Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

DECEMBER 6, 1984
THURSDAY

Even before the Grabber’s basement, Steve had always hated the cold. The winter weather had only ever been tolerable when his family took their yearly daytrip up to the mountains—then, there was at least snow to go along with the chill—a stark difference from the brittle and brown Denver landscape.

Of course, once his mom died, those trips up to Winter Park had stopped entirely. No more renting ski equipment for the day, no more funnel cake after long hours racing each other down the slopes, cheeks pink from the wind and their wide smiles. Instead, his dad got a whole lot more drunk, and Steve and his sister got a whole bunch of bad memories.

After the situation with Alpine Lake, his hatred of the cold permanently seeped into the mountains that used to be his sanctuary. Then there was everything that had happened with the spooky evil tunnels…

Steve hated the cold.

So, why, pray tell, was he currently freezing his ass off in the middle of winter, trying to shovel the Byers’ driveway? Because he was a masochist, obviously.

…And maybe because he felt bad about Mrs. Byers’s boyfriend getting eaten by one of the demo-things the month before. Or because the guy had made a ghostly phone call the previous night, asking Steve to look after Mrs. Byers.

How was he supposed to say no to that?

“…Steve?” a voice called out. Steve startled at the sound and quickly shook off his train of thought before turning to face Jonathan. The other boy’s hair was ruffled in a distinctly unintentional way, and his flannel pants were frayed at the too-short hems.

“Hey,” Steve greeted, breath fogging in the early morning air. He went right back to shoveling.

Jonathan gave a loud sigh from behind him. “What the hell are you doing here, man? It’s like… it’s…the sun’s not even up yet.”

Steve paused. “…doesn’t Mrs.—er, doesn’t your mom work mornings at the corner store?” He looked over his shoulder with furrowed brows, meeting Jonathan’s sleep-crusted eyes.

“Well…yeah, but that’s not what I…why are you here, Steve?” he asked, running a tired hand down his face.

Steve couldn’t help but blink, confused at the question. Wordlessly, he gestured broadly at the half-cleared driveway. “What does it look like I’m doing?” he said slowly.

Jonathan pinched the bridge of his nose. “What I’m trying to ask is why are you, of all people, here?”

Steve sighed at that, wiping sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket before it had the chance to freeze in the cool air. “I’m trying to help, man. Last I checked, you guys just lost your main snow-shoveler. Figured it was the least I could do.” Steve shrugged, turning his gaze away and back towards his work.

He heard Jonathan mutter a curse behind him before the sound of the front door clicking shut echoed through the quiet morning air and figured that was the end of it. It took maybe two more lines of snow cleared off the driveway before Steve heard boots crunching towards him through the ice.

Privately, Steve thought Jonathan looked like the Marshmallow Man from that movie the kids made him watch, bundled up in a giant light-grey puffer that was far too large for him. With every shift in the breeze, he could smell the dusty combination of aromas that only ever came from thrift stores. It made him think of his childhood, back home in Colorado.

They fell into an uneven, but unfaltering, rhythm for a bit. Steve would take the lead plowing through a line, and Jonathan trailed after, breaking up the ice that had solidified beneath the snow and cleaning up the edges.

“…You didn’t have to do this, you know.”

Steve gave a small shrug. “I know.”

When Jonathan’s footsteps faltered, Steve paused and turned around.

“What? Something wrong?”

Jonathan shook his head but didn’t stop with the staring.

Steve took a deep breath, jabbing his shovel into a heap of snow and leaning slightly on the handle. He turned to look at Jonathan. “What, Byers?”

Jonathan kept giving that suspicious squint. “Why are you doing this? Do you want…money? Want me to…to put in a good word with Nance?”

“Jesus, no! I’m being—neighborly! I don’t know! You seriously think I’d show up unannounced to try and—Jesus,” Steve snapped, more than a little offended. “I know you don’t trust me, but Christ, Byers…” he ended with a mutter, sharply tugging his shovel free and getting back to work.

It was quiet for a moment. “…I don’t,” Jonathan agreed quietly. “But…but I guess that was unfair.”

Steve sighed, using his foot to kick off a chunk of snow stuck to his shovel. “Right,” he muttered. “I don’t know what you want from me, Jonathan,” he said, trying to hide his growing weariness. This would’ve been so much better for Steve if Jonathan had never come outside. “I’ve apologized, I’ve beat up monsters for you, and now I’m shoveling the driveway. Is it really that crazy to think that I just want to help?”

He could practically hear the gears whirring in Jonathan’s head, could practically see the way he was scanning Steve with those squinty-ass eyes of his, despite not even looking at him. Damn it. Steve had never been good at biting his tongue—look where it’d gotten him this time.

He shook his head, heaving a final pile of snow off the driveway. “There. Done. I’ll…I’ll leave you alone now.”

Steve started stalking off, shovel slung over his shoulders and balanced with his gloved hands.

“Steve­—” Jonathan finally said. Steve turned around, maybe halfway to the end of the drive. Jonathan met his eyes, gaze flickering across Steve’s face as though searching for something. “…Thanks.”

Steve gave him a firm nod and continued his walk. By the time he got to the road, he could almost pretend he’d never been at the Byers’ in the first place. He could pretend that the cold didn’t make him want to crawl out of his skin and curl up into a corner, didn’t make him think about cool concrete walls, or frozen lakes, or underground tunnels, or the terrible, terrible sound of a phone ringing.

Steve had never been good at biting his tongue, never good at being something he wasn’t. He’d never been good at pretending.

With an exhausted sigh, he shook the thoughts from his head and trudged into the early morning darkness.

Chapter Text

JUNE 10, 1985
MONDAY

“I’m just saying, if ghosts were real, they wouldn’t be hanging out in Hawkins!” Robin argued, feet swinging just above the ground from her perch on the counter they were supposed to keep clean to prep toppings for the ice cream, but three days after training ended, Steve had elected to stop caring about things like that.

He shook his head as he muscled out a scoop from a fresh (freezer-burnt) tub of sorbet. “You are so incredibly wrong it’s not even funny.”

Robin sighed in a way that Steve knew meant she was rolling her eyes, feet tapping an even staccato rhythm against the cabinets as she gently kicked back-and-forth. “No, I am absolutely right. If what you said about ghosts only being formed by super-traumatic deaths is true, then there’s literally no possible way that ghosts hang out in Hawkins.”

Steve couldn’t help but snort. The irony was not lost on him, for once.

It was almost surprising, how…comfortable he felt with Robin. Even talking about ghosts, of all things, he couldn’t bring himself to feel bad around her. She was annoying, and a smart-ass, and far too chatty for her own good, but—

…He didn’t know how to describe it. Quietly, he decided that it didn’t matter.  This tentative friendship could fizzle out in a month, a week, a day, but for now…he was going to enjoy it. Steve was happy—a rarity in his miserable life—and by now he knew better than to look at a gift horse in the mouth.

Steve slid the cup of ice cream to the customer waiting on the other side of the counter, then turned around and pointed his scooper at Robin. “Barb Holland,” he pointed out, doing his best to ignore the pang of guilt that rose in his throat.

Robin stopped tapping her feet. “I…yeah, I guess she would count, wouldn’t she?” she agreed softly. The store was empty, now. It was quiet. Steve sighed, internally cursing his talent for ruining good things.

“Did you…know her?” he asked gently.

Robin swallowed, completely focused on whatever was new with the back of her hand and deftly avoiding Steve’s gaze. He looked away and started refilling toppings, ears straining for any noise, a hitch of breath, a whisper, that might indicate she had something to say.

“…Yeah. We were best friends as kids. We grew apart, but…” she trailed off.

Steve kept quiet, letting her gather her thoughts.

“…I thought she’d skipped town. We used to talk about it a lot: leaving Hawkins and running away to someplace cool. Somewhere with mountains and three waterfalls or something.”

Steve hummed, finishing his—probably unnecessary—restock. “Well…if you still want to go somewhere like that, Rifle Falls State Park is maybe a 20-hour drive. Pretty much a straight shot west down the interstate, too.”

He turned around to face her, leaning against the glass casing of the ice-cream cabinet with crossed arms, only to find she was staring at him. She wasn’t saying anything.

“…What’d I say?”

Robin blinked. She blinked again. “…You go to state parks?” she probed dryly.

Steve’s flickered his eyes to the side, then to the other side, searching for some kind of hidden meaning in her question, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of one. “…Yeah?”

“You go to state parks in other states,” she pointed out, eyebrows raised.

Steve furrowed his brows. “Well…I used to live a couple hours away, so…yeah. I’ve been to state parks in other states.”

Despite all signs pointing to it being physiologically impossible, Robin’s eyebrows shot up even further. “You’re not from Hawkins?” she said incredulously—almost more of an accusation than a question.

“What? No. I moved here a couple years ago.”

“…And you didn’t mention this before because…?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “You didn’t ask, Buckley.”

The bell at the door rang, announcing the arrival of another customer. She leveled him with a half-hearted glare as she approached the register. “I hate you,” she informed him.

“No, you don’t.”

Chapter Text

MARCH 11, 1983
FRIDAY

After their break spent at Alpine Lake things were…good. Almost suspiciously so. Gwen’s nightmares had ceased, for the time being, Finn’s weekly visits with the school counselor were going well, for once, and their dad…

Well, their dad was still sober.

Finn had been convinced that his and Gwen’s absence from the house for those few days was plenty of time for Terrence to fall off the deep end again, but, miraculously, he hadn’t. Instead, he called in a favor and drove a snowplow all the way up to Alpine Lake to bring Finn and Gwen home. And when Gwen refused to leave, and Finn refused to leave his sister…he’d stayed.

Their dad had stayed. It was almost too good to be true. He was sure it was too good to be true. So, Finn couldn’t help but keep a watchful eye for beer bottles whenever he took out the trash, couldn’t help but scan Gwen whenever she entered the room, searching for the telltale signs she was hiding some kind of injury—whether from a dream or from Terrence

After two months, though…Finn’s walls began to crumble a bit. It was some kind of mixture of reassurances from the counselor and Gwen and general peacefulness, and it was maybe the worst thing that’d ever happened to him. The moment he let himself hope that things might be okay…

Finn came home late from school on a random day in March—hell if he could remember what he was doing that was so much more important than looking out for his family, but he couldn’t undo it. Not then, not in the future, not ever.

He remembered turning the corner.

He remembered seeing the red and blue lights before the cop cars.

He remembered seeing the cop cars before his father.

He remembered seeing his father before the handcuffs around his wrists.

He remembered seeing the handcuffs before the ambulance.

He remembered seeing the ambulance before the body on the stretcher

He remembered seeing the mangled body before seeing the face—

Finney registered two things at the same time: Gwen was dead, her body broken beyond repair, and Terrence was being loaded into the back of a cop car with blood on his hands.

The rest of that month was a blur of grief, betrayal, and just about every other emotion known to the human psyche. Finney came out of his haze just in time to pack up some keepsakes and other belongings before being shipped off to some town in Indiana to live with some woman who was supposed to be his mom’s cousin, or something.

As he packed, he couldn’t help but hesitate before tucking a picture of his mother, father, sister, and himself into his bag, taking care not to crease the print.

Finney hated himself for feeling guilty about refusing to speak to his father, but he just couldn’t take it anymore. Gwen was gone, and his mom was gone, and his dad was, for all intents and purposes, gone. He didn’t think he could bear seeing his dad as an inmate, as a murderer.

No. Terrence could rot in jail. Gwen, his mom, his dad…they could stay safe and sound, preserved in a photograph.

Finney took a plane to Indiana—his first time ever being airborne. The boy he was before the Grabber, before his mom died, would’ve been ecstatic. All Finney could think, though, was that he was tired of being screwed over by the world. Tired of being Finn or Finney or a Blake.

He left Denver International Airport as Finn Steven Blake.

He landed in Indianapolis as Steven Harrington.

Chapter Text

DECEMBER 14, 1984
FRIDAY

The Harrington landline rang in the early hours of the morning. Steve, of course, was already awake—if only to avoid his pseudo-family before they came downstairs. Mostly, though, he enjoyed his daily ritual of making and eating breakfast as the sun rose. Casting a furtive glance at the staircase, he dashed for the phone before it could wake them up.

“Harrington residence, this is Steve,” he said quietly into the receiver. Half of him was waiting for that telltale crackly static that meant the phone call was coming from someplace a little left of normal, but there was nothing.

“Steve? This is Joyce—Joyce Byers?”

He let out a small breath before allowing himself to sink into some slight worry, leaning against the wall. “Hey, Ms. Byers. Is everything okay?”

“Hm? Oh, yes, honey, I was just wondering if you’d be able to pick up Will and drop him off at the Snow Ball tomorrow night. Claudia—Mrs. Henderson—mentioned you were driving Dustin. Jonathan has to be there early to set up the photo booth, but I just realized I’m scheduled for a double shift, and, well—"

“Yeah, for sure. I’ll probably get there a little bit after seven,” he interrupted, smiling slightly. She didn’t need to explain why she didn’t want Will to bike there all by himself.

A sigh of relief. “Thanks, Steve. I really, really appreciate it. How much do I owe you?”

“Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Byers,” Steve replied, idly playing with the cord on the phone.

“Oh no, call me Joyce, honey. Are—are you sure? I know gas prices are going up, so—”

He cut her off again. “Really, Mrs. Byers, it’s alright. Want me to drop him off afterwards, too?”

“…If you don’t mind, I’m sure he’d appreciate that instead of having to wait for Jonathan to finish or for me to get him,” she responded, somewhat sheepishly.

Steve nodded to himself. Gwen used to hate getting picked up late just because he or his dad couldn’t get her. “Yeah, makes sense. Back home—” he cut himself off, almost startled at what he’d almost let slip out. Christ, he must still be half asleep. He shook off the train of thought. “I…I get it. Do you want me to hang out with him till you or Jonathan get home? I could talk to Mrs. Henderson and see if she’s okay with Dustin hanging around till then, too.”

She was quiet for a moment. “…Sure, hun’. You’re a real help. Oh, before I forget—Jonathan mentioned it was you who helped shovel the driveway last week. I wanted to thank you—it was very thoughtful.”

“Yeah, of course. I…I figured it’s been hard for you guys recently,” he said softly. “I would’ve dropped by sooner with a casserole or something, but I’m sure you’re tired of them by now.”

Mrs. Byers laughed. “You have no idea. Well, thank you again. For the driveway and for Will. You’re a good kid.”

By the time Steve swallowed down the lump in his throat enough to respond, Mrs. Byers had already hung up. He put the phone back and returned to eating his breakfast in the quiet darkness.

He needed to leave soon if he wanted to get to school on time to meet with Ms. Kelly before class.