A/N: Many thanks to wolfish_willow for a speedy beta and encouragement. 3
You Will Find A Better Man
As a kid, Steve's parents told him the same thing most parents say to their beloved offspring. You can do anything if you put your mind to it. And they probably did mean it, once.
He wasn't sure when they stopped saying it exactly. Somewhere between the many disappointing report cards and the 'must try harder's at parent-teacher conferences, he realized they didn't believe in him anymore. They managed their expectations. They made do with him being good at sports; that was something they could at least brag about at neighborhood barbecues.
He wanted to do better, he tried. Staying focused on studying had always been hard for him, and Carol and Tommy weren't much help there since everything came easy to them. It didn't feel like blowing off studying to hang out was going to make much difference in his case. No one but the most foolhardy of his teachers expected better of him by that point.
He coasted by, with his basketball and swimming propping up his grades – the coaches probably pressured others to nudge his grades up for the sake of the team and school spirit. Even when he looked at a grade and it was better than he'd hoped for, he wondered if he deserved it, if it wasn't just a convenient lie everyone but him agreed to.
It's hard to keep going in a marathon without a goal in sight and Steve wasn't sure what his was. Everyone else prepped for college, but unlike all his peers, his parents weren't pushing for it. He brought it up, hoping his parents could help him, but all he got was an 'Oh sweetie, you don't need to do that.' from his mom and a gruff 'What exactly do you expect to major in?' from his dad.
He applied anyway, because it was what everyone else was doing. It was what Nancy would do too, next year, and he couldn't cope with a conversation about him not , about what he'd do while she was in college. She'd be kind about it, she'd be supportive, but she couldn't disguise the truth that he wasn't good enough for that. That he'd be a hanger-on in her life, spectator to her bright shining future where she was sure to go places, places other than Hawkins where he seemed likely to get stuck in. He didn't want to admit he wouldn't be going so he kept playing the part. Because King Steve was cool, or still trying to be these days. King Steve wouldn't worry about the future, he'd just ride on the high of today and being on top. That Steve couldn't admit to weakness or they'd all sense it like sharks in the water.
So he wrote a god-awful essay that even Nancy couldn't salvage. The point he'd had when he started writing, briefly enthusiastic at the idea, got scrambled up as the words came out. And he couldn't catch the thread after the fact and rework it to make any sense. He'd read it and get the feeling again of what he was trying to say, but anytime he tried to explain it, it got stuck on the tip of his tongue.
Getting the inevitable rejection letters might've been a low point for anyone else, but Steve only felt relieved. He'd graduated. And college wasn't happening now. A local community college might've been possible, not that his parents would consider that. It would be beneath them, probably bring more shame to their prestigious family name than he already did, so he didn't even try to bring it up. There was no doing better now. At least he got to stop pretending otherwise, doing away with all that bullshit. He wasn't King Steve anymore; he was in a different league. Maybe it was a step down but it was an honest one and there was some strange comfort in that.
No college, it felt good to say. It was like finishing a hard season; he was worn out and a break from pushing himself sounded good. Except that his parents started nagging him about jobs instead. A summer job, he figured, he could do. No one had ever taught him to plan for the future, which made it difficult to know where to start now that he needed to. But nobody would expect great things from a summer job. It would give him time to figure out what he wanted without too much pressure besides turning up. And maybe he could meet someone new to take his mind off Nancy. The immediate future looked manageable that way and he guessed that was how you got through things. You made your best play and you survived until another day.
End Notes: Title taken from a lyric in Grandson's song 'Despicable' but I take it in a more hopeful way, that the better man found is Steve after his S3/4 character growth.