One day, when Steve and Eddie are still in the early stages of dating, both a little overwhelmed but sure of each other and excited to see where it’s going, Steve brings Eddie flowers when he comes to the trailer park for a date night. It’s the first-month anniversary of their first kiss, and he doesn’t say as much, because he’s pretty sure Eddie doesn’t care about those dates like he does - and it’s not like a one-month anniversary is some kind of great accomplishment anyway - but he wants to do something special and he decides flowers will make anyone happy, if only for the gesture. He gets a bouquet with bold, dark shades; purple and dark red and some greenery with sharp edges and thorns, to give it a little bit of Eddie: sweet, but still badass.
When Steve gets to the trailer, Eddie opens the door with a wide smile on his face - but it instantly disappears and gets replaced with a kind of shocked surprise when he sees what Steve is holding in his hands.
‘Got you flowers,’ Steve says, stating the obvious and leaning in to kiss Eddie’s lips. But Eddie is still frozen in the doorway - his mouth doesn’t even move when Steve presses his lips against Eddie’s.
Steve pulls back and squints at Eddie, trying to figure out what’s going on with him. ‘You alright there?’ he asks.
‘You got me flowers,’ is the only thing Eddie says; his voice is trembling and his eyes are still wide, fixed on the bouquet in Steve’s hands.
‘Should I... not have?’ Steve asks. His palms are getting sweaty against the stems of the flowers, but it doesn’t look like Eddie is gonna be moving to take them from him anytime soon. Panic starts to crawl its way up in his stomach as he wonders if he’s made some kind of huge mistake.
‘I um... I’m sorry. This was stupid, wasn’t it? Is it weird? You know I’m only used to dating girls and they always used to love it when I -’
‘What the hell are we even doing?’ Eddie suddenly interrupts him in a shrill voice with a panicked edge to it.
‘What - what do you mean?’ Steve asks, still unable to make sense of what’s happening.
‘I’m not the kind of person you can bring flowers to! I’m - I live in a goddamn trailer, for fuck’s sake! I’m not like any of those girls you used to date, Steve, and if you -’ He glances around him frantically, then fixes his eyes back on Steve’s face, a scared look in them. ‘We don’t even own a fucking vase, Steve, we never - I never - Jesus, they’re really pretty but I’m not - they’re too beautiful for this fucking trailer, you shouldn’t -’
‘Hey, woah, take it easy, alright?’ Steve finally understands what’s going on, and it’s breaking his heart that Eddie believes he isn’t even worth a bunch of flowers. He gently drops the bouquet on the ground, freeing his hands to be able to place them on Eddie’s shoulders in an attempt to ground him.
‘Take a deep breath for me, okay?’
Eddie obeys, taking a shuddering breath while blinking tears away from his eyes.
‘I know you’re nothing like those girls,’ Steve says, softly. ‘And I don’t care. If anything, it’s why I like you so much more. That’s why I think you deserve flowers, even if you don’t have a vase. Trailers deserve flowers, too, you know.’
Steve can see the tension disappear from Eddie’s body as Eddie lets out a heavy sigh. Then, his boyfriend suddenly launches himself into Steve’s arms, colliding into him with a force that almost has Steve tumbling down the steps leading up to the trailer’s front door.
‘You’re too fucking good to be true, Stevie,’ he murmurs into his ear.
Steve can’t help but chuckle at that, holding Eddie as tight as he can. ‘What, ‘cause I brought you some flowers?’
He can feel in the crook of his neck how Eddie is nodding.
‘How about I get you a vase next time, so I can keep bringing you flowers?’
‘I love you.’
Steve freezes. A second later, Eddie lifts his head to look at him. His eyes are wide and shocked, probably mirroring the look in Steve’s own eyes.
‘Shit, sorry, that just - um - that just slipped out,’ Eddie stammers. ‘That was - that was probably way too early, wasn’t it? I wasn’t - I didn’t mean -’
‘I love you, too,’ Steve interrupts him.
And the enormous grin that breaks through on Eddie’s face makes Steve decide instantly that he’s gonna get Eddie some sunflowers on the one-month anniversary of their first “I love you.”
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TW minor character death / grief
Everyone thought Eddie lived with his uncle because his dad fucked up too bad and couldn't take proper care of a teenage boy. But that wasn't the truth: Eddie lived with his uncle because Wayne was the one needing someone to take care of him.
The truth was that Eddie used to have a cousin. Meredith was only three weeks older than him and the two of them had grown up side by side. Both of them didn't have a mother, but they did both have fathers who loved them more than anything else, even though Wayne usually had an easier time showing that than Clyde.
Meredith died on her sixteenth birthday. Before any supernatural presences were let loose in the woods of Hawkins, Meredith Munson drove to her birthday party at the Hideout on a frosty night and got her father's car wrapped around a tree because the brakes weren't functioning the way they should and the tires lost their grip on the icy road.
Understandably, Wayne took the loss of his only child badly. He barely ate, barely slept. He started drinking more than he had ever done before, even more than his brother. According to Eddie's father, this was just what grief looked like, and things would get better with time. But Eddie was worried. Like Wayne, he felt the loss of Meredith like a gaping hole in his chest. But he felt like he had also lost his favorite uncle on the night his cousin died. So he convinced his father to let him move in with Wayne for the time being, to keep an eye on him.
It helped. Eddie's lively presence was a comfort to Wayne, a reason not to drink too much, to clean up after himself, and to keep going to work every night. Meredith's room easily became Eddie's room: the band posters on her walls could've been picked by him just as well, he was just as messy as she used to be, and lying in the bed where she had once slept gave Eddie a weird sense of comfort. He and Wayne soon fell into a rhythm where they knew exactly what to expect from each other. They had an easy companionship and barely ever fought. They could grieve together, but they also managed to make some good new memories together, even though the pain was always there with them.
What should've been a few months, turned into years. Eddie didn't even feel all that bad when he failed to graduate the second time, because he didn't want to think about ever leaving Wayne alone in his trailer again.
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please i beg you, whatever you do, do NOT think about how wayne must've felt upon finding chrissy's body and hearing eddie was dead a week later
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my very serious writing advice for people who are trying to write more morally complex characters is to stop caring about their morality and focus instead on their individual motivations
it’s hard to articulate exactly what I mean, but the essence of it is basically: when a character does a murder, not only do I not care about whether they’re justified in doing so, it’s straight-up irrelevant. a character’s moral standing from some nebulous universal standard has no bearing on the plot or their interactions with other characters and has no use in the story for me as a writer. what does matter is why the character thought they were justified and then if it comes up to other characters, what they think about it.
you can obviously think about your characters’ morality but it’s not your job as a writer to interpret your stories for your readers and tell them how to judge your characters. your readers can see the evidence for themselves and draw their own conclusions. your job is just to understand why a character is motivated to act in a certain way and have it make sense
focusing on character motivations is a much more versatile framework than trying to give them specific personality traits or moral alignments, and frankly more useful to understand why a character would do a certain thing instead of just what they do. that way when something fucked up happens and your character starts acting differently, there’s an actual logical reason for it that isn’t you forcing characters to do things because it’s what’s required to make the plot go
when you write your characters with the understanding that people are not static and they act differently under different circumstances, complexity in character and morality follows naturally.
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