cue all the love to leave my heart /
it's time for me to fall apart
────────Miss Missing You, Fall Out Boy

         Grief is love with no place to go.

Alex Harrington carries the weight of this love on her shoulders.  The load gets easier to bear with every passing day—not because it gets lighter, but because she gets more used to it.  There is a gaping hole in her heart where El had once resided.  Time heals wounds, they say, but this one seems to last forever.  The thing about grieving is that the world doesn't stop, even when you shut it out.  It doesn't wait for you to catch up after waking up from your hibernation in your room.  It keeps on going.  And so, she's forced to go along with it even though the first few months after El departs all she wants to do is cocoon herself in her blankets and seal herself in the catacomb of her own bedroom.  For the first few months, she teeters on the edge of a pit of depression, but as more time passes, it becomes easier to keep her balance. 

A month passes.  And then two.  And three.  And suddenly, before she knows it, almost a whole year has flown by since November.  Change is brought along with the flowing of time.  Alex is taller now.  Steve jokes that there must be something in the water.  Her resentment's getting smaller.  She's not as angry anymore.  Fresh scars fade away, leaving vacancies for new ones that never form.  Of course, her anger hasn't completely faded away; there's still the occasional screaming match between Alex and her mother or her father or even Steve when they can't find any other way to work out their issues; vases smashed against walls; angry threats to run away.  It's always there, just beneath of the surface of her skin.  But it's easier to control it now.

Alex isn't so empty now, either.  She had to learn to lick love off of knives, but now she's handed it with a silver platter.  Steve seems more youthful now that the responsibility of taking care of Alex has been handed off to their parents.  He's more of an older brother to her now and less like a parent.  She has her friends, now, too, who she loves unapologetically, and they love her the same.  She would take a bullet to the heart for her friends if it came down to it. 

And lately, it almost seems as if the world is asking her to.

❛ i'll miss missing you ❜

ALEXANDRA ' ALEX ' HARRINGTON ━━━━━━ THOMASIN MCKENZIE
SHE/HER.  13.  BARBARIAN.

kate siegel ━━━━━━  LAURA HARRINGTON
james mcavoy ━━━━━━  JOSEPH HARRINGTON
clark backo ━━━━━━  ABIGAIL ' ABBY ' FOSTER
justina machado ━━━━━━  KYRA FRENANDEZ

❛ now and then ❜

dedicated to . . .
cheerybIossoms & coronasaurus-rex
thank you for being so amazing and supportive ily <333

disclaimer: i do not own stranger things, its plot, dialogue, characters, or locations.  i am only responsible for alex harrington, abby foster, any other characters that you do not recognize from the original source material and their developments.

warnings: grief, depression, poor mental health, poor coping mechanisms, strong language, substance abuse, drinking, smoking, eating, possible self-harm, character death, graphic violence, graphic death, assault, racism, homophobia, sexism, PTSD, panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, suicidal thoughts, violent urges, blood/gore, references to child abuse both physical and verbal + more to be added/changed.

this is very much an anti-billy fic.  if you are looking for a pro-billy fic you might as well just click out of this one.  his abuse will not be romanticized and i do not condone his actions. 

author's note: hello and welcome to alex's yassification arc.  but in all seriousness, my girl's still healing from el and the upside down and everything that happened in season 1 but she's getting better and she's growing and she's less angry because she has support at home again kind of and she has support from her friends and other people that love her and she's still seeing kyra but she needs an actual therapist whose trained specifically for people with alex's trauma </3.  things are getting better for her, but that doesn't mean that she's going to be automatically better right away.  but alex is my best girl fr and i love her <33

also abby!!!  best girl part 2 you can read her fic, adventures in babysitting, (which is completed) on my acc too if you would like.  she did make a cameo in the epilogue of just one yesterday if you remember that.  there is a crossover between her fic and alex's fics, but you should take anything written in regards to alex in abby's fic with a grain of salt; it was written when i had other things in mind for alex's story.

i'm super excited for this too, because i don't think i've ever gotten to this point (s2) in alex's story.  and if i have, i never got very far into it.  but i'm determined to get alex through season 2 because it's what she deserves.  this is gonna be a whirlwind of growing and changing and friendship and messily falling in love and i'm here for it.  this is also for any newcomers, the second book in the series, and while it isn't strictly necessary, you might be better off starting with the first book because you'll get a lot more of alex's development and basis of relationships and how she got to this point.

almax nation, your time has come.  the gays are back and better than ever.  i'm planning for hopefully a lot more non-canon scenes (specifically between alex & max and alex & steve), there's weren't a lot in book 1 because the timeline was kinda tight and i didn't have a whole bunch of inspiration for them but i really want almax to develop outside of just canon season 2 timeline.  they are my best girls and i love them sm.

hope you enjoy :)

alex @ steve throughout the entirety of this fic

started: 6.10.22
published: 10.17.22
finished: ...