Chapter Text
Steve Harrington will never get to be a father.
He realises it on a Tuesday afternoon, and it’s almost laughable, with how mundane it is. Draped over the counter at Family Video, with Robin shooting off random movie trivia into the stale silence. His hands hurt where they’re curled up on the linoleum, sores along his knuckles, half-healed, from an encounter with his garage wall that he can only half remember getting into, completely inebriated and furious with himself, with his own ineptitude. Took it out on unyielding concrete and woke up curled in the corner like some kind of wounded animal. Some kind of feral guard dog.
He's been antsy, recently, thoughts always returning to the nail-bat at the foot of his bed, the knife under his pillow. The gun, which he doesn’t know how to shoot, but knows is in his father’s bedside drawer and checks is loaded on the nights his parents aren’t home (which is every night, these days).
It’s a lot, trying not to let this newfound tendency towards violence bother him. It’s fine, he reasons, only logical, given everything. Makes him good for something, maybe, the way he wasn’t good for in that fight with Hargrove, or against those Russian soldiers that beat the shit out of him and pumped him full of so many drugs he thought Henderson was his goddamn father. It still feels ridiculous. Maybe the first time he got knocked around by Byers was beneficial for him, jiggled something loose that made him realise he was being an asshole, got him thinking about something, for the first time in his life, but the rest of it—well, it was a little bit of an overkill. Now he takes his bat out to the junkyard where he used to smoke with Tommy H and beats the shit out of old cars, admitting for a few moments that the newfound tendency towards violence bothers him, just a little bit.
Because people who spend so much time thinking about things like this, getting in fights with walls, shouldn’t be spending half as much time taking care of kids as he does. Shouldn’t be around kids, full stop. Steve can’t recognise the version of himself from less than three years ago, all bark but no bite, sneering and mean but at least not dangerous. At some point he had sharpened his claws, and he can’t for the life of him figure out when that had been. Was it after Billy, in the days and weeks he had spent licking his wounds, vowing to himself that he would keep that shitbag away from his kids? Or after Starcourt, laid up in the hospital with all of his ribs broken and trying not to let it show how bad it hurt, when the kids had piled onto him like a pack of overexcited puppies? Steve guesses it doesn’t make a difference. The outcome is the same: he’s dangerous, now, and knowing that is like trying to hide a stab wound. People look at him, and they know it, too.
“Did you know that Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott didn’t get along?” Robin asks, and Steve thinks, I can never, ever be a dad.
He bursts into tears immediately.
Robin is by his side in an instant, all awkward fluttering hands and stilted cooing noises, like she knows what she’s meant to do but feels awkward doing it, and it only makes Steve cry harder.
“Oh, Steve, Steve,” she says, “I knew you liked Blade Runner, but I didn’t think it was going to make you this upset! I’m so sorry, I’ll stop with the fun facts—”
“No, it’s,” he manages to cut in, but he’s interrupted by a fresh wave of tears, and then Robin is running to the bathroom babbling something about tissues, and he never gets to say it.
He isn’t sure what he would have said, anyway.
When she gets back, he’s already composed himself, and makes a joke about giving him some warning before she divulges potentially distressing information next time. He doesn’t tell her about his revelation, just tucks it into the back of his mind as one more thing Steve Harrington has already failed at before he’s even had a chance to start.
It stays on his mind, in the days and weeks after he realises. Driving the kids around, having them over for movie nights, listening to them ramble about their latest dragon game, or whatever it’s called. He scolds and teases and offers advice, like he always has. They roll their eyes and tease back and complain, like they always have. He keeps thinking about it.
See, Steve had always expected to grow up normal. And sure, he’d had a pretty normal childhood, if a cold and empty house could be considered normal. He’d been normal all through school, if not a bit of a slacker, muddling his way through his assignments and scraping Cs in most of his classes. In fact, he’d been better than normal. Steve Harrington, king of Hawkins High, all-American sweetheart. The golden boy.
Well, so much for all of that. He’s a bit sour about it now, but whatever. The point is, Steve’s spent his whole life being normal. Expecting to be normal. He’d graduate high school, go to college, and get a job at his father’s firm. Eventually inherit the company, if the man in question felt generous enough for it. Find a nice girl, get married, settle down in a house with a white picket fence. Have a reasonable number of children that he’d try and raise better than his father had raised him. Normal. Normal, normal, normal.
Obviously, that had all fallen apart. Steve isn’t even sure where he’d managed to fuck it all up; whether it had been because he’d barely passed his senior year—something that felt like a goddamn victory after Nancy and Barb and that stupid Demogorgon, not to mention two traumatic head injuries and a veritable herd of children he now looked after—or because his father thought he was getting soft, Steve doesn’t know, but whatever it was, the outcome is this: Steve Harrington does not get to be normal. Not anymore.
So maybe that’s why this new realisation stings so bad. Because yeah, maybe Steve doesn’t get to be normal. He doesn’t get the cushy office job he expected to have handed to him, doesn’t go to college, doesn’t meet any nice girls that want him for anything more than sex. He wakes up screaming more nights than he doesn’t, finds himself forgetting things he should be able to remember, lets time slip away from him. But despite all of that, despite the crushing realisation that life from now on is going to be fucking hard for him, he’s held onto the idea of having kids, starting a family. Just this one thing, the one normal thing he can still have, something that he thought all of this bullshit couldn’t take away from him. Something his father couldn’t take away from him, either. He isn’t ashamed to admit that it had kept him going, the thought of him and a horde of mini-Harringtons on a road trip, with someone by his side. It isn’t a lofty dream. For most people, it’s totally feasible, if not completely expected. Everyone wants to have kids. Everyone gets to have kids.
Except, now, for Steve.
Maybe that’s why it feels like his heart is broken.
Nothing really changes, in the wake of this revelation, but also, it does. He grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white, hangs back in the shadows of his own damn house. Flinches away more. If anyone notices, they don’t mention it, and he’s as grateful for it as he is devastated. His kids (because he’s never going to stop thinking of them as his kids) don’t need him, not anymore, and it should be fine. It should be good. He should be happy, that he gets to have his life back. But he isn’t. They’re his kids, and now, the only kids he’s ever going to have. The only children Steve will ever have, and they’re already half gone, all grown up and drifting away. It makes him feel frantic, makes him drive slowly past their houses in his beamer like a creep, just to make sure they’re still there. Still safe.
And it’s not an unwarranted fear, Steve knows, but he feels less and less like he’s trying to protect them from some monster in the dark, and more and more like he’s trying to protect them from himself, from the violence he keeps wrestled just below his throat. Because he might be stupid, but not so stupid as to think that people who reach for weapons as a first response, who shoot first and ask questions later, make good friends, or babysitters, or partners. They certainly don’t make good parents.
So, he retreats into himself, a little. Talks less, touches less. Keeps himself at a safe distance. It’s better, he reasons, to take a step back while he sorts himself out. Because he has to. He isn’t of any use to anyone when he still wakes up screaming and sweating and scrambling for his bat, stalking the house until the sun rises for a sign of something, anything, to justify why he’s acting like this.
Robin still comes over, on nights her parents don’t need her home for whatever family stuff they do, and he’s glad that he doesn’t have to be afraid of hurting her, at least. He holds her, solid and warm against him on the couch, says to her, “I think I was only ever in love with the idea of you,” and she says, “I know, big guy.” It’s good. There aren’t any expectations, and Steve never has to be any more than himself, with Robin. It’s strange, the way she soothes something in him, turns the red, blistering fear of it into a calm acceptance. He thinks he must settle something in her too, because all her twitchy, nervous energy seeps out of her the moment it’s just the two of them, alone.
When it’s good, with Robin, it’s so good. It’s movie nights and weekend drives and skipping rocks together on the lake, herding the kids to and from their dragon-whatever games, sleepovers where Steve dozes in the corner while Robin finishes some random extra-cred assignment she’s doing. She makes him feel like a kid, again, talking about everything, and there’s almost nothing he would hesitate come to her with, knows she’ll accept him for who he is (and also who he isn’t), the same way he wholeheartedly accepts her.
But when it’s bad with Robin, that’s when Steve hates himself most. Because Robin gets mean. Says these terrible things about herself and her friends and this shithole town they’re both stuck in. She never yells, not like Steve does when he’s overwhelmed, but her words cut to the bone and then they aren’t speaking for a while, until she comes back all sheepish and apologetic-like, and she never explains. He doesn’t expect her to. Steve isn’t afraid of hurting Robin, no, but he’s definitely afraid of her hurting herself, so he sticks to her like a barnacle and hopes she doesn’t anchor herself in fresh water anytime soon. Hopes she doesn’t mind, and the craziest thing is this: she clings right back.
And it is crazy. She’s such an oddball, so different to anyone Steve’s ever met, that he has half a mind to spill his guts every time she comes over, to say everything he thinks and feels and dreams, on the rare occasions that he manages to sleep. Wants to tell her, because if there’s anyone in Hawkins who’ll understand what it means to be different, it’ll be Robin. But when he looks her in the eye, he can’t bring himself to do it. Can’t bring himself to tell her about the realisation that has brought his world tumbling down around him. So, he doesn’t. He just keeps pulling away.
She asks, one night. He isn’t expecting it, thinking that no one was paying enough attention to realise, but of course Robin does. Robin notices everything. “You haven’t been hanging out with your kids as much lately,” she says, all casual-like, but Steve knows that tense set of her shoulders. “What’s that about?”
‘Your kids’. His kids. Steve’s kids. Something about the way she says it makes his heart tremble and his forehead crease, and he sighs, feels the breath catch in his throat.
“It’s nothing, Rob,” he lies, unable to look her in the eye. “Just busy.”
She doesn’t push it, and he’s glad. He spends the next week apologising without words, silently taking all the closing shifts so she can go home earlier, slipping candy bars into her pockets when she isn’t looking. Saturday night sees her back on his doorstep for a rewatch of Alien, and Steve knows he is forgiven, because things stay good for a while longer, and she still doesn’t shake him off.
When the Upside-Down bullshit returns to their lives, Steve is almost relieved. At least now he doesn’t have to keep making up reasons for his sleepless nights. Selfishly, he’s glad that someone else is bearing the brunt of this year’s horrifying happenings; Eddie ‘the Freak’ Munson sits hunched in on himself in Reefer Rick’s boathouse, listening, appalled, as they manage to jerkily explain the events of the past two and a half years between the four of them. He’s processing it far better than Steve ever remembers himself doing, but then again, he had been seventeen. Munson’s a super senior, originally one year ahead of Steve himself when they’d both been at Hawkins High. Those couple extra years Eddie has on the high school version of Steve probably do wonders for his situational adaptability.
Steve actually remembers Eddie, from when they were in high school. They’d had English Lit together during his senior year, and he’d spent more than a few lessons staring over Munson’s shoulder to watch him draw whatever crazy monster he’d come up with this time. Other than that, they hadn’t interacted much. Steve knows he probably hadn’t left a good impression, though, if Eddie’s panicked tackling of him against the wall was any indication.
It's kind of crazy, in retrospect, that he’d ever believed Eddie might have actually murdered that Chrissy girl. The version of him that Steve remembers jumping on tables and giving lame speeches in the cafeteria had seemed weird and a little startling, sure, but watching him now, his big brown eyes wide with fear as he chews on the ends of his hair (gross, it’s such a bad habit), there isn’t a single thing that could make Steve think he’s guilty. Even though he’d nicked Steve with that damn broken bottle earlier, Steve can hardly blame him for it, and besides—a real murderer wouldn’t have hesitated to slice him open at the jugular. Eddie’s hand makes this little aborted movement towards him when he catches sight of Steve’s throat, stutters out a “Sorry, man,” and pulls a bandana out of his back pocket, shoving it towards him. Steve accepts it gratefully, and can’t help but notice the way Eddie’s eyes fix on his neck when he presses it to the cut, wiping the blood away. Maybe he’d spare a thought for it, if he weren't so focused on trying to save the world, again.
When they spot Nancy on the road outside the trailer park it feels like a shock of cold water to Steve’s system. Rationally, he knows that of course Nancy would be caught up in this—she’s too nosy for her own good, always trying to stay ahead of the pack, and since she’s already been through this insanity three times it’s only logical that she would be dragged back into it, willingly or not. It doesn’t stop him from freezing when he sees her, and the conflict must show on his face, because he can see the way her expression shifts from over thirty feet away, her big, blue eyes watery and sad. God damn.
See, that’s the thing about Nancy. She always makes Steve feel things. Sometimes he thinks he never felt much of anything before he got involved with her; it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. The idea that he could have stayed like that, a shell of a person, acting out because mommy and daddy didn’t pay enough attention to him, but at least still sane. The idea that she completely changed the trajectory of his life. It keeps him awake at night knowing that one person has changed him so irrevocably. Nancy Wheeler made Steve Harrington, both directly, by him loving her, and indirectly, by opening doors to the people he would come to love. She was also a catalyst for the events that broke him. Both of these things are true.
It's safe to say that Steve’s feelings about Nancy are kind of complicated, at the very best.
She fills them all in on what happened, the five of them all gathered at the picnic tables a little way aways from the crime scene, and it kind of makes him want to throw up. Some poor kid that had been on the school newspaper with her, all twisted up in the road, just like Chrissy. It’s at times like this that he really has to wonder why it had to be Hawkins. Why it had to be them.
They fill her in on what they know, too. She seems resigned about it, like she’d had a hunch that it would be to do with the Upside-Down again, and Steve’s heart twinges sympathetically. It isn’t fair, that they have to keep doing this, but she doesn’t say it, so Steve keeps his mouth shut.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she says, and Steve wants to laugh, but he doesn’t. None of this ever makes sense to him—it’s nice that someone finally agrees, instead of berating him for failing to keep up, but then she clarifies, “Fred and Chrissy, don’t make sense,” and he’s alone again. “I mean, why them?”
“Maybe they were just in the wrong place,” Dustin says, not looking convinced himself. “They were both at the game.”
“And near the trailer park,” Max supplies, and Steve suddenly feels nervous, the hair on the back of his neck standing up.
“We’re at the trailer park,” he says, looking from Max to Nancy and then back to Max again, before he turns around to survey the park behind him. What exactly he’s looking for, he isn’t sure. Some caricature of a wizard, one with a big hat and a star wand, maybe, but that seems absurd, even to him. “Uh… should we maybe not… be here?”
Everyone else looks around too, and then Nancy is talking again, but Steve isn’t fully paying attention anymore. He’s too keyed up with the knowledge that whatever got Fred and Chrissy might still be here, ready to strike at any moment, and he is suddenly supplied with the mental image of his friends, his kids, all twisted up on the ground with their eyes gouged out, mutilated by some crazy wizard with a grudge against teenagers. Nausea hits him full force, and he has to tune back into the conversation to block out his own thoughts.
“I don’t know about you guys,” he says, voice weak in his own ears. “But if I saw some freaky, wizard monster, I would mention it to someone.”
“Maybe they did,” Max offers, and Steve really has to hand it to her. She’s definitely leading this conversation in the right direction, wherever that might be. “I saw Chrissy leaving Miss Kelly’s office. If you saw a monster you—you wouldn’t go to the police, they’d never believe you. But you might go to your—”
“Your shrink,” Robin finishes, eyes widening, and god, does Steve wish he could understand these moments. Feel useful, for a change. At least everyone else is smart enough to make up for it, he thinks, only a little bitter.
He ends up herding them out of the trailer park to his car, until Nancy tries to head off on her own. Then he’s humiliating himself by implying that she can’t do anything on her own, which isn’t what he meant to do but knows is how it sounds, is humiliated by Robin, who essentially lets him know that his attempts to get Nancy alone are both unsubtle and pathetic, and is finally humiliated by Dustin, who asks, “You just gonna stand there and gawk, Harrington?” with that stupid, self-satisfied grin he gets when he thinks he’s being clever.
“Shut up,” he snaps, and Dustin’s still smiling and taking the piss out of him, which Steve supposes he’s long since resigned himself to. “Just get in the car.”
He spends the drive to this “Miss Kelly’s” house thinking about it, his apparent inability to say what he really means. It makes him want to tear his hair out in frustration—it’s like his mouth gets in the way of his words, or something. Everything he actually wants to get across is mangled beyond comprehension, the things that come out completely unrecognisable to him. I care about you, I don’t want you to get hurt, becomes, are you out of your mind, you need someone, to, to, and it’s gone. The chance to be useful, the chance to smooth things over—though what, exactly, it is he thinks he can smooth over with Nancy, at this point, is something even he isn’t quite sure of.
He pulls the car over on the side of the road, and Max is throwing the door open before they’ve even stopped moving. Typical. He watches her make her way across the road, shouting a “Be careful!” after her, which she waves off without even looking back at him. It makes his heart twist, a little. All grown up. He keeps his eye on her until Miss Kelly opens the door to let her in, and she finally throws a look back his way before she disappears from view.
Steve’s never met Miss Kelly, had never visited the counsellor when he’d been in high school; his father had said that real men deal with their shit on their own, or something to that effect, but in hindsight, it probably would have done him some good. What’s done is done, though, and now he’s only wishing he knew more about this woman to be comfortable leaving Max alone with her. A silly thought, he knows; Max can take care of herself, no problem, had even been the one to save Steve’s ass that night at the Byers house what feels like years ago now, but it doesn’t stop him from worrying. Doesn’t stop him from anxiously drumming his fingers on the side of the car. She’s just a counsellor, he scolds himself. No need to get weird about it. God knows Max needs someone to talk to.
And that’s the thing about Max, Steve thinks, bitterly, although he doesn’t want to be. That’s just the thing. Max will not talk. In a strange kind of way, she’s just like him: stubborn, aggressive, too proud to let anybody know she needs them. Too afraid to let them know. He catches her, sometimes, staring off into the mid-distance like she’s a million miles away, and it makes his heart twist and ache so awful that he can’t look at her. Steve doesn’t need to know exactly what she’s thinking about for him to tell it’s something too terrible to say aloud, so he just puts a hand on her shoulder and drags her back to them. He’ll keep dragging her back, even if she ends up hating him for it.
“So,” Dustin starts casually, dragging Steve out of his thoughts. “We gonna talk about it?”
“Uh, sorry,” he says, finally managing to pull his eyes away from Miss Kelly’s house. “Talk about what?”
Dustin gives him this look, and Steve really isn’t sure what it’s supposed to mean. “Your temporary insanity, earlier today? Where you basically threw yourself at Nancy?” he asks, and god, Steve really, reallydoesn’t want to talk about this, especially not with Dustin, who is so good at twisting people’s words into whatever he wants them to mean. It makes him proud and uneasy in equal measures—Dustin would make a great lawyer, if he put his mind to it, Steve thinks, and the idea makes his stomach turn a little.
He fends off Henderson’s teasing for a little while longer, because no, he isn’t still into Nancy, and she has nothing to do with his ‘steadfast refusal’ to date Robin, of all people. And Jesus, if that isn’t still a can of worms he never wants to have to get into with Dustin. He’s a good kid, god bless his heart, but Steve doesn’t know how long Robin’s secret will stay a secret, with him around. Maybe believing that Steve’s not over Nancy yet is better—if that’s what it takes to keep Robin safe, in the end, then he’ll say it himself, even if it makes his head swim and his stomach turn to talk about Nancy like that.
If only kids weren’t so damn nosy, he thinks sourly, but it’s taken his mind off of Max, and Miss Kelly, and the godawful feeling crawling up his throat at the thought of it all. He threatens to knock Dustin’s teeth back out, which is a little much, but at least gets him to quit it with the badgering, and then they’re sitting in silence again. Steve hopes to god that saving the world will be enough to distract the kid from continuing this little detective shtick he’s got going on, but lord knows Steve isn’t that lucky, and that Dustin will never be able to leave anything well enough alone.