Steve’s best relationship wasn’t even a relationship. He could barely call it a fling, a flirt. They never even went on a date. They never kissed.
Steve still thinks of it as the best whatever-it-is he has ever had with someone.
At the beginning it was mostly infuriating, how quickly Eddie managed to win the kids over, compared to Steve’s months of work as babysitter/nailbat swinger/monster fighter. Steve had to literally bleed multiple times to get an ounce of respect, Eddie only had to run a nerdy club about fictional bleeding and monster-fighting.
Then somehow, and Steve still has trouble pinpointing when and how it happened, everything changed.
Taking the kids back home from hellfire became something he impatiently waited for.
He and Eddie would barely talk for a few minutes and he would find himself replaying the conversation in his head for days. Anything he could say to get a reaction out of Eddie became fundamental, and if he started by picking subjects to piss him off, he ended learning about Eddie’s favorites, because few minutes after hellfire were never enough and Steve needed Eddie to talk as much as possible, until the kids were begging to drop it and go home.
Steve never questioned the change, most likely out of fear. He doesn’t think he ever was clueless, just really scared about what would potentially mean to be staring at another dude’s eyelashes as he goes on a rant about why Ozzy Osbourne is the best artist of his generation. Or blush whenever said dude would call him “baby”, or “sweetheart”.
Steve convinced himself that the thing he and Eddie were having was as good as it was going to get, nothing more.
Then Chrissy Cunningham died, Eddie ran, and Steve realized that the thing will never be enough for him.
He couldn’t not have Eddie. Not watch him as he entertains a bunch of freshmen, as he stomps with his worn out sneakers on top of forniture, as he puts his terrible music on to push away anyone who doesn’t care enough about him to stay.
Steve needed to see Eddie being alive, doing what his heart desires, and he needed to be next to him when he does.
Obviously, this realization came at the worst possible time.
Steve tried to tell him so many times: when they found him at the boathouse, when he was hiding at refer Rick’s house, when they were taking a stroll in the upside down, and even when they were driving a stolen trailer to a gunshop.
But, it seemed, Eddie had come to a realization just as important and he tried his best to avoid Steve at every given chance.
Steve tried to initiate the conversation as Eddie did his best to run away from it. And he ran until Steve had no chances left to tell him how he actually felt.
———
Steve doesn’t know if he’s allowed to say he lost something he never had. To mourn a relationship he never began. A partner that, technically, never became a partner.
After Eddie dies, Steve has no one to be next to but he can’t say he ever did.
Steve just exists waiting. He can’t tell if he’s waiting for the pain to go away or for Eddie to jump out of a bush and yell “ah! I got you sucker!! By the way, I’m in love with you too.”
For obvious reasons, that never happens.
What does happen, is a call.
It’s a normal Tuesday, as normal as you could define it after Hawkins almost collapsed into the upside down. Steve got into a routine, between checking on the ones at the hospital, helping out at the shelter, allowing Robin to check on him to see if he’s still alive.
The call happens while Robin is doing her kitchen check up - aka making sure he has food and that he’s eating it-, so she picks the phone like she did a million times before.
“Harrington residence, this is Robin” she says, cheerfully.
Steve doesn’t pay much attention to it as he’s folding his dad’s old clothes that intends to donate to the shelter, until he hears Robin’s loud gasp.
“What is it? Is it the hospital? Is it Max?” He rushes to the other room where Robin is.
She doesn’t answer but she gives him a look as she passes him the receiver.
Steve goes quiet, a million thoughts going through his head as he takes the phone from Robin.
He’s still unprepared when he hears that unmistakable voice “Baby”.
Steve gasps for breath “Eddie?”
Is that really you? What happened? Are you hurt? Isn’t this impossible? Is what goes on in Steve’s head, but he ends up just asking “are you okay?”
He can hear a chuckle, Eddie’s wicked chuckle, a further confirmation that it is him, “I’m- hanging in there… are you okay?”
Steve finds the question absurd. He isn’t the one who got left in the upside down, the one that got eaten by demonic bats, the one who died before Steve had the chance to tell him how he felt.
He answers truthfully nonetheless, “I’m… I’m not okay.”
“I’ll be there soon, I promise.”
“Please Eddie, come quick.”
“I’ll break the sound barrier for you.”
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thirteen update ☀️🥀🪰🏚️
chapter 6: march
summary:
(“Be here. For Adrien.”
“Emilie, I can’t…”
“For me, then. Love him for my sake.”)
A sob cracked open Adrien’s chest. He ripped away from the wall, clapping a hand over his mouth to try and stifle himself. His lungs wheezed, a crumpled can, and the world slipped off its axis.
She was dying. She was dying. She was dying, for real, and soon, and this was what they hadn’t wanted to tell him.
excerpt:
Time barrelled on after that, like a ground speeding toward him in freefall.
Lessons slipped through his head and smiles stretched over his mouth and Adrien’s life became, more than ever before, defined by the moment he would next see Maman. It was like his brain couldn’t catch hold of anything else, couldn’t grasp it. Even when he was out doing other things, in other places, he wasn’t really. He was always back with her.
The shift happened sometime in the beginning of March.
A change in the air, the bones. The house held its breath. Walls stood cleaner and quieter and bigger than before. Or maybe Adrien just got smaller. Maybe it was like a vacuum, like he’d learned about in physics. All the air sucked out of his lungs, crumpled up like a can.
The silence was the worst. When Adrien was gone, he could lose himself a little. Turn his brain off at photoshoots and fall into the monotony of fabric on his body, skin on his face, hands all over, fixing him and fixing him and fixing him. Dissolve into the rhythm of fencing, blocking and thrusting and parrying and sweating and not thinking not thinking not thinking. But being inside the house was different. He couldn’t do anything but think, couldn’t be anyone but himself. Even his shows started to fall flat; Adrien found himself restarting the same Ouran episode ten times because he hadn’t absorbed a thing. The house was so quiet, his brain so loud. The world was transparent and he wasn’t quite sure he was real.
And then he would see Maman.
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