#cannot believe i initially forgot my au tag. for shame

[thatgirlwithasquid]

Dear Moor Monster of Mine

3,424 words || read on ao3

I've been meaning to write a wolfblood harringrove au for so very long, so I'm glad that the @harringrove-relay-race gave me the push I needed to finally put my ideas down!

This is the first chapter. The full fic will be up on my AO3, but I didn't want to post too much here haha :)

---

Since the series of incidents last year, Steve’s parents have been keeping an unbearably close eye on him. If you had asked Steve perhaps three years ago, he would have been overjoyed with having his parents around all the time. But, right now, making his walk of shame from the car park where his mam dropped him off to the school’s doors, he can’t bring himself to feel anything other than frustrated.

Instead of travelling away on one of their monthly ‘work conferences’, Steve’s parents have taken to staying home month-round. That now includes the full moons. 

When Steve was little he used to hate that his mam and dad left him home alone for such an important day. Sure, they made sure to get nice babysitters or arrange sleepovers for him with Tommy and Carol, but all he had wanted was to share that experience with them. It didn’t matter that he knew he couldn’t do the transformation yet and so couldn’t fully understand it all, they were still his pack and it felt like they just didn’t want to share something that fundamental to wolfblood life with him.

It was isolating and upsetting, no matter how many kisses or how much quality time his parents would try to repay him with upon their return. He just wanted to spend those days with them. But now? Now he would much rather be left alone to watch movies, hang out with his friends, and not have his trainers chewed-through by his mam’s overeager wolf self.

“Nice wellies, Stevie!” Tommy calls out from across the yard as Steve passes by.

“Yeah yeah, laugh it up,” he huffs, striding on past to where Nancy and Jonathan are already waiting. 

Nancy doesn’t so much as spare him a glance as he comes to a squeaking standstill in front of them. She only manages a distracted ‘Hi, Steve’ as she continues flipping through her bag, clearly looking for something.

“Morning,” he answers anyway before turning to Jonathan.

He’s not looking at Steve either, too distracted by sending his choice of footwear a confused look.

“Planning on trekking through the woods later?” he asks by way of greeting.

“Monsters ate my shoes, had to make do with these instead.”

That makes Nancy’s head finally shoot up. For a moment, she gapes at him, flustered and speechless, before she composes herself with a sigh and a shake of her head. 

It’s then that she straightens up, shrugging her bag higher on her shoulder and brushing her hair back behind her ear. It opens her back into the group from where she had otherwise been sequestered off in her own mind. Steve grins at her.

“Don’t joke about stuff like that when Barb’s around,” she reminds him, expression friendly even in spite of her reproach.

“Don’t joke about what when I’m around?”

Well speak of the devil.

They all turn to Barb as she settles herself into their circle. Jonathan and Nancy look pained but Steve just throws an arm around her shoulder, pulling her into a squeezing sideways hug.

“Nothing,” he dismisses. “Just the photography club.”

Barb rolls her eyes, leaning back in Steve’s hold to send him a look that says she doesn’t quite believe him. She doesn’t shrug out of his hold, though, and that might be enough to lighten his petulant mood. The pair of them have come a long way since the whole drama around him and Nancy dating, which is something he’s very glad for.

Losing Tommy and Carol as friends stung, no matter how much he knew it was probably for the best; they weren’t very nice people and being around that sort of character wasn’t doing him any favours, but they had been his friends for years. But cutting himself loose from them, and by apologising properly to Jonathan for being nasty about his brother going missing and to Barb for being such a douche, did bring him into a much nicer friend group.

“You’re not still on about that, are you?” Barb asks him.

“Always,” he replies with a grin, raising his brows. 

Okay, maybe he’s not fully lost all his douchey-ness, but at least now he can argue it’s just part of his charm. Barb just shakes her head and accepts it with a fond roll of her eyes. 

“You already have your own camera,” Steve continues, turning now to address Jonathan, “so it’s not like you need it to be a school club.”

“Yeah, but it’s nice for it to be.”

“Fine, but I still think I deserve more credit for joining.”

“You only put your name down on some paper,” Nancy points out, smiling indulgently at him.

“And wasn’t that to make up for you smashing my camera?” Jonathan pipes up.

Steve cups a hand over his heart with a wounded expression.

“Wow, I see how it is. And, for the record—” he drops his hold on Barb to lean in and jab a finger into Jonathan’s chest “—I replaced that camera, as you should all know. You use it all the time for your stupid club. And what’s the point of the school supplying you with stuff if you bring your own in anyway?”

No one humours that with a response. That’s fine, they’ve gone over this bickering a hundred times before. Steve only really brings it up to wind them up now—all in good humour! At the end of the day, he’s fine with being an on-paper member of their club if it helps them out or whatever, especially since he knows that the Photography Club is Jonathan’s favourite thing about school.

He owes them all as much as well, for continuing to let him hang around. They let him off the hook for last year with less grovelling than was probably deserved.

“Ah,” Barb jumps in. “Speaking of photography… you’ve got to see what I found this morning on the moors.”

She unearths her phone from her bag and Steve winces. Sure, it’s only been about a year that he’s known Barb, but he really has come to like her. 

The whole of Hawkins High has always known about her monster on the moors theory—hell, the whole town probably does—and Steve had laughed at it back then, like everyone else, but now Barb is his friend… It leaves a bit of a sour taste in his mouth to think of the way he’d acted about that before, and the way others still act now.

It was arrogance, that sort of reaction. Thinking he was better than her because of her theories. And it was him in particular who was more arrogant than anyone else, hiding behind it to ignore that twinge of anxiety. It was easier to dismiss it all as ridiculous. Steve hadn’t quite been cruel enough to laugh in her face, but he’d still snickered behind his hands with Tommy and Carol before him and Nancy had gotten together early last year. 

Now that he knows Barb, it’s definitely worse. With him being around her so often, it feels like he’s waiting for her to look at him a little too closely and see just what lies beneath the surface. And that’s something he really doesn’t want, not just for his own safety.

They had to come a long way to get to where they stand now, but she’s undoubtedly one of his closest friends. Her, Nancy and Jonathan. All three of them—despite their rocky time when Steve had thought Nancy was cheating on him with Jonathan—are the people he cares about most in this world. 

He really doesn’t want Barb’s obsession with her own ghost story to get in between them all, he couldn’t handle it if they decided he was still a monster even after everything.

“See?” Barb asks, shoving the screen of her cellphone in their faces.

On it, clear as day, is the photo of a paw print. Realistically, it could be anything so it shouldn’t matter… but Steve can’t help the small shudder of anxiety in his chest. It doesn’t even make sense! His parents couldn’t have been up in the moors to leave that—he would know—and there’s no other wolfbloods around for miles of their territory, so it’s got to be an animal. 

And yet.

“Um… What… is it?” Jonathan asks. “Just a paw print?”

Barb huffs, turning to show Nancy instead, who gives the photo a more genuinely intrigued look.

“ ‘Just a paw print’,” Barb grumbles. “This is proof.”

“It could be,” Nancy says, and Steve can tell that she’s serious. “I could also be a fox or something—”

“Yeah, or a stray dog,” Jonathan suggests.

Barb looks at Steve pleadingly, but there’s nothing he can say. He knows this isn’t what Barb wants it to be. It can’t be.

“We need more concrete evidence,” Nancy consoles her instead.

“But this still proves something,” Barb insists. “That there’s something up there.”

“Hey, Barbara!” Carol calls.

The group of them all turn to see Carol, Tina and Vicki walking up behind them.

“I saw something weird on the moors: you.”

The others snicker as they push past, making their way inside. Steve shoots them a sour look as they strut past.

“Whatever, Carol,” Jonathan sighs, never having enough energy to deal with her dramatics.

Steve can’t blame him, it seems impossible that he had been able to get used to what they were like.

“Ignore her,” Nancy tells Barb.

“I will. We’ll show her when we end up being right.”

Nancy nods with an unsettling certainty.

—

Walking in to their form room would be the same as usual were it not for the folder of posters Nancy finally unearths from her bag. She leafs through them, splitting the pile into smaller ones to hand to each of them. Steve accepts his own with a begrudging confusion, peering down at the sign-up sheets and trusting the others to guide his way through the halls.

“When did you have time to print these off?” he asks.

“I came in early,” Nancy tells him with a shrug. “My parents wanted me to show Mike around on his first day anyway, so I was in early.”

Steve hums.

“That’s right, you two—” he gestures between Jonathan and Nancy “—have your brothers starting year 7 now, right?”

Jonathan nods to him; “That’s right.”

They turn a corner, heading towards the stairs up to Mrs Click’s room.

“Why don’t you just get them to sign up for your club, then? They’re nerds. That way you won’t need to stick these up around school.”

Barb rolls her eyes as Steve reaches over her to wave his stack under Nancy’s nose. The brunette just bats him away with an unimpressed look.

“I don’t think they’d find that particularly… cool,” Jonathan answers in her stead, “hanging out with their older siblings.”

Steve shrugs. He can’t say he can relate, being an only child, but whatever, he can see where they’re coming from. 

Barb and Nancy are debating the best ways to go about getting new members for the photography club when Steve goes rigid. They take a few more steps before they realise he’s fallen behind and then, with curious eyes, turn back to call out to him.

Steve doesn’t hear a word of it. Something’s off.

An unusual scent roots him to the spot. He doesn’t know what it is—or maybe he does, but it can’t possibly be what he thinks. All he knows is that this has never been here before, and it shocks him with a deep sense of wrongness. It doesn’t belong there.

He needs to root it out.

An instinctive territoriality spurs him onwards, picking up his pace until his friends are following after him with confused shouts. He needs to find whatever left that scent throughout the school. It’s like he can see it, a trail of scent in the air guiding him to whoever or whatever left it.

“Steve?” Nancy is calling. “Steve!”

He just keeps moving, feet carrying him onwards. Turning down hall after hall, paying no attention to the loitering students he shoulders past. 

“Steve, you’re going the wrong way,” he thinks that might be Jonathan this time.

The bell rings and more students hurry through the corridor, dispelling the scent trail. If Steve had gone through his first transformation by now, he’d probably still be able to track down whoever left it from the lingering traces, but with his senses not being fully developed yet…

He stands still dumbly, staring ahead with a sense of uselessness. The wolf instinct within him feels unappeased.

“C’mon,” Jonathan coaxes, leading him back over to where Barb and Nancy stand looking concerned. “We’ve got class.”

It’s probably lucky for them all that the scent trail Steve was following didn’t create too big of a detour. As it stands, they get into Mrs Click’s class for form in the nick of time. The woman stands up at the front of the room, talking to an unfamiliar head of blonde curls.

At first, Steve notices nothing askew—Mrs Click is talking to the new student about how she is their form tutor and head of year—but then it washes over him. The adrenaline of nearly being late to his first lesson fades and that scent steals his attention again. 

He freezes in where he’s stepped aside to allow Barb to shuffle into their shared desk, eyes swivelling to that new figure. Now that he’s paying attention, it’s like the scent itself is visible in the air, clouding around him with that cloying wrongness and announcing to the world how wrong his presence here is.

There’s a cocksure smirk on his face that makes Steve’s lip curl in disdain, an instinctual need to snarl and warn off the outsider barely suppressed.

“Everyone, this is William Hargrove—”

“Billy,” the new kid buts in. “It's Billy.”

A chorus of ooohs rise from the room, students goading on the attitude shown to their teacher. For her credit, Mrs Click takes it in stride. Instead, she nods and turns to settle the class.

“Okay,” she says, raising her voice over the beginnings of chatter. “That’s enough, thank you…”

But Steve is barely listening. It’s like everything else fades away and his focus narrows down to this William—Billy—still standing at the front of the class. Like Steve’s whole world is overtaken by the beating of his heart and the inescapable smell of him, a smell that’s so familiar. Familiar in a way that has his hackles rising in unease. It’s almost like…

“You smell like my parents,” Steve blurts out, and the rest of the class starts laughing.

Nancy reaches over from her and Jonathan’s desk to yank him down into his seat by the hem of his jumper’s sleeve. She shoots him an unimpressed look as Mrs Click scolds him:

“Alright, Harrington. Sit down.”

Steve barely hears any of them, barely notices any of it. Billy’s eyes had locked on to his, deep and blue and endless. It felt like Steve was falling into them, diving head-first into their emptiness where Billy would eat him alive. 

“Steve,” Barb whispers, jabbing him with an elbow. 

It’s only then that Steve realises he’s been watching Hargrove as he walks over to an empty seat at the very back of the room. 

“What’s gotten into you?” she asks, sounding concerned.

“Nothing,” he dismisses, trying to turn and give her his full attention. “It’s nothing.”

He can’t get involved, not after everything. Steve has been working so hard to prove to his parents and his friends—hell, even to Tommy and Carol as they watch with a smug anticipation for his downfall—that he’s not the guy he used to be. That’s something he can’t just throw away by causing problems with the new kid, even if he’s breaking every rule Steve has ever known.

There’s no question that this Billy is a wolfblood like he is, like his family is. The question is what is he doing here? One doesn’t just set up themselves on some other pack’s territory, and the Harringtons have held the territory around Hawkins for centuries. 

By showing up here, Billy is throwing everything off balance, but Steve can’t risk doing anything about it. Not now, not like this. As much as Steve wants to step up and scare him off, this is something he’s going to have to leave to his parents to deal with.

Even as he feels the itch of Billy’s eyes on the back of his neck, Steve keeps on looking ahead.

—

Billy, so it seems, takes no time to settle into Hawkins. By the time lunch rolls around, he’s already settled himself pride of place between Tommy and Carol, a wolfish curl to his grin that flashes just a hint of canine. It’s so outlandishly taunting that Steve has to sit with his back to their table to avoid staring at his sheer gall.

Nancy and Jonathan are discussing the school paper when Steve decides he can’t stand this silence anymore. He tears his head around from looking over his shoulder after Billy’s eyes catch his and his smirk seems to dim.

“Where the hell did he even come from?” he asks, cutting off Jonathan’s suggestion about… actually Steve isn’t sure, something about a book of the week.

“Who?” Nancy asks and Steve jerks his head back to where Billy now keeps sending glances his way. 

He can feel the others’ gaze on him, like someone is brushing his fur the wrong way. 

“Billy,” he says, trying with great difficulty to keep his tone neutral. “Someone must have seen something. Moving vans or something. Anything.”

Jonathan just shrugs.

“Not that I heard. Seems like everyone’s interested in him now, though.”

Steve looks around again in time to see Tina and Vicki settle themselves in the seats opposite Billy and Carol, effectively severing Steve’s line of sight. He huffs and turns back around. At the very least, them blocking the way soothes that feeling of being observed.

When he meets her eye, Nancy has a concerned look on her face.

“Leave it Steve,” she warns, voice carefully neutral. “You don’t want to get caught up in any trouble again.”

He hears what she’s saying, even if she won’t just come out with it. 

I won’t put up with you if you act like an asshole again.

It rankles him. It’s not even like it’s him doing anything wrong here! He almost wants to tell her that, to point out that for once he’s not just being an asshole, but doesn’t dare. He can’t, he reminds himself.

He couldn’t tell Tommy and Carol—probably for the best given their massive fall out—and so he can’t tell these guys either. No matter what. Which means he just has to bite his tongue and mind himself. This is something he just needs to let lie and have his parents handle it.

They can reach out to Billy’s pack, he thinks. And then this will be sorted.

“And who’s that?” 

Billy’s voice is clear and quiet with consideration, cutting through all the background noise like he had whispered the words directly into Steve’s ear. He shouldn’t be able to hear it, but he can’t help himself from focusing his enhanced hearing to pick up the conversation.

“Him?” Tommy says, breaking off with a derisive laugh. “That’s ‘King Steve’, used to be top dog around here. The Harrington’s have lived here for years, one of those right old families and Steve acted like it until he got all soft and cosied up to Nancy. Well—” Tommy laughs again and Steve clenches his fist beneath the table “—until Nancy ran off after weirdo Byers, there.”

Billy hums, interested. He doesn’t say anything else, but Steve can feel the way his eyes linger on him for a long moment.

The canteen smells like the sweat of overcrowded kids as he takes in steadying breaths through his nose. Jonathan, Barb and Nancy chat on none the wiser. It takes a long moment, but Steve manages to reign in his self control and steel himself into an icy indifference.

It doesn’t matter what Tommy thinks of him. Steve’s moved on, he’s better than this now. And the new kid won’t be around for long. Wolfblood packs don’t mix; even if he’s here now, he won’t be for long. Him and his pack will be long gone by the end of the week.

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Stick around to see what wonderful work @medusapelagia has put together for us next!! <3