wayne never trusted the suburbanites of hawkins. he’d been fine with them before, but once eddie started living with him, and he heard the way their kids spoke to his, he quickly turned his back.
when eddie came home crying because some girl called him a freak, or hid his bruised wrist behind his back and insisted he’d fallen over, he would say, some kids just follow their fathers, ed, there ain’t nothing you can do or not do about it. just count your lucky stars you’re smarter than them. it was a small comfort but the best he could do without his voice cracking.
so when nancy wheeler, robin buckley, steve harrington started showing up, packed into a beemer the boy had been bought at sixteen as a ‘starter car’, he had been nervous. buckley was okay, she wasn’t so prim and proper, and he’d heard enough stories about wheeler’s gun storage from eddie to see through any facade of manners. but harrington.
harrington was different. he stared at eddie whenever he laughed loud, or changed his voice, or gesticulated wildly. he smirked softly to himself when eddie referenced dnd.
he was the embodiment of hawkins.
when the four of them tumbled through the door together, laughing and nudging each other in a scramble for the sofa, wayne stood from his chair and left. he couldn’t bear to see his boy mocked all night by someone pretending to be a friend.
(what he didn’t notice was the way steve soaked up the sounds of eddie’s laugh, trying to work out how to be the one to cause it; or how proud he felt when dustin’s reluctant tutoring paid off and he could understand a nerdy comment.
steve harrington was in fact the antithesis of hawkins.
because he loved eddie munson.)
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I'm not a writer but i had this thought so- bear with me, yeah?
For months Eddie hears all about how cool and badass Steve Harrington is, yeah, but you know what he also hears about? How Steve and Robin are made for each other and how cool and pretty Robin is and how stupid it is that they're not a couple for some dumb reason, like Steve not wanting to be with a band geek and still clinging to high school hierarchy. And in all of the things Dustin says about Steeeve Harrington, that last part is the only thing that fits into the Munson Doctrine, so obviously everything else Henderson is saying is what's skewed in his little shrimp world view.
Steve Harrington thinks he's better than a band geek and that's why we won't look twice at a girl that would be perfect for him (according to Dustin Henderson, so... still questionably trustworthy information). Eddie probably assumes Dustin is talking up how close Steve and Robin actually are, just how he's exaggerating how close Dustin himself is to Harrington (like that would impress Eddie and the rest of Hellfire??? He really doesn't know how to get through to the little sheep that his worship of Hawkins' most notorious square is a detriment to his character and not something Eddie would find impressive. If it was real. Which it obviously isn't. Anyway-)
Turns out? Steve Harrington? Actually a cool dude. Not cool as in popular but cool as in "holy shit did he just bite that thing's head off???? Oh and he's not even gonna brag about that, it's just nbd, yeah sure, cool cool cool be fucking cool Eddie, oh god he's talking to me why is he talking to me" and just, chill to hang out with. After the whole shit show went down. Who would have fucking thought, huh? (except for Dustin Henderson, yeah yeah yeah, shut up)
So now Eddie has to reevaluate some other assumptions he made. Maybe Dustin was right and Steve actually is cool and badass, and he and Buckley actually are as close as he had said (and they really fucking are! He has seen them give Keith eerily matching bitchy looks for trying to schedule them on opposing shifts and basically bully the guy into changing the schedule around so they can spend as much time as possible in each other's presence. It's enough to make a guy question his own friendships when sometimes a few hours of band practice are enough to make him want to never see any of those chucklefucks again. Of course, that feeling abates but seriously, how are those two never sick of each other??)
So if they're as close as advertised but not a couple (and after meeting everyone Steve cares about and they're basically all nerds so the "Harrington thinks he's too good for a band geek" thing can't actually hold true-) what is the hold-up? Why aren't they a couple? And somehow, somehow Eddie comes to the conclusion that Steve is in love with Robin. Steve is a serial romantic (emphasis on romantic) and while his love life isn't the talk of the town post-earthquakes as it would have been before, people do still talk about the fact that he hasn't taken out a girl since it happened.
Which brings us to a day in summer, maybe fall, after Eddie has seen Steve look wistfully at a young couple with a baby, that he shows up at Robin's door step.
"Eddie? Hey what's up?"
"Good, good, how are you? Uhh can I... can I come in?" There's a nervous energy around him that is immediately infectious and she leads him to the living room where he immediately starts walking back and forth in front of the couch. She watches him for a moment, hands fluttering through different motions trying to find one that might calm him down before giving up on that. Instead Robin swerves around him, clambering onto the couch and wrapping her arms around her right leg, putting her head on her knee. She follows Eddie's path with her eyes and decides to wait before quickly realizing that she can't, actually.
"As riveting as it is watching you walk a groove into my parents' rug, do you maybe want to say something? I mean I can definitely talk enough for the both if us if that's what you want it's just that I have the slight suspicion you've got something you need to get off your chest" Eddie stopped walking halfway through her monologue and starts nodding.
"Yeah. Yeah yeah yes you're right it's just- I haven't a hundred percent made up my mind about saying something", Eddie has one arm wrapped around himself and uses the other to alternately play with his hair and gesticulate at her, "because on the one hand it's a little bit driving me crazy, maybe, but on the other hand this is none of my fucking business" And Robin who was worried at first just because Eddie is nervous, then for a second because she was scared he was going to confess to a very ill-advised crush on her, is stumped. What the fuck is this about and why did it bring him to her of all people?
"Just say it you weirdo", is what decides to comes out of her mouth but it doesn't even matter because half of her sentence is layered with his "Are you aware Steve is in love with you?"
[here we're facing the issue of me not actually being a writer and pretty much running out of steam but we also haven't reached the part that sparked this whole thing yet, which is wild - let's just pretend I wrote a very funny dialogue between those two in which Eddie confronts Robin for stringing poor Steve along ]
There's a moment when they're both silent and there's a moment when they're both talking and then there are steps coming down the stairs. They make a smirk grow on Robin's face that is starting to worry Eddie when not a parental figure but Steve Harrington steps through the doorway. He's wearing sweatpants and a shirt that might be Robin's and there's a headband pushing his hair away from his face.
"Don't yell at me for coming downstairs, you took forever and the first layer... is... dry....", he stops in his tracks the moment he looks up from his bare toes and sees Eddie. Then he very quickly rips off the headband and slings it somewhere to his right into the unknown of the hallway.
"Hi Eddie. What's... up" Eddie is going to sink into the floor and never come up for air again.
In the meantime Robin stood up on the couch to sit cross-legged on the back of it for a better vantage point and is steepling her fingers in front of her face. Eddie is getting the distinct impression he's missing some crucial information here.
"Stevie, babe, platonic love of my life-", Steve nods for her to go on, "you know how we decided I get a veto on your romantic life because we realized droves of suboptimal dates actually make you miserable so we're going for quality over quanity for the first time in your small-town Casanova life?" Steve has that cute little crease between his eyebrows while he's looking back and forth between Eddie and Robin, trying to figure out what's going on but he rolls his eyes at the end of her sentence, back in familiar territory. "Yes, Robin-"
She interrupts: "And you know how I also reserved the right to give a shovel slash molotov cocktail talk to anyone we deemed worthy of being a potential future partner?" Steve's face somehow shows an emotion that can only be encapsulated by "?!" as he glances to Eddie before shifting back to Robin with just the "?" remaining.
"First I have to say I'm personally very pro, I loved this experience; Eddie here really made a fool of himself, very worried for your delicate sensibilities and how I'm breaking your sweet little heart." "...what...?"
"So: what's the verdict on a potential future partner giving me the shovel talk?"
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Ritsu doesn't respond to Shou's messages, not cause he's disinterested or doesn't consider him a friend, but because 90% of the time he forgets he owns a phone
Like from an outsider's POV Ritsu seems like he's cold towards him or mildly annoyed but in reality he's just introverted and hasn't had any friends before besides his brother
Whatever you think they feel for one another is mutual, whether it's friendship or love or just mutual understanding and sympathy
Like, I can see them argue and be annoyed with eachother's personality once in a while but they care. I like to believe this isn't my bias but canon fact, Ritsu wouldn't have agreed to help Shou otherwise
They understand eachother. Shou tells Ritsu his big ideas and Ritsu understands how he's come to that conclusion and gives criticism and Shou listens to him. Because he knows it isn't an insult, he knows its genuine advice, he knows Ritsu actually listens and wants to help
That has its shortcomings as well, I think they're overestimating how well they understand eachother sometimes, there's a certain degree of projection happening. Their situations are similar but very, very different
What I'm trying to say is that they don't hang out that often but ten years post canon Shou could call Ritsu up after they haven't spoken in forever, unsure if he even has his number anymore, ask for help and still receive it. That Shou would let Ritsu crash on his couch after he impulsively quits his job even if months passed since their last conversation. It's not about personality compatibility with them, its about trust.
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Me: And you see, here’s the thing, right? Here’s the thing. While it’s fairly reasonable to assume that Ignitor—who is canonically stated to distrust and despise all witches—would dislike Hex for no other reason than her simply being a witch, I think what’s missing from this take on their hypothetical dynamic are all the things that they have in common. Now, I don’t doubt that Ignitor would be wary of Hex at first. But I also think that over time, he’d be able to shake off his bias and grow to really cherish Hex as both a teammate and a close friend, especially because they share so many of the same traumas. See, becoming Undead was not Hex’s choice. She had her life taken from her by Malefor, the Dragon King. Once she was cursed, people began to fear her. People began to hate her for reasons completely out of her control. She began to hate herself. She began to mourn the life she’d lost. She doubted she could ever be happy with herself again. And then you have Ignitor. Ignitor didn’t start out as a flame spirit. He also got cursed, just like Hex. And coincidentally, he lost his body during a battle with a dragon as well. He too grew to loathe what he had become. He didn’t feel like himself anymore. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to accept his fate. But slowly, these two characters not only learned to love themselves, but they also began to realize the amount of love people still have and will continue to have for them. For so long they had believed that their curses made them unloveable and monstrous, but over time, they came to realize that they’ve always been worthy of love and always will be worthy of love. Hex and Ignitor’s journeys are so similar. Their experiences are so similar. I lose my mind thinking about it. Did the author of their character bios even notice the parallels? Did they realize the fact that—
The burglar who has broken into my house: They’re mirror images. They’re the coalescence of sword and sorcery. They’re two lines of poetry that end in rhyme.
Me: They’re two lines of poetry that end in rhyme!
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