Chapter Text
Steve Harrington got out of the institution on the day of his ex’s wedding. He was picked up by his parents, waiting impatiently in their car to collect him out front — wouldn’t be caught dead stepping foot into a place like that, no matter who was waiting for them inside. He changed into his best suit in a Burger King bathroom on the way to the ceremony and they headed for the church in silence. Out of the frying pan and straight into the fire, as it were.
He had just about gotten the hang of the place after three months in. The routine had been comforting, a kind of consistency that soothed his frayed nerves, even if it did nothing to calm the static that fizzed constantly inside his head. Get up, eat, go to the class of your choosing, eat, therapy in the afternoons, exercise, group, eat, free time and in bed by 10, then do it all over again the next day. There was a lot he couldn’t talk about in his therapy sessions, a lot of the root cause of… all of his little problems. Steve thought that if he could just tell someone, that maybe it would make the buzzing go away, but even so, the routine had been nice. No monsters, no Russians, no surprises, only bland predictability. He felt taken care of, in control, and then it was gone.
Richard and Marsha Harrington had not been thrilled to be picking Steve up from what they had disdainfully called a nut house when they’d first heard the news, his mother lamenting that he hadn’t thought to call her up in Aspen or New York or wherever the fuck she was when his whole world was caving in so that she could have found a more appropriate place for their only son. A health spa, she had kept saying, wouldn’t that have been so much nicer? Steve shifted in his seat in the Mercedes at the memory, the pristine leather creaking beneath him, and he adjusted the too-tight cuffs of his dress shirt again, making sure the scar wouldn’t show.
He’d begged them not to have to go to the wedding, had hoped that for once, for once, they could all go home together instead, order pizza and watch a movie together as a family in the never-used living room of their cold, lonely house. But it was expected that the Harringtons would make an appearance there, the Wheelers being just well off enough to warrant their presence — they refused to acknowledge the Byers — and so they were going, end of story. So Steve sat in his uncomfortable suit and watched his ex-girlfriend get married to the guy she left him for, and tried to be happy for her as his dad ogled the women in the room and his mother hissed to him under her breath how she didn’t understand why Steve had let someone as lovely as Nancy Wheeler get away.
They were in the post-reception dinner lull, after the plates had been cleared and before the dancing, when the guests were served flutes of champagne and left to mingle. Steve’s father had been hitting the open bar hard, and was visibly drunk, red in the face and looking at his watch frequently, while stating loudly for the fifth time that he can’t believe he had flown in for this. The kids were all there, guests of Mike Wheeler, and Steve waved at them subtly with a small smile, but begged them with his eyes not to come over; his dad hated kids. For once reading the room, they stayed away, but he caught them sending concerned glances more than once in his direction. Across the room, Steve’s mother was making conversation with another woman and her lovely daughter, the three of them looking in his direction as his mother gestured to their table, her laugh tipsy and loud through the din. She stumbled a little, bumping into a table, but covered it well as she began to lead the two women in his direction. Steve could feel his heart hammering uncomfortably in his chest, too fast, and there was a bead of sweat working its way down his spine. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, the pressure inside him building with nowhere to go. He had to get out of there.
In the safety of the bathroom, Steve was finally able to catch his breath. He leaned his overwarm face against the cool metal of the stall wall and closed his eyes, listening to the base and thump of the music that had started up, the shouts of Nancy Byer’s guests cutting up on the dancefloor. With trembling hands, he pulled a safety pin out of his suit pocket; it had been overlooked, left in the hem of his suit after the precise alterations had been made by the family tailor, a fortuitous slip. Steve’s body thrummed with excitement, all of his too much bubbling up to the surface, ready for release. He popped the pin out from its safety cover and dragged the pointy end along the skin of his forearm, a sharp scratch that wasn’t anywhere near enough. Steve reached to pull his pant leg up, nudging his dress sock down and exposing the inside of his ankle — safe skin, he couldn’t do too much damage there — and braced to sink the pin into his flesh. But then, instead of the blissful silence that came with targeted pain, there was only the tinkling sound of champagne flutes being tapped with cutlery, and an excited cry of “they’re about to cut the cake!” Steve sighed, righting his sock and smoothing down his pant leg, stowing the little safety pin back in his pocket. He washed his hands, plastered on as bright a smile as he’d ever been taught to do, and rejoined his parents to watch the woman he’d once loved feed cake to someone less bullshit than him.
After the cake had been cut, the toasts made, first dances danced and the rice thrown, Steve was home again in his sterile, too-plaid bedroom for the first time in 90 days. His parents were fighting downstairs, Steve could hear them through the walls. His mother had gotten too drunk, too sloppy, and his father had gotten too handsy with a waitress, some things never changed. Steve sat on the edge of his bed and took stock of the place; clearly, it had been gone through. Robin, he thought. His parents wouldn’t have known to search for contraband, and besides, they didn’t have as clumsy a hand as she did. Pictures were askew, the items on his desk and shelves just slightly off center of where he had left them all. But even Robin, for as well as she knew him, hadn’t thought to check the books — why would she, it was Steve, after all, he surely wouldn’t have ever touched them himself. Steve’s skin was buzzing and a headache pricked behind his eyes. He stood from the bed, stretching his long limbs, and approached the bookshelf, reaching up and behind the tidy row of Encyclopedia Britannica that his parents had given him and he’d never once used. Steve’s fingers brushed against the smooth, hard plastic, and he fished it out, carrying it carefully into the en suite.
Steve’s kit was innocuous at first glance, merely a sewing kit, the kind that comes complimentary with the room of some of the nicer hotels. This one had a faded palm tree on the face of it; he’d gotten it at a beach resort he and his parents had stayed at when he was little, the last time they had all gone away together on vacation — the last time he remembered his parents getting along, actually, when he still felt safe and happy and loved. He had long since removed the thread and the little packet of buttons that had come with the kit, but had kept the needles and the small sewing scissors. There were little cotton pads in there now, a travel sized bottle of peroxide, a small sharpening block and band-aids. Steve smiled down at the items spread out across his bathroom counter, all of his old friends. He shut the door behind him and locked it and made all the static go away.
***
It had been New Year’s Day when he slipped up. It'd been building for a while, Steve understood that now, the overwhelm, the need for help, but truly it had been an accident. They were a year and a half out from Starcourt, from the Russians, from torture and terror and saving the city again, and things had been good. The gates were closed, the town had moved forward, Robin was healing, her nightmares nearly gone, the kids were back to being just kids, but Steve… Steve had only gotten worse.
He’d tried, he really had, but while everyone else was busy moving on, Steve remained suspended in some terrible kind of fight or flight panic, the voices in his head whispering insidiously that he wasn’t safe, none of them were. He spiraled, and no matter how many times El assured him that the gates were closed for good and the Upside Down was behind them, nothing could stop the buzzing beneath his skin. That he wasn’t enough, that he would let them down, that they would get hurt or worse and it would all be his fault if he didn’t stay alert, stay vigilant, stay solid for everyone. So, outwardly, he put on a brave face, his babysitter face, but privately… he had begun to cut himself. Just a little, just enough to let some of the pain and pressure bubble to the surface and dissipate, all of his senses focused on the sting for once instead of everything he couldn’t control, and it was enough for a while.
If anyone noticed how he began to cover himself up more than he ever had, they didn’t say anything. If they noticed how he had withdrawn into the lonely silences of his big empty house, he wasn’t aware of it. Only Robin seemed to understand that something wasn’t right, though she didn’t quite know what. She still came over all the time, they still hung out, and he swallowed down his overwhelm until he could finally be alone again and take care of it the only way he knew how.
And then it was a brand new year, ‘86 giving way to ‘87, and Steve was having a bad day. Everyone was talking about resolutions, and all the things that they were going to do with their burgeoning independence — driver’s licenses, freedom, safety from the horrors of the past — but Steve’s world was only getting smaller. If the kids didn’t need him, then he wouldn’t have a reason to go out. If he didn’t go out, all he had were his thoughts. There was so much noise, all around him and within, and Steve just needed a tiny amount of relief.
He was at the kitchen sink, his back to everyone. The kids had wanted burgers, so he had grilled out, despite the snow, made a big show out of sweating over the grill while also wearing snow boots. Everyone was in the process of making their food, constructing monstrosities with the lettuce and tomatoes and onions that Steve had meticulously cut with his sharpest kitchen knife. He knew he had to be quick; had, for the first time, chosen speed over caution, and he had just slipped. Gone too deep, too close to the intricate structures within his wrist. Blood sprung up and didn’t stop, and Robin had screamed Steve, just once. Everything had been a blur after that.
Max had driven Steve to the hospital — Max, after he had sworn never again — while Robin sat in back with Steve, holding a quickly soaking kitchen towel to his wrist. While the doctors got him patched up, she had called Dr. Owens and subsequently had Steve moved into his care, until he finally landed at the institution where he would spend the next three months. Robin wrote him daily, tearstained, guilt-ridden letters detailing how she had known something was wrong, but hadn’t known what. That she hadn’t known how to help him, how he had strayed too far from her reach. To forgive her, please forgive her, the guilt was eating her alive. But Steve didn’t blame her, he never could, knew that she only wanted the best for him. If only being loved by someone as good as Robin Buckley were enough to get the noise in his head to stop, but it simply wasn’t.
The doctors in the institution taught him healthy routines, taught him coping mechanisms for his anxiety, breathing techniques and exercise to expend the energy coursing through his nervous system. Tools, they called them; life tools. They offered classes to direct the patients’ focus towards productive activities, and Steve took a typing course while there, found that he liked the rhythm and the repetitiveness of it, even if he wasn’t very good.
His parents didn’t visit him once during his stay, but at the end of the 90 days they returned “for good” to take him home and get him settled. Steve knew that “for good” meant “for as short a time as possible” and “get him settled” meant “clean up the mess he had made,” but he was home again and feeling better, and that was all that mattered. They hadn’t said much for the first week, nor the second, allowing him time to rest and recuperate and hang out with Robin and the kids, but by the time they got to the third week, Steve knew they were becoming impatient with him. His parents sat him down at the dinner table one evening, handed Steve a glass of scotch that he did not want, and told him that it was time he thought about the future.
He hated the future.
“You’re twenty years old now, Steven, almost twenty one; it’s time you put this nonsense behind you and start acting like it.”
Steve’s father informed him that he needed to get a job, that they would no longer be supporting him if all he did was sit around and feel sorry for himself. And not just any job, but a real job, a man’s job, something important, like his father did, at a firm. Richard wasn’t exactly clear on what kind of firm it was that he expected Steve to work at, seemed only to be concerned about the prestige of those four letters.
Sensing her opportunity to dig in as well, Steve’s mother followed up with her own concerns over Steve’s social life — it was beginning to look a certain kind of way that Steve had been single for so long since high school, and wouldn’t everything be a little nicer with somebody to keep him company? She didn’t mention Robin, he knew that Robin was the wrong sort of company in her eyes and she’d be all too delighted to replace her.
“A little birdy told me that Brenda was interested, you remember Brenda, don’t you? Caroline’s daughter, you met her at Nancy’s wedding?” Steve did remember Brenda, wouldn’t have been able to forget if he tried with the amount of times he’d heard her name since.
They steamrolled over Steve’s life in the way that only his parents could do, and by the end of the conversation he had agreed to go on a date he hadn’t wanted to go on, and was, apparently, looking for a job. But that night, just as he was about to shut himself up in his room to let off some steam the best way he knew how, his mom ducked her head in and smiled at him, clear-eyed and genuine for once. “You’ve been through a lot, son. I have a feeling that things are looking up. I’m proud of you, Steve.” His heart stuttered in his chest, and he felt awash with shame, refusing to allow himself to even look at the sewing kit and the easy release it offered; he couldn’t do it to them all again.
Then the next day, Steve sat in the car with Robin — roles reversed, she drove now, just to be safe — on their way to pick up his typing certificate from the institution. In a way that only Robin could, she filled the slightly awkward silence with a long, bumbling speech about how proud she was of him for working past his breakdown, for taking a course and sticking with it, for earning a certificate, like a foiled piece of paper was the key to changing his whole life. Steve had no skills, he had headaches, he was shy and withdrawn post-Starcourt, but he had his typing certificate, and Robin was proud of him — his mother, too. He hoped it was enough.
Things had never been quite the same between them after the incident. Robin was overly cautious with her words, checking in with him too often in a way that was unnatural for the relationship they had previously enjoyed. At home, as well, Steve had noticed a change. The knives had been locked up in a drawer, his father’s liquor cabinet, too, as though that had ever been part of the problem. But still, when Steve returned to Robin’s beat-up old car with his certificate in hand, she had gushed over him, crying a little, like it was the greatest thing in the world. That night, his mom made a cake — she said it was just because, but he knew. She had never been warm, never overly maternal, but she was trying, and that had to count for something. Couldn’t Steve try then, too?
He snuck out that night after everyone had gone to bed, snuck down the stairs and through the kitchen, past the people who were supposed to love him’s fear and their disappointment and the silver padlocks on the cabinets. There in the moonlight, Steve quietly lifted the lid of the silver trash barrel and placed his little sewing kit inside, slamming the lid down on it fast. As he walked back up the path leading into the house, his feet were heavy, and there was nothing more that Steve Harrington wanted than to keep making his people proud, but there was a ringing in his ears that threatened to buckle him. He sank down into the soft earth, a cold sweat breaking out all over, spots were swimming before his eyes and he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe. He knew by then, had the life tools to understand rationally that it was just a spike of anxiety, but there was no one there to hold him through it, to remind him to calm his breathing and take stock of his surroundings, so Steve sat in the cold, dew-damp grass of his backyard, shaking apart with the worst panic attack he’d had in months.
When it was finally done, Steve hauled himself back up on shaking legs to retrace his steps. He lifted the lid of the trash can again, retrieving the sewing kit and returning it to its rightful place behind the encyclopedias in his room. Just to be safe, just in case he needed it. A safety net, nothing more. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes again, he wouldn’t let them all down. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t.
But when sleep didn’t come, Steve spent the night carefully carving precise, tidy lines into the skin above his ankle all the same. Robin checked his arms now, she was always looking, but she never thought to look there. He cut another line, just one more, and then set about putting himself back together again. He needed to get a job. He needed to get out of his head, or he would never stop.
Robin came over the next afternoon, piling up side by side with him on his bed as they threw popcorn into each other’s mouths and scanned the want ads for jobs. Internally, Steve despaired — he wasn’t really good at anything besides scooping ice cream, and even that he couldn’t do anymore because of his trauma. Everything they circled that Robin thought looked promising left him feeling more and more adrift.
“You know,” Robin mused, furrowing her brow as she squinted at the smudged newsprint in her hands. “I think I saw a help wanted sign hanging up in the office building where I work. I wonder if we can find it. That would be fun, don’t you think, Steve? We could carpool!”
She scanned the columns until she found it by the address — the law office of E. Edward Munson was in search of a secretary.
“Hm, Edward Munson. I’ve heard he’s a little weird,” Robin hummed as she wrinkled her nose, continuing to read. “Answering phones, coffee, typing, filing… you could do this, Steve.”
A tiny bubble of hope floated up into his chest. “Yeah? And, like, a law office would be the same thing as a law firm, right?”
“Right you are, dingus! It’s perfect. He’s gonna love you.”
“Didn’t you say he was weird, though? Not sure I’m flattered by that vote of confidence, Robs.”
Robin laughed, smacking him with the rolled-up paper, and there again was that look on her face — pride and hope that things were finally on the up and up for him. The optimism that Steve had felt was swiftly replaced with shame all over again, and the fresh cuts along his ankle itched. He didn’t want to disappoint her, so he forced himself to put on a wide smile, hoping it was enough but knowing that it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“What do I do next?” he asked, feeding into her giddy excitement.
“Well, babe, let’s put that certificate of yours to work and start typing up your resume. You’ve got a lawyer to impress!”
***
It was raining the next day, cold and gloomy, and Steve was soaked by the time he got to the office of E. Edward Munson. His clothes were sticking to his skin uncomfortably, and his hair was plastered to his head — so much for all the effort he had put into trying to make it look just so, staring at himself in the mirror wondering who that man with the sallow skin and dull, flat hair was. Diminished was the only word for it, diminished from who he once had been, but Steve was still there somewhere, and he was trying — that had to count for something.
Robin had driven him to the office building; it was her day off, but she said she didn’t mind, and Steve tried to ignore the little pang of resentment he felt that he couldn’t even be trusted to do this alone. But she had looked so hopeful, giving him two thumbs up and a toothy grin as he stepped out from her car, so he set those feelings aside and ran as fast as he could through the rain into the building. Steve shivered as he stepped into the stale air, and he took a moment to get his bearings. Robin had said there were offices above the row of little shops where she worked, and to take the stairs on the left. He did that, rounding the corner to a heavy wooden door with a gold placard on it that read E. Edward Munson, Esquire. Steve cleared his throat nervously, reached into his coat to pull out the resume he had shoved inside to keep it dry — to no avail, since it was now damp, wrinkled, and torn on one corner — and reached for the handle..
As Steve shouldered his way through the heavy door, he didn’t have time to notice a woman who was walking out, box in hand.
“Hold the door,” she barked, and he leapt back, arm flung out to keep it from slamming on her, further crinkling his resume hopelessly beyond repair. Walking past, she glanced down at the paper in his hand and then smirked back up at him grimly. “Good luck with that one. He’s a freak.”
What?
Steve shook it off, stepping fully inside and letting the door close behind him with a thud. He had expected… someone to be there to greet him, but the painfully cold and professional front office was empty — just a row of leather seating for clients and a hulking, wooden front desk with no one sitting at it, sat centered in the room like a sentinel guarding a dark hallway leading back. He shivered in the air conditioning, stifled it. Tugged off his coat and hung it from the coat rack by the door, and then turned back to the empty desk, peering past it down the long corridor. There was a door off to the left and to the right, and then a larger, carved wooden door dead ahead, left slightly ajar. Steve swallowed roughly, gripped his resume a little tighter, and rounded the desk.
“H-hello?” Past the first door on the right was a small break room, refrigerator, microwave, table, sink. “M-Mr. Munson?” To the left was a copy room with racks of files, shelves of office supplies, and a shiny, new Xerox.
“In here,” called a voice, startling Steve from his curious snooping. It was rich and deep, but also sounded tired and resigned, and more than a little hesitant. It sparked something inside of him, a recognition, some niggling little thing that set off alarm bells within. A call that he felt instinctively compelled to answer.
“Coming,” Steve called back, walking quickly the final few steps to the heavy wooden door, peering his face around. “Mr. Munson? I’m here about the ad? I didn’t mean to intrude, but there was no one—”
“That’s rather the point of the help wanted ad,” grumbled the voice, low and probably not meant for Steve to hear. Steve stepped inside; Mr. Munson’s chair was turned, facing away.
Munson’s office was different than the rest of the place, decorated with buttery-soft black leather and lush, jewel-toned velvets. The desk was intricately carved mahogany, wide and heavy, and it was littered with tidy stacks of papers, fountain pens, and a burnished, gold desk lamp. There were book cases filled to the brim with tome after tome of legal books, and, curiously, shelves on the wall with whimsical rows of tiny, fantastical creatures. A large window fixed with a plush-looking window seat perfect for reading looked out over the park that was nestled behind the businesses; ducks were swimming in the little pond, playing in the rain.
Without warning, the man spun in his chair, suddenly facing Steve. He was younger than Steve had expected, surprisingly young for a lawyer; large, dark eyes set in pale, lightly freckled skin, a nest of curly dark hair piled up in an attempt at a bun on the top of his head. The man wore a meticulously tailored suit — a Harrington could recognize a custom piece when he saw it — and a menacing, wide, wicked smile. Steve might have been afraid, intimidated, but there was something there in those eyes, attention skittering all around, almost nervous, wide and observant in a way that left Steve feeling flayed open and exposed and all too seen.
Mr. Munson skewered Steve with that piercing gaze, and rapped on the desk with his knuckles, holding a hand bedecked with heavy rings out impatiently. For three painful seconds, Steve gaped at the man stupidly, unsure what it was that he wanted, before remembering:
“Oh! My resume.” He placed the damp, pitiful document into the lawyer’s outstretched fingers.
Curling his hand in so that he could read it, Mr. Munson gave the document a once-over and then shot Steve an unimpressed grimace, eyebrow raised quizzically. Steve knew that it was pathetic — he only had Scoops to recommend himself by, and his typing certificate, and beyond that the thing was empty.
“Steeeeve Harrington.”
“That’s me.”
“What the fuck is this?”
“It said secretary,” Steve stammered lamely. “In the ad. Typing and coffee and taking calls. I don’t have a lot of experience, but I can do that.”
Steve stood nervously in place as the lawyer rose from his desk and walked forward and around him, appraising him, summing him up, weighing his merit. He knew that he must look like a drowned rat, hair drying in a chaos of frizz, shirt nearly transparent from the damp, plastered to his body, shoulders curled forward from the cold. Steve was wearing a thin gold chain that he could tell must be picking up the light where it lay nestled in his thick, unruly chest hair by the way Mr. Munson was tracing its line with his eyes.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“Where do you live?”
“Here in Hawkins.”
“In an apartment or a house?”
“A house.”
“Do you live alone?”
“No.”
“Are you married?”
“I live with my parents.”
“Have you ever won an award?”
“I—yes?”
“Is that a question, Mr. Harrington?”
“No. I was captain of my swim team, and my basketball team made it to—” Steve stopped, Mr. Munson tsked lowly under his breath, looked disappointed. Then:
“Are you pregnant?”
“W-what?” Steve startled, knew somewhere in the back of his mind that it wasn’t something an employer should be asking a prospective employee, and besides, he was a boy — a man. “I—”
“These are questions I ask all my secretaries, Mr. Harrington. It’s so hard to keep good help. Do you have a problem with that?” It was a challenge. Steve shivered.
“No, sir. And no, I am not pregnant.”
“Do you want to be?”
Another hard shiver rolled through him, and oh. His lips curled a little, a cocky half-smile appearing of its own volition, and for a brief moment, Steve felt almost like himself again: confident, sarcastic, playful. “Well, I’m still a bit young for that, sir .”
There was a spark in Edward Munson’s eyes, Steve watched it catch and grow, that tiny flicker of light. His nostrils flared on a deep inhale. He rested back in his chair, frowning at Steve from across the desk, considering him, a puzzle to be figured out. Then, breaking the eye contact, the lawyer picked up the phone and began to dial, shuffling through some of the papers on his desk. Steve deflated; he’d been found unworthy and was dismissed. He turned to leave.
“Mr. Harrington?”
With a heavy heart, Steve turned back halfway as he stood at the threshold of Munson’s office door, waiting for the hammer to drop, officially.
“Go make me a cup of coffee, and then you can start on the filing.”
Blinking, brain not quite caught up yet, Steve nodded and closed the door softly behind him, before slumping against it and huffing in a few deep breaths. He was shaking all over, adrenaline coursing through his veins at a breakneck pace, and his heart was hammering in his chest so loud he was sure the lawyer could hear it through the door. Slowly, as rational thought came back online, a grin began to spread across his face, and Steve pumped his fist in the air, once, whispering “yessss” under his breath. Then he headed off into the break room to make coffee.
The coffee was bad. Well, Steve could only presume that it was bad considering Steve hated coffee so he didn’t know the ratios, and there were grainy bits of coffee grounds floating in it, and the liquid looked a little too dark, even for black coffee. Which is what he assumed Mr. Munson would like since he hadn’t actually said, but it felt like something he would like. Hastily, Steve turned to bring the coffee into the office, sloshing scalding hot liquid over his wrist in the process. The sting grounded him, and he carried it in, placing the mug down on the coaster that was sitting on the corner of the desk. Steve gave his new boss a polite smile, as he turned to leave, but not before he caught the wince that the man made as he took a sip. It was probably just hot, Steve figured.
He shut the door quietly behind him and hurried into the copy room, locating a basket full of manilla folders labeled “to be filed.” Steve had never done this before, but how hard could filing be, really?
It… wasn’t easy. He blew a strand of hair out of his face, staring with frustration at the files all around him on the floor. He had finally given up and spread them out, trying to find a rhyme or reason to the way they were labeled to no avail. There were names, case numbers, courtrooms, outcomes. The numbers were swimming in his vision, and there was a headache pricking behind his eyes, and Steve was on all fours, face pressed close to the folders as he squinted his eyes, willing the words to make sense, ass in the air. For a moment, he felt like someone was watching him, a cold chill crawling down his back, but when Steve looked up over his shoulder, there was no one there.
“You’ve got this, Harrington,” he said aloud, huffing a breath and getting back to it. He would figure it out, he would.
And he did. Steve got through it, switching to read the already filed cases on the shelf one at a time, slowly beginning to understand the pattern. By the time 5 o’clock rolled around and Mr. Munson was calling him back into his office, Steve had managed to get everything filed and had tidied up the space. He nodded to himself with satisfaction, and went where he was called, head held high.
He stood in front of the mahogany desk for a long while as Mr. Munson considered him, eyes narrowed in deep contemplation.
“You’re wildly underqualified to be my secretary,” the man began. Steve swallowed, watching as Munson’s eyes tracked the movement of his throat.
“I’ll learn.”
“Is this really what you want to do with your time? You’re an athlete, you said, you’ll be bored to death.”
The man said athlete like it left a bad taste in his mouth. Steve thought of real-life demons and hell dimensions and Russians and sharp metal instruments and torture. He lifted his chin, fractionally defiant
“Trust me, I want to be bored.”
“I already have a paralegal, Ms. Cunningham, to help with all the thinking around here. You would be stuck on the typewriter all day, or answering phones. It’s not stimulating work, Steve.”
His eyelashes fluttered briefly with the way the man said his name. Steve . “There’s nothing I want more than to be able to turn my brain off for a while, sir. ”
Munson mulled that over, frowning.
“There’s something different about you, Steve, your posture, the way you hold yourself. Tense, like a rubber band pushed past its limit.”
“I know,” Steve whispered, feeling all at once wrung out and thin, unused to being seen so plainly. He had thought that he was masking it better, but as the man said, there was just something different about the way the lawyer looked at him, something that felt kindred. His scars called out, humming beneath his skin in recognition.
“What happens when you snap?”
A smile pulled wide across Steve’s face, and he would always wonder what he would have said to answer that — the truth, maybe? — if the phone hadn’t chosen that moment to ring.
They both startled, staring at the gleaming black of the telephone sat between them on the desk. Mr. Munson recovered first, looking up to Steve with a tight smile. “I’m not here.”
Steve didn’t understand. The phone rang again, and the lawyer gave him a pointed look, eyebrow raised. Oh, right. Steve picked up the receiver, tucking it into his shoulder against his ear as he fumbled for a pen and something to write with.
“Law office of E. Edward Munson, how may I help you?” Steve greeted dutifully, listening hard to make sure he got the message just right. Mr. Munson stood up, gathering his things on the other side of the desk. He slid his long arms through the sleeves of a very expensive-looking black raincoat and brushed past Steve. Then, with a tickle of warm breath, velvet heat curling right up against the shell of Steve’s other ear, the man whispered:
“The coffee was terrible.”
He nearly fumbled the phone, turning fast to watch as Mr. Munson walked straight out the door of the office. In the hallway, the man dropped a small loop of keys onto the plush red rug. He called out over his shoulder, never once stopping to make sure Steve was listening; “Lock up when you leave, please. See you tomorrow, Mr. Harrington.”
It was a solid thirty seconds before Steve could remember where he was — remember his own name — and pick back up the receiver that had dropped into his lap as he gaped after the man who was now his boss. Steve could still feel his heat against his skin, could smell Mr. Munson’s cologne all around him, spice and smoke and pine, and he shivered hard. He apologized profusely to the woman on the phone, took the message, hung up, and raced for the keys that still lay there, beckoning him. With great care, Steve went room by room to shut off lights, make sure everything was put away, and then finally locked up the office behind him as he slipped back out of that strange world and into the ordinary hallway of the office suite.
It was still raining when Steve finally made his way back out the glass front door of the building he had walked into hours before. Robin was still there, legs tucked up as she read, dutifully waiting. It was obvious that she had been there for some time, and Steve felt a rush of guilt at being an inconvenience tug at him as he hurried into her car. He hated to be a bother.
But Robin seemed to take it in stride, slipping a bookmark between the pages of her book and giving Steve her full attention. A hopeful smile was blooming across her face, and she gave him an inquisitive little look.
“You’ve been gone for a while, dingus,” she said without heat, gently questioning. “So?”
“So I got it.”
Robin screamed. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight, asking a million questions as fast and loud as she could. It reminded Steve of an overeager puppy stumbling over itself for attention, and that made him laugh as he dropped a kiss to her nose and told her to drive. She took him out for burgers and shakes, attention rapt as he told her everything — well, almost everything — and she nodded along enthusiastically as she listened, praising him for not giving up when things got hard, and landing a job on his first try. “At a firm,” they said in unison, and laughed and laughed. Robin was a good friend.
She got him home early so that he could tell his parents the good news and get to bed on time. He had an early morning, after all, and she would be there at 7:45 on the dot to drive them both to work.
That night, Steve stared at himself in the mirror, trying to see what Mr. Munson had seen. His gaze roamed over his messy hair, his downturned eyes, the starmap of moles and freckles that dotted his face and body. His cheeks were pink and his eyes bright, the light of the vanity picking up the green in them. He looked good, for the first time in a long time.
“Hello, you’ve reached the law office of Mr. E. Edward Munson, who may I say is calling?” he said to his reflection, watching intently as his mouth formed the words. “I’m his secretary.”