“this is ilya, i will never listen to your voicemail” and shane takes that to heart!!
he thinks ilya doesn’t ever listen to his messages, so maybe he starts leaving one here and there. maybe they’re nothing really, just a note to say he tried to call. sometimes leaving off with “oh, this is shane. by the way” he calls when he knows ilya won’t be able to pick up; “hey, uh. i know you won’t get this, but i was thinking about you. i miss you. i know you’re just in ottawa but… sometimes it feels a lot further. i love you.” and sometimes he’ll be watching a game and god. he wants to talk to ilya about that play, so he’ll leave message about it. shane never really tells ilya that this is something he does.
ilya knows, of course. watches his voicemail fill up little by little. always makes sure there’s space for new ones. has ones that he listens to so often that knows them by heart. memorizes the way shane laughs because he thinks no one will hear it, the sound of his breath on the other line between words. he listens to every one of them.
The reason Steve remains in Hawkins is because he doesn’t want to and can’t move away from Eddie.
When his friends ask and prod him he talks about the view, the quarry, the quiet life, about his job and the boring everyday nothings; he finds every other excuse for why none of his relationships work and lets them joke about it because it’s easier than admitting he’d stopped trying a long time ago; he mentions his house in Forest Hills and hopes that none of them read too much into it. The lies, the omissions, all of it, is because he doesn’t know how to tell them the truth; because they wouldn’t really understand, and he wouldn’t know how to explain that he doesn’t need their pity, that while it might not be happiness, he is truly content and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Maybe one day they’ll be able to hear him. Maybe one day, he’ll be ready to say it.
He can’t leave Hawkins. He won’t. He can’t leave Eddie behind. Can’t let his name turn into a cheap bedtime story for unruly kids, or a drinking tale for rebel teenagers in parking lots.
So he stays to keep him company, he stays for the only kind of company he craves, for the kind of conversations that settle himeven in the absence of answers. He stays so that Eddie doesn’t disappear from the town’s memory like a bad stain, he stays to make sure he’s not forgotten, he stays so that Hawkins won’t repeat its mistakes. He chooses to stay so that kids like Eddie can have someone who believes in them on their side through the pains of growing up in a small, backwards town in Indiana.
consider: after season 1, steve is fucked up and stressed and cant sleep and goes to buy weed from eddie.
eddie asks why he cant sleep and steve- being too tired and concussed and annoyed at eddie’s prying to make up a lie- tells the truth.
“demogorgon” he says
eddie sputters- “im sorry what?”
“demogorgon. an interdimensional monster wrecked my shit and now i cant sleep. now do you have the weed or not”
they look at each other for a solid minute and steve starts to realize how much he definitely just fucked up, then eddie bursts out in laughter
“demogorgon? how do you even…. jesus christ. harrington- as much as i hate to do it, ill give you points for creativity on that one… anyway, how much do you want?”
they work out the deal and dont bring it up again, but both spend the rest of the day thinking about it. eddie- wondering what hidden depths the mind of steve harrington hold that he is casually referencing dungeons and dragons during a drug deal, and steve- thinking about how goddamn good it felt to tell the truth, even though eddie didnt believe it.
Location: Bulgaria 
