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Steve was eight when he discovered the truth. Later, he would learn the term genealogical bewilderment, but, in that moment, he just knew fear and disgust.
He shouldn’t have been up as late as he was, but, for some reason, he couldn’t force his parents’ argument into the white noise like usual.
“So did our vows mean nothing to you?” his mom said.
“Oh, so you’re allowed to sleep around with anyone you want, but when I go see a friend from years ago while her husband is present, I’m the one violating our vows.”
“That was years ago. I am a changed person,” his mom said. “You need to be here for–”
“For what, Jessica? You? Our son?” his dad scoffed. “He’s not even my son; you’re lucky I do anything with him.”
Steve covered his ears with his pillow and squeezed, hoping not to hear anything more.
October 1980
Steve had no idea why people didn’t believe in divorce. It happened every day. The Henderson’s down the way were divorced, rumor had it that the Byers had finally decided to untie the knot (even if things weren’t final for a few months), so why couldn’t his parents just pull the trigger and file for divorce.
“We get along so well while on vacation,” his mom said once, and Steve thought it was a funny way of saying “We get along better when we can forget you exist.”
He rolled his eyes, and she wrote it off as him having just turned thirteen, but honestly, it was 1980, not 1960. People could escape each other now if they wanted to.
He had fantasies sometimes of his dad–his real dad–finding him and saying that he couldn’t stand not knowing him any longer. Sometimes he was rich and famous and whisked him away on an adventure. Sometimes he was a politician who didn’t care about the scandal it would cause.
Sometimes, he was a normal guy who just wanted to be there.
He would take any of them over his real dad and mom now.
Steve had no clue why he had to be in the principal's office. All he did was say some true things to Jonathan then get punched by Jonathan. He didn’t even hit back. The moment he registered what was happening was the same moment Jonathan decided to sprint away.
Six chairs were crammed across the desk from Principal Morrison, only four of which were filled. Steve glanced over the two empty seats that separated himself and Jonathan. The kid was hanging his head and trying to make himself smaller like he always did, though he couldn’t tell whether from shame or guilt this time.
“I wanted the boys fathers to also be here for this,” Mrs. Morrison said from across the desk.
Steve crossed his arms, not seeing why it mattered so much if their dads were there. He knew his dad would try and remove himself from the situation as much as possible before banning him from the tv or his bike for a month, and Steve didn’t blame the guy.
Why would he want to do anything with the reminder of what his wife did?
“Lonnie’s on his way,” Mrs. Byers had said half heartedly, “I told him this morning this called work to remind him. He’s on his way.”
“Good,” Mrs. Morrison said before turning her attention to his mother. “And Mr. Harrington.”
“We can start without him,” his mom said.
The door clicked open, and all turned to see a beer bellied man in a flannel and white undershirt stained with cigarette ash (only some of which could have come from the one currently in his mouth). He carried a smugness to him that would make Steve turn the other direction if he saw him on the street.
A smugness that disappeared the moment he locked eyes with Steve’s mom.
He looked at Jessica, then at Joyce, then back at Jessica, then the briefest glance at Steve and Jonathan before focusing on Mrs. Morrison.
“Lonnie Byers,” he said, reaching a clammy hand out to shake Mrs. Morrison’s. “What seems to be the problem with…these boys.”
“These boys,” said Mrs. Morrison. “Got into a fight.”
“I’m sure it was justified.”
“Lonnie!” Joyce snapped.
“No fight is justified as far as this school is concerned,” the principal said. “Why don’t you take a seat.”
“If there was an issue, then it’s within my kid’s right to stand up for himself, just like I taught him.”
“Jonathan started the fight,” Joyce reminded her husband quietly.
“Well, I still believe that this can be solved for both of the boys at home.”
The adults talked, defending their kids and negotiating his and Jonathan’s punishment, occasionally asking questions about what happened, but it all seemed to be in one ear and out the other for Steve. He never got the best grades in school, but he could read people.
He saw Lonnie looked and him and his mom when he walked in, the way they both stayed tense through the entire ordeal, trying to get it over with as quick as possible, even the way that
the way Lonnie would glance over at Steve when he thought Steve wasn’t looking and avoid eye contact when Steve was.
Steve looked over at Jonathan. He looked a lot like his dad.
They both did.
“Lonnie’s my father, isn’t he?” Steve said the moment the car door closed.
“No, your father is your father,” his mom said without looking at him.
“Mom, be honest with me for once. I overheard you and him fighting years ago; I know he isn’t my dad.”
Jessica sighed. “Your father and I were having trouble. He was traveling for work over half the months back then, and I made a mistake with Lonnie. We came to the agreement that it was better to just keep our marriages intact.”
“Intact?” Steve scoffed.
“That is the man who found out there was a chance you were his and hid behind his marriage to avoid having to deal with you. Is that what you want to hear?” Jessica snapped, finally looking him in the eyes. “Your father is a good man who loves us. The fact we’re still together is proof of that.”
Steve crossed his arms and looked out the window. It was proof his parents were too stubborn for their own good.
November 8, 1983
“But yeah, my dad’s out of town on a conference and my mom went with him because, you know, she doesn’t trust him.”
“Good call,” Tommy H. joked.
Steve grimaced. If only they knew.
“So you in?”
“In for what?” Nancy Wheeler asked, too naive to read between the likes.
Carol rolled her eyes. “A party.”
Nancy chuckled nervously.
“What?”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“It’ll be lowkey, just a few of his,” Steve reassured. “So what do you say? Are you in or are you out?”
Nancy contemplated this for a minute.
“Oh god,” Carol said, pointing at the bulletin board with her head. “That’s depressing.”
Steve looked over at Jonathan pinning something to the board.
“Should we say something?” Nancy asked.
“I don’t think he speaks,” Carol quipped. Steve felt his heart clinch. Jonathan Byers had no confidence, and Steve knew that it was likely his fault.
“I’ll go talk to him,” Steve said as he broke away from his friends. He tried reaching out after the fight a few years ago quite a few times, only to be met with distrust and avoidance, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still curious about the guy, that he didn’t still wonder what it would be like to have a brother.
But things that were never there couldn’t be fixed.
Steve glanced at the flier then did a double take. On it was a photo of Will Byers, smiling with the words MISSING above it in red letters.
“Holy shit,” Steve’s entire demeanor changed. He stopped, leaning on the wall and immediately tried to grab a flier from Jonathan’s arms only to have him pull away. “Thought he just got lost in the woods.”
“He probably did just wander off,” Jonathan murmured like he was trying to get himself to believe it. “Why are you suddenly so concerned?”
Steve took a subtle breath and quickly ran over the lies in his head. The years had given him a lot of practice, so it didn’t take out that long. “You’re the one who is putting up flyers. There’s no way your family would waste money on something like this unless it was serious. When was the last time anybody saw him?”
Jonathan shrugged “He left the Wheeler’s house at around 10 last night.” Jonathan caught sight of Steve’s posse and noticed the new member before giving an exasperated sigh. “Wheeler, of course. Nancy put you up to this, didn’t she?”
Steve flinched “What?”
“Her brother and my brother have been best friends for over half their lives. She is concerned, you save the day, you get—“
“Hey! I just found out this kid is missing, don’t arrange an entire conspiracy already.” he turned back to the board. “Besides, I don’t need a ploy to get into a girl's pants.”
Jonathan looked like he was about to say something then stopped himself.
“Could he be with Lonnie?”
Jonathan blinked a few times and Steve silently swore. Jonathan and Steve were strangers these days, and strangers didn’t know the names of each other’s whole families.
“I remember him from when we got into that fight in the eighth grade. Well, my eighth grade, your seventh grade.”
“I remember,” he said. “And no, there’s no way he would go back to that guy.”
“Yeah, he’s a real dick.” Steve joked.
“Can we not talk about Lonnie?”
“I’m serious, though.” Steve shifted so that Jonathan had to look him in the eyes. “Where does he live?” Jonathan thought for a moment. “Indianapolis.”
“That’s what, two and a half, three hours away if you take 69?” Steve rummaged in his pocket for keys.
“What are you doing?” Jonathan said.
“I’ll take you now.” Steve said. He knew he usually wasn’t this impulsive, but Will was his brother, too, and this could be the perfect opportunity to actually connect with his brother.
“I don’t want your pity.” Jonathan sighed. “And I don’t want to get in trouble for ditching.”
“Your brother went missing, I’m sure all his friends are ditching, too.” Steve put his hands on his hips. “Honestly, take the whole week, no one will think twice.”
“Steve, it’s ten now. An hour or so there plus six hours round trip means you’ll be back at four o’clock at the earliest.”
“So we should get going,” Steve said, finally fishing his keys out. “Come on, your mom wouldn’t want you going there alone, and you shouldn’t make her go with you.”
At this point, Steve noticed that Jonathan’s quiet and shy demeanor had completely melted away to reveal a general befuddlement at the whole situation. He was standing up straight, just an inch or two shorter than Steve, and looking him in the eye like Steve was trying to sell him the Golden Gate Bridge.
“What is this to you?”
Steve flinched.
“Excuse me?”
“What the actual hell are you doing?”
Steve swallowed. He was driving him off, and only now did Steve realize how insane he sounded. He might as well be a stranger with candy to Jonathan.
“Seriously? Is this charity work for you because there is no way you actually care about me or Will.”
Steve sucked in a breath. For a moment, there was just silence as Steve tried to figure out what to say. Jonathan waved his hand and went to storm away, but Steve managed to catch his shoulder in time.
“Jonathan,” Steve said, all the usual charisma he wore gone. “I regret what happened back then. It was out of line.”
Jonathan cocked his head and examined Steve.
“Let me do this, for both of us.”
Jonathan bit his lip then, accepting that Steve had revealed his personal gain, relented.
“Can it be after school?”
Steve winced. “No can do. I have to be back at night and, honestly, so should you.”
Jonathan debated one last time, though Steve knew that he had already passed the point of no return.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
Steve knew that he was not a member of the ‘think things through’ club. Typically, his five year plan and his five hour plan were the same: figure it out when you get there.
Now, after thirty minutes in the car with Jonathan, he started to actually wonder whether or not that policy was actually working out for him.
Sure, he wasn’t expecting a “Thanks, Steve. I know we haven’t seen eye to eye on anything before, but it means a lot to me that you’re so concerned about me going to my abusive father on my own.” or anything like that, but the guy just sat down, fixed his gaze out the window, and…that’s it.
Steve clicked on the radio and started to search for a station that wasn’t playing ads.
“--Breaking my heart, I–”
“--I wanna–”
“--Go now? Should–”
Jonathan perked up.
“--Amarillo’s on my–”
“Go back to that one.”
Steve clicked back to the station and listened for a moment. He hadn’t heard the song before, but it sounded like something The Clash would make. He was more of a Bon Jovi kind of guy, though he did just start listening to this new band, Duran Duran.
“This is Will’s favorite song,” Jonathan said in a way that made it clear he wasn’t trying to make conversation.
If I go there will be trouble
If I stay there will be double
So I really have to know:
Do I stay or do I go?
Steve could almost have laughed. Where was this song half an hour ago when he was hopping into a car with Jonathan Byers?
Lonnie’s house was a step down from anything in Hawkins.
Good. Steve thought smugly.
Jonathan knocked on the screen door, and a woman with disheveled hair and blue eyeshadow opened up
“Is Lonnie Byers here?” Jonathan asked meekly.
“Yeah, he’s out back. What do you want?”
“To look around.”
Before Steve could register what was happening, Jonathan was halfway through the house yelling “Will,” as he started checking doors.
The woman made no attempt to stop this madman who invaded her house.
“I’m sorry about him,” Steve said awkwardly “He can get ahead of himself.”
Steve heard a thud against the wall and followed the woman to the hall to find Jonathan pinned against the wall by Lonnie Byers.
Steve sprung into action to rip Lonnie off of Jonathan, but Jonathan had already pushed his father away by the time he got there.
“Damn,” Lonnie said, patting his son on the shoulder like the past ten seconds never happened. “You’ve gotten stronger.”
“Could someone explain what the hell is going on?” the woman said from beside Steve.
“Jonathan, this is Cynthia. Cynthia, this is Jonathan, my oldest.”
Steve narrowed his eyes at Lonnie.
“And that’s…Steven, right?”
“Steve,” Steve said. “It’s not short for anything.”
“Where’s Will?” Jonathan said.
Lonnie glanced over at Steve for confirmation, and Steve shook his head. Lonnie relaxed his shoulders a bit, as though what he did was okay so long as no one knew.
Lonnie turned back to Jonathan. “How ‘bout you come with me out back? I’ll show you the car I’ve been fixing up.”
“Can I ask you something, Steve,” Nancy said in his living room that evening. Carol and Tommy had already gone to do it in his parents’ room (the most action that bed had ever seen, most likely) and Barb was probably off somewhere, so it was just the two of them.
“Shoot.”
“Where'd you go after first period?”
“I ditched.”
“I know that, but where’d you ditch to?”
Steve shrugged. “I just gave Jonathan a ride to his dad’s place so he could check for Will.”
Nancy scrutinized him for a moment.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “It’s just not what I was expecting you to say.”
Steve grinned. “Well, I’d seen all the movies and the arcade’s for nerds.”
“I didn’t know you were friends.”
“I wouldn’t call us friends, but there’s more to him than most people think. He was shy to begin with and I ended up pitting the school against him in middle school and was just too young to realize the consequences.”
Steve could see his shift from jock to mystery in Nancy’s mind reflected in her demeanor. She wasn’t trying to be coy and flirty anymore, but now ran through the questions in her mind to see which ones were pertinent.
“Why’d you do it?”
“I don’t know.” Steve paused for a moment. “Could we not, though? I like you and all, but I got soap opera level shit going on in my life, and you don’t need to worry about that, okay?”
Nancy bit her lip and forced herself back into the coy persona. “Want to go upstairs?” She asked, though Steve could tell her mind was elsewhere.
Steve smiled. “Why not?”
Steve picked at his jeans nervously. He wasn’t even sure if it meant anything. Barb going missing outside his house could mean nothing. The police said that her car was found at the bus station. He should just accept that the happenings of the town don’t revolve around him.
He heard the door chime and popped up from the plastic chair.
“Mr. Hopper–I mean Chief–”
“Anything,” Hopper said with a wave, more to stop the nervous ramble than to be polite. He could see how tired the man was in his eyes and wondered if he had slept at all in the past two days.
“I…I have something that you might need to know about the disappearances.”
“Barb or Will?”
Steve took a deep breath. “Maybe both.”
Hopper seemed to wake up a bit at this.
“Could we go somewhere private?”
Hopper gestured for Steve to follow him to his office.
Steve sat down across from the chief’s desk. The door clicked shut, Hopper sat down, and things were too quiet for a minute.
“So you going to tell me what’s going on?” Hopper said, trying to sound like a regular guy looking to help Steve out, but Steve recognized the interrogation tactic from his father.
Steve took a deep breath. “I think I may have been the last to see Barb alive.”
“We talked about this in the school interview.”
“Yeah, but… Myself and some friends were having fun and taking a late night swim… and I thought I saw a flash from the bushes.”
“A flash?”
“Like a camera. I was jumping in the pool at the time, and, when I went to investigate, I didn’t see anything.”
“Do you believe someone is stalking you?”
Steve sighed. “I don’t know. One person went missing outside my house, and the other was outside of the Byers and I drove with Jonathan to see Lonnie and he–”
“Woah, woah, woah. That’s in Indianapolis.”
Steve froze, realizing what he’d let slip.
“Why would you go to Lonnie Byers’ place?”
Steve’s leg started to bounce.
“Helping out a friend is one thing, but from what I could gather, Jonathan isn’t the social type. Mind telling me why you would drive a stranger to Indianapolis and back?”
“I wanted to make sure that Lonnie wasn’t in some kind of trouble and…I thought it would be a good opportunity for Jonathan and I to bond.”
“Why would your friend’s estranged dad be any of your concern?”
Steve bit his lip for a minute. He never actually had to say it aloud, and the secret had been a part of him for so long that he was unsure how to actually get it out.
He needed to say it. He could say it. He may not know Hopper well, but he needed to know if the cases could be connected. If someone wanted revenge on Lonnie. “We are…related.”
Hopper's eyes widened in recognition. “Okay then.”
“Listen, Will goes missing. The next day, someone is secretly taking pictures outside my house on a night I was supposed to be home alone. If Lonnie pissed the wrong guy off…” Steve put his head in his hands. It sounded flimsy at best coming out of his mouth.
“If Barb saw what was happening, you’re afraid they would leave no witnesses.”
Steve ran his hand through his hair. “Jonathan doesn’t know what I told you. My parents and Lonnie, that’s it, as far as I know.”
“I wouldn’t put it past Lonnie to run his mouth while on a bender.” a beat “We’ll look in the woods behind your house later today, okay? I want you to point out where you thought you saw the flash.”
Steve felt Hopper’s hand on his shoulder and looked up to see fatherly eyes. “This may be exactly what this case needs.”
Steve half smiled. “Jonathan doesn’t want anything to do with me. Is there any way you could send someone to keep an eye on him?”
Hopper sighed. “We’re spread thin at the moment, but I can tell Joyce what you said: We have reason to believe that it might be because of Lonnie and to keep Jonathan close.”
Steve nodded. It was the best Hopper could do, he knew that, and it’s not like Jonathan would let King Steve be his shadow until this all blew over.
“Thanks, Chief.”
Hopper gave Steve a pat. “You’re a good kid, Steve. If you were anything like that deadbeat dad of yours, you wouldn't have been brave enough to come here. Remember that.”
Steve could be thankful that he found out through the paper and not the rumor mill, he thought numbly as he stared at the Byers’ front door. He wouldn’t tell Jonathan that they were brothers unless he absolutely needed to–even he had enough tact to know that would be a bad idea.
He took a deep breath and knocked on the door. He heard scrambling and whispered swear words come before the door opened just enough to reveal the face of Joyce Byers. He looked down at her. She was disheveled and clearly on edge, and Steve couldn’t blame her. He honestly had no idea if he even had a right to grieve right now when he never shared a real conversation with Will; he just knew him through the drawings of his Joyce would hang at Melvin’s.
“Hey, is Jonathan home?”
Joyce shook her head. “He’s out wasting money on a casket.”
Steve shifted. That…he didn’t know what to make of that.
“I need to talk with him, do you have any idea when he’ll be back?”
“Later,” she said with a thin lipped smile.
“Is everything okay?” Steve said before thinking. Of course things weren’t okay, but this didn’t seem quite natural. She seemed afraid of something.
“Yep,” she said, popping the P.
“I’m sorry to hear about Will,” he said, mentally swearing once it came out of his mouth.
Joyce looked at nothing for a moment. “He’s in the lights now.”
Steve smiled. That was an odd way of putting it.
Both flinched as ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ sounded blasted through the house. Joyce turned and ran through the house. Steve pushed open the door and his brain screamed “Get out!”
Christmas lights hung so densely that Steve couldn’t even see the ceiling and stretched onto the walls and crisscrossed the room with little regard for design or leaving space to walk. Furniture was strewn about the ransacked room, yet lamps and plastic candles like he’d see at Christmas were strewn about in a half circle around the sofa. Painted on the wallpaper behind the sofa was an alphabet.
Joyce turned to the alphabet on the wall like it was a shrine.
“Come on, Will.” she said under her breath “Tell me what you want to tell me.”
She switched off the boombox.
Thud…Thud…Thud…
Steve stepped into the house to find the sound was now coming from behind him.
No. It was coming from within the walls.
“Mom?” he heard muffled from inside the walls.
“Will!”
“Hello? Mom?”
Joyce ripped away the wallpaper to reveal some kind of fleshy film.
“Mom?”
Steve’s blood ran cold. There was a figure in the wall, hands pressed against the hazy red.
Something growled.
“Mom! It’s coming.”
“Baby,” Joyce cried. “Tell me where you are. Tell me how to find you.”
“It’s like home, but it’s so dark. It’s so dark and empty and it’s cold. Mom? Mom!”
“Listen to me, I swear I’m going to get you but now I need you to hide.”
Drywall began to creep in from the sides. “Mom!”
“Baby, I will find you but you need to run. Run!”
The growling grew and grew until the wall closed up.
Joyce turned around and produced an ax. Without hesitation, she hacked away at the wall. Steve took a few steps back as the wall gave way to insulation. Daylight poured in, but Joyce continued to pull away at the pink stuff with her hands until she was looking out at her car.
She broke down crying. Steve knew he should do the right thing and comfort her, but all he could muster was “What the fuck!”
Steve sat on the couch next to Joyce, staring into the yard through the hole in the wall.
“This is crazy. This is crazy!”
“I’m not crazy,” Joyce said, even when she was biting back at him, she managed to reign herself in, and Steve feared the moment she completely snapped.
“I didn’t say you were crazy. I said ‘This is fucking crazy!’ The phone. The lights. The wall.” He rose from the sofa and shoved his hand through the hole in the wall, patted the outside a few times, and pulled it back in. “How?”
“I don’t know, and it only concerns me as far as getting Will back.”
Steve plopped back down on the couch. He came here to check on Jonathan, not become privy to the supernatural.
He turned to Joyce. She seemed to have come out of her shock in the past half hour and now stared at him like he was just as mysterious as the brief portal in her wall.
“Why are you here?” Joyce said quietly.
“What?”
“You bullied my son for a year and got punched by him. Why…even if you thought Will had died, why are you here?”
Steve turned away from her and hoped his fidgeting came off as residual fear from what just happened and not nervousness. “Making amends, I guess.”
“Steve,” Joyce cocked her head around and looked at him with weary eyes. “I suspected.”
Steve chuckled nervously. “Suspected?”
“The way Lonnie reacted when he saw you and your mom…” Joyce wiped away a couple of stray tears. “I suspected.”
Steve labored to keep his breathing even. He couldn’t break down now. He needed to be the composed one. If one of them went over the edge at this point, they would drag the other one down with them.
“You hate me, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You’re allowed to,” Steve said. “This shared experience doesn’t change that.”
“Oh sweetie,” Joyce wrapped her arms around Steve and pulled him in so her head could be on his shoulder. “I don’t hate you.”
Steve started to tear up. Of all the ways he imagined this going, none of them involved acceptance. “How?”
“This doesn’t make me hate you Steve; it makes me hate Lonnie more. You’re innocent in all of this, and I’m sorry nobody had the sense to tell you that.”
Steve found himself putting his arms around Joyce, and, for a moment, they each let themselves cry.
Steve made the decision not to leave until Jonathan got home. Conversations had been curt. Joyce asked how long he’d known. Half an hour later she asked if he ever thought about reaching out, and kept with this pattern until the sun went down and both wondered where Jonathan was.
Headlights flooded in through the hole in the wall. Steve rose and promised Joyce he would be by again the next day before slipping out the door, too tired to care if Jonathan saw him.
The car door slammed. “Babe.”
Steve froze at the voice.
“What the hell happened?”
Steve felt something boil inside him as Joyce materialized at his side.
“I’m sorry,” Steve snapped. “Babe?”
Lonnie stopped in his tracks. It was too dark to discern his expression, but Steve assumed it could be summed up as “What the fuck is he doing here?”
“You have no right to call her babe,” Steve snapped.
“Steve,” Joyce attempted to push him back inside. “This is not a good idea.”
“Decided to run off and tell her to spite me, did you?”
Steve pulled away from Joyce. Did this guy honestly think he could sleep around, treat his family like shit, then ride up and call Joyce ‘Babe’ like nothing had happened?
They say not to make decisions after a traumatic event, but didn’t choose confrontation so much as be thrust into it.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Steve said through clenched teeth as he squared up with Lonnie.
“I’m here for my son’s funeral.”
“Well, then I hope you got a hotel for the night because you are not going in that house.”
“Because of the hole in the wall?” Lonnie leaned around Steve and smiled at Joyce. “Babe, neither of us should be alone tonight.”
“Is that the line you gave my mom?” Steve said.
“Stop!”
They both froze. Steve turned around to find Joyce, standing in the headlights with a look so unhinged that you could forget she was unarmed.
Then it registered. Lonnie’s headlights were off.
Steve turned back around to find Jonathan hopping out of his car, eyes transfixed on and trying to make sense of the whole situation.
Steve took a steadying breath. He didn’t have confidence that Jonathan would handle himself, but he trusted Joyce enough to handle the situation.
If she could manage a supernatural beast in her house, then she could manage her ex.
Steve made his way over to his car without another word.
“Yeah, run away, Steven.” Lonnie yelled.
“You’re a piece of shit, Lonnie.” Steve said as he hopped into his car.
“Your mom didn’t think so.”
Steve couldn’t help it; he flicked Lonnie off as he left.
Steve decided to wait in the back until everyone said their peace only to discover that most people were flocking to Lonnie and letting the new county kook be.
He sat down next to Joyce at the reception. No one he knew was there, fortunately, including Jonathan.
“Joyce,” Steve said quietly.
Joyce snapped out of her daze.
“What we saw was real,” he said.
Joyce nodded, relief washing over her. “People think I’m crazy, but I will keep those Christmas lights up until the day I die if there is a chance my baby boy will come home.”
“Hope you have a receipt for the coffin when that happens.”
Joyce grimaced. “You're a better kid than you thought you were.”
“You met a different version of me.” Steve said. “Finding out…it doesn’t just change who you are, it makes you realize you never were them in the first place.” a beat “Besides, he’s my brother, I gotta help him.”
“You…I know he’s your brother, but that doesn’t mean you're obligated to help him.”
“I ain’t Lonnie; family actually means something to me.”
“So what do we do then?” Joyce said.
“Try and call him, I guess,” Steve said.
Joyce beamed and started to cry. The whole town may have thought she was crazy, but sometimes, you only need one person to agree with you.
Steve reached down from the ladder and let Joyce hand him another nail before securing more sagging lights to the ceiling. If this was meant to be their base of operations, then they would need to be able to move around without getting caught in the spider web.
A banging came from the door.
“Go away, Lonnie,” Joyce yelled, and Steve grimaced at how she beat him to the punch.
The banging continued.
Joyce groaned, grabbed the hammer from Steve, and marched towards the door. “Lonnie, I am going to murd–”
Steve’s blood ran cold. He turned around to find The Chief standing at the door, holding up a sign that said DON’T SAY ANYTHING. He slipped in like an operative and took in the fallout of the Christmas lights warhead with creeping dread.
“Oh Jesus,” he whispered. He turned the paper around and pulled out a sharpie.
BUG IN LIGHTS
Steve stared at him confused. Bugs? Who would bug Joyce’s place?
Hopper grabbed the nearest light and got to unscrewing.
“Will’s body. It was a fake.”
…
“There was a kid’s room, more like a prison.”
…
“Earl said he saw some kid with a shaved head with Benny.”
..
“What if this whole time I’ve been looking for Will, I’ve been chasing after some other kid?”
The adults likely forgot Steve was there hours ago, and there was no way Steve was going home now. He was on the edge of a conspiracy he wanted to stay the hell away from, sure, but his parents weren’t exactly happy when they discovered that Steve threw a party and was the last to see a girl alive when they returned home.
He glanced between Joyce and Hopper. They were discussing visiting some woman from a decade old article that lived outside of town.
He stood up and stretched his back. They wouldn’t notice if he left, and Nancy wouldn’t mind if he crashed at her place for the night.
Joyce jerked awake from the couch at the sound of the door slamming against the wall hard enough to bounce back, both hands around her ax. Steve barged back into the Byers’ house, not even bothering to knock in his rage.
“What the hell, Steve?” Joyce snapped as she registered it was him and not the monster.
Steve bit back his rage. “Do you know where Jonathan is right now?”
Joyce blinked a few times. “I-I–fuck! I don’t know.”
“I just went to sneak into Nancy's room, and I’ll give you one guess as to who I saw there.”
Joyce’s eyes widened.
“They weren’t doing anything but–” Steve grunted and clenched his fists “Now I know how my dad feels.”
“Steve, what did you see them going?”
“What?”
“Did you catch them in the act, Steve?”
“No, they were sleeping together, but the lights were on and why the hell would they be sleeping in the same bed if nothing was going on.”
“Steve, breathe. That could mean anything.”
“I don’t wanna breathe. I wanna–I wanna–” a terrible idea entered Steve’s mind. He marched down through the hall, ignoring Joyce’s protests as he barged into Jonathan’s room and flung everything off the desk before pulling out the drawer. Joyce was yelling in his other ear and grabbing at his arms, but she only managed to slow him as much as a fly.
He pulled out another drawer, and black and white photos scattered on the ground.
Photos of himself and his friends swimming.
His stomach twisted in to a knot as he resisted heaving. Joyce, having not yet noticed the photos, gently put herself in Steve’s line of sight, directing his gaze towards hers with caring hands.
“Listen, Steve, I know this feeling. You feel like a fool because how could you have been so blind to what’s going on, and you just want to destroy them and everyone and everything they touched, but you can’t, Steve. I don’t know what you saw, but I think I know my son better than this. He may be…different, but he would die before he let himself become his father. What are you…”
Steve was squatting down to pick up the photos, and now, Joyce was looking.
Him and his friends drinking beer. Them jumping in the pool. Some of them just standing around in wet t-shirts.
Joyce gasped as Steve held up the photo of Nancy’s bare back through Steve’s bedroom window.
“Th-this–what the hell is this? What the hell was he even doing there? What–”
Steve plucked the photo from Joyce’s hand and ripped it in half then in half again, repeating until the photo was too torn to be legible. “No one can see these photos.”
Joyce nodded and started to gather them up to put in the drawer.
“No, I mean we need to destroy them.”
Joyce flinched. “That’ll destroy Jonathan. You know that, right?”
“Joyce, I thought someone was in the bushes and reported it to Hopper. He’ll be arrested for stalking if anyone finds these.”
Joyce bit her lip. She knew better than Steve how much every photo meant to Jonathan. He poured himself into every shot he took and developed, spending the few spare pennies they managed on either Will or his photos. It was how he coped with the world, and Joyce had no idea how he would cope with not only the destruction of his photos, but the violation of privacy required to find them in the first place.
“They’re a few photos; I’m not smashing his camera. Tell him I burned them in a fit of rage.” he gestured broadly “There’s plenty of evidence for that.”
Joyce shook her head. “No…I’ll take the heat for it. I’ll tell him… I’ll figure something out. I just know that he can forgive his loony bin mom, but this’ll destroy any chance of you two being brothers.”
Steve stared at Joyce for a minute, brow furrowed.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? To know he and Will as brothers?”
He gave a small nod, waiting for her to change her mind or pull away, but she never did. He teared up as her seriousness soaked in. She would do that? Steve had been the asshole that bullied her son until just yesterday, and now she was willing to take the heat for him without a second thought.
No one had ever done anything like this for him before. His parents once told him that, if he did something illegal, they would turn him in themselves. What Joyce was about to do was worse than breaking the law–it could be breaking her family.
“You don’t have to, Joyce.”
She shook her head. “I’ll hear his side of the story before I do anything, but…I’m just disappointed in my son right now.”
Steve rubbed her shoulder for a minute before Joyce got to work on gathering the pictures, taking the appropriate ones and filing them back into the drawer as she saw them.
“I’m sorry this is happening to you, Steve,” Joyce said.
“I’m sorry this is happening to you, too.”
Steve screwed bulbs back into strings of Christmas lights, more to have something to do than anything. Joyce told him to stay at her place until she and Hopper got back in case Will came back, but that was twelve hours ago, and TV could only entertain someone for so long, and he had no intention of running up the Byers’ phone bill so he could talk to his friends.
(And even less intention of inviting someone there to hang out.)
He heard a car pull into the yard and sighed in relief. If Joyce had some news about Will, then this would all be worth it.
Steve froze at the sight of Jonathan and Nancy.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jonathan said.
Steve rose from the couch. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I live here!”
“Then where have you been the past three days?”
Jonathan took a step forward. “Where I am is none of your concern.” He hissed.
Steve mimicked his movement. “It is when you’re in my girlfriend’s bed.”
He felt Nancy’s hand on his arm. “It wasn’t like that, Steve.”
“Then what was it like?’
“It’s…it’s complicated.”
Steve chuckled. “And here I thought we had something.”
Jonathan put himself between Steve and Nancy. “Listen, she was helping me look for my brother and Barb, and she didn’t feel safe staying alone. I was over the covers, she was under, and neither of us did anything.”
Steve looked to Nancy for confirmation.
“I saw some shit.” She said without elaboration.
“You could have called me.”
“Not the kind of shit you’d believe.”
Steve clenched his jaw and rubbed his mouth for a moment. “I saw what I can only describe as a flesh portal open in the wall. My threshold for what is believable is much greater than you think it is.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Jonathan stuck his hand out “You saw that thing?”
Steve glanced between Jonathan and Nancy. From what he’d understood from Joyce, Jonathan thought she was nuts and the lights were just lights. If he saw it, there was no way he would hide it from Joyce and let her think she was crazy.
Then Steve saw the box of traps and guns. “That for the thing in the walls?”
Jonathan and Nancy both flinched.
“Jesus–I’ve been with Joyce the past three days. I know what’s going on with Will.”
“Yeah, well, why the hell should you care?”
Steve scoffed.
“Yeah, you heard me,” Jonathan asked as he pushed Steve “What the hell does King Steve think he’s going to get out of this, huh?”--he pushed again– “Not enough to be star athlete, gotta have a project,”--push– “be a saint”--push– “fix the Byers’ ‘cause god knows how fucked up they are.”
Steve gritted his teeth in an attempt to avoid tackling Jonathan through the coffee table.
“Say something, dammit! Why would someone like you give two shits about me or my mom or Will. Tell me, dammit! Tell me!”
“Because he’s my brother, too!”
Jonathan scrunched his face, looking at Steve like Joyce explaining how Will was alive in the Christmas lights. “What.”
Steve bit his lip. It was now or never. “Jack Harrington isn’t my father. Lonnie is.”
Jonathan blinked a few times, processing things in his head. Steve looked to Nancy for a minute. She was wide eyed and clearly uncomfortable being here.
That makes two of us, Steve thought wryly.
“No,” Jonathan said quietly. “He would’ve said someone when you drove me…but he looked at you when we first got there. He wanted to know if I knew, didn’t he?”
Steve nodded. “This isn’t the way I wanted to tell–”
“You were a dick to me for years.”
“And I stopped the moment my mom told me who he was, but by then…the damage was done.”
Jonathan ran both hands through his hair, letting his arms hide his face.
Steve sighed and reached for Jonathan. “Listen, man–”
“Don’t,” he slapped Steve’s hand away. “I’ll deal with this later. Right now, we need to set a trap for that thing so my mom can get Will back.”
“Where do we start?” Steve said.
Jonathan chuckled. “We?”
“We,” Steve said. “You got a problem with that?”
“Enough!”
The boys turned to Nancy. “You two can deal with your family drama later. Jonathan, help me with the bear trap. Steve,”--she picked up a bat and shoved it in his arms– “Put nails in this.”
“You seriously don’t have to do this,” Jonathan said to Steve as the three of them held knives to their palms.
Steve made a clean slash and drew blood. “Likewise.”
Jonathan groaned, giving Nancy the opportunity to make a slash herself.
“Come on, Jonathan,” she grinned. “Don’t be the odd man–”
Jonathan made his cut then reached into the medkit.
“And we’re sure about this?” Steve said as he wrapped his wrist.
Jonathan scoffed. “You’re asking that now?”
“I meant bandaging. Will it still be enough?”
“It found Barb with a few drops, from what I can tell.”
The three of them went quiet.
The lights began to flicker. Steve gripped his bat, Nancy pulled her pistol, and Jonathan readied the lighter.
“There!” Nancy pointed to the ceiling, dipping and sagging like something was moving around inside. Adrenaline surged through the three without an ounce of regret.
The faceless thing dropped ten feet without missing a beat. It turned and opened the flaps of its mouth to roar before Nancy fired three rounds into it. It flinched away, and with how little it did, the beast might as well have swallowed the bullet.
It pounced forward. Steve narrowly dodged and swung at its shoulders, hearing the squelch of its flesh as it hit.
The thing did a 180 and leapt onto Jonathan.
“Jonathan!”
Steve took a headshot. It pulled back to roar at Steve, drowning out the sound of Nancy’s bullets.
He swung again and again. Slowly, the Monster rose up, setting its sights on Steve.
Good. This is exactly what he needed to get it down the hall.
Nancy’s gun clicked. It was up to him now.
He focused on swinging, not caring to aim for a specific place and leaping back with each hit.
He glanced back just before the trap and leapt.
Click.
The Monster roared in pain.
“It’s in the trap! Go!”
Flames climbed up the Monster, up the walls, up like a beast in and of itself, consuming the predator become prey.
He closed his eyes as a cloud of white quenched the Monster, but Steve could have sworn he saw it fall into the ground with the same force it used to fall through the ceiling.
All was quiet. He opened his eyes to find a smoldering hole where it once was and wondered where the metal trap went.
“Steve!”
Before he could register what was happening, Nancy had run into his arms and was embracing him.
“Don’t you ever be that stupid again,” Nancy said into his shoulder.
“Don’t go monster baiting again.” He said, and it was almost a joke.
He pulled away and rushed down the hall, adrenaline still coursing through his veins.
“Jonathan!” he yelled.
“Here,” Jonathan said, helping himself off the floor.
“Thank god.” Before Steve realized what he was doing, he was pulling Jonathan in for a hug.
Jonathan’s arms just kind of floated around Steve, not entirely sure what was happening.
“I saw you get tackled, but I didn’t see you get up.”
“Oh…” Jonathan mumbled, and Steve could only imagine what the guy was thinking. He pulled away to take in Jonathan’s unreadable expression. The monster was a lot to process for all of them, but Jonathan was the only one of the three who now had to face the fact that he was now a middle child and not the oldest.
“So…does my mom know about you?”
Steve laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Yes, your mom knows about me, and suspected before I told her.”
Jonathan nodded and wiped some monster slobber off his face. “I should’ve punched Lonnie before he left town.”
He patted Jonathan on his shoulder. “Hey, maybe we can take another trip up to Indianapolis together and beat him up together.”
Jonathon nodded, still in shock.
“I’ll discuss it with Mom and Will when they get home.”
“I do have to warn you about something before your mom gets home.”
Jonathan perked up at this.
Steve turned to Nancy. “Could the two of us have a minute alone?”
Nancy nodded and went down the hall to Jonathan’s room, letting the door click behind her.
Steve lowered his voice. “You’re not out of the woods yet, Jonathan.”
Jonathan scrunched his face. “Excuse me?”
“When I thought you’d slept with Nancy…I went to destroy your room in blind rage–I stopped!” he spat out before Jonathan could say anything “But…your mom and I found the photos you took of my little pool party.”
Jonathan’s eyes widened.
“I don’t plan on telling Nancy, but–”
“I’m dead,” Jonathan covered his mouth with his hand. “I’m so dead.”
“I can call her off.”
“I am still dead.”
Steve put his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder.
“Those photos…I regret taking–well, all but the one of Barb because–nevermind! I am dead.”
Steve waited in the waiting room with Nancy, Will’s friends, and their parents. The news that Will Byers wasn’t actually dead would be on the front page of the Hawkins Post in the morning.
In a few hours, really.
The door to the ward clicked as it opened, and Jonathan appeared at the doorway. Will’s friends all leapt from their seats in anticipation of the go ahead to see their friend only for Jonathan to hold up a hand.
“Woah there, I know you guys want to see him, but I think someone’s been waiting longer than you guys to say hello.”
Steve turned to Will’s friends with a smile that he hoped said “Sorry” and now “take that, dipshits” in the kid’s eyes.
Steve made his way past Jonathan and down the hall.
“We‘re actually doing this now?” Steve asked about halfway down the hall.
“No time is a good time,” Jonathan said “And…he asked about you?”
Steve looked puzzled. “He did?”
“Well, not by name, but he saw that Mom was with somebody the time she took an ax to the wall. We tried to just keep him calm and ease him back into the world, but the kid has questions, y’know? He’s a smart kid. Mom and I just shared a look and decided… basically what I just told you.”
Steve nodded, taking this in.
Jonathan nudged his shoulder. “Don’t worry, I painted you to be some kind of hero.”
Steve nodded. He tried to tell himself that the news would go over easier for Will since they didn’t have a history like he and Jonathan, but it didn’t do much to ease his nerves.
Jonathan gestured for Steve to enter first.
Will laid in his hospital bed. Steve wasn’t allowed back when they brought him in, but he looked better than Jonathan described him, at least. He seemed to just barely have the strength to smile at Steve.
“Hey,” Will said, and Steve thanked whoever was up there that there was no awkward silence.
“Hey, Will,” Steve said as he moved to stand at the foot of WIll’s bed. “I’m Steve.”
“Yeah, Mom and Jonathan told me who you were.”
Steve’s smile strained a bit before he could stop it.
“Jonathan tells me you beat the Demogorgon up pretty good for me.”
Steve chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
“And that you saved him in a mele fight.”
“Your brother–our brother–was the one who caught him on fire.”
Will nodded, taking this in. “Have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons?”
“I can’t say I have.”
“Well, you’d make a good barbarian, probably a half-orc.”
“Yeah, sure,” Steve said, having no idea what any of that meant. “If I played with you and Jonathan, you two could just be…orcs.”
Will grinned. “Orcs aren't a race. I’d have to be a human.”
Steve clicked his lips. “Well, shows what I know.”
“Will the Wise–the character I play– is a human wizard. I could see if Mike or Dustin would be willing to make a campaign with you as a plot point. Then Will the Wise could also have a new brother.”
Steve grinned. New Brother. He liked that a lot better than half brother.
December 24, 1983
“It’s an Atari,” Will said as they all sat down for Christmas dinner.
“What’s makes you say that,” Steve said with a grin, knowing full well that he, Joyce, and Jonathan had decided to split the cost so that Will could have the $199 gift under the tree this year.
“Because Dustin’s getting one and he let me hold it. It’s the same size and shape and everything.”
Steve smile and ruffled Will’s bowl cut. Seeing Will happy would be Steve’s gift from his parents this year, but they didn’t need to know that. The two of them took a cruise to somewhere warm, and they were actually thankful that he asked for cash instead of something they had to go out of their way to buy.
Christmas for Steve was different than it was with the Byers, he’d realized. If Steve wanted something throughout the year, he or his parents bought it. If the Byers wanted something, they’d use layaway so they could get it by Christmas.
“Food looks great, Mom,” Jonathan said as he took a candid shot of Joyce setting a bowl at the table for a Norman Rockwell dinner.
“Oh please,” Joyce said, spooning some mashed potatoes to reveal they had the same consistency as the gravy. “Look at these potatoes. They’re runny. They’re–”
“More than my mom’s ever done,” Steve said. “Christmas dinner in the Harrington household was Chinese takeout.”
“In that case,” Joyce said as she put a napkin on her lap. “You’re welcome back for Easter dinner, too.”
Steve smiled, knowing there was certainly a place at the table. When Steve didn’t want to impose on the Byers during the holiday season, Joyce had kindly explained to him that she always intended for her kids to grow up in a family of four–she just hadn’t realized that the fourth person was not meant to be Lonnie.
“Let’s dig in,” Steve said, not entirely sure how family dinners were meant to start.
Will took the moment to rise from his seat and start making his way towards the door. “Actually, I’m going to wash up really quickly.”
Steve smiled and pointed back at the hall. “I have literally never met such a well behaved kid.”
“That’s actually new,” Joyce said “Guess he must finally have found a good influence.”
“Definitely not,” Steve said.
“She’s right,” Jonathan said, not quiet or mumbly at all. “It’s…you’ve been a good older brother this past month.”
“Well, thanks.” Steve smiled and looked down at the food to hide the tears welling in his eyes. “You’ve been a good family, too.”
Will returned and sat himself back down at the table, restarting a conversation from earlier about what was going on in the new D&D campaign he was writing, making asides about each oddly named creature when they came up for Steve, and between every bite of Joyce’s dry ham and every flash of Jonathan’s camera, couldn’t help but wonder what he’d done to get this lucky.