#i never been so mad for a character | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cchapsticck · 9 months

Text

A couple things:

The first album he ever owned that he got to choose on his own was Master of Reality when Wayne handed him 5 bucks at the used record store after he picked him up from foster. And he’s pretty sure Children of the Grave changed his brain chemistry. Like something in him got hard re-wired and soldered in place. Like there’s no unfixing that fix.

The first song he ever learned to play on Wayne’s old beater acoustic was Here Comes The Sun, but if anyone asks he says it was Smoke on the Water, which was actually second but the truth is possibly humiliating, considering his curated reputation.

He cannot read music. Which is funny, considering he’s had a “band” since 7th grade. He just kind of picks at shit by ear. Which he’s pretty good at, thank you very much. It's why he likes shit with solos, he can pick out a riff better than he can pick out a chord progression.

Said band did not lock down members with any kind of permanence until 10th and no one had any kind of electrified instrument until 11th because Jeff and Phil and Gareth might be better off than he is - drug money notwithstanding - but tuns out parents aren’t keen to just drop that kind of money so one’s kid can fuck around in another kid’s garage every couple weekends for that kind of price tag

Metal shows are few and far between in Roane County, considering all the ways it is. But the couple no-name bands that have breezed through town at the dive-iest of bars the county has to offer well - he doesn’t want to say, changed his life but - but he’s never been so glad to have been elbowed in the face because everyone’s having a good fucking time and without the accompanying “faggot” attached to the act, which he’s had a repeat performance of just. Generally. In his life outside of the shittest bars in Indiana.

He’s not saying Zepplin II made him gay but Robert Plant’s face pasted onto that German soldier’s body made him feel some kind of way at a formative age and that’s maybe just something he’s going to take to the grave even if apparently the shittiest of shitheads just decided that was a true thing about him on their own.

Steve Harrington has been hot since, like, junior high. Which is horseshit. Because like, first of all. He sucks. Like, he’s a douche. But Barb Holland died and he ended up in the hospital because apparently those two things are related events and rumor has it he got kicked out of his house and he shaved his head about it and there are a shocking number of scars hidden under that disco hair and that, unfortunately, does not make him less hot or less of a douche.

Another thing: Dustin Henderson is fucking annoying. Like annoying in the unremarkable way all nerds are annoying that he’s a little dead to (like sometimes he catches himself mid-tirade and thinks ‘damn, I’d kick my ass too’) so he gets it but also. He’s fucking annoying. He’s fucking annoying about Steve Harrington in particular which like. Hilarious. Go figure.

And he’s got a lot of annoying ammunition in that particular annoying gun, because apparently Harrington’s been living in his basement. So the kicked out thing is probably true. A lot of what he’s got to say is anecdotal. Lives in the basement. Pays rent. Makes dinner for Henderson’s mom. Drives him to school. Owns a bat with nails in it? Which. Alright? That makes about as much sense as anything else going on. The weirdly dense law enforcement presence in the wake of the Holland murder (and those are feds, like, he knows cops, he grew up around a lot of cops - thanks Dad - these are not cops) and the ever evolving whatever-this-is of Steve Harrington which he is for sure paying a normal amount of attention to and not unloading his guts at Gareth and Jeff who for sure don’t want to kick his ass about it because are we all seeing this shit? It's been like 5 years of high school and this is a puzzle he is no closer to solving, as he is no closer to graduating. And it's not because he’s being a dipshit about Harrington’s gradual transformation no matter what Gareth keeps insisting. (he’s being a dipshit about graduating because he’s a dipshit - separate problem)

But like, something is for sure going on with Steve Harrington. And fuck him dead because he is desperate to pick it apart. It's got nothing to do with the horny goblin in his brain barking about the, shall we say, aesthetic realignment here (which maybe, like, is coming for the integrity of his own genre cred but like. Come on, man.) and it's got everything to do with someone like Steve Fucking Harrington willfully abdicating the throne to throw himself amongst the Maligned With Problems The World Will Make Your Fault. Like he had to have known the flavor of hell people like him and Hagan and every other one of those silver spoon fucks made of his life. And not just his, just like, anyone remotely adjacent in the social order.

There’s this kind of unspoken truth at shows. Like metal, hardcore, whatever, any genre within a genre that fills up bars like this, like he’s pretty sure the punks even have this rule, this remains true: the more normal the guy looks the more fucked in the head he is. That guy is dangerous. That guy is working through some shit you cannot even begin to conceive of and this is only outlet he’s got. Like that guy will straight murder you if you come at him wrong in a pit and everyone knows it. You do not fuck with that guy. You do not make eye contact with that guy. So Steve Harrington in his tightass Levi’s and bright white fresh out the 3-pack t-shirt hugging the back wall of the Hideout on a Thursday night sure is a red flag. But red’s always been his favorite color, so-

So he buries his shoulder blades in the wall right next to him and hits him with a of all the gin joints and Steve just squints at him like he’s got no fucking clue what he’s talking about. Figures. Harrington always seemed like a philistine. Steve just runs his hand over his shaved short head, and Eddie swears he can hear the rasp of Steve’s palm over the noise of the bar.

“You come here often?” And it's not not a come on and he’s a little prepared to get decked but it's also a genuine question.

“It’s work.” Steve says, not unkindly but not really looking at him either. Like he’s not really interested in the conversation or Eddie at all.

“It’s work?”

And that gets Steve looking and he does not look impressed. It's cute. Which probably says more about Eddie’s ability to turn disdain into some semblance of private affection but we’re not going to unpack that bag we’re just going to throw the whole suitcase out.

“Well, I can’t work the bar so I just pull people out of the pit. Work the door sometimes.” Steve says over the noise of the bar, by way of explanation.

“How about that?” he says with no small amount of genuine awe. “Mall work not cutting it for you, then?”

Steve just kind of one shoulder shrugs. Not cutting it in the sense that the mall like, fuckin’ burned down but. Y’know. Speaking in kind of a general hypothetical kind of way. Looking for a new career path kind of way. Less about the mall directly. Or at all.

“Yes and no. I got punched less by skinheads at the mall.” and that almost sounds like a joke, like Harrington isn’t totally hating this conversation. Delightful.

“And you’d willingly go into this line of work when Henderson says you can’t win a fight?” he says it like he means it, like he’s actually surprised. Because he is. Because getting laid out at a show is just some shit that happens sometimes. Assholes with something to prove, the wrong guy took an elbow at the wrong time, a drunk got in the pit and doesn’t know the difference between a good time and a fight, like, shit happens.

Steve’s scrunched up face of repulsion and offense is additionally cute.

“Yeah well, Henderson says a lot of shit about you too.”

He may have been operating on the assumption that Steve actually had no idea who he was. And was just some weird guy who, for some reason, had a lot of personal information about him that was in no way reciprocated. Just kind of figured he would have been beneath Harrington’s notice in a big picture kind of way.

Fuck you, Henderson, how dare you.

“Only glowing reviews, I’m sure.”

“More or less.”

Alright he’ll take back point two, then. You’re on thin ice, Henderson.

“Is that where the uh-” and he kind of gestures limply at the pit and then towards the thick, formerly stapled up scarring in Steve’s hairline. Like he’s come home from a show with a bloody nose or a black eye or two but nothing like that.

“No.”

It's the finality in his tone, when he says it that makes him suspect he’s fucked this up and the conversation is over.

And it is.

So he hangs around the bar for the set and then he leaves and its not really all that interesting.

But he thinks about that for a while, that something rattled Steve Harrington’s cage so hard he’s this now. Somewhere in the realm of quietly fucked up, and on the edges of good sensibility and good taste because its more comfortable out of a spotlight. Even if the dark on the edge of that pool of light is more than a little dangerous, but at least there’s a place to hide.

And then Chrissy Cunningham dies on his ceiling and he has to keep hiding.

#i wrote this thing like a billion years ago when punk!steve was going around and this was the closest i could get to it #while still feeling authentic #character wise anyway idk #i think i had other plans for it but i don't remember them now #so i cleaned it up and here it is yall can have it now #prompts #steddie #steddie fanfiction #steveddie #steddie fic #stranger things #eddie munson #steve harrington #punk!steve #steddie au #stranger things fic #steve x eddie #steddie fics #i've been trying other creative outlets and just getting mad so i decided to clean up wips i figure would never see the light of day

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