Chapter Text
There were lots of things Steve was terrified of. Interdimensional eldritch horrors. His swimming pool being a gate to hell. Elevators. Secret Russian bases hiding under middle of nowhere shopping mall's. Tunnels to hell. Speaking to his father.
One fear he had never thought he'd have though, was the thought of “peaking in high school.”
Like sure, he was one of the popular preppy kids, King of school, keg king, popular without really ever having to do much, thanks to genetics and three generations of obscene wealth, marking him as a good-looking guy with a ridiculously fat wallet for a teenager. He had girls drooling over him since he was in elementary school. Never had to wear braces to have an award-winning smile, hardly even had to work to keep his body in shape, thanks to an inborn talent at anything athletic. He had been involved in gymnastics as a young child, before his mother decided to dip her toes into the fashion industry, she even used him as a model for her children’s line of clothing until he hit puberty. He had a natural charm, and an endearing sort of clumsiness that was smoothed over by dance lessons and a few comportment courses.
No, honestly Steve never thought he would have peaked in high school, but, unfortunately, that is exactly what he did, and not for any lack of ambition, or never really going anywhere after graduation, cause sure, there was some of that, but mostly by choice while he decided exactly what he wanted to do after graduating high school. No, it was because of an unassuming box of chocolates his mother brought back from France after his latest bout of getting his ass handed to him, this time by Russian spies in a secret base under the mall where he slung ice cream.
It was a variety box, with all kinds of exotic flavors, and he had mowed through them, until there was just one left. There was no reason he was saving it, or that it was the last one left in the box for nearly three months. He had mostly just forgotten about it after it got burried under a pile of college brochures his mother left for him before jetting off again.
His parents had done their usual thing after Starcourt; his mother had stuck around for nearly three weeks while he convalesced, until his face had healed completely, and she had managed to put together her new spring line for the next year, before she jetted off Milan to organize the show it would be in, securing Steve’s promise to not get his face beat in again until after he could be one of the models in the show. His father had stuck around for an entire week this time, before having to look at his disappointment of a son got to be too much, and he fled back to New York to finalize a corporate buy-out of some other company.
He had been on his own again for months now and had just started a new shitty customer service job, this one slinging video’s instead of ice cream, but he had decided he wanted some real-world experience for at least a year before moving onto something more adult and sustaining or whatever, and hey, at least he was still working with Robin. So, when he had decided to clean out his room of all the accumulated piles of post Apocalypse averting malaise, he came across the last chocolate in the box, and without thinking too hard about it just popped it in his mouth and continued cleaning.
Twenty minutes later he was dead thanks to a previously undiscovered allergy to dragon fruit.
If things had gone on as normal, it would have taken nearly 6 days for someone to find him, that someone being Robin, who had gotten worried after he didn’t show up to work 3 days in a row without calling in, and Dustin because he had a key to Steve’s house and he wasn’t answering his phone, or the door after Robin had pounded on it for nearly 20 minutes. However, because of fate, or his brushes with the upside down, or maybe glowing blue Russian mystery drugs, no one had a chance to discover his bloated stinking corpse lying at the bottom of the stairs, where he had tried to reach the phone in the kitchen to call 911. No, instead, he got to go through the whole sensation of dying, and then woke up to being a god damned baby.
~~~~~~
His first couple years were disorienting to say the least.
His mind warring between his 19 years of memories and the hunger of a newborn. He would barely be able to form coherent thought before he needed to eat, or fell asleep, or even worse needed changing. Fed up with the whole diaper thing, he fast tracked his own potty-training to as soon as he could competently walk. He also fast tracked the whole talking thing, preferring to be understood, even though the words were not always so well formed with his infant vocal cords and his clumsy toddler mouth.
His parents were still barely there, leaving him with Nannies for the most part, until they deemed him old enough to take care of himself, this time at age ten, instead of age fourteen like the last time. He still had a house keeper that would buy groceries and take him to doctors appointments and such, but she only came by twice a week instead of living in. he was a little sad at first, but it honestly gave him more space to plan for the future, and not just like, that vague adult future, but the very likely future of having to face monsters from a different dimension shortly after his 17th birthday.
When he was about the age to first enter into school, he decided he was going to stick as close as he could to what he remembered happening the last time he had lived. Still not certain that his last life was even real to be honest, until certain events he remembered from his childhood took place around the same time as he remembered them. Stuff still changed of course, but he still made his first best friend at age 5 when he shared his cookies with Tommy H and made his second best friend at age 8 when he and Tommy had invited the new girl, Carol Chambers, to play with their action figures at recess. A few things did change though, especially as the years went on. For one, he was less of an asshole than the last time, knowing better now, and encouraging Tommy and Carol to be nicer when they were still young had the benefit of not getting into so many school-yard fights.
Unsurprisingly, he still had trouble reading, but having 19 years of building blocks, he was able to push through the issues he had before and managed to somehow land at a level of reading comprehension that more or less matched his age. Math had always been his strong suit though, so he decided to breeze through the early stuff so he could get to the more complicated stuff he hadn’t been able to when stuck at a normal high school level. He still pursued gymnastics and sports and such, cause he was good at it, and it had always given him a sense of accomplishment, he also found that it took very little to retrain the muscle memory he had in his previous life.
The summer before he started high school he decided to exploit a gem of a loophole, and after getting jobs with a few of the local farms he managed to get his drivers license on the farmhand waiver exemption at age 14 instead of 16.
Once he could legally drive, he took courses at the community college in Shelbyville, for first aide and eventually taking nursing classes, which were stupid hard with all the reading, but Carol’s new step-father, Dr. Perkins helped him out, and even managed to bond with his new daughter when Carol started taking courses along with Steve. Tommy even tagged along too once he and Carol began officially dating.
One of the interesting side effects of his more “studious” nature was less lectures from his father. Even better, after a while, it had the side effect of his father branching his weapons manufacturing company into the medical field as well, his father assuming Steve was thinking of becoming a doctor one day. Steve did not dissuade his father of this idea, as it meant he had a much larger allowance to take courses, stockpile supplies for the inevitable Upside-Down nonsense, and on his 15th birthday his father offered to buy him his own car, instead of just giving him his dad’s old beamer. His dad had looked at him askance when he chose a Chevy Blazer, instead of something fancier and expensive, but he explained it away by saying it would be the best choice to get it through snowy country roads to and from Shelbyville in the winter. The truth of the matter was of course he wanted something that could easily hold all the kids (eventually) and wouldn't look to wild if he were to retrofit it himself to be an absolute beast of a thing.
As 1980 hit he began taking self defense courses, and even asked his dad to send him away to a summer boot camp where they would train him on military tactics and weaponry in 1982 & 1983. His father agreed, since the forefront of his business was with military contracts, selling weapons to the army, so Steve having a basic understanding of both the workings of the military as well as weapons only boded well for the future owner of the company.
One thing Steve stepped back on was dating. He tried for a bit once he hit high school, but while his body was that of a young teenager, his mind was that of, well, at least an older teenager, he still had very little adult life experiences, and while he was more responsible and driven, he didn’t have the life experience to feel older than a more mature teenager, it still squicked him out to date girls his own age, so his few relationships were short and usually with juniors or seniors, with the occasional foray into Chicago or Indianapolis or Fort Wayne with a fake ID and a one night hook up with someone a bit older. A new thing he learned about himself in those few instances was he was apparently attracted to both males and females, at least physically. Small town life didn’t offer too much of a chance at having an actual relationship with a male, so he still wasn’t sure if he would want to do more than fool around with a guy.
By the time September of 1983 rolled around, he found himself in a near constant state of panic, trying to plan the best way to prevent as many deaths as possible. He had listed out all the deaths he remembered happening, Benny at the Diner, Barb in his pool, Bob to the Demo dogs at the lab, all the people who worked at the lab (he was kinda on the fence about those, not sure if he could really prevent any of those, and not sure if he really wanted to) and finally Billy and Hopper to Starcourt. He knew there were others, like some hunters that were eaten after Will went missing, and all the people the Mind Flayer turned into goop, but he didn’t have a list of who those people even were, so he decided for his own peace of mind he would focus on the ones he knew for sure and try to keep the others from happening if he could.
So, as September 7th 1983 rolled around, he moved from planning and stockpiling, to putting said plans into motion. First step, date Nancy Wheeler.