Re. Stranger Things

the argument was stupid, you knew that. and honestly that made it worse.

it was just one glass, one glass left out on the side that got knocked over because it wasn't meant to be there.

that one broken glass led to a total collapse, but you didn't expect it to go on so long or be so ugly.

"you were being careless" you spat

"it's just a glass" he retaliated

"that's not the point!"

"then what is the point?!"

"i asked you to put it away ages ago"

"then why didn't you do it" his response was laced with a tone of sarcasm, a tone that pushed you over the edge.

huffing loudly, you slammed your hands on the side next to the collection of shards tears falling from your eyes out of pure frustration.

"i shouldn't have to do everything" your voice broke and cracked.

"you don't" he contradicted.

"yes i do steve- i do everything- im always clearing up after you it's exhausting!"

"well then just don't"

"if i didn't we'd be living in a dump!"

it went on and on, spiralling out of hand ending abruptly with you shutting yourself in the bathroom, hiding before you threw a picture frame at steve's head through anger blurry vision.

you knew you weren't arguing over the glass, you weren't actually even arguing. all of this was just a meltdown of built up stress from the last few months of crawls.

getting in the shower, you tried to wash your anger away expecting steve to be on the other side of the door with apologetic eyes and welcoming arms when you were done.

but you were more than wrong.

after your shower you dried and changed in the bathroom, opening the door with a confidence that was completely broken when your eyes locked onto steve, already in bed and seemingly asleep.

your eyes burned with tears, the four years you'd been together, you'd never gone to sleep separately, without saying "i love you"

steve was stubborn, you knew that but he always folded when it came to you. arguments always fizzled out within about an hour, commonly ending with some heavy make up sex way before either of you went to sleep for the night.

the room was too dark to see if steve was still awake, however as you stepped closer he didn't stir.

walking around to your side of the bed, your chest ached painfully when you slipped under the duvet onto the cold mattress.

tears fell onto your pillow when you laid your head down facing away from steve's body, your arms curling around yourself in a pathetic attempt to replace what should have been steve's.

little did you know, he was awake, waiting stubbornly for you to cave and throw your arms around him, burry your head into his neck, fall asleep wrapped in his warmth.

he wanted you to admit you needed him as much as he needed you, and tonight, he got in his own head, suddenly terrified that you didn't need him.

a quiet sniffle echoes around the silent walls of your room before landing in steve's ears.

his heart dropped and he almost rolled over to find you, acting on pure instinct before forcing himself not to.

an hour past, steve drifted off into a shallow sleep as you layed wide awake, cold, hurting and lonely.

your tears had stopped but the emptiness around you and the damp pillow under your cheek was a constant reminder of what had happened.

after crying so much, your throat was dry, a bitter taste in your mouth that you couldn't swallow away.

quietly, you slipped out from under the duvet, tip toeing around steve's side of the bed and out the door on your way to the kitchen.

your mind replayed every part of the argument, every word you said, every word he spat back. you over analysed everything, his tone, the way he went to bed without you.

how could he go to bed without you.

upstairs, feeling the shift of the mattress, steve stirred half waking up and in a sleep haze he rolled over, gravitating where the warmth of your body still lingered.

your pillow, still wet and salty with tears ended up locked under steve's arm, pulled tight against his chest. subconsciously, he breathed in your scent, the simple, instinctive gesture relaxing him significantly.

glass in hand, you walked back to your room like it was second nature, not even thinking about each step you were taking.

when you opened the door you stopped at the threshold eyes locked on steve, asleep on your side of the bed, holding your pillow.

heart sinking, you walked quietly back over, placing the glass on the side before perching on the edge of the bed.

"steve" you whispered, reaching out to hold his arm.

he grumbled softly, shaking his head into your pillow. you couldn't help but melt at the sight of him, at the sweet sounds he was making.

your heart screamed at you to just squeeze in next to him and let yourself be held by him until you fell asleep, safe in his arms.

"steve" you tried again, louder.

this time his eyes fluttered open, settling on you immediately.

"what's wrong" he questioned instinctively, arguing or not, his first thought was to worry about you.

"you're on my side"

"oh" he sat up a bit, looking at his side of the bed then back to you, remembering past events and how you ended up so far apart in the first place.

"steve.." your eyes were stinging again, just desperate to feel comfort from your boyfriend, not even caring about the argument anymore.

"darlin"

he shifted across, lifting the duvet up for you. you wasted no time, practically diving in next to him, wrapping your arms around his body.

the gesture spoke 1000 words and when you felt him physically relax underneath you, you felt like you could breath properly for the first time all night.

"i'm sorry" you whimpered into his chest.

"no darlin i'm sorry- it was my fault and then i just tired to shut you out- i was scared and-"

he cut himself off with a quiet sob, his arms tightening around your body.

"i heard you cry and- fuck- i just felt like what ever id say you'd hate me and- i thought you'd realise you didn't actually need me"

a fresh wave of tears fell from your eyes at his words, your heart shattering into pieces.

"stevie no- i need you, so bad and id never hate you- not over a stupid glass anyway"

"it was stupid"

"so fucking stupid"

you both laughed tearily pulling back to look at each other in the eyes.

he softened and caved first, lunging forward to kiss you, holding you against him with a large hand on the back of your neck.

salt from both your tears mixed with the pure and intoxicating taste of him as you slowly kissed him deeper, savouring every second.

"i'm so sorry babygirl"

"i'm sorry too"

"im gonna be more tidy- i promise"

"and im not gonna be as bossy"

“i love you so much darlin”

“i love you more”

“impossible”

KATE HADN’T EXPECTED the immeasurable amount of people in the War Zone parking lot.

She didn’t quite know what she had been expecting, really. She knew that the hunting store on Main hadn’t been able to come back from its closure after the mall had opened up, so the fact that they had business wasn’t too shocking. What did surprise her was that it looked like nearly every single person that lived in Hawkins was currently inside the store based on the sheer number of cars in the parking lot.

“Pull into the back,” she said, looking over at Steve. “There’ll be space back there.”

He nodded, bypassing the parking lot and pulling behind the building. Whenever he put the Winnebago into park, Nancy stood up from her seat and moved to stand in front of everyone except for Steve and Kate.

“You three need to stay here,” Nancy said as she looked at Dustin, Lucas, and Eddie.

“What? Come on,” Dustin said annoyedly, still sitting in the back of the Winnebago. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. Based on what you told me earlier, the entire town is looking for every member of the Hellfire Club right now, not just Eddie.”

“All we really need are the guns, explosive stuff, and medical supplies, right? Maybe some clothes?”

“Clothes? What the hell do we need clothes for?” Steve asked, confused. 

Her eyebrows furrowed together as she glanced over him, his lack of shoes and a shirt still bothering her. “For you?”

“Oh.”

“Yes, that’s what we’re looking for. That and anything else that could possibly be deemed useful,” Nancy said. “Now, come on, let’s go. I don’t want to waste any more time than we have to.” Without another word, Nancy opened the door to the Winnebago, and Robin quickly followed after her, as did Max and Erica. Before Steve and Kate could leave, however, their attention was quickly snagged by someone else.

“Hey, Hop—uh, shit, uh… Sam–Samwise!” Eddie shouted as he moved toward the front door.

Kate and Steve turned around, both confused. “The fuck d’you just call me?”

“Doesn’t matter. Hang back, will you? Henderson, uh… dude needs your help with something.” 

Dustin gaved him a confused look. “No, I don’t.”

After flashing the kid a threatening stare, Eddie looked back at Kate awkwardly, flashing a smile. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

She gave an annoyed laugh, almost as if she couldn’t believe he was wasting her time. “All right, first off, you call me Samwise, which I find highly offensive for multiple reasons, but—”

“Jesus, Samwise, stay behind with us or I’ll go inside with you two, you take your pick.”

After Kate and Steve exchanged glances, he finally sighed. “Just… stay here with them, okay? I don’t trust them alone in this thing, anyway.”

“Hey!”

She scoffed. “Are you serious? I wanted to pick out my own gun.”

“I think Nance’ll be able to handle it for you.”

She sighed while Eddie stared at her pleadily. “Okay, Jesus Christ, fine. I’ll stay. Tell Nance to pick something good, please? No revolvers. I want something that deals maximal damage. Preferably a rifle or something so I can shoot the everloving fu—”

“Okay, okay! Jesus Christ,” Steve said, running his hands through his hair as he started to walk out of the Winnebago. He almost looked scared of her as he started to walk away. “Got it. No revolvers. Maximal damage. Shoot him to bits and pieces. Jesus.”

She stuck her head out the door before he walked away. “And please come back wearing some actual clothes and some shoes!”

He chuckled, almost relieved that she had stopped talking about rifles and shooting the shit out of Vecna. “Right, I’ll be back. Fully clothed and everything.”

She stifled a laugh, pressing her lips together as she watched him catch up with the rest of the group, then she shut the door behind her. She immediately dropped the smile on her face when she saw Eddie again. “Now what the fuck do you want?”

With that, horror struck his face. “Come again?”

“This better be fucking good. I swear to God, Munson, I’ll strangle you with my bare hands if you’re stopping me from picking out my own gun just for shits and giggles.”

“Jesus Christ!” he screeched. “Do you always threaten murder the second he’s not around?”

Dustin nodded. “Steve keeps her from being scary.”

“Dustin—”

“One time, she killed three Russians—”

“You know, Steve vaguely mentioned that—”

“Dustin.” Kate gave him a death-glare to make her point. “Are you finished?” With the call of his name, Dustin moved further back into the Winnebago, almost like a dog with its tail between its legs. “Sorry.”

Whenever only Eddie remained in the front with her, she refocused her aggression on him. “All right, now what could possibly be so fucking important that—?”

“Oh, nothing,” Eddie said, attempting to retain his cool. “Nothing, really. I’m, uh… I’m just checking on you after that lovely conversation you and Harrington had earlier. Didn’t want him around when I asked.”

She gave him a somewhat confused look. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

As her terrifying gaze melted away, Eddie started to smirk. Steve really did keep her from being scary. “Come on, man, you don’t have to do that. He’s not here. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“No, I–I mean I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said honestly. “What conversation did we have earlier?” “You know, the one about the six nuggets and the Winnebago?” he asked. “I didn’t think you would forget that harrowing and, quite frankly, traumatizing experience so quickly. I mean, it’s not even a cool dream, man. It’s honestly more impressive he thought that was, like, okay to say out loud and actually admit to you.”

With that, Kate quickly remembered what Eddie must have been on about. He must have overheard the conversation that Steve and Kate had been having on the way to the War-Zone, the one where Steve had told her about that old dream of his. She couldn’t quite understand why Eddie cared so much about it. While, yes, she thought Steve was at least a little insane for admitting he would be okay with having that many kids, she didn’t think that he’d said anything too crazy that it hadn’t made sense. She couldn’t fathom why Eddie had asked her to stay behind over something so trivial.

“Okay, it wasn’t that bad,” she said, almost as if she was trying to defend him.

“So you do remember it!” Eddie said, almost too excitedly.

She sighed. “I mean, yeah, but—”

“And you’re not horrified?”

“Listen, that’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s not even the craziest thing he’s ever said. I mean, he doesn’t… He doesn’t have any siblings, you know? So like, it makes sense.” She looked back at Lucas and Dustin, almost as if she was double checking that they weren’t paying attention to them. Whenever she found that they were completely entranced within their own conversation, she continued on. “And you haven’t met his parents, but i–it makes sense if you’ve met them. They’re total assholes. Like, his house growing up? Weird as fuck. I swear to God that is the most ‘not seen and not heard’ house I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life. The house doesn't even look lived in whenever you go inside of it. It’s fucking crazy. His parents are actually batshit.” Whenever he gave her an unconvinced look, she sighed. “It explains a lot about him, I promise.”

“But six kids and a Winnebago?” Eddie clicked his tongue in disapproval. “Samwise, that’s certifiable.”

“Okay, where the hell did Samwise come from?” she asked bitterly. “You could pick any Tolkien character, literally any single one, and you pick Samwise? Really? I’d honestly be less offended if you would’ve picked Smaug. At least I wouldn’t be the goddamned sidekick gardener who—”

“Quit changing the subject, Sam! Also, it’s completely accurate, so it’s sticking.”

“No, it is not.”

“As I was saying, Sam, I just wanted to apologize on behalf on pretty boy despite your composure about the situation, but also to apologize to you for my own actions,” he explained.

She furrowed her eyebrows together in concern. At this point, she knew she could only accept the name. The more she denied it, the more likely it would be that it would actually stick. “Wait, why are you apologizing? You didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, trust me, I did,” Eddie said, shaking his head and dismissing the thought with his hand. “No, this is actually, like, almost entirely my fault.” Whenever he sighed, she began to listen to him more intently. “There I was wandering the dark wood last night, and along the way, I found a poor, lost boy who still somehow gets cotton-mouthed the second he comes within five feet of you, so I attempted to give him some heartfelt advice. I’m sorry that I didn’t explain it to him like he’s five years old. How was I supposed to know his mind would jump straight to telling you he has a reoccuring dream of knocking you up some day—?”

“Oh my God, that’s not… that’s not what he meant,” Kate said, her face immediately flushing red. “That’s… No. That’s so fucked up.”

She didn’t exactly know where Eddie had gotten that idea from. Surely Steve hadn’t meant her specifically whenever he’d told her all of that. She didn’t think he would be that bold, especially not with something as serious as the dream he’d told her about. Then there was the polaroid incident from yesterday morning, and that had been bold. She had to be practical about this: of course Steve didn’t mean her. The furthest in the future they’d ever talked when they had been together was potentially getting married, and even that conversation had been quickly tabled for another time and never spoken about again. Kate couldn’t imagine him saying all that with the intent of it specifically being about her, especially not when he sounded so sure.

Eddie, however, wasn’t buying it.

“Oh yeah, Samwise, unfortunately for you, that’s exactly what he meant.” He hesitated to go on for a moment, almost like he was attempting to give her a moment to process the news. “Now that reality’s setting in for you, I just wanted to let you know that I completely understand if he’s now been deemed completely undesirable to you. No amount of chest hair can erase the fact that conversation was straight out of a horror movie, even from my point of view. You took it, like, extremely well, all things considered.”

“He wasn’t even talking about me!” she replied, wiping her face to try and rid herself of the pink tinge it still carried. “He was speaking… you know, generally.”

“As one does.”

“Yes!” Kate said, almost as if she was relieved he seemed to understand. “He’s probably just, like… I don’t know, out of it or something. He lost a lot of blood, okay? Near fatal. He’s delirious. Give him a fucking break.”

“While I appreciate you giving him and by that extension me the benefit of the doubt, you’re allowed to walk away now. Like, full permission, dude.” Eddie hummed in amusement before he spoke again. “Very cute of you to defend him, by the way. Makes your whole scary stoic act not worth a shit. Now you just look like a big softy.” When her mouth fell to the floor in shock, he chuckled. “I’m just kidding. Kind of. Not really. You’re way less scary now that I know pretty boy’s your weakness.”

“Eddie, I swear to God—”

“Jesus Christ, I’m kidding, I swear. I just… I admire your loyalty to him. I don’t know if he deserves that at this point, but it’s honorable. Adorable, too, really, if you think about it.” He paused, almost like he hesitated saying more. “I get why Harrington’s so obsessed with you now. You’re a good dude, Sam, even if you’re not a dude.”

She pressed her lips together hesitantly. “He’s not… obsessed with me.”

“Now I’m concerned you’re the one with all that brain damage.”

Kate tried to stifle a laugh and suppress a smile. “Thank you for the apology, Edith, but I—”

“Wait, hold on, Edith?” “Did I stutter?” Whenever he didn’t reply and only put his hands up in surrender, she took a deep breath before going on. “Look, I appreciate it, but it’s really not that big of a deal. He had sweet intentions. If that’s the weirdest thing he says to me this year, then I think I’m good.”

Eddie hesitated. “Good?” He chuckled uneasily. “I’m sorry, Harrington fully admitted to you that he most definitely has a breeding kink and you’re just… okay with that fact?”

“Okay, before I answer that, why do you enjoy tormenting him?” Kate asked. “I mean, I know you’ve been doing it for years at this point, but, like… why are you still on this? He’s changed so much in the past couple years that I think you’d actually like him.”

He chuckled. “That’s a great question, actually. Honestly, I was totally gonna be completely civil with him whenever I realized how close Henderson was to him. We were fine the first couple times I saw him. One time though he said something snippy to me when he was picking up Dustin from Hellfire so it just… kinda stuck, unfortunately for him. He’s a cool dude, Harrington. I just enjoy tormenting him now.”

Kate gave him a confused look. “So all of this, it’s just some joke?”

“Yeah, it’s great. I love that guy,” Eddie said. “I just like to see the light leave his eyes a little bit every time I open my mouth.”

“Oh, cool. In that case, you have my permission to fuck with him forever.”

“Planning on it.” Eddie then cleared his throat. “Now, back to what we were discussing. You’re fine with Harrington’s barefoot-and-pregnant fantasy?”

“I mean, that’s definitely not what he meant by that, but, like… I kinda have to be, right?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s, like… not the case, dude, but okay.”

“Listen, all right? I’ve been dealing with that asshole my entire life. That’s nowhere even close to the weirdest thing he’s ever said.” 

“Am I allowed to ask what the weirdest thing he’s ever said to you is, then?”

She pondered the thought for a moment. What was the weirdest thing Steve had ever said to her? Then, without a moment’s hesitation, a memory from last summer came back to her.

“I don’t think anything’s ever gonna beat him calling himself daddy.”

Eddie’s jaw dropped to the floor. “I’m sorry, what did he do?”

She shrugged. “Oh, it wasn’t that big a deal. He just got to drive a really sweet car last year whenever the mall burned down, and he called himself its new daddy because the license plate said ‘Toddfather,’ which is the guy that my dad stole the car from? Long story short, he called himself the car’s daddy. That was the worst thing he’s ever said.”

Eddie’s jaw was still slack. “Jesus Christ.”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. This wasn’t about me. He’s just a little insane and wants six kids, apparently. That’s it.”

Eddie gave her an unconvinced look. “Sure.”

“Why do you care so much, anyway?”

“Because you, Sammy, have somehow won the affection of Mr. Steve Harrington himself, which I’ve quickly discovered is much more of a chore than a privilege, but that doesn’t matter. I was just rooting for him to get the girl of his dreams, you know? He’s trying really hard for you, man. He’s just lost his mojo, like, bad. You really fucked him up, dude.”

“Oh my God, how many times do I have to explain it to you guys? He does not still have feelings for me.” When Eddie looked at her in anticipation, a sly grin on his face, she scoffed. “And I—you know, I don’t have feelings for him either, still. I’m over him. Completely. And for the record, I’m the one that dumped him, so—”

“Don’t worry, Harrington told me. He made it pretty clear that was a mistake on your part.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Kate said, somewhat annoyedly. “We’re just… friends now. Just like before. No strings attached between either of us. Okay?”

Eddie gave her an unconvinced look in response. “Right. Just don’t eventually forget to tell him to wrap it before he taps it, because he’s not pulling out, I promise.”

“Edith!”

Before she could tear into Eddie, Steve burst through the door of the vehicle, wearing new clothes and shoes as promised. He already made it halfway to the driver’s seat and thrown Eddie’s vest jacket back to him by the time he spoke. “We gotta go.”

“What happened?” Lucas asked.

“Your old friends are here,” Erica said somewhat anxiously.

The Hawkins High basketball team was who they must have spotted—the same group of boys who had been hunting down Eddie and by that extension any member of the Hellfire Club.

“Shit.”

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Dustin shouted.

“I’m going! I’m going! Sit down!” Steve shouted back.

Steve sped out of the War Zone parking lot, passing by Jason Carver as he loaded his Jeep Cherokee up with supplies of his own.

Nancy and Steve had compromised on picking out shotguns for their needs, much to Kate’s dismay.

After Kate had expressed her annoyance with them both, Nancy had suggested that they modify the weapons for any potential close range action they might have with Vecna. Max, of course, had been holding their guns in place as they sawed the barrels off of them.

“Is this legal?” Max finally asked, holding onto one of the guns as Nancy worked the saw.

“Actually, I think it’s a felony,” Nancy said, not fazed by her own words as she continued to saw off the barrel. “Kate?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely a felony,” she replied plainly. 

“Right,” Max said, a soft smile spreading her lips.

Out of anyone in the group, Max wouldn’t have thought that Nancy and Kate would have been so nonchalant about committing felonies, but she figured she would stop assuming she knew anything, especially anything about her friends in times of crisis. Of course, she had no idea how many felonies all of her friends would all commit if it meant they could guarantee Max’s safety. 

“But it guarantees one thing,” Nancy said, continuing to saw the barrel of the shotgun off. “We won’t miss.”

“That or won’t have them turned on us.”

As they continued modifying their guns, Steve and Robin were busy making Molotov cocktails as he rambled about what he and Robin had seen inside of the weapons store, more specifically Vickie with the long-distance boyfriend she apparently had.

“I mean, it just doesn’t make sense,” Steve said, holding the alcohol and funnel while Robin poured the gasoline into the bottle.

“What doesn’t make sense?”

“That was Dan Shelter,” Steve said. “He graduated, like, two years ago.”

“So?”

Despite seeing Vickie and Dan kiss within the hunting store, Steve wasn’t convinced by what he’d seen. Yeah, sure, Vickie having a secret long distance boyfriend tracked, but Dan Shelter? Besides, whenever Vickie had realized Robin had seen her kiss said boyfriend, the look on her face made it apparent that she hadn’t told Robin about her boyfriend for some reason. There was a piece of the puzzle missing, and while Steve thought he might have been too stupid to figure out what, that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to, at least.

“So he’s in college. Which means he was visiting on spring break,” Steve explained. “Fast Times was returned, like, I don’t know, a week ago? Right? Unless she’s got some horndog brother we don’t know about, which is possible. Or she’s just, like… really into Judge Reinhold? Nah—”

“Steve,” Robin finally called, cutting off his rambling.

“What?”

“I don’t care,” she said somewhat firmly, “and I don’t understand why you do either with everything that’s going on. Honestly, this feels like a perfect time for that little pull of the rug because… in the face of the world ending, the stakes of my love life feel spectacularly low.”

“Yeah. I mean, I get you there, but… I still have hope.” Steve passed her the finished Molotov cocktail to put aside.

“Not everything has a happy ending.”

“Yeah, yeah, believe me, I know,” he said as he put the funnel on top of the next alcohol bottle. He looked over at Kate again, who was currently testing out her modified shotgun and attempt to get a feel for it. His lips quirked upward for half a minute whenever he saw her somewhat exuberant smile. Maybe she was a little crazy, but he wouldn’t want it any other way.

Part of him still couldn’t believe how put together she seemed only hours after she’d been taken by Vecna. Somehow she’d been able to push through the trauma of such visions and instead channeled that fear as confidence as she prepared to take on the monster that had threatened her and the people she cared about. Even with that bright smile on her face, he knew she was ready to kill anyone who got in her way.

He knew nothing would stop her from killing Vecna. Even if he wanted him dead too, he knew that nothing would get in her way. Based on how she looked now, Steve knew she wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever it took to end the suffering they’d all faced. To avenge all those they’d lost over the years. To save Max and Eddie and everyone else in Hawkins who was in danger whether they knew it or not. He knew that she’d do whatever it took to end this once and for all, and that was what horrified him. Steve had been having nightmares for years now that she didn’t make it out of this alive. That she would sacrifice herself when she shouldn’t have, when she didn’t have to die in order for everyone else to live. Now that there was a chance that she could go down fighting, Steve didn’t want to risk her life just for a chance at living for everyone else. The world wasn’t worth living in if she wasn’t around to experience it with him.

Robin had been watching him carefully as he mulled over his thoughts internally. “Hey, Steve, you OD over there?”

Her words snapped him out of his thoughts. “What?”

“You gotta stop staring at her. One day she’s gonna gouge your eyes out for that.” He shrugged. “She can get over it.”

She gave him a soft smile, humming in amusement. At least he wasn’t denying it anymore. “You know, I was really angry with you last night. Just… Just for a little bit, really. I thought I was going to kill you for the way you were initially yelling at her.”

He sighed. “Robin, I’m—”

“I know you’re going to try and apologize to me, but you don’t have to do that. I… understand why. You couldn’t fathom the idea of her not telling us something important like that, and I get it. I just wish you would’ve listened to me instead of getting so angry. Would’ve saved everyone the heartache, you know?” She paused to sigh. “Besides, it doesn’t matter how I feel about all of that. She didn’t seem angry with you. She understood why you were upset too, almost like she knew it would have been the same if the situation were reversed, which it would have been, if you aren’t already aware.”

Steve hadn’t thought about it that way. While Kate had immediately forgiven him for his briskness with her earlier that morning, much more immediately than she should have, honestly, he hadn’t thought that her caring about him might have been a potential reason for it. He almost chuckled. Considering the way Kate typically acted whenever he was remotely hurt, Robin was probably right. Kate would have most likely lost her shit on him if she thought he was lying about his condition just for her sake of mind.

“Why is why, I guess, I’m completely baffled as to why you haven’t talked to her about last night yet.”

His eyebrows furrowed together in confusion. “What about last night?”

“About how she was fighting sobs while she was trying to take care of you?”

He shook his head as she poured gasoline into the bottle he was holding. “She was just… She was just worried, okay? I was fine. It’s not like we’ve had time to talk about it considering all the, uh… the Vecna, end-of-the-world stuff, you know? She was pretty shaken up about all of it, if you couldn’t tell.”

“Yeah, I figured as much,” Robin replied. “Have you thought about, I don’t know, maybe talking to her about that?”

“Maybe. I tried to talk to her a little bit earlier.”

“I heard that. I actually think you had a good chance with that until the six nuggets thing.”

He almost cringed at her words. “You heard that?”

She nodded, fighting a chuckle. “You are… extremely loud. I’m pretty sure half of Hawkins heard that.”

He groaned in annoyance. “Seriously?”

Robin shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think you’ve still got a chance. She cares a lot about you, for some reason.”

Steve chuckled as he put the funnel on yet another bottle of alcohol. That she did, apparently.

Robin looked over to Kate again across the field who was now checking Nancy’s shotgun. “As much as I wish I was, I wasn’t talking about potentially failed romance.” She poured the gasoline into the alcohol bottle through the funnel. “I just… I have this terrible, grawing feeling that… it might not work out for us this time.”

“So you think we shouldn’t be doing this?”

“I think we’re mad fools, the lot of us, but—” Robin sighed as she watched over the rest of the group— “but if we don’t stop him, who will?” She looked back to Steve, not sure if she was trying to convince him of her words or herself. “We have to try, right?”

Steve hesitated to look back at Robin. “Yeah.” He held up the next alcohol bottle, holding it out to Robin as if he was going to toast it. “To killing Vecna.”

Robin held up a finished Molotov cocktail. “Slash Henry.”

“Slash One.”

They clinked the two bottles together, hoping that it wouldn’t be the last toast they ever made.

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KATE AND STEVE sat on Max’s bedroom floor until after the sun rose.

No one had tried to bother the two of them. Robin and Nancy had sat outside the door for a while, ready to barge inside Max’s room if he didn’t stop yelling at her. Whenever the yelling had stopped and they finally heard the light sobs from the other side of the door, they moved to the living room to sit with Eddie and the kids. Steve and Kate needed to be left alone.

Steve had probably cried more than Kate had as he squeezed her tight. He couldn’t exactly explain why. Normally he hated crying in front of people, especially her if he could help it. His father had always taught him that only pussies cry, and real men would never do such a thing. Something about the way her fingers raked through his scalp now had been more than enough to make him finally let go. Maybe it was because he’d almost died. Maybe it was because she’d almost died. Maybe it was because they’d both almost died again and they still hadn’t come close to getting rid of Vecna.

He didn’t want to let go of her. He had started to fall asleep, the adrenaline that had been pumping through his body for hours starting to fade. Steve wasn’t exactly in the most comfortable position with the way he was essentially laying on top of her, his head on her shoulder and his arms wrapped around her as she leaned against the wall still, but he didn’t care. She was safe, and that meant he could have a moment to relax.

Whenever the sun started peaking through the bedroom window, the soft oranges and reds of dawn dusting over them both, she rubbed his arm, careful not to touch anywhere that had been scabbed over. “Steve.”

“Hm?”

“Sun’s coming up.”

He jerked up to turn his head and look out the window. As its rays dusted his face, he squinted. “Shit.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He sighed, moving to lean against the wall next to her. “You gotta tell them what you told me. You know that, right?”

Terror struck her face. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Kathy, come on, you’ve got to,” he said, almost begging. “I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t tell you to if I didn’t think they didn’t need to know.”

She searched for an excuse. “The kids don’t need to hear about this.”

“The hell they don’t. I can’t do anything with what you told me, okay? I’m too stupid. Dustin, Nance, Robin, one of them… one of them might have an idea of what to do.” He stopped himself whenever he saw the horrified look on her face and her eyes glazed over. “What?”

Kate took a shaky breath. “I just don’t want to go through it again.”

“You won’t. I’m not… I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, okay? I won’t, and neither will they.” He took her hand in his, squeezing it tightly. “I’ll be right there the whole time, okay?”

She turned to look at him again, squeezing his hand in return. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

It hadn’t taken long for Kate to finally work up the courage to leave Max’s bedroom and tell the rest of the group everything she had seen while she was under Vecna’s spell.

She sat in one of the big chairs in Max’s living room, everyone gathered around her and focused on her. She felt like she was in some type of intervention that was staged against her, either that or she was in some type of group therapy session. She wasn’t quite sure that all of them knew about her episodes before now. Eddie, of course, didn't know about them, but she didn’t think the kids knew about them, either. If she was being honest with herself, she wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t ever told Robin or Nancy explicitly, either. Kate wasn’t used to sharing her feelings, especially not with a group as large as this one. Even when her father had died, she’d managed to remain as stoic as possible, not wanting to seem weak. Now, though, she was being forced to share what she’d seen.

Kate met Steve’s eyes again as he sat across from her. He nodded once, almost like he was encouraging her to go on. You can do this. She sighed as she glanced down to the floor. She thought if she accidentally met anyone’s eyes, especially his again, she would break.

Her voice was hoarse as she spoke. “He… showed me… things that haven’t happened yet. I mean, they were… terrible.” She paused, trying to shake the images from her mind. “I saw… a dark cloud. Spreading over Hawkins. Downtown on fire. Dead soldiers. And this… giant creature with… a gaping mouth. And this thing, it wasn’t alone.” Her voice almost cracked. “There were so many monsters. An army. And they were… coming into Hawkins. Into our neighborhoods. Our homes. And then—” Kate paused, almost like she didn’t want to go on— “he showed me El. The Byers. You guys.” Steve. “And they… you were all…” She took a shaky breath to try and stop herself from sobbing again. She didn’t want to watch them all die again. She couldn’t.

“Okay, but,” Steve started, trying to talk her down again, “he’s just trying to scare you, Kathy. Right? I mean… I mean, it’s not real.”

“Not yet,” she said, almost inaudible. “But there… there was something else. How showed me these… these gates. Four of them. Spreading across Hawkins. And these gates, they looked like the one inside of Eddie’s trailer, but… they didn’t stop growing. And this wasn’t the Upside Down Hawkins.” Another tear slipped down her face. “This was our Hawkins. Our home.”

At first, no one knew what to say. The thought of Hawkins being engulfed by the Upside Down almost didn’t make any sense. After an idea hit Max, she finally spoke up. “Four chimes.” When everyone turned to look at her, she continued. “Vecna’s clock. It always chimes four times. Four exactly.”

“I heard them too,” Kate said softly.

“He’s been telling us his plan this whole time.”

“Four kills,” Lucas said, understanding what she meant. “Four gates.” He hesitated to finish, almost unable to look at Max. “End of the world.”

“If that’s true,” Dustin said, almost horrified, “then he’s one kill away.”

Eddie cupped his face in his hands. “Jesus Christ.”

Steve looked over at Max, which made her move back to the landline on the wall. “Try ‘em again. Try ‘em again!”

Max punched the Byers’ home phone number into the landline on the wall, trying for what seemed like the hundredth time attempting to reach them. Kate had tried telling them already that there was no use, and so had Nancy. The line had been busy for days now, which wasn’t helping her nerves in the slightest. Max once again proved her point whenever she hung the handset back on the hook. 

“Rang a few times, then went to a busy signal.”

“I told you,” Kate said softly, almost as if she had no hope for them. She could only hope that Jonathan, Will, Mike, and El were safe. Alive.

“Maybe you punched it in wrong,” Steve said, trying to remain hopeful. “Try again.”

“I didn’t punch it in wrong,” Max said defensively.

“Well, I mean, I don’t know.”

“I think she knows how to use a phone,” Dustin said to Steve.

“I’m just saying, she could’ve typed it in wrong.”

Max rang the phone number again, the same few rings and busy dial tone droning before she hung the handset back up. “Same shit.”

“How is that possible?”

“Joyce has this telemarket job. Always on the phone. Mike won’t stop whining about it,” Dustin said.

“Yeah, but this phone’s been busy for, what, three days now?” Max asked. “That’s not Joyce. No way. Something’s wrong.”

“She’s right. It can’t be just coincidence. It can’t be,” Nancy said. She then looked at Kate. “When was the last time you talked to them?”

She shrugged absently, almost like she didn’t know. “I–I don’t know. The day I came here, I guess.”

Nancy walked over to the window. “Whatever’s happening in Lenora is connected to all of this. I’m sure of it.” She paused. “But Vecna can’t hurt them.”

“Not if he’s dead,” Kate said, standing up out of her chair. Everyone’s attention turned back to her as she took a couple steps forward. “We have to go back there. Back to the Upside Down.”

“Woah, no, no, no. What?” Steve said, standing up and throwing his hands in the air. At first he couldn’t believe that she, of all fucking people, would even suggest such a thing, then he remembered that Kate had an actual death wish at all times. “Let’s think this through, okay?”

“What is there to think through?” she replied somewhat bitterly as he walked toward her.

“We barely made it out of there in one piece!” “Yeah, because we weren’t prepared,” Nancy said, stepping in to defend Kate. “But this time, we will be. We’ll get weapons and protection. We’ll go through the gate, we’ll find his lair, and we’ll kill him.”

“Or he’ll kill us!” Steve said. He couldn’t believe that Nancy was agreeing with her. He looked at Kate as he spoke again. “The only reason you survived is because he wanted you to. He’s not scared of us.”

“And for good reason,” Robin said, standing up to join the argument. “We were wrong about Vecna. Henry. One. Sorry, what are we calling him now?”

“One,” Dustin and Lucas said.

“Vecna,” Erica answered.

“Henry,” Kate and Nancy said. 

“Right,” Robin replied, the unclear answer stressing her out more. As she spoke, she grew increasingly anxious. “We’ve learned something new about Vecna-slash-Henry-slash-One. He’s a number like Eleven, only a sick, evil, male, child-murdering version of her with really bad skin. But my… m–my point is, he’s super powerful. He could turn us inside out with a snap of his fingers. It’s not a fair fight!” “Then why fight fair?” Dustin asked. “You’re right. He’s like Eleven. But that gives us an upper hand. We know Eleven’s strengths and weaknesses.”

“Weaknesses?” Erica asked.

“Believe it or not, she does actually have them,” Kate said.

“When El remote-travels, she goes into this sort of… some trance-like state. I bet the same is true of Vecna.”

“That would explain what he was doing in that attic,” Lucas said.

“Exactly. When he attacks his next victim, I’ll bet you he’s back in that attic, physical body defenseless.”

“Defenseless, yeah?” Steve asked, unconvinced. He pointed to his neck where a ligature mark still outlined where he’d been choked by the bat’s tail. “What about the army of bats?”

“Right. We will… have to find a way past them. Distract them somehow.”

“And, uh, how do we do that, exactly?” Eddie asked, standing up.

“No idea,” Dustin said, making Eddie sit back down reluctantly. “But once they’re gone, he doesn’t stand a chance. It’ll be like slaying sleeping Dracula in his coffin.”

“That all sounds good in theory, but there is no pattern to Vecna’s killings. At least not one that I can decipher,” Robin said. “We don’t know when he’s going to attack next. We don’t even know who he’s going to attack.”

“Yeah, we do,” Max said softly, making everyone turn toward her again. “I can still feel him. I’m still marked. Cursed.” She paused. “I ditch Kate Bush, I draw his focus back on me.”

“Max, you can’t,” Lucas said, almost as if he was begging. “He’ll kill you.”

“I survived before. I can survive again.” Lucas, however, wasn’t pleased with her words. “I just need to keep him busy long enough so that you guys can get into that attic. Then you can chop his head off. Stab him in the heart. Blow him up with some explosive Dustin and Kate cook up. I honestly—I really don’t care how you put this asshole in his grave, just… whatever you do… try not to miss.”

Even though no one truly liked the idea, not a single one of them protested.

“Okay, then where are we going to get weapons?” Nancy asked.

Eddie cleared his throat. “I think I have an idea.”

It didn’t take long for Max to find a phonebook for Eddie to look through, and then for everyone to gather around at her dining room table.

“Check this out. The War Zone,” he said, flipping pages in the phone book. “I’ve been there once. It’s huge. They got everything you need for, uh… well, killing things, basically.”

“Do you think fake Rambo has enough guns there?” Robin asked, pointing to the picture on the ad. “Is that a grenade? I mean, how is any of this legal?” “Well, lucky for us, it is, so…,” Eddie said, trying to get back on topic.

“Isn’t it outside of Hawkins?” Kate asked, looking over his shoulder to get a closer look at the ad. “The store, I mean?”

“Yeah, this… this place is just far enough outside of Hawkins. As long as we steer clear of the main roads, we oughta be able to avoid cops and, uh… angry hicks.”

“If we’re trying to avoid angry hicks, maybe we shouldn’t go to some store called the War Zone,” Erica said. 

“Yeah, but is it worth the time?” Dustin asked. “It’ll take all day to bike there and back.”

“Who said anything about bikes?” Eddie asked.

“What, you got some sort of car we don’t know about?” Steve asked.

Eddie stood up straighter next to him, looking at him somewhat affectionately. “It’s not exactly a car, Steve, and it’s not exactly mine, but, uh… it’ll do.” He turned to Max. “Hey, Red, uh, you got a ski mask or a bandana, something like that?”

Max hesitated before grabbing him a Michael Myers mask, specifically the one that she wore for her Halloween costume two years ago. Once Eddie got his toolkit and put on his mask, he led the group of nine through the trailer park. Whenever Kate found that Eddie was heading toward a mobile trailer, she almost couldn’t believe she was actually going to help steal it. The thought, however, quickly left her: she’d done worse this week.

Eddie jumped through the back window of the RV, taking the mask off of his face as Steve jumped in after him. “That was suffocating.”

“Go! Come on,” Steve said softly as he helped Kate, Robin, Nancy, and the rest of the kids through the window. 

Eddie locked the front door of the trailer, sitting down in the driver’s seat as he began hot-wiring the vehicle. Steve and Kate came up behind him, watching as he started working on the RV.

“Where’d you learn how to do this?” Steve asked, somewhat concerned. 

“Well, when the other dads were teaching their kids how to fish or play ball, my old man was teaching me how to hot-wire. Now, I swore to myself I wouldn’t wind up as he did, but now, I’m wanted for murder, and soon, grand theft auto. So, uh, yeah, I’m really living up to that Munson name.”

Robin came up behind Steve and Kate, putting her hands on her shoulders. “Uh, Eddie, I’m not sure I love the idea of you driving.”

“Oh, I’m just starting this sucker.” Eddie then looked at Steve, smiling affectionately. “Harington’s got her.” He moved closer to his face before he spoke again. “Don’t ya, big boy?”

Whenever Steve gave a confused, almost flustered look, Kate’s eyebrows furrowed together. Was he actually fazed by that? She also couldn’t help but notice how affectionately Eddie gazed upon Steve, which made her think that maybe the rumors about Eddie Munson were true. Before she could ask any questions aimed at either of them, however, Eddie started the Winnebago, causing the owners outside lots of distress.

“Hey! Open this door!” the woman shouted, banging on the window. “They locked the door!”

Steve looked absolutely horrified.

“Shit, go!” he shouted, pushing Eddie out of the way as he jumped into the driver’s seat. Kate sat in the passenger’s seat, watching him anxiously as he tried to figure out how to drive the largest vehicle he’d ever had to operate. “It’s just a car,” he mumbled to himself before shouting, “Everybody, hang onto something!”

“Oh my God! Let’s go!”

“Drive, Steve! Drive!”

“Go, go, go!”

Steve, still barefoot, floored the gas pedal, making the Winnebago lurch forward suddenly. He drove as fast as he could to the trailer park, everyone screaming at him to go as fast as he could.

“Shit, they look pissed,” Dustin said as he looked out the back window.

“I mean, it’s not every day you lose your house and car in one fell swoop,” Robin replied, bouncing around because of Steve’s driving.

“Hold on! Hold on!” Steve shouted as he hit a couple of trash cans, doing his best at attempting a complete and fast turn.

As they turned out of the trailer park, Steve slowed down in an attempt to make it less obvious that he’d never driven a Winnebago before and that they’d just stolen it. It took a while, but he eventually got the swing of it. Kate had tried to let him focus on figuring out how to drive the damn thing, choosing not to speak for a while. As far as she knew, the biggest car he’d ever driven was hers, and he’d even had difficulty with Barry the first couple times he’d driven it. She knew how particular he was with driving. She had only driven the two of them somewhere a few times, and that had only been whenever he’d had concussions and had been barred from it. She, apparently, drove much too fast for his liking.

“How’s it handle?” she finally asked whenever he had seemed to calm down a bit.

“Not half bad,” he replied, keeping his eyes on the road. “Considering that this is a… house.”

Kate stifled a laugh, nodding slightly. “I never want to hear you complain about my driving ever again after pulling out of that trailer park the way you just did.”

“Jesus Christ, that was a one-time thing,” he said, somewhat annoyed. “You always drive like that, okay? Like, always. I mean, seriously, who taught you how to drive?”

“You did, you asshole!”

His eyebrows furrowed together in confusion for a minute before remembering that he had, in fact, tried teaching her how to drive sometime around sophomore year of high school for a bit before eventually giving up just because of how awful she’d been at it. He’d figured he’d rather not wreck his car just whenever he’d gotten it and had opted to let her father follow up on that one.

“Oh yeah.”

She rolled her eyes. “Dick.”

He looked back at her again. Despite her insult, he couldn’t help but smile. Despite everything they had gone through that night, she still looked… pretty. Her hair was somewhere between wavy and frizzy, and there were bags under her eyes. She had since gotten her dad’s jacket back, making her automatically look a little less cold. Even if she would have thought she was a sight for sore eyes, he thought she still looked good.

He knew he could get used to a sight like this. Kate sitting in the passenger’s seat as he drove, a hint of a smile on her face. Just like old times, really, but something about this was different. It was that same feeling he’d had yesterday morning with her in his kitchen. The same one that he’d had for a long time regarding her. There was just something about it, about her that made him think about the future.

As he drove, Steve thought about what Eddie had said to him last night. Eddie was right: Steve had to do something, anything to get her back. Everything he’d tried thus far hadn’t worked. Maybe telling her about what he saw in his future would get her back. 

“Have I ever told you about this dream I have?” he finally asked.

Kate gave him a questioning look. “What dream?”

“The one about what I see in my future?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so, no.”

“You know, it’s… it’s silly, but I–I’ve actually… I always had this dream that I’d have this, like… this really, really big family.”

Her eyebrows furrowed together as she stifled a laugh. While the comment seemingly came out of nowhere, she’d known that about Steve since they were probably in middle school, mostly because of how his parents were. Seen and not heard, as it had always been. Kate wasn’t sure that Steve’s parents had had a child for reasons other than to have him as an accessory whenever he’d been younger. That would explain why they’d only ever had the one kid that they’d stopped caring about whenever he could finally be left home alone. 

For a long time, Steve had always wished he’d had siblings. Someone that would truly understand what it was like to have parents like his, more specifically to have a dad like his. Even when he had gotten older, he wished he had at least one sibling, just because his house was so incredibly lonely whenever his parents weren’t home, which was most of the time. Just a younger sister he could shield from the world, or maybe a younger brother he could shoot hoops with outside (because in his mind, he would definitely be the oldest sibling). Because of all that, Kate had always known that Steve would want a bigger family whenever he got older. 

“I know.”

“No, I’m talking, like, uh… a full brood of Harringtons. It’s, like… five, six kids.”

“Six?” Kate asked, looking at him as if he was crazy. She hadn’t ever realized he wanted that many children. “Your poor wife.”

“What?” he asked, confused. “I mean, it’s just six little nuggets. Three girls, three boys.”

“Just? That’s six separate times someone has to push a child out of them. You know how much childbirth is, like, supposed to hurt, right?” Whenever he saw the slightly horrified look on his face, she shook her head. “Also, you know you can’t, like… control that, right? Whether it’s a girl or a boy? I mean, unless you adopt them, which would make this situation much easier for literally everyone involved—”

“Okay, all right, I get it,” he said, chuckling. “Just hear me out, okay? Every summer, no matter what the kids are, I figured all of us Harringtons, we would pack into something like this and… just see the country. You know, the Rockies, Grand Canyon, maybe Yellowstone.” He looked back at her again, almost smiling. “End up in some beachside town in California. Spend a week parked in the sand. Learn how to surf or something.”

“I mean, in a way, that… sounds nice, I guess,” Kate said, shrugging.

He looked back at her again, his heart swelling. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Kate grimaced when she thought about the rest of his dream. “Well, uh, except for the six kids part. That sounds like… a total nightmare for, like, multiple reasons.”

“If only I had practice,” Steve said sarcastically, motioning to the kids in the back.

Kate nodded reluctantly. “All right. Fair. That’s… fair.”

With that, she sighed. She couldn’t believe they were only having this conversation now. Robin had been right about their relationship last summer: even though they had nearly dated for a year, they hadn’t ever had a serious conversation like that. She hadn’t ever realized he wanted that many kids. She then wondered if Robin knew about this dream of his. Robin couldn’t have known about this. Kate would have known about it before now if he’d ever mentioned something like this to her. Besides, if Robin knew, she would have never let him live this down and would have teased him at every opportunity she could.

“What about you?” Steve finally asked. “You, uh… ever thought about it? What the future looks like?” 

She sighed. “I don’t know, I just… I guess I have never really thought about that.”

“I didn’t think so.”

She shook her head. “No, like… I never thought about, like, what my life would be like… later. Like, I kinda… I don’t know.”

Kate didn’t know how to say she hadn’t really thought about making it past twenty years old without sounding insanely depressed.

“You don’t know what?” Steve asked inquisitively.

“I don’t know, I just can’t really imagine myself having kids, you know? Being someone’s mom.” She hesitated. “It’s not like I’m totally against it or anything. I’m not, actually. I mean, it sounds nice, I guess. I just think my mom kinda… scared it out of me, or something. After everything she’s done. I obviously had great role models growing up when it came to parenting.”

Steve could only frown.

Kate’s mother, Diane, had left her and her father whenever she was eleven, about seven months or so after her biological sister Sara had died. Both events had almost killed her father, and Kate loathed her biological mother for doing such a thing to them. She’d gotten remarried to a boring man and had had another daughter while simultaneously forgetting about her firstborn. Kate had vowed to never speak to her mother again until last summer when her father had died. Simply out of respect, Kate had reached out to her mother to let her know that her father had died. Despite her protests, Diane had come to Hawkins to attempt to help her with the funeral. Kate had seen her three times that week: once alone, once with Steve, and once at the funeral. The first time that she’d seen her hadn’t been too terrible despite her mother twisting everything around like it had been Kate’s fault that she’d left in the first place. Even if it had pissed Kate off, she hadn’t had the energy to argue with her biological mother. Kate had only blown up on Diane the second she’d had the audacity to judge both Steve and her father whenever she’d met Steve and Kate for dinner one night. That had been something Kate hadn’t been able to tolerate, and that was proven by the less than ten words she’d shared with her mother at her father’s funeral and the radio silence she’d vowed to give her since then despite living in the same city as her.

It was safe to say that Kate didn’t like her biological mother very much.

Steve looked back at her fondly for only a moment before looking to the road again. “I–I think you’re really great with kids.”

“What?”

“I mean it.” He motioned to the kids behind him again absently. “Those guys back there? They… They love you. So much. All of those little shits think you’re the coolest person they’ve ever met.”

She shook her head. “I’m sure that’s not true. Not when you’re still around to help them.”

“I mean, maybe not the coolest, okay, but one of the coolest, for sure. Especially if you’re put up against me.” He paused to gather his thoughts. “I mean, you’re their hero, okay? Not only have you saved their asses multiple times, but you… you’re just so good to them. I still hear about that nerdy game book you got Dustin last Christmas. Max still has the cassettes you gave her, and I know that because I’ve seen your initials on all the cases.” He stopped himself, almost chuckling. “I mean, Jesus, that’s not even including El. You’ve practically raised her, Kathy, and you’re still doing it even though she’s on the complete other side of the country from you. These guys, they worship you, okay, and I don’t blame them. If someone did all that for me when I was a kid, I’d love them that much too. They all love you a lot more than you realize.”

Kate didn’t know what to say. The thought of the kids loving her nearly as much as they loved Steve hadn’t ever occurred to her. She knew El loved her, obviously, because she was her sister, and she had somewhat of an unconventional but close relationship with Max, but the other four boys? Dustin? She hadn’t ever thought that they cared her that much, but the thought did warm her heart.

Whenever he spoke again, she quickly looked back at him. “And fuck your mom, okay? You’re not… You’re not like her, okay? You’re not like her at all. I think you care about all those guys back there more than their actual parents sometimes, which is something she’d never do.” He paused again, almost hesitating. “I… I think you’d be a good mom, okay? Trust me. You’d… You’d be great.”

She pressed her lips together to form a smile. “You know, I think you’d be a great dad.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And Kate, for the first time in her life, thought about what her life might look like after she turned twenty.

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KATE HAD STILL yet to break her eyes away from Henry receiving his tattoo from Dr. Brenner.

She didn’t know what to think. Kate felt completely overstimulated with everything she’d just learned: Henry Creel hadn’t died in 1959 like his mother and sister had. Henry Creel was actually a murderer and had actually been the one to kill his mother, sister, and those other three teenagers that had died within the past week. Henry Creel was alive, somehow, despite what his father had been told years ago. Henry, or One rather in this context, had been the first subject of Hawkins Lab and of Dr. Brenner’s, and had been the reason why all of the other subjects existed. Henry was the reason why all those other subjects besides El were now gone without a trace. Henry had killed them. Henry now wanted to kill El, almost like he was finishing the job of killing the rest of the subjects modeled after him. Henry had tried to use her years ago to get at her sister, and had tried to control Kate to kill her. Henry was Vecna but was also One. Unfortunately, everything made too much sense now that she had the full picture.

After learning so much in such a short period of time, her heartbeat seemed to pound in her head, making everything within her hurt. Kate needed to get out of her own head right now or else she wouldn’t be so lucky to escape it with all of the vital information Vecna had just provided her. She had to warn the others of what they were really facing. About what all of this had really been, after all. She needed to get out right now.

Brenner finally put down the tattoo needle in his hand and wiped at the numeric tattoo marked “001” now on the younger Henry’s left wrist.

“All done. Not so bad, was it? See? There’s nothing left to be afraid of.” Before speaking again, Brenner paused, almost in anticipation. “Is there, Katherine?”

She took a step back with the sound of her own name. As far as she knew, she hadn’t been able to interact with anyone in these visions thus far, nor had anyone seemed to notice her presence up until now. Kate didn’t think it was a good sign that Brenner had started to speak to her, especially if he was acknowledging her with something as unused as her legal name. When she realized how his eyes were now milky and pale-looking, glazed over in the same manner as the rest of Vecna’s victims always seemed to be, she felt frozen in place.

Kate was absolutely, positively fucked.

As Brenner spoke to her now, his voice began to sound distorted, almost like he was being used an extension of Vecna, or maybe he was a manipulation of his to scare her further. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

Without a second thought, Kate made a run for it down one of the halls of Hawkins Lab. She tried not to think about the numerous bloodied bodies that seemed to litter the hallway, the nurses and guards and children that had been murdered by Henry, but she couldn’t block out the screams. Their screams. As the lights flickered around her, surging as she ran away from the horrors and atrocities that Henry had committed, she only looked for a possible way out of this hellscape.

She knew it wasn’t the aftermath of the attack at Hawkins Lab that she was cursed with seeing now, not the night that she’d nearly been killed. Not the night that he’d let all those people die, where he’d let the Demodogs ravage all of those people and kill for sport. No, this had been the night that Henry, that Vecna had killed all of those people. All of the other numbers, the children that had been alive prior to Henry’s massacring of them. Not just them, but all of the people that had worked at the lab. Anyone and everything that got in his way had been a victim that night except for Eleven, somehow, and she couldn’t, she wouldn’t stand around to wait for that to happen to her too.

She had to get out of here right now if they had any chance in hell of defeating him for good.

Steve had no idea how long he’d been shaking Kate for.

“Kathy, just stay with me!” he shouted, still holding her head in his hands as he shook her violently.

That was what he’d been doing since he’d realized that she’d fallen into her trance. He hadn’t stopped shaking her, calling her name, begging for her to come back to him. All of it, however, had seemed to be of no use. There hadn’t been any type of response from her, any proof of alertness or awareness in her being. It was just like how Max had been in the graveyard all over again, except this time it was much, much worse because he knew there wasn’t a single cassette tape around to save her with.

Kate was about to become the next victim of Vecna and Steve had no idea how he hadn’t picked up on such a thing. Even if his mind raced with trying to find events within the past twenty-four hours that could have led to this, signs that Kate was the next addition to Vecna’s chain of untimely victims, he knew he couldn’t think of that right now. They didn’t have time for that. She didn’t have time for that. He had to focus on breaking her out of her trance, on lifting this curse of Vecna that had somehow been bestowed on her. Otherwise, Kate might not be as lucky as Max to survive. 

Steve didn’t care what he had to do to get her back. He couldn’t lose her. She wasn’t allowed to die. Not right now. Not like this. Everything in his entire being ached knowing that Kate might die just because they didn’t have a cassette tape with one of her favorite songs on it with them right now. Because he hadn’t thought to have one ready to go just in case something happened just like this. He wasn’t going to sit here and watch her levitate into the air, watch all of her limbs snap in half, watch her eyes get sucked back into her skull just because he hadn’t prepared better for something like this to happen to her. He should have known that this could happen, that it would happen to her especially after that particularly nasty episode of hers last night. He should have fucking known better and he was a dumbass for even thinking that she would be safe. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He couldn’t dread on any of that now. He had to focus. He wasn’t going to hold what was left of her in his arms as he felt the last bit of air leave her lungs, the last bit of life she had leave her body after she’d finally fallen back down to the ground again. He refused to let Kate die, especially if it was going to be like this. He wouldn’t break his promise to her father after he’d done so much to keep it. He had to save her. He had to. Otherwise, Hopper would come back to life just to murder him for letting his daughter die under his own watch, especially if it was like this. Especially if it could have been so easily avoided if he wouldn’t have been so stupid.

He tried not to think about any of that as he tried to shake her back to consciousness. About what would happen if she actually did die right now. He would have to tell Joyce that he hadn’t been able to save her. To tell El that it had been his fault that the last living member of her family had died. That he’d done everything he could to save her sister, but it hadn’t been enough. That he hadn’t properly prepared for something like this to happen and that it was all his fault that she was gone. His recurring nightmare where he hadn’t been able to save her and instead had to bury her would quickly become a reality if she didn’t wake up soon. Before any of that, though, he would have to carry her dead body out of the Upside Down and somewhere other than this goddamned trailer so she could be put to rest the right way. As all of it ran through the back of his mind, he wasn’t quite sure he’d be able to survive any of that if she didn’t wake up.

“Please, Kathy, just stay with me!”

He’d almost ripped his voice raw from screaming so loudly for her to snap out of her trance. Even if his throat hurt, he couldn’t give up now. With each plea, he became increasingly more desperate for her to wake up. Part of him knew it wasn’t of any use. That everything that he was currently doing didn’t matter because he didn’t have that goddamn cassette tape. None of it had mattered for Max, so why would it be any different for Kate?

Despite his irritation, his neverending frustration with the situation, he knew he couldn’t stop now. He needed to see her eyes again. Her eyes that were so bright and lively, not the milky and pale blue ones he was currently looking into.

“Stay with me, okay?” he said shakily. He begged with her almost as if she could actually hear him. Steve looked back up through the gate to find Erica still standing underneath it. “Whatever you guys are doing up there, hurry up!”

Erica, somewhat panickedly, ran down the hallway and into Eddie’s bedroom where everyone else had started searching Eddie’s collection of cassette tapes for songs that Kate might like. The only reason she had gone so fast was because she didn’t want to risk Steve screaming at her like that again.

Even after the incident with the Russians, she had never seen him in a fraction of the state he was currently, but part of her couldn’t blame him for the way he was acting now. The Russians had been a completely different situation. While they had all been in danger, it wasn’t like there was a direct threat to Kate’s life. If anything, Steve’s life had been in the most danger after the Russians had beat him the way they had. Even so, there hadn’t been a supernatural threat to their lives until they had escaped the bunker that night. That was why this was so different. Now that Kate was under Vecna’s curse, there was a strong chance she wouldn’t ever come out of it, that she would die before they could save her, and she couldn’t blame Steve for panicking like he was. She didn’t want Kate to die, either.

“Steve says you need to hurry!” Erica shouted whenever she was within earshot of the rest of the group. 

“Yeah? No shit!” Dustin shouted as he shuffled through some of Eddie’s cassette tapes in his bedroom.

“We’re trying,” Max said, a sense of urgency in her voice. “We can’t find anything!”

“Seriously, what is all this shit!” Robin shouted at Eddie as she threw cassettes at him angrily.

“I don’t know, what are you even looking for?” Eddie shouted in return.

“Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, Bowie, Beatles?” Robin said, trying to think of anything and everything Kate liked.

As of right now, getting one of Kate’s favorite songs to play through her ears wasn’t even that important to her. Kate just needed to get something she liked decently enough and hope that it would get her out of her own mind, anything that she remotely enjoyed just to give her a chance at escaping a particularly painful death while they searched for something a bit more on brand for her. Kate wasn’t even that picky in terms of music, so it shouldn’t have been this difficult to just find a single song for her to listen to. For some reason, though, she hadn’t thought that Kate would enjoy anything that Eddie currently had to offer considering his current library seemed to only consist of Iron Maiden and Dio.

“Music! We need music!” Robin shouted at him, still holding one of his cassette tapes.

Eddie snatched the Iron Maiden cassette out of Robin’s hands bitterly, holding it up to her in disgust. “This is music!”

Whenever Kate finally found what might have been a potential exit out of the lab, she didn’t care that it was boarded up by planks of plywood, similarly to how the windows and doors had been boarded up at the Creel house whenever they’d gone the day before. She tried breaking the barrier in, pulling and kicking at the pieces of wooden board she could reach most easily. If she was stuck in her mind, she should have been able to do whatever she wanted to get out of it.

“Goddammit!”

She finally got the first piece of wood off, throwing it on the ground behind her. As she pulled, she tried to ignore the sharp pain that had suddenly flared up her hands, seemingly because of the wood that had started to splinter off into her palms. She had to ignore it—now wasn’t the time to give up just because of a damn imaginary splinter.

This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real—

She tried to ignore Vecna’s words. About how telling herself that it wasn’t real didn’t matter anymore. It did matter, because none of this was real. Just like it normally was, all of this was just in her head. She had to ignore that, ignore him because he was just trying to get at her again. The more scared she was, the more power he had over her. She had to remind herself that none of this was real and that she was actually safe so long as she found a way out of her own mind. She had to figure out another way out of this that wasn’t her dying or her magically listening to Fleetwood Mac.

How she’d had to think about this was she was just experiencing an episode on steroids. Nightmare on Elm Street rules: no dying or else you’d actually kick the bucket. Really, that was all this was now that she knew Henry was behind her episodes to begin with. A cracked out episode. Somehow with the added context Henry had provided, her standard episodes were much less horrifying. She figured they’d remain to be that way if she ever had the unfortunate experience of having one again. Now she knew her episodes were simply a remnant of what he’d failed to do: control her. Kill her. She couldn’t let him win now.

As she pulled another piece of plywood from the doorway, she heard someone call her name just from the other end of the hallway.

“Katherine.”

She stopped tugging on the piece of wood that her hands were currently wrapped around, her eyes widening in horror whenever she saw him. 

Vecna had found her.

He looked exactly as he had whenever she’d seen him last with his gray skin and viney physique. Somehow, though, seeing him for what felt like the first time all over again made her heart sink in her chest as it pounded heavily. This time, for some reason, looking at him felt more like reality than it had the last time she had seen him. Just like before, he appeared as if he had been perfectly assembled into the Upside Down, nothing remaining of his human form except for his now pale blue eyes. Kate thought that somehow that must have been the most horrifying part about him.

What made everything far, far worse was that she knew the thing she was currently looking at was once a man.

“What are you doing?” he asked, taking slow, heavy steps toward her. Whenever he spoke, his voice was distorted and deep, unnatural and inhuman. “It’s not time for you to leave.”

She gasped, then turned back to focus on the piece of wood that she’d still yet to tear off the door. She moved down to the next piece of wood, trying to peel it off the door as quickly as possible. She couldn’t die in here. She wouldn’t.

“Now that you’ve seen where I’ve been,” Vecna said as he got closer to her, “I would like very much to show you where I am going.”

Kate pulled the last piece of wood off of the door that was in her way and threw it back behind her in an attempt to slow him down. She broke through the entrance to hopefully lead her to a hallway so she could try to find an exit of some kind. When she looked around the new room she had entered, however, one that appeared to be another testing room within the lab, her stomach leapt to her throat whenever she saw Brenner again, his eyes still looking as if he were possessed by Vecna with their pale and milky shade.

“Take a seat, Katherine.”

The lights surged again, shutting off entirely for a few seconds before Kate found herself tied down to a chair in the room, her only restraints being the very vines that covered the Upside Down. She tried to break free from their grasp as they coiled tightly around her arms and legs, but she couldn’t. The more she tried to fight them off, the tighter they writhed around her body, making her even more uncomfortable and sick-feeling than she already was. The vines felt wet against her skin, and they grew tighter around her as time went on. She could have sworn they were alive. Everything felt so horribly real that part of her thought for a moment that this couldn’t have been happening inside of her head. Kate, however, knew better than that.

This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real.

Vecna now stood in the corner of the room, breathing heavily as he took menacing steps in her direction. As he inched closer to her, Kate thought she was going to be sick. This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real. Whenever he finally stood above her, Kate’s heart started beating out of her chest, even more so than when she was having a regular episode. This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real. For a moment, she thought that her having a heart attack would be enough to pull her out of Vecna’s grasp. She didn’t have to worry about Vecna killing her if her heart gave out first.

“I… want you to tell Eleven,” he started, moving his hand closer to her face. “I want you to tell her everything you see.”

Kate could only watch as his long-fingered hand hung over her face as she tried to steady herself. Before she could even try to prepare herself to have her limbs snapped out of place and eyes sucked back into her skull, an image danced across her mind. Dozens of them. Her eyes remained open as her visions flashed across her mind at a hundred miles an hour. She almost couldn’t register the images because of their rapid speed, but she focused just enough to get the main idea of Vecna’s message.

At first, she saw the Creel house engulfed by what she could only assume was a massive gate that had somehow formed from within the house itself. The gate, however, split the house down the middle and grew past the property. That one, however, wasn’t the only gate that began to grow past its typical size. Another gate grew from within Eddie’s trailer. From Lover’s Lake. Even the gate on the road that Fred had died on had started to spread fast, spread violently. Everything was glowing a bright red as it grew bigger and bigger, a red so bright it burned her eyes. The chime of a clock.

“No!”

All of the gates from the murder sites seemed to grow, spreading like a virus instead of closing like they normally did shortly after they’d initially been opened. Instead, they were spreading, growing, killing with a sense of purpose, almost like those tunnels beneath Hawkins had done years ago during their initial spread. These gates sought to do what those tunnels couldn’t at the time. The chime of a clock.

“Tell her…”

All four gates continued to grow and spread until they finally met each other at the center of downtown Hawkins, wreaking mass havoc upon the entire town as it seemingly folded in on itself. As the massive gate burned a bright and exquisite red, it seemed as if it sought to destroy everything in its path. Buildings around it collapsed, homes were destroyed, and dozens upon dozens of people were hurt and died, a complete massacre taking place within the town they had all done such a good job of protecting until now. The chime of a clock.

“…everything.”

The chime of a clock. She could only watch as the people of the town of Hawkins suffered, as they endured the agony of the massacre none of them had been able to stop. Of what she hadn’t been able to stop. Kate had been left completely useless to watch as everyone she had ever loved died trying to stop the monsters that emerged from the gaping hole from causing anymore mayhem: El, Steve, Robin, Joyce, the kids, Nancy and Jonathan, Eddie. Everyone she’d ever loved was going to die, and Kate would be there to watch every last one of them take their final breaths.

“No!”

Without any warning, Kate swiftly fell out of her trance, causing her to gasp as she collapsed.

“Hey, woah, woah, woah, woah,” Steve said, catching her fall as she dropped to the floor. Even if he couldn’t do much to stop her from falling, he gently paced her on the ground, dropping down with her as she hyperventilated, almost sounding as if she was about to sob.

Kate could hardly register where she was or what she was doing after everything she’d just been subjected to. Her head pounded so hard that she could barely see, dark spots now dancing across her vision. Her ears still rang so loudly that she could hardly keep her eyes open, and she could barely hear. She could only imagine all of that was because of Vecna infiltrating her mind like he had again. For a second she tried to fight Steve, almost like she thought he had been trying to kill her too, but she quickly gave up her struggle whenever she finally saw his face and registered him in front of her and realized it was actually him, not some fucked up nightmare version she had to watch die again. As he spoke to her now, he tried his best to try and calm her down and tell her that she really was okay. The tears in her eyes started to swell over with the sound of his voice. Somehow, she’d made it. She’d made it out of there alive.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m here,” Steve said, nearly panting as he gazed upon her.

Holy shit. He tried to catch his breath as he looked over her. He wanted to make sure she was at least physically okay, because mentally was a long shot. He brushed over her arms and her hands, making sure that nothing felt broken there. He glanced down at her legs, which also didn’t appear to be broken, but her falling like that stressed him out. He could only hope that her legs had only given out like that because of pure exhaustion and not any Vecna-related issue. Whenever he met her eyes again, the typical blue shade and not the pale blue that they’d taken during her trance, he was almost able to breath again as his eyes swelled with tears.

“I’m right here.”

Kate, even if she was absolutely horrified at what she’d just seen, thought that just for a moment that she was more than lucky to have survived, and she wasn’t quite sure that she had ever been happier to do such a thing.

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AS DUSK BEGAN to settle over Hawkins, the group of eight picked up their pace to try to find the supposed gate.

Kate didn’t know how to feel about their hunt in the first place. Part of her thought they were on a wild goose chase, or maybe she had just been hoping that. She had no desire to go through a gate, particularly now that none of them had any weapons on them, as Steve had requested her father’s revolver stay locked in her glove box for the rest of the week. None of them had anything to defend themselves with, and she didn’t like the idea of them going to the Upside Down empty-handed.

Because of that, Kate felt like she was going insane. Was she the only person that remembered what the creatures from the Upside Down had done to people in the past? Had done to her? The more they walked in the direction of the gate, the more anxious she became. She definitely did not want to go to another dimension. Not today, and not without a weapon of some kind.

“Hey, you okay?” Steve asked as he touched her shoulder.

The sensation of his fingers grazing her skin made her jump, but she immediately relaxed whenever she met his worried eyes. “Y–Yeah, I’m fine. Peachy.”

He frowned. “Kathy, if you wanna call this off, just say the word and it’s over, okay? You and I, we… we can go back and find another way to help.”

“What? No, that’s not—” She cut herself off, sighing as she lowered her voice. “I just… I can’t be the only one that thinks this is a bad idea.”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure I said it was a bad idea about a hundred times, but Henderson ignored me.” He sighed. “He just doesn’t listen to me anymore.”

“Oh yeah?” Kate asked as she tried to find a way to change the subject. “You were right about him having a new friend. It’s kinda cute.”

“No, it’s annoying,” Steve said, rolling his eyes at just the mention of Eddie. “I’ll never understand his obsession with him.”

“I mean, he’s not so bad. He’s nice.” Kate hesitated to go on. “I just wish he didn’t call me Hopper.”

Steve gave her a confused look. “What?”

She shrugged, giving him an odd expression. “I don’t know, it just… sounds weird. Everyone called my dad that, you know, so it’s just… I don’t know. It’s stupid. I don’t feel like I’ve earned it, you know?”

“Hey, it’s not stupid. I get it.” He paused. “Just so you know, you’ve definitely earned it. You’re… You’re a real badass, okay? Everyone thinks so but you.”

“Thanks.” She pressed her lips together, trying not to lose the smile that dusted her lips. “About Eddie, though, he’s cool. I mean, he’s not cool, but that’s what makes him cool. He’s proud of it.”

“Oh, so, what, you like Munson now, too?” Steve asked exasperatedly.

Kate hummed in amusement. “Yeah, I guess so. He’s just… He’s got really nice hair, you know? And those big baby cow eyes? I just get lost in them. And he’s—”

“All right, stop it, I know what you’re doing,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Very funny, okay? You’re hilarious. Now stop it.”

“It’s not a joke, Steve. I think I might be in love with him. I kinda want to be serenaded by him, you know, because he plays guitar—”

“Oh my God, please tell me you’re joking—”

She giggled at his concern. “I’m just kidding. You make it so easy to fuck with you.”

Steve pursed his lips, a pink hue just barely dusting his cheeks. Her and her damn teasing.

“But, really, in all seriousness, he’s a cool guy. I think it’s sweet he’s good to the kids.”

“I don’t get why you like him so much,” Steve said, somewhat bitterly. “He feeds into Henderson’s shit, just like he is right now. He doesn’t get it, what we’ve gone through, okay? What you’ve gone through—”

“Steve, it’s okay,” she said softly, almost like she was trying to calm his nerves. “Seriously. I’ve moved past a lot of that now.”

“But it’s not okay, all right? Stop acting like… like this is the way things are supposed to be, because they’re not.” He paused, trying to collect himself before he said something stupid. “Okay?”

Her eyebrows furrowed together. “How are things supposed to be, then?”

He didn’t know how to respond to that. Realistically, he didn’t know if the way things were supposed to be and way he wanted things to be were different, but in his mind, they were the exact same thing. After the time he’d spent with her the past few days, he knew that he had to have more with her. How are things supposed to be, she’d asked. He could almost laugh. Things weren’t supposed to be like this, he knew that much. In his mind, things being right would have been him and Kate still together, even if he hadn’t done anything to deserve her in the first place. Things being right would have been him living in New York City with her despite not being in college with her. Things being right would have been the world not ending once again before a year had passed since the last time they’d saved the world, but he couldn’t have those things. He couldn’t have any of them. God, he wished that was how things could be for them. He wanted more than anything for that dream of his to become reality, but he wasn’t that lucky. Instead, this was all he had.

“How are things supposed to be, Steve?”

Steve contemplated his options. He could keep all of those thoughts to himself, just like he had all week. For weeks. Months, really, because he’d thought those things since the night they’d broken up. He didn’t want to push her away again with his thoughts, but right now, he didn’t care. What if they got sidetracked the second they got to the gate? What if she got hurt again? What if neither of them got as lucky as they had in the past? The thoughts in his head started running at a thousand miles an hour, nearly killing him with how many chances there were for everything to go wrong once they found the gate. He couldn’t lose her again. Not for real this time. He wouldn’t let that happen.

As he looked into her eyes now, the remnants of twilight barely brushing her features as the sun dipped below the horizon, he sighed. He knew what he had to do now. “I, uh… I know things have been… less than normal between us. You know, recently.”

Her confusion didn’t melt as he spoke.

“And I’ve liked getting to see you again. A lot, actually, and it’s made me think about things.”

“Think about things?”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Being with you again, it’s made me think a lot about what I want, and… and I don’t know, I just… I just know I still—”

“Dustin? Can you slow down? Dustin!” Eddie called from just ahead of them, somewhat distressed.

Kate and Steve exchanged glances for only a second before running ahead through the woods as Steve shined a flashlight to illuminate their path. By the time they caught up with them, Max and Lucas in front of them and Robin and Nancy behind, Dustin and Eddie discovered the shoreline of a lake.

“Watch your step, big guy,” Eddie said, pulling Dustin back from falling into the water. “Oh man,” Steve said, almost out of breath as he stared over the lake. “You gotta be shitting me.”

“Yeah. I thought these woods were familiar.”

“Lover’s Lake,” Robin said. 

“This is… confounding,” Dustin said, almost in awe.

“There’s a gate in Lover’s Lake?” Max asked.

“Hey, Nance?” Kate asked, looking in her direction questioningly. “Didn’t the, uh… Don’t you remember when we went hunting with Jonathan? That night, you know, whenever you disappeared for a sec?”

“When I went through that hole in the tree?” Nancy asked, not following completely.

“Yeah,” Kate started, nodding once. “Yeah, that. The Demogorgon, it killed that deer and left a snack-sized gate there, too. I mean, every time it attacked, it always left an opening.” She paused, only watching the still and quiet lake in front of her. “Maybe Vecna’s the same way, too.”

“Yeah, only one way to find out,” Steve replied.

Eddie took them over to the small boat from Reefer Rick’s boathouse that he’d taken to the shoreline. After explaining to them that the motor was dead and they would have to row with the oars, Eddie and Steve worked on getting it back into the water to explore the lake more closely.

“Easy. I… I said easy, man,” Steve said after Eddie slammed it down into the edge of the lake, splashing water onto him.

“Sorry, dude.”

“Here you go,” Steve said, holding his hand out to Robin as she stepped into the boat.

“Yeah, I’m just gonna do that,” Robin said, entering the boat by holding both Steve’s and Eddie’s heads to enter. “Thank you.” “Yeah, that works too.”

Eddie stepped into the boat after her, then he offered his hand to Nancy to help her in. “Wheeler.”

Kate started to step into the boat, but hesitated and looked down at her dad’s jacket that she was wearing. It was a corduroy jacket—she wasn’t going to let it potentially get ruined and let it get wet. Without a second thought, she turned around to Max, took off her jacket and held it out to her. “Here, hold onto this for me, will you?”

Max took it in her hands awkwardly, her eyebrows furrowed together in confusion. “Won’t you freeze to death?”

“I’m not letting my dad’s curdoroy jacket get wet.”

She shrugged as she folded it and hung it under her arm, almost as if to say “fair.” If that was Billy’s jacket, she wouldn’t want it to get messed up, either.

Steve tried to help Kate into the boat, but Eddie already stuck his hand out to her. “Good, you got her.”

“Hopper.”

She nodded once, standing next to where Nancy stood and Robin sat.

When Dustin tried to step into the boat, Eddie blocked him from even attempting. “Hey, hey, hey, you trying to sink us? This thing holds four people tops, okay?”

“It’s better this way, okay?” Nancy said to Dustin after she saw the hurt look on his face. “You guys stay here with Max. Keep an eye out for trouble.”

“You keep an eye out,” Dustin said to her, earning a pointed look from everyone in the boat. “It’s my goddamn theory.”

“You heard Nance,” Robin said.

“Who put her in charge?”

“I did,” Robin replied without a second thought.

“I second that motion,” Kate said, sticking her hand out to Dustin. “Compass. Now.”

Dustin pouted as he pulled the compass from his pocket, bitterly handing it to her. 

Steve quickly stood up, throwing the backpack that he’d been holding to Dustin. “Hey, there you go.”

After Dustin bitterly said “Ow,” Steve pushed the boat off of the shoreline, stepping in and taking his seat next to Kate.

“You said four!” Dustin shouted at the older kids in the boat as it moved deeper into the lake.

Steve turned back to look at him sheepishly, whispering whenever he spoke. “Sorry.”

“Bedtime’s at nine, kiddos!” Robin shouted. Whenever Dustin shot them the bird, Kate shook her head and laughed as Robin stood up in the boat. “Miss you already!”

Nancy chuckled before looking at Kate. “You got the compass?”

“Yeah, I got it. Stay on the lookout for Demogorgons, okay? Or, like, whatever the Upside Down equivalent of Nessie is.”

Whenever everyone in the boat laughed nervously, Kate looked back down at the compass in her hands. Once Robin and Eddie picked up their oars, it fell quiet as they started to row out to the center of the lake, anxious to find this supposed gate. Kate kept a careful eye on the compass, almost like it was the only thing in the world.

Steve, however, tried his best not to focus on her. He tried his best to follow her instructions and keep an eye out for anything interdimensional in the lake’s depths, but he wasn’t able to focus on identifying anything past the surface of the lake. He felt so out of place. Steve had almost gotten the chance to tell her he was still in love with her and, of course, it had been taken away from him. Now he was squished next to her on a boat at Lover’s Lake, which only made his head hurt. His heart was nearly thumping out of his chest at just the press of her thigh up against his, the sensation of her fingertips barely grazing the back of his hand by accident whenever she moved hers. It all made him faint just thinking about it.

“Woah. Woah, woah, woah, slow down. Slow down, guys,” Kate said, trying to quickly grab everyone’s attention in the boat. Steve held his flashlight over her shoulder, trying to illuminate the compass as its needle spun around madly. She moved forward so Nancy, Robin, and Eddie could also see it.

“Woah.”

“Guys, what’s going on?” Dustin asked over the walkie. “Come on, guys, talk to me. What’s going on?”

Robin picked up the walkie that they had in the boat. “Uh, Dustin, your compass has gone from wonky to wonky with a capital ‘aah!’”

When one of Steve’s shoes dropped to the bottom of the boat, Kate turned to look at him as he took his sock off, too. “Steven, what are you doing?” “Somebody’s gotta go down there and check this thing out,” he said, starting to take his other shoe off his foot. “Unless one of you four can top being a Hawkins High swim co-captain and a certified lifeguard for three years, then…” He sighed once he’d gotten his other sock off, looking up at Kate. “It’s gotta be me. No complaints, all right?”

When he stood up, everyone watched him as he stood toward the edge of the boat.

“Hey, I’m not complaining. I do not wanna go down there.” Eddie took one of the remaining plastic bags from his groceries out of his pocket. 

Despite his request for no complaints, Kate opened her mouth to protest the idea, but she immediately stopped herself whenever she watched him take off his sweatshirt, looking at his bare back. She knew she had to stop staring, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Much to her surprise, he still looked good even though he had the excuse to stop working out now that he wasn’t playing any sports. If anything, she thought he might look better now than he ever had.

Robin, of course, only smiled as she watched Kate seemingly lost her mind internally. Called it.

Eddie wrapped the flashlight inside of the grocery bag that remained in the boat, taking the box of cigarettes out of it and handing the grocery bag-covered light to Steve. “Hey, good luck.”

“Thanks.”

As Eddie put a cigarette in his mouth, Steve threw his sweatshirt at Kate and turned around to face her. “Hold onto this for me?”

She nodded, trying to avoid looking at his bare chest. Considering how much taller he was now that he was standing in front of her still sitting down in the boat, it seemed impossible to miss him. Somehow he’d gotten even hairier than last summer which only made her want to investigate him more. What else was different about him? She couldn’t help but let her mind wander. Right now, though, was not the time to grossly objectify him. She knew she must have seemed like an absolute idiot to everyone else in that boat. “Yep. Got it.”

Eddie tried to light his cigarette only for Robin to flick it out of his mouth and into the water, rendering it useless. “Gross!”

As Steve breathed deeply, almost like he was trying to also convince himself that he could do this, Kate spoke again. “Steve?” He turned around to face her and looked down to see her soft, tight-lipped smile. “Be careful down there. You got this, okay?”

He nodded once at her and smiled before diving into the water.

Kate held the sweatshirt he’d previously been wearing in her hands, gripping it tightly. It smelled strongly of him and his cologne, which was the only thing providing her comfort right now. It was cold now that she didn’t have her jacket on, the white tank top and the jeans she was still wearing were not of any help now that they were on the water. She snaked her arms just through the arm holes so she wouldn’t freeze to death. She didn’t want to put it on completely and potentially give Robin and Nancy more ammo.

“Woah, Hopper, where’d you get that?” Eddie asked, his eyes glued to her collarbone. “That is the, uh… coolest looking thing I’ve ever seen, man.”

Nancy and Robin both sent him alarmed looks, almost as if they were trying to warm him against asking her such a question.

Her eyebrows furrowed together in confusion and she looked down to see what he could have been staring at. Whenever she found her scar, though, she had a moment of clarity. “Oh, shit, I forgot about that.”

Robin and Nancy exchanged glances. Forgot?

Her indifference only piqued his interest further. “What is that?”

She sighed, looking back toward the water. “It’s just a scar. Second go-round from this shit about a year and a half ago.” She paused, almost as if she was trying to figure out how to explain it. “Remember when I missed, like, a lot of school last year? Everyone talked about it because we said we got into a car accident?” 

Eddie nodded, recalling the situation. He remembered he thought they were both full of shit because Steve had looked like he’d gotten his ass beat and Kate had been in the hospital for a few days. He knew now that he’d been right to question it: their story was far from the truth, and part of him wished he could have remained oblivious to that now.

“Yeah, so this? This is actually from a, uh… Demodog, as Dustin lovingly calls them. I’m sure he’s explained all the creatures to you by now. Another guy and I, we… we were trying to escape a group of them. Just when we were about to get away, one of them pinned me to the ground and nearly tore me to shreds.”

“And… the other guy?”

“Died,” she said calmly, almost like it didn’t effect her. “He saved my life. Pulled the fucking thing off me so I could get outta there, so… basically, I got lucky that I didn’t bleed out and die. I’ve got scars all over the place, this one’s… this one’s just the worst.”

Eddie hesitated to respond to her. “Really?”

Kate nodded. “Like I said, I’m lucky I’m not dead.”

As she spoke, Nancy and Robin gave each other concerned expressions. Part of them felt relieved that it didn’t seem to bother her anymore, but they couldn’t help but think that it was because she couldn’t find it in her to care. While neither of them would ever say it out loud, both of them feared that maybe Kate didn’t feel lucky, rather that she was damned.

Eddie didn’t reply to her last statement, instead looking fear stricken. He definitely didn’t want to go to the Upside Down now if there was a chance one of those creatures could tear into his flesh like that. Kate didn’t add to the conversation, either, which didn’t help his nerves. It wasn’t her fault she was so anxious, and he knew that. Despite having only been around them for a couple of hours, it was obvious Steve and Kate had a strange relationship. Eddie couldn’t imagine that any of this had helped.

All four of them now watched the water in silence, waiting for Steve to reemerge at any given second. It had felt he’d been down there for hours.

“Where’re we at, Wheeler?” Robin asked anxiously.

“Closing in on a minute,” Nancy replied, her eyes glancing over to Kate for a second.

“Okay.”

Kate hadn’t taken her eyes off of the water since she’d looked at her shoulder. She couldn’t. If he drowned down there, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself. It wasn’t like she thought he was going to drown or something. She knew that Steve could hold his breath for an insanely long amount of time, even whenever they had been younger. She’d lost count of how many times he’d faked his death in his own swimming pool, specifically when they were about thirteen or fourteen. She could only hope now that there was nothing down there waiting for him.

Whenever he sprang out of the lake, though, sending water in just about every direction, Eddie, Robin, Nancy, and Kate all jumped.

“Oh, Christ!” Eddie shouted, his voice going up about two octaves.

“I found it,” Steve said, breathing heavily still as he tread water.

Kate pulled his sweatshirt off of her arms and let it fall to the bottom of the boat as she moved closer to its edge.

“You found it?” Nancy asked, almost excited.

“I found it.” He held his hands on the side of the boat in an attempt to hold himself up a bit more so he didn’t get any more lake water in his mouth. He was still completely out of breath, nearly panting as he spoke. “Yeah. I found it.”

“Dustin, you are a goddamn Einstein,” Robin said into the walkie. “Steve found the gate.”

“You okay?” Kate asked him, putting her hands over his to try and support him.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.”

Whenever the kids didn’t return Robin’s message, she set the walkie down.

“It’s pretty wild,” Steve said, still panting. “It’s more a snack-size gate than the mama gate, but still, it’s pretty damn big.”

“Okay, we can talk about it more in a sec, let’s get you back in the—”

Before Kate could finish her sentence, Steve got pulled back into the water, only to pull himself back up moments later after she grabbed at his hands and arms. He looked at Kate for only a second, horror striking his face before he got dragged back under, this time losing his grip on the boat.

“Steve!” Kate shouted.

All four of them called for him as he got dragged back down into the water by an unknown entity, his figure becoming impossible to see as he got dragged to the depths of the lake.

“What the hell was that, man?” Eddie shouted.

“What happened!” Nancy asked, looking at Kate for answers.

“Kate, really, what happened!” Robin shouted.

Despite their screams for answers, Kate started breathing heavily as he got pulled down deeper and deeper into the water. She didn’t have time to think, only do. She wasn’t going to lose him, too. Not like this. That was why, without a single thought, Kate dove into the water after him.

“Kate, no!”

Since getting dragged through the lake’s depths, Steve had been pulled through the gate by a vine and had been dragged across the bottom of the lake. Now as he yelled out for help, his screams weren’t being drowned out by the water. In fact, there was no water anywhere. Once he’d been slammed into a boat covered by a large patch of vines, the grip on his ankle ceased, and he took in his surroundings as best he could.

His back burned almost like it was on fire. He felt like he had lost the top layer of his skin there, his entire back stripped raw. He looked down at the ground as he panted, taking in the vines and rough terrain he’d just been dragged across. He looked up at the dark sky, everything seemingly dead around him. He took a shaky breath whenever he heard the inhuman shrieks in the distance, the otherworldly cries that he unfortunately recognized. With just that, Steve knew where he must have been.

Steve had been pulled into the Upside Down.

As a flash of red lightning cracked the sky in two, he stood himself back up. He didn’t have any time to figure out an escape plan before he heard a call from behind him, a shriek that must have belonged to another one of the creatures there. He squinted to try and see it better, but whenever he saw the bats flying in his direction, his heart started to pound deep in his chest. The flying creatures began to swarm him from above, ready to attack at any given second.

He didn’t have much time.

Steve ran toward the stranded boat and grabbed an oar to try and defend himself. He tried beating one of the bats with his oar, but instead the creature wrapped itself around his neck with its tail, slamming him to the ground as it choked him. He squirmed as he tried to loosen its grip around his neck, using one arm to try and grab it and his other to pull at its tail. Another one of the creatures latched onto his stomach, its sharp teeth piercing into his skin, then another.

He tried fighting them as hard as he could despite his compromised state. The two on his stomach he could only keep away for so long before they came back down to feast on his skin. He knew he didn’t have much time before the tail around his neck cut off his air supply and suffocated him.

As he screamed out for someone, anyone to help him, all he could think was that he was going to die in the Upside Down alone and that no one was coming to save him.

next chapter

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STEVE AND DUSTIN had been fighting over who was leading the group in the wrong direction to Skull Rock since they’d gotten out of the car.

Under normal circumstances, this argument would have been settled in near seconds. Everyone would have simply believed Dustin and would have let him lead the way without question. Kate, however, had quickly jumped to Steve’s defense knowing his history with the place. She had argued that actually, she and Steve both knew the spot extremely well and that no one would be able to find it better than either of them. Despite that, Dustin had continued to argue with Steve and Kate both enough to the point that Kate had finally made the decision to hang back with Robin and Nancy as they all walked through the woods. That now meant, however, that Steve and Dustin didn’t have a mediator for their constant bickering at the front of the group as they both tried to lead the way. 

“Dude, I’m telling you, you’re taking us the wrong way,” Steve said, following closely behind Dustin. 

“It’s north,” he argued. Whenever Steve hadn’t replied, he went on. “I’m positive. I checked the map.”

Steve, however, wasn’t convinced. “You do realize Skull Rock, it’s a super popular make-out spot?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t popular until I made it popular. All right? I practically invented it,” Steve said cockily. While he had done his best in the past couple of years to kick his somewhat inflated ego from high school, he certainly would pull it back out whenever he deemed it necessary. “We’re heading in the wrong direction.”

“Steve. Where are you going?” Dustin shouted as he veered off in another direction. “Steeeeeeeeve!”

“Stop whining, let’s go. Trust me.”

The rest of the group didn’t have much confidence in either of them, to say the least. Whenever Kate had gone back to walk with Robin and Nancy, she had mumbled something about Dustin and Steve both acting like assholes just because they wanted to prove the other wrong. They all could only hope now that the two of them would actually be able to find both Eddie and Skull Rock.

“Okay, so apparently we’re going this way now?” Max asked. “I swear to God, if they get us lost…”

Nancy, Robin, and Kate each kept looking back to check in on Max and Lucas. The three girls didn’t want to disturb the two of them now that they were alone. Besides, Lucas was still processing the loss of his friend Patrick. Right now, the only thing they needed was one another, and none of them were going to get in the way of that. 

Just looking at them tugged at her heartstrings. In a strange way, Lucas and Max only reminded her now of how she and Steve were, or maybe it was the way they had used to be whenever they had been younger. No matter how, Kate thought they seemed connected in some way. She remembered when Steve had been the only one to pick her back up when she was down, and she him. She could only hope that things wouldn’t end for Lucas and Max the same way it had for her and Steve—she couldn’t imagine the two of them not being happy after everything they’d been through at such a young age.

Robin swung around on a tree branch before landing back down on the ground, then glanced over her shoulder. “Oh my God, they’re so adorable. I just wanna squeeze ‘em, you know?”

Nancy and Kate both smiled. Relatable enough.

“If I’m permitted to see a silver lining in any of this end-of-the-world doom and gloom, it would be the rekindling of old flames that never should’ve been snuffed out in the first place.”

Whenever Kate felt Robin’s gaze on her, she turned sharply to Robin as Nancy stifled a laugh.

“I… didn’t mean that as a hint or anything,” Robin said sheepishly, not expecting that sort of reaction out of her.

“Right,” Kate said, somewhat annoyed by the comment.

As much as she appreciated the sentiment, she didn’t want to have this conversation right now. It would have been different if the world wasn’t currently ending once again. If Steve wasn’t standing only twenty or so yards ahead of them. If this hadn’t been the millionth time Robin had tried convincing her to get back together with him. Kate wasn’t ready for that conversation about her and Steve, especially not with any of their mutual friends. She didn’t know if she would ever truly be ready for that conversation, but she certainly wasn’t prepared for it right now after her conversation with Steve last night.

“But if I did mean it as a hint, would that be so terrible?” Robin asked. “For me to wish happiness for both of my best friends?”

Kate scoffed. “What, you think I’m not happy just because I’m not dating Steve anymore? Because I can assure you that I have many, many other reasons to be unhappy. Plenty of them, actually, if you didn’t know.”

“I–I’m sure you do,” Nancy said, trying to bounce back from where Robin might have fumbled the ball a bit. “Robin… Robin knows that. We both know that. Better than anyone.” “What Nance said,” Robin replied quickly, nodding along somewhat fearfully.

Whenever Kate didn’t say anything else, Nancy tread lightly with her words. “It’s just… I don’t know, doesn’t everything feel just a little bit better now that you’re back in Hawkins?”

Robin scoffed whenever Kate shrugged in response. “Oh, don’t try to sell me that crap. Last time I talked to you, which was just a couple of weeks ago, by the way, the only thing you were somewhat looking forward to was flying out to California to see your sister, and even that you didn’t seem too enthusiastic about. I just chalked it up to mid-semester boredom at the time, because that’s relatable, but I knew it went deeper than that. However, now that you’re with dingus for the first time in months, you both have that lovesick puppy dog look on your faces whenever you look at each other that makes me want to projectile vomit. It’s forlorn, honestly, especially knowing how much you dumping him broke the both of you, and after seeing you two interact the past couple of days, I think you’re certifiable if you’re not realizing how much happier you seem right now despite this conversation. I mean, come on, Kate, you haven’t been this enthused about anything in, like, months, and it’s breaking my heart for you guys. I don’t understand why you’re being so difficult about all of this and refuse yet again to actually communicate about your feelings for one another.”

At first, Kate didn’t know what to say. She hesitated to reply at all mostly because she hadn’t ever thought that Robin would be able to say all of that. Even Nancy looked surprised whenever she glanced in her direction. Even if she didn’t want to admit it, Robin was right. Kate hadn’t seemed enthused about going to California because she really hadn’t wanted to go in the first place. She only made the decision to visit her sister for break because she knew it was the right thing to do. That was how she had made most of her decisions recently, really, because if you didn’t care about anything how else were you supposed to make decisions? Knowing that, though, Kate also didn’t want to admit that Robin was right. If she admitted that, then she’d have to admit that she knew things were off with herself. That she had known she hadn’t felt right for a long time and she still refused to do anything about it. She’d have to admit that nothing had felt right again until she’d gotten to spend some time with Steve alone for the first time in over half a year. She’d have to admit that maybe she’d closed that chapter of her life much faster than she was supposed to and now she had to fix it.

That was why she didn’t know what to say. What could she say, really? That Robin was actually kind of right to call her out like that? As much as Kate wanted to fire back with a bitchy remark, she knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t tell the truth either. Kate wasn’t ready for that yet. She wasn’t quite sure that she would ever be ready to speak that many of her thoughts out loud, but she certainly wasn’t going to discuss them with Robin and Nancy before she really got to even toss ideas around with Steve.

“I… It’s not like that, okay?” Kate finally said after collecting her thoughts. “We… We broke up for a reason. Like, a lot of them, okay?”

“And how many of them were relating to just the physical distance that you chose to put between the two of you, even though he was more than happy to rent out an apartment for the both of you in New York City?” Robin asked somewhat bitterly. “And you can’t count anything relating to your dad, either, because you were doing a lot better mentally whenever you had Steve on top of your ass, and we both know that.”

“Oh my God!” Kate said annoyedly. “I get it that you all feel emotionally invested in my relationship with Steve or lack thereof, okay? I get it. But, I mean, seriously, can you all just let it the fuck go? We’re just friends now.” Whenever neither Nancy or Robin said anything else, her raised eyebrows didn’t fall. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Robin said, still unconvinced, “so if you both are so insistent that you’re ‘just friends now,’ can you please explain to me, then, why you guys were, like, snuggled up the other night? You know, all tangled up in each other’s limbs adorably on the floor of Nancy’s basement?”

“Oh!” Nancy said excitedly, almost as if she had prepared for this debate. “And how you guys went back to his house alone last night after you’ve both been checking each other out all week?”

“Oh my God, and that phone call this morning whenever I caught you both playing house?”

“And all the senseless giggling and flirting with each other than you both think none of us can hear?”

“And not to mention how you guys went grocery shopping together this morning!” Robin said. “That’s, like, the most intimate thing imaginable!” “You two are the ones that sent us!” Kate said, still unconvinced. “Seriously, Steve and I are just friends now, okay? Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Kate asked them both, her voice somewhat tense.

“Got it.”

“Right.”

As Kate walked ahead, presumably to catch up with Steve and Dustin, Robin and Nancy lowered their voices as they continued to speak.

“So we agree she’s definitely in denial, right?” Robin asked. “I’m not missing something?”

“Oh, yeah, no, definitely in denial,” Nancy said as she gripped the grocery bag she was holding tighter in her hands. “You have to remember you met them when they were, like, half a year into a serious relationship. That was, like, the best they ever were. Believe it or not, they actually used to be worse than this. I mean, back whenever Steve and I were together, he… he was so obviously in love with her. It didn’t really end up being a problem, all things considered, but it wasn’t like I didn’t know at the time.”

“Wait, I’m so confused,” Robin said, her eyebrows furrowed together. “You dated a guy you knew was completely in love with someone else for a year?”

“I mean, yeah, but I wasn’t innocent, either,” she replied. “We were both wrong for what we did. I wanted to be with Jonathan, he wanted to be with Kate. For whatever reason, we both just decided to settle for each other instead of trying to get what we really wanted.”

“Hm,” Robin said, still obviously confused. Straight people. “Interesting.”

Nancy sighed. “But that doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does. My point is with even bringing that up is that they’re both weird. Steve’s actually kinda good at downplaying how much he cares about her, or at least enough where it doesn’t raise any red flags to her. It’s actually, like, kinda scary how he’s able to hide it from her so well considering how obvious it is to everyone else. That’s why she’s so confident in the fact that they’re ‘just friends’ now. We’re also biased because I think by now we’ve both heard him, like, break down multiple times in the past few months because of how much he loves her and how she obviously doesn’t love him back anymore?”

Robin tried to hide her grimace. “Yeah. Just a couple of times.”

She was quite sure that there was nothing else that Steve could have said to explain how devastating the loss of Kate had truly been to him, but Robin would not be surprised if he found more ways to express that.

Nancy, of course, picked up on that. “Right. So that happens because she’s horrible at telling people she actually loves them. Like, absolutely horrible. Don’t, like, ever tell Kate this because I’m pretty sure she’d freak the fuck out, but Joyce says that her dad was, like, the exact same way. Especially whenever they were in high school, I guess. The only one that doesn’t have a hard time with it from that family is El, and Jonathan only told me that’s because his mom has made sure to not let it be a habit. I mean, Kate’s horrible at talking about her feelings, and she’s even worse at expressing her emotions.” Nancy paused. “You know I’m not bashing Kate, right? Like, you know about what happened to her when she was younger?”

“Yeah, I know.” Robin’s eyebrows furrowed together. “Wait, what happened?”

She sighed. “Kate had a little sister other than El, but she, uh… she passed away, and her mom left later that year. She didn’t speak to her until her dad died, and I’m pretty sure after that mess she’ll never speak to her again.” Nancy paused, almost as if to collect her thoughts before going on. “That’s why Kate’s so closed off. All she had for years was her dad and Steve, and her dad was a drunk and Steve was such an asshole.”

“Yeah, you don’t have to remind me about that.” Robin sighed. “You know, I felt horrible last summer whenever her dad died because I knew her mom was out of the picture, but whenever Steve told me that she’d lost her sister before and that was why her mom left, I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never really thought about how all of that would, uh… make her so… brusque.”

“Yeah, so do not tell her that I told you about her inability to express her emotions because of that. Like, ever. I’d rather live a happy life and have a friend that loves me, whether she tells me or not.”

Robin nodded, seeming to understand. “Got it. So Steve cares, like, way too much and has to hide it so he doesn’t feel stupid, and Kate doesn’t know how to express that she actually does give a shit without sounding soft so she just chooses to say nothing at all. That’s a fantastic combination.”

Nancy shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess so. I stopped trying to figure them out years ago. They’re both just fucking weird, okay? They always have been.” She stopped to sigh. “You know, I cannot believe I ever dated him. I used to think he was so cute whenever I was like, sixteen, but I look at him now and think Kate must actually be insane.”

With that, Robin chuckled. At least Nancy would understand Robin’s jokes about him. “I think I’ve been teasing him about that since I met her last summer.”

“As you should. I’ve been too close to the situation for too long now to tease,” Nancy said. “You know, my friend Barb told me how stupid I was for liking him before I started dating him. She thought that he was, like, totally in love with Kate in secret. I didn’t believe her then, but now I know she was right. Like, so right she didn’t even know.” She sighed. “I wish she was still here. She… She didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“I’m sorry about Barb,” Robin said. “Steve, he… he and Kate told me what happened whenever they explained this whole thing to me last summer after all the stuff with the mall.” Whenever Nancy didn’t reply, Robin continued. “You know, Barb and I were actually best friends in elementary school.”

Nancy almost smiled. “Yeah? I didn’t know that.”

“Oh yeah, for sure. I loved Barb.” Robin thought she would leave out the part about how they dreamed of exploring the world outside of Hawkins together to spare Nancy for the timebeing. “I mean, it wasn’t like we were close friends once we got to middle school or anything. She kinda met you and forgot I existed.”

She grimaced. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it. I was just upset at the time because I had a huge crush on—” she cleared her throat— “I mean, a–a really close bond with her. We… We were just good friends and I was jealous.”

Nancy sighed, not seeming to notice. “Still though. If I would’ve known, I—”

Robin dismissed the thought with her hand. “You don’t have to apologize for any of that. We were, like, eleven. I had braces and I played French horn. I wouldn’t have been friends with me, either.”

Whenever they both chuckled, Nancy continued on. “Well, I was just gonna say I wish Barb would’ve introduced me to you then. Maybe we could have been friends earlier.”

“Oh yeah, and then I wouldn’t be able to tease those two about their weird relationship? No thanks, I’ll pass,” Robin said jokingly. “I think I like that I’m just a bit removed from the whole thing. Someone has to bully them about their situation, right?”

Nancy shook her head as she tried not to laugh. “I think in a couple years it’ll be okay for me and Jonathan to poke fun at them. I’ve always really wanted to make jokes about this whole thing, especially now. I mean, how after being best friends for so long are they still unable to communicate like normal people? I’m serious when I say I have my jokes ready.”

“Me too!” Robin said, almost too excitedly. “You know, I think that most of their problem is that they have this inability to, like, talk to each other. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever heard one of them say something normal to the other, like, one time. They’ve gotten so used to flirting with each other that it’s just natural now, so when they both think they’re actually communicating like normal human beings, we think they might as well be sticking their tongues down each other’s throats.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Nancy said. “See, I know they both think that they’re really good at hiding it from everyone. Maybe Steve not so much, but Kate? She thinks she’s hiding it so well from all of us. I think because they can’t communicate they think we don’t notice the excessive flirting. They can hide if from each other, no one else, and that’s good enough for them. That’s my theory.”

Robin chuckled. “And you said they used to be worse?”

Nancy nodded, her lips pursed. “Yeah. It really sucked. Every time I wanted to talk to her and he was around, he would literally, like, go numb. Like, heart eyes, frozen limbs, the whole nine yards because she wasn’t speaking to him and he had realized too late that he was totally in love with her.” She paused for a second. “It was actually really sad. I tried to at least help them go on speaking terms, but he was scared of her and she was just holding a grudge.”

She grimaced. “You’re a much better woman than me. Forget dumping him, I would’ve strangled him with my bare hands.”

Nancy shrugged. “To be honest, I wasn’t much better with Jonathan. I, uh… I still liked him a whole lot even though I was still with Steve, which was completely wrong of me. I just think the funniest part about it is that all four of us are, like, kinda friends now. Like, there aren’t any hard feelings or anything on anyone’s part, at least not that I’m aware of.”

Robin, however, wasn’t convinced that that was even humanly possible.

“You know, I’m glad that she has him,” Nancy finally said. “I think… I think she really needs him, you know? I think they need each other, actually. They really are each other’s… person. I think so, anyway. Even if it is extremely aggravating to be their friend and watch them try to figure out their shit, I’m glad they have… whatever it is they have with each other. They’re cute, even if Kate would kill us if she heard us talking about this still.”

Robin’s eyebrows furrowed together as she watched Kate finally catch up with Steve and Dustin, then watch as Steve pushed Dustin out of the way excitedly to stand next to her with a bright smile on his face. “You think they’ll ever figure it out?”

Nancy shrugged. “At this rate, there’s no telling.”

The tinge of pink on Kate’s ears had yet to cease. How had Nancy and Robin managed to make Steve and Dustin’s bickering much more desirable? It hadn’t taken her too long to catch up to ther two of them considering how slow they were walking. Whenever Steve saw her out of the corner of his eyes, he couldn’t help but bring her into the conversation in an attempt to cease his and Dustin’s argument.

“Kathy! Perfect, I need to ask you something,” he said as he shoved Dustin out of the way to stand next to her.

She chuckled warningly. “I am not taking sides in this—”

“Please tell Henderson you know that I know where Skull Rock is.”

Her eyebrows furrowed together. “And why should I know that?”

“Because it’s my spot, okay? Mine. You know that.”

“Do I?” Whenever a panicked look flashed across his face, her lip curled upward. She tried her best to hide her smile as she went on. “I mean, if you’re so sure it’s your spot, I mean… I don’t know, shouldn’t you have been able to find it by now?”

“Don’t do that. Don’t do this to me right now,” he said, somewhat exasperated. “Quit fucking around, okay? We both know I know where Skull Rock is, okay? I know you do.”

“Oh yeah? How’s that?”

He gave her a pointed look. “Do I need to remind you about that one night last May? The one right before graduation?” Her mouth dropped open in shock, her smile immediately disappearing from her face. She was mostly surprised that he would dare bring up such an occasion right now, especially in front of one of the kids. Of course she remembered that night. The night of summer and sherry and sex, the one where they’d both gotten so hammered during their what-was-supposed-to-be a romantic picnic at Skull Rock that they’d had to walk through the woods and all the way back to the cabin in their post-sex haze. He’d had to carry her halfway back because her legs finally had started giving out. They’d simply gotten lucky that Hopper and El had already gone to bed, mostly because they were extremely loud and intoxicated as they stumbled their way inside. As much as she liked to remember that night, especially his giggly little wine-drunk kisses and his perfectly tanned skin, she didn’t think it necessary to bring it up in front of Dustin, nor anyone ever for the rest of time. 

“Steven Otis Harrington, don’t you dare.”

“Ew, you brought Kate here to make out with her?” Dustin asked, disgusted.

“I mean, we didn’t exactly make out, okay—”

“Steven!” she shouted, cutting him off as her face started to gain heat. “If you even think about finishing that sentence, I will murder you.”

Of course, Steve had conveniently not heard her threat. The all too familiar set of bushes as well as a very, very familiar large boulder had distracted him.

“Oh, boom!” Steve said as he walked through the bushes. “Bada bing, bada boom. There she is, Henderson. Skull Rock.” He moved toward the rock in question as he continued to insult Dustin. “In your face, man. In your stupid, cocky little face.”

Dustin looked at the map and compass in his hand, looking at Kate for any kind of support. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah, yeah. Even with it staring you right in the face, you can’t admit it. You just can’t admit that you’re wrong, you little butthead.”

Kate’s eyebrows furrowed together. “How old are you?”

“Let me have this, please?” he whispered just loud enough for her to hear.

“I concur.” The group of three turned around to find Eddie standing behind them. “You, Dustin Henderson, are a… total butthead.”

“Jesus, we thought you were a goner,” Dustin said as he took him in for a hug.

“Yeah, me too, man.” Eddie pulled him out in front of him to speak to him, almost as if Dustin was his son. “Me too.”

Steve awkwardly ran his hands through his hair, pushing it back as he nodded awkwardly in his direction with pursed lips like a divorced dad dropped his kid off with his ex. Kate almost laughed at the sight. That was why Steve didn’t like Eddie all that much.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Eddie said as he looked in Steve and Kate’s direction. “Kate Hopper, I presume?” She nodded once and pressed her lips together into an awkward smile as she stuck her hand out to him. “Nice to meet you.”

Steve moved closer next to her before Eddie took her hand. Even if he knew that Eddie was a bit more sane now, he wasn’t going to have any repeats of the broken beer bottle incident. While, of course, he didn’t want to see Kate in that position, he wasn’t scared of that. Realistically, he feared more of what would happen to Eddie in that situation considering she would have him pinned down to the ground in a heartbeat. Out of anything he could have expected from Eddie Munson, though, he certainly wouldn’t have assumed he’d give her such a proper greeting. 

Whenever Eddie curtsied as he took her hand, Kate’s face flushed. “Oh, uh… Y–You don’t have to do all that for me.”

“Oh, no, I insist. I am meeting former Hawkins royalty, if I’m not mistaken?”

Her faced flush even more with his words as he released her hand and stood back up straight. “I mean, I wouldn’t call it that, you know, just because I–I—”

“Are you fucking serious right now?” Steve asked exasperatedly, crossing his arms disappointedly.

She turned to look at him, near cottonmouth at the events of the past five minutes. Her face still hadn’t lost any of the pink hue it had taken from either conversation. “Sorry.” 

Eddie stifled a laugh. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Well, formally meet you, I guess. I’ve heard a lot about you, man. You’re a lot less scary than I thought you’d be, though, if I’m being completely honest.”

Whenever she opened her mouth to speak, Steve shook his head as he chuckled. “Nah, she’s still scary. Promise. She’d just embarrassed ‘cause I—”

“If you don’t shut the fuck up right now, I swear to God, I will put Nair in your shampoo tonight. Got it?”

Steve’s amused expression swiftly melted into one of fear. “You don’t mean that.”

“I swear to God, Steve, if you don’t quit, you will permanently remain on my shit list, got it? Being bald will be the least of your fucking worries. You don’t want that, now do you?”

As Steve quickly shook his head in response, mumbling something under his breath that was near undecipherable as a horrified look flashed across his eyes and he ran his fingers protectively through his hair, Eddie finally realized there must have only been one thing in the world that made Steve Harrington himself lose his cool.

It hadn’t taken too long for Nancy, Robin, Lucas, and Max to catch up with the rest of the crowd and follow the shouting from beyond the bushes. Eddie took his requested groceries and began to dig into them while he waited for everyone to gather around him to hear his story of what happened at Lover’s Lake the night before.

“When I got to the shore, I tried calling you guys, but, uh—” he paused to take a sip of water— “my walkie was busted, man. Drenched. So, uh, I did the thing I do now, apparently. I ran.”

Eddie chuckled as he smiled anxiously. Kate’s heartstrings pulled taut in her chest as she watched over him. She couldn’t imagine what he was currently feeling. He’d watched two people get horrifically murdered only for the police to publically regard him as a person of interest in those crimes. Even worse, it wasn’t like her father was still around to get him out of this. They simply had to hope to stop Vecna and save Eddie from a life in federal prison. Now, though, they could only try to ease his anxiety.

“Do you know what time this was? The attack?” Nancy asked.

“Yeah, no, I… I know exactly what time it was.” Eddie started to take his watch off of his wrist. “My walkie wasn’t the only thing that got soaked.”

He threw the watch over to Nancy, which made her jump as she caught it. Whenever she read the time, she nodded. “Nine twenty-seven.”

“Same time our flashlights went kablooey,” Robin said.

“Which means what, exactly?” Steve asked.

“That that surge of energy was Vecna attacking Patrick,” Kate explained. “That’s why our flashlights blew up.”

While she had overexplained her answer to him, Kate knew that must have been what happened. She remembered whenever the Byers had gone through three different phones in the course of a week whenever Will had tried getting in contact with his mother even though he was in the Upside Down. Whenever he would attempt at calling, the conversation would only last a few seconds before the phone blew up. She couldn’t imagine Vecna’s multidimensional attacks were much different.

“Well, we’re one step closer,” Robin said. “We know how Vecna attacks.”

“And where he attacks from.”

“So now we just need to sneak into his lair in the Upside Down and drive a stake through his heart,” Max said as-a-matter-of-factly.

“If he even has a heart.”

“A stake?” Steve asked. “Is he like a vamp? Is he a vampire?”

“It was a metaphor!”

“A bullet should work on him, right?” Eddie asked.

“Not anything I have with me,” Kate answered. “The gun that I have would just piss all of those things off rather than do anything.”

Eddie’s eyes flashed with horror. “You have a gun?”

“In the glovebox of my car, yeah.”

He hesitated to respond to her. Maybe she was actually a lot scarier than he had originally thought and the kids had undersold it. “Shit.”

“I say we chop his head off,” Lucas said in an attempt to put the conversation back on topic. 

“Yeah, I’d say all of the above, but we can’t do any of that until we find a way into the Upside Down,” Nancy said.

Max crossed her arms. “We need El to get her powers back.”

“It’s not that simple, guys,” Kate said. “Besides, she’s all the way in California now. There’s no way she could get here fast enough. We’re stuck without her, unfortunately.”

“Ugh, everything was way easier,” Steve complained. “We had this girl, Kate’s sister. She had superpowers—”

“Superpowers. Yeah, you mentioned her.” Eddie then looked over to Dustin, who had been pacing behind everyone since they’d started talking. He hadn’t even tried to input into the conversation. “Hey, uh, Henderson’s not, uh… cursed, is he?”

“Cursed?” Steve asked. “No, no, no. He’s fine. Mental? Absolutely.”

Before anyone could say anything else, Dustin stopped in his tracks and yelled so loud that his voice echoed against Skull Rock.

“Boom!” Everyone turned sharply to look at him, watching as he pointed at Steve with a triumphant and I-told-you-so look plastered on his face. “Bada… bada… boom.”

Steve gave him a confused and simultaneously annoyed look, his arms crossed over his chest and eyebrows quirked in curiosity. 

“I… was right,” Dustin said. “Skull Rock was north.”

He rolled his eyes. “Seriously? You’re serious?”

“Mhm.”

“This is Skull Rock, okay?” Steve shouted exasperatedly. “You’re totally, absolutely, one hundred percent wrong. Right now!”

“Yes, Dustin admitted, his voice much softer as he spoke. “And no.”

“Oh my God,” he said as he buried his face in his hands. 

Dustin held up a compass in his hands. “This worked correctly when we left the Wheelers’. It was correct when we got in the car on Curly, but it started to slip the further east we went. Now… it’s way off. When I was leading us here, I wasn’t wrong. The compass was.”

“So you’re using faulty equipment. Dude, you’re still wrong,” Steve said, still annoyed.

“Except it isn’t faulty.” Dustin turned away from him. “Lucas, do you remember what can affect a compass?”

“An electromagnetic field.” “Yep.”

“I’m sorry, I must’ve skipped that class,” Robin said, somewhat confused.

“In the presence of a stronger electromagnetic field, the needle will deflect towards that power. So either there’s some super big magnet around here, or…”

“There’s a gate,” Lucas finished.

“But we’re nowhere near the lab,” Nancy argued.

“But what if, somehow, there’s another gate? A gate that we don’t know about? It’d have to be smaller. Way less powerful.”

“Like a… snack-sized gate,” Kate suggested.

“How? Why?” Steve asked, confused.

“No idea. All I know is that something is causing this disturbance, and the last time we’ve seen anything like it, it was a gate, and I hope it is, because then we’d have a way to Vecna. And a shot at freeing Max from this curse.” Without another word, Dustin started to walk off from the rest of the group, presumably in the direction of his compass.

“Where are you going? Hey! Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!” Steve shouted at him before he turned around and stopped in his tracks. “Eddie’s still a wanted man. We can’t just go for a hike in the woods.”

“This little steel capsule might be the key to saving both Max and Eddie,” Dustin said, holding up his compass. “What say you, Eddie the Banished?”

Everyone turned to Eddie as he pondered his decision. “I say you’re asking me to follow you into Mordor, which if I’m totally straight with you, I think is a really bad idea. But, uh, the Shire… the Shire is burning.”

Dustin hopped up and down with glee and a grin plastered on his face, presumably understanding Eddie’s reference that most people in the circle had missed.

Eddie stood back up before walking over to Dustin. “So Mordor it is.”

As everyone began following Dustin through the woods once again as they grabbed the groceries they’d brought, Steve turned to Kate and whispered ever so softly, “What is Mordor?”

Kate stifled a laugh as Eddie turned back to grab the rest of the groceries they’d bought him.

“Get your stuff, dude. Let’s go.”

That commenced the new objective: find the gate.

next chapter

taglist:

my masterlist

season one:

the prologue 1: should i stay or should i go? 2: goodbye barb 3: off with their heads! 4: baby brother 5: ice-capped fire 6: the beginning of the end 7: hurry... 8: patient, for you.

season two:

in progress!

season three:

coming soon!

season four:

coming soon!

season five:

coming soon!

It’s hot.

The body behind you shifts, inching closer until his bare chest is pressed fully against your back, his skin is warm, too warm in fact. A content sigh escapes his lips as his arm tightens around your waist, his fingers splay across your stomach like he’s trying to hold you there even in sleep. You wake slowly, blinking up at the ceiling, your skin sticky with sweat, sleep and him. Half dazed, you tilt your head towards Steve’s alarm cloak.

00:42

“Shit.” You stumble from the bed, waking the slumbering boy.

“Babe?” His voice is rough with sleep, and you turn to find him rubbing his eyes, already reaching for the lamp.

“I’m late,” you mutter, searching the floor for your clothes. “It’s late, I should’ve left hours ago. I can’t see anything.”

The soft lamp light clicks on. Steve is propped up against the headboard now, the blankets and sheets pool around his waist, his hair sticking up in every direction, lips parted in that dazed, just-woke-up look you secretly find adorable.

“Thanks.” You glance over at him, flushed, and in a hurry.

“No, thank you,” he smirks, his gaze scanning over your naked body when you bend over to pick up your scattered clothes. “You look amazing like this.”

“Perv,” you roll your eyes and playfully toss his shirt into his face. He catches it, laughing, watching as you shimmy into your jeans, moving with urgency.

Steve swings his legs over his side of the bed, the wooden floor creaking faintly as he stands. He bends to scoop up his gray sweatpants from where he tossed them hours ago, tugging them on with the same ease he peeled them off with. His hand closes around his car keys on the dresser.

“Come on, I’ll drive you,” he says, like it’s not even a question, like it’s decided.

“I rode my bike here.” You reply, tugging on your jacket.

“And?” He looks at you, eyebrows knitting together like that changes anything. “I’m not letting you ride home alone in the middle of the night.”

“Letting me?” You arch an eyebrows, crossing his room to stand in front of him. The corner of your mouth lifts into a slight smirk, your fingers gently toying with the drawstring of his sweats. “Careful, Harrington… People might start thinking that you care.”

“Care? About you?” Steve lets out a short breath, a mix between a scoff and laugh, but there’s a tension behind it. “Come on, we said casual, no feelings… Right?”

You swallow the lump in your throat, nodding at his words.

He’s not wrong, you were the one who said that. No strings, no messy complications, most importantly no heartache.

Or so you thought.

“Right,” you echo, your tone a little too sharp for your liking. “And since it’s so casual, I’ll be riding my bike home.”

You sling your bag over your shoulder in one motion, hoping you can move fast enough so he didn’t notice the flicker of emotion in your voice. Your boots thud softly against the staircase as you head for the front door.

His house is quiet, it always is. His parents gone again, off at another one of his dad’s conferences. Not that they’re ever really there.

Just as your hand reaches for the doorknob, you hear his voice behind you, softer now.

“Wait…”

You glance back, Steve’s standing at the bottom of his stairs in the dim light, hair messy, chest bare, sweatpants hanging low on his hips.

“Please,” he says, stepping closer to you, his hands sliding around your waist, the keys still clutched loosely in his right hand. “Just let me drive you home.”

“I live down the street, Steve. It’s Hawkins, nothing bad happens here.” You lean back in his embrace, your hands resting against his muscular chest, staring up into his eyes.

“Fine, fine, fine.” He blows out a frustrated breath, running a hand through his already wild hair, looking away. “Can you just… call me? So I know you got home safe?”

You pause for a moment, Steve looking anywhere but at you when he says those words.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at school,” you say instead, standing on your toes to press a kiss to his cheek.

But before you can pull away, his arms wrap tighter around your waist and Steve leans down to kiss you. One of his hands slides up, threading into your hair at the nape of your neck, gently guiding your head as he tilts it just right to deepen the kiss. Both your mouths part simultaneously, familiar, allowing his tongue to slide in, languidly stroking against your own.

His other arm tightens around you, pressing your bodies flush together, you let out a quiet moan before you can stop it.

When he finally pulls back, it’s only just.

His lips hover, his forehead drops to yours, and for a long second, neither of you move, just catching breath that has been stolen by a kiss that didn’t feel too casual.

“Goodnight, Steve.”

The night air is crisp and has more than a slight chill to it as you pedal through the quiet, dark streets of Hawkins, your tires crunching over loose gravel the only sound in the sleepy town.

“Shit.” Both Jonathan’s and your mom’s cars are parked at the front of your home. The porch light has been purposely left on for you, most likely by your younger brother, aware that you’re not in the safety of your bedroom.

You slip through the front door as quietly as possible, but the rusted hinges betray you, groaning loud enough to make you wince. You pause, waiting, listening.

The house is dark and silent as you continue your path down the hallway, tiptoeing past your younger brother’s rooms, past your mother’s.

Your door clicks softly closed behind you, with your back against the door, you let out a small breath, you touch your lips, still tingling from Steve Harrington’s kiss.

You wearily enter the kitchen, trying to act casual when you notice Jonathan standing by the counter, carefully stirring scrambled eggs in a pan, his eyes darting to yours, narrowing slightly. The shower running in the background gives you both privacy from your mother for his upcoming interrogation.

“So,” he says breaking the silence you were all too eager for. “Where were you last night?”

“Does it really matter?” You sigh dismissively, grabbing a glass from the cupboard, filling it with orange juice.

“I got home at midnight and your bike wasn’t outside, you weren’t in your room.”

You pause for just a second, then take a sip of your juice, your eyes carefully avoiding his. From the corner of your eye, you see him glance at the stove, jaw tightening like he’s trying to keep something back before turning back to you.

“You know Harrington’s a piece of shit, right?” He says all knowing, his voice without judgement. “He’s not good for you, he’s just using you. I’ve seen him and Nancy at school.”

You don’t flinch, you act like it doesn’t bother you.

“I’m not you, Jonathan. I don’t care about Nancy Wheeler.” You tell him. You tell him the lie you tell yourself, hoping if you say it enough it will come true. “And maybe I’m the one using him, he’s hot, he’s easy, he doesn’t ask questions. Did you ever think about that?”

The bathroom door creaks open, and your mom steps out ready for work, muttering to herself about her late shift and car keys she can never seem to find.

The conversation between you and Jonathan is finished for now. You slip out of the kitchen without a word, heading down the hall toward Will’s room to wake him for school.

“Will! Time to get up, baby.” You frown when you open the door to Will’s unmade bed, but there’s no sign of your baby brother in his room.

Your mom walks past just a moment later, clearly with the same plan in mind, only to stop short when she sees the empty bed.

“He came home last night, right?” Your mom follows you as you walk back into the kitchen about to ask Jonathan the same question. “Did he come home or not?”

“I don’t know, I was working, Erik asked me to cover a shift.” Jonathan justifies his absence to their mother, talking about the extra cash they sometimes desperately needed.

“You don’t know?” Joyce snaps before turning to you. “And what about you?”

Your eyes dart to Jonathan’s.

“I… I don’t know. I was out,” you mumble, the words barely above a whisper, a heaviness of guilt begins to creep up and settle into your chest.

“He was at the Wheelers all day, he probably just slept over.” Jonathan offers quickly. Your eye’s flicker gratefully at him, but the guilt is still lingering.

“What is wrong with you two? I can’t believe you two sometimes.” Joyce shakes her head as she grabs the phone off the wall. You anxiously play with the sleeve of your sweater, waiting for confirmation that Will just slept over Mike’s.

“You know, I think he might’ve just left early for school, thank you very much.” You and Jonathan listen on as your mom lies to Mrs Wheeler.

You sat up quickly, rubbing one of your eyes as you pushed the covers off of yourself, immediately cringing at the cold air of the room. You rolled out of the bed, glancing around the room in the light of day, and immediately zeroing in on clothing that had been laid out for you at the end of the bed. When had someone snuck in here to do that? You hadn't heard anyone, and obviously they had been stealthy about it since the door had that obnoxious squeak if opened too wide. It made you shudder, it made you pull on the jeans quickly in case someone, whoever it may be, could see you standing there half naked.

You opted to keep your sweater on, but pulled the plaid shirt on over it, buttoning it. Your boots were exactly where you'd left them the night before, a pair of fake leather designer numbers you'd gotten second-hand, not suitable at all for outdoor chores, but truthfully you had no idea what Karen was going to have you doing today, so you pulled them on anyway. The jeans you'd been given were a bit too long and the boots helped keep you from tripping over them on your way downstairs.

The kitchen was alive with activity when you arrived. Roy was seated at the head of the table, an empty chair to his left. Beside that were two little girls, faces the same with clothes to match. More men than you'd seen the night before were taking up most of the rest of the table, plates empty already or nearly so.

“Ah,” Roy boomed, silencing all of the other conversations happening around him, and drawing Karen's attention to you from where she stood at the stove, fixing two plates, presumably for the little girls. “Look who finally decided to join us. Good morning, darlin'.”

You tried to keep the scowl off your face as every single person at the table looked toward you. Fiddling with the sleeve of the flannel you'd been given, you shrugged a shoulder. “Couldn't set an alarm,” you said. “Phone's dead, remember?” Roy smirked, opening his mouth to retort, but you kept going. “If I can just use your landline, I'd be out of your hair for good.”

Without waiting for permission, you stepped into the kitchen and headed for the phone hanging on the wall. Before you'd even taken three steps, Roy looked at the young man seated at his right hand. At the look, he was up, his chair skidding back a little on the tile floor with the speed at which he'd risen. He beat you to the phone, clapping his hand down onto the receiver and resting his other hand on the butt of the gun in his thigh holster—a fucking gun.

“I'd rethink touchin' without askin', sweetheart,” he said, and Roy stood up behind him, clearing his throat. The younger man looked back at Roy but made no move to retreat, at least until Roy cleared his throat again.

“That's enough, Gator. I think she gets it,” he said, and even as you watched, you saw the young man—Gator, apparently—lose the edge of confidence he'd had in his expression. It melted away to one of admonishment; he lowered his eyes, deferring to Roy's decree, and stepped away from the phone, returning to his seat, the legs of the chair scraping as he pulled it back to the table.

Your cheeks were hot, you could feel them, enough pairs of eyes on you that you felt utterly exposed even though you were dressed in layers. As you watched the scene at the table, Karen walked over calmly, as though nothing had happened, and put the identical plates down in front of her girls. Gently, she smoothed her hand over their pigtails, one then the next, before she sat down beside them and began eating her own meal, the last one to get any food even though she had surely been the first one to rise. Business as usual, despite the outburst.

Your eyes drifted over the others at the table, all of them either eating or preparing to get up and go about their daily business, but finally your gaze settled on Roy.

“You missed breakfast, young lady,” he said, and the phrase made you lose what appetite you did have after a long, cold night. “If Karen thinks there's enough time before you all get started today, you can make a plate, otherwise...”

“There isn't,” Karen said, even though she had barely begun eating herself, and she'd left a stack of pancakes and half a pan of eggs on the stove. “Tomorrow, wake up on time.”

“I want to call my parents,” you said, deciding to forget about the towtruck.

“No need,” Roy said. “I spoke to them this morning.”

“Excuse me?” you said, legitimately shocked. “When?”

“When you were upstairs sleeping in,” Roy said, sitting back down at the table and picking up his coffee mug, taking a long sip. Beside him, you saw Gator reach for his as well, taking just as long a draught. You stared daggers at the back of Gator's head, only because you didn't think Roy would take too kindly to you killing him with your eyes.

“Stick to Karen today,” Roy continued, lifting his napkin from his lap and wiping his mouth, before tossing it onto the table; it landed partly on Karen's plate, but she only moved the cloth off of her food without complaint or comment. “She'll show you the ropes.”

“But what about my parents?” you pushed, stepping closer. Gator shifted his chair, turning it just enough that he could easily intercept you if you approached Roy too quickly. “I want to talk to them.”

“I already explained your predicament,” Roy said, not even looking at you as he spoke. “They were more than grateful that I'm putting you up for the time being. As a matter of fact, when I explained that I was the sheriff here and they learned that you'd gone and dropped out of school—” Your mouth dropped open, because how did he find that out? “—they thought it might be... beneficial that you get some other kind of education. So how's about that?” He glanced up at you. “Close that mouth, darlin', around here that looks like an invitation.”

You snapped your mouth shut as a few of the other men snickered. Gator only looked from you to Roy, who nodded his head toward his staff (Were they here of their own free will? you wondered), and the crowd around the table dispersed except for the twin girls, Gator, and Karen.

Roy looked down at Gator, still seated, and as soon as their eyes met, Roy's gaze angled down his nose at the younger man, Gator stood, back ramrod straight, quite nearly at attention. “Sir.”

“You head on down to the station,” Roy said, gesturing to Gator with his chin. “I'll be up there soon, just gotta make sure our little miss had a good evening last night.”

Gator hesitated, something you could tell just by looking pained him to do—disobeying orders from the sheriff didn't seem high on most people's lists. “Sir,” he said again, though this time his tone was slightly imploring. “I thought you might want to ride together?” It pitched up at the end, a question, but he cleared his throat, making it seem less desperate.

Roy leveled Gator with a look. “I have business here, boy, I just told you that. Get.”

Gator just mumbled “Sir” for the third time, hurried around the table, and left the room. You heard him mount the stairs quickly, and during the few moments of quiet while he presumably readied himself for the day, Roy looked back at you.

“Now, I know you're a bit touchy after—” he started, but you interrupted, because touchy wasn't what you were, and if it was, you had every right to be.

“I want to speak to my parents,” you said. “You say you spoke to them already, but I need to talk to them. I need to explain about school—how did you even know about that?”

Roy only smiled, the expression not reaching his eyes. “I'm the sheriff, darlin'. I know half the damn bureaucracy in this state, and every single one'a them is in my pocket. Ain't that far of a stretch that I can learn any damn thing I need to.”

You stared him down, not speaking for long enough that Gator was thumping his way back down the stairs. Out of your periphery, you saw him pause at the kitchen door, but neither Roy nor Karen reacted to him. One of the little girls waved to him and whispered “Bye, Gator.” He smiled and waved back, then went on his way, slamming the front door as he left the house.

“So what, you're kidnapping me?”

Karen's head snapped up at that, and Roy's lips flattened into a thin line.

“Now, I'd be careful about levelin' accusations in this house,” he said.

“What is this, then?” you asked, incredulous. “I'm not allowed to call my parents, you won't let me charge my phone, you researched me, and at this point I'm fairly sure you won't let anyone give me a ride back to get my car, so... what am I missing here, Sheriff? Are you above the law?”

“I am the law,” Roy said, and you didn't miss the way his chest puffed out a bit when he said it, like he really, truly believed it. “And your car is on its way here as we speak. I'm having it towed here for you, so we can figure out what's wrong with it and get it fixed for you.”

Despite everything in you telling you not to hope, a small glimmer sparked to life in your chest. Did that mean he would let you drive out of this hellhole?

“We'll need another good vehicle for the winter,” Roy concluded.

And just like that, the warm bubble in your chest popped.