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Steve Harrington comes out as bisexual—though he doesn't have the word for it—in his late twenties, almost early thirties. He's tired of striking out with girls. But also he's come face to face with the fact that it's just okay to be this, to be him, to want this. Robin did it and Will did it and they're okay, their lives are normal and perfectly okay. They're happy.
Why does he wait until then?
Because he lives in Forest Hills. He doesn't live with his parents anymore. His parents don't live in Hawkins anymore. His dad isn't breathing down his neck, scaring him. He's not sitting in his bedroom while he hears his dad call people like Robin and Will 'those queers.'
Steve's in his living room, one late night, watching a rerun on his TV. He's comfortable. He's safe. His little league team is doing great this year. He got a postcard in the mail for Derek Turnbow's high school graduation ceremony. Things are okay.
For the first time since 1983, he can take a full breath and sleep a full night and not feel the desperate urge to call Nancy or Jonathan or Robin whenever he thinks something's happened.
He can say with his full chest that he is happy. Happy with where he is in life. Happy that he isn't forced to live up to impossible expectations. Happy that he's comfortable being alone instead of anxiously stewing in the outskirts. Happy that he can sit back with his feet up and not have to look at his car keys a single damn time.
Dustin lives an hour away from him now, but they see each other as often as possible. They're best friends, they're brothers. Somehow, in the last ten or so years, Dustin has not run out of stories to tell. According to Mike Wheeler, Dustin's typically not a storyteller. But when it comes to the likes of Eddie and Wayne Munson? Steve's never going to get tired of those damn stories.
In his apartment, Dustin has framed pictures of Eddie's drawings on his wall, right next to Will's. He's got Eddie's D&D equipment. He has Eddie's bats on his arm, but another piece of his supposed sweetheart on the other forearm; Dustin had commissioned Will for it.
The only thing Dustin doesn't have is Eddie's journal. And the only reason for that is because Dustin gave it to Steve.
"What am I going to do with Eddie's journal? You should keep it, man."
"No, Steve. You're gonna want to see what's inside."
"Isn't that an invasion of privacy?"
Dustin had sighed at him. "He's dead, Steve," he had said quietly, "Wayne had to go through Eddie's things already. I was looking at what I had been given. It's not a journal for me, man."
"And instead it's for me? How does that make"—
"Just read it."
So, Steve did. Cover to cover. Forwards, backwards, backwards, and forwards again. Each page from the end of 1985, into early 1986. There's still about forty pages left blank, unfinished. Each page riddled with things Dustin had said about Steve. About Steve and this 'stupid, embarrassingly big, hopeless crush.' About Steve and being a possible good guy. About Steve.
It didn't make sense. Why did Eddie care so goddamn much?
But then Steve sat with it for a long while. With the journal tucked neatly on his bedside table. Under the ceiling of his trailer, four doors down from where Eddie once resided. Steve sat with it. With the fondness that grew towards Dustin's stories. With the anger that arose again, so mad at Eddie for dying too early. With a weepy sort of yearning, for a friendship that could've been.
For that something more they could've been.
He comes out as bisexual first quietly to himself, in the comfort of his own home, without breath down his neck. He whispers it into the air, like the whole world will hear him, but as if only one other person should. He admits it out loud before he can catastrophize.
He says it just to say it. Just to make something real.
Just to test the words. Make sure he means them. He does. Of course he does, he wouldn't have carried that fear of what-if all his growing up if he didn't mean this.
But he says it, most importantly, as a sort of accepting and moving on.
It would've been nice to be loved by Eddie, he thinks. It would've been nicer to have Eddie still here, but he can't linger on that too long; if the Upside Down is gone and monsters are no longer real and the world is "normal" again, then Eddie can't come back.
It would've been nice to be loved by Eddie, he thinks, because I'd be capable of loving him, too.
And that settles it. He's bisexual because if there was another timeline, another universe, thousands of other pocket universes in which Eddie Munson is alive, Steve would've taken the chance to fall in love with him. Over and over and over again.
Steve's in his living room one late night with the phone cradled between his ear and shoulder. With Dustin's number already punched in. He'll be up, Steve knows he will.
"Hello?"
"Hey, man," Steve says. Before he can be interrupted, "I read Eddie's journal about a week ago."
Silence. Tentative. "Yeah? How do you...feel?" Dustin asks softly.
"Things are different," he mutters. "I'm...different."
Dustin hums. Says nothing. Steve appreciates it.
"I'm into guys," he states easily.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I just didn't really connect all the dots until tonight, though," Steve admits quietly, "but...I think that Eddie would've been an easy person to love."
There's a small sniffle. Croaky, Dustin responds, "He was. I think you would've really liked him, Steve."
Steve closes his eyes against the words, rests his head on the back of his couch. There's a steady, easy thrum in the air. "I think I would have, too." His voice barely breeches the privacy of his home. It doesn't echo like it did at his old house. It just sits. "Hey," he then adds in a murmur, "I'm, uh, I'm really sorry for how I treated your friendship with him. It's obvious it was special. I guess I was just...just too jealous to see how good of a thing it was. How good it could've been for me, too."
"You're forgiven," Dustin mutters, voice snotty. "Dude, you've been forgiven for a long time. I should have taken the time to try and include you more or...or...or find some sort of common ground for all of us. There had to have been something."
He snorts. "Dustin, it was you that was common ground. Eddie and I had barely anything outside of your butthead attitude."
"Hey"—
"I just think that if I got over myself, there could have been something very nice for all of us. And it took a—god—painstakingly long time for me to realize that. Maybe I was too nervous to get too close? Maybe I was just always mad at him? Maybe I was just bitter with you? I don't—
"I don't know. There's no point in lingering on it now. It matters, but it also just...I guess it just sort of doesn't. We were all just a bunch of buttheads. All of us.
"Things could've been different for us. That's what I'm saying. And I missed out, like, a lot." He lolls his head back down, eyes opening slowly against the warm light of his living room. The TV's buzzing in the background with the chatter from Friends. He smirks at the screen, a passing thought of what it would've been like if Eddie, Nancy, Jonathan, Robin, and himself could've been like that, too. What it would've been like, where he could be, all the shenanigans, all the stories. "Hey, Dustin?"
There's a loud swallow on the other side. And Dustin's voice is impossibly more nasally. "What's up?"
"Tell me again about the day Eddie spotted you in the cafeteria. What did your Al Yankovic t-shirt look like?"
As Dustin laughs all wet and promptly bursts excitedly into a story, Steve allows himself to settle back into the couch. Fully, completely, at ease.
He's okay and he's happy.