Zone-Defense
It was sick. It was sick and wrong and the worst possible timing in the entire freaking world.
But… but did Harry get glasses?
Yeah, there was a body that apparently wasn't Will's, sounded more like a mutant-magic-golem or something, but Steve couldn't stop glancing at Harry, at his glasses. God, it was sick.
It was like the second Steve thought ‘maybe I'm gay', the gay thoughts turned up their volume in his head and it was making Steve want to climb out of his body to get away from them.
Did Harry like his glasses? Did he know how he looked in his sweater with his glasses and his eyes so freaking bright? Should Steve tell him? Steve could not tell him, that would - that would… it wouldn't be good.
Steve needed to shut his mouth and maybe focus on Jonathan and not the sick curiosity of ‘how different would it be to kiss Harry than a girl?'
The whole situation was sick though so Steve didn't want to be too hard on himself. Steve was only there because Sirianna had called him and asked for a ride. Steve would have said no, he didn't really feel like being a taxi or being around Harry just yet, but she said Jonathan's brother might have died.
Then Harry said he didn't die.
That he was… trapped? Kidnapped? By wizards in white coats? They kidnapped Will, changed a dead body to look like him, to… to throw the police off the case? It kind of made sense, kind of. Maybe if Steve understood half of what they were talking about then it would make more sense.
Sirianna clearly believed Harry because when he finished explaining how he was apparently the smartest person in the room, she shifted so her arm was around him and her chin was up in the air.
"If Harry says it's not Will, then it's not Will," she told Chief Hopper directly. "Harry's the most powerful wizard I know, and he - we - know the White Coats best."
The little girl - the sister/not-sister - made a quiet sound while she stared curiously up at the weird freaking Christmas lights and Sirianna backtracked.
"And El does too, of course."
"Of course." Jonathan sounded faint - shocked, probably, he looked freaking shocked - when he spoke up. It dawned on Steve then that Ms Byers and Chief Hopper didn't look surprised at all by the mention of magic or wizards… so they knew.
And Steve wasn't a wizard, he wasn't brilliant or powerful, but he could look at Jonathan's pale and sweating face and guess that he had no freaking idea.
"Yeah, of course, wizards took my brother and they sent a fake body and they're hiding him in the walls and HE CAN ONLY COMMUNICATE THROUGH A POLTERGEIST CONTROLLING CHRISTMAS LIGHTS?!"
Oooh, that was what the lights were for. Steve looked at them again, saw then how each light was hung above a different letter. That was kind of rad, like a magic keyboard to the other world or whatever.
"Jonathan, it's okay." Ms Byers had stopped crying, thankfully, and Steve could tell she believed Harry - wanted to believe him. "This is good, this means that Will is still alive."
"Mom!" Jonathan jumped up and Steve lunged toward him, made to grab his elbow when he swayed. Steve didn't get dizzy about magic and mutant powers being real, but Steve also didn't have a brother who was… trapped in a wall? Dead but not dead?
Steve didn't have a brother, anyway. And Jonathan had kind of been cool about Steve's embarrassing and drunken confession. Jonathan didn't say a word to anyone as far as Steve knew and he even drove him back to his place to sleep it off. If it had been Tommy or one of the guys off the basketball team who Steve went blurting out about being gay, they wouldn't have been cool about it.
So if Jonathan needed someone to grab his elbow so he didn't land on his ass, Steve could do it for him like he had for Steve.
"This is crazy," Jonathan said, stammering some. "They - magic and wizards and poltergeists? Those aren't real, Mom. They're not."
It was crazy, all of it. But Steve had seen magic, he'd seen Harry control the freaking weather. And when he looked at the twins again, at the calm on Harry's face and the confidence on Sirianna's, he didn't doubt for a second that what they said was the truth.
A crazy truth, super freaking crazy, but still true.
Steve would have backed them, said he believed them like Ms Byers and Chief Hopper clearly did, but Harry surprisingly spoke up again.
Or maybe it wasn't surprising. Maybe Steve didn't know him all that well and he was always calm in a crisis and went around with his power and brilliance and identified bodies or something.
"I'll show you," Harry said.
"Harry James —"
Sirianna didn't get to finish what sounded like a threat (Harry's middle name was James?) before Harry waved his hand toward the wall of the Byers' living room. Steve only had a second to hear a sort of exasperated sigh from Chief Hopper before a section of the wall exploded.
Dust filled the air and Jonathan wasn't the only one who yelped in shock. Jonathan tripped into Steve, Steve barely kept them both on their feet.
"What the fuck?!" Jonathan yelled. "My mom just fixed that!"
Oh, yeah. Steve had forgotten with the whole ‘dead body found in a gutter' thing, but there had been a tarp on that wall the last time he had been there. Jonathan said it was no big deal, an accident, but it made the house cold as hell.
"Doubtful," Sirianna sniffed, though Steve was more interested in watching Harry. Harry didn't so much as flinch at the explosion he must have caused, Harry was still pointing at the wall while he watched Jonathan.
With barely a flick of his wrist, the wall began to repair itself. The debris and dust flew in reverse to the wall and it knitted itself back together. Within seconds, it was like it never happened.
"See?" Harry said. "Real."
"Real," El said.
Jonathan's mouth opened and closed, no words seemed to come to him though. When Steve thought his knees were about to buckle, Steve kindly pushed him back to the couch to sit down.
"You've got to stop doing this," Sirianna whispered to Harry - kind of loudly - while Ms Byers sat beside her son and pulled him in a sideways hug. "Do you remember that they're all muggles? We can't tell everyone that magic's real."
Steve looked down quickly since Harry's immediate, and kind of innocent sounding considering he could blow up walls, reply seemed so genuine.
"Why?"
Steve wasn't the only one who grinned, Chief Hopper actually let out a quiet chuckle as he leaned himself in the doorway of the living room and continued watching everyone.
"Because, Har, it's illegal," Sirianna stressed.
Harry blinked, "I think kidnapping kids is too…"
"Well, we're better than them."
"Yeah, we didn't torture anyone."
Steve's smile slipped when they circled back to what they said before. Some wizards, Bad Wizards in White, had Will. And before they had Will, they had… Harry? And Sirianna? And they tortured them?
That… that was sick. That was horrible.
"So do you know where Will is?" Ms Byers asked Harry. It made Steve sad to hear her, to hear the raw and desperate hope in her voice. "Can we get him?"
It wasn't Harry or Sirianna who answered her that time, it was the girl, El.
"No," she said simply. "Project Dimension."
"Right." The Chief shoved himself off the wall and pinned El with his stern gaze. "I need to know more about that. What is Project Dimension?"
Steve wondered if he should even be there? Chief Hopper seemed to know more about what was going on than anyone, which, like, apparently Harry and both of his sisters were mutants too? Or wizards? Not mutants? Wizards in glasses and soft sweaters?
It would be weird to leave, Steve kind of needed to see what happened. And Harry was looking at him, looking at him while Steve looked away from him toward El.
While Harry didn't seem to like speaking, El seemed like she couldn't speak. Every word for her was a struggle; Harry had been clear and calm as soon as he had his sister by his side.
"Open… new… world…" El said slowly, her eyes locked on Harry the whole time she tried to explain. It sounded painful, it made Steve rub his own throat in sympathy.
"You opened a new world?" Sirianna still had her arm around Harry's shoulders, but her head was tilted curiously. She really was pretty; Steve wished she was the one he kept looking at. "With magic? That - how?"
"Project," El said. "Mon-ster."
Steve saw Harry's eyes flash and his voice was sharp.
"You are not a monster," he said. "You're not. What they did to you wasn't your fault."
"Not El." El pointed at the lights and everyone turned to look at them at the same time. "Will. Monster world."
It was kind of insane after that dramatic bit of information.
Steve wound up sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, while everyone else seemed to be planning a rescue. Steve was still trying to wrap his head around wizards (somehow mutants made more sense?) and kidnappings and monster worlds. Steve was also trying to not think about the twins being tortured, Will Byers being tortured, El being tortured, or why Harry's first reaction to ‘monster' was to tell El she wasn't one.
Steve did think about the kid, the one who died. The police found his (her?) body in a sewage drain and Harry said their appearance had been changed to look like Will. Was that permanent? Would they be buried with Will Byers' face and their family never know? Maybe there was another mom somewhere, looking for her kid like Ms Byers was hers, and she wouldn't ever know that her kid had died.
It was sad and Steve couldn't stop thinking about who the kid was or what would happen to them.
The room was getting seriously loud with the clashing voices - Ms Byers wanted to get Will then and there, Jonathan wanted to go with her. Sirianna was trying to coax information from El, El just kept saying ‘monsters'. Harry wasn't saying anything, he just stood in the middle of the room sort of looking like he didn't know how he got there.
Chief Hopper lost his patience around the same time that Steve started to wonder if life was ever going to be normal again or if it would be crazy shit for the rest of his life.
"Everyone needs to shut the fuck up for a second!" Chief Hopper yelled, instantly silencing everyone. "Look, we are not going to go rushing in there to get Will, that's a suicide plan, got it?"
"So you do know where he is!" Ms Byers stood up and even if she was like at least a foot shorter than the Chief, she managed to stare him down. "Tell me right now, Jim. Tell me where my fucking son is!"
"You are not going anywhere near that fucking place," Hopper snapped, somehow not intimidated at all like Steve totally was. Steve would have told her, instantly. "We are going to play this smart and we are going to bring Will back without anyone getting hurt. Am I completely fucking understood right now?"
Steve didn't know why he looked at him - Steve barely understood what was going on. Everything sounded like some huge comic book storyline with bad wizards, good wizards, and dead bodies that were used as distractions. Steve was just… some guy.
Some gay guy who looked at Harry again and saw that he nodded at Chief Hopper's order.
"What do we do about - about the not-Will?" Jonathan asked. He rallied quick, he wasn't so pale or shaken looking anymore. He was looking up at Chief Hopper from the sofa with a nearly calm expression. There was still something wild in his eyes, something that made Steve kinda wonder if he would have liked being an older brother or not.
"Fuck." Chief Hopper rubbed a hand down his face and sighed. "I don't know. I'll - I'll find a way to keep that body from being released, we're not burying a fake body under Will's name."
But then what?
"Wait, so you're just going to leave them? In a morgue? Forever?" Steve didn't plan on having any input in the conversation, he probably should have left when the Chief arrived, but they couldn't do that. They couldn't just let some kid rot away in a morgue.
That kid didn't ask to be changed, that kid didn't ask to be turned into someone they weren't. It wasn't their fault that - that some bad wizards changed them. They couldn't just rot away without anyone ever caring about them.
"What do you want me to do?" Chief Hopper asked. "Have a whole fake fucking funeral? Make Joyce bury a fake corpse?"
"But they are a real person!" Steve scrambled to stand up, he wasn't going to sit there while they acted like that person didn't matter. "It's not their fault! They didn't - they didn't ask to be someone different!"
"Nobody asked for any of this shit!" Chief Hopper said. "We are all doing exactly what we can and there isn't jack we can do for that kid anymore, got it?"
No, Steve didn't get it.
Steve stood there and didn't get it at all when Hopper told the twins and El to go to his car. He didn't get it when Ms Byers was crying in Jonathan's arms and Steve quietly let himself out.
They were going to leave that kid to rot in a morgue because they were suddenly different and didn't matter to anyone anymore.
It felt wrong and Steve spent pretty much the entire night laying in his bed, thinking about it.
Getting up for school felt like its own special form of hell after not sleeping all night.
Like the world was fucked up and full of evil wizards and good wizards and monster worlds and torture and Steve still had to worry about his history homework? What kind of crap was that?
Steve must have looked as bad as he felt because nobody at school even tried talking to him. Jonathan's car wasn't there, no surprises there, but Hargrove's was.
Considering their last conversation, if it could be called that, Steve was just waiting for Hargrove's boot to fall and kick Steve in the dirt. Hargrove didn't say a word though when Steve slouched past him, he seemed pretty distracted by Sirianna beside him.
Seemed like they were pretty official, if he was driving her to school and sharing cigarettes in the parking lot. Steve wasn't jealous, though he kicked himself for thinking that he probably would have been if it were the other twin under Hargrove's arm.
Harry was there, thankfully not under Hargrove's arm. He stood just on the other side of his sister and when Steve peeked - quickly - to see if Harry had on glasses again, Harry's eyes caught him.
Was Steve supposed to wave? Say nothing? Tell him he liked his glasses, he thought they made him look a little older, a little calmer?
Probably best to say nothing.
Harry didn't say anything and Steve didn't either, he walked past them as fast as he could while still trying to be casual.
Sirianna and Hargrove sounded like they were busy talking about the same thing Steve could hear everyone else discussing loudly. Sirianna had a hell of a lot more details though, Steve couldn't imagine why she thought it was a good idea to share them with Hargrove.
"— Hopper wants to go tomorrow so I thought maybe you could come over?"
"Come to your place while the Chief's gone? Hell yeah."
Steve kept his head ducked and hid his scoff at Hargrove's response. Of course all he'd care about was getting laid, or whatever. Hargrove probably didn't give a damn that there was a kid being tortured or that - that Sirianna herself had probably been tortured and Harry had been tortured and wizards could probably do a lot worse damage than normal people.
God, Steve should have stayed home. Or left Jonathan's when the Chief showed up. What was he supposed to do with all the thoughts that were screaming in his head?!
"Steve?" Nancy Wheeler stopped Steve in the hall, kind of a twist on how Steve used to go looking for her. Why couldn't she be the person Steve kept thinking about? Nancy was nice, sweet, smart. She was pretty too and Steve had liked kissing her. He did.
Except she wasn't the person Steve wanted to be with and it was awful. Not as awful as evil wizards torturing kids or being locked in a monster world, but still awful.
"Nance, hey." Steve tried to smile, something. Nancy still seemed like she wanted to be friends, which was something. Steve was starting to feel like he didn't really have a whole lot of friends anymore.
"Are you okay?" Nancy reached out to touch Steve's arm and her eyes were so worried. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you kind of look like crap."
Yeah, how could Steve possibly take that the wrong way?
"I'm fine," Steve said. "Thanks."
"Okay…" Nancy didn't look convinced but the bell was ringing and they had separate classes to get to. "Jonathan said it was a rough night though, so if you wanted to talk to me… you can. I - we're friends, Steve, okay? No matter what."
No matter if Steve was a queer or not.
Good to know.
"Thanks." Steve started to walk away, he just didn't have the energy for some big heart to heart in the hallway. He paused after a few steps and turned back to find Nancy had been watching him walk away. "When did you talk to Jonathan?" he asked. Jonathan wasn't there, Steve doubted he'd be back until Will was home.
"He called me, last night. He said he didn't want to say much on the phone, but I'm going to his place after school to talk." Nancy tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ear and Steve pushed away the horrible urge to laugh. "Why?"
No reason, none at all.
Hargrove had Sirianna.
Jonathan had Nancy.
And it was Steve who was left behind with the feeling that maybe he never knew who he was to start with.
Steve made it to English a minute early and snagged a desk in the back. All he wanted to do was rest his head on his desk, close his eyes, ignore the gossip spreading through the school that Will Byers had been found dead.
It seemed like a pretty simple wish, to be left alone. It didn't sound like too much for a guy to ask of the world after the night Steve had.
Except Billy fucking Hargrove couldn't just leave him alone.
Their teacher started talking about the new section of Macbeth they were all supposed to have read the night before. Steve didn't read the section and kept his eyes closed, hoping he wouldn't be called on. It was working out okay, until Hargrove decided to be a massive dick at eight thirty in the freaking morning.
"What figure today could we compare Lady Macbeth, the Scottish Queen, to?"
Steve heard the question sort of vaguely, not in a way that he really even comprehended what was said or asked. Steve might not have even thought about the question at all if he didn't hear his name right after it.
"How about Queen Steve?"
Steve's head snapped up off his desk so quickly that he was dizzy for a second. For one second, Steve's head swam and he looked through the classroom until he found Hargrove smirking at him.
Did he… did he really just…
"Queen Steve." Tommy was sitting near Billy, Steve had never even noticed, and he laughed. Carol turned to look at Steve and then she laughed too.
It took half of a freaking second before the entire room was full of laughter and whispered comments that their teacher tried half-heartedly to kill.
Steve could feel his face burning and his pulse pounding in his ears as he glared at Hargrove with everything he had. Every joke felt like an actual slap to Steve's face. He went to school with all of them, for years, and Hargrove said one stupid thing and they were going to run with it?
Of course they were, they always did. How many times did Steve sit where Hargrove was and crack some stupid joke that turned into a months worth of rumors and gossip?
So it was like karma or something. The world said ‘hey, Steve, you're kind of a dick, so have fun being a fucking homo and listening to your friends laugh about it!'
It took everything Steve had to not walk out of that classroom, but he knew it would just make it all worse. When the teacher finally got enough students' attention, Steve laid his head back on the desk and flipped the hood of his jacket up to try and block everyone else out.
Nothing seemed to improve any through the rest of the morning. Every class there was someone with some stupid fucking joke to make.
Steve discovered that his name could apparently be rhymed with a variety of insults - Steve-o the Homo was something of a stretch though. It didn't matter that Hargrove wasn't in any more of Steve's morning classes, he made a dumb joke and the rest of Steve's classmates were more than happy to run with it in his absence.
There were a few people who didn't say anything, which was cool or whatever, but calling Steve a faggot had somehow managed to be the top gossip of the day even with Not-Will's body being found in the sewage drain.
Steve kept up his new routine of going straight to his next class and laying his head on his desk for fourth hour. They were supposed to start baking that day and Steve really hoped that Chrissy wouldn't be pissed if he stayed at his desk. Steve had been looking forward to it, to a project he was sure he'd get an A on without even cheating, but - but he was just over it.
Someone kicked the chair of his seat when they walked past him, probably Lisa from the sound of the giggle. Steve could hear someone else whispering about if Steve ‘sucks cock' when they walked in the room - though they at least shut up when they must have noticed him at his desk.
The chair beside his was pulled out just before the bell rang and Steve assumed it was Chrissy and he waited to hear what super brilliant and totally creative comment she would make.
"Steve?"
Steve clenched his eyes shut more tightly because it wasn't Chrissy, it was Harry. And either Harry was going to decide that he'd like some payback for anything stupid that Steve said when he started at Hawkins or he was about to make everything ten times worse.
"Are you okay?"
No, not really, thanks.
"I… I think you're right."
Steve wanted to pull his hair out. Why - why - would Harry choose the worst possible time to try and talk to him? Sure, when Steve wanted to talk to Harry, he got nothing. Suddenly, Harry got new glasses and soft sweaters and was some powerful and brilliant wizard and he wanted to talk to Steve.
If they weren't in a classroom full of people who had been making Steve's life miserable all morning, maybe Steve would have been excited. Maybe Steve would have wondered if kissing a boy was really the worst thing in the world when compared to torture and evil wizards and being trapped in a monster world.
"Please, go away," Steve whispered so quietly he didn't think Harry heard him, he didn't know if he wanted Harry to hear him. How much worse could things get, really?
"I don't think we should leave that person in a morgue," Harry said, clearly he didn't actually hear Steve. Or maybe he didn't care. Maybe Harry knew there were more important things than Steve being called a queer.
And Steve knew there were, he knew it. It was a joke, one that would go on longer if he didn't do something about it, like denying it for starters, but Steve wasn't dead. Steve wasn't kidnapped or - or tortured or trapped in a world of monsters.
"Hop isn't going to be home tomorrow, I thought - thought maybe you'd want to help me… bury them."
Steve's stomach twisted when he realized what Harry just said.
Bury them. The dead body. The body that would look like Will Byers.
Steve wanted to say no, he should say no. He picked his head up enough to see if Harry was serious, if it was all some massive prank to him, and then blinked at the calm certainty on Harry's face.
And then Steve was staring at him and noticing things he shouldn't, noticing that Harry's eyelashes were as dark as his hair, which made his eyes seem brighter. His hair seemed longer than it had been the first time Steve saw him, it sort of curled around his ear and was a little messy, like he didn't even brush it in the mornings.
His face was pretty. It was pretty and awful and Steve shouldn't have been looking at it. Harry didn't seem to care, Steve thought he was looking at his face too, but slowly, carefully.
Steve should have said no, then maybe announced that he wasn't gay and then beat the shit out of Hargrove for starting everything he did. Steve should stay fifty feet away from wizards and magic and boys who were prettier than any girl.
"Yeah." Steve heard himself speaking and couldn't stop the words that left his mouth. It was going to make things worse, he was sure of it. "Yeah, I do want to help."
It wasn't that person's fault they were changed, they didn't ask to be turned into someone else. They didn't deserve to rot away for it either. So it was going to make shit worse for Steve, but it also seemed like the right thing to do.