Chapter Text
Years spent on the swim team had, apparently, been preparing Steve for exactly this sort of life. Rising every morning at five - which, depending on the season, means he beats the sunrise itself into the day - Steve stumbles down the perpetually creaky stairs and through the process of making himself a coffee, somehow managing to not trip over Betsy’s excitedly writhing body that slips between his legs.
Then, thermos in hand, Steve makes his way outside.
He actually enjoys the colder months, when the crisp morning air works in tandem with the caffeine to wake him up properly. Betsy is always excited to get outside, regardless of the weather, and the lack of one hind leg simply makes her entire rump shake as she wags her tail and hops down the stairs. Rudy is crowing from the chicken coop and has been for hours, telling them about the coming dawn. He’s never been great at understanding the concept of time.
“C’mon, babygirl,” Steve says, reaching down to ruffle the black and white fur on her head, admiring the scene before them for a moment - the early morning fog casting an ethereal silver glow over the land, something that should be haunting but Steve instead finds romantic.
Betsy knows the routine as well as he does, and she isn’t in the business of lingering to appreciate the scenery like Steve is - she leads the way down to the sheep and goats first of all, weaselling her collie body through a gap in the fence so that she can rouse them all with her excited barking. Steve follows at a more sedate pace through the gate, which remains latched and locked, a habit only formed when he had an old foster goat who would routinely let himself out of his paddock to roam free.
Murphy is always the first of the group up, though it’s not because he can see or hear any of Betsy’s shenanigans. “Morning, Murph,” Steve calls to him, even though he’s entirely deaf, making sure his footfalls are extra heavy on the dew-covered grass so that his presence can be felt.
Murphy finds his way to Steve’s side, butting his head into Steve’s thigh - which could be intentional to get treats and pats, but could also simply be because he can’t see, either. Steve’s not really sure, but he scratches at Murphy’s head nonetheless, digging his nails in through his wool. “You’re gonna need shearing soon, hey bud?” Steve mumbles conversationally to him as the three of them cross the wet green grass towards the barn Steve has been meaning to paint for two years now.
Inside the barn itself, which is structurally sound though not aesthetically pleasing, Abe and Maude are both tucked together, still snoozing. Neither of them really like humans - though Steve can’t exactly blame them. What’s there to like, when they’d spent most of their lives being forced to breed before being sent for slaughter? It’s what keeps Steve content, when they run away from him, knowing that he’s giving them a life now that they never would’ve had otherwise. Sure, the barn is an ugly mix of weathered grey wood and new timber patching up the holes, not to mention the state of the tin roof, but what do they care? They get to spend their days in the sunshine, and never wonder where their next meal is coming from. Plus, there’s no free trip to the slaughterhouse.
“Up, grandma, grandpa, c’mon,” Steve says as he walks by, rousing both of the elderly sheep who bleat their complaints at him. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”
They all have a big day ahead of them, and it’s important Steve gets all his chores done early so that he can start to fulfil this confusing favour he’s (perhaps foolishly) agreed to doing for Hopper.
“Wobbles, Tillie, good morning,” Steve says, a little more gently, crouching down to pat his resident goats. Wilma stands on shaky little legs, Tillie by her side, the two of them practically joined at the hip. Tillie helps Wilma get up and around, the pair of them racing Steve over to their feed troughs.
Steve knows they can’t understand it at all, but he lets them win every time, just because he likes to see Wilma having the chance to be a normal little girl, even if she leans heavily on her buddy for support. That, like seeing Abe and Maude soaking up the sunshine, reminds Steve that everything he does is worth it.
With great care, Steve measures out the feed - pretty much everyone on the farm has a different diet, not to mention the veritable drugstore’s worth of animal medication he’s had to stock up on, so it’s an arduous task. He measures out dry pellets for some, adding water to mash it up for the poor old sheep without their teeth, putting in the correct dose of medication for everybody in their respective bowls and mixing it all together.
Then, one at a time, amidst the bleating and baaing and general mixture of sleepy irritation and hungry excitement, Steve gets them all fed. Murphy is a little greedy and requires some redirecting - as too does Betsy, who thinks that every offering of food on the farm is for her - but eventually they end up where they need to be.
With that lot done and the sun starting to rise over the hills, Steve heads off to where the other, larger animals live. It’s an odd little family up there - two cows, a horse, and a donkey - but they’ve formed their own herd, and they all seem to know their place.
Somehow Norman, an elderly donkey, became the head of their group, but Steve’s not exactly the best person to debate logical group dynamics since his friendship group consists of the art therapist he basically moved into his guesthouse, his high school sweetheart, and not much else.
Daisy and Poppy, two black and white holsteins Steve rescued from a dairy farm, trot up to him, while Scout, the overexcited chestnut gelding, runs ahead with Betsy.
“Morning, girls,” Steve says in fond greeting, patting each of them on the muzzle as they wander over towards their barn to get their breakfast ready. At least their barn is nicer - it was the one Steve did have the energy to paint after he patched it all up, opting for a bright, perhaps cliché, red. Again, Steve knows none of his rescues are architects or designers, so they don’t care, but Steve feels a hint of pride looking at the barn as it stands tall amongst the fog and rolling green hills.
Scout is busy snorting and kicking his legs up, Betsy barking and playfully snapping at his heels, while Norman huffs and grumbles his way over like the old man he is. Steve had tried, for a time, letting Norman live with the sheep and goats, but unfortunately he and Abe got into some old man get off my lawn type bickering, and it simply wasn’t meant to be.
Once again, Steve organises the feed for the different animals, having to shove Scout’s big head out of the way repeatedly (and hold Betsy back with an outstretched leg), before he can finally set them up where they need to be. He unrolls the hose to top up their water, spraying it over Betsy who is an absolute moron who loves chasing water regardless of the temperature, and then the pair of them wander back down towards the chicken coop.
Betsy isn’t permitted inside - she’s not rough, but she’s just excitable, and while a gang of sheep and cows and a high-energy horse can handle that, the poor chickens can’t. Steve hunches over to fit into the coop, stepping carefully through the dirt and hay underfoot, picking up eggs that have been hidden here and there by hens who don’t understand that they have been given perfectly good nesting boxes to use.
After Steve gathers his haul in a little basket - eight eggs, from the baker’s dozen of hens he has - he ducks back around the house to the kitchen window, where he placed last night’s compost bucket. He trades that for the basket of warm, fresh eggs, in order to feed the chickens. For some reason, Betsy is the most excited for that, a mixture of too-wilted leaves and potato peelings that Steve tosses into the chicken coop along with some pellets.
With all the errands done for the day, his empty compost bucket in one hand and a now-muddy Betsy by his leg, Steve surveys the farm.
It’s not much, but it’s his.
Steve knows it isn’t what his parents would have wanted him to do with the money they left him, their estate and business sold, their life insurance invested carefully, all so that Steve could do this - buy a rundown little farm house, rebuild it himself, and home all the animals nobody else wants.
It’s not what they wanted, but it’s what he wanted, the chance to do something simple and quiet but meaningful. He’d spent too long aspiring to meet some of their lofty visions for his life, and then, when that failed, he’d spent too much of his life trying to forget how much of a failure he was.
This was something he didn’t fail at.
Steve could work with his hands to fix leaking ceilings and fallen roof tiles, he could pull on his gumboots and tramp through the muddy paddocks to replace fencing, he could get up early every single day, memorise the exact dietary requirements and medical routine for each animal given to him by the vet, and make sure they get what they need to be as healthy as possible.
It’s not the best life - it’s certainly not always fun or happy. There are days that suck, days when Steve brings an animal home who doesn’t make it through the night, despite his constant monitoring. There are days when he has to call the vet, who tells him that there’s nothing that can be done, that the kindest thing is to let them finally rest.
And Steve holds all of them through it, strokes their faces if they let him, and perhaps it’s a penance of sorts because he didn’t get to hold his parents at the end, never even got to tell them goodbye.
At the time, he didn’t know if he even would’ve gone to see them, the relationship between them all strained and breaking, but Steve’s forgiven them now.
Clarissa and George Harrington have side-by-side gravestones out the back of the house, in the flower garden Steve’s worked tirelessly to bring to life. He tells them what’s going on, keeps them updated on all the animals that come through the house, and the kids too.
It’s not like that was a formal thing, at the beginning, the kids.
It started as a favour, actually.
Nancy Wheeler - high school sweetheart turned heart breaker turned close-ish friend - had a job working at Child Protective Services, and she’d called him out of the blue, begging him to give just one spare bedroom and a few days of his time to a little boy who had nothing else, no space to call his own, however temporarily. Nancy had told him about his anger and his sadness, his outbursts that started as one and became the other.
Steve, knowing about misguided childhood rage, about the depths of grief you could feel at a young age without the capability to fully understand it, invited the boy into his home.
He’d taken the room Steve had given him and tore it apart, ripped bed sheets and overturned the desk and systematically put every plank from the bed base in different parts of the room. He’d cried and screamed for hours, and when Steve had finally opened the door, he’d just glared at him.
“Nobody will listen to me!” He’d yelled, tear tracks marking his face, this breathless sort of rage consuming his body.
“Okay,” Steve had said, sitting down on the floor in the hallway, leaving the boy to have his own space, no matter how ruined it was. “I’m listening. What’s going on?”
And through angry tears - through more throwing and screaming and crying - he had explained about how they’d taken his sister from him, and how he had to get to her, had to find a way to get her back, because she was his sister, he had to protect her.
Steve had left the boy to call Nancy, to demand that she find the little girl in the system and bring her to Steve - or, alternatively, take the boy to her, because the poor kid had been telling them what he needed but nobody had thought to listen to him.
Before his sister arrived the next morning, the boy helped Steve right the room again. Steve taught him how to plaster holes in the wall, sand off the excess, and paint it so it was impossible to tell that anything had happened. He’d woken the boy up at five the next morning, introduced him to all the animals, and got him lugging around huge bags of feed just to get some of that angry energy out of him before his sister arrived.
They had been Steve’s first two fosters.
And, when they were finally together, it was like two soulmates had been reunited. They slept together in the single bed Steve had prepared, refused to go anywhere without the other within reaching distance, because the system had torn them apart before and neither of them were willing to let it happen again, not without a fight.
For a month, he’d taught Lucas and Erica all about farm life, gotten them covered in grime and muck every day and listened to them laugh as he hosed them off before they dashed through the house to the bathroom.
He took Lucas jogging, taught him how to channel his anger into sports, and Steve would be damned if he didn’t end up getting recruited for a college team because that kid could shoot.
He taught them both how to cook and clean and how to perform minor repairs on furniture and clothing and the carpet Erica accidentally poured paint all over.
Then, they’d gotten the call that there was a home for them - a permanent one, with a loving mom and dad, which wasn’t what Steve could offer them. He was heartbroken, of course, but it was the point of fostering - he wasn’t a parent. He was like a big brother, someone who could offer some reprieve, but that was it. Steve’s job was to help them on their way to somewhere else, a mere stepping stone in their journeys to the happy lives they all deserved.
From there, word spread.
Steve most often wound up doing respite care, giving full time carers a break while teaching kids all manner of farm skills, but short-term fosters came and went. Some for a week, others for a few months, all of them filling the vaulted ceilings of his farmhouse with laughter, and - oftentimes at the beginning - tears.
It was through Nancy and her work that he met Robin, a therapist who he had kindled an instant, deep affection for. She was funny and sharp-witted, always giving him shit but there for him no matter what.
Four fosters into his journey, and a few weeks since he’d met Robin Buckley, she started running her business out of one of the other farm buildings on the property. It was an old place Steve had converted into a guest house, but he didn’t exactly have any guests to occupy it, so it had sat sad and empty.
They transitioned into working weekends in tandem - Robin ran art therapy classes in the guesthouse, while Steve took kids into the outdoors and helped them bond with animals. Some of his fosters came back for those sessions, remembering the names of their favourite animals, and it made Steve’s heart swell when the animals remembered the kindness they’d been shown too.
It was a perfect little life that Steve had made for himself, until Jim Hopper called.
Which was unusual, mostly because Hopper wasn’t great at keeping in touch, and neither was Steve, so they were a good match for one another.
“I’ve got a favour,” he’d said, in lieu of a greeting or asking how Steve was, whilst Steve leaned against the wall in the kitchen, contemplating the old wallpaper and what he was going to replace it with.
“Depends what it is,” Steve had replied, playfully. Florals, again, maybe - or was it too cliché? Then again, did that even matter? He had a red barn, so it was safe to say that design wasn’t exactly his forte.
A sigh sent a wave of static down the line. “Good friend of mine, Wayne, his kid’s… going through it, y’know?” Hopper knows that Steve knows what going through it is like - he’s been through it himself, in so many different ways, self-loathing and self-pity and self-indulgence, the lot of it. “He needs somewhere to go for a break.”
It’s not exactly Steve’s area of expertise, though he could hardly say that fostering children was his area of expertise when Nancy called on him, so anything’s worth a shot. “What are you asking me to do? Foster a grown man?”
“He just needs a place to dry out, away from all the media attention.”
That had drawn a frown to Steve’s face, because someone who would have media attention is likely a bigger problem than Steve’s expecting. And drying out can only mean one thing, which Steve’s not exactly judging the guy for, but just… someone famous, someone with issues around addiction?
“Oh, so you’re asking me to become a rehab clinic?” Steve replied, and though he tried to mask it with a joking reply, his uncertainty was clear.
“Steve,” Hopper had said, and Steve could feel the unamused glare even across the phone line. “It’ll be good for him. Might be good for you too.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means you get an adult to talk to. Something that isn’t an animal or a kid.”
“I have Robin,” Steve protested, because Robin was there at minimum three days a week, and also neither a child nor an animal despite how she acted at times.
And also, what was wrong with forming relationships with his animals? If Steve didn’t have Betsy to talk to, he’d have lost his damn mind years ago.
“My point stands.”
“That’s rude,” Steve replied, rolling his eyes. “But fine. I’ll do it.”
“Knew you would, kid,” Hopper said, which Steve knew was thanks, only that word didn’t often cross Jim’s lips for anything short of Steve saving the world. “He’ll swing by in a couple of days, alright? Wayne’s a good guy, and so’s Eddie, he’s just gotten all mixed up in some shit.”
Steve hadn’t commented on that at the time, and he still couldn’t.
It wasn’t up to him to decide who was good and who wasn’t. Steve’s place had always been just a place of second chances - or third, or fourth, or fifth, depending on the kid - and it would be no different for this Eddie guy.
In the interest of giving Eddie a fresh start, Steve didn’t even bother trying to figure out who he was ahead of time. Sure, he could probably ask Robin or Nancy, they could go through magazines and newspapers and current releases, figure out if he was an actor or a musician or something else entirely, but then Steve’s idea of the guy would be altered.
So Steve kept his upcoming visitor to himself - himself, and the animals, who he advised any time he knew they’d be meeting someone new. He liked to think it helped them adjust, too, getting that simple heads up.
Steve had explained on a call with Wayne how it worked, how Steve got the people staying with him to pull their weight around the farm, to feed the animals and clean up after them, to pull weeds and harvest vegetables, to cook dinner and clean the dishes, and Wayne had agreed instantly.
“He’ll do it,” Wayne had said, a grumbly voice like Hopper’s down the line, both of them lifelong smokers, clearly. “He’ll bitch and moan the whole time, don’t get me wrong, but he’ll do it. He wants to change, I think, just needs… needs somethin’, somethin’ I don’t know how to give him.”
Steve hoped he could give Eddie the something he needed, but he wasn’t entirely sure.
Kids are one thing, and so are animals. They need someone to listen to and care for them, to take their needs into consideration and work accordingly. Steve has never met a child or a stray who has been intentionally cruel and vicious. Adults, though? Adults do that sometimes, they aim to hurt, and Steve knows because he used to be that.
With his fresh eggs, Steve goes to make himself an omelette for breakfast. No use worrying about it. Wayne had said that Eddie would be arriving around ten that morning, and Steve still had plenty to do.
Butter sizzles in the pan as Steve pours in the freshly mixed eggs, cooking them with the produce he had in his fridge that would soon be going off: spinach and mushrooms, with a handful of thinly sliced chives. He tops it off with some cheese from the dairy farm up the road, and rewards Betsy for not upending him in the early hours of the morning with a handful of cheese delivered directly into her open mouth.
Steve toasts some thick cuts of sourdough from Robin’s latest baking fixation, and serves it all up on a chipped ceramic plate. He puts some extra cheese on the side of his plate, because he’s a softy and because Lulu is usually out on the porch enjoying the sun around this time and he doesn’t want her to think Betsy is his favourite.
True to form, Lulu is in her usual spot. She’s taken over the sun-bleached terracotta pot that had contained (and still did, albeit more squished now) a mysterious plant when Steve moved in. After many years of laying in that particular place, the plant has learned to live with being crushed under the body weight of his blind tabby cat.
So the three of them sit together out on the front steps, the way they usually do - Steve’s been meaning to redo the porch entirely, but that’s a bigger undertaking than any he’s attempted before, so he’s somewhat reluctant. It’s not like it matters hugely - it’s just him and his two girls most days, sometimes Robin joining him for lunch, and the sunlight that makes it through the holes in the porch are just a bonus for his lounging animals.
The porch itself is in fine condition for two adults, and when he has a kid staying with him they eat at the table, the way his parents never did with him. It’s an unusual thing to miss from childhood, like someone without a bedtime yearning for one, but it doesn’t stop Steve from enforcing that rule.
Once the sun’s fully up and Steve’s finished both his breakfast and his second cup of coffee, he gets to work. Betsy usually settles in for her morning nap around eight, stretching out in the dry dirt beside the chicken coop, lazily watching the hens bustle about until she dozes off.
Steve’s first order of business is airing out what will become Eddie’s new bedroom downstairs, tucked away behind the living room. He coaxes the squeaky window hinge with some WD-40 and elbow grease, then throws the shutters open.
The early spring breeze flows in through the open window, and Steve makes Eddie’s bed for him with new, flannelette sheets to help him through the lingering cold nights. Steve opens up the dresser drawers and checks that they’re empty, then opens the lopsided wardrobe on top and places a few spare metal hangers inside.
After testing the bedside lamp - which does still turn on after a few months of disuse - Steve deems the room ready. It’s still a touch musty, having been closed up all winter, but it’s nothing some fresh air and fresher flowers won’t fix. Hopefully Eddie is fond of the clashing between the floral comforter and the tartan curtains.
Next on the to-do list is some gardening.
Steve’s got a black thumb, and he’s only just gotten the hang of not killing everything in his garden beds after four winters spent on his land. He dirties his hands harvesting his first lot of radishes for the year and then plants some parsnips in an empty bed, hoping that his produce this time around will actually do more than make Robin laugh at him. Steve’s come to accept that his dream of a self-sufficient life with a garden bed that meets all his food needs is completely out of the realm of possibility. The one positive is that Steve is slightly better at growing flowers, which brightens up the garden even if they aren’t useful in an edible way.
The flower garden in question is coming back to life after winter’s end, a burst of yellow and pink and purple primroses the highlight of Steve’s garden. He stops to see his parents, their simple little headstones belying the extravagant life they’d lived. He hopes they’re happy with it, wherever they are now.
Then Steve picks some of the flowers carefully to put in an old vase that was once his mother’s, carrying them inside - stopping to slip out of his boots by the backdoor so he doesn’t track dirt through the house the way Betsy likes to - and into Eddie’s to-be bedroom.
It looks nice, Steve thinks, but he’s not sure if nice is what Eddie’s looking for. He knows that nice, when Steve was in the deepest part of his own, complicated feelings, would’ve been something he’d lash out against, the same way so many of his fosters did.
There’s not much time to consider whether Eddie will trash his room like a scared child would, though, because Betsy is barking outside, and a quick look at his watch tells Steve that it’s just about ten.
So one of them - Wayne or Eddie - is punctual. Steve thinks he knows which it is.
He heads around to the backdoor to slip his boots back on, then whistles Betsy over to make sure she doesn’t unwisely put herself underneath a car. There’s a reason the poor girl had her leg amputated, and that reason was a complete lack of comprehension when it comes to the size and speed of vehicles.
“Hey!” Steve calls, as she rounds the corner, turning backwards and continuing to bark at the driveway as if Steve hasn’t figured out someone is coming. “Here, now, c’mon.” He pats his thigh and she finally falls into place at his side, bouncing up like she doesn’t only have one hind leg, whining desperately for him to go investigate.
Which Steve is in the process of doing, if only she’d stop getting in his way. Steve’s long past the point of feeling guilty when he knees her, because Betsy is seemingly masochistic and intent on hurting herself. She’s always surprisingly durable, though, and simply gets back up when Steve takes any tumble over her body. She’s certainly more resilient than he is.
Once they round the side of the house, Steve spots the old pickup bouncing down the dirt driveway towards him. Steve lifts a hand to wipe over his sweaty cheeks, then rests both of them on his hips, watching Eddie’s approach.
The pickup stops beside his own, both vehicles old and a little rough around the edges but more reliable than anything you can buy today. From the drivers side emerges the person who must be Wayne, looking exactly like the sort of guy Hopper would be friends with - his expression says that he’s not the sort for any nonsense, though the way he hesitates when the other door opens shows the depth of his concern, a vulnerable moment that Steve thinks he wasn’t meant to be privy to, so he just looks away.
Speaking of doors, though - one slams, and Steve’s attention snaps over to Eddie.
Eddie, whose beautiful features are soured by a scowl that takes over every inch of his face, from his dark brows to his curled lips.
Steve feels a little breathless looking at him, actually, and he wonders if there’s some merit to the phrase if looks could kill, because Eddie looks ready to commit murder.
Steve also feels some measure of relief at the fact that he doesn’t recognise whoever Eddie is, because it means they can start here, from scratch, without Steve judging him based on past indiscretions.
“Steve,” Wayne says, holding out a hand - wrinkled through years of hard work.
“You must be Wayne,” Steve says, stepping forward, taking his hand. He learned to shake hands from Jim Hopper himself, who’d insisted that a good handshake told you all you needed to know about a man. Steve can tell his initial impression of Wayne is right from the firm, quick shake he gets in greeting. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Same to you, kid,” Wayne says, and he sighs, sharing a private look with Steve before he glances over at Eddie. “This is my nephew, Eddie.” So not kid then, Steve notes mentally, something to think over later.
Eddie’s tugged a duffel bag out of the bed of the pickup, and a larger bag out of the cab. He’s got them slung over his thin, pale shoulders, which practically glow under the spring sunlight.
His expression hasn’t changed.
“I’d say it’s a pleasure but it’s not,” Eddie explains, his tone misleading jovial.
He approaches Steve - who holds his hand out in anticipation - and then dumps his duffel on the ground. Eddie’s more careful when he lays down the other bag, which Steve now notices is a guitar case. Musician, perhaps. Or just a hobbyist.
Then, he looks at Steve, anticipatory.
Steve raises an eyebrow.
Is this guy expecting him to carry his things inside for him?
Now, Steve’s a gentleman, and would absolutely offer to help, but the bags are hardly heavy looking, and Eddie seemed to be coping just fine. Plus, the sneer on his face makes Steve think more entitled brat than person who needs assistance. Maybe this is part of the famous persona Steve’s been keeping himself from finding out about. If Eddie thinks Steve’s going to know who he is and trip over himself to attend to his every whim, he’s got another thing coming.
Before Steve can say that, though, Eddie is sweeping a dramatic hand at his things. “Well, there you go. Look away.”
“Look at what?” Steve asks, glancing at the bags then at Eddie, feeling as if he’s missed something important.
Eddie looks at him like he’s an idiot. It’s clearly an expression he’s honed through years of practice, because Steve’s received some savage glares from kids before but this one cuts deep. “For contraband. Drugs and porno mags and guns-”
“-Ed,” Wayne scolds, long-suffering, turning his head heavenward as if to beg for patience - or mercy.
“What?” Eddie replies, turning to Wayne with the sort of mocking look Steve’s seen on one particular eleven-year-old who still visits the farm on weekends. Dustin Henderson is a master at making Steve feel like an idiot with a mere look, and he thinks Eddie must have the same innate ability. “You’re the one sending me away to this fucking wannabe rehab.”
Wayne immediately starts to protest, and Steve identifies it as an argument they’ve had plenty of times before - honestly, judging by the fact that Wayne dives into the middle of one point, Steve would be willing to bet that they had the exact debate as they came down the driveway towards him.
Steve doesn’t like to be rude, but he feels like it’s necessary to interrupt the well-trodden path the two are heading down. “This isn’t a rehab, and I’m not checking your bags,” Steve says, clear and firm but non-combative.
Eddie turns to look at Steve, eyes narrowed, assessing him for… something. “So what’re you gonna do if my bags are full of drugs?”
Steve… doesn’t really have an answer prepared. “I mean, I can’t stop you, but-”
“So what if I just take them all, right now? Pop all these pills,” Eddie kicks his duffel bag for emphasis, “and kill myself.”
Wayne makes a noise that is equal parts pained and frustrated.
“The ambulances take a while to get here, so I’d call them and then hope you have an easy gag reflex.” Steve waggles his fingers, hoping that Eddie might appreciate a slightly more morbid type of humour. Something needs to lighten the mood between them, and Steve’s grasping at straws to find it.
Eddie snorts, but he doesn’t sound amused. “You know, most guys I meet don’t want me to have a gag reflex.”
“Jesus Christ,” Wayne curses, shaking his head. He runs his hands over his bare scalp, like he used to historically be a hair ruffler until it all left him.
Steve chokes a little on his own spit, and that brings a smile to Eddie’s face, something razor-sharp and designed, Steve thinks, to hurt.
“Anyway,” Steve announces too-loudly, because the moment stretches on long enough to be painfully uncomfortable. He gestures towards Betsy, who has been incredibly patient in her heel, knowing - after much training - that the strangers who visit them are not always excited for thirty-five pounds of border collie barreling into them. “This is Betsy,” Steve explains, because dogs seem like a safer topic than drugs and gag reflexes. “She’d love a pat if you’re interested. Otherwise, Lulu,” Steve turns now, and gestures towards the stoop at the brindle cat dozing away happily there, “will gladly join you in bed for a snuggle, if you need a nap.”
Eddie is staring at Steve now, squinting, assessing. He turns suddenly to Wayne.
Wayne, who is taking Steve’s offer and kneeling down - slowly, the way Jim does on his old knees -, holding a hand out to Betsy. At Steve’s command, she leaps forward, licking his cheeks and wriggling into his hand.
“Are you serious?” Eddie asks, and it’s a real, legitimate question, even if Steve doesn’t know exactly who Eddie is asking the question to.
“About what? The pats?” Steve is being intentionally obtuse, but he gestures at Betsy, who is presenting her belly to Wayne for more rubs. “Dead serious, man, look at her.”
“No, no, this whole-” Eddie cuts himself off with a frustrated sigh, and runs a hand aggressively through his own hair, yanking at the strands. Like uncle, like nephew, apparently, although Eddie seems to have taken all the hair in the relationship. “Fine, whatever. Are you done?”
Wayne heaves a laboured sigh and pushes himself upright. Steve doesn’t offer to help, but that’s only because he’s copped enough shit from Hopper for implying the old man might need help.
“Ed,” Wayne says, and his voice lowers.
Steve’s gotten pretty good at sensing impending emotional conversations during his few years spent fostering, so he whistles low, summoning Betsy back to his side. “I’ve gotta check on the chickens,” he explains, nodding towards the coop, well aware that he’s being incredibly obvious and not caring at all. “Let me know when you’re ready for a grand tour, alright Eddie?”
The chickens are absolutely fine, and Steve knows that because he attended to them around two hours ago. Nonetheless, Steve makes a show of emptying out their water trough on a flower bed by the front door, and then refilling it at the old tap on the wall. Eddie and Wayne speak in hushed voices, and Steve tries not to be obvious as he watches them both.
They embrace, and Steve notices the difference in their body language - another thing he’s picked up on more, now that he’s had to get familiar with sensing the words his fosters don’t want to say aloud to him.
Wayne clings, fists his hands in Eddie’s black shirt, buries his face against his shoulder. It’s desperate, it’s full of love, it's full of need. Steve aches for Wayne, seeing that, because whatever Eddie is going through is clearly hurting him.
Eddie, on the other hand, is tense. He reciprocates, of course, but it’s not so open. There’s something in the way, something holding him back from embracing his uncle properly. He holds Wayne, though, and doesn’t push him off, and maybe that’s the closest Eddie can get right now to returning that hug.
Then, Eddie picks up his bags, and stomps over to Steve, while Wayne returns to his pickup. “Let’s get this fucking show on the road then, huh?” He asks, dry as a bone and clearly unimpressed.
Steve smiles, and tries to set aside his knee-jerk reaction of telling Eddie to have some respect. It won’t help matters. When people hurt - kids or adults - they act in ways they wouldn’t usually. Steve’s learning not to take offence from it, but it’s easier to apply that with a child than it is a grown-ass man.
“Let’s get your stuff put away, then I’ll show you around,” Steve says, nodding his head once to Wayne, who’s been hovering in the driver’s seat while they talk.
Once Steve leads Eddie to the door, he hears the engine turn over, and the pickup slowly heads back the way it came.
“Just this way,” Steve explains, Betsy underfoot, Eddie scuffing his shoes behind him.
Steve always makes a goal when he gets a new kid. He thinks that he might help them learn how to handle their emotional outbursts, or that he wants to teach them how to care for animals and, by extension, themselves.
For Eddie, all Steve wants is to figure out what it is that’s stopping him from opening up to the clear love he has for his uncle, and he wants to remove that wall.
Somehow, Steve thinks it’s going to be the hardest job he’s had yet.