HEAR ME OUT?? Please—
I LOVE love LOve when like, in fics, Steve has this really weird talent or interest that nobody knows about or like nobody expects but then oddly enough it sort of fits him.
And just like— it opens up so much possibility for character projection.
My favorite is writer Steve but I’ve been growing increasingly obsessed with Steve who’s hyper fixation is snakes.
The image in my head is like— everyone’s hanging out at the trailer park for one reason or another, and they hear Robin fucking /screech/.
Everyone’s on their feet in a split second, worry and confusion and deep dread forcing the way into the forefront of their minds.
Turns out: it was a snake. A really small one at that.
Eddie and Wayne offer to take it and dispose of it, the two of them having done this various other times with the other snakes people find in the trailer park.
But Steve pushes to the front of the group yelling and scolding.
“No absolutely not!”
Eddie shares a look with Nancy, both chalking it up to Steve’s hero complex acting up and him trying to protect them from the potentially dangerous critter.
“Look, Stevie—“
“You are not going to kill that little sweetheart!”
Eddie paused, shared a confused furrow of brows with Nancy and Robin, and turned to face Steve fully.
“Stevie, baby, that’s a snake.”
Steve stood with his hands on his hips, a determined glint in his eye, and nodded. “No I thought it was a squirrel.”
Eddie sighed loudly. “Then what do we do with it?”
“Well not fucking kill it for starters! It’s harmless. Aren’t you baby?”
Eddie and everyone else watched Steve step up to the snake that was hanging from the trailer’s side door. “Um, Steve what’re you doing?”
Steve ignored them completely and simply plucked the snake from its place on the door. From somewhere beside Eddie Robin squeaked in horror and Will groaned while Lucas gave a violent shudder.
“Such a small baby aren’t ya?” Steve cooed at the little snake wrapped around his hand.
“Steve— that’s a snake,” Nancy said warily, eyeing said snake like it killed her mother. “A potentially dangerous snake.”
Steve scoffed while the snake lifted the front of its body to peer at him. “She’s not dangerous, she’s a goddamn rat snake. They’re harmless.”
Just as he said it, the snake turned its head and not his finger. Where Steve didn’t even blink, everyone else freaked.
Eddie and Robin rushed over to him, Eddie immediately taking a look at his hand but keeping his hands away from the snake. Robin kept her distance but rambled about rabies or whatever.
Steve huffed and laughed quietly. “Guys, seriously. It’s a rat snake, they’re completely and utterly harmless to humans. They have such a small amount of venom it doesn’t bother humans. And besides, this little baby’s so small she couldn’t even break the skin.”
He was right, there was no sign of breakage or even redness on Steve’s hand where he was bitten.
Eddie looked at his boyfriend a little in awe and even more in love.
Jesus Christ.
Dustin and Mike walked slowly over to Steve, each asking to hold the snake.
Steve held it out gently, Dustin taking it first and holding it delicately in his hands. When he passed it over to Mike, the snake wrapped itself around his hands and a bit up his arms. Eddie was a little in shock at the giggle the younger Wheeler let out.
Dustin, Mike and Steve sat on the trailer’s side steps and held the snake together, going back and forth about random animal topics that Eddie couldn’t be bothered to remember.
When he asked later, Will and Lucas were delighted to explain that the entire reason Dustin was allowed to join The Party was because in 4th grade he brought Mike a frog he found. Lucas explained that Mike and Dustin had both gone through and extensive reptile and amphibian phase in elementary school and still held onto some of that obsession.
From then on, whenever anyone in the trailer park found any form of snake or rodent that they wanted gone, they called Steve.
