pretty damn good babsitter.

he doesn’t mean to end up at melvald’s.

he tells himself he just needs coffee. the shitty kind, pre-ground in a red tub, the kind his dad used to drink and tommy used to mock until he got older and realised it was the only thing that ever cut through a hangover. he doesn’t even need it. not right now. he’s just restless. agitated in that twitchy, skin-too-tight way that comes around sometimes and won’t leave without being walked out.

so he drives. no plan. no radio. just the sound of his own engine and the vague idea that doing something normal might keep the ghosts at bay.

he parks outside the store. sits there for a minute with the keys still in the ignition. the parking lot’s nearly empty. fluorescent light bleeds out across the concrete like a bad omen.

he tells himself it’ll be quick. just the coffee. in and out.

but when the bell above the door chimes and he steps inside, the first thing he hears is a drawer slamming shut and the rustle of paper. then a voice - low, distracted, familiar.

steve.

tommy freezes.

he doesn’t see him right away. just hears the sound of receipts being counted, maybe end-of-day paperwork. nothing remarkable. but his body reacts before his brain does - blood thudding in his ears, hands starting to sweat. he doesn’t know why it’s hitting him this hard. maybe because he didn’t brace for it. maybe because he still remembers what steve looked like the night they stopped being friends. or maybe because he doesn’t remember the last time they looked at each other and it didn’t end in something mean - from tommy’s end at least.

tommy stares. too long. he shouldn’t. he knows he shouldn’t.

because it’s him, and it’s now, and everything between them feels like a loaded gun left on the table. months and months and months of silence, of biting words and worse absences. but also: bikes leaned against trees. summer afternoons by the pool. being sixteen and thinking the world only went as far as the next weekend and the people who made you feel invincible.

he wonders if steve still remembers any of that. if he lets himself. or if he’s rewritten it all by now - sanded it down into something easier, something where tommy was always the villain. maybe that’s safer. maybe it’s what tommy would’ve done too, if the roles were reversed.

he wants to believe steve knows he went to rehab, but deep down, he doesn’t think anyone told him. why would they? his parents wouldn’t. not out of pride or concern, but embarrassment. image to maintain. no one needs to know that poor boy fell apart.

if he does know, tommy’s sure he thinks it’s pathetic. predictable. of course hagan ended up in rehab. of course he burned his life down and now he’s hanging around hawkins like a ghost trying to prove he’s changed.

tommy has to force himself to look away, tap his fingers against his thighs, resist the sicky feeling that spreads throughout his body. ground himself - remind himself that it’s just steve. his best friend. he takes a deep breath, reaching for another thing off the shelf without even thinking, and bounds up to the counter.  

“hey.”

it’s soft. careful. tommy swallows. his voice is caught somewhere between old muscle memory and something gentler, smaller. something he's spent the last few years trying to grow into. “didn’t mean to interrupt. i was just-” he gestures vaguely at the shelf behind him but doesn’t finish the sentence, instead he places his coffee and a pack of grape Bubble Yum onto the counter.

it’s stupid. he doesn’t even like gum, not really, not anymore. but his hand just grabbed it without thinking, like muscle memory from middle school afternoons when they’d sneak pieces under the bleachers or shove five pieces in their mouths at once just to see who could blow the biggest bubble. it’s bright purple and dumb and childish, but it’s something from before. before the drinking. before the fights. before he forgot what it felt like to laugh without something ugly sitting behind his teeth.

with all tips counted and spread evenly into envelopes that would probably not even get picked up until next week he started onto another task, only distantly wondering how filling out an application for a weekend helping hand slash stock boy had turned into him totaling the register at the end of the day. at least his mixtape is still playing dimly over the speakers, and steve taps his pen along to the beat, barely registering the bell indicating that someone had entered the store. a glance at his watch, a deep sigh. there were always some stragglers, but five minutes before closing on a weekday feels more like a personal vendetta against steve above all else.

he can only hope whoever's come in knows exactly what they want, so this can be swift, in and out, and he can close up shop and collapse into bed before putting in his hours at the YMCA tomorrow morning.

he's deeply engrossed in a world of numbers and receipts, yet the sound of footsteps coming closer to the counter has him turn around swiftly with a customer service smile pulling at his lips in a sort of pavlovian response that is so deeply indoctrinated it takes a couple beats before his smile unavoidably begins to falter, then drops altogether. lips part around words that haven't yet manifested in his head, his brows draw together ever so slightly. the air suddenly feels so thick and static it's like a hole in the ground has opened up and he's fallen straight into the upside down.

but there's no flicker of lights, none of that prickling sensation at the back of his neck that will had mentioned. somewhere in the distance he hears marvin gaye's 'after the dance' come to an end, promptly transitioning into duran duran's 'save a prayer'. and somewhere in his immediate close vicinity, a few steps from the counter that seperates them both, there's tommy hagan.

the images that are immediately and unwillingly drawn up in the back of steve's mind aren't pretty. it's explosive fights, it's 'nancy the slut wheeler' sprayed onto the local movie theatre, it's tommy being complicit as billy hurls some insult his way in the hallways. steve blinks. whatever he wants to say is beyond words, could never be expressed by anything as feeble as speech. whoever said that breakups only hurt when it's a relationship is a fucking idiot.

"hey."

and somewhere he knows that he's absent-mindedly yet somehow purposefully been avoiding tommy for as long as possible. which feels weird, and mean for some reason. he glances down at tommy's items, and the slide show of memories starts up again, but this time they're sepia toned. and it's having sleepover's at steve's place, staying up into the wee hours of the night to craft up a game plan for a first date with carol, it's dunking each other in the pool until they're breathless with laughter. it's patching up fight wounds, sharing a joint on tina's roof, squeezing three people into a photo booth.

the way the Bubble Yum sits on the counter feels like it's taunting him. grinding his teeth he rings him up wordlessly. when he looks back up to announce the total, that's when it hits him - the face that looks back seem more like a stranger than an old friend. and that's because steve doesn't know tommy as an adult.

not that steve would necessarily call himself an adult, either. but the steve that tommy was best friends with had ceased to exist sometime around senior year, maybe even a little bit before that. and the remnants of the tommy he had known were hidden underneath a layer of something steve couldn't quite put his finger on - something that occasionally bubbled up to the surface, manifesting in a pack of Bubble Yum.

"great choice" is how he breaks the silence after what feels like eternity coming and going in the small distance between them. he nods, finding it unbearable to meet tommy's eye. "we also - we've got peach, too. somewhere around here. or - in the back, maybe. that's one's ... that's also good."

His parents were less excited about the whole basketball thing. They'd been tentatively supportive when he dedicated his entire summer before freshman year to running drills with Steve, but even that was more because they were so shaken up from the fire that they wanted him to do something "normal." When Lucas actually made the team and it became apparent that basketball was a major time commitment, Charles and Sue were very clear with their expectations.

If at any point Lucas' grades slipped below a B+, he was off the team, point blank period. So he's been fighting tooth and nail, semester after semester, to make sure that never happened. Lucas had maybe gotten less sleep these first three years of high school than ever before between balancing AP classes with Dungeons and Dragons and basketball-- but he'd always been a little hyperactive, prone to getting bored if there weren't a million things going on at once. And besides, it's not like he wanted to spend a single minute of the day alone with his thoughts, because then he'd just be moping around about the fact that Max had dropped him like he was nothing.

And, not for nothing, the keep himself busy M.O. was highly effective, if not unavoidable between the constant needs of Mom, Erica, and The Party. Lucas narrowly escaped a conversation with Mrs. Jenkins who was insistent that he was the only person in Hawkins who knew how to mow her lawn properly, therefore it was his fault that it was overgrown (despite the many, many times Lucas had encouraged her to hire another, preferably less busy, high schooler to mow it.) He'd ducked behind a tent to avoid her gaze, and all was going well until someone all but screamed his name through the crowd.

Lucas turned to Steve with wide eyes, making a 'cut it out' motion at his throat until he was sure her hearing aids hadn't picked up on his yell. "Hey, man," he breathed, clapping Steve's hand with his own and patting his back in the 'totally cool' handshake Steve had taught him just a few years ago. "I'm avoiding... kind of everyone but you," Lucas admitted, letting out a sigh and peering up at his friend, weary. "You actually like stuff like this?" He'd never been a fan of crowds, himself, but maybe King Steve could pass off a tip or two.

"Uh...well, I guess I used to", Steve muttered, unsure, letting his gaze trail over the square, the crowds, the frilly banners some poor city council intern probably spent all night hanging up. Not exactly the social event of the season, but he figured King Steve wouldn't have missed making an appearance nonetheless. Which feels tragic now that he thinks about it, and unbelievably shallow, and it's almost like he can see himself, Tommy and Carol in tow, leaning against his car, a can of beer wrapped in a brown paper bag, silently chuckling at the nerds passing by. He wants to go back in time and smack some sense into that Steve. He also wants to hand him another beer and tell him to take it easy because come senior year he'll have not only his college essay to worry about but also soul-sucking-demon-monsters that live beneath town and seem to have it out for his friends specifically.

What finally snaps him out of his quiet rumination is distinct pair of eyes locking onto him. Steve blinked once, twice, then again, as the gears grinding in his head came to a sudden halt. Before he knew it Tammy Thompson was grinning from ear to ear, approaching at a speed Steve would not have thought possible with the crowd between them, and he jumped into action. A hand clasped onto Lucas' back, he discreetly steered him away into the other direction. "Hey, you know what, you're right. This blows. Let's go somewhere else. Anywhere else." Where was Robin when you needed her? If anyone could throw themselves in the way of Tammy to talk her ear off, it was her. "Why are you avoiding everyone? Aren't you kind of the man of the hour? Star player on the team, I'm surprised you're not swarmed by people." And Steve could only hope he sounded sincere and not as pathetic as the echo of his words made him appear to be. Man, peaking in high school sure is a full-time job.

There was something kind of unbearable about Main Street when it was dressed up like this. Too many paper banners flapping overhead, too many kids darting between booths, too much sun hitting Chrissy's shoulders. She had already been mistaken three times for someone working the PTA table (she wasn’t).

Now she stood just slightly off to the side of the crowd that had started forming, her hair sticking slightly to the back of her neck and a plastic Go Tigers! pin stabbed into the fabric of her top. She was actively not trying to look like someone waiting for someone. But she was definitely scanning faces. She didn't realize how awkward she would feel being back around the hustle and bustle of it all.

When her eyes caught on Steve, it was almost an instinct. Muscle memory from too many parties where she’d hovered somewhere near him. She hadn’t planned on saying anything. Honestly, she figured they’d nod at each other, maybe trade a look that said god, remember this nonsense?, and that would be it. But, something made her push off the pole she had been leaning her body against and cross the space over to him.

"You ever miss it?" Chrissy asked, her voice light as she nodded towards the teenagers that were making their way from booth to booth, smiling and gawking at what may be their first or final time at the bash. She thought senior year would be her last time and yet, here she was — as faculty, no less.

With every familiar face that happened to pass through town and stop by his stall he felt an overwhelming need to draw out the conversation, just so that he could offer some explanation as to why he was still here. Tripping over his words as he tried to cram in his courses at Roane Community, his job at the YMCA, his dream of opening a basketball camp. And did he know who he was trying to impress here? Whether he was rationalizing his decision to stay in cursed Hawkins to whatever washed up classmate-turned-businessman who'd happened to stumble in front of his stall, or to himself?

By the time he was done ringing up the queue his head was spinning. And the spinning suddenly ceased somewhat when he locked eyes with Chrissy Cunningham, and Main Street faded away, replaced by someone's living room, or dingy basement, or backyard. Like magnets they'd always seemed to gravitate towards one another, exactly at that point of the party when all your friends where nowhere to be found and the music felt a little too loud and Tina's living room had gotten a little too crowded.

Steve followed her gaze, tiny tin pricks to his chest as he watched the teenagers pull each other along to the next booth. Soon enough that would be Lucas, Dustin, Max, El, Mike and Will. Not a babysitter anymore. Though he hadn't been that for a long time. "That's a ... loaded question", he managed after a moment, still none the wiser on an answer. "I guess? Parts of t, I mean. Not calc. Definitely not anything Mrs. Click ever taught." And definitely not skipping revision for the next exam to go demon hunting in a shadow dimension beneath Hawkins. Although maybe Steve wonders if he was just fucked up enough to miss exactly that. Because wasn't it the Upside Down that had plucked him from prom-king-obscurity, that had laid the foundation for the connections that would shape him into the semi-decent person he was today?

No, he had a new purpose now. And power surges definitely did not make him break out in a cold sweat. The kids skipped to another booth, and Steve turned back to Chrissy. "How about you? Is it weird being back in there?"

They felt chummy, friendly, even, in a way they hadn't in a long time. A hand on her shoulder, the ask of how she was doing, were both further than they'd gotten in years. Between his friendship with her brother's friends, forced proximity, and the boy who had come between them before out of her life, maybe they could be friends now, a feat Nancy hadn't considered possible years ago.

"Oh, I will. I think she requires twice the hairspray quota compared to every other woman in Hawkins, so, much appreciated." The question had been posed to her, but Nancy couldn't help but wonder how he was doing: still stuck in this town, working at a store that seemed to just barely be hanging on after years of threatening to close. It was enough to make Nancy feel a slight, shameful level of concern. But, they weren't that close--at least, they hadn't been in a long time, and they weren't again yet.

Nancy offered a shrug in response. "It's, y'know, Hawkins. Same as ever, except when it's not quiet around here." She should be grateful that it was, that maybe she and her friends could have a moment of peace, for once. "It's so weird, seeing them almost grown up. Mike was talking about college the other day." She was sure Steve felt the sentiment, having grown so close to the Party over the years. "I knew it would come sometime, but I just didn't expect it to feel so fast."

Steve cleared his throat, snapping himself out of it. No, this was exactly why he went to community college, why he was working two jobs to support himself, why he'd moved into the city. He looked back at Nancy. "Guess I gotta stop calling myself babsitter soon, huh." A quick joke to lighten the mood, he quickly shrugged the momentary dread that had gripped him off. "How's the old job treating you? Things gotten any better since Tom Holloway...well...." got absorbed by the terrifying, soul sucking blob monster? Steve cleared his throat again, shurgged. "Well. Y'know."

Truth be told, Steve was out of his depth here. Truth be told, Steve didn't even know why he cared so much. Guilt, maybe? Or something that ran deeper, that had Steve curse himself out because while he'd been unwillingly thrust into the role of babysitter, he had taken to it liek a fish to water. Somehow, Max had become his responsibility just much as Dustin was, and Lucas, and the rest of the kids. On top of that, she'd witnessed her step-brother die one of the most horrifically violent deaths Steve could think of. And while he still had Russian doctors haunt him in his nightmares, he couldn't begin to imagine how the immediate aftermath must have been for her. And what it was like now. Steve rolled his eyes. "Ha-ha. I'll have you know someone really special made that mix for me." They had, before Steve had taped over it when their ill-fated situationship had come to an end - she's moved away for college, how predictable - and he'd been left with a tape full of Anita Baker and 10cc. A sudden glint of mischief in his eyes, Steve turned around to fiddle with the stereo. The music suddenly ceased, replaced by the umistakeable sound of fast-forwarding through a tape. "And they knew me so well they made sure to include my favourite song!" His words were drawn out, coloured with a smug grin. His fingers released the button, pressed another one and a new song began to echo through the store.

He pretended not to hear her snarky comments, singing along to Raf Ravenscroft's 'Maxine' instead, swaying back and forth behind the register, theatrically clutching at his heart and wiping an imaginary tear from the corner of his eye.

All fun and games until his car was mentioned and Steve sprung back into action, fixing her with a look that meant business. "You stay away from my car, Mayfield, you hear me?" The memory of Max's joyride to Hawkins Lab still made him queasy and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, dispelled the feeling by waving both hands before him in a criss-cross motion. The day Max would drive his car again was the day of his funeral. Hey, she could drive the hearse for all he cared, long as he wasn't around to witness it.

"No, I just wanted to ... Well. You know." And the gesturing continued, Steve shrugged. "Just. You know." Did she? And did he, know? Why was this so uncomfortable to admit? Another shrug, he decided to go for the defense and placed his hands on his hips. "I wanted to check in on you, see how you're doing. What, is that a crime now or something? This country's going to the dogs, you know."

It was a strange feeling to consider seeing Steve Harrington a relief these days. There was a time when she was sure he brought out the worst in her: the small, aching part of her heart that had once yearned for the kind of coolness he carried around him so effortlessly. Being cool didn't get her very far, though--if anything, it left her here, back in her childhood home, wondering why she'd ever felt the need to satisfy the magnetic pull she had to him back then when it had come with such a cost.

Things were cool between them now, though; at least, they had been the last time she'd been home, and the small conversations they'd had in passing in the few months since they'd been home. It was nice to know they could be friends again, even if Nancy wasn't sure she had it in her to say the same about the other former boyfriend of hers present at this party.

"Not even a five car pile-up can keep Steve Harrington from a party," she joked as they finally settled in. "Some things never change." That was the thing about him: wherever Steve was turned into somewhere everyone wanted to be, her mother's backyard apparently included. "It's good to see you, though," she added, this time more sincere. "Especially since the last time I saw you, I needed to run home with my mother's hairspray."

Nancy joked, smiled, and Steve's hands grew clammy. And he felt nervous, all of a sudden, like he was about to take a big test. An exam on how to prove to your ex-girlfriend that you've changed and grown up, and that you've been absolutely okay since you guys broke up, even though she may or may not have been the best part of you for a while there. Steve smiled, hands on his hips as he trailed his gaze across the Wheeler's backyard. Half of Hawkins seemed to have gathered here. Ted Wheeler would hate this. "Well, they didn't call me King Steve for nothing", he joked back, and the quip came easily now. Everything began to feel strangely familiar, his surroundings, cracking jokes with Nance. "I'm telling you, that spot on the prom court, that's hard earned."

Absent-mindedly he'd begun scanning the place for familiar faces, yet looking for no one in particular, and he abandoned the task to turn back to Nancy. His gaze softened a little. "Yeah. It's good to see you, too", Steve nodded, tentatively raising his hand to give her shoulder a squeeze. Maybe, in a few months' time, they could transition into a hug? "And you can tell her I always keep an extra can stocked in the back, even if we've run out out front." He'd tell her himself when he caught her. Or when he'd gathered the courage to speak to her as if she wasn't the mother of the woman who'd broken his heart (deservedly so). The lingering grip on Nancy's shoulder almost made his fingers cramp up and he quickly grabbed a cup of - something - maybe lemonade? - to busy his hand. "What's it like being back? Must be a big change. Although I gotta say you fit right back in."