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Steve can take a punch. Physical and emotional, he’s kinda gotten used to being the world’s punching bag. Particularly the last few years. He can take it. It doesn’t mean he likes it.
He keeps telling himself it’s not Dustin’s fault, that he’s angry and grieving and taking it out on the world. Mostly on Steve… and himself.
It doesn’t make any of it hurt less.
I remember what it was like to have a good friend. A real friend. Who actually believed in me and was actually nice to me
The words dig into Steve’s ribs. More bruising than Dustin’s fists.
He wasn’t perfect but at least he knew it, unlike you. He wasn’t never fake. He didn’t care what other people thought about it. He was just himself. And he was the smartest and kindest person I knew.
A punch across the face. Another. Another. All aiming to hurt, to draw blood, to break something.
Steve still shouldn’t have taken the bait. He didn’t punch back but he knows his reply was aimed to hurt. Not out of hate (never), not even out of anger (though it was there), but in a desperate attempt to reach a hand into the gapping wound of the kid in front of him and find, between the blood and guts, a trace of the friend he knew, the friend he misses. He snapped back because he thought, naively, that maybe if he got Dustin to see reason, to realize who he was actually angry at maybe… maybe he could stop hating Steve instead. Maybe he could forgive himself.
Stupid.
Now all he’s got is new bruises and a burning pain on his cheek and the taste of blood in his mouth and, perhaps worst of all, a knot of tears in his throat.
“You know what, man?” He says, catching his breath, hating how the waver of his voice gives away his broken heart. Not that Dustin will notice. Not that he’ll care. “I’m done.”
Getting up is painful. Especially after having the air knocked out of his lungs.
He spares a glance at Dustin, who seems to be sitting up already. He’s okay, then. Didn’t hurt himself with the fall. Good. That’s good. That’s all the concern he can spare at the moment.
“I’m done,” he repeats, choking around his emotions as he storms away.
”Yeah, run back to Nance,” another punch more salt in the wound. “You dumb, fake asshole!”
He doesn’t make it very far after that. One room, two rooms, one dark corner, he wishes he’d brought the flashlight with him, he finds another door, to what looks like a small hospital bedroom (or a prison cell creepily enough) and stumbles in. In the darkness, he feels his way just enough to avoid bumping into the bed then all but collapses on it, his knees giving in under him.
Steve sits, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, and finally lets out a sob. He’s mortified by it, by the sound of his own sadness bubbling out.
Harrington men don’t cry. Well, fuck you dad.
Steve just got beaten and yelled at by his best friend… and the pain of the hits, even the pain of the insults, is lesser than the pain of knowing Dustin meant them, that he meant to hurt, to cause damage.
He hates me.
The idea isn’t new. It’s been festering inside him like a nasty untreated wound for months. But the way he talked today about Eddie, about him. “Unlike you,” he’d said and Steve knows, he’s not an idiot, he knows what it means. That in Dustin’s eyes Eddie’s life was more valuable, that Eddie was more important, that it shouldn’t have been him getting killed that night. It should’ve been Steve. That’s what would’ve been fair. The world needs more people who are like Dustin, like Eddie, smart and kind and authentic.
And Steve… Steve isn’t any of those things. He tried to be.
He’s been trying for years to become all those things. To be smart enough to keep with whatever new threat is coming after them, go learn from the others and grow. He’s been trying to be kinder, to look after the kids, after his friends, after others. He’s been trying to be authentic, to renounce everything he once valued and instead focus on true friends, n being himself around others, on letting his guard down. He’s been trying, okay? But now he sees it doesn’t matter. Not to the world. Not to Dustin. Maybe it’s true. If he has to try so damn hard, maybe it’s be a use he isn’t good enough. And if that is the case, then, damn, maybe Dustin is right and the world should’ve sooner lost a dumb fake asshole like him instead of Eddie Munson.
Dustin hates me and Dustin wishes I was dead instead and maybe he has a point.
Thoughts circle around his head like vultures.
At least the crying has stopped. He’s now reduced to ragged breath and shaking hands. Something hurts in his chest.
It doesn’t matter. The idea forms clearly even between all that pain and guilt. It doesn’t matter that he hates me, that he wishes it was me. It wasn’t. I am here.
Steve will never be Eddie, and he will never be enough to heal Dustin’s pain, but he can’t do anything about it. All he can do is be here, do his best, try to get Holly back and everyone alive and out of here. Get Dustin back in one piece.
Taking a deep breath, he cleans his face and stands up. The darkness is off putting, particularly here where monsters might actually lurk around the corner, but he tries to make his way back carefully.
He said he was done and he meant it. He’s done fighting Dustin’s hatred. He can push him away all he wants, insult him, throw everything he wants at him. Steve is done fighting back.
But he’s not done caring.
He doesn’t have it in him. He’ll love that kid as long as he’s allowed to breathe. Whether he likes it or not.
So when he hears his voice again, far of, panicked, urgent, he does the only thing he can: he runs back towards him.