Chapter Text
Steve Harrington’s adoption is the best kept secret in Hawkins.
Steve himself doesn’t find out until his thirteenth birthday. In hindsight, he should have realized his parents would drop some life changing revelation on him when both of them managed to be home for it. Naively, he’d hoped they just really wanted to be there for such a big milestone. Wish him a happy birthday, get him his favorite cake, spend a quiet family night together.
Instead, they sit him down at the long fancy dining table and his dad says, “Your mother and I have decided it’s time for you to know the truth.”
“What truth?” Steve repeats.
“Steve,” says his dad, “you’re adopted.”
Just like that. A one-two no holds barred punch. Straight for the kill. Steve, who until this exact moment had always thought he had his mother’s eyes and his father’s nose, experiences a moment of complete brain death. “What?”
His mother sets a hand over his fathers on the tabletop, the other worrying at her fine pearl necklace. “We thought it was high time we told you,” she says. “We understand this is probably a shock, but we know that you’re mature enough to handle it.”
Steve doesn’t feel mature enough to handle it. In front of him, the candles wedged in the birthday cake his mother had bought from Hawkins only high-end bakery drool wax into the frosting.
It’s red velvet. Steve hasn’t liked red velvet since he was at least five.
“What…” Steve doesn’t know what he’s trying to ask. Mostly, he just feels like he should ask something. “Who…?”
“If you’re asking about your birth parents,” his mother says, “I’m sorry to say they’re not really in the picture.”
His father, ever the diplomat, says, “Your mother was a homeless junkie. She died in childbirth. Your father could be anybody from here to China for all we know.”
Your mother, he’d said. Your father. As if the two people sitting across from Steve are strangers instead.
Steve looks at them. He looks at the cake in front of him. The wax has started to burn through the buttercream. He’s so sick that, for a moment, he thinks he might pass out, face smashed into the cake like a cartoon character.
This is what you get for wanting a normal family birthday, he thinks.
He looks up again. At his parents. At the strangers who raised him. “Why did you adopt me?”
“Oh, Steve,” his mother says. “You’re still our son, okay? We couldn’t have children of our own. We waited a long, long time to be allowed to adopt one.”
Steve doesn’t feel like a much-wanted child in the face of that. He feels more like a commodity. “Great,” he says. “Of course.”
At least, he supposes, as the truth finally starts to take root inside of him, it explains why he could never seem to live up to any of the impossible standards his parents expected of him.
Steve Harrington wasn’t born into this world a wanted child. He was born into this world as a vehicle for his parents' hopes and dreams; expected to follow a roadmap they’d laid out for him before they’d even known he was alive and kicking.
Across the table, his father remarks, “I hope it goes without saying that we don’t want you telling your friends about this. The Harrington name has a reputation to uphold, and people can be closed-minded, after all.”
Closed-minded. Rich coming from him.
“Right,” Steve says.
His mother smiles at him. Looking at her now, Steve can’t help but see all the ways in which their faces don’t line up at all. “Well,” she says, “are you going to blow out your candles, honey?”
Steve does.
“Make a wish,” his mother adds with false cheer.
I wish I was nothing like either of you, Steve wishes with an equally false smile.
A couple of months after his thirteenth birthday, Steve has his first psychic vision.
--
Second period English. Steve has had a headache for two days straight. He’s wearing sunglasses inside because the light hurts his eyes something fierce. He’s aware he looks like a fucking idiot, but it seems secondary when compared to how awful he feels.
Behind him, Tommy leans forward to tug the back of his collar. “Seriously, man, how hungover are you? I can’t believe you got drunk without me.”
Steve shrugs him off. “I’m not hungover, fuck off, Tommy.”
They’re only thirteen. Steve hasn’t even been drunk yet. Not properly. Tipsy, maybe. But he’s never been drunk, and he’s definitely never been hungover.
If it feels half as awful as this, he hopes he never is.
“Wow, unbunch your panties, princess,” Tommy says. “Seriously, you’ve been so bitchy since your birthday.”
At the front of the room, the teacher raps her chalk on the blackboard to prove some kind of point, and Steve winces as it strikes through his temple like a gunshot. Rubbing one hand over his face, he mutters, “Just let it go, okay?”
From the corner of his eye, he sees Tommy pull a face. “You’re such a buzzkill,” he says, and flicks the bare nape of Steve’s neck.
Tommy at forty, maybe fifty, wedged behind the steering wheel of a big rig. It’s dark outside the windows, rain pattering down as the wipers struggle to clear the flood of it away. The clock on the dashboard reads a stern 3:04 in the morning. There’s a bobblehead above it, some figure from a movie that won’t come out for at least another twenty years.
“And now the weather,” announces the radio presenter.
Tommy yawns. His eyes drift closed. With nothing to guide it, the truck begins to veer off the road. Its tires hit the bumpy dirt lining the pavement, and Tommy’s eyes snap open.
He jerks the wheel. Overcorrects. It refuses to take on the wet road.
The rig goes down hard. Tommy, stuck behind the wheel, goes down with it. Glass shatters. The metal warps with a deafening shriek. It’s almost loud enough to drown out the sound of Tommy screaming.
The wipers groan as they continue to swipe across the windshield. Behind it, Tommy does not move.
Steve’s vision clears. He’s in the classroom. Still in the classroom, he means. Up the front, Mrs. Chaplin is droning on about Sophie’s Choice. Behind him, Tommy is whispering his name with increasing urgency.
“Steve? Steve? Harrington, man, are you alright?”
“Fuck,” Steve says, and pukes all over himself.
--
He takes a week off school.
His father’s not home, off on some business trip, but his mother comes back early. Supposedly to take care of him. Mostly, Steve knows, because optically it doesn’t look great for a thirteen-year-old to be left unattended with the flu.
“Oh baby,” she says, as she places a wet cloth over his head. “I can feel the heat from here. You’re really burning up.”
Steve blinks blearily up at her. He doesn’t feel hot. He feels like ice. “Huh?”
His mother clucks her tongue at him. “What’s your temperature? Did they take it at school before they sent you home?”
They hadn’t. Steve had a meltdown when the nurse tried to touch him. “No,” he rasps.
“Well, I’m not sure where the thermometer is,” his mother admits. “Ella would know. Should I call Ella?”
Ella had been his nanny up until Steve was twelve and his parents had decided he was old enough to be left home without a babysitter. He hasn’t seen her in over a year. Even halfway out of his head with fever, he can’t imagine she really wants to hear from the Harringtons who’d fired her with no warning after ten years of service. “I don’t know, mom.”
His mother sighs, put upon, as if Steve’s sickness is a personal inconvenience to her. “Well,” she says. “I can at least check if you need to go to the hospital, I suppose.”
Before Steve can say anything, she lays the back of her palm across his forehead.
His mother, hair bleached a brittle blonde that contrasts the fine lines spidering from the corner of her eyes. She’s on a divan, wearing a nice evening dress and dark heels. There’s a glass of whisky beside her on the coffee table and an empty bottle on the floor.
Across the room, the TV plays a rerun of a show Steve doesn’t recognize. Muffled voices rise and fall like a tidal wave.
Drunk and asleep on the couch, his mother breathes out deeply. Once. Twice.
Her chest stops rising.
She dies alone in the living room to the soundtrack of canned laughter.
Steve rockets back to the present, to the feel of her hand pressed against his clammy skin. She’s looking at him with increasing concern. “Steve, honey, you’re really on fire here, are you okay?”
Steve stares at her. At her botox perfect face, the natural blonde of her hair. He stares and sees her as she’ll be in another thirty something years when she dies alone in their living room. Canned laughter plays in his ears, ringing his head like a bell.
“Fuck,” Steve says, again, and this time pukes all over them both.
--
The visions don’t go away.
In American History, Amanda Mitchell passes him a pencil and Steve watches as she falls asleep on her back porch with a cigarette in her hand, her house burning down around her. Mr. Johnson brushes his hand as he’s returning their math exams, and Steve is treated to an intimate view of him bleeding out on an operating table some twenty years from now. When Carol punches him the arm playfully at lunch, Steve grits his teeth through a vision of her taking her last breath in a hospital room, surrounded by sobbing loved ones, the smell of antiseptic and death thick in his nostrils.
He’s going fucking crazy. He has to be. Because a month ago, Steve hungered for the closeness of casual touch like a starved animal, and now he’s stuck flinching from every passing glance, terrified of the snuff film playing on repeat before his eyes.
He needs to tell somebody, he knows. Needs to tell his mom before she leaves for Paris again.
He imagines the look on her face when he tells her he’s seen her dying alone and miserable. He imagines her taking him to Hawkins General. He imagines them refusing to let him back out again. Steve and his hallucinations stuck in a white room with white walls forever and ever, treated to an endless parade of strangers with their fresh skin touching him over and over and over and -
His mom goes back to Paris. He doesn’t tell her anything.
Two months after Steve’s life took a sharp turn for the worst, the librarian at Hawkins Middle School pats him on the shoulder after he stops by to borrow a required English text. Her thumb grazes a smear of his skin.
Mrs. Simpson, waiting at a red light, bunched up tight in a bright blue cardigan. The radio is playing Magic by Olivia Newton-John, just like it has for months now, and Mrs. Simpson sings along to it softly as the light turns green. She shifts gears, and her old truck rolls forward as her fingers beat against the steering wheel.
She doesn’t see the car running the red light until it careens right into her driver’s side door.
Burning rubber and oil stink up the sky. Mrs. Simpson’s car rolls - once, twice, three times. It comes to a stop, wheels spinning fruitlessly in the air like a dying beetle.
The radio croons, “Building your dream has to start now, there’s no other roads to take - you won’t make the same mistake, I’ll be guiding you, you have to believe we are magic.”
In the distance, sirens begin to wail.
“Dear? Steven, dear - are you alright?”
Steve comes back to himself, staring blankly up at Mrs. Simpson’s creased face. The worry lines pinching her mouth tight tells him she’s been trying to snag his attention for some time now. He clears his throat. Struggles against the nausea roiling through his gut. “Sorry,” he says. “I must have zoned out.”
Her frown deepens. “You should make sure you get more rest,” she chides. “You young boys are always running yourselves ragged. Make sure you’re eating properly, too. You look positively pale.”
“Sure, Mrs. Simpson,” he says weakly. “I’ll do that.”
He turns to go, English text clutched to his chest. From the corner of his eye, he sees something hanging behind the library service desk. Heart turning to ice, he turns to look.
A blue cardigan droops from a hook.
For a moment, Steve can’t breathe. The whole world slows to a standstill.
“Steven?” Swallowing, Steve glances back. Mrs. Simpson is staring at him with concern. He doesn’t blame her. He can only imagine how he looks. “Is something the matter?”
“No,” Steve says automatically. Then, “I mean - yes.”
“What -?”
Before his courage can fail him, Steve says in a rush, “When you drive home tonight. Can you… can you be careful?”
Mrs. Simpson looks baffled. Understandable. Steve doesn’t think he’s ever said more than a passing question or two to her before. “Pardon?”
“On the roads,” Steve clarified. “When you leave. Be careful, okay?”
He must look as manic as he sounds, because Mrs. Simpson only hesitates for a moment before saying, “Of course, Steven.”
“Good,” Steve says, and then, before she says anything else, he books it out of the library. He can feel her watching him as he goes, but he doesn’t turn around. Mortification boils his skin all over.
Stupid, he thinks to himself. God, so fucking stupid.
That night, he sleeps like shit, plagued by restless, uneasy dreams. Sirens pierce his ears every time he closes his eyes, and his head spins like a car on a collision course with gravity. By the time his alarm sounds, Steve is more exhausted than he can remember in a long time.
He drags his feet all the way to school, which is probably why he misses the police car wedged into the overfull parking lot until he’s already pushing open the door to the corridor. Inside, students are clumped together, whispering in fraught voices. As he passes by, he hears more than one girl crying, mascara smeared over their freckled cheeks.
The uneasy feeling he’s been nursing in his stomach all morning blossoms and he beelines right to Tommy’s locker where he finds him and Carol gossiping in low voices.
“Hey,” Steve says. “What happened?”
“You haven’t heard?” Tommy says in surprise. He runs a jittery hand through his spiky hair, looking more unsettled than Steve thinks he’s ever seen. “It’s all anybody’s talking about, man.”
“What?” Steve presses. “What happened?”
“It’s Mrs. Simpson,” Carol says, arms wrapped around herself. “The librarian, you know? She was in a car accident last night.”
Steve stares at her. “What?”
“Somebody plowed into her at the lights right outside Benny’s,” Tommy says. “She died instantly.”
Carol shudders. “I heard they had to scrape her brains off the road,” she says. “That it’s going to be a closed casket funeral.”
“Oh, shut up, Carol, you did not hear that.”
“I did! Suzie Jackson got the information from her brother, who’s a deputy!”
In Steve’s head, a car rests on its roof, tires spinning, spinning, spinning. A blue cardigan gone black with asphalt and red with blood.
“You know what I heard?” Tommy says. “I heard her car was still running when the cops arrived. The radio was going and everything. Like something out of a horror movie, you know?”
“Yeah,” Carol says. “Suzie says her brother said he’ll never be able to listen to Oliva Newton-John again.”
Steve doesn’t puke, but it’s only because the past month has given him excellent control over himself. Instead, he turns on his heel, leaving Tommy and Carol to gossip by the lockers, and walks right out the front door.
Nobody stops him, and Steve doesn’t stop himself until the school is nothing but a glimmer in the distance. His bag bangs against his back as he walks, heavy with the book Mrs. Simpson had helped him pick from the library shelves only yesterday.
He hits the woods on the outskirts of town, and lumbers into them until he can find a patch of grass, absent from the world. He shrugs his bag off and slumps against a tree trunk, the bark scraping his skin as he slides down to bury his face in his hands.
“I’m going crazy,” he says. “I’m going fucking crazy.”
Except he’s not, apparently. Crazy is imagining the people around you dying. Predicting it? That’s something else entirely.
There’s a couple of kids at school that play at that sort of thing. Wear black, talk in airy dramatic voices. Lots of crosses and crucifixes and eyeliner. Steve had always thought it was dumb as hell. A real weird niche to marry yourself too.
He still thinks that. He thinks that more than ever.
If the universe had thought to ask Steve whether he wanted this, he would have told it to shove it up its fucking ass.
Steve Harrington has plans. He’s going to go to Hawkins High a new man. Lean into the rich boy image his family's reputation has cultivated. Befriend all the right people, say all the right things. He’s going to graduate and go to college and marry the most beautiful girl in Hawkins, and have half a dozen kids and a great job and the whole world is going to be green with envy.
Nowhere in that plan is being a freak.
Steve breathes out, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes as he strives to stop the shakes trembling across him. “Not crazy,” he reminds himself. “Not a fucking freak.”
It doesn’t make him feel any better. He hadn’t really expected it to.
Okay. Okay, so Steve is a freak. A freak who watches people die. He’s realistic enough to admit that his newfound freakiness probably isn’t going away anytime soon either.
So he’s a freak. But that’s not all he is.
Nobody knows Steve is adopted. Nobody knows that his parents haven’t been home in weeks - that they often disappear for longer than that at a stretch. Nobody knows that he nearly failed English last year, or that he’s close to failing it this year too.
Steve is a freak. He’s also a liar. Steve isn’t accomplished at much in life, but he has lying down to an artform. A bat of his eyes, a curve of a smile. It’s so fucking easy. Too fucking easy, to him.
He’s not going to start dressing in black, wearing crucifixes, hanging with the kids who haunt the back of the cafeteria like ghosts. No. Tomorrow, he’s going to go back to school, and he’s going to go to Mrs. Simpson’s funeral with the rest of Hawkins Middle School, and he’s going to keep his mouth shut about how she’d looked laid out over the road like a broken doll.
He’s going to graduate middle school soon. Start at Hawkins High. And he’s not going to say shit. He’ll graduate, go to college, marry well, and have the perfect white picket fence family.
He’ll do all that or die trying.
--
Steve starts at Hawkins High.
It’s both exactly like and nothing at all like middle school. Classes are the same as always, really. He starts from the bottom of the social ladder, but he’d been solidly stuck at the middle rung last year anyway, so it’s not a total loss. Plenty of time for reinvention still.
At the start, he tries. Sticks to his plan, smiles at the right people, laughs at the right times. Joins the swim team and makes plans for as many other sports as he possibly can.
People like him. The freshmen do at least. It’s a good start. Steve can work on that.
The cute girl in his Bio class passes him an eraser and Steve sees cancer eating through every line in her body. One of his teammates helps hoist him out of the pool after practice and Steve watches him bleed out, alone, on his bathroom floor. Principal Murphy is going to die happy but young, and Vice Principal Nelson is going to die old and miserable.
Steve has nightmares every night. With his parents off gallivanting around Europe and his best friends consumed with climbing the ladder of popularity, nobody notices.
Two months into high school, Steve has to admit that his plan might not be working as well as he’d hoped. Turns out that pretending you’re not a freak doesn’t actually make it go the fuck away.
He has a notebook. Plain college ruled paper. It was meant for taking History notes. Instead, it’s filled with visions.
Mom - 80s. Old age. Alone in the house.
Tommy - 40? 50? Truck accident.
Carol - 60s, maybe. Illness. Hospital, with family.
It goes on and on. Everybody he’s ever touched and remembered. Just enough details to keep track. Never anything more than a line. He doesn’t really need it. His memory, which has always been kind of shit, has turned into a steel trap for this and this alone.
Some of the names are crossed out. Names like Mrs. Simpson.
If somebody ever finds his notebook, Steve will have a hell of a time explaining it.
Nobody else has died since he started keeping it, but he knows it’s probably only a matter of time. The notebook is filling up fast, after all, and even Steve knows that if he’s playing a volume game, eventually he’s going to lose out.
He hasn’t tried saving anybody since Mrs. Simpson. Hasn’t really had the opportunity. He’s thought about it though. He’s only human. Of course he’s thought about it.
He doesn’t know if it’s possible. He’d warned Mrs. Simpson, and it hadn’t really made a difference. Maybe the future is just like that. Immutable. Solid. Has a steel spine to it Steve wishes he could borrow.
Most of the deaths he witnesses aren’t savable to begin with. Decades away, natural causes. Some a decent way to go, honestly. Steve wouldn’t want somebody to butt their head in, if he were in their shoes.
Others though. Fuck. It’s a good thing he’s developing a strong stomach.
In the end, his realization comes to him the way all great things in his life have come to him. Rudely and like a blow to the face.
He’s at school, sitting on the bench after gym, wiping sweat off his brow. Two of his classmates are wrestling nearby, shoving each other back and forth over a soccer ball as Tommy drones relentlessly in Steve’s ear.
He’s not really listening. He hadn’t slept last night, and exhaustion has worn deep circles beneath his eyes. An hour of chasing a ball across a field and pretending like everything was fine had worn them deeper still.
“ - so what do you think?” Tommy finishes and looks at Steve expectantly.
Steve opens his mouth to reply, something prepackaged and automatically. His classmates, wrestling and cackling like fucking toddlers, trip over their feet and sprawl across his lap.
It’s a doozy of a vision. A real two-for-one special.
Blood on freshly mowed grass, the stink of it sweet in the air -
Sickly hospital smells, bleached sheets, crumbling pills -
Sobbing like a hurricane, hands pressing at split flesh -
“I’m here, honey, I’m here. We’re all here. You can -”
“Dad, dad! What do I do, what do I do? Keep your eyes open, okay? Please, please, please -”
“Steve! Steve!” Tommy hands are on his shoulders, shaking him. The two classmates Steve has just watched die are hovering in front of him, looking baffled and increasingly concerned. Behind them, the teacher is striding forwards with a thunderous expression on his face. “Jesus, man. Are you okay?”
It’s been a while since Steve puked over a vision. Strong stomach and all.
He smells lawn clippings and gore. His mouth tastes like antiseptic.
Steve rockets to his feet, sending everybody scattering back. “I’m fine,” he announces. “I’m going to go puke in the toilet. Nobody follow me.”
Nobody does. He supposes the look on his face had said it all.
Hurling into the toilet bowl in Hawkins High, Steve finally admits to himself what he’s been trying not to since the visions set their claws into him what feels like a thousand years ago now.
He’s tired of this. Of being useless. An observer rather than a participant in his own life. Steve Harrington has been a lot of things, but passive has never been one of them.
Mostly, he’s tired of watching people fucking die.
He coughs sour bile into the toilet water and sits back on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
So the first time he tried, he hadn’t been able to help. Most of the things he sees are unavoidable. But if Steve is anything, he’s persistent. He’ll see something he can stick his fucking nose in eventually, and when he does, God.
He’s going to find somebody slated to die, and Steve Harrington is going to save their fucking life.
--
A couple of weeks later, he gets his chance when he bumps into Kerri Jones in the hallway.
At this point, he’s been through enough visions that when it hits him, he manages to keep his face blank, a hand idly to the wall as it passes through him. It takes maybe five seconds. Probably less. Nobody even glances at him as Steve comes back to himself.
Slowly, he shifts his books under his arm and heads for his locker. His notebook is exactly where he’d left it, wedged in the torn lining of his bag where nobody was likely to stumble upon it. Keeping his open locker door between himself and the rest of the world, he uncaps his pen with his teeth and begins scribbling.
Kerri Jones - falls through the deck railing at a house party.
Her hair had been just about the same length. Steve hadn’t recognized the house, but he definitely recognized the music thumping in the background.
Swallowing, he writes soon.
A hand bangs the locker beside him and Steve jumps, heart in his throat.
“Whoa, dude, you look like you just pissed yourself,” Tommy cackles.
Steve scowls at him. “Jesus, Tommy. Don’t sneak up on people.”
Tommy shrugs. “Maybe you just need to pay more attention.” Then, seeing the notebook in Steve’s hand, “Are you seriously doing homework in the middle of the hallway right now?”
Hastily, Steve stuffs the notebook back in his locker before Tommy can look over his shoulder at it. “Shut up, maybe some of us just want to do well in our classes, you ever think of that?”
“Oh, Stevie,” Tommy says. “I think you and I both know passing is kind of the best you can hope for.”
Steve refuses to let the hurt of that statement show on his face as he slams his locker closed. “Did you come over here just to be a dick, or what?”
Tommy rolls his eyes but slings an arm over Steve’s shoulder, steering him down the hall. “I came to ask if you wanted to go out tonight. Some sophomore is having a party. Open invite.” Tommy wiggles his eyebrows at him. “Could be a chance to get in good with the upperclassmen.”
Steve thinks of his vision - of poor Kerri Jones, leaning against a splintering balcony. Of how red her blood has been on the pavement after it gave way beneath her.
“Sure,” he says. “I’m in.”
Tommy grins, giving him a good shake before dropping his arm. “That’s the spirit,” he says. “Carol and I’ll pick you up at nine, yeah?”
“Sounds good,” Steve says.
“It will be,” Tommy promises. “Just you fucking wait, Steve. By the end of this year, we’ll have this whole school under our thumb.”
Not all that long ago, that was all Steve wanted. Now, he’s not so sure.
“Yeah,” he says. “Under our thumb.”
--
The party that night isn’t the one. Neither is the party the following Friday, or the party after that.
Steve doesn’t care. He keeps showing up. He doesn’t even know half the people who are hosting, doesn’t even like half the people. But he keeps going because he knows one day and one day soon something is going to go wrong, and this might just be his chance to prove he can do something about it.
If nothing else, it winds up being a great way to scout, too. Sort of.
Pushing through a crowded room of writhing, drunk teenagers mean Steve must touch dozens of people a night. He gets punched in the gut with so many visions that he winds up spending a lot of parties hunched over the toilet, puking his guts out, pretending like he’s had way more to drink than he actually has.
His notebook fills up quickly. Details are scarce (Senior Stacey - car accident in thirty something years?) but Steve is determined to keep trying to stay on top of his routine.
Tommy, at least, is thriving. “Dude,” he says, by the time they’re into the second half of the year, “I think you’ve made us the most popular kids in fucking Hawkins. Kids trip over themselves when you show up at their parties.”
They’re sitting in Steve’s yard, feet dangling in the pool, and a washcloth over Steve’s eyes. They’d gone out last night, and he feels wretched for it. His skin tingles all over from being touched, and every time he blinks, he sees blood, hears the rattle of a dying breath. Tommy thinks he’s hungover again, and Steve lets him, because it’s an easy out.
At least, he thinks, the way he’s going he’s got to run out of people to touch sooner or later.
“Nobody thinks we’re the most popular people in school, Tommy,” he says, back flat to the overwarm pavers. “We’re still freshman.”
Tommy snorts, kicking water at him, and Steve shifts his washcloth to glare at him. “You know Kate from the cheer team asked me if you were seeing anybody.”
Steve frowns. “Kate Jordan?”
Tommy flashes him a grin.
“Isn’t she a senior?” Steve asks.
“Yeah,” Tommy says. “And she totally wants to suck your dick, man.”
Steve thinks he’s supposed to be flattered. He mostly feels kind of creeped out. He shifts the washcloth back over his eyes. “If you’re so into her, maybe you should ask her out.”
“Carol would murder me,” Tommy says, and Steve snorts. “Look, man, all I’m saying is that the way you’re going, you’re going to have a lot more girls pawing at you by the year end.”
Steve doesn’t tell him he already does. He’s been asked out three times this month alone. It’s a little disconcerting, really. In middle school, Steve had been unremarkable and uninteresting. Girls had looked right past him. Right after they’d graduated though, he’d shot up like a weed, had filled out some, and apparently it’s really paying off for him.
Middle school Steve would have been ecstatic.
Middle school Steve hadn’t seen all his classmates and friends kick the fucking bucket.
To Tommy, he says, “Sounds good, man.”
He hears Tommy sigh. “You used to be way more fun.”
Steve’s too tired to be upset over that. He’s probably not wrong. “Sorry.”
Silence but for the faint splash of their feet in the water. He hears Tommy breathe out, long and slow. Then he says, “Sorry, that was kind of a dick thing to say.”
“It’s fine,” Steve says. “Whatever.”
“Just, I don’t know, man. I feel like you’ve been pulling away, you know?” Tommy says, voice quiet. “If something’s going on with you, you know you can, like, say something, yeah?”
It’s the most earnest thing he thinks Tommy’s ever said to him. Slowly, Steve shifts the cloth to look at him again. Tommy is staring out over the water, jaw clenched, looking as uncomfortable to have said something genuine as Steve is to have heard it.
For a second, Steve considers it. He really does. Thinks about how good it’d be to be able to share this with somebody; to have somebody understand the bullshit he’s going through.
Tommy’s his best friend. It should be fine. It should be fine.
He thinks, then, of the way Tommy shoulders past some of the kids in the hall. The sneer on his face as he eyes down the less popular tables across the cafeteria; the kids who are into nerd shit, or try too hard in class, or like the wrong kind of music.
Last week, he knocked Eddie Munson down a set of bleachers and called him a freak.
Steve’s always kind of liked Munson. Thought it was admirable to be so earnestly devoted to the things you like, even if you’re going to cop shit for it. When Tommy had pushed him around, Steve had stood in the background with his mouth closed and hadn’t said a word.
Steve swallows. Summons every ounce of charisma he’s been told he has and smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “Don’t worry, man. I know.”
Tommy doesn’t look like he believes him, but he nods anyway, lets the lie pass without scrutiny. His shoulders ease. Steve wonders if he’d been more afraid of a confession than a lie.
“Right,” Tommy says, then clears his throat. “Anyway, there’s going to be a party this weekend. You in?”
Steve wants to go to a party like he wants a bullet in the skull. “Yeah,” he sighs. “I’m in.”
--
The party is out the other side of town. Not quite in the worst neighborhood, but far from Steve’s prissy street with their swimming pools and BMW’s.
A cheer had gone through the room when Steve and Tommy had shown up. Unnerved, Steve had to admit that maybe there was something to Tommy’s little prediction the other night. Smiling, he let a cute girl push a cup of beer in his hand. They must have met at some point before, because when her fingertips brush his, his head stays firmly and clearly in the present.
Steve lets himself get dragged off to dance. The inexpensive speakers are thumpingly loud, and Steve sways through the living room, drink in one hand and the other tucked firmly in his pocket, away from and naked skin.
He’s wearing a jacket despite the fact it’s over warm inside like this. Sweat is already trickling down the back of his neck.
“Hey,” says the girl who’d passed him his drink, craning to yell in his ear. Her hands fix on his arm, overly familiar. She flutters her eyelashes at him. “Aren’t you hot in that?”
Steve is. Of course he is. But the idea of spending the night puking in the bathroom doesn’t sound all that appealing right now. He smiles at her. “If you want to strip me down, you’re going to have to do better than that.”
She laughs, her cheeks bright pink. “Well,” she says. “Maybe I like a challenge.”
She’s sweet looking. Blonde hair, blue eyes. All American Beauty sort of pretty. Steve thinks she might be a sophomore. If a girl like her had looked at him last year, he’d be tripping over himself to look back.
Jenna, he remembers abruptly. Her name is Jenna.
He opens his mouth to say something, maybe flirt a little, but he catches sight of a head of red hair over her shoulder and suddenly his stomach flips.
Kerri Jones is shouldering her way out the back door, unsteady on a set of tipsy feet. The song changes over the speakers. Something Steve recognizes for all the wrong reasons.
“Fuck,” Steve hisses. “Here, hold this.”
Jenna blinks, taken aback as Steve thrusts his drink into her hand. She calls his name as he shoulders through the crowd, but he barely hears it, trying to wriggle through the press of sweaty bodies around him. Through the glass back door, he can see Kerri standing on the balcony, lighting a cigarette without a care in the world.
The beat of the music picks up. Nears its chorus. The sound of it wobbles in Steve’s ears. He’s not going to fucking make it.
“Jones!” he calls. “Kerri!”
She doesn’t glance up. Doesn’t hear him. There’s like six feet between them and a single ajar door. It might as well be a mile.
Then, like an answered prayer, the crowd parts for a second, and Steve is spat out by the wall. Jesus fuck, he thinks, and shoves the back door open without a pause.
Kerri startles, nearly dropping her cigarette as she turns to see him, all her weight resting on the railing behind her. “Harrington? What are you -?”
Steve wraps a hand around her wrist right as the porch creaks. The railing splits. Kerri teeters where she stands, eyes blowing wide as her foot slips on the wood beneath her, wet from spilled beers and slippery in the evening air. The concrete pavers below glisten in the moonlight.
Not this fucking time, Steve thinks, and yanks her hard enough that something nearly pops in his shoulder.
Kerri collides with his chest, barely on her feet. Her hands clutch at his jacket as she heaves unsteady breaths. She’s missing a shoe. Her heel is wedged in a crack in the wooden boards right where she’d been standing - right where the rotted railing had cracked, permitting a fall straight to the unforgiving concrete.
“Shit,” Kerri whimpers, straightening up. “Oh my god, Harrington, you’re a damn lifesaver.”
Steve’s heart is thundering in his chest. He barely hears her. He’s staring over her shoulder, to the pavers where she ought to be laid out and bloody. In his head, he sees it so clearly - her green eyes blinking up at the moon before going empty, the red of her hair bleeding into the puddle around her split skull.
She’s not there though. She’s pressed against him, alive and well, looking at him with wide, grateful eyes.
He did it. He fucking did it.
Fuck his visions. Fuck the future. Steve Harrington can change things.
There’s blood in his mouth. He’d bitten clear into his tongue from sheer elation. Victory tastes like iron and ash. Steve has never been so happy in his goddamn life.
“Seriously,” Kerri sighs. “Just - thanks.”
When Steve smiles, he has blood on teeth. “Anytime,” he promises, and means it like a vow.
--
Tail end of freshman year, old man Washington who owns one of the farms way out back of Hawkins has a heart attack and croaks it. Steve, who had brushed by him at Melvald’s last year and watched it happen in real time, breaks into his summer savings to send the Washington family an anonymous bouquet of flowers.
Three weeks before homecoming, Steve asks Tracey Childs to go with him. Of course, she agrees, even though Jack Summers had already asked her. They have a nice enough time. Steve takes her home and kisses her on her porch, and at the end of the night, Tracey gets to climb into her bed instead of choking on her own vomit, drunk as a fucking skunk in the back of Jack’s pickup.
It’s kinda nice. Not, you know, making out with Tracey Childs, who kisses with way too much tongue, but doing something. The bare minimum. Making the most of the incredibly shitty hand Steve has been dealt in life.
The thing about Hawkins, Indiana is that it’s kind of a nowhere town in a nowhere place. The people Steve watches die are old and tired, mostly. Set to die decades from now, halfway across the country. What’s Steve meant to do with that, really? How’s he meant to stop a burning house, a downed big rig, old age?
Hawkins has maybe two or three non-natural deaths a year. Car accidents, overdoses, farm accidents. Drunk highschoolers, like Kerri and Tracey.
Steve ought to know. He’s seen pretty much every death in this stupid town.
But Steve develops a routine, and he sticks to it like glue. Opens himself up to casual touches even when he wants to shrug them off, watches death after death after death. Keeps his notebook, and makes plans when things seem like they might need a little intervention.
He’s saved at least three or four people by now. Has helped minimize the fallout of at least a half dozen more.
It’s all very civic minded of him. It doesn’t help him sleep easier, but it does something all the same. Warms the sallow pit inside of him where he thinks there ought to be a teenage boy.
In a different world, where Steve hadn’t turned thirteen and woken up as a walking talking death omen, maybe it wouldn’t be so sallow and empty after all. But this isn’t a different world. It’s the real one. So Steve smiles and laughs, and writes his damn notes.
It’s fine though. Steve’s fine. He’s doing his duty. The bare minimum.
He has confidence that, one day, he’ll earn his peace.
--
In sophomore year, Steve grazes Nancy Wheeler’s hand for the first time as he leans against her locker and watches as a heart attack takes her sixty years from now.
There’s nobody else in his vision. Nancy is alone in a big bed in a bigger bedroom. There’s a picture on the nightstand, maybe, but Steve doesn’t get a good look at it. Whether it’s a husband or kids. Whether it’s him.
Steve wants it to be him like he’s never wanted anything else.
Steve smiles at her. All teeth. The boy-next-door smile that got him the King Steve crown as the new year rolled in. “Wheeler,” he says. “Looking good today, huh?”
She flushes all the way to her ears but slams her locker closed without looking back at him. Ice cool, she says, “Something you should try, maybe.”
Steve, who hadn’t anticipated such a firecracker response, feels thrilled to the deepest parts of his bones. “Maybe you can give me lessons?” he suggests.
Nancy pauses. Look him up and down as she clutches her books to her chest. Steve lets his grin widen. “I don’t know,” Nancy says. “You don’t seem like a good student.”
Usually, a remark like that would hit Steve in his carefully hidden sore spot. Nancy’s cute enough that it glances off his armor instead. “I could be for you,” he offers.
Nancy’s cheeks pinken again. “I don’t think so, Harrington,” she says. “My time is valuable.”
She turns on her heel, leaving him alone leaning against her locker as she strides off to class. Steve stays where he is, watching her go, feeling charmed to hell and back.
He can’t remember the last time he struck out with a girl. It’s kind of thrilling, honestly.
Steve thinks of her sixty years from now, staring emptily at the ceiling of a too big bedroom. He thinks of the unknown photo frame by her bedside. He thinks of white picket fences.
Nancy Wheeler is the prettiest girl in Hawkins. More than that though, she’s kind of a spitfire, and Steve likes that even more. He sees a future with her. A real one, he means.
And Steve? Well, he’s always had a good affinity for the future.
--
Steve is seventeen and Hawkins High worships the ground he walks on.
Turns out you show up at enough parties, look cute enough, take enough cute girls home to your empty house - well. It gets you a reputation. And in Hawkins, Indiana, where nothing interesting happens, having everything fall right into your lap turns out to be a very coveted skill.
Steve doesn’t really mind. The way he figures, he deserves it at this point. He’s more than earned it.
End of the first week of sophomore year, he throws a party. His parents are off in London right now - although only Tommy and Carol know that’s where they’ve been for three weeks - and the timing is perfect to reestablish his hold on Hawkins High.
It’s an open invite sort of event. Everybody who’s anybody shows up. Even, to Steve’s utter delight, Nancy Wheeler.
“Nancy!” he crows, cornering her in the kitchen where the beer is going warm in a tub of ice. “I didn’t know you were coming!”
She sips at her drink, looking down her nose at him. “Was I meant to stay home?”
Steve treats her to a grin. “You know I’m more than happy for you to be anywhere you want.”
Over her shoulder, Nancy’s ever present friend snorts. Nancy shoots her a look and then turns back to Steve. “Maybe I’ll go snoop through your house if you’re not careful, Harrington.”
Steve says, “It’s not snooping if I give you a tour. Wanna see the bedroom first?”
Nancy rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. Some of the iciness she’d had on Steve’s initial approach has thawed by now. Sometimes, Steve can even be convinced that she’s flirting back. “Maybe next time.”
Steve opens his mouth to reply, but Tommy calls his name, clapping him on the shoulder, and Steve is wrapped up in conversation for a solid minute. By the time he turns back, Nancy and her friend are gone.
“Man,” Tommy says, “you’ve got it bad for that one, don’t you?”
Steve elbows him in the side, stealing his beer. “Shut up and mind your business.”
Tommy wheezes, but grins up at him as he clutches his gut. “If you’re gonna be like that, I won’t share my joint with you.”
Steve’s face drops into a frown. “What joint? I don’t have any weed in the house.”
Tommy laughs. “Hate to break it to you, man, but I’m pretty sure Munson is dealing in your backyard.”
Steve nearly does a double take. “Eddie Munson?”
“How many other Munsons do you know?” Steve’s not sure how he feels about drug deals happening at his house. Something must show on his face, because Tommy sighs. “God, would you chill out? It’s just a little weed, it’s not going to kill someone. In fact, you could probably use a fucking hit yourself. Maybe it’d help you sleep for a change.”
Steve bristles. “I sleep.”
Tommy gives him a flat look. “Stevie, man, in the time I’ve known you I think I’ve seen you sleep through the night maybe once.”
Kind of hard to sleep when Steve gets to relive every snuff film he’s ever seen when he closes his eyes for more than a moment at a stretch. “Fuck off, who are you, my mom?”
Tommy grasps him by the shoulders steering him out of the kitchen, through the mass of bodies. “No, I’m your best friend, and as your best friend, I’m gonna do you a favor and send you on a mission to get the good stuff. Maybe you’ll learn a little something about yourself.”
“Tommy -”
Tommy slaps twenty bucks in Steve’s hand. “There you go. My treat, even.”
Before Steve can protest, Tommy shoves away, leaving Steve standing in the middle of his own living room, looking kind of like an idiot. For a solid moment, he seriously considers pocketing Tommy’s money and leaving it at that. Maybe hunting down Nancy. See if with a little persuasion he might be able to talk her into a tour after all. See how she feels about a pit stop at his bed.
The same bed he lays awake in every night, watching the time drag by, too scared to sleep.
Steve scuffs a hand through his hair with a sigh. “Fuck,” he hisses, and, before he can doubt himself, ducks out the backdoor.
There’s nobody outside right now. Steve had put his foot down about partying with the pool, tired of cleaning trash out of it. Without the draw of its artificially warm waters, the crowds seem to be favoring his overly loud sound system and the sprawling floorplan of the Harrington house.
Eddie Munson isn’t. Instead, he’s sitting by the pool, smoking like a chimney. His legs are folded at the edge, and the filthy sole of his hightop skims at the surface on every swing.
“Munson,” Steve says as he approaches. “Fancy seeing you out here?”
Eddie leaps a mile in the air, cigarette falling from his hand as it jumps to his chest. Whirling around, he stares wide eyed at Steve. “Jesus, Harrington. Want to make some noise as you walk or something?”
“It’s my house,” Steve points out, amused.
Eddie smiles at him. A nervous little thing. His shoulders are tense, crawled up below his ears. “Yeah, well.” A pause. “Are you here to kick me out?”
Steve raises a brow. “Of my pool? I mean, I did tell everybody it was off limits.”
Eddie laughs awkwardly. “More like the party, Harrington.”
“Why would I -” The last time Steve had spoken to Eddie was… never, actually. But he’d stood right behind Tommy’s shoulder as he sneered down his nose at him and called him a freak. “Oh.” Steve tries for a smile. “No, uh. I’m not going to kick you out of the party. It’s not like you’re crashing it. Open invite, and all.”
Eddie looks at him skeptically. He’s got a battered tin lunch box beside him, one hand to the lid, the other tugging absently at a lock of his hair. It’s stupidly long for a guy, really. Longer than a lot of girls Steve knows. He has no idea how Eddie makes it work. If Steve had hair that long, he’d look like a fucking idiot. “Right,” Eddie says. “I’m sure you love having Hawkins' favorite freak show up at your house party.”
Steve sits down beside them. There’s a careful gap of space between them. “You’re the one who showed up,” he points out. “Why did you come at all if you’re gonna be a bitch about it?”
Eddie blinks at him. “Why did I -?” He pauses. “Well, you’ve got me there, Harrington.”
Steve grins. After a tentative moment, Eddie grins back. Relief washes through Steve’s gut.
It’s not like he doesn’t understand Eddie’s suspicion of him. It makes him feel awful, but he understands it. Doesn’t know what to do to make it better though. It’s not like Steve can walk back the reputation he’s worked so hard to cultivate.
He supposes he doesn’t need to. Tommy’s money burns a hole in his pocket. It’s not like he came out here to win Eddie Munson’s hand in marriage or anything.
Steve clears his throat. “So,” he says. “Should I take a guess why you showed up?”
Eddie winces. The hand he has atop his lunch box white knuckles. “Uh,” he says. “To rub shoulders with the best and brightest Hawkins has to offer?”
“Best and brightest?” Steve repeats. “Shit, man, I think you showed up at the wrong party.”
Eddie laughs, something startled and bright. For absolutely no reason, the shocked sound of it makes Steve’s stomach turn over. “Fuck,” Eddie says. “Don’t let your friends hear you say that.”
Steve shrugs, glancing away to the water so that Eddie doesn’t notice anything strange about the look on his face. “I don’t think they’re gonna hear anything over this music anyway.”
“Yeah, well.” Silence for a second. Then Eddie says, “Should I guess why you’re out here then?”
Eddie is still pulling at his hair, but his expression is striving for confidence. Failing miserably, but striving all the same. Steve tries to borrow some of that bravado, slapping back on the grin that has fooled everybody the town over. “C’mon, man,” he says. “You gonna make me say it out loud?”
Eddie snorts. His fingers tap across his lunch box. A one-two-one-two rhythm. “I thought this kind of errand running would be beneath you,” he says. “Thought it would be your fuckface friend.”
Fuckface friend. Steve can think of only one person that might be. “You sell to Tommy?”
“Should I not?” Eddie says, like a challenge.
“No, just…” Steve wishes he had a nice way to say this. “I mean, it’s not like he’s exactly, uh…”
“Just because somebody pushed me down the bleachers once or twice doesn’t mean I’m going to pass up a chance to make some money off them,” Eddie says. A pause. “Besides, he’s too dumb to notice when I overcharge him.”
“Are you going to overcharge me?” Steve asks.
Eddie considers him. “I don’t know, do I need to?”
That feels like a loaded question. Steve doesn’t know how to answer it. He swallows and says, “How about you decide that, and I’ll go along with whatever you pick?”
Eddie stares at him. For a long, long moment, he just stares. Eddie’s attention is unnerving. Steve’s used to being looked at, but there’s something about Eddie that worms through the armor Steve has spent years carefully erecting around himself.
Just when the silence is starting to become awkward, Eddie says, “You’re not like I expected, King Steve.”
Steve tries not to sag in relief. “What were you expecting?” he asks.
Eddie’s mouth curls up. Not really like a smile. Too self-conscious for that. He’s chewing on his hair now. It’s a childish fidget, but Steve hasn’t slept without a light on in three years, so like, glasses houses and stones and all that. “To be pushed into the pool,” Eddie says.
“I wouldn’t push you in the pool,” Steve says. “I mean, I only just cleaned it yesterday.”
The unsure look on Eddie’s face morphs into a grin. A real one this time. “Jesus, man. Nobody told me you were funny.”
He says it like it’s a surprise. “I don’t know what you mean,” Steve says. “Everybody laughs at my jokes.”
Eddie’s not looking at him. He’s cracked open his tin box, rustling through it with his shoulder to Steve. “No, everybody pretends to laugh at your jokes,” he says. “There’s a difference.”
“I’m funny!” Steve protests, flushing.
Eddie plucks something from the box and turns around. “I know,” he says. “I just said so, didn’t I?”
Steve is taken aback. He’d thought he was being sarcastic. Eddie doesn’t sound sarcastic. He sounds matter of fact. It’s worse than the sarcasm, honestly, and Steve’s flush deepens. He’s glad it’s dark out. He would never live it down if Eddie ‘the freak’ Munson was caught making him blush.
“Here,” Eddie says, tossing a little baggie into Steve’s lap. “Consider it a party favor.”
“A party favor? It’s my party,” Steve says. “What do I owe you for it?”
“I can do ten bucks,” Eddie says. “That work for you?”
Steve’s never bought weed before. He has a feeling a bag this heavy costs more than ten bucks. He stuffs his hand in his back pocket, fishing Tommy’s money out. “Here,” he says, holding it out to Eddie. “I don’t need change.”
Eddie stares at the note. “I’m sure you’re a good tipper, but I don’t need it, Harrington. Seriously, ten is fine.”
“Would it make you feel better if I told you this isn’t my money?” Steve grins. He waves the note. “Tommy’s shout. Don’t you love to overcharge him?”
Eddie laughs. It makes Steve’s stomach turn all over again. “Well, when you put it like that.”
Eddie reaches out. Steve, long used to the routine of his life, braces for them to touch.
They don’t. Carefully - so carefully it has to be deliberate - Eddie’s long, pale fingers tug the note from Steve’s fingertips. It slips easily from Steve’s grip, and Eddie folds it into his fist and out of sight.
Steve stares at him. His hand hangs in the air. He doesn’t know what to say. What to make of that.
People don’t avoid touching Steve Harrington. People, Steve has learnt over the course of his life, will do anything to have touched the skin of a King.
“Well,” Eddie says, getting to his feet, lunch box in hand. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”
Awkwardly, Steve drops his hand and clears his throat. “You too, Munson.”
Eddie smiles. He still looks nervous, but Steve’s starting to wonder if that might just be a perpetual expression for him. Wide eyes, soft bitten lips. Hair frayed at the ends from tugging it. Probably, being your local high school drug dealer comes with a lot of anxiety.
Steve, whose life also comes with a lot of anxiety, feels a flare of kinship that nearly flattens him where he sits.
“See you around, Harrington,” Eddie says, and before Steve can think to say something back, he goes, disappearing back inside to be eaten out of sight by the hungry hordes of Hawkins High. Steve doesn’t even know what he’d have said anyway. Just that, for a moment, he’d wanted to find something.
Steve turns back to the pool. He should go back inside. Find Tommy. Monitor the party. Think about kicking everybody out as the night wears on.
He stays where he is and rolls a joint. It’s kind of shitty. Turns out, joint rolling is not a skill Steve exactly excels in. He supposes it doesn’t matter. They all burn the same in the end.
He stays out there for hours. By the time he wobbles back inside, the house has cleared out, Tommy splayed out on the couch, Carol pressed into his side, snoring.
“Hey,” Tommy says. “Where the fuck have you been?”
Steve’s just high enough that he doesn’t think about it when he says, “With Munson.”
Tommy blinks. “What?”
Steve ignores him and tromps up the stairs. Just because Tommy’s content to sleep on the couch doesn’t mean Steve has to be too.
His bedroom is trashed even though he’d made sure the door was shut before the party started. Solo cups litter the carpet, and the top of his dresser is alarmingly sticky when Steve pauses by it to wrestle out of his shirt. His bed, at least, is untouched. He crawls atop the mattress, hauling the covers over his exhausted body.
The hallway lamp is still on. A puddle of light leaks in through the crack in his door. It’s just bright enough that when Steve closes his eyes, he feels safe enough to let the sleep creep in.
He dreams that night. Empty, pleasant things.
Nancy Wheeler, in his kitchen, smiling at him with doe eyes as Steve tucks a lock of curly hair behind her ear.
Eddie Munson in his pool. Hair fanned out in the water. Steam curls from the surface. When Eddie’s head breaks through the waves, his eyes are the same brown as Nancy’s.
When Steve wakes up, he remembers nothing at all. It’s the best night’s sleep he’s had in years.