#listen maybe i havent slept for two days and this is full of typos! who knows tbh! have fun!

[repentarium]

Me: maybe a cute little holiday sorry will Help Me, the working title is gonna be Season's Greasons lol

Also me: >16k later it's getting a silly Wham! xmas song lyrics. Bon appetit.

Featuring holiday angst, diy rage room, Gremlins, gremlins, a tree named Fangorn, a panic attack at the hardware store, Trauma™️, and a happy ending (not like that).

Merry crisis!

Excerpt below.

After Steve was old enough (in his parents eyes) to be left at home with paper money and a credit card, they stopped making it a big deal. Christmas, that is.

When he was younger, they could dress him up like a little handsome doll and slick his hair back and make sure he kept his bowtie on just right all through their coworkers’ holiday parties and all through the dinners and the photos and the cheek kisses.

Of course the parties were horribly boring; he was always the youngest kid there, the food tasted weird, and he had to sit quietly for basically the whole time, which he wasn’t very good at.

His Christmas memories are mostly of too many lights, too many people who are too drunk and too loud, and all the various times he was taken to the side to be screamed at by his dad for being ‘out of line’. In a closet or a foyer or a spare room or the top of the steps, away from the eyes of the people who might have judged them. Always, after, his dad’s face turned into a happy mask again, and he would smooth his own hair and it’s like he willed the beet-red angry blush of his cheeks to calm. Steve would be left to trail after him, grabbing at the sleeve of his suit jacket. If he was still teary-eyed at all his dad would rip the sleeve out of his hand and walk faster.

After his parents decided he was old enough to be left alone, they’d still hired the decorators to come in, so there would be a perfectly-lit tree in the window and staged empty presents and everything would look twinkly and warm and dramatic. They'd take some photos and then leave for most of the season.

This time they'd told him they aren't hiring the decorators again; his parents hadn't been to the house in Loch Nora all year. Even after all the repairs and the government cover ups, they just stayed away. The last Steve heard, they were going to sell it. They had hated Hawkins even when it was just a normal American dream kinda town, and now it's just a poorly patched dark house in a poorly patched dark town. What was the point?

For the holidays they had some sort of company get together in Chicago, where his dad’s main offices were and then… the Bahamas? Brazil? Some warm place that starts with a ‘B’ he thinks. It doesn’t really matter. It’s gonna be like all the other years in a lot of ways, but he wasn’t going to have a big King Steve party.

He probably could throw another rager, he’s honestly sure it’d be easy and familiar and like flexing a muscle. No one hated him so much, even after everything, that they’d turn down a rager.

But it made his skin itch to think about it. Buying the beer and liquor and snacks, seeing everyone fight over the hot tub, everything smelling like stale beer and perfume and maybe someone’s soft hands on his face which, while it might be nice in theory, if he's being honest with himself the whole charade was too much.

All this to say, there’s no rager. He’s thinking he’ll have a repeat of Thanksgiving, which his parents were also away for. A frozen tv dinner (he bought an extra when he got the esteemed Thanksgiving Dinner Meal two weeks ago), some kind of spritzy wine cocktail he bullshits his way through, some movie he borrowed from Family Video. Maybe he'll get some lights. No big deal.

It’s the kind of thing that’s only really sad if you let it be, and Steve’s had a whole life of not letting things be sad. It’s self-preservation, but it’s worked so far.

He’s got a couple of weeks still, but he knows the holiday movies go fast so he’s rummaging through them during his shift, planning to squirrel the one he wants away so no one gets to it first. He’s about to give up and just plan to turn something on the tv honestly, it’s all kids movies and love stories and they’re just making him feel worse.

It’s a Wednesday afternoon before school’s out so there’s nothing going on; ample opportunity for Eddie to come in and hang out, which he’s taken advantage of. Steve has joked a lot about the trauma bond that you get out of the Upside Down but it’s kind of not a joke. You save the world with someone, you save their lives and they save yours, and it means something.

Eddie’s there now, sitting cross-legged on the counter, and he and Robin are painting each other’s nails. A bright red that they’ve decided is ‘festive’, which had made Steve roll his eyes.

He was startled out of his studying by all the yelling, so he wanders over, both of them shoving their hands in his face and making him pull his head back so he doesn’t smudge anything.

‘Very cute.’

‘Thank you, King Steve. I think I am.’

‘We know you think you are.’ Robin scoffs and grabs the nail polish, raising an eyebrow at Steve. ‘You want?’

‘Someone’s gotta actually do the work around here, Robs.’

‘Yeah it’s swamped.’ Eddie hops off of the counter, gestures around the ghost town of the shop, and wanders over to where Steve had abandoned the holiday display.

Robin grabs Steve’s hand and pulls him until he’s flush against the counter, stretched across it, and starts painting his nails delicately with the tip of her tongue poked out in focus. She’s gotten really good at this since they started working here; it’s not the kind of thing that would slide at the food court, but it’s safe here, as long as Keith doesn’t catch them and they don’t wreck anything in the process.

By the time Robin’s finished painting Steve’s nails, Eddie has come back over and slapped a VHS onto the counter next to Steve. He cranes his neck and sees the cover.

‘This is the one you want, babe.’

‘Eh. It looks… creepy. I don’t really do horror after all the, you know. Horrors.’

Eddie clutches his heart a little dramatically. ‘It’s not creepy, Steven, it’s cinema. It’s iconic!’

‘I’ll consider it.’ he sighs.

'Consider it a little harder. It's the right choice.' Eddie grabs the VHS box and walks it back into the employee office, probably putting it in Steve's jacket pocket like some awful reverse pickpocket, or like a niche Santa.

When he comes back, he's carrying a little piece of paper and his eyebrows are confused.

'I wasn't snooping, first off. Secondly, aren't you already all fancied up? I thought your folks' kind got the work done early and by someone else.'

It's just a little list that says 'lights, movie, tree(???), that sparkly plastic stuff'. If he didn't write it down he'd walk out of the store empty handed.

'Oh. They're selling the house apparently. They won’t be back, so…' they don't care. He shrugs.

'So you're decorating yourself?!' Robin is somehow excited and devastated. 'Are you going to be alone for the holidays Steve?! You're an asshole for not saying anything sooner, you could have come over for Thanksgiving!'

Eddie is still gawking at Steve like he's some kicked and broken puppy looking for a home and it's making him feel so fucking small.

'Robs it's fine, this is, like, normal for me, it's not a big deal. It's not a Thing, I've never really done big celebrations for the holidays, you know that. We're going to have our little Party Christmas and that's just fine for me.

'Steven. You are coming over to my house after work, that settles it.' Eddie grabs a pen from the desk and scribbles out 'movie', then tucks the list into a pocket. The pen gets tossed at Steve, but it bounces off of his chest and lands back on the counter.

'Ed - it's fine, I'm fine!'

'That's not what people who are fine say.' Robin says under her breath.

'I'm going home after work, it's a Wednesday. I open tomorrow.'

'It's not gonna take long. You'll get your beauty sleep.' Eddie raises a dramatic wave and walks out of the store with Steve protesting at his back.

'Sounds like you don’t really have a choice here, pal.'

Steve throws the pen at Robin; she ducks and snaps at him until he sighs and brings his hand back over to her so she can touch up the smudged polish.

—

No matter how many times he'd repeated to himself that he wasn't going to Eddie and Wayne's new place across town, he found himself parked outside the apartment with his forehead against the steering wheel, chill slowly seeping into the parked car.

He jolts at a rapping at the passenger window. Eddie is standing there with a cardboard box, and he nods at Steve to open the door.

Steve leans across to pull open the passenger door, and the box is dropped unceremoniously into the seat.

'Come upstairs!' Eddie smiles at him over the box.

'Sorry, I was pretending I didn't exist for a minute.' When Eddie pinches his upper arm Steve leaves the car, makes a big deal of wincing and rubbing his arm, grumbles and follows upstairs anyway.

'Wayne's out, but I wanted to show off the tree!'

It’s hard to miss the lights even from the street, but when they push through the door into the apartment it’s still a shock that they’ve crammed so much festive into the space.

The tree is tall enough that the top is slightly bent against the ceiling; the lights are all sorts of colors, the ornaments are a mess. He can see a few standard colorful baubles, but most of the decorations seem to be completely random - there's some little stuffed animal, like the kind you get from a claw machine. A tiny wrench. A couple of small framed photos that seem to be a grinning child Eddie. A couple of clay things probably made by that Eddie child.

'There's so much to see!' Steve chuckles, kind of delighted, and when he looks over, Eddie is beaming proudly.

'We used to have a lot more, we lost a couple of boxes in the Apocalypse.'

'I don't think it'd stay standing if you crammed anything else on.' He's examining some sort of horrible popsicle stick creation with pipe cleaners and googly eyes that he thinks it's supposed to be Rudolph.

'No way, we always get the strongest tree.'

'It smells… green.'

Eddie is just watching him take it all in, but his smile is falling a little. Steve hopes he hasn't insulted him, he just has never seen anything like this.

Steve hasn't spent a ton of time at Eddie's place, but the difference from the last time he'd picked him up was startling - it wasn't like when the decorators came to Steve's hours, when everything was trim and restrained and delicately sparkling. This was honestly practically gaudy, but it was fun and it was homey and friendly. There were stockings across the wall behind the TV, lights and sparkly plastic nonsense anywhere it could physically be. It all felt glowy and warm, and all at once it made Steve feel loss for something he'd never had. It's only sad if you let it be.

'I know, it's kinda trashy but I guess it fits.' Eddie's hands raise out in a gesture that says 'after all, look at me'.

'No!' Steve snaps out of his oncoming sadness, pushes it aside. 'It's awesome, Eddie. I've never seen anything like it, it's so happy.'

That perks Eddie back up a little, even if it makes him blush a little and kick his foot. 'It's not exactly designer. I bet you've seen some real fancy stuff.'

Steve scoffs. 'Our tree was the same every year. Only white lights, a bunch of glass ornaments, Tiffany of course. Red bows. Boring.'

'That's rough.'

Steve nods at him soberly and goes back to the tree. 'This would never fly.' He lifts a little G. I. Joe figure hogtied to the top of a hot wheel car in Eddie's direction. 'What even is this?'

'Heist gone wrong.'

'Do the army guys do a lot of heists?'

'No, that's why he messed this one up so bad.'

'He needs to learn to plan a little better.'

'Yeah, yeah, yuck it up, he's in mortal danger.'

#stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #fic #fanfic #holiday fic #holidays #listen maybe i havent slept for two days and this is full of typos! who knows tbh! have fun!