effie mae

Because another rumour—again, untrue—came only two weeks later. About a different guy. One who had a girlfriend. Apparently you had given him a blowjob behind the bike sheds. You hadn’t but that didn’t matter. You weren’t sure if Sarah was also behind the rumour but you wouldn’t have been surprised. People started to whisper about you as you walked by. Not only were you a slut, but also a homewrecker. You pretended as though you didn’t care. Like the word ‘slut’ hadn’t crept beneath your very skin and refused to leave.

The word had followed you through all of your junior year and into your senior year. You became numb to it at some point, rolling your eyes instead of bursting into tears. Guys treated you differently, girls were wary of you.

Had your best friend Robin Buckley not been by your side during your later high school years—you may have lost your mind. Whispers followed you wherever you went. You avoided guys like the plague. You didn’t want to draw any more attention to yourself, plus the guys who were interested in you were only really interested in you for one thing. You told yourself that you only had a few more months until you graduated and you could finally leave this small minded town where people still believed a rumour from when you were sixteen.

But then the earthquake happened and Hawkins was put under a strict quarantine. No one could leave. You graduated without knowing when you would be able to go to Smith College with Robin. And you were stuck with those same damn labels hanging over your head.

It had become very apparent to you that Robin was trying to set you up with her friend Steve. She had been dropping hint after not so subtle hint. It was amusing and even you could admit—Steve Harrington was incredibly attractive, funny and on the occasions that you had hung out with him (through Robin), you couldn’t deny that fluttering feeling you got in the pit of your stomach when he’d walk into the room. 

And maybe—just maybe—you were beginning to come around to the idea.

”C’mon,” Robin practically pleads as she flops down onto your bed dramatically. “Steve’s great! Really. Not a creep. Not a murderer. He thinks you’re pretty, he—”

You blink several times, turning to look at Robin with raised brow and a face that was starting to feel a little hot.

”He said that?” You ask her, trying to appear casual but the hopeful tone of your voice sounded anything but. 

“He did,” Robin confirms in a sing-song voice, a bright smile on her face. “His exact words were ‘she’s really, really pretty’. He also that you were smart and kind and—”

”Okay, okay,” you interject, your face now burning as you throw a sweatshirt at Robin to shut her up—which was something you hadn’t been able to master in over ten years of friendship. “I get it.”

Robin sits up, her blue eyes bright and hopeful. “So, will you do it? Please? Will you give him a chance? Just one? Please?”

You mull it over, worrying your bottom lip between your teeth before you look back at Robin. 

Having been your best friend for as long as she has, Robin already knew exactly why you were hesitating.

”You know he doesn’t care about what people say about you, right?” Robin asks you quietly, fixing you with a rarely seen serious expression. “He knows it isn’t true and even if it had been true—he still wouldn’t care.”

You knew—deep down—that she was right. You knew a guy like Steve—kind, caring, incredibly considerate—genuiely did not care what people said about you. You knew he wasn’t the kind of judge nor was he the type of guy who tied your worth to how many people you had or hadn’t slept with. But it didn’t stop you from caring. It didn’t stop your stomach from turning uncomfortably.

“He doesn’t care,” Robin repeats gently. “Trust me.”

And because she was your best friend, you did. And you went on a date with Steve Harrington the very next day.

And unfortunately for you—it had been the perfect first date. 

You didn’t even wait for a second date to kiss him.

And Steve Harrington quietly eased his way into your life like he had always been there.

“You two are sickening,” Robin tells you both fondly as you sit beside Steve in the booth at Sally’s diner, his arm slung around your shoulders while you trace your fingertip over his hand gently. You had only been dating a few weeks and you were at the point in your relationship where you were almost constantly touching one another. Robin had thought it was sweet at first, seemingly pleased that her match making had been successful but now? Now she thought you were both incredibly annoying.

”Oh, you love it really Buckley,” Steve grins, pressing a kiss to your cheek before he leans over to grab his mug of coffee. 

“I do not,” Robin counters with a roll of her eyes. “You two are disgusting. I practically have the word ‘third wheel’ tattooed on my forehead.”

Steve snorts into his coffee while you manage a faint smile. 

You were half paying attention to the conversation because the table directly behind Robin had grabbed your attention.

It wasn’t very often you saw people who had been to high school with you, mostly because you tended to keep to yourself but you would recognise those faces anywhere. Because they had been some of the ones behind the whispers. Because they had been the reason why high school had been so fucking awful for you. 

You try to act natural, try to keep up with the conversation that was flowing between Robin and Steve but your heart was beating fast—too fast. Your hands felt clammy and there was a faint ringing in your ears. You squeeze Steve’s hand once to help ground yourself before you get to your feet. 

“M‘just—I’m just going to go to the bathroom,” you tell both Robin and Steve. 

“Wait, are you ok—”

You don’t let Robin finish her sentence. Instead, you make a beeline to the diner’s bathroom, making sure not to pass by the table full of Hawkins High alumni.

The diner’s bathroom was empty and you breathed out a sigh of relief, resting your palms against the cool countertop and allowing yourself a few moments to calm down. You had to remind yourself that you were no longer in high school. That the rumours about you hadn’t even been true, that anyone who still cared about them now were childish and not worth your time. But what you had come to realise was that, though you had become numb to it, though you had rolled your eyes when people whispered about you—you still cared. You really fucking cared and you wished you didn’t.

You feel your traitorous eyes sting, just a little and you curse yourself for being so sensitive. You keep trying to tell yourself that it didn’t matter, that it wasn’t true. That you were more than what people thought you were. 

You take another deep breath, turning on the tap so you could splash some cold water on your face. But just as you cup your hands under the running water—the bathroom door opens. Your stomach drops and you feel a sense of panic that seems to seep into every nerve in your body and without even looking up, you know exactly who had just walked in. 

Lucy—or maybe it was Lily, you weren’t too sure—says your name in a sweet greeting that felt laced with poison.

“Hey! I haven’t seen you in such a long time! How have you been?” she asks, smiling kindly at you and you weren’t entirely sure whether or not she was being genuinely kind or simply pretending. It was hard to be sure since Lucy had been the girlfriend of the guy whose dick you had apparently sucked behind the bike shed all those years ago. They had broken up shortly after and she had blamed you for it. And then, she had gleefully joined in with all the slut shaming you had experienced.

But now Lucy was smiling at you like it was all forgotten and it was—a little confusing.

You blink, unsure whether or not it was some sort of trap. You try to think of a response, of something—anything—to say but your mind has gone blank. Your fingers curl against the countertop. The tap continues to run.

Lucy’s smile falters, just a little, when you say nothing. She sighs and stands at the basin beside yours, looking at your reflection in the mirror and smiling once again.

“I know you, um, probably don’t want to talk to me after everything I said about you back in high school,” she begins, choosing her words carefully. “But I—I just wanted you to know that—that I think about it a lot and I’m—I’m really sorry.”

You hadn’t been expecting that. Your eyes widen and you look back at her, shock apparently evident on your face as she laughs nervously.

“I know, I know sorry isn’t enough and it won’t ever be enough for those things I said. But—I was a teenager, you know and I was stupid and angry and I projected all my anger onto you instead of Paul and I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Oh,” you say finally because you didn’t know what else to say. You certainly weren’t going to forgive her because quite frankly, you didn’t want to but you appreciated her apologising all the same. It was better than the ones who pretended like it had never happened. “Well um, thank you. I—”

“—I mean, I should not have taken it out on you. I should have taken it out on Paul instead because he was the one who cheated—”

“—he didn’t cheat though,” you interject before you could stop yourself. “We never did anything. Someone made it up. I didn’t—”

Lucy laughs and the sound makes your gut churn uncomfortably.

“—oh c’mon,” she says, smiling as though this was some kind of joke. “I know you slept around a little in high school, it’s cool! It’s water under the bridge now—”

“—but I didn’t,” you say, your hands beginning to shake as you turn to look at her properly. “I was a virgin until, like senior prom—”

The way she laughs even harder at that makes your face burn with shame.

“I find that very hard to believe,” Lucy simpers.

You open your mouth to respond—or snap at her, or burst into tears, you weren’t sure yet—when the bathroom door slams open.

And when you turn, you see Steve Harrington standing in the doorway.

“This is the ladies,” Lucy tells him. “You can’t be in here—”

“Don’t care,” Steve interjects, his eyes focused solely on you as he closes the door behind him.

You blink a few times to try and stop the tears that were threatening to fall before Steve notices. But it was too late—because of course Steve noticed.

He’s at your side in seconds, palms resting on your shoulders and squeezing gently.

“You okay?” He asks. “You were gone for a while and Robin said—”

He stops himself and glances over at Lucy before looking back at you and you understand immediately what Robin had told him. You understand why it had been Steve who had come to check on you and not Robin.

“We were just catching up!” Lucy explains brightly. “We um, we knew each other in high school, didn’t we?”

Your eyes flicker down to the bathroom floor and you simply hum in acknowledgement.

Both Steve’s hands squeeze your shoulder once, twice—and it’s enough to make you look at him. You find that he’s looking at you with those honeyed brown eyes that make your body feel warm. Make your shoulders relax and your breathing even.

“Oh,” Lucy says in sudden understanding, stepping away from you and Steve as she steps towards the door. “I didn’t realise you two were—um, but that makes sense, I guess.”

You watch her leave, wishing that you didn’t understand what she meant by that. But you did. You understood that she wasn’t surprised that former ‘King Steve’ had ended up with Hawkins High’s resident slut.

“You okay?” Steve asks the moment you two were alone, his hands moving down your arms—causing a trail of goosebumps along your skin in their way—before he takes your hands and squeezes them gently. “Robin told me she was the girl who—”

“—she didn’t believe me,” you tell him quietly. “I tried to tell her that nothing ever happened between me and her boyfriend and sh—she didn’t believe me.”

“Baby, I’m—”

“—but you believe me, right?” You ask before you could stop yourself. You couldn’t help it. You hate yourself a little for second guessing him but the doubt was creeping in. And that word that still lived beneath your skin was starting to itch.

But the way Steve looks at you—almost offended that you would even ask such a question—tells you everything before he even opens his mouth.

“Without a doubt,” Steve vehemently states, his jaw tense but his touch remaining soft. “Of course I believe you, baby. I’m sorry that you even had to ask that question.”

You nod, letting out a breath that you hadn’t realised that you had been holding before your hands tentatively reach towards the front of his shirt. Just to hold him.

Steve’s eyes soften as he looks at you. He lifts one of his hands to cup your face gently, his touch so gentle and so Steve that you couldn’t help but look at him.

“Hey,” he says in a voice so soft and gentle that it smoothes over you like a calming balm. “I’m sorry she didn’t believe you, baby. I really am. It’s fucking bullshit nobody believed you back then and it’s bullshit they don’t believe you know. But you know, what? You know the truth. Robin knows the truth. I know the truth. The people who love you, who care for you, know the truth. Everyone else? Fuck ‘em.”

You let out a small, watery laugh, looking at Steve as you try fighting back a smile.

“There she is,” Steve murmurs, both hands now cupping your face gently as he wipes away some of the tears that had escaped without your permission. “Keep smilin’ like that, baby. And don’t let anyone try and take that beautiful smile away from you again, you hear me?” 

You sniffle before you nod, managing a weak smile. “I hear you,” you whisper back. “Thank you, Steve.”

“That’s Stevie to you,” Steve says, smiling back at you before he leans in to place a fierce kiss to your forehead. “Only you.”

You pull away enough to look at him with a skeptical look on your face. “But Robin calls you that too.”

“Yeah but—as a joke,” Steve explains, thumb still brushing over your cheek gently. “She doesn’t have my expressed permission to call me that, only you do.”

“That makes me feel special,” you say, unable to stop yourself from smiling now.

“Yeah,” Steve murmurs, his eyes dropping down to your lips. “You’re pretty fucking special.”

It was you who leaned in first, your fingers curling into his shirt as you pressed your lips against his. Steve almost instantly smiles against your lips before he melts into the kiss. His arms encircling your waist as your lips move against each other in a dance that was beginning to feel familiar. You barely even remember you were in a bathroom in a diner as Steve tugs you even closer by your belt loops.

You could have stayed there for much, much longer, if the bathroom door hadn't banged open again.

“Ugh! Seriously you two?”

You pull apart from Steve at the sound of Robin’s voice. Your face feels hot and Steve’s ears are red—though, his swollen lips twitch as if he’s trying not to smile.

“Can’t help it,” Steve grins, his arms still around you and a dopey sort of smile spreading across his face. “Your match making skills are just too good, Buckley.”

And as you lean your head against Steve’s shoulder—you couldn’t help but agree.

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mooney rambles: can’t believe the 2k special week is actually over! i was so worried i wasn’t going to stick to it but somehow i did! once again—thank you for 2k followers, i’m already on 2.8k (nearly 2.9k wtf) and i’m like 🥹🥹 thank you for the support, it means the world because i fucking love writing and i hope i never stop loving it

You got hit.

Steve got stung.

Ro saved him while you led Tommy off-course, wearing Marvel’s jacket like a decoy target in human form.

Tracker jackers swarmed the whole goddamn pack.

Glimmer died.

Steve lost his mind.

Ro found him.

…and Jonathan stood there in the middle of the square with a sack of onions in one hand and stale coffee on his breath while every person in a ten-foot radius collectively lost their absolute fucking shit.

He can still hear it.

The gasps. The shouting. Somebody dropping a glass bottle that broke all over the pavement and nobody even looking down. The old woman near the flower buckets who’d clapped both hands over her mouth so hard Jonathan thought she was going to bruise herself. The butcher yelling, “NO, NO, NO, KID, GET UP—GET UP!” at the screen like Steve could hear him. Some old man by the newspaper stand muttering, “That girl is smarter than all of ’em,” in a tone so awed it sounded almost religious.

Jonathan exhales hard.

The road bends.

Rain keeps coming.

And as suddenly as the thought appears, it hits him like a brick.

The bakery.

“Oh, shit.”

His hands tighten on the wheel.

“Oh fuck me—”

Because he was supposed to stop there first.

That had been the plan.

Market, then bakery, then home, then get Will, then take Will to Steve’s, then circle back and make sure Burdock had what he needed before Joyce left for work.

That was the plan.

Instead he got hijacked by a live broadcast of absolute arena psychosis and now he’s halfway home with a trunk full of damp groceries and his brain full of tracker jacker venom by proxy.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake—” He slaps the heel of one hand lightly against the wheel, furious at himself, and the old car gives one unhappy little shudder as he takes the next turn too fast.

Water sprays up in white sheets on either side. The tires screech. The whole car hydroplanes… just enough to make his stomach drop through the floorboard.

Jonathan swears and jerks it straight again, heart pounding.

“Okay,” he mutters to himself, breathing hard. “Okay, great. Great. Fantastic. Love that. Real smooth, Byers.”

He should just go home first.

That would be the practical thing.

Get Will. Get the groceries inside. Make sure Burdock’s all right. Then go back.

Except now he cannot stop thinking about the bakery. About the fact that if there was ever a moment to push, it’s now. While everybody’s rattled. While what happened is still fresh enough to burn in people’s heads. While your face is still on every television in the country, half-feral and wounded and still fighting.

Jonathan swallows hard.

Because he needs to see what Parker’s doing.

That’s the truth of it.

Not Anjelica. Fuck Anjelica.

He already knows what that witch is doing.

She’ll be behind the counter with her spine straight and her hands cool and her face composed and her voice low and reasonable and all the while she’ll be using every excuse in the world to do exactly what she always does: protect the business in theory while protecting herself in practice.

But Parker…

Jonathan’s jaw tightens.

Parker is harder.

Parker is… annoying, frankly. Because he would actually be easier to hate if he were emptier. If he were actually cold all the way through. If he were truly apathetic. If he didn’t have that buried, godawful heart buried under all that bitterness and all that old grief and all that calloused bullshit Anjelica has spent years packing down around him like wet cement.

Because apathy has never looked right on Parker Everdeen.

Not really.

That’s the thing Jonathan has always held against him… and for him… at the same time.

The fact that Parker cares is precisely why he’s been such a bastard to you.

A person who feels nothing doesn’t spend that much energy resenting one human being.

A person who feels nothing doesn’t keep circling the same old wound until it becomes his whole religion.

A person who feels nothing doesn’t bring bread to Steve Harrington’s house at night and then act like it means nothing.

He grips the wheel and stares through the rain-blurred windshield while the road unwinds back toward town.

Because there had been a stretch there, once.

When Parker had softened.

Jonathan remembers it. You remember it too, even if you don’t talk about it much. Back when you were little enough to still think every version of love could be coaxed back if you just kept trying hard enough.

Eight. Nine. Ten.

There had been a window of time when Parker actually tried.

He’d sat beside you on the bakery floor while your father kneaded dough at dawn. He’d carried flour sacks bigger than his own torso like they were all badges of honor. He’d let you trail after him. Had even smiled about it sometimes. Had taken your hand crossing the street. Had tucked a blanket around your shoulders once when you fell asleep in a booth after closing and your father had looked so tired Jonathan thought he might cry.

There had been heart in him then.

There had been.

…and then Peeta Everdeen died on the floor.

Jonathan’s throat tightens. He doesn’t let himself linger there long… but the memory comes anyway because it always does when Parker’s involved.

Your father on the ground.

You, sobbing. Anjelica, stunned. Parker, white-faced and frozen. Jonathan there because of course he was there, because where else would he have been? You were his best friend in the world and he’d lived half his life in and out of that bakery like it was a second house.

And Peeta—God, Peeta had barely gotten the words out through the pain in his chest before the pain took the rest.

I love you. To you.

Then look after her. To Parker.

…and that was it.

That was all.

Not because he did not love Parker, too. Jonathan knows that. He knows it in his bones. Knows it the way he knows his mother’s face and Will’s laugh and the exact sound rain makes on the Byers’ roof in springtime. Peeta Everdeen adored both his children. Loved and adored them.

But grief is not logical, and narcissists love a vacuum.

Anjelica took those last words and turned them into a blade.

He told her he loved her. Not you. Not me. Her.

Jonathan’s seen it happen in real time over the years since. The way one poisoned idea, repeated long enough and gently enough, under the guise of injury instead of cruelty… becomes foundation. The way that Parker stopped leaning toward you and started leaning away. The way he rebuilt every wall he had briefly set down after your father spent years trying to show him you were not the grave his mother died in.

The rain gets harder.

Jonathan barely notices.

Because that part of it all — Anjelica and Parker and the whole dead rotten architecture of the Everdeen grief… is one of the reasons he can never quite bring himself to hate Parker cleanly.

Lonnie Byers had been loud with it.

Lonnie had used fists made of words and doors and liquor and voice.

Anjelica, from what Jonathan’s watched over all these years… doesn’t need volume. She knows how to make someone feel guilty without ever sounding cruel. She knows how to make silence itself do the punishing, knows how to stand in a room and let everyone else feel like the unreasonable one.

And Parker…? Parker had been ten years old when your mother died. Then barely eighteen when your father dropped dead in front of him.

He never had a fucking chance.

Jonathan still wants to punch him sometimes.

But he knows what it is to grow up under somebody’s distortion.

That knowledge is the only thing that has ever kept him from wringing Parker Everdeen’s neck with his bare hands.

Everlark Bakery appears through the rainfall a minute later, all warm window light and fogged glass and that familiar painted sign that somehow still looks gentle even on mornings like this.

Jonathan pulls in too fast.

Brakes hard.

The car jolts.

He kills the engine and then sits there for one second, both hands still on the wheel, chest moving fast. Then he grabs the hood of his jacket, throws it up over his hair, and gets out.

Rain immediately slaps cold against his jeans. He hunches into it, crossing the lot at a half-run, boots splashing through shallow puddles — then yanks open the bakery door hard enough to make the bell over it jangle too brightly.

Warmth hits him first. Then freshly baked bread. Then television noise.

And there he is.

Parker.

Standing near the front of the bakery with both arms crossed so tightly over his chest it almost looks painful, staring up at the mounted television in the corner like he’s trying to burn a hole through it with his eyes.

When the bell rings, Parker’s head snaps toward the door.

Those bright blue eyes hit Jonathan’s face immediately.

For a second neither of them says anything.

Jonathan pulls his hood down.

Parker just stares…

And behind the counter, Anjelica is exactly where Jonathan knew she would be — setting out fresh trays with those calm, precise movements of hers, her long near-black hair pulled back now, not a single gesture wasted. She also glances up, but only for a second. Just enough to acknowledge his existence before going back to arranging pastries with the effortlessly cool detachment of someone pretending this morning is ordinary.

It’s not ordinary.

The television flickers.

The screen cuts through brief arena shots — Thresh moving like a shadow through the grasslands, Foxface crouched at the stream, Steve barely visible beneath leaves and brush while little Ro presses chewed herbs against one of the stings on his arm.

Parker’s eyes drag back to the screen like they are attached by wire.

Jonathan takes that in.

And something in his chest goes tight and hot all at once.

Because there it is.

The thing Anjelica does not have.

Parker is worried.

Not politely concerned. Not grim in the abstract. Not just watching because the television is on.

Worried.

It’s written all over him in the way that his jaw is too tight. In the way his eyes keep going glassy without his permission. In the fact that he has not moved from that spot even though there’s dough that needs turning and ovens that need checking and a morning rush that should already be starting.

Jonathan clocks all of it in a blink.

He also clocks Anjelica’s stillness.

She’s not uncaring in a cartoon-villain way. That would almost be easier. No, hers is worse than that. Hers is the kind of restraint that suggests she sees no use in panic. As if love is inefficient once events are already in motion. As if feeling too much about a thing after the fact is simply bad management.

Jonathan hates her instantly all over again.

He cuts right to it. “You both saw?”

Parker still doesn’t answer. His eyes remain fixed on the TV, waiting for your image to reappear — even while his whole body seems to pull more tightly inward around the question.

Anjelica answers instead.

“Hard to miss,” she says mildly.

Jonathan just looks at her for a moment. The television light flickers across her sharp, sunken cheekbones, cool and silver-blue. Somewhere behind him rain pelts the tall windows. The whole bakery smells like sugar and yeast and a brewing storm.

He doesn’t bother pretending he’s here for anything except exactly what he came for. “We need to send more.”

Anjelica doesn’t look surprised.

That almost makes it worse.

Her hands keep moving over the tray in front of her as if he’d merely asked about flour inventory instead of your life.

“We’ve already sent enough this week to remind the Capitol who she is,” she says coolly. “And who this business is.”

Jonathan actually lets out a short incredulous laugh.

Enough.

That word almost takes him out at the knees.

“Enough?” he repeats icily.

Now Parker looks over.

Not at Anjelica.

At Jonathan.

Anjelica folds a towel with maddening care. “The point of these gestures is not volume. It’s visibility.”

Jonathan stares at her.

Then at Parker.

Then back at her.

“Visibility,” he repeats flatly. “Right. Cool. Cool, that’s great. Meanwhile your stepdaughter is limping through the woods with a cut in her leg and Steve Harrington’s been half out of his fucking mind since sunrise.”

“She’s alive.”

“So far.”

A beat.

Then another.

Anjelica finally sets the towel down and looks at him fully. She never raises her voice. Never needs to…

“That panic in your tone,” she says, “isn’t helping anyone.”

Jonathan can’t even help the smile that comes then, even though there’s no humor in it.

“No?”

“No.”

His eyes flash. “Because from where I’m standing, sitting here acting like this is a bookkeeping problem isn’t doing much either.”

The silence that follows that is precise.

It slices clean.

Parker’s shoulders tense.

Anjelica’s eyes narrow just slightly — not enough for anyone who doesn’t know how to look for it. But Jonathan knows how to look for it.

“You’re upset,” she says softly, tone wry. “I understand that.”

God.

Goddamn, she is good at this.

Not good like admirable. Good like a knife is well-made.

Jonathan can actually feel the shape of the trap in her tone. The attempt to turn his urgency into immaturity. To make his emotion the unstable thing in the room instead of her own unnerving detachment.

He takes one breath.

Then another.

And makes himself answer evenly.

“No,” he starts slowly. “I’m clearheaded, actually. Which is why I’m telling you both that whatever you think this is costing you now? It’ll cost more later if you sit on your hands and call it strategy.”

Anjelica tips her head. “And you know the books now?”

Jonathan almost laughs again.

“No. I know her.”

That lands.

It lands on Parker more than his stepmother. Because Parker’s mouth now tightens at that and his eyes go back to the television where your image has just flickered onto the screen for half a second — just you moving carefully beside the stream, one leg off in the slightest wrong way, Marvel’s jacket still over your own, hood up, your face pale and set with pain and focus both.

Parker doesn’t breathe.

Jonathan sees it.

Sees the way your brother’s whole face changes and barely tries to hide the change too late.

Behind him, Anjelica says, “This bakery was left to all three of us, Jonathan. I’m not sure if you’ve forgotten that.”

He goes still.

Because yup.

There it is.

That sentence.

Not about money. Not really. Not about logistics. Not really...

A reminder. A warning. A poisoned relic dragged up from the floorboards.

All three of us.

Her father loved all three of us.

Jonathan doesn’t look at Parker right away because he doesn’t need to. He can feel the silence hit him. Can feel it hit the whole room. And sure enough, when he does look… Parker is no longer watching the TV. He’s staring down at the counter with that awful neutral expression he gets when he’s trying so hard not to feel anything that his whole face becomes made of stone.

Jonathan’s stomach turns.

He knows exactly what Anjelica meant. She knows he knows. Parker knows they both know.

And for one heated second, Jonathan just wants to put his fist through the cake stand and tell her to stop using a dying man’s last fucking breath like a goddamn rent payment.

Instead he inhales through his nose.

Exhales just as slowly.

Then says, with care sharpened to a point, “Yeah. I remember.”

The TV changes again.

Jack peeks out of the cave while Hannah sits inside on the sleeping bag with blackberries in her hand, small and quiet and alive while telling him, “She’ll make it back. She has to.” And at those words, Jack nods — still warily peeking through the foliage keeping them hidden.

Jonathan catches that image in his peripheral vision… and so does Parker.

Except Parker doesn’t just catch it.

He locks on.

And all the words in the room stop mattering to him.

Jonathan sees it happen in real time: the way that Parker’s attention leaves them both and goes all the way to the screen. The way everything Anjelica is saying becomes distant noise. The way his eyes soften again against his own will while he watches the little cave and the little girl and the blackberries and all the impossible evidence of what you’ve been doing out there.

Jonathan follows his gaze.

The television cuts again.

Back to you.

You’re still by the stream. Still moving carefully. Still upright. Still trying. One step, then another… jaw set tight. The camera catches the slightest hitch in your gait and holds it there. Not enough to humiliate. Enough to make clear that you are hurting.

Parker doesn’t blink.

Jonathan and Anjelica are still speaking. Maybe even arguing. Their voices go on, clipped and low and passive-aggressive enough to raise the hair on the back of Jonathan’s neck.

He doesn’t even fully hear what they’re saying anymore because Parker’s silence has suddenly gotten louder than both of them. All that he catches is the tail end of a phrase from Anjelica—

“—and feed the town with what, exactly?”

There.

There it is.

The practical line.

The saintly line. The martyr line.

The one that makes it sound like any charity toward you would somehow be charity stolen from everybody else.

Jonathan’s head turns toward her again to clip back — just as Parker does something completely unexpected.

He speaks.

Not loudly.

Almost too softly, actually.

But with decision.

“Do it.”

Both Jonathan and Anjelica look at him.

But Parker is already moving. He’s gone behind the counter before either of them can respond, pulling open the lower drawers, reaching for ingredients, yanking a clean apron from the peg with one hand.

For one brief stunned second Jonathan just watches him.

Anjelica goes so still it’s almost frightening.

“Parker…”

He does not stop.

Does not look at her.

Does not acknowledge she’s spoken to him.

Parker just reaches for flour, then sugar, then the big mixing bowl like a man obeying a command that came from somewhere older than thought.

Anjelica recovers quickly because it’s a skill. “You can’t be serious.”

Parker says nothing.

“Parker.”

Still nothing.

Jonathan stands there in the middle of the bakery floor with rainwater still dripping from his jacket and he genuinely has no fucking clue what to do with his face.

Because this is it.

This is the crack.

This is the thing he always knew lived under Parker’s ribs and never had the nerve to stay out in the open.

Anjelica circles behind the counter now, posture immaculate, voice still soft.

“…if we do this now,” she tries, shifting gears, “we are shorting production for people here. For families who rely on us. Here. For people your sister would want us to keep feeding.”

Oh this bitch is good, Jonathan thinks to himself.

But Parker just keeps moving.

Measuring.

Setting things out.

Not fast, exactly. Just relentless.

Anjelica follows him, eyes forced-solemn.

“She would hate that.”

Jonathan sees Parker’s shoulders jump at the words but he still moves. And something about it actually makes Jonathan close his eyes for one second… because there it is again. The guilt with no teeth marks. The manipulation so quietly voiced it almost passes for concern.

He opens his eyes again but doesn’t even dare speak.

Not yet.

He can tell that Parker’s balancing on the edge of something. 

One wrong word might shove him backward.

Anjelica tries again, gentler. 

“We all want her safe...” She pauses briefly, then adds, “you know that...” 

That almost gets a laugh out of Jonathan. A dark one. A murderous one.

But Parker’s the one who finally stops.

Only for a second.

He plants both hands on the counter and bows his head. Rain rattles against the windows. The TV crackles on with some arena commentary about Ro layering leaves over Steve’s unconscious body — the image of the little kid bent over that impossible task making Jonathan’s chest burn.

“And starving this town right alongside her?” Anjelica keeps going. “Isn’t what she’d want.”

Then Parker stands up straight and finally looks at his stepmother.

Not confident. Not polished. Not even especially brave-looking.

Just… done.

And when he speaks, his voice is low and frayed around the edges.

“She’s bleeding.”

Anjelica blinks.

He keeps going before she can answer. “She’s out there bleeding, and—you want to talk to me about pastries and inventory.”

“It is not that simple—”

“No,” Parker cuts in, sharper now, and Jonathan actually almost startles because Parker Everdeen never cuts in. “It’s not.”

The room goes silent.

Parker swallows once, hard.

Jonathan can tell he hates this. Hates the speaking, hates the disobedience, hates the feeling of standing opposite Anjelica even now.

But he does it anyway.

“She built half this place with her bare hands,” he goes on, and his eyes flick once—only once—to the TV, then back down. “If there’s anything in here worth using for her, we use it. Alright?”

Anjelica’s face does not change.

That is somehow the most unnerving part.

She just studies him with that terrible composure of hers, like she’s already deciding what emotional invoice to send him for this later.

Jonathan stands there quiet as a ghost.

Partly because he does not trust himself to say anything useful.

Partly because his heart is now doing something weird and ugly and hopeful in his chest.

And partly because the television has now cut to Steve under the brush while Ro chews medicinal leaves and presses them to the stings, and Parker sees that too… with those blue eyes that were never born cold.

Jonathan sees Anjelica see it with her prejudiced eyes…

The “little black boy” tending to “the rich dead family’s white son,” like some tiny battlefield medic from a fairytale that forgot how to be sweet.

Your plan is everywhere. Your fingerprints are nowhere.

Anjelica’s mouth pulls just slightly.

Not a sneer.

Worse.

The beginning of one that gets strangled off almost before it forms.

Then she yanks open a drawer so sharply that Jonathan jumps.

Parker doesn’t even flinch. He just keeps moving, working with what he has. Bowls. Flour. Butter. Honey. Fruit preserves. More flour. Cinnamon. Sugar... His hands know where everything is and what to do with it. He starts building the thing almost before the argument is over, as if action is the only way to keep from losing his nerve.

Anjelica goes silent.

Not defeated.

Just silent.

The silent treatment is used as strategy. The guilt has now moved into atmosphere instead of language.

Jonathan knows that trick. Knows it so well it makes his stomach ache. He’s been on the receiving end of it many times before, back when he was seven, when Lonnie tried it on him before Joyce kicked him to the damn curb, never letting him back into their home or their lives. He knows the way it feels, how it causes one to panic and scramble and apologize for nothing they ever did wrong to begin with…

But Parker doesn’t apologize.

He still doesn’t even look at her.

…and after another half minute of standing there like someone hit the pause button on him, Jonathan finally clears his throat.

“Well, uhh,” he says, because what the fuck else is there to say.

Parker looks up then, only briefly, newly irritated by the existence of another person still in the room during this awful moment and not helping out.

“Well, uhh,” he repeats curtly, gesturing a hand. “Grab an apron, let’s go.”

Jonathan lifts both hands a little. “I gotta go get Will. Take him to Steve’s.”

Parker stares at him.

Jonathan, unable to stop himself, adds, “Then I need to get back to Burdock, because somebody does.”

Yikes. That one lands meanly.

Parker’s jaw flexes.

Anjelica looks almost pleased that Jonathan took the shot instead of Parker having to deal with the guilt laid raw.

Jonathan hates that he just gave her that.

Parker wipes flour off one hand onto his apron and clips, without inflection, “Fine.”

Jonathan waits.

But Parker doesn’t dare look at him again. Just says, “Then come back when Ms. Joyce isn’t working.”

“She works ‘til close.”

“Then compare schedules and help when you can.”

Jonathan blinks. Because that isn’t exactly permission, not exactly gratitude or apology either.

But it is an ask.

And for Parker Everdeen, asks are rarer than snow in the summertime.

Jonathan shifts his weight. “Burdock’s still with her till Mom clocks in, then I’ll be with him.”

No answer.

So he pushes once more, softer now.

“Tomorrow. I can come help.”

Parker tosses a wooden spoon aside, kneading dough. “What good’s that do if we’re here doing this now.”

“It does your grandfather’s lungs good,” Jonathan replies with steely calm so that he doesn’t let his impassioned rage about their negligence towards their own kin put a stop to what they’re doing. “I think your sister would want that, right?”

Anjelica arches a wicked brow at that audacious wraparound… but she’s still too committed to her silence to rebuttal, and too eager for him to blow it.

Parker huffs out something between annoyance and reluctant acceptance.

“Whatever. Just—go get Will before the goddamn skies falls and more gates tear open.”

Jonathan looks at him for a long second.

Really looks.

At the hard line of his shoulders. At the tired circles under his eyes. At the furious, mechanical way he’s throwing himself into helping because if he stops moving he’ll have to name why.

Then Jonathan turns toward the door.

The bell chimes when he opens it, more gently this time. The rainfall sounds louder instantly, cold and relentless and real, already getting worse.

He gets halfway out…

Stops.

Something in him turns him back around.

Parker’s still working. Anjelica’s still silent. The TV’s still going.

And Jonathan — standing there with one hand on the door with humidity and rain at his back… says the thing before he can talk himself out of it.

He keeps his eyes only on Parker as he does.

“Whatever you’ve told yourself all these years,” he says, voice low and rough enough to cut, “she never believed it.”

Parker goes eerily still, eyes still on the dough.

Jonathan doesn’t blink. “She never blamed you. Not once.”

Anjelica turns slowly at that, disbelief and warning both crawling across her face now.

But Jonathan ignores her completely and keeps looking right at Parker. 

“She’s spent half her life loving people who made that harder than it ever needed to be. You included.” He swallows. “So if you’re finally gonna do right by her, then do it all the way. Don’t make her drag it out of you from a fucking arena.”

The bakery is dead silent.

Parker doesn’t look up.

But the hand holding the measuring cup has stopped moving.

Jonathan lets that sit.

Then he pulls his hood up over his hair, steps back into the rain… and leaves the bakery with the bell jangling behind him and Anjelica’s silence following him all the way to the car.

Effie Trinket has never looked more at home in a pressure cooker.

Not because she enjoys the frenzy, though in a different life she very well might have, or because she is untouched by what is happening either — because that would be a lie, and a vulgar one at that. No, the reason  that she looks so heartbreakingly, magnificently at home in this fever-pitched little Capitol conference room is because pressure has always had a strange way of revealing what someone is actually made of.

And Effie Trinket, for all her authentic silk and glitter and pearlized polish and lacquered smiles and absurdly elegant posture, is made of steel.

“MRS. TRINKET—OVER HERE, PLEASE!”

The conference room itself is a madhouse dressed as sophistication.

Tall silver screens run along the walls in seamless panels, every single one flashing between live arena feeds and Capitol graphics and press footage from Hawkins, Indiana — where apparently half the town has collectively decided that rules are for weaker constitutions. The ceiling lights are too white. The long tables are too reflective. The air smells faintly of hairspray, espresso, warm camera equipment and the expensive kind of cologne that lingers like a threat.

And every seat is full.

Not just with reporters. But with personalities. With hungry little monsters in couture, with anchors and journalists and culture writers and teen magazine columnists and sleek political correspondents and gossip creatures and social editors and feature writers and society women pretending they are not gossip creatures. They are all here. Capitol Vogue. Panem Tonight. District Digest. Sunup with Caesar. Ember Youth. The Victor’s View. Capitol Pulse. The Capitol Ledger. Elle. Goldline. The Ticker. Brightstar. Panem Vanity. Spill.

Even two ridiculous little teenybopper outlets — Arena17 and TributeBeat — with heart-shaped logos and over-highlighted interns who look like they have personally never known a hard day in their lives and are now acting like you invented romance and combat simultaneously.

And right in the center of all of it, poised behind a pearl-toned podium with one gloved hand resting lightly at its edge, stands Effie Trinket.

She is dazzling.

Not in the empty way. Not in the shallow way these people usually mean when they use that word. She is dazzling because she has chosen to be incandescent while worried sick. She has chosen shape and grace and clear diction and perfect lipstick while both her tributes bleed on live television. Her dress today is a structured thing in pale lavender with subtle gold threading through the seams, severe at the shoulder and soft through the skirt, like somebody made a battle standard and decided to call it couture. Her blonde curls are sculpted within an inch of their life. Her earrings flash every time she turns her head. Her eyes, behind the sparkle and powder and practiced delight, are bright enough to betray her completely to anyone looking close enough.

She means every word.

That is why nobody in the room can stop listening to her.

“And the truth of the matter,” Effie is saying now, chin high and voice clear as a bell, “is that courage need not always look loud. Sometimes it is quite soft. Sometimes it is lovely… and sometimes it is a girl in borrowed black, limping through the trees with blood in her shoe and love in her chest.”

A full-body shiver goes through the room.

Pens move.

Microphones inch closer.

Somewhere to the left, one of the Panem Tonight correspondents actually presses a manicured hand to her sternum like she’s been personally struck by the sentence.

Effie clocks it. Of course she does. She clocks everything.

The questions come in waves.

“Miss Trinket—do you truly believe that Miss Everdeen intended from the beginning to misdirect the Career alliance?”

“Was the diversion spontaneous or planned?”

“Did she knowingly sacrifice her own safety for Steve Harrington?”

“How early did you realize she was playing the long game?”

“Are we looking at strategy, or devotion?”

“Is it both?”

Effie does not rush her answers. That’s one of the great secrets of her art, and it is art. She’s never understood why anyone would pretend otherwise. Publicity is theater with blood pressure. It’s curation under attack. It’s survival with powder on.

She lets the room ask, let’s the frenzy peak just enough…

Then answers as though she is laying pearls one by one onto velvet.

“Oh, it is devotion,” she says, and her eyes go just the slightest bit glassy in a way that feels wholly genuine and therefore lands all the harder. “Let us not strip the poetry from it simply because it is also strategic. That young lady is in love with that young man. Has been since they were scarcely taller than their school satchels. I am not surprised in the least. She was always, always going to fight for him.”

The room nearly combusts.

There are actual gasps. Half-delighted, half-horrified, and wholly feral little sounds.

A reporter from Capitol Vogue leans forward so abruptly she almost knocks over her own recorder. “But does he love her back?!”

Someone from Pulse blurts, “How can he not know by now?”

Another voice cuts across from the second row. “Will they be reunited?”

A young brunette thing from Brightstar, all lip gloss and shaking hands around her recorder, asks, “How will justice be served?”

Effie meets every single pair of eyes in turn.

“The truth,” she says with absolute certainty, “always comes out. It cannot be rushed, nor can it be summoned by force. Nor can it be said exactly when or how it will bloom. But love… has no timeline.” Her gaze sharpens. “Neither does justice.”

There is a charged silence.

Effie leans ever so slightly forward. “But there will be justice,” she says, and now her voice has iron beneath the silk, “for our dove. For the burden she bears and bleeds for the one who holds her heart.”

That one hits like a struck match in dry summer grass.

Questions burst again.

“Do you mean justice in the arena?”

“In sponsorship?”

“In public sentiment?”

“What do you make of the Hawkins street response?”

“How significant is public pressure?”

“Can public pressure influence the odds?”

“Do you believe the nation is rallying around both tributes or favoring one?”

At the edge of the room, Effie catches a flicker of movement and sees the other publicists clustered in their own strange little orbit. Some are trying not to stare and failing miserably. Some are annoyed in that polished, pinched Capitol way… the way ambitious professionals get when someone else has accidentally become the center of the universe while they’re still trying to secure a columnist from Goldline. A few look openly impressed. One man from District 2’s team has the expression of somebody chewing glass, while District 1’s publicist (all lacquered indifference and razor-clipped bangs) is pretending to look at her notes while listening to every syllable.

And there, nearer the back, is Pepper Potts of District 7.

Soft-spoken, warm-eyed, immaculately put together without ever looking fussy. Her honeyed hair is pinned low and sleek at the nape of her neck, her cream suit crisp, her expression composed but far more human than most people in this room know how to be. She is standing beside the wall with her hands loosely clasped, and the moment Hannah’s name gets mentioned again in a question from Capitol Ledger — “little Hannah from Seven, still hidden, still alive” — Pepper’s entire face changes in that subtle, devastating way only somebody paying attention would notice.

Her heart swells right there in her throat.

Effie notices that too.

How could she not?

Because of course Hannah is part of this story now. You made her part of it. You made Jack a part of it. Ro. too… Steve most of all. You have somehow, inside less than three days, turned yourself into the axis around which four other endangered lives are now rotating. And the room cannot get enough of it.

A reporter from Ember Youth, no older than twenty-two and practically vibrating with the thrill of being alive at the same time as a narrative this juicy, asks, “Do you believe that’s why the public has attached so strongly to her? Because she’s protective? Because she’s… merciful?”

Effie’s smile softens.

“I believe,” she answers carefully, “that people know grace when they see it, even in a place built to erase it. They know mercy when it appears where mercy has no business surviving.” Her voice grows almost wistful. “And what is she if not precisely that? The arena angel. The dove in the midst of cruelty and warfare. The baker’s daughter carrying kindness into a place that does not deserve her.”

One of the teen outlets actually sniffs.

Good, Effie thinks. Cry.

On the silver screen behind her, the feed changes again.

You, briefly.

Just for a few seconds. Leaning against a tree, face gone pale beneath the hood, one hand braced above the cut in your shin while you breathe through the nausea of looking at it.

Effie’s pulse jumps.

But she does not dare let the room see it.

She does, however… see Pepper glance at the screen too. Sees the awful little flash of sympathy there. Sees, farther off, one of District 5’s interns on the social media team squeeze her own wrist hard enough to redden it at the sight of Jack safe in that cave while her older tribute spirals out near the Cornucopia. Effie sees all the quiet things... The human things… The things that survive even here.

The questions keep coming.

“Miss Trinket, is Steve Harrington aware of the extent of her sacrifice?”

“How can he be, if he’s unconscious?”

“What happens if he wakes before she reaches him?”

“Do you think she was right not to kill the Careers in their sleep when she had the chance?”

…that last one stops the room.

It doesn’t silence everyone completely.

That’s part of what makes it so ugly.

It simply lands and goes still there. A few people murmur. A few others shift in their chairs. Somebody gives a low, subtly scandalized hum. Effie blinks once. Twice. Not because she’s rattled beyond recovery — but because the out-of-touchness of that question is so staggering that it requires a moment’s mental accommodation.

The journalist who asked it is sitting three seats from the front — female, acid-bright green satin, bleached blonde hair waved too stiffly. A jeweled pen is clutched in one clawed hand, her smile like a paper cut.

Ah.

There you are.

Effie’s own smile returns, every bit as dazzling as before. “What’s your name, dear?” she asks sweetly.

The woman sits up taller, delighted to have the floor.

“Rita Skeeter.”

Of course it is.

Effie knows this woman’s ways all too well.

There’s a tiny stirring in the conference room. Several people recognize the name immediately… and look either entertained or exhausted, depending on how often Rita has tried to turn their private lives into a column.

Effie nods once, as though she’s been handed something mildly interesting at tea.

“Miss Skeeter,” she says warmly, “what a very lively question.”

Rita’s smile sharpens. “It is a practical one.”

“Is it?”

The room goes a little quieter.

Effie folds her hands at the podium and tilts her head in that way of hers that somehow manages to be both cherubic and vaguely lethal.

“Because from where I stand,” she says, “it sounds rather like asking why a wounded young woman, surrounded by four better-armed tributes she had only just outmaneuvered… did not simply rise in the dark and become an executioner.” She lets that sit. “And I daresay the answer is terribly simple.”

Rita opens her mouth.

Effie keeps going. “She is not stupid.”

A few startled laughs slip out before people can stop them.

Effie smiles brighter.

“She is strategic, yes. She is brave beyond reason, certainly. But she is not foolish enough to confuse opportunity with invincibility. Nor is she so…” She takes a beat, doing everything not to look at the Careers’ publicists and team members leaning in. “…blood-drunk that she would mistake slaughter for intelligence.” Effie’s kind voice hardens, just slightly. “Miss Everdeen is alive because she knows precisely when not to strike.” A beat lands, before she cannot help but add, “just like she told Mr. Hagan, when ordered to climb up the tree.”

That gives a collective murmur through the room.

The teen outlets snicker amongst themselves, already excited to feature that exact quote inside their juicy column.

But Rita, unwilling to surrender so easily, presses on. “But surely if the point is survival, sentiment becomes expensive.”

That gets a couple of murmurs too. Less approving now, more wary.

Effie’s sparkly eyes flash. 

“Sentiment?” she repeats lightly. “My dear, you are mistaking conscience for weakness.”

There it is.

A little intake of breath all around the room.

Rita actually stills.

Effie, relentless now in that gracious, devastating way of hers, goes on. 

“The very reason the nation is riveted by Ren Everdeen is because she has managed to remain herself in a system designed to strip that from her. She has not survived by accident. She has survived because she understands people.” Effie lifts one shoulder in the smallest of shrugs. “And because she is not foolish enough to murder in the dark when daylight may yet offer better odds.”

Then she turns, elegantly, opening the answer back out to the room instead of letting Rita own another second of it.

“What she has done,” Effie declares, her voice now for everyone, “is protect innocence where she found it. Four times over, if we are counting properly… And I do think we ought to count properly.”

That lands thunderously.

Because now it is not just about you protecting Steve. Now it’s about Hannah and Jack, and little Ro too. Four full names in the air. Four lives your actions have touched. Four small rebellions.

Even Rita Skeeter has the decency to shut up for the moment.

The room shifts. The energy changes with it. The frenzy doesn’t vanish, but it deepens. Becomes more solemn. More reverent. More dangerous in its own way.

Questions start again, but they sound different now.

Less bloodthirsty.

More invested.

“What do you think she’ll need next?”

“Can public pressure help secure aid?”

“Is Steve still central to her strategy?”

“Do the little ones know how much she’s risked?”

“Do you believe the new bond between Harrington and Barnett changes the endgame?”

“What does mercy look like now?”

Effie answers as many as she means to and not one more.

That is another one of her talents. Knowing the line before anyone else sees it. Knowing exactly how much to give the room before they would gladly pull out your bones if she let them.

When she finally feels the moment beginning to tilt from useful into greedy, she primly straightens.

“I have said rather too much already,” she says, airy but final.

There is immediate protest.

“Just one more—”

“Miss Trinket—”

“What about the reunited angle—”

“Can you confirm whether—”

But Effie raises one gloved hand and somehow, miraculously, silence comes back.

“I do adore your enthusiasm,” she tells them, and means enough of it for the lie not to matter. “But I think it is time you all troubled someone else for a while. There are eleven tributes left, after all, and though I remain entirely convinced ours are the most compelling—”

That earns the exact laugh she wanted.

“—even I,” she continues, “must occasionally permit the rest of the nation its due.”

A few more scattered laughs color the room — along with some groans and several desperate final scribbles.

Effie steps back from the podium.

And as she does, the silver screens shift yet again…

You.

Still moving.

Still alive.

Still carrying both your wound and the weight of every pair of eyes inside this room.

Something fierce and maternal and glittering with rage surges through Effie so hard that she nearly sways with it.

It is only the beginning of day three.

Only day three.

And already she knows with chilling certainty that this week is going to try to kill her in ways entirely separate from the arena.

Fine.

Let it try.

She is, after all, Effie Trinket. She knows how to smile with blood on her lips and still keep her poised spine straight while doing it.

So when she turns from the podium and begins to hurry offstage through the side aisle, still hearing the room swell back into chatter behind her, she does not allow herself even one second of visible collapse.

Not one.

Only when she reaches the corridor beyond, half-shadowed and temporarily blessedly free of microphones, does she finally stop and press one hand to her own chest. Not dramatically. Just enough to feel the beating there.

“You are not dying in there,” she fiercely whispers to no one and both of you. “Do you hear me? No tombstones. Not for either of you. I forbid it.”

Then she lifts her chin, smooths one hand over the front of her dress… and strides back into the war.

Because keeping you and Steve alive in the press is not a side task now.

It is the task.

And by God, Effie Trinket has never once in her life shown up underdressed for a fight.

Will is on the floor in front of the couch with his overnight bag unzipped and half-emptied around him like he got in a fistfight with his own belongings and lost on principle. Socks. A flannel. A stack of sketch paper. Two pencils. Red flashlight. One random action figure that has absolutely no business being in there. His toothbrush wrapped in a washcloth. 

“I’m just saying—” he’s rambling, shoving everything back inside his duffel in no discernible order, talking so fast that he’s now halfway to smoke, “I don’t understand why they haven’t cut back to her again, because obviously she’s fine—I mean, not fine-fine, but alive fine, and there’s a difference, and if they don’t show her soon, I’m literally gonna lose my mind—”

“You and the rest of the country,” Jonathan mutters sourly from beside the television, where he’s now leaning over to turn the volume down one notch because Claudius’s voice is currently making him want to commit a felony.

The Byers’ quaint living room glows blue from the dreary morning light, along with the TV — where Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith are now still going feral about the entire ordeal took place on live television earlier this morning. Every single media outlet, every local news station in Hawkins and every nationwide news channel have all decided that the world can only talk about one thing now.

You.

Steve.

The tracker jackers.

The dead pageant queen.

The angry Career boy, still out for blood.

And the little boy who dragged the handsome golden boy into safety.

But right now? The Byers’ are collectively losing their shit over the first one.

“It was a sword,” Will blurts, like nobody knows that. “That wasn’t a scratch. That wasn’t some little nick. That was a sword. He had a sword—!”

“Believe me,” Joyce sighs, passing behind him with a mug in one hand and Burdock’s medicine cup in the other, “nobody in this house has somehow forgotten the giant shiny murder sword, honey.”

Will twists around on his knees, hair falling in his eyes. “I’m being serious.”

“So are we,” Jonathan says earnestly, tone gentle.

And that’s the thing.

Everybody is.

That’s what makes the whole house feel so bizarre right now, so unhinged in a way that’s almost funny — if it weren’t so deeply, skin-crawlingly awful. Because Will is frantic in the innocent way twelve-year-olds are frantic, full of heart and panic and too much imagination. Joyce is frantic in the seasoned way mothers are frantic, which means that she looks almost completely calm while death stares down her whole family. Jonathan is frantic in the “eldest Byers way,” meaning he looks one wrong sentence away from putting his fist through the nearest wall. And Burdock—

Well, Burdock is sitting in his chair with a blanket over his lap and his inhaler on the side table… and the television glow making every line in his face look older than it did yesterday.

He’s not a frail man by spirit. Never has been. Even now, with his lungs the way they are — even now with his body increasingly betraying him like some slow mutiny… there is still too much iron in him to ever come across delicate.

But this morning?

This morning he looks wrung the fuck out.

Not because he’s weak.

Because he’s petrified.

Word-sick petrified. Bone-deep petrified. The kind of petrified that sits behind his breastbone and makes every breath a little sharper than it ought to be. The kind that keeps dragging his eyes back to the TV screen every time that it flickers. Every time the feed cuts to a different corner of the arena. Every time Caesar’s bold voice lifts theatrically and Claudius murmurs something all polished and expensive over footage of children trying not to die before breakfast.

Any time it cuts back to you, Burdock’s whole face changes.

Not dramatically. He is not a man built for dramatic displays. But Jonathan sees it. Joyce does too. Will absolutely sees it. That little tightening around the mouth. The fury in his wise old eyes. The way his weathered hand settles instinctively against his chest as though he could physically pin his own heart down and tell it not to make this worse.

And fuck, does Jonathan hate the television for making him watch it.

He knows exactly what Burdock’s seeing every single time your face comes up there on screen. Not the “arena angel.” Not “the baker’s daughter,” or the little media myth those Capitol creeps keep dressing you up as. He just sees you.

His girl.

His little Ren.

The little thing who used to climb up into his lap with a stack of books almost bigger than her own head. The girl who still sat by his chair now and read aloud to him when his lungs got bad enough that talking wore him out. The one who makes his tea the way he likes it without ever asking twice. The one who always slips extra blankets over his knees and pretends not to when he catches her at it.

…and now she’s somewhere in a fake forest, bleeding through a wound in her slender shin, walking on a leg that probably ought to be resting, following a stream back to a cave where two little kids are waiting for her like she hung the moon.

The television image cuts from your retreating frame, wincing and weaving through the trees, following the stream — to the collapsed bodies of Tommy, Carol and Marvel… all knocked out from their track jacker stings, in a heap of barely-alive-limbs.

Carol’s got two lumpy stings on her jaw, one on her neck and three more on her bicep.

Marvel’s got two stings on the same cheekbone, looking like the worst case of acne any boy his age has ever seen (and that’s not counting all the stings across his bare biceps, thanks to surrendering his jacket to you).

And then there’s Tommy.

Tommy’s still got that nasty sting under one eye, all swollen and puffed out. His other eye’s got the horrifically fresh, precise scar-like cut from where that robin bird came out of nowhere… just in the nick of time, before he ran away from the swarm of killer demobats — all while you crawled off to safety in the opposite direction.

All three of them are now knocked out unconscious, somewhere by the lake, under a tree’s shadow.

Burdock’s jaw works once.

Then he says, very dryly, to no one and everyone, “I’d like five uninterrupted minutes alone with that freckle-faced son of a bitch and his sword.”

Will goes very still, muscles stiffening.

Jonathan’s mouth twitches despite himself.

Joyce, saint that she is, doesn’t even miss a beat as she slyly hands over the medicine cup. “You and me both.”

“I’m serious,” Burdock says gravely.

“I know,” Joyce says, just as serious.

He takes the pills, swallows… then grimaces at the lingering chalky taste. “No, Joyce, I mean I would genuinely like to beat him to death with one of my good hardbacks.”

Will gives a little startled laugh.

There it is.

That little stupid involuntary sound that slips out at exactly the wrong time… and somehow saves everybody in the room from drowning for one blessed little second.

Burdock hears it and glances at him, his eyes gentling even while the rest of his face stays gruff… though teasing now. “What.”

Will wipes at his nose quickly. “Nothing.”

“That’s a lie, William”

“It’s just…” Will gives a helpless little shrug, still kneeling in the middle of his half-packed life. “You said hardbacks.”

“Well, I’m not wasting the paperbacks,” Burdock grumbles.

Jonathan snorts out loud.

Joyce closes her eyes briefly and exhales through her nose, smiling despite the sheen of fear still sitting behind it.

But the relief lasts for all of five seconds, because the television cuts back to you again.

This time you are limping by the stream. Hood up. Both windbreakers still on. Face pale. Mouth set.

The room goes painfully quiet… Will’s bag falls forgotten into his little lap as he sits cross-legged on the warm carpet. Jonathan’s arms fold tighter across his chest. Joyce completely goes still from where she stands just behind the couch. Burdock’s fingers curl over the armrest hard enough that the tendons in the back of his hand stand out.

Caesar’s voice keeps going. Claudius’s too. Some local Hawkins anchor on another channel the television had been bouncing between only moments ago had been saying something breathless about “the developing odds” and “the brilliance of the alliance fracture,” but none of that matters now.

All any of them can see is the way you keep stopping for breath… and then forcing yourself forward anyway.

Burdock watches you for three long seconds.

Then four.

Then says quietly, melancholy, almost to himself — “That girl of ours would drag herself through hell before she’d leave that boy behind.”

Nobody answers him.

Because nobody can.

Jonathan doesn’t look at Joyce, but he can feel her thinking the exact same thing he is.

Yeah, she would.

And Burdock knows it better than any of them.

Because he has known since you were tiny what Steve Harrington did to the architecture of your little heart. That first ridiculous crush. That impossible devotion that never actually shrank, just grew up with you… changed shape, got quieter and deeper and far more dangerous. He has watched you love Steve from a distance for so long that at this point, it’s practically one of the house ghosts.

Burdock never once mistook it for a phase.

Why would he? He was a man who had once loved that way too.

He’d loved Astrid with his whole chest. Then he watched their son love your mother, Lenore, like the world itself had invented devotion just for him. Men like that recognize it when it blooms in somebody else.

Which is exactly why Burdock sits there this morning looking like he’s trying not to come apart at the seams.

Because he knows you.

He knows damn well… you are not walking out of that arena without Steve Harrington if there is any possible way to make otherwise happen.

He also knows the rules say there can only be one winner.

And that knowledge is sitting in the room with all of them like another person.

Joyce is the one who finally cuts through it, because of course she is.

She turns from the screen, claps her hands together once, and says in that brisk, no-arguments voice she gets when the world is on fire and she has no intention of letting the flames set the schedule, “Alright. Enough. We are not going to sit here and let the television morons tell us how to have a nervous breakdown.”

Will blinks up at her.

Jonathan glances over.

Burdock huffs. “Pity. I was just beginning to enjoy mine.”

Joyce points at him with the medicine bottle. “You’re not allowed.”

“Says who.”

“Says me.”

He grumbles something beneath his breath that sounds suspiciously like oh so this is tyranny, but he takes another sip of tea anyway.

Joyce sets the bottle down and keeps going. “The rain’s only getting worse. You boys are headed clear across town—you need to go before it turns into lightning and thunder and the roads really go to hell.”

At that, the practical side of the room wakes back up.

Jonathan pushes away from the wall. “Yeah.”

Will scrambles fully to life again, grabbing up the rest of his clothes, jamming them into the overnight bag with even less coordination than before. “Right, right, okay, okay—”

“Not okay,” Jonathan says.

Will looks up.

Jonathan nods toward the mess in his lap. “You packed one shoe.”

Will looks down. “…oh.”

Burdock makes a dry sound in the back of his throat. “His mind’s elsewhere.”

“Same,” Jonathan mutters sadly, stooping to grab the missing sneaker from beneath the coffee table.

“It’s in the arena,” Will says, like it’s the most self-evident thing in the world.

Jonathan pauses for one beat with the shoe in his hand.

Then hands it over. “Yeah. Mine too.”

…and maybe that’s why Burdock softens then, just a little bit. Because the second that Will’s worry gets too big and too visible, it gives him somewhere to put his own tenderness besides fear.

He opens one arm. “C’mere, squirt.”

Will doesn’t even hesitate.

He just launches himself at the old man — so hard the blanket bunches and Burdock lets out a startled grunt before wrapping him up one-armed anyway, tucking Will close with that gruff old affection of his that always feels more solid because it isn’t dressed up.

“There we are,” Burdock murmurs, rubbing one hand over the back of Will’s head. “Nearly broke my ribs, boy.”

“Sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

Will squeezes harder.

Burdock’s voice shifts… low, steady and made to hold. “And yes, I’m keeping in touch on the walkie, alright? You keep yours on, I’ll keep mine on, and if I hear you getting too dramatic over there? I’ll come down that line and haunt you myself.”

Will laughs wetly into his shoulder. “You’re not dead.”

“Not with that attitude.”

Jonathan has to look away for a second.

Joyce doesn’t. She just watches the whole thing with her mouth pressed tight because if she lets it tremble, she’s done for.

Will finally pulls back enough to look at him. “You promise?”

“Of course I promise,” Burdock winks. “Now you go on and have some fun.”

Will makes a face. “At Steve’s?”

“Yes, at Steve’s.”

“There’s nothing to do except watch the Games.”

“Then don’t watch them every goddamn second,” Burdock says, giving his little shoulder a gentle shove. “Go outside. Touch some grass. Pick weeds. Make nuisance of yourselves. Play something. Be children.”

Will’s face folds into that sweet, wounded little Byers expression of his before a soft sigh escapes him. “We’re trying.”

Burdock’s eyes warm. “I know.”

Then Jonathan is there, crouching beside them, and Burdock’s hand leaves Will’s shoulder to grip the back of Jonathan’s neck instead for their own quick goodbye. Not theatrical or prolonged. Just one of those rough little embraces men give when too much is being said without language.

“Don’t drive like a maniac,” Burdock mutters.

Jonathan snorts. “I almost hydroplaned into a telephone pole about forty-five minutes ago, so I’ll do my best.”

Joyce whips around. “You what?”

“It was fine,” Jonathan says immediately.

“Jonathan—”

“It was fine,” he repeats, standing too fast and going for lightness because if he doesn’t, she’ll make him sit back down and explain every second of it. “The car and I had a brief disagreement with the weather. We resolved it.”

Burdock mutters, “Jesus.”

Joyce is already pushing them both toward the door. “Go. Both of you, go. Before I decide nobody’s going anywhere ever again.”

Will grabs his overnight bag. Jonathan grabs his jacket. Joyce catches both their faces on the way out — cupping one cheek, then the other, pressing kisses to forehead and temple and cheekbone in quick succession like she can armor them with contact alone.

Jonathan murmurs, “Mom.”

She ignores that.

Then she points two fingers at him. “It is not even nine in the morning. My shift is not until noon. You do not need to rush back so recklessly that you kill yourselves doing it.”

“I know.”

“You hear me?”

“Yes.”

“I mean it.”

“Mom—”

“And walkie me as soon as you make it.”

“We will,” Will promises.

She smooches his forehead once more then shoves them both out the door. “Be off.”

The door slams behind them half a second later.

Rain hits instantly.

Cold, soaking, immediate.

Jonathan throws one arm over Will’s shoulders and the two of them make a mad dash for the car hunched together like fugitives. Will is laughing and sputtering by the time that Jonathan gets the passenger door open for him, shoving the overnight bag in after him and then darting around to the trunk long enough to wedge his bicycle in place. By the time he slides behind the wheel, his hair is wet through and rain is running off the end of his nose.

He wipes at it with the back of his hand and jams the key in the ignition.

The engine coughs awake.

And before Jonathan can even shift into drive, Will has already snatched up the walkie.

“Hello? Hello? Hello? Guys?”

Static.

Then Dustin’s voice explodes through so loudly Jonathan flinches. “BYERS! OH MY GOD, FINALLY!”

Will lights up so fast it’s like somebody plugged him in. “We’re coming!”

“Well, hurry up!” “Yeah!” Lucas chimes in. “We’re already out!”

Jonathan blinks, one hand on the clutch. “Wait—what do you mean already out—? I thought you guys were at Steve’s.”

Will covers the walkie with his palm and looks over, eyes huge. “They’re not at Steve’s.”

“No kidding.”

Then Lucas cuts in over the static, repeating: “We’re already out!”

“Out where?” Jonathan stresses.

Mike answers this time, sounding just as keyed up as the rest of them are. “We’re about to rally in the streets!”

Jonathan stares straight ahead through the rain. “You’re about to what.”

Dustin clicks in. “Can Will please, please, please come?” “He has to!” Mike begs. “The party’s not full without him!”

Will lowers the walkie and turns to him with the expression of a child about to ask for something he already knows he should not be asking for. “Jonathan.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Please, please, please, please, please—”

Jonathan tips his head back against the seat for one full second, eyes shut, rain drumming the roof like impatient fingers. Then he looks sideways at his brother, who is all earnestness and panic and giant eyes and still somehow twelve in a world that does not deserve twelve-year-olds.

Will clasps his hands together. “Little Ro just saved Steve’s life.”

“I know he did.”

“And everybody’s already out there.”

“That part is not helping your case.”

“Please?”

Jonathan stares at him.

Will stares back.

The older brother squints. “Who’s supervising.”

“Eddie.”

“Just Eddie?”

“I think so.”

They have a little staredown — one all puppy eyes, the other hesitant.

Then Jonathan exhales through his nose and rolls his eyes so hard it ought to count as a spiritual experience. “Fine.”

Will gasps. “Really?”

“No, I’m lying for fun.”

Will practically bounces in his seat as he lifts the walkie again. “Guys! Guys, he said yes!”

Through the speaker comes an immediate collision of voices.

Dustin: “I KNEW IT.” Mike: “Told you.” Lucas: “Don’t go too far, dumbasses, they’re coming.”

Jonathan pulls the car out carefully into the road, shaking his wet hair once like a dog. “Where are we meeting?”

This time Dustin answers like he’s reporting battlefield coordinates. “Mayor Kline’s house!”

Jonathan snorts. “Of course you are.”

Will relays, “We’ll be like thirty-five minutes!”

“Maybe less if Jonathan drives like a psycho,” Mike offers.

Jonathan leans toward the walkie. “Not happening.”

Static hisses.

Then Lucas, sounding unbearably pleased with himself, says, “Coward.”

Jonathan barks out a laugh before he can help it. And that’s really the tone of the next stretch of drive: rain, windshield wipers, the old engine… Will in the passenger seat talking ninety to nothing into the walkie while Jonathan drives through gray morning roads with the smallest unwilling smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

The boys keep talking over each other in overlapping bursts.

Dustin is convinced the whole town should celebrate what Ro did.

Mike thinks they need signs.

Lucas thinks that sounds stupid unless the signs are for a campaign.

Will keeps trying to ask where they could even get poster board this early.

Erica suddenly crackles through the line just to add, “—from the old school supply closet—obviously,” like everybody else in Hawkins is an idiot except her.

Jonathan glances at his brother, brows raised. “You’re all robbing a school before breakfast?”

Will, without shame, giggles into the walkie, “guys, are we robbing a school before breakfast?”

“It’s not robbery,” Dustin argues. “It’s repurposing.”

“Repurposing,” Jonathan repeats flatly.

“Big brother’s not happy,” Will chuckles into the walkie.

“Tell your brother to mind his damn business,” Erica snarks.

Jonathan almost drives off the road laughing.

The walkie devolves into chaos again. At one point Mike and Dustin start to bicker about whether “Shadow Boy” sounds cooler than “Ro the Brave.”

Lucas vetoes both and says they sound like rejected comic books.

Will immediately defends the latter.

Then Jonathan hears a horn through the static.

A beat later, Eddie Munson’s voice cuts in, lazy and unmistakable. “Alright— which one of you little criminals stole my walkie channel.”

Will beams. “Eddie!”

“Yeah, hi, sweetheart, it’s me, your favorite parole violation.”

Jonathan glances in the rearview mirror automatically even though he can’t see anything yet except rain blur and distant headlights.

Eddie goes on, “Just so everybody knows, I am tailing these tiny fugitives in the van because apparently I enjoy stress now.”

Over the walkie comes a chorus of protesting voices.

“We are not fugitives!” “Don’t act like this wasn’t your idea!” “Eddie, you’re such a codfish.”

Eddie guffaws over the speaker. “A what?!—”

Jonathan snorts, reaching for the walkie. “Gimme.”

Will hands it over happily, and Jonathan clicks in with a smirk as he stops at a battered stop sign. “Morning, Munson.”

They can hear the wild grin still in Eddie’s voice whenever he stops leaning into all the kids’ madness, answering him directly. “G’morning, Byers. How’s the old man doin'?”

And just like that, something softens in the tense space between Jonathan’s shoulders. Not because Eddie has said anything overtly noble. He hasn’t. Of course he doesn’t, because Eddie Munson would rather die than just sound happily earnest for too long in one breath.

But he asked.

He asked because he knows. Because everybody knows, because this is a small town (and much smaller now, thanks to apocalypse the purge) and the people left who care know where every ounce of care gets done — even if nobody stands up and applauds it.

Jonathan shifts one hand higher on the wheel. “He’s alright. Worried sick. Same as the rest of us.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says quietly. Then, lighter again: “Well, if he starts stage-diving through windows trying to get to the Capitol, tell him to wait till I can set up a proper ramp.”

Will laughs.

Jonathan does too.

And for a little while that’s enough.

They keep driving.

Rain crawls heavier down the windshield. Still no thunder. No lightning. Just the steady low-lying dread of a storm that has not decided whether it wants to get worse yet.

Eddie keeps half an eye on the kids in the back of his van in his rearview and half an eye, apparently, on the damn road — grinning, walkie in hand. At one point his voice cuts abruptly sideways with, “Mike Wheeler, if you’re standing in the back of that van without holding on? I will personally fling you into next Thursday.”

There’s a clatter.

Dustin cackles.

Lucas shouts, “I told him—!”

Will bends over laughing in the passenger seat.

Jonathan, still driving, snorts fondly into the walkie. “When will you kids ever learn, man…”

Then there’s a brief lull.

It’s enough for the rain to sound louder again. Enough for Jonathan to feel all the old nerves start trying to creep back in around the edges now that all the chatter’s dipped…

And that’s when he shifts in his seat.

Once.

Twice.

Will notices out of the corner of his eye but, because he’s Will, says nothing.

Jonathan stares out at the road. Mouths one false start. Stops. Tries again… then finally, into the walkie, with all the awkwardness of a man trying not to sound like himself, asks, “Is, uh… is Nancy there?”

Silence.

It only lasts maybe two seconds.

But in those two seconds Will goes so still beside him he might actually be trying not to smile with his whole body.

Then static crackles and Eddie answers, maddeningly normal, “Yeah, man. She’s here.” A beat. Then, with just enough casual cruelty to make the point without making it a point, adds: “Riding passenger princess.”

Jonathan’s ears go hot. “Cool,” he says, far too fast. Then slower, trying and failing to recover. “Right. Cool.”

Will looks down at his lap immediately, like it is suddenly the most fascinating object in all of Indiana.

Jonathan narrows his side-eye. “Don’t.”

Will does not look up. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I really wasn’t.”

“You were smiling.”

“That could mean anything.”

Jonathan huffs and looks back at the road. But his mouth betrays him. There is absolutely a smile there now — embarrassing and involuntary and kind of helpless.

Because yes, of course Nancy’s there.

Nancy Wheeler has been orbiting Steve Harrington since middle school in one form or another. Whatever version of together they are, whatever shape that has taken over the years, Jonathan knows better than to pretend it isn’t real.

And still.

Still some stupid soft stubborn part of him keeps loving her anyway.

“So we’ll see you soon, yeah?” Eddie clicks in again, light and easy.

Jonathan, clicking in. “Should be twenty minutes out now.”

He’s still smiling like a fool.

Will, sweetly, says nothing.

That’s the grace of him. He knows. He’s always known. But he would sooner die than make his brother feel ridiculous over it.

Over the walkie, Eddie has moved right back on to the kids without touching the Nancy thing one inch further. Another grace. Different font.

“Raincoats,” he says now. A collective groan answers him. “I’m serious.” “Boooo,” Dustin drones. “I don’t care if you boo me, Henderson, put the damn raincoat on.” “We look stupid.” “You are stupid.” “That’s not the same thing.” “Today it is,” Eddie quips, then clicks the walkie again. “Hope you’re wearing a strong raincoat, baby Byers. This rain is asssss.”

Jonathan glances at Will. “He’s right. This weather’s gross.”

Will grins, grabbing the extra little yellow rain slicker bunched near his feet. “You sound just like him.”

“That’s because I’m also right.”

“Debatable.”

“Child.”

“Old man.”

Jonathan laughs under his breath and reaches over to knock lightly against Will’s shoulder. Then, because he’s still Jonathan… and because even in the middle of all this there are some lines he was apparently born to say… he adds, “If any of you idiots catch a cold from running around in the rain, you’re grounded,” into the walkie.

Will blinks at him.

Then actually laughs. “Grounded from what?”

“Exactly,” Jonathan deadpans.

Over the walkie, Eddie barks out a laugh so sudden it fuzzes the speaker. “That is the shittiest threat I’ve ever heard, and I fully support it.”

“It still counts,” Jonathan drawls.

Mike’s voice comes in, indignant. “No it doesn’t.” Lucas, traitor that he is, clicks in and adds, “Kinda does.” Mike cuts through everybody with his usual snark: “I’m not getting grounded by anybody who doesn’t even own my house.” “Thank you,” Dustin contributes. “That’s what I’m saying.” “Both of you shut up and zip your coats,” Eddie groans.

The rain gets harder then. Not violent yet. Just thicker. Meaner. A little louder against the hood and roof. The streets ahead turn slicker — reflecting the washed-out morning sky like strips of torn metal, making the post-apocalyptic version of Hawkins just look more grim than it already was.

Jonathan keeps both hands on the wheel.

Will keeps talking with his friends.

The walkie keeps crackling.

And somewhere beneath all of it, beneath the weird hysterical relief and the worry and the rowdy affection and the fact that none of them know what the next hour will bring, there is one quiet steady truth humming through Eddie’s beat up van and Jonathan’s old car:

This little corner of Hawkins is not splitting its loyalties.

Not now. Not ever.

There is no Team Steve and Team Ren in competition.

There is only a townful of people who have decided that if the world is cruel enough to make them choose, then the world can go fuck itself.

Jonathan drives on through the rain with his little brother in the passenger seat and the bike rattling softly in the trunk and Eddie’s van somewhere out there, carrying Nancy and the other boys and all their noise. And as the road unwinds beneath the tires and the storm gathers itself one shade darker overhead, he thinks — not for the first time, and not for the last — that some people belong to each other so plainly it ought to be enough to change the rules.

It ought to.

So maybe that’s what all of Hawkins is doing now.

Not watching.

Not waiting.

Just refusing.

Refusing the terms. Refusing the odds. Refusing the corrupt idea that one heart should have to beat at the expense of the other.

Outside, the rain keeps falling. Inside the car, Will is still arguing with Dustin about poster board logistics over the walkie while Jonathan drives safe and steady and grins at the road in spite of himself. And somewhere far from Hawkins, deep inside a cursed arena built to make children bury one another, a wounded girl keeps moving and a broken boy keeps breathing.

For this little pocket of the world, that is enough reason to keep going too.

next part ->

<- previous part

⚕️

“Dustin—you don’t need ten hats!” You scold your younger brother lightly as you pull out five of the ten hats he had decided to pack in his suitcase. “We’re meant to be packing light for the trip, Steve said to—”

“—Steve’s being dramatic,” Dustin replies flatly, snatching the hats back from you. “If you can bring half your wardrobe with you, then I can bring my favourite hats with me.”

You manage to refrain from rolling your eyes but your face still warms. Admittedly, you had packed a little too much but in your defence, you were going on a long road trip with the guy you were secretly in love with so of course you wanted to look nice. But you couldn’t tell Dustin that.

“Fine,” you concede, picking up the bag of toiletries you had packed for your brother (because you didn’t trust that he would remember to pack sunscreen by himself) and shoving it in his case. “Take the hats with you! See if I care.”

“You seem to care an awful lot,” came a voice that made your stomach feel light, as though you had missed a step going downstairs. Your face feels warm as you turn and see Steve Harrington standing in Dustin’s doorway. 

Fuck, he looked good. Ridiculously so. Steve looked good in a way that it should be illegal to look like that. He was wearing some jean shorts that showed just a hint of his delicious thighs, a light green shirt that was unbuttoned at the top to expose a smattering of his chest hair and his hair looked windswept and effortlessly cool in a way that told you he had spent way too long styling it.

“She does! She’s trying to dictate the amount of hats I can bring like she hasn’t brought six different pairs of shoes. Who even needs that many shoes?”

You turn to glare at your brother. “I’m being practical, okay?”

“What’s practical about six different pairs of shoes?”

“Says Mr. I-Need-Ten-Hats-Or-I’ll-Explode—”

“—hey, hey!” Steve interjects, stepping closer and placing a hand on both yours and Dustin’s shoulders. The touch was strictly platonic but it still lit a fire in your gut. “No bickering between the Henderson siblings until we’re at least in South Dakota.”

Dustin frowns, pulling out the itinerary you had made from his bag and scrutinising the map for the trip carefully.

“But that’s like…day six of the trip! We can’t go that long without—”

“—well, just try for me, yeah?” Steve smiles, dropping his hand from Dustin’s shoulders but letting his touch on you linger for a beat. He squeezes once before letting go. It makes you hot all over and you find yourself once again wondering how you were going to cope for the next thirty days.

Your hand brushes over the spot that Steve had just touched, unable to help yourself. Neither Steve or Dustin seemed to notice, both too engrossed in an argument over who would be in charge of the music for the drive to Chicago.

“I’m just—going to finish packing,” you say, more to yourself than to the two guys who were still bickering.

You slip out of Dustin’s room seemingly undetected, heading across the hall and into your room. Your suitcase was packed and you just had to put the last little bits into your backpack. Your sunglasses, a first aid kit (just in case), a copy of the itinerary you had made, a polaroid camera and a list of the books you needed to read before your first semester at University of Illinois Chicago, just in case you found any second-hand ones at a book store.

“Still can’t believe you’re leaving me to deal with your little brother by myself,” says Steve from somewhere behind you.

“Jesus, Harrington!” You exclaim, startled, causing you to drop the book list. You quickly turn to face the guy you were desperately trying to hide your feelings for. He was smiling, leaning against your bedroom door like he belonged there. “Don’t sneak up on me like that—”

“—sorry, sorry,” Steve says, holding his hands up in surrender and smiling at you before stepping forward and bending down to grab the book list you had dropped. “Is this your book list for your first semester?”

“Yep,” you say with a small nod.

“Are you excited?”

You give a small shrug. “More nervous than anything,” you tell him after a moment. “Being away from my mom, Dustin and yo—Tews.”

Your face warms, trying not to dwell on what you had almost said but Steve doesn’t seem to have noticed. He’s too busy looking at the boxes you had already started packing ready for your move to Chicago at the end of August.

“You shouldn’t be nervous,” Steve tells you gently. “You—you’re going to be great. You’re smart. You’ll figure things out. You’ll make friends, maybe even meet a guy who's smart too. Not as smart as you but you know—smart.”

You laugh because you didn’t know what else to do. You wanted to tell him he was being ridiculous because guys that weren’t Steve Harrington didn’t interest you.

“I’m going for my education, Steve,” you say, busying yourself with packing the rest of your backpack so he couldn’t register the slightly flustered look on your face. 

“Oh—of course, yeah. Totally,” Steve says as he hands you back your book list. His fingers brush against yours momentarily and the touch does funny things to your gut. You wonder once again how on earth you were going to cope with the close proximity with Steve over the next month. “Hawkins is just going to suck without you, Henderson.”

Your eyes flicker up to meet his hazel ones and find yourself struggling to fight back a smile. You knew he was just being friendly. He was probably just going to miss having you around so he didn’t have to be the only one able to give Dustin a ride to the arcade. But the sentiment was nice all the same.

You zip your bag close and swig it round onto your back. You go to grab your suitcase but one of Steve’s hands shoots out before you could take it.

“I got it, Henderson,” he tells you, giving you a lazy smile as he rolls your suitcase out of your bedroom. “Your chariot awaits, Lady Henderson!”

The first few days of the trip had been—eventful. The journey to Chicago had taken almost four hours and Steve and Dustin had spent most of the car journey bickering about the best Star Wars movie. You were glad to get out of the car once you had arrived at the motel. You had spent the first two days exploring the city, Dustin wanted to see your University campus and Steve seemed set on finding the best deep dish pizza. You then set off for Milwaukee and spent the most of the day at the Art Museum where Steve had dozed off in the middle of one the galleries. Dustin had suggested leaving him there but you had vetoed the idea. 

You were now driving towards Minneapolis. It was almost a six hour drive and so you and Steve had agreed to split the driving between you.

You happily sipped on a cherry slushie as you flick through another page of your book. You had stopped in a book store whilst in Milwaukee and picked up a copy of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood which had come out only a month or two ago. And so, you had spent most of the car journey speeding through the novel. Steve kept trying to ask you about it but Dustin kept asking questions about where you were going to be staying.

“We’re camping this time, Dustin,” you cut in before Steve began to lose the will to live at Dustin’s incessant questions. You bookmark your page before turning in Steve’s passenger seat to look at Dustin. “At, um, Eden Campsite, I think. We can drop off our things and then head to Minnehaha Falls.”

“Oh, right,” Dustin says with a small nod. “And whose tent am I staying in?”

You blink, looking at Dustin before glancing at Steve who looks equally confused.

“You—no one’s. You were meant to bring your own tent, Dustin.”

Dustin looks incredibly sheepish and you know then that you shouldn’t have trusted your brother to pack for himself.

“Dustin!” Steve groans, rubbing his temple as though he was holding back from losing his shit at your younger brother. “Why didn’t you pack a tent—”

“—Mom said I could share with my sister—”

“—Mom also forgot to mention that it’s only a one person tent,” you retort. “My tent doesn’t have enough room for the both of us.”

Dustin huffs before looking over at Steve who—you knew for a fact had a much bigger tent. 

“I’m not sharing with you,” Steve says matter of factly with a small shake of his head.

“What am I meant to do? Sleep outside?”

“I mean, if it’s an option—”

“—what would be so bad about sharing a tent with me, Steve?”

“Maybe the fact you snore so loud that it could wake the dead—”

“—so? That’s not enough to—”

“—and the fact you had a spicy breakfast burrito and I do not want to be sharing a tent with you when that decision comes back to haunt you.”

Dustin looks visibly annoyed now, his arms crossed over his chest as he tries to think of a solution that doesn’t leave him in a sleeping bag outside.

“Fine. Why don’t you two share and I take the smaller tent? Problem solved.”

You nearly choke on the slushie at Dustin’s suggestion.

Steve splutters out a response that you barely hear, too busy trying not to think about sharing a tent with Steve—

“—your sister doesn’t want to share with me,” Steve insists, ears red and glancing at you as you cough to mask the warmth of your cheeks.

“Why not?” Dustin asks plainly. “You’re both adults. It’s not like you’ll be sharing a sleeping bag.”

The comment does nothing to help the situation, in fact, all you can now think about was squeezing into a sleeping bag beside Steve. Imagining him pressed up against you, his large arms wrapping around—

“So—what d’you think, Henderson?” Steve asks you and it’s the sudden silence that snaps you back into reality.

“Huh?”

Steve shoots you a look, an easy smile on his face as he pulls onto the highway. “You—me and my dad’s expensive tent?”

You swallow. You don’t dare look anywhere else. You just nod because there wasn’t much else you could do.

“Sounds great,” you say, returning Steve’s smiles before glancing back down at your book.

When you pulled into the campsite five hours later, the sun felt unforgiving. You had to borrow one of Dustin’s hats as you helped Steve set up the tents.

“You’re really sure you’re okay with sharing a tent?” Steve asks you quietly as you hand him a tent pole. “I mean—I don’t mind sharing with Dustin if you don’t want to.”

You look at Steve and you can see the hesitancy there. The need to make sure you were comfortable and you feel everything in you soften. The truth was that you wanted nothing more than to share a tent with him, you wanted any excuse to be close to Steve. You just knew it was a bad idea considering you had fallen for this guy and didn’t know how to get back up.

There were a lot of reasons you couldn’t be honest about your feelings for Steve. For starters, you were sure that he didn’t feel the same. He didn’t look at you the way he looked at other girls, he spoke quite openly to you about the girls he had dated and of course, there was the fact he had told you on multiple occasions how much of a ‘good friend’ you were. The words had felt like poison in your gut but you ignored it. You decided being his friend was enough. And besides—even if theoretically Steve did like you, you would be moving to Chicago for University in the next two months and you didn’t think it would be fair on Steve. And so, ‘just friends’ was okay. ‘Just friends’ was safe.

“I don’t mind sharing,” you tell Steve sincerely. “Just don’t snore too loud, okay?”

Once the tents were set up, the rest of the afternoon was spent hiking along the creek before you reached the bottom of Minnehaha Falls. The sight of the cascading waterfall was nothing short of breathtaking and you found yourself just staring at it while Dustin ran off to sneakily join the back of a nearby guided tour. Steve had stayed with you, offering you a sip from his water bottle before suggesting taking some pictures with your polaroid camera. You had smiled a little nervously but quickly pulled out your camera. You took photos of the waterfall mostly before Steve managed to sneak his way into shot. He smiled looking so effortlessly handsome it took your breath away before you reminded yourself of what you were doing.

“This one’s the best,” you say, handing him the polaroid that captured him standing directly in front of the waterfall. “You look—um, it’s just a nice photo.”

Steve takes it, once again your fingers brush against his and you can’t help but dwell on how his touch sends shockwaves through your body.

“Thanks, Henderson,” Steve says, pocketing the photograph before he holds out his hand. “C’mon, your turn.”

You blink, momentarily confused before you realise what he meant. “Oh, oh—no, no. It’s okay! I don’t want—”

“—I insist,” Steve says, gently praying your camera from your hands and stepping back from you as he holds up the camera.

You feel awkward, you were wearing your little brother’s hat, an old Hawkins book club t-shirt and some gym shorts and suddenly you deeply regretted letting Steve take your camera.

“Steve—can we just forget it? Please?”

But Steve shakes his head, smiling at you encouragingly. “C’mon! Just one smile, please Henderson?” He pouts a little and that was your undoing. You give Steve a small, slightly forced smile and hear him snap a photo.

“Beautiful,” he says, missing the way your eyes widen at the word as he glances down at the photo as it develops.

You think about that word for the entire hike back to the campsite. You think of it as you help Steve with the barbeque. You think of it as you head to the showers. You think of it as you sit in front of the campfire warming marshmallows. And when both you and Steve retreat into the same tent and you lay in a sleeping bag beside him, you think of that word again and again until you fall asleep.

Beautiful. He had said you were beautiful.

The next stop after Minnehaha Falls was Badlands National Park, then a quick stop to visit Mount Rushmore before a long drive to Denver. After two days exploring the city, you then set off for Moab, Utah. The journey had taken almost ten hours due to stand-still traffic. You had missed your reservation at a campsite as a result and had to stop off at a motel instead. Steve had gone out of his way to find some Little Debbie snacks for you since you had been pretty down about it.

And today was the start of your journey to Las Vegas. You were agitated, especially after the events of yesterday. You had decided to take the first half of driving just to get it over with and you were relying on Steve to be in control of the map since Dustin had decided to fall asleep barely ten minutes into the journey.

“Okay—so you’re gonna wanna go right—no, no. Go left actually, sorry. These roads are so damn small—”

You breathe through your nose. It had been twenty minutes of this. Of Steve trying his very best to give you directions but you were tired, incredibly so and Dustin was snoring behind you and—

“Oh—shit,” Steve mutters, glancing down at the map and up at the road signs whizzing by. “Fuck. I think we missed our turn.”

Your jaw clenches. In all honesty, you wanted to explode. You felt wound up, a mix of the heat beating down onto Steve’s beamer, the infuriating sounds coming from your brother and the fact the stress from yesterday was still catching up with you.

“You’re not serious,” you mumble, glancing over at Steve before looking back at the road. “Steve, I can’t turn around now, we’re on a highway—”

“Okay—okay,” Steve says gently, sensing your impending freak out. “I’m sorry—just come off at the next exit, yeah?”

You nod, jaw tight but you do as he says.

Twenty minutes later, you were back on track but you still felt irritable and you weren’t sure why. You decide to pull into a gas station to grab a drink. Steve barely has time to pull out his wallet for you before you’re scrambling out of his car. 

Once in the gas station, you head straight for the chilled drinks section and rest your head against the glass, sighing softly in relief.

“You good, Henderson?”

You mumble out something incoherent, eyes closed and head still resting against the refrigerator. Steve chuckles, placing a hand on your back and rubbing it soothingly. Steve’s gentle touch was somehow even more of a relief than the cool glass and you find your shoulders sagging with the release of tension.

“M’sorry,” you murmur out quietly. “You’re just really bad with directions. It pissed me off.”

Steve laughs at your brutal honesty, hand still remaining on your back as he carefully watches the side of your face. “I figured.”

You swallow, pulling away from the refrigerator to look at him to find him already watching you. His hazel eyes flickering over your face as though chronicling every microexpression.

“You know—I know you like to plan but there’s some things you can’t plan for. Traffic is one of them,” Steve tells you.

You hate that he could read you so well. It annoyed you but it also made you fall for him that much harder. Because he seemed to understand you without even really trying.

“I know I just—we had a reservation and we missed it and we lost money and—”

“—and we got an alternative. It’s okay. Things go wrong sometimes.”

You nod because you understood that—you really did. Your dad left when you were eleven, you knew things went wrong sometimes.

“I know I just—I keep thinking what if that happens when I’m at college,” you say quietly, your voice barely heard over the hum of the refrigerator behind you. “Like what if I’ve spent so long planning for college and it goes wrong and—”

“—hey, hey,” Steve’s voice is gentle and his hand leaves your back so he could take both your hands in his. “None of that. Okay? What did I tell you, Henderson? You’re a smart girl. Trust yourself. If things go wrong, if you have a shitty professor or you realise you want to major in art history instead then you’ll figure it out. And if things go really wrong? You call me.”

He squeezes your hands and you feel as though your heart had exploded in your chest in the middle of a gas station store.

“Really?” You ask him, your eyes flickering between his hazel ones. “Even if it’s the middle of the night—”

“—especially then,” Steve says with a faint smile. “C’mon, let’s go get you a slushie.”

Las Vegas had been probably one of the highlights of the trip so far. You hadn’t been able to enjoy much of the nightlife—due to the fact you had a fourteen year old accompanying you—but it was the first night of the trip that you had stayed in an actual hotel and you had soaked up every bit of it. You had ordered room service and spent the evening watching movies until you all fell asleep. You had woken up the next morning with your head resting on Steve’s shoulder. After Las Vegas, you had taken a long drive to the Grand Canyon where you had stayed at a lodge overnight. Steve had bought you the ugliest t-shirt from the gift shop he could find in what was fast becoming a tradition for the two of you every stop—to find the most garish souvenir in the store that the other had to wear for the rest of the day.

Then there was a brief stop off in Sante Fe before a two day car journey to Austin. By this point in the trip, you were all exhausted. Happy, but exhausted. And so, the next day when you arrived in New Orleans, it was no wonder Dustin told you he was going to stay back at the hotel while you and Steve went out to explore the city.

“Are you sure?” You ask Dustin as you pause by the motel door. “I mean we could always stay in—”

“—and miss out on beignets?” Steve asks you, incredulous. “Have you lost your mind, Henderson?”

You stifle a laugh before looking back at your brother who looked perfectly content with his mountain of snacks and a handful of horror movies Steve had rented for him from a nearby video store.

“I’ll be fine,” Dustin tells you, already popping open a bag of cheese puffs and taking a large handful to stuff into his mouth. “Jus’ ‘ave fun!”

You nod, face slightly furrowed in disgust at the way he was eating before you shut the door behind you.

“Ready to go?” Steve asks, smiling at you and holding out his hand for you to take.

You glance down at his hand because god, did Steve Harrington have good hands. Large, veiny and long fingers that you just wanted to—

“Yeah,” you say, face hot as your thoughts spiralled. You took his hand before you could think anymore of it but of course, it didn’t help. Not one bit. 

New Oreleans was beautiful but at night, it was even more so. You spent half the time walking down the street beside Steve with your mouth hanging open. It was a vibrant city and there seemed to be a constant swell of music—some of it a soulful jazz before it blended into a lively, energetic number.

You found beignets very quickly and you decided to walk along the river beside the French Quarter while you ate them.

“You look—you look really nice by the way,” Steve tells you as he takes the bag from you. 

Your face warms, you were wearing a dress for the first time this trip since you were properly out in a city at night. Plus, you had secretly hoped Steve might like it.

“I mean—not that you don’t look good in a dress. You look great in anything. But the dress is just—it’s—yeah. Nice.”

“Nice?” You repeat, biting back a laugh as you wipe some powdered sugar from your lips.

Steve’s face turns a little red and he glances out towards the water for a brief moment. “I mean—you look beautiful. You always do. I was just—”

There it was. That word again. Beautiful. Steve thought you were beautiful. That you were always beautiful.

“—I got it,” you say, nudging his arm as you try to control the way your heart felt as though it was trying to beat out of your chest. “Thank you, Steve. You look nice too.”

Steve laughs, scratching the back of his neck and causing his shirt to rise up a little. It takes everything in you not to look down at his happy trail that was now exposed.

You continue to walk along the river, sharing the beignets between you as the sun starts to set. As you turn to watch the sunset, you hear a faint clicking sound and you turn to look at Steve and—

“Did you take my camera?” You ask, face warm but smiling as you notice your polaroid camera in his hand that he had clearly packed into his backpack without you noticing.

“Maybe,” he murmurs, looking down at the polaroid developing in his hand. You step forward to look at it too and when you see that he had taken a picture of you—of you in one of your favourite dresses staring out at the sunset—you feel something funny in your stomach. As though you had missed a step going downstairs.

You swallow, looking at the photograph before you look back at Steve to find him already looking at you. The sound of gulls and the water lapping against the rocks was all you could hear outside the beating of your heart. The look between you lasted perhaps five seconds or maybe even five minutes, you weren’t sure. All you knew is Steve’s eyes eventually moved down to your lips and everything began to feel a little fuzzy.

You don’t speak. Neither does Steve. You just stare at each other, he’s still holding your camera and the polaroid he had taken of you and you’re still holding the almost empty bag of beignets.

“You got a little,” Steve murmurs, pointing a finger to the corner of his mouth and you blink for a moment before you realise—he wasn’t looking at your lips because he had wanted to kiss you. You still had some powdered sugar on your lips.

“Oh,” you exclaim, your body burning hot in embarrassment as you lift a hand to wipe the corner of your mouth. “T—thank you. Is it gone—”

Steve swallows, shaking his head and as you glance down, feeling a wash of humiliation, you don’t notice how Steve steps closer. How he slides both the polaroid of you and your camera back into his bag. “No. It’s the other side.”

“Oh,” you say again, your face now burning in shame as you lift a hand to wipe the right side of your mouth.

But Steve’s fingers wrapping around your wrist stops you.

“I got it,” he murmurs, stepping into your space as he lifts his now free hand to cup your jaw. You’re breathless. Your brain can’t compute what was happening. All you knew is Steve Harrington’s thumb was gently wiping away powdered sugar from your lips and staring at you like it meant something.

“Steve, I—”

But whatever you were about to say never left your lips. Because Steve was leaning in and he was kissing you before you could finish your sentence. 

His lips were soft and his kiss was maddening. You could barely believe what was happening and it took you a full five seconds and him almost pulling away from you for you to respond. Which you do, eagerly.

The bag containing the beignet for Dustin falls onto the ground by your feet as your arms wrap around his neck, your lips moving against his in a way that had Steve groaning a little against your mouth. His hands move to your waist as he kisses you slow, deep, pouring every ounce of feeling he could into the kiss.

You could have stayed there for hours, especially when you felt him tug you closer. Especially when he used his tongue to gently coax your mouth open. Especially when he encouraged you to slide your hands through his hair. But the sound of a cyclist angrily ringing their bell at the two of you making out in the middle of the walkaway pulls you apart.

Steve smiles at the cyclist sheepishly as he places a hand on your lower back to guide you out of the way. Meanwhile, you’re breathless and touching your lips that felt wet and swollen from the kiss.

“You taste like beignets,” he tells you, lifting a hand to brush a strand of hair that had fallen out of place behind your ear.

“So do you,” you say.

You both just look at each other and smile. You smile so hard it nearly hurts.

“Why did you—”

“—kiss you?” Steve asks with a smile that stretches across his handsome face. “Because—because I wanted to and because I was going to go insane if I had to spend one more day on this trip without telling you.”

“Telling me what?” You ask, trying to sound casual despite feeling anything but.

Steve looks at you for a moment, his eyes darting over your face as though he was trying to memorise every inch of it.

“That I like you,” he says finally. “That I really, really like you. I might even love you. Fuck, I definitely love you. I mean, why else I am on a road trip across America with Dustin Henderson? It’s because I’m crazy about his sister!”

It was near impossible to fight the smile off your face. You wondered if you were dreaming but then—even your wildest dreams weren’t as good as this. Weren’t as good as Steve Harrington kissing you, of him tasting like beignets and holding you like you were something special.

“And I know, I know you’re going to college and shit, this is probably a terrible idea. I mean, you’re you and you’re probably going to go to Chicago and do great and forget all about me and—”

You’re the one to interrupt him this time, with a kiss to his lips that leaves Steve weak at the knees. This kiss is just a little more desperate, your hands weaving through his hair and his cupping your jaw so he could tilt your head back and deepen the kiss.

You pull away before you could indulge yourself anymore, smiling as he tries to chase your lips.

“Steve, I’m never going to forget you, you know that right?” You ask him. “Two hundred miles—”

“—two hundred and thirty miles, actually,” Steve mutters. “I checked.”

Your heart thumps at the implication. He checked. Like he had thought about it. Like he had looked at the distance between Hawkins and Chicago and it had mattered to him enough to remember. 

“Two hundred and thirty miles isn’t enough to make me forget you,” you say, meaning every word. Your hands in his hand trailing down to rest on his chest, where you felt his heart beating rapidly in his chest. “And it’s certainly not enough to make me stop loving you.”

Steve blinks, slowly digesting your words. Big hazel eyes sweeping over your face as though trying to find a hint of dishonesty. But when he finds none, he just smiles back at you before he leans in to press a kiss to your forehead, eyes closing for a moment as though he could barely believe it.

“So, we’re really doing this then?” Steve murmurs against your skin. “You in Chicago and me in Hawkins?”

“I mean, only if you want to, I understand if—”

“—I want to.”

And you know he means it. Because when it came to you, two hundred and thirty miles was nothing if he got to be with you. 

The remainder of the trip passed by quickly. After New Orleans, you had travelled to Nashville where both Steve and Dustin had attempted line dining. Dustin had made some excuse and given up after ten minutes but Steve was determined to get it right so he could dance with you. You had spent a few days there before driving to Cincinnati before finally making the drive back to Hawkins.

And Hawkins was exactly how you had left it. It was just you and Steve Harrington that had changed.

Your mom had a million questions when you returned from the trip, as did Robin. Dustin seemed glad to finally have some distance from you and Steve and your ‘canoodling’ as he called it. But even he couldn’t deny that you made each other happy.

You had a month together before you left for Chicago and that month was full of movie dates, dinner dates and the occasional mini golf date. It was full of Steve Harrington being unable to resist you and you being equally unable to resist him.

And when it came time to say goodbye at the end of August, Steve looked as though he wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

“You’ll call as soon as you’re there?” He asks you, mimicking your mother’s request as you put away the very last box in the boot of your car. “And you’ll call me about next weekend too, right? And—”

“—Steve, you’re doing it already.”

“Sorry, baby.”

“Ugh, gross,” Dustin groans as he passes by, pushing his bike up the driveway. “Could you at least wait until I’m gone?”

“I’ll miss you too Dusty Bun!” You call out to your brother as he reaches the top of your driveway. You hadn’t told Steve that earlier this morning, Dustin walked into your packed up bedroom and burst into tears.

Dustin glances back at you and flips you off before he rides off down the street.

“Little punk,” Steve mutters before looking back at you. There’s a look on his face that you can’t quite decipher and then you realise that he was trying not to cry.

“Oh, Stevie,” you murmur gently, your own eyes betraying you as you wrap your arms around your boyfriend. “It’s okay. It’s only Chicago. I’m not going to the Moon.”

“I know, I know,” Steve sniffles, pressing his face into your shoulder and hugging you back tightly. “I’m being ridiculous. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise,” you tell him, your fingers gently running up and down his back in the way that you learnt Steve loved. It made him squirm for a moment before relaxing in your arms.

“M’just really gonna miss you,” he murmurs against the skin of your shoulder before pressing a gentle kiss there. “A lot.”

“And I’m going to miss you too,” you tell him before forcing yourself to pull away from the embrace to look at him. “But we’ll be okay, yeah?”

Steve nods, sniffling and quickly wiping his eyes. “Yeah. We’ll be okay.”

He takes a deep breath before he leans in and kisses you. It was like that kiss you had shared in New Orleans—slow, deep, everything you needed and more—only this time he didn’t taste like beignets and now he knew the shape of your lips like the back of his hand. Knew just the right amount of pressure to make you feel lightheaded. Knew how you liked it when he ran his hand through the hair at the nape of your neck. And you knew how he liked it when your fingers brushed down his chest. You wished you had more time, wished you could take him inside and to your bedroom so you could lose yourself in him.

But you had to pull away. You had to get in your car and start the journey to Chicago.

And you do just that—you pull away from your boyfriend with a final kiss to his lips before moving around to the driver's side of your car. Steve rushes to open the door for you, unnecessary but it makes you smile anyway.

“See you soon,” you say as you roll down the window and smile at him.

“Real soon, baby,” he tells you with a determined nod. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

And then—he watches as you drive away.

It hurts—it really fucking hurts knowing that you wouldn’t be twenty minutes away from him anymore. Hawkins wouldn’t be the same. He wouldn’t be the same.

But as Steve tucks his hands into his jean pockets and begins the short walk home, his fingers brush against two polaroids. He takes a moment to stop walking and pull out the photographs.

One was you in New Orleans, standing in front of the sunset in a beautiful dress and the other was of you in front of Minnehaha Falls—Dustin’s stupid ‘Thinking Cap’ hat on your head, an old Hawkins book club t-shirt and some gym shorts—and Steve smiled before tucking the memories back into his pocket because no matter what adventure you were on, Steve Harrington would always love you.

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It irritated her, how quickly he could get under her skin, how he could just say her name and her ribs physically contorted. She tried to avoid prompting him to say it to her at all, and lucky the conversation rarely warranted for it, but it was still something she was cautious about. He just made it sound so special, even if it wasn’t to him, he had the ability to make it feel that way. 

She was partly avoiding him when he kicked the soccer ball across the grass, nearly hitting her in the process. She flinched as it bounced off of the legs of the chair that she was currently sitting on. Whether it was on purpose or not was to be determined but concerning the fact that  Steve was good at most things, especially anything that required physical activity, it was most likely intentional.  

“Sorry.”  

He called over to her, smiling so wide that even if he had broken someone’s nose, they probably would’ve forgiven him. As a matter of fact, he had already gone ahead and charmed his way into playing soccer in Mrs Harrington’s garden just an hour ago after she strictly forbade it since her new tulips had been planted this past weekend. But somehow here he was, just barely missing his Mother’s flowers with every kick. 

She turned her attention back to her book but she was only met with breeze flipped pages and a dawning realisation that she had lost her place. A bookmark would’ve really come in hand right now but she had borrowed the book from the Harrington’s collection and she had completely forgotten to ask for a marker (preferably something leather) to keep her page. 

“He made me lose my page.” She muttered to herself, trying to find where she was again. She was determined to finish it this weekend before she went home. Otherwise the entire drive back to her house on Sunday evening was going to be spent wondering how the characters' storylines ended up. 

“What was that?” He was suddenly standing beside her, blocking the sun with his muddy black and white soccer ball under his arm and a smirk playing on his lips. “I thought I heard you muttering something over here.” 

She gave up on trying to find her page again and turned her attention back to him. Why did it have to be him? Him and his stupid  brown hair and lovely green, borderline chestnut, eyes. He smiled down at her, like he already knew full well what she had said under her breath just moments ago. She decided to play along.

“Nothing. I just lost my page in my book.”

“Our book.” He corrected. 

“Your book.”

The corner of his mouth tilted upright before he brushed the back of his hand playfully against her cheek. It was a sleight of hand touch. Close up. Intimate. Almost trick like in its fleetingness. It could all come down to nothing to his parents cooking in the kitchen or even to Steve himself, but it was not and never would be ‘nothing’ to her. Even if she really wanted it to be. 

“Steven, leave the girl alone!”

They both turned their heads towards Mrs Harrington calling out to them through the kitchen window. In Steve's defence, he wasn't really bothering her, other than kicking the soccer ball at her, she had been the one to start the conversation with her slightly unnecessary muttering. 

“I wasn't even-” The brunette gave up fighting his corner just as quickly as he started. There was no point. So, instead of arguing with his mother, who had now disappeared from the window again, he turned his attention back to her. “It wouldn't matter if you had stolen my ball and thrown it into the neighbours garden, I still would be the one accused of bothering you, wouldn't I?” She bit back her smile, knowing full well that he was right. 

“Yes, you would. But I would never do that anyway.” 

“I know.” Steve spun around in defeat with his ball still tucked under his arm. Leaving her with two options. The first being to scan every few paragraphs of their book until something sounded familiar, and the second was to just give up entirely and come to terms with the idea that she wouldn't be able to finish the book this weekend, not with Steve around at least. 

She watched him quietly as he kicked the ball around the garden again, barely missing some bright orange tulips as he carelessly ran around. If anyone in this world should've been given a sibling, it should've been Steve. His shorts were cut off just above his knees, proudly showing off the stitches he had gotten three weeks ago during a street basketball game. She could admit to paying too much attention to it, but it was only out of the fear that he was going to fall and cut his skin open again.

“Do you want to play, or do you just want to keep watching? Because, I'm okay with either.” He smiled brightly at her as the sun started showing itself on his cheekbones. This was a perfectly irritating example as to why it was him. Spring had only officially started a few weeks ago and he was already skin scarred and sun kissed. 

She closed the book. It was probably a good idea to run around and enjoy the sun before Summer came to Hawkins and took over, making it too unbearably hot to do anything anyway. Steve smiled knowingly and boyishly at her all at once as she crossed the garden to him. It was the kind of smile that was equivalent to an entire conversation between two people who had known each other for too long. It was classically handsome. And it was perfectly Steve. 

“Pass me the ball.”

He tossed it over to her. And for a while, they just played soccer in the Harrington's garden like they were seven years old again and she forgot that she had been trying to get through the weekend with as much distance between them as possible. She didn’t overthink the way his hands encircled her waist as he tried to get the ball back from her, or the way he laughed with his entire body. He got mud on his t-shirt, and she got grass stains on her trainers. And most importantly, all of Mrs Harrington’s flowers made it out safely untarnished by their games. 

Steve rushed through the hallway with sweat dampening his hair and a new sunburn settling in across the bridge of his nose. He should have been a mess. But life wasn’t always fair. “Do you want to take a shower?” Apparently it was just extremely unfair to her… 

She knew he didn't mean it in that kind of way, he was just innocently asking to be considerate. He was not asking her to take a shower ‘with him’, it just sounded like he was. It must’ve hit his ears the same way it hit hers, because suddenly, Steve Harrington was smirking down at the hardwood floor like a mischievous flirting teenager. Didn't he realise that, ‘Are you going to have a shower?’ would've sounded so much better then ‘Do you want to take a shower?’. 

He placed his hands on his hips and pulled himself together, his smirk still annoying ever present. “I didn't mean it like that.”  

“I didn't say that you-”

“No. You didn't. But you were thinking it.” 

She bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from saying something in retort. She wasn’t actually sure what she was going to say but she knew it would’ve been a mess of words that would have been badly stumbled over because of the way he was looking at her right now. She was thinking it, and somehow he had been able to see straight through her and read her mind well enough to know it. She silently prayed to herself that he couldn’t read every thought that raced through her head as she brushed past him and made a quick getaway for the stairs. 

“Weren’t you?”

She stopped on the Harrington’s staircase and turned around. Steve actually looked more innocent then she was expecting to find him. He was still standing at the bottom of the stairs, his hands were no longer on his hips though and he was not smirking anymore. It had now faded away into something else, something that to her looked an awful lot like curiosity. The blood started to rush to her head, it was different than usual, he was different then usual. And she suddenly wondered if the staircase was the best place to be standing right now. 

“Maybe.” She said, barely offering up an admittance, but still managing to keep the conversation going. It didn’t matter that she had fallen in love with him, she had always liked talking to him even before. She liked their back and forths. The soft, more delicate conversations that they had and the foolish, almost childish ones too. Like the one they had earlier over the true owner of her now long forgotten book. 

He took two steps up the staircase. “That’s not a real answer.” He was silently daring her to meet him. All she had to do was take three steps downwards and she would be standing right in front of him and forced to stare directly at the constellation like freckles that dragged across his jaw. Did he want her to? Did he really want her to stare? 

“I have to take a shower Steve.” She wasn’t sure why she was whispering, but she was. His name felt more fragile than usual. The situation was more fragile than usual too, but it wouldn’t be long until they sat down for dinner and she didn’t feel like eating in the same sweaty clothes she had been running around in. “Like, now.” 

Steve started walking back down the stairs, backwards, she mentally crossed her fingers that he didn’t trip.“There’s clean towels in the cupboard next to the guest bathroom. And the soap in the shower is lavender scented so you’ll like it.” Would she? And why was he so sure of it? 

She never reached for lavender perfume or decidedly picked it out as her favourite over all of the other flowers, and yet Steve sounded so sure that she would like it. It wasn’t his usual smugness taking over, it was genuine confidence that led to her internally cursing herself as she leathered the lilac soap over her skin. She did like it. Almost too much. 

It reminded her of lavender bags hung up in the back of the car or tucked away in a draw. It smelt like the Harrington’s garden in the middle of May. And it felt like being in love in the Spring. 

She could still smell it on herself long after her shower. All through dinner she kept getting these faint reminders of lavender and chamomile every time she moved. It also didn’t help that Steve sat beside her in the dining room, therefore forcing her to look at him every time Mrs Harrington spoke to her since he was on her left and his Mother was on his. 

But she had gotten through it, she had survived his elbow accidentally nudging into her own, the quickly broken eye contact, and the newfound information that if she was to kiss him tonight, he would’ve tasted like cherry coke and blackberry macarons. 

She traced her lips in the mirror in what would be ‘her’ bedroom for the weekend. When she first started falling for him, one of the warning signs was the way she found herself studying his mouth. 

She had memorised just how to know what he was feeling from one glance. He tilted up the right side of his lips first if he was being sarcastic or pessimistically smiling, but the left corner always went first if it was a true genuine smile. He licked his lips before he said someone's name (well, at least when he said hers he did). And, he clearly had a habit of chewing on his bottom lip when he was thinking because it was often broken and sometimes bleeding. 

She couldn’t help but imagine kissing him as she dragged her fingertip along her bottom like to try and recreate the feelings. It was and would never be the same of course, but in her more romantic and foolish moments, it seemed to make the urge to find him and ask him to kiss her less persistent.

But this time, a soft knock on the door drew her out of her daydreaming instead of momentary fulfilment. “Come in.”  The door opened to show Steve standing there, in his pyjamas, with messy hair and a book in his hands. The book. The one that she had forgettably left outside and never gone back for. 

“I thought you might want this.” He stepped into the room, letting the light from the hallway sneak inside. The sun had set so softly that she had forgotten to turn on the lamp that was sitting on the bedside table. She wasn’t even sure what the time was. 

“Thank you, Steve.” She crossed the room and took the book from him before setting it down on top of the wooden dresser draws that Mrs Harrington had picked out a few years ago. If she really concentrated tonight, she could find her place again and read a little more of the story. And at the very least, there was always tomorrow, so long as Steve played soccer elsewhere. “You know,” She hesitated to tell him what she was thinking at this exact moment but decided anyway. “You can be very thoughtful. Sweet even.”

She dragged her foot back and forth across the carpet, making lines that lightened it, and when she looked up, she wasn’t even sure how her words had reached him because her eyes weren’t on his, they were on the new tiny mark on his skin.

She reached up to brush away the spec of fluff lingering under his eye that was coincidently the same deep blue colour as his t-shirt. She thought nothing of it, she knew how much she hated the feeling of something on her face that she couldn’t find and she couldn't imagine that anyone else felt any different. 

“Do you have to do that?” His voice dropped into a quiet whisper, like they were up past curfew telling secrets. His gaze softened and his eyebrows knitted together, and as she fixed her eyes on his, she decided that no one had ever looked so much like a stray dog begging for a home before. But she was still lost, wondering what exactly ‘that’ was.

“Do what?”

He looked down at the space between them, at his hands that were just mere inches from hers. “Talk like that. Look at me like that. Touch me like that.” Her stomach twisted. This was starting to feel an awful lot like the confessions she had had with herself in the middle of the night, except, in her dreams, it was always her saying this, not Steve. “I know you’re not trying to be mean, that’s not who you are, but it still feels a little targeted.”

“I-” The tone in his voice was breaking her heart. She felt stupid for being so absentminded and even more so for not knowing what she had been absentminded about. What had she done to hurt him? “Why are you so upset?”

He dragged his eyes up to meet hers. Everything suddenly felt very important. “Because I don’t want to be your fucking friend.” She felt like she flinched backwards at his words but her feet were still very firmly planted in the same spot on the pink carpet. He quickly shook his head. “I mean, of course I’m your friend but- It’s killing me. You’re killing me.” No, no, no… “You don’t know what it’s like being around someone all the time knowing that you cannot kiss them, ever. You being here this weekend, playing soccer with me and sitting next to me at dinner was like the final knife.” She wanted to pinch herself but if she moved her arm all she would smell was that damn lavender soap again. “I can’t pretend that I’m not in love with you anymore when all I can do is think about you.”

She breathed in sharply as he stepped forward and pressed his lips to his. It was like he needed to kiss her. Like he just had to. And as far as worthwhile confessions went, this was her new found favourite. Even though Steve's hands were shaking when he talked and he had the most harrowing look of self pity in his eyes as he told her that she was ‘killing’ him. He loved her. He was in love with her.

His hands cupped either side of her face as he drank her in. The taste of his toothpaste touched her tongue and she knew he had permanently ruined spearmint for her. There was no way she would ever be able to toss a wrapped mint into her mouth and not think of this moment. Of the carpet beneath her feet, of the Spring warmth in the room and of lavender soap & muddy soccer balls. 

“...” He said her name as he broke the kiss and her ribs twinged in response. How decidedly irritating. He kept one hand on her cheek as he just kind of looked at her. Like they had just met for the first time and he was memorising every mark and every feature. Her eyes found the familiar hint of green in his eyes and stitched themselves to it. “I really needed to do that.” 

“I really needed you to do that.” She couldn’t help but whisper back to him, forgetting all the preemptive caution she had taken into this damned weekend. And she only solidified her death with what she muttered to him next. “I love you, Steve Harrington.”

“What was that? I thought I heard you muttering something.” 

“Don’t you-”

Footsteps sound behind you.

Faint, wary…

You don’t turn right away to confirm whether or not it’s him. But something in your chest seizes anyway. Because you know. You know who it is before he even says anything.

There’s a pause.

And then?

“…hey.”

It’s quiet. Almost too quiet. Like the word itself didn’t want to be spoken too loudly in case it scared you off.

You turn.

Your eyes go a little wide without meaning to.

Because there he is.

Standing a few feet back, half in shadow, half caught in the spill of rooftop light. Different now than he was earlier. Stripped down to something simpler. That white t-shirt. Lounge pants. Bare feet like he didn’t bother with anything unnecessary before coming up here.

Steve looks… younger.

And more tired.

But still the boy you’ve loved nearly all your life.

Your mouth opens just slightly before you find your voice.

“Hey.”

It comes out softer than you expected.

But it’s enough.

Something in Steve’s expression shifts — just barely — like the word hit him somewhere he wasn’t braced for.

He nods once.

Stiff.

Wary.

Careful.

Then he moves.

Slowly.

Like approaching a wild animal he doesn’t want to startle.

He comes over and settles across from you along the ledge, leaving a few stretches of space between you that feels much bigger than it actually is. He leans back against the wall, one knee drawn up, forearm resting over it, gaze turning outward toward the city like yours had been.

For a while, neither of you says anything.

And while the silence isn’t empty, it’s… loaded. Heavy in a way that presses against your ribs and makes your breathing feel louder than it is.

You’re aware of him.

Every second of it.

The way he shifts slightly beside you.

The way his puppy brown eyes flick once toward you… then away again, like he caught himself.

The way he exhales through his nose — slow, controlled, like he’s trying not to feel something too loudly.

You don’t know what to say.

You’re almost afraid to speak at all.

Because the last time you spoke freely, you changed everything.

And the last time he spoke, he—

You swallow.

Don’t go there, you tell yourself. Not yet.

Steve finally clears his throat. It’s quiet, but it breaks the tension just enough. “You should be asleep,” he says, snot looking at you.

It’s not sharp.

It’s not accusing.

It’s just… there.

You glance at him, then back out at the city.

“So should you.”

“Yeah,” he mutters.

Another beat.

The music below swells. Someone screams in delight. Fireworks — of all the fucking things — flare briefly in the distance, bright colors blooming against the dark like it’s a holiday instead of a countdown to slaughter.

You hate it.

You hug your knees tighter.

“Do you think any of them are?” he asks suddenly.

You blink. “Any of who?”

“The tributes,” he clarifies simply, eyes on the skyscrapers. “Sleeping.”

Your stomach twists.

You shake your head slightly. “No.”

“Yeah,” he says, like he already knew. His jaw tightens a little as he stares down at the city. “Kids definitely aren’t.”

You nod silently, heart bruising all over again as the names run through your head like lost boys and lost girls on the night…

Hannah.

Jack.

Ro.

Too small. Too young. Too terrified.

You can see their faces if you let yourself think about it too hard.

So you don’t.

“Careers probably aren’t either,” he adds after a moment, voice going a little flatter. “Doesn’t matter how cocky they are. No one sleeps the night before they might die.”

You hum faintly in agreement.

There’s nothing else to say to that.

The truth of it just sits there.

Between you.

Below you.

Everywhere.

Steve glances at you again.

You don’t notice.

You’re still looking out at all the chaos below, eyes distant, expression softer now… but more closed off than it used to be.

There’s a difference.

He sees it.

Feels it.

It makes something in his chest pull tight.

Distance.

There’s distance now.

Not just the few feet between you on the ledge.

Something else.

Something he put there.

Distance he’s instilled, even though you acted in it first thing morning.

Now he’s solidified it.

And he hates it.

Doesn’t know how to fix it.

Doesn’t know if he’s allowed to.

Doesn’t know why he wants to…

“Are they… in costume or something?” he asks, now nodding faintly toward the crowds below, eyes narrowed at the scene.

You follow his gaze.

Tilt your head slightly.

A sad little almost-smile touches your mouth.

“Who knows,” you say softly. “How can you tell?”

He huffs under his breath.

“Fair.”

You watch a group of Capitol citizens spinning in circles below, painted and jeweled and glowing under artificial light like they’re all part of some twisted parade.

“Everything here looks like a costume,” you add.

He nods slowly.

Yeah.

It does.

Everything except you, Steve thinks to himself absently.

He squints at it a second longer. Then looks away because he can’t stomach it anymore. Can’t stand the sight of glorified manslaughter below, like it’s The Purge Act all over again… just with rules still in place for those “fortunate” to stick around and live by them, here inside the elite walls of Panem.

Steve’s head tips back against the wall. Eyes closing briefly. Breathing in… breathing out… breathing in… out…

He knows what he has to do.

He knows it.

He just…

Doesn’t want to say it wrong.

Doesn’t want to make it worse.

Doesn’t want to look at you and see fear again.

He exhales slowly, then lifts his head and looks at you. 

“Ren?”

You turn again, your eyes still a little wide. A little cautious.

It guts him.

“I…” He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “About earlier—” He stops, starts again. “That—what I said. The way I said it.”

Your gaze softens.

You don’t dare interrupt.

You just listen.

Patient.

God, you’re so fucking patient.

“I shouldn’t have… snapped like that,” he says, voice tighter now. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. That’s—” He shakes his head. “That’s not… me. Or least, it’s not—” His jaw flexes. “Who I used to be.”

There’s so much unspoken shame behind that sentence, it kills you softly.

You almost smile at him through the ache you feel in your soul.

“It’s alright—”

“No.” He cuts in immediately.

Not harsh.

Just… firm.

Your mouth closes.

Steve shakes his head again, more frustrated now — but this time, it’s not at you. It’s at himself.

“It’s not,” he repeats. “Don’t—don’t do that.”

You blink. “Do what?”

“Make it okay when it’s not.”

Your brows draw together just slightly. “I just—”

“I was an asshole,” he says flatly.

You inhale softly. “That doesn’t make it—”

“It does.”

A beat lands before Steve looks at you. Really looks, like he’s staring straight into your soul. Trying to read your mind, to make sure you’re hearing him.

“I don’t get to talk to you like that and then have you tell me it’s fine.”

Your lips part, hesitating before speaking again.

“I mean… you were blindsided.”

“I don’t care.”

“It’s still—”

“I don’t care,” he repeats, quieter now, but no less intense. “I don’t get a free pass for that. And no one should. Ever.”

Your chest tightens.

You study him for a long second.

Then you nod, subtle… almost small.

“Okay.”

That quiet response seems to throw him off more than if you’d argued.

Steve blinks. “Okay?”

“You’re right,” you say simply.

That… lands.

Different than he expected.

He looks at you like he’s trying to recalibrate something.

“…okay,” Steve finally echoes.

There’s a flicker of something like relief.

And something else.

Something softer.

Vulnerable.

You give him the faintest smile. It doesn’t reach your eyes completely, but it’s there. Gentle as ever. Warm, even though it's melancholy. Across from you, Steve notices that too. And it makes him feel like shit.

Silence settles between the two of you again.

It’s not as tense as before.

But still heavy.

Still loaded.

When Steve glances at you again, he finds that you’re watching him now… not looking away.

That’s new.

Or maybe it’s just unsettling.

Either way, it makes something in his chest twist.

He holds your gaze for a second longer than he means to. Then, words slip out before he can overthink them or shut himself up while he’s ahead.

“Your stepmom and your brother didn’t come to tell you goodbye.”

You go still, just a little, as he lets the statement hang before asking…

“…real or not real?”

Your angel eyes soften instantly. Something warm flickers there — surprise, maybe, or perhaps it’s just recognition. Because you remember… 

The kitchen.

The desserts.

The stupid game.

The hours spent together.

You nod. “Real.”

Steve watches you intensely, his cynical eyes searching… 

Searching for anything.

A crack.

A tell.

A lie.

He doesn’t find one.

His jaw tightens.

“…you told Caesar your brother isn’t heartless,” Steve says after a long beat. “That you forgive him.”

Your throat moves when you swallow.

He still asks. “Real or not real?”

Your kind eyes go a little glassy, but you don’t look away while answering.

“Real.”

Steve’s cynical gaze sharpens. “And your stepmother?”

That question…

You inhale slowly. Exhale just as slowly. You look down, then back out at the city. At the crowd, the noise, the bloodlust and exuberant joy of elites…

“Some days it feels real,” you confess quietly. “Some days it doesn’t.” A loud burst of fireworks pop off while you take a beat, eyes on the sky now. “Some days, I think that I truly forgive her.” The crowd roars. “Other days, I’m not… sure if she wants me to.”

That answer?

It hits him hard.

Because it’s not perfect. It’s not clean. It’s not what he expected. It’s honest. It’s brutally honest without overstating.

And for some reason that pisses him off a little.

Not at you.

At the fact that it keeps being real.

He stares at you for another long moment before speaking more carefully — the game still going, the search still on...

“You’ve been in love with me since grade school.”

A beat.

“…real or not real?”

You don’t hesitate. “Real.”

And you don’t even look at him when you say it. You just… know.

Steve watches you like he’s trying to break the word apart. As though maybe he can dismantle it if he stares hard enough.

He can’t.

“Why.”

The question comes out sharper than he means it to.

But not cruelly.

Just demanding.

Seeking.

Needing.

You blink at the city, then finally look at him. And for a second, you truly don’t know what to say. Because where do you even start? There are too many reasons. There always have been. It’s never just been one thing. It’s been a thousand small, quiet things that never stopped adding up.

Moments.

Looks.

Actions.

Ways he existed when he didn’t think anyone was paying attention.

You’ve never had to say them out loud before.

You’ve just always known, since the day he raised his hand in the classroom whenever the teacher asked everyone who knew the Star-Spangled Banner, and none other than Steve Harrington had proudly declared that they did — and then he’d stood up, hand over his heart as he sang it sweetly. In front of the entire classroom, while you watched with starry eyes that shone brighter than fireworks on Fourth of July. All for him.

Your gaze drops to your knees as the memory consumes you… 

You exhale softly. “I don’t even know where I’d start.”

“Start anywhere,” he says immediately.

Your brows pinch.

That didn’t help.

“Name one thing,” he adds.

It’s quick.

Too quick.

It puts you on the spot in a way that makes your chest tighten. But you don’t look away. You think. You search. You dive into every single crevice of your mind that drowns in every single core memory of him you’ve locked away — replaying them on a loop, scribbling them into the margins of your notebook while in class, daydreaming about while twirling in your room…

…and then you find something.

Small.

Specific.

But real.

You glance up at him through your lashes, your voice quiet.

“You always stayed.”

He blinks.

“…what?”

You shrug a little, almost imperceptibly. “With them,” you say. “With the kids. Even when things got bad. Or when everyone else was panicking or running or… too busy falling apart. Even when you did...” Your fingers tighten slightly around your knees. “You stayed.”

That’s it.

That’s the thing.

Not flashy.

Not grand.

Just… that.

That.

And it hits him. Not the way you expect, but it does all the same.

Steve’s expression shifts, something flickers behind his eyes. He looks away, shakes his head once. “You can’t love me.”

Your brows knit. “What?”

“I’m not—” He exhales sharply. “I’m not what you think I am.”

“I never said—”

“You didn’t have to.”

You stare at him, brows furrowing with gentle puzzlement.

“You don’t know me,” he goes on. “Not really. You know—pieces. Versions. Whatever the hell I was before all this.”

“That’s not true—”

“It is.”

“It’s not.”

He looks at you again, something more heated in his eyes now. “You don’t know what I am now. You love someone you think you know. Someone that’s capable of living up to your expectations.”

You stare, shaking your head. “That’s not real.”

“Your idea of me isn’t real.”

“I don’t love ideas of you.”

…that stops him.

Just for a second.

He blinks, actually caught off guard. Not only by your words, but your tone — which has sharpened, despite not raising your voice. And you hold his gaze, steady as ever, not cowering.

“I’m not in love with a fantasy,” you say quietly. “I’m in love with you.”

The real you.

You don’t have to say it.

It’s there anyway.

You’re in love with the real him.

He stares at you like he doesn’t know what to do with that, his jaw tightening. “You can’t be.”

You stare back. “Well I am.”

“You don’t—”

“I do.”

Steve’s frustration spikes now. Not loud, but sharp.

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t,” he fires back, a little harsher now. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Your expression doesn’t harden.

That almost makes it worse.

“You help people,” he says, gesturing vaguely. “You—you see the version of me that matches that. The version of me that—hunts, feeds people, keeps them alive. You see me with all those kids and think that makes me—what? Good?”

You don’t answer.

He laughs once, humorless. “That doesn’t make me a good person.”

You open your mouth.

But he cuts you off. “It doesn’t make me worth it.”

You close it again.

He keeps going.

Because now he can’t stop.

“Just because I let Dustin and his mom and Eddie all live at my place doesn’t make me a fucking saint. Just because I make sure my people don’t starve doesn’t mean I’m—” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means—”

“It doesn’t,” he repeats, sharper.

And then, he goes too far.

“I’m not someone who was made to be loved by one woman.”

The words land heavy.

Final.

You freeze.

He keeps going anyway. Because once it’s out, he can’t pull it back.

“I know I said that to the press, and they spun it like—” Steve mutters, halting the sentence to cut to the chase. “But not like that. Not—” Then he exhales harshly. “I’m not meant to be… that. For anyone.”

Your eyes are glossy now.

Wide.

Watching him.

“I’m not—someone you come home to,” he says. “I’m not someone you build something with. I’m not—” He gestures vaguely. “Dinner on the table. Good day, bad day, all that bullshit.”

His voice roughens.

“I can’t even get out of bed some days.”

That hits you square in the chest.

Hard, anguished, devastating…

You don’t move.

Don’t speak.

He keeps going.

Because now it’s spilling.

“I have Eddie dragging me out half the time,” he says. “Or I just… don’t talk. For days. I’m pissed off all the time, I’m grieving all the time, I’m—” He stops, jaw clenching. “There’s nothing light in my head anymore.”

Your chest aches.

God, it aches.

“I’m not letting anyone into that,” he finishes, quieter now. “I’m not doing that to anyone.” He holds your gaze with his own quiet agony. “Never will.”

Silence.

You’re still staring at him.

And your heart?

It’s breaking.

But it’s not breaking for you.

It’s breaking for him.

Because you can see it. All of it. You see the pain, the trauma, the unspoken horrors that plague his mind day into night, night into day. It’s all in his eyes. In the way he holds himself like he’s already bracing for impact, like he’s still backed into a corner with no other way to survive it then to lash out or cower in fear and beg for mercy.

You swallow carefully, keeping yourself together as best you can. Then softly tell him, or try to rather, “you don’t have to—”

“I do,” he interjects immediately.

Your lips press together.

You inhale slowly.

Exhale slowly.

And then something shifts as you look at him again, more carefully this time.

“There’s… Nancy,” you say.

It’s hesitant.

A little unsure.

His expression flickers, newly thrown. “What?”

You fumble slightly. “I mean—I know she helps you. At your house. And that she—she matters to you, and I just—” You shake your head. “I didn’t mean to—overstep. If there’s something there, I—”

“There’s nothing there.”

Steve cuts you off.

Instant.

Absolute.

You blink. “Oh.”

“She’s—” He exhales stiffly. “She’s my best friend.”

You nod slowly, still a little uncertain. “I just didn’t want to—”

“You didn’t.”

“I—”

“She loves me,” he admits bluntly. “Because she has to.”

You go painfully still.

That’s… not what you expected.

“She’s known me forever,” he goes on to say, just as blunt. “Yeah, we dated. Yeah, we—whatever. But that’s not—” He shakes his head hard. “That’s not something I can be anymore.”

You watch him quietly, still listening…

“Whatever part of me could’ve been that guy,” he mutters, “he’s gone.”

Your chest tightens.

“She knows that,” he adds. “She deals with it.” He stares at his hands now, at the callousness that never seems to go away. “I don’t ask her to stay, but she does. And I let her in the only way I know how.”

A beat falls.

Because he stops, realizing something dreadful…

He’s talking too much.

Saying too much.

Oversharing.

He exhales sharply. “Why the fuck am I telling you this?”

You don’t answer.

You just look at him… soft, open. 

Open.

And yet somewhere between maintaining this new distance between the two of you, while looking at him as though you’ve nothing to hide from him.

It makes him more frustrated.

“It doesn’t matter,” he mumbles, shaking his head. “None of this matters.” He looks at you, brown eyes burning. “You can’t love me.”

And then, as if things weren’t awful enough…

You smile.

Not brightly.

Not happily.

Something quieter.

Something that aches.

Something that yearns.

You hold his gaze. And then you tell him, soft enough it almost disappears into the wind, “You don’t get to decide that for me.”

Silence.

Heavy.

Absolute.

And all the while, Steve just… stares. Like your words knocked the air out of him. But all you do is turn your gaze back out to the city.

The countdown continues.

The music swells.

And somewhere between the noise and the quiet, everything changes again as the city below keeps celebrating like it isn’t counting down to a massacre. From up here, the Capitol looks almost… strangely beautiful, if you let your eyes blur long enough. Lights in long jeweled strings. Towers plated in gold and glass and untouchable monochrome. Streets pulsing with color. Massive projected numbers ticking down across the skyline in bright white digits, each second disappearing with a cruel kind of elegance:

09:13:42

09:13:41

09:13:40

It would almost be easy to pretend it’s a New Year’s Eve countdown. Some giant, drunken festival. A country making a large spectacle of itself the way that countries always do whenever they’ve convinced themselves that blood is tradition and cruelty is structure and children are acceptable collateral so long as the cameras stay polished.

Steve glares down at it all from beneath his lowered lashes and feels his stomach coil.

Music rises up in warped bursts from somewhere down in the streets. Horns. Drums. Laughter. The shriek of women dressed in sequins and feathers and body paint, hanging off balconies with drinks in their hands like tomorrow’s blood won’t be their entertainment. Men in expensive suits leaning against lit railings, gesturing up at the giant screens as though debating the odds at a horse track. Somewhere down there, inside the sealed and glittering walls of Panem, children are fast asleep in warm beds with full stomachs and parents who believe the world is still mostly safe.

And the sickest part?

Steve’s relieved for them.

Not for any of the adults. Fuck them. But the kids? Yeah. Those kids deserve soft sheets and locked doors and ignorance. They deserve to not know what demodogs look like when they tear through a town at dusk. They deserve to never hear the sound a demobat makes right before it dives. They deserve to never see what happens when people get cornered long enough that the monsters stop being supernatural and start being human.

Steve knows better than anyone… that walls don’t mean a goddamn thing in the end.

He was born behind them.

Born into gates and codes and private security and cameras set at every angle. Born into money that built fences so high, they looked like promises. His parents had made fortunes helping engineer systems like those: high- end private security, gated community defense networks, panic installations, reinforced estate perimeters. The whole pitch had always been simple: keep danger out. Keep the right people safe. Keep order where other people only had hope.

They were good at it, too.

Good enough to get rich. Good enough to get envied. Good enough to make sure that when the Purge Act hit and everyone with a brain and a wallet scrambled for some semblance of protection, the Harrington house became a fortress and a refuge. Families Steve had grown up around got welcomed inside those walls because his parents still had and exercised enough real decency to understand that survival without community was just expensive loneliness with surveillance.

And still, in the end, none of it mattered.

Because the things that got in that night didn’t come crawling through from another dimension with petals of teeth and claws and wet black skin.

They came in human form.

Human hands. Human mouths. Human rage.

Human resentment sharpened by class and humiliation and years of being told they’d never have what families like the Harringtons had. Human beings who looked at Steve’s parents and saw not people but symbols. Saw money. Saw power. Saw all the reasons their own lives had turned out hard and ugly and starved and praise-less. And they butchered them for it.

Not quickly enough to be merciful. Not sloppily enough to be random. It was deliberately. Viciously. Like they’d been imagining it for years.

And then they left Steve alive.

Which had always felt, in some ways, like the cruelest part.

Because if they had killed him, too? Maybe at least his story would’ve ended there. Maybe he would’ve gone with whatever dignity he still had left. Maybe he wouldn’t have had to spend the last year and some change carrying around a body that feels less like his than ever.

Instead they’d ruined him.

Ruined things no one could see at first glance. Things that lived under skin. Things that woke with him and slept with him and never, ever shut the fuck up. They’d taken his parents’ life and his house and his certainty and his manhood and left him with a pulse and a smile people still sometimes found charming, as if charm had anything to do with survival.

The memory doesn’t come at him all at once. It never does. It’s fragments. Heat. A hand. His father’s blood. A voice too close to his ear. Laughter in the wrong room. The sensation of being pinned by more than weight. Of being looked at like a prize, an object and a punishment all at once. Of someone saying sell him like it was a joke. Like a game. Like he wasn’t even there to hear it.

Sell.

That word still lives under his skin like rot.

It’s why Hopper’s voice downstairs earlier hit him the way it did. Why the sponsor talk always makes him want to peel his own skin off. Why the Capitol’s hunger felt so familiar when they chanted for him to take it off.

Sell.

He can still hear it. Still feel the burn of it in his wrists and pelvis and gut, like his body still keeps score even when his mind would rather jump off a bridge than remember the math.

He blinks hard and drags a hand down his face, palm rough over the line of his jaw. The wind touches the damp corners of his eyes and he hates himself for it immediately.

Next to him, you’re quiet.

Not distant in the cold sense. Just soft. Still. Wrapped around yourself at the edge of the rooftop in that pale sleep set that looks like something out of a painting no one in this city deserves to own. Your hair moves in the breeze, copper catching the moonlight. Your cheek is pressed lightly to your knees. The skyline glows in your eyes when you stare out at it, bare skin glowing like milky porcelain.

He shouldn’t be looking at you.

He looks anyway.

And because he’s a coward in all the ways that matter most, because it’s easier to talk while staring at the ugliness below than it is to look directly at the person breaking him open, the first thing out of his mouth comes half-flat and half-tight.

“Thought you said your grandfather ruined you for all other men.”

The second the words leave him, the air changes.

You don’t answer.

Steve frowns and glances down at you.

His stomach drops.

Your eyes are bright. Not full-on crying. Not openly. But shining in that awful way that means you’ve been fighting it for a while and you’re starting to lose. You thumb just beneath one eye when a tear catches there, blinking it back before it can fully fall, and then you curl tighter around yourself and keep staring out at the city.

After a beat, you nod.

Just once.

That’s somehow worse than if you’d snapped at him.

Because suddenly the meaning behind what he said… blooms in full. Your grandfather is sick as hell. Probably in a recliner somewhere right now with a blanket over his knees and the television too loud because everyone back home is losing their goddamn minds over what happened tonight, and he’s watching his favorite girl get dressed up and marched towards a slaughter he’s too powerless to stop.

Steve feels it then like something physical. A sharp, ugly stab right through the center of his chest.

“Shit,” he mutters, already shaking his head at himself. “No, I didn’t mean—”

But you cut him off before he can butcher the apology worse, lost in thought.

“I just…” Your voice is soft. Not shaky enough to break, but close to it. “I just keep praying he’s alright.”

That shuts him up instantly.

For a second all he can do is look at you. Really look. At the way you keep your face turned toward the city because maybe it’s easier than letting him see too much. At the wet shine still trapped in your lashes. At the way your fingers dig into your own sleeve to steady yourself.

He shouldn’t ask. He does anyway.

“Has he got someone with him?”

The question comes out stiffer than he means it to. A little too blunt. Like he doesn’t know how to ask gently anymore, only directly, as if kindness always has to be smuggled in under rougher language so no one sees him trying.

Thankfully, you don’t seem bothered by it.

You nod against your knees, a little sniffle escaping before you press a small, tired smile into the fabric. When you finally turn your face enough to look at him through your lashes, your eyes are still glossy.

“The Byers.”

Steve stiffly nods.

Right, he thinks to himself.

Jonathan Byers.

Which, for some reason, opens a whole other mess in his head.

Because yeah, obviously — of course the Byers are with him. Joyce would sooner fistfight God than let an elderly man sit alone and sick while his granddaughter waits for the arena. Jonathan’s your best friend. Has been forever. Steve knows that. Or knew it, anyway. It’s not new information, not really, but somehow it lands differently now.

He finds himself replaying middle school hallways. Elementary pickup lines. You and Jonathan perched on playground swings talking like the rest of the world didn’t exist. You by his side, at the Fall Festival one year, both of you carrying paper cups of steaming cider and laughing at something private. Not a romantic memory. Not remotely. Just… old. Established. Rooted.

Why the hell had he stopped thinking about that?

Maybe because Jonathan Byers, in Steve’s head, has spent so many years existing in relation to Nancy Wheeler. Quietly in love with her in that unflashy, puppy-eyed way that Steve has always hated recognizing because it makes him feel like an accidental villain no matter what he does. Maybe because Steve had gotten so used to clocking Jonathan’s feelings for Nancy that the rest of Jonathan blurred out around the edges.

But still...

A question presses forward before Steve can stop it. He doesn’t even know why he needs the answer. He just knows he does.

He clears his throat. “He, uh…”

You look over again.

Steve immediately regrets opening his mouth.

But he’s already in it, so he just keeps going, awkward and tight. “Jonathan. He—how’s he… holding up?”

It’s a stupid question. Too broad. Too personal… yet not personal enough. It makes him want to slam his own head against the wall because how in the fuck would you know? You’re stuck here, just as unaware as he is.

But you don’t laugh at him. Don’t look confused. You just blink once, then consider it for a second like you’re finding the answer in real time.

“Like Jonathan,” you say at last.

Steve almost huffs. “That clears everything up.”

That gets the faintest little smile out of you.

“He’s quiet when he’s worried,” you explain. “Quieter than usual, I mean... Which is saying something.” You tilt your head a fraction, eyes drifting back to the city. “He’ll make sure my grandfather’s got his medicine. He’ll keep the TV low if it gets to be too much. He’ll probably sit up all night, pretending he isn’t.”

Steve listens harder than he means to.

You shrug one shoulder. “He’s good in a crisis.”

“Yeah,” Steve murmurs before he can stop himself. “He is.”

Something about the answer settles weirdly in his chest. Not bad. Just… strange. Because it confirms exactly what he’d expect from Jonathan and somehow still makes him feel like he’s on the outside of a story everyone else already understood.

It also makes him wonder how in the hell Jonathan has never pursued you.

I thought suddenly searches through his mind, racking his brain, perplexing him even further. Because how in the hell is Jonathan Byers best friends with someone like you — someone angelic and ethereal and naturally beautiful in ways that puts the girl-next-door type to shame — and not head over heels in love with you?

…has that ever been the case?

…have the two of you ever talked about it?

…have you and Jonathan ever been more than friends?

Steve suddenly feels all these new uninvited questions pressing in. However, he doesn’t ask anything else. He forces himself not to.

Then you say, quietly, “Will worships you, y’know.”

That one does catch him off guard.

His head snaps toward you. “What?”

Your mouth softens at one corner. “He does.”

Steve ducks his gaze almost instantly, fondly embarrassed in a way that feels stupid and juvenile and painfully real all at once. His hand flexes where it rests over his knee. He can feel a little heat starting to work its way up his neck and hates that too.

“Kid’s got bad taste,” he mutters.

You smile properly this time. Small, but real. “No,” you murmur. “He doesn’t.”

Steve can’t help it. Something at the corner of his mouth twitches.

“Will’s probably the most well-behaved rascal out of the bunch,” he says.

Your nose scrunches fondly and it’s such an absurdly gentle expression that it almost physically hurts to look at.

“Yeah,” you whisper. “He is.”

Then the smile fades from both of you, because the city below swells again — horns blaring, voices rising, some new eruption of delight from whatever fresh coverage the giant screens have just started playing. The countdown clocks roll over to another hour marker and the whole Capitol seems to scream in approval.

Nine hours.

Nine fucking hours until the games begin.

Steve stares at you while you look away, and suddenly the reality of tomorrow settles over him with fresh teeth.

You’re going in there.

Into that arena.

With him.

With twenty-two other tributes and whatever horrors the Capitol’s engineered for spectacle and whatever human horrors get there first all on their own.

And he can’t protect you.

He shouldn’t want to.

But he does.

And the wanting of it — strong, instinctive, immediate — makes something vicious flare in him because Dustin is home. Dustin is his reason. Dustin is twelve and safe only because Steve stepped in. Steve gets one job: survive and get back to Hawkins. Back to the kids. Back to the house. Back to the world where grief is at least familiar.

…and yet all he can think right now is that you’re going in there too… and he doesn’t know how to live with the math of that.

You speak again before he can.

This time, you sound farther away. Like you’re following your own thoughts as they happen.

“When I go in there tomorrow…” You pause, eyes on the skyline. “I don’t… want it to change me.”

Steve goes very still at your words… …but then his eyes catch something.

You keep absently rubbing your right wrist with your other hand as you speak, thumb dragging up and down from wrist to forearm. He notices that before he notices the words. The faint discoloration there. Not a full bruise. Not yet. But a mark. A whisper of one. And for one sick second he can’t tell if it’s from earlier. From his hand on your arm in that hallway. From the way rage had made him careless.

The guilt hits so hard he blurts before he can think.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.”

You blink, startled out of your own thoughts. “What?”

“Your arm,” he says, staring at the place you’re touching. “Earlier. I grabbed you.” His voice roughens. “I shouldn’t have done that either.”

You follow his gaze down, as if only just now realizing what he means.

“It’s alright,” you say automatically.

Steve’s jaw tightens. “Stop saying that.”

He nearly begs you this time.

For once, you almost look like you might argue. But the feeling disappears as quickly as it came, and instead you turn back outward again and continue more softly, “I just don’t want to die unlike myself.”

That lands strangely enough that Steve actually has to blink.

“What do you mean?”

You take a slow breath. “I don’t want to disgrace myself.”

He stares at you. “By what. Not killing anyone?”

That makes your brow furrow pensively. “No.” You shake your head. “I mean—I’m not stupid. If it came down to defending myself, or protecting one of those kids…” You swallow. “I know what that means.”

The honesty in that answer makes something in him flinch.

“But I don’t want to come out of this as something I’m not,” you say. “Or die as something I never was.” Your hands tighten around your own wrist. “I don’t want them turning me into a monster and calling it survival.”

And there it is.

The thing he’s been choking on for months in one form or another, spoken back to him in your voice.

He should meet it with truth.

Instead he does what he does best.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says flatly. “That’s what we are to them. Pieces. All of us. Pieces in their games, paws they can maneuver whatever way they see fit.”

You turn and look at him fully now.

The challenge in your expression is quiet, but unmistakable.

“Maybe to them,” you say. “But I’m still me. And you’re still you.”

Steve gives a humorless little laugh. “Sure.”

“You are.”

“Why does it matter?”

Your eyes don’t leave his. “Because I care.”

He looks away first.

“Hate to break it to you,” he says flatly, voice grim. “You don’t get to care about that.”

And that, more than anything else tonight — seems to strike something raw in you.

You go so still he can almost hear it.

Then your voice comes out gentler than anger and sadder than pleading and somehow sharper than either.

“Aren’t I allowed to care about my own dignity?”

The word hits him like a body blow.

Dignity.

For a second the whole world narrows down to that one word and the sound of blood in his ears.

Dignity.

The thing stripped from him piece by piece under Purge Act laughter and masked faces and hands that treated his body like public property. Dignity torn loose with buttons and fabric and breath and every futile attempt he’d made to keep any part of himself untouched. Dignity left in tatters on a floor he still sees every time he closes his eyes too fast.

And here you are, saying it like it still belongs to you. Like it still could.

Steve’s stomach twists so violently he almost feels sick.

He wants to tell you yes. Wants to say yes, of course you are, yes, hold onto it with both hands, and yes, don’t let these bastards touch one inch of what makes you you.

Instead he says the ugliest thing available.

“I care about going home.”

The words come out cold. Blunt, deliberately stripped of feeling.

You blink.

“I care about getting the fuck back to Hawkins and getting this over with,” Steve adds, his tone clipped.

You don’t argue him further. Hell, you don’t even look offended.

That somehow makes it worse.

You just slowly pull back, leaning against the wall again, putting that distance between you one more time, and turn your face toward the city with a little nod that could mean anything.

Steve feels the flare in his chest immediately. That familiar helpless anger, sparked by the exact kind of quiet he never knows how to survive. So he goes on the attack again, but quieter this time. Meaner for how measured it sounds.

“Look,” he clips. “If this is how you wanna spend your last peaceful hours before tomorrow, fine. Who’m I to stop you. But I’m gonna spend whatever’s left of mine getting whatever sleep I can manage, so that I can lift my head another day back in my godforsaken hometown.”

He expects you to flinch.

You don’t.

You just… smile to yourself. Small, sad… real.

“I’m sure you will.”

It takes him half a second for that response to register. Then the meaning of it lands and something incandescent flashes under his skin.

He turns on you fully. “Don’t.”

You look over, startled by the force in his tone. “Don’t what?”

“Talk like that.” His voice drops lower, rougher. “Like you’re already dead.”

Your mouth parts, then closes again.

“I didn’t—”

“You did.”

He’s breathing harder now. He can hear it and hates that too.

“You keep doing that,” he goes on. “You keep talking like I’m the one going home and you’re—what? Not even in the running?”

You give the smallest laugh, almost self-conscious. “Steve—”

“No.” He leans forward off the wall, eyes hot. “No, answer me. Why the hell do you do that?”

There’s real confusion in your face now. “Do what?”

“Say it like it’s a given.” He gestures angrily out at the city, then back at you. “Like I’m supposed to just—accept that there can only be one winner and it sure as hell won’t be you.”

That startles you.

Steve can see it. The shift. The way your whole expression opens for one exposed second before you school it again. And because he’s too far in it now to stop — because the truth has started leaking out under all the anger and he can’t seem to seal it back up, he keeps going.

“I already know there can only be one fucking victor,” he states. “You don’t need to keep reminding me.”

Your eyes go wider.

Oh.

That’s what this is.

And the realization moves through you so quickly it almost feels like light.

Steve sees something change in your face and hates himself for wanting to know what it is. He’s still talking, too worked up to notice the damage he’s done — or the confession buried in it.

“I don’t wanna hear you talk like that,” he admits, quieter now, but no less fierce. “Like I’m supposed to just be fine with making it back into Hawkins alone.”

The second it’s out, the air goes electric.

You just look at him.

And for one impossible, aching moment, Steve realizes what he’s said.

Not fully. Not in a polished, pretty way. But enough.

Enough that you heard it.

Enough that he heard it.

Enough that there’s no taking it back.

The elitist city below keeps screaming and the countdown keeps ticking and somewhere music swells again, but up here everything goes still.

Your bruised heart feels so full it almost hurts.

Because there it is.

Not required love. 

But want.

Need.

The terrified, angry truth that Steve Harrington does not want to survive this without you.

You don’t smile right away. That would ruin it — break the fragile, blistered honesty of the moment. Instead you just keep looking at him, eyes bright and soft and astonished all at once, as if he’s placed something precious in your hands without understanding what he’s done.

Across from you, Steve looks like he wants to crawl out of his own skin.

Then, because the feeling inside you is too big to hold and too warm to hide, the smallest smile ghosts at your mouth.

You rise to your feet.

Slowly… carefully…

Steve stays seated and just watches you, blue-screening in real time. You in that pale silk sleep set with your robe hanging loose from your shoulders is the cause of it. You barefoot on the rooftop. You with the moonlight in your halo of hope and a look on your face he cannot decode for the life of him.

You look almost peaceful.

That makes no goddamn sense to him whatsoever.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” you say.

That’s it.

Just that.

And yet it leaves him staring like a complete fucking idiot, because how do you keep doing this? How do you keep taking the ugliest, sharpest things he gives you and somehow turning them all into something steadier, gentler, survivable? How do you keep walking away from all of these conversations looking more certain — while he’s left feeling like his own insides have been rearranged with a crowbar?

He doesn’t know.

What he does know — though he barely dares name it — is that you never make him feel small in it. Never stupid. Never condescended to. You leave him confused, yeah. Wrecked, absolutely. But not lesser. It’s almost worse, in a way. Because it means whatever this is, it isn’t power. It isn’t manipulation. It isn’t a game.

It’s just you.

You hold out your hand to him.

Simple as anything.

Like you’re offering help, not asking for it.

Steve swallows thickly. Then he reaches up with his left hand before he can think himself out of it. His calloused palm fits into yours and the contact is immediate and alive and a little too much in the secrecy of the dark. And like always, your hand is softer than his — warmer than the night air. The robin tattoo seems to twitch beneath his skin like it has its own pulse, as though the ghost of his best friend is getting a kick outta this. 

As if Robin Buckley herself is bugging him from the other side of the veil, the inside of his veins… calling him Dingus, telling him to say something.

Goddammit I’m working on it, he shouts at her in his mind.

You brace and help him up.

He could’ve stood on his own. Easily. You both know that.

Neither of you says it.

He rises and ends up standing too close for his own good, looking down at you while you look up at him… and for one charged second neither of you moves. The wind lifts a strand of your hair. The city glows below. Somewhere in the far back of his mind, Robin Buckley’s loud ghost is absolutely losing her goddamn mind.

Dingus, say something.

So he does.

“…see you in the morning.”

It comes out lower than he means it to. Almost shy.

Your angel eyes soften.

Then you give his hand the gentlest squeeze.

“Goodnight, Steve.”

The words hit him square in the chest.

Because of this morning. Because of the kitchen. Because he’d hated how much it bothered him when you didn’t say it the night before. Because it had become a thing between you before he even understood it had. A rhythm. A ritual. A stupid little thread of normalcy in a place designed to erase every trace of it.

And now you’re giving it back to him like you know.

Like you know exactly what it means.

He doesn’t scoff. Doesn’t deflect. Doesn’t even have enough pride left in him to pretend it doesn’t matter.

He just answers, quiet and sincere and wrecked by how much he means it.

“Goodnight, Ren.”

Your smile changes. Not bigger. Just deeper somehow. Then you let go of his hand and take a few steps backward, still looking at him, before turning toward the rooftop door.

Steve watches you go.

He watches the pale line of your silk robe disappear into the interior glow of the penthouse. He watches the door shut softly behind you.

And then he’s alone.

Again.

Only now it feels worse.

He stands there on the roof with his hand still half-curled from where it held yours and realizes with a sharp, sinking kind of horror that there is no chance in hell he’s sleeping tonight.

Because all at once he wants impossible things.

He wants another night in the kitchen with you stealing dessert off silver trays and talking about fake-sounding pastries until one of you laughs too loudly. He wants another old Disney movie with your shoulder near his on the couch… and the smell of something warm in the oven and no countdown clocks anywhere in sight. He wants to hear you say goodnight like it isn’t the night before the Hunger Games.

He wants you.

Not in the crude way the Capitol wanted him. Not in the way people take and strip and sell. Not ownership. Not spectacle.

Just you there.

Alive.

And the knowledge of that — the raw, helpless, completely unworkable need of it — makes the air leave his lungs.

Because it is not going to happen.

That’s what the rules say.

That’s what the odds say.

That’s what every giant bright number in this monstrous city says every hour, every minute, every second it keeps ticking down.

And yet every instinct in him is beginning to revolt against the math.

He doesn’t want to be the victor without you.

He doesn’t even know why that truth feels so old inside him. Like it’s been waiting there much longer than a week, longer than the train ride, longer than the Capitol, longer than the reaping itself. Like maybe some part of him knew before he ever did.

Below, the countdown rolls mercilessly onward.

08:57:03

08:57:02

08:57:01

Steve stares at it until his vision blurs.

And somewhere between one second and the next, between the noise below and the silence you left behind, between grief and dread and want and fury, he realizes the most devastating thing of all:

He is not afraid of dying nearly as much as he is afraid of surviving without you.

END OF CHAPTER 

You flinch so hard your shoulder hits the fridge. You swipe your palms over your wet eyes and cheeks, rapidly scrubbing the evidence of your misery away, before turning in the direction of the masculine voice. You find Jack Abbot lingering in the threshold, eyes wide and attentive, with one weathered hand still wrapped around the silver handle.

Neither of you says a word for several long moments. It could’ve been three seconds or three years; you can’t quite be sure.

“Are you… okay?” the older man presses.

“No. Yeah. I’m—” Your voice breaks, betraying you instantly. You shake your head despite yourself. “I’m fine.”

Jack’s head lowers. His light eyes squint. He doesn’t try to argue; he just looks at you, really looks at you.

“I know I seem crazy,” you laugh through a quiet sniffle. “But I’m fine.”

He steps further inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click. The chaos of the crowded ER goes muffled in an instant.

“Did something happen?” the attending asks lowly. He’s visibly on edge from the Code Hula Hoop from earlier that day — silver head bowed to keep your gaze, strong arms crossed over the chest of his thin black tee.

“No. Nothing like that,” you assure him quickly. “It’s just… It never gets easier, you know?”

Jack’s expression shifts when you turn away to lock up the small fridge behind you. His alarm ebbs into something more sympathetic. “Yeah. I get it…” he mumbles. “Go take a breather, if you need it.”

You shake your head, dismissing the thought immediately. “Robby’s been on my ass all week about taking too much time with my patients as it is. If I don’t pick up a few before I go, he’ll—”

“I’ll deal with him,” Jack cuts in, firm but not entirely unkind. “You go take a break.”

You turn back around, looking half-shy as you cross your arms tight over the chest of your wrinkled scrubs. “I… I can’t…” you mumble.

“…You can’t?”

“I’m like a shark— if I stop swimming, I’ll die.”

Jack would’ve laughed at that if you weren’t so solemn about it; if he hadn’t remembered, in that moment, that you’ve been working since seven the evening before. Almost twenty-four hours ago. “You haven’t slept today, have you?”

“I was going to,” you tell him, a little too quickly. “And then we got all those patients from the waterslide collapse, and then the systems went down, and then Ilana came in, and…”

His brows knit together. “So you haven’t slept since you started your double?”

“No,” you shrug. “I’m just… I’m not tired.”

Jack studies you for a long moment — your wet eyes, your worry-bitten lips, your arms crossed like you’re trying to make yourself as small as possible. You wear the long day all over, along with the grief you’ve been trying to hide all day. Jack knows the signs; he’s seen them in his patients, in his staff, in himself.

It usually starts with a double, and then a patient or two that spikes the adrenaline like a triple shot of espresso. That’s when the mania sets in, the belief you don’t need sleep despite the obvious, which inevitably leads to a crash. And that’s exactly where you’re heading.

“Can I ask you something?” Jack wonders lowly, taking a slow step forward and never once taking his eyes off of you. “Something kinda… personal?”

You hesitate, brows lowered, then nod despite yourself. “Yeah?”

“Do you… Do you see someone?”

You blink owlishly at him. “See someone?”

“Yeah. You know, like a… therapist,” he clarifies. “It’s good, you know, to have someone to talk to about… all this.”

He motions vaguely all around him, to the muffled chaos outside.

“No,” you shake your head, almost amused by the thought. “I’m fine. I don’t need a therapist—”

“Everyone needs a therapist,” Jack huffs a faint laugh. “Especially the people who choose to work here. We’re all lunatics.”

“Well, I’m fine,” you shrug and look away. “It’s everything else that’s so… fucked up.”

Jack exhales hard through his nose, nodding sympathetically. “Yeah, I… I heard about Barry. And his mom. I’m sorry…”

That’s what does it. The reminder of the memory — only from earlier that morning, which you had not forgotten but had tried hard to bury anyway — does it. You feel the dam break, crumbling into nothingness under the weight of an unrelenting pressure. 

“See, that’s— that’s what I’m talking about,” you start with a wet, maniacal sort of laugh. “I spend two hours coding a pre-school teacher, then another two treating her four-year-old, all while trying to get him to talk about what happened. And then I have to act like none of it fazes me, or else I’ll get that whole spiel from Robby— again. And then I do a sexual assault kit that no one will pick up because nobody gives a shit!”

Your voice rings through the quiet room.

You don’t seem to notice it, though, so Jack pretends he doesn’t either. He knows you need this, knows you’ve spent the past near twenty-four hours keeping all of this trapped inside.

“Barry’s dad won’t see the inside of a jail cell for what he did to them, and Ilana’s abuser won’t either, because the police won’t do their job— because nobody fucking cares—”

Your breath comes out sharp, like the air is being punched out through a tight chest. Your words spill from your mouth faster than you can stop them.

“And I’m supposed to help them, right? But how can I when nobody else gives a shit?”

“Hey— Hey…” Abbot coos, taking another step closer when he catches you starting to spiral. “Take a breath, kid…”

His voice is grounding. Steady, almost. A firm sort of comfort you’ve been searching for all day — a tenderness that feels like proof that you’re broken. Suddenly, you feel like you’ve said too much.

“I’m sorry,” you huff with a shake of your bowed head. “I-I have to go— I’m sorry.”

You storm past him to the door, and don’t stop when he calls your name.

Jack looms over the monitor of the now-functioning workstation. 

While the rest of the PTMC scrambles to scan their paper documents into the system, Jack peruses your file. His narrowed eyes flit across the screen, searching for your emergency contact. He holds his phone in his free hand and prepares to dial the number — to tell whoever is on the other line that you need them. 

Because someone did it for him once upon a time, and sometimes he thinks that’s the only reason he’s standing here now.

He’s got his thumb hovering over the green button to call when Robby catches his eye — the same way a dark black storm cloud swirling overhead would catch his eye. The older man tilts his head to glance at the overhead monitor and scratches at the grey patch in his beard.

“Who’s supposed to be overseeing the kid in pedes?”

“I’ll do it,” Jack tells him, half-distracted.

“I have a senior resident who’s supposed to be doing it,” Robby scoffs.

“I told her to take a break.”

The older man’s head snaps in his direction in an instant. His brows lower as his lip twitches into a faint smirk, looking half-offended as he crosses his arms over his chest. “And why would you do that?” he squints.

“She’s had a hard day,” Jack shrugs.

“We’ve all had a hard day,” Robby laughs. “And if we all took off because of one bad shift, none of us would be on this floor right now.”

“And if you had a little bit more basic human empathy, maybe your residents wouldn’t be falling apart, brother.” 

He flashes the older man an unamused glance. Robby flinches slightly at his words, chin jerking like he feels them physically. Jack would’ve apologized for being so harsh any other time — if he hadn’t almost gotten shot today, and if he weren’t already slightly angry at Robby for mistreating you.

“Excuse me. I gotta take this,” he mumbles and brings his phone up to his ear.

Robby scoffs a quiet laugh and shakes his head as he walks off in the opposite direction.

Jack watches him go with an unblinking stare as his phone starts to ring. Once, twice, and then— 

A sharp, grating chirp fills the crowded ER, swelling over the droning chatter and distant beeping. Jack’s eyes snap to the red phone on the other side of the work station, while his own stays pressed to his scruffy jaw. 

Dana peers at the man over the top of her glasses. Her eyes flit from his shocked face to the ringing telephone at her side. She picks it up with a lazy hand and holds it to her ear.

“PTMC charge nurse,” she greets without taking her eyes off Jack. “You mean to call this number?”

“Yeah, I was just—” Jack clears his throat and glances at the monitor below. “This was the emergency contact on file.”

“Well, sorry to get your hopes up…”

She flashes the man a sympathetic smile before hanging up the phone. 

The dial tone beeps in his ear for several long moments. He tries to guess why you would’ve made the E.D. your emergency contact — because you don’t have anyone outside of work, maybe, or because all of your closest friends work here, or because you’d want the ER to know first if something ever happened to you.

It makes his chest hurt either way.

He exhales a slow, heavy breath and shoves his phone back into his scrub pocket. He turns on his heel and makes a beeline for the stairs, hiking up to the roof despite the distant ache it puts on his prosthetic. Because he knows that’s where you are.

Because it’s where he would’ve gone, too.

“Y’know…” a familiar voice cuts through the quiet of the roof, lit only by distant streetlamps. “You’re in my spot, kid.”

You don’t turn to look at him. You’re too tired to take your eyes off the pitch-black hills rolling in the far-off distance, further away from the PTMC than you’ve been in months. Years. You get lost in your own head, and only vaguely register the sound of Jack’s nearing footsteps scuffing against the concrete rooftop.

“It’s getting pretty late…” the man continues, all casual, like you’re not standing on the very edge of the hospital roof. “If you’re hungry, there’s this DoorDash guy. Name’s Marco. He’ll trek up here for an extra ten—”

“Twenty if you want beer,” you finish for him, voice weighed down by something heavy.

“Ah…” Jack hums, closer now. “You come up here often then, huh?”

You exhale a heavy breath that he thinks is meant to be a laugh, though it comes without a usual smile. “I guess you could say that…”

He reaches the metal railing just a few feet from the ledge, where you stand on the other side, with only a thin glass pane keeping you from the roof’s edge. Even though you aren’t looking at him, you can feel him just beside you. The silken summer breeze carries the scent of his cologne as he bends at the waist to rest his elbows along the barrier between you.

“You wanna talk about it?” he wonders quietly, after a few beats of not-quite silence, filled by the sound of passing cars and chatter from the city below. “It’s good to talk about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” you shrug with a shake of your head. “I just… I thought I was doing some good, you know? By showing up here every day…”

“You are,” Jack insists, firm and immediate. His stare hardens as it flits across your emotionless profile, silently begging for you to look back at him. You avoid his gaze at all costs. “Those people down there— They need you. They need all of us.”

“But what’s the point?” you scoff. “If I can’t help him, then what’s the point?”

“You do help them.”

You scoff a teary laugh.

Jack burns from the inside out.

“You may not see it, kid, but I do,” he tells you. “That little boy in there— He’s still alive because of you.”

“But his mom’s not,” you argue in a detached tone of voice. The starry sky above you starts to blur as you blink back the warm tears gathering at your waterline. “And when Barry grows up, he won’t remember his mom— what she smelled like, what kinda music she liked to listen to in the car— but he’ll remember how the system failed her… Both of them…”

You trail off. Jack stays silent, letting you say all the words that have been raging in your head all day — untrue or otherwise.

“And it’s the same with Ilana, too, you know? I spent three hours with her in that room, doing something I know was triggering for her, and… for what? For the kit to sit in that fridge for two weeks because no one else gives enough of a shit to actually pick it up?”

The dull amber streetlights turn your unshed tears to gold when you finally turn to look at him. Your features are largely emotionless, fixed into the sort of automatic deadpan you train yourself to do as a doctor. But your eyes are wide and glittering with emotion despite yourself when you turn to the man beside you.

“I tricked myself into thinking I was actually doing some good for these people, but…” Your jaw clenches to stave off a sob as you shake your head at yourself. “Turns out, it’s all just… bullshit.”

The corner of Jack’s lip flickers upward into a sympathetic smile, because he knows exactly how you feel. “It’s not, kid…” he murmurs lowly.

“It is,” you insist, still stern despite the way your features crumble. “What I do in there doesn’t matter— None of this shit matters—”

Jack can sense you spiraling, can sense you about to turn away from him before you’ve even done it. He reaches out for you, catching your chin between his thumb and pointer finger to keep your eyes on his.

Your gaze flickers with surprise at first, stunned momentarily by the warmth of his touch, before it softens around the edges with something tender — as if you’d been craving this kindness all day. Your glitter irises follow Jack when he rises to full height, towering over you from the other side of the thin metal railing.

“Hey,” Jack snaps, firm but still strikingly soft with you. “You saved a life today, kid. That matters.” 

Your eyes sting.

“You helped a girl through the hardest day of her life,” he continues, with a stare just as merciless as his words. “That matters, too.”

You shake your head against his calloused hand, trying and failing to repel his words. You need them more than anything, and still, you can hardly stomach them.

“The officers will pick up that kit, I promise you that. And the asshole who hurt her will pay for what he did, I promise you that, too.”

“But you can’t,” you whimper. “You can’t promise me that. You can’t promise anyone that.”

“Well, I am,” Jack says. “Because I’m gonna make sure it happens. Because I believe it— Because I believe in Barry and Ilana, just like I believe in you. And without you… If you weren’t here for them today… Who knows what would’ve happened?”

His gentle grip on your chin softens when he knows you aren’t going to turn away from him again, but he still doesn’t let you go.

“That’s the point,” Jack tells you, so softly you could cry. “That’s why it matters. That’s why we need you here, understand?”

You sniffle quietly and nod despite yourself, if only to free yourself from this suffocating moment — from Jack’s unrelenting tenderness, which you feel hardly deserving of now.

He clicks his lips against his teeth and smiles softly as he murmurs, “Yeah, I’m gonna need to hear you say it…”

Your wet eyes are stern with unsaid protest, with lashes all clumped together from unshed tears. Your voice is small and more fragile than glass as you abide him anyway. “I understand…”

“Oh, c’mon…” Jack lilts drily. “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, kid— At least try to make it sound like you believe it.”

You roll your glassy eyes, more in embarrassment than annoyance.

Jack grins wider. “Yeah, I don’t know if you know this about me, but I can get real annoying if I need to…”

A faint smile pulls at the corners of your mouth despite yourself.

“…I understand,” you repeat, slightly steadier this time.

“Yeah…” Jack praises with a slow nod. “There we go…”

There’s a lingering beat thereafter, where you think he’s about to let go of your chin. Only he doesn’t. 

And it isn’t till then that you realize how intently he’s looking at you now, with eyes heavy and glittering beneath the dim starry night. Your heart lurches in your chest when you think he might kiss you — a fleeting, irrational thought that makes your breath shudder and your mouth fall gently agape.

A sudden boom cracks suddenly through the air.

You flinch hard as a blue-pink firework crackles in a navy black sky.

“Shit…” you huff, clutching at your racing heart. “That scared me…”

Jack’s chest aches with a similar fear. He reaches for you on instinct as his own hands start to tremble. 

“Here. C’mon,” he mumbles to himself, calloused hands firm on the outsides of your elbows. “Come back on this side before you give me a damn heart attack, kid…”

He assists you over the railing. You swing one leg over, and then the other, in a motion that feels practiced. Familiar. Until your left foot catches slightly on the edge, that is, and sends you stumbling into the older man’s chest.

“Whoa—“

“I got you,” Jack murmurs, steadying you with firm hands.

For a second, you’re closer than you’ve ever been. You can feel his heart racing against your palms. He can feel your breath fanning across his scruffy cheek. You can see his heavy eyes flitting wildly between yours, and again, you think he might kiss you — you want so desperately for him to kiss you.

Then the heavy door to the roof swings open, and the two of you jerk rapidly apart.

Laughter and muddled conversation come spilling out as a handful of the day shift emerges, with Donnie and Princess leading the charge, carrying a square blue cooler between them. The former smiles when he finds the two of you standing there together.

“You guys are early to the party, I see,” the man shouts over another set of booming fireworks.

“You kinda have to be when you’re the life of one,” Jack shoots back. “It’s more polite that way.”

“Here,” Princess says, handing the man a chilled beer. “Figured you could use one after getting shot today.”

“Shot at,” he corrects drily and takes the can from her grasp. “But I’m not drinking— I’m still on the clock… But she’s not.”

He turns to you, holding the beer out expectantly between you.

“I-I still have a few rounds to finish up,” you shake your head.

“I’ll do ‘em,” Jack shrugs. “You take a load off, alright? You deserve it.”

You hesitate for a moment, swallowing hard before reaching for the can with trembling hands. “…I deserve it,” you repeat under your breath, as though you were trying the words on for size.

“Yeah, you do,” Jack squints.

The can cracks faintly when you open it. You bring it to your mouth and take a slow sip, watching as the fireworks continue raining down overhead. 

The day shift gathers around you at the railing with their own beers, while sparkling rainbow hues decorate the dark rooftop. You lean against the cool metal, now on the other side of it, and a little bit better than you were before.

Jack lingers just next to you, and forgets to watch the show playing overhead.

He doesn’t even realize he’s staring until you turn to look at him, eyes wide with worry.

“You’re okay, right?” you mutter sheepishly, licking the sheen of alcohol from your mouth. “It’s not too loud out here, is it? ‘Cause we can go back inside if you want.”

The corner of Jack’s mouth lifts in a smile at your concern, and at your use of ‘we.’ The warmth you put in his chest far outweighs the lingering panic settled there. 

He shakes his head with a glassy-eyed gaze, “I’m right where I wanna be,” he assures in a honeyed voice.

You turn away, face flaring, and hide your smile behind your beer.

“Yeah…” he hears you mumble. “Me, too…”

There’s a slight pause.

Larry wipes his forehead with a handkerchief. “As far as anyone knows,” he adds grimly, “the tributes went straight back to their quarters.”

Someone mutters “Jesus…” right as another voice calls out, “well what about President Snow?!”

Klein spreads his hands. “Hasn’t said a word.”

The silence that follows is brief.

But heavy.

Then the projector flickers again.

The news broadcast cuts to a replay.

Caesar Flickerman’s blue hair fills the screen as he recaps his show… sitting on another talk show, where he’s being grilled by the hosts. “—and perhaps the most stunning moment of the evening came from District 12’s very own, our dove, Ren Everdeen—”

The gym falls quiet.

Everyone watches.

Again.

The clip replays. Your face on the stage. Soft, calm. Terrifyingly sincere. “Because he came here with me.”

The silence inside the gym deepens into something almost sacred.

Then the noise explodes again.

And right up front, on the gym floor, five kids sit cross-legged on a cluster of mismatched beanbags like they’ve claimed territory. Walkie-talkies. Pudding cups. Backpacks. A stack of comic books someone isn’t even pretending to read.

They look like they’re preparing for a sleepover.

Except nobody’s laughing.

Dustin Henderson’s mouth is hanging open. “Dude...”

Mike Wheeler rubs both hands down his face. “Dude...”

Lucas Sinclair shakes his head slowly. “Dude.”

Erica leans back against the beanbag with her arms crossed. “Are you idiots going to say anything besides ‘dude’?”

Dustin slowly turns toward her, mouth still agape. “She said she loves him.”

“Yessss,” Erica drags the word out, eyeing him like he’s stupid. “We all heard that part.”

Mike stares at the screen. “But like… loves him loves him.”

Erica rolls her eyes. “That’s generally what the word means.”

“Wait, wait, wait—” Lucas leans forward. He points at the screen where the interview replay continues. “She said she’s always loved him.”

The boys stare at each other.

Then slowly turn toward Will… who sits very still. His chin tucked slightly into the sleeve of his sweater. His eyes never leave the screen.

“…yeah,” he admits quietly. “Because she has.”

All four of them snap toward him.

“You knew—?!” Dustin squawks.

Will shrinks slightly. “Well… not knew-knew.”

Mike gapes. “Dude!”

Erica groans. “Oh not again—stop saying dude!”

But the boys don’t let up.

“I just mean—” Will fumbles. “I mean she always looked at him like that.”

Lucas squints. “Like what?”

Will shrugs helplessly. “Like…he was the sun.”

The boys simultaneously go silent.

“And because like…” Will adds quickly, still tripping over his words a bit. “She and Jonathan have been best friends for years, and she’s—never looked at him like that, or…” He pauses, peeking at them all shyly. “I dunno. It’s hard to explain. Like even around town, when she sees us all at market with Steve? Her eyes just sort of… sparkle differently.”

Erica tilts her head thoughtfully. 

“Huh.” Then she shrugs. “Seems reasonable.”

Dustin whirls on her. “REASONABLE?!”

“Well yeah.” She gestures at the screen where Steve Harrington’s interview replay flashes briefly between clips. He’s leaning back in the chair. Chainmail glinting. Eyes dark. Attitude blazing. His smile brooding and beautiful. Erica smirks. “Have you seen that man?”

Mike chokes on air.

“Erica!” Lucas exclaims with boyish disgust.

“I’m just saying.”

“Please stop saying,” her brother gags.

“It’s the facts,” she shrugs again. “If you’re gonna fall in love with somebody before getting thrown into a death arena, he’s a pretty solid pick.”

Mike coughs into his fist.

Dustin points at the screen again. “Yeah, and now we don’t even know what the hell he’s thinking—son of a bitch…” He pinches the bridge of his nose… just like Steve always does. “This sucks. Big booty hole sucks.”

Erica reels back. “Ew?!”

“I wonder if he knows,” Will solemnly says.

“How can’t he?” Lucas asks exasperatedly. “He was inside the same studio the whole time. He had to have heard it.”

Mike runs both hands through his hair. “Which means—”

“Oh my God,” Dustin breathes. “What if loves her back?”

The boys freeze.

Erica squints at all of them before cracking open a new can of pudding. “He’d be stupid not to.”

Down the hall, away from all the noise…

Nancy Wheeler paces.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

The classroom smells like chalk dust and old textbooks. There’s a small TV sitting on the teacher’s desk. It’s muted. But it’s still playing the same looping footage.

Your interview.

Over.

And over.

And over.

Nancy’s thin arms are crossed so tightly across her chest her knuckles have gone white. “This is bullshit.”

The door warily creaks open.

Eddie Munson pokes his head inside like a man approaching a bear trap.

“...Hey.”

Nancy doesn’t stop pacing. “This is such fucking bullshit.”

Eddie sighs. “Yeah.”

She spins toward him. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh I absolutely do.”

He shuts the door behind him as Nancy gestures violently at the television.

“She’s lying.”

Eddie lifts an eyebrow. “Is she?”

“YES.” Nancy’s voice cracks. “She has to be!”

“Why?”

Nancy stares at him like he’s stupid. “Because she doesn’t even know him!”

Eddie crosses his arms. “Nance…”

“She doesn’t—” Her voice breaks sharper now. “She met him a week ago— she can’t be in love with him when they’ve never once hung out. Not once!”

Eddie stares. “You can’t possibly believe that.”

Nancy scoffs bitterly. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah. Really.” He shrugs. “Because half the goddamn town’s been in love with Steve Harrington since middle school.”

Nancy’s face goes red. “That’s not the same thing.”

“No?”

“No.”

She turns away, running a hand through her long brunette hair, feeling Eddie staring at her… tracking her like a hawk.

“You’re missing the point.”

Eddie leans against the desk. “Then enlighten me.”

Nancy’s voice drops. “There can only be one winner.”

Silence.

Eddie studies her. “And you think it’s gonna be Steve.”

Nancy’s jaw tightens. “I know it will be.”

“Which means she dies.”

Nancy swallows down the better part of herself. “Yes.”

“And if she dies,” Eddie says slowly, “then this whole tragic love story thing… kinda goes down the drain.”

Nancy’s eyes flash. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

“You’re taking her side.”

“I’m taking Steve’s side.”

Nancy laughs bitterly. “Oh, bullshit.”

“Nancy?” Eddie pushes off the desk. “Stop it.”

“No,” she snaps, backing away. Her eyes are pure glass, angry with emotion that threatens to spill over. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am.”

“Then say it!”

“Jesus—” Eddie’s patience snaps. “For Christ’s sake, Nancy!”

She visibly flinches.

“You think I don’t get why you’re upset?” Eddie keeps going, his voice rough now. “You think I don’t know you love him?”

Nancy’s eyes fill instantly. 

“I know you do…” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “That’s why I—need you—to be on my side.”

Eddie exhales slowly. “I’m always on your side.”

Silence stretches.

Then Nancy’s anger collapses into something fragile and raw. “She doesn’t even know him,” she grunts again, weaker now.

Eddie walks forward. “Maybe not like you or I do,” he agrees solemnly. “But it doesn’t change the fact she’s grown up around him, too.”

“Well it isn’t the same.”

His eyes soften. “I know it isn’t.”

Nancy nods miserably at that, glaring at the ground. “Good.”

She takes a moment to gnaw at her bottom lip until it’s swollen and raw, then glances up at the small TV… where the news station is flashing an image of you and Steve arriving together at the gala, arm in arm.

Her blue eyes narrow, one rogue tear falling before she bats it away angrily. 

“He’s not like he used to be,” Nancy states through gritted teeth. “That… flirty lifeguard golden boy that used to charm the halls. Make girls blush. Take me out on diner dates in his fancy car.”

“I don’t think that’s who she’s in love with,” Eddie gently counters her.

“That’s the only version of him girls are in love with!” Nancy argues, getting worked up again. She laughs humorlessly, eyes wild. “C’mon, Eds—that’s all they’ve ever known him as! King Steve!”

Eddie exhales sharply. “That version of him’s been gone for a solid year and a half. Everyone’s seen that. Including her.”

“Key word: seen.” Nancy hisses the word, jabbing her finger at him. “They’ve all seen the change. They don’t know him, they don’t— know why.”

He doesn’t disagree with that.

Because he knows the dark truth that Steve carries with him, and Nancy has held him through many times… whenever he lets himself be held or touched at all.

“Maybe not,” Eddie relents, “but she now knows a side of him we don’t know either.”

Her eyes flash. “What’re you—”

“A lot happens in a day, Nancy,” Eddie cuts her off flatly. “You know that.”

“So?!”

“So imagine seven days. Out there.” Eddie gestures at the television. “Inside the Capitol. All alone—no family, no friends. Just each other to lean on.”

Nancy shakes her head — arms crossed, pacing again. “Not true. Hopper’s there.”

Eddie roughly scrubs a hand down his face, mustering patience. “You and I know damn well… Steve’s not gonna lean on Hopper for sanity.”

“Well he should! That’s what he’s there for!”

“They’re leaning on each other, Nancy,” Eddie states with finality. “And that’s how it should be.”

Nancy stares, then scoffs bitterly. “You’re unbelievable.”

“—and the flames aren’t the only thing they’ve now shared,” a reporter is now saying on the TV, standing outside the White House. “Steve Harrington is rumored to have taken a mock bow during evaluations—right at the end of his presentation for Seneca Crane… and now, Ren Everdeen has mirrored the exact same sort of bow. A curtsy, really! Which begs the question: was it merely rumored… or was it real?—”

They watch the television for another moment as reporters lose their minds. Theorize. Voice conspiracies. Spread gossip. They show clip after clip, photo after photo, playback after playback — all on repeat.

One leaked shaky cam footage appears to have been filmed from a distance, as if captured by a hidden source — showing you and Steve, walking arm in arm, after the Gala. He’s leaning into you, whispering in your ear with a grim expression… and you’re listening, leaning in closer, before nodding up at him as he pulls back and whisks you away protectively into the cybertruck. Every corner is flooded with paparazzi and reporters trying to get all of the tributes’ attention as they’re escorted away — and for the most part, the tributes wave or acknowledge them.

But not Steve.

Not you.

Neither of you notice them.

And there’s something unusually territorial in the way that Steve keeps your arm in his while looking around, then pausing as you reach for someone. It’s a little boy. 

Eddie squints at the screen, noticing it’s the kid from District Five. 

You’re asking him something with a warmly concerned expression, and Jack is just nodding at you quickly before Steve winks at him then ruffles his hair. 

It’s only after Jack’s been safely escorted into the other cybertruck with more of the tributes that Steve safely sees you inside the one assigned to you both parked parallel to it while all the other tributes keep waving and basking all of the glory… the attention… the pandemonium…

The sight makes something pull at Eddie’s heartstrings.

His eyes go round with wonder as he watches the camera footage end while the news anchors resume their theorizing…

“You really think she’s lying,” he says quietly.

Nancy’s still staring at the TV, but she doesn’t blink. “Yes.”

“…and you think he doesn’t love her back.”

She turns to him now, eyes hard… but her voice cracks. “He can’t.”

Eddie studies her face carefully. “And why not.”

Nancy looks like he slapped her. “Don’t.”

“I’m just saying—”

“DON’T.”

Her voice breaks completely now.

And suddenly she’s crying.

Angry.

Ugly.

Heartbroken tears.

Eddie’s eyes go wide with horror and exhaustion alike. He sighs deeply while pulling her into a tight hug, desperate to make this all go away. Nancy resists for about half a second…

Then collapses against him.

“Fuck,” she sobs into his jacket.

“I know,” he murmurs sadly. “I know, Nance.”

Outside the classroom door, the gym roars again as the broadcast replays your confession one more time. And on every single television screen across the country, the countdown clock ticks lower.

11 hours, 47 minutes until the Games.

The Capitol calls it analysis.

The people watching know better.

It’s spectacle.

The footage doesn’t stop. It keeps playing across every screen in the country — every bar, every storefront window, every dusty television struggling to hold signal through crooked antennas and half-dead wiring.

But no city is a match for Hawkins tonight.

Back in the gym, the projector hums louder as the next segment begins. The anchorwoman sits behind a sleek glass desk, Capitol lights glinting off her lacquered hair. Behind her, a massive still image from the parade fills the screen — you and Steve in the chariot, standing side by side, both of you wreathed in flame, your joined hands lifted toward the sky. He looks like fire incarnate. You look like something fallen from heaven.

The caption beneath the image reads:

THE KING AND THE DOVE

“District 12 has captured the entire nation’s attention tonight,” the anchor narrates with zeal. “Following tonight’s interviews with Caesar Flickerman, analysts across the Capitol are now scrambling to interpret the stunning revelation from tribute, Ren Everdeen.” Another commentator leans into frame beside her, eyes wide. “Star-crossed lovers entering the arena is not something this country’s faced over the last forty-eight Games, all leading up to this one,” he says, folding his hands together. “But it’s the declaration that has everyone stunned, given the small town baker’s daughter’s vulnerable confession…” His co-host nods reverently. “It was just so… sincere.”

The screen cuts again.

A different image appears — the press photograph taken earlier in the week. Steve is seated, leaning back in a chair, head tipped toward the ceiling, eyes somber. The netting at his throat catches the light like liquid silver. Behind him stands you, an ethereal beacon of light… like an angel entered the room and graced it with her presence.

And of course, the viral photo is what gets the most coverage.

The studio image where Steve’s profile is to the camera, head tipped back… eyes closed. You stand behind him, temple resting gently against the center of his spine, your hands lifted near your chest — not quite prayer, not quite surrender. Your gaze locks straight into the camera, steady and daring.

The commentator whistles under his breath. “How did we miss this?” The anchorwoman smiles thinly. “Perhaps we were looking for the wrong signs.”

Back inside Hawkins High, the crowd reacts like a thunderstorm breaking wide open. People point at the screen, talking over one another.

“That’s from the photo shoot!”

“No shit!”

“Look at the way she’s leaning into him—”

“Jesus Christ…”

Someone mutters from the bleachers, “How long has that been going on?”

Nobody has an answer.

Down on the gym floor, Dustin nearly launches himself off his beanbag. “DID YOU SEE THAT?!”

Mike blinks dazedly at the screen. “Yeah.”

Lucas leans forward, squinting. “Now, hold up.” He points at the image. “That picture… I thought that was just a cool pose.”

Erica rolls her eyes. “You thought that was a cool pose,” she mocks him.

Lucas turns defensive. “Well how was I supposed to know?!”

Will speaks quietly beside them. “Someone leaked candid footage from that.”

The others turn toward him immediately.

“When?” Mike asks. “Where?”

“It was online,” Will explains, trying to remember. “But like—it wasn’t anything news broadcasts were showing. Just some highlighted story from the zine’s account.”

Dustin leans over eagerly. “What happened in the footage?”

Mike leans in too, flat on his stomach while eating popcorn like he’s watching a new blockbuster hit onscreen for the first time. Lucas mirrors him, snuggled closely — like they’re two girls at a sleepover. Even Erica’s enthralled.

Will swallows, suddenly on the spot. “Uhm—well… They were talking before the photographer came in. During the press junket.”

Dustin scoots closer. “Talking about what?”

Mike crunches popcorn, not blinking.

Will shrugs sheepishly. “Nothing important.”

Lucas narrows his eyes. “That doesn’t sound like nothing important.”

“Well they were just…” Will hesitates, searching for the right words. “Normal. Like they forgot the cameras were there.”

For a moment none of the boys respond.

“And like,” Will continues, thinking back to the video. “They were sorta just… I dunno, just really in sync. Like they didn’t even remember that they’re stuck inside a human death machine.” His eyes suddenly light up. “And, and—like, they’ve both sort of had to survive some scary story together that the world’s writing for them. So they’ve got their own language going on… but offscreen. Not just for show.”

Lucas still looks puzzled.

Mike’s also trying to understand.

But Dustin’s connecting the dots faster. “Like the Empress and Atreyu in the Neverending Story.”

Will snaps his fingers excitedly. “Exactly!”

Erica tilts her head thoughtfully, slowly licking her pudding spoon. “So they’re either hopelessly in love,” she observes, raising one eyebrow, “…or the best damn actors in Panem.”

Dustin points at her triumphantly. “BOOM!”

Lucas groans. “That doesn’t narrow it down at all!”

Mike rubs his face with both hands. "But is it real though…? That’s what I’m still wondering.”

Will looks back at the screen again. “I think it’s real.”

The others stare at him.

“Why?” Mike asks cynically.

Will shrugs sadly. “Because she looked scared.”

Lucas frowns. “When?”

“Right before she said it,” Will replies. “Her hands were shaking.”

Across town at Melvald’s General Store, the televisions in the front window crackle through a mismatched set of speakers wired together with electrical tape. The store itself is technically closed, but the lights are still on, and half the town has gathered on the sidewalk outside anyway.

Inside, Joyce Byers stands behind the cracked counter of the cash wrap with both hands braced against the worn wood… watching the staff room TV that she and Donald moved out there for safety, given the constant news updates and state of the world. 

The clip rolls again.

Your face on the stage.

Your voice is steady.

“Because he came here with me.”

Joyce exhales slowly.

Behind her, the store owner shakes his head. “Well I’ll be damned.”

Joyce doesn’t add to that. She just stares at the screen, her heart twisting in ways she didn’t expect while Donald shakes his head — abandoning his task of price stickering new inventory. 

Neither of them can focus on work now.

Especially Joyce.

She’s known you since you were small — small enough to sit on the counter while your father baked bread, small enough to walk home from school while holding Jonathan’s small hand… when both of you were just in grade school. You were always so gentle. Always so careful with people’s feelings.

Joyce presses her hand against her mouth.

“…oh honey,” she whispers tragically.

Suddenly she understands something she never noticed before…

All those years you never talked about yourself. Never complained. Never asked for anything, or let yourself fall into relationships with boys… no matter how nice they might’ve been. Because all this time, you were just… waiting.

You’ve been waiting for Steve Harrington to notice you back.

And now the entire world knows it.

Across town, inside the Byers quaint house, Jonathan sits on the couch with the television volume turned low. Your grandfather sleeps in the old recliner beside the window, a blanket tucked around his knees.

The replay begins again.

Your voice fills the quiet room.

“I don’t want the press spinning this to make him look heartless,” you tell the crowd. “Because he’s not.”

Jonathan sighs down at his lap, then quietly glances over at the old man. He finds him still sleeping — which is a relief, because Burdock’s worry for you had only deepened after that interview. But given the strong medication that he’s on right now for pain, the drowsiness had set in… and he’d drifted off to sleep, shortly after the news stations went berserk.

“—but despite Ren’s assurance, others aren’t so convinced,” a reporter is now saying, standing right outside some pompous bakery at the Capitol. “Because now? People are speculating about the Everdeens’ collective silence on the day of the Reaping. Reaction footage only shows Ren’s grandfather looking horrified—very visibly refraining from shouting, no doubt given the fact Peacekeeps won’t tolerate it. However… when the cameras pan over to Parker Everdeen, his face is almost blank—almost apathetic. The same can be said for the siblings’ stepmother, Angelica. But could this perhaps just be shock? Are we reading this wrong?—”

Your grandfather’s voice rumbles suddenly. “Not entirely.”

Jonathan jumps, turning to find the old man with his eyes still closed. “You’re awake?”

“Hard not to be with that thing yappin’ all night,” Burdock sighs, opening one eye. “They’re not gonna believe her. No matter how good a heart she’s got.”

The boy next to him stands up now, reaching for the remote.

But Burdock stops him. “No, no—it’s alright. Don’t—” 

He stops to painfully cough and wheeze into his elbow, which automatically makes Jonathan spring into action as he brings the glass of water to his lips. The old man looks ashamed of himself, but grateful nevertheless.

“These news anchors are annoying,” Jonathan murmurs.

Your grandfather sighs gravely, glancing at the screen. “They’re all just trying to sound smart. Say somethin’ riveting. Like it’s anything original, when it’s just a bag of expired bologna packaged to look like prime rib.”

Jonathan smirks fondly. “Your analogies never miss the mark.”

The old man stares at him with a deadpan expression. “Don’t kiss my ass. It ain’t something you wanna be anywhere near with that clean mouth.”

That earns a barked laugh from Jonathan.

“Duly noted,” he chuckles.

Burdock tiredly grins, watching the local news reporters now talking around. They’re showing the bakery, which now sits dark on Randolph Lane. It won’t be open tomorrow during the Games. At least not until after the cornucopia.

Because if you go in the initial bloodbath, no one is going to want to work.

Especially not Jonathan. Not even your brother or stepmother.

Not until after they’ve properly mourned you.

“…Y’know, she always did say the Brothers Grimm fairytales seemed more accurate,” your grandfather murmurs, watching Peacekeepers onscreen now stand guard at the bakery, along with Office Powell and Callahan. “It makes sense she’d finally confess she’s in love with him when darkness tries taking over.”

Jonathan blinks, quietly thrown for a loop.

He looks at your grandfather, then back at the screen. “You knew?”

Your grandfather snorts. “Girl’s been mooning over that boy ever since they were size four tennis shoes.” He shrugs warmly, smirking at him. “And no, I didn’t snoop through her diary. She told me herself.”

Jonathan blinks. “Seriously?”

“Yep.”

The old man shifts slightly in the recliner. “I might be a crotchety old man, but I’m a real good listener.” He smiles to himself, stifling a cough. “Especially for my granddaughter.” 

Jonathan’s eyes gloss over.

Because he knows just how close you and your grandfather are, and he also knows just how long you’ve been in love with Steve Harrington…

Which is almost as long as you’ve known how in love Jonathan has been in love with Nancy Wheeler.

“Also,” Burdock now drawls with a mischievous glint in his eye. “D’you really think that your mama and I wouldn’t have tried marrying you two off together, if we didn’t know there wasn’t a shot in the dark?”

At that, Jonathan laughs sheepishly. 

“Yeah, well,” he scratches his neck. “If I wasn’t so boringly content with being the closest thing to siblings, I’d marry her in a heartbeat.” He smirks. “Ren’s perfect.”

“Sure is.”

“She’s a real life Disney princess.”

Burdock smiles sadly. “Yeah, I know…”

Jonathan’s chest tightens. “Don’t think I haven't thought about it.”

Your grandfather looks at him then.

But Jonathan keeps staring at the TV screen. “I’ve asked myself what the hell’s wrong with me. Why I can’t just see her like that.”

“To be fair,” your grandfather cuts in helpfully. “She’s done the same.”

“Oh, I know,” Jonathan crooked smirks, glancing at him sideways. “Trust me. We’ve talked about it.”

The old man smirks back fondly. “That’s because you’re best friends.”

Jonathan’s charcoal eyes twinkle sadly. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, forever.”

The word lodges in his throat.

Forever.

Even though forever my end tomorrow.

“Damn it,” Jonathan mutters to himself, shaking his head shamefully as soon as he feels himself leaking. He turns away, jaw flexing. “Sorry.”

Your grandfather’s brow furrows, eyes solemn. “For what? Loving her?”

Jonathan doesn’t answer that right away.

He just sighs through his nose, composing himself before glaring at the news again… watching as they show yours and Steve’s silent motion images from the studio, where you’re both wearing the athleisure suits for your designated tribute avatars.

“No,” Jonathan finally replies, now turning to Burdock. “For not volunteering in her place.”

That actually makes your grandfather go eerily still.

A chill runs up his spine, his already failing heart twisting painfully inside his chest. He fixes Jonathan with a stern look.

“Jonathan Shane Byers,” Burdock says slowly. “There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

“I could’ve tried.”

“Unless you’ve got female genitalia, I don’t know about? No. You couldn’t.”

Jonathan almost laughs at that, although it falters.

His face is pinched. “I still could’ve tried—hell, District Eleven’s got two boys going in there.” He flings a hand at the TV, bitter with himself. “They could’ve let us do the same.”

“You know they wouldn’t have done that,” Burdock quietly reminds him. 

“But I’m—” Jonathan cut himself off, eyes closing. He shakes his head at himself again, while taking a disarm intake of breath through nose…and then releases it slowly. “I’m still not there helping her.”

Burdock stares at him. “That’s because you’re here… helping her.”

Jonathan nibbles at his bottom lip, still not sure.

But when he peeks up through his lashes to meet your grandfather’s eyes, he stays quiet and listens.

“You’re helping take care of me,” Burdock goes on to say. “You’re helping run that bakery while she’s gone. You’re making sure no one burns any loaves of bread. Or the building down. Which all of us have almost done at least once.”

A breath of laughter tumbles from Jonathan before he can stop it.

“And you’re rallying behind her every step of the way,” Burdock stresses, his eyes completely serious. “You know how hard it was to get Angelica to even agree to letting those ingredients be spared today?”

“Yeah well, she can make me work to pay it off,” Jonathan blurts heatedly — not even hesitating now. “For all I care? I’ll sell a kidney before that woman gets cheap. Ren’s the only reason that bakery stays warm. Not the ovens.”

At that, your grandfather beams. “Damn right.”

They look at each other for a moment in solemn solidarity.

With mutual understanding.

With mutual love and respect.

With mutual adoration for you.

“She’s coming home,” your grandfather says quietly, although the shakiness in his tone doesn’t go unnoticed by either of them. He leans back in his seat. “Both of them are. Least if I’ve anything to say about it.”

Jonathan huffs softly. “Pretty sure the Capitol doesn’t take prayer requests.”

The old man folds his hands over his stomach. “Doesn’t mean we won’t try.”

That makes Jonathan’s eyes twinkle with hope.

He smiles at your grandfather, tight-lipped and aching — then reaches out to squeeze his hand as they watch the television screen.

“We’ll die trying.”

Back at the gym, the broadcast shifts again to a panel of Capitol analysts.

One gestures dramatically toward the screen. “Whether strategic or sincere, Ren Everdeen has changed the entire narrative of these Games.” Another analyst nods. “Public sympathy could translate to sponsor interest.” The third leans forward. “And sponsor interest saves lives.”

The gym murmurs uneasily. Nobody likes hearing it put that bluntly.

And down the hallway, Nancy’s crying has slowed… though she still clutches Eddie’s jacket like it’s the only solid thing left in the world.

“God,” she mutters hoarsely. “I hate this.”

Eddie rubs her back assuring. “Yeah.”

“I hate the Capitol.”

“You and me both.”

“I hate them.”

He kisses her crown, silently seething as he rocks her. “Me too.”

“…and I can’t stand her.”

“That’s not true, and you know it,” Eddie counters softly. “She’s just as much a victim as he is”

Nancy pulls back enough to glare at him. “You’re not helping.”

Eddie shrugs helplessly. “I’m emotionally supporting you.”

“By disagreeing with everything I say?”

“No.”

She rolls her eyes. “Exhibit A.”

“I’m keeping you honest,” Eddie murmurs to her calmly. “Because you stand for truth, and your anger shouldn’t blind that. No matter how valid.”

Nancy pulls father back to squint at him. “That’s not support.”

“It is if you’re crying.”

She huffs, wipes at her face. “…I still think she’s lying.”

Eddie sighs sadly. “Nancy.”

“I do.”

“She truly looked like she meant it.”

Nancy groans. “That’s not the point!”

“Then what is?”

“The point,” Nancy snaps, “is that Steve is an idiot.”

Eddie blinks. “Okay, well that I can agree with.”

“And he’s probably—freaking out right now...”

“Also accurate.”

Nancy suddenly pulls back, a new thought crossing her mind as she watches the television. A panel of women are now talking over each other while large monitors bring them display an image of you and Steve shaking hands, back at the Reaping…

Her stomach dips as she watches.

“…what if he thinks he has to protect her?”

Eddie pauses.

He hadn’t really thought about it. Or rather, hadn’t had to think about it, given the fact Steve would never do anything except protect someone. But now…? Now that he knows you aren’t just a good person, but that you’ve supposedly been in love with him for years…?

He blinks. “Oh.”

Nancy points at him. “Exactly.”

“That…” Eddie thinks about his best friend’s inability to put himself first, even if he should. He swallows. “That might actually be a problem.”

Nancy throws her hands up. “THANK YOU!”

Eddie sighs again. “But… if the country falls in love with them…” He gestures toward the gym outside. “…that might save both their asses.”

Nancy glares. “Or it might get them killed faster.”

Neither of them has a good answer.

Near midnight, the crowd in the gym thins slightly, though not by much. Now people start sitting on the floor where there wasn’t space before, making to camp out for the best seats in the house tomorrow morning once the Games begin.

The kids remain firmly planted in the front.

Because there’s no way in hell they aren’t going to be here, holding down the fort once the Games start. They’re still going to be helping take donations… make sure that Mayor Klein doesn’t slow down… help run the soup kitchens with Joyce, since the old classrooms now serve as homeless shelters for any citizens who’ve lost their homes.

Lucas unzips his sleeping bag. “None of us are separating, right?”

Dustin yawns but refuses to move. “No way,” he stretches like a cat, settling deeper into his own sleeping back while taking off his glasses. “I filled up the automatic feeder for Mews, back at Steve's. Filled a mixing bowl of water. He won’t need anything for a while.”

That earns him a snort from Lucas. “Unless he Houdini’s his way into Steve’s big ass pantry again. Then we gotta boogie.”

“Psh,” Dustin shrugs with a tired grin. “Good thing is, we’ll know if he tries…” He raises a little gadget, displaying a live cat-cam feed. “Kitty cam has fresh batteries.”

Will giggles, straightening out all his pillows.

Mike does the same, then glances at the countdown clock on the broadcast.

10:58:11…

10:58:10…

10:58:09…

“Games start at ten tomorrow,” he mutters with a shiver.

Lucas exhales slowly, laid back in his sleeping bag. “Man...”

Will hugs his knees.

From her makeshift pillow and blanket fort, Erica checks the screen again as she pulls her My Little Pony slippers over her feet.

“…you know what? I still think it’s brilliant.”

They all look at her in childlike appall.

“The Games?” Lucas asks incredulously.

She scoffs loudly, shoving him. “No, dumbass—the love confession.”

Mike groans. “Why?”

“Because the entire country is talking about them,” she replies passionately.

Lucas frowns. “So?”

“Soooo,” Erica drawls impatiently, “if everyone wants them to survive…” She raises an eyebrow, “then the sponsors might make that happen.”

Dustin’s eyes go wide. “Holy shit. We’ve gotta play that angle.”

Will nods eagerly. “Then we can actually get them both home.”

“But there can only be one winner,” Lucas complains disdainfully.

“They say that now,” Dustin points at him, then between all his friends. “But how many times have we seen rules get changed? Even the Purge Act didn’t make it past a year.”

Mike considers that, lips pursed. “Fair point.”

Even Lucas nods slowly now. “And that’s why we keep both donation jars out at all times. They’ve gotta both have a fair shot. Steve would want that.”

Dustin nods fiercely. “Especially if they’re actually in love.”

Mike tilts his head. “Do you really think they are? I mean, like—” He waves a hand around. “Seven days isn’t really long…”

Erica crunches a chip loudly. “Prince Charming fell in love with Cinderella in one night,” she deadpans. “I think seven days is more than enough time.”

“Yeah, but that’s a fairytale,” Lucas counters.

She makes a face. “So?!”

“So there’s no such thing as fairytales,” he fires back.

Erica narrows her eyes to slits, jabbing the Pringle pinched between both her fingers in his direction. “You really wanna tell me there’s no such thing, when we’ve been fighting storybook monsters in real life for two years? Hmm??”

Lucas blinks once, then again — rapidly.

Because… shit. 

“Touché,” he blinks again.

“And if you think true love’s a myth—” she adds, like a lawyer addressing the court of law. “Then I dare you to say that shit to mom and dad. Those two are so in love, it’s disgusting. They got married three months after dating and still act like stupid teenagers.” She grimaces just thinking about it. “Blehck.”

Mike stares at her. “You’re ten.”

“Your point?”

Lucas shakes his head slowly. “That’s terrifying.”

Erica smiles sweetly, slowly crunching her Pringle. “I know.”

The Everlark Bakery sits dark, except for a single dim lamp over the counter. Flour dust coats the empty display case. The ovens have gone cold. Cakes sit in the glass display, freshly baked earlier this afternoon…and the lingering scent of sage and sugar makes the air taste melancholy.

Parker sits alone at the small table in the corner.

The television above the counter glows faintly.

The replay runs again.

Your face.

Your voice.

Your confession.

Parker’s fist presses hard against his mouth, eyes glued to the screen. He’s not moved in nearly an hour. Not when news reporters tried knocking earlier. Not when he heard Powell and Callahan ordering them away, to “respect the owners privacy in this difficult time.” Not even when Anjelica tried calling him, leaving a voicemail from the landline out back… inside the quaint house, just behind the bakery.

News anchors and reporters chatter endlessly onscreen.

“The baker’s daughter…”

“The dove of District 12…”

“Hawkins’ Cinderella…”

Parker stares at the floor.

All he can hear is your voice. Not theirs… yours.

I don’t want anyone thinking he’s heartless.

I love him more than he knows. 

I don’t want the press spinning to make him look heartless. Because he isn’t. Not even close.

His jaw tightens. Because even now, even after everything…you’re still being kind. You’re still protecting him. You’re still vouching to him.

You’re still loving him.

“I love my brother more than he knows,” you’d said.

He squeezes his eyes shut.

For years, he’s told himself it didn’t matter. That you didn’t matter. That your existence was a cosmic mistake that stole his mother’s life.

But now you’re twelve hours away from dying.

And the bakery feels colder than it ever has before.

Parker looks up at the television again, at the image of you standing on that stage — soft, fearless, impossibly kind.

His voice cracks in the empty room.

“…Idiot.”

He doesn’t know if he means you.

Or himself.

Outside, the streets of Hawkins are still full of people staring into glowing TV screens. Across the nation, the story spreads like wildfire. And somewhere far away, inside the sealed walls of the Tribute Tower, no one knows yet that the entire country has fallen in love with you.

The countdown clock ticks lower.

10 hours, 41 minutes until the Games.

END OF CHAPTER 

⚕️

TAGLIST:

The rest gets swallowed by the roar.

Steve keeps walking.

The audience is a massive blur of color and flashing teeth and waving hands. Rows and rows of people stacked into balconies that climb higher than the eye can easily follow. Hundreds of faces. Thousands. Everyone screaming like they already know him.

His ears ring.

Shrill and deafening.

It’s the kind of ringing you get after an explosion.

But he keeps walking.

Caesar is standing there with his arms wide, that enormous host’s grin blazing beneath the lights. The moment Steve reaches him, Caesar grabs his hand and shakes it enthusiastically while the crowd keeps roaring.

Steve’s hand shakes back on instinct.

Autopilot.

They sit.

The chairs are angled toward each other, positioned so the audience gets a perfect view of their faces. Caesar settles in like he’s at home in the world’s most expensive living room.

Steve sits a little slower.

The applause finally begins to taper off.

The ringing in his ears lingers.

He stares out into the crowd.

Caesar says something.

Steve doesn’t hear it.

Caesar tilts his head, smiling patiently.

Steve keeps staring at him.

The audience grows quiet.

Caesar blinks.

Steve blinks back.

Three seconds pass.

Five.

Ten.

Finally he leans forward slightly, brow furrowing.

“…What?”

The audience erupts.

Laughter explodes through the amphitheater so loudly the microphones pick it up in a distorted wave. Caesar’s eyes widen before he bursts out laughing right along with them, slapping his hands together once.

“Well!” Caesar says brightly, turning toward the audience like they’re all in on the joke. “I’m thinking someone might be a little nervous tonight!”

More laughter.

Steve glances sideways at the crowd.

Then back at Caesar.

His expression is flat.

Caesar recovers instantly, leaning forward again with perfect charm. “What I was saying, Steve,” he continues, “is that you made quite the entrance seven days ago during the Midnight Black Parade… when the tributes arrived in the Capitol.”

Steve nods slowly. “Oh.”

“I was wondering if you might tell us what was going through your mind while riding that chariot in front of millions of people… completely on fire.”

Steve studies him.

The question hangs in the air.

Then he says, very matter-of-factly, “well I was hoping I wouldn’t fucking burn to death.”

The audience gasps.

Then laughs again.

Caesar actually looks delighted. “Oh, I like this one,” he exclaims, tapping the arm of his chair with vigor. “Ladies and gentlemen, don’t worry. My show isn’t censored.”

Steve tilts his head slightly.

“…It’s not?”

“Nope.”

“That’s… interesting.”

Caesar grins. “How so?”

Steve shrugs. “Well,” he says dryly, “seems fair, I guess. If the country’s cool with kids murdering each other on live television, it makes sense a couple swear words probably aren’t the biggest issue.”

The audience bursts out laughing again.

The sound punches Steve straight in the chest.

For half a second he’s somewhere else.

The laughter becomes something uglier.

Masks. Music. Liquor spilling across marble floors. Hands grabbing at his jacket while strangers howl with amusement then moan with delight.

Purge Parties. Tongues. Teeth. Skin.

Steve blinks hard. The stage snaps back into focus. And while he looks from Cinna out to the crowd again, trying to blink away the flashbacks… he finds his focal point.

Cinna.

Third row.

Dead center.

Exactly where he said he’d be.

Cinna leans forward slightly in his seat, elbows on his knees, watching Steve with calm focus. When their eyes meet, Cinna gives him the smallest and yet most encouraging nod.

Just one.

You’ve got this.

Steve finally exhales the breath he’s been holding all this time. The tension in his shoulders loosens a fraction. And when he turns back to face Caesar, there’s the faintest ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Caesar is already moving to the next question. “Now tell me—those flames, during the parade. Were they real?”

Steve leans back slightly in the chair. “Yeah.”

“They were?!”

“Oh yeah. Very real.”

“How on earth did your stylist manage that?”

Steve coyly glances at Cinna again before answering. “That’s classified.”

The audience laughs.

Caesar clutches his chest theatrically. “Oh, come on!”

“Can’t give away trade secrets,” Steve says with a crooked smirk.

Caesar shakes his head, amused. “Well I must admit — when you and Ren Everdeen rolled out onto that avenue with fire blazing from your backs…” He gestures dramatically. “It was mesmerizing.”

The crowd murmurs approvingly.

“You two were holding hands,” Caesar continues. “Unified. Side-by-side. And literally on fire…” He shakes his head with awestruck wonder. “I have to tell you, my heart stopped. It literally stopped.”

Steve shifts slightly in his seat, the mention of your name rattling inside of his chest like a cage that refuses to set him free. But he grants the host a subtle smile.

“So did mine.”

Caesar chirps — half surprise, half-tickled. And it only eggs on the audience to laugh some more, all of them startled into giddy adoration.

They love him.

The crowd loves Steve Harrington.

“And since that night,” Caesar continues, spreading his hands out wide, “the Capitol press has given you quite the title.”

Steve lifts an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“The Boy on Fire.”

A pause.

Caesar tilts his head thoughtfully.

“…although personally, I’m not sure that’s quite right.”

Steve frowns slightly. “No?”

Caesar studies him for a long moment before saying quietly, “No. Because I don’t see a boy sitting in front of me.”

The room goes still as he takes an intentional pause.

“I see a young man.”

The word lands like a stone dropped into deep water.

Man.

Man.

Man.

Steve’s jaw tightens.

For a split second the stage disappears again.

Hands.

Laughter.

Voices telling him he’s not strong enough. His father telling him he’s not man enough when he cried as a little boy. Deep, husky voices, humming against his ear, telling him he’s not as dominant as he thinks he is. That he’s going to submit to them. That he’s not anything except something to pass around for entertainment and lustful desire.

— “Big man’s down here,” they’d purred and slithered through their teeth and crooned as they stroked his manhood with zero shame… “What a big boy…”