Hoe4Joe

You and Steve sit in the back of the ambulance in silence, your head on his shoulder, fingers entwined, watching the commotion around you. There’s a shrill sound of tires screeching, and you recognize the cause of the noise. Your mom’s station wagon has just slammed to a halt, and she hasn’t bothered to park anywhere specific. She climbs out of her car and whips her head from side to side, frantically searching for you or Dustin. 

“Mom?” you call out to her. You leave Steve sitting in the back of the ambulance to go talk with her, and Dustin comes over too. She’s A MESS!! She’s babbling and pulling you both into rib-crushing hugs and petting your hair and holding your cheeks to inspect your faces to make sure you’re okay. 

Steve watches the whole interaction from where he sits alone in the back of the ambulance. His heart aches at the sight of a worried mother doting on her children out of concern. You and Dustin have to tell her SEVERAL times that you’re okay, until she gets the message. 

“Ugh, let’s go home, babies. Can we go home? Do you need to talk to the police? Have you been checked out by the paramedics? Do we need to go to the hospital?” 

“No, no, no. We can go home,” you say comfortingly as you wrap your arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go home, Mom.” 

You start walking to the car when you turn to look at Steve. His family didn’t come to get him, though that’s not really a surprise. His parents are huge pieces of shit, and they’re probably not even in town. They never are. 

You realize that Steve still doesn’t have his car since the Russians took his keys. Your footsteps slow until you come to a stop. You pull your arm from around your mom’s shoulders and walk over to him. 

He looks up at you and gives you a sad smile. You hold out your hand to him silently. His eyes drift down to your hand, then back up to your face, trying to read your expression. He hesitantly takes your hand and stands, walking with you over to where Dustin and your mom have stopped, watching you. “Mom?” you say, Steve’s hand still in yours. “Can we give Steve a ride home?” Steve is looking down at his shoes, his free hand shoved into his pocket. He glances up sheepishly at your mom. 

She doesn’t even hesitate. “Oh my god, of COURSE! Get in the car, honey, I’ll take you wherever you need to go.” She takes his arm and guides him over to the car, going full mom-mode.

As they walk towards the car, you hear him mutter a soft “thank you” and apologize for the inconvenience, which breaks your heart a little bit. “Of course, honey! Don’t even give it another thought. It’s no problem at all!”

You sit in the front, and he sits in the back with Dustin. He doesn’t say anything the whole drive to his house except to quietly give your mom directions. He just stares out the window. 

When you pull up in front of his house, he gives your mom a small ‘thank you’ and gets out. You watch as he walks to a huge, dark house. He’s touching the cuts and bruises on his face, which makes your heart wrench in your chest.

You turn to your mom, and she doesn’t even let you get the words “I think I should stay with him tonight” out before she’s nodding and saying, “Go take care of him.” After all, you get your insatiable need to take care of others from her. 

You give her a tight hug and climb out of the car. You go to the open window in the rear passenger door where Dustin is laying his head against it, already half asleep. “Get some sleep, Dustybun.” you say with a teasing voice. He starts mumbling what you think is a protest to the nickname. You just ruffle his hair and turn to follow Steve. 

He is standing at the door to his empty house, delaying going inside for as long as possible. Then he hears your voice call out behind him. “Mind if I crash with you tonight?” you say lightly as you jog to stand next to him on his porch.

Steve returns the smile you give him, but his eyes are pricked with tears, and he breathes out a huge sigh of relief. He pulls you into a tight hug and tucks his head into your shoulder, mumbling, “Absolutely.” You wrap your arms around his shoulders, running a hand comfortingly through his hair. It’s still weird for you to be close to him like this, to see him so vulnerable. 

He takes a deep breath, pulls away, and turns to unlock the door. He walks in first, holding the door and closing it behind you. He turns on the light to illuminate the entrance, and you take in your surroundings. 

His house is cold, dark, and empty. It almost feels like a museum, not a place that’s been lived in. The decorative flowers on the entry table are covered in dust. Your shoes join the other Nikes on the shoe rack, which you can only assume all belong to Steve, and then he leads you upstairs to his room. There are family portraits on the wall leading up the stairs, but they’re serious and stiff. 

You’ve never heard Steve talk about his family, but considering the many times he threw parties at his house in high school and how many family dinners he’s spent at your house instead of his own over the past year, you can’t imagine his family is ever even home, let alone warm and loving.

When you reach his room, you’re both quiet. You look around, trying to glean any and all information you can about Steve’s life. 

It’s big. He has plaid wallpaper that matches the sheets on his bed. It's a little faded, probably the same wallpaper he’s had since he was a kid. 

He has a desk to one side that’s scattered with cassettes, VHS tapes, and clothes. There’s a tv stand in the corner. You wonder how much time he spends hiding out in here during the few times his parents are home. You decide not to tease him about the poster of a girl in a hot pink bikini hanging on the wall.

Steve starts rummaging through some drawers and hands you a Henley and a pair of pajama bottoms. “You can shower if you want. The bathroom is just through there.” He points down the hall toward the bathroom.

“Thanks,” you say quietly as you take the clothes from him, suddenly shy. You realize how awkward this is. To be sleeping over at Steve’s house, wearing his clothes, using his shower. But honestly, you’re so exhausted, and you feel disgusting, so a shower is too enticing to pass up. 

As you’re about to take a step toward the door, you hear Steve’s voice again. “I’m sorry, by the way.”

You turn back to him, “For what?” 

“For making you feel like you need to stay here and take care of me. You should be able to sleep in your own bed tonight,” you toss the clothes onto his bed and walk over to him, shaking your head as he continues, “But instead you’re here, and I’m just really sorry.” He’s looking down and fumbling with his hands as he speaks. 

You grab his cheeks and force him to look at you, which cuts off his rambling. “Hey. Don’t apologize. I want to be here. I want to make sure that you’re okay, and that you know you don’t have to be alone, especially after what we just went through. You never have to apologize for needing help. Not with me.” 

The intensity of his watery stare makes you want to drop your gaze, but you hold your ground, making sure he feels the sincerity in your words. 

After a long pause, he simply whispers, “Thank you.” 

You shake your head and smile softly. “Don’t mention it.” You rub your thumbs gently along his cheekbones, catching the tears that have started to fall. Then you take a deep breath, breaking the moment, and run your hands down his arms to slip your hands through his. Your smile widens as you say, “You probably have better water pressure than my house, anyway.” 

He returns your smile, and you retrieve the clothes from his bed and make your way to the bathroom.

You stand under the warm water, feeling the layers of sweat, dirt, and trauma rinse away. It honestly feels heavenly after not showering for the last 3 days, and after all that just happened. 

When you simply can’t find an excuse to stay in the shower any longer, you turn off the water and step out into the humid air. Steve’s clothes feel soft and comforting on your skin, and you feel the most relaxed you have in days. You find a comb in the medicine cabinet and comb out your wet hair before returning to his room. 

You leave your dirty clothes in a pile in the corner because you don’t know what else to do with them, and rummage through his kitchen to find some food while he showers. You heat up a frozen pizza and pull out some veggies that are about to go bad. You hear him turn off the water, and a few minutes later, he joins you in the kitchen. “I figured it might be good to have an actual meal after not really eating for like 2 days,” you say with a shrug.

“Oh, good. I’m starving,” he sighs with relief.

 You eat in mostly silence with the occasional “Oh my god, I’m so hungry,” and “Ow, my face hurts.”

When the food is gone, and the plates are in the sink, you inspect the wounds on his face a little more. You can get a clearer picture now that they’ve been treated by the paramedics and he’s washed the rest of the dried blood and grime off. 

You stand between his legs, studying the bruises on his face. His hands are on your hips again, fiddling nervously with the hem of your shirt. It takes all your willpower to focus on the injuries and not on the way that he’s fixing his big brown eyes on you. “I like it when you take care of me.”

You give him a shy smile, and you feel your cheeks warm. “Well, good, get used to it. At this rate, I’ll be patching you up every other week.” He scoffs and pinches your side, making you jerk away from his grasp and giggle. 

You finish your inspection of his face, determining he miraculously doesn’t have any broken bones. “Okay, now take off your shirt.” 

His eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. “Well, aren’t you forward,” he says with a sly smile, pulling you into him teasingly. 

You roll your eyes and shove his shoulder playfully. “Not for that. I need to check that your ribs aren’t broken.” 

He chuckles lightly and straightens up. He tries to raise his arms to pull his shirt over his head, but he quickly curls them back into his side and winces. “Okay, maybe you’ve got a point.” 

You help him remove his shirt, then turn your full attention to his body. 

Admittedly, you probably stare for too long. You take in the sight of his freckled shoulders before your gaze drifts down to the thatch of hair on his chest. He’s so beautiful that it makes your chest ache a little bit. The only sound in the air is your breathing. His neck and cheeks are tinged red, and you can feel heat rising up on your own. 

You watch as your own hand reaches out and lightly grazes his skin, starting at his collarbone, sweeping along his shoulder. He shudders, and his skin prickles under your fingertips. Then your fingers drop down, scraping dully across his chest before landing on the deep purple bruises on his ribs and stomach. 

You snap out of your trance and clear your throat. Right. There’s a reason I’m looking at him shirtless right now, not just for my own enjoyment. Your eyes flicker up to his, his dark eyes boring into yours. You clear your throat again and gently press your fingertips on his ribs, feeling for bumps or jagged edges. 

Steve sucks in a sharp breath and grabs your wrist. “Sorry,” you whisper, moving your other hand to his cheek.

He shakes his head. “S’okay. Just surprised me.” He releases his grip on your wrist, and you keep probing, keeping a comforting hand on his cheek. Your movements falter a little when you feel his hands coming to rest on your hips again, gripping your shirt tightly. 

You don’t feel any fractures, which is honestly shocking with how badly he was beaten by the Russians. 

That’s when it hits you, how lucky he is to be alive. He was held captive and tortured by Soviet guards. He very well could have died, and you would never forgive yourself for leaving him and Robin in that moment in the vent. The pain that accompanies that thought almost completely overwhelms you. You could have died, you think. And I’m so fucking glad that you didn’t. 

You blink away the tears pricking your eyes, and your hand lifts from his ribs up to his chin, tilting his head to look up at you. Your faces are so close that his breath tickles your lips. You shake your head, and your nose bumps his. “Not broken, just bruised,” you say softly. 

“Okay,” his voice is barely a whisper. He releases his grip on your shirt and flattens his hands on your waist, thumbs rubbing small circles into the skin there. His hands feel big, warm, and comforting. You feel your heart beating faster as you stare down at him. 

Then you do something that shocks even yourself. You lean forward and plant a barely-there kiss on the corner of Steve’s mouth. Warmth spreads through you, and he squeezes your waist tighter. Just as you start to pull away to look at him, one of his hands flies to the back of your neck and pulls you back down, attaching his lips to yours. 

Your surprised gasp turns into a giggle at his sense of urgency, quickly moving your lips against his. You step closer until your chest is flush with his and wrap your arms around his neck. His hand leaves a trail of fire in its wake as it travels from your neck, threading his fingers into your hair while the other arm wraps around your waist, pinning you tightly to him. 

You try to be gentle with your movements because of the cuts and bruises on his face, but he doesn’t seem to care. He deepens the kiss, making you whimper into his mouth. You feel lightheaded, like you’re slowly running out of air, feeling a little bit suffocated. But you keep kissing, because you know that if you pull away, it will be as if you’ve stopped breathing completely. 

It’s only when you start to taste blood from the cut on his lip that you finally pull away. You can’t help but let out a small whine at the loss of contact, and you feel him press a quick peck to your lips. Then another, and another. You get the feeling that even if he feels the sharp pain of the opening in his lip, he would’ve kept kissing you if you hadn’t pulled away.

Your eyes slowly flutter open as you try to catch your breath. His eyes are glued to your lips, as yours are to his. You lean forward, pressing your forehead to his. His fingers release their hold on your hair, and he drops his hand to your shoulder, sliding it down your arm to land on the small of your back. 

You feel his breath fanning your face and swallow thickly. Your heart is pounding in your chest, and you feel yourself trembling in his arms. “Oh, god,” you groan, dropping your head to tuck into his shoulder, pulling him into a tight hug. You’ve wanted this for so long, and now that you’re here with your chest against his and his arms around you, it doesn’t even feel real. His arms wrap around you tightly, and his breath tickles your neck. 

You stay like that, locked in each other’s embrace, for what feels like forever. His body is warm, and his shoulders are steady and strong beneath your touch. You let the feeling of him spread through your body, calming your heart and easing the tension from your aching muscles. You feel his arms tighten around you even further, as if trying to convince himself that you’re both here and okay.  

Finally, you lift your head from his shoulder and step out from between his legs, taking a deep breath. You grab his bunched-up shirt from where it lies on the counter and hold it to his chest. “Get dressed, let’s go to bed,” you whisper, still breathless from the kiss and him. He takes his shirt from you and says, “Yeah, you’re probably right.” 

He slowly works it onto his body without causing too much pain to his ribs, then you hold out your hand like you did in the mall parking lot. He takes it and stands, then guides you up the stairs to his room. 

You leave the kitchen a mess; you both just need to sleep right now. You let his hand slip from yours, and your steps falter in the doorway of his room. When he feels the loss of contact, he turns back to you. You don’t exchange words, but he knows what you’re asking. After all, there’s a perfectly good guest room just down the hall. 

He just walks back over to you, takes your hand, and pulls you further into the room without his eyes leaving yours. He maintains his gaze as he turns you both around before gently guiding you back onto the bed and pulling the covers over you. The action is so simple, yet intimate and sweet that it makes your heart flutter. 

He climbs into bed next to you, and you stare at each other for a minute. You take in his swollen eye and bruises that scatter across his face, getting darker by the minute.“You look terrible,” you whisper. 

“You look beautiful.” He replies instantly, reaching out to tuck some of your drying hair behind your ear. You blush and look down. He kisses your nose and pulls you into him by your waist, and you feel like your heart might burst.

You can’t process that you’re here right now, in Steve Harrington’s bed, with your head on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart below his bruised ribs. He lazily draws circles on your back with his thumb, and the sound of his heartbeat and slow breaths lulls you into what is probably the best sleep you’ve had in years.

Friday, July 5

You swear when you wake up, it’s like coming out of a coma. You feel slightly disoriented, and it takes you a second to remember where you are. The room is too bright, and every muscle in your body feels like it’s made of lead. There’s an unfamiliar weight on your waist, and something is tickling the back of your neck. 

You feel your brain rebooting as you piece together where you are. The plaid wallpaper and the warmth pressing into your back. Steve’s arms are wrapped around your middle, and his soft puffs of breath against your hair are tickling your neck. 

It all feels so foreign to you, waking up in someone else’s bed, your bodies tangled up in each other. A slow smile creeps its way onto your face as you allow yourself to bask in the comfort of it. The closeness, the constant touch, the realization that this doesn’t have to be a one-time thing. 

You roll over in Steve’s arms. He’s still asleep. Even though his face is still badly bruised, the swelling around his eye has gone down significantly, and he looks so peaceful. You reach up slowly and push his hair away from his forehead, nails dragging against his scalp until your hand comes to rest on the back of his neck. 

He hums and his eyebrows furrow. You press a tiny kiss to his nose, mimicking his actions from last night. At that, he hums again, and the corners of his mouth quirk up into a small, tired smile. His eyes flutter open, and he looks at you before quickly shutting them again. He pulls you closer to him with a sharp jerk, making you laugh. “Good morning.” He mumbles. His gravelly morning voice makes your stomach flutter. 

You smile and lift your head to look past him at the clock on his bedside table. “Actually, it’s ‘good afternoon,’” you say as you lie back down to face him.  

He just shrugs, eyes still closed. “I think we’ve earned it.” His hand slides from your back to your hip, playing with the hem of his shirt on your body. 

You sigh, knowing that you should get up and probably go home, but you can’t bring yourself to move. You brush his cheek gently with your thumb. “How’s your face?” 

He takes a deep breath and scrunches his nose, finally opening his eyes. “It’s been better.” 

You nod, brows furrowed as you grow serious, slipping back into medic mode. Your eyes search his face, reassessing his injuries. “You should ice your eye for the next couple of days, until the swelling goes down completely. And you need to take medication for the pain, which should help the swelling too.” 

He smiles at your uncontrollable need to provide medical advice. “Is that doctor’s orders?” 

His comment brings you back to the moment, and your eyes meet his once again with a smile. “Yes, it is.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” He says teasingly. After another moment of silence, he speaks again. “You told me the same thing last year.”

You furrow your brows. “What?”

“About the ice pack. After my fight with Billy, before we went into the tunnels.” He smiles at the memory. “We were both badly concussed, and you couldn’t see straight, but you still managed to give me half-decent stitches in a moving car being driven by a 13-year-old. And you told me to keep ice on it.” 

You cover your face with your hands at the memory. Ugh, you were so embarrassing when you were concussed. You couldn’t think straight. “Oh my god, that’s right.” 

“But obviously your treatment worked because I didn’t scar and I recovered from my concussion just fine.” He says with a grin. 

“Well, good. Guess you should listen to me more often, huh?” you say, trying to lighten the mood with a fake superiority. It just makes him hum out a laugh. 

“Guess so…” he mutters. 

After you can’t possibly think of another reason to stay in bed any longer, you roll onto your back and stretch your arms above your head. “Okay, I’m going to go make-” you try to sit up, but Steve just whines and tightens his hands around your waist, pulling you back to him. You laugh. “Steeeeve, I was just going to go make us some coffee!” 

“No!” he whines. “Lets just stay in bed all day! We deserve a rest day!” 

You scoff incredulously as you lean up on one elbow and turn to face him. “You know, Steve, eventually I’m going to have to go home!” 

“If you leave, then who will be here to take care of me and my poor, poor, injured face?” He pouts, doing his best to fix you with his best puppy dog eyes. Normally, his big, pouty, brown eyes would work on you, but the effect just isn’t quite the same with the swollen black eye. 

You cock an eyebrow and give him a sarcastic look. “You’re a big boy, I think you can handle it.” Then you lean forward and, with your lips against his, mutter, “It’s not like this hasn’t happened before,” before finally planting a quick peck on his lips.  

Steve gasps dramatically and releases his grip. “Oh, rude!” 

You take the opportunity to finally escape his grasp, flinging the covers off and swinging your legs over the edge of the bed. You stand and turn back to him triumphantly, giving you both an opportunity to take in the sight of the other. 

His hair is mussed from sleep, and he’s wearing a worn, old t-shirt that it seems like he’s had for years. You’re wearing his clothes that are way too baggy on you, and your hair is a frizzy mess. 

You can’t help yourself when you slowly crawl back onto the bed and hover over him. He looks so comfortable and boyfriendy, aside from the bruises and swollen eye.  “I’m going to go make us some coffee,” you say with a kiss to his lips, “and get you some ice.” You kiss his forehead and pull away, but he just grabs you and yanks you back to him again, chests pressed together. “Steve!” you say, laughing. This time, he rolls you both, laying you on your back so he’s hovering over you. 

You bite your bottom lip as he stares down at you, feeling a little shy under his intense gaze. His eyes drift down to your lips. His thumb comes up hesitantly, pulling your lip from between your teeth and running over it before he rests his hand on your cheek. Your breathing catches as you stare at him with wide eyes. His eyes slowly move back up to yours, silently asking. 

Your hand comes up and holds his cheek, gently brushing your thumb over it. He slowly leans down, inching closer and closer. You lean up and close the distance, slotting your lips over his. He doesn’t hesitate to kiss you back, moving his lips against yours feverishly. Just like last night, he doesn’t seem to be bothered by the cuts on his face, kissing you deeply. 

He pulls back and looks at you, hitting you with a classic Steve Harrington cocky grin when he sees you following his movement. Then he leans back down and attaches his lips to your jaw. He plants a trail of kisses down your neck to your shoulder before he simply tucks his head into the crook of your neck. Then his body drops, lying down on you completely, crushing you into the mattress. You groan at the sudden weight. You hear his laugh next to your ear. “Gotcha.” He says.

“Oh, so this was your plan all along? Kiss me just to trick me into staying here to be your nurse?” 

“No, the kiss was just an added bonus.” He teases. You pinch his side in retaliation, but he doesn’t move. 

Your hands wrap around his sides, and you push on him, trying to signal to him to get off you. He doesn’t budge. “Steeeve, I have to go!” Nothing. “I need to check on my brother!” He simply nips at the skin of your shoulder. Your hands release their grip on his sides and flop dramatically against the mattress in defeat. “This is kidnapping,” you huff, searching for any way to get him to let you go, not that you’re completely miserable like this. “I’ll make you coffee,” you suggest in a sing-songy voice, resorting to bribery to escape his grasp. 

He sighs into your shoulder and says, “alright fine,” before leaning back up and rolling off of you. You sit up and turn around to face him. “As much as I would love to stay, I should go check on Dustin.” You lean back down and give him a quick peck on the lips, and you can’t help feeling giddy that you even get to do that now. 

You stand up and make your way to the bathroom to wash up. While you’re brushing your teeth with one of the extra toothbrushes Steve conveniently keeps in his bathroom, which you’re choosing not to think too deeply about, he appears in the doorway. He comes and stands behind you, wrapping his hands around your waist and kissing your shoulder one, two, three times before resting his chin on it. Then he finally looks in the mirror and sees his reflection. 

“Holy shit, is that what my face has looked like this whole time?” He asks incredulously, leaning over your shoulder to get a better look at his injuries in the mirror.

You laugh and spit your toothpaste into the sink. “That’s actually better than it was yesterday. Didn’t you look in the mirror when you showered last night?”

“No, I couldn’t tell, the mirror was too steamy. Jesus, I can’t believe you let me kiss you while I looked like this!” He turns his head from side to side, inspecting his face. 

You laugh again and turn around to face him. You shrug. “Hm. You’re still cute, even when you’re beat up,” you say to him with a smile. You plant a kiss on his cheek before leaving him in the bathroom to get ready. 

You go back to his room and pull out a clean t-shirt and a pair of sweats to borrow, since your clothes are disgusting and should probably just be incinerated at this point. 

Once you’re changed, Steve comes back in and sees you in his clothes. He briefly pauses at the sight, eyeing you up and down before walking over to you. He looks down at his shirt on your body and runs his hands across your shoulders and down your arms. He hums in satisfaction. “Cute,” he says with a smile. You can feel your cheeks grow warm, and you drop your gaze.

You brush past him to head downstairs, but his hand slides down your arm and wraps around your wrist. He yanks you back to him, and his hands find your cheeks. He locks his lips with yours again, which makes you giggle. He really can’t get enough of your kisses, and he isn’t subtle about it. He releases your lips with a smack, hands still gripping your cheeks. “You’re cute when you get shy on me.” 

You roll your eyes and try to smile, but his palms are squishing your cheeks, so you’re not very successful. “Stoppp,” you whine, feigning annoyance. 

He chuckles and plants another kiss on your lips. “Never,” he says before finally letting you go.

You use his phone to call your mom, who says she’ll be here to pick you up in 20. You brew some coffee as promised, then you eat breakfast (lunch?) while you wait. 

You make Steve take meds to help with the pain and swelling, and tell him to keep an ice pack on his face for at least 20 minutes 3 times a day. He makes another joke about you being his doctor, to which you just roll your eyes and shove his shoulder. 

You share about a dozen more kisses (seriously, Steve can’t seem to help himself) before, eventually, you hear your mom honk the horn in Steve’s driveway. He walks you to the door and leans on it as you step out onto the porch. He looks so comfy in his pajamas, and his eyes are still a little sleepy. 

“Bye, Henderson.” He gives you a content smile. 

“Bye, Harrington,” you whisper as you turn and start walking. After a few steps, you turn back and walk backwards with a sly smile. “I’m holding you to that date, by the way,” you tell him loudly. You point to him and say, “You'd better plan something epic.” 

He gives you a huge grin and taps his temple. “Oh, trust me. I’m all over it.” 

You smile back. When you finally reach the car and climb inside, your mom asks, “How are you feeling, sweetie?”

You look back at Steve, still standing at the door. “I’m good,” you say. “I’m really good.” 

They're DISGUSTING I love it!!!!!

El is screaming and crying in pain, and you snap into action. “Move!” You push Nancy and Jonathan out of the way. You inspect the wound before turning to Jonathan and telling him to find you a knife, some gloves, and a wooden spoon. As he gets up and starts running to one of the restaurants, you yell behind you, “Jonathan! Sterilize the knife!” 

He runs to dig through drawers in the food court kitchens. 

El is crying as you watch the thing move around beneath her skin. Mike tells the rest of you to help move El, so she’s lying in his lap. 

Robin nervously starts talking. “You know, it’s not actually that bad. There was a.. The goalie on my soccer team, Beth Wildfire, this other girl slid into her leg and the whole bone came out of her knee, like six inches or something, it was insane.” You’re all staring at her, trying to figure out what the fuck she’s talking about. 

“Robin?” Steve says.

“Yeah?”

“You’re not helping.” 

“I’m sorry.” She says before keeping her mouth shut. 

Jonathan comes back and kneels down next to you. You take the supplies, put on the gloves, and tell El to bite down on the wooden spoon. You hand it to Mike, who puts it between her teeth.

You look at her. “This is gonna hurt a lot, okay?”

El says, “Okay,” through sobs. 

You hold the butcher knife Jonathan brought over her wound.  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing??” Mike asks you. 

“I need to cut it out!” you yell at him. 

“Says who??” He asks.

“Says my two years of medical training!” You snap. “Do you want to leave that thing in her leg? No! Now shut up!” you put the knife to her wound “Ready?” you ask El. She nods, and you press the blade into her skin. She screams, and everyone gags. You follow her leg to where you see the parasite bulging and use your finger to push it towards the incision you made. Once it’s close enough, you use your finger to try to scoop it out. It keeps writhing away from your grasp. El is screaming, but you almost have it. 

Then El yells, “Wait! Wait! Stop!” You stop your movements but keep your hand there to hold the thing in place so you don’t lose it in her leg. 

“I can do it. Let me do it.” El says as she sits up, still sobbing. 

“Are you sure? I almost have it,” you ask her. You keep your hand there to hold the thing close to the cut in her skin, and she nods. 

She holds out her hand, using her powers to draw it out of her. She screams as the parasite writhes under her skin, and you push harder to keep it close to the incision. She screams so loud, and her powers are so strong that the glass window shatters behind her. The others duck to avoid the shards of glass, but El is still locked in her battle with the parasite, and you don’t flinch as you help her as best as you can. 

Finally, the disgusting, sluglike creature is lifted from the wound. She screams and throws it across the floor. It lands with a sickening splat and starts crawling away before comes down on it hard, crushing it to goo. 

It’s Hopper. Behind him are Joyce and a man you’ve never seen before.

You tell Robin to find a first aid kit. You stitch El’s wound up and wrap it while Mike talks. “The Mind Flayer, it built this monster in Hawkins to stop El, to kill her, and pave a way into our world.”

Nancy continues, “And it almost did. That was just one tiny piece of it.”

“How big is this thing?” Hopper asks. 

Jonathan answers. “It's big. Thirty feet at least.”

Lucas nods. “Yeah, it sorta destroyed your cabin. Sorry.”

“Okay, so just to be clear,” Steve chimes in, “this big, fleshy spider thing that hurt El, it’s some kind of gigantic weapon? But instead of like screws and metal, the mind flayer made its weapon with… melted people...”

Nancy nods emphatically. “Yes, yes, exactly.”

Steve nods as if that's perfectly normal. “Yeah, okay. Just making sure.”

“Are we sure this thing is still out there? Still alive?” Joyce asks. 

“El beat the shit out of it, but yeah, it’s still alive,” Max says. 

“But if we close the gate again-“ Will proposes.

“We cut the brain off from the body,” Max says. 

Lucas finishes the thought. “And kill it. Theoretically.”

You finish wrapping El’s leg and hand Joyce an ice pack to hold to it, then Steve offers you a hand, and you stand next to him. Nancy notices this little interaction, but doesn’t say anything. 

Then Murray comes in, waving papers in the air. “YOO-HOO!”

He sets notebook papers down on a table, and Hopper and Joyce crowd around him to see what he’s looking at. They seem to be hand-drawn maps and written instructions to something. “Okay, this is what Alexei called ‘the hub.’ Now the hub takes us to the vault room.”

Hopper inspects the map. “Okay, where’s the gate?”

Murray points to a section of the map. “Right here. I don’t know the scale on this, but I think it’s fairly close to the vault room, maybe 50 feet or so.” 

Erica steps forward. “More like 500. What, you’re just gonna waltz in there like it’s commie Disneyland or something?”

Murray stares at her in disbelief. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Erica Sinclair. Who are you?”

Murray is a little wary at her confidence. “Murray… Bauman.”

“Listen Mr Bum Man, I’m not trying to tell you how to do things, but I’ve been down in that shithole for 24 hours. And with all due respect, you do what this man tells you, you’re all gonna die.”

“I’m sorry, why is this 4-year-old speaking to me?” Murray says through thinly veiled anger. 

“Um, I’m 10, you bald bastard!” Erica snaps. 

“Erica!” Lucas chides.

Erica turns to him, “Just the facts!”

“She’s right. You’re all gonna die,” you say from behind Erica, your arms folded in front of your chest.

“But you don’t have to.’ Dustin says, stepping forward to the papers on the food court table. “Excuse me. Sorry, may I?” 

“Please,” Murray says with a fake smile. 

Dustin and Erica sit at the table. You lean over Dustin to look at the map as well. Dustin pulls a pencil out of his vest pocket and circles one of the rooms on the map. “Okay, see this room here? This is a storage facility.” Dustin explains. “There’s a hatch in here that feeds into their underground ventilation system.” 

You point to the room Dustin circled and draw a line across the page with your finger. “That will lead you to the base of the weapon.”

“It's a bit of a maze down there, but between the three of us, we can show you the way.” Dustin offers. 

“You can show us the way?” Hopper says flatly. 

You roll your eyes. “Don’t worry, you can do all the fighting and dangerous hero shit, and we’ll just be your… navigators,” you say with a shrug.

Hopper shakes his head as you speak. “No. Nope.” He starts gathering guns and walkies to prepare to go down to the Russian lab. You roll your eyes again, not wanting to bother arguing with Hopper. Dustin, on the other hand….

Steve comes over and slings his arm around your shoulder. You look up at him with a shy smile before your eyes catch a certain curly-haired brunette staring at you with her eyebrows furrowed. Your smile drops as Steve steers you away, following Robin toward the nearest restaurant.

You, Steve, and Robin go to Hot Sam and start rummaging for food. You sit on the counter, munching on stale pretzels left in the warmer. Should you talk to Nancy? You glance at her out of the corner of your eye. She’s leaning against the railing of the steps leading to more food court seating, talking with Jonathan. She glances over at you and meets your eye before you quickly look away.

You’re not super close, but you’d gotten closer during your last year of high school. It’s probably weird for her, right? To see you and Steve acting so comfortable and touchy with each other? But she can’t be mad, or even jealous. She dumped him for Jonathan. They’d been dating for months, and since then, she hasn’t given Steve the time of day. But still, maybe it would be the mature thing to talk to her about it… Maybe. 

You hear Hopper yell, “Hey, heads up!” and it pulls you from your thoughts. He throws a walkie to Dustin. “You can navigate, just not from here.”

“It’s not that simple,” Dustin says condescendingly.

“The signal won’t reach,” Erica explains

Dustin holds up the walkie. “Not with this. You need something with a high enough frequency band to relay with the Russians' radio tower. But for that to work, you need to have someone who has both seen the comms room and has access to a superpowered handcrafted radio tower, one preferably already situated at the highest point in Hawkins. Oh wait. That’s me.” He points to himself with the walkie.” Hopper rolls his eyes. “If you want us to navigate, you got us, but we need a head start. And a car.”

Dustin, Erica, and Hopper come over to you, still sitting on the counter of Hot Sam.

Alright, Scoops Troop. Let’s go.” Dustin says. 

Steve looks at Dustin in confusion. “Scoops Troop?”

You ask, “Go where?”

Dustin explains, “We’re going to navigate Hopper through the vents, but we need Cerebro for it to work. Scoops Troop is our call sign.”

Hopper hands the keys to Steve. “I expect her back in one piece.” He slaps him on the shoulder. Steve looks at the keys, then at Hopper. 

You head out the front doors and see the banana yellow Buick LeSabre. “Oh, yeah!” Steve says, nearly jumping for joy at the thought of driving the most godawful car you’ve ever seen. “Now, this…” He tosses the keys and catches them, then points to the car. “This is what I’m talking about.”

Robin reads the license plate and raises her eyebrows. “Toddfather?” 

“Oh, screw Todd! Steve’s her daddy now!” Steve says excitedly. 

“Did you just talk about yourself in the third person?” Robin asks Steve as he jumps over the door and into the driver’s seat. 

“Did he just call himself daddy?” Erica adds as she, Dustin, and Robin climb in the back. 

You giggle and roll your eyes at Steve’s giddiness as you climb into the front seat. 

“Alright, where are we going?” Steve asks Dustin. 

“Weathertop,” Dustin says simply. 

Steve turns his head. “Weather what??”

“Just drive!” Dustin says with annoyance. 

“Okay! Jesus!” Steve looks at you and gives you cocky, flirty eyebrows while he turns around to back out and zip out of the parking lot. You roll your eyes again but turn away to hide your smile. He still catches it. 

After driving in silence for a few minutes, you click on the radio. A cheesy R&B song from the ‘60’s is playing. 

“Jesus, how far is this place, man?” Steve asks. 

“Relax, we’re almost there!” Dustin answers. 

“Suzie must be pretty special, huh? I mean, if you built this thing and lugged it all the way in the middle of nowhere just to talk to her?” Robin asks Dustin. 

Dustin smiles. “I mean, nobody is scientifically perfect, but Suzie’s about as close to being perfect as any human could possibly be.”

You turn around to look at him with adoring eyes. “Aww Dusty!”

“She sounds made up to me. She sound made up to you?” Erica asks Steve, who stays silent. You whack his arm. 

Dustin leans forward. “Why are you hesitating, Steve?”

Steve stutters. “I’m- I’m- I’m not! I’m not! I think she sounds real! You know, totally, absolutely real.” He says unconvincingly. 

Dustin shoots forward. “Left. Turn left!”

“There's not a road here!” Steve argues. 

“TURN LEFT NOW!” Dustin yells. 

“Jesus! Hang on!” Steve jerks the steering wheel, and you crash through a fence, flying up the hill. “Whoa, Henderson, where are we going???” He asks as you bump over the grass. 

“Up!” Dustin yells.  

Steve fights to keep the car under control as it slows, struggling to make it up the hill.

Robin shakes her head, holding onto the front seats. “We’re not gonna make it!”

“Yes, we are!” Steve says, slamming on the gas, trying to urge the car forward. “Come on, baby. Come on, baby!” You have to admit, under different circumstances, him saying that would have probably made your stomach flip. But not right now. The wheels just spin in the grass, ultimately ending it’s uphill climb.

“Yeah, we’re not going anywhere,” you say. 

“Guess the Toddfather has its limitations,” Robin states. 

Steve reluctantly turns off the car, and you all climb out and continue up the hill.

When you get to Cerebro, you hear Mike. “Scoops Troop, do you copy? We’re trapped in the mall and in need of emergency transportation. Billy has found us. He has disabled our car, and we’re trapped at the mall.”

Dustin runs over and answers Mike, but Mike says, “Wait we may have another option, stand by,” and then the radio is silent for several minutes. 

you all breathe a sigh of relief when Mike’s voice finally crackles through, informing you that they might be able to repurpose the car in the food court. You sit around Cerebro and wait for our queue. 

After a while with no word, Dustin decided to radio Murray to check the status. “Bald eagle, do you copy? Bald eagle, I repeat, this is Scoops Troop, do you copy?”

You hear Murray’s annoyance through the walkie. “Yes, I copy.” You all chuckle with relief. Steve stops his pacing to lean over Dustin. “Call sign?” Dustin asks. 

“Bald Eagle,” Murray responds reluctantly. 

“Please repeat,” Dustin says with a shit-eating grin. 

Murray: “Bald eagle! This is Bald Eagle!”

Dustin laughs in relief. “Copy that. Good to hear your voice, Bald Eagle, what’s your 20?”

Murray responds, “We've reached the vent. I’ll contact you when I need you. Until then, silence!”

“Roger that, Bald Eagle. This is Scoops Troop going radio silent, 10-10 over.” Steve pats Dustin’s shoulder proudly, and you all relax a little bit. 

You, Steve, and Robin all walk/pace around bored. Dustin and Erica occasionally answer and direct Murray. “Scoops Troop, this is Bald Eagle. I’ve reached another junction.”

Dustin and Erica talk it through. This is what?” Dustin asks. 

“The fourth junction,” Erica adds. 

“Okay, so if memory serves, this is right after the My Little Pony thesis,” Dustin remembers. 

“We went left, so he has to go right,” you say from where you pace across the grass.

“Right.” Dustin agrees. Then into the walkie, “Fly right, Bald Eagle.”

Murray responds. “Roger that, flying right.”

“What’s the My Little Pony thesis?” Robin asks as she kneels next to them. 

“Don’t get him started,” Erica says in annoyance. 

Steve stops when he notices lights flickering around the mall. “Hey, guys?”

You all run over to him to see what he’s looking at. Oh shit. You run back to the radio, and Dustin tries to contact anyone. The only response you get is monstrous screeching.

You and Steve share a knowing look, then he runs to the car.

“Where are you going?” Erica yells after him. 

Steve yells back, “To get them the hell out of there! Stay here and contact the others!”

“Shit,” you say as you give Dustin a kiss on the head and start to run after Steve. 

“Wait, guys, stay in touch!” Dustin tosses you the walkie.

You catch it. “Got it! Robin, watch them and stay safe!” You jump into the car right as Steve is starting the ignition. The car backs down the hill easily, and Steve slams on the brakes and turns sharply when you hit the asphalt. 

The drive back to the mall consists of you and Steve muttering “shit, shit, shit, shit,” over and over. You grab his hand out of anxiety, and he squeezes yours back. You just share scared, anxious glances the whole way.  

You get to the parking lot and see Billy’s car speeding toward Nancy. He glances at you and says, “You might wanna hold on to something.”

You look at him with wide eyes filled with fear as you brace yourself, gripping the door and center console as much as you can. Steve slams his foot on the accelerator and your head knocks back against the headrest.

The Toddfather slams into Billy’s car just seconds before he gets to Nancy. Both cars spin out, tires squealing. You finally come to a stop, breathing hard.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks you.

“Add that to the list of things to ask me tomorrow,” you say, trying to contain the tremble in your voice. You hear loud thumping and look up to see a huge, monstrous form made of writhing flesh moving on the roof of the mall. 

You both stand up to look at it over the windshield. “Holy shit,” you mutter. You share a look because you know the Toddfather isn’t going anywhere. Your mind starts turning, trying to figure out a way to get back to Dustin and away from the horror in front of you.

You hear tires squeal as the rest of the gang pulls up next to us in the Wheelers’ station wagon. “Get in!” Nancy says through the window. You and Steve scramble out of the car and into the back of the station wagon. You watch out the back window as the monster starts chasing after the speeding car. 

Then you turn and notice that there aren’t many people in the car. Where are Mike, El, and Max?? “Wait, wait, wait! Where are the others??” I yell through the car to Nancy.

“We got separated, we’re trying to lure that thing away from them!” 

The walkie crackles before you can respond, and you hear Dustin and an unknown female voice.

You and Steve lock eyes and say “Suzie” at the same time, Steve in realization, you in a “told you so” way.

You hear giggling, then you think she’s about to turn her radio off. Why is Dustin talking to his girlfriend right now? Then you hear singing and you give each other a confused look. 

You're embarrassed that you're related to this idiot. 

Suzie says a random number over the walkie, and they start talking about how much they miss each other, then their voices cut off. 

You and Steve watch through the window as the monster stops and turns around, heading back toward the mall. “It’s turning around.” you say to the others. 

“What??” Nancy yells from the front. 

“It’s turning around!” Steve shouts louder. 

“Maybe we wore it out?” Lucas suggests. 

Jonathan looks through the rear-view mirror at the monster. “I don’t think so… hang on!” He flips a very hard U-turn and the car tears down the dark road after the monster. 

As the car turns sharply, Steve flies forward, his head landing on your chest. “Sorry.” He says shyly.  

“It’s okay,” you say offhandedly as you turn to the others. “What are we going to do when we catch up to it? What’s the plan??”

“We have a shit ton of fireworks, we’re gonna blow it straight to hell.”

You nod your head at the simplicity of the plan. “That works,” you say. 

When you get to the mall, you all scramble out of the car and divide up the fireworks. You and Steve take your basket and a lighter up to the second floor of the mall. 

You lean over the railing and see El laying, dazed, at the foot of the monster. Then Lucas throws a firework directly into it’s mouth and it stumbles back. 

You light the fireworks and hand them to Steve, who has the better arm between the two of you. “Hey, asshole! Over here!” He shouts as he launches a firework at the monster. It explodes in its face, knocking it off balance. 

You watch Billy stumble around in pain, affected by the hivemind. El uses that as her chance to escape and starts crawling away, but Billy latches a hand around her ankle and drags her back, pinning her to the ground. 

Steve throws firework after firework. You see the others scattered around the top floor of the mall. You go through our fireworks quickly, and when they’re gone all you can do is watch and hope Hopper and Joyce get the gate closed. 

You yell to Dustin through the walkie that you're out of time as Steve launches the last firework at the monster.

You watch Billy pin El to the ground. You think you can see her mouth moving like she’s talking to him. Then he rises to his feet and faces the monster. It roars in his face and a fleshy, dripping arm shoots out from the monster toward Billy. He catches it, but more and more clawed tendrils erupt from the monsters body, surging toward Billy and stabbing him everywhere. 

He drops to his knees and screams, black blood dripping from his mouth. Then a clawed arm plunges through Billy’s chest and he falls to the ground. 

Suddenly, the monster screeches and flails, almost running into you and Steve.

He pulls you away from the railing, and you fall over trying to scramble away. The monster collapses to the ground, dead. 

Steve’s arm is around your waist as you sit up.

“You okay?” Steve asks you. 

“Are you?” Neither of you answers the question. Then you hear helicopters overhead, landing in the empty parking lot. The mall is filling with fire, smoke, and military.

Steve stands up and offers you a hand. You take it and stand up shakily. He puts his arm around you, and you walk out of the mall.

Fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances fill the parking lot of Starcourt Mall. You and Steve get checked out by paramedics. They make you wrap foil blankets around yourselves even though it’s the middle of Summer and there’s an enormous fire raging mere feet away from you. 

You keep telling the paramedic you're fine and that you need to get your brother. You refuse to let him check you out until your brother is getting taken care of. He calls a police officer over, and you tell him where Robin, Dustin and Erica are. Steve goes to check on Nancy and Jonathan, who are sitting in the back of another ambulance nearby.

When Robin, Dustin and Erica arrive with the officer, Dustin sprints over to you, and you pull him into a tight hug. He fusses over you, making sure you're okay. You’re sitting at the edge of the back of an ambulance, where the doors are hanging open. Dustin is inspecting your face closely, looking for any cuts or bruises. You keep brushing his hand away, insisting that you're fine. 

Steve comes back over and stands in front of you awkwardly. You and Dustin just look at him. Dustin reads the room, gives you a look, and leaves to check on the others. Steve sits down next to you. 

After a minute of silence, he slowly slips his hand in yours, intertwining your fingers. “So? What do you think?”

“You asking about anything in particular?” you say casually, lifting your gaze from where it had settled on your joined hands to meet his eyes. 

“About that question I asked you earlier.” He says. His eyes are soft and earnest, searching yours.  

You raise your eyebrow and the corner of your mouth lifts in a small smile. “You mean on the floor of a public bathroom?”

“That's the one.” He says, heart pounding out of his chest from nerves.

You give an exaggerated sigh. “How romantic,” you say sarcastically. 

Steve’s mouth quirks up at the corners, but he stays serious. “So?”

You tilt your head and look to the side, pretending to consider it. You drag it out for probably too long just to make him sweat a little, then look back at him with a deadpan expression and say, “Maybe once your face has healed up. It hurts me to even look at you.” 

A grin erupts on his face, and he laughs, swinging his arm around your shoulders, your hands still entwined. You reach up and brush one of the cuts on his chin with your thumb gently before leaning your head on his shoulder. 

You just know they're both twirling their hair and kicking their feet on the inside

 You fly down the main hallway back to the tunnel, but it still takes you a long time to reach the elevator. Steve and Robin are muttering nonsense in the back.

“What is wrong with them??” Erica shouts over to you. 

“I don’t know!” you respond. You don’t have time to worry about that right now. You hear them giggling. You're in too much of a rush to care where you park the truck, so it slams into a bunch of barrels. You hear Steve and Robin slam into the metal grate behind you. 

Dustin turns and asks, “You guys alright back there?” 

There’s only overlapping cries of complaint from the back. “They’re fine,” you say flatly. 

Steve and Robin and they’re slow to get moving when you swing the back door of the truck open. 

“Come on, let’s go,” Dustin says. They still don’t move. 

 You don’t have time for this. “Come ON!” you yell as Erica shouts, “Get out!!”

“Okay! We’re coming!”

“This sucks!” 

You finally get them in the elevator ,and Dustin uses the keycard to close the door. You feel the room lift upward, and you immediately feel a crushing weight slowly lift from your shoulders as you ascend further. 

Steve stands on a cart and pretends to surf. He and Robin are laughing and talking nonsense to each other. You, Erica, and Dustin stare at them, confused and concerned. 

“They seem drunk,” Erica states. 

Dustin turns to her. “Why would they be drunk?” 

Then Robin pulls the cart out from under Steve, and he goes flying, landing against some boxes. “Wipe out!” Robin shouts with a laugh. 

If you didn’t know better… Although who knows what those Russian guards did to them. “I think they’re drugged,” you say. 

“Shit.” Dustin bends down to Steve’s level and checks his forehead. He turns back to you. "He's burning up.”

“You’re burning up!” Steve says defensively. 

“Dustin, check his pupils,” you say, snapping into EMT mode. 

Dustin pulls Steve’s less injured eye open to check his dilation while Steve whines in pain. “They’re super dilated.”

“He’s definitely drugged,” you say as you come to kneel down next to Steve. He boops Dustin’s nose, making Dustin jerk his head back. Dustin looks down at Steve and pats his cheek, trying to get him to focus. “Steve, are you drugged?”

Steve sighs. “How many times, dad? I don’t DO drugs! It’s only marijuana!” He boops Dustin’s nose again. You, Dustin,and Erica exchange nervous glances.

You unceremoniously move Dustin out of the way and grab Steve’s face to make him look at you. “This isn’t funny, okay? We need to know what they did to you.” You search his brown eyes, but there’s a slight glossiness to them. 

“Are you gonna die on us?” Dustin asks. Steve boops your nose this time and giggles. 

Robin is now squatting at Steve’s feet, playing with her hair. “We all die, my strange little child friend. It’s just a matter of how and when.” 

You and Dustin exchange a confused glance. “They’re gonna be looking for us up there,” Dustin says to you. 

You scoot closer to Steve. He’s already distracted and looking around again, so you hold his cheeks to force him to look at you. “Stevie?” you say in a sweet voice like you're talking to a 2-year-old. He smiles up at you and mutters a small “hi.” 

You give him a warm smile. “Hi. I need you to tell me where you parked your car,” you say slowly. 

Steve looks at Robin. “Oh, can we make a pit stop at the food court?”

Robin gasps. “I would KILL for a hot dog on a stick!” she says as she hits Steve’s foot. 

“Ooooooooh!” he says. 

Seriously, this is painful and you're starting to get irritated. “Alright, yes, food. You can have as much food as you want, but only if you tell me where your car is parked.” 

Steve looks back at you. “Uh oh.”

“Uh oh?” you ask, trying your hardest to contain your frustration and maintain a positive tone.

“Car’s off the board.”

“What?” Dustin asks. 

“They took the keys.” He pulls the pockets of his shorts inside out to show you that they’re empty. “The Russians, they took the keys! Like forever ago!” Steve and Robin burst out laughing. Then he looks back at you and smiles. “That’s a bummer, right?” 

You rest your forehead on his chest in defeat and groan in anger. “Oh my god, the ONE time I don’t drive myself to the mall!” 

Steve and Robin keep laughing, and you and Dustin give each other a defeated look and try to come up with another plan. 

When you get to the surface, and the doors slide open, Robin tips her head back and holds her mouth open. “Oh, that tastes so good! Oh my god, Steve, can you taste the air?”

Steve mimics her actions. “I taste it!! I taste it!”

The gates ahead of you open, and you see Russian guards running towards you. You stop in your tracks and hold your arms out, stopping Dustin and Erica. “Oh, shit!” Dustin mutters. You turn and grab Robin while Dustin grabs Steve. You turn them around and herd them through a side door back into the mall. 

“Why are we running?” Steve asks as Dustin shoves him through the door and into the back hallway. Robin holds her hands up and whoops. You tear down the hallway.

“Where are we going?” Erica asks, struggling to stay with you.

“We need a place to lay low,” Dustin says. 

You stop and wrench open the door to the movie theater.  You pick a random theater and find the only empty seats, right in the front row. You point at two seats and tell Steve and Robin to sit like you're their mother. 

“No, n,o no! These seats are too close!” Robin whisper-yells. 

Steve sits next to her and says, “Dude, these seats totally blow!” You don’t know where he got a tub of popcorn, but he’s shoveling it into his mouth. 

“Then don’t watch the movie!” Dustin says. 

“We wanna watch it!” Robin argues. 

“Then watch it!!!” Dustin yells. He gets shushed by someone behind you, and Steve and Robin shush him back loudly.

“Sorry,” you whisper to the man before turning back to Steve and Robin. “Whatever you do, don’t go anywhere!”

“Fine, Dad!” Steve says. Drugged Steve is really sassy, and it makes you kinda want to punch him. Robin laughs, and you roll your eyes. 

You, Dustin, and Erica find the closest empty seats, on the opposite end of the row from Steve and Robin. There are only two, so you have Dustin and Erica sit down. Dustin sighs as he relaxes into the seat. “Okay, it’s official, I’m never having kids.”

“What are we doing here?” Erica asks. 

“We’re laying low. Cooling off,” you say as you kneel next to Dustin. 

“like Oswald.” Dustin agrees. 

“Oswald was found in the theater and shot to death,” Erica says flatly. 

“A week later!” Dustin retorts. 

“The point is, his plan didn’t work!” Their voices are getting louder and louder. 

“Only because it was a setup! He was just a patsy!” Dustin says. 

Erica gives him a deadpan expression. “Tell me you’re joking.” An old lady behind you shushes you loudly, and Dustin and Erica shush her back. 

“YOU GUYS!” you interrupt them.

“We need to get out of here,” Erica says. 

“You guys stay here and watch tweedledee and tweedledum,” you say. 

“What are you gonna do?” Erica asks you. 

You reach into the bag in her lap and grab the walkie. “I’m gonna find us a ride.” 

You give Steve and Robin one last glance and sneak out of the theater. You find an empty projection room and start trying random channels. “Hello? Does anybody copy?”

Finally, you hear Mike’s crackly voice through the walkie as he says your name in relief.

“Mike?? Oh, thank god! Russians have invaded Hawkins, and they’re trying to open the gate!!” 

Mike’s voice crackles back. “Wait, you’re breaking up!” 

You speak more slowly. “We’re trapped in the mall! We need a ride! Can Nancy drive?”

Mike says something, but it’s really garbled, then you watch the light go out on the walkie. Dead battery.

You growl with frustration. “Shit!” You slam the antenna back down and run back to Dustin and Erica. 

“It ran out of batteries!” you whisper-yell at Dustin and throw the walkie into his lap. “But I think I got a hold of Mike.”

“Shit! GODDAMN low battery!!” Dustin says in frustration.

You look over and notice that Steve and Robin are gone. “Where are they?” you ask slowly. 

They look over to see the empty seats and exchange a nervous glance before immediately flying out of their seats. You each take a side of the theater to check every row of seats to no avail. Shit.

Steve and Robin are out in the hallway, chugging water from the drinking fountain. While Robin is slurping loudly, Steve wanders a few feet away and stares at the ceiling. He calls Robin over and they both stare at the glittery ceiling. Then it starts to spin and they get nauseous. They run to the bathroom and throw up all the popcorn and water they just had. 

Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably a few minutes, the vomiting subsides and they flush the toilets. Steve is leaning against the wall next to the toilet, while Robin is lying on the floor with her legs up against the stall wall. 

“The ceiling stopped spinning for me. Is it still spinning for you?” She asks. 

Steve looks up. “Holy shit. No. You think we puked it all up?”

“Maybe. Ask me something.” Then she says in a Russian accent, “Interrogate me.”

Steve chuckles. “Okay. Interrogate you, sure. Um… When was the last time you, uh, peed your pants?” 

“Today,” Robin admits. “When the Russian doctor took out the bone saw.” 

They both laugh. “Oh, my god,” Steve says.

“It was just a little bit though!” Robin jokes as she sits up against the wall. 

“Yeah, it’s definitely still in her system,” Steve mutters. 

Robin laughs. “Alright, my turn.” She knows this is her chance to fish for answers about how Steve really feels about her best friend.

“Okay, hit me.” 

Robin hesitates, then she asks, “Have you…. ever been in love?”

“Yep. Nancy Wheeler. First semester, senior year.” He makes a gun shape with his fingers and makes a gunshot sound.

“Oh my god,” Robin said. She knew that he dated her. She remembered the drama around when they broke up last year. But she was shocked to hear that he’d actually loved her. Robin vaguely knew Nancy because you sometimes talked to her, but Robin never really interacted with her.  “She’s such a priss.”

Steve hums dryly. “Turns out, not really.”  

Robin probes a little deeper. “Are you still in love with Nancy?” 

Steve pauses, considering. Then he shakes his head at her from the other stall. “No.”

“Why not?” Robin asks. 

Steve hesitates, then takes the opportunity to finally let his feelings out to someone, especially after what he had just been through with Robin. He feels like he could trust her with anything. “I think it’s because I found someone who’s a little bit better for me.” 

Robin raises her eyebrows. Finally, she’s about to learn the truth. 

Steve continues, “It’s crazy. Ever since Dustin got home, he’s been saying, you know, ‘You gotta find your Suzie, you gotta find your Suzie’.”

Robin furrows her brows in confusion. “Wait, who’s Suzie?” 

Steve sighs. “It’s some girl from camp. I guess his girlfriend? To be honest with you, I’m not 100% sure she’s even real. But that’s not- that’s not really the point. That doesn’t matter. The point is, this girl, you know, the one that I like, it’s somebody that I… barely even talked to in school except to tease her. Not until Senior year. And I don’t even know why. Maybe ‘cause Tommy H. would’ve made fun of me or.. I wouldn’t be prom king. It’s stupid. I mean, Dustin’s right, it’s all just a bunch of bullshit anyway. Because when I think about it, I should’ve been hanging out with this girl the whole time. First of all, she’s hilarious. She’s so funny. I feel like this past year, I have laughed harder than I have laughed in a really long time.”

Robin smiles, knowing who he’s talking about and happy that she finally gets to know the answer to the question she’s been hearing you ask all summer. 

Steve continues. “And she’s smart. Way smarter than me. You know, she knows all this medical stuff, and she can crack, like, top secret Russian codes. You know? She’s honestly unlike anyone I’ve ever even met before.” He waits for Robin to respond. 

She stays quiet, grinning from ear to ear. 

“Robin?” Silence. He taps on the wall separating their stalls. “Robin, did you just OD in there?” He asks, concern lacing his voice.

“No,” Robin says with a shaky breath, trying to contain her excitement. “I…  am still alive.” She lets out a deep sigh, trying to calm herself down. 

Steve slides under the stall wall and sits across from her. “The floor is disgusting,” Robin says. 

“Yeah, well, I already got a bunch of blood and puke on my shirt, so..” he replies flatly as he looks down at his disgusting shirt. He looks back up at Robin. He needs to know if he has a shot with her best friend, and she’s probably the only person he could ask. “What do you think?” 

“About?” Robin asks, raising her eyebrows. 

“This girl.” He says nervously. 

“She sounds awesome,” Robin says pointedly.

Steve doesn’t even hesitate. “She is awesome. And what about the guy?” 

“I think it took him being on drugs to finally think straight.” 

“I agree,” Steve says. 

Robin can’t help but think that he can’t possibly be this stupid. But if she’s learned anything while working with Steve this summer, it’s that the level of his obliviousness knows no bounds. She decides to spell it out clearly. “Look, he’s had months to get to know this girl. And if he does know her, like really know her, I think he would have asked her out a long time ago.” 

“You think?” Steve asks hopefully.

Robin can sense his uncertainty. “Listen to me, Steve. It’s shocked me to my core, but I like you. I really like you. But I love her. She’s my best friend.” Although she couldn’t be happier, she can't help but go into protective-best-friend mode. “She is not like your other friends. And she is NOT like Nancy Wheeler.” She warns, making sure that he’s not about to break her best friend’s heart.

Steve scoots closer and leans forward. “Robin, that’s exactly why I like her.” 

“Good.” She relaxes a bit. “Just know that if you ever hurt her, I’ll kick your ass and all that shit,” she says, waving her hand dismissively.

Steve laughs and nods. “Got it.” He leans back against the door, able to relax now that he has confirmation from your best friend that he should go for it.

“Good.” There’s a lull in the conversation, and Robin looks at Steve. She can’t believe that this is the same guy who would tease you in high school. That spray-painted “Nancy, ‘the Slut’ Wheeler” on the marquee at her old job, the Hawkins Theater. 

She can’t help but feel like she could trust Steve with anything now, after all they just went through together. Especially if he’s going to start dating her best friend, she might as well make an effort to get closer to him now. And she does trust him. It’s now or never. 

She takes a deep breath, “Well, since we are sharing our deepest secrets now…” she says hesitantly, “it’s my turn.” She tucks her knees tightly to her chest defensively. “Ask me if I’ve ever been in love.”

Steve furrows his brows in confusion. “Have you? Ever been in love?”

Robin sighs deeply, wondering if she will regret sharing this with Steve. “Do you remember what I said about Click’s class? About the two of us being jealous and, like, obsessed?”

Steve nods. “Yeah.” 

“Well, my reason was different than hers. It isn’t because I had a crush on you.” She takes a deep breath, steeling herself. “It’s because she wouldn’t stop staring at you.” 

“Mrs. Click?” Steve asks, leaning forward and resting his arms on his knees.

Robin pauses, taking a deep breath. “Tammy Thompson. I wanted her to look at me. But… she couldn’t pull her eyes away from you and your stupid hair.” She looks up at the dark tendrils atop his head, disheveled and sun-bleached. “And I didn’t understand, because you would get bagel crumbs all over the floor. And you asked dumb questions. And you were a douchebag. And I would go home and just scream into my pillow.” 

“But Tammy Thompson’s a girl,” Steve says, still not understanding. 

“Steve.” She says, urging him to connect the dots. 

“Yeah?” Robin stays silent, raising her eyebrows at him. She registers the realization in his eyes as they widen, and he nods. “Oh.” 

Robin nods. “Oh.” 

He sits back against the door of the stall. “H-holy shit.”

“Yeah, holy shit.” She leans her head against the wall. Steve stays silent and stiff, staring blankly at the wall next to Robin’s head. “Steve.” She bumps his shoe and echoes his earlier question. “Did you OD over there?” 

Steve smiles and shakes his head. “No, I just, uh… just thinking.” 

She plays with her earring nervously. “Okay…” she whispers. 

Eventually, Steve shrugs. “I mean, yeah. Tammy Thompson, you know, she’s cute and all, but… I mean, she’s a total dud.” 

Robin furrows her brows, offended. “She is not.” 

“Yes, she is.” He insists. “She wants to be, like, a singer. She wants to move to, like, Nashville and shit.” 

“She has… dreams,” Robin says, defensively. 

“She can’t even hold a tune! She’s practically tone-deaf, have you heard her?” Robin smiles. “All the time!” He sings Total Eclipse of the Heart with a throaty, high-pitched voice. 

“She does not sound like that!” Robin defends, though she’s trying not to laugh.

“She sounds exactly- That’s a great impersonation of her!” Steve argues playfully.

“You sound like a Muppet.” Robin jokes. 

“She sounds like a Muppet! She sounds like a Muppet giving birth!” Then he continues singing, imitating Kermit the Frog. Robin laughs, then joins in. Steve laughs with her.“Exactly!” 

“I know!” Robin says. They’re both laughing hysterically now. 

Out in the hallway, you, Dustin, and Erica meet up after searching the entire movie theater. “Any luck?” Dustin asks. 

You sigh in defeat. “Not at all.” Shit. What do we do? Your eyes wander to a door behind Dustin’s head, just outside the theater. “Did anyone check the bathrooms?”

Dustin and Erica say, “No...” 

You rush through the door and find Steve and Robin laughing on the floor in one of the stalls. You breathe an intense sigh of relief and lean your shoulder against the wall, sliding down and collapsing on the floor. They stop laughing and turn to look at you. 

“Okay. What the hell?” Dustin asks in exasperation. 

They look at each other and burst out laughing again. Steve slaps his leg, slumping down and leaning against Robin’s leg, which she has propped up on the stall door next to him. Robin leans over and hits Steve’s knee. 

The three of you glare at them as they laugh. 

After a few minutes of them clutching their sides and gasping for air from laughing so much, they finally calm down. You stand and cross your arms, staring at them angrily. “Seriously, what the hell, guys?” You offer Robin a hand to help her stand up.

“Sorry,” Robin laughs. “We ate a ton of popcorn and got thirsty, so we went out to the drinking fountain. But then we got super dizzy and ran in here and, like, puked everywhere. But we think we threw up the drug or got it out of our system or whatever. So, I think we’re good now.” Robin explains.

“Thank god, you guys were embarrassing on drugs,” you mutter. 

Steve gets to his feet and walks over to you, getting unnecessarily close. “Really? I thought we were adorable,” he says with a smirk. He has a newfound confidence after his talk with Robin.

You lean away from him, suddenly intimidated at the way he’s crowding you. You feel your cheeks warm, but attempt to brush it off. “You weren’t. And you stink.” You press on his chest to push him away from you. 

Steve and Robin rinse their mouths out in the sink and clean the puke off their shirts as much as possible. You all decide to wait until the show is over to blend into the crowd and leave with them, so you hide out in the bathroom in the meantime. 

Now that you’ve had time to slow down, you decide to get a better look at Steve’s beat-up face. “Alright, sailor, come here.” You grab his arm and drag him over by the sink. You push his shoulders down to guide him to sit down on the ground, leaning against the wall under the towel dispenser. You kneel in front of him and grab his jaw with your pointer finger and thumb, turning his head from side to side to inspect his injuries.

“Jesus, Steve,” you mutter. It’s pretty bad. You would be shocked if he didn’t have a fractured bone around his eye or his cheeks. 

Steve’s cheeks warm from how intensely you're staring at him. “Yeah, they got me pretty good, I guess.” He gives a dry laugh, trying to act nonchalant even though, now that the drug has worn off, he can feel the full effects of his injuries again. 

You try shifting your weight, but from where you're kneeling on the floor next to him, you're half twisted awkwardly. You hesitate, considering whether you really want to do what you're about to do. You take a deep breath and muster some courage, plant your hands on his shoulders, then you throw your leg over his to straddle his thighs. Steve inhales sharply, surprised by your actions. You pause, and your breathing stops. 

You stare at him, waiting for him to shove you off of him and ask you what the hell you're doing. But he doesn’t. He just stares back at you, and you don’t think he’s breathing either. You clear your throat, playing it off, and kneel up to grab two paper towels from the dispenser above Steve’s head. He looks up at you with big brown puppy dog eyes that make you nearly crumble into dust. 

You lean over to the nearest sink to wet the paper towels, and you're leaning so close to Steve that you can feel his warm breath on your stomach through your shirt. You sit back down on his lap, fold one of the wet paper towels, and place it over his swollen eye gently. “Hold that on there.” 

His warm hand comes up and covers yours gently, then you slip your hand out from under his so he’s holding the paper towel. Then, you lean in close to his face. “Ready?” you ask him. 

He inhales deeply before saying, “Yeah.” You hold the side of his neck with one hand to keep his head steady, then you start dabbing at his cuts with the other paper towel. He inhales sharply and grips your leg tightly, trying to brace himself against the searing pain in the sensitive skin around his eye.

You stop dabbing. “Sorry…” you say apologetically. 

He shakes his head and breathes out, “It’s okay,” but his brows are furrowed, and his eyes are closed. He leans his head back and rests it against the wall. “Keep going.” He mutters. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows thickly.

You return to your previous ministrations and Steve breathes deeply through his nose. His large hand is latched tightly onto your thigh, but he doesn’t complain. You lose yourself in your medical training, focusing only on the split and bruised skin in front of you. 

As you clean up his face, you distract yourself from the feeling of Steve’s body against yours by telling him and Robin that you got a hold of Mike and that they should be coming to get you, but you need to be ready in case they don’t. 

Then there’s a long moment of comfortable silence. Steve meets Robin's eyes, and they share a look. Robin nods once and ushers the kids to the door to give you some space, telling them that they need to be lookouts.

Steve turns to you, clears his throat, and takes a steadying breath. He says your name, your first name, in a small, shy voice. 

“Hm?” you hum in response, not really listening, too focused on cleaning up his wounds. His hand shifts, leaving a burning trail as it travels up your thigh to nervously play with the hem of your shirt. His other hand lowers so he can look at you with both eyes, and takes one more deep breath in, bracing himself. “Um… Would you… Do you wanna… Will you go on a date with me?”

Wait what? You stop your movements and pull back to stare at him. Your eyes are wide. You can feel the heat in your cheeks, and your breathing speeds up. “What?”

Steve smiles at your flustered reaction. “Will you go on a date with me?”

You examine his bloodied face, his one uninjured eye boring into yours. This has to be some kind of sick joke. He’s still high, for sure. “I don’t think all those drugs have cleared out of your system. You’re not thinking straight.” 

You return to working on the cuts on his chin, but he grabs your wrist. He pulls it down and rests your hand against his chest, his thumb rubbing the back of your hand. When he speaks, his voice is soft and quiet. “Actually, I think this is the clearest I’ve thought in a long time.”

You look at him again, trying to read his expression. He has the most genuine look in his eyes that you have ever seen. A heat blooms in your chest that makes your stomach leap. Your head is reeling. Did that really just happen? Did Steve Harrington just ask me out on a date? But now is not the time to worry about dating. Not when you’re being chased by murderous Russians. 

You give him a soft smile, and your eyes wander up to his disheveled hair. You run your fingers through it, brushing a stray curl of hair away from his forehead. “Ask me again when all this is over.” You keep your hand in his hair for a second before you continue cleaning the blood from his face. He just smiles at your response, and he playfully squeezes your hips. 

Dustin comes back over to you, looking very uncomfortable with the sight of you sitting in Steve’s lap. “Hey guys, the movie is over, everyone is leaving.”

You look back at Steve before placing your hands on his chest to climb up off his lap. He lets his hands slip off your hips. He takes your hand when you offer it to him and rises to his feet. You all poke your heads out the door and wait for the crowd to thicken.

“And….. blend,” Dustin whispers. You step out of the bathroom and walk with the crowd to the stairs. Steve keeps his head down, and he plays with his hair to cover his face as much as possible. You cleaned up most of the dried blood, and the cold water helped reduce the swelling around his eye, but he still stands out. 

“Well, shit, that worked,” Erica says, impressed. 

“Of course it worked!” Dustin says. “Now we just have to get on the bus with the rest of these plebes and home sweet home here we come.” 

“Uh… Dustin?” Steve says. “Yeah, we might not wanna go to your house.”

“Why?” you ask nervously.

“Well, I might have told them your full name.” 

Dustin turns around to look at him. “What is wrong with you?”

“Dude, I was drugged!” Steve says, a little hurt. 

“So? You resist! You tough it out! You tough it out like a man!”

“Oh yeah, easy for you to say!” Steve snaps. 

Your eyes land on two or three guys dressed in dark clothes. They’re stopping everyone on their way out the doors. Your steps falter. “Guys?” you grab onto Dustin’s shoulder to stop them, and they see what you're looking at. They’re definitely Russian guards. One looks over and clocks you. He starts shouting to the others, and they start walking towards you.

Dustin stops in his tracks and starts backing up. “Abort. Abort!” You turn around and run. 

You look back to see the Russians shoving through the crowd, chasing after you. The escalators are turned off, so you slide down the metal gap between the two sides and run to hide behind the counter at one of the restaurants in the food court.

 You're gripping onto Steve’s hand and trying to control your breathing while you wait out the Russians. You can hear their footsteps getting closer as they talk in Russian. 

Suddenly, you hear car alarms echo through the empty mall, making you all jump. Then there’s a huge crash. You stand hesitantly and look over the counter to see a car thrown across the food court, wiping out the Russians. 

You step out from behind the counter and look up to see the rest of the gang up there, El at the front with a bloody nose. They run down the stairs, and you run to meet them. Dustin greets his friends with a hug. “You flung that thing like a hot wheel!” He says, laughing. 

Erica sees her brother. “Lucas?”

“What are you doing here?” Lucas asks incredulously.

Erica points to you, Steve, and Robin. “Ask them, it’s their fault.”

“True, yeah. Totally true. It’s absolutely our fault.” Steve admits. 

Robin’s eyes are locked on the car tipped on its side against one of the food court counters. “I don’t understand what happened to that car.” 

“El has superpowers,” you tell her offhandedly. 

Robin raises her eyebrows in disbelief. “I’m sorry?”

“Superpowers.” Steve says, “She threw it with her mind. Come on, catch up.” 

Erica points to Eleven. “That’s El?” 

“Who’s El?” Robin asks again, still confused. 

Nancy pipes in. “I’m sorry, who are you?” she asks Robin. 

“This is my best friend Robin, she works with Steve,” you tell her. 

Dustin adds, “She cracked the top secret code.” 

“Yeah, which is how you found out about the Russians,” Steve explains.  

Jonathan shakes his head in confusion. “Russians? What Russians?” 

“The Russians!” Steve yells as if that will clear things up for Jonathan. 

“Those were Russians?” Max asks incredulously. 

Erica shrugs. “Some of them.”

“What are you talking about??” Lucas asks. 

“Didn’t you hear me on the walkie?” you ask Mike.

“Yeah, but I couldn’t understand half of what you were saying.”

“GODDAMN low battery!” Dustin shouts in frustration. 

“How many times do I have to tell you with the LOW BATTERY?” Steve chides. 

“Well, everything worked out, didn’t it?” Dustin snaps at Steve. 

Erica scoffs. “Worked out? We almost died!”

Dustin turns to her. “Yeah, but we didn’t, did we!”

El steps away from the group and collapses. 

You all stop your conversation and rush to her side.

Mike is shaking her shoulders. “El, El! What’s wrong??”

“My leg! My leg!” she cries out in pain. Nancy and Jonathan unwrap her leg to reveal a horrible wound. 

Then you see something move beneath her skin, like a parasite.

I can't wait for flirty boyfriend Steve!! He's my favoriteeeeee! Y'all are NOT ready!

“The Gate.”

Robin and Erica look over at the three of you and see the fear in your faces. “Guys, what is it?” 

“We know what they’re doing,” you say gravely. All of you head back down the stairs. 

“I don’t understand. You’ve seen this before?” Robin asks. 

“Not exactly,” Steve says with uncertainty. 

Robin throws her hand in the air. “Then what, exactly?”

“All you need to know is it’s bad,” Dustin summarizes. 

“Really bad,” you add. 

Dustin continues, “Like, end of the human race as we know it kind of bad.”

“And you know about this how?” Robin asks. 

You look over and see an empty spot on the floor where you’d left an unconscious Russian.“Steve? Where’s your Russian friend?” He looks down at the floor by his feet. 

Then an alarm sounds and Steve runs to the door. He peeks out to see a bunch of guards huddled around, shouting at each other. Then they turn and see him. He slams the door and runs back to the group.

“Shit!” you say, looking around, thinking fast. “Come on!” You grab Steve’s hand and pull him up the stairs as guards start flooding in. You run through the door, and a bunch of scientists turn and stare at you in confusion. You see a side door and run toward it. You push through the door, down a set of stairs, and out by the machine that’s still shooting a beam of energy into the sprawling tear in the wall. The machine is spinning so fast that you can feel the wind from it whipping at your hair.  

The guards are still behind you, so you yank on Steve’s arm again and run down a set of stairs past the machine. Steve lets go of your hand and shoves a tower of barrels, knocking them to the ground. He waves the others ahead of him, and they follow you through another set of doors. 

You look around for a way to get out. Steve is the last one to enter the room. He turns and slams the door closed behind him, holding it closed with his body. You spot a grate in the floor and run up some stairs to it. You lift it and see that it leads into a large vent in the floor. 

Steve is struggling to keep the door closed and calls out to Robin, who is closest to him, for help. Dustin and Erica are right behind you, and you usher them into the vent. You look up to see Robin and Steve blocking the door.

“Come on!” you yell at them.

“Go! Just get out of here!” Steve yells, struggling to keep the guards out. 

If you weren’t panicking before, you definitely are now. You feel tears sting your eyes, and your voice rises in pitch. “Come on! Hurry! Please!”

They don’t move. “No! Just go get help, okay?” Steve yells. 

You climb into the vent and pause, looking at them, really hating that you have to leave them. 

They can’t hold the door much longer. Steve looks over at you and yells, “What are you doing?? GO!!” 

Robin’s now yelling at you to go too. 

You glance back and forth between both of them and know that they’re right. 

“Shit… shit, shit,” you whisper to yourself as you kneel down, pulling the vent closed behind you.

Dustin and Erica are stopped in front of you. “Where are they?” Dustin asks. Then you hear the door burst open and two thuds, which you assume are Steve and Robin being slammed into something as they’re thrown out of the way. You hear guns cocking and guards shouting, and you don’t need to answer Dustin’s question. 

“Move! We have to go!” you whisper to them, wiping away the tears that have begun to fall as you shove them forward and follow them through the vents. 

Thursday, July 4

You wander around in the vents for hours. Your knees hurt from crawling, your eyes burn from lack of sleep, and your head is pounding because Erica has been harassing you and Dustin, begging you to explain what the machine is and why you know about it. After an hour, Dustin finally breaks and he explains it all. You haven’t said much, alternating between anxious impatience and a full-blown mental breakdown. 

You get blocked by a fan so Dustin fiddles with the control panel next to it, trying to pry the cover off. He’s still explaining the Upside Down to Erica, so he keeps stopping to wave his hands and he’s generally just taking forever.  

“So,” Dustin continues. “We set fire to the hub, drew the demodogs away so El could close the gate. But now, for some insane reason, the Russians appear to be trying to reopen it, which just destroys everything we risked our lives for.”

Erica doesn’t believe him. “By ‘we’, you’re including Lucas?”

Dustin is confused. “Yes, of course?”

“So all that shit you told me, Lucas was there? My brother? Lucas Charles Sinclair? I don’t believe you.”

You pause and turn to her. “Wait, so you believe everything about El, and the gate and the demodogs and the mind flayer, but you question your brother's involvement?” 

Erica turns to you and nods. “That's correct.” She looks down at Dustin fumbling with the wires. You can’t take it anymore.

“Ughhh, will you hurry up, please! We need to help Steve and Robin!” you shout at Dustin. 

Dustin says your name in a hushed tone, trying to stay calm. Almost like how you talk to a feral cat, so you don’t startle it. “I am working as fast as I can. I’m sure they’re okay.”

“We don't know that, Dustin!!” you shout back. “Who knows what those Russian guards are doing to them! Oh god, oh god, oh god. I shouldn’t have left them. They’re gonna die, and it’s gonna be my fault!” There are tears welling up in your eyes again, and you run your hands through your hair. Maybe it's the lack of sleep or the general stress of what you’ve been through the past couple of days, but you're close to snapping. 

Erica turns to you. “No offense, Dustin’s sister, but I don’t think you could have single-handedly defended Steve and Robin against that swarm of evil commies.”

You stutter as you try to find a good argument. “Yeah, well, I could have… I don’t know!” you concede. 

Erica nods. “Exactly.”

“You would just be in the exact same place they are.” Dustin points out. “At least here you can help them by getting out of here and finding help.”

You take a deep breath, trying to calm down. “You’re right, you’re right, I’m sorry. It’s just that Robin is my best friend. And Steve is… Steve. I don’t know what I would do if…” You take another deep breath. “Okay. Keep going, Dustin.”

 “Um… you need help with that? She’s right, it’s taking a while so-“

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock!” Dustin snaps. 

“Alright, so if we don’t find a more efficient method to stop these fans, we’re never gonna find help, and your sister’s ice cream buddies are screwed.”

Dustin scoffs. “Yeah, with that attitude they are, jeezus!”

“Also, like, do you not know my name?” you ask. “Why do you keep calling me ‘Dustin’s sister’?”

Erica simply shrugs at you before turning to Dustin and holding up her hands defensively. “I’m just being realistic. I mean, we’ve made it about .3 miles in nine hours, then we had to walk 3 hours down that tunnel, so I’d estimate ten miles back to the elevator, which should take us approximately 12 1/2 days.”

You and Dustin glance at each other.

You turn back to Erica. “Did you just do that all in your head?”

Erica shrugs. “I’m good with numbers.“

Dustin laughs. “Holy shit. You’re a nerd.”

Erica whips her head around to him. “Come again?” 

Dustin raises his voice. “You. Are. A. Nerd.”

Erica scoffs. “Okay, you better take that back, nerd.”

Dustin shakes his head. “Can't put the truth back in the box.”

“But it’s not the truth,” Erica argues. 

You lean against the side of the vent and give her a cocky smile, grateful to finally have something to focus on besides Robin and Steve. “Let's examine the facts, shall we? Fact 1: You're a math whiz, apparently. Fact 2: You’re a political junkie. Fact 3: You love My Little Pony,” you say as you hold up her pink backpack. 

“And what does My Little Pony have to do with this?” Erica asks. 

Dustin jumps in. “Ah, let’s recall the ponies’ latest adventure, shall we? The evil centaur team and Tirek turns Applejack into a dragon at Midnight Castle and then Megan and the other ponies have to use Moochick’s magic to defeat his rainbow of darkness saving them from a lifetime of enslavement.”

you add on, “All the pink in the world can’t disguise the irrefutable fact that centaurs and castles and dragons and magic are all standard nerd tropes.”

Dustin continues, “Ergo, My Little Pony is nerdy. Ergo, you, Erica, are a nerd.”

Erica smiles at him.  “And how do you know so much about My Little Pony?”

Dustin finally pulls the cover off of the control panel as he turns to her. “Because I’m a nerd!” He pulls on the wires, stopping the fan. 

“Let's go, nerds” you tease. Erica glares at you and then follows Dustin through the fan blades.

You crawl through the vents for what seems like hours. You go through phases of anxiety attacks and being in denial about what’s probably happening to Steve and Robin right now. Finally you reach another grate and crawl through into a room filled with large tanks of the green chemical. 

“Jackpot,” Dustin says as he looks at the room. He spots one of the little red trucks while Erica and you climb out of the vent. He climbs in and notices an empty ignition. “aw, come on.”

“you seriously thought they’d just leave keys in there?” Erica asks. 

“There’s gotta be a spare here somewhere…” you say and you start looking around. While you and Dustin are looking around the car for the keys, Erica wanders over to an empty cage. 

“Hey, guys? How big did you say that demogorgon was again?” Erica asks. 

“Big. Nine feet or so. Why?” Dustin says, still looking for the keys. 

You find the keys in a box on the wall. “Found ‘em!” You turn around to see that Erica is gone. You hear a crackling sound behind you and turn to see Erica holding a long rod crackling with electricity just inches away from Dustin’s face

Dustin turns and jumps. “What the hell is that??”

“A deadly weapon,” Erica says matter-of-factly. “Could be useful,” she lights it up again, and you run over and take it from her. 

“For what?” you ask. 

“What do you think?” Erica asks sarcastically. “Taking out commies, saving your friends.”

“I thought you were more realistic than that, nerd.” Dustin teases. 

“We don't even know where they are, and even if we did, there are a million guards up there with weapons way deadlier than that,” you point out to her. 

“The best thing we can do for them is to get out of here and find help.” Dustin decides. 

You hand the weapon to Dustin. As he grabs it, it moves close to your face. “Easy with that.” 

Dustin continues talking to Erica. “Our best chance of surviving and theirs rises substantially. Just trust me on this.” You climb into the truck and start it up.

Steve and Robin are tied with their backs to each other. Steve is slumped forward, unconscious. Robin’s voice is echoing down the deserted hallways. “Help! Help! Help!”

Then she hears Steve’s slurred voice from behind her. “Hey, wouldya stop yellin'?” 

“Steve? Oh, thank god!” Robin lets out a huge sigh of relief. “Steve- Are you okay?” She leans against his back and turns her head as much as she can to see him. 

“My ears are ringing, and I can’t really breathe. My eye feels like it's about to pop out of my skull, but, you know, apart from that, I’m doing pretty good.” He says, trying to act like he doesn’t feel like he’s dying. 

“Well, the good news is, they’re calling you a doctor.” Robin tries to reassure him. 

Steve looks around. “Is this his place of work? I love the vibe.” Robin chuckles. “Charming.” 

“Yeah, tell me about it. So, okay, do you see that table over there to your right?” Steve whips his head to the left. “No, your other right.” He whips his head to the right. “Yeah, okay. And do you see those scissors?” 

“Uh huh.” 

“Yeah, well, I think that if we move at the same time, we could get over there and then maybe I could kick the table and knock them into your lap.”

Steve nods, understanding her plan. “And I could cut the binds.” 

“Yeah! And we could get out of here.”

“Gotcha. Okay, yeah. Those morons. They left scissors in here?”

Robin laughs. “Yeah, total morons. Okay, so on the count of three, we’re gonna hop. Okay, one… two… three!” They both push off the ground with their feet, lifting the chairs up and inching toward the right. “Okay, that worked! Okay, again. One… two… three!” They inch further to the right. “Holy shit, this is gonna work! One… two… three!” But they miscalculated their timing and the chairs stumble. They tip and fall, landing hard on their shoulders. 

Steve feels Robin’s shoulders shake behind him, and he hears her gasping for breath. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t cry. Robin.” Then he hears a squeaky wheeze. “Are you laughing?”

Robin can’t help it, finding humor in the absurdity of the situation. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s just… I can’t believe I’m gonna die in a secret Russian base with Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington. It’s just too trippy, man.”

“We’re not gonna die. We’re gonna get out of here. Just- You gotta let me just think for a second.” He looks around the room, trying to think of a way out. 

“Do you remember, um, Mrs. Click’s sophomore history class?” 

Steve shakes his head, confused as to why Robin is bringing up History class right now. “What?” 

“Mrs. Clickity-Clackity. That’s what us band dweebs called her. It was first period, Tuesdays and Thursdays, so you were always late. You always had the same breakfast. A bacon, egg, and cheese on a sesame bagel. We sat behind you two days a week for a year.” Mister Funny. Mister Cool. The King of Hawkins High himself.”

Steve shakes his head in confusion again. “We? Who’s we?”

“Me and Henderson or whatever you call her. You talked to her sometimes, but… Do you even remember me from that class?” Steve stays quiet, but he shakes his head softly, even though Robin can’t see him. Robin lets out a breathy laugh. “Of course you don’t. You were a real asshole, you know that?” 

“Yeah, I know.” Steve says sadly. The way he acted in high school was his biggest regret. He knew there were so many people who only knew that version of him that he would never be able to apologize to. 

Robin continues. “But it didn’t even matter. It didn’t matter that you were an ass. We were still… obsessed with you. Even though all of us losers pretend to be above it all, we still just want to be popular, accepted, normal.”

“If it makes you feel any better, having those things isn’t all that great. Seriously, it just baffles me. Everything that people tell you is important, everything that people say you should care about, it’s all just…” He sighs with a small smile. Oh, the irony. “Bullshit. But I guess you gotta mess up to figure things out, right?” He says, closing his eyes. His head is really pounding now. 

“I hope so. I feel like my whole life has been one big error.” Robin says with a deep voice.

Steve laughs. “Yep.” 

“At least it can’t get any more messed up than this,” Robin says with a smile. They both laugh.

“You know, I wish I had known you in Click’s class. Really, I do. Or that I had been nicer to Henderson,” he says before correcting himself and saying your first name, noting how Robin mentioned that he never calls you that. “Maybe you guys could have helped me pass the class. Maybe instead of being here, I’d be on my way to college right now.” Steve says with a wry smile.

“And I would have no idea that there were evil Russians beneath our feet, and I would be happily slinging ice cream with some other schmuck.” 

Steve laughs. “Gotta say, though, I liked being your schmuck. It was fun while it lasted.”

Robin smiles. “It was.” 

Then the door buzzes and opens. The Russian general walks in to find them tipped over on the ground, still strapped to their chairs. He chuckles. “Where were you two going?” He jokes with a shrug of his shoulders. Two of the guards come over and lift them up, so they’re sitting upright. 

The general leans down in front of Steve. “Try telling the truth this time, yes?” He raises a hand and pats the side of Steve’s head. “It will make your visit with Dr. Zharkov less painful.” He strokes Steve’s hair a few times before grabbing his chin, pressing his thumb harshly into one of the bruises there. Steve winces. The general laughs and looks up, nodding to the doctor in the lab coat. 

The doctor walks over with a huge metal device that looks like a giant injection tube with a huge needle sticking out. Steve’s breathing picks up as the doctor gets closer. “Wait a second. Wait. Hold on. Okay! Wait, wait, wait! What is that thing?” The doctor comes and stands to the side of Steve. 

“It will help you talk,” the doctor says calmly. He harshly grips the hair on Steve’s head, injecting the needle into his neck, just below his ear. Steve screams in pain as the needle sinks into his flesh.

You, Dustin, and Erica are driving down random tunnels, trying to avoid guards and find your way around the absolute maze that is this Russian compound. 

Steve and Robin are leaning lazily against each other, eyes glazed over. “I don’t really feel anything,” Steve says. “Do you?”

“I mean… I feel fine. I feel normal.” 

“Yeah, I feel, I feel fine.” Steve agrees. “I kinda feel good.” 

They both burst out laughing. “You wanna know a secret?” Robin asks, leaning her head back against Steve’s.

“What?”

“I like it, too.” They laugh even harder. 

“Morons! They messed up the drug!” Steve says, giggling. 

“They messed it up! Morons!” Robin agrees. They both turn toward the door, shouting ‘morons’. 

“There is definitely something wrong with us.” Robin states. 

“Something’s wrong.” Steve giggles. 

Then the buzzer sounds and the door opens again. 

Eventually, you, Dustin, and Erica make your way down a hallway where a very official looking guard and a creepy guy in a white lab coat and gloves are entering a room, arms full of equipment. It has to be them. You slam on the breaks and Dustin and Erica fly forward.

“Jesus!” Dustin yells. 

You shush him loudly. “I think they’re in there.” You point to the door down the hallway. You get out of the cart and crouch against the wall, peering around the corner. 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the door, the creepy doctor sets out an array of what looks to be torture devices. He picks up a large knife and checks how sharp the blade is with his thumb. 

“Would now be a good time to tell you that I don’t like doctors?” Robin says nervously. 

Let’s try this again, yes?” The general asks Steve. Steve nods his head, his tongue playing with some of the shredded flesh on the inside of his lip. “Who do you work for?”

“Scoops.” Steve says with a smile. Robin laughs. “Scoops Ahoy.” Steve chuckles. 

The general remains unamused. “How did you find us?”

“Totally by accident.”  Steve laughs again. 

The general rolls his eyes and says something in Russian to the doctor. The doctor picks up what looks like a pair of giant pliers and walks towards Steve. “What is that shiny little toy?” Steve asks.

“Where you going with that, doc?” Robin mumbles. 

Then the doctor grabs one of Steve’s fingers, placing the pliers around his fingernail as Steve tries to pull out of his grasp. “Whoa, hey, wait! No! Wait!” 

“There was a code! There was a code! We heard a code!” Robin yells. The doctor stills before pulling Steve’s fingernail out of its nail bed. 

The general walks around to stand in front of Robin. “Code. What code?” 

“‘The week is long. The silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west.’ Blah blah blah. You broadcast that stupid spy shit all over town, and we picked it up on our Cerebro, and we cracked it in a day. A day! You think you’re so smart, but a couple of kids who scoop ice cream for a living cracked your code in a day, and now, people know you’re here.”

“Who knows we are here, suka?” The general snaps. 

“Uh, well, Henderson knows.” Steve offers. 

“Hey. Steve.” Robin warns.

Steve continues, saying your FULL NAME, like an idiot. “Yeah. She knows.”

“STEVEEEE!” Robin groans and leans her head back against him.

The Russian general smiles mockingly. “ Is this your little curly-haired girlfriend?”

Steve smiles and laughs. “Yeah!” he says excitedly. “Curly brown hair. Great hair. It’s really pretty.”

“And where is she?” The guard asks. 

“She’s long gone, you big asshole.” Steve brags. “And she’s probably calling Hopper, and Hopper's calling the US cavalry. They’re gonna come in here commando-style, guns a-blazing, and kick your sorry asses back to Russia. You’re gonna be two pieces of toast,” He laughs.  

Back in the hallway, you ask, “What do we do?” 

“I say we go in there, guns a-blazing and kick their sorry asses back to Russia!” Erica says as if it should be obvious. 

You roll your eyes. “Okay, but we don’t know how many guards are in there, and we only have one weapon.” 

“And a whole truckload of green poison!” Dustin adds. 

You look back at the truck and then at each other. 

You drive the cart a few halls down and smash a whole bunch of green vials to create a huge hole in the floor. You circle back to watch the guard rush out of the room where Steve and Robin are. 

Then, you sprint toward the door and burst in. Dustin screams and shocks the doctor with the electrical weapon while Erica unties Robin, and you kneel in front of Steve. 

He looks awful. He has gashes and bruises all over his face, and his left eye is nearly swollen shut. You take his cheeks in your hands and turn his head from side to side to get a good look at the injuries on his face.

“Oh my god, Steve, what did they do to you?” you ask worriedly. 

Steve just looks at you and grins. “Heyyyy, Henderson! That’s crazy, I was just talking about you!” For someone who has been beaten to a pulp by Russians, he’s acting suspiciously happy. 

You furrow your brows and eye him as you untie the bindings around his hands and legs. As soon as he’s untied you stand and yank him up from the chair to crush him in a huge hug, careful to avoid his clearly injured face. Steve doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around you. He turns his face into your hair and inhales. “Mmm, Your hair smells nice.”

Robin looks over and sees you and Steve hugging. She clasps her hands together against her chest and bounces on the balls of her feet. “Awwww, that’s so sweet! You guys are in love!” she squeals. Dustin and Erica exchange a confused look. Why are they acting like this?

Robin’s comment makes you peel your body away from Steve’s and your cheeks feel warm. You look at Steve and grab his hand. “Get ready to run!” Dustin grabs Robin's hand, and you drag them out of the room and to the truck. You shove them into the back while Dustin and Erica sit up front with you. 

You turn the key and look at Dustin and Erica. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.” The little truck roars to life, and you slam on the gas pedal.

Wednesday, July 3

You're the first to wake up the next morning, mostly because your ass is asleep from sitting on the floor for so long. You try to sit up and realize that your head is sandwiched between Steve’s head and his shoulder, your hands tucked up tightly against his chest. You’re pretty much completely cradled in his arms. 

The events of last night come back to you. They’re filled with terror, adrenaline, and dread. But there are glimpses, flashes, of deep brown eyes and a warmth that wraps around you like a blanket, breaking through the fear. 

You smile to yourself, and allow yourself one more minute to enjoy the present moment. You even snuggle in a little deeper, just to really soak it up. 

After your ass truly cant take another second of the cold storage room floor, you try to pull your head from under his without waking him up, but once you're free, his head drops to the side, and his eyes shoot open. He blinks rapidly, adjusting to the bright light.

You look at him quietly, and after he’s adjusted to the harsh light of the room, he meets your eyes. You smile uncomfortably at how closely you had been sleeping for the past few hours. 

But he doesn’t seem uncomfortable. He smiles, reaches up, and tucks some of your hair behind your ear, out of your face. You feel your cheeks warm at the casual intimacy of the small action. Your lips part and your breath quickens. 

He’s looking at you so softly right now, and his touch is so gentle as his hand finds your thigh again. He’s not being his usual cocky self, who takes pleasure in making you squirm. He’s looking at you genuinely, with a soft smile that makes your heart skip in your chest. 

But you can’t help but feel confusion, your mind casting doubt on the intentions behind his behavior. 

If the look in his eyes was anything to go off of, then why hasn’t he asked you out in the last several months since he broke up with Nancy? 

He spends all day every day flirting with any girl that walks into Scoops, asking them out any chance he can get. He flirts with you, sure. But he acts that way with everyone. 

Why hasn’t he asked you out? Or given any indication that he might be interested in you? 

Was he only acting like this now because you were in yet another end-of-the-world level scenario? Is he just scared and seeking comfort in someone and you just happen to be there?

“Steve?” You whisper. 

His mouth opens, but he doesn’t get a chance to respond because you hear Robin roll over and sit up. She stretches and groans, her eyes still closed. You pull away from Steve and quickly stand up before she can see. You look down at Steve, frazzled, before going over to wake up Dustin and Erica. 

Once everyone is awake, you and Steve fill the others in on what you’d discussed the night before. Steve stands with his hands on his hips as he explains that you’d stayed up all night thinking and were nowhere closer to figuring out how to escape. 

Dustin climbs onto the elevator to try to contact someone. “This is code red, I repeat, a code red. Does anyone copy? We are innocent children, and we are trapped under Starcourt Mall. The Red Army has infiltrated Hawkins, and if we are found, they will torture and kill us.”

Steve climbs up and stands in the open hatch. “Hey. Gotta take it easy on that thing, okay? You’re gonna drain the battery.”

“The mall just opened,” Dustin tells him.

“So?” 

“So someone could be in range.” 

“What do you think? Petey the Mall Cop is gonna rappel down here and save the day?” Steve says sarcastically as he pulls himself up onto the roof. 

“Okay, why are you so cranky after you got to-” He drops his voice to a whisper, “spend the night with…” he points down, as if gesturing to you.

Steve shushes him loudly. “Jesus Christ. Will you just give up on your creepy dream already?” Steve feigns annoyance, but Dustin doesn’t miss the way Steve’s cheeks flush red. 

“I heard you guys talking all night.” 

“Yeah, we were trying to figure out how to open up the door while you children were sleeping,” Steve says as he looks up at the elevator shaft and steps over to the edge of the roof. “After eight hours, we’re still nowhere. Which is probably why I’m just a tad cranky.” He starts unbuckling his belt. 

“What are you doing??” Dustin asks. 

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m taking a leak. Look away. Look away!” He yells to Dustin.

Inside the room, Robin looks up from the control panel and sees a dark line appear on the cement wall and scrunches her nose in digust. “Can you redirect your stream, please??”

You look up and follow her gaze to find out what she’s talking about as you watch a line of urine spray across the wall as Steve turns. You look at each other and groan. Boys. 

Erica bangs one of the green vials against a box, and you and Robin run over to her. “Hey, careful, careful, careful!” Robin rips the vial from Erica’s hands. “We don’t even know what this is,” Robin warns.  

“Exactly, it could be useful!” Erica argues. 

“Useful how?” You ask sarcastically. 

“We can survive down here a long time without food, but if the human body doesn’t get water, it will die.”

“I hate to break it to you, but that’s not water.” You point to the vial in Robin’s hand. 

“No, but it’s a liquid. If it comes down to me drinking that shit or dying of thirst, I drink.” She gives you a sarcastic smile. 

“I wouldn’t.” You warn. Robin rolls her eyes, then turns to you. 

“Hey, so what were you and Steve doing last night?” She raises her eyebrows suggestively.  

“KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWNNNN.” You whisper-yell to her and glance at the hatch in the ceiling to make sure Steve and Dustin didn’t hear her. “Nothing, we were trying to figure out how to get out of this stupid elevator!!”

Robin rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. You don’t think I saw you two cozied up in the corner over there this morning?”

Erica looks between you and Robin, realizing what Robin’s suggesting. “Hold on. You and the sailor man?” She scoffs and rolls her eyes. “Please.”

“No, not me and the sailor man.” You say to her. Robin raises her eyebrows, not buying any of what you're trying to convince Erica of. “He’s an idiot!” You insist. “Did you not hear him peeing against the wall a minute ago?” You gesture to the cement wall darkened with Steve’s urine and turn back to Robin. “AND he’s been flirting with every girl within a 5-mile radius all summer EXCEPT me, so I think it’s very clear how he feels about me.”

“Did you ever think that maybe the reason he hasn’t asked you out is because you’re the one girl he’s actually scared of getting rejected by?” Robin suggests matter-of-factly. 

Your mouth drops in shock. All of the doubts in your mind after waking up in his arms this morning seemed to vanish with this new theory that Robin has dropped in your lap. 

You stutter, trying to find something to say. Some argument to convince her that that can’t possibly be the reason. Can it? 

Robin smiles triumphantly, then freezes, and her smile drops. She runs over and presses her ear to the door of the elevator. Her eyes widen, and she turns to you, “Someone’s coming!” She whispers.  

You scramble through the hatch in the ceiling. “We’ve got company!” Robin says as she climbs through first. You help Erica up, then, as you climb, you kick the tower of boxes over so they don’t see them stacked up to the hatch in the ceiling. 

Steve watches through a grate in the ceiling in silence as some men exchange words in Russian and take a few boxes and load them onto a little red truck. He waves at Dustin to lean away from the grate and looks at you as he holds a finger to his lips. 

Then his eyes fall on the green vial in Erica’s hands. 

He grabs it from her and waits for the guards to climb back in their car to open the hatch. You hear the door start to close, and he jumps down and lunges forward. He sticks the vial under the door to stop it from closing all the way, and he ushers everyone under the door. 

Erica throws him her backpack, and he slides it under the door. He hurries her along as she crawls under. Dustin slides under next, then Robin. You're in the middle of sliding through when the glass of the vial starts to crack. Steve barely makes it out before it shatters, bubbling and dissolving the floor.

You all scramble to your feet, away from the chemical. Then you crowd around it to watch as it dissolves the cement floor. “Jesus Christ,” Steve mutters. 

Robin turns to Erica. “Still wanna drink that?”

You hear Dustin behind you. “Holy mother of God.” You turn and see what he’s looking at. You stare down a hallway that seems to go on forever.

“Well…” Steve starts. “I hope you’re in good shape.” He pats Dustin’s chest as he walks past him. “I’m lookin’ at you, roast beef.” He starts walking before looking back and realizing no one is following him. He waves at the rest of you. “Let's go, come on.”

Robin puts a hand on Erica’s back to usher her forward, and Dustin looks at you. “Why me?” He asks quietly. You give a soft giggle and throw your arm around his shoulder, pulling him along after Steve. 

You walk. And walk. And walk. For hours. 

Then Dustin speaks. “I mean, you have to admit, just as a feat of engineering alone, this is impressive.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve asks. “It’s a total fire hazard! There’s no stairs, there’s no exit, there’s just an elevator that drops you halfway to hell.”

“They’re commies. You don’t pay people, they cut corners.” Erica states. 

“To be fair to our Russian comrades, I don’t think this tunnel was designed for walking.” Robin theorizes. “Think about it, they’ve developed the perfect system for transporting that cargo.” 

You nod. “It all comes into the mall like any old delivery.” 

Robin continues, “Then they load it up onto those trucks, and nobody’s the wiser.”

“You think they built this whole mall just so they could transport that green poison?” Steve asks. 

Dustin scoffs. “I very seriously doubt it’s something as boring as poison. It’s gotta be much more valuable, like promethium or something.”

“What the hell is promethium?” Steve asks. 

Robin answers, “It’s what Victor Stone’s dad used to make Cyborg’s bionic and cybernetic components.”

Erica shakes her head. “You’re all so nerdy it makes me physically ill.”

“Hey, don’t lump me in with them, I’m not a nerd, alright?” Steve defends. 

You look at him with a mocking smile and bump him with your shoulder. “Why so sensitive, Harrington? Afraid of losing cool points to a ten-year-old child?”

Steve looks at you, and some of the defensiveness melts from his face. “No.” He says, softer. “I’m just saying I don’t know jack shit about Prometheus.”

“Promethium.” Dustin corrects. 

You lean in toward Steve and explain quietly, “Prometheus is a Greek mythological figure. He’s the one who brought fire to humanity.”

Dustin ignores you and continues, “Whatever. All I’m saying is it’s probably being used to make something.”

“Or power something,” Robin suggests. 

“Like a nuclear weapon?” You ask. 

Robin nods. “Totally.”

Steve sighs. “Walking towards a nuclear weapon. That’s great. That’d be great.”

Robin continues, “But if they’re building something, why here? I mean, Hawkins. Seriously. Of all places? At the very best, we’re a toilet stop on your way to Disneyland. But maybe that’s it? Maybe it’s our very….”

Robin’s voice fades as your steps falter, along with Dustin’s and Steve’s. You huddle together and start whispering.

“Do you think the Russians know?” Dustin asks. 

“About the…” Steve trails off. 

You shrug. “They could.”

Steve looks at you and asks, “So it’s connected?” 

This time, it’s Dustin’s turn to shrug. “Maybe.”

“How?” You ask. 

Dustin looks at you. “I don’t know, but it’s…”

You all nod and say, “Possible.”

Robin stops and turns around. “I’m sorry, is there something you three would like to share with the class?”

You look over to her, considering what to say to her without telling her anything. Just then, the walkie clicks on, and you hear Russian muttering. “Walkie.” Steve and Dustin say together. 

You all run toward Erica, who’s digging it out of the backpack. You listen, and soon Robin starts translating, “the code.”

Dustin starts, “wherever that broadcast is coming from-“ 

You look at him and finish his thought. “It's close.”

“And if there’s one thing we know about that signal…” Robin says with a smile. 

Dustin nods. “It can reach the surface.”

You smile and look up towards the mall sitting hundreds of feet above you, then back down to the group. “Let's go.”

You’re newly energized, knowing that help is so close. You walk for probably another half an hour before you hear another truck coming. Steve shoves you all down behind a crate to wait until the Russians pass. 

Steve looks and checks.“Okay, clear.” He steps out from behind the crate and signals you to follow him. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Okay, that was close,” Robin says. 

“Too close,” Dustin agrees. 

“Relax, alright, nobody saw…” Steve trails off as he rounds a corner and steps out to see a large room filled with control consoles and bustling guards in Russian uniforms. You all stand there in shock, taking in the sight. 

Then an angry-looking guard with a huge gun turns his head towards you, and you duck behind another crate. 

“Shit! Jesus!” Steve whispers. 

“Red Dawn!” Dustin says, remembering the war movie that came out the last year. 

Erica whispers. “I saw it! First floor, northwest.”

You turn to her. “Saw what?”

 “The comms room!” Erica answers. 

Steve looks at her incredulously. “You saw the comms room??”

“Correct.”

“Are you sure?” Dustin asks. 

Erica nods. “Positive. The door was open for a second. I saw a bunch of lights and machines and shit in there.”

You shake your head. “That could be a hundred different things.”

Robin turns to you and Steve. “I’ll take those odds.” You turn to Steve, who stares at Robin, considering. He shakes his head, knowing that there isn’t a better option. 

You all peer around the corner of the crate to get a good look at the door and the obstacles in your way. Then Steve turns to you, and you lean back, close to the wall. “Alright,” Steve says. “We’re gonna move fast, we’re gonna stay low, okay?”

You all nod and follow Steve, ducking behind carts and crates as you move.

You're holding onto the edge of Steve’s shirt to stay close to him, and you're holding Robin's hand in your other hand. 

You wait for the door to open, then Steve rushes to catch it before it closes. He ushers you in, then closes the door, and you come face to face with a guard sitting at a control table. He turns around and sees you, eyes widening. He takes off his headphones and stands, reaching for his gun.

Robin sees his hand move toward his weapon and rushes forward, speaking to him and gesturing to you in Russian. The guard seems confused, and you can tell Robin is floundering. She steps closer and says the only other Russian word she can remember. 

The guard reaches for his gun again, and Steve yells out. He rushes forward, slamming into the guard. The guard throws him into a table, and Steve ducks to avoid being punched. The guard grabs him by the front of his shirt and throws him across another table before grabbing the back of his shirt. Steve elbows him in the gut, and the guard stumbles away. Steve grabs a microphone, tossing it briefly in the air and catching it with his opposite hand, then hits the guard over the head with it. 

You watch the guard spin around, slam his head on the table, and fall to the ground, unconscious.

Steve breathes heavily and pushes his hair out of his face. You all stare at him in shocked silence before Dustin breaks out in a huge grin. “Dude! You did it! You won a fight!” 

You stand behind him, beaming. Steve looks up from Dustin’s face and meets your eye. He blushes, but gives a proud smile. Dustin runs and grabs the keycard from the guard.

Erica asks, “What are you doing?”

Dustin holds up the card. “Getting us our ticket out of here.”

Erica laughs. “You want to walk all the way back?”

Dustin walks up to her and says sarcastically, “Well, we could hang out here for a little bit, relax, have a picnic maybe.”

“Have a picnic??” Erica repeats. “We came here for the radio!” 

You notice Robin walking towards a set of stairs that lead up to a door. You follow her and peer through the window with her. What you see sends a chill down your spine. You and Robin exchange a nervous glance, then run back down to the others.

“Guys!” You say, getting everyone’s attention. 

Robin points behind you up the stairs. “There's something up there.”

You give Steve and Dustin a look that says whatever you just saw is bad. Really bad.

You lead them through the door to a set of windows overlooking a room filled with more Russian scientists and control panels, and beyond that, a huge spinning machine giving off sparks and shooting a stream of energy into a wall with a huge, orange, glowing tear. 

“Holy shit,” Dustin says. 

You, Dustin, and Steve exchange terrified glances. “The gate.” 

Oh, shit.

Tuesday, July 2

The next morning, your mom drops you and Dustin off at the mall on her way to her book club. You decide to stake out the loading dock again to get more familiar with the system. Then you meet Steve and Robin back at Scoops to relay the information. “That keycard opens the door, but unfortunately, the Russian WITH the keycard also has a massive gun,” Dustin explains.

You continue, “whatever’s in this room, whatever’s in those boxes, they really don’t want anybody finding it.”

Robin says, “But there’s gotta be a way in.”

“Well, you know.” Steve leans forward intensely, resting his elbows on the table. “I could just take him out.”

“Take who out?” Robin asks, amused at the idea.

“The Russian guard.” He states as if it were obvious. You all look at him like that’s the stupidest idea you’ve ever heard, because it is. “What? I sneak up behind him, knock him out, I take his keycard. It’s easy.”

“Did you not hear the part about the massive gun?” Dustin asks. 

“Yes, Dustin. I did.” Steve snaps. “Which is why I would be sneaking.”

Dustin crosses his arms over his chest. “Tell me this, have you ever actually…” he shrugs, “won a fight?”

Steve shakes his head defensively. “Okay, that was one time-“

Dustin holds up two fingers. “Two times. Jonathan, the year prior?”

You look at Steve and try to contain your laughter.  “I still can't believe you got beat up by Jonathan Byers! He weighs like 20 pounds!” 

Steve gets defensive. “That doesn’t count.”

“Why wouldn’t it count?” Dustin asks. “Cuz it looked like he beat the shit out of you. You got a fat lip, a crooked nose, swollen eye, a LOT of blood…”

Steve and Dustin keep arguing, their voices overlapping. You look over at Robin and see her eyes fixed on a spot on the wall. You follow her gaze up to the vent and furrow your brow in confusion. After a minute of processing, you realize what she’s thinking. She looks back at you. “That just might work.”

You nod. “We need a map of this place.”

You turn and sprint through the swinging door, heading straight out of the ice cream parlor. Steve and Dustin follow you out to the front, confused at what you’re doing.  

“Robin?” Steve calls. 

Dustin calls after you, but you don’t slow down for even a second. 

Robin stops and turns back, grabbing all the cash from the tip jar. 

“Hey, what are you doing??” Steve tries getting your attention. 

“We need cash,” Robin states matter-of-factly. 

“Well, half of that’s mine!” Steve whines. “Where are you going?”

you call from the front of the store, “to find us a way into that room!”

“A safe way!” Robin adds. She finally stops and turns to them at the entrance to the ice cream shop. “In the meantime, sling ice cream, behave, and don’t get beat up! We’ll be back in a jiff!” She turns and runs toward the front entrance of the mall. 

You blow a kiss to Dustin, call out “Love you, be safe!” and run after Robin. 

Because you don’t have your car, you have to sit on the back of Robin’s bike, holding onto her awkwardly.

You go to the city clerk's office, where a greasy young guy sits at the desk. He couldn’t be more than 25. You walk up to him, lean over the counter, and ask for access to the map of Starcourt Mall with your best flirty lashes. He’s interested for sure, but not willing to do something he might lose his job over.

“Fat chance, kids. I’m not getting fired for that shit.” 

You stand up straight. It was worth a shot. “What will… 20 bucks get us?” Robin holds up the stack of tip money. 

He hesitates and looks at you. You give him your best doe-eyed look. He considers for a moment before he stands and takes the cash, leading you to the back room. He shows you where the mall's blueprints are. 

You lay the map out flat on the table and start orienting yourselves to the mass of lines on the page. You spot the little square marked “Scoops Ahoy” and the loading dock.

After a few minutes, you find exactly what you’re looking for and share an excited look. You roll up the map and run out of there. 

As you walk back into Scoops, Steve looks up at you expectantly as he scoops ice cream. He hands it to the customer and follows you into the back room. 

“It is fascinating what 20 bucks and this one batting her eyelashes will get you at the County Recorder’s Office.” Robin gestures to you as you lay out the blueprints on the table and flatten them with your hands. “Starcourt Mall.” Robin holds out her hands to the map laid out on the table. “The complete blueprints.”

“Not bad,” Dustin says, impressed.

“So this is Scoops,” you say as you point to the area marked “Scoops Ahoy” on the blueprints. “And this is where we wanna get,” you point to a bigger square on the other side of the map, marked “Delivery”.

You let Dustin and Steve study it, then Steve says, “I mean, I don’t really see a way in.”

Robin grabs the whiteboard marker and walks back over to you. “There’s not, if you’re talking exclusively about doors.”

You take the first page off the pile and drop it on the floor behind you. Dustin inspects the blueprints and looks up at you once it hits him: “Air ducts.”

Robin smiles. “Precisely. Turns out, this secret room needs air just like any old room. And these air ducts lead all the way to…” She draws a line with the marker, following a line of air ducts. “Here.” Her marker stops at Scoops, and she circles it. You all look up at the vent on the wall behind you. 

Steve grabs a ladder from maintenance and a screwdriver. He removes the vent cover and hands it to Dustin. “Flashlight?” He says through the screwdriver between his teeth. You hold it up, and he takes it from you before handing you the screwdriver. “Thank youuu.” He switches the flashlight on and inspects the vent. “Yeah, I don’t know, man. I don’t know if you can fit in here, it’s like… super tight.” 

“I’ll fit. Trust me.” Dustin says confidently. “No collar bones, remember?”

Steve hands Dustin the flashlight and jumps down off the ladder. Dustin climbs up.

“Oh yeah, he has that like…. thing,” Robin turns to you. 

Steve turns to her. “Yeah, it’s like cryo….”

“Cleidocranial Dysplasia,” you correct him before turning to Robin to explain. “Basically, he doesn’t have collar bones, and that’s why he loses teeth easily.” 

“Basically, he can bend like Gumbo,” Steve sums up.

Robin scoffs. “You mean Gumby?” 

“I’m pretty sure it’s Gumbo,” Steve says.

“It's really… not,” you mutter with a sigh. 

Dustin is halfway into the vent, his legs hanging out. “Steve just shut up and push me!!” 

“Okay! I’ll push ya.” Steve turns and points at Dustin, then looks back at you and Robin, as if explaining that he has to go deal with something. He climbs up a few steps of the ladder and grabs Dustin’s feet, trying unsuccessfully to push him.

“Not my feet, dumbass. Push my ass,” you hear Dustin from the vent.

“What??”

Dustin yells, “Touch my butt, I don’t care!” Steve pushes on Dustin’s butt, but he doesn’t budge. “Come on, harder! Push harder!” It’s still not working, so Steve tries lifting Dustin’s legs onto his back to feed him through better. “Oh, now you’re just playing with my legs!”

“I am not! I’m pushing!!! I have TERRIBLE footing!” They’re both yelling at each other and getting nowhere. 

You and Robin shake your heads in disappointment, and you close your eyes and pinch the bridge of your nose. 

You hear the bell ringing incessantly behind you. You and Robin turn around and see Erica. “Ahoy, sailors! All hands on deck, ahoy!” you see Robin get a knowing glint in her eye. “Get over here and serve me some samples!” Erica yells. 

You look at Robin. “You can’t be serious.” She just turns to you with a smile and walks around you, going out to the front to talk to Erica. 

You turn back to the idiots on the ladder. “Steve, get my brother out of there. We’re gonna have to try something else.” 

Steve stops pushing on Dustin and looks over at you while Dustin continues to yell from the vent. He pulls on Dustin’s legs to free him, and they almost fall down the ladder. “Jesus!“ Dustin yells. 

When Steve’s feet are safely planted firmly on the ground, he comes over and leans on the table. “So what's the new plan?”

You sigh. “You’re not gonna like it.” You turn and draw their attention through the window to Robin, who’s leaning over the counter and whispering to Erica. Erica glances over Robin’s shoulder back at you all, considering. She follows Robin into the back room, and Robin points out the vent to her. You all watch her silently as she climbs up the ladder, and Dustin hands her the flashlight. She looks…. Considers….. Then climbs back down the ladder.

“Yeah, I don’t know…” Erica says with uncertainty.

“You don’t know if you can fit?” Dustin asks.

Erica comes to stand at the table, opposite the four of you, who lean against the counter. “Oh, I can fit. I just don’t know if I want to.” 

“Are you claustrophobic?” Robin asks. 

Erica scoffs, “I don’t have phobias.” 

Steve is already annoyed. “Okay, well, what’s the problem then?”

“The problem is, I still haven’t heard what’s in this for. Erica!”

You lean forward against the table across from her. “Name your price.”

Erica gives you the most unsettling smile you’ve ever seen in your life before rattling off about 10 different ice cream orders. You look over your shoulder and give Steve and Robin a questioning look. Robin looks at Steve, who considers it, then sighs and walks to the ice cream counter to start scooping. 

The rest of you find an empty booth, Erica at the head, Dustin on her left side, and Robin on her right. You sit next to Robin, and when Steve brings the ice cream over, he sits next to you. You try not to focus on the way his shoulder presses against yours as he slides the banana boat towards Erica.

She immediately slides it back.  “More fudge, please.” She waves her hand to shoo him away. “Go on.”

Steve glares at her, possibly considering the easiest way to hide a body, then gives her a fake smile, takes the banana boat, and stands up. Robin picks up the map and shows it to Erica. “Alright, you see this? This is the route you’re gonna take. Then you just wait till the last delivery goes out tonight. Then you knock out the grate, jump down, and open the door.”

“Then you find out what’s in those boxes?” Erica says, slurping the float you’d had the forethought to make before you came over to the booth. 

“Exactly,” you say. 

Erica continues sipping on her float. “Mmhmm. And you say this guard is armed.”

Dustin reassures her. “Yes, but he won’t be there.”

“And booby traps?” Erica asks. 

You try to bite back a laugh at the absurdity. “Booby traps?” 

“Lasers, spikes in the wall?” She sets down her drink. “You know what this half-baked plan sounds like to me? Child endangerment.”

Robin tries to reassure her. “We’ll be in radio contact with you the whole time and-“

Erica interrupts. “Ah, ah, ah. Child. Endangerment.”

Then Dustin tries.“Erica?” She turns to him. “Hi, uh we think these Russians want to do harm to our country. Great harm. Don’t you love your country?”

“You can’t spell ‘America’ without ‘Erica,’” Erica says matter-of-factly. 

Dustin is surprised he’s never thought about that before. “Uhhhh yeah. Oddly, that’s totally true… So don’t do this for us. Do this for your country!” He continues over Erica’s obnoxiously loud slurping. “Do it for your fellow man. Do this for America… Erica.”

Erica finally finishes the last of her float. “Ooh, I just got the chills. From this float, not your speech. Know what I love most about this country? Capitalism. Do you know what capitalism is? It means it’s a free market system, which means people get paid for their services, depending on how valuable their contributions are. And it seems to me, my ability to fit in that little vent is very, very valuable to you all. So, you want my help? This USS Butterscotch better be the first of many. I’m talking free ice cream, FOR. LIFE.”

Erica pops a maraschino cherry in her mouth as you, Dustin, and Robin exchange glances… then you get to work while Steve brings Erica her newly fudged ice cream. 

You use Robin’s bike helmet and tape two flashlights and Dustin’s headset to it so her hands are free, then head to the roof to watch the loading-dock doors. 

Robin speaks into the walkie-talkie. “Erica, do you copy?”

You hear her garbled reply through the walkie. “I copy. You nerds in position or what?”

“Yeah, we’re in position. It’s all quiet here, so you’ve got the green light.” Robin says. 

“Green light. Roger that. Commence operation Child Endangerment.” Erica replies.

Robin sighs. “Can you maybe not call it that?”

“See you on the other side, nerds,” Erica says. You and Steve exchange nervous glances while you wait for Erica in silence, which feels like an eternity. 

Eventually, you hear Erica again through the walkie, “Alright, nerds. I’m there.”

“Do you see anything?” Robin asks, voice tight. 

“Yeah, I see those boring boxes you’re so excited about.” 

“Any guards?” Robin says into the walkie.

“Negative.”

“Booby traps?” Robin asks sarcastically.

“If I could see them, they'd be pretty shit traps, wouldn’t they?” Erica snaps through the walkie. 

“Thank you for that,” Robin says flatly. 

Another minute later, you hear Erica say, “I’m in.” 

“Oh, god.” Steve runs his hands through his hair, hoping that nothing happens to this sassy girl who has nothing to do with any of this shit.

Then the doors open, and Erica walks out and waves across the alley to you. She stands with her hand on her hip. “Free ice cream. For. Life,” she shouts across the way. 

The four of you exchange impressed looks and head over to the dock. You start poking around the boxes, but you don’t see anything of significance. Then Steve opens one up, and you see a box with a metal handle. He turns it and lifts the lid. 

Mist billows dramatically from inside the box and clears, revealing a metal contraption with four handles. “That’s definitely not Chinese food,” he mutters before turning to the rest of you, all huddled around the box next to him. “Maybe you guys should, you know, stand back.” He waves you away. 

You, Robin, and Erica all step back. Dustin doesn’t move. “No.”

“Just- step back, okay?” Steve pushes on his chest, but Dustin keeps refusing. “Just step back, seriously.”

You tug his arm. “Dustin, come on.”

Dustin stands in place. “No!” He says it loud enough for you all to stop trying. “If you die, I die!” He says, completely serious.

You roll your eyes at his dramatics. “Oh my god, Dustin.”

Steve just stares at him. “…..okay,” He turns one of the handles and lifts it out of the box, holding it up to reveal a vial of green liquid. “What the hell?”

“What is that?” you ask. Then suddenly the ground jolts underneath you, so fast that you almost think you imagined it.

“Is that just me, or did the room move?” Dustin asks nervously.

“Booby traps,” Erica whispers. 

Robin is really freaking out now. “You know what? Let's just grab that and go.” She reaches forward and takes the green vial from Steve.  

Dustin goes over to the control panel on the wall and pushes the ‘door open’ button. Nothing happens. The door does not open. “Which one do I press, Erica?”

“Just press the damn button, nerd.” Erica snaps. 

“Which one? I'm pressing the button, okay?”

“Press ‘open door’!” Erica yells.

“I’m pressing ‘open door’!” Dustin yells back. 

Steve goes over to Dustin, and then you’re all yelling at each other, trying to get the door open. Steve and Dustin start pushing random buttons. You start walking toward them to pull them both away from the control panel because obviously, nothing is working. Steve slams his palm on the large button in the middle, and suddenly, a huge metal wall comes down from the ceiling in front of the doors. 

You all go silent and stare at it in confusion.

Then you’re falling. 

You feel your stomach in your throat as you latch onto Steve’s arm, grab Dustin, and brace against the wall. Robin is latched to the shelves, and Erica is clinging to the boxes in the middle. You’re all screaming as you plummet further and further down, seemingly with no end in sight. 

“Shit! Shit!” Dustin wiggles out of your grasp to go hit the buttons again, trying anything to get the room to stop. 

“We’re going down! We’re going down!” Steve yells.

“Yeah, no shit, Harrington!” Robin yells. 

“WHY DON’T THESE BUTTONS WORK??” Dustin screams as he tries every single button. 

Erica runs over and tries pushing the buttons too. “Push the button!”

“WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M DOING?” Dustin screams at her. 

“Come on, do something! Just push the button!” Steve yells. 

The room finally slams to a stop. Steve falls, but you're still latched onto his arm. You squeal as he yanks on your arm, pulling you down on top of him. He lets out a hard grunt as you land on his chest, knocking the wind out of him. Your chest is pressed against his, and your face is hovering inches above his. “Owwww, get off me! Get off me!” he groans. 

Dustin helps you scramble to your feet, and you haul Steve up. “Are you okay?” you ask him, out of breath.

“Yeah, I’m GREAT now that I know Russians can’t DESIGN ELEVATORS!!” He shoves Dustin out of the way and goes over to the control panel to try to open the doors. 

“I think we’ve clearly established that those buttons don’t work,” Robin says dryly.

“They’re BUTTONS, they have to do SOMETHING!” Steve shouts. 

“Yeah, if we had a keycard!” Robin says, pointing to the card reader next to the panel.

“A what?” Steve asks. 

“It’s an electronic lock.” Robin walks over to the card reader. “Same as the loading dock door, if we don’t have a keycard, it won’t operate, meaning-“

“We’re stuck in here,” Dustin concludes. 

Erica pipes up. “Just so you nerds are aware, I’m supposed to be spending the night at Tina’s, and Tina always covers for me. But if you're not home for Uncle Jack’s party tomorrow and my mom finds out that you four are responsible, she’s gonna hunt you down one by one and slit. your. throat.”

That’s when Steve really snaps. “I don’t CARE about Tina, or Uncle Jack's party! Your mom isn’t gonna be able to find us if we’re dead in a Russian elevator!”

Dustin looks up and sees an emergency hatch in the ceiling. “Hey,” he points to the door. “What if we climbed out?” 

You stack some boxes on top of each other so Dustin and Steve can reach, then they climb through the hatch. They look up and realize it’s about a 2-million-foot drop.

“What were you saying about climbing?” Steve asks. 

They climb back down and report their findings. 

You run your hands through your hair. “Shit. What do we do now?”

After about 10 minutes of the five of you going around in circles and talking over each other loudly, Robin sighs, knowing that nothing is gonna happen anytime soon. She holds up her hands in defeat. “You know, guys, it’s been a long day, let’s just try to get some sleep, and we’ll figure something out in the morning.” 

You all mumble in agreement and look around, picking an uncomfortable spot on the metal floor to rest for the night. Erica uses her backpack as a pillow, and Dustin sleeps on top of some boxes because he’s convinced it will be more comfortable than the floor. Dustin, Erica, and Robin quickly fall asleep.

You stare at the ceiling from your spot on the ground next to Robin. There’s little to no chance of you being able to fall asleep. This place is really creepy, and the lights are still on, so it’s really bright, and you don’t want to be trapped down here forever. 

Eventually, you can’t lie still any longer and quietly find your way over to the control panel to inspect the buttons and keycard scanner.

You inspect it for a minute before you feel a presence behind you and turn around to find Steve, watching your hands fumble over the buttons.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” you whisper. 

Steve shakes his head. “No, I can’t sleep either,” he says quietly, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. 

You let out a nervous breath and look around at this place you've found yourself trapped in. “Shit, Steve. What did we get ourselves into?”

Steve shakes his head again. “I don’t know…”

“Are we gonna die down here?” 

You must be wearing your terror on your face, because Steve’s eyes soften as he sees how scared you are. He hesitantly reaches up, waiting for you to move away or ask what he’s doing. Instead, you silently watch his hand as it brushes your hair back from where it lies on your shoulder. Then you look back at his face as you feel the weight of his comforting palm on your shoulder before it slips down and drags along your arm. 

If you weren’t so anxious and exhausted, the soft touch would have surprised you, but right now you can’t find it in you to care other than registering the comfort that it brings you. 

There’s a pit in your stomach, and your heart is beating about a million miles a minute. So instead of pulling away, you step forward and rest your head on his chest, tucking your arms up against your own.

You feel him go rigid before slowly relaxing and hesitantly wrapping his arms around you. “What are we going to do?” you whisper as you gaze blankly across the metal room. 

“I don’t know… I guess we wait until someone opens the door…” 

"I'm really scared, Steve."

His hand comes up to cradle your head against his chest. "I know. Me too. But, we'll... figure it out. We always do." He sounds more like he's trying to convince himself than you.

"Do you really believe that?" You lift your head from his chest to look up at him. That's when you realize how close you really are, how intimately you're positioned right now.

The look in his eyes is what startles you the most. You expected him to look uncomfortable with how close you were, but you see something else in his gaze. Something that makes your cheeks grow warm.

"Yeah, I really do," he says.

You spend the rest of the night whispering about what to do. You're only talking about the predicament you've found yourselves in, but it's like something has changed between you.

The two of you sit in the corner of the room, far from the others, so you don't wake them. You lean against one wall, and he leans against the adjacent one. Your legs are draped over his, and your faces are close together so you can speak quietly without disturbing the others.

He’s so close his hair tickles your forehead. You don't even bother to be fazed by the closeness. It feels oddly natural. Comfortable. As if you were chatting with an old friend. Though it's not entirely like chatting with an old friend. There is one small difference.

When he’s not waving his hands around emphatically, they rest on your thigh as you theorize and discuss your options. It sends sparks up your legs and into your spine with every brush of his fingertips that you'll have to ruminate over later.

Eventually, you can’t keep your eyes open any longer, and your responses to Steve get slower and quieter. Steve is staring at the control panel, discussing how you could maybe get Dustin to mess with the wiring and open the door. Your head finds its way to Steve’s shoulder, halting Steve midsentence. 

As you drift off, you feel warmth slowly envelop you as he wraps his arms around you. His warm breath tickles your scalp, and you hear a soft whisper against your hair, “Goodnight, Henderson.” Then you slip into a dreamless sleep.

EEEEEEEEEK! Things are happening! Tensions are rising! Feelings are being felt! These next few chapters are gonna be so sickening, I'm so excited!

Monday, July 1 

You and Dustin get to the mall to meet up with Steve and Robin early the next morning. Dustin and Steve scout out for Russians in the mall while you sit in the back room of Scoops, staring at a notebook with the code on it, trying to make any sort of sense of it. Robin stands behind the counter, headphones on, as she listens to the recording, trying to work out the message's meaning. 

Erica rings the bell repeatedly, and you and Robin exchange an annoyed look through the window. “Ahoy!” Erica yells, finally getting Robin’s attention. She sighs and pulls off the headphones, turning to face Erica. “I’d like to try peanut butter chocolate swirl, please,” Erica says with a fake smile plastered on her face.

Robin smiles back at her. “No. No more samples today.”

Erica’s fake smile disappears. “Why not?”

“Because you’re abusing our company policy.”

Erica scoffs in frustration. “Where's the sailor man??” Erica demands.

“Sorry, he can’t help you. He’s busy.” Robin turns back to her notebook.

“Busy with what?”

Robin turns back to Erica and gives her a sly look. “Spy craft.”

Steve and Dustin are in the open common area of the mall, hiding behind a plant. 

“Do you see anything?” Dustin asks Steve, who’s holding binoculars up to his eyes. 

“Uh, I guess I don’t totally know what I’m looking for,” Steve says.

“Evil Russians,” Dustin says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

“Yeah, exactly. I don’t know what an evil Russian looks like.”

“Tall, blond, not smiling,” Dustin says flatly. “Also look for earpieces, cameras, duffel bags, that sort of thing.”

“Right, okay, duffel bags,” Steve mutters, still looking through the binoculars. Then he stills. “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.” He whispers.

“What?” Dustin asks excitedly, hoping that Steve found someone who could resemble a Russian.

“Anna Jacobi’s talking with that meathead Mark Lewinsky!”

Dustin sighs in exasperation. “Dude, if you’re not gonna focus, just give me the binoculars.”

Steve is still locked on the couple standing against the railing on the second floor. “Jesus Christ, whatever happened to STANDARDS?? I mean, Lewinsky never even came off the bench!”

“Dude, you’re the worst spy in history, you know that? Give me those!” He rips the binoculars from Steve’s hands, making Steve duck his head and pull the strap from around his neck. 

“Besides,” Dustin continues, “I don’t get why you’re even looking at girls anyway. You have the perfect one right in front of you.” 

“Seriously, dude, if you say your sister again-“ 

Dustin interrupts him by saying your name repeatedly.

Steve tries getting Dustin to stop, raising his voice to talk over him. “Stop. No, no, no! No, man, she’s not… my type!” He’s looking around uncomfortably, avoiding Dustin’s eyes. “She’s not even in the ballpark of what my type is, alright?” He says unconvincingly.

 “What's your type again? Not awesome?” Dustin asks dryly.

Steve gives him a sarcastic smile. “Thank you.” He pauses before continuing, “For your information, she’s weird. She’s a weirdo. And she’s a know-it-all. I don’t like that she’s a know-it-all, although I see where you get it from. And she does drama with that freak Eddie Munson. That’s a bad look. No.” He shakes his head.

“Hey, that’s my sister you’re talking about,” Dustin cuts him off, defensively. “And now that you’re out of high school, which means you’re technically an adult, don’t you think it’s time you move on from primitive constructs such as popularity?”

“Oh, primitive constructs?” Steve repeats mockingly. “That some stupid shit you learned at Camp… Know… Nothing?”

“Camp Know WHERE, actually.” Dustin retaliates. “And no, that’s stupid shit I learned from life. Instead of dating somebody you think is gonna make you look cooler, why not date somebody you actually enjoy being around? Like me and Suzie.”

Steve raises his eyebrows mockingly. “Oh, Suzie. Yeah, you mean ‘hotter than Phoebe Cates?’ Yeah, that Suzie. And let’s think, how exactly did you score that beautiful girlfriend?” He scratches his head, pretending to think. “Oh yeah. With my advice. Cuz that’s how this works, Henderson. I give you the advice, and you follow through. Not the other way around. Alright, peabrain?” He looks away from Dustin, back to the crowded mall. 

Dustin stares at him flatly. “Actually, I got my girlfriend with my sister’s advice, not yours, because she’s awesome.” 

Steve doesn’t even bother to respond, letting the conversation drop. They continue watching the people hustling around the mall until they spot a huge guy with long blond hair. He’s carrying a duffle bag and wearing a black hoodie. 

Steve and Dustin follow him up the escalator and through the crowd. They struggle to keep up with him, but when he turns around to look behind him, they quickly try to blend in. Steve turns and faces the wall, while Dustin grabs the payphone and pretends to be on a call. 

They continue following him until he goes into a Jazzercise studio. He opens the duffel bag to reveal a boom box. He unzips and strips off his jacket, revealing a tight leotard. Steve and Dustin are hiding behind a pillar, staring as he leads a group of moms through the beginning of their warm-up routine. 

You and Robin are repeating the code over and over again. Robin is checking to make sure her translation is correct. There's a knock on the back door of the ice cream shop, and Robin slides through the window and hops off the counter to answer it. It’s a deliveryman from “Lynx.” Robin signs for the delivery and looks up at the logo on his hat. 

You glance up to see who it is before looking back down at your notebook. Then a thought occurs to you, and you whip your head back up. Robin turns to you, and it hits you both.

You stand up from the table, and Robin steps into the back hallway, watching the deliveryman. 

“Silver cat,” Robin mumbles to herself. She comes back into the back room and looks at you with wide eyes.

“Silver cat!!” you say excitedly. Robin grabs the notebook with the translated code, and you run past Steve and Dustin, who’ve just gotten back. You lock eyes with Steve and give him a little smile as you run past. You run and stand on top of a ledge and start looking for clues. You both look at the notebook.

“A trip to China sounds nice….” you mutter to yourself. Your eyes fly around the space, trying to find anything that could relate to China. Then you spot the “Imperial Panda” restaurant and point it out to Robin.

Robin points to Imperial Panda following your train of thought, then looks at the next phrase of the message. “If you tread lightly….” She points out Kaufman's shoes. You look back at the notebook. You’re both muttering “when blue and yellow meet….” You turn, and your eyes land on the large clock at the North end of the mall at the same time. “When blue meets yellow in the west!!” Robin says. You look at each other and grin. Thank god you finally cracked it. 

Steve and Dustin walk over and look up at you as you stand on the ledge. “Guys, what are you doing?” Steve asks. 

“We cracked it,” Robin tells them with wild eyes and a huge grin.

“Cracked what?” Steve is still confused. 

You both hop down off the ledge. “We cracked the code,” you say with a glint in your eye. 

You and Robin explain the code, and you decide to check out the loading dock on the other side of the mall at 8:45, when the clock hands meet. 

Dustin suggests going to the roof of the building across the way from the dock. It’s pouring rain now, and lightning crashes in the sky. You find the best vantage point, and Dustin pulls out his binoculars.

“Look for Imperial Panda and Kaufman Shoes,” Robin yells over the rain. 

Dustin points. “There, with that whistling guy, ten o’clock.” 

“What do you think is in there?” you ask.

“Guns, bombs?” Dustin guesses.

Robin suggests, “Chemical weapons?” 

“Whatever it is, they’re armed to the teeth,” Dustin states.

Steve’s jacket doesn’t have a hood, so he’s soaked. There’s rain in his eyes, and he can’t really see anything. His face is scrunched miserably against the rain. “Great. That’s great,” he says flatly. You try to focus on the covert operation at hand, and not how cute he is when he’s grumpy, looking like a wet rat. 

One of the delivery men uses an electronic key card to open the doors. “Hey, what’s in there?” Robin asks Dustin.

Dustin zooms in with the binoculars. “It's just more boxes.” 

Steve grabs the binoculars from Dustin. “Let me check it out.”

Dustin pulls away from him. “No, I'm still looking!”

“Let me see it!” He grabs at the binoculars harder. They fight over it, and it hits the metal edge of the roof, making a loud CLANG that echoes around the alleyway. 

You all duck as you see one of the guards turn his head toward the sound. You look down and realize that you’ve instinctively grabbed Steve’s hand. You glance at each other and down at your linked hands before pulling them away.

“Guys, we gotta move. They’re going to come looking for whatever just made that sound,” you say. 

You all bend down and walk toward the door to the roof in order to avoid being seen. While you walk down the hallway, Robin says,“Well, I think we found your evil Russians.” 

“Shit,” you say breathlessly. You can’t believe that this whole thing is actually real.

Sunday, June 30

You and Dustin are eating breakfast the next morning. You’re slowly eating your cereal until you notice how hastily he’s eating. You start shoveling cereal into your mouth, confused by the rush. 

When you get to Scoops, Robin is at the counter looking miserable. You walk up to the counter, and Dustin steps forward. Robin doesn’t react. “Hi!” Dustin says cheerfully. 

“Hi?” Robin says not as cheerfully. He just stares at her for a second as if she should magically understand who he’s there for, which she clearly doesn’t. 

“Is he here?” He asks.

“Is who here?” She gives you a confused look, and you give her a look that says, “Just wait, this will be good.” Just then, the swinging door to the back room SLAMS into the wall as Steve bursts through, hands in the air.

“Henderson? HENDERSON! HE’S BACK! HE’S BACK!!” He’s jumping up and down as he moves toward you and Dustin. 

Dustin is laughing, just as excited as Steve is. “I’m back! You got the job!” He says, gesturing to the counter Robin stands behind.

“I GOT THE JOB!!” Steve pretends to blow a trumpet, and he and Dustin immediately go into their absolutely ridiculous little handshake, complete with a fake lightsaber battle (plus sound effects), ending with Dustin pretending to stab Steve in the stomach. They’re both laughing, so happy to see each other. Robin gives you a confused glance, and you give her a “welcome to my world” look.

“How many children are you friends with?” She asks Steve. 

Steve’s face drops as he looks at her, a little hurt and annoyed that she’s ruining his happy moment. 

They both ignore her. “Hey, it’s good to see you, man!” Steve says, patting Dustin on the back as Dustin turns to Robin and orders a banana boat, then turns back and whispers conspiratorially to Steve, “I need to talk to you guys.” He grabs Steve's hand and yours, pulling you both over to a booth in the far corner. 

“Can you tell us what this is all about now?” you ask as he pulls you into the booth. 

“What? What happened?” Steve asks, looking between you and Dustin. 

Dustin explains what happened with his friends last night and about Suzie. Robin brings Dustin his ice cream and plops it on the table, looking confused at all the secrecy and the fact that Steve’s best friend is her best friend’s 14-year-old brother. “Dude, I’m telling you. Hotter than Phoebe Cates. I swear.” 

“No, no. No way. Hotter than Phoebe Cates? No.” Steve denies.

Dustin takes a bite of his ice cream. “Mhm! Brilliant too! And she doesn’t even care that my real pearls are still coming in. She says kissing is better without teeth!”

Your eyes meet Steve’s for the briefest of moments, and you know you’re thinking the same thing. “Well, that’s great! I’m proud of you, man! Yeah, that’s kinda romantic! Wow.”

He’s trying so hard not to let his doubt creep into his voice, but Dustin isn’t paying attention. “So do you really just get to eat as much of this as you want?” Dustin asks, taking another bite of ice cream. 

“Yeah, sure.” He leans back and slings his arm over the back of the booth. “It’s not really a good idea for me though, because I gotta keep in shape for the ladies.” He gestures to his body before wiggling his eyebrows and winking at you, to which you immediately look at Robin like, “Is he for real?” You choose to ignore the butterflies that have erupted in your stomach at the obvious flirting. 

“And how’s that workin’ out for you?” Robin asks with a sly smile from where she’s standing behind the counter. 

Steve waves her off. “Ignore her.”

“Robin’s cool,” Dustin dismisses, knowing her well after all the years of her hanging around at your house. 

“She’s not.”

“Yes, she is,” you say. 

Steve ignores you and changes the subject. “So where are the other knuckleheads?”

“They ditched me yesterday!” Dustin says, still upset about it.

“NO!” Steve gasps. 

“My first day back! Can you believe that shit?”

“Whoa, seriously?” Steve leans forward and looks at you to confirm, to which you nod.

“I swear to God! But they’re going to regret it big time, though, when they don’t get to share in my glory.” Dustin says through a mouthful of banana. 

“Glory? What glory?” Steve asks. 

“Is this what you wanted to talk to us about?” you ask Dustin.

Dustin nods, then he looks around at the other customers in the parlor and waves you to lean closer to him.“So last night, we’re trying to get in contact with Suzie and…” he glanced around to make sure no one’s listening, then covers his mouth and mumbles something neither of you hear. 

You and Steve look at each other to see if either of you caught it. “What?” you ask. You both lean closer to him, trying to hear better. 

Dustin repeats it, still too quiet to hear. “Dude, just speak louder!” Steve says, not understanding why he can’t just say it. 

“I INTERCEPTED A SECRET RUSSIAN COMMUNICATION!” Dustin practically shouts way too loudly for the sentence that just left his mouth. 

“SHHHH!!” you hiss, looking around to see if anyone heard or believes it. 

“Jeez, okay, that’s what I thought you said,” Steve concedes. He hesitates, then asks, “Wait, what does that mean?”

You let out a quiet scoff at his confusion.

“It means, Steve, we could be heroes,” Dustin says. “True American heroes. Just think, you could have all the ladies you want-” Steve glances at you quick enough for neither Dustin nor you to notice. “and more,” Dustin continues. 

Steve seems to be warming up to the idea, slowly nodding his head. “‘More’. I like ‘more’.” He hesitates. “What’s the catch?”

Dustin shakes his head. “No catch, I just need help.”

“With what?” Steve furrows his brows.

Dustin pulls a book out of his backpack and holds it up. “Translation.”

I’ve heard enough of this nonsense to know it’s not going to end well. Dustin clearly has not thought this through. “Alright, hang on. What’s the plan here, Dustin?” you ask. “We translate this Russian code and then? What? Hand it over to the police?”

“Precisely,” Dustin points at you. 

“And how do you plan on translating Russian?” you ask, feigning innocence.

Dustin waves the book in front of your face. “I have this dictionary!” 

“And what about the different alphabet?”

Dustin’s cocky smile falls. “The what now?”

“Russian uses a different alphabet than we do,” you explain with a condescending tone. You watch the light die in Dustin’s eyes a little bit, and Steve just stares at you blankly. These little baby deer are so helpless. You sigh. “Alright, give me the dictionary.”

You go to the back room and figure you need a way to write out the alphabet to reference. You all turn and look at the “you rule/you suck” board hanging on the wall. You’re standing in front of it, while Steve and Dustin stand across the table from you. You sigh in regret. “We can use the whiteboard,” you say glumly. 

“Don’t act so happy about it, Henderson,” Steve teases. 

“Hey, it was hilarious watching you stare your failure in the face every time you came back here.”

Steve rolls his eyes as he walks over to stand next to you. There was no reason for him to stand that close to you, his chest nearly brushing your arm, his eyes never leaving your face as he reaches out and grabs the eraser. 

It’s actually stupid how just him standing next to you makes the air rush from your lungs like you’ve been punched in the gut. He turns away from you to face the board and says, “Well, too bad, you’ll have to find entertainment elsewhere.” He erases the board, and you spend the next hour trying to decipher the Russian alphabet and start translating. 

After almost 2 hours, you’re still nowhere.

Eventually, Robin gets sick of offering Erica free samples and yells for Steve to come help her. Steve’s telling you that he recognizes the music in the background through his mouthful of banana.

Robin bursts into the back room. “Okay, babysitting time is over. You need to get in there.” Then she turns and sees the whiteboard, now covered in Russian symbols. “Hey, our board! That was important data, shitbirds!”

You let out a breathy laugh from where you’re seated, with your feet crossed at the ankle on top of the table. “Robin, we all know it was not that important.” 

“I guarantee you what we’re doing is way more important than your data,” Dustin reassures her. 

Robin gets a cocky look on her face. “Yeah? And how do you know these Russians are up to no good anyway?” 

Our faces drop. Dustin turns to you and Steve. “How does she know about the Russians?” he mutters to Steve.

“I don’t know?? It wasn’t me!” Steve mutters back. 

Dustin turns to you. “You told her about the Russians?” he says through his teeth. 

“Hello!” Robin interrupts. “I can hear you. Actually, I can hear everything. You are all extremely loud. You think you have evil Russians plotting against our country, on tape, and you’re trying to translate, but haven’t figured out a single word because she’s the only one who realized Russians use an entirely different alphabet than we do. Sound about right?” She gestures to you before crossing her arms with an air of superiority. 

You all stare at her in shock this. Robin reaches for the tape, and Steve snatches it before she can grab it. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you think you’re doing??”

“I want to hear it!” Robin says defensively.

“Why?” Steve and Dustin ask simultaneously.

 Robin shrugs. “Maybe I can help.” She turns to you, silently asking for backup.

If something actually comes of this Russian code stuff, you don’t want to get Robin involved. She doesn’t know any of the shit that’s been happening in this town for the past couple of years, and you don’t want to pull her into anything dangerous. 

However, you’re really struggling to make progress with this thing, and you might be in a unique position to actually foil a Russian plot. She actually might be able to help. “She is fluent in 4 languages,” you say, considering her proposal. 

“Russian?” Dustin asks hopefully.

“Ooh-yay are-ay umb-day.” Robin says.

Dustin and Steve get so excited, not realizing what she actually just said to them. You roll your eyes at how stupid your genius little brother can be sometimes. It’s expected from Steve. 

“That was pig Latin, dingus,” Robin says. 

Steve smacks Dustin’s shoulder with his banana peel. “Idiot,” he mutters. 

Robin continues, “But I can speak Spanish, French, and Italian, and I’ve been in band for 12 years.” Robin sits at the table across from you. “My ears are little geniuses, trust me.” Steve and Dustin hesitate. You and Robin look at them hopefully. “Come on! It’s your turn to sling ice cream, and my turn to translate! I don’t even want credit, I'm just BORED!” She holds out her hand, and you watch Steve expectantly.

He considers, then sighs, takes the scoop from her, and hands her the tape. 

Robin asks you to help him up front while she and Dustin keep working. You and Steve are a pretty efficient system. You take the orders, and Steve scoops the ice cream, working smoothly around each other. You keep glancing at each other while you work, but don’t talk much. 

After about an hour of this, Max and El show up and order ice cream. While Steve scoops the ice cream, Robin pops her head through the window. “Hey, we have our first sentence!” 

“Wow, already?” you ask, taking the money from Max and turning around to stand at the window next to Steve. 

“The week is long,” Robin says in a thick Russian accent. 

“Well, that’s thrilling,” Steve says dryly. 

Robin shrugs. “I know, but- progress!” She slides the screen closed.

You and Steve turn back to the girls waiting for their ice cream. Steve hands the ice cream to Max and El, and something occurs to you. “Wait a second, are you even allowed to be here??”

They look at each other, laugh, then run away.

You and Steve look at each other, and he mutters, “that... okay?” You just shrug. 

It’s not until well after the mall has closed that you finally translate a large chunk of the code. You all gather in the back to read it: “The week is long, the silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west.” You chorus. It makes no sense. The phrases are practically incoherent. 

Steve locks up, and you walk through the mall to the employee parking lot. “It just can’t be right,” he says.

“It's right,” Robin states.

“Honestly, I think this is great news!” Dustin says. 

“How is this great news?” Steve asks. “I mean, so much for being American heroes. It’s total nonsense!”

“It's not nonsense.” Dustin defends.

You shake your head. “It’s too specific, it’s obviously a code.”

Steve looks at you, confused. “What do you mean ‘a code’?”

“Like a super secret spy code,” Dustin says.  

Steve scoffs. “That's a total stretch.”

Robin hesitates. “I don’t know, is it?”

“You’re buying into this?” Steve asks her incredulously. 

“Just for kicks, let’s entertain the possibility that it is a secret Russian transmission. What did you think they were going to say, ‘fire the warhead at noon’? And my translation is correct. I know that for sure so…. ‘The silver cat feeds,’ why would anyone talk like that unless they were trying to mask the meaning of their message?” 

Dustin waves his hand, gesturing to Robin. “Exactly.”

“And” you continue, “why would anyone want to mask the meaning of their message unless the message was somehow sensitive?” 

Dustin gestures to you. “Exactly!”

Steve starts falling behind you and mimics you mockingly as you all theorize. 

“So I guess that confirms your suspicion,” Robin says to Dustin.

Dustin shrugs his shoulders. “Evil Russians,” he concludes.

Robin chuckles and turns to you. “I can't believe I’m about to agree with your strange little brother, but totally. Evil Russians.”

Steve continues to slow down, then he looks over at the Indiana Flyer kiddie ride. The rest of you continue walking.

“So how do we crack it?” Dustin asks.

“I guess we translate the rest and hopefully a pattern emerges.” Robin guesses.

Steve stops at the horse toy while you keep walking and talking. 

Dustin nods. “A pattern, right, like maybe ‘silver cat’ is a meeting place?”

“Or a person?” you suggest.

Robin adds, “or a weapon? It’s probably going to take a super genius to crack it but…”

You notice that Steve isn’t with you and stop, looking around to see where he is. “Where's Steve?” You turn around and see him fumbling in his pockets for change.

Robin yells, “Hey, Steve!”

“What are you doing?” you ask loudly as you start walking towards him.

Steve is muttering to himself. “Uh, it’s quarters,” then he turns to you and calls out, “Do you have any quarters?” 

“You sure you’re tall enough for that ride?” Robin teases as she and Dustin start jogging toward you, just as you're getting to Steve.

“QUARTER???” Steve yells past you at Robin.

Robin throws him one as she and Dustin finally reach you. Steve catches it and slams it into the machine. He kneels down in front of it, and you kneel next to him. He’s quiet, and you wait for him to explain what he’s doing. 

“Need help getting up, little Stevie?” Robin asks mockingly. You look back at her and giggle.

Steve shushes you both. “Would you guys just shut up and listen?”

The music plays, and it sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before? Dustin and you lock eyes as it hits you both at the same time. “Holy shit!” you say.

Dustin nods. “The music!” He kneels down and starts rifling through his backpack. He pulls out the tape and hits play.

“I don’t understand,” Robin says slowly.

“It’s the same song on the recording,” Dustin explains.

Robin shrugs. “Maybe they have horses like this in Russia?” She suggests.

Steve shakes his head. “Indiana Flyer? Yeah, I don’t think so.” You and Steve look at each other.

“This code didn’t come from Russia,” you conclude.

Steve nods. “It came from here.”

You grin and grab his face, shaking him. “Steve, you’re a genius!”

Steve turns pink from his neck to the tip of his ears as you let go of his face. He stands and offers you a hand, and Robin says, “Um, excuse me, Dustin and I are the ones who actually translated it.” 

you take Steve’s hand, “I thought you didn’t want any credit,” you say to her mockingly as you stand. Robin gives you a sarcastic smile. You let your hand linger in Steve’s for a second longer before you lock eyes, realize that you’re basically just holding his hand, and pull away. 

That night, you’re lying in bed, covers tucked up to your chin, staring at the ceiling. Your mind is swirling with Russian words and letters, Steve’s hand wrapped around yours, and the smell of his cologne. You close your eyes and furrow your brows, trying to force the thoughts out of your mind. But that only makes flashes of Steve’s stupid uniform cross your mind, and you groan. You roll over onto your side and pull the covers up over your head, trying to will yourself to sleep. 

I love it when my baby boy has a big brain moment, he's always been smart!

Friday, June 28, 1985

You're sitting on the counter next to the screen that separates the ice cream counter from the back room, eating a bowl of chocolate chips you stole from the toppings station. You swing your legs as you wait for Robin to help the waiting customers. 

A swirling mass of limbs and sunscreen rushes into the parlor as Mike, Lucas, Will, and Max rush up to the counter and stare at Robin. Mike repeatedly slams his hand on the bell, despite Robin standing right there. “Hey, Dingus!” She calls in a faux cheerfulness. “Your children are here.”

Steve flings the sliding screens open from the back room with annoyance on his face. “Again? Seriously?”

You try to contain your giggle, knowing exactly how he feels. It feels like they show up at the theater during every single one of your shifts, asking you to let them in for free. 

Mike looks at him unapologetically and rings the bell again. Steve rolls his eyes and ushers them through the back of the store and out the back entrance. 

He comes back and joins you and Robin, leaning against the counter across from you as you tell Robin, “Hey, so just a reminder, I’m not working tomorrow because we’re picking Dustin up from camp, so you’ll have to ride your bike to work, sorry.”

Robin groans and rolls her eyes, annoyed at the thought of riding her bike to work in 100-degree heat. 

Steve stands up straight, and his eyes widen. “WAIT, DUSTIN COMES HOME TOMORROW?”

“Uh, yes?” you say with a laugh, confused at his enthusiasm. 

“FINALLY! IT'S BEEN SO LONG!!” Steve nearly jumps up and down, fist-pumping the air.

You roll your eyes, but you can’t stop the grin from growing on your face. “It's been a month, Harrington. Calm down.” You try to brush it off, but a warmth spreads in your chest at the knowledge that Steve and Dustin are so close. 

Steve really took Dustin under his wing after last fall, almost like Dustin was the brother Steve never had but always wanted. Dustin is just relieved to have an older guy to look up to instead of just his sister. 

“I don’t care! I miss that weird little dude!” Your eyes can’t help but drift up and follow the movement of his hand through his hair before he adjusts the white sailor hat back on his head. 

You shake your head in exasperation and open your mouth to say something sarcastic back to him when suddenly the world goes black. You all look around in confusion.

Every light in the mall has gone out. 

 “Huh, that’s weird..” Steve says. He walks over to the light switch and flicks it on and off to no avail.

“That isn’t going to work, Dingus,” Robin says.

Steve gives her a pointed look. “Oh, really?” He says with a deadpan expression. He then starts flicking the light switch faster and faster. He does it for so long you think the sound might be permanently etched into your ear canals. He’s about to give up when finally he flips the switch one last time, and the power comes back on. 

“Let there be light,” he says smugly as he turns away from you and Robin to continue scooping ice cream.  

You and Robin roll your eyes and share an annoyed look, but you can’t help the smile on your face. 

You catch Steve stealing a glance at you from where he’s leaning over the tubs of ice cream. You look down into your bowl of chocolate chips, trying to hide your smile. He looks back down into the ice cream as his cheeks grow warm.

There’s a lull in customers at the ice cream parlor, so Robin starts scooping and taking payments. You and Steve are talking quietly, and he tries to steal a handful of your chocolate chips, but you pull the bowl out of his reach before he can grab any.

Every time you pull the chocolate away from him, he leans forward, so close that you can smell his cologne, and his wild hair brushes against your forehead every once in a while.

You're giggling and telling him to stop, then suddenly his face grows serious, and he keeps glancing down at your lips. 

The smile on your face fades as he looks at you intensely. You can feel your heart pounding in your chest, and your cheeks grow warm. Is this really happening? Here? Now? In front of Robin and all of Scoops Ahoy? 

He slowly leans in, lips inches from yours. You swallow thickly, and your breath catches in your throat. His brown eyes flit up from your lips and bore into yours. You can feel his warm breath against your lips, and you're about to lean in, confused but chasing the moment. 

Then he reaches out and rips the bowl of chocolate chips from your hands and walks away triumphantly. 

The air around you immediately feels about 10 degrees colder in his absence. You gasp, “Hey!” you say, and he just turns and flashes you a smile as he tosses a chocolate chip in the air, catching it in his mouth as he pushes through the door into the back room. 

You scoff at the audacity, trying to calm your racing heart and willing your face to return to a normal color. You turn to Robin, who’s giving you a look that tells you that watching you flirting with Steve is the most painful and ridiculous thing she’s ever seen in her life. 

You open the screen into the back room and turn around. “You owe me chocolate, Harrington.” 

He’s leaning back in a chair with his legs propped up on the table. “Well, considering you stole this from my job, I’d say I owe you nothing.” He looks over at you and throws another chocolate chip into his mouth. You roll your eyes and shut the screen. 

“You two are disgusting,” Robin says to you when you turn back to her. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” you say, feigning innocence. 

She rolls her eyes. “Why don’t you guys just drop the act and fuck each other already?” She says, her voice growing quieter. 

“ROBIN!” you say in shock, your eyes wide. 

“What?” She says defensively. “It’s, like, super obvious that you like each other!” Her voice drops to a whisper as a customer walks in. 

You roll your eyes. “Robin, you’re totally wrong. This is purely an exercise to him, just like when he flirts with every other girl that walks in here.” 

She scoffs at the absurdity of your statement. “Yeah, okay. Keep telling yourself that,” she mumbles as she turns to take the customer’s order. 

You look down, furrowing your eyebrows in confusion. There’s no way she’s right. Right? He’s had plenty of opportunities to ask you out over the last several months. He spends basically every day with your brother, and you sat behind him in History twice a week for a year. It's not like you never see each other. And if he really liked you, then why would he flirt and ask out literally every girl between the ages of 17 and 22 that walked into Scoops? 

No, Robin’s definitely way off base. 

Right?

Saturday, June 29

You’ve been sitting in the car with Mom and Dustin for hours, and he hasn’t stopped talking once. He tells you all about camp, the lake he canoed on, the projects he created, and his bunkmates.

The second he sees the “Welcome to Hawkins” sign, he whips out his walkie and tries to reach his friends. He gets no response and keeps talking into the walkie, growing increasingly frustrated. 

“Dusty!” your mom says after he swears into the headset perched over his new “Camp KnowWhere” hat. 

“What!” Dustin yells. 

“Calm down, for goodness sake!” Mom replies calmly. 

“I’m in range! They should be answering!” 

“Dustin! We haven’t even gotten home yet, give it a minute!” you say in annoyance. Little does he know, you helped the kids plan a surprise and make their welcome home sign. It’s actually ridiculous how much time you all spent on it. 

“Yeah, you’ve been away a whole month! Maybe they just… forgot.” Mom says casually, trying really hard not to ruin the surprise. He grows quiet, and you can tell the thought of his friends forgetting about him hurts, but you know the surprise will make up for it. 

When you get home, Dustin is quiet and mopey, sad that his friends haven’t bothered to contact him. He immediately trudges off into his room to pout in peace. 

The kids hide behind the wall, and after a minute, El starts setting off various toys in Dustin’s room. He follows them into the living room before they suddenly shut off. 

You give them the signal that Dustin is in position, and they jump out from behind the wall, blowing on the paper party horns in their mouths.

Lucas is holding the banner in front of the group, unfortunately for him. Dustin is clutching a can of Farrah Faucet spray, which he proceeds to spray directly into Lucas’ eyes while screaming at the top of his lungs. 

You lunge out and rip the can from Dustin’s hand, and Dustin finally processes what just happened. 

“Holy shit, you guys just scared the shit out of me!” he says, clutching his chest and trying to catch his breath. 

Lucas is frantically rubbing his eyes and waving his hands in front of his face as the hairspray burns his corneas. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! Ow ow ow! It burns!” You grab Lucas’s wrist and drag him over to the kitchen sink, Max close behind. 

You and Max help him hold his head under the faucet to rinse out the hairspray while Dustin takes the others to his room to show off his inventions from camp. 

“Is that better?” Max asks as Lucas pulls away from the stream of water and stands up straight.  

He rapidly blinks the water and remaining hairspray from his eyes. “Still stings…” Then his vision begins to clear, and he points at Max’s forehead. “Is that a new zit?”

You gasp, and your jaw drops. 

“What is wrong with you?” she deadpans as she shoves his head back under the faucet. 

“Yeah, you deserve that, Sinclair,” you say, and you and Max share a look like, “Wow, he’s an idiot.” 

You see the other kids walking out the door, their arms full of tech equipment. You turn back to Lucas, his head still in the sink.

“What’s going on?” Max asks, to which Will replies, “We’re going to talk to Dustin’s new girlfriend.”

Your head whips around at them, and Lucas straightens up immediately. “Girlfriend?” you all ask simultaneously. Max and Lucas immediately run after them, and you follow them to the door and yell, “You better tell me everything when you get back, Dustin!!” 

Since you have the day off and have nothing else to do, you visit Robin and Steve at work for the rest of the day. You and Robin have been working tirelessly on your whiteboard in the back room as you watch Steve’s fruitless efforts to get a date, and you pretend it doesn’t bother you. 

It seems your thoughts were correct: he doesn’t actually like you, he’s just a flirty guy who’s desperate to get a date. After he strikes out again for about the millionth time, you and Robin slide into view through the window to show him the “you rule/you suck” board, bumping shoulders as you meet in the middle. 

“Ooooh, another one bites the dust!” you tease. Steve turns around to face you, the light dying in his eyes as he realizes you’ve been watching him this whole time. 

“You are oh-for-six, Popeye.” Robin says as she writes another tally under the “you suck” column. 

“Yep, I can count,” Steve says, already irritated. 

“You know that means you suck, right?” you ask with a grin.

“Yep, I can read too.”

Robin is quick with her reply, “Since when?”

He steps forward, leaning on the small counter across from you as you slide the board to lean against the wall next to the window. “It's this STUPID hat! I'm telling you, it is TOTALLY blowing my best feature.”

“You got that right,” you mutter to yourself, probably louder than you meant to, as you adjust the whiteboard. 

Robin rolls her eyes and glares at you, which you spot from the corner of your eye, and your face goes red. Steve poorly attempts to hide the pink tint in his cheeks as he looks down for a moment. 

“Yeah…” Robin says, slowly pulling her eyes away from you and back to Steve, returning to the conversation at hand. “Company policy’s a real drag. You know it’s a crazy idea, but have you considered telling the truth?”

“Oh, you mean that I couldn’t even get into Tech and my douchebag dad is trying to teach me a lesson, I make three bucks an hour, and I have no future? That truth?” Steve says sarcastically. 

You and Robin smirk at his dramatic plights before Robin points out a hot girl coming in. “Hey, twelve o’clock.”

“Shit, oh, shit. Okay. Alright, I’m going in.” He turns to go, then stops and turns back to you and Robin. “And you know what? Screw company policy.” He takes off the hat and throws it between you and Robin into the back room. 

“Wow, you’re a whole new man!” Robin mocks. 

“I know, right?” Steve plays along with the teasing as he backs up and turns to greet the girls. 

He’s ridiculous, and he looks ridiculous, and he's acting ridiculous, but your heart still skips a beat as you look at his dorky behavior and his gorgeous hair, now fully on display and a little messy from the sailor's hat. Robin gives you a knowing look before Steve’s loud voice startles you both. 

“AHOY, LADIES! DIDN'T SEE YOU THERE!  WOULD YOU LIKE TO SET SAIL ON THIS OCEAN OF FLAVOR WITH ME? I'LL BE YOUR CAPTAIN. I’m Steve Harrington.”

“And then he does that,” you say in disappointment.

Steve only gets confused, startled looks from the girls, but he continues. “Can I get you guys a little taste of Cherries Jubilee? No? Anybody? Banana boat? Four people, four spoons? Share it in the booth? Anybody? It’s hot out there.”

You and Robin both sigh, and you reluctantly hold out your hand. Robin slaps the marker into your palm, and you make another tally under “you suck.”

That night, you're sitting on the couch flipping through a magazine when Dustin gets home. He closes the front door harshly and huffs as he walks past you, clearly upset.

You immediately put your magazine down and sit up on the couch. “Hey, hey, hey, what’s wrong, bubs?”

Dustin stops at the entrance to the hallway and turns to you. “I got Cerebro all set up on Weathertop to call my girlfriend, and she didn’t answer, so no one believes that I even have a girlfriend at all, and then they ditched me!“

“Wait, what? Slow down, tell me what happened.” You pat the space on the couch next to you, and he immediately comes and slumps down. 

He explains how he set up his radio tower and how they waited for hours, until his friends gave up and ditched him. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry, bubby. You were out there for a long time. I'm sure they just got bored. And they probably just don’t get it because they live so close to their girlfriends. They can’t see how much harder it is for you!” Dustin stays quiet, and you sit in silence for a minute before you change the subject. You give him a sly smile and say, “So you have a girlfriend, huh?”

A grin slowly grows on his face. “Her name is Suzie with a ‘z’. She lives in Salt Lake City, and she’s Mormon, so her parents disapprove of her dating an agnostic. That’s why I have the radio to call her instead of just using the phone. She’s seriously so cute, and she’s a genius. Like she’s insanely smart.”

You're gushing internally at how adorable and innocent it all is. You reach your hands out and wrap him in your arms, pulling him to your chest. “I’m so happy for you, Dustin! She sounds awesome!!” 

Dustin laughs. “Thanks!! I really like her!” Then he gets serious and pulls away from you, sitting straight up. “BUT! I have something else to tell you and Steve. Can you take me to the mall tomorrow, and I’ll tell you then??” 

“Yeah, sure,” you say, confused. “Why can’t you tell me now?” 

“I don’t want to have to explain it twice, and I’m going to need both of your guys’ help with it.”

Still confused, but trusting him, you say, “Okay? Yeah, sure, I’ll take you tomorrow. First thing.”

With Dustin feeling slightly better than he did when he walked in the house, you both head to bed, not quite ready for what tomorrow would bring. 

Ughhhhhh, I looooove flirty Sailor Steveeeeeee

Around mid-May, Robin quits her job at the Hawkins Theater, and you both start applying for jobs at the new mall that just opened up. She gets a job at the ice cream shop, Scoops Ahoy, and you land a job at the movie theater on the upper floor of the mall. 

Steve had been ranting to Dustin for the last several weeks about how he didn’t know what to do after graduation, since he didn’t get into the Tech college across town. He’d been complaining that his dad was making him get a job, but wouldn’t hire him to work for his own company. 

You suggest applying for a job at the mall, and beg Robin to help get Steve hired at Scoops. She still maintains the fact that he’s a douchebag, even after your friendship with him grew over the last several months of high school. But she helps him anyway as a personal favor to you, which you had to repay by bringing her all of the popcorn left at the end of the night at the theater for the next month. 

Once you and Steve graduate and school ends, you develop a routine of visiting him and Robin at Scoops on your lunch breaks, which mostly consists of you and Steve giving flirty eyes to each other, much to Robin’s chagrin. 

Since that night in March, he’s been more flirty with you, and your confidence has grown, seeing his reactions when you flirt back. You might get flustered, but he practically loses his mind every time you sit on the counter at Scoops and lean back so the light catches your collarbone just right, or when you press up against his back, place a soft hand on his shoulder, and whisper “excuse me” softly in his ear when you have to squeeze past him behind the counter because it’s just so tight back there. 

You chalk it up to his lack of dick-wetting since what happened with Nancy last fall. 

But despite how nervous and fidgety he gets in those moments, he’s quick to recover and throw it right back at you. And that’s how you know this is all a game to him, not genuine. Like when you’re sitting on the counter, and his hand brushes your bare thigh as he works next to you, or when he puts his hand on the small of your back and leans down to whisper “sorry, Henderson,” in your ear when he has to squeeze past you behind the counter. It’s purely something to make the work day a little bit more interesting, nothing more. But regardless, you’ll take that over nothing at all. 

This summer is gonna be fun. 

*ONE MONTH LATER*

It’s been a month since the most horrifying night of your life. Although it was just one night, you feel like everything in your life shifted afterward. You decided to take a break from your EMT classes. After all that you saw, it was too hard to talk about and look at pictures of wounds and other gory things. 

You and Dustin are more open and trusting with each other. He’s been hanging out with Steve a lot, so you see him even more than you did before. Nancy and Steve broke up that night, and she’s now dating Jonathan. You're not shocked at how quickly she moved on; your and Robin’s theory must have been right. 

Things between you and Steve have also completely changed since that night. There’s still teasing, but it’s more fun-spirited than mean. When he walks past you in the hallway, he’ll tap your shoulder just to make you look, and he’ll sometimes write notes about random stuff and pass them to you during History. Just stupid stuff, like “This shit is boring,” and “Do you see the piece of broccoli stuck in Click’s teeth?” and “Who eats broccoli at 7 in the morning?” 

Most of the time, you don’t write any notes back, but they make you have to stifle a giggle during class. 

However, you will tease him back while sitting behind him in Click’s class. You’ll flip the collar of his polo up over and over again, or see how many tiny pieces of paper you can get to stick in his giant hair before he notices. It makes the droning of the American Revolution much more enjoyable. 

He’s become much more bearable over the last month. He doesn’t quite fill you with unbridled rage anymore. Instead, you feel queasy whenever you see him, like there’s a tornado in your stomach. 

That’s how you feel now, about a week before the Snow Ball, opening the front door to see Steve holding a brown paper bag. 

“Oh! Hey, Harrington,” you say, a little confused at why he’s at your house. He eyes you up and down, taking in the sight of you in your baggy pajama bottoms and oversized t-shirt. You look down at your pajamas and hope to God that there isn’t a chocolate stain on them or something. The corner of his mouth quirks up a little bit at the sight, and you can feel your soul withering away in your body.

“Hey, Henderson.” He says casually as he steps into the house. “Is the kid here?” He asks. 

“Yeah, he’s in his room,” you say, still confused and now eyeing the mysterious paper bag he’s holding. You look up from the bag in his hand to see Steve already looking at you. It catches you off guard, how intensely he’s staring at you with his big, brown eyes. You feel your heart skip a beat, your breath catches in your throat, and there’s that damn tornado.

He raises his eyebrows, and you realize he’s never been here before and therefore has no idea where Dustin’s room is. You snap back to reality and blink rapidly as you try to regain control of your breathing. “Oh, um, sorry. His room is just down the hall, first door on the left.” You point down the hall before tucking your hair behind your ears, looking down at your feet to avoid his burning stare. 

He looks at you with an amused expression and says a quiet “thanks.” He gives your arm a firm pat, as if he were talking to one of the other boys on the basketball team or something. 

As you watch him shove his free hand in his pocket and walk down the hall, you refuse to acknowledge the tiny seed of disappointment growing in your chest. He might as well have called you “champ” or “kiddo” or something.

Once you're left standing alone in the living room, you take several deep breaths and close your eyes to gather your wits. Your arm feels like it’s on fire where he touched you. You roll your shoulders and move your head side to side, shaking off the nerves and other feelings you refuse to acknowledge before returning to your room to finish your homework. 

The next day, you're sitting behind Steve waiting for History to start. You lean over your desk and tap his shoulder to whisper to him. “Hey, Harrington. How much do you like me?” 

His face immediately reads ‘alarm’ as he looks at you over his shoulder. “What?” He asks loudly. 

“Okay, fine. The better question is ‘how much do you like my brother?’” You ask, resting your chin in your palm, elbow on the desk. 

“Why…?” He draws out the word as if suspicious. 

“Because I might need a favor…” You say hesitantly. 

His face relaxes, and he lets out a sharp breath. “What do you want, Henderson?” 

“Could you, pretty please, drive my annoying little brother to the stupid Snow Ball dance next Friday?” You bat your eyelashes and give him your best doe eyes.

He rolls his eyes, but he’s trying to suppress a smile. “Why can’t you do it?” 

You sigh in exasperation and lean back in your chair. He turns around in his chair to fully face me. “Because Nancy roped me into volunteering for the stupid thing, so I have to get there early.” You and Nancy have become awkward acquaintances since that night. Mostly because she now has a girl her age to discuss Upside Down stuff with, rather than just Steve or Jonathan. 

He gives a wry laugh and looks down at his hands in his lap. The mention of Nancy still stings. “Yeah, she’s good at that.” He looks back at you again and pretends to consider it, then he lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Yeah, I can pick up the little shit and take him.” He turns back to the front of the class.

A grin breaks out on your face. “Oh, YES! Thank you!” You grab his shoulders and shake him. “God! Harrington!” you say through clenched teeth, completely overdoing it now. “You’re the best!” 

“Yeah, yeah, okay, don’t get too excited, it’s just a ride.” He says, trying to hide a smile that you luckily can’t see. 

On the night of the Snow Ball, you help Dustin with his clothes, but he insists he doesn’t need help with his hair. 

At the dance, you and Nancy are on punch duty, while Jonathan takes photos.

While standing next to Nancy at the punch table, you notice her and Jonathan making eyes at each other. Your curiosity gets the best of you, and you break the silence. “Okay, so you and Jonathan… I have to ask, what happened with Steve?”

Nancy looks down and shrugs. “I don’t know… Steve is great and all, but Jonathan and I just…” She looks over at Jonathan, and a soft smile grows on her face. “We just fit better together… I guess..” She looks back at you, and you squint your eyes at her because that very vague answer did not satisfy your curiosity. But you're not close enough with Nancy to press any further, so you drop it. 

“Hmm…. Okay…” you say as you slowly drag your eyes away from her. 

As Steve watches Dustin talking to Mr. Clark at the check-in table, his eyes fall on Nancy through the window just behind Dustin’s head. She’s smiling and laughing at something to her right as she hands people cups of punch. 

Then he sees what she’s laughing at. Or who. 

You step forward to hand a preteen with braces a cup of punch, and you say something else to Nancy, which makes her crack up. You smile brightly as you watch her laugh at your joke. Steve’s eyes linger on you, and he lets out a deep breath. Then his eyes move back to Nancy, and he inhales sharply before forcing himself to look forward and drive off. 

You glance over to the door and see a person with the biggest bird's nest on his head I’ve ever seen. Then you realize that it’s your brother. “OH MY GOD LOOK AT DUSTIN!!” you say as a smile breaks out on your face.

Dustin walks past us and says hi. Nancy responds with a very confused “hi?”

“Dustin, what did you….” you say, staring at the bird's nest on his head. But he’s already walking away to go see his friends. You and Nancy just exchange a shocked yet amused look before breaking into hushed laughter. 

You keep an eye on Dustin for the rest of the night, and after his whole friend group splits off to dance, you watch him go from group to group, asking girls to dance. The smile on your face slowly fades as you watch girl after girl scoff and walk away from him. The look on his face breaks your heart, and he shuffles over to sit on the bleachers by himself. 

Nancy sees it too. 

“Hey, Nancy?” you look over to her. 

You don’t even have to ask before she gives you a smile and walks over to Dustin, asking him to dance with her. You watch with a soft smile as she explains to him how to dance. They talk, then the song picks up the tempo, and they start bobbing their heads to the beat. He finally smiles and looks like he’s having a genuinely good time. You make a mental note to thank Nancy Wheeler every day for the next year for doing this, then turn back to hand a cup of punch out to the waiting teens. 

Over the next several months, you and Steve get to know each other better as he spends more time with Dustin and at your house. Whenever you walk into the living room and see him there, you get all blushy and flustered, which makes him try to fluster you even more. 

One time around mid-March, he’s there later than usual, and you’ve been locked in your room working on homework all night. You come out to grab a textbook you left on the side table in the living room in just a tank top and sleep shorts. His breath catches, and he eyes you up and down as you reach over to grab the textbook. Your tank top rides up a little bit, and he can see just a sliver of the soft skin of your stomach, and then his face is heating up, and his palms grow clammy. 

You notice him staring, look down, and realize what you're wearing. You blush shyly as you say, “Oh, um, hey, Harrington,” before turning around and going back to your room. 

As you practically sprint down the hallway, you can hear Dustin yelling at Steve, trying to gain his attention. He has a hard time focusing on what Dustin says after that, and you simply sit on your bed staring blankly at your textbook, not being able to focus on anything other than the way Steve Harrington was just looking at you. 

Yay, the end of Season 2!! I'm so excited for the next season, Season 3 is my favorite, and we get even more Robin and reader sharing a brain cell, which I love.