Chapter Text
Steve hadn't meant to be the last one left in Hawkins. He really hadn’t. It’s just, when Robin broke it to him that she would be leaving for college, he hadn’t been ready to leave yet. The kids were still there, and as much as he felt like Hawkins had failed him in the last few years, turning their noses at him where they used to fall at his feet as he failed to meet their expectations for the perfect omega, this was still his home.
He spent his childhood basking in the dappled light of Hawkins’ forests, saw all his favorite movies down at The Hawk, staining his jeans with butter, and had his first kiss in the back of Jenny K’s car pre-presentation in 79’. As silly as it may have seemed, Steve had always dreamed of starting his family here. Finding a partner and building a family he could share only the best parts of his childhood with.
So, he stayed. The kids all graduated and went off in search of new horizons, no doubt bound to change the world. Phone calls went from a once a week occurrence to once a month to a couple of times a year. The only person he had regular contact with anymore was Robin who was in her last year at college.
Sometimes Steve thought about picking up and following her out there, but she was settling down with her “beautiful, enigmatic, totally out of my league” alpha girlfriend, and Steve just…couldn’t bring himself to insert himself into her new life like that. Bi-yearly visits were one thing, but Steve didn’t want to try and force himself into a new space and face rejection.
Steve had long since given up on any of the eligible alphas in Hawkins or any of the surrounding counties taking an interest in him, not that he would have wanted any of them himself. He had always yearned for a family, one that he made himself. He had long abandoned any kind of hope that one of the alphas in town would make a good candidate and so, at 24, alone and with no prospects in sight, Steve agreed to let his parents set him up with one of their alphas.
And so he met Adam.
Adam was fine.
Nice.
Completely normal.
Dark, cropped hair and gray eyes, a perfectly pleasant smile. He smelled nice, all masculine cedar and fresh air, a little strong for his taste but better than half the Alphas left in Hawkins these days. He asked about Steve’s life at dinner and didn’t immediately balk when Steve cut straight to the chase and told him he wanted four kids minimum, hopefully six. He just said something about heirs and carrying on legacies. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it would suit his purposes just fine.
Two weeks later, they were married and mated.
Life went on. Steve grew to appreciate his alpha more every day, their bond telling his hindbrain that he could trust his mate. Adam is kind of serious and always practical, but he tells Steve he’s pretty and scents him lightly before he heads off to work. Maybe he doesn’t spoon up behind him at night like Steve would really like but he never pushes him away when he lays his head down on his shoulder after they finish.
His heart wants a family. His mother’s voice in his ear is nagging about his “biological clock.” His omega telling him with a mate who makes him feel safe and a viable womb, it’s time for them to get serious.
But then Adam always wants to use a condom, even three months after their mating. At first it's excuses about settling into their new home. He talks about preparedness and the importance of setting up a proper home for a family before gunning for pups. Steve lets it go.
Then five months after their mating, he enters his pre-heat and Adam is asking him to go on birth control. At first, Steve says no, absolutely not. This is their chance, their first near guaranteed window to get their family started and he doesn’t want to waste it.
It’s the same excuses about responsibility and readiness and eventually Steve caves. As much as we wants pups, he doesn't want to raise them with an alpha who isn’t ready for them. Next time for sure he tells himself.
Which brings him to now, a year and some change after their mating, at 3:12 am on a Tuesday, waiting for his alpha to come home, pissed as all hell. They fought last night. Again.
They fight almost every night now. Steve isn’t going to stop pushing, not after another heat was spent on those stupid birth control pills that make him feel sick. He doesn’t understand why his alpha is being so wishy-washy about pups after everything they’ve talked abotu, unless there’s a reason he can’t give Steve pups.
If he can’t impregnate Steve like he’s starting to suspect, then they can figure it out. Surrogacy, adoption, ICI. Steve doesn’t care as long as he gets his family, that was the whole point of this mating, they both know it. He’s grown to care of Adam, even love him in some ways, but this as always been a transaction. An agreement. A family for Steve, a pretty, status wife for Adam. Steve is fulfilling his end, and now he feels like he’s being stiffed.
So he keeps pushing, and Adam keeps dodging. He’s mad. He starts picking fights over little things even if he knows he shouldn’t, but if Adam wants to act like a child, so can he.
Last night he threw out a half baked barb about his Alpha’s sperm count that earned him a night in the guest bedroom. Its bare walls and empty space were another reminder of everything wrong with his marriage. He’d never bothered to decorate in here, it was always supposed to be a nursery. He was supposed to have a baby by now. A sweet little pup to fill the space with their gurgling laughter and milky scent.
Steve had been ready to apologize that morning, feeling genuinely bad about what he had said. Adam wasn’t a bad man, they just needed to sort this out. But when he got out of bed that day, Adam was already gone, left for work before they could talk it out which, ok, maybe he needed more time to cool off.
Thirty minutes, an hour, three hours past Adam’s usual return time came and went by with no sign of the alpha. Steve was pissed. “Fucking child,” he muttered under his breath as he made dinner for one instead of two.
Lost in his musing, Steve didn’t notice the door opening, only tuning in to the sound of Adam’s shoe knocking against the hall closet as he kicked them off. He comes into view and, of course, he’s god damn drunk.
“Where the hell have you been?” Steve asks, letting his irritation shine clearly through his voice. Adam just blinks for a minute, clearly not expecting Steve to be waiting up for him.
“None of your business. It was just a few drinks after work,” he says, words slurred as he makes his way past Steve toward the sink. He pulls a cup from the cupboard and chugs some water before slamming the cup into the sink.
Steve scoffs. “Jesus Christ, seriously, Adam? We need to talk about yesterday,” he says, blocking the way out of the kitchen.
“Nothing to talk about,” Adam says, but stops anyway, looking at Steve with a sloppy glare.
“Nothing to talk about my ass! Look, if you think you have, like, sperm count issues or something its fine! I don’t care how we have kids but I want to start this family soon! We agreed on that. Surrogacy or a sperm donation or-” So caught up in his rant, Steve hardly registers Adam moving, closing the distance between them until the alpha is right in his face.
“Shut the Fuck up!”
“Excuse me? Fuck you! Don’t fucking-” And then his back is being shoved up against the wall, head banding on the drywall.
“I said shut the fuck up!” Adam yells, slamming his hand twice into the wall next to Steve’s head, spit flying into his face. Steve can feel his heartbeat in his throat, adrenaline kicking in. He must be pumping out distressed pheromones like crazy, it should be enough for Adam to back off and start begging for forgiveness, but he doesn’t.
He’s stunned as he looks into those eyes he had learned to love. Cold and grey in the yellow wash of the kitchen light, he hardly recognizes this man at all. “Adam?” He asks. He should do something, he should push him away or run but it’s all too much. His brain feels stuck.
“What, you got something else you want to say about my dick, bitch?” There’s a hand on his neck, pinning him to the wall behind him. You seem to like it just fine,” he grumbles, the stink of alcohol on his breath making Steve’s head spin. He still can’t move. He just wants to move.
"You want my welps so bad, I can why don’t you act like a real omega for once, hu? Present for me for once in your life instead of being such a romantic bitch and I’ll show you-” It’s enough. The complete degradation from this man who is supposed to take care of him. Poking at an old wound he never wants to look at, for him to break free of his stupor.
Coming out of his daze, Steve shoves the alpha away from him hard. Anger and fear coursing through his body. Hot and burning like electricity. Dangerous.
“Get the fuck off me,” he yells, coming out of his daze to shove the alpha away from him, hard. It’s enough to send the other man on his ass, drunk as he is. “Don’t fucking touch me.” His voice is shaking, but Adam doesn’t seem to notice.
Adam glares at him from his spot on the floor, considering. Steve is no wilting daisy, and Adam knows it. As much as Steve had always felt like a piece of freshly cooked steak in the face of so many starved dogs in the town of Hawkins, people had always been more than happy to point out his ‘flaws,’ his size being one of them. He said it himself, Steve isn’t the most ‘omegan’ omega, whatever the fuck that means.
Steve has two inches and fifty pounds on Adam, easy. If it came down to it, only an alpha’s command would give Adam a chance in a physical altercation with Steve’s head in the game.
Steve can see the wheels spinning in the other man’s head. He can just tell that he’s considering it. Can feel it testing the waters of their bond. It makes him sick. He presses his hands to the wall behind him, preparing to give himself an extra push if need be.
Adam seems to decide against it, which is a surprisingly smart choice from a man as drunk as he is. Maybe it would work, but in the middle of a fight, it might do the opposite. Might make Steve’s omega reject the bond completely, making him feral.
He pushes himself off the floor, spitting on the tile next to Steve’s feet. “Bitch,” he says, one more time. Steve tilts his chin up, even as it tries to wobble, and watches him go. He hears the slam of the guest room door, and lets go.
Steve collapses against the wall behind him. It feels like there’s been a monumental shift in his body in the past five minutes. He can feel his omega’s distress building along with the anger of his rational brain.
“Fuck. Fuck.”
Before he can think about it Steve is pushing off the wall and stalking toward the stairs that lead to the main bedroom. He’s running purely on instinct at this point, his omega telling him that this is not a safe space anymore. There is a hostel alpha downstairs that’s already proven that he’s willing to disregard the pull of their bond to hurt him, so they need to go.
Before he knows it Steve has a suitcase full of his most important papers, money, and clothes packed and settled into the trunk of his car. It’s not until he’s almost done packing up a smaller bag full of pictures of the kids and Robin and the few pieces of his nest not imbued with the scent of his alpha that he realizes what exactly he’s doing.
He stops, takes in the room around him. The room in the house he’s getting ready to run from. The room in the house in the town he’s always dreamed of raising a family in that he’s being all but run out of because his alpha isn’t safe anymore.
He thinks of that alpha. That alpha that Steve always thought would make a pretty good dad. Thought of him sitting at the table helping a puppy pack with math homework. Family dinners. Holidays with presents and feasts. That alpha who Steve was never really in love with but who he loved all the same.
Steve shakes his head, lets those dreams wash away and turns back to packing. He’s crying, he realizes. Salty tears dripping down onto a picture of him and Dustin at his senior science fair, blurring their smiling faces. He reaches up and pinches his nose, willing the tears away.
He zips up the top of the bag and slings it over his shoulder.
Time to go.
-
Steve packs the last bag into the trunk, tiptoeing his way past the door where he can hear his alph – he stops the thought – Adam snoring away.
He doesn’t want to risk waking him, knows that if he does he’ll be in for a world of hurt. Adam might be a relatively mild-mannered alpha, but alphas are known for not taking rejection well and Adam has already shown he’s capable of hurting his mate. His omega won’t risk being discovered.
He makes one last pass through of the house, making sure nothing he absolutely needs will be left behind. He grabs his favorite quilt, the one Nancy gave him before she left for college, and stops one last time by the guest room to listen for Adam’s soft snores.
Resting his back against the wall across from the door he’s hit once again with that visceral combination of fear and rage. Pushing himself off the wall he rummages as quietly as he can through the junk drawer and grabs the bat he kept from his freshman baseball days from its home in the hall closet.
Stalking up to Adam’s dumb, practical Volvo, he lays Nancy’s quilt along the windshield and brings the bat down as hard as he dares.
His heart races, the sound of rushing blood filling his ears as he tries to listen for any sign that Adam is awake. When two minutes pass with nothing Steve runs back to his car and starts the engine, leaving the ignition on and the door open in case he needs a quick getaway for the next step.
He climbs out and grasps the bat low on the wide end, lining up one of the nails he pilfered from the junk drawer up with the wide end of the front tire and bringing the flat end down as hard as he can, like using a rock to hammer in a stake. The tire makes a small hissing sound, but the nail acts as a slow releasing plug. It may be drivable now, but Steve knows by tomorrow morning the tire will be flat.
The Omega repeats this process for each tire, smashing a nail in and listening carefully for any signs of life within the house before moving on to the next. By the time he’s finished and racing back to his car, bat thrown hastily into the back seat, his heart is beating faster than he thinks is healthy and his hands are shaking where he white knuckles the steering wheel.
“Shit. Shit. Fuck. Clam down.” he hisses to himself, forcing himself to take deep breaths and shut the door quietly. Forces himself to carefully change gears so the car doesn’t make that horrible grinding sound. Forces himself to look straight through the windshield and not at the house he’s leaving behind. Forces himself to drive 15 miles an hour without the headlight on so he doesn’t alert any of their sparse neighbors.
It feels like it takes ages, his distressed scent to strong he can smell himself in the close confines of the car, but eventually he reaches the end of the road they live on. It connects right onto the interstate that will take him to the larger freeway.
He takes one last look at what used to be his home at the end of the cul-de-sac through the rear view mirror, just a shadow in the distance, and floors it.