It's hard to wake up I hate what I love
and twenty-one (six) sucks, pretend
It takes a few weeks after Erica's left for college for Steve to realise he's depressed.
Of course, he's been depressed before, but it hits harder when you're stoned and lying on the expensive leather couch that's been in the house you can't be bothered to leave for over a decade or more and life seems to be really sucking right now.
Maybe he could have gotten somewhere, gone to college or something, forgotten about here. That dream was years ago now, in another person's head that's long dead, but he can always pretend that he's still alive.
I'm good but I'm not, my friends are all gone,
Get stoned and watch (feel) lost, again
He can pretend that King Steve, the rich boy, the prospective heir to his father's fortune, was still living. Only problem is that King Steve didn't have any of the friends this version of Steve had, even if they were all no longer here with him. All the kids had left for college or bigger cities, Sinclair's sister being the last.
Even Robin, his soulmate, his best friend, had left.
She'd moved with Nancy out to Cincinnati where his ex had gotten an internship at a major news company and given the way Robin looks at her, he suspects when he sees them this upcoming Christmas, there will be a lot of things he won't be told, but will know instantly.
Point is, he just…feels lost as all shit and doesn't exactly know what to do about it.
It gets worse before it gets better, shit that might just take forever
So I wrote myself a letter and said
He can hear his mother from the back of his quietly buzzing head, in one of her many lucid moments out of the wine stupor she constantly puts herself in while back in Hawkins (or even outside of it) saying that bad things only happen to make good things appear.
Steve never actually believed any of that, given when he was a kid all he'd wanted was them around, but no matter how many bad things he did, they never stayed. Constantly coming and going and treating him like a book, showing some interest in him when his life became interesting, but discarding him when it got boring.
He didn't really know why, but that book thing stuck with him for the latter while as the high coursed through him. Normally, to him, most books were just words - but words themselves were something he had a love/hate relationship with. There weren't many good words in his life, not really, only if he didn't count the ones Nancy used to say to him or the ones RObin says to him on his semi-weekly breakdowns. He does remember once however, when there were good words, but they weren't for him exactly. They were for someone else.
There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh,
Promise me you won't let, go
3rd grade. Ms. Fleisher's class. Everyone had a task to write a letter to someone and say some really nice things about them. That was still when drugs were a long future away and the teacher still had 50's style values, so it was something at least everyone could do without wanting to kill themselves out of embarrassment.
Even at our best we'll still be a little bitter,
Part of me is a saint but I'll always be a sinner
Steve remembers his young self writing his. He had a lot of friends and it was also before his parents were away for the majority of days listed on the calendar, so he wrote it as if he was talking to one of them.
He filled it with sweet, child-like compliments, telling whoever may get it to keep going and that being grown up would be so cool and hopes of him and them being friends before it was snatched away off his desk, sealed in an envelope and disappeared.
There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh,
Promise me you won't lose, hope
He never found out what happened to it and while others moved on (as the attention spans of 8 years old only hold so long on things like that), Steve sometimes wondered who had gotten that letter.
Obviously it wasn't Tommy, who'd been his best friend since forever, not his crush Carol or anyone else he knew in his year. Maybe Ms. Fleisher had just wanted them to say nice things about others as a lesson or something.
Even when we're low and there's nothing to believe in,
We'll never be alone yeah we always have our demons
It was weird, but he tried not to show he cared about it too much as the term passed and then, years cycled by. By the time he'd even thought about it again, fleetingly of course, he grew up and everything went to shit before it got worse with the Upside Down stuff.
Now, semi-decently normal again, Steve just looked up at the ceiling and hoped to God whoever was lucky enough to get that letter of his was living their best life somewhere, unlike himself, even if it was a stupid wish from a childhood he barely remembered.
He didn't know that he wouldn't have to look too far away to find out that wasn't the case.
If I met myself when I was twelve, I wonder what he, would say
I'd hide all of my drugs, I'd give him a hug and tell him he'll be okay
Eddie Munson was never the good child of the family. Even if he was an only child at that point and possibly still is, though he's not sure. The by product of an alcoholic dad and a wayward mom who couldn't take his father's mood swings and disappeared for days at a time, it was no wonder he turned into a tearaway that knew how to pick locks and haggle at the local pawn shop in his neighbourhood with items he'd stolen by the time he was 12.
With everything he knew about them over the years, he shouldn't have been surprised when his parents broke up, much less when his mother drove away from the house in her old sedan one day, promising to be home by 5 and never coming back.
That had been the beginning of the spiralling downfall into selling drugs and rock music for him as a preteen, the anger of being abandoned by not one, but both parents later down the line when his Dad also dropped him off at Wayne's 2 states over and left him to chase his new girlfriend down the East Coast, bleeding out into making money and trying not to let the grief get to him, resulting in him being half a mile from a full nutcase by the time he was 20 and trying to graduate from Hawkins High.
God, that kid could have really used a hug.
It gets worse before it gets better, shit it feels like it's forever
So I wrote that kid a letter, it said
There had been one silver lining of moving to Hawkins, however.
When he'd been caught lighting up his first toilet in 3rd period, the school counsellor had sat him down and gave him this sticky, boring speech about how he should "embrace this move as a new start" and that "it wouldn't be like where he'd come from and he could make sure of that" and all the stuff you'd expected someone like him would say to someone like Eddie.
He then presented Eddie with a basket of envelopes and told him to pick one. Despite feeling like he was being duped into a psychological experiment (something he'd come to regret in the latter years when what happened, happened), he picks what he guesses must be the oldest one in the pile, one whose paper is crinkled at the edges and the tape is yellow on it because it's been there so goddamn long.
He doesn't open it till he's at the trailer in his room, using the spiked bracelet on his wrist to open it and pushing the black hair out of his face as he reads it.
There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh
Promise me you won't let, go
The letter was, for lack of better terms, genuinely heartwarming, despite Eddie's heart being a cold, shrivelled up mess at that time. It talked about being friends, how sometimes the world seemed like it was out to hurt you, but that when you grew up, it would be better.
Even at our best we'll still be a little bitter
Part of me is a saint but I'll always be a sinner
Despite it being written by a kid (clearly) with no bad experiences just yet in their short little life (at least, not like him, a sinner in studded boots Wayne made for him as a welcome present, the man was a saint), Eddie found himself smiling at it, looking at the crudely drawn 'S.H." entails dotted at the bottom of it.
There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh,
Promise me you won't lose, hope
S.H. seemed a little naive, but he (or she) had made Eddie smile at least, which is something that they'd listed they'd wanted to do in the letter anyway. They'd also asked whoever was reading their letter to try and see some good in bad things, as they were alive too. Sorta.
(Hey, the kid's words, not his. It made him snort loudly.)
Even when we're low and there's nothing to believe in
We'll never be alone yeah we always have our demons
Eddie still went back to the letter, even now, his body half scarred and having to use a cane to get around as his leg barely functioned. Sure, he'd survived the Upside Down and he'd graduated (finally), but the cost had been heavy.
The town hadn't accepted him back due to the mass hysteria that had befallen it, leaving him having to move to the next county over and losing his spot in the band to another sophomore that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Gareth and Jeff called once or twice, but soon left him be, just like everyone else.
(Well, okay, Henderson also called and visited, but Henderson knew what he was going though. He was one of the only ones that knew, so he didn't count as someone who had turned their back on him since Chrissie and Jason's deaths.)
There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh, woah-oh, oh-oh
There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh, woah-oh, oh-oh
Safe to say every time he drives back to Hawkins just to see his uncle, he always feels like he's never welcome. Even these days, when the town's long moved on and feels like it's more ghosts than actual residents, despite the mall that's still standing today.
It's not busy as it used to be while he walks through it, on his way to check out the new releases in Family Video next door under the disguise of a baseball cap with his still long black hair tied up and sticking out of the back of it and slightly oversized jacket that he can bury his arms and hands in, carrying a shopping bag as Wayne had asked him to get some stuff for him while he looked at some new TV he couldn't afford.
Hopefully the old man would be waiting back at the car so they could leave and he could head off home before it got too dark to drive on the roads. Not that Wayne would care of course.
I don't know if I'll get better, yeah, forever feels like never
So I opened up my letter and read
He's browsing the shelves in the small video shop and fumbling with his cane and jeans to fish his wallet out of his pocket (because come on, he might be an almost 30 year old man, but he'd been looking for Judge Dredd for /weeks/ since it came out) when he drops literally everything, cards, cash and coins spilling everywhere.
Groaning, Eddie lowers himself gingerly to the floor, attempting to use his cane hand, which is a mess of pink raised tissue and nerve problems, to pick it all up with his left holds onto the videotape with a grip that would strangle someone if they were within it. Clearly he's struggling as his effort attracts someone (a staff member by the garish yellow polo he's wearing) who comes rushing over, bending down. "You okay?"
"Yeah, yeah-" Eddie hisses as his hand stings and picking up he's not as okay as he's making out, the guy then starts picking up the wayward belongings that are too far from Eddie's grip, embarrassing him a little, but he tries to act grateful nonetheless. "You don't have to do that man, I'm fine, my hand just slipped-"
"It's cool, seriously." The guy then grabs a piece of paper that's been flung under the shelf beside him that has several fold lines ingrained within it, the paper brown and overused. It falls open at the smallest touch and that stupid letter that saved Eddie's life when he was other is projected into this guy's face and- oh.
There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh
Promise me you won't let, go
It's only when he doesn't give it back straight away that Eddie finally looks up at the guy. It's Harrington. Shit, Harrington was still here? Dustin didn't mention that.
Everytime Dustin visits from Columbus, he talks about anything and everything to do with Hawkins and with his newly adopted hometown and Eddie just listens. Sometimes he pays attention (when he's able) and sometimes he doesn't due to a whole list of things that start and end with 'everything's been fucked since those bat and I can't help that'.
Granted, on his part anyway, Eddie never recently asked any questions about anyone in those places that Dustin's swapping between, but that's moot. He was sure Harrington would have left by now, flown the coop with all that money he's sitting on and started up somewhere new without feeling like his entire life had been laid out before him.
Maybe the realisation that he hasn't done that for a reason is also why Eddie's heart beats a little faster when the latter looks down at him with an expression that makes him sweat.
Even at our best we'll still be a little bitter,
Part of me is a saint but I'll always be a sinner
On the other side of the equation, Steve looks bewildered as his own words, written so long ago now in pencil and marker, stare back at him on a battered piece of paper that was in the wallet of some random man that was obviously disabled and no one took a second look at.
He might have not exactly been a saint growing up with his head in his ass, but after all that happened to him and the others, he had been hardcore humbled and justifiably so. To see that piece of paper was also frightening, as it was written by someone who had no idea what life was about to do to him and yet, he could picture himself now doing the same thing if he had to do it all again, no questions.
But who was…? He looked down, catching the grimaced mouth of a man covered in scars, his face deformed on one side. He wouldn't forget his eyes, however. Those eyes stared into his soul at night as he slept, begging them to help him even though he'd already done so.
He hadn't seen those eyes in 9 years. "Eddie?"
There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh,
Promise me you won't lose, hope
"Steve." Has he also mentioned that, in the very beginning, Steve was the one who brought his dead ass back? That man sat on the ground, breaking Eddie's ribs as he lay paralysed and bleeding all over the place, performing CPR on him to get the bat venom to pump though his system and stay away from his heart till the party could find help.
He'd also breathed air into Eddie's frozen lungs, his eyes watching him the whole time as he tried to stay conscious, watching as Steve's panicked eyes flickered between his chest and his mouth and face. Steve was the reason he was alive, broken yes, but still alive.
He can't help but watch as Steve passes the letter over to him face up, the still legible but faded 'S.H.' scribbled onto the bottom of the letter. "I wrote that when I was 8, you know?"
Even when we're low and there's nothing to believe in
We'll never be alone yeah we always have our demons
Of course. Of course it had to be him. Everything makes so much sense now. It leaves Eddie dumbfounded for all of five minutes before he snaps his neck up. "I wondered why it sounded like a dumbass wrote it."
There's no heat behind it and Steve thankfully can see that as he cracks a grin at the same time Eddie does before he carefully helps the latter back up onto his feet, cane back by his side to keep him straight as Steve surveys his left hand. "Judge Dredd? Dude, bad choice."
(There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh, woah-oh, oh-oh)
(There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh, woah-oh, oh-oh)
"Hey, you saved my life once!" Eddie protested quietly. "Just because I had your green leaf air in my lungs, that does not give you the authority to criticise my choices of movie. Do you think you know any better ones I haven't seen, Harrington?"
Steve almost looks too pleased, though it's hidden behind a sudden flare of nervous tension that Eddie can pick up in a second.
"Yeah. I can show you them on my day off tomorrow if you'd like."
Eddie's heart and lungs once again stop in the presence of Steve Harrington, but for vastly different reasons this time. They soon start working again, this time without Steve open mouth breathing into him. (Which is almost disappointing.)
(There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh, woah-oh, oh-oh)
(There's beauty in the bad things, oh-oh, woah-oh, oh-oh)
"Normally I'd be heading off home-" Eddie starts and he can see the hope in Steve's eyes dissipating. "-but I can delay going back to my shithole apartment to possibly get a little more culture and junk food into my system."
"Yeah?" Steve looks bright, so bright, almost as if he was that kid that had written all those words on his wallet again and it makes the preteen that read them somewhere still inside him flush with feelings that Eddie relates with someone being asked out by their crush.
It's good, it's different. It's almost fucking normal. "Yeah, Harrington."
"Oh, okay." Steve stumbles backwards into a shelf on his way back over to the counter at the end of the row, but straightening himself out, he grins nervously. Eddie doesn' think he's ever seen the former popular student so flustered. "I'll see you tomorrow then."
"Tomorrow." Eddie nods, the Judge Dredd case lamely looking up at him with dead eyes hidden by robotics and fantasy as he slowly turns back, head in a blur until suddenly he hears in the same direction "Oh, and Eddie?"
Eddie sighs with a smile, turning back his way. "Yes?"
"Call me Steve." The man's smile is indulgent and Eddie shakes his head in disbelief despite the pull in his neck wanting to make him wince.
"See you tomorrow, Steve."