Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As soon as the thing—monster, there really is no other way to describe it—disappears from the hallway and the lights finish twinkling, Nancy and Jonathan head straight for the car parked in front of the Byers’ house. She says something about needing to check in with their brothers and the other kids, and Steve is barely registering a word and he knows he’s babbling like an idiot, but he can’t help it because holy shit monsters are real. Still, Nancy sends him on his way with a promise that she’ll call him and explain everything later. It’s only after they’re gone that he realizes he’s still holding the baseball bat with nails in it.

Chapter Text

“Hey, I need you to do something for me,” comes Nancy’s voice on the other end of the phone.

“Oh yeah?” Steve smirks, leaning up against the wall of his kitchen as he cradles his home phone against his face with his shoulder. “And what is it, exactly, that you would like me to do for you?”

“I- shut up.” He can almost hear the blush in her voice. They’ve been dating for over seven months now and he can’t help it if he still likes to make her blush. “I need you to pick up lunch for the boys.”

Well, that certainly wasn’t where Steve thought she was going with this. A call from his girlfriend in the middle of a summer day usually involves doing something a lot more fun than babysitting. He’s well aware of who Nancy is talking about, of course: her little brother and his friends. All four of them have been hanging out at the Wheeler house almost constantly this summer whenever they aren’t at the arcade. Coincidentally, Steve has also spent most of his time at the Wheeler’s, though for an entirely different reason. But they tend to stick to the basement and he’s either in the living room or in Nancy’s room, so his interactions with them have been passing at best.

He must have been quiet a little too long because Nancy sighs and says, “Look, my dad is at work and my mom took Holly on a playdate and I was supposed to pick up a pizza, but I’m stuck babysitting at Mrs. Peterson’s and she called and said she’s going to be back late. So, will you please go pick up the pizza and drop it off at my house? For me, please?”

“Alright,” Steve relents, because he’s got nothing better to do and he really does like helping Nancy out. “But I’m not babysitting, I’ll just drop the pizza off.”

“Great!” Her voice is suddenly much more chipper. “The pizza is already paid for, so no worries there. Just tell them you’re picking up for Wheeler. And if you want to wait around my house for a little while, I should be back in an hour and a half.”

Now that sounds like a promise of the fun afternoon he was hoping for. “Well in that case, I’d be happy to drop by. Might have to kick the kids out though, so we can have the house to ourselves.”

“You are such an idiot, Steve,” Nancy says, but he can hear the smile in her voice, which is what he was aiming for.

And that’s how Steve finds himself walking into the Wheeler house holding a large pizza box, feeling like the least-well compensated delivery boy of all time. The downstairs of the house is quiet, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s home, but that doesn’t surprise him. He’s sure the boys are in the basement playing that dice game that they like so much. He makes his way towards the stairs and, lo and behold, he can see the four boys are huddled around the table, papers and little figurines strewn everywhere.

Mike is speaking in an ominous voice, “… when you turn around, you see a huge shadow being cast on the wall and you-”

The one with no teeth—Dustin, Steve recalls—is the first one to spot Steve creeping awkwardly down the stairs, quickly bringing him to the attention of the rest of the crew by yelling, “Hey, you can’t be down here right now!”

Mike is rolling his eyes at the interruption, and the one Steve thinks is called Lucas has twisted in his seat to frown at him. The only one seemingly not annoyed by his presence is the Byers kid, who gives Steve a little wave.

 “Yeah! You’re interrupting the last battle of the campaign!” Lucas adds.

Maybe Mike’s attitude is rubbing off on him because Steve rolls his eyes as well. He holds the pizza box in front of him like a peace offering and says, “Relax, relax. Or do you not want this pepperoni and sausage pizza Nancy sent me to bring you?”

“Oh nice!” Dustin exclaims, and before he can even blink, Steve is being swarmed by middle-school boys. They practically tear into the pizza box in a way that reminds Steve of a nature documentary he saw about piranhas once. Well, he didn’t actually watch the documentary, but he did catch a few minutes of it when he was flicking through channels.

In any case, the boys swipe the slices as quick as they can and return to their seats to begin chowing down. Steve glances in the box and sees they left a measly single piece behind.

“See, whadda ‘ell ya?” Mike says through a mouthful of pizza, which he thankfully swallows before continuing. “He’s not actually that big of a douchebag.” This gets a few noncommittal shrugs from the other boys.

Steve isn’t sure if he should be offended by their perception of him, grateful for Mike’s (admittedly lukewarm) defense, or just overall concerned about the foul mouth that all these kids, except for maybe Will, have demonstrated the few times he’s interacted with them. Probably all three.

He isn’t shy about making the best of a weird situation, so Steve snags the last slice and sets the empty box on a crowded dresser by the stairs. The kids aren’t talking much, too preoccupied with their frantic consumption of pizza. It’s not that Steve is uncomfortable with quiet, exactly, it’s just that he’s never been in a room with any of the boys for this long without hearing their ceaseless chatter. He suspects it’s just a natural part of being thirteen.

After another moment of unsettling silence, Steve decides it can’t hurt to try and break the ice. “So, what exactly is all of this?” he asks, gesturing to the mess of papers, dice, and figurines with his half-eaten pizza slice.

Mike straightens up in his seat a little and states very matter-of-factly, “We’re playing Dungeons and Dragons. Everybody creates characters with different skills and abilities to help the party, like clerics and thieves, and then you roll dice to see whether your actions succeed or fail. I’m the Dungeon Master, so I control the campaign and play all the bad guys.”

Steve thinks he’s doing a fairly good job of nodding understandingly as Mike explains, but it must not be very convincing, because after a moment where Mike stares at him like he’s stupid, the kid says, “… we fight monsters.”

“Monsters, huh? That seems cool.” It makes sense, Steve supposes, because he’s pretty sure Nancy told him something about their real-life monster being named after one from her little brother’s game. He wonders if the Demogorgon in the game is as terrifying as the one he saw, but that hardly even seems possible

“We could teach you how to play if you want,” Will says helpfully, and damn if the kid isn’t way more polite than his friends.

Steve finishes off the last bite of his pizza before replying, “Thanks, but I’m good. I’ve had enough monster fighting for one life.” Besides, he may be low on close friends after last year, but he’s not so desperate that he wants to start hanging out with middle schoolers.

“Shit!” Dustin exclaims, reminding Steve once again just how foul-mouthed these kids are. Was he like that at that age? “I forgot you fought the Demogorgon.”

“Fought it? Dude, I kicked the Demogorgon’s ass,” Steve scoffs automatically while pushing back the instinctual wave of fear he feels whenever he thinks about that night. It turns out monster hunting is not as fun as the movies make it out to be.

“You kicked the Demogorgon’s ass? The same Demogorgon that could only be defeated by El, who was basically a wizard?” Lucas asks disbelievingly. “Somehow, I seriously doubt that.”

Damn, is every one of these kids as much of a smartass as Mike? Steve’s not entirely sure why he’s feeling so defensive of his reputation in front of a bunch of children, but he is, so he says, “I’m serious! I mean, I didn’t kill it or anything, but I beat the hell out of it with a baseball bat.”

Mike, who looks as unconvinced as Lucas sounded, asks, “You fought it with a baseball bat?”

“I mean, Lucas wanted to use a slingshot on it,” says Dustin, earning a laugh from Mike.

“It. Was. A. Wrist. Rocket!” Lucas reaches across the table to start shoving at Dustin, who starts shoving right back until they are both quasi-fighting and shouting incomprehensibly at each other.

Steve, who admittedly doesn’t have a lot of experience breaking up fights, pushes away from the wall and yells, “Hey, knock it off!”  Dustin and Lucas both slump back into their seats, arms at their sides, with nothing more than mildly annoyed expressions on their faces. Jesus, these kids.

Steve thinks he ought to find a way to get the conversion back on track and distract the boys from whatever long-standing argument he’d inadvertently steered them into, so he asks, “You guys seriously don’t know what happened that night with the Demogorgon? Did Nancy or Jonathan not tell you?”

The group looks around at each other, possibly trying to confirm how much they each knew about the Demogorgon fight. Finally, Mike says, “I mean, Nancy said they went back to Will’s house to lure the Demogorgon away so the chief and Will’s mom could get to him in the Upside Down. Then you showed up, you guys fought the Demogorgon, and it disappeared.”

“Yeah, ‘cause that’s when it showed up at the school and almost killed us!” Dustin interjects.

Perhaps brought on by the memories of that night, Mike’s mood seems to sink in that all-too-familiar way. He’s quiet for a moment before he continues, “I guess we never really talked about it more than that. So much stuff happened that night with El and the Demogorgon and the Hawkins Lab guys. And Will was alive, that was the most important thing, so everyone was focused on that.” Will gives a shy smile at that last part.

 “It was a pretty crazy night,” Steve agrees, which, understatement of the century.

Will, who has been mostly quiet during the conversation thus far, says earnestly, “Would you tell us what happened during the Demogorgon fight?”

All the boys look over at him expectantly, and Steve wishes he could say he feels annoyed or inconvenienced at the idea of storytelling for a bunch of children, but strangely, he doesn’t. Honestly, his ego puffs up a little bit at the idea of telling them about how he, Steve Harrington, took on a terrifying beast and lived to tell the tale.

“Alright,” he beginnings, trying to organize his memories of that night, which are still a little jumbled from all the fear and adrenaline even all these months later. “I went by the Byers’ house looking for Jonathan and-”

Not even ten seconds in and Steve is getting interrupted by Mike asking, “Why were you looking for Jonathan?”

He supposes he should have expected to get a lot of questions, especially from these kids. Steve grimaces a bit, trying to figure out how to phrase his response. “I, uh, I wanted to apologize for a fight we’d gotten into that day.”

“Why were you fighting with my brother?” Will asks, concerned. The rest of the boys look equally confused.

It occurs to Steve then that none of them know about what happened in the alley that day between him, Nancy, and Jonathan, nor do any of them know about what he let Tommy spray paint on the movie theater marquee. Normally, that sort of gossip would have been big enough to circulate even down in the middle school, but Steve supposes it got swept up in other news; Will Byers’ miraculous resurrection after a very public funeral, for one, as well as the property damage at the schools (officially due to a burst water line) that caused them all to be sent on Thanksgiving break a week early, and the continued “unsolved” disappearance of several local townspeople. With all of that, whether or not Nancy Wheeler slept with Jonathan Byers was small potatoes, especially considering that by the time they were back in school, Steve and Nancy were still dating as if nothing had happened.

Looking back now, Steve is ashamed of his own assholery, and he’s grateful that none of the boys heard about what happened, or that Nancy and Jonathan didn’t tell them. For some reason, he really does want this group of middle school nerds to have a good opinion of him, odd as it may be.

Said nerds are still staring at him expectantly, and Steve realizes that he needs to come up with a response quickly. He sighs and says, “Look, the fight was just… I was being a dick, alright? And I wanted to apologize to Jonathan for that.” Thankfully, the kids seem to accept his explanation and he continues. “So, I went to the house and knocked on the door and Nancy answered it. And she was acting weird and there was blood on her hand so-”

Another interruption, this time from Dustin. “Makes sense, the Demogorgon would be attracted to blood.”

Nothing about intentionally luring a giant, man-eating monster into attacking you makes sense to Steve, but he had to make peace with that one a long time ago. “Yeah, well basically I went inside the house and there was, like, this baseball bat with nails and it smelled like gasoline, so I was like what the hell is going on, you know? And that’s when Nancy pulled a gun on me and told me to leave.”

“Holy shit, your sister is awesome,” Lucas says to Mike, whose expression is caught somewhere between admiration and panic at the thought of Nancy wielding a gun.

“And I seriously thought she was gonna shoot me,” Steve can’t explain why he smiles a bit at the memory. “But then, the lights start flickering like crazy and, honest to god, this huge monster thing like busts through the ceiling. And I’m freaking out, and Nancy and Jonathan start running and they grab me so I’m running too. There’s this bear trap in the middle of the hallway, and I gotta jump over it, and then we’re all hiding in the bedroom.”

By this point, each of the boys seems transfixed by the story, learning towards Steve with anticipation. Steve is caught up in the moment himself, and he’s never told this story before and the words just keep tumbling out, “I guess they were trying to get the Demogorgon in the trap, but it was all quiet. So, we go back in the hall and the thing’s totally disappeared. And I still have no goddamn clue what’s going on, but Nancy is telling me that thing is gonna come back and I need to leave. So, you know, I do what any sane person would do, and I run the hell out of there.”

“What, you just left?” Mike bursts out, stopping Steve short.

“Well, yeah. The whole thing was totally crazy.” Seeing the disappointed look that’s mirrored on all the boys’ faces, for the first time since that night, Steve feels a twinge of shame about his actions. Perhaps that is why he rushes to continue the story with, “But as I was leaving, I saw that lights start flashing in the house. I knew that thing was back, and I couldn’t just abandon them, you know?” The group nods solemnly, and Steve can tell this is an audience that understands loyalty even in the face of extreme danger.

Getting hyped up again, he says, “So I run back into the house. The monster was there, and Nancy was shooting at it, but it wasn’t doing a damn thing and she was out of bullets, so I picked up the bat off the ground and just started swinging. And I mean, I was really going to town on it, just wham, wham, wham. It didn’t really hurt it, but I managed to push it back into the bear trap, right? That’s when Jonathan runs over, and he throws a lighter and woosh, the monster goes up in flames.”

“Jonathan cast fireball at the Demogorgon!” Will exclaims with pride.

Steve doesn’t really understand what that means, but there was definitely a fireball in the hallway that night, so he says, “Yeah, I guess he did. Anyways, that’s when the thing disappeared.”

For a moment, none of the boys say anything, perhaps trying to reconcile their previous options on Steve Harrington with this new information, or maybe just thinking about their own encounters with the monster. Still, Steve has to admit that it feels strangely good to have told someone about the night that changed pretty much his entire perspective on life.

“I still can’t believe you fought the Demogorgon with a baseball bat,” Dustin says eventually, though this time it’s more with awe than disbelief.

“I still have that bat in the trunk of my car, actually,” Steve comments, more to himself than anyone else. They all lapse into silence again, though it doesn’t seem nearly so awkward this time. After a moment, Steve states, “Well, I guess I’ll let you guys get back to fighting your own monsters.”

As he turns around, Mike calls after him, “Thanks for the pizza!” Steve just waves his hand in acknowledgment as he heads up the stairs.

Checking his watch, he realizes that he still has a little less than an hour before Nancy is supposed to get back. There isn’t a ton he can do to entertain himself in someone else’s house, so he figures his best bet is to relax in the living room and watch some TV.

That’s where he is, sprawled out on the couch and watching some shitty action flick, when Nancy walks through the front door. Steve smiles when he sees her, sitting up to make room for her on the couch.

“So, you decided to wait after all,” Nancy teases as she sits down, taking one of his hands in hers.

“Oh, I am more than happy to wait for you, Nancy Wheeler.” She laughs and rolls her eyes—a family trait, he supposes. “How was your day?”

She groans a little bit. “Mrs. Peterson’s kids are such brats. You had it right when you said you didn’t want to babysit.”

Steve grins automatically, but he can’t help but think about how, despite their very, very annoying habits of interrupting him and calling him a douchebag, those boys are actually pretty alright kids.

“I don’t know,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.”