Chapter Text
“Marithe had looked up at the stars and asked her mother, who was sitting in the chair opposite, whether it would come back, this sense of being inside your life, not outside it. Claudette had put down her book and thought for a moment. And then she had said something that made Marithe cry. She’d said: probably not, my darling girl, because what you’re describing comes of growing up, but you get something else instead. You get wisdom, you get experience. Which could be seen as a compensation, could it not? Marithe felt those tears pricking at her eyelids now. To never feel that again, that idea of yourself as one unified being, not two or three splintered selves who observed and commented on each other. To never be that person again.” —This Must Be the Place, Maggie O’ Farrell
Every inhale hurts. That’s just December in the midwest though, icicles in his lungs, only a temporary pain–chest wrenching but temporary. He knows real pain, feverish, spitting, consuming.
Steve keeps running. Over tree roots and a small icy stream until he’s breaking out of the oppressive woods to the street again. Mirkwood, where it all began so many years ago. He bends at the waist, dragging in air and watching it flood the air around him, listening for any sound from the woods behind him.
Lucas had been right behind him earlier.
A familiar fear slithers through his stomach. Joan, Dr. Bright, says that trauma is like any sensory memory sometimes. The same as catching the scent of Fabergé Organics hairspray and suddenly he’s seventeen on the way to prom again.
She must be onto something. He feels suddenly terrified and weighted, heart tripping over nothing, as he stares down the wooded path. He swallows drily around the urge to tear back into the woods, screaming for the kid. Irrational. He does know where and when he is. The danger here is a thing of the past. They’ve made sure of that.
“You win, old man!” Lucas wheezes, coming around the last turn in the path. The world falls back into focus; he isn’t seventeen and Lucas certainly isn’t a kid anymore. He’s more than a foot taller than Steve now but clearly not in the same shape he’d been in the last time they ran together. Lucas would never let him survive the embarrassment but sometimes he wants to smush his cheeks in his hand same as he does with Oliver and just marvel at him, the man he’s become.
“I told you, didn’t I,” he says instead of any of that, patting the other man’s back. “It’s that fancy desk job of yours.”
Lucas thrust a finger in the air from his hunched position. “I-” he gasps out, “don’t know how you can call becoming a lawyer, a desk job. And it’s not even a job yet, I’m only in my second year of law school.”
Steve grins. God, he’d never get sick of hearing about it. He had Lucas’ law school acceptance letter, along with Dustin’s letter for his MIT PhD program, pinned to a cork board at home like a proud father. It suits him too; he’d always been a practical, logic driven kid, quick to point out the holes in their dumb plans.
“You’re going to be a great lawyer. Don’t be modest.” Steve scoffs, still patting his hunched back. “Gonna have to survive the rest of this run first though.”
“God,” Lucas moans. “I can’t believe we used to do this every morning. Okay. Okay, I’m ready.” Neither of them mention that back then running had been a matter of survival.
Steve keeps a slow pace the rest of the way back. He needs to broach the Max topic anyway. As far as he’s aware, Lucas and Max haven’t seen each other in a year now. Robin says they just need to heal, become their own people before they can try to be together again.
Steve mostly agrees.They were all too young to become bonded together forever. You’re not really meant to stay with the person you dated in middle school. But who else is there for any of them? Who else could ever understand?
Breathing out a cloud of his own air, Steve dives in, “So the party tomorrow?”
Lucas turns to him, brows scrunched together. “Yeah?” he prompts, before throwing an arm out at Steve. “Wait. Is this about Max?”
Steve curses the 1985 version of himself who adopted a bunch of preteens.
The lack of immediate response must give Lucas his answer because his hand shoots out again, jerking them both to a stop. “Look man,” Lucas starts, shifting on his feet, “I get that you and Max have your like co-worker buddy code now so maybe you can’t give me details, but, is she okay?”
Sometimes, like now, Steve worries that Lucas resents him for whisking Max away, back to Hawkins, that night. Everyone acknowledges that it was the right move but emotions are rarely rational things.
He’s looking Steve dead in the eye now, serious and more importantly calm. They remind Steve a little of a younger him and Nancy, exes who would still die for each other, but could never be together. He doesn’t want that to be the case for them though.
“Yeah, Lucas. She’s-” he has to think about what he can say without breaking anyone’s trust. “Good. She hosts our Star Search night and she’s doing the books for me and a couple of other businesses. God knows I don’t have the head for it. Her and Hopper still go to AA every week. She’s got her own place now on main street. She’s good.”
Lucas nods, blinking fast. “Okay, okay, yeah, that’s good. I-I love her so much, you know. I’m just glad she’s okay. I didn’t see it, you know. I didn’t get how bad it was until,” he barks out a bone dry laugh, “well you were there.”
He did know. Flashing blue and red lights, Max refusing to look at him while the Indianapolis cop kept talking, the confiscated bat in hand, snow and broken glass on the ground.
God, he hoped Robin was right about the two of them. She was usually right about everything.
“Lucas,” he says gently. He won’t hug him; that’s never been their relationship. “She didn’t want you to know. It wasn’t your fault or responsibility. I know she’s told you that herself. You both were going through a lot.”
Steve wishes more than anything that these kids’ childhood would’ve granted them immunity from any more pain. They shouldn’t have to still be fighting. Lucas re-writing a paper because one of the racist dicks in his pre-law program destroyed it, Will standing beside the hospital bed of a college friend as he wasted away, Dustin calling in tears after the power went off in his dorm during a storm.
Lucas finally looks away down the street. “You’re still seeing that therapist?”
He laughs. “That obvious?”
A jerky nod.
“Yeah, Robin says we gotta be good influences for you shit birds. And it helps, I guess. Or it feels like I’m trying to let it help. You know Owens will give you a reference if you ask. A lot of us see Joan but she’s not the only psychologist in the know.”
Steve watches Lucas’ jaw tick. He’s a man now, not a little kid, he reminds himself again. was he even still a kid by the time they met?
“There’s a campus support group I go to. It’s not the same. I can’t talk about so much of what happened here but there’s a lot too that I can talk about. We were the only Black family in Hawkins until the Adams’.” He wipes some of the sweat off his face with the corner of his sleeve before continuing.“Wasn’t just alien monsters and Russians, you know. I like being able to listen to other people talk in the support group.” He pauses, cracking the knuckles in his hands. “Trauma is trauma whether it came from a mirror realm of monsters or shitty parents or racism or death. Feels less isolating like that.”
Steve scratches at his stubble. Lucas is probably the socially smartest of the kids. He’d known that already but it hits him again. “Oh. I’ve never really thought about that.”
He waves a hand, vaguely embarrassed. “I’ve sort of talked there about Max, about seeing her over the break. I think it’ll be good for both of us.”
“I’m proud of you, man.” He jostles Lucas’ shoulder. And he is, in a chest-caving in kind of way. He can see Lucas as the thirteen year old, bandana wrapped around his forehead, fighting off a boy three times his size, the sixteen year old, schooling him out on the basketball court, and the twenty year old with three law school acceptance letters in hand. All of him.
“Yeah, well, it was Erica’s idea so, of course, it’s working out.” He shrugs, a half grin on his face. “Now I just need to work the gym back into my schedule.”
Steve snorts. “You really have let yourself go, Mr. six-minute-mile.”
“Whatever,” he scoffs, “I’ll race you back.”
He takes off without a backwards glance. Steve can’t help but watch him for a moment, long legs eating up the pavement. Sentimental in his old age.
———
Oliver is crying when he gets back. He follows the sound into the kitchen where the almost one year old sits in his high chair, banana mush in hand, big dramatic tears dripping down his face.
“Hey, little man.”
“Oh Steve! Thank you! I’ve got to get to work. Owens has something for me. He ate pretty much all his breakfast.” Robin closes the fridge and brushes a harried kiss on his cheek as she passes.
“Sorry,” he apologizes, grabbing a clean washcloth. “I talked to Lucas about the party though.”
Pausing in her attempt to shove her things in her bag, Robin asks, “And? He’ll be okay?”
“Yeah, he’s good.” It comes out too soft, too sad. “You know I just-sometimes I wish they weren’t so mature.” Gently, he rubs the washcloth over Oliver’s face and hands.
Hopper tells him all the time that kids are resilient, he follows it up with, like cockroaches, but still. If he could go back in time so those kids didn’t become so practiced at heartbreak, he would. Oliver’s stopped crying now at least. All his hurts are still so fixable. He kisses the boy’s chubby cheek.
Robin just snorts. “Did Dustin and Erica not call us the other week to drag us into their insane, passive aggressive fight over the correct placement of a lamp? Oh, they’re so mature, my ass.” Her tone is mocking but she lingers in the kitchen even though she’s definitely going to be late.
She hugs him too tight, the way you put too much pressure on a wound or break ribs restarting a heart during CPR or the way you hug someone you love.
When she steps back, hands on his arms, he face is all jokes again. “And you’re clearly forgetting the part where Eddie egged them on the whole time.”
It’s his turn to snort. “I’m sorry was Vic not doing the exact same thing? All, ‘Erica just keep moving it a few inches every day he won’t even notice’ and I never said we were mature.”
Robin just laughs and brushes a hand over Oliver’s wild tuft of hair and then Steve’s. “I gotta go, boys.”
Ducking away from her hair destroying hands, he waves her off. “Thanks, Robin.”
“Always, Dingus.”
“Ollie, Ollie, whoop.” Steve swings the baby out of the chair and into a spin. Grinning wide at the delighted laugh he gets in return and shrieked, “Da”. They both stand and watch through the bay window as Robin crosses the driveway into her car.
“All right, let’s get you dressed,” he says, face pressed to Oliver’s head. One inhale and then another of that not quite lavender Fisher Price soap they bought in bulk a week before they brought Oliver home.
The house is the quietest it ever gets to be with five adults and a baby. Dishwasher humming and the distant thump of Eddie’s music coming from the bathroom. Robin long gone. Vickie, taking advantage of Hawkins High’s winter break, and Will, with his chronic insomnia, probably still asleep. Tomorrow though the house will be over full and loud again just the way he prefers.
He pads through the living room back to the hallway with their bedrooms still half thinking about Lucas and Max. Oliver’s room is his favorite in the house with its walls painted with scenes from the Rainbow Fish. Dustin gifted the book to them because he thinks he’s funny but it’s always been Oliver’s favorite. Will spent a month carefully painting the walls.
There is so much color, so much life in here. Mismatched furniture, the overflowing bookshelf Joyce, Melissa, Karen, Sue, and Claudia have filled with their children’s old books, the rocking chair Hop made them. Then there’s the evidence of their time in here–Vickie’s grade book on the toy box beside one of Will’s sketchbooks, Robin’s shoes beneath the crib, Eddie’s acoustic guitar by the rocking chair, and a pile of Steve’s sweaters hanging off the back. Oliver won’t be like any of them; there will never be any doubt that he’s loved.
He changes and dresses him with minimal fuss and wrinkling of his own nose, blowing a raspberry into his belly at the end.
Humming something that might definitely be Metallica, he picks Oliver up and heads back to the kitchen. Eddie’s there, picking through the fruit bowl like he thinks he might find a Hershey bar in there. His hair is still wet, dripping onto his shirt, and Steve can’t help but think of the second gray strand Eddie made him rip out last night. He doesn’t know how to tell him he thinks he’d look good with gray without being made fun of.
“Hey, it’s my boys!” He careens across the kitchen on his mismatched socks towards them. Steve loves this ridiculous man.
Eddie pulls Oliver from his arms, shifting him to one arm so he can lean entirely into Steve’s space and kiss him. “You reek of physical activity.”
“Laugh it up. My body is a temple.”
The wide grin that takes over Eddie’s face is his only warning. Steve slaps a hand against Eddie’s mouth trying to keep whatever utterly profane thing he’s about to say from coming out. Oliver mirroring him, pats clumsily at Eddie’s face too.
“No, don’t start with me.” Pulling his hand away before Eddie can lick it, like an absolute child, he leans in and kisses him again as a consolation.
“Hmm seems an awful lot like you’re trying to start something with me,” Eddie murmurs against his lips.
Steve laughs, dancing away from his reaching hand. “I gotta rinse off and get to the shop before Joyce and Max kill me.”
He fills two glasses of orange juice, light pulp, because Eddie and Robin love that gross ass lumpy shit and Vickie and him are excellent at compromise, if nothing else.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll let you go but only because you’re gonna bring me home a brownie.”
“No, I won’t, actually.” Steve chugs his orange juice before heading for their room with Eddie on his heels. He’s apparently the only one who remembers Eddie’s cholesterol numbers.
“He’s fed and changed. And I’m pretty sure Claudia still wants to go to the park with you all today. Oh and the dishwasher’s making that noise again. I know what you said, Eddie, but really we should just let Wayne check it out,” Steve rambles as he grabs his clothes.
Steve already knows he’s going to ignore the dishwasher part. His stupid pride won’t let him ask his Uncle for help with it.
Sure enough, “Claudia just thinks one of us know when Dustin is going to propose. Her interrogation technique isn’t subtle.”
Steve whirls around, pointing an accusing finger, nearly dropping his clothes. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“No!” Eddie denies. “You forget how they all wrangled me into attending book club with them that one time. First, I’ve never heard such an eviscerating condemnation of someone’s writing as Karen delivered that night. I know I should’ve expected it; she’s Nancy’s mom but, Jesus, Maclean didn’t deserve that. Second, those women gossip like it’s an Olympic sport. I know what I’m up against better than the rest of you.”
Steve’s in the shower now Eddie having followed him into the bathroom to keep complaining. Stripping in front of him hadn’t even derailed Eddie from his book club trauma. “Well, we only need to hold out a little longer. You’ll be fine. Now if Sue asks anything just start running.”
“Mrs. Sinclair’s the sweetest.”
Steve jerks his head around the curtain to look at Eddie. “Exactly! That’s how she gets you. Next thing you know you’re telling her about the time you peed yourself on the playground in first grade.”
“Okay, fair. But her cookies.” Eddie passes him a towel when he shuts the water off.
“Part of the trap obviously. I thought you said you knew what you were up against.”
“Speaking of, how’s Lucas? He went running with you, right?”
Steve sobers. “Better. Hurt. But it won’t be anything more than awkward. Hopefully this will be good for them. To see each other. He was really put together about it.”
“Not surprised. Kid’s always had a good head on his shoulders.”
Dropping his shirt, Steve sing-songs. “Dad jar!”
“Shit.” He only presses a hand against Oliver’s ear after he says it. They’re absolutely going to get called in to a parent teacher meeting on his very first day of kindergarten. Steve can already see it.
“50 cents. Don’t skimp!” Steve calls at his retreating back.
He finishes dressing, listening to Eddie teasingly grumble to Oliver in the other room. The skin on his back barely even tugs as he jerks his shirt on. It’s a good day despite the cold weather. The scarring is still, even a decade of reassurances later, hard for him to look at. Only a bit of it peeks out from his collar along the back of his neck and another patch on his left arm. What can he say, he’s vain.
Oliver starts crying the moment Steve steps out of the bedroom, dressed to leave. Half the time Steve wants to start crying too. He’d never regret the months he only worked Saturdays to stay with Ollie but it’d made him somewhat clingy with Steve in particular.
“Hey, Buddy, you’re okay. I love you so much and Eddie Bear-“
“I told you we’re not doing that.”
Steve only raises his eyebrow, ignoring Eddie entirely. Eddie passes Oliver into his arms, an effortless exchange. “Daddy Eddie loves you so much. Momma Robin loves you so much and Momma Vickie loves you so much.” Steve puts his face to Oliver’s head.
Joan would probably tell him he’s not making the separation anxiety better. He keeps his face there though, waits until the tears turn to quiet hiccups. Months ago, his hand could span the entirety of Oliver’s back. Sometimes, already, he wants to rewind time.
Eddie’s watching him like he’s thinking the same thing.
“He needs a sibling,” he says, eyes on Eddie, nervous even though it’s stupid. The four of them have already talked about this.
“I know. Five more, right?” It’s a joke except for the way Eddie’s smiling at him, a little wobbly. “We can really talk about it seriously after the party.” He leans in and kisses Steve. “You’re going to miss the morning rush, Steve.”
It’s a gentle, unwanted push. He lets Eddie take Oliver from him, runs a hand down his face. Today’s already been a lot. “Yeah, okay. I’m going. I love you.”
“Love you too,” Eddie replies, following him to the door. At the car, he stops to wave at them both in the kitchen window.
———
Tracy Chapman is singing about a revolution when he pushes through the door. Max glares at him from behind the counter, past the line stretching ten people deep. Holly and Joyce are bustling around but neither of them look too harried. In any case, he always comes in a bit later on Friday since he’s here late on Thursday for the D&D game they host.
Joyce takes Max’s spot at the register without a word, tipping her head at Steve as he slips through to the back. Max wheels in behind him a moment later.
“About time, Dingus,” she snarks.
He drops his bag with theirs at the little staff table, trading it for his apron. “You’re spending too much time with Robin.”
“You told me not to call you Shitbird anymore. Here, just turn around,” she instructs impatiently, waving her hands at him. “Swear to god, thirty years old, a parent, and he still can’t dress himself,” she mumbles, cinching the apron tight.
He lets himself grin dopily while she can’t see his face, standing still as she ties the cute little bow like always.
“All right, you’re good. Remind me later to tell you about Holly’s loverboy.” The grin on her face is positively evil.
“He was here?”
“Sat at the window table making cow eyes at her for an hour.”
Steve shakes his head. “Poor thing. Someone should tell him the Wheeler women are ruthless.”
“I think that’s why he likes her. I can’t wait for Nancy to meet him tomorrow.”
“You’re ruthless too,” he scolds her with zero heat to it. “I gotta get out there before they stage a coup.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be back in 30,” she replies, eyes rolling dramatically.
Out in the front, there’s still a line. Gertie’s is a Hawkins’ institution. Steve is proud of it in much the same way as he is of Oliver with equal parts pride, fear, and disbelief.
The day Gertrude officially passed the place onto him, he’d nearly been sick. Six years later and he still feels overwhelmed sometimes but the place is doing great. It’s a second home to so many people here.
“Steve, Merrill dropped off a few pies and fresh milk this morning. Said you’d already paid him. I put it on the spreadsheet,” Joyce says as he slips between her and Holly.
“Oh, good. I was hoping I’d miss him. He wouldn’t stop talking about alien abductions and crop circles the last time I was there.”
“It’s that weird show, X-files,” Holly speaks up as she passes a latte to Mrs. Hayes. “Caleb made me watch some of it.”
Joyce’s eyes dart over to his, both of them sharing a smirk. They’re not quick enough for Holly not to notice though.
“I don’t know why I talk to you two. Don’t you have adult stuff, like mortgages and oil changes, to talk about instead of gossiping about my love life?” She asks, hand on hip, head cocked. She looks so much like a petulant Mike when he was her age that Steve wants to snap a photo. He sends up a silent blessing to Karen instead.
Joyce mouths mortgages and oil changes at him, her eyebrow raised.
Steve can’t help but keep poking her; like Mike, she makes it too much fun. Unlike Mike, she knows how to dish it back with the sharpness of Nancy. “So, are you bringing him to the party? I know your siblings would love to meet him.”
Holly’s eyes roll. “We have customers if you two didn’t notice.”
They both just laugh at her even though she’s completely right.
Steve makes cappuccinos and hands out plates of muffins or the cherry tarts Mr. Clarke makes special free of charge for them until the morning rush dies down. Joyce always jokes that it’s his pretty face and charm that keep getting them free and discounted stuff from their local vendors.
She’s not completely incorrect though; Steve knows he’s good with people. He’s got a solid reputation here, because of the awful things that happened and lives they saved, because he helped rebuild a lot of this town, because in a place like Hawkins they still care that he was the basketball and swim star of the high school. Mostly they like that he stayed here, a good hometown boy. All it takes is talking about the Pacers or the Colts or town gossip or their respective families to loosen just about anyone around here.
Holly leaves at eleven to pick up Nancy from the airport with Mike and Karen. Besides El, who has a red eye flight from Peru tonight, everyone else is already in town for Christmas. It’s selfish but Steve prefers when they’re all here in close range.
Shortly after Holly leaves, Steve retreats to the office to sort through the books, check inventory, make some calls, and finish the schedule for next month. Max and her accounting degree do most of the heavy lifting in terms of their finances, thank god. Vickie’s taught him a lot of tricks to help deal with the way he hates sevens and words that just slid into one another when he reads but paperwork will never be his strong suit.
Tucked in here, he can still hear the murmur of voices and the suggestion of music. Soothing in its familiarity.
An hour in and mostly done, Max rolls in, smile bright in a way that makes him want to take a photo and time travel back to a year ago just to show her she wouldn’t always feel so broken.
“Hey, my shift’s over and Dustin and Erica are here. They have questions about tomorrow.”
“Good. I literally can’t look at this anymore,” Steve admits, blinking fuzziness out of his eyes.
“I keep telling you, you need to get your eyes checked. I’m sure your prescription’s changed, old man.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He saves his work and shuts down the computer monitor.
“About tomorrow? I talked to Lucas this morning.” He pauses when she reaches out and pushes the door shut. Doing this feels like garbage but like his talk with Lucas it has to happen.
“I didn’t ask you to do that,” she says carefully, hands balled into fists on her thighs. He misses the smile from earlier.
Eddie, because he grew up trailer trash too and claims they could say those things about each other, once likened Max to an animal raised for fighting.
“I talked to you about him being at the party. He deserved the same, Max.”
Her face shifts out of the mulish look she wore so often as a young teen. “I know that.” A beat as her eyes skitter to the cheesy motivational poster she hung up in here. ‘Mindset is everything’ it proclaims in cheery font. Steve knows her mom gave it to her shortly after she moved back. She said it was put it here or the dumpster.
“Did he-How did he seem about having to see me?” she finally gets out.
When Steve talked to her weeks ago about the party, she’d rolled her eyes and reminded him that Hawkins was a small town, that her and Lucas would run into each other one way or another. He’d let it go then since she was right. The party is tomorrow though and he supposes the reality of it has set in.
“Don’t say he has to see you like that. You know he wants to see you. This-”
Her head shakes, almost violently. “He shouldn’t want to. I hurt him. Like real hurt not high school hurt and then I left.”
There’s no truth in denying that. “Not maliciously.” It feels like a small thing but Steve knows he and Max can be similar in the way they lash out at people when they’re insecure. She never meant to hurt Lucas. “He’s always going to want to see you, Max. No matter what else he’s always going to be your friend. Neither one of you are the same people you were a year ago. Just see how tomorrow goes.”
She nods tightly but doesn’t say a word. Dr. Bright and AA have probably told her the same thing with better wording.
Pushing back out of his chair, he rounds the desk. “What are you doing with Dustin and Erica?”
Her face scrunches, accepting the change in subject easily. “Movie and then dinner at Dustin’s. They think I’ll be a buffer with his mom.”
He snorts, following her out the door. “Let me guess, you’re actually on Claudia’s side.”
“I want to be a bridesmaid and everyone, including Erica, knows Dustin bought the ring ages ago. What is he waiting for? I know you know what his plan is. He tells you everything”
Steve flicks her head as they come back to the front. It’s much calmer than it was this morning. Joyce isn’t even behind the counter, instead she’s chatting over by one of the window tables with Carol Perkins of all people. Word from her mother, who comes through Gertie’s regularly, is that she’s married with a couple of kids, living in a new development right outside of Indianapolis. Steve thinks she looks happier than she ever did when they were kids. She’s fingering the sales tag on one of the chairs Hop built so hopefully they’re about to make an extra sale.
They’ve sold a decent amount of his stuff this year and Mrs. Abbott is always asking if he’s changed his mind about selling the wide rectangular table that dominates the left hand of the shop.
Dustin and Erica are over by the cork board where the monthly calendar and other announcements are pinned up. Erica is pinching Dustin’s side in a way they all know from experience is vicious.
“Hey, Nerds,” Steve greets, throwing an arm around the two of them.
Erica instantly wiggles out with a pointed glare. “Still not a nerd.”
“Right, remind me, Steve, what’s the other name for graduating magna cum laude from MIT?” Max teases, grinning with her teeth at Erica. Things between them should be weird because of Lucas but somehow they’ve always acted like he doesn’t even exist within the confines of their friendship. He’s accepted at this point that he will never understand women.
“I’m multifaceted.”
“It’s true,” Dustin pipes up, still under his arm. “She’s the best one on her tennis team. A jock too.”
Erica rolls her eyes. “All right, I know you all love me. Enough.”
“Right, Steve,” Dustin snaps to attention. “Are you sure all we’re bringing tomorrow is the dip and decorations? Last call.”
“Yeah, dude. We’re gonna have so much food.”
Dustin sighs. “I just can’t believe our little man is turning one.”
Our would be weird wording if any of them were normal people Steve supposes. But they’re not normal. Oliver is the first child amongst them all so it’s hardly surprising that they all think of him as theirs too. After all, Dustin was there the day they got the call that Oliver’s mother had gone into labor.
“Neither can Steve. Robin told me he cried the other day about it,” Max mockingly confides, the bite undercut by the look she’s giving him.
Arguing would be a lie since he did cry after a little too much wine during family dinner and Joyce always tells him it’s good for boys to know men are allowed to show emotion or whatever. He never used to cry, not really, not the way he does now, over basically nothing.
“Just wait for your turn and you’ll see,” he says simply, a constant refrain of parents.
Erica’s nose wrinkles. All of them are still so young, Erica’s only recently turned twenty-one; although, most of their parents were around that age when they had their first child. She’s older now than he was during the war.
He can’t help the way his gaze drifts to Joyce, imagining an early twenties version of her being handed baby Jonathan. It hurts in the time worn way thinking of Jonathan does these days. Back then, he couldn’t have imagined it not feeling shocking and sharp forever. The shock is gone now it’s just suffocating.
All of this, everything, they have here is because of Jonathan’s love for his brother. It began there too, really. He used to obsess over what Jonathan must’ve been thinking in those last moments. Mike might know; he was the only one there besides an unconscious Will.
“You sound like such an old man, Steve. All, ‘when you get to be my age.’” Max’s impression of his voice sets the other two into peals of laughter and the grief goes back where it belongs.
“Yeah, yeah. Why don’t you three head to your movie and let us adults work.” He unwinds his arm from Dustin’s shoulder, preparing to physically steer them out but Erica makes for the door first.
“I’m not missing the previews anyway.”
Dustin lingers beside him as they watch Erica hold the door for Max, both girls chattering about something.
“So we’ll come over around ten to help you guys set up, that okay?”
Steve ruffles his hair, warm and proud. “That’s perfect.” He does have to give him a push towards the door then. “Go on, Dude.”
Out the window, he watches as Dustin and Erica take up either side of Max’s chair, the three disappearing down the sidewalk.
Steve settles back into the familiar rhythm of joking with customers and Joyce, dishing out cookies and coffee all the while.
At four, with only a couple of high school age girls in the corner, Will pushes through the door, bell tinkling above him, mobile phone pressed to his ear with one hand and the other holding his sketchbook. Will is the only person in Hawkins with a mobile phone. As he ought to be, Steve thinks proudly. Echoing the thought are the two girls elbowing each other in the corner.
Will probably would’ve been a local celebrity, even if he hadn’t gone out into the world and become an actual celebrity. He can practically hear Will correcting the word celebrity but now that he’s been invited to speak at Comic Con it’ll be hard for him to argue. Sure, The AM Archives is a little niche between the sci-fi elements and queer themes but Eddie says that’s part of the reason it’s such a cult favorite.
Steve could’ve guessed who he was talking to by the pink flush to his cheeks but he’s rewarded with the answer anyway when Will says, “I heard you, Theo. I’ll have the chapters by next Monday” just as he approaches the counter.
He turns away from them for a moment. “Yeah, you too. Okay, bye.”
He and Joyce have just enough time to share a look with each other before Will’s shoving the Motorola in his pocket. Really, he is the old man Dustin called him—spending half his time conspiring with Joyce Byers about other people’s love lives.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Will scolds, pushing his hair out of his face. One day he’ll stop being jealous of all that natural volume Steve has to work hard to create. The Eddie that lives in his ear teases, how no one pegged you for a queer with all that hair primping.
Joyce purses her lips a bit. Honestly, they should butt out of the whole thing but it’s hard. Everyone likes Theo.
“I know, honey. I just want you to be happy,” Joyce says. Steve privately thinks happy is too vague a word.
Will’s nose wrinkles and Steve imagines that he’s thinking something similar. “I am happy, Mom.”
Recognizing when he should step back, Steve turns and starts on Will’s coffee. Behind him, he hears Will’s gusty sigh. “I told you. We don’t want to start anything until the series is finished. It’d be too weird while he’s my editor and neither of us want someone else editing it.”
Steve’s glad he’s not facing either of them. He and Robin are the only ones who know that Will and Theo actually were already seeing each other back when Will was still living in New York.
“That’s very responsible of you both. I just don’t want you to regret it,” Joyce mutters. They can both hear what she means—something about never knowing how much time anyone has. It’s not something Will needs to be reminded of.
Steve pushes the mug between them, hoping to break the tension.
“I’m going to be okay, Mom. Thank you for worrying though.” He leans forward, half across the counter, to brush a kiss against her cheek.
Still, after he takes his coffee to a chair, Joyce sighs. Steve leans into her. There’s nothing to say; he’s not even sure who’s right in this case but either way it’s Will’s choice. He nudges her after a long moment.
“Here, let me pack you and Hop a little treat before you head out.”
Carefully wrapping up a few of the things they hadn’t sold out of in time, he hums along with the song playing something about rain on your wedding day that’s been playing all the time.
Joyce is still frozen in place watching Will. Kicking her out isn’t something he wants to do but he will.
The two teenage girls have summoned up enough bravery to talk to Will while Steve was distracted. Will’s face is tilted up at them, a soft, open smile on his face. Every now and then, Steve feels a nonsensical spike of guilt that they all get to see this self-assured, grown up Will while Jonathan never got the chance. So many of Steve’s moments with him should’ve belonged to his brother.
Joyce takes the bag out of his hand, pulling him back to reality. She pats Steve’s cheek. “I guess I never really learned how to stop worrying about him but he’s really good, isn’t he.”
“He is,” Steve agrees. Nothing can erase what happened—Steve doesn’t need to tell her that Will still has nightmares and trouble sleeping, about how he was when he moved back, she knows. “Go home, Joyce.”
“I know. I’ll see you all tomorrow for the party.”
Steve nods, watching her disappear to the back for her things.
He lets himself get drawn into conversation with Will and the girls and doesn’t notice when she leaves. They’re both juniors at Fishers High, a town over, and have heard about Fridays at Gertie’s. Stephanie, the shorter of the two, says this in a devastatingly uncertain way. Will handles it well with a gentle smile, telling them they're in the right place.
Steve’s a little surprised that word has reached all the way to Fishers. It’s only been a couple of years that they’ve done this and it is still very much only word of mouth.
Hawkins, because of what this town has seen and survived, is more accepting than it should be, than it once was, but Steve still wouldn’t risk calling Friday evenings what they are unlike Tuesday’s Star Search night or DnD Thursday night. It’s one thing for Steve, Eddie, Robin, and Vickie’s situation to be an open secret and another to endanger the kids that show up here looking for safety and acceptance.
The four usual high schoolers show up, Mac, who’s home from her freshman year of college, and Andrew, who was in the year above him but became a Hawkins’ firefighter as soon as he graduated. Robin tumbles in just before he flips the window sign to closed.
“Hey.” Steve hands her a decaf and a cookie. “I’m glad you made it. There’s a couple girls here from Fishers that you should talk to.”
“Oh, shit.” She squeezes his forearm. “We’re like Indiana’s queer church.”
“It’s two kids from one town over. I wouldn’t go that far,” Steve corrects even though Robin’s already waving him off.
“And Will is queer Jesus,” Robin says, ignoring him.
He tries to tell her she can’t say shit like that but she’s already sauntering off. Someone turns the sound system up a little, catching the tail end of the Metallica song Steve thinks he was humming this morning.
Mama, they try and break me.
The song fades out and Eddie’s clear voice comes through instead, “That was Metallica with Hero of the Day. You all know it’s not my favorite off of Load but all my heroes are back in my hometown for the holidays so that one was for them. After a word from our sponsors, I’ve got the perfect introduction to your weekend.”
Mac and Robin draw the two new girls into a conversation that seems to mostly be about Ellen DeGeneres so Steve busies himself with setting out some snacks.
Most Friday’s are like this, informal. With the two newcomers here, everyone haloes them rather than breaking into their own groups.
As Steve guessed early on, the two girls are dating. By the time six pm rolls around, the girls are holding hands and have promised to be back next Friday. Robin catches his eye while he and Andrew discuss the merits of the new Alien movie and he knows she’s thinking about her own lonely experience in high school. For Robin, Steve’s always thought this must be a little bittersweet to see these kids.
Robin and Will are the last to leave after he swears he’ll be right behind them. Closing alone has always been his thing. The process of wiping everything down, putting away the perishables, restocking, mopping up, all a sort of therapy.
Anyway, Eddie’s with him, sort of—wishing all the commuters safe travels through the radio. He doesn’t dedicate anymore songs to them although he does play Everlong which he knows is Steve’s favorite.
Once Gertie’s is ready for Sunday, Steve locks up and collapses into the car. Silence crashes into him louder than anything today. It’s already dark out and there’s only a little movement on the sidewalks. The biggest crowd is six teens right outside the theater. If Steve squints he can see all the way back in time to himself, Tommy, and Carol hiding a flask in her bra before heading into the theater.
The image dissolves with a shake of his head as he turns the car on, Eddie’s voice spilling out into his space again to remind him of all the years between the boy who hung out in front of the theater in an ugly letterman jacket and the man he is today. A few months ago, he turned thirty.
It’s habit to miss his turn and go down through Loch Nora instead. Only Vickie knows about his fixation after he unconsciously took the turn with her in the car a couple years back. He doubts it was very surprising to her. She knew how he felt the very first time she’d come to that house, that specific emptiness a motherless home has.
The house, his childhood home, is gleaming full of lights, movement visible beyond the curtains. There’s a few bikes in a pile on the side of the driveway and two kids sitting nearby drawing with chalk. The Hatchers have three kids and a fourth on the way. Anytime Steve drives by, the house is alive the way it should have always been.
Steve invited his dad to Oliver’s party. It seemed like something he ought to do; give his dad a chance to know his grandson in a way he never knew his son but looking at this house he regrets it. He won’t let his son be disappointed by missed celebrations and events the way he was, searching a crowd for someone who was never there. It’s not as if the kid needs any more grandparents.
Vickie will be pleased; she has no forgiveness for his father whatsoever. Steve, the day he’d accidentally drove here with her in the car, had tried to excuse his father by admitting that he had no idea what he’d do if he ever lost Eddie or Robin or her. Vickie had given him an apologetic look but her words were hard.
“I know, no matter what else, you would never abandon Oliver. Your dad can’t use grief as an excuse for years of neglect, Steve. My dad lost his wife too but he never forgot he still had kids to raise.”
He hadn’t said anything the rest of the drive home, just linked their hands together and sat in the truth of it.
Tonight, it’s easier to agree with her. He cruises past his old house with just a fond smile at the Hatcher kids.
Their home is gleaming with lights too when he pulls into the driveway. Someone’s put in George Michael’s latest CD so he’s greeted first with gotta get up to get down.
“Steve!” Vickie waves a spoon at him from over by the stove. “Come try the chili.”
Beside her with another spoon, Will shakes his head. “I’m telling you it’s not spicy enough.”
Will’s a psycho so Steve honestly doesn’t need to taste it to know that the spice level is probably more than fine. Years ago now, they all had a near death experience after eating at an Indian place Will took them to when they visited him at NYU.
He takes the spoon anyway, slurping it up. “It’s perfect, Vic.” He kisses her cheek before pointing a finger at Will. “Don’t let him touch it.”
“Dada, da, da,” Oliver calls from behind them, wobbling in with Robin right behind him gripping one of his little hands.
Every bit of progress Ollie’s made in becoming a real person has amazed and horrified Steve in equal measure. He can see it in Robin’s face too, in the way her other hand hovers so close to Oliver’s back. Ready at any moment to catch him.
“Hey Bud.” He drops into a squat, pretending his knees don’t twinge with the action, and holds his arms out for the boy to careen into.
He lifts him up, insides humming when the boy fists the collar of his shirt tight. “Did you have a good day, Ollie?”
He babbles nonsensically, except for the word Da before dropping his head to Steve’s shoulder.
“I think he’s pretty wiped out. The last few days have been a lot with everyone in town. Think he knows something’s going on.”
Steve nods, chin brushing Oliver’s hair with the movement. “Tell me he got his nap before Nancy came over? Holly said she planned on coming straight here from the airport to see him.”
Vickie pats his arm. “Yeah, you guys actually barely missed her. You should’ve seen her though when she held him-absolutely terrified still.”
Robin elbows him with an evil grin. “Poor Stevie thought that was the woman who was gonna have six kids with him.”
“Hey, I thought we were all gonna die and, and, compulsory heterosexuality,” he defends even as the other three cackle.
They all know his dream selfishly had nothing to do with Nancy; he just wanted this, everything right here, a family, a home. He never imagined it could be better, different, more than, the cookie cutter version.
Will pats his back with the hand not holding the dishes. “It’s okay Steve. It’s that Wheeler bone structure, I understand.”
That sets the girls off on Will just like he must have known it would. All “but Mike, really, Will, really” and “thank god your taste in men has improved”.
By the time they’re sitting around the table eating, they’re making fun of all their first crushes. Vickie tells them about sharing a sticky ring pop with a girl in her middle school and how, in retrospect, she definitely had some weird thoughts about their shared spit.
Oliver laughs hysterically with them, hitting his little plastic spoon on his plate. Just imitation at that age. By the time Vickie gets up to dish out the half tin of chocolate chess pie he brought back from Gertie’s, he’s drooping in his high chair, head jerking as he slips in and out of sleep.
Steve gently lifts him up and carries him into the nursery. It’s too late most Fridays for them to do a bedtime story so he just cleans his face and changes him. He can be hard to put down some nights, fussy and wiggling, but tonight he’s like deadweight. Out entirely by the time Steve’s buttoning the onesie.
Laying him down, he brushes one hand over his head and backs out of the room. If he lingers too long, the others will eat his pie. He’s working on his attachment issues anyway.
He’s almost too slow anyway. Robin straightens back into her own chair the second she sees him, one forkful of pie coming with her.
“Thief!” He smacks the back of her head before he sits. “See if I bring any more home.”
Robin grins cheekily back at him. “I don’t think so. You secretly want us all to be fat and happy.”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Just in case the world ends and I need to eat you.”
She kicks a foot out at him. “Ew Steven!”
He grabs her foot before she can pull it away, cracking the first toe he gets a hold of.
“She is tasty,” Vickie chimes in, a wide smirk on her face.
“Ew! Stop!” Will shrieks.
“Homophobic.” Robin deadpans.
“Don’t listen, Will. She literally called you gay Jesus earlier.” Steve reveals, just dodging another kick from Robin.
“What?” Eddie asks, standing in the entryway, trying to shrug his coat off. Steve hadn’t even heard the door open over their antics. “Dude, I thought you only called me Jesus.”
It’s stupid and Steve hopes the truth of it isn’t written on his face but, in that moment, snow melting in his long hair, mischievous smile on his face, Eddie does look like Steve’s personal version of Jesus.
He knows his lines though. “That was only one time when you-”
“No, no, no,” Will frantically begs, nearly overturning his chair. He’s trying to cover his ears and eyes. “Not another word from any of you. This is worse than Hop and my mom.”
Eddie drapes himself across the back of Steve’s chair, snagging the crust of his pie. “Did you just call us your parents?”
“Think he did,” Vickie agrees.
“Now young man, did you get permission to leave the dinner table first,” Eddie calls at Will’s retreating back.
He raises one middle finger which only makes them all laugh harder. At his door, he turns. “Just call me when The Nanny comes on.”
At that, Eddie wolf whistles. “Can’t miss a second of Mr. Sheffield, can you?”
The girls both howl with laughter when Will just raises both middle fingers this time and shuts his door.
“Shh, you’re going to wake Ollie,” Steve scolds Eddie before he can yell anything else at Will.
“I’d be surprised. He’s gotta be knocked out honestly. Today was a lot,” Vickie says with a laugh.
“Did Nancy end up coming over?” Eddie asks, tapping a pattern on Steve’s shoulders that makes him lean into warmth of Eddie’s body even with the chair between them.
“Yeah, not long after you had to leave,” Vickie replies. “She was less afraid of him now then when he was a newborn at least. She said Karen’s finally backed off making hints about her settling down and having her own kids.”
“Good,” Robin agrees, backing away into the kitchen. “I don’t think I could’ve watched that go down again.”
Eddie makes a sound of agreement as he goes into the kitchen. Steve watches him spoon up some of the chili still on the stove and stick it in the microwave.
“It probably helps that Mike’s engaged now,” Vickie offers. “And Karen didn’t realize how uncomfortable she was making Nance.”
Steve gets up, grabbing everyone’s bowl off the table.
“Okay but did you hear Mike last night? They’ve been engaged for five months now and they were still vague about when the wedding will be.”
“I caught that too,” Robin agrees. “But are you saying you think they’re not going to stay together?”
Steve slots each plate into the dishwasher. “That’s what Holly thinks.”
“Oh shit,” Eddie breathes. Chili in hand, he leverages himself up onto the counter. “Well, now, I’m going to be weird with them tomorrow.”
Steve pats his knee. “You would’ve been weird anyway.”
“Well, I hope they’re okay. I like Liz.”
“You like everyone,” Robin laughs. “But, yeah, she actually seems good for him.”
“Oh,” Eddie gasps, kicking his heel against the cabinet and pointing at Vickie. “I meant to tell you before I left. I moved your stuff to the dryer when I got ours out.”
“Yeah, I saw. Thanks for reminding me.” Vickie gets up, causing Robin to groan.
Vickie ignores her as usual. “Come on, you’re helping put it all away.” With a teen level eye roll, Robin follows her.
Searching for a container for the rest of the chili, Steve says, “We heard your dedication earlier.”
Eddie grins around his spoon. “Too cheesy?”
“You’re probably safe; Max didn’t hear. She’s the only one who’d harass you. The boys all still think you’re untouchably cool,” Steve tells him, trying not to grin too much.
“And you. You were never fooled either.”
Steve snorts. “That’s because you literally never tried to act cool.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Eddie’s mouth gape unattractively. “What? Dude. Man. Buddy. Light of my life. You’re re-writing history. I was a drug dealer. I had illegal tattoos. A metal band!”
“Nope, doesn’t change anything. First time I ever actually spoke to you was my sophomore year. That party out by the quarry for Halloween? You were there selling. Tommy was usually the one who bought but he and Carol were in the middle of one of their fights so I marched over there. You harassed me about how old I was, wouldn’t let me buy until you were convinced I wasn’t a freshmen.”
Steve shakes his head at the memory, at the man in front of him. “I was dumb as shit back then and pissed about the whole thing but even I thought that was oddly virtuous. Also, you went around quoting your nerd books all the time so there was that.”
Eddie taps his fingers against the bowl in his hands, staring at him. “You’ve never told me that. I don’t remember at all. I mean, yeah, I never sold to freshman but,” he trails off seemingly too distracted with Steve’s revelation to continue their play argument.
Steve wipes his wet hands off on a dish towel before moving into the space between Eddie’s thighs. “I wouldn’t expect you to remember. I wasn’t King Steve yet or anything.”
He mostly remembers trying to act like he didn’t care about anything in front of the upperclassmen back then, especially the guys on the basketball team. It feels embarrassing to think of now. Pointless too when all that was needed to cement his status was just throw a party at his house. He’d been too scared of his Dad finding out back then. Tommy was the one who convinced him his Dad wouldn’t give a shit later that year.
Eddie sets his bowl down on the counter, hands coming up to grip Steve’s shoulders. He relaxes at the gentle pressure. “The first time I remember-”
“Eddie,” Steve whines, pulling away. He doesn’t want to hear this, can’t imagine it’s anything good. He’s already thought about high school more tonight than he has in years.
Eddie tugs him back though, fingers tight in his shirt. “Hey. Listen. It’s fine. I wouldn’t tell you a story about you being a dick which you weren’t, not really. Jesus, stop squirming.”
Placated and curious now, Steve stills. “All right, you have the floor.”
“Thank you, counselor,” Eddie retorts, a mean little smirk on his face that Steve loves.
“So, I’m sure you’ll remember this. Detention in the biology lab, the frog protest,” Eddie prompts.
“Oh my god,” Steve hits Eddie’s shoulder. “Of course, I remember that. Once they started chanting outside the door, you joined in. I thought Mr. Abbott was going to bust a blood vessel and then he just gave up, dismissed us all. We were barely fifteen minutes.”
“He did give me another detention that day,” Eddie reminds him mournfully. “But when we were walking out, you clapped me on the back and said thanks for taking one for the team.”
Steve grins. “I don’t remember that part.”
“Trust me, it happened. I was like fucking convinced you were going to give me a football ass slap for a second.”
“You liked me,” Steve chortles, disbelieving.
“Don’t get a big head. I was a confused, perpetually turned on, teenager. You were hot, you are hot, asshole.”
“You liked me.” Steve repeats anyway, leaning in to kiss Eddie like he’s wanted to since he walked through the door. Hands in hair, nails scratching his scalp, open mouthed, slick and too warm. When he finally pulls back, because this is everyone’s kitchen and Eddie’s hand is moving steadily lower and lower down his back, Eddie’s bowl is cold.
Steve picks it up and slides it into the microwave for the second time. “Hurry up and eat. I’m finishing this and then marinating on the couch. It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah. Good though.” Eddie agrees, eyes bright and glued to him. “We should go away for a weekend soon. Just the two of us.”
Steve laughs. “So we can spend two uninterrupted days having loud marathon sex and never leave the hotel? You can just say that.”
“Don’t start this. I assumed you knew. I love our family, would never trade this, you know that, but the privacy is lacking sometimes. I swear we’ve all become champions at having the world’s quietest sex. Why else would I have proposed us taking a trip alone? It wasn’t my fault. Robin and Vickie definitely knew what was up.”
“Well, clearly, I didn’t get it. I was excited about going on that tour of the dairy farm. You said they made their own ice cream, Eddie. Straight from the cow, you said.”
“I winked at you. I thought you were just playing along with the ruse. You’re right; I shouldn’t have trusted you to read between the lines,” Eddie teases.
Steve closes the dishwasher before stepping back into Eddie’s space. “Just for that we’re not having the world’s quietest sex tonight.”
Eddie reaches out and tugs on his ear. “You’re cute when you think you’re the boss.”
Rolling his eyes, Steve pulls out of his reach. “Put that in the dishwasher when you finish. I’m going to watch TV.”
In the living room, he can hear Robin and Vickie talking even behind their closed door. He turns the TV on and sinks graciously into the cushions. He can’t help but run through the list of things they need to get done tomorrow in his head.
“Are you on the right channel?” Eddie asks, dropping heavily beside him a few minutes later.
“Yeah. Tomorrow’s gonna go well, right?”
“Of course,” Eddie assures easily. “If not, it’s his first birthday. He won’t remember. Anything else besides his happiness isn’t our problem.”
Steve rests his head on Eddie’s shoulder. “Do you think my dad will show up?” It’s the question he’s been avoiding for days now, the reason he’s been thinking about the past maybe. He doesn’t want to verbalize it, doesn’t want to reveal everything he’s certain can be heard in the question.
Eddie’s quiet for a moment just long enough to cement his self consciousness.
“I don’t know, Baby,” he finally answers, soft. “Do you want him to?”
Steve shuts his eyes against the endearment so rarely used. He wishes it were as simple as yes or no. “He doesn’t really fit here.”
“What are we talking about?” Robin asks, sprawling on the other side of the couch with Vickie on her heels.
“The party,” Eddie covers.
Robin’s parents will be there, Vickie’s dad and Abbie, Uncle Wayne. More than enough immediate family.
“It’ll be fine. We have plenty of people to help set up.”
“Really, for a first birthday, somebody else should host and the parents just stroll in, have fun, and leave. A party for us. We’re the ones that kept him alive a whole year,” Robin proposes.
They all snort at that.
“We more than kept him alive,” Eddie says. “He’s happy.”
Happy. Just that, simple and complicated and everything they wanted.
“Somebody needs to get Will. The show’s starting.”
“I can’t get up,” Steve immediately says.
Eddie sighs dramatically, dislodging Steve. “I’ll do it since I harassed him.”
Steve yawns. He can hear Eddie and Will down the hallway if he listens hard enough. Robin puts her feet in his lap.
Will bounds into the room and takes the love seat to himself. He’s grinning in the manic way that usually means he was talking to Theo, and not Theo, his publisher, but Theo, his sort of, maybe, eventual, boyfriend. Steve really likes Will being here. It’s not permanent, just a landing place, same as it was for Max at the start of the year. He’s pretty sure Will plans on staying in Hawkins though.
It should be weird how many of them have stayed here, have come back here. To Hawkins, the site of so much of their trauma, both supernatural and not. But Steve knows they survived here too. They grew here together, mourned here. They all spilled actual blood into the ground of this town and built it back up.
They’ve scratched initials into wet pavement, worn paths through the woods, voted in local elections, repainted the high school, supported local businesses. They made it their home against all odds. If he had his way, they’d all be here together living in one neighborhood, their own community, in and out of each other’s homes, lives impossibly tangled.
He’ll just have to settle for what he does have. He lists back into Eddie’s side the moment he sits back down, yawning with his whole jaw. Through half shut eyes, he watches Fran scold Mr Sheffield for something.
It’s much later when he wakes back up. He can tell almost immediately they’re the only ones left in the living room. A lamp casts a small circle of warm light near them. The TV is off but someone put a CD in the sound system.The giant book Eddie’s been reading this week is closed in his lap.
I guess that this must be the place, someone sings.
Eddie nudges him again. “Come on. Time to go to bed. My arm is dead.”
He sits up, disoriented, too warm, mouth sticky dry. Eddie’s face is open, watching him in the dim light, adoration in every crease of his face. There’s no other word for it besides love, love, love. Steve can’t help but lean into him, half on top of him, to kiss the look off his face. This man.
“Love you too. Come on, up we go.”
Steve sways for a moment. Eddie’s hands, everywhere, supporting him. “I don’t think I saw a second of the show.”
“Nope, you were out before the first commercial.”
“Okay, right.” Steve tries to center himself, wake up enough to go back to sleep. He watches as Eddie turns everything off. “I just want to peek at Oliver real quick first.”
Eddie nods back at him, nudging him forward. His own eyes look heavy now that Steve’s looking.
They shuffle down the hall as one, Eddie right behind him, hands on his shoulders. Oliver’s sound asleep when they creep in, hands outstretched, one little fist clenched around nothing.
They stand there watching him breathe for too long. At some point, Eddie grabs his hand, something wordless exchanging between them.
Back in their room, they don’t say much either, brushing their teeth side by side and slipping into bed, content in the silence. Eddie shuffles close in their bed, socked feet tangling with Steve’s bare ones. He knows Eddie will get hot during the night and wake up Steve when he peels the socks back off. It’s an inevitability in winter. He falls asleep thinking he should tell him to wear only one sock.
And wakes with a jerk, sometime later, nauseous and momentarily confused. The nightmare fades fast even as he works on convincing himself that it wasn’t real, or, at least, it isn’t anymore.
By the time he slides out from under Eddie’s arm, there’s only the impression of burning cold on his back.
It’s quiet and he stands in the living room, cataloging furniture and framed photos. He hates that such a good day can still stir up a nightmare like that.
He tiptoes into the kitchen and puts a kettle of water on to boil. Joan’s the one who got them all into drinking tea; maybe he can get her a nice assortment box for his next appointment.
The floor creaks behind him. It’s only the afterimage of the nightmare that makes him glance at the knife block on the counter in front of him.
“Hey,” he murmurs instead.
“Hey,” she replies, voice sleep rough. “Do you ever think it did leave behind some innocuous part of the hive mind in us or that there was something in those Russian drugs?”
Her arms wrap around his waist before she hooks her chin over his shoulder.
“Our freaky twin powers? No, that has nothing to do with the Upside Down. A freak accident of nature, more likely. Or maybe the Hawkins water supply really was bad.”
Robin lets go of him, pulling open the pantry beside him. “Lemon chamomile?”
“Sure.”
“What did you dream about?” He asks softly, eyes on the tense line of her shoulders.
She doesn’t answer for a moment, moving around him to pull down mugs.
“It was fucking stupid,” she finally admits.
Lifting the kettle before it can whistle, he pours it into their mugs. How many nights have they done this? The thought of it makes him tired, makes him take in the circles beneath Robin’s eyes, makes him think of Max trying to drink it all away, of Will screaming until his throat was raw. Sometimes the power it still holds over all of them takes his breath away.
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that, Robin.” He holds Robin’s mug out to her, forcing her to curl her hands around the warmth of it.
Automatically, they both head for the kitchen table. She shakes her head, gazing into her mug. “Sure but it really was stupid. I was back in my old house, or an amalgamation of it and the place Nancy, Vickie, and I rented our last two years in Boston but in the dream I knew it was my childhood home. Someone was screaming but no one was there. I kept looking, tearing the place apart, but no one was there.”
Steve stays quiet as he looks at the white grip she has on the cup, gaze somewhere out the window at the dark street. He can tell she’s not done.
“I woke up and, for a moment, I was back in my bedroom in my parent’s house. I swear I could hear my parents talking in the living room. The strangest disorientation.”
“You grew up in that house, never moved. Happens to me sometimes too,” he pauses, fiddling with his cup. “I’ve been thinking about the past a lot lately. I don’t know if it’s everyone being here for the holidays or like a crisis over being thirty.”
“Don’t talk about thirty. I’m having my own crisis about it. Although.” She squints at him, lips quirking up. “I guess you look okay. Can’t be that bad.”
He sticks his tongue out at her.
“It is crazy though. I could never really picture myself as an adult. I don’t know. It’s like the only version of adult I ever saw was a marriage, kids, suburban home and, I knew, for reasons I didn’t even understand yet, that that wasn’t me. A mom, a wife. It’s not like anyone ever let us think there were other paths. Couldn’t fathom a future I viewed as a sort of death.”
This isn’t news to him. They’ve talked about this before back when they were still young. For him, it was different. He always, always, knew he wanted a family. To make up for the family he’d never had, because one of the only things people told him about his mom was how much she wanted a big family, because he’s always felt most like himself, happiest, when he was taking care of someone.
He can acknowledge, now as an adult, as someone who has learned how to actually listen, that it is different for women. It can be a death of self for mothers, for wives in a way it will never be for men. Their very identity becoming part of a collective. Their own last name vanishing into history, found only in old yearbooks, described as Mrs., as so and so’s wife, as a mother first before anything else, lives having to revolve around these other people first and foremost. Like how, the most he knows about his mother is that she wanted a family. He knows it was true but he knows there were other things she must have wanted too, other things she was besides a mother for one hour of her life.
He knows why that future seemed incompatible to both Nancy and Robin.
Steve is self-aware enough to know that saying this thing he’s spent years putting together in his brain, would prompt a blank stare and a “duh” from any of the women in his life, so instead he says, “Robin, I hate to remind you but you are a wife and a mom.”
“You’re joking but I do actually forget that we’re married sometimes.”
Steve laughs. “Harsh. You know anytime you want that divorce, we can do it.”
Robin shrugs. “I know. It doesn’t really have a negative impact on my life though. And Nancy’s right; it’s safer this way, especially now that we have Oliver. If we’re serious about adopting again, we should keep it until then too. You’re a pretty okay husband anyway. It’ll be different one day.”
“Okay husband?”
“Yeah, okay. Don’t push it.”
He watches her sip at her tea. Sleep is finally beginning to weigh him back down.
“I sort of knew you and Eddie were talking about your father earlier on the couch, by the way.”
He grimaces at her. “And?”
“And I’m glad you’re talking to Eddie about it. I did tell you.”
“I didn’t say much,” he mutters, staring into his tea.
“You don’t need to. It’s letting someone in, letting them know you want help. You didn’t say a lot to me either when you were trying to decide whether to invite him to the party.”
“Yeah, stop bragging about your emotional intelligence. Joan doesn’t give out gold star stickers.”
“Shows what you know.”
He drags a hand through his hair. “I won’t be happy either way. I’ll be disappointed, I guess, if he doesn’t show. Not surprised. If he shows, it’ll be awkward. At the end of the day, I don’t really know him and he’s never going to be okay with me being with a man.”
Robin bit her lip. “You still reached out to him though.”
“He’s my dad, for better or worse. Becoming a parent, I don’t know, made me both more and less understanding towards him. I thought he deserved a chance. I’m probably just looking for a father figure in the wrong place though. I’ve got Wayne and Hop and your dad. Dr. Miller still terrifies me to be honest, don’t tell Vickie, but even he’d be here in a heartbeat if I called.”
“He would. So would the others,” she agrees softly. “if you want to keep trying with your dad though, we’ve got your back.”
He nods, biting back a yawn despite the conversation. “I hear you. We should go back to bed. Tomorrow’s going to be crazy.”
She grins at him, still looking impossibly young. She looks a lot like her mom when she smiles. “You love it. Everyone being in town.”
“I really, really do.”
Robin gets up first, picking up his empty cup too. She kicks at his foot. “Come on. You were right, it’s late, early.”
“You know, I was thinking, the next time we’re all together will probably be Dustin and Erica’s wedding,” Steve said following her out of the kitchen.
“Huh, yeah, probably. Now that’s going to be crazy.”
He nods. In the hall, Robin squeezes his arm and murmurs goodnight before heading for the room on the opposite end of the hall. He watches her until she shuts the door behind her. Eddie grunts once when he slides back into bed and flings a clumsy arm around him.