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spicysix · 8 months

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I'll be with you, when the roses bloom again

cheerscoops week - day two prompt: childhood friends to lovers/soulmate AU

rating: T warnings: no Upside Down, soulmate AU, childhood friends to lovers, temporary character death, panic attack, mention of drugs, oblivious steve, toxic stomarol, angst with a happy ending word cont: 4.3k

↳ read on ao3

Soulmates weren’t there when you were born. That was a fairytale, a romanticized version of it all, told so all the kids would grow up thinking life was all love and flowers.

It wasn’t.

Soulmates could be a bad thing. People you were destined to meet, no matter if their impact on your life would be good or bad. They would leave a mark, whether you wanted it or not.

You weren’t born with it. You had to earn it, take it, have it beaten into you.

It happened when it happened.

Steve had four for Tommy and Carol. One for each, for when they met, beautiful blooming flowers on his left shoulder. And one for each, for when they left him, putrid rotting weeds on his right shoulder. They had changed his life, back when he had just moved in to the house closer to Carol’s and she introduced him to that freckled little boy from the block down. And they had changed his life when they decided he wasn’t good enough for them anymore, or bad enough if you look closely into it. They had changed his life a thousand times in between those two, and Steve was glad his soulmarks for them were on his back, because if he had to see them every day instead of only when he purposefully turned his back to a mirror and looked over his shoulder, he thinks he wouldn’t bare how much he missed them sometimes.

He had a poisonous ivy leaf hidden by his hair and by the scar where Billy had broken a plate on his head. The biggest reason he still maintained his hair as long and coiffed as he did.

He had another blooming one on his left hand for when he fell in love with Nancy, and another dying one on his right for when she told him her love for him wasn’t real. He had another one, though, a secret third one right where his clavicle bones met, in the center of his chest, a fully bloomed flower in all her glory. One that appeared during the night after they talked the whole day, meeting their common grounds and finally understanding what went wrong and what didn’t, where they did right and where they failed on each other. After they could finally heal from their heartbreaks, and find a friend on one another — not as close as they were before, but a different kind of strong friendship anyway because Steve wasn’t Steve without Nancy and Nancy wasn’t Nancy without Steve.

The biggest one just under his heart for when Robin poured her heart out to him on dirty bathroom floors; and that was the first time he was grateful for a mark. He wished it had appeared somewhere in his body that he could show to everyone, so the whole world would know that he had many failed soulmates, but the successful one was the best he could ever ask for. He had a tiny one around the big main one for every little special time they shared, for every new revelation, for every new secret, for every time his soul felt happy and complete because he had Robin next to him.

The house next to Carol’s had a family that Carol hated. She used to say they were too perfect, all doll-looking, blonde hairs and blue eyes and skinny physiques.

Steve didn’t told Carol at first when he’d hang out with the girl she hated from time to time.

It started one day as he was leaving Carol’s house and, as always, he passed in front of the Cunningham’s home. The doll-looking, blonde-haired, blue-eyed skinny girl was collecting dandelions from her front lawn. Steve was eleven, she was ten, and that was the first time he thought he’d get an immediate soulmark and was left frustrated.

He looked at Carol’s house, glad to see she had walked back inside it already, and carefully approached the girl. A leaf crunching under his sneaker alerted her of his presence.

Blue eyes met Steve's.

“Hi?” she asked. Her voice was soothing, calm, a beautiful sound, a strike contrast to Carol’s shrieks. No wonder she hated her.

“Steve,” he answered dumbfounded. Her front teeth were charmingly crooked, he noticed when she smiled at him. “Me! I’m Steve.”

“Chrissy, me, I’m Chrissy,” she answered giggling and Steve couldn’t help but laugh back.

They just stared at each other for a while, Steve could feel his face burning and knew he was probably more red than the shoes she was wearing. Her hair tied into pigtails, and the whole image reminded him of Dorothy. He wanted to say more, but couldn’t find his voice.

After what felt like hours, he just pointed to a random spot to his left, waved way too fast and started walking. He heard her laugh as he kept going further away, and that kept the smile glued to his face, even through the embarrassment of not saying anything else.

He just left like a coward lion.

But he was there again a couple of days later, going home from Carol’s house, and she had green shoes this time as she was having what looked like a tea party with her stuffed animals. There was a lion amongst them.

“His name is Theo,” she said when she noticed Steve’s fixated stare on the stuffed cat.

“Theo, the lion,” he whispered back and she nodded.

His feet took him closer without him noticing, and he spared a look to Carol’s door. It was closed, she was back inside. It was safe.

“Steve, you, Steve. Hi!” Chrissy greeted him, that crooked smile that triggered Steve’s own lips to curl upwards.

“Hi, Chrissy… sorry about that… got nervous.” He shrugged.

“No need to be nervous. Do you want tea?” she asked, pointing at the (probably empty) tea pot.

“Uh… sure, yeah!” Steve answered. Chrissy’s smile widened, Steve’s smile widened and the world felt more colorful.

That was all it took.

Every few days, Steve would stop and play or chat or pick flowers with Chrissy on his way home from Carol’s. He would always look at the Perkins’ door to see if it was closed, and he would always ease up at Chrissy’s sweet voice, and he would always finally go back to his house feeling like he was stepping on clouds.

The Summer ended, the school started, he’d see Chrissy every day across the hallways and when Carol finally spotted him waving at the blonde girl, she threw a hissy fit. Steve talked her down, convinced her Carol was still his best girl friend, Chrissy wouldn’t replace her nor her blooming flowers in his left shoulder, and it worked. Carol wouldn’t talk to Chrissy, not ever, but she tried to hide her scowl when Steve did. Tommy just laughed whenever Carol complained, but he would also refuse to allow Chrissy into their closed group, and that was all very annoying in an endearing way to Steve. Or, endearing, in an annoying way. He couldn’t pick.

All the years kept passing, and in between fancy family trips and weeks being left alone the older he got, Steve learned how to keep his friends as close as possible so the soul-crushing weight of loneliness wouldn’t smash him to the floor whenever he woke up to an empty house. He could keep them all, Carol and Tommy and Chrissy, but as the years went by and he grew older and the hormones started working and the voice in his head — that sounded just like his father — spoke louder, three of them didn’t feel like enough.

Steve threw a party or two, but then he’d be the one to clean the house after it, so he resigned to just attend other people’s parties. He’d bring Carol and Tommy with him, always, but Chrissy wasn’t allowed yet, and he knew she wouldn’t enjoy them either.

It was like he was two different people.

He was Steve Harrington, keg stand king, someone the whole High School student body somehow looked up to. He got bitchier around Carol and Tommy, he even got meaner sometimes, but everyone around him laughed when he got that way so it was fine.

And he was Steve. Around her, he was just Steve. He got gentler, softer even, around Chrissy, and he got silly sometimes but she laughed with him and not at him when he did so it was fine. If he liked who he was with Tommy and Carol, he loved who he was with Chrissy. He’d teach her basketball, and she’d teach him collages, and they’d watch terribly produced musicals together, and bake delicious brownies that no one else got to taste because it was theirs. It was a little colorful world and it was only theirs.

He didn’t have a problem, exactly, that those two sides of him were so contrasting. He kind of liked being both. He loved Carol and Tommy, more than anyone, and he also loved that he got to keep a side that only Chrissy got to see.

Then came Nancy.

She changed everything.

She changed him, or he changed himself after her, and he was grateful for it. But in the same way Carol and Tommy tolerated Chrissy, they despised Nancy. Maybe because they saw, before anyone else including herself, that Nancy had a sharp edge under her softness. That she was bark and bite, that she wouldn’t take Carol and Tommy’s shit without fighting back if she had to.

And she had to.

It wasn’t a “her or us” situation, they didn’t put it like that, but Steve chose Nancy anyway. He chose who he was around her, the softness before only reserved to Chrissy that now Steve felt like he didn’t have to hide, and the eagerness to protect through sometimes mean words when necessary — not with fists, not like Tommy, never with fists. Nancy got along well with Chrissy too, and Steve liked it better now when he didn’t have to split himself into two. He could be just one, just Steve.

The blossoms on his shoulder rotted.

A new one bloomed on his hand.

Chrissy still didn’t have a flower of her own, and it never ceased to confuse Steve.

As fast as Nancy came, though, she went. A hurricane of changes, a storm turning his life around, a whole new Steve left behind and he couldn’t and he wouldn’t keep a grudge. They were just kids. They could figure it out later. They did, eventually.

The blossom on his hand died anyway.

Chrissy still didn’t have a flower of her own, and even if she and Steve’s paths weren’t crossing as much anymore for some reason after his and Nancy’s break-up, it was still confusing.

Steve graduated, no more seeing Chrissy every day across the hallways, no more stopping by her house beside Carol’s, daily phone calls turned into weekly ones, into monthly ones, into no phone calls at all until Chrissy still had no flowers and Steve missed her every day and had no mark to stare at in the mirror to torture himself.

But suddenly Steve had Robin, and he had Dustin, and he had Max. He got to keep them all, be just Steve, and he didn’t need any more. It was enough.

Chrissy had no one, and so she turned to Eddie Munson.

Robin called him at work, anxious to gossip about the Queen of Hawking High making a drug deal with The Freak, and Steve was immediately confused because, when had Chrissy become the Queen of Hawkins High, and why was she after drugs?

His head burned with it through the whole day, nothing good could be the cause of that, and the guilt eating up at his insides for being so estranged to Chrissy that he didn’t even know what could possibly be so bad in her life that she’d resort to drugs to fix it. He tried to rationalize his way through it, remembered Munson didn’t sell a lot of hard stuff, he was mostly a weed guy — god knows how much money Steve himself spent with Munson for party supplies, maybe Chrissy just wanted to relax a bit? Yeah, that should be it, no way it was anything stronger. She wouldn’t need that. She wouldn’t go there.

Steve had a date with Hailey, or Lauren, or whoever to the Pep Rally, and Chrissy looked just fine cheering through it, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Lucas scored the winning points, Robin scored a laugh from her crush, Steve scored a “this was nice but we should keep it as friends” from Holly/Letty/whoever.

And he told Robin he’d wait at the parking lot while she got out of her band clothes, and he basically ran to it just in time to see Munson and the rest of Hellfire leaving the school main building, but his eyes didn’t linger on their commemorations before finding Chrissy — subtly hidden by the shadows, but still visible waiting next to Munson’s van.

His feet took him closer without him noticing.

“Chris?” his voice scared her, wide blue eyes immediately finding his, no softness there, and he held his arms up in a non-threatening stance. “Sorry. Are you… How are you?”

She had a frown, her charmingly crooked teeth worrying at her bottom lip, unsure eyes searching for something in him because of course she didn’t trust him anymore. She had no reason to.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he pleaded, a wave of many bad feelings running him over. He took a small step towards her, and then another, and he could see her fidgety fingers over her stomach. “I wasn’t a good friend, I-”

She interrupted him, “Can we not do this right now?” she asked, looking at something behind Steve’s shoulder. “Can we not do this today?” Her voice was still soft though, still trying to soothe him even if he didn’t deserve it.

He couldn’t help but look behind him, Eddie Munson standing from a safe distance, crossed arms, crooked eyebrow, waiting attentively. Steve let out a sigh.

“Can I call you tomorrow?” he asked, and she only nodded before looking back at Munson again.

Steve didn’t turn to see, but he listened as Munson walked around the van to the driver’s side, and watched as Chrissy stepped into the passenger side. He walked backwards, out of the van’s way and didn’t look away as Munson drove off. To his trailer, probably. To sell Chrissy drugs.

A hand on his shoulder startled him.

“Good to go?” Robin asked, a knowing look on her face that had Steve aware they’d have a sleepover, because he had a long story to tell her.

Steve woke up in the middle of the night with his phone loudly ringing and a burn in his chest.

“What the fuck?” Robin grumbled from beside him in the bed as he got up and ran to the corridor to answer the phone.

No good could come from a call that late into the night.

“Hello?” he answered, breath short, chest tight already.

“Steve… It’s Chrissy,” Max’s voice was watery on the other side of the line, and it took Steve a while to make the connection.

Max lived in the trailer park.

The same trailer park as Munson. She lived right across Munson’s trailer, actually.

Munson, who was supposed to sell drugs to Chrissy that night. Who took her, in his van, to his trailer, to sell her some kind of drug.

Steve’s heart was beating way too fast and it was burning and he didn’t know if he had answered anything to Max before he glanced down to his shirtless torso and stared at the right side of his chest.

A dead flower.

Not dying, not rotting.

A dead flower.

His soulmate had died.

Chrissy finally marked his skin with her own flower, a rose nonetheless, and it was dead.

Chrissy was dead.

A ringing in his ears.

His vision was blurry.

Was someone talking to him?

His chest felt tight.

It burned, his skin, but underneath it too. It felt constricted.

Was someone talking to him?

Sharp pain on the skin of his tights. Sharp like nails. Maybe his own.

Was someone talking to him?

A single drop of sweat running down his back.

A single drop of a tear running down his cheek.

“Steve!” Robin was talking to him. “Steve, you gotta breathe, please!”

Her hand was on his cheek, not the wet one.

His blurry vision went up her torso. He could see his flower across her left ribcage, under the top she was wearing as pajamas. His blurry vision went up her face. Blue eyes met his.

Blue eyes.

His vision went clear.

“Robin!” he gripped her wrist. It must’ve hurt her. “Robin, Chrissy, she-”

“Steve, listen to me!” Robin was crouching, but she dropped to her knees on the floor and didn’t care about Steve’s grip on her wrist. She kept holding his face, and her other hand went to his chest. His burning chest. “Steve, listen. You’re having a panic attack, you need to breathe.”

“But Chrissy-”

“Steve, in and out, come on,” she instructed him through it, breathed slowly in and exhaled slowly out with him.

Steve wanted to scream at her, Chrissy’s dead! But he had no voice, and no air in his lungs to do so.

He breathed slowly in and exhaled slowly out until his vision wasn’t blurry, until he wasn’t ripping his skin open with his fingernails, until he wasn’t gripping Robin’s wrist so tight. Her hands were still on his face and his chest. She was caressing him with her thumbs.

“There you are,” she whispered, a smile trying to fight its way to her lips. “Steve, you saw the dead soulmark and had a panic attack. I talked as fast as I could to Max before rushing to calm you down, she explained it. Chrissy’s in the hospital.”

The words made no sense.

“No, but, but- You said it yourself, dead soulmark Robin, how-”

“Steve.” He stopped talking at her stern tone. It was grounding. “Let’s get to the hospital.”

“You can’t drive,” he reminded her and she had that soft smile for him in response.

Soft, soft, soft. Always soft for him.

“Nancy’s here.” She nodded behind her.

Only then Steve saw his ex-girlfriend standing in the middle of the corridor, a worried look on her face, Jonathan next to her obviously not aware of anything that was happening. But they were there anyway. Steve still had them.

Chrissy had no one, she had no one but a drug dealer-

“Hey, no spiraling again.” Robin turned his face back to her, she knew him so well. “Let’s get to the hospital.”

Steve felt numb. He felt numb as Jonathan helped Robin get him to his feet, he felt numb as Robin dragged him to his bedroom to get dressed, numb through the car ride in Nancy’s station wagon, numb as they walked through Hawkins General’s doors.

Numb as Robin talked to Chrissy’s parents, numb as Nancy and Jonathan talked to Munson, numb even as Max came to give him one of her rare hugs.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” she said, muffled sobs against his shirt.

“It wasn’t you, Mad Max,” he answered numbly. “I promise it wasn’t you.”

His chest still burned.

Steve had to sit numbly in the chair next to Munson, and when Robin noticed he was about to jump him and resort to Tommy’s old ways of resolving things, she sat between them.

“It wasn’t his fault,” she whispered. “Chrissy didn’t take anything.”

Steve numbly growled in response.

He had to numbly wait there, Robin by his side and Munson by hers, even after Nancy and Jonathan took Max home, even after Chrissy’s dad went to work, even after Chrissy’s mom went back to the house to get a shower or something. Her family, and they didn’t care enough to stay. Chrissy didn’t have them.

Steve sat there, Robin by his side and Munson by hers, as they waited until Chrissy could get visitors.

It felt like days.

His chest still burned.

He didn’t hear when the nurse agreed to let them in to see her, only felt as Robin dragged him by a hand and Munson by the other, up the elevators, down too many corridors, a white door on a white wall, white floors and white ceilings, and he could only remember Chrissy’s red shoes and Chrissy’s green shoes and Chrissy’s blue eyes.

They were closed as they entered her room. No blue eyes in sight.

His feet took him closer without him noticing.

He sat on a chair next to her bed. She looked so pale. Steve’s chest was burning.

Why did it take him so long?

He finally had Chrissy’s soulmark, it was a rose, but at what cost?

It was a dead rose.

“She was convulsing,” Munson started talking, from the other side of the bed, and Steve tore his eyes away from Chrissy to look at him as he explained. “I took her to the trailer, she wanted ketamine, I had it in my room and when I went back to the living room she was already on the floor, I-”

“Eddie, breathe.” Robin was saying that a lot that night.

“I ran out the door, I didn’t know what to do. Red saw me, thankfully, and she was the one to call the ambulance as I just stood there in shock. Didn’t to anything. Fucking coward.” Munson’s last sentence was whispered, but the room was so quiet Steve heard it anyway. “It took the ambulance too long, and neither me or Red knew what to do to help her, just turned her sideways, but it took too long. By the time they got there she was crossing the line.

“She was dead for two whole minutes. They got her to the ambulance, used the defibrillator, her heart started again but they don’t know if she’ll have permanent damage from how long her brain was out of oxygen, or whatever.”

Munson ran his hands through his face, messing up his bangs, fingers visibly shaking, his knee nervously going up-down, up-down, up-down, up-down, up-

“Why did she wanted ketamine?” Steve heard himself asking.

Munson’s big eyes met Steve’s. They were brown. “I don’t know, man. She said in the woods she was losing her mind. Red said she saw Chrissy leaving the counselor’s office looking bad, and that she had some sort of break down in the bathroom? I don’t know, man.”

The room went silent again. Steve’s eyes searched for Chrissy’s blue ones, but they were still closed. His chest was burning.

“I have a dead rose on the right side of my chest now,” he said. He could feel Robin’s and Eddie’s eyes on him. “I know Chrissy since we were middle schoolers, and she was one of my best friends. Back when I was an asshole, before Nancy, she was the only one I could be my true self around. I went soft for her. I liked being soft for her. I never noticed.

I always wondered why she never had a mark. Carol and Tommy do. Nancy. Even Jonathan Byers. Robin has a whole bunch. Dustin, Max. Fucking- Billy Hargrove.” He swallowed around the lump in his throat. His chest was burning. “Chrissy never got one. She’s got a dead rose now.” He turned to face Robin. Not the blue eyes he wanted to see, but comforting blue nonetheless. “The only flower I know. Roses are for romantic soulmates, the permanent ones, as cliché as they could be. ”

“I know,” Robin whispered.

“I only got her when she died?” Steve asked, Robin’s blue eyes soft on him. Always soft.

“She’s not dead, Steve. She’ll wake up.”

Steve sighed and looked back at Chrissy in the bed. She almost looked like she was just sleeping. But the lack of pink in her cheeks denounced her. He could only think about red shoes, brave brave Dorothy and her two coward Lions.

At least she had them, now.

Eddie’s leg was still bouncing up-down, up-down, up-down. Robin’s right hand was holding Steve’s left one, and her left one was resting right beside Chrissy’s leg.

She had them, now.

Steve had her, now. It took him way too long, he was almost way too late, but he had her, now. He wouldn’t leave again.

Chrissy’s fingers twitched.

The beeping of the machine went a little faster.

She groaned, a beautiful sound, and her eyes opened slowly as the other three in the room held their breaths.

Blue eyes met Steve’s.

His chest stopped burning.

He could breathe again.

Two years later

Blue eyes met Steve’s.

Soft, always so soft.

“Good morning,” he whispered, kissing her forehead.

She sighed, a beautiful sound.

“Morning, Steve.” His name like a prayer from her mouth.

Her legs intertwined with his, memories of all the other beautiful sounds she made last night and the night before, running through his mind. No barriers between their bodies, between their skins.

“I gotta call Eddie tonight,” she said, voice still slurred from sleep.

“Mm.” Steve looked past her naked shoulder, could see the trees outside the window of the RV, a soft breeze ruffling the leaves. They had to leave camp that night, Chrissy wanted to head south. “Yeah, it’s been a whole day, he must be worried sick.”

She laughed, a beautiful sound, and Steve turned his face back down to look at her again.

Blue eyes met his.

Her charmingly crooked teeth greeting him in a blinding smile. He loved her.

Her skin was warm against him, her hand on top of his chest. A beautiful, fire-red rose under her palm, a delicate golden band sparkling from her ring finger. He smiled at the sight. Traced the fire-red rose on her left ribs that he knew was his.

He had her, now. She had him.

He wouldn’t leave again.

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