#out of all of the prompts I think this'n turned out to be one of my favorites to write

[hargrove-mayfields]

You’re The One I Want To Go Through Time With

Day one of HWOL is finally here!! So excited to share all I’ve written! For today I chose the prompt Neighbors AU!!! You can read this on ao3 also as part of the collection as well!!  Hope y’all like it!! 

Word Count: 11,952

Rated: G

It finally happens when he’s 15 years old. It’s not like he hasn’t seen it coming, but Steve gets kicked out.

In the very beginning of a particularly brutal Hawkins summer, he had decided to invite Tommy over to smoke weed in the pool house. He thought nothing of it, but the neighbors complained about the smell, and, coupled with every other act of his deemed irresponsible, immature, disgraceful, by his stuck-up parents, a couple of blunts was apparently the last straw.

They tell him the Harringtons had a reputation, an air of elegance and respect they had to upkeep, so they couldn’t just let him bring drugs onto their property. He thought it was ridiculous, considering that they were allowed as much wine aging in the cellar and expensive whiskey propped up on a hutch as they wanted, but when he’d brought it up he’d gotten nothing but a stern look.

They’d been through this a thousand times over, how worthless and terrible a son he could be, grounding him for bringing too many girls home, taking his car away when he failed a class, so he knew to expect a punishment.

This is obviously the next step, the throwing him out on the street thing, for years he could feel the neglect and tension starting to build up and boil over. Sometimes, they’d even hang threats of it over his head, so now that was told he had to be out of the mansion by the end of next week or there would be consequences, it couldn’t be too much of a shocker.

Though at some point, he’s got to wonder if they ever really thought as far ahead as consequences, or if they just knew they trained their boy well enough that it never got that far. If only he had more of a spine.

Now, as unsurprising as the scenario may be, Steve was still absolutely in no way, by any means ready to be thrown out on the streets before he even had his driver’s license.

In the case of emergency, like the time Stephen Sr. got just a little too rough and popped his wrist out of place, or when they’d left him alone for a month at age 9 and he went three days without food because he didn’t know how to turn the stove on, he had his aunt, the thankfully much more compassionate counterpart to his mother, who lived over in California.

The minute they’re gone, having passive aggressively hurried off somewhere, probably the country club or something, to complain about how disappointing their son was with their rich friends, Steve grabs a suitcase from the closet and gives his Aunt Margaret a call.

Before he knows it she’s got him a flight booked, a written agreement from her sister that proved taking him in was legal, and a set of luggage. Three days later, he was flying first class towards the rest of his life.

~~~~~~~

Touching down in San Francisco has got to be the most surreal thing he’s ever done.

He’d never even left the Midwest before, his farthest ventures being into the three states surrounding his home state, so to be charted off to the west coast? It’s an experience alright.

Aunt Margaret is there waiting for him, her jet black permed hair a few inches above the rest, her brown eyes sparkling with the kindest smile he’s ever seen as she runs up to hug him.

She takes all of his bags, swatting his hands away when he tries to carry even one, and makes him sit in the car while she shoves it all into the trunk.

He wasn’t used to not being the help, since that’s all his parents ever really saw him as anyways, only valuable as their son if they got something out of the time they spent with him. It’s got him feeling weird the whole drive back to the Margos apartment, like he’s in some alternate reality where people are nice to him for a change.

She lives in one of those shared places, a duplex where the house is divided into two halves for two different renters, the very kind his mother would’ve turned her nose up at despite having been raised in one herself. Margaret told him there was a mother and son who lived in the other half, but they’re quiet enough, and polite.

Just pulling up outside of the house, Steve already knows it’s everything he’s ever wanted.

The house itself, painted a pale shade of peeling yellow and missing the majority of the shingles off of the roof, is actually a reasonable size, a direct contrast to the mansion he grew up in, fit for a dozen but occupied by one most days.

Brutal summer heat has dried up the lawn and the garden so they aren’t perfectly tailored, not trimmed by underpaid staff or watered by automatic sprinklers. All across it there’s a scattering of ornaments, like colorful pinwheels in the front garden, and plastic flamingos standing guard by the mailbox.

There’s even a rickety old fence, all mossy and broken up to mark the edges of their property, so different from the white vinyl fence in his backyard at his parents house.

It would seem too that the garage was only big enough for one car, not three like he was used to, and that the makeshift gravel driveway leading up to it was at max capacity with only his aunts Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais, and a dinged up old Karmann Ghia the same color as the house parked in it.

Basically, there were none of the telltale signs that a neglected rich boy lived there, and from that alone he already knew he belonged here.

His aunt hurries him into their section of the house, theirs is the right side, so he can get to resting off the jet lag before he starts unpacking, but he’s far too distracted taking everything in to worry about being a little drowsy.

The rooms are small and the ceilings are low. Where there would’ve been beige and white and other sophisticated tones, there was a rainbow of colors in Margos apartment, from the curtains to the carpet, the Afghan on the back of the couch to the little trinkets in the entertainment center and windowsills.

He notices that, to accommodate for the heavy summer heat, there was a fan spinning in the corner, and all the windows were left wide open. His parents had the windows painted shut back home.

It might’ve been overwhelming, being thrown into a place like this so suddenly, but in his heart he knows this was what he was made for: a cozy life with someone who treated him with the bare minimum of respect.

~~~~~~~

Eventually Steve does fall asleep, the switch from Eastern Standard to Pacific time just being too great for his body. He doesn’t really mean to, he thought he’d just lay down for a minute while he was putting his clothes away in his new dresser, but he ends up sleeping until it’s almost dark out.

He goes looking for Margo when he realizes the house is empty, an irrational pit of dread growing in his chest at the familiarity of being alone, and finds her out back.

The yard also seems to be shared with the other house, a wispy line of barely showing through grass separating the two where a divider had once been, but had since been ripped up.

His aunt is with another woman, a blonde lady who he assumed was from the next door apartment, were sitting in mismatched lawn chairs, cigarettes glowing as the sun got lower and lower in the sky.

Margaret beckons him over once she notices him, and shows him off to the woman. It’s not at all like his mother would’ve done it, none of the flaunting him to make a good impression. This is more like her wanting to introduce him because she genuinely cares.

In a way, it almost makes Steve more uneasy. He could handle all the fake stuff with only the slightest hint of discomfort at being gawked at, because most of the time he’d never have to see those people again, but this was astronomically different.

“Maria, this is my nephew Steve.” Deep blue eyes seem to take him in, accompanied by a polite smile that makes his stomach drop for no good reason.

He panics, shifts into the role of the perfect little socialite he’d been working on his whole life. Without thinking, he extends his hand for her to and produces the generic response his mother’d trained into him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Ms..”

She takes his hand, but looks a little surprised about doing it. “Hargrove. But we don’t have to do formalities.”

“Right.” It feels awkward to Steve, but judging from the laid back attitude of the women, it’s not a universal sentiment. That only makes it more embarrassing, to be the only one bothered by it.

His aunt leans back in her chair, tapping the ash of the end of her cigarette and tells him, “Go ahead and grab a chair Stevie.”

He straightens his back out and scans the yard, expecting a chair to already be propped open somewhere. The confusion must be apparent on his face when he finds nothing but grass and more grass, because his aunt specifies, “By the shed, kiddo.”

His parents always told him they weren’t allowed to have lawn furniture except the pool chairs cemented to the ground, because they said it didn’t fit the lifestyle they tried to lead. Even the concept of a shed would’ve been insulting to their tastes.

He's done enough growing up to know now that they were just afraid to look too much like they were people who lived in rural Indiana instead of in true big city luxury. They couldn’t risk seeming too much like they weren’t in the upper middle, it would be a disgrace.

The contrast between that and just sitting out there and not having his guard up is so, grounding. Not having anything at all to do but just, sit and appreciate instead of performing and worrying, it’s a lot to take in at once.

He was so nervous the whole way up, even though it was his aunt and he already knew she was nice, that they wouldn’t get along, since that’s the way things always were with his own mum, and lord knows he hardly ever even spoke to his father.

But it’s really not tense at all, actually, it’s sort of the opposite. For once in his life he feels free of expectations, and takes the moment to just exist. Ruthie and Stephen Sr. had long ago made sure that was a concept he could barely understand.

It’s not too long after that that the screen door to Maria’s side of the house swings open, scaring Steve so bad he almost tips his chair over as he startles.

There’s a boy who he’s guessing is about his age leaning out the door, but from the distance he’s at and with how dark it’s getting, Steve doesn’t see much else about him. “M back momma.”

“Okay baby.” The screen door clicks shut again in the next moment, and Maria offers Steve an apologetic smile “You’ve gotta excuse my Billy. He’s not too good with other kids.”

“No, it’s alright.” He assures her, like a polite social butterfly should.

Maria goes in a little while after that, and Margaret and Steve follow suit, since the sun’s almost all the way down.

But Steve’s curious now. He wants to know more about the boy, Billy, he thinks was what Maria called him. It’s only right to wonder, being that they’re neighbors now and all.

It gets brought up later that night, when they’re watching TV on the couch, a thrifted, feather stuffed thing he thought was simultaneously the most hideous and most comfortable thing he’d ever sat on.

“I didn’t know you had neighbors.” He’d been trying to work himself up to talking about it, sitting in the corner of the couch in a little ball and picking at his nails as he worked up his courage.

It was funny, being so nervous over casual conversation, but he guesses he could blame his parents for that one.

His own mum wouldn’t have even paid him any mind, at most pretending to listen while her eyes stayed trained to the television or magazine or coworker in front of her and hummed a non committal response, but Margo turns her whole body on the couch to face him while she answers him, with a complete sentence even. “Oh, people used to come and go all the time over there.”

“How long have they been here? Maria and her son?”

She thinks for a moment, a little surprised at her nephew's interest in the topic of their neighbors. “I don’t know, probably about a year or so now.”

“What’re they like?” He comes across as maybe a little too eager, and his aunt notices.

“What’s got you so curious?” There’s a teasing bit of reprimanding in her tone, just enough to suggest that she knows he’s being a nib-nose, but doesn’t mind it.

And he feels himself flush, because he is being nosy. To try to save face just a little, he comes up with an excuse that isn’t quite a lie. “Nothin’, just knew all my neighbors back in Hawkins, I guess.”

But she wasn’t upset with him, it wasn’t her intention to get him to shut up, like it would’ve been had he heard the same thing from one Ruthie Harrington, so she answers that question too. “I don’t know, they’re nice, sort of reserved, but I’ve never had any problems with them.”

~~~~~~

The two boys are properly introduced for the first time the next morning, when Steve goes out to fetch the mail for Margret. It feels like the least he can do for bumming off of his aunt.

Stepping out on the porch just shy of 8 in the morning and not seeing dewey grass, or the early sunshine muted behind rolling fog and dreary clouds is something he’s going to have to get used to.

Summers in Hawkins were always muggy, full of thunderstorms and unpredictably dreary days. San Francisco is so bright, so different, and such a relief.

While Steve basks in it, the already warm breeze and the sun shining bright, the neighbors’ door opens up and Billy comes out to do the same, standing on his tip-toes to reach up into the mailbox beside the door, holding a traveler's mug of coffee in the opposite hand.

When he turns around to go back inside, Steve, staying true to wanting to get to know the other boy better, has taken a few steps closer, and has extended a hand for Billy to shake, the same sort of introduction panic he’d felt last night.

But, Billy, seeing that his hands are a bit preoccupied by a stack of bills and a cup of coffee, just offers a sheepish smile.

Steve settles for a formal introduction without a handshake, though it’s still too stiff an interaction to really get to know him beyond the awkward new rich kid in town. “Hi. My name is Steve Harrington. I’m uh, I'm your new neighbor.”

“Pleasure to meet you Steve Harrington. M’Billy” They stand there, neither of them making any move to do anything but just look at one another. Billy clears his throat and shakes the coffee cup towards Steve, sensing that maybe this was the place for hospitality. “You want some? My momma always makes too much.”

“No thanks. I’m uh, allergic to coffee beans.”

“Huh.” He seems amused by that, scrunches his nose up like he doesn’t believe it, and Steve wants to curl up and disappear. “I’ll see you later then, Steve Harrington.”

He watches the other boy turn back to leave after that, and still sort of just stands there before his brain comes back on and he realizes he should say something in return. “Right, uh, bye.”

It’s just a moment's passing, but Steve can’t get the interaction out of his head.

He chalks it up to being nervous that his new neighbors won’t like him, the fear that Aunt Margo will send him back to his parents if he can’t get along here, and that makes logical sense, except, what he’s caught up on is Billy’s crooked smile, and his blond curls that lay just past his ears, messy from just waking up and bleached from the sun, and the spatter of dark freckles across his nose.

First full day in California and he has a crush on the neighbor kid. He can’t believe himself.

There isn’t very much time to mull that fact over though, because, over breakfast, what his aunt calls her ‘special occasion breakfast’ of cinnamon rolls with ice cream, she tells him she’s going to do some errands today.

And that’s alright, he tells her he’ll be fine all by himself, and he is, for the first few hours, but the more time she’s gone, the worse and worse he starts to feel. It’s that worry again, that deep rooted fear that he’ll be left alone forever.

Experience has taught him to try to calm himself down, to catch his breath and try to focus on the fact that he knows he’s being irrational, but those techniques don’t cut it, as they often don’t, and he’s sending himself further into a panic attack trying to think too hard about it

Sitting inside, he gets stir crazy, feels suffocated by everything that had before been inviting to him, so he goes for some fresh air out front. Watching the road for so long, just waiting for the Oldsmobile to pull up, he starts to feel antsy again, so he goes out back where it’s quiet instead.

There’s a glider on the porch back there, an old rusty thing that squeaked every time Steve rocked it forward or back, but the calming motion of it is probably the only thing keeping him from spiraling too far.

He doesn’t really know what time it is anymore, only that he’s hungry, and that the sun’s going down, and that he’s been sort of zoned out back there for a long while. He feels hot and cold at the same time, and he’s lost in his head.

The sound of a screen door gently tapping against the side of the house brings his eyes up from the spot on the ground he’d been staring at with tears in his eyes, but it isn’t his aunt Margaret coming home, it’s just Billy.

With his hands stuffed in his pockets, leaning against the wall between the back doors, he says real quiet like, “Momma told me to ask if you wanted some of the dinner she made.”

He shrugs. “I’m alright.”

“I figured.” Billy looks at the floor while he tries to figure out how he wants to approach this. For a long moment, neither of them say a word, no sound between them but distant field crickets, until Billy asks, his voice quiet enough it barely registers in Steve’s mind. “You okay?”

If he’s being entirely honest, Steve doesn’t really know if he’s okay. He trusted his aunt enough to move all the way across the country with her, and yet he can’t manage enough trust to believe her when she said she’d come home from some errands? Doesn’t sound too okay to him.

But he’s not in Hawkins, he’s away from the people he knows for sure wouldn’t be coming back for him unless it was to pull something like they had and treat him like garbage. So in a way, he guesses he’s better than ever.

Unable to think of any words that might convey what he’s thinking, Steve just shrugs again, but Billy seems to get it. He sits down next to Steve on the glider and plants his feet so it won’t move, and so Steve’s attention will be on him.

Knowing he’s got Steve’s focus, since he looks over at him with glossy eyes, Billy tries to reassure him, “Your aunt’s a good lady. She wouldn’t leave you.”

“Who said I thought she would?” It sounds pathetic, wet and stuffy with the remnants of tears he hadn’t known were falling, but there’s a vulnerability he couldn’t hide behind even the toughest of masks that reveals he isn’t being honest.

“The way you watched for her car said enough.” It makes Steve feel exposed, having a total stranger see right through him, but Billy explains himself. “When my momma went out looking for this place, I was sure I’d never see her again.”

“Why did you guys move here?” If he was going to psychoanalyze Steve, he felt it was only fair to ask Billy a pressing question back.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me.” He deflects it back onto Steve in a way that might’ve seemed cocky, but it's obvious he’s just trying to avoid the question.

Steve won’t let him win this one though, maybe just to save his own ego, or pretend like he hadn’t been caught crying by someone he met that morning, or maybe it was just because he had asked first, but he wants Billy to answer, so he tells him, with the slightest hint of a bashful smile playing at his lips, “You first.”

“Stubborn.” He cracks a smile back though, and goes ahead and goes first at the other boys insistence. “My dad’s a real nasty s.o.b. Would get drunk and mean for no good reason, so momma took me and we high-tailed it before he did anything too drastic.”

He didn’t know what he was expecting, why he even felt like it was any of his business, and he doesn’t know what he should say to that.

For lack of a better response, he gives his own little life story summary. “My parents were rich. They didn’t want me, so they have the time of day for me. No matter what I did they punished me for it, grounded me, hit me, sent me to Christian school, until they just got sick of me, I guess.”

“That sounds pretty shitty.” Billy offered.

“Yeah, yours too.”

After a while, Billy, sounding for a moment like he’s a lot wiser than any 14 year old has the right to be, says “What matters is we’re here now.”

Steve feels so touched hearing that. It was so simple a thing for the other boy to say, but coming from Billy after he’d just shared what he did, it means a lot more than just basic condolences.

Hardly anybody had ever been that genuine in anything they said to him. Steve can hardly force a response out of his shocked mouth. As he looks over at Billy’s face, still turned up towards the sky, he sees all that meaning there illuminated by the stars, and he's able to mutter a breathless, “Yeah.” in response.

They both jump when the door flies open, and aunt Margo comes running over to Steve. Frantically she explains that she’d been trying to make sure everything was legal, only to find that some of Steve’s papers were missing, and they had to try to track them all down and get some of them faxed, and it ended up taking way longer than expected.

It feels nice to be understood. Just a few years ago his parents left for what was supposed to be a three day trip to Indianapolis, only they didn’t come back for what was almost two months. Once they were home they didn’t even mention it, just continued going about their business as usual until it was time to leave again. His aunt taking the effort to explain herself was already a vast improvement from that.

He lets her pull him into a big hug, accepts her apology as the air is squeezed out of his lungs, and when he pulls away from her, Billy’s gone.

~~~~~~~

Finish reading on ao3! You can find this posted under the same title by ej_writer or as part of the hwol collection over there! Sorry tumblrs word limits deemed this too long!