Chapter Text
Steve’s got blood all over his new jeans. Not that he’s particularly attached to them, it’s just that they look good with the sneakers he got for his birthday, which he also got blood on. It’s drying tacky on the rubber sole, squeaking against the sterile, snow white floor. Tacky on his skin, too; crusting under his nail beds and turning an awful shade of rust. When he bites them, the taste is funny in his mouth.
Someone said he could wash his hands earlier, but that was then and now he’s too tired to think about it. He knows there’s blood on his face, because he can smell it, like when Byers and Billy busted him up those times. Like when Carol accidentally kicked his mouth on the swing set and knocked his last baby tooth out, ripped it right from his gums. He was really ugly for a while, and whistled every time he spoke. The tooth wasn’t ready, that’s what Tommy’s mom said. She hugged him and Carol while they cried, then Tommy too. She got them ice cream and fresh strawberries and Tommy mixed Steve’s up like soup so it would be easier to eat. Carol tried to chew the strawberries up and feed them into his mouth like a mama bird. He’d love some ice cream now – his throat is so dry.
He can’t remember if he cried this time, but it doesn’t feel like. Drank all the water somebody gave him and he should ask for more, but he’s not sure the words would come out. He thinks maybe he threw up, but there’s none on his clothes, and his mouth tastes of ash more than anything. Like the tunnels, the taste of them through the bandana Dustin tied at the nape of his neck.
There’s a nice lady at the desk, but Steve can’t remember her name. It makes him feel really bad. She’s got a purple shirt on and a badge of a little bird pinned above her watch. She was meant to call his dad. Good luck. Dad doesn’t answer phones, not unless there’s a promise on the other end; something in it for him. Steve wonders how he knows – wonders if he has their home phone number blocked in just his New York office, or his Chicago and Detroit ones too. Dad won’t come, and that’s fine – Steve’s never relied on him when it comes to stuff like this, and he’s not about to start just because he got blood on his Nikes.
There’s someone close by who smells of cigarettes. Steve can’t have one because he left his jacket on the kitchen floor. Bunched up, crimson, like a giant carnation. Cigarettes and fried food; a spritz of something soft and woody on the collar of khaki linen.
Hopper’s hand is warm on his cheek.
“Kid,” he says, as if in a tunnel. “Let’s get you home.”
Hopper’s heavy arm drapes across his shoulders like a long and loping scarf. He holds Steve close and they’re moving, linoleum to carpet to wet concrete. It rained. How much time has passed? There are no clouds. The sky is black and the moon is high. The stars above are dizzying, pinpricks of light he can no longer make shapes from.
Click, his seatbelt. Steve jolts at the realisation that Hopper is gone. The door is closed. Hopper is gone and the car gets smaller and smaller until the other door opens and Hopper is there again, smiling at him by the dashboard light.
“You’re gonna be fine, kid,” he says, turning the key in the ignition.
And Steve is fine. He’s fine when the radio stays off and the night blurs by. When the car bumps along the dirt road, through packed trees. He’s fine when Hop opens the door for him and guides him across trip wires, rotting trunks. When the static of a walkie shuts off and a front door busts open. He’s fine when Eleven wraps her arms around his middle, even though he can’t stop crying.
“Your mama,” she says, and Steve’s breath hitches. “She is safe now.”
—
Steve’s mom didn’t die, is the thing.
There’s a lot of blood inside a person, and most of it came out, but she didn’t die. The paramedic told Steve that if he hadn’t pressed so hard, known to tie a dish towel just below her elbow, she would have died. But there’s nothing reassuring about that fact, nor is there any in him coming home early enough to find her; because he told Mom he’d be home at eight.
If it wasn’t for Nancy and her interrogation at the Byers’ dining room table, Steve would have been none the wiser. Not until he got home and found his mother dead – definitely, indisputably dead – on their imported marble flooring.
And maybe that would have been easier.
Hop’s not making him go to school today. But that’s okay, because Hop doesn’t want him going home either. Instead, he’s keeping El company while Hop goes to work. He’s made room for her on the couch. They each have a blanket wrapped around their shoulders and she’s switching between channels on the TV without moving an inch.
“Are you hungry?” Steve asks. “I can make you something.”
El shakes her head, unfolds her legs from the pretzel she’s made of herself. “I can do it.”
Steve stands up to follow her. He feels a little lightheaded, unsteady, but that’s to be expected. Hop gave him woolly socks that catch on the wood floor, so he walks on his tiptoes over to the makeshift kitchen. It’s cold, and the clothes he’s borrowing are too big, but that just makes it easier to burrow into them while El sticks her head into the ice box.
“No Eggos,” she says.
“That’s okay.”
“But you are sad.”
“Not sure Eggos will fix it, kid. ‘Sides, I’m meant to be the one babysitting you.”
El frowns. “I do not need a babysitter.”
“That’s what you all say.”
“‘Sides, Hop said I have to make sure you eat something.”
Steve scoffs. “Yeah, and I don’t need a babysitter either.”
Eleven frowns, head tilting to one side. “But you need someone,” she says, like it’s a question.
Then, completely sure of herself: “You do not have anybody else.”
Steve thinks about how he has everything: a brand new BMW 733i with custom interior and rims and heated seats, heated pool, too, and an ensuite bedroom, home gym, sound system wired into the walls, three expensive watches, an Atari, a full bar, two televisions, a timeshare in Boca Raton, good weed, good pills, and a trust fund he can access the entirety of when he turns twenty-one.
But Eleven’s right: Steve does not have anybody else.
“Okay,” he says. His forehead is pressed hard against the cabinet, the edge of the counter digging a red line across both palms. Steve isn’t mad, because Eleven isn’t sorry. She’s not sorry because she knows it’s true and friends don’t lie – they just don’t.
“I like French toast,” he tells her. This is true. It’s the only truth he can give her in the moment. “Let’s make some.”
He finds a stool for her to stand on, hooks his chin over her shoulder at a hunch while she whisks the eggs, the salt and pepper, whatever meagre offerings Hopper’s cabin has hidden away. The bread has a thick crust that tears a jagged line under the knife. She can’t figure it out, so he helps; tucks each little finger back until it's out of harm’s way, layering thick slices of butter and some bacon that Hopper must have cooked for them when Steve was still sleeping.
Steve teaches El how to hold her knife and fork, to push her glass of milk in so it’s not leaning precariously off the edge of the table. He tells her that you can put syrup on anything, really, but it tastes best on French toast. And, yes, they can make it again tomorrow and the tomorrow after that. They can make it for Hopper too, because El thinks he’ll like it a lot and it’s got eggs, which are good to eat.
They watch more TV and Steve does his best to think only about the people moving on the screen, about El’s feet tucked under his thighs to keep warm. When he bites his nails, they taste the same, but then El takes his hand to hold in her own and he’s back to tasting plain old butter and syrup. This is better. Everything here is better.
El hauls the cushions from the sofa into her bedroom. “You sleep here,” she decides, since Hopper isn’t home yet and can’t say otherwise. “Read.”
Steve splashes water on his face, uses the spare toothbrush under the sink – pink with glitter, too small for his mouth, he feels like a giant – and tries not to look at himself in the mirror. His hair is slick under his palms and the collar of his shirt is wet, but he’s warm by the heat of the stove, eased by the orange light from El’s nightstand. He reads, long and slow and tripping on some words that catch him in a tangle. It’s late and his eyes sting, but he keeps going until her breathing evens out, stretching out to fill the silence.
“I’m not like the rest of you; I never made any plans about what I’d do when I grew up; I never thought of being married, as you did. I couldn’t seem to imagine myself anything but stupid little Beth, trotting about at home, of no use anywhere but there. I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is leaving you all. I’m not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.”
And he doesn’t understand. Doesn’t know what happened earlier in the book to make things go this way. He should start at the beginning now that El is sleeping, see the why and the how and find out who will be homesick, who is leaving who. Maybe it would make things easier. Maybe he will see it all so clearly that this awful unknown will dissolve into something harmless that stops hurting him.
But Steve’s been looking at it forever, and it’s dangerous to see. He’s never been homesick in his life, and his mother hasn’t either.
—
Eleven is coming over, but Mom says he can’t tell Nancy. He can’t tell anybody. Jonathan has nobody but Nancy to tell, and it’s not like he would have, anyway. She’s studying for finals – being pretty intense about it, actually – and he knows they’re not supposed to talk about anything like that over the phone. He might not even stick around, which is nothing personal to Eleven, it’s just that Hopper will obviously be there too. Hopper will talk to Mom and El will talk to Will and Jonathan will be left to dangle awkwardly like a superfluous extra limb. He’s used to it, school and all. But it’s different when it happens in your own home.
He’s just about to cut out, make his exit before the yard gets too crowded, when Hopper’s blazer pulls up beside his car. It would be rude not to say hello, at least. He waits on the porch with the front door still open, hand raised to shield his eyes from the high beams.
“Hey,” calls Jonathan, as two silhouettes approach. “My mom’s just put dinner– ” Then three. “Steve.”
He’s wearing clothes that clearly aren’t his own – belted cargos, rolled at the ankle, and the same shirt El wore to dinner last weekend. Was that the last time he saw Steve? Nancy’s like clockwork every day at lunch time, pointing out his absence. He wasn’t in chem, Heather said he wasn’t in gym either. His car’s not in the usual spot, so Billy’s started taking it. I’ve called his house but there’s no answer.
Jonathan should feel a certain way about it – jealous, maybe – but the emotion is distinctly lacking. He’s been jealous of Steve, sure – he’s only human – but lately all he’s been able to do is feel for Steve. Guilt, maybe, a little. Because of what happened at Murray’s; because he saw Steve cry after leaving the bathroom at Tina’s Halloween party.
When Steve trails El and Hopper up the front steps, he looks like he’s been crying for days.
“Byers,” he says with a nod, voice hoarse, passing him on his way through the front door. Jonathan follows him at a distance. Inside, Mom is smiling like she knew Steve was coming all along.
“Hi, honey,” she says, already wrapped around El, hand reaching out to brush Steve’s arm.
“Hello, Joyce.” El beams, chin tucked to Mom’s chest. They sit on the couch. Steve hovers awkwardly until Hopper nods for him to do the same. Will fits in seamlessly, coming to El’s side with a drawing he must have done for her earlier in the day. “Cool!”
“Have you two been behaving for Hop?” Mom asks lightly, hand linked with El’s.
“Oh, yes!” El beams. “Steve has been reading Little Women to me.”
Steve’s head swivels toward them, like he’s only now joining the conversation. “Huh? Oh, yeah.”
“Whispering like two school girls at the back of the bus,” Hopper says, saving him. “I’m sleep deprived.”
“We’ll try to keep it down,” says Steve. “You need that beauty sleep somethin’ awful, Hop.”
There’s a spark there; something like life in his otherwise blank eyes. Steve wasn’t himself when he left their Party dinner last weekend – not after being accosted by Nancy, certainly, but something seemed off before that too. Mom said he wasn’t feeling well, that he needed to get home. Said he might swing by to give some of the kids rides home like he promised, only he never came and Hopper left in a hurry, so Jonathan and Mom had to take everyone home instead.
It’s not like it’s a big deal or anything worth noting – Steve looks like he really was sick – but, in combination with his glaring absence from school and his sudden appearance with Hopper and El of all people, Jonathan feels the distinct stirring of something wrong, wrong, wrong in his gut.
Steve’s not wearing his own clothes. Steve’s sleeping in El’s room. Steve’s hair is damp from a shower, curling around his ears and shooting up inelegantly on his head; no product, no sign of styling. He’s also quiet, lacking in any of the charming awkwardness he usually spares these interactions with these particular people. It’s obvious that he doesn’t quite understand the kids, understand them, and how they all move around one another. Jonathan – who’s from a house of noise and slamming and laughing and yelling, music blaring through the kitchen, four boys yelling over each other at the dining table – knows how to be here, even when it fits him wrong, when he finds himself at a misstep. Steve can’t grasp it – not without the roadmap of highschool hierarchies, without leeches clinging to his sides and framing his world, without Nancy keeping him afloat. It’s the truth, not one that Jonathan feels bad about admitting to himself, but one that he feels bad about Steve experiencing at all. There are ways in which Steve thrives that Jonathan simply does not, but he’s not naive enough to think Steve above him in any regard; not when it’s clear that Steve is in dire need of some compassion.
“Hey,” he tries, while Mom shoots from the sofa to fetch dinner – no doubt burning in the oven. Steve’s chin darts up, amber eyes assessing. “I have some other books in my room. If you want to pick some for El, I mean. I’m not sure what she likes.”
Steve’s look is cold and still. Jonathan can see how it cuts through him, the ways Steve used to be. How he tended to lash out, slice with words, barbs that he did not care to veil. He used to pick at the collar of Jonathan’s shirt and talk as if the fabric was sandpaper. Complain about the smell of cheap soap, the loud and jarring engine of a beater in the school parking lot every morning. Jonathan was never invited to the parties, the pool, the rallies down by the quarry. Steve used to look straight through him like he was a ghost, an invisible man. Now, he looks at Jonathan with a gaze so hard and focused, that it’s as if he’s willing him into being.
“Sure.”
Steve has only been in Jonathan’s bedroom twice. The first was when they leapt over the bear trap and tried setting fire to the Demogorgon. The second was when Billy Hargrove beat Steve to a bloody pulp and he had to sleep off some brain damage on Jonathan’s bed.
“This way,” he says, even though Steve knows. “Sit wherever you like.”
Steve promptly drops himself onto the mattress. “Y’know, Byers, if you wanted me in your bed so badly you could’ve said so.”
“I said sit, not sprawl.”
Steve coughs, small and fake. “I’m sick.”
“Even worse,” says Jonathan, earning a grin.
He’s lucky that dating Nancy has meant keeping his room a little cleaner, because the drawers in his dresser are no longer filled to stuffing. Everything is folded away, neat and tidy, when he picks a few shirts for Steve. Socks, some underwear – which is not a big deal, but feels like a weird thing to share with his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend – and a pair of jeans. Jonathan doesn’t have much – certainly not another pair of gym shorts to spare – but Steve’s wearing Hopper (and maybe El’s clothes) for a reason, and surely he’d much rather something closer to fitting.
“Are you sure?” Steve holds the jeans carefully, and if it weren’t for the peculiar dampness to his eyes, Jonathan would think him disgusted by the offer.
“Yeah, man.” Jonathan fidgets with the hem of a shirt. “It’s no big deal or anything.”
“It is,” says Steve.
He doesn’t change his clothes there, because the ones he’s wearing are just fine for the evening. Jonathan rummages around under his desk for the plastic bag he kept from RadioShack, and passes it to Steve, who rolls everything neatly and puts it in the bag.
“The books are there.” Jonathan nods to the slightly crooked shelf that he and Mom drilled into the wall. “Take your pick.”
“Oh,” says Steve, pushing the flannel sleeves up to his elbow as he stands. He looks smaller, wrists thin with the fabric falling around. Hopper’s clothes make him look more like a boy than ever, which is an odd thing to recognise as Steve’s always been bigger in Jonathan’s eyes – taller, more built, older. Right now, he’s a kid, index finger dancing along the spine of each book like he’s only milliseconds from picking one.
“I don’t know what El likes, really,” he tells Jonathan. “Hop usually picks ‘em out.”
“Is she liking Little Women so far?”
Steve nods.
“Are you?”
A shrug, Steve rises higher on the balls of his feet to see a title with smaller text. Maybe he needs glasses.
“I think so,” he says. “Not really the kind of thing I’m used to.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s really nice. To have something like that, I mean, that you always want to go back to.”
Jonathan thinks of Lonnie, of Mom’s bruised arms and Will running off to Castle Byers. He thinks of learning how to throw a punch the hard way. He thinks of the quiet between Lonnie leaving and Will vanishing, and how – even though he was so desperately lonely at the time – it felt so much better than what came after. He has Nancy now. He’s had her since everything turned on its head. But he always wants to go back to before: when Will was safe, innocent, able to sleep through the whole night without waking in tears and scrambling away from the shadows as if they were fit to eat him.
Does Steve have something like that? A time when he felt safe?
When Jonathan looks at him, Steve is looking back.
He smiles. “I don’t know. Maybe I can come back when we’ve finished the book? Pick another?”
It’s trying, clear as anything. Jonathan never wanted it to be this way for them and it’s becoming obvious that Steve didn’t want it either. It’s not a promise, but a commitment. Jonathan’s room, a moment of quiet. Nothing fancy, but it never would be with them.
“Yeah, man,” says Jonathan. “Any time.”
Mom calls for dinner.
—
At school, Steve’s not worried. Nobody knows – nobody who’d be a problem, anyway.
Hopper drops him off, because Steve doesn’t have his car. Steve could have his car – could have his clothes too – but they never talk about it. Hop tried, the day after the hospital, but Steve didn’t want to. There was nowhere to keep his car at the cabin, anyway; nowhere subtle. Then Jonathan gave him some shirts and jeans and it turned out some of El’s things from the Goodwill fit him just fine. Hop hasn’t brought it up since.
It’s raining, so Steve makes it across the parking lot without drawing any attention. His locker is pretty close to the side door, at the end of the row, too. Yeah, people see him. People always see him, but nobody says a thing so long as he shoots them a smile.
He’s in the clear – just received a pat on the back from Mark Lewinsky, a hip check from Heather Holloway – when Carol walks right up to him, hip cocked, gum popped, and says:
“Wanna make out in the bathroom?”
Steve looks at her for a moment, how her hands make fists inside her jacket pockets. Her eyes, so cold and green, almost reptilian. Her mouth in that typical downturn – ready to wobble, to take a bite out of him.
“Sure,” he says, easy and cool. People are watching, because people are always watching. He leans in close, arm above her head and resting on the lockers. “I can give you five.”
“Oh, Stevie,” she grins. “That’s all I’ll need.”
In the bathroom, Carol stands on the toilet seat in her baby blue heeled boots and cracks the window. Steve grabs the pack of smokes from her back pocket and lights up with his Zippo.
He passes a lit cigarette to her and she smiles down at him, warmer than before but no less sharp.
“Tommy said your mom carved herself up like a turkey.”
Steve hums, takes his first drag. “Sure did.”
When he climbs to stand on the toilet seat next to her, she grabs the ratty sleeve of his flannel for balance. “Is that why you’re dressed like a hobo?”
“It’s a shirt with The Clash on it, Carol,” he says, stretching over her head to lean his elbows on the windowsill.
“Fine,” she huffs, the heels of her boots dangling precariously over the edge. He wraps one arm around her. “An English hobo.”
“Borrowed it, is all. Can’t go to my house right now.”
“Just break in,” she says on an exhale, blowing smoke right up his nose. “Me and Tommy will climb in the window after school if you want.”
“It’s okay. The cops had to lock the place up because I’m an unaccompanied minor or whatever.”
Her laugh is so sharp and high he wants to cover her mouth, but the bell has yet to ring and nobody ever uses this bathroom unless they’re desperate.
“So now they care?” she asks.
“Right?” he laughs, quieter, breath moving strands of her hair. “Anyway, I’m staying with the chief.”
“Chief Hopper? Gross.”
Steve shrugs. “Not so bad. He works a lot.”
“The irony of it all can’t be lost on you.” She pops her gum, takes another drag. “Fuck him.”
“Not like he knew. Wasn’t any of his business.”
“You railing coke off the dining room table? Not his business?”
Steve smiles, breath stuttering on the exhale. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Suppose he would have liked to join you.”
“Carol!” He laughs through his fingers and instantly feels sick about it. But it’s alright, because nobody’s here but them.
“Whatever,” she says, pulling on the collar of his shirt to get a good look in the sunglasses he’s hooked there. “These his too?”
Aviators, not his style. Hopper let him borrow a pair because the early morning sun had been giving him headaches – Steve didn’t have the smarts to connect the dots himself, but Hop noticed. Carol uses the reflection to reapply her lip gloss. Steve takes them when she’s finished and pushes them through his hair like a headband.
“You look terrible,” she says, offhandedly, a nod to his flat locks. “Should let me fix that.”
“You could never.” He stubs out his cigarette against the window ledge on the outside, flicks the butt into the hedges where the rain will soak it safe.
“Let me. There’s a party tonight at Heidi’s. You can come over before.”
“As if.” He steps down from the toilet seat but doesn't lend her a hand; blocks her path. Carol is stuck there, once more looking down on him. “I’m not in the mood for a Tommy Tantrum.”
“Oh, please,” she says, a roll of her eyes and a bat of her lashes. She applies another layer of gloss, thick and sticky. “He’s been fretting over you all week. Acts all shocked and wounded every time your mom pulls this shit.”
“Wasn’t ‘shit’ this time, Carol. She almost died.”
“Yeah,” says Carol. “But she didn’t.”
This is true. What’s there to say but that? Mom is alive, drugged and bound and confined to a room that he wouldn’t visit, even if he was allowed to. They don’t let kids in the ICU, Steve’s known that fact for as long as he can remember. Don’t allow them on the psych ward either. Steve’s not a kid, but he’s only gone seventeen, so the technicalities always trip him up. That’s why he’s staying with Hopper, is what he keeps telling himself, because Hopper is the Chief of Police and Steve’s grandparents are all dead; his dad won’t pick up the phone. Mom isn’t dead, but she can’t take care of him, and Dad won’t come home. This has always been the case for Steve, so why is everything only changing now?
Not because Hopper cares; not because they’ve been through these awful things together, no. It’s because he noticed. He was forced to – when Steve panicked and called an ambulance and the cops showed up too.
If he had never caved to Dustin’s nagging, never went to the Byers. Steve should have stayed home and things could have stayed the same. But Hopper knows now; Mrs. Byers and Jonathan too. El and maybe Will and probably the Party by the end of the school day. And Nancy. Fuck, Nancy.
“I’m not taking the bus to your house,” he tells Carol. “Tommy’s driving, or I’m out.”
Carol beams – a real, sure thing – and leans down to smack her lips against his own. The gloss sticks, a pink sheen for all to see when they leave the bathroom right on the bell.
“Excellent.”