Steve nodded like it made perfect sense, even though his own version of preparation is grabbing his keys and hoping for the best.

He notices the way you roll your eyes when Dustin starts his monologues, but you still listen. He notices how you automatically shift to make room for Max on the couch, how you hand Lucas things without looking, how you always ask Robin if she wants to ride shotgun even though Robin will absolutely fight him for it anyway.

Steve pretends this doesn’t make something warm and fond bloom in his chest.

Steve likes to pretend he’s annoyed when the power goes out late afternoon in Hawkins and The Squawk is off air. But Robin has the day off and you’ve joined him to keep him company.

He’d tried to make you a guest on the lunch time segment but wasn’t offended when you’d turned him down. He was offended when you’d said you’d just make their ratings go down. They’re average at best anyways, if anything you’d definitely improve them.

It’s a hot day unfortunately and there’s nothing they can do until they fix whatever it is that has the town without power.

You sit on the floor at the end of the console and lean up against the wall, reading the back of a manual you’d found on the shelf beside you.

Steve sits next to you and offers you a warm soda. “Not ideal.” Steve says mournfully.

You take it from him with a sad look on your face. "Could be worse."

You're reading and Steve's sure it can't be anything interesting. Some page about frequency range and power output. He feels a little bad.

You sip from the warm Sprite and hum a tune under your breath like there's nothing wrong. He’s noticed before, you only do that when you’re happy. He notices now.

"Everything okay?" He nudges your shoulder with his own and you look over at him.

"Yeah, why?" You smile. Steve has to swallow lest he does something silly.

"I've invited you to keep me company and all I've got is warm drinks and radio manuals. Not too crash hot." Steve has to laugh or his embarassment might ruin his too-cool, totally-not-in-love demeanour.

"It's okay," You're too nice, "could be worse. I could be with someone else." Unbelievable.

"I can't be that bad, I guess." Steve laughs. "You are humming."

You frown. "Humming?"

His cover is blown. "Yeah," he clears his throat, "You- you hum when you're happy."

A tiny smile plays at corner of your mouth. He thinks your eyes sparkle for a second but blames it on his love-sick brain. "Steve Harrington you surprise me sometimes."

Steve hums questionably in response.

"Everyone is so wrong about you." You giggle and it surprises him. He feels stupid. "Nancy tells me you don't listen to anything. Your head is too big."

Are you making fun of him? You wouldn't.

"Nancy's feelings towards me are warranted."

"I guess," you sigh. "But I don't think anyone else has ever paid as much attention to me than you do."

The words settle in his chest like sunlight on a cold morning. He swallows hard, glancing up, and then quickly looking away again, embarrassed.

Steve looks in his lap sheepishly, playing with the pull tab of his own soda. He hopes there's an answer at the bottom of the can that helps him not to sound like a creep.

"I notice you, Steve."

Steve wonders if this whole time he's been looking at you, paying attention to things when he thought you weren't looking, etching things into his own memory, you were there also noticing him.

He hadn't even realised he wasn't being noticed in the first place. That he was worth being looked at. Remembered.

"Was there much to see?" The power comes back on. The lights brighten the room and the AC spatters back to life.

Now with every light in the room illuminationg the small space, he's sure he looks like a sweaty mess. You on the other hand look as pretty as ever and he's not sure if he detests you for it.

James stops right in the middle of the street when he looks down at your feet. “Stop,” he says softly. You stop with him when your arms snags against his.

He bends down onto one knee right into the snow and you gawp. “James!”

He swats your foot. “Stand still, angel.”

You do as he says. Mostly because you want him to hurry. “What are you bloody doing?”

“Babe, I don’t want to be a smartass right in the middle of the road,” he snorts, tightening your laces a little too hard, “but I’m tying your shoelaces up.”

“Yes, James,” you chide. “In the middle of the road.”

He makes two loops and if you weren’t too busy watching the corner to your left, you’d laugh at his bunny-ear method. With love, of course. He’s adorable. But right now, you’re a little peeved.

James looks up at you with soft eyes and a bright smile. You melt faster than the falling snow. You’re half annoyed because he’s being reckless, but also half adored because he’s being reckless on behalf of you. “I didn’t want you tripping.”

You want to put your hands in his hair. You also don’t want to encourage him. “Thank you, James, truly baby,” you hurry, words a little jammed, still genuine, “but please hurry up. I don’t want to get flattened.”

“I’d never let that happen,” he says, a little offended, a lot loving.

“I know.”

James grins. “Double knots?”

You roll your eyes, still annoyed. Shaking your foot you say, “C’mon, up.”

James gets up, letting you pull him into your side to cross the rest of street. Standing under a street lamp you stop still. James stops too, though hesitant.

“What’s up? Your other shoelace undone?” he frowns.

“No, it’s good.”

You needle your arms under his, pushing through the fleece of his parka jacket, angling your head up to look at him. James looks confused, still, he wraps his arms around your back with a ruffle of synthetic materials.

“I know it’s cold, baby,” he starts, squeezing you close, “but don’t you want to get inside? I’ll hug you all over Sirius’s new couch if y’want.”

His head blocks the the street lamp, curls haloed by warm yellow light and a falling of snow. You watch it decorate his hair and scatter in his too-long lashes, landing on the lenses of his glasses, and for the hundredth time since you met him, you think he’s the prettiest boy you’ve ever seen. It’s always just as startling as the first time.

“Did you just tie my laces in the middle of the street?”

James might think you’re scolding him. Though your features are soft and little too lovesick. You seem quite dizzied.

James grins boyishly. “Yeah…”

“We could’ve been hit by a lorry,” you laugh, half smothered by a chattering of your teeth.

“We could also freeze to death out here,” he says back.

“James…” you mumble, hiding your face in his chest. He smells like damp fleece and dwindling cologne that the wind keeps picking up.

“What?” he lets out a startled laugh, shielding your cold head with his big hand. Your hair is already half-damp. He’s starting to regret not letting you out at the front of Sirius’s building and finding a park himself.

“You love me,” you say suddenly, voice tainted with girlish laughter.

“Of course, I do,” he says. He smooths a kiss into your hair for good measure.

“Only boys who love you tie your laces up in the middle of the street.” You pull back your head from his chest and catch his gaze. He looks a mixture of confused and a little fond.

“How do you know that?” he feigns shock, “Who else has been tying up your shoes, huh?”

You shake your head, giggling, “No one.”

He dips you back, arms tight around your torso. Mouth hovering over yours, he says, “Who else?”

“No one,” you repeat, huffing a high pitched laugh. “Just you.”

He kisses you. Soft and quick and all things cold. You can’t help the smile that presses up against his lips. “Good,” he murmurs quickly.

You try to kiss him back. He grins all smug when he has you chasing his mouth. He stops when you huff, letting you too willingly kiss him.

“Should only be me tying up your shoes,” he says.

“Yeah,” you hum back.

The image presses against your chest, heavy and accusing, like some high school bully taunting you. It’s unfair, cruel how powerless you feel, how small, as if the world has condensed into the space between fear and regret, and there’s nothing you can do to reach him.

Tears well up in the corner of your eyes, hot and sticky and unrelenting. You try to swallow them back though your throat feels dry with an upset you don’t want to happen.

You don’t want Steve to return to a you who is a lot more upset than you were before he left. You’ve been faking a version of you that is stronger for a lot longer than you’d like to admit. But it’s okay, because Steve will return just like he said.

The tears get thicker and your breaths get ragged. You try to stay focused, listening for snapping of branches in the distance or the wind picking up when it shouldn’t be. Any sound of foot prints in the distance that Steve is right there.

You call his name until your voice cracks. Words marred with a mouth full of tears and hiccups that break through the end of your desperate pleas.

It wasn’t just Steve being gone that hurts you, it’s everything finally arriving at the same moment, uninvited and unavoidable. All the fear you’d swallowed and promises made in chaos have come crashing down at once. You’ve been holding yourself together with borrowed calm and adrenaline, telling yourself you could fall apart later, that there would be time. But waiting for Steve, seeming helpless, feels like the final thread pulling loose.

Your breakdown doesn’t explode. It collapses. You sink to the wet ground at the base of a tree and let the moss and mud cake your pants and boots. Forehead pressed to your knees, fingers digging into fabric like you could anchor yourself to reality by force.

Your chest hurts in a way that feels foreign, too big for your body, like grief has buried itself between your ribs. You whisper his name like a confession, like a prayer into the void. If he can hear you, you needed him to know how much he mattered. How much space he occupied in your life. How wrong it felt to exist without him in it.

You don’t even know if everything is actually okay. You could be jumping the gun. But Steve never lies, never gives you false hope or empty promises. If he says he’ll be back, that he won’t leave you, he means it. You have no reason to not trust him. Worry like this is making your head spin.

You don’t hear it at first. Not really. A shift in the air, a sudden pull, like gravity reasserting itself. Voices rise in the distance, and your head snaps up, heart slamming so hard it steals your breath. You’re on your feet before you realise you’re moving. The forest blurs as you run, fear and longing tangling so tightly you can’t tell them apart.

Steve stumbles out of the gate like he’s been kicked from a nightmare, coughing, bat slipping from his grip, hair worse than usual and face smeared with dirt and red ash. He’s breathing hard, alive in the loudest way possible, and the sound of it shatters something inside you completely.

Steve falls to the mud and then you follow him. He catches you in a hug, your arms are so tight around him he grunts — pulls a sharp breath between his teeth, followed by a baby.

“Where were you!” You punctuate every word with a slap to his chest. You’re not as hard as you’d like to be. You can’t bring yourself to hurt him as much as you want to. You were scared.

“Hey!” he huffs. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He hugs you tight. You cry like you’ve been holding your breath for days, like the fear had fermented inside you and finally found a way out. Your words come out broken and useless, apologies and accusations and his name tangled together in a sob.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, into your hair, over and over. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It took longer than I thought. I should’ve— I know. I know.”

He pulls back and looks at you like a scared puppy. Like looking at you was worse than whatever he just faced in the Upside Down. He looks like he might cry, something you’re not used to. He squeezes your arms and your leather jacket squeaks under his hold. It’s grounding. His hands on your arms, the smell of his cologne, clouded with his sweat. The feeling of his waist under your hands.

“I thought you’d…” You can’t say it. Speaking it into the universe feels too much. The thoughts you’d had between and now were enough. Saying it out loud is too much for you.

“I’m sorry, baby.” He can’t stop hugging you. You don’t want him to. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The image presses against your chest, heavy and accusing, like some high school bully taunting you. It’s unfair, cruel how powerless you feel, how small, as if the world has condensed into the space between fear and regret, and there’s nothing you can do to reach him.

Tears well up in the corner of your eyes, hot and sticky and unrelenting. You try to swallow them back though your throat feels dry with an upset you don’t want to happen.

You don’t want Steve to return to a you who is a lot more upset than you were before he left. You’ve been faking a version of you that is stronger for a lot longer than you’d like to admit. But it’s okay, because Steve will return just like he said.

The tears get thicker and your breaths get ragged. You try to stay focused, listening for snapping of branches in the distance or the wind picking up when it shouldn’t be. Any sound of foot prints in the distance that Steve is right there.

You call his name until your voice cracks. Words marred with a mouth full of tears and hiccups that break through the end of your desperate pleas.

It wasn’t just Steve being gone that hurts you, it’s everything finally arriving at the same moment, uninvited and unavoidable. All the fear you’d swallowed and promises made in chaos have come crashing down at once. You’ve been holding yourself together with borrowed calm and adrenaline, telling yourself you could fall apart later, that there would be time. But waiting for Steve, seeming helpless, feels like the final thread pulling loose.

Your breakdown doesn’t explode. It collapses. You sink to the wet ground at the base of a tree and let the moss and mud cake your pants and boots. Forehead pressed to your knees, fingers digging into fabric like you could anchor yourself to reality by force.

Your chest hurts in a way that feels foreign, too big for your body, like grief has buried itself between your ribs. You whisper his name like a confession, like a prayer into the void. If he can hear you, you needed him to know how much he mattered. How much space he occupied in your life. How wrong it felt to exist without him in it.

You don’t even know if everything is actually okay. You could be jumping the gun. But Steve never lies, never gives you false hope or empty promises. If he says he’ll be back, that he won’t leave you, he means it. You have no reason to not trust him. Worry like this is making your head spin.

You don’t hear it at first. Not really. A shift in the air, a sudden pull, like gravity reasserting itself. Voices rise in the distance, and your head snaps up, heart slamming so hard it steals your breath. You’re on your feet before you realise you’re moving. The forest blurs as you run, fear and longing tangling so tightly you can’t tell them apart.

Steve stumbles out of the gate like he’s been kicked from a nightmare, coughing, bat slipping from his grip, hair worse than usual and face smeared with dirt and red ash. He’s breathing hard, alive in the loudest way possible, and the sound of it shatters something inside you completely.

Steve falls to the mud and then you follow him. He catches you in a hug, your arms are so tight around him he grunts — pulls a sharp breath between his teeth, followed by a baby.

“Where were you!” You punctuate every word with a slap to his chest. You’re not as hard as you’d like to be. You can’t bring yourself to hurt him as much as you want to. You were scared.

“Hey!” he huffs. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He hugs you tight. You cry like you’ve been holding your breath for days, like the fear had fermented inside you and finally found a way out. Your words come out broken and useless, apologies and accusations and his name tangled together in a sob.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, into your hair, over and over. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It took longer than I thought. I should’ve— I know. I know.”

He pulls back and looks at you like a scared puppy. Like looking at you was worse than whatever he just faced in the Upside Down. He looks like he might cry, something you’re not used to. He squeezes your arms and your leather jacket squeaks under his hold. It’s grounding. His hands on your arms, the smell of his cologne, clouded with his sweat. The feeling of his waist under your hands.

“I thought you’d…” You can’t say it. Speaking it into the universe feels too much. The thoughts you’d had between and now were enough. Saying it out loud is too much for you.

“I’m sorry, baby.” He can’t stop hugging you. You don’t want him to. “I’m not going anywhere.”