Chapter 1: Robin Buckley's Soulmate is a total idiot. (To bad she fucking loves him)
Notes:
Okay, you got me, this isn't the sequel. Well it is, it's just kind of an in-between sequel before the real sequel. Still important though. Kind of a love letter to Steve and Robin.
Also, I'm not dead, I just like to have most of something written before I publish it, and this whole thing is taking a little longer than I planned. It's still coming though. :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When Steve Harrington collapses on the floor of Hawkins General Hospital exactly five days after the world doesn't end, Robin really wishes she could say she's surprised.
She's the first one to get to him, out in the hallway. The first one to see him convulsing on the linoleum flooring as the nurses desperately clear the area and a doctor comes running in. She's there when they lift his shirt to reveal the angry red bites with yellow-tinged edges, and when they frantically check his temperature and heart rate. She sees them lift him onto a gurney, his muscles spasming weakly, and watches, unable to tear her eyes away, as they wheel him quickly out of sight.
She sits with him too, once he's awake. Standing in as his new, and only, emergency contact while they tell him he's contracted a tetanus infection as well as a mildly severe case of pneumonia.
And then she's there to smack him upside the head when the doctor isn't looking and chew him out once they're finally alone.
She stays while he gets his IV in, holding tightly to his larger hand as the Nurse gently injects the needle, and watches him carefully as he finally falls asleep. Sequestered snugly in the newly divided room he now shares with Eddie Munson.
Through it all, Robin remains blessedly detached. The emotions stay tucked in and out of reach, a natural reaction to the many things she's seen in the past year. She takes a deep breath. She squares her shoulders. She does what must be done. It's incongruous with her nature. It chafes to stuff down the chaotic thoughts and feelings that are clawing their way into her conscious mind with tenacious ferocity. But then, Nancy is pale and shaking. Dustin is yelling curses and bitter insults through hysterical tears. Lucas is dead-eyed and Erica is silent. Steve is hurt and alone, so Robin does her best.
When the silence settles and her best friend is finally sleeping, she gets more details from his doctors. Timelines and prognoses and recommended treatment and prevention plans. It's all so much. A crushing litany of consequences for something that could have been so easily prevented, if anyone had managed to look. If anyone had bothered to see. If Steve had been taught to talk and if anyone had ever listened.
It makes her head spin and her thoughts run wild. It's then, in the quiet after the storm, that Robin is angry.
It's so unbelievably stupid of him to hide a tetanus infection. He's been in a fucking hospital for days, and he never thought to address the numerous symptoms he must have accumulated since then. He's been running errands and bringing Wayne dinner and making Dustin and Lucas sleep at his house every night when visiting hours have ended, just because it's closer.
Robin isn't sure she's even seen him sit down for more than a minute since they brought Eddie and Max in. Since Steve pulled up beside the ambulance in his Beemer and told the entire staff to fuck themselves when they refused to treat Eddie. Pulling out his parents good name and throwing threats around like candy until every receptionist was red in the face and the doctors finally relented.
And here's the thing. It's so stupid, and she's so mad, but she's also not surprised.
It's just so quintessentially Steve. So in tune with his every aggravating characteristic. She's seen how he is when people are hurt. The way he rushes in to help put on everyone else's oxygen mask first and never once thinks of his own. He's a self-sacrificing idiot.
So she's not surprised, she's just furious.
She'd thought once, near the beginning, when sleep was still a long-forgotten dream and bone-saws and flesh monsters invaded her memories, that it was the Upside Down that had made Steve this way. That the yearly peril and endangerment had forced out his heroic nature in a damagingly self-destructive streak. Maybe it has, a little. But sharing nightmares has a funny way of telling you who people really are, and Robin knows now, that whatever goes through Steve's mind when he pulls stunts like this is a lot deeper. That it started earlier and mattered more than whatever has happened to him in the last few years.
"Where would you go? If you Didn't have to stay in Hawkins. If you could be anywhere, do anything, what would you choose?"
She asks it into the darkness of his ceiling as they lay on Steve's bed. Tangled together in his too-soft sheets at midnight; pretending that they are only staying awake because it's the last day of summer, and not because Robin can't stand the thought of the crowded school hallways. The way the shoving and jostling of them is so often harsh and unkind. The way those nauseating presses remind her of other hands. Gripping her chin, tying her to the chair, pushing the needle into her skin.
"I don't know."
Steve's voice is quiet in the darkness. It presses into a feather-soft sound somewhere above her, twisting through the quiet of the house as it stands starkly against the peaceful feeling of his room. He sounds strange now. Unsure. Robin wonders how she knows. Wonders how you can care about someone so much, how you can know them so well. It's a new feeling from the isolated years of her childhood. A welcome one.
"I guess I've never really gotten that far."
His voice is tired and resigned. Like he really can't see a future where he ever makes it past the well-drawn limits of Hawkins Indiana. A small-town boy who will live and grow and die here, in a too-big empty house with stone marble countertops and freezing floors.
Robin thinks then that if she ever meets Richard and Emilee Harrington she might just strangle them. She tangles her fingers with Steve's instead and squeezes his hand tightly in her own.
"I think I would go to France. Or Rome." She tells him softly. "Somewhere I can practice speaking the native language and learn all the weird history."
She can practically feel Steve roll his eyes.
“You and languages.” He says in a knowing tone. “Someday you’re going to run out of those weird foreign films you like so much.”
She rolls her eyes in fond amusement.
“You know the point of going abroad is that they won’t be foreign films anymore right?” She says sardonically. “Besides, I think you’re underestimating the number of amazing, deep, culturally significant works of art I’d be able to find anywhere. Don’t insult my linguistical prowess just because you don’t have culture Harrington.”
He laughs, burying his face in her hair as his shoulders shake with it. Eventually, he tightens his grip on her fingers. Pulls her a little closer in.
"You'll send me postcards right?" He says quietly. "You'll mail me long-ass letters and call me on the weekends? You can send me pictures of all the places you go, and I'll tell you all the stupid shit the kids get up to when you're gone."
She hears what he doesn't say. Will you forget about me? Will you still need me? Will we still matter?
Robin thinks for a minute. Lets the words line up in her head before they come teetering out her mouth. She bites back the 'of course' building on her tongue. The 'you don't have to worry about us' that's climbing up her throat. She thinks about his big empty house and the way he spends so much time away from it when he can. The way her dream is born of the same stuff. To get out of a place where she has to keep so many secrets. Where she has to hide and cower and never be too loud. She finds the words she means, the ones he probably needs to hear.
"No." She says firmly. "I won't be mailing you any letters."
She can feel him go tense beside her. She keeps talking.
"Letters are overrated. Obviously, you're coming with me, Dingus. We're gonna travel the world together and see everything. We'll eat gross food and wear stupid outfits. And someday, when you've had enough time to think about it, we're gonna go wherever you want, just you and me."
He lets out a shaky breath. Relaxes a little into the mattress behind her.
"You might have to wait a while for me." He says apologetically, laying his cheek on the crown of her head. "I gotta watch those damn kids graduate and make sure they actually fuckin' make it to adulthood."
Robin feels something a lot like love take its staggering place in her chest, vast and unending. For the kids, starting high school with her tomorrow. For Steve, always watching out for them. They are bound together. All of them. Through demons and hell and late nights like this. She thinks at that moment that she would follow him anywhere. Forever. If only he would ask.
Maybe that could be better than running away from here. To run towards something with him, instead.
"That's okay." She says, smiling. "I'll always come back for you. The world will wait."
Robin doesn't go home after the earthquake.
She spends the first five days of it with Steve. Stumbling after him between hospital visits and relief efforts to make sure that everyone is safe. That they're all okay. After, when Steve has officially been put on bed rest, she makes the rounds with Nancy instead. Alternating between checking in on everything, and staying by Steve's bed as much as she can.
She knows her parents are furious and worried. That the one phone call she gave them the day after the gates closed and again when Steve collapsed is not nearly enough. But she can't seem to make herself go back. There is a heaviness there, in her living room and under her stairs. The weight of the secrets she's kept from her parents for so long that it feels as natural as breathing. There is a space, where maybe she thinks security should be, filled with all of the things Robin can't make herself say. All the ways she is sure that she would be a colossal disappointment to her parents, if only they knew. Robin isn't sure what would happen if she went back now. How she would face their worry and gentle hands in the wake of another tragedy that they can't ever understand.
Her mind runs everything in circles over and over. She feels like an entirely new person now, after only a week. It feels a little like it did last summer. When her reality expanded into something beyond Robin's understanding and twisted completely out of control.
The world has gone and changed again. The ground has shifted beneath her feet. Her best friend is in a hospital bed on medical rest for the foreseeable future. The ground split open and she torched an interdementional serial killer less than a week ago. Nothing makes any fucking sense, and she's supposed to tell her parents what exactly? The truth? The stupid cover story the Feds are cooking up that has no evidence backing it and makes zero sense?
Robin knows exactly how much bullshit her parents will take. This is pushing it.
Her dad's voice is tight on the other end of the phone line. She can hear him shuffling from foot to foot the way he does when he's nervous and trying to hide it. His tone is worried and snappish like it was when she came home on the Fourth of July last year, tired and shaky, the ruined mall still billowing smoke in the distance.
"You're not coming home then." He says it like he already knows the answer. "You're staying at the hospital."
She rubs her arm, glancing down the hallway to Steve and Eddie's room, at the nurses and doctors bustling down the hall.
"Steve is hurt, Dad. Like, really bad. I'm gonna- I need to stay and help with everything."
Her dad sighs, all sad and deep, and Robin can imagine the way he must look standing in their kitchen; frustrated and stressed with his hand pinching the bridge of his nose. He's never really liked Steve, is the thing. Steve, who gets into fights with his old friends around town sometimes and who's come to hang out with her every day for the last year but won't take her out on a proper date.
She knows how it looks. A perfect picture outlined in endless sleepovers and colored in with Steve's old reputation for parties and cruelty. Most of Hawkins is convinced they're hooking up. Half of the girls who go out with him send her triumphant looks when they score his number over the family video store counter, like they think they're getting one over on her by sleeping with someone she's never confirmed she's dating. She knows it bothers Steve. Can see the way his smile tightens when he catches the look. The way no girl ever gets farther than that first date. Either because they can't be convinced that Steve is serious about not being with Robin, or because they're the kind of girl who doesn't care. She hates and loves that he never asks her to change the narrative. That he gives up any real chance at a relationship so freely to keep her safe.
Through it all, her Dad is just waiting for the day the other shoe drops. The moment when she'll come home teary-eyed and broken-hearted. It's a fact he's convinced is inevitable, no matter Robins' protests, and something he brings up with varying degrees of displeasure at least once a week. She can hear the notes of his wariness slipping through his reply now, even as he does his best to conceal them.
"Yeah, okay." He says tiredly. "Okay. Just, if something else happens, I need you to come home. Do you have a ride that can take you home?"
Robin looks at Nancy Wheeler, sitting slumped in one of the waiting chairs in the hallway and feels her ears go a little red.
"Yeah, Dad. I do."
She hangs up the phone and heads back into the fray, taking a moment to put her hand on Nancy's shoulder and give it a squeeze before she's back at Steve's side, holding his hand in a white knuckle grip as he coughs so hard he throws up.
There will be time later. Time to face her parents, and figure out all the half-truths she'll tell them that they won't believe. Time to sleep and rest and be ready for all the shit that's coming. Time to heal. For now, she'll sit by Steve's bed and be there for as long as he needs. She'll do the rounds with Nancy and check in on the kids gathered in Max's room. She'll finally talk to Eddie about the black bandanna hanging out of his back pocket in the middle of nowhere Indiana
She'll be here.
Her Dad's voice stays in the back of her mind, furious and worried, but even then, she can't find it in herself to regret her decision to stay.
Her family needs her.
Notes:
Is Robin maybe one of my favorite characters to ever exist? Absolutely.
Also, Robin and Steve would do anything for each-other, I really do mean that.
Also also, if you’re wondering if you can get seizures and pneumonia from an untreated tetanus infection, the answer is yes. I looked it up.
If you’re wondering if you can indeed cough so hard you throw up, the answer is also yes. That one I know from my own personal experience with pneumonia. (Raise your hand if you emotionally project onto Steve Harrington.)
Chapter 2: Can you still set someone up with your nephew if you've also decided to adopt them?
Summary:
The Steve Harrington thing has been a problem for, a while.
When the Steve Harrington thing first begins, back in Eddie's junior year, Wayne isn't quite ready for the sudden and violent fixation. He sees Eddie's determination, brewing thick as honey in those wide brown eyes of his, and thinks that the intensity will fade. The way it has so many other times Eddie has come home with a bruised eye and an even more delicate ego. Eddie is a bright flame that burns hot and short. His anger is a fast-acting poison that purges itself quickly.
This thing with Steve Harrington though, it's different.
Notes:
Wayne is another one of my favorites, and its super important to me that he had a chapter. I'm also a sucker for people being read into all the upside down stuff and being like, what.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The Steve Harrington thing has been a problem for, a while.
Wayne will be the first to admit that raising Eddie isn't the easiest task in the world. When he first shows up on the trailer doorstep, all rigid little shoulders and huge Bambi eyes, Wayne isn't sure he's fit to be anything to anyone. Let alone the guardian to the only kid of his dead little sister.
And he isn't at first. Eddie is a jumble of loud contradictions. Blowing up at every little thing and yelling his displeasure from the rooftops, only to stay silent about what really matters to him. Wayne spends months finding the little tells in his nephew that warn of an oncoming storm. How to avoid the meltdowns and coax Eddie's real thoughts right out of his mouth.
It's like learning a new language, communicating with Eddie. Sounds and expressions he's never had to use before. Wayne isn't good with words. He doesn't understand a lot of the niceties and little fibs people tell each other in everyday conversations. His ideal night is quietly watching a baseball game alone. Eddie isn't like that. He needs love and conversation and reassurance.
They settle in eventually. The random screaming matches come less often, and Eddie slowly exchanges his pent-up rage for a kind of wonder Wayne will never stop marveling at. He's a loud kid. One who isn't afraid to put a target on his own back, despite the consequences that ease like mud through his insecurities. He's passionately stubborn and obsessively driven about the things that really matter to him, and he can never shut up.
Wayne loves it.
When the Steve Harrington thing first begins, back in Eddie's junior year, Wayne isn't quite ready for the sudden and violent fixation. He sees Eddie's determination, brewing thick as honey in those wide brown eyes of his, and thinks that the intensity will fade. The way it has so many other times Eddie has come home with a bruised eye and an even more delicate ego. Eddie is a bright flame that burns hot and short. His anger is a fast-acting poison that purges itself quickly.
This thing with Steve Harrington though, it's different.
It isn't just anger, or pain, or humiliation, that Eddie seems filled to the brim with. It is a sharp disappointment; bitter and cloying. It's an echo of that distant rage Eddie carried in his rib cage that whole first summer. Wayne thinks then, for a little while, that maybe Harrington had been Eddie's friend, before. That maybe he feels betrayed beyond the confines of the black eye and bitter words he walks through the door with. But Eddie never eludes to any prior friendship between him and Harrington, and his anger never fades
It isn't until Eddie accidentally comes out that the pieces start to fall together, and when the November wave of Eddie's obsession starts back up in 1985, stronger than ever before, Wayne isn't surprised.
Like the anger, the new fixation doesn't fade. He isn't sure what's changed. How it's shifted so quickly from disgust to fascination, only that it has. The perpetual complaints are still present, but they sound more like Eddie is trying to convince himself of Harrington's faults now, and he never seems quite able to manage it.
Wayne keeps waiting for the day it will break. For the moment it will reach that fever pitch point and give. Instead, he watches it climb and climb. Loud complaints about Harrington turn into frustrated mutters. The murmurs shift into grudging respect and curiosity. Sometimes, more often than not, Eddie seems concerned.
'Steve is corrupting my Freshmen.' Eddie says, leaning up against the kitchen counter after school the beginning of October. 'He's infecting the nerds like some kind of stupid fucking parasite. Henderson won't shut up about the guy and it's driving me insane.'
He huffs, full of stubborn indignation and bitterness, and Wayne pats his should conciliatory on the way to the sink. He knows that twist of Eddie's eyebrow. For all his dramatics, the kid is bothered, really bothered.
His sympathy lasts about a week. After that, he just tunes Eddie out as best as he can manage.
'Harrington took Dustin to a fantasy store in Indy this weekend. I can't get the kid to stop talking about it.'
'Apparently, Harrington's favorite color is yellow. Why those shrimps think I need to know is anyone's guess.'
'Harrington just doesn't make any sense, Uncle Wayne. He keeps smiling and laughing but something is wrong. I can tell.'
'Harrington did another grocery run at the Mayfield's today.'
'I think there's something actually going on, Wayne. He's like, really fucked up in the head. I don't know what to do.'
Through it all, Wayne is just about ready to tear his hair out. He has too much information about Harrington. Good. Bad. It doesn't matter, it's all the same. Wayne doesn't need to know what's going on. He loves his kid, but God can that boy talk about Steve Harrington. It would be sweet if it wasn't so damn constant.
And then it's spring break.
Then it's finding a horrifically murdered girl in his trailer, no sign of his kid anywhere.
Then it's the sinking, crushing, knowledge that Eddie would never do this -could never do this- but that no officer in this shit town will ever believe him.
Then it's earthquakes and pain, and desperation. It is the two days he spent alone at the hotel before the hospital got his number, not knowing if Eddie was dead or alive. It is waiting rooms, and comas, and the most unlikely fucking story to ever grace his ears. It is a little girl rolling into town and lifting things with her mind, just to prove to Wayne that she can help his Eddie.
Then it is Eddie in the Hospital bed, pale and weak. He gasps for air as he wakes up again and again, disoriented and afraid, his wild curls matted and his eyes bright with sickness.
Where are they? He asks every time, pale and shaking through glazed eyes. Are they safe?
Wayne really, properly, meets Steve Harrington those first desperate days at the hospital. He is… unexpected.
When Wayne first makes his way into the ER reception, rushing up to the information desk and scrambling to pull out his ID for the nurse, Harrington is already there. He looks ragged and beaten in. There is a deep maroon line slashing across his neck, angry and grim, doing nothing to distract from the way his face is haggard and scraped to hell. Dirt and blood are plastered under his bitten fingernails and his eyes are ringed in purple. He looks nervous standing there. Almost frantic as he looks into Wayne's face desperately.
"You're Wayne Munson? Eddie's uncle?"
Wayne turns back to the Nurse and gives her his driver's license, glancing warily at the Harrington boy from the corners of his eyes. The kid might be a fixation of Eddie's, but right now he looks dangerous and on edge. There have been riots in the street. Teenagers calling for his nephews' blood. Wayne isn't sure what to expect.
"I am," He says carefully, "What of it?"
Harrington takes a breath.
"I was with him when the earthquakes hit. He's just come out of surgery yesterday, but I can take you to him if you want."
Wayne, for all his wariness, doesn't really have to consider it. He very much wants.
He fills out the paperwork fast as he can. Barely listens to the nurse at the desk as she tells him the doctor will also be on the way to see him shortly. He just nods his understanding but keeps his eyes on Harrington; the way the kid is shifting from foot to foot impatiently, his shoulders tight and tense.
They don't speak as they make their way down the hallway to the elevator, keeping pace with each other. Wayne thinks that the kid still looks nervous and tired. An echo of how tumultuous Wayne feels. It's almost nice to see how frantic he is to take him to his nephew. It brings Eddie's apparent crush into a nicer, softer light.
Then Harrington pushes open the door to room 307 and all of Wayne's thoughts scatter like dust in the wind.
Oh, Eddie.
He's propped securely in the hospital bed, wires and IVs hanging off of the frame in careful arrangements. There's a stark white line of bandage making its way across the lower half of his face and over his neck. His unmarked cheek looks sunken into the bone, and his skin is drawn and gray. Mostly though, he's silent and still. Too still to be Eddie. Too still to be his little boy.
Wayne sucks in an unsteady breath, turning between his nephew and Harrington in renewed confusion. He notes the defeated slump of the kids' shoulders.
"What the hell happened?" Is what comes out, angry and frantic. "Jesus Christ. What the fuck happened to my kid?"
Harrington, if possible, looks even more miserable.
"It's hard to explain."
Wayne scoffs, turning his head back to Eddie so he can sit in the visitor chair and take one of his pale freezing hands between his own.
"Right, of course." He says, glancing briefly back at his companion. "Make no mistake Harrington, I'll be gettin' that explanation soon as can be. But first, what do you know? Is he okay?"
"We're not sure," Harrington says with an exhausted grimace. "The doctors all say his vitals are stable but Eddie isn't- he hasn't woken up yet."
He wrings his hands, fingers twisting tightly around themselves. Wayne looks at him sharply, squeezing his boys' hand tight and sure.
"How long has he been here?"
Harrington shrugs, one shoulder going higher than the other as his arm comes to curl protectively over his middle.
"I wasn't awake for all of it, but I drove in with him that first night, two days ago. Probably close to midnight. They didn't operate right away though." He runs a hand through his hair with a furious little frown. "It's all kind of a blur."
Wayne feels his eyebrows creep up his forehead the longer he listens. He's about to open his mouth and say something sensible like 'What the fuck do you mean you drove in with him?' When the doctor comes in, clipboard in hand, and Harrington slips out, suddenly the last thing on Wayne's mind.
He's honestly not expecting to see Harrington after that. Eddie's steady stream of manic observations hasn't painted the best picture over the years, the recent madness aside. He figures Harrington will leave now that Wayne is here to take care of things. Now that he doesn't owe Eddie any more responsibility. He probably should have known better.
The kid is in and out of Eddie's hospital room like he's being paid to do it, those first three days after Wayne arrives. He chauffeurs in a bunch of Eddie's little freshmen and brings Wayne breakfast sandwiches in the morning when he comes in. He runs errands for all of Eddie's visitors and stands guard in the hallway, just in case. He's there in the corner, steady and calm, leaning back in his chair when the Feds come in. Black suits immaculate and sunglasses perched on their noses as they turn Wayne's reality on its head.
They give him the bare bones of it all, some cock and bull story about a failed experiment and a not-so-subtle bribe, -paid hospital bills, an official pardon- for keeping his and Eddie's mouths shut about it in the aftermath. Harrington doesn't say much, just stays there in the corner while they talk and weave their idle threats.
When the Feds have left though, the kid stands up without a word and brings in Dustin to tell the rest of it. Chiming in softly and putting his hand on the boys' shoulder for support. Nodding along while he tells the most batshit insane story Wayne has ever heard.
He kind of thinks the whole world's gone around the bend. That maybe they're all experiencing some kind of joint psychotic break. Only their battle-weary faces, only Harrington's ragged coughs and Dustin's twisted ankle and Eddie's cold cold bandaged hands make Wayne even half believe. His crash course involves names and crazy events that he can't wrap his head around. Mostly he leaves the conversation, dazed and confused, wondering where the fuck all the adults are in this. He wonders even more when little Eleven Hopper comes in, fucking levitating pencils like its nothing, just to show him she can find Eddie. Just to prove she can help.
Harrington takes permanent residence in Eddie's room on the afternoon of Wayne's third day in the hospital.
He mostly misses the commotion. He's on a different floor getting Red Vines from the vending machine for Eddie, since he doesn't like the Twizzlers and he's barely awake enough to complain about it. -He's awake. He woke up. Thank God.- But Dustin Henderson's inhuman screeching is audible before the elevator even dings on the 3rd floor. The volume of it only increases as the doors slide open.
"What the fuck is wrong with him?" Dustin seethes with fists clenched tight over the handles of his crutches.
He's wobbling back and forth in the hallway, one hand tugging relentlessly through his curls as he yells at the top of his lungs. His captive audience, the empty nurses' station and an equally furious-looking Nancy Wheeler, don't move a muscle even as the walls seem to shudder under his wrath.
"Seriously. What the hell was he thinking? Hiding injuries like we're all fucking amateurs? He should know better by now. He should. I'm so sick of this shit. I'm so sick of it."
Nancy puts a hand on the kid's shoulder, gently trying to guide him to a seat. Dustin shrugs her off forcefully and gives the hallway wall a vicious hit with the leg of his crutch.
"I'm so fucking tired." He says, miserable. He turns to Nancy then, tears in his eyes, and Wayne feels like he's intruding on a very private moment, even if he has no idea what they're talking about. Nancy does though, because she's closing her eyes and tightening her expression in determination before she answers Dustin, angry and sad at once.
"I know." Is all she says. But something about the look in her eyes has Dustin's face crumpling and his shoulders sagging down in exhaustion.
"He can't keep doing this. He can't. He's gonna get killed."
"I know." She says again.
They fall silent as Wayne makes his way down the hall past them, but then he sees the new bed in Eddie's room. It's already stocked with an occupant slumped down into the pillows; Buckley exhaustedly standing watch from a visitor chair. He thinks that he understands Dustin's shouting well enough.
He finds himself watching Steve Harrington. Watching and waiting to see some of that magic that drew his Eddie so surely to him. Sure at least a little that he won't find anything special at all.
What he sees is someone tired.
There's a lot of commotion in Eddie's hospital room. The freshmen are in and out constantly. They take turns alternating between their three patients with a single-minded focus that sometimes frightens Wayne. When they sit with Eddie, who's mostly still asleep, it's like they zero in. Focusing entirely on their linked hands or staring at Eddie's face as intently as they can.
With Steve it's different. He makes them laugh with sarcastic little comments and shoves at them gently when they sit close to him on his bed. He ruffles Dustin's hair and bumps elbows silently with Lucas in solidarity when one of the other kids badmouths sports. He snarks back at Erica and trades insults with Mike. He smiles and laughs and only coughs a little as they gather around his bed to heckle him endlessly.
He's, kind. Obviously in pain but doing his best to hide it from his smaller visitors. Wayne only knows because he stays so long at Eddie's side. Waking up in the middle of the night to hear the rattling coughs that come echoing through the room once visiting hours are over and the kids have gone home.
It makes him inexplicably grateful for Eddie's deep breathing. For the immediate care he was able to get at the hospital before it could spiral into something else. His kid has enough going on without whatever the hell it is Steve's contracted. It's hard enough to watch Eddie like this as it is. The pale shivering skin. The dazed panicked look in his eyes as they mostly stay open for a few minutes at a time. Searching endlessly before they close as he's pulled back under. It hurts. It hurts like a part of Wayne himself is lying damaged in that hospital bed. His old withering heart ripped out.
So sometimes Wayne watches Steve Harrington instead. Because it's easier to take.
And the thing that Wayne can't help but notice is that for all the kids showboating in and out of the hospital room, for all that Robin Buckley and Nancy Wheeler are perched like Hawks watching over his bedside or curled in the visitors' chair at all hours of the night, there is a conspicuous absence present. Which is to say, there's been neither hide nor hair of Richard and Emilee Harrington in this hospital room. It's strange. Strange enough that Wayne breaks their tentative silence one day to ask.
"When're your folks comin' to visit kid?"
"Oh," says Steve. Soft and clear and casual. He's laid out carefully on top of his covers and his eyes are dark and far away, even as his posture stays lax. His voice is light. "They're in LA for a conference still. They didn't get a flight down."
Later, Wayne will look back on this moment and think about the word didn't. About the casual sound of it leaving Steve's mouth like it must have been said a million times before. The way it implies conscious choice. Right now, at this moment, he sees that look on Steve Harrington's face and thinks of Eddie, standing tight as a fiddle in their worn-out kitchen after that Hellfire meeting in November saying, 'I think there's something actually going on'.
He thinks of Eddie, that first day, staring up at him from his porch, so defiant and ready to bolt. He sees some of that now, in Steve's eyes. It gathers microscopically in the corners of his expression and pulls down the lines of his face. Weary, defensive. His tells are different from Eddie's. All smoothed over and practiced. It's just his eyes really, that can't hide the hurt his voice does so well masking.
Wayne thinks of the way he watched Richard Harrington traipse around town after high school, bitter and mean. The rumors about him and his wife getting knocked up to stave off divorce. How they're always leaving town, have been for years. He can imagine a little Steve, tired like he is now. All alone in that big empty house. His heart gives a twinge of sympathy.
Aw, hell.
Wayne's done his best to hold out against that Harrington charm. He really has. Not because he doesn't like Steve, but more because Eddie's been dealt a shit hand already, and he'll be damned if he opens up the door to any more heartbreak for his kid.
He's held out against the determination and the soft smiles Steve gives his endless supply of visitors. He held out against the variety supply of snacks Steve kept pushing in his hands the first few days. How careful he is with the kids and his tired grin when he sheepishly hands Wayne Eddie's half-busted-up and freshly cleaned battle vest.
Faced with this though, with that empty empty loneliness in Steve's eyes, he feels his walls start to crack against his will. The boy's in the hospital, and his folks aren't coming. No kid deserves to be asked about their parents and say the word didn't.
It's Dustin though, that shatters his resolve completely beyond repair.
Steve is on one of his rare checkups, chest rattling as he's wheeled down the hallway when the Henderson kid pokes his head through the door. He's wobbling something fierce on his little boot as he makes his way over to the second visitors' chair. He sits down heavily on the flat cushion with a huff, doing that thing where he just stares at Eddie in silence. A hard look in his eyes.
The quiet is comfortable. Wayne contents himself by stretching his bad knee out until it pops. Giving the kid a moment by staring out the little window on the opposite wall to look at the trees.
Dustin clears his throat.
"I'm really- I'm super fucking angry at him." He says quietly, ashamed.
"He pulled a real hero move Mr. Munson. Self-sacrificing shit. He- helped. A lot. Bought us time. Probably saved me and Max's lives, to be honest. And I'm so grateful. I am. But I'm like, so mad about it too."
He laughs, bitter, wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his too-large jacket.
Wayne doesn't know much about this part of the story. Dustin's earlier debriefing had kind of skirted around the topic, Steve squeezing the kids' shoulders tight as he stumbled over his words and skipped ahead. Wayne finds himself suspended in a stalemate. Horrified to hear more. Needing to know.
"He died," Dustin whispers, and Wayne's breath catches. Because it's not a surprise, but damn if it ain't hard to hear. "His heart stopped for a few minutes. By the time Steve got to us I was sure he was gone. I couldn't find any pulse. But Steve just- he just started giving him CPR, and I didn't even do anything. I just watched. I couldn't- I couldn't move. His blood was all over my hands and I couldn't- I just watched."
"I couldn't even help, I was so scared of losing him. And I know I didn't. I know he's here, still. I know. It's just that I'm still so fucking scared that I don't know what to do with it. And every time I look at him, it's like I'm losing him all over again, and that makes me so angry."
Dustin sniffs, impossibly young. He tugs a little on one of his curls, and lets his hand half run through his hair before it fists tightly in his lap. Wayne feels an echo of fondness for this kid he's heard so much about already. Who's so sad, but still trying to tell Wayne that his nephew was a hero. He's coiled tightly in his chair, angry tears gathering at the corners of his eyes and running down his nose.
"I'm grateful," Dustin says again to Wayne, looking into his eyes to show he really means it. "But I hate that he was gonna do that for me. That he threw himself into danger like he's fucking expendable or some shit. Like I don't need him here with me."
Wayne has a sneaking suspicion, based entirely on his own observations and the overheard conversation in the hallway, that they have veered into broader territory now, and that the kid isn't talking about just Eddie. There's a lot of pent-up tension in his shoulders. A lot of old half-buried hurt.
"Then tell him." Says Wayne surely. "Tell him what you need from him. You matter to him and he loves you. I think you've got a real good chance that he'll listen."
"Do you think so?" Dustin asks almost bashfully, bright eyes shimmering. Wayne cuts his gaze to Steve's bed and back to the kid, nodding his head slowly.
"Yeah bud, I do."
The conversation sits itself real secure in his head for a long time. It twists into a monstrous shape in his mind, painting a ghostly picture of pain and ruin. He was so close to losing Eddie. He did lose Eddie. Eddie was dead. Eddie's heart stopped.
His boy, his kid, his child-
And Steve Harrington brought him back to life. Steve Harrington found his mangled body and pumped air back into his lungs so forcefully that he broke three of Eddie's ribs. Steve Harrington drove up beside the ambulance and demanded they treat his nephew, another tidbit he learned from Dustin.
Now he looks at Steve Harrington and he sees other things.
He sees the way the kid can't take his eyes off of Eddie when they're both in the same room. Constantly checking him over to make sure he's okay. The way he sighs at all times of the day when Eddie avoids him. Like he's some spurred housewife waitin' for her husband to pay attention. Steve Harrington stares at Eddie Munson like he's cataloging every feature in his mind. Memorizing his expressions and gestures with a single-focused determination.
Something like hope settles itself under Wayne's collarbone. Something like giddy relief rests itself behind his eyes. Maybe everything's not so pointless, for Eddie and Steve. Maybe something good can come from all this hurting.
Now, Wayne looks at Steve Harrington and thinks that his Eddie might have finally been dealt a good hand after all.
Notes:
Yes it was totally on purpose that Eddie is complaining so much about the kids talking about Steve, only to do the exact thing verbatim and never mention it at all in his own chapters. You can pry overly dramatic Eddie from my cold dead hands.
Chapter 3: Erica Sinclair vs Feelings, Stupidity, And the trials of caring about Steve Harrington's health more than he does
Summary:
Erica doesn’t have a soft spot for Steve Harrington.
She doesn’t.
He’s annoying, for one. A total dweeb who never shuts up and always has to have the last word. He’s also a complete dork. He has a twelve-step hair care routine that he lives by religiously. He never shuts up and he can be a total bitch when he wants to be.
Notes:
WOW its been a hot minute.
Sorry for the delay, I hope you love Erica as much as I do.
I do feel the need to put a slight trigger warning on this chapter. There's a brief mention of how Erica feels about what happened to her in those last episodes of Season 4, which doesn't really get a mention in the show, but like, she's supposed to be 12, and that would be really really messed up.
So, trigger warning for brief recollections of assault related trauma. Keep yourself safe!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Erica doesn’t have a soft spot for Steve Harrington.
She doesn’t.
He’s annoying, for one. A total dweeb who never shuts up and always has to have the last word. He’s also a complete dork. He has a twelve-step hair care routine that he lives by religiously. He never shuts up and he can be a total bitch when he wants to be.
She still hasn’t forgiven him for the time he loudly told her to ask out James Lyndon when he was in the booth right next to them at the diner. Erica has not felt shame that intense since she was pushed into a mud puddle in kindergarten. She doesn’t even like James Lyndon! He’s a complete moron. Steve was just being a jerk because she ate the stupid cherry on his ice cream sundae before he could stop her. He paid pretty succinctly for that little stunt with a very hard kick to the shin from her rubber-bottomed My Little Pony custom boots. He’d responded by rolling his eyes at her, but Erica caught him rubbing his leg with a pinched face later, so he definitely felt it.
Ruthless retaliation. The only way anything ever gets done. Erica’s honing her skills now so she can use them in the totally achievable twenty-step world domination campaign she’s going to start running as soon as she’s tall enough to reach the upper shelf where her mom keeps the peanut butter. Devious plans take a lot of legwork, and if Erica’s learned anything from her foray into that Russian bunker, it's that you really can’t do anything cool on a calorie deficit.
So, she doesn’t have a soft spot for Steve Harrington. He’s mostly just, vaguely amusing. Erica likes amusing things. And if anything, she’s just sticking around for the free milkshake he gets her every Friday afternoon.
It should also be made perfectly clear that this is not a Steve Harrington exclusive thing. Erica doesn’t do favorites. She doesn’t have a soft spot for anyone. Except maybe Max. But that’s only because Max is fucking awesome.
That being said, going to the hospital is hard.
It’s hard to walk through the doors, and it’s hard to get in the elevator, and it’s hard to see Steve lying dead asleep in his stupid hospital bed.
He looks kind of dumb, actually. He’s always flopped out on top of the covers with his legs hanging off the side. It’s weird. Especially since he’s got some sort of fucked up lung situation going on that makes his whole chest wheeze like an especially sad balloon letting out its last dredges of air.
She doesn’t sit by his bedside though. Not like she does with Max. She doesn’t know why it feels different, but it does. And it’s been bothering her for days, why she feels so wrong-footed all of the sudden.
It’s like this: Steve isn’t special, but he is good and nice, and sometimes he just gets it. In a way it’s hard for Erica to understand. In a way that even Lucas can’t always manage.
Which, she loves Lucas! Even if he’s gross and kind of dumb. He’s loyal and funny. He taught her how to read and gave her his DnD stuff, even though he never asked her to play with him. He’s her big brother. He always will be.
He just doesn’t get it, sometimes. Not really. He sees the pieces, but she isn’t sure how to make him understand. He heard about everything, but he doesn’t know in the same way she doesn’t know; why he carries that stupid wrist rocket in his backpack or why he always feels braver in face paint.
She wasn’t there for that part. She doesn’t have context.
Lucas wasn’t there. Under the mall, in the elevator, climbing through the vents. He didn’t get chased by Russians through a secret facility. Didn’t hijack a golf cart to rescue the only designated adults around. He didn’t grab an electric taser or get up close and personal with Russian acid.
There are things he can’t understand.
And that’s… fine.
But Steve was there. He got them out of the elevator. He knocked out the Russian guard and held the door closed while Erica and Dustin got to the vents. He was drugged and bruised and beaten, and then he got back up. He threw fireworks at a flesh monster and drove them out of the mall to the safety of Cerebro.
He’s just kept going, through all of it. Putting himself in front of them when there’s danger. Always smiling and making fun of Dustin to get her to laugh. Steve is there. Steve has been there. He’s stupid and dorky and annoying and there.
And it’s not like she’s ever thought he was like, invincible or anything. She’s seen him get drugged, captured by Soviets, and punched so hard he still can’t remember basic facts on his worst days. She knows he has to shut himself up in his house with the lights off sometimes, and that Robin had to make him a dumb sticky-note cork board to help him keep his schedule straight. She knows he does roll calls on the radios before school, and that when he drops off her and Lucas in the mornings he always packs them lunch.
Steve is a lot of things. He’s an annoying rule stickler and secretly a total nerd. He gets weirdly intense about basketball and likes to pretend he can talk circles around Erica even though he actually can’t. He’s Steve. The unexpected big brother-type none of them ever even knew they needed. As embarrassing as he is, as much as she is sure she will never ever tell him, Steve means something to her.
Maybe. A little.
He’s someone who gets it without her always having to say.
So maybe it’s a little hard to see him like this, laying still in his hospital bed. He seems older, somehow. But not older like he looked when he climbed down the rope ladder out of the Upside Down, or older the way Lucas was when he told off Tina for making a too-sarcastic comment about Erica’s hair. He looks exhausted and deflated. He’s got bandages wrapped around his torso and an IV digging into the vein of his forearm. He’s still, and quiet, and when he smiles, his eyes are tired. It’s wrong. It’s not how he’s meant to be.
Especially not when he’s been the only one to hold back so many of the things that haunt Erica’s nightmares.
So Erica doesn’t sit with Steve. It’s not something she does. She just kind of hovers near him, thinking up funny things to say that won’t sound mean to someone who collapsed a couple of days ago and is on mandatory bed rest.
It’s like navigating a conversation she doesn’t understand. Steve has never been this way in the entire year she’s known him. He’s always taken her barbs with good humor and an exasperated fondness he can’t ever really hide. Now though, even with the other kids back from California and the adults rolling in from Russia, even with Eddie finally kind of waking up, Steve is still carrying that stilted weight behind his smiles. That uncharacteristic seriousness. He’s still not normal.
It’s throwing Erica off.
It’s also hard, a little, because for the first time since last year, Erica isn’t sure she can talk to Steve about all the things swirling in her head. For the first time since this started, he wasn’t there for everything. He might not understand. And it feels different. Especially because he’s clearly dealing with so much shit right now on his own.
And what is Erica supposed to say, exactly?
That she keeps replaying every moment of that stupid spring break over and over in her head? That she can still feel Andy’s impossibly strong arms pushing her into the dirt? Or that when she closes her eyes, every time, she’s back in that empty hallway; remembering the crack in her brother’s voice when he begged her to call an ambulance through a locked door.
It’s too much. So she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t sit with Steve.
She knows he can tell something’s up. He keeps giving her those dumb concerned eyes he gets when he knows something’s wrong and Erica kind of hates that he can just tell. She’s good at being strong. That’s like her whole thing. It’s infuriating that some dorky 19-year-old can read the uncertainty she’s doing her very best to hide.
But Steve’s always been adept at that. At people. It’s one of the things that makes him good to have around. Erica can scheme and blackmail with the best of them. She can posture and craft and find the perfect precisely aimed insult to hit at someone’s deepest insecurities. But Steve can see people. He’s always somehow being exactly what they need, exactly when they need it. He knows when to lay off Dustin or when to handle Mike especially carefully. When Max started pulling away, it was Steve that got through to her. More than anyone else. It’s honestly kind of crazy.
Erica’s not very good at the being seen part. It chafes. She doesn’t want to be a crybaby about any of this. She doesn’t want to not be okay. She wants it to be like it was last year. When it wasn’t something she even thought about that much, other than to joke about how cool she was with Lucas or to discuss on quiet ice cream runs with Steve and Robin. Because for all it was new and scary and hard, someone was always there. Steve was there. Robin was there. Dustin was there.
It was just her and Andy in the park. No backup. No support. Just her and her flashlight and her not fast enough legs. When he tackled her, really properly held her to the ground, it felt like all the air in the world snuffed out, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.
It kind of feels like she hasn’t caught her breath since.
She doesn’t want to remember those moments. She doesn’t want to be stuck with the memories. She wants Max to wake up. She wants Lucas to smile and Eddie to be okay. She wants Dustin to stop crying in the hallway behind the vending machine where he thinks no one can hear him.
She wants Steve to get back up again.
Like he always does.
He catches her out pretty quick, all things considered. Makes eye contact with her and nods his head at the visitor's chair as everyone is leaving from their check-in at the end of his third day in the hospital. He waves the rest of them out and nudges the chair with his foot, gesturing for Erica to make herself at home. He keeps looking at her as she settles. His eyes getting that knowing glint they do when he’s about to roll a fucking natural 20 in perception and ask her something she probably won’t like. He tilts his head, and thinks a little about what he wants to say.
“You’ve been really quiet.” He settles on eventually. “You okay?”
She feels the sudden sting of tears threatening in her eyes like a tidal wave, vast and unstoppable. She breathes out and shakes her head, clenching her hands in her lap.
“I’m fine.” She says. Because she is. She’s strong and tough and fine. Stupid Steve Harrington with his stupid knowing eyes isn’t going to get to her.
Steve’s look softens even more, drooping at his eyes and pulling at the corners of his mouth. It makes him look like a sad rescue abandoned on the side of the road. Erica watches the clock on the wall beat a staccato rhythm of seconds to avoid his gaze.
“You can tell me if something is going on,” he says gently. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”
But what about what you need?
And suddenly she’s kind of angry, actually. Because Lucas is falling apart, and Dustin is crying in the hallways, and Steve isn’t here right now. Not really . He's stuck in his stupid hospital bed because he couldn’t let someone take care of him the way he needed. And he’s sitting there asking her if she’s okay when he won’t let anyone else ask him the same question. It makes her mad. Because how is she supposed to tell him anything if he’s like this? If he won’t let anyone take care of him the way he should? And maybe it’s unfair, but it’s burning in her throat.
“You’ve been really fucking stupid,” Erica says tightly, trying not to play her whole hand. “You should have had your bites looked at when we got here. You’re a total idiot.”
She can see his confusion at her choice of topic twist in his eyebrows and it makes her angry enough to clench her teeth.
“Okay,” Steve says diplomatically, still confused. “That’s fair. I deserve that. I’m fine though. You know that right? I’m gonna be fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”
Then who will? She thinks furiously.
“I know a lot is going on right now. Do you want to talk about any of it?”
“Not really,” She says.
Something about this is unsettling her. She can feel the nervous fluttering of panic licking up her throat. She has to leave. She actually can’t do this right now, thanks.
She stands abruptly, pushing against the edge of Steve’s bed and backing away, a halfhearted excuse on the tip of her tongue as she turns around and runs.
She makes it through the hallways just fine. Small enough to deftly avoid the grumbling doctors and harried nurses as she makes her way down the hall. She has the unbidden thought that if there were more obstacles in the way that night she might have been able to outrun Andy.
Stop.
The panic builds.
She makes it to Max’s room quickly. Stepping carefully through the door and closing it firmly behind her. This room, unlike Steve and Eddie’s, is calm and quiet. She can hear her breath echoing on the empty walls, jagged and uneven against the steady beating of Max’s heart monitor. Lucas looks up from the book he has propped up against the bed, furrowing his eyebrows painfully as he takes in what must surely be a totally embarrassing view.
“What’s wrong?”
His voice is quiet and concerned. Like he thinks if he talks too loud he’ll spook her into running right back out. Or maybe he’s just talking quietly for Max. It doesn’t really make a difference.
She shakes her head. Curls into a chair, cheek pressed against the cold hard line of the wooden armrest as she stares at Max’s pale face. The anger spikes, sudden and raw. Erica swallows against the razor-sharp feeling of it. Flicking her eyes to Lucas’s battered face instead. To the raw gash on his chin, his swollen lip and his black eye. He’s starting to heal, but he still can’t make many facial expressions without wincing instinctively. Erica’s gut curdles with fury.
She feels like shouting. She feels like tearing something down and burning it up until she can crush the ashes underneath her heel. She’s going to crawl out of her skin, maybe. She’s going to explode in this stupid room in this stupid hospital where nothing can be done, and no one is okay, and everything is fucked.
And then Lucas’s hand is on her arm and she jumps, coming back into her body with a startled intake of breath. His chocolate eyes are warm and worried as he kneels in front of her. His face is a fading patchwork of colors and swollen lumps. Erica swallows and her throat clicks against it, painfully audible in the empty room.
“It’s just everything.” Is what she says finally, pulling her legs up into the rigid padding of the visitor's chair, and feeling very small. “Everyone’s being stupid, and nothing is the way it’s supposed to be.”
She takes a deep breath.
“It wasn’t like this last time.”
Lucas sighs, resting his elbow on her knee as he leans closer to her.
“Of course it’s not.” He says tiredly. “I’ve done this four times. Every year is different. It’s not gonna feel like it did before.”
She shakes her head. Lucas isn’t getting it.
“Everything before, it was crazy and scary and awful, but it was also okay. It was fine. I was mostly over it. And now suddenly everything’s completely fucked. You’re hurt and Eddie is hurt and Max isn’t even awake. And Steve! Steve is just-“
She bites back a hysterical laugh. Feels the anger build back up in her chest, wet and hot, choking in her throat in a way that feels a little like despair.
“It’s just wrong. I don’t like feeling like I don’t have my footing.”
Lucas sighs.
“I know,” he says. “I felt it too. The second time.”
He brings his arms up onto his own knees, resting his chin there and staring up at Erica, his thoughts gathering like storm clouds behind his eyes.
“There was a moment there, at the Byers house that second year, when I thought Billy was going to kill me. He had me pushed up against the wall, and I’d never seen someone with that look in their eyes before. Like they could murder you and not lose a second of sleep over it.
“I don’t think I really understood until that moment that people could be monsters too. After that night, for weeks and weeks, I would see Billy around town. Just walking and laughing with his friends. He would catch my eyes sometimes, and I would just think, Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the day he comes for me, right here in the street. Maybe no one will save me this time.”
He shakes his head. Closes his eyes.
“There are things that stay with you.” He says gently. “Things that don’t heal the way physical injuries do. I know something more happened to you that night. I know there’s something you’re keeping bottled up inside. Holding onto it. It’s never going to get better if you can’t talk about it.”
“I know,” Erica says tightly. Lucas just shakes his head.
“Sometimes you want to be stronger than everyone else. And I just think you don’t have to be strong all the time. You’re allowed to be a kid. You’re allowed to feel things.” He pauses then, taking a deep, bracing kind of breath.
“I guess sometimes it feels like I haven’t been there for you the way I’ve wanted to. And I just want you to know that it’s okay if you aren’t okay. You can talk to me.”
She’s not sure exactly how she gets there, but one moment she’s in her chair and the next she’s curled in Lucas’s lap, her weight pillowed against his shoulder as he leans back against the bed frame and wraps his arms fully around her, tucking her head beneath his chin and pulling her to his chest.
She remembers suddenly, viscerally, sitting this exact same way when they were both very small. When she went to that park playground on Cornwallis and fell off the tall swing. It feels like a million years ago Lucas held her in his lap, his arms around her back as she cried into his shirt. He’d kept her there until she calmed down and then took her home to clean her scraped knee. She's bigger now. The feelings are more complicated and the world doesn’t make any sense anymore, but some things are the same.
She still fits.
“Andy tackled me in the park.” She whispers into his shirt. “He held me to the ground and I couldn’t breathe. Sometimes it feels like I still can’t. I keep waiting to see him everywhere I go. I keep feeling his hands pushing my face into the gravel. I still hear you screaming through the door. I can’t close my eyes without going back there and I don’t know what to do.”
She feels his arms tighten around her. So different from the crushing weight that holds her down in her dreams. She shudders into his chest, her eyes stinging.
All at once it’s like a flip has switched in her brain and the tears come fast. It feels like a release. The fear of that night. The hurt she’s been holding in her chest for her friends. It is every moment she held Dustin while he cried. Every time she watched as Eddie gasped awake or Steve’s eyes tightened when he moved. It is her pain. Understood and held in his arms and soothed with silent comfort. Screw being cool and unaffected. Everything’s fucked and broken, and it feels like maybe Lucas is the only thing holding her together.
She cries harder.
They sit that way for a long time. Long enough that Erica’s face has dried and Lucas’s legs must be completely asleep. She shifts gingerly, crawling out of his lap to sit beside him on the floor, their legs stretched out side by side on the linoleum.
She takes a shuddering breath.
“What if it never gets better? What if I feel like this forever?”
“You won’t.” He says simply. “But if you did, I’d be here.”
He nudges her shoulder with his own and she pushes back. A smile tugs at the corner of her lips as they both lean in to press their body weight against each other as hard as they can. The back and forth gets more and more aggressive, going until she gets an elbow under his arm and shoves him hard enough to fall over in defeat. He laughs softly as he sits back up and gently pushes her forehead sideways with his palm.
“I’ll be here.” He says again, his smile still there, but his eyes serious.
“I know.” She says, leaning back on him with her own returning grin. “And you’ll still be a total dork too.”
He laughs delightedly at her, tired but bright, and then suddenly he’s standing, going to the desk at the corner of the room and opening up a box resting there amongst all of Max’s belongings. He exclaims triumphantly and turns back to the bed, emptying a colorful armload of something’s right on the edge by Max’s cast.
Erica leans forward to get a better view and finds her eyebrows kissing her hairline as she looks at the diverse collection of Kate Bush band flags, Karate Kid posters, and a variety of moderately painted to terribly drawn portraits of Wonder Woman. She sees the neon duct tape clutched in her brother’s hand and feels understanding dawn as he faces the empty white walls of the hospital room, his lips twisted in determination.
“I've been meaning to decorate it for when she wakes up.” He says. “But everything has been so crazy and I don’t really want to do it alone.”
He doesn’t say anything more as she gets up to help, but she knows what he’s asking her anyway.
They arrange every poster carefully, Erica grunting with effort as she moves the chair into place so she can reach a little easier. They keep going for almost an hour, stepping around each other, taping the decorations up in total silence until there’s not a speck of white showing through on any of the walls. The sheer mass of color is a little nauseating, but Erica is pretty sure it looks exactly the way Max would want it if she were awake.
It isn’t until they’ve stepped back to admire their handiwork that Erica realizes the itch to smash something has disappeared from under her skin. Instead, she feels the warmth of a good job done. Of knowing that if Max woke up right this second she wouldn’t be totally depressed or embarrassed by her room.
Lucas nudges her shoulder, and when she looks up, he’s already smiling at her, warm and kind.
“Better?” He asks, like he doesn’t already know the answer.
“Better.” She replies.
They stay until the stars are out and visiting hours have ended. Creeping through the cool corridors to sneak past patients' rooms and out to the front of the Hospital. The silence is almost nice. Like the hallways are carrying on that peaceful stillness she found with Lucas by Max’s bedside.
It’s not until they’re making their way past Steve and Eddie’s room that Erica hears the low murmur of voices. She waves Lucas on, compelled by a pulling in her chest that is definitely not worry, and peaks her head through the door. Looking but not looking into the dimly lit space and blinking in surprise at what she sees.
It’s still quiet here. Barren walls and shadows from the windows casting over the floor. Both of the actual occupants of 307 are dead asleep. Buried in their pillows and half sitting up. Like they were in the middle of a conversation when they nodded off.
They’re not alone though.
She realizes it’s Hopper and Wayne standing by Steve’s bed pretty quickly. Not before her heart rate spikes, but early enough that she doesn’t jump to any worst-case scenarios about why someone could possibly be in Steve and Eddie’s room in the dark.
They both cut intimidating figures. Locked in quietly serious conversation with each other, gruff and beaten in. They seem totally focused on whatever it is they’re discussing, though Erica doesn’t care enough to try and follow it. Instead, she watches in delighted fascination as Hopper reaches over and tucks Steve’s scratchy hospital blanket a little tighter at his shoulders, not even breaking eye contact with Wayne as he absentmindedly runs his hand along the seam of the blanket and pulls it higher.
It’s so stupid and embarrassing Erica wants to laugh. She smiles instead, imagining all the different shades of red Steve’s face might have turned if she’d managed to get a picture of that touching display.
Something about it feels right though. Like it’s the way things should be. Steve is weird, and dumb, and kind, and so incredibly stupidly stubborn it makes Erica want to tear her hair out. From what she’s seen and heard since the adults got back from Russia, Hopper might be the only one who could possibly take care of him without much of a fuss. If only because he’s even more bullheaded than Steve is.
It makes some half-buried tension ease in her chest to see it, even if she would literally rather die than tell Steve she cares about him. It’s an emotion she’s decided does not need to be acknowledged. Ever.
It’s just funny to see Steve be tucked in like a little kid, that’s all.
For the first time in a long while, Erica feels something like relief. Something like not worrying about all the idiots she constantly finds herself surrounded with. Something like, maybe it will all be okay, eventually. And in the meantime, she has an endless amount of blackmail material to try out on Lucas.
She feels herself smiling as she turns away to follow him out the door.
Notes:
I love love love Erica. What a queen.
Again, sorry for the long delay! Honestly It might be a while before I manage to write/post the last (and biggest part) of this series. I have a lot of plans and written scenes for it, but I'm lowkey going through it rn, so I don't know how long it would take.