Stranger Things

you don't have to want to fuck someone to love them so much it steals your breath, turns out.

One of them is in college, Josh and Maisie are pretty sure, at Emerson. The other three work an odd variety of hours. They have a large amount of makeshift weapons littered where anyone can grab them, they’re all covered in scars, and whenever the lights in the hallway flicker they jump about three feet in the air.

He thinks this is dangerous, its like they’re married, the casual sharing of intimacy, this space between them which feels like something and nothing all at the same time. He thinks it’s dangerous for him to pretend Steve sees it the same way, that one day Steve’s droopy, kind eyes are going to see right through him and he’ll lose this. This being a side of Steve’s bed that is his, a nightstand where his rings always pile, a drawer of shirts in Steve’s bedroom that only Eddie uses. He can’t lose it, so he shuts his mouth, turns out the light, and watches the slow breathing of sleep fill Steve’s chest.

The world ends, except it doesn't. Somehow, Mike finds himself on the other side of that tunnel, forced to deal with the fallout that comes with the world apparently being saved: the mastermind behind it all, more missing children, his parents, and a best friend whose life has just taken quite the shocking turn. Mike wonders how long it’ll be until the scars fade, if they do at all.

Two unknowingly closeted aromantics try to explain crushes to each other, it goes about as well as can be expected.

Yeah; I’m gay, Robin thinks. Her throat constricts painfully. “I—you’d know if I were dating someone,” she says instead.

Something about the word boy stung more than the rejection itself. The line went silent and Jonathan heard a choked sob on the other side. They didn't have it in them to try and comfort them. A beeping sound and static. They blinked, they knew it was coming, yet somehow they were still weirdly shocked.

Robin and Steve in their platonic love affair, from realisation to maybe even a happily ever after.

Eddie Munson has kissed a boy, and now he has to handle the fallout. He's got to grapple with the fact that he likes boys, likes a boy, and the harrowing fact that he may have inadvertently broken said boy's heart.

In Miami, on vacation with his parents, Steve meets Eddie. So what if he doesn't get a last name or a phone number, it was a summer fling and they had a great month together. He doesn't realise it was Eddie fucking Munson until the guy has a broken bottle to his neck and they're about to go face interdimensional aliens together. Steve doesn't know when his life became a very fucked up and non-musical version of Grease.

“We should kiss,” he says. The ceiling isn’t spinning, but it definitely looks a little weird. Like, he’s 82% sure that it can’t be the exact same ceiling that’s been in his room his whole life. It’s just kinda... off. “I’m high, not drunk,” Robin responds.

Gareth has had just about enough of Steve Harrington in the fall of '86. He sets about to do something about it. It takes an angry mob, a Corroded Coffin gig and a baseball bat full of nails for him to change his mind. Gareth gets mad, Eddie gets beat up, Steve gets violent and Wayne is just really tired of everyone's shit.

Steve Harrington and Robin Buckley learn about the wonderous world of being Aromantic. Mostly.

Steve manages to figure out that he's bisexual, despite his best efforts to repress it, comes out to Robin and Jonathan Byers of all people, and figures himself out. Also, there's a cute guy who might be actually insane running the kids' dnd club and he's got his eye on him. And his bandana. Too bad Eddie Munson hasn't had a similar revelation. He's still under the impression that he's a straight man obsessing over Steve Harrington for normal, extremely heterosexual reasons.

Steve will be the first to tell you Hawkins is hell, but he doesn’t think he literally shares his hometown with the devil. Apparently that leaves him in the minority, because when Dustin’s nerdy after-school club is accused of being a Satanic cult, Steve is tasked—okay, co-tasked—with clearing the name of a man he barely knows. To make matters worse, he might actually have to, like, read the Bible? A campy, satirical take on the Satanic Panic, featuring undercover missions to the local church service, falling for the antichrist, and engineering an Easter miracle.

(In which Robin eats some candy, talks to Nancy Wheeler, and navigates the aftermath of the Battle of Starcourt.)

"I can't figure out your movie taste," Robin says. "I see where you're going wrong," Steve says. "I don't have any taste."

Sure, they've saved the world, but the best part of that really is that it doesn't end there and in a town where everyone thinks he murdered a girl, he's at least got Steve Harrington and Robin Buckley. It's really not his fault he accidentally starts living at Steve's house, he was invited, after all. There's a mystery too, about Barbara Holland and Steve's pool.

Steve isn't in love with Nancy. Not anymore. And he hasn't been in love with anyone since. He's starting to think maybe that's how he likes it.

"Jonathan!" Will lifted his arms but didn't get out of bed. "Eddie picked me up from school!"

Eddie comes out to Steve, and Steve's heartbroken about it for some reason. Eddie thinks Steve's dating Robin. Everyone else thinks Steve and Eddie have been dating this whole time. Robin doesn't get paid enough for this shit.

Steve goes to work after a bad morning, suffering through dysphoria and nightmares.

Phil Callahan has made a large variety of strange arrests in his time working as a cop for Hawkins, Indiana. Daylight skinny-dippers; a small group of old ladies who’d attempted to rob the corner shop with their umbrellas, a guy who’d stolen a total of eighteen gnomes from his suburban neighborhood. But pulling over Max Mayfield driving her brother’s Camaro at the ripe age of thirteen was pretty insane. Sure, kids will be kids and kids will be crazy. Until Steve Harrington crawled out of the backseat, clutched his knees and horror-movie hurled blood all over his boots and shit got crazier. That took it from a minor concern to oh, fuck. Callahan has to take this kid to a hospital.

Crossovers

Daredevil

come on and let me know (should i stay or should i go?) by QueenWithABeeThrone. Gen. Mattfoggy, Stoncy, Mileven, Lumax. AO3. 2018.

or: someone's trying to open a new gate in New York. at the same time, Nancy Wheeler, now a reporter for the Times, her husband Jonathan and their boyfriend Steve go missing. the former Party suspects these two events are linked. meanwhile, the Defenders are trying to figure out what the hell is going on in New York again, while Matt Murdock throws himself into crime-fighting once more, stumbling on something else entirely.

Doctor Who

With a Bit of a Mind Flip by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee. Gen. Dustin & Steve, Rose/Ten. AO3. 2022.

AU where Steve Harrington's parents are the Doctor and Rose Tyler and somehow he's still fighting monsters with a baseball bat.

Gravity Falls

Stranger Than Fiction by ImpulsiveWeaver. Gen. Stobin. AO3. 2023.

Steve and Robin are always victims of coincidence, whether it's in Hawkins, Indiana or Gravity Falls, Oregon. And in this case, a mishap with a certain stammering time traveler takes them to a time and a place that has its own share of strange and wondrous things.