Chapter Text
Steve isn’t surprised when the call comes. He isn’t even really disappointed. Mostly, he just doesn’t know how to feel. His parents haven’t been home in over a year, so hearing his mother tell him they won’t be coming back feels more like a formality than anything else.
At least they leave him the house.
He doesn’t tell anyone at first. After all, nothing really changes. Robin still finds out anyway — almost immediately. It would probably be concerning how well she knows him if Steve hadn’t already accepted that they’re basically the same person at this point. She already has a key to his house and spends most of her time there anyway, so when she starts bringing over more of her stuff and dumping it in one of the many empty rooms, they don’t even bother talking about it.
Most people in Hawkins — the ones who care enough to have an opinion — assume they’re dating, and Steve can’t blame them. They do everything together. They work together, eat together, drink from the same milkshake, call each other cheesy pet names as often as they insult each other, and sleep in the same bed most nights. At this rate, if their love lives keep going the way they are, they’ll probably end up getting married for tax purposes or something.
Steve wouldn’t mind.
When they apply for college, it’s never even a question that they’ll go to the same one. Steve knows their codependency passed the line into concerning a long time ago.
He still doesn’t mind.
“You know you’re, like… never allowed to leave me, right?” Robin says one night, high out of her mind, sprawled beside him on the living room carpet.
Steve blinks up at the flickering lamp above them, trying to clear his head enough to answer.
“Why would I ever do that?”
Robin hums, satisfied, and pats his head with all the coordination of someone very, very stoned.
“Just wanted to make sure.”
For a moment, the room is quiet except for the music from the record player Robin’s parents gave her as a “moving out” present, changing from The Clash to Billy Joel.
“I love you, Robs,” Steve says. “You’re like The One — just without the sex.”
“Platonic soulmates,” Robin agrees.
“With a capital P,” they say at the same time, before dissolving into giggles.
//
Steve isn’t entirely sure how Max ends up moving in. She starts sleeping over more and more whenever the Party comes by, and then one day she just… stops going home.
He lets her.
It’s no secret that her mother is unreliable at best and borderline neglectful at worst, and while Steve doesn’t exactly see himself as a model guardian, at least he’s there.
Besides, Max is almost as moody as Mike, and messing with her is fun.
“What do you want for dinner?” Steve asks when he gets home from his shift at Family Video.
Max is sitting at the kitchen table doing homework. She rolls her eyes at his question as if his mere present were a personal inconvenience.
“Do I look like I care?”
Steve lifts an eyebrow as he starts unpacking groceries.
“So you’d be okay if I made that spinach quiche from Mrs. Henderson?”
She grimaces disgusted, which Steve thinks is a little dramatic.
“No. That thing was absolutely inedible.”
Honestly, he agrees. Still, part of him is tempted to make it again just to annoy her. Max seems to catch the thought the second it crosses his mind and narrows her eyes at him.
“No spinach,” she says. “Or turnips.”
Steve grins and walks over to ruffle her hair.
“See? Was that so hard?”
“Don’t touch my hair!” she snaps, but like always, she doesn’t actually pull away. If anything, she leans into it, glaring at him like he’d burned her favorite cassette.
“Hey, don’t talk to your mother like that!” Robin calls from the next room, sounding just as entertained by the teenage angst as Steve feels.
//
Once Max starts living with them, Lucas starts coming over more to see his girlfriend.
“But remember to leave the door open,” Steve teases as the two of them head for Max’s room.
“Oh my God, shut up!” Max snaps at the exact same time Lucas yelps, “Steve!”
Steve just smiles innocently.
“You’re just as bad as my mom,” Lucas complains.
Steve tosses a wet dishcloth at him.
Max shrugs. “At this point, he basically is my mom.”
Steve freezes, unsure whether he’s supposed to feel flattered or deeply concerned.
//
Holly is smiling brightly, waving as she slips into the backseat next to Mike. Steve is picking them all up for a game night at his — on Dustin’s insistence. He’s been pestering Steve all week to spend more time with them. Steve is almost certain he’s just scared Max is going to become his new favorite. It would be annoying if it weren’t so funny — and at least a little endearing.
“Hey, Holly!” Steve waves back. “I didn’t know you were coming today.”
“Mom couldn’t find a babysitter,” she explains. “Mike told her you wouldn’t mind if I came along!”
Steve gives Mike a flat look. “Oh. Did he say that now?”
Mike shrugs, not looking even slightly guilty.
“It’s fine, right?”
Holly looks so excited and happy, maybe because her big brother wants to spend time with her, or maybe because she hasn’t been over to Steve’s in months.
Steve sighs. There goes his plan to study while the kids play their nerdy little game.
“No, it’s cool. I’m always happy to have you, Holly. You’re the best Wheeler anyway.”
He winks at her, and her smile somehow gets even wider. One day he’ll learn to say no to those kids.
Today is not that day.
//
Eddie loves Dungeons & Dragons. He loves diving into another world and briefly leaving all his problems behind. He loves being the one to build that world and decide what happens next.
Still, today he can’t concentrate, and the reason — as so often — is Steven Harrington. Former king of Hawkins High and now proud mother of six to eight children, depending on the day.
At the moment, he’s standing in the kitchen, Holly and Erica perched on the counter beside the stove while he explains to El how to crack an egg without getting shell into the batter. Eddie can see them through the open doorway, and right now Steve is laughing at something Erica said, sunlight catching in his hair, eyes bright and striking, and he is so, so pretty.
“Eddie! Munson!” Mike’s annoyed voice snaps him out of his daze. “What do we find in the new passage? Are there more enemies?”
Eddie blinks. Right. He’s the Dungeon Master. He’s telling a story. Obsessing over Steve can come later.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry,” he mumbles, then clears his throat and slips back into character.
“You continue your travel. A new passage opens up to your right, narrow and half-swallowed by shadow, as though the dungeon had been hiding it until now—”
From there on, the campaign continues more or less without complications. There are only two more Steve-related blunders, and really, it’s the other man’s fault for being so goddamn sweet and domestic. Anyone who was ever even slightly interested in men would be pushed to their limit.
Anyway, all of this would be fine if Eddie couldn’t feel Max’s judgmental stare on him after he messes up his lines for the third time.
//
They’re sitting in the school cafeteria and Will is explaining his newest physics presentation when Max suddenly says, “Eddie wants to sleep with Steve.”
Dustin chokes on his strawberry milk, eyes watering as it comes back out through his nose.
“What?” he manages between coughs.
Will and Lucas stare at her wide-eyed, while Mike seems frozen in place.
“Eddie wants to sleep with Steve,” Max repeats, as if that explains anything.
“Max,” Lucas says slowly, “what are you talking about?”
The girl wrinkles her nose as if they should all obviously know this, and she’s disappointed they don’t.
“I realized it during the last campaign,” she says as she unpacks her lunch. Salad and two sandwiches. Dustin just knows Steve prepared it and can’t help the stab of jealousy. He really shouldn’t be jealous of Max. After all, he still has both his parents and Steve.
“You realized that Eddie wants to sleep with Steve?” Will asks again, slowly.
Max nods.
“But — what — that — no!” Dustin finally gets out once he stops coughing. “That’s like… that’s like if our dad wanted to date our mom!” His eyes widen at his own words. “Oh my God, it makes so much sense!”
He says it a little too loudly, and people around them turn to stare, but none of them really care. After multiple near-apocalypses, school reputation stops mattering all that much.
“It does not make sense!” Mike argues, finally snapping out of his paralysis. “It’s disgusting and not true!”
Beside him, Will shrinks back, tensing. “Because they’re both men?”
Mike glances at him, confused. “What? No. Because they’re Steve and Eddie!”
Immediately, Will relaxes again. “Oh…” He furrows his brows, biting his lip. “But is it really that bad? I think they’d be good for each other.”
Now that the first shock has passed, Dustin kind of sees where Will is coming from. Eddie and Steve work well together, both in world-ending scenarios and in everyday life. They’re completely different and still somehow similar in every way that counts. They’d both do anything for the people they care about.
Max doesn’t seem satisfied with this, her frown only deepening.
“Maybe,” she says at last, “but Eddie has to prove himself first.”
“Prove himself?” Lucas asks.
Max crosses her arms.
“Yes. Prove himself. Prove he’s good enough for Steve.”
There’s a moment of silence as the boys think it over, and while the whole thing still seems kind of mind-boggling to Dustin, he also gets what Max means. All of them have seen Steve get hurt over and over again, and even if Eddie is their friend… he still has to prove he can be trusted.
From the others’ expressions, Dustin thinks they get it too.
“But if he really likes Steve,” Will says cautiously, “he wouldn’t hurt him, right?”
“Billy was also into Steve,” Max snaps, “and look where that ended.”
Once again, all the boys gape at her.
“Billy was—”
“What?”
“How do you know—?”
Max shrugs.
“He had a picture of Steve in his room. The ugly one from the yearbook. And one time I found him—”
“No, no, no!” Dustin cuts in. “I do not want to hear any more about Steve and your creep of a brother!” He pauses. “Uh… sorry.”
She shakes her head.
“It’s fine.” Her glare hardens. “But you get it, right?”
They all nod, even Mike, who still likes pretending he doesn’t care about Steve.
//
“Is Robin going to be there too?” Dustin asks, a little too solemnly, after Steve mentions he’s going to watch a movie with Eddie.
Steve frowns at him. Not for the first time, he realizes how much the kid has grown. He doesn’t have to look down all that far anymore; they’re almost the same height now.
“Uh. Yeah. She’ll be there. Why?”
Dustin nods, satisfied. “Good. You’re not allowed to do anything alone with him for now.”
Steve stares. As far as he knows, Dustin practically worships Eddie.
“Why the hell not?”
Dustin shifts, clicking his tongue the way he sometimes does when he’s not sure how to say something. Then:
“…you’re better as a single mom. For now, at least.”
Immediately, all of Steve’s concern vanishes. He huffs.
“Doesn’t this mom thing ever get old?”
The boy gives him a pitying look and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“No, Steve. No, it doesn’t.”
//
“So if Mike jumped off a cliff,” Steve asks, eyebrow raised and arms crossed, “you’d jump too?”
The whole Party, plus Eddie and Robin, is sprawled around his living room watching some gruesome movie Steve has been trying very hard to ignore.
Beside him, Will looks sheepish and shrugs. “Kind of, yeah…”
From Steve’s other side, Mike mutters, “As if you wouldn’t follow Robin.”
Which is, admittedly, a decent argument, but not the point.
“And you, Wheeler,” Steve says, turning on him immediately. “Where did you even get cigarettes? And then give some to Will? He’s the sweetest one out of all of you. Don’t be a bad influence.”
Will beams. Mike rolls his eyes.
“Whatever you say, mother.”
“He is not the sweetest,” Max says.
“He absolutely is,” Steve says. “He's an innocent angel and shoulde never be smoking behind a dumpster.”
Dustin nearly chokes laughing.
“Also, not that anyone ever cares,” Steve grumbles, “but I didn’t actually give birth to any of you, you know.”
Robin smirks at him over El’s shoulder. “You sure about that? I mean, you had a giant hoe phase. Maybe you’re just embarrassed you don’t know who the father is.”
“Robin!” Steve whines. “You’re my best friend. You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“Oh, come on. When have I ever been on your side about this?”
“I’m taking away your movie-night-picking privileges.”
“That is such a mom threat,” Eddie says.
“You don’t get a vote,” Steve shoots back.
“See?” Dustin says. “That too.”
Steve slumps deeper into the couch. “You know you all have actual mothers, right?”
“I actually don’t,” El pipes up.
The room stills for a second.
“I haven’t seen my mother in two months,” Max says from the floor, not looking away from the TV.
Steve’s expression crumples. “Okay, wow. Great. Awesome. Way to make me feel like an asshole.”
Will, still tucked up against his side, reaches up to pat him on the head. “You’re not an asshole.”
“Your taste in music still sucks, though,” Mike adds helpfully.
“And your taste in movies,” Lucas throws in.
Steve huffs, only mildly offended.
Dustin grins, apparently deciding to take pity on him. “But you’re a really good cook.”
“And you give good hugs,” El says quietly.
Steve glances at her, and whatever sarcastic comeback he had lined up dies on the way out. Instead, he just sighs and pulls the blanket up to his chin.
“Alright. All of you are banned from emotional honesty for the rest of the night.”
When Max leans back against his legs from her spot on the floor, Steve reaches down to ruffle her hair. Across the couch, Robin starts tossing popcorn at him, and El smiles in that innocent way he’s pretty sure she’s weaponizing.
Steve sighs again. Maybe it’s time to just accept his role in teenage parenthood.