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performing-personhood · 2 months

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I learned a kind of funny thing and I need to tell you bc it's important, cmere. Lean in so the others can't hear okay?

Ok so like

I know that the reason we are the way we are is because at some point we took up some space - as people do - and someone turned to us and went "whoa, excuse you! What do you think you're doing" or something, right? And they were, like, surprised and offended that we took up space and told us to stay real small and subservient? And we were pretty young, you and me, and we didn't really grok Peopling yet and so we assumed that everyone else was going to have that expectation too?

Okay I just learned: that isn't true at all, that person was just an asshole.

Babe. BABE. This is big.

Ok do you realize ??? that most people when they're around someone - anyone, this is important, it's an unconscious reflex and happens rather automatically - and that person is like "I have an opinion and desires and also some needs and I am going to express them openly" Did you realize, because I didn't, that most people completely intuitively go "oh! There's another person here! Lemme just scootch over so they fit better :)" PEOPLE MAKE ROOM FOR YOU.

People don't ignore us, when we're silently having wants and needs and waiting our turn to be noticed, they just have similar very loud brains and have no idea because beung corporeal is Distracting™️. Not only do people just need a reminder that you're there, they're totally happy to accomodate. In a distinctly "ope! My bad, lemme just- here-" sort of way.

My spouse has a loud brain and drowns it out with Mario Kart. I've spent most of my life quietly entertaining myself in all of these instances, because at some point someone told me I was supposed to "go play" and nobody wanted to play with me so I entertained myself right? Okay. Well I recently had a sea change and decided I was gonna pop my headphones in and watch TV on my tablet when he was doing his Mario Karting. Because the boy will easily go for four hours and I just spontaneously realized that it would actually be ridiculous if he got butthurt at me for putting some quiet tv on for myself instead of watching a grown man play the same video game for hours.

You know what happened? Not only did nobody's feelings get hurt, but I have never made it more than twenty minutes into a show before he ends a match and switches the console off. And I have never asked him to do so. When I'm over there doing my own thing with my own TV show like a person instead of just scrolling on my phone trying real hard not to exist, somewhere in his unconscious he goes "there's a whole other human being on the other end of the sofa from me. I want to turn this off and engage with that person!"

Okay do you understand what I am telling you??

When you behave like a human person and treat yourself like a human person, other people also instinctively treat you like a human person and they're happy to be reminded that they get to engage with you. The person in our past that reacted differently and got mad at us for being a person, plainly and simply: they were just being an asshole to us.

The people we love want to engage with us. Almost all of them!!! And not only that?? Most other human beings feel the same way.

Huge. Big huge.

Don't take my word for it baby cakes okay, take a sec and muster up the courage (it'll be scary the first time, but the thinking about it is always scarier than doing it I swear) and then get back out there and practice being your very own human person occupying human people space, around someone who loves you, and just... watch what happens. The first time someone warmly, graciously, voluntarily accommodates you is the greatest feeling a corporeal being can experience, and you deserve it too.

#recovering people pleaser #recovering from abuse #recovering from trauma #recovering codependent #recovering from cptsd #cptsd recovery #actually cptsd #just neurodivergent things #actually neurodivergent #mental illness #things I learned in therapy #therapy works

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takeme-totheworld · 4 months

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If you were raised by adults whose only tool for teaching you how to behave was to wait until you did something wrong and then express their surprise and disappointment that you didn’t already know better, that was completely dysfunctional of them and you were not the Bad Kid you always felt like inside. I promise.

#things I learned in therapy #personal

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wytchwyse · 7 months

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How comfortable are you being wrong?

How comfortable, are you being corrected?

And if it's necessary, how comfortable are you Apologizing for saying something offensive out of ignorance?

Growing up I used to have a real hard time with being wrong , and being corrected. I still have have to sort of emotionally prepare myself for those moments when I'm wrong and I'm being corrected. Took years of growing up, and therapy to teach me that it's okay to be wrong . It can be a bit uncomfortable, but discomfort can't hurt you.

To look specifically at the occult and witchcraft communities where accurate historical knowledge is like your resume. It can be especially uncomfortable to be wrong, we have come to equate ignorance as a moral failing. Ignorance was never meant to be an insult, and it's certainly is not a moral failing. We are all ignorant of things.

Ignorance is an opportunity to grow as a person. It allows for us to expand our mind and become more worldly. No one can ever know everything, and there is no such thing as perfection. Give space for people to grow, give space for yourself to grow, ignorance is human. When you are corrected, remember that is not a moment of shame and is not an attack. But when you were the one correcting make sure that you are not attacking. We need to be remembering to hold space for people to grow. And if the situation calls for it and you said something hurtful out of ignorance an apology is always appropriate , and then you can move on knowing better.

Now willful ignorance is a different beast altogether, this far more than ignorance brings harm. To choose to remain ignorant is a sign of a much deeper problem. Knowledge has weight, and yes, sometimes It can be heavy. However, knowledge makes for a more vibrant and fuller life.

Learn as you live, have fun with gaining new information. But do not hold yourself to impossible standards . Follow your passions, learn about the things that mean a lot to you , you will feel more fulfilled and you will feel an ever growing Sense of excitement to learn.

#ignorance #learning #gentleness #knowledge #occult #witchcraft #life #things i learned in therapy

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lopeirce · 11 months

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I had to give myself a pep talk this morning so I figured I’d share this in case anyone else needs a pep talk.

Things I’ve learned in therapy:

Reversing the negative self-talk is a huge element of building up your self-esteem.

I read this book called “Unfuck Yourself” by Gary John Bishop and he said that the person that you talk to the most is yourself. It’s true. That inner dialogue dictates our self-perception and we are our own worst enemy. Change that negative self-talk because that negative self-talk is what is allowing you to remain at the bar that you’ve set for yourself. If you don’t change it, you’re never going to grow and heal. You are not your thoughts. The negative thoughts are lying to you. Don’t buy into them.

Accept compliments even when you don’t agree.

I had a really hard time accepting compliments from people a few years ago. One of the things that my therapist told me to do was when someone compliments me, say “thank you” and then move on and don’t give it a second thought. Even if you think it’s the most ridiculous thing in your mind. Even if it makes you uncomfortable. (Obviously, this pertains to healthy compliments and not a creepy person.) Why? If someone tells you they like your shirt and you say something like “oh, this old thing” you’re demeaning yourself. It goes back to the negative self-talk. Just say thank you and move on because what you’re doing here is you’re not allowing yourself to engage in the negative self-talk. As silly and small as it is, this helps builds confidence.

You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.

If you’re a people pleaser like me, this hits home for you. I spent most of my life doing things because I felt like I would be a horrible friend/person/daughter/sister/lover/etc if I didn’t and in the end, I lost pieces of myself. I sacrificed my own happiness for other people who to this day don’t even acknowledge that. Don’t do this. Know your limits. Set boundaries. You don’t have to sacrifice your own health and happiness for other people. It’s not your job to make other people feel satisfied. That’s their job. If you give 100% of yourself to everyone else, you’re not leaving anything left for yourself.

Your feelings are valid.

It took me until I was 30 to reconcile this. I grew up in a household that made me feel like I was a crazy person and that everything I felt was ridiculous. It’s not. A friend of mine told me something recently that even further has stuck with me. It’s okay if you feel something for only a short time. If someone said something that upset you and then they further explained which then made you understand it better, that doesn’t mean that you weren’t upset. Acknowledge it and know that whatever you feel is okay and it’s normal. You’re not a robot. You’re a person with feelings and they are valid.

Depression/negative feelings are easy to give in to. Resisting them is the hard part.

I struggle with this a lot. I’ll confess that I gave into my depression and eating disorder yesterday. It was easy. Today, I am resisting it and it’s hard. And that’s okay. If you allow yourself to sit in your negative head space, all you’re going to see are negative things. Give yourself time to address your feelings but don’t stay there. It gets harder to get up the longer you stay down. Focus on the simplest of things even if it’s just “ this cup of coffee is so good.” Find the little smiles throughout the day.

If you want to be more positive, successful, etc, surround yourself with people who are those things.

Just like how negativity is easily spread, so is positivity. Use that positive, successful space. It’s amazing how you can train your mind that way.

Life will keep throwing the same lesson at you until you learn it.

Sometimes healing hurts more than the thing that hurt you.

Healing is hard. Therapy is hard. Reopening old wounds hurts because it’s festered for so long. But when the day comes when you can talk about something or experience something without negative feelings, it makes it so worth it.

Most of the issues we carry into adulthood stem from childhood trauma.

I’ve always struggled with feeling like I matter. My therapist asked me “who made little you feel like you don’t matter? Who do you hear besides yourself telling you that you don’t matter?” Start there. Unpack that.

Know what triggers you and try not to coddle them.

When someone has a phobia of something, they get put through exposure therapy. It’s the same concept with something triggering. Little by little, expose yourself to things that make you feel uncomfortable within your limits. It doesn’t have to be a lot. If you never expose yourself, you’re never going to heal. I used to think that by shutting myself off from the world, no one would hurt me. a.) I was wrong. b.) I’m a human being who needs connections with other human beings. In order to heal, you have to learn to be okay with being uncomfortable.

Tell people how you feel.

This isn’t something I necessarily learned in therapy but it’s something that I live by. I’d rather tell someone how I feel about them and have my heart shattered than look back and wonder “what if?” If you’re bold enough to express your feelings to someone, you can get through the day.

Negative feelings are temporary.

I have to remind myself of this daily. The pain you’re in, the anger you’re feeling, it will all go away eventually. Someone once told me that it’s literally impossible for the universe to remain off balance. Balance has to be restored eventually.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

#mental health #therapy #life lessons #things i learned in therapy #healing #depression #anxiety #trauma

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lilislevelingup · 1 year

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Something I learned in therapy

If someone you appreciate never calls you by your name and/or avoids calling you by your name, get out of there. They don't appreciate you back, not as much as you do, sorry.

#period #things i learned in therapy #things i think about #I know I'm young but take it seriously

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beautifulbookishdisaster · 4 months

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"Sometimes weird is your gut talking to you. The point is not him being weird or not being weird. The point is that you feel uncomfortable, and you're trying to talk yourself out of it because you think you're supposed to be nice."

Deb Caletti, A Heart in a Body in the World

#book quotes #bookish quotes #book quotations #ptsd #trauma #post traumatic stress disorder #a heart in a body in the world #deb caletti #gut feelings #gut feelings are guardian angels #things I learned in therapy #page 54 #survivor #young adult book quotes #young adult books #young adult literature #printz honor book

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pencildragon11 · 1 year

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life hack:

three years ago i got very sick with covid, and then long covid, and i fell out of touch with a lot of people

then when i had a smidge more energy, i didn’t get back in touch because i felt so ashamed of not having responded sooner and also I couldn’t figure out what to say.

this year, i’ve been reaching out again, getting back in touch with old friends one by one

and here’s what i’ve learned:

you don’t have to write The Perfect Missive

all you have to do is send a short, simple message

“hi. been thinking of you / it’s been a long time. hope you’re well. would love to get back in touch if you’d like.”

#it works really well #things i learned in therapy #life advice #pencil's scribbles

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inkskinned · 1 year

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something bad happened to you, and you died, and you came back wrong.

not wrong all the way. the little ways. you forget important dates, stopped going out with friends. it's harder to make you smile. you're apathetic towards things you used to love, afraid of places you used to go to cheer up. quieter. flinching. different.

you came back for love. you're still here for love. what pulled you back was a brightness so loud that even death couldn't outshout it. death heard the call and smiled at you and said okay. go home. somebody is waiting for you.

but you came back different. like lot's wife; you've turned into salt. you used to chirp through life in hops and skips; but now you lose skin just standing up. you have to move slower, skimming across this world without-touching-it. most things feel dull - until they're suddenly all-too-much. life, and being alive just rushes up and over you and you get hopelessly crushed.

you try to explain it to them: it is ugly, but this is what you are, now. the huge golden hoop of your halo now a little bronze ring. you are still watering your plants and wearing the same clothes. after all, you worked hard to come home. this life; so odd and off-color, now that you are wrong.

but they waited for you - it's just that they wanted the "you" that happened before this. the "you" that could sing in the show and hug people tight and look at a blade without breaking down to cry. the you with a smile in pictures. god, holyshit, it's like looking at a completely different person, isn't it. that other-you; the one they actually wanted.

you are the consolation prize. you are the body that forgot the ghost. you are the memory of the bad thing, and the death after; like you are wearing that memory as a banner. you are a fragment, an assembly. simulacrum. you don't make eye contact in mirrors, afraid the light will glance off and your true nature will flash back at you.

you hear them talk about it in their hushed, desperate whispers. sometimes they even admit it to your face; harsh and violent, acid thrown at christmas dinner. god, can you just fucking be normal again. you do not remember what normal is. you had to climb so far to get back here; you are far too exhausted. you want to open the glass door of your heart and show all the gears. can you help resolve whatever got messed up?

you try so, so hard. you came back for them. because you believed they would love you, even when you were so horribly broken. because you believed they would be patient. because you believed unconditional meant "without exception." you cannot do things the same way. you just get tired too quickly these days.

you want to put them on a couch and pour them the tea with hands that shake more than they remember. you want to line them up and draw them a map of where you have had to wander. you want to show every bruise in a backsplash; the little helpless ant of your soul carrying all that weight, over and over. you want to say: yes! it is different! but i did it for love!

you want to say: "i'm not the same, but i'm yours and i'm here. can that be enough?"

#this is very obviously about my battle with #ptsd #but i think it's also like a pretty apt metaphor for a lot of things like setting boundaries or going to therapy or choosing recovery #i was thinking about the 'comes back wrong' trope and i was like. oh no i have feelings about this bc i have mental illness #and once i stopped masking - i was WRONG. i was different #here's the good news: i am now INNUNDATED with love. fucking swimming in it. excelling at it. the people who stayed #learned my new self. my new different body and how i am different but i am trying. they have held me so tightly #and my life no longer feels quiet. it is not based in my suffering. it feels like i have been growing a tree in my chest #and now it is flowering.#it is so lovely to be surrounded by people who have said - oh! you cut off so many branches i was worried you weren't the same. but now...#... this is just a new you. and i love you. and i love that you're different and happy.#(but yeah also im nb so i was absolutely influenced by Trans things)

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flowercrowngods · 1 year

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yearning hours (b-side) — in which being in love can feel like the greatest tragedy of all until you learn that you’re not alone (or: bravery, despite everything)

🤍 also on ao3

Steve comes to the quarry when he needs to think. He comes to the quarry when he needs to not think. When he needs to feel this rush of adrenaline that feels so much like monsters are real and the world has turned upside down. Except he isn’t going to die here, sitting on the cold ground, legs dangling over the abyss.

He’s not going to die, but life stops for a moment all the same.

And Steve relearns how to breathe. How to think. How to not think. While the darkness below him swallows it all. The pale light of the moon is not enough to reach the ground hundreds of feet below, or to chase away the complete and total darkness that meets his eyes when he looks down there.

It’s all-encompassing, this darkness, the vastness of it; Steve sometimes feels like he becomes part of it. Just for an hour or two. Just for the night.

The cold air that hits his face makes him shiver for a second, and reminds him that he used to think the darkness at the bottom of the quarry had a life of its own. Hell, maybe it does. With what they’ve seen, what they’ve fought, who’s to say there’s nothing down there? Maybe that’s what draws him here so often.

Does the living darkness know his secrets like the darkness in his room does? Does it listen to him, does it care? They’re stupid questions, Steve knows. But they carry a hopefulness he wants to preserve. Something that survived the Upside Down, that survives the nightmares and the flashbacks and the post-traumatic stress, as Hopper and Owens call it.

There’s something primal about sitting on the edge of such vastness, so much so that it makes his heart beat faster, his breath come shallower, like he is just a second away from falling. Like he has to savour this; this second, this moment, this life, because beyond it, around it, below it, there is only darkness.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and lets it all out until his lungs ache. The silence is absolute. He feels like the only person on the planet — but not in the bad, painful way that’s been hiding in the back of his mind for as long as he can remember.

If he only breathes like this for a while longer, lets the feeling settle, lets the thoughts come and bring emotions with them, he knows that soon the tears will fall.

Tears, because he shouldn’t have to sit at the edge of the quarry in the dark of night just to be able to feel. Tears, because he forgot how to be a boy, how to be a person, about three years ago. Almost to the day. Tears, because they all did; but he’s Steve. He can’t let them see. Wouldn’t know how even if he wanted to.

And tears, tonight, because just hours earlier, Eddie fell asleep while Steve made dinner. His arms were curled around the pillow Steve had leaned against all afternoon, and Steve just stood there in the doorway to Eddie’s room, the smell of fresh pasta mixing with that of leather, paperback books, tobacco and laundry detergent that is so purely and wonderfully Eddie that Steve just wants to catch it in a mason jar and open it whenever he needs a dose.

Eddie had fallen asleep, and all Steve could do was look at him. Smile on his lips, ache in his heart that only grew in ferocity until all he could do was leave. Because friends don’t watch their friends sleep. Not like this. Not with their hands twitching by their sides, curled into fists to stop them from reaching out and trailing over soft, warm skin. Friends don’t… They don’t.

So Steve left, pasta untouched. Heart unravelled. Words unspoken.

He left and sped off until he reached the quarry, a safe place to piece himself back together again — but he doesn’t have the heart to leave out Eddie. So every time he comes here and puts the pieces of himself back together, he puts Eddie in the centre. He always does. It’s what keeps getting him in this mess.

But it’s still the closest he’ll get to bravery after the Upside Down; admitting, if only to himself, that he likes a boy. Allowing himself to cry about it. To breathe in and breathe out and have the truth unchanged, unchallenged, undoubted.

He’s still breathing when the all-encompassing silence is interrupted, joined by the unmistakeable sound of tires on gravel. Seconds later, headlights illuminate the night, his arms, the edge of the quarry, but still not reaching beyond that. The car comes to a stop but Steve still doesn’t move, doesn’t turn around, just hopes that whoever it is will just leave him alone.

Lights go out, the engine is killed, followed by the sound of a car door opening and being closed far too gently.

Steve isn’t too surprised when steps approach him slowly, nor when they come to a stop beside him, chasing away some of the cold that’s been resting over him like a blanket.

Instinctively, he knows it’s Eddie. He just doesn’t know why.

“How’d you know I’m here?” he asks into the void, still unmoving.

“Just knew,” comes the reply, and it sounds so soft, so gentle, so understanding that Steve fears he might fall apart and have to rebuild himself once more. Twice in one night. Wouldn’t be the first time. Won’t be the last. “Why’d you leave?”

Because otherwise I’d have crossed the distance and fallen to my knees, brushed a kiss to your forehead and told you dinner was ready. Because otherwise I’d have slid down the doorframe and watched over you, watched you, and the firework of a person that you are even in your sleep. I’d have fallen in love and I’d have fallen, fallen, fallen. So I needed to go where falling is not an option.

Instead of saying any of that, Steve only shrugs. “Just did.”

It’s lame and unfair, he knows, but talking to the darkness is so much easier when there’s not an audience, and Eddie just… he can’t know. Any of that.

“Can I join you?” Eddie asks then, and Steve can hear it in his voice that he would leave if Steve said no.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t; just nods and scoots to the side a bit even though there’s enough room for Eddie to sit just anywhere.

But he doesn’t sit just anywhere, no. He sits down rather clumsily — for which Steve can’t blame him, it is a little scary in the dark, and one wrong move could be your very last — and ends up with his arm and shoulder pressed to Steve‘s, their legs so close he can feel Eddie‘s warmth through the denim.

It’s too much. It’s not enough. It’s dangerous, so close to falling, and Steve scoots to the side, breaking contact. Breathing carefully.

Eddie‘s eyes are on him, he can feel it. He doesn’t react. It hurts, his entire body aches with how close he wants to be. But it’s too much, even for himself to bear. Putting all that on Eddie would be enough to take them both down to the bottom of the quarry, and lower still.

So he swallows. All the words he cannot say, all the thoughts that lump together and clog his throat.

“Are you okay, Stevie?” Eddie asks, and Steve just shrugs again.

“Sure.”

“Right,” Eddie whispers, then sighs. It’s not a heavy sigh or a judgmental one, but it makes Steve flinch all the same.

Too much. Too fucking much even unknown.

Silence falls over them, the quarry working its magic — or its curse — even on Eddie Munson. Steve wonders if it suffocates or liberates him, but he doesn’t dare to ask. It would take too much explaining for the question to make sense, too much revealing himself, too much of… Just too much.

He wants to ask. To say something. To scoot back over again, closer to Eddie, and lay his head on his shoulder, bask in his warmth and withstand the magic, the curse, the darkness.

Withstand it, because that’s what Eddie does. He is brave, despite everything.

And Steve is just the boy who sits with darkness at night because he doesn’t know how to be brave anymore, not when there’s no question of life or death. He forgot all about everyday-bravery.

But Eddie didn’t. He’s still there, still smiling and laughing and teasing his way through life and into Steve’s heart and soul.

And Steve doesn’t know what to do with it. Doesn’t know what he can do with it. Doesn’t know how to ask.

It’s no surprise, then, that it’s Eddie who does.

“What are we doing, Steve?” He sounds a bit resigned about it, and it makes Steve hide away in himself even more, focusing on the darkness beneath him rather than the light beside him — they both leave him blinded at equal measure, but one of them doesn’t ask him questions to which he doesn’t know the answer.

“What do you mean?” he asks after a while, his voice a little off. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling. Apprehension, maybe. Caught. Uncovered. Exposed.

Beside him, Eddie sighs again, just a little bit, but Steve has always hated that he keeps making people sigh. Makes him feel so fucking small, so incredibly useless.

He raises one leg from the abyss to rest his chin on his knee, because suddenly he feels so heavy that he needs the physical reminder that he’s not about to fall. One foot on the ground. Steady, secure, a great illusion for now.

“Sorry,” he whispers at last, because Eddie hasn’t said anything, has only sighed and created a silence that’s so loud it can probably be heard at the bottom of the quarry, and Steve feels like the silence is his fault this time.

“What for?”

“Dunno,” he confesses, lies, concedes as his house of cards begins to crumble for some reason. The heaviness wanders from his throat down to his heart and settles there, making a home for itself, casting out all the lightness that usually comes when he’s around Eddie.

But it seems he’s reached his breaking point. It seems he can only pretend to be okay for so long, pretend not to yearn and ache and long for intimacy and tenderness. It seems he can only put himself together again, rebuilding himself around Eddie at his centre, until it would break apart for good. Burst out of his heart, dismantle him piece by broken piece until all that’s left is a broken boy, yearning.

And so he can’t stop the tears even if he wanted to. They’re kind in their silence, streaming down his face without demand for sobs or sniffles. Just breaking free, a simple displacement reaction. Following the physics of emotions.

“Hey,” Eddie whispers, reaching out to wrap an arm around Steve’s shoulders, pulling him into his side. There’s that warmth, that touch, that gentleness he’s been craving — and there’s that sob he’s been suppressing. “Hey, Stevie, it’s okay. You’re okay. You can talk to me, you know that, right?”

He shakes his head into the warmth of Eddie’s neck, wiping dejectedly at his tears.

“No?”

“No,” he whines, sighs, groans, annoyed with himself.

“Don’t want to? Or can’t?”

Both. Neither. All at once.

He shrugs again, still leaning against Eddie.

Eddie, who turns his head slightly and brushes his lips over Steve’s hair in what can only be described as a kiss. Except, it can’t. It couldn’t. It isn’t.

Steve begins to shiver against him — maybe he’s cold, maybe he’s overwhelmed, maybe he’s both and neither and everything all at once.

“I’ve got you, Stevie.”

And then Eddie kisses his head again, and he stills.

“You can’t kiss me, Eddie,” he says, voice still thick, but steadier this time. No more sobbing, no more whining. Just a broken boy, yearning. Always, always that.

Eddie freezes where he’s holding Steve, only his arm still moves in soothing, rubbing motions — warming him, holding him, saving him. Always, always that.

“Sorry,” Eddie says this time. Except it’s wrong. It’s so wrong, and Steve leans back to look at him. It’s impossible to make out his expression in the darkness, but he tries nonetheless.

“Don’t be sorry,” he whispers. “Just…” He gestures vaguely, not quite sure what the just entails. Just mean it. Just do it right. Just don’t do it out of pity. Just leave me alone until I’m over you even though we both know I never really will be.

“Just?”

Steve shrugs. Whispers, “I don’t know.”

“Don’t hide, Stevie.” Be brave, Stevie. Be brave like me.

God, how he wishes. How he longs. How he aches.

“You don’t have to hide, not from me.”

Steve huffs and says, before he can stop himself, “Especially from you.”

Eddie pauses and Steve freaks out a little bit, even before Eddie asks, “Why?” He sounds wounded. Small. He shouldn’t sound like that. Never.

“Because you’re gonna see otherwise.”

“See what?”

That I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Besotted. Enamoured. All the big words you like to make fun of. All of them and more.

“Me.”

There’s a beat where nothing happens. Maybe time stops, maybe reality resets itself, settling in more comfortably in anticipation of vulnerability’s fallout.

And then Eddie takes his hands, reaching for them in the darkness and finding them with ease. Like he’s done it many times before. Because he has. Just never like this.

“Steve,” he begins, and Steve wants to run again. To hide, to confess to another void, and make Eddie forget this conversation ever happened. “I think I already do.”

What? No. No, you can’t.

When Steve doesn’t respond, Eddie continues, seemingly gathering himself and his thoughts as he goes. Always so much stronger, so much braver than Steve.

“I already do see you. The way you smile at me, light up the whole room with it. The way you hug me, always a little too long, but never long enough if you ask me. I see you blushing, I see you going out of your way for me, and… And I think, if you knew how to look, you’d see the same in me. Because, uh. Because I like seeing you. And I like… I like you. Not in a friends kinda way. In a way where I wanna sit beside you all night and talk about deep shit, but I wanna run my fingers through your hair when we do. I wanna play with your fingers when we do. I wanna kiss you when we do, because there’s deep, heavy, traumatic shit everywhere, but there’s also you. And I don’t want one without the other. I want you. In that exact way that I see you looking at me, wanting me, too.”

Eddie swallows, a little breathless beside him like Steve’s not choking on emotion himself.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Eddie whispers then, pressing and desperate and knowing. “Tell me you don’t like me in a way you think you shouldn’t. Tell me I don’t see you.”

He shakes his head, slowly, frantically. “I can’t.”

“Because it’s true?”

Steve’s nodding now, just as frantic, leaving him disoriented and falling, only anchored to Eddie who’s still holding his hands.

“Yeah,” Steve gasps, rasps, whispers. “It… I’m. I don’t.” It’s he who swallows heavily now, needing a second or an eternity to process Eddie’s words. “You really mean that?”

Eddie nods. He can feel it, somehow.

“I don’t know what has you so scared,” Eddie begins. “Except the obvious, of course, but I feel like that’s only a small chunk of it. But you gotta believe me when I say that I mean it. I like you. So much it makes me stupid sometimes.”

Steve huffs, but it’s a smile this time. A real one. Tinged with sadness and heaviness and disbelief still, but a real one nonetheless.

“I wanna tell you. All of that. Everything, in my own words. And I will, but… Eddie, I’m—“ Steve starts with a quivering voice but shuts himself up before he can ruin this.

I’m broken. I’m not sure if I can let you. I’m just Steve. I’m bullshit. I’m…

“I’m tired.”

It has a double meaning, here at the quarry — but he doesn’t mean it like that. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He won’t.

“Can you just hold me?” It is perhaps the closest to bravery he’s going to get. Tonight, or always. But it’s enough. It can be enough.

Eddie hums and Steve can hear the smile, can feel how some of the heaviness inside him dissipates with it.

“Of course, sweetheart.”

Steve shivers again as he shifts, lying back so it’s only his legs, bent at the knee, that dangle over the abyss now. Eddie joins him, wrapping his arms around Steve’s middle and rearranging them so Steve rests half on top of him. It can’t be comfortable, but Steve doesn’t mention it.

They lie there in silence, and Steve allows himself to let go of the tension in his bones as he feels Eddie’s hands travelling across his back in a tender caress. He doesn’t quite believe it’s real, doesn’t believe he’ll get to keep it beyond this moment, and can’t quite savour it the way he wants to because surely he will lose this, too. Surely Eddie will realise and come to his senses and—

“Do you really mean it?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, leaning up slightly to brush his lips over Steve’s temple. “Yeah, Stevie. I really, really mean it.” And then, after a while, “Will you come back home now?”

Back home. Home to Eddie and Wayne. Home, because Eddie cares and wants and bravely, bravely asks.

“Yeah,” Steve says.

Another kiss to his forehead. “And will you stay?”

It is Steve now who leans up, hovering above Eddie to meet his eyes through the dark. “I will. I do.” And then he slowly, carefully captures Eddie’s lips with his own, sealing the promise and receiving one in return.

Kissing Eddie is a lot like falling, he realises. But there are arms wrapped around him, holding him, never wanting to let him go — so maybe it isn’t falling after all. Maybe it’s flying.

At home in his bed, Eddie holds him some more, running fingers through his hair long after Steve has fallen asleep.

They’ll make it work.

#steddie #steddie fic #stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #dio words #idk how to describe the mood of this so uh feel free to tell me if you find out #in which being in love can feel like the greatest tragedy of all until you learn that you’re not alone #they need so much therapy your honour #i keep wanting to write this one steddie at the quarry scene but it always gets derailed :/

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