Chapter Text
The thing is, Steve definitely did not mean to adopt six middle schoolers.
When your town is the literal hell mouth, however, things like surviving to adulthood, avoiding permanent physical trauma, and being a legally recognized parent get a little fuzzy.
“Steve,” Nancy’s voice crackled through the static of the phone. “Where’s Mike?”
“Why’re you asking me?” He grumbled, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. He cast a quick glance at the clock. The glowing red numbers informed him that it was indeed the ass-crack of dawn. “Jesus, Nance, it’s five am, go back to sleep.”
“Mike’s not home,” She plowed through as though he hadn’t spoken. “And if he’s sneaking out to visit Eleven in the middle of the night, our mom’s gonna kill him.”
With a barely-suppressed groan, Steve sat up, shoving the phone between his ear and shoulder as he fumbled around for socks. “Sneaking out to visit your girlfriend is a pretty normal part of being a teenager if I remember correctly.” He quipped before he could stop himself. An awkward silence followed his admittedly poor choice of words. “I’ll see if he’s here and call you back. I’m pretty sure Max is the only one who crashed here last night.”
Nancy huffed out a laugh, and Steve was relieved to hear it only sounded a little forced. “Your house is like the hub for wayward, lost children. Have you started the official adoption paperwork yet?”
“Goodbye, Nancy.” Steve hung up and shuffled out of his room, squinting into the dark. Shit, the sun wasn’t even up.
He ducked his head into the guest room that unofficially had turned into Max’s bedroom. He could see her red hair in the darkness, but no one else. He closed the door and turned to the stairs, suddenly catching the scent of… bacon? His parents were still out of town, and there was no one but him and Max in the house.
Almost on instinct, he slipped back into his room to retrieve his baseball bat. Call him crazy, but many a monster (demodog, Dustin would grumble) had been taken out with this thing, and he refused to be caught off guard. He quietly crept down the stairs, stepping over that one squeaky floorboard before peering into the kitchen.
Eleven was standing in his kitchen, focusing her attention on a skillet full of sizzling, popping bacon. As usual, her nose was bleeding.
“Jesus, kid,” Steve sighed, setting the bat against the door frame, all tension draining from his body. Eleven hardly acknowledged him. “A little warning, next time? Maybe use the doorbell?”
She raised a questioning gaze to him. “Door…bell?”
Steve had been the last to meet the strange, powerful girl who’d escaped from Hawkins Lab, but after dealing with demogorgons and alternate dimensions, she hadn’t even struck him as out of the (new) ordinary. Though she still had a lot to learn about social graces, her telekinesis came in handy from time to time.
“Yeah, it’s a button near the door? It lets people inside know that there are people outside.” He explained, sitting down. He reached for a strip of bacon resting on a plate, but she slapped his hand away. “Yeesh, what gives?”
“We eat together.” She said plainly. According to Mike, she hadn’t had a very large vocabulary to begin with, but living with Hopper and his monosyllabic ideals for conversations probably hadn’t helped either.
“Max won’t be up for another hour.” Steve grumbled, rubbing his hand. The pre-teen almost looked apologetic, then turned to the skillet and jerked her head to the right. Three pancakes flipped themselves in quick succession. “Okay, now that’s seriously cool.”
Eleven grinned at him, pleased. When she wasn’t battling monsters or- gah- throwing supernatural temper tantrums, she really was quite adorable. “Jim taught me pancakes. I made them better.”
Steve smirked. Stoic, kind of scary Jim Hopper, parent to the most volatile kid in the state. “Hang on.” He peered at her with new curiosity. “Not that I don’t appreciate the in-house breakfast service, but aren’t you under-“ He stopped himself before he could say house arrest. “Some protective rule?”
Eleven not so discreetly looked away. “I… was all alone?” Steve swore under his breath. Eleven looked intrigued. “Can that be my word for the day?”
“No!” He exclaimed quickly. The last thing he needed was to be in more trouble with her dad-slash-sheriff. “El, you know you’re not supposed to be out on your own for like, nine more months.”
“I was bored.” She said edgily, turning off appliances with a twitch of her fingers. Steve handed her a tissue- an automatic reflex.
He couldn’t help but feel bad for her. If she hadn’t been locked away by those psychotic nut jobs- or at least hadn’t been treated like nothing more than a lab rat, the kid might have actually led a normal life. Not for the first time, he wondered about the other ten kids, the ones who had come before number eleven.
“You need to be safe.” He argued instead. “What would Hop or Mike do if-“ Steve suddenly recalled the phone call. “Wait, Mike didn’t come over last night, did he?” Eleven shook her head no, concern coloring her delicate features. “Nancy called a few minutes ago, wanted to know where Mike was. She thought he might be visiting you.”
She shook her head again, looking more worried. “No, not last night. He said he had homework. Do you think it’s a demogorgon?”
Steve shook his head. “I don’t know what to think-”, then paused. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘not last night’? Does he actually sneak in? Oh my god, Nancy’s gonna flip-“
“I will look for him.”
“Oh, with your mind powers?”
Eleven stared at him, going from cute to deadly in half a second. “Not if you don’t shut up.”
“Don’t be rude.”
El ignored Steve’s quibbling and closed her eyes. The soft radio music turned to static. Once he was sure that El was well and truly inside her own mind, he stole a strip of bacon and watched as her eyes flickered around rapidly beneath her eyelids. It was simultaneously gross and incredibly cool.
Just when he was considering stealing another piece (he was bored, and who knew how long this would take?) El’s eyes flew open. “He is at the store.” She reported, and Steve breathed a sigh of relief, snaking his hand back across the table. “He was getting flowers.” She added, sounding confused. “But he has flowers outside of his house. I don’t understand.”
Now, Steve laughed out loud. Mike wasn’t in mortal danger, he was buying flowers for his girlfriend. “You’ll figure it out later.”
Before El could question him further, a shuffling noise drew their attention to the stairs, and Steve saw a fuzzy-headed Max stumble into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. “Who made breakfast?” She asked, her voice scratchy. El waved, offering Max a tentative smile. She was still trying the whole “being nice to new friends” thing, but Max seemed to take her quirks in stride. God knew they all had some. “Sick.” She surveyed the counter. “No Eggos?” She asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow.
El frowned, but the deadly expression from before was gone. “Jim said I needed to…” She paused, looking for the right term. “…’Branch out’. Less Eggos.” She looked well and truly put out by the sentiment.
Steve stifled a laugh and looked over to see Max doing the same. El’s addiction to Eggos was strange and somewhat inexplicable, but had become something of an inside joke with the party. “It looks delicious, El. Sit down, I’ll grab the syrup.”
“Do you want to hear about all of the boring crap we learned in school yesterday?” Max offered, casually taking the reins of a conversation she knew El would never start on her own. The other girl nodded eagerly, and as the sun rose and washed the kitchen tiles in a golden light, Steve listened to Max chat in an unusually animated matter, explaining to El the intricacies of pre-algebra and how unfair Ms. Lebell was, and how Dustin had gotten in trouble for swearing in class. “Steve totally reamed him out later.”
El looked up at Steve, who nodded solemnly. “I babysat and made him do homework.” She giggled.
After breakfast, they tag-teamed dishes and cleanup, and Max pounded back upstairs to get dressed while Steve called Nancy to let her know Mike was alive. Then he went out to get the newspaper with El tagging along. She tugged on his sleeve as they made their way back inside.
“Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“Mike and Nancy have parents.”
Steve looked at her, narrowing his eyes in confusion. “Yeah…”
“Lucas and Dustin do too.”
He’d never been one for word games or beating around the bush. “What are you asking, kid?”
El tilted her head to look up at him. “Where are your parents?”
Whoop, there it is. “Not here.” He said shortly, knowing that wouldn’t be enough of an answer for her.
“Are they… gone?”
“No.” It came out blunt, and harsher than he intended. She paused, looking cowed. Instant guilt washed over him, and Steve ran a hand through his hair. He hadn’t taken the time to tame it yet, so it was standing out every which way, like he’d stuck his finger in an electrical socket. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just… they go on trips a lot, so I’m alone. They send money every month, and I take care of myself.”
At first, it had been cool, having the house to himself for a night, or a weekend. When Steve was thirteen, he’d order pizza and stay up watching bad TV and blasting the radio until the sun was peeking in through the curtains.
When he was fifteen, he’d throw ragers and get trashed, sometimes only cleaning up hours before his dad’s station wagon rolled up. He shot up in popularity, and relished in the newfound fame, his only hope being that it would last.
When he was sixteen, they’d be gone a week, maybe two. He’d learned how to grocery shop and use coupons, get cheap beer, and most importantly, not tell anyone.
When he was seventeen, he gave up on hosting, and went to other peoples’ parties instead. It got depressing, cleaning up when he knew no one was coming home. Filling an empty house with empty people left him more depressed than ever before.
When he was eighteen, he adopted six weirdos and their families into his life. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that he hadn’t seen his mom in two months, or that his dad was still in the trial run of branching out his stores in different states. There were kids filtering in and out of the living room or the kitchen at all hours of the day. Joyce would call to see if he wanted to come over for a casserole while the kids played D&D. He, Nancy and Jonathan would sometimes stay up late, drinking all that cheap beer he’d bought and debate whether or not they should write a sci-fi book based on their adventures.
These weirdos, this strange, cobbled-together family, filled him up with warmth, though he’d deny it up and down to anyone who asked.
Except El, to whom he told all of this until she was smiling and he was, too. “Tell anyone this, and your ass is grass.” He warned, but still smiled and mussed her curls. She batted his hand away and tried to fix the tangle, lips curling upwards into an elfin grin. It was finally growing past what he’d dubbed its “little orphan Annie” stage- though he still claimed it had been a fitting nickname.
He bundled El and Max into the car, first dropping El off at her cabin under strict orders to actually stay this time. “I’ll tell Hop about Mike’s little field trips if you pull this shit again.” He said. El looked unperturbed. waving before disappearing in the decrepit-looking home.
Next stop was to drop Max at the middle school. “See ya later, Zoomer.” He quipped with a wink. Max rolled her eyes.
“God, you’re so weird.” She groaned, which was as close to a “Have a good day” as he was going to get from her.
“No, I’m Steve!” He called after her. She slammed the door shut and ran over to the bike racks, where Dustin, Lucas, Will, and Mike had just rolled up. Dustin waved enthusiastically at Steve, who returned the wave before pulling out of the parking lot, not even trying to hide his smile.