Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steve woke slowly. He reveled in the feeling of half sleep clinging to him. He felt really good, no headache or pounding in some of his more mistreated joints. These days were becoming increasingly rare and Steve took them as the blessing that they were.

“Steve!”

He sat bolt upright in his bed. That had been his mother calling him. His parents weren’t home. They were spending most of their time at their house up at Lake Geneva these days.

“Mom?” he called confused as he got up and went down the carpeted stairs to find his mother standing in the entryway surrounded by suitcases.

“Steve, I thought you wanted to get up in time to say goodbye before I leave for Italy?”

“Italy?”

His parents had only gone to Italy once, the summer before his junior year.

“When did you go to bed?” she scolded. “You’re barely awake..” she tutted and then chuckled. “Come here, let me give you a hug.”

Steve went down the last steps in a trance and hugged his mother.

She was rattling off a list about grocery money and cleaning schedules, but Steve wasn’t listening. He was smaller than his mother.

His mother was a tall woman, Steve definitely got his height from her rather than his father. But he hadn’t been smaller than his mother since the growth spurt he had undergone a couple years ago.

“Anyway. I’m meeting your father at the airport.”

Steve, for lack of something better to do, only nodded in confusion.

“Oh Stevie, try to keep to better sleeping times while we’re gone, ok?”

“Ok mom..” He felt like he was going crazy.

“Be a good boy now” she said and kissed his hair. “I’ll see you soon!”

And with that she was gone out of the door, carrying her two suitcases to the taxi waiting in the driveway.

“What the fuuuuuck…” he said as he was waving back to his mother once she was sitting in the car and driving off.

Italy? There was something wrong.

‘Duh’ said his inner Robin.

Then he caught a glimpse of himself in the entryway mirror. He stumbled forward a little and caught himself against the cool glass.

He was young. Too young.

Steve wondered if he was dreaming, but dismissed it after pinching himself in the face so hard it actually hurt. Then he looked around in a panic. There were no grandfather clocks, no subliminal ticking or chiming either. He relaxed minimally. This didn’t feel threatening in the way the others had described their Vecna-induced visions.

He tried to think back to the last thing he remembered, but could only vaguely recall cleaning up in Hopper’s cabin after the confrontation with Vecna in the upside down. Beyond that, it felt like mentally hitting a wall. He tried to push against it, struggled to progress past cleaning up in the messy, dilapidated living room.

He let out a frustrated groan, but it was simply no use. However, the clues were gaining in numbers and Steve didn’t like the thing they were implying.

How to find out more? They didn’t receive any newspapers at the house, his parents got them at their office. But a different idea hit Steve.

Steve hurried over to the kitchen and turned on the radio that was always set to the local news station.

Some man was reporting on a school fundraiser a couple of towns over. Steve fidgeted and searched for any other clues to what might have been going on.

Before he can find something like mail the news speaker on the radio cheerily announces “There you have it for the 9 am news on Saturday the 4^th of June 1983. Keep on listening while my colleague…..”

Steve didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. He felt like he might faint. Slowly, he slid with his back down the kitchen cabinets and sat on the linoleum floor for a while.

No aches. Because he hadn’t been beaten six ways from Sunday yet. His parents in Italy, because they went during his summer holidays in 1983.

The horrible thing about this was that he could believe it. Once he accepted portals to alternate dimension, gruesomely violent monsters from said dimensions, superpowered teenagers and state conspiracies to match it all, time travel wasn’t that difficult to believe in. He had even heard Dustin go on about it a couple of times. Now, he wished that he had paid better attention at the time.

But the thought of Dustin made him wonder something else: were there others that were also here from the future? He hoped so, but was unsure about how to find out. In the future, he was a fixture in Robin’s and Dustin’s life, but not in ‘83. And if only Tommy H had travelled with him, he preferred not knowing.

In a spur of the moment decision he got up and went to the telephone. He knew Robin’s number by heart and dialed it absentmindedly.

Her mother answered the phone. “This is Melissa Buckley speaking, hello?”

“Hello Mrs. Buckley, this is Steve Harrington. Is Robin home?”

“One moment, I’ll get her..”

He could hear Robin being called over the phone and waited impatiently until he could hear the receiver on the other end being picked up again.

“Hello?” Robin said in a confused tone. Her voice was higher, she must have only been around 15 years old. Maybe 14.

“This is Steve,” he said urgently.

“…Steve..? Who?”

That answered his question, then.

“Oh sorry, I think I called the wrong number.” Steve said and hung up in a hurry.

Shit. He had really hoped that Robin would be here with him. His Robin.

He didn’t dare calling Dustin’s house after this. Not without a plan in case he also could not remember Steve from the future.

A plan. Steve had to laugh. It came out strangled, a pathetic, hysteric little thing. There was a reason why he was never involved in the actual coming up with plans.

The reality of the situation dawned on him. He was probably alone in the past. This was scary enough, but he thought about everything he could potentially change and Steve felt like the pressure was crushing him.

He had to at least try to change things for better, but he didn’t have the foggiest clue about how to set out. He felt his breaths coming faster until the air he inhaled felt cold and all wrong. There was static at the edge of his vision.

‘You’re having a panic attack’ some detached part of himself observed.

He shut his eyes and forced himself to hold his breath – one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi. He exhaled violently and took an urgent and shuddering next breath.

Not his first rodeo.

He focused on the chatter emanating from the radio that was still on in the kitchen.

He stayed like that for a while.

Once he had gotten himself under control again, he went to the powder room and washed the sticky tears from his face. The cool water helped him feel normal again. It was half past 10.

Steve decided to actually go ahead and just have a shower.

While he was standing under the stream, he tried to map out the events that were to come.

Steve had spent this summer swimming a lot and otherwise just lazing around. Tommy H had a fake ID and together they had blown a small fortune on booze.

Then the new school year had started and Steve had become obsessed with Nancy Wheeler.

On the 8^th of November her best friend died in his pool. He knew that Eleven had opened the gate to the upside down and escaped the lab only a couple of days earlier.

He thought about Eleven trapped in that facility, while he had had the summer of his life. Thought about how to break her out now instead of waiting until November. But he couldn’t even think of a way to approach his friends, let alone break into a secret, high security government facility and break out the human equivalent of a nuclear bomb.

 He did have a place to start, though. He had nearly half a year to prepare before things would escalate.

He got out a large drawing pad that he still had from art classes from the back of his closet and drew out a timeline for the next three years. He wrote down all the deaths carefully and had to consciously regulate his breathing with each one. Some of them stood out, the personal losses and tragedies. There was Barbara Holland, right here where Steve could have seen it from his bedroom window. Billy Hargrove. He felt uneasy when that one hurt decidedly less than some others. Then Eddie Munson, so fresh in his mind. Steve had to get up and leave the room at that one. He put on his sneakers, grabbed his wallet and keys and just left the house. He drove into Hawkins’ town centre and parked in front of the small general store on autopilot.

He walked in and stood rooted for a moment. Joyce Byers was standing down the aisle, packing away shampoo.

She turned when she heard the little bell above the door chime.

“Hello,” she greeted him cheerfully. The store was empty and the radio was turned off for once. The deep hum from the refrigerators and the occasional clatter from Mrs. Byers one aisle over were the only noises.

 Steve must have come between the morning rush but early enough for the low of the work day to not have set in yet.

“Hello Mrs. Byers,” he greeted her back, feeling unsure and. Yes, shy. Steve back then would have also known her name, but he would not really have cared enough to be courteous.

She smiled at him and went back to stacking the shelves.

Steve hadn’t come in with a certain goal in mind and just slowly walked through the small store. He picked up a carton of cornflakes and a gallon of milk. Normal groceries for a normal day.

He went on to stand in front of the notice board for a while. He read the little ads and lost and found flyers.

Then one flyer suddenly grabbed his attention violently. He recognized that telephone number. That was Dustin’s number on an ad searching for a babysitter.

He tore off one of the strips at the bottom with the telephone number on it down with shaking hands before thinking better of it and looking around to see if Mrs. Byers was watching him. Then he unpinned the entire ad and carefully folded it and put it in his pocket. There had been no other strips torn off yet. Mrs. Henderson had probably been here this morning.

Steve couldn’t believe his luck. He knew that he had always complained about his role as a babysitter for Dustin and his ragtag band of friends, but he did enjoy their company and Dustin’s most of all. And who knew, if everything worked out, he might even be paid this time around.

He paid for his groceries and tried to avoid making eye contact with Mrs. Byers, as if she could somehow divine his time travelling from his face.

Once outside, he put his purchases on the back seat and jogged over to a telephone booth. He dialed Dustin’s number and after a couple of rings Mrs. Henderson answered.

“Claudia Henderson speaking?”

Right. This was his time to shine. He knew how to charm parents. It used to be useful in different context, but the rules still applied.

“Hello Mrs. Henderson, this is Steve Harrington. I’m calling about your add for a babysitter.”

“Oh, how wonderful! I didn’t expect anybody to call so soon..”

Steve chatted to Mrs. Henderson for a couple of minutes and agreed to come over to the Henderson’s house that afternoon.

Steve went back home after that and quietly ate a bowl of his randomly purchased cornflakes while sitting by the pool.

It felt right to sit there, to see the reminder of what was yet to come. Steve hated that pool even more than he hated his house. It symbolized everything wrong with him and his life. Rich boy, rich family. A status symbol rather than something useful, Steve used to go to the community pool for training because the lanes were much longer there. The site of ill-advised parties and also the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s best friend.

When he finished his bowl, he got up and cleaned it before going up to his room again. The drawing pad with the timeline he had scrawled down this morning was still lying on his desk, but he ignored it in favor of changing his clothes.

He would continue the timeline later. For now, he needed to get hired as Dustin’s babysitter.

So he changed into the polo shirt his mother used to made him wear when they went to visit his grandparents. He looked at himself in the mirror again. He used to wear his hear differently, not having come into a routine yet. But it made him look more like a respectable boy, instead of a teenage heartthrob. Which was obviously the entire reason he had changed his style up in the first place, but his current looks suited his needs at the moment.

It was also weird to see himself be so small. He knew that he would grow this summer, really grow out of his gangly form. He was gangly. He had pimples. Steve realized that this was all very, very minor background nuisances, but he really didn’t like being 16 again.

He headed out again, and it didn’t take long until Steve parked his car in front of the Henderson’s house and went up to the front door. Shortly after he rang the doorbell, Mrs. Henderson opened and greeted him warmly. She ushered him to the kitchen and made him sit down with a glass of lemonade.

She sat down opposite of him and asked “So how is Sharon?”

“Good, good. My parents left for Italy this morning.”

“Oh, Italy – how nice,” she answered. “And you didn’t go with them?”

“Ah, no. To be honest, holidays with my parents are a bit boring, and all my friends are here for the summer anyway…”

This was all technically true while also being a big lie in spirit. Holidays with his parents had always been boring, but they hadn’t wanted to take Steve with them since he was 10 years old. And while both his friends from his first time at high school and his future friends were all here in Hawkins at that moment, Steve felt that the truth was that he currently had no friends at all.

“Plus,” he continued “I am trying to make captain of the swim team in fall, so I wanted to be able to go and practice at the pool every day.”

Steve didn’t want to give her the impression that he was looking to be lazy all summer, even though that was exactly what he did the first time around.

“I see. And have you taken care of children before?”

Before he could think it through, he answered honestly “I spend basically all my time doing just that,” he said exasperatedly.

Then he heard himself. “Well, I used to. I have a lot of cousins,” (a lie, his mother was an only child and his father had a younger brother with no children) “and they’re all a couple of years younger than me. But this summer I probably won’t be seeing them.”

He continued to spin the lie to what he hoped would be his advantage, “Honestly, I will miss it,” he said sheepishly. Maybe this was a return to the truth after all.

He looked up at Mrs. Henderson and knew that he had won. She had always liked him, but there was rather more riding on that being replicable this time around.

But she looked at him with soft eyes and a happy smile and Steve knew that she would hire him.

He would be paid 2$ per hour and watch over ‘little Dusty-buns’ 5 times a week for a couple of hours. The pay was rather middling, but Steve didn’t care. He wasn’t doing this for money, this was before the fall out with his dad after all. He had a tidy allowance transferred to his bank account each month before he failed to get into college and had been sent off to work first at scoops and then family video.

Still, 40$ per week for something very much like what he had previously done for free was nothing to sneeze at.

Mrs. Henderson explained to him, that her usual baby sitter had forgotten to tell her, that she would go to camp for the summer, and that left her looking for someone to take care of her son over the summer holidays.

Steve knew that Dustin’s parents had gone through a messy divorce a bit less than a year ago at this point. Mrs. Henderson worked and had raised Dustin alone from that point on. And while Dustin had never gone into much detail, Steve got the sense that they both didn’t have stellar father figures.

After he chatted a little with Mrs. Henderson, Dustin rushed in greeting his mother and talking about something that happened at Mike Wheeler’s house.

Steve was staring, taken aback by how small Dustin was. Just a small child, just eleven. Basically just out of primary school. Steve knew that it should not continue to surprise him to see everybody back to their younger selves. With the children it was a particularly stark contrast however, just on the cusp of puberty. Dustin back in ’86 was a young adult. This Dustin was a child.

It made Steve want to cradle him, hide him away from the world’s cruelties.

He snapped out of his musings when he heard his name, “This is Steve, he will help look after you,” Mrs. Henderson said with a big smile.

Steve raised his hand in a casual greeting – it wouldn’t do to seem overeager.

“Hey man.”

Dustin looked at Steve as if he had grown a second head.

“You look way too cool to be a babysitter.”

“Uh, thanks?”

So much for feeling uncool for being 16.

Chapter Text

Steve drove over to the Hendersons’ first thing on Monday morning.

The day before he had gone to the library where he stared at the physics section like a lost child for half an hour, before deciding to cover his bases and take out a couple of introductory volumes and several more specialized academic articles.

He felt slightly crazy for being the kind of person that went to the library, never mind the kind of person that tried to read academic articles about complex physics problems.

It certainly hadn’t been an action borne out of instinct, but while Steve felt that he had taken his situation is stride that first day, he had been starting to have to work harder on repressing a creeping anxiety.

Normally, he would have simply went to his friends and they would all have figured something out together. That avenue was not open to him, so he had decided to try to find an explanation on his own.

His second project was not only establishing a history of relevant events in Hawkins, but also rebuilding the evidence against Dr. Brenner and his research project that had led to the building of the lab. Well, technically Henry Creel had been what had kick-started the whole project, but that would be harder to prove. Steve knew that Dr. Brenner had left a paper trail a mile long, Nancy hadn’t even had to dig all that hard in order to find troves of incriminating evidence after teaming up with Jonathan.

For this second part of his self-assigned homework, he had tried to ‘simply’ retrace the steps that the others had already taken when they had originally researched all this. Except that he had not really participated in that research. On his own he only found a single journal article potentially linked. It turned out that his fears had been legitimate: research was hard.

Still, Steve had left a small fortune in coins at the copy machines and had the selected texts and articles with him in his messenger bag.

He had that bag clamped under his arm as he made his way to ring the doorbell.

Mrs. Henderson had asked him to come over a little bit earlier just for the first time. After the first day, he was supposed to come for either late morning and lunches or the afternoon and evenings.

The door opened and he was ushered in by a cheerfully manic Mrs. Henderson “Oh, Steve. I’m so glad you’re here!” she said in lieu of a greeting and went back inside.

The scene which then unfolded before him could only be described as controlled chaos.

Mrs. Henderson couldn’t find her keys. Dustin couldn’t find his pet turtle. Mrs. Henderson was reminding Dustin about the vegetables he was supposed to eat at lunch. Dustin was trying to use the chaos in order to sneak permission for staying out longer on Wednesday and go to the cinema with his friends. 

Steve was standing at the side-lines, casually leaning against the wall and observing fondly. For him it hadn’t been that long ago, that he not only spent time regularly at the Henderson’s home, but also became an adept participant in this dance they did.

Then Mrs. Henderson walked over to him, car keys in hand, and said “Steve-dear, there is lunch prepared for you in the fridge, and Dustin has plans to work on a project of his today. So just make yourself at home and keep an eye out for him, ok?”

“Alright, Mrs. Henderson,” Steve answered politely. It felt easy to be polite to Mrs. Henderson, she was so genuinely nice to Steve. “Have a good day at work.”

“You boys have a good day, too!” she said as she left.

A sudden silence draped over the room, Steve and Dustin were alone.

Dustin gave him an apprehensive look “Soooo..”

In general, the whole situation was still very overwhelming for Steve, but he had done a decent job at compartmentalizing. This, befriending Dustin, was something that he could do. He had done it before.

Once he had this one person back in his life, he could start thinking about the million other people and problems that were just too much to deal with at that moment.

Steve wanted to make a cool impression while he still could. He figured that even if Dustin would be disillusioned soon enough, there were some things that he knew would get him in his good graces. So he had spent the previous two days devising a battle plan.

He couldn’t come across as too eager, that would be objectively weird and also detract from the cool teenager status he would have with Dustin. This left him with the question of what to do while Dustin was busy with his own things.

One of the things he had vaguely regretted last time around, the first time around, was his general unpreparedness.

Even after the second and third times, the upside down’s incursions had taken him by surprise, leaving him reeling and confused. Like that trip to the war zone could have been entirely avoided, had one only of them stocked weapons or anything like that. Something simple like that could have made such a difference.

Obviously, he would probably be the most prepared person this time around, anyway. But he would also start making concrete plans for potential threats.

Still. He was already changing things by accepting this summer job. Who knew what the consequences would be once he actually started interfering with the big events that were yet to come?

Steve really hadn’t paid enough attention to any seemingly hypothetical scenarios about time travel they might have discussed in physics classes when he had been still in school.

If this had been 1986, he would have asked Dustin for help, but first of all Dustin was 11.

He was smart as anything, but there were limits to the knowledge of an 11-year-old. Second of all, at this stage they didn’t even know each other, Steve would have had a hard time explaining the reason he was asking. Dustin also had a way of weaseling information out of Steve, which he did not want to share.

“So,” Steve answered belatedly and tried to play it cool. “Your mother said you have a project you want to work on?”

“I got a Heathkit radio self-assembly kit for my birthday..” Dustin answered shyly.

Steve hadn’t thought that he would see the day on which Dustin would be shy, but Steve also knew that Dustin used to be bullied for his interests. Here came an older teenager, someone who could really ridicule him or at least be dismissive towards his hobbies.

“Sounds cool.” Steve said simply and already opened his mouth in order to ask what exactly a ‘Heathkit’ was, but Dustin was already talking.

This would have been the point at which he would have rolled his eyes at Dustin, but only future Dustin knew that this was a fond gesture. So instead, Steve tried to keep a politely interested face and thought of a future where he could lovingly tease him about him geeking out instead.

Just an ounce of positive Interest seemed to have been enough for him to start geeking out about his radio kit, the relays and resistors that apparently came with it and the specific tools he had collected for projects such as these. After ‘radio’, Steve didn’t really follow anymore, but he enjoyed Dustin’s enthusiasm, nonetheless. He seemed happy. It made Dustin happy to have Steve show interest. And sure, Steve and Dustin had been close in the future, but never really shared any interests.

In that moment, Steve resolved to be generally more engaged in Dustin’s hobbies. He had a moment of introspective clarity, during which he realized that he didn’t really have that many interests or passions himself, so he might as well engage a little in those of a person he cared for.

“That sounds good man. Do you want to set up at the kitchen table? I brought some of my own stuff to work on.”

They set up in the cozy kitchen. Steve only had to take out his papers and books, but Dustin started bringing crates full of stuff from his room. There were lamps and a magnifying glass on a long bendy arm, screwdrivers, bottles and small tubes of glue, and what Steve thought might have been a soldering iron. 

 A small cardboard box with a picture of a simple little radio with a single speaker was carefully laid on the table, front and center, before Dustin set up any of his other equipment.

“You need all that stuff, just for this small thing?” Steve asked incredulously.

“You have obviously never assembled anything in your life!” Dustin shot back reproachfully.

“Hey that’s not true,” Steve objected.

Dustin shot him a doubting look, while clamping his bendy magnifying glass to the table and adjusting it with an efficient tug.  

Steve wracked his brain for something, anything that he could use as an example. DIY-ing dangerous weapons were not age appropriate and would only have given Dustin ideas.

“I changed the light bulb from my car headlights!” he said triumphantly.

“That’s not actually assembling or building something!” Dustin argued back. “How difficult can it be to change a light bulb?”

“It’s plenty difficult..” Steve muttered under his breath.

Dustin rolled his eyes in that way where his entire body seemed to be involved in the action.

“So, what impressive thing are you working on?” he asked Steve, in a way that made it clear that he doubted it would actually be anything impressive.

Steve should have prepared an excuse for why he was carrying around half a tree stump in printed papers, but it hadn’t occurred to him.

He opened his mouth, just to close it again.

His cover story needed to be innocent, boring enough to not spark more questions, but also fulfill his goal of subtly impressing a nerdy 11-year-old.

“I am doing research for a summer assignment,” he said lamely.

It was Dustin who looked at him incredulously now. Then at the books which Steve had stacked in front of him.

“If you say so…”

Dustin started to interestedly read what looked like a manual for his assembly project. He became still, stopped to fidget as he started to really focus on the text.

The room became filled with companionable silence. Outside noises started to filter in; some younger children were playing a couple of houses over, a car drove by slowly, birds were chirping.

Steve used to absolutely dread silence and was still learning to identify the good ones, but this moment was good all the way down. He got lost in it, just staring out the window but looking at nothing for  a while.

Something raw and anxious in him soothed a little.

Steve thought about reading his introductory texts first, but was not only a little daunted by the heavy volumes and looked at the academic articles he had printed and brought with him instead. The one on top was only six pages, so he reasoned that it could not be too difficult and took that one first.

He had to read the first sentence several times.

„We examine the assertion that the "reduction of the wave packet," implicit in the quantum theory of measurement introduces into the foundations of quantum physics a time-asymmetric element, which in turn leads to irreversibility.“

He tried to continue with the next sentence in the hope that it would provide clarification on the first, but no luck.

The only thing that vaguely made sense to him was the ‘which in turn leads to irreversibility’. But either he a) misunderstood the topic of the article so completely that the authors weren’t even talking about if the past could be changed when time travelling, or b) the authors had no clue, because he had already changed things. However, Steve was honest enough with himself to admit that it was probably the first one.

Irreversibility. It hadn’t even occurred to him, that things might not be able to be changed. He had simply gone ahead and changed things anyway.

As he flipped through the other papers he had brought with him, Steve felt like kicking himself. He couldn’t really understand any of them. One however, turned out to be more about the philosophical implications of time travel. It mentioned the ‘grandfather paradox’ and that awakened a dim memory in him.

He tried to nail the vague recollection down, like a word on the tip of his tongue. Then it hit him – the movie they had watched a little of after escaping the Russian base beneath Star Court.

But his time traveling was nothing like that from back to the future. He didn’t take his body from 1986 back to ’83, only his conscious traveled back in time. There was no danger of deleting himself, as was the danger in the grandfather paradox.

Even though he had understood some things in that article, it didn’t actually help him at all. Steve felt foolish and supremely frustrated with himself and the general state of the world. He stuffed the papers back into his bag carelessly.

“Dude, you have been muttering and grunting over your papers for the last hour,” Dustin accused him across the kitchen table. “What are you doing?” he continued to ask, and it still sounded like an accusation.

Steve felt caught. He didn’t want to reveal that he had bitten off more than he could chew with the printed articles.

“It’s just annoying school work…”

He grabbed the Introduction to Physics as Dustin scrunched up his face in a mixture of empathy and doubt at Steve’s explanation.

Steve fought his way through the most boring and dry text ever conceived and finally came to the conclusion that he simply wouldn’t find his answers in physics.

The whole venture had led nowhere, and it dawned on Steve that it didn’t matter what grand theorems may have been able to explain his situation. He had witnessed mind boggling things without understanding the causes of any of them.

It would have been nice to find a ready-made answer: SO YOU’VE FOUND YOURSELF ACCIDENTALLY TRAVELING IN TIME? Avoid eating pickles and making left turns after 6 pm.

Steve now saw that that had been a silly notion. And it really did not matter. He would do the job that was in front of him.

And the job in front of him became clearer and clearer to him. Seeking out Dustin had honestly been a selfish thing to do. If he planned on getting involved with what was happening in the lab, then it would be better to keep as far away from the child.

Seeking out El was something he needed to do.

No way could he just leave her in that lab. Sure, she would break out on her own, but it was the principle of the thing. If Steve could spare her even one day in there, he would do everything in his power to make it happen.

Instead of wasting more time reading the nonsense he had brought with him, he started to scribble on his notepad.

What did he know about El’s powers?

They did seem strangely connected to radio waves. They hurt her in some way, always leaving her nose bleeding from the strain. She did better, the less distractions there were around her.

Other than that, Steve didn’t really know. He had seen her move things with her powers alone, but also find people, read their memories and affect the very fabric of reality.

The problem with all this was, that El didn’t know that she had an ally on the outside, somebody to search and look for.

Steve figured that this meant that he might have to try to gain her attention without raising alarm bells at the lab.

He knew that they were monitoring phone calls and were not above bugging homes. But right now Steve was flying under the radar, just a random 16 year old. Nothing to see here. And he would try to keep it that way for as long as possible.

After a while, Steve looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall and saw that it was nearly noon.

“Hey, you wanna eat?” he asked Dustin who was completely focused on fiddling with a circuit board and tiny, tiny screws.

Dustin looked up and grinned.

“Sure!”

Steve got up and carefully took out an oven dish from the fridge.

Dustin carefully packed away a myriad of tiny screws and circuit board, before getting up and proceeding to get in Steve’s way.

“You have to put it under the grill for the cheese to melt nicely” he said and tried to turn the dial on the oven, before Steve could lightly bat away his little hand.

“Nu-uh, if you turn that one from the beginning, you’ll just end up burning your mom’s perfectly nice lasagna.”

They bickered until the egg timer went off and Steve plated them a portion each. Their teasing was a bit hesitant, both of them were trying to assess the other. But it made Steve hopeful, the fact that he naturally fell into a similar dynamic with Dustin made him feel very relieved. Something unclenched within him, that he hadn’t even realized was tensed.

Like he had been holding his breath, waiting for things to go wrong between them.

They decided to eat on the porch overlooking the backyard, so that they wouldn’t have to clear the kitchen table.

The day was gorgeous – warm but not as humid as it would get later on in the season.

They both settled on the rickety garden chairs and started to tuck in.

One additional advantage of this job he hadn’t considered until that moment, was Mrs. Henderson's cooking. Steve had picked up a couple of skills in the kitchen over the years, but he still wasn’t a great cook.

“I was thinking about going to the pool more this summer, do you want to come with?” Steve offered between bites.

“You know you don’t have to come up with activities to do..” Dustin answered after a second of hesitation.

“I’m not, man. I am gonna go with or without you, I just thought you might enjoy it, too.”

Steve was a little surprised at how the exchange was going. He wondered if he had just missed this phase in Dustin’s life where he seemed more insecure, or if this was how he acted in front of strangers and the last time they had gotten to know each other had simply been overshadowed by a crisis.

“In that case, can I bring my friends?”

“Sure,” Steve answered easily.

In reality, he was a little apprehensive about meeting the others so soon. He had hoped to be able to worm his way into Dustin’s affection a little more before being introduced to the rest of the group. He still felt so unsure about their relationship, but the morning had shown that they had a natural rapport.

This would be ok, too. And it would make Dustin happy.

They continued an easy conversation, Dustin talking excitedly about Mike’s upcoming Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

Steve had never had any interest in playing that game, but without the tacit understanding that his resistance towards it was largely based on a somewhat self-deprecating exaggeration of his own character, there wouldn’t have been any point. Besides, Dustin was opening up about his hobbies and that was a win in Steve’s book.

Once they had finished eating their lunch, Dustin proudly brandished his walkie talkie and Steve himself was proud for his believable portrayal of being impressed by a gadget that he had seen a hundred times.

He used the walkie to contact his friends about their plan to go to the pool the next day.

They sounded enthusiastic, and after a little back and forth, reported that they had received permission from their parents.

Steve thought it was a little funny how the kids used their walkies for everything they could get away with, lest their parents listened in on their phone calls.

After they made plans for the next day, Dustin seemed to consider his radio kit but ultimately decided against continuing. He carefully tidied the rest of his set up away.

Steve, discouraged by the morning’s lack of progress also put the rest of his things in his bag.

They could have cleared their things before dinner, but Steve was glad that they had gone to eat outside.

“Do you want to grab some ice cream?” he spontaneously asked Dustin.

“Uh, yeah!” Dustin answered enthusiastically and beamed at Steve.

“Alright, let’s take the car” he said and turned Dustin around by putting a hand on his head and shoving him through a U-turn.

Dustin let it happen without comment, without even really seeming to notice.

Steve however, had already held his breath at the slip up into the gesture that was only familiar to him. He thanked whoever might have been listening for Dustin’s nonchalance.

Dustin commandeered the passenger seat gleefully, starting to fiddle with the stereo before Steve had even sat down.

“Seat belt,” he muttered simply out of habit, but a quick glance to the side confirmed that the comment had been appropriate.

Dustin groaned but complied, the buckle slotting in with a little click.

There used to be this little ice cream parlor in town, before the mall opened and the quaint little shop closed down like so many other places around Hawkins.

He fell into an easy conversation with Dustin while driving into the town center. Dustin excitedly talked about the new Star Wars movie that had come out a couple of weeks ago.

Steve had actually seen that one together with Dustin not too long ago, in his own personal time line.

Once they had arrived in town, Steve parked the car and herded Dustin to the shop, pulling him back by the neck of his t-shirt before he could run in front of a car.

“Careful! Didn’t anybody ever teach you to check the road before crossing?” Steve exclaimed, winded from the flash second of panic.

Dustin looked chastised. “Sorry…”

Steve rubbed his free hand over his face. “You’re gonna make me go grey prematurely..”

“We wouldn’t want you to lose your youth and vitality” Dustin sassed back.

They crossed the street bickering like an old couple and Steve only realized the levity of it all until it suddenly stopped.

They had entered the ice cream parlor and while Dustin excitedly ran up to the till, Steve stood rooted to the spot.

Dustin had run right past Eddie Munson.

His hair was shorter, maybe chin length but so enormously curly that it was hard to say for sure. He was wearing a graphic t-shirt that his aged-up counterpart would probably still wear, but the blue jeans were making for an incongruous picture. He looked more like just some kid in need of a haircut, instead of suburbia’s ideal scapegoat for everything from ‘decaying morals’ and portals to alternate hell dimensions opening in their backyards.

Steve felt like he had been hit with a bag of bricks. There he was, alive and just walking around. There was a cone with a scoop of strawberry ice cream in his hand.

Because there were so many rivaling emotions raging within him so suddenly – relief, guilt and sadness – Steve couldn’t do anything but stare. He was completely frozen.

Eddie had died only a couple of days ago.

“What’s your problem man..” Eddie muttered as he forcefully pushed past Steve, bumping their shoulders together as he squeezed through the door.

Steve only then realized that he had just blocked the entryway while fixedly staring at Eddie for decidedly longer than was socially acceptable.

Dustin, luckily, hadn’t seen this interaction. He was excitedly chatting to the girl behind the counter, none the wiser.

Steve turned to look at Eddie again, as he was walking down the street. Unfortunately, Eddie looked back over his shoulder and squinted irately at Steve, before he hurriedly turned and walked up to the counter.

He ordered and paid for the ice cream on auto pilot.

Dustin noticed his emotional state then and asked “Did you see somebody you know?”

“No, not really,” Steve answered.

He gave himself a mental slap and pushed his reaction to seeing Eddie away from the forefront of his mind. This was something he would deal with alone, away from prying eyes.

Chapter Text

The next morning dawned bright and fresh, crisp in a way that promised heat later on in the day.

Steve put on his swimming trunks under his jeans and packed his sports bag for the day. His thoughts drifted off while folding several extra towels in order to have some spare ones for the kids.

The problem yesterday had been that he hadn’t been prepared to see Eddie. Without the mental preparation, he had simply ended up staring and making a complete fool of himself. The question then was, how to prevent a situation like that one from arising again when he would meet other previously dead people?

He couldn’t stand around shell shocked every time he met somebody from his future life, completely alienating them in the process. Hawkins wasn’t big enough to not run across all of his future friends, foes and in-betweeners.

On the ride over to Dustin’s place he mentally went over each person that might be important to him and gave them all a good consideration. Mentally steeling himself for the inevitable meetings. Maybe the real issue had been that he had let his guard down. While joking around with Dustin during the car ride into town, he had simply forgotten what situation he found himself in.

On one hand, there was a certain positive implication of that: his plan to befriend Dustin was going along swimmingly, even after only one day. On the other hand, if Steve wanted to have just the tiniest chance of making any meaningful changes to the way things happened, he would have to step up his game. Just going along with it and being surprised at the tiniest unforeseen encounters was not the winner’s mindset here.

There were some people he wasn’t worried about meeting. People like Tommy H or Tammy Thompson. They were people he had once known well, but that he didn't really care about anymore. Other people he looked forward to in nervous anticipation: Robin and Nancy, for example. The kids, but them he would be prepared for.

Then there were some wild cards. Meeting Mrs. Byers had gone over well. Eddie, not so much. There would be others that would be weird to encounter. Chief Hopper, Barbara Holland, Billy Hargrove.

All this also raised the question about which people he should actively seek out, as he had done with Dustin.

Robin, that wasn’t even up for debate. Sure, she wouldn't remember Steve and all the things they had gone through together, but Steve missed her too much to be able to ignore her. How to actually befriend her without the binding factor of a shitty summer job and or accidentally infiltrating a secret Russian base together, that was a whole different problem. Nancy, too, he would have to seek out actively.

The whole research debacle had driven that point well and truly home. With Nancy came her best friend, Barb. And Steve supposed that it would be his opportunity to not be an ass, this time around. 

Steve wondered, not for the first time, what made him go back to this point in time specifically. It was too close to the start of all the troubles for him to completely believe that it was random. But if it wasn't random supernatural bullshit that had sent him back in time, what could it be? And why him?

Anybody with an ounce of common sense would have chosen anybody but Steve to send back. Like, for example, Nancy. Smart as a whip, good with a gun, and personally involved with way more of the active parties.

Or hell. Why not an adult? Chief Hopper being the smart decision there. Newly resurrected, and coming back to a position of power and authority?

What Steve brought to the table was the reluctant willingness to chauffeur kids around and a slight aptitude for swinging his baseball bat.

He continued to brood all the way over to pick up the kids at Dustin’s house, but cheered up once he saw the group all assembled sitting on the steps leading up to the front yard.

They had piled their bags in front of them, one of them had even brought a pool noodle.

Steve honked and the group looked up from the huddle they had been in. He waved at Dustin and the four boys scrambled to load all their stuff into the trunk of his car. Steve didn’t bother to get up and out, but greeted them amiably, watching them through the rearview mirror.

He felt like an old auntie at a family reunion, saying ‘My, how you’ve grown!’. Only in reverse because he could not get over how tiny they all were.

He felt a pang of fondness. Even for Mike Wheeler.

Dustin let himself fall into the passenger seat and the others shuffled in to sit on the backseat bench.

“Everybody, this is Steve, Steve this is Lucas, Will and Mike”

They got introduced, and Steve listened in while they continued a discussion they seemed to have started earlier while reversing out of the cul-de-sac.

He turned on the car radio and vaguely recognized the song that was playing. Something that had been playing at every hip party that fall. It felt bland.

Once they had made their way to the community pool, Steve had paid the admittance fee for all of them.

It was decently busy, as nice days during summer holidays always were.

After quickly changing, Steve waited for the children in front of the changing cabins. They rushed out and Steve could only holler after them:

“Hey! No running at the pool!”

Mike turned around, in all probability wanting to reply something petulant, but slipped on a puddle and Steve only gave him a dry look as he caught him by the upper arm.

The others laughed uproariously and Mike blushed all the way down to his shoulders.

Had they known each other for longer, Steve would have mercilessly teased him about this, but as it were he let it go with a huff.

Mike hurried over to his friends without saying thank you, but markedly did not run.

They all spread their towels over a single free pool chair and the children proceeded to jump into the pool, Dustin clinging to his pool noodle.

Steve felt a little awkward, he didn’t want to leave them alone, but also couldn’t really integrate himself in their play. After minimal agonizing he decided that the pool guards were there for a reason and went to the lanes that were partitioned off for faster swimming.

High School sports seemed like the least important thing in the world at that moment, but he really did want his future body back. And swimming had done wonders for that, so the frequent exercise had to become part of his routine again.

The movements came to him easily, all muscle memory. After a while he started to enjoy himself, the straining muscles in all the best ways.

He had done lanes back and forth for a while, before taking a break at the pool side and searching for the group of kids while catching his breath.

When he caught sight of them, he panicked for a second and hurriedly swam under the buoys to get to them.

Some other children were head dunking Dustin!

Steve emerged from the water behind the kids like some kind of vengeful sea monster.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

They were three boys, the same age as his kids. The head-dunker released Dustin and he came up spluttering, Lucas, Will and Mike crowding him protectively.

The head-dunker sneered at Steve derisively. Steve immediately clocked him as a typical school yard bully. It took one to know one, after all.

“Aw, so your Nanny came to save you...”

Steve felt too old to be involved in this kind of interaction. But also knew that this would have to be handled delicately.

Coming across too protective would hurt the kids if they ever ran into those bullies again. Being to mean too them would not have been appropriate, they were only children, too, after all.

So, Steve took a page out of his own notebook as a former high school apex predator. Low level humiliation was the way to go. Steve didn’t like to revert back to this kind of behavior, but he drew the line at the kids being bullied like that.

 He lifted the head-dunker by the back of his swimming trunks.

The child yelped in panic and embarrassment, as Steve raised him up, wedgie clearly visible to both his two cronies and the other children in pool.

Gangly and 16 he may have been, but he was strong enough to lift up a wet dish towel of an 11-year-old.

Laughter erupted around them and Steve let the boy splash back down unceremoniously.

“Get lost,” Steve said exasperatedly.

The bullies did an awkwardly slow run, due to the water nearly reaching their shoulders.

Steve took Dustin, who had stopped coughing, by the shoulder.

“Are you ok there, Henderson?”

“That was awesome! You totally showed them!”

Steve felt relieved and prouder than he should have for bullying a literal child, but he couldn’t help the sense of accomplishment that washed over him as the boys continued to express their enthusiasm.

He herded them outside the pool anyway, he wanted to give the children the opportunity to calm down and rest after the encounter with their bullies.

They all sat down on and around the pool chair, still laughing and singing Steve’s praises.

“Enough enough...” he said bashfully. “Violence is not the answer, and I only did that to make him go away quickly.”

This very responsible message obviously did not really reach them, but they did calm down as they dug out sandwiches from their bags and started to make a crumbly mess of their general vicinity.

Again, Steve felt a little awkward. He hadn’t thought about bringing any food with him, only a bottle of water.

Will seemed to notice and shyly offered him a cereal bar.

“You can have this, if you want. My brother packed too much for me anyway...”

Steve gratefully took the offering and was just about to unwrap the cereal bar, as Lucas spoke up.

“You didn’t bring lunch?”

“Nah, I forgot” Steve answered and took a bite. He lifted the rest of the snack up, as if to cheer Will.

“Here, take my apple – I brought two” Lucas said and laid a small, pink apple next to Steve on the chair. Steve was honestly touched.

Not to be outdone, Dustin laid a Musketeers bar next to it and even Mike contributed a cookie from his lunch box.

After their surprisingly pleasant lunch he made the kids wait for 15 minutes and used the time to have them reapply their sun screen. 

They chatted excitedly about DnD, a topic to which Steve couldn’t really contribute but he didn’t feel too excluded. He listened in fondly instead.

Apparently, Mike was planning their game and the others were exchanging ideas about their characters.

Once they went back to the pool Lucas and Will got in at the deep end first, Mike and Dustin waiting to follow at the edge. Steve didn’t feel like going back to swimming lanes and saw a golden opportunity.

Before he could overthink anything, Steve grabbed Dustin and lifted him up in his arms. He held him there while Dustin apparently couldn’t make up his mind if he should be shrieking or laughing and ended up just doing both at very high volumes. Steve gave him a big grin and tossed Dustin in the water, the splash hitting the two boys that were dog paddling in the water.

Mike laughed out loud over the scene, but clapped a hand in front of his mouth as he caught Steve turning towards him with mischievous intent.

He reacted too slow and Steve had him up in the air and following Dustin in the pool, before jumping in himself.

The kids’ peals of laughter mixed with the general boisterous soundscape of the pool.

They left the pool sunburned, despite Steve’s best efforts, and completely tired out.

The boys shuffled into his car in the exact opposite way from that morning – all heavy-limbed and yawning here and there.

They fell asleep during the ride and Steve basked in the slow and peaceful ride back to Dustin’s place.

After having dropped off the kids, Steve stopped in front of the local Radio Shack. It was a little chilly from the air conditioning inside and his hair had not completely dried just yet.

Just as he looked around and crossed his arms in an effort to keep war, he came face to face with another person from the future, Mrs. Byer’s then boyfriend Bob Newby was manning the store.

This proved his earlier thoughts about never being able to avoid running into people unplanned, correctly.

But him and Bob had never interacted much at all, so Steve felt ok seeing him. Just kind of tangentially wistful.

“Hello, how can I help you?” Bob asked cheerfully.

“I am looking for a walkie talkie. Uh, something beginner friendly maybe?”

Something cheap, was what he meant. Bob seemed to get the hint.

“Well, we have a really great model that a lot of people choose to be their first one! Let me just get it from storage.”

Ten minutes later he walked out of the store, proud owner of a shiny new walkie talkie.

20 bucks was a lot to dish out for a casual purchase, but if it helped to break out El it would have been a small price to pay.

The next morning Steve found himself in the library again.

He was standing in the children’s section, perusing the shelves for an appropriate book. He didn’t recognize any of them, his parents hadn’t really been invested in his literary education beyond school work when he was a kid.

Apparently, he had been looking lost for just long enough that a librarian took pity on him.

“Are you looking for something specific?”

“Uhm, I guess? I want to read to a little girl, but I don’t really know what she would like…” Steve answered.

“Oh, how old is she?”

“Hm, ten or eleven. But her vocabulary isn’t very good, is there maybe something for younger children?”

The librarian gave him an appraising look, but smiled and took some volumes out.

“Well, this is suitable for children who are eight years or older, and it’s a lovely story.”

That evening Steve trekked out into the forest, as close to the lab as he dared.

He found a small clearing and settled against the trunk of a big tree, took out his new walkie and a well-loved library copy of ‘The Secret Garden’.

He felt very nervous, the plastic walkie slipping from his hands as he fiddled with the dials in order to select a channel that he hoped wouldn’t be randomly picked up by anyone.

When he was done, he put the walkie in a little hollow part of the stump just at head height.

“I hope you can hear me. I hope you’re ok. I want you to know that there is someone out here who cares for you” Steve started to ramble.

“I thought that I could start reading to you. It’s the only thing I could think of for now, but things will get better soon.”

“Well, this nice lady at the library helped me chose a book, I hope that you’ll like it. It’s an old story and not from here, but it has a good ending and the girl in it makes friends with other kids and gets to play outside a lot…”

“Ok, here goes…”

“When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen…..”

He stumbled over words and had to restart sentences quite often in the beginning, but it got better the longer he read out loud.

Steve wasn’t used to this, didn’t think that his parents had ever read to him, his primary school teacher, Miss Fipps, being the only person who he remembered had ever done so.

When he had finished the fourth chapter, he closed the book.

Dusk was gently settling and the light wasn’t great for reading anymore.

“Well, I hope you liked it. I am going to continue reading tomorrow at the same time. I’m sorry I can’t do more right now.”