redamancy

February 27, 2025

For the Stommy Mini Bang

Rating: T | CWs: 1 Use of a Slur (Not Derogatory), Glossed Over Canon-Levels of Violence | Word Count: 3,188

Pairings: Steve/Tommy, Steve & Tommy & Carol

Additional Tags: Tommy's POV

Summary:

A/N: I hope you enjoy my entry for the Stommy Mini Bang! It's been a process, but I've met so many incredible people through it! Shout out to my artist Mouse, whose art I will link as soon as I can! And thank you to everyone who cheerleaded to me as I wrote. My regular group knows who they are!!

“I’m just saying!” Tommy said loudly, throwing his hands up. “Why does he have to be such a douchebag! I was trying to protect him!”

“Like you were any better, Tommy. Seriously. He was our ride home. You couldn’t wait to pick a fight until he dropped us back off at your house?” Carol snarked back, sneering at Tommy. She picked up her pace so she was a few steps ahead of him.

Tommy lengthened his stride to catch back up with her. “Can you fuck off about that, Carol?” he said angrily. “He’s ditching us for some girl who cheated on him, and I’m not supposed to be mad about that?”

She spun around, getting right in his face and pressing the tip of her finger into his chest, and hissed at him, “I’m not the one that wants to suck Steve’s dick, Tommy. I don’t care who he dates or what he does. He’s been a real dick lately, anyway. Why does it matter?”

“Fuck off, Carol!” he shouted at her, much louder than he should be for being in nearly the middle of town.

“Fine!” she huffed. “Be a pathetic little bitch about it. Steve’s not going to come crawling back to you just because you act like this. You know, it’d serve him right if we ditched him like he ditched us, yeah?” she asked him condescendingly. “Which way do you want it, Hagan? Are we being Steve’s friends no matter what, or are we pissy because he’s fucking another one of his sluts?”

Tommy’s fists balled up at his side, and he found it very, very tempting to hit her. He took a deep breath and reminded himself he didn’t hit girls. “Seriously. Fuck off, Carol. I don’t want to talk to you anymore right now.”

She flipped him off and spun on her heel, stomping away from him and throwing a petty little wave over her shoulder. “See you when you make up your mind, asshole!” she called out, not looking back.

Turning to go a different way to get home, he looked down the street and saw Steve at the top of a ladder, scrubbing at the movie theater marquee. “Oh, fucking come on!” Tommy yelled in frustration and turned back, deciding it’d be better to follow Carol for a block or two instead of passing Steve.

It took him another forty-five minutes of walking to get home, and by the time he made it, Tommy was sweaty and tired and even angrier than before.

While he was throwing off his shoes and ditching his coat at the door, he heard his mom call out from the kitchen, “Tommy, honey, is that you? You’re home later than usual. Did you go hang out with your friends?”

“No, Mom,” he huffed as he walked through the house towards her. “I was going to, but Steve’s being a dick.”

“Language!” his mom scolded.

“Well, he is,” Tommy complained to her. “And Carol is being such a priss about the whole thing too.”

“What happened, baby?” his mom asked, looking across the kitchen island at him.

“So you know how Steve’s been dating Nancy, right?” he started, pulling at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt.

“Mhm,” his mom hummed. “He really seems to like her.”

“Well, we found out that she cheated on him with this other guy from school, total creep; he hid out in the woods and took pictures of all of us at Steve’s house the other night when we were hanging out there, but, like, especially Nancy,” he explained.

His mom looked borderline horrified at that. “You should tell the police that, honey,” she told him.

“We already had a talk with him about it. Steve and I confronted him. But that’s not the important part,” Tommy told her. “So we find out Nancy cheated on him, and then he got in a fight today with Byers – the other guy – but later, he flips out on me and Carol, saying that we were in the wrong about it!”

Reaching out, his mom squeezed his hand and told him, “It sounds like he has a lot on his plate right now. Maybe he got mad just because you were the one still there.”

“Well, he shouldn’t have,” Tommy grumbled.

“I know, honey, but people make mistakes. You two have been friends for so long; you shouldn’t let this get between you. Once you cool down a bit, you should go over and try to talk to him about it, see if you can’t sort things out,” his mom told him, offering him a warm smile.

“Why do I have to reach out?” he complained. “It’s his fault.”

“When you care about someone, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. Sometimes you have to be the bigger person and meet them where they are in order to fix things,” she told him.

He let out a deep sigh and stepped back. “Fine, I guess.”

“Good,” she told him, patting him on the cheek. “Now go take a shower, you reek. I’ll whip up something quick for dinner, so you can go talk to Steve.”

“It’s not my fault I had to walk almost five miles to get home,” Tommy grumbled to himself as he stomped off to his room.

After his shower, he laid back on his bed, staring at the ceiling as he waited for his mom to call him to dinner.

Maybe his mom had been onto something. He supposed that usually when he and Steve fought, Steve was the one to approach him to apologize, even if he hadn’t been the one to start the fight in the first place. They had just never fought this bad before.

He also supposed maybe Steve was a little right too. He was extra harsh to Nancy as opposed to anyone else Steve had seen before, and maybe he was an asshole sometimes. He only went off on Steve, though, because Steve went off on Carol.

If he couldn’t be a dick to Steve’s girlfriend, then Steve couldn’t be a dick to his. Even though he wasn’t in love with Carol, he still cared about her. They took care of each other, protected each other. He told her things he’d never told Steve. She knew his secrets, and he knew hers. Steve was his best friend, but Carol was his closest friend.

Fine. Fine! So he had to go talk to Steve, and he’d apologize to Steve, but Steve had to apologize to him too. And Carol.

His mom called him to dinner, and he scarfed it down quickly, soon darting out the door with the keys to her car in his hand, borrowing it to go talk to Steve.

“Drive safe, honey! Call if you plan on staying the night at Steve’s!” his mom called after him as he left.

When Tommy pulled up to Steve’s house, all the lights were off, and there weren’t any cars in the driveway. He still got out and rang the doorbell just to double check, but it seemed like Steve wasn’t home.

He drove by the theater next to see if Steve was still scrubbing the marquee, and when he didn’t find him there, he checked Wheeler’s house next.

Steve still hadn’t turned up, so Tommy drove to all their usual haunts looking for him. He wasn’t at the quarry, Skull Rock, Lover’s Lake, or the field they liked to go to sometimes to drink.

As a last ditch attempt to find his friend, Tommy pulled over and dug the old copy of the Yellow Pages out of the trunk that his mom kept there. It didn’t take him long to find the Byers’s address and drive that way.

He could tell, even before he’d fully reached the house, that this was where Steve was. His car sat outside, illuminated by the single post light. Tommy pulled up next to Steve’s car and threw his door open, ready to storm up and demand to know what Steve thought he was doing.

The front door flew open just after Tommy had cleared the bonnet of his car, and Steve came running out, barely bothering to close the door behind him.

He got halfway to his car before he froze, looking wide-eyed at Tommy.

“What are you doing here?” Steve asked him, sounding more afraid than Tommy had ever heard him. “You have to go. You’ve gotta get out of here.” He rushed up to Tommy and tried to push him back toward the cars.

“Steve, what’s going on?” Tommy asked him, feeling confused and startled, worried about Steve.

“Leave, Tommy!” Steve yelled, shoving at him.

Tommy pushed back, shoving Steve against the driver’s side of his car. “Not,” he said firmly, pointing a finger at Steve, “until you tell me what the hell is going on!”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw all the lights in the house begin to flicker and flash. His hand slowly dropped as he turned to watch. “What the hell, Steve?” he asked absently, not looking at Steve as he did so.

“You need to-” Steve said, trailing off and staring at the house too. “We need to go.”

The lights in the house cut for a long second then burst back on, still flashing.

All of a sudden, there was screaming and gunshots coming from inside.

Tommy felt frozen in place like a deer in headlights. His mind was racing, but he couldn’t hold onto a single thought.

Steve pushed past him and rushed into the house, and Tommy felt his feet unstick from the ground as he followed behind. He couldn’t leave Steve to run into that house alone; he would never. Even if it got him shot.

When he burst into the house, he expected crazy Jonathan Byers to be waving a gun around, but all he could see was the hulking mass of what could only be called a monster, with Wheeler pointing a handgun at it as Steve ducked in and slammed a nailbat that he’d picked up off the ground into its back.

“What the fuck!” Tommy screeched, throwing himself back along the wall in the entryway.

“When did he get here?” Wheeler yelled at Steve.

Steve didn’t flinch, still wailing on the monster with the bat, guiding it into the hallway. “Not the time, Nance!” he said roughly.

Tommy heard the click of metal, and Steve yelled, “He’s in the trap!”

Jonathan came rushing over at Nancy’s shout of “Jonathan, now!” and threw a lighter at the monster, lighting it up like a bonfire.

It screeched and screamed as it was set ablaze, and the house quickly began filling with smoke.

Tommy’s head started to spin, and he coughed, having trouble breathing.

The other three were talking, saying something about the monster, but Tommy couldn’t focus. That thing could’ve killed them. Could’ve killed Steve. What the hell was it?

He blankly watched as the other three followed the shifting lights across the house and out onto the porch. When they came back inside, Tommy followed them.

The house reeked of burning flesh and something similar to mold, but the four of them sat in the living room, surrounded by the creepy remnants of whatever the hell was going on. An alphabet was painted on the wall, with Christmas lights strung across it.

Steve started demanding answers from Nancy, and Tommy listened as she explained that that thing was a monster from another dimension. That it had taken Will Byers and Barbra Holland. That little Byers might actually still be alive.

Chief Hopper pulled up in his truck sometime later, long after they’d talked themselves out and were just sitting in silence. It turned out Will Byers was still alive, and the Chief was there to drag Byers over to the hospital to see him.

“Are you coming, Steve?” Nancy asked, pausing before she climbed into the Chief’s truck.

Tommy watched Steve hesitate for a long moment, looking between him and Nancy, before making up his mind. “No, Nancy,” Steve said, firmly but not unkindly. “I hope the kids are okay, but I’ve got to talk to Tommy and get cleaned up. Call me, though, if you need anything.”

“Okay,” Nancy said, nodding. She hopped into the truck, and the Chief pulled away.

Steve let out a deep sigh and ran his hand over the less injured side of his face. He glanced over at Tommy again and asked, “Meet me at my place?”

“Um… yeah,” Tommy agreed, then half-stumbled back to his own car.

He realized as he pulled out of the Byers’s driveway that his hands were trembling to the point he could barely drive, but he tried to focus and force them to be still for long enough to get the Steve’s.

The two of them pulled up outside the Harrington house, and Steve quietly unlocked the door and let Tommy in.

“Let’s go up to my room and get changed,” he suggested, guiding Tommy up the stairs.

They changed in silence, Steve handing Tommy some of his clothes without asking, already knowing what Tommy would want to wear. As soon as Steve was in fresh clothes, he stepped into the en-suite and starting dabbing at his face with a wet washcloth.

“Stevie,” Tommy said softly. He hadn’t called Steve that since they were little kids, but after a night like tonight, it felt fitting. “Let me help,” he offered, holding his hand out for the washcloth.

Steve handed it over immediately and turned to give Tommy better access to his face.

After he’d gently wiped the blood off Steve’s face, he reached into the cabinet and pulled out the first-aid kit, smearing antibiotic cream on the slowly scabbing wounds and covering the worst cut in a bandaid.

Once he’d smoothed the edges of the bandaid down, he pulled back, feeling like he’d been too soft, gone too far with it. Like Steve would figure it out and call him names and beat him up. But Steve just smiled back that soft, dopey smile that he only showed a few people, and Tommy’s whole chest felt warm inside.

“I’m tired, Tom,” Steve said, blinking slowly. “Ready to lay down?”

“Yeah, just toss me a pillow, and I’ll camp out on the floor in here,” Tommy told him, already preparing for a night on the rug.

Steve shook his head and tugged on Tommy’s hand. “No, we can share,” he insisted.

They hadn’t shared a bed since they entered middle school and Steve’s dad started making a fuss about them being too old to share, but Tommy didn’t hesitate to take what he could and crawled into the bed opposite Steve, both of them laying on their sides, facing each other like they did when they had sleepovers as kids.

Once the overhead light was out and it was down to just the dim lamp on the side table, Tommy felt more open, like the lump that had been in his throat was gone and now he could actually talk to Steve. “I’m sorry,” he told Steve, “about earlier today. I can’t-” He cut off, nearly choking on tears now as everything truly hit him. “I can’t imagine what I would do without you. If my last time seeing you was us fighting-”

Steve shushed him gently and reached out to place a hand on Tommy’s arm. “Don’t think about the what ifs,” he said. “We made it out okay. I just wish you didn’t get mixed up in it too.”

“I don’t,” Tommy said truthfully. “I know I wasn’t any help, but-”

“I was freaking out the whole time too,” Steve said, cutting him off. “The only reason I didn’t freeze up was because I saw it before I ran out that first time. I was more prepared. That’s all.”

“I was really scared that you were going to die,” Tommy confessed, curling in closer to Steve.

Steve reached out to poke Tommy on the tip of his nose like he did when they were little and he thought Tommy was being silly, opening his mouth to say something, but Tommy grabbed his wrist and cut him off, saying, “I’m serious, Steve. I was terrified.”

His expression grew more serious, and he said, “I know. I was too. When you showed up, I thought you were going to die because of me. I just wanted you to leave.”

The fear and sadness and care in Steve’s eyes was too much for Tommy to bear. He lunged forward, crushing his lips to Steve’s.

Steve didn’t respond at first, and Tommy froze, worried he’d ruined everything. He started to pull back, when Steve’s hand fisted itself in Tommy’s hair and pulled him closer. Tommy melted into him, moaning softly into the kiss.

This time, Steve froze. He yanked himself away from Tommy and sat up, turning his back to him. “Oh, God,” he heard Steve mutter.

“I’m sorry,” Tommy gasped out, scrambling back. “I’m sorry.” He really had ruined it.

“What about Carol?” Steve asked, sounding upset and angry.

That stopped Tommy’s spiraling thoughts short. “What?” he asked, confused. “What about Carol?”

Steve spun around to face him. “That fact that she’s your girlfriend, Tommy?” he accused.

“Oh,” Tommy said blankly. “Oh, shit!” he said louder, brain finally coming back online. “We’re not!”

“You can’t tell me you’re not!” Steve said angrily. “You two are always hanging off each other! I’m both of your guys’ friend! I see it all the time! I’m not going to let you cheat on her with me.”

Tommy held his hands up in surrender, trying to placate Steve until he could explain. “Steve, Carol knows I’m gay. She’s covering for me.”

Now Steve looked like he was the one who was lost. “What?”

“Steve, Carol is a dyke. The only thing she’s going to be mad about is that I kissed a guy before she got to kiss a girl,” Tommy said flatly, staring Steve in the eye.

“Oh,” Steve breathed, then lunged at Tommy, going back to kissing him with fervor.

Tommy’s back hit the bed, and Steve stretched out over him, their bodies pressed together from chest to knee. He gripped the back of Steve’s shirt tightly and pulled him as close as he could.

Steve’s bedroom door flew open, and the two of them flew apart, Tommy’s heart in his throat.

Before he could get himself worked up into too much of a panic, Carol’s bitchy voice said from the doorway, “Glad to see you two sorted things out.”

“Carol, what are you doing here?” Tommy asked, staring at her wide-eyed.

“You were supposed to call your mom. When you guys didn't answer the phone here, she called me asking where you were. I covered for you; you’re welcome,” she told him, her tone promising that he’d owe her. “I’m going to go sleep in the guest room. Try not to be too loud, boys,” she said, turning on her heel and heading back out into the hall.

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