Chapter Text
He doesn’t know at what point this all started. All the doubt, the curiosity, the interest. If you ask Steve things just happened, there's not like a key moment where he can say "yes, this was it" although there are several moments that ultimately fall into the category of suspicious, moments that at the time were not relevant but once he analyzed them, knew he couldn't deny it anymore.
He could probably put as a starting point the upside down when he couldn't stop looking at Eddie's lips as the guy gave him his whole "Nancy loves you. Go get her, dude." speech, or maybe that time the metalhead got too close to him in RV using his flirtatious smile and those words Steve can't get out of his head:
"Harrington's got her, don't ya big boy?"
Maybe it was earlier. Much earlier. When he was looking for any excuse to pick a fight with some guy on his basketball or swim team because he longed for physical contact; when he would drag out his showers because he knew Daniel Espinoza liked showering late and wanted to spend some time with him.
The reality is that he can think of many other moments with other men, moments that straight guys don't live, like when he got jealous that time Tommy introduced Carol as his girlfriend; when in the stores he saw those magazines meant for women with the excuse that "he wanted to know what they like" or when he saw "grease" over and over again saying that he liked it since Olivia Newton-John was hot, because, although she is indeed hot, he can't deny that many times his gaze went more towards John Travolta.
God, there was even that time he called Jonathan Byers "queer" with the clear intention of hurting him because for some reason for the Steve of that time, the most horrible thing that could happen to a man is that people would think he liked other men. Now he knows it was his internalized homophobia, because for others being called "queer" was perhaps the same as being called any other insult, but for Steve, it was something worse than that, it was a reality he didn't want to accept.
Another moment that crosses his mind is the time Robin came out in the Starcourt bathrooms. He'll never say it, but that conversation was in his head for days as it was the first time, he realized there were more options than just being straight. Sure, he knew it before, but it was more of a concept than a reality. That summer of '85 was the first time he felt some hope in his heart, he just didn't know how to name it.
Maybe the discovery of his sexuality was something progressive, something that so simply grew inside him.
Let's just say it all began as it began. No more.
The key point perhaps was when he heard a simple phrase that reverberated in Steve's ears louder than it should have. "I'm gay" Eddie had said one night as if it was the most insignificant thing in the world. He said it without thinking and without making a big deal out of it, they were just stoned while playing a round of "truth or dare" in Steve's backyard, and everything was pretty normal.
It had been a year and several months since Vecna and when summer came, he decided he could have a little party at his house for the kids to take advantage of the pool. The time post-Vecna had been very difficult, school resumed, and the seniors were able to graduate, but there was no ceremony because the whole town was more concerned with rebuilding what was destroyed and helping those who were left with nothing. Hawkins looked extremely sad.
As the months passed many were trying to get back to normal and act as if nothing had happened; but it is almost impossible when the land was divided, there were many dead and a few more injured. Almost 1/4 of the population left, mostly those who didn't have something to really tie themselves to or had enough money to have no problem if they changed their lives.
Steve's parents plan to be part of that ¼ by the end of 1987, though no one knows yet and the athlete doesn't plan to comment on it to keep his friends from worrying. He was going to be fine, once he convinced them to let him stay - it was hard, they kept worrying about losing him in case there was another earthquake or worse - they put the house in his name, would keep sending some money for a while – money he denied -, and even offered to help him pay for community college if he wants to take classes.
He wanted to sell the house, but no one was going to buy such an expensive place in the cursed town, so he decided to keep it and make it a place where his friends can be without any problems or worries. Because that's what they need: normal adolescence without worries.
"You need some normalcy in your life" Steve reminded them every time they took on a burden they shouldn't take on. They've already been through a lot in their 15-16 years, much more than everyone else in town or even the world.
Once the supposed earthquake passed, they had to deal with Max's coma, Eddie's trial, and their own PTSD. Despite what they experienced, they all volunteered in almost anything they could, whether at the gym or in the rubble or the hospital. They are barely 15 years old and don't know what it's like to have a normal life. It's pretty sad.
As time went on, things improved a little.
Max is out of the hospital, sadly she lost a lot of her sight, she needed a wheelchair for a while and now she needs crutches or something to help her support herself. The good news is that she is alive and with rehabilitation one day she will likely be able to move around without any problems, the bad news is that she will never see like she used to, she might even go blind at some point in her life.
It was a hard blow for the redhead, but she has decided to be optimistic. At first, it was planned that she would stay at Hopper's house with El, but something good came out of the whole tragedy and that is that her mom decided to start rehabilitating herself "I almost lost my daughter because of this, I don't plan to let it happen again." This brought them much closer than before, which was good.
With Eddie, things were easier. Luckily on a health level, they were able to recover him with many blood transfusions, millions of stitches in all his wounds, and weeks in the hospital, he has scars and sometimes struggles to move because of the pain, but nothing horrible. His problem came with the law and the people who still wanted to participate in the witch hunt.
During his time in the hospital, he was guarded by the police almost all the time, interrogated whenever possible, and treated like the worst criminal in history. Part of it has to do with him refusing to say anything to the officers, not because he wanted to, but because he knew he had no real alibi and explaining to them that it was all the work of an Interdimensional creature they decided to name after a D&D character was not an option.
Once he was released from the hospital he was arrested and went straight to trial. Luckily, by that time the government had already prepared a good enough cover-up for him to be declared innocent in just a few weeks. Some still doubted the metalhead but considering his condition many assumed that he turned out to be just another victim of a real serial killer named Henry Creel.
That led them to the pool party. If he could give the younger teens a couple of hours of fun, he would do it without a second thought, last year the group didn’t have a single moment of relaxation because of the fear of something new happening. This year they decided that the best thing to do was to try to live and deal with it as usual if something comes along.
Of course, in that party, they included the youth group and Joyce, Hopper, and Murray - who arrived with a Russian guard who struck terror into Robin and Steve for a moment before they made sure he was a good person - and Wayne, who ended up joining their little family after they all insisted on babysitting him when their nephew was indisposed. And yes, he knows everything, Wayne Munson hates lies so he forced them to tell him every detail no matter how crazy it was.
The day was quite fun, the boys had arrived around noon and immediately jumped into the pool as if it was the thing they were looking forward to most in their short lives. They played all day, ate hamburgers made by Murray, and at 9 pm they went inside to watch a movie and then went to sleep.
The adults left once they gave instructions to the younger ones about how they shouldn't watch horror movies and that they would pick them up early in the morning.
That left the young adults, who had no plans to get drunk but couldn't resist the bag of special gummies Argyle had hidden in his backpack waiting for just the right moment to pull them out. And God knows Steve was very grateful to have eaten a few because that way he could justify his strange reaction to Eddie's comment.
"Seeing as you just had Byers almost break his foot with the past challenge it's obvious I'll choose true," said Eddie as the bottle pointed at him. He doesn't quite know how much has happened since he started his trip, so he has no idea what Jonathan did or who is supposed to ask Eddie.
"How many girls have you slept with?" asks Nancy from the other side of the circle. Now they have his attention.
"Oh, that's easy, Nance. None," replies Eddie with a funny smile waiting for the group's reaction. It wasn't long in coming, from one second to the next it seems everyone lost their minds upon hearing such a statement.
"Wow, dude. Not to judge here, but why?" That's Argyle.
"You're quite handsome and you have a band, I don't believe it" continues Jonathan.
"I didn't take you as a virgin, but I don't judge" this time Robin said.
With this Eddie laughs rather loudly. He seems quite amused with the situation. "I never said I was a virgin, Buckley I just said I haven't slept with any girls" he mentions lowering his voice which still sounded funny.
At this point, everyone seems to pick up on something that somehow slipped Steve's mind because he feels the looks of "really?" when it occurred to him to ask with genuine doubt "wait, how can you not be a virgin if you've never slept with a girl?"
"Oh, God" he heard Jonathan exclaim before Eddie turned to look him straight in the eye as he came dangerously close to his face. "Harrington, sweetheart. Things are as easy as this: the reason I'm not a virgin even though I've never slept with any girl is because I'm gay."
It takes him a second to process it. If Eddie is gay, it means he doesn't like girls. Better yet, it means he likes boys.
He feels something churn in his stomach the moment that information comes into his head "Eddie likes boys" and for some reason, he processes it as a "better yet". He feels dizzy, and his heart is racing. God, why is he reacting like this? Steve isn't homophobic, but if he isn't, where is this feeling coming from?
Oh.
Oh.
Son of a bitch.
Does he like Eddie?
Did he just blush because he's thinking about liking Eddie and everyone is watching him have a meltdown?
How long has it been since he last spoke?
It could be two seconds, or it could have been minutes. He has to say something before they think he's a homophobic jerk or something. He also must talk to Robin because now has doubts that he can't resolve right now since he has to say something before others get suspicious. Harrington, focus. Be back in the moment.
"Cool, who's next spinning?" he says once he manages to come out of his trance. Considering that everyone looks calm he can assume it didn't last more than a couple of seconds, they probably don't think anything about it and assume it has something to do with the gummies.
"That would be Robin" replies Eddie cheerfully before passing the bottle towards her.
And again, he doesn't know what happens for the next few hours. He knows that everything was normal, he knows that he played a couple of rounds and that it was past 3 am when everyone decided to go to sleep. He didn't have much to remember as since Eddie's confession he can't stop thinking about his own internal crisis that, on one hand, terrifies him and on the other makes total sense.
From that day on, thinking about his sexuality has been a problem that has taken his mind 24/7.
He tries to convince himself that it's all a simple confusion, something born out of the connection that the trauma left between him and Eddie, but he knows deep down that this is a complete lie.
At this point, Steve can't deny it and it frustrates him in a way he can't explain. He knows he likes women because he definitely wasn't faking it when he was in love with Nancy, nor was it a false pleasure all those nights of casual sex, nor did he feel it was a false interest in seeing a pretty girl on the street.
That completely rules out being gay, although he doesn't think it's fair or realistic to call himself straight either.
The more he thinks about it the more he understands. It is true that, just as he looks at attractive girls, he also looks at attractive boys.
Concluding that he likes both men and women was a no-brainer. Accepting it, on the other hand, was not.
Steve feels free and broken at the same time. Part of him feels like he is finally filling an empty space in himself that he always felt, another part of him feels like he is nothing more than an insatiable pervert. He doesn't get enough of dating three different girls a week, now he also feels the need to date men? Inside his guts feels like a depraved man.
He wants to talk to Robin about it. He needs to.
A Monday afternoon at family video seems like the perfect opportunity to do just that. Two weeks have passed since his mind became a whirlwind and he knows Robin can tell that something is off.
"Robin, I have to tell you something," he began chatting during their lunch hour.
He can feel how she's been waiting for this, nothing has changed between them, but Robin is adept at figuring out when something is wrong "Everything okay, dingus?" she says in her sweetest voice.
"I..." And he is speechless.
The problem is that talking to her is not easy. At first, when he questioned himself very seriously about whether he is gay or not he thought Robin would help with his crisis, at the end of the day he knows for sure she went through the same thing when she was younger.
She has talked to him about how she often fell into something called compulsive heterosexuality and forced herself to like boys and even kissed one when she was about 11 years old, so he knows she wouldn't look bad if he suddenly told her he was gay and all the girls he dated were a product of that compulsive heterosexuality.
At that point in his questioning, he seriously considered talking to his best friend.
Now that he knows he's not gay and likes both genres he no longer wants to talk to her. What if he thinks she's making fun? Or worse, what if she thinks he's a pervert and decides to cut off their friendship? He can't risk that.
"My parents want me on my birthday besides a party with friends to also go to a corporate one." He finally said to avoid the subject without her getting suspicious. It was not a lie; his parents had asked him to do so because he was turning 22. It is a tradition among their business partners to have a big dinner when their children are of age, this way they become part of the exclusive social circle.
Last year, with everything that happened in town, it couldn't be done, so they planned to do it now that he is turning 22.
Steve hated those events, so he knows Robin won't question his aloofness or assume him to be anything else.
"Okay, do you want me to come with you?" to which he says yes and ends the conversation.
Unable to talk to his best friend, Steve has no choice but to seek information in another way. He considers for a second talking to Eddie but doesn't think it's a good idea to talk about his gay crisis/awakening to the man who is one of the reasons for all the questioning.
He won't talk to Nancy, Jonathan, or Argyle about it. Nor will he talk to the adults, Dustin, or any of the other children.
For this reason, ends up in a library in the city of Indianapolis.
He's never been to one of his free wills. He's visited Hawkins high library when forced to, but he's never searched for anything on his own. Now he is parked in front of a huge library in downtown Indianapolis hoping to find some answers about himself.
He felt like an idiot not knowing how to start looking, it's not like he could walk up to the lady at the entrance and ask her if she had anything on homosexuality, so he had to search every shelf until he found something that might seem helpful.
An hour passed and he found nothing at all that could help him. Certain books talked about homosexuality, but most of them were so horrible that they made him sick just by reading a couple of lines.
"Did you find what you were looking for, honey?" the woman in charge asks him to which he replies in the negative and walks away before she offers any more help.
What if this is wrong, is he the only person in the world who has felt this way? Questions walking outside doing his best to not cry. Then, he does something he hasn't done in a long time: he prays.
"I'm just asking for an answer" he begs aloud walking down the street and deciding to go on foot in search of a church. Knows he looks ridiculous. He doesn't believe there is anything up there that will listen to his prayers, and even if he did, he's pretty sure they’ll ignore him by just turning to them at this point in his life. He was raised kind of Catholic, but after all, he's been through it's hard for him to have faith.
His mind is foggy and tired, and he starts to cry. "What does this mean?" he asks to nothingness sitting on a bench knowing he is about to burst into tears. Rain falls from the sky, making him look more pathetic.
He has had panic attacks before as well as guilt and religious doubt, but this is the first time his feelings are so strong that he breaks down in public asking God between sobs to give him something.
"Need help?" Steve hears a voice above him. Looking up he sees a young man a little bigger than him with an umbrella, a chocolate bar, and a t-shirt that says, "don't be silent". He stares at him, not knowing what to say so the other continues. "I saw you from that house across the street, there seems to be something wrong, and you'll get sick if you stay here. You don't have to tell me anything, but, if nothing else let me take you somewhere out of the water, have you eaten anything?" he denies.
"Okay, if you want to come along, we also have something for you to eat." Without another word, Steve gets up and follows him.
Once he walks in, he notices the place. There are a couple of other people sitting on the couches and the floor making posters and discussing ideas. The walls have banners and posters, some he doesn't recognize, but others know perfectly well that they are from the Queer community thanks to Robin showing them to him once.
The boy, whose name he doesn't yet know, disappears to bring him a towel. "We have some clothes if you wish."
"What is this place?" he asks curiously, something that seems to get the attention of the others as they drop their own work and turn to look at him.
"Jay, who is he?" asks a dark-haired woman.
"A boy who looked like he needed help."
"You don't know him, is it safe for him to be here?" says someone, the other young man.
"What is this place?" Steve asks again.
"He looks like a good kid, that's for sure," jay says, "now, kid, I still don't know your name I think you should tell me."
"Steve." Answers, "What place is this?" he asks for the third time.
"Nice to meet you, Steve. I'm Jay, the girl in black is Lila and the guy on the couch is Alex" he chats. "Answering your question, this is an LGBT support house. Here we organize protests, action plans, or just create a safe place for Indiana's Queer community."
"Can you help me?"
"That depends, what do you need help with?" says the same black-haired girl.
Takes a deep breath before he says anything. Will it be okay to tell them? They say it's a safe place, don't they? And even if it isn't he can leave without a problem, the door is wide open.
"I like boys," he says finally feeling tears coming to the edge of his eyes, "which I don't understand because I also like girls and I feel like I'm freaking out since there's no one I can talk to. I drove hours ago from Hawkins hoping to find something in the library, but I only found hate and a few minutes ago I was praying to whatever is upstairs to give me answers."
He earned a few sympathetic smiles.
That day was a clarity in his mind. He spent hours talking with the group learning a lot about the community and himself. There is hope and fear in his heart. That night Steve sleeps knowing two things: 1-. he is bisexual, which is fine and doesn't make him a pervert; 2-. he is hopelessly in love with Eddie Munson.
My goodness, it feels like a bad romantic movie.