Chapter Text
Steve was twelve years old, and Eddie Munson was presenting as an alpha. Their entire sixth grade class buzzed with the drama of it all. Eddie was the first one in their class to present as anything. It made sense, since he was a little bit older than everyone else, having been held back the year before. Still, thirteen was young to present, and the rest of the twelve-year-olds in the class excitedly whispered about it as the teacher made a slew of calls on the phone in the hallway right outside their door.
Steve was sitting on the seat next to the teacher’s desk, obediently keeping his hands in his lap and trying not to fidget. His parents always hated it when he fidgeted, but his arms were beginning to hurt. He sniffled, trying not to look at the way a tiny spot of blood began to seep through his shirt. He and the other boys had been playing tag during recess when it had happened. Steve had been teasing Eddie a bit, because it was funny to watch him react when Steve tapped him on the back and then ran away faster than Eddie could chase him. Steve was the fastest kid in their class, and he liked holding it over the other kids’ heads.
Eddie was cool . Steve had always thought so, since the very beginning of the year, when he showed up like a new kid, taller and stronger and faster than everybody else their age. The other kids saw him as some kind of bad kid, stupid for repeating the year, the kind their parents warned them about, but Steve couldn’t bring himself to care about stuff like that. He liked Eddie, liked the way that his clothes always had holes in them and fit too big. It always seemed like he was too cool to have parents like Steve’s who monitored his every move. Unlike Steve, Eddie could pick his clothes. Could wear the comfy, worn ones that Steve was always forced to put into a donation box or relegate to sleepwear.
So, Steve liked teasing Eddie―he liked asking Eddie where he got his clothes, liked shutting his locker before he was done getting all the books, just because it got his attention. He liked pretending, sometimes, that Eddie had cooties just like the girls did, because Eddie often made Steve feel the same jittery feeling he got when he was around them. And he liked poking Eddie on the back during tag, watching him startle and try to grab at Steve even though Steve was too quick to be caught. He liked the way Eddie always fixed him with a determined look and started racing towards him with a single-minded drive.
Steve had always thought these things meant that he and Eddie were friends, or something like it. Not quite friends, but maybe a pre-friendship, where Steve orbited Eddie like a planet did the sun. But today was different. As he’d tapped Eddie’s back and began to run, he’d turned back to look at the larger boy, just to glance at him and make sure he was following.
Instead of his normal playful resolve, there was a raw fury in Eddie’s face that Steve hadn’t seen before. His eyes and cheeks burned red, and more red formed where Eddie bit his lip so hard it bled. Steve’s pulse kicked up and his throat seized. In that moment, it wasn’t just a game anymore. Something primal kicked in, and little Steve stumbled before running full speed across the field. Eddie followed, big steps bounding heavily in Steve’s direction. The other kids stepped back, their instincts telling them to get out of there, but it didn’t matter. Eddie’s gaze was only focused on Steve. He didn’t even flinch as he barreled over Tommy H on his way to get to his prey.
Steve zoomed around the field like his life depended on it, but it was like a human running from a bear. No matter how fast he ran, Eddie only got more angry, more determined, more aggressive. Steve took a turn towards the edge of a hill, and Eddie collided into him. Suddenly, they were rolling together, their bodies tangling and bouncing against one another as they rolled down the grassy slope to the edge of the recess field.
When the world finally stopped spinning, Steve registered a clawed hand grasping onto his arm. Eddie was sprawled out next to him, and he came to awareness in the same breath Steve did. He launched himself at the smaller boy, growling and snarling in his face, eyes fully red, now. Steve cried as pinpricks of pain formed on his arms from where Eddie’s clawed hands grabbed them like a lifeline.
He shook Steve, once, twice. “I hate you!” He’d snarled, right in Steve’s face, pure and unchecked fury guiding him. “Why won’t you just fucking leave me alone?!” Spittle sprayed in Steve’s face and suddenly his face was on fire, his heart clenching up in shame. Hot tears began to spill out.
And then the teachers were there, extracting the two. Steve was in shock. The teacher tried to pull him farther away, but his limbs felt like lead. Eddie was screaming as the gym teacher and another adult grabbed both of his arms, holding him down like they’d been trained to do. “Just leave me alone! Leave me the hell alone!” Eddie was screaming, and maybe it was listening to that, or maybe it was the urgency in the way the teacher pulled him, but Steve’s legs finally began to move backwards. He let himself be pulled away and comforted by the teacher.
He wasn’t brought to the nurse’s office. Apparently, that was reserved for Eddie, who needed the entire room cleared, and needed Steve far away. Instead, he was brought into the classroom, onto the little wooden chair next to the teacher’s desk as they waited for the Eddie situation to settle, and for one of the nurses to come down and look at Steve’s scratches.
Steve could feel the eyes of the other kids on him, and he looked down at his knees, embarrassed. Everybody knew, now, didn’t they? How Steve had been doggedly pursuing someone who hated him. His mind reflected on all the times he’d reached out and tried to be Eddie’s friend, but it was like this game Steve had gotten that year for Christmas. The cards in the game didn’t look like anything at first; they looked like blue dots and red outlines until you put them in their red little screen, and then suddenly the words became clear.
Eddie’s presentation was the red screen that made everything clear. Every time Steve had thought he was getting closer to this cool older friend, winning him over just a little bit more, Eddie didn’t see it that way. He saw Steve as an annoyance, a pest. Even worse than that, maybe. Steve had heard his teacher whisper on the phone about Steve potentially bullying Eddie, and how they’d written it off as just normal childhood rivalries that formed when both kids were set to become alphas. Steve’s face got hot all over again at that. Worse than a pest, he was a bully . He struggled to keep in the tears in front of the other students. He didn’t want to embarrass himself even more.
Eventually, the nurse came to bandage Steve up and give him a warm hot chocolate and a blanket. She was one of those ladies exactly opposite of his mother. His mother was beautiful and angular, all sharp bones and sharp looks at Steve when he was being embarrassing in front of her. She was kind on the outside, and never yelled at Steve, but there was something cold on the inside that always made him feel like he needed to be careful around her.
The nurse was soft, and round, with dry, cracked hands and short, stubby nails. Her face was weathered but warm as she comforted Steve and asked how he was feeling. She was firm, but there was a softness and a comfort to it that got Steve crying all over again. “I know, kiddo. That was scary, wasn’t it?” She said, letting Steve hug her close to him, and rubbing soothing patterns on his back. “Sounds like you’ve learned your lesson about being mean to alpha boys that are bigger and stronger than you, eh?” She chuckled, and Steve could feel the vibrations from where he was plastered to her side.
“That little Munson boy’s got enough going on without having to worry about schoolyard bullies picking on him.” She said, and Steve felt the shame all the way down to his shoes. “So, be nice to him when he comes back, yeah? He didn’t mean to rough you up; nobody can really help how they act when they’re presenting.”
Steve nodded, wiping at the tears in his eyes. “Don’t worry, peanut, you’ll understand when you present, yourself. The instincts just take over. It’s scary for you, but it’s just as scary for the one presenting. Just wait ‘til you’re older.”
Steve did understand, because he happened to be the one there when Tommy presented, and when Nancy presented, and when half the basketball team presented. People just called it bad luck, mostly. Tommy joked around sometimes that it was because Steve had a really punchable face. None of the times with other kids were as bad as with Eddie, though. Not really. With Tommy, they’d been fighting over the remote when suddenly the other boy had gotten out of control and started punching Steve’s side until he finally gave the remote up, and then Tommy had curled around the little piece of plastic in the corner of the room and snarled everyone to stay away from him until Carol showed up and calmed him down.
A couple of the basketball kids had suddenly presented during practice. By this point, though, he’d already taken sex ed, where they’d explained the phenomenon with a clinical apathy. Alphas usually present when they have unchecked feelings of aggression. Usually, it is brought on by a fight or power struggle of some kind. Organized sports are a common place where that aggression might turn into a presentation. The targets of this rage upon the commencement of a presentation are typically either other alphas with whom they share a rivalry, or an omega they admire. In the case of an omega, their rage will more likely be turned toward anyone trying to separate them from the object of their affections.
So, Steve had been there for both kinds. He’d been there when Jason Fieldman had been in charge of blocking Steve, and then suddenly had been wrapped around him, wrestling him to the ground and telling him he wasn’t getting through. And he’d been there when he’d been talking with Peter Kowalczyk’s girlfriend about a school project and then suddenly Pete was throwing Steve away so hard, he’d landed against the lockers on the other side of the hallway and hadn’t been able to bend down without pain for three days.
And he’d been there for Nancy when she’d curled around Jonathan after the demogorgon had disappeared, panting heavily and telling Steve he needed to go before she did something she regretted.
That last one had stung a bit, and in hindsight, Steve should have known their relationship was pretty much over from that point. If they’d really been destined, Nancy should’ve been protective of Steve, right? Or clingy or something instead of seeing him as a threat. He’d just told himself it was because she’d presented as an alpha, so of course she’d be feeling aggression towards another alpha. And of course, she’d be protecting Jonathan, a beta. Especially after something so traumatic. He’d been so preoccupied by the insanity of the night, though, he’d just walked out, numb, and drove himself home.
All of those times were surprising, sure, and sometimes he got injured from getting thrown around, or punched, or scratched. But he’d known what he was looking for, and their anger had been easily boiled down to instincts. The time Eddie presented was burned deep into Steve’s memory and was the reason he avoided the kid so resolutely in school. When Eddie would get up on the cafeteria table for some rant about how stupid the basketball team was, or how shitty the teachers were, Steve had just looked resolutely down at his food, even if his friends stood up and jeered back at Munson.
And when he heard his friends were going to swirlie Munson or teach him a lesson, he made sure to make himself scarce. Tommy always made fun of him for it. “King Steve is scared of the Freak.” He’d taunt, and Steve would disagree loudly and make excuses, but in truth he kind of was. Scared of Eddie, that was.
He just got the vibe, whenever Eddie looked at him, that the other boy secretly wanted to murder him or something. It was irrational. He knew it was irrational. But there was something about the way he looked at Steve that made Steve remember the furious intensity of when he first presented. Sometimes he’d be in the parking lot, and his friends would make some kind of joke about how Eddie was trailer trash or something, and Eddie would just give Steve this look. And Steve had this bizarre feeling deep in his gut that Eddie was just going to pull a knife on him or something.
Steve didn’t really think too hard on it, though. Just stayed far away from Munson and got his weed from a dealer out of town if he really wanted it.
It was easy to forget about the way Nancy had cast off Steve like an old shoe, when she was so nice to him a few short months later. They got back together before Christmas, and in January, Steve presented. Nancy helped him through it, and the whole thing felt kind of like fate.
Getting back together had gone smoothly. After about a month of mostly radio silence from Nancy, she’d finally called him and asked to talk. At that point, Steve had been so lonely that he came over right away, eager to rekindle their relationship.
Nancy had laughed off all the conflicts they had in the days before their break. “I think it was just the alpha thing. I’d expected to be an omega, but it all kind of makes sense if we’re both alphas. I was getting pissed ‘cause our natures are more combative.” She’d said.
Steve understood what she meant. Before going to kindergarten, every kid got tested to see if they had the alpha/omega gene, or if they were one of the 60% of the population who identified as a beta. Everybody assumed that a girl with the alpha/omega gene would present as an omega, and a guy with the same gene would be an alpha, because that was what happened about 90% of the time. But on rare occasion, a girl would be born with the alpha gene, or a guy would be born with an omega gene and there was no way to tell until they actually presented.
Nancy had spent her whole life being told that she was going to present as a sweet little omega, the same way everyone treated Steve like a strapping alpha boy even when neither of them had technically presented. It must have rocked her world to actually present as an alpha instead, but it also must have made things fit into place for her more than ever.
“My biggest fear was me turning into my mom,” Nancy confessed to Steve. “I didn’t want to just be some housewife stuck with a litter of pups and nothing else in her life. I don’t know, I guess I just must’ve seen you as an extension of that or something. Now that I’ve got all these possibilities opened from being an alpha, I think all those reservations I was having have kind of gone out the window.”
They were both at Steve’s house when he presented. His dad was at a conference, and it happened to coincide with the half of the week his mom always spent in DC, so they’d been alone, cuddled up in Steve’s bed. Steve could smell her everywhere, her perfumed floral smell something soothing and safe. The sound of the water lapping on the pool outside and the eerie whisper of the leaves on the trees was drowned out by the soft crooning of John Denver on the record player.
Steve’s heat had come on slowly, like a rising tide, rather than a crashing wave. His body began to feel warm, and a pulsing desire began to build inside of him non-urgently. Nancy’s knot bulged against him, and his mind felt like it was swimming as he wondered what it might be like to have it inside of him. He’d begun rocking against her, and they hadn’t even realized it was a heat until they were on their third round that night and Steve still didn’t feel satisfied.
The heat had lasted three full days, and it had been absolutely perfect. Nancy was his mate . He was absolutely sure of it. It was the only thing that made sense, the whole reason why she’d become an alpha and he’d become an omega. They were like puzzle pieces that perfectly fit together. Even when his parents inevitably walked in on them post-coitus and had given an extremely uncomfortable talk about protection, followed by an even more uncomfortable talk with Steve about bringing girls over, it hadn’t been able to shake his high.
He and Nancy were in love. At the ripe age of sixteen, he’d already found the mate he wanted to be with for the rest of his life.
Everything had come somewhat crashing down to reality when Nancy had finally made her way home and Steve had watched her mom’s car pull out of the driveway. He was an omega male. What were people at school going to say? What were his future job responsibilities going to be like? Ten years ago, the only jobs open to omegas had been teachers, nurses, secretaries, or flight attendants. At least that's what people said. Of course, there were omegas who worked in factories, or as cleaning ladies, or whatever. But…Steve had always just assumed he’d be taking over his dad’s company eventually. That was totally out of the picture, now.
“Steve, we need to sit down and have a talk about how public we want this to be.” His mother had said, after Nancy had left, and the world came crashing down even more. That was right. His mom was a senator. A very republican senator, too. If word got out that Steve was a male omega, her opponents might even use it against her. Say it was the kind of deformity that happened when two alphas mated each other.
“Not public at all.” Steve answered right away, imagining the way Tommy would grin meanly and call him Nancy’s little bitch boy. Or the way he might be get kicked off the basketball team if the other players weren’t comfortable playing with an omega. “Is there any way we can hide it? Nancy can keep a secret; I know she can. I just…maybe just until I graduate or something? I just don’t want my entire life to change just yet.”
His mom’s eyes softened. “Don’t worry. The schools are not required to know your designation, just get a note from a doctor saying it was properly handled and that you are on the appropriate suppressants.”
“I’ll pick up all the scent blocking supplies on my way home from work tomorrow.” Steve’s dad offered, already noting it in his planner. “You’ll have to take the next couple days off school until we’re able to get some good suppressants and the scent blockers do their job…I’ll call the school and tell them you had your rut.”
“Don’t worry, Steve.” His mom said. “I know you might feel ashamed, but it doesn’t have to be that life changing. Nobody even has to know.”
And then they were both walking away, too distracted by all the work they had to do to sit with Steve or talk him through the change to his entire self-perception.
And Steve had nodded, grateful for the way they could handle things. The strings they could pull. He was…he was broken. His designation turned him from a golden boy to a black sheep in the world’s eyes, but his parents loved him anyway. Treated him the same. They were willing to see this through with him and hide it. He could hear his dad shouting something on the phone in the other room, and Steve sat on his hands and tried again not to cry.