#stali

so take everything left of me, anything you might want

Kali gets taken in by the Byers-Hopper family post-canon, much the same way Joyce took in Jane and treated her like her own in Hopper's absence.

Hopper starts off still quite hostile towards Kali, causing tension in the home. It makes it hard for her to heal immediately. He is unintentionally playing into her trauma by treating her as a problem rather than a loved one.

This changes at a certain point when Kali's mental health takes a nose dive and Joyce advocates for her like no tomorrow. She rips Hopper a new one for doing to her what he wanted to protect his own daughter from. Hopper's opinion of Kali officially shifts when he sees how much she genuinely cares for Jane and would do anything for her, going out of her way to go to Jane in times of distress and talk her through bad dreams and panic attacks. As well as seeing Kali's struggles when she thinks she's alone, waking up hyperventilating from nightmares the same way he remembered with Jane.

He begins making a conscious effort to make amends for his part in exasperating her mental decline, going out of his way to slowly engage with her interests in his own ways and taking care of her. He starts working on his kneejerk reactions to normal milestones in parenthood, with Joyce’s help. (She deserves a fucking medal fr that man needs therapy /lh)

She doesn't trust this in the beginning, until it becomes apparent that this is not a self-serving mission he has, or one he's doing purely for Joyce or Jane's benefit.

She slowly begins to trust Hopper, allowing him slow tiny steps towards getting closer to her and letting her walls down around him. They may never quite make it to the same level of bond that he shares with Jane, but they have their own unique relationship to each other that they both deeply value.

Will clings to Kali very quickly, thinking she's one of the coolest people alive. She very quickly adores him because he reminds her of Jane.

Kali and Jonathan bond rather quickly as well, since he visits home frequently to keep his mother from worrying too much about him. They bond over their shared interest in punk music and anti-capitalism.

Joyce is a loving and attentive mother to Kali, offering to do small things for her throughout the day to show she cares. Things Kali isn't used to. Joyce makes her meals, and offers to braid her hair, and includes her in family game nights as if she has always been a fixture of their family.

Steve enters the picture after moving in with Jonathan after around eight months of staying in Hawkins. The nightmares never ceased living in the trailer park Eddie and Chrissy died in, in the town that had brought him so much pain and taken so much from him. He didn't want to be alone anymore.

Steve doesn't have anyone to go home to anymore, his parents were never really big on holidays as it stood and they never seemed to care about Steve the way parents should. This leads Jonathan to bring Steve home to visit his family in Montauk for the holidays.

Joyce absolutely adores Steve, and promises him he's always welcome to visit, with or without Jonathan. She likely knows the level of neglect he's experienced from his parents by virtue of living so close to them. She knew his father in high school. She's happy to take him under her wing and add yet another lost child to her roster of babies that need a mom.

Steve meets Kali officially during that first trip. He had somewhat met her in the events of the final fight, but they never exchanged pleasantries or introductions. He didn't know much about her, just that she was also a lab subject like Jane and she was very closed off from anyone that wasn't Jane.

Steve does his best to be kind to her. He's staying in her house, after all. She seems lonely and he wants to bridge that gap. She doesn't let him in immediately, closed off and anxious around him like a cornered prey animal.

He doesn’t take this personally, and doesn’t stop offering that branch each time they interact. He treats her like a person.

Nothing happens between them until the next time he comes with Jonathan for holidays. He’s still very kind and gentle towards Kali, something she’s still not used to, and believes she may not ever be.

The bridge between them starts to build this second trip. Steve says something to her while making dinner for the family one night (he wanted to give Joyce a break from feeding 7 people on her own, but he had to put up a fight to get her to agree to relax), asking if she would prefer him making her dinner another way after she seemed slightly disappointed in his choice of spaghetti. She quietly tells him she had hoped for alfredo, but “it didn’t matter”. She’s then surprised when she gets to the table after dinner is called to see only her plate filled with alfredo instead of spaghetti. Steve doesn’t acknowledge this, just gently comments that he hoped everyone enjoyed the food they got.

She visits Steve in the guest room that night as he’s getting ready for bed. He’s surprised to see her but welcomes her in without a second thought. She’s quiet, but probing. She asks him about little things she sees in his belongings. It’s an awkward exchange, but he welcomes it. They talk for roughly twenty minutes before she leaves him to rest. He goes to bed smiling.

Kali has started calling Jonathan regularly to check in on him, and in these calls she always asks how Steve is doing. Jonathan always tells Steve that Kali said hello during their calls, and it always makes him happy to hear.

One day, Jonathan is busy and out of the house. When Kali calls, he answers instead. He apologizes to her, telling her he can let Jonathan know to call her back as soon as she’s available. But she asks if they could talk instead. And they do. It slowly becomes less and less awkward. He hears her laugh for the first time. He fixates on the sound of it for a little too long.

They talk for so long, he doesn’t even realize until he notices the sun had began to set, and hears Jonathan’s keys rattling against the lock on the front door. He asks if she still wants to talk to Jonathan, but she declines, says there’s always tomorrow, and thanks him for the conversation. Jonathan asks about the call. Steve simply tells him that Kali said hello.

This becomes routine for Kali. One call to Jonathan, always mid-day, around the time he’s out of classes and has nothing going on. Then, a separate call to Steve in the evenings. Always longer, gradually brighter. Steve finds he really likes the sound of her voice. Kali finds she really likes the sound of his smile shining through his words.

Robin visits Steve and Jonathan often, sometimes with Nancy if she isn’t busy. She finally hears about what’s been going on between Steve and Kali, and is ecstatic for so many reasons. Steve’s mental health has been on the decline as well, right up until she entered the picture. He’s smiling brighter, eating more, feeling less pessimistic overall when it comes to his own future. She likes this look on him, and thus loves Kali.

She encourages him to pursue Kali, but he immediately waves it off. He defends that she only just got around to trusting him on a fundamental level, that romance of any kind is not currently and may never be in the cards with her. He just likes her company. He even tries to deny there’s feelings to be talked about anyway, that they were just friends and that’s all this was. She doesn’t believe him for a second.

In Montauk, Hopper agrees to teach Kali how to drive. And oh, does that go exactly how you think it does. Cue stressed out Hopper in the passenger seat gripping the safety handle for dear life as she struggles to understand the concept of speed limits.

When she finally gets comfortable with driving and passes her test with flying colors, she plans to take a trip to visit Jonathan and Steve where they are for a change. She brings Will and Jane along.

Much to Jonathan’s surprise, Kali clings to Steve the entire trip. He had known Steve had been having late night calls with someone, just not who. He still doesn’t know, but he’s happy Kali had made a friend in Steve.

Steve and Kali continue their late night talk tradition, just in person. They sit on either one of their beds and talk for hours about nothing in particular every night. He’s so fascinated by her, having lived through so much and still being here to tell the tales. She feels the same about him.

He kisses her one night, in her room. It was an instinctual action after a long night of tension that finally broke. And he panics, apologizing immediately and making a swift exit back to his room. She doesn’t follow, too shocked and locked in place, mind racing.

Steve wakes Jonathan up at 5:30 in the morning to confess to his sins. Jonathan is so sleep deprived that it takes him a full 5 minutes to understand what Steve even means by “I kissed her, I’m so sorry, I kissed her.”

He reassures Steve that it’s not a big deal, that he’s surprised but not upset. Steve doesn’t understand, because he knows their history. He knows Jonathan remembers him as a boyfriend, and all that happened with Nancy. Jonathan takes his time to reassure Steve that all of that was in the past, that they were all teenagers and traumatized, and he doesn’t hold that stuff against him or his character. He says he would be happy for Kali to have someone like Steve. He finally cuts the sweet moment short by gently telling Steve to fuck off and let him sleep.

Steve is walking everyone back to the car when it’s finally time to leave. He can’t meet Kali’s eyes. Despite Jonathan’s groggy blessing, that doesn’t do much for knowing how Kali feels in all of this. He says goodbye individually to Will and Jane, letting them get their goodbyes from Jonathan as he makes it to Kali.

He tries to stumble through an apology for the night before, saying he had just been tired and wasn’t thinking. That it didn’t have to mean anything, and he didn’t want her to feel obligated to make anything out of it. She kisses him to shut him up.

They start dating mostly long distance. Dustin teases him for it to harken back to when he dated Suzie. “But Steve, are you sure she’s real?” “I literally kissed her on the mouth, you idiot.” “Mmm, I dunnooo. How do you date someone you can’t see?” “I’m not gonna visit anymore if you don’t shut the hell up.”

Steve becomes the favorite son-in-law. Hopper likes him because he reminds Hopper a lot of himself when he was younger, and offers a loving paternal energy in his life.

His relationship with Joyce doesn’t change at all, she’s known that was one of her boys the moment Jonathan started bringing him home. Though honestly she thought he’d be dating Jonathan instead (much to BOTH of their complaints when she brings it up for the first time). She has no complaints regardless.

After a couple years, Steve and Kali’s relationship is going so well that they agree to find a place to live together. They stay close to their family and friends, and visit often to keep Joyce from fretting.

Steve and Jonathan talk a lot on the phone. Jonathan sees Robin and Nancy a lot. He tells Steve about how he reconnected with Argyle as well, and tells him all about the friendship they had in California, and how Argyle had went on to move into his van and travel the United States, and how they had reunited through pure chance at a park Jonathan frequented for photography opportunities. He eventually comes out to Steve and tells him that him and Argyle are in a romantic relationship. Steve has never been happier for him, and says he’d loved to meet Argyle.

They come to the decision that all six of them, them, Robin, Nancy, Kali and Argyle, need to take a camping trip together. Do something to feel normal. They actually follow through.

They take a week long camping trip to a state park in Pennsylvania. They spend the trip talking around bonfires, swimming in the river in their underwear, smoking weed and letting go.

Robin and Nancy reveal they’ve been dating for the last year, which shocks the whole group. They spend nearly 30 minutes ranting about it while the girls laugh at them. They then spend a while joking that they all found love in the darkest of times.

Steve had been taking it incredibly slow with Kali up until that point. Despite getting a house together, he wanted the relationship and all of its milestones to go at Kali’s pace. Meaning, they hadn’t slept with each other. Until the trip.

Kali is the one to initiate it, in their tent after a long day of fun and effortless smiles. It’s everything she’s ever wanted.

After six years of dating, Steve proposes to her. It’s simple, and private. He does it on their sixth anniversary, setting up a modest homemade candlelit dinner and giving a quiet but heartfelt speech about how much her presence in his life meant to him, and that he could see forever with her.

They have a small wedding, and they only invite those who are close to them. Jane is Kali’s maid of honor. Dustin is Steve’s best man. Hopper walks Kali down the aisle. Max and Lucas volunteer to throw the flower petals. Jonathan is the ring bearer.

They had a small “reception” at Joyce and Hopper’s house. Joyce is happy to see her house so full again, after Will moved in with Mike and Jane moved in with Dustin. Steve helps her cook a big dinner for everyone, still in his tux. He refuses to take it off.

They don’t tell anyone, but they were already technically married by this point, and had been for several months. They couldn’t wait, going down to a courthouse for the certificate and setting it in stone. The wedding was for their loved ones, the people who gave them life again in their own individual ways. But their actual marriage? That was just for them, private and quiet and utterly perfect.

It’s laying in their honeymoon bed in Italy, head on Steve’s chest as he sleeps, hearing his heartbeat against her ear, that Kali feels true peace.