One-sided Enemies To Lovers Pre-season 4 Steddie

It's okay if it takes a little longer than you thought.

The only adhd tips that actually work:

1. Never tell anyone what you're planning to do until you do it (you will get a premature dopamine hit and sense of accomplishment from telling them and lose motivation to actually do it)

2. Never sit down (never sit down)

First you procrastinate on the task because it is not a big enough deal to get done urgently. Then you procrastinate on the task because it has become such a big deal that doing it is overwhelming. You would think that this implies a middle point where it is just big enough of a deal to get done easily, however the inherent perversity of the universe's causal geometry prevents this

I don’t know if anyone has ever done this before but, here ya go… The Different Types of Fanfiction! 

I probably left a few out, but these are the most common, compared to their base fiction’s canon plot. Enjoy! XD

The first time Wayne meets Steve Harrington, he is nine years old and it's Career Day.

Every year a bunch of people crowd into the gym to tell the kids what they do for a living. This year, Wayne drew the short straw and was sent to represent the plant he works at.

He wasn't expecting his measly poster board to attract a lot of attention compared to the other booths with their models and hangouts. So, it's a little surprising when a kid with big eyes and wild hair marches straight up to him and asks, "What do you do?"

"Plant work."

The kid tilted his head, "Like a gardener?"

"More like an electrician."

The kid stood up a little straighter. His eyes went a little wider the way that his nephew's eyes do when he was interested in something, "Like lightbulbs and wires?"

"Yeah," Wayne answered, and then was immediately assaulted by a series of questions.

The questions were specific like the kid had read a book on electrical work but hadn't quite wrapped his head around it. It made Wayne think of Eddie, many miles away with Al, and all his many weird special interests. He smiled but then the kid asked, "But what if you can't turn the electricity off first? Will you die? I'm Steve, by the way."

"Hi, Steve," Wayne said and then made it very clear, "You should not be messing with any wires without adult supervision. It's very dangerous and you can get hurt."

Steve just huffed at that and then ran off when he saw Mr. Hagan at his booth. He was giving out toothbrushes.

Wayne doesn't think much of that kid after he leaves the school. He doesn't have much reason to until there's a loud insistent knocking on his front door an hour after he got off shift a couple days later.

"...What are you doing here?"

"Hi, I'm Steve. We met before..." The kid said, fidgeting when Wayne just stared at him bewildered. "I asked Mrs. Byers at Melvards where you live. I see you there sometimes."

Wayne raised an eyebrow and Steve rushed, "I need a grown up with super-vision."

This was how Wayne found himself on Saturday morning in the front hall of the painfully empty Harrington household. Steve was beckoning him along and showing him a burnt outlet. He gave Wayne a very serious look, "I need help fixing it."

"Why don't you wait until your parents get back from...?"

"No!" Steve snapped at him. "I'm in charge! Dad said that I have to take care of the house and, and-"

"I don't think he was referring to something like this, kid."

"Yes, he was!" Steve insisted. "Cause I - 'Cause I told him that the lights were flickering when Mama called and he said to figure it out so. So, I got you. That's deli-gate-tion."

And that was how Wayne found himself standing in the Harrington basement with a flashlight and a kid with a death grip on his pant leg. Wayne was looking at the marks on the breaker box where the kid clearly tried to pry it open with a screwdriver when Steve tugged on his leg, "Can you see inside it with your super vision?"

Jesus, Wayne thought and then dedicated the rest of his day to showing this kid exactly why he should not be messing around with electrical wires and maybe. Just maybe, inspiring a future electrician. 

Blankie

Steve has a blankie. It's his blankie. Worn and threadbare over the years. His grandmother had sown it for him, simple and plain.

But Steve loved it. Could never be without it.

"I threw it out,"

Steve had been gone the weekend. Checking the places over in Indianapolis that they could maybe afford. He'd been gone two days. Two fucking days.

"You what."

His mother doesn't even look up at him. She never has actually, paid him much attention.

"God Steven, don't make me repeat myself. I threw it out. With a bunch of your baby things. It was old and ratty. I should have thrown it out sooner really-

Steve doesn't listen, he's out the door before she's finished her sentence.

"Steven!"

He can see them, the boxes, chucked out by the mailbox. For anyone to just pick up. He tears open the first one, doesn't care that he's throwing baby toys across the yard.

It's at the bottom. Torn in half.

He walks back to the house.

His mother looks at him with disgust. He can tell. It's the same way she always looks at him when he's acting o u t.

Steve's lips twist into a shadow of his former self and he walks past her. He smashes the number he now knows by heart into the receiver.

It rings once before a click "I'm coming. Now. Forever."

And then he hangs up.

"Steven?"

She doesn't sound so sure now, he voice quivers slightly as he tears through the house, grabbing what little he actually has left there.

Then he makes a last turn around the kitchen, his mother hovering as he grabs the bread, Dustin's favourite cereal and the expensive chocolates from his dad that Eddie loves stealing.

"Steven it's just a blanket what are you doing?"

Steve whirls on his mother.

"Once a month, on the third Tuesday, your husband goes to a bar just out of town and fucks the youngest thing he can find. Boy or girl, he doesn't really care. It's not just a blanket it's the only proof I have that I was loved, goodbye Mother,"

And as he slams the front door he doesn't look back.

"Steven."

He doesn't pause.

Eddie's van is turning the corner.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

Steve clenches that blanket to his chest.

"It's worth shit,"

Part 2

A spoon's only objective in life is to make soup go upwards, and it knows this. That's why when you put one under a running tap it blasts the water way high. The spoon thinks there's suddenly TONS of soup to deal with and it freaks out.

Thinking about some angst real early in the morning because I can't sleep!

CW: Implied/Referenced Depression, Implied Suicidal Thoughts (In Reference to Dead Poets Society)

Steve and Eddie breakup. They'd been together for years. And when I say years, I mean YEARS. So long that Steve had proposed to Eddie, so long that there's an engagement ring to leave on the table. So long that when Eddie leaves their relationship, their shared life behind with two suitcases and a pale strip on his ring finger, it means something.

Steve left behind with the words, "I don't love you like I used to." Words abrupt. Right before dinner was served. The house still tainted with the seasonings on Eddie's favorite dish. The dim light left in Eddie's wake. The cold spot in their bed. Half of a closet that once was brimming. A shower shelf that only has residue to tell that Eddie once existed there.

Steve who doesn't know what's happening, not really, when it comes to people being around him. He knows there's something. That there's always been something with him that has ruined everything he's ever wanted. Maybe it's the fact that he was a baby born from an act of cheating, the baby that forced a marriage into existence, the baby that became a point of contention and proof that there is no trust even in vows. Maybe it's the fact that when he says he wants to do things like theater or band or math club, he's told he's a pansy or a pussy or a fairy, that he's making a disappointment of himself, that he's not living up to expectations—expectations forced upon him because again he is a point of contention otherwise. Maybe it's his personality or his lack of personality or his clumsiness in his personality. It's the lack of book smarts, it's the lack of street smarts, it's the lack of—the absence, this crater birthing inside him. He's a child for not knowing, he's a child if he can't get himself together, he's something to be molded, to be made, he's a child for rebelling, he's a child for wanting something more.

Maybe it's the trying. The flowers and the apologies and the replacement camera and the cleaning of the vest and letting movies play (even when he doesn't like them) and turning on music just to consolidate his top-forty interests.

It's the fracture, hair thin and spreading inside him. Something that came with him when he was born. Something he's never known to remedy. He's a failure, he's a let down, he's grime, he's the worst, he's bullshit, he's unworthy, he's too much, he's actually a good guy, he's too opinionated, he's not opinionated enough, he's one way, he's this, he's a loser, he's—

He doesn't know who he is. He just bends himself into shape whenever he needs to be a certain way for somebody. The basketball star for his dad. The smarmy asshole for Tommy. The charming boyfriend for Nancy. The older brother for Dustin. The sarcastic best friend for Robin. The cool good guy for Eddie. But, deep down, he doesn't know who he is.

Eddie leaves him. In dust. In the afternoon. In broad fucking daylight.

And Robin comes over to comfort, to soothe, to love him—supposedly. And they do another dumb thing together, they form a lavender marriage. They coexist. They cohabit. They share the same bed because of nightmares, because they can't fathom being apart from each other. They eat at the same table and laugh at the same jokes and do the same things and talk on the porch. And Steve smokes a cigarette and Robin tells him to brush his teeth. And Robin is a loud drunk and Steve tells her to keep her voice down.

Robin falls in love with a girl. Steve is happy for her. Meets this girl. Meets the girlfriend. The lover. And, suddenly, it's not a lavender marriage anymore. It's two best friends and a girlfriend. It's two best friends and a girlfriend who has her own place. It's one best friend and a couple. It's a best friend in a too big house with an engagement ring on the coffee table and a cigarette between his lips and food burning on the stove and movies he doesn't have opinions on and an empty bed.

It's Steve with an array of hookups. One after the other after the other. He can't be loved, but he can be touched. It's the intimacy in sex, it's finding himself to be useful, it's finding himself to be handsome and worthy and wanted. It's Steve and a random hookup telling him that he's too shallow. It's Steve running out of condoms and always buying more. It's Steve and this crater stretching within him, a gaping maw in the center of his chest, his heart still beating like a near dead horse panting, held together by the thin, fraying sinew of grief.

It's him on the porch, the last cigarette in the pack, his teeth yellowing and his mouth gummy and the constant sheen to his empty eyes and being a few pounds underweight and the quietness of an uninhabited backyard. Him on the porch, Robin forcing her way inside to sit with him.

It's Steve turning to her, cigarette dwindling between his fingers. It's him being honest.

"You know that paperback you lent me?"

It's Robin conversing like this is kind of normal. "Dead Poets Society, right? I've been meaning to snag it back from you."

"I read it recently."

"Yeah?"

It's Steve nodding. And taking a drag and holding the smoke for a little too long. Until it burns. Until he can make it hurt. "Did you know that a girl called me shallow? Just because I wanted to have sex?" It's him not letting Robin answer. "I've run out of condoms, like, three times since Eddie left. I didn't even have sex with him that often. But...but...these girls, they always wanna know if I'm clean. The people at the clinic know me now. First name basis, Robs. And they smile at me when I come in. Like I'm doing them a service."

It's her being silent.

"I read that book you lent me. And...and it was weird."

"What was weird, Steve?"

"I could see myself between the lines. Like I was hanging onto the curls of the letters. Like I was Neil." He flicks the cigarette into the dead grass of his backyard. Watching it sizzle out and die, too. "I'm empty, Robin. I don't think I have anything else left in me to give."

"Don't say that"—

"Everything I've ever done in my life has been because somebody else wanted me to. And everybody I've ever loved, I think I only loved them because I was chasing something. I don't think I want love, Robin, I think I just want to be complete.

"And I don't think I'm there, like, at all."

"I'm here, Steve. I'm right here."

It's Steve seeing Robin. Her freckles and her sad eyes and her hope bundled tight to her chest. "I know," he whispers, "and none of this is your fault. I think it's me. I feel like...I feel like I'm gone or something, I don't know. Empty? Fruitless? Accepting something I'm not supposed to."

That's as far as I can think for this, I think. But I know for sure that Robin would suggest he goes to a therapist. But Steve would refuse the help because he's, like, so far in the dark that he's just out of it. He's letting all of this continue to pile on and hurt him because it's better than complete and absolute nothingness. And also, he wouldn't know what would become of him if he got better—he doesn't know what version of himself would become apparent; because he's never truly met himself.

This is also lowkey hypersexual Steve. Which wasn't completely an accident, but also wasn't completely purposeful.

There’s a tumblr post floating around somewhere that says “We think that if we get better at writing, it will someday stop sounding like we wrote it” or something along those lines.

Does anyone happen to have a link handy? I want to reference it in an advice post.