Eos 🩵

stardew valley, sam/sebastian, fluffy romance, 8k, 3/3, read on AO3 here.

A rumour spreads through Pelican Town that Sam and Sebastian are dating. They're not, but Sam would really rather if they were.

--

“I think Abigail was probably right about the two of you. I thought she was being silly because you were too different, but I can see it now.”

Then she turned and walked right out. 

“Wait, Abigail said-? Shit.” Sam had almost chased after her without his drinks. He turned back to grab them both and speed-walked as fast as he could down the corridor without spilling them. “What did Abigail say? Maru-” But she was long gone, her door clicking shut behind her. 

Sam froze outside of it, heart racing. 

Teaser:

By the time the sun was setting, Sam was painfully restless. His father had returned from taking Vincent fishing and made a half-hearted attempt to ask Sam a question, no doubt about The Rumour. Fortunately, Sam’s mom had waylaid him easily and effectively, distracting him with discussions about prepping the lobsters for dinner. 

Vincent, the little shit, had teased until Sam tried to kick him out, then offered a wide-eyed apology complete with a ‘gift’. In other words, he’d dropped a live cockroach into Sam’s open palm and then bolted before Sam could smack him for it, which meant he spent the next twenty minutes being out-smarted by a bug while he ran around with a cup and sheet of paper. 

By the time he’d actually gotten the chance to fix his messed up hair, the hours had already been ticking down. He didn’t taste a bite of his dinner and spent the rest of his free time pacing grooves into his bedroom floor. At five sharp, he flew out of the door with a brief ‘goodbye’ and jogged the whole way to the Saloon, ensuring he was pink, sweaty, and out of breath when he arrived. Which was just what he wanted. 

Cursing his own stupidity, Sam stood around the corner for a few minutes, trying to let the evening air cool his face. He’d barely caught his breath when the door banged open, two sets of steps disappearing around the far side of the building. Sam thought nothing of it until he heard a familiar voice. 

“You know what you did.”

“Serious, Seb? The only person I told was Haley!”

“Who told the whole fucking town!” Sebastian hissed. 

Sam’s heart was racing. It was a bad idea, he suspected, to eavesdrop but he was already terrified of how Sebastian was going to react to their conversation, and the situation struck him as an opportunity to get a lay of the land before he made his confession. Slowly, he edged towards the corner of the building so he could hear more clearly, watching his step to avoid snappable sticks. 

“Seb, everyone already knows.”

“Sam didn’t! Fuck, Abs, can’t you think?”

“Okay.” Abigail said flatly. “Let’s make this really clear. I kept your secret when you told me. I only told Haley when I discovered some… related information.”

heated rivalry, hollanov, pwp (explicit), oneshot, 6k, read on AO3 here.

Shane needs advice on good sex, and goes to his roommate Ilya for help.

--

“It’s about me and Sophie.”

Ilya cocked an eyebrow. “Trouble in paradise?”

“No.” Shane huffed defensively. “Well, sort of. It’s the… the sex.”

For a long while, Ilya just watched him in tense silence. Shane couldn’t really read the look on his face, but he suspected it was shock. Then Ilya laughed. “Not good? What, she uses too much teeth or something?”

Teaser:

Shane had been dating Sophie for two months when he decided that something needed to change. 

Specifically, the sex. It was… fine. Tolerable. They were reaching double numbers in attempts, and Shane had managed to come almost every time. Sophie was operating on an approximately 50/50 likelihood, usually when she finished herself off at the end, and they avoided talking about those horrible statistics entirely. 

She wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was pretty, with long legs and nice boobs. She was funny, clever, and just as happy to go out drinking with her friends as she was staying in to watch movies with Shane in amicable silence. She went to all of Shane’s games to cheer him on. 

Shane had considered that they just had bad sexual chemistry. This was pretty routine for him—he’d had the same issue with Rose when they were teenagers, though their dating phase had contained exactly one unfortunate attempt at oral before agreeing to stick to friends. Shane knew that it was a real problem; two people could get along perfectly well but just not work in bed. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. 

Except Shane was starting to suspect that it was his fault, specifically. A few beers was all it took to get Hayden spilling way too much about his sex life with Jackie, and Shane was a good enough friend to hide his grimace behind his ginger beer and pretend to be interested. Like, ten times, Hayden had said once, and Shane had felt his stomach drop. I didn’t even know girls could cum that many times in a row! It was so hot.

Ten times. In a row. In one night. Shane really did worry that he was simply bad at sex. 

And Shane Hollander wasn’t bad at things. When he found something that was difficult, he kept doing it until he was the best he could possibly be. Practice made perfect, and Shane was determined to be perfect. The thing about practice was that it required actually doing the thing, and Shane sort of didn’t want to do sex at all. 

It was just… boring. The orgasm was nice, sure, but he could get that just fine on his own. At least jerking off didn’t require him to be constantly second guessing how much someone else was enjoying it. It didn’t require the effort of thrusting and lifting and pinning down, nor the dexterity of rubbing and fingering, nor the cognitive focus required to dirty talk. 

Add to the fact that Shane had pushed past his general distaste for the act several times and shown no improvement whatsoever… there was only one solution for finding oneself in a rut like that, and it was asking for help. 

Shane was a big enough person to know when it was time to reach out and trust in someone else's seniority. He’d considered a sex therapist first, then almost thrown up at the thought of telling a stranger about how long it took for him to get hard. He’d have asked Rose if their past sexual history didn’t make the topic so awkward, and he didn’t really want to admit to Hayden that he was a bit pathetic in bed. 

stardew valley, sam/sebastian, fluffy romance, 8k, 2/3, read on AO3 here.

A rumour spreads through Pelican Town that Sam and Sebastian are dating. They're not, but Sam would really rather if they were.

--

“I think Abigail was probably right about the two of you. I thought she was being silly because you were too different, but I can see it now.”

Then she turned and walked right out. 

“Wait, Abigail said-? Shit.” Sam had almost chased after her without his drinks. He turned back to grab them both and speed-walked as fast as he could down the corridor without spilling them. “What did Abigail say? Maru-” But she was long gone, her door clicking shut behind her. 

Sam froze outside of it, heart racing. 

Teaser:

The kitchen had been empty when Sam went in, which always managed to strike him as strange. 

He’d say that it was because he was used to a busier house, but that wasn’t exactly accurate. In fact, for a while, there’d been less people in Sam’s house than there was in Sebastian’s. Even now, with Sam’s dad back and haunting the riverbank, the number of occupants in each house was exactly the same. 

The families were different though, and maybe that was the thing that kept Sebastian’s house feeling perpetually empty. Sam’s family were constantly in the kitchen. His mom had always been the housewife type, but after his dad left, she became obsessive. It probably had something to do with having to take on all parental responsibility—to be mom and dad—which made her so intense. She was always cooking or baking something, washing dishes and scrubbing floors, walking Vincent through the homework Penny had set for him while she painstakingly de-iced their freezer. 

Vincent was often in the kitchen, begging for snacks or clinging to their mom’s skirt to beg attention while she worked, and if their dad was home, he was usually lingering awkwardly just outside the kitchen door, listening to his family go about their day without really being a part of it at all. 

The heart of their family was in the kitchen. It was never quiet. 

Sebastian’s family seemed to be the opposite. They practically never interacted. Sam knew that Maru was close with her father and they sometimes worked on science experiments and stuff together, but otherwise, they didn’t talk. They just sequestered themselves in their own private spaces and presumably avoided the kitchen altogether if it had another occupant, like flatmates who disliked each other keeping out of shared spaces. 

As a result, Sam often felt like he was doing something he shouldn’t be when he crept out of Sebastian’s basement room to go searching for snacks. As it was, all he wanted was a hot chocolate, and yet he still felt the urge to check his blindspots. 

A healthy urge, it turned out, because one particular furtive glance revealed that someone had managed to sneak in without his noticing and was weighing up the apples on the table with one hand. 

“Shit.” Sam cursed, leaping a foot in the air. “Uh, hello.”

Maru blinked at him, expression blank. “Hi.”

POJ, fan changyu/xie zheng, explicit, 2/2, 9k, read on AO3 here.

Marriages required consummation. Changyu knew as much. She couldn’t quite put her finger on the age she’d been when she learned the simple fact, but it had been young; when learning from her father how to tend to the pigsty, she’d seen her fair share of matings and births among the animals and sat at her father’s side in the aftermath, curious with the innocence of someone yet to connect the acts with human taboo. 

“And we humans do the same?” She’d mused, awed by the idea. A simple understanding of the world she knew drew such a firm line between human and animal, between dirty and refined, common and civilised. The mounting, rutting, and squealing of two creatures creating new beings to be butchered, sold, and eaten in a year's time seemed an impossible thing to participate in herself. 

Her father had scoffed, arm draped across her narrow shoulders. “But of course. You’ll marry, A-Yu. You’ll find it less strange then.”

He’d gone to no lengths to explain the details and differences. Perhaps he’d thought it wasn’t a father’s job and assumed her mother would fill in the gaps. Or maybe he’d failed to consider the possibility that he’d be dead before the day she completed her bows and she’d be left thumbing through a booklet of sketches that made her face feel hot to look at. 

The drawings were different to what she’d expected, but only in places. Still here, the female on her hands and knees, the male braced behind her, like dogs. She’d chewed at her lip as she examined it—it had always been an impossible thing to judge how an animal felt about the procedure, but Changyu had inferred that humans found the act to be a pleasurable thing. They certainly seemed glad enough to do it as soon as possible, married or not. Even small Lin’an had its brothels, its women known for their open legs and its men for their leering perversion. 

Not one of them had desires for children. It wasn’t, for them, a practical thing, nor the completion of a ritual to solidify a marriage. It was for fun. For enjoyment. Perhaps for money, at least for the women. 

But then, she’d considered, is it fun only for men?

Well, Changyu wasn’t entirely ignorant. She knew her own body and its capabilities. Her father had impressed on her from an early age that knowing what she could and couldn’t do relied on how well she knew every inch of herself, how far each ligament could stretch before it tore or what force she could exert before her strength failed her. A desire to become familiar with each inch of the body which served her had led to plenty of forms of exploration, and perhaps her father had never quite intended to direct her to touch herself like that, but he had still inadvertently set her on the path to it. 

So Changyu was quite aware of how to give herself pleasure. It was her husband that she wasn’t quite so sure about. 

Yan Zheng was a… delicate thing. Though he was healing well with good rest and good food, his injuries lingered and had been reopened or irritated more than once by the bad fortune Changyu had been struggling through. He often needed more sleep than Changyu thought was quite right, and he sometimes found himself short of breath simply from walking too fast. 

She’d brushed off Mrs Zhao’s concerns to start with, saying that Yan Zheng needed more time to heal before they did anything quite so strenuous, but Changyu couldn’t keep denying her curiosity. She’d long since packed away the wedding-red underclothes which had been meticulously crafted for her, but it was her understanding that they’d have been taken off eventually anyway. 

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 80k, complete, read it here.

Teaser:

Castle Byers was in quite the state. 

Steve wasn’t sure what, exactly, had drawn him back out to the woods. It was broad daylight, perfectly peaceful and quiet, not even a breeze to disturb the fallen leaves. No one was missing, everyone was safe, and the Upside Down was gone.  

Hawkins had adapted and reached a new baseline. Some of the families who fled in the aftermath of the earthquake had begun filtering back in, and the town centre was entirely rebuilt. It was summer break, so everyone was visiting home, which meant that Steve and El had experienced several weeks worth of welcome home parties with varying levels of alcohol involved.  

Eddie was just beginning to forgive him. They still slept every night with their hands resting on the other’s chest, just to make sure it was still rising with every breath, and they spent so much time glued to each other’s sides that Hopper had teasingly offered to help pick the lock on the invisible handcuffs they’d gotten stuck in. Even the kids seemed happy they were back, even if Steve had been subjected to enough incredibly painful and honest conversations to leave him wrung out with guilt, and Dustin had slept on their couch for a week just because he’d been as nervous as Eddie that he’d wake up and Steve would be gone. Dustin was back in his bed now, though, and Steve was exactly where he’d promised to stay.  

In other words, everything was swell. Steve had never been so at peace with his life. He was reunited with the man he loved, with his family, and he was keeping in contact with his mom and dad. He was working as a baseball coach for Derek’s little league team so he and Eddie could save up the money to move out to Indy. The future was opening out in front of him and Steve wasn’t alone.  

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 80k, 23/24, read it here.

Teaser:

“Home sweet home.”

The Hawkins sign had been sprayed over with red paint to read ‘Hell’. They were almost two years out from the day they’d left and yet it seemed no one had come out to clean up.  

Steve wondered if it had been so easily forgotten. People adapted quickly, even in the face of utter chaos, and it wasn’t beyond the realm of reality to think that the absence of the monsters and the military had turned Hawkins back into the sort of place which didn’t have to worry about graffiti.  

“Apt.” El commented, barely glancing up from the newspaper in her hands.  

Things had been quiet in Milwaukee for eighteen months. Steve had lived a number of them on the edge of his seat, waiting for the first black and shiny SUV to pull up on the driveway, or to be woken by flashlights and rifle muzzles in the dead of night.  

He got used to taking odd jobs for spare cash, considering Freddy Catteno was legally dead and thus not permitted to be employed, which he spent on the bare necessities, unasked-for rent, and phone calls.  

He called what felt like a hundred numbers until the ground felt steady beneath his feet again. The paranoid part of his mind which had developed some time around the first occasion he came face to face with a Demogorgon still considered their return to be a risky one, but Steve wasn’t sure how much safer they were going to get.  

Farmers’ fields blossomed into buildings as they wove through the outskirts of town, heading straight for Hopper’s cabin. Steve could see El’s fingers drumming an uneven pattern on her thigh.  

She’d been restless to start with. Both of them had gotten used to keeping on the move, and the busyness of it all had kept their minds off of what they were leaving behind. When life was less hectic, though, the homesickness crept in to replace it.  

Eventually, El took up yoga. Steve’s mom did at least an hour of it a day, usually after work, and El had gotten curious enough to give it a go. She said it wasn’t unlike the meditation she did to locate people. Apparently she found it grounding.  

Steve, on the other hand, had learned that he hated yoga.  

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 80k, 22/24, read it here.

Teaser:

Milwaukee was unusually mild for December. Steve supposed he’d expected—maybe even hoped for—some snow, and was bitterly disappointed to find out that the wind was cold and dry instead. 

It had been a hell of a journey. He and El had discovered a whole host of petty crimes which were significantly easier with the benefit of psychic powers. Shoplifting was made less nerve-wracking with El as a co-conspirator, busy snapping the wires on CCTV cameras and knocking over shelving racks to distract potential onlookers. With the hotwiring knowledge Steve had gleaned from Eddie and the ability to pop a car lock from outside without touching it, grand theft auto became a cake walk. They pickpocketed cash from strangers in designer clothes without even touching them and began a long road trip consisting of eating in tiny roadside diners and napping in the back seat of a borrowed car which was promptly dumped and replaced at the first opportunity.  

Steve shaved his hair and El bleached hers. They found lens-less glasses and baseball caps to cover their faces, dotting concealer onto the bruises and cuts which could be used to identify them.  

They talked a lot. Not about Hawkins or the people left behind there, because neither of them could really bear it, but other things. El told him about killing the ‘bad men’ at Hawkins Middle School all those years ago, and the lives she’d taken in between. Her kill count outscored Steve by miles, enough to make him feel a little pathetic about being so freaked out over Kay, but El was always kind about it.  

It helped. He woke up abruptly in the middle of the night haunted by the memory of how her heart had felt stuttering to a stop beneath his hands. It was proof that his ‘father’ had been right, that Steve was just as destined to be a killer as Danny Harrington had promised. The thought made him feel dirty and sick.  

But El talked about it in neutral tones, free equally from shame and from joy. She explained the guilt she’d felt, then the anger and injustice, then the self-disgust. She said it hadn’t been fun or good even once, but that she’d come to terms with it. There was peace in her voice when she recounted it.  

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 80k, 21/24, read it here.

Teaser:

While wrapped up in the stress of hustling twelve small children through apparently endless woods, Steve had happily attributed the loud, echoing bangs to the pound of his own heart in his chest. Sure, Vecna had dodged Kali’s attack and sure, he was angry and dangerous and their plan was totally ruined, but Steve was good under pressure. He knew how to keep an optimistic outlook in the heat of the fight because it was the only thing that kept him thinking quick and sharp. There was always another path to take. 

Right now, they were relying on Max’s intel about the safety of the caves. Holly commanded her army of middle schoolers with cool confidence in a way that was half Max and half Mike; she was a party leader in her own right, and the bite of her instructions kept everyone moving fast and hard.  

She was just about the age that El had been when Steve first met her. That was strange to think.  

Steve could feel Henry’s burning rage, the way it slammed around the mindscape like tsunami waves levelling a city. When he was a kid, wasting time looking busy in the library so he wouldn’t have to attend his detention for missing homework, he’d read a book on natural disasters.  

He’d read about a volcanic eruption somewhere in ancient history where super-heated plumes of black ash and hot rock had swallowed an entire village. Steve recalled the vivid way they’d described it, the way the heat had suffocated the trapped civilians, the way the ash and smoke had come down hard and heavy enough to collapse roofs onto those hiding within. They’d been consumed by it, encased in it; centuries later, when they prised the bodies from the wreckage, they seemed like statues hewn from clay, with only their withered skeletons left in the hollow insides. Steve could empathise, now.  

Henry’s anger seemed dense enough to devastate him. Steve could hardly blink for it. He could feel the heat of it against his skin, felt blinded by it, drowned in it. It was overwhelming enough to make him feel nauseous but the need to keep moving, to get the kids somewhere safe where Henry couldn’t reach them, overpowered the need to flee.  

There was a series of consecutive loud pops like gunfire, six total, then a wailing scream. Steve paid no attention whatsoever until the noise changed, the slam of metal on glass followed by a creaking, breaking sound. El skidded to a halt, a plume of dead leaves fluttering through the air.  

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 76k, 20/24, read it here.

Teaser:

“This is a bad idea. This is such a stupid idea.”

Steve conceded that he wasn’t known for his bright ideas in the first place—he was the reason the beamer was lodged in an Upside Down flesh wall and they were all trapped in the first place—but he was not convinced by Dustin’s shitty plan either way.  

Everything went to hell. Steve supposed thirty-six mostly-successful Crawls necessitated a massive crisis, and that the chaos had been inevitable. That didn’t mean he was happy about it.  

The opposite, in fact. Hopper and El were also in the Upside Down, but on the other end of town, and now Steve, Nancy, Jonathan, Eddie, and Dustin were stuck chasing some fucking demogorgon. Steve would have been less frustrated by this turn of events if they weren’t doing something incredibly reckless based on a movie that Steve barely even remembered.  

He remembered the teddy bears. He remembered them throwing… logs… at… white people? It was hazy. Dustin had sold a big story about getting inside of an energy shield and destroying its generator, but that was all speculation and they weren’t actually living in Star Wars.  

More importantly, perhaps the greatest flaw of the whole plan, was that it required leaving the location that they’d specifically been told to stay at so that they could regroup with Hopper. Even if Dustin’s plan had had some weight to it—which it didn’t—it could still surely wait until Hopper and El had heard it.  

But no. Instead, they were making their way to Hawkins Lab, aka Steve’s least favourite place in Hawkins, in search of something that probably didn’t exist.  

“Yes! Thank you! Steve!” Dustin sassed, eyes on his compass. The kid was in a weird mood. Sure, he was always a little jerk, and if he wasn’t making some sarcastic, half-insulting joke then he was staring wide-eyed at Steve like he couldn’t fathom someone being quite so slow.  

But this was a different ordeal. He’d gotten into a fight. No matter how much he tried to tell Steve otherwise, that he’d fallen off his bike and bust his nose, Steve knew what a face looked like when it had been punched. Someone had socked him, hard and more than once. Why he was lying about it, Steve couldn’t guess, but it bothered him.  

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 76k, 19/24, read it here.

Teaser:

Steve wasn’t sure when, exactly, The Squawk had become the de facto hangout for half of his friendship group, but he seriously wished it hadn’t. His job took up enough brain power as it was, constantly having to keep track of every dumb sound effect and when Robin wanted it played, but being constantly distracted by the sound of giggling and shouting outside of the sound booth was enough to make him want to tear his hair out. 

He balled up the packaging of that morning’s breakfast sandwich and eased the door open enough for him to hurl it at the back of Billy’s head; he closed it before Billy had the chance to curse him out for it.  

Robin gave him a filthy look, never once pausing in her spiel, so he hauled ass back over to the console and got back to work.  

The pay for running W.S.Q.K was minimal to such an extent that it may as well have not existed. Radio restrictions meant they couldn’t broadcast anywhere outside of Hawkins and they weren’t particularly popular among the masses. Fortunately for them, the job perfectly served their greater mission; hunting Vecna.  

Now that the MAC-Z was set up in the remains of the library and the military presence in Hawkins was unavoidable, they’d needed to develop a new way to stay involved with the chaos without giving themselves away. The Squawk was an ideal way to share information quickly and covertly—not to mention pretty much the only way to pass the time anymore—and the location of the building was isolated, private.  

They’d taken over the abandoned location and made it the perfect base, even outfitted with a secret basement full of weapons and supplies ready for if the worst was to pass. Which was probably part of what kept people hanging out there. The Squawk felt safe when nowhere else in Hawkins did.  

Even if only Robin was running the radio, with Steve as her trusty assistant, The Squawk was rarely empty.  

Steve knew that Eddie was sick of being cooped up there, but Hawkins seemed to have come to the conclusion that even if he hadn’t killed Chrissy and the others, he was still a devil-worshipper, which was somehow a worse crime. The kids were particularly diligent in repping the Hellfire brand, which was constantly getting them, and especially Dustin, in heaps of trouble. Meanwhile, Eddie got heckled everywhere he went and couldn’t even get an interview, nevermind a job.  

It was driving him crazy. He wanted so badly to try and support his uncle, desperate to get him out of the old emergency shelters and into a real house, but his hands were tied. Wayne swore that the apartment suited him just fine, that he was a grown man who could look after himself, but Steve could see how it nettled Eddie anyway.  

They were all going a bit stir crazy, really. There was a difference between being in Hawkins and being stuck in Hawkins, and it was getting to all of them. Feeling constantly surveilled, having no escape, and having to play dumb about the truth of what was happening was enough to drive anybody mad, but the fact that they were running covert recon operations every time the military went into the Upside Down was just the icing on the cake.  

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 76k, 18/24, read it here.

Teaser:

The crowds seemed to go on for miles in every direction, and if Steve let his focus wander for even a second, he’d lose sight of one of the kids in a blink. 

He didn’t remember his own graduation particularly well, mostly because he’d been tragically alone and wishing he was anywhere but on a stage full of people who, at best, didn’t give a shit about him. Part of it had been bad timing—Joyce had been working, Dustin had left for summer camp, and Steve’s parents had only called him a week late to ask if they’d done the ceremony yet or not. Which was fine, because he hadn’t wanted them there at all.  

People had gotten together afterwards for a more personal celebration, where he’d been able to personally thank Nancy for being his de facto tutor, and he’d gotten his round of applause and compliments sparsely decorated with surprise that he’d managed to graduate on his first try.  

But this year they were celebrating three graduates. Or, technically two, because the issue of whether Jonathan was getting his diploma from Cali or Hawkins was still under negotiation as a result of his… unexpected relocation. The afterparty would be dedicated to him nonetheless.  

Steve had to keep grabbing at Mike so he wouldn’t dart off towards the stage, and Dustin and Lucas had spotted a food table and were presently arguing who could eat the most from it before they got kicked out. 

Mike spotted the rapidly approaching entourage of Byers’ before Steve did, and sprung off to give Will a hug before Steve could drag him back into arms reach. He tangled one hand into the handle of Dustin’s backpack for security and used his free arm to greet Joyce with a hug; she patted his back reassuringly.  

“They’ll be fine.” She shouted over the din. “Relax a little!” 

“They’re escape artists!” He complained. Dustin was already trying to struggle out of his backpack straps, so Steve grasped his sleeve instead.  

Amused, Joyce patted his cheek. “I’ll keep an eye. Where’s your friend?” 

“Billy? Looking for our seats.” Steve rocked up on his toes, peering over the crowd. It wasn’t hard to spot Billy—he was tall enough. He gestured in Billy’s direction, and Joyce quickly rallied the kids immediately around them to start heading that way. Steve was just encouraging Will and Mike to squeeze through a narrow gap in the crowd when a hand tapped his shoulder.  

Carol was decked out in formalwear, but her expression was unhappy. Steve hadn’t carried a conversation with her in over a year. When Billy rolled into town, Carol and Tommy were more than happy to forget about Steve to fawn over the new guy instead. By the time Billy had started repairing his relationship with Max and spending time bothering Steve, he’d also fallen from grace in their eyes.  

Billy hadn’t attended their graduation, opting to get his diploma in the mail, and Steve had rushed through the ceremony and bolted the moment his diploma was in his hands, so he’d never stopped to catch up with his old friends.  

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 76k, 17/24, read it here.

Teaser:

Steve couldn’t sleep. It didn’t matter that the end of the world was facing him down. It didn’t matter that everyone else in the campervan was already knocked out and snoring. His head, still battered by the chaos of the past few days, was now stuffed full of so much information that he felt like throwing up. 

The kids had collapsed in a heap on the couches at the back of the van, all pretty much on top of each other. Nancy had won the driver's seat and was snoring softly against the window with her feet kicked up on the dash. Robin and Billy had enacted a physical fight over the passenger seat which had culminated in the two of them sharing, their backs to each other as they glared petulantly in opposite directions. Billy might have been physically stronger, but Robin was craftier and she fought dirty; they’d been equally matched.  

Steve and Eddie had both been lucky enough to get blankets laid out on the floor, half tucked under fold-out tables and crushed up against the bathroom door, but Eddie had curled up like a cat and knocked out within five minutes, leaving Steve entirely by his lonesome.  

He leaned against the back of the passenger seat, knees pulled up in front of him, and studied the peaceful, dark campervan unseeingly.  

Vecna was Henry Creel was 001. Steve had surely known him, but he couldn’t remember. He could remember what P- Brenner had made him do, and even if that particular recollection had ended with Robin only barely talking him down from a panic attack in the Upside Down Wheeler House, he couldn’t help but be glad to have that fragment back and safe in his mind.  

They only knew all of this because of the vision he’d given Nancy, which had featured Hawkins being split into fragments, not to mention the deaths of all of her family members. If anyone was asked, they’d say that Steve had witnessed the exact same thing.  

They’d just be wrong. Steve had been right in front of Nancy when Vecna took over, so he’d jumped into the illusion without hesitation. Except Vecna had been prepared that time; Steve had played the same trick once before, and he wasn’t interested in letting it happen again. He’d separated the two of them immediately.  

But Steve didn’t know how to tell the others what he’d seen. It didn’t matter. It was irrelevant to their mission and it wouldn’t help them defeat Vecna. It was simply fortunate that Nancy had been in such a rush to tell them what she’d seen that people only thought to ask Steve about it afterwards. That was how he’d gotten away with the lie.  

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 76k, 16/24, read it here.

Teaser:

Steve didn’t mind being the guy rowing the boat, but he might have appreciated it more if he wasn’t also being their Human Gate Detector. Over his shoulder, he saw the four silhouettes of the kids and Billy, who had been forcibly left behind because Steve refused to be the babysitter again, and it always ended up being one of them. Besides, Billy had charmed the pants off of everyone’s parents with ease; he could get them to believe anything. 

He also couldn’t sense the Upside Down, which left him to make sure the kids didn’t get themselves killed. And Steve finally got to be part of the main action.  

“What’s the plan with the gate, anyway?” 

“Check it’s there, first of all.” Nancy replied, peering over the edge of the boat and into the black water below, as if there might be something to see. “We can confirm our theory.” 

“And figure out its size, if we can. If Vecna is hiding in there, we might be able to get in that way.” Robin suggested. She sprawled out across the boat, getting firmly in Steve’s way. He shoved an errant limb out of the way and continued rowing.  

“We’re going to swim to the bottom of the lake for it?” Nancy asked sceptically, at the same time that Eddie squeaked, “We’re going in?” 

“We can’t go in without a plan.” Steve reminded them all. “And it’s definitely there.” 

He could feel it radiating up through the water, no different to the feeling of walking the halls of Hawkins Lab. If anything, it was perhaps more… unstable, more ragged. This was a hurriedly, randomly torn-open gate, not the one being constantly monitored and controlled by a team of military scientists. It seemed significant enough in size, too, but he couldn’t make a solid judgement without seeing it himself.  

So, as the icy feel of it reached its apex and he was certain it was directly below him, Steve set the oar aside and stood, hooking his fingers into the hem of his sweater. “It’s right below us.” He explained, tossing his sweater at Robin’s face just to piss her off. “I can take a look.” 

“Steve, sit down.” Nancy snapped, stealing the sweater from Robin’s grip to hurl it at Steve again. He batted it away petulantly. “It’s too dangerous.” 

“Yeah, and listen, I’m not exactly up to date on your freaky abilities, but can’t you just… sense how big it is?” 

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 76k, 15/24, read it here.

Teaser:

Every single year, Steve ended up shocked when the Upside Down came back to screw them over. Every single year, he thought to himself, well, I should have expected this. 

This time, the chaos had selected Eddie Munson to orbit around. It wasn’t that Steve had really believed that Munson had killed anyone, but rather that he’d been hopeful, because the alternative was that something supernatural was happening, and Steve was so tired of being the first responder to that kind of bullshit.  

But his luck was gone. Dustin was convinced enough that Eddie was innocent to get them all roped into proving it, which was how Steve nearly got his throat slit in the boathouse of a local pothead. Now, they were facing the fact that Eddie wasn’t to blame, but rather an invisible figure with the power to snap limbs and pop out eyes was slowly massacring its way through the teen population of Hawkins and Max was next on the chopping block.  

Everyone was at the end of their tether. Steve felt nervous every time he took his eyes off of her. Lucas and Billy perpetually appeared seconds from throwing up and spent the vast majority of their time either hanging over Max’s shoulders like guard dogs or staring at her miserably from across the room.  

It was driving Max insane which meant that despite the fact that Steve also wanted to smuggle her away somewhere that she couldn’t be found by this Vecna guy, he had to be the one advocating for her chance to breathe.  

He’d physically slammed Billy back into the car head first just to keep him from marching up the hill to bother Max when Steve could see her quietly reading to Heather Holloway’s headstone, and Lucas was a ball of nervous energy where he sat perched on the beamer’s trunk. Steve wasn’t happy about babysitting, not least when the herd of troublesome kids within his care included Billy, but the man in question had flat out refused to try and help a different team until they knew Max was in the clear.  

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 76k, 14/24, read it here.

Teaser:

Objectively, Steve didn’t mind horror movies. He didn’t particularly enjoy them, nor did he find them particularly scary. In his experience, he’d appreciated them for what they offered, which was always the opportunity for a girl to get frightened and cuddle up against him, clinging to him for support and hiding her face in his arm at the movie theatre. 

It seemed like decades had passed since Steve last watched one. There weren’t really any girls in his life that he felt the need to impress with his bravery and stoicness anymore.  

Add to that the fact that he’d lived through several horror movies, experiencing at least one a year for the past three years, they’d lost a lot of their shine. It was simply unfortunate that no one else seemed to share that opinion.  

Now that Steve’s access to a massive house and modern TV was officially on a time limit, the kids were taking every single opportunity to host sleepovers there. Frankly, Steve wondered if the Wheelers had forgotten what their son looked like. He seemed to spend more time in Steve’s living room than anywhere else.  

On the other hand, they were probably glad that Party hangouts were no longer in their basement.  

Steve was squished onto the couch between Dustin and Mike, with Lucas wrapped around one of his legs. Dustin and Lucas had already given up the confident facade, both blatantly terrified, but Mike was working hard at pretending to be wholly unruffled. If it wasn’t for the tight fist wound into Steve’s shirt, he might have gotten away with it, too.  

Robin and Max were sitting in front of the TV, ramrod straight as they stared at the screen in adoration and wonder. They’d ganged up to bully the other kids into watching something R-rated and scary; the boys had wanted to watch some kids movie for ‘nostalgia’. However, their egos couldn’t handle being bruised by admitting they didn’t want to watch the horror movie because it was too scary, so they were forced to bow down to the superior manipulation skills of the ladies.  

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 76k, 13/24, read it here.

Teaser:

It was dark inside, so Steve slipped the door open without knocking. As he poked his head into the dimness, he saw the faint silhouette of someone sleeping in a chair at the bedside, as expected. 

Nancy must have heard the door creek open, as she stood to welcome him in, taking the bag from his hand as he carefully pressed the door shut as quietly as possible.  

“Still here?” He whispered as she pulled a can of soda out, squinting at the brand name. “She said she’d go home last night.” 

“No dice.” Nancy seemed satisfied. She handed the back back, and he went to drape it over the edge of the bed frame.  

Back at the mall, he hadn’t even noticed that Billy wasn’t with them anymore until he saw Heather Holloway hit the floor. Steve had nearly hurled himself over the bannister when he saw the tall figure standing between the limp heap of El’s body and the towering monster of the Mindflayer.  

Max had screamed, there’d been a splash of blood on the white tile floor, and then Steve had been practically flying down the frozen escalators, gathering Max up in his arms as she wailed and begged, to no avail.  

Only when El managed to crawl over and take his place did Steve think to press his hands to the gory, gnarly hole in Billy’s chest. By then, his eyes had already been glassy and dead.  

The doctors had called it nothing short of a miracle that they’d been able to get his heart beating again, but even now, after a hundred surgeries, skin grafts, and weeks of a coma, if there wasn’t a steady and constant beeping sound to prove the opposite, Steve would have thought he was dead.  

Perhaps it was the lighting, but he looked grey and fragile. Billy was wasting away ever so slowly, barely any sign of recovery in his sallow skin, but Max couldn’t be made to leave the hospital room. In the faint light from the window, the curtains drawn tight, he could make out the greasy cast on her hair. It had been days.  

Nancy had cupped her hand over the top of her can to muffle the sound, but the pop and hiss of the tab still drew Steve’s attention. She looked exhausted, too.  

They’d been working on a cycle of keeping an eye on both Billy and Max. Technically, Nancy was meant to be there until the evening when Robin would arrive, but they’d had to shuffle the times around a bit so Nancy could attend an interview. Steve had a few hours of supervision time before Robin was due. 

“Jonathan’s bringing El in for PT in the evening.” Nancy whispered, slinging her bag over one shoulder. “See if you can get her to go home with them. She needs a proper night's sleep.” 

AO3, Experiment!Steve Harrington, 76k, 12/24, read it here.

Teaser:

When Steve was fifteen, Hawkins High held a talent show. He’d signed up with a couple of guys from the swim team. They’d done something flashy and stupid; Steve seemed to recall a lot of walking on his hands and cartwheels. It had mostly been an excuse to show off how athletic they were, but he’d still had the time of his life just because it was an opportunity to be a bit silly for a change. 

That was the main thing he’d remembered, but he hadn’t forgotten the few musical talents. The school band got an obligatory spot. There was also some edgy metal group with a name he couldn’t quite remember anymore. Then there’d been Tammy Thompson.  

She’d been pretty, sure, with her hair done up in tight curls and her baby-pink eyeshadow bright enough to be seen from the back of the bleachers. Steve had genuinely been a little enamoured until she started singing.  

Not everyone could be talented. God knew Steve wasn’t one for belting out ballads. But Tammy Thomson’s talent was just… unusual. She had the innate ability to miss every single note.  

Every time he tried to imagine a little baby Robin sat in the crowd, stuffed into the stodgy pseudo-military uniform of the brass band, clarinet clamped in her hands, gazing starry eyed at the stage as the auditorium was flooded with the Muppet-esque dulcet tones of Tammy Thompson, he burst out into giggles again.  

Robin’s hand was warm beneath his. She was smiling too, her eyes bloodshot but finally clear again. Her calf pressed to his shoulder, his knee at her hip. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so comfortable with someone’s natural tactileness. Not since Nancy, at least.  

Steve suspected it was a result of the massive bonding ability of experiencing awful trauma side by side, but the only thing he could think of when he looked at her was I love you.  

Instead, he cleared his throat. “I’ve thought about it, you know.” 

“Tammy Thompson?” Robin asked, a hint of jealousy in her voice.  

He scoffed. “No. About… guys.” 

Robin cocked an eyebrow at him.  

When Steve said he’d thought about it, he more so meant that he’d avoided it as carefully as possible. He’d just about accepted that the specific rush of butterfly nerves he’d gotten the first one or two times Billy had looked at him was probably a budding crush. It had dampened quickly, and by the time they’d started developing a friendship, it had withered entirely.