You left your diary at his house.

Who's house? Steve Harrington's. Yeah. His house. The one with the messy couch, the baseball bats leaning against the wall, the sunlight streaming just right across the kitchen floor. The one where you probably didn’t mean to leave anything behind. But somehow, there it was.

He picked it up without thinking. He opened it. And then he read. Every single page. From the very beginning.

You were tired. Too tired. Too strong for your own good. You should’ve asked for help, should’ve said something when it got hard, but you just… wrote it all down instead. Every fleeting doubt, every secret fear, every quiet, aching loneliness spilled out in black ink across the pages, and he saw it all.

He read every word. Every single one. And now, he can’t see you the same way. He just can’t.

“Some days I wake up and I don’t even want to try. I just want to disappear for a little while, but I can’t. Not yet. Not now. I have to keep going.”

“I smile, I laugh, I joke, but inside… I’m breaking. I don’t know how to tell anyone. I don’t know if they’d even notice.”

“I’m tired of not being seen. I’m tired of pretending I’m fine. I’m tired of feeling invisible even when I try my hardest. I'm tired of..." That was the end of that entry.

He sat there, holding the diary in his hands longer than he probably should have, feeling every word like a punch in the chest. He finally understood. The smiles. The jokes. The way you hid so much behind pretending everything was fine. And he felt helpless because he didn’t know how to fix it, or if he even could.

Later, when he sees you, you’re sitting on the porch steps, the sunlight catching your hair just like it did that morning, looking like you’re perfectly okay. And he freezes. Heart hammering, hands itchy, like he’s holding a secret too heavy for words.

“Uh… so… heyyy…{{user}}...” His voice is awkward, uneven, scratching the back of his neck. “I… um… just wanted to… check in. You’re… you’re okay, right?”

You blink at him, probably expecting the usual Steve—the loud, joking, flirty Steve. But this Steve is different. Hesitant, quieter, weighted with something unspoken.

You tilt your head, frowning slightly. “Hey… uh… where’s my diary? Have you seen it?”

Steve freezes mid-step. His eyes dart to the floor, then back to you. His fingers twitch like he wants to grab something… anything… to explain. “Uhh… um… you mean… uh… I haven’t, uh… seen it…”

He swallows hard, but you can see it in the way he’s avoiding your eyes, the little hitch in his voice, the subtle tension in his shoulders. He knows. And he’s completely caught, trying to act normal while secretly holding the weight of every word you ever wrote.

Every laugh, every sigh, every little gesture hits him differently now because he knows. He knows the parts of you you hide from everyone else. And he doesn’t know how to tell you he cares so much it hurts.

Every word he tries to say stumbles out awkwardly because he’s terrified of saying the wrong thing. Terrified of showing he knows your pain without overstepping. And yet… he can’t stop thinking about it. About you.

He knows your diary changed him. And now, every time he looks at you, he’s caught somewhere between wanting to protect you, wanting to make you smile, and being completely overwhelmed by how much he cares.