Steve Harrington was pretty sure he knew he was gay before he knew how to walk.
Despite this, he probably had more girlfriends growing up than any straight guy his age. It came with the territory; after he was crowned 'King Steve' - jock, basketball stud and heartthrob of Hawkins High - girls were throwing themselves at him (literally, he'd be jumped as soon as he set foot outside the locker room) and it would have raised too many questions not to embrace the attention.
As it turned out, Steve actually enjoyed having sex with most of them. Sex is sex, after all, and his testosterone-fuelled teenaged dick wasn't fussy about who the mouth or hand wrapped around it belonged to - as long as they knew what they were doing. Occasionally, if the girl was a bit inexperienced, he would close his eyes and tap in to mental footage of his teammates in the communal showers after a game (carefully obtained while they were looking the other way). Steve refrained from doing this where possible; not only because it wasn't kind to the girl (Steve may not have been 100% faithful in his early romances, but he at least prided himself on committing to who he was with in the moment - even if he had a moment with someone else an hour later), but also because this tactic carried considerable risk.
More than once, swept up in the throes of passion and having long-since relinquished any semblance of composure, Steve had forgotten himself and nearly let slip the likes of "Harry" "Zach" or "Ryan" instead of "Amy" "Laurie" or "Becky." Thankfully, he'd always managed to cover his tracks by masking the name in an intentionally loud moan or flipping his partner over and doubling the speed of his thrusts to distract them. Still, instances like these were a cold hard reality check.
Steve never bothered entertaining the thought of coming out. Of Hawkins' entire population of 3,000 plus, not a single person was openly gay (openly being the operative word). Steve knew for a fact that certain people were, and had heard rumours of numerous others, but no-one would ever dream of going public about it. It just wasn't worth it. Hawkins was a small town and people liked to talk. The looks, the stares, the whispers - not to mention the abuse, verbal or otherwise. And apart from anything else, Steve wasn't under any illusion that his parents would accept him if they knew the truth. He'd never been that close to his family, but the thought of them actively throwing him out, maybe even disowning him (which, if he knew his dad, was exactly what would happen) was still hurtful.
Nope. Steve had it all worked out. He was going to graduate high school with hopefully decent grades (he wasn't an idiot, but he was no genius either), get a job at his dad's mechanic shop, buy a house, find a nice girl to marry, have a few kids and enjoy the occasional long weekend on "business trips" to Chicago - which, he'd heard, had some pretty good gay bars and an abundance of cheap hotels. It might not have been the kind of life people fantasize about, but it was something.
Until November 1983, when everything fucked up.
Steve was seventeen when the whole thing kicked off, at which point he had just started dating Nancy Wheeler. Nancy wasn't like the other girls Steve had dated - she was no Amy, or Laurie or Becky. She was one of the smartest girls (scratch that, smartest people) in Steve's year, and she was - as his dad would say - "going places." Nancy was attractive, no doubt about it, with long brown hair, bright blue eyes and a petite, slender figure - but that wasn't what drew Steve to her. It was her kindness, her natural reserve - it fascinated him. She clearly liked Steve too, although virtually every girl in school did (apart from perhaps Barbara Holland, Nancy's best friend - although Steve had an inkling Barbara played for his team), but she didn't throw herself at him like the others. Didn't wear plunging necklines or lashings of makeup just to get his attention. For the first time in his life, Steve found himself developing feelings - real feelings - for her.
Naturally, this revelation triggered a barrage of questions. Had he been wrong all these years? Was he straight after all? Had it just been simple curiosity that called forth those images of his sweat-slicked basketball teammates in the shower, soap suds streaming down their wet, muscular chests... His body's immediate reaction to these thoughts quickly dispelled any doubts about his queerness, but that only made his feelings for Nancy all the more confusing. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on the perspective), Steve soon had much bigger things to worry about than his sexuality - in the form of giant, extra-terrestrial monsters that wanted to eat everyone.
When Steve looks back on it now, there's still a tiny part of his mind that's convinced it didn't really happen. That Tommy H and Carol thought it would be funny one day to spike his Coca Cola with a military-level hallucinogenic drug. Tommy's brother was in the army, so it was feasible he could have gotten hold of some - plus, it was exactly the sort of thing his so-called best friends would have found hilarious. But deep down, Steve knew that crazy as it sounded - it happened. Although, according to the hundred page, legally binding document he signed at Hawkins Lab, Steve "solemnly concurred that nothing untoward whatsoever took place in the town of Hawkins, Indiana between 1983 and 1984. Furthermore, he will not, for the remainder of his life, discuss these non-events with anyone who was not directly involved - and then, only when absolutely necessary." Easy to sign a piece of paper agreeing to it, not so easy to live with it afterwards.
Whether it was too hard to forget everything that happened, the fact he did infinitely better in his final exams than he could ever have hoped (all the study sessions with Nancy evidently paid off), or simply that Steve Harrington was not the same person anymore after 1984 - he decided to leave Hawkins. The carefully thought-out life he had planned for himself went out the window and he applied for a college course in San Francisco to become a teacher. If Steve had been asked a few years prior which career he wished to pursue, teaching would have been bottom of the list - hell, it wouldn't even have been on the list. But here he was with an acceptance letter from the University of California.
As he explained to Nancy: "I may be a pretty shitty boyfriend, but turns out I'm actually a pretty damn good babysitter." She was the only person who might have changed his mind, convinced him to stay. But another 'non-event' of 1984 was that Nancy had broken up with Steve to be with Jonathan Byers, and it broke Steve's heart. She never admitted that was the reason, but Steve saw the way they looked at each other. The worst thing was that even though losing Nancy destroyed him, Steve couldn't blame her. Jonathan was smart, caring and brave - much better boyfriend material than a once-popular closet gay (or at least, 99% gay). So Steve let her go, and chalked this heterosexual love up to a one-off anomaly.
And that was how Steve Harrington ended up as a middle school teacher in San Francisco rather than a mechanic in Hawkins. It was a tough road, but one Steve was glad he'd taken. As far as he was concerned, he'd left his old life behind him and had no intention of looking back.
How wrong he was.
