lyrics are from Everybody Wants You by Red Hearse (playlist is coming soon - just need it to have a little bit more meat to its bones)
update schedule went out the window real quick :/ v srry i also work full-time lol
Feels like I've been burnin' up on the coldest day
Feels like I'm comin' up on a perfect moment, take a moment
But you don't 'cause you don't want it
'Cause everybody wants you
- Red Hearse
June 24th, 1993 - Hawkins, Indiana
Thirty three hours and a few minutes after Robin and Steve start their trip to Hawkins Indiana, they cross over the town line.
"Finally," Robin groans, tipping her head back.
The drive had been good - long , but good. They'd traded off driving duty (Robin had gotten her driver's license during her gap year and although she hated driving, she didn't mind it as much at night and when the roads weren't busy) and they stopped every so often to eat and stretch their legs, but they had made good time.
Two minutes later, Steve is easing the BMW onto the familiar long, gravel driveway almost completely hidden by evergreens, and nearly a minute down the rough path, a massive Victorian house comes into view.
The Victorian belong to Joyce and Hopper.
The Victorian, big and red and old and perfect , is the House.
After Vecna was dead and the final gate to the Upside Down was finally closed, after they'd all started to rest, to figure out how to pick the pieces of themselves up and start pasting them back together, Doctor Owens and a small cavalry of other shady government agents finally showed up in Hawkins.
Owens had informed Joyce that her home in Lenora, California was mostly destroyed, but so was most of Hawkins - in other words where did she want to go? It had taken all of five minutes for Joyce to decide that Hawkins was her home, her family's home. They would stay.
With an affirmative nod, Owens had told them to pick a house - any house - and he'd make it theirs. With most of Hawkins's citizens long gone, they had pretty much their pick of the town.
The house Joyce and Hopper chose was an enormous, partially abandoned Victorian set way back into the woods. When Joyce and Hopper first signed the papers, the house had been, quite frankly, completely terrifying. Even if it hadn't reminded them all way too much of the Creel house (and it absolutely had - it actually took quite a bit of getting used to), it was dark and dusty and cold, with patched up walls and dingy furniture leftover from whoever the previous owners were. The first time Steve stepped foot in the house (not the House quite yet), he'd wrinkled his nose, both in distaste and at the smell - decaying rodent carcasses and mold and dry rot - and given Hopper a skeptical look. Hopper remained convinced that the house had serious potential and made it his goal to have the place in a livable state by the start of the summertime, enlisting the whole Party in his crusade. It was difficult to say no to a man you'd once thought had died to protect you, and that in addition to the general unpleasantness of the place had acted as sufficient motivation for them to get it fixed up as fast as possible.
The Byers had needed to return to California for the rest of spring (just because Hawkins had decided to waive the remainder of the school year didn't mean everywhere else did too), and by the time they returned to Hawkins at the end of June, the house was good as new.
(Still not the House yet, though. That would come later. That would come after several weeks of finding solace there, several weeks of movie nights and game nights and dinners that would become family dinner, several weeks of 'D&D's at the house, tonight' and 'meet us at the house when you're out of work, 'kay?' and 'I can't sleep, I'm just gonna crash at the house' . It didn't take long for everyone to catch on. The house was the House .)
Steve maneuvers the car to the very edge of the dirt driveway, knowing there'll be several other cars joining his soon and wanting to leave them space to park, then cuts the engine.
Like she always does, Robin immediately shoves her door open and jumps out of the car, and Steve isn't too far behind her. She lets out a long groan and shakes out her legs, but Steve is already grabbing his bag from the backseat. A familiar sort of comfort and security starts to ease over him, a feeling that only strengthens as he follows the stone path that connects the driveway to the front porch of the House.
While Robin dislodges her duffle bag from beneath the seat, Steve takes the porch steps two at a time, rapping on the door as soon as it's within arm's reach
A few seconds later, he hears the very faint sound of sneaker-clad feet descending the stairs in the front hall. The chain at the door rattles for a moment, and then Steve is face to face with Joyce Byers.
Joyce is pulling him into a tight hug before Steve even has a moment to process her in front of him.
"Oh, honey, I missed you," she says, her arms tight around his shoulders.
"Missed you too," he replies.
Joyce takes a step back, still gripping his shoulders.
"Since when did you knock?" she asks with an exasperated smile, "That's how we really know it's been too long. You lose your key?"
"No," Steve shakes his head, and without thinking, he begins to fiddle with the lanyard he still holds in his hand until his fingers find the big silver key that belongs to the House. With a shrug, he adds, "Just...y'know, it's been a while. Didn't wanna barge in."
"Kid," a new, deeper voice comes from behind the half-open door. A moment later, Hopper appears in the doorway behind his wife (yeah, his wife - that's a long and also infuriatingly short story), "If this place is still home to you, it's not barging in."
"Hop," Steve says with a grin. Joyce neatly steps aside as Jim pulls Steve into a bear hug.
Jim Hopper is, at this point, Steve's dad in everything but blood and legal title.
It had started with Hop having an affinity for — in his own words — "kids who pretend to be punching bags for the people they care about" . At the time, Steve had been severely concussed and couldn't exactly argue.
In the wake of the "earthquakes" that tore through the town, Steve's parents, perpetually at their condo in Indianapolis, didn't want to risk the drive into the smoldering town. They called once the story hit the news to check in on the state of their house (and eventually their son), satisfied to learn that both were in one piece, but that was it.
Steve, unwilling to spend all his time sitting around his empty house, not with Robin grieving and Eddie healing and Max a big fat question-mark, had thrown himself into the renovation of the House alongside Hopper. It had taken Jim a grand total of two days to grasp Steve's entire situation, at which point he embarked on what Jonathan had told Steve to be a pathetically executed crusade to absorb Steve into the stubborn little family he was building without displaying any emotion or vulnerability at all.
And because Steve and Jim were alike in all the worst ways, Steve had met every one of his feeble attempts at bonding with his own half-hearted refusals.
Honestly, Steve isn't totally sure how Hop managed to succeed at all, but somehow he did, and by the end of the summer, the House felt more like home to Steve than the Harrington mansion in Loch Nora ever had.
Once all the happy reunions are sufficiently had, Joyce corrals everyone back into the House and sends Steve and Robin upstairs to get settled.
"You've got a couple hours before everyone else starts to show up," she says as they hoist their bags over their shoulders once again, "And, Robin, I figured you'd stay in Steve's room, but don't be afraid to steal one of the extras before the masses arrive if you want. They'll just end up sleeping in the den anyway."
"You got it, Joyce," Robin says with a grin as she follows Steve up the creaky stairs to the second floor and down to the very last door at the end of the hall.
Steve pushes the door open and is met with the familiar sight of his bedroom, one he hasn't seen in a few years.
"Time for a fucking nap," Robin groans, immediately dropping her duffle bag on the floor. As she starts toeing her shoes off, Steve looks around, taking in his wrought iron bed with the thick white comforter spread over it, the purple and blue striped quilt El crocheted for him years ago folded by the footboard.
His beat up dresser Robin had found on the side of the road and lugged up into his room, rambling about the ideas she had for little acrylic paintings on all the drawers (she got bored and stopped halfway through).
His posters and drawings and photographs he has tacked up on the cream-colored walls.
The red armchair left by whoever had abandoned the place that Steve had cleaned up and repaired (figured out how to fix the wobbly back leg) before setting by the window so it looked out onto the backyard.
The big snake plant in a clay pot that sits beside his bed, where the good light can hit it in the afternoon.
Steve looks around at his room in the House and feels another wave of that same familiar comfort wash over him. Last time he'd been home was three years ago nearly down to the day, for El and Max's high school graduation in June of 1990. After that, he'd just been busy - busy finishing up undergrad, then busy once he'd started his doctorate program, busy working as much as he could when he found the extra time.
It's nice to be back, nice to know it's even possible to feel that way about his hometown after everything that has happened here.
It's kind of logic-defying, actually.
"You gonna nap with me, Steve-o," Robin asks.
Steve blinks and looks over to see that Robin has stripped off her jeans, leaving her in a t-shirt and boxers and she's already got El's crocheted blanket pulled halfway to her chin.
"Eh," Steve shrugs. He kind of wants to go find Joyce and Hop again, but he did just drive for almost a day-and-a-half which always leaves him feeling sort of nauseous, and he'd forgotten what it's like to be in a house with adults who are more adult than him - it's an effect that knocks at least four years off his age and feels safe in a way he doesn't get to feel often anymore.
"Come on," Robin says, "You know you want to."
And he does want to, is the thing. He wants to sleep knowing there are grown-ups in the house who will look out for him, who can protect him against the monsters that he knows could crawl through his ceiling or up through the floorboards because he's seen it happen before, so he kicks off his own sneakers and settles down on the familiar mattress next to his best friend and finds himself drifting off in a matter of minutes.
April 10th, 1986 - Hawkins, Indiana
The Byers returned to California at the very end of March.
They did, after all, still have a life there, even if they were just gonna pack it all up and move it right back to Hawkins. Still, the Party didn't take their departure lightly and it was especially true for Hopper, who was channeling whatever apprehension he was feeling about it into exhaustive sweeps of the town, checking for any sign that Hawkins's connection to the Upside Down wasn't completely severed and dropping in on every Party member to make sure they were doing okay.
It was exactly what he was doing on this day when Steve heard a knock on his door in the late evening just as he was deciding if making dinner was worth it or if he should just wait until he and Robin went to the diner tomorrow morning - it's not like he was ever that hungry these days anyways.
Standing on the other side of the door was Hopper, who immediately stepped through the threshold and looked Steve up and down once before his eyes swept over his empty living room.
"God, kid," Hopper immediately said, "This house is like a coffin - the hell are your parents?"
"Still in Indianapolis," Steve replied with a shrug, "I talked to them yesterday."
"And?"
"And they're good."
"Harrington, I don't care if your parents are good. They weren't here. They should be wondering if you're good."
Steve shrugged again, avoiding Jim's eyes in favor of looking around his grey living room.
Hopper let out a heavy sigh and looked to the ceiling, "Alright, kid - let's go. Have dinner with me and El. We'll talk in the car."
He turned and passed through the still open door while Steve nudged at the corner of a small area rug with the toe of his sneaker. Jim made it all the way to his truck before he turned to see Steve still standing in his hallway.
He rolled his eyes and bellowed, "Let's go!"
Steve groaned, snatching his keys off the little table by the door before he hurried out after Hopper.
Once they were on the road, Hop waited a full two minutes before diving in.
"So, your folks."
Steve groaned, "It's nothing. It's all fine."
"It's all fine? Do they know what happened?"
"To Hawkins? Yeah, they'd already seen the news, anyway."
"And?"
"And what?"
"That was it?"
"I mean...no, we talked. They wanted to know if the house was okay-"
"Jesus Christ."
"-and I told them it was fine."
"That's it? That's all you talked about?"
"Yeah, I guess. I mean, they said that...well, it doesn't matter."
Hopper glanced over at him, face hard.
"They said what?" he finally asked.
Steve let out a breath, his fingers drumming on his knees as he looked at the road ahead of them.
"They said they're gonna sell the house and that they're sick of this town and all the bullshit that keeps happening here. Apparently, they wanted to sell it a while ago - they were waiting for the market to be better, but now that's gone to shit and they just want out. It makes more sense to be in Indy full-time anyway, with my dad's job there."
"Okay," Hopper said slowly. He was quiet for a few seconds, "How do you feel about that?"
Steve can hear Joyce's influence in the question, which means it probably wasn't an easy one for Jim to ask so the least he can do is give an honest answer.
"Shitty, I guess. After everything, I just...I don't want to leave everyone. No one else gets it."
"So don't."
"What?" Steve asked, finally looking over at him.
"Don't leave. Take a room in the new place. You know we have extras."
"N-no," Steve stammered, "I couldn't do that. Joyce-"
"Joyce would be relieved," Jim interrupted, "Do you realize how much she worries about all you older kids - you, especially. She's giving herself grey hairs, and believe me when I say I need her to outlast me."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. Kid, the amount of work you put into the place with me, you could have first dibs on a room, for all I care."
And that had been that.
Sure enough, six weeks later, when the construction was done and the House was more than fit to live in, Steve was corralled up the stairs with El to pick out bedrooms (El picked the one closest to the stairs, assigning Will's to be the one directly across from hers, and she pointed Steve to the one at the very end of the hall - the one with big windows that looked onto the yard).
His parents never actually sold the house - never returned to Hawkins at all, for all Steve knew, but Steve still stayed at the House every night, more and more of his things shifting to his new bedroom until the one at his parents' home looked just as dreary and cold as the rest of the place.
June 24th, 1993 - Hawkins, Indiana
Family dinner starts at five-thirty sharp, which historically meant everyone would trickle in until around six, and then it would take another five minutes at least from them to get all situated around the gigantic dining table.
Today, however (and maybe it has something to do with it being the first complete family dinner in years), the next car pulls into the driveway only a few minutes past four forty-five and Max, El, and Will emerge moments later - not that Steve was there to see it; he was still sound asleep on the second floor of the House and stayed that way until the kids - not kids anymore, though, they're all twenty-two now - are upstairs and dropping their stuff off in their rooms.
Eventually, the sound of a door shutting loudly rouses Steve and he sits up, rubbing at his eyes.
"Shit," he jabs an elbow into Robin's side, "Rob, they're here."
Robin mutters something incoherent, rolling away from him as Steve climbs out of bed and starts picking through his suitcase to find something half-decent to wear.
Just as he's tucking a thin, striped button-down into his old Levi's and cuffing the sleeves, there's a knock on the bedroom door. He opens it to see Max and El standing in the hallway with expectant looks on their faces.
"Oh shit, hey guys!" Steve says with a grin, pulling them both in for simultaneous one-armed hugs, "How was the drive?"
"Good," El says, her voice muffled in Steve's shirt before she pulls away "Will still drives very slow."
"I bet," he replies with a laugh, "Where is he?"
"His room," Max replies, tipping her head towards the other end of the hallway, "He brought laundry home and I think he's working on whatever pitch will get Joyce to do it for him."
Steve chuckles.
"Hi Robin," El calls, looking over Steve's shoulder at Robin who is only just starting to sit up. She gives them a weak salute in response before running a hand through her sleep-tousled hair.
"You good, Rob?" Max asks humorously.
"Oh, she's just tired from sitting in the passenger seat for thirty hours."
"Hey! Lies and slander, Harrington, all of it."
Steve ignores her.
"I just wanted to say hi," Max says as El slides past them into Steve's room and sits cross-legged on the bed in the empty spot Steve had recently vacated, "I'm gonna go see my mom, but I'll be back before dinner."
Steve nods. "Say hi to her for me."
"I will."
After graduating high school in the spring of 1990, Max had taken a gap year to work and continue letting her body and brain heal after everything that had happened with Vecna and the Upside Down. She'd definitely taken the worst of it out of all of them, and once she'd woken up from the coma (which she took her sweet time doing - it had been nearly August), the doctors had estimated she'd recover to about seventy-eight percent of her pre-Vecna condition, but Max, ever stubborn in her refusal to let anybody else dictate any bit of her life, managed an even ninety-two (by her own estimates). She got her mobility back in full, though she's gonna have chronic pain for life, and her vision is shit. She wears a thick pair of glasses that she hates, but needs (Steve tried them on one time and immediately had a headache that persisted for over an hour).
The bulk of her recovery took place over what would have been her sophomore year of high school had she actually been able to attend, but she picked it back up only a year later and with El, who had needed to repeat ninth grade in Hawkins for a plethora of reasons, by her side.
Together, they'd spent their gap year in California living with Max's dad (Hopper had spent the year constantly on the brink of a conniption), and by the time they returned, Will had decided to drop out of college and needed roommates who also wanted get the hell out of Hawkins. Max and El fit the bill.
It hadn't taken them long to find an apartment together in Indianapolis, and now Max is splitting her time between working a couple jobs in the city (one at a Vans store and another bartending at what Steve knows is a gay bar - Max refuses to entertain any conversations about this) and taking some classes.
Of all the no-longer-kids, Steve stays in touch with Max the most - he's not sure what the distinction is, maybe it's the nearly watching her die at least twice thing, or maybe it's because one time when she was high on pain meds she told him he's the older brother she wishes Billy had been, or maybe - well, there are probably a lot of reasons. Whatever they are, once a week he gets a call from Max where she updates him on everything going on in Indiana and listens while he talks about his degree and usually ends up roasting the shit out of him in the process. She's fantastic.
After Max heads back out to visit her mom, Steve leaves Robin and El in his room, where El will probably further corrupt Robin with whatever witchy shit she's been up to these days (El is responsible for Robin's short-lived but passionate and expensive interests in astrology, crystals, and something to do with phases of the moon that apparently is completely different from astrology).
He nearly pokes his head into Will's bedroom to say hello when he hears Joyce say, "Honey, if you're actually gonna move to Boston in a year, you really have to start learning how to do this stuff."
Steve snorts and keeps going down the hallway towards the stairs. Will must be pleading his case for laundry services from his admittedly lenient mother, who is making a solid point rather fruitlessly because she hasn't been able to say no to Will since she dragged him out of the Upside Down almost a decade ago (or so Steve has heard).
He finds Hopper in the kitchen hovering over a very full stovetop.
"Jesus, it smells good in here," Steve says, stopping right at Hop's shoulder to peer over at what's cooking (sizzling, covered pans are sitting on two of the burners and the other two are holding a pot of pasta and another of chili that Hopper is stirring).
"It better," Hopper replies, "Joyce's been prepping all this for ages. Practically had me writing up a damn menu and everything."
"I believe it."
"She's excited you'll all be back here together again," he says, and he keeps his gaze firmly away from Steve's just like he always does when he's being earnest, "Me too, you know. God knows it'll probably be the last time with Sinclair finally getting the hell out of this town, and in my old age..."
"Shut the fuck up," Steve rolls his eyes, "You're fifty-one - hey, you still doing all the laundry around here?"
"That is the arrangement we've made," Hopper replies, not looking away from the chili he's idly stirring. Steve gives a slow nod, and when he doesn't say anything, Hop looks at him suspiciously, "Why?"
"Pretty sure Will is upstairs guilting Joyce into agreeing to do laundry for him."
Hopper stills for a moment, then shakes his head with a short exhale.
"Not my kid, not my problem," he finally says, and Steve lets out a surprised laugh.
"Hop - when the hell have you ever lived by that statement."
"Alright, Harrington, get outta my kitchen."
January 2nd, 1992 - 10,000 Feet Over the Mid-West, U.S.A.
"Steve, I have to tell you something, and it sucks and I feel like a terrible person and I've been trying to just will it away, but it just keeps coming back stronger and if I don't tell you right now , I'm gonna explode."
Steve blinked. Robin had been otherwise silent so far on the flight back to Washington from their visit to Nancy's apartment in Boston for the holidays, which in and of itself was odd, but they'd been on the plane for three hours, so Steve had gotten used to the quiet.
"Okay...so tell me?"
"Okay," Robin continued, "but just know I don't like that this is happening either - believe me. If I could just make it, like, poof , be gone, I'd do it. I-"
"Robin," Steve cut her off, "Either tell me or don't. Don't keep telling me about telling me. I get all confused."
"Okay," Robin said, shaking out her hands, "Okay, so I think I have a teensy tiny crush on-on Nancy."
"Uh, yeah , I already knew."
"You knew ?"
"Robin, it's super obvious to me when you like someone. We've talked about literally every other crush of yours ad nauseam."
" Ad nauseam ?" Robin looked taken aback. "Okay, when we're done with me, we will be talking about how much time you spent with Eddie on this trip because that's clearly where that just came from. Also, how the fuck long have you been sitting on this?"
"I dunno," Steve shrugged, "Since we walked from Reefer Rick's house to Skull Rock during spring break your senior year."
"Okay, first of all, I'm gonna need you to stop referring to Inter-Dimensional World War Four as spring break . Also, that was six years ago! I went out with Vickie for, like, several months after that. Why didn't you say something?"
"Had I known it'd take you this fucking long to bring it up, yeah, maybe I would have said something sooner, but, for one, you were dating Vickie, plus, you spent most of senior year telling me how much you couldn't stand her!"
"Who? Vickie?"
"No, not Vickie! Nancy!"
"Nancy?"
Steve let out a groan, because of course Robin would conveniently forget the months she'd spent trying to convince him that Nancy was something between an actual spawn of something evil and just a generally unpleasant person. During their time working at Scoops, Robin had bullied Steve into divulging an abridged version of his break-up with Nancy and after everything that happened at Starcourt, she'd demanded the full story.
The end result - a fuming Robin, furious at Nancy for cheating on Steve, furious at Steve for seeming to not care at all.
And he really didn't care.
Two years of protecting people he cared about from unimaginable monsters had been a humbling experience, one that had put a lot of things into perspective for him, things like how maybe it wasn't the end of the world for his high school relationship to come to a somewhat messy end if everyone involved was alive .
Robin, though? Robin cared. She cared a lot and seemed to make it her mission to be mad at Nancy on Steve's behalf if he wouldn't be mad at her himself.
"Jesus Christ, Rob, don't tell me you don't remember - also, why do you think I wouldn't be happy?"
"Well, I mean, you guys did…date, so…"
"Yeah - years ago. We're friends - you know we're friends. We just went to her house for the holidays. She dated a whole other person after me even before high school graduation and I'm friends with him too."
Robin shrugged, scuffing her shoe against the underside of the seat in front of them.
"Robin, the only person I think is cooler than Nance is you. It's all good - it's more than good - like I said, I've been waiting for you to figure this out for a long fucking time."
Robin groaned as she slumped down further into the seat.
"What now?" Steve asked.
"Well, now I actually have to do something about this, don't I? And you do too, dingus, I may have been a little pre-occupied during the trip but I didn't miss your stupid pining over Eddie - it's getting worse, I swear."
"Yeah," Steve grumbled, "Jesus, we suck - hey, what if we, like...what if we say the first person to actually sort their shit out wins, I dunno, ten bucks or something."
Robin straightened, tipping her head to the side in consideration.
"Twenty?"
Steve snorts, "Sure Rob, twenty."
She turned to look at Steve.
"You got a deal."
June 24th, 1993 - Hawkins, Indiana
Steve is sitting on the top step of the porch soaking in the one square mile of Hawkins, Indiana he actually likes when Lucas pulls up to the House in the little sedan he shares with his sister whenever they're both at home, Erica and Dustin in the backseat.
Of all the younger half of the party, Steve had seen the Sinclairs most recently, when he'd flown to Pennsylvania for Lucas's graduation less than a month earlier.
Lucas had been scouted for Carnegie Mellon's basketball team after going to a month-long camp in Philadelphia his junior year of high school. By the time he graduated, basketball was mostly just a hobby and he'd moved back to Hawkins in May with a business major that, like Robin, he was still figuring out what to do with.
Just as the Sinclair's car turns off and Steve is descending the stone porch steps to greet its passengers, Robin slips out the front door to join him.
"What the hell, man?" Steve says to Lucas while Robin opens the back door so Dustin and Erica can slide out, "How'd you end the fight over shotgun? That's, like, one of the greatest unsolved problems of the universe."
"I didn't do shit," Lucas said, accepting Steve's one-armed hug, "They wanted to sit back there together."
"Aw," Robin cooed, "Best friends!"
"Dustin's best friend can't be my sister," Lucas gripes, "It's weird."
"Shut up," Dustin shoots back, yanking Lucas away so he can give Steve his own bear hug, one that makes Steve wonder if Dustin has somehow gotten taller (even though realistically he probably hasn't - he just doesn't see the kid nearly enough).
The second they crossed the threshold, Dustin, Erica, and Lucas are heading up the stairs towards the den - the partially finished third floor attic with an old couch and some overstuffed armchairs set up around an ancient TV set that Hopper couldn't bear to part with even after they replaced it with the new one that still sits downstairs, an old bookshelf filled with VHS tapes and board games, baskets stuffed with spare blankets and pillows, and boxes filled with old records and cassettes and all of Will's old video game consoles - where El and Will are already setting up camp for the evening.
Steve returns to the kitchen, now with Robin in tow, and leans against the counter to watch his best friend needle Jim relentlessly until Joyce eventually comes to rescue him, corralling them out into the dining room where the table is only partially set.
He's helping distribute mismatched dinnerware around the long dining table with Joyce and El when they hear Dustin start yelling all the way from the den up on the third floor.
"Guys! Guys, they're here!"
Steve glances out the big window in the dining room to see that, yes, Nancy's car is joining the veritable convoy in the driveway. He looks away before he catches a glimpse of Eddie, his palms already sweating, and feels Joyce's eyes on him, though he refuses to acknowledge her, already knowing the exact expression that'll be on her face without needing to turn and see it.
There's the cacophonous sound of several pairs of young-adult feet thundering down the stairs, and Will, Lucas, and Dustin appear on the landing just as the front door opens. The din when Max steps into the House is insurmountable, and Steve glances back at Hopper in time to see him wince and head back into the shelter of the kitchen.
"Alright, alright," a familiar voice comes from behind the still-open door, blocking the speaker from view even though Steve knows exactly who it is. "Let the lady and I through, sheep."
The welcoming committee manages to shift a good few feet back down the hallway, though El has joined them now, so it does little more than give Nancy and Eddie a couple inches to squeeze into the House and shut the front door behind them.
"Hi, Nance," Joyce exclaims with a big smile on her face. She immediately sweeps past Steve and pulls Nancy into a hug.
Eddie, who arguably saw Joyce and Hopper most frequently these days, looks over Joyce's shoulder, his eyes immediately finding Steve who's still holding an armful of cups and can't manage more than a stupid grin. Eddie opens his mouth to say something, but before he can, the younger half of the party turns their attention onto him and suddenly he's swallowed up in a riotous crowd of twenty-two-year-olds who apparently haven't seen him in far too long.
It's possible that Dustin and Lucas haven't seen him in nearly a year, Steve realizes. The last time they were in Hawkins was for their winter break, and that particular week, Eddie had left for Washington as it was Steve and Robin's year to host their little group's holiday tradition of piling into someone's tiny apartment for the week between Christmas and New Years, when none of them had school or work and they could drink spiked cocoa and eat shitty takeout and argue over what made a Christmas movie a Christmas movie and play card games with their own twisted rules and piss off the neighbors without a care in the world. That year, with Robin and Steve hosting from their apartment in Tacoma, Jonathan and Argyle had actually made the drive up from San Francisco to join them, so they'd been able to add smoking enough weed to knock even Eddie off his feet to their itinerary. It had been a dream.
Out of everyone in the party, Steve is probably the least close with Jonathan these days, though considering how even one tour in the Upside Down is enough to form a bond for life, this doesn't mean much. They are brothers, had been since Jonathan yanked him down the hallway of his house in 1983.
Three years later, in the early spring of 1986 when Vecna was defeated and the gates to the Upside Down were closed, all three Byers returned to California. They had needed to finish school and let Jonathan graduate and transport their lives back to Indiana, so all three Byers went back to California in March.
Only two returned to Hawkins.
Jonathan, after several weeks of anxious deliberating, pled his case to stay in California. After a few more weeks going back and forth with Joyce, he won.
Everyone had...well, it had been a bittersweet thing to learn when Will and Joyce returned without the eldest Byers brother, but Steve understood. He knew that the weight of the whole world had been put on Jonathan's shoulders, including its darkest moments. They had discussed a few times their shared tendency to put the needs of everyone around them before their own, so Steve knew that deciding to stay in Lenora was probably the first truly self-motivated thing Jon had ever done.
Now, Jonathan is a free-lance photographer - a pretty damned good one, if his portfolio is any indication. He recently bought a townhouse in San Francisco, and he and Argyle are three years (and some change) away from achieving full-on domestic partnership status, though none of them know what the actual status of their relationship even is.
Steve is happy for him.
"Hey."
Steve jumps, so engrossed in his train of thought he hadn't noticed that Eddie had managed to free himself from the masses and appear right by Steve's side.
"Hey," Steve says, clumsily setting the glasses down on the one empty spot left on the dining table. Once they've sufficiently settled, no longer noisily clanging against each other, Steve finally can step into the hug Eddie is offering him, wrap his arms around Eddie's shoulders and stick his nose in the fabric of Eddie's shirt and smell the scent he knows is just Eddie .
God, he's so far gone. Maybe it's a little sad (he'll ask Robin later if she doesn't beat him too it), but he can't really bring himself to care (can't really bring himself to actually do anything about it, either, but that's a different issue).
Last time Steve had seen Eddie was five months ago - for that same holiday trip to Washington that had kept Lucas and Dustin from reuniting with their friend and their mentor (not that Steve was all that sympathetic because it had meant he got to see Eddie, and he didn't let himself be selfish often but he would about that).
Steve is determined for this trip to be different, because it has to be. He'd spent many hours during the car ride from Washington (mostly the hours when Robin was able to sleep and Steve was left alone with his thoughts and the quiet radio) convincing himself of it, working through scripts, committing them to memory, figuring out when the best time to deliver whatever monologue he settled on would be, but this hug, this hug full of love and softness and affection is making him remember why he always chickens out in the end, like he had chicken out in December when Eddie was in Washington, in Steve's apartment, in his bed for a short time. He'd had a plan then, too, had it all worked out, but then Eddie had hugged him just like he's hugging him now and all that had flown out the window.
Because this hug reminds him why it's easier - leaps and bounds easier - for Steve to act like he feels nothing more than friendship for Eddie Munson and know that he'll get to have him in his life forever, even if it's not quite in the way he wants, than to confess and throw everything on the line and risk losing the wonderful, sweet, breath-taking person that Eddie is.
And Steve would lose him, is the thing, in one way or another - sure, Eddie would probably be pretty cool about it, if he didn't feel the same way. He'd make a few jokes to ease the tension and reassure him that nothing would change between them if Steve didn't want it to, but then things would change anyway, and who's Steve gonna blame when the person who broke his heart is himself?
Steve suddenly realizes that they've been hugging for a long time, probably way longer than they should for two guys who are supposedly just friends, but Eddie's arms around his waist haven't loosened and, again, Steve can't bring himself to care about anything supposedly , not when Eddie's here - in the same room, same house, same town as Steve, even if it's the town that's nearly killed them both.
Eventually, Eddie is the one who pulls away first, reaching up to tug at the stray lock of Steve's hair that's perpetually falling into his face.
"Miss me, Harrington," he says with a massive grin.
"Shut up, 'course I missed you," Steve swats at Eddie's hand, pretending he definitely doesn't want to know what it would feel like tangled up in his hair, what it would feel like if he just pulled -
Jesus.
Steve needs to pull himself together.
"I'm gonna greet our other host before he boots me out of his house for lack of manners," Eddie says, heading for the kitchen.
"He's done it for less," Steve manages to quip, and Eddie snorts as he disappears.
As if by magic, Robin appears at his side.
"God, you're pathetic," she says, "That was pathetic."
"Oh, fuck off . He caught me off guard. I have game - you know I have game."
"Not once in these nine years have I ever known you to have game."
"Alright, that's big talk from you. Say hi to Nancy yet, bullseye?" he pokes her flushed cheek, a tell-tale sign that she has indeed been given an opportunity to greet Nancy.
Steve will never admit it, but Robin is right. Steve doesn't have any game, not when it counts, and never with Eddie.
Maybe if he didn't fall in love so damn fast, he'd have a chance, but with Eddie he doesn't think it would have mattered all that much - he never had a chance to begin with. Eddie is just so good . Sure, he's kind of completely terrifying, but he's also good and kind and soft and real. It's all the things Steve has spent years re-learning how to be, and Eddie just is .
(And he's stupid hot, which, sure, Steve had needed a little bit more time to realize than the rest of it but now that he has, it's only making matters worse).
"Alright, everyone," Joyce says, clapping her hands together, "Time to sit down and eat."
The dining room is the first room to the left of the entry way - a massive room nearly consumed by a massive dining table with its leaf permanently installed. Today, like always, the table is set for thirteen - two place settings at either end, one in front of each of the five chairs on the left side of the table, and six more on the right side, where a long wooden bench is still pushed in against the oak table legs.
The volume of the dining room as they all cram in around the table is deafening, and twice Hopper has to glare across the table at the Lucas-Dustin-Will triad that's responsible for most of it. Eventually, though, they all get settled and load up their plates with as much food as their dishes can bear, and then, aside from the sounds of forks and knifes scraping against ceramic, the room is quiet.
June 15th, 1990 - Hawkins, Indiana
Eddie had a boyfriend.
Well, Eddie was seeing someone and that unheard-of statement coupled with the small smile and flush high on his cheeks when he said it only lent itself to the conclusion.
The kids (not kids, though, they're all nineteen now) had grilled him into divulging his name and how they'd met and a few other details (they'd also thrown in some requests to meet the guy, which Eddie had immediately shut down) - or so Robin would tactlessly tell him later.
Steve had missed all but the beginning of the conversation because Joyce (forever his knight in shining armor) had gotten to her feet and asked if anyone wanted to join her on a last minute trip to the grocery store for hot dog rolls. Steve had immediately taken her up on the offer, though he was the only one.
Once they were on the road, Joyce started to fiddle with the radio, switching between stations that Steve couldn't hear because the conversation he'd walked out on was bouncing around in his brain and even though he desperately wished he could forget what he'd heard, it was ringing in his ears and his fingers were digging into his knees and his eyebrows were furrowed so deep it was only a matter of time before it turned itself into a headache.
Joyce shut off the radio.
"Hey," she said, "you wanna go get ice cream?"
The question was so jarring it actually managed to quiet the noise in Steve's mind for a moment.
"W-what?"
"You know...ice cream!"
Steve looked at her to see that she was sporting an inviting smile, her eyes wide.
Steve's brow furrowed again, albeit for a different reason than before.
"Uh...I guess."
"Or we could go to that bar on Main and get a drink!" Joyce continued eagerly, and that suggestion is even more jarring than the ice cream, "You know...if you're too old for ice cream."
"No, I-uh, we can do whatever, but...what about the grocery store?"
" Right - but that'll take, like, a second, and I never get to see you anymore, and you know tomorrow's gonna be so crazy with Max and El's graduation and the party, and you and Robin have to head to the airport early the next morning, so now's the time, right?"
"Uh, okay," Steve replied, perplexed, "Yeah, sure. Whatever you want."
So, absurdly, they got ice cream. They went to the little parlor on Main Street right below the Munson's apartment - though it was just Wayne's now after Eddie moved out early last year. Steve has a handful of decent memories in that apartment, mostly from the few months during the fall of 1987 when both Nancy and Robin were away at college and Steve hadn't started quite yet, a few months when Steve and Eddie were synonymous for each other.
Steve hadn't been in that apartment in a long time.
He wondered if Eddie had brought his boyfriend to that apartment yet. He wondered if he'd met Wayne yet. Maybe not though because Wayne still called Steve a couple times a month to check in on him and he'd probably stop whenever he met -
Steve forced that train of thought to end. There were a lot of implications there he didn't want to face right that second.
"You okay, honey?" Joyce asked, and Steve felt her cautious glance.
Steve shrugged.
"Can...can I tell you something?" he asked, his heart giving one big thump.
"Of course, Steve."
"I...I like Eddie."
He didn't look at Joyce, didn't want to see her face, but he heard her exhale.
"Steve," she said, then paused, "I know."
And somehow it was the best and the worst thing for her to have said.
"Oh."
"Are you okay?" she asked again
"I'm...yeah, I dunno. I was-I was gonna maybe...tell Eddie on, you know...while we were here. I was gonna tell him. Maybe."
Joyce made a small, sad noise.
"Oh, Steve...I'm sorry."
He shrugged.
"You know," she started, "I had a crazy big crush on Hop in high school and that worked out in the end."
"Yeah," Steve said, more to appease Joyce than himself (and he decided against pointing out that things had only worked out after two decades and the threat of horrific death), "That's true."
"And you guys are still so young. You have plenty of time, but I...I know that it hurts sometimes. It hurts to see something you want and know you can't have it."
Steve's heart trips over itself again, and he finds he doesn't have anything to say in response.
It starts to occur to him that there's a mountain of food in the kitchen from Joyce's two-hour trip to the grocery store yesterday that she'd taken to collect everything she'd need to feed all the guests of El and Max's graduation party tomorrow afternoon.
"We...Joyce, I don't think we need hot dog rolls."
Joyce keeps her eyes on the road ahead as she tips her head to the side.
"No, probably not."
Despite everything, Steve's heart starts to swell.
June 24th, 1993 - Hawkins, Indiana
"Hey Steve," Max says from across the dining table, "How's the doctorate coming?"
Max is in a public health program at a community college in Indianapolis. Public health and psychology bear many similarities (at least, Steve is pretty sure), and with the overarching foundation of existing to improve the lives of others, it gives Max and Steve a lot to talk about.
"Oh," Steve says, chewing and swallowing a mouthful of steamed broccoli before continuing, "Yeah, it's good. I have one quarter left of year two. Starts in a couple weeks, then in October I have to pick a dissertation topic."
"You're in school year-round?" Will asks, wrinkling his nose, "That sucks."
"Nah," Steve shakes his head, "Not really. Courses are cool."
"And what would you know, Mister College-Dropout," Joyce teases with a smile.
"Jeez, Mom, you'll never let that go."
Joyce holds her arms up in a playful surrender and Will rolls his eyes, a smile on the edge of his lips.
God, Steve loves Joyce. He's so fucking grateful for her and her unconditional love for him and the rest of their motley crew.
Steve knows it couldn't have been easy for her and Hop to be one of very few adults who actually knew what everyone had been through. After all, they'd had their own healing to do and Steve knows they often let it fall to the wayside, instead checking in on the rest of them, making sure they were doing okay. Steve had recognized this and done his best to not be someone they needed to spare any unnecessary attention for, but obviously his efforts had been for naught, because here he was.
He's just never met anyone who exudes mother more than Joyce Byers does, with her welcoming eyes and the faint scent of vanilla and nutmeg and the way she makes love seem so easy. Steve's own mother had always made it seem like loving him was a chore, like it was something she was obligated to do because she'd chosen to bring him into the world and it was part of the gig. Love was never his mom's first choice; it was always an afterthought, like Steve was an afterthought. Joyce, though? Joyce loved the kids that filled her house day in and day out fully, indiscriminately, effortlessly. Not once living in the House, living under Joyce and Hopper's roof had Steve ever needed to wonder if he was enough, if he was good, if he was wanted. They had always made sure he knew.
Steve taps back into the conversation at the dinner table to hear that Dustin is trying, yet again, to explain what he's in school for, something Steve has been on the receiving end of more times than he can count with varying levels of success.
Erica is the only one in his corner, and she's in the middle of kicking Lucas underneath the table and saying, "No, you dummy, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences is one major. Biology is the other one."
(Steve still can't wrap his head around it, but at the end of the day he knows that Dustin is a genius whose combination of degrees is gonna lead him right towards the answer to every question he's ever had about the Upside Down, and that's the only detail that really matters.)
With everyone's attention on Dustin, Steve lets himself spare a glance in Eddie's direction. Indeed, Eddie's eyes are on Dustin, and he has a slightly overwhelmed expression on his face, though if that's from the speed of his words or the content of them, Steve doesn't know.
God, he's pretty, Steve thinks, handsome, good-looking, attractive, whatever - all of the above, and he would be happy to just look at him forever.
It was true in 1987 when Eddie's hair was long and unruly, when he had bangs that fell into his face more often than not, when his clothes were tight and worn and ripped, when he accessorized with big metal rings, silver chains that hung from his jeans and around his neck, stick-and-poke tattoos that peeked out from beneath the collar of his t-shirt and sleeves of his jacket.
It's still true in 1993, now that his curls have been cut short so Steve can see every exaggerated expression on his face, now that his old metal persona has softened into a vague grunge, with big flannels and old band t-shirts and worn-in jeans. He still wears the rings, Steve notes, although maybe not all the same ones, and every time he sees him, Eddie usually has at least one more tattoo.
He's also got a scruff of hair along his jaw - more than stubble but not quite enough to be considered a beard and it's somehow both softening his face and making him look just a little bit older, and Steve can't remember if it was there when he last saw Eddie, but either way he is not complaining.
As Dustin continues to talk about his coursework, Eddie looks up and suddenly he's met Steve's eyes with his own.
Steve feels his heartbeat trip over itself, but he doesn't let himself look away. He normally would — he knows he normally would, but something is different about this visit. It has to be. He doesn't think he can take this - the pining and the thoughts that drive Steve to distraction and the feeling like his heart is gonna burst out of his chest every time he so much as sees the guy - for another second.
So they look at each other for a while, and eventually Eddie's lips curve up into a little smirk, half hidden behind his hand, and his eyebrows go up just a smidge.
Beside them, Hopper clears his throat quietly.
"Eddie," he says, and Eddie tears his eyes away to look towards Jim, "How's the shop?"
"Not bad," Eddie replies, and then he starts telling them about a recent client's old car he got to work on, something Steve knows very little about but Hopper seems to be at least sort of intrigued by.
As Eddie continues, Steve feels a dull weight fall onto his foot, and only after a glance from Eddie does he realize it's the latter's own, the toe of his thrifted Dr. Marten nudging at Steve's ankle.
Steve's face starts to feel hot, and he grabs his half-full glass to hopefully hide the flush that's spreading from his neck to his ears and onto his cheeks.
Eventually, Eddie moves his foot away from Steve's as he starts to get pulled into the conversation, gesturing in the exaggerated way he always does as he talks Hopper (and Steve, to a lesser extent) through the trials some yuppie with a "vintage" car he does not know how to care for is putting him through at the shop, and Steve is left half listening and half trying to process whatever the hell just happened.
Robin clearly saw something, given the way she's eyeing him but before she can subject Steve to her freaky telepathic thing she's always been able to use on him, her attention is pulled to the other end of the table where Lucas and Will have begun to pester her about something, just like they always are, and Dustin has given up on talking about school and settled into conversation with Nance and Erica and Joyce, so the volume around the table is at an all-time high for the evening, and there's a warmth spreading in Steve's chest strong enough to quiet the noise about Eddie in his brain as he takes in the chatter and laughter and camaraderie that's blanketing the room — this room filled with Steve's family back together again for the first time in ages — like a thick, familiar quilt, and the warm feeling is spreading all the way to the tips of his toes.
Steve is home.
this chap is also accompanied by another flashback i full lost control of (chapter 2 of next work in series) - should already be uploaded unless you are vERY early
livwritesstuff