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Steve will never get used to the abrupt veer into normalcy his life takes after something from the Upside Down comes chasing them down.
One minute it’s the crack of his bat and the kids screaming and the need to protect, protect, protect, and then he’s standing in the dark in the foyer of his empty house, alone.
The bat is back in his car. He has a shift at family video in a few days. It’d be unbelievable if it weren’t the fourth time he’s been through it and he didn’t know what to expect by now.
He startles at loud noises, can’t look at Christmas lights without dizzying nausea, gets anxious when he goes too long without hearing from Dustin and Max and Nancy. He’s got memory problems from the amount of concussions he’s had and he hasn’t slept through the night without waking up screaming even once in four years.
He’s okay though, really. He’s fine.
He flicks on the light to the foyer and stumbles in the direction of the stairs and towards the bathroom. When he sits on the floor of the shower he pulls his knees to his chest and drops his head to them and lets the hot water wash away the blood and dirt and terror of the past week. He knows from experience that it will take a lot more than a shower to feel normal again, but it doesn’t hurt. When the water finally starts running clear again he has to will himself to stand, pull on clean pants, and collapse into his bed.
Tonight’s nightmare is a familiar one - he hesitates outside the Byers’ house for too long and by the time he gets inside the demogorgon has moved on from Jonathan and looks up from where it’s crouched over Nancy’s body, blood dripping from its open, roaring mouth. Christmas lights. A scream. The pounding of the monster chasing him as he runs away.
He wakes up with a gasp, drenched in sweat but shivering and heaving for breath.
It takes him a minute to realize the pounding in his dream is real and still happening, coming from the front door maybe. He’s so exhausted he doesn’t even have it in him to panic and either way everyone involved with the Upside Down are obsessive and lack boundaries and would just open the door if it was an emergency. Most of them even know where he hides the extra key.
Whoever it is pounds again so he heaves a sigh and pushes himself up. Runs a hand through his hair, the same hand over his face, yawns, and then finally gets up to answer the door.
He’s expecting Dustin, who undoubtedly can’t wait to ask Steve about every single thing that happened while they were separated. Or maybe Robin, who sometimes comes over to keep him company when neither of them can sleep to snore in his ear and hog his bed.
But when he swings the door open it’s Nancy instead, whose expression changes so swiftly from determined to unsure that he’d be concerned if he had the energy to spare for anything other than keeping himself upright.
“Nancy?” he says stupidly.
Before he embarrasses himself further with an awkward attempt at conversation she looks down at his uncovered torso and gasps.
“Steve! You haven’t been checked out yet?”
She grabs his arms and turns him so she can see his injuries better. He’s so bewildered by this turn of events that he just lets it happen without protest.
He and Nancy have barely spoken in the year and a half since they broke up - mostly passing hellos when they’re both dropping kids off at the same location - and now here she is with her warm hands all over his naked chest, stomach, and arms. It would be a lot for him even if he wasn’t barely awake and freshly wounded from yet another near-death experience.
“Why’d you run off? You could’ve gone to the hospital with everyone else,” she says. He tries not to prickle at her tone. Tries not to say something cruel about her caring about him suddenly or not having the right to tell him what to do.
He’s just cranky. She doesn’t deserve any shit from him.
“I just wanted to get some sleep, Nance, I’m fine,” he sighs. She frowns up at him.
“Did you just wake up? It’s almost eight o’clock,” she says, and he looks past her for the first time and takes in the cool spring air and the purple sunset sky.
“I was tired.”
“Steve.”
“I’m fine, Nancy. It doesn’t even hurt.”
Her frown deepens like he’s lying to her, which he isn’t. He should probably be more concerned by that than he is but it’s not like he wants to be in pain.
“Look, Robin was right. Maybe not about the rabies but we have no idea what those bats could have been carrying and you definitely need stitches. Put a shirt on and I’m taking you to the hospital.”
He knows better than to argue with Nancy Wheeler when she has that tone. Wordlessly, he turns around and heads for his room, leaving the door open behind him.
There’s a split second when he sees himself in the mirror in his bedroom for the first time since he got home and cringes. His hair is flat and unwashed and there’s a blank, dead-eyed expression he doesn’t recognize on his own face.
Oh well. Nancy has seen him at his worst. There’s no need to impress her anymore and even if there was, he doesn’t worry about things like that so much anymore. His top priorities for the next few days are to sleep as much as possible and to see Robin and the kids with his own eyes to confirm they’re alright, and then to sleep some more, preferably.
Nancy’s aimlessly wandering around when he comes downstairs, looking at pictures on the wall like she’s never been here before and hasn’t seen all this already. Pretending. The word still makes his stomach turn.
“Ready to go?” he says, and she nods.
The ride is quiet and tense but not awkward like he was expecting. Nancy grips the steering wheel like someone might rip it out of her hands and only takes them off to fidget endlessly with her hair, her clothes, the rearview mirror.
“Are you okay?” he finally asks.
“I um - I don’t like going to the hospital anymore.”
Steve thinks back to the past few years. It comes back to him suddenly.
“You and Jonathan last year, you were there when all the Mind Flayer stuff was happening, right?”
Nancy nods one, tersely, but she doesn’t say anything else.
“You don’t have to tell me. I get it, I’m not so good with hospitals anymore either,” he says.
She bites her lip and only turns to look at him once they’re stopped at a red light.
“Our bosses at the Hawkins Post got possessed by the Mind Flayer and tried to kill us at the hospital and we had to - we had to kill them,” she says. The words seem casual but there’s a weight behind them that tells him enough.
“Christ, Nance, what are you doing bringing me to the hospital? You don’t have to go back there for me.”
Nancy shrugs him off. They both watch the light turn green. There’s nobody behind them, and Nancy doesn’t move to start driving again.
“I can do it,” she says firmly. He looks her over, notices how she still hasn’t relaxed a single muscle and her eyes are tight at the corners the way he knows they get when she’s trying not to cry. He wonders how many people she’s told about this, how many people know.
He reaches to put the car in park.
“Steve?”
He leans over the center console of the car and pulls her into a tight hug. It’s been years and years and he loves this girl so much and he’s so, so sad for all the things she’s had to survive. It’s not about being in love with her though, no matter how much Eddie and Robin and Dustin hint and tease. She broke his heart and never really apologized and he isn’t interested in dating her. But he loves her, and the past week has taught him that it might be possible for them to be friends.
“I don’t know if anyone’s told you this but they weren’t your bosses anymore. They were gone way before you had to kill them, Nancy, it wasn’t your fault.”
Her arms tighten around his back and stay there while she breathes into his shoulder. When they were dating he wasn’t so good at talking about this kind of stuff with her. It was easier to push it down and try to keep going than to dwell on all the ways they’d been wounded. He knows better now.
He can’t tell if she’s crying - if so it’s very quiet - but he’ll sit here and hold her together for as long as she needs. Or at least until a car honks and startles them out of their moment. They pull away from each other abruptly so Nancy can start driving again, but she’s not so tense anymore and there’s something close to a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.
“Thank you, Steve.”
“Anytime, Nance.”
“You said you weren’t so good with hospitals either?” she asks, cautious.
“Robin and I got tortured by Russians in the underground base we got stuck in. There was a whole table of medical equipment.”
He tries not to think about it. Robin’s back pressed against his and the bone saw and the way he’d been so sure he wasn’t going to make it out of that one.
“Oh my god, Steve,” Nancy says. She flails an arm out towards him and he catches her hand, holds it to his chest.
“I’m okay. But I tried to go to the dentist last year and had a panic attack and threw up, so this should be interesting.”
She gives him an alarmed look.
“I’ll be okay, really,” he says.
They only let go of each other's hands long enough to get out of the car and meet each other at the front of it. Steve stares up at the brick building and tries to take steady breaths.
“You don’t have to go in with me,” he offers. “You already did a lot just getting me here, I can find a way home after.”
“I’m not leaving you here by yourself. We’ll go together and we’ll be okay.”
Steve loves her so much he wants to start yelling about it. He grabs her hand and holds on tight instead.
He doesn’t have an infection - a normal one or one of the Upside Down variety - but he needs more stitches than the toddlers he’s friends with could probably count.
Lying back on the hospital bed while a doctor puts a needle through him reminds him so strongly of the Russians that it very nearly sends him into a panic attack. Nancy picks up on his distress even through her own and strokes one of her hands over his head again and again until he’s so calm he might fall asleep.
He doesn’t take his eyes off of her though. Can’t look away from the sweet, fond look on her face.
She watches him back, silent. The window behind her is dark now that the sun has set and the white walls are nothing like the metallic glean of the Russian bunker and Nancy is here and all of it roils through him like a storm.
He wants to ask about Jonathan, about the Halloween party. He wants to tell her that they were going to start ripping his fingernails off. He doesn’t want to talk about any of it ever again.
The doctor leans further over him and his muscles tense. Nancy starts running her fingers through his hair rather than just over his head and the breath he’d been holding releases all at once.
“You’re okay,” she says quietly. He nods.
Everything feels slow and syrupy and distant. He wants to go home and go back to bed. He wants to go back to four years ago when the worst injury he’d had was the arm he broke playing soccer when he was nine and alternate dimensions were a scientific theory he wasn’t aware of. He wants to lay here with Nancy’s hand in his hair for the rest of his life.
The doctor finishes up and pats him on the shoulder. Tells him how to keep his wounds clean and what his pain meds dosage is and to take it easy. Steve nods once and lets Nancy pull him upright with a hand around his forearm and her arm under his back. When she lifts his shirt up he ducks into it and tries not to think about how intimate of a gesture it is.
He catches her hand as they walk through the corridors, unsure where in the hospital the worst of it took place but unwilling to leave her to go through it alone. They take one step towards the elevator before he comes back to himself and freezes. Another thing to add to the list. Christmas lights, loud noises, the smell of gasoline, elevators. Nancy doesn’t ask when he leads them to the stairs instead.
When they get to his house neither of them moves. It’s been nice to spend time with her again and he wishes he could invite her inside without crossing boundaries. He doesn’t want anything from her except for her company and the steady comfort she’s been providing since she showed up tonight, but there’s no good way to ask.
“Are you going to be okay alone?” she asks. Steve nods.
“I’ll be alright. I mostly just want to sleep.”
There’s a prolonged pause.
“Steve -”
“Nancy-”
They both stop and look at each other.
“I missed you,” she says.
It cuts through him like nothing else. The urge to snap rises in him again and he reigns it in for the second time in a few hours. He wants to remind her she’s the one who broke up with him, pretended to love him for god only knows how long, moved on with Jonathan, and stopped speaking to him.
“I missed you too,” he says instead. It’s true even if it’s not the whole truth but it doesn’t matter anyways. Nancy has grown as much as he has since they were together. She dove into the Upside Down without hesitation to try to save him and she showed up today to bring him to the hospital despite having no obligation to. Those aren’t the actions of a person who doesn’t love him.
“Do you think we could be friends again? I just - I really liked Robin and I think if you got to know him you and Jonathan would be friends and-”
Steve has never seen Nancy ramble before. It’s cute.
“I think that would be fun Nancy, give me a call sometime and we can all hang out, okay? It’d be nice to have more friends my age,” he jokes, and revels in the smile that dawns over her face.
“Okay. Now get out of my car before my parents figure out I’m gone.”
“You snuck out to drive me to the hospital?”
“Don’t forget to take your meds!”
“Nancy!”
“Keep changing your bandages!” she calls, ignoring him. He stands in front of his house and laughs as she pulls away.
Friends. It’s a nice thought. He can’t wait.
He wakes up in the middle of the night from a nightmare about Dustin getting eaten by Dart and finds Max next to him, curled up and asleep in his bed. It’s not exactly surprising considering how much comfort they all get from company at night, but it’s the first time Max has been the one to show up at his house. Usually it’s Dustin or Robin, and he’s sure it’s the same with everyone else. Things are just a little less scary when there’s someone next to you, he gets it.
He spends a while looking her over. She’s clearly stolen one of the hoodies he left lying around his room, and she’s curled up on her side facing him and sleeping peacefully.
It’s not that he hadn’t noticed her pulling away from everyone last year but he’s not sure he realized how bad things were until they were going through everyone’s counseling files and he saw the pages and pages of notes. And that had been nothing compared to the terror he felt watching Vecna lift her ten feet in the air while he could do nothing but watch and try to grab her sneaker like maybe he could pull her down to safety.
Hopefully the fact that she’s shown up tonight means she’ll start reaching out again, but he’ll ask her about it in the morning. For now he shifts closer and puts an arm carefully around her back and tucks her head under his chin. The urge to protect is so strong for Steve that he wonders for the millionth time how Billy could have ever felt anything but overwhelming adoration for this kid.
Thinking of Max cowering from Billy for years and then trying to carry the weight of his death alone makes a surge of anger wash over him. He lets himself feel it for a while before he lets it go. He’s got Max now and he’ll make sure she’s okay. She doesn’t stir when he leans down to kiss her forehead or when he pulls her closer to his chest, and he drifts off to the sound of her even breathing.
Steve wakes up to someone poking very gently at his stitches. He slowly opens his eyes and finds Max sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed, dwarfed in his high school basketball hoodie and fidgeting with his bandages.
“What’s up, Red.”
She looks up at him and jerks her hands back.
“Sorry, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Nancy took me to the hospital last night, I’m all stitched up and I don’t even have Upside Down rabies.”
Her eyes widen almost comically. “Was that a concern?”
“Robin was concerned about it. The rest of us not so much.”
Max ducks her head and stays silent.
“So Nancy took you to the hospital, huh?” she finally asks, smirking.
Steve grabs the nearest pillow and knocks her in the side of the head with it. He doesn’t manage to hold back his fond grin at her peals of laughter echoing around the room but he isn’t trying very hard.
“What is it with you little gremlins being obsessed with my love life,” he says to the ceiling. Max is still giggling where she’d collapsed next to him.
“I’m just teasing,” she says.
“Well tease about something else, would you?”
She’s quiet for a moment, thinking. He instantly regrets inviting her mockery.
“Remember when I threatened you with a lawyer and it worked?”
Steve picks up another pillow and gently holds it over her face like he’s trying to smother her.
“I hate you,” he says over her muffled laughter. The worst part is that he actually adores her and thinks she’s hilarious even when she’s bullying him.
“You want to go get breakfast?” he asks. She yanks the pillow off her face to look at him.
“Duh, but you have to shower first.”
“You are so mean to me.”
“It’s affectionate. It’s like when you call us little shithead goblins but you still drive us to the arcade.”
He sighs. Life was easier when the people in his life never looked past the surface and didn’t know him beyond the image they created of him. Worse, for sure, but easier.
“Okay, I shower, you put your shoes on and we’ll be ready to go,” he says, and takes the hand she offers to pull him up.
Later they can talk about Billy and Vecna and why she biked across town to come sleep next to him last night. For now he’ll let them both enjoy some levity and also waffles. He’s going to eat so many waffles.
When they get to the diner they run into Nancy and Mike in the parking lot and then all four of them run into Jonathan and Will and El as soon as they walk in. The kids are insistent that they sit together so they push a few tables together and order enough waffles and pancakes and bacon to feed a small army.
Steve sits next to Max and Will and across from Jonathan and Mike and Nancy.
“Everyone had the same idea this morning, huh?” Steve says to Jonathan and Nancy over the sound of the kids bickering over the best breakfast food. Mike is staunchly on the side of pancakes but Will and El have teamed up to defend waffles while Max listens and rolls her eyes. Jonathan watches on with poorly concealed affection.
“Our mom has been unbearable about all of this and we had to get out of the house,” Nancy says.
“We didn’t have any food so my mom told me to come feed the kids.”
Neither of them ask how he ended up with Max but he supposes it isn’t exactly surprising for one of the kids to be trailing around behind him anymore.
“That is stupid,” El says firmly. Steve looks over at them. Three of the four kids are glaring daggers at each other and Max, always one for chaos, has a look of pure delight on her face. “You are being stupid.”
“That isn’t a valid counter-point,” Mike says.
“Yes it is and she’s right. The little cups in the waffles hold the syrup, it’s so good,” Will says.
El nods vigorously.
Mike frowns. “Yeah but then they get soggy.”
“No they don’t.” El bangs on the table with her fist and all the silverware rattles.
Right when Steve catches Nancy’s eye and silently communicates that it’s time to intervene, the waitress shows up with all their plates and the kids are blissfully silent while they stuff their faces.
It’s great to see them actually acting like children but it would be less great if it got them kicked out of Steve’s favorite diner, he thinks.
He realizes as soon as there’s food in front of him that he can’t remember the last time he ate and he’s ravenously hungry. It seems everyone else is in the same boat because nobody says a word for the first ten minutes of their meal. The kids gradually start a conversation back up, this one free of arguments and bickering.
“One day they’re fighting inter-dimensional monsters and the next they’re arguing passionately about the merits of waffles versus pancakes,” Nancy says, laughing.
“Max threatened me with a lawyer the other day.” He’s not sure why he says it until Jonathan laughs so hard he starts coughing and Nancy has to smack him on the back a few times.
Steve and Jonathan haven’t had time outside of near death experiences without their past in the way to actually get to know each other. This is as good of a starting point as any, he figures - the three of them with their kids and a bunch of good food.
“Yeah but did it work though?” Jonathan asks, looking up from under his bangs like he’s still not sure he’s allowed to joke with Steve like this.
“It worked!” Max says brightly from across the table.
That sets Jonathan off again, and Nancy too, and then Steve is laughing even though it’s at his own expense.
“Steve is a pushover,” Max adds sagely.
“Watch it, Mayfield, who’s buying you breakfast right now?”
"My point exactly."
“Jonathan’s a pushover too,” Will adds. The affronted look on Jonathan’s face almost makes Steve start laughing again. He’s only ever seen Will be a perfect angel - to see him be an obnoxious little brother feels like a gift.
“What the fuck, Nancy won’t even let me in her room half the time,” Mike adds, loudly.
“Mike,” Nancy hisses, “language!”
“Shit,” El says helpfully.
“Ass,” Will adds.
And then Max, “Damn.”
Steve puts his face into his hands but not before he sees an elderly couple two tables away frown at them.
“What?” Max says. “You can’t tell us you didn’t swear in high school.”
“You don’t want to be like me in highschool Max,” he says. He looks up to catch Jonathan’s eye and feels some kind of understanding pass between them.
“You should be aiming to be better than us,” Jonathan adds, staring at the kids seriously.
If you’d told Steve five years ago that he and Jonathan Byers would be co-older brothering a bunch of preteens together he would have laughed. And yet.
“Jonathan it’s ten a.m., it’s too early for a pep talk,” Will says through a mouthful of Mike’s pancake. They’ve all been stealing food off of each other’s plates all morning even though they’re eating mostly the same things. Steve will never understand their frankly bizarre rituals of communication and affection.
“We love your pep talks though,” El offers.
“Yeah but not right now,” Will says.
Steve can’t help laughing. He knows they’re not biologically related but Will and El look like twins sitting there harassing Jonathan in sync.
He spends another hour or so joking around with Janathan and Nancy and the kids over food before he gets up like he’s going to the bathroom and pays for all their meals.
Nancy and Jonathan predictably throw a fit.
“Steve, there's three of us, at least let me give you some money for me,” Jonathan says.
“No.”
“Come on, you don’t need to do things like that,” Nancy pleads.
“What, buy breakfast for my friends and our crowd of little siblings? No, I don’t need to but I want to,” he says. See, he’s not a total pushover, he can be stubborn as hell too.
The kids end the conversation by cheerily calling, “thanks Steve!” and heading for the doors.
Nancy and Jonathan finally relent and thank Steve. It shouldn’t feel like such a victory but he pumps his fist as soon as they turn their backs to chase the kids down.
There appears to have been an impromptu meeting in the thirty seconds they’ve been alone, because Max comes running up to Steve and says, “I’m going home with the Byers.”
“Me too,” Mike adds.
“Okay,” he says. “If that’s okay with Jonathan and Nancy.”
Max looks at him and Jonathan gives her a dorky thumbs up.
“You left your bike at my house, you want me to drop it off?” Steve asks. Max frowns like she hadn’t thought of it.
“I’ll bring her by on my bike and then Steve can take us home,” Mike offers. The kids used to argue about their overprotective insistence that nobody go anywhere alone but they agree to it wordlessly now. Steve is grateful and endlessly endeared even though it’s a result of their constant near-death experiences and collective paranoia.
Will and El and Mike give him brief one-armed hugs with thank yous for breakfast. He squishes Max into a full hug, though.
“Hey, I didn’t get the chance to ask before, you okay?”
Max nods against his shoulder.
“Just didn’t want to be alone. I know I have to talk about things and I want to, but I’m good right now,” she tells him. He believes her.
“Okay, someday soon though.”
“Sure, bye Steve!”
He and Nancy watch everyone get into their cars and leave and spend a few minutes standing in the warm sun in the parking lot. His sides have started to ache and he’s tired despite sleeping nearly forty-eight hours in a row and now that he has food in him he’s ready to go back to sleep.
“I’m sorry,” Nancy says. Steve spends a few minutes waiting for that to make sense before he realizes it doesn’t.
“For what?”
“For how we broke up,” she says quietly, and he turns to look at her and finds her eyes full of tears.
“Woah, hey, what do you mean? Where is this coming from?”
“I got drunk and told you I didn’t love you. God I was awful. And you didn’t even do anything wrong! We were just coping differently and I was so, so cruel to you. And today you came and you made jokes with me and Jonathan like there wasn’t this thing between us and bought us breakfast and -”
Steve yanks her into a hug, unable to listen to any more.
“Okay, that’s enough of that. You’re right. It was awful and it really messed me up.” Nancy tightens her arms around him. “But I really appreciate the apology and I’m more than willing to be your friend, Nance. I really do love you.”
“I love you too,” she says, and he knows that she means it for the first time since Barb, and it makes all the difference in the world.
When the kids come by later there’s more of them than promised but it’s okay because Lucas wraps him in an affectionate hug as soon as Steve’s up off the couch. “Glad you’re okay,” he says.
“You too, buddy.”
Lucas holds on tight for another few seconds and then lets him go with a smile. Steve loves this kid. He got to know him much better after spending the summer helping him get ready for basketball and the thing about Lucas is he’s just as smart and stubborn as the rest of them but he’s quicker to be sweet than them, and Steve loves it.
Dustin goes in like he’s going to hug him too and then he has the audacity to lift Steve’s shirt up over his bandages and look him over with a critical eye.
“Dude!” Steve says, yanking his shirt back down.
“I told you he got it checked out yesterday,” Max says from next to Mike.
“No boundaries,” Steve huffs. Dustin squints at him.
“‘You sure you’re okay?” he asks. Steve thinks about Dustin watching him dive into the lake only to get separated and find out Steve was in the Upside Down and gravely wounded.
“Yeah buddy,” he says, much more gently. He leans forwards and hugs him. Appreciates the way all of these kids know to avoid his injuries when they squish him into a death-grip. “I’m all good. Got lots of stitches and all I’ve been doing is sleeping.”
“Sleeping and getting breakfast with all of my friends and not me.”
Steve rolls his eyes and starts herding everyone into the car, magnanimously ignoring that. He drops them off one by one and watches them until their doors are shut behind them and locked and a light turns on.
Things go well with Nancy and Robin but there’s still an odd tension between him and Jonathan. Like they’re too scared to hurt each other so they’re too cautious to joke around like actual friends. It stays that way until Nancy’s birthday.
He’s got Jonathan and a few of the kids in his house making birthday cards - there’s glitter absolutely fucking everywhere - when his mom comes home earlier than expected. He tenses up when he hears the key in the lock and watches Jonathan tense up in response. The kids are too busy covering themselves in Elmer’s glue like toddlers to notice anything else.
His mom comes into the dining room slowly, like she’s put off by the raucous the kids are causing.
“Hi mom.”
“Steve, I didn’t know you were having friends over.” There’s an edge to her voice he doesn’t like. He wants to point out that she didn’t know because they’ve been gone for a week again but doesn’t want to start a fight in front of everyone else.
“Yeah we’re making cards for Nancy’s birthday. This is Jonathan, Lucas, Will, Max, and . . . Jane.”
He tries to telepathically communicate that he needs them to please be charming rather than complete shitheads just this once. Apparently it works because the four of them sit up straight and say “Hi Mrs. Harrington.” in perfect unison.
“Jonathan and Will Byers, is it?”
It makes him nervous that she’s honed in on them but he tries not to show it. Jonathan smiles politely at her. “It is, I hope you don’t mind us coming over.”
“Of course not,” she says, and then immediately eyes the glitter all over her expensive table with disdain. To be fair it is a lot of glitter.
“And how are you both and your mother doing after that incident a few years ago?”
“Mom,” Steve warns.
“Oh I’m just curious. You know how people talk in this town and your mother always seemed so nice except for-”
“Enough,” Steve snaps. “These are my friends. You don’t get to come in here and interrogate them about something private and you definitely don’t get to insult them. Jonathan and I are friends. Will is one of the best kids I know. Leave it.”
The kids stare at him with wide eyes across the table. He doesn’t like to raise his voices at or near them, especially Will and Max, but he can’t help it.
“Alright,” his mother says primly. “Do you have a minute to speak in the kitchen, Steve?”
He follows her without a word, gently patting Jonathan on the shoulder on his way out like that will make up for anything.
“I just don’t understand why you’re spending time around that family, Steve, you know what people say about them. Not to mention that Buckley girl. And god only knows what they’ll say about us when they realize -”
“I said enough,” he snaps. “Those are my best friends, my family, and I meant it when I said you don’t get to insult them. What would the town say if they found out you’ve been leaving your kid alone since I hit high school, huh?”
She winces like he’s hit her. “Now you know that isn’t fair -” she starts.
“No. It isn’t. And it isn’t fair for you to make judgements about people and their children based on town gossip. He’s my friend. You aren’t going to change that so let it go.”
“What happened to Carol and Tommy?”
“We’re not friends anymore. We haven’t been friends since my sophomore year of high school and you would know that if you spent any amount of time with me.”
He turns before she can respond and finds Jonathan, alone in the dining room, watching him carefully.
“Kids?” Steve asks.
“Asked them to get some more supplies out of the car.”
“Sorry you had to hear that.”
“No it’s okay. I appreciate you standing up for us like that.”
“You don’t have to sound surprised. I know I was an asshole to you but I am sorry. Your mom is like, the nicest person ever, Will is the sweetest kid in the world, and you’re one of my best friends, dude. Of course I’m not gonna let anyone say that shit to you.”
Jonathan reaches out to grab his hand. “Still, thanks.”
Steve squeezes his hand once and lets go. “Thanks for getting the kids out for that.”
Like they’ve been summoned, the four of them come stomping back into the room with armfuls of construction paper and markers. He and Jonathan spend the rest of the day cleaning up glitter like they’re hanging out with preschoolers and not fifteen year olds. They have fun anyways.
With Steve and Jonathan settled, Nancy and Robin and them get along so well he can hardly remember what it was like before he had these three for best friends.
It’s different from what he’s used to. He and Carol and Tommy partied and drank too much and made each other miserable.
He doesn’t drink anymore after the Russians gave him that truth serum.
He tried once when the nightmares were particularly awful and he couldn’t stop jumping at every noise and he just wanted to sleep, but he started to feel a little out of it and remembered giving the Russian doctor Dustin’s name and he’d thrown up and hasn’t picked up a drink since. He doesn’t want to feel out of control again. Can’t.
Nobody seems to mind. Mostly they watch movies and sleep at each other’s houses and collectively wrangle the kids. It’s fun, and easy, and he’s happier than he’s been in a long time even though the rest of his life isn’t so fun and easy.
As the anniversary of Starcourt approaches everyone gets tetchy and anxious. They tend to congregate without mentioning it or acknowledging why, and Steve has slept alone in his own bed three nights of the past two weeks.
The Hopper-Byers family has everyone over for dinner a few nights a week and refuses to let the kids bike or walk home. Nancy and Jonathan start coming into Family Video to rent movies but mostly to lean against the counter and chat with him and Robin. He catches Hopper quietly patrolling town more times than he ever has before.
Two nights before the anniversary he wakes up from a nightmare and he can’t calm down again. It’s just that these things followed a pattern in the first few years and what if this year is no different? What if the tunnels never closed up properly or the gate in the road by the trailer park or watergate reopened and they aren’t prepared.
He has to check. He’ll just go make sure everything’s in order, that’s all. It won’t take long. Thankfully nobody has spent the night so all he has to do is avoid waking up his parents when he leaves. He grabs his bat and a flashlight from his trunk and makes his way on foot for the field where they set the tunnels on fire.
He makes his way around town in the dark, tripping over branches in the woods and jumping at every small noise. None of the gates have reopened and everything seems fine but he can’t shake his panic. He’s decided he’ll just walk past everyone’s houses, too, just to be sure, when a police truck comes screeching to a stop in the middle of the road next to him. A window rolls down.
“Hop?”
“In the car. Now.”
“Is everything -”
“It wasn’t a request. Get in the car.”
Steve has heard that tone but never outside of life or death situations. He gets in the car and feels his earlier panic multiply by about a thousand with Hopper’s tense, painful silence.
“Is everyone okay?” Steve asks. “What happened, are the kids safe?”
“Are the kids safe.”
Steve has heard from Will that when Hopper starts ending questions with an even tone it means trouble.
“. . . yeah? You just seem really stressed.”
Hopper doesn’t answer him but his big hands tighten around the steering wheel and release over and over again all the way to the Byers house.
The second he’s out of the car Mrs. Byers is out the door and crushing him in a hug.
“Oh Steve, thank god,” she says breathlessly. Steve watches, baffled, as Hopper ignores them and goes into the house.
Mrs. Byers hands are shaking and she smells like cigarettes, a sure sign something is wrong and she’s terrified out of her mind. Steve hugs her back, mind racing with possibilities. Will is gone, or it’s Jonathan this time, or the monsters are back, or somebody’s come for El.
“What’s going on? Hop just grabbed me and didn’t say anything. Are the kids okay?”
“Are the kids okay?!”
He pulls away from Mrs. Byers to look at Nancy and Jonathan and Robin storming towards him from the front door. He’s a little concerned Robin’s going to hit him until she replaces Mrs. Byers and reaches her arms around his shoulders to clutch him in her own hug.
“I went to your house and you were gone and your parents didn’t know where you were and your car was there but your bat was gone and we couldn’t find you-”
“Okay honey,” Mrs. Byers says. “It’s alright, he’s right here.”
“You were worried about me?” he asks stupidly.
“Steve. We were fucking terrified,” Jonathan says. He’s too tired to process any of this - the tremor in Joyce’s hands and Nancy’s wide-eyed look and the way Robin is holding him so tight his ribs ache.
He chooses not to think too hard about it when Jonathan and Nancy finally come over to hug him and Robin and then they’re one big pile of arms and heads. Everyone is shaking. Steve tries to clutch them as tight as he can like maybe that will get them to stop.
“Okay,” Hop says from the doorway after a while. “Get him inside, let the kids see him, then we talk about this.”
His friends release him one by one and lead him into the house. The sight that greets him when he walks into the living room breaks his heart clean in half.
All six of the kids are sitting on the couch or on the floor in front of it, huddled together with pale, terrified faces. There are tears streaming slowly down Dustin’s face that he’s ignoring like he’s given up on trying to stop them.
Max is tucked under Lucas’ arm, but Lucas doesn’t look like he’s faring much better. Mike looks furious, and Will and El are the most pale and drawn. All of them are holding hands and clinging to each other and his heart clenches to see them look so young and small for the first time in so long.
He steps into the room and watches all of them sag in relief at the sight of him. He’s on the floor before them without thinking about it, and he lets Dustin tuck in under his chin and Max cling to his other side and everyone else pile around.
“Sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“We thought you were gone,” Will says.
“What the fuck were you doing? We’ve all been sitting here terrified out of our goddamn minds and Joyce and Hopper wouldn’t even let us help look and -”
“Mike,” Hopper says. “Enough. Steve, come into the kitchen. We need to talk.”
The kids gradually let go of him but none of them will really look at him. He pats a few heads and squeezes a few shoulders on his way to the kitchen anyways. He’s gonna have to buy them so much ice cream to make up for this.
Jonathan, Robin, Nancy, and Joyce are sitting around the kitchen table when he walks in, and Hopper is leaning against the sink glowering.
“Sit,” he says gruffly.
“We need to know what happened, Steve,” Mrs. Byers says.
“I woke up from a nightmare and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was worried so I went around and made sure all the gates were closed and stuff, that’s all. I didn’t mean to freak you guys out, I didn’t even think you’d notice I was out.”
“You went out in the middle of the night, alone, without telling anyone, and went to the most dangerous spots in our town.” He hates Nancy’s tone, hates it when she talks to him like he’s stupid, but the way Jonathan and Joyce are anxiously bouncing their legs and Hop is silently fuming tells him she may be right.
“Okay so I should have left a note,” he offers.
“You shouldn’t have gone at all!” Robin cries.
He looks to Hopper like maybe he’ll back him up. “You know better than to walk around in the woods at night around here.”
“If you were concerned you should have let us know,” Joyce says.
Steve frowns. “What and drag you all into potential danger? No way. I was fine.”
“What so it’s better if it’s you than us,” Jonathan says incredulously.
“Yes?”
Nancy looks close to tears. He eyes the doorway but none of the kids are eavesdropping which tells him more about how terrified they’ve been than anything else.
“Steve, what else has been going on with you?”
He’s not sure how to say any of it. That he wakes up from nightmares every night and he’s pretty sure he’s gonna die young and all the sudden there’s all these people around who need things from him and he’s not sure how to carry the weight of it all.
He shrugs.
“Nightmares,” Nancy offers. He nods.
“Anxiety, I guess. I just can’t help feeling like this will never be over and I’ve got to look out for the kids and -”
“Okay.” Hopper crouches in front of him and puts one hand on the side of his face and the other on his shoulder. “First of all the kids are not your responsibility alone. Me and Joyce are here, and so are Nancy and Jonathan and Robin. You’re a kid, too.”
Steve opens his mouth to protest and gets cut off again.
“Yes, you are. And it might not be over, but if something happens again we will deal with it together. Do you understand? No more sneaking off by yourself. You feel like that again and you call us.”
Joyce leans in to take his hand and strokes her thumb over his palm soothingly. “And if you can’t do it for yourself or for us than do it for those kids. Because they have been terrified out of their minds for three hours thinking you were dead, and they need their big brother.”
Steve looks at Jonathan but Hopper turns his head back to him.
“We’re talking about you, Steve.”
“I’m not their brother,” he whispers.
Five voices simultaneously say, “yes you are.”
Jonathan puts his hand on the back of his neck. “You love them just as much as we do, Steve, of course you are.”
“They love you, and so do we, and we need you to be okay, got it?”
It’s not that Steve has terrible parents. They don’t hit him or anything, they’re just. Not really there. They leave a lot for work and when they’re around it’s mostly his Dad telling him how disappointed he is and his mom asking about Carol and Tommy because she forgets every time he tells her they aren’t friends anymore.
It’s a little difficult to wrap his head around all these people sitting here telling him he’s loved and wanted and needed and has adults looking out for him and friends who love him. Which is all to say he drops his chin to his chest and starts weeping the second Joyce stops speaking. Hop uses his grip on his shoulder to tip him forward so he can cradle him against his shoulder and Joyce runs her hand through his hair and everyone else leaves to give him privacy.
“Alright son, you’re gonna be just fine,” Hopper says quietly. Steve chokes on an inhale and cries harder. It would be humiliating if Hopper wasn’t so good at being comforting. He’s so solid - Steve had felt the loss of that steadiness in their group acutely when they’d thought he was dead.
“And I know you’re alone in that house a lot so I want you to know you’re always welcome here,” Joyce offers. “I also know that all you kids run off to keep each other company when you have nightmares, which is something else we have to talk about, but it’s not the same. You can always come here if you’re having a bad day and don’t want to be alone.”
Steve pulls back from both of them and nods.
“You’re really good at this whole dad thing,” he says to Hopper. His whole face crinkles into a fond grin.
“Well there’s about a million of you running around here in need of parenting so I had to figure it out. Can you imagine having this conversation with Ted Wheeler?”
Steve laughs and it’s real even if it’s a little choked.
“Why don’t you go take a nap, huh? You look exhausted.” He is. A nap sounds good.
He finds them in Jonathan’s room. They’ve dragged El and Will’s mattresses into the room and everyone is puppy-piled around in various states of exhaustion ranging from blinking slowly to unconsciousness.
He crawls into an open spot in the center and throws an arm around Dustin. Max props herself up from Dustin’s other side and stares at him.
“I thought you were dead. I thought we’d have to go through all of this again and we’d have to go through it without you.”
“I’m sorry, kiddo, I won’t do it again.” He keeps his voice low so he doesn’t wake anyone else up.
“You made me talk to you about Billy and Vecna. You told me I had all these people looking out for me, and then you went and did this like the same isn’t true for you.”
She doesn’t sound like the little kid Steve met two years ago. Not for the first time he thinks about the way all this trauma has made all of them far wiser and more mature than other teenagers and he’s so, so sad.
Steve has accumulated so much grief on behalf of these people that he doesn’t know what to do with it most days. He’s always cared about other people but in a far shallower way than he does now. He cared about what people thought about him, about his image, his social status.
Now he cares that Max and the other kids are happy and healthy and safe. He wishes El got the chance to grow up with her mama and that Will never got sucked into the Upside Down and that Robin and Erica never got dragged into an underground Russian base with them.
He likes to tell himself that anyways. Mostly it’s true but mostly he’s just selfishly glad they’re all in his life no matter how they got there.
He’d go back to that first moment when he’d picked up the bat and he’d swing it a million more times if it ended with him, here, with Nancy and Robin and Jonathan and Joyce and Hopper and all these goddamn kids. Sue him.
Two weeks after the Starcourt anniversary and Steve’s mild nervous breakdown he decides everyone deserves a fun day and he’s going to give it to them. He invited Nancy, Jonathan, and Robin over to plan one day and they came up with a fair a few hours away. None of them actually went to the Fourth of July fair in Hawkins last year so it shouldn’t upset anyone and it’ll be something new.
He gets to the Wheeler's house early that morning and finds everyone bickering about who’s riding with Steve and who’s going with Jonathan.
Max looks particularly smug. “Well he’s obviously taking me because I’m his favorite.”
“Steve doesn’t have favorites, right Steve?” Nancy asks diplomatically.
“Of course I do. It’s Will because he’s perfect.”
Will beams at him and all the other kids shrug like that actually makes perfect sense. It does. Will is everyone’s favorite.
“Back off, this one’s mine,” Jonathan says. He wraps an arm around Will’s shoulders and playfully frowns at Steve.
“I let you have Max the other day even though she was supposed to teach me skateboarding. I think you can share for like, a minute, dude.”
“Eddie’s my favorite,” Dustin interrupts from across the room. He doesn’t even look up from his notebook. Steve tries really hard to not look visibly offended.
He’s being provoked.
He knows he’s being provoked.
He’s not going to react.
“Eddie, who's older than me and still hasn’t graduated from high school?”
“There it is,” Nancy says under her breath.
“Steve, you like Eddie. You and Eddie are friends.”
“Oh I’m sorry, were you not just trying to hoard your little brother’s attention?”
“Steve,” Jonathan laughs, and then doesn’t stop.
“I hate all of you.”
Robin snorts a laugh. “You just called Will your favorite and then got wildly possessive over Dustin. Nobody believes you.”
“Okay!” he claps his hands together loudly. “Nobody is riding with me. I’m going alone and I’m enjoying some goddamn peace and quiet.”
He walks out of the room and towards his car, refusing to turn and see their reactions.
“He’s joking,” Max says.
“Is he?” Nancy wonders aloud, and then there’s a half-dozen children running after him yelling about Jonathan’s music taste and how he and Nancy never take them to McDonalds and they were just kidding, really, can they please ride with him and Robin?
It ends up being a good day. Everyone gets mild sunburns and he’s sure they’ll have cavities from how many sugary treats he bought them. They discover that El loves rollercoasters and Lucas is very good at the games and wins enough stuffed animals that everyone ends up carrying one around.
Jonathan takes about a million pictures that will inevitably be printed and distributed and framed. Steve can’t wait. He does end up convincing Jonathan to stop at Mcdonalds on the way home to the elated cheers of his half of the kids, and only laughs a little when they all pass out in his car almost immediately after finishing their food.
They drop the kids off at the Wheeler’s again and head for Steve’s house. His parents are gone for a few days so they all grab snacks and blankets and trudge up to Steve’s room and climb out the window. There’s a little flat area on the roof and it’s become one of their favorite spots to lay around at night and talk.
Tonight they pile together and laugh about the day - the way Will’s tongue turned blue from cotton candy and El very subtly used her powers to win an absolutely massive stuffed animal for Dustin and the look of horror and disgust on Erica’s face when they convinced her to pet a cow and it tried to lick her arm.
Eventually they run out of stories to tell and lay together in the quiet. Steve’s head is on Robin’s stomach and he’s holding Nancy’s hand and Jonathan’s legs are draped over his and he feels comfortably pinned and smothered. For years now he’s felt like his entire life was spinning out of his control and expanding rapidly to include monsters and death and other dimensions. Here, with his friends who love him because he’s Steve and not the King of Hawkins High, he feels everything shrink back down into something manageable. Someone’s playing with his hair and somebody has a hand around his ankle. It’s good. Someday soon they’ll pile their little siblings into a few cars and take them to do something fun again. They’ll have to avoid the roller rink and the pool and lakes and malls and whatever else reminds them of the Upside Down but that’s okay. There’s plenty of other things to do and they have plenty of time to heal.