𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐞𝐛𝐮𝐠

You lived in absolutes, in extremities sharpened by probabilities where every outcome measured against loss, grief and love.

Love most of all.

You had never been optimistic about it. The second something became important enough to lose, your mind immediately began preparing for the damage, so when you and Steve happened, when whatever existed between you stopped being casual and started surviving things that should have destroyed it, your thoughts turned vicious toward yourself. 

You questioned every moment of it, every stretch of peace, explaining it away with the town, with trauma and proximity, with the fact that Hawkins had a way of welding people together under pressure until they could not tell the difference between dependence and devotion.

You told yourself it was because you had never seen love done right. Every example you had ever known seemed to rot eventually, becoming bitter, painful or cruel once it settled long enough to harden into permanence. From where you stood, love ruined people, it hollowed them out and left them recognizable only in pieces. You had built your entire life around avoiding that fate, around never needing anyone enough for them to destroy you if they left.

Hyper independence had become religion to you and Steve fought against that without even trying.

The longer your relationship lasted, the more unbearable that realization became since it survived everything thrown at it. Near death, bloodshed, monsters, fear and nights where either of you could have disappeared into the dark and never come back. It stayed standing anyway, stubborn, warm and terrifyingly steady but as long as it stayed exactly what it was, you could breathe through it. As long as nobody touched it, labeled it or pushed it toward something bigger, you could pretend you were still in control but the second the water shifted beneath the boat, the second the future became something tangible instead of implied, bile climbed your throat because the Upside Down had been constant too.

You had spent the entire afternoon preparing for the crawl. Weapons spread across tables, maps pinned down under impatient hands, everyone talking over each other inside the Squawk while tension sat thick in the room like smoke. This time you were going with Hopper. Nobody argued with the choice because every crawl into the Upside Down made the odds worse, every mission sharpening that ugly, unavoidable thought sitting in the back of everybody’s mind.

What if this was the one somebody did not come back from?

By the time the sun began sinking low enough to stain the fields gold and copper, you and Steve slipped outside together, escaping the suffocating planning and worried glances for a little while. The air smelled like dirt and drying grass, warm from the heat of the day but cooling quickly as evening settled over Hawkins.

You watched Steve walk a few steps ahead of you through the field before jogging lightly to catch up. “You think this is it?” you asked.

He glanced over at you, slowing his pace. “That you find Vecna tonight?”

You nodded once.

“The sooner we do,” he said carefully, “the sooner everything goes back to normal.” A grin tugged faintly at his mouth then, teasing something softer into his voice. “We’ll go back to our boring lives…You might actually have to get serious about getting a job.”

You let out a quiet laugh through your nose. “Don’t even know what I’d do with all that safety and time.” Your eyes drifted across the endless stretch of fields around you, the sunset catching along the horizon in bruised shades of orange and pink. “I barely remember what Hawkins was like before all this. Might actually get really boring.”

“We don’t have to stay here,” he said.

There was something careful hidden underneath the words, something almost restrained.

You looked at him sideways. “So what? We escape in one of those shitty getaway cars with the cans dragging behind it and a ‘just married’ sign taped to the back?”

Your tone stayed light, joking but Steve’s expression changed in a way that made your stomach immediately tighten.

He looked at you too long and then he sighed, so quiet you almost missed it but there was relief in it somehow, relief at finally standing near the thing he had clearly been carrying around for a long time.

The look on his face hit you like cold water. He looked hopeful…hopelessly in love.

Your body reacted before your thoughts did. You took a step back instinctively as Steve shook his head gently, almost like he thought moving too fast would scare you off.

“No,” you breathed, pulse beginning to pound hard enough to make your chest ache. Your stomach dropped violently as his stare remained unchanged. “N-no,” you repeated, softer this time, shaking your head.

“You can’t deny something that’s already yours.”

The words landed hard, making your throat tighten. You backed away again while he moved forward slowly, carefully, like approaching something wounded.

You pointed toward the ground between you both as if he had physically contaminated the space with it, with futures, promises and permanence, with things that never lasted for anybody around you no matter how badly they wanted them to.

“You picked a fucked up moment, Steven.”

“We need to make sense of this before you go down there,” he insisted, voice roughening around the edges. God, he was practically begging now. “We’ve had three good years,” he said as he stepped closer again, eyes fixed on yours as if he could hold you there through sheer will alone. “And it’s time we call it what it is.”

You kept shaking your head before you even realized you were doing it, the word ‘no’ falling from your mouth over and over while your feet kept carrying you backward through the field.

“I love you and I have for a long time and you need to hear it.” His voice trembled through the confession even while every word stayed painfully clear, intention unwavering despite the fear cracking underneath it. “I’ve tried to show you and you wouldn’t let me, which is fine, but before you go, before whatever happens down there is out of our hands, I need you to give me an answer because I just can’t…” He stopped for a second, swallowing hard enough for you to see it in his throat. “I can’t keep going like this.”

“Steve, please don’t,” you begged quietly.

But he kept going anyway, because this had clearly been clawing at him for too long to stop now.

“I learned what you couldn’t take and I stopped doing it.” His eyes stayed fixed on yours desperately, trying to hold you still long enough to finally understand him. “And I’m happy I did. It’s fine. And I waited, and I never complained because I...” He broke off suddenly, his expression twisting as his eyes glossed over. “You know, I figured you’d love me.”

The words hit you harder than anything else had.

You kept shaking your head softly, almost unconsciously, hoping he would see the panic written all over your face and stop before either of you said something irreversible.

Instead his voice got louder, never yelling but definitely fuller now, wounded and spilling out too fast to pull back. He looked away from you for the first time, gaze drifting across the field as if he could not bear watching your reaction anymore. It was obvious he was making this part up as he went along, fumbling through raw honesty without a plan, just like the two of you had stumbled through the relationship itself.

“And I realize maybe I messed up somewhere,” he said roughly. “Maybe I fucked the timing completely. Maybe I’m not this changed man everybody keeps saying I am...”

“No,” you cut in, stepping toward him to make him finally look back at you. “Yes, you are.”

Your voice cracked with urgency because none of this changed the fact that he deserved it. He deserved someone capable of holding what he offered without trembling underneath the weight of it.

“You’ve grown into an amazing man,” you said, forcing the words through the tightness in your throat. “Too good for me, and I’m grateful for all of these years and I’m so proud of you.” Emotion climbed too fast into your chest, choking the next sentence apart as soon as it left your mouth. “But I just...” You inhaled shakily. “This isn’t something I know how to keep. I don’t know why.” You shook your head harder, frustrated tears beginning to blur your vision.

“You can’t?” he echoed quietly, brows pulling together.

“No,” you breathed. Then you blinked quickly and kept talking before he could interrupt again, before you lost the nerve to keep hurting him.

“You should be with someone who can actually handle normal life when this is over. Someone who doesn’t flinch every time they’re shown affection and actually knows what to do with it.” Your voice shook despite how hard you tried to steady it. “I’m awkward, and I don’t even understand why we didn’t go wrong already when I’ve been proven over and over again that I ruin things. And I won’t drag you with me past this.” You motioned vaguely around you, toward Hawkins, toward the disaster your lives had become and the rot underneath everything.

“I love you, Y/n,” Steve said in the middle of your spiraling but hearing it again only made your panic sharpen.

“And we’d constantly fight over stupid shit like how I drive your car,” you continued breathlessly, motioning toward the distant shape of it sitting near the road. “We can’t help it even now.” You laughed once, hollow and humorless before your face crumpled again. “You’d end up hating how skeptical I am about everything, and I’d spend every day questioning what you could possibly see in me, and we’d become miserable, Steve. We’d wish we left it trapped here, down there with the demogorgons and all the rest of it, and everything would turn catastrophic.”

The silence afterward stretched painfully long. Only then did you realize Steve was no longer looking at you.

His eyes had dropped toward the ground, jaw tight like he was blaming the dirt beneath his feet, blaming the existence of the Upside Down itself for carving this fear into you so deeply that even love sounded like catastrophe.

“Anything else?” he asked finally. His voice was so quiet you barely heard him.

You bit the inside of your cheek until it hurt before shaking your head. “No. No, nothing else.”

“Alright.” He nodded once, firm and restrained, then turned back toward the Squawk.

The movement made your stomach plunge so violently it almost hurt. You reached for him instinctively. “Except that...”

Steve stopped and turned back toward you again, giving you a small nod to continue.

You froze for a second.

“Steve,” you started weakly, “I don’t think I’ll ever understand how to hold what you tried to give me. This...” You gestured helplessly between you both. “This is safer. Messing it up fatally won’t ruin me this way.”

“I think you’re wrong about that, Y/n,” he replied immediately, voice firm again despite how wrecked he looked.

“I don’t...”

“I think you will find a way,” he interrupted softly. “You’ll find somebody worth risking your heart for, and you’ll love them, and you’ll live and die for them because that’s your way.” His expression tightened painfully as he forced out the rest. “And you will.” He paused. “And I’ll watch.”

You stood there and watched Steve walk away from you while your own feet stayed rooted to the ground. Every instinct in your body screamed to stop him but wanting that and knowing how were two entirely different things and somewhere in the middle of your fear and selfishness you realized you had run out of words to justify yourself with. The reasoning that had always protected you suddenly sounded thin and desperate in your own head.

Still, you let him go.

You kept your eyes lowered when you walked back inside the Squawk, forcing yourself into focus as everybody geared up around you. You concentrated on the plan, on weapons, on timing and routes. You promised Hopper you were fine, focused and ready to go, which were the same lies that had carried you straight toward your own ruin.

You were reckless during the crawl, in small terrible ways that added up fast. 

You made decisions that sent adrenaline crashing through your body every few minutes just so you could feel something other than the hollow ache Steve had left behind. It all blurred together quickly after that, dark tunnels of vines, spores and rotting air while demogorgons chased close enough behind you to hear their shrieks echoing against the trees.

You had done this a thousand times before and that was probably the problem.

Your weapon slipped from your grasp while you were running and instead of leaving it behind, instead of following Hopper toward safety like you were supposed to, you slowed down. 

You turned back and tried to outsmart it, tried to buy Hopper more time to get ahead…and failed.

The hit came hard and fast, the force of it throwing you violently backward into the trunk of a tree. Pain exploded through your skull the second your head cracked against the bark. Through blurred, tear-filled vision you barely managed to see Hopper firing wildly, injuring the creature enough to force it retreating into the dark.

After that, consciousness came and went in fragments. You felt hands dragging you, voices yelling your name, blood running warm down the side of your face and the suffocating smell of the Upside Down clinging to your lungs.

When you finally forced your eyes open again, you were inside a house you did not recognize, laid out in some dim ruined room overtaken by thick crawling vines spreading across the walls and ceiling.

Hopper’s voice echoed loudly through the haze wrapped around your head as consciousness slowly dragged itself back into place. Your vision swam in and out of focus while you blinked at the ceiling above you, vines twisting across it like veins and watched him pace hurriedly through the room with a walkie talkie clutched tightly in his hand.

He had called in the accident the second you were dragged back to safety.

Steve, reckless in the exact way Steve always was when it came to you, had not hesitated for even a second after hearing Hopper’s voice break over the radio. He had driven straight through the newly opened gate with Nancy, Jonathan and Dustin, tracking a wounded demogorgon deeper into the Upside Down in hopes it would lead them to you. The more Hopper explained what happened, the harder Steve pressed down on the gas pedal, panic swallowing every other thought in his head until even your rejection disappeared beneath the need to reach you.

Now all of them were somewhere out there searching blindly while communication crackled in and out around the interference poisoning the air.

“Steve?” you called weakly, your voice scraping painfully against your throat as you tried pushing yourself upright. The second you moved, agony split through your skull.

Hopper immediately dropped the walkie onto the nearby table and rushed toward you.

“Hey, kiddo, hey.” His hands carefully steadied your shoulders before you could sit fully upright. “Lay back down. You hit your head pretty bad.”

Your fingers instinctively rose toward the throbbing ache near your temple. When you pulled your hand back down, blood stained your fingertips dark.

“It stopped bleeding,” Hopper assured quickly when your breathing shifted unevenly. “But you need to stay down. Help’s coming.”

He guided you gently back against the mattress and this time you let him. Your entire body felt weak and heavy, exhaustion pressing into your bones while pain pulsed behind your eyes.

“I messed up,” you rasped.

Hopper shook his head immediately, even though both of you knew you had. You had broken formation, abandoned the plan and nearly gotten yourself killed. Still, his expression softened instead of hardening.

“We don’t gotta talk about it right now.”

“With Steve,” you corrected shakily, tears burning at the corners of your eyes. “I was too quick turning him down.”

Hopper blinked slowly before exhaling through his nose and lowering himself into the chair beside the bed.

Truthfully, he had guessed as much the second you and Steve walked back into the Squawk earlier that evening. The both of you had looked devastated in entirely different ways and Hopper knew heartbreak well enough to recognize it immediately. He understood now why Steve had seemed ready to tear the world apart before driving into the Upside Down after hearing your name over the radio. Hopper had spent years watching the two of you orbit each other helplessly, stuck in that miserable gray area between fear and devotion, too close to walk away but too terrified to call it what it was.

“Do you love him?” Hopper asked quietly.

You blinked toward the ceiling for a second before answering.

“If he asked me again,” you whispered, swallowing around the knot tightening painfully in your throat, “I think I’d say ‘yes’.” Your eyes finally moved toward Hopper’s. “Do you think he’ll ask me again?”

“But do you love him?” he repeated, firmer this time.

The question settled heavily in your chest. You gave a small nod against the pillow despite the way it made your head pulse violently. Tears slipped freely down your face now, warm against your skin.

“I just don’t want him seeing parts of me he can’t fix,” you admitted brokenly.

Hopper’s expression changed, something deeply understanding moving through his eyes.

Before he could answer, noise erupted from downstairs followed by multiple footsteps and raised voices. Then Steve’s voice cut through everything else as he called your name with enough panic behind it to make your entire body tense.

Hopper watched you react, watched the way your expression changed before you could stop it.

“Upstairs!” Hopper shouted back before slowly standing from the chair. His eyes stayed on you as Steve’s footsteps thundered through the house. “Steve’s a big boy…let him decide that for himself,” Hopper said softly.

Steve appeared in the doorway. His chest heaved violently from exertion, hair damp with sweat and sticking messily to his forehead while his wide frantic eyes landed on you almost painfully fast. Relief and terror crashed across his face so openly it made your chest ache.

He crossed the room. “Oh, my sweet girl,” he breathed.

Steve dropped beside the bed, one hand carefully cradling the side of your head while the other moved shakily over your arms and shoulders like he needed physical proof you were still there. His eyes scanned every visible injury at once, muttering frantically under his breath about getting you out, getting you to a hospital and figuring something out.

“What if you don’t like what you see?” you interrupted weakly, your trembling voice finally pulling his attention fully back to your face.

Steve’s eyes lifted to yours instantly and somehow, in that moment, it felt like he already understood every single thing you meant, like he had seen all the ugly parts already and stayed anyway.

His hand slid slowly to your cheek, thumb brushing carefully over your trembling lower lip while his breathing gradually steadied, his heartbeat finding an entirely different rhythm now that he knew you were alive.

“How deep am I allowed to look?” he asked quietly.

A sob broke from your chest. “As deep as it goes.”

Something in Steve’s expression softened completely before he leaned down carefully and kissed you, deep and warm and maybe a little desperate in a way that felt like breathing after nearly drowning, oxygen finally forcing its way back into your lungs to keep you alive through the pain, the fear and through every doubt that had ever convinced you love would ruin you before it could save you.