Work Text:
“You can’t just call me every time any little thing goes wrong in this place!” Dustin’s yelling. “You literally work here Steve, it’s your job to know this crap.”
“No one ever taught me how to fix the…the…” Steve flaps a hand, searches for the words Dustin had mentioned earlier.
“Broadcast processors,” Dustin spits, rolling his eyes.
“Yes! Which is why I radioed you -”
“Interrupting my night again -”
“Oh, I’m sorry Henderson, what was it you were so busy doing? I know for a fact you’ve been ignoring your friends, so don’t tell me you were on some…social call.”
“How about you put that tiny Harrington brain to use for once, and read a goddamn manual!” Dustin scrubs a hand over his face. “I know you’re just a jock, but Jesus H Christ.”
Steve recoils. Feels like he’s slapped across the face, both from Dustin’s nastiness and the cussing that sounded an awful lot like someone else. “Oh, that’s all I am is it? Just some dumb jock you’ve gotta put up with, huh?”
Dustin meets his eye.
He looks mean.
“Yeah, I guess you are.” Dustin turns his back and hits a few buttons on the sound panel. “There, fixed your problem. Again.”
“You know, you’re an asshole these days,” Steve mutters.
“Takes one to know one.” Dustin storms out, leaving Steve alone in the room.
He slumps into his chair. Puts his head in his hands. Wonders, for the millionth time, just how the hell he can get through to that kid.
He’s been trying for months. Had tried to be patient, tried gently asking Dustin if he wanted to talk, if he needed anything. Tried talking to his friends. Tried getting Dustin out of the house more. Tried a more direct approach, telling Dustin he was worried, that he didn’t like the way he was acting.
Sure, they were all on edge. All stuck in this small town, the military breathing down their necks, almost frozen in time while the rest of the outside world carried on without them. Everyone was stressed, grumpy, tired, scared of what was going to happen next.
Because something would happen.
Vecna would make a move. Or Hopper and Eleven would.
And it’d all start all over again, and Steve would go back to desperately trying to keep everyone around him alive by the skin of his teeth.
But so far, Dustin had rejected every single one of Steve’s attempts to get him to open up.
It all came back to one thing.
The elephant in the room.
Eddie.
Steve clenches his jaw, is about to jam his headset back on when there’s a little knock.
He looks up. Joyce is in the doorway, knuckles rapping gently against it.
She smiles. It’s a little sad.
“I guess you heard all that,” Steve says with a sigh.
She nods. “Hard not to. The two of you are always yelling these days.”
Steve ducks his head. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s alright. Everyone’s on a short fuse at the moment.” She steps into the room, gestures to the empty chair. “Can I?”
Surprised, Steve nods.
He and Joyce hadn’t had a whole lot to do with each other, even since the gate opened and everyone was forced into quarantine in the same little town. Sure, he certainly saw her more than he used to, what with her frequenting the Squawk for crawl briefings, but even then they didn’t really talk.
“Hop wanted to meet, said he had some new schematics to go over. I’m just…a bit early for once,” she says sheepishly.
Steve nods again.
The silence drags on, a little awkward.
Steve doesn’t have much experience talking to…moms. Certainly not his own. In fact, he’d gotten good at avoiding them – sneaking in and out of Nancy’s room in high school, and countless others before her.
“He’s still really hurting, isn’t he?” Joyce says after a while. “About Eddie.”
Steve swallows thickly. “Yeah. I’ve tried to help him but he won’t talk to me. He just gets mad.”
“Will says the same,” Joyce tells him. “I think…all we can really do is be here for him. Eventually, he’ll need us.”
Eddie would’ve known what to say to him.
The thought of him causes Steve’s chest to tighten.
Eddie had always been good with words. He would’ve been able to get through to Dustin, talk to him in a way Steve never could. He’d been smart, so much smarter than he was.
The hurt must show on his face, because Joyce leans forward in her chair. “Hey,” she says, softly. “Are you ok?”
Steve sniffs, turns away. “Yeah, fine.”
She studies him. “Your parents call yet?”
“No,” Steve mumbles, wonders how Joyce even knows about that, then figures everyone in Hawkins talks – there’s not much else to do these days. “Not for…six months or so.”
“Must be hard, not hearing from them?”
There’s the ghost of knuckles cracking across his cheek. Of filthy queer spat into his ear after he’d been caught with Tommy. Of bottles smashing, of his mom crying, of furniture upturned.
“Not really,” he mumbles.
He can feel Joyce’s eyes on him still. He should really get back to work – now that Dustin had fixed their technical issue, he could start broadcasting again.
“Listen, I’m sure Dustin’ll come around eventually,” Joyce says. “He misses Eddie -”
“We all miss him,” Steve snaps, then immediately takes a deep breath. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to...yeah.”
“Steve…are you sure you’re ok?” Joyce asks again.
Steve huffs out a laugh, devoid of humour. “Someone has to be, right?”
“It doesn’t always have to be you.”
Steve turns away. Fiddles with something on the sound panel, pressing buttons just to give his hands something to do. Maybe if he just waits long enough, Joyce’ll give up on him.
She doesn’t.
“You know, after Bob died, I was angry. At everyone. And then, when I wasn’t angry anymore I was just sad. And I felt like even in moments where I could be happy, I shouldn’t, because Bob was dead so how could anything be happy?”
“But Bob was your partner,” Steve interjects. “Eddie wasn’t…well, he wasn’t…” he struggles to find the words.
What had Eddie been to him?
A friend, maybe.
But before all of this, before the gates, before the demogorgan, before Steve became responsible for a group of kids that weren’t his, Eddie had been…something else to him.
Steve had shared cigarettes with him outside parties clogged with drunk teens and loud music and keg stands. Amongst all the bullshit, the gossip, the hook-ups, the fights, the yelling and the exuberance of youth, Eddie had smiled at him like he saw Steve in a way no one else ever had.
At school, when Eddie had been on his table-top rants about conformity or something else Steve hadn’t grasped at the time, he’d throw a wink towards Steve like he set him apart from the rest of the jocks he mocked so relentlessly, and Steve would blush and dig his fork sharply into the slop served up at the cafeteria.
After his fight with Jonathan, when Steve had been at Melvald’s picking up painkillers, his head throbbing and his vision blurry, Eddie had been there. Steve had bumped into him in an aisle, mumbled an apology through his swollen mouth, and Eddie had tilted his head and looked at him like he cared, had grabbed his arm and lead him over to the medicine aisle. “You should get some ice on that too, big boy. Gotta look after that pretty face.” Steve’s stomach had swooped, and it had had nothing to do with his dizziness.
Later, much later, Eddie had kissed him in an upside down forest.
Had tugged him behind a vine-ensnared tree, asked him if it was really Nancy he wanted or if he was just running from something else. When Steve had opened his mouth, closed it again, fumbled for something to say while staring at Eddie’s lips, it had been answer enough for the other boy.
Steve had never told another soul about that brief kiss.
Not even Robin.
He doesn’t realize he’s crying. Not until something drips from his chin onto his hand.
“Oh, honey,” Joyce murmurs, and then she’s at his side, opening up her arms.
Steve falls into them. He’s far bigger than her, but sobbing silently into her shoulder he feels small.
“Shhh, it’s ok,” Joyce soothes him, rubbing over his back. “I saw you and him at Melvalds after your, um, incident with Jonathan. I was outside the police station, and I saw him helping you to your car,” she whispers. Steve tenses, but she shakes her head. “No, no, it’s ok, I promise. Just…I remember the way he looked at you. And the way you looked at him, even if you were all…”
“Messed up?” Steve croaks out, voice wet.
Joyce smiles into his hair. “Yes, ok, messed up.”
“We weren’t…we weren’t like you and Bob,” Steve chokes on a sob. “But I think maybe we could’ve been. One day. If…”
“If Eddie had made it out,” Joyce finishes quietly.
Steve nods, tears flowing freely now. “Dustin keeps trying to be like him. But Eddie was never mean, even when he was stirring shit up. Now his words are all being twisted, and it’s like an insult to his memory, does that make sense?”
Joyce hums.
“He’s not doing it on purpose. Dustin. He’s just so angry and upset and everything’s coming out wrong.” Steve defends him, because he’ll defend that kid till the day he dies, even if he’s being a little asshole.
“And he’s not the only one grieving.”
“No. But then, he was actually with Eddie when he…when he died, so it’s worse for him.”
“It’s not a competition. You’re allowed to grieve too, you know that, right?”
Steve trembles a little in Joyce’s arms. “We weren’t even together,” he whispers.
Joyce holds him tighter. “Maybe not. But you’re allowed to be sad about what could’ve been.”
A shuddering breath escapes Steve.
He hasn’t cried in a long time.
“But you’re also allowed to be happy,” Joyce continues. “All of you are. I didn’t know Eddie very well, but I do think that’s what he would’ve wanted. And from what I’ve heard, he was a big believer in being yourself, right?”
“Forced conforming. It’s what’s killing the kids!”
Steve had heard it over and over. Year after year. Like it was Eddie’s favourite quote to hurl across the cafeteria.
He smiles through tears. “Yeah, he was.”
Joyce pulls back a little, wipes at Steve’s face with her sleeve like he’s some little kid. “So be you. All of you. Brave, charming, smart, you.”
“Not smart,” Steve mumbles, looking away. “Henderson had that bit right.”
Joyce huffs. “You are. And if I ever catch that boy calling you dumb again, I’ll whoop his ass, grieving or not.”
Steve laughs.
He believes her.
Taking a deep breath, Steve scrubs a hand over his face and lets go of Joyce. “I’m gonna go around to Dustin’s place once I’m finished here.” He gestures to the sound booth. “I’ll try and…talk to him. Again.”
Joyce smiles. “All you can do is try.”
“Yeah. I will. And I’ll keep trying. For him. For Eddie.”
He imagines Eddie’s response. A small smirk perhaps, but there’s warmth behind it, a softness in his dark eyes. You got this, big boy. Go round up those little lost sheep of mine.
Joyce pats him on the knee. There’s a creak from the front door, metal scraping across the floor.
Standing, Joyce straightens her jacket, puts herself back together after comforting Steve. “Well, that’s my cue,” she says, jerking her head towards door. “Better go and look at these schematics.”
“Sure.” Steve’s cheeks are a little flushed, slight embarrassment lingering after his uncharacteristic outpour of emotion. But still, he feels lighter than he has in a long time. “Mrs Byers?”
“Mmm?” She turns back towards him.
“Thank you.”
“Anytime, Steve.”