Archive of Our Own

It’s summer break and Steve Harrington cannot catch a goddamn break.

The heat is stultifying, oppressive and heavy; sitting at the poolside, he feels sweet gather in the dip of his collarbones, fingers dropping into the welcome coolness of water. It’s been years, but it’s still hard to look at the pool without thinking of that day—with Barbara and Nancy and everything after—but Steve is nothing if not a master of repression and compartmentalisation.

Some days he wonders what would’ve happened if he’d hadn’t gotten into all this shit; remained oblivious, and ignorant, and blessedly unaware. Would ‘King Steve’ actually be doing something meaningful with his life, away from Family Video and Hawkins? Would he still be one of the assholes he’d grown to hate? Would he have a bunch of bratty kids he’d die for, a kickass best friend and a friendship with Nancy and Jonathan and people he wouldn’t trade for the world?

Would he have Eddie ‘the freak’ Munson, popping out of nowhere like it’s his job to scare Steve to death?

“What the f-” Steve scrambles back at the sudden motion, swinging widely on instinct and missing as Eddie jumps out of the way. “Jesus Christ, man! Don’t scare me like that.”

Eddie grins, holding his hands up; a sign of surrender. “My bad. A little lost in thought there, aren’t you?” He leans in slightly, hands shoved into the pockets of his ripped jeans. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Har de har har,” Steve says in the driest tone he can muster. “Did you pick my lock again?”

“Yes. At this point you should really give me a key.” Eddie chances a side glance at the pool, then at Steve, who stands and gets a better look at him. In the sunlight, the silhouette of Eddie’s hair glows an angelic golden-brown, eyes dark and amiable as he smiles; with this weather he’s ditched his vest and jacket for jeans and- and- a fucking crop top , with his toned midriff on show, a strip of smooth skin Steve wrenches his eyes away from because hey, nothing weird about that, right?

He doesn’t get why his mouth is dry as his gaze flickers back up to Eddie, who’s frowning and still looking at the pool. Must be the heat. Something lodges in his throat, and he swallows a little before speaking. “Oi, Munson. You want to go for a swim or something?”

A shake of the head; a pause. “I heard what happened here, all those years ago,” Eddie says abruptly. “Was it… y’know, related to all that?” He makes a circular hand gesture and grimaces. Steve clears his throat.

“Yeah, well. It was a long time ago.” He heads back inside, Eddie not far behind him. And because Eddie can read Steve incredibly well, now, like an open book—understands him wordlessly even more than Robin or even Nancy—he shuts up about that and says instead:

“So, are we going to my trailer to get high or what?”

Steve doesn’t know when this became a regular occurrence, when he started to spend less time in that big empty house alone and more time in Eddie’s trailer. He likes it. It’s lived in; homey; and more importantly, it’s so very Eddie.

They hang out aimlessly, sometimes, smoking weed or drinking shitty beer or watching movies from Family Video after one of Steve’s shifts (shifts Steve most likely spent being bothered by said man). Today he’s off work, because Robin owes him one and offered to cover his ass for a day as payment, so he’s currently sitting at the feet of Eddie’s bed, head tilted back and Eddie draped beside him.

Seriously, the man doesn’t have a sense of personal space. He’s one of the most tactile people Steve has ever known; a brush of shoulders here, a nudge there. It took some getting used to, but Steve relishes it—relishes the contact, the reminder that they’re both alive.

Some days Dustin pesters him to drive them and the kids to the arcade and Steve feels something like anxiety sitting in his gut the whole time. No matter how much he tries to play it off, the dread is a second behind; not always acute, but subconscious, almost. He finds that that feeling of responsibility stemming from all their little fights never quite goes away.

He does a quick head count every 5 minutes, tells them not to do this or that. They never listen and he never fully relaxes. Who knows when those damn things will be back again?

But being like this—being here with Eddie—it all goes away. Eddie’s strumming his guitar absently, humming a few notes; the melody washes over Steve like a balm, a strange sense of unfamiliar contentment buzzing in his chest, and it’s not just the weed talking. Steve watches Eddie’s slender, bony fingers as they pluck a chord; entranced. It’s pretty, the way his curls fall over his face, twisted in concentration.

Steve does that, sometimes—watch Eddie closely—but it’s purely aesthetic appreciation, and he makes sure Eddie never notices. Eddie really is good-looking, and genuine, and a goddamn nerd. He exhales; Steve is infinitely grateful to have him-

All of a sudden, the contentment gives way to sharp physical pain. Surprised, he lets out a few coughs, something that must be phlegm stuck in his windpipe, and Eddie stops mid-hum to look over and frown.

“Careful, there. Want to take a break?”

“I should.” Steve pushes the drugs aside, scoots over and folds his arms. Taps the guitar. “Gonna give me a special performance, Munson?”

“You’ve seen me perform before.”

“Yeah. But you’ve never performed just for me.”

Steve didn’t mean to say that, didn’t mean to phrase it with such connotations. Getting high seemed to have loosened his tongue; it reminds him, for a sickening moment, of the Russians, but he shoves that aside in favour of playing it off and giving Eddie a wink and a grin. Something flashes across Eddie’s face so quickly Steve isn’t able to catch it in his currently addled state, before Eddie grins back.

“Very true, very true. Alright then.” He spreads his hands wide, theatrical as ever as he stands and does an exaggerated rock ‘n roll hand gesture. “This one’s for you, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart. Eddie uses it often as a term of endearment, and it doesn’t mean anything, but for some reason Steve’s chest pulls taut again and his throat clogs as he leans back and lets all his worries fade away—leaving just Eddie. Only Eddie.

Steve is working with Robin, a stray idle thought of the metalhead crossing his mind when somebody checks out the movie Rocky Horror . He coughs again, more violently than he had at the trailer the other day, and Robin frowns at him. 

“Are you catching hayfever?”

Steve shrugs, hitting his chest a few times. “I’m good.”

“Sure,” she says dubiously, and when it happens a few more times throughout the weeks, he blames it on some allergy.

Now, to be very honest, Steve did not even slightly believe in the supernatural before the whole monster thing. He’s a skeptic at heart, but a firm believer of ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’; yet even when the first petal flutters into his hands, he’s hard-pressed to not try and come up with some other plausible explanation.

He starts hacking up a lung in his bedroom while listening to Black Sabbath at Eddie’s insistence, the former of which has been happening so increasingly often Steve wonders if Robin’s hayfever worries have some merit after all. But this time, instead of subsiding after a few seconds, it goes on and on as something rises up Steve’s throat; bile and acid and a hint of something else, something-

Floral?

He looks down at his palm. Sitting in the center is a single white petal.

What. The fuck.

Steve holds it up to the light. Yup, a genuine petal. Gives it a sniff. Yup, from a flower.

What is his life anymore. Did he accidentally ingest flowers somehow? Or is he just hallucinating everything? He wraps the saliva-coated petal up in a tissue—gross—and dumps it in the bin. It’s probably nothing.

(At the back of his head, he hears Eddie’s gleeful voice: Denial is one hell of a drug, baby. )

“Please pretty please pretty pretty please with a cherry on top?” Dustin’s hands are clasped together.

“No! No, absolutely not .” Steve puts his hands on his hips, shaking his head adamantly. “No. No .”

“Please! It’s just one time, because our current venue is unavailable today.”

“No.”

“Eddie will be there.”

“He’s not the boss of me.”

“Boss of who? What’s going on?” Robin emerges from the Family Video backroom, eyebrow quirked questioningly.

“Steve is hosting our DnD campaign at his house tonight,” Dustin announces loudly before Steve can so much as get a word out. “Don’t worry, it’s just a few of us. Thanks, man, you’re the best.”

“Henderson, I did not agree-”

“See you there!”

He’s out of the store in a flash. Steve's mouth is still half-open in protest, a finger reaching out. He drops the finger and pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “I hate my life.”

“There, there,” Robin says as she pats him on the back, deadpan. “We’ll make a nerd of you yet.”

And so that’s how he finds himself greeting Eddie and his groupies at the doorstep, the former who beams at him and stage-whispers, “Dude, Henderson really has you wrapped around his pinky, huh.” He slides in, shoulder brushing Steve’s in a spark of electricity, then walks with clear familiarity to the dining room. “Never thought I’d live to witness King Steve hosting a DnD campaign in his,” Eddie makes a show of spinning around, “graaand estate.”

“Whatever, man,” Steve replies, then mouths, “Hypocrite.”

Eddie gives him a smirk and a faux innocent shrug, and Steve feels that familiar taste of bile begin to rise. He ruthlessly clears his throat; ignores it.

“Anyway, Dustin told me to, like- light some candles, dim the lights or something.” He leads the group awkwardly to the table and waves his hand at the darkened room, orange and shadowy with the light of the candles. “Is it enough?”

Eddie not-so-subtly stifles a shocked laugh, but when he goes to pat Steve on the back, his mirth is so incredibly warm and fond that Steve has to turn away to hide the cough wrenched out of him. “Such effort, Harrington. Seriously, you sure you don't want to join our so-called nerdy little campaign?”

“Never,” Steve says drily, wandering off to the side as they set up and begin their game.

The rules are complicated as hell and Steve struggles to make sense of them, but the storytelling from Eddie is so immersive and everyone else is so enthusiastic that Steve finds himself sucked into the lore and story of their creation. Eddie’s theatrics serve him well, here—very well. His voices are perfect for the atmosphere, switching effortlessly between characters and narration, and he’s happily animated in a way Steve hasn’t seen him for a long time after Chrissy and the rest. It took him a while to get back into his whole DnD club after the whole thing, Steve knows.

He’s glad that Eddie is back where he belongs now; watching him here, like this, so wholly in his element, just like watching him perform on stage, Steve’s ribs tighten and ache with something akin to yearning. He chalks it up to regret, regret that he hadn’t met Eddie sooner and regret for the kind of person he had been to people like Eddie, but suddenly the ache morphs into something more physical and he darts out of the room in anticipation of what’s to come.

Sure enough, he’s coughing violently as soon as he reaches the sink, hands braced on either side of the mirror. He feels the petals come up this time—plural—and as he gapes at the two in the sink—and spits out two more—Steve thinks even his powers of denial have a limit.

And he’s no biology 4.0 student, but Steve has enough common sense to understand petals don’t just get dumped out from your lungs . The first thing he thinks of is, naturally, the Upside Down; the sickening thought that it could be back, and so soon at that. Something new and, uh, flowery this time. He shakes away the thought as soon as it comes, desperation and a brush-off all at once.

It’s probably nothing.

He rinses his mouth. Washes the petals down the sink. Clears his throat, runs a hand through his hair. Then goes back to sit and watch their campaign like nothing happened.

As he walks back into the room, Eddie pauses mid-way to shoot him a look. Concerned. Questioning. Steve shakes his head in spite of the trepidation settling in his gut, and Eddie frowns, giving him one last glance before returning to his Dungeon Leader duties or whatever.

The library’s air-conditioning is a respite from the heat outside, cooling the sweat sticking to Steve’s skin; he goes to the shelves on medical diseases first, despite the fact that what is happening right now should be both medically and scientifically impossible. Could it be that he inhaled some abnormal spore from the last time he was in the Upside Down and it began growing in his lungs? But Eddie and Robin and Nancy and the rest seem fine, so maybe it’s something else.

A few people recognise him and give him odd looks—which, fair, it’s not often he goes to the library. But Steve disregards them, and it’s only an hour in until he finds anything relevant. When he does, it’s not from the medical section, either; it’s from the folklore and myths section.

Hanahaki disease

Desc. Rare disease in which flowers grow in a subject’s lungs when one’s love is perceived as unrequited.

Stage 1: Roots take hold and flowers grow.

Stage 2: Coughing and chest pains begin.

Stage 3: Petals are coughed up, gradually increasing in number.

Stage 4: Full flowers are coughed up. Subject is usually in critical condition a few days after the first signs of stage 4.

Stage 5: Suffocation and death.

Steve reads the last line and feels the absurd urge to laugh. Suffocation and death . He’s survived demon dogs and bats and whatever and he’s supposedly going to die from, what, unrequited love?

He continues searching because, despite stages 1-3 resonating with him, this is a fictional disease—and, more importantly, he isn’t in love, let alone an unrequited one. His love life is as pathetic as the saliva-coated petal he’s currently trying very hard to not cough up.

A fruitless two hours later Steve is forced to admit that this- this Hanahaki disease is the only explanation he can find. The fictional part of it; well, he’s seen a kid with telekinetic powers obliterate monsters from another dimension. A weird ass love flower disease isn’t too much of a stretch.

He finds the description of the same disease in two more books, flipping frantically for a cure. When he finds one in the next book, he nearly collapses in relief.

When the target of one’s affections reciprocates their feelings, the flowers have been known to dissolve almost immediately. Alternatively, one can undergo a surgery, but all memories and feelings regarding the target will be gone with it.

A surgery. For some reason, Steve hesitates. It would be reckless to do such a thing when he’s unsure of anything—unsure of the so-called target of his affections, unsure that he even has this fucking disease in the first place. He snaps the book shut with a thud and sighs, thinking he should just go find Eddie for a smoke and-

Steve wheezes and doubles over, the bile and pain rising more suddenly than ever; he hacks almost non-stop, much more intense than the intermittent light coughing that had been happening for the past few hours. This seems to be the last straw for the librarian, who has already been shooting him dirty looks.

“Out! Now!”

Steve stuffs the handful of colourful petals into his pocket and scrambles out as fast as he can. Shit. 

It’s getting worse.

He gets kicked out of Family Video on sick leave by both Keith and Robin for very different reasons (“It’s bad for business.” “Don’t spread your germs to me.”). Steve is almost appreciative, because he’s tired of having to run to the bathroom every time he begins a coughing fit; of having to dump petal after petal in the trash can, smothered in tissues in case anyone sees.

And so he stays at home. Big empty echoing house. No one there but Steve—his parents are off on another god-knows-where trip; at this point, he doubts they even think about him anymore. He watches movies like Labyrinth and Star Wars and spends most of his time vacuuming stray petals from the floor.

A mere two days into his Robin-imposed quarantine the doorbell rings.

“Wow.” Steve yanks open the door, annoyed affection bubbling somewhere in his ribcage as soon as he spots familiar curls and a trademark smirk. “You didn’t just break and enter this time? What’s next, the word ends?”

“C’mon, Harrington, I would never treat a sick man so.” Eddie strides in dramatically, swinging a plastic bag in Steve’s face and looking him up and down; his brow furrows, something like worry lacing the undertone of his low whistle. “Woah, you actually look really sick—eyebags, and all. Hayfever?”

“Sort of,” Steve says vaguely, squinting at the plastic bag in a silent question.

Eddie does a little shoulder shimmy, sidling up to him and nudging his arm. “Heard from Robin you weren’t doing so hot. I brought soup; made it myself, even. You can thank me later.”

“You brought soup,” Steve repeats, and when he does, his voice is hoarse and slightly scratchy. “You, Eddie Munson, brought me so-”

He doesn’t manage to finish his sentence, because all of a sudden he’s crouching over in another one of his coughing fits. Eddie’s at his side in an instant, steadying him with hands holding either side of Steve’s shoulders, too close and too warm and Steve fists a hand in Eddie’s shirt and turns so that he can’t see the petals Steve hastily and subtly shoves into his pocket.

Eddie doesn’t let go of him. “Jesus, man. You good?”

“Fine,” Steve grates out, dropping his hand from the man’s shirt. “If this disease doesn’t do me in, I think your soup will, anyway. Can you even cook?”

Eddie clutches his chest in mock offence, looking around at no one as if to say, are you hearing this? “I go out of my way to make soup for you, and this is the thanks I get? You haven’t even tried it!”

“The most I’ve seen you in the kitchen is to bake pot brownies.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, hands a steady pressure on Steve’s sides, firm but not squeezing. “I got my uncle to help me out, okay? It has chicken and protein and sick people stuff, all that shit. It’ll help you.”

And isn’t that just downright thoughtful? Steve shakes himself out of Eddie’s grip before he can begin wheezing again and pads to the kitchen. “Fine, I’ll bite,” he gripes; pretends he doesn’t see the way Eddie’s face lights up by disguising it with a cough.

The soup is… surprisingly good. The warmth slides down Steve’s throat and under the softness of Eddie’s gaze, seated across him with an expectant look on his face, Steve inexplicably feels better—only slightly, but still.

“So?” Eddie stretches his arms wide, smug.

“Okay, fine. It’s acceptable.”

“Acceptable!” He crows, punching a fist in the air and stepping on the seat of the chair with one foot, the other on the ground. “I’ve got the Harrington seal of approval.”

“Shut up,” Steve grumbles; he’s too busy sipping chicken soup to come up with some other appropriately witty or scathing retort. The petals burn a hole through his pocket and Eddie kicks his legs back, tone deepening slightly the way Steve knows it does when he’s getting ready to say something serious.

“Just- take care of yourself, alright?” Eddie's gaze goes dark, intent, voice low. “You’re not very good at that. Throwing yourself headfirst into danger, all tank knight in shining armour, a perfect paladin—yeah. Self-preservation? Not so much.” For a second, Steve is struck, unsure of how to reply. Then Eddie grins sharply; all his levity back in its full shining glory. “Oh yeah, they kids said they wanted to visit you too.”

Grabbing on to the lifeline, Steve’s eyes widen in horror. “Wait, what? Back up. No. Absolutely not, those dipshits cannot come over. They already give me a headache when I’m healthy as hell.”

“Too bad! They’ve made up their minds already.”

And when Eddie jumps up to dance around Steve, blatantly laughing at the latter’s groan, the tightening in his chest and the bin full of petals is momentarily forgotten for something more pleasant.

“...had to go scrub ice-cream off the freaking carpet like some sort of Cinderella. Steve? Steve, are you listening?”

“Oh, you talking to me?” Steve asks. He’s draped on the couch with a plastic bag to cough into and deposit all his petals without anyone noticing. “Sorry. Thought you couldn’t hear me over the sound of your own voice.”

Dustin magnanimously flips him off.

“He’s sick, man, give him a break.” Lucas claps a hand over Dustin’s mouth, who promptly shoves it away.

“Yeah, fine. You’re right.”

Steve’s voice is raspy when he says his next words. “Oh my god, Dustin Henderson admitting he’s wrong? I really am sick and delirious.”

Dustin looks very close to flipping him off once more.

Steve cranes his head slightly to where Will (visiting over summer break) and Mike are huddled in the corner, speaking softly. There’s… there’s something about them, that Steve can’t quite place his finger on, something about that tenderness and sweetness that tugs at the edges of his perception. He’s been sneaking glances over to them ever since the kids came, and Max, who has been listening to music silently the whole time with Eleven, finally speaks up.

“Why do you look so baffled?”

Steve almost snaps his neck turning to her; whiplash, here he comes. “Huh?”

“You act as though you didn’t see them coming from a mile away like anybody with a pair of functional eyes would’ve been able to.”

Them . As in, they’re together? Steve buries his face in his plastic bag for a moment, coughing, before he lowers it and frowns. “I… I don’t know. I thought Mike dated El before?”

Max gives her signature unimpressed look. “And?”

“Well- I mean- Mike likes girls?”

“Yeah. He does.”

Steve’s kids-induced headache springs out at full force again. “I don’t get it.”

“He likes both , Steve. Seriously, how anyone can be as oblivious as you is the real bewildering part.”

Steve blinks up at her, then at the ceiling, then closes his eyes. Panic slams into him all at once; full force at the base of his stomach, heart rate spiking sharply. Both. He likes both. Steve Harrington loves boobies and therefore he cannot like guys. That unshakeable doctrine is shattered with a single word—both.

He thinks of David Bowie’s jawline, of Tom Cruise’s arms. He thinks of both Hans and Leia, of boys in locker rooms and a simmering hatred and something else with Billy Hargrove, of Nancy and Jonathan’s grappling hands on his. He thinks of both soft edges and sharp ones, thinks back to stray fantasies born out of curiosity, or maybe something more.

Most of all—he thinks of Eddie Munson. His eyes, his smile, his damn teasing, his care and bravery and passion and warmth. A deep voice like scraped gravel and white hot electricity, a flush when he winks and spouts pet names and a vest hung in Steve's closet, pun intended, because "keep it, it looks better on you anyway."

Unrequited love, the book had said, and oh.

Oh.

Isn’t that fucking ironic.

“You can like both?” Steve breathes jerkily, quiet and somber all at once.

Max and Dustin and Lucas and even El all give him a weird look. “Uh, yeah,” Dustin says; he seems tempted to add a ‘duh’ behind, but one look at Steve’s face and the word dies on his lips. “Um… are you okay?”

Steve coughs for like a minute straight until all the kids are looking at him—Mike and Will included—before jabbing a finger at them, stress and incipient confusion packaged into one swirling mess of emotions, closing his eyes. “I’m not feeling so well. Please get out before I spread anything to you guys.”

There’s genuine concern on Dustin’s face, now; washing over whatever was there before. “Steve, seriously, man. Are you alright? Have you even seen a doctor?”

“Out,” Steve croaks, pointing to the door, and he doesn’t even have it in him to banter.

The kids exchange looks Steve doesn’t understand—Will, in particular, looks like he wants to say something—but for once they listen and actually leave. Steve rubs an exhausted hand over his face, various types of petals smeared with bodily fluids in the plastic band on hand; he reckons they have some sort of meaning, but he knows fuck all about flowers, so.

He breathes in. One, two. Breathes out. One two. And then he grabs his sofa pillow and throws it so hard across the room it hits a lamp and both go crashing down brutally to the floor.

Eddie Munson. It’s almost hilarious.

Steve hates his life.

For a split second, Steve considers confessing. It’s such a bad idea in a dozen different ways that he dismisses the idea instantly.

For a split second, Steve considers getting the surgery. All his memories of Eddie, all his feelings, everything they went through—gone. He drags the option to the back of his mind and leaves it there for now.

“Eddie tells me you haven’t been letting anyone into your house. Not him, Nance or Jonathan, or the kids. He tried picking the lock but apparently you went so far as to—what, barricade the door like a paranoid psycho?”

“Yeah, Robin, I didn’t want to spread anything to them; sue me.”

“Have you been to the doctor? Your voice is all messed up.”

“You sound like Dustin. I’m fine, it’ll go away.”

“Steeeeeve.”

He feels a cough building up. “I’ve got to go.”

“Huh?”

“Bye. You’re with Nancy, right? Send her my regards.”

“Yeah, but- wait- Steve, no, don’t hang up -”

Unrequited love. Steve thought he’d had enough after the whole ‘bullshit’ fiasco with Nancy all those years back, but apparently not, because the universe obviously despises him with a burning passion. It’s only now he fully understands Robin’s complaints about the excruciating pain of liking a straight person—that whole schtick—and damn does it hurt more than he would have thought; and funny because it’s that that hurts more than the blood scraped from the sides of his throat, that that hurts more than the bunched up petals he has to force out aggressively before he can’t breathe.

Is Eddie even straight? Come to think of it, Steve hasn’t even gotten a straight (hah) answer from Eddie about anything remotely romantic or sexual. He knows Eddie is supportive of Robin, but being supportive and being queer himself is a whole other matter. Steve huffs a self-aware scoff in the middle of watching The Shining and slaps himself.

He’s the ladykiller , damn it. He’s never had trouble asking a girl out, why should a guy be any different? He’s got a boatload of experience using his patented Harrington charm to get what he wants—and what does Steve want, really? He remembers Eddie next to him, slinging an arm around to rest on the couch, touching but not quite; Eddie’s hands, solid on his shoulder, tracing absent circles into his biceps as they watch a movie; Eddie’s laugh, soft and authentic and breath tickling his cheek.

Damn. How did Steve not realise it earlier?

He slaps himself one more time for good measure, coughing all the while, and summons all his signature confidence. What is he even dawdling for? Ridiculous. He’s Steve Harrington. Romance is his department; his specialty.

First he has to ask if Eddie likes men. If the answer is yes, all Steve has to do is romance him until he reciprocates his feelings. There! Bada bing bada boom.

( It didn’t work on Nancy , a nasty voice whispers in the back of his head, it won’t work on anyone you actually love .)

Meanwhile, if Eddie does not like men or Steve’s charm fails in phase 2—either one—surgery it is.

It’ll be painful for both of them, for Steve to forget all about Eddie; Steve knows it will be, and that’s why it’s a last resort. But Steve thinks maybe it’ll be better for both of them in the long run, better for him to forget these stupid feelings, and better for Eddie to not have to deal with the painfully awkward fallout. They can rebuild their friendship from there, if Eddie allows it.

That way everyone is happy and Steve survives. He’s not dying from a dumb flower disease, of all things. He’s not . The next time Eddie bangs on the door—for what is quite possibly the dozenth time that week—Steve opens the door at long last to see a considerably and understandably pissed man shoving a middle finger in his face.

“What the fuck, man? So you finally decided to let me in after days of literally shutting me out?”

In the face of Eddie’s anger, a vice grip wrings Steve’s chest, wrapping around his lungs mercilessly; dunking his face in yet another plastic bag, Steve practically hacks his lung out, throat raw and stinging from all the coughing. Eddie’s vexation dissolves at once like salt in water, pushing past dawdling at the entrance to enter the house.

“Lie down.” Steve obediently lies down on the couch. Eddie’s hand is uncomfortably cool as it touches his forehead. “Shit, you’re burning up. Is that blood on your lips?”

Steve swats his hand away, blinking blearily at him, and opens his mouth to ask in the most discreet way he can: do you like guys?

But nothing comes out. His heart is pounding and he hasn’t slept for at least a day or two, too restless to do so, and here with Eddie next to him, despite being hot and sticky and uncomfortable, he just wants to drift off to sleep. Steve could ask, right now—four words and an answer. He could play it off however he wants afterwards, blame it on the fever or some other excuse.

Steve could.

He could.

But he doesn’t.

Shit, man. He’s- he’s fucking scared. He’s scared of the answer. Scared of what happens next. Scared of what Eddie will think of him asking the question.

In many ways, Steve is brave. When he’s with the kids he puts them first—always. Positioned at the front, the first line of defense, makes sure they escape danger before he does, because he’s the adult there and that’s what he does, it’s his responsibility. He asks girls out as easily as breathing air, even though nothing quite seems to stick.

And yet. And yet.

When he does so, it’s without a second thought; an instinctive reflex, something seen as an absolute, something natural, and this courage of his always manifests best, he realises, when there are people he’s doing it for. Something else at stake than just his reputation and his image. For years, he’s hung out with Tommy and Carol and other assholes, and maybe he’s always known on some level the kind of people they were, but. But.

He wanted to be popular. He wanted to be liked . And it wasn’t until Nancy—strong, intelligent, headstrong Nancy—was he finally able to gather that courage to confront them.

All this—it was so vastly different from Eddie.

His assurance, his authenticity; the ease in which he moves in his skin, not afraid to be different. Steve knows Eddie hates himself for all the running after Chrissy, leading him to eventually step up with nothing but himself and his guitar; but even if he didn’t, Steve still thinks he’s the furthest thing from a coward—the true kind of coward here is him.

Too afraid to truly be himself.

Steve Harrington, everybody. Reduced to a coward under the guise of a fierce protector; the self-assured playboy helpless in the face of his true desires. Too fearful of what Eddie will think, what everyone else will think, and Steve thought he’d shed this part of him when he broke free from Tommy and the rest, but it seems that it’s never quite fully gone away.

Eddie is saying something, but Steve doesn’t hear. He just yanks Eddie down beside him, shoves his face in his shirt, snuggles in, and goes the hell to sleep.

If he can’t do anything else, he can at least do this one selfish act. Just this one.

When Steve wakes up, he’s both mortified and significantly more clear-headed. Eddie is gone, the only trace of his earlier presence the faintest whiff of his scent—vanilla and weed and metallic oil. Well, that and the note on the dining table.

I left some soup :), it reads, with a smiley face, and Steve rolls his eyes, holds it to his heart anyway as he begins that frankly mind-numbing ritual of choking out blood-soaked petals and gasping for air.

If he can’t romance Eddie, that leaves the surgery. The surgery, and another option—doing nothing. Certain death, according to the books he’s read.

Steve goes to the clinic that night. Gets referred to a specialist and books a surgery at the hospital while the doctor gawks at him like he’s some strange specimen; proof of a 'fictional' disease. Apparently there have been sealed records of similar cases, the doctor informs him, but it’s near unheard of and more rumours than anything. They schedule the surgery in two days time and Steve only hears that he’s losing Eddie less than 72 hours.

All they’ve been through, Steve and Eddie and Eddie and Steve—gone just like that. Can Steve really do it?

Two days later, he glares at the medical slip of paper, confirming the surgery date and time; a few hours from now; and he thinks.

He thinks.

Is this love worth dying for?

And Steve Harrington is nothing if not a fool. Nothing if not willing to die for people he cares about. Nothing if not willing to redeem himself for his bullshit mistakes, nothing if not ready to take responsibility, nothing if not a man with heart.

And so he tosses the slip in the trash, decides: yes, it is love worth dying for.

Robin and Nance and Jonathan come visit a few more times, and Steve decides, fuck it, if he’s gonna die soon might as well let them in. He can’t talk half the time, though, his voice wrecked to shit, but they seem to understand and pester him to take medicine. He does; he takes the medicine, knowing it won’t help, and thanks them with a croaky voice anyway.

Eddie visits most often, and even if it only seems to exacerbate the symptoms, Steve doesn’t have the will to turn him away anymore. He wonders if this is how Max and Nance felt when they were cursed by Vecna—but at least here he has a choice. It doesn’t feel like a choice, though; he listens to Eddie chatter away, vibrant and energetic and, unlike Steve, so unafraid to be himself, and it feels like an inevitability.

It figures, that as with most things, it is the kids that figure it out first.

“You’re dying.”

Steve raises his eyebrows and rolls his eyes at the (albeit true) dramatics. “It’s just a really bad cough. I’d hardly call that dying , Wheeler.”

“It happened to Will, too,” Mike snaps, and that’s what really catches Steve’s attention, the seriousness and the guilt interlaced within those words.

“What did?” Steve shrugs at them, plays dumb—but it’s obvious no one’s buying it. Not Sinclair, not Mayfield, not Hopper or Byler or Wheeler and definitely not Henderson.

“Hanahaki, that’s what. Will had it very recently; not as bad as yours, because we rectified it quickly, but still. We’ve had a similar storyline in one of our DnD campaigns before, y’know.”

“Oh, please, not that game again,” Steve groans, massaging his temples, and Eleven just looks part lost and part worried. Dustin claps his hands twice sharply and furiously.

“Focus, here! Who the hell is it and why haven’t you confessed?”

“Or maybe he has confessed,” Will pipes up, and Steve’s eyes flicker to his for a moment, the teenager’s steady stare wrought with understanding and wryness and kinship. What are the odds two of them in such proximity would catch the same idiotic and unheard of disease? Hawkins never fails to amaze.

“Bullshit. Who would Steve like that wouldn’t like him back?” Dustin paces around the room; then freezes in horror. “Don’t tell me it’s Nancy? You said you were over her!”

“And I am!” Steve throws up his hands, vocal chords scratchy and barely audible. “For fuck’s sake, I am.”

“Then who?! Robin? Is it someone we know?”

“C’mon, dude, it’s none of your business.”

“None of my-” Dustin looks positively incensed, more so when Steve descends into another violent coughing fit and doesn’t bother with the plastic bag now that they know. Steve takes a moment to be simultaneously touched by the concern and annoyed at the breach of privacy and lack of respect for his—admittedly questionable—decisions, when Lucas places a hand on his shoulder.

“Look, Steve, you’re right. It’s none of our business in normal circumstances, but we’re talking life and death here.”

“Get the surgery,” Max says, abruptly. “Nothing can be more important than your life.”

“At least confess first!” Dustin counters in disbelief, and so on and so forth as they bicker until all of them shut their mouth when Steve chokes and shoots to his feet because shit crap shit he can’t breathe.

A few seconds after he forces out whatever is stuck, he spits out a mouthful of blood onto the floor and sees a fully formed white flower. Stage 4.

Dustin lets out a colourful string of curses, most of them directed at Steve, but his ears are ringing and he’s too busy catching his breath to respond.

“Get the bloody surgery!” Max is snarling at him, Mike joining in this time; and Lucas follows Dustin and Eleven in wringing his hands. Only Will is silent, and with his palms stained with blood and saliva, scattered petals on the floor, a lone flower in his hand, Steve meets his eyes and jerks his head minutely. Unspoken communication.

“We’re going,” Byers announces; with an air of finality. Bless him.

Despite being scrawny as hell, he somehow manages to manhandle most of them out the door. Dustin’s face is tear-streaked as he leaves, and Steve is both honoured by the concern, and bitter—because this should be his choice to make—his responsibility, no one else’s life but his own—but even now he has to think of more than himself. Reconsiders the surgery for the sake of the others, because while he’d initially shrugged it off because their grief would fade, after today, he’s not so sure anymore.

Somewhere along the line, had he really become that important to them?

“Consider what Dustin said,” Will tells Steve, just before he steps out. “It worked out for me. And then consider the surgery.”

But the resigned smile he gives Steve indicates that far beneath his words, Will is the closest of them to understanding and recognising his decision.

“You’re a coward, Harrington!” he hears Dustin yell from somewhere out on the porch. “I thought better of you! Coward!”

Sounds about right, Steve thinks, and goes to clean up the mess on the floor.

Sure enough, once the first flower arrives, it’s less than 24 hours before Steve is almost fully bedridden, just barely able to shower and eat and sleep.

And because Dustin Henderson is a big mouth who can’t keep things to himself for his life, Steve sees Eddie Munson barge unceremoniously into his house and give him a nice fat slap across the face.

“Ow?!” Steve’s jaw drops weakly in shock. “What the hell, Munson? I’m a sick man, you know?”

“That’s for not telling me you’re DYING.”

“I didn’t know!”

“Sure you didn’t. And what’s worse, I hear you have a cure , you’re just refusing to take it?”

Goddamn Henderson. Even though speaking feels like pin needles are stabbing the inside of his throat, Steve begins:

“Eddie-”

“Who is it?” Eddie’s visibly shaking, more anguished than Steve has ever seen him—and Steve has seen him in some of his lowest moments; his brows are drawn together in beautiful irritation, and once again Steve is awash with literally sickening affection. “Who’s the fucking idiot you’re in love with?”

Oh, the irony. Despite himself, Steve breaks into a grin, and Eddie looks ready to slap him again.

“What’s so funny?”

“Have you ever loved anyone, Eddie?”

Eddie reels back as if struck. “Of course I have.”

“How did it work out for you?”

“Not very well.” Eddie huffs, some of the humour back in his voice; but it’s self-deprecating this time. “I got hit the first time I tried anything. He called me a bunch of slurs and left, and after that I didn’t really try again—ever.”

He .

“He?”

Eddie juts his chin out. “Yeah.”

Steve turns away, rolls across the bed and sits upright at the edge. When he spits out another flower, yellow this time, he wipes the blood away from his mouth with his shirt and laughs.

“What’s so funny?” Eddie echoes his sentiment from earlier, looking downright and wholeheartedly infuriated. Steve just latches on to his wrist; drags him forward so he falls next to Steve on his bed, and it’s just like any other hangout session except they’re in Steve’s room, not Eddie’s, and also Steve is afflicted with some dumb ass disease. “Seriously, Steve, what’s wrong with you?”

And Steve hears Dustin’s voice— coward . Hears his own voice screaming at him, emotions he’s bottled up for so long spilling through the cracks. Coward.

“Tell me who it is. I’ll punch them for you.”

“You.”

Eddie pauses, bluescreening. “What?”

Steve swings a leg over him, straddles his waist and snatches him up by the lapels of his stupid vest. He brushes hair off Eddie's face with a trembling hand, something he's felt the urge to do for a while now. “You.”

There’s a flicker of something raw and jagged, then the shock-disbelief-puzzlement—hope, even?—is rapidly transforming back to an expression of wrath. “If this is your way of fucking with me, Harrington,” and Eddie’s voice is low, angry, hurt , “I swear to god-”

And so Steve gathers the last cutting shards of his courage, the courage he draws from when he’s thinking about more than just himself. When he can become something more than the coward he is—the coward he was—the coward he hates to be. But he’s different now. Now, Steve realises with an inhale, he isn’t the person he used to be. “I’m not.”

Eddie stares at him. “I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, for god’s sake.”

“No. It doesn’t even make any sense. Tell me who it is, or get the damn fucking surger-”

Steve reaches over, pulls him close, and locks their lips together to get him to shut the hell up .

For a moment, Eddie is unresponsive; paralysed; then a blink and Steve is on his back, Eddie’s hands tangled in his hair and kissing Steve back like both their lives depend on it—which, in Steve’s case, is kind of true. There’s a sort of bliss in finally being able to touch Eddie as he’s wanted to for weeks and weeks, fingertips running over his waist and the nape of his neck and his cheek; the ache in his chest purrs with a content sort of glee, and the pain and smothered breath dissipates and gives way to Eddie. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

Eddie shoving a thigh between his, Steve bringing out the full force of his experience in kissing girls, and really the scrape of stubble and the hard flat plane of chest under his hands is new but not unwelcome.

But, because they both unfortunately need to do a pesky thing called breathing, Eddie eventually breaks away, eyes shining the way Steve’s own is no doubt right now. “Steve fucking Harrington,” Eddie murmurs, reverently, pupils blown wide, grin awed. “Steve fucking Harrington.”

“That’s me,” Steve declares, and just rolls his eyes when Eddie slaps him again. “Okay, fine, I deserved that. Very much alive, by the way; I’m planning to keep it that way.”

He coughs out the last of the petals. Chucks them aside, and then goes back to making out with Eddie Munson, because that’s his life now. A far cry from the coward he once was—and for now, and the rest of eternity, Steve intends for it to stay that way.