Chapter Text
One person Steve was definitely not expecting to see when he opened the door was Sam Owens. He hadn’t seen the man face to face since visiting El in the wing of the hospital the government had commandeered. There was talk of refurbishing the lab buildings to help with rebuilding the town, but he hadn’t been sure Owens was still around because Hopper had mentioned him being called away.
“Mr Harrington,” Owens greeted.
“I thought we agreed, it’s Steve?” he replied.
“Steve,” the man said with a smile that even reached his eyes. “Is now a bad time? I can come back if so, but I was wondering if I could talk to you.”
“Is it the pizza, Dingus?” came from behind him.
“No,” he called back, “we literally only just ordered it.”
Robin could be very impatient when she was hungry.
“Come in,” he invited, “it’ll be a little while before dinner is here. Eddie’s running a DnD campaign for the kids and his friends and they’re not quite done.”
He couldn’t help noticing Owens was carrying a folder in one hand.
“Thank you,” Owens said, “this shouldn’t take long. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
That set alarm bells ringing in his head, but he was kind of committed now.
“My Dad’s office is empty,” he said and indicated the way.
Several pairs of eyes looked at him across the room from the dining table at the end as everyone spotted who had just arrived. He simply shook his head at them to get them to keep on playing. Robin was more persistent from where she was standing in the kitchen doorway, staring at him. He shrugged, he didn’t have anything to tell her.
It felt strangely ominous as he closed the door to the room his dad hadn’t actually used in years.
“This is for you,” Owens said and handed him the folder.
“What is it?” he asked even as he flipped it open.
“The title deed for this house,” Owens replied.
Steve looked up sharply.
“How did you get this? My parents…”
“Never owned this house,” Owens interrupted him, "and now it's yours."
He froze.
“I don’t know what you…”
“Steve, you don’t have to pretend, I know who you are,” Owens said in a perfectly calm manner. “I mean you no harm.”
“How do you know?” he asked, ignoring the last part for now. “You didn’t know.”
He had been sure Owens had been as clueless as the rest of the government lackies when he had been to see El.
“Before Dr Brenner died, he gave me a safety deposit key and instructions of where the box could be found,” Owens told him. “He said it was his backup plan and to use it if there was no other alternative. With the urgency of everything that was going on and Colonel Sullivan breathing down my neck, I did not have a chance to use it until after Eleven was recovered. In it was that deed, certain financial information and your records. I burned everything that identified you.”
With every word Owens said, Steve had been getting tenser and tenser. The last sentence was like a release valve. He felt lightheaded.
“Why?” he managed to ask.
“I think you should sit down,” Owens said, gently guiding him to a chair. “I apologise, I did not come here today to terrify you, rather to put an end to your fear of discovery. You and all those in Hawkins have paid a heavy price for our mistakes. I am of the firm belief it is time for that to end.”
He looked Owens directly in the face then. He couldn’t see a lie.
“Even El?” he checked.
“Especially her,” Owens replied, not breaking his gaze.
Steve looked at the package in his hand, taking a few steadying breaths.
“Did you read it all before you burned it?” he finally asked.
“I did,” Owens said. “I noted key information in case you wished to know it but kept nothing that could identify you as Seven.”
The folder was shaking in his hand. He really hadn’t needed this kind of shock.
“Did the …” he started and stopped again as too many thoughts fell over in his head. “Did it mention my real parents?”
“I’m sorry, Steve,” Owens said, “but it only listed your mother and only by her first name. She was called Julie, and she died just before Brenner took you to the lab. The notes indicated he had not expected to ‘collect’ you, his word not mine, for at least another year, but her passing necessitated taking you earlier than expected. It was just before your fourth birthday. You remained at the lab for eight months before being given to the Harringtons. They kept your birthday the same.”
“There’s that I guess,” he said as he processed the information.
“I was sat there as he discussed the deal he made with Mom and Dad, y’know,” he said, trying not to dwell on the mother he could not recall. “He knew he was going to wipe my memory, so he didn’t care that I heard all the details. He wanted them to see what an obedient child they were getting.”
“He was a man twisted by his goals and blinded by his own genius,” Owens said in a surprisingly hard tone.
“A genuine mad scientist,” Steve commented.
“He could have done so much good and yet, here we are,” Owens agreed and sounded kind of tired.
The lab, the Upside Down, it had wrecked all their lives. Always before, Steve had hoped it was over, now he could kind of sense it was. El said the air felt lighter and he had to agree. He just hoped it stayed that way.
"And finally, there is this," Owens said, knocking him out of his thoughts
The man took a small book in a plastic wallet from his jacket pocket. Steve accepted it as Owen held it out, peering at it suspiciously.
"This looks like a bank book," he said, turning it over.
He had one upstairs for his savings account that looked pretty similar. Only this one didn't have a bank's name on the outside.
"It is," Owens replied. "This is the account Brenner had set up to fund his black op of hiding you, even from the government. It was how he paid your adoptive parents."
"Why give it to me?" he asked. "I assume the money is back where it should be."
"That would unfortunately raise far too many questions," Owens said to his surprise. "The account is as Dr Brenner left it before he chose to go completely off grid. While I will make it my mission to ensure the government funds the rebuilding of Hawkins, it is not within my power to compensate properly those who have had to deal with this negligent situation since 1983. However, the funds in this account could go some way to rectifying the situation. I've had the paperwork created so it looks like a trust fund you inherited from your late grandfather. I will leave it in your hands how you wish to distribute it further."
Steve opened the booklet and flicked to the latest entry.
"Holy shit," was the best he could do. "What the hell was he planning to spend this on?" he asked as he took in the number of zeroes on the total.
"It seems Dr Brenner may have been as cavalier with government funds as he was with his scientific ethics," Owens said with a small smile.
"You can say that again," Steve agreed. "Wow, okay, yeah, I'll make sure everyone gets their share."
"I was sure you would," the other man replied. "You are a remarkable young man, Steve," Owens added, "never let anyone tell you differently. Now I must be going. My apologies for taking you away from your friends."
"It's fine," he said, still mostly in shock. "Let me walk you to the door."
He put the booklet in his back pocket and tucked the folder with the deed under his arm. Frankly he was in a bit of a daze as he escorted Owens out and said goodbye. Robin was hovering when he stepped back into the house.
"What did he want?" she asked in a whisper.
"Later," he said, "when it's just the Party left."
He wanted to tell her right then, but he knew Robin, and she would be loud when she found out what he now knew. That Eddie’s band mates and friends had been invited to the special game as well meant they had an audience. She frowned at him for that, but he gave her a look he hoped conveyed that he was only doing it this way because he had to.
"Everything's okay though?" she checked quietly.
"Yeah," he promised. "But we need a meeting of everybody soon. We can start with who's here though."
"This better be good," she told him in a petulant tone.
"You have no idea," he admitted.
~*~
Pizza came and went as the message was carefully passed round that everyone in the know should stay once food had been consumed. Steve even managed to convince Eddie to ask Wayne to stay rather than going in to work. Will, the consummate storyteller that he was had come up with a whole story how his mom would kill him if he didn't wait for Jonathan to come pick him up when Jeff offered the kids a ride home. And everyone else had agreed. Since everyone in town was very clear on Joyce Byers reputation as someone who scared even hardened military types, there were no arguments.
"Okay, what gives?" Eddie asked the moment he closed the door on his friends.
"Yeah, what did Dr Owens want?" Mike added.
"He gave me the deed to this house and access to a bank account with more zeroes than I have ever seen and asked me to make sure everyone got their share," Steve said without any preamble.
"Come again?" Dustin asked.
Rather than explaining again, he simply handed the kid the bank book.
"Jesus Christ," was Dustin's almost immediate reaction on opening it.
Looking rather stunned Dustin handed it over to Mike, who whistled and so on and so forth round everyone in the group except Wayne who was standing in the kitchen doorway.
"Is this government hush money?" Erica asked.
"Nope," Steve replied, "it's compensation, courtesy of Brenner being even shadier than even we thought he was."
"You're going to have to explain that," Eddie said, handing him back the bank book.
"This is the account Brenner set up to pay my dutiful parents," he said, doing his best to hide at least some of the bitterness, "only clearly he had bigger plans than that."
"Owens knows?" Robin asked, eyes going round.
Steve nodded.
"Brenner gave him a safety deposit key before he died for real," he explained, "and when he finally had a chance to go to it, he found this," he held up the booklet, "this," then the deed, "and all the records about me. He said he burned the records."
"Do we trust him?" Lucas asked.
"Yes."
Surprisingly, or maybe not, it was El who spoke up.
"Sam is good," she said simply, and no one chose to argue.
"The account is set up so it looks like I inherited a trust fund from my grandfather," Steve went on. "I was thinking we make a list of names of who's been up close and personal with the Upside Down and give everyone an equal share."
"Some people have been doing this way longer than others," Eddie apparently felt the need to point out.
"But we all nearly died," Steve countered immediately. "We're not playing games with who has more trauma, we all do. If you look at it by degrees, El has us all beat. Money can't take that away, but it can sure as hell help with college funds and repair bills and some plain old retail therapy."
"I agree with Steve," Will said in a resolute tone.
"So do I," El agreed, and that just about sealed the deal.
"I'll get a pen and a note pad," Dustin said, heading over to where they had all been playing DnD.
As Dustin started writing down names, Eddie came over and sat down next to Steve on the opposite side to where Robin had already taken up residence.
"You're something else, you know that?" Eddie said quietly, leaning against him.
"Why d'you say that?" he asked, not sure what Eddie was on about.
“Stevie, Owens gave you the house and the money,” his boyfriend said.
“Yeah, and?”
“And it never even occurred to you, you could have kept both and nobody would have been any the wiser,” Eddie pointed out.
“Why would I do that?” he asked.
“See,” Eddie said with a grin. “That’s what I mean.”
He just shook his head, sometimes Eddie talked in circles.
~*~
Steve’s house had emptied out leaving just him and Eddie. Robin had finally had to move home properly, even though she was still over a lot. She’d confessed to her parents the truth that she hadn’t been on a trip at all and had been staying with Steve using the whole cover story as an excuse. They had been surprisingly cool about the whole thing once they were sure she was safe. It did mean they’d only had one bathroom-talk though, and neither of them had been ready for anything very deep.
When she wasn’t there, Steve missed her like an amputated limb. Not that he would ever dump that on her. At least his relationship with Eddie had got her talking about Vickie again.
Wayne was out with Hopper, something to do with Owens and job opportunities that did not involve manual labour. So, he and Eddie were alone.
Eddie had been quiet since everyone had left and Steve was giving him space. Since the whole press conference and reconnecting with his closest friends, Eddie got contemplative every time after seeing them. Unfortunately, that gave Steve far too much time to think.
Owens’ visit had brought to the surface all the things he had been pushing to the side to make sure Eddie was doing okay, Robin as doing okay, El was doing okay, Dustin was doing okay etc etc. After the talk he had had with Eddie out by the pool, he hadn’t really let himself dwell on his part in the bigger picture. He’d fallen back into Steve-is-the-babysitter mode.
The kids had worked out their list and done the numbers on the bank account. There were plans to get everyone together to talk about it. And for some reason it made the whole thing real, or maybe that was Owens knowing the truth. Someone in the government knew. El trusted the man, which said a lot, but Steve was not quite there yet.
The Party had helped clear up for a change, so there hadn’t been much for him to do, after which he ended up sitting on his bathroom floor. The tremors from when Owens had been in his dad’s office were back as everything churned over in his mind. Right on top of the mess of thoughts were his pseudo parents.
“Steve,” he heard from somewhere in the house. “Hey, Stevie,” from closer. “Are you in here?”
He didn’t seem to be able to reply. His throat was too tight, his head too full.
“Steve?”
That was from even closer.
“Oh, Stevie.”
A warm body settled next to him against the bath.
“I am such an idiot,” Eddie muttered. “I should never have left you alone, not after Owens.”
“N…ot…” Steve wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say.
Eddie’s arms snaked around him.
“Just breathe, Sweetheart,” Eddie told him gently. “Just breathe.”
He didn’t want to cry. He hadn’t since he had been little him. It wasn’t what he did. Yet, as Eddie held him, he finally let out some of the loss and terror he had been pushing away.
“Oh no,” Eddie said, pulling him even tighter, “here I go. Did I mention I’m a sympathetic crier?”
The little part of Steve’s brain that wasn’t churning thought it was ridiculous that two grown men were sitting on a bathroom floor crying on each other, but most of him didn’t care.
It could have been a couple of minutes, it could have been an hour, Steve lost track of time. All he knew was his throat felt raw, his nose was blocked, and his chest was hollow by the time the tears were finally done.
“Hey Stevie,” Eddie said quietly, apparently more together as Steve came back to himself, “want me to call Robin?”
He shook his head.
“Want to talk about it?” was the next question.
He almost shook his head again but stilled before he did. Part of him did, part of him didn’t. And it was hard to know what to talk about.
“Do you think they knew the whole truth?” he finally spoke.
“Your parents?” Eddie checked.
“My pseudo-parents,” he replied.
“What do you remember Brenner telling them?” Eddie asked.
Steve let the memory surface. It was unsettling how clear it was. Childhood memories were supposed to be fuzzy on the edges. It was another thing he had been refusing to think about.
“When I was there, he told them I was part of a government program for gifted children, but I’d had a breakdown. He needed to hide me somewhere safe, and he knew they were having trouble conceiving. That’s when he offered them the money and the house,” he revealed. “I don’t think he ever told the truth about what I am.”
“What you can do,” Eddie corrected gently. “So, they don’t know the truth about what’s been going on in Hawkins then.”
“But what if they come back?” Steve asked. “What if they tell everyone I’m not their son? What if government people who aren’t Owens put the pieces together?”
His chest was starting to feel tight.
“Steve,” Eddie said, squeezing him lightly, “they haven’t even called.”
“But they might hear about the money,” he said.
He was catastrophising, he knew he was, but he didn’t seem to be able to stop the thoughts now they had started.
“If they turn up and try to make trouble we call Owens,” Eddie said before he could spiral any more. “We’ve all seen the piles of NDAs, we’ve all signed them. I’m betting they value their freedom more than any money.”
That helped slow the cascading fear at least, but the hollow feeling came back.
“They haven’t even called,” he said, parroting back Eddie’s words. “We were on the national news and they haven’t even called.”
His voice was small even in his own ears.
“I know, Sweetheart,” Eddie said, rubbing his arm, “but they don’t deserve you, they never deserved you. I’ve met five-year-old you now, and you were the sweetest, loveliest little boy and they wasted that.”
“I think Mom tried,” he said quietly. “At least for a while, but if it was Dad or me, Dad always came first.”
“Maybe that’s why they could never have kids of their own,” Eddie said in a somewhat cutthroat tone, “whatever divine being is looking down at us took one look at them and went ‘nope’.”
“Pretty sure that’s not how it works,” he countered, but he couldn’t help the momentary satisfaction at Eddie’s harshness.
“Well, if it was my world, it would,” Eddie told him. “Damn, I never would have let my worthless father near kids.”
“Team Deadbeat-Dad,” Steve mumbled, but his voice faded out.
They sat there quiet for a while longer before Eddie finally moved.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to call Robin?” he asked, pulling away a little, but not completely.
Steve bit his lip.
“Maybe,” he admitted.
“Come on, Love,” Eddie said at that, “we are going downstairs. We are getting the comfiest blankets. I am calling Robin, and then we can talk, or watch dumb movies, or just get blind drunk, your choice.”
“Okay,” he agreed and let Eddie help him up off the floor.
“What is it with you and Robin and bathroom floors?” Eddie asked as Steve went to wash his face.
“Starcourt,” he replied.
“Details, Stevie, I need details,” Eddie said.
That was one trauma that it was easier to talk about, so Steve launched into the story. They all had so much crap to deal with that it would probably take them years to come to terms with it, if they ever could. Pandoras box was open for him now and there was no way to close it again. The darker thoughts were still churning over in the back of his mind, but they were under control for now. He had Eddie, he had Robin, he had the kids. It was more than he had ever had before the Upside Down, even when he had just thought his dad was an asshole and his mom was distant.
Vecna was dead. The Upside Down was closed off, hopefully for good. They had a future now. He just hoped he would figure out how best to live in it.