Chapter Text
WILL
Will buzzes with adrenaline, the wind rushing against his face as he races his bike against Dustin, the high of a good DnD session.
As Dustin stops at his house, Will wheels past with a laugh and makes his way home, the excitement settling into a content kind of calm.
Mike is a captivating DM and Will hangs off his every word. Somehow the ten hours they had played tonight had felt like mere moments and left Will wanting even more.
But he can wait. Because the wait makes it better. The anticipation for the next session, stewing in what they did and learned from their last time together, picking out the details that he missed when it happened and going into the story with a new sense of clarity and curiosity.
He’s so wrapped up in his thoughts, replaying his night in his mind, that he almost doesn’t see the figure looming in the road.
It’s incomprehensible. Something out of a nightmare or a foe that Mike would conjure for the party to fight. It’s taller than any human could be and its face… or… where its face is supposed to be…
Will moves before he can register what he’s doing, his bike swerving into the woods beside Merkwood. As he tumbles onto the ground he can feel his heart pounding, his pulse rushing to his ears in a deafening swell.
He tries to scramble to his feet and screams when he feels something grab his shoulder.
What he doesn’t expect to see is a teen, vaguely familiar though Will is unable to place exactly how, his petrification muddying his thoughts.
“Stay here,” the teen says. “I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”
And with that, he barrels towards the creature. It’s only then that Will notices the nail covered bat in his hand.
However, he doesn’t swing it towards the creature. Instead, he douses it with something (gasoline, he realizes, as the pungent scent hits his nose) and someone else joins the fight with him, appearing from the shadows and blocking the creature from Will, obstructing his view of the fight as he pulls out a flamethrower and sets the thing on fire.
It howls and screeches before disintegrating into ash at the teen’s feet.
The person in front of him turns around and kneels to Will’s level, dropping the flamethrower and looking at Will with concern. “Are you okay?”
“Dustin?!”
Dustin smiles sheepishly. “Hey, Will.”
“Is Will okay?” the teen asks, joining Dustin’s side.
Will stammers for a moment, the words not coming out, before he manages to say what he thinks is “yes.”
The two of them sigh with relief.
“Good.” The teen nods to himself, running his fingers through his hair and pausing with a frown as if it’s not what he expected to feel. “Good, good, good.”
“Are you okay?” Will asks, when he finally catches his breath.
“I’m fine. I can walk it off,” Dustin says.
Will highly doubts that but just nods. “What was that? And how did you kill it?”
Dustin sends him a crooked grin. “Let’s just say it’s not from around here and we’ve fought it before.”
Will looks to the teen who he realizes is Nancy’s a-hole boyfriend. “And are you not from around here too?”
“Oh, no, I’m just a normal human,” he says. “I’m from this dimension and I don’t have any powers.”
Two very specific statements that Will has to guess hold a lot more than Will is able to comprehend at this moment. Will’s gaze turns to Dustin who raises his hands in surrender.
“Dude, the closest thing I’ve got to superpowers are my funky bones.” Dustin turns to Steve. “Well, we’ve saved Will. It’s officially diverged. I’ve got no idea what’s going to change from here.”
“Then we’ll just have to stop what we know,” Steve replies. “And get Will home safe.”
“What am I going to tell my mom and Jonathan?” Will asks.
“You saw something in the road. You crashed your bike. Dustin helped you.” Steve shrugs. “It’s the truth.”
“And the giant monster?”
“Not a necessary part of the story,” Steve says.
Will doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into, but he knows that this is only the tip of the iceberg of crazy.
TOMMY
“What do you mean we can’t have the party at your place anymore?”
“Exactly what I said,” Steve says to Tommy, arms crossed with an annoyed huff.
“Why?” Carol asks. “Did your parents come back early?”
“No,” Steve says, “my kid cousin did. My uncle’s an abusive piece of shit and she needs somewhere to lay low.”
Carol softens. “Is she okay?”
“Probably not. He’s going to come looking for her eventually but I’m trying to give her a safe place to stay while I can. He… he did a lot of fucked shit to her. And I don’t want him to get her back.”
Tommy shifts awkwardly, suddenly feeling sheepish for caring about something as trivial as a party when Steve is clearly going through something serious. “Can your parents do something?”
“They barely give a shit about me. You think they’ll want to take care of another kid?”
“Then what are you gonna do?” Carol asks.
“I”m almost 18,” Steve says. “When I’m old enough, I’m gonna try to get custody of her.”
The breath is kicked out of Tommy’s lungs. “Custody? Like… like you’ll be her dad?”
“I’ll be whatever she wants me to be,” Steve says. “But all she needs right now is somewhere to stay, so that’s what I’ll give her.”
“What’s her name?”
Stevec hesitates for a moment, about to say something but stopping himself before the words come out. “Eloise.”
“Do you… do you need help? I mean, shit, you said your parents aren’t home yet. Do you need, like… groceries?”
A startled laugh escapes Steve’s throat. “I’m good on groceries, but uh, Carol? You wouldn’t happen to have any clothes that you’ve grown out of, would you?”
“You know what,” Carol says. “I happen to have a bag in the back of my closet I was planning on donating. How old is she?”
Steve pauses again, obviously doing the math in his head. “She’s twelve.”
“You think she’s about my size when I was in middle school?’
“Oh definitely.”
She smiles. “I’ll stop by with those after school tomorrow.”
Tommy nods along. “You know what? Fuck stupid house parties. Eloise deserves a proper welcome party.”
Steve’s eyes go wide. “Uh, Tommy—”
“And by that I mean a good ‘ol movie night. We haven’t had one of those in… shit, it’s been years. Just us. A-and her. How does that sound?”
Steve visibly relaxes. “That would be… yeah, that would be great. I’d… she’d love that.”
“It has been too long since we’ve just had a movie night in.”
“I forgot about them,” Steve admits quietly, the words filled with a sadness and guilt that nearly punches Carol. He looks at the two with searching eyes. Searching for what, she doesn’t know. “I missed you guys.”
“We haven’t gone anywhere,” Tommy says, brows furrowing as he smiles confused at Steve.
“Yeah,” Steve says. “I guess you haven’t.”
The bell rings.
Tommy claps Steve on the shoulder. “I’ll see you… Saturday?”’
“Yeah,” Steve says, nodding with a soft grin. “Saturday.”
ROBIN
Steve Harrington has come into first period history without his stupid bagel.
Or, well, he still has a bagel, but it’s smooth. Completely seedless.
He also has it wrapped in a napkin and when he starts to eat it, he leans over his desk so the crumbs fall onto his napkin.
Robin can’t help but stare in bafflement. Steve looks up from his bagel and meets her eye and smiles. Steve Harrington. Smiles at her.
She tries to focus on anything but Steve Harrington but Tammy Thompson is making heart eyes at him, twirling her hair and jutting out her chest as she bats her lashes at him.
But instead of flirting back, Steve sends her an apologetic look and turns her down gently in a way that is way too nice for a guy like him. Tammy Thompson spends the rest of the class seething and Robin, perplexed and somewhat uncomfortable, turns back to the front of the class and tries to get through Ms. Click’s droning lecture without sneaking glances at whatever odd pod person has taken over Steve Harrington’s body.
To make things flip from odd to full out Twilight Zone, Steve Harrington comes up to her desk after class is over.
She looks up at him, cocking her brow in a way that totally comes off as cool and intimidating.
He isn’t deterred. He just grins cheekily.
For a horrifying moment, Robin thinks that she has become Steve Harrington’s new conquest now that he’s deemed Tammy Thompson insufficient (which she still can’t wrap her head around.)
“Hey, I’m really lost with what we’re covering. Do you think you could help me?” Steve is uncharacteristically awkward. Definitely not the behavior you’d expect from Steve Harrington wooing a girl.
If he really is struggling, then that would explain his odd behavior towards Robin, probably too embarrassed and prideful to ask for help.
It didn’t explain him turning down Tammy though.
“You know that there are actually tutors, right? And I’m not one of them,” Robin says flatly.
“Yeah, well,” Steve’s fingers tapping nervously, “I just thought I could ask you because we have a friend in common.”
Her brows furrow. “I can’t imagine us having any friends in common.”
Steve pauses, face pinching as if he’s building the courage for his next words. “Well, I’m a friend of Dorothy. And I thought you were too.”
Robin feels her blood turn to ice. “Is this some kind of fucked up joke?” Robin prepares herself to flee, not prepared to get hatecrimed in between classes by Steve Harrington.
Steve’s eyes go wide. “No! No, no, no, absolutely not. I… I wouldn’t joke about this.”
“You see, you say that, but I don’t really believe you.”
Steve sighs. “I know that I’ve been—”
“A major asswipe?” Robin kicks herself at her big mouth.
“—not the kindest person. But I’ve been severely buried in the,” his voice drops, “closet. And I… I’ve got a lot of internalized hate that has only been fueled by the people I hang out with and I’m starting to realize that those aren’t the kind of people I want to be friends with.”
“And you want to be friends with me?”
“Well, yeah. I don’t really know anyone else who understands this and I… I’m still figuring it out to be honest and it’s… it’s freaking scary, Rob, and I don’t know who else to go to.”
It finally hits Robin what Steve has just trusted her with.
From what she can tell, she’s the first person he’s come out to. Somehow he figured out that she was someone worth trusting and came to her with his deepest, most fragile secret and she knows better than anyone else how terrifying it is admitting it is. Hell, she hasn’t done it herself it’s that scary.
And somehow Steve Harrington figured it out. She doesn’t know how, doesn’t know why, but he did.
But maybe it’s because he understands that he did.
Warmth blossoms through her. Someone understands.
And even if that person is Steve fucking Harrington, it’s someone, and she never thought she’d find someone like her in this conservative shithole.
“Would you want to hang out this weekend?” Robin says. “To look over the last chapter, obviously. And to talk about our mutual friend.”
Steve beams at her. “I would like that a lot.”
And looking at the way he looks at her with the genuine, unfiltered adoration just from this short conversation, Robin realizes that she really doesn’t know Steve at all, but damn, does she want to.
BARB
It’s not a secret that Barb doesn’t like Nancy’s boyfriend.
Steve Harrington is an arrogant, idiotic, asshole who doesn’t deserve her best friend.
So, when he comes into school the next day, and breaks it off with Nancy, she should be happy, right?
But no. It just fuels her flame of hatred even more. Because how dare he string along her best friend like that? How dare he play with her feelings?
After school, Barb follows Steve to give him a piece of her mind.
She expects him to be heading to the gym for whatever after school practice he has. So, when he heads to the field, she’s not surprised.
No, what is surprising is him going beneath the bleachers to meet with Eddie Munson.
It’s not a secret the sort of things Eddie Munson sells. If it was a secret, then he wouldn’t get any sales. She just didn’t realize that Steve did that sort of thing. It shouldn’t have thrown her so off guard, she knows that Tommy H. definitely got into a good high at parties but here? At school?
She almost turns away, not wanting to be a witness to a crime, but stops cold in her steps when Steve pulls Eddie by the shirt and crashes his lips onto his.
Barb’s jaw drops at the sight.
The kiss is passionate and very much not a new thing.
Her blood boils again, for him stringing Nancy along, for cheating on her behind her back.
But then she feels a rush of pity, of sympathy, for Steve. She knows what it’s like to hide the part of you that just wants to love. Knows what it’s like to never be able to truly be yourself.
Eddie loops his hands around Steve’s neck, locking his fingers into Steve’s ridiculously pampered hair, making a mess of it in a way that Barb never thought Steve would allow someone. Steve pulls Eddie in by the belt loops of his ridiculously tight black jeans and smiles against his lips.
He looks… happy. Happy in a way she thought Nancy made him.
But he wasn’t. Not like this.
Barb walks away because she knows she’s not meant to see this.