Work Text:
The thing is, Claudia didn’t exactly know where Steve Harrington came from.
Well, not like that. After all, back when she was Claudia O’Malley, she’d been in the same year as Melissa.
She remembered how Melissa had gotten engaged to Richard straight after her eighteenth birthday during senior year, and Claudia had thought it charitable that they’d waited to make it official. Everyone who was anyone knew those two were going steady for over a year before the engagement. They were married a week after graduation.
As his father’s health declined, Richard was taking on more and more responsibility within Harrington Pharmaceuticals, and it was as he rose in the corporate ranks that the company began to truly explode in size.
It was the talk of the town, of course: a homegrown success story, starting in the backwater of Indiana, now with locations in all fifty states and seventeen countries.
Richard was practically always out of town, but Claudia saw Melissa around occasionally. Just like she’d been in school, she was always meticulously dressed and effortlessly graceful, with some designer handbag on her arm— but sometimes, now and again, there was also a little curly-haired boy on her hip.
What an odd thing, Claudia used to think, to see such a small child— bright-eyed and chubby-cheeked and clinging to his mother’s skirt— and to know the responsibilities which awaited him before he even knew himself? After all, there could be no other path open to this boy (Stephen, she heard his name was) than to sit as heir to his father’s throne: the future of the Harrington Pharmaceuticals fortune.
Years went by, though, and Claudia never saw Melissa around town like she once did. Apparently she’d stepped fully into her role as a CEO’s wife, and was dutifully accompanying her husband to all his business engagements abroad.
Their big fancy house at the end of Kerley Boulevard sat still and empty, but the lawn remained perfectly manicured year-round; the rose bushes were trimmed; the pool stayed clean throughout the summer, then was silently covered when autumn approached. It was as if ghosts were looking after the home in its owners’ absence; Claudia wondered if the Harringtons remembered it existed at all.
Hawkins still spoke of them, of course. It was the sort of story that happens once upon a time to a tiny town, the one God gave to parents for whenever a kid pitched a fit about their schoolwork.
“Why, don’t you want to do well in school so you can succeed and build a wonderful life for yourself, like the Harringtons?”
(Claudia could never say that to Dustin. For one thing, her kid did too much homework, if anything, but furthermore she’d been lab partners with Richard for an entire semester when she got put into honors chemistry. She wasn’t one to gossip— but she’d tell anyone who’d listen that it wasn’t smarts that got Richard that cushy CEO job, that’s for sure.)
Thus, life trudged by in Hawkins like it always did.
The harvests came and went like they always did: some good years, some bad, but mostly just fine.
Every year, Hawkins High students believed they invented coolness, and were shocked when their teachers found them smoking under the bleachers or making out under the maintenance stairwell— because nobody thought to find better hiding spots since the teachers were students themselves.
Some people moved away, and a few new folks moved in, but most of the people stayed the same. No one updated the sign at the city limits declaring Hawkins: Population 13,607; “give or take,” everyone would say with a shrug and then carry on.
Names in the yellow pages stayed the same, signs over storefronts faded with age, and Claudia always saw the same faces at Immaculate Word every Sunday morning.
She got busy with school, then with work, then with Dan, then with Dustin, and then suddenly without Dan.
So Claudia now-Henderson (because she’d only just filed the paperwork to change her name, and it was too much a bitch to do all over again) was busy keeping her and little Dusty afloat. Balancing bills, work, playdates, the pediatrician— she barely had time to even think. For many years, even as life settled a little and she finally began to breathe again, Claudia was far too busy thinking about her own baby boy to spare a thought about the Harringtons’.
More years passed.
Dustin was in middle school, and things were good. Always on the honor roll, a little science nerd just like she’d been, and with a smile that lit up her world— Claudia couldn’t have been prouder of her Dusty.
She was glad, too, that he’d found such a good pack of boys to call friends.
The Party, they’d started calling themselves, wasn’t a large group. There was Dustin, of course, and Karen Hodgson’s son, and Joyce Maldonado’s youngest, and finally sweet, little Lucas Sinclair, whose family had moved to Hawkins when his father was appointed the Roann County Comptroller.
But even if they were few, the boys were thick as thieves, so different and yet so alike. They had their spats, of course, and were nearly constantly bickering about some meaningless debate, but they always stood up for each other without fail.
Claudia knew all four boys were targets for bullies at school. It didn’t matter the reasons, and she didn’t bother doing any detective work. It was middle school, after all, and bullying—especially at that age—felt like an eternal issue; she reasoned it’d be harder to find someone who wasn’t bullied in school than someone who was.
Still, Dustin never came home crying to her about the bullies, never broke down in her arms over insults thrown his way.
He did, however, come home beaming many a time, because “Troy pushed me down at recess but then Lucas gave me this cool Batman band-aid!” or “James called Mike ‘frog-face’ again but then Will drew this funny comic of all four of us as toads!”
So Claudia felt able to relax a little bit.
That wasn’t common, not since Dan left her with a three-month old and an apology scribbled on the back of a drugstore receipt, but she felt like Dustin had his own little community now— a support system of sorts, people who he loved and who loved him back— besides his mother.
It was so scary when they lost Will, and that horrible handful of days when they thought they’d really, truly lost him, but the whole thing finished as quickly as it began. Will came back, apparently stumbling out of the woods in a daze and back into their lives with no injuries to speak of.
Dustin, Mike, and Lucas— they became even tighter in that awful week. And, of course, when Will came back, the three of them enveloped him closer than ever before. As the months went by, and the boys didn’t waver in their commitment to each other, to the Party, Claudia realized that they weren’t planning on ever slackening that hold. They weren’t just friends anymore. Those were brothers, and Claudia felt so happy that such a bond could be forged from something so awful.
But then came Stephen Harrington.
“Steve,” Dustin would correct her.
But it was him, Melissa’s boy, in the flesh, driving Claudia’s little boy home one night in a car that probably cost more than her yearly mortgage. He hadn’t come in, but he waited in the driveway to make sure Dustin got inside safely, gave her the usual neighborly nod of a polite stranger, and then drove off.
She’d asked about it the minute Dustin got in– well, okay, maybe a few minutes after; she was still worried about her precious Mews, of course.
But Dustin had been surprisingly casual about it.
“I went to look for Mews around Mike’s neighborhood, and ran into him— you remember how he’s dating Mike’s sister?” He’d said, and Claudia hadn’t, but she nodded, anyway. “Well, he said he didn’t have anything to do today, so he spent the rest of the day helping me look for Mews.”
And so Steve Harrington had Claudia’s heart.
The next day, Dustin went out looking again, but the sun was still high in the sky when he opened the door with Steve of all people behind him. She wanted to ask, but Dustin looked positively heartbroken, and Claudia immediately knew it was Mews.
She cried and Dustin sniffled while Steve explained how he’d found Mews near his house.
“We have bobcats in the woods back there sometimes, and coyotes,” he said, patting her back in that awkward teenage boy way. “I don’t know what it was exactly, but Mews must’ve gotten out and… it wasn’t pretty. I didn’t want you or Dustin to have to see that, so I went ahead and buried him there. I hope you don’t mind.”
And so Steve Harrington not only had her heart, but now her eternal debt. She said as much to him, and he flushed bright red.
“Oh, that’s really not— I mean, anyone would’ve— you don’t need to—”
He’d waved his hands and looked at Dustin to help, but Dustin was just… smiling.
And Claudia’s heart swelled, even as her heart broke about Mews, because she realized she hadn’t seen Dustin smiling for a good few days now. Longer than Mews had been missing, her mind supplied unhelpfully, and then she remembered with a start what had been happening around this time last year.
Will.
The anniversary was coming up, and Claudia had been too worried about her cat to see her son struggling with such painful memories right in front of her.
Yet Steve, for all that he reeked of teenage-boy-ness, had taken Dustin under his wing, at the expense of his own time and energy, to help him when Claudia couldn’t. It was so unlike Melissa, Claudia thought, who’d grown so absent, so cold once she married Richard. Yet here was her son, this boy Claudia hadn’t even realized still lived in Hawkins, helping her son.
She’d already been hoping the new girl at school might join Dustin’s list of friends, ever since he mentioned it a few weeks ago, and she was thrilled when Dustin confirmed that with a blush. But now she could add Steve, too, and she was over the moon about it.
She didn’t really expect Steve to go out of his way for Dustin beyond that, though. They could be friendly, of course, but with Steve in high school and Dustin in middle, she didn’t anticipate them even having any opportunities to interact after that odd incident with Mews.
(Besides, she’d heard Nancy had broken up with Steve for Will’s big brother— and, oh, if they weren’t thirty years younger than her, then Claudia would be dying for that drama. She had to remind herself that she was forty with a son and a savings account. No bothering her son's friends for gossip. That had to be a cardinal rule of motherhood, right?)
But then, the week after Thanksgiving, while she was trying to keep Tews out of the pancake batter, Dustin rather casually told her that he would be getting home a little late.
“Steve said he’d drive us to go Christmas shopping,” he said.
Claudia blinked.
“All four of you?”
He shrugged.
“Well, it’s five with Max now, but the Party, yeah. Don’t worry, he said he’d have all of us back home by seven.”
So that was that. And sure enough, at six thirty, Steve and his fancy car rolled up to the house with Dustin in the passenger seat and Will in the back. She got up to open the door for him, and chuckled as Will eagerly hopped out of the car to take shotgun while Dustin quickly waved good-bye and hurried up the front steps to escape the cold.
She gave Steve a wide smile and a friendly wave from the porch.
He looked— well, almost startled by it. But then a smile was stretching across his face, too, and he waved back to Claudia. Then he looked both ways, backed slowly out of the driveway, and turned down the street in the direction of the Byers’ house.
“It was nice of Steve to drive you boys today— oh, and Max,” Claudia said over dinner. (She was still getting used to her son knowing a girl.) “Especially Will. I wonder why Jonathan didn’t drive him.”
Dustin swallowed a large mouthful of lasagna.
“Oh, Jonathan had a date with Nancy. That’s why Steve offered to take Will Christmas shopping, ‘cause Mrs. Byers had work,” he explained. “You know how she hates leaving Will home alone.”
Claudia hesitated.
“So Steve took all five of you shopping because Will was going to be by himself?”
Dustin shrugged.
“Yeah, I guess.”
And Claudia’s heart grew five sizes.
“I’m going to knit that boy a sweater,” she decided.
Dustin groaned and buried his face in his palms.
“Please don’t,” he pleaded.
She did, a beautiful bright yellow sweater because she’d only seen that boy wearing blue and green and brown, and she was always telling Dustin that any respectable young man needed a full palette in his wardrobe.
She had Dustin deliver it the day after Christmas; she had to go to work early, but Steve had offered to take the Party sledding down the big hill on the McCorkles’ farm. Lucas and Mike’s families were both out of town, but Claudia had gladly allowed Dustin to accept the invitation, and Max and Will had apparently signed on, too.
While she was at work that day, she thought about how Max had a big brother at the high school. Dustin had mentioned it in passing, his lip curling unpleasantly, but she wondered if Steve and that boy were friends. In any case, it was so nice of Steve, she thought, to treat Dustin almost like a little brother.
Dustin got home a little after her shift ended, and he shuffled through the door with a bright pink nose and frozen fingers, tracking snow on her carpet. But Claudia didn’t even care to scold him— she was too distracted, because Steve wasn’t sitting in the driveway, waiting for Dustin to get safely inside before he drove off. He was standing in the entryway, shuffling a little awkwardly, but smiling all the same.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” he managed to say before she was hauling him bodily in for a hug.
He was stiff as a board in her arms, and she realized it might’ve been inappropriate to hug a stranger—much less a teenage boy—like this, but his anxious smile had grown to a grin when she stepped away.
“I just wanted to thank you for the sweater,” he said. “If it weren’t winter, I would’ve brought flowers, but—”
“But then I would’ve had to make you another sweater to thank you for that!” Claudia teased, and he laughed brightly.
She wasn’t looking at Dustin, but she could picture his expression based on his tone alone:
“Steve, I told you, you didn’t have to come in. The sweater was a thank you. You don’t ‘thank you’ a ‘thank you,’ or you’re caught in an endless loop of ‘thank you’s!”
Claudia rolled her eyes and turned to chide him, but Steve beat her to it.
“It’s called being friendly, dude,” he said. “You could stand to try it sometime, y’know?”
Claudia turned back to beam at him, and only faintly heard Dustin’s groan.
“Great, now I have two mothers.”
Despite that, after the sweater, Claudia really did think she wouldn’t see much of Steve Harrington anymore. It was so nice of him to look after the Party a bit, but the boy was in his last stretch of senior year, of course. She imagined a strapping young man like that would be busy with friends, and girls, and whatnot; if nothing else, surely Richard and Melissa were prepping him for some elite collegiate career or his grand entrance to corporate life.
And yet, Steve kept coming.
He let the kids host their little Dungeons & Dragons game nights at his house when Ted and Karen had guests over.
He took them to see that odd Breakfast Club movie when none of their parents—including Claudia—particularly felt like it.
He drove Dustin to school the week that his bike tire popped, and it took them a few days to get it replaced.
When the weather got a little warmer, Steve took the kids out for ice cream, and he refused to let the kids swim at his house until they all got the all-clear from their parents; he even wrote out little permission slips to be certain.
It wasn’t always all of them. One of them would be sick, or another was out of town, but he’d still take the rest. Oftentimes it was Will and Mike, who were left with the option of being watched by Steve or accompanying their older siblings on a date. And sometimes, so long as he got her permission, it was just Dustin.
Claudia never figured out how Steve knew that she’d had to work overtime that week, or that Dustin had been grouchy about losing a campaign, or that he’d just been oddly withdrawn for a while. In Steve’s words, he’d “just thought Dustin needed cheering up.” And Claudia decided to just be grateful.
Hell, he brought Claudia a bouquet on Mother’s Day. All the ladies at the office with her positively screeched when he came in that afternoon, still carrying his backpack over one shoulder like he’d come straight from school, but holding the pink and yellow flowers as carefully as a glass vase.
His eyes brightened when she hurried over to meet him, and thrust the bouquet towards her with that trademark nervous smile of his— like he was nervous to even exist, Claudia thought sometimes, and didn’t that make her heart ache?
“Happy Mother’s Day, Ms. Henderson,” he said politely. “Dustin said he made you a nice card, but I, um, thought you might like these, too.”
“Thank you, Steve! That is so kind of you,” she gushed as she took the flowers from him. “But for the millionth time, call me Claudia.”
He rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish grin.
“Yes, Miss Claudia,” he parroted, like he always did, and she laughed.
“So have you talked to your mom today?" She asked cheerfully. "I wasn’t sure if she came into town or not— but you’re always so responsible, I’m sure you called her."
Steve’s smile wavered, for the briefest moment, but then he was plastering it back on.
“Ah, yeah, she was really busy with some big meeting in London. But her secretary said she’d call me back sometime this week,” he added brightly.
Claudia paused for a moment, maybe two.
“You’re coming to dinner tonight.”
He blinked.
“Dinner? You mean, at your house?” He asked slowly. “But it’s Mother’s Day, Ms. Hend— I mean, Miss Claudia. Don’t you want to—”
“My house,” she interrupted, taking out her firmest mom voice. Just like with Dustin, it shut Steve up right away. “Seven o’clock. You don’t need to bring anything except your stomach and your smile. Dustin will be so happy to see you. He talks about you constantly, you know. Thinks you hung the moon and stars.”
Steve paused.
“I— He does?” He said shyly.
She smiled.
“All that boy’s ever wanted was a brother, Steve,” she said simply.
He swallowed hard. It looked like he was biting back a grin that would split his face if he allowed it.
“I did, too,” he admitted in a low voice, shrugging his shoulders.
Claudia patted his hand.
“Well, guess I’ve got two now,” she said, easy as that— and it was that easy, really. “Both of you boys better be at the table by seven, you hear? And you’d better not bring anything. You don’t ‘thank you’ a ‘thank you,’ remember?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll see you tonight, Claudia.”
That boy wasn’t anything like his parents, she thought as she watched him practically skip back to his car. He had Melissa’s hair, sure, her eyes, and maybe Richard’s chin, but the similarities died there.
As Claudia returned to her desk, she thought about how Steve looked more like Dustin the longer she knew him. Both of them had the same dimple when they smiled, all shy and polite, and she loved making them smile just so she could see it.
Steve had a little Mike Wheeler in him, too, she thought; a bit of sass on his tongue, hands on his hip and eyebrows raised.
But he reminded her of little Will, too, the gentleness with which he moved, and looked, and held out his hand to all who needed it.
There was a fire in him, as well, a fierce protectiveness in his eyes that reminded Claudia of Max Mayfield’s famous temper.
And, of course, when he was with the kids, he laughed like Lucas— loud, bright, and damn contagious, even for the lamest joke.
When she first got Mews, the worker at the animal shelter made some comment, that people and their pets start to look like each other as time goes on. For whatever reason it stuck with her all these years later, and she knew that it was true of Steve Harrington and the kids he affectionately called “his.”
And Claudia was glad for it, was thrilled to see the wonderful parts of those wonderful kids show up in another. Yet she couldn’t help but think that, with a little luck, the reverse would be true, as well.
She hoped she saw those kids grow to love like Steve Harrington did.
The world would be better for it.