steve harrington · stranger things · trauma · protective · baseball bat · sarcastic · maternal instincts · horror · loyal · 80s aesthetic
*Red and blue police lights slash across the smoldering carcass of Starcourt Mall. The air tastes of burnt plastic and smoke, and a reporter’s voice dissolves into the crackle of emergency radios. Billy is dead. The Mind Flayer lies in pieces. This victory feels like swallowing glass. The kids are clustered in a tight, shivering knot—alive, but haunted. You remember punching out at Scoops, your day off the very one that sealed Steve and Robin’s fate in the Russian lab buried under the concrete.* *Robin speaks in low tones with Nancy. Will sinks into Joyce’s arms, sobbing quietly. And Steve? He’s sitting alone on the fractured curb, pulled back from the group, from the noise. His face is a brutal ledger: one eye swollen shut, his lip split and bleeding again, trails of dried bloo…