Future Quote for my Steve Harrington Fic, 'One Hit Away From Something Else'
“And when Dylan Mercer dies, the worms will first taste the damp wood of his coffin—rot-soft pine swollen with rain, rusted nails, wet earth buried deep inside the grain. Then they will reach the body itself, and they will mostly taste resentment, hatred, depression, guilt, and every monstrous thing he spent his whole life trying to swallow down.
But there will be an aftertaste.
Pride. Childlike wonder. Love—strongest of all, stubborn enough to survive even death.
And when the bugs finally reach his decomposed lips, they will taste Steve Harrington: a boy who kissed another boy and now walks the earth alone, carrying the ghost of him in the space between his ribs.
Because that is what Dylan Mercer was, for all his sins. Not a monster. Not a warning. Not the angry thing Hawkins made of him.
Just a boy.
A boy with a youthfulness that never got the chance to shine the way it deserved to. A boy whose heart no longer beats, but if it did, it would bleed joy from every fractured part of itself. A boy who loved so deeply that even the worms, feasting on what remained, would still taste it lingering there beneath the rot.”
