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strawberryspence · 2 years

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Steve Harrington has always loved the sky.

How vast, and complex, and free it is. How it changes colors with the season and weather. Sunsets and sunrises, and the things they signify. Some may hate the way it makes them feel smaller, but Steve loves it. He feels safe being a tiny particle under this big sky.

At the early age of six, Steve remembers his mother, sitting beside him in the garden. She was the one who thought him cloud watching. Laying mindlessly in the garden, as they both point out at shapes at the blue sky. There’s a cup, a shape of a heart, a bear. One even looked like a guitar! It was one of the only things they did together for fun.

At thirteen, the sky becomes Steve’s only companion. His parents has left him again, alone in a big quiet house. He’s been in the pool for almost three hours, floating aimlessly as he stares at the sky. There’s different shapes, and it makes him a little less lonely knowing that he’s at least not alone as long as he’s under the big sky.

At seventeen, Steve finds the beauty in the night sky. The dark canvas, with the shining stars and the moon looking down at him. He doesn’t cry, because Harrington’s don’t cry. But there he was, laid in his backyard, nursing a broken heart from the first person he’s ever loved. He’s alone again, and he thinks he’ll always be alone. Just him and the big vast sky. However, there’s more important things now, more than heartbreaks and loneliness, like 12 year olds that get experimented in labs, a girl getting pulled in his pool and to her death and monsters living underneath him. Although underneath the big dark sky, Steve feels like he’s being wrapped in it’s darkness, almost like a comforting blanket.

At eighteen, Steve finds a real friend. Not the sky, but Robin Buckley. A friend he found under the night sky as the place they met went into flames, including Billy Hargrove and Jim Hopper. It’s cruel, but one of the things Steve has learned is that there’s always lost, and there’s always gain. Two nights after the fire, Steve asks, if Robin would lay beside her on the ground. They watch as dark sky turns as the sun rises, too scared to go back to sleep because only then can the nightmares haunt them again. They watch as colors mix from darkness to brightness, and the for the first time in a while, he has someone there with him.

At nineteen, Steve meets Eddie Munson. Really meets him, a brand new slate from what they had in high school. It’s the night just after they come back from the upside down, his bits have been eaten and they’ll probably go back there again tomorrow. Nancy has some kind of plan and he wants to sleep, but he can’t. They sit at the back of the trailer, away from people that could see them (specifically Eddie) smoking a cigarette.

“I can’t believe you guys have been doing this for years.” Eddie says, disbelief apparent in his voice.

Steve shrugs, “I don’t either. They’re—“ He pauses, thinks about El who’s only 15 and has the weight of the world on her shoulders, thinks of Will who’s been through hell and death, thinks of Max who’s still grieving her dead brother only for it to be used to lure her into death, he thinks of the kids, the kids who’s all barely 15 fighting this entity, “They’re all too young for this.” He finishes.

Eddie gives him a look, Steve doesn’t like it. It feels like he’s being studied, he feels naked under Eddie’s eyes. Like he can see through him, see the pieces Steve has hidden for so long.

“You’re young too.” Eddie answers back, tilting his head, “You, Robin, Nancy, even me.”

Steve shrugs, “I guess. I just want this to end already.”

Eddie looks away, staring at the skies as it finally starts changing its hues.

“I don’t really like sunrises.” Steve looks at him, offended and ready to defend his dear old companion.

But Eddie continues, “I’ve always liked the sunsets more, you know? Sunsets are— endings. But they show you that even endings could be beautiful.”

Steve stares at him, watching silently as Eddie smokes. Steve knows the sun is rising now, and he’s never been one to miss it when it’s right in front of him. But there’s something about the way the different colors are hitting Eddie’s face, the light dancing on his skin and his brown eyes illuminating the colors, like it’s lighting him up in ways Steve has never seen before. It’s breathtaking, Eddie’s breathtaking and it makes him feel things he’s never felt before.

When the silence grows heavy, Eddie breaks it with, “Plus I really like it when the sky turns orange.”

It’s the first time Steve has ever ignored the sky.

At nineteen, Steve learns that the sky could also be red. He doesn’t remember much, just Dustin crying over Eddie’s body as the red sky above him thunders on, menacing and cackling at their demise. The clock just struck, four fault lines running across the town above him. Vecna got Max and Eddie’s dead in Dustin’s arms. It’s hard to look up at the sky then, when they finally emerge from hell. Steve thinks that no clear blue sky, or no dark starry night, can ever give him comfort again.

At twenty, almost three months from the first Vecna fight, the sky is permanently gray and stormy. Steve Harrington is bones and meat. Nothing else. He is nothing but a body, weary of the life that has been given to him. They fight for the last time. Steve wants to run away, pack his bag and never look back but as long as his under this fucking sky, he will always remember that he abandoned them. He fights, he fights, he fights. Eddie’s dead, and Max is in a coma, and Steve Harrington fights until it ends.

They get Max back, but she’s forever changed by the experience. They win, the skies turn back to blue and Steve wants to vomit. If this is what it means to win, then why does he want to die? Why does winning feel so much like losing?

At twenty-two, Steve moves to Boston with Robin and Nancy. It’s a weird group, his best friend and her girlfriend, who was also his ex-girlfriend. But they’re Steve’s family (aside from the kids) and he’d go anywhere if Robin asks. He hasn’t laid in his back to watch the clouds in three years, he hasn’t stayed up to look at the night sky, he hasn’t watched the morning sun rise to it’s beauty and he hasn’t watched the sunset in a while.

It’s a conversation they’ve always avoided. Robin knows that Steve used to love the sky, he told her just as much, how it feels like a companion he’s always had. She doesn’t know why he stopped, why he stopped looking up and pointing out random shapes, or random constellations. Why he hasn’t been waking her up in the morning just so he can show her the sky changing to another beautiful color, morning after morning. All she knows was it stopped after Eddie died.

Eddie’s death has always been hard for the three of them. This one person who’ve they known for almost a week, leaving such a big impression in their lives. She knows Nancy has stash of metal music, smiling with a sad grin whenever Metallica comes on. Robin has multiple guitar pins, always an electric guitar in the color red, pinned in her coat, in her bag, in her bedroom and anywhere else she can stick it on. And Steve, well, Robin held his hand as he got his first tattoo. A D20 dice, just above his demobat scar. Robin’s still not sure if he cried because of the pain of the needle or the pain of having the same scar, in the exact same place, of someone who didn’t survive it.

It all comes out one day. The anniversaries has always been harder, not only were they far away from the kids, but the Vecna spring anniversary always hits them the hardest. It’s also Eddie’s death anniversary, to make it worse. Robin plans it all out, they stay in all day. Just watch movies, eat snacks, stay wrapped in comfortable blankets. The three of them fall asleep in the middle of their fourth movie of the day, all tangled together and it’s days like this— like this that makes it harder to ignore the fact that it should’ve been the four of them rather than just three.

Robin wakes up with Steve not beside her, Nancy still sleeping peacefully beside her. The digital clock— they all can’t stand the silent tick tocking of a clock, reminds them too much of a grandfather clock, no matter how big or small— blinks at her, it’s almost 5:21 in the afternoon. From where she is sitting, she can feel the cold wind brushing her feet, the door of the apartment balcony open. She stands up, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders and walking out to the small balcony.

It’s a surprise to see her soulmate watching the sky start to change colors, the sun impending to set in a few more minutes.

“You’re watching the sunset.” Robin states, making Steve look up at her.

“Yeah.” He replies.

Robin sits beside him, putting the half of the blanket on his shoulder, the half on hers. They watch as the colors start to change. The blue shifting to pink and purple.

“I stopped watching the sky because of Eddie.” Steve starts, startling Robin. It’s been a conversation waiting to happen for years now, but she didn’t think it would happen today. She finds her footing almost immediately, “Why’s that?”

Steve isn’t looking at her, just watching as the sky dances in front of him. Robin have imagined hundreds of ways that this conversation could go but she never expected him to say, “I think I could’ve loved him. Sometimes, I think I do love him.” She had her suspicions, that maybe her bestfriend isn’t entirely straight. But she didn’t connect the dots that it was Eddie who made him realize this.

Steve continues, “He said he loved sunsets, he loves when it turns orange. Because it showed people that endings could also be beautiful.”

Steve has watched maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of sunsets in his life. But this one— they stay quiet, Nancy comes out a little later, sitting on Steve’s other side and holding his hand through the sunset. Together they watch as the day of the anniversary ends, with what Steve could only call the most beautiful sunset he’s ever seen in his life. It turns into the most beautiful hue of orange and Steve breaks.

“That’s him.” Robin tells him, as she wraps him into a hug, as Steve finally cries on her shoulders, both grief and pain chocking him as he sobs harder, “It’s okay. Eddie’s okay now, and he’s letting us know. We’ll be okay.”

“We’ll be okay.” Nancy reassures, hugging the two of them.

Only then does Steve find comfort in the sky again, with the two people he loves and he knows loves him and under the sky as an old friend watches over.

At twenty-six, Steve graduates with a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Atmospheric Science.

Steve doesn’t avoid the sky anymore, he studies it now, writes the weather news for a big Boston channel. He stops to point out random objects in the sky, has a telescope set up for constellations. He drinks a hot cup of coffee, every morning, watching as the sun rises.

He lays in the grass with Dustin and Suzie’s son and teaches him how to cloud watch. He takes time to send reminders to Max and Lucas to wear a raincoat if he sees that it’s going to rain in California. He talks to Will and Mike for hours, just trying to describe to them a weather phenomenon so Will could draw it and Mike could write it for their latest best-selling comics. He knits El a gorgeous sky blue scarf, because he knows how cold it gets in New York.

Wayne calls him, every other day, to ask how the weather is in Boston and Steve asks how the weather is in Indiana. Steve spends a few months in a year in the guest room of the farm house Joyce and Hop bought in 1986. He stays and writes about the stars and the planets, because the skies are so much clearer in rural places.

He still lives with Robin and Nancy, but they’ve moved to a house now. He’s got equipment for sky watching at the backyard and the girls surprised him with sunroof in his office. They have a dog named Hetfield and cat named Sabbath.

And more than anything, Steve loves sunsets. He has the time of every sunset for everyday charted in his room. He stops, whatever he is doing, however important it is, just to go out and get a glimpse of the sun setting. Sometimes, at home, the girls accompany him, like an unspoken ritual, to just watch the sun setting. He waits for it to turn into some shade of orange and smiles when it turns to the color.

It’s a hello, a how are you, a comfortable hug.

It’s an old friend in the form of the sky.

It’s Eddie Munson just checking in.

→ @undreaming-fanfiction’s beautiful addition (p2)

→ dustin henderson & sunsets (p3)

-> the alternate nicer, fluffier sunrise fic

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