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Who: Steve Harrington & OPEN (that means you).
What: Just ~stuff~. Clothing scavenging, working on an ice rink so there are monster-free places to skate.
When: Early July.
Where: Milton.

Content Warnings: TBD.

Steve's settled into life in Milton pretty well since he arrived a couple months ago. Sure, the cold part sucks balls (like, so many balls), but as far as weird shit happening all the time and General Monster Fighting? Yeah, that's pretty normal for him. So Steve can sort of get past the way he feels like he's freezing his ass off all the time.

It's hard to find a routine in Milton, though. There's no watching television when things get boring, there's no driving around, there's no anything. Which means Steve can be found bumming around Milton, filling time the best he can. One of his favourite pastimes is looking through what's left of the clothes. Most of the actual stores are picked through, and Steve wants to be respectful of people still to come through, but he pops into the unused houses now and then to see if anything's left over. Most things stay where they are. If he finds something that might fit him or Eddie, he'll stuff it into his backpack. And if you don't catch him scavenging the houses, maybe you see him carrying a bundle towards the community hall. At least this way there's good quality stuff there for the next time new arrivals come through.

Otherwise, Steve can be spotted almost daily working on his latest Labour Of Love: an ice rink. Working on teaching Eddie to skate has made Steve realize that the threat of a lake monster or whatever underneath maybe isn't great. Which is fine. It's not like Steve has anything better to do with his time, so out behind his home he shovels out the general shape. He'll gladly accept any help or any company while he shovels, or he'll take an extra pair of hands to carry out buckets of melted snow to start laying down the ice. It's a work in progress, but he's pretty pleased with how it's going.

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John's been knitting.

The thing about knitting is that you need yarn to knit with. And the thing about yarn to knit with is that you can take it from old knitted items that have started to wear down. That's what he's here for when Steve walks in with his bundle: he's looking to see if any of the clothes here have broken down or torn or need to be repurposed via a pair of knitting needles.

When Steve enters, he turns: a giant laundry pile himself, since most clothes more get draped over him instead of being able to fit on him normally, with sheep's legs and antler-like horns sprouting from the forehead of his mask-like head. The bright gold eyes peer like a (badum ching) Doe in the headlights since he wasn't expecting anyone to be coming in.

"Oh." Beat. "Hi."

"Jesus -!"

Steve jumps, not even a little bit, clearly startled by the moving clothes pile before his brain catches up to the situation. He clears his throat once his heart-rate starts to slowly come down.

"Sorry." At least he sounds and looks like he means it, because he does. "Hi. I, uh. I can come back if this is a bad time."

John shakes his head and he'll hold up a hand and wave it to dismiss the fact that, well... he's scary as shit. He can acknowledge that.

"It's fine. I'm just looking for yarn. Or... pre-yarn."

Even with the gap of time he was gone, Eddie has still been here significantly longer than Steve and things really hasn’t gotten much more exciting. Outside of the weird shit that happens every month, of course. He still largely just lives waiting for Aurora nights, when his battered amp works and he can actually hear what he’s playing, but he's running out of things to do when life is quieter. He’s already read just about every book worth his time in Rorschach’s library, he’s taught himself the basics on the out-of-tune piano in the community hall to the point where he can kind of read music now, whereas he used to just figure things out by ear. Today, however, he’s opted to just trail after Steve and poke though clothes. It’s something new, at least.

“Wait, wait, wait—“

He’s spotted something he wants in the pile that has been brought to the community hall, and he all but launches himself forward to grab it like a little goblin before someone else tries to. With a flourish, he shakes out this beautiful shirt. It’s rumpled and way too big for him, but he gazes at it admiringly before wheeling around on Steve, eyes narrowed.

“You saw this--" He pauses dramatically to turn the plague-shirt toward Steve. "And you didn’t think that maybe, just maybe, I would have wanted it?”

Steve's not sure what he was expecting. Maybe some stupid band shirt, or something ripped and made of denim stitched up with leather. He stares at Eddie for a long moment like he's trying to determine if Eddie's bullshitting him or not.

He ends up determining that, no, he's not and he's being fully serious.

"No. Who would want that? Even the people that owned it didn't want it."

“Me!,” he all but yells, looking indignant. “Me, Steve. I would want it. Clearly the people that owned it—and you to be completely honest—are lacking in the taste department.”

He holds the shirt almost protectively to his chest, like Steve could destroy it with one nasty look alone. He’s being dramatic, sure, but he’s not bullshitting. He really wants this shirt.

“So while you’re wearing whatever—“

He bravely shrugs off his jacket and pulls the too-big shirt on over the on he’s already wearing.

“I’ll be celebrating 650 years of the bubonic plague.”

Steve holds out his hands and shakes his head, a look of complete judgement and what the fuck on his face. The truth of the matter is that Steve has no idea what the bubonic plague is and how a rat has anything to do with boobs, and he mutters something to himself as he turns back to sorting through the clothes he's found.

"Also -" He turns back to Eddie, putting his hands on his hips. "I have great fashion sense. Even on limited resources."

The rat has nothing to do with boobs…not a thing…But happily clothed in his bubonic plague shirt, Eddie smooths the front of it down and pulls his jacket back on, looking about as pleased as someone who’s probably dead back home can look in a snowy wasteland.

He turns to Steve, he squints, crosses his arms, tilts his head like he’s really trying to detect what Steve’s fashion sense is. He’s always dressed well—not lame, but not exactly Eddie’s version of cool. Dude could probably pull off a mean leather jacket if he tried.

He looks down at his now-prized possession, then back at Steve.

“You know,” he begins. “I’m just not seeing it, Steve. But! Have you considered…”

He trails off and reaches into the pile, pulling out another extremely cool shirt, grinning ear-to ear.

“Something like this?”

In response to the shirt, Steve flips Eddie off.

"Are you actually gonna help or are you just gonna be a dick?"

Steve doesn't really seem to mind. Actually, he's growing to like Eddie. He won't ever say it out loud, but it's been nice to get to know him and teach Eddie how to skate and even play the stupid dice game. But no one needs to know that.

"This stuff is for the new people when they get here. Stop taking it all for yourself."

“Oh, well if I get a choice…”

Unaffected by being flipped the bird, he pauses and tilts his head like he’s giving it some real thought, but as a slow grin tugs at the corners of his mouth, it’s clear that he already has his answer and it’s the one that’s the biggest joke.

“Be a dick. Every time. Obviously.”

Even in a snowy wasteland, he is merely a jester and the world is his court. All the same, he does step up to help out, picking up a shirt or jacket here or there that have dropped out of Steve’s bundle.

“Hey,” he begins again. “I can’t help that everything you’re putting in this pile has “Eddie” written all over it.”

Edited 2025-07-21 14:46 (UTC)

Steve snorts, but if Eddie looks, he'll see a smile on Steve's face as he shakes his head and goes back to folding and sorting.

"You're such a weirdo."

It's the lamest way anyone could ever insult someone, but it's said with some amount of fondness, so it's likely that Steve means it as a compliment. Maybe.

"So, uh ... What happens after the lake, then?" He means, of course, when he jumped into the lake and then arrived here, seemingly from an earlier time than Eddie arrived here, which is still really fucking hard to understand but he's trying.

“Pretty sure the word is freak,” he answers, grinning right back. It is a lame insult, but Eddie doesn’t seem fazed one way or another. He merely takes to folding and sorting to the best of his ability, actively helping rather than being a dick like he promised.

“Uh, well,” he begins, eyebrows knitting together. It's odd to have to recount an event that Steve was present for, but he's long since resigned himself to the overwhelming strangeness of this place. It’s not the first weird thing to happen, and it won’t be the last. At least this time, Steve actually knows who he is.

“Wheeler jumped in after you. Then Buckley jumped in after her. And I didn't want to be the only coward in the bunch, so I jumped in after her."

This time, he opts to leave out the bit about not saving Steve's ass under normal circumstances. He meant it as a joke the first time, a stab at himself and his cowardice, but he’s not sure it’s a joke he wants to repeat or a joke that would really land in a place like this where everything wants to kill you.

"Then you got bitten up pretty well by some mutant bats. But, uh, you bit them right back so if was a pretty badass Ozzy Osbourne moment, believe me." Without missing a beat, he quickly tacks on, "Yeah, I know you don't know about Ozzy. It's cool. And you were totally fine after you and Wheeler made goo-goo eyes at one another.”

“And, uh, then we had to distract Vecna. Henderson and I took care of that. Not totally sure what the rest of you did. There were Molotov cocktails involved.”

He frowns, pausing to stare at another shirt, vaguely contemplating if it’s his vibe or size. He decides that it isn’t, and carefully folds it to join the others. It can be someone else’s vibe. He frowns and taps his fingers against the table for a moment, debating whether or not to be a complete downer. Steve did ask, though, and Eddie can only recount what he witnessed. So in a quiet voice, he adds:

“I’m, uh…pretty sure I died down there, actually.”

Steve listens, paying attention as he folds and sorts the clothes, flinging one of them Eddie's way. He doesn't interrupt, but his expressions or the occasional nod should be enough to show he's following along.

Of course Nancy jumped in. Of course Robin jumped in. He's pleasantly surprised Eddie did, too, and he scrunches his nose up at the thought of biting one of those bat-things.

Then he stops folding and looks up, turning his head over his shoulder to stare at Eddie.

"What? No you didn't."

Because that's not how this works. They don't die. People around them? Sure. But this group has some sort of anti-death thing going on despite all the shit that should've killed them ten times by now. So there's no way Eddie died.

Eddie fumbles but manages to catch the shirt—after it smacks into his face, of course. He shakes it out in front of himself and snorts. Shrimp Whisperer is adding some much needed humor to this conversation.

“Oh yeah. That one’s going to Dustin.”

He throws it to the side, and he absolutely will gift it to Dustin when he gets the chance. It might be better suited for Steve, who is an actual shrimp whisperer with all the children he’s collected, but Dustin is the actual shrimp…They have to clothe their son...

“Uh, I think I did, actually?,” he starts again, eyebrows knitted together as he stares a little too fixedly on yet another shirt before tossing it in Steve’s direction with a dry chuckle. This isn’t exactly the conversation to have while flinging joke shirts back and forth, but it helps Eddie to stay calmer and more grounded than he might have been otherwise. He’s had a lot of time to avoid thinking about this, and that hasn’t made it any easier, but jokes help. They give him something else to focus on, and a way to keep afloat.

“I mean, I don’t have proof, exactly, but, uh…”

He pushes away from the pile of clothes. He shrugs half of his jacket off and tugs up all of his layers (plague shirt included) to show off a gnarly looking scar, taking up nearly all of the left side of his torso. It’s healed, but it doesn’t look particularly pretty. The skin is puckered in places where the stitches were pulled too tight, like whoever stitched it up was no professional and did a rush job of it.

“Damn bats got me too. Still aches like hell, but I guess that’s the price you pay for not bleeding out, huh?”

He knows that Steve is going to point out that if he’s here and he’s been stitched up and he's feeling the pain of his wounds, he obviously isn’t dead, but Eddie has one more piece to add to this puzzle. He smooths his layers down and tugs on his jacket again, returning to sort through the pile of clothes before he continues.

“I, uh, also disappeared for like, three months. From here. I didn’t go home.”

Steve listens. He looks, too, and yeah that scar is disgusting. Steve feels pretty fortunate that for as much as he's gotten his ass kicked in the last few years, he's walked away relatively unscathed (scar-wise, that is, he's pretty sure he's had more concussions than one person should). He presses his lips together, still somewhat unconvinced. Just because he got eaten by bats doesn't mean he died.

"So? You ended up here, why not end up somewhere else that isn't home?"

Like, people in Hawkins go missing all the time, right? Doesn't mean they're dead. Usually.

"We wouldn't let you die, Eddie. Dustin would shit his pants."

“I know you wouldn’t, man.”

He knows that well enough. Despite only being well acquainted with one member of the little group they’d formed over spring break, they all pitched in to save his ass. Letting him die would be the last thing any of them would want…if they had been present. But it had only been Eddie and Dustin against the bats, and Eddie took the actions he could to make sure Dustin wouldn’t follow him into danger.

With a deep frown, he falls silent, a grand feat for someone who seems to like to jam as many words and music references as possible into his sentences before taking a single breath. His worries don’t seem to be soothed, but he doesn’t try to argue.

He folds quietly for a moment, letting a couple genuinely hilarious shirts go without comment.

“Yeah, he would,” he agrees, remembering Dustin’s face as the last thing he saw before everything went black. He hopes he didn’t traumatize the kid too badly. Finally he takes another stab at humor: “I’m kind of his favorite person, after all.”

Levi comes across Steve digging on one of his patrols and stops for a moment to watch. The guy is probably not digging a grave with the size but Levi has no idea what it might be. Probably not anything to worry about, though.

So he steps closer and raises his voice, "Do you need any help?"

"Hey."

Steve raised a gloved-up hand, giving a bit of a wave.

"Yeah, that'd be great. I think there's another shovel just over there." He gestures in a general direction, then gestures to the snowbank he's building up and a series of footprints that make out a vaguely oval shape. "I'm making a rink."

Levi nods and retrieves the shovel so he can help. He's done a lot of digging here, but at least this seemed to be for a more pleasant reason. "A rink?"

"Yeah, for skating. It's probably safer doing that on something made by a person than any of the frozen-over lakes or whatever."

Because even if there weren't monsters in the water, falling in would suck. Big time.

"The basin is usually safe..." Well, no, there was that weird woman or whatever. "Well, safer than the lake. I think Fraser skates on it sometimes. But you're right, somewhere inland would be safer."

"At least here the ice can't crack and send you to a really shitty watery death."

Probably. It is solid ground, but as Steve looks down at the snow beneath his feet, he has to wonder if this place wouldn't just split open one day just to spite them.

"Also I guess I just needed something to do to keep from going crazy or whatever."

"...I understand that. There's only so much to do around here before it starts to get old. I've reread the same books like ten times by now."

He hasn't run into his young friend since their initial meeting, but it's good to see him not only still around and seemingly well, but also helping the community. It's a lovely sentiment, it really is, and it warms Darling's heart to see it.

"Steve!" he calls out, hoping he remembered the boy's name correctly, and gives a friendly wave. "Do you need a hand with all that?"

Steve turns to the side slightly, to see over the bundle of clothes he's precariously balancing in his arms.

"Dr. Darling!"

The enthusiasm is genuine. Steve doesn't really have a lot of Adults in his life that pay attention to him or care, so it'd been sort of nice when Darling showed any amount of concern for him. Plus, he seems like a nice guy.

"That'd be great."

Because it looks like he's about to lose some sweaters from his pile.

"Oh here -- allow me." Careful not to disrupt the pile too much, Darling scoops up an armful of sweaters and other things to lighten Steve's load. "It's good to see you again. You look like you're settling in well, I think? You've certainly gotten a good start on resource gathering."

"Thanks -"

He lets Darling offload some of the clothes, flashing a grateful smile and then finishing the walk to a nearby table. He sets down what he's holding, taking a pause before getting to sorting.

"A friend from back home was already here." Friend. He never thought he'd call Eddie a friend, but here they are. "He helped get me things figured out. This is mostly because I'm bored."

Mostly. Steve's actually a decent guy, even if sometimes he doesn't really look at himself that way.

"Oh, it's fantastic to have someone here you knew from back home," he says with a smile as he starts folding sweaters. "I have a friend here as well. He's from slightly after me on our timeline, but it's still a comfort to have him." There's a pause before pats the sweater and moves onto the next, his thoughts wandering somewhere before returning.

"This will be helpful, though. Having all these clothes in one place for people."

"Yeah, Eddie's from a bit later, too."

Which is still so fucking weird, but Steve's learning to deal with it. He nods at Darling's comment about helpfulness, starting to separate the pile into different items.

"It'll be good for when new people show up. And for everyone else here, too, I guess. Hey, I'm making a skating rink, too. Community enrichment or whatever."

"Oh, Eddie! Uh, uh -- about your age, long curly hair. He was looking for a box of tapes that belonged to him, I think? We spoke, briefly. I need to find him again, we had such an interesting discussion about the pocket dimension beneath your town. Did you travel there, too?

Oh!" Another sweater, and a sock that is set aside to see if it has a mate. "A skating rink is a great idea. I don't trust my own balance, but I bet others would have fun."

"The Upside Down? Yeah, I've been there."

And it sucks, actually, and Steve's surprised none of them inhaled anything that fucked up their lungs or some shit.

"I'd teach you. How to skate, I mean, if you wanted. I'm teaching Eddie so it's not a big deal."

"The Upside Down! What a deeply spooky name. I was in a dimension known as The Dark Place for a while. I do think all alternate dimensions should have appropriately spooky names. That, or vague and ominous.

But the offer is appreciated! I tried once or twice, when I was younger. There was a pond near my house that froze in the winter, but I never quite took to it."

"Why can't alternate dimensions be, like, nice? Maybe it can be like, oh wow, look at this really nice place full of things that don't want to kill you or invade your home."

Just a thought. Steve doesn't think that seems unreasonable, to be honest.

"Anyway, sports aren't for everyone. That's cool." Unlike Steve, who seems to be good at pretty much every sport he's able to do.

"You make a fair point. I've yet to visit a dimension that didn't want to kill me in some way, which is unfortunate considering that's the focus of my research.

I do like going for a jog, but doing that here is a little, uh... brisk?" It's freezing, and it makes his lungs feel like they're filled with ice. Less than ideal.

"Oof, yeah. This place isn't really runner friendly."

It's actually not really anything friendly, but at least with skating you can sort of do it at a leisurely pace. That said, if he can rope enough people into some sort of game of hockey, he absolutely will.

"Sometimes I used to think that the town I lived in was pretty shitty. You know, small town, everything's the same, feels like a dead-end sort of thing. Shit like this really makes you think it wasn't so bad."

"It certainly does put things into perspective, doesn't it? At least in a shitty small town you're typically not having to fight for survival on a daily basis. At least not in quite such a literal way.

At least there are all sorts here. I have a friend with a wolf who is exceptionally good at hunting, she brings meat to the kitchen here when she can."

It has to be said, Charles is getting better at not accidentally sneaking up on people. Thirty-five years without footsteps is hard to overcome, but after seeing enough people grip dramatically at their chests when he's just trying to start a conversation, he's started making more of an entrance. Bumping into things, shuffling his feet, breathing conspicuously.

He forgets this time, too distracted by trying to puzzle out what this guy is doing.

"Ground too lumpy for you?" As casual as anything, all leaned against a tree with his gangly arms crossed. "Bit small for a football pitch, but it'll do."

Steve does jump a bit, but puts it down to him being so focused on shoveling and not the fact that the fact that he didn't hear any real snow-crunching under foot.

He gives the guy a look, nose scrunched because it's obviously not a football field. And who the hell calls it a pitch? That's baseball. Clearly this guy has no idea what he's talking about.

"It's for skating." Duh. Well. "It will be, once it's all level and there's ice on it."

Well, here comes the obvious question, with an obvious answers. Let's just get it out of the way.

"There's no lake around here you can use for that?"

"The lake has a monster in it."

Which apparently makes some people more nervous than others, and Steve can't really blame them because he also doesn't want to become monster chow.

He shrugs, going back to shoveling as he talks.

"And the basin apparently has something weird, too, but if the ice cracks then you're sort of screwed."

"Everything here's got something weird, though, don't it?" Charles lopes a bit closer, hands in his pockets. "There's probably something weird under this spot, too. Might as well skate where you want."

He's teasing. He'd be wary of the lake as well.

"Everything everywhere has something weird."

At least that's what Steve's learned from the Two Whole Places he's ever been - Hawkins and Milton. He'll still probably take this over Vecna, though.

"Probably only a matter of time until an earthquake or something splits it open," he admits, looking down at this rink-in-progress.

"C'mon, mate, you can't be going into it with that attitude!" Charles steps forward and gives the leveled surface a good couple of whacks with the flat of his foot. He's helping. "They knock it down, we put it right back up!"

Something something toxic positivity, perhaps. But he's long-since been in the business of bringing the optimism to his best friend's gloom parties.

"Do you know how many times every building in this town's had to be rebuilt basically from the ground?" A brief, grinning pause. "I mean, I don't, but I bet it's a ton."

You probably shouldn't ask questions if you don't know the answer yourself, because Steve was ready to ask how many times and now he just has to wonder about it? Who is this guy even?

"Yeah, we'll just pack the hole open with snow. Good as new."

He snorts, but it doesn't dissolve his determination to actually make a rink and actually skate and actually have fun.

"Hey, there's the spirit."

A ghost pun? ~~In this economy?~~

Charles isn't just here to observe and pester, though; he's not that kind of spirit. Instead, his smile turns more friendly than jesting, and a smudge of maturity makes an appearance.

"Really, though - what can I help with?"

Oh. That's actually a bit of surprise, but Steve looks pretty pleased. He's been out here shoveling by himself, which is fine, but he's glad for some help.

"I could use a hand clearing the snow from the perimeter I made."

He motions to where he's shoveled out the rough size and shape of the rink. Nothing big, but a good enough size for a backyard set up. Where he's been shoveling, he's been packing it into banks around the edge to mimic the boards in a traditional rink.

Charles scopes it out like a surveyor, as though doing some kind of snow-related mental math. Then, with determination: "Alright. Be right back."

He clambers back up the way he came, a youthful bound in his step, and soon disappears around a bend. It takes about fifteen minutes, but he eventually makes good on his word, reappearing from through the trees with a rust-brown shovel.

"I give this old thing another few hauls before it snaps straight through." Another well-loved gift from Gladys, the late owner of his home. Bless her soul and her packrat tendencies. "Or 'til it gives me tetanus."

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clothes pile - community center

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community centre

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(ice) sk8 life

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