Chapter Text
Sometimes Steve remembers that living in a town with a pretty obvious cult just outside it isn’t actually normal. But everyone in Hawkins has sort of gotten used to it.
The Eleventh Church of Stranded Souls keeps to themselves, and whenever one of their members comes into town for groceries or other supplies, they’re polite and cheerful and don’t say much about the apparent ‘our church can reconnect you with your lost loved ones and commune with the dead’ shtick that draws in new members. (At least, not unless they’re asked, and most of Hawkins chooses not to ask.)
Every couple months someone new drives through town on their way to join the church, and that’s when it gets a little jarring and weird. Some new arrivals will gush and weep about the church and how they hope it’ll change their life. Some seem far more skeptical, spending a few days in town, asking questions as if anyone in Hawkins knows anything about the cult and how real their claims are. But for all their skepticism, even those visitors often carry an air of desperation. Sometimes they’ll talk about who it is they want to contact. Sometimes they never say what they’re after, but everyone in Hawkins knows. And those same folks are the ones who provide Hawkins with the only answers they have for the next arrivals— they come, skeptical but desperate to talk to a deceased loved one. They visit the Eleventh Church. They return to Hawkins a few days later, teary and starry eyed. Very frequently they leave just long enough to pack up their previous lives, and then they pass through Hawkins once more on their way to join the church. The cult. Whatever.
Steve doesn’t think about it all that much. It’s a part of life in Hawkins, and high school’s a bitch, and Steve’s busy juggling his relationship with Nancy Wheeler (and the nagging suspicion it’s all falling apart), and the tightness in his chest when spending time with her these days almost always means spending time with her fellow Hawkins Post intern Jonathan, and keeping his grades up enough to graduate this year and keep his father placated, and the weird tension with Tommy and Carol lately, and also how he’s somehow babysitting almost a half dozen kids nowadays, whose newest obsession is ghost hunting and have been bullying Steve into taking them to every abandoned house in Hawkins.
And yes, Tommy and Carol make fun of him for getting bullied by middle schoolers (and sometimes a single elementary school girl), but they aren’t trying to wrangle four middle schoolers (and the aforementioned elementary school girl). One middle schooler is a stress headache. Two middle schoolers is like trying to walk a tightrope while also walking two uncooperative dogs. Three is a disaster. And four is a fucking hurricane. There’s no controlling that. You hold on for your fucking life and just focus your energy on making sure the stupid bullshit they do is non-lethal stupid bullshit. (Adding Erica to the mix is a whole different beast. Steve’s pretty sure every hour spent with all five takes years off his life. He’s rapidly aging like the puppets in that one movie Dustin insisted on showing him, that left Steve scarred, because Steve was expecting, like, Muppets, not skeletal bird men sucking the life out of bug-eyed Cabbage Patch dolls.)
So Tommy and Carol don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. The day one of them manages to keep a single middle schooler in line is the day they can criticize Steve for getting pushed around by four. (Also, Steve’s seen the screaming matches Carol gets into with her younger brother, and the chaos when the Hagans watch Tommy’s kid cousin. They can’t say shit.)
“Everyone’s heard about crazy lady Bodin and her prophecies!” Mike insists.
“None of you are even old enough to remember old lady Bodin,” Steve retorts, shuffling another battery out of the meter and into the ‘technically good but not great’ pile. “She had late stage dementia is all.”
“No, but see,” Dustin wheedles, “She apparently started freaking out about Mrs. Byers before she even knew she was pregnant with Will.”
“Yes, I am aware the old lady with dementia was known for screaming at Mrs. Byers at church,” Steve sighs, dropping the next battery into the ‘dead’ pile. “She did that. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“I think it’s why they stopped going to church by the time I was born,” Will says mildly, notably not commenting on the larger debate. “Jon says Lonnie used to make them go every Sunday, until Bodin started screaming about how Mom was pregnant and it was going to break apart their marriage."
“Not to be harsh,” Steve says gently. Next battery is great. “But I think everyone in town knew Lonnie was leaving sooner or later. And, like, self-fulfilling prophecy or whatever, having an old lady screaming all the time about how something is going to end your marriage is a good way to ensure that thing ends your marriage. Again, that doesn’t really mean anything.”
Will laughs softly, and gives a weak shrug and a faint smile. Steve wishes he could read the kid’s expression better.
“Probably,” Will says.
“Yeah but— that— things have always been weird around Will, and she said Will was a conduit that attracted spirits to Hawkins!” Mike says.
“And she told me I’d never get married or have kids,” Steve sighs.
Technically, she’d said something about ‘never being bound in holy matrimony’ and, even worse, that his ‘loins will never bear fruit,’ but that was such a weird gross thing to say to a 7 year old, and he’s definitely not gonna repeat that to the kids, because they will absolutely lose it.
(Steve ignores the faint sting the memory conjures. He wants kids, and he wants to get married, and he maybe wants that with Nancy, but they haven’t discussed it, not really, and she’s always uncomfortably changed the subject when they got anywhere close.)
“So, once again,” Steve says, “None of it meant anything. She was just kind of a bitch.”
“Ooh,” Lucas says, and Steve whips a finger in his face.
“Don’t repeat that.”
“You’re lucky Erica isn’t here,” Dustin says, and all the kids snicker. “She’d rat you out in a second.”
“Yeah, because she’s normal and has no interest in going to a graveyard in the middle of the night,” Steve says. “Which, why the hell are you all trying to convince me ghosts are real? If I didn’t think it was nonsense, there’s no way I would be chaperoning you weirdos.” He pauses and looks down at the pile of batteries, then over at the group of boys sprawled across couches and the floor. “And why am I the one checking your flashlight batteries?!”
“You don’t have to,” Dustin says, rolling his eyes.
“They’re fine, probably,” Lucas agrees, and Steve furiously gestures at the pile of batteries that are proof they are not, in fact, fine.
“No, they aren’t!” Steve protests. “They super aren’t!”
“We’ll figure it out,” Mike says dismissively, and Steve lets out an incoherent noise of frustration and indignantly goes back to checking the rest, because someone has to, and apparently that someone is Steve. He refuses to be stuck in a graveyard with dead flashlights.
“It’s— it’s unscientific, is what it is,” Steve complains. He’s sprawled across the Wheeler couch, exhausted after a completely fruitless night of wandering around the graveyard. Nancy and Jonathan sit at the kitchen table just through a wide, open archway, each on their own laptop, working on some article they’re putting together.
(Steve hasn’t had an afternoon with Nancy without Jonathan around in weeks. It was Barb for the weeks before that, but Nancy insists she needs this Hawkins Post internship to go well, because she’s trying to build her portfolio and her resume, insists that’s why she’s so busy and that’s the only reason they haven’t been on a date in months. Steve tries to ignore the voice in his head that says Jonathan makes for a pretty good buffer, to say nothing of the acrid sting of jealousy that bubbles in his gut.)
“You’re not wrong,” Nancy says drily, “but since when have you cared about scientific rigor?”
Steve huffs, and Jonathan laughs softly from where he’s tabbing through photos. Steve suppresses the urge to scowl indignantly, knowing it makes him look like a pouty, petulant child, and he refuses to embarrass himself in front of Nancy’s coworker. (Do you really call them coworkers when they’re both interns? Steve wonders to himself, and does not ask aloud, because it’s a stupid question, and they all know Jonathan and Nancy are leagues smarter than Steve is, but he’d rather not draw attention to the fact.)
“I dunno,” Jonathan says mildly, pushing his laptop with a raised eyebrow towards Nancy. (“Oh, yeah, that one’s good,” she agrees, and he pulls it back to do… something to it.) “Weird stuff’s always happened around Will since he was a baby. And back when mom had that phase where she, like, kept consulting psychics about it, several of them said the same stuff old lady Bodin did about magnetic energy that drew stuff in.”
“Oh no, Jonathan,” Nancy says, sounding more curious than incredulous. “No way. You believe in that?”
Jonathan shrugs. “I dunno. Not really, but I also wouldn’t say I don’t either.”
“What does that mean?” Steve asks, curious despite himself.
“Just, you know—” Jonathan pauses to narrow his eyes at his screen, tapping a few things on the keyboard, narrowing his eyes again, and then nodding, satisfied. “It’s hard to dismiss how frequently our fuses blow out—”
“Your mom plugs her hair dryer, curler, and a box fan into the same power strip,” Nancy points out.
“Yeah, maybe,” Jonathan says easily. “But also, like, he’s really good at finding injured or dead animals, right?” He looks over to Steve for this, like Steve will back him up, which feels strange since they barely know each other beyond Steve’s babysitting duties and proximity to Nancy, but also, he’s not wrong.
“Yeah, but that’s not a ghost thing though, is it?” Steve says.
Jonathan shrugs.
“The kids aren’t wrong that old lady Bodin never screamed at mom until she got pregnant with Will, and the few times Lonnie dragged us to church without him, or if mom and I went to the dry cleaner and ran into her, she was fine. Same cryptic prophecy shit, but none of the freaking out.”
“So it’s your fault!” Steve accuses, sitting up to point at Jonathan. “There’s no way the kids would remember any of that!”
Jonathan just laughs, and gives Steve a wry grin. (Steve’s stomach does something weird. Is he getting sick?)
“Yeah, maybe,” Jonathan says lightly.
“Bodin was just a bitch,” Nancy says. “All her ‘prophecies’ were awful.”
“That’s what I told the kids!” Steve says, vindicated and pleased, and Nancy grins back at him. See, they’re fine. Everything is fine.
“I didn’t think they were that bad, were they?” Jonathan asks. “Why, what did she tell you?”
Nancy purses her lips, and Steve sits back, prepared for her usual ‘It’s just the ravings of an old lady whose mind was going. I’m not going to even acknowledge that crap.’
(Because yeah, of course Steve’s asked her before. Just about everyone their age got one, grabbed by her iron grip as they walked past the dry cleaners. And being with Nancy has made him think about his more and more. He’s not sure if he wants Nancy’s to be obviously untrue, proof his is too, or if he wants it to match his, some neat little parallel that makes his make sense, makes them into proof they’re meant to be together, even if they maybe don’t get married and maybe don’t have kids.)
And then Nancy glances at Jonathan out of the corner of her eye, and sighs.
“She told me I’d spend my life always wondering if I’d kept my husband from a relationship he would’ve been happier in,” she says.
Steve’s stomach drops out.
“Oh, my god,” Jonathan says, “No, you’re right, she did suck.”
“Right?” Nancy says indignantly. “What, I don’t even get a prophecy about myself, it’s about my husband? What kind of bullshit—”
“That doesn’t even sound like you,” Steve says, trying to keep his voice light. Trying to ignore the sting that she’ll tell Jonathan but won’t tell him (even after he’d spilled his guts about his, about how much it gnawed at him, about how he could never let on to anyone but her about how much it bothered him, because no man, let alone a Harrington man, should get so upset about something as foolish as kids and romance), trying to ignore the sting that Nancy has made it very clear how little regard she holds Steve’s exes in, so there’s no way it has anything to do with Steve. So yeah, the prophecies, they’re bullshit. They have to be.
“Exactly,” Nancy says primly, the click of the enter key on her laptop sharp punctuation. “I’m not a homewrecker.”
“What about you?” Jonathan asks Steve, expression open and gaze direct. “You ever get one?”
And maybe it’s just that Steve’s caught off guard by the fact that Jonathan would even ask.
“Just, you know—” Steve flops back onto the couch and waves his hand ambiguously in the air, trying to keep his voice light, tone unconcerned. “Stuff about never getting married and never getting to have kids.”
“That’s pretty heavy and shitty,” Jonathan says, and Steve glances over, and there’s something serious to Jonathan’s face, like he means it. Steve can’t tell if Jonathan saw through his tone, or if Jonathan just believes it enough that it doesn’t matter.
“I—” Steve goes to play it off, but he can’t break Jonathan’s gaze. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Yeah, kinda.”
There’s a brief silence, broken only by the continued typing of Nancy’s laptop, and Steve can’t keep this up, but Jonathan makes no move to look away.
“Well, technically,” Steve says, forcing that lightness back into his voice, “she said my ‘loins would never bear fruit’, which—”
And exactly as Steve hoped, Jonathan chokes on a laugh and Nancy recoils and gags, and the moment breaks.
“Ew!” Nancy yelps.
Steve snickers.
“Isn’t it?” he agrees.
“God,” she groans. “Not to speak ill of the dead—”
“Didn’t you just call her a bitch earlier?” Jonathan asks, amused, and Nancy actually sticks her tongue out at him, playful and easy and relaxed (like she hasn’t been around Steve for ages now.)
“Well, she was.”
“Feels kind of unfair that I got a nice one after hearing those,” Jonathan says.
“Sorry, you got a nice one?” Nancy asks, incredulous.
“Mm, yeah,” Jonathan says. “One of those the few times I saw her and Will wasn’t around so she wasn’t shrieking. She told me I’d give up on all my dreams to be the man of the house and take care of Mom and Will until I found someone else to take care of them.”
Steve winces, and Nancy’s mouth pinches, because it’s no secret that after Lonnie Byers finally bailed when Jonathan and Will were still young, a fragile Joyce Byers relied a little too heavily on her older son (arguably still does).
“I dunno how nice I’d call that,” Steve says softly, but Jonathan just laughs, a low, easy rumble.
“Nah, it’s nice,” he says. “Lonnie was gonna bail no matter what, everyone knew it, and it means somewhere in the future there’s people I can trust will watch out for Mom and Will, yeah? That’s a good thing, I think.
“Anyways,” he says, shaking his head, “Point is,” and both Nancy and Steve can’t help their startled laughter at the reminder that they’ve gone way off track. “Point is, stuff’s always been weird around Will.”
“And so you believe in ghosts?” Nancy asks.
Jonathan shrugs again. “I mean, right after Will was born, I had some weird imaginary friends. And, you know, now that I’m older it’s hard to say how much was an overactive imagination, and how much was me perhaps getting ahold of the obituaries and latching onto the names there, but—”
“Whoa,” Steve says, sitting up again, “Whoa, wait, what?”
Jonathan throws Steve a lopsided grin. (Something funny twists in Steve’s chest.)
“All my imaginary friends had the same names as people who’d died around here, usually recently,” Jonathan says. “And I only ever played with them while playing in Will’s nursery while he slept. So, you know, weird. I’m not saying ghosts are real, but I’m also not gonna say they’re not, either.”
Steve stares at Jonathan, and beside him, Nancy is too.
“What the hell, Byers?” Steve says. “That’s really weird, you know that, man?”
Jonathan just laughs. (That thing in Steve’s chest pulls a little tighter.)
“Yeah, I know,” he says easily. “Should I go with the bridge or the headshot from the interview, you think?” he asks Nancy.
“I like the bridge a lot, and it’s a better photo, but the headshot probably works better for the article.”
Jonathan nods thoughtfully.
“You should still put the bridge in your portfolio though,” Nancy says, “It’s really good.”
“I met the girl in the cult!” Mike whisper-shouts to the other boys as they hang out in the Harrington living room. Steve’s pretty sure the ‘whispering’ is to avoid his attention, and he sighs, but decides against calling Mike out on it. Mike may be what started Steve’s whole babysitting gig, trying to help out the Wheelers now that Nancy’s internship kept her busy, take Mike off of Karen Wheeler’s plate at least, but he’s also the least fond of Steve (also probably because of dating Nancy.)
“What girl in the cult?” Lucas asks, sounding unimpressed. “There’s like, a bunch of them.”
“No, the girl!” Mike hisses, and is met with blank silence.
Steve bites back his laughter as he surveys the inside of the fridge for snack options.
“The girl!” Mike snaps, finally breaking the whisper in his frustration. “The one who can talk to the dead!”
“Whoa, wait, what?” Dustin says.
“What do you mean ‘the’ girl?” Will asks.
“Nancy’s always theorized the cult has one central person they say communicates with the dead,” Mike says, like his sister is the authority on the cult, which, to be fair, she might be these days. “And it’s her.”
Nancy’s been working on a side project for a good year now, trying to debunk Hawkins’ resident cult, convinced the project will put her on the radar of serious journalist institutions, or at the very least, give her a major talking point for her college applications. And most of the rest of Hawkins doesn’t really care to think about them much at all (besides the cops, who, quote ‘aren’t exactly the kind of journalistic sources she wants to rely on, and only care as far as their armed territorial pissing contest goes anyway.’)
Nancy used to complain to Steve about how hard it was to find anything useful, since she’d quickly ended up on the cult’s “Do Not Talk To” list after pushing a little too hard when members were in town. She’d went on a rant about how no one in Hawkins cares, how the small town mentality had made everyone too self-absorbed and small-minded to pay attention to anything real. Steve hadn’t really got it. Why should they care about a random cult that has nothing to do with them, when everyone has their own problems?
Nancy stopped talking to him about her research after that.
“So it’s not like a thing they claim they can let you do?” Dustin asks, as Steve shakes off the funk. “I thought that was the selling point, that they let you talk to your dead loved ones yourself.”
“How would that even work?” Will asks. “Tricking people into thinking they’re talking with their dead loved ones directly, I mean. Drugs?”
“I always assumed it was just their leader guy who ‘talked to the dead’,” Lucas says. “Isn’t that usually what cults do?”
Mike stomps his foot just a little.
“It doesn’t matter what cults normally do or how they would— because it’s a girl. Like, our age.”
Steve draws up short. Their age?
“Oh,” Will says, voice a little clipped.
“There’s a girl our age who can talk to the dead?” Dustin asks, fascinated.
“Yeah, it’s super cool,” Mike gushes. “She’s super cool.”
“Sorry, how are you meeting this girl in the cult?” Steve says, finally turning from the fridge and butting into the conversation, because, “They’re literally an armed compound.”
“She’s sneaking out, duh,” Mike says, rolling his eyes.
“Okay, how is she getting out?” Steve says, even if he feels a bit better about it. The cult probably isn’t going to shoot their supposed ghost-whisperer.
Mike just shrugs.
Then Steve frowns. “Where are you meeting her?”
“I’m not telling,” Mike says, folding his arms, but two can play at that game.
Steve crosses his own arms and stares down at the twerp.
“Oooh,” Lucas half-whispers, “He’s getting the crossed arms.”
“I’m not,” Mike says. “It’s none of your business.”
Steve taps his foot.
“There goes the foot,” Dustin whispers, and Will bites back a laugh.
Mike begins to shift nervously.
“Do your parents or Nancy know you’re meeting this cult girl?” Steve asks.
“No,” Mike says nervously.
Steve arches an eyebrow.
“If Nancy and your parents don’t know, then it does sound like my business,” Steve says. “Where are you meeting this girl?”
“And next come the hands on the hips,” Lucas narrates under his breath like a sports commentator.
Steve slowly uncrosses his arms.
“The woods, okay!” Mike bursts out. “Mostly. Sometimes the quarry, or I sneak her into our basement if it’s too hot out.”
“Thank you,” Steve says primly, because positive reinforcement or whatever. Then he sighs.
“You really should tell your parents or Nancy if you’re sneaking the cult’s main kid into your house, you know?” he says. “It could get you and your family in a lot of trouble.”
“Nancy would want to turn her into, like, a source for her stupid research,” Mike grumbles. “And Elle asked me not to tell anyone.”
“Well, you blew that,” Lucas says drily, and Mike punches him in the shoulder. Dustin and Will snicker.
Mike’s scowl fades though, into something softer, something Steve doesn’t see very often. “I think adults make her nervous,” he says, quieter. “I mean, I think everyone makes her nervous, but adults especially. I don’t know that she would even be comfortable with Mom, let alone Dad. And I think Nancy would make her really nervous.”
Steve chews the inside of his cheek. It is hot out, and pretty soon it's going to start getting cold. Damnit, he’s gonna do this, isn’t he?
He heads into the entryway and fishes a spare key out of a small drawer in the little console there.
“Here,” Steve says, walking back into the living room and tossing it. Mike fumbles and drops it, to laughter from the other kids. “My parents aren’t due back until November or maybe December, and I’m tired of having to skip the beginning of practice to come home, let you kids in, and then go back to the high school. I’ll make copies for the rest of you sometime.”
Mike stares up at Steve, and it’s Steve’s turn to try not to fidget. Gratitude from any of the kids makes him feel uncharacteristically mushy, but Mike is the rarest.
“Thanks,” Mike says quietly.
“Don’t trash my house when I’m not around,” Steve says. “Now do you guys want ham and cheese sandwiches or PB&J?”