Chapter Text
Steve has always known he’s stupid. Sure, he doesn’t remember crawling backwards, but his mother just loved to laugh about the story as she told it to her dinner and party guests. They would laugh and express disbelief.
“I understand he was a baby, but I don’t understand how someone can’t figure out how to crawl correctly.”
“Maybe you should have taken him to a child psychologist.”
“Are you sure you’re remembering correctly? As a new mother you must have been sleep deprived.” Not that she was the person who took care of him. At least home video wouldn’t be a thing for several more years. His mother would absolutely have filmed him and put those videos on display for her guests.
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Steve’s walking well before he can talk fully, and when he does start talking in full sentences, his parents direct him about everything. They don’t want to be embarrassed during they’re dinner parties, so he needs to learn manners.
He picks up etiquette fairly quickly, but there are other things that are constantly slipping his mind. His parents never chastise him in front of guests, but as soon as they leave, he’s given a list of everything he did wrong. It usually consists of every instance in which someone spoke to him and he didn’t look at them.
This is something that constantly comes up in the Harrington home. With or without guests, they constantly have to direct him where to look. It feels so unnatural to look at someone’s eyes while they’re talking. He usually finds himself looking just past people’s shoulders, but it’s hard to keep himself from looking at their mouths if he’s going to be forced to look at them. It makes it easier to make out the words.
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As it turns out, crawling isn’t the only thing he gets backwards. He can never remember the difference between right and left, and learning to read and write turns out to be quite the challenge, too. The letters seem to jumble and shift in and out of place. Letters like d, b, q, and p became interchangeably processed in his mind.
He’s homeschooled for kindergarten and first grade as his parents attempt to get him to catch up academically and to cement his habit of looking people in the eyes, before the world is made too aware of his failures. His mother would sit in the room with his tutor, the disappointment of her gaze drilling into the side of his head. She left the room the moment he read the word ‘world’ as ‘morip.’ They tell him he’d understand if he would just pay more attention. He tries, though. He tries so hard.
Eventually he gets pretty good at sifting through the possible words and what works with the context of the sentence before reading it out loud. He’s slow, but his tutor still gave him the pass, telling his parents that these services were no longer required. Steve thinks he only passed him so he won’t have to deal with it. So he’s passed—by a hair—but he can read now. He did it.
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He has a hard time paying attention in any of his classes. He asks a lot of questions, which his teachers apparently deem to be stupid enough that there’s no way he’s asking in good faith. He’s labeled a “class clown” by all of his teachers. Steve eventually drifts towards the other “class clowns” of the class. Tommy H and Carol P.
Whenever he asks dumb questions, they’re always the ones to laugh the loudest, and sometimes add to the questions in a way that seems to mock the teachers. Steve almost appreciated it—it made him look less stupid—but it also made it look like he was antagonizing his teachers, and he never got his questions answered. He just got sent to the principal’s office where they called his parents.
The first time it happens, he’s in third grade, and he thinks maybe they don’t think it matters. The principal calls his parents and simply sends him back to class. It confuses him until his mother picks him up at the end of the day, instead of Vanessa, his father’s housekeeper. The ride is tense and silent. His father is waiting at the door as soon as they arrive.
“I hear you’ve been antagonizing your teachers,” he says. Steve doesn’t know what that word means, so he shrugs. He knows what he’s referring to at the very least. The next thing he knows he’s on the ground, his cheek stinging. His father grabs a fistfull of his hair and drags him to a closet. He isn’t let out until Vanessa finishes making dinner. It’s hot and suffocating, squeezed under the lowest shelf, shoved into a few spare blankets.
The next time he messes up, the closet is cleaned out and all the shelves are removed. Just for him.
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Every time Tommy or Carol disrupt the class they look to the other and to Steve, as if to search for approval for their practical jokes. They clearly don’t realize that he’s genuinely stupid. But it’s nice. He does enjoy their fun most of the time. It’s much more enjoyable than reading the same sentence over and over again. It doesn’t hurt that it gives him the excuse that another student was distracting him. He can pretend that’s why he’s so behind. It’s for that reason he starts joining in.
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Steve’s parents leave for business conferences every couple of weeks. The problem with that is that Vanessa is his parents housekeeper, not his. On days they leave he has to find his own food. His parents are, obviously, rich and pretentious, so most of the food in the house is ingredients to actually make things. They have loads of uncooked pasta, eggs, and flour, but Steve doesn’t think there’s ever been a poptart in the house.
He knows how to make scrambled eggs, so he usually eats those for breakfast on days his parents are out. He hates the taste and can barely stand the texture, so he refuses to eat them for more than one meal a day. This leaves him struggling to find anything to keep his stomach from eating itself. He often finds himself chewing on the dry pasta.
Steve never got any kind of warning when his parents left for business conferences. He would just wake up some days and they’d be gone. They never left for more than two days, and he can always rely on them being back soon. Until one day when he’s in fourth grade.
It’s day three, and he’s starting to get hungry again after the scrambled eggs. He reluctantly resorts to scarfing down the container of spinach in the fridge. It’s almost 5:00 PM when he hears the door open. He reluctantly makes his way down from his room. He knows, coming home so late, they’d have probably already eaten, so they aren’t going to call Vanessa over, but they’ll want to evaluate how much he messed up the house with the housekeeper out.
He’s surprised to come downstairs to find that Vanessa is, in fact, there, but his parents aren’t.
“Where are mother and father,” he asks.
“I was wondering the same thing,” she answers. “So I called the hotel they’re supposed to stay in. Their business trip is scheduled for a week.” Something sparks in her eyes. “Now I’m not getting paid for this, but I swear to god!” She marches over to the kitchen and begins making dinner. It’s spaghetti. Steve wonders if she picked up on the fact it’s his favorite, or if it’s just easiest or the fastest.
“Come on over here,” she says.
“I’m not supposed to go near the stove when you’re cooking,” he says.
“Not anymore. Now, you’re going to need to learn this stuff.” Spaghetti is only the first food she teaches him to make over the week.
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The summer between fifth and sixth grade, Carol asks if they want to go swimming in Lovers’ Lake.
“Ew, Lovers’ Lake?” Tommy asks. “Come on Carol, that’s lame.”
“I want to go swimming,” she stands her ground. “In a lake. I don’t like the smell of chlorine.”
“Well, does it have to be Lovers’ Lake?” Steve tried to find a compromise between them.
“Yes. All of the other lakes are going to have a bunch of old geezers, fishing in them.” She turns directly to Tommy. “And it’s only called that because it’s kind of heart shaped, you know.” Both Tommy and Carol’s arms are crossed in front of them.
“You know what I heard, Tommy?” Steve asked. “There’s a house by the lake with some old kook.” Specifically, his father had called him a ‘degenerate and a maniac’ but Steve couldn’t remember the actual words. “My dad says it’s best to stay away from there.” They all have mirroring grins now.
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They’re all in the bathing suits they arrived in, creeping up near the house. Carol throws the first rock, but Tommy’s the one who actually breaks a window. A man barges out of the house, holding a shotgun. Steve’s eyes immediately widen, and he drops his rock and ducks behind a tree. Tommy grabs his hand, dragging him into the open and towards the lake. Steve chances a look at the man. His gun isn’t raised; he’s just glowering at them.
They all swim across the lake, like that’s the most logical course of action. The lake, while relatively small for a lake, is big and their legs are short, but they have the stamina of the eleven/twelve–year–olds they are. Even so, they’re about halfway across–and growing exhausted already–when Carol lets out a gargled yell. The boys stop and scramble to try to keep her above water, but she’s thrashing at them too, and none of their feet have been touching the ground in several minutes.
Over his panic, Steve hears a roaring motor sound behind them. He turns to see the man on a boat, steering towards them. He screams.
The man stops the boat when he gets to them, plunging an arm in the water just as Carol’s head bobs under the surface and pulls her up by the bicep.
With a renewed adrenaline, Tommy and Steve start moving to swim away but are quickly scooped up and land in the boat. Tommy and Carol are immediately in each other's grasps and Steve is gripping the bench under him. The man doesn’t turn the boat back around like he expects. He continues to take them to the other side of the lake, where they were headed. The man stops the boat, right at the edge, when the bottom is touching the ground.
“Get out,” he orders. They comply and the man grabs his oar. “Don’t go throwing rocks at people’s houses, ya’ hear?” he says as he uses the oar to turn the boat around. They all nod rapidly. “Good.” He starts the engine back up and moves back to his side of the lake.
“I wanna go home,” Steve says.
“Pussy,” Carol says.
“Yeah, Steve,” Tommy laughs. “That’s the most fun I’ve had in my life!”
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Despite Tommy and Carol having such an enjoyable time the first time, they don’t attempt to disrupt the man’s property again. They do continue to go to the lake that summer–and would continue to go the following summer–to swim. Steve always has the house in the back of his mind, feeling the urge to check over his shoulders every now and then to make sure the man isn’t watching them. That urge goes away over time.
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By middle school his parents seem to have lost all faith in any academic prospects for him. As long as he passes, they don’t care. He scrapes by on C minuses. He enters middle school and gets As and Bs in Mr Clarke’s class. Mr. Clarke is his favorite teacher. He explains everything in such an investing way, worded in ways that make the facts hard to forget. He gives very little reading material and doesn’t take off points for misspellings. I’m a science teacher, not an English teacher, he tells Steve. Enthusiasm and jokes infecting Steve’s mind with the facts of the matter.
Steve’s gotten As and Bs on individual papers before, as rare as he does, but this is the first class he’s gotten as high as a B on his overall report card. He carries the paper home, giddy with pride. Sure the other spaces are filled in with Ds and C minuses, but he got a B and even managed to avoid an F in English.
He puts the paper on the table in front of his mother. She looks down from her wine glass, and analyzes for a few moments. Her eyebrow twitches before she finally looks away again, bringing her wine glass to her mouth again.
“Must have been an easy class,” she says.
Steve feels like his chest is collapsing and he has to force it to expand again to breathe. She’s right though. He’d barely even studied for the class; as opposed to his English classes, which—again—he almost always gets an F in. Maybe Mr. Clarke was a bad teacher. Maybe he wasn’t teaching everything that needed to be taught. Not if he was teaching at Steve’s level.
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Tommy and Carol start dating in seventh grade and decide that if there are going to be lovers in Lovers’ Lake that summer, Steve shouldn’t also be there. It’s sort of an inside joke. Mostly it’s just the best place for them to be alone since neither of their houses are ever as empty as Steve’s. Steve gets it. It’s not like they’re always there, but when they decide they want to be doing couple things, that’s where they go, and Steve has to find something to do himself.
One day he’s buying time biking around the street and he runs into a classmate, Rachael.
“Where are your friends?” she asks.
“At Lovers’ Lake.”
“What? Why?”
“You know…” he shrugs non-committedly, “couple stuff.”
“They’re dating?”
“Yeah, they’ve been dating since January.” They’d been each other's New Year's kiss, and decided to go for it. It had worked out for them so they continued.
“Oh,” she says. “Hey, I was on my way to go see a movie. Wanna come?” So he does, because he’s just been biding his time anyway. He doesn’t watch a lot of movies, he realizes upon entering the theater. He remembers why once it’s over. He forgot about his tendency to zone out and stop paying attention. The movies are always over before he knows it.
“You should bike me home,” Rachael tells him.
“Didn’t you bring a bike?”
“Yes. We should bike back to my place together, and talk about the movie. We live pretty close.”
“Yeah, ok.” They don’t talk about the movie; she talks about the movie and he nods like he knows what she’s talking about.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me now?” she asks once they reach her house.
“Why?”
“That’s… what you’re supposed to do after a date,” she says. “At least, in movies they do…”
“Was this a date?” Her face falls. “Just messing with you,” he lies, laughing. He leans in to kiss her. She seems pleased and enters her house. It was his first kiss, and probably the least eventful of any he remembers, but at least he remembers it.
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When he arrives at school the following month, there’s a rumor that Carol and Tommy have been “making love at Lovers’ Lake since January.” Which is an absurd claim, and most people assume it started later than that, but the rumor is still there.
Steve knows that’s not what they’ve been doing, or Tommy would have come to him to brag and tease him about ‘being behind.’ Tommy and Carol insist he does not clear things up. Something about 'street cred.'
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He hadn’t gone to the Snow Ball dance in seventh grade, but he does in eighth. The gym is really decked out for a middle school dance in The Middle of Nowhere, Indiana. There’s tinsel hanging off the walls, and even a curtain of it separating the dance floor from the bleachers. Streamers and string lights are tented on the ceiling and there are giant letters covered in glitter, spelling Snow Ball. Steve’s pretty sure that sign has probably been used every year. Probably all of the decorations have been reused and added to the collection.
Steve’s not entirely sure what he expected to get out of the dance, but Tommy and Carol are enjoying themselves. Steve stays pretty close to the concession stand for the first half of the dance.
“You didn’t get a date for the Snow Ball?” Mrs. Fischer asks, sounding sympathetic. “I’d have thought a nice, handsome boy like you would do numbers.” Steve forces a smile and thanks her because, well, it was a compliment. He doesn’t have a reason to feel so uncomfortable. He heads over to the dance floor, deciding he’d rather hover around all the dancing couples than stay near the stand anymore.
“Steve?” He turns towards the voice next to him.
“Hey, Emily,” he greets.
“You know my name?”
“We have three classes together, just this year. Why wouldn’t I know your name?”
She seems embarrassed and the next thing he knows their lips are pressed together. She holds it for several seconds, and Steve is frozen the whole time. When she finally pulls away she’s a blushing mess, and she runs back to her group of friends who are cheering her on.
It was a dare. She was dared to kiss him, but it wasn’t a bet.
Steve could do numbers…
He kisses two other girls that night, before Tommy and Carol drag him back to Lovers’ Lake.
“I thought you said lovers only now,” Steve says.
“Come on Stevie–boy,” Tommy says. “Tonight’s special.”
“Yeah,” Carol laughs. “We’ll let you date us for the night. Maybe we can have a threesome.”
“With you guys?” Steve scoffs. “Yeah, right.”
“Aw, no?” Tommy pouts in mock offense, before pulling out a six pack of beers. “Alright. Let’s have some fun.”
They each have two cans and separate to stumble their own ways home. Vanessa greets him at the door, sighing at his pathetic entrance, having barely made it home at almost midnight.
“Do you realize how much beer you spilled on yourself?” she asks. He looks down. He isn’t exactly drenched, but there are small damp spots speckled around, primarily, his top.
“Oh. Yeah, Tommy was waving his cans around whenever he said anything.”
She tsks. “Go get changed and brush your teeth. I’ll make sure to have your suit cleaned by the time your parents get home in the morning.”
When he wakes up the next morning there’s a trashcan next to his bed. Just in case , the posted note by his bed says. There’s also an Advil with a glass of water. He doesn’t end up needing the trashcan and he decides that two beers isn’t a lot. He does take the Advil though.
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Steve’s parents go on small vacations every year around the holiday season, but Steve’s father recently got a promotion, so their vacation this year takes two weeks. Vanessa comes every day that week and they review every of the recipes he’s learned over the course of the last four and a half years. They have to make several of them twice, since he doesn’t know 42 recipes, but some of them are more complicated than others, and Vanessa has him do those ones for the repeat meals.
Steve has mixed feelings about it, since they take a long time, but the more complex ones always taste the best. He thinks Vanessa is smart enough to know his preferences by the time she starts teaching him, and knows which foods he’d be willing to put more effort into getting results.
They make a cake the last day, and Steve invites Tommy and Carol over to eat it. He hadn’t seen them for the whole of the two weeks. He knew that if he had invited them over, they’d have stayed all day, then made fun of him for cooking. He knows it’s a girl’s activity, but he’s just so glad he doesn’t have to eat raw materials anymore.
“Jeez man, where have you been?” Carol asked, hugging him from the side. He hesitated.
“I was on vacation with my parents,” he lies, he looks at Vanessa, who smiles encouragingly at him as she cuts the cake. “They’re at a conference now, so they’ll be back tomorrow, when school starts up again.”
“Well, god man, you could have called,” Tommy deadpans.
“Yeah, sorry. I got distracted.”
“Alright, who wants the first slice?” Vanessa asks exuberantly.
After Tommy and Carol leave, Vanessa tells him that she’s no longer going to visit with his parents away. That he knows what he’s doing now and she’d never been getting paid enough to compensate. He doesn’t get to sleep that night, dreading the next day when he knows will come the arrival of the ending of the best two weeks of his life. He feels guilty thinking it was the best time of his life when his two best friends have been absent almost the whole time.
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Steve’s dad gets a new car just before spring break, and tells Steve that he can have the old one once he gets his license. His keys are given to Vanessa for safe keeping. That’s when Vanessa starts taking him to empty parking lots to practice.
“What happened to not getting paid enough to take care of me when my parents aren’t here.”
“I was never paid enough for it. I still did it. Now you know how to keep yourself alive. But this. This is a milestone. And you can be the first of your friends to drive. You’re already probably the first in your grade to have a car.”
“It’s not mine yet.”
“You’re driving it, aren’t you?”
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He goes to the first party of the school year as a freshman. He accepts a few drinks and it’s nice. It’s calming. He regularly goes to parties after that, drinking to let go of the stress of school. He doesn’t get wasted until some party in late September. He remembers trying a keg stand. He needs a second attempt after he almost drowns himself, not expecting what came at him. His second attempt he apparently breaks some record.
He remembers being passed a few more drinks. He woke up at home the next day with a girl in his bed and the newly acquired title King Steve. And he was good at something.
For the next two years this becomes a regular occurrence. Get wasted and wake up with a girl in his bed. Sometimes the bed is empty, but obviously needs washing. Sometimes he wakes up in somebody else’s bed, but that’s a rarity. It helps with the stress of school. The hangovers get more manageable over time.
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A few weeks later, Steve’s father urges him to join the basketball team. He’d spent middle school studying, so he didn’t even really consider the possibility of squeezing fitness into his workload.
“You already have the genes for it,” his father reasons. “You’re going to need something to stand out to colleges. You aren’t getting any smarter.” All his father meant when he said he had the genes for it was that he, himself, had played baseball at a young age, but he turns out to be right.
Steve is naturally good at the game. He’s coordinated, and now that he’s regularly exercising, he gains strength easily. He revels in the positive attention provides; an attention he doesn’t get at home. When the season for competitive swimming comes up, it’s his choice to join. His parents seem pleased by this decision.
Tommy’s the one who suggests joining the swim team. He’s on the team too. They grow closer during training, trying to outperform each other and going out to eat with Carol after. His grades are dipping even below what they were, but his parents don’t seem too bothered, as long as he does well enough in competition.
Him and Tommy make varsity sophomore year. He gets invited to more parties, and he somehow manages to keep his grades fairly steady, still barely passing, albeit on very little sleep.
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“Everyone knows that you’re a good fuck,” Tommy says matter of factly, “but what good does that do if you can’t actually get a girlfriend.”
“I could get a girlfriend if I wanted.”
“Right, but you aren’t even trying to.”
“So?”
“People are gonna start thinking you’re gay.”
“What? That doesn’t even make sense. I have sex with girls.”
“Yeah,” Carol draws out. “Do you really think the queers never try to give themselves alibis? It’s awfully suspicious that you bed and run, Stevie.”
“Look,” Tommy says, “all you’ve got to do is pick someone. Any girl at this school would jump to date you. Unless you aren’t into that, Stevie.” He’s grinning darkly, the same way both Tommy and Carol always do when they call him that. But it’s more intense this time.
“I like Mallory,” Steve admits slowly. Tommy’s face scrunches a bit.
“Mallory Shelmore? Why?”
“I mean, she’s pretty.” He doesn't mention that she had been in his periphery since fifth grade. Not after having seen Tommy’s immediate reaction to the admission.
“I guess,” Tommy says, dubiously.
“It’s mostly her hair,” Steve backtracks, feeling profoundly judged. If nothing else, the fact that she had angelic hair was pretty undeniable. Cascading curls, the color butter might turn under the perpetual gaze of a sunrise.
“Ok,” Tommy concedes, “but you need to find someone with a matching face.” He snickers.
“And image,” Carol says. “You know in sixth grade she found a lizard during recess and brought it in to class?”
“No,” Steve lies. He did know. He thought it was cool. He gets the impression even knowing that she did that and still having suggested her as an option would have given him a lot of shit.
“Just find yourself someone,” Tommy says. “You should probably run it by us first though. You obviously don’t have the eye for this, do you Stevie?”
Steve blinks. “...Right…”
Steve spends the rest of the day on the lookout for—as Tommy described them—candidates. He thinks about the reasons he likes Mallory that aren't related to her appearance or ‘weird’ hobbies. She’s a member of the ten percent of the girls at Hawkins High, who both look at him with curiosity and intrigue, while also managing to actually have a conversation with him. A conversation where her voice isn’t overplayed, trying to turn him on, in an attempt to coax him into a bed.
He keeps his eyes peeled and can’t believe he’s never noticed a certain Nancy Wheeler. He knows why she’s never been on his radar—being a year below him—but god does she stand out once he notices her.
She’s not just pretty (and at that, pretty in a way he’s distantly judged as something Tommy would deem acceptable) but she has this confidence. She knows what she’s doing, and has probably known what she’ll be doing after graduation since before middle school. She’s smart and nice. He tells Tommy and Carol that if he were to ask someone out it would be her.
“Well hurry up then,” Tommy says. “What’s the point in getting all that experience if you aren’t going to use it?”
Tommy’s talking like advancing romantically is the same as advancing sexually, and it’s something Steve can’t imagine is the case. In all honesty, the only reason he even still hooks up is out of boredom. They live in a small town and there’s nothing to do. There’s a reason there are so many parties happening to give him the opportunity in the first place. But when he thinks about approaching someone with the prospect of dating—buying her flowers, picking her up, letting her drag him shopping, cuddling at the top of a ferris wheel, sharing intimate secrets, all that relationship stuff—it makes his hands sweat and his stomach twist.
Getting a girl into bed is easy, but asking one to—What?—go to a diner and sip from the same milkshake. It made him nervous. Especially someone as go getting as he’s noticed Nancy is in the past week. So he knows how to get a girl into bed, but not how to get them to a diner, and he voices these concerns to his friends, to be met with an eye roll from Tommy and a laugh from Carol.
“That’s the same thing, stupid,” she barks.
“What do you mean?”
“Same approach,” Tommy clarifies. “You draw her in and tease her with the possibility—of both—and she’ll come out of her shell for it.”
“So, right now…” Carol pauses, thinking. “You’re like an open box. People go to you and take out the sex.” Tommy snorts and Carol swats him with the back of her hand. “Starting a relationship would mean locking the box and giving her the key.”
“A spare key,” Tommy corrects and Carol scoffs at him.
“So it’s a trust thing?”
“Kind of,” Carol says. “It’s more about showing her she’s special to you. And also not fucking every girl in town. You up for that?” She winks. Absolutely he is.
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He draws her in with some make out sessions. If kisses land somewhere between sexual and romantic intimacy, then he could use his sexual charisma to charm her romantically. At least, that’s what Carol had said. Steve guesses that makes sense.
Tommy and her are constantly trying to explain to him that romantic and sexual relationships go hand in hand, and that if you can get someone sexually, you can get them romantically. Steve has a hard time grasping that. It’s never been that way before. Though, to be fair, Steve has never tried to go much further. Not that he really tried to get as far as he has.
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“You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.” The words are harsh, but the tone is playful. It’s their third make out session, and he thinks he’s making progress towards the diner date of his dreams. He almost tries to defend himself, before letting Nancy walk away, towards the bathroom exit.
It wasn’t the first time someone had called him an idiot, but never from someone he liked. Not the way he likes Nancy. The way he wants her to like him back. That made it sting in a way it hadn't in a long time.
She tells him to meet her Dearborn and Maple at 8:00. She later calls to tell him she’s on house arrest, so he meets her where she is. He helps her study; tries to make it fun. She tells him off for it.
“Was this your plan all along,” she asks. Demands. “To… To get in my room and then… get another notch in your belt.”
“No,” he reassures. “Nancy, no.”
“I’m not Laurie, or Amy, or Becky.”
“You mean, you’re not a slut.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“You know, you’re so cute when you lie.”
“Shut up,” she says quickly, offended. That’s fair, he thinks. It was very accusatory of him. He picks up a teddy bear and puts on a voice for it.
“Bad Steve,” he makes the bear say. “Bad. Don’t do that to Miss Nancy.”
“You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.” He quickly swallows down a lump that formed in his throat, which he didn’t entirely understand why he had.
“You are beautiful, Nancy Wheeler.” He needs to not think about the lump in his throat, so he immediately goes back to reading the flashcards.
Through the whole study date, Nancy barely misses three questions. He wonders if she would still think he was an idiot if she wasn’t a genius. No, he decides. She would. Maybe she wouldn’t say it to his face though. The way his parents tiptoe around it. We want you to do better. He knew what they meant, and why.
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The next time he sees her she’s walking down the hall with her friend, studying again. He doesn’t remember her name. He should.
He pulls the flashcards out of her hands.
“Hey!”
“I don’t know, I think you’ve studied enough Nance,” he says. “I’m telling you, you know, you got this.” He shifts the conversation to invite her to a party he’s planning. Well, she calls it a party, but he doesn’t think she’s been to many. It would just be him, Nancy, Tommy, Carol, and—well—he was inviting Nancy in front of her friend, so he wasn’t going to keep her from coming if she wanted. Nancy doesn’t actually get to decide if she wants to come before Carol points out Jonathan Byers putting a missing poster on one of the school pinboards.
“Oh, that’s depressing,” Steve says, because it is. He didn’t know someone went missing. His family must be devastated. Tommy makes a joke about how Jonathan probably did it, and Steve tells him to shut up—because seriously, what the hell—as Nancy walks up to comfort Jonathan. She’s a better person than Steve is. To be fair, Jonathan’s younger brother and Nancy’s younger brother were best friends.
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Steve tells Vanessa that he’s planning on throwing the party. He wouldn’t dare tell his parents, but she would be cool with it, as long as he was clear that it wouldn’t be massive.
“Four or five people, max,” he tells her.
“Why are you telling me this, Steven,” she asks, not annoyed, just confused. “It’s not like I’m going to be there to disrupt anything. I haven’t been taking care of you in years.”
“Mother and father have really high standards for the state of the house. I can never pass it, even when I’m not throwing a party. I don’t even know how to get rid of the smoke smell in my clothes.”
“Baking soda,” she says flatly. “Honestly Steven, do I need to teach you everything?”
“That’s not-” He rakes his hand through his hair, debating how he wants to communicate his issue. “Look, I’ll keep the party activities by the pool, and I’ll do the bulk of the cleaning. I just want you to give it a rundown before my parents get back. Please?” She eyes him.
“Theoretically, that’s not something I would have a problem with. But frankly I don’t trust those friends of yours to stay away from each other. I don’t want to be involved with that.”
“Tommy knows how to clean that up by now. I’ll make sure they take care of that if they pull anything. I just need you to make sure the pool area is clean.” Vanessa sighs.
“You’re lucky I have a soft spot for you,” she says. “But you’re paying me twenty bucks for this little favor.”
“You’re the best.”
“I know.”
↞⬡+¤+⬡↠
Nancy does show up with her friend. Barbara as she told him over the phone, saying she didn’t want to come alone. As soon as the name exited her mouth he scrambles for a piece of paper to write down the name so he could make sure to remember by the time they got to his place. He tries not to be too concerned about whether he spelled it wrong. As long as he could decipher the name it shouldn’t matter, but there’s shame knowing he might have.
It’s a good night. He has a lot of fun. He thinks Nancy does too, despite her friend (Barbara, Barbara, her name is Barbara. Don’t forget.) cutting her hand while trying to shotgun. That cut turns out to be the first link in the wild chain of events that would change Steve’s life.
↞⬡+¤+⬡↠
Link 1: Barbara cuts her hand.
Link 2: Barbara leaves the party early.
Link 3: Nancy can’t find Barbara the next day.
Link 4: Nicole tells him, Carol, and Tommy that she saw Jonathan Byers developing some photos that they ‘might want to know about.’ He finds out Byers was taking pictures of their party the previous night when he was ‘looking for his brother, who had gone missing. He breaks his camera.
Link 5: The kid is found dead in a lake.
Link 6: Barbara is officially missing. Nancy tells him she went to his house to search and saw some kind of monster. He doesn’t believe her.
Link 7: The cops question everyone at the party. Steve asks Nancy not to mention the beers that were at the party and she doesn’t. Carol does. She can’t resist the allure of being viewed as a rebel.
Steve’s father confronts him about the beers the next time he sees him. It’s the next day and he just woke up and his father is standing in the middle of the hall outside his room. Steve gulps. He knows this stance, the one his father is standing in. He walks up to him, forcing himself to maintain eye contact.
“Beers, huh?”
“Yeah…”
“What was that?”
“Yes sir,” he corrects. He expects to get knocked around for a bit. He does not expect his father to sigh, disappointed.
“Next time you decide to do something stupid, don’t drag your friends into your bullshit with you.” There’s silence for a moment as Steve shakes off the shock.
“Yes sir.” Steve’s father shoves him into the wall to get by, heading to the bathroom across from Steve’s room.
Link 8: He apologizes to Nancy for being a dick. Acting like his father finding out about the beers was more important than Barbara.
“Did you get in trouble with your parents,” she asks. She’s probably asking about throwing a party in the first place, a party where someone was last seen. As far as he knows, she doesn’t know the cops ever found out there was beer.
“Totally, but… You know, who cares? Screw ‘em.” He wonders if he’d be saying this if he got the reaction he was expecting. “Any news about Barbara?” There hadn’t been. She’s obviously upset about it, so he invites her to the movies. She could use a distraction. She says she’s busy; especially with the fact her brother’s best friend’s funeral was that day.
Link 9: After their last interaction, Steve’s concerned about her. She seemed off. Tommy and Carol tell him he’s being stupid. Stupid for worrying, and stupid for caring about her at all.
They're right. He climbs up to Nancy’s window, to check on her. Inside is Jonathan Byers, the pervert who stalked them. Who took pictures of Nancy while she was getting dressed. He has his arm wrapped around her.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Link 10: He gets mad and goes too far. Tommy and Carol are the ones to pull him into their scheme of revenge on his behalf, but that shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
Together the three of them spray paint 'NANCY THE SLUT WHEELER' on the movie theater sign. Carol comes up with the idea, Tommy writes it out, and Steve holds the latter.
“You don’t want to do the honors?” Tommy asks, as if Steve even trusts himself to spell everything correctly. Not on something so public.
“I can’t believe I was actually worried about you,” he tells her later, once the sun comes up.
He eggs on Jonathan, insulting him and his family. He calls him things he shouldn’t, compares him to his absent father. He unremorsefully sneers about his missing brother and his grieving mother. Steve gets his face beat in, and he deserves every bit of it.
Link 11: He deserves it, but Tommy’s talking about revenge. Tommy’s accusing Jonathon of murdering his brother, and Carol won’t shut up. In a moment of rage he cuts off the friends he’s had for years.
Link 12: He cleans the spray paint off the movie theater sign before heading over to the Byers’ house to apologize to Jonathan. Shit goes down.
He’d jumped to conclusions—he was stupid—and just wants to talk about the situation. Work things out. Nancy’s there, and the house is decked out with Christmas lights, weapons, and the smell of gasoline. As stupid as he is, he’s never been more confused in his life, but before he can really even say anything there’s a gun in his face and he’s even more confused, with much added panic.
Suddenly the lights start blinking like crazy, out of nowhere. Something’s breaking through the ceiling. Jonathan grabs a baseball bat that has giant nails rammed through it, sticking out from every side off the table, and pulls him through the hall. Everything’s happening so fast and he just barely catches the warning to jump over the bear trap in the middle of the walkway.
They lead him into a room where the pace of everything happening slows to a stop. He takes a moment to register what’s happening. Whatever came through the ceiling seems to leave. This is crazy. Nancy tells him it’s going to come back and yells at him to leave. He runs.
He’s at the car, and the door is already open, but he’s looking at the house and the lights are flickering again. He can’t just leave them…
He runs back to the house. When he opens the door there’s a giant humanoid creature with an open flower face willed with spiky teeth. It’s set towards Nancy, who’s shooting the pistol she previously held to Steve’s face. It’s largely unaffected, and Nancy quickly runs out of bullets, continuing to shoot nothing in panic. He pulls himself together just in time to keep the monster from mauling Nancy, picking up the bat with nails running though it that Jonathan had previously been brandishing. He knocks it into the trap Jonathan and Nancy set up, and the former kills it with fire.