Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

(November 5th, 1984)

“It was awesome,” Dustin’s enthusiasm echoes off the wooden panels of the Byers’ living room.

“It was scary,” Lucas counters, his voice slightly strained in a way that leaves Steve to wonder if it’s from fighting to hold back tears or from all the smoke they had inhaled in the tunnels. “If Max hadn’t of...”

“What?” A third voice chimes in, small but urgent, and it takes him a moment from where he’s lying on the Byers’ couch, eyes closed and covered with a bag of now partially-thawed frozen peas, to realize it belongs to none other than Joyce Byers herself.

A beat of silence follows — nothing but a shuffle of nervous feet and the faintest tick of a clock hanging on the kitchen wall. It’s enough to urge Steve to open his eyes.

Dropping the bag of peas from his eyes, he takes the slightest peek and finds them just as he expected; awkwardly glancing at each other, unsure what to say and how to say it, telepathically begging one another to be the first to break.

None of them wanted to be the one to tell Ms. Byers that Steve nearly died right here on her living room floor. It was bad enough that there was a dead demodog in her fridge, nail holes on her floor, and vomit on her porch.

They especially didn’t want to admit that the guy left in charge of looking after them had not only dropped the ball but let it roll so far away from the court that it took heavy medical drugging and a nail-spiked bat wielded by a thirteen-year-old girl to get it back and save the game — and his life.

None of them wanted to say it, but someone had to, so it may as well be him.

“She saved my life.”

They all startle at the sound of his voice, jolting where they stood like they forgot he was in the room with them. He ignores the sharp sting he feels in the corner of his mouth as a gash reopens from talking and tries to bury it with the way his head seems to take on a life of its own as it starts swimming when he sits up while every bone in his body protests.

“Christ, kid!” Hopper scolds. “Mind telling us what the hell happened?”

One by one, Joyce, Hopper, Dustin, Lucas, and Mike turn to him. Steve can feel the urgency seeping into his bones as each pair of eyes begins to bore into him, each set looking to him for further explanation and answers that he’s not entirely sure he has. And while he doesn’t know if the heat he feels in his face is a product of their gaze or just his embarrassment, he does know that the only person in the room who’s not looking at him is Max.

Instead, her eyes are fixed pointedly on the odd drawings still littering the Byers’ floor.

“Billy came by looking for Max, and things turned ugly. We fought; I lost….” His voice trails off, lost somewhere behind split lips and overwhelming shame as he motions to his face. “She jumped in.”

“Why’d you two fight?” Joyce asks, unable to keep her concern from bleeding into each syllable. “What happened?”

“How’d she jump in?” Hopper tacks on. There’s an edge to his words, and even in Steve’s addled state, it takes him less than a minute to pin it as a hint of finality. Hopper knows, even before he asks: “And would it have to do anything with that empty syringe on the floor?”

Like a spark, Hopper’s question spurs a brushfire. Steve swears he can feel the living room walls shaking around him from the vibrations of their voices as they climb higher and higher, fighting to talk over one another.

Their questions come in waves, one hurled after another before he even has the time to answer one. And with them, a wave of nausea. Steve bites them both down and focuses instead on how Max’s eyes seemingly still refuse to meet his. They settle on anything but, taking in everything from the mismatched pillows littering the couch around him to the clean time-worn stain on the dirty wallpaper where a clock used to be.

He watches as they shift around uncomfortably, almost as if she’s searching for a way out, and then as they grow wide when Joyce and Hopper turn to her, spouting out questions in rapid-fire in their quest for an explanation.

Steve’s not sure if it's this room or this conversation that Max wants out of more, but he’s in no shape to drive and doesn’t see any of them leaving the Byers' place anytime soon, so he offers her the only thing he can and hopes it’s enough to bring her shoulders down from her ears.

“Hey, look… I think it’s still pretty blurry to all of us,” It’s a weak attempt, and he knows it. It even feels flimsy on his lips. But Lucas looks like he’s about ready to cry, something Steve never wants to see again for as long as he lives; Mike looks so uncharacteristically uncertain that it’s nearly comical, and Dustin’s eyes are practically screaming, begging for some kind of defense. It’s the same way they had looked back in the tunnels when the demodogs had charged past them, and Steve finds he has to fight back a shiver.

And Max…

Max is stone-faced. She’s tense as shit and so tightly wrapped around herself that Steve’s almost certain she’s going to have a future filled with nothing but chronic back pain. She looks ready to go face-to-face with Billy, or a demodog, or anything horrific and slimy she can get her hands on so long as it gets her far, far away from here, and something about that realization makes his chest ache.

It might be a weak attempt, but it’s all he’s got right now, and he refuses to let these kids down again.

He can’t.

He won’t.

So, he clears his throat and tries again, hoping like hell that this time he will sound more convincing. “I get you guys have questions, but… Max did what she had to do. It’s as simple as that. She saved me, and as far as I’m concerned, none of the other shi—argh, stuff matters. Not really.”

He does his best to hold his voice steady, firm — the kind of tone typically reserved for those rare “What are you doing with your life, Steven?” fights with his dad and pep talks with the team before basketball games — and prays to whoever is listening that Hopper and Joyce will take it for what it’s worth or at least take enough pity on him to let it go.

Joyce’s brow wrinkles while the frown on her lips seems to deepen. Something about the sight is so wrong that it sends another wave of shame through him because Joyce Byers was a good woman. A wonderful woman. Maybe even the best one that Steve knew. She didn’t deserve to wear a frown because of anyone, especially not because of him.

But despite the way her frown grows in size and much to Steve’s relief, she doesn’t say anything else. Instead, she nods in understanding and gives him a somewhat forced and all too small smile. He’s seen that smile before, seen the exhaustion that lies behind it, and knows enough to know it’s well-rehearsed, even as she lifts a hand to Max’s shoulder, offering the young girl a reassuring squeeze.

But the respite of small victories is short-lived because Hopper isn’t as easily swayed. Steve has to fight not to bulk under the scalding gaze the older man gives him. His eyes water in protest as he stares back, determined, defiant, hoping to convey his unspoken words. Not here, not now. Please.

He racks his brain in search of a time that he was ever this brazen with the Chief, only to come up short. For a moment, Steve thinks that his empty-handedness has to do with the concussion he no doubt has but the brief look of surprise that dances across Hopper’s face tells him otherwise before it’s carefully schooled back into its typical neutral and cold expression.

In the past, before their lives had intertwined in a new world of eldritch horror, the two had crossed paths solely when a broken law called for it. Unsupervised parties that had gotten out of hand and warranted noise complaints from tired neighbors. Backseat car hook-ups that were broken up before they ever started with a bright light to the face and a fuming rap against the window. Underage drinking stopped in its place after old man Whittakers ratted him and Tommy H. out.

Each and every time, Steve had been nothing short of charming. Polite, understanding, agreeable. Each and every time, he had laid it on thick, the same he did with every adult who had no reason to trust him. And when mixed with his willingness to bend over backward to make things right before they got too far out of hand, namely before his parents could be called, it had been enough to keep him and Hopper on good terms.

But now, he wasn’t trying to play coy, and he was anything but charming. Now he was pushing back, and it doesn’t go unnoticed.

He doesn’t know if that’s what causes Hopper to back down, if he’s caught on to what Steve’s so desperately trying to tell him without so many words, or if he’s just too tired to keep pushing but eventually, the Chief breaks and settles for a curt nod instead of pushing the subject.

Steve lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and lets his eyes find Max again. The relief he feels has nothing on hers, and as her eyes drift up from the floor to meet his for the first time since they arrived back at the Byers’, Steve feels himself begin to relax.

“Mom! Will’s awake!”

Jonathan’s voice cuts through the otherwise still air, causing them all to jump. Their panic is short-lived as Joyce excuses herself without so much as another word and hurries down the hallway towards Will’s room. Mike follows, hot on her heels, and it doesn’t take long for Dustin and Lucas to trail after him.

Their sudden departure leaves Steve with Max, who, after her first — and only — shared look with him, had gone back to finding the floor fascinating, and Hopper, who hadn’t quite stopped staring at him since Steve spoke up. And for a moment, none of them say anything, choosing instead to sit in somewhat awkward silence as the faint sound of the kids' laughter travels down the hall towards them.

Steve knows he should be more concerned with the fact that Hopper seems to be analyzing him. He knows he should feel raw and exposed, knows he should be worried about what the older man could find if he looks too hard. But his head is throbbing, and the room keeps threatening to spin on him and Max…

Max has gone right back to being tense, and fuck, he’s nauseous.

So rather than be concerned about any of that, Steve settles for squeezing the now-even-more-thawed-out bag of frozen peas in his hand to keep himself busy and tries not to stare at either of them too long.

It pays off a few painfully long minutes later when Hopper eventually moves. Steve doesn’t know if he found what he was looking for or not, he isn’t even sure that he really wants to know, but the look Hopper gives him as he heads towards the kitchen leaves little room for argument.

We’re talking about this later.

Steve can only nod and try not to groan at how it makes his head pound.

Max still won’t look at him after Hopper leaves the room, but she does move closer.

It’s barely a foot and just small enough that he wonders if he’s wrong and made it up. Maybe she was always standing there, and his depth perception is just off. He was a solid seventy-percent sure he had a concussion after all…

But then she moves again; this time, he knows he hasn’t made it up because she’s across the room now and standing beside him, close enough that he can see the slight tremble of her hands. Her calves brush back against the couch like she wants to sit down beside him but isn’t sure she’s allowed to.

And his chest aches again.

“You can sit,” He says, careful not to put too much weight behind the words. “if you want.”

She doesn’t reply, and Steve finds himself less than surprised for some reason, but she does sit. It’s a cautious action, slow and considered, and for some reason, it reminds him an awful lot of the skittish kittens he and Nancy had found at the park once, to the point he has to shake his head to clear that thought away.

He’s still in the middle of trying to cut off that train of thought when a hushed voice mutters:

“Sorry about your face.”

It takes him a second. And then another for good measure.

Her voice is so flimsy and afraid that he almost misses what she says, which even he has the mind to consider odd. Sure, he had only met this random girl a few hours ago, but that alone had been enough time for him to get a good idea of who she was, and if there was one thing he had learned about Max Mayfield during that time, it was that she was anything but quiet and she certainly wasn’t afraid of much.

“Eh, don’t worry about it.” Steve’s voice sounds less convincing than he likes as he leans back against the couch in some attempt to seem less fazed about it all. Even though every bone and muscle he has screams in protest, he’s rewarded for his effort when Max follows suit and slinks back against the cushions.

Back to small victories, he takes the win, although it does little to stop him from casting a worried glance her way.

She’s still too tense for his liking. Too tightly wound for a kid her age.

He hates it, but it’s nothing compared to how much he hates just how long it took for him to figure out what it was that was actually bothering her as sudden realization knocks him in the face as he stares down at her, still shaking hands.

She wasn’t afraid.

When they had come back to the Byers’ house, Max had been lit with a quiet fire. None of them had any idea of what they were coming back to. No idea if Billy was still hanging around. They had his car; they knew the odds weren’t exactly in their favor, so Steve had gone in first, bat in hand, after a long and loud back and forth with Max, who had practically insisted she was the one who should do it.

When he had looked back one last time before heading inside, Max’s expression had changed. Like the fire inside her had dwindled. It was much less like it had burned out naturally and more like someone had suddenly doused it, snuffing the flames right out with a bucket of ice water.

Steve had just assumed it was the fear of seeing Billy again. Fear of what could happen to her if he was still there.

But as she sat beside him now with fingers that tugged nervously at a stray hem in her jacket and gnawed away at her bottom lip, a heavy furrow in her brows, Steve realizes it’s something else entirely.

She feels guilty.

It was never about what would happen to her if they returned to find Billy still here. She was worried about what would happen to Steve. It’s why she had insisted she be the one to go inside and why she had looked downright terrified when Steve went in alone anyways, despite her protests. It’s why she had seemed so hollow when he returned alone and gave them the all-clear to go inside.

Because now that she didn’t have to make the fear of what her step-brother was capable of her priority, she could feel everything else. Now she was drowning in the aftermath of it all.

She feels guilty, and she blames herself.

“It was probably for the best.” Steve lets his face be open and honest for the first time tonight. He doesn’t blame her, and there’s no reason she should blame herself. “I was getting too pretty. Being roughed up now and again keeps me in check. Otherwise, I’d be like, you know, totally unstoppable.”

There’s a brief moment where Steve thinks he’s gone and failed again. That he’s fucked up the one job, he had left to do — try and cheer Max up.

But then a noisy snort hits his ears, followed only by a string of unabashed laughter. It’s too close to his ear to be comfortable and too loud to help the pain in his head, but the corners of his mouth turn up all the same.

Max smirked. “Good to know Billy didn’t hurt your ego then.”

“Never,” Steve confirms, smiling at her. “I really do mean it, red. This isn’t on you.”

Max is hesitant. The uncertainty shows in every inch of her face, but the longer Steve smiles, the more it begins to melt away, taking her tension with it.

“Okay.”

She’s not entirely convinced, and he knows it. Just like he knows, this probably won’t be the last time they talk about it. But she’s smiling now, and her fingers are no longer trembling or pulling away at that loose hem, so Steve files it under the column of small victories again and finds it's enough for now.

“So, what the hell is a Zoomer anyways?”

“Oh my god.”

Chapter Text

(Monday, November 19th, 1984)

For as long as he could remember, Steve had enjoyed routines. Something about the everyday simplicity of knowing exactly what to expect helped him get by. The unwavering course from morning to night made him feel in control, even when everything around him turned on its head and began spitting out interdimensional monsters and curve balls from hell. It was nice not having to think too hard about his next move, even nicer not having to fear what would happen if he couldn’t come up with a good enough answer.

Through his sophomore year, Steve’s routines had been nothing shy of mundane. He’d scrape his way through each class and book it when the final bell rang, Tommy and Carol on his heels. The three of them would smoke in the parking lot, pressed against his Beemer like it was a holy throne, bullshit and sneers rolling off their lips as easy as puffs of smoke as they watched their classmates roll out. When everyone was gone, they’d head back to his place, grab whatever food they could find, and plant themselves in whichever room felt the most inviting that day. They’d stay like that until nightfall, drinking, laughing, and occasionally getting high until Carol would whine about her curfew, and Tommy and her would pack it up and head for home.

Like clockwork, the house got colder when the front door slammed shut behind them, and Steve would spend the next few hours trying to get warm. He’d fill the silence with tapes and records, busy himself with trying and failing to study for an hour before giving up, and then throw himself into bed with a huff.

Then morning would come, and he’d start it all over again.

Even his hobbies had a routine. Cross country in the fall. Basketball and swimming in the winter. During the summer, he’d spend his school-less time alternating between working as a lifeguard at the community pool and trying to figure out how to hit as many keggers as possible before midnight.

Weekends were reserved for dating, sometimes a different girl every week. He moved his way through it the same way he did with classes—with a charming smile and just enough attention paid that it gave him a pass. Sometimes it was double dates with Tommy and Carol or trips to the movies; other times, it was quick hookups at Skull Rock or tangled limbs in the backseat of his car.

It was a simple routine. Maybe even a little stupid, but it was his, and he liked it just the way it was.

Or at least he thought he did until Nancy Wheeler came along and not only gave his head the thump of a lifetime but also turned his entire life’s routine upside down.

Suddenly, he was taking notes instead of daydreaming in class because Nancy liked good grades. Instead of bolting from school when the final bell rang, he was lingering in empty hallways he hadn’t known existed as he waited for her to finish Model UN club meetings. He traded Friday night hookups near Lover’s Lake for evenings crammed in the library with chaste kisses stolen during study breaks. And Tommy and Carol became nothing more than a fleeting memory that made him grimace.

He even stopped smoking because Nancy hated the smell. Cut back on his drinking because she hated that too, and shockingly, he was okay with both because now he didn’t have to try so hard to stay warm anymore.

He didn’t have to fill the silence either. Instead, he would just go to the Wheelers when the quiet got too loud. Instead of getting high, he was making Holly laugh with silly faces and talking sports with Mr. Wheeler. He was passing peas to Mike, grinning as the younger boy sneered, and holding Nancy’s hand under the table as he listened to Mrs. Wheeler talk about her book club instead of falling asleep on the couch with cold leftovers around him like he usually did.

It was a much different routine than he was used to, but somehow it had still become his, and he wore it with as much pride as he had the first one. Maybe even more if he was being honest about it, but then he blinked, and a year had passed, and suddenly, Nancy Wheeler was turning his life upside down again.

This time in a puke-scented bathroom as Cyndi Lauper cried her heart out between the painful sting of drunken mumbled ‘bullshit’ and dry heaves.

So, his routine had changed again.

Almost back where he started, he was scraping by the skin of his teeth in class and fleeing when the bell rang. He didn’t linger in the parking lot, though, or smoke against the Beemer while talking shit like it somehow made him cool. Instead, he made a game of evading those on his list of people to avoid like they had a severe case of grade school cooties. And because that list just seemed to keep growing, it meant that Steve spent most of his time dodging around corners, slinking down behind his locker door, and having lunch alone in his car.

Tommy and Carol were the first on that list, also the two there the longest. As annoying as they were, the pair were ultimately avoidable if you knew which hallways to skip around. In Steve’s case, he had already spent so much time during the latter half of his junior year doing just that, that his senior year had hardly been any different.

Nancy and Jonathan were next on that last, although Steve would never admit to it out loud if anyone asked. He liked to think of it more as dodging than avoiding since he didn’t exactly go out of his way to hide from them on the rare occasions that their paths did cross. Still, he wasn’t allowing himself to linger about either because while there may not have been any bad blood between them — coming scarily close to death twice over with people had a way of really nipping that kind of thing in the bud — it hadn’t stopped his heart from feeling like it was going to crumble out of his chest whenever he saw the two of stumbling into the library together, giggling and holding hands.

Lucky for Steve, both Nancy and Jonathan were Grade A nerds with too many clubs and odd hobbies to count. It meant they were constantly ducking in and out, rushing through the halls at a blur-like pace with twin looks of determination as they headed off to French, the newspaper, the dark room, or whatever the hell else it was that they did. It made Steve’s… dodging all that much easier.

Billy Hargrove, however, was a different story and a harder one to avoid.

While he had let up on harassing Steve for the most part since that fateful night at the Byers’ house, it hadn’t stopped the occasional all too nasty glare or rough shoulder bump when their paths crossed. And while they weren’t earth-shattering events, not when compared to how things had been before their fallout, they had done very little to ease Steve’s paranoia or aid in his recovery. As a result, Steve had taken to staying out of Billy’s reach whenever possible, even if it meant lingering in the bathroom between every class while trying to ignore the throbbing inside his head.

The rather nasty concussion Billy had given him had turned out to be the gift that kept on giving. Not only had it left Steve with near-constant headaches and dizzy spells over the past two weeks, but it had also gotten him officially barred from all contact sports until further notice—effective immediately.

That in and of itself wasn’t so bad. Sure, he was bummed, but like many other things, team sports had lost their appeal after evil parallel worlds, and snarling monsters with too many teeth had become a reality. So, while Steve wasn’t mourning the loss of the sports themselves, his all too empty schedule was. And with nothing to take their place, he was stuck with nothing to do and a quiet that was louder now more than ever before.

Days like today were the worst of it, where the silence had somehow managed to grow legs and become an all-encompassing beast that threatened to eat him alive. Even in class, between failed tests and chapter reading, the silence had tried to bury him. With every hour that had crawled by, Steve had grown more and more suffocated, and by the time the final bell had rung, it had taken every ounce of self-restraint he had not to break out into a sprint on his way to the car.

All he wanted was to get home, kick back, and catch a good, long nap before he had to head to the Henderson’s for their weekly Monday night meatloaf dinner. But all that would require him being lucky. Really lucky. And unfortunately for him, luck hadn’t had anything to do with him since ‘83.

So maybe, in hindsight, he shouldn’t have been so surprised when a wrench got thrown into his plans. Life had never seemed to like him all that much, and if the past year had taught him anything, it was that it certainly didn’t give a damn about his precious little routines. Still, it doesn’t stop him from wondering how he kept finding himself in these situations as his eyes fell on the familiar sight of flaming red hair walking alongside the road.

Max. They’ve met once, yet; Steve would know the back of that head anywhere. He spent too many hours doing headcounts with blurry eyes and fighting to ensure some sense of safety for her and the rest of her little squad of shitheads to lose sight of it now.

She was alone, an all-too-heavy-looking burgundy backpack slung over her shoulders, and her head hung low. She looked… small, almost like she was somehow too fragile for the world.

It wasn’t a look that fit, Max. It was too uncharacteristic for a girl who had taken down her own brother to keep Steve from bleeding out on laminate flooring and Crayola drawings.

Realization draws forth the memory of skittish kittens, and the look of Max’s shoulders around her ears as her hands shook in the middle of the Byers’ living room, and an all too familiar ache finds its way into Steve’s chest.

He doesn’t know why she’s out here, alone and walking instead of bundled up in the passenger seat of her brother’s obnoxiously loud car. He’s almost certain he doesn’t want to know why, but they’re well into the middle of November now, and the days are getting shorter, the air colder, and the only thing that seems to be separating Max from the crisp bite of winter air is a flimsy green zip-up.

She would probably freeze to death at this rate before making it home.

If she even makes it home, his brain unhelpfully supplies. It was Hawkins, after all.

Not so much as a second thought is put into motion before he’s letting off the gas.

But Max is already on the defense after one too many speeding cars filled with reckless teenagers have flown by her. She doesn’t miss a beat as she throws up the hand that’s not clutching tight onto one of the straps of her backpack, her middle finger riding high in the air before he even comes to a complete stop beside her.

“Watch where you’re going, asshole— oh, it’s you.”

Something about that response leaves Steve sputtering. Maybe it’s because she hasn’t quite tucked away the finger she was giving him. Maybe it’s the fact that she spat the word you like it was something between a curse and a joke. Maybe it’s because she looks ready to kick him in the shins for making her stop, and he hasn’t even said anything yet.

“Yeah. Hi. Uhh… what the hell are you doing?”

It felt like a fair question, all things considered. Or at least it had to him. Max clearly doesn’t feel the same if the look she gives him is anything to go by, and suddenly his concern for his shins safety increases by about a hundred percent.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m going home.” She says it like it’s a simple fact, one so well-known and true; the sky is blue, the grass is green, and Max Mayfield is walking her ass home! One look to his right, and Steve can see that fine vertical wrinkles have even appeared on the pale, freckled skin between her eyebrows, almost as if carved there by her confusion over his lack of awareness.

“That’s not— forget it. Why are you walking?” His tone is cautious, half expecting a firm instruction from her to mind his own business.

To his surprise, she doesn’t give him one and instead replies plainly, "My board’s still busted.”

Steve doesn’t bother telling her that he had no idea her board was ever busted or that he only vaguely remembers someone – Dustin, maybe? - mentioning the fact that she skated in the first place. Instead, he regretfully charges forward, barreling towards the looming question clawing away at his already too tired mind, and winces before the words even leave his mouth. “Why isn’t he driving you?”

He doesn’t bother saying Billy’s name; they both know who it is he’s referring to. It’s all too evident in how Max’s face dampens and darkens, then twists into a faraway look like she’s remembering something painful. In the way, his mouth suddenly tastes bitter and hot, overflowingly full like he’s meant to be sputtering up blood in the backseat of a Camaro any second now.

Remarkably, they both power through it. Though Steve realizes it probably isn’t all that remarkable, really. After all, they’d both faced off against interdimensional monsters and Billy in one night. With a twinge of grief, he thinks it’s more likely they’re just grown used to pushing through because it’s the only choice they have lest they be eaten alive. Figuratively or otherwise.

“He’s got a stupid sports thing.” Max’s face is still twisted as she responds, but the faraway look is gone, much to Steve’s relief. “Basketball practice or something. It was either walk home or sit inside a smelly high school gym for two hours and wait for him to be done.”

Max’s revelation wasn’t exactly news, but it still felt like a gut punch to Steve, allowing the suffocating feeling that had been plaguing him all day to rear its ugly head once more. He should have known, really, or at least assumed at the very least. With him down and out, someone was bound to replace him, and Billy had been gunning for everything Steve had and then some since the moment he rolled into town.

And while it wasn’t surprising, it did sting to think about the fact that it was Billy that had replaced him.

Billy, who had left him with ears that liked to ring at the oddest of occasions and an inability to walk down the stairs without nearly tumbling. Billy, who was horrible to his kid sister on a good day and somehow even worse to almost everyone else.

Billy, who would be surrounded by teammates and cloaked in the roaring cheer of a packed gymnasium while Steve sat alone in an empty house, nursing migraines and zoning out to reruns of Cheers.

Steve has to shake his head a bit too aggressively to knock away the antagonizing little voice in the back of it that reminds him of just how far he’s fallen. It’s only when he stops to scold himself for the sudden movement that he notices Max staring at him, looking expectantly and growing impatient.

And shivering. Oh right, fuck.

“Jesus, red. Shit.” Steve mumbled, probably too late. “C’mon, get in the car.”

“What?”

“Get in the car.” He repeats, inclining his head towards the empty passenger seat.

Max doesn’t move. Not one inch.

She just stares at him, almost like he’s gone and grown a second head. Beneath layers of obvious confusion, Steve swears he can see the faintest brush of surprise on her face. But just as quick as it’s there, it’s gone. Her face twists again, turning into the trademark scowl he’s come to associate with red hair and freckles. It’s almost always been pointed at someone else, though. Never him, and if he hadn’t had nearly a year on the receiving end of the raging bitch fit little looks that Mike Wheeler had trademarked, Steve would’ve folded then and there. These kids were downright scary when they wanted to be.

“No,” she says in a sharp rebuff. “I don’t need your help.”

“Oh, well, in that case,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Seriously, you’ll need way more than my help when you freeze to death, idiot. Do you want to be hypothermic?”

“It’s not that cold!”

There’s a sharp pain between his eyes, and Steve’s sure this headache will be named Max. “Then why are your lips practically blue? That a new lipstick?”

She gapes at him, annoyed at being called out and searching for her next biting quip. Much to Steve’s chagrin, she finds one, and he’s forced to sit and watch helplessly as defiance comes back in full force, bringing that same shin-kicking look with it. “My mom told me not to get into cars with random men.”

It’s his turn to gape, and Max takes it for the win with a smug smirk. She’s already off, trotting away triumphantly with her head held high by the time his brain begins to work again. Steve has to press down on the gas, inching the car forward to keep up with her.

“Funny, my mom said something similar about getting into cars driven by ten-year-olds.”

“I’m thirteen, asshole.”

“Potato, tomato. Get in the car, Mayfield.”

“That’s not even the saying!” He wonders if it’s humanly possible for someone to strain their eyes from rolling them so hard. “And I already told you, I don’t need your help.” Max hasn’t bothered to stop walking, even as the words tumble out her mouth. She doesn't bother sparing him so much as a second glance as she trudges ahead.

Steve taps his fingers against the steering wheel, debating his next move carefully. He could play this one of two ways, and neither seemed all that appealing. He could stop the car, jump out, and catch up with her. Try to reason with her a little, maybe wear her down some before trying to drag her back to his car. Or he could keep inching the car forward, trailing after her like she hadn’t just refused his help and wait for the moment she either gets tired and gives up or makes it home in one piece, frozen or not.

No matter the choice, Steve’s just smart enough to realize there will be consequences. Option one would likely get him hit. If he wasn’t already concerned over the safety of his shins and she wasn’t carrying that heavy-looking backpack, he’d probably risk it. Max may be a wildcard, but she was still only thirteen. Chances are, she couldn’t hit any harder than her brother, and Steve had already been there, done that, and bought the hospital emergency room band as a reminder. Still, she’d probably bolt when he opened the car door, and then he’d have an entirely new problem to deal with.

His chances of finding her were significantly low if she took off in a run. Max felt like the dodgy type; he didn’t put it past her to slink around a corner and hide somewhere just out of sight before he could get even marginally close to catching up with her. She was crafty like that, probably fast too.

He was pretty sure the kids called her a zoomer for a reason.

Option two would likely prove to be the safest. Leaving him unscathed for however long he managed to stay inside the car. If she still decided to make a break for it, it’d be a hell of a lot easier to tail her in the car. Steve couldn’t deny it would likely draw some attention, though, and while Hopper would probably get a big laugh out of it, he could only hope that Max wasn’t nearly as tough as she looked when it came to braving the cold of Indiana’s winter.

It never occurred to him that there was a third option there.

He never considered that he could just keep driving and leave her to fend for herself.

Pressing down on the gas, he catches up to Max as he settles for option two. He doesn’t say anything as she walks and tries to act like he doesn’t see the side glances she’s trying to pretend she’s not giving him. In a slump of disappointment and a stab of concern, he notes that her cheeks are as red as her hair. It isn’t all that surprising, considering he’s cold despite the Beemer’s heater humming and all his layers.

Max was obviously hellbent on being stubborn. Any other day and maybe he would have smiled at that, and the fact that the horrors they faced hadn’t made her lose her spirit. Any other day and he would perhaps have indulged it longer, sat by silently and let her prove whatever it was she thought she had to prove by walking home alone. But today, there was a painful gnaw in his stomach, and his fingers were growing numb from the breeze of the open window. One way or another, he was getting her in this car, even if he had to play dirty to do it.

“Who said anything about me wanting to help you? Maybe I’m just trying to help myself. Have you ever thought of that?”

Max comes to a stop, whirling around so fast that Steve’s not sure how she didn’t get whiplash. “What?!”

Hook.

There was a strange, nearly wild look on her face. It’s almost like she couldn’t believe Steve had said something so absurd. A true testament to how little she knew him, he figured, but then she seemed to remember herself. She pulls herself together by threads, shaking her head as she tosses away all remnants of expression from her face.

Nearly as fast as she had whipped around the first time, Max turned again and started walking before Steve could reply.

“I said…” He repeats, continuing to move the car along beside her. “I’m trying to help myself here, red. Obviously.”

Steve eyes the empty road with all the faux concentration of a new driver. From his peripheral vision, he sees her glance shoot towards him. He doesn’t have to see her face to know she’s rolling her eyes again. Seriously, that kid was going to pop something.

“That doesn’t even make any sense.”

Steve snorts. “Sure, it does.”

“How?!” Max’s voice is sharp, laced with an unspoken question hidden behind the obvious one and nearly a rival for the look she’s casting his way. She’s still on the defense as she sizes him up, fiddling with the strap of her backpack before crossing her arms over her chest almost bashfully.

Line.

“You think I got my face rearranged and nearly got lost inside an underground hellscape looking after you shitheads just to turn around and have to spend my Monday afternoon scrapping a Max-sized pancake off the highway in this weather? Yeah, no. That’s not happening.”

Max stills instantly.

Sinker.

It’s the cheapest shot he’s ever taken before, especially towards a kid, but it’s nearly worth it to see Max’s mollified expression. The fight melts out of her, tumbling away in the winter wind that blows tangled locks of red hair across his face. Its presence is replaced by defeat and the slightest hint of guilt. Steve figures he should probably feel worse about that, but he can’t feel his hands and is all too aware of the fact that Max’s lips really are starting to turn blue, so he leans over and throws the passenger door open.

The guilt can find him later. Preferably after he’s had his nap and Max was back to a comforting 98.6 degrees.

She hesitates, still unsure. Still that skittish kitten in the park. Still fighting hard to hold her stubborn ground. He can practically hear the gears turning inside her head and forces himself to wait patiently as she comes to a decision, remembering the way Nancy had forced him to sit and wait on those kittens in the park—Be patient, they’ll come to you.

He doesn’t have to wait too long before she shoves her backpack into the backseat with a loud thump and huffs as she sinks into the passenger seat. Steve tries to think of a word to describe the harsh way she slings her seatbelt on. Passive-aggressive comes to mind.

But as the passenger door slams closed, relief washes over him. That was half of the problem taken care of. Now he just had to get her home in one piece, maybe try and defrost her on the way. If he took a shortcut through Oak and timed it right, chances were they could dodge the traffic nightmare as kids wandered around Main, searching for food and something to do now that their school day had ended. If he pushed it, he could probably even make it home under thirty and still have plenty of time to catch that nap.

“It’s not that big of a deal.” Her voice is small, her eyes staring pointedly out the windshield.

Steve’s first instinct is to argue because it is a big deal. It’s a big deal when it’s the middle of winter in Indiana, and she’s from California and seriously underdressed. It’s a big deal when they live in Hawkins, which just so happens to be the hot spot for monsters and missing children. It’s a big deal when she lives on the other side of town, and without a bike or skateboard, it would be dark out when she finally got there.

Truthfully, he’s not sure he’s ever wanted to disagree with something more in his life but decides against it as a little voice inside his head — one that sounded suspiciously like Nancy — reminded him that loud noises and his own stubbornness were his enemies in a situation like this.

It had been hard enough getting Max inside the car; he didn’t need her suddenly deciding to jump out of it while it was still moving to get away from him. She’s just bold enough to try it, and he knows it. He’s not about to give her a reason to want to.

“I never said it was.”

“Good, because it’s not.”

Steve nods. Tries to ignore the sting as he bites his tongue. “Yeah, I got that. Totally.”

Silence sweeps over them, heavy as it settles. The only sounds being the engine's rhythmic hum and the almost hushed whisper of indistinct singing from the Christmas music that the radio station had started playing a touch too early for Steve’s taste.

It’s a strange turn of events, but Steve finds himself okay with the quiet. It wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as it could’ve been, and nowhere near that of the angry beast that had tried to eat away at him in the hours before. It was… odd, sure, a little awkward even. But it wasn’t suffocating.

It was almost like he could breathe again, actually. Like he had relearned how now that he found himself a purpose. Even if that purpose was only temporary and came at the stake of keeping a thirteen-year-old from freezing to death between Elm and Cherry Lane.

Steve tried not to let himself think too hard about that as he focused on the road.

“I do it all the time.” Max eventually sighed, tone sounding defeated. Her eyes were still fixed on the windshield, staring out at the empty road with a steadfast determination. Her brows were furrowed just so; eyes squinted just the slightest bit. Strangely, she sounded a little upset over her words. A touch angry too, even a little sad. Almost as if she hadn’t wanted to admit that out loud.

“What do you mean?” Steve also tries not to think too hard about how his stomach seizes, turning even before she offers him any kind of confirmation.

“Walk home — I do it all the time.” Her admission was quiet and maybe a little too casual. “Sometimes, if I’m late, Billy makes me walk home instead of giving me a ride.” She shrugs like it’s simple, and Steve’s head and chest seem to throb in sync with one another. “I usually have my board, so it’s not really that big of a deal. It’s busted, though, so it is what it is. I can foot it. It’s not like I really live that far away. Plus, the guys all bike to and from school all the time.”

Max either doesn’t notice the way his hands have tightened on the wheel, leaving a white-knuckled grasp that was almost painful, or she’s feeling too embarrassed to say anything. Whichever it was, Steve was thankful for it. It was already too hard holding back the cacophonic rush of thoughts that had hit him the moment she opened her mouth, like how the fact that she was used to it didn’t mean that it was okay or how biking with a group was a hell of a lot different from trudging along by yourself when it came to a town that was probably cursed or something.

Instead, he scrambles for something to fill the space she leaves open for him that won’t end up scaring her away. “Well…” he starts, his mouth dragging out the syllable in an attempt to buy himself more time. “I mean, listen...” He doesn’t win against the wince that follows and can only hope that Max is still too busy watching the trees go by to spot it. “That's your business, red.”

There’s an itch in his throat. An awkward scratch from words that feel too wrong to be said. He gives in to the urge and clears it. It sounds loud in the otherwise quiet car, and it’s enough to grab her attention.

Max turns to look at him; brow raised suspiciously. She seems almost humored as the corners of her lips quirk upwards, threatening to override her sullen pout.

“Jesus, you’re bad at this.”

“Wow, great. Thank you.” Steve shoots back without any venom because the change in her demeanor is welcomed. “All I’m saying is, you do what you want, but if you’re going to be doing this….” A hand removes itself from the steering wheel to wave dramatically out towards the road. “You need to dress better. It’s cold. I don’t know how you guys do it in California. I assume it’s like way hotter there, right?” A deep snort cuts through the air. Steve chooses to ignore it. “So yeah, get a better coat or something. Raid your mom’s closet if you have to. Or wear every thin, stupid jacket you own. It’s about layers, Mayfield, because this….” The hand that never quite made it back to the steering wheel now reaches down to pick the cloth of her joke of a zip-up between two fingers. “Yeah, this is a no.”

Max rolls her eyes again. Steve’s eyes almost hurt in sympathy.

“Whatever.” She sounded annoyed, but she had stopped shivering and appeared un-shrunken. It’s enough for Steve to write the whole thing off as a win. And if he bumped the heater up as high as it would go and pretended not to notice the way Max shoved her sneaker-clad feet against the one in the floorboard, well, then that was his business.

“Whatever.”

“Great.” Max nods, gifting him the first glance of a tight-lipped smile.

“Good.”

They slip back into silence for the rest of the ride, and thankfully, Steve finds he’s still okay with it. It’s more comforting now, like the air in the car had grown lighter now that the awkwardness was out of the way. The little Nancy voice in his head offers praise. See, patience does pay off.

He’s further rewarded when he drops Max off, and she assures him that he doesn’t have to worry his tiny little pea brain about it because it won’t happen again. There’s a promise to get a proper jacket tucked in there between scoffs and eye-rolls as she gets out of the car. There’s even the tiniest little smile as she mumbles thanks before she takes off running up the driveway, her wild red hair dancing behind her.

Steve allows himself to believe that. Max is smart; he knows that even with the limited time he’s spent with her. She’s smart and resourceful… things will be fine. Probably, or at least that’s what he tells himself as he throws the car in reverse.

By the time he makes it home, he’s even more exhausted. The total weight of his exhaustion hits him like a train without the panic of Max freezing to death to keep him distracted. Unlocking the door, he takes the stairs to his room on autopilot, collapsing onto his bed with a groan.

Face down in a pillow, he takes stock of his body and mind and is surprised to find the suffocated feeling from before is nowhere to be found. And somehow, despite the fatigue thrumming through wary bones, his mind is wired, now plagued with the haunting question of what kind of guy makes his kid sister walk home on more than one occasion, even in the middle of November, even as a freeze hits the air.

Even when she has no skateboard to get around.

Even when she has no genuine winter jacket to keep her warm.

A sharp sting behind his left eye laughs at him and tells him he already knows the answer.

And he never does manage to get that nap.

Chapter Text

(Wednesday, November 21st, 1984)

Steve didn't consider himself a gullible man.

Was he thick-headed at times? Sure. A bit oblivious to the things going on around him? Of course. Did he sometimes have to rely on the help of others, namely a certain curly-haired thirteen-year-old and a beautiful doe-eyed brunette, to ensure that he didn’t end up wholly but accidentally misinterpreting whatever interdimensional crisis they were facing? A hundred and ten percent.

But gullible? Absolutely not.

So, when Max had pulled a face, half-scoffing and half-laughing, and assured him that her slinking home alone in the dead of winter wouldn’t happen again when he dropped her off two days ago, he had believed her.

And when she said she promised to get herself a genuine winter jacket before she jumped out of the passenger seat and bolted up the driveway, well, he had believed that too.

Not because he was gullible, of course, not at all. He wasn’t.

He isn’t.

Max was just a smart kid. Scary smart. Intuitive. She had the kind of head on her shoulders that was far more level-headed than Steve’s had ever been at that age. The type that could probably go on to cure diseases and end world hunger or something if she put her mind to it. So, when she had turned to him with a whisper of a smile and told him everything would be okay, he hadn’t felt the need to argue with her about it.

His subdued state was only worsened by the fact that Max felt exceptionally old compared to her actual age, like a wise tiny older man had been shoved inside a teenage girl’s body— like her very own Mr. Miyagi, he figured.

Steve was smart enough to know that it probably wasn’t a good thing that Max was like that. He knew from personal experience that kids only tended to act grown up when they felt like they had to. Whenever their parents, neighbors, coaches, and teachers went and left them behind with no choice but to buck up if they wanted to get by and learn how to survive on their own.

Still, the wisdom laced behind every word had him nodding along without question as she claimed that Billy had merely forgotten he had basketball practice that Monday and needed to set up a ride for her. The words had rolled off her tongue with such calm, practiced ease that it was hard even to consider the possibility of it being a lie, and so he hadn’t.

Truthfully, Steve didn’t want to.

Instead, he had dragged himself through dinner with the Henderson's, comforted by the idea that his after-school run-in with Max Mayfield had been nothing more than a one-off event. Then he had tucked himself into bed, absolutely spent but warm at the realization that the next time he saw the fiery redhead, she would be flanked on all sides by a trusty band of loyal nerds who would look out for her as they ran off to the arcade or wiggled their way into an R-rated movie.

When morning had come, Max’s instance and Steve’s self-reassurance had loomed so convincingly around him that he was nearly three-fourths the way through his morning hair routine before he remembered that it had happened at all. But a few deep breaths and a nod in the mirror had helped him brush the creeping anxiety away enough into the darkest corners of his mind.

And by the time the final bell had run Tuesday evening, he had all but forgotten about it again.

His insistence had been rewarded with the sight of that taunting blue Camaro peeling out of the parking lot after school, a flash of red tucked away in the passenger seat. It had left Tuesday to come and go without incident, allowing Steve to fall back into the comfort of his usual routine of going to school, scraping along by the skin of his teeth—ducking, hiding, and hauling ass whenever the bell rang before slumping home and throwing himself across his bed.

Tuesday night bled into Wednesday morning, and the quiet respite Steve had found had chased away all doubt. It allowed him to drag himself through the day, his mind a one-track note of casual everyday concerns, weighted down only by his desire to get home as soon as possible.

It never occurred to him that the span of only two days wasn’t nearly enough to change the course of his luck or that the amount he possessed hadn’t changed, not even a drop.

Luck still hadn’t had a thing to do with him since ’83, so it was only natural when everything around him came to a crashing halt. Leaving his well-planned routine thrown out the window once more. This time before he even makes it past the beat-up sign at the exit of the shared parking lot between the middle and high school reminding students to drive safely.

Every ounce of calm he has left in him leaves with it when a foray of red and green floats into view.

“Fancy seeing you here.” His voice travels easily through the rolled-down window as the car slows to a crawl. “Still toughing it out with the thinnest zip-up known to mankind, I see.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re kind of annoying?” Max replies without missing a beat; her voice muffled in the wind as she trudged on.

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard that once or twice,” he replies, tutting under his breath. “Get in the car.”

“No thanks.”

“Do I look like I’m asking?” Steve bites back, fighting the newly developed urge to put his hands on his hips.

Max stops dead in her tracks and slowly turns to face him. It’d be creepy if Steve weren’t scrambling to bring the car to an abrupt stop to keep from rolling past her. Her freckled face looked strangely emotionless, save for the one quirked eyebrow heading towards her hairline. Steve’s once again reminded just how scary these kids could be.

When she shows no signs of budging, he tries again. “Max.”

He’s not the least bit shocked when he gets an eye roll in response.

“Look, kid, we both know I’m not going to let up, and it’s only getting colder, so you may as well save us both the trouble and get in the car. We both got places to be.”

Steve skates across the lie, surprised by how well it rolls off the tongue. He didn’t have anywhere to be—at least not as long as his most important plan centered entirely around the warm bed at home that was currently calling his name. He knew it, and like most of the Hawkins student body, Max probably knew it too, although she’s nice enough not to call him on it. Her shoulders sink in resignation as she shuffles towards the car, moving as though her feet were weighing her down.

It's the most protest she makes beyond the cutting glare she gives him as she opens the passenger door. Steve has half a mind to gloat about it, but something in the anxious, wary glance she sends his way as she slips down into the seat leaves him biting his tongue.

They lapse into silence the moment the door slams shut. Steve’s grateful to be driving; having to focus on the road as he pulls away from the shoulder gives him an excuse not to talk as he racks his brain for something to say that won't leave her looking any more unsettled than she already is.

It doesn’t surprise him when Max proves to be the bravest of the two of them all over again and speaks up first.

“He didn’t make me walk if that’s what you’re thinking.” Her words come out slow and careful, like she’s tiptoeing around broken glass. “He had practice again. My mom said I should wait in the gym, but…”

Max trails off, and Steve realizes he’s the broken glass. The anxious looks, her sunken posture, the fact that she didn’t fight nearly half as much today as he expected her to… it all starts to come together, creating what has got to be the ugliest puzzle Steve’s ever seen. She’s worried about how he’s going to react to this. Worried about what he’s going to say now that she’s gone and lied to him, or worse, what he’s going to do now that she thinks he could be angry with her.

A cold shiver runs down the length of his spine, and Steve wishes it was nothing more than the winter wind.

“But it smells,” he offers, careful to keep his tone level and inexpressive. “Yeah, you might’ve mentioned that.”

There is movement in his peripheral vision. A sudden jerk as Max turns her head to look at him. Steve tried to keep his eyes on the road as she studied him, likely searching for whatever warning signs she usually saw in these situations. Finding none, she relaxes, melting back into the passenger seat with a sigh.

“So…” he says. “Radio on or off?”

“Oh.” She mumbles, sounding half-surprised. Steve can’t quite tell if she’s surprised that he’s dropped the subject entirely or if she’s surprised by the fact that he’s asking her what she wants. He doesn’t want to guess what either of those mean. “Doesn’t matter.”

Steve nods, reaching forward to turn on the radio without further question, inching the volume up. They finish the ride to Max’s with only the faint, melodic hum of a Hall & Oates song between them. It’s a stark contrast to their last ride and all its silence. More comfortable, companionable almost, even though Max never puts a firm hold on the curious glances she casts his way.

But for all its differences, the drop-off is nearly identical. It’s the same muttered thanks. The same reserved, almost shy look as she spins the same, tired line for him with the same calm, practiced ease. It won’t happen again, don’t worry about it.

Steve doesn’t bother nodding this time, although he still doesn’t argue.

He waves goodbye as she runs up the pebbled walkway and tries to offer the same whisper of a smile she had given him as he calls out the window and reminds her to get a better jacket.

He doesn’t think about the fact that it was expected to start snowing any day now as he heads for home and ignores the gnawing feeling in his stomach that tries to tell him this won’t be the last he sees of Max Mayfield.

(Friday, November 23rd, 1984)

It happens again, and some part of Steve knows by now that he should stop feeling so surprised to see a streak of red trailing alongside the road.

Like both times before, Max is alone as she staggers her way through the freshly fallen snow. Head down and determined, she's completely enthralled as she throws up the bird to every passing car that speeds by her like some twisted little send-off community. With a strike of pride, he notes she’s at least wearing a double layer of jackets now, even if they are still too thin to be considered practical against Indiana’s winter.

He doesn’t roll his window down to try and bargain with her as the Beemer comes to a crawl beside her; he just leans over to throw the passenger door open after he brings the car to a stop.

Max looks up, more annoyed than alarmed, and pauses.

Snow flurries are gathering in her hair, a violent contrast of red and white as she stares at the open passenger door, weighing her options. He isn’t left waiting long when a howling gust of wind blows, causing them both to shiver. Max is in the passenger seat, the door slamming shut with a loaded thump before the wind even settles down.

She struggles to put on her seatbelt, and Steve can’t help but notice how they shake, shivering from exposure. It reminds him of the ugly little chihuahua Carol used to have who trembled whenever anyone so much as breathed in its direction. It sends a strike of panic through him, nearly overwhelming him with the sudden rush to do something to help her.

At the first stop sign they reach, Steve uses the stop to his advantage and shifts the Beemer into park. He shimmies out of his jacket without so much as a second thought, depositing it into her lap. He doesn’t say a word as she shoots him a look out of fear of spooking her. He just shrugs, turning his attention back towards the road in front of them, although he does not attempt to continue driving.

Behind them, a car lays on its horn in annoyance. The sound shocks Max into motion, snapping her out of whatever reservations she was clinging to. She slips on his jacket with a huff, and Steve shifts the car into drive.

They’re ten minutes into a twenty-minute drive before either of them speaks.

“He had practice again.”

Steve nods. “Yeah, I figured.”

Billy having practice again wasn’t shocking. It was Friday, and the basketball team always practiced three times a week—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Steve knew this. He’d penciled those dates in enough on his calendars over the years to recite them in his sleep. He doesn’t tell Max this, though, because somewhere along the way, he’s realized that he’s playing fast and loose with a game he knows nothing about.

So, they finish the rest of the ride in the same silence as before, Steve with a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and Max with her still trembling hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets.

The Hargrove’s house looks the same way it has for days now, deserted and cold, as he pulls Beemer up in front of it. The fresh snow only serves to make matters worse, pushing the already grim-looking sight into something more miserable and forlorn than ever. It’s a visible resemblance to his own, reminding Steve of what’s waiting for him back at home, just as empty and sad—just as cold. It’s enough to send his optimism from before back into his throat, bitter and hot and burning with the startling realization that, like him, Max is stuck in a loop she’ll probably never get out of.

Shaking his head as if trying to dislodge that thought from his mind, he swallows hard and decides there’s no point in pretending anymore. “See you Monday then, red?”

She doesn't respond. Steve knows she’s not going to.

Instead, his answer comes in the form of the neatly folded jacket she leaves behind on the passenger seat after she gets out and the all too familiar unease making itself right at home in the pit of his stomach.

Chapter Text

(Saturday, November 24th, 1984)

Friday’s flurries turn into Saturday’s steady snowfall.

It’s the final touch of winter settling in, and it gathers the remnants of Hawkins’ population under a blanket of freshly fallen snow and idyllic haze.

It’s a wholesome affair, one that offers comfort and joy as kids race to the streets in search of their friends and the best locations to make a home for a snowman. Teens scramble close behind, ready to take up residency at Mickey’s Diner and drink their weight in hot chocolate while they gossip and laugh with friends, happy just to keep warm.

One winter ago, Steve would have been caught in the center of it all. Red-cheeked, rosy, and gleaming, hand in hand with Nancy on the Wheeler’s front lawn as they helped a giggling Holly make the perfect snow angel and let Mike taunt them with a barrage of snowballs.

Two winters ago, Steve would have been just on the cusp of it. Perpetually numb and skating along, crammed together with Tommy and Carol on his mother’s expensive couch, watching whatever movies they had gotten their hands on that week and thanking God for central heating.

Today, Steve finds he’s no longer even in the same area code as any of it.

Instead, he spends most of the day alone, curled up in bed and alternating between dreary catnaps and glaring at the stack of homework currently taking up space on his desk. He stares until the pile begins to look like it’s doubling in size and then stares some more just to prove to himself that it isn’t. And when sleep finally decides it’s had enough of him, and his eyes grow tired of squinting, he forces himself out of bed.

Today, Steve has no concerns about which sweater of his has the ability to both look great on him and still keep him warm enough as he trollops in and out of the cold. He isn’t worried about the state of his hair, tousled and dirty, the perfect display of bedhead, and has no plans to try and hide the bags under his eyes that seem to scream out just how tired he really feels.

Today, Steve just shucks on the cleanest shirt and heads for the stairs. Takes them on autopilot and heads for the kitchen, where he then does the thing he seems to do the most these days— nothing.

He almost forgets the reason he came down in the first place as he stares out the windows, watching the snow flutter and fall until his stomach rumbles and growls, loud in its hunger, bringing him back to his senses.

It’s just enough for him to wish it hadn’t as he turns, intending to plunder through the fridge, and spots it.

For a while, he just stares at it.

The jacket, still folded neatly as anything, waiting right there on the island chair like the ghost of Mayfield’s past meant for it to be found. Like yesterday’s him knew he’d come down eventually, eyes bleary, stomach empty, feeling—

Whatever it is he’s feeling. He doesn't know if there's a word for it

Steve can only scowl at it as he moves past it. He yanks open the fridge and grabs a carton of orange juice, downs a gulp straight from the spout because who’s gonna stop him? His mom that isn’t here? Or his dad who doesn’t care?

He doesn’t look at the jacket again, not when he rinses out a bowl for cereal, not when he scrapes the bottom with his spoon and shoves it in the sink. But it’s there, and he knows it.

He knows it, and he’s feeling—

Well, something. He still hasn't figured it out, although he's started to suspect there probably is a word for it. There usually is.

By the time he’s setting the bowl down, that something has turned into a knot in his stomach, tight and strange and persistent. Like frayed wire buzzing under his skin, itching at him to do something about it, although he wouldn’t even know where to start.

So, he doesn’t start. He just keeps moving.

He cleans.

Vacuuming first, even though there’s nothing on the carpet except for the same old footprints his mom leaves behind in her pointed heels when she passes through the house like a ghost. He dusts, scrubs down the counters. Thinks about tackling the baseboards before realizing that’s insane, and then does it anyway.

He does his homework. Actually tries for once. Pulls out the textbook, reads through the equations, fights with them long enough that they start swimming together in front of his eyes.

The knot doesn’t go anywhere.

He makes dinner. He eats it. Washes the dishes and leaves them to dry. Tries to watch something on TV but can’t remember what was on the second he turns it off.

It’s still there.

He tosses and turns that night, more familiar with the feeling by now but still not quite used to it. It’s the unease that creeps up on him when he least expects it, like a hand gripping his shoulder, the whisper of something he should be paying attention to but isn’t. It lives in the space between his ribs, tucked in close, patient and quiet and unmoving.

When he wakes on Sunday and it’s still there, he knows he has to do something about it.

So, he heads for the attic.

It’s been years since he’s been up here. Long enough that the pull-string light flickers a little in protest when he yanks it down. Long enough that the air is thick and stale, settling in his lungs like a weight as he shuffles forward, careful of the creaky boards.

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. Maybe more dust. Maybe more silence.

What he gets is something else entirely.

A graveyard of memories.

A lifetime of carefully crafted versions of the Harrington family, arranged in neat little rows, tucked away into storage until they were no longer deemed useful. Slipped into and out of, traded for something new like his mother’s favorite silk scarves.

Steve tiptoes through the bones of it the best he can. Ducking under cobwebs, and avoiding the old mirror leaning against the wall because he already knows what he’ll see.

He’s got a job to do. A man on a mission.

The box in the back finally catches his eye. STEVEN’S THINGS, ’82 written in his mother’s precise, looping handwriting. He doesn’t let himself think too much about it as he kneels down, fingers ghosting over the cardboard edges before it pops it open.

Inside, it’s a mess of almost-brand-new clothes, folded so sharply they still have creases. Sweaters with plenty of life left in them. Polos in colors he doesn’t even remember owning. Things that had once belonged to him until they didn’t.

He shifts through them, pulls out a particularly garish striped sweater, and tosses it aside with a grimace, then— There.

His fingers brush something softer, thicker than the others. A pullover, deep blue, the fabric warm under his fingertips despite years of neglect. He exhales, then, feeling something settle for the first time since the passenger door had slammed shut yesterday.

It’s not a full-fledged winter coat, but it’s thicker than the ones Max seems to favor, and Steve thinks it’ll do just fine.

It just needs a wash.

The scent of stale air and faint cigarette smoke clings to it, a reminder of every time his mom had good intentions but never quite followed through. She’d meant to give all this stuff away, to send it off to a country club donation drive, but like a lot of things, she’d gotten distracted. Then she forgot, and it had ended up here instead.

His lingers just a second longer, fingers gripping the pullover before he stands.

By the time Sunday evening rolls around, there’s a fresh load of laundry tumbling in the dryer, and for once, Steve finds himself eager for Monday.

Not for school, but because he has something to give.

And maybe, just maybe, that will finally make the knot in his stomach go away.

Chapter Text

(Monday, November 26th, 1984)

There’s something different in the way Steve moves that morning.

It’s nothing drastic. Not even enough to draw attention or make his reflection smirk back at him like it used to.

But it’s there.

It’s there in the way he towels his hair dry with a little more urgency. In the speed with which he chooses his outfit for the day. In the way his steps hit the stairs just a bit too quick, like his body is trying to get somewhere before his mind catches up. It’s even in the way he rushes through breakfast, barely remembering to put his dishes away before he’s heading for the door.

It’s not joy, not exactly. But it’s close.

Or maybe it’s just purpose.

He hasn’t had one of those in a while.

The pullover is folded clean on the passenger's seat before he’s even halfway through his coffee. He doesn’t bother to double-check it. Doesn’t even hesitate to toss it there. Just grabs his keys, slides behind the wheel, and starts the car before he has any time to think about it.

The heater kicks on slow, windows fogged faintly at the edges; the road out ahead is still soft with old snow. Waiting for the car to heat up, he drums his fingers on the steering wheel once, twice, then stops himself as that old familiar sensation makes its presence known.

The knot’s still there.

Low and dull, tucked somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach. It’s not as sharp, not screaming the way it had been over the weekend. But still, it hums, low and persistent in the way only something so familiar can be. Like background static or the buzz of a far-off light. The kind you don’t notice until the room gets quiet.

But this morning, it almost feels manageable. Containable somehow.

He tells himself he’ll notice it less once the day gets going. That he may even be able to let some of it go.

And at first, he does.

He coasts through first period with one foot tapping under the desk. Second slips by too. He even catches himself humming under his breath as he slings his locker shut between classes. Some Hall & Oates thing that’s been stuck in his head since Friday. It’s not that the day is good exactly. It just isn’t bad. Not the way most of them have been lately.

Every sneer from Billy, every shoulder-check from Tommy, every too-familiar laugh echoing across the cafeteria from where Nancy sits huddled close to Jonathan — it all still happens. Just as it always did lately. But today it bounces off this strange, unexpected buoyancy he’s been riding all morning.

Because today, he’s got something to hold out for. Something Max doesn’t even know is coming.

And that matters more.

That counts for something.

By the time the final bell rings, it’s the closest thing to anticipation he’s felt in weeks.

He doesn’t make a show of it, but he lingers in the lot. Let’s the first wave of students pour out, laughter sharp in the cold, boots and sneakers crunching over half-melted slush, backpacks bumping as they pile into cars and head down the sidewalk two by two. Cars peel off in every direction, everyone all too eager to get anywhere but here. One of the buses pulls off. Then another.

As he waits, he taps his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of nothing at all, heart pulling tighter the longer he waits, eyes scanning the stream of movement for one thing in particular.

A flash of red against all that white. The familiar slouch of a too-thin green jacket.

She’s always come down this stretch before, cutting through the shared lot from the middle school doors, board tucked under one arm or gliding easy beneath sneaker-clad feet.

But today? Nothing.

No red hair. No green jacket. No scowl. No Max.

He waits longer than he probably should. Pretends to flip through the glovebox. Pretends he isn’t checking the mirrors over and over like she might suddenly materialize late, distracted, and hidden just out of view behind someone taller.

Eventually, the lot clears. The cold sets in again.

Still no sign of Max.

Left with no other option in sight, Steve pulls out, driving slow. Just in case.

He even loops past the middle school. Slows down near the curb. Eyes the crowd of kids still loitering around the doors. A few backpacks, a few bikes. None of them hers.

He rounds another block. One more. Then another. Tells himself he’s just being thorough.

But there’s no sign of her.

Not today.

The knot shifts. Tightening.

Worse than before, maybe.

Because for a second— a whole day, even —he really thought he might get to set some of it down.

(Tuesday-Thursday)

He tells himself it’s good he hasn’t seen her.

That it means Billy must’ve driven her home like he’s meant to. That maybe things are better, or at least settled down. Maybe they even talked. Maybe, somehow, she and her family figured something out.

He tells himself that’s a good thing.

That it’s better this way. That she’s safe.

But then Tuesday comes and goes, and the knot in his stomach doesn’t ease. It shifts; it tightens. It loosens just to retighten and then shift some more, low and uneasy. But it doesn’t go away.

By Wednesday, the buoyancy he’d felt at the start of the week is gone. Like a dying star, whatever brief surge of momentum had carried him forward has burned itself out, leaving something quieter in its place.

He still checks the lot.

Still slows his steps after last period and finds reasons to linger in the driver’s seat, heater on low, eyes trained on the flow of movement outside.

The pullover sits in the passenger seat beside him. Still folded and still waiting. Just like him.

But each day the space stays empty. Each day, the flash of red never comes.

And each day, he drives off a little sooner than the last.

By Thursday, he’s no longer pretending to check the glovebox. No longer making excuses to himself for circling the block. He just sits and listens to the engine tick under the hood, watching the snow turn to slush in the rearview.

And tries not to think about how familiar this kind of waiting feels.

The same kind that always comes after the dust settles. After the monsters are all gone and the gates and tunnels are sealed. When things are supposed to be back to normal. When the others start breathing easier again, start picking up their old routines, and he just… doesn’t.

Maybe that’s why the pullover ends up tossed to the backseat at some point. Not folded neatly anymore, just thrown across the cushion like he couldn’t bear to look at it one second longer.

It’s not about the sweater, not really. And some part of him— tiny as it may be —knows that it never was.

It was about what it meant to give it. To have something to do, and what it means for him now that he doesn’t.

But the knot isn’t screaming anymore.

It just sits there, thick and quiet, still posed in the pit of his stomach, like it’s waiting too.

(Friday, November 30th, 1984)

By Friday, Steve’s coasting on fumes.

The pullover is still in the backseat, crumpled. He hasn’t touched it since he threw it back there. Hasn’t even really looked at it. And he tells himself it’s fine. That it’s better this way. That she’s probably fine. That everyone’s fine.

But the knot’s still there. Waiting.

By last period, he’s got his head on his desk, half-listening to the tick of the wall clock and the quiet scratch of a pencil behind him. He’s already decided he’s going straight home. No stops. No loops. His bed is warm, and his plans are nonexistent.

But still, when the bell rings, his body moves on its own time.

He lingers in the lot a little longer than he means to, letting the rush spill out and the noise fade. It’s not hope that keeps him there this time. Just… rhythm. Another routine he’s fallen victim to. A muscle memory that hasn’t figured out how to just let go yet.

Then he pulls out, driving slow down past the edge of the high school. Past the shared lot, past the place he’s looked all week and found nothing. He doesn’t even look now.

Not until he rounds the corner.

And stops.

Double checks the empty road.

Then— backs up.

It takes a second, but yeah. That’s her.

Half-hidden near a telephone pole, collar pulled up tight around her neck, red hair tangled and wet with snow. She’s hunched; her shoulders curled in like she’s bracing for a hit. There’s a dark scrape across her cheek and something raw about the way she wipes her nose on her sleeve. Almost too fast, like she doesn’t want to be seen doing it.

Steve throws the car in park and leans across the seat, opening the door.

Max gets in without a word.

She slams the door shut behind her, shoving her soaked sneakers up against the heater vents like she’s done it a thousand times. There’s no glance, no snark. No muttering about independence or strangers or not needing help.

It’s progress.

It’s also a warning.

Because Steve knows Max Mayfield by now— or at least, he’s getting there —and this silence isn’t comfort. It’s a fuse.

He watches her out of the corner of his eye.

Her hands are fists resting in her lap. Her jaw’s clenched so tight it looks painful.

“Y’know,” it’s with great effort that he tries to keep his voice light, gentle, trying, “pretty sure the heater’s gonna melt your shoes into the floorboards, and I’m not cleaning that up.”

She doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t even snap back.

She just flinches— almost undetectable –and keeps her eyes locked forward like she’s trying not to cry. Like she’s trying to survive this ride without shattering in front of him.

That’s when it hits him.

This isn’t just some moody teenager having a bad day.

This is something else.

“Hey,” he softens. “What happened?”

Nothing at first. It’s so still after he asks that Steve is beginning to wonder if Max even heard him.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

It’s quiet, but it’s not nothing.

So he lets the silence stretch there and watches the road ahead, the white blur of snow flattening everything into sameness. The heater kicks harder. Her shoes are starting to drip.

Eventually, her voice breaks through, seeming to struggle as it climbs its way up her throat.

“He left me.”

Her voice cracks, only barely, but Steve hears it.

“Billy?” He asks, already knowing the answer.

Max doesn’t nod, just stares out of the windshield. It’s all the confirmation he needs.

“We were supposed to go to the store. For groceries. My mom gave him a list and everything, and he said he’d take me. But then he got pissed over— I don’t even know what. Just…” She trails off, eyes blinking fast. “He dropped me on the side of the road.”

Steve’s grip on the steering wheel tightens. The leather creaks beneath the pressure.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No.” She says fast, nearly too fast. “Not like that. He just… yells. And he gets mean. And then he acts like it’s me that’s the problem.”

Her eyes are wide as she turns to look at him. It reminds him a little of stray dogs at the junkyard whenever you get too close to them. Like they haven’t decided if you’re friend or foe.

Steve exhales. Long and slow.

“Shit.”

Max shrugs like she doesn’t care, but her chin’s trembling.

“Yeah. Well. Whatever.”

There’s not much else he can say. Not that she’d hear right now, and he knows it. So he doesn’t try.

Instead, he shifts one hand off the wheel and reaches into the backseat. Fingers find the soft fabric of the pullover with minimal effort, as if the jacket itself knew this was the moment. He tugs it across the center console without a word and offers it into her lap just the same.

She looks at it. Then at him.

Her face twitches.

“You’re giving me your laundry now?”

He snorts. Involuntary, the sound is sharp but real.

“No. No. Just figured… it’d fit better on you than in my attic.”

“So… it’s junk?”

He scoffs in reflex. Some part of him had decided that it was better than taking his eyes off the road to roll them.

It’s not lost on him that her chin’s stopped trembling. That she’s trying. That the joke is maybe half an actual question and half an attempt to keep herself from unraveling.

“Would you just take the thing? Jesus.”

Max doesn’t answer. She doesn’t thank him, either. But she doesn’t argue, and Steve figures that’s about as good as it’s going to get toward a step in the right direction for progress. He takes it without complaint.

Although she hesitates at first, Max takes the jacket, slowly. Almost carefully as she picks it up, like it might somehow unravel in her hands. She slips it on right there in the passenger seat, dragging it over her soaked green jacket. It’s a little big— the sleeves swallow her wrists, hang past her fingertips —but she tugs them down and buries her hands inside them anyway.

They’re not shaking anymore, Steve notices.

And for the first time in days, the knot in his stomach lifts — not just sits heavy or waiting or still.

Almost like it’s loosened just a little.

The rest of the drive is quiet.

Not the heavy kind from before that sits around waiting for someone to fill it, or the kind that fills the space like pressure building in a pipe. No, it’s something closer to calm. Like the air’s been cleared a little.

It’s not exactly peace, but something adjacent. A thin layer of calm settled just above the frayed edges of them like bruising before it colors.

Max doesn’t say anything, but she moves differently now as she shifts once in her seat. Slumping less as she loosens her shoulders, leaning her forehead against the passenger window as they coast through the turns toward her neighborhood, eyes half-lidded. She watches the outside blur by, the quiet flicker of houses and skeletal trees and slush-piled curbs. Her shoulders rising and falling in slow rhythm, the sleeves of the pullover still dragged down low over her hands, fingers hidden.

She’s burrowed in, he realizes, proudly. Settled.

And although the tension’s not gone, at least not completely, it is quieter now. Something closer to contained.

Steve doesn’t ask her where she wants to be dropped off.

He already knows. It’s routine now, too. Unspoken and familiar.

The car crunches gently up to the curb outside her place. The familiar porch light that’s always on is steadily glowing weak yellow, like it knows what time it is and is saying hello.

Max reaches for the door handle.

Steve almost lets her go without saying anything else.

Almost.

“Hey,” It’s a single word, but it comes low and even as he prepares himself not to fuck it up.

She pauses, looking back over her shoulder, hand still hovering near the handle. The glow from the porch cuts across her cheek, soft and flickering. She looks tired. Not weak. Just… spent, like a match after the fare.

He swallows, gripping the wheel with one hand, the other braced against the console as if he needs the moral support to anchor himself to say it.

“If you ever need anything — I mean, like, anything. Or just someone to…” He trails off for half a second, although not for lack of words, before he clears his throat and starts again. “You find me. Alright? Doesn’t matter what it is.”

Max doesn’t nod, but she doesn’t roll her eyes either.

Instead, she just stares at him over her shoulder for a second longer than usual, like she’s still trying to decide what kind of person he really is.

Steve considers it another small victory. Another step forward towards trust, or at least, something.

It’s the first time she hasn’t tried to dodge or joke her way out. The first time, she just lets herself sit quietly on the receiving end of his help.

She studies him for a second longer. Then she pushes the door open and climbs out.

The slam door echoes sharply against the cold.

Slush squelches under her sneakers as she hops down and starts up the dirt path toward the porch. Steve watches her retreat up the walkway. She doesn’t look back.

He expects that to be it — the door, the light, the end. Just as it was every time before.

But just before Max reaches the top step, she stops. Turning slowly where he catches the last thing he needs to see as she raises one hand– still gloved inside the sleeve —and waves.

It’s a little awkward, a little stiff. But it’s a wave, nonetheless.

Not a salute. Not a middle finger thrown without caution into the wind. Just… a wave.

Steve blinks. It knocks something loose in his chest. Or maybe it’s lower. Maybe it’s the knot again.

Except, it’s not tightening.

It’s loosening. Finally, and fully. Like something inside him just released the breath it’s been holding all week.

She disappears inside.

He doesn’t pull away right away. Doesn’t reach for the radio. Just sits there in the hum of the heater and the smell of old leather seats and snowmelt and the faintest trace of something that feels like progress.

The passenger seat is empty.

The pullover’s gone with her.

No jacket. No Max.

And, somehow, for the first time all week, no knot.

Chapter Text

(Friday, December 14th, 1984)

It’s been a few weeks since the last round of insanity. No monsters, no possessions, no panicked calls in the middle of the night. A few weeks since he’s seen the brats for more than a passing glance down the shared lot. Red hair or trucker cap bobbing in the distance before disappearing into Billy’s car or the middle school doors.

It’s good. Really good. It means things are probably, maybe, kinda back to normal, he figures. At least for now. Hopefully for good.

With everything settled, Steve’s started to fall back into a normal pace— get up, get by, get home —a steady rhythm that doesn’t leave much room for thinking too hard about anything else.

And right now, that rhythm has him on the fast track for a weekend of doing absolutely nothing. He’s got a plan, a beautiful, sacred plan: shoes off the minute he’s through the door, leftover pizza (if the universe is kind), bad TV, and a whole lot of not speaking to another human being until Monday morning. He can almost see it: the couch, the blanket, the glorious nothing of two whole days stretched out ahead. He can even practically feel the couch fabric imprinting on his cheek already.

It's hard-earned as far as he’s concerned. He’s already running on fumes. It’s been one of those weeks that stacked on itself, day on top of day, until they just became one big, tired smear. The kind where even sleeping all weekend only knocks the edges off the exhaustion.

Needless to say, by the time the last bell rings, Steve’s already halfway home in his head.

The parking lot is a sheet — ice under old snow, it’s the kind of half-frozen slick that makes everyone move like toddlers on skates. Breath fogs. Engines grumble awake. Keys jingle. People are escaping slowly but surely, shuffling to their cars with the kind of focus only freedom brings. Steve blends right in with them for once. Head down, keys between fingers, jacket zipped to his throat.

He’s halfway into opening the driver’s side door of the car when it happens.

“STEVE!”

It’s less his name and more a death sentence, ripped across the high school parking lot like an air-raid siren. It ricochets off the rows of cars and the one-story brick building, every cell in his body jumping to attention. His shoulders go up like someone just fired a starter pistol in his ear, and every head in the lot turns to watch.

So does Steve— against his better judgement –hands still on the frozen handle, heart dropping straight through the soles of his sneakers.

Here they come. Dustin first, then Mike and Lucas, doing this horrible half-run, half-surf down the glossed-over asphalt. Arms windmilling, sneakers skidding across the slick sheet of ice and snow. They’re loud and determined and impossible to ignore. Somehow, even more eyes swing toward them, watching like they’re the halftime show. Someone laughs. Someone else yells, “Careful!” because it looks like at least one of them is about to eat it.

Steve’s first instinct is to duck into the driver’s seat and lock the doors. Instead, he stands there like an idiot and has the extremely rational thought that death would be kinder than whatever this is.

They skid to a stop right in front of him, red-cheeked and out of breath, and immediately start talking. Not one at a time—never one at a time. That would be too easy. No, their words explode out of them so fast, crawling over each other, that he only catches maybe a handful: names, places, the word “urgent” at least five times. Mostly, it’s just noise. Loud, frantic noise.

“Whoa, woah—”

They don’t even hear him. Or they pretend not to. Steve has no idea which possibility is worse, but their words aren’t so much English as panic with nouns.

“Wh— hey,” he glances around, lowering his voice because he’s still got a sliver of dignity left and would love to keep it. Even if his heart’s starting to thump harder, panic edging in. “Is it… monsters?”

No answer. Lucas is already pointing toward the far side of the lot like there’s a finish line only he can see, Mike’s elbow-deep in his backpack, Dustin’s voice climbing higher with every sentence.

“Guys, seriously?! Is it monsters?”

Dustin finally blinks at him, like Steve’s just asked if the sky is up there today. The pause stretches long enough for Steve to feel stupid before Dustin throws both hands up in front of his face, like he’s wrangling an excitable golden retriever. “Steve — focus.”

“I am focused,” he says, even though he isn’t. “Focused on the part where you yelled my name like we were all about to die.”

“It’s not monsters,” Dustin says, breathless, somehow offended he even has to clarify. “It’s our AV club project.”

There’s a beat where Steve genuinely relaxes. Shoulders down, breath smoothing. No monsters. Great. That’s good. Then the rest of the sentence lands, and the relief collapses in on itself.

It lasts all of half a second before the urge to strangle all three of them kicks back in.

“You scared the hell out of me for a school project?” he demands, baffled and exhausted in equal measure.

“Mr. Clarke’s out sick,” Mike says with the air of someone declaring a federal emergency.

“And we need to get the camera from the AV closet, but the key’s with Ms. Ratliff, and she’s left already,” Lucas adds.

“And the tripod’s leg is stripped,” Dustin says, like he’s describing a battle wound. “We need to hit the equipment store before it closes or we’re doomed.”

Steve stares. This is all actually happening. Right now. To him.

“Where are Nancy and Jonathan?” It comes out more pleading than he means it to. “Or your parents?”

“Everyone’s busy,” Mike says.

“Except for you,” Dustin adds, way too cheerfully.

Steve’s about to argue they have no proof of that when Lucas cuts in. “Look, we just need a ride. And possibly the kind of adult who can sign things without the office asking questions.”

“I am not an adult,” Steve says, horrified.

“You are to them,” Dustin says, jerking his head toward the school buildings. “You have a car.”

“That’s not how adulthood works,” Steve says, even though he’s pretty sure it is — at least to them. And maybe it’s for the best, because he’s not entirely sure how else he’d explain it.

They all do the thing then: three earnest faces, three sets of too-wide eyes, three mouths moving in overlapping pleas. It’s like drowning in a petition. He holds up a hand, palm out. His couch is still calling his name.

“No.”

They don’t stop; they just ignore him harder.

“I said no,” he says, louder. “I am going home. I am not your chauffeur. I am not your—"

They’re already herding toward his car like it’s a given. Mike’s popped the back door and tossed his backpack into the seat. It lands with the kind of thud that says textbooks and terrible decisions.

“Did you hear me? I said no.”

“Thank you so much, Steve,” Dustin says, not listening at all, his enthusiasm bordering on weaponized optimism. “You’re saving our entire winter break.”

“I didn’t—”

Lucas is already motioning like a ground crewman on a runway. “We have hit Ms. Ratliff’s first. Then the school, then the equipment store.”

“I’m not—”

Dustin yanks the passenger door open, one foot on the running board, turning back to toss more words over his shoulder when a streak of red slices cleanly into the frame.

Max slides in before he can blink.

Unlike the boys, she’s not out of breath or sweaty and red-cheeked. She didn’t run across the lot like a lunatic to announce herself. She just strolled in— right timing, right angle, right amount of zero patience —and drops down into the passenger seat like it’s always been hers, one smooth move.

Dustin freezes mid-lunge, fingers hooked uselessly under the door handle. “Hey! That’s my seat.”

Max reaches for the air vents with casual ownership, angling every one toward her before the car’s even on. “Should’ve been faster.”

She shuts the door in his face.

A few onlookers are still lingering, pretending not to watch. One girl snorts; a couple of guys laugh. The late bus hisses to life. Engines keep turning over one by one as the lot goes back to being a lot. Their moment in the center of it all breaking up like ice underfoot.

Steve doesn’t say a word, but he is— against his will —briefly satisfied. Dustin’s ego taking a hit is one of the few simple pleasures left in the world.

Then reality returns, and he remembers who he is, where he is, and what is happening. The other three gremlins are already climbing in: coats, elbows, backpacks, all angles and momentum. They fill his car like a small weather system.

“Unbelievable,” he mutters, mostly to himself, because if he says it to them, it’ll just spawn a fifteen-minute debate. He stands there in the cold for one last second, every part of him deeply opposed to this, watching four faces look up at him from inside his own car like he is the one holding them up.

He knows exactly how long this ends if he doesn’t give them what they want: Never.

So, he gets in the driver’s seat, slamming the door against the cold and the last of his free will. Then he puts the key in the ignition and curses, not so quietly, whoever handed him a guardian angel with a mean sense of humor and a fondness for middle schoolers with zero boundaries.

“Seat belts,” he says, because if he’s going to be kidnapped by children, he’s at least going to make sure they survive it. “And if anyone tries to change the radio, you’re walking.”

Dustin’s already pointing a righteous finger toward the windshield. “Okay, first stop—”

Against every single plan he had, Steve rolled the car out of its spot and joins the line of people who were supposed to be free five minutes ago. “Shut up. I’ve already made one mistake today, Henderson. I’m not making two.”

The inside of Steve’s car feels smaller than usual, like the heat’s turned up too high even though it isn’t. Dustin’s in the back explaining something about the AV project or closet key or— honestly, Steve doesn’t really know. He stopped listening the minute they left the parking lot. But Lucas interrupts every now and again with “that’s not what she said,” and “I’m telling you, I’m right,” while Mike’s leaning forward between the seats like sheer proximity will somehow manage to make Steve understand faster.

Max is the only one not talking over someone else. She’s slouched in the passenger seat, elbow on the door, staring out at the snow-slushed road like she, too, is regretting her life choices. But the way she’s soaking in the heat, steam curling off the damp cuff of her jeans after she immediately cranked the dial, says otherwise.

From what Steve’s gathered, apparently, Ms. Ratliff is the gatekeeper. And Ms. Ratliff has already left.

“It’s no big deal,” Lucas says, like they’ve got this handled. “She lives near the old water tower.”

“That’s not true,” Mike fires back immediately. “She lives by the grain mill. She told me once.”

Dustin waves them both off. “You’re both wrong, but it doesn’t matter. Everyone knows she goes to the pharmacy every Friday after school. We’ll catch her there.”

Steve tightens his grip on the wheel. “You guys do realize this is insane, right?”

Three voices answer at once: “It’s not insane.” / “This is important, Steve.” / “We’re on a schedule!”

Max isn’t one of them. She just tips her chin toward the heater vent, eyes half-lidded, smirk tugging at her mouth. “You already know you’re gonna give in,” she says. “So why fight it?”

Steve… doesn’t have a good answer for that. So he groans, slinking lower in his seat, and keeps driving.

They hit the water tower first. Nothing turns up but a few empty yards and a couple of ridiculous lawn ornaments, none of which suggest Ms. Ratliff has ever been anywhere near here. Then the grain mill, where Mike insists she “must’ve just moved,” despite the only house in the area being several years into its abandonment. Finally, the pharmacy, where Steve’s patience is circling the drain, and Dustin is still arguing his case as they pull to a stop.

Through some miracle, there she is.

Ms. Ratliff is standing in an aisle inside, a basket looped over her arm, flipping through greeting cards like she’s got all the time in the world. The kids barrel in ahead of him, voices climbing as they swarm her before Steve’s even through the door. They trip over each other about cameras and closets and how they need it today, overlapping loud and louder until the whole store knows they’re after a key.

She blinks at them, bemused but not bothered. “The AV closet? Oh, sure. I’ve got the key in my car.”

Which is how Steve ends up trailing the pack back outside like a reluctant sheepdog.

At her hatchback, she digs through an oversized bag. And digs, and digs, and digs. Every thirty seconds, something surfaces— a tangle of yarn, a crushed granola bar, an expired coupon —before disappearing back into the depths.

Finally, she pulls out a small folder, flips it open, and produces a single sheet of paper, which she holds out in Steve’s direction. Some standard equipment removal form.

“Sign here for me, will you?”

Steve blinks at it. “Uh, I’m not—”

“You’re their ride, right?” She’s already handing him a pen, smiling like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

“Unfortunately,” he mutters, earning a scoff from Dustin and an eyeroll from Mike.

“Then just sign here and initial here.”

He does, crawling his name so hastily on the hood of the car it almost floats off the page. Ms. Ratliff doesn’t question it— which is, frankly, disturbing —before tucking the form away and producing a set of keys with a little apple-shaped fob with a flourish, pressing it into Lucas’s palm like she’s been waiting all day to get rid of it.

The kids head back to his car in a little cloud of victory, the key clutched like it’s gold. Steve follows, vaguely concerned by how easy it apparently is to pass as a responsible adult in Hawkins. Not a comforting thought.

The middle school is already halfway buttoned up for the weekend by the time Steve pulls into the lot. One of the side doors is propped open with a salt bucket, but every other entrance is locked tight. The sound of a vacuum hums faintly from somewhere inside, blending with the muffled echo of a radio.

Lucas takes off first, jogging toward the open door, Dustin and Mike right on his heels. Max doesn’t bother pretending she’s in any hurry.

When Steve throws her a look, she shrugs.

The second they step inside, they’re met with a wall of lemon-scented floor polish and the sight of a janitor dragging folding tables toward the gym. “School’s closed,” the guy says, like he’s said it a thousand times before, his bald head shaking to-and-fro.

“We just need five minutes,” Dustin promises, holding up the key like it’s a magic pass. “Swear!”

The janitor squints past them to Steve, clearly clocking him as the so-called responsible party in charge, and Steve’s stomach drops somewhere around his feet. He has to resist the urge to plead that “in charge” just means “on the hook” in this case.

Steve forces a polite smile that feels like it might split his face in half.

“You with them?”

Steve wants to say no on instinct, but four little heads nod too fast behind him. He feels the words from earlier— you’re an adult, you have a car —circle back like a curse.

He nods instead, holding up both hands as he amends despite the already looming bad feeling. “Two minutes.”

There’s some muttering from the janitor, followed by a reluctant sigh, and then they get waved through with the lazy overturn of a hand. Three of them instantly break into a run.

“Don’t run!” The janitor calls after them.

Steve jogs to keep up, shoulders hunched against the inevitable disaster. “You really think sprinting past the guy in charge is a good move?”

“We’re on a schedule,” Mike throws over his shoulder.

Max’s voice comes from somewhere behind him, closer than he expected. “Told you not to fight it.”

“Yeah, thank you for that. Very helpful,” Steve says, but she’s smirking when he glances back.

The AV closet is worse than what Steve pictured: cramped, overstuffed, and smelling faintly like burnt dust. Tapes, tangled mics, boxes of cables, and stuff that looks like it hasn’t been touched since the seventies. There’s a camera— right there on the middle shelf —but nobody so much as looks at it first as the kids descend on the rest like they’ve been set loose on a free-for-all.

“Camera,” Steve calls out. “You came here for a camera. grab it and—”

“We need mics,” Lucas says, already pulling a tangle of cords off a hook.

“Oh, and the light kit too,” Dustin adds, dragging a battered case the size of a small coffin into the hall.

Mike spots a beat-up-looking boom stand and grabs it like a trophy.

“Whoa—slow down,” Steve says, stepping in to keep a display stand from tipping into a shelf of reel-to-reel decks. “You break it, guess who’s taking the blame?”

Max deadpans: “You.”

“Bingo. So maybe stop trying to carry half the closet at once like you’re training for the circus.”

But it’s useless — they’re already hauling out another armload. Way more than any one camera. Cords spill like spaghetti, stands scraping along the doorframe, and someone nearly knocks a box labeled DO NOT REMOVE off the top shelf. Steve lunges just in time, wedging his shoulder under it before it brains him.

“Guys, seriously!” he barks, voice ricocheting in the narrow hall.

In the chaos, Max has perched herself on the edge of a desk crammed in the far right corner of the closet, legs swinging without a care in the world. “You really suck at being in charge.”

“I’m not in charge,” he shoots back, wresting what feels like the tenth cable out of Dustin’s hands.

“Exactly.”

Once he’s finally able to wrangle them back into the hallway, it takes forever to load up everything they swear they need in the car. The Beemer’s trunk fills up first, then part of the back seat, then the space under Max’s feet. She shifts grudgingly to make room for a coil of cables, leaning against the door with the air vents still angled squarely at her.

“Don’t suppose you want to help,” Steve calls out toward the open passenger window as he shoves the trunk closed for the third time. Thankfully, this time it sticks.

“Don’t suppose you want to thank me for not making it worse,” she fires back.

He just stares at her until she cracks the faintest smile.

“This is a nightmare,” he mutters, mostly to himself, climbing in.

The drive back across town is loud. Not the kind of loud with music or anything worth hearing, but the particular brand of overlapping chatter that somehow manages to needle every single nerve in Steve’s body. Mike’s halfway over the back seat again, Dustin’s hands are flapping around more than is reasonably necessary, Lucas is cutting in with corrections every five seconds, and Max— Max is sitting quietly, chin in hand, eyes occasionally cutting between Steve and the boys in the backseat like she’s a researcher taking notes for Idiots in the Wild.

Steve tries to tune them all out. It works for a while.

Until one word finally slips through, slithering into his ear like a worm. Tripod.

He glances at Max, who doesn’t so much as twitch, then back at the mirror where three heads are still bouncing around like pinballs. “Wait,” he cuts in, brow furrowed. “We’re going to the Wheelers for a… tripod?”

Dustin throws his hands up in a look of defeat. “See? I told you— focus.” Dustin jabs two fingers toward his own eyes, then the direction of Steve’s, like he’s trying to train a particularly dense animal. “We already told you this, like, three times, Steve. Maybe if you didn’t zone out every five seconds, y’know, like you always do—”

Steve’s brain stalls, then starts chugging again with painful slowness. He saw tripods in the AV closet. He saved tripods in the AV closet when one of these little gremlins nearly toppled them over with a light kit ten minutes ago. He tightens his grip on the wheel. “Hold on. Back up. There were tripods back at the school. I saw them. Why the hell didn’t you just take one of those?”

For the first time since they started, the backseat goes quiet. Almost too quiet. Max shifts in her seat to get a better look at the four of them, chin still propped on her hand as her smirk sharpens, pleased, like whatever research she was doing before just got extra good after the lab rats chewed through their own maze walls.

“Well,” Lucas starts.

“See—” Dustin adds with a fleeting wince. “Technically–“

“Ours is better,” Mike insists, staring determinedly out the window like that excuses everything. “It actually stands up straight.”

“And the others are wobbly,” Dustin rushes out. “Bad legs. This one’s sturdier!”

“Unlike the ones in the closet,” Lucas mutters.

Then it hits him, slow but inevitable, dropping into place like the world’s stupidest puzzle piece. “Wait a second, if the Wheelers have a tripod, they have a camera. Why aren’t you just using that?”

The silence in the car could now power the whole town if anyone hooked it up to the grid.

Finally, Dustin says, “It’s not the same.”

“It’s… not as good.”

Steve laughs. It’s sharp and humorless, the kind that makes Max side-eye him from the passenger seat like she’s not sure if he’s about to swerve into traffic. “Oh my god. You’re serious.”

Lucas jumps in after Mike, “The AV camera has better resolution.”

Steve just stares at the road, then at them in the rearview, waiting for the part where sanity returns. It doesn’t. “So let me get this straight. You dragged me all over creation, harassed Ms. Ratliff at the pharmacy, nearly gave me frostbite, and risked my permanent record— for equipment you already had?”

“Mr. Clarke said—” Dustin fumbles, then finds his footing. “He said if we wanted to use the mics and light kits, we have to check out the camera too. It’s policy.”

Steve gapes at them. “Screw policy! You guys are insane. You realize that, right?”

Three voices pile on at once, full of excuses and urgent justifications. The project has to be perfect. It has to blow the others out of the water. They need every piece of equipment for the best possible grade, for their future, for the good of America, maybe the entire planet.

Steve’s head thunks back against the headrest as the car fills up with noise again. Max shifts, pulling her sleeves down over her hands and hiding a smile in them, just enough to make it obvious she’s enjoying this way too much.

By the time he pulls up in front of the Wheelers’ house, he’s seriously considering driving straight on past and leaving them all to walk. Max catches his look, reads it instantly, and only shrugs like she wouldn’t blame him if he did.

The boys tumble out in a tangle of limbs and noise, half-tripping over the pile of AV junk wedged across with backseat with them. Steve winces with every thud and scrape, imagining dollar signs sprouting out of the cords and cases as they vanish up the Wheelers’ front walk. Mike doesn’t even look back when he slams the door behind him; Dustin and Lucas are already bickering about who’s going to carry the tripod back to the car.

The car goes quiet. Blessedly quiet. The engine hums under his palms where they rest against the wheel, a low, steady vibration that almost feels like a heartbeat. Max hasn’t moved from her seat, choosing not to follow the boys. She’s got her shoulder leaned against the window, fog collecting where her breath touches the glass.

They sit like that for maybe a full minute before she speaks. “You do know they said earlier the tripod’s leg is stripped, right?”

Steve feels like his skull is cracking open. “What?”

“Back at the school,” she says, turning her head just enough to look at him. “They were arguing about it. Something about how they’d need to hit the equipment store after. Dustin was right—” she says, wincing like the words physically pain her to say. “You really don’t listen.”

A groan drags out of him, deep and miserable. His head drops back against the headrest. “Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. They dragged me across town, made me break half a dozen traffic laws, and now they’re going after a busted tripod?”

Max lifts a shoulder, unconcerned. “Looks that way.”

He mutters something that would probably get him banned from babysitting duty forever, if babysitting duty didn’t already feel like his life sentence. The silence returns after that, stretching out long enough for his pulse to settle. His eyes slip shut without meaning to, the faint heat pouring out of the vents working its way into his bones.

The couch is calling him again, louder than ever. He can see it in his head like a mirage — sock-covered feet, blanket over his legs, the kind of nap that easily erases whole hours from the clock. If he plays this right, gets them in and out fast, maybe the afternoon isn’t a total loss. Maybe he can still salvage the sacred nothing he’s been chasing since the bell rang.

That’s when he hears the click of plastic. His eyes open again to find Max leaning over the center console, hand buried in the glovebox like she owns the place. Old receipts and a busted pair of sunglasses scatter into her lap.

“Seriously, red?” Steve says, too tired to even muster a real snap.

She doesn’t answer. Just digs deeper, pulling out a cassette tape with a raised brow before tossing it back. Then a lint-rolled pack of gum. Then a cracked Bic lighter that definitely isn’t his.

He’s about to bark at her about leaving it all alone when his brain finally catches up to something else—she’s wearing the jacket. His jacket. The one he shoved at her weeks ago in the cold, almost half-expecting never to see it again. And yet here it is, collar flipped up to her ears, sleeves swallowing her hands, looking like it belongs there.

It strikes him then that he hasn’t really thought about the knot in weeks. Not since the day it finally let go as he drove away from the Mayfield house. The bliss of forgetting it even existed. But now, as the car idles and Max digs unbothered through the clutter, there’s a strange kind of relief that comes with the sound. Enough of one that he doesn’t tell her to stop the way he usually would, letting the rest of the tension from the day bleed out of his chest instead.

“Find anything good?” he asks instead, voice dry.

“Not yet,” she says, though her smirk is there in the corner of her mouth as she rifles through one more handful of junk.

Steve watches her for a beat, suspicion tugging at the edges of his thoughts. He’s not convinced it’s the actual snooping she’s after. He doesn’t even think she’s looking for anything real. He doesn’t ask, though. Just lets her keep going and thinks for the first time all day that maybe he can survive this after all.

They lapse back into quiet, the only sound the faint whir of the heater pushing warmth against the windows. Max finally leans back, tucking her hands deeper into the sleeves of the jacket as she gives up on digging around the confines of his car and turns to watch the Wheelers’ house like she can will the boys to move faster.

“You know,” she says after a beat, her tone flat but her eyes sharp, “if you want them to listen, don’t argue.”

“Pretty sure that’s not in the definition of listening.”

“Yeah, but with them? The more you fight, the more they dig in. Just let them think it’s their idea. Then they’ll actually shut up for once.”

It’s so unexpectedly practical— so true —that Steve blinks at her, caught off guard. Max doesn’t look at him, doesn’t push it, just keeps staring out the window like she didn’t just hand him the first useful piece of advice he’s heard all day.

Something further eases in his chest before he can stop it.

The front door bursts open before Steve can even finish the thought of saying anything else in response. The boys come barreling down the walk, wrestling with something long and unwieldy between them. The tripod. Or, as it looks from here, some kind of medieval torture device they’ve decided to drag into his backseat.

They fumble with it at the curb, knocking elbows, swearing under their breath, the legs catching on the sides of the open backseat door more than once. Steve doesn’t move to help. Just watches in resigned silence as they wedge it in on top of the rest of the AV junk, every scrape against the upholstery adding another year to his life expectancy going down the drain.

By the time they tumble back into their seats, red-faced and triumphant, the chorus hits in unison: “Equipment store!”

Steve’s hands tighten on the wheel. The words are a headache waiting to happen, but when his eyes flick sideways, Max is already looking at him, expression unreadable but steady. A quiet reminder.

He exhales instead of arguing. Deciding to follow Max’s advice, he doesn’t fight, doesn’t waste the energy. Doesn’t even bother pointing out the fact that the tripod being busted defeats the entire argument about it being better and sturdier than the ones back at school. Just shifts the car into gear and pulls away from the curb, wondering if not arguing might actually keep him sane.

The equipment store isn’t crowded, but it might as well be a battlefield from the second the kids pile out of the car. Their chatter ricochets off the glass doors, filling the place with enough noise to turn heads from two aisles over. Steve follows, dragging a hand down his face, already bracing himself for the disaster about to unfold.

Normally, this would be where he snaps. Where he corrals them with a barked order, tries to wrestle the chaos back into something manageable. But Max’s words hang around like an anchor—don’t argue, let them think it’s their idea. He glances at her on the way in. She’s trailing just behind him, hands still buried in the sleeves of his jacket, giving him the smallest of looks. The quiet reminder now shifted into something of a dare. Try it her way.

So, he does.

They descend on the aisle with the replacement parts like they’re storming Normandy. Dustin seizes the first pack of bolts he sees without so much as a second glance, Lucas immediately says they’re the wrong size, and Mike is already reading off prices like he’s calling out bad plays in a football game. Steve lets them go, arms folded, waiting it out like he has nothing better to do.

When Dustin finally waves a package in triumph, Steve only tilts his head. “You sure that’s the right one?”

Dustin blinks, caught out mid-celebration. “Uh—yeah. Of course.”

“Because Lucas sounds pretty convinced you’re wrong. And, y’know, you hate being wrong.”

It takes five more minutes of squabbling, but somehow the right part ends up in the basket. Steve never raises his voice once. Max’s smirk grows every time he doesn’t.

Of course, it doesn’t end there because that would be too easy. Mike tries to sneak in an extra spool of wire—“for backup”—and Dustin argues that buying the upgraded brand is an investment in their future. Steve only sighs, shaking his head. “If it’s not on your original list, it’s not going in the basket. I’m not watching you blow all your money on wire you’re never gonna use.”

Predictably, three voices rise in protest. Steve just shrugs, careful. “Hey, your project. Your call. Just don’t come crying to me when you’re broke and still need snacks for movie night.”

That shuts them up faster than yelling ever could. Max nearly chokes on her laugh.

By the time they finally make it back to the register, the basket Steve somehow got roped into carrying holds exactly one repair part and nothing else. No bonus wires. No unnecessary upgrades. He even manages to see to it that they pay without anyone knocking over a display or earning anything more than an eyebrow raise from the tired-looking clerk. Miracles do exist, apparently.

When they hit the parking lot again, the boys are still bickering— who gets to hold the bag, who gets credit for spotting the right bolts first —but the fight is lighter now, almost triumphant. Steve shakes his head and finds himself laughing, low and reluctant, but real all the same as he climbs back into the driver’s seat.

And although exhaustion still hangs heavy in his shoulders, it feels almost bearable as he puts the car into drive.

The ride across town is somehow louder than the ride out. It’s not bickering this time, but the overlapping excitement of plans tumbling out one on top of the other about shots, angles, and voice-overs. How this is this going to be the best project the AV club’s ever seen. Mike’s practically vibrating out of his seat, Lucas is already claiming ownership of working the mic, and Dustin keeps reminding them all that he called dibs on editing.

Steve tunes in just enough to catch the vague shape of it. He’s dead on his feet, shoulders still heavy, but. Well. They’re actually kind of impressive when they’re not driving him insane.

The car pulls to a stop in front of the Henderson house upon request. Before the engine’s even off, the doors burst open, the boys spilling out like they’ve been set free. Max climbs out slower, slamming the passenger door behind her. Steve drags himself out, too, helping wrestle the AV junk from the trunk before anything can hit the ground.

Dustin mutters a quick, distracted “thanks” without looking at him, already hauling some of the AV junk up the walk. Lucas pauses just long enough to slap Steve’s palm in a quick high five before jogging after him, arms overflowing with wires. Mike doesn’t even glance back, too busy running ahead to shout instructions about where the tripod goes.

That leaves only Max. She hangs back a beat, tugging the jacket tighter around herself as she eyes him.

“Guess you’re not the worst at being in charge,” she says, like the words taste funny coming out before quickly tacking on, “when you’re listening to me, anyway.”

Steve blinks, half a laugh escaping before he can stop it. “Thanks… I think?”

But she’s already gone, darting up the drive before he can say anything else.

This time, he’s the one who lifts a hand, waving after her before climbing back into the quiet car.