Chapter Text
Steve Harrington was a disappointment to his parents.
He hadn’t always been one—as a child he was the very picture of a proper pup for a young, wealthy couple looking to turn money and connections into political power. A bit rough and tumble when playing with his friends, but his mother could stick him in a little suit and pull him onstage at campaign events to show off the result of his father’s alpha virility along with the classy restraint of stopping at one child. He would smile and wave while his mother kept a firm grip on his shoulder, doing as he was told until he could undo the tie around his throat and run off with Tommy to grab their bikes.
After a summer of bicentennial picnics, local parades, and debates in middle school auditoriums, Robert S. Harrington won his first election to the Indiana State Senate. He commuted for the week to Indianapolis while the legislature was in session, leaving Steve alone with his mother in Hawkins.
Until Judith Harrington brought Steve on a surprise trip to the capital and caught Bob with a hand under his secretary’s blouse.
Then Steve was left home with nannies for the first time since he started school.
Sometimes he stayed with Tommy since Mr. Hagan ran the Hawkins office for Senator Harrington. Tommy’s house was a bit smaller than Steve’s, and there was no pool, but it was still in Loch Nora. It felt like being at home, but better since he got to run around with Tommy and he didn’t have to worry about being too loud and upsetting his father or waking his mother from a valium-induced nap.
So Steve had his little group of preppy friends, and a string of nannies who usually lasted 6 months before leaving for something with more stability and less constant wrangling of a hormonal, pre-teen pup. His parents came home for major holidays, for campaign events, and at the end of the legislative session. Judy called home at least once a week during those early years, always making promises and plans for what they would do as a family when she and Bob came home. And every time Steve held onto the vicious hope that those plans would come to fruition, flower into some family bonding moment, a time to feel safe, and happy, and loved. To feel like a pack.
At 14, Steve had already hit his major growth spurt and was nearly as tall as his father. “See, Judy,” Bob said on the rare occasion he was home the summer before Steve’s freshman year, “Knew he’d be an alpha. I’m sure he’ll hit his first rut any day now.”
Steve had purred softly, preening at the pride in his father’s words, at the gentle affection as he gripped his shoulder. He didn’t know to pay attention to the gradual changes in his body that were preparing him for his presentation; his father said he would be an alpha, what did he have to look out for anyway?
But he didn’t present that summer. Bob Harrington barely came home anyway, so it wasn’t like Steve could disappoint his dad then. Instead of dwelling on what may or may not happen when puberty hit, he talked Tommy into joining cross-country with him so they could build up their stamina for basketball season.
Tommy hated running, but he’d do anything to make the Hawkins High basketball team (Go Tigers!) in order to impress his own father. Steve just wanted to play a game he enjoyed with his best friend. And sports gave him something to do after school rather than go home to his empty house—high schoolers did not require nannies according to Bob and Judy Harrington.
The boys made the basketball team that fall, but neither presented. Tommy’s scent settled as a beta into a soft cedar and musk without presenting that winter. Coach said ‘81/’82 was a building season for the Tigers, and they failed to make it to the playoffs.
“Always next year, right Steve?” Tommy said with a grin as he threw an arm around Carol Perkins’s shoulder. Carol snapped her gum and shoved Tommy off.
“Yeah, next year,” Steve said with an easy smile. Not that he and Tommy hadn’t spent most of the season riding the bench, they still got to play as freshmen, which was plenty for Steve. It wasn’t like his parents came to any of the games the way Mr. Hagan did. Basketball was just for fun.
Then Steve presented.
He was home alone over spring break. His mom had originally wanted them to take a family vacation, but another important dinner, or fundraiser, or gala came up. Steve didn’t remember the excuse this time, had stopped keeping track of where his parents may be at any one time. He was nearly 15, and Mr. Hagan said he would teach him to drive once he got his permit. He could handle a week home alone with nowhere to be.
Steve didn’t expect the fever, or the pain in his abdomen to hit him that Tuesday. He woke up to his presentation heat, the discomfort made worse by the fact that no one was home. He had no comforting pack scents, no cool fingers to stroke his forehead, no whispers to distract him from the pain and quell the hormones rushing through his body. It left aroused and opened, slick coating his thighs and sweat dripping down his spine.
While he wanted nothing more than to nest, pull every soft thing into his bedroom and curl into a tiny ball, he was more afraid of how his mother would react if he ruined any of her linens. Judith Harrington had been on heat suppressants since Steve was born, there hadn’t been a nest in the house in over a decade, and they didn’t have the materials for a proper one either, at least according to Steve’s developing sensibilities. He huffed a snuffling little cry, grabbed an old bedsheet and the ratty towels his mother would likely throw out the next time she was home, before making the saddest excuse for a nest in the bathtub of his bathroom. It would be easier to clean after.
Steve cried himself to sleep that first night, alone, desperate for release, with his fingers shoved inside himself, nowhere near enough to satisfy the itch deep inside him.
His mom called that Friday night, and through tears he told her the news. Judy clicked her tongue and said, “I’m sorry you were alone for that, darling. Should I get your father over here so you can tell him?”
For a moment Steve was certain he would throw up.
“Could you tell him?” he responded. “I’m just tired,” he yawned for emphasis, “Figured I’d go to bed early.”
“Hm,” Steve could hear the tightness in his mother’s voice as she pursed her lips. “Of course, dear.” He was about to say goodnight when Judy added, “Oh, did you find everything you need? There should still be some pads in the master bath!”
Hot embarrassment burned up Steve’s neck, pricklier than the heat of his hormones from earlier that week. “Yeah, I found them, all good!” he blurted, desperate to end the conversation.
“Oh, good! I’ll be sure to get you stocked up when we come home. Can’t have any accidents, not an omega like you, Stephen.” Her tone shifts again, back to the gentle mother he still remembers from his childhood, back before the suits and campaigns, when his dad was just VP of sales at his own father’s company, and they were all together in Hawkins all the time. “Goodnight, dear. I’ll see you soon.”
“Night, Mom.” Steve hung up the phone and went to rifle through his parents ensuite. He had been coping with wadded up toilet paper in his underwear for nearly two days. It was such a given in Steve’s life that he would present as an alpha that he had barely paid attention in health class when they learned about puberty and presenting, so getting hit with his first period following his first heat had been a horrifying surprise until his brain caught up and pieced it together. Almost as horrifying as the almost nonexistent slit hidden by his apparently empty scrotum having begun opening into a vulva and vagina in the months leading up to his heat without him noticing. Steve had always wondered how some male omegas knew beforehand. Apparently, they were just more aware of their taints.
“No way,” Carol said, noticing him before Tommy, her omega-nose more attuned to changes in scents and pheromones than Tommy’s beta senses. Carol had a pointed smirk on her face, finally something to bring King Steve, Hawkins High junior royalty, down a peg. Tommy scrunched his face in obvious confusion, not sure what Carol was talking about.
“It’s about time, Harrington,” Carol continued. “Thought you’d end up a beta at this rate.” Her smile softened as she leaned in, “You handle it okay? I thought your folks were out of town.”
“Yeah, I handled it fine, thanks.” Steve kept his eyes down, not sure how he fit in with his friends anymore. “Can we not make a big thing out of it?”
At that point Tommy had caught on and held up his hand for a high five, “Alright, Harrington finally presents! Bet your dad is stoked.”
“Doubt it.” Steve leaned back against the wall, kicking his left leg up to rest the sole of his adidas against the brick. “I don’t know if my mom even told him yet. Me being an omega is going to take getting used to… for a lot of people…”
Tommy’s eyes went wide at that. “Oh, shit.” He grabbed Steve’s shoulder. “Guess you’ll just have to be the best omega this school has ever seen, huh?” He smiled, gave Steve a wink that might have been flirty if it weren’t for the fact that Tommy had been his proximity-based best friend since he was 8 years old, and dragged Steve and Carol along before the bell rang.
In that moment, Steve was infinitely grateful for Tommy Hagan. Because it was that easy for Tommy. He wasn’t willing to accept a Steve Harrington that was anything less than the most popular boy in their grade, but a Steve Harrington who happened to be an omega was as easy as an alpha Steve, or a beta Steve. That won’t be true of many people. Not at first.
But Steve is stubborn and he’s ready to fight for the crown his father expects him to wear. He’ll be the best omega Hawkins High has ever seen, more popular, more envied, more wanted by the hottest alphas.
And he’ll do it until his parents aren’t disappointed anymore.
Freshman year doesn’t leave him much time to grow his popularity as an omega, but his parents help him out by way of a car for his 15th birthday when he passes his permit test. And Steve manages to get an invite to the Junior/Senior prom from Beth Porter, an alpha senior who had been on the basketball team and was almost as tall as he was. They go more as friends, but he still makes out with Beth in the back of her car after they leave the dance.
That summer he dates around, finally settling on Michael Thompson, a junior, who feels him up at parties and takes him to drive-in movies in order to get in his pants. Steve loses his virginity—but does not come—at a showing of An American Werewolf in London. He breaks up with Michael in early October and hooks up with Heidi Andrews at her Halloween party. They stay together until Spring Break, which feels somehow auspicious and ominous to Steve. He’s been an omega for nearly a year and has two relationships plus a dozen casual dates under his belt, along with some relatively mediocre sex and a lot of above average kissing. Not too bad for a guy who was destined to be an alpha according to his very old-fashioned alpha father. Not that his father cared.
After Heidi, Steve sticks to casual dates, never seeing anyone more than two times in a row. He’ll hook up at parties, blow an alpha in a bathroom before going back to the crowded living room and shotgunning a beer, sometimes he makes out with Carol when Tommy is grounded or too drunk to care. It becomes routine. He floats through his life at the top of the popularity food chain, gets a date whenever he wants, works just hard enough in class that teachers ignore him as average. And his parents are still away all the time.
Robert S. Harrington was planning on running for the U.S. House of Representatives, taking advantage of the redistricting in the upcoming election cycle. He would be in Hawkins slightly more for the campaign, but not home, and not around Steve unless he was useful.
“Can’t you find some nice, clean cut, alpha girl to date. Someone I won’t have to answer any embarrassing questions about if you’re seen around town?” he growls at Steve across the dinner table after informing him of what he’s been hearing from Ray Hagan about Steve and Tommy’s activities.
“Yes, sir,” Steve answers, eyes down, submissive.
Now a junior, Steve wears his popularity with confidence at school. He goads Tommy into being an ass, says stupid, cruel things with Carol, and he watches everyone else moving around him, some with deference, some disdain.
And one cool, late-October morning he asks Nancy Wheeler on a date.
She’s pretty and quiet, smart and focused, from an unremarkable middle-class family. Nancy only presented as an alpha over the summer, which surprised most of the town because of how petite she is. She’s a surprise, like Steve. Anyone who didn’t know them would assume he was her alpha, the thought of which settled oddly in Steve’s gut.
But Steve likes Nancy. A lot. She’s sweet, and she’s clearly flattered by his attention, not put out by his taking initiative and asking her the way most of the alphas his age and older would be. She has goals, talks about the future, something Steve never does with Tommy and Carol outside of what their parents expect of them.
On their first date she asks him what he wants to do after high school and he genuinely has no idea. “I dunno, maybe college. Probably end up working at my grandfather’s company if I don’t just get married,” Steve says with a shrug and roll of his eyes. “That’s all my parents really expect of me, I’m sure once I graduate my dad will be throwing young, up-and-coming alpha politicians at me until one sticks.”
“What if you’ve already found someone who doesn’t fit what your parents want for you?” Nancy asks with a smile that doesn’t go all the way to her eyes.
“Then fuck ‘em. My dad should've been around more.” He shoots her his brightest smile, steers the conversation back to her and what she plans on doing. And he’s pretty sure Nancy Wheeler is going to be out there changing the world, investigative journalist, blowing open massive stories, helping people, finding her way as far away from Hawkins, Indiana as possible. And a hidden part of Steve’s heart hopes he can tag along with her.
A week later Will Byers goes missing, and Steve’s world changes.
He doesn’t care much beyond the fact that a kid going missing is always sad, but the Byers family have always been the kind of people who the Harringtons ignore at best and on the whole disdain. Steve goes along with Tommy when he makes mean-spirited comments around Jonathan Byers, but he flushes with shame when Nancy calls him on it. He agrees to join Nancy and her best friend, Barb, on the forest sweep after school. His parents are fully out of town again, and he figures they’ll all already be close enough to Loch Nora that he can get Nancy to come over, spend the night so he isn’t alone. And maybe he can deal with how horny he’s been at the same time.
Steve ends the night riding Nancy Wheeler’s dick while she inexpertly jerks him off. And Barb Holland disappears from his pool.
Nancy pulls away, focused on finding her friend. Tommy hears about the pictures Jonathan Byers was developing of their party, which sends Steve rushing to make sure they disappear so no papers can run a story about State Senator Harrington’s omega son drinking underage and sleeping around.
But the pictures are almost all from after they ended up in the pool and went inside. Most of them are of Barb sitting on the diving board. One catches his eye though, since it’s focused directly on his bedroom window, from after Nancy had pulled off her wet shirt, when she was reaching to undo Steve’s fly and get him out of his soaked jeans. “Not something I’d expect from an omega, Byers,” Steve says before stuffing the picture in his pocket, letting it crumple, and dropping Jonathan’s camera, smirking as it breaks. He leaves with Tommy and Carol, not bothering to wait for Nancy who is apologizing to the stalker freak.
Steve spends the night alone at home, stewing, and looking at the photo he kept. Tommy had torn up the most incriminating ones during the confrontation, but even creased, Steve kinda likes the way he can see that Nancy desires him in this photo. It might have been purely physical, but it feels good to be wanted by someone he admires. By someone worth admiring.
The next day at school, Steve admits that breaking the camera was too much, but that he’s got every right to be mad about the photos. Nancy agrees, but stresses that Jonathan was the last person to see Barb and she needs to talk to him about it. “Fine,” Steve says, “But I’m staying out of it. I’ll be here for whatever you need that doesn’t involve Byers.”
And he keeps that promise, only to see Jonathan Byers sneaking out of Nancy’s bedroom window when Steve stops by her place the next morning. He sees Nancy notice his car, but he doesn’t wait for her to run out the door yelling after him. He just drives straight to Tommy’s and vents.
Tommy spray paints “Nancy Wheeler is a Cheeter” on the movie theater marquee because he can’t spell for shit. Nancy freaks when she sees it, Jonathan tries to explain that it wasn’t like that, they were just trying to piece together what happened to Barb, see if it was connected to Will. And Steve responds the way his father has trained him to, with venom, “Get it through your head, Byers, I know your mom is losing it, but you had a funeral! Kid’s dead!”
He regrets the words as soon as he says them, but they still start the fight that gets the two of them taken into the police station. Jonathan has a busted lip, and Steve has a fresh, red bruise over his left eye and an equally busted lip. Joyce Byers picks her son up immediately, but Steve has to wait for Chief Hopper to drive him home because his parents are unreachable.
Tired of feeling like shit and being an asshole about everything, Steve drives over to Byers’s place to apologize, only to find Nancy and Jonathan setting up some crazy trap in a living room with a hole in one wall and the entire alphabet painted over the wallpaper on another. “Steve, you need to leave,” Nancy says, pushing all the alpha authority she has into her voice.
“What the actual fuck is going on?” Steve yells, terrified.
“You really don’t want to know,” Jonathan answers just before the lights flicker, and Steve feels every hair on his body stand on end. “Get out while you still can.
And suddenly Nancy is pointing a gun at him and yelling for him to go.
Steve makes it as far as putting the keys in the ignition of his Beemer before saying, “Aw, fuck,” and running back in. He may be an omega, but he’s also older, stronger from cross country, swimming, and softball (he switched sophomore year since staying on the basketball team felt like inviting trouble), and even after everything, he really likes Nancy Wheeler.
So, Steve runs back inside and has his mind fucking blown.
After fighting literal monsters with Nancy and Jonathan, Steve keeps tagging along on the crazy mission with them that also involves Nancy’s little brother and his nerd friends, along with Chief Hopper and Ms. Byers. And this girl with superpowers. Somehow it all works out, the girl disappears, Will Byers is found, and life goes on.
Steve cleans up the theater marquee, and apologizes again to Nancy and Jonathan. They forgive him, and Nancy tells Steve that she wants to keep seeing him if that’s what he wants. “Yeah, I do,” he says softly, knowing that he likes who he is around Nancy more than he has ever liked himself, at least since he presented, and very possibly since he was a little kid.
Pushing Tommy away hurts, but he tried to explain how sick he was of being an asshole for the sake of popularity, and Tommy didn’t get it. Maybe Tommy couldn’t get it. “Didn’t think you’d ever turn into such a priss, Harrington,” Carol tells him, still hanging off Tommy’s shoulder. “I hope Wheeler’s dick is worth it.”
“Fuck off, Carol.”
“Gladly,” she retorts, flipping him off. “Let’s go, Tommy.”
Tommy takes a moment longer to move, staring straight through Steve’s head. “Eight fucking years, Steve.”
“All we ever had in common were sports and our shitty dads, Tommy. I want to be more than that.” Steve shakes his head, biting his lip to distract from the tears threatening to escape from his eyes. “I hope you can find something that makes you want more than that, too.”
“Sure,” Tommy shrugs, “See ya around, Harrington.”
“See ya, Tommy.”
Steve does find himself getting better with Nancy; he starts figuring out what he actually likes and what he cares about. He likes musicals and love stories, and he likes being around pups. He likes the Muppets. He likes taking responsibility for himself, offers what he can to make up for what a douchebag he was; buys Jonathan a new camera and has Nancy give it to him, makes sure all the pups get something special from him for Christmas.
He likes having a pack that is gentle and caring, instead of the loosest semblance of one that cares more about appearances than anything else.
And he settles into having that small, tight-knit pack, pulled together through the weird trauma-bonding situation they all are struggling with. They all have nightmares, some worse than others. Steve hates sleeping alone because of them, can always bring to mind the creature's weird five-petaled mouth as it screams, fear dropping into the pit of his stomach. But now he has Nancy and Jonathan, and the pups—Mike, Will, Lucas, and Dustin. They all help each other, as best they can. Joyce Byers has the group over to her house since she understands, and she mothers all of them, but especially Steve since she can sense how badly he needs mothering. Steve is sure the pups mostly see him as Nancy’s boyfriend, but Lucas and Dustin have picked him as their omega in the pack, wanting him to scent-mark them whenever they have bonding time.
That summer Steve works as a lifeguard at the community pool. He spends a bit less time with Nancy as she spends more time researching Hawkins Lab, trying to find a way to help Barb’s parents get closure—to do right by her best friend.
That need for closure leads to the two of them having dinner at the Holland’s house, and finding out about the private investigator they’ve hired. Nancy has a breakdown over it, sick of keeping the truth of Barb’s fate secret. Sick of lying. Sick of pretending that she doesn’t hate going over to Steve’s house whenever they want alone time because she can’t help thinking about what they were doing while Barb died.
It all comes to a head at Tina’s Halloween Party.