Work Text:
Steve’s soulmark is cute, at first.
Childhood sweethearts, the women all coo whenever his mother brings him with her to the store or around her friends, and they all seem delighted by the loosely scrawled 13 that graces the top of Steve’s left hand.
They pinch his cheeks and grab his wrist to get a better look at the mark, and his mother only ever seems to mind the attention when Steve shies away from it – she seizes him by the shoulders then and holds him in place so that the ladies can look their fill, smiling like she’s pleased by their reactions.
He’s nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen himself and his soulmate doesn’t show up, but no one seems to expect her to; She’ll be younger, of course, one of the women comments to his mother, who nods and keeps smiling as Steve turns fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and then she seems to be smiling less and less.
Steve turns seventeen, and neither of his parents acknowledge the mark anymore the few times a year they make it back home, not like the old ladies he still runs into at the grocery store now that he’s doing all the shopping himself.
They all feel the need to comment on it; She hasn’t come yet? they say, and Be patient, honey, but there’s an undertone to it now because Steve’s starting to get too old for it to be cute anymore, and with each passing year the 13 seems to grow more problematic as it stays the same and Steve doesn’t.
He’s getting looks in school now, too; the same girls who liked to sneak touches in 8th grade just to see if maybe they’re his soulmate now watch him like there’s something wrong with him – something off, as if Steve actually chose this.
He’ll be eighteen soon, and his soulmate will still be thirteen, and the general consensus seems to be that it got creepy a while ago.
Steve’s honestly not sure what to tell them. He’s obviously not going to date a literal child, but maybe, if he meets them soon, he can babysit for a couple of years or something, and then when they get a bit older, maybe he can— Fuck, there really is no good way to spin this, is there?
He starts dating girls his own age because that seems to take people’s minds off the whole thing, and he only feels a little bit bad about it because it helps with the empty feeling of being on his own once again, his parents off to Paris, Milan, Stockholm, London, and leaving Steve behind in some kind of limbo, alone and aimless and starting to think what-ifs – what if his soulmark is wrong; what if he never finds its match; what if they’re not born yet; what if they died a long time ago?
Nancy is an easy choice; she’s smart and pretty and demure, and he’s drawn to her like a moth to flame, delighted by the way she blushes when he smiles at her in the hallways. He comes to find that she’s got a 16 on the back of her shoulder, neatly hidden beneath the tidy blouses and sweaters that she likes to wear, but that’s okay; none of this is supposed to be permanent, after all.
Steve tries to keep this in mind when Nancy kisses him, soft and sweet like she actually cares, but he fails – falls in love and fucks up and forgets – even though Nancy clearly doesn’t, because she ends up going off with Jonathan Byers instead.
There’s a monster too, from another dimension, but it feels almost like a footnote to Steve as he takes a step back to lick his wounds – physical and otherwise – only then Nancy comes back to him, her shoulder bare because she let Byers fucking touch her, and the guy might be her soulmate but he’s too preoccupied with his brother to care, so Steve welcomes her back with open arms because he does still love her and there’s a hope brewing in his chest that maybe they’ll be one of those couples who say fuck soulmates and fuck expectations and forge their own way in life.
It all ends up being bullshit, of course.
Steve’s bullshit, apparently, and maybe it’s true – eighteen now, with that fucking 13 still on the top of his hand, too conspicuous to hide – and Nancy throws it back in his face as she accuses him of not loving her, even though she’s the one who won’t say it back, and it must be love for it to hurt this much, right?
He walks away even though it kills him, but he doesn’t even have Tommy H or Carol to lean on this time; the house is too empty and too quiet and Steve buys a dozen roses and tries to come up with the right words to say, only he never gets to speak them because he’s suddenly roped right back into monster-hunting once again.
He usually doesn’t make it a habit of hanging out with children, let alone let them close enough to touch him, but suddenly he finds himself in charge of trying to keep a fucking gaggle of them alive, like herding a bunch of cats who each have their own, personal death wish.
It would probably be fucking exhausting even if Steve hadn’t taken a fuckin’ plate to the head, and he leans against the sink of the Byers’ bathroom and touches his fingers to the split in his lip, nails packed with dirt from the tunnels, and winces as pain radiates from the tear.
He needs to clean it, he realizes, but he’s not about to go snooping through the Byers’ bathroom cupboards for any kind of antiseptic, so he makes do with the soap on the sink; wets his hands and face and scrubs at his skin, watching the dirt swirl down the drain, and his knuckles are split from the fight and some of his fingernails are cracked from whenever, and Steve stares down at the tops of his hands – both blemish-free like they haven’t been in years – and distantly feels himself wondering which one of the kids it was that touched him.
It’s strange how soulmarks work sometimes; such a momentous occasion and Steve wasn’t even aware that it had happened until just now, probably a good hour after the fact.
He finds himself thinking about the first time he’d met Nancy’s brother, and how he’d asked her how old the kid was and she’d given him an almost knowing look. He’s twelve, she’d said, and Steve had breathed a sigh of relief and made sure to shake Mike’s hand later, and it hadn’t even bothered him when the little shit turned out to fucking hate him – still doesn’t, because if nothing else it means that he keeps his distance, which suits Steve just fine – but what Steve hadn’t counted on was the dipshit having real actual friends, or that those same friends wouldn’t forget Steve’s first encounter with a monster and therefor not hesitate in pulling him back into the sordid business that is the Upside Down.
And Steve finds that he can’t even be mad about it now as he rubs his fingers over the skin of his left hand, 13 gone like it was never there to begin with, because all he feels is an overwhelming sense of relief.
It’s over. He fucking found them, finally, and the ever-present churning worry in the pit of his stomach smooths out into a sense of anticipation as he closes his eyes and tries to think.
He can’t remember when it might have happened. Dustin had been the first – the one who pulled Steve back in – but Steve still had his soulmark by the time Max and Lucas showed up, because he can recall it being there in the abandoned bus, Dustin pacing a few feet away, agonizing over Max as Steve had played with his lighter and watched the shadows dance across the number on his hand.
Mike and Byers’ brother had joined them later, as well as Eleven, the super-powered girl, but Steve hadn’t touched any of them from what he can remember. That leaves three of the four kids out in the living room, loudly bickering as they attempt to clean up the mess left after Steve’s fight with Hargrove, and it must have happened when Steve was unconscious, he decides.
They must have all touched him as they hauled him out to the car, and once he woke up Dustin had immediately dared him to help them and Steve had pulled on the gloves he’d worn until just a few minutes ago, not even bothering to check because there were more important things on his mind, like making sure no one died in the creepy interdimensional tunnels.
There’s a knock on the bathroom door and Steve jumps, coming back to himself as he blindly blinks down at the water running over his hands, and the second knock sends him fumbling to turn off the faucet and quickly pat his hands dry before reaching out to unlock the door.
He’s not even sure who he had been expecting it to be, but when the door swings open to reveal Dustin standing there, a determined look on his face, Steve feels an obvious sense of relief flood through him because of course it’s him – the little shithead who’d simply hijacked Steve’s entire life two days ago like it had been his right to do so.
‟Mike says you’re a year older than Nancy,” the kid says, and Steve realizes that maybe Dustin hadn’t known just that.
‟Yeah,” he says, ‟I’m—”
‟Eighteen,” Dustin finishes. ‟It was on your hand, right?”
Steve looks down at his hand and then back up at Dustin, and the kid must take that as a yes because he steps into the bathroom and closes the door behind him – shutting away the prying eyes that Steve’s just now realizing has been watching them from behind Dustin – before reaching out to carefully take hold of Steve’s hand.
Steve lets him do it; waits with bated breath as Dustin rubs his thumb over his skin, and he can see it then – the 13 briefly shimmering into view again, semi-translucent like an oil slick on the surface of a body of water, before fading again – and Dustin sucks in a sharp breath and drops Steve’s hand before frantically pulling at his own sleeve, rolling it up to expose his forearm.
Steve hesitates, not knowing where to touch him until Dustin indicates a spot just below his elbow, on the inside of his arm, and Steve wraps his hand around the kid’s forearm – fuck, he’s tiny – and brushes his thumb over the skin, just like Dustin had done to him, and feels it like a punch to the gut when the 18 momentarily blooms into view.
‟Fuck,” Steve breathes, and Dustin grins then, looking strangely pleased.
‟Hi,” he says, stupidly, and then he’s lunging forward to wrap his arms around Steve’s waist, head barely clearing Steve’s shoulder, and he does it with enough force to make Steve take a step back and knock his hip against the edge of the sink.
Steve swallows back a groan at the pain that laces through him at the impact and instead hugs Dustin back, because he’s powerless to do anything but, and he can feel Dustin’s hands fist in the back of Steve’s jacket, pulling at the fabric.
‟I’m really happy it’s you,” Dustin mumbles into Steve’s shoulder, and Steve swallows hard and brings a hand up to cup the back of the kid’s head, because that’s pretty much more than he ever expected to hear from his future soulmate.
‟Yeah,” he says, ‟me too,” and he finds that he means it; fuck, it’s been two days and the kid’s already got him wrapped around his little finger, and Steve doesn’t know how the hell it happened but he doesn’t feel too bad about it either – feels almost good, actually, like it was meant to be, and everything considered maybe that’s not too far from the actual truth.
Dustin hums and turns to squint up at him. ‟You’re bleeding,” he says, and Steve frowns and reaches up to touch his face but Dustin grabs his arm before he’s able to. ‟No, don’t touch it!”
‟I wasn’t gonna,” Steve lies, and Dustin looks like he knows it.
He releases his grip on Steve’s arm and takes a step back and points at the closed toilet lid.
‟Sit,” he says.
Steve blinks, but the kid’s expression doesn’t waver; he looks utterly determined, like he’s fully expecting to get his way on this one, so Steve sighs and does as he’s told and plops himself down onto the toilet seat. Dustin nods to himself as if pleased, and then turns to open the medicine cabinet above the sink, and Steve watches him dig through it and make a triumphant noise as he quickly unearths a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a handful of cotton balls.
‟This might sting,” Dustin warns Steve as he pops the bottle cap open and wets some of the cotton.
‟No shit,” Steve murmurs, and Dustin grins like he finds the swearing hilarious – probably does, the little shit – and then he’s reaching out to cup Steve’s face in one hand and using the other to gently dab the cotton ball against the split in Steve’s lip.
Steve hisses but doesn’t pull away, which seems to please Dustin; he steps closer, until he’s standing between Steve’s legs, and tilts Steve’s head back so that he can get a better look at the damage done, and Steve goes with it, closing his eyes against the bright bathroom light.
‟It doesn’t look too bad,” Dustin assures him, like he knows how much stock Steve’s always put in his appearance, and for some reason it strikes at something in Steve’s core, because it’s more than anyone else has ever bothered to tell Steve in the past few years.
And maybe that’s sad; the fact that this random kid who Steve’s known for all of a blink of an eye knows exactly what to say when neither Steve’s parents nor his former friends ever really have; or maybe it’s perfectly natural, because this kid is also Steve’s soulmate – the perfect counterpart to everything Steve is and ever will be – and no one else can even hope to come as close.
‟We’ll have you looking great again in no time,” Dustin reassures him.
He brushes Steve’s hair back from his forehead and starts to dab at one of the cuts along his temple, still far more gentle than Steve ever thought him capable of, and Steve knows with a perfectly calm sense of clarity that this is it; whatever happens next – whatever he might find himself facing – he’ll never have to do it alone again.