okay i cannot shut up about them
steve being the one average intelligence friend among fucking geniuses (most of which are like fucking 13 year olds / all of which are younger than him) must be so damaging to his self esteem
because he’s only surrounded by child prodigies, a literal genius that’s fluent in several languages, and (probably the valedictorian if she wanted to be) a badass genius journalist, he has no example of what average intelligence is and just assumes he is stupid
which is not helped by the fact that everyone looks down on him/calls him an idiot/expects him to know everything!! so they just enforce this belief that he’s stupid and less than just because he’s not as intelligent as the rest of them
and then along comes eddie munson who failed senior year twice, yet is an amazing storyteller and genius DM, who knows about all these cool things and guess what? dustin looks up to him!
and steve knows dustin isn’t replacing him but dustin thinking he was cool was one of the only things holding his facade together
and then robin is only thinking about vickie and of course steve wants to help and he listens and gives advice, but robin was the only one who was around, who hung out with him, who listened
and max is isolating herself, and lucas has basketball and hellfire, and he doesn’t think nancy would ever want to be friends, so it’s. just him.
steve is walking through the upside down with eddie munson, and eddie references something he doesn’t get, and steve expresses his confusion and is prepared to be made fun of- but eddie just. tells him? explains it to him?
and it catches him off guard because no one has done that before, even as King Steve carol would roll her eyes and tommy would laugh whenever he asked them something. whenever he asked questions in class (which was rarely) the teachers told him he should’ve been paying attention but he was- he just didn’t get it
so steve tests it again later on and the same thing happens- even in front of the others, when steve asks a question eddie just tells him without poking fun and it’s… it’s really nice actually
once vecna is defeated and everyone survives (bc fuck you) steve continues to badger eddie with questions, looks to him whenever he doesn’t understand what’s going on and eddie will immediately explain it in a way he can understand
a while after they become good friends, steve just has to ask.
“…does what get annoying?”
“me asking you about stuff all the time”
but eddie just smiles at him, tells him how he actually loves that steve asks because it means he’s engaged and interested, when eddie is used to people getting bored of his rants/tirades
he tells steve that he loves explaining things to him, loves that he listens and pays attention and steve realizes oh, we’re kind of perfect for each other aren’t we?
he thinks he’s okay with that. especially if eddie keeps smiling at him and telling him about anything and everything he wants to
dailybridgerton
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