#oc: Camilla | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

desiccatedwithering · 2 years ago

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with those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings

(post-s2 || gen || T || 3.5k || chapters: 1/1 || read on ao3)

Steve probably could’ve planned this better. He probably should have planned this better. In his defense, he’s still nursing something of a concussion. Which, now that he’s thinking about it, is definitely a sign that this is a poorly thought out idea. He should’ve, uh… done research? Asked… not Mrs. Byers, so… Karen Wheeler for advice?

Whatever, at the very least, he should’ve brought someone with him.

Not that there’s anyone you could have brought, a voice that sounds like Tommy mocks, seeing how your girlfriend dumped you, and you have no friends other than a bunch of middle schoolers.

Steve takes a mental nail bat to the Tommy that lives in his head and shoves that train of thought into a little box to never ever deal with. It’s not like the real Tommy would’ve been willing to join him on this mission, even if Steve hadn’t realized that he and Carol were assholes and stopped hanging out with the two of them.

It doesn’t matter anyway. He’s fully capable of finding presents for a bunch of nerdy kids, even if he is mildly concussed and getting increasingly lost in Indianapolis.

After walking for a while longer—whether it was five minutes or an hour, Steve honestly could not say—Steve looks up from the sidewalk and freezes. Hey, where the fuck is he right now?

A quick glance around confirms that, yeah, he’s well and truly lost at this point. Like, outrageously lost. Never going to find his way back to his car, living on the streets of Indianapolis level of lost. There’s just— He’s surrounded by houses. He’s in some random neighborhood. Is he even in the city anymore?

Steve sets his hands on his hips, lips pursed as he spins in a slow circle. There’s gotta be something useful nearby. Dustin’s always talking about being aware of your surroundings, finding landmarks and using the position of the sun to tell direction or what time it is, that kind of shit. Honestly, Steve’s hoping for something more like a payphone or a sign that says, “This way back to Indianapolis, dumbass!”

Ah ha! There! His feet knew what they were doing. Confidence restored, he saunters towards Dreams and Swords Bookstore. That definitely sounds like the sort of place that’d have the kind of nerdy stuff the kids would like.

Sure, it’s just a normal house with a sign out front, so there’s pretty decent odds he’s about to be murdered, but he’ll take that chance. He resists the urge to ring the doorbell and tries the handle. The door jingles as he pushes it open, and he jumps and then trips over his own feet because that’s just how this day is going to be, apparently.

The woman at the counter eyes him with obvious suspicion. Fuck, can she tell that he hasn’t stepped foot in a bookstore since he was, like, twelve? Does he look like a shoplifter? Or someone who’d, like, try to burn the books for fun or something?

He tries to offer her his most pleasant and charming smile—the one he uses around his parents and his parents’ friends and business partners—but it feels tight and wrong on his face.

She doesn’t smile back, and after an agonizing few seconds of eye contact, he folds, cutting his eyes to the side and ducking into the nearest aisle, out of her line of sight. God, he feels like he’s gonna light on fire. It’s way too hot in here for early December. He unbuttons the top of his coat, heart rate easing a bit when the fabric is no longer strangling him.

He doesn’t think she can see him from where she’s standing, but he still grabs a book at random, opening it and flipping through a few pages. He’s not sure if that makes him seem like he knows what he’s doing, like someone who regularly goes out and buys books, or if it just makes him look more out of place. God, why can he not stop overthinking this? Why has a bookstore of all fucking things sent him into this spiral? Fuck, he should’ve just sucked it up and asked Nanc—

He bites down on his tongue viciously, like that can stop his train of thought from careening off the rails. He doesn’t want to think about Nancy right now. Doesn’t want to think about how they had a fight, and then she decided to skip town before he could even try to fix it. Doesn’t want to think about how something had clearly happened between her and Jonathan while they were off on their joint adventure, how the tension in the air had shifted, how they’d fallen into each other’s orbits so naturally when they all regrouped at the Byers’ place. He doesn’t want to think that Nancy could have cheated on him, but—

The kids. He’s focusing on the kids. He’s here to buy them some little nerd books for Christmas and not think about anyone else.

He puts back the random book he grabbed and starts skimming over the shelves, his fingers trailing across the spines as he goes. He’s just scanning the titles, which probably isn’t the best way to find what he needs, but oh well. So far, there’s nothing that jumps out and screams Here there be dragons or whatever other nerd things.

Ugh, he doesn’t even know what kind of things he’s supposed to be looking for. He knows the kids are into Dragons and Dungeons— No, other way around. Dungeons and Dragons. But he honestly has no idea what that entails. There are books, he’s pretty sure. He’s seen some left open the few times he’s ventured into the Wheelers’ basement, at least. But he doesn’t know which books the kids have or which they might need.

And he knows that Dustin has mentioned something else, something about rings, but—

Shit. He’s gonna have to talk to the woman at the counter, isn’t he?

He pokes around for a bit longer, delaying the inevitable, but eventually it’s time to cut his losses, put on a brave face, and pray that she can help him find something that will work without judging him too harshly for being a meathead jock.

He scans the rows of magazines on the counter as he makes his way over to the register, stride easy and relaxed, a pleasant mask on his face, a careful air of confidence— The facade shatters as his eyes catch and stutter to a stop, his whole body following. He barely notices as he trips on his own feet again, stumbling a bit but never taking his eyes off the cover.

The photo was taken at a bar, a woman standing in the center of the image. But what really draws his attention are the three men surrounding her. They’re all lounging around her, one on the bar at either side of her, and one spread across a row of bar stools. And they’re all practically naked, wearing nothing but jockstraps.

He feels like he should turn it around or hide it behind some of the other magazines. He knows that he shouldn’t be standing frozen at the front of the store, unable to tear his eyes away.

“You want a copy?” the woman behind the counter asks, like that’d be a totally normal thing for Steve to want.

He unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth and croaks, “Sorry?” All without managing to drag his eyes away from the magazine. Jesus Christ, he’s sure making a show of himself today.

The woman huffs out a little laugh, tapping her fingers against the magazine. Her nails, short and unpainted, land right above a man’s bare, propped up thigh. “The Works,” she clarifies. “Do you want a copy?”

“I—” Steve shakes his head, which completely fails to clear his mind. He finally manages to pull his eyes up to her face and catches the amusement in her gaze. “I couldn’t…” The protest trails off weakly, dying in the air between them.

“You new to the scene?”

He doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. New to Indianapolis, probably, though it seems like there’s something more to it, something deeper she’s trying to say. He’s always been shit at catching that sort of thing. He can read when people are trying to hide their emotions, bury them out of sight; he can somehow always tell what they’re actually feeling. But his ears don’t seem to have the same ability. Sure, he can recognize the tone that people use whenever they’re trying to be subtle, trying to say something without actually saying it, but he can never piece together what they’re trying to tell him.

He just nods slowly, feeling a bit dumb. His eyes try to escape back to the magazine, and he catches himself at the last second, forcing himself to maintain eye contact.

The woman’s face softens. She grabs a copy, flipping to the next page and pulling out a pen to circle something. “You have any questions, you call this number, alright?” She puts a star next to it, then draws a couple more circles. “And here are a couple places to check out. They can be overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re getting into, though, so read through this first. Actually—”

She darts through the doorway behind her and comes back a moment later with a pile of tiny booklets and flyers. She slips them into a bag and reaches towards the display to grab another magazine: another issue of the same one, which he hadn’t even noticed, he’d been so laser focused. She adds both magazines to the bag, drops in a business card, and slides it over to him. “Our number is in The Works, but I figure having a card doesn’t hurt. That should be enough to get you started, and then you can call the Switchboard or come back here or check out any of the other stores if you need more help.”

“Right,” Steve says, nodding, honestly completely baffled by this whole interaction. “Uh, what do I owe you?”

She waves a hand dismissively. “It’s on the house, since you’re just figuring things out.”

“Thanks,” he says, rocking back and forth on his heels a bit. She slides the bag across the counter, and he takes it slowly, like it might come alive and bite him, like one of those… mimes or whatever they’re called from Dustin’s game. Or like someone might jump out of the aisles and tell him he’s fallen for some bizarre prank before beating the shit out of him. (And why does he immediately picture that person as Tommy?)

“Do you need help with anything else?”

“Um, no thank you,” he says, the paper of the bag crinkling as his fingers tighten around it. Then he nearly smacks himself for his stupidity. “Or, wait— Yes, actually. Do you have any Dungeons and Dragons stuff? Or like other—” Do not call them nerd books, Harrington “—other fantasy stuff?”

She looks at him completely blank faced for a moment.

“Swords?” he adds, voice remarkably weak.

She barks a laugh, not malicious, but Steve still feels a blush burning his cheeks. “Honey, this is a feminist bookstore.”

****

He makes it home after a long, long and exhausting day. The woman at Dreams and Swords, Camilla, did know where to get fantasy stuff; apparently it’s actually not a super uncommon mistake that people make.

(And after hearing that, Steve had to bite his tongue against the suggestion that they should maybe consider changing their shop’s name if lost and bewildered customers came in looking for fantasy books semi-regularly. Because voicing that opinion unprompted would be rude, and he’s making an effort to be less of an asshole these days. Whatever, it’s not his shop, so it’s not his problem. And Camilla’s cool. He wouldn’t want to offend her over something so stupid. Especially not after she helped him figure out where he’d probably parked his car, which involved a fun guessing game where he told her the half a street name that he could remember and then badly described some of the buildings he’d walked past.)

It ended up being fairly easy to get all the kids presents once he was at the comic book store only a few minutes away, somewhere that actually had the stuff he was looking for. Hopefully he didn’t buy anyone something they already have, but he kept the receipts just in case, so it won’t be a big deal. And hey, if something does need to be exchanged, he can always offer to drive them up to Indianapolis and release them into The Comic Carnival, which they’d probably get a kick out of.

Honestly, he’d nearly forgotten about the magazine by the time he has all his bags laid out on the coffee table, carefully emptying them so he can get started on wrapping everything.

And then he pulls out that issue. The Works, November 1984. Right below the title, in all capital letters: Indiana’s newsmagazine for gay men and women. Steve immediately flushes, glancing around his big empty house just to make sure it’s really empty, that his parents haven’t somehow sensed the thoughts in his head and found a way to teleport back to Hawkins so they can kick him out and disown him.

If it felt wrong to look at the magazine in the store, it’s somehow worse here. It feels dirty to be looking at it right now, all alone, in private. The image hasn’t changed; everyone is still wearing at least some clothes. It was deemed tame enough to be displayed right up front in an actual store. But—

Steve takes a deep breath, bracing himself for— for— he doesn’t even know what, and flips the page. He lets out the breath, feeling a little silly because he had watched Camilla open it to the inside cover. He already knew that there wasn’t anything scandalous there. Aside from a list of gay businesses and services. Which, should they really be advertising that they’re gay? Isn’t that dangerous?

The thought sends a chill down his spine, the fear of someone catching him reading this, but he shoves it away. His house is empty as always. His parents aren’t going to be back for weeks, if not months, and they always call before their flight so he knows to stock the fridge (like he doesn’t eat anything while they’re gone). He’s fought monsters from an alternate dimension twice now and met a teen girl with superpowers. He can read a gay magazine in his own home. He can.

Except—

“What would the neighbors think?” his mother would say, so that she could pretend not to be the bad guy; it was always other people who would judge them, who forced them into their neat little nuclear family playacting, who restricted their freedom.

And his father—

Wait. Why the fuck does he care what his parents would say? His father was more concerned about Steve drinking a single beer with a few friends, rather than the fact that a girl had gone missing. He only cared about how rumors might spread, how it might affect their image in town, the family name, their reputation. He didn’t actually care about the fact that Barb was gone, just that the last place she’d been seen was their house, at a party where Steve was behaving less than perfect.

They hadn’t recognized her name a couple weeks ago, just a little over a year after she was reported missing, when Nancy got something like justice and the (cover) story of Barb’s death finally broke. His mother had watched the news with a perfect mask of sympathy, not even a trace of recognition on her face, and murmured, “Oh, her poor family. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose your child.” Like she cared about anything beyond how that tragedy could be used to make their family look better. (Like she would even notice if Steve ever went missing.)

She’d wanted to send Barb’s parents a flower arrangement, and Steve didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or scream at the insensitivity, how completely tone deaf that would be. He’d volunteered to buy and deliver it himself and then felt nauseous at his mother’s praise.

His father had squinted at him and said, “Oh. You must’ve had classes with her.”

Steve didn’t bother to point out that she was a year below him, let alone the fact that she died in their pool.

They hadn’t even stayed in town long enough for the funeral. (Steve had gotten the Hollands flowers, because it was his fault that their daughter had died, but he sure as hell hadn’t said that they were from the Harringtons.)

So fuck what his parents think. Even if they did somehow manage to find out— What? Would they hate him? Disown him? Never speak to him again? Almost certainly. But they’ve gone months without speaking to him before, so would it even matter? Sure, he’d have to find a new place to live, but he’s going to have to do that at some point no matter what, so who cares if it happens a few years early. Nothing would actually change, other than his parents no longer needing to pretend to tolerate him.

“Alright,” he says, breaking the dead silence of the living room. His voice echoes a bit in the empty space as he stares at the magazine, bracing himself to read it. “Here goes nothing.”

…

After getting up and double checking the lock. Just to be safe, of course. You never know when someone might try to break in to steal something.

He settles back on the couch and grabs the magazine again, skimming through the list of businesses. Bars, restaurants, a couple more bookstores, some other businesses. Surprisingly, the list isn’t just contained to Indianapolis; there are other towns scattered around the state with gay bars and businesses. And The Works is apparently distributed throughout Indiana and the surrounding states, which is honestly kind of mind boggling.

Camilla had circled a couple of the bars, though whether those were her favorites or the best ones for someone “new to the scene”—the… gay scene?—Steve genuinely has no idea. The switchboard she mentioned was apparently the Gay/Lesbian Switchboard, which shouldn’t really surprise him considering it’s a gay magazine, but it somehow manages to anyway. Story of his life, honestly.

Steve eyes the table of contents on the next page warily. Is he really, actually going to read this? He shouldn’t. Not that it’s wrong or anything, it’s just— just— It’s just that Steve shouldn’t read it.

No. He just decided that he wasn’t going to be bullshit. He’s not going to let himself be a coward and back out now.

(Is this his punishment for calling Jonathan a queer last year? Being caught staring so obviously at a gay magazine that it was given to him for free? Having a stranger notice the same thing in Steve that he used to attack Jonathan—and, worse, treating him kindly about it? Having to actually confront the thing that he’s spent years burying and hiding?)

He’s not stupid; he’s always known that he felt different than other guys. Most dudes don’t think about kissing their guy best friends just as much as they think about kissing the girl they’re crushing on. But it was always easy to ignore that feeling. He knows Hawkins isn’t safe for that sort of thing, never found anyone else who was like him.

But now someone’s seen him, recognized him. Now someone’s looked at him and said I know you. Here’s your community. Here’s where you’ll fit.

He knows that the safe thing—arguably the smart thing—would be to bury this again, to shove this feeling down and ignore it. But he’s tried that already.

He tried playing it safe, tried to pretend that he was a normal teen in a normal, happy relationship. Tried to help Nancy move forward. Tried to keep her safe. Tried to stop her from going toe to toe with the government to get Barb justice. And look how that turned out. The safe option blew up in his face, and now he’s single and friendless—save for a pack of middle schoolers—and still recovering from a grade three concussion.

Playing it safe meant being the son his father wanted, popular and outgoing. It meant being King Steve, Steve “The Hair” Harrington, a douche with false confidence and a plastic smile and dead eyes.

He’s sick of being safe and pretending and trying to mold himself in his father’s image. He’s sick of trying to live up to his parents’ impossible standards. Sick of being bullshit. Maybe it’s time to start being himself.

Steve flips the page. Time to figure out how, exactly, he would do that.

pre-Steddie sequel on ao3 or tumblr

#stranger things fic #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things #steve harrington #steve harrington fic #my fic #my writing #my post #st fic #oc: camilla #series: make the yuletide gay #indy queer history #steve pov

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