Briar Rose

~ 1 ~

Rain pelted against the windows as Steve Harrington lay in his bed late that Tuesday night, something acoustic and vaguely soothing ringing through the air coming from the stereo that sat at the other end of the room.

He was thinking, because that's what he spent his evenings doing nowadays, thinking.

Thinking about Nancy, about her beautiful eyes and pretty smile, thinking about how she didn't love him anymore. She hadn't said anything but he could tell. Steve knew Nancy, she was easy to read, her beautiful eyes expressed her emotions no matter how hard she tried to hide them.

Thinking about the last few months of his life, about Will Byers and how his disappearance in November of 1983 changed the lives of everyone who knew what really happened, the people who were there and bore witness to the monsters that hid in the darkness.

Thinking about the phone call that came to the house earlier that day.

* 6 hours earlier *

Steve came through the door suitably exhausted and really considering dropping chemistry all together if he had to deal with another of Kaminsky's surprise pop quizzes.

What he wasn't expecting was to see his father sitting at the kitchen table with his mother waiting for him to come home.

Steve hasn't seen this since he almost failed the 7th grade.

"Alright who died?" he asked sheepishly, trying to think back to the near past to figure out what he could have done wrong to warrant this kind of intervention.

" Stevie, sweetheart you might wanna sit down, we wanna talk to you about something important." his mother said softly with a small smile that didn't reach her eyes.

This is when the panic set in, he definitely did something to upset his mom but he couldn't tell what it was that he did, his grades were up, he hadn't been staying out recently, he even bought her pretty flowers for mothers day a few weeks ago.

So what had he done?

Heeding the advice he was given he sat opposite from his parents his thumbs instantly finding each other under the table as he messed with his fingers, a nervous tick he had picked up recently as his anxieties developed. No one was the same after the run-in with the Demogorgon back in November.

Steve had gotten used to looking over his shoulder and still kept the bat in the trunk of his car, a precaution.

Steve looked up from the tablecloth as his father's voice broke out through the air, snapping him out of his own head, "son, we got a phone call to the house, from New York".

This didn't surprise Steve as New York was the destination of many of his dads business trips. But what did that have to do with him?

The confusion was clearly evident on his face as his dad sighed and ran his hands over his brow. "it was from the NewYork-Presbyterian".

That that when Steve was truly confused, he had never had anything to do with that hospital, nor had he any living relatives living in New York.

So why were his parents so freaked out?

"Steve, 13 years ago I went to New York to close the Waldorf deal work, it ended up taking longer than expected and I was in the city for a month."

Steve remembered this vaguely, being 4 years old and constantly asking his mom when daddy was coming home.

" While I was there I met a woman named Carly, and being away from your mother for so long, well, we spent some time together."

Steve felt sick to his stomach, he knew what was coming and he damn well didn't want to hear it.