Chapter Text
Steve Harrington has things; Many things.
Materialistic praise and pride; False bravado and an ego that accompanies a broken moral compass.
But, he has life in the palms of his hands, and he doesn’t know what to do with it; Doesn’t want, to do anything with it, because he doesn’t care enough about himself; Never really has.
He used to care, somewhat, about things. But that fleeting care was never really for himself, only for the things around him; The people that he never knew would stay or go.
Steve Harrington has things.
He’s got a large house, he’s got the world in his hands, and he’s got people around him who never really challenge him.
And yet, he doesn’t care.
Because for every-thing that he has, there’s something greater that he doesn’t.
He has things, but not people.
He has the house, but no-one to fill it; To make it feel like anything worth having.
He has the praise and the pride in his actions; But not in himself, no pride for who he is.
He’s parentless; And he doesn’t care.
It doesn’t matter, he says. Who the fuck cares?
Not him.
Because he’s learned how to push everything away; Out of his own reach.
He’s got holes in his heart, been that way for years.
Every person that he tried to care about, has left it there; Another hole.
But a funny thing happened one day, he disassociated from all of the bad shit, from all of the abandonment, and from all of the hollowness. Because he realized, one day, that there was no hole in his heart anymore—it was just, completely gone; Instead.
You eat away at something for long enough, and suddenly, it disappears.
Steve Harrington has things.
But he has no feelings left to attach to them.
He’s got trauma and pain and ugliness inside, and yet, he’s forced himself to forget; To abandon it altogether.
He’s forced himself to know of only one thing—nothing fucking matters.
He doesn’t care about anything anymore.
Not the things of which he has in abundance, and certainly, not himself.
He doesn’t care if he lives or dies.
He doesn’t have happiness.
He doesn’t know love.
But, none of that fucking matters.
He’s not reckless with his life, he wouldn’t say; But he doesn’t value it, certainly—doesn’t look at himself in the mirror and think, hey that’s a human being; A precious person with a heart of gold!
No.
The truth is, he looks in the mirror and he laughs.
He laughs because he doesn’t feel anything when he looks there.
It’s a shell of a person.
It’s skin; Flesh.
A thing looking back at him.
But it’s no-one that he knows; Not anymore.
And he wonders sometimes, what it would be like for this shell of a person, this thing that he is now, to just shrivel up; And fucking die.
But it’s just a thought; A quick thought that happens maybe, once a month when he looks into the mirror. But it doesn’t last. It doesn’t linger when he’s out and about.
It doesn’t ring in between his ears as this pressing desire; It’s just this passing thought that creeps on him now and again when he looks at his own reflection.
But he doesn’t give enough of a damn to think about it long there-after.
He’s just, moving along.
He’s just, existing now; But he’s adopted this, nothingness, for himself.
And as sad and as hopeless as it sounds, he doesn’t fucking care…
He doesn’t think that he needs anyone.
He doesn’t think that a thing like him should have to need, anyone, ever.
Because a thing doesn’t need love, he thinks.
And when he does bad things, when he pushes people away, when he thinks that he might just have one ounce of care left within him, he remembers that when he looks in the mirror later on, he won’t see shit worth caring about, and he’ll drown himself in the actions that he knows are awful and screwed up; And he’ll know better, he’ll think that he should want to do better too—but he won’t.
Because he’s nothing, he thinks; And he’ll get along anyway, because he has, things…