Chapter Text
🥀💛👑
Steve
No you, you’re bullshit.
Pretending like we’re in love.
It’s bullshit.
Steve can’t listen to her any longer – he’ll make sure she gets home safe, hopefully Jonathan decided to show, can look after her – but his first priority is just out. He can’t duck out without going through the busiest rooms and he’s concentrating too hard on making sure he stays away from the sounds of the basketball team and fucking Hargrove, that he doesn’t realise he’s about to crash into someone in the hallway until they’re both staggering back.
“Shit, sorry Munson.” Steve swears, realising who he’s crashed into. Eddie Munson is in Steve’s year, his second go at it; not here because he wants to be, but because it’s good for business. Even on Halloween, he sticks out. If he’s wearing a costume, Steve can’t tell what it is. Steve tries not to care much for Munson himself – never had a reason to that he could get away with, stifling flickers of amusement and something electric he refuses to focus on – but if Steve ever wants to buy from him again, he could do with not pissing him off.
Munson rolls his eyes, brushes himself down- but whatever snarky comment he was about to make seems to die on his tongue when he looks at Steve. “Hey man, you okay?”
“Of course,” the lie is natural, rolls off the tongue, but unlike everyone before him, Munson doesn’t accept it.
“You don’t look okay.” Munson says, and Steve is so used to biting judgement from the man that the lack of it is what makes him pause. Consider honesty. Fuck, he just wants to be honest with someone, he feels like shit and he hates the whole charade – Nancy’s brought it down with a few choice words and he’s just tired. Steve clearly takes too long to respond – shit, has he been staring at Munson the entire time? – because the other man starts speaking again. “Is it Wheeler?”
It feels a bit like a gut punch, both to hear it and to know it’s apparently written across his face like a thick tattoo – Nancy Wheeler thinks I’m bullshit. “Why do you care?” Steve snaps out, automatic, and immediately cringes a little from the impulse. “Sorry.”
“I’m not sure yet.” Munson answers his question, ignores the apology, looking amused and concerned all at once. Steve is baffled by how well the expression suits his face when Steve before has only ever seen him angry and animated and a little bit manic. (Tommy once referred to him as feral, and Steve understood it even as he hated the phrasing.) “She break up with you?” Steve doesn’t know what his face does, but his chest clenches, and it’s clearly answer enough. “Shit, sorry man.”
Steve snorts. “It’s not like you made her do it.” Steve frowns. “Unless you spiked the punch.” Munson doesn’t seem like the type, despite his reputation the thought just doesn’t sit right with Steve, not with the man in front of him showing concern where everyone else would pick ignorance, but at a party like this it’d be more of a surprise if someone hadn’t.
“Not me.” Munson says, as if he could ever know what Steve was thinking. He doesn’t say anything else for a long moment, so Steve goes to step out of the little bubble they’ve been in in a corner of Tina’s house. He’ll find Jonathan, and then he’ll go home. “Hargrove is looking for you.” He swallows, and Steve can’t help but watch the movement, something magnetic about it. “Don’t let him antagonise you.”
“...thanks.” Steve says – he couldn’t care less about Billy Hargrove right now, he’s already seen him once this evening and that was more than enough. He’s an asshole and a dick, and as long as he stays the hell away, Steve has no argument with him, or with Tommy who’s thrown himself right behind him. Steve doesn’t miss it with any actual want, but there’s something to be said for someone having your back.
Munson stares at him for a moment, before looking down at his feet and then up at the ceiling – sighs. Deeply. “Look Harrington, I get that this is the last thing you actually wanna do, but if you ever want a distraction, come over. I’m sure we can occupy you enough to forget Nancy Wheeler.”
Steve automatically wants to reject the offer – but he’s trying to be less of an asshole, and if nothing else, Jonathan is proof enough that weird isn’t bad. If he’s really trying to cast all of King Steve aside... Munson seems genuine, if expecting a no. Steve considers it for a moment, considers him. Takes stock of the way he’s standing, all black denim and chains, leaning into Steve’s space, his eyes a little dark – and darting down to Steve’s lips when he speaks like he can’t help it.
Eddie Munson is flirting with him.
What the fuck?
Brave asshole.
Steve chalks his response up to being a little too buzzed and a little too self-destructive; mirroring Munson’s glance, he leans in a little. “You’d have to be pretty damn good to make me forget anyone, Munson, but I’ll bare it in mind.”
He leaves Munson stood in the hall at Tina’s party, looking startled.
The cool air feels good when he gets outside – but something in his chest is still too fucking tight. He stands there for a moment, eyes closed. He’d driven both of them here and now-
“Steve? You okay man?” Jonathan’s just coming up the path – he’s not in a costume, Steve doesn’t think, but he can hardly care about anything other than Jonathan being here means he can go.
“Will you take her home?”
“Wh- Nance?” Jonathan frowns, looking between Steve and the party still raging behind him.
“She’s really drunk, but she doesn’t-... Will you?” Steve asks, swallows hard. “She’ll listen to you.”
“Nance doesn’t listen to anyone, Steve, you know that.” It’s meant to be teasing, but it just hurts a little too much right now – Steve doesn’t know what Jonathan sees on his face but he straightens up immediately and Steve looks away, eyes burning. “What happened?”
“She broke up with me.” Steve admits – because that’s what that was. There’s no coming back from that. Nothing she can say can cushion the blow of pretending like we’re in love. Steve’s been pretending his whole life and he thought with Nancy he’d finally learned how to stop, at least a little.
“Shit, I’m sorry Steve.” And when Steve finally looks up, Jonathan does look torn up for him. It’s more than Tommy had ever have managed. “I’ll look after her. Do you need anything?”
“No, no I’m just gonna... Go home.”
🥀💛👑
The answering machine is blinking when he gets home from school on Friday. He showered after practice but he almost wants to shower again – wash off Tommy’s revelation, Hargrove’s taunts, the whole itchy feeling the break-up half completed has left him with – but he stalls in the hallway. The only people who leave messages are his parents or looking for them, and Steve would rather not have the consequences of ignoring it looming over him the next time his parents decide to come home. He grabs the pad and pen he leaves by the phone and hits play.
It’s a surprise when his mom’s voice filters out – she calls once every few weeks, but it’s barely been a week since the last time she called – still calling him Steven, nicknames and ‘sweetie’ long a thing left behind. He takes notes about the pool cleaner, and the change to his allowance, rolls his eyes at the thinly veiled dig at his grades – at least they actually read the report this time, he supposes – and then freezes.
“We’re coming home in December,” his mother’s voice sounds tight, “we’d like to actually meet your little girlfriend – we need to make sure she’s appropriate for your future!” Hearing Nancy referred to as his ‘little girlfriend’ isn’t nice, it twists something in his gut, but-
But it’s his father in the background, a clear, doubtful ‘hmph’ “For his future,” he’s much further from the phone, would’ve been hard to hear but Steve turns the machine up loud since his last concussion, “honestly Patricia even if he could keep her, it’ll be the only thing he does right.”
“Walter,” his mom just sighs – it’s not chiding or biting or defensive. Just tired. Resigned. She barrels on like he didn’t say anything Steve would hear. Steve misses her goodbye the first time, has to go back and listen to it again in case he missed anything they expect of him, but all he can hear is the only thing he does right – and he’s already failed at it. He’s in love with Nancy, he knows he is because what else could this be, though he will let her go if he’s not what she wants – but he can’t argue with his father’s assessment. In high school, scoring and keeping and loving Nancy Wheeler is the only thing he’s done right.
He’s going to have to make it up to her.
Steve knows how to do this – he’s watched his parents do it often enough. His mom gets drunk at dinner and they fight, and the next day his father comes home with flowers and chocolates and jewellery and apologises for whatever, and his mom graciously accepts it. Or at least that was how they used to do it – they’re home so infrequently now, he has to assume the pattern hasn’t changed much from Hawkins to New York. Maybe the only difference is they’re more direct, putting words to emotions that they never let Steve hear.
It’s one of the few bits of advice his father has given him, the last time his mom stormed out angry – he doesn’t remember exactly when it was. Before Christmas, probably. “Steven, when your wife tells you you’ve done something wrong, it’s easier not to argue with her. Buy her gifts; flowers always, jewellery sometimes, remind her why she likes you, and be ready for when it happens again. Apologise if you must, but don’t ever beg for it.”
Will this happen again?
It’s not the first time he’s bought Nancy roses, but its the first time he’s bought Nancy roses like this. Is this- is this a pattern he wants to start? With someone who can’t even tell him that they love him? Even his mom still tells his father that she loves him – often that she hates to, but she still does and that’s the important thing. Remind her why she likes you – he doesn’t want someone who only likes him for what he can give them. Same as how he realised with Nancy he likes her, not just having a pretty girl on his arm. She may have been a challenge, once, a trophy of good grades good girl to win, but he’d fallen a mile for Nancy Wheeler once he’d given it half an inch.
He’s in love with Nancy, but he doesn’t think she’s in love with him. Not with him, and not even with the status or stability his place in the world affords her. Not when it’s been almost a year and she can say that every time she’s said it is a lie – it shouldn’t be that easy to dismiss it all, surely? Or is Steve just clinging on to it for the wrong reasons, to keep the one stable thing he’s had since that day at the Byers’ house when he’d gone to apologise to Jonathan.
Nope.
Roses, apology, get back together with Nancy. He can deal with the rest of it later.
He’ll start with an apology. He could be more understanding – he’d barely known Barbara, after all, but she’d been Nancy’s best friend, irreplaceable. It still hurt Steve, still cut deep, and surely they could work together to help it hurt less? Never not at all, Steve understands that, but there has to be a way for them to work together on this, on the nightmares and panic attacks and whatever else. It’s not worth breaking up over when they love each other.
Maybe they’re not in love with each other.
Steve runs over the words of his apology over in his head – and they just don’t feel right. I’m sorry? What the hell am I sorry for?
“Steve!” He looks up at the sound of his name – finds Dustin Henderson, one of Mike’s friends, walking towards him from the direction of the Wheeler house. “Are those for Mr or Mrs Wheeler?”
What kind of a question is that? “No?”
“Good.” Dustin says, snatching them from his hand.
“Hey, what the hell?”
“Nancy isn’t home.” He says it so casually, like it’s not another punch to Steve’s gut, rings with Tommy’s voice in his head – Jonathan and the princess skipped town yesterday. Still haven’t shown. But that must just be a coincidence, right?
There’s no such thing as coincidence.
Steve genuinely hadn’t considered that he might be his mother in this situation, had genuinely believed that Nancy and Jonathan would never do that to him even after Tommy’s words, but now… “Where is she?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Dustin is just walking to his car like they do this all the time, like they live in a world where he could have shotgun rights to Steve’s beemer. “We have bigger problems than your love life. Do you still have that bat?”
“Bat?” Please not that bat. “What bat?”
“The one with the nails?” Fucking that bat – it’s probably not one of those, though. The nightmares have barely stopped.
“Why?”
“I’ll explain it on the way.” Dustin opens the passenger side door – and Steve really doesn’t have a way out of this.
“Now?”
“Now!”
🥀💛👑
It is exactly one of those.
A fucking baby demogorgon – why couldn’t Dustin catch stupid little lizards like other kids? Right now Steve would even help him, would listen to his inevitable lecture on lizard biology just to not be doing this.
Because his face opened up and he ate my cat.
Fucking Dustin – Steve is never, ever, letting him live this down. He doesn’t know what his plans for the evening were – he doubts Nancy would’ve accepted his offer of Sal’s and the drive-in, even if he had fixed it – but camping out in the junkyard with Dustin, Sinclair, and fucking Hargrove’s little sister is definitely Not It.
“So you really fought one of these things before?” Max asks, equal parts curious and dubious.
Steve nods, not really sure what else to say. The action of messing with the lighter is helping him not think too hard about what he’s going to do if D’Art has grown any more.
“And you’re like, totally 100% sure it wasn’t a bear?”
Dustin snaps. “Shit. Don’t be an idiot. Okay? It wasn’t a bear. Why are you even here if you don’t believe us? Just go home.”
“Jeez. Someone’s cranky. Past your bedtime?” Max quips as she climbs up the ladder to join Lucas on the roof, and Steve can’t help but huff a laugh – he likes her, against his will. Still.
“Whatever you were aiming for,” Steve tells him. “That wasn’t it.”
“Thanks, Steve.” Dustin resumes pacing. “The line between caring and not caring is hard.”
“Not caring is overrated. It works, but it’s overrated.”
“Why d’you say it?”
Steve shrugs. He doesn’t really know – he doubts it’s what I’m meant to say will go down well with Dustin.
“Is that what you did with Nancy?” Dustin asks, and Steve nearly drops his lighter. He forgot for a moment that Dustin is primarily His (Ex-?)Girlfriend’s Little Brother’s Friend and not much else to Steve.
“At first.” Steve says. “Then I cared too much – that’s why you’ve got to find the line.”
Whatever Dustin would’ve said to that is cut off by loud growling from outside. They throw themselves up against the grated window.
“Lucas, what’s going on?” Dustin calls up to him.
“Hold on!” Lucas calls back.
“You see him?” Dustin asks, crowding closer to the window.
“No.” It’s too dark to see much of anything outside their clearing trap, too many shadows cast.
“Lucas, what’s going on?” Dustin calls again.
“Hold on!”
The growling doesn’t stop, a deep, ominous rumble from the dark. Too loud to be from something as small as Dustin guessed.
“I’ve got eyes! Ten o’clock! Ten o’clock!”
“There.” Steve spots him.
“What’s he doing?” Dustin questions.
“I don’t know.” They wait a moment, but- “he’s not taking the bait. Why is he not taking the bait?”
“Maybe he’s not hungry.”
Steve’s stomach drops. “Maybe he’s sick of cow.”
He stands back, tries to think for a moment. Is he really going to go out there? What other choice has he got. He can’t let a baby fucking demogorgon loose in Hawkins. He can’t handle another Barbara Holland.
“Steve? Steve, what are you doing?” Dustin follows him halfway to the door. “Steve?”
Steve chucks him the lighter. “Just get ready.”
He steps out cautiously, wields the bat high. He can hear D’Art chittering just in the edge of the shadow. Maybe it’s stupid, but he whistles a little like it might tempt the thing out towards him.
“C’mon buddy, dinner time.” He makes his way towards the pile of meat. “Human tastes better than cat, I promise.”
Any confidence he had evaporates when D’Art lopes out of the fog – much, much bigger than a dog.
“Steve! Watch out!”
“I’m a little busy here!” Steve is not taking his eyes off the thing in front of him.
“Three o’clock! Three o’clock!”
What the fuck do you mean three o’clock?
There’s three fucking more.
“Steve!” The door opens. “Abort! Abort!”
D’Art’s face unfurls, those goddamn face petals that haunt his dreams with all those fucking teeth.
Steve dives as the one in front runs at him, across the hood of the car and narrowly misses a second one launching at him. He brings the bat up in an arc as he lands on his knees, wallops another in the face. It’s just enough to give him chance to run, the kids gathered in the door yelling for him to get back.
He throws himself in the door, Max asks a question but Steve is looking around for something to hold the door shut. It’s no use, the baby demogorgon tears through it – Steve reaches for the bat, brings it down and brings it down, again and again.
We’re at the old junkyard, and we are going to die!
It stops moving eventually – Steve looks up in time to watch Max’s gaze drift up to the one on the roof. She screams, Steve shoves her out of the way, putting himself between them and it. He won’t have much of a swing at this angle, but what else can he do?
He’s fully preparing for that to be it – but just as it starts to lean into the hatch, it looks away, like someone called it’s attention. It growls as if in response – and is gone.
They’re all gone.
“What happened?” He hears Lucas ask in a harsh whisper.
“I don’t know.” Max answers, tone matched.
“Steve scared ‘em off.” Dustin says, and Steve has to bite back a scoff. How scary do you think I am kid?
“No. No way. They’re going somewhere.”
🥀💛👑
Of course fucking off into the woods to chase not-so-baby demogorgons brings them out near Hawkins Lab.
Of course that’s where fucking Nancy is.
Of course, of course, the monsters were heading into the lab – and of course there was nothing they can do. They piled out of the cars at the Byers with the same urgency they piled into them at the labs, Steve and the kids pulled in with Hopper. Steve had done his best to fill Hopper in on the way – all Hopper had really done was swear a lot under his breath, answer what he could; but not everything. Somethings just didn’t have answers that could be spoken aloud.
The lab’s a lost cause.
Nancy stands at Jonathan’s shoulder as he talks to his brother, and Steve hates that even through the ache of it all, it doesn’t feel out of place. He’s known the whole time that Jonathan had feelings for Nancy, but seeing it now, seeing it reciprocated...
“I don’t know how many people are there! I don’t know how many people are left alive!” Hopper snaps down the phone.
Right. Priorities. Steve turns away, to the kids gathered around the kitchen table – another one pulled into all this bullshit.
They didn’t believe you, did they, Dustin says and Steve resists the urge to ask would you?
The whole makes no sense – Nancy never explaining it slow enough for him to take it all in, and he’s left piecing it together from what she snaps at him sometimes, and now he feels like he’s lacking most of the foundation he needs to have any chance of keeping up this time.
“Like the Mind Flayer.”
“The what?”
“What?” Steve’s glad not to be the only one who doesn’t get it. He might struggle to get things to come out of his mouth, but he’s not entirely stupid.
Listening to Dustin explain what it is, is no less surreal than Mike’s explanation of a hive mind – Steve tries to think of something to ground it in his head, but life slipped sideways last November and apparently it never fucking slipped back.
🥀💛👑
Steve is almost grateful to be side-lined – give himself a moment to observe the break-up, completed – but these kids, god these fucking kids. He almost admires it, their refusal to do nothing when there’s the slightest chance they’ll make a difference. He does admire it.
He can’t handle another Barb Holland.
“I said does everybody understand that?” They look everywhere but him. “I need a yes.”
The Camaro’s engine revving. Max is first to the window, with Lucas. “It’s my brother. He can’t know I’m here. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill us.”
It’s the way Max’s voice sounds that makes him know he’s about to lie his ass off and hope it works. He couldn’t give a shit about Hargrove, truly, but no one should worry about their brother the way he worries about his father.
Steve steps out to meet him.
He’s just another monster to put himself in front of. He should even be able to talk his way out of this one. Hargrove pulls up, already smoking.
“Am I dreaming or is that you, Harrington?” Steve hates the way Hargrove’s gaze flicks across him.
“Yeah it’s me, don’t cream your pants.” Steve heads towards him, tries to seem frustrated and confused, not fucking nervous and wary. Hargrove shoves his jacket in the car and gets out – he’s dressed pretty fancy. Steve notes interrupted plans as an additional bit of pissed off to contend with.
“What are you doing here amigo?”
“I could ask you the same thing. Amigo.”
“Look for my stepsister.” Stepsister, not sister. Max says brother. “A little birdie told me she was here.”
“Huh, that’s weird, I don’t know her.”
“Small? Redhead? Bit of a bitch.” Well, that’s harsh.
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Sorry, buddy.”
Steve was almost the boy in front of him. Is still too close to it. Too willing to just say shit. Think shit.
Hargrove just laughs as he’s hit.
Steve doesn’t remember anything after the plate.
He comes to in a car.
With Max driving.
The panic he’s been holding at bay all day hits like a goddamn truck.
He tumbles out of the car – can’t even consider how they got him into it – and just knows that he’s got another concussion out of all of this. He can’t defend the kids like this, and he can’t let them go on their own – not into the tunnels, not anywhere. He can’t let them go, and he can’t make them stay – they’re not listening to him, of course they’re not listening to him.
“The bottom line is a party member requires assistance, and it is our duty to provide that assistance. I know you promised Nance you would keep us safe,” Dustin holds out a rucksack with his bat strapped to it, “so keep us safe.”
Steve hates this fucking kid.
He takes the bag.