Steve Imagine - Blog Posts

Panacea [0]

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Reader

Word count: 1,635

Warnings: Mentions of triggering/tough topics - such as abuse, racism, sexual coercion, and overall just toxic relationships. This is a general warning that will accompany every part of this little series. 

Summary: The one where you are given an introduction to your story.

Taglist: @sydneekomspacekru

(shitty) short introduction | part 1 | part 2

Roane County in Indiana, otherwise known as Hawkins, was supposed to be your new beginning. It was your way of starting over - of leaving behind your deadbeat father and your dead mother, of purging yourself of the sins of your family. Indiana was a huge change, especially in climate, when it came to your place of origin in middle-of-nowhere Arizona. Admittedly, it took you a while to get used to the colder temperatures - but you did what you’ve always done; you adapted. This was a skill you had to learn from a young age, especially with how poisonous your relationship was with your father. And, thankfully, your adaptive nature enabled you to quietly slip into the social structure that made up Hawkins's High - your extroverted, friendly nature helped as well, gaining you quick traction among the clichés of popularity. It was with ease that you blended in among those in town that held good names; after all, your mother had lived here for the first seventeen years of her life. Even though she had chosen to leave Hawkins all those years ago, you were welcomed back with open arms - and it was like you had lived your entire life within the small square footage that made up the strange town.  You have to suppose that a town of this magnitude never truly forgets who it marks as its own. 

And, well, it didn’t take long for Hawkins to mark you as one of its own. The ease you had with moving there seemed to infiltrate every aspect of your life. You got good grades - A’s on practically every assignment, quiz, and test, got along well with the teachers and the students, had no difficulties finding a job at the local diner, and you even hit the jackpot with a bewitching  significant other. At least, that last part is what every girl in your friend group told you. Now, Billy Hargrove was - in and of himself - a conundrum, to say the least. This was something you had figured out quickly about him; right after he had decided that your welcome to the town from him was his shirtless body hefting your heavy boxes into your new apartment. Before promptly deciding to spend the rest of the evening in the local diner with you, flirting more than you had ever seen a teenage boy do. In a way, you were still set apart from the others. Because you saw behind his façade; you saw behind the flirtation and sex appeal. There was a brokenness that you had only ever seen in one other place, and that was in the eyes that stared back at you when you looked in a mirror. The life he had at home wasn’t good - and your suspicions were confirmed the first night his younger step-sister had showed up to your apartment with him sprawled out in the backseat of his Camaro, with wounds that only could have been inflicted by a man in a drunken rage. 

His sister, Max, was another person you had quickly formed a bond with. That night, when she brought Billy to you because she had no other place to take him, she found out just how far your generosity could spread. From that moment forward, after you had patched up the wounds on a moaning Billy, your apartment became a safe haven for the two of them - especially for Max. Every time their house gets too loud or too violent, Max finds her own way to you; a frequent occurrence that caused you to give her your spare key. Unfortunately, though, Billy’s conundrum of an existence only grew bigger after the night you patched him up. Even though you were supposed to be his nepenthe - the one thing that takes away all his pain and sorrows, the one thing that helped him heal - he refused to admit that you did anything to help him. In his mind, it was a weakness he couldn’t afford and - frankly - that never happened. Honestly, you see more of Max these days than you do of Billy. And you’re naïve about it. You think that just because you’re helping Max that you’re helping Billy; you believe that he’s embarrassed and doesn’t want you to be pulled into his horrific domestic life. 

You’re naïve because you think you can fix him. You see the broken parts, the fragmented sides of this unhealed child that’s become your boyfriend - and you think that if you give him enough time, enough patience, that he’ll come forward, that he’ll let you help. But he won’t. Because, frankly, Billy Hargrove is past saving. He’s headed down a dark path and you’re only going to be caught in the crossfires. But you don’t know that; not consciously, anyways. He’s never laid a hand on you, so you think that things are okay. You don’t understand that it’s not okay that he doesn’t show up, that he yells at you when he gets mad and doesn’t talk about it after. You think that this is just his way of coping - that it’s different from what you did when you were with your father. And what makes your naivety even worse is that you swore you would never end up in a relationship like your mother. You watched, physical altercation after physical altercation, as your mother became more beaten and more bruised - and you swore, you promised, you vowed, that you wouldn’t become your mother. You broke that. Because you didn’t know that your parents started out the same way that you and Billy did. And as hard as it is to take it in, you are just as doomed as your mother was. You don’t have enough love to spare to put him back together again. But love isn’t what can fix him. Nothing can patch a boy together when he has crevices as empty and deep as Billy. 

And this doesn’t begin to touch the things that he does with you that you know are wrong. He’s a very high-driven, sexual person - and this is something that you found out decently quickly once you officially got together.  It never mattered if you were in the mood for it or not, you were too focused on trying to meet his needs when he finally told you about them that you didn’t realize just how bad coercion is. You think that you have it good because everyone else is jealous of the intimacy you have with him. You don’t realize that his coercion, his guilt-tripping to get you to please him is just assault. And even though he gets aggressive when you’re in bed, when he bruises you because you’re not doing something the way he likes, you don’t see the red flags. Deep down, you know that the way he treats you is wrong - but he’s never laid a hand on you outside of your private time together, so you think it’s okay. You think what you have is love and that it’ll get better once you get him out of his toxic household, but that’s not true. The abuse he experiences is so profoundly engrained in who he is that the toxicity will only follow him once he leaves. He might get out of the house, might leave behind his asshole of a father, but he is another victim that will fall into the idiom of the apple not falling far from the tree.

That’s just another way in which you and Billy are more similar than most people think. He’s turning out to be just like his father - and you’re heading down the same path that your own mother did; despite all your best attempts to pledge to her gravestone that you’ll be different. Your childhood was spent watching an abusive relationship pave itself; your father was always under the influence of something, whether alcohol or drugs, and it ignited an anger in him that could only be taken out in physical ways on your mother. You spent enough nights hiding in your closet with your blanket and pillow, trying to get away from the sounds of your mother begging and pleading, that you’d think you would know to get out of whatever you have going on with Billy. And one thing that makes you less similar to him, that sets you apart, is how you both coped with the abuse you’ve seen in your homes. You turned to books and school, delving into every interest and hobby that popped up as you grew. You found friends and a way out of the house and hyper-focused on how you would one day get out. But Billy, he turned to other things - like cigarettes and working out and blaring loud music. He found hookups and hyper-focused on how he was one day going to get back at his dad for all the pain, all the suffering, the man had caused him. Perhaps, in a way, you were two opposing sides of a coin - and maybe that was just another thing that added to your naivety about your relationship with him. 

You watched as your father, day after wretched day, slowly killed your mother. You watched as she dug her own grave, watched as your father finally - after years of her surviving - put her six feet in the ground. And Max, the girl who’s practically become your own little sister, the girl who would do just about anything to see you get away from her older step-brother, is determined to save you. The way she sees it, your fate is now in her hands - and it’s not something that she, or her “baby-sitter”, will take lightly.

Panacea

Summary:

Months after moving out on your own to a small town by the name of Hawkins (and promptly transferring your school records to Hawkins High), you’ve found yourself as the token girlfriend of the highly-acclaimed Billy Hargrove. You seem to have it all - a hot boyfriend that every girl could only dream of, straight A’s and a golden 4.0 GPA, and not a single parent or guardian to hold you back. But the truth is, dating Billy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You’ve found that it’s lonely - he never shows up when he says he will, tries to pepper up his apologies with bouquets bought last minute from the grocery store down the street from his house, and - almost worst of all - he never even bothers to open up to you. You’ve seen glimpses of his home life, heard stories of what goes on behind closed doors from his younger step-sister on the nights she finds herself on your doorstep, and deep down you know that this relationship isn’t any good for you. People always say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree - and Max knows that Billy is a nuclear bomb set on a path for complete annihilation that will take you out with him once he finally detonates. Enlisting the help of her self-declared “baby-sitter” is all she can think to do - but she knows that Steve Harrington, with his familial history and his too-big-heart, can save you from the Death Zone. 

Chapters:

(shitty) short introduction

Extra Scenes:

Inspired Works:

Song Inspiration