Chapter Text
"Hey, Steve?"
Focussed on assembling sandwiches for the pups gathered around the table behind him, Steve hummed to signal his attention.
"What's knotting?"
Steve almost dropped his knife, whipping his head around to find six pairs of eyes blinking at him. "You... Where did you hear that?" he spluttered.
"Eddie said it," Lucas answered for the group.
"In his storytelling seminar-thingy at the library," Mike added.
Nodding quickly, Dustin explained, "He said it, then Gareth laughed and Eddie told him to get his head out of his magazine collection."
The competing sensations of his stomach dropping and ire burning in his gut made Steve nauseous.
"But they would not elaborate," Jane pressed, her arms folded attentively on the table. "But you are smart, so we decided to ask you."
"He's not smart," Mike corrected with a disgusted look. "We're asking him because they made it sound like a dirty thing, and Steve knows all about sex stuff."
Max smacked him upside the head. "He is smart, dumbass."
"Stop," Steve cut in firmly, one hand raised to emphasise his point. Taking a slow, deep breath, he set his knife down, despite the urge beneath his skin to bury the utensil in Munson's thigh because why would you mention knotting in front of pups?!
A moment of nothing, then Lucas pressed, "Soooooo... are you gonna tell us?"
Planting both hands on the island counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room, Steve levelled the pups with a look. "I can," he said slowly, deliberately. "But. I'm only doing this because you asked and I know how piss poor the Sex Ed at Hawkins Middle is."
"So it is a sex thing?" Dustin checked, clearly proud that the group had deduced that much.
"It's... It's definitely a sex thing." Rubbing the palm of his hand over his eyes, Steve huffed a sigh and dropped down to lean his elbows on the counter, hands clasped. "How much do you guys actually know about primary and secondary gender?"
"Male and female are primary," Will murmured, tentative in conversation but confident in his knowledge. "Alpha, beta, and omega are secondary."
Steve nodded once. "And you know that a person's primary gender has no impact on their secondary, right?"
"People think only men should be alphas and only women should be omegas," Dustin commented. His eyes widened slightly when Steve raised an eyebrow at him. "Not me! I'm just saying, that's what people thought for a really long time."
"But we all know it doesn't work like that," Max said firmly, shooting Dustin a scowl before looking to Steve. "We know you're an omega."
Fighting the urge to shift uncomfortably, Steve cleared his throat. "Yeah, and there's still a lot of prejudices about that," he muttered. "Anyway... Yes, alphas, betas, omegas. Knotting requires an alpha."
A round of understanding nods from the table.
"It happens during sex," Steve explained, finding himself deliberately avoiding Mike's face as he looked around the table. "The base of the alpha's penis swells up - that's the knot - and if it does that inside their partner, it gets, like... stuck." He made a loop with his thumb and forefinger, then poked two fingers from his other hand through it. He spread his fingers, then showed he couldn't slide them back through the loop. "It's a breeding thing. Omegas have a ring of mucles that get tighter when it happens, too," he demonstrated by squeezing his lopped fingers, "so they lock together. That's knotting."
The dining room table was silent, startled eyes starting back at him.
"You asked," Steve pointed out, dropping his hands from their demonstration.
"Like... stuck stuck?" Lucas frowned.
Steve shook his head easily. "The alpha's knot goes down eventually."
"So... an alpha can only knot someone with a vagina?" Jane asked curiously, earning horrified looks from the boys.
Something smug and deeply amused settled in Steve's stomach at the boys' despair. "No, actually," he told Jane, who was beyond fascinated. "It works with anal sex, too." When Jane just blinked at him, Steve elaborated, "Penis in butt hole. But 'proper' knotting needs that ring of muscles - which everyone does actually have in their butt - but it means that alpha and beta women have to, like, focus on clenching, so it doesn't work so well."
The seriousness on Jane's face as she nodded sparked a little pride in Steve's chest; he was genuinely informing this kid. Then she followed up by asking, "Have you ever participated in knotting?"
"Nope!" Mike exclaimed, scrambling back from the table. "Nope, I'm not listening to this bit!" He ran from the table with his hands over his ears, Lucas sheepishly slinking after him.
When no one else moved, Steve looked back to Jane. "Yeah, I have."
Another serious nod. "With Mike's sister?"
Steve winced. "Yeah... And a couple other people."
This time Jane frowned. "Why?"
Max gently elbowed her friend and whispered, "You can't ask people that."
"It's fine, Max," Steve dismissed, waving a hand.
"You aren't breeding," Jane continued, looking Steve over intently. "So why knotting?"
With half a shrug, Steve admitted, "It feels good. Like, it physically feels good, but there's a lot of hormones when it happens, too, and they feel great." Pointing a finger at each of the pups, he added, "That's not an endorsement for you guys to start having sex. You're too young."
The four remaining pups sat with that statement for a little while, until Dustin piped up, "Steve, do you want pups?"
A little startled, Steve nodded, "Of course I do. Lots of them, actually, but I gotta worry about you idiots first."
"We're your practise," Max smirked.
"Yeah," Steve sighed, shaking his head as he pushed off the counter and turned back to making sandwiches.
"Do people treat you bad for being a male omega?"
Steve glanced back over his shoulder to Will, who was struggling to maintain eye contact. "Sometimes," he admitted, laying cheese slices over bread. "But Robin or Nance usually shut them up. I'm pretty sure Jonathan gets the same."
"Yeah," Will confirmed quietly. "But Nancy takes care of him."
Turning back around, Steve leaned back against the counter and folded his arms. "Us omegas don't need someone to protect us. We're not made of glass. Sure, it's nice to have help, but a lotta people underestimate us. We're not fragile just because we go into heat every few months."
"What's heat?" Jane frowned.
A smirk pulling up the corner of his mouth, Steve chuckled, "One thing at a time. We'll cover that another day." He turned back and finished assembling the sandwiches, then called out for Mike and Lucas to come eat.
Steve was just outside Melvad's later that night after dropping all the pups home when he spotted him. He swung the beemer into a parking space, then climbed out and marched across the lot towards Eddie Munson, who was just lighting up a cigarette by the doors.
Munson's eyes widened when they landed on Steve's purposeful stride, a startled, "Eep!" leaving his mouth when Steve grabbed him by the front of his shirt and dragged him around the side of the building.
"What the fuck were you thinking?" Steve hissed, glaring daggers at the wide-eyed alpha as he shoved his back against the wall. "You can't go making knotting jokes around a bunch of middle schoolers! Especially not in the goddamn library."
Eddie blinked once, twice, then huffed and rolled his eyes. "I didn't," he grumbled, removing his unsuccessfully lit cigarette from his mouth and shoving it in the pocket of his leather jacket. "It's a storytelling seminar; I was talking about prose. Y'know, describing situations and shit."
Eyes narrowed, Steve shoved Eddie a little with the hand still gripping his shirt. "So why'd I have to give six pups a Sex Ed lesson three hours ago?"
"It was a different use of the word!" Eddie protested. "I was talking about communicating feeling. Like when you get all worked up and you're feeling a lot of things, I was describing emotions knotting up in your chest." With another roll of his eyes, he muttered, "Trust Gareth to start giggling when I used a perfectly innocent word."
Taking a moment to mull this over, Steve breathed a long sigh, then released Eddie's shirt and took a step back. "Right." Dragging a hand through his hair, he mumbled, "Sorry."
Eddie raised both hands. "It's fine, I guess." The tiniest smirk appeared at the corner of his mouth. "Sounds like you had an... interesting night."
With a snort, Steve shook his head. "They were pretty good about it, actually," he admitted. "And it's not like the middle school does anything about proper Sex Ed. Apparently, our next lesson will be on heat."
Choking on a laugh, Eddie snickered, "Lucky you."
"Least they'll be informed," Steve supposed, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "I'd rather they were prepared. Don't want them going into all that shit blind - or worse, scared." Biting his lip, he added quietly, "Pretty sure one of them's gonna present like me, so I don't want him thinking there's something wrong with him."
Gaze darting around Steve's face silently for a moment, Eddie commented, "You're not actually a bad dude, huh?"
A shrug. "I try."
Eddie hummed, eyes lingering on Steve's lips for maybe a moment too long. "Well... I'll see you 'round, Harrington." Stepping around Steve, he gave him a quick nod, then hurried off to his van, maybe a little less cool than he had tried to seem.
Returning to his own car and checking the rearview mirror, Steve was sure he caught Eddie sniffing at his shirt where Steve's hand had been. Biting back the feeling that vision stirred, he started his engine and headed home.