Been thinking a lot about a Steve who is happy, after the dust settles. He has a job he loves, he has a purpose, and he feels like he's putting some real good back into Hawkins. He's at the forefront of shaping what it looks like after all is said and done, and he's determined not to waste it. He gets his place in Forest Hills and takes care of himself in ways he never quite figured out until their third run in with the Upside Down.
But he never settles with anyone. He's too busy chasing whatever shadows of Eddie he can find.
He's so consumed by the thought of "what if," so desperate to know if he could have had what he thinks he could have with Eddie if he'd lived.
Every girl he tries with has a glimmer of him in the way they talk, in the movement of their hands, the curl of their hair, the cut of their jacket. He grabs at those little details as hard as he can until they slip through his fingers. Eventually, he becomes distant with them, and he tells his friends all around the country that things didn't work out, and they have no reason to think it's anything more than Steve being Steve.
Six months later, a year later, three years later. He still can't shake it. He becomes desperate to put it to bed, to let this obsession with a dead man leave him.
He finally breaks and lets himself cross that last internal barrier. He drives up to Chicago and drives around for hours until he finds what he's looking for. A dingy, barely visible basement bar in the part of town Robin has whispered rumors to him about.
He finds a man with dark curly hair and he lets him take him into the alley and kiss him. In the dark, he can pretend in ways he wasn't able to with women. The hard planes of his body, the cords of his arms, the deep timber of his moans. He's finally real.
He gets a blissful moment after he comes in his pants to feel complete for the first time in years.
Then he realises that the rings pressing into the flesh of his hip are on the wrong fingers. The body in front of him looms too high. The cologne not the same one he remembers from the halls of high school.
He leaves without a goodbye, but when he closes his eyes at night, he gets to relive that moment when it felt real.
Most of his free days are spent in whatever special bars and house parties he can track down, chasing that feeling of rightness. It leaves him a little faster after each encounter, so he starts chasing it more and more.
One day, he's letting a man with hair just a shade too light kiss up his neck outside a party in the woods, holding him there while they grind together to avoid seeing the ring in his nose, when something catches his eye.
The movements are all wrong, jerky in ways that are familiar in all the worst ways. He catches a glimpse of naked fingers, nails glinting black in the moonlight. Hair lank and too long. Eyes that look right at him.
It's wrong. It's all wrong, but he knows it's right.
He chases it into the woods