Chapter Text
You watch Steve out of the corner of your eye. It's something you are very good at. You can do pretty much anything while simultaneously gazing at Steve Harrington: you can watch a movie; do calculus homework; babysit anywhere from five to seven unruly tweens; fight post-apocalyptic, multidimensional horror creatures. It's second nature, now. Count heads: Dusty, Mike, Will, Max, Lucas, Ele, all alive and accounted for; bash demodog in the face with home-made club; throw trash can at Russian spy; watch Steve Harrington be a hero; watch Steve Harrington defy expectations; watch Steven Harrington watch Nancy Wheeler as you pretend not to watch Steve Harrington watching Nancy Wheeler. It's a niche set of skills, no doubt, but a set you've mastered, since your move to Hawkin's Indiana, three years prior.
When your father sat you down and told you he'd be leaving 'indefinitely' for business overseas, there were two available options. One: leave school, move to a country where you did not know the language and knew only your father, who, for the eighteen years you'd been aquaintaned, had shown about as much parental warmth as a winter's day in the North Pole. Or (option two) you could leave school and move to Hawkins, Indiana, where you knew only next to no one: your sweet cousin Dustin and his kind, albeit too-hands-on, mother, Aunt Claudia. It was an easy decision, though not one made happily.
Leaving highschool to move interstate had felt like too much change. Behind you, a cold and lonely penthouse apartment in New York City; in front, the Henderson's stuffy abode; Aunt Claudia's helecopter parenting, which, although pretty full-on and overwhelming, was not entirely unappreciated. Being an only child yourself, you'd found the switch to siblinghood rather easy. Dusty was funny, smart, nerdy, and theatrical. Sure, he disappeared late at night and sometimes you heard weird sounds coming from his bedroom - but that was normal, wasn't it? He's a teenage boy for christ's sake - who knows what they get up to late at night. Who even wants to know?
In the end, though, it had, in fact, turned out to be very not normal. Now, portals to hell-dimensions filled with bloodthirsty, horror, end-of-days, zombie-creatures and girls with telekinetic powers felt like old news. Solving mysteries and fighting crime with a rag-tag bunch of teenage nerds and misfits felt like 'just another Tuesday in Hawkins, Indiana'. There was leaving home, changing schools, and moving states... and then there was saving the world. And then there was saving the world more than once.
And then, there was him. Steve. Big-haired, brown-eyed Steve. Rough around the edges, slow on the uptake, Steve. Brave Steve. Protective Steve. Would die for his kids Steve. You'd fallen for him in a big way. Even though no one knew (not even Dusty; definitely not Robin) you often found your insides boiling, cheeks flaming red with embarassment at even the slightest grin thrown your way, or pat on the back for a job-well-done.
And he liked you well enough. Maybe even loved you, like he loved Dusty, or Lucas. His kids. That's how he saw you - just one of the kids. He'd taken to calling you 'Hendersone', the oldest Henderson of the batch, Dusty being several years younger (now 'Henderstwo', were you both within earshot, or 'Henders one and two' if the situation warranted a dual summons). He never called you by your name. And that's how you knew. He didn't see you how you saw him: someone who was wanted privately, quitely, alone in the dark of the bedroom at the end of the hall that you'd claimed as your own three years ago.
The worst part was, you'd liked him right away. Instantly. But who hadn't, in those days? It was made only worse by the cliche of it all: to crush on the coolest guy in school, the 'king' of Hawkins High. You'd been humiliated, even then. If you'd been asked, you would've denied it, deflected. But no one asked - not ever. It had been your own precious secret; locked inside your heart and guarded fiercley. Back then he'd been dating Nancy Wheeler. Sweet and lovely Nancy, who you knew from shared classes and chatting at the door of Mike's house, picking up Dusty on cold Sunday mornings. They'd been together for some time. It didn't last, though; you'd felt a thrill when whispers of the break-up first hit the halls of Hawkins High. You'd smiled down at your new Nikes, sent from your dad, overseas. It was your 17th birthday and it had felt like a sign. It wasn't.
Nothing ever changed between you and Steve. He started dating again (other girls); he introduced you to Robin. "It's toooootally platonic. Like two-hundred percent, just buddies, platonic" Robin. The two of you fit together like the last piece of a puzzle found wedged between the floor-boards on moving-out-day. But it was never the three of you. It wasn't you, Steve, and Robin. It was Steve and Robin. You and Robin. But never you and Steve. If you weren't watching him so closely, you might've missed the way his eyes lingered on Nancy's form a little longer than any other; how he always seemed to look to her first in a sticky situation, or at the end of a fight. You didn't miss the way his body turned towards hers in a conversation, or the way he never quite managed to completely conceal the pinch of his features when he saw them together - Jonathan and Nancy, who seemed so happy, and so in love.
You wanted to be that for him. But you werent. You were just Hendersone. Just another kid.
And so you tried to move on. There was the Battle of Starcourt. No one came out of the Battle of Starcourt unscathed. Some, like Max, were hit harder than others, but no one really escapes a thing like that. It leaves a mark on your bones, and like any wound that never fully heals, on a cold day, it aches. Steve became your cold day. You couldn't look at him without the pain of that night. The memory of what it had been before: just a crush on a handsome boy from school. Infatuation, in all its teenage glory.
That night changed everything. You felt the last molecules of your childhood evaporate as you watched Steve out of the corner of your eye. It had hit you then. An awful realisation. You loved him, and he might die. Or you would. Him or you, or both of you, and all of your beloved friends. Or Dusty. Your little brother. The only family you'd ever really had.
But in the end, it had been Max's brother. You were no fan of Billy Hargrove, but when he died, he took a piece of your friend with him. Watching someone you love hold their brother's dead, lifeless corpse in their little, childish arms, is not easily forgotten. She was so young. You all were. That kind of childishness doesn't ever come back. It's one thing to posess the knowledge that people die; it's another thing entirely to see it happen, up close, and reflected in the eyes of a girl far too young, far too innocent, the buzz of her first kiss, not even a year prior, still alive on her lips, split and covered in blood, crying her dead brother's name.
You had wanted to go to her, but you couldn't move. At the time, it had felt like staying very still might keep it all contained. Not yet real. If you moved a muscle, somehow that would seal Billy's fate. And Max's, and Dustin's, and Steve's, and yours. In the end, Steve had come to you; he stood beside you, his hand finding yours, squeezing blood and ash between your palms - that one single anchor, that one real thing.
In the end, Steve had made it real, and at the time, that was unforgiveable.
It became too much: the grief, the love, the rage. Looking at his face was unbearable. It felt stupid not to tell him how you felt, after everything you'd been through, how any of you could've been Billy that night. It felt stupid not to set all those wild emotions free; to tell him how hot your love for him burned inside your chest whenever he laughed or smiled, or threw an arm over Dustin's shoulder in a way that made the kid preen. All the same, you couldn't get the words past your lips. If you told him and you lost him, or if he stuck around out of pity, never looking at you quite the same, and then that one real thing, that bloodied palm in yours, the anchor, making it all real and holding it all together - Steve - evaporated?
You would break apart. And you knew what it looked like to die, now. How Dusty's voice might sound as he called your name, too frantic to accept you could not possibly call back.
You could not break.
So you did the only thing you thought you could. You put your still-battered and bruised body on a plane, and you ran.
It had been seven long months. But now you're back, right where you started. The same way it always starts, with you, watching Steve Harrington, out of the corner of your eye.