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rebelspykatie · 1 year

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Now it seems life's passed me by

@steddie-week Day Four - Familiar

Link to AO3 | 2.2k | Rated G

Steve has always been a bit slow on the uptake.

When he was little, before schoolwork turned from finger paints and ABCs to complicated geometry and biology labs, he started out on the same level as his peers. It was easy to keep up with simplistic things like writing a short story about his mom, or doing simple math problems counting in twos. As time went on, and classes advanced as he got older, it took him entirely too long to realize he was falling behind everyone in his classes.

His grades were on a gradual decline, the kind of decline you don’t notice until you’re halfway down the slope and it’s too steep to make a rescue attempt and pull yourself out of it before hitting rock bottom. Reading was always a challenge. He dreaded being called on in class to read a passage, stumbling his way through a paragraph and begging everyone to keep their eyes down and not outright laugh at his attempts to pronounce the words swimming on the page.

It wasn’t until fifth grade that he started to catch onto the fact that he couldn’t keep up with his classmates. They stopped inviting him over to do homework together. No one ever asked him what he got for number four after a test, like they instinctively knew he didn’t know the correct answers for any of the problems. Sometimes, he thought he heard whispering and snickering laughter behind his back in the library.

That was when it clicked that he was going to have to work harder to keep up. His mother clucked at his report cards, but it never seemed to cross her mind that her son might be stupid, or that he might need help, or that something was wrong. Maybe that’s why it took him so long to realize, from his perch atop the mountain of privilege afforded to him by his parents, no one ever questioned his intelligence.

Surely the son of Richard Harrington the third would grow up to be just like his father, smart and cunning. Devious enough to work his way to the top of the corporate ladder. Popular enough to snag the prettiest girl in school and marry her young, starting his empire fresh out of college and setting an unrelenting pace for himself. Never slowing down to make time for his family. For his son. If he had, he would’ve realized that his son was soft in all the places he was sharp. That being cunning was an unfamiliar concept to him, outside of figuring out how to sneak a cookie out the jar without the nanny of the week noticing.

Perhaps that’s why no one realized Steve was struggling, because no one was really around to see it happening. Betty Harrington was a socialite with a packed schedule, often leaving Steve at home with nannies. She questioned his grades, but was quick to assume they were slipping because he wasn’t trying, or because puberty was creating distractions that had his mind filled with things besides schoolwork. She had no idea how hard he was working.

It wasn’t until high school that he cottoned on to those survival skills his father tried to instill in him from birth. He hated using his father’s name or his mother’s connections to get ahead in life. He knew they were powerful people in Hawkins, but an unpleasant feeling would settle in his stomach when he used their names to get what he wanted. He wanted to earn what he got in life, he wanted his merits to be his own, not something handed to him because of who birthed him.

But Steve was still struggling, barely maintaining grades that moved him to the next level. He even had to take remedial courses over the summer to be able to move on to high school with the rest of his class. Later in life, he’ll realize that neglect was detrimental to him, in ways far beyond his emotional wellbeing. His parents' lack of attention kept them from seeing the underlying issues, the dyslexia that had always been there and the blurry eyesight that just got worse with each head injury.

It didn’t help that it all changed when he joined the basketball team. For the first time in his life, he discovered a natural talent. Basketball was the first step to hiding himself in plain sight. Popularity was at the tip of his fingers, gaining traction with each game, until they won the championship because of his three-pointer. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be his friend. King Steve emerged and protected him until monsters started crawling out of the ground and Billy Hargrove showed up to knock him off his throne.

Teachers suddenly looked the other way when his essays didn’t make sense. He went from barely skating by on a C and D average, to a modest B- in almost every subject. The red marks on his papers dwindled and careful explanations on how to solve math problems were written out beside where he was unable to complete his work, no longer losing marks for not answering, but gaining points for even attempting to answer. It was the first time he heard his father say he was proud of him. It itched under his skin, knowing that he was acting just like his father would, getting ahead on merit he didn’t earn.

Then the upside down had to ruin his carefully constructed facade. His fall from grace was harder than he expected. Losing that favor that he hadn’t really earned with anything besides a natural prowess for sports. It happened both in slow motion, and all at once. He kept trying to hold onto the lie he had built for himself, like he could pretend that monsters aren't real and some girl didn’t die in his backyard, and he was just another dumb jock trying to graduate and go on to have his 2.5 kids and a white picket fence.

But reality always caught up to him, even when Steve was ten steps behind. The familiarity of his throne was almost enough to keep him there, safely at the top of the food chain. But the crown never really fit. The lie was easy. He wanted to believe it. He wanted to be popular, and looked upon with favor, and someone who made people proud.

What goes around, comes around, though. The empty seat left when Nancy and Jonathan and monsters from another world knocked him off his throne didn’t sit vacant for long. It takes him too long to realize he doesn’t even want it anymore. It takes a toothless, curly-haired little menace to make him realize that none of that was real. With how quickly they all turned their back on him, he realized that he didn’t have any real friends to begin with. He’s not even sure if Nancy and Jonathan count, given their rocky relationship.

What he does know, is that this kid, who started off thinking he was an asshole ex of his friend’s older sister, looks at him with wonder, sees him for who he really is, and doesn’t care whether he can solve an algebraic equation or compose a coherent five page essay. Even that takes him too long to realize.

It’s not until they’re staring down death in the upside down, with Eddie Munson at his side, that he understands how important he is to the kids, especially Dustin, as Eddie rambles on about him, praising him and confirming that he’s no longer King Steve. He wants to weep. He wants to sigh in relief. He wants to erase that version of himself from existence, if only he could go back in time.

Loneliness had become so familiar to him, that he didn’t comprehend how much genuine connection would mean to him, or even what it would feel like. Some instinctual part of him knew that the kids, and Robin, and Eddie, and even Nancy, were all worth protecting, that he could depend on them. Something was different in how they looked at him, even if they sometimes found his lack of understanding annoying, or thought he cared more about his hair than anything real. They trusted him, knew he would show up, knew he would throw himself into danger to protect all of them.

So perhaps, the unfamiliarity of love, which he’d mistakenly thought he felt before and got wrong time and time again, is what makes him almost miss when it’s really happening. His relationship with Nancy was short lived, but he spent so long clinging to the idea of Nancy and Steve, that he thought that blind devotion was something real. He was wrong. He thought that warm, comforting feeling that crept up on him around Robin, even when she was calling him a dingus or making fun of his abysmal flirting skills, was romantic love. But he was wrong. It wasn’t in quite the same way as with Nancy, but it was still wrong.

It’s practically staring him in the face before he’s cognizant of it. He’s been at Eddie’s side for months now, helping with Eddie’s recovery, letting Eddie help with his own recovery. They’ve grown impossibly close, almost as close as him and Robin. He spends most of his time with Eddie, or thinking about Eddie, learning everything about him and committing it to memory.

He knows that Eddie is terrible at feeding himself, will go days without eating something more than a few slices of bread, if someone isn’t forcing him to eat. Somehow, he takes over this responsibility from Wayne, luring Eddie out of his room with the prospect of a grilled cheese and homemade soup. It’s always met with an appreciative, reserved smile.

He knows that Eddie misses his friends. That he wants to see them and reassure them that he’s not a satan worshiping murderer, not that Eddie truly thinks they believe that nonsense, since Lucas made it clear they wouldn’t give him up to Jason and his goons except under duress. So Steve quietly arranges for them to stop by the trailer, disappearing for a few hours to Robin’s, letting them talk it out and work through their shit. The smile that he gets when he returns to the trailer is blinding.

He knows that Eddie’s wounds ache in the same way his do, that they feel foreign and like his skin is no longer his own. They tingle when it rains, and burn like hell when the wrong fabric scratches the delicate ridges of the inflamed tissue. It takes months of physical therapy for Eddie to recover, and the open wounds turn to ugly scars that make him self conscious. Steve traces his fingertips along them when they lie beside each other in Eddie’s bed, hoping that Eddie knows they’re just as beautiful as the rest of him.

It takes a gentle nudge from Robin for him to realize what’s happened. That he’s become so familiar with Eddie and all his eccentricities, that they’ve entwined their lives together so intricately that you can no longer separate them into two entities. His affection for Eddie sits so deep in his soul that it’s like a tattoo on his heart. He couldn’t remove it, even if he wanted to, and he doesn’t.

The thing that takes him too long to realize, is that he’s found home, and it’s not a place. It’s the way Eddie never makes him feel stupid, never explains things in that condescending tone that Dustin sometimes gets when Steve’s being particularly slow. It’s in the way he wants to tell Eddie everything and learn everything about Eddie in return. It’s the way he doesn’t have to tell Eddie when he’s having a bad day, he instinctively knows and does everything in his power to comfort him without Steve saying a word.

But once he realizes, he sinks into the feeling, that reassuring embrace of familiarity. He doesn’t ever want to go back to the days of uncertainty, or doubting himself or his relationships with others. He wants to come home everyday to this feeling. And it doesn’t really blind side him, because it’s been there, creeping up on him day after day, in the way he seeks Eddie’s touch and the way he stares at his curls in the sunlight.

And when he finally works up the courage to tell Eddie, it doesn’t change anything, but it also changes everything. They’re still themselves, but more. They become Eddie and Steve. And they grow together from that, becoming all the more familiar with each other, and build a home and a future together. And it’s everything little Steve never could have imagined for himself, when his peers outsmarted him and left him behind. He wanted desperately, for so long, to find a place where he felt like he was on even footing, and Eddie always meets him right there, eye-to-eye. He couldn’t ask for anything more.

#steddieweek2023 #stranger things #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #if i write one more thing without dialogue i think you can agree i've been abducted by aliens #coming in hot with a last minute addition for today lol #my fic #katie writes

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