To Heal All Wounds

The Games We Play

Family Video had gone down. Another victim of the quakes that nearly threatened to eat Hawkins whole. Two years later, the lot where it once stood was still empty, like a scar of broken concrete, buildings yet to be torn down, and earth-filled fissures. Those great cracks in the earth, like the Creel House and the ruins of Starcourt Mall, stood lonely and abandoned against the slowly healing community of Hawkins, Indiana.

Because some hurts were too fierce to ever heal.

But, festering wounds aside, capitalism marched on, and Steve Harrington and Robin Buckley, Steve's Rock and his Harbor, still needed income. And just like before, Robin had been the one to secure them the job, this time at a local coffee shop, despite Steve's obvious lack of knowledge regarding anything even remotely food service.

He'd learned, albeit the same way he learned everything. Slowly and with endless repetition. Robin, with the patience of every saint in the known canon, trained and retrained Steve until he finally finally could do the job on his own. They'd stayed late, even, Robin explaining the process of making drinks and working the espresso machines over and over in different ways until it finally clicked what to do.

He later learned that the payment for the drinks used to train him after hours were taken out of her paycheck, to his endless shame. Even if he had eventually paid her back the full amount.

The end result of Robin's otherworldly patience was a fully independent Steve Harrington, manning the shop and thereby the espresso machines by himself in the slow hours of the day. Once the after-work rush finished, there were only ever a handful of people who came by, and one of them nearly every day at exactly the same time.

And so when the bell over the door rang at exactly 5:15 in the evening, Steve called out the name before he even looked up from the dishes he was washing at the back counter.

"Hargrove, welcome back."

Laughter from the door and the sound of heavy boots on the floor. Steve ignored the swooping sensation in his stomach at the combined sounds. He ignored that sensation every time Billy walked into the store, even if it was getting harder as each passing interaction got less and less formal.

It had been easy at first. Billy was still getting used to being alive and was trying to feel out how he was supposed to interact with the world again. Steve could ignore the staring and the chuckles and the way he spoke when they made awkward small talk, both men equally guarded against past wounds. But eventually, somehow, Billy drew him into conversation. Questions about the town since he'd been dead. Questions about Steve. Little offerings about Billy's life before he died. He went from standing as he shifted nervously from foot to foot, to laying his upper body out along the counter as he spoke, languid and relaxed like he owned the surface.

Steve found himself, eventually, leaning on the counter too.

"Looks like I need to change up my routine if I'm becoming this predictable," Billy gruffed as he approached and Steve knew exactly the path he was taking. Because he had taken it every time he came in for the last month. He walked in the door, took a sharp left to stop at the counter with the cream and sugar so that he could grab a stir stick to chew on, and then wandered over to the register, tapping on tables as he went.

It was the same track he'd been taking for weeks now. And when he leaned on the counter, waiting for Steve to finish whatever chore he was doing and turn to him, he would always fall into the same stance, with the same smile, and the same look in his eyes. He'd tell Steve silently that he was ready to play a game of which he hadn't yet and probably would never inform Steve. A game with rules and parameters he may as well be making up as he went along, getting more and more intense with each visit. But Steve, while not a particularly good student in school, could pick up well enough when it came to other people. And he learned the rules that Billy was laying down for him quickly.