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Begrudgingly, Steve had to admit to himself that it maybe would have been better to just let that Max girl drive them–slowly–back to the Byers house: his eyes were so swollen that he could hardly see, and now that the immediate danger of hell tunnels and monster dogs had passed, and with it the adrenaline, he was fully sitting in the thrall of a concussion. But he did get them home, without hitting anything or throwing up in Billy’s car.
He threw up back at the house. The four kids were bubbling with the excitement of a successful adventure and anxiously peering out the window for the return of El and Will, and Steve hauled himself unnoticed into the bathroom where he had to hold the edge of the sink to keep himself steady as he emptied his guts. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and winced. On the other side of that fight with Jonathan last year, he’d flattered himself (and Nancy had flattered him) to think that the cuts and bruises actually had a certain appeal, gave him a roguish, dangerous quality. There would be no fooling himself into the same conviction this time. His whole face just looked… broken. And swollen. And cartoonishly cleaned and bandaged by middle schoolers. He thought about trying to wash off more of the blood, but another wave of dizziness and nausea convinced him to quit while he was ahead.
His absence was not so unnoticed as he’d thought. As Steve crossed back through the living room on the way to the kitchen, away from the painfully loud children, he caught Max watching him out of the corner of her eye. Her face was impassive, guarded, as she tracked his movement. Steve got the feeling she saw lots of things she pretended not to.
Sitting in the Byers’s kitchen waiting for the “starting team” to return, finally having the time to breathe and reflect, Steve realized that he couldn’t actually remember most of the fight. The beginning he remembered very clearly. He’d come in so confident. Well no, not exactly confident. He wasn’t a complete idiot. He knew full well that Billy was bigger and meaner and more at home in a fight than him. But he’d been buoyed by the righteousness of his position, by the rage he’d felt when he heard Max’s pleas and seen Lucas cornered like that (just thinking about it, he was ready to fight Billy all over again, come what may). But then that plate hit him. That was when it all turned to a blur, when his brain started working in slow motion, trying to piece together why the room was spinning, why his head felt like it had a huge crack in it.
Steve remembered staggering backward into the living room, Billy still coming for him like when a wave knocks you down and another comes before you can get your feet under you again and another and another. Steve had put his hands up, grabbed at Billy because he couldn’t make his brain move fast enough to throw a punch. Then he was hitting the ground and then-
Nothing. Waking up in the car. Only the testimony of every ache and bruise to tell him there’d been a whole lot more after that. The size of the gap shook him. He hadn’t really been afraid during the fight, but considering that empty space, and whatever senseless rage had driven Billy to keep going and going when Steve was clearly beaten, when Steve wasn’t even conscious--that scared him.
To be honest, it scared him more than the demodogs. In their own crazy way he understood demodogs. They wanted to hunt, to eat, to protect their tunnels and gates or whatever. It was all pretty straightforward. (The evil something behind them, giving them orders, was another story, but he kinda figured that was above his paygrade–a problem for the Chief and the weird girl to figure out.) But Billy was a person. A stupid teenager just like him. Except that this teenager didn’t seem to care if he killed someone over…nothing, as far as Steve could tell. That was a more sobering thought than monster tunnels.
He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about going back to school and walking the same halls as Billy. Or walking the same halls as Nancy and Jonathan, for that matter. At the moment he didn’t really want to think about anything. So he held a bag of frozen veggies to his head in the vain hope that it would feel less like a car had backed over his skull, and tried very hard to forget everything.
Hopper and the others all came back together. The weird girl–El–was on her feet, but looked about ready to drop from exhaustion. Hopper had an arm around, wrapping her into his larger frame. It looked like a cartoon. A bear and a skinny little kid he looks after. It was sweet.
Jonathan carried Will in. The kid looked small and pale and tired in his brother’s arms, but he was awake and smiling faintly and eager to be reunited with friends. Joyce hovered over both of them, her arm around Jonathan, as protective as Hopper with El though the picture was so different, and reaching out to squeeze Will’s hand. She kept reaching for Nancy too, a comforting hand on the girl’s shoulder and a gentle smile.
The razor sharp yearning that stabbed through Steve, caught him off guard. It had been a very long day. Two days really; he and Dustin had spent most of the night looking for Dart, grabbing a few hours of sleep in his car. And then he’d been pulled into all this insanity again–hiking through the woods, building a trap, fighting demodogs, rigging the Byers’s shed for mind-controlled interrogations, Billy, running around the tunnels, all with a herd of kids trailing him like ducklings and the ever-present weight of knowing that it would have to be him keeping them safe.
And after all of it, with his head splitting and the room spinning, what he wanted so badly his chest ached was to not be the adult in the room anymore. He didn’t want any of it on his shoulders. He wanted someone older to put their arm around him and comfort him and fuss over him and let him rest and tell him it was going to be all right.
When he was eight, he broke his arm. He could remember his mother holding him in the emergency room while they waited, wrapping her arms around him, resting her cheek on the top of his head. He remembered getting home with his cast and getting a blanket tucked around him on the couch and his dad sitting with him to watch tv when he got home from work. He didn’t really remember any other times like that.
But in a flash, he saw it in his mind’s eye. Joyce and Hopper would see him sitting there in the kitchen, beaten and bloody, and they’d be worried and rush over to check on him- He slapped the image away as quickly as it came, but the ache remained.
Hopper and Joyce caught sight of Steve at nearly the same moment. They took in the blood and the bruises, and he watched as their eyes instantly bounced off him back to the kids, scanning urgently for a sign that any of them had been hurt.
“What happened?” Hopper demanded. Steve had heard the question asked that way plenty of times, when it really meant ‘what did you do?’ He shut a door inside himself, cut off the yearning.
The kids were only too happy to supply Hopper with the story. Steve was glad because between the alarming unreliability of his memory of the fight and the fact that getting his thoughts together around the pain in his head felt like trudging through thick clinging mud, he didn’t think he could tell a coherent account. The kids tripped over themselves to get the story out. They were still young enough to enjoy the thrill of it. A few pieces made Lucas and Max falter, a little more aware of the weight of what they were saying than Mike and Dustin, but only pieces. Steve was as interested as the starting line to have the kids paint the picture of the fight for him; he hadn’t realized until Hopper asked that he had no idea what had happened to Billy to end the fight (if it could be called that).
Max’s heroics surprised him. She stood with her chin raised defiantly through Dustin and Lucas’s besotted telling of it, eyes shifting between the adults, uncertain if she’d be receiving praise or punishment. But Jonathan and Nancy beamed at her; and Joyce congratulated her on her quick thinking. Even Hopper nodded in approval. Steve noted to himself that he’d have to thank Max later.
And then the story moved on to the tunnels and opened up to getting answers about what the Byers had done to save Will and El’s magical takedown of the gate. And Steve faded out. He’d get all the details he’d missed later. For now he just wanted to sit and rest.
The conversation had wound away from him for some time when Steve felt Hopper’s eyes on him. For a moment Hopper held his gaze in scrutiny. The chief was turning something over in his mind, retracing his steps back through the conversation.
“So a bunch of kids come up with an incredibly risky, incredibly stupid plan to distract a bunch of monsters, and you just let them call the shots?” Hopper challenged. He didn’t sound angry (unusual for Hopper) so much as confused, playing the role of an investigator just beginning to realize that the pieces didn’t fit right.
Pain made Steve impatient. “Yeah, I’m a complete idiot-”
He was drowned out by the kids leaping to his defense all at once.
“Steve didn’t want to-”
“He said no, but-”
“We were already there-”
“We convinced him that you needed us, and we were right-”
Hopper held up a hand to stop the onslaught, hooked on a detail. “What do you mean you were already there?”
The kids exchanged a look, unsure what potential remained for getting in trouble.
It was Lucas who piped up: “Well, after the fight Steve was passed out, and we didn’t want to leave him behind-”
Hopper cut him off again, catching on the bit of the story he’d actually been looking for, the part that now that Steve thought about it had been entirely glossed over in their original telling. “You lost consciousness?”
Steve nodded and instantly regretted the movement.
“For how long?”
Another gap in the night that Steve couldn’t fill. He cast a searching glance at the kids.
Dustin and Mike looked to each other and shrugged. “10 minutes?”
“Fifteen,” Max asserted confidently.
Hopper’s eyebrows went up. He swore. Steve echoed the sentiment silently. That was a long time.
“Ok, Kid,” Hopper said brusquely, getting to his feet. “Let’s go. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“No.” Steve drew himself up straighter, trying to look capable of making that judgment. “No, I don’t need a hospital.”
“Not a discussion. We’re going.”
“I’m not a kid, okay, I’m eighteen. That means you can’t force me to go.”
Hopper glowered. For a second it seemed he would force the issue. Then, abruptly, he conceded. “Fine. Then I’m taking you home.”
Steve balked again. “I can get myself home.”
“Steve-” Nancy started before cutting herself off. Steve didn’t look at her. He didn’t want to look at her.
“My house isn’t far. I can walk,” he insisted. He wasn’t even sure why. He certainly didn’t feel very capable of walking home through the woods. His house was close to the Byers only if you went through the woods. The roads weren’t direct.
“No,” Hopper practically growled. “I let you walk home on your own and your father finds out I was with you and before I know it I’m getting sued and the whole department along with me. Especially if you pass out along the side of the road somewhere.”
Admittedly, it did sound like something his father would do.To protect the family’s name or some crap like that. Steve could imagine his father’s attitude toward him the whole time too. “We’re doing this for you” in a tone that clearly communicated what an inconvenience that was. All the time I’m putting into this, all the lawyer’s time, all the judge’s time, all this money, all this hassle, is because of you, you ungrateful child.
So he submitted to Hopper’s plan. Joyce agreed to watch the kids, including El, while Hopper ran Steve home.
As he followed Hopper out, Steve didn’t look at Nancy and Jonathan. He didn’t want to see if there was guilt or pity or nothing at all in Nancy’s face. He did look at the kids watching him, Dustin and Lucas all wide-eyed and admiring, if a little concerned, Max guarded and intense. He winked at them with his less-swollen eye, ruffled Dustin’s hair as he passed and gave Lucas’s shoulder a small tap. Max flashed him a tiny smile.
Hopper watched Steve sink into the passenger seat of his truck with a groan. Inside, it had taken a while for him to notice how quiet Steve was. In general, Steve didn’t talk a lot around him. He wasn’t entirely sure why the kid pulled back like that–retreated to the edges. Actually, if he was honest with himself, Hopper was pretty glad of it. If experience held true, Harringtons liked the sound of their own voice, so if he had to deal with one of them at least it was one that Hopper didn’t have to listen to that much. Daniel Harrington had certainly never considered the possibility that his opinions might not be called for in every situation. So Hopper took Steve’s reticence in his presence as a little bit of grace. And he’d initially missed that this was the silence of someone in pain focusing very hard on holding themself together.
He felt a little bad about that. It was too dark in the cab to see much of Steve’s cuts and bruises, but he could see the way Steve curled into himself now that less eyes were on him. Kid couldn’t fight for crap. First Jonathan last year and now this. Figured that a Harrington would be all bark.
“Someone’s gotta teach you how to throw a punch.You nauseous?”
A nod.
“Did you throw up?”
Another nod.
“When?”
There was a pause. “When we got back to the house.” His answers were sluggish, taking a beat too long to process. Earlier Hopper had mistaken it for sullenness.
“Well don’t throw up in my car.” Steve still didn’t respond. “You’ve definitely got a concussion.”
“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,” Steve mumbled without opening his screwed shut eyes.
Hopper was doubly annoyed because the point was valid. “A bad one. I’m serious; we should go to the hospital.”
Steve leaned against the window, using the chill glass to ice his head. “The hospital means a bunch of people asking questions about what happened. And where it happened. And who was there. And just a whole lot of attention on all of us. And we don’t really want anyone to know about what we were doing tonight, do we?”
Hopper started the car silently and headed for the Harrington place.
Being part of a conspiracy is stressful. Even more so when you’re the one in charge of making sure everyone stays quiet and your co-conspirators consist of a traumatized (and extremely stubborn) single mother, a couple of teenagers who just discovered the art of rebelling against expectations, and five twelve-year-olds. But the part that really horrified Hopper was when, after painstakingly striking his deal to protect them all and keep it quiet, he learned that their conspiracy would also have to include Steve Harrington. Joyce, Jonathan, Nancy- they could all keep a secret if he just convinced them it was necessary. The kids could be intimidated to the same end. But the poster child for entitled rich kids? He’d figured Harrington would blow the secret within a week as part of some stupid high school pissing contest.
It turned out that Steve should have been the least of his worries.
The streets of Hawkins were quiet. The still night was almost surreal after the horrors of earlier. How could it all have sunk back into the status quo so quickly? They drove in silence for a few minutes. A bump in the road shook the car, and Steve let out a little pained grunt. Hopper pretended not to notice.
“It’s not ideal,” Hopper said, abruptly resuming the conversation. “But we can make it work. Figure out a story for the doctors. Not like this group doesn’t know how to keep a secret.” Steve didn’t answer, which Hopper took as a continued ‘no.’ Fine. That was just the preamble to his real point. “You know. You could press charges. This was assault.” Battery actually. And as regarded Lucas’s role in the events, maybe a hate crime too.
Steve didn’t respond immediately. When he did, the exhaustion in his voice was palpable. “Dragging him into court, lawyers, testifying, all that… where would that leave Max?”
It wasn’t a question. At least not one with an answer. Maybe it’d be better–get that stepbrother out of her life for at least a little while. Or maybe it would tear that family apart more than it already was–both emotionally and financially–and that little girl would bear the brunt of it. Especially if she was asked to be a witness.
“Still,” Hopper said in a bear-like grumble. “We can make it work. Just say the word.” An empty offer. They both knew they weren’t going to be pressing charges.
The Harrington house was quiet. A single light warmed an upstairs window. Hopper followed Steve up to the door, keeping an eye on the slight unsteadiness in his step. Before Steve could let himself in, Hopper reached out and rang the doorbell.
Steve gave him a confused, and somewhat irritated, look. “I have a key.”
“You think I’m gonna drop you off, all beat to hell, and just leave you on the doorstep and expect that to keep the Harrington lawyers off my back? Nu-uh. I’m gonna look your old man in the eye and make sure he knows this isn’t my fault.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
No additional lights had come on. Hopper rang the doorbell again. “When was the last time you were home?”
Steve shrugged. “Yesterday morning.”
“Hmm.” Hopper tried not to make the sound come off as judgmental. Maybe he didn’t try very hard. He at least hoped it was clear that the judgment was for Daniel and Virginia Harrington.
He had just hit the bell a third time when a light flicked on and Daniel Harrington opened the door. He was wrapped in a bathrobe, looking remarkably put together for a man who had clearly already turned in for the night. Steve winced at the sudden bright light. Daniel’s impassive face was marred only by the slightest furrowing of his brow as he took in his son’s swollen and bruised face. Hopper glanced down at the boy beside him. At this angle there was a highly visible smear of blood at the hairline, probably the product of the smashed plate he hadn’t taken much notice of when the kids were talking over each other to tell the story of Steve’s ill-fated heroics.
“Evening, Harrington,” Hopper broke the awkward pause.
Daniel’s eyes snapped from his son to Hopper. “What did he do? Is he under arrest?”
Hopper’s hackles rose. If it were his kid coming home in this state, if it were El or Sarah, he would already be on the warpath to find whoever hurt them. He certainly wouldn’t jump straight to blaming them. But you made the exact same assumption about Steve tonight, said a voice in his head that sounded vaguely like Joyce.
Yeah, but the difference is he’s not my kid, he argued back.
At his side, he felt Steve stiffen. If Steve withdrew in Hopper’s presence a bit, he positively froze for his father. It was the kind of movement Hopper had seen often enough in animals deciding whether to run or fight. From what he could tell from gossip and observation, the particular brand of Harrington conflict was more verbal and psychological than physical. Daniel was good with his words, whether he wanted to charm or cut to the bone.
Hopper smiled with the forced smile he knew made people nervous. “No, not in trouble at all. Just making sure he got home safe.”
“Well, looks like you’ve done a great job of that, Chief,” Daniel replied with the note of contempt tucked neatly into the polite smile.
“What can I say, Danny, your kid’s got a nose for trouble.”
They’d been in high school at the same time, Jim and Danny. Living very different lives and running in very different circles, but aware enough of each other to build up a healthy antagonism. After high school Jim went to Vietnam. Danny went to college. Danny returned to Hawkins a few years after college with a new wife he’d met in Chicago, already expecting a child, a new high-paying job secured for him by his father, and a new insistence that everyone call him Daniel. Hopper made a point of calling him ‘Danny’ whenever he could.
The polite smile tightened a little more, creeping nearer to a sneer. “What happened?”
Hopper looked to Steve. The boy had placed a hand against the doorframe and was leaning a little. He made no move to answer the question, apparently content to leave that job to Hopper since he’d insisted on being there.
If the kid wasn’t so obviously concussed, Hopper would have been happy to force the issue and make Steve come up with his own lie. As it stood, Hopper seriously doubted Steve’s ability to do so convincingly. Fine. He’d lie to the kid’s parents for him. He’d probably lie to the Wheelers and the Sinclairs and Claudia Henderson later tonight too.
“Actually, your boy here decided to play hero.” Sometimes Hopper couldn’t help but try to knock a smug bastard down a peg. It felt a little unconventional to do it by praising a man’s son, but he’d take whatever opportunity came his way. Maybe he could even admit that Steve deserved the credit. He clapped a hand on Steve’s shoulder. Maybe he did it a little too hard because Steve started a bit as he did. “You know Mike Wheeler? Nancy’s brother?”
Daniel nodded. Good for him, if he was telling the truth. Hopper would not have placed money on him knowing anything about the life of his son’s girlfriend of the past year.
“Mike was out with some of his friends, and he’s got a bit of a mouth on him, seems like they pissed somebody off. Late teens, early twenties, kids weren’t sure. Didn’t know who it was. This guy starts harassing them, and then it starts to get physical. Roughed up the Sinclair kid a little. You know the type. Well, about that time, Steve here comes along and steps in to protect the kids. Didn’t uh,” he paused and meaningfully looked Steve up and down, earning himself a scowl from the kid, “didn’t work out so well for Steve. But he protected those kids. Not a scratch on them, thanks to him.” It was close to the truth, which would be useful for making sure all the kids had the story straight, not to mention Steve, what with his brain getting rattled and all.
The look on Daniel’s face couldn’t quite be described as proud: more like not disappointed. Even still, Hopper thought he could detect a note of critique. Daniel would be even more not-disappointed if his son had either had the sense to stay out of the fight altogether, or the skill to win it.
Daniel made a noncommittal mutter, then added, “Maybe you should tell the Wheelers and the Sinclairs to keep a closer eye on their kids.”
There was no reaction in Steve’s face that Hopper could see. He wondered if it was a studied nonreaction or if he truly hadn’t caught the hypocrisy.
“And this thug,” Daniel went on brusquely, “have you arrested him?”
“Took off before I got there.”
“And are you gonna do your job and find him?”
“Don’t worry, Danny. We’ll look for him. Top of my priority list,” Hopper drawled, managing to keep the sarcasm in his voice to a relative minimum. “But odds aren’t great that we’ll be able to find him. Like I said, the kids claimed they didn’t know who he was and weren’t able to give much of a description. And Steve here says he doesn’t remember anything about the guy.” He let a note of disapproval and skepticism hang in his voice. Daniel probably wouldn’t believe that it was some mystery assailant, but kids refusing to snitch, even on someone who beat the crap out of them, was a regular enough occurrence.
“A complete mystery,” Daniel said with an edge to his voice. He seemed ready to make a fight of this; he just needed to decide whether his opponent was Hopper or Steve.
Hopper shrugged.
“Yeah Dad,” Steve chimed in suddenly, seeming to sense they were losing his father’s cooperation. “Honestly, I don’t remember much of what happened at all. The guy hit me with an old bottle or something, and it’s all pretty blurry.”
Hopper looked at him sharply. In his career he’d heard a lot of lies and excuses, but that rang true. So the slowness to respond all night wasn’t just sluggishness.
For the first time, genuine concern registered on Daniel’s face. He believed it too.
“All right,” Daniel said with a note of concession. “Come on inside, Steve. Go clean up and get some rest.”
With a small grunt, Steve straightened up from where he’d been leaning, shrugging past his father into the house. Virginia had materialized in the house behind her husband, and she ushered him away. Hopper watched them go.
He cleared his throat. “Look, Danny- Daniel,” he caught himself, dropping the simmering hostility. “The kid’s got a concussion. Seems like a bad one. You should take him to the hospital. I tried to get him to go, but he’s eighteen and I can’t force him. He should really get checked out by a doctor.”
The tight-lipped smile Daniel gave him was empty of any emotion. “Thank you, Chief.” He didn’t sound thankful. “We’ll certainly consider it.” He started to close the door. “Let me know when you find the one who did this.”
The door clicked firmly shut.
The headlights of his truck still illuminated Hopper as he stood on the Harrington doorstep. Dissatisfaction sat in his chest, irritating him. He’d done what he needed to do. Steve was home, the lie was spun, Daniel Harrington’s meddling was staved off. He’d even made a valiant attempt to convince them to go to the hospital. It wasn’t his fault if they didn’t follow his advice. Still, he felt unresolved. A job poorly done.
Back at the Byers house, a dozen fires were waiting for him to put out. Bob’s death would have to be dealt with. Joyce was grieving. Will was saved but with a whole heap of new trauma. A half dozen children needed to be ferried to their various houses. El needed to go home. He had enough problems without adding Steve Harrington back on to them. Let his parents worry about him and be glad he’s off your plate, Hopper told himself, slamming the thoughts shut with the door of his truck.
A few days later, driving around town, Hopper saw Billy Hargrove. He was on the side of the road with some girl, leaning against a car that looked a little worse for wear, its front bumper scratched and dented. More of note, several dark purplish bruises marred Hargrove’s face. Apparently Harrington wasn’t quite so useless in a fight after all. Hopper felt another twinge of regret for his assumptions that night. He’d seen enough bar fights to know how getting something, be it a plate or a beer bottle, smashed on your head can turn a tide.
As Hopper drove past, slowing a little, the boy looked up and met his gaze. Billy’s eyes unsettled him. They were turbulent with a distrust so deep it bordered on malice. Like a feral dog that might attack just about anyone. He’d known guys like this–men who came back after the war with something broken inside of them.
He thought about stopping. He could put the fear of God into Billy, make sure that he steered clear of Max and Steve and the boys. He could make it clear that criminal charges were still on the table. Steve could always “remember” who assaulted him. That kind of thing happened. He thought about going by the Harrington place to check on Steve. Unlike Billy, Steve was not up and running around town with girls. No sign of him out and about at all. It would be simple enough to swing by on the pretense of giving his parents an update on the so-called investigation, just to see how Steve was doing.
Hopper didn’t stop the car. He didn’t go by the Harringtons’ that day or any other. Over the months that followed he saw very little of Steve, except for at a distance.
Hawkins settled into winter and the rejuvenated normalcy. Spring brought familiar patterns. Summer exploded into cataclysms. And a year removed, in the fall of ‘85, Hopper found himself in a freezing cell in Russia, battered, starving, and worn.
Hopper didn’t think of Steve much during his time in Russia. Why would he? He hadn’t even thought much about Steve back in Hawkins. But one night in late September, dumped in the dirt of his cell, fresh off an interrogation that left his head murky with pain, and his mouth choked with blood, Hopper was struck by a bit of irony. Out of all the people he knew, the only person who’d had any experience like this was Steve Harrington of all people. Danny Harrington’s dumb jock son. The pretty boy. The poster child for entitled rich kids. That was the one person who had had even a small taste of what Hopper was now going through. It was so ridiculous that Hopper actually laughed out loud, surely looking like a madman, splayed on the ground, blood on his teeth, alone in the apathetic night. He stopped laughing when his ribs hurt too much.
Truth be told, Hopper wasn’t sure how much Steve’s encounter with the Russians had resembled his. When he’d arrived at Starcourt, he’d brushed past the news of Steve’s Russian adventure. There were other things on his mind. The kid was on his feet, so who cared what had happened in the base? A worry for another time and another person. Just like he’d brushed past the kid’s injuries the night they closed the gate.
He’s just a kid, the voice that sounded like Joyce said. He was kidnapped and tortured and drugged, and you didn’t even check on him. Nobody did.
I was a little busy, Hopper argued with himself. What with the whole stopping evil Russians and giant spider-monters thing. It wasn’t really the best time to stop and ask him about his feelings.
Not his feelings, no. But you could have at least checked to see if his ribs were broken before you started barking orders. And what about after it ended?
I didn’t really get that chance.
But you know you wouldn’t have. You’d have slapped him on the shoulder, told him to go to the hospital and just gone home with El.
He’s not my kid. It’s not my responsibility to parent him.
No. But somebody ought to do it.
The reflections of that evening were an outlier. For the rest of his months in Russia, Hopper didn’t think about Steve at all. In fact, this one internal debate made no impression. If you asked Hopper about it later, he would have no memory of it. It was one night’s pain-addled musing among a morass of identical nights with their own dreams and regrets.
Whatever window there had been for someone to step into Steve’s life, it was closed by the time Hopper returned to Hawkins.
The Steve who greeted Hopper in the spring of ‘86 was different than the kid hanging around the edges of Joyce’s kitchen in the fall of ‘84. His shoulders had broadened. His back was straighter. His jaw set easier. He didn’t retreat to the edges around Hopper or Joyce (or Nancy and Jonathan). And as the details of what had happened, both over spring break and back in the summer unfolded for Hopper, bit by bit over the course of the quarantine, he couldn’t deny that Steve had earned the right to stand there and be taken as a man. He’d taken responsibility and scars and loss thrown his way, and he’d grown up.
The kids responded to this change in Steve. Or maybe that was a reversal of cause and effect. Over the years, while Hopper had been preoccupied with other concerns, the kids had in some way asked something of Steve, and he had answered them. And in the same way that the heights of infatuation soften and settle into deeper love, the kids’ admiration for Steve that had sparked that night in ‘84 had faded and broadened into trust like a river. It rankled Hopper a little, the way he’d give an order and watch the kids’ eyes flick to Steve and Nancy, gauging their response first. Especially Lucas and Dustin, but Mike and Will and even El clearly felt their magnetism too. Nancy was all too aware of it. Their eyes on her were both a weight and nourishment, shaping her into a leader as she stood on the brink of adulthood. But Steve seemed hardly aware of it. Did he see the shades of himself in the way Lucas stood and walked and talked? Did he realize that as Dustin was buffeted by grief and rebellion it was Steve who acted as the anchor keeping him in port? Did he see anything noteworthy in his daily trips to the hospital to sit by Max’s bedside? Or did it all just pour from him naturally?
There was safety in Steve that the kids felt when so little in their childhoods felt safe. He’d carved out that space of trust, but not just with blood and sweat and bruises. It had also come from a thousand little favors, from holding on to the knowledge of details of their lives, from being present in the fire and when the storm was quiet.
In danger, in humor, in rest, the kids' eyes drifted to Steve. Because he was present. Because he listened. Because he cared.
Sometimes, against all odds, you give what you never received.