Jess

But then—

Laughter. 

Pure, unfiltered, ringing out loud through the room, with him. 

The look of shock on your face, followed immediately by you swallowing it all down, as if joy were sacred. Not for him to share with you. 

You won’t let yourself feel that around him, mind latching onto the past, proof of how deeply it has affected you. 

It was on the drive home that Robin told him what had happened. 

She wants to see you tomorrow.

His brain short-circuited.

“Wait, what—” he’d started, then stopped. “Since when? How did you—what did you do?”

The girl groaned, dropping her head back against the headrest like she couldn’t believe he was making her say this out loud. 

“I didn’t do anything.”

Steve had laughed again, but it came out panicked. 

“You did something. People don’t just—she wouldn’t just—she hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” she corrected automatically.

“She doesn’t?”

How could you not? 

“I mean—” she’d started, then sighed. “Okay, listen. She’s mad at you. Like… pissed. Which is fair. But she doesn’t—” She had searched for the word, eyes narrowing like she was trying to solve a puzzle. “It’s not hate. It’s… fear. And anger. And this thing where she’s—I don’t know—bracing for something.”

Steve had stared at the road so hard his eyes burned.

Bracing. 

She continued, softer. 

“And… she’s tired.”

You were? 

He was, too. Tired of everything. 

Life felt like one long mess he was barely holding together. If he wasn’t fighting for his life, he was chasing Dustin for a conversation, trying to prove to Nancy he had his shit together, trying not to make things worse with Jonathan, trying to keep the radio station from going up in flames.

And then there was you. Trying to fix things with you.

He was fucking exhausted.

By the time the sun rose, he’d given up pretending sleep was an option.

He’d gotten up, showered too long, used too much soap, stood under the water until his fingers wrinkled because it was the only thing that made his head feel quiet. 

He’d made coffee even though his stomach was too tight to want it. He’d wandered the house doing pointless things—wiping down counters that were already clean, rearranging cans in the pantry, opening the fridge and staring inside like a solution might be hiding behind the milk.

Anything to kill some time. 

At some point, he’d turned the radio on, hoping that you’d be on air. That he’d catch the sound of you before he had to face you. That he could hear if you were sharp today or soft, if you were in one of those moods where your voice turns into steel, or one of those mornings where it glows.

But it was just music. Track after track, uninterrupted.

No voice. Nothing to read.

Nothing to brace against.

The drive up to the station felt like a death march.

He has driven to worse places. Darker places. Places that smelled like rot and copper and something that wasn’t quite earth. He’s gone into houses where the windows were boarded and the air was all wrong. 

He’d gone down into tunnels with a bat in his hands and his heart in his throat, done things that still show up in the corners of his dreams when he’s trying to sleep. And yet.

Talking to you? 

Finally doing this? 

Words—feelings. 

This is the kind of thing he has always been terrible at.

A gravel road. A familiar hill. A building he’s been inside a dozen times now, sweeping floors and wiping shelves and trying so hard not to touch anything that belongs to you.

And it’s got him gripping the steering wheel like the car might float off the road.

His stomach is doing that gross flip-flop thing. Like he’s sixteen all over again. 

Christ. 

Get it together.

He blows out a breath through his nose, annoyed with himself, and tries to loosen his fingers where they’ve started to cramp. The BMW rumbles under him, steady—one of the few constants left that doesn’t feel like it’s slipping out from under his feet.

He pulls into his regular slot, stomach flipping again as he tries to calm down. 

Breathe in, breath out. 

God, he’s a mess. 

He already has the station. He already has plans with the others for the basement. There are things moving under the surface, things you don’t know about yet, and the thought of bringing danger into your space makes him feel sick. 

She needs to trust you.

And now, on top of that, there’s the van.

That damn van. 

He cuts the engine. The sudden quiet is deafening. 

His hands don’t move right away. They stay on the wheel, knuckles pale. He stares at the building through the windshield and tries to picture you inside. 

Waiting. Not waiting. 

Sitting in the booth pretending you’re not thinking about the fact he’s going to walk through that door at any second. Ready to rip him to shreds with that sharp tongue of yours. 

He swallows again and finally forces himself to move, fingers flexing, shaking off adrenaline.

No use in stalling.

Robin’s voice plays in his head—because it always does, because she has become the part of his brain that says the things he needs to hear even when he doesn’t want to.

Be yourself. Don’t hide behind an act. 

Stop trying so hard. Maybe then people will actually like you.

He grabs his jacket off the passenger seat, hesitates, then leaves it. He doesn’t want anything between him and whatever this is. No armour. No pretending.

He steps out of the car.

The cold air hits him hard enough to make him straighten. Gravel crunches under his shoes. He makes himself walk.

One foot, then the other, up the small dirt path. His breath fogs faintly. He can hear the wind worrying at the trees beyond the building, the distant town far below.

And he wants—God, he wants—to see you smile like you do on air. In front of him. Not because he deserves it. Not because it would fix anything. But because it would mean you don’t have to be scared anymore.

He doesn’t know if that’s possible.

He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to want it.

He just knows he’s willing to try.

Steve lifts his fist and knocks.

You didn’t go home last night. The decision came the second Robin shut the door behind her. 

The latch clicked. Her footsteps faded. And suddenly the station felt too empty, like it was holding its breath along with you.

You stood at the window for a long time.

Headlights flared to life in the lot outside, washing the walls in brief white arcs as the car turned. Steve in the driver’s seat. Robin beside him. You watched as they rolled slowly down the hill, the station shrinking behind them.

You wondered if he was looking back too.

You didn’t go home.

You’d always kept spare things in the car. Practical things. Clothes folded tightly in the boot. A toothbrush still in its packaging. Makeup wipes. Hair ties. It wasn’t unusual—sometimes the station ran late, sometimes the silence afterwards felt safer than the drive back. Sometimes it was easier to stay.

You hadn’t done it since that first night they’d burst in.

The memory still aches. The way your heart had nearly slammed out of your chest. You’d been rattled for hours after, nerves jangling, unable to settle.

But tonight felt different.

They wouldn’t come back. You told yourself that firmly, like a rule. He’d have the decency to wait. Tomorrow was tomorrow. Tonight, you were safe.

You locked the door. Checked it twice. Then a third time, just in case.

You curled up on the couch with the radio low, letting the night mix bleed into the room. Vinyl crackle. Familiar voices. 

Morning crept in gently, pale light spilling through the window. You woke with a jolt, disoriented for half a second before the station came back into focus. The couch. The equipment. The smell of old paper and coffee.

And the knot in your stomach.

You sat up slowly, rubbing at your face, already tired and the day hadn’t even started.

…Now what? 

You had no idea what to do with yourself.

Going on air felt impossible. The energy you’d shared with Robin yesterday had completely evaporated overnight, leaving something raw and exposed behind. 

You almost wished she was back here now, perched on the edge of the coffee table, talking a mile a minute, giving you one of her accidental pep talks that somehow cut straight through your defences.

She’d been so good at it.

Too good.

Talking with her had felt dangerous. Like speaking to someone who saw you clearly without trying to pry. She’d dismantled your walls without even meaning to, and before you realised what was happening, you’d been nodding along. Agreeing. Letting yourself be convinced.

Agreeing to hear her out.

Agreeing to talk to Steve.

You scowled at the thought, dragging yourself to your feet.

It was only because of her.

The only reason you were entertaining this meeting at all was because Robin was who she was—kind, perceptive, sharp in a way that didn’t cut. She seemed wise beyond her years, like she’d lived more life than she let on. She felt like a good judge of character.

And the way she spoke about him—that softness in her eyes, that careful honesty—had disarmed you when nothing else could.

Stupid.

How could you have let it happen?

You shoved the nerves down as best you could and busied yourself in the office. Paperwork. Letters. Notes. Ad requests scrawled in half-legible handwriting. 

You sifted through them methodically, stacking some aside, discarding others. Anything to keep your hands moving.

You checked the notice board. The calendar. The mailbox. Nothing new from the military—no fresh instructions, no ominous envelopes. Just the usual quiet.

You welcomed it.

You told yourself that this was fine. That you were in control. That you could handle a conversation. That you wouldn’t let it spiral.

Your mind, traitorous as ever, kept slipping.

Back to hallways and lockers and laughter that wasn’t yours.

Memories of Steve…

You shook your head sharply and focused harder on the page in front of you.

You were so absorbed that you didn’t hear the door open.

Didn’t hear the familiar squeak of rubber soles against the floor. Didn’t hear the subtle shift in the air when someone new entered the space.

It wasn’t until a gentle knock sounded against the office door that your heart slammed violently into your throat.

You spun around so fast the chair legs screeched.

And there he was.

Steve Harrington stood in the doorway, hands loose at his sides, posture tentative like he wasn’t sure he was welcome. Not the cocky ease he wore like armour back then. 

Too soon. 

You say nothing at first. You just stare at him.

Morning light shifts across the hallway behind him, catching in his hair, outlining the shape of his shoulders. 

He looks uncomfortable. Less prepared. Like he didn’t quite know how to dress for whatever this was meant to be.

He hasn’t stepped inside the office. Not even an inch.

He’s still hovering in the doorway, one hand braced lightly against the frame, like crossing that threshold without permission might shatter something. 

You notice it immediately. 

You told him the office was off-limits. And he listened.

Damn it. 

You clear your throat, arms crossing instinctively—defences snapping into place before you can stop it.

“You’re early,” you say bluntly.

The words come out sharper than you mean them to, but not enough to take them back.

He blinks, caught off guard. 

“I—uh. I am?”

He glances over his shoulder, then back at you.

“I—I knocked,” he adds quickly. “I didn’t hear you—on the radio, I mean—and Rob didn’t really mention a time, so I just…”

He trails off, suddenly very aware of how much space he’s taking up.

Truth is, you don’t actually know if he’s early.

You’ve lost track of time completely. The clock on the wall might as well be decorative for how little you’ve looked at it. Anything was better than counting down the minutes to this moment.

Your hesitation must show, because he shifts, weight rocking back slightly, nerves written all over his posture.

“I could—uh—I could come back later?” he asks carefully, “ If you’re busy—I mean, I can just—”

“No.”

The word comes out fast. You wince internally and try again.

“No,” you say more evenly. “You’re… you’re here now.”

You don’t know who you’re convincing more—him or yourself.

There’s no point in putting it off. That much is painfully clear. This is why he came. This is why you agreed. And if you don’t do it now, you’re not sure you ever will.

You need to say it.

All of it.

The things that have been sitting in you for years, heavy and unspoken.

You push yourself to move before you can second-guess it.

As you move past him, he immediately takes the hint—shuffling back a step to give you room, eyes flicking between your face and the door like he’s afraid of doing the wrong thing. You reach past and close it, the click of the latch sounding louder than it should.

Let’s get this over with. 

You carry the scattered papers from the office in your hands that feel a little unsteady, and set them on the coffee table by the couch. 

The location is deliberate—buying yourself a few extra seconds to think.

This is going to take a while.

You sit first.

He waits until you do before lowering himself onto the opposite end of the couch, leaving a careful distance between you. He perches there like he’s on the edge of a chair in a principal’s office—knees bouncing, hands clasped loosely, shoulders tense.

On trial.

Good, a petty voice in your head supplies. 

He should be uncomfortable.

You almost let yourself lean into that satisfaction—the small, vindictive relief of seeing him nervous, seeing him unsure. Seeing him stripped of that confidence he always—

But then Robin’s voice slips in, unwelcome and gentle.

It’ll eat you alive.

You swallow hard.

This ache in your chest—the one that flares every time you look at him—it’s familiar. Old. You’ve carried it for so long it feels like part of you. Letting it go feels dangerous. Like setting down a weapon you’ve relied on for years.

You don’t want to be here. But you also don’t want to keep living like this.

Steve shifts again, clearly trying to make himself smaller, less intrusive. 

His gaze flicks to you, then away, then back again, like he’s not sure where he’s allowed.

God, this is unbearable.

You think of last night. Of Robin on this same couch, knees tucked under her, voice soft and earnest as she talked you into this. 

You wish that she were here now. Sitting between you. Making it easier. Buffering the sharp edges.

But this isn’t her mess. This is yours.

Steve clears his throat quietly, like he might say something, then stops himself. 

Smart. 

For once.

You take a slow breath, grounding yourself in the feel of the couch beneath your fingers.

You’re in control.

You can do this.

“I never wanted to come back here.”

The words come out quiet, brittle at the edges. 

You don’t look at him when you say it. Your gaze stays fixed somewhere past his shoulder.

You needed a clear head to do this, and looking in those brown eyes was sure to derail it.

“That was the promise I made when I left for college,” you continue, voice tightening despite your best efforts. “That I would never—ever—set foot in this stupid town again.”

Your hands curl in your lap. Nails biting into skin. 

Steve stills.

You feel it more than you see it—the way his body goes rigid, like this isn’t the opening he’d braced for. He’d been ready for anger. For accusations. For you to tear into him.

You’ll get there.

But not yet.

You need to start at the beginning. Where all of this actually started. You need him to understand what this town did to you before he even gets to understand what he did.

Because you are not doing this twice. You don’t know if you’d be able to.

“I didn’t have a plan for my life,” you say. “Not a real one. Not when I started high school. I didn’t have some big dream or grand ambition. I was just… like everyone else.” 

Happy. 

You take a deep breath as you allow the memories to wash over you, trying to keep your voice steady. 

“I thought those years were supposed to show me who I was. What I was good at. What I wanted to be.”

You huff a small, humourless laugh.

“Turns out all they taught me was how badly I wanted to get out. How far I’d have to run to never see any of you ever again.”

There it is.

You risk a glance up.

Steve’s mouth parts slightly, like he’s about to speak, like instinct is pushing him to interrupt—to defend, to explain, to soften the blow. 

You don’t let him.

“Don’t—“ you cut in, sharper now. “Please.”

Don’t stop now.

You say it more to yourself than him. 

He shuts his mouth immediately. Nods once. 

You look away again, forcing yourself to finish what you started.

“I never wanted to come back,” you say again. “I didn’t just… decide one day that it would be fun. I spent weeks—months—trying to figure out literally any other option. Anything that didn’t involve coming back to Hawkins.”

Your jaw tightens.

“I tried everything—job applications, newspaper ads, roommates—“ you shake your head, “—Nothing. None of it worked. It was my last resort—the thing I told myself I’d only do if everything else failed.”

You allow yourself to look around the room, its familiarity. 

“I had to come back to this godforsaken hellhole after years of trying to build a life—back to where I started. Square fucking one.”

It was true—you had tried everything. 

As the semester drew to a close and your options thinned out, you realised you would have taken almost anything. 

But the only familiar place left to you was Hawkins: the one place with cheap rent and a handful of connections you might be able to lean on until you got back on your feet.

“I knew you’d still be here,” you say quietly. “That wasn’t hard to guess. You had no reason to leave, right? Nothing chasing you out. You had a home. Friends. Stability. A life here that you clearly thrived in.”

Steve inhales sharply. He wants to tell you that things weren’t perfect, that everyone has their demons. But you don’t let him. 

You give him a look.

You dare him. 

Because whatever demons he might bring up now will not excuse what he put you through.

You lean forward slightly, elbows on your knees.

“Did you know what you were like back then?” you ask him. Needing him to be honest. “I need to know. Did you ever realise what it was like for the rest of us? Watching you walk through the halls like nothing could touch you?”

Steve drags in a breath, slow and shaky.

Your words were getting to him now, clearly. The need to smooth it over, to make it somehow better. 

But how could he? 

“Back then…” he starts, then shakes his head, eyes dropping to the floor. “God. I can’t even begin to imagine what I—”

You scoff softly, cutting him off.

Bullshit.

“Stop.” 

He flinches.

His words are hollow to you. Excuses that you don’t want to hear. 

You want him to understand. 

“You must have known you had power, Steve,” you continue, voice rising despite yourself. “You had to have known. You’re not that stupid.”

He winces at that word, as it hits him square in the chest.

“You could have done something—anything. They were your best friends. You could have made it stop.”

He was right there. 

“I should have,” he says immediately. “I could have. I—God, I should have done something.”

The words are gentle. Regret soaked through them.

Too late.

“Then why?” you snap, finally looking straight at him.

Your vision blurs. Tears well behind your eyes, betrayal rushing back like it never left.

“There were so many chances,” you say, voice cracking. “So many goddamn chances for you—you could’ve—“

You stop to swipe angrily at your cheek, refusing to let the tears stop you now.

“How many times did you let Tommy corner me in the halls? How many times did you watch Carol follow me out of school?” Your chest heaves. “You let them sit on the hood of your car for godsake! Let them call out across the parking lot!”

Your lip quivers. You feel like a kid again. 

Your voice drops, deadly quiet.

“You let them do all of it.”

You never even cared. 

The silence that follows is deafening—and the worst part is, you’re not even finished. 

You can feel your heart beating under your skin, adrenaline still flooding your system. But you owe it to your younger self; no matter how hard this feels now, she would have wanted this. And your future self, too. This—you here, facing the fear that’s trailed you for years—this is what you’re doing for her.

“You know I never went to prom?” you add. “Or any of the formals?”

His eyes are still on yours, but he looks like he is unravelling.

“What?” The word comes out raw. 

Like this is only just clicking for him—how bad it got. 

Well, it doesn’t stop there. 

“I was terrified,” you say. “All the time. And there was no one. No one who had my back. No one who stayed once I became the target.”

It was a smart decision on their part—you had to give them that. You couldn’t even blame them. 

The problem was that the blame was sitting right across from you now. Looking every bit like you once did. Small. Beaten down. 

Your hands shake now. You don’t try to hide it.

Do what you came here to do. 

“It was all because of your group. People were scared they’d be next.”

He’d known they mattered. He just hadn’t known they mattered that much. Not enough to do this.

Right?

“I—” His voice breaks. “I never knew it was that bad.”

You stare at him, incredulous.

“You didn’t?” You laugh again, harsher this time. “Could’ve fooled me.”

You shake your head, anger surging.

“And that’s not even the half of it.”

He goes very still.

He wanted this conversation? 

Now he was going to get it. Every last piece of what you’d endured.

“Did you ever wonder why it was me?” you ask. “Did you even know why Tommy decided I was the one to torment?”

He looks… afraid to answer.

So you do it for him.

“What, he never told you?” you press. “The whole school seemed to think I threw myself at him at that party first year.”

Recognition flashes across Steve’s face.

The party.

The first big one of the year. He remembers it. 

“Yeah,” you say bitterly as it clicks. “That one.”

The party where he was probably off somewhere else—backed up against a wall with some girl laughing too hard at his jokes, his hand loose at her waist, everyone watching. Flirting without even trying. That stupid, perfect smile. Music pounding, beer everywhere, Steve Harrington at the centre of it all, like nothing bad could ever reach him.

Too busy being him to notice what his friends were doing. Too quick to chalk it up to kids being kids, to cheap beer and nights that didn’t matter.

Not for you, though.

Your voice trembles now, but you push through.

“Did you know he tried to get me to go upstairs with him?” you say. “And when I told him to get the hell away from me, he promised—swore—he’d make me regret it.”

The laugh that slips out of you is wrong. 

“And look what he did,” you add bitterly. “Guess he was a man of his word, huh?”

The words don’t just hang between you—they sink in.

Steve goes still. Like something’s punched straight through his chest. 

The air feels knocked out of him, sharp and sudden. He can’t tell if he’s supposed to breathe or apologise. His mouth opens, useless. All that’s left is the sick, burning knowledge that he didn’t intervene—and that not acting was its own kind of betrayal.

He’s staring at you now, no idea where to put the words—or the pain, or even himself.

He wants to reach for you; that’s what you do when someone is scared, when someone needs help. You pull them in. You try to hold them together.

But how could he? 

When you’re breaking because of him—again—and it’s his fault. 

Again.

He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing like it hurts.

“I— ” He tries miserably. His voice sounds weak—too thin, like it’s being stretched. “I didn’t know all of that—if I had known—”

“You would’ve stopped it?” you cut in sharply. 

Your laugh is short, jagged. 

“No. You wouldn’t have, Steve. You had plenty of chances. And you didn’t take a single one.”

The words feel like broken glass coming out of you, but once they start, you can’t stop them.

Your hands begin to shake harder. You notice it distantly, like it’s happening to someone else. 

Like your body is betraying you all over again.

Keep going. 

“Graduation,” you say, breath hitching. “Graduation was the happiest day of my life.”

Steve’s brow furrows, like he doesn’t understand the pivot. Like he’s just now realising what that says about everything that came before.

“I grabbed my diploma,” you continue, voice trembling but relentless, “and I ran. I ran halfway across the country for college, and I didn’t look back. Not once.”

Your chest tightens.

“I thought it was my ticket out. I thought I was safe. Safe knowing you’d be far away from me. Safe knowing I’d never have to see any of you again.”

You wipe angrily at your face again as tears spill over anyway.

“I thought I could finally build something,” you choke. “Something that actually meant something. A life that didn’t revolve around surviving.”

Steve looks wrecked now, like each word is landing exactly where it’s meant to.

There is nothing he can say.

“But then,” you press on, voice cracking, “the universe decides to have this sick sense of humour.” A sob slips out before you can stop it. “A goddamn quarantine. And suddenly I’m back here. Trapped. In this town. Like it was waiting for me all this time.”

You push yourself to your feet abruptly, adrenaline flooding your system. The room feels too small, the walls too close. 

He flinches back instinctively, eyes wide as he looks up at you.

“And now—now—” you gesture wildly, words tumbling over each other, “when I finally have one thing in my life that feels normal—one thing that’s mine—you show up.”

Your vision blurs. Your heart is hammering now, loud enough to drown out your thoughts.

“I—I had this place to build something on my own,” you say, voice rising. “To have purpose. And you just—what? Decide to turn up and demand space here too?” You laugh. “You were bored, Steve? You couldn’t find anywhere else to be?”

He always had to find you. 

Your breathing starts to go wrong—too fast, too shallow. 

You know this feeling. 

You know it too well.

No. 

No, not now.

Your chest tightens like it’s being crushed. The room tilts.

“I—” you stutter, panic clawing its way up your throat. “I’m sorry. I—I can’t—” 

You shake your head frantically, backing away. 

“Robin was wrong. I can’t do this. I can’t— I’m sorry.”

Your vision tunnels. The edges go dark.

Get out.

Need air.

Need space.

You turn sharply, stumbling away, heart slamming so hard it feels like it might break through your ribs.

Breathe, breathe, breathe—

And then—

A hand closes around your arm.

You jolt.

He catches you before you can get far.

Not rough, but firm enough that you can’t disappear on him. 

His hand closes around your arm and the second he feels you lurch, like a startled animal, something inside his chest caves in.

Shit. 

Shit, shit, shit.

“Hey—” he says immediately, voice too loud at first, panic sharpening it. 

He can’t add to this. 

He forces it down, softer, slower. 

“Hey—just—listen to me, alright?”

You don’t look at him.

Crap. 

Your gaze is unfocused, skittering past his shoulder, past the room, like you’re not entirely here anymore. Like whatever you’re seeing is louder than him, closer than him, and he can’t reach it.

Your breathing is all wrong, like you’re chasing air that won’t let itself be caught.

His heart starts hammering. His own breath stutters in ugly sympathy, muscle memory flaring sharp and unwelcome.

No. 

Focus on you first. 

He swallows hard, forcing himself to be something steadier than the mess clawing up his throat. 

Someone needs him right now. That has to matter more than the way his hands feel stiff, clumsy, like they don’t belong to him.

“Okay,” he murmurs, lowering his voice until it’s barely more than a vibration between you. “You need to breathe. Alright? Just—just breathe for me. Slow. Okay? Slow.”

He demonstrates without thinking, pulling in a careful breath through his nose, letting it out through his mouth like he’s taught himself a hundred times before.

In. Out.

Don’t rush it.

He watches you try.

You’re trying. He can see it—the way your chest hitches, the way your diaphragm trembles with the effort of it. But your body isn’t listening. It won’t cooperate. Your breath stutters and breaks anyway, tears spilling fresh over your waterline like it’s too much to hold back anymore.

“I can’t—” you gasp. “I can’t, I’m sorry, I’m—”

Sorry.

His jaw tightens.

How the hell are you apologising right now?

After everything you just ripped out of yourself. 

The unfairness of it sets his teeth on edge. The instinct to pull you closer—to shield, to anchor—burns through him so hot it scares him. He keeps his hands where they are through sheer force of will.

“Hey—hey,” he says gently, because if he doesn’t soften it right now he might crack straight in half. 

You look wrong like this.

The only other time he’d ever really seen you scared was that first night at the station—eyes wide, terrified, cornered. And even then, even with fear written all over you, you’d been all teeth and defiance. 

Swinging. Spitting. Fighting him every inch of the way.

That’s what he’d expected today.

Hell, he’d braced for it. He’d come in ready to have his ass handed to him, ready to swallow every word, every accusation.

But this?

He hadn’t expected this.

Hadn’t expected that just talking about it—just remembering—would drop you to pieces right in front of him. That it would still live this close to the surface. That it would take so little to break open.

Christ.

Your knees buckle.

Steve reacts without thinking, heart leaping straight into his throat as he steps in closer, careful, so careful, guiding you down before gravity can take you. 

“It’s okay—you’re okay, I gotcha,” he murmurs, lowering you toward the floor, arm gently on yours. “It’s alright—you’re okay. We can stop now. We can stop.”

He repeats it like a mantra, like if he says it enough times it might become true.

We can stop. 

Your body is still vibrating when you sit, nerves firing everywhere. He crouches down with you, hands braced on his knees, because he doesn’t trust them not to grab you if he lets them wander.

You’re listening. Or trying to.

Your hands are shaking badly now. Tremors running through your fingers like your body doesn’t know what to do with all the energy screaming through it.

How could he let this happen?

You told him you didn’t want to have this conversation, told him to back off. 

He should have listened. 

But once again, he got his way—like he always did—even if it meant tearing everything open again.

You swallow hard, shifting slightly on the floor. Your breathing is slowing—barely—but your expression twists into something else entirely. 

Tight. Embarrassed. 

Angry.

At yourself.

At him.

“I—” you start, voice hoarse.

You try to speak. The words don’t quite make it out.

“Sorry, I—” Steve cuts himself off, shaking his head once. Focus. “I didn’t get that. What do you say?”

Whatever it is, he’ll do it.

Whatever you ask for, he’ll try.

Your expression tightens, attempting firmness.

“Go,” you grit out.

The word is sharp, strained.

He blinks. “Huh?”

“Go,” you repeat, harsher now. Your head jerks toward the door.

Leave?

Not a chance. 

“What—no,” he says immediately, shaking his head. “No. I’m not—”

How could he leave you like this? 

He told himself he’d listen to whatever you wanted today. That he’d take it. That he wouldn’t push.

But he can’t do what you’re asking him right now.

He can’t walk away while you’re shaking on the floor because of things him. He can’t leave you alone in the wreckage and call that growth. He can’t go back to being that guy—the one who didn’t look, didn’t notice, didn’t act.

He knows what this is. Knows it too well.

The numb limbs. The lungs that refuse to cooperate.

The way the world gets too loud, too fast, too much.

He’s had panic attacks more times than he’ll ever admit. He learned early how to hide them, how to ride them out alone, hidden in his room, jaw clenched, hands shaking under tables, breath quiet so no one would see.

He knows how awful it is to make it through alone—and he won’t let you do that. 

He might be the last person you want right now. Hell, he’s almost positive. And you can tell him that later—when you can breathe, when you can think, when the words don’t feel like they’re ripping you open.

Until then, he’s staying.

“I said go,” you snap, even as your voice wobbles, betraying you completely.

“I’ll go when you’re okay,” he says quietly. “Alright? I promise I’ll leave. You won’t have to see me again if that’s what you want. I swear.”

He lowers himself further, cautious not to close the space between you.

“But I’m not leaving you like this.”

He stays crouched there on the floor long after the worst of it passes, his whole body aching with the effort of being still.

He keeps his hands planted on his knees. Keeps his breathing slow and obvious, a metronome you can borrow if you want it. Keeps his eyes on the gap in front of you instead of you, because every time he looks straight at your face he sees your panic.

He waits.

And waits.

Until your breaths stop catching like they’re snagging on barbed wire. Until they even out into something like normal. Until the shaking in your hands fades from violent tremors to small aftershocks, like your body still doesn’t trust that it’s allowed to come down.

His throat burns. He doesn’t swallow. He’s scared it’ll make noise. Scared the tiniest wrong sound will tip you back over the edge.

He hates how familiar this is. Hates that you know it too.

When you finally look up, it’s not anger that hits him first.

You’re exhausted. 

You look like you gave everything you had. Like you emptied yourself out until there was nothing left to hold you upright, and now you’re paying for it with interest. 

Your eyes are blown wide, still wet, lashes clumped. Your mouth is set in a line that’s trying so hard not to tremble.

You got it all off your chest, and it brought you to your knees.

If he’d known it would do that, if he’d had even the slightest clue that telling him would cost you this much—

He wouldn’t have let you do it.

No. 

That’s a lie.

He would have let you. Because you needed to say it. Because it lived in you, and you deserved to put it somewhere else, even if it tore you open on the way out.

But God—he hates that the price of doing it now.

Your shoulders sag as you lean back slightly, eyes dropping like you can’t stand to hold his gaze for long. He mirrors the movement slowly. He shifts his legs out from under him and settles back too, close enough that you can see him if you need to, but far enough that you won’t feel him.

No touching.

Not even close enough to brush your knee by accident.

He doesn’t trust himself not to flinch at that contact. Doesn’t trust you not to flinch either. He can’t take either of you jerking away right now. 

He drags a hand down his face like he can wipe the last ten minutes off his skin. Like he can rub the helplessness out of his eyes. His palm comes away damp—sweat, maybe. Or something worse.

He looks at you again, measuring the way your breath moves in and out now without fighting you so hard. 

He needs to talk to you. He needs you to talk to him.

But above all else, he’s worried.

His voice comes out carefully, like he’s walking across ice.

“How long… have they been going on?” he asks.

Your brow furrows.

“What?”

God, he’s terrible at this.

“The—uh.” He clears his throat. “The… panic attacks.”

You blink at him, confusion cutting through the haze for the first time since you dropped. Like he shouldn’t know what those are.

He almost laughs.

Oh, if only you knew.

“How do you—?” you start, voice rasping, and then you stop yourself.

He shifts under your gaze, suddenly very aware of himself. Of the way this is turning the light on him. Of the fact that you’ve done your share today—more than your share—and now you’re looking at him like he’s a person instead of a problem.

He doesn’t deserve that, but he can use it.

If it keeps you here. If it keeps your mind from running back. If it gives you something else to hold.

He exhales slowly.

“They—uh.” The words stick. He has to force them loose. “They started… senior year.”

Your eyes narrow slightly. Like you’re trying to read him for a lie.

He doesn’t give you one. It isn’t the whole truth; they became more frequent after he left school, worse than before. But he keeps that to himself. You don’t need any more reasons to panic right now.

His voice drops, smaller than he likes, smaller than anyone ever hears from him. 

“I think the first one hit when I didn’t get into college.”

He waits for your face to change. For the judgment. For the oh, poor Steve that he doesn’t want and doesn’t deserve.

But you just watch him.

Good.

“I applied for, like, a bunch of schools,” he says, the confession scraping on the way out. “But… I didn’t have the grades. So I sort of knew I wasn’t gonna get in. I—” He wets his lips. “I didn’t even want to send them because… I already knew the answer.”

He wasn’t smart like you.

That’s the bitter thought that flashes through him. He crushes it down. It’s not about smart. It’s about him spending his whole life being shown he was nothing but a face. A name. A thing that looked good on paper until you read the paper.

He can still hear the lectures. The disappointed silence. The way his father’s eyes would flick over him like he was a faulty product.

He can still feel the sweat on his palms when he’d hide report cards at the bottom of drawers. Can still remember sitting outside parent-teacher conferences in the car, stomach twisting, like it might be better to throw up than to go inside.

His dad always made him anyway. As if it were important he witnessed it. Like the humiliation was educational.

Steve’s eyes stay on the floor, but he can feel yours trained on him now. The attention is hot. It makes his skin itch.

“As soon as I saw the letter, I took it,” he continues, voice rough. “Waited until my parents were asleep. Didn’t want them to see it.”

He risks a glance up.

You’re watching him, and the look on your face isn’t what he expected.

You look… distracted. Like you’re recalibrating. Like the image you’ve held of him—Hawkins’ golden boy, perfect life, perfect parents, perfect future—is taking a hairline crack.

Like there was more to his story. 

“I knew they’d be pissed,” he says quietly. “Dad especially. He never really…” He swallows, jaw tight. “…had much faith in me.”

Something flickers behind your eyes. Surprise, maybe. 

He’s started now. He can’t stop halfway.

“I hid it for weeks,” he goes on, voice steadier only because he’s past the point of saving face. “Thought I’d gotten away with it. And then my mom cleaned my room and…”

He glances away, heat crawling up his neck.

It shouldn’t be embarrassing. It isn’t even the worst part of his life. Still, this is the inch he chooses to show you.

The other stories—the guarded ones—are too dangerous, even if he knows they’d distract you far better than some cheap anecdote from his past. 

This one, at least, is true. 

He won’t lie to you again.

“I came home one day,” he says, and now his voice goes dull, “and it was just… sitting there on the table. All crumpled up.”

He can see it like it’s right in front of him: the letter folded wrong, creased too many times, like it’s been crushed in someone’s fist in anger. 

He swallows again. 

“I just… stood in the doorway for a second,” he admits. “Thought about turning around. Not coming back.”

He shakes his head, not caring when his hair falls into his eyes.

“I didn’t,” he says. “I stayed. Let them yell.”

It’s not even a confession anymore. It’s a bruise he’s pressing on to prove it still hurts.

“Dad called me every name under the sun.” The words taste like metal. “Couldn’t understand how his son barely scraped through high school. Said there was nothing waiting for me. No future.”

He gestures at himself, small and dismissive.

“It wasn’t until Rob that I started… thinking for myself.”

The words are tender, but far too clean in his mind. Like he’s trying to wrap years of being awful in a bow and hand it to you like see? character development.

But it’s true. 

He can put his hands up and admit it: before her, he was nothing. Not dramatic or self-pitying—more in the way with no spine. No compass. No clue who he was when he wasn’t being admired.

Maybe his dad had a point.

He thought he knew what friendship was—sort of—but he’d been dead wrong. The Tommys. The Carols. All of it had been surface-level. Nothing that required him to actually show up as a person.

Lunch conversations that never went anywhere real. Jokes that didn’t ask questions. Cruelty that passed for humour if you didn’t look too closely.

He shifts, dragging a hand over the back of his neck. He can feel sweat there even though the room is cold. He feels like he’s been running for miles. 

He looks over at you and you seem to have calmed down a little more.

Your eyes are softer—not forgiving, not warm, not that. Just no longer gone. You’re here again. Your breathing is steadier. The tears have dried in the tracks they made down your cheeks. You fold your hands in your lap and, thank God, they’re not shaking anymore.

You look at him in a gentle way that makes him feel ten times worse than if you’d glared.

“Yeah,” you say, voice hoarse but steady, “she told me about that.”

Steve’s brain stutters.

“What?” he blurts. 

What did she tell you? 

You tilt your head slightly, like you’re choosing how to say it.

“Robin. She told me about… you. About the mall.”

His eyes widen before he can stop them.

“What part?” 

You huff a soft breath.

“Just… that you worked together… The uniforms.”

Thank God. 

His face pulls into something that might’ve been a smile if it didn’t hurt.

“Yeah,” he says, weak chuckle scraping out of him. “The uniforms.”

He couldn’t forget those if he tried. That ugly scoop-neck thing that made him look like a washed-up sailor. The name tag. The stupid hat. The way the air in there smelled like pretzels and popcorn.

Funnily, that was the best part of that summer.

“It was the only place that would hire me,” he says, and there it is—honesty, plain and ugly.

He lets the calm sit for a second, because he doesn’t know what else to do with it. 

“It was only with her that I… started seeing who I was back then,” he says, and the words feel too small again. He tries to push through it anyway. “What I—what I did to people.”

He swallows, throat tight.

What he let happen to you.

He needs to do what he came here to do.

He needs to get through to you. Somehow. He needs you to know that he’s sorry. The kind that lives under your skin. The kind that changes how you move through the world.

And he had meant what he said earlier, too—he’d meant it with everything in him. If you never wanted to see him again, he could make that happen. He could take the hit. He could disappear. Tail between his legs, out of your orbit for good.

Robin would just… be the one who spoke to you. He’d take the backseat. He’d swallow it.

He would.

He’s not trying to be noble. He’s trying to not make your life worse.

His fingers curl tighter around his knee.

“Since I wasn’t in high school anymore,” he adds, forcing a crooked edge into it because he can’t help himself, “she could dig at me all she wanted.”

His eyes flick up to you, then away. 

“And trust me,” he mutters, “she did.”

Your lip quirks up at the image. You’re sure she bossed him around to no end. 

There it is.

“There wasn’t much to do,” he continues, spurred on by the small expression on your face. “We had to kill time. And she still tried her best not to talk to me.”

He shakes his head.

“It was… obvious,” he says. “She’d look everywhere except at me. Like if she didn’t acknowledge I existed, I’d go away.”

He remembers it too clearly—the way her mouth would twist like she’d bitten a lemon whenever he tried to be charming.

“It wasn’t until—” he starts, and the next words rise up automatically, and he has to bite down on them so hard his jaw aches.

Not that. Not the whole truth. Not the Russians. Not the basement under the mall. Not the secret rot under Hawkins that you don’t know about.

He can’t drop that into your lap right now. Not when you’re looking at him like he’s finally human.

He forces a different sentence out.

“Before the place burned down,” he says instead, and it’s close enough to the truth that it tastes like ash, “we… talked.”

He steadies it by pressing harder against his knee.

“It was only then that she—” He swallows again. “That she dropped the bomb.”

His gaze drops to the floor. 

“She told me she sat behind me for two years,” he says, and the shame crawls hot up his neck, “twice a week.”

He lets out a breath through his nose.

“And I didn’t—” his voice catches on the word, “—I didn’t even remember her.”

He remembers how it felt when she said it.

Not like being punched—he’s been punched. This was worse. This was something sinking slow into his ribs.

That he’d moved through school like a king through a crowd, seeing nobody unless they were useful. That he’d had people orbiting him—people with whole lives and whole thoughts—who might as well have been wallpaper.

He’d existed like that. For years.

And you—God—you’d been a person in his hallway, in his town, in his line of sight.

And he’d let you become a target anyway.

“When she told me that—” 

He tries to smile at that, like it’s a joke. It doesn’t work. It falls flat and ugly.

“It was just…” He shakes his head. “It was humiliating—I spent my whole life thinking I was somebody, when really I was—”

A coward. 

He reminds himself, sharply, that this is not the point.

You are the point.

He needs to apologise. Properly. Not with a story. Not with context. Not with excuses dressed up as honesty.

“I think about it every time I see her,” he admits, and it comes out lower than he expects. “She doesn’t know it, but—”

He stops.

Because what was he going to say?

She saved me.

She taught me how to be decent.

She’s the reason I’m not the same guy anymore.

It’s true.

And it sounds… wrong. Wrong as in cheap. Like he’s trying to earn points.

“She didn’t owe me anything,” he says simply.

He hates how emotional he gets about her when he should be thinking about you.

But the truth is—they haunt him. Both of you, in different ways.

Robin, because she stayed. Because she saw him at his worst and chose to keep showing up.

You, because you didn’t have that choice. Because he helped make you feel unsafe in the place you were meant to grow.

Two people in his life, both bearing scars that circle back to him like a boomerang.

He doesn’t know how he fixed it with Robin. He doesn’t know why she stuck around. He tries not to think about it too hard, because the moment he does, it feels like he might drop it. Like he might lose her just by acknowledging the miracle of it.

But you—

You’re not Robin.

You don’t make jokes over the hard parts. You don’t throw him a rope and call it character building.

He shifts forward slightly.

“But what I need you to know,” he says, slower now, deliberate, “is that if I could go back—if I could do it again—”

His throat closes up on him.

He clears it, tries again, voice rough.

“—I would’ve done things differently,” he finishes. “I know that now.”

He would’ve been braver.

He would’ve been better.

He would’ve been the guy he pretended to be.

He blinks hard and pushes through the ache in his chest.

“I chose myself,” he says. “I chose… comfort. I chose to stay where it was easy.”

He shakes his head slowly, like he can’t believe the person he’s describing is real. Is him.

“I hate that I did that,” he says, and his voice breaks properly this time, no control, no polish. 

He hates that he let it happen.

He swallows. His eyes burn.

“I know this is a weak excuse,” he adds quickly, because panic surges the moment he hears emotion in his own voice and his instinct is to cover it, to smooth it over, to fix it before it looks ugly. “I know that, and—and I’m not asking you to forgive me.”

He would never ask that.

He leans forward another inch, then stops. Measures the distance like it’s life or death.

He keeps his hands visible. Keeps them still.

“But I need you to know that I’m—” He tries. The words halt in his throat like they don’t want to come out because they know they’re not enough.

He hates words.

Words are slippery. Words get you out of trouble. Words let you lie.

He wants something heavier than that. Something you can’t fake.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s not pretty. It’s not eloquent. It’s not a speech. It’s just him, stripped down. “I’m so—” He exhales, shaky. “I’m so, so sorry.”

You stare at him.

You’ve dreamt of this. Imagined it in quiet moments. You’d hoped that one day he would finally see it. That he would understand what he did. What all of it did to you.

And now he’s sitting on the floor with you.

He’s down here, legs bent awkwardly, shoulders slumped, looking every bit as drained as you feel. Every bit as fragile.

You can tell he’s holding something back. You don’t know how, but you can see it in the way his posture is tight, like he’s afraid if he lets it go fully, something will break loose. Maybe he’s doing it for your sake.

The thought surprises you.

And worse—there’s a pang of sympathy that follows, blooming right in the middle of your chest.

He looks sad.

And that’s… that’s everything you ever wanted, isn’t it?

To see it land. To see him carry even a fraction of what you’ve been carrying for years.

So why do you feel so hollow?

The satisfaction you thought would come—some neat sense of closure, some vindication—it doesn’t arrive. 

There’s this strange, empty sensation.

It aches.  

You think you might have felt embarrassed, sitting on the floor like this, if it hadn’t been for his reaction. You never—never—would have expected Steve Harrington to know what true panic felt like.

And then there’s his parents.

You didn’t know that. You’d always imagined them as a photograph-perfect American family: mom, dad, son. Big house. Money to burn. Smiles that belonged in frames. You’d never had that, never had everything handed to you.

But based on what he just told you… money doesn’t buy everything.

At least your parents were never cruel.

You understand now why he spoke when you were spiralling. It didn’t take a genius to see it, in hindsight. 

He’s more like Robin than he probably realises—less chaotic, sure, but the same instinct buried underneath. That ability to fill a space with words when silence becomes dangerous. To read a moment and shift his tone when something is on the brink of shattering.

You see it. 

You see what you didn’t before. 

He clears his throat softly, sniffing once, and glances at you again like he’s checking for damage. Like he’s bracing for a verdict.

You don’t say anything.

Your mind is still catching up to your body, still sorting through the wreckage of what just happened. So you just look at him. Carefully. Like one wrong movement might break the moment apart.

Steve Harrington—your sworn enemy, the name that used to knot your stomach on sight—has just admitted everything. Held himself accountable. Didn’t run. Didn’t deflect. Stayed with you while you fell apart, took it all in stride, and apologised with something dangerously close to earnestness.

You can see him now the way Robin does.

It’s almost disorienting. 

He doesn’t fill the room by demanding attention; he fills it by paying attention. He wants to help. To be there. 

To make something of himself without treading on anyone in the process.

You see the remorse in him. The shame. It’s all tangled up in those wet brown eyes he keeps trying not to let linger on you, like he’s afraid you’ll see too much if he looks for too long.

The silence stretches.

It’s long enough that it starts to feel deliberate.

Long enough that his shoulders shift, that he glances over you once more—measuring, deciding—and then slowly, carefully, he gets to his feet.

Your heart stutters.

Standing, he looks down at you, nerves written all over his face now, stripped of that fragile steadiness he’d been holding onto.

“I’ll—uh,” he says, voice rough. “I’ll go now.”

What?

Your brain lags, a half-second behind the words.

He glances at you again, uncertainty flickering, and then he really does turn to leave—already interpreting your silence as an answer. 

A no. A boundary. A dismissal.

Panic flares.

You don’t want him to leave.

You still feel scared, still feel overwhelmed, still feel like the world is tilted slightly off its axis—but you don’t want this. 

You don’t want him walking away now, not after everything that just cracked open between you.

You don’t want Steve Harrington to leave.

“Hey—” you call out, the word tumbling from your mouth before you can think better of it.

He stops immediately.

He turns back to you, alert, worried, ready—like you might need something else, like he’s already bracing himself to step back in if you falter again.

“I—” you start.

Your voice catches.

Don’t go.

You don’t say it out loud, but something in your face must give it away. Your eyes, maybe. Or the way your hands curl into themselves in your lap, like you’re holding onto the moment with your fingers.

He reads it immediately.

Of course he does.

His shoulders soften, the tension easing out of him like he’s been holding his breath too. And you realise that he doesn’t want to be alone either. 

He doesn’t say anything. He just crosses the small distance between you and lowers himself back down onto the floor, careful, slow, sitting beside you instead of in front of you. Close enough that you can feel the warmth of him through your sleeve. Far enough that he’s not crowding you.

He gives you the choice without ever asking for it.

And you let him stay.

You sit there together, shoulder to shoulder, letting the silence settle around you. For once, it doesn’t feel sharp. It doesn’t feel like something you need to fill or defend against. The barrier that’s always been there—thick with memory and fear and resentment—feels thinner now. 

You almost want to call it comfortable.

Almost.

“I don’t forgive you,” you tell him softly.

The words are quiet, but they hit hard.

You feel him stiffen beside you immediately. His spine goes straight, breath catching like he’d walked right into it. 

He’d been expecting it—you can tell—but expectation doesn’t blunt the impact.

You turn your head to look at him.

The corners of his mouth are pulled down, eyes dropping to the floor as he nods once, accepting it like a sentence already handed down.

“Yeah,” he says, too quickly. “Yeah, no—that’s alright. I didn’t—I wasn’t—”

He trails off, stopping himself before he can dig the hole any deeper.

“But,” you add.

The word is small. It feels dangerous even as it leaves you.

He stills.

You swallow, heart thudding.

“But I’d like to see if we can… try?”

You don’t know why you phrase it like a question. Maybe because it feels too big to state outright. It sounds almost childish. An innocent, tentative thing. Like holding out a hand and hoping someone will take it.

Like you both should have done when you were younger. 

Something in you wants to let this go. Wants to finally be free of the constant vigilance, the tightness in your lungs every time you hear his name.

To breathe again.

To trust him.

Fuck.

To trust Steve Harrington.

He blinks, turns to you slowly, like he’s not sure he heard you right.

“We—” he starts, then stops, disbelief breaking through his voice. “We can… do that.”

You nod, just once.

“We can do that,” he repeats, quieter now. Like he’s testing the words.

You look over at him and manage the smallest smile you can muster—tired, uncertain. He mirrors it, his own smile wet and anxious, eyes still shining with everything he’s trying not to feel.

But you’re here. Together. On the same page.

Cleared the air, as Robin would say.

You huff out a soft breath, something like a laugh.

Damn it.

She’s right again.

And—annoyingly—it really does feel better.

You sit there for what could be minutes or hours, time losing its shape around you. Eventually your tailbone goes numb and that, more than anything, breaks the spell. You shift, groaning quietly as you push yourself up to your feet.

Steve’s up immediately, a second behind you, eyes fixed on you like he’s expecting you to wobble. You don’t—but you notice the way his hands hover anyway, ready to catch you if you do.

“Do you, uh…” he starts, rubbing his palms down the front of his jeans, nerves creeping back in now that the emotional freefall has slowed. “Do you… want a coffee?”

Typical.

You chuckle, the sound surprising both of you. He looks at you like he’s not quite sure what he did right.

“I’m alright,” you say gently. 

You’re way too buzzed still to even think about caffeine. 

He tries not to let it hit him, but you see it anyway—the flicker of disappointment, the way his shoulders drop a fraction. He masks it quickly, but it’s there.

And you smile.

“But,” you add, tilting your head, “we do have hot chocolate in the cupboard.”

His eyes lift again.

“It’s only the powdered stuff,” you continue. “Nothing fancy.”

“I’ll make it,” he says immediately.

This is something he can do.

You lean back against the wall and watch him move toward the kitchen, careful but purposeful, like he’s afraid of doing this wrong too. 

Halfway there, he glances over his shoulder at you, caught between checking that you’re still here and not quite believing you let him stay.

There’s a bashfulness to it that makes your chest ache in a strange, unfamiliar way.

This version of Steve—quieter, stripped of certainty, trying instead of assuming—feels like someone you might have known in another life. Someone you could have trusted, maybe. Someone who never would have let things get as bad as they did.

He’s less sure of himself now. Anyone could see that. And the questions that still linger in your mind haven’t disappeared—not all of them. There are gaps. Loose ends. Things that will need words, time, honesty you’re not ready to ask for yet.

This isn’t resolution.

You both know that.

But it is a beginning.

Something has shifted, subtle but undeniable, like a lock finally turning after years of forcing the door. The ball has been set in motion, and the relief that washes through you is almost dizzying. You feel lighter than you have in years—giddy, even—and you tell yourself it’s just adrenaline, just the aftermath of everything you dragged into the open.

But it’s more than that.

For the first time in a long time, you feel free. Not healed. Not fixed. Just… unburdened. The weight isn’t gone, but it’s loosened its grip, and even with the edges still frayed, you can breathe.

You find yourself wanting him to stay a while. Long enough for the quiet to settle. Long enough to see if this fragile new honesty can hold. Maybe long enough to start putting other things in order, too—to test the waters of this truce you’ve carved out between you.

It feels like the past has finally loosened its hands from around your throat.

And you’re taking your first real breath of fresh air again.

a/n: to celebrate nesrly finishing exams!! this was the big one and i was going to break it down into parts, but after hearing from you guys ik you wanted longer chapters.

this is just the beginning, and dont worry there is more angst to come (it's me c'mon) but this needed to happen.

But then—

Laughter. 

Pure, unfiltered, ringing out loud through the room, with him. 

The look of shock on your face, followed immediately by you swallowing it all down, as if joy were sacred. Not for him to share with you. 

You won’t let yourself feel that around him, mind latching onto the past, proof of how deeply it has affected you. 

It was on the drive home that Robin told him what had happened. 

She wants to see you tomorrow.

His brain short-circuited.

“Wait, what—” he’d started, then stopped. “Since when? How did you—what did you do?”

The girl groaned, dropping her head back against the headrest like she couldn’t believe he was making her say this out loud. 

“I didn’t do anything.”

Steve had laughed again, but it came out panicked. 

“You did something. People don’t just—she wouldn’t just—she hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” she corrected automatically.

“She doesn’t?”

How could you not? 

“I mean—” she’d started, then sighed. “Okay, listen. She’s mad at you. Like… pissed. Which is fair. But she doesn’t—” She had searched for the word, eyes narrowing like she was trying to solve a puzzle. “It’s not hate. It’s… fear. And anger. And this thing where she’s—I don’t know—bracing for something.”

Steve had stared at the road so hard his eyes burned.

Bracing. 

She continued, softer. 

“And… she’s tired.”

You were? 

He was, too. Tired of everything. 

Life felt like one long mess he was barely holding together. If he wasn’t fighting for his life, he was chasing Dustin for a conversation, trying to prove to Nancy he had his shit together, trying not to make things worse with Jonathan, trying to keep the radio station from going up in flames.

And then there was you. Trying to fix things with you.

He was fucking exhausted.

By the time the sun rose, he’d given up pretending sleep was an option.

He’d gotten up, showered too long, used too much soap, stood under the water until his fingers wrinkled because it was the only thing that made his head feel quiet. 

He’d made coffee even though his stomach was too tight to want it. He’d wandered the house doing pointless things—wiping down counters that were already clean, rearranging cans in the pantry, opening the fridge and staring inside like a solution might be hiding behind the milk.

Anything to kill some time. 

At some point, he’d turned the radio on, hoping that you’d be on air. That he’d catch the sound of you before he had to face you. That he could hear if you were sharp today or soft, if you were in one of those moods where your voice turns into steel, or one of those mornings where it glows.

But it was just music. Track after track, uninterrupted.

No voice. Nothing to read.

Nothing to brace against.

The drive up to the station felt like a death march.

He has driven to worse places. Darker places. Places that smelled like rot and copper and something that wasn’t quite earth. He’s gone into houses where the windows were boarded and the air was all wrong. 

He’d gone down into tunnels with a bat in his hands and his heart in his throat, done things that still show up in the corners of his dreams when he’s trying to sleep. And yet.

Talking to you? 

Finally doing this? 

Words—feelings. 

This is the kind of thing he has always been terrible at.

A gravel road. A familiar hill. A building he’s been inside a dozen times now, sweeping floors and wiping shelves and trying so hard not to touch anything that belongs to you.

And it’s got him gripping the steering wheel like the car might float off the road.

His stomach is doing that gross flip-flop thing. Like he’s sixteen all over again. 

Christ. 

Get it together.

He blows out a breath through his nose, annoyed with himself, and tries to loosen his fingers where they’ve started to cramp. The BMW rumbles under him, steady—one of the few constants left that doesn’t feel like it’s slipping out from under his feet.

He pulls into his regular slot, stomach flipping again as he tries to calm down. 

Breathe in, breath out. 

God, he’s a mess. 

He already has the station. He already has plans with the others for the basement. There are things moving under the surface, things you don’t know about yet, and the thought of bringing danger into your space makes him feel sick. 

She needs to trust you.

And now, on top of that, there’s the van.

That damn van. 

He cuts the engine. The sudden quiet is deafening. 

His hands don’t move right away. They stay on the wheel, knuckles pale. He stares at the building through the windshield and tries to picture you inside. 

Waiting. Not waiting. 

Sitting in the booth pretending you’re not thinking about the fact he’s going to walk through that door at any second. Ready to rip him to shreds with that sharp tongue of yours. 

He swallows again and finally forces himself to move, fingers flexing, shaking off adrenaline.

No use in stalling.

Robin’s voice plays in his head—because it always does, because she has become the part of his brain that says the things he needs to hear even when he doesn’t want to.

Be yourself. Don’t hide behind an act. 

Stop trying so hard. Maybe then people will actually like you.

He grabs his jacket off the passenger seat, hesitates, then leaves it. He doesn’t want anything between him and whatever this is. No armour. No pretending.

He steps out of the car.

The cold air hits him hard enough to make him straighten. Gravel crunches under his shoes. He makes himself walk.

One foot, then the other, up the small dirt path. His breath fogs faintly. He can hear the wind worrying at the trees beyond the building, the distant town far below.

And he wants—God, he wants—to see you smile like you do on air. In front of him. Not because he deserves it. Not because it would fix anything. But because it would mean you don’t have to be scared anymore.

He doesn’t know if that’s possible.

He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to want it.

He just knows he’s willing to try.

Steve lifts his fist and knocks.

You didn’t go home last night. The decision came the second Robin shut the door behind her. 

The latch clicked. Her footsteps faded. And suddenly the station felt too empty, like it was holding its breath along with you.

You stood at the window for a long time.

Headlights flared to life in the lot outside, washing the walls in brief white arcs as the car turned. Steve in the driver’s seat. Robin beside him. You watched as they rolled slowly down the hill, the station shrinking behind them.

You wondered if he was looking back too.

You didn’t go home.

You’d always kept spare things in the car. Practical things. Clothes folded tightly in the boot. A toothbrush still in its packaging. Makeup wipes. Hair ties. It wasn’t unusual—sometimes the station ran late, sometimes the silence afterwards felt safer than the drive back. Sometimes it was easier to stay.

You hadn’t done it since that first night they’d burst in.

The memory still aches. The way your heart had nearly slammed out of your chest. You’d been rattled for hours after, nerves jangling, unable to settle.

But tonight felt different.

They wouldn’t come back. You told yourself that firmly, like a rule. He’d have the decency to wait. Tomorrow was tomorrow. Tonight, you were safe.

You locked the door. Checked it twice. Then a third time, just in case.

You curled up on the couch with the radio low, letting the night mix bleed into the room. Vinyl crackle. Familiar voices. 

Morning crept in gently, pale light spilling through the window. You woke with a jolt, disoriented for half a second before the station came back into focus. The couch. The equipment. The smell of old paper and coffee.

And the knot in your stomach.

You sat up slowly, rubbing at your face, already tired and the day hadn’t even started.

…Now what? 

You had no idea what to do with yourself.

Going on air felt impossible. The energy you’d shared with Robin yesterday had completely evaporated overnight, leaving something raw and exposed behind. 

You almost wished she was back here now, perched on the edge of the coffee table, talking a mile a minute, giving you one of her accidental pep talks that somehow cut straight through your defences.

She’d been so good at it.

Too good.

Talking with her had felt dangerous. Like speaking to someone who saw you clearly without trying to pry. She’d dismantled your walls without even meaning to, and before you realised what was happening, you’d been nodding along. Agreeing. Letting yourself be convinced.

Agreeing to hear her out.

Agreeing to talk to Steve.

You scowled at the thought, dragging yourself to your feet.

It was only because of her.

The only reason you were entertaining this meeting at all was because Robin was who she was—kind, perceptive, sharp in a way that didn’t cut. She seemed wise beyond her years, like she’d lived more life than she let on. She felt like a good judge of character.

And the way she spoke about him—that softness in her eyes, that careful honesty—had disarmed you when nothing else could.

Stupid.

How could you have let it happen?

You shoved the nerves down as best you could and busied yourself in the office. Paperwork. Letters. Notes. Ad requests scrawled in half-legible handwriting. 

You sifted through them methodically, stacking some aside, discarding others. Anything to keep your hands moving.

You checked the notice board. The calendar. The mailbox. Nothing new from the military—no fresh instructions, no ominous envelopes. Just the usual quiet.

You welcomed it.

You told yourself that this was fine. That you were in control. That you could handle a conversation. That you wouldn’t let it spiral.

Your mind, traitorous as ever, kept slipping.

Back to hallways and lockers and laughter that wasn’t yours.

Memories of Steve…

You shook your head sharply and focused harder on the page in front of you.

You were so absorbed that you didn’t hear the door open.

Didn’t hear the familiar squeak of rubber soles against the floor. Didn’t hear the subtle shift in the air when someone new entered the space.

It wasn’t until a gentle knock sounded against the office door that your heart slammed violently into your throat.

You spun around so fast the chair legs screeched.

And there he was.

Steve Harrington stood in the doorway, hands loose at his sides, posture tentative like he wasn’t sure he was welcome. Not the cocky ease he wore like armour back then. 

Too soon. 

You say nothing at first. You just stare at him.

Morning light shifts across the hallway behind him, catching in his hair, outlining the shape of his shoulders. 

He looks uncomfortable. Less prepared. Like he didn’t quite know how to dress for whatever this was meant to be.

He hasn’t stepped inside the office. Not even an inch.

He’s still hovering in the doorway, one hand braced lightly against the frame, like crossing that threshold without permission might shatter something. 

You notice it immediately. 

You told him the office was off-limits. And he listened.

Damn it. 

You clear your throat, arms crossing instinctively—defences snapping into place before you can stop it.

“You’re early,” you say bluntly.

The words come out sharper than you mean them to, but not enough to take them back.

He blinks, caught off guard. 

“I—uh. I am?”

He glances over his shoulder, then back at you.

“I—I knocked,” he adds quickly. “I didn’t hear you—on the radio, I mean—and Rob didn’t really mention a time, so I just…”

He trails off, suddenly very aware of how much space he’s taking up.

Truth is, you don’t actually know if he’s early.

You’ve lost track of time completely. The clock on the wall might as well be decorative for how little you’ve looked at it. Anything was better than counting down the minutes to this moment.

Your hesitation must show, because he shifts, weight rocking back slightly, nerves written all over his posture.

“I could—uh—I could come back later?” he asks carefully, “ If you’re busy—I mean, I can just—”

“No.”

The word comes out fast. You wince internally and try again.

“No,” you say more evenly. “You’re… you’re here now.”

You don’t know who you’re convincing more—him or yourself.

There’s no point in putting it off. That much is painfully clear. This is why he came. This is why you agreed. And if you don’t do it now, you’re not sure you ever will.

You need to say it.

All of it.

The things that have been sitting in you for years, heavy and unspoken.

You push yourself to move before you can second-guess it.

As you move past him, he immediately takes the hint—shuffling back a step to give you room, eyes flicking between your face and the door like he’s afraid of doing the wrong thing. You reach past and close it, the click of the latch sounding louder than it should.

Let’s get this over with. 

You carry the scattered papers from the office in your hands that feel a little unsteady, and set them on the coffee table by the couch. 

The location is deliberate—buying yourself a few extra seconds to think.

This is going to take a while.

You sit first.

He waits until you do before lowering himself onto the opposite end of the couch, leaving a careful distance between you. He perches there like he’s on the edge of a chair in a principal’s office—knees bouncing, hands clasped loosely, shoulders tense.

On trial.

Good, a petty voice in your head supplies. 

He should be uncomfortable.

You almost let yourself lean into that satisfaction—the small, vindictive relief of seeing him nervous, seeing him unsure. Seeing him stripped of that confidence he always—

But then Robin’s voice slips in, unwelcome and gentle.

It’ll eat you alive.

You swallow hard.

This ache in your chest—the one that flares every time you look at him—it’s familiar. Old. You’ve carried it for so long it feels like part of you. Letting it go feels dangerous. Like setting down a weapon you’ve relied on for years.

You don’t want to be here. But you also don’t want to keep living like this.

Steve shifts again, clearly trying to make himself smaller, less intrusive. 

His gaze flicks to you, then away, then back again, like he’s not sure where he’s allowed.

God, this is unbearable.

You think of last night. Of Robin on this same couch, knees tucked under her, voice soft and earnest as she talked you into this. 

You wish that she were here now. Sitting between you. Making it easier. Buffering the sharp edges.

But this isn’t her mess. This is yours.

Steve clears his throat quietly, like he might say something, then stops himself. 

Smart. 

For once.

You take a slow breath, grounding yourself in the feel of the couch beneath your fingers.

You’re in control.

You can do this.

“I never wanted to come back here.”

The words come out quiet, brittle at the edges. 

You don’t look at him when you say it. Your gaze stays fixed somewhere past his shoulder.

You needed a clear head to do this, and looking in those brown eyes was sure to derail it.

“That was the promise I made when I left for college,” you continue, voice tightening despite your best efforts. “That I would never—ever—set foot in this stupid town again.”

Your hands curl in your lap. Nails biting into skin. 

Steve stills.

You feel it more than you see it—the way his body goes rigid, like this isn’t the opening he’d braced for. He’d been ready for anger. For accusations. For you to tear into him.

You’ll get there.

But not yet.

You need to start at the beginning. Where all of this actually started. You need him to understand what this town did to you before he even gets to understand what he did.

Because you are not doing this twice. You don’t know if you’d be able to.

“I didn’t have a plan for my life,” you say. “Not a real one. Not when I started high school. I didn’t have some big dream or grand ambition. I was just… like everyone else.” 

Happy. 

You take a deep breath as you allow the memories to wash over you, trying to keep your voice steady. 

“I thought those years were supposed to show me who I was. What I was good at. What I wanted to be.”

You huff a small, humourless laugh.

“Turns out all they taught me was how badly I wanted to get out. How far I’d have to run to never see any of you ever again.”

There it is.

You risk a glance up.

Steve’s mouth parts slightly, like he’s about to speak, like instinct is pushing him to interrupt—to defend, to explain, to soften the blow. 

You don’t let him.

“Don’t—“ you cut in, sharper now. “Please.”

Don’t stop now.

You say it more to yourself than him. 

He shuts his mouth immediately. Nods once. 

You look away again, forcing yourself to finish what you started.

“I never wanted to come back,” you say again. “I didn’t just… decide one day that it would be fun. I spent weeks—months—trying to figure out literally any other option. Anything that didn’t involve coming back to Hawkins.”

Your jaw tightens.

“I tried everything—job applications, newspaper ads, roommates—“ you shake your head, “—Nothing. None of it worked. It was my last resort—the thing I told myself I’d only do if everything else failed.”

You allow yourself to look around the room, its familiarity. 

“I had to come back to this godforsaken hellhole after years of trying to build a life—back to where I started. Square fucking one.”

It was true—you had tried everything. 

As the semester drew to a close and your options thinned out, you realised you would have taken almost anything. 

But the only familiar place left to you was Hawkins: the one place with cheap rent and a handful of connections you might be able to lean on until you got back on your feet.

“I knew you’d still be here,” you say quietly. “That wasn’t hard to guess. You had no reason to leave, right? Nothing chasing you out. You had a home. Friends. Stability. A life here that you clearly thrived in.”

Steve inhales sharply. He wants to tell you that things weren’t perfect, that everyone has their demons. But you don’t let him. 

You give him a look.

You dare him. 

Because whatever demons he might bring up now will not excuse what he put you through.

You lean forward slightly, elbows on your knees.

“Did you know what you were like back then?” you ask him. Needing him to be honest. “I need to know. Did you ever realise what it was like for the rest of us? Watching you walk through the halls like nothing could touch you?”

Steve drags in a breath, slow and shaky.

Your words were getting to him now, clearly. The need to smooth it over, to make it somehow better. 

But how could he? 

“Back then…” he starts, then shakes his head, eyes dropping to the floor. “God. I can’t even begin to imagine what I—”

You scoff softly, cutting him off.

Bullshit.

“Stop.” 

He flinches.

His words are hollow to you. Excuses that you don’t want to hear. 

You want him to understand. 

“You must have known you had power, Steve,” you continue, voice rising despite yourself. “You had to have known. You’re not that stupid.”

He winces at that word, as it hits him square in the chest.

“You could have done something—anything. They were your best friends. You could have made it stop.”

He was right there. 

“I should have,” he says immediately. “I could have. I—God, I should have done something.”

The words are gentle. Regret soaked through them.

Too late.

“Then why?” you snap, finally looking straight at him.

Your vision blurs. Tears well behind your eyes, betrayal rushing back like it never left.

“There were so many chances,” you say, voice cracking. “So many goddamn chances for you—you could’ve—“

You stop to swipe angrily at your cheek, refusing to let the tears stop you now.

“How many times did you let Tommy corner me in the halls? How many times did you watch Carol follow me out of school?” Your chest heaves. “You let them sit on the hood of your car for godsake! Let them call out across the parking lot!”

Your lip quivers. You feel like a kid again. 

Your voice drops, deadly quiet.

“You let them do all of it.”

You never even cared. 

The silence that follows is deafening—and the worst part is, you’re not even finished. 

You can feel your heart beating under your skin, adrenaline still flooding your system. But you owe it to your younger self; no matter how hard this feels now, she would have wanted this. And your future self, too. This—you here, facing the fear that’s trailed you for years—this is what you’re doing for her.

“You know I never went to prom?” you add. “Or any of the formals?”

His eyes are still on yours, but he looks like he is unravelling.

“What?” The word comes out raw. 

Like this is only just clicking for him—how bad it got. 

Well, it doesn’t stop there. 

“I was terrified,” you say. “All the time. And there was no one. No one who had my back. No one who stayed once I became the target.”

It was a smart decision on their part—you had to give them that. You couldn’t even blame them. 

The problem was that the blame was sitting right across from you now. Looking every bit like you once did. Small. Beaten down. 

Your hands shake now. You don’t try to hide it.

Do what you came here to do. 

“It was all because of your group. People were scared they’d be next.”

He’d known they mattered. He just hadn’t known they mattered that much. Not enough to do this.

Right?

“I—” His voice breaks. “I never knew it was that bad.”

You stare at him, incredulous.

“You didn’t?” You laugh again, harsher this time. “Could’ve fooled me.”

You shake your head, anger surging.

“And that’s not even the half of it.”

He goes very still.

He wanted this conversation? 

Now he was going to get it. Every last piece of what you’d endured.

“Did you ever wonder why it was me?” you ask. “Did you even know why Tommy decided I was the one to torment?”

He looks… afraid to answer.

So you do it for him.

“What, he never told you?” you press. “The whole school seemed to think I threw myself at him at that party first year.”

Recognition flashes across Steve’s face.

The party.

The first big one of the year. He remembers it. 

“Yeah,” you say bitterly as it clicks. “That one.”

The party where he was probably off somewhere else—backed up against a wall with some girl laughing too hard at his jokes, his hand loose at her waist, everyone watching. Flirting without even trying. That stupid, perfect smile. Music pounding, beer everywhere, Steve Harrington at the centre of it all, like nothing bad could ever reach him.

Too busy being him to notice what his friends were doing. Too quick to chalk it up to kids being kids, to cheap beer and nights that didn’t matter.

Not for you, though.

Your voice trembles now, but you push through.

“Did you know he tried to get me to go upstairs with him?” you say. “And when I told him to get the hell away from me, he promised—swore—he’d make me regret it.”

The laugh that slips out of you is wrong. 

“And look what he did,” you add bitterly. “Guess he was a man of his word, huh?”

The words don’t just hang between you—they sink in.

Steve goes still. Like something’s punched straight through his chest. 

The air feels knocked out of him, sharp and sudden. He can’t tell if he’s supposed to breathe or apologise. His mouth opens, useless. All that’s left is the sick, burning knowledge that he didn’t intervene—and that not acting was its own kind of betrayal.

He’s staring at you now, no idea where to put the words—or the pain, or even himself.

He wants to reach for you; that’s what you do when someone is scared, when someone needs help. You pull them in. You try to hold them together.

But how could he? 

When you’re breaking because of him—again—and it’s his fault. 

Again.

He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing like it hurts.

“I— ” He tries miserably. His voice sounds weak—too thin, like it’s being stretched. “I didn’t know all of that—if I had known—”

“You would’ve stopped it?” you cut in sharply. 

Your laugh is short, jagged. 

“No. You wouldn’t have, Steve. You had plenty of chances. And you didn’t take a single one.”

The words feel like broken glass coming out of you, but once they start, you can’t stop them.

Your hands begin to shake harder. You notice it distantly, like it’s happening to someone else. 

Like your body is betraying you all over again.

Keep going. 

“Graduation,” you say, breath hitching. “Graduation was the happiest day of my life.”

Steve’s brow furrows, like he doesn’t understand the pivot. Like he’s just now realising what that says about everything that came before.

“I grabbed my diploma,” you continue, voice trembling but relentless, “and I ran. I ran halfway across the country for college, and I didn’t look back. Not once.”

Your chest tightens.

“I thought it was my ticket out. I thought I was safe. Safe knowing you’d be far away from me. Safe knowing I’d never have to see any of you again.”

You wipe angrily at your face again as tears spill over anyway.

“I thought I could finally build something,” you choke. “Something that actually meant something. A life that didn’t revolve around surviving.”

Steve looks wrecked now, like each word is landing exactly where it’s meant to.

There is nothing he can say.

“But then,” you press on, voice cracking, “the universe decides to have this sick sense of humour.” A sob slips out before you can stop it. “A goddamn quarantine. And suddenly I’m back here. Trapped. In this town. Like it was waiting for me all this time.”

You push yourself to your feet abruptly, adrenaline flooding your system. The room feels too small, the walls too close. 

He flinches back instinctively, eyes wide as he looks up at you.

“And now—now—” you gesture wildly, words tumbling over each other, “when I finally have one thing in my life that feels normal—one thing that’s mine—you show up.”

Your vision blurs. Your heart is hammering now, loud enough to drown out your thoughts.

“I—I had this place to build something on my own,” you say, voice rising. “To have purpose. And you just—what? Decide to turn up and demand space here too?” You laugh. “You were bored, Steve? You couldn’t find anywhere else to be?”

He always had to find you. 

Your breathing starts to go wrong—too fast, too shallow. 

You know this feeling. 

You know it too well.

No. 

No, not now.

Your chest tightens like it’s being crushed. The room tilts.

“I—” you stutter, panic clawing its way up your throat. “I’m sorry. I—I can’t—” 

You shake your head frantically, backing away. 

“Robin was wrong. I can’t do this. I can’t— I’m sorry.”

Your vision tunnels. The edges go dark.

Get out.

Need air.

Need space.

You turn sharply, stumbling away, heart slamming so hard it feels like it might break through your ribs.

Breathe, breathe, breathe—

And then—

A hand closes around your arm.

You jolt.

He catches you before you can get far.

Not rough, but firm enough that you can’t disappear on him. 

His hand closes around your arm and the second he feels you lurch, like a startled animal, something inside his chest caves in.

Shit. 

Shit, shit, shit.

“Hey—” he says immediately, voice too loud at first, panic sharpening it. 

He can’t add to this. 

He forces it down, softer, slower. 

“Hey—just—listen to me, alright?”

You don’t look at him.

Crap. 

Your gaze is unfocused, skittering past his shoulder, past the room, like you’re not entirely here anymore. Like whatever you’re seeing is louder than him, closer than him, and he can’t reach it.

Your breathing is all wrong, like you’re chasing air that won’t let itself be caught.

His heart starts hammering. His own breath stutters in ugly sympathy, muscle memory flaring sharp and unwelcome.

No. 

Focus on you first. 

He swallows hard, forcing himself to be something steadier than the mess clawing up his throat. 

Someone needs him right now. That has to matter more than the way his hands feel stiff, clumsy, like they don’t belong to him.

“Okay,” he murmurs, lowering his voice until it’s barely more than a vibration between you. “You need to breathe. Alright? Just—just breathe for me. Slow. Okay? Slow.”

He demonstrates without thinking, pulling in a careful breath through his nose, letting it out through his mouth like he’s taught himself a hundred times before.

In. Out.

Don’t rush it.

He watches you try.

You’re trying. He can see it—the way your chest hitches, the way your diaphragm trembles with the effort of it. But your body isn’t listening. It won’t cooperate. Your breath stutters and breaks anyway, tears spilling fresh over your waterline like it’s too much to hold back anymore.

“I can’t—” you gasp. “I can’t, I’m sorry, I’m—”

Sorry.

His jaw tightens.

How the hell are you apologising right now?

After everything you just ripped out of yourself. 

The unfairness of it sets his teeth on edge. The instinct to pull you closer—to shield, to anchor—burns through him so hot it scares him. He keeps his hands where they are through sheer force of will.

“Hey—hey,” he says gently, because if he doesn’t soften it right now he might crack straight in half. 

You look wrong like this.

The only other time he’d ever really seen you scared was that first night at the station—eyes wide, terrified, cornered. And even then, even with fear written all over you, you’d been all teeth and defiance. 

Swinging. Spitting. Fighting him every inch of the way.

That’s what he’d expected today.

Hell, he’d braced for it. He’d come in ready to have his ass handed to him, ready to swallow every word, every accusation.

But this?

He hadn’t expected this.

Hadn’t expected that just talking about it—just remembering—would drop you to pieces right in front of him. That it would still live this close to the surface. That it would take so little to break open.

Christ.

Your knees buckle.

Steve reacts without thinking, heart leaping straight into his throat as he steps in closer, careful, so careful, guiding you down before gravity can take you. 

“It’s okay—you’re okay, I gotcha,” he murmurs, lowering you toward the floor, arm gently on yours. “It’s alright—you’re okay. We can stop now. We can stop.”

He repeats it like a mantra, like if he says it enough times it might become true.

We can stop. 

Your body is still vibrating when you sit, nerves firing everywhere. He crouches down with you, hands braced on his knees, because he doesn’t trust them not to grab you if he lets them wander.

You’re listening. Or trying to.

Your hands are shaking badly now. Tremors running through your fingers like your body doesn’t know what to do with all the energy screaming through it.

How could he let this happen?

You told him you didn’t want to have this conversation, told him to back off. 

He should have listened. 

But once again, he got his way—like he always did—even if it meant tearing everything open again.

You swallow hard, shifting slightly on the floor. Your breathing is slowing—barely—but your expression twists into something else entirely. 

Tight. Embarrassed. 

Angry.

At yourself.

At him.

“I—” you start, voice hoarse.

You try to speak. The words don’t quite make it out.

“Sorry, I—” Steve cuts himself off, shaking his head once. Focus. “I didn’t get that. What do you say?”

Whatever it is, he’ll do it.

Whatever you ask for, he’ll try.

Your expression tightens, attempting firmness.

“Go,” you grit out.

The word is sharp, strained.

He blinks. “Huh?”

“Go,” you repeat, harsher now. Your head jerks toward the door.

Leave?

Not a chance. 

“What—no,” he says immediately, shaking his head. “No. I’m not—”

How could he leave you like this? 

He told himself he’d listen to whatever you wanted today. That he’d take it. That he wouldn’t push.

But he can’t do what you’re asking him right now.

He can’t walk away while you’re shaking on the floor because of things him. He can’t leave you alone in the wreckage and call that growth. He can’t go back to being that guy—the one who didn’t look, didn’t notice, didn’t act.

He knows what this is. Knows it too well.

The numb limbs. The lungs that refuse to cooperate.

The way the world gets too loud, too fast, too much.

He’s had panic attacks more times than he’ll ever admit. He learned early how to hide them, how to ride them out alone, hidden in his room, jaw clenched, hands shaking under tables, breath quiet so no one would see.

He knows how awful it is to make it through alone—and he won’t let you do that. 

He might be the last person you want right now. Hell, he’s almost positive. And you can tell him that later—when you can breathe, when you can think, when the words don’t feel like they’re ripping you open.

Until then, he’s staying.

“I said go,” you snap, even as your voice wobbles, betraying you completely.

“I’ll go when you’re okay,” he says quietly. “Alright? I promise I’ll leave. You won’t have to see me again if that’s what you want. I swear.”

He lowers himself further, cautious not to close the space between you.

“But I’m not leaving you like this.”

He stays crouched there on the floor long after the worst of it passes, his whole body aching with the effort of being still.

He keeps his hands planted on his knees. Keeps his breathing slow and obvious, a metronome you can borrow if you want it. Keeps his eyes on the gap in front of you instead of you, because every time he looks straight at your face he sees your panic.

He waits.

And waits.

Until your breaths stop catching like they’re snagging on barbed wire. Until they even out into something like normal. Until the shaking in your hands fades from violent tremors to small aftershocks, like your body still doesn’t trust that it’s allowed to come down.

His throat burns. He doesn’t swallow. He’s scared it’ll make noise. Scared the tiniest wrong sound will tip you back over the edge.

He hates how familiar this is. Hates that you know it too.

When you finally look up, it’s not anger that hits him first.

You’re exhausted. 

You look like you gave everything you had. Like you emptied yourself out until there was nothing left to hold you upright, and now you’re paying for it with interest. 

Your eyes are blown wide, still wet, lashes clumped. Your mouth is set in a line that’s trying so hard not to tremble.

You got it all off your chest, and it brought you to your knees.

If he’d known it would do that, if he’d had even the slightest clue that telling him would cost you this much—

He wouldn’t have let you do it.

No. 

That’s a lie.

He would have let you. Because you needed to say it. Because it lived in you, and you deserved to put it somewhere else, even if it tore you open on the way out.

But God—he hates that the price of doing it now.

Your shoulders sag as you lean back slightly, eyes dropping like you can’t stand to hold his gaze for long. He mirrors the movement slowly. He shifts his legs out from under him and settles back too, close enough that you can see him if you need to, but far enough that you won’t feel him.

No touching.

Not even close enough to brush your knee by accident.

He doesn’t trust himself not to flinch at that contact. Doesn’t trust you not to flinch either. He can’t take either of you jerking away right now. 

He drags a hand down his face like he can wipe the last ten minutes off his skin. Like he can rub the helplessness out of his eyes. His palm comes away damp—sweat, maybe. Or something worse.

He looks at you again, measuring the way your breath moves in and out now without fighting you so hard. 

He needs to talk to you. He needs you to talk to him.

But above all else, he’s worried.

His voice comes out carefully, like he’s walking across ice.

“How long… have they been going on?” he asks.

Your brow furrows.

“What?”

God, he’s terrible at this.

“The—uh.” He clears his throat. “The… panic attacks.”

You blink at him, confusion cutting through the haze for the first time since you dropped. Like he shouldn’t know what those are.

He almost laughs.

Oh, if only you knew.

“How do you—?” you start, voice rasping, and then you stop yourself.

He shifts under your gaze, suddenly very aware of himself. Of the way this is turning the light on him. Of the fact that you’ve done your share today—more than your share—and now you’re looking at him like he’s a person instead of a problem.

He doesn’t deserve that, but he can use it.

If it keeps you here. If it keeps your mind from running back. If it gives you something else to hold.

He exhales slowly.

“They—uh.” The words stick. He has to force them loose. “They started… senior year.”

Your eyes narrow slightly. Like you’re trying to read him for a lie.

He doesn’t give you one. It isn’t the whole truth; they became more frequent after he left school, worse than before. But he keeps that to himself. You don’t need any more reasons to panic right now.

His voice drops, smaller than he likes, smaller than anyone ever hears from him. 

“I think the first one hit when I didn’t get into college.”

He waits for your face to change. For the judgment. For the oh, poor Steve that he doesn’t want and doesn’t deserve.

But you just watch him.

Good.

“I applied for, like, a bunch of schools,” he says, the confession scraping on the way out. “But… I didn’t have the grades. So I sort of knew I wasn’t gonna get in. I—” He wets his lips. “I didn’t even want to send them because… I already knew the answer.”

He wasn’t smart like you.

That’s the bitter thought that flashes through him. He crushes it down. It’s not about smart. It’s about him spending his whole life being shown he was nothing but a face. A name. A thing that looked good on paper until you read the paper.

He can still hear the lectures. The disappointed silence. The way his father’s eyes would flick over him like he was a faulty product.

He can still feel the sweat on his palms when he’d hide report cards at the bottom of drawers. Can still remember sitting outside parent-teacher conferences in the car, stomach twisting, like it might be better to throw up than to go inside.

His dad always made him anyway. As if it were important he witnessed it. Like the humiliation was educational.

Steve’s eyes stay on the floor, but he can feel yours trained on him now. The attention is hot. It makes his skin itch.

“As soon as I saw the letter, I took it,” he continues, voice rough. “Waited until my parents were asleep. Didn’t want them to see it.”

He risks a glance up.

You’re watching him, and the look on your face isn’t what he expected.

You look… distracted. Like you’re recalibrating. Like the image you’ve held of him—Hawkins’ golden boy, perfect life, perfect parents, perfect future—is taking a hairline crack.

Like there was more to his story. 

“I knew they’d be pissed,” he says quietly. “Dad especially. He never really…” He swallows, jaw tight. “…had much faith in me.”

Something flickers behind your eyes. Surprise, maybe. 

He’s started now. He can’t stop halfway.

“I hid it for weeks,” he goes on, voice steadier only because he’s past the point of saving face. “Thought I’d gotten away with it. And then my mom cleaned my room and…”

He glances away, heat crawling up his neck.

It shouldn’t be embarrassing. It isn’t even the worst part of his life. Still, this is the inch he chooses to show you.

The other stories—the guarded ones—are too dangerous, even if he knows they’d distract you far better than some cheap anecdote from his past. 

This one, at least, is true. 

He won’t lie to you again.

“I came home one day,” he says, and now his voice goes dull, “and it was just… sitting there on the table. All crumpled up.”

He can see it like it’s right in front of him: the letter folded wrong, creased too many times, like it’s been crushed in someone’s fist in anger. 

He swallows again. 

“I just… stood in the doorway for a second,” he admits. “Thought about turning around. Not coming back.”

He shakes his head, not caring when his hair falls into his eyes.

“I didn’t,” he says. “I stayed. Let them yell.”

It’s not even a confession anymore. It’s a bruise he’s pressing on to prove it still hurts.

“Dad called me every name under the sun.” The words taste like metal. “Couldn’t understand how his son barely scraped through high school. Said there was nothing waiting for me. No future.”

He gestures at himself, small and dismissive.

“It wasn’t until Rob that I started… thinking for myself.”

The words are tender, but far too clean in his mind. Like he’s trying to wrap years of being awful in a bow and hand it to you like see? character development.

But it’s true. 

He can put his hands up and admit it: before her, he was nothing. Not dramatic or self-pitying—more in the way with no spine. No compass. No clue who he was when he wasn’t being admired.

Maybe his dad had a point.

He thought he knew what friendship was—sort of—but he’d been dead wrong. The Tommys. The Carols. All of it had been surface-level. Nothing that required him to actually show up as a person.

Lunch conversations that never went anywhere real. Jokes that didn’t ask questions. Cruelty that passed for humour if you didn’t look too closely.

He shifts, dragging a hand over the back of his neck. He can feel sweat there even though the room is cold. He feels like he’s been running for miles. 

He looks over at you and you seem to have calmed down a little more.

Your eyes are softer—not forgiving, not warm, not that. Just no longer gone. You’re here again. Your breathing is steadier. The tears have dried in the tracks they made down your cheeks. You fold your hands in your lap and, thank God, they’re not shaking anymore.

You look at him in a gentle way that makes him feel ten times worse than if you’d glared.

“Yeah,” you say, voice hoarse but steady, “she told me about that.”

Steve’s brain stutters.

“What?” he blurts. 

What did she tell you? 

You tilt your head slightly, like you’re choosing how to say it.

“Robin. She told me about… you. About the mall.”

His eyes widen before he can stop them.

“What part?” 

You huff a soft breath.

“Just… that you worked together… The uniforms.”

Thank God. 

His face pulls into something that might’ve been a smile if it didn’t hurt.

“Yeah,” he says, weak chuckle scraping out of him. “The uniforms.”

He couldn’t forget those if he tried. That ugly scoop-neck thing that made him look like a washed-up sailor. The name tag. The stupid hat. The way the air in there smelled like pretzels and popcorn.

Funnily, that was the best part of that summer.

“It was the only place that would hire me,” he says, and there it is—honesty, plain and ugly.

He lets the calm sit for a second, because he doesn’t know what else to do with it. 

“It was only with her that I… started seeing who I was back then,” he says, and the words feel too small again. He tries to push through it anyway. “What I—what I did to people.”

He swallows, throat tight.

What he let happen to you.

He needs to do what he came here to do.

He needs to get through to you. Somehow. He needs you to know that he’s sorry. The kind that lives under your skin. The kind that changes how you move through the world.

And he had meant what he said earlier, too—he’d meant it with everything in him. If you never wanted to see him again, he could make that happen. He could take the hit. He could disappear. Tail between his legs, out of your orbit for good.

Robin would just… be the one who spoke to you. He’d take the backseat. He’d swallow it.

He would.

He’s not trying to be noble. He’s trying to not make your life worse.

His fingers curl tighter around his knee.

“Since I wasn’t in high school anymore,” he adds, forcing a crooked edge into it because he can’t help himself, “she could dig at me all she wanted.”

His eyes flick up to you, then away. 

“And trust me,” he mutters, “she did.”

Your lip quirks up at the image. You’re sure she bossed him around to no end. 

There it is.

“There wasn’t much to do,” he continues, spurred on by the small expression on your face. “We had to kill time. And she still tried her best not to talk to me.”

He shakes his head.

“It was… obvious,” he says. “She’d look everywhere except at me. Like if she didn’t acknowledge I existed, I’d go away.”

He remembers it too clearly—the way her mouth would twist like she’d bitten a lemon whenever he tried to be charming.

“It wasn’t until—” he starts, and the next words rise up automatically, and he has to bite down on them so hard his jaw aches.

Not that. Not the whole truth. Not the Russians. Not the basement under the mall. Not the secret rot under Hawkins that you don’t know about.

He can’t drop that into your lap right now. Not when you’re looking at him like he’s finally human.

He forces a different sentence out.

“Before the place burned down,” he says instead, and it’s close enough to the truth that it tastes like ash, “we… talked.”

He steadies it by pressing harder against his knee.

“It was only then that she—” He swallows again. “That she dropped the bomb.”

His gaze drops to the floor. 

“She told me she sat behind me for two years,” he says, and the shame crawls hot up his neck, “twice a week.”

He lets out a breath through his nose.

“And I didn’t—” his voice catches on the word, “—I didn’t even remember her.”

He remembers how it felt when she said it.

Not like being punched—he’s been punched. This was worse. This was something sinking slow into his ribs.

That he’d moved through school like a king through a crowd, seeing nobody unless they were useful. That he’d had people orbiting him—people with whole lives and whole thoughts—who might as well have been wallpaper.

He’d existed like that. For years.

And you—God—you’d been a person in his hallway, in his town, in his line of sight.

And he’d let you become a target anyway.

“When she told me that—” 

He tries to smile at that, like it’s a joke. It doesn’t work. It falls flat and ugly.

“It was just…” He shakes his head. “It was humiliating—I spent my whole life thinking I was somebody, when really I was—”

A coward. 

He reminds himself, sharply, that this is not the point.

You are the point.

He needs to apologise. Properly. Not with a story. Not with context. Not with excuses dressed up as honesty.

“I think about it every time I see her,” he admits, and it comes out lower than he expects. “She doesn’t know it, but—”

He stops.

Because what was he going to say?

She saved me.

She taught me how to be decent.

She’s the reason I’m not the same guy anymore.

It’s true.

And it sounds… wrong. Wrong as in cheap. Like he’s trying to earn points.

“She didn’t owe me anything,” he says simply.

He hates how emotional he gets about her when he should be thinking about you.

But the truth is—they haunt him. Both of you, in different ways.

Robin, because she stayed. Because she saw him at his worst and chose to keep showing up.

You, because you didn’t have that choice. Because he helped make you feel unsafe in the place you were meant to grow.

Two people in his life, both bearing scars that circle back to him like a boomerang.

He doesn’t know how he fixed it with Robin. He doesn’t know why she stuck around. He tries not to think about it too hard, because the moment he does, it feels like he might drop it. Like he might lose her just by acknowledging the miracle of it.

But you—

You’re not Robin.

You don’t make jokes over the hard parts. You don’t throw him a rope and call it character building.

He shifts forward slightly.

“But what I need you to know,” he says, slower now, deliberate, “is that if I could go back—if I could do it again—”

His throat closes up on him.

He clears it, tries again, voice rough.

“—I would’ve done things differently,” he finishes. “I know that now.”

He would’ve been braver.

He would’ve been better.

He would’ve been the guy he pretended to be.

He blinks hard and pushes through the ache in his chest.

“I chose myself,” he says. “I chose… comfort. I chose to stay where it was easy.”

He shakes his head slowly, like he can’t believe the person he’s describing is real. Is him.

“I hate that I did that,” he says, and his voice breaks properly this time, no control, no polish. 

He hates that he let it happen.

He swallows. His eyes burn.

“I know this is a weak excuse,” he adds quickly, because panic surges the moment he hears emotion in his own voice and his instinct is to cover it, to smooth it over, to fix it before it looks ugly. “I know that, and—and I’m not asking you to forgive me.”

He would never ask that.

He leans forward another inch, then stops. Measures the distance like it’s life or death.

He keeps his hands visible. Keeps them still.

“But I need you to know that I’m—” He tries. The words halt in his throat like they don’t want to come out because they know they’re not enough.

He hates words.

Words are slippery. Words get you out of trouble. Words let you lie.

He wants something heavier than that. Something you can’t fake.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s not pretty. It’s not eloquent. It’s not a speech. It’s just him, stripped down. “I’m so—” He exhales, shaky. “I’m so, so sorry.”

You stare at him.

You’ve dreamt of this. Imagined it in quiet moments. You’d hoped that one day he would finally see it. That he would understand what he did. What all of it did to you.

And now he’s sitting on the floor with you.

He’s down here, legs bent awkwardly, shoulders slumped, looking every bit as drained as you feel. Every bit as fragile.

You can tell he’s holding something back. You don’t know how, but you can see it in the way his posture is tight, like he’s afraid if he lets it go fully, something will break loose. Maybe he’s doing it for your sake.

The thought surprises you.

And worse—there’s a pang of sympathy that follows, blooming right in the middle of your chest.

He looks sad.

And that’s… that’s everything you ever wanted, isn’t it?

To see it land. To see him carry even a fraction of what you’ve been carrying for years.

So why do you feel so hollow?

The satisfaction you thought would come—some neat sense of closure, some vindication—it doesn’t arrive. 

There’s this strange, empty sensation.

It aches.  

You think you might have felt embarrassed, sitting on the floor like this, if it hadn’t been for his reaction. You never—never—would have expected Steve Harrington to know what true panic felt like.

And then there’s his parents.

You didn’t know that. You’d always imagined them as a photograph-perfect American family: mom, dad, son. Big house. Money to burn. Smiles that belonged in frames. You’d never had that, never had everything handed to you.

But based on what he just told you… money doesn’t buy everything.

At least your parents were never cruel.

You understand now why he spoke when you were spiralling. It didn’t take a genius to see it, in hindsight. 

He’s more like Robin than he probably realises—less chaotic, sure, but the same instinct buried underneath. That ability to fill a space with words when silence becomes dangerous. To read a moment and shift his tone when something is on the brink of shattering.

You see it. 

You see what you didn’t before. 

He clears his throat softly, sniffing once, and glances at you again like he’s checking for damage. Like he’s bracing for a verdict.

You don’t say anything.

Your mind is still catching up to your body, still sorting through the wreckage of what just happened. So you just look at him. Carefully. Like one wrong movement might break the moment apart.

Steve Harrington—your sworn enemy, the name that used to knot your stomach on sight—has just admitted everything. Held himself accountable. Didn’t run. Didn’t deflect. Stayed with you while you fell apart, took it all in stride, and apologised with something dangerously close to earnestness.

You can see him now the way Robin does.

It’s almost disorienting. 

He doesn’t fill the room by demanding attention; he fills it by paying attention. He wants to help. To be there. 

To make something of himself without treading on anyone in the process.

You see the remorse in him. The shame. It’s all tangled up in those wet brown eyes he keeps trying not to let linger on you, like he’s afraid you’ll see too much if he looks for too long.

The silence stretches.

It’s long enough that it starts to feel deliberate.

Long enough that his shoulders shift, that he glances over you once more—measuring, deciding—and then slowly, carefully, he gets to his feet.

Your heart stutters.

Standing, he looks down at you, nerves written all over his face now, stripped of that fragile steadiness he’d been holding onto.

“I’ll—uh,” he says, voice rough. “I’ll go now.”

What?

Your brain lags, a half-second behind the words.

He glances at you again, uncertainty flickering, and then he really does turn to leave—already interpreting your silence as an answer. 

A no. A boundary. A dismissal.

Panic flares.

You don’t want him to leave.

You still feel scared, still feel overwhelmed, still feel like the world is tilted slightly off its axis—but you don’t want this. 

You don’t want him walking away now, not after everything that just cracked open between you.

You don’t want Steve Harrington to leave.

“Hey—” you call out, the word tumbling from your mouth before you can think better of it.

He stops immediately.

He turns back to you, alert, worried, ready—like you might need something else, like he’s already bracing himself to step back in if you falter again.

“I—” you start.

Your voice catches.

Don’t go.

You don’t say it out loud, but something in your face must give it away. Your eyes, maybe. Or the way your hands curl into themselves in your lap, like you’re holding onto the moment with your fingers.

He reads it immediately.

Of course he does.

His shoulders soften, the tension easing out of him like he’s been holding his breath too. And you realise that he doesn’t want to be alone either. 

He doesn’t say anything. He just crosses the small distance between you and lowers himself back down onto the floor, careful, slow, sitting beside you instead of in front of you. Close enough that you can feel the warmth of him through your sleeve. Far enough that he’s not crowding you.

He gives you the choice without ever asking for it.

And you let him stay.

You sit there together, shoulder to shoulder, letting the silence settle around you. For once, it doesn’t feel sharp. It doesn’t feel like something you need to fill or defend against. The barrier that’s always been there—thick with memory and fear and resentment—feels thinner now. 

You almost want to call it comfortable.

Almost.

“I don’t forgive you,” you tell him softly.

The words are quiet, but they hit hard.

You feel him stiffen beside you immediately. His spine goes straight, breath catching like he’d walked right into it. 

He’d been expecting it—you can tell—but expectation doesn’t blunt the impact.

You turn your head to look at him.

The corners of his mouth are pulled down, eyes dropping to the floor as he nods once, accepting it like a sentence already handed down.

“Yeah,” he says, too quickly. “Yeah, no—that’s alright. I didn’t—I wasn’t—”

He trails off, stopping himself before he can dig the hole any deeper.

“But,” you add.

The word is small. It feels dangerous even as it leaves you.

He stills.

You swallow, heart thudding.

“But I’d like to see if we can… try?”

You don’t know why you phrase it like a question. Maybe because it feels too big to state outright. It sounds almost childish. An innocent, tentative thing. Like holding out a hand and hoping someone will take it.

Like you both should have done when you were younger. 

Something in you wants to let this go. Wants to finally be free of the constant vigilance, the tightness in your lungs every time you hear his name.

To breathe again.

To trust him.

Fuck.

To trust Steve Harrington.

He blinks, turns to you slowly, like he’s not sure he heard you right.

“We—” he starts, then stops, disbelief breaking through his voice. “We can… do that.”

You nod, just once.

“We can do that,” he repeats, quieter now. Like he’s testing the words.

You look over at him and manage the smallest smile you can muster—tired, uncertain. He mirrors it, his own smile wet and anxious, eyes still shining with everything he’s trying not to feel.

But you’re here. Together. On the same page.

Cleared the air, as Robin would say.

You huff out a soft breath, something like a laugh.

Damn it.

She’s right again.

And—annoyingly—it really does feel better.

You sit there for what could be minutes or hours, time losing its shape around you. Eventually your tailbone goes numb and that, more than anything, breaks the spell. You shift, groaning quietly as you push yourself up to your feet.

Steve’s up immediately, a second behind you, eyes fixed on you like he’s expecting you to wobble. You don’t—but you notice the way his hands hover anyway, ready to catch you if you do.

“Do you, uh…” he starts, rubbing his palms down the front of his jeans, nerves creeping back in now that the emotional freefall has slowed. “Do you… want a coffee?”

Typical.

You chuckle, the sound surprising both of you. He looks at you like he’s not quite sure what he did right.

“I’m alright,” you say gently. 

You’re way too buzzed still to even think about caffeine. 

He tries not to let it hit him, but you see it anyway—the flicker of disappointment, the way his shoulders drop a fraction. He masks it quickly, but it’s there.

And you smile.

“But,” you add, tilting your head, “we do have hot chocolate in the cupboard.”

His eyes lift again.

“It’s only the powdered stuff,” you continue. “Nothing fancy.”

“I’ll make it,” he says immediately.

This is something he can do.

You lean back against the wall and watch him move toward the kitchen, careful but purposeful, like he’s afraid of doing this wrong too. 

Halfway there, he glances over his shoulder at you, caught between checking that you’re still here and not quite believing you let him stay.

There’s a bashfulness to it that makes your chest ache in a strange, unfamiliar way.

This version of Steve—quieter, stripped of certainty, trying instead of assuming—feels like someone you might have known in another life. Someone you could have trusted, maybe. Someone who never would have let things get as bad as they did.

He’s less sure of himself now. Anyone could see that. And the questions that still linger in your mind haven’t disappeared—not all of them. There are gaps. Loose ends. Things that will need words, time, honesty you’re not ready to ask for yet.

This isn’t resolution.

You both know that.

But it is a beginning.

Something has shifted, subtle but undeniable, like a lock finally turning after years of forcing the door. The ball has been set in motion, and the relief that washes through you is almost dizzying. You feel lighter than you have in years—giddy, even—and you tell yourself it’s just adrenaline, just the aftermath of everything you dragged into the open.

But it’s more than that.

For the first time in a long time, you feel free. Not healed. Not fixed. Just… unburdened. The weight isn’t gone, but it’s loosened its grip, and even with the edges still frayed, you can breathe.

You find yourself wanting him to stay a while. Long enough for the quiet to settle. Long enough to see if this fragile new honesty can hold. Maybe long enough to start putting other things in order, too—to test the waters of this truce you’ve carved out between you.

It feels like the past has finally loosened its hands from around your throat.

And you’re taking your first real breath of fresh air again.

a/n: to celebrate nesrly finishing exams!! this was the big one and i was going to break it down into parts, but after hearing from you guys ik you wanted longer chapters.

this is just the beginning, and dont worry there is more angst to come (it's me c'mon) but this needed to happen.