Chapter Text
Sometimes – okay, most of the time, if he’s being really honest with himself – it doesn’t even feel like she belongs to him. It’s a horrible thing for him to even think, so Steve tries not to, tries to avoid letting it pop up as much as he can. No other person alive knows that he feels this way – it’s disrespectful enough to know it himself without telling someone else. Artemis will know his feelings either way, but the least he can do is not say it out loud. Not that much seems to phase her.
He never even told Nancy, which maybe should’ve been his biggest clue that this was not a relationship destined to last, but hindsight is 20/20. Just another thing in his life that feels temporary – like Carol and Tommy, always more wrapped up in their own bullshit to really care about him.
Like his parents, throwing money into the bank accounts and assuming that means he’s taken care of. Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, it isn’t like they beat him or call him names. He doesn’t speak to them, sometimes for months at a time, especially after he hits middle school and can be trusted to use the stove and do the laundry without a nanny in the house. But it’s fine. Most kids can only dream of the kind of freedom he has. It hardly matters that it feels more like a big fancy prison than freedom, that’s just Steve’s own neuroticism talking.
Some people just have this ability to know themselves. Some people just fundamentally understand themselves. Steve does not.
Everyone settles differently, of course, and at different ages, but it usually occurs around thirteen or fourteen. Sometimes, like Will, they experience an event that forces this to happen a little earlier. Sometimes, like Steve, it takes a little longer than that for the daemon to decide.
His mom said that her daemon spent weeks, months, flirting with finch shapes until finally he stuck as a rosefinch. His dad used to say that his daemon randomly became a gray fox one day and the form just clicked. Most people seem to have experiences like that.
Not Steve – Steve woke up one morning to find that Artemis was an Aussie – an Australian Shepherd with a patched blue merle coat, lying at the foot of his bed. Nothing seemed unusual about it until hours later. On the way home from Tommy’s after school that day, Steve spots a pair of cardinals on a fencepost and after pausing a moment to admire the peach-colored feathers of the female and the bright scarlet red of the male, he says, “Try that one, Artie.”
Artemis has always had a pleasant and eerily even tone, almost detached, just another of the reasons that he sometimes wondered if she was actually his. That day she was just as mild and even as ever. “No. I’m staying this way, Steve.”
“Oh,” he says, blinking and crouching into the snow to get a better look at her. The mottled blue-gray-black of the merle coat extended all the way up to her face. It created a pale mask, outlining her eyes in black like eyeliner, with rust-colored patches on either side of her cheeks. Her most striking feature though were her eyes, both a pale and piercing marble blue. “Okay.”
There were jokes of course, from literally every guy on the basketball team. ‘Harrington’s a bitch’. Steve heard it all. Every possible dog joke, he’s heard each and every one about a thousand times.
But objectively, he was a bitch in the most literal sense of the word. Steve’s soul was a female dog, and he had no idea why. He couldn’t understand his own soul, didn’t know why Artemis was the way she was. She was so calm and aloof that sometimes it felt like she existed on a totally separate plane from him.
Instead of calling him retarded or telling Steve to get a clue the way everyone else in his life seemed to do, Artemis licks at his fingers at they lay in bed, the one pool of light in the giant shadows of his dark empty house. “It’s alright, Steve,” she says in her sweet mild alto, pushing her head beneath his hand. “You still love me anyway, don’t you?”
“Of course,” he tells her, grief-stricken, face hidden in her mottled fur so that he could cry without anybody knowing it. It didn’t really matter – no one was ever home with them. Steve has gotten used to it. “Of course I love you, Artie.”
“Then everything’s alright,” she says serenely. “Steve – oh Steve, it’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, brushing his hand through her fluffy coat. “I feel like I’m failing you.”
“We just need some extra time.”
The first time Steve feels like he and Artemis belong to each other, a Demogorgon has Jonathan pinned to the floor in the middle of the Byers’ living room, and his mentality clicks with hers.
Kill it, kill it, kill it. Now, now, now.
Artemis is a whitish blur charging through the Byers front door. The monster’s shriek is awful as Artie sinks her fangs into its neck, staining her white chest with the black blood pouring from the wounds. It shakes and thrashes, but Artie just won’t let it go, growling furiously as she tightens her jaws around the thick muscles of its neck and shoulders, paws braced along its back, out of the range of its flower-shaped mouth.
Steve follows up his brave bitch by popping it in the face and chest with a baseball bat loaded with nails, driving the Demogorgon straight into the beartrap. Artie refuses to let it go until Jonathan flicks the lighter on, bounding into Steve’s arms the moment before the flames can catch her.
“That was so brave,” Nancy says, kissing Artemis on the snout. Her daemon Celestis sort of tentatively preens at Artie’s fur and he nearly grins. It’s kind of cute.
Steve’s face still throbs from the (well deserved) thrashing Jonathan gave him, his heart beats at double-time, so hard that it makes his chest hurt. But he leans down to wrap an arm around Artie’s neck. “That’s my girl,” he whispers, resting his forehead against her. “You were amazing, Artie.”
“My brave boy,” Artemis replies fondly, licking his face. “You were right there with me, Steve.”
She’s covered from muzzle to feet in grayish-black monster blood and for the first time, he feels like he’s done right by her.
---
Steve has no idea what Billy Hargrove wants from him, but the asshole doesn’t seem willing to leave him alone until he gets it. Shoving into his space, hissing at him under his breath, pushing him down on the basketball court.
This is especially weird for Steve because Billy’s daemon is way more polite – normally someone who behaves that belligerently will also have a very hostile daemon toward the person they don’t like. But Billy’s daemon is just…indifferent. To everything, actually. It sort of reminds him of Artie, but that sounds so strange and disloyal, Steve flinches away from the thought.
She’s also, Steve silently acknowledges, one of the most gorgeous creatures he’s ever seen. Nancy’s daemon Celestis is beautiful and fearsome looking and Artie has a very sweet face, but Billy Hargrove’s daemon is just flat-out stunning, and Billy knows it. She’s also easily one of the largest daemons he’s ever seen, even bigger than Chief Hopper’s Andy, and nearly as big as a fully grown man.
Steve doesn’t know what her name is, but he does know what a cougar is, and Billy’s daemon definitely is a cougar. Her pelt is a sand-colored gold, matching her green-gold eyes, and she stalks in front of Billy like she owns the whole world. He’s obviously very proud of her – she wears even more jewelry than he does.
Bands of gold collaring protect her neck, the plating engraved with some sort of runic writing, but she also wears long ropes of gold chain studded with bright blue turquoise stones, matching the studs and hoops pierced through her ears. Additional gold rings wrap the length of her tail. Billy even puts in the effort of sharpening and painting her huge claws.
She’s entirely indifferent to Billy’s barely controlled rage, watching them throughout basketball practice with little more than a lazy swish of the tail, surveying them like a queen upon her throne.
Artie sits on the sidelines on the opposite side of the court, where the other daemons on Steve’s team are, ears upright but otherwise pretty idle. No daemon is allowed on the field in any sport – it would give certain players an unfair edge.
And when Billy watches her follow Steve back into the showers, an unholy glee overtakes his face. “I’ll be damned, Harrington,” he says, staring straight at Artie like the rude asshole he is. “I should’ve guessed you were a little bitch.”
Artemis cocks her head and stares right back at him with her ice-blue eyes. She grins at Billy, a wide doggy grin that shows all her teeth. Then she sneezes and walks away and Steve follows behind her, an uneasy feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.
It’s hard to make himself care about all Billy’s posturing over taking away the title of King when Steve hadn’t exactly sat easy on his throne since the beginning of junior year. Hell, he’ll give it away if Billy will fuck off and leave him alone.
But Steve had the feeling that Billy wouldn’t fuck off and he was right.
“Am I dreaming or is that you, Harrington?” This time, Billy’s daemon isn’t quite so calm and indifferent, stalking out of the car low to the ground as though she’s about to pounce on something.
“Yeah it’s me, don’t cream your pants,” Steve answers tightly. Artie’s ears are lifted straight up, her back tense with alertness. He isn’t exactly scared of Billy Hargrove…but Max is. He could see it in her face the moment they heard the growl of the blue Camaro pulling up to the Byers driveway. That alone is enough to put them on edge.
The moment Billy whips off his jacket, Steve knows this ain’t gonna end well. “What are you doing here, amigo?”
“Could ask you the same thing, amigo,” Steve replies. Restlessly, Artie begins to pace in an arched line behind him, keeping herself between the cougar daemon and the front door. Good girl.
“Lookin’ for my stepsister. Little birdie told me she was here,” Billy tells him through the cigarette.
Billy smells like booze and looks ready for a fight and this is another moment in his life Steve feels like he and Artie belong together because there’s no way either of them are letting Maxine get into a car with him. “Huh, that’s weird. I dunno her.”
“Small, redhead, bit of a bitch,” Billy says, with a tiny sneer that says this wasn’t a wisecracking joke between siblings.
“Doesn’t ring a bell, sorry buddy,” Steve lies. I think something’s wrong with his daemon. Her ears are back and she already smells like blood, Steve. He doesn’t let himself look at the cougar, doesn’t want to give Artie away.
Billy nods in agreement before pulling the cigarette out of his mouth. “I dunno, Harrington, this whole situation,” he waves a hand in an ambiguous gesture. “It’s givin’ me the heebie-jeebies.”
Steve feigns amusement. “Yeah, why’s that?”
Billy’s stare is hard, no more pretend affability in his demeanor as he takes another drag on the cigarette. Just behind him, the cougar makes a horrible hissing sound, like a cobra about to strike, and her tail lashes the air. Steve, to his credit, doesn’t jump or flinch. “My thirteen-year-old sister goes missin’ all day, and then I find her with you, in a stranger’s house, and you lie to me about it.”
“Man, were you dropped too much as a child? I don’t know what you don’t understand about what I just said. She’s not here.”
He points the cherry at the Byers’ front windows. “Then who’s that?”
“Ah shit,” Steve mutters. “Listen-”
He goes down hard when Billy shoves him, winded. “I told you to plant your feet.”
Pain explodes over in his stomach as Billy follows that with a sharp kick to the ribs and Artemis gives a high yelp, barely able to remain standing herself.
It hurts, god it hurts, but they can hear crashing inside the house, and the children screaming and shit, he’s not good for much but he can make Billy more interested in hurting them than hurting the kids and that’s good enough for them.
“You’re DEAD, SINCLAIR!”
“No,” Artemis says lowly, shocking everyone into directing their attention to her and Steve. “You are.”
He will cherish the look of genuine surprise on Billy’s forever, when Artemis charges straight at the cougar, every bit as daring as she was when confronted with the Demogorgon.
Using your daemon to fight another daemon isn’t socially acceptable in most cultures and in a developed society, this was doubly true. Unless you were a police officer or a soldier, fighting with your daemon as a combatant was something only troublemakers and criminals did.
But Billy didn’t realize that they were playing with way different stakes here.
The cougar lets out a terrifying, growling scream as Artemis bites her, latching onto her shoulder. None of her attempts to throw Artie off are successful – she was smart enough to avoid biting at the gold-plated collar guarding her neck – and when Billy whirls on Steve, he has just enough time to realize he and Artie may have bitten off more than they can chew this time.