Mily but I write stuff here :]

Chapter 1: Lizard Dogs

Chapter 2: The Snowball Dance

Chapter 3: In-betweens

Chapter 4: The Graduation Party

Chapter 5: American Heroes

Chapter 6: Crack the Code

Chapter 7: The Fall of the Wannabe American Hero's

Chapter 8: Veronica Jones

Chapter 9: Wonder Woman

Chapter 10: Back to the Future

Chapter 11: The Battle of Starcourt Mall

Chapter 12: Death and All Her Friends

Chapter 13: Edge of Desire

Chapter 14: The Kids Might Be Alright

Chapter 15: Like It Tends To Do

Chapter 16: Change

Chapter 17: Moon Song

Chapter 18: Come Down Soon

Chapter 19: Every Breath You Take

Chapter 20: I'll Be Watching You

Chapter 21: Aphasia

Chapter 22: Restless Mind

Extras:

Savior Complex Headcanons

December 27th, 1984

“Earth to Dustin?” Eddie sings through the walkie. Dove registers it as his voice as she sits up, fighting the pull of Steve’s arms. Her eyes squint, trying to adjust to the bright light seeping in through the basement windows. Her head whips around again as Eddie’s voice comes through the speakers, trying to find the walkie. Her eyes land on it, on the other side of the coffee table.

Dove goes to get up, but Steve’s arm is securely wrapped around her, and she doesn’t feel like he’s going to be letting go anytime soon.

She gets just enough leverage, leaning forward as Eddie keeps singing and trying to reach for the device. Almost there, she just needs to lean forward a bit more and—

“Shit,” she groans as she hits the floor, startling Robin and Nancy, who were much closer together than they were when Dove went to sleep.

Dove rubs her hip as she stands, grabbing the walkie and extending its antenna.

“Hey, it’s Dove,” she says quietly. She steps away from the couch, not wanting to wake anyone else in the room.

“Princess,” Eddie beams. She can hear his smile through the walkie. “How are you? Did you sleep well? I bet Harrington keeps that bed nice and warm—”

“Eddie,” Dove cuts him off, not in the mood for the teasing and flirting. “What’s up?”

“Uh, I’m gonna need a food delivery, like, really soon,” Eddie says, not even bothering to address Dove’s tone. “Unless you want me going out into the world, which we all know how that will go, Princess.”

Dove’s tenses in surprise when she hears Steve’s groan behind her. She shoots a glance to him over his shoulder and sees his eyes half-lidded but expression sour. She suspects it’s from the spring also digging into his hip now, but when she can tell he’s looking at her, she knows it’s from hearing Eddie’s lovely voice. 

“No, no, don’t do that,” Dove sighs, turning around to Steve. His brow is raises in question. She just shakes her head, watching him close his eyes again, before responding to Eddie. “Just stay there and we’ll try to get there as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, yeah, thank you, and you know, listen… can you pick me up a six-pack?”

Dove’s eyes squeeze shut, feeling an irritation that can only come from a lack of sleep, form from the request. She has half a mind to yell at him and let him know how serious this actually is and how they are dealing with more than just needing to hide him. That thought reminds her of the redhead she is protecting and spins to the spot she fell asleep watching. 

“I know, I know, princess, it’s stupid as shit to be drinking right now, but a cold beer would really calm my jangled nerves,” Eddie says, like he can feel Dove’s forming irritation through the radio waves.

“Oh my God,” Dove mutters when she sees Max no longer draped over the armchair. “Hey, uh, Eddie, I’m gonna have to call you back.”

“Dove, hey, Dove, no—”

Dove slams the antenna shut again, startling Nancy. 

Nancy’s eyes adjust, scanning the room and noticing exactly what Dove did. Her eyes widened in horror. 

“Shit,” she says, scrambling from her spot next to Robin and kneeling in front of Dustin. She shoves his shoulders twice. “Dustin. Dustin, wake up.”

Dustin groans as he wakes up to Nancy in his face.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on Max watch?” she asks.

“Yep, yep, yep,” Dustin replies slowly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Then where is she?”

“She’s right there—” Dustin points toward the armchair where she had been laying, only to find Lucas alone, no Walkman in hand and fully asleep. “I swear, I woke up when we switched and—”

“Switched? You were supposed to be watching her the whole time!”

“What? No, we said we’d switch!”

“Hey, you two, stop it,” Dove hisses at them as she walks over. “You were all asleep when me and Steve came in, and that was—” she checks Dustin’s watch and tries to remember the last time she saw on the clock before finally dozing off and— “Shit, that was three hours ago.”

The three of them scramble and move up the stairs, Nancy leading the charge through her house and into the kitchen.

There, next to Holly Wheeler with her Lite-Brite, is Max. Her headphones are on, blasting Kate Bush as loud as the Walkman allows as she colors.

Dove lets out a sigh of relief along with Nancy and Dustin as they trudge into the kitchen.

“Morning, guys!” Karen Wheeler chirps from the stove. There’s a pause as the three of them just stare at Max. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s okay,” Nancy finally answers.

Max finally turns her head to look at the three of them standing in the kitchen.

“I think it’s so sweet that you guys are sticking together like this,” Karen says as she drops some finished pancakes onto the plate on the island.

“Could try sticking together at a different house for a change,” Ted grumbles as he flips through the paper.

There’s no response from them when he lifts his eyes—or more like cuts them—at Dustin, who spends a lot of time either here or at Steve’s.

Nancy doesn’t even bother to respond, moving past her dad and toward Max at the table. Dove goes to follow but is cut off when Karen turns to both her and Dustin.

“You know you guys are welcome here anytime,” she smiles.

“Totally, you’re like family,” Dustin smiles as well. And while yes, it’s true, his tone is totally meant to piss off Ted.

Karen hands a plate to both Dove and Dustin. The younger boy steps forward first, pointing to the bacon.

“May I?”

“Absolutely,” Karen responds happily.

“Yeah, why not? Take us for all we’re worth,” Ted retorts as he sips his coffee, his eyes never leaving the paper.

“Okay,” Dustin beams, grabbing a hefty portion of bacon, making sure each piece lands loudly on his plate as Ted watches.

Dove snorts, grabbing a pancake. It’s hefty but smells sweet, the warmth of it a welcomed feeling as she places it on the plate. She realizes that she hasn’t had proper food in…she actually doesn’t remember when she ate last. That’s probably bad but eating has felt less like a priority. Still, she feels her mouth water when she glances down as the sweet breakfast food. 

Before she can walk away, Karen stops her, a gentle hand on her back.

“How are you doing, Dove?” she asks, a smile on her face that’s both sad and genuine. Like she actually wants to know, even if it’s bad.

Oh, Karen Wheeler. While Dove’s mom didn’t have many friends outside of their family here in Hawkins, Karen had always been kind. She and Veronica were in a book club together (why her mother was in that book club, Dove will never know) and also did some sort of group exercise thing… Dove doesn’t know, she just remembers her mom being gone with a group of women. They’d all walk around Hawkins together in their brightly colored sweatsuits, and Karen was always there.

So she guesses they were friends. Karen was at her dad’s funeral, and then her mom’s. Dove wonders if Karen would be asking if she knew Dove was the reason for her mother’s death.

“I’m good,” Dove answers, hoping her smile passes the lie.

“Is everything good over at your house? Are you doing okay there by yourself?” She continues to pry as Dove’s attention goes back to the table, where Dustin has just sat and joined in on Nancy and Max’s conversation.

“I, oh, well I’m not really staying there. I, uh, I stay with Steve most of the time,” Dove replies as a blush rises on her face.

“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t know. That’s very sweet of the Harrington’s to let you stay,” Karen replies with a smile.

Dove is surprised Karen’s out of the loop on this. She seemed to know all the town gossip, and the orphaned little Russian girl living in sin with Hawkins’ golden boy seemed like something worth gossiping about.

“Yeah, I’m sure Danny is thrilled about it,” Ted scoffs. And as Karen scolds him, whipping a dish towel at him, Dove thanks her for the food and walks over to the table where her friends are.

Scattered across the table are drawings. All red and a little crude, but they depict what Max saw pretty well.

“Maybe you infiltrated his mind,” Dustin says as Dove approaches. “He invaded your mind, right? Is it that big of a leap to suggest you somehow wound up in his? Like Freddy Krueger’s boiler room!”

“Freddy Krueger?” Holly speaks up in disgust.

“He’s a super burned-up dude with razors for fingers, and he kills you in your dre—”

“Okay, Dustin,” Dove says, cutting off the explanation along with Nancy as she says, “Seriously?”

Dustin looks at them confused before it settles that he was, in fact, talking to a fourth grader.

“Sorry, it’s a movie. It’s just a movie.”

The three girls shake their heads before Dustin turns to look at Dove.

“Dove, what did you see?”

Dove suddenly becomes very interested in the pancake on her plate, slicing it into pieces as she pours syrup on it. She stabs the pieces with her fork once they’re dripping with syrup, taking a large bite. She chews slowly, eyes not lifting to the group as she sees Vecna’s burnt face in her mind again, staring deep into her. 

“Dove?” Nancy asks, a little more impatiently.

“I don’t think it’s out of the question that Max invaded his mind,” Dove finally answers, taking the roundabout way of avoiding the topic turning completely on her.

“Why do you say that?” Dustin asks.

“Because she was in mine,” Max answers, finally realizing Dove wasn’t some made-up figment of her imagination in her brain. She was actually there. Max hadn’t talked to her since seeing her in the mind world. She barely gave an explanation to everyone about what Vecna looked like and what she saw.

“I’m sorry?” Nancy asks, brows furrowed as she shakes her head.

Dove opens her mouth, then closes it, choosing her next words carefully. “I, uh, well… remember those weird vision things? Well, I guess they are coming from Vecna, or like his world. I’m not sure about all the details, all I know is that… whenever Max went into that weird trance thing, I found a way in.”

Nancy and Dustin blink at her in surprise before Dustin’s brows shoot up. “This is great!”

“Great?” Nancy snaps.

“Yes! Now we have a way to protect Max from the inside!”

“Uh, but then what happens to Dove? What if something happens to her?” Max asks quickly, which makes Nancy give Dustin a pointed look.

“Oh, well, uh,” Dustin stutters.

“That doesn’t matter. Dustin’s kinda right, we have a way to help from the inside if all else fails,” Dove says, turning to Max, who’s giving her a terribly sad look. 

“And you know, Max, what if when you went through that red fog, you somehow unlocked a back door into Vecna’s world?” Dustin says, cutting Max off from saying anything to Dove. “Like maybe the answer we’re looking for is somewhere in these incredibly vague drawings.”

Dustin picks up one of Max’s many papers, squinting his eyes at the almost crudeness of it.

“God, we need Will.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Max retorts at the insult. “But I tried them again this morning, and it’s the same busy signal.”

“You guys tried to call them?” Dove asks, trying to catch up on what she missed while being outside with Steve last night.

“Yeah, while you and Steve were, uh, arguing,” Dustin says, saying the word tentatively.

Dove looks up at Dustin then and sees a look cross his face. She can’t decide if its a look of horror of knowing they went and fucked in Steve’s car (god she hopes it isn’t) or one from just her and Steve arguing in general. 

Nancy picks up the drawing Dustin had just set down, showing it to Max. “Is this a window?”

“Yeah,” Max responds quickly, a little relieved her drawings aren’t terrible.

“Stained glass with roses?” Nancy says, taking in the design.

“Yeah. See? I’m not so terrible after all,” Max says to Dustin.

His eyes roll in response.

“Yeah, well, it helps that I’ve seen it before,” Nancy says before folding that page along with all the others on the table.

The others watch as she pieces it together like a puzzle, and once it’s all together, Nancy draws a line with a Sharpie to connect it all.

Forming the outline of a house.

Dove recognizes it from the papers in the library, but something else itches at her mind. She squints her eyes, trying to see it from a different angle but she suddenly feels a punch to the gut as she’s sucked into a memory without even hearing her name.

“This will be your home one day,” he says as they stand outside the house.

The blue paint looks nice and new. It’s tall and grand, feeling like something Dove would only see on TV.

“It looks like a castle,” a young Dove remarks with wonder in her eyes.

“Yes, and it will be your castle, and you will rule beside me,” he says, kneeling down beside her. “Because this is what you were made for, Dovey. You were made to help me.”

Dove looks at him, and this is the first time in any of her visions she’s truly seen his face. His hair is so blonde, like hers, and his eyes are a piercing blue. His face is soft in terms of his skin, but the bone structure is sharp.

And that fear settles deep in her gut again as he says, “And you will help me. You will.”

Dove sucks in a breath, gripping the edge of the table as she comes back to herself. Dustin’s hand is already on her shoulder, steadying her even though she’s sitting.

“Dove, Dove, what was that?” Dustin asks, his hand gripping her arm tightly.

“That house, I know that house,” Dove pants, looking back at the image.

“What? What do you mean?” Nancy asks as she stands and walks closer to Dove. 

“He showed me.”

“Who? Vecna?”

“No, no, I don’t know who he is, he’s just there, in all these memories,” Dove snaps in frustration, shaking her head frantically. “I don’t know why, or how, or what, it’s just there, and I am still trying to piece it all together.”

“Okay, okay,” Dustin says, trying to calm Dove’s breathing, which has suddenly picked up. “Maybe we go downstairs, yeah? Let’s go find Steve.”

Dove feels her heart racing in her chest like she’s been caught in a lie hearing his name. A strange feeling settling into her gut and feels that panic swirling. It’s fighting against her, telling her no, no, no, no. And she’s not sure exactly where in that dark corner of her mind those thoughts are coming from but they’re loud and persistent and she feels that drop in her stomach at his name still so she tries to redirect. 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Dove says, putting her hand out, stopping Dustin from standing. “I just… I just need a second.”

But her breathing doesn’t slow, it doesn't settle back as she tries to ground herself. It’s not terribly overwhelming like some of these attacks are (which makes her wonder if this is that even that. It has the same components it feels different entirely). She feels herself drop into something, a shuddering breath releasing. 

Dustin sees it all happen, taking in her face and twisting into something like concern and curiosity. That disappears though when she lets out a choked breath and decides he’s not waiting for a yes, and neither is Nancy.

“Come on,” Dustin says, pulling her up and following Nancy down the stairs.

--------------------

Dove’s breathing never seems to settle completely. Steve hears it hitch every couple minutes, like a hiccup. He’s been trying all his usual tactics to calm her down from one of her panic attacks. He’s rubbed her arms for friction, squeezed her tightly against him, he’s even tried to squeeze her head (which she has only ever asked him to do once or twice) but she pushed his hands away when he tried that time. 

Steve felt the hit to his ego when she pushed his touch away. It’s rare she does it, if ever. He doesn’t like the feeling of not being able to fix something, especially with Dove. He understands this is an odd situation though and she is clearly not telling him something. Whether that is something she saw in that vision or something she is feeling, he wants to know. He wants to help. He wants to fix it. 

He likes being there for people, likes being able to be relied on. Dependable. And Dove was one of the only people who he relied on (because she showed up and had been there for him more than anyone else in his past) and he needs to be that same thing for her. He had been since the mall. At least he felt like he had been. He had been working hard to try to have that role. Not that he would ever try to make Dove talk about things she doesn’t want to, he never tried to push her but…things were becoming harder to just let her deal with on her own. He feels like he’s missing something. Like he’s not being clued in on a joke, or a story, one he should know but doesn’t. Because he’s been here the whole time. 

“She totally blanked out,” Dustin says, sitting across from them in the back of Nancy’s station wagon. “It was like at the graveyard.” 

“How long was she out for?” Steve asks, his hand slowly raising to Dove’s leg to rub her calf. Her legs are bent uncomfortably over him, allowing her to fit in the backseat of the Station Wagon. 

“Maybe two minutes? It could’ve been longer. I was watching Nancy piece together the drawing.”

“Do you think it was Vecna? Or could she could have slipped into—”

“You guys know I’m sitting right here right?” Dove finally speaks up, making the two boys look at her muttering “sorry”.

She sighs, shaking her head. But finally, her shoulders drop ever so slightly and Steve can see something in her change. Maybe it’s just knowing her so well, but he swears her eyes grow brighter when she suddenly slinks into his touch. He watches Dove take comfort in the feeling of his hand rubbing at her calf. Then he sees her shake off whatever she had been feeling, like she’s shedding off a jacket. Finally, she takes a deep breath.

Steve also feels his own form of relief settle over him at this. When she came down the stairs at the Wheeler’s house, she had been off. Obviously, he’s seen her through panic attacks before to recognize them but he knew somehow this was different. Something about whatever memory she went into in the kitchen had done something to her. Something she couldn’t even hide.

“Are you feeling better?” Dustin asks, leaning a little closer as he rests his elbows on his knees. 

“Yeah, yeah I am,” Dove sighs. Steve’s hand stays on her calf though, rubbing up and down is slowly, applying pressure every so often in a squeeze. It’s for her mostly, but also for him. 

“Do you want to talk about what you saw?” Steve asks carefully, nudging his shoulder against hers.  

He watches Dove face contort slightly. Something shifts across her features he can’t read at all. But it falls away just as fast as it came, her eyes lifting up to meet his gaze. 

“It was another vision but, we weren’t at the lab this time, we were at—“

For a second Dove thinks she’s back in the vision when Nancy stops the car in front of the decomposing creel house. 

“Here,” Dove finishes looking up at the darkened blue paint. 

The walk up the steps from the street feel like Dove is walking towards the end. That’s a feeling she’s decided to ignore in pursuit of what she deems is more important. But there’s someone behind her, in that broken down playground watching. There’s someone in the window staring at her. The breeze carries her name “Dove, Dove, Dove”. It echoes out and the feeling of her throat tightening again comes back, harder to swallow and fight off but she tries. 

But only when Steve’s hand comes to her back, a comforting, entirely normal gesture for him, does it all stop. Everything. The feeling on her throat, the feelings of being watched, the whispering of her name all disappear as he says, “Yeah, that’s not creepy.”

A part of her lingers on that. How quickly his touch or presence will snap that darkness back into its corner. It’s always still there, hovering, watching. But when Steve’s around, it hides, like it’s scared of him.

When they reach the porch, Nancy and Steve use the hammers they brought to pry the nails from the piece of plywood covering the front door. 

Dove stands at the bottom of the stairs with Robin, both of them watching with a popped hip and turned heads. Dove is staring at Steve’s ass, frankly objectifying him. He’s covered with his grey jacket, but if he wasn’t, she’d get to appreciate the way his biceps flex and shoulder blades as well. She knows it’s not the time but when she glances over to see what Robin is so focused on…well when Dove glances at her she can tell Robin is definitely staring at Nancy’s ass. 

“Whatcha lookin’ at Buckley?” Dove teases in a whisper, knocking her hip against hers. 

Robin’s cheeks burn but she comes back quickly with, “Oh like you weren’t doing the same thing.”

“Uh huh, sure,” Dove says, her eyebrows wiggling. 

“What exactly are we supposed to be looking for in this shithole?” Steve pants, his irritation slipping into his tone as he turns towards Nancy. 

“We’re not sure,” Nancy says, lining up the back of the hammer with another nail. “We just know this house is important to Vecna.”

“Right yeah, because Max saw it in Vecna’s red soup mind world and Dove had another vision when you drew it?” 

“Basically,” Nancy says with a shrug. 

“I don’t really like this idea,” Steve says, yanking another nail out. “But sure yeah, let’s just go into the place where the guy that wants to kill Dove and Max could be. Sounds like a great idea, Nance.”

“Steve—”

“Maybe it holds a clue to where Vecna is. Why is he back? Why he killed the Creels?” Dustin cuts Nancy off, trying to help Steve not spiral out in frustration. “And how to stop him before he comes back for Max.”

“We don’t think he’s in here…do we?” Lucus asks, reiterating the concern Steve had just said. 

“Guess we’ll find out,” Max says, looking back to Dove below her from her spot on the porch. 

Dove takes a deep breath, her shoulder’s shrugging as she does, nodding her head. She looks back to the door just in time to watch Nancy and Steve release the plywood and let it fall to the ground. It kicks up the dust and grime that had settled on the deck, making everyone shield their eyes as it crashes down. 

Max and Dove’s eyes lock on the stained glass once it’s revealed. The symmetrical flower makes them both remember something. Max hear’s Vecna’s voice calling out to her when she was in the mindscape. Dove sees piercing blue eyes looking down at her, sending a shiver down her spine as she sees the flower in his pupil. 

Steve rattles the door knob, “It’s locked.” A part of him is relieved by that. 

“Maybe you should knock, see if anybody is home,” Dove jokes, trying to lighten her own mood but it doesn’t go over well. Everyone looks at her funny. “Tough crowd.” 

“No need to knock," Robin suddenly says, bending down to the grass next to her and picking something up. She returns upright holding a bright orange brick. “I found a key.”

The stained glass is smashed and something in Dove is satisfied seeing it destroyed once the Scooby-Doo gang enters the house. Steve enters first, Dove following close behind because he has decided that just in case Vecna is in this house, he will be close to her.

The floors are covered in a thick layer of dust. It kicks up with every step someone takes into the home, floating in the light stream coming through the broken glass. 

“Looks like someone forgot to pay their electricity bill,” Lucas comments after trying to flick a light switch. 

Dustin, who is standing in front of Steve, whips a flashlight out and flicks it on. Everyone follows, clicking theirs on. As Steve looks around,  he sees everyone, including Dove, has one. 

“Where’d everyone get those?” 

Dove looks at her boyfriend, shrugging as Dustin turns to him slowly and incredulously saying, “Do you need to be told everything?”

Silence. 

“You’re not a child,” Dustin continues, staring at Steve. 

“Thank you, Dustin,” Steve deadpans, glancing at Dove who just covers an amused smile with her hand as Dustin pulls another flashlight from his bag.

Lights shine through the house, illuminating the abandoned state with everything left in its place. 

“You all see that, right?” Max asks, her flashlight lighting up a grandfather clock. 

“Yeah,” Steve says, walking up behind her and shining his light onto the clock as well. 

Besides it being in a creepy-ass abandoned house, it’s a beautiful piece. 

“Is this what you saw in your visions?” Dove asks as she steps into the spot next to Steve. 

Max just nods, staring wide-eyed and terrified at the clock.

“I mean, it’s…just a clock,” Robin comments, peering over Max’s shoulder. “Right?”

In a moment of bravery, maybe from feeling surrounded and protected by her friends (or utter stupidity from just trying to be brave), Dove walks up to the clock. She wipes the dust from the glass, the grime sticking to her hand before she wipes it on her pant leg quickly. “It’s just an old clock but…it must mean something?”

“Yeah but why is he obsessed with clocks? What is he like, a clock maker or something?” Steve asks, genuinely trying to piece together every bit of information he has in his brain.

“Think you’ve cracked the case Steve,” Dustin deadpans with a shake of his head. 

Dove smacks his arm, shaking her own head in a scold. While this is not the time nor the place for the lecture, or really even the thought, Dove can’t help but let that defensive side of her come out when it comes to Steve. One of her biggest grievances with Nancy hanging around was her tendency to brush things Steve said off, like they were stupid. And unfortunately, that same thing went for Dustin sometimes. 

“All I know is the answers are here,” Nancy states and thus commences the splitting up process. 

Robin and Nancy take off up the stairs. Max grabs Lucas and they head towards one of the front rooms, leaving Dustin with Steve and Dove. 

“I’m gonna go check the kitchen, why don’t you two go upstairs?” Dove suggests, beginning to move towards the kitchen. 

“Uh, no, Nancy’s right, we need to stick together,” Steve says, shaking his head. 

“It’s an odd number Steve, we’ll cover more ground and it’s not like I’m gonna be far—”

“Yeah, but—”

“I’ll be fine, Steve, end of discussion.” And then Dove turns, walking towards the kitchen, leaving Steve and Dustin alone in the foyer. 

Dustin turns to Steve, a tight lipped smile on his face as he waits for him to turn and look at him. “Yikes.” 

Steve’s lips pull into a line before he lets out a heavy sigh. He turns away from where Dove disappeared, fighting every instinct in his body telling him to follow her.

But he doesn't. Because he remembers what they talked about last night. She can make decisions on her own, she isn't a child. He isn't responsible for every choice she makes. So he doesn't argue, just watching her go.

That doesn't stop the knot in his stomach from tightening.

Because something is wrong. Steve knows it because he knows Dove. There's something she isn't telling him, some piece of this he still hasn't figured out, and the more he turns it over in his head, the more certain he becomes that he's missing something important. And all this talk about saving Max and Vecna and what she should do makes him terrified she’s going to do something to get herself hurt. Or worse. And while in the same house, he feels a million miles away from her. Not knowing how to protect her without ignoring what they talked about. 

“What was that?” Dustin asks when Steve starts to walk up the stairs.

“An understanding,” Steve grumbles as he trudges up the old wooden stairs.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dustin asks.

“I—nothing, just come on, dude,” Steve sighs again as he looks back at Dustin, motioning him to follow.

“Why are you two fighting?”

“We’re not—it’s not a fight.”

“Sounded like a fight.”

“Okay, well, if you’re such an expert on relationships, then you should know what that was.”

“It looked like a fight and probably was whatever you guys were fighting about last night.”

God, he’s such a know-it-all. If Steve didn’t love him so much, he’d thunk him on the head for the attitude he’s giving him. Actually, maybe he will do that.

Steve turns around when they reach the top of the stairs and lightly whacks Dustin’s arm.

“Ow!”

“That did not hurt, dude.”

“What is it with you and Dove hitting me? You know that’s child abuse!”

“You’re not our child,” Steve scoffs, continuing to walk down the hall upstairs.

They turn a corner, entering a drawing room or a study of some sort. Steve’s question from before entering the house has still gone unanswered. What are they looking for? What is in this house that’s going to show them what Vecna’s plan is?

“Hey, Henderson, could you maybe clarify what sort of clues we’re supposed to be looking for here?” Steve asks, moving his flashlight over different items in the room, motes of dust picking up in the beam of light.

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes,” Dustin says, a fake, posh British accent taking over as he turns back to Steve with a goofy smile.

Truly, he’s hoping to do it to make Steve smile. The sour tone coming off him since they woke up this morning made Dustin worry.

But there’s no response from Steve, just a confused face and a curled lip.

“Sherlock Holmes,” Dustin supplies after noticing Steve’s expression. Still no response, just a confused face. Dustin scoffs, moving away from Steve to look further into the room.

“That’s great,” Steve mutters before speaking up louder as Dustin moves away. “Thanks, that’s great. Really helpful.”

Dustin continues to walk away, not even bothering to look back. Steve continues to mutter under his breath, annoyed and trying to figure out what to look for. Obvious things which nobody observes? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Shouldn’t what they are looking for be obvious? I mean, this is a freaky flesh-burned wizard from what Max described to them. That should stick out like a sore thumb.

But something not so obvious catches Steve’s attention. Maybe it’s his poor eyesight, but when his flashlight runs over the vent grate, there’s a glimmer.

Well, it shouldn’t hurt to check out.

Peeling open the grate and then shining his light in, he finds jars. Multiple. And when he pulls one out, inside he finds a spider. Dead, obviously, since the jar has no holes in the top, but maybe once alive, as there are some twigs and leaves kept in the jar. There’s a skittering on his arm, the feeling of something he prays is his imagination at first, but then it continues and he knows it’s really there.

He jumps up, dropping the jar and shattering it as he swipes at his arms and head to rid the creature from himself. He passes through webs as he continues his backpedaling, only to stop when he hears...

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Steve, what’s wrong?”

Dove places a hand on his shoulder, keeping him from moving away again. 

“There was a spider, a black widow,” Steve pants, running a hand over the back of his head again. He looks at the door of the study, quickly grabbing the handle and shutting it. “Don’t go in there.”

Dove chuckles slightly before nodding. “Got it.”

Steve turns his back to her for a second, and Dove catches sight of the webs still in his hair. “Oh, Pretty Boy, you—”

“What? What is it?”

He rushes over to the mirror on the wall, trying to look at the back of his head before Dove comes up and grabs his shoulder.

“Stop moving, let me just—” she reaches up, beginning to pick the bits of cobweb out of his soft hair.

“Thank you,” Steve sighs in relief. Yuck, spiders.

“If there’s a spider nesting in there, you’re never gonna find it till it lays eggs and all the babies spill out,” Robin says, coming out of nowhere with Nancy trailing close behind.

“What’s wrong with you?” Steve snaps, cutting his eyes at her as she walks past.

Robin chuckles, backpedaling to look at Dove with a mischievous smile, making Dove smirk too.

“Robin, seriously,” Steve calls after her before whispering to Dove, “She’s got problems.”

“Yeah, but they’re your problems,” Dove chuckles again.

“Uh, and yours.”

“Yeah, but she’s your best friend.”

“Uh huh, sure. Remind me who she clings to whenever she makes our bed a dog pile when she sleeps over?”

Dove stifles a laugh as she thinks about the few times Robin decided to squeeze herself between Steve and Dove for a sleepover after a movie night. Robin always ends up snuggling up to Dove, somehow pushing Steve to the edge of his own bed.

“Yeah, okay, that’s fair,” Dove relents, pulling a long cobweb out.

“It’s cool her and Nancy are friends now,” Steve says.

“Yeah, friends.”

“Well, whatever they are, or end up being, it’s cool. Maybe after we find Vecna, kill him, save the world and stuff, maybe we can all go out or something. Maybe even Jonathan when he’s back.”

Dove’s motions falter for a second before continuing to brush the webs out of Steve’s hair.

“Okay, you are web-free,” Dove announces, stepping out from behind Steve.

“Great, yeah, thanks,” Steve says, suddenly awkward as he turns to face his girlfriend. “Did you, uh, find anything? In the kitchen?”

“Just some old canned food and cockroaches,” Dove answers, shivering at the thought of the cockroaches coming out of the pantry when she opened it. That made her decide upstairs was definitely going to be more fruitful in finding clues.

“Right, gross,” Steve says, curling his lip in disgust at the thought as well. “And no bone-snapping visions or finding weird mind gates and jumping into them?”

Dove rolls her eyes, shaking her head. “No, Steve.”

Steve nods. “Okay, good. Just don’t go jumping into those here.”

“Oh my God,” Dove sighs, rolling her eyes again. “I know you don’t like it, Steve, but it might be helpful if one of those showed up and I went in. Vecna might not be on the other side of it, we could find some answers.”

“Or maybe he’s waiting there like it’s a trap.”

“Well, we’re not finding anything here, so…”

“Yeah, well, the obvious things are not what people observe,” Steve poorly quotes before backtracking. “Or ‘don’t observe.’ Or… I don’t know, something Sherlock Holmes said. All I’m saying is, we just need to be careful.”

“Right, got it,” Dove sighs, shaking her head before flicking her flashlight on again and walking away.

A chill runs up Dove’s spine, and the feeling of being followed—her name echoing throughout the house—returns, and she’s looking around quickly before Lucas’s voice from downstairs calls everyone down.

Now they’re all standing around the dining room table, looking up at the chandelier lights flickering in a pulse.

“It’s like the Christmas lights,” Nancy says in awe.

“The Christmas lights?” Robin asks in a whisper to Nancy.

“Yeah, when Will was in the Upside Down, the lights… came to life,” Nancy tries to explain.

“Vecna’s here, in this house, just on the other side,” Lucas says.

The lights stop, and Dove feels the shift. “He left the room.”

“Did he hear us?” Max asks, looking around.

“Can he see us?” Steve asks, looking directly at Dove.

“Headphones,” Lucas says, pointing at Max, who lifts them to her ears quickly and rewinds her tape.

Steve’s hand reaches out and grabs Dove’s, lacing their fingers together and squeezing tightly for a second. Dove looks behind her, trying to find where the shift went, looking for that same tear in reality for a second, but finds nothing.

“Everyone, turn off your flashlight and spread out,” Nancy says as an idea pops into her head.

Lights shut off and movement begins as the room starts to envelop in darkness.

“We’re not gonna be able to see if we turn off our flash…lights,” Steve trails off as the only light left on is his.

Dove slips her hand from his, beginning to spread out, but he quickly follows behind.

“Steve, we gotta spread out,” Dove says, catching a glimpse of him in the low light.

“We are, I’m just… staying close,” Steve says, coming right up to her side.

A little bit of wandering later, Robin’s voice calls out when she finds him, her flashlight illuminating in a pulse before dying. The light bounces to Steve’s, and they follow it up the stairs before it cuts out.

“We lost him,” Steve grumbles, looking at the dull light.

Dove turns her head, barely catching the glimmer of golden light. “No, we didn’t.”

She pulls open the door, revealing the most ominous-looking attic staircase any of them have ever seen.

Steve leads the charge as they go up, the stairs creaking under the weight of each of their steps.

“Guys,” Dustin hisses, but no one turns back. “Guys, what if he’s leading us into a trap?”

But Steve, Dove, and Max have already reached the attic, staring at the singular light bulb illuminating the space in the middle. As they all come under the bulb, the buzzing sound grows louder as all their flashlights illuminate.

They circle around the bulb, looking up at it as it pulses and buzzes.

“Okay, what’s happening?” Steve asks with a wavering voice.

The lights shine brighter and brighter, and Dove doesn’t know how she sees it, but right next to Steve is that same tear. It’s small, but it’s there.

“Steve,” Dove says, looking right past him at the tear.

And when Steve follows her gaze and sees nothing, he turns back to her with wide eyes. “Dove, no, don’t—”

“But what if—”

“If he’s right there, he could kill you—”

“We don’t know that—”

“Yes, we do—”

“Uh, what is she talking about?” Robin asks, making both Steve and Dove cut their eyes to her.

But before they can answer, before Dove can even think about going into the tear, the flashlights explode. Starting with hers, and then Steve’s, and then Max’s, and then everyone else’s in the circle.

They shield their eyes from the glass, and just before the bulb above them shatters, Dove sees it—or him, rather.

“Dovey,” he says, his voice low and menacing. “Your time is coming.”

In a blink, he’s in front of her, hand coming up to her face and then placing itself on her throat. “But not now.”

He squeezes slightly, and that’s the last thing Dove sees before she blacks out for a second and the last bulb explodes, plunging them into darkness.

Steve catches her falling form, steadying her against him before she snaps right back into herself with a gasp.

“What? What was it?” Steve says, frantically grabbing her face and pulling her gaze toward him.

“He was—I was—he was right there, I saw him—but I didn’t go in—”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Steve says, pulling her into a hug against his chest. He smooths her hair down, flattening her curls as he looks at the concerned eyes around him.

Everyone begins to realize Dove might be in just as much danger as Max.

--------------

Max enters the Harrington house first, slinging her backpack full of clothes over her shoulder and heading straight up the stairs for the guest room. Dove had convinced everyone they needed a good night's sleep tonight, in real beds, not on couches or on the floor of the Wheeler basement. Leaving Max to join Steve and Dove at their house, Robin and Nancy staying in Nancy’s room, and Dustin and Lucas crashing in Mike’s room there as well.  

Tensions were high leaving the Creel house. No one really knew what it meant when the flashlights shattered or why Dove was seeing a tear in reality. There were so, so many questions about everything that no one had answers to. 

Dove was fine. Or at least she was trying very hard to be. Sure, a flesh-burned monster from another dimension had looked her dead in the face and told her that her time was coming, but besides that? Totally fine.

Except she’s not. Not really. Because a few months ago, maybe even a year ago, she would’ve swallowed this fear whole and carried it alone without letting anyone see what it was doing to her. That version of Dove would’ve made this her issue, and hers alone.

But this version of her is different now. This version lets herself feel things. This version has people who love her (she realizes she always had that with her mother but something about it was never the same as this love she experiences with these people, with Steve), people she leans on without even realizing it sometimes. And because of that, she’s terrified in a way she’s never been before. Because that means there might be something more to lose than just herself. 

“I’m going to bed,” Max projects to them from the top of the stairs, down to where Steve and Dove were taking off their shoes in the foyer. 

“Leave the door to your room open, please,” Steve says and it’s not a question. “There should be a cassette player in there, you can play your music out loud. You know, just in case.”

Max nods, the corner of her mouth twitching into a smile before she crunches her face to make it go away. “Thanks, I’ll uh, yell if I see any clocks.” 

Steve nods and then turns his attention back to Dove, who is looking at herself in the mirror by the front door. He’s not sure what she’s looking at, but he watches her grab her hair and pull it to one side, messing with the ends. 

“I need a hair cut,” Dove states suddenly, looking at Steve in the reflection. 

He just stares at her, mouth slightly parted and expression impossible to read. His eyes track the absent way she twists the ends of her hair through her fingertips, inspecting the split ends like this unspoken conversation isn’t sitting heavy between them.

Suddenly, Steve is hit with it all. The graveyard, the sleepless night, the argument. The desperate sex in his car where they clung to each other like it would somehow prove it, even though neither of them knew what they were trying to prove. Forty-eight hours of terror and tension crashing down on him all over.

Because now there’s this looming truth hanging over him: the girl he loves—so deeply, so painfully, so completely—could die if he doesn’t figure out how to protect her. And the worst part is that it might not even be Vecna who takes her from him. It might be Dove herself. Throwing herself into danger trying to save Max from him first.

“What’s your favorite song?” He finally asks. 

Dove furrows her brows together, shaking her head before turning to him. She leans against the buffet that’s under the mirror, the edge of it digging into her lower back. 

“Steve, I’m not cursed.”

“Is it still Abba? The Winner Takes It All?”

“Steve—”

“He told you your time was coming.”

Dove sighs, “He—he’s probably just trying to scare me. Let’s not go crazy, okay?”

Steve’s face twists with confusion before hardening into anger. “Can you please just stop and consider for a second that you might also be in danger?”

Dove sighs, shaking her head. “I’m not worried about that right now, okay?”

“Well, you should be.”

Dove’s jaw parts to speak, but the words stall in her throat. She can’t think of a response good enough to make Steve drop it.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she finally admits. 

“I want you to tell me you’ll stop trying to do this alone.” 

“I can’t do that,” Dove shakes her head. “You know I can’t do that. This is my problem, I have—”

“No,” Steve says flatly. 

“No? What do you mean no—”

“I mean no, you don’t get to tell me that this isn’t my problem too. No matter how many times I tell you I am here to help you, that we can get through this together, you just won’t listen. Why? Why can’t you just let me help you?”

Dove chews on her bottom lip, avoiding his gaze as she crosses her arms. 

“You said you understood—”

“I didn’t say shit about understanding, I let you distract me but this is not something we’re avoiding anymore,” Steve says sternly, taking a step closer to her. 

She’s silent again, staring down to her left, looking at her pair of converse she discarded by the door, a layer of dust at the bottom of them. She’ll have to clean them, that is if she ever gets a chance to. Maybe Max will want them. 

Steve takes his pointer finger and hooks it under her chin, pulling her gaze towards him. “Why are you trying to handle this by yourself?”

“Because it’s my fault.”

Steve’s eyebrows furrow together in confusion. “How is any of this your fault?”

“No…not this, well maybe this too, I don’t…I just feel like because…” She takes a deep breath, shuddering and shaky.  

“Hey, hey, baby breathe, breathe,” Steve says, taking her face in both his hands, stroking her cheek bones. “If this is about your mom, you’ve gotta remember that’s not your fault. We talked about this, you didn’t know what was going to happen—”

“But I should’ve—”

“There was no way for you to know,” Steve interrupts, tucking some hair behind her ear. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“But I do.”

It strikes Steve then that this is something he’s seen Dove do more than just now. Granted, it’s been at a lesser scale but he’s watched her consistently take the blame for things. Maybe that's it, the thing weighing on her is her belief that everything that’s gone wrong in her life is her fault. 

Steve shakes his head quickly. “But what does your moms death have to do with this?”

Silence stretches between them after the question. The ticking of the clock, the muffled sound of Kate Bush, Dove’s ragged breaths—they all echo louder in the stillness while Steve waits for her response.

Dove pushes herself away from him, standing in front of the front door.

“I have to fix it. This is my problem. He keeps telling me I was made for this—that’s what I keep hearing—so I have to deal with it. Me. I can’t make you or anyone—”

“I love you!” Steve finally yells cutting her off. 

She stops, not expecting that to be what he says at all. 

“I know you do, I love you too—”

“No, I love you, Dove. I love you so much, and because I love you, I can’t just stand by and let you try to deal with it alone. I can’t watch you try to kill yourself trying to save Max, or everyone else, trying to fix something that wasn’t your fault, because none of this is your fault. That’s not how this works. We are together. We are in this together.” Steve is breathing hard now too, tears glassing over his eyes as he stares at her.

Dove shakes her head, “Steve, I can’t ask you to do that—”

“You’re not asking. I told you, I want you to need me. I need you to need me. I need you to let me be there for you because I don’t know how to do this without you. I am telling you, I am here to help you, so let me.”

“You could die.” 

“I would die a thousand times if it meant you were okay,” Steve says, bringing her face into his hands again as he crowds her again. 

Dove shakes her head, shaking his hands from her and stepping around him. Away from him. “No, no Steve don’t say that, you can’t—”

“I would Dove, because I love you—”

“You don’t get to die because of me. I won’t allow it, so you have to—you have to let me do this.”

Steve shakes his head. “I won't, I can't.”

“Yes, Steve.”

And now it’s his turn to distract her, grabbing her face again and kissing her. It’s less frantic than hers was, less of him trying to distract her and more like him pouring all his love and devotion into it. 

His head turns, deepening it as one of his hands drifts to her waist, pulling her against him. Her hands reach up, tangling in his hair for a second before using the leverage to pull him off of her. 

“Don’t, don’t do that,” Dove pants. 

“You did it to me,” Steve states matter-of-factly. “I love you, Dove, so I am telling you I am going to help you.”

Dove shakes her head, “I love you, Steve, and that’s why I can’t let you do that.” 

Steve separates from her then, pacing a circle and rubbing his hands down his face in frustration. “Why? Why are you being so stubborn about this? What could—”

“I will not be the reason for you getting yourself killed!” Dove says, anger rising in her voice. 

Steve feels that, he feels the weight behind it. But there’s more, more she’s not saying, not telling him. He can see it in her face, the way her eyes start to fill up with tears before sucking them back in. Trying to fight the feeling, whatever it is. 

“But you can’t hurt yourself or—or let yourself get hurt because that’s only going to hurt others. Everyone around you cares about you and if you want to protect us, you gotta protect yourself. So no, I’m not gonna let you get yourself killed because you’ve decided you're expendable! You’re not. You of all people aren’t. Not to me.”

The silence settles. A standstill between them, both panting as they stare each other down in the foyer. The tension is thick enough to choke on. And he watches the flicker of something go across her face, an emotion he saw once before. But it can’t be that. He doesn’t let that cross his mind again.  

“Look, it’s late, let’s just go to sleep, Nancy’s going to get here pretty early so we can go on that supply run for Eddie so—”

“We’re not going to bed without finishing this conversation, Dove,” Steve says, turning around as she walks past him and begins to head up the stairs. 

Dove stops, hand gripping the railing tightly before looking back at him “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Silence settles again as they look at each other before Steve relents, exhaustion creeping its way up both from this conversation and the lack of sleep. It’s not how he wants to end it. He wants it to end with her saying she’s not going to jump in front of a bullet for anyone. He wants her to talk about why she feels like her mom dying is her fault. He wants to know why she’s feeling like this and how to fix it. And he can’t help but to just sigh…because he just wants to go to bed. 

“I love you, just please, remember that and please, and please don’t do anything stupid,” Steve finally says, stepping up the stairs with her, making them eye level. 

Steve watches something in Dove melt at that. Her eyes soften as her face relaxes. And maybe she also just wants to go to bed too.

“I love you too,” she responds, but that’s all she says before leaning forward for a quick kiss. 

Their lips lock, for just a second, not truly a peck but it doesn’t go any further before she turns and leads him up the stairs towards his room. 

The pad into the space quietly, methodically going through the routine they’ve developed in living together. Opening drawers, taking off jewelry, brushing their teeth. And the routine stays silent while Steve keeps catching himself gazing over at Dove, who is kneeling in front of the dresser, staring at his T-shirts in contemplation. 

Her chest rises and falls a little faster then normal and he sees her open her mouth to speak a few times but then shuts it. Like she can’t decide if she should say what she’s thinking. Until finally, she does.  

“Steve?” 

His gaze is already on her when she turns her head to look at him. 

“Yeah?”

She bites her lip for a second, her face pulling into something he can’t really read. Like she’s fighting her own voice to come out of her throat. 

“Um, when I was in New York last summer my aunt bought me a Stevie Nicks vinyl and uh…” 

She stops herself again and Steve sees her face contort again before she takes a deep breath and shakes the feeling again. Like she did in the car. 

“The Winner Takes It All is still up there but I heard Edge of Seventeen for the first time and, uh, yeah, that’s probably my favorite now, I guess.” 

Steve just stares, something churning in his stomach. Something akin to hope but it doesn’t last long when she averts her gaze. But it’s enough, enough of a thought of wanting to be saved. 

“Thank you,” Steve breathes. 

-----------------

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Dove sucks in a breath, shrugging her shoulders. “I’m… I’m thinking about it.”

Steve nods. “Okay, okay, let’s go over there. I’ll go with you—”

“No, I—I should go over there alone, I want to talk to her—”

“Honey, I don’t know if you should go alone. I mean, thank God Lucas went with Max, cause—”

“I have to do this alone, Steve,” Dove says, turning to him fully. 

A breeze cuts through the clearing, the late afternoon air carrying the smell of honeysuckle. Dove’s hair blows in her face, and Steve reaches out and brushes it behind her ear.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” Steve admits softly. “I don’t—I don’t know what I’d do—”

Dove leans forward, pushing up on her toes and placing her lips on his. The kiss is soft, her hand cupping his cheek gently, with the intention for it to ease his mind. And hers.

When she pulls back, he chases her lips, following her before settling back on his heels.

“That’s not fair,” he murmurs, but there’s no real complaint as his lips turn up ever so slightly.

“I’ll be just a few minutes, I swear. When Max finishes, come and get me,” Dove says, her thumb rubbing over the stubble on his cheek before dropping her hand. 

Steve takes a second to look over her face before conceding. He leans forward, both hands cupping her jaw and placing a kiss on her forehead. He keeps his lips there longer than he usually would before he turns back to the car. Leaving Dove by herself and looking toward her parent’s graves.

The grass that’s still a little dead crunches under her feet as she approaches the two headstones. It’s solemn and eerie now. A chill settles up her spine. Her mind flashes with the memory of her saying Veronica’s name in that comms room, the fear in her eyes when she saw her daughter behind the glass, and then the ringing of the shot that killed her. 

She feels that dark voice, the one she pushed to a far corner of her brain creep out just a bit more. The guilt and shame crawling up her throat, beginning to choke her.

“Hi, Mom,” her voice shakes, and a tear falls out of her eye that she wipes away quickly. “No, Dad, I’m not crying.”

She chuckles lightly at her own joke, and she hopes her dad would’ve laughed too.

“Um,” she looks down at her hands, pulling on her fingers slightly as she takes in another shaky breath. “Mom, me and Steve are together now. I, uh, know how much you liked him, and even though you didn’t directly say it—” she laughs lightly— “I think you’d be happy for me.”

Another breeze passes through the cemetery. She tucks her hair behind both her ears and stands in silence, wiping heavy tears from her cheeks. 

She sucks in a breath, trying to gain composure, trying to cling on to the last bit of her that feels like her. She doesn’t want to go back to where she was, she was feeling better. She was handling it. But all her resolve crumbles as the memory of last summer flashes through her brain again. 

She remembered the way she felt bound to that chair, watching them torture Steve and Robin, feeling that generals hands on her. She shouldn’t have survived that night. She shouldn’t have walked out of that mall at all. 

“I’m sorry, Mama, I shouldn’t have said your name that day. If I hadn’t, you would still be here, but I—I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just trying to keep everyone safe. And I tried, and tried but you still died, Billy died, Hopper died. Everything feels so wrong without you here. I should’ve tried harder, should’ve run in there to save you and—and now I've lost both of you guys. It’s all my fault mama, I shouldn’t—I don’t.” 

She feels like the ground is sinking below her, trying to consume her. Maybe it will, maybe it will finally take her instead of her mom. She wasn’t trying to find out secrets she shouldn’t. She wasn’t snooping and being dumb. Why did she have to die for her daughter's mistakes? 

“I can’t face Anna, or Stephen, or even Grandma. Because I know what happened and I know what I did and it just sucks, Mama. It sucks so fucking much.”

She doesn’t even bother wiping the tears coming out of her eyes anymore as she falls to her knees, a hand rising and settling on top of the grave.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she whispers.

It takes a full minute for her to get past the point of almost hyperventilating. Her chest still is pressing in on herself and she starts to go numb from it. Finally it settles to a point where she can talk. 

“I keep having these dreams, or visions, or something, and I thought they were from when we were in the hospital with Dad, but… why did we move to Hawkins from New York? I… I don’t really remember it. I didn’t remember any of this until Friday night, and… I wish you were here so I could ask you about it…”

Another breeze passes through—but this one’s different. It doesn’t carry that same honeysuckle smell. It’s stale and brings the promise of rain. A storm, charged with lightning and destruction. But the rest of the week calls for good weather—Dove saw it on the news at the Wheelers. And then she remembers that breeze, that change, in the basement of the station, then again at Dustin’s house. 

She turns her head back to her friends, but everything’s fine. She sees Steve sitting on the hood of the Beemer, watching Max. Dustin’s propped against the passenger door, fiddling with his walkie, and Lucas’s arms are crossed as he also watches Max just up the hill.

Dove feels a gentler breeze, this one more like early Indiana spring. It ruffles her hair and tickles her cheeks. Giving a sense of normalcy and calm to the edge of the storm clouding her mind. Slowly, she turns back to the grave stones. 

“I just don’t know why I don’t remember these… visions. You were there, Mom, in the first one. We… we talked about how what I was doing was going to help Dad, and I… I don’t understand why. I just wish I could talk to you.”

Some time must pass as Dove recounts all the visions to her mom, because her knees are starting to hurt from being folded under her. She’s picking at a blade of grass from under her as she tries to talk through the memories out loud.

She was at Hawkins Lab. Her parents brought her there. What she was doing was supposed to be helping her dad. Prick her skin, drip something into her, make her sleepy. There were other people there. The little boy. His parents. The doctor. The blonde man. She remembers yelling, blood, fear, so much fear. And then warmth. 

It all goes away after that. To a point she has physical memories, what she’s been shown where she can remember what she saw, like watching a movie. But then it just becomes that. Flashes and feelings. 

The one feeling she can recall the most now is that feeling of fear. It twists in her stomach and crawls up her spin. She can feel it behind her eyes like she’s being forced to watch something she doesn’t want to. It then rings her ears, like someone is telling her things she wants to block out. It’s all so strange. 

But Dove tries to keep her focus on her mom’s grave, that memory of fear twisting into that darkness taking over her mind. It contorts with the guilt and it slinks out of that corner she shoved it to, winning the internal fight by gaining more ground. 

Just across the clearing, Steve checks his watch again. His eyes have been bouncing back and forth between the two girls. Dove he can watch breathe and the movement of her talking and wiping a tear. He lingers on her before turning his eyes back to Max, who he had been trying to keep most of his attention on. What he thought would take about five minutes had stretched to ten…and now they were closing in on fifteen. 

And she’s so still sitting up at the top of that hill, and it might be the distance but he can’t see her moving like Dove is. No bounce of her shoulders like if she was talking. It eats at him to check on her, make sure she’s okay. And when another breeze passes through, something in it stinks and Steve decides it’s time to call it. 

“All right, it’s been long enough,” he says, pushing off the car and making his way up the hill, throwing one more look to Dove over his shoulder.

“Steve, just give her some time,” Lucas tries to reason.

“I have, alright, Sinclair?” Steve continues up the hill, body half-turned toward him as he moves up, then he begins walking backward. “I’m calling it—her and Dove. If Mayfield wants to lawyer up, she can.”

He jogs the rest of the way as he calls out, “Max! Time to giddy up, yeah?”

But when he looks down at her, his stomach drops. Her eyes are glazed completely over. The blue completely clouded. He says her name again and again, grabbing her shoulder and shaking it, but she doesn’t come out of it. 

His stomach sinks and nose stings as he fears for the worse. He keeps shaking her shoulder before letting go and clapping in her face.  

“Wake up! Max, please, wake up—hey!”

Down the hill, Lucas and Dustin look up, hearing Steve’s voice raise. 

Beginning to move up the hill, Lucas mutters, “Something’s wrong.”

The next few minutes are a blur. Once up the hill and onto the plateau, they’re all shaking Max’s shoulders and saying her name until Steve grabs Dustin by the front of his sweatshirt. 

“Henderson, go get Dove! Call Nancy and Robin! Go get ’em! Go get Dove!” Steve yells frantically, pushing Dustin away and then turning back to Max, holding her face with one hand and shaking her shoulder as he says, “Wake up, Max, come on!”

Dustin rolls off the platform of Billy’s grave, tumbling down the hill toward the car and screaming, “Dove! Dove, help! It’s Max! Dove!”

Dove rises from her spot on the ground at the call of her name and sees Dustin barreling toward the Beamer. She stumbles as she stands, taking off toward him, and as she gets closer, she sees Steve and Lucas at the top of the hill, yelling Max’s name in her face.

“Go help them! I’m calling Nancy and Robin!” Dustin yells as he reaches inside the open car window for his walkie.

Dove takes off up the hill, stumbling as she yells, “Max!”

And there, right behind Max, is the tear—the bend of a shadow that isn’t there— a tear in reality. Dove doesn’t need to think about the decision to run into it. A reason, an excuse, proof. A lot of things come to her mind as she goes head first into danger, hoping it’ll save Max. 

While she keeps moving in, running toward the tear and making it through: entering the dark, horror-movie realm of the cemetery, her body doesn’t. In the real world, she locks up, stopping right behind Steve, eyes clouded over and her consciousness completely gone. She stands like a statue. 

“Dove,” Steve says, turning back to her, but then his face drops. “No, no, no, baby, come on, don’t do this, Dove, Dove!”

He looks toward Max again, and then back to Dove, and then down to Dustin in the car, yelling, “Hurry!”

Dove is sprinting through the cemetery, following the sounds of what she hopes are Max’s feet thudding. 

“Max! Max!” she yells out into the dark. 

Then she hears a deep voice echoing through the cemetery saying, “You cannot hide from me, Maxine.”

Dove sprints faster, finally spotting red hair hiding just across the way behind a grave. Her gaze is turned toward something—or rather, someone.

Coming out of the fog, a tall figure appears, skin scorched and red. It’s awful, horrifying, worse than Dove imagined it would look like. But then again, when they said wizard she only thought of Merlin in Fantasia but wearing black. 

Max’s chest rises quickly as she tries to hide again, but then he’s walking closer to her, and then Dove does something she knows is stupid. 

Proof, a reason, a purpose. 

“Max, run!” she yells. She yells it so loud that it draws Vecna’s attention away from Max and to her.

He stops walking dead in his tracks. “Dove?”

Her blood runs cold as the gravelly voice says her name, but she’s relieved as she watches Max get up and sprint away fast.

Dove’s eyes widen as Vecna begins to approach her, walking faster than he had with Max, and then she begins to run in the same direction Max had.

She outran the creature better than she thought she could and catches up with Max, the two of them hugging tightly before Dove looks over her face. She cradles her cheeks and pushes the bits of pieces that fell out of her pony tail away as she checks for cuts and bruises. Something shifts and they both turn, looking around them, back to back, as they try to find a way out.

“Lucas! Dustin! Steve! Help!” Max begins to yell, spinning around frantically, as Dove then sees Vecna start approaching them.

“Max, Max, you gotta go, you gotta—” And as she says this, turning to pull them away, the cemetery fades and a vast red hellscape appears.

“Oh, fuck that,” Dove says, but Vecna is approaching quickly. And as the thunder rumbles and the red fog thickens, Dove pushes Max toward it. “Go, I’ll distract him.”

“No! No, I’m not leaving you,” Max says, not letting go of Dove’s hand.

“Max, I’ll be close behind, just go,” Dove says, lying through her teeth, trying to pry her hand off hers. 

Proof, a reason, a purpose. 

“No!”

“Max! Go!”

“What’s her favorite song?!” Dustin yells at Lucas after dumping the contents of Max’s backpack on the ground.

The boys frantically look through the tapes dumped on the ground after Dustin hastily explained what he learned from Nancy and Robin.

Steve turns back to Dove, who’s frighteningly still. He’s fighting every fiber of his being to help her, but he looks back to Max and hears Dove in his head telling him to make sure she’s okay first and—

Dove’s body moves slightly, like it’s losing balance, swaying, and Steve leaves his spot to steady her. “Dove, Dove, hey, come on, come on, wake up please.”

Dove stands in front of the red fog, watching Max as she disappears, and hears a voice behind her say, “What are you doing in here, Dove?”

It’s deep and menacing and it shakes her to her core. Her breathing picks up as she feels him get closer, and closer, that thudding in her head, that feeling she’s been having for days now just right behind her. Now with a voice and an actual presence. 

Dove turns slowly, facing the terrifying being. “Let her go.”

“How did you get in here?”

Dove shivers as he gets closer, her nose tingling in fear, but she keeps a stoic face. “Let her go.”

“You shouldn’t be here. It’s not time for you yet,” Vecna says, voice deeper than before as he extends a hand, quickly wrapping it around Dove’s throat.

Shit, not again.

Dove’s body collapses in the material world, and Steve barely has time to catch her as he yells out, “Whoa, hey, no, no, no! Wake up, Dove!”

Dove pushes against the hand, the one much more human than the other, clutching her throat. She chokes as she tries to breathe and spits out, “You’re such a little bitch, Vecna.”

He turns his head, bringing her face closer to his. Up close, Dove can see something reflecting in his eyes. Darkness, a feeling, creeping up her throat alongside the grip of his hand. And then recognition. She sees something there she’s seen before. 

He turns his head. “That’s not my name.”

“Dove, Dove, wake up!”

Dove gasps, because before she could find out more, she’s sucked back into her body. Steve’s holding her, one arm wrapped around her shoulders, the other pushing her forehead into his. He’s shaking and whispering her name. 

“Oh, thank God, thank God,” Steve breathes, hugging Dove tightly to him, but she’s pushing him off and looking behind Max again for that same tear—but it’s gone.

“I had him, Steve, I had him, why did you do that? Why did—”

“What’s Max’s favorite song?!” Dustin yells as he holds up more tapes, but his question is answered asLucas finally finds Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” and puts it into her Walkman.

The four of them sit and watch, and as the chorus of the song approaches, Max begins to rise up into the air. Floating high up, they can only watch with slack jaws.

And as the song’s bridge ends and it enters the last chorus, faintly heard now since Max is so high up, she finally drops. Lucas catches her as she lands, panting heavily, and he wraps his arms around her.

------------------  

The Wheelers basement has always had an eerie feeling to it since Will disappeared. Especially at night. And as night approaches on this Monday evening, it feels even creepier. 

There’s only the sounds of breathing and faint conversation. Everyone’s eyes drifting over to Max who’s sitting in a chair in the corner next to Lucas. The headphones of her Walkman haven’t left her ears since the cemetery.

Nancy and Robin had returned from Pennhurst and had been rattling off ideas and things they learned from Victor Creel. Dustin was intently listening, discussing with them as he took notes, and Steve was trying to listen. He really was.

But his leg is shaking violently as he stares at Dove’s back. She’s been staring out the basement door window for so long now—long enough that he’s concerned she could be back under a spell—but then she shifts and he can breathe.

Robin, the ever attentive best friend, keeps taking glances at Steve in between giving ideas and listening to Dustin and Nancy. She watches as he chews on his thumb nail and stares at the pretty blonde's back. 

Steve consistently came to Robin when things with Dove got funny. Especially when she got really weird around Christmas. There was one night she went to go see her sister and came back crying and locked herself in the bathroom. Steve called Robin the next day to talk about it. 

Robin was always of the notion that Steve needed to ask Dove what was wrong and to listen. He didn’t need to try and fix it like he always wanted to, Dove just needed someone to be there. She doesn’t need a white knight, she needs a friend.

“Steve,” Robin says.

Steve hums, not taking his attention away from Dove until Robin repeats his name more sternly, and then he’s looking at her eyes. They’re tired and sad and knowing as she cocks her head to the side with that look.

Don’t be a white knight. 

When Steve looks back to where Dove was, he’s met with the basement door closing gently. He stands, following her and not listening to Robin as she repeats his name.

“This should go well,” Robin mutters, shaking her head and looking back to Nancy.

The night air is crisp as Steve walks down the slope of the backyard. The grass is dewy, and when a breeze comes through, it nips at his bare arms. He’s on edge—he’s been on edge since Roane Cemetery. The moment Dove came back into herself and Max dropped to the ground, Steve’s been on fight or flight. Even more so since Dove hasn’t spoken a word since she pushed herself off of him.

Not a single word. Not to Max, not to Dustin, not to Lucas, and especially not to Steve.

So Steve approaches with caution to Dove, who is sitting at the edge of the yard, looking into the woods. Her hair, which was neatly cared for yesterday, is a bit more frizzy today, but the weight from how long it is makes it cascade nicely down her back. Her knees are pulled to her chest, her chin resting atop them. 

She’s in her head, in the normal sense, not the weird Vecna way, Steve thinks. 

“Hey,” Steve says, his fists clenching and unclenching by his side.

Dove turns back to him for a second, not giving her full attention, but it’s more than what she had been giving. “Hi.”

“We… can we talk?”

Dove turns more, putting her hands behind her. “About what?”

Steve blinks, shaking his head. “Uh, I don’t know—maybe about what happened at the cemetery?”

Dove closes her eyes. “Yeah, right. That.”

“Yeah, that.”

Dove sighs, wiping her hands off on her black trousers, and stands. They’re still on the slope, making her significantly shorter than him. 

She crosses her arms over her chest. “What about it?”

Steve huffs, mirroring her stance. “Well, maybe let’s start with what happened? What did you see?”

Dove shrugs and looks around the yard, avoiding Steve’s eyes. “It’s hard to explain…”

“Well, we’ve got time.”

Dove snaps her head back at his tone. She knows he’s mad. And of course he is, because if his hunch as to what happened is right, then she blatantly lied to him about doing this together. 

Dove’s mouth opens and closes a few times as she tries to explain what she saw and how she got where she did. After another heavy sigh, she speaks. 

“There was this… tear. Like—like the gate that we saw beneath Starcourt, but it wasn’t like that. It was like a shadow, and when we were at the trailer park, I saw it there, but… when you guys couldn’t wake Max up, I thought I could help, so I—”

“You what? You jumped into it?”

Dove nods, rubbing her arms up and down.

Steve feels the frustration rise up in his chest. “And what would’ve happened if you couldn’t get out of that? If I couldn’t pull you out—”

“You don’t need to pull me out of anything—”

“No, don’t do that. We said we would do this together. You said—”

“That was before Max was comatose, sitting at Billy’s grave, and Dustin was screaming my name! What else was I supposed to do?”

Steve scoffs, throwing his hands up and looking away before they settle on his hips. “I don’t know, Dove! Maybe stop and think before you go running into gates—”

“It wasn’t a gate.”

“Oh my God, that literally doesn’t matter right now, because you ran into something you didn’t know where it led to and could’ve gotten you killed!” Steve accentuates both points by pushing down his fingers as he says them.

“It wouldn’t have gotten me killed—”

“You don’t know that—”

“What does it matter anyway! Why shouldn’t I take a risk if it means saving Max, huh? Like you wouldn’t do the same for her? Or Dustin? Or any of those kids?”

Steve chews his bottom lip as they stare at each other, both breathing heavy.

“It matters because you could’ve died, Dove, you didn’t know what that would do! You don’t need to go running into those things because you’re important—”

“But we don’t need to worry about—”

“Will you stop interrupting me!” Steve finally snaps.

Dove’s mouth shuts, lips sealed, because Steve never raises his voice like this at her. In all their arguments, he hasn’t sounded like this, he never tries to because he doesn’t want to be like his father.

He sighs, taking one step closer, and before he speaks again, he breathes out shakily.

“It matters because you are important. No matter what you think, you are important to Max, Dustin, Lucas, all of the kids—even the ones not here. You’re important to Robin. You’re important to your sister and brother, no matter how much you ignore them.” Steve raises one hand and places it on her shoulder. “And you’re important to me. You’re so important to me, ’cause you know I need you. I love you, and I can’t have you jumping into things because you feel like you need to be a hero.”

Dove’s eyes water as she looks at him. “I don’t feel important.”

“You are—”

“No—”

“Yes, you are, please, Dove, please—”

“No, Steve, how do you expect me to just sit and wait? ’Cause if I didn’t run into that gate, or tear, or whatever the fuck it was—what if Max never made it out? I… I was able to distract him for a second, and Max got to that weird red fog place, and… and what if—”

Dove’s crying now.

Steve doesn’t have a response, truly unable to answer the what ifs.  

But what if Dove didn’t wake up? What if she was the one who was floating twenty feet in the air and her bones started snapping?

“We need to game-plan,” Steve finally says, holding both her biceps. “There’s no time to look back on the what-ifs. We… we need to figure out how to keep you and Max safe. We’ve got the Walkman for her… we’ll go to the house and get yours. We’ll—”

“No, no, Steve, we worry about Max, not me. She’s the one cursed,” Dove interrupts again, shaking her head. “When… when I was distracting him, he was surprised I was there. Like I wasn’t supposed to be there, but… he knew who I was. He said my name, even though he wasn’t in my mind. At least I don’t think it was my mind. And it felt like all those times when I had those visions. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like…”

“And that doesn’t worry you? Dove come on—“

“Steve, Max is who we need to worry about.” 

Steve purses his lips, sighing heavily for the umpteenth time in this argument. Dove is stubborn. Probably the most stubborn person he’s ever met so he knows that if she's dead set on this, it might not be worth trying to change her mind. But he needs her to not try to make herself expendable in her efforts of saving Max. He needs to convince her that they’re a team. 

“We’ll figure it out, we will, honey, I promise,” Steve says, continuing to rub her arms. “Just, please, please, don’t—”

Dove looks at him, eyes still watery and spilling tears as she gives him a look—the one that has Steve shaking his head because it’s so apologetic and heartbreaking.

“Dove, seriously.”

“I… I can’t, Steve, I can’t say I won’t do it, ’cause if it means saving her and everyone—”

“Dove, don’t put this on yourself, you don’t need to be the hero—”

“Steve, you literally cannot talk! You are always trying to be the hero! And this, this is something I know I can help deal with!”

“I’m not going to let you get yourself killed because you think you have to do this alone!”

“I’m not going to get killed—”

“Really? ’Cause this sounds like a suicide mission! There are two people who are dead, Dove. Two. I do not want Max to die, believe me on that because she deserves so much more than what she’s been going through. We are going to do everything in our power to stop this, but your life shouldn’t end in the process!”

They’ve put some distance between each other from their outbursts, both breathing heavy. Steve’s chest is tight and aching and it hurts.

“Would you just listen to me? Please?”

Dove sighs shakily and looks at him. 

He can see in her eyes that she’s sorry but she’s not going to promise anything. She won’t lie, she hates lying. 

She lurches forward, grabbing his cheeks and planting her lips on his. It’s a bruising kiss, sloppy but disguised as passionate and loving. It’s not a promise. And that’s what is so heartbreaking about it when Steve’s hands go to her waist, pulling her closer to him.

It’s faster than it needs to be. Loud and aggressive. The sounds of their lips smacking together as Steve walks them down the last two feet of the slope and has her back against a tree. Her teeth tug at his bottom lip, and he opens up, allowing her tongue to slide in.

It’s a distraction. Steve knows it, and Dove knows it. 

Because she knows it’s her manipulating this so he’ll stop trying to make it about her. She knows it’s wrong but she can’t help it. Behind it though, is a cry for help. The part of her, the part of her Steve knows feels loved and worthy of being loved, is trying to fight through and save her from herself. Letting him help her. 

That’s what he can feel. And that’s what he’s going to chase. 

Her hands tug in his hair as she pulls him closer, like she’s trying to absorb him into her skin.

“Please,” Steve mutters against her lips when they part for a second, taking in a breath. 

His lips are back on her in an instant, tongue diving into her mouth as one hand drifts up to the side of her face. He deepens the kiss further, if that’s even possible, pushing against her when he whimpers into her mouth.

He doesn’t know if he’s begging her to keep going or begging her to stop. He’s exhausted, both from the lack of sleep and the fight against her trying to prove she needs to be the one to save everyone. He’s tired of watching her carry everything like she deserves to be crushed beneath it. But he can’t bear another time where she’s sobbing every night taking the blame for something that isn’t her fault. He doesn’t know how to convince her otherwise, but he will keep trying and trying until he can prove to her that she’s not expendable. 

Steve just wants it to end. He wants some shitty little apartment with bad plumbing and thin walls. He wants to complain about her cold feet on him when they lay on the couch and hear her complain about not matching socks properly. He wants a life with her so painfully normal it almost hurts.

And he will take every hit, every beating, if it means he gets to keep loving her. In every lifetime, every universe, every version of their story. Steve thinks there has never been a reality where he wouldn’t end up bloodied and bruised if it meant she got to walk away alive. No matter how much she protests it. 

Dove can’t respond, but the taste of salt in the kiss from her tears is Steve’s answer that has him separating.

Their lips are swollen, glistening with each other’s saliva in the moonlight. It’s heartbreaking when Steve looks at her face and sees the tears streaking.

“Please,” he pleads again, wiping her tears. His head dips to her neck, kissing down the side of it and tracing his teeth over the column of her throat before he falls to his knees.

The denim on his knees dampens against the ground as he kisses her stomach through his shirt she’s wearing. He pulls it from being tucked into her pants, finding skin with his mouth and attaching his lips there. The kisses are hot and open-mouthed, making Dove’s knees buckle slightly.

“Steve,” Dove breathes, hands moving to his hair. “Steve, please, please look at me.”

He does, his own eyes starting to glisten. She drops to her knees as well, coming face to face with him again.

“I love you, I love you so much… and… I-I don’t want to lie to you and say I won’t do something if Max ends up like that again, but we will do as much as we can together, okay? Okay, just please, please try to understand.”

Steve drops his forehead to hers, eyes closing so the tears won’t fall. “I love you so much, please don’t… Please don’t do anything… anything to get yourself… killed. I don’t—I couldn’t—”

“I know, I know, and that’s not what I want. I just want to make sure everyone’s safe.”

She’s holding his cheeks now, and when their eyes lock this time, it’s an understanding. As much as Steve doesn’t agree with it, as much as he wants to bear this burden himself, he understands. He understands because he wants to bear this burden—and that’s what makes him so mad.

They’re both too hardheaded to stop themselves from wanting to save everyone.

And so Steve’s lips are back on hers, kissing her deeply and slowly. It’s not the response Dove wants. She wishes she could tell him she wouldn’t do it. But this, for some reason, feels like her fault.

The kiss grows deeper and deeper, hands moving over each other and gripping. His tongue is in her mouth again, tasting her deeply and there’s a pooling feeling in her stomach as she feels him push against her. 

Neither of them are sure how it happens but they end up leaving the ground and moving towards the beamer. 

Once inside Steve’s car, Dove’s straddling his lap as her shirt has come off, his lips attached to the curve of her shoulder, leaving a light mark. 

Her pants come off somewhere on the way, along with her underwear. Leaving her in just her bra. Steve’s lips stay on her as much as they can, tasting her skin and breathing in the amber from her perfume. 

Dove paws at his chest, pulling the fabric of his polo off and then running her hands over him. The hair is coarse against her palms but she loves it as she dips her head to his neck to kiss there. 

Most of the time they have sex, it’s not this frantic. It’s normally loving and caring, not a cry like this is starting to feel like. 

Steve’s hand moves from where it was guiding her grinding motion on her hip towards her core. He touches lightly over the folds, trying to bring back that loving, caring feeling. His fingers slip between them though when she rocks her hips, picking up the pace of the action. 

“Baby,” Steve’s voice groans, feeling her dripping. 

“Steve please, please.”

His fingers dip into her without much more fanfare and she’s moaning his name and digging her nails into his bicep. The two fingers in her curl, finding that spot making her let out a wanton moan. Her back bows into him and she needs more, more, more. 

“Steve, Steve, baby please.”

The pet name has him flipping her down onto the seat, moving between her legs and his mouth on her in a second. His tongue dips in, tasting her and she’s so sweet and he could live here. He really could because the noises she’s making, the way her body moves against his face as he sucks her clit and dips two fingers into her again is heaven. 

He sucks on the bundle of nerves, flicking his tongue against it as he does. He keeps curling his fingers inside her as he does so. It’s messy and cramped due to the lack of space but she tastes so good. So good. And his mouth feels so good and Dove wishes this is just how they could stay forever. In this car, in their own world, with no looming dread.  

She comes apart barely a minute into his actions and after riding out the orgasm she’s moving back on top of him. She’s pulling his jeans and boxers down swiftly and settling herself on top of him, lining herself up. 

“Baby, baby, wait- oh God.” Steve has no time to even think before she’s sinking herself onto him, taking his large length fully. 

“Oh, Steve,” Dove moans against his throat as she adjusts. No matter how many times they have sex, how many times he fills her up, she still feels like she’s splitting in two because of his size.  

Steve wishes this could be slow and sweet like they usually have. Even when they’ve found themselves in the car like this before, it’s been sweeter than this. But this isn't normal. This is anger and sadness and something else Steve can’t recognize. 

This is Dove crying for help because she wishes she could feel different but right now…right now the physical push and pull, the feeling of him inside of her, his lips, his moans, it’s all that’s keeping her from spiraling out into a panic. 

The pace she sets is brutal, knocking the breath from her as she rolls against his cock. He’s moaning her name, hugging her against him, kissing any part of exposed skin he can reach and he’s still so sweet as she just takes from him. 

Tears start pooling in her eyes as she gets closer and closer to the edge. But it’s not from pleasure, or maybe it is, but it’s they’re gone after one tips out of her eye.

And when she does tip over the edge, she cries out his name, collapsing against him as he pulls out. His own release coming out between them, hot and heavy. 

Steve kisses her slowly again, hands cradling her face and hoping to convey the last of his pleas before he helps her clean up. He dresses her gently, kissing her forehead before exiting the car. 

They’re silent as they walk back down towards the backyard basement door, not wanting to wake up the rest of the sleeping house. 

As Dove reaches for the handle, Steve’s hand grabs hers. 

“Hey,” he says, pulling her wrist hard enough to make her turn towards him. He cradles her face with one hand, kissing her lips softly one last time before resting his forehead against her. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, so much.”

Steve nods, squeezing the skin of her cheek that he’s holding gently. “We’re going to get through this.” 

Dove nods, raising her hand to squeeze the one holding her cheek. “Yeah.” 

And when they come back to the basement, everyone’s asleep. Sprawled across the floor, and in chairs. The couch is left open and Steve  knows that was somehow Robin’s doing when he sees the short haired girl sleeping with her head against the table. 

He kicks off his shoes, tucking himself against the back of the couch and opening his arm to Dove. She slides into the spot, her back against his chest. 

From her position laying on the couch, Dove scans the room. Robin is right below them, laying against the table. Nancy is on the other side curled into a ball on the floor. Dustin’s back is against the entertainment center, mouth hung up. And Max is sitting in the arm chair sideways, one hand down and holding Lucas’s. He’s sitting on the floor, leaning against the seat. One of his hands holding Max's, the other clutching her Walkman, waiting for the tape to end so he can restart it. 

“You okay?” Steve whispers into Dove's ear. 

She turns her head and nods, settling back against him again and grabbing his hand that was resting on her stomach. 

With his arms wrapped around her, their hands intertwined under her chin, they fall into sleep. 

Well, Steve sleeps. 

Dove stays awake staring at Max and Lucas for a while just thinking. She thinks about tomorrow and what that brings when the sun rises. How she won’t get to stay wrapped in Steve’s arms, how they’ll have to get up and she’ll have to tell them about what she saw in there with Max. 

She’ll keep that brave face on and not act scared as shit. No matter what Steve says, how he pleads with her to just let him help, she can’t allow it. She can’t shake the feeling of being responsible and needing to stop this. To protect Max. To protect Steve, because she knows that if she doesn’t throw herself into the line of fire he will do it himself. 

So she stuffs down the feeling of guilt and the other things she’s lying to herself about. She can’t live in a world without Steve Harrington. She can’t live in a world where another person she loves more than anything dies. Not when she can stop it. 

--------------

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Those guys—the ones who would show up to the game just to ogle at the girls—were the ones who dubbed her dick biting Dove. Which all started when one of them (Luke T.) was embarrassed that she didn’t want to give him head so he made this rumor that she’d bit him when she went down on him. This made her look like a freak and then it became the challenge of who could get into Dove Jones’s pants without getting their dick bit off.

It was a stupid game or bet or whatever it was. One she hated with a passion because every guy who took her out wanted one thing and one thing only: sex. Dove, whose favorite stories in history have to do with professions of love, was subjected to guys who went out with her to get the coolest notch in their belts.

If you could sleep with Dove, you had it, that’s what they were convinced of.

Dove figured it out after the second guy convinced her to sleep with him after their first date. Mitchell had been really sweet and she liked him, but he rambled a little too much and let it out that there was a bet going around the school.

She became very selective with guys after that.

Steve Harrington was no exception to that case when he came into her life. Sure, she thought he was attractive and appreciated his “knight in shining armor” act but Dove was trying to be better about just jumping from guy to guy.

And after Billy, she definitely needed a break.

Steve was a great friend though. She found herself enjoying his company a lot more than she thought she would and her heart flutters when he lingers closer. Which he had been doing a lot more recently. And she has too, which is why she finds herself knocking on his door at 1:39 in the morning after she was violently awoken by a nightmare.

Billy was over her, hands wrapped around her throat. She’s thrashing, panicking, his grip is so tight. She turns her head and there’s the four tweens she made herself responsible for that night in the junkyard. They’re hiding behind a car door because they’re somehow in the junkyard and then she turns the other way—and there’s Steve. Eyes glossy and almost completely limp as a demo dog snarls over him. His hand is reaching out to her, his last act trying to help her before the dog sinks its flower faced teeth into him and—

She jolts awake and is out of her house quicker than she could imagine. And that’s how she finds herself wrapped in some old sweater she’s sure was her sister's and a thick pair of plaid pajama pants on Steve’s doorstep. She’s praying he’s awake, or maybe she woke him because it’s so cold. She’s shivering.

“Dove?” Steve yawns, his perfect hair tussled sleepily and worn grey Detroit Lions shirt resting on his frame. That surprises her, seeing as they live in Indiana and she was sure Steve was an Indiana sports fan throw and throw but…that’s not important right now.

“Hey, hi sorry, it’s late I know it’s late, it’s just, I—um, it’s this I shouldn’t have come here—“

“Was it a nightmare?”

Dove sucks in her bottom lip, feeling embarrassed. She doesn’t like feeling this way. Vulnerable. Wanting to need someone. She’s always just needed herself, for as long as she could remember. But stupid Steve Harrington and his stupidly perfect smile and moles and hair cracked some part of her that makes her feel like she can feel these things.

That terrifies her a lot more than she cares to admit probably.

Because with any other guy she would’ve just been able to push it away. Feelings, emotions, all of it would be gone if she just wanted them to be. That was easy since every guy had decided she was only worth locker room credibility. It was easy to justify not ever having feelings for anyone because of that.

Stupid Steve Harrington. He was supposed to be an asshole, not someone who invites her over to study and buys her dinner at the diner expecting nothing in return. He’s supposed to be a chauvinistic rich asshole, not someone who looks so adorable when sleepy and has kind eyes and actually cares. Stupid Steve Harrington.

They end up in his living room, two glasses of water, no ice, sitting on the table as Dove plays with the frays of her sweater. Steve turns on the TV, some rerun of Saturday Night Live is playing when it kicks on. The studio audience's laughter fills the room as Dan Aykroyd puts a fish in a blender.

For about five minutes, neither of them say anything. Dove sits with her legs crossed on one corner of the couch and Steve sits on the other, arms crossed and watching the TV.

She honestly didn’t expect it to be this awkward. She figured he’d just give her a pillow and a blanket and she could sleep on the couch. Or he’d tell her to get lost and grow a pair, it was after all just a nightmare.

But he doesn’t do either of those things. Instead, he sits on the couch with her in silence. She can’t figure out if it’s helping or not yet.

“So….” Steve finally speaks, head lulling slowly over to the side so he can look at her. “Do you want to talk about it now or let this episode finish first?”

Dove blinks at him, puzzled by the question because either option doesn’t give her the chance to not talk about it. Which would be her choice. “Uh….I don’t….know if there’s anything to really talk about.”

Steve furrows his brows in confusion. “So you just came over here ‘cause…what exactly? I thought you were upset ‘cause you couldn’t talk about this with your mom.”

Dang she did say that didn’t she? Talking to her mom about it versus talking to Steve about it are two entirely different things. She talks to her mom about everything. Because she’s her mom and…she doesn’t judge her. She just nods and gives her the best Veronica Jones advice she can. Which usually is very factual and scientific because she is a scientist after all.

“I mean, it’s kinda just the same thing I said the other day…Billy really fucked with my head and he’d been aggressive before but…you know being strangled and all is odd.”

Steve just nods, listening intently before standing up and offering his hand out to her. “Well, I promise you Billy Hargrove won’t get you here. I’ll make sure of it.”

Dove looks at his hand and then back at his face. He’s got that stupid boyish smile and his eyes catch the low lamp light making them that honey brown she finds herself craving to see more.

Slowly, like she’s not really sure she should be doing it, she takes Steve’s hand, letting him pull her up.

“Let’s get some sleep, and I’ll gladly take a plate to the head again if he shows up,” Steve jokes, making Dove huff out a laugh as they climb the stairs to his room.

“I don’t think your head could handle it, it’s big enough already.” Dove holds back a smile as she says it, tickled by her own insult.

“I’ll have you know, my head is actually of average size thank you very much,” Steve quips back as they enter the room. He had let go of her hand before they even came up the stairs but she still can feel the weight of it.