Chapter Text
He leaves Henderson on the floor. His hands are jittering, quaking things, and anger wracks him in tremors as he gets to his feet, slicing through him.
‘You know what man, I’m done.’
Steve tries to breathe, but the air sticks in his throat, thick like mud. He can hear the emotion bubbling in his voice; it cracks as he speaks, flooding him with red-hot embarrassment.
‘I’m done.’
He goes. He can hear Henderson shout something after him, but Steve doesn’t care to listen. His head pounds — he must have hit it again on the way down, not good — and he needs space, needs air, even if the air in the Upside Down will likely do him more harm than good.
There’s something rising in his throat, something awful pushing its way up — a sob maybe — and shit, shit, shit, he needs to get somewhere alone before the thing tears free and he comes apart.
I remember what it was like to have a good friend. A real friend who actually believed in me and was actually kind to me.
The words ache. When did Henderson stop seeing Steve as a friend? How did he let that happen? Jesus, how did he fuck up this bad?
Steve tries to pinpoint the failure, searches for it desperately as if it’s something that can be found. A fixed, palpable moment, a marked point he can turn over in his mind, examine, understand, then crush between his thumb and forefinger.
The thing in his throat is pressing upwards, and there’s something else building in his chest now too, a cold mess of feeling that Steve doesn’t quite understand. He’s never been good at emotions. Never been good at feeling things. The key has always been to act like you don’t care — isn’t that what he’d told Henderson, once? Something along those lines, somewhere along a train track in the middle of Hawkins woods, back when things had felt simpler.
Steve pushes through a set of doors into another dark hallway, tripping over a mass of blackened vines. The jolt of subsequent panic he feels is more habit than anything else, though it would be just his luck if now, after months of nothing, Vecna decided to send a swarm of Demobats his way.
Hey, maybe this time he’ll survive an encounter with the Upside Down without losing half a gallon of blood? If he wasn’t so fucking angry, Steve might feel hopeful. Aside from crashing the car, things have gone eerily well so far. Had been going well, until Henderson had thrown a Rubik’s Cube at his face and shit had gone sideways.
He almost wishes for a swarm of Demobats, at this point. As if in disagreement, the pinched scars on his abdomen twinge — but wouldn’t that make things simpler? God, he could just… pack it in, and be done with it all.
Fuck, it would be so peaceful.
He wouldn’t have to feel any of this messed up shit he’s feeling right now. Wouldn’t have to deal with the migraines, the nosebleeds, the forgetfulness, the blurred vision. The way his jaw cracks and locks and slips out of place, the way it’s been ever since Billy beat the ever-living shit out of him and nearly killed him.
It’d be so easy, and there’s a small, hideous part of him that wants it badly.
But there’s a problem— one he’s all too aware of. A chatty, obnoxious, Robin Buckley shaped problem.
Steve knows he’s on his last warning when it comes to near-death scrapes. If he doesn’t make it back to her, he’s pretty sure Robin will make it her life’s mission to track down his half-rotting corpse and bring him back from the dead — just so she can kill him herself.
He misses her. She’s been so busy, lately. They both have been, of course, and he’ll never blame her for losing sight of him. She has Vickie, and The Squawk, and her family, and there’s that other thing — the inter-dimensional battle for Hawkins they’re fighting against a super-powered totally evil child-stealing dickhead…
She has all that to juggle. And Steve has, well… Steve.
He has his big, quiet house and his hair and his beamer and — wait, no, he doesn’t even have that last one anymore. That last one is lodged deep into a writhing wall of flesh, abandoned in the grey expanse of the Upside Down. It’s stupid, but the loss hurts, in some pathetic and fucked up way.
Steve loved that car, even with the stupid fucking satellite dish that Henderson fixed on top. It’d been the only thing that stayed the same throughout everything. The only thing that never changed. He’d always had his beamer, no matter what. It had always started first try, had never let him down.
Jesus fucking Christ, Steve, get a grip, he thinks.
He’d have included Henderson in that list of Things Steve Has too, once. But things feel different now. Maybe they have for a while — since Eddie died — and Steve’s been too scared to admit it out loud.
He’s been trying every way he knows how to be there for the kid. For his idiot kid. Sure, Steve’s not perfect, but he’s been trying his goddamn best. And maybe they’ve been arguing a little more than usual, and sure things have felt all awkward and weird, and perhaps he should have been the adult in the situation, but he’s been hurting too, and then —…
And then Henderson hit him in the face, and Steve had been reminded of every other time he’s failed to be good enough, and well, things are… different now.
He stops in a stairwell a couple hallways down from where he’d left Henderson. He’s so fucking angry at the kid right now, but even so, he wants to be within earshot. Within reaching distance, just in case something goes wrong.
His legs near give out the moment he knows he’s alone. The thing in his throat finally surfaces and he tries, but fails, to swallow it. A grief-laden, wracking sob that echoes against concrete, bursting free with such force it scares him.
He’s clasped his hand over his mouth by the time another comes. He forces this one down, biting into the soft meat of his knuckle to stifle it, then slides to the floor with his back against the wall.
Steve’s hands rake his hair. His eyes sting, and his head pounds mercilessly with that familiar pressure. He just needs to breathe. In and out, dickhead, he tells himself. What, you can’t even breathe properly now?
Beneath his fingers, he can feel the puckered line of skin where the plate hit him at the Byers’ house three years ago. There was a brief moment when Steve had worried the hair might never grow back. He’d been silly to worry, he knows that, but it hadn’t helped. He still spent far too long in the pharmacy searching for scar-softening treatments and far too much money on specialised hair regrowth shampoos. For a few months, it had become a bit of an obsession — to the point that he’d had to have three stitches redone because he’d preened too excessively.
It never did grow in, of course it didn’t, but Steve’s perfected his meticulous hair routine now so that the scar is hidden, most of the time. He checks it anyway, morning and night, even when no one will see it. It’s an embarrassing habit, one he’s not proud of, but he can’t help it.
Henderson’s voice is in his head again.
He wasn’t perfect, but at least he knew that, unlike you. He was never fake. He didn’t care what other people thought about him.
Steve sucks in another lungful of stale Upside Down air. So what, is it a crime to care what people think? He thinks bitterly. But what he really means is, is it still so obvious? Can everyone see it?
The ugly thing inside him that aches for approval. The love-starved creature he tamps down — the weak, shivering thing in him that his father tried so hard to stamp out.
What, are you crying, Steven? Look at me. Wipe your fucking face. No one respects a man who falls apart. Jesus Christ. I thought I raised you better than this.
Steve’s been trying. He’s been trying to do better. Not in the way his father would want, but in the small, soft ways Robin and his kids have shown him.
He’s trying to leave King Steve in the past, even though so much of that persona — the hard-edges, the forced smile, the false arrogance — are ingrained into his very being. Taking them away, leaving them behind — it’s been hard realising how little is left. How little else was ever allowed to grow.
It’s why Henderson’s words are all the more bitter to swallow. He wipes his cheeks, sees red on the back of his hand — understands then that his nose has begun to bleed. Shit, not now, man. Pull yourself together.
He wishes Henderson could see that he’s doing his best, that he’s still learning. He wants to grip his kid by the shoulder and plead with him, beg him, ask him to just hang on, don’t give up on me yet. I know I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m trying to let you in. I’m trying to be what you need me to be.
Almost mockingly, his own words ring hard and sickly in his ears.
Eddie wanted to play hero. And he made a dumb call, and he got himself killed.
The memory of the words brings bile to his tongue and before Steve can stop himself, he’s lurching to the side, vomit burning in his throat. It splashes onto the concrete floor, steaming slightly, a puddle of guilt and shame and half-digested Peanut Boppers.
How could he have said that? Fuck, how could he have said that to Henderson, when all the kid has done for the last year is cling to the image of Eddie The Hero.
Steve knows it’s the only thing that’s kept Henderson going. The only thing that’s helped him come to terms with Eddie’s loss, a lifeline in a black, unrelenting sea — and Steve has just wrenched that from him. Henderson, who is hurting so much, so deeply, and who Steve only wants to hold close and never let go.
He wishes he could take it all back. He wishes he had powers, like El, that he could go back and undo it. Hell, he’s wished many a time he could go back and change how it all went down, put himself in Eddie’s place, die in his stead.
Not because he cares so much for Eddie — of course, he’s often thought about the guy’s black, sparkling eyes and yes, he still has the guy’s jacket folded beneath his pillow — but more because he often wonders if Henderson wishes it were Steve instead.
The thought burns in his throat along with the remnants of his own stomach acid. It’s a thought he’s tried to shake free, but it’s lodged deep in him — a scared, ice-cold shard of pure fear that’s stuck firmly in his chest. Maybe that’s what Henderson’s thought all along, maybe that’s why he’s been pulling away, why he can barely stand to look at Steve these days.
Steve gets it, sure he does. No matter what Buckley says, no matter how wrong she tells him he is, he gets it. It’s the same way his parents came to resent him — the way his father resents him for his failure, the way his mother resents him for needing more than she knew how to give.
It hurts, but it’s okay. If Henderson needs someone to blame, he can be that person. He’s good at that, has done it before, knows how. Hell, he’ll be whatever his kid needs him to be, so long as his kid still needs him. So long as Henderson stays.
Steve swallows thickly, wipes at his nose again. The bleeding has lessened, even if the pressure in his head hasn’t. He doesn’t feel angry anymore, just flat — a miserable emptiness that moves in over his bones and stills his body.
He sucks in one last dust-filled breath for good measure. He should find the others. Fuck, pull yourself together man. You’re so embarrassing.
Just as he’s bringing himself to his feet, he hears footsteps pounding the concrete steps from below. His heart lurches, but he realises quickly it’s Henderson.
At first he feels relief, goes to open his mouth to say something — maybe the start of an apology — but then he sees Henderson’s face. The kid’s hurried, reckless, and white-faced.
Everything Steve feels is snapped quickly into a box, and he braces himself for whatever comes next.