#wily

Somewhere in the distance the sound of your footsteps echo into the dark, bitter night. 

Clenched within your hand are your knives. Their metal glints in the streetlights as you run past every lonesome car, avoiding their collisions. 

One of them slams their horn at you, screeching to a stop just before it collides into your fleeing body, but you hardly even flinch.

You don’t care. 

All you do is run.

Minutes pass. You hardly process any of it. 

The only indication of the passage of time are the ringing in your ears increasing in volume and how badly your chest burns for oxygen as you run as far as your aching legs will allow. 

Up the crest of the hill, the Wheeler’s house shines untouched. Safe. The relief of it being intact  strengthens you to keep going, to run for just a little longer, until a horrible, eerily familiar screech pierces through the silence of the night. 

The mangled sound chokes you. 

Only a Demogorgon’s cry could paralyze you so viciously. 

“Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler?” your throat strains to be heard over the monster’s cries as you force the last of your sanity into running faster, harder, towards the Wheeler’s front door with your knives at the ready. “Holly?”

But no one answers.

Heart beating of your chest, you fling the door open with more cries on the tip of your tongue, searching through the living room and stumbling back at its disarray, but they all die at the sight of red.

Everywhere. 

The red is everywhere. 

It pools on the floor, drips down the walls, and covers the limp body of Karen Wheeler, leaving her almost unrecognizable.

The red glues your cowardly feet to the floor, rendering you unable to move. For what feels like an eternity you stand in the kitchen’s doorway, horror consuming you as you stare at Mrs. Wheeler’s mangled mess of a body on the ground. 

Her body? Or her corpse?

“Oh my god.” Bile rises in your throat. The sharp smell of blood stings your nose and you choke back grieving gags at the knowledge of who it belongs to.

This woman baked cookies for you every Christmas, always excited to share her recipes with you. She fed you dinners, countless breakfasts, endless snacks for long days with the boys in her basement. 

Karen Wheeler helped soothe your childhood wounds through her unyielding empathy.

Now she lies before you, motionless. 

Yet in your horror, you remember who else the woman fed and soothed. Mike’s teary eyes looking up at his mother and Nancy’s gentle voice and Holly’s small hands all reaching for Karen in your memories. 

They’d be lost without their mother. Her death would ruin them.

The realization forces you to your knees. The blood pooled on the floor soaks through your jeans and onto your skin. Its warmth unsettles you. But when you see Karen’s eyes wide and panic stricken staring back at you, your body moves to hers. 

“Mrs. Wheeler,” you press your hands against her jugular, suppressing a gag at the sensation of her thick blood between your fingers. She stiffens at the touch, tries to get away from the uncomfortable pressure, but you frantically shake your head and keep your grip firm. “It’s okay, I’m right here, alright? Just-just stop moving.”

Karen tries to say something, causing even more blood to bubble over her torn skin, and you’re quick to quiet the woman once more. Her eyes beg you for answers that you can’t give her. All you can do is stroke her cheek and whisper apologies to her over and over again. 

“Nancy will be here soon,” you try to reassure her, ignoring how cold her body now feels. “Just hold on a little while longer. I’m so, so sorry, Mrs. Wheeler.”

Her eyes flicker briefly, a question within them. She doesn’t know why you keep apologizing. She doesn’t know that the claw marks on her ribcage mirror the very same ones that mar your own ribcage. 

“Mom!” 

Nancy’s tormented scream haunts you. 

“I-I found her like this.” Your knees slide against the bloodied kitchen tiles in your haste to allow Nancy beside her mother. “The blood–”

But Nancy doesn’t acknowledge your presence. She tears her jacket off and pries your hands away from her mother’s neck before pressing it tightly against the wound. “Don’t try to talk, okay? Just stay calm.”

As she consoles Karen, you follow her daughter’s lead and quickly tear off your own jacket to tie around Karen’s abdomen. As you’re messily dressing her wounds you feel someone’s hand land against your arm. 

“Will she be okay?” El’s soft voice asks. 

You don’t know whether she means Nancy or Karen. Maybe both. 

“We need to get Mrs. Wheeler to the hospital–”

“H-Holly.”

Karen’s strained, broken vocal chords piece together only one name. The ringing in your ears crescendos into a deafening end. 

Nancy quickly turns to you. “Did you find anyone else in the house?”

“No, I–” You hadn’t even thought to look for anyone else. You’d been too focused on Karen to consider who else may still be missing. Ashamed and overwhelmed, your stomach churns and your head shakes violently. “I didn’t even think to look–”

“Then where’s my sister?” Nancy’s panic swells the room. “Why isn’t she–”

Her voice dies in her throat as something catches her attention. You twist your head around, trying to find the cause, and your own voice dies at the sight of a gate to the Upside Down, slowly closing into itself upon the front door. 

“Go.” Nancy snaps her attention back to El. She’s realized what you’re too afraid to comprehend. “Go, go, go, go!”

El looks between the two of you, torn and confused. She doesn’t want to leave you behind, not while covered in Mrs. Wheeler’s blood and unsure whether she’ll ever see her alive again, but you shake your head slightly, softly. 

“Find Holly.” You tell El, forcing down your own urge to follow. The Upside Down almost killed you once before. “Please.”

Nothing else has to be said. El doesn’t turn back even once as she runs towards the gate and into hell. She isn’t afraid. Not anymore. 

The gate closes behind her. 

“You’re gonna be okay, Mom.” Nancy’s tears break you back to reality as she clings onto her mother’s limp hand. “I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”

You reach for Nancy’s other hand. While she doesn’t accept the endearment, you cling onto it regardless to remind her that she isn’t alone. She will never be alone as long as she has you. 

You’re not sure how long you kneel in Karen Wheeler’s blood listening to her daughter’s pleas to stay alive. All you know is that you never once let go of the girl’s hand. You never once stop caressing the woman’s cheek. You watch other both Wheeler women, caring for them how they’ve always cared for you. 

And when you hear Mike’s urgent voice outside the house, you know what your final act of mercy will be. 

No child should ever have to endure seeing their family home covered in blood.

“You can’t come inside.” They’re the only words you say to the boy at the door, blocking him from entering. 

Mike’s chest heaves. “What the hell, Y/N?”

Lucas stands behind him. He catches your pleading look and understands. Squaring his shoulders, he grabs Mike’s forearm and tries to pull him back. “Mike, you shouldn’t–”

“Where the fuck are my parents?” Mike slams his body back, fighting against Lucas and shoving even harder against you when he notices the blood that stains your clothing. “Where are my sisters?”

“Mike–” You wish there was more you could do.

He only fights harder. His elbow digs into your ribcage and you know his nails will leave marks later. But you don’t blame the kid. He’s worried, terrified of what his family has become. “Let me go!”

Lucas roughly grabs Mike’s shoulders, forcing him off of you. “Enough, Mike!

“I have to help!”

“We’re not letting you inside!” Lucas screams over Mike’s insistent terror. He grabs harshly at the kid’s body, forcing him to look at you and Lucas in a vain attempt he’ll listen. “You can’t go inside, alright? We won’t let you–”

Blinding lights fill the Wheeler’s driveway. The paramedics’ arrival stuns Mike long enough to force him away from the front door. The EMTs rush inside, and just as you’ve secured Mike underneath your arms, the first of the gurneys crashes through the door. 

Ted Wheeler. Multiple puncture wounds to his chest and abdomen. 

Mike’s body collapses. You’re there to catch him.

Karen Wheeler follows. Nancy runs beside the gurney as she whistles off every piece of vital information she can think of to the emergency responders. 

When she sees Mike, she lunges towards him and pulls him into her arms. 

You and Lucas step back to give the siblings space. They’re all the other has left. 

Numb fingers worry away at your nailbeds, picking at the tender skin that never has enough time to heal before its next slaughter. The sharp pain of the bloodied wounds soothes the itch underneath your skin to crowd Nancy and Mike. To fret over them, to do more than what you already have because it’s what you do. 

It was all you were ever meant to do.

Lucas grabs your hands, intercepting the next wave of destruction they’ll endure. 

“Enough,” he gently chides, allowing the smallest of smiles to peek back at you. “I don’t want you hurting yourself.”

“That’s what I’m supposed to tell you.” Though you smile back at him, the effort exhausts you. 

Lucas notices and sighs, releasing your hands. His mouth opens as if to chide you once again, but one of the EMTs begins guiding Nancy and Mike into the back of the ambulance and you’re following after them immediately. 

“I’m coming with you guys.” The tone of your voice doesn’t suggest a question. 

Mike quickly grabs your hand to pull you inside the vehicle, but it’s Nancy who stops him. “You have to stay, Y/N.”

Your face pinches together. “Absolutely not. There’s no way I’m letting you face this alone.”

Nancy shakes her head violently. Her entire body ruptures at the movement, fresh tears spill down her face. “No, I need you to keep looking for Hopper.”

“Steve and Jonathan are already–”

“Then go find El!” The last of Nancy’s resolve breaks. She jumps to her feet, flings her arms out and gestures wildly as if to articulate her despair and delirium even more. “Find someone, anyone, who will lead you to my little sister.”

Find Holly for me.

A heavy burden to carry, the trust of finding one’s little sister.

Yet you’d do it in a heartbeat for Nancy. Time and time again, you would carry the burden and smile in its wake, full of gratitude. 

“I-I will.” You promise her, pulling her shaking body into yours one final time. She trembles at the touch. Her hair tickles your cheek and your lips press to her scalp. “I’ll find Holly.”

“Thank you.” Nancy’s wet voice breaks you. 

Your hand cradles her head. “Of course.”

“We need to get your parents to the hospital.” An EMT interrupts, not unkind, but firm. 

Nancy forces herself away, but you manage to grab the back of Mike’s neck and pull his head within your reach so that you can kiss his forehead goodbye. His body crumbles at the affection, he holds your hand so tightly that it cuts off the circulation, but you don’t care.

Instead you watch as the Wheeler children crawl into the ambulance with their mother while Lucas rides with their father. They leave in a storm of flashing lights and harsh sirens.

Mike’s old, abandoned bike remains the only thing left in its wake. 

You grab it, feeling your promise to Nancy etching itself into your skin. 

I’ll find Holly.

The promise rings in the air around you. Its tone mirrors the same cadence as the promise you once made to Jonathan about finding Will. 

In the end, you found him. But not before he became someone else. Someone different from the little bee you once adored. 

Swallowing down the overheated adrenaline coursing through your system, your feet kick off the bike’s pedals, ignoring how badly your hands shake as you do so. 

Jonathan and Steve will be worried about you. 

Yet the knowledge of their concern isn’t enough to suppress the gory images of Mrs. Wheeler’s body on the kitchen floor from flooding your mind. 

They will haunt you forever. 

– 

Steve stands outside the WSQK van with its engine tethered to a jeep. The owner of the vehicle, a girl you’re unfamiliar with, has her arms defensively crossed and an agitated expression of obvious disdain for your boyfriend. 

Steve’s uncomfortable stance reveals that he’s painfully aware of her feelings towards him. 

“Can I, uh. Offer you a Bopper?” You overhear him offer the girl, clearing his throat awkwardly. 

She doesn’t bother to respond, only making the uncomfortable situation worse. 

When Steve sees your silhouette in the distance, he exhales in relief and practically runs away from the girl in order to get to you. He would’ve much rather have spent his night alone with you, tucked away together somewhere no one else could find you, safe and sound. 

“I’ve been missing you all night, angel.” His head tilts when he notices you’re on a bike rather than on foot. But then his eyes fall to your chest, your stained hands and stomach, and the red that cakes your body strikes Steve’s aorta so deeply that he struggles to breathe. “Y/N.”

Steve’s hands fall to your waist immediately, helping you off the bike and sitting you onto the ground in a frenzy of concern and fear. He traces every inch of your skin repeatedly, trying to find the source of the pain. “Where the hell is the blood coming from? I-I have to stop the bleeding–”

“The blood isn’t mine.” Your hands grab his, quelling their weathered fears as Steve’s expression morphs from terror to confusion. 

“I don’t understand…”

“It’s Mrs. Wheeler’s.”

Despite how softly you say it, Steve hears the broken confession and closes his eyes in stunned remorse. “Will she be okay?”

The innocent question exhausts you. Mind nearly melted from the night’s events, you push yourself up and start walking towards the van. Your body moves on autopilot, brain only focusing on what comes next and the necessary steps. “We need to leave.”

“Woah, hey!” Steve scrambles after you. “Y/N, I really don’t think you should be running around right now.”

You ignore him and climb inside the van, only to startle Jonathan sitting in the passenger seat.

“Jesus, bug. You scared me–” But just as Steve’s worried eyes scoured your body, Jonathan does, too. He nearly chokes on his spit seeing all the blood. “Fuck, are you alright?”

“It isn’t her blood.” Steve answers for you, slamming the driver’s side door closed before crawling over the driver’s seat and pulling you into his lap. His fingers wipe away at the dried blood on your face tenderly, carefully, delicate in a way only love can provide. “C’mere, angel.”

He begins cleaning you, uncaring of the fact that Jonathan sits just a foot away. And while Steve’s touch has only ever brought solace to your tumultuous life, tonight it burns your skin and leaves you feeling raw, exposed. 

You pull away, just out of reach. “The Demogorgon got to the Wheeler’s before we could. Mrs. Wheeler, she…”

The unnatural angle of her arm, its protrusion and the lacerations on her throat and chest and all the exposed flesh and meat of her body all echo in your mind and bring bitter bile up your throat at the onslaught of memories. 

But you promised Nancy you’d find her sister. 

“I was trying to stop her bleeding when Nancy and El found us.” Swallowing down the nausea, you do your best to block out the memories, but they come pouring out anyways like a ruptured dam. “We think Holly was taken to the Upside Down, just like Will was, and-and Nancy sent El there to save Holly and forced me to come here so that we can find Hopper–”

You don’t notice your tears until Steve’s gentle fingers wipe them from your face. “Y/N, you need to breathe.”

As you manage a quick inhale that leaves your weak lungs craving more, Jonathan leans over the passenger seat and lowers his voice, eyes wanting. “What about Nancy, bug? Can you tell me if she’s alright?”

Steve reels at him. “For fucks sake, man. Can’t you see that she’s barely able to get a breath in?”

“I’m sorry, is my concern for my girlfriend really that distressing to you?” Jonathan scoffs in disgust. “I understand that Y/N’s had a hard night, but from what she’s just told us, Nancy’s entire family is in critical danger and I’d really like to know how I can help her.”

They argue with each other as if you aren’t even there. As if you aren’t sitting on the floor of the van, wishing you were anywhere but here, surrounded by two boys whose childish ego battle threatens to send you over the edge. 

“But unlike Nancy, Y/N is actually here. Covered in someone else’s blood.” Steve wraps a protective arm over you, pulling you away from Jonathan and deeper into his chest. “What we need to do is get her cleaned up and–”

Their voices pound inside your head until you can’t take it anymore. Until all that’s left to do is scream.

“Stop it!”

You’ve never heard your voice so shrill before. You almost don’t recognize it to be your own, but when Steve’s grip loosens in surprise and Jonathan’s eyes stare back at you wide, unnerved, you know that it had been you screamed. 

Suddenly overly aware of both boys’ eyes on you, you shrink in on yourself, covering your body with your arms as you crawl out of Steve’s grasp and towards the van’s doors. “I-I didn’t mean to yell. I’m sorry, I just… We have to stick to the plan. Nancy made me promise we’d find Holly. We have to find Holly.”

Bile rises in your throat yet again. It burns through the strain in your vocal chords from all the yelling. If you don’t leave now, you’ll do something you regret. 

“I-I need some air.” Hand on the door, your fingernails dig into the metal as you fling it open. The minute the fresh air hits your face, the tightness in your chest dissipates. Inhaling deeply, you throw your body up and quickly call over your shoulder to Steve and Jonathan as you flee, “don’t follow.”

You fall against the nearest tree you find just within reach of the van’s headlights. The girl Steve was talking to earlier who helps jumpstart the van gives you an odd look, but you simply drop your head to your knees and breathe in the night air, basking in the silence. 

Steve watches you through the windshield, lazily returning to the driver’s seat in frustration. He picks at his nails nervously, his worried eyes trace over your exhausted body over and over again. 

“We need to take Y/N home.”

Jonathan whips his head to look at Steve, completely in awe of his stupidity. “You can’t be serious.”

Steve bristles at his annoyed tone. “She’s obviously in shock and currently looks like she’s five seconds away from passing out.”

“Alright, and then what? What’s your genius plan after we tuck Y/N into bed, huh?”

“I don’t know,” Steve shifts in his seat, eyes never leaving your body just a few feet away. He watches for any more signs of distress, worried he’ll look and find you passed out moments later. “The hospital isn’t far from the Henderson’s. We can go there after, make sure Nancy is okay and maybe get some more intel.”

Jonathan rubs the crease between his brows. “No. No, we stick to the plan. Find Hopper, find Eleven, and find Holly. That’s what Y/N said, and it’s what she promised Nancy.”

“Right, but we don’t know how long it’ll take for us to locate Hopper’s telemetry tag again.” Steve’s knee bounces up and down. He hates being stuck inside the van, so far from you. “I’m worried Y/N has pushed herself too hard this time. I mean, she always pushes herself too hard, but this time she looks exhausted, dude.” 

“You can’t just sideline Y/N.” Jonathan shakes his head. He did that to you, once, when he tried sneaking out of the middle school with Nancy one night to go fight a Demogorgon. Jonathan will never forget the hurt on your face when you caught them. “She’d never forgive you.”

Something stirs within Steve’s stomach at the somberness in Jonathan’s voice, obviously recounting an old, nostalgic memory. A bitterness overtakes him. “Sounds like you’d know from experience.”

“Jesus Christ,” an exasperated breath rattles Jonathan’s chest, bordering between exhaustion and disbelief. He resents Steve’s bitterness over your history together, it isn’t fair. He gets a future with you while all Jonathan has left is the history. 

“What?” Immediately Steve feels defensive, caught. 

Jonathan stares out the window, his own eyes tracing your silhouette. Once, proximity didn’t exist between the two of you. Once, nothing else in the world existed outside of your own, small universe where your planets orbited around each other and your suns were intertwined. 

Now you can’t even bear to be in the same car as Jonathan. 

“I just thought that, tonight of all nights, you might just… give it a rest.”

Steve frowns. “Give what a rest?”

“This bullshit competition for Y/N and Nancy’s attention.” Jonathan hates the words coming out of his mouth. He knows you’d despise them as well. It’s embarrassing, groveling for his best friend’s attention and his girlfriend’s adoration. 

Yet here Jonathan is, on his knees with only bruises left to show for it. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Rarely does anything Jonathan says makes sense to Steve, but tonight he’s convinced the guy has smoked a stash behind your back, yet again. “No one is competing for anything.”

“Dude, ever since I got back from Lenora, you’ve been constantly injecting yourself into every one of my conversations with Y/N.” Jonathan’s own bitterness bleeds into his voice. “It’s as if you’ve become physically incapable of leaving her alone with me. She’s my best friend, we have a history together that you could never understand, and it’s fucking childish to hold it over my head as if it’s somehow all my fault that you’re uncomfortable with the history.”

Steve’s fingernails dig into the steering wheel. An old, familiar fury rises in his throat. “Careful there, Byers. It almost sounds like you forgot who Y/N is in love with.”

The words are like cold water poured upon Jonathan’s skin. “I’m not the one constantly showing off for Nancy, trying to remind her of how much better I am than you.” He swallows thickly, turns away from Steve, and says into the night, “seems you forgot who she’s in love with, too.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, obviously uncomfortable with Jonathan’s insinuation, and Jonathan latches onto the moment of vulnerability like a rabid dog. 

“Which is ironic, if you ask me, because while all you can focus on is Y/N, I’m actively trying to make sure that Nancy has a chance of surviving this shitshow of a night, because I could never forget who she’s in love with, despite your selfishish delusions.”

Years of built up resentment simmer between the two men. Neither one of them has anything else to say. The battlefield has been drawn, uneven grounds left in wreckage with no clear winning side. 

A series of staccato horns breaks the silence. Both Jonathan and Steve jump up in alarm, heads turning towards the direction of the sound and finding the girl they’d forgotten about, sitting in her car with nothing but disdain on her face, angrily gesturing to the van. 

The sound catches your attention, causing you to carefully stand up and begin making your way back to the van, seemingly ready to finally leave. 

Steve reaches for the keys and places them into the ignition. He notices the hesitancy in your steps, how slowly you drag your feet as if walking into a minefield. 

“You know what, Byers?” Suddenly everything Steve has ever wanted to say to Jonathan becomes a race against the clock, to get everything out before you walk back inside the van and force the reality into another endless silence. “You’re totally right about my ‘selfish delusions’.”

Jonathan’s head falls into his hands, clearly wanting the conversation to just end, but Steve doesn’t care. You’ll be back any minute, and for once in Steve’s life he can’t bite his tongue for your mercy. Not this time.

“Y/N told me about your little phone call.” And there it is. Steve has revealed his final card, and it's dealt as a javelin to Jonathan’s stoic demeanor. He stiffens in his seat, and Steve gets a sickening sense of satisfaction watching his facade crumble. “What did you say again? Something about whether you and Y/N made a mistake?” 

A ringing fills Jonathan’s eardrums. Cold, metallic ringing. The taste of betrayal and shock linger on Jonathan’s tongue, mixed with embarrassment and shame.

He never thought you’d tell anyone about the phone call. 

Then again, Jonathan never thought you’d do a lot of the things you’ve done since he lost you.

Humorless laughter drips from Steve’s cruel mouth as he watches Jonathan’s face twist in shocked grief. He has him right where he wants him. “And I’m the fucking delusional one.”

Shoving the key into the ignition, the van sputters once, twice, before dying again. All Steve wants is to leave.

“I’ve known all along how miserable you and Nancy are, from the minute you decided to call my girlfriend, high as a kite, trying to get her to leave me for you.” You’re only a few feet away now. Throwing all caution to the wind, Steve lays his final blow. “Maybe if you stopped living in some idealized past life with Y/N, a past life that is dead, and instead focused on your current life with Nancy, maybe then the two of you would finally be happy. Maybe then you’d finally have your best friend back.”

Then the van comes to life, its engine loud and daunting. The headlights come on and your arm reaching for the van’s backseat doors, a question on the tip of your tongue about how long it will take to recalibrate the telemetry tag, when suddenly the question dies on your lips as you see your little brother, bloodied and bruised, stumbling up the street. 

“Dustin!”

The sight of him breaks you completely. 

You grab for his broken body blindly, tears blurring your vision as you cradle Dustin’s head to your chest. Struggling to breathe, you finally allow the sobs that have been building within your frigid body to come crashing out in waves, no longer able to pretend that tonight hasn’t been one of the worst nights in your entire life. 

“I’m fine, Y/N.” Dustin’s body remains stiff, uncomfortable in your embrace. He places his hands awkwardly on your arms in a weak attempt to pull away, almost as if he hadn’t been expecting such a volatile reaction. 

“You don’t look fine,” Steve yanks Dustin’s bike out of his hands, uncaring of the boy’s bruises and bloody nose. “You chose a spectacular night to ditch us.”

Dustin opens his mouth to argue, maybe even defend himself and provide an answer to his disappearance, but Steve cuts him off. 

“Save the bullshit excuses for later,” he hauls the bike into the van and slams the door shut. “We need to leave. Now.”

Dustin looks to you for an answer you can’t give him. His eyes land on the dark stains of blood clinging to your sweater and the shell shocked tears that won’t stop falling. “What the hell did I miss?”

You wipe a stray tear, smearing even more blood on your face.

“It’s been a long night.”

– 

Your back presses into the van’s floor as you stare up at its ceiling, watching the streetlamps flash across like streaks of lightning. Every bump of the rough road digs harshly into your spine, but you’ve gone numb to it. 

Jonathan sits beside you, one hand pressing the headphones tightly to his ear, trying to catch any hint of Hopper’s telemetry tag, while the other hand carefully steers the antenna attached to the roof. 

“And by sheer luck, Jessica was coming back from a party and I charmed my way into getting us a jump.” Steve explains everything to your brother as he drives, eyes never straying from the windsheild. “Which brings us to you, arriving looking like Rocky Balboa.”

“Y/N’s the one who looks like she barely escaped Leatherface.” Dustin quips back, slouching further into the passenger seat at the idea of you covered in someone else’s blood. “So I think I’ll be okay.”

“This isn’t funny, alright? Out of all the crawls, this was like, the one to miss.” Steve rolls his eyes. The annoyance in his voice is like a jagged edge, piercing your thin membrane of patience. “So, well done, Henderson. Really, really well done.”

You roll onto your side, finding your brother’s eyes in the rearview mirror as you hand him a tissue for his wounds. His hard gaze softens slightly, accepting the small offer, and something loosens within your chest. “Are you sure you’re okay, Dustin?”

He purposely misinterprets your question as concern for his sanity, shoving the tissue up his broken nose. “It’s a lot to process… I mean, why Holly?”

“Maybe Eleven could tell us, but it’s a bit difficult to contact her now that we’ve lost our connection to the Upside Down.” Steve not to gently reminds Dustin. 

“We just have to keep trying,” uncomfortable with the quickly rising animosity, you sit up and force yourself between the two boys. “That’s what we should be focusing on right now.”

But Dustin has already latched onto Steve’s pointed finger. “You guys should’ve turned everything off the second the lights went from really bright to really dim. I’ve told you before that it means the generator is surging.”

Naturally, Steve doesn’t take the criticism well. “Yeah, great. I’ll remember that for next time, or, and this is a suggestion, you could be where you’re supposed to be.”

“Steve,” you kick the back of his seat, worried he’ll push Dustin too hard and create yet another blowout. “Leave it.”

“C’mon, Y/N!” He waves his hands in the air, exasperated. “You can’t seriously believe that the kid just fell off his bike and gave himself two black eyes.”

The indignation pisses you off. Of course you don’t believe that Dustin’s shitty excuse for his injuries. Of course the sight of his bent nose and swollen eyes makes you sick to your stomach, because Mike and Lucas fucking told you about some douchebag named Andy and you know Dustin has become only more bitter and swallowed whole by his grief. 

You know the bruises on your little brother’s face were caused by angry fists. Of course you know. 

But Dustin hasn’t been honest with you in a long, long time. 

You’re just relieved to see that he’s still breathing.

Dustin stares back at you, almost daring you to call him out on his bullshit, but you’ve come to accept that you’ll take whatever he’ll give you. Lies and distance and all. 

“Hey!” Jonathan snaps from the backseat, headphones in his hand and worried eyes on you. He sees the clench of your fists, the hardness in your shoulders and how close you are to spiraling. “Can you guys keep it down up there? I’m listening for a signal, in case you forgot.”

Steve flashes him a sarcastic thumbs up, but even before he opens his mouth you know that there’s no end to his merciless antagonization. 

“Who was it?” He questions Dustin, licking his lips in anticipation, eager for a reaction. “It was Andy and his goons, wasn’t it?”

“Steve!”

“He’s always practically begging to get his ass kicked, Y/N!” 

Cleaning his injuries, Dustin sighs, unamused. “Your concern for me is overwhelming.”

“We have shown nothing but concern for you since forever,” Steve keeps pushing, keeps instigating and insisting on berating your brother to the point of exhaustion. “And we’ve been repeatedly ignored, and now look what’s happened. We’re completely fucking screwed.”

The dam breaks. Dustin’s vitriol foams out his mouth. 

“Correction!” He exclaims, laughing manically to himself as he falls off the edge. “We’re screwed because you don’t know how to do the most basic thing like prevent a power surge.”

All night you’ve been pulled too far, stretched too thin until you have nothing left inside you. Steve and Dustin bite back and forth at each other with viscous words and over-saturated egos and you’re too used up to suppress the overflowing aggression. 

Their voices overlap in a pounding, splitting headache that numbs your tongue. Curling into yourself, you squeeze your eyes shut and breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth, anything to digest the turmoil that nauseates you. 

“Jesus Christ, just admit it for once!” Steve’s hard, loud voice squeezes at your lungs, flinching at the harsh finality. “You’re wrong, Henderson. You screwed up!”

Steve never, ever raises his voice. He knows how much you despise it. You’ve spent endless sleepless nights confessing to Steve how your father used to yell at you, how his anger haunted your childhood home. 

And now Steve screams at your baby brother. 

You’re no longer numb.

“Stop it!” Your head nearly hits the roof of the van from how quickly you sit up, throwing yourself against the boys’ seats in a desperate attempt to get it all to stop. “Jesus, both of you just shut up.”

Both Dustin and Steve jump at the sudden outburst. Neither of them had been expecting it, both too lost in their own passive aggressive world to notice the signs of your brewing collapse. 

“I’m so fucking sick of this,” the timbre of your voice shakes, unable to hide the devastation that coincides with all the anger within you. “The arguing. The snarky comments and excessive defensiveness. I-I can’t do it anymore.”

Dustin offers you a concerned glance. “Y/N–” 

“You’re in desperate need of help and it’s fucking infuriating that you refuse to accept it.” No longer do you dread upsetting your brother. For months all you’ve done is tip-toe around his feelings, but in the end all it’s done is drive him further away, and you’re tired of pretending that it isn’t killing you. “All you’re doing is hurting the ones who love you.”

Steve gestures wildly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him!”

“And you,” immediately you turn Steve, your eyes hard and narrow and lacking their usual warmth when you look at the boy. “You need to act your own age. It’s so fucking infuriating having to deal with your insatiable need to always pick a fight with a literal child.”

“Until you both figure out whatever the hell is going on between the two of you,” hands shaking, you bite down on your teeth and spit out your final words, “leave me out of it.”

The sound of your uneven breaths become the only exhale that fills the silence in the van. Fragments of your ribcage rattle with every sharp inhale, heart on edge as it tries to piece together whether tonight has been real or if any second you’ll wake from the horrible, awful dream. 

But a rough, nostalgic hand cups the back of your neck. Its presence grounds you, it soothes the sporadic beating in your chest like a magnet to a nail. 

Falling back into the touch, your back presses against Jonathan’s legs, his body firm, unyielding, and you allow his touch to lull you into a bittersweet, endless silence. 

No one in the car speaks. 

– 

The hours pass by slowly.

Steve drives the same monotonous route over and over again, the four of you waiting for something, anything to happen. 

But Jonathan never gets a signal. The radios remain silent. 

As the hours drag on, the exhaustion from the night creeps in. Your eyes struggle to remain open. The adrenaline crashed long ago, with the only thing keeping you going is the fear that you’ve lost Hopper all over again.

You don’t know what you’d do if that were true. 

You’ve grown too used to grief, but you don’t think you’ll ever recover from losing Hopper. Not again, at least. 

“One more loop around the zone?” Steve asks Jonathan, navigation being the only conversation left to be had anymore.

Jonathan adjusts the antenna and checks for any new signal. His shoulders drop when he finds no difference. “Yeah,” he sighs. “Go ahead.”

The wheels of the van veer to a turn, but just as the tired gain traction, Jonathan’s hand flies to his headphones as he grips onto it harshly, face narrowed in concentration as he listens for something. “No, wait.”

“What is it?” You’re alert immediately, crawling onto your knees as you anxiously peer at the decibel meter. 

“Is it Hop?” Dustin’s voice laces with naive hope.

You shake your head, squinting at the meter, which has remained the same all night. “I don’t see anything on the decoder.”

“No, but I can hear something.” Jonathan’s body visibly strains, his eyes squeezing shut as he presses the headphones tightly to his ears. Suddenly he sits up in his seat, tired eyes now alight. “Yeah, I can definitely hear something.”

Dustin’s foot catches the base of your skull as he haphazardly crawls over the passenger seat and next to Jonathan.

“Fuck,” you duck to avoid further damage, wincing at the explosion of pain in your head. “Why is it always me you bruise?”

Your brother shushes you aggressively, shoving past you to get a better look at the meter himself just as Joyce’s voice sounds from the walkie.

“Is that him?”

Dustin yanks the headphones off of Jonathan and shoves them onto his own head, forcing the older boy to respond to Joyce. “We’re not sure.”

Both you and Jonathan stare at Dustin, baited breaths as you wait for his answer. But just as you allow a grimace of hope to build, he tears it down with one single sentence. 

“No, it’s not Hopper.”

“Then what the hell is it?” You bite back tears of frustration, fingernails cutting in your palms. “What else could you possibly be hearing?”

“I don’t know, alright? It could be a million things.” Dustin wrings his hands together, anxious. His own hope has died alongside yours. “Military broadcast, TV channel, any EMI within our frequency zone.”

Yet you’re a hopeless naive. “But we’ve been driving the same route all night without hearing anything. Why start now?”

“I can’t answer that,” your brother admits, shrugging. “But I can tell you that it’s not Hopper’s telemetry tag. If it was, it would show up on the decoder. So… the search continues.”

He crawls back to the passenger seat, unphased, yet you can’t move on. You know Dustin is right. There isn’t any other possible explanation, but it still feels as if a hammer has torn a nail through your chest. 

Jonathan senses your disappointment and squeezes your wrist, a silent, gentle acknowledgement of your exhaustion. Raising the walkie to his lips, he delivers the news to Joyce. “Hey, mom, um. Disregard. It’s a false alarm.”

She remains quiet for a moment before responding. “Jonathan, is your receiver in any way connected to the flux capacitor?”

Simultaneously you, Steve, Dustin, and Jonathan all cock your heads at the question, each of you trying to figure out whether or not you heard Joyce correctly. While your time at the radio tower has been limited, and while almost all of the hard labor has fallen onto Dustin’s shoulders, none of you know what the hell the woman is asking. 

“Uh, sorry, mom. Can you… repeat that?” The tailed raise in Jonathan’s cadence, hints of amusement and disbelief, somehow gets you to laugh, if even for a second. 

“The flux capacitor.” Joyce explains confidently. “Robin said it was down, but she and Will are working on it. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t messing with your connection.”

And there it is. 

Robin Buckley. 

Somehow it’s always her.

Steve catches your eye in the rearview mirror, his thoughts echoing yours. He raises his eyebrow, chuckles to himself, and you find yourself biting back a smile as well while Dustin fully turns around in his seat. 

Joyce’s voice sounds from the walkie again. “Hello?”

“You gonna tell her, or am I?” Dustin asks you, highly amused. 

You huff an amused laugh, reaching for the walkie from Jonathan. “I’ll tell her, though I can’t imagine it’ll sound any better coming from me.”

“Are you guys still there?” 

“We’re still here, Mrs. Byers.” You answer the woman, unable to suppress the smile that won’t leave your wanton lips. “Did you, uh. Say that Robin went off with Will?”

“Yeah, to fix the flux capacitor.” Joyce’s tone shifts, teetering on suspicion. “...Why?”

“I regret to inform you that Robin Buckley is a liar,” you tell her, giggling despite your best efforts not to. “And you should probably start looking for them.”

A beat passes.

“Oh, those little shits–”

The signal quickly disconnects and the walkie shuts off. 

For a brief moment, the van fills with a warm, honeyed hue. Jonathan snorts in disbelief, Steve shakes his head as he chuckles to himself, Dustin rolls his eyes, though not even he can mask his pleasure in hearing of Robin’s ability to deceive even the most vulnerable of parties. 

The honeyed hue lingers as the night stretches on, though all good things must come to an end, and when the radio’s silence dregs over into the next hour with nothing to show for it, no signs of Hopper or updates from Nancy, the hue becomes bitter once more. 

Eventually the beginning rays of early morning sunlight ebbs over the van’s dashboard. Its light kisses your eyelids and coaxes them shut. 

Steve lays his jacket over you. 

No one wakes you up.

-

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