Chapter Text
He holds Carol’s hand, then Tommy’s. He holds Tina’s hand and thinks that he ought to look for the phone, call the station to let Hopper know where he is, that he won’t be back tonight. But then he’s making out with Heather against the refrigerator and everything else slips away.
Steve’s made out with Heather forever. Knows quite well the feeling of her nimble fingers pulling the hair at the nape of his neck, her thigh hitching up over his hip, the press of her calf against his ass. Somewhere behind him, Tommy is whooping, howling like a wolf at the moon. He thinks things are the same as before, back to how they used to be; with their acceptable roster of friends. And Heather is acceptable – more than acceptable, if the handful he’s getting is anything to go by – but nothing is the same as before and his whole world is spinning faster and faster like a Gravitron; so far beyond his control.
“Hey,” says Heather, forehead pressed to his. He’s far too warm. She touches his cheek, makes him look at her. “You good?”
“Uh huh,” says Steve, chasing her lips.
“Steve,” she laughs, palm flat to his chest. “Your heart’s racing.”
“Got me all fired up.” A kiss to her cheek, her jaw, her neck. “Where’s my Heather Holiday, huh?”
Heather’s doe eyes snap right on his, and he’d flinch if he wasn’t hanging on by a thread. “Go sober up, Steve,” she says, each word measured and sharp. “Come find me later if you’re still feeling fired up.”
He pouts, stepping back, hands slipping down her waist.
“Go!” she laughs, nose scrunching, cute as a button. “You can crash at mine tonight, if you want.”
And he must nod, surely he nods, but then Heather is gone and Steve is leaving the kitchen, despite the hands that grab and tug and pull him back in. Heidi’s phone is somewhere under the stairs, but where crowds used to part like the Red Sea at his mere presence, they seem to pack ever closer like sardines. He’s almost there, latched to the one thought he was supposed to hold onto, when another pair of doe eyes trap him – hook, line, and sinker.
“What the hell are you doing, Steve?”
Nancy Wheeler, hands on hips, sulky and sour as the night he left her cleaning punch off her blouse in Tina’s bathroom. Steve swings around, hell bent on– the patio, for a smoke. Yeah.
He smacks into: “Jonathan! Hey, man.”
“Uh, hey, St– ”
“You got a light?”
“I mean, yeah, but– ”
Nancy wraps around his arm like a python, Jonathan seeming to get with a program that Steve hasn’t switched to just yet. “You want a smoke?” she asks, though it doesn’t really sound like a question. “Let’s go get you a smoke.”
She drags him through the throngs, Jonathan right behind them, and shoves her whole body against the sticky patio door. Steve knows it’s sticky, because one time in freshman year, Heidi’s father nearly squashed him like a bug against the glass when he couldn’t get it to open. Not because he couldn’t get it to open, but because he caught Steve with his hands up Heidi’s shirt and some missing pants. Steve smiles, then laughs a little to himself at the memory: running down Maple in his socks and underwear.
“Steve!” Nancy yells, right in his ear. The cold winter air slaps his cheeks, makes his eyes water. When he blinks it away, Jonathan is there, cigarette lit, passing it to him.
“Thanks, Jon,” Steve says. “You’re the best.”
“Steve.” Nancy’s pinching the bridge of her nose, face flushed with the cold, maybe, or whatever anger is seemingly brewing in her. “What are you doing here?”
Steve shrugs, taking a nice, long drag to warm his lungs. “It’s Heidi’s party. I love Heidi’s parties.”
“This isn’t good for you,” she says. Which makes no sense.
“What– Nance, you literally said I could come out here and smoke?”
Jonathan sighs, tucks his chin and begins awkwardly fidgeting with his camera. “Wait,” Steve says. “Why are you guys here?”
Nancy, suddenly quiet, looks away. Jonathan answers, easily yet with a measure of regret. “Heidi asked me to get pictures of the cheer squad. For their yearbook spread.”
Steve snorts, nods towards the window. “Sure is gonna be a spread, Jon. Just wait for the wet– ”
“Steve,” Nancy scolds, sounding an awful lot like his father. “Do not finish that sentence.”
He giggles. Hiccuping at his own goddamn joke and sounding like a little girl. Oh, he ought to go back inside and call–
“Let’s get you back to your house, yeah?” says Nancy. “We’re parked just down the str– ”
“No.”
He’s taken a step back, then another. His sneakers squeak against the paving. They still have blood on them that Hopper couldn’t quite scrub off – staining the thread, in the cracks of the leather. He got blood on his old sneakers the night Barb cut her finger by the pool – when he showed her where the bathroom was and should have followed to make sure she was okay; should have made sure she got home safe. But the blood on these sneakers isn’t from Barb, no, and it’s probably the same blood still staining his kitchen floor because nobody would let him go back and clean up so the house would be nice and ready for when Mom gets home from the hospital.
Barb cut her finger. Mom cut her wrists.
Steve can’t go home ever again.
Jonathan knows this, says as much with his sad eyes and his worrying lip, but he won’t speak it aloud. Not when Nancy is right there between them, imploring Steve to just listen to her and get out of here and go home because this party is bullshit and he’s not that guy anymore. He’s not.
Only he is, and he’s not doing this here. Not now. Not with Nancy Wheeler and her doe eyes that have never seen him for what he really, truly is.
“Be right back,” he says, when they all know he won’t. He dodges around her, jimmies the sliding door the way he learned the second time he got caught with his pants down on Heidi’s couch.
“Where are you going?” Nancy demands.
“Tommy’s got my blow,” he responds, flippant as he can be, cigarette perched on the edge of his mouth. “Can’t let him get away with that.”
“Really, Steve?”
“Shocker!” Steve tosses carelessly over his shoulder.
“I’ll call Hopper!” she threatens.
“You do that, Nancy,” says Steve, and she should. She should, please, but Steve isn’t going to wait out here, not when waiting out here cuts into him like a jagged knife. Not when the party and Heather and Tommy and Carol and the blow are all inside.
He closes the door behind him, waves dismissively at the small clamour of applause that arises at his reappearance. Somewhere by the keg that Steve’s been avoiding like the plague, Billy Hargrove scowls, vicious and dark. It’s easy to smile at him, to pretend none of it means anything when Billy isn’t even the worst thing that happened to Steve that night – that month – just the thing that more than likely gave him permanent brain damage. He waves at Billy, a playful flutter of his fingers, and puts his cigarette out on Heidi’s kitchen countertops. It’s the kind of thing Steve’s mom would lose her mind over – one of many, actually: like bubbles in the new wallpaper, the wrong brand of milk, florals in the winter, a missing pair of earrings, a missing bottle of pills, a missing husband and a son who’s there all the time, waiting, like a spectre or a mirror of her own misfortune; a picture that she won’t ever fix, happy to leave completely shattered in shards on the floor; with hands that could never hold anything quite right for all the shaking they do. The shaking she gave him.
Nothing’s where he remembers it being. Not the phone, not Tommy or Carol or Heather or his blow. He finds the stairs, though, climbs it with a death grip on the bannister and tries every door on the landing – it only takes two and the toss of a shoe at his head for him to find the bathroom.
He shoves the door open, lets it clatter against the wall. Heaves himself up to the sink, the mirror, and when looking at his haggard expression – his mother’s dead face – becomes too painful, it’s easy to look away; because there, in the corner, perched on the edge of the bath with his tiny tin lunch box, is one Eddie Munson.
“Well,” he all but purrs. “Look what the cat dragged in. If you’re in search of some coke, I’m afraid your human stain of a best friend has wiped me clean.”
“Tommy’s not my best friend,” Steve says, eyes meeting Munson’s in the mirror. “Not anymore.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” says Eddie, crossing one leg over the other. “You two looked mighty cosy when he was rubbing dust on your gums. Who knows where those hands have been… Wait. You do!”
Steve scowls. “Whatever, freak. You got anything else?”
Munson gives him the most obvious once-over, clearly more than a little displeased by what he sees. “Harrington, I kinda need to know what’s going on here before I toss anything else into that, uh– cocktail.”
“I haven’t taken anything. Except the coke.”
Munson laughs – a light, trickling thing – then changes abruptly to a flat stare. “Tell that to your pupils, King Steve. The Void is calling.”
Steve’s head whips around so fast, he can hear the bones crack in his neck. “What?”
“Nevermind, it’s a– ”
“Dungeons and Dragons thing.” Everything the kids talk about is a Dungeons and Dragons thing. And they mention the Void, when El puts her blindfold on and blood comes out of her nose.
Eddie nods, dumbfounded. “... Yeah.”
Blood comes out of Steve’s nose sometimes, but not because of that. He swipes a finger just above his lip, knowing there’s nothing – he can see as much in the mirror – but he still feels it. Sticky on his hands, under his nails. The sickly scent of copper and the taste of it on his tongue.
“Does it look like there’s something wrong with me?”
“I don’t think I should answer that.” Munson pulls at a thread in the knee of his jeans.
“No, I’m serious. I need you to tell me if there’s something, anything – does it look wrong? Do I look wrong?” He feels wrong.
Munson is nervous, for once. “You look fine, Harrington. Handsome as ever.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Look, man. Maybe you should head home, yeah?” Munson rises from the bath, throwing one leg over to climb out clumsily. “I’m sure Mommy and Daddy Harrington are wondering where you are.”
Steve wants to laugh at the idea, but the feeling gets all caught up in his throat. “Mom’s fuckin’ comatose, so she’s not wondering much of anything.”
“Um… what?”
It’s that dumb, doe-eyed look. Hair curlier than Nancy’s piled atop his head in the stifling heat of the bathroom. Steve doesn’t want to talk about it – not to the court jester, the asshole who climbs on top of tables and spouts truths like mere gossip so he can claim plausible deniability. Steve’s already done damage – at least him doing drugs is unspoken yet general knowledge among the upper circles of Hawkins High – but he can’t let it spin any further from his control.
“Get out.”
“Harrington, how about we— ”
“Get the fuck out, Munson.”
“Do you want me to get anyone? Wheeler- uh, I mean. Fuck. Uh. Perkins? I’m so not getting Hagan, he will beat– ”
“Munson!”
The two-time senior trips over his own feet. While pleased that he’s leaving, the reaction startles Steve. He’s never gotten physical with Eddie – most people tend to give him a wide berth for how unnerving he can be, for the fact that he is a known drug dealer – yet he bolts from Steve’s vicinity as if fearing for his life. The concern soon vanishes, though, when Steve is left entirely alone.
To his eyes, his mother’s face. A drooping reflection, tan skin turned sallow. Steve is shaky on his feet, catching tiny breaths and forcing them from his chest. Munson took the lunchbox when he fled, so Steve opens the bathroom cabinet, orange and green plastic bottles passing through his fingers and falling into the bowl of the sink. The rattle of everything he doesn’t need – fuckin’ birth control and viagra, Tylenol – the bass thumps from below and cuts off abruptly, but it sounds like nothing to the incessant hum in his ears.
He opens each lid, struggles to crack the child lock. Rifles through the pills in search of a familiar shape or colour. The begin to dissolve in the damp well of the sink; a wash of pastel pastes. He snaps the Tylenol between his teeth, where it sits all chalky on his molars. Maybe… maybe Tommy is upstairs somewhere and hasn’t given all his coke away to Billy fuckin’ Hargrove. Steve crashes toward the door, yanks it open. Maybe–
“Hop.”
Barrel chest to his own, which hiccups and rattles and shakes against the pressure.
“Did Nance call you?”
“No, kid.” Hop’s not even in his uniform. He must have been at the cabin with El. There’s no phone at the cabin. El is alone at the cabin. “I’ve been looking for you all night.”
“No…” Steve sighs. “That’s not right.”
Most of the time, Hop’s eyes are hard to look at. So, Steve looks away. To the mirror, where his mother is staring at him with those sad eyes that run water and blood like rivers from the mountains.
“...eve, c’mon. You with me?”
A jerk of his head, click of his jaw. Steve looks at Hopper’s nose, mouth, ears. Counts the tiny scars on his face.
“Can I…” he starts, confused about where the sentence is supposed to be going. “I want to.”
Hopper waits, even as footsteps scamper past his back, people yelling down the hall as they run home, he waits.
Most of the time, Hop’s eyes are hard to look at. Because they’re kind. Because, when they land on Steve, they’re warm, and he’s not quite sure what to do with that.
He falls forward, forehead to barrel chest; to the feel of something steady against his cheek.
“I wanna… I really wanna go home, Chief.”
“Yeah,” says Hop. “Okay.”
Steve doesn’t cry, but flannel sleeves are delicately drying his eyes. Hopper pats at his skin until all that’s left is the blotchy red of concealed tears. This is better, because no one will question the fact that the Chief of Police is taking him home; no one will think Steve’s a pussy who’s crying about being arrested or the thought of his mother conked out and strapped to a hospital bed.
But Hopper’s hand is on his back, a heavy, guiding weight. Down the stairs and out the front door – past Tommy, who’s giving chase to a breathless Callahan, and Carol, who sneers at Steve from the hood of the squad car, but uncrosses her arms to send him a small wave.
When Steve stumbles over the edge of the curb, Hopper’s hand is there to right him. He won’t fall because Hopper will catch him. By the collar of his borrowed shirt like a kitten, or by a large hand settling on his shoulder. The hand moves to the top of Steve’s head, which is coaxed down so he doesn’t smack it off the roof of the blazer. He’s buckled in like a child, and he can’t find it in himself to care about what any onlookers might think, not when he’s now cocooned safely in the one place he doesn’t have to pretend.
Because Hop knows all about it – about his mother on the kitchen floor – and he’s not mad about it. He’s not anything.
They drive down Maple and cut across Dearborn. At some point, they pass the turn that leads to Loch Nora and Steve can’t speak up. Can’t feel anything but relief flooding all the way down to his toes. The radio plays something old and kooky that Hopper’s fingers match beat for beat on the steering wheel. He takes each corner slowly so Steve’s head doesn’t knock against the passenger window, and he wonders if this is what tenderness feels like.
Maybe. Maybe the bar is just that low.
Much later, when recalling this night and all its minute details, as if its terrible feelings were the most special things to ever happen to him, Steve will think of how Hopper held his hand. He will think about how he hasn’t held his father’s hand since he first learned to walk. How, through the dark trees and guided only by the moonlight and a police issued flashlight, Hopper cared enough to show Steve the way home.
It’s no small thing, not to him.
There’s the secret knock that Steve has memorised, the static of the TV whining, the patter of bare feet across the floor. His makeshift bed is still there in El’s room. There’s a plate of food waiting – Eggos, topped with whipped cream and sliding candy – and another, smaller, hand to hold.
Hopper keeps his hand under the showerhead until the water runs hot, gives him a ratty towel and more borrowed clothes – from him, from Jonathan. They wait on the couch, even when he’s clean and dry and eating his Eggos. They flick through the channels without the remote, as if Hopper doesn’t have work in the morning, as if El’s eyes aren’t drooping.
When Hop herds them to bed, Steve holds his gaze from the doorway, wants to cup that gentle smile in the palms of his hands and keep it forever. Backlit by the living room lamps, he is every dream of a father that Steve ever had. He is a giant and a god, and he is only a man.
“No reading tonight,” says Hop, a firm suggestion. It’s about as stern as he gets – despite the drinking he knows Steve was doing, the drugs he undoubtedly took – and he even leaves the door open a crack to let light bleed in from the rest of the cabin. “Yell if you need anything.”
“Goodnight,” says El.
“Night,” says Steve, closer to a whisper. “Thank you.”
Hopper says nothing, because it goes without saying. When he leaves them, the room is silent for all of a minute before Steve can bear the silence. She’s been so good, so understanding.
“You’re right, El. I don’t have anybody else.”
Steve’s a latchkey kid. He makes all his own meals and does every bit of laundry. Everything he’s learned has come from TV, books, or nannies. Or Nancy. Or Tommy and Carol. He adapts because he has to, and he makes space even when it feels like he’s all full up – of bad things, bad feelings and memories and people, who push and push until his skin is worn thin.
He can’t check out, he can’t break apart on the kitchen floor because his mother took that choice away from him. Because he has to be okay for her, keep her afloat even when she feels like nothing but drowning.
You always make me smile, Mom said. You always make things better.
You’re the only one who knows how.
You’re all I have.
He never wanted that.
A cold draught blows under the blanket, the pillows sink. El curls up next to him, face to face. Her hair is growing out in curls that flick up like feathers, big teeth coming in, making her smile wider and brighter.
“I could be your somebody.”
It’s a nice feeling: not being alone. It’s nice to have someone who really wants him around. Even nicer to want them around too. Maybe that’s all it boils down to: he wants El and Hopper more than he’s ever wanted anything; and that’s the most frightening thing of all.
“Yeah,” he says, chin on the crown of her head. He holds her there, where his heart thumps a violent staccato in his chest. “Okay.”