Chapter Text
While Hopper and Joyce and El were in New York with Steve (staying in a hotel, thankfully, and taking a few kids with them each night so Steve and Robin would be able to sleep and also host Nancy), Jonathan and Will and Murray found a place for Steve and the kids to live. He didn’t hear a lot of details over the phone, but Pogo wired them money to pay for it and as long as it had room for seven babies, one Steve, and a part-time Robin, it was fine. That was a difficult enough task without adding Steve’s silent futile hope for a bathroom he didn’t have to share.
Once the sale was made, they planned for a road trip to help Steve and his new family move.
The day before the move, a Winnebago appeared in front of Steve and Robin’s building, Hopper getting out of it with an apology for it being so "old fashioned" and "not cool" and Nancy smiling crookedly from behind his shoulder (or elbow, really, given the height difference). So he knew which one had actually picked it out.
If Hopper wanted to think Steve was still too cool for a Winnebago even though he’d just adopted seven kids, Steve wasn’t going to stop him. So he shrugged and told the man he could suck it up, and waited until Hop walked away to smile up at the drivable house with a soft smile.
"What do you say?" Nancy asked, "should we find a route that takes us to the Grand Canyon?"
"Only if doesn’t add too much time," Steve shrugged, not taking his eyes off the huge van.
"Jonathan and Will might need it," she countered. Whatever house they’d secured for Steve needed work apparently, not the least of which was super-baby proofing it. Dustin and Will had spent an hour on the phone talking in careful nerdy code exactly what the kids could do (that they knew of) and offering suggestions on how to keep the house safe (things bolted in place, as many ways to play music as they could).
They traveled in a caravan, all the kids' stuff packed in the Winnebago, with Steve’s car leading the way driven by someone else since Robin had gotten Steve pretty worried about the carseats in a drivable house thing. The kids would be split up for room, and there was a fight over who would get to ride with Klaus for the first leg through Pennsylvania, and Steve wasn’t really a fan of the reason.
"If Klaus has extra senses, he may react differently to where he was born, like from sense memory," theorized Dustin. "It can give clues to what he’s sensing."
"I can help," El offered.
"You can’t run an experiment on the baby during a road trip," scolded Steve.
"If he starts screaming in the car," Robin whispered, carefully covering Klaus’ ears just in case, "he won’t be able to wake up the other kids in the van." Oh. Okay.
"If he falls asleep you can’t wake him up," Steve said firmly, and handed the baby over.
Nancy looked betrayed for all of a minute at the development before she marched to the wall of babies in car seats (finally they each had their own!) to also grab Diego, who had quickly become her favorite because he only screamed when people weren’t paying attention to him.
"Diego is riding with us, then, too." Throwing things was actually a really effective way to distract Klaus from whatever he was scared of; like a bird, Klaus rarely screamed when he had a blanket over his head.
"What if he throws off our results?" Dustin whined.
"Then you can mark down his aim," she argued back, and Steve gave her a big thumbs up over Dustin’s head to which she nodded smugly.
Steve didn’t hear about any groundbreaking discoveries about Klaus when they were all bundling up in the house-van for the first night, but that might have been because he and Robin and Joyce and Hop were busy reeling from an entire day where Vanya could control the radio.
"She kept it skipping on one verse," Robin told the others, voice raw and shellshocked. "For hours."
Dustin looked upset to have missed it, and he and El traded Klaus for Vanya on day two, Nancy strategically picking Allison as the second. Smaller cars seemed to be the best choice for the kids, because Dustin trudged back into the Winnebago on Night 2 after another quiet uneventful ride to a scarred camper.
"Ben can make," Hopper paused as he tried to think of the count, but Steve had lost track around eight and apparently so had the other man, "so many tentacles."
They’d passed a water park Ohio and Joyce had held Ben up to the window and wiggled his arms as she pointed out all the slides. He’d mimicked them, and then started dancing to the music they could finally appreciate. It might be cute eventually, but Steve would probably take a couple years to see it that way, mostly just thinking of what looked like a giant squid waving one of his kids around in the air in the rear view mirror.
Dustin and El rode in the Winnebago the next day, letting Hop and Joyce drive in Steve’s car. The morning during the baby shuffle, Steve thought he told them to pick some fresh babies for the quiet car, but Nancy had already buckled Allison and Vanya back in, and if Steve had learned anything in his time as a father it was when to pick his battles and when to just start driving already.
They started riving already.
"I swear to your mom," Robin threatened, turned in the passenger seat into the back of the Winnebago where Dustin was throwing things at Diego and then handing them to Luther to hold once they were sent flying back, "that if you hit my baby I will break your kneecaps!"
"El’s on standby," Dustin said, "and he’s having fun!"
"No, he threw something at his brother and you’re encouraging it," Robin accused.
"Which one of us is a registered camp counselor?" Dustin said, disdain dripping in every word, and even El, who was perfectly still and focused on watching Diego’s own telekinesis, rolled her eyes at his tone. "You should be taking parenting notes."
"Yeah, dipshit," Steve called back. "I get it, you turned it into a game, congratulations. Doesn’t mean you needed to toss the damn tea kettle. Soft goods only!"
"Progress is about challenges!" Dustin cried, at the same time that Robin scolded, "Stop swearing in front of the babies!" She covered Klaus’ ears in the carseat behind her, even though he was already wearing the most adorably tiny pair of ear-muffs Steve had ever seen in an effort to muffle his senses. He sometimes kept his own eyes closed, too, and Robin had taken to dancing her fingers up and down his arms like he was a trumpet, to his giggling delight, as a way to play without him having to open them.
The baby opened his eyes when he felt her hands on his head, and grabbed them in his tiny fists to bring them to either arm, which Robin did obediently.
Smiling and soft hearted, Steve didn’t really answer, forcing his eyes away from his best friend and their weird kid and back to the road to make sure he didn’t kill them all.
That night, all seven adults and seven babies relaxed after a perfectly executed diaper-change-to-feeding-to-burping-to-clothing-change-to-bedtime assembly line (Dustin was giving credit to his single summer as a camp counselor at the same camp he’d attended as younger kid, while Robin was claiming credit for coordination and timing from marching band, but Steve knew it was his own years of teamwork and play-making on the court).
It was the halfway point of the worst road trip idea anyone could possibly have, but they had a fair rhythm down. Hop and Joyce had been switching out driving with him when they were in the Winnebago, so it was decided after a full day of driving the monstrosity without help (he’d trust Robin before he trusted Dustin, since Robin had only needed to take the test twice, but Steve wanted to sleep when he wasn’t driving and he thought one of them needed to have focus on their kids) that Steve would get to relax in the quiet car for day four.
Outside in the campgrounds, the flattest and most boring looking campground Steve had ever seen, but he guessed after a lifetime in them he was just partial to wooded views, Steve stood drinking his coffee, trying to fit a day’s worth of stretching into five minutes, and contemplating which kids to bring with him.
"Who’s the chosen one, Steve?" Dustin asked, sitting at the picnic table, feeding Five and Luther on each knee. "Time to reveal who your favorite kid is."
"It’s not about favorites," Steve said in a rush, looking wildly at each of the surrounding babies just in case one of them somehow understood. He didn’t think they could pick up swears, but parental rejection? That dug deep, and they all had super powers besides. "I just have to think about who would even notice a difference. I think Klaus would like it where it was quieter, but I don’t know who else."
"Oh," Nancy said, egg sandwich stopping mid air an inch a way from her mouth. She didn’t pull it back at all when she talked, and she looked kind of silly but she had a thoughtful frown on her brow. "I thought Allison was riding with me again."
"Allison’s had quiet time for two days," Robin said, getting the girl in question buckled into her carseat for the day, the others doing their last minute preparations for the day around the dirt circle. "She might be a good influence on the others."
"I don't know," Nancy said slowly. "I thought she was supposed to? Didn’t someone say that? I don’t know why, but I just thought that was the plan?"
Steve thought back on if anyone had said that, and couldn’t think of why he would, certainly. Allison was the only one they hadn’t seen any hint of a power yet from, so really they had less rules for her. She was just an easy going sweet baby, and even when she was fussy Steve always found what she needed easily. She babbled more than any of the others, and Robin said she’d probably talk first, because sometimes it almost seemed like she already was, even if she was actually saying nonsense sounds.
"I don’t think so?" Robin asked toward Steve, and he agreed.
"Yeah, no," he said. "Allison can go wherever. I’m gonna bring Ben, because I didn’t like that game Dustin played with him yesterday."
"You just don’t like science."
"You tried to hang the baby from the storage rack," El pointed out.
"He had eight arms!"
"Hey El, you tried to braid his arms, so don’t think you’re out of the dog house either, okay," Robin scoffed, crossing her arms. El, for her part, at least looked a little bad, though it was probably for not making a better case for why braiding Ben’s tentacles was actually a really good thing. Or maybe just for getting caught.
Steve jogged over to the line of finished babies-in-carseats with high knees, feeling them creak uncomfortably. And he hadn’t even spent 10 hours in the smaller of their caravan yet, shit.
"Alright boys!" Steve said brightly to Klaus and Ben, babbling to each other smilingly. "It’s all day nap day. Who’s excited? I’m excited."
When they arrived at the car, Robin was there holding Allison.
"Have you been sleeping?" Steve asked, eyes drawn. "I mean I haven’t, but I’m pretty sure we literally just said Klaus and Ben would get the car today?"
"Did we?" she asked, tilting her head.
"Yeah."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Are you sure?"
Steve wasn’t really sleeping, so maybe not? "Hey guys," he asked the assembled group. "Did I say I was bringing Klaus and Ben in the car today?"
"Yeah," Dustin, Joyce, and Hop said together. Nancy was still frowning, and she had been just as certain as Robin was now that Allison belonged in the car. El was tilting her head, too.
In her carseat, Allison babbled and reached for Steve, and he set down Klaus and Ben to coo at her cute little chubby fingers.
"Oh!" El exclaimed.
Steve held Allison’s hands and started doing a little hand dance with her as he asked, "What, El? Did I say Allison? I must’ve said Allison, huh?"
"No, Steve, you didn’t say Allison," Nancy said, sitting straighter.
"She’s in your head," El said, and Steve counted the bird caws around camp: only two out in the middle of nowhere grass plains.
"She’s—" he stopped himself from finishing it, eyes dragging over Allison’s round cheeks, her dark eyes sparkling up at him, toothless smile still talking at him.
"In your head," El finished. "Allison. She wants to sit in the car."
Steve tore his eyes away from his daughter to look at El, same as the other grown ups around the cars.
Dustin broke the silence, of course. "That seems like overkill," he said. "Steve was already whipped by his kids, he didn’t need a daughter with brainwashing powers."
He really didn’t.
Steve had to talk it out with Joyce on whether to let Allison stay in the car, because on the one hand she was communicating fairly effectively, but on the other hand Klaus was genuinely less distressed in the car, and Ben hadn’t had a turn yet. Steve would take parenting notes from Joyce any day, and stuck to his guns about fairness, making sure that the next day Luther and Five both got a turn, too.
At the end of their sixth day on the road, with Allison and Klaus sharing the car, Steve drove the Winnebago behind Joyce and Hop in his car along the winding streets of southern California. They were outside of any cities, and the landscape was greener than the deserts of Nevada, which had made Steve genuinely unsettled (not helped by El sitting still and vigil at his side like a hawk looking for signs of child-experimenting labs), but still sparse of trees. Instead they wound between steep hills, and Steve didn’t quite see where they were going up until his car stopped in front of a heavy farm fence, and the moldy, falling apart, disgusting looking farmhouse beyond.
"Oh please tell me we’re lost," he said to Nancy next to him. She was biting back a smile and he dropped his jaw at her incredulously. "You knew this was it? This was the house that Jonathan and Will found for me? Jesus, I know Jonathan and I don’t talk a lot but I thought Will liked me more than this."
Hopper pushed the fence aside and gestured at him to keep following them, so Steve did and drove right next to the condemned building that the Byers-Hoppers apparently thought he should raise his children in.
"This isn’t it," Nancy said. They drove far enough past the death trap that he believed her, but his heart didn’t raise any when he saw where they were going.
"You know this is worse, right?" he asked, stopping in front of the house's horse barn.
It was in one piece, at least. It had a fresh coat green paint, and the longer Steve looked the more it looked like the wood under it was actually solid. The doors looked new, too, not like flimsy wooden sliding doors like he sometimes saw on barns (when they even had doors for the huge opening, and didn’t just live open to the elements). Instead they were wood and metal, one side bolted down and the other with a heavy wrought iron handle on it.
Jonathan and Will were leaning against the barn, but went to greet their family when they all left Steve’s car, El and Hopper holding his kids so Jonathan and Will could hug their mom.
Steve, Robin, Nancy, and Dustin wrestled their way out of the Winnebago with curious babies in the carseats they were restlessly waiting to get the hell out of finally.
"Holy shit," Jonathan mumbled at the clown car effect. "Those are actually seven kids."
"Were you expecting goats?" Robin asked tightly, knuckles white on the edge of Luther’s carseat.
"No no, we just," Jonathan started, looking for Will for help but Will looked completely gobsmacked at all the babies, an amazed kind of smile on his face like he was accepting that he was going crazy but at least the hallucinations were adorable. "We fixed it up, I swear."
"I’m sure they did," Joyce said confidently, smiling back at everyone and opening the door. She pulled it at first, but it didn’t open and Will sprang to life to slide it instead. Joyce’s smile didn’t waver, but Steve and Robin exchanged looks, and then second looks when Nancy kicked Robin at the same time that she elbowed Steve, gesturing them forward with her chin.
They had indeed fixed it up inside. The floor was old thick hardwood, sanded smooth and freshly stained, and the walls were thick and drywalled, painted white. The entrance led to a kitchen and dining area, and behind the long table with benches bolted to the floor was a small sitting area, a couch and an armchair similarly mismatched but made warm with a wide and brightly colored rug. Down the center of the room past the living room was a hall, a line of doors on either side.
"You’re really putting my kids in horse stalls, huh, Byers," Steve said tiredly, a wry smile on his face as he looked around. Five was heavy on his chest and Ben’s tentacles tickled his fingers from the carseat Steve held in his good hand, and the barn didn’t really look that much like a barn from the inside. Definitely didn't smell it, but who knew how long it had sat abandoned before the Byers boys bought it and spent the last few weeks making it livable.
"Those’re the best part!" Will said adamantly, and Steve melted further at his brightness. The walls of the hall were full and thick, and a staircase just past the kitchen led up to a proper second story, walled up from when it was probably a hay loft.
"Tada!" Will said, pushing open the first door to reveal a small bedroom, maybe a stall and a half or even two. Along one wall was a mural that made Steve’s breath catch: a fantasy land, with waterfalls and rainbows, a flock of unicorns flying in one corner, a dragon in another. "There are eight bedrooms down here, and I did a painting in all of them! They’re all the same basic drawing, but I changed some things."
Jonathan cleared his throat and spoke somewhere behind them, back in the open living area. "There’s also a bathroom at the end of the hall, in what used to the be the room where all the saddles and reins and stuff would go. And the attic doesn’t have any walls now, but I think it’s big enough for two rooms. At least a room and a bathroom, if you’re smart about it."
"This is," Steve said, voice choked up, "this is great, Byers. Little Byers. Thanks."
"Welcome home, Steve."