before they bury her.”
Robin and Eddie say nothing, and if Steve is being honest he really doesn’t expect them to. He realizes that he should have told them from the very beginning. Should have spared them all the emotions the past few days have brought out. In fact, Steve thinks he never should have brought them with him.
But it’s too late now to regret anything, and they’re already here. 24 hours from now Steve will be wearing the suit he packed and burying his mother to the ground. He lets the silence stew.
“I wondered—Why you seemed—I didn’t want to pry, but I think, deep down, I knew it had something to do with your parents. It’s—” Eddie twists his rings. He looks into the horizon instead of Steve. “When you asked about my mother, I think that’s when I knew.”
“She’s not even gonna be buried in Hawkins?” Robin asks after a while. He looks at her, then back at the shore.
“No, I don’t—I—It’s my dad’s kindness, I think. Having her buried here.”
This time it’s Eddie who speaks. “Why?”
“Because she—Hawkins never made her happy. I don’t think my dad ever made her happy. Or me. But I think my dad loved her anyway, in his own way. And that’s why he kept her far from...” He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. Like it doesn’t hurt him at all. “From Hawkins. Why’s she’s getting buried here, too. Sunny California. Not the—It’s—Hawkins is dreary. She never would have—I don’t—"
Robin holds his hand. “Steve. He kept her away from you .”
Steve laughs. “And she wanted that, I think. I don’t–I feel like–I don’t think either of them liked me very much. They had me because it was expected of them, not because they wanted to. I mean, why do you think I’m the only Harrington kid?”
“Hey, Steve...”
“No, Eddie.” He says, cutting Eddie off. He lifts his left hand and buries his forehead on it. “It’s—I’m fine. I think. I’ve made peace with it. Or... as much peace as I could.”
“Are you sad?” Robin asks.
Steve pauses. “I’m okay.”
“But are you sad?” She asks again.
“Should I be?” He turns to look at her. “I feel like—It’s—I don’t know. I don’t know how to feel.”
“You can be sad, Steve.” Eddie says to him, his hand loosely grasping Steve’s wrist now.
“I’m not sad she died. I don’t even—I never really knew her, you know? Or I once did, but it’s all so long ago. I didn’t—I wasn’t here. I didn’t even know she was sick. I—I didn’t know how she was at the end of it. And it’s–It’s not like your mother, Eddie. You knew her. You loved her. And my mother, she–” Steve rambles, rapidly spiraling.
“It’s okay if you aren’t. You’re—Steve, you’re allowed to feel whatever it is that you’re feeling. It doesn’t matter what it is. We can’t—No one else but you knows how you grew up. She was supposed to love you and she didn’t. What you feel about that isn’t anyone’s business.” Robin whispers, wiping a tear from his cheek that he didn’t even know has fallen. “Not mine, not Eddie’s. No one. Just you.”
“It was—I was so lonely, you know?” He spits out. “All alone in that empty house. I still—I think I still am. And I’m afraid that I’d be like her. That I—That something is wrong with me. That whatever she had I’ll have too.”
“Steve, you’re not her.” Robin replies, pressing herself closer to him.
“But I’m her son.” He says. I have her eyes. There’s already a part of her in me. Who’s to say there isn’t more where I can’t see?
“And it ends there.” Eddie says firmly, making Steve tilt his head to look up at him through wet eyes. “Don’t—You have a family Steve. You found one yourself. It’s—You’re not alone anymore.”
“But—”
“You have me.” Robin counts on her fingers. “You have Eddie. You have Dustin and Max and Lucas and—There’s a lot of us that love you, Steve.”
“Robin—”
The dam finally breaks, and Steve lets out one sob after another. He falls apart in Robin’s arms, the world blurring in a haze of tears and misery. The weight he has been carrying in his chest explodes outward, and for the first time, the reality of his mother’s death dawns on him. Like the bag of rocks that has been tied underneath his feet has finally made its presence known. An explanation for his misery and the empty feeling he can’t quite get rid of. The realization that he’s been drowning this entire time.
And–
And he thinks he may hate his mother. For making him feel this way. For having neglected him all these years. For having shown him love only briefly and then taking it away from him. For having her eyes and having her sadness live inside of him and making him think he was wrong.
For never giving him the chance to know her. For never giving herself the chance to know him . To know who he was and who he is now and who he might become. For having died before he could come to terms with all of it. Before he could even actually say goodbye.
He wonders if she changed in the end. He wants to know if she was still her or if she went back to the mother she once was to Steve. Or if she was someone else entirely. Someone she could have been if her husband and Steve didn’t come along. And—
And maybe that’s what this trip has all been about.
His mother’s final attempt at gaining the upper hand. Making Steve want. Making Steve chase for a warmth that was never there.
“Let her sadness die with her, Steve.” Robin finally says once his tears have subsided, rubbing a hand gently up and down Steve’s back. Her blue eyes swim in concern and love and understanding. “Don’t let her take you away from us.”
Us. Robin says.
It plays out in his head. Image after image of the family he’s built from the rubble. Of the people he cares about. The people he’s bled for and have bled for him. He thinks about her perfume and Henderson’s endless enthusiasm. Max’s eyerolls and Mike’s snark. Joyce and Hopper’s guidance. Erica’s wit and Lucas’ fist bumps. Nancy’s warmth. Even Jonathan and the way he slings his arms around Steve’s shoulders when they’d see each other. And El and Will and all the other small things.
Small, yes, but happy things all the same. Small things that mount up into moments that make up who Steve is. That makes up his family.
His family. The only one that counts.
“But if you still want to go to her, we’ll take you there.” Eddie says, reflected in his eyes the same understanding Steve saw in Robin’s. “I–Do you still want to go?”
Steve closes his eyes, feeling the salt air from the ocean seeping into his bones. The push and the pull of waves crashing against the shore rattling inside his chest. Let her sadness die with her, Steve. He plays it over and over inside his head. Plays it for the child inside that wrote in the diary for the first time.
“No.” He says, taking his first real breath in a while. He opens his eyes and finds that the world splinters a little less in the corners of it. Still cracked. Still the slightest bit broken. Maybe he always will be.
But there’s a family waiting for him in Hawkins. There’s nothing for him here, in California. And maybe Steve will finally learn how to stop wanting. Maybe this time he’ll learn something else. Like accepting the love he already has. An unflinching and unwavering and unconditional love. One he found on his own.
I'll be brave. You'll be free. He whispers to his mother's ghost. He doesn't let her say anything back.
“Let’s—Let’s go home.” Steve says with a finality, a small smile worming its way on his face. Robin and Eddie laugh beside him, holding him together. Dragging him back to the surface. Untying the rocks. Keeping him afloat. Taking him back to the shore.
Around him, the world keeps spinning.