i. ‎ ₜₕₑ ‎ 𝘑𝘰𝘤𝘬 ؟

“ .. yeah. yeah, i think i have to. ” the admission slips loose. the hood of the car, a slab of dented american steel, has been repurposed into a sort of confessional pew. an altar of interim stillness. the metal hums faintly beneath them, a residual benediction left behind by a sun that has already abdicated its post, leaving the sky a lacquered black, vast and pitless. an obsidian canopy freckled with stars. around them, the town exists only as implication: generates gnawing, the distant march of boots, the scent of oil and ozone and damp earth. hawkins exists in this forever stale state. it's holding its breath. and steve harrington, a patron saint of bad timing and even worst instincts, feels the same practiced tension coiling somewhere in his lower gut as he leans back on his hands, palms flattened against the cold paint like he could maybe anchor himself to the present by force alone. he exhales through his nose, a sound a halfway sigh and a halfway laugh. “ scared i'll mess it up, y'know. miss the right move. ” a pause, a fracture of such. he shrugs then, “ i mean, statistically, i've messed up pretty bad before. a lot. ” for sure. the night does not argue with this sentiment, it absorbs it instead. “ it's easier when it's just steve. ” steve the outlander, steve the decoy, steve the idiot. when heroics arrive with muscle-memory like tendencies, a reflex honed by repetition, when he is allowed to be velocity without much foresight. it is easier when the risk ledger lists only one name on it.

“ harder when it's people that y'know. all that heart-of-jesus crap. ” and there it is, naked and unceremonious: the thesis behind the thesis, the meat and their potatoes: the terror of consequence. of choosing wrong and watching someone you care for pay for it. of learning, too little and too late, that courage does not inoculate you against regret. steve harrington has learned this the hard way, through repetition and less and the slow accretion of names that haunt at the back of his skull. he has learned relatively quickly that heroism is less about the swing of the nailed bat and more about the afterward. steve studies the enigma that is nancy wheeler. eyes trained in at the side of her face, moonlight threading itself along the architecture of her profile. there is something halcyon in her stillness. a pause between them, and it is almost never empty. it is congested with unsaid things.

memories stacked on top of memories like geological layers: the crust comes first the outermost layer. sun-baked and loud and easy to stand on top with reckless boots on gravel, the layer that believes solidity is synonymous with permanence. it is simply steve and it is nancy and they are comrades of a kind and there is absolutely nothing chipped or scuffed because this is the uncomplicated layer. beneath that, the plates oceanic and continental, grinding slow and soundless, moving on timelines no one truly notices until the damage is already done. nancy presses forward, drawn toward the heat and truth of life. steve, meanwhile, stays anchored to what is familiar and what is sturdy, and neither are wrong. just drifting at incompatible velocities. then comes the mantle thick, viscous, incandescent. this is where the monsters lived, rewrote what steve and nancy's connection ever meant. forged together in fear, pressed into a shape that was melded while hot and can never bend back into it's original one. glances held too long, instincts firing in unison, the unspoken knowledge that even when the world ends, they will know how to stand against it back-to-back. is it love? maybe. it is density more than anything. and then, god help them, the core dense and magnetic, longing and regret and nostalgia. the truth that some bonds are foundational. see, you never live at the center of a planet because that is not safe, but you always feel it pullling.

“ ... do you ? ” the question is tentative, offered like one would place glass in your palm. “ cause you've got this poker face straighter than anyone i know. ” compliment disguised as deflection. and for a moment, a stolen, illicit moment, the word feels manageable. two figures perched on the edge of a car, sharing residual confessionals and mutual recognition, suspended in that liminal corridor.

it is, and cannot be overstated, a small apocalypse. a catastrophe of a distinctly modern scale. not the kind that grazes cities or collapses total governments, but a far crueler variety. the implosion of self-mythology ! a halcyon legend undone by soft-serve and awkward laughter. and steve harrington, once crown-polished and sun-blessed, now idles maroon behind the counter and scoops ahoy hums around his skull with a sickly cheer. ⁽ shouldn't he be working? he should totally be working. ⁾ the bell at the door rings again, a requiem tone, and the girl is out the door in a quickness. steve rolls his eyes skyward, pupils scaping the ceiling as though salvation might be taped between the nautical decals and the peeling paint, his ego sloughing off in layers. opposite him, dustin, the oracle of doom, seated comfortably in the wreckage. steve slides into the booth across him. a disgraced general no one sings for ! “ what are you, like six years old this year? ” exaggerated cadence, a hand lifts and gestures.

“ see, that was advanced technique. ” advanced, sure. misunderstood greatly by the masses, more so. “ you wouldn't understand subtlety. you're about as subtle as a foghorn. i've never seen anything less subtle. ” irony, like accountability, is an optional feature. steve crosses his arms against the vinyl, knee begins its traitorous bounce beneath the table. then comes this retreat, “ .. she was into it. y'know? she, uh, .. smiled. ” right.

she picks at the upholstery, redressed in a half-assed way, thinking straight in a half-assed way. steve is sitting as a passenger would, though spent. and she, equally rosy and warmed, leans against his side with an need for connection, his connection, that hasn’t been severed since the day they ended things. they have a very different definition of ending things than that of their mutual friends.. and it’s then that sera tries so hard to make sense of their stupid arrangement that it doesn’t make sense anymore, not even to her. “..is it nancy?” sudden, unsweetened but not bitter, see murmurs after trilling her lips. frankly, she had just ridden steve for the better part of a half hour. fogged windows as their witness. it shouldn’t be bitter. in fact, it’s relenting. resign. the acceptance of a smaller crown in the shadow of the bigger, shinier, more historic one. nancy and steve go way back..

there is a moment here suspended, undocumented, unclaimed by any clocks, where the body has finished speaking but the soul has hardly remembered how to function. this is that moment. the engine hums low, a mechanical mantra, heat ticking off of the bmw's hood in metallic syllables. inside? fogged windows, breath uneven, aftermath of closeness that tastes of copper and pine and something almost regretful. steve harrington exists with a belt half-threaded, unsettled. he laughs, reflexively, a sound trained into him young. the laugh falters halfway, caught on its own hook, and he scrubs a hand through hair damp with sweat. the movement is automatic, ancient, muscle memory. “ nancy? no, sera ” and the name misfires on his tongue. not hers. but the other one, the archive. his gaze flicks anywhere but her: the dashboard clock blinking 12:00 like a taunt, radio faceplate smudged with fingertips, the soft reflection in the glass. he grips the steering wheel, leather warmed and worn by his palms, grounding himself in something real and unromantic and present. “ no, it's not. nancy, she ... ” the sentence collapses under its own weight.

here is no clean articulation for a thing that is past over but still a daily reference, like a scar that only aches when it is pressed. he doesn't miss her. not really. sometimes, he misses the boy he was when he loved her simpler, carefree. that boy drowned somewhere between monsters and funerals and learning how to bleed quietly. ⁽ he has since been reborn. more rather reconstructed. ⁾ “ chapter's closed. .. closed. ” he nods as he says so, a punctuation mark made of bone and breath. the word feels right in his mouth. final. non-negotiable.

OW. steve harrington finds purchase against the wall because the wall finds him first: vine-tangled brick without warmth, texture without mercy, this sickly design of the upside down. he begins to slide his back against it, blood finding itself efficient and unbothered. “ hey hey, i'm not lyin'. ” he blurts, because eleven's eyes have gone sharp and still in the way that she's clocking his math HIS RATE OF BREATHING, color shift, the way his legs are hardly participating. palms up and exposed. “ i'm .. i'm omitting. that's different. that's strategic. ” a sort of laugh. it fractures halfway out. ABORT. “ okay, yeah. it hurts. fine-ish. ” his breath starts doing that thing, the ugly thing, too fast and too shallow. blood stains denim darker, heavier, the fabric giving up his secrets in real time. steve swears under his breath, a muttered litany aimed at no one in particular, and then louder. “ i've been worse. i think. probably. ” ⁽ OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT? ⁾ he fumbles at his pant leg with puppet-like fingers, rolls the fabric up & up then too much red, too fast. steve glances at her then, really looks, voice dropping into octaves more careful and coaxing. “ you know what a tourniquet is? a-a tie-off. stop the blood, boy scout kinda crap. ” presses both hands harder to the wound, jaw tight and grin flickering in out like a moribund bulb.

steve harrington on a roof. it's fitting. angled planes of cold, granulated asphalt biting faintly through the denim, night painted obsidian and flat above him. he's squated like a gargoyle one sneaked hooked, one knee burning. exhales through his nose, allows the moment to breathe. then “  ... fine. i can work with that. ” words spill too easy, lacquered with that familiar hair-rington: charm, sanding down the sharp parts of being told NO. “  that a 'kick rocks, harrington' or a 'sit down and behave' ? ” night hums, cicadas somewhere. “  'cause i can behave. i'll be good. ” and the window slams shut. not ceremoniously, not even angrily ⁽ WHICH SCARED HIM MOST. ⁾ final and telling, a hard and blunt THUNK! that vibrates up the glass and into his teeth, into the place behind his eyes where his embarrassment and affection trip over one another. steve freeze mid-lean, blinks once, twice, stares at the faint smear of is own ghost against the pane. silence rushes in to fill the space of seconds. “  okay. ” swallows. “  yeah. fair. ” steve shifts, crouch deepening, heel scraping, roof protesting.

there's a lot he doesn't say. there's the kids, for one. the upside-down, for another. the way time keeps folding in on itself lately, dates missed, promises postponed, dinners turned into apologies rehearsed on the very drive over. there's the knowledge that any explaining of such would sound insane. ⁽ JUST TRUST ME IS A PHRASE WORN THIN. ⁾ scrubs a hand down his face, figners lingering against his jaw. debates and tastes a few different things on his tongue before it comes so simply: “  i'm sorry. ” that one isn't armored. he's missed a date too many. “  's shitty. i know it was. there's just.. ” he trails off, searches for a word big enough in its magnitude and finds none that will not collapse in. “  .. a lot you don't know about. ” about as close as he gets, for now. a line steve tiptoes, keeping her safe and keeping her in the dark. “  c'mon. you gonna open that window back up? ” a flicker of hope, stupid and persistent and unkillable. “  'cause i can climb. i can't, uh .. phase through matter. missed that class, i guess. ” gestures vageuly at the roof, the gutter, and himself. EXHIBIT A.